Hello and welcome to the Weekly Scroll Podcast.
My name is Ryan. And I'm Christian.
And today we are going to be looking at hammers from John
Davis of Civic Sanctum, the Bell Book in Candle Edition, a play
test of horrific old school system tools.
Yeah, mine's got a little signature.
You have a signed copy. Yeah, well, because I yell at
John every time he sends me something that's not signed.
Mine's a home print I just drove my notes straight into.
There you go, this. It's probably scary to anyone
who's ever had something edited. This is just notes though.
I just happened to use a red pen.
These aren't the red is not a signifier that these are all
negative. Yeah, you know me, I would have
to buy a whole nother one just to write in it.
So that's not happening. But so.
So Kristen, you've been on the show before, but for those that
might not know or seen those episodes or know who you are,
who the heck? Who the heck are you?
Why? Why should they even listen to
me or care is what you're saying?
People probably know me online as Meat Castle.
I put out all my game stuff as Meat Castle gamewear or you
might see Christian Sorelli and as a name in books for the
freelance stuff that I do. But I've done like mothership
adventures. I edited the Shrike that Leo
hunt adventure that was like up for an any of this last any time
period. You know, people can go to my
website and see, but basically editor, game editor, writer, dev
editor for a handful of things. But I put up my own stuff as me
counseled game, right. I've done mothership stuff and
have my own games, cooking and things like that.
But people probably if they're in your if they're in the space
where they're listening to weekly scroll, they may very
well have something with my name on their shelf.
I would say Cloud Empress have done a lot of stuff with Cloud
Empress. I'm doing some stuff with Watts
new game Rust wings that's coming up now, which I think is
going to be really cool and all that kind of stuff.
So yeah, I'm, I'm around. Yeah, sure.
Yeah. Expect to hear more about Rust
Wings here at some point. But but yeah, I mean, obviously,
you know, I have gosh, I think that red box is all you.
This one right here. The Meat Castle Box I.
Remember the meat castle box? Yeah.
And and like you said, you were editing for a long time for kind
of jump back in and ALM is still, is still cooking as well,
right. It is unfortunately very slow
last year, but it is definitely slow cooking.
Yeah, that's one of like two goals for this year.
I'm giving myself some more, you know, less ambitious goals and
just focusing on like 2 to three things this next year because,
you know, it's one of those things where life always gets in
the way when you're not designing full time.
You know, for a while I was doing this full time and that
was awesome. And it, that was like when I'm
started and then life shifted like it does, especially for
like indie creators, right? That stuff's always changing of
maybe someone now can do it full time and maybe they don't.
And it's like, yeah, but it's still very much there.
I'm actually playing through the remake of Final Fantasy Tactics,
so I've right now. So I've been having tactics on
the brain again for sure. So yeah, still coming.
Yeah, this is, you said goals for the year.
I don't know why I'm holding an egg of of Silly Putty.
I'm going to put that down. I thought it was AI, thought it
was a weird cherry tomato. No, I I got AI got Silly Putty
to use his like mask for when I'm painting miniatures, but it
came in A5 pack so now it's just become like a new fidget toy.
Yeah, a new fidget. Yeah, just have an egg of Silly
Putty in every room. But first review of 2026, that's
that's what this is. You know, you're the second one
on, but the first review, but you said you got two goals for
for 20261 is is what's the other one?
Well, I haven't made this specific list yet, but I would
say 1 is on. I'd say of the if I have three
want to be getting technicians of on at least content finished.
I'd really love to get it like text finished and send it into
layout. And then my other two are, I'm
working on this thing called Stranger Stars, which I'm
calling a Mothership total conversion mod.
The idea of going for like the old PC gaming total conversion
mod thing of like, hey, if you have Mothership, you've played
Mothership, you're familiar with Mothership, this will be 95% the
same, you know, sort of the way people say like, oh, it's
Powered by the Apocalypse or something, right?
I'm just saying this huge even more closely to its mothership,
but I'm building it around a bespoke setting, which is very
like the opposite of Mothership, you know, motherships doing the
anti Canon thing. I'm doing the no, I want to I
want to make Taylor a version of mothership specifically to a
setting that's sort of more space opera.
It's really inspired by Eve Online, which I know only people
typically who've played Eve Online or familiar with EVE
Online. But the idea, the idea of being
the we found a way. Humanity found a way to get to
another Galaxy. And then that wormhole collapsed
and now it's, you know, hundreds of years after that and Earth is
gone. We like, there's no way.
There's no faster. There's not that kind of faster
than light travel. It's like you're not getting
back to the Milky Way. No way home.
Humans have had to splinter off that kind of thing.
So working on that. And then I have a game that's
like 85% done called Void Breakers, that's a mix between a
Panic Engine game and Call of Cthulhu.
It's sort of like my ideal version of an investigation kind
of game. Little liminal horror, a little
Call of Cthulhu. That's pretty much already
written for the most part. So I just need to do some of the
final leg work on it. But I'd love to get that out
too. But we'll see.
There you go. And then you can come on, play
it, show it off, talk about it, do all that kind of stuff.
Because much more system, much more system focused goals for
me. Typically I'm I'm I'm much more
an adventure writer editor than than systems where I'm trying to
get a few under my belt even though they're way harder.
Which is funny because people who make systems all the time
feel the other way. Like they'll be like, I don't
know how you guys write adventures.
I can't do it. And I'm like, I feel the same.
The other, the opposite now where I'm like, I don't know how
you guys put out systems so much.
Yeah, too much. Yeah, I mean, you know, we're
we're systems. We're we're really a systems
podcast. We talked about that a little
bit before the show started. So definitely excited for that.
I saw you putting out some panic table stuff for for your mother
ship. Fuck.
What's it called? Stranger stars, Stranger stars
and definitely very excited for that.
So because I you know, I have thoughts on mothership.
We talked about it. It's there it's a game.
It's right here. It is.
But but yeah, so yeah, that's that's Christian back on the
show. I you know, I I can only assume
you you're going to be on a couple of times this year.
If not for your own games. I'm going to I'm going to
convince you to come on for more reviews if if Hunter ends up
getting back into school again with all those multiple jobs.
So. Yeah, I mean, I always like
talking about games, so it's easy to convince me.
It's just it's, you know, it's that time zone thing that's
really good. That's true.
That's going to get us. But yeah.
So today, today, like I said, we're looking at hammers.
This is from Jon Davis over at Civic Sanctum.
Hammers is an old school dungeon crawler inspired by the likes of
Meatheads, Wolves of Palma Coast and Troika.
Hammers was released on Itch about a year ago on January
28th, 2025. As I said, this is the Bell Book
and Candle Edition. It is a play test edition.
I want to say that very loud and clear at the beginning.
This is not a complete game. I don't even know if John would
consider this an alpha. It is a play test version.
It is a text only rule set. There are plans for a future
version that will include artwork, tools for referees, and
a sample adventure, and you can find it right now at Civids
Dash, sanctum dot itch dot IO slash hammers.
And obviously the links will be where they are on the Internet,
wherever you're reading. Just Scroll down probably or
watching. And that's, and that's hammers.
Yeah, quick, before we get into no, let's just, let's get into
it. Why don't we just fucking get
into it? Let's look at it first.
Sure, let's do it. Boom.
So this is the cover of Hammers. First of all, that font, John, I
need you to send it to me. It's gorgeous, it's perfect.
It speaks to my little heart. It is a, a very much a, you
know, kind of fancy black letter, little scruffy looking
situation. I'm a big fan.
And you got 2, you know, armored figures on horseback.
I really like the way that the one in the foreground is dark
and on the background's kind of light.
That's an interesting way to to to.
Yeah, feels like there's like some depth to it, like there's
fog in the distance or something, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And as I said, it is a play test
of horrific old school system tools.
So we're gonna let's just fucking let's just hop into it.
So usually we start with the rules breakdown, but today we're
going to start with character generation because it is very it
is very small and then the rules kind of feed off of that.
So, Christian, why don't you hit us with with character
generation for hammers? Yeah, so character generation,
as we said here, is very simple. So your characters are all
called hammers, and that sort of will reveal itself as we go
through the rest. But the big things to know going
into this game is basically you're all clergy, you're all
clerics, paladin, you know, whatever sort of religiousy
fighter type of character you want to put it.
In Finder kind of thing. Yeah, witch hunter, that kind of
thing. You're all clergy of some
aspect. The reason you're called hammers
comes up I believe later, which we'll talk about.
But the idea is that is in impure for you to carry a bladed
weapon. So you you all use blunt weapons
only, which is why you're called hammers, which is it's also just
cool. It's a cool thing to call the
characters hammers. So I like that.
But yeah, the actual character creation is really simple.
