Doomslakers!

Been in a funk lately. I was working on the new game every day, kind of obsessed with it, then I got COVID. Seems like that's when the funk started. Been kind of flitting around since then, not focused on a damn thing. Arting randomly, no focus at all.

But such is life. I have a wandering mind. Sometimes it's worse than other times. I would probably fit into some category of neurodivergent, but I'm not dysfunctional enough to give a shit about checking.

Even unfocused, though, I still draw a decent amount. I berate myself for not doing much but then I look at my art stack and realize it just keeps growing and growing and growing. Even my daughter, who draws all the time, comments "How do you just keep drawing so much?".

I guess my issue is that I see all these accomplished comics creators, for example, who did x number of issues of their book over x decades and I'm like "Where's my x book?". I don't really have one. People know me either for The Pool, Pan-Gea, Black Pudding, or my pin-up art. I think. I'm so god damn random I can't even tell if any of that is true.

Here's a logo I recently drew for a character aptly named Hoofnar. Great visual concept. I even have a cool cover for it, pictured here. But I've been unable to settle on the character's core. Is he a goofy bastard bumbling through a cartoon world? Is he a serious straight Conan riff? Is he something else? I don't know. It's got me locked up on doing him.
I mean, this idea has legs, right?

Meanwhile there's Zarp. That little red bastard has been with me for 23 years and I've drawn lots of little comics about him. I even drew a 16 pager at the end of 2022. I want to get that into print. But I'm stumbling around not sure if I want to do a dedicated Zarp comic or not.



And now, suddenly, there's this Hymla idea. She's a badass warrior chick. She's thick and mean and missing a tooth. I like her a lot. She deserves a comic too.
Picture it in FULL COLOR.
Come to think of it, the Hymla piece, in color, would make a fucking sweet 11x17 poster. I might do up a few and sell them, signed and numbered and all that.
All of this leads me to the inevitable concept of a simple anthology comic wherein I can just dump all my comic book ideas. Like Random Order Comics, which makes sense. I already did a Random Order Comics & Games zine back in the oughts. And my imprint is Random Order Creations (established 1994, and consistently used ever since).
Which leads me to this concept.

Yeah, I'm a creative mess right now. But that's cool. I've always been a mess. I still keep messing around.

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.

It's a god damn undead.
I have these mental partitions in my social media posting. On my blog and Twitter I just say whatever I want, fuck it. But on Facebook I tend to dial it back a tiny bit and I try to be more broadly agreeable. I think this is because I have family who follow me on FB (at least a few).

But I do cuss like a sailor at a whorehouse and I do it because that's just how I am and because I don't want to cater to children. That last part is very important to me. I do not do stuff for kids. I don't want children browsing though a lot of my stuff, though I feel like it's mostly completely OK if it happens. It's just weird. Kids have tons of cool shit, they don't need me. And I need to be as unfiltered as I can possibly be.

In fact, I need to be more unfiltered and unhinged than I already am. Why the fuck would I even self-censor at all? I'm not famous, I don't make much money doing art, and I don't have much clout to lose. When no one is looking you can do what you want, creatively.

I actually need to loosen the fuck up.

In this post, I bemoan the suckiness of Magic-Users as presented in original editions of D&D such as B/X and 1e and I offer some ideas for house rules to give those poor bastards a kick in the ass. Some folks thought I was being too harsh or obtuse. Fair enough. I wasn't, but I get it.

Here I'd like to revisit that topic and attempt to save the ole MU without any house rules. I know, right? How in the world can you possibly do it?

First, please understand I'm not shitting on a beloved class because I hate it. I do love a good Magic-User. But one thing I never did or do is run them without house rules. Because I simply find the original rules for most classes to be limiting and obtuse in ways that annoy me and don't mesh with my play style.

Anyhow, here are some ways that I would personally want to run a B/X MU, for example, without necessarily needing house rules. Most of these ideas came from reading or hearing about similar ideas in other games, blogs, and social media over the past decade or so.

1. UNIQUE WIZARDS

I love this one. In B/X it doesn't say you can memorize the same spell twice, nor does it prohibit it (as far as I remember). This leaves the GM to decide which way to go. For this mode of play, go with "no you can't". Each spell occupies the wizard's mind as a single entity and will not or cannot tolerate another version of itself in the same brainspace.

But take that idea to another level. Make a setting in which a spell can only exist in a single book, scroll, or crystal, or wherever you like to put spells. If it is copied to another place, it disappears from the original. If it is read out loud to cast it... the damn thing is gone forever.

