ReadLog: The Bookmarked

I picked up this booklet after hearing the game’s pitch it at Tabletop Scotland last month. Tell me it isn’t intriguing: you play a post-apocalyptic spellcaster who frees ancient robots of the obsolete programming they have been stuck in for centuries. Your spellbook is a real-life book taken from your bookshelf, in which your store your spells as bookmarks.

everything I got, minus the stickers

It’s a 36-page zine with 12 pages of spell bookmarks and scenario tables. It has a clear layout, very legible type despite the off-white textured background, and the art by Amber Oppel helps communicate the whimsical cuteness of the world. The design is by Freddie Watkins and Andrew Marks, with help from Liam Summers and Kyle Puller.

Tellers and Cyphers

The zine starts with a short introduction about the setting before diving into world and character creation. The former is done freely in conversation, with one simple rule: contrast the fallen human world with the onset of nature in every sentence. The latter requires players come up with a motivation and origin for their characters (the tellers), drawing inspiration from the book they brought to the game (known in the world as their cypher. There are no guidelines for choosing the books: it can be War and Peace, it can be Rolemaster’s Spell Law, the King James bible, or a Nigella cookbook. I can only imagine the diversity of characters one can have. Note that this isn’t a multiversal RPG: the characters aren’t borrowed from the book Jasper Fforde style. They’re native to the post-apocalyptic era, but they have grown with the book they’ve found in the ruins and have evolved with it.

two classes per page

Interestingly for such a small game, The Bookmarked has classes: adjector, deponancer, divinour, punctualist, and breathful (a freed robot, which the authors recommend you don’t play initially). This isn’t 5E though: each class and its illustration take up half a page — they get a bonus to one type of action and a special ability, along with some flavour choices. No attributes, no skills, no numbers. The character sheet is the book and the spell bookmarks inside it (each class starts with a double-sided bookmark containing two spells).

Non-violent mechanics

The resolution system is d6 based: roll four dice, plus any bonus dice from your class, and each 4+ is a success. The main things you do are strictly defined : three physical actions, two social actions, and three interface actions. Interestingly, you can hide and run away but not fight, you can influence and threaten but not damage psychologically. I mean, I can’t stop you from trying to do this things, but no class gives bonuses to your rolls (and there aren’t any NPC stats or hit points or wounds system, this game really doesn’t want you to get violent). Player characters can die however: there is a multi-roll save mechanic called peril that is invoked when they fail an action with potentially dangerous consequences.

Psycuitry and the Breathless

Each scenario is centred around a breathless, an ancient robot that is carrying on its centuries old programming, negatively affecting the world and a community living nearby. Confronting the breathless to get it to break free of its programming and finally become sentient (and a breathful, then) is the final scene of each adventure and a mini-game in itself.

Depending on its current states (operational or damaged and friendly or defensive), a robot does different things, and different actions can be attempted against it. To win, the players must help the breathless achieve selfhood by pushing it to do three actions from a list divided into self-determination, self-awareness, and autonomy. They do so by rewriting its programming (an action called psycuitry), using their book’s words to change the three sentences that compose said programming (and that they’ve hopefully discovered in the adventure leading to the confrontation). The words must appear on the pages marked by one of the player’s spell.

If they fail to do this before the robot gets both damaged and defensive, it locks down or leaves and the characters have to wait, and deal with the fallout of an unchecked robot doing crazy things and worsening the local’s lives. Maybe they didn’t investigate enough before confronting the breathless, and they didn’t know enough about its original programming to tweak it efficiently.

Having not played yet, it looks like a good balance of mechanics and fictional positioning. You track the robot’s states and the programming sentences you’ve deducted, but the situation dictates what you can do just as much.

Scenario building

The zine ends with tightly packed tables to build your adventures: 11 scenarios and 45 obstacles. The GM uses these tables as a base for their locations, settlements, communities, NPCs, etc. Some entries have symbols to indicate they work well together in a series of scenarios.

