Hello and welcome to the Weekly Scroll podcast.
My Name Is Ryan. And I'm a disgusted miser.
Yes, you are. Yeah, that's true.
And today we are going to be going over Cyst from Jamzilla
James Millichamp. This is an ultra light world
building game. I mean when I say ultra light I
mean like. I mean, it's it's as light as it
could be. No, there really isn't.
Much less there could be. And yet it's awesome.
You know, I think there's a lot of people in the space that are
like this are some of my favorite scenes.
Yeah, I completely agree. Yeah, very, very vibey.
Very graphic design core, you know, if I remember correctly.
Cause at some point I did in fact listen to their interview
on The Lost Bay. I believe they're in school for
graphic design. And if I'm completely wrong,
fuck me, but that is a thing. I'm sorry guys.
It's been a minute and I'm fixing some stuff.
So let's see if all works. Yeah, there we go.
So yeah, I mean, realistically, let's just hop in.
Let's look at it. There's not a whole lot to say.
This is once again, James Miller, Champ.
This is CIST. As far as I know, CIST came out
in either late 2021 or early 2022.
One of the things I really do love about CIST is that they tag
the date on a lot of their stuff.
So I remember what came out in 2022 and what came out in 2023.
Love that. And also most of the work is a
very collage style like paper cut out that is then scanned in,
which is so fucking cool. I think one of the other people
that does a similar style to that, but not so much in the
same way as like Zine make and stuff like that is I'm going to
completely mess up. It's either gardens and goblins
or goblins and gardens. You know what I'm talking about.
Oh yeah, Goblins and gardens. Goblins and gardens.
Yeah, yeah, I've seen their. Tarot deck, I think, yeah, yeah,
yeah, I've seen it. Yeah, really, really cool stuff
where they mix like garden books with like old D&D stuff and it
just looks really, really fantastic.
So similar, kind of like collage style that reminds me of that a
bit. So yeah, so why don't we, why
don't we? Well, let's, let's show off.
Let's go to the wild one. I don't.
Know if we're gonna be able to make it through this one
tonight. So I know, right?
This book is, let me tell you what.
So also, first and foremost, there's two versions of SIS.
The first version of SIS that I ever got was this one right
here. This is just a like watercolor.
Well, let's let's, let's show the people.
Why don't you show us, Ryan? Let me.
Let me do that. I'm gonna do that real quick
here. Boom.
So this year or the? First, Ryan is opening the first
one. The older and the older version
assist. That's what I did.
Yeah. So if you those in podcast
world, that's where we're at. Let me get the mic.
Mic get closer to me. There we go.
We haven't done this in a minute and I'm tired, so we apologize.
Or I do, at least for I. Apologize.
Yeah, you know what? Fuck you guys.
But thank you for listening. Thanks for listening now.
So we're just gonna flip through this and then we'll actually go
through the more recent version of Sis and then we're actually
gonna flip through. We don't do adventures here on
the show, but we will this time mostly just to show them off.
So I mean also there's like. 15 So if we go through one, it's
like you still have 14 other ones.
If you want to go buy it, we run it.
You know, we want to talk about the what.
So this is this is my cyst collection here.
You know out of context saying this is my cyst collection.
You know for those that, no, that, no that's interesting too.
What do I got here 1234567891010 of the scenes.
Well if you count double S 11 sis plus the map and I think
gosh these big pagers like four or five of those oh remind me to
show off the the boxes at the end too.
So Sis Sis is a game, this is the original version.
It was just on this kind of like rainbowish, kind of like how do
you describe this? Almost like spray painty
background. There is some kind of like weird
stippling effect like you're like from a printer like the
color dot, where it's just like thousands of like little dots,
like, I mean it is stippling. Yeah, something like that's
going on. There's things, yeah.
There's stuff and things, right? So then this is the sys revised
version that came out that fits way more into what I envision as
gentle style. Yeah, it really matches the vibe
a lot more. So I I think it's still ties in
the original one in that. So when you look at it, it's
definitely like as we said, most of the art looks like cutouts.
They are from like magazines or books or things like that.
So in this one there is a it looks like a cliffside castle
and then it's got cyst big and yellow over like the bottom half
the front cover and then the sky is like a pink, yellow, blue
kind of gradient that does is very reminiscent of the original
cover, the original cover. Absolutely.
It keeps the kind of same color. Yeah.
The color themes are very similar.
It just has the like the imagery.
I actually really like like digital collage and like actual
like collage work. I think it's just like.
A very fun art style that you can bring a lot of like
reference, like it's very referential.
But I do also love really seeing it in the tabletop community
where it's all this like recycled old like Dungenesque
art with these high color backgrounds or like pieces of
image pasted within it or over it.
Yeah, this is, it's a beautiful. I mean, is this how many pages
is this? Like 10?
Yeah, it's very. I mean, it's very, very, very
small. I mean, it's 10 beautiful pages,
yeah, yeah, it's gorgeous. And that's why, and there's so
much of it. That's why we're gonna go over
more than just the game. So the original cover does keep
a lot of the original vibe, as in it's the same.
I think it might even just be the exact same piece of art.
Even it is, it is. So if you actually look at the
the two covers, you can see in the top there's like a little
splotch of like yellow that's exactly the same.
