Hello and welcome to the Weekly Scroll Podcast.
My name is Ryan. And I'm a sad human with a
really long nose and a lizard's tail.
That's about right. Yeah, Yeah, yeah, there we go.
And today, today we are going to be looking at just a wee little
game. A little short short 1:00 today.
Little Shorty, this is Short Sword.
This is from I'm going to My God again.
In my head, I feel like I can say stuff and then I said it
loud and I can't. This is from Guiliano Roborado
or Roll for Taras. It's got that dope Roll for
Taras logo right here. This is from our our Latin
friends. And yeah, this is a cool little
game. It says welcome to a miserable
world of precarious adventure. I'm going to move this over here
because I hurt myself poorly on the mic last time.
No unwieldies by handers here. Only the quick and deadly short
sword will keep you alive in the archipelago.
Grab a couple of six sided die and embark on this journey with
a rules light system inspired by grim TTRBGS of old.
This is a cool little game. This is a fun little game I have
I have a little folder in my Dropbox called like OSRNSR
inspirations, and this has been in there for quite a while.
I picked this up yeah, on exalted or probably spear rich,
because that's where the link is in here.
I picked it up a while ago. It's a fun little thing.
It's a it's a it's a system. You're calling it a game is a
bit of a stretch. A whole game.
Yeah, I guess it. It definitely is.
It's something you can build a game out of, you know.
Yes, yeah, yeah, it's, it's a very, it's a very light
framework and I really enjoy it a lot.
Yeah, it's, it's good. It reminds me of a thing I'm
working on, actually, as we were going through those like huh?
Oh oh. I'm making this.
This reminds you of a thing. It Could that be the reason?
I was like, oh, maybe we should do with it this week.
Yeah, it was a good call. By.
Yeah, it could have been part of the reason.
I also appreciate that it's so sparse and they still fit some
humor in, you know, like you're part.
I was like, you know, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for
sure. Prior to that though, you know,
let's talk about we're doing, we're doing.
What's it? What's that say?
That's hell. Night, baby.
Hell. Night T-shirts.
Hell Night T-shirts available on the World's at Kroger bonfire
store. Check it out.
This one's great. I love when the design actually
fills the shirt. I hate when there's like a tiny
little tiny little thing. This is a it's a great shirt.
I got the comfort colors, heavyweight teats.
It's one of my favorite blanks. And at the end of the episode
today, we're going to be giving away a copy of Hell Knight still
wrapped in plastic. This is our third week of
giveaways from Gabbro Koroga. Hell Knight is what I think it
was our top rated game of last year and it was on like every
category. It's an amazing game from Gavro
Kroga, Worlds of Kroga. We've already given away some of
their other games that they were kind enough to send us.
Neurocity 2 weeks ago, Warp Line last week.
We're giving away Hell Knight this week and you should also go
back Hell Knight, the expansion, the Black Rainbow Society
Kickstarter from Gavro Kroga, which is an expansion to Hell
Knight over on Kickstarter. Still got a little bit of time
left, plenty of time for you go to check it out.
We're also going to throw in The Damned, which is the the this
Rizzo printed bonus class. I'd like eight of these for some
reason. And he sent me some other stuff
too, like GM screen and stuff that you'll that you'll you'll
get with this as well. So if you are listening live, go
to our Twitter find the post just hit like and that interest
you at the end of the episode. I will start from the bottom up.
Roll a number of dice equal to the number of people in the
giveaway, and if you haven't previously won one in the past
two weeks, Ozo meet castle. You will win it.
And then I will collect people's addresses and mail them all out
whenever my ADHD says so. Amazing.
So yeah, definitely check that out.
There's not a whole lot else going on.
We can say what else is happening this week at the end
of the episode, but that's, that's, that's pretty much what
we got, right? Yeah, I think so.
All right. Yeah, so.
Yeah, short short sword, short sword.
So this just so we can make sure we go over all the info.
As we said, this is from role for Tarask, which I believe so
it's written, designed and laid out, like I said, by what
happens when I click this. Oh, he does have an individual
Kickstarter or Twitter page. So it's night Ramen KNIGHTR AM
EN over on Twitter and then roll for Trask is the group.
I believe that they are part of the number of other creators,
same guy that put out or same group that put out brave zenith,
which is a great game that we will definitely go over at some
point here on the show. And they also put out or they
wrote back toes terrifying cuisine, which you can still
preorder the print run for from Spear witch right now, or you
can get on their itch page for like 20 bucks.
It's very it's it's it's really neat.
I'm really excited to get it in physical.
I have leaked through it. Yeah, I've leafed through it,
but I'm definitely the person who whenever I get something
like Kickstarter or, you know, buy something, gives me the PDF.
I'll glance at the PDF, but until I physically have the book
in hand, I want to experience it all together.
I generally wait, and that's what I'm doing with this, but it
looks really great as I flip through it and I'm excited to
get it in hand. It looks like that will be
available in July. 48 pages, you know, Hardbound A5 full color
again from Spear Witch. Definitely check out Spear
Witch. And you can still get shorts or
over Spear Witch too. And I think it's only like 6
bucks, but it's also only like 10 pages.
And yeah, super reasonable. It's definitely one where if
you're getting something from Spear Witch, just just add this
on. It's worth it.
I really like it. It's cool, yeah.
Your shipping's gonna end up being about the same cost as
that. So yeah, it's like, why not?
And then the cover art on the front here, Public domain, I'm
blurry. Let me unblur for y'all out
there real quick. Unblur.
