Tabletop Gaming Feeds

If you told me yesterday that Bethesda would eventually allow someone to design a Fallout pen & paper roleplaying game, I wouldn’t have believed it. For a very long time they weren’t willing to let anyone touch this franchise. But it seem Modiphius managed to convince them that Fallout was in good hands with them.

What’s even more surprising that they’ll not just release one but two RPGs in the Fallout universe. The first one will be a roleplaying expansion to their successful Fallout Wasteland Warfare miniatures game (check out our interview with its designer James Sheahan). The second one will be a more traditional tabletop RPG using Modiphius’ 2d20 System. You can learn more about these games on Modiphius’ Fallout Roleplaying website.

The one based on the miniature game will actually be out this summer and will be playable without miniatures as a standalone RPG using free downloadable cards!

I am extremely excited about these news and hope we’ll get more details on both games in the near future!

Related posts:

1. Fallout Wasteland Warfare Q&A with Designer James Sheahan
2. Hell froze over: There will be a new Alternity RPG
3. More Modiphius News: Grimmerspace

Today I stumbled upon an excellent article written by Brad J. Murray about luxury games (like Monte Cook’s Invisible Sun) and the struggles of indie game designers. It’s definitely well worth your time. I posted an excerpt below.

My business, the VSCA, is in a very privileged space. It’s not for me to talk about whether someone elses pricing scheme is good or bad, just or unjust. It is certainly all those things. So let’s just look at some things that are certainly true and wonder how much we care. You get to decide how much you care for yourself.

Monte Cook Games pays a decent wage to their writers and artists. Far above the indie norm.

A hundred bucks in one outlay is too much money for some people to pay. They cannot afford to buy this game (Invisible Sun) even in digital only form. [..]

Check it out!

Related posts:

1. Monte Cook’s New Game will be Weird – With a Capital W.
2. Some thoughts on Invisible Sun
3. Humble RPG Book Bundle: Numenera

A couple of days ago Monte Cook Games finally released their roleplaying game Invisible Sun in digital form. Until then the PDF version of the game was one of the exclusive Kickstarter backer perks. The digital edition not only contains multiple PDFs with over 1000 pages of text, but also countless cards in a printer-friendly format and handouts for all the props included with the physical version of the game. The price tag is at $99.

This may sound a lot and quite a few people have been arguing that its way too much, but this is not the issue I am having with the game. Invisible Sun is a surreal fantasy game, a game in which characters wield unimaginable powers, a game which is supposed to change your perspective on what roleplaying games could be. This might to a certain extent be quite pretentious, and a bit of hyperbole, but the people who read or even played it, seem to like it a lot. So what’s the issue?

My issue with the game is that aside from either getting the $99 digital copy or the $250 physical one (aka the Black Cube), I have no way to find out more about the game. Sure, I can watch the videos Monte Cook Games has uploaded to YouTube, or I can read one of the few reviews out there. Having a reasonably priced starter set or perhaps even some free quickstart rules would make it much easier to find out whether Invisible Sun is worth my money or not. With a game at such a high price tag, I just want to be really, really sure, that the game is for me.

Is the price itself fair? Undoubtedly so. Monte Cook Games creates awesome products and I never regretted putting down money for any of their books. Especially the physical copy of the game is probably quite cheap considering how much material you get. I’d love to get my hands on a copy, but at the moment, a $99 or $250 minimum to get into the game, just seems too much for me.

By the way, I just noticed that Invisible Sun is actually the #1 best selling title on DriveThruRPG at this moment. I don’t know how this is measured, just by the sheer number of purchases or is the price factored in? Still, it’s pretty impressive.

What are your thoughts? Are you intrigued by Invisible Sun, but shy away from the high price tag? As always every comment is highly appreciated!

UPDATE: My friend Roberto aka Sunglar let me know that there’s actually a preview for Invisible Sun available for free on DriveThruRPG. I haven’t had the time yet to fully read it, but it seems to give a good overview on character creation, the magic system and some of the “fluff”.