It's just darkened up, unpixelated and just vibed out
like crazy. But again, if you look at in
spreads, how it wraps around the original cyst is just that with
cyst on it and black on the side.
But compare it to this one, where it's got it's not.
I know the covers that castle, but the back continues to go all
the way around. Yeah, that's the Jimzilla style.
And then says Jimzilla 2022 on the back, which is obviously we
said before they tag it. So going forward from here,
that's pretty much where the outside the words that the
layout pretty is. It ends as far as this because
the other one has no pictures in it all this one bam, right off
the bat. Another castle dragon red
backward sky. Everything very.
I mean vibes on this are going to be through the roof obviously
and they and Jimzilla's style seems to be very involved with
this specific font. I believe it's called Glassion I
think is the name of the font but it's on their website.
It's insist it's it's through all the books.
It's through everything. It's on the same as like the
Toon Valley gosh and stuff too. It's it's the same font and it's
a pretty, I think it's a pretty common Google font.
So it's. I mean, I found it to be able to
use it for our promos, for our social media.
So anyway, so the world, the game, all has come to ruin.
Castles crumbled into dust as Mother Earth slowly dies.
An age of wondrous monsters and weary heroes has come, an age
rife with adventure and peril vibes.
Love it? Great.
That's pretty much the world. That's pretty much it.
So why don't you? Do you want to create a
character as we go 'cause it's pretty much this entire Z?
Absolutely. There's no way we're going out
through this about creating a character.
Yeah. So the base Zine of core
basically create a character and then you create a world and then
you play in it. And then a lot of the other sis
stuff is creatures, situations or adventures specific to to
Titan areas. And then one of the things that
come out recently, which reminds me to show at the end, talking
about Dunbar, we'll all show is interesting too.
So how to play? One player is narrator.
Really you just need two players.
So one player's narrator. They describe to the other
player the happenings of the crumbling world and the glorious
things within it. The other player, other players
each control an adventurer. That's you.
You're an adventurer. I'm an adventurer.
That's you whose bold action set them aside from the other
creatures of the world. Players must decide whether
their adventurer is born of meat, magic, or love, as well as
any other important details of their life.
Whenever an adventurer does something difficult, their
player flips a coin and hopes for heads.
If an adventurer is born to do this task, the coin may be
flipped Again, that's pretty much it for the mechanics.
Pretty. Much it.
That's it. That's it.
Like, this is definitely a my God.
When I was brushing my teeth, I was thinking of a great way to
say what I want to say and it's completely eluding me now.
But this is just a great way to look at like a hyper Hyper
Ultralight game in that there's no monster stats, there's no
numbers at all. There's that's it.
Like, that's. I mean this is even lighter than
9 Lives of Valhalla. And I was thinking that, yeah,
at least there's dice mechanic in that one kind of going into
Google. Sucks.
So that's good. We'll just just roll up, bring
it up, and do AD 2. Just call one heads the normal
flipper. So adventurers and Argonauts,
right? So create your adventurer any
way you wish. There are a list of ones on the
side. There is the Wraith writer, the
forgotten chimera, the unborn gargoyle, the Paladin of the
sleeping Sun, the prismatic Zealot, the Witch of the Wastes,
the drinker of the Brine, and the mound of Flesh.
Any of those pop out at you? Oh, I mean now.
The flesh every day, all the no, I think prismatic zealot for
sure. You've gazed into the thin world
beyond. You wander without reason,
reciting its hymns and recounting those endless
vertices. Oh, wonders truly lie Beyond
One's a dope one. Yeah, I really like the The
Wraith writer is really cool too.
It's torn from the thin world. So world building right off the
bat. What the fuck is the thin world?
There are some immediately goes to some type of spirit world.
Yeah, yeah. Torn from the thin world by dire
magics. You wander these twisted tracks
atop your skeletal steed forever searching for a way back to the
other side. So so are you then, if you are
the prismatic zealot, are you born of meet magic or love?
I think I'm born of magic. Yeah, that's my assumption too.
So you are born of magic. So then why don't you roll 3D
eights and then I'll give you your sign, your nature and your
got, well, 60 eights basically. OK, the first one is a 2.
So now you've got Mystic. Fuck Mystic.
All right, well that works perfect.
Yeah. Then I rolled for Nature of
Four, which is spiteful. For garb 2 armor, for feature
1-2, again ancient. For feature 2, glow or yeah,
eight is glowing. And Tool.
I rolled A6 for axe, so I am a spiteful armored Mystic who is
incredibly old that glows and wields an axe dope.
Yeah, absolutely. That sounds like a prismatic
zealot to me. Absolutely.
I've seen the truth of the prisms.
Next we roll on places and things.
This is a crumbling wonder lurks just beyond the horizon.
Roll 48 sided dice and venture forth so.
OK SO48 sided dice. I rolled A3.
So locations. You go for it, Yeah.
You read it, you No. Yeah, we'll say.
We'll say the LO that so it's locations, weather, encounters
and treasures. So you rolled A3 on location, so
you have a wretched, stinking mire dope.
Then, for weather, I rolled an 8.
That means the skies look down with eyes of fire.
Very more Landy, yeah. Encounters one, You starvation
afflicts the party That's you. You're starving, buddy.
And then Treasures is 5 a fruit enchanted and afraid?
And afraid no, you got that, You got that.
I was going to make a One Piece reference, but I've never
watched it so. Oh really?
