Hello and welcome to the Weekly Scroll Podcast.
My name is Ryan. And I am Vladimir.
Greetings comrade. And today, today we're going to
be looking at Rad from Hippolyta.
I hope I said that right. I looked up the the accent and
everything. This is a tabletop role-playing
game set in a post nuclear Soviet wasteland inspired by
Metro 2033. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, I played that game a little bit.
It just definitely has that vibe, you know, I mean, it's a
book series as well, so. Yeah, I never, I never played
that game, but I think that's normal is that you've played
everything and I play nothing. Yeah, you know, I'd be playing
video games. Yeah, you do be playing those
games. I do want to stay right off the
bat because I will forget later. There is a jam going on for this
game. Anyone if you do follow
Hippolita over on Blue Sky, I don't, I think that's you.
Just search that HIPOLITA on Blue Sky, you'll find them.
But they are currently running the radioactive jam to create
more stuff for RAD. Talking about RAD a little bit
here. It looks like a RAD originally
came out November 9th, 2023. It looks like it was published
sometime later to get a physical copy.
I got the physical copy in my hands right now.
There's some other stuff from Hippolyta that we were going to
look at at some point. It's on a list.
Cantrip. Have you seen Cantrip?
I have. We have it Within reach.
I don't think I have within reach, but that's that's been on
the list for a while. It's a little bit longer than
this. We did want to do a short one
this week, so we'll go over at that at some point, but I know I
picked that up. I think also from Soul Muppet
with their RPG Lat AM section that we talked about with Mini
VX. So that's on there, yeah.
Just want to make sure the people are aware that the jam is
going on to if you like rad, the game that we're going to be
going over in just a second, make sure that you go check out
the jam, make some cool stuff. If you like the game that's
going to be running all the way through April, I'll make sure
the link is in the notes below. But other than that, I think I
think let's just get another review.
We've we've been absent a lot the last like month.
Our analytics are definitely showing it.
So we'll we'll try to get back to doing episodes more regularly
now, including some special stuff coming up.
I don't know when at this point, but we'll get there.
But I think that's all we got to talk about.
Why don't we just hop into the game?
Yeah, let's do it. Yeah, yeah.
So actually then take notes for this one.
This is like one of the first ones we need to take notes for.
I just didn't get around to it. But it's also a pretty short
game. It's, yeah, it's fairly short.
And I think the things that we are going to criticize are, you
know, hard to miss. Yeah, interesting.
If for some reason we have like a theme we'll get to for some of
the critiques we have going forward, but pretty short game.
As I said, this is a game set in a a post Soviet nuclear waste, a
post Soviet nuclear waste, a post nuclear Soviet wasteland.
It's only about. Oh yeah, post Soviet nuclear
wasteland. Yeah, some places we're we're
getting there. We're we're trying to get post
Soviet at least, but there's no page numbers in the book.
Don't know if you don't say that.
Yeah. So it's about 40 pages cover to
cover with the covers included as far as the PDF goes.
Right off the bat the cover slaps.
Love the bright colors. It is a figure kind of looking
up out towards you with a gas mask on.
A lot of bright colors, pinks and Blues and yellows.
There's some graffiti going on the background and it looks like
like they have a mutation. Their right arm has spines and
and and things jugging out a bit.
Big anime vibes. You know, yeah, big anime vibes.
This is also one of the only pieces of art in the entire book
there. There's some there's some like
it looks like public domain stuff throughout, which is fine.
This will obviously be as a Zine.
I think it's like 35 to fortyish pages.
But like the the game itself is is sort of that.
So it goes, you know that. So right off the bat, first of
all, it is it has no bookmarks. It has, no, I don't even think
it has a table of contents. It does not.
Yeah. So then it obviously has no
bookmarks on the table of contents because it's.
Not. I mean, you can't really have a
table of contents with no page numbers, you know?
Right, right, right, right, right, right.
So I will say it is mildly inconvenient that even though
this is fairly short, it does not have page numbers.
Yeah, it's got chapter numbers, which is cool, but.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's interesting the way the
chapter numbers work too, because, well, let's get into
it. So there's dedication on the
front page here. This game is used as Creative
Commons license. Hack it, adapt it, steal from
it, make new stuff for it, and charge whatever you think is
fair. Rad is for everyone except
fascists. That's a theme throughout, cuz
fuck fascists. How's your how's that 401K
looking buddy? Yeah, really good.
I'm doing great, yeah. Check out my other games at
hippolyta dot itch dot IO. So I'm going to read this page
here because it's kind of setting the tone for the game.
This is the post Nuclear wasteland of the former Soviet
Republics. In the year 1990, the United
States of America fired a nuclear attack on the Soviet
Union, immediately killing millions and poisoning the land,
air and water. For years.
The scarce few survivors were forced into hiding.
About 50,000 people fled to the relative safety of the Moscow
Metro, with smaller numbers following suit in cities like
Novus, Nova, Saberisk, Volgograd, St.
Petersburg, Yeka, Terenburg, Samurai and others.
Even more survivors, especially in the non Russian Soviet
republics, made their living on the surface, living off the land
and rebuilding this socialist society as best they could,
despite the constant threat of mutants, monsters, bandits,
fascists and, it is rumored, and NATO troops.
The sites of nuclear strikes, urban centers, factories, ports,
mines, airports are highly dangerous places where the air
is toxic, the lingering radiation reaches a life
threatening levels and horrifying mutants, the
embodiment of nuclear radiation made horrible flesh make their
layers. The various metros themselves
don't fare any better with their own breeds of mutants, making
travel between stations a dangerous affair, but ask any
metro in and they'll tell you people are often more dangerous
than the ghoulish horrors that lurk in the tunnels.
Cool mutated freak thing here on this page as far as art.
Marianne's have like little, little huddle of monster, you
know? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then we immediately get into a couple of just like stuff
pages, which is an interesting place for it.
Instead of putting it in like in like the spread that would be
the inside cover in the first page, they do like the intro as
the first page and then go to this like spread of stuff, which
is fine, whatever. And then we get to think.
So let's let's start, let's start hitting some stuff right
away. So for some reason, this year we
have this theme of good game, lackluster product.
I think we've we've had a couple of those and you know, the game
we reviewed last, if I remember, was the last episode was did we
do was never going home, the last one, whatever, maybe
pretty. Yeah, I don't know.
Interest. Interesting game, pretty pretty
poor layout. This book, I think just suffers
from maybe I don't, I don't know if they had an editor, but
there's like a lot of glaring layout issues with it that are
that I think are just like it needed like one more pass to
like catch the mistakes, clean up some things.
And it's not even like the layout as in like the design of
the layout. It's things like so for example,
this page is gear and prices, and then we'll get to the thing
in a second because all prices are in bullets, the standard
currency, the post nuclear world.
I like that. I like when we get to the bullet
stuff later. But you got useful items,
Weapons, weapon attachments, basic supplies, services, and
settlements. Under weapons it says see page
XX for weapon stats. I think maybe they just forgot
to go back and put the page number in, but there are no page
numbers so maybe in chapter and then under weapon attachments it
says see page XX for attachment stats.
So I think they maybe just forgot to go back and put in
that info. Did they forget to go back and
number the pages so they could come back and do this afterwards
or that's? A possibility too, because I
like the page numbers, is. So what I was going to say
before is it's interesting because.
So let's get to Let's get to a page where we see a little bit
of layout on the next page. But can I ask a question real
quick? Did you get the physical?
Is it like this in the physical? Oh yeah, I double checked.
Every single thing is exactly the same.
Yeah, yeah. The next page has names.
There's a list of names. It says not just Russian, but
Armenian, Kazik, Ukrainian, Tajik and more.
Whole list of male names, whole list of female names here.
And then there's things to find list, which is a D6 and a D8.
Then we get into yeah, we'll, we'll we'll get to the layout
thing in just a second. Let's go through this page and
then we actually see it in the thing.
We'll talk about it. So what you need to play a Dyson
Shit, there's other stuff listed.
I'm not going to go over it. Here's another one, though.
It says you'll also need a character sheet and item cards.
LinkedIn the QR code at the back of the book or available at
XXXXXXXXXXXX dot itch dot IOI think they also forgot to maybe
go back and put Hippolita Doctor Scott IO in there.
Another thing, maybe that was just like placeholder at the
time but didn't get fixed. And then what is rad they list
here the concept, aim, tone and subject matter.
I like this. I not like a Don't give me a
What is a role-playing game bullshit give me.
What is this game? Yeah, I do appreciate this.
You know, I think. This is great, good to know the
tone. Before you go in.
So yeah, it reminds me a little bit of the beginning of, Oh my
God, Colin Lasore. I have every, every, every.
We've played it a million times on stream.
The Norse Dark Souls game. It's crushing.
How am I doing? Why is my brain beard?
Why are you making me blank too? Odin's beard.
What is it behind me? We're the worst people room.
Care. Room care.
Yeah, it is behind me. I'm a I'm dumb as hell.
I'm dumb as hell too. We we've.
Talked to Colin a bunch of times.
Show with Colin. Multiple times.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've I got to play it
individually or with Colin and one of the person.
Anyway, Rune care in the beginning has this kind of thing
where they they walk through themes and tone and things like
that and and I really appreciate it when Colin did that in room
care. So I really like this.
