ZSF: Badger's Hole Ep. 0

Official playtesting of ZSF kicked off Monday night with a fun session zero. The group of four players (and me) created their weird PCs. The character creation rules seem to work very well... no one was confused and we had four solid PCs, some backstories, and some reasons to be together after a little over an hour. Including banter and discussions.

We started the adventure during the final 30 minutes of play. The PCs had been hired to crew the SS Stymie on a mission to check up on a lost science faculty. No other details were given other than the pay of $200 up front and $300 upon completion. Not a fortune, but a solid little gig.

The characters are a bit of a mixed bag of weirdos.

Lucian Kane is a drug-dealing devil. Literally a devil, as that is one of the 12 Forms you can roll if you choose. He bought a fake engineering background to get hired on the gig.

Z the Inscribed is a kind of experimental artificial person. Genderless, sexless, and created to aid/serve humans on a cruise ship (I think). But a tattooing incident resulted in a death and now Z, uncertain if they did it on purpose or not, is on the run and in existential crisis mode.

Nurse Twitchet is a flytrap plant person in pants. They are out in the ZSF just looking for love, it seems.

Doctor B. P. Chitterbati is a spider person and an engineer who is for damn sure very well-read.

The PCs are on board. The ship was locked down suddenly... seems the good Captain Deuce failed to pay his docking fee at Hellion Cross space station. But some quick hacking by Dr. Chitterbati silenced the alert and freed the ship for takeoff.

Now the ship is in space and the PCs learn that there are others on board... two agents of SEDCA... the ZSF's version of the CIA. Who is really behind this mission??

ZSF Character Sheet Deep History

My space fantasy RPG ZSF is on the front burner again. It is an adventure game set on the Supercalla space highway. I begin playtesting it in a month or so. This is probably the first game I ever designed around a character sheet, which I created before making any game rules. I'd say this isn't a bad way to do it, though I would caution doing it exactly how I am.

I drew tons of these character sheets between 2023 and now and I haven't changed the elements. I'm locked in. These are the elements I used to design the game. I refused to change them. Why?

Because I gave it a shitload of thought and these are the elements I need for this game. The skill list (abilities, attributes) includes the six things that all spacers will do in this game, over and over. Explore, Drive, Fight, Operate, Shoot, and Talk. Everything else can be a Trait.

Anyway, here's the first two sheets I ever did. You can see in the first one that I was not 100% locked in but by the second sheet... I found it.

The first ZSF sheet.

 

This is the second one, on the next page.

To demonstrate how this sheet hasn't changed... here's the most recent one I did.

I think the elements are mostly self-explanatory, but here's a rundown of what they mean.

EDFOST: This dumb acronym stands for Explore, Drive, Fight, Operate, Shoot, and Talk. The Skills of the game. Most of the action rolls are based on one of these. One early feedback from my group was "Edfost sounds stupid"*. Fair enough. But it's how I have enshrined it into my brain.

So I built some lore into the setting. The names Ed Fost, Stef Do, and Fot Sed are the equivalent of John Doe or Jane Doe. Ed Fost himself was apparently a real guy. Some factory working schmuck who got used by the system and now his name and face are the standard for a generic person. I think that's kinda funny.

Never trust anyone who says their name is Ed Fost.

DEF: This is Defense. It reduces damage and comes from armor and shields and stuff.

LP: Life Points, which work exactly like Hit Points.

SP: Space Points, which are like XP that you spend to help change and grow.

Aces: These are luck points that let you absorb damage, improve rolls, and add little narrative flairs.

Name, Form, Background, Gear: These all seem self-explanatory. Form is what you are... like a green bubble headed guy or a robot.

Traits: These are things outside normal Skills. Not just skills and powers, but relationships and stuff. They add to dice rolls.

$: Money. To buy ship stuff, cooler gear, road snacks, etc.

The game is built around these pretty simple concepts. Dice rolls are probably mostly about shooting monsters, hotwiring spaceships, and fast-talking alien leaders.

My current thought is to publish the game in the form of a series of zines. But it is still very early and I might change my mind.

Spaceship Landers

Some spaceship landers from my sketchbook.

 

Hellion Cross

I have spoken many times about ZSF, a space game I was/am working on. I did a metric ton of character sheets for it, just for funsies. And I have several drafts of the game written. But I needed something to get me over the edge, to help me commit to the bit.