Also, make MUs very rare. Within the PC party, you don't have to limit folks. If you wanna be a MU, be one. But in the setting itself just don't include MUs on your wandering monster tables or as NPCs in towns. They just don't exist very frequently. Consider a small world and there are like a dozen wizards in it, period. One of the PCs is an up-and-coming member of the elite.

In that kind of setting, each spell is extremely valuable and precious. You can't just go to another MU and learn a new spell. You have to find spells in abandoned spellbooks, negotiate the purchase of spells, or steal them.

This kind of campaign, though it seems low magic, might be very wizard-centric because so much time would be taken up with your MU seeking power and playing 5d chess with other wizards who are doing the same thing. Could be fun.

2. MIX EDITIONS

Not technically a house rule, I guess. Use B/X and Holmes combined to allow your lowly wimp wizard to make scrolls. I don't believe Holmes explicitly limits when a MU can make a potion, so just lump that in with scrolls. Then the party's riches at lower levels could be poured into the wizard's laboratory so they can make plenty of Sleep and Magic Missile scrolls and Gaseous Form potions. Make extra and sell 'em to other parties. Clean out that ruined tower, set up a shop, defend it from marauders, discover the hidden dungeon that lies beneath. That's some fuckin' fun right there.

3. MAGIC SCHOOLS/GANGS

Typically, a D&D party has no real ties to anything other than each other and the dungeon at hand. But maybe create a rich tapestry of wizard orders and fit the PCs into that framework. Now the PC MUs have in-world goals related to the setting. Perhaps more potent spells can be had by working your way into a coven or cabal. Perhaps secret powers can be offered, magic items bestowed. Now the lowly 3rd level MU with three spells also has a talking skull necklace that spits acid and knows the names of 3 demons and can call on them for favors (dangerous but that's magic, baby).

4. CREATIVE GMING

The players can be creative as hell, trying all kinds of cool things. The MU is out of spells, but the player says they want to use their arcane connections and lore to cause some magical effect anyway. A shitty GM would say "No, you're out of spells. Can't do it." But a clever GM who actually enjoys playing the fucking game could say "Neat idea. Tell me what you're doing and what you hope to accomplish".

So the player, jazzed at having to work for it, works for it. They describe how they call on the names of several imps they knew during apprenticeship in order to barter for a boon. They sacrifice some tiny portion of sanity and the imps cause something freaky to happen, such as a swarm of flies to appear. Hell yeah. The GM decides what percentage chance the PC has of succeeding, based on the Magical Research rules. A roll is made. SUCCESS!

"Now reduce your Wisdom score by 3. You're not doing too well, emotionally. You'll gain 1 point back each day you pass a Save vs. Spells."

I like this because it re-purposes Magical Research to accomplish on-the-fly magical effects. Unlike casting a spell from memory, this type of magic has a price.

And so on.

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Here's a truth that many OSR folks do not agree about: low-level Magic-Users in pre-3e editions of Dungeons and Dragons suck. I'm sorry, grog, they just do. You know they do.

A first level M-U gets one god damn spell per motherfucking day. They can't even create magic scrolls to store spells until level 7 (if you use general 1e wisdom). In B/X, a M-U must be level 9 to create a scroll or magic item.

Let's drive home this point a little bit more. A M-U cannot even read a magic scroll without casting the spell Read Magic. Which means, as a first level caster, if you don't take Read Magic as your one and only spell, then you can't read scrolls.

"I'm glad I didn't choose Magic Missile instead of Read Magic. I was able to cast Read Magic so I could read that Magic Missile scroll and save the party from that one orc!"

The pushback is obvious and widely-screamed: If you can't think of anything else to do other than cast spells then you suck at this game.

That's fine. Except it's a fantasy game and I came on my Friday night with but one dream: to be a motherfuckin' wizard. And here you got me casting Read Magic and hiding behind the dwarf.

I beseech you, my OSR friends: don't visit this hell upon players. Unless you know for a fact that the person who wants to be a wizard both understands these limitations and LIKES IT, you gotta house rule that shit. And there's a lot of fine, fine house rules out there you can use to fix this broken-ass setup. For example, Magic-Users in your game can...

• Read any scroll.

• Create scrolls and magic items, per the Magical Research rules, starting at first level.

• Cast 3 additional first level spells per day in addition to what's on the spell slot table. Call it baseline training.

