The Gloom that Befell My RPG Folder

Hell's bells, I haven't done one of these posts since 2023.

To clarify: My RPG Folder series is where I open my folder of RPG PDFs and randomly click on a few. I give them a once-over scan or read and I write my thoughts pretty much as I'm scanning. These are not full-throated reviews, just "at a glance" thoughts. For fun.

Nobody reads these. I'm literally talking to myself right now. But I'm in that kind of mood. So here we go.

Opening folder... hitting "page down" a few times... double clicking with my eyes closed...

Oh. This one was just a one-page dice template for a custom d10. I'll click on something else...

Files For Everyone: Nashi by Alexander Augunus. Killer cover art by Luis Prado. Interior art by Prado and Chan Yue Rong. We're off to a good start because I have no idea what this is. No memory of picking it up. And it's for Pathfinder, which I've never played.

"Nashi are short, stocky plantigrade humanoids whose body is covered in thick fur that often makes them appear stouter then they are. Although viewed as a disparaging remark by the nashi, the term “raccoon folk” does aptly summarize a typical nashi’s appearance, as they possess furred bodies, long tails, mask-and-ring fur patterns, and nailed digits."

Given that the product came out in the 2010s and features a raccoon-ish character sporting a big gun, I think this was likely inspired by Guardians of the Galaxy. Which is cool. I love that movie.

Um... ok so this is a species for Pathfinder. Now, what I do know about Pathfinder is that it is the spiritual successor to D&D 3.5 edition, being largely the same game by a different name. I missed that whole era of gaming. I ducked out of D&D in the early 90s and didn't really pick it back up until I discovered the OSR in 2013.

The Nashi are an industrious lot. They love hard work and building things. Cool. This is a 21 page PDF and it's packed with info about these critters. From culture to cuisine to ethnic groups. Way more information that I'm comfortable with in an RPG. But I'm happy it exists. Looks like the author went to a lot of trouble to build something fun and detailed. Bravo.

Ok... full confession. I don't just look at whatever I click on. If it looks like something I don't want to talk about right now I just skip it. I just clicked on something that is super slick looking, polished as fuck, and boring as hell to my eyes right now. I'm skipping it.

Next one I clicked on was an ejection of desktop publishing overkill, complete with background imagery that interfered with text. It's also a D&D 5e type thing and I just can't be bothered right now. I'll skip it too.

Oh? What's this? O Povo do Buraco 1 by Carlos Silva, illustrated by Diego Santos. This looks interesting...

Ah, this is a Lamentations zine. But let's carry on anyway. I'm curious.

I won't comment on the writing because I assume the author's first language is not English. I will, however, comment on layout. There are some strange line breaks in here. Such as, on page 2, a line that breaks in the word "where". You never want to line break on a word like that. Super weird.

Since this is a Lamentations zine, it is going to contain references to excrement and sex. In this case, there is a local food (Vatapá) made by some scoundrels and it makes you addicted. One of the side effects is that you have to shit a lot and you might shit your pants. In fact, there are actual rules for it, with a d2 table dictating if you shit your pants or not.

There are a number of weird magic items that do strange things, such as a belt that makes you lose weight every day until you die. Oh, and there's a magic dildo that gets you pregnant with a dog-octopus baby, regardless of your sex. The drawing of this little bastard is actually cute.

But this is not for me. I don't mind the edginess, but often it feels like edginess for the sake of it. And I wouldn't want to play in or run a game where the central theme is shitting your pants and playing with dildos. I did enough of that in junior high.

I wish people would put the publication dates in these things. Maybe I'm stupid but I can't find it. Last update on DTRPG was 2018 so maybe that was it.

This next one is another desktop-publishing-nightmare and it's for Pathfinder and it's over 200 pages. I'm skipping it.

ReMemorex by R. M. Sean Benjamin Jaffe and illustrated by a bunch of people. Looks like 2018.

This is a game inspired by 1980s supernatural fun. Given the date, I'm sure Stranger Things had a large hand in making this game happen. Which is cool. I loved that show too. And I was an 80s kid, so this is supposed to hit me in the feels.

Right off the bat it does not. But lest I sound harsh, let me explain. Though I was a kid in the 80s (turned 10 in 1980), I am also a cynical middle aged man. I am not easily swooned by nostalgia. Especially when it is trendy. I really don't like being pandered to. And I'm not saying this game is doing that. To the contrary, it feels like a really genuine attempt to connect to the vibe of a time.

Ok. The look of the game is pretty classic. I don't love the very light font used, but I respect the late 80s RPG layout. Somehow it reminds me of the original Cyberpunk box set layout, which I owned for a brief time in the late 80s. Not bad.

Oh, funny mistake: The Athlete Type lists Flash Gordon twice in the examples.

Speaking of... So the game is very very simple. You make up a character with three ideas. One is your Type, one is your Training, and one is your Talent. Types include Athlete, Criminal, Brain, Basket Case... basically the cast of Breakfast Club. Next you come up with your Training... the thing you have learned to do. Examples include Techie, Karate Kid, and Meanest Girl. Finally you name your Talent... the thing you're actually really good at.

Then you assign them as Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary. One example given is Ferris Bueller whose 3 things are (in order of importance):

Talent: Getting Away With It

Type: Trickster Prince

Training: High School Hero

Looks like you assign dice to your traits. So I think this is a dice pool type system.

