Hello and welcome to the Weekly Scroll Podcast.
My name is Ryan. And I'm Tangle the elf.
Yeah, that. All right, let's call me Tangle.
Yeah, OK. And today, today we are going to
be looking at forgotten valid this is.
One of the first times ever I hold the book up and you hold up
empty hands because I have something.
Yeah, yeah, this is what you. What's funny is that I what's
funny is that I backed it and then you were like, hey, add on
the shit so that I can get a copy too.
And then I looked at it and I was like, I'm actually OK
without this and then just sent you the regular ones and I
didn't get it. I actually backed the original
Kickstarter because you backed Cries of the Overworld, which is
the, yes, best theory. And I backed the original
Kickstarter, but it was a time I was trying to save a little
money. So I backed it at the digital
level. So I've had this for a while,
but yeah, I, I'm super happy about this.
But first, Ryan, how you doing buddy?
Oh, I'm, I'm, I'm doing all right.
How, how? How are you?
Good man, anything cool going on life?
You play any games or read any books?
Got it. Oh, you know, I'm still, I'm
still chewing through the Horus Heresy.
You know that old Warhammer, Graham McNeil write less words.
But that's it. My glasses broke.
These are my backups, and I hate them with my entire being.
I hate them. I hate them so much.
Mostly because I genuinely hate like these things.
OK, gotcha. Oh, and for the podcast I was
pointing to like the nose pads, my glasses are so thick.
My, my lenses are so thick because I'm so blind that when I
have these kind of glasses, they literally just like slide down
my face all fucking day and it drives me nuts.
So so that's that's can you see it on camera?
They will. See you listening at home.
They're they're thick. Yeah, the lenses are like four
times thicker than the actual, like, like frame holding them.
So yeah, thick, thick boys. I'm in the process of getting
the one, so I got to, I picked some frames.
I just got to take them into my work.
Also has their own eyeglass department so I take them in and
they'll just pop from lenses. Anyway, that's all I'm doing.
How? How about you buddy?
Anything new? Good.
Man, you know, I'm just just working, but I have been playing
a really interesting game that's tangentially related to what we
talked about. And so I just want to talk about
on the show I've been playing Scald against the Black Priory,
which is a retro RPG, is a like a Lovecraftian horror RPG, very
dark, very dreary, 8 bit music in the background.
But it is a 2D6 RPG and it is really good.
It's 2D6 plus your plus your attribute plus your stat.
But it has like full stat sheets.
You can like click on the characters and has skills and
it's incredibly enjoyable and is just like a very much like a
minimalist in the RPG that we would review.
And I've really been enjoying it.
Yeah, you sent that to me and I meant to download it and I
didn't, so I'm just going to. It's also like 15 bucks and I'm
a couple hours in and I would have paid way more than 15 bucks
for this. Yeah, it looks dope and I
fucking love the art style. Like art style.
It looks fantastic. Yeah, I want more.
I want more out of this. What am I doing this?
I'm doing a fucking podcast God damn it.
Yeah, get off your video games. So so anyway, yes remind me
again I know you sent that to me to download that cuz yeah the
entire thing is like 15 bucks and and that's including like
the soundtrack like the DLC and fucking everything.
So let me exit cuz when you close steam, it doesn't actually
close, even though it doesn't show in any part of the bottom.
You have to actually hit exit on steam cuz fuck you steam right.
I haven't really I, you know me I'm not really a big video
gamer. I I will find one that I love.
I will play it for a million hours and I won't play another
game again for five years. Yeah.
So I'm trying. I tried, honestly, here's the
thing. I love Dark Souls lore.
I've read so much of it. I've done everything.
I've never played Dark Souls, you know, try to yeah, No, I
tried to play DS1 and I I put like maybe like 10 hours into it
and I just bounce off. It's super hard.
I think that it's it's fine. It seems really cool, but it's
it's it's just extraordinarily repetitive immediately, which I
know you said that that's not how you really play, but like,
if you just are patient and slow, you can just kill
everything and keep moving. Like I.
I play Fast and Furious. You know you got to play
Bloodborne. Bloodborne teaches you how to
play better, so. Yeah, so everyone also show me
the. Amazing game.
Yeah, everyone keeps telling me play Bloodborne in DS3.
So I'm going to play DS3 because if I want to play on PCI have to
get PlayStation Plus, which I will for a month just to play
Bloodborne on PC or I'll bust out my PlayStation.
But yeah, I'm, I'm doing those, but I'm also playing Doom
because I'm working on a thing that's.
Yeah, you're. Very, Jason.
Push forward mechanic game you've been.
Well, a lot of the mechanics I'm cooking are directly from Doom
2016. Doom 2016.
So it's fun. It is.
It is enjoyable. I just, I sit down and play a
video game and like 30 minutes and I'm like, I could do
anything else right now and be fine.
So I just put it down and go away.
Yeah, but I know you're a video Game Boy.
I see you on Discord, like, all the fucking time.
Yeah. Doing stuff.
What's? Funny is that like a lot of
times on Discord, you'll say I'm playing a game, but I have the
bad habit of pausing a game and then walking away.
Like I have 100 hours in Door Fortress and like 30 of those
are overnight because I'll pause it and I'll start watching a
show or reading something and I'll just like I am, I'm going
to go to bed and it just stays on.
So it stays on. Yeah, yeah, I really want to get
back into play and Doom and and like I said, start up DS3
because DS1 like it's ice bounced off the play style.
I know you said DS3 is a little quicker.
You go and just like waiting patiently, you can like break up
like the bosses, like moves a little bit better.
So we'll see. Yeah, that's us.
That's us as you. Said on our life, as we said
before, our our schedules change a little bit for those listening
Fridays 10:00 and then Fridays and Mondays.
Most of our stuffs can be Fridays and Mondays most, and
I'm my goal is to whenever we do Friday, have the episode
published by Sunday morning, which I had been doing until our
our dirt episode are are not cat chats that I didn't get
published till like yesterday, but but we want to get back to
doing reviews every Friday besides the dirt episodes
interviews on Mondays. That way we don't miss reviews
and we can keep up to date on stuff that's going on.
So yeah, that's it. As we said today, we're doing
forgotten ballad. This is a sword and songs
adventure game. Very, very Zelda Core.
Very Zelda. Core.
That's all I I immediately latched onto for that.
I'm very nostalgic for my youth of playing The Legend of Zelda.
Well you don't even have to be for good youth.
Haven't there been a bunch of like recent very good popular
Zelda games? But I feel like, yeah, and I
feel like there are like some small like enemy elements in
this game from more recent games.
But I think vibe wise, this very much reaches back to because
there's aren't, there's not really as much of like a musical
element in the more modern ones. The older ones have like the
Ocarina. Yeah, like the Ocarina Time.
Yeah, yeah. I still, yeah, I still play
Legend of Zelda. I play Breath of the Wild and
Tears of the Kingdom, and I'll play the new one coming out
where you play at Zelda for the first time ever.
But this very much has the energy of like an older one.
Gotcha. Yeah, see and we talked about
this before the for the show started today.
I have no good or bad thing to say about Zelda.
I have no relationship with Link or Zelda.
I never I didn't play the Zelda games as a kid.
I think like I said, we had Lynx awakening and I'd like chop some
grass for rupees. I did a little bit of fishing
and then maybe got the first dungeon and never really went
beyond that in any and never played another Zelda game ever.
So I have no nostalgia for Zelda.
I have nothing bad at all to say.
I just have no relationship with the content.
So this is a very, very opposite side to the coin for this game,
but it's a good one. You know, I mean, I suggest, I
suggest a lot of games, but you are adamant you really wanted to
do this one. And then the new Kickstarter
dropped that they did the over, over, over.
So we waited to physically get that, which you just recently
got, and now we're going to do this.
But this was a great fucking suggestion.
Yeah. You know, sometimes.
Sometimes I know stuff, yeah. Sometimes, occasionally, but,
well, why don't we? Why don't we?
Why don't we hop into it? Hop, what do you.
Show off that book a little bit more, though.
Oh yeah, so the book's pretty nice, right?
Hardcover, like, nice spine. I I I'm very happy with calling
book. It's incredibly thin.
This is a really short game that we're going to go through.
And so I do think it's like funny that it's a hard back.
I do like it and I think it's a good format and I think it came
out looking good. It's hard for me to show on the
camera because lighting, but you know, it's got some nice.
Yeah, you know, I will say. Yeah, we'll go over it.
But the art in this fantastic. I love the art.
It looks great. And Felipe de Silva, the writer,
is also the illustrator and and massive kudos to them because
the art's so on point. Yeah, it it's fantastic.
For those in podcast land that couldn't see the book that
Hunter was holding up briefly. Oh yeah, sorry, it's.
It's very, it's so it's a, it's a, it's a very nice green
colored book. It's got a lot of everything on
the outside is like these gold, you know, accoutrement all over
it. Gold logo on the front.
The logo is dope. There's no bookmark or anything,
right? No, there's not.
But the cover, it's nice. The cover is not glossy which I
do I'm I prefer a non glossy cover.
Give me that. Anyone who really want no
listen, fuck Matt covers, give me that nice shiny drive through
POD cover, you know? No, of course.
Yeah, they look great. And I mean, like I said, when I
actually had them before I like sent them out to you, I was
like, damn, these are kind of nice.
I should have got them. And I like a nice thin hardback,
like the job from games Omnivorous.
That's a nice thing. It just feels good.
It feels good. The bachelor's cookbook, you
know, I like those are great. And then the the Chrysler, the
overall book is like a, like a maroon kind of cover, right?
Yeah. And it's it's very similar style
and it has that kind of gold layout.
And yeah, I'm incredibly happy with these.
Yeah, they, they look really nice and, and the game's dope
too. So why don't we, why don't we
hop over to, to that page and we'll look at it.
So here is forgotten ballad and again, very simple logo.
I really love it though. Forgotten small ballad Biggers
got a leaf on it, which you know when you know it's Zelda, you
know it's going to do that and I love that does it so on the PDF
the gold is really nice. It's so it's obviously not gold
foiled, but they do the art in such a way that it really looks
gold foiled. Does it look that nice on the
thing? Because it's not foiled, it's
just like. It's it's pretty like it's hard
to like it interpret on the camera.
It's pretty bright, like it's not foil, but it looks nice.
It stands out. It's faux foiling it looks.
It does look nice out foiling. So forgotten ballad A sword and
songs Adventure game adventure game.
Interesting topic that they bring up Philippe de Silva and I
love the little. Sword and Song.
Yeah, Sword and Songs is good. Yeah.
Listen, I don't, I never played Zelda, but I know enough about
Zelda that I understand, like all of the references in here,
or at least the the obvious ones, you know, I'm sure that
there's a bunch of little things you're like, ah, you know,
that's from here, whatever. But I love the little, the
little like Lear on the front with the Felipe de Sova there at
the bottom. Great minimalist cover.
Beautiful, fantastic cover. Love this.
It's great. Yeah, there's definitely a
philosophy of minimalism in all of this that they really stick
to, that I appreciate. Yeah, that's great.
