River of heaven, Pathfinder 2E, Basic Roleplaying and Other Stuff

 No sooner do I find myself thinking I have free time once more than my schedule goes belly up, and before I know it December has arrived. Fear not, the blog is not dead (nor the blogger!), just once more neglected due to the perambulations of time. 

In the last few weeks I've had a few noteworthy items to discuss. Each topic deserves more blog time, but in brief...

Pathfinder 2E version 2 has arrived! I spent some amount of the Thanksgiving weekend diving in to the new Player Core and GM Core books, which together are the first two books of the four book core set. I can say the following on a read through: there are some changes, but it is mostly explanatory/cosmetic. This new iteration of the system is more retrocomptable than, say, D&D 3.5 was with 3.0, perhaps even more so than AD&D  2E was with AD&D 1E. I feel comfortable in using existing PF books with these new ones. What the books do exceedingly well is twofold: they purge whatever Paizo felt was too "OGL" or IP-specific from their game, and they (most importantly of all) do some significant reorganization and a certain amount of rewriting to clean up how they present their rules....this is a much easier presentation of the PF2E system than the first books were, hands down. There are other little tweaks and changes, and some (while noteworthy) still aren't significant in terms of compatibility. Overall.....about what we should have expected.

I Snagged a copy of River of Heaven, Refreshed. Still reading it, but this is by far the best attempt at a D100 powered science fiction system. It's based on OpenQuest, which of course exists as a nice fantasy alternate to Mythras and BRP/Runequest. I will write more on this soon, hopefully.

While securing and reading those books, I have been running an ongoing Basic Roleplaying campaign in a scifi/cyberpunk future using the newest edition of BRP. It's gone well! The newest edition of the book is overall not too terribly different from the older BGB (Big Gold Book), but its slight refinements, corrections and revisions have made for a generally improved experience. I have plans for several more genre variants powered by BRP in the works as a result.

Beyond that....it's been a rough month! Hopefully I'll be returning to some more normal form in my periodic blogging. I have thought a bit about moving to a new, more popular platform such as Substack, may well look in to that. Indeed, I really need to see if substack has an RPG wing over there, because most of what I see at substack appears to mostly be wannabe journalists and topical writers. Maybe substack isn't meant for this kind for more casual fare? Will have to investigate.   

A Correction! And on Getting Old.

 A few days back I complained about Onebookshelf ending an agreement with me. I was wrong! So wrong that when I went to re-read the email notice I realized, after thinking about it, that the notice was from Warehouse 23, the online venue for Steve Jackson Games. That honestly makes a lot more sense....I only recall I had anything at their site when I get an occasional notice that they have owed me $7 for the last two years. Their site is not optimized for finding content, and it is easy to never notice anything on their store outside of the most recent products, and SJ Games products in particular. With their recent move to a new sight design this only got worse, so yeah, this totally makes sense.

So...for those looking for my stuff on Drivethrurpg, looks like I am just getting old and easily confused, that stuff will continue to be there. I have gone ahead and deleted that post, to replace it with this one admitting my brain sometimes misses important details these days. Sigh....!

Having fun with Basic Roleplaying

The revised edition of Basic Roleplaying is a lovely book, it changes just enough to make it more useful and efficient, while still being the system I've been enjoying for going on 43 years now. I didn't have much to say in this post, but amidst a year of GM burnout, a developed fascination for minimalist zine games, and a lot of work interrupting play, it's been nice to get my hands on the new BRP hardcover and start experimenting with what I can do with it. In every way this book feels just a bit more like what I need to generate some interesting scenarios and campaigns. I'll post some soon, once I've sorted out what I won't use, or end up using (to avoid spoilers for my players). I will say that I have a near-future hard SF campaign ready, as well as that long-awaited ancient Egypt campaign in the works, and some developing ideas on a new Strange Apocalypse style supers campaign.

That's it! Just a short comment to let everyone know I exist and will be back on track for posting soon, things are returning to normal for me again. 

Troika! in Softcover

 Having recently reviewed this I thought it worth mentioning that Troika! has a revised 3rd edition now out in softcover here. Although I have some misgivings about it's initiative system and curious was of expressing the implied setting, Troika! is nonetheless a fascinating game I plan to run sooner or later, so am grabbing this latest edition along with Acid Death Fantasy in print so I can put that plan in to action. Check it out!

This is a busy work month for me! Lots of travel. I will be in a better spot for catching up on my blogging by the end of the month, hopefully, as a I still have many Indie/Zine RPGs to review, including....

Pirate Borg

CY_Borg

Cairn

Liminal

and more!!!!

Mutant: Mechatron is Back in Print!

 Not only is Mutant: Mechatron back in print at a normal price at Free League Publishing, but a new book in the Mutant: Year Zero series is announced as well titled Mutant; Year Zero - Ad Astra. Mutants in space! 

It is possible that you are in the same camp I am and know why this is a moment for celebration, but if not, then know this tale: Several years ago in the before-times of the pandemic Mutant: Year Zero arrived on the scene with much surprise, and I was fortunate enough to grab it with all the cool bells and whistles back when Modiphius was distributing. Over time Modiphius and Free League parted ways (though recently that has changed again), and Free League books became tough to find, especially if you didn't back the Kickstarter. In short order I missed all three sequels (Genlab Alpha, Elysium and Mechatron). Last year one of the reasons I resumed collecting and then deep-diving into Free League books was due to a happy accident when my wife and I uncovered a trove of a gaming shop in Florida that had more gaming tomes than I had seen in years. Years! Among the many books I snagged there were all the books I was missing for the Mutant Year Zero lineup except one: Mechatron. Heck I even got the card deck....just not the book. 