You're just going to, it just says grab an index card or scrap
of paper, 3 sided, 36 sided dice and pencil.
And then you're going to roll 3D6 to determine your only
ability, which is piety. And then based on whatever you
roll from that, you get sort of some sub stats like minor
statistics, which are willpower, healing, turning, and flock.
And there's a little table here that adjusts.
So it really is that's character creation.
As I was going through and reading this, I did a sample one
to bring it up. But in that case I rolled
A2A6A4, which gives me a piety of 12 and 12 falls right in the
middle of that bell curve for the 3D6.
So I have no adjustments. So basically all I have to write
down is I got a piety of 12 and everything else is just going to
be a straight roll for me. And then, yeah, you begin play
with 3D 6 * 10 ducats and then D 6 / 2 languages.
And actually I thought this part was kind of cool because
normally you would think, OK, well, 3D 6 / 2, I'm going to
just round down, round up or whatever.
But actually you can half know a language, which is cool.
It has half known languages, cannot be read or written, but
can be spoken well enough to act as an interpreter.
So it's like if you half know a language, you speak it, but you
can't read or write it, which is cool.
Yeah. Yeah, I think.
John put the same thing in Oh my God, John, what is your what is
the Wild West game called? Why is it in the light of a
setting sun? There was some mechanic when we
played that on the campaign and I same thing.
I really like that. I like the half language kind of
it. It makes sense.
And then yeah, it has here hammers can choose a language
when first encountered instead of selecting it in care at
character creation. And unless I missed it, I don't
actually believe there are any languages like laid out in the
text. I assume that's either something
that would come up in your game or later when there's like
beastiality and other elements like that added.
So it really is just that simple.
So in my case, I happen to roll 12 piety 12/9 ducats and I roll
A6. So I get 3 languages, which I
think specifically in the clergy element, the language potential
language focus is cool because to me that is very like medieval
Middle Ages, right? It's like I you have language
that is accessible only to you and you barter in only because
you are learned language in a way is like the average person
isn't. So that's at least the thing I
would probably lean into if I was running this book.
That's that's really that that is at least this point of
character creation. And then, you know, we can do
you want me to keep rolling along through or we want to talk
through the. Yeah, I mean, if you want to, I
can touch on Hit Dice. Unless you want to, but also
there's the Holy Orders as well. That's true.
Yeah. Yeah, I can.
I can go through the next few pages here.
Yeah. So then after that, it uses hit
dice. So hammers have hit dice a
number of D sixes that determine your HP.
So every new character begins play with one hit die.
So you're just going to roll AD 6 to determine your starting HP.
In my case, I roll the six, which was great.
And then it according the number of hit die you have determine a
few other things. And there's little table here.
So, you know, if you have four hit die once you've advanced and
sort of the equivalent of leveling up later, you might get
a bonus. You'll have two actions instead
of just one action in combat, you get a little bonus.
You can attack a number of one hit die creatures equal to your
hit die, right. So OK, well if I have 4 in that
case, that means I can attack four hit die worth of creatures
in one action. You have a saving throw base off
of that. And then yeah, the primary means
of sort of advancement come out of this, which is through hit
dies with this thing called sworn oaths.
And there's also friendly wagers, which is sort of ways to
risk reward, call your shot in play and see if it pays off, and
maybe boost yourself, like during session, you know, mid
session, which is cool. But in terms of actually
creating the character, that's really all you're going to do is
just roll that one HD and take that as your HP.
And yeah, whenever you get a new hit die, you roll those and see
if it goes above your HP and then your HP races as well.
Big one from sort of like the, you know, I think, I think it
would have a big impact on play, especially in the game world, is
holy orders. So you pick one of three holy
orders to be a part of as your hammer.
So the three here are the Black Lodge secret occultists and
alchemists in the tradition of Paracelsus, Nicholas Flamel and
John D opposed to the white chalet.
Then there are the Hermeticists, unaffiliated bounty hunters
looking to line their own pockets, and then the white
Chalet, monastic clerics and healers bent on the spread of
their gospel and the banishment of unholy forces opposed to the
Black Lodge. And then this is kind of one of
the bits in here, I think that gives us a best, a good sense of
the world that we're cooking in with hammers.
You know, Black Lodge are in my mind kind of like clergy looking
like hunting for hidden knowledge.
The white chalet are sort of like the controlling clergy.
You know, they're like, no, we're getting, we're purging the
unclean or whatever. We're like destroying the things
that we don't want you to know. Whereas the Black Lodges may be
indulging in that. And then hermeticists are kind
of those in between more standard, you know, that they
feel more standard adventurer maybe than clergy.
But I think there's also, that's probably where you have
potential as players to, to be some sort of more out there or
off the wall beliefs and weird esoteric characters and stuff.
Yeah, that's interesting that you're.
So when I, when I read these three, I kind of read it as,
yeah, the Watch LA being the primary controlling church
aspect of it. The Black Lodge being definitely
those like the guys that get in trouble in church for maybe
digging a little too deep into like the miracles or the
Exorcist or something like that. And then I really saw the
hermeticist this kind of like the the witch Finder kind of
people that are just like, I have a permission to murder
people for for God. So I'm going to go out and
fucking do it so. Like an Inquisitor type or yeah,
like a like some sort of traveling, traveling, yeah,
healer or something. This sort of in between, yeah.
And the in between this does come up does come up later.
Yeah, in some interesting ways. And sort of, I guess the last
thing, unless you had something you can say, I was going to say
the last character creation bit there is Insight where you can
sort of push the luck on the roll.
You roll through 3D6 again and if it's equal to or greater than
the piety score you originally rolled, you get to increase that
score by AD 3. And if it isn't, you die and
then you are consumed by the Children of the Night roll
again. So it's kind of going for that
like, hey, you can, you know, see if you can boost your stat.
You don't. And if it doesn't work out, you
die and I, you know, you restart.
It's always kind of funny to me to have death and character
creation. I do think here I would because
it is just kind of like it's so quick that it almost makes me
think well, if I died, I would just roll it.
Like it makes me feel like I'd fall into this cycle of just
rolling and re rolling and rolling and re rolling.
I almost think the insight would be a bit more fun if it was like
if you if you roll under, you take AD three penalty to your
piety and you just have to live with it.
That's maybe like the way I would roll with it at my table
based on this, because I do think it's there's not as much
story in the character creation. Like say, you know, something
like the the you die during character creation.
I always think of as classic traveler, right?
But at that, by that point you're like, OK, my guy's been
he's done. He had this job and then that
job he's done his third tour of Space Marine duty or whatever,
and he's going to go fight another war.
Let me put him through his fourth.
And then you die and then you at least come out with like a mini
story. I don't get the sense that I'm
coming out of character creation here with a mini story so fun
that it's in there. But I wonder if there could be a
better alternative to death as a as a hey, you can, you can, you
know, you can take the leap of faith.
I think a game, a favorite game with lots of leaps of faith
potential mechanically is cool, but I almost wanted to be like,
if it doesn't go wrong, you got to live with it in a way.
I, I completely agree. I think that's, you know, first
of all, I think insight, I would probably just call it leap of
faith. I think that's a better
indicator of what it is. But I completely agree with you.
When I, you, you obviously when you see this right away, the
first thing popped in my head is, is classic traveler.
But when you're making a classic traveler character, it's almost
like a solo game just making the character.
So if you happen to die, you're already probably like 1520
minutes in and you had fun making the.
I, I completely agree with you on the the insight bit is that
if I would just do this every time no matter what, and then
and then just like just take the best one.
If they die, they die. Yeah, it's, it's and because
it's so easy to roll piety, you just can just roll 36 and then
roll again, OOP, they died. And then I roll again and then I
roll again, OOP, they died. So I completely agree with you.
I would rather take AD through penalty to my piety as then then
to just die and kind of have that.
I just don't think there's enough depth to to this.
There should, like you said, I think there needs to be a little
bit more there in order to make it, yeah.
Yeah. And like you said at the
beginning too, right, it's you. We were saying that this is sort
of like a collection playtesty collection of tools.
So I would say, you know, I'm, I'm saying that all based on
what's here right now that that of course could change in a
final version. You could say, oh, well, you
know, maybe in the final version you're picking your you've got
like your holy order and a few little sub options with that and
your languages and all that. And maybe you are hitting this
point with a little bit more of a story behind your character.
But as is, as it is written here, yeah, I would say if I go,
oh, I died, I don't feel like I'm leaving that with like a
full character or story yet. So to me it I want you know,
either some something with a little bit more interesting
flair there to it. Yeah, completely agree.
And then the last sort of character related thing is this
next option. But you go, you go ahead.
No. Go for it because I would love
for you to to explain that because you know, I'm going to
go through the the rules breakdown.