OH... there's a terrible secret... ReMemorex isn't real. I like that. It means you can lean hard into nostalgia and mistaken memories and it's fine. It doesn't matter. Because the setting isn't real.

This is a highly narrative game. It has a lot of rules for players to initiate scenes, call for "Tracking Errors" (nice), and the like. The language is heavily TV-coded. There are Jump Cuts, Montages, and Clip Shows.

Ok, so I'm not going to read all 166 pages of this right now. But I gotta say that my impressions have changed while I've been scanning it. Started out a little weak for me but ended up feeling stronger about it. Went from "I'll never play or run this" to "This is a contender for me to play or run." So check it out.

It has a diagram of an Atari joystick.

My RPG Folder is a Mole Rat and It Is Naked

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.

The first random file I opened is a Modiphius 2d20 book called Shadow of the Sorcerer.

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.

Goose-Gold & Goblins by Patrick Stewart is in my folder. I don't remember ever seeing this or downloading it or anything. But here it is. I opened it and the first pages are just plain text. Most of this is just plain text, I think. Sans the image I posted above. Starts off by letting us know the design goals:

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.

I Married My RPG Folder But it Ain't Working Out

God damn, I haven't done a non-review since last October!

Let's look at some PDFs I have lying around cluttering up my desk and gathering dusk. I'll just reach out blindly and grab one or two...

So You Want to Be an Adventurer? is a wee little PDF of a mere 19 pages (including a solid black page) by Jared Sinclair with wonderful art by Evlyn Moreau. I cheated a little on this one because I picked it up today, so it wasn't gathering dust on my digital desk.

Usually in these non-reviews I don't read the game ahead of time. Usually I'm just looking at them for the first or second time and giving my off-the-cuff thoughts as I go. But this is a swift read. It's really just a conflict resolution mechanic, some simple rules for making a character, and a bunch of pages of cool pictures with TONS of blank white space to write in.

Character creation is writing down a certain number of things about your character (not an arbitrary number of things, but certain things). No stats or numbers are involved, it's all imagination.

The mechanic is to roll 2d6 and try to get 8 or better.

If you have a thing that benefits you, add 1 to the roll. If you have a thing that hinders you, subtract 1. Stack these up appropriately. For example: I have the high ground and a badass axe so I get +2 on my roll to fucking kill you. Or... I have a janky leg from a fall so I have -1 to jump that ravine. Etc.

Um... that's it. That's the game.

This is definitely a minimalist game. And there isn't much to say about it as a "system". Of course this game will work. You'd be hard-pressed to find a more heavily playtested mechanic than roll 2d6 and beat a target. The target of 8 means you effectively have a 50% chance of doing anything (not exactly, it's actually slightly less but who cares?). So the real meat of play probably comes from really using those advantages and disadvantages, narratively. Which is very cool.

There are a million games like this you can find at any moment. And of course that's to be expected. This type of system is kind of bedrock to the entire hobby. This is just a "here's a way to resolve things, now GO" sort of project. With most of the space left over for you to write new rules and ideas. I believe there are people who might pick this up and go "What the actual FUCK did I just pay for?" because let's face it... you can slap this together on your own in a hot 15 minutes and do your thing (but it won't be as awesome without Evlyn's art). There is nothing new here, nor is it claiming otherwise. But some folks will feel a little cheated, I fear.

Maybe this just appeals to some other types of folks (myself being one of them to a large degree)... this is a book that invites you to come and play and be creative. It wants you to make shit up. It wants you to enter the imagination zone. This is a "game" that reminds me of what I invented as a 14 year old who had only experienced RPGs one time and didn't own any. I made shit up. It was magic.

As a lover of ideas and tools for making shit up, I approve.

Wastoid: An RPG by Jason Tocci.

34 pages, based on Knave by Ben Milton, and inspired by Fallout. With very cool art. The layout is clean and simple and certain headers and stuff do remind me of the Fallout game aesthetic (though I never played it, my kid played the shit out of it).

In an interesting twist, character creation doesn't come until halfway through the book. Bold move, Tocci.

I like the use of "game moderator" instead of "game master". You get to keep the GM term that is so ubiquitous but you ditch the "master" part that seems to bother some folks. Very nice. But I'll still use Judge nonetheless.

There's a nod to Jim Wampler's Scientific Barbarian zine. Very nice.

On the "playing the game" page, there are three important aspects of game play described. One is to set boundaries, such as "let's not have rape, ok?". I have no idea why this type of suggestion triggers some folks. The very idea of DISCUSSING things ahead of play is somehow alien? Like... I get it... when I was gaming back as a teen we didn't discuss jack or shit before playing. And we had some monumentally FUCKED UP experiences that probably would have been smoother and more fun if we'd just... y'know... talked about it.

Another one is to telegraph intent, as a player. So instead of saying "what's in this room?" you say "I stand in the doorway and casually scan the room. What are some things I can see?" This is very nice because it shares some of the labor more equally. So often in games, the players really do shove everything off on the GM.

I'm not super familiar with Knave, so I don't know how closely this game cleaves to it. I can see that it is largely OSR-friendly with d20 rolls, 2d6 reactions, and so forth. Seems straightforward.

The initiative system is the same as what I used in GOZR, which is the same as Mörk Borg, which is the same as Knave, and I have no idea where that method originated. But it works and I like it.