Simultaneously I started thinking about comics again. Like, a LOT. Finally these things are aligning. I'm working on a new comic, Hellion Cross, which is set in the world of ZSF. At this moment, I have 11 pages inked. I haven't decided yet if this issue will be 24, 28, or 32 pages long. Still on the fence about that.

It has been a long time, it seems, since I dived this far into making comics. This is all I used to do. TTRPGs were a distant second in the back of my mind, though I never stopped fiddling with them. All through the 90s, 2000s, and of course beyond... always, always noodling and doodling about the elfgames.

But comics were always primary for me. I started seriously working on them in 1987 and didn't stop focusing on them until around 2012 when I suddenly shifted gears into an obsession with roleplaying games, particularly the OSR-type. Even then, the result was Black Pudding... a zine that looks a lot like a comic book.

So, what's up with the new comic? I started with a short script wherein a salvage ship finds a frozen woman who bursts out of her ice cage and sort of barges onto the ship, taking over. Much to my surprise, the character morphed before my eyes into Fawn Rainchild, the primary character of my Pan-Gea comics. I didn't expect to see her again, especially in space. But there she was, demanding to be in the book.

Who was I to say no?

So the small crew of the SS (space ship) Motorbreath comes up on a frozen Fawn, naked on a small planetoid. She comes out of her frozen spell and boards the ship, using up the hot water for a shower.

Now... you lascivious types might be going "naked", "hot shower" and thinking this is a prurient comic book. Tut-tut as they say. This is a serious comic about space adventure. The naked woman bit is just because the god damned wizard who gave Fawn the freeze spell was a pervert, most likely.

Where does the book go from here? Well, there's a secondary storyline about a robot vs. human war. At some point these two storylines will merge and we'll see a bigger picture, I'm sure. But right now I'm doing this comic the way I like to do everything: page by page, idea by idea. Hey... Mat Wagner, creator of Mage and Grendel, did it this way. So can I.

You'll know when I know.

ABOUT THE ZSF RPG

Oh yeah. So the comic title is Hellion Cross (unless I change my mind). But it is set in the Zoa Space Frontier, or ZSF. This is the wild west of the galaxy, outside the Galactic Main where everything is safe and sanitized. It's a dangerous place. Apparently, according to what I've written so far, there's a fuckin' war going on. But I feel like this is a relatively trivial matter. The robots of the RIO (Robot Imperial Order) have been warring with the UHF (United Human Federation) for countless years. This current war is just one of many, with the robots and humans fighting over resources. Perhaps they fight so much because the humans created the robots and the robots have a lot of mommy/daddy issues as a result. The humans... they just like to fight over resources. Always have.

So anyway, the game. It is going to be called ZSF, unless I change my mind. It's a space romp RPG. The setting, the ZSF, is magical space, mind you. This is not "hard sci-fi". This is pure space opera and sci-fantasy. There are wizards and shit. You will see barbarians with swords and blasters. This is my shit.

The RPG is an original system. A big part of me wanted to use GOZR as the system, so I could just wrap that setting into ZSF more easily. But I foolishly created an entirely different one. Mostly because I wanted to get away from the d20 as the core die, even though I love it and I think GOZR's system is great. I wanted to peel away from that a little bit. Right now ZSF uses a d6 pool with exploding dice and stuff. But more on that later.

First step is to get the comic done. A setting, in action, with characters and visuals... this will help establish the tone and "what you do" in the game.

But I've rambled on long enough. Back to inking.

Here's page one of Hellion Cross, y'all. Colors later.

Captain Vista

This post is a nerdy dive into some ZSF rules about character creation. Proceed at your own risk.

I've been drawing a lot of ZSF art lately. I don't know how much of it will end up in the game book, and I'm not even thinking about it. I'm just having a great old time drawing.

As I was doodling last night, I drew this sketch of a character who I named Captain Vista. So I thought I'd go ahead and give him game stats. I wanted to write a little bit about it because I can discuss the character creation system a bit.

Here's the Captain:

 He's a beefy lad! A real space hero. But he is not an example of a starting character. His stats are more beefy than a new PC would be. Of course, like any game, you could tweak the chargen rules to allow for more beefy starting PCs. That's fine. But let me break down how this guy is put together and how it differs from the chargen rules.

Basic Skills

Every PC has six Basic Skills: Explore, Drive, Fight, Operate, Shoot, and Talk.