Related posts:

1. From my blogroll: “expensive toys” by Brad J. Murray
2. Monte Cook’s New Game will be Weird – With a Capital W.
3. More Thoughts on the Cypher System

I have spent the past seven weeks reading the Zweihänder core rules cover to cover.At nearly 700 pages this was not a small task. The reason for this was purely for review purposes.

Over on my own blog I have done a chapter by chapter read through as inspired by Jeremy Friesen’s SWN series. I did the series on my blog for two reasons. The first was that there are potentially useful elements in Zwei for Rolemaster fans as both are d100, detailed and gritty games. Zwei by comparison is brand spanking new and shiny but most to of my blog readers are old hand Rolemaster GMs playing a game that is 30 years old or so.

The second reason is all about word count. I think I have written something like 12,000 words about Zweihänder in the past two months. That is fine on my own blog but it is a little presumptuous to monopolise Michael’s blog just to review a single game.

So enough about the how and why, what do I think of Zweihänder?

Mechanically, it is a simple enough game. It is a well written and simple game using a roll under mechanic on a d100. Some of the things that immediately appeals was that there are no levels and no hit points.

What Zweihänder lacks is survivability. It is written in that players are expected to hold a stable of characters and swap in a new PC when the current one dies. This is something that I struggle with. I find it hard to invest in a PC that I know is almost certainly going to die. I know that PCs die all the time but a great many fantasy games include Raise Dead, Resurrection or Life Giving which means that death is not necessarily the end. Of course if death is a real possibility it means that choices have meaning. If death is an almost certainty it goes too far the other way.

That is probably my only gripe.

On the plus side there is a lot of really good stuff here. I personally would have said that the magic system in Zweihänder is one of the three best magic systems I have ever used. The other two are Hero System and 7th Sea. Hero is simply the most flexible system imaginable and 7th Sea is the most integrated into the setting and by extension the most flavourful.

Zweihänder has a very simple critical system, both for critical success and critical failure. This same system runs through skills, combat and magic. The way that critical failures are applied in magic is that the successes and failures are explicitly described in each and every spell. You don’t get any of this bland “You failed so your spell doesn’t work.” Take this spell as an example.

FEAST FOR CROWS
You conjure forth a murder of crows, which harry and harm your
enemies.
Distance: Any one place you can see
Reagents: A crow, sacrificed (expended)
Duration: Instantaneous
Effect: After successfully casting this spell, you can conjure
a flock of murderous crows that swoop about your enemies,
dispersing only after tasting blood. All those who are caught
within the Burst Template suffer 2D10+[WB] in Damage.
Critical Success: As above, but those caught in the Feast for
Crows begin to Bleed.
Critical Failure: You call forth a flock of murderous crows –
armed with iron beaks and dagger-like talons – not from the
Material Realm but from the Abyss! They swoop about you
and you suffer 2D10+[WB] in Damage and begin to Bleed.

You can see from the spell description how those critical successes and failures are unique to each spell and add to the flavour of the spell. That runs right through the magic system. Everything feels really tight, slick and polished.

The next thing that I think is good is the bestiary. This is not the biggest bestiary in the world but the way it is structured and the breadth of the monsters included is more than adequate. They are also all the most iconic of monsters. Zweihänder also uses a system of true names. So where some games may have seperate stats for a Frost Giant, a Jotun and a Nephilim, Zweihänder uses a single base creature but rather than creating numerous variations it integrates the monsters into its folklore skill. So a Frost Giant is a nephilim as is a Jotun as is a Giant. The actual monster stats are kept secret but the characters can learn, through their skills and game experience interact with just the local names and local monsters.

Zweihänder also has a feature and mechanic for corruption. This also integrates with the bestiary with its mutants and corruptions. The lasting impression is that everything in Zweihänder is, just like the magic, tightly, slick and polished.

So my conclusion is that I like Zweihänder. Right now the game is $14.99 on DTRPG but it is about to disappear. Grim & Perilous Studios have signed a publishing deal and will be disappearing from all the OBS websites. You can preorder the printed books through Amazon and apparently Target and Walmart if you are that way inclined but the price is going to be an awful lot more than the PDF pricing.