So Concept Rad is a role-playing game about Hardy explorers,
fighters and adventures in the ruined post nuclear Soviet
Union. Rad is dangerous, highly lethal
game. Or wits, patient and insight are
more important than strength, etcetera etcetera.
So what is the aim in this game? Players characters goals is to
venture out into the dangerous places to scavenge for supplies,
help people with their problems and above all kill fascists in
bold. I'm for it.
You know in game, right, The goal of the players is to, yeah,
building real life. Too.
Yeah, yeah, build an interesting post nuclear world, etcetera.
Anyway, tone. The game is post apocalyptic
high Slav Soviet core, dangerous and frantic.
The atmosphere of dudes rock. For me it's everything.
This is one of my favorite things in the entire game coming
up. It really gets me.
Subject matter. They recommend using safety
tools. Good idea.
Use what you need. Potentially triggering or
upsetting topics that might come up in a game.
Imperialism, capitalism, fascism, body horror, graphic
violence, nuclear weapons, depression, the United States
and scarcity. And to be honest, yeah, as far
as triggering and upsetting, I would say the United States is
way the fuck up there right now. And I'm in it.
I can't imagine having to deal with the the bullshit that we
create for other people. That's one of my favorite things
in the entire book. Yeah, that's right.
They listen to that there. That that really cracks me up in
a very sad, sad way. So getting to the layout of the
book. So the way that they do the
layout is they do chapter. So it's like 1 core rules and
then every section underneath it like stats is 1.1 and then time
is 1.2. I love that.
I think that's great. There's 1.31.4, etcetera,
etcetera. So what's interesting is if you
look at like Mothership for example, unless I'm completely
making it up, the way mothership does their thing I think is by
page and chapters on page. So on page 4, paragraph one will
be 4.14.24.3. On page 5 it'll be that.
Am I completely making it up or is it by chapter?
I've had a really hard time like picturing the mothership book in
my head even though I've obviously had to read it because
I've run mothership. And we, I mean, we interviewed
on the show, but versus like Troika, who does the same kind
of layout here, but they do it by, you know, big sections, not
by page number. So did you.
You didn't happen to then hop into mothership, did you?
And. I No, I did not.
So I. Started to and gave him up
honestly. So I just wanted to to see if I
was making that bullshit up or not.
Player survival guide. So do, do, do, do, do scrolling,
scrolling equipment get out of this stuff.
So yeah, armor is #14 Safety instructions, page 1616.1 Yeah,
page 1717, point 118.123 Yeah. So they do it by page number.
So whatever page number you're on, the sections on that page.
So you know, if you say like 17.2, you can go to page 17,
chapter 2 and you got it versus Troika, which I don't think does
it by page number, It does it by chapter, but there's still are
page numbers on the book. Right.
This one does not have the page
numbers. And I think if you're over like,
I don't know, freaking 8 or 10 pages in a Zine, you should
probably at least our page numbers in a book.
Yeah, I agree. I think, I think especially when
we're get we get over for me if you had 15 pages. 16, yeah.
Well, yeah, yeah, 16, right. Multiples of four.
You get to 16 plus like it's time to add numbers, you know?
Yeah, but as we go, you'll notice some issues with the way
these these numbers work, so we'll get there as we go.
So #1 core rules, let's cover the basics.
So this is just the basics of the game.
We'll run through it real quick. 1.1 is the stats.
There are four of them, coordination or COR which is a
geology and dexterity, senses or Sen Sen which is aim, reflexes
and empathy, Vigor which is VIG, athletics and endurance and
willpower, Wil which is your charisma and grit.
So some roles will have a modifier.
A modifier is added or subtracted from your stat, not
the role when making an enhanced.
So this is this isn't something that comes up that's weird.
When making an enhanced role, roll two die and keep the better
results. For impaired rolls, roll two die
and keep the worst result. But we'll skip the next
paragraph just for a second and then go down to advantage and
disadvantage, which means you roll 2D20 and keep the better
result. And disadvantage means you roll
2D20 and keep the worst result and they cancel each other out.
Yes, I was wondering about this. Well, and then there's an
enhanced and impaired later for damage rolls.
So there's some confusion around all that, like I assume, I mean,
because I'm pretty sure every role is AD 20 roll and sometimes
you're, you're rolling. I don't I I mean, that's the
core role of the game. So I don't get the enhanced and
impaired. D20 under game, so yeah.
So I, I, I think maybe there's an error here or else I'm
reading something completely wrong.
Because if there's enhanced and impaired roles plus enhanced and
impaired damage roles, you should just use different words
for those two things. Yeah, I think someone was
writing in layout, yeah, in this case, and they forgot to go back
and delete a previous version of like what they were working on
in this. Section it's a possibility
because enhance and impaired is just advantage and disadvantage,
which is listed to two paragraphs later.
It is. When attempting something where
the outcome is uncertain, the players role they save against
an appropriate stat to succeed as AD 20 equal to or below your
stat, plus or minus any modifiers.
So also what it says is like you add or subtract this from the
stat, not the modifier. So if your SAT is 10 and you
have a modifier of two, you're rolling AD 20 under 12, right?
You're not rolling AD 20 and then like subtracting or adding
two to the roll and you just do it to the modifier first, which
is great because then you're just still creating your plus
minus right off the bat like you're over under, which is,
which is what you need to do. 1.2 is time, rounds, turns and
watches. Guess what?
They all work the same. It's 10 seconds, exactly what
you think. Yeah, I love the chapter header,
by the way. Oh, what?
The No. Travel, Yeah.
Oh yeah. That's another thing.
Yeah. So rounds, turns, watches, it's
it's six, It's it's 10 seconds, 636, blah, blah, blah.
And then, yeah, 1.3 is travel is at the bottom of the page and
then there's nothing underneath it.
And then you go up to the top right for that.
But then underneath it, there's plenty of, there's like 1/4 of a
page on the right. There's no reason for it to not
just go over this is what we're saying, where someone, I think
someone like this feels like an alpha draft of a game that
someone never went back into to just fix the layout of, you
know, yeah, which kind of sucks because I like the game, but
like, there's so yeah, there's just so many errors in the
layout. It's crazy.
Like clearly like the the creator either didn't have an
editor or like just didn't come back and do this.
But also the publisher obviously didn't even glance at it before
printing it or else they would have admit hopefully would have
at least seen like one of the many, many errors.
But you know, sorry, I'm surprised.
I'm publishing something for you.
I'm giving them the once over myself as well, you know.
You would think, You would think, yeah.
So travel, There's travel on foot, there's travel mounted.
We don't need to go over that. There's trains, there's hunger,
sleeping rads. Characters must mark one dot of
rations per day or gain the starving condition.
Players must also spend one watch a day sleeping or gain the
exhausted condition. This goes with mounts and stuff
too. While asleep characters are soon
to not have their pack wearing anything, holding any items, any
of that stuff. However all items are soon to be
kept in arms reach. That's got that's must be like a
surprise thing. If you get jumped like some of
the jumps on you, you don't get your shit.
And then lightly irradiated areas will inflict the radiation
condition on character after one watch unless they take anti rad
medicate meds. Highly irradiated areas will
inflict the condition after one turn.
Extremely will be after every round.
So couple of things right off the bat, I know this is the core
basic stuff, right? But there's no explanation of
what conditions are. Clearly this is like an into the
yacht. Well, we haven't really figured
out this was an into the odd thing yet, but this is a mouse
rider hack. Basically, it's an into the odd
hack. It's AD 20 roll under.
When we get to the inventory system, you really see mouse
rider enhanced and impaired. You know, it comes up again,
conditions is a thing where it'll take up inventory slots
and we eventually get to that, which is fine to just hit the
basics here in the core rules. But this is one of those things
where like it might, it would not be a bad idea in the core
rules section that if you mention something, you can just
say where it is later. So like what I would have done
here is as soon as they said conditions, I would have done
like AC page, you know, blah, blah, blah for conditions kind
of thing. X.
Page XX Yeah, Page XXX. So that's the, the core aspects
of it is that is just your, your 4 stats, how time works, how
travel works and your hunger sleep in rads.
It also, yeah, it also talks about marking a dot, which
eventually we'll get to. But there are, it's, it's again,
it's like master inventory. It's got, it's got 3 uses jots
per things. And if we, when we eventually go
look at the character sheet and when we get to inventory, it'll
explain a little bit more that there's a difference between
your inventory and these like, I can't remember what they call
them, but we'll get to it. Rest and healing.
So you got you, you rest and you heal, right?
So you got short rests, long rests.
Short rests are 10 minutes. You, you restore 2D6 resolve.
I you have resolve. It's a thing that you have.
Resolve. Yeah, we'll get to it in
character creation. Let's see.
I don't think we've gone over that.
Yet. So yeah, yeah, yeah.
This is one of those things where I, I always feel like
after this, like a little core rule section, I would put
character creation in and then go back to the rest of the
rules. But the game's not that big.
So you get resolved back long rests, it's a full 6 hours, it's
a watch. You return to full resolve, you
clear short and long rest conditions.
Conditions have different lengths, and there's stuff you
can do with first aid kits and wounds and things like that.
We're not going to dig too deep into it, but during the long
rest, you can take 1 up to 1 long rest action.
And I believe these things that follow it are the long rest
actions, and there's three of them.