These tables are detailed and atmospheric. They do the heavy lifting in communicating the game’s mood. There are stylist robots pillaging vital resources to create ever more beautiful outfits, weather balloon robots, sports team mascot robots. More Saturday morning cartoon than Terminator.

the tables and their corresponding cards

Village on Stilts has published the tables as a deck of cards (which I bought, of course), and there is a tarot-size deck containing each class’ bookmark spells. These are in the book, laid out so you can cut them out but of course I bought that too. Along with a few cute robot stickers, I was given a pamphlet with a scenario, which helped me understand how much context is needed to the tables entries/cards (which is not very much).

tl;dr

A non-violent post-apocalyptic game with a lot of flavour (and perhaps too many neologisms but that’s just me). Simple and innovative mechanics. Starts at £7 in PDF on Village on Stilt’s website. I’ll definitely keep it at hand in case there’s an opportunity to play it in person!

the bookmarks are nicer as tarot cards, as you would have guessed

3 October 2024

ReadLog: Arkeos Adventures Early Access

Here’s a French game for a change. Arkeos was a pulp adventure game and campaign released over twenty years ago. I never played and never read all of it (despite having it on my shelves all this time) but this new edition is making me want to go back to these cinematic 1930s, leading a bunch of two-fisted archeologists in a race across the world against Nazi sorcerers.

With his new publishing imprint, the original publisher Christian Grussi brings pulp action back to us, with an entirely new, diceless system. This early access (read: quickstart adventure) is a 66-page booklet, available as a pay what you want PDF from Rafiot Fringuant, or physically for €15 — which is deductible from your pledge should you chose to back the boxset.

arkeos box

It looks like a board game…

Christian was nice enough to send me the booklet and I am very impressed with the game mechanics. Browsing the PDF after the game’s announcement, my initial impression was along the lines of “Does this need to be so complicated?” but as I read on, I realised it was due to the two infograph style spreads.

These serve to both recap the rules and give examples, and in all their colour coded glory, they gave me the wrong impression. Admittedly, the photos of the contents must have been a factor in my initial thinking.

arkeos infographic

It’s smells like a board game…

As it turns out, the rules of Arkeos Adventures are straightforward enough. I bet I can explain them to you in a couple of paragraphs!

At the start of a Challenge (any situation that cannot be resolved by conversation), each character bets from their pool of Daring tokens against a general Difficulty (how sneaky that Nazi spy is) and optional Complications (the morning crowd in the souk) described by the GM and each materialised by a card bearing a number, at least one of which face down. If a Complication is only affecting a character, it is put in front of that player.

Players decide where their tokens go, describing what they’re attempting to do, and the turn is resolved by comparing each card (revealing it if needed) to the sum of the tokens bet against it. The highest number wins and the difference is subtracted either to one of the cards (player wins) or to the character’s Daring tokens (player loses). The next turn starts with the GM describing the new situation, possibly adding more Complications for one character or for everyone. And so on until the players lose all their Daring tokens or the scene’s Difficulty card is reduced to zero.

Also, a Challenge can be a simple affair where the players either succeed or fail in one turn. The grumpy doorman who refuses to let the heroes in the Explorers’ Club doesn’t come with a Difficulty and Complications! He actually comes with a single number, as does every challenge in the game. Talk about an efficient stat-block!

arkeos NPCs

It even plays like a boardgame…

There are subtleties of course: characters can help each other, players can spend Plot tokens they’ve earned previously to affect the narrative, etc. If a character spends more than half their current tokens on a single action, they must draw a Fortune card (some have positive or negative modifiers, some add something to the fiction).

A rule I really like: as a player only wins if they beat the card they’re facing, they can risk everything in case of a tie. They flip a coin, either reducing the card to zero or losing all their Daring tokens and therefore failing at the whole Challenge.

Yet it’s a fiction first RPG!