So cover art here. They do list those on the itch
page, which I definitely just close down of.
Whoops, whoops. No.
And what you did is I clicked on the I clicked on the Twitter
link. That's what I did.
What was I looking for again? Oh, the cover is the battle with
the Sagittari and the conference at Achilles tent from scenes
from the story of the Trojan War.
That is the cover of each cool vibey.
It gives you kind of a sense of what's going on on the front
cover. It's well, let's just, let's
just look at the fucking game. Let's do it.
Boom, here it is. Let me close out the stuff here
on the side. The crazy part, we'll get to it
in a second. But yeah, great scene on the
front logo is a is a red border on like a faded light to dark
blue. It's just a short sword on it
and it says a miserable, miserable world of precarious
adventure. The crazy thing is this whole
thing is like 11 pages and yet it is like every single page is
bookmarked so. Really.
I did. Honestly, I did not even look.
You motherfuckers out there that can't bookmark your I know 11 is
pretty easy to bookmark but like if they're willing to take the
time to bookmark a a book that has no I would never knock this
for not being bookmarked because it's literally like 4 pages put
together right? It is a very small thing and yet
they still can. You have no fucking excuse not
to 2024, you know bookmark and hyperlink your shit.
But short sword, it's really cool.
It's really vibey. It's it's interesting because
there's there's a, there's this is a framework with a little bit
of implied setting. And the interesting thing is
like even on the itch page, there's like information or
implied setting that's not even in the book, which is, which is
funny to me. It's just like they anywhere
that they can tuck in a little bit more is cool.
It's like piercing item descriptions and Dark Souls, you
know, Like, yeah. You eventually get this world
that you you do get out of it. So we we chat about it a little
bit. So what what, what was your
initial thought when I was like, yeah, we should check this out.
And when you when you flip through it real quick.
I was like, wow, this is a lot like the game I'm riding.
In fact, it's it is. Yeah, Yeah.
I mean, not exactly, obviously, but I'm like, oh, now that I've
read this, I'm going to have to credit this because damn,
they're just so close. Yeah.
I mean, I listen. 1D6A success of five or six.
Great. You're a genius.
That's a great system. That's like 33% right there you.
Know, I mean, you know, once you've read enough games, you
definitely, uh, things you're we're there's like 10 OSR games,
you know what I mean Yeah and like everything else is a
variation on a theme. You know I I, I wrote up assist.
I wrote up a thing and I was like, man, this is incredibly
unique mechanic. And then I found it like three
times, you know, not exactly, but close enough for I was like,
God damn it, you know, and nothing new exists and that's
fine. It's kind of like the OSR in
general. It's such a new thing, even
though it's been around for for a while that there's this
constant like discovery of it, which means we have to listen to
the same stupid dead discourse over and over again as people
rediscover it and start their journey along the pathways.
But but yeah, but this I do really enjoy this game.
Like I said, it's a framework for a system that has some
really fun little bits of implied setting.
It's definitely one of those systems that is great to play on
its own. Obviously it's very late, but
that you could easily hack this is something you could like just
put on. You're like, oh, it doesn't
have. I want a more robust inventory
system. You could do this without
breaking it like. I want a more robust.
Like anything, you could do this without breaking it.
It's a great foundation to to hack from, and it's A and fun in
and of itself. Yeah, no, I mean, I, I just, I
was just joking about that. Oh, I'm writing a thing just
like this, but. Dice balls I Yeah.
Yeah, I do also like that ceramic is the yeah currency
like, OK, cool. Well, the interesting thing
about that, and I really enjoyed that was just like even just the
if you just, if you tell someone that your currency is scrap
metal, like your brain instantly goes to.
Yeah, exactly. The hunter is nodding.
Really changes the vibe, like just what you call your
currency, you know? Right.
And as soon as you hear that the currency is ceramic, your brain
instantly goes to like statuary and pottery and all those you
instantly, to me, instantly teleported into like the ancient
worlds. You know what I mean?
Yeah. Yeah.
It's either that or to like summer camp, you know?
We shot guns in my summer camp and rode horses the one time I
went. Two times we like built
birdhouses and painted like. That sounds cool too.
Like the easy thing to possibly do is just make a small skinny
ceramic square and then just say that it's like like a like you
can put your mug on it or like a hot dish, you know what I mean?
Absolutely. We love a good coaster.
Yeah, ours, after we passed the swimming test, they would take
us out on a boat into the and the lake's like fairly small and
they would get you off the boat and they'd flip the boat and
they'd make you like flip it back.
I'm like. Yeah, yeah, We did that at Boy
Scouts. I mean, I would do.
I went to Boy Scout camp. I went to Girl Scout camp, went
to 40s. Camp, but to scout camp that
sounds OK. Special means camp Yeah.
Was gonna camp was OK at camp Karundenal docks myself a little
bit, or at least my my younger self anyway.
So here's a game. No, no, no.
Let's keep going. This is a short one so I was
interested with more summer. Camps Camp Grady Spruce.
Oh interesting. Yeah.
Wait, was Karun and Hall boys? No, Karun and Hall was boys at
camp. I don't remember where forage
camp was anyway, so what's this game?
Yeah, Short Sword is a role-playing game where a bunch
of down on their luck adventurers team up to do odd
jobs in hope of gaining some ceramic.
One person will take the role of the referee describing the world
and its inhabitants, while the others take the role of the
adventures describing how they interact with said world.
I will say this is a very extremely rules like OSR like
there's nothing there's very little I want to say quote UN
quote like original here, but it's well pieced together again,
super simple, everything you need from a game.