So let's talk about the character bit stuff.
Yeah, I was going to say the, I think it's, yeah, it's pretty
much the last before we get into that the like more mechanical
stuff. The last sort of character
creation option is this Meditonia section.
So this is basically like funnel play.
Generate 4 hammers per player. Don't roll for insight, you just
roll for like. Don't roll for that push your
luck thing we just talked about. You're just going to roll bass
piety. All the characters have D3 HP.
They're effectively hit dice 0 characters.
They don't start with any money, they just have robes to cover
their naked shameful bodies. And then you don't have a flock,
which at this point in the text we don't really even know what a
flock is, but we've read the rest of it that will come up
later. But it's essentially like
followers. You know, you're supposed to be
a cleric of some renowned. You've got, you know, people
who've start to follow you a little as this person of God.
But as an initiate in this sort of funnel play, you don't have
that. So you're just basically 4 weak
nothing characters, and then when you survive a session, then
they go up to 1 HD, you gain a boost to your piety, and then
you can start to have members of your flock.
And that could even be some of these other characters you've
rolled. It could be like, OK, well I'm
just going to have one of these guys go to 1 HD and then two of
them are going to fall into my flock, that kind of thing.
But yeah, basically just an even more simple basic character
creation, but where you're going in with a bunch of people and
going to see who The Who the gods let live.
Yeah, going with like, you know, three players, 12 dudes rolling
in before you have a flock and and are your hirelings.
So, yeah. So that's that's basically
character generation. I'm going to cover maybe touch
on a little bit of that again as we go through kind of the rules
breakdown real quick. But as we said at the beginning,
this is a playtest document. It's really kind of a toolbox, a
list of procedures and mechanics and stuff to use for the game.
So this is a was a little bit harder to kind of give like a, a
good breakdown in mechanics because there's not really like
I've questioned about like the game loop and stuff like that.
But anyway, so the gist of the game, as we've already
discussed, kind of it's an old school dungeon crawler where the
players are these 1700 ish, you know, players and stuff.
Christian already tucked on touched on piety.
You know your 4 stats, willpower, healing, turning in
flock, and already touched on Hit Dice, which we'll discuss at
length because I have lots of questions about that.
Because Hit Dice does give you your actions, your bonuses, your
saving throws, your a lot of stuff based on just the 2 rolls
you get between piety and hit dice.
Cuz really, that's all character generation is like 2 of them,
yeah. And then you hit dice, you're
really just rolling, yeah, you're just rolling to get your
HP. But then everything else is sort
of just comes off of that, yeah. Yeah, like character generation
is basically 46 and then you're done.
Yeah, yeah. OK, so you have the hit dice.
So there really isn't, like I said, it doesn't really feel to
me like there's like a base role in the game.
Like everything you do kind of is its own procedure.
The core dice you need for the game obviously are D sixes, at
least in character generation, but that continues throughout
the rest of the game. Everything is 1D62-D63D6 usually
like AX and six chance of things.
You know those kind of stuff which is confusing we'll talk
about later. So saving throws you roll.
Let's let me let me Scroll down a little bit.
So saving throws you roll 2D6 higher than your saving throw
value, which is determined by your HD Π D tests.
You roll one D 6 + π D and it has to be equal to or greater
than 20, but you can push with another D6 or get 1D3 in aid
from each hammer that helps you. We'll, we'll touch on piety
tests. We'll touch on a lot of this
stuff again after the kind of the run through leveling
advancing as Christian said is is gaining and losing HD, which
is done by completing sworn oaths, which seem incredibly
difficult. We'll we'll go over the math of
that a little bit later as well, but that's one of the core kind
of non dungeon crawl loops. I mean can be part of it, but
like it's it's the mechanical loop.
Outside of it is. Yeah, it could be in any at any
point in play, whether or not you're like in combat or in a
dungeon. Yeah, but that's kind of like
the core of gaining. It's a daring personal goal that
grants HD after accomplishment that showcase your faith in
bombast and it's a piety test without anyone being able to
help you. We'll go over the math of that a
little bit later. The other and and the HDS up and
down is is part of it. One of the other things that you
can do is friendly wagers, which I know you were a big fan of.
We'll talk about that too, but basically you can wager someone.
One of the examples here is who can make it to the village
before nightfall. So you can wager with as many
other hammers as you want, and the winner gets 1 HD and the
loser loses 1 HD, which is again interesting.
We'll talk about and. I think it's fun.
It's it reads to me it's potentially fun if you're in a
party with mixed affiliations for your clerics.
I see both the sworn oaths and the friendly wagers as sort of
being that like like, you know, the white chalet guy being like,
my God will see me safer back to town than yours.
Screw off, Bozo. And then he goes running off and
then when he when he loses, it's it's you know, it's like it
feels very like that, like you feeling like your faith is
paying off or not in the back and forth of that.
So it seems like it has fun potential, but you would
obviously need to hit die to wager which the spin up could be
a little bit there. Which, yeah, again with the
interplay between that and some other things is one of my kind
of core, I don't want to say issues, it's questions with the
game. So that's definitely something
we're we're going to talk about. You talked about flocks.
You can have a flock of hench men, hirelings and specialists
that follow and assist you when you get to combat.
The combat uses matrices a la Troika and whatnot.
I know we both have opinions on that, we'll talk about that.
But here is the combat matrix for for the comment matrix, HD
on one side, AC across the other.
So if you have HD one and they have AC-5, you need to roll A7,
right? And then there is a damage
matrix as well. You would just roll AD 6 if you
successfully hit and you will look at the weapons list on the
side here versus the roll across the top and it'll give you
damage. So if you have an arc bus and
you roll A6, you're going to do 18 points of damage.
So those are that's it's, it's interesting.
It's one of those things that is, in my opinion, interesting.
I think it's very much like a, a love it or hate it kind of
thing. I don't know a lot of people
that are middle of the line on on matrixes matrices.
Yeah, I mean my, you know, when I was going through it, it's
like my knee jerk reaction is that I don't like them.
Same. But I don't necessarily think
that I have a good reason for that, which is to say, I think I
honestly think it's because when I started playing RPGs, they
were a sign to me of an antiquated game, but not
antiquated enough that I found it interesting, if that makes
sense. It's like like when I like I,
you know, there was that sort of era of trad game in like the
late 90s, it was still sort of stuck in the past in a bad way.
And I feel like that's when I first encountered them was like
me being like, wait, you mean I don't just roll and it tells me
my damage. I have to like look at this
table every time. But I think in practice, like
they they probably aren't really any slower or faster.
I know some people really don't like the like math, you know,
while rolling, like they don't like having to go plus this
modifier plus that or let me add up these four dice.
I do think from the damage, the damage matrix, it is cool that
it lets all the weapons have different, you know, different
scales of damage. I think it's cool that's
something you couldn't replicate easily with dice rolls.
At least, you know, if, if the arc bus or whatever, you
couldn't just say, well, roll, you know, saying it's not the
same as saying roll 4D6 for damage isn't the same as saying
roll D6. And maybe the sixth option is
like 28 damage and the first step option is 1.
You know, it lets you have a more interesting and very
damaged scale between weapons. So I think that's kind of cool.
But I think in play, I think this would be, I would be fine
with them. But yeah, my, for some reason,
my knee jerk is it's like it feels kind of like, you know,
sometimes you see a character sheet and you're like, this
looks like a tax form. Yeah, like not in a fun way.
So that's that's my thought. But I think that they're fine
here. I think they would be fine.
I feel somewhat similar. My knee jerk is I'm not a fan,
but it's also one of those things where I'm not not enough
of a fan that like 20 minutes into the game, it would just be
a thing that exists. It would no longer be a problem.
You know what I mean? Like it's a little bump that
would be easily sanded over. You know what I mean?
It's not an issue. Yeah, I'm like you said.
Yeah, it just, it just means I have this page open in front of
me as I play. Yeah, and you don't even.
You could even have a new character sheet with your with
your weapon. You could even just have just
your line of of damage written down on it too.
You don't even need that. So I mean it is interesting
because with combat 2, if you roll a crate, you get double
damage. So if you roll an arc bus at 18
damage and then roll A6, you're doing whatever 18 into a 36
points of damage, which is insane because this is not a
very high HP game. So weapons are deadly, you know,
that's part of it. So, so combat, they use matrices
on attack roll. You roll 2D6 to attack and you
get movement and an action, but maybe more actions.
It's not addressed in combat. The only time the number of
actions you have in in a turn is addressed is in the table that
talks about how many actions you get.
So there's we're we're going to talk about the clarity
throughout the the document coming up.
But to finish kind of running through this, the other things
you can get are obviously your clerics, you can turn unholy.