Having not played the game (yet) I don’t know if it runs as smoothly as I think it does. But these mechanics look like they could bypass the conversation entirely:

GM: Out of the shadows comes out a burly figure you recognise. (Puts down a card worth 6). She plants herself in front of the door and declares in her thick German accent: “I have orders. The ritual must be conducted without interruption. But do try to get in, Ms Lundgren, so I can finally crack your Dummkopf open.” Player: I say: “It will be my pleasure to crack yours, Heidi dear,” as I take a sip of my hip flask… and suckerpunch her square in the jaw! (Advances 3 tokens and points to her Action of 2 and +2 for the Liquid Courage resource, on her character sheet.) GM: She goes off like a lamp. You walk over her and open the door…

With everything laid out on the table, stakes are obvious to everyone and tension can build up as players push their luck. With a little practice, it looks like a session could be almost completely devoid of gameplay conversation.

Build your PC with adjectives

As a fan of FKR games, I believe you can create a fun TTRPG character with a couple of sentences and not a single numbered value. Arkeos works in the same kind of way, even if it doesn’t eschew maths entirely.

Characters are defined by traits that give points adding up to three abilities: Action, Thinking, and Interaction — the pregens in the booklet have scores ranging from 0 to 6, and I don’t think the full character creation rules will let you go much higher, if at all. Like all good pulp action heroes, Arkeos characters also have weaknesses (claustrophobic, hopeless romantic…) and special gear that’s more like special abilities: a pocket bible that will absorb some some damage once, or good hiking shoes that lower risks in some precarious situations.

Taking the character sheet for ‘Cap’ Edward Nesbitt, I could sum up his stats as: a brainy mercenary and a learned fighter, who suffers from motion sickness, and has a pocket logic puzzle and a signature weapon, both with special effects. The pregen characters are rounded off with a presentation and a motivation, a short sentence each.

Given the fact that the traits are organised as archetypes, occupations, profile, and talents, it looks like character creation will be a breeze.

arkeos PC I’ve rambled enough, so I’ll just add that the booklet has a long adventure, complete with a lot of historical background and photos dripping with atmosphere.

I’m excited about this game, even if I’m not sure I’ll ever get to run it (I’d have to track down enough French speaking gamers around me).

1 September 2024

PlayLog: XCrawl Classics

Since its inception towards the end of the d20 bubble, Xcrawl has always been something I wanted to check out — televised dungeon crawling as the world’s most popular form of entertainment always stroke me as a genius idea — but never enough to get the book, I guess. Fortunately, the Kickstarter campaign for the DCC based new edition happened at a time when my gaming life wasn’t saturated in d20 fantasy games. So I took the plunge, and a few months later, I don’t regret it. XCC is everything I hoped: tons of DCC style fun art, whacky rules with enough deviation from the original to make it interesting, and a setting that’s just as fun as I was expecting. I didn’t go for the full package, but I bought the funnel module, which is what I ran for a small group of players with various TTRPG backgrounds. We played three sessions, and we had 14 deaths. Call me Killer Judge Eric now please. The group is still up for more, so I made sure I preordered the modules I’ll need to challenge Xcrawl’s newest Division III squad.

Gonzo turned up to 11

Not you daddy’s dungeon crawl

So, sore point perhaps: an Xcrawl is not an old-school dungeon. It is an arena built to entertain both the local crowd and people on TV. Crawlers don’t get to play factions against each other or look for a way around a monster. XCC crawls are more like funhouse dungeon with commentators. Of course, this doesn’t make the game less entertaining. After all, post 3E players expect their dungeons to work this way: puzzles, challenges, tactically interesting fights, and the occasional roleplay encounter. And it works even better with a shitload of tongues in cheek dropped into the formula. The crawls I’ve read so far crank the gonzo to d11. Typing this makes me wonder how one could add some of the features we adventure gamers like to say make a good dungeon. Giving choices to the contestants, or the option to ally with some of the enemies would make for good television. I don’t see why some Dungeon Judges wouldn’t try this to surprise their audience, as long as they get the blood they came for. And typing that, I wonder about adding some not so subtle subtext to the game with a new-old school of DJs building crawls based on the original gameplay of the Dungeonbattle RPG (because of course, Xcrawl is inspired by the tabletop RPG that took the Empire by storm in the 1970s). XCrawl Renaissance, anyone?