What I find interesting, well tangent again real quick at the
beginning, is I, I find there's this kind of weird like
backwardsness to a lot of rule systems where you would think
that the more experienced you are in role-playing.
And this is not for everybody. And let's just start off by
saying there's a million pathways in role-playing games,
story games, OSR, like everything, everything that's
not a story game that has like a, a test or an ability check is
just the fucking OSR. Now the OSR is dead, but it will
exist forever because it's a marketing term that people use.
Where the fuck was I going with this?
I completely lost my turn of thought as I tended did off my
tangent into talking shit about the OSR.
So you would think that the more experienced you are, the more
you you would want from a game. And I mean in like in like
quantity and depth and and complication of procedures and
stuff. And I feel like for a lot of
people, it's almost the exact opposite.
Like the more I play games, more I read games, the less rules I
want. And I feel like a lot of new
people want a lot of rules. And it all comes down to, as
we've talked about numerous times, the show eventually have
an all episode on it, but it's game scaffolding in the amount
of structure you need in your game and how much that can fall
away as you change the way that you play games, as you you know,
if you start advancing or like down that pathway.
And it's just really interesting to me because you would think
the less rules easier it is to play, but then you handle to
someone new and they're almost like lost in the kind of
paralysis of choice because you realize just how open it is
versus like having all those procedures and structures to
like keep you like, you know, kind of like the.
Like. The bumpers at the bowling alley
exactly yeah, so and when I was reading this, I'm like, this is
exactly what it is. I was like, this game is right
up my fucking alley. But I can say there's a a 1000
people out there that are going to be like this is barely even a
fucking game and it's like you just because you require more
structures and bad. But you know some people don't
and this is plenty plenty. So I like how this is broken
down by numbers even within its own paragraph.
Like this is also a great example of like, you don't need
art in a book. There is no fucking art in this
book except for the covers, right?
Correct. Yeah, so paragraph like Section
1, what's the game? Section 2 is just tests.
It says when doing something potentially dangerous or stupid,
roll A6 sided dice ( 1 D 6 and try to get A5 or A6.
If you succeed, whatever you're trying to do happens.
You get an extra dice cumulative win.
The thing you are doing relates to one of your vocations, or the
thing you are doing relates to one of your skills.
When you fail, the lowest number rolled indicates the number of
wounds received. If it is relevant to the
situation, that's it. That's the core mechanic of the
game. Love it.
What are your thoughts? A great great mechanic, very
easy to understand. Also like the math on it.
Good, you know. So my well, so that's curious to
me because you're, you're more of a dice pool guy than I am and
you've been running him a lot more lately.
How do you feel about one D6 on A5 or A6?
1D6 on A5 or six is tricky in like.
Well, like 33%. It is 30.
Yeah, hold. Let's pull up.
Let's pull up my spreadsheet of dice pool metrics to hit A5 or
A6 because I have one. Well it's it's A5 or A6 which is
A two of six which is 1/3 which is 33.
So yeah, 33% if you have two dice, it's 55%.
Oh, how much is 3? Because if you use vocation and
a skill that's three V6, it's a percentage percent chance set of
success. Yes, that's crazy.
Yeah, but like, that's me saying it out loud to you, but like
genuinely at the table It's so it's so shakes out differently.
Like I mean, when we were first play testing my game adepts and
you needed multiple successes to do an action, certain actions,
not all actions, getting two hits was, I mean, fucking near
impossible. So one for everything is
definitely good enough. And if you have one dive, you
really want to do anything you can to get the second one.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, the, the numbers just
speak for themselves. I mean, when we were doing
Coriolis over on the AP side of the channel, it's only a six,
not A5 and A6, which warps numbers incredibly.
But I was getting like 1-6 out of like 14 die, 15 die.
Like there were times where I got like 2 successes out of I
think like 40 die, which I think the dice were just fucking me.
But like that's a possibility, which is crazy.
I also just read I just rolled 73D sixes in a row and succeeded
on six of the seven times. But you know, it's fine, so.
The problem is that like roll, like digital rollers, I don't
have true randomness, you know, so.
I completely agree. I.
When I would test out of stuff on my PC, like just sit here and
like write out scenarios, I would roll, which actually only
be done twice. I don't know why.
Like, yeah, all the times I've done it, I would definitely roll
fives and sixes way more than we sat at the table and did it.
Oh yeah, well, one thing that I'm gonna mess around with a
little bit here, but let's do a a quick shout out for I know
we've showed this on screen before, the digital dice roller.
This thing is incredible. And let me tell a quick story
for that. This is a this is an episode of
tangents real quick. Wow.
Brought to you by. Yeah.
So critical machine is people that made this, they put out
this keyboard machine. Why can't why?
Where are you critical machine like ADP?
Criticalmachine.co.uk. Yeah, there we go.
Plug. You know, say it out loud in the
podcast so everyone can go. Well, what did you say was
critical machine? Dot co.uk.
So these people protocol machine.co.uk, they put this
dice roller out, which is a fantastic automated dice roller.
It's got multiple channels to it, it's got like the number of
dice, it's got modifiers, it's got everything.
One of these keys stopped working and I messaged them
because this is about like 70 bucks and then it ships from the
UK. I messaged them and it was a
past a year, which is like return by date.
And I was like, you know, this is late, I'll pay whatever it
costs. I just want this to work.
Can you help me with this key real quick?
And they're like, yeah, if you can just pay to ship it to us,
we'll fix it and send it back and everything.