Page one, you immediately get into a a quick, a quick
reference for the entire book. You have a creating a hero
section, a rolling section and equipment, a little equipment
rules, one liner, weapons and damage, and then a 2D61D6 across
1D6 down for a quick names table, which is great.
Right on the first page. This is what I've been talking
about forever, where if you want to do characterization first,
even literally just this on the first page is enough for me to
go. OK so rolling literally tells me
one E6 default 1E6 die for equipment, 1E6 for Vantage
1E66S, and five or six. Just give me the base ice
mechanic. Like super easy, yeah, good
contacts. Yeah, really great.
So again, all those sections will be later in the book.
We'll go over them later. But it's really nice that the
very first page is like, boom, like, here's a breakdown in the
book. I love the name.
I love that you can just like, Yeah, I'm Yanji.
Romano. Yeah, Romano, I don't.
Think I closed any dice, but let's open it back.
Again. Oh, I can always just go.
Oh yeah, you have that. Do it.
Yeah, use it. Oh, OK, let me plug in real
quick. For some, what's the point I
have in the cool gear if we never use it?
Yeah, so again, for those that that don't know the cool gear
boom, I have a nice digital dice roller.
From critical machines, there's a.
Machine. Yeah, it was just an So I just
go D66. Let me clear that.
So I got a three and a four. Three and four, that's poo.
And then one more. Or Pennsylvania.
Oh, five put. Them things together and 4-5 and
four your your pusa or pusa pusa.
Oh, your PUSA. Oh, oh am I?
Am I PUSA? Yeah, PUSA.
So PUSA. That's how there you go.
Who say here we? Go yeah, but I love it.
You know, it it, it works really well and it kind of fits in
thematically to have like the simple like 2 syllable names or
like one syllable name. They're good.
Who say so going into it forgotten ballad song and sort
of venture game written design illustrated by Philippe de Silva
with writing translation or vision from I think that's is
that JP Nakashima. I believe that's AJP Nakashima.
High school too far forward. Yes, there is this language
hieroglyphic situation that's behind a lot of the writing and
is like trailer like on the top and bottom of every page.
That's really neat. Does is that?
Is that some type? Of yes, it's very that's
actually I feel like very more modern Zelda E, but yes,
absolutely. Gotcha.
And then there is this rock thing.
I assume that it's all is that an ocarina?
Like what it? What is?
No, that's a thing. I don't know what it is, but
it's definitely a thing. It's a rock thing.
OK, So kicking it off right on the early thing and says listen,
kid, the enemy's power is growing again.
This world has survived many calamities.
Our people are few, simple and scared.
It gets us. Hope to see with all that
courage you can fight back if you find those relics and
forgotten songs buried in old ruins.
But it's dangerous to go alone. Gather your friends and take
this with you. Is is that a Zelda thing?
It's dangerous to go alone. Oh yeah, so in your in the very
first Zelda before you like head out from the castle and says
it's dangerous to go and take this and gives you a sword and
it gives you sword. And then that listen, kid, is a
great reference to Navi from the Ocarino time, because whenever
wants to nullify you, it's like, Hey, listen, you're like, oh,
fuck again. Oh.
Isn't that the fucking ball thing?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Hey, listen. Yeah, that's that's the thing.
Major inspirations. Oh fuck, I forgot to read this.
So major inspirations are oil fantasy for playstyle and
guidance all-wheel. And then there's the websites
oil fantasy.blogspot.com mouse Ritter for the inventory and
ambiance mouse ritter.com Cairn for guidancecairnrpg.com false
machine for the playstyle and it's false machine.blogspot.com
slash 2020 slash O 5 slash soft dash S-D soft SD&D.
But that link doesn't take you anywhere.
If you put in dot HTML at the end of it, you'll actually get
to the the thing from false machine.
For those who don't know false machine, Patrick Stewart, it's
done a bunch of weird, crazy shit.
Deep Carbon Observatory, Veins of the Earth.
They actually let me actually show this off.
And obviously we're not talking about Sir Patrick Stewart, who
plays John Lee with the card. That would be wild.
Those that might have got one of these, Patrick put out their
entire blog from 2011 to 2021 in a giant collected volume.
Which I of course have because I love their shit.
Because it's weird and dark and fucked up and they have a lot of
incredible opinions, whether I agree with all of them or not
about gaming. And it is a beautiful, beautiful
tome. But yeah, I do really love False
Machine. I was really surprised to see
that as an inspiration here. But what's funny is if you
actually go read Soft Dash D&D, it's fucking great.
And I can totally see the inspirations after reading this.
When I went to read Soft Dash D and DI Really wanted to read Oil
Fantasy at work last night but I got there and it is not in
English and my computer very easily translates but my phone
didn't as easily on the slowest Internet at work so I did not
get a chance to read the the Oil Fantasy manifesto.
Very excited to read that though.
I need to be careful with this and put this somewhere.
Just though it just anywhere. Absolutely no, not with that.
So again, for those in podcast land, I held up a very giant
bright orange tone for False Machine, but really cool and
then some game the Legend of the Zelda mechanics and ambience.
So, yeah, continuing on, so table of contents, so right off
the bat, let's talk about a couple of things.
Websites are listed here. They are not hyperlinked out to
actually go to those websites, which is kind of disappointing.
We hit the table of contents which is not hyperlinked at all.
Let's check for those bookmarks. There aren't any bookmarks.
Oh, oh, no bookmarks. So complete lack of digital
tools on the PDF. It is.
I was going to say, it's kind of short.
It's still 50 plus pages, so it is kind of disappointing.
Sometimes if I want to, and I actually noticed this earlier
because I was rolling something up like last night and I wanted
to go straight to something. I was like, oh, I kind of got to
got to look through it, you know?
There's also not a. A silk bookmark in the book,
like we said earlier. So navigate, yeah, I mean books
in hand, it's. 48 page like it is a very thin I agree with you
listen, everything should have three bookmarks.
I'm right there with you. I won't I won't hold it that
much against this one when it is an incredibly thin PDF, but it's
never a bad thing to have. And the lack of the hyperlinks
in the table of contents is, you know, that's the thing.
That's the thing that is literally one of the things
we're most known for is bitching about hyperlinks.
I I need to get a merch, my merch out.
I talked about the merch, right. Like I want to have like our
logo on it, but like the bottom like THRBG podcast in like blue
with like a hand over it. Like it's like like clicking the
hyperlink. That's going to be one of our
first marches hyper logo merch. Yeah, so going through this,
there's an about forgotten ballad.
Hey, if so, I assume, and tell me if I'm wrong, that the person
talking to in our chat right now might be the creator of the
game. If you have a newer one, feel
free to send it to us, but I do have what's called the final PDF
from the Kickstarter. Who do I so yeah, but we have a
about forgotten ballad. We have principles for the
guide. We have principles for players.
Here are creation rules, playing the songs, building dungeons,
the region and the people, world inhabitants and forests of
storms. All of which comes out to What's
the total count on this 55 pages, but the actual kind of
like stuff to play the game before he gets like dungeon
building and like the lower bit is 18 pages.
So it is a very tight small game and anyone that watches us here
on the show knows that that's the kind of game we like.
I, if you're and listen, we're, we're going to be reading a book
very soon that's 404 pages long. So we will be saying some shit
about that. Even though we're excited to
read it. That's just not where we're at.
I, I, and I think we've talked about this a bunch before, Like
there are people out there that were, that want a procedure and
a crunchy thing for every possible outcome.
And I think a lot of it comes down to scaffolding.
It's just like I've, I've seen people be like, this isn't even
a rule. Like there's nothing here.
Like like I saw people talking shit on bastards, which again,
it's not complete but like the whole thing is like it's, it's
enough for you to get going. Yeah, and that's the point.
So people that are like rulings over rules that doesn't make
sense, why isn't there a rule for it?
Because I don't want forehand pages fucking crunch.
Like just let me do whatever the fuck I want to do.
I mean. I go, I say all the time how
much of A minimalist boy I am. Like, I mean, bastards was my go
to forever because I just don't want, I just, I just know how to
make decisions for my table and like my table and I are also
like everyone in my table now has been playing like DCC and 5E
for years. So when it comes to like making
decisions that we've all are OK with, like it's very easy to do.
We don't want that much crunch. Most of the time.
I I prefer the minimalist first because if I feel like it's
missing something, I just add it, you know?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that's the thing.
It's like you don't need to do all of here's the thing, I'm
expanding my mind and I have been for a while, right?
It's like. The DNT.
I'm gonna start blogging at some point very soon and I've
thought, you know, we'll, we'll see how it comes out.
But a lot of it, a lot of it comes down to like I said, is
like game scaffolding. And I really want to do like a
big old thing about game scaffolding and like not only in
individual games, but also in game styles and stuff like that.
And how fucking dumb it is to like basically say like this is
the right way to do it and, and the way you're doing it is
wrong. It's just like it's an entirely
different genre of game. Like people in OSR are saying
that Pbta is wrong is literally like like people doing like
polka saying that metal music isn't the way to really do
music. And it's like it's not even the
same genre it has nothing to do with each other.
So like there shouldn't even be like a crossover for it.
Like it it's it's OK when something it when you're not the
target audience for something. And I think that the especially
Western civilization has decided that that's not OK that like if
you are not the target audience that something's wrong.
No listen, listen listen as to sis hat white dudes.
We really are allowed to have opinions on this, right?
Whoa sis, that's a slur. Bro, fucking people like fucking
individualism is one of the downfalls of Western
civilization. Anyway, let's get into this
game. I really I really enjoy this
game. All of that is to say this is
the very minimalist game and aside from 1 little bit we're
going to talk about really, really enjoy this.
So about forgetting ballads, I'm not going to read all of this,
but it says what is an adventure game, which I had never really
read specifically is like a separate genre, but I guess it's
I get it, the thing. I get it.
Yeah, so basically it says an adventure game.
Players solve problems by using their imagination, similar to
other teach RBGS, but the focus is much more about problem
solving than on story creation. Which makes sense if you're a
big Zelda hat, I guess, because it's a lot of puzzles and and
playing of the game. Which totally makes sense.
The game is for two or more people, etcetera, blah blah
blah. Yeah, In the Forgotten Ballad, a
primordial evil has destroyed the living world many times.
People are now scattered around the land, living in ruins, small
villages or cities with no contact outside their
settlements. There are signs that the enemy
is gathering forces again, corrupting and disturbing each
region. The players are adventuring
musicians in search of power in the form of knowledge of the
ancients, pieces of music, history and magic artefacts,
etcetera, etcetera. This little book presents you
with procedures and rules to help you live your adventure in
this world of sword and song. Again, I love when people do
that shit like when when Alex had like the what was sacrifice?
What did he say for that? Like the they'd.
Say incense and iron. Incense and iron.
Fucking great. What the fucking genre title
that is too. That's a great one.
So. It's great, but Sword and Song
is so. Evocative like you just you very
early on the get an understanding by that like its
own intended like creative sub genre.