But there’s life outside the dungeons

But I hope to run some sessions outside of the crawls, so we can explore the world and have some variety. The short chapters on Xworld and the history of Xcrawl are a delight to read. The North American Empire is a points of light setting, with walled cities and most of its surface peopled by barbarians (human or otherwise) and ruled by dragons. Who knows what wonders exist in these untamed lands, and who could best explore them than professional dungeon crawlers? They may start complaining about having to carry their treasure instead of having it carted back to green room by the staff. The wilderness doesn’t hand out vouchers for Georgio’s Armour Emporium. Wealth is in the hands of the nobility, corruption and crime is everywhere, and justice is scarce. For a commoner, there aren’t many ways to ascend socially, or even make a comfortable living besides becoming modern day gladiators. Even organised crime is riddled with nepotism. The game alludes to urban adventures and it’s easy to come up with ideas to involve a team of career killers into shenanigans involving there agent, coach, or loved ones. How do you take out a gang boss when their hideout doesn’t follow guild fairness guidelines and their goons pack guns? I’m looking forward to giving some real, non televised trouble to my crawlers.

25 August 2024

ReadLog: We Deal in Lead

Funny how games come in waves. I was reading Eco Mofos before going to LasagnaCon. At LasagnaCon I picked up the new Cairn Player’s Guide from Paolo. And not a week later, going to Wayland Games to get something else, I saw three By Odin’s Beard books on the new arrivals tables. Among which was We Deal in Lead. When I realised this is not just a weird west game, but a weird west game directly inspired by Stephen King’s Dark Tower novels, I just couldn’t put it back on the table. Sorry, Runecairn, you didn’t stand a chance.

Art by Kim Diaz Holm

We Deal in Lead is a straight Cairn hack by Colin le Sueur. Play an Order of hardened gunslingers, armed with magical shootin’ irons, riding together on a quest among the ruins of a world that moved on. As every other game of its kin, you can hit the ground running: roll on the character creation tables, discuss a few details together, and you’re ready to ride the dusty trails of the Driftworld.

On top of the Into the Odd core rules (at the risk of repeating myself, still the most streamlined engine for efficient old schooling), it has rules for animal companions (aka non-human gunslingers), ritual magic, and of course magical boomsticks. I like the short and efficient hexcrawling procedure with default encounter tables by environment (windshorn mountains, bleached deserts, but also irradiated sprawls), and the excursion generator that’s part scenario ideas and part solo crawl rules (which are completed by another short chapter including a tarot inspired oracle. The bestiary has about 40 spooky critters from spideer to serfbot. And there are monster creation and conversion guidelines as well.

The book is sewn hardbound, 88 full colour pages on thick paper inside a gorgeous Goran Gligović cover. The art is maybe a bit inconsistent in style, but each piece is atmospheric and/or illustrative though, so no complaint from me. I would also have liked a more complex starting adventure, but in 5 pages, Swampwater Shootout has atmosphere in spades and can be used as a springboard for a longer saga.

The biggest selling point for We Deal in Lead as far as I’m concerned is the slipdoors. Like King’s series, We Deal in Lead proposes to send your gun-toting knights questing into strange places. Places like, I don’t know, [the Vald](https://cairnrpg.com/, or Bastion, or fantasy Sumer, or another post-apocalyptic world or three. I’m also wondering if I could use more than just the setting from Mythic Bastionland… What I know for sure is I’d defo mine Frontier Scum for bleak western material (and probably the saved-by-your-hat rule).

You can get the PDF of We Deal in Lead on itch and the book directly from Odin’s Beard. I’ll add that the game has possibly the best official RPG soundtrack I’ve ever heard (which you can stream on Of Sleeping Bears’ bandcamp).

13 August 2024

ReadLog: Eco Mofos

I’ve been leafing through the adventure mini-modules that came with Eco Mofos and I’m happy to report my initial impression is 100% confirmed: this game fucking slays!

Eco Mofos

A ‘weirdhope’ post-apocalypse setting with tons of weird stuff to see and do and build upon. Yes, the world is broken, but we can try to fix it. It’s a Mark of the Odd game, aka the ultimate distillation of old school mechanics, tense and barely noticed in play. Your character starts with a basic concept like Freak or Fighter but soon becomes unique as they collect weird items and strange powers.