Any of it? I've only seen like 25 episodes,
but no. But don't they eat fruit?
Aren't they fruit people? There is a fruit that does give
them powers. It's very rare they got they got
fruits. So you're right.
I don't know if those fruits feel fear though, So I mean,
maybe it's a Freddy fruit. Yeah, it might.
I don't know. So, so your adventure.
So to start your adventure, you on the horizon.
You saw a wretched, stinking mire, and when you look up the
skies, look down on you with fire.
You are currently starving and seeking an enchanted and afraid
fruit. That is the adventure.
I feel like there is like in this mire, there is like a tree
that bears enchanted like living fruit and as you're traveling
through, like it's like that bleak, ultra hot sun just
beating down on you like fire staring down you from the sky,
you know. Yeah, And I think it's a very.
Open to your interpretation, yeah.
Well I think the fruit enchanted and afraid when I got there with
you if I was jamming would definitely be fruit.
As in like a person hanging from the tree like that aligo and
that if that's the fruit you choose to eat, they are afraid
and you decide what you do with the fruit.
Quote UN quote when you find it. That's interesting.
So creatures and cretins. Oh, also the the page before the
Adventures and Argonauts page is just a blue a blue kind of WAVY
background. This one does have the places
and things has, you know, kind of like a hillside cliffside
situation. The creatures and cretins has a
great one that looks very like, yeah, like fallen angels looking
at like a throne kind of situation.
It's like classic biblical fiction fanfic art, you know,
there's like snakes off to the bottom right and the background
and this is great. It's a very it's a yellow, green
that's a very putrid color, looks great and the Creatures
and Cretins is a bright pink on it.
Like, I love this one. This one pops like crazy so all
right so B they freak friend or otherwise roll 48 sided dice and
C so this is NPCS in general whether they're good guys or bad
guys. So why don't you hit me with
what do you just AD 8 at a time will do creature first.
So what is your creature that's going to be A7?
So you got a lumbering troll. Still don't know whether it's
good or bad guy. And then they're mean.
Their, their, their, their general vibe, what they are.
Seeks. Oh, they're curious, lumbering
trolls. So still could be an MPC.
That's cool. What is your proclivity, yeah?
8 8 Scrolling Secrets on a spoiled scroll.
And then the final one was trappings is A1.
Oh, a well worn leather armor and a square sword.
So that's a very interesting you have a curious, lumbering troll
and well worn leather armor with a square sword that loves to
scroll secrets on a spoiled scroll.
Huh. Well, an interesting creature
that come across. Mm hmm.
Mm hmm.
There's some really. I mean, all of these are
fantastic. So we're rolling DH, which means
you're getting what? Like a fraction of what the
possibilities are here, but a weird it.
Rolled on this one earlier and I got like the wary it.
That was like attempting to regain their bearings.
Yeah. And I was like, that's very tree
beard, you know? Like, I'm not sure where I am
anymore. The they always Jim Taylor loves
to put two ZS for a wizard too, which I've noticed they're
everything. So Wizards are WIZZARD, and
we're already almost done with the Z, and that's how small the
original 1 is. This is caverns and catacombs.
This is another one. So there's obviously like a
photograph of like kind of like a a rockiness with like more
rocks in the background, but it's very purple to kind of like
magenta vibe. But cut out are these black and
white drawings or even like these like catch drawings of
there's like a knight with the damsel, A goblin creature coming
to towards him with a sword, one coming up over the hill, and
then some creature in the background with like, you know,
long. Face beyond explanation coming
up over the edge, which is fantastic.
So this, says caverns and catacombs.
In the deepest, darkest chasms of the earth, treasures and
dangers are dealt most freely. So it's it's 48 for denizens,
curiosities, happenings and treasures.
For denizens, I got a chittering spider, terrifying curiosities.
A slain adventurer. For happenings I got a wizard
duel and then for treasures, a beautiful harp.
That's cool. There's a lot you can do with
that, especially the the. I would, I would separate that
into a couple of different things, you know.
Absolutely this. These are like encounters you're
going to have as you're in this Depths area.
I would say those separating two different things.
If it is a slain adventurer and chittering spiders out of the
slain adventurer in the web of a chittering spider and then the
wizard duel, they would be dueling over the beautiful harp,
you know. Or the Chittering Spider.
Maybe they both want it. Yeah.
I mean, that's true as well. That's true as well.
Then we got there's literally 2 pages left and that's the entire
scene. The next one, the next one is
monsters and magics. So it's 38 sided dice to create
an artifact or four for a monster.
So why don't you do the three first and we'll do the artifact,
it's power source and it's aura, and then we'll do the monster
second. Yeah, so for the artifact, I
rolled A6 for an amulet. The power source is A5 for the
stars and its aura is radiant, which is perfect.
I have a Radiant Star Powered Magic Amulet Dope.
Amazing, that's what's up. And then what about your visage,
physique and feature one and feature 2 for your monster?
So my visage is feminine physique is molluskin.
Like a like a mollusk. Molluskin, yeah.
I assume it's like a mollusk, yeah.
Feature one is stinking and feature two is winged.
So a winged, feminine mollusk creature.
Awful, terrible, terrible. Once again, horrible beyond
belief. Oh that sounds so like I would
have like the the the thing open up and it would almost be like a
mermaid if it was like top woman bottom mollusk and it just like.