There's cooking, forging, and revel.
So cooking. You can cook stuff.
I'm reveling, dude. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Spend time cooking to remove a wounded or another relevant
condition from the cook or another character by marking a
dot on their rations and succeeding on a coordination or
census test. Save foraging.
You spend time foraging and then you know you get stuff for that
and then reveling. Spend time reveling with the
party if at least one other player character also revels.
All reveling players gain a free RE role to be used for any
reason before the next long or full rest.
If less unused until the next long or short rest.
It is lost if a reveler has an instrument or another item that
can be used to entertain others. They can give one non reveler a
free reroll as well. I like that.
Like it's literally say just chill with your homies.
I love it. Yeah, it's good.
It's good. Then 2.2 is a full rest.
This is like literally a week's worth of time in safety.
Restore all resolve, remove all your conditions.
It costs you 50 bullets worth of food per person to do that.
And during the full rest, you can have two full rest actions
and those are Commission or repair an item, gather
information, work or live it up. And there's various things you
can do with that. Again, not going to dig too deep
into those. There's no reason to.
Basically, if you Commission a repair an item, guess what you
do? You do.
You do exactly what you do with. Title describes it.
So what? Do you think you do with?
Gather information. I'm not sure, so let me read.
Yeah, so you learn stuff. Work is neat though.
Find part time work and get paid in bullets. 2D20 bullets a day
is customary and you work for five days, which is nice.
So 2 D 20 * 5 days. That's a lot of bullets.
Yeah, imagine if you just went in your boss roll dice every day
for how much you were going to get paid for that day.
Oh hey man, I owe you 2 D $20 today so hopefully.
That. Isn't that just like waiting
tables? Yeah, yeah.
I mean. Also, I like this like
structured downtime, yes, like I like the rest actions.
I like the full rest actions. Like I think it's a good use of
like, because in more than one game, there's definitely like
long rest is a week and then nothing else past that.
And you're just like, that's a week of time, bro.
And like, yeah, you're not going out adventuring, but you're,
you're up and about like what do you do in that week?
And you can always, you know, with my table we would like talk
about what we did that week, but it's cool to have a little bit
of structure and like procedure to back that up.
Yeah, no, I completely agree. I think the as you said like the
short, the long rest and the the full rest actions are great.
You know what it reminds me of a little bit is the village, the
village expansion for 12 years that we did with oh.
Yes, Yeah, yeah, yeah. With with Max, because like you
said, you're like, OK, well, the full rest is a week.
So you could just be like, all right, we take a week, cool a
bathroom break and then we'll get back at it.
Like that sucks. Like, you know, I mean, there
are some people that like hate shopping episodes and just want
to be fighting all the time, whatever.
But like a role-playing game is a role-playing game, so you can
role play and stuff like that, which includes other things
outside of that. So it would really be nice.
I'm actually working on a role-playing game.
It's only shopping episodes just the whole way down.
It's just the the the mall is a dungeon and you're trying to
make it out with as many bags as possible, so.
We got to bring it on. Let's run it.
The last thing is live it up. Spend time living your best life
and you do stuff and that happens.
So then we get to combat. So before combat proper begins,
determine if either side is being surprised or ambushed.
That's how it goes last. Otherwise, have the group leader
make a save to determine who was first depending on the overall
strategy being employed. I like this.
So there's a different strategy for each stat.
So if trying to coordinate a complex maneuver to outflank the
enemy or exploit weaknesses, role coordination.
If trying to remain on the defensive and wait for the enemy
to make a mistake or for an opportunity to present itself,
role senses. If going all out and trying to
overwhelm the enemy, I'll roll Vigor.
And if improvising, acting in a disorganized, surprising manner
or trying unorthodized tactics, roll.
Will I like that? I like the idea of being like,
OK, guys, what are we going to do?
And then rolling, rolling for the strategy.
It's neat. Yeah.
And the save reoccurs at the start of each round of combat.
So you're kind of like planning out your round of combat
together before you go into it. I like that.
I think it's really interesting. Yeah, I thought that was a those
cool option that gives you there.
Yeah. This next page.
Yeah, a little bit art here on the bottom and then we get just
an interesting page that I think maybe, I assume maybe they're
supposed to be art that like didn't get put on here or
something. That's my assumptions, maybe if
there's art on the side. So basically what we're looking
at is it's so the whole layout is black and white and it's 2
column right down each page. The entire left side of this
page is just completely blank. And then there's some stuff and
then like the bottom right quarter of the page is
completely blank. So almost 3/4 of this page is
completely blank. But where the text is, is in the
top right quadrant, so it's just.
My assumption immediately was that maybe they just forgot to
drop a piece of art in here. On the left side.
Yeah, because there is a piece later where they do like 1/2 a
page of art and stuff like that. So I give the benefit of the
doubt to maybe there's be supposed to be a piece of art
here. Otherwise they just have a weird
3, the weirdest 3/4 of the page. Such a.
Funny looking page. Dude, blank.
Completely blank. So anyway, so 31 actions in
combat and three, two attack and defense.
I like this. I think this is interesting.
I'm going to read it. You tell me what it reminds you
of. So on your turn in combat, you
can perform 2 complex actions. You can break up either or both
of these into two simple actions.
Complex actions are moving up to 30 meters, attacking with most
weapons, reloading weapon, attempting a utility action,
scrounging through your pack. And then simple actions are
varied and can evolve. Throwing a weapon, opening a
door, pushing a button, passing or tossing an item.
So basically complex actions are moving, attacking, reloading us,
getting in your pack, and attempting utility action.
And simple actions are like quick tiny things, popping a
potion, you know, hitting a button, opening a door, shit
like that. Remind you of anything that we
almost played? Yeah.
Warhammer Fantasy. This reminds yeah, this is
Warhammer 2 E Yeah, I like the complex and simple actions
thing. I wish the simple actions made.
I don't know if I want or need. I mean, there's enough of a list
here for simple action, so I think I get it.
I mean, I do get it. I don't know if I would have
mind maybe a little bit. I don't like throwing your
weapon. I'm like, what's the difference
between throwing your weapon and throwing a weapon as far as like
attacking? You know what?
I. Mean.
Yeah, Yeah. That's a really.
But other than that I get it. Like opening a door, pushing a
button, tossing an item to an ally.
I get it. Attack and defense attacks with
your fists, mail weapons, you're thrown weapons you roll
coordination and firearm attacks you roll senses.
Here's the thing though, always mark a dot of ammo on your
weapon card after attacking with firearms.
Remind me of that in a second. And the last one is attacks on
rat. Always hit as long as your
target is within your weapons functional range.
So again, it's it's mouse straighter, it's into the odd
attacks, always hit D20, roll under, etcetera etcetera.
Always mark a dot of ammo on your weapon card after attacking
with firearms. We're going to get to weapons
and stuff, right? But there where, where on where
on the weapon card do you do you mark a dot of ammo?
So let me bring it up. So this is the weapon card,
right? Let me zoom a little bit.
This is a weapon. It's so confusing.
Kind of parse my way through this scene digitally with no
page numbers. So what was I?
So I brought up the so when you get this game, you get a bunch
of stuff you get which is great. You get like weapon cards, item
cards. You get like what else?
What else do we get in here? We get the condition cards,
character sheets, session tracker, a lot of great stuff
that comes with it, which is super helpful, especially
because master inventory. You can just print these out and
cut them out. It's great.
But I'm looking at like automatic rifle, for example,
and I get usage dots at the top and then range, reliability,
damage special. We'll go over this again in the
weapon section. It says mark a dot ammo every
time you use it. Where?
What? What is an ammo dot?
I can't, I cannot. Did you remember ammo dots
anywhere? No, I was kind of thinking that
they were talking about the usage dots for the items, but.
No, but we're in one second. We're going to go into a section
where it actually talks about usage challenge.
Yeah. Where's the ammo item cards?
Oh there aren't any. The only ammo item card quote UN
quote is the ammo belt, which holds 500 bullets right, but
like an ammo card would be dope. And if, and here's the other
thing about an interesting ammo card is that like every we're
we'll get to it in inventory, but every inventory slot can
hold 100 bullets. So I would just have like a card
with 100 dots on it and then just like mark the dots that I
have ammo in. You know what I mean?
Like something right, But like, for example, like I think the, I
think the parentheses on the weapon card is how much ammo a
magazine can hold. So it would be like 20.
So it's got 20. So that does that mean like
every, there's not space on any, most of the cards to like even
just like put a little X for like an ammo that you're using.
So that's the thing that is I, I don't get how you would mark a
dot of ammo on the weapon card, but I like the idea of being
like if you shot a bullet, you spent a bullet like it's gone.
But then we get into a section where it talks about like going
out of ammo. So let's go into 33.2 special
weapon rules, which is before regular weapon rules, I guess.
But here's some special weapon rules.
So automatic weapons can attack twice in a single complex action
at the cost of reducing their reliability dice size by one
step. AD 8 becomes AD 6, and so on.
For this combat. We talk about reliability here
before we really get to weapons and talk about reliability.
Right, I must say, yeah, there's a way to order this.
So yeah. There again, I think an editor
could have cleaned up I think the the order of this a little
bit. After every round of combat and
win and when combat ends, every character does a weapons check.