• Use any weapon they care to pick up, but if it's not allowed by the rules-as-written, then they get a -3 to hit. No biggie.

• Detect the presence of magic in a device or an area, perhaps by making a simple Intelligence check. You don't have to tell them what the magic is, just that they "get a vibe" off it.

• Possess one trivial magic item at character creation. It's their signature thing, like a hat that returns to them or an unseen hand that carries their sack. I promise you it will not break your fragile dungeon ecosystem.

Ok, this is all just a little bit tongue-in-cheek. But it's also true. If you can't save the Thief class at least pull the Magic-User up from the darkness.

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.

The original Zoa Space Fantasy logo, c. 2008.
A long, rambly post about a game I'm working on.

Since the oughts, I've had this crazy space idea zipping around my brain. It's space, but it's not "normal" space. There are planets, but also potato-shaped worlds, worlds that look like castles, worlds that are domed, etc. Really just an anything goes fantasyland where you have vast oceans of space ichors, empty space, and rivers of phlogiston instead of fields and roads and seas between interesting locations.
I did a comic about it called Zoa Space Fantasy. I think I did around 20 pages or so before I petered out. The story was about a little robot guy called N9 who wakes up on a garbage planet without his memories. He fights a garbage creature and is rescued by a space pirate/salvage ship called The Workhorse, captained by Tyrrany Flack, a medusa space captain. The ship was powered by a demon.
Later, I revived the idea and published a Troika! RPG book called Supercalla, then a follow-up called Cozmic Metal Heads, which was all about robot PCs. I am super proud of these books. I think they rock. I worked on a third book to be called Hellion Cross, which was a den of scum and villainy. I actually did a ton of work on that one and I believe I finished all 36 character backgrounds and most of the art. But I didn't finish it up.
More recently, I ran a game in my Monday night Doomslakers group called Heat Death. It was an original system and was set, loosely, in the same universe. But Heat Death was more grounded, scaled back, less fantastical. It was intended to be something like "in the past" of the ZSF universe. It was more about down-and-out Earthlings working out in the armpit of the galaxy because of crimes they committed or something. It was fun, but the system ultimately didn't quite work for me.
Which brings us up to current times. For many months, perhaps a year or more, I've been noodling an entirely new game based on this crazy space fantasy idea. The game will be called ZSF, Zoa Space Fantasy. Or Zoa Space Frontier, if you like that better.