You were like, oh OK, I it already it gives you a vibe to
kind of start on some beginning context or expectation.
Absolutely it works. It does just it really does.
Again, someone who's never who has a very minimal relationship
with Zelda, like it's so obviously inspired by.
And it here's the thing too, that I really enjoyed this game
and we'll see it more as we go through.
Like you're not, this isn't a game to emulate Zelda.
It's a game that is just incredibly heavily inspired by
Zelda. Could you play Link and all that
through here? You could, but this game feels
more like a game kind of set in a world adjacent to the world of
Zelda. Not like you're trying to
emulate the game, you know, which I really enjoy.
I do too. It's like, it's like the world
of The Legend of Zelda, like high roll and all that.
And all the different iterations is always so fun and like
interesting and like it's cool to have it like, Oh yeah, but
it's kind of like that. But there's no like, great hero
and there's no Princess and you're you're just exploring
these lands and there can be a big bad answer, some
implications. Yeah, implications.
I I don't know what you're quoting because I've never seen
it's. It's Always Sunny.
So don't. Want to go on a boat you've
never seen? It's always Sunny.
No, I'm kidding. I've I've.
Seen the tangent on this one. So anyway, so these rules were
designed for fast learning and gameplay, don't cover all
situations, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
The lore in the book is meant to be subtle.
It's a very like implied setting.
Build it, make your own world. And I really like that
throughout our random tables, texts and illustrations, I want
to inspire you to build your own adventure world for your group.
Love that that's great. And I do believe that the, the
author, if I'm correct, that was the, that they were here in chat
with us, said that the, these words across the page are, are
words, they're just encrypted. They said these are actually
words written on those runes kind of encrypted, Of course,
very interesting. It would be interesting to try
to decrypt that and see what it says.
So what? What's interesting too is like
half the beginning of this game, like the the the setup for the
game is more pages than the actual like rules of the game
and stuff. I think it makes sense for this.
You're creating expectations. You let everyone know where you
should try to stand as you play this as the we're going to do
principles to the guide and then principles to the player
afterwards. And it really helps like paint a
picture like what you're going to do.
You don't need a lot of mechanics for this.
This isn't really about the mechanics.
This is about the adventure. And I and I love that.
And honestly, the section coming up, I, I love I would, I would
pull out and and and and bring to any session for your like any
kind of game. So it talks about game dynamic
and keeping it safe. So the game dynamic basically
says it's conversation between players and the guide.
Boom, there you go. Keep it safe, use safety tools.
That's it. There's a little little kind of
breakdown of the game, like a like a what am I trying to think
of example play kind of thing. We talked about the
conversation. They reiterate over and over
again, like having a conversation.
So guy says this, player says that, guy says this, read it.
It's good. It's a good little thing I do
love. So let's talk about the layout
real quick. Background is super white,
totally fine. I wouldn't mind if it was like
slightly less white, yeah. But I think the body font is
incredibly readable. I really enjoy the header fonts.
I think that it's a fancy but readable font, Super cute.
The entire thing is very much green.
The runes across the top are all green that are light green.
The headers are all the dark green.
And these kind of like side boxes instructions and things
like that are in like a light green as well.
So very much a green, but consistent through throughout
the the the game. And I think even most of the
most of the art has like a mostly green overtones We'll get
to. It's very like nature for it.
It has that, you know, fairies in the woods type of vibe, you
know, ancient, ancient structures covered in Moss and
wrapped in vines kind of thing, you know?
Very much so. Even even these little symbol
headers, I really enjoy this like mountains in the clouds
with like the sun, you know, coming up behind it and really
great. So there's second here on
principles for the guide and principles for the players.
These are fantastic. They're fantastic.
They're really good. They're they're great.
They're great. I mean, again, so inspired by,
you know, I again, I haven't I've had a chance to read the
the Oil Manifesto. I'm sure that's not what I
really call but but obviously Karen has really great, you
know, tools and writing in the beginning.
Absolutely. And then again, a lot of stuff
from Patrick, but like these are really fantastic and we're not
going to read through every single one of them, but I highly
encourage you to principles for the guy.
Basically, this is advice. It's interesting that the mainly
from the oil fantasy manifesto, which is interesting because
that's the one thing that I didn't get a chance to read
guide guide rules first. It's cool, but basically
emergent story. A lot of these are kind of like,
it hits that, like OSR but leaning more narrative kind of
kind of aspects, but a lot of them are still.
The NSR. The NSR is just the OSR
relabeling itself post pandemic. Try to get rid of a bunch of the
right wing. I would say that this venture is
almost into the ASR, the after school revolution, the idea that
like, you know, show the I think, I think there was a John
Davis one that like this is a thing you could just have.
That's a Christmas set thing. Is it a Christmas set thing?
Yeah, so Emergent Story basically says everybody is
looking for fun, but knowing what fun is for everyone would
be too much. Basically, the idea is to let
the players interact with the world and the story emerges from
that, which is one of the core conceits of like everything
that's not fucking five, Ed and D.
You know, you're not a storyteller, you're a guide.
You know, player agency, which is again, something just foreign
to most 5E players. Player interactions inside the
world should have an impact. The world needs to respond and
change. Failure is proof that their
actions mattered. Referee posture.
You were supposed to be as neutral as possible.
You're not playing against the players, but you're not.
You're also not protecting them from failure.
People are allowed to die, people allowed to make bad
decisions, people allowed to make good decisions.
Your job is just to keep the game fair and consistent for
everybody and allow the players to play the game challenge
centered. So again, for the adventure game
style, the challenges are kind of the point.
That's what they said you like, you're not telling a story.
You're not just like dungeon delving, like there's these
challenges and puzzles and traps and in the adventure game style
that's, you know, that's very forward in the game.
Obvious danger. Basically anytime players are
going to run into something crazy, there should always be
hints. You should always be
foreshadowing what's coming forward.
Obvious opportunities. Tell the players what they will
encounter in the wild and the ancient ruins.
Tell a little bit of history, like let people know what to
expect and, and what part of the world that they're going to be
in and so they can build on it. Transparency above all else,
always tell your players the challenges they are facing.
Again, like the world is or this style of gameplay is about
making decisions and players need to have the information
able to make those decisions. It's never, you're never going
to do a gotcha or an aha like on players tricking them with
mechanics, you know, paint the world.
I I do like the way that they describe this part when making
descriptions, try to 1st tell the three most prominent things
with a little detail and let the players ask more information.
If they want it, that's a great, that's great.
If it stinks, say it stinks. If it does walls or stones, say
there's stone. If it's poorly lit, say it's
poorly lit and let the players ask you what else is there.
You don't have to like, you know, do the whole thing.
No, I have to itemize every detail.
I wrote a paragraph about this one room that we're going into,
so I I must describe it all to them.
Yeah, I mean, you have to but but how would they roll that
investigation check, you know, the game beyond the dice.
Dice are valuable when using them sparingly.
If if it makes a rolling more thrilling.
Challenges can be overcome by narrative like only roll when
you have to, you know, and that's that's something that
like almost every game does. But then like so many people
don't listen to there's just such as internalized like D&D
brain of like, I encountered an obstacle.
I must roll dice. Like just tell me what the fuck
you want to do. Yeah.
Just tell me what you want to do.
I do. We have had some sessions on,
We've had one session on here. I've had some in real life where
it's like, I think we may have rolled twice, you know, and.
That's fine. That's fine.
For like 2 hours we're all twice.
It was great. I mean like that's not a
complaint. Like the fun comes from the the
the story and the interaction and and hanging with your buds
to do a cool thing. The dice is just a mechanic for
solving non narrative problem. Problems that you could solve,
you know, or solve problems you could not solve narratively I
can speak. Words or or or again like if if
if the if the consequence to what you're doing, whether good
or bad isn't interesting. Defeat the thing narratively.
You know what I mean? Rules as a toolbox.
The rules in these books are simple and only cover some
situations. That's the classic rules.
You know, rulings over rules kind of situation.
And then game balance. If you anticipate the danger, be
transparent and respect the player's agency.
Game balance doesn't really exist.
Like if a if a level one party runs into a dragon, they should
run away and they should know that they should run away,
right? Yeah, but like I've literally
played with like level one people.
This is a very I don't know why I'm so against I I was even
talking earlier about being like more open to different styles.
But like I I've had like a level one party run into a dragon
literally designed to make them run away and they fought to the
daft and were like, why what? Why did we die?
And it's like you was a fucking dragon.
I don't understand you love. You have four hit points.
Referencing kind of what this game is very inspired by in
Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom.
Sometimes you'll come across like incredibly intimidating
looking monsters. Like there's the Lionels or
Lionels. They're just big, like Centaur
lions. And they'll just be in a massive
open field. And you look at them and you're
like, I don't think that I'm ready for this interaction, you
know, Like it. It's clearly telegraphed.
Like they're in a big open field.
They're in a battleground, essentially, and they're
standing in the center as a challenge.
Like, you know, if you're going to go in, it's probably going to
be difficult. Yeah, at best.
At best, at best. So yeah, so that is the
principles for the guide principle for the players are
also just as great. Describe So this is a game of
shared narrative. Describe how your character acts
like understand what they're doing.
Describe what's happening. Fear the dice, the dice or
caprices beast like rolling involves risk.
Like always try to solve the situation without rolling.
Rolling our mechanic used to determine like fate and and and
things like that, like not what you do.
And that's why like encountering something being like, well, I
wouldn't roll an acrobatics check, but like, what are you?
What are you acrobatic? Like, what are you?
What are you doing? You don't roll the dice and then
tell me what like interpret the role.
This isn't bones, you know what I mean?
We're not like casting for the future.
Like tell me what you want to do and then I'll tell you if you
even need to roll. Be free to use your head, your
character. She only has a few things on it.
And I love this like people that are like so worried about the
immersion that like met like player knowledge is character
knowledge. Who gives a shit?
Like who cares? Like you're my immersion would
be broken the second someone pulls out dice because I'm not
really wait a minute. I'm not really in this like
quasi western medieval world with the sword.
Oh no, like come on, give life to your character.
The story happens in the game, it deals with the characters and
how it interacts. Like you don't need to act or
make a silly voice to role play. You can, you're more than
welcome to, but just be coherent and be consistent with your
character explorer. Exploring is life, an
adventurer. Try new places, characters,
tactics. Do do things you know do things
and move the game forward. There's no correct answer, right
or wrong. You are the hero, one of the
courageous. Take action, set goals.
This is not a game of sitting and waiting, so great great sets
of principles across both. Very strong.
Yeah, first full page art here. Love, love, love this page, this
group of adventurers walking up a hill and in the background is
you tell me. I assumed statue at first, but
now I'm not so sure. I think it's just a massive
statue. But like the word, it's.
Not floating. Yeah, it's floating it.
Is, yeah, but these this very, very kind of like wind swept
open grassy plains, like rolling hills.
Clouds come in the background. Great, great piece of art
really, really enjoys. And this, this woman in robes,
flowing robes. Oh, yeah.