Every, every moment of this, I resent having to live.
There's like little wings on it. Well, you know, mollusks and
like, like clams and stuff have little little things to flop
around with too. So that's cool.
That's cool. That's a.
Good one. Still going great for me over
here, Yeah. And then the last page is heroes
and happenings. So with 3/8 set of dice,
populate your crumbling world with 1000 myths and legends.
So this is heroes, oddities and happenings.
So we're all three to 8 and we'll go through these.
I rolled. OK, I almost rolled 3/8, but I
didn't. Cool.
So for heroes, I rolled an 8. An empty suit of Silver Mail.
Lies here as though slain, Huh. Nice.
Oddities. Another 8A vapor fills the area
and then it's gone. Something has changed, though
you can't quite place it. And then happenings is A7
Nameless. Things have burrowed up from the
deepest pit of the earth, talking in secret and shadowy
tongues. There's definitely like tables.
I would mix and match for areas. You know, it's like build a
bunch of, I mean, there's a ton of stuff here.
Yeah. I mean that's that's the thing
that's like this isn't. It's not like you would roll all
of these in a row, like you make your adventurer and then as you
go through places, you would roll when you needed to.
So if you were deciding that, like starting off, I might do
the places of things, but then like, you know, I might roll out
a couple of times to go overland.
But if it's decided you go underground, that's when you'd
hit the caverns and catacombs. I mean, I might roll the heroes
and happenings kind of right at the start too, just to have like
some adventure kind of situations to start, you know,
But. Almost like creating like a
little like like word bank list for you to pull from for you
know. And that's it.
That's it for the first one, yeah, the last.
It even says populate your crumbling world with myths and
legends. So like that's why it's just a
great seed, you know venture see things.
So yeah, so that's that's the Corzine, that cyst and this one
is clearly, you know it's, it's chopped up and put together, but
the the words are still clearly put on in like a program or
something, right. When we look at some of the
other ones, well, let's go through, let's look at Tombs of
Agalash first. Well this is a 2023 one.
This is a later one, yeah. Let's go through Agalach,
because actually the Tombs of Agalach is extremely reminiscent
of Cyst in that the layout for it is incredibly similar.
So if you look at, you know, like the front cover I'm showing
here, Tombs of Agalach, the sky and stuff reminds me very much
like the yellow on the front, everything.
Let me open up Tombs of Aggloss real quick.
I know I downloaded it. Here we go.
Well, let's do it still. Having like bad dreams of the
half mollusk woman. So hey listen, do you do what
you got to do in the context of the mollusk woman.
So this is interesting. In the spreads version they have
the. Yeah, I know it covers, it's,
yeah, the ones on the wrong side.
But I mean, it makes sense because it's the front.
It's just interesting. So this side here on the right
would actually be on the left side.
So this is tombs of Agalash and adventure location persist.
The sacred seal is come and dawn.
The tombs cry out. Again, For an age and beyond,
the Wizards of Agalash have languished in their ancient
halls, trapped there by the gods they dared dethrone.
Fearful of phantoms and breathless things, the Wizards
fled deeper and deeper into their dungeon tombs, hoarding in
pits, their spells and things of gold.
So, oh oh, I opened this one where it doesn't.
I'm fine with that. So this one is interesting in
that it's laid out very similarly then as the sis one,
which is very different than some of the other ones we see.
But you start with some vibes. I love the skies on.
You know what this reminds me of?
You know? I know I said it just a second
ago as far as, like, a reference to Warpland, Yeah.
Absolutely. But it reminds me, you know that
like the page in Warp Land, my my light got weird here.
So let me auto adjust a little bit of brightness back on my
face so the sky page in Warp Land.
This looks to me as if those skies are the sky because you
actually get to see the setting with the sky above you.
That's one thing I love about this.
I think I would hold that in the description of playing this game
as well. Like I'd be like, yeah, since
the sky is fucking insane, I'd show him this and be like yet at
all times a living hue of pinks and purples or whatever.
It's dope. It is dope.
I do agree. A shriek is heard across the
crumbling world. The Wizards of Agalachia have
outlived the seal that kept them trapped in their tombs, now
promise their magics to those that free them.
So the Wizards of Agalach are calling out to be free now that
their seal is unsealed, but so this One of the things is these
are completely different character backgrounds, so driven
by dreams, avenger power. Adventures draw nearer to the
tombs, ready to thwart the friends that lurk in the shadow
and to free the Wizards who hide below.
So any of these speak out to you.
We got the reticent jeweler, the moon kissed Warden.
Oh, it's the crumbling Sovereign, the crumbling
Astropath. What's that one say?
Uh. Crumbling asthma.
You have gazed out into the distant Suns, etched their paths
upon your skin. Your blood maps have led you
here to the place where All Stars end.
And it's dope. Yeah, prize cool.
The Smoking Cog Fiend. I'm not gonna use that one at
the table because that's not what people will say for the
entire session. I'll tell.
You that right now? Yeah, Garg Cog.
Yeah, the gargling Wretch is a is a bit of a touchy.
One too gargling. Yeah, yeah yeah, yeah.
And the spell touched Squire. So great.
Great. The vibes.
The writing is for how minimal all of this is.
The writing has to pop and it it does like crazy.