And I was like, that's awesome. But like you shouldn't have to
pay for that. Just let me know and like I'll
pay for return shipping. I'll do whatever.
And as I said, it's already way past the return date.
It is like, I think I bought this like 2 1/2 years ago and
it's like a a year for potential replacements, whatever.
But they're like, yeah, I just sent us as well figure it out.
So I sent it to them, they fixed it in like 3 days, sent it back
without ever even asking for anything.
And when I got in it worked. They were just like, yeah, you
know, you're, you're welcome. That's it.
So I literally all I had to do was pay to send this to them.
They fix it, sent it back in like 2 days.
Incredible customer service. They were super nice the entire
time. Updated me on the tracking that
I sent them the tracking they sent back to me.
Listen, if you've thought about getting a digital dice roller,
we're not sponsored. Sponsor us if you want
incredible piece of machinery and exemplary customer service.
Thank you so much, Critical machine.
But get one of these and the randomness seems to be a lot
better than the online dice rollers.
I was wondering how we got there.
That last sentence really tied it in for me, you know?
Hey, listen, the tangents, at least, almost always have a
purpose. I will agree that even in our
personal conversations, like our phone calls that end up being
two hours, your tangents do in fact serve a distinct purpose.
We eventually get back to where we were going.
Yeah, so past tests we have combat section #3 a great, I
love, I do really love all the number sections.
Yeah. So combat is like everything
else because this game is as simple.
You just make a test. If it succeeds, you deal 1D6
wounds to your opponent. A failure.
It's the same as a test, which means that your enemy has hit
you instead. It's important to know that
whoever goes first in this scenario is the person with the
least armor in combat. That is how initiative is
decided. Person with least armor?
That makes sense to me. Yeah.
Yeah, unweighed down. And then we have nice little
wounds. Guideline Section 4.
The amount of wounds a person, monster or whatever should have
three is average small animal A6 trained person, large animal,
small monster 9 and mutant or a large monster.
And fighting anything stronger leads to immediate death, which
is a great rule. You know, just.
Love it. Now, any bigger than this,
you're dead. You're.
Oh, you go against the Kraken like you're.
You're out, man. Yeah.
And then armor. I love this one sentence, you
know, reduces wounds received equally to its value.
Amazing, amazing One scented section, and I really mean that.
I love that. I did.
That's the thing that I really like about this game in general
is like, we talked about this over and over again and like I,
I know that this is a personal opinion.
I don't know if you share the exact same.
Opinion or opinions or personal opinions?
Yeah, I mean, I just hate I, I one of the reasons I fucking
hate discourse is that people talk as if what they're saying
is the only right way in a, in a field that literally goes from
everything from monopoly to fucking fiasco to fucking DCC,
You know what I mean? Like, like your way is your way,
so stop talking as if your way is the only way.
And that's what, that's why I like to I think if people use
more qualifiers, they wouldn't sound like such fucking
assholes, you know what I mean? Like, that's the issue.
So I try to qualify my ship by saying this is one way my thing
lately is that if you can chop it off, just chop it off.
You know what I mean? Like I don't need exactly you
say I don't need a paragraph to explain that you just if your
armor's 4 reduced damage by 4, like that's fucking it, you know
what I mean? It's great.
I love it. It's.
Also like just the most like TTRPGZ core thing to have a
section that's one sentence and the sentence works perfectly.
Like I really, I love stuff like that.
Well, one of my things that I like the most is that the header
with like the the square above it, it says 5 armor all bold is
like five times bigger than like the one sentences underneath it.
Like I love it so much, you know what I mean?
So there's some examples here. We I actually really like these
and there's no reason not to go through them because there's
only two pages left. So no, we don't have enough time
so. Yeah, oh, you're right.
We're already 38 minutes in our episode and we're almost done
already. So we have to talk about the
automata tuna fisherman. I'll do the first one, I'll do
the, I'll do yeah. So on Automata tuna fish, a tuna
fisherman attempts to. Now that question is and you
don't know, are they a tuna that also is a fisherman or are they
a fisherman? Fortuna you know what I mean
because you don't know. Attempts to steal a gold plated
tankard by fishing it from an unaware patron on the lower
floor of the Tavern. The referee calls for a test.
Since this task has something to do with their vocation.
The player will roll 2 dice. They will A5 and A2A success.
I love that. So they're literally at a Tavern
on the 2nd floor and they just like cast down and fucking just
like try to like fish up the other person.
That's awesome. An ogre mime has had too much to
drink and finds themselves into a drunken brawl with a local
Harlequin. The referee calls for a test.
Yeah, who doesn't want to fight a Harlequin?
Since they have the skill Drunken Fighting, the Playboy
rolled 2 dice, they rolled 4 and A2, which results in a failure,
and two wounds are received, which is the lowest dice that
they rolled. If they had succeeded, they
would have dealt 1D6 wounds to the Harlequin.
And then why don't you read the last one for me, a human?
Rat catcher. A human rat catcher.
Also, I'd like to say that real quick.
When I first read the Automatic tuna Fisherman, I read it as
like, it's an automata and a tuna.
Like fishermen. It's a yeah, OK, a robot.
It's a tuna. That is an autumn.
Yeah. It's a robot tuna that fishes.
That's how I read it. But it could just be it's a
robot person that fishes for tuna.
Doesn't matter. Either way is fine by me.