Cool stuff about junk. You gather junk (because in the post-apoc hellscape everything is junk) and you can "spend" it to repair weapons and armor. Very cool. And probably a nod to the computer games? I dunno. But I like. Roll 1d6. On 1-3, enemies go first.

Yeah, this is sweet. You got stunts, rads, and mutations. If you are into post-apoc, you'll probably dig it.

I Shot My RPG Folder

I haven't done any blind reviews in a while. Owing to my lack of focus, let's do this random ass shit. As always, I often do not know who the fuck makes these games so if you dislike any of the creators that's just on you, man.

I really have never heard of A.C. : After Collapse by Justin Oldham published by Shadow Fusion. I'm honestly not sure how I got this. Maybe a bundle? No shade to Shadow Fusion, but I would never buy a game like this. Even though I loved The Road Warrior and made my own post-apoc RPG called "Surivors" based on it when I was 15, I am just not into the militant post-apoc jam.

So this game says it is a d20-based system, classless, with detailed combat rules and rules about radiation, etc. Interesting thing: it says that there are three classes of RPGs in the Collapse timeline. There's B.C. (Before), D.C. (During), and of course A.C. (After). So you can play games I suppose in modern times while the world is still humming along and during the tumultuous collapse and then after it.

Shit, this is from 2019? That's pretty recent.

So my first impression is that this is too big and not my bag. It's 286 pages... about 200 pages more than I need or want, generally. But that's just me.

Oh no... there's Upper Body Strength and Lower Body Strength and there's an Attractiveness stat. And damn, the section on batteries takes up half a page of the table of contents! Batteries must be a big fuckin' deal.

The Collapse seems to be brought about by AI, perhaps inspired by Terminator? There's a bit about homeowners gating their communities and trying to ignore what was happening in the world around them. Seems familiar.

Ultimately, a game with an "Upper Body Damage Modifier" is just not going to be my taste. If you like crunchy systems and if you're into something like Twilight 2000 maybe this is your jam.

Way back in the old days, Palladium had the license to do Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles RPG stuff. The original After the Bomb was a supplement for TMNT and Other Strangeness. I suppose since that license has probably lapsed, Palladium just made a whole separate After the Bomb RPG.

I picked up this book recently because I kinda dig funny animal RPG shit and I already owned several of the related supplements.

There's a weird disclaimer right at the front where Palladium says they do not condone the practice of magic, among other things. As if this game was gonna find it's way into the hands of little kids whose parents are Bible thumpers. This is 2021... Tik Tok exists. After the Bomb is really no threat, guys.

Looks like Erick Wujcik based this entirely on the house system. Cool. I don't have much to say here... I like that this exists.

Ok, I picked another monster of a book. This sumbich is 350 pages! Ehdrigohr, a game with precisely the right number of hs in its title, is by Allen Turner, published by Council of Fools, and is powered by Fate. Now, I'm not the biggest Fate guy. Which is weird because I mail ordered a copy of FUDGE back in the 90s and loved it. But I guess if I'm gonna do a FUDGE then I'll just do a FUDGE. No shade on Fate, I know a lot of folks who dig it.

Oh shit is that Papyrus font? Bold.

So the premise is that nine tribes of people dwell in a broken world of darkness where they struggle to maintain the light. There are chaos monsters or something roaming the land. You play someone who probably wants to keep the monsters at bay and protect reality. Cool.

I am not a big fan of the graphic design. It smacks too much of the high desktop publishing era. There's a border around each page and a lot of use of watermarks. We don't see any spot art until page 27. But I do like that that aesthetic is kind of Native American or Mesoamerican... I know next to nothing about this, so I'm not even sure what terms to use. But clearly from the art and some of the language of the book it is in this vein.

Though the art is kind of scant, it is pretty cool. Not all of it is my vibe but I dig it. I just wish they hadn't let the watermarks bleed through the art. Again... smacks of "I CAN do this so I WILL do this" desktop publishing. Just a pet peeve.

Ok. This looks like a true labor of love and I'm not gonna poo-poo it. There's a lot of worldbuilding in this thing. It's BIG. For me, it's just too damn much and I'm just not into Fate. But if you like Fate and you like the aesthetic then by all means dig in and see what's here.

Back to BasiX Hardback

I joined the Kickstarter for the Back to BasiX issues 1-10 hardback collection and I got my book yesterday.

I remember this fanzine coming out a few years ago and I was super impressed by the great cover art by Matthew Ray. It's nice to see this collection includes all of Matthew's covers plus a new one for the main book cover.

I didn't pick this zine up or read it before now. I MIGHT have it in PDF and just never got around to looking at it?

Anyway, it's a very nice looking book. The cover is hard and heavy and the whole book feels weighty and substantial in your hand. This is probably because the paper stock is decent and it's on glossy paper... kind of like a glossy magazine but heavier.

The binding is glue, so that's a downside. I feel like some of these pages are eventually going to come loose. Plus it means the book doesn't lay open. It wants to close when you open it up. Not a huge downside - I'm just spoiled by all these mega deluxe boutique hardbacks I've seen over the years. Still, even really nice, solid hardbacks don't always lay open flat. Old School Essentials Rules Tome is very nice and sewn-bound but it won't lay open, generally.

The title on the spine is not aligned so it's hovering close to the bottom edge. I suspect either a mistake in layout of in printing. Of course, duh. But it's really not a big deal unless you are super OCD about that stuff. Which is fine.