It also means EM is compatible with a galaxy of games you can borrow from. Mail Order Apocalypse fits the bill perfectly, or Monolith for harder SF, or questing multiversal cowboys from We Deal in Lead (more on these later), and why not throw a spooky cursed forest in there with a couple of Cairn adventures?

But even without any of these ‘lateral supplements’, it’s more than enough to start your group of punks on their quest for the peaceful, safe Glade where they can build a new home.

My only minor gripe is, despite how beautiful and streamlined the book is, a couple of rules took me a minute to grok. (But it was the same with Into the Odd back in the day, so maybe my brain isn’t great with pared down mechanical elegance :)

The PDF of Eco Mofos is a fiver on David’s itch page, so why don’t you just?

(adapted from a Mastodon post)

12 August 2024

An attempt at regular web logging

Because I don’t want to waste a specialty coffee’s worth in Blot subscription, I have decided to post some low friction things. It was the point of having a low friction blog in the first place. I will then try to log some of the things I read, watch, and play on a regular basis.

Think of this as the semi-elaborate review or impression social media posts I don’t do anymore because fuck Musk and yuck Zuck. I mean, I’m on Mastodon but my account is set to delete on a regular basis so I might also paste some of my posts there.

So, yeah. Don’t hold your breath for more than “Hey you should watch this!” and “Does anyone know about that?” posts around here. At least not until I’ve got back into the swing of web logging things again.

11 August 2024

ConLog LasagnaCon 7

Friday

I flew to Glasgow from Dublin Friday afternoon and landed just in time to meet Paolo, Gustav, Roger, and game jam organiser Gabe at the BECO building (aka Barclay’s Eagle Labs coworking space). The space is just as nice as you’d expect a bank owned startup incubator. Three floors with big desks we could commandeer for board games, meeting rooms for RPGs, kitchens, the works.

That evening, we had just a couple hours after the customary chats and lasagne to play, so Paolo ran a pick up session of Dwarf Land. We rolled silly characters and were sent on a mission, which we chose to mostly ignore so we could hire some rabbits to build a reverse pyramid for us.

Saturday

Most of the day was taken by Roger’s exploration of Slave Pits of the Undercity using his own 52 Pages ruleset (it is indeed 52 pages long, but it’s also called 52 Pages). We had were six to eight players at any time, with eight 5th level characters and a few followers in tow. It was an interesting experience, I think especially for a ‘young’ grognard like me: when you have a dozen delvers, stealth mode becomes very challenging: light sources, noise management, and the sheer space taken by such a large group makes avoiding notice and pursuit interesting. And if the gnome at the back of the column decides to go and explore by themselves, there isn’t much the more tactically minded characters at the front can do. We didn’t make it into the titular slave pits, but got in a few scrapes where the rules showed their potential. 52 Pages strides the line between simplicity and heroism with ease. (I’m not including a link as the last publicly shared version seems to be from 2016. Roger has done quite a bit of work on it since then.)

Later, Roz, Richard and myself tried playing Vial Belli with three players but, as I’ve confirmed by watching the rules video on the itch page linked here, we didn’t have all the rules right. There wasn’t much time to try a two- or four-player game, so I’ll have to update later with full thoughts on this cool little card war game. We followed this with a couple rounds of Scout, which is an easy to learn and fun card game with a thin theme of circus management. I’d never seen the hand management mechanic before.

Sunday

The main event was Paolo’s playtest of Sorcerers & Shenanigans. Based on Gangs & Bullshit but whackier, this is a game of apprentice sorcerers going wild while their master is away. Exploring the tower and the region surrounding it, getting in all sorts of trouble, and generally not caring much about the various crises threatening the land. The game was a blast. It has very simple mechanics and a unique turn structure, which lets a GM work with a large number of players. We played for four to five hours with eight characters and so much shenanigans happened over the course of nine months of game time. It was interesting to see how some apprentices became accomplished wizards, while others didn’t but made friends and arguably accomplished more in the world. Props to Chris for mutating into a Chaos Cat and prompting their new ice dragon god master to take over a city.