It seems like the world and his brother already own Zweihänder but if you don’t and you think it could be your thing then I would get it sooner rather than later. If you really want to read about it in depth then you can head over to the RolemasterBlog and search for Zweihänder there and you will find my read through.

Related posts:

1. ZWEIHÄNDER supplement round up
2. Zweihänder Collaboration
3. The Dungeon Master Guys

If you are an avid fan of PC gaming, you have probably heard of Sunless Seas and its successor Sunless Skies. Both games have a strong focus on story and exploration. In Sunless Skies you are the captain of a locomotive exploring the skies. And that’s not where the weirdness ends. In Sunless Skies stars are highly intelligent … and dying. The Victorian Empire has built its own Sun and Queen Victoria reigns from the Throne of Hours, which gives her control over time.

If you want to explore the vast skies in a tabletop roleplaying game, don’t fret, Failbetter Games has you covered. Skyfarer is a Sunless Skies RPG which you can download for free. The game uses a simple d10-based mechanic and is focused on narrative gaming. If you expect complex rules and tactical combat, Skyfarer is not for you. But if you intend to tell exciting stories in a delightfully weird world, you definitely should check it out.

Related posts:

1. Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies now available over RPGNow
2. Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies
3. Freebies: Renaissance

A friend of mine just pointed a pretty good deal out to me. In order to celebrate Pathfinder 10th anniversary, Humble Bundle is selling $505 worth of Pathfinder stuff for mere $18.

The offer is tiered with the lowest tier starting at $1 and containing the Pathfinder Beginner Box, the core rules, several sourcebooks and trial access to Pathfinder Online. The next tier starts at $8 and contains additional material like the Advanced Player’s Guide and the Villain Codex. The third tier starts at $15 and contains books like the Ultimate series of sourcebooks, Bestiary 2 and 3. Last but not least the highest tier starts at $18 and contains more material for Pathfinder, and also the core rules for Starfinder, Paizo’s new Science-Fantasy RPG.

Of course you can always decide to pay more. Each Humble Bundle sold supports charity. You can either choose the one featured by Humble Bundle this month, or choose your own.

Related posts:

1. Humble RPG Book Bundle: Numenera
2. Humble RPG Book Bundle Warhammer
3. Bundle of Holding: Traveller New Era

This is a short update to let you all know that I’ve created a new Twitter account. From now on, my old account @StargazersWorld will be exclusively for blog-related stuff, while my personal account @LordStargazer is for everything else. Please note that it will probably take me a couple of days to get everything sorted.

Related posts:

1. Leaving Twitter
2. Twitter
3. Twitter Trouble!

Praise the Fallen focused on a place of chaos, now its spiritual successor, Sision Tower, explores a place of law...sort of.  It’s easy to make chaos dangerous and creepy, but can the same thing be done with something Holy?  This became my goal, although, it didn’t start out that way...
     Sision Tower is a vertical dungeon crawl using a non-traditional map.  So far, I've drawn about 30 pictures for it (Praise the Fallen had 7 or 8) and a solid majority of the writing is done.  Still far from finished, but definitely starting to come together. 
Here is some of the art...






Meanwhile, I thought this was cool...

http://hyperborea.boardhost.com/viewtopic.php?pid=16946
Back to work.