A new PC has a rank of 1 in each skill and you can distribute 9 additional points between them for a total of 15 ranks. The Captain has a total of 19, not 15.

As you play the game, the GM will hand out Space Points, which are like XP. You spend them on your character to make changes. One of the changes you can make is bumping up your skills. It costs 3 SP to increase a skill by 1 rank. So the Captain has spent 12 SP on skills.

Life Points

Every PC starts with LP equal to their Explore + Fight ranks + 20. Cap's E+F+20 equals 29, but he has 35 LPs.

You can add 1 LP by spending 1 Space Point, so the Cap has spent 6 SP.

Traits

Every PC starts with 2 special Traits. A Trait is really just anything at all about your character that isn't covered by other chargen rules. Rapid healing, a rich uncle, and a magic gun are all examples of Traits you could add to your PC.

Captain Vista has 6 things listed on his sheet that could be counted as Traits, though 2 of them are probably just gear.

• Animated Hair (definitely a Trait)

• Hyper Strong (definitely a Trait)

• .50 Cal gun (probably gear, not special)

• Katana (probably gear, not special)

• Captain of the Heroic Tortoise (definitely a Trait)

• Space Eyes (definitely a Trait)

The difference between what is a Trait and what isn't is that a Trait is something extra. All PCs can buy a laser pistol. If your character buys a pistol for $100 and it deals 5 DMG (damage), then that's just a standard thing. If you want it to be something special, you can spend 2 Space Point and turn it into a Trait. You might then say the laser pistol actually has modular parts and you had a super zapper module lying around. Now your laser pistol, a Trait, deals 9 DMG instead of 5. Or it can be set to scan mode or something.

The Captain started with 2 Traits at chargen. Assuming his weapons are not special, he currently has 4 Traits, so he has spent a minimum of 4 Space Points to add 2 new Traits. It is possible that he spent more, because you can improve your Traits by spending 2 SP on them. We don't really know the details of his abilities from what we're shown here. Let's just assume he spent 4 SP.

Money

Captain has $625. All PCs begin with $100, so he has probably spent and earned some money over time. He's not rich at all. He can't even buy a laser pistol with that kind of cash. So I don't think he has spent any Space Points to make himself richer (you can get a quick $500 for 1 SP).

Summary

In total, we know that Captain Vista has spent 12+6+4 = 22 Space Points. If the GM follows the guidelines given in the rules, they will award 1 SP per 1 hour of play. Adjusting for snack runs and Monty Python jokes, Captain Vista has been involved in at least 22 hours of game play, or about 5 or 6 typical game sessions. He's not a new character.

Of course it's possible the GM awards more points than normal or starts with more bennies for PCs. Every table is different, you know.

Last Thought: The Heroic Tortoise

Nobody starts with a ship in this game. At least not a ship worth a bent penny. Part of the game's theme is that you are poor outsiders working within or against a system that is inherently unfair and kind of ruthless (sound familiar?). Captain Vista would not have a ship like this one as a new PC.

The Heroic Tortoise

How did he come by it? Does he own it or just work for the owner? These are details that grew out of playing the game. He might have rescued the ship from a bad owner and now claims it himself. In that case, the player would add "Heroic Tortoise" as a Trait. They didn't spend points to get it because it was just a result of organic play, as most things will be.

Later, the player might want to improve the ship in some way or add details to it. They can do so by spending money on upgrades or spending Space Points to bump up the Trait's details. It isn't terribly precise or crunchy... this is more of a narrative element. But some game benefits should be imbued, which can be negotiated between player and GM.

Also, this ship might not belong only to the Captain. This is a RPG, after all. It is probably the case that the ship belongs to the team, so every player has ownership. In that case, players could spend money or SPs to improve the ship as well. They just won't have sole ownership of it.

ZSF Noodle Doodle Drop II

Following up on this post, more thoughts about ZSF: Zoa Space Fantasy!

ZSF is a work-in-progress space fantasy adventure game set in a wild galaxy where the Companies and the Law run the show. PCs are on the outside of mainstream society, and probably outlaws.

Since my last post, I refined the rules a bit.

• Instead of rolling for your Basic Skill ranks, you start with 1 in each and can add 6 more to them. The only rule is you can't dump all 6 into one Skill. So you could end up with a mix, as long as it all adds up to 12 total.

• Successes, called Hits, are on a 5 or 6 on d6.