And then like the arm, I didn't even see that the arm before was
broken too. And it's also floating of this
like statue reaching up into the sky, clearly extremely tall over
one of the hills in the background.
Great piece of art, full page. I know this is random but I love
the kind of like inky like frame that was put on and how it like
breaks down into like the rocks and stuff at the bottom as
opposed to just being in pure square.
I really enjoyed the way it's set on the page here.
All the art's very satisfying to look at creation.
I will say before you get into this, this is one of the pages.
This is like one of the only pages that kind of tweaks me a
tiny bit just because of how much open space is at the top.
A top, Yeah, yeah, it actually finishes at the bottom of the
page, but the top has just like, it's almost like it bothered me
less if they just centered it up a little bit more.
That's what I'm saying because if it was, it would be.
This is better than if the bottom was just like giant open
because it would feel. Empty.
I agree if it was. If it was a giant empty space at
the bottom, I'd hate it. But but best of both worlds,
just centered up a little bit, just a little bit more.
So the space feels smaller because there's another page a
little bit lower. We'll get to it in a little bit
or I'll Scroll down now where there's space at the top, but
it's not as much space and it doesn't bother me nearly as
much. So if they would have just
centered up that a little bit, even if it's not the same low as
like every other page, I think it would have just made this
page feel a little bit less incomplete.
Or just put, just put a little bit hard.
Just put a little hard in there. You're the illustrator.
You're paying yourself to do as
much art as you want, you know? So tell me about.
Tell me about hero creation. Yeah, So you're hero.
So you're musician, your hero. Now, First off, we have the best
thing to ever have and any character creation, which is a
numbered list of steps. We love that.
Always do it. It always works.
It's great. I mean, yeah, you're a brave
one. You left your village in search
of the ancient songs with the courage to face the Wilds, the
enemy and help your people. Follow the steps below to create
your character and forgotten valid.
So let's choose background for the background stable.
Choose an instrument, a parting gift from your village.
Choose something you're carrying in a bottle.
Classic. I have the ferry in the bottle.
Mark three hearts. All adventures have humble
beginnings. Optionally choose a weapon.
Those are rare to find. And the 6th describe what your
hair looks like. And seven, give them a name and
pronoun, the ones that people will sing in the future.
Ryan. Is fairy in a bottle?
Is that a? Is that a?
Totally. It's yeah.
What is that? What is that in the world of?
You can either use a fairy to heal several hearts, or if you
get knocked to 0 hearts left and you have fairy in the bottle,
you revive back. OK, OK, there is a there's a
fairy in a bottle thing later in here too.
OK, cool, cool, cool. Cool, cool, cool.
I love this. So optional rule up in this top
right in a green little bubble. Love the green bubbles used
throughout this. They're used appropriately.
They're not overused, which is amazing, and they draw your eye.
It's perfect champion mode. You're a hero of your people, so
you start as a hero of your people.
Tell the group about their culture and start with four
hearts and a relic. That's a pretty good start.
Cool option to have. Moving on to backgrounds, every
hero had an occupation before they were a hero.
Obviously, you know. I mean you got to the hero's
origin terms, their knowledge and ability.
The players and the guide must decide what the hero's origin
can help in tests and situations.
The player can choose the hero's background or roll it on the
background table. We are a a rolling podcast here.
We will always roll, so we're going to so I, I be used to it.
Well, I'm going to do one too. No, just me.
So I rolled a six and a four. So I got an air.
I start with fine clothes and two D6 coins.
I'm a rich boy. 20 I got A2 and A2, so I got merchant.
I get to choose to. I'm going to be.
Like. Choosing 2 items.
I don't want to do that. I got A5 and A5.
What? Why am I doubling up here so
much? Wanderer, a bug collection and a
rope. Bug collection and rope.
Great. I love this.
It's very like I, I always hold back from describing things as
cute because I'm not trying to like, I think people take that
as like a negative thing, like, oh, it's cute, but like, dude,
this is super cute, you know, like.
Adorable. It's adorable as as it's to say,
is Q without 7 to Q adorable. Yeah.
The list of items are really interesting too, though, because
like it feels like, I don't know why and it's not always that
way, but like there's almost this kind of like useful, like
very proactively and useful a little bit like reactively kind
of niche to it. You know what I mean?
Like bug collection, rope is like rope I'm going to use all
the time. Bug collection.
That's a cool thing to have, but like if you look like walking
stick and dog, same kind of thing, like walking stick you
use all the time. The dog is a cool thing to have.
Like, you know, they're not always, but I, I, it seems like
through some of them there really was that kind of like
thought of like, you know, kind of like a primary item and
secondary item aspect to it. I agree someone who was writing
this was paying attention what they're doing.
Gravedigger obviously is what I would pick first.
Shovel in a candle. Yeah, of course, because even in
a light hearted, adorable, fanciful game, you're gonna be
the the sad boy. So moving on to rules.
Mr. Probably arcanist, shaman or fortune teller like.
Yeah, You know, Arcanist, you just get the what?
You start with an ancient song. I don't know which one's fortune
teller. What do you start with?
Fortune teller. Broken crystal fortune teller
cards. Oh, that's sick and you still
have a broken. Crystal ball, Like, listen, just
because we're completely pegged and who we are, we've accepted
it, you know? Yeah, that's fine.
I'm a I'm a mystical magic boy and I'm good with that.
So rules in this game, the conversation is the main
mechanic. You always start with the
fiction created by the group. The players player characters
are capable heroes and will succeed in most of their
attempts. Move the game forward and let
the dice act only in really dangerous or drastic situations.
I love that this is just a conversation.
Whenever you really like things, really tense dice will make the
decision. So this is AD Shockingly, the
game that I I like and picked is AD6 Dice Pool system, one of my
two favorite dice pool systems. So first one being.
D20 roll under or the other one being D20 roll under.
Yes, D20 roll under and D6 die spool are amazing systems and
they are great. Yeah, so whenever your hero
tries to do something risky with a potential failure or an
unclear outcome, their player roles 1D6 no matter what, plus
one more die for useful equipment, one one more for
fictional advantage, and then one more for help from other
characters. If the die hits A5 or six, it is
a success. The hero has avoided the risk or
the outcome was positive for them.
Great little optional rule at the bottom, the half success
rule, which I like, and if you roll A3 or A4, it's a partial
success. Essentially you do what you were
trying to do, but there is some sort of negative outcome.
What's funny is you said something that is anathema and
to what I was about to say is I love half success because I
could not hate the words partial success anymore.
I'm gonna have a whole thing about that.
I think one of the problems again, neither of us are huge
PPTA heads, but we know that it exists and it's fine.
I am a big 2E6 make success person right?
Even though I don't. I don't like moves, but as we
know not liking moves is a move since everything is a move
since. Everything is a move.
Actually starting this conversation is actually a move,
so. Right.
And any of the conversation is a move.
So. But but here's the thing.
The way that this is worded, you can just a half success on a
three or four. It says that means the character
succeeds but suffers a set back or disadvantage.
I think one of the reasons is sometimes people bounce off of
2D6, especially Gming. It is the words partial success
because people go, well, how do you partially succeed?
How do I like half succeed at this?
So I have to come up with these like interesting way where you
like kind of succeed but kind of don't.
And that I think is why people bounce off a lot because to me,
and how this says it and how exactly how I would say it is,
it's not that you partially succeed.
It's not that you would kind of do what you want to do.
It's you succeed, but there's a consequence to that action too,
as opposed to just succeeding. So using words like half success
or mix success are what I prefer.
And I love that they worded that way here and then specifically
described it as you succeed comma, but you suffer set back a
disadvantage. It's such a good way to to write
that as opposed to like partial success where again people feel
like, how do you partially succeed?
Like, yeah, it's much more of a clear descriptor than it's a lot
less foggy, yeah. Absolutely.
Feels easily it feels easy to implement even in the game is
this lightweight and yeah so hearts next hearts are your
health units your heroes resistance to damage you start
with three you gain a new heart when you defeat a boss and a
dungeon. You can also gain a new heart by
helping people around the world. And you can recover lost hearts
by taking some time to rest and eat.
Love that you just. Yeah, just by helping.
Be a helpful guy. Be a nice dude.
You're a nice guy. Wow, it's interesting.
I think in so the original version of this, which I don't
have super internalized is the Legend of the Forgotten Ballad,
which was a pamphlet minimalist game.
I think in that one originally it was you got like a quarter or
half a heart for helping people. And I remember reading that
being like, I don't really want to track that.
So this being just like, Oh yeah, you just get a heart for
helping like way easier. That's great.
It also feels more meaningful. And I like you.
That's the kind of what you want because you know all the in like
The Legend of Zelda and many of them, when you do those like
side quests for people, you help them out.
It feels very meaningful. So this is nice.
Yeah, it's really nice, you know, and it's one of those
things where, like, you know, incentivizing a play style is
not brainwashing. So if you give.
People a whole heart brainwashing.
Yeah, they're more likely to to help people which like, you
know, even even the optional weapons at the top was great and
I love that. Definitely, definitely pulled
that from that blog post from Patrick Stewart from false
machine You I highly recommend Hunter you to to to read that.
It is fantastic. OK, cool.
I will, yeah. Equipment.
I'm gonna can I Do you know I love a good inventory system.
I'm gonna. Do it.
Go for it buddy, it's all you. I don't know why, but I love a
good inventory system. You know, I love this.
So equipment, a hero is what the carry.
It allows you to fight soft. So again, because the core
mechanics of the game is like roll dice and you get additional
dice for like a useful equipment.
Equipment is a huge part of the game.
Yeah. So yeah, inventory super simple.
You get 12 items, 6 equipped, 6 either in belts or backpacks or
or whatever and you're limited to any more than that and you
can't like run quick or move. The only thing I will say is
like, I love how light this is, but also like there's not really
like like an action economy described in combat or whatever.
So it's like if something is equipped or in a backpack, I
wouldn't have minded like the thought of like, what does it
look like to need to take something out of a backpack?
Like does that matter? I guess like I don't even need
like necessarily like give me the rule for that.
But like, does it matter? Like in combat, if it's on your
belt, is that any different than having it equipped?
If it's in your backpack, is that any different?
Is there more you have to do for it or not?
Don't know. Obviously you can make it up for
yourself that that is kind of one of the rules where I'm like,
I wouldn't mind the thought from the creator on that one.
Yeah, I would really lean into the like almost cartoony aspect
of this, which is just like things are just on hand when you
need them. Like you can always just pause
the game and and hold out your inventory and you have it.
Yeah, yeah. I don't see my only.
My only thing with that though is like if.
If that's the case, then there's no reason for a distinction.
That's very fair. You know magic.
The old ways of magic are lost, but heroes can access this power
through songs and items. In the beginning heroes are able
to use magic only once per day, but this can be increased by
doing favors to fairy mothers, which we get to, and then
weapons, which I think would be a good time to to also now we
get to that. So weapons.
They are rare and usually kept as family heirlooms.