That's. What I know about this really
good job. There's a page for Wizards and
wonders, so there's creatures and treasures, but there's also
incantations and features, and this is the spellit tombs and
the cobbles heaped with gold spirits and specters that you
can run across miserable creatures that can be found.
These are just a straight D8, so these are straight up just from
the from the Wizards Acrid pots of Slime 1000 creatures come.
So these are really great like roll AD 8 and we'll we'll we'll
kind of give a reference for this.
I just clicked out of my dice roller and so it's right here
again. I rolled A4.
An ornate plinth has lost its gargoyle.
A wasted chimera has it desperately trying to suck the
icker from its stone shell. So that's kind of stuff that
comes up into into this, yeah. And then one thing I love is
this. The jewel of Agalach, mumbling
the deepest bowels of Mother Earth.
The wizard's greatest gifts, gifts lies dormant, forged ages
ago by the long dead Stark. And how magics, what magics
could hold. So there's actually like some of
these are lists of characters, like Murloc, the wisest wizard.
There's a reference to some of the other ones.
Is this one that references? No.
There's references to the other ones that come up and other
things. But anyway, so very similar in
my mind to Sis. The colors PO I think are even
like more bright in this one, but the layout is incredibly
similar. But when we go to something like
let's open up like even let's like Pangram is a good one to
look at. So this is a completely
different kind of vibe and style.
This one is definitely looks more like they chopped it up and
then scanned the pages. Oh yeah, it's a bunch of I
actually, I haven't gone through this one at all.
So no. Me and me and the podcast team
at the same time. Much different style though,
right? It's it's very.
Still belongs, you know. Yes.
Oh, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So Tara and ecstasy falling from the squalid womb, The creatures
meet the earth. The Talisman is stitched betwixt
it's chiseled teeth. That lasts.
A pangram is born. So this is a Matt.
This is a creature that you could battle but that's like
there's the how to play section it has a couple of like AD 8
table and that's pretty much it. Like it's it's a very small just
vibey like location bad guy and that's pretty much it.
But you know as as we said it's much more chopped together
pieced together. It's not text.
It's clearly like cut out a magazine you know serial killer
letter style looks fantastic. The last one we really are gonna
well let's let's flip through 2 real quick There's the dungeons
of Dunbar which is much newer one.
It the this keeps that cut style in that it's you know pages that
are cut up into pieces as opposed to like you can actually
see where the pieces are glued on to the background behind it.
And I I don't know which one I like better.
I think both together work really well between like the
cyst and this more collage. Style.
I don't know that I like 1 better than the other.
I think they both like. I like regular cyst because it's
so clean looking, but I also like this because it's just so
like. Like DIY art, punk.
Yeah, stuff. You know, I will say that it's
clear that they, like they wrote what they wanted to write,
printed it out, cut it up and then put it on here.
I'm fine with that. I'm fine 1000%.
I I I like the style. But I can tell you right now
this I got this had to take much longer.
I mean when you look at the page and then you have like your D8
table that you like literally write, print, print out, cut
into strips and then glue back onto paper, it's dope.
And then I I said one, but I meant to, there's one thing
where they do a completely different style.
Let's look at something like is this more path throughs?
So they do sometimes this kind of style where it's actually
like a whole page. This is when you download it,
it's called the watching woods but it's more pets Roos on their
itch page. It's it's it's just a whole
page. So as opposed to that style.
So one of the for those in podcast and they can't see, some
of them are just like whole pages that are that are put out,
you know and when we look at something like dungeon here,
that's one this is how to play. So it gives you the rules for
the game. There's a dungeon entrance,
there's the Dungeon Lord, and then there's the dungeon rooms,
and you roll on dens and curiosities, happenings and
treasures. So it's more like an individual
location, but it's written not in Zine style, it's written in
like page style. So that's the other kind of
thing that you can see. The last one I really you want
to look at a lot that I want to touch on was Lord's Bio Keep.
This is one that I believe was a Kickstarter.
I know, I know it was crowdfunded.
I don't know how many other projects there's was
crowdfunded, but this is pretty much the biggest one that
they've done. Let's say it's.
It's by far the longest, yeah. And.
There's actually it's not very long, but so there's actually
two different versions of this that came out as well, I
believe. The first one if you look at for
those I can see here the there is actually kind of like a mini
perfect bound that actually has like creasing in the sides.
It's got like a little bit of an edge and then they basically
were like not happy I guess with how it turned out or a specific
type of the layout. So they sent out a whole nother
one that's more Zine style and changed the layout completely.
So when you look at you know one compared to the other the layout
and style is different. So that's the 1st 2 pages in
that one, but in this one, this is the first 2 pages.
So for those who can't see, it's different.
So they just tweaked the layout, combined some pages, took out
some of the pages that were just spreads of words and did that.
But this is Biokeep, so it's a much darker vibe than everything
else. It's very, I mean, it's the
Lords of Bile Keep, if you can think of that. the Champions in
this one are like bare fingered beggar nascent things, disgusted
Miser, Hobgoblin, nameless stranger, vengeful Warden.
So it's definitely like a deeper, darker setting who you
can meet along the road. The wicked Witch, the wasted
weird thing. I also think that this is more
of a structured kind of like campaign ish thing that you can.
Do assist. Take on a campaign?
Yeah, so you actually, it actually takes you through the
bio lands meeting various different things.