Yeah. Oh yeah, like a robot tuna that
fishes. A A human rat catcher is trying
to lay a trap for a dangerous salamander by using a piece of
meat and lots of rope. The referee calls for a test
since both the their vocation rat catcher and skill tying
knots, which is both a real thing, come into play here.
They get to roll 3 dice. 70 plus percent chance of success right
there. Yeah, yeah, let's, let's roll
for them because they put a roll in this one doing 3.
What do you roll? For cool, I rolled for the human
rat catchment because they got three dies.
I rolled no five or six. Which?
The realest thing ever and so I would take the lowest die as
damage, which is one. So salamander does you for one.
Yeah, Salamander charged me and I fell backwards and bumped my
head on the wall, you know? Just a little, just a little Boo
Boo that you got there. Backpack #7 An adventure can
carry up to 12 items and have four of those equipped.
Equipment is something worn or readily available, indicated by
a dot next to the item on the sheet at the end.
They don't say that, but they don't need to because there's
sheet at the end. What about death and scars?
Talking about death and scars. When an adventure's wounds reach
6, they die. When the wounds reach three,
they get a cool scar on their one D6 shoes.
I'm going to roll 1 real quick. I roll one hand.
They got cool, scarred up hands. You know.
I like how it says for four it says nose like parentheses S
noses like yeah. Could have multiple noses.
Yeah. Well, it's hands, eyes, ears,
noses, arms and legs. So pretty, pretty.
I mean, things you could always do, you could always do do it.
You could put feet and butt and you know, you know.
Yeah. Feet foot butt on your foot
butt. On your foot.
But yeah, healing adventurers lose 2 wounds by spending the
night with a roof over their heads.
It's I that's fine. I would.
The only thing I would tweak there is I would I would like
maybe adventurers reduce two wounds or something or heal two
wounds. Lose 2 wounds.
When I first read out, I was like, are we, are we trying to
gain one? I don't get it.
But then it just means you just, you lost them.
But it's fine. It's whatever.
It's a nitpicky bullshit. Corruption.
What about corruption? Using magic?
Hold on, have some allergies today.
Using magic Being in close proximity to mutants or
embracing the bold forces of corruption generates one point
of corruption. Every two points you get a
random mutation. If you gain another point after
reaching 6, you die. When you embrace the forces of
corruption, roll an extra die, a dice of different color during a
test. If it is the highest one rolled,
regardless of the outcome, you get a point of corruption.
Magic requires a spellbook and allows you to modify reality to
your liking. Frowned upon by common folks.
Witch to the. Witch ominous.
Yeah, mutations are good too, and they're tiered.
So it's like the first mutation is one table, the second one is
the next table, and the third one is the following table.
We'll get there. And they they get like more
robust or powerful or large as you kind of go down that list.
Well, yeah. Well, let's get there.
So prior to that, which is, I mean, well, because it's a whole
page, that's why. That's why it's later because
it's a whole page. So, oh, you know, but then they
could have just put growth at #10 and corruption and #11 and
then the mutations in #12 but whatever.
Growth. If someone attempts something
really, really specific and creative during a test, turn
that into a skill. Every two sessions, you can get
a new vocation. You can have a maximum of three
vocations and six skills. You can always replace them as
you go. I like that.
Like you do something cool enough.
You can just say, well, I haven't tied a knot in a while.
I'm going to go with boogie boarding, you know, like I just
did that and I did, and now it's my skill, you know?
So what about mutations? Yeah, so let's roll a couple.
Let's you and I both roll one for each.
How about that? Yeah, I was going to say I'm
definitely rolling three to six on this.
On the first one, first mutation I got dog face.
I have the face of a dog. I got glass skin.
Glass skin is an interesting one.
You're horrifying to look at. Yeah, that's terrible, because
my assumption is that not only am I brittle, but you can see
through me. You can see through you I think
is the most horrifying part of that.
For my second mutation I got. Through all the options, they're
really cool. Go through all the options.
They're really cool. OK OK, so for first mutations we
have additional eye, dog face, glass skin, furry horns or the
6th 1A really long nose. Could be a second nose, hence
noses. Nah.
And then for your second for second mutation I rolled the
first one metal skin I have plus one armor.
Nice. And I rolled A2 which is razor
sharp claws to go with my glass skin.
Yeah. Other than that we have one D6
extra arms, lizard tail, tentacles for hands.
I've seen that or spit acid. Nice, good.
Yeah. And for 3rd mutation I rolled A6
which is immortality. So like, you're just not dying?
Yep, you got. What did you get?
You got a really long nose and metal skin and you're immortal.
Dog face metal skin. Immortal dog face.
That's right. All right, you're a dog faced
immortal. Yep.
I rolled A2 again on that one so I got telekinesis.
Yeah, glass skin, razor sharp claws, and you're psychic cool.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The other options were Midas
touch, constant invisibility, demonic wings, and laser eyes
that do 2D6 wounds. This shit gets crazy.
Late like constant of invisibility is like oh you're
just always invisible? That's wild.
That sucks for you. Put on makeup, I guess you.
Know, I guess that's what you've ever seen.
The Leave League of Extraordinary gentlemen.
Yep, Yep, Yep, Yep. Terrible movie, but yeah.
It is. Yeah, it is.
You can't, You can't. You can't defend it.
It's an awful. There a better, a better, cooler
or more updated version. What's the one with Brendan
Fraser where he is like a a a a a like a brass robot man.
And there's like there's also an Invisible Man in that, but it's
it's like Matt Bonner or whatever from like the suits,
but not suits where he like steals.
You've no idea what I'm talking about.