I've said before how the Marvel (FASERIP) RPG was my go to super-hero system for years, so much so that it nearly ruined percentile systems for me -- I probably passed on a lot of good games over the years simply because I was so sick of rolling percentile dice.  These days I don't care so much, whatever works.
The other two super-hero systems that I like are DC Heroes (Mayfair Games) and Heroes Unlimited by Palladium.  Notice a trend?  All three are old-school games.  I would love to encounter a modern super-hero game that I liked, but I haven't (Mutants and Masterminds isn't bad, so I suppose an honorable mention...)  Most modern super-hero games seem to be "story-based"-- not my cup of tea.  Some of the games do look like nice products, so I'll give them credit for that.
The last Marvel game (Marvel Heroic) was terrible, not trying to offend anyone, it just was.  It's flaws?  1.  Being forced to not only play Marvel characters, but, Marvel stories as well.  Stories, I might add, that you've probably already read.  2.  No robust character creation rules, though I think something half-assed was added later.  People ALWAYS want to create there own characters.  The Marvel (or DC) universe should simply be a guideline, a sample setting, something you can use or not use.  3.  Typical story-game nonsense made it possible for Dare-Devil types to even have a chance to defeat Thor types.  This reminds me of the "every one gets a trophy" nonsense.  Sorry, Dare-Devil, you can't beat Thor, I don't care how well you describe it.  I understand, they're trying to recreate those clever little comic-book moments where Ant-Man and the Wasp defeat the Absorbing Man and Titania, but......no.  Roll some dice, the story will tell itself.  4.  The dice-step system using only d4 - d12 is extremely limiting, they should have at least included the d20 to give the game more depth, but that still only leaves a 5 or 6 rank difference between normal folks and godlike beings.  I'm sure it can be done...  And to be fair, there is (subjective) dice-pooling involved.....which, I'm never a fan of dice-pool systems where you inevitably spend too much time making the case to include certain dice in your pool and then spend time "interpreting" your roll.  
Anyway, that's just a little rant, if you disagree with any of it, that's cool.  To each their own.  I always say, play the games you love and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
What this post is really about, is this:

More specifically, those dice.

I've designed several complete super-hero role-playing systems.  Or rather, I've designed my own system and redesigned it several times over.  For whatever reason super-hero games, up until recently, were my favorite to design.  Probably because no system out there truly satisfied what I wanted in a super-hero game.

Yet I keep coming back to FASERIP.  Those seven abilities (Fighting, Agility, Strength, Endurance, Reason, Intuition, Psyche) perfectly describe super-heroes.  Add up the first 4 for Health, the next 3 for Karma.  Perfect.  I used to think the Talent system was lame and we craved more "skills," but now I don't.  The Talent system makes sense.  The Powers could have been better explained, and the character creation system could be better tweaked to include more detailed "archetypes," but should remain random.  There are ways to create randomly rolled characters without it being nonsensical.

Here's what bugs me about FASERIP:  No matter who you're fighting, your chance to hit remains the same.  Aunt May, who probably has Feeble (2) or Poor (4), Fighting, has the same chance to hit Captain America as she does a hapless child (not that Aunt May would ever attempt either.)  The system doesn't take into account the combat prowess of your opponent (unless they actively try to dodge, which rarely happened because it costs your turn.)  One thing that was beautiful about Mayfair's DC Heroes, is that your fighting ability (Dexterity) was directly cross-referenced with your opponents score to determine your chance to hit -- the height of logic.  But, you had to consult charts, and that can be a pain.  FASERIP has this chart flaw too.  Charts were big in the 80's.


Right, those dice...

I've often pondered how to play FASERIP  without using percentile dice and/or charts, or at least only one chart, and include a way to make the opponent's power-level relevant when you attack/manipulate.  Zak Smith came up with an idea on his blog (I can't seem to find the exact post.) 

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/
It involved assigning a number (ranging somewhere between 7-ish and 18-ish, like a D&D saving throw) to the FASERIP ranks and rolling 3d20 to hit that number.  One hit is a green success, two is a yellow, and three is a red, so you still need the small results chart atop the Universal Table.  Example, lets say Amazing (50) would be target number 8, you would need to roll at least one 8 on 3d20 to hit.  Pretty cool idea.

Fast forward to my recent purchase of Dungeon Crawl Classics and the special dice needed to play that game.  I was toying around with these dice to see just how well they roll and they're not bad, though some will keep rolling forever unless they hit a barrier.  I was thinking, why don't the games out there with dice-step systems (such as Savage Worlds) use these dice to improve or broaden their systems?  Does Goodman Games own these dice?  I doubt it.

My mind quickly went to FASERIP, maybe because Zak Smith had made another post where he talked about designing a super-hero system using a d4 - d20 dice step system.  As a fan, I'm sure it will be good.  But I find myself thinking, why not use the extra dice?

 http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2018/10/new-toys-new-toys.html 
Well, the answer's simple, you never want to force players to buy "funky" dice to play your game.  And OSR types (myself included) are plenty content with the dice we already have.  Still, it's too good an idea to ignore, so how about this?