The layout is uber-basic and Thom Wilson, the publisher and author, uses the classic B/X Souvenir font (or perhaps Soutane, a similar knock-off?). This two-column look is immediately nostalgic. I do like that quite a bit in a "let's watch Andy Griffith" sort of way. But the full justification of the paragraphs is a bit jarring - not much use of kearning or adjusting the space between words. A bit awkward, which is kind of lovely in fact. I'm kind of a fan.

I also noticed some typos and other errors. I see that a lot in small press books. Again... I'm not going rag on that. These are labors of love and I am here for it. Editors and layout geeks may cringe but if they love old school gaming and small press publishing they also gotta smile.

Of course none of that matters if the content is no good. In this case that's not a problem. Again, if you're into old school RPGs and B/X D&D in particular, this is a tasty dish of yummy. Each of these short 10 issues is chock full of adventures, monsters, NPCs, magic items, spells, maps! And an interview in each issue with some old guard of the hobby.

And it is a zine. Like... proper zine. It has ads and want ads and product spotlights.

Here's my takeaway: If you like B/X D&D, you will enjoy this book and you will get some use out of it. There are plenty of little adventures to run in here and lots of simple new magic stuff to play with. If you like small press TTRPG books you will dig this. It's got a lot of cool bits.

So don't let any of my criticisms of the physical book or layout deter you. I do kind of adore this book. I honestly wouldn't want it to be any other way! This is in my wheelhouse.

Layout Noodle II: The Slickening

Way back in the olden times when TSR was in business they often produced some fairly slick products, particularly their box sets. A typical late era TSR box set would include two booklets (often with "self covers", meaning there was no cardstock color cover... like a comic book without a cover, page 1 is just the start of the book with table of contents or something), at least one large color fold out map, maybe an adventure book, and maybe some sort of loose extras like player handouts or monster sheets for those god-awful three-ring monster binders.

Overall, these were pretty nice packages. But they were not perfect. Riddled with typos and egregious omissions (TSR was dying after all, budgets were slashed), and often feeling quite hollow. One that I remember most is the Al Qadim box sets. Lovely, with wonderful large maps and cool handouts... but the booklets usually just featured the repeated box set cover art or some repurposed art from some other product. One of them, perhaps Assassin Mountain, actually had the wrong cover title on one of the booklets.

Even the back cover is rad.

Cool as these things were, they pale by comparison to some of today's slick productions. I'm not talking about large publishers here, either. I don't even know what is happening with the bigger RPG publishers these days. But in the DIY scene (OSR, Sword Dream, story games, whatever) there are books being produced that are jaw-dropping in their beauty and scope. Some of these productions are so wild, so artistic, so delicious they may even go too god damn far. I dunno. YMMV. I like 'em, but I don't aspire to them.

This is because I'm a pretty basic sort of creator. I like to work privately, on my own, without too much fuss. I am not a business person, I am not much of an influencer. I do have some social capital in the RPG DIY scene thanks to having been active on G+, doing my Black Pudding zine, and working for all kinds of crazy RPG publishers over the years from Adept Press to Goodman Games to Gary Con to DIY RPG Productions. So if I wanted to do a Kickstarter I believe I could pull it off and be somewhat successful at it. So far I have not had the urge to do so.

Because I'm just a little too basic.

My targets are lower. I come from a small press aesthetic where stealing photocopies and trading zines was the pinnacle of happiness. Low key, low bar, low point of entry. That's me. I want as few things as possible standing between me and whatever sort of creative nonsense I want to do today.

And look... people who can commit to massive projects and create lush, beautiful books that will adorn my shelves forever are supremely awesome. I tip my hat and I continue to shove money at them because I do LOVE what they create (I type this as I drool over my print copy of Knock #1... fuckin' hell this is a lovely object).

Anyway. Not every book needs to be a coffee table tome. Here are some books that inspire the shit out of me right fucking now.

Look at those pants!

Misty Isles of the Eld is from The Hydra Cooperative, by Chris Kutalik. It's part of his Hill Cantons setting and is written specifically for Labyrinth Lord rules (so it works seamlessly with B/X and Old School Essentials). This is a digest sized book with a single column layout. It's easy on the eyes, with clear presentation of information and strong, fun art. In fact, all of Chris's Hill Cantons books (Fever Dreaming Marlinko, Slumbering Ursine Dunes, etc.) are laid out similarly and of equal aesthetic and utility. I love these books because each is self-contained and can be used instantly to run or enhance games. The Hill Cantons books form the loose tapestry of a wider setting, which is, incidentally, the kind of project I'm currently working on (Yria, the world of Black Pudding, a pet project I've long wanted to put into motion).

Pretty much anything from Paolo Greco's Lost Pages line is right in the spirit of what I'm currently working toward as well. Simple, direct layouts that are easy to follow. Pleasing to the eye, for me, and that put the information forward. Check out Lumberlands by Erik Jensen for a perfect

example. It's 48 pages long and presents a robust romp of a setting you can play on its own or as part of some other campaign. This one is system neutral so you can apply your flavor of RPG rules to it. But if you're not into that, don't let it deter you. This book contains lumberjack stuff, cool new gear, poison plants, familiars, squirrels, and sasquatches. It's delicious.

My favorite bit in this book is a table of 100 little decorative and/or utilitarian flourishes you can add to any equipment. For example, a lucky rabbits foot to dangle from your pick axe or a vampire-slaying stake to put on the end of your lantern pole.

And so forth.