No. And I think Burn know this is
the show. You're saying a suits that?
Suits. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
It's a guy and he gets caught. It's kind of like that movie
with Leo, Catch me if you Can. But like, yeah, but so they
catch this guy who's like a con artist and like a forger or
whatever, and then he decides to work with the FBI, who becomes
buddies with them. I saw the he.
Was on like it was on the network that like suits and
stuff is on. Yeah, like right before or
whatever. Yeah, I know.
What show you're talking about? It's not burners, Yeah.
But no, it's not Burners, 'cause that was on USA anyway.
He was on. He's on that show with Brendan
Fraser where they're superheroes.
It's on Max it's fucking great. It's really, really good and I'm
I'm sad that I can't remember what it's called for all you
people out there in podcast land, they just get to listen to
us type and hot on Google for the entire episode.
Brendan Fraser Superhero Doom Patrol Doom Patrol is the show
that I'm talking about. I.
Did not realize that that was Brendan Fraser and Doom Patrol.
Brendan, he's like the robot guy.
He's like. I haven't seen any episodes
truthfully, but I've seen stuff of the show.
And then the one of those guys is the Invisible Man, and I
can't remember. Lot of tangents today.
Yeah, Matt Bomer. Bomer.
That's what his name is. And the show that he was on was
called I'm. Going all the way through, guys.
Oh, yes, we, we have to get White Collar.
That's whatever. White Collar, it's the suit, but
not Suits. Yeah, yeah.
Listen, Suits got the Netflix treatment where they said we're
going to push this on everybody. And then everyone was like, oh,
this is the good show that came out ten years ago, and now we're
cool with White Collar. Deserves that too.
Anyway, so creating an adventurer #13 roll on the
following tables to determine your origin, starting vocation
and skill, or make up your own. I like that, thank you.
Regardless, every adventure starts with a short sword.
Wait a minute, it's that me? Oh yeah, 'cause that's the name
of the game. 1D6 ceramic and a traveling poncho.
Finally name them. So the origins are.
So roll for me. We got automata, which it gives
you forearms, no corruption, but you cannot heal.
That sucks. An ogre, Spiky and big human,
greasy hair, Human, sad human, communist or finished person
breathes underwater. What's your origin?
I'm a I'm a human communist. Oh, just like real life, I got
automata. Nice.
Vocations. Talk to me about vocations.
Yeah, so there's once again steaks.
I love just a bunch of D6 tables.
So vacations. We have tuna fisherman, I guess
that answers our question. Fishing pole and one D6 worms.
You have rat catcher, 3 doses of poison, cheese wheel, mime
makeup kit, and a permanent frown.
That'd be a cool 1 to get the constantly invisible for 'cause
then you could just like have your mime makeup on.
You wouldn't even know. That you're invisible because.
You wouldn't know until you work.
Yeah, that's so good. And then gambler.
Fancy playing cards and loaded dice?
Disgrace. Noble spellbook, bottle of
champagne, and then Doomer. Full body tattoos and thick
skin. What'd you get when you rolled
for one? I got 4 gambler, the fancy
playing cards and loaded dice fancy.
I see, I get. The load of dice to hold in my
glass hands. Yeah, you're sharp claw.
Do you have razor sharp claws? Well.
You have my razor sharp claws. Yeah, for my for my playing
cards. And for skills, oh, what did
you? Get.
What did you get? What did you get?
Oh. I I fuck it.
I know. I enroll for a gambler.
We're both gamblers. How we know each other, Yeah.
For skills, another the in the very last section of this book
before the scene before the character sheet for skills, we
have tying knots, Playing dead, mixology, Ambidextrous,
ambidextrous cat, whispering and advertising.
If I rolled cat whispering I'd be so pissed.
They didn't. I got ambidexterity.
I got mixology. Look at you.
I know us the. Characters that we just rolled
up are ridiculous. You want a fancy cocktail?
I got you. Yeah, that's what I want.
And then yeah, the character sheet, it's interesting.
It's it's plain as fuck name, Origin, ceramic.
It's got vocations listed because you only get three
possible. And I guess you can just check
it off 6 spots for skills because that's your Max.
You got the backpack, which is just a giant empty notes part.
Wounds are listed out so you can mark all six, and you can.
There's a mark for Cool Scar at three and death at six.
Armor is just a triangle that you can write the number in, and
then it's got all six levels of corruption where you get the
mutation at level 2, level 4, and level 6.
And then after that is death. It's literally all you need and
it gives you two of them. The very last thing is the shop.
That's your favorite part? Yeah.
I don't know what an EIN hander is.
Oh, a scrolling shooter developed by Square for the
PlayStation console? I feel like that's probably not
what Einhander is. It's probably some type of like
weapon or something. Define what is an EIN hander.
Hold on, based on the Greek, I think it's from the Greek myth
of Celine and Endymion. OK, Dope, dope, dope, dope.
Yeah. So that's what I mean.
It is. Referring to the fucking
PlayStation One game. Do you get that for 23?
I mean, you can get the PlayStation game Einhander.
Yeah, It's just a bunch of stuff.
Pine spear, Ebony crossbow, bronze spiked warhammer, coral
chainmail. It's interesting.
This is another little bit of of of spot to put like a tiny bit
of like world building and stuff.
A laser pointer. I mean, it gets weird.
They a drop of cheap perfume, a really cool tattoo.
In the book. There are two pages that aren't
a couple pages that aren't on here.