To do so, roll the reliability dice for each weapon that was
used. So it's usage dice, right on a
one to three mark, a usage dot on the weapon, and if it's a
firearm, it's also out of ammo. That makes complete and total
sense. But I'm saying are we tracking
individual rounds or are we just tracking the out of ammo thing?
Because it doesn't make sense to do both, you know what I mean?
It kind of doesn't make sense to both because 1 is a
simplification of not having to track every single fucking
round, which I like better, right?
It's just if you ever hit one through 3, boom, it's gone or
whatever. So out of ammo firearms reduce
the wielders bullet count by the weapons magazine size, which is
in the parentheses by the reliability.
I would like to that and takes a complex action to reload.
I get it. So I'm but I'm kind of again
with the previous rule saying that you you mark a dot for
every bullet you spend the out. Of the dot thing.
What are you talking about? Just mark the dot dude.
I think there's just some, there's some friction here in if
you're marking every single dot, then it doesn't really make
sense to do the whole like usage eye out of it.
Well, think because you know how many bullets exactly you have in
a magazine. So if you suddenly just lose all
of them for no reason because you rolled on a one to three,
that kind of sucks. Or you're not tracking every
individual bullet. You're just tracking chunks of
bullets and magazines and stuff like that.
There's a little bit of, I think a disconnect and I think a
little bit of a cleaning up that could be done in the way that
you're tracking ammo, whether it's individually or all of it.
I get it for the automatic thing where because you might just
like RIP off like a bunch and you don't know how many, but for
for every round to do a weapon check.
And you could, you could theoretically like empty your
magazine, take a complex action, reload, fire at once and then
roar your weapon check, lose your magazine all over again and
you're 40 bullets down after shooting twice.
So it's just an interesting it's an interesting I see where
they're going for, but I think it's it doesn't I I in this game
specifically because bullets is awesome money.
Yeah, I would track every single fucking bullet individually and
I would only do the add of ammo thing for if you RIP an
automatic shot off and lose a bunch of bullets.
Anyway, I think that would be a cool way to clean this up.
So we also noticed so that actions in combat was 3.1,
attacking defence was 3.2, special weapon rules was 3.2.
Yeah, then we get enhanced and impaired with just three-point
3. Then we also get cover light and
heavy, which is 3.3. So again issues with the the
layout structure here a bit. But then again enhanced and
impaired. We already talked about enhanced
and impaired, which was just like a repeat of advanced
advantage and disadvantage, but this is a different 1.
So certain abilities, attachments and situations can
cause an attack to become enhanced or impaired.
When attacking an unawares target, exposing a target's
unique vulnerability, etcetera, it becomes enhanced.
Enhanced attacks always roll D12 for damage, and the inverse, if
you know you're impaired in your attack, whatever, you roll D4
for damage. So again, I I think the enhanced
and impaired earlier doesn't make sense if you have advantage
and disadvantage. It makes more sense here because
enhanced and impaired is an end to the odd thing which is
rolling in D12 than D4. Yeah.
So the earlier advanced and apparent, I think it's just a
could be deleted since it's just the same as advantage and
disadvantage. Sometimes you might get a free
attack which is like a point blank.
It's like a coup de One of my biggest pet peeves in the entire
fucking world is DMS and 5E when it's like, all right, they're
sleeping. I have a dagger, I'm going to
stab them in the neck, they're going to die and they're like,
OK, roll damage. All right, well, I rolled it
too. Well, they have a A3 armors.
They they have like armor and then but and 30 HP.
So you take 2 HP off the sleeping person you just stabbed
to the neck, roll for initiative.
And it's like, bro, what the fuck are we doing here?
Yeah, I think in OSC, because I've been running OSC recently,
I think the assassin has a like a + 4 chance to just insta kill
and then aware person, you know? Yeah.
Also in Wolves Upon the Coast, really the rule is like if
someone's not aware and you attack them, you just kill them,
you know? Which is a reasonable thing.
Oh, that's why I think you add like three more of those for
last time because why why why this last time?
I meant to keep adding it and I didn't.
I I've kept forgetting to put the F so I.
Stands for fuck. Yeah, no, it doesn't.
It stands for Very Nice things. After you're in the chat, you
know what we're talking about. So anyway, so then cover and
light and heavy. So cover is interesting because
it's fucking important and I like that in a game that
literally revolves around bullets and ammo and shit, I
would really, really like yeah, the cover.
Because basically what it says is being under no cover makes
attack against the target enhanced.
So if you're in the open, you're fucked.
Like you're like, you're not just normal, you're fucked.
Being in light cover gives you the normal rules against you.
So like, it is the game is designed for you to get behind
shit, which when you're shooting bullets at people is a
completely reasonable thing to do.
I want to get behind stuff. This of is probably my like
favorite part of the rules because it deals with guns like
like I thought the idea of like, Oh yeah, hey, if you have no
cover, every shots enhanced at you, I'm like, oh, that's
perfect because it that's how it works in real life.
If you are having a gunfight and you stand in the open, you're
the dead person. And then also like it, it
incentivizes actions for the players like oh, this is a cover
based game. Oh, it really is a cover based
game now, because if you're not in cover, you're fucked no
matter what. So.
I don't like it. Yeah.
And light. Light cover, overturned tables,
low walls, wooden fence, regular shit.
That's normal rules. Yeah.
And it's only heavy cover, like a concrete bunker, a high solid
wall, like a well guarded position.
Then the attacks are just impaired against you, not that
they can't hit you. And it does say cover can be
circumvented by flanking, forcing the enemy to move, using
weapons that ignore cover, stuff like that.
So I really dig this. I think it's great.
Yeah. 3.4 taking damage. Incoming damage first reduces a
character's resolve, which again, you have resolved.
You don't know how much yet. I'll be You have it still.
Like I didn't realize resolve was so much later in this.
Yeah, when there's all this, Yeah, when there's all this,
just zero, you become banged up, capital.
Banged up. If a banged up character takes
regular damage, including damage it carried over, they must
attempt a vitality. Isn't it Vigor?
It is vigor. All right.
So it should say vigor not it should say VIG not VIT are.
We totally. Is there vitality later in the
character section? I don't remember.
Oh God, I don't know. There's vigor at the beginning.
Is there vitality later? I don't know.
I guess we'll find out. So.
Maybe you have Resolve and Vitality?
I'm not sure we'll get to in character creation.
So they must attempt AVIT save minus the amount of damage they
have taken over their resolve. If they fail, they take critical
damage. OK so as far as this game goes,
what does critical damage mean? A character who takes critical
damage also gains the wounded condition and must make a will
save. If they fail the will save they
also gain the peril condition. Fear based attacks also reduce
resolve, but a banged up character who takes fear based
damage or is a will save instead of vitality or gains the panic
condition. A player character can spend 1
exploration turn tending to an incapacitated character, moving
one random condition from them and bring them back to
consciousness. Alternatively, a shot of
morphine can jolt them back in the consciousness for the
duration of 1 exploration turn. I will say this Morphine does
not jolt you back. I will.
Say this from absolute certainty.
As someone who's given a lot of morphine in my life, I think
what would be better here would be epinephrine, which in layman
terms would be adrenaline, which is the thing that will get that
heart up pumping. And I'll tell you that from
experience too. I'm going.
To take some morphine and go do vigorous activities.
Yeah, but I mean, I get it. I get it Like you're, you're,
you're, it's a painkiller. So you're killing the pains.
You can get back into it. But like the idea of a shot of
morphine jolting them back to consciousness again, adrenaline
or epinephrine, specifically epinephrine atropine would would
either of those things would be, in my opinion, a better use here
for the use in the game. Imagine getting on morphine and
having to go do anything. What I see what they're doing it
and like I, I get it. Like it totally makes sense.
I think I would just, I would just switch it out.
But I do it is what I do for my life.
So yeah, I get it. So enemy actions on their turn,
enemies can basically do the same shit that people can do
regular stuff. They replace all saves with
morale saves. And then humans would prioritize
these targets, flank and maneuver and stuff like that.
Enemy resolve works the same, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera,
right? Other stuff, things happen, blah
blah blah. Weapon attachments.
There are some you got scopes, extended magazines, heavy
stocks, suppressors, bipod, reflex sight, bayonet.
I love all these. They're great.
Scope removes the automatic tags.
You can't fire scope weapon with automatic.
I like that. That makes sense.
Plus plus 100% all rage bands. I dig it.
Removes light cover to no cover. Great heavy stock only mark a
usage dot during weapons checks on a one to two.
I love that I all of these are really really great.
Even like the bipod set up before combat or as a complex
action. While set up, automatic fire
does not reduce your reliability die size.
These are really well done. I like all of these.
There is a lot of good in this game.
Like there's a lot of good. I fucking love the scope, by the
way. I would I would take the scope
weapon attachment. All of its in a heartbeat.
Yeah yeah, yeah. Basically, if someone's not in
heavy cover, you're just enhancing all the time.
Fuck yeah, I would. But here's the interesting
thing. Why the fuck is weapon
attachments way down here when special weapons was like way up
here? Like it's just a weird order.
This is definitely Azine more. Why is anything in any order?
Yeah, why are we just now getting to character creation?
Yeah, I would love to just edit this and just be like, here, let
me, let me. There's nothing wrong with,
well, there's a couple s s that shouldn't be here.