The Wraith of the the wrath of the Gargoyle, the dying Lord of
Pus, the bio Keep besieged, and the various things you can do.
The slime slick dungeons, the gutters below the deepest bowels
of the earth, you know and and then there's like an appendix N
in the back. So it it is the longest.
I think. I mean dog shit is really really
long too but it's one of the longest and I think one of the
more in depth cyst pieces. So if you're going to get cyst
and also want something to go with it I mean get all of it but
definitely get Lord's bio keep so last I know I've said this a
bunch of times. The last thing we're going to
look at, because it came out recently as far as I know, is
the is this. I don't know if you've seen
this. This is the crumbling world map.
Oh, I just. I saw the No, I haven't seen it.
Go for it. Yeah.
No, it's. I just, I love that the so I
have it physically here, the crumbling world map, all of the
locations in the various things, talking about the great immortal
ink applied to the Necromancer Duns of Dunbar, all of those
things, they all take place in this map.
So they actually made a collage style map.
Crazy map, right? Like the Super collage style.
Yeah, go, go ahead. Sorry.
I mean, after you go for it. Oh no.
Yeah, Like you were saying, The Clash style.
But like, if you look at some of the things we talked about, the
Bio Keep is the bottom right? And there's the bio lands right
next to it. But as you read through all of
these, you'll be like, oh, that happened here.
That's where Murloc is. This is where the wooden land
is. Like, it's really dope that
they're like, OK, all of these are in the crumbling world.
So let me put the crumbling world out there.
Wow, very cool. I love this.
I'm so, like, I love this map so much.
Yeah, it's definitely it's it's exactly the kind of map that I
would expect to to come from the people that made Cyst.
Yeah, so very cool. Again, for those that are just
listening, this is when you might want to go watch or
definitely go check out the H page.
We'll drop all the links and everything.
We we're still going to do like a review of this.
I know that this is a very short episode where we did more of
like, you know, kind of showing off than than anything, but
we're definitely still going to do a review of this because we
want to do scores on everything. So why don't we hop over to
that? No, no.
Oh, all right, let's go back to the.
All right, we're here we go. We're back at the.
OK. One thing I do want to say too,
though, is I love that when I get packages from James, they
always do art on them, which is super cool.
Like this is. I don't know, my camera is just
not having a good day. I don't think maybe you're too
bright. That could be it.
So this one is like a like a troll guy.
It says thank you on it. This one is like a little goblin
guy says thank you on it and I really love this one.
It's the it's a character talking to like a necromancer
and it says thank you bold adventures.
But alas my book of spells is gone.
So really cool on on the packages that all come from from
overseas. So and and all this.
It's so inexpensive, like when you get when you order these
zines from the when they're available.
Crazy cheap. Yeah, it's like 5 bucks for the
Zine and 5 bucks for shipping. I'm like, yeah, give me.
I'll do all of them. Sorry, not cheap, affordable.
But I also would say I would. I would pay substantially more
for these. So shocked at how inexpensive
they are, but we're going to do a Zine style review real quick
and then talk about where you can get some of these zines.
This is a little bit more of a casual episode, so we'll just
cruise through this so. Show them today, you know?
Yeah, we, I mean we post. Holiday and we're we're come
back, you know. Yeah.
Well for those that celebrate,
you know, Happy Indigenous People's Day.
Yeah. And for those that do the other
one, think about not doing that. So for zines we do it a little
bit different than books. Books we get 5 metrics to for
scenes we give three because it's not really fair to compare
something like this to something like the die RPG with like 1000
pages. Well like 300.
But we do visuals, rule set and vibes.
Visuals are together, layout, art, everything.
Visually, how do we like it out of 10?
Rule set is the rules. Not only do we like the rule
set, is it, you know the Because a game could have one rule and
we could give it a fucking 10. So.
And then vibes are a mix of everything.
It's kind of like how bad we want to play the game once it's
shut, you know, once we once we read through and everything.
So that that's what got through visuals, rule, setting, vibes.
So visually, what are your thoughts?
Oh, visually it's it's so substantial.
You know, like I love the visuals.
I like the the the two different really styles that we're talking
about, the more like. Text over this like backdrop and
then the other version, which is almost like that.
Yeah, text pasted over, yeah, I think, I think very highly of
the visuals. I mean, I think it's, it's, it's
clear, like a very visual project, Yeah.
I mean I think if especially if art is their focus in school,
which I feel like I remember them saying that and I feel kind
of like I didn't get a chance to listen to the interview again
but you should definitely check that out.
They did do an interview on the Lost Bay podcast from front of
the show eco so definitely go go check them out on the Lost Bay
and listen to that. But the collage style art is
fantastic and do you look like the crumbling world map.
I mean that in and of itself individually.
So it's a fantastic piece I. Mean.
You know, when you talk to people about people that have
these scenes, a bunch of people say, like these are some of
their favorite scenes in their collection, especially the ones
that are chopped together in pieces and you can visually see
that it's like glued together and photo scanned.
So what are your thoughts on visuals?
I don't know. I'm pretty high up there.
What are you thinking? I mean, I'm pretty high up there
too, so. How are you?
How are you Drew? I think like like 9 at least you
know I'm. Feeling good 9 on this one Yeah.
I mean they're it's just they're fantastic.
I mean it's not just that they look awesome.