The inside of the covers. So on the front cover it says
only the finest snuff will do for my Sultan from the
incarnated leaves of the island of Piragara.
We crush it, we shape it. Long may the Sultan be caked,
long may his richest flow. And then on the back cover.
And then there's the roll for traps page with the the with the
writer's name in it. And then on the back there's
this graphic, kind of reminds me of the Rogue Eye a little bit,
if you know what I mean. I like Asus.
Ceramic from the gods, ceramic from below, from its flesh we
shall feast and that's it. And that's the game.
That's the whole game. That's the whole game.
That's the whole thing. We.
Get it? Because like I said, the the
Wikipedia page where it talks about, what does it talk about?
Oh, keep you alive on the archipelago.
There's no mixed in an archipelago in here.
Not a single time. It's there, but it's it, it's
there. It's there.
So, yeah. So let's let's go to the review
scores. We doing Booker's in on this
one. I think we should do a full book
score. I think anything was.
Unfair. So we're gonna do the scene
score on this, which is only three metrics to go to 10
instead of five. Normally for like the bigger
games, the metrics are visuals, rule set and vibes.
Visuals are the art, the layout, everything that when you look at
this, you see the rule set is if it's an adapted rule set, how
well is it adapted? If it is a unique rule set, do
we like it? Do we think it's good?
And the vibes are once you've read it, once you've read the
rule set, once you've looked at the visuals, basically how bad
you want to play this? Is there anything that that
harshes the vibes, you know? So, visuals, Thoughts.
I mean, it's a sparse scene on center column.
The heathers are good. It's numbered, which is nice.
I mean, yeah, it's good. Not a time to say about visuals.
It's not like it's not awful or anything.
No, it's it's not it's not it's it's neither great nor bad.
It's serviceable and all the ways we want.
I do really like just how fucking obvious.
Like you can't miss how obvious each section is.
I this is not AI, don't this this thing is literally what
like like 8 pages? Like it's not something that
needs a ton of art. I do like the the art that they
did to use for the front back cover and it's just it's super
readable and pretty straightforward.
I mean, again, nothing, nothing crazy, nothing it doesn't, but
it doesn't need to be either. You know what I mean?
I feel like it's entirely serviceable.
What are your thoughts? I.
Don't know what are your thoughts.
Maybe like a six like. I feel like that's super fair.
Yeah, I mean, you could make this vibe as fuck with like
really cool visuals, but it's just unnecessary.
Yeah. But again, 5 is five is just
kind of like nothing good, nothing bad.
It's fine. So I think the six is good on
this. I do.
I do like the layout. I think it's it's it's clean.
That's about it. Rule set.
It's I mean, we've talked about this before at the beginning.
It's pretty much a framework. Like obviously you can play this
game. Yeah.
It is a very, very, very strict like this when, when people say
rules light, this is rules light, right?
Half of what people say is rules light is really rules fucking
medium. You know, like this is
literally, if you, if you take it apart, it's 1-2, It's, it's
two, it's 2 pages folded in half with a cover.
Like that's the whole book. Like that's the whole scene.
It's literally 12345678 pages of actual rules like and there's
like 2 paragraphs on each and some of those paragraphs are one
sentence like. This is the epitome of rules
like there's nothing you don't need at all.
The as written, you can easily run the system, but as we said
before, this is an incredibly modular framework that instead
of like I, I highly recommend when people start hacking stuff
as if I'm an expert, as if I have a bunch of shit out and for
those who don't know nothing out to pick games like this and just
start hacking this until it's so unique that it's your own.
Like we talked, me and Hunter talked about this recently, like
Frontier Scum was a Merc Borg hack until it was different
enough that it wasn't, you know what I mean?
So this is the kind of game that you could easily be like, all
right, I love this base. I'm going to start making more,
you know, if you want to. I dig it.
What do you think? Yeah, it's good.
I mean, I mean, I like the system fine.
I think it works really well. And you'd have absolutely, I
have nothing to add to what you just said.
I feel exactly the same. Way I think, I think the only
thing is that like it's there's nothing It is, it is it is OSR.
You know what I mean? Like this is a a DS excitable
OSR game. Every like 20 bucks says if you
give me the test, I could have written the rest of this game.
If you just said it's rules like right, the rest of it, we
probably would probably would have got 80% of the rest of it
like dead on for the rules. You know what I mean?
Yeah, right. I could have told you I would
have said like 10 inventory slots.
They did 12 like, but you know, it's it's everything you want
and need from that style of gameplay.
What number do you think? Oh.
I'm still around, I think a six or seven for this one for me.
I think 7. I think 7's good.
I think 7 feels really good. Like I said, there's nothing
really like in the rules themselves.
There's nothing like unique really.
But I, I love the rule tables and I like the brevity that they
wrote the rules with. Like that's my favorite part is
just like how, how it gives you exactly what you need and not
like one sentence more. And then you get a lot of like
funny, like interesting shit in the rule tables.
Like that's a game. Like that's, that's great.
Absolutely, yeah. When you, when you the ogre,
your sad human companion, and then the automata like walk out
and get mutated over time, like there's a lot, there's a lot of
gain there, you know? Yeah.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, yeah.
Just like how does, yeah, how does your automata, tuna
fisherman, like, mutate? You know that that cracks me up.
Well, he doesn't mutate so. Oh, that's right.
But he can't heal either. Yeah, I can't heal.
It's all dinged up, all right, Vibes, vibes, all right.