There's a couple extra spaces and stuff, but let's just
reorganize some sections. Let's number them correctly.
And this would be a fucking banger.
Yeah. But anyway, so running into
character creation, who's to say why you decided to abandon if
you comfort the village or metro station in order to adventure
out into the mutant infested tunnels?
Just fucking because, right? So I.
Felt like it. I was feeling good that day.
You know, so no, there is no vitality as far as I can tell.
So they used Vita bunch instead of vig.
So that's just another thing to add to the list.
So stats 3D6 keep the highest 2 for each of your stats for D20
roll under is that is into the odd keep the highest 2 mouse
shredder 2 where they keep you get the three right?
Like yeah, do you have bad stats in this holy?
Shit, your chats fucking sucking.
Yeah, but it says if the sum of all four is less than 32, which
makes sense, right? SO3D6, the average of 3D6 is the
average of AD 6. Is what like a three 3.5?
Something like that. 3.5 yeah. So 7:00-ish on average. 4 times
gives you what like a 28 so it says if it's less than 32 you
can re roll your lowest one and then swap out any 2 values once
if you want. So it like they they there's
numbers that they want that's clearly what they want.
It's about 8 per yeah. But I mean you're but but the
game does say it's hard and you're talking about doing
impaired and enhanced a lot advantages and disadvantages,
things like that. So I will say they do make a
little bit harder, but it's, I mean, I don't think it's just
bad math. They, you know, it would say 36
if not, you know, instead of 32. So it's just rough, you know,
and I'm fine. I, I like it.
There's no reason not to fail a bunch.
Resolve the bullet. Two fives.
I want you to know what. What was your total?
You got a 5050 What and. What I I gave up and adding it
because we started talking and I stopped doing the math in my
head. But I got let's see, I had an
825, so I was at 18. OK, see this next one.
I'm at 6:00. So that puts me at 24.
Well, that's that's four. You already did your 4.
That's four, yeah. So you need to reroll the lowest
1. So reroll one of those fives.
It's a nine. Yeah, so you got 98 what, 7 and
five? That's terrible.
What's 9 + 8 + 7 + 5 9-8 and seven together is 8 * 3 is 24 by
like 29? Yes.
Yeah. I want you to know I was saying
987 and five in my head and on the nine key those were not the
buttons I was pressing. So that's why I put pause for so
long. I was like what's wrong with my
brain bro? See I just did 9-8 and seven is
the same as 888 which is 24 + 5. Yeah, I could have done that,
but I didn't wanna. Anyway, so so that's your
character stats. So you're, that's not, I mean,
yeah, good luck. Yeah, but so you get 1D6
starting resolve, you get. So keep rolling it out, buddy.
So let's roll A1D6 for your starting resolve, and let's roll
A1D6 for your starting bullets. Multiply the result by 10.
So roll 1D6 for your resolve. Just make character.
Let's just run it out. Yeah, OK.
My resolve is a four. Not terrible, all right, Roll
1D6 for your bullets. 2. So 2 * 10 you got 20 bullets,
plane bullets and it says these bullets are 76 twos, which makes
sense it's Soviet Union, that's what you put in an AK47.
I will say they bring up bullets later and and it's incorrect.
So will remind me to remember that I do like it says it'll
work in most weapons. We'll get to that in a second.
So cross reference sees 2 values on the table on the next page to
determine your character's background starting inventory.
Let's just jump to that right now because I love this.
I love this shit. So you got A4 and A2, right?
So what'd you get? Four and two occupation burglar.
Just like real life, I have a dagger and some lock picks.
Nice, there's some good shit in here.
A lock shit like this. So this is also very Into the
Odd. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Which of this is a not a criticism at all.
I think that's one of the, you know, they've taken a lot of
things from Into the Odd and use them well.
Like, I like the impaired and enhanced damage.
I like the kind of system of getting us some starting items
in the background. Yeah.
And I like each one you're on, so yeah.
Mutant hunter, Station Guard, Rat catcher, Bandit, Smuggler,
Cook. You know, just you're an oiler,
enter into the oil and bug catching that.
There you go. So so yeah.
So you always start with a battery operated flashlight, a
weapon of your choice, and then underlying items replace your
starting weapon. Cool.
So you don't get a weapon of your choice if you roll a
background that has a weapon. Yeah, but the one on the on the
background are pretty good. There's a bolt action rifle,
submachine gun, Harpoon gun, harpoon, you know.
Let's see. Real quick the I will say, and
this is just me being an asshole at this point, the underlining
for some of these is different from the underlining of other
ones. Some of them.
And some of them are bolded and some are unbolded.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just noticed that.
So getting him inventory, as we said, inventory is like mouse
Twitter. Even on your character sheet
you'll see it's got like the main hand offhand and then like
6 empty slots. It is just the master thing,
which is fine because it fucks. And Master's inventory is some
of the best inventory out there, which I think they borrowed from
somebody. Something else that I need to
read, but I love it. So characters carry items in
their inventory slots, one item per slot.
Items are one inch squares or two inch by 1 inch rectangles
printed on thick paper. And write that shit down.
Inventory split into two sections.
OK, so you get supply counters and inventory slots.
Let me bring up a character sheet real quick.
It's in the back of the book, which is fine, but you also do
get it as a download in the book.
So this is the character sheet. So it's got name, background,
current, XP, life, MXP. It's got spots for your 4 stats.
Then it does say VIT on it, not VIG.
Are we assholes? Like is it my talent?
No. It's vigor, no.
It's vigor, yeah. Yeah, that's.
It is bigger. A pretty egregious mistake,
actually. To put the wrong stat halfway
through the game to switch stats, Yeah, it's kind of crazy.
But so let's go back to the character sheet real quick.
And then there's a current and Max resolve, and then there's
live it up re roll and the reveling re roll.
I like that those are on there. There's the main hand offhanded
to worn items that you can have. So we'll get to it in a second.
But if you're wearing it, you can just you can snap.
You can just use it. I think it's a simple action.
But then if it's any of the six slots that are in your pack, it
takes a complex action to achieve from your pack.
So there are these are your inventory slots, But then you
have these counters up top the bed roll rations and battery
supply tracks, which is what it's talking about here.
So supply counters and inventory slots.
Supply supply counters are for battery charger rash in the bed
roll and then your inventory slots.
As I said, there's three types, the hand slots, the worn items,
the pack slots. We went over all of that
already. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah
usage dot. Most of them have three dots.
When all three dots are marked, the item is either depleted or
destroyed. A dot can be a race for 200
bullets. It's it's dots.
We've all played these games before.
Moving on. Conditions are placed in a
character's packed slots. The specific slot is chosen by
the player. One condition slash item per
slot. Conditions may stay in packed
slots. Conditions can only be removed
when their clear condition is met.
When all six are filled, a character's incapacitated.
So again, looking at condition cards, which is also listed on
here, we'll pull, we'll pull this up.
So it does say on the condition cards on the sheet, it says
exhausted, starving, wounded, banged up, peril.
It lists what it is. And then on the card itself it
says, for example, condition exhausted and then says clear
after a long rest. So every condition card here has
the clear condition underneath it.
That's great. Yeah.
If they're nice, little they're again, it's If you're gonna take
something from a mouse reader taking the inventory system,
it's the best thing you'd possibly take.
And. I'll take the best some.
I always love when condition, not always actually, but a lot
of times I really do love when the conditions are things that
take up inventory slots, especially when you have limited
inventory slots. That makes inventory management
like it's its own mini game, you know?
Yeah. Is that just?
Like a weird side thing that we don't pay attention to.
I think we've talked about this before where I think it's
incredibly clever, but I would never do it.
Yeah. Yeah, I feel like we've had this
conversation before. I think I like, I like, I like,
I think it's really smart to be like, hey, like you're hurting
so you can carry 1 less thing like that's great, but like.
But. But I just wouldn't do it.
Like something about it feel so meta that it kind of I think
that's what it is that that like it's one.
But again, it's one of those things that I think is
incredibly clever. I I mean all the end of the odds
do it because it does the core of the game care and mushroom or
all of it. It's great.
It's clever. I'll play with it, but I would
never put it in my game and I would never, I would never do
it. I like the flip actually.
In vast Lands and and Synthetic cream Machine by Luke Reyes,
there is a your powers and abilities and spells take up
inventory slots. So you can really only have like
as many powers as you can fit into your inventory.
And I like that. It's like a positive thing
though. It's like the flip, you know?
Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, I don't.
We should review that eventually.
Oh, yeah, we will. But I I just, I don't know.
I don't know why I'm like, just let me inventory just be my
stuff. You know what I mean?
Yeah, like if I got if I got a backpack in pockets, like I'm
like, I'm just putting stuff in it.
I don't know. I don't know.
But I think you'd like that take on it.
We'll go through it eventually, but yeah.
But again, it's into the odd and there's it's not a knock on this
game. It's just a a curiosity into the
odd that for some reason just is that the.
Odd thing Or is the mouse for the thing?
I can't remember. That no, it's into the odd.
It's Cairn. It's it's all of it.
Like, yeah, all the conditions. Yeah, I mean, especially, I
mean, you know, like a Karen a bunch and stuff.
But yeah, I don't live in a horror, you know.
So anyway, weapons and items. This is another thing too, where
I'm like, why? Why?