Feeble  d3Poor  d4Typical  d6Good  d8Excellent  d10Remarkable  d12Incredible  d14Amazing  d16Monstrous  d20Unearthly  d24Shift X  d30
Don't worry about ranks above Shift X as they almost never enter the game anyway.  You could simply treat them as d30 with Advantage.
The numbers for Health and Karma are the dice numbers, so if you had all Excellent's, your Health would be 40 and Karma would be 30.

When you attack someone, it's an opposed roll, Fighting vs. Fighting, Agility vs. Agility, Psyche vs. Psyche, or a Power vs. any of these, there are multiple possibilities.  If you beat their roll it's a green success, if you beat their roll by 5 it's a yellow success, if you beat their roll by 10 it's a red success.  You obviously still need the effects part of the Universal Table, but that's just a quick glance, no biggy.

Damage could be a dice roll or a static number (static number would be better I think.)

Talents improve your rank by 1 or 2 as normal.

Higher level, Thor types would be prone to wilder results when they fight thus resulting in people getting "slammed" all over the city.  Regular humans would rarely "slam" anyone.  Perfect.

Feat rolls would be made against the GM's roll for the feat.  Example, jumping across roof-tops might be an Excellent level feat, so you roll Agility vs. the GM rolling a d10.  Certain feats might be automatic if they're below your level, unless your attempt is under duress.

Spending Karma equals to die type you're upgrading to, e.g., you have Incredible d14 and want to upgrade to Monstrous d20 would cost you 20 Karma, and you can never upgrade more than 2 steps.

I've run some samples based on some FASERIP characters, and this all translates very well.

I almost feel like writing up a rule-set, but beyond what I just did, there's not much more to it.  I might however, write up a new random character creation system for FASERIP, but that's for another time...

Meanwhile, I'm working on another OSR Dungeon and will be posting a preview soon.

We are just back from a very productive AthensCon. This third edition of the yearly convention welcomed no less than 17,000 visitors and fans over two days. The event is growing year on year and is fast becoming a reference within the comics, games, movies and collectibles industry.

AthensCon Day 1
AthensCon is a hub of creative talent, starting with the Special Guests themselves, from comic writers and fantasy illustrators to action movie actors and cosplay artists from Europe and the US, with connections to Marvel, DC Comics and Disney, no less. 

Rob and part of the AthensCon crew. (L-R: Khaled, RJK, Costas and Marios)
As a Special Guest, Rob ran a two-hour workshop, The Genius of Original Dungeons & Dragons:  Leaping Outside the Box of Design History. He also participated in a Q&A session on RPG and D&D, and DMed two sessions of his redesigned Lake Level from Castle El Raja Key, featuring surprising encounters of the aquatic kind which certainly sent the players' imagination into overdrive!

Captive audience at the workshop
Rob took the pulse of the thriving Greek RPG market. He met up with his fans for autographs and a chat and was bowled over at how passionate and enthusiastic those guys and gals are!

Q&A session
This year is ending on a high note for Rob as when in Athens he made some interesting contacts with industry people and got some new project ideas rolling.

Let's roll some dice!
The history-laden, mythology-steeped antique city of Athens lends mystique to the convention itself and to the extra two days of hospitality provided by the organisers to their Guests. Thus special thanks to Andreas, Yiannis, Costas, Vera, Marios and the rest of the team who made us all feel at home amongst friends, and treated us to the warm Greek hospitality: the culinary delights of taverna fayre, and the historical delights of the unmissable Acropolis - birthplace of democracy and the precepts of Western civilisation - which gracefully dominates the Athenian cityscape. Not to mention its dedicated Acropolis Museum, and other places of interest (ex: National Archeological Museum) which stretch timelines out into millennia as they whisk us onto a fantastic odyssey peppered with Gods, Demi-Gods and Heroes... from Greek mythology!

AthensCon was for us a very successful event. Thanks again to our hosts for the invite, and we look forward to meeting up again!

No Photoshop required: the Acropolis is naturally beautiful!