During a break, Chris led four of us in a short session of a GMless game he’d acquired that same morning: Stack of Goblins. Nothing new theme wise: you play goblins piled in a trenchcoat sent on a randomly generated mission. I liked that narrative power is distributed according to your goblin’s place in the stack.

And then it was time for Christine’s now traditional session of Mörk Borg. I had kept last year’s character and brother Björnus wasn’t as lucky and finally succumbed to a Type III CyberDemon’s blaster gun. The adventure was supported by Christine’s really cool map and art.

Sunday was arguably better attended. There were people playing board games, and a multi-setting session of 24XX was held in one of the side booths. I wish I could have played in that too but in any case it was great to see this game in the wild!

Monday

There was just enough time to have coffee and say goodbye and thank you to Paolo. Turned out Roger and I were on the same southbound train, so we chatted about 52 Pages for a good bit, long enough to convince me to try running it. These pages are just filled to the brim with simple and clever procedures for old school adventure gaming.

After he jumped off to make his connection, I spent the rest of the trip doing some edits on adventures for Dungeon, Inc., and listened to episode 14 of When We Were Wizards. Wonder if it’s the last one or if they’re planning a more upbeat summary of the series…

I’m probably forgetting things. I have zero brain today and the coffee isn’t helping.

6 August 2024

Time Keeping in the timeless world of BREAK!!

I just love BREAK!!.

If you haven’t been navigating the OSR spheres (OSpheRes?) at all in the last ten years, there is a small chance you haven’t heard of BREAK!!. This tabletop roleplaying game is a love letter to classic JRPG and anime that builds on old-school D&D to deliver a fresh take on the tired old elfgame. What makes it work so well for me is that it is serious, but also not.

Granted, seriously-but-also-not is the way I run every dee-endee, but the whimsical and anachronistic vibe in Outer World (the game’s setting) gels super well with the heroic-yet-deadly mechanics. Much better than anything I’ve ever seen.

Grey Wizard’s art is just 👩‍🍳👌😘

But anyway. One of the specificities of Outer World is that its sun (or to be exact, the Sun Machine) doesn’t revolve around the planet. The machine was broken long ago, and for eons it has been hovering above one of the continents. This gives distinct atmospheres and themes to regions depending where they are relative to the unmoving star, which is a genius idea. And as a GM, it also makes me think about how communities keep track of time. The book (or Reynaldo on the BREAK!! Discord — my brain doesn’t remember things anymore) says that people are more chilled in Outer World because they aren’t slaves to clocks or bells like they are in Other World (that’s our world, or a version of it). Which is another great worldbuilding detail.

Playing an NPC in my first session though, I found myself stumped when a length of time needed to be stated. “The search party is leaving tomor… er, in the morn… er, at first ligh… at Third Bell!” is more or less what I ended up saying. I could have said “When we’re all awake”, but that’s not what came out. I just made a mental note to answer the time-keeping question when I prep a settlement.

Hence the following table.

The time-keeping method here (d20)