Why is the special weapon rules not with the weapon rules?
Yeah, that's a really, really amazing question, right?
Yeah. Why the weapon attachments with
the weapons? With the weapons, I don't know.
I don't know, I don't know. This thing needs.
There's a lot of solid, there's a lot of solid good here.
You know, like I, I mentioned in playing this, I'm interested in
how brutal the roles are, Although I will say that it does
say specifically modifiers affect your like the role, the
number you're rolling under and not your role itself.
But then should how that really gives you I?
Mean it's Robin Peter Paul like it's just it's just a way to
make the make the role more consistently simple than having
to be like, wait, do I add 2 or do I -, 2 do I add 2 -, 2 I.
Completely 100% agree with that alone.
Because it doesn't make a difference whether you're adding
two to the one or subtracting 2 from the other.
It's just easier to add it before you do the roll so you
know exactly what the number is. Yeah, and being.
Able to just roll a die and be like that's the number I don't
need to modify it yeah way more simple blame it shouldn't
playing us there's there's a lot of stuff in here that I'd like
and I would like to play around with but yeah a solid editing
pass would have done would have made this a really great Z you
know like. And yeah, I because again, we
said this. The game, The game.
The game. Yeah, the game in this is good,
but the product itself, yeah. Yeah, is it's, it's got issues
like literally like let me do, I'll do it.
Hit me up. He's dying to edit more stuff
so. So weapons and items 6.1 weapon
ranges. Guess what weapons have ranges,
guys, There's and then things happen.
There's long, there's extreme things like that.
Guess what? If you're in the wrong range,
you're impaired. And if you're in the the right
range, you know things happen, right?
Long range shots become harder to effectively place.
Reduce weapons damaged ice by one step.
Extreme range attacks of this range are always impaired.
It's cool. I like if, if, if cover's going
to matter and make the ranges matter and it's interesting.
It's range bands cool. It's exactly how you think range
bands would work. Armor.
OK, this is the only time armor is talked about.
Like in the entire freaking then.
They make no sense. You can mark a dot on armor,
bulletproof vest, helmets, makeshift Shields to reduce
incoming damage by two. My assumption is that there is
not really armor. It is just that like if you have
a bulletproof vest you have usage dots and the usage dot
just lets you reduce damage by two.
And then after you've marked the three dots the the piece of
armor is broken. Yeah.
And then you got to do that long rest action where you can.
Or just pick something else. Yeah, Yeah.
But like, there's no, there's no silk, there's no D4 damage
reduction. It literally is just mark a dot
reduced by two. Move on.
I'm fine with that. I think it works, yeah.
Nice and clean. So yeah.
Well, I think it and especially for this where it's like, you
know, you're not going to be, why would you damage?
So like it makes sense with the dot system?
Every empty item so I can hold 100 bullets?
Great. Firearms need the appropriate
ammo to be worn or held in order to be used.
Every firearm uses the same bullet. 776776 isn't a bullet,
it's 762. It's what they listed earlier,
but the same caliber uses currency.
For the sake of simplicity will make the following assumptions.
This is one of my favorite things in the entire book.
Bullet length doesn't matter. You can make bullets from your
evolver. You can take bullets from your
evolver and put them in your bolt action rifle.
Let's call it nuclear magic. I love that.
Great because it's like, wait, are they 762 or are they 223 or
are they 556? Like are they NATO rounds?
Are they 45? Like it would just be such a
giant pain in the Dick to just be like everything is 762.
If if it's an AK, you can sell a baby for it.
Like like that's that's it. I love that clips are assumed to
already have been put into a magazine or clip when you need
them. I will say I do appreciate that
they use magazine appropriately through the entire thing.
If I have one fucking knock. One of many knocks on all the
Warhammer books I love is when an author in the same fucking
sentence will interchange magazine and clip.
A magazine is not a fucking clip.
It's 2 completely different things that belong there to
completely different kinds of guns.
Warhammer stop calling magazines clips.
They're going to, they're going to see this so.
They fucking better magazines. Bullets are assumed to have
already been put in a magazine or clip and you need them for
instance when reloading. No need to simulate loading each
bullet into the magazine or having to swap them out because
that's a fucking pain in the Dick.
When loading a weapon with bullets, reduce, yeah, reduce
the number of bullets available in an inventory slot or item
holding bullets by the weapons magazine size if you're taking
bullets out of the weapon. Note how many ammunition dots
have not been marked. There are no ammunition dots,
Yeah. We're back.
Multiply that by the weapons bullets per attack and add that
number to whichever inventory slot you want to put the bullets
into. OK OK, they need to fix ammo.
If give me an ammo card that's got 100 slot 100 dots on it.
I'm just going to have a little piece of paper on the side
they'll have like just 100 dots on.
It yeah, or even just like the magazine, like like I would you
know, what I would want to do is just like if it's if it says 20,
I'm flipping it over and just putting a dot on the back of the
card every time. And once I hit 20 dots like that
fucking magazine, you know what I mean?
Like just something or like, oh, just magazines.
Just give me a magazine card. That I can just like.
Mark, you know what I mean like the ammo card or whatever, but
like you know, cool magazine with like dots on it, but there
is nothing there is nowhere to mark ammo dots like I can't find
them. Maybe I'm wrong.
I think they missed that there's no item card for ammo like
anything. So anyway, bedroll when sleeping
in a bedroll roll AD 6 on a 5 to 6 market uses dot if you're
sleeping on the surface at the mercy the elements.
Basically your bed roll can go bad, which sucks, and your
batteries can go bad, which sucks and you're you.
There's healing at it. Morphine restores 2D6 resolve to
yourself or an adjacent target is a simple action.
I mean, I'll feel real good, but I don't know how like resolved
I'll be on the morphine we talked about those feel.
Really great and feel like going to sleep.
There's any have? You ever had a bed roll go bad
on you before camping? You mean like when it starts to
tear and the phone starts coming out?
Yeah, we're like or if you have like an inflatable one like and
it stops holding air 'cause I have an inflatable like roll
because. You'll just be on the ground and
it'll be like puffed up around you.
I keep waking up 'cause I'm like sunk it in and my shoulders hurt
but this fucking sucks. I always got the ones that had
like a built in motor and it had like a never flat motor.
So like it senses the air pressure and if the air pressure
gets too low it like kicks itself on for a little bit.
That's fancy. Yeah, they're nice.
Yeah. I mean when I was travel, when I
was travelling, doing my job, I just brought a blow up measures
with me everywhere. I was just like cool, I got a
bed. All right.
Anyway, healing items, anti rod meds are a thing.
Single air filter for a mask can protect against harm for gases,
for stuff advancement. So the party gains one XP for
every bullets worth of valuable community supplies they bring
back to a sediment or station. Bullets gained from selling
loot, weapons, stuff like that do not count towards XP.
Community supply items are clearly marked as size.
So what this is saying is that the point of the game is
community, and what you're doing isn't just going around and
fucking around. You're going out to get stuff to
help your community, and if you want to advance, you advance by
helping your community. Any bullets you get for selling
shit or finding shit or doing whatever, what is just bullets?
And you can shoot shit with it. But to advance, you have to help
advance your community to advance yourself.
It's cool. I think I wish more people think
that way. You know, man, just, you know,
Western individualism, right? Yeah, you sound like a fucking
socialist right now, buddy. Yeah, yeah.
Anyway, anyway, when a character reaches the next level, they
gain 1D3 more resolve to a maximum of 15 and roll AD 20 for
each of their attributes. I think it's the only time they
say attributes all the time, not stats.
If they roll over their attribute, they may increase
their attribute by 1 to a maximum of 15.
So like you can advance kind of quickly, you know, from your low
numbers. And there is a little chart here
for the advancement. SO5 it's basically I there isn't
a consistent to get to level 0 requires 500XP no 0.
Zero to 1 is 501 to 2 is 15. Two to three is 3003 to 4 is
5004. Oh, wait.
Yes, OK. Thank you.
Yeah. Well then 5000 should not have a
number next to it. Or sorry, 5 should not have a
number next to it. Or just it should just or just
zero shouldn't be on this list. Or zero.
Shouldn't be on there. Yeah, you're.
Right. Both of them anyway.
So it's 515 hundred, 3005 thousand, 75111 thousand, which
is not consistent math, but it's fine.
And then we get to a bunch of stuff we're just going to cruise
through. So we're at Section 8 out of
like maybe 14. And then we get a weird kind of
mix of like gaming stuff and then stuff that's important of
the game and things. So we're going to cruise through
parts of this. So gaming rad.
There's GM best practices. It talks about presenting a
living world, being a fan of the players, telegraphing danger,
rewarding ingenuity. Bunch of OSR shit, right?
Infuse everything with Sovietica.
Just keep it, you know, calm, say comrade a lot and you're
good. Kill fascists in game.
The reason I say game so that you are aware is that Twitch TOS
is a thing and we can get banned for saying this shit if we're
not talking about a video game. Yeah, that's right.
The nuclear war that destroyed the USSR has encouraged certain
people to unfurl the banner of Nazism.
Also other things have encouraged people to do that.
I love this. Like Soviet flight ad.