There are prayers called Hail Marys, which we will discuss
because I think we both have kind of a lot of questions about
that. And then everything after that,
really, again, we're not going to go too deeply into this.
We're not going to read it page by page.
But there are holy relics. You can do research.
You can have feasts, which is the only way you can have an
option for a debt saving throw is if you had a feast that day,
which is interesting and then everything after that pretty
much you know, it is a dungeon crawler game.
The core loop then becomes raiding layers to kill unholy,
and the vast majority of those mechanics are pretty classic old
school dungeon crawling. Like there's, you know, there's.
What are you going dungeon tables?
Yeah, all that kind of stuff. And my, my, my issue, you know,
you know, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we have a whole set of
mate of metrics to talk about to get to the issues.
But that's kind of it. There's options for hench men.
There's options for having, you know, like a stronghold, AKA
like a sanctum, which is here, traps, hazards, morale, you
know, all sorts of stuff. So kind of the whole second-half
is really classic dungeon crawling, which which is an
interesting kind of thing to have a party of clerics that go
dungeon crawling in the world I. Well, it's kind of it's, yeah,
it's flavored a little differently.
It's flavored as layers and the like LAYIR and the idea being
that it's like you because, you know, we said it's this playtest
doc. So there aren't things like
there's not a bestiary here and stuff.
But I get the feeling that there would be lots of.
There is a mention I think at one point of werewolves, there's
a mention of vampires. It feels a little like Witcher,
vampire hunter, that kind of vibes.
So it's like I get the feeling that this isn't so much like,
let's go down to the old temple and just see what we see.
It's more like we have heard the villagers are dying to some
beast in the night and we've been told it lives here, let's
go down and find it, which is cool.
But yeah, I mean, we can talk to it more as we go through that.
I think to me out of everything on my initial read through, the
differentiator, like the unique aspect here is I think leaning
into the cleric thing. I think that having followers
each each NPC, each PC having NPC followers like more or less
from the jump is cool. The shifting up and down.
It also has, you know, you know, a lot of games do this where
they kind of recommend like have someone make the map, have
someone, whatever. Here it kind of calls out
specifically like, hey, there are roles, player roles.
It's like caller, which is the person who's deciding where you
go and when, like overall mapper, quartermaster, which is
the person who's tracking like time, goals, arrows you fired,
foes you vanquished, hammers, loss.
And then shepherd, which is like the person who's tracking like
money, the names of your of everyone's flock, the locations
you visited. And to me, I think that's kind
of the juice. That's the juice that's here is
really leaning into that like clerical aspect in a traditional
sense. Like I want to feel like a monk
playing this and that means that I want to be like, let me open
my tome. Yes, Edgar the Edgar the the
puny. He's joining your flock today.
And we have to pay 100 ducats to keep our sanctum up and stuff
like that. So I think that's the cool
differentiator here because at least in my experience, all I
know a lot of a lot of general games have hirelings and stuff
like that, but normally I'm always playing with enough
people that we don't really ever use them.
But I like the idea here of like, you're always sort of this
weird band of religious misfits with followers that come and go.
And those relate to some things like as you, you know, if you do
a sworn oath and you fail, your flock leaves.
Like it's like you're like, you're like, my God will see me
through this unharmed. And then you the werewolf
slashes you and you bleed and they go, why am I following this
guy? And they have leave.
And you know, like that's the thing I think most reading it
that appealed to me is like it's, that's a pretty unique
angle, I think within that sort of classic dungeon crawly frame.
Yeah, no, for sure. I think so.
So, yeah. So, so that's, that's game
mechanics, that's character creation.
We're getting into like our thoughts before we get into the
metrics. And and you've hit, you've hit
on a bunch of them. What why don't we go through the
rest of kind of like your, you know, we have our notes here,
like what were your general thoughts that, you know, aren't
really going to be covered in the metrics a little bit?
And then when we go through the metrics, I definitely want to
hit on some more specific things.
But is there anything else that you thoughts like likes,
dislikes, miscellaneous bits, things that stick out about
about hammers? Again, as a playtest document
for those listening. Yeah, yeah.
I was going to say it's you know, I think it's got a pretty
tried and true core in that way of like if you've played that
old school dungeon stuff, you're going to see a lot of things
here that are that are standard or like standard within that
pantheon of everyone has their own little house Rouille
variance. You know, this is like clearly
someone's pick up those. But the things that I like who
kind of like I said, that wager friendly wagering the oaths, the
flock, the sanctum. There's cool stuff like you have
to have, you know, if you have a sanctum of a certain size or
certain area, you have to pay not only money every month to
keep it secure and up to keep it up, you also need to denote some
of your flock members stay there to keep it secure.
So almost like that management layer that like you are trying
to sort of build a religious following and always sort of,
you know, take these leaps of faith and show how your God or
your way of worshiping your God or whatever is better than the
other allies in your party. That to me is the stuff that
like I would hope when this goes further down development, it's
like that's the stuff to me. And it's like what shines here.
That's why I would go here rather than someplace else.
And some interesting stuff. Like I said, it's cool that it
calls out specifically like holy relics and it's like, hey, magic
swords are pretty common. You can't use them.
You're a cleric. Like that's a that's an unholy,
that's an unclean weapon to you, but your flock can use them.
And it's like, there's something really interesting to me about a
game going, Hey, it's pretty common that you're going to find
magic swords, but you can't use them.
Like that's interesting. And it's not really like there
aren't options for like, well, what if I want to use them?
It's just like you don't use them.
And you know, you could probably dictate that at your table if
you wanted, But I think there's some cool stuff there of like of
the game basically suggesting that you're going to find loot
that you don't immediately benefit from, but maybe you give
it to your flock and maybe your flock or two guys with, you
know, +2 flaming magic swords and you're just a little meek
cleric with a hammer in front. So that to me is the kind of
cool stuff. I think in terms of like
negatives, which may come up to when we talk about the thing I,
I do think it's the, it's mostly just related to the fact that it
does feel like a play test dock with those various procedures
stacked in, you know, just put into a dock.
So some of those things are out of order.
Like coming through our first read I'm seeing mentions of I'm
seeing like 3 or 4 mentions of flock before I'm getting what a
flock is. Some weird things where you know
where it says oh if your hit die is this amount you get plus 3
flock. Or +2 flock, but it isn't
actually +2 members to your flock.
It's like you're the maximum you can have in your flock goes +2.
So little things like that of like, well, how many do, how
many flock members do I have to start?
Do I have any? Do I not have any?
Those little questions that in a final thing you would expect to
be ironed out aren't. So, you know, that was my those
are my main takeaways. And I think that comes up
especially around the Hail Marys, which you talked about
are almost sort of these like once per, I think once per
session, if I'm remembering correctly.
But they're like, you know, these kind of rare, like we
really need this to pay off. I'm really beseeching my God for
the benefit. But it isn't really clarified
here to me very well in the text of how and what they are.
But they kind of say they have like a 5050 shot by default of
happening. They typically involve A to hit
die, but sometimes they're, you can do it, a Hail Mary and an
attack. So that part was like, I don't
really. I couldn't really get a sense of
what they were, what they do, yeah.
Like was it? Yeah, like was it double damage?
Is it triple? Is it like could you use your
Hail Mary just to like slay in it like a boss outright?
Like I'm just going to, I'm going to put it all out there
and hope I cut this thing's head off in one go or so.
That was probably the bit, those like sort of sub procedure that
was most confusing to me as written that I didn't see, I
didn't think was communicated well.
Yeah, yeah. I mean clarity, clarity is going
to be a big thing that comes up in the the metrics real quick.
But my kind of thoughts initially before we hit the
metrics is I think, you know, there's a lot of interesting
stuff here, but the core of the game, I mean, there's OD and D
aspects to it, right? But it feels kind of convoluted
or even missing like it is a play test doc, but they're it's
been nixed in favor of miracles. Let's put out a 1.1.
I have a lot of questions about this.
So it's a play to stock, but I feel it's more like a list of
ideas and procedures as opposed to kind of like a complete game,
which again, it is a toolkit is a play to stock.
That's fine. But outside of a of a layer and
the layer delving rules, I'm kind of struggling to understand
the game loop or, you know, the way that some of the core kind
of things work like piety tests and sworn oaths.
So what's, why don't we hit that when we go through the metrics?
But we'll talk about that a little bit because that's going
to come up in usability and and rule set a bunch.
So art and layout. It's again, it's a playtest doc.
Really the only art in the entire thing is slow graphic
here of a, of a dude playing harp to to another dude wearing
a pelt and the cover. But also there is on each page I
did bring it up. There is a the proposed cover
for the final bit which is vibe as fuck.
I mean it looks incredible. Black, white and red is always
going to be the correct choice. That's.
Your that's your wheelhouse for sure now.
