A continuation of the fine, fine tradition of randomly opening PDFs in my massive library of RPG PDFs and dashing out my off-the-cuff first impressions. I do this every so often, such as here, here, here, and maybe even here. And other places too.
Today's method: Open the folder marked "new", close eyes, click on something.
Even though I actually own physical copies of the first six Conan books in this series, I'm not terribly familiar with it. I don't know the system at all. But it's a BIG DENSE MEATY looking game and I'm intimidated.
Even though there's at least one Simon Bisley cover on this series, the thing overall just isn't barbaric enough for my blood. It looks too much like a vanilla D&D 4e or 5e fantasy game. I want blood, dammit! This feels slightly softened for some reason.
Next up... this looks positively fantastic. I think I probably made a post about this when I first picked it up, maybe on FB or something. Anyway, the design is like an old comic book, which I truly appreciate. The fact that the art and layout is attributed to "R. Dumb" is delicious.
Call of Cthulhu Cosmically Horrific Comix #1 "Sermon of Sludge" is an adventure scenario for use with the classic Call of Cthulhu horror RPG. Like most CoC books, this one richly outlines a situation and presents environs and characters to interact with, all leading to some nasty outcomes. In this case, a comet set to deliver some nasty stuff.
The book has a lot of pre-generated characters, plenty of maps and other handouts, and lots of fun cool art.
Definitely worth having, just to look at if nothing else.
A game you can play across generations.
Violence as a last resort
Challenge matters, threats are real
If in doubt, do it like BX
Use oral culture techniques
Avoid 3rd person, try to use ‘I’ and ‘We’
Geese are treasure
No weapons
Courtesy instead of Charisma
XP for Friends and Food
Pretty good list. Let's you know up front what you are NOT getting into. This will not be a game of dungeon-crawling and monster-slaying. This will be a fairytale type of game, possibly kid-friendly, definitely violence-averse. Cool.
So basically this is a game with a very specific setup. You and all the other players are from the same village or family and your mom is sick. Also, the goose is missing. This is bad because geese are super important and valuable. You must help your mom and get that goose back!
And if you resort to violence anywhere near a goose you're in big trouble because those bastards have a demonic berserker rage mode.
Interesting game concept. I don't know if Patrick developed it beyond this "proto-design" doc from 2020. Here's a blog post he made about it.
Oldskull Game Epansions I: Character Creation by Kent David Kelly is a big fat book of character creation optional rules, tables, and clarifications of existing rules for Old School Essentials, or really any B/X style game. It's got lots of ability score rolling methods, exceptional ability score rules, tables for appearance, alignment and deities, personality, skills, etc. The list goes on.
The book looks fine. It might suffer a little from over-production, IMHO. It has a slight tinge of that early desktop publishing era mania where you felt like you had to use all the buttons on the program. But maybe that's unfair of me. It does not have a garish watermark and the font is easy to read. So I'll back off that a bit. It looks fine. I just don't like the header and footer very much. Something about them is too busy for what the book is and is trying to do.
It has a lot of art, which seems to be a mix of public domain and clip art. And it's all good stuff. I think this is a nice little resource to have in your back pocket if you're gonna run some straight-up D&D type shit.
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