The RPG Folder from Heck

It is once again time to crack open that folder of unsorted RPGs, randomly select a few, and dash out some thoughts about them. Just like in the days of old.

AGON by John Harper is a game about poor Greek bastards serving the gods in an endless divine war. This game looks pretty focused and themed. The layout is landscape, everything looks pretty good. It's one of those games that takes its time but doesn't seem to meander. We don't get an intro until page 8. It's a game unafraid to give you multiple pages of pictures and quotes to prime the pump.

So right off the bat the game sets up a clear purpose for the game - heroes (players) must gain glory by winning fights and contests. They must also carry out the quests given them by the gods. Players are explicitly in competition with each other and the GM (the Antagonist), trying to out-awesome each other. But also they are part of a team working toward the goals of a god so they must work together. That seems like a nice tension.

The mechanics are elegant. You have stats ranked by dice. Bigger dice = better stat. When you have a contest, you roll some dice. Whoever has the die with the biggest result wins that contest. I like it. Seems like a quick way to resolve conflicts and is well-suited to playing in person at a table. Makes me want to revisit ideas for dice pool systems.

So the whole thing takes place in a fictionalized ancient Greece with gods and monsters where strong heroes duke it out or have fantastic contests of a - shall we say - Olympic quality.

I would play this.

Side note: I recognized the name John Harper because you can't toss a stone in the RPG sphere without running into Blades in the Dark, another game of Harper's design. This guy is good. Watch out for him.

Repatriated by M.A. Guax is a pamphlet game, so it is minimal in nature. The Basic Rules are 2 pages.

It says it is a game about being exiled to a forbidden land that belonged to your ancestors and that you have some kind of divine right to claim it. There isn't much here in terms of explanation or guidance. There's no discussion of how to create such a setting or what you're supposed to do in it.

The rest of the game is rules for survival and task resolution.

There's also a separate equipment pamphlet.

This is a weird one. The design seems fine. You have a few attributes and some vulnerabilities: Hunger, Pain, and Stress. All dice rolls are 2d6 vs. your vulnerability.

The game isn't listed on the creator's page as far as I can tell so I honestly don't know how I got it. Maybe it was up for a time but taken down? I don't know the history of it.

Fireball by Łukasz Kołodziej is "An Old-fashioned Role-Playing Game" published under a Creative Commons license. This game appears to be a basic fantasy adventure game covering similar ground as D&D. It only uses d6s.

When you create characters you roll some d6s and your lowest result determines your species while  your highest roll determines your character class. Each roll is placed on an attribute such as Strength or Agility.

There's a neat little quest generator where you roll some d6s and you can get stuff like "go to a dark forest that has been attacked by trolls to repair a stolen strange machine". Kinda cool. I really dig random generators.

When you have a conflict, you decide what the stakes are. You can say some health will be lost or an item will be lost, etc. Then each side of the conflict rolls 1d6 and adds their attribute and skill. The lower roll suffers the predetermined consequences. Interesting, deciding stakes before rolling and not just assuming each conflict will be about killing each other.

The game is super simple and intended for fast play. To give you an idea of how simple, the wizard has 3 spells. Oh yeah... it's also free.

The RPG Folder Was Too Hot

Continuing this intellectually-mindthrobbing series.

Dallas: the Television RPG: I snagged this by way of piracy out of pure curiosity. I needed to understand. I was largely underwhelmed by it but hey... what did I expect? An incredible storytelling revolutionary RPG that somehow nobody is talking about? Nah.

The game is bland as all hell, like many or most early RPGs. This came to us in 1980, a mere 6 years after the publication of D&D. So at this time a person with a little bit of pocket money could own all the RPGs in existence and actually play them. Wild, huh?

This game is about Dallas and nothing else. The rules are fairly simple. Everything is framed as episodes with scripts (script = adventure). Mechanics are kind of interesting. You have a few stats such as Coercion and Persuasion, which have two numbers. The first number is your strength and the second is your resistance. To see what you need to roll in order to Persuade someone, subtract their resist number from your Persuasion strength and roll under that number on 2d6. Kind of cool, but perhaps we could have come up with a slightly simpler way. Still... this is 1980 and at least the designers were experimenting.

For pete's sake, this game doesn't even have any combat rules. That is a HUGE departure from virtually all other RPGs of the time. All of the game mechanics are about social interaction, mostly negotiations. Which... makes sense, given the subject matter.

It is an object of it's time. The writing is just yawnworthy, like many older games. No flair. Nobody expected flair, I guess. Just stereo instructions.

I kinda wanted to play this but now I'm thinking not really. No shade intended. This was a cool experiment and I applaud its existence.

Feral RPG: Character Samples 2.0: By Jez Gordon.

I have seen Jez' work around for years but haven't really interacted with them nor closely followed the work. Which is weird because look at this cover and tell me this isn't my jam? I love it.

Honestly though I've seen Feral RPG stuff for years I just didn't know what it was. Seems that it is compatible with D&D 5e and you play mutant critters in a punk mutant future world. Cool. The word "gonzo" definitely comes to mind.

This book is a collection of characters and their awesome character sheets, such as Jimmy the Thing and Nyuk Nyuk the Knife. I have heard of this game project for years but I don't remember ever seeing a finished book. Check the website to see what's up with this awesome jam.

Hack & Slash Compendium I: by Courtney Campbell.