To create this game, I started with a character sheet idea. I wanted to narrow it down to what you will always need in order to run wild space adventures. I decided you need the following elements.
FORM AND BACKGROUND
Fundamental to your PC... what kind of life form are you and what sort of job skills do you have? A list of these things will be given, with some minor detail. But making the shit up is an option. Monkey pirate? Blob scientist? Humanoid guru? You decide.
TRAITS
A Trait is any kind of characteristic that has any kind of mechanical impact on play, such as having a third arm or x-ray vision. You can make up some Traits when creating your PC and you can add more later. A Trait can also be an item. So if you really want to start the game with a kick ass laser rifle, make it a Trait. You damn sure won't be able to buy one with the skimpy funds you'll be starting with.
BASIC SKILLS
Everyone is a spacer, so they all should have some common basic skills. Not everyone is equally good at them, so the skills should have ranks. I decided you should randomly roll your ranks on a d6 per skill. It feels right. There are six skills. Not because six attributes is common, but because it makes sense. Trust me... I preferred to have less than six. But my image of how this game works just ended up requiring these six skills. I don't want more.
•Explore (perception, instinct, toughness, etc.)•Drive (ships, cars, bikes, etc.)•Fight (punch, kick, tackle, bash, etc.)•Operate (machines, robots, computers, etc.)•Shoot (load, aim, fire, reload, and duck)•Talk (charisma, persuasion, negotiation, etc.)
The way I see it, every conceivable common task a fantasy spacer could engage in is covered by these six skills. Blasting robots, flying ships, kicking in teeth, negotiating with locals, etc. Now you may wonder immediately... this is a space fantasy game. There are wizards. So how does a PC interact with magic? There isn't a skill that is obviously magical. There are reasons for this. First, most things that appear to be magical may actually be tech. Super science! Sufficiently advanced, as it were.
If the PCs encounter a truly mystical, magical thing that is beyond technology... why would they have a skill for it? Those are special situations.
LIFE POINTS
I thought about not having hit points. I thought about a wound levels system, or just ignoring this altogether. But honestly... this is an adventure game wherein you'll likely have fights with monsters and shit. I like hit point systems. They are quite reliable. So ZSF will have one. They are called Life Points to reinforce the fact that when you run out of them, you die. Or... probably... I will do a player choice: death or some kind of permanent drawback, akin to Death or Debasement from GOZR.
DEFENSE
Lifted straight from GOZR, which came straight from Into the Odd and other similar systems. Defense is just armor, or anything that absorbs damage. By default, this is a zero. And having a point or two is a big deal.
EXPLODING DICE
I love exploding dice. I can't not have them. So in this game, under the current rule sketch, you roll a d6 to do shit and if you roll a 6, the die explodes. There's more to it than that, but there it is.
ACES
I also love meta points. In this game, they are Aces. I used that term because years ago I did a dry run for a space game and the term "aces" played into that system. Plus "space ace" is fun. Anyway, this is exactly like GOZR's GOOZ points. You spend Aces to make shit happen.
GAMBLING
Way back in 2000, I wrote The Pool, which had a gambling element in the core mechanic. I wanted to bring that idea back because I do love the dynamic it provides. When players have a meaningful choice... to take a big risk and make big things happen. The idea here is you can literally roll as many dice as you want in any situation, thus increasing your chance of being wildly successful. But if you roll even a single 1, you have not only failed... you critically failed. I think this will be a fun game element.
MONEY AND GEAR
Mostly, I'm going to use The Black Hack's elegant usage dice for keeping track of bullets and stuff. But money, in the form of STDs (Standard Trade Dollars), will be tracked carefully. You'll shop and buy shit. You'll get ripped off. You'll rip people off. You start with a low amount of cash and things are expensive. I like it when players have to go buy things, haggle for them, and so forth. Plus if the PCs have to think about money, it underscores one of the game's core themes: corporate greed.
Gear is super important too. I think this is me showing my influences right on my sleeve because Star Frontiers was the second game I ever owned and I spent copious amounts of time pouring over the equipment descriptions. I love that shit. This game will have a lot of fun gear you can purchase, if you can get some money.
SETTING
I've already discussed this a bit. But to add to it, the galaxy is dominated by companies. Corporations have fully taken over as the real power. Governments exist, but are essentially fronts for corporations. Honestly... not very different than reality, huh?
The PCs will be adventuring mostly in the ZSF: the Zoa Space Frontier. This is basically the outer galaxy. Polite society is closer to the core of the galaxy, where streets are straight and the Law keeps things nice and neat. Out in the frontier it is a different story. Things are wild and wooly. Which can be good bad... the corporations reach out here to mine for resources, exploit natives, and so forth. The Law is their blunt tool. Many PCs may be outlaws. Fun.

Ok, so those are pretty much the important bits, in terms of what I wanted this game to emote. Let's talk system for a minute.
Currently, it's this:
•Roll a d6 to do a thing. A 6 explodes. Hit the Challenge Number and you succeed.•Each skill level adds 1d6 to the roll. Traits can also add dice or add modifiers.•Roll a 1 without a 6, and you failed. Roll the die again and if it's another 1, you crit fail. You describe what happens.•Borrowing from GOZR, if you roll 1 under the target, you graze. Something beneficial might still happen.•Spend Aces to do things like take extra actions, auto-explode a die, etc.•Add dice to the roll as a gamble, as discussed above.•Earn Space Points to build upon your character.
That's the gist of it. Work in progress, very much in the gestational phase. Even though, if you've seen any of my social media posts, I've been drawing tons of ZSF character sheets. I'm doing this because it's fun and because I want to lock myself into the bones of the system. I need to do this because I'm prone to change shit over and over and never get it done. How the fuck do you think I got GOZR finished? By literally drawing the rules I had a harder time changing them. If you knew how many iterations of Rabbits & Rangers exist and that game is still not written...
TONE
Holy fuck. This is a big deal. Because RPGs are for everyone, right? I want to be inclusive. I don't want to tell someone they can't play, either directly or indirectly. But at the same time, the tone of a work will invariably filter some people out. But this is a natural filter. It's ok.

For example, I don't line dance. Nobody tells me I can't do it. It's just not for me. In that respect, whatever tone this game ultimately strikes, it will filter out some players who just aren't into that tone. And that's a beautiful thing. Choice. Variety. The spice of life.
My inclination is to be a bit reckless and say naughty words. I could avoid that. I might avoid that. But I might just remove the training wheels on this one and let my raw imagination go nuts. It could be a galactic train wreck. We'll see.


An old Zoa banner, c. 2009.