None. People don’t care about anyone’s need for sleep. People around here a always a bit on edge.
None, but people have a system of signals (signs on doors, flags, hats on pegs…) to indicate when they’re resting.
Marked candles are used by families and work groups to tell when the next activity or sleep cycle (“lights”) happens. Not in a coordinated way though.
People have a natural sense of time. Their sleep and activity cycles are very short. (Like a one-hour nap every two hours.)
Everyone gets to be in charge of keeping time for a week. They ring a gong at intervals that feel right to them. People associate according to their views on timekeeping and work cycles.
The locals model their sleep cycles on the prides or roarclaws who live around here. They snack and nap a lot.
A colony of honeycrawls living among the villagers provides them with a strict schedule.
The flowers of the starchid tree open and close at regular intervals. Different species have different schedules, and people and communities choose the flowers that suit their personalities.
A goblin inventor maintains a network of cogs and cables connecting lumi-slime jars. Tiny hammers and pop guns awake some slimes every handful of hours. The number of illuminated jars marks the time of the day.
Bells are rung six times a day by local monks. The intervals follow meditation cycles and are simply called “bells”.
The nearby volcano spouts harmless fireworks three times a day. People call these periods flames (morning), flares (afternoon), and fumes (night).
A gigantic clocktower powered by an ancient arcane source. It has 21 hours. The last one is the Witching Hour, when ambiant mana surges.
An old clepsydre is painstakingly kept in working order inside a temple-workshop. The shaolingineers who live there raise a different flag every two hours (13 flags total).
People use glowing mana-rocks to tell time. These stones have a colour cycle, with colder hues being used as resting time. Only thing is, the proximity of mana disrupts the cycle. And adventurers bring a lot of mana with them.
An antique warbot has been dying under the town for as long as anyone can remember. A loud buzzing alarm resonates four times a day. These four cycles are called “throes”.
The synthaur (a bio-mechanoid with the lower body of a largzard) who serves as the militia captain has an internal clock. They loudly announce every hour. Even at night.
Luminous dronekites are seen dancing high in the sky for about half the day. People are superstitiously afraid of them, so they stay indoors to rest and sleep when they are visible.
An oldtech clock network is maintained by a clan of rai-nekos. The digital clocks are connected to each other by radio waves. They may even have a radio station with a morning DJ.
The settlement owns one or more SMT clocks, plugged into the outer-world-wide Standard Merchant Time arcane network. (Thanks Burn!)
There are two concurrent and possibly competing time keeping systems. Roll again twice.

This is how I envision the clocks of entry 18

Note: with no objective way to measure days, some activity cycles will be much shorter than others. One community’s day may last an objective 16 hours when the next one’s is closer to 28 hours. Does it matter? Only if you have a human stray who brought a Swiss wristwatch with them, I guess.

6 October 2023

An Unfinished FKR Game to Play Your 5E Character

*Edit 27/12/23: removed the Arbitrary Calculation mechanic; Changed the referee/narrator to Diceless Motherfucker; Clarified checking and crossing out lines; Fixed the dragon librarian.

I cobbled this together last week, following an urge to rework something I’d written during the lockdowns and never used. It’s up here so I don’t forget about it again and might evolve if I get to run it. It uses the key principle in OZR, the Obliviax Oracle table, and borrows some lingo from CRACK!. The break rule comes from one of John Grümph’s many, many games (I’m just not sure which…).

Epic Five

Reckless Attack, Dread Ambusher, Fey Ancestry… One of the things that we like about making character in the Fifth Edition of The Wannabe Billion Dollar Brand is the cool abilities we get from backgrounds, classes, races, spells, magic items, and the like.

Of course, each of these cool sounding abilities come with their own rules, for the sake of gameplay and balance. Which is good, of course, ’cause we play the game to play the game, but still… What if we were just using the cools words?

“You’re a Spell sniper? Well, you can shoot that undead sentry in the skull with a silent magic missile. Roll a d20.”

As you’d expect, you need one DM (Diceless Motherfucker) and from one to four players to play.

Bring your character

You need a sheet of paper with your character’s name and 20 numbered lines, preferably with checkboxes.

Next, fill in a number of lines equal to your character’s level with the cool words from your D&D character sheet. (It should be a minimum of 5 lines, even for a low level character.)

Some examples of what you can write on a line :

And that’s all! You can put your D&D character sheet away now. We wouldn’t want to make the session boring by looking up details or doing maths!

Action! Checking lines

When your character attempts something risky or is in danger, roll a d20 and aim high.

The DM uses the table below as inspiration to describe the consequences of your roll. Feel free to suggest ideas. It’s your hero after all!

Optionally, a player always describes their action and the DM builds on it.

Boosting a roll: you can check any number of lines on your character sheet to roll that many extra d20s, as long as you can justify their use in the attempt. You get to choose the result you like best. (But it you take too long, the DM is entitled to choose for you.) Optionally, the number of dice results equal or above the chosen result give you the quality of the success. The DM ultimately gets to decide which lines can and cannot be used in a given situation. But they won’t be a dick about it, and they certainly won’t refer to any corporate rulebooks or overpriced apps. So be creative!