That is for sure. And so this is very much like a,
you know, 1700 dish. It's giving you that kind of
like Pilgrim with the the the tall pointy hat, you know,
probably buckles on their shoes. How it ringing a bell very much
hits me with a witch Finder kind of puritanical puritan.
That's exactly thank you. That is the word I've been
trying to find for like the entire time we've been we've
been doing this in black and white above in front of a black
and red background. It looks fire.
It looks incredible. This would be great for a cover.
Good fucking job. So there's not really a whole
lot to say about art and layout. It's a plate to stock.
So that's it Next is usability. So I mean, even in playtest
docs, there's no hyperlinks, there's no bookmarks, there's no
table of contents with how scattered a lot of the rules
are, that would be a little bit helpful to have.
And there's a lot of stuff throughout that we don't need to
talk about, but an editor will find like there's, you know,
tense shifts, there's some capitalizations of things.
The, the order of it is just, it really makes it difficult to get
those loops kind of going through.
There's times where, as I said, you know, there's things where
Hit Dice has a number of actions listed here and never is that
ever addressed again in the book when you get to combat and it
says you can take an action, it doesn't say like, you know, it
doesn't remind you, hey, you can take, that means you can take 2
combat actions if you have HD-4 and, and stuff like that.
So there's a lot of stuff with with clarity throughout this.
Yeah, things like things that if you're like as if you're a
pretty experienced GM, especially in the style of game,
I can definitely, I definitely feel as if I could easily
outside of like that one, you know, the Hail Mary section we
were talking about. But even then, I could come up
with a ruling on the fly. I definitely feel like I could
play test this and have fun with it, but you know, I'm in that
position of being like, well, I can probably cook up a
connective tissue between two things on the fly if I need to,
but you don't want to have to feel like you need to do that.
But like we said, this is a play test talk.
But but that is that that's kind of my feeling too of going like,
OK, you know, it does say if this table says I have plus
what, 2 actions? I assume that just means when it
says I can do an action in combat that I actually can do 3
now. But it doesn't, you know,
specifically state that. But the big thing for me was
that order of yeah, mostly the order of that information, how
that information is presented was the biggest thing that I
think in it, even in its play test form, you could swap some
of these things around. Now I knew, you know, it's a 20
page doc or something. You know, it's not, it's not
that long. I just made a note.
I was just like, what's flock? I'm going to keep reading.
Oh, OK, in three pages. Now I know what a flock is, not
the end of the world from a play test standpoint, but you could
reorder some of those things, introduce concepts a little
differently to make it read more smoothly for sure.
Well, even especially if you're putting on a document to get
feedback, which this, this, I mean, on this page it says like
this is put out to get feedback and stuff like that.
I think 1, I think it's too terse.
I think there is a complete lack of clarity for most things.
There are no examples really of pretty much anything.
There's no explanation of things that would be incredibly
helpful. I think this is the kind of doc
where it's OK to over explain and you can pull that back for
the primary doc to, to get the wording you want versus under
explaining when you're trying to communicate something like
specifically, like you said, the Hail Mary's and, and, and John
said that that's getting replaced with miracles and
stuff. But there was there's a lot of
other clarity issues. I have a little pet peeve
whenever I read a book when there are tables and or not even
tables when there are directions to information because of how
often layout changes that. So it'll be like look below for
this, but in a book, it's the tables to the right.
And that happens a bunch through here.
Like you can scroll like 10 pages down and it'll say, see
the piety table above and it's the piety tables like 20 pages
ago. So there's, there's that kind of
stuff through that. Well, again, we'll get clarified
later, but wouldn't it wouldn't be bad to kind of go through
this entire document, rearrange some stuff, clarify some stuff,
add some examples, add a lot of, you know, kind of more
explanation to really portray some of the the stuff that you
want. Like I have a lot of questions
going into rule set specifically about a number of things.
You know, I, I personally think it's really interesting how much
incentive is built into the game with the way that play, whether
narratively or mechanically, seems to be dictated
specifically around like sworn oaths and, and, and wagers,
right? Almost all of that is all
incentivization, but I have an issue with kind of the de
incentivization of things specifically.
And this is a question I'll ask you and, and John's here in chat
with us, so we'll talk about it. But my issue with sworn oaths is
that it's kind of the core part of after character creation, the
way your character kind of works.
It is a way that you can increase your HD and I want to
specifically bring up a couple of things about it.
You know, you said, you know with wagers and things your HD
can go up and down. But there's a section here at
the beginning where it specifically says when a hammer
games new hit dice through sworn oaths, they reroll all their hit
dice together and can do their new HP.
To me that says that healing friendly wagers, all the ways
you can increase and decrease HD have no effect on your HP.
It's just something that goes up and down which.
Is if rules had written, yeah. If rules has written so my, all
of the things that I'm going to talk about now are rules as
written. And this is kind of just I'm
bouncing off of you bouncing off of John to kind of get this out.
So my issue kind of with the sworn oath is mathematically if
I start with less than 10 piety, the only way I can ever succeed
on a piety test or on an on a sworn oath is if I crit, if I
roll my D6 and then push and then roll another D6.
Because if you have looking at the math and we said we're gonna
talk about this earlier when we. Yeah, you need to meet or exceed
21. So technically you could roll A5
or A6 on that second die. Only if you have a 10 or higher,
because on a setting you would need 2 sixes which is still a
crit. But if you have an 8 or less to
start, you can never increase your HD with sworn Oath, which
rules has written means you can never increase your HP
regardless of how much your HD goes up and down through
friendly wagers and things like that.
So mathematically, if you start with piety of eight or less or 9
or less, you have to crit and even getting to 10, you have to
you have to push with a six and then get a 5 in order to to
succeed on a sworn oath. And for me, the sworn oath is
something that when I read this, I see that would be the way that
I would really lean into the game narratively is through my
sworn oaths making it where for like 10 or less is the vast
majority of like 18 points. So you can potentially have
right 17, I guess because you can't well, 16 because you can't
have less than a 3. It's impossible.
You can't, you can't you can't succeed with the sworn oath.
The other thing is I kind of don't really get sworn oaths at
all. Like is it a narrative thing or
is it a mechanical thing? Right.
So like if if I'm I'm declaring a personal goal and in play
narratively I succeed at that goal, right?
Say my goal is to kill like a super big boss and we go in, we
kill that super big boss, the boss is dead.
Am I then rolling a sworn oath roll to see if I completed my
sworn oath or not? Because narratively it already
happened. So how am I explaining that
mechanically then mixing it with the narrative to do it?
And if not, can I just always just roll for a sworn oath
without hitting the narrative beat to it?
So it feels like a kind of like a like a more narrative
mechanic, but then you have this mathematic mechanic on top of it
that for less than a nine piety is impossible anyway, so.
Yeah, I know. You're saying it's not.
It's not a yeah, it's not a straightforward boast.
It's not me saying it's not me saying I will.
We will kill the dark beast in The Cave outside of town.
I will do this and then you go and do it so.
Then you get an HD. Yeah, you have to roll rules as
written. You still have to roll this
almost impossible role in order to gain it.
So it almost makes me think, yeah, that the way I guess that
I would. I guess yeah, I do think that
there is some like you said, there is a lack of clarity there
for sure. I would probably I would
probably run it as the me going, but meet my I'm going to attempt
to slay the the monster is the sworn oath roll.
But not everything applies to that like you say, because that
could be like, you know, your clerics.
That could be like I will I, we, I will bring clean water to the
village, a source of clean water, right?
We're going to we're going to help the people in the village.
How are you roll? Maybe you don't have to roll for
that. Maybe that's, you know, you
spent time and you spent time and other resources exploring
and you found a natural spring. Cool, or sometimes, you know,
you could complete an oath after you should have maybe rolled for
it to, you know, like you could it could resolve it.
It could resolve a different way.
So I do think I do think, like you said, that that contention
is there of going well. Is it always a role?
Does it have to be a role? Or maybe they're meant to be a
more short term and that's why there's a role attached.
But we need that communicated a little better because if it's
supposed to be short term, maybe it maybe it literally supposed
to be that. It's supposed to be like you are
in a layer. You see a trap, you see a
trapped hallway and you go, my God will see me safely to the
end of this hallway. You roll a test, and the test
determines whether you get to the end of the hallway safely or
not. See and if that's, that's but.
It's not communicated super well well.
It's not even just that it's not communicated, but I think that
like at that point it becomes, well, there's a lot of friction
in between the narrative and the mechanic, right?