This is a collection of blog posts by Courtney. The art is by Courtney too, including that delicious cover. Not much to say about it because I haven't read it all but this is indeed where you can find the famous quantum ogre.

What Ho, Frog Demons!: By Chris Kutalik and Luka Rejec.

Another famous book that I have managed to not really look at until recently, despite the fact that I am a huge fan of both Chris and Luka. First, the cover is lovely, as expected.

This book is based on Labyrinth Lord, like all the other Hill Cantons books in Kutalik's series. I love me some Lab Lord. I sometimes have a sad because the wonderful Old School Essentials line seems to have killed Labyrinth Lord's influence for now. I mean... how cool is the name Labyrinth Lord alone? Badass.

Anyway... this is a setting book that is relentlessly focused on adventuring. You won't find any tedious boring histories of duchies or wars that nobody cares about. Instead, you'll find gamable rumors and plenty of hex encounters.

Did I mention the maps are by none other than Karl Stjernberg? Nice.

Cutty Sark: Die Tonight

 I don't know shit about Cutty Sark. Are they still active? (edit: doesn't appear so)

Die Tonight was a good listen. For me. But hey, if you didn't grow up in the time when this kind of album was being made then maybe this will sound like hot garbage to your ears. It isn't clean or exceptionally produced. It's rough and basic and I dig the shit.

So I'm not a music expert. In fact I'd call myself a music IDIOT. I like stuff, I don't like stuff, and I really struggle to identify why. I also struggle to compare music or talk about it in a meaningful way. That being said, this album reminds me of metal groups from the 80s such as Mercyful Fate and maybe Accept or Running Wild. If you like that shit, you might like this shit.

The cover is interesting. The name "cutty sark" is a ship, right? So this is a stark contrast to the art.

Gaming it: A band of madness-plagued desert warriors ravage the land, burning stone monuments (?). The PCs must track them and put a stop to their evil! The leader, Cutty Sark, has a demon sword that possesses his soul and the souls of his band mates.

Messiah Force: The Last Day

I love finding old metal albums I haven't heard before. Messiah Force is a band I had never heard of until recently. I love the shit out of the album cover! A good cover can sell me on a record that might actually be just OK.

Is this a good record? Well... it's a record of its time. I think it's pretty good. I didn't turn it off, I finished it. I like the female lead vocals (?), and it's got some nice 80s crunch (date on the YouTube upload says 1987). If you're into 80s thrash and metal then you probably can't go wrong here.

I'm guess the theme of the cover and album is nuclear winter, like so many 80s metal albums. Man... I used to live in fear of nuclear annihilation. Thanks, Cold War. Fuck off.

Messiah Force: The Last Day

Warrior Path: The Mad King

Warrior Path: The Mad King

Power metal! I am not a fan. Generally... I don't enjoy power metal. Which is weird because I cut my teeth on bands like Helloween and Iron Maiden. But the high-end singing and faux-symphonic music styles I just find to be a little bit too cheesy, even for a bastard like me.

But sometimes a power metal album comes along that I happen to listen to and enjoy. This is one of them.

This album is awesome! Killer riffs, cool solos, and driving song compositions keep this one on fire. Cheesy? Fuck yes it's cheesy as fuck. But it's nice cheese. Not stinky.

And of course check out that sweet ass cover art by Dimitar Nikolov. That could be a dwarven king in a dwarven hall. Dunno, but it kicks ass.

Al Qadim Again

I've posted many times how much I love Al Qadim. I have been collecting the books for years (not finished yet, but getting close), but really I've only played in one Al Qadim game one time in the mid 90s and I've never ran it. Maybe I never will.

An interesting thing about this setting is just how inaccurate it is to Arab culture and the mythos in which it plays. For example, my understanding is that the tales we call Arabian Nights are actually Chinese in origin (?), not Arabian. but folks in the Arabian world, having also grown up knowing about these tales, assume they are Arabian. There are lots of other culturally inaccurate ideas in the game that you can Google for yourself.

I'd love to say these things don't matter because it's an elf game. And... yeah... I mean, mostly that's true. But we'd be fools and - worse - assholes if we totally ignored it. This is a game series based on a distinctly American male's idea of what Arabian fantasy is. More specifically, it's based on a certain generation of American males: mine.

When I was in first grade, c. 1976, I remember our little asses being marched into the school's auditorium to watch a movie. I remember it vividly because we were arranged from shortest to tallest (so people could see over each other, natch) and I was second in line. The only person shorter than me was Vickie and her pigtails. I loved Vickie. Being placed next to her in line, for me, was an early romantic experience that filled my wee mind with ideas. I was her "taller man".

Anyway. That's not important. The fact that she ignored me is meaningless. The point is we watched the 1963 classic Jason and the Argonauts, then only a little over a decade old. It was phenomenal! Warriors, ships, giants statues, skeletons! My mind reeled with the imagery looming over me.

This has jack shit to do with Arabian Nights, but it's this sort of movie, along with mummy movies and other adventure flicks, that fueled the imagination of Jeff Grubb, author of TSR's Arabian Adventures setting book that launched the Al Qadim campaign series.

Jason and the Argonauts, the mummy movies, Sinbad, the Thousand and One Nights... these are the sources for Al Qadim. Arabian mythology and history are really a distant second. The setting is a hodge podge of middle-world cultures and ideas, all filtered through the brain of a white male American riffing on ideas that inspired him in the 60s and 70s. And it's fucking fantastic! I love Al Qadim, for what it is. Warts and all.

