An RPG Folder You Once Smooched

Another chapter in this unfolding story.

How this works, for the record: I open random PDFs (I usually close my eyes and click) in my gaming folders and I snip the title, then I give a very quick, short, off the cuff response to what I see. Usually this means I haven't read the thing completely if at all. Sometimes I dive deeper, sometimes I just say a sentence or two.

So here goes another batch.

Paragon: Universal Role-Playing Game by Sean Boyle. Right off the bat, the title isn't going to grab me. But this is only because a) I'm not a huge fan of superhero games and b) I'm not a huge fan of universal systems. Those are my biases going in.

Not that this is a supers game. It's universal. But that cover art by Adrian Reece (which is a bit too early-age digital for me) screams SUPERS.

Um... you need d4, d6, d8, d10, and d12. So no d20 on this bad boy. Plus you need a deck of Paragon cards. A PDF of the cards comes with the game so you can print them out. They're simple black line art so that's no biggie. The cards are like special effects, such as Lucky Break. That type stuff.

Oh man... there are 13 stats for a character. There's a max load table (lifting I guess?) with decimals. So those are not giving me a warm and fuzzy. There's a list of backgrounds and weaknesses, which feel like GURPS-style Adv/Disad. Which is totally fine, of course. It's an intuitive concept and I don't know why people shit on it sometimes.

There's a beefy list of mental disorders, which is a huge callback to classic RPGs that tried to model everything. And this game is definitely in that lineage. It wants to simulate everything it can so you can play any genre you like. Of course, from a game design nerd perspective, this is a fool's errand and no one should endeavor to do it. What you usually end up with is a textbookish set of all-things-being-equal rules that might fit well in an empty white playing space but is clunky and uninspiring when you try to use it in a genre or in a very person setting.

Not poo-pooing this game at all. It's a fleshed out labor of love. But generic systems are just not inspiring to me anymore and I don't believe they accomplish the task they want to accomplish, in the end. At least not for anyone other than the game designer and those few people who for some reason love the blank white space of such a game.

Hypertellurians by Frank "Mottokrosh" Reding is a sci-fantasy RPG... and I really really love me some sci-fantasy. It is a Creative Commons game, which is rad because you can make your own Hypertellurians content and put it out to the world.

The text says it is compatible (more or less) with most old or new adventure games. I'm not sure what that means since game mechanics are pretty disparate between games. But it does look like the game has six character classes or types, so maybe it's got some strong D&D DNA in it?

The text says that the rules use "natural language" so there's lots of room for interpretation, which is good. But also I can see that the characters have numbers rating stats. So it's a mix.

A big portion of the charsheet is inventory slots. One of the key principles of the game is that what you carry defines you. This is certainly a strong callback to old school D&D in which the thing that differentiates two level 1 fighters is that one has a club and the other has plate mail and a sword. Big difference. Also, games like Knave and Into the Odd certainly put a high premium on inventory. I'm also doing this to some degree in GOZR. Anyway, I like it.

I just flipped through and saw a power called Magnificent Mucus Membrane. That's a winner.

The game's art is a mix of custom art and what I think are old public domain sci-fi pieces that kick a lot of ass. The cover by Anna Katariana Molla is pretty sharp. I snagged a print copy of the game and it looks not too shabby. It's on the edge of being a little bit too desktop publishing for my taste, but it's pulled back just enough to be good.

The character sheet is fantastic. It's drawn, and there's a painted version. I can't see who the artist is, though. I might be stupid. But there is a Skullfungus version too! And we all love some Skullfungus.

In the Heart of the Sea by Goblin's Henchman is a one page dungeon. Or more accurately, it is a one page seafaring hexcrawl procedurual thingie. It's only one page. Henchie gives us three "hex flowers", which are big hexes with 19 smaller hexes inside. Each day you roll 2d6 and use the navigation directions hex flower to see which hex you end up in. Each hex has some kind of encounter or trouble or other event. It looks like a very simple, fast way to determine sea travel events if you end up on the high seas in a hexcrawl kind of campain. I'm gonna say neato!

That RPG Folder Named Desire

A continuation of this series right here.

In a Strange Land by James D. Hargrove, hardest of the Hargroves, is a pulp fantasy hex crawly game.

Layout is clean, art is very cool. It's a short game clocking in at 8 pages. Tight.

The opening paragraph has a cryptic reference to a "solo-play board game of the early 80s". I believe this might be a reference to Dwarfstar Games' Barbarian Prince, but that's just a wild conjecture since I know nothing of that particular lost artifact of the past.

Mechanics are interesting. Blows are resolved by subtracting the Fighting scores of opponents to get a modifier, then making a 2d6 roll and modifying it with the number you got. There's a table then that you look at and if your final result is on the table it will tell you how many wounds you dealt. This is really interesting to me because it means the scaling isn't intuitive. For example, if you end up with a 6 you have scored 1 wound. But if you get a 7 you score no wounds. A 12 is 3 wounds but a 13 is zero wounds.

Weird, but neat. Not something I'd be attracted to in an RPG. But I'd give it shot for fun because it is so damn weird.

Much of the other content is related to hex travel. How far can you go in a day, how much food do you have, etc.

I dig how sorcery is handled. PCs are not wizards. Sorcerers are evil, alien, sinful, wicked, dangerous. Much of what they do is reduced to a single d6 roll where, on a 5-6, they deal wounds to every PC in the group with a blast of wicked energy. Cool beans.

Seems like a fun little game. Not too complicated. Very focused on exactly what you see on the cover: pulp fantasy hex crawls.

Echoes of the Labyrinth by Scott Malthouse is a Tunnels & Trolls hack. I know very little about T&T in terms of game play, so I'm taking a look at this one as a total noob without any idea what I'm talking about.

It's a short game that weighs in at 16 pages. It cuts right to the chase by telling us that it's a traditional GM/Player game (GM = Heart, Players = Yearning Delvers... I'm down with that!) and giving  us the core mechanics right on page one. In this game you only use d6s. You make skill rolls on 2d6 + mods vs. a target.

Combat is different. All combatants on a given team make 2d6 + mods roll and then everyone adds their results together. The other side does the same. Compare the rolls to see who was the victor. The difference between the rolls is divided among the losing side as points of damage, which are distributed as the losing side sees fit.

That's very interesting. Is that part of classic T&T? It's a very cooperative method, it seems. If I'm down to a single hit point and you have ten then maybe you absorb all the damage so I don't die. There's a big meta-gaming aspect to that, which is taboo in some RPG modes, but which doesn't have to be taboo. I am not sure I love it, but I do find it terribly interesting.

Characters have six abilities that are generated by rolling 3d6 each... which of course is exactly what classic D&D does. But that's expected to me since I know that T&T came out a mere year after OD&D and is inspired by it.

I like how monsters are statted-up. They just really have 3 elements. FR = Foe Rating; this is how many hit points the monster has and half of the FR is it's Combat Points (bonus to attacks). Armour = how many points of damage the creature can ignore. Special = whatever special abilities or notes it has. So monster listings are super short.

This is an easy game. Based on reading it alone I can see that it would play fast and free. I like that the game's central conceit* is that it takes place in The Great Labyrinth, which is potentially unlimited in size and scope, possessing entire cities and nations deep within it. I dig it. I would play this game.

*You know, I have seen the phrase "the central conceit of..." many times and I only assume know how to use it. I am assuming here. It's one of those phrases like "damp squib" that I have heard and never fully understood except through context. Weird.