There's a lot of games that like Dragon Bane, for example, like
there are things that you can you can gain a heroic feat or
whatever from doing a thing, but like you just have to
narratively kind of like do the thing or declare the thing
succeed at doing the thing, which has a lot of other
mechanical bits into it, right? Like if I say I'm going to kill
that bad guy, there's a million roles between me and killing
that bad guy. And then when I actually get to
it is a thing. So I think there's a there is a
friction here between is this narrative, is this mechanic.
And I don't know if there's a reason to have it be both as
opposed to one or the other, especially since all you get
from this is one hit dice. And then we get into things
like, OK, how about friendly wagers, right?
So friendly wagers and you can only do this one per session
friendly wagers. There's no, there's no limit on
it. So we could, we could fucking
DraftKings this shit wager all goddamn day and I get into
session with 20 fucking HD right?
And you could end with 0HD really easily.
At that point, where is the diegetic or endogenous reason to
ever fuck with sworn oaths at all?
Like in character there's always like, well cuz your character
would do that, that's kind of a thing.
But like out of character, why would I ever risk dropping HD if
I need to get if I have to do an almost impossible role to get a
sworn oath to you mean? You're saying why would I mess
with friendly wagers? Yeah, because then if I.
Yeah, why? Why would you mess with friendly
wagers if your hit die if the gaining hit die is so hard?
Yeah, yeah. And.
Not only that, yeah, then you have to look at healing too.
So we talk about healing. Clerics heal.
There's a whole faction whose entire description literally
says they're healers. But when you heal someone you
lose a hit dice, which why would I ever do that in game or out of
game if once again, I have an impossible role to get me back
up and and I know John Ted and chat that you can do.
You can do research, which is sort of like a downtime way to
guarantee to, well, not guaranteed, but like to get more
steady, steady advancement. Yeah, but that isn't necessary.
Yeah, like you're saying that isn't necessarily the most
interesting or fun thing to to come in with a piety 9 character
and go I'm going to have to spend 4 sessions researching
between, you know, for wheat months before I'm good enough to
even maybe get my sworn out. Yeah, like I think I think the
juice is in the hit die. Like honestly, if I was not just
if I was not play testing this for play test purposes in terms
of like giving feedback and stuff like that in the discord
or something. If I was like, I want to have a
fun time at the table, I'm probably starting everyone at
three to four hit dice characters and being like, let's
go. And I'm probably going to run
the sworn oaths. I'm probably going to run the
sworn oaths as more like I said that in the moment, they're like
you declare it and you make a role and the role is just
determining how how it plays out or not.
Maybe it's mid boss fight. Maybe it's that, you know, maybe
it's like you go to see the leader of a town and the guards
won't let you. And you turn to your party and
say, we will speak to the mayor before this day is done.
And you roll. And if you fail, you don't.
And if you succeed that role, you do.
Because to me, I think that the fun is that the system is so
lean that I want there to always be that shift.
Like, I want to have to look at the HD table a lot because I
want to like, within a session. I start at 3:00, by the end of
the session, I'm at 5. The next session I healed
someone and I, you know, made another wager and now I'm back
at 2. And the same way your flock
grows. So it's like, I think that's
where the juice is in the game. So I do think, like you said, I
do think it should be a little. I would prefer that it was more
a pro. It was more likely that you
could succeed A sworn oath every session.
Yes. See so my issue I think, and I
think this is percolating and finally came to a head.
I think to me, Sworn Oaths feels a little bit like or my issue
with him is the same issue I have with Mothership 1 E in that
the IT there's there's disincentivization that I think
is counterproductive to what the game is trying to do in that,
for example, Mothership 1 E. It is this game that wants to be
OSR, but is built on this panic engine that requires you to roll
on a table, but tells you constantly to not do the things
to get you to roll on the table. But rolling on the table is the
fun part. So I know a lot of people that
will start with like 5 panic or whatever just so that you can
get to those roles on the table quicker and faster because
that's the fun part. Which at that point then like
again, your you created this system that has friction in it
where you try to avoid doing the things to get you to roll on it.
But rolling on it is the part that you want to do.
So with sworn oaths. If the sworn oaths is supposed
to be a a thing that you want the game to center around,
making it nearly impossible to do seems counter in
counterproductive to having it that way.
You could almost just fix it by making it a 2D6 role and then
being able to push it or whatever, because then you can
just succeed at it. But sometimes you will fail.
I don't know if mathematically that would help or even just
being able to do D3. But you know, the other part too
is again, like I, I think you're right in that the HD moving up
and down and constantly being like, oh, I have three actions
now or I have this. Having it kind of be like a
favor of your God kind of bit and stuff too.
But having it be where the HP only changes when you succeed on
a sworn oath, which you can only do once, allows that HD to
bounce up and down through your wagers and stuff like that,
which would be really interesting.
It's just making the sworn oaths so difficult to do.
I think we'll just encourage people to not heal people and to
wager a lot more. Especially because even when you
do increase your hit dice with going up by 1, re rolling your
HP doesn't even guarantee you're going to get more HP.
Make one at least. Right?
But the higher you get, not so I think.
I think the fix 2 is even. Like you said, starting with
more HD gives you more to gamble with.
Like if you go to the casino poor you can't gamble very much.
And if the kind of the system is built around this kind of
gambling aspect, you know, giving to people a little bit
more to gamble with at the start might be a little bit more
interesting. But I think it to me in the, in
the, in the, in the loop outside of the exploration layer stuff
that, that was the part that seemed like it had the most
friction to me is the HD part feels like that would be the
funnest part. And I feel like there's a lot of
there's just friction in the way you're going to gain and lose
and use, especially in the sworn oaths section.
So. Yeah.
And I think that that, yeah, it's, it's like the clearly the,
the game with the pieces that are here now wants HD to be
essentially a resource, but we're trickling those out.
So. Because I would say the other
side too, of the the piety and everything that we've that you
were bringing up, the other side of that is say you roll those
3D6 and you know, I know this is a super small chance, but say
you're a 16 to an 18 piety, you're gaining hit dice like
crazy because now that rolls really easy.
So, and not to say, you know, I don't want to, you know,
everyone has different design goals when they come into
things. I don't think a game needs to
guarantee. I don't, I definitely don't.
My philosophy is I don't think guarantee should guarantee good
results for everyone all the time.
But The thing is, you could see maybe like 4 players, maybe one
guy is able to swear oaths all over the place because he
happened to get a good piety roll.
The other people don't. Maybe you spend down.
Yeah, it's like it could even just be a simple like you said,
you know, I mean, I guess not to get down, especially with
something that's a play test doc.
You know, I never want to get too much in like armchair design
mode. But yeah, I would say to me, the
cool stuff here is that up and down your flock growing and
dying and your strength increasing and not especially
because it also kind of leans into that cool.
Like how much of this is like your God is actually empowering
you, You're falling in and out of favor with your God.
How much of it is like it's placebo, right?
It's like you're stronger today because you think you're in your
God's good graces or not. You know, like there's there's a
lot of really cool juice there. But I can imagine a lot of
people taking this to the table and maybe playing three sessions
and hardly getting to experience that.
And you know, most people, most games are getting, if they're
getting played, I would say under 5 sessions.
So don't you know what, you, you don't want to leave the good
stuff. I feel like you don't want to
have the tabletop version of the RPG thing, like a video game
where people go, Oh well, if you just get 40 hours into Final
Fantasy 8, it's awesome. It's like you never want to hear
that. And that's again, why is the
same issue that I have with mothership where I think it
really lends itself to arcs and toward campaigns because of the
build up of panic and things like that.
But as one shot you have to tweak it in order to really
interact with the system the way that you want to do.
I mean I think also another fix would just be I think you could
do with piety what you did with the with the matrixes, right?
Like if you have where you want it to be in balance the way you
want the fact that you could literally have between 3 and 18
piety and everything is built on that one number with that big of
a span. But every mechanic in the game
is based on AD 6 is I, I, I think it's, it's too big of a
role. Again, like Mothership's panic
table should be AD 10. It doesn't need to be AD 20.
I don't like why wouldn't? For example, this could just be
a 2D6 table and you could have piety of like two through 12 or
less, or even break it down into like 1234 as opposed to two
through 18, and then just tweak some of the rolling 2D6, rolling
1D6. I just think the spread of your
ability to do things based on the one role you do at the very
beginning of the game mathematically creates what
could be incredibly different games.
Like, so for example, let's say you, you play this game with
your players and there's not a single person that rolls above a
nine piety, right? The experience your players are
going to have, honestly, with the way it's written, is going
to be much more difficult. And than say I play the game and
I don't have anyone that rolls below a 12, right?
They're going to be doing swornos like crazy.
They're going to be getting HD up and down like crazy, which
means they're going to be gambling more with their wagers
and doing stuff like that. The spread of the experiences
that you can have with this game, if you want it to be that
big, I just think it's incredibly unrewarding to anyone
that rolls under half, basically, because you're not
going to be able to interact with the cool mechanics of the
game nearly as much. Yeah, which is why.