There are many tales about legendary weapons hid in the
world. When a weapon hits it always
says the same damage. Boom.
Ordinary weapons are fist one damage refined for special
weapons, two damage. Legendary weapons, three damage.
Big explosive, 4 damage. Love that, fucking love it, huge
fan. What are your thoughts?
Oh, I'm also a huge fan. I, I don't see a lot of like set
damage for stuff. A lot of times there's a couple
games that I've gone through that were set damage, but I do
really, really like them. I do think it creates an issue
that we're gonna talk on very shortly, but we'll get to it and
we get to it. But yeah, I like it overall.
Yeah, yeah, it events. I love the piece of art here on
the bottom of what is probably a merchant like.
A shot shop guy, yeah. The pawn shop guy with like the
rings and like all of the fucking jewelry and shit with
like the eye the. Monocle.
So my thought is, OK, is it a monocle or is it that like the
thing that people look at diamonds with like all close,
you know what I mean? That's what I'm picturing is, is
he's just like rocking that, waiting for your shit to be
like, you know, and. This is real magic, I'll tell
you you. Know Do you want to do combat?
Do you want to do combat? Yeah, Combat harm.
When a character takes a hit, the weapon damage is deducted
from their hearts. If they have any defense value,
reduce it from the damage. Any damage that causes hearts to
drop to 0 or less leaves a hero unconscious.
They can get back on their feet if they have a ferry in a
bottle, but if not, if not rescued, that's the end of their
story. So defense value is an
interesting thing that is not mentioned again and has not been
mentioned before and I don't know what it is.
I mean we can infer because we're we, we read a lot of games
right? But the only other time defense
is mentioned at all in the game, and trust me I control left is
in enemy stop blocks. Yes, yes, this is mentioned
enemy stop box and I don't know I I'm interested about this
because because there is set damage and you have armor that
gives you a defense value of one and it's a soap defense that
means anything that does one damage, which is a few things
can never hurt you after that. Yeah, that's fine.
Why do you see that as a problem?
I cuz I don't I just do. Like I mean there's no point in
which you should be immune from. That means if you have two armor
things that do 2 damage, you're immune from.
But here's the problem. Here's the problem that I have
with with your thinking is your thinking is incredibly like,
like very tunnel. Vision you're saying I have a
small brain bro? Not small brain, just narrow
vision. Expand upon this for me.
So is taking one damage, right? The so here's the thing, let's
reverse it. Let's say that an enemy has one
armor, right? One defense and you're carrying
the the simple weapon that gives you one hit, right?
OK. OK, is hitting that bad guy with
that weapon the only possible way in like possible way you
could defeat them? No, I guess you are right, there
is another Ave. for this enabled.
Bajillion avenues because this game is an adventure game which
is the. Game.
Challenges and problem solving exactly, so I see no issue with
that. The thing too though is it was
better. Defined.
Oh, 100% agree, I'm just saying I'm just saying specifically to
your point that like if you have damage took one and everything
does one damage, but the other thing too is like if you get to
that point, the GM should be like shouldn't necessarily just
be throwing one damage bad days at you all the time.
You know what I mean? Like, you know, things like
that. Also, the game is designed
around finding relics and things like that.
I but I I see where you're coming from.
I just don't see it as an issue because of exactly we said it's
a problem solving game solve the problem.
But to your point again, well, eventually we'll talk about
armor. There is 00 not a single thing
about like what armor is for players.
And the only time defense is mentioned again is in bad guy
step locks. So just like the weapon section
above here where it says weapon one damage refined to weapon
like legendary three big four. Like I wouldn't find it an armor
one to be like simple armor one like legendary armor two, you
know? So I'd like to read just the
bottom of this combat example that is under initiative harm
and and the first part of the combat example is they're
attacking the flame bat and they hit it and it's very it's a good
combat example so that's fine. The second paragraph is Bowie
misses her shot, but Camira manages to get the bats
attention. The creature screams and their
flames grow stronger. How are you going to defend
yourself Camira? The guide asks I'm going to
stand my ground and use my shield to block the creatures
attack. She replies and the guide grants
her +2 dice. She fails the roll and takes two
damage. Some of her clothes are
breathing. So to me that means that if you
have armor when you're being attacked, you roll your dice
pool. You can add your armor to that
dice pool to avoid taking damage, but that doesn't that's
not damaged soak. Right, which also though the
other thing too is so the guy grants her plot +2 dice. +2
dice, yeah. But one for the.
Shield, Shield. And then you get the one base
stock. Just the one like maybe that's
what they're saying is there's the one die that you get and
then. And then the shield die.
Yes, in the combat example it sounds like armor is just a
useful item that you that adds to your dice pool.
But if that's the case, what is the whole?
What is the like there is no defense value thing that would
would make any sense as far as the players go.
And that's fine, because combat could be combat could be just
talking about defense value for bad guys.
But the way it's written, when it specifically says when a
character takes a hit, the weapon damage is deducted from
the heart. If they have any defense value,
reduce the damage. They're still talking about the
character. Yeah, I think the way that I
personally would run this is you.
If you have armor, you add that as a die into your pool when you
roll it's. Just an it's just an I, it's
just a piece of equipment. And then I would say the defense
value for the enemies is is, so you know.
Gotcha. Well, we do we do we do have the
creator in chat so we can ask. And this is one of the reasons
we still stream live. Like people ask us sometimes
like why we still do this One, it's so that we have a time
frame, so we would talk forever if we didn't.
But two is the occasional time where we get the creator in
chat, which is really nice. So we actually do have the
creator of the game in chat. And they said that the text
could be improved. But what I actually intended was
that the defense to absorb the damage.
OK. OK, so in that case then armor
would be soaked. But there is again, there's no
explanation of of of that in this.
And based on the common example, like you said, it does
specifically seem to say that it is a piece of equipment.
So that means basically learning there a whole errata for like
how armor and defense works should should be a thing because
I'm curious now because there's a little bit of a contradiction,
but guess what? We got clarification, which is
always nice. And now we know, and now you
know as well. That's why you listen to the
show, right? Yeah, and knowing is half the
it's. Half the battle.
Yeah, in the defense role, they're getting a die default
and another for the shield. So that's what the two is
exactly. Cool.
OK, so initiative. Initiative.
Yeah, I didn't even do that part, sorry.
Initiative heroes always go first unless they're ambushed.
Love it. Great, let everybody make a move
and assume heroes can always make coordinated movements.
When every character in the fight has acted.
Start again with the one that makes more sense.
That's my favorite type of initiative.
Great. Whoever is doing shit right now,
just do that shit. Thank you God I don't.
I don't. I just don't need initiative to
be complicated. It doesn't need to be mad.
I don't. I don't.
We know what we're talking about.
One of my favorite parts of these.
Tokens in this bag and in every time that we go, we'll just go
out this bag. Anyone that knows knew you
didn't need to explain it. But one of my favorite parts of
this though, is I love the line that says I'll let everybody
make a move and assume heroes can always make coordinated
movements. I really, really like that.
Like there's not like it doesn't matter.
Like if you go, I go like the heroes are going as a group
first, so they're allowed to just like decide what you want
to do as a group. If you want to do the whole, you
know, like throw in a dwarf kind of thing or whatever.
Yeah, Yeah, You know, I'll. Throw you up and you drop the
people's elbow kind of thing. Exactly.
It's great it. Feels much more narrative.
It's kind of got that like comic book game here, kind of like,
yeah, it's good a movement. Yeah.
Talk to me about the songs
because. This is.
Where it starts to lose me a bit because I know, like you said,
that the early Zelda stuff was incredibly music oriented,
correct? Yeah.
Yeah, you're learning songs that do stuff to solve problems, and
it's great. And this is good and I like
this. When when?
When in in Zelda lore was did they shift away from music?
Like at what game stage? I feel like I don't remember
Twilight Princess having a lot of music and I did not play
Skyward Sword, although I hear it was really good.
So I can't speak to the musical aspect of that.
I think in the more the later, the later like big title Zeldas.
I know a lot of the Game Boy or DS1 still kind of like a musical
element to them, but I don't have Nintendo DS, I never have.
So I missed a lot of those. But I mean, I was very much a
Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask kid, which both are
incredibly musical. And there's a lot of songs that
you do a lot with that you use to solve problems and I think
they're fucking cool. Yeah.
So playing songs, there are only 6 notes in the world obviously,
and each correspond to one of the dyes faces.
When heroes try to play a Magic song, each player rolls three
dice plus one die for each other person playing.
So that's four for one player, 5 for two players, and so on.
And the results must have at least one number corresponding
to each music note. You can distribute the dice to
the players involved to represent their respective parts
in the tune. Love that?
Think it's cool? You're just putting a little
together a little. You know your your band's jam
and under immediately we have some enhanced effects, which I
kind of thought was a weird spot.
I would have put this probably at the end of all the song list.
I don't know if it matters all that much honestly, but these
are some enhanced effects you can do for the songs.
And then, yeah, I made a gesture for those in podcast land that
said I agree with the flip. I think the enhanced effect of
the song would be better done after the songs.
Yes, but it's not, I'm not dying over it.
But yeah. So basically if you roll in
certain ways, you can create enhance effects to your song.
It kind of contingent upon you must succeed on playing a song,
which I yeah, that makes sense. And the role, the results are
required by the method. So the first one of those being
solo. If one hero alone rolls all the
notes of the song, they can choose the duration of the tomb.
Crazy cool. Which which?
Which one's your favorite? There's six here.
Which one's your favorite solo improvisation, bridge, fake and
lick response? We don't need to hear all of
them, but which one's your favorite?
I think improvisation because you can change one verb in the
song's description, which I'm like, oh, that's actually
potentially like a really big deal.
Huge. Yeah, Yeah, huge.
What about you? Did you have one?
I really liked improvisation. I thought that was really
interesting. But even like, I don't wanna
pick that one because you just did.
I mean, I think fake Ind is interesting.
If all players are all the same number, they can choose to
trigger the song's effects at another moment of the same day.
So like you get like you get to trigger it again, which is cool.
Just keep it in the back pocket, Yeah, that is.
Pretty cool. Yeah.
Great little graphic here at the bottom, another music
instrument, like laying in the grass.
Like even something like just just a little graphic like this
just feel so much of A page. It's so beautiful.
And then there's the song book, which is easily hackable I
believe. I'm pretty sure not every single
combination of 3D6 is taken. So tell me so talk me through
again real quick because I read this twice.
Casting playing a song say there's say there's two the
guide and three of us. Walk me through how we so.
There's a guide that's 4 + 3 dice.
You roll 7 dice, right? Wait, oh wait, wait.
There's a guide and then there's three of us.
Oh yeah, there's three players, right?
OK, yes. Right, so you roll 3 dice plus
1/3 plus SO6 dice 6. Dice OK all.
Right. You're all six dice and you pick
from those to put together the notes required to play one of
these songs, is my understanding.
Now do you do we have to have collected the song first?
I'm. Going to go with yes.
So we need to have collected the song, and we're actually trying
to actively cast the song we're trying for.