It the thought process behind. I think collaging is really
interesting because I can't imagine how many pages you flip
through to find that piece that you really need.
Oh, do you? Know.
Yeah. It's more of like a building a
collection of like. Themed, you know what I mean?
And then putting it together. But yeah, I mean, yeah, crazy
probably took forever. Yeah.
And then just the pieces where it's like that black and white
kind of design with them, then suddenly get that pink sky
behind it. I mean, you know, it's a lot
more than putting a piece on top of the other piece.
And it's just it's just gorgeous.
Yeah, they're just gorgeous all around.
So rule set, I mean, we we this is probably the least we've ever
talked about a rule set because we literally just read it and
kept going. I mean, there's not really much
rules here, right? You flip a coin if it's
something your character was born to do You you flip the coin
twice. Yeah, I would say my only, my,
only. I like that this is like a like,
as I was trying to say before, this is like a treatise in like
culture, like gaming, right? There are no rules.
And I don't think, I think there's a lot of people that
really love this. And I think there's a lot of
people that would read it, think it's pretty and never touch it
again because it's not. There's not a lot there.
I mean, even when we did 9 Lives of Alahala, there's at least
like, you know how many times you have to hit the thing to
kill it. It's really like once.
Yeah, this. You don't even know that
realistically. I mean, what's the difference
between a lumbering troll and the pangram that gets this
entire own Zine, you know? I would think that the only the
only thing about the rules that that I think I would want is
like even just like like nothing has HP and stuff so I I get
that. I I would think though that
like, what does defeating something look like
comparatively? Like if it's like a crab on the
road, or if it's like the evil warlord or necromancer that's
destroying everything. How does one defeat one versus
the other? Just live in heads once, you
know. Yeah.
So that's my only thing with the rule set is I love that it's
super light. I love that it's very it's do
what you want with it, but I almost want just like the
tiniest bit more and it doesn't need to be need to be numbers.
It's almost more just like maybe in context that like is would
defeating the neck venture be multiple roles in that Like
there's a storytelling part to it where it's like you defeat
it. Once you broke you you you did
it once you broke their their wand you do it twice you you
shatter their their scrolls. You know what I mean Kind of
thing. It just any context I think is
the only knock I have on something that's this light and
I but I'll tell you what, I would rather have the question
about something this light than read a 400 page book of rules.
Oh, I mean, if if you know me, so I'm like, yeah, me too.
And I'll just wing it, I'll make it, I'll make up a rule all
gamify boss fights or regular fights and just be like, it's
not so much like you hitting it and dying.
It's like there's a sequence of events to play through, you
know? Yeah, I mean, I mean, I agree
with you. I would just make it up.
But much like some of the other things we've done before where
it's like clearly we we know enough of our games, but we can
just make it up, keep going and not even pause, a lot of people
can't. So to me that is that is just
like I said, not necessarily a knock, but it is a question.
So what do you think? I mean, I do really enjoy this,
but do I think that something like 9 Lives of Valhalla did
Ultra Light cleaner? Yes I do.
You know what I mean? I left less questions to be
answered, you know, and and what did he give that for rules?
Was that the 9 for that too was 9 that was.
Pretty. It's the perfect it's it's got
one fucking rule. Yeah, something like that.
Pretty high, yeah. I mean, I.
Think this is like a strong seven to light 8 for me, You
know, I mean, I'm. Not blown away by the by the
coin toss I think it's I think it's totally fine and I really
like how minimal is and and I'm definitely going to play this
with my new table that I'm getting started just to go
through it. You know, what was that?
Because you know what we looked at before that reminds me of
this. We looked at a coin toss game
before. Yeah, it was prole.
Prole, yeah. So that's when I compare like a
coin toss game to a coin toss game.
I think prole is cleaner and I think it takes about the same
amount of space. So that's my that's my thought
in my head is like when I look. At.
Yeah, when I look at 1:00. So yeah, I'd probably go with
the seven for this. Yeah, I think it's really good
for this. Yeah, I think it's really solid.
The fact that literally that's all it is, is just flip a coin
and sometimes you'll have the advantage to flip a coin twice.
That's crazy to me that you can. I think it's one of those things
where the more you add to this, the more you fuck it up.
Yeah, you know, I think there's a sweet.
Spot, you know, this is a lesson in editing.
And I don't mean like line editing.
I mean and like editing your thoughts and editing your
ingredients and editing your your pieces and stuff.
So I think 7 is solid for this. I really enjoy it.
And I think the context of how you use it within the scope of
the game is what really makes it really, really good vibes.
I don't. I mean.
Oh, super vibey. Yeah, I mean, what are your what
are your thoughts? I think in my I'm a strong eight
or a light like a well, no I think I'm a yeah strong eight to
light 9. Yeah.
I'm a going out on this hard, like I think if you have you,
did you actually get a chance to sit down and read Lords and Wild
Keep? Like no, I did not.
Read I read Plight of the Necromancer and now it's pretty
cool. Oh, Plight of the Necromancer is
great, but it's also only like 4 pages.
Yeah, you know it's very, very small.
When you get a chance to read through Lords Biokeep, you're
going to be like, Oh yeah, easy night, easy night.
That one. The one that's like longer.
Oh, also dog shit, it's also really, really long.
It's it's fantastic too and it's a little bit longer.