What is? That pretty viby, you know, I'm,
I'm feeling a, I'm feeling a strong, a strong seven and a
half, you know? Yeah, yeah, I mean, that's the
thing too is like we said this before, like, you know, when you
compare, this is something like BDSM where it's like
Technicolor, you know, puking out of that fucking thing.
Vibes are high, but vibes can also be high for a game that has
like 0 fucking art just because the system is so light and fun.
And like, I could literally hand this to somebody who's never
played a game, they could read through it and we could be
playing in like 5 minutes and that's super fun to me.
That's super interesting. Like it's a really great game.
We we talked about this a little bit before about like I said,
like the more experienced you are, the less rules you
technically need. But like that also comes from
like running the game more than anything too, 'cause you could
run people that have never played the game through
something like this because you know how to guide them through
something like this easy. But I like it.
I mean, yeah, I would be a good, I would be OK going for an 8 on
vibes on this. I mean, I dig it.
It's it's something that's been in my Dropbox like it for a
while. Yeah, yeah, All right. 678
really good. Really, really incredibly light
Zine 6 + 7 + 8 = 21. It's good.
I like it like this is. Yeah, like this could literally
just be like, oh, the GM didn't show up tonight.
Oh, we still want to play Grab short sword.
You know, it'll take us 5 minutes to figure it out.
You know, that'd be, that'd be so nice.
I really, I really dig it. Like I said, this is from
Guiliano Roborato, I'm sure I fucked that up.
Roll for Tarasque again. Brave Zenith is really cool.
I'm super excited to get Boktos. Go check them out on Spear
Witch. I don't know if Spear Witch
carries Brave Zenith, but I'm pretty positive that Sole Muppet
does. I know Sole Muppet carries a lot
of the RPG litem stuff. I believe that's where I got
Brave. Seen it.
Definitely worth checking out. Check out all of Roll for Trask
stuff. Really interesting.
It's also really great to support the RPG Litem community
we'll be doing. I mean, we've, we've covered a
number of other things, but there's other things I really
want to cover too. A lot of stuff like Hipolito,
like Rad and stuff like that. So you definitely want to check
this out. As I said, if you're covering
something from Short Sword, spend 6 bucks and throw this in.
It's worth it. It's really cool.
It's definitely worth worth the six bucks or literally just a
dollar on itch $1.00 like. That's crazy.
And yeah, super, super crazy. So support them.
Support their stuff. Grab this again.
Super worth it. Super easily hackable framework.
Grab it, grab it, do it. What do we got?
Oh, we're doing the giveaway. Giveaway.
We're doing the giveaway for Hell Night.
Let me go to the tweeters. Let me find that tweet and then
count the number of people that liked it.
We got 15 likes here, which means you have a pretty good
chance of winning. Not you laws.
And let's get rid of the people that don't matter.
Whoa, everyone matters. No, Christian already won, so he
can't win again. 123-4567 to three.
Should I remove them from the number that I roll or just skip
them? Or just reroll like I did with
Gabriel yesterday and just have the total number.
Just reroll. OK, so 123456789101112 so 13
because some people liked it and unlike probably you, probably
me, so 1234, I'm just going to double check.
I did not like this post actually so. 13 I don't think I
can roll AD 13. Why not?
In chat. I've been rolling it in chat.
Oh. That's OK.
Do you want me to roll on any dice?
No, I'll roll on any dice because I wanna, I wanna, I want
chat to be able to see it. So they know that we're not like
anyone gives a fuck, so they know that we're not scamming.
I was like, so you know, we're not one fucking.
Scheming who were giving it. I mean, I will say that our
first week giveaways are one was to Ozo who, but they also are
here every fucking episode and that's why they win so much.
And then the other is to Christian, you know, SO1D6.
OK, so so I will do 113 sided dice.
We're counting from the bottom up.
It's a one. It's a one that would be Greg
Kawakami. That would be who?
Shout out Greg Woo. Shout out Greg Woo.
Yeah, Greg, just send us your birthday Social Security number
and address and we will send it right to you.
Yeah, so starting from the bottom A1 boom, right there.
Yep. You said credit card
information, right? Mm, hmm.
Mm. Hmm.
Cool, Perfect. That's all we need from you.
I'll reach out to laws when that when the one popped up for 1/2 a
second I thought it was a 10 and you were #10 I looked, I looked
if I was going to cheat, I was going to send it to you, but I
didn't. We have, we have, we have
integrity here. That's why we don't take review
copies. Sure, sure, sure.
That's it. That's our show.
We had a bunch of cool stuff coming up.
It was a really, really short one today, mostly because we
didn't even figure out which one wanted to do until yesterday.
Also I started the new job this week and I'm fucking actually
exhausted so I'm going back. I'm going to sleep after this.
I'm also going to sleep, but that's 'cause it's my normal
bedtime. Join us on Saturday.
I'll be chatting with Kayla Dice about their new game, Psycho
Dungeon. Definitely going to check that
out on Kickstarter. Right now it's like 66% funded
in the first day or two, so go check that out.
We'll talk about that more, I believe next week.
As of right now, we might, we, we're going to, we probably have
two special guests, one of which I told Hunter about.
We'll probably have two special guests next week.
So fun stuff coming up and then a couple of other guests next
month. Two returning special guests
too. They've both been on the show
before and show favorites I would say.
Yes, yes, yes, wonderful people. So you will you will hear and
see that I think we did four episodes from last week.
I put two out. So I expect two more episodes
soon and then this one sometime next week because.
Yeah, Sunday, that's. How it works?
That's it, That's our episode. We will see you all later.
Bye. Bye.