Yeah, it says in here that magic is a gift from fairy, fairy
mothers. And I would also probably put it
as like a thing you can discover.
I would dress my world up with this.
This would be discoverable. You know I.
Might. I might give them one to start,
you know? Yeah, well, yeah.
Well, especially if you make Arcanist, you get an ancient
song to start with or whatever. Yeah.
So basically like say say we find what's your favorite song
on here? Oh, I don't know that I have AI
think I think storms fanfare is one of my favorites, but only
because I love the song storms in Ocarina time.
You know, just because you can make it rain so.
What about beat off self? I mean, beat off self, so storms
fanfare. So storms fanfare.
Say say we found storms fanfare. OK, right.
So walk me through let's let's cast storms fanfare.
OK, we roll our dice. OK.
We needed SO2 threes and a six. OK, wait, wait, wait.
Let's do. What's that 66?
Yeah, 66. OK, you keep track of this
636415. So we can't play Storm Stand
fair. So I got a six and a three, but
I didn't get the other three. So we failed at the casting.
Yes. OK.
All right. So you just play the left, Yeah.
So we were rocking out, but someone hit like a Brighton and
just failed at the casting. So you got it.
That's so cool. That's so hackable.
Yeah, yes, it's really, I mean, yeah, this is incredibly
hackable. You could really make your own
magic system or even other kind of skill systems by doing this.
But I like this. I like this.
How this? Works.
My brain immediately went to surprising nobody, a very like,
grim dark, like ritual magic thing where like instead of like
a band, like say we're all like cultists or casters or
something. Yeah, we're chanting.
And we all, we have to each one of us is like chanting into it
to try to cast this like ritual magic or whatever.
And each spell is based on like us working together because
magic is like kind of like it's so like one, it'd be difficult
for one person to do it. So like the more people you have
together, the easier it is to cast.
And it's cool to like cast like especially that, like that, that
that's like how easy it is to hack and stuff.
So cool. I'm so Matt, you for the beat of
self chokes still. Yeah, there are.
We were kind of glossing over the songs.
There are many cool ones. Oh, the fire is also another
cool one. You just light all the fires
around you. All flame sources.
How many are there? Right.
It's like 14 ish. Yeah, I do.
I do really like that. A lot of them are things that
are are narrative, you know, like like your storms fanfare
was like heavy rain pours. If the heroes choose to play the
chorus, a Thunder will strike like that, like a a challenge
thing. Like I imagine immediately being
like you come across a village that has been like in a trial
for too long and you're like, let's get together and fucking
play storms fanfare and like get these people some rain.
You know, oops at oops. We forget that in like rock
hard, hard ground, you know, that's been dry for so long.
When it rains, it doesn't soak into the ground and you get mud
slides, you know, like I, I, I like, I like that idea.
And like you just said, the oh to the fire, like all the light
sources just light up there. So far it's great, you know.
Yeah, it's very cool. It's simply.
Not like Storm of Blades comes kills everything, you know.
I do 5D6 damage, yeah. But I think for this it doesn't
need to be. I think the like narrative and
kind of innocuous effects like really add to that kind of like
not quite pastoral cottage core song and sword game that's going
on right here. I I I vibe with it heavily.
Well I mean it also really lends to the concept of like the
weapon is optional. Yes.
You know, I like that a lot. Cool, cool, and now we start
getting into the. This is the other one that has
like that huge space at the. Top yeah, we begin to the part
where it becomes mostly tables. This first one is building
dungeons. I did build a dungeon in this
and I thought it was really cool and a really great time.
And one thing I'd like to note on this, I don't know how you
feel about going through this. We can just, we can just run
through real quick, yeah. So it is a numbered list, like
creating a character. Step one is that you create the
relic for the dungeon, which is a major center point in the kind
of boss battle and you're kind of built in mechanics of the
dungeon or the theme of the dungeon.
The next step is you create your giant monster to be the
guardian. It should have a vulnerability
related to the relic. Perfect.
Now the you You choose a theme for your dungeon.
You create two to six enemies to populate the place.
The next is you create traps and environmental challenges relate
to the relic and the theme. Six of the guardian and a magic
song are inside a room locked by three keys scattered around the
dungeon. The keys don't need to be
literal keys 7. The interest of the dungeon is
locked by something related to the theme and an 8.
The region around is it is usually sorry.
The region around it is usually related to the theme and suffers
some influence from the dungeon and its guardian.
Classic, classic Legend of Zelda the Great Deku trees being
poisoned and so it's dying and some bad stuff's in the forest.
You got to climb into his mouth. Yeah, Ryan's like, I don't know
what you're talking about, but. No, no, no.
But I mean Ori is what popped into my head right away.
But like, you get, you gain a heart whenever you beat a defeat
a dungeon, right? Maybe.
Is that a thing that yeah, they gain a new heart when they
defeat the boss of a dungeon. So the cool thing is like every
time you go to one of these dungeons that literally you can
just roll up you if you beat it, you get a heart, you get a
relic, you get a song like every time you go through it.
But yeah, it's it's really neat, you know, cuz then you have like
the relic tables and the relic are what it's weapon, armor,
instrument are those are those. Utility.
Where's utility? It's number six.
Oh, it's below the art, below the art, below the art.
Gotcha. Gotcha.
Yeah, And then the properties are.
Sparks shot. You know.
Yeah, exactly. So those are those are those are
well, let's, I mean here, fuck it, let's let I'm gonna roll up
a relic real quick, All right, D6, right, Yeah, 4.
OK, that's armor. So you're going to roll 2D or
1D6 on the armor table. OK, one.
It's a shield, very cool. And you're going to roll 2D6 on
the properties or spark table. OK, five one.
Distance. Hmm.
Shield of distance. What does that mean to you,
Ryan? Oh, I went this way.
This way. I would have done mirror.
Then oh, that's even better. Wait wait wait wait.
Where? Where is distance on this whole
thing? Five one on property.
Oh, I went to utility. Oh no, that's that's for a
utility tool. What utility is in a tool?
That's a type of role, so. Okay.
SO51. Or five one SO51 is distance?
Or what if we did 5-1 with stone?
Stone, stone. Stone shield.
Yeah.
Stone Shield. That's dope.
Yeah, that's cool.
And there's a relic. Boom, Dante.
Yeah, and like that informs all the decisions you make.
You have a big stone shield as the the problem solver for some
of the challenges in your dungeon.
So what are those challenges going to be?
Something you have to block, obviously with a big stone
shield. But as you like roll for theme
and guardian, you start to let you can really figure like
figure out what you're going to do for this one.
I feel like a guardian, like the guardian that charges at you and
hits your stone shield and that knocks that to its side so it
lays on spell and then you can attack its belly.
That's probably how I would start building this one.
I'd probably build from guardian down.
But yeah, really cool. Lot of great inspiration.
All these tables and they're all great, but the dungeon section
has a really interesting mapping tool.
Yeah, so the layout, you're going to draw a 6 by 6 matrix
and you're going to roll 2D6 and mark the corresponding cell.
Much like these tables are actually 2D6 matrix matrix.
There's an X&Y axis essentially, of course, my cell.
One die for the column, the other die for the roll.
Each cell is a corridor or room of the dungeon.
Repeat and connect the cells as you like.
Really simple mapping tool and I like it.
I love this little like way to generate a layout to a dungeon.
It's super quick. I really like it.
And you know me that like everything is sixes, so I want
to keep everything sixes, right? But why would an 8 by 8 also be
a great tool? What?
Why would an 8 by 8 also be potentially an even better tool?
Because there are D eights, I don't know what do you, what do
you drive in that? 8 by 8 is a chess board, so you
could have that already. You're right, and 8 by 8 is a
chess board. Sorry, I don't play chess.
The only time I ever use a chess board is when I'm playing
Tacticians of ALM I. Was gonna say boom, there you
go. For games like this, there you
go. But yeah, these are these are
great. Like I love like the theme right
off the bat to make it super easy.
I mean cuz again, like it's that easy that I can just go 5 two
and it is either ice or if I wanna go to on this way demon,
which one do you think I'm gonna pick?
Let's be honest. Ice.
Of course, you know, that's me a great, great.
We we have kind of skipped through some of the graphics,
some of the illustrations here. There are these more like
scenes. I love this one here where these
this party is like coming down the stairs, running away.
But if you look in the background, there's definitely a
giant like chasing this little girl party like way in the back
and like there's small doors and big doors and stuff like that.
Fantastic graphic. And again, everything is very
like green as the overtone. So it keeps the consistency of
of the game throughout. Did they switch though in this
section from like a green to like a Yeah, as soon as you get
to building a dungeon, it switches from a green to almost
like a tape, like a green grey. You can see it in like symbols
at the top, but then the boxes as we go are kind of like a
greenish grey switch up as well. I do have all the icons on top
of the different sections as well.
They really, there's a lot of like stuff that kind of dresses
up a lot of this in a in a very effective way.
Yeah, yeah. And, and they look like very
watercolor done like the dungeon door, like the the rest of it,
the dungeon rooms being just the door, there are fantastic icons.
And I really like this map on page 27.
It's I, I don't know if I've ever seen where they do this
kind of like like the door on both sides and it kind of like
like leans in a little bit. I don't know why they really
think about that, but that's great because you can see like
the walls around all four, you know what I mean?
Yeah, it's interesting. It's almost like a top down
isometric angle, kind of like, not really, but like the way the
walls got lean. You can see both sides, you
know. Yeah, it slopes in Oh, the book
has no magenta on the color compositions.
Well, that I mean, there you go. That makes sense.
Yeah, it's very readable. I do like this.
You understand what the map looks?
Yeah, it's great. The art's great.
Dude, the the graphic of age 2028 where it's like that, You
gorgeous. Waterfalls, This little town
with a big skull. A very breath of the wild tears
of the Kingdom gore. So, so good.
I love just a little dock into like the water here.
But yeah, the skull that clearly was like a cyclops eye with like
a horn stick and I haven't said so do.
You have a Nintendo Switch. No, I don't even know what a
Nintendo Switch looks like. I thought you wanted ADS?
No, I mean, that was like I'm saying like that was JDS like 10
years ago, 15 years ago now. Nintendo Switch.
Oh with the with the with the handles.
No bro, we talked about how I play one game ever.
I I definitely. I guess we start with that.
I was saying Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom's good, and
everyone really loves it. But for me personally, Breath of
the Wild was perfect and I always encourage everyone to
play it because it's great. I might play it again.
Fuck these are they're like 200 and 5300 bucks for this little.
Fucking thing. Yeah, but it's big though, you
know, It's, it's this big. Yeah, but like I have ATV.
Yeah, but you can slot it onto it and it goes into your TV.
It has a dock. Listen for people that are into
this, This looks really cool. I think the little handle things
are neat. I'm good.
Yeah, you're right. You don't waste money you don't
like doing that. Listen, waste plenty of money,
but I let's $250 of games of Warhammer, I'm not buying like
that's not a thing. A whole section on regions and
its people. Is there anything about the
regions of people that you really want to go over?