That's great asking for saves. It talks about when to ask for
saves here, which is interesting and like when you would do the
save. So again, they do VIT instead of
VIG, but saves to avoid consequences through strength
and endurance. Like it's just avoiding through
the thing that it listed before. It talks about consequences,
which I really, really like. I think this is a good thing to
have if you have a game where you're like, there are
consequences, right? And it's not like APBTA that
gives you just like a pick list of fucking choose your own
adventure. Actually, like giving example
consequences is such a good thing to have.
So it talks about like if you're doing danger, how much danger to
give, if you're having them lose time, how much time to lose,
what kind of conditions work, like when to mark usage dots,
when to make them do certain things.
I think that's a great thing that if you have an OSR game
that just says you suffer consequences, give some
consequence examples, give some context to like what the bad is.
Talk about adventures here and like what you're doing,
Supplies, resources, useful items, things like that.
Phases the of an adventure which is investigation, exploration,
extraction, incursions, which is delving into specific like
locales, places and it talks about like area sizes, actions
you can take during exploring, searching rooms, light and
darkness, patrols, traps, everything.
A lot of great stuff. Great picture here of like a
bottom top brutalist architecture.
Honestly Soviet brutalist architecture, some of the most
beautiful shit in the fucking world.
I don't give a fuck. I think it's amazing.
People were all in on brutalism and then people got all out on
brutalism and started talking shit.
Fuck you. So here's a weird thing that I
think should be way earlier because I love it.
Treasure shards. We don't know who broke the
world, but we know what did it. Even now.
Stalkers Dell, The most dangerous fucked up irradiated
recesses of the former SRS defined their own uranium based
holy grails. Shards of the SAR Bomba, the
largest thermonuclear device ever detonated.
Overtime these shards have congealed the radiation around
them and grown unstable. Arcane and dangerous shards have
been known to attach themselves to living things when their
container fails or is opened, granting the creature powerful
abilities, horrifying changes, and really fucked up mutations
in their bodies. Consuming A Shard and inquiring
and acquiring a power or mutation takes an expiration
turn and always reduces the consumer's resolve to 0,
triggering all the requisite saves.
You can just fucking die, right? Using a power requires a will
save. If the save is failed, the
character takes on the RAD condition or the power fails at
the players discretion. This condition cannot be
removed. See with the table on the next
page for possible mutation powers.
Roll me AD 10. 5 blood affinity. You need blood to survive and
rations won't cut it. This lets you shape your blood
into horrifying weapons. Nice.
The other options are mutant arm, glow eyes, mind meld,
juggernaut, phase time walk, telekinesis, electric field, and
feral. This fucks.
Yeah definitely There's a mutant on the front cover.
Why is this buried deep in the GM section and not literally in
the character creation section or in the character rule
section? Is like a core part of the game.
I don't know, is this kind of like a secret thing that they
discover as they play? I mean, we don't know because
this is all but it says we don't know who broke the world, but we
know what did it. So people are aware of the SAR
bomba shards like I I, and it's not like someone, it's not like
every player is just going to like stop at GM advice like
they're going to read this shit. You know that is.
True. This is a cool, cool, cool thing
that adds another cool element to the game.
It should be higher talk about community supplies, talking
about there's community supply tables, which is full of stuff,
surface exploration. So there's like a mini game here
of literally like making a map, which is really cool.
So you roll for different landmarks and then you do this
whole thing where you you take out a piece of paper, you you
roll your dice and those are landmarks.
You draw lines that represent roads, You draw lines that
represent railroads. You name your sediments.
You do a whole thing. So you can you just use this to
create like a whole map, which is dope.
Reminds me a little bit of the maps in Torch Vine or Varts
Vine. Yeah, yeah, that too.
But like Torque, you could like put your die down and then put
the other day down and do a thing, remember.
True. Yeah.
But yeah. Weather tables, encounters and
reactions table. There's a whole there's creature
cards here, so bandits, Austern's Mountaineer, Spetsnaz
guy, and they It's cool because each one has the stats, morale,
resolve, defiance, and armor. But D 4 -, 1 armor?
What the fuck does that mean? Because armor is just usage dots
Is that the number of usage dots?
Makes no sense. I might have jumped over that
armor in the enemy section though.
It's got a tax which is any firearm D10 armor piercing ammo.
But it also lists once to continue serving the USSSUSSRS
intelligence directorate, which is cool.
I like the once thing. There's a there's D4 of them and
there's a critical you got absolutely shredded turn into a
fine red mist. You die on the spot at the
spetsnaz guy crits you love that.
And then there is like D6 prestigious petsnats guys, and
then it lists like six of these guys, But on some of the other
ones there's like under bandit, it's D6 infamous bandit.
So it gives you like the breakdown of like who they could
be. So each one of these is really,
really cool. Like each card has a lot of
stuff. Your stature attacks,
information once criticals against you, different powers
they can have. Like all of them have AD 6
table. These are great.
These are really great. I love these a lot.
Yeah, I think the armor is. He doesn't say, but I would
assume that it's like how many usages of armor they have,
right? Because just -2 to incoming
damage or armor, right? Yeah, that could be explained a
little bit better. Then we get to section 12,
Stations and trains, where we talk about stations and train
under 12. We have 11.1 in the metro, which
is it's always weird to have 11 after 12.
I think that's just another error in the layout here.
We have the train, we have the train crew.
So there's a lot of stuff here that we get into.
But like there's a loyalty table for people that are like the
train crew and like there's start talking about proletarians
and bourgeois dice and stuff. I mean, it gets, there's a lot
of world building stuff here that's really.
Interesting. Yeah, there's a lot of tools for
the the game Master that have a good time setting this up and
like figuring how things are working.
You know I love a good map making procedure too so.
Yeah, it's crazy with a loyalty table when you start getting
into this like proletariat and bourgeois dice, you add 1
proletariat die for every loyalist on the crew and one
bourgeois dice for every saboteur on the crew and like
creating loyalists and saboteur NPCS and stuff like it gets.
It gets so deep here. 13 in settlement, settlement creation,
there's a whole bunch of tables here to create settlements and
stuff. 14 is factions and then you get like a whole bunch of
different ways to do factions with themes and assets and goals
and defining new factions and all sorts of stuff.
The faction turn, which is great.
You get to the appendix, which is kind of which is like weapon
cards, but again there's no usage dots on these and there's
no ammo dots that you can use. And then we get to the character
sheet on the back, which again has VIT instead of VIG, and then
a piece of Soviet art on the back.
And that's the game. Pretty cool.
I like a lot of things about this game, you know?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Why don't we talk about that in the review scores?
No. I say yes.
So this this is going to be a Zine, not a book, which I think
will be nicer to this than if we did a book.
Honestly, going through this, I was like, damn, it's really
getting off easy because we're not going to grade it on the
book layout. I.
Mean it's 40 pages. We could call it Book.
I don't know, it doesn't feel bookie to me.
No, it's a Zine. So we here on the show, for
those that are unaware give we quantify our terrible opinions
with numbers. Zines are different than books.
Books have 5 scores, zines have 3 scores.
We do the difference because for this exact reason, like a lot of
zines have like less art, the layout sometimes a little bit
simpler, there's a little bit less to it.
So to to grade something like this versus something that's
like 400 pages on the same scale, it just has never, never
felt right to be started doing it this way.
So we score scenes on three scores.
We do it on visuals, which is all of the visuals of the book.
It is the visual layout, it is the art, it is everything rule
set, which is if it's a new rule set, do we like if it's adapted
rule set, how well is it adapted?
And then vibes are little bit of a catch all, but also like if
you how do the visuals and rule set work together so that when
you close the final page of the book, you want to play the game,
That's kind of the vibes. Do you really when when you're
done reading this, do you want to fucking play it?
And that's the vibe. So all of them are up to 10
points each and for a total of 30 on Zenes.
So visuals we got to, we got to put the layout somewhere.
Yeah, I think the layout's going here.
It's got to because I mean, we can't be that nice that we're
ignoring literally the glaring issue in the entire book, which
is that my fuck didn't need an editing pass because there's so
many. I've never seen a game with more
errors in it and like literally to the point that like their own
itch address is a placeholder text, which is crazy to me.
So some positives though. There's good art.
Even for Zen, Zen's always have a little bit.
Not always, but they most often like have more sparse art.
This has got some good pay, like a little page ending art and
some like full pages scattered in between, and they're all
really good. I think we skipped like the
raccoons driving a car the. Raccoons driving a car?
Yeah, we did. But then that's a great piece.
And the cover Fox love the colors.
Yeah, so positives neg and the layout with minus the errors
would be fine. It's just black and white text.
I I'm a big fan of usability if we were given the usability
score. Anytime you can do 1.11.2, like
you can literally just be like hop to section 32 instead of
being like go to chapter 1 and find stats.
You can literally just go no, go to 1.2, right?
I love that. Section 3 two.
Which Section 3 two are we talking about?
This is the problem. There are so many errors in
this, it's crazy. And that has to be factored in
somewhere. So yeah, are we doing that in
visuals? We do it in vibes like I think
we do. It in visuals.
OK. OK.
All right. Well then.
Unless you have a bait. Listen, I'm not married to the
idea, so if you have a way you prefer to go about it.
I mean, we could do it in vibes. It's kind of like just the catch
all a little bit for this because it does bring my vibes
down pretty hard that I. Felt like that.
I caught air. Like crazy.