But like in context when you look at when you go from like
Sisters of Saban to Dungeons of Dunbar to Lords of Biokeep, I
mean the the world building is fantastic.
The tables are always great. There's a bunch of bunch of
different like every time. A lot of them will have new
character options in the beginning.
Some of them don't even give you all three, like meet, meet, love
and and magic. Sometimes you're completely
different ones and some of them I can't remember which one it
is. That completely changes it up.
You don't even start with those three.
You start with three completely different ones and I can't
remember which one it was. Was it dog shit?
Where you start with three completely different ones?
I don't remember, but it's, I don't know, I I think vibe wise
to me, it's through the roof. I think this is just the the
perfect kind of storytelling that can be told without sitting
down and writing a story. And I love that through the
context of all the different adventures, you eventually get
to the crumbling world map. And yeah.
I really, really it's a This is a very.
Cool collection of scenes. I now want all of them.
So yeah. Well, if you want to find all of
them. Where do I find them?
Dunyons of Dunbar is one of the most is one of the newest ones.
You play Might Magic or Mischief instead of Meet Magic and Love.
So I'm curious if that's gonna be a change in the overall style
of playing Cyst. Yeah, listen, that was my
nickname in high school, but might magic or mischief in done
with the Dunbar. But if you are in the States,
you can check them out at Nave of Cups.
Friend of the show Nave of Cups. They recently did their November
drop. You definitely, definitely,
definitely want to go check it out every time I possibly can.
Anytime they come up on itch. You can also find them directly
from James Zilla from James Miller Champ.
Definitely do that. Don't forget how that works is
you pay the $5 and tip an extra 5 for postage.
They'll reach out to you if you screw that up.
Oh what was their total score? Man, We are who I am low on my
fucking Adderall today for. That is OK, buddy, I'm.
I'm also just barely holding it together.
I'm plus 7 + 9. This is a 25 which is super
solid, cool, good for for Azine and it deserves it.
I mean some of my favorite scenes in my in my collection.
Obviously huge fan of Jim Zilla who huge fan of James Miller
champ. Definitely check them out.
So go check out Napa cups. You can find a lot of this stuff
there. Otherwise you definitely want to
go check out Jim Zilla's itch page.
It is literally Jim Zilla JAMZILLA dot itch dot IO.
They have a great page. I haven't seen one like this
before where like the the the links to each of each of little
thing is like a full page spread.
It's so cool. Page from the yeah, if I if I,
if I ever actually put anything out on itch, I'm definitely
reaching out to them and asking how the fuck they did that,
because that's the best looking itch page I've ever seen.
But if you go to the the Naval Cups page right now, you can get
done just a Dunbar. The greater Mole ING the Tombs
of Agalos. You can get Cyst, you can get
Pangram. The only one that's out of stock
right now is Lords of Bio Keep, but I highly recommend getting
all of the rest of them. They're really fantastic and
they're only like 6 or $8. Like, they're so inexpensive for
how fucking cool these are. Inexpensive.
Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, you just get so much from each individual one.
I mean, the fact that there's like, you know, four to six,
eight D8 roll tables on each spread, even if it's only 6
spreads, that's so many adventures you can play in each
individual one. I mean, even if you just got
these for like the inspiration of the tables, like they're so
worth it for that in the art, you know what I mean?
Like, yeah, yeah. I mean, again, even if it's a
game you never play like, as you just said, like as an art piece,
they're stunningly beautiful, but for world building, they're
great. I mean the the crumbling world
is awesome but what you just said the the basically using
them as your own adventure season tables.
So cool so cool. Anyway so yeah that has been
sist got a total of 25 this is a an ultra ultra ultra light kind
of like world building coin flip game.
Totally worth it highly highly recommended it.
It's really inexpensive and really fun to play for those
people that want something that where the rules don't get in the
way at all because yeah, so a couple of things coming up here
this week. We have a special episode coming
up. I believe it's is it Wednesday
morning? We've already done, yeah, we've
done not one, but two Eye wizard unboxings where you can see a
lot of these boxes here, a lot of these.
I got three of them here, four of them here, got all OSC box
here. These are all from Laws the Eye
Wizard. So the morning of the 29th we
will be doing a third unboxing of Eye Wizard stuff because I
can't stop spending money on boxes and we got too many
scenes. Very cool.
So we'll be doing that. And then I don't know what.
Do we have something? I have something marked for
Friday and for Sunday. I have no idea what it is.
Do you know? What it is?
Let's see. Nothing marked for.
Yeah, I don't have anything on my.
We'll use something marked for Friday and Sunday I guess Maybe
we moved it because I have nothing marked at all for Friday
or Sunday either. Huh.
OK, well listen, let's post on social media when we know what
we're doing, man. Yeah, this was, this is a great
one. This was super clean, super
nice. This is a great one.
So listen, you can find all of our stuff at our link tree at
the Weekly Scroll. As I said, you can find all of
Jimzilla stuff on their Itch page at jimzilla dot hio and
find all their stuff physically right now at Knaves of Cup, our
Nave of Cups. Definitely check out all the
rest of the stuff at Nave of Cups.
Great people, great shop, you know, give them your money.
They deserve it. And that's it.
That's our episode. You guys Have a wonderful night,
Hunter. I'll see you later and we'll
figure out what the fuck we're doing next time.
Bye.