But I understand that folks from middle-world cultures might find the work irritating or even mildly offensive. I don't believe it is egregiously so. Jeff Grubb and crew did a bang-up job of doing the best with what they had and genuinely trying to make a setting that lovingly and respectfully approached the material. But it was by and for white Americans, so any actual near-east perspective is not really present in the work - and that is one of the things that must be kept in mind when exploring it.

This is the subtle point that people miss out on when they complain about "cancel culture". Nobody is running around screaming "cancel it!" like the right wing media machine wants you to think. Rather, things we took for granted are being examined from new perspectives and sometimes that means something old and beloved has to be re-evaluated if you want to be intellectually honest and socially responsible.

You can still love the shit, so if you feel some sense of outrage welling up just tamp it back down, kiddo. Enjoy your magic carpet ride, just don't forget it's complete fantasy.

But hey, maybe check out this video series that goes into a lot of depth on the topic. They talk about these issues more broadly, from a modern perspective, so don't go into this expecting a short review of Al Qadim. You ain't gonna get that, buster.

EDIT: And I want to say for sure that I 100% accept that this series has serious problems. No defense will come from me on that front. This is probably why, even though I own this and still collect it, I have not ran it. I could have easily ran this setting long ago. Still I don't.

Zebu: Reek of the Parvenu

It's my blog and I'll cry if I want to. So I'm a gonna post some music albums here and there. Note that this is not a "review" series, at least not in siprit. I'm just posting shit I found that I have some reason to talk about. Very very often it will be because the album cover art caught my eye.

This one is part of the Chicks on the Cover series. I think that is self-explanatory, isn't it? Come for the cover, stay for the tunes?

Zebu: Reek of the Parvenu

This is a really good Greek metal band. If you like the band Death, this will appeal to you, I think. Mostly because the vocals are similar. But this is a solid band with a heavy doom sound that doesn't fall into the overtly Black Sabbath end of the spectrum. The riffs aren't boring.

There's a backing vocalist on one track who I could have swore was Michela D'Orlando from Power Symphony, but turns out is really Katerina Kostarelou from Bacchus Priest. There's a deep cut for your ass.

The cover is by Mike S. Putrefurnaced and it depicts a witchy looking woman with lovely blue hair being hauled down by little ghosts or faeries or something. Epic!

The RPG Folder I Caught in the Act

Part of this amazing ongoing series!

How it works: I randomly click on an RPG PDF, check it out, and maybe write a little mini-review. I usually write about it while I'm looking at it.

Oh snap! I clicked on an OD&D referee's screen. And it's a damn good one too. Trouble is I'm old and I don't remember who made it or where you can download the thing. Someone help me out in the comments. Don't hold out on me.

EDIT: StuRat in the comments came through with the link. This is from a blog called Smoldering Wizard. Check it.

Darkfast Dungeons by David Okum. Man I am such a wank. I love David Okum's paper minis and I follow his posts and Patreon. But I have never really looked at this book. SHAME ON ME.

So first of all, I'm a sucker for anything that emulates that classic TSR trade dress. If done well, it's just delicious to me. It can be stale, it can be overplayed. But anyone who says it is a dead art can suck it. This cover looks good.

Ok, so this appears to be a full game. Again, color me a dumbass because I didn't actually know that. I just thought Darkfast Dungeons was a series of paper minis.

I love that this is written and illustrated by David. I love ventures that are single-creator visions. Now, don't get me wrong here. Obviously there's nothing wrong with collaboration and group efforts. I'm just saying that I have a special place in my black heart for these kinds of singular vision projects.

This one appears to be compatible with or based on other games of David's. Interesting. It's definitely inspired by the classic 1981 D&D game. Natch.

Nice looking character sheet. Cool art, of course. I wanna play a Corvian.

Chronicles of the Spacejammer! by Richard Ruane is one that I just don't remember picking up at all. I might have snagged it on a bender* and never opened it. It's a book with 36 space-based backgrounds for Troika!, the other world's favorite RPG.

So this appears to be something that fits snuggly into Troika!'s aesthetic, which is kind of spacejamming to begin with. Just spot-oogling these I find the Chronomancer's Ex to be interesting. A person who hopped a ship with a chronomancer, ended up in a bad relationship, broke up, and is now kind of wayward in the stars perhaps trying to make their way back home.

Isn't that wonderful? This is the power of the game's backgrounds scheme. It's world building and character building all rolled into one. Not much more to say about this one. It's literally a book of 36 backgrounds. And they all seem pretty damn cool to me.

Legacy: Life Among the Ruins (2nd Edition) by Minerva McJanda and Douglas Santana Mota. Hey it's only 55 pages! I might be able to say more about... oh no... that's just the handout document. The main game is 305 pages.

So this appears to be a post-apoc game, judging by the cover. It's a nice cover, I dig it. The art by Tithi Luadthong is pretty dope. Oh... hey. This is published by Modiphius? Huh.

Oh, ok. This is Powered by the Apocalypse. So the mechanics are gonna be similar to many other PbtA games such as Dungeon World. You know, to this day I don't actually know the rules for these games. I've read some bits and listened to a bunch of podcasts about them but I haven't quite grokked the concept entirely. Here's my uneducated idea of what they are: You have character abilities, called Moves, and you roll 2d6 when you want to use one. If it's like 4+, you did it. Or something. I know it's not that simple. There's a range in the middle that is "yes, but". I dig it.