This is more just like these are more world tables for like
settlements and regions and weather.
And like, I mean, the vast majority of this book probably
what how much it is. When does this start?
Like the vast majority of this book is like world tables for
building your world, building your dungeons.
Yeah, building everything, which really does lend itself to.
So we're from page 19 to to 55, we're talking about all of this
being building the dungeon, the regions and people, the world
inhabitants and the forest of the storms, which is an
adventure and the world inhabitants are mostly like
they're NPCS, but mostly bad guys.
Let's let's talk about the bad guys real quick because I do
first of all, illustrations for almost every single one, which
is fucking fantastic. But I love how they have this
breakdown here of these are creatures, blah, blah.
They all have the same structure.
There's a picture, a name, a number of hearts, a short
description of the behavior and italics.
They're attack in form of defense in bold.
But six variations. You can choose from a role
randomly. So every single creature has six
variations of that creature. So if we go down to like the,
the, the cult, the Deblin, right, it's this giant.
It's basically a giant. It's holding like a cow.
It's got four hearts. It says throw their enemies love
a good meal. That's who they are.
Weapon two, kick one. But there's six things.
There's leader, lonely tax collector, gourmet, 2 heads and
undead. That means anytime you run into
a Dublin, you could just roll AD 6.
So I'll roll A2. I run into a lonely Dublin.
They just want some company. Just want some company.
They just gotta hang out with you, you know?
So so. There's a lot of variety added
very easily by just being like the other six different kinds of
men. You can just decide randomly.
Also like some great callbacks to a lot of great enemies from a
lot of great Legend of Zelda games.
Like what? Like like toss them out for all
the Zelda heads out there. All of them like I mean every
single we start, we start with the very first one in this is
the beblin, much like the Boblin, which is exactly that
the dude. They're I mean they're all
they're all Legend of Zelda enemies.
I mean all, all, all all of them.
I I love the deados, the hand. Oh.
Dude, so that's honestly one of my favorite things in this
entire book. I love it so much.
It basically is like like thing but it's got an eye on the top
and it's great. And live in dark places, take
out uninvited guests, grab and tackle.
And then there's Stalker, Walker, Guardian, Thief, Trap
and Librarian. Yeah, of course.
You know, Classic Librarian. Yeah, they know.
Where to find the books? I mean, a lot of these enemies
are like, you know, the prom and stuff.
It's like that's just from everything.
And the, the Paludo, the, the dog person.
I don't think it's from Legend of Zelda.
Maybe it's from what game? I haven't played.
There's a lot, there are a lot of those games.
But like the Mummy 1, the mimic, the imagine the the like mage
guy, the little floater guy that teleports after attack or being
hit thinks that you're just playing with you.
That's I, they're the bane of my existence.
And Breath of the Wild. Yeah, I I really enjoy this and
the the adventures cool too. Also just pointing out if you go
to the like in cool way, ink dot itch dot IO, there are three
adventures to this game. One of them is in this book.
Actually, there's two other like dungeon adventures for this game
already written at name your own price.
That means if you're super broke and you could just pay a dollar,
you you could get it, you know, I mean, and have a full maybe
two sessions of play. Just lay it out there.
And there there is the adventure in the book.
And anyone that watches this show regularly will know we
don't go over adventures. Yeah, you should buy the book.
Yeah, you should buy this book. This is a great one too.
Buy the fucking book. It's really good.
Well, so so we'll get into costs and and all that kind of stuff
when we get to the review, but let's do that now.
Why don't we do that? Now?
Back to. The book Do you want to real
quick show off Cries of the Overworld?
Yeah, sure. You I honestly haven't even
flipped this open. So you tell me what you what you
want to see through this So great book.
Definitely plenty of magenta in the in the compositions on this
one, considering the front is is very magenticot.
Honestly, if we just do the how it works, hey, I should open it
on my end as well because I'm reading and it's hard to do that
if I don't have it open. I have the book in front of me
but I don't want to look down while I'm doing this, you know?
Still, Cries of the Overworld is a best theory for Forgotten
Valid. It's a creature guide to the
forgotten valid and there's a lot of great.
I mean, it's a great book, but almost it's worth it purely for
the illustrations because I think that they are lovely and I
very much enjoy them. So we will just go to the How it
works page. Also not also not bookmarked or
hyperlinked, just around that out there how it works.
Oh, here we go. OK how it works.
So yeah, each page of this book contains a monster with his game
information and the following format.
It has a little game card, so like a little monster card, you
can see regions where you could find them that can help inspire
you when you're like rolling up your regions.
Their name and illustration, which is great to have for every
monster. Insane, their defense value,
their usual hearts, a short description of their behavior.
It basically just gives you what's monster, where this
monster lives and what how it kind of acts.
And I just think it's a great tool.
And there's an illustration on every single fucking page of
this book, which is wild. It's interesting that the format
gives me like CCG. Oh.
Yeah. Not in a bad way, but just like
the the name, the region, it's got like the little defense like
symbol right there, like everything.
But yeah, like you said, I mean every, I mean, so listen, when
the creators see Illustrator, they can take as much time as
they want to illustrate every fucking page.
But it is insane that it really is like 60, you know, it's like
60 plus pages. And then, yeah, with an
illustration on almost every single page is crazy and they
look great. They look great.
This is a Zoeyii that's very like beholder style.
How many hearts is that? I'm scrolling down.
Oh, that's a lot of hearts. That's a lot of hearts.
Like eight or nine hearts. I stopped.
Counting, I think one of my favorite ones in this, though,
is on page 54. Oh, read the one you're reading.
We'll talk about the one I'm doing.
Well, no, it's just there's, it's funny that I don't know if
this is a. Is this an evolution?
The zoia? And then there's zoia with a
tilde O, which is. Is that like the grown up 10?
I don't know, maybe. Yeah, let's go all the ones,
just a bundle. Of eyeballs, though.
Oh yeah, the the veins. Yeah, the vampire.
Which one were you talking about?
On page 54, Classic. One the shadow.
Yeah, that's just it looks like a 2D silhouette of the heroes,
slightly stronger. That's it.
There's not even, there's not even like anything else about
it, because it's just the shadows of the bad of the of the
good guys. Yeah, it's just, it's slightly
stronger. Yeah.
And I mean, there's just like, simple text, all of them, like
the thief, which is the next one.
They'll never fight if they can choose.
Yeah. I just think it's a useful tool,
helps flush out your world if you're rolling stuff up.
And it's just delightfully illustrated.
I mean, that one point alone is like, every page has an
illustration on it. Is is genuinely insane.
And, and they're all, they're all fantastic.
They're all great. Yeah, the art style is really,
really great. It really, I mean, it very much
fits the world, you know? And I love the page right at the
very end of like all of them. But like from like a nice camera
angle where they're kind of like going over.
It's got like the like the giant guy, the dragon, the bat, like
the the floating skull, the beblin, like just absolutely
fantastic art all the way through.
Yeah, it's crazy. The other world.
Did you want to hop to the the the old?
The old? Let's review it.
Let's do it. So this is obviously a book.
Is this obviously a book? It's, yeah, it's almost, it's
almost 50 pages. Yeah, it's it's easily a book.
It's literally a book. Hold it.
Hold it up for me. Hold it up for me.
Is it is that a book we can't do a Zine score on literally a
hardback book you're. Right, you're right, you're
right. It's just like 19 pages of the
rules, you know? And it's A50 page book though,
you know, I mean, here's the thing, the the, the, the world
building is part of the game. You know what I mean?
Like, and there's so much world building parts to it.
So for those that don't know, we do quantify our terrible
opinions with numbers. For books, we do up to 50
points. For Zenes, it's three metrics or
30 points. So the five metrics worth 10
points each that we do for books are art and layout, which is
basically it's all the visual. So the layout visually and the
art that's in the book. Usability is things like digital
tools and if things are in like correct orders in our opinion
and things like that. Rule set is if it's a, if it's a
new rule set, do we like it? If it's an adapted rule set, how
well is it adapted? Originality is any of those
things or more value is bang for your buck.
It's not just what it costs, but also what you get with it.
You know, third party licensing, extra adventures, character
sheets, digital tools, apps, whatever the fuck.
Like when you pay, how much game do you get overall?
So art and layout, first of all. So art and visual layout.
What are your thoughts? I mean, the art's delightful.
That's a great word for it. It's.
Book is nice to go through. I like the text, I like the
fonts, I like the text colors. I I think like layout wise it
looks great. I think there's a couple pages,
2 pages that could be center that could be like centered, but
it's 2 pages. Or just or just a little
graphic. Just a little or.
Just. Yeah, there's a graphic on every
single page of Christ, Jehovah World.
I wouldn't find it. Just like a little harp sitting
in grass on the bottom. You know, just literally
anything. Yeah, I, I, I think pretty
highly of the way this looks. You know, about you.
What are you thinking? Yeah, it's really nice.
The art style is great all the way through.
The layout is very readable. You know, again, those two pages
are, I don't know, I mean, obviously, you know, they're
they're pretty glaring and just that they're the only two that
are like bottom, bottom centered with like basically a half page
of blank above them. And there's so much illustration
and graphics on like other pages.
So it's an interesting choice there to do that as opposed to
maybe they're on just two more small illustrations on.
But it looks great. I mean, it doesn't like blow me
away and the art I think does. The layout is, you know,
relatively straightforward. I do like the consistent colors.
I do like the the green boxes. I do think that the layout
itself lends to the style of the game.
But yeah, what are you thinking? I'm thinking of Strong seven.
Seven is exactly where my mind went, because it is.
It is very nice to read. I think I will always prefer my
PDF to not have like a stark white background, but I'm not
going to hold that against people that, you know, just put
the same view. Of the white background to you?
I feel like it's a little off white for me.
Might be your computer strain. No, I am on the weird screen,
the weird second hand screen that I have.
I guess it is white in the book as well.
Yeah. OK, OK, OK, Egg shell 7.
Yeah, yeah, even though I say egg shell usability.
So it doesn't have hyperlinks, it doesn't have bookmarks, which
is, you know, our one, the one thing that we are the most
likely to critique on of anyone ever at any point in time.
And I would kind of like them in the digital version.
I guess in the physical, it's really not that big of a deal
that doesn't have a actual bookmark.
But yeah, I mean, it's pretty short.
It's pretty usable. That has a first page rules
reference, which is great. And we love, we love to see
that. What are you thinking?
Tell me your opinion. Yeah, I mean, here's the thing,
you know that we're going to get.
You got old doc points offered literally having no digital
tools whatsoever in 2024. You know, it's difficult.
I mean, even just even just the hyperlinks.
I mean that to me that's like the bare minimum that PFS have.
I mean, the bookmarks, things like that, like sure, that's
great. I mean one or the other because
bookmarks are basically hyperlinks because you can just
Click to it, right? But the hyperlinks would be
better in in line hyperlinks even better.
I do think there, in my opinion, there are some usability
situations here where like I do think there are a couple of
things where maybe it could have been flipped.