• The difficulty of any task is called the Difficulty Level, or DL for short. The GM sets the DL for tasks. NPCs and creatures will have DLs so you know what you need to score to hit or otherwise oppose them.

• The DLs are very limited in range. Due to the nature of the dice mechanic, getting even 2 Hits is not easy. So a range of 1-4 is plenty wide.

• All action dice rolls are made by the players, just like in GOZR.

I've spent some time thinking about money and economy in the setting. Not much has changed on that front. PCs begin with $100 and some basic equipment. As I said before, if you really want to start with a badass weapon you can use one of your Traits to describe it. Because almost everything really cool is well beyond your $100 budget.

Right now I'm considering different ways to approach equipment. What I'm thinking is, similar to GOZR, there will be some short, simple lists with prices for relatively generic goods. But then also a fat section on very specific goods and services, name brand stuff like the PH22 blaster or Breathe-O-Matic cozmask (space mask, a kind of auto-fitting helmet). Since Companies are tied into the setting, it'll be fun and rewarding to lean into that and have a lot of branded merchandise that PCs can get their hands on. Why settle for a generic laser rifle when you can have the industry standard RIG 17?

SUPERCALLA

Of course much of this material was first introduced in my 2019 Troika! book, Supercalla, and the 2020 follow-up Cozmic Metal Heads. I'm super proud of those books. ZSF is essentially taking that same core setting idea and exploding into a full-blown RPG with an original system. Almost everything you saw in those books will land somewhere in ZSF in one form or another.

EDFOST

Ok, a little behind the scenes into how my brain works when I'm noodling ideas. I spent a ridiculous amount of time deciding on the core stats (the Basic Skills). My idea was that they MUST form a cool acronym. At least something that you could pronounce. I can't even remember what all I came up with. One idea involved these monosyllabic words like Oomph, Bam, Yak, etc. Which was cool, but I veered away and landed on EDFOST:

Explore, Drive, Fight, Operate, Shoot, Talk.

Having the acronym, which is now etched into my brain, helps me always remember the list. "E is Explore... what was F? Oh Fight!"

More later.

Phantasmagoria Character Sheet

Here's a character sheet I drew for the most excellent DCC RPG zine Phantasmagoria! You should check it out. I actually quite like how this one came out.

Space Ranger

Here's one I did recently. I have posted it on FB and Insta but I keep forgetting to mention that it's actually a finished version of a very old sketch, posted below. Not that it matters to anyone but me. But there it is.

This is sort of in the wheelhouse of old school "men's magazine" style pinup cartoons wherein you draw a sexy lady and have some kind of pithy, funny gag written at the bottom. Just for giggles.

This was OK. I like the image fine, but it isn't thrilling me. Might just be that the composition is static. I have a bad habit of doing static figures when I really kinda want to do more dynamic scenes. And I don't mean action scenes, necessarily. You know how Frank Frazetta or Mike Ploog can have a figure just standing around and the image have movement and action? Like that. Things in motion, even when the figure isn't leaping or fighting or running. I feel stiff.

Another thing I was conscious of when drawing this was faces. A lot of artists have developed such a style that their faces are immediately recognizable. In some cases its because they seem to draw literally the same face on every figure (maybe Dan DeDcarlo comes to mind)*, or it's because their line quality and general style just shines through even though they draw a wild variety of figures (maybe Dave Cooper). So what are my faces like? I went through a phase between 2008 and 2012 where I was drawing a lot of huge eyes and cartoony faces. Which is good... I like cartoony. But I was being influenced by art that I didn't necessarily love and I backed away from that just a little bit. And it just strikes me now that I don't have "a face" that I draw. For example, I draw different noses all the time and I don't know if that's a problem or not.

Various JV West eyes and noses over the years. Trends?

*Now, I'm not suggesting that artists who draw the same girl over and over in different clothes is bad. It isn't bad. It's fine. Dan DeCarlo drew amazing girls who all looked alike. I have zero complaints about that. Hell, lots of cartoonists draw exactly the same face on almost every character for decades. Whatever works.

Supercalla Adventure?

I haven't committed to doing it yet, but I'm thinking about writing a 48 page follow-up to Supercalla called Supercalla: Eastbound, based on the scenario I've been running these last couple of months. And yes, it's totally inspired by, but not very similar to, Smokey and the Bandit.