Uncheck your lines when taking a breather: three minutes and a swig of ale if enough. But if the DM

Fight! Losing lines

Dealing hits: Your attacks, spells, and other offensive actions deal one hit per d20 rolled.

Taking hits : This covers the usual worg bites and fire bolt burns, but also conditions used by Hasbro‘s Ampersand Brand (fear, paralysis, etc.) or not (disarmed, in love, amputated…). When you get hit, you cross out (not check) one or more of your character lines. The DMay tell you which lines to cross out as directed by what just happened (being disarmed, you would lose your axe for instance). Otherwise, it is randomly determined: for each hit, roll a d20 and cross the corresponding line on your sheet. If this line is empty or already checked, you choose. It’s better if you can explain how the hits you take make you lose some of your abilities or equipment, but don’t sweat it.

Being taken out: Whenever you run out of lines to check or cross out, you are out of the game for an amount of time decided by the DM, or unless someone comes to revive you.

Non-lethal damage: As we said above, conditions can deprive you of your lines. So is social and psychological damage resulting from non combat situations. The bard losing the rap battle to the Killa Kobold Krew? The shame cost them their cutting words line.

Furthermore, some conditions limit what your character can do. Someone who’s restrained or swallowed by a hydra cannot do everything they like. In these situations, the DM will be a lot more strict with the lines you can check to boost your rolls.

Monsters and characters

The DM should have lists for monsters and NPCs representing their abilities and how resilient they are in a conflict. This works just like for your character, with a number of lines you can base on their hit dice or level in D&D or just estimate. The lines can be used to describe the NPC’s needs, character, and flaws, as well as their abilities and tactics. See examples below. Optionally, some lines can be duplicated, especially if the DM is coming up with enemies on the fly.

Also, each potential adversary has a Critter Rank (CR), which is essentially the number of lines you cross out if they hit you.

The DM doesn’t roll dice in combat. So avoiding hits or spells is on you: make a roll (boost it if you like) and beat an AC that can be indicated on the enemy’s sheet or made on the spot. Per die result meeting or beating this AC, remove one from the damage you would have taken.

Taking breaks to recover lines

Whenever you feel like they are running out of abilities, you can agree to take a break. The time it takes in the shared narrative doesn’t matter: it may be a week at a comfortable country inn, recovering from a dungeon crawl with hot bone broth and cool rye ale; or it can be a mere instant regrouping behind cover, hoping the dragon won’t be breathing its fire yet again. When you take a break, recover (uncheck and uncross out) your lines. Every player, including the DM, must agree to do so, or the break doesn’t happen.

Everyone gets a break! What is stopping you from taking as many breaks as you want? Well, a break for the heroes is also a break for the villains. While the characters are recovering, the DM gets to take a turn, essentially doing what they would do between sessions: restock the dungeon with reinforcements, make a faction move, bring a villain’s plan to fruition… anything that makes sense within the situation. The Queen’s army was been defeated by the undead horde while the party was resting behind the lines; as the heroes were catching their breath behind a rock, the dragon’s cultist allies showed up to encircle them.

Example enemies

Pixie bandit: CR 0

Infuriating little annoyance

Human city guard: CR 1

Bored bully
Clunky armour

Ogre vagrant: CR 2

Huge mofo
$18 ^{00}$
Hungry all the time
Always attacks the most annoying target

Dragon librarian:* CR 4

13 September 2023

Dungeon 23, May: The Cold Sea

Last month I decided to do an island crawl for a slowpocalyptic setting I’ve been thinking about. I’m not sure how interesting it is, but at least I’ve learned that I’m unable to maintain a consistent mapping style ;p

it started relatively simple

I did both weeks in the same couple of days

but after that I added shadows

and then contour lines were gone

no map here, I needed the space for June

All in all, I’m rather happy with the final style. I’m not good at isometric style, but I could probably make some half decent maps with a lot of practice.

11 June 2023

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