I think. Which is why a lot of games like
for example, like 5 fucking E or like a lot of the standard D and
DS is you roll that 18 and then it gives you a modifier number
which gives you a less of a a kind of a more controlled room
to grow with. So if you want to do 3 through
18, why not then just have it be 1 through 6 as the modifiers
that get off of that and build build around that with since
everything else is D sixes. Yeah, I think there's a, there's
a bunch of different, you know, ways that could be handled at
that level. I would say to me, the positive
though, as a thing that is a playtest doc that's been put out
in this way, right? The positive to me, which I have
only read this right, but the positive to me on reading it is
that I'm like the I can see I the cool stuff is here.
It's just about that shift and how that makes its way into the
final form, you know, So that would be that that would be the
big, that would be my thought, right, is if like if I'm in a
looking at this in like a development standpoint, like it
was a freelance thing I was working on or something, that
would be my big thing is being like, I think this is the, it's
got a really cool identity and a unique stuff in there.
It's just making sure that's at the forefront, not at the back,
you know, which I do think can easily happen between here and a
1.0 with a shift, like I said I would.
It's it's honestly, you know, the of course, inescapable to
not reference 5 E like you said, but it's like the D&D thing of
like a lot of people just start their campaign at 3 at Level 3,
level 1 and 2 suck, you know, boring.
It's kind of like that, You know, I'd say that's that's what
I get the feeling here is there's there's that other
legwork of like clarifying editing order of information,
but I think mechanically it's really just that it's like, hey,
how can you just how can you just shift of the stack here?
So we're starting at we're starting at the cool unique
angle. And then you go from there to,
you know, it's cool too, to think of your piety 18.
You've done all this research, whatever, you've got eight hit
die. Your followers are all kitted
out in magic swords and armor, and that's really cool.
But just starting with enough, you know, hit die in your wallet
to start gambling and throwing around.
I think same with healing. It's like, I like that healing
has a big cost, but you don't want it to have such a big cost
that you're just going to let the guy next to you die.
You know, you want it to be, you want it to be like, OK, well, I,
I, my sworn oath paid off this session, but I really don't want
Bob the cleric next to me to die.
That's my friend. I'm gonna spend that.
I'm gonna use that hit die to keep him alive, that kind of
thing. If you didn't feast, Bob didn't
feast today. Yeah, I think it's kinda cool
you have to feast every day to get a saving throw cuz it's like
it has a little cost like maybe you're gonna feast before you go
into a layer. But then also, it always says
the feasts are done in honor of a specific St.
And I like the idea of making up all these Saints.
Maybe the final book will have, like, a table of Saints.
But I think it's more funny. I think it's funnier to be like,
who are you feasting for today? And then you just make your
table to be like, oh, this is for Saint Bartholomew, the
patron St. of Moles. Yeah.
I love, I love the idea of like in world, them having to be
like, listen, we have to feast because we're fighting the
fucking vampire. But like, who?
What the fuck We feast into today.
It's like Thursday, the whatever.
It's like, and it's like, all right, let me pull my book out.
And it's like, OK, well, today is the Saint of like foot
fungus. We have to feast to this guy so
that we can do a thing. Yeah, it's great.
I mean, that's the thing. So moving from ruleset into
originality, I think that's The thing is you said over and over
again, there's a lot of fucking Jews here.
I just think that it's it just needs the right kind of squeeze
for originality. I would love to play an all
player game of like witch finders that are kind of
dimension that are like opposed to each other working together
to kill werewolves and monsters in a kind of 1700s ish, you
know, whipping around their arc buses and and stuff like that.
So for originality for me, I think this is this is pretty way
up there. I think there's a lot of really
fun, interesting mechanics. There's a lot of ways that this
can be dialed into something that's really, really fantastic.
And I I think as a playtest document, this is an incredible
list of fun ideas and procedures, and I can't wait to
see it kind of dialed in and and yeah.
Do you have thoughts on originality?
Yeah, I would I would say the same thing.
That's that was the the thing I had seen John put stuff about
this on like Blue Sky before and I just kind of took it as like,
not that I wasn't interested in reading it at all, but I took it
as that like, OK, this is this is one of those it's a person's
sort of specific collection of old school house rules.
You know, they're just making a dock of their house rules.
But then when I was like, wait, it's an all cleric game.
I love being a cleric. Clerics are like my favorite DND
class growing up. I played like tons of them.
Like I played a cleric all the way to level 18, one in one
campaign. So that was the really cool
thing to me. And then I do think that, yeah,
the more you lean to those angles, it's the same thing with
like the sanctums and having followers guarded.
And there's a chance, even if it's guarded every month, that
like on Children of the Night might come and raid it.
And that idea, yeah, like you said, of being these sort of
monks or witch hunters that have your little base and you're
going out and helping the surrounding thing.
And you have followers that come and go and die or you die.
And now your lead flock you it has a thing in there where it
calls for you to you name an error that it's like if I fall
in battle, you know, Amelia is going to step up.
She's she becomes the new hammer.
That feels really cool. And I and I do think unique and
having it be something where you could definitely play more like
middle age medieval. You could play all the way, like
you said, up to sort of like, you know, early Victorian.
If you wanted, you could go into gun territory, I mean.
There's guns in the in the book, so.
There's like you could go. In there, yeah.
Go that way with it. I think it's cool.
So yeah, definitely, definitely original and fun and and cool.
Yeah, I would love to play this. I mean, we've talked to John
before about coming on Impossible Planet, so we'll talk
about that next value. It's 2 fucking bucks for the
PDF. I mean, even with everything
that we were talking about, like it's a great set of tools.
So even if you just grab it right now to have some home
brewed stuff to add into your OD and E campaign or whatever, kind
of like old school game you want to do for two fucking bucks,
it's way more than worth it. But also like I can only assume
that as John keeps developing this, there's going to be
updates to it. So probably a good idea to grab
it right now and it's only $2.00 because then you get those itch
updates and and I did get the printed copy.
It is $9 I think plus plus shipping, which is like 5 bucks.
So for a 20 something page Zine, nice quality.
I obviously was going to snag it.
It's total of $14.00 for shipping and everything, which
is a great deal. Anything less than 10 bucks for
a Zine, it's fantastic. If you pay in now, you'll have
access to the full version 2. Fucking I was actually.
I'm glad John's in the chat because I was going to ask that.
I was like. I think 2 bucks is definitely
worth it. 2 bucks is especially worth it if you get the full
whatever the end version for being for sure.
Yeah, that's crazy. And then vibes, I think we kind
of hit it on already. I mean, I think the this is a
game that I really want to play one because I really want to see
how it plays, you know, because again, I do have a lot of
questions kind of about this HD loop that we're in.
But I think the vibes are strong and could be stronger.
I think that the parts that I think are really cool sound
really fucking cool, but I think leaning into those parts a
little bit more would be really fantastic.
I think art obviously would be a huge help, but again, this is a
playtest document. But I think, you know, all the
things that would increase those vibes are things that I think
are playing to come, like adventures, layers, you know,
beast area, like all that kind of extra bits are the parts
where a lot of the flavor gets to come in tables and relics and
all that kind of stuff. So there's a lot of flavor and
stuff that is all the parts that would be added to this to kind
of route it out to a full game. What do you think?
Yeah, similarly, I would say the parts just by lieu of where it
is in development and as a playtest doc, sort of the least
the flavorful parts are what's here.
Like what would be the least flavorful parts of a full game
are what's here. We get a little bit of it and
you know, the names of the stats, like Piety Flock, those
kind of things. But with a game like this,
really most of those are going to come out from like, oh,
there's a holy relics list, there's a bestiary, there's
yeah, I said maybe a sample adventure.
There's maybe there's a table on the feast page with a list of
example patron Saints. You know, that's where you're
really going to get it. The vibe is going to amp up.
I can easily imagine though, with what's here, how I would
lean into that. But same thing, right?
You can imagine maybe there's like a NPC table or list for
people in your flock, right? Like what kind of people are in
your flock? A bandit who's turned away from
his life of crime and wants to be better or, you know, an ex
prisoner, like I've been escaped prisoner who's taken up the, you
know, the kindness of the clergy to to get out of the law.
You know, you can imagine a bunch of these possibilities.
So it's like, I think as those, you know, the mechanical core of
a game is always the least vibe of it saying, well, 3B6, it
doesn't have much, yeah. So but there is a good, there's
a decent chunk of that here. But I do think that that will
come in even more later. But it's easy to imagine using
the sparks that we have of those vibes here.
Absolutely. And I, you know what?
You know what this game is to me though, because I mean, my brain
is this is where it's at right now.