If I do this, the book would include the adventure along with maybe 6 new backgrounds and a bunch of creatures and items that have appeared in the game sessions, such as space piranha and time-distortion ray guns. Stay tuned to this batchannel for future updates, highway hunters!

An RPG Folder Full of Fire

Continuing this series in which I sort out my "new" RPG PDF folder. This has been a fun journey because I'm forced to read at least SOME of what I'm sorting. I'm pretty bad for downloading a thing and never looking at it again.

Fuck the King of Space is Nick L. S. Whelan's players' guide to their funky space game. I am not sure if it's still ongoing. The document is a wild mix of classic sci-fantasy art and Nick's own cobbled-together rules that are based in D&D. Right of the bat we're off to a good start because you choose a "boon" for your character during chargen. For example, you might get +2 to hit, a random spell, or some skills. I'm a huge fan of this move and I'm including it in all my game designs. For example, when I created my level 3 pregens years ago for convention and public play, all of them had little perks and things that are not part of the core B/X rules. Because as much love as I have for B/X, it does not generate interesting characters right out of the gate. Everything interesting has to happen in play. Which is fine... it's very OSR. But you can do better than that.

(Nick also has this wicked POSER Manifesto on the site.)

The Revelation of Mulmo by Daniel J. Bishop is a level 4 adventure for DCC RPG. I haven't read it but it seems to be an adventure location related to mean-spirited asshole elves in which there is a kind of resurrection pool. It's a proper dungeon crawl, from the looks of it. Daniel generally does fine work so I'm gonna go ahead and say this is probably keen.

Victorious by Mike Stewart is a sort of Victorian age superhero steampunky RPG based on the SIEGE Engine as seen in Castles & Crusades. I have written about C&C before and I still think it is a killer game and is clearly the spiritual successor to AD&D. In fact, as an aside, if I ever get around to running Al Qadim I might just use C&C instead of AD&D 2e. But that's got nothing to do with Victorious. 

I have been a fan of Mike's since I first heard Save or Die and I've made my fanboy love for Mike, Liz, and the gang public for years. Listen to the back catalog of Save or Die and Save For Half and you'll encounter my emails and junk here and there. Knowing Mike's penchant for old school play and his dislike for crunchy skills systems I can only assume this game is a bit lite in that area. But who knows? I haven't actually read the damn thing. It looks pretty slick. A bit too shiny for my taste, to be honest, but it's fine. Troll Lords puts together some good looking books and this is no exception.

Supercalla PDF is Live

Supercalla is alive! The PDF is now available for your road rage pleasures.

What's in it?

• 36 character backgrounds such as Old Lawdog, Long Distance Runner, Trucker, and Three-Eyed Demon Biker
• Space weapons such as Blas-Tar Boppers, chi destabilizers, and MasSault Atomizers.
• The Law
• Space magic
• Random tables for fun and profit
• A delicious layout by Matt Hildebrand!

So get your motor running! I suggest listening to Judas Priest, perhaps "Breaking the Law" and "Heading Out to the Highway", to get this party started.

NOTE: There is a print option coming.

Supercalla Coming at 55 GMPH

Supercalla Character Sheet

Here is a Supercalla character sheet... for my Troika! RPG setting book of the same name. Space fantasy with a totally route 66 sort of vibe. I'm trying to keep this thing to 48 pages so I'm not including everything that might fit that theme, but it's got a lot of spark in it, I hope.

I handed the text to my sorcerous layout guy (Matt Hildebrand) after Andy Solberg took a scrutinizing gaze with his Monocle of Editing. I hope to have this sumbich shot out to the wilds by Xmas. It is not an elaborate endeavor, just a simple, fun little romp-kit.

And for some reason, motorcylces. I'm not even a cycle guy. Not sure how that happened but there are multiple biker backgrounds in this thing. In space, of course.

Supercalla!

Zoot!

Just a space doodle.

Supercalla Cover Art

As I said once or twice, I'm writing a Troika! space fantasy setting. At first it was to be called Zoa, which is kind of a larger broader title. Then I went with Hellion Cross, to focus on one little region. Then I shifted a bit and now it's a space highway called the Supercalla. Hellion Cross, being a large location on the highway, may get its own book later.

Anyhow... here's the cover art! I really loved drawing this one. It's one of those examples of an idea popping into your head fully formed and then falling down on the page without much effort. And I like that.