I do agree that the enhanced spells might be after, but
again, it's one page later so it's not that big of a deal, but
we got to be. I know if that one's big enough
for me to count against it, you know?
Yeah, no, it would just be if there was a number of those
things and maybe it would knock down overall.
So I mean, so A5 is bang average.
Like what about the usability of this gives it more than like do
you have any? So fives are like nothing good,
nothing bad, kind of in the middle.
To me, I think the first page rules reference is a great
addition to it and I think that does bump it just a touch.
So I mean, I'm, I'm probably about six for it.
Yeah, I think a six would be good.
I do think because at the end of the day, you know, I mean
anything less than having any digital tools whatsoever should
probably drop by below 5. But like, considering how many
we've read, that's not generally the.
Yeah, we'd be reading a lot of stuff really low.
So I do think the rules driven to the beginning is nice.
I think that the actual reading of the book and like the headers
and everything, it's spaced out really well.
The way that they did all the tables for the world building
done really well. So yeah, six is great rule set.
What are your thoughts? I love the rule set.
So I mean, it's important that the defense value has been
expounded upon a little bit more and laid it out clear.
But that's my only complaint really.
And that's just like, I like the rules.
I think they work well for what this is.
I think it really reinforces that like, you don't really need
a sword. This isn't really about doing
stuff with a sword, you know? It's about solving problems,
having adventures with the buds, you know.
Yeah, I mean you again. This is a huge game.
Yeah, it's a very me game. I love the way the songs work.
I also like that, frankly, they're so like lightweight.
I didn't know that was your imagination.
They're so like, lightweight. You could easily, like, hack
your own into this. And I like the structure of how
this is meant to be played. Like you help people get hearts,
you go into dungeon like solve puzzles, you get the relic to
solve it, even more puzzles that you couldn't solve without the
relic. And then you used to be the bad
guy and that gives you a song and another heart and you just
get to go adventure and play your music.
You know, yeah, I mean, so again, this is very Zelda coded,
which you would know more. This emulates that really well.
But if someone who doesn't know, again, mostly anything about
Zelda, this is an extraordinarily playable game.
It's adorable. It's super rules.
Like it's like you said, it's so easily hackable.
It's very much a rulings, rules over rules, rulings over rules
kind of thing. But again, as you said, we're
missing armor, we're missing defense, we're missing some
things from it. I think a little bit of
clarification with, I like how light it is.
I wouldn't mind like one more page, you know, one more page of
rules, a little bit of clarification on equipment,
clarification on armor, maybe another maybe like an example of
play for a spell I think would be really, really nice.
I think that's a usability thing anyway.
I, I feel strongly, I feel, I feel good about this rule set.
I, I really do enjoy this a lot. I would, I would play this.
I would play this right now. Yeah.
Pitch for your number 7. I'm like, I'm A7 and if it
wasn't for like the inventory thing, I totally understand.
It wasn't for the defense all you think this would be at least
an 8 for me or at an 8 for me. So yeah, I think 7's a good one.
OK, cool. So a little bit of a rata would
clean that up a bit. Which I never do.
So when you publish a game and I get it, I'm playing that fucking
game. If you release a rata for it, I
probably won't see it. Bro OK so can we just say it out
loud? Like if you're going to publish
a game, don't publish physical version of the game of 1.2 and
then by the time it gets to you already be on like 1.51.6.
Like it's already a different game than what I bought I'm not
going to buy the physicals anymore.
If you constantly update the PDF after you've printed it, just go
through play testing. This is not a comment about
anyone that we know with all, by the way.
No, it's definitely not a comment about this game we're
talking about right now, because it is.
Not at all. Not at.
All is it we're referencing something else?
Yeah. Were we on the original yet?
Where are we? Yes, yes.
Yeah, so it is, you know, a a Zelda emulation, but I but it
doesn't stop there and you don't, it doesn't need to be
just that for you. Like you could play this as your
own thing and it has its own distinct style and its own
distinct vibe for it. Well, is it though?
The more I read it and the more you talked about how much of it
is exactly, you literally said the entire beast here in the
back is not. Yeah.
It's nothing. There's definitely a few
monsters in there that are not from Legend Zelda, but there's
also a lot that there are. Vast majority more so.
Like I mean this basically is Zelda the RPG TFPG.
Yeah, I guess you're right. It is really.
So as far as originality goes, and this is not a knock on that
aspect of it at all, like it does a really good job of, of of
being what it wants to be. Yes.
But that doesn't necessarily read into the the numbers that
we're talking about here, which is why you don't you, you don't
take the overall number, you take the numbers that you you
want. You know, if the rule set
matters to you, look at rule set score.
If originality for this isn't really going to matter for this
because it the goal of it wasn't.
Going to be original. It was to be emulated.
Personally for me, when I listen to our show and I want to know
about a game, I just turned off when we started giving numbers,
Yeah, I mean. Pitch number, I mean again, this
is, this is AU, this is AU base I.
Think this was a six for me. Like I is it an emulation of a
thing? Yeah, but I think the song magic
system is cool. I think the like tables for
making dungeons while like the the modality of like making that
gridded dungeon I think is great and like super useful if you
were at a table in a different game you like I just want to
roll a dungeon real quick. Like perfect make a 6 by 6 and
just start rolling 2D6 till you color it in.
Yeah, I think it bumps out to six for me.
Yeah, pretty easy, Yeah, yeah. Value.
I mean, this is going to be fucking high.
So so you get so just just for what exists, right?
You have the forgotten ballot book, You have the Cries of the
Overworld book, which is an entire like 60 page beast here
with graphics on every fucking page.
We already talked about the fact that there's what, like three or
four, I think. I think Philippe in chat said
that they put out a new adventure literally today.
Kofu's palace was that one you saw before Kofu's palace inside
the man to Goddess, a forest of the storms.
Oh, I also wanted to say prior, the first thing I ever saw from
the crater was from the mud, which is this tiny little, I
can't remember the name of the zenes where you like open it up
into a different way. This tiny little fantastic
little Karen hack, this mini Zen Karen hack.
I love it so much. It's almost always like sitting
here, but like half my shelves, like off my shelves now.
Absolutely fantastic little Zen. It's like a dollar on on itch.
That's the first time I interacted or I found this
crater at all. Fantastic.
What do you what? What's owing so?
I think Fires of the Fires on the Fire on the Sacred Tree was
released today because I didn't I didn't see it before.
Is that the one up to 38 minutes ago?
Yep. I didn't even see it before we
started this episode. So get it now.
There's another adventure out now.
I don't know. I like with the kind of roll
tables it has in the amount of them.
There's just such an endless amount of stuff that you could
do and it'd be so easy to recolor these role tables to
continue forward in like another world or dimension.
I if you want the physical copy of this game, it is $39.00,
comes with the PDF, which I think is fine.
That is on. I just clicked off.
It's like bloat games I think. Yeah, Eric Bloat.
Bloat does a lot of I think he he.
I don't know if he did Forgotten Ballot, but I know that he was
with Cries of the Overworld. Yeah, so I found it on Bloat
games for $39.00 which is cool. The 39 is a little extensive for
A50 page book. Right on itch.
The PDF is $12.00. Completely reasonable.
Which is I would say is more than reasonable.
Yeah, the graphic, the graphic on Itch is animated it like it
like blinks it like the the glints off the gold and then
like Leafs fall down. I fucking love that.
That's great. Well, Chrysler, the overall's
only $7.00. Really.
Yeah. So you can get the PDFs of both
for less than $20. Yeah, crazy.
And then you can get a bunch of adventures for name your own
price, which pay what you want. Yeah, pay, pay authors, but
like, but if you broke, they're super broke, Yeah.
Yeah, but you get a game, you get an adventure in the book,
you get four more theoretically from the page.
You can get PDFs of both for under $20.
You can get the the book itself for $40 plus PDF.
I mean, to me that is a little expensive for a book that small,
but it's tons of stuff. I mean, tons of stuff.
I can only assume that you're allowed to hack this, which you
know, opens that up for a ton of possibilities, but I think it's
I think this is a great value. I not only the one of the other
ways it's such a great value is because I think that you could
easily sit down anyone like 8 and up 8 to 80 with this game
and have them playing in like 15 minutes.
Yeah, absolutely. And like if you today were like
damn, I kind of like get the gaming group together tonight
and everyone's around, it would take you no time to set this up.
It would be so simple and so easy and such a good pick up
game. Because realistically, if you
just had AD 6 in front of you, you could roll up dungeon
Guardian relic like the entire thing without with with no
thought on your brain at all to have it in front of you.
Piece it together in ways to make it a little make a little
bit more sense, which could take you.
When you rolled up your dungeon, how long did it take you?
Oh, it took me maybe like 5 or 6 minutes, Yeah.
So. For for someone who does that,
done it much, maybe like 10, maybe 15 minutes tops to do that
15 minutes to explain the rules to everybody, maybe tend to do a
character. So to to to do the entire prep
for everything, including character creation and
everything, you're talking like 30 to 45 minutes tops to
literally go from nothing cracking the book open to
playing at the table super easily.
I mean honestly I think it's a great value to add 8.
Yeah, I'm a strong eight. Yeah, Strong eight.
Anything, anything about that would need like crazy shit.
Like fucking apps and shit, you know what I mean?
Like, you know. Solid.
Score. I really like this.
I mean, I think honestly this is one where how much I like the
game is probably higher than the score that is going to come out.
Yeah, I feel the same. So it's a 34 which is totally
fine. Actually.
Bro they just reminded me the visceral codex.
Just remind me the song system in my opinion and you can tell
me if you disagree. I think.
Bumps the originality up a point for me I think.
I'm good with that. OK, Yeah.
That's right, we're live. As fucking fantastic.
Yeah, well, we really haven't established it yet.
We've revised the scores after that.
We have multiple games that we we screwed up, so we're gonna
actually bump that to a 35. But I think that really helps
your originality and stuff because like I haven't seen a
matching system like that, like you know what I mean?
Like where you're literally like as a group potentially like
rolling together for your band to play the song you're trying
to do That's fantastic. So 35 for forgotten ballad.
Great little game. I love it.
Again, I would love to see this game played.
We'll put it on our list here on the show.
But I would again, such an easy game to hack.
Like obviously again, instantly I went to some grimdar cultist
ritual bullshit with it. But like, it'd be so easy to do
anything where you as a group are hacking or doing magic and
doing anything to convert the instruments to anything that you
want. So fantastic one hunter, great
suggestion. We do have another Zelda style
game we're going to think I'd do in the next two weeks.
We do want to shout out the fleet De Silva, the illustrator,
creator, writer, everything of this game that have been a chat
with us, helping us clarify some things.
Really appreciate you being here.
Appreciate you making this game. It is great.
We really enjoy it. And again, amazing game.
Good chance you'll see it here on the show again sometime in
the future. So really appreciate that.
Last words. Zelda, Zelda, Link, you.
Yeah. Hey guys, how does it go?
Hey, listen. There you go.
Hey, listen.
Bye. Bye.