This is this is Dark Heresy to me, basically like the fact how
easily you could run this as an inquisitor with their acolytes
and stuff like that. You know, War Warhammer 40K for
those that don't know what the fuck I'm talking about.
How easily you could have your flock be just your dudes and
actually run your hammers as straight up fucking inquisitors
and literally just have the three different factions of
inquisitors, the different Ordos be the different Ordos that you
are in the in the holy orders. I mean, that's that's what I
would immediately hack this into is just actually running as
inquisitors because in dark hair.
So you don't even get to be the inquisitor.
You're the inquisitors homies, like you're his little buddies
or whatever. But actually being able to run
this as as inquisitors as is with just changing some names
and stuff, barely even doing that, you know, just armors now,
power armor kind of it it it fox like, you know, so yeah, what?
You're saying is you're asking, you're asking John, you're,
you're saying once you finish hammers, star hammers.
Star Hammers. That's exactly what's happening.
Exactly. You need star hammers.
Yeah, that's that's what I envisioned.
You know, power hammers is good too.
Yeah, that's what I envisioned as well was like, yeah, it's,
it's that Inquisitor vibe. Whether you take that sci-fi
like 40K or just literally like we are the Inquisition rolling
around. It's cool.
It's also interesting because I think at the table you could
decide how you want to play that as the GM or as the table.
Like do you want to be like actual Inquisitors, which is
like, we're going to go hunt the witch and it's just like a woman
living in a cave or do you want it to be like she's really an
evil witch or both? I I think I would almost be cool
to have that be part of play as the party needing to determine
if this is a real threat, a supernatural threat, or just
like a problem to deal with. You know, this is an
interpersonal problem. They just call them this lady a
witch because they don't like her.
But I think you could lean into that too, which is cool.
And like you said there, there is no, I mean, the picture kind
of again, gives you that Puritan a little bit.
But the fact that as written right now, you can go everything
from medieval to like Puritan 17 hundreds, 1800s kind of thing to
fucking 40K inquisitors with really not changing anything at
all in this is also, I think a fantastic addition to the vibes
and to to the game overall. Like having it not necessarily
be set in a very specific time frame, but more giving you the
vibes of those time frames is really I think beneficial to to
allow tables to do a lot with with what they have.
So. So yeah, that's that's hammers.
That's that was good. It was fun.
We should do that again. Any final wrap up thoughts on on
hammers from John Davis? And again, we will drop that
into the to the links below where you can find it.
Grab it now while it's $2.00 because then you'll get the full
version later. But wrap up thoughts.
Are we we about done Christian? No, I mean, I'm super interested
to see how it continues to develop.
I think that, you know, especially in like we're in the
land of like reviews and like things, people putting things
out there. I think putting stuff out like
this is cool. Reading stuff like this is cool.
Thinking about it, even if you're a person who isn't like
in my side of things, like you're not a person who's making
stuff and you don't have any interest to make things, making
games yourself. This is interesting and cool the
way that maybe, you know, like an old DVD, watch the behind the
scenes of a movie. I think I would encourage, I
guess more people generally, even if you're just like, I'm a,
you know, final fit and finish product kind of person.
I do think it's always cool to take a peek at these early
things. And I think it's cool when
people like John in this case or put it out into the world to see
what people make of it. So I think if nothing else, it
is an interesting way to look at a collection of tools and see
this early form and then compare to later.
But yeah, I think definitely made makes me hyped to see how
it develops. And I think it's going to have a
lot of those, the particularly unique cool elements of the sort
of shifting and character going up and down and your followers
going up and down. And having that be like an
expected standard aspect of play as everyone probably has
followers or you're gaining them quickly if you don't, or losing
them, I think is making me think of whole different ways you
could, you know, run these kind of games, which is cool.
Absolutely. I mean 22 parts to that one.
This kind of stuff is my favorite shit on my shelf.
Like the playtest docs, these early alpha prints, all that
kind of stuff. The some of my favorite things
and all of the shit behind me. These are what they are.
I have the 1st 12 years ever made before it even hit
Kickstarter. I have a bunch of stuff like
that and. I couldn't agree more.
I wish more people put out things like this.
I wish people just made some like quick cheap thing and, and,
and let it get into people's hands and stopped waiting until
it was fucking polished into a diamond to let people see it.
Because you know, I dropped my, you know, alpha doc for the
thing that I'm working on and hearing people read it has, I've
done 2 fucking updates to it already, which I wouldn't have
done. I would have put it in layout
and printed it and done all this thing and been pissed when I got
it and saw like the typos or things like that.
So I wish more people would do more kind of like DIY stuff like
this. I wish people would release more
draft stuff. No one's going to steal your
shit. You don't have an IP.
Trust me. There's nothing you're making
that's going to make you a millionaire right now.
If you're listening to this fucking show.
Stop worrying about people stealing your mechanics or like
blurring all of your stuff. Let people play with your
fucking game. Get people excited, you know,
because when they buy the physical games where you can
actually make the money on it, so.
But it's cool like in it's cool in both ways, Like it makes me
more interested in the final form hammers takes, and then it
also feels like it adds to my tool kit as a as often the GM as
a player, right. It makes me think, Oh, maybe in
my normal, in my standard dungeon crawl game on critical
failures, I make the hirelings rule morale and they ditch when
you critical fail because they're like, I don't care how
much you're paying me. I don't want to be, you know,
like it's it gives those gears turning in interesting ways.
So even just as a player as AGM for more of like AGM advice
thing, it's like reading stuff like this helps improve your
brain scape of games and. Then, you know, and then moving
from game design into actually, you know, being a, a seller of
things and trying to make money off of a thing.
What do you think that person who got to read that playtest
doc, it was inspired to change something at their table because
of what you wrote? What do you think they're going
to do when you release a thing? They're going to be like, oh,
yeah, I love that thing. We play this because of that.
Like they brought it to their table.
They got like three other people to talk about that thing that
you made because you dropped the playtest doc.
I don't know, I I I'm always I'm I'm very much a release stuff
for free as PDF. Make your money on the book
thing. But if you're not going to do
that, release your alpha copy so people can get excited for it
and then do whatever you want with it.
But you know that it is what it is.
I don't remember the other point that I made, but I think I think
that's a good stop. Any I think we talked about at
the top of the show, but where? Where can people find you and
your stuff, Christian? Yeah, people can find all my
stuff at Meet Castle Gamewear. It's where like Ware my wares.
Meet Castle gamewear.com got a blog on there.
I've been doing posts on. I have my monthly newsletter,
which I'm getting back to actually really being monthly.
It was not monthly last year and then also as part of my most
recent newsletter. My main thing right now is I
have pre-orders up for my 3rd annual Zine, which basically
collects all the little free supplements and tool kits and
all that kind of stuff that I put out as part of my
newsletter. And this one has an additional
thing I had just put on itch for free that wasn't part of the
newsletter in it into a nice print Zine that's going to come
out. So I'm going to order those
probably in about a week. And then as soon as I get the
print run in, they're going to go out to people.
And you can also get the annual number one and annual #2 on
there. They've got like this one has
like went down and sort of a Karen rabbit hole this last year
in 2025. So it's got an adventure for
Karen and a player class. And then it also has some
mothership module type stuff. It has a one page RPG like a
honey hack, Honey Heist hack that I actually made for a job
interview, as weird as that might sound.
Not an RPG job, by the way, just a marketing job interview.
And yeah, so that's my current thing that I'm doing.
And then I'm gonna be keeping down in the future into more
things like Stranger Stars and Tacticians updates and that kind
of stuff. Awesome.
Yeah, I love your annuals. I think it's fantastic.
Again, we talked about this. I wish stop, stop, stop, stop
making everything so polished. Everybody like Christine is such
a perfect example of like, have an idea, put out the idea, let
it bounce around at the end of the year, put it together,
Nazine, throw that out there. Let people see all of your
stuff. I mean, I'm excited for #3 I
have number one and two of the of your collected stuff.
And between the newsletter, between those and between all
the little stuff you put out, there's just so much cool stuff
and more people need to make small cool things and just
release it to the people. And I think you're such a
perfect example of that. So yeah, thanks so much for
coming on the show again. I expect you to be on multiple
times this year, whether it's playing a game, talking about
your game, or reviewing another game.
So really appreciate it. Yeah, thanks for having me.
Always fun under talking. Good excuse.
You were like, what do you want to review?
And I was like what about this Hammers thing?
Yeah, heard something about this.
So it was a good reason to get me to actually sit down and read
stuff rather than, you know, doing whatever else over the
holidays I would have been wasting time with SO.
There we go. So yeah, so like I said, expect
Christian back multiple times and that's going to be us for
today. We will see you all later.
Bye. Bye.