Yeah, let's just let's just let's just throw that in vibes.
And because visuals we keep to visuals.
The layout is fine. It's it's adequate.
It's got a decent art, It's got a OK cover and it's got a great
cover. That like if layout is part of
visual, there's parts of the layout that I do not think are
good. There is a page that Lily has
two sections in the top right corner and the rest of it is
empty. Fine, we'll put individuals if
that's the case. Fuck bro.
Yeah, it's going to, it's going to hurt.
I would. Yeah, it's it is, man.
It is. So I mean.
Wherever we put it, it's going to be sub 5 I think.
Yeah. I mean, I think it's going to I,
for me personally, I think it makes the most sense.
Here is a visual aspect of going through it.
OK, So what are your thoughts? I'm thinking, oh God, I don't
know. I'm thinking like a four,
honestly. I'm.
Thinking like a four too, because again, and this is
specifically because of all of the errors throughout the
layout, it's insane. It's like I lost count of them.
Like there's just so many. But I think the cover art is
gorgeous. I think the use for the most
part. Is great.
The full page art is all really cool, you know.
So this is mostly because again, This is why I almost kind of
want to do it as a book just so we can kind of throw this in
there. But it doesn't matter it this
score is mostly for when going through the layout of the book,
how many errors are in here, which again, and this feels like
rad like .8 and didn't quite roll over to one point O as a
release, because once again, there's so many errors that you
would think a publisher would catch or an editor would catch.
But yeah, so rule set. OK, so we it's it's it's it's a
mouse rotor hack, but there's also a lot of other cool stuff
involved with it. I love the use of the bullets as
both currency and ammo. I think I I do think there's
some issue with the way that the ammo usage needs to be kind of
sorted out. Yeah, I like it.
Inventory system, I really like what else was like really fun
and interesting in the rules. I know there was a bunch of
stuff that we talked about. I like the rest actions.
I think those are fantastic. Cover is really, really great.
Yeah, Cover's great. Yeah, there's a lot of rules
added on to this, like kind of mouse Ritter into the odd frame
and like. Those are good.
This is a good idea. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I I really
love the the occupation and starting items as your resolve
and bullet like rolls. Those are really great.
I mean, again, we've talked about this before.
I think the game is really good and I just think the product is
not very is is is less good than the quality of the game because
of just again, how many errors are are like.
And I think what gives me is how, how, how easy the errors
are to fix. Like, they're so obvious.
You know what I mean? It's not like you accidentally
put like too many commas or like spelled a word wrong.
It's like, literally like. Well, I'm looking at the
comments on hippolyta dot H dot IO back slash rad and someone
else pointed out almost everything we pointed out in the
comment four months ago and got no reply.
So I'm wondering if there's going to be make an update or
they're gonna fix it. I don't know.
I don't. Know we'll see, we'll see.
So anyway, so rule set. I like this, I like this.
I think I would play the shit out of this, especially as as an
into the odd person. I think I think I think it was a
good comparison to compare this and nuked as because I say this
to people all the time. I actually recently had a
conversation with somebody where I was like, I feel like Nave and
Cairn are like opposite sides of the same coin, or they're like a
very similar game, but one is more kind of BX and one is into
the odd. And I feel like this and Newt
are kind of the opposite sides. I will say that, and I said this
before and we talked about a lot in the review, that nuke just
one of my favorite hacks of all time.
I think they did a really, really good job of taking the
very core of nave and as little as they could and then added a
bunch of Black Hat to it. And I think they really take
this game really takes the core of mouse Rider and the inventory
system and then add so much cool stuff to it.
I really, really, really like a lot of what they do.
So what are you? What are you thinking for this?
You know, I'm thinking that you give me a number.
Well, I mean, how do you feel about it?
Like it's like, are you thinking it's like really good?
Do you think it's like really good?
I think I'm really good too. I do think this is really,
really good. I think we need to give more
really goods and less grades to some stuff.
Yeah. I mean, I'm not I'm not on great
on this one just because in the rule set there's some rules that
I yes, that that aren't they need some.
More yeah, the something with ammo needs to be sorted.
Something with ammo cards needs to be sorted.
There's some, there's some things that I think that with,
again, an editor being like, hey.
Dan, honestly, I'm talking myself out of A7 at this point.
I'm now thinking of 6. No, I I'm a good on A7, I'm good
on A7, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think the
issues bring it down to A7 and there's not outside of ammo like
name me something else. Hey, how does advantage work?
Is it? Which one of those?
Events there, there's just a bonus advantage, but yeah, so
vibes. What are your thoughts on vibes?
So again, this vibes is just like how we feel like when we
close the cover. Like, do you want to play this?
Do you want to play this game? Yeah, I feel solid about this.
I would definitely play this and I'd consider running it as well,
just because I like all the GM tools and the map building.
I think that's really cool, but I don't know.
It's not, you know, blowing my hair back, you know?
Yeah. You know I'm at about 7:00 for
this one. That's, I mean, yeah, I was, I
think it was between like a six and A7 on this because I think
for the same ring like I would, I would definitely play this.
It'd be fun to prep this to like, build a settlement, do all
that. Kind of stuff.
I think that's what I'm more excited about, honestly, yeah.
To prep it, I'll play it. But the problem again, like
again, what what we what we talk about with vibes and how I've
kind of centered it in my head, I don't know if it's the same as
you, is that I like, if do the visuals reinforce the rule set?
Do the rule set reinforce the visuals And the way that those
two work together, Do you want to play this game is how I've
come to vibes, right? Yeah, man, the errors really
just kill my eyes. Really.
Drag it down. Like, which is unfortunate,
which is unfortunate because again, it's not like it's
literally would take like 1 pass.
And that's what kills me. So it's like, oh, you throw this
in there, throw that page number in there, throw that page number
in there, unless your page was the whole thing.
Let's rearrange where weapons go.
Let's fix the numbers that are wrong.
Boom, this slaps. You know what I mean?
So what are you thinking? If you said seven, I'll go 7,
but I'm between the six and seven on this.
I'm also kind of between 6:00 and the seven.
I don't know. I don't let you make the call
so. I vibes is also kind of a bit of
a catch all. I like this.
I think I'm going to go 7 on this because I think it deserves
like it deserves A7 deserves some love because I do really
enjoy this and again, like it's hard to separate out the errors,
but if you if I don't think about the errors the game, I
really. Like the game?
I agree. I agree.
So let's go with seven on vibes, and that's going to be an 18.
And I, I don't know, to kind of reinforce yourself.
And I also think like the average person going through
this as a product to play at their table is going to be
slightly annoyed by the errors and maybe a little a little
confused by them. But they're not going to be as
as like zoned in to them as we are as people who just deep dive
this. But that's The thing is that's
the thing too is like it. None of them are like we've
looked at games before where like some of the errors are like
I don't understand because this is fucked up right?
This is not this. This is literally and this is
the thing that kills me. It's just like they're so easy
to fix. This literally is just like you
have two 3 point twos just make one to 3.3 like that's the.
Is really the one for playing that I would have to, you know.
Yeah. But that's just a question of
like, I, I don't, I don't know it, it feels like it makes sense
in their brain, but like maybe just a little bit of explanation
was missed where it's like, yes, I get that you're tracking all
your bullets, but then the ammo thing.
But then you talked about the ammo card and the dots, but
there's no dots. Like I think that feels less
like that feels just like maybe a tiny bit undercooked, but it's
not like it's the thing that's like page XX kills me where I'm
like like that doesn't really make that big a fucking deal
because there are two page numbers.
You can just delete it and would be the big deal.
And that's what kills me is just the errors are so like easy to
catch and easy to fix and don't really affect like the game in a
way. It just affects the product.
So that's why. But I do really like this.
What sucks is that like if there were no errors in this game,
visuals would probably be at a six or seven two and this game
would be up there in like in the 20s.
Yeah, I agree. Because again, visuals in this,
to clarify, is mostly a score of the errors in the layout because
we have to put it somewhere because it's so egregious.
In other games where there's like one or two little things,
we just kind of ignored it in scenes because this is like,
it's whatever. It's a Zine like, listen, if you
put together your Zine with your little small crew and maybe just
you and one other person or you and two other people and there's
a couple errors, Yeah, it's. Whatever should happen.
Yeah, but yeah, these are there's just so many, but quick
reminder. So again, it's a great game.
I I mean, I definitely think you should go to Hippolytus itch
page and snag this. Hopefully there will be some
updates in the future for it just clean up all of these
errors. But otherwise, again, I would
love to play this game. I think it's great.
The jam is going on right now, the radioactive jam.
It's a itch dot IO slash jam slash radioactive dash jam.
I'll make sure that that is in the links below.
You definitely want to check that out.
Check out this game. I think it's only like 5 bucks
on their itch page again, that is and that is just Hippolita
HIPOLITA dot it, Hippolita. That's right Hippolita dot itch
dot IO and again that will be linked below.
Fun, cool game, just again great good game, less good product,
which we run into a couple times this year.
Editors are important people, so have get one.
That's it. That's all we got.
I've no idea what we're doing next week.
I have one thing that I need to talk to Hunter about that we're
doing next week. Probably another short Zine, but
that is our episode for today. Thank you for listening.
We will try to be a little bit more consistent in our schedule
going forward. Yeah.
And that's us. All right.
Bye.