Anyway... the game has a decent look. I don't love it. I think the artist is pretty rad and lots of the art is killer but a lot of the art in this book has the look of photo-manipulation - which is not my cup of tea. It's a turn off for me. But it does capture the post-apoc future world vibe so maybe you'll love it.

Colours of Melestrua: Ragnar's Keep by Ian Brockbank is a setting for RPG adventures in a working medieval castle. So this guy's name is Ian and he says "games master"... I'm betting this is a British publication. I'm so smart. I guess the spelling of "colour" didn't give it away. I love the Brits!

This is what it says on the tin. It's a very detailed castle with lots of rooms, all of which are described. There are some drawings of the castle and maps for each level plus the cliffs and river around it. There are detailed descriptions of the castles' important occupants plus their 5th edition stats. Overall, it appears to have everything you'd need if you are into historically accurate medieval gaming. Which, of course, I am not. So I am a terrible judge of this book.

The trade dress is nice because, I think, it is an aesthetic callback to old RPG resource books such as Harn and Role Aids and others. I'm probably wrong on that, but it strikes me that way. Actually, now that I think about it, this reminds me of a 90s RPG resource book akin to ICE's Campaign Classics.

*Aside: I use "bender" casually to indicate some event where I spend all day making memes or listening to obscure 1982 metal albums. But it dawns on me as I type this that "bender" might be a term fairly exclusive to heavy drinking. I don't know. I don't mean heavy drinking, for the record. My heavy drinking consists of 2 tequila sunrises on a Saturday night.

The RPG Folder in Outer Space

Has it been 3 months since my last RPG folder post?? Yeah, I think so. Here's another batch of three RPGs I clicked on randomly (like, I close my eyes and move the mouse around and click a file. Hope there's nothing evil in here.

e-Adventure Tiles: Swamps by Edward Bourelle is exactly what the title says it is. A packet of something like 16 1" gridded swamp tiles. Print, trim, put minifigs on 'em. They look pretty good. I have almost no experience with this style of gaming but when I was using a battle mat I understood the value in having a precise map. For certain types of games.

Kingscairn: a Troika! Zine by Uyuxo Games with lots of public domain art by William Thomas Horton is a Troika! zine.

The zine gives you some random tables, six new backgrounds, and a few locations.

Right off the bat it's good to go because it uses a d20 table, shattering the d6 aesthetic of Troika!. I dig it. Fuck the system, right?

Holidays, guilds, random names, backgrounds. The locations include some random encounters and descriptions.

Overall, this looks like a very quick and dirty little setting you can just sort of run with. No fuss.

What the actual fuck have I gotten myself into here? First of all, it's a Fate based game. And... y'know. That's great. I am just not very into that game. I talk about it here a little bit. Second, and more importantly, this motherfucker is 382 pages long. Now... I'm a gonna preemptively state that no game needs to be 382 pages, especially one based on a fairly loose, narrative-leaning system. But hey. That's my lazy ass.

Modernity is a game by someone. I have not found the author's name yet. It is a Creative Commons game, which is awesome. Props to them for making their vision something for everyone to use and enjoy. Looks like Glacier Peak Games did this.

Ok. I'm on page 11 and it looks like we're starting. So now I'm getting a feel for how you can get to 382 pages.

I rib, but y'know.

Art is part of the setting, and this one has a lot of CG style art. However I can't seem to find the name of the artist in the credits. The pieces are signed and I think it says "Dash Reed". But I Googled the name and came up empty. Dunno. The pieces are OK, but not my cup of tea.

The game is basically an X-Files kind of thing. Hidden world in plain sight. The book says this:

Modernity is a thriller setting where modern meets mystery, where fact

fights fiction, and where skepticism slams headlong into superstition.

The several billion denizens of an otherwise mundane Earth circa “right

now” share reality with tabloid headlines that can be revealed in all their

grisly truth by heroes who dare to uncover their secrets.

I do pick up a tone in the opening pages of the text proper. First paragraph mentions "frou-frou coffee" and "faux news". One of the three modes of play (Contemporary, Occult, Noir) says "for the hyperconnected, media-saturated, politically correct, information age that we all live in." So maybe the author here has a bit of an axe to grind. Dunno.

This is a fat book and obviously a lot of work went into it. But it's definitely not for me. Check it out if you like X-Files and conspiracy theory fringe types of games.

Conan 2d20

I own several of the Modiphius Conan 2d20 game books. I'm not even sure which ones... like 8 of them though. I have never read them, nor played them. I picked them up because the covers looked sweet and I figured with that much content they're bound to be useful. Also I'm a big Conan fan.

But I don't know. Them's some big ass books. My RPG aesthetic is simpler. I like games that I can hold in one hand. Of course I won't write these off until I know more about them. I did watch a few video reviews and based on what I'm seeing I would say that I might enjoy playing but would not enjoy running this game.

One thing I noticed was they had a Doom pool - which is a resource the GM can use to make things harder for the PCs. I have used similar rules before. I remember drafting a game called Black Wing back in the early 2000s and that game had Doom that served a similar purpose, if I recall. Also my draft of Sand in the Bone features a very similar mechanic. So it's nice to see I'm not alone in thinking this is a cool idea.

Will I ever learn this game and run it or play it? Almost zero chance. But I like that it exists. It looks pretty.

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!