It turned out it had a really limited print run for the Kickstarter and had never been reprinted. Mechatron was going for $400+ on Ebay auctions for the only three copies available anywhere (and I bet those sellers are wishing they had lowered the price just a bit now). I secured the PDF easily enough, but using the PDF is just not practical for me, I'm an old Gen X gamer, and my embrace of electronic books does not comport well with gaming tomes, it's just a problem with our generational model...we need that book in our hands to make the magic happen, plain and simple. 

So with this new announcement Free League has at last course corrected and is steering the Mutant Year Zero brand back on track. Celebration time! I have ordered my copy, time to wait patiently for it to arrive. 

The Indie/Zine RPG Review Part XVIII: Electric Bastionland

Electric Bastionland - Deeper into the Odd

$19 in PDF on itch.io 

$60 in print+PDF on Exalted Funeral

I actually found Electric Bastionland before I snagged Into the Odd. Chronologically this is a sequel to the latter, with Electric Bastionland taking place roughly a century or so after Into the Odd, moving the technomantic steampunk era of Bastion to the electric age. Despite the book's large size, it's probably only maybe twice the word count of its prequel; the game is heavy on illustrative art, a black-and-white minimalist design that is at once evocative and well-done, without being too abstract. The tonal consistency of the tome is welcome.  

The System: It's the same core mechanical design as Into the Odd, which is a system that appears now in quite a few other games. This system is defined over six pages which includes to pages of examples. For a refresher, you roll three stats (strength, dexterity and charisma in this case) on 3D6, then hit protection (HP) on a D6, some cash and equipment in hand, and then a failed career (about which more in a moment). When you roll to succeed (a save), its roll low with modifiers. When you fight, you go right to rolling damage and applying against hit protection. When that is gone, it goes to stats and bad things are immediately likely to happen if you fail a save. Very basic system, the same one in many other zine rpgs (Into the Odd, Liminal Horror, Old Skull Publishing's trilogy of RPGs, etc.)

The main variation in the character generation is rolling a failed career. This is similar to a profession or background as in other variations on the system, but your choice is based on looking at a chart and comparing your highest stat to your lowest stat....so yeah, players who want to choose what they play are out of luck here without spending a nontrivial time rolling up new stats to get just what they want. (Yeah, I have a player like that lol). In addition to your low and high stats determining failed career, your D6 in cash and your HP roll determine other details.

The failed careers are just that: something your PC is or did and of course wasn't so good at for various reasons. Each entry provides a visual reference and four distinct items to jot down on your character sheet, one for special equipment, your debt source, and then two variable details based on your starting cash and hit points. It's very important to note that most of the book is failed careers: 220 pages, to be exact! In a sense, much as with Troika! before, Electric Bastionland informs you of a lot of its flavor through this inexact process. Unlike Troika!, EB provides an additional 95 pages of guidance and setting material for the GM (called the conductor here)....so it's not all purely in descriptions. Also, unlike the other game, EB's careers have a greater level of consistency for the setting; in other words, there is most definitely a setting here, and it has its own internal logic to follow.

Some examples of EB characters for you to consider, noting that these are 100% random, and names are from the suggested choices by career:

#1 Pearl; Starting Stats: STR 10 DEX 13 CHA 11 HP 4 Cash 2 - Rural Tax Collector. Has a taxman's pistol. What did the tax office provide you with? An ornate baton. What do you hate most about Bastion? Bureaucracy - you have a portable shredder.

#2 Bushka; STR 10 DEX 9 CHA 8 HP 3 Cash 2 - Professional Gambler, who owns a slug gun and a pack of gum. What's Your Game? - one-car bluff, take a pocket full of tiny mirrors that stick to any surface. What did you win? - Anti-Matter Key, when placed in a keyhole it utterly annihilates the door and itself.

#3 Risper; STR 14 DEX 14 CHA 6 HP 4 Cash 6 - Urbalist (you're both into herbs and urban stuff, I think), a saber and three doses of hallucinogenic herbs. What do the walls tell you when you're herbed up? You can put some fragments of the wall into your ear to know a trivial fact about a being (if any) that calls this place home. What do the floors tell you when you're herbed up? You spit on the floor to learn the name of the person who thinks they are in charge.

So yeah....that's a modest sample of what characters can look like in EB. One item I left out is the debt. Each group starts 10K in debt to some group of individual. Each career has a source of this debt, but the determining factor as to who that debt belongs to is based on who the youngest player at the table is. 

There are a lot of interesting failed careers, and seeing any of them will be down to the fickle nature of the dice. The careers strongly suggest that Electric Bastionland is very much a cyberpunk game, just with less cyber (sometimes) and more of that electric part. It's what a steampunk world might one day look like with the onward march of science. Plus...as we shall discuss below, this is the direct sequel to Into the Odd, which means there's a lot more going on in this strange world to inform it, too.

The Setting: Bastion is the future of the same city from Into the Odd, now much advanced and with at least a century (or more) since its predecessor. Where Into the Odd evoked a quaint sense of victorianism and rugged exploration of an unknown world and the underground, the Bastion of EB is a dystopian, sprawling nightmare and the book conveys this by primarily giving tools and instructions on how to design your own city. It covers Bastion, the world outside called the Deep Country, the world below (underground) and then the mystery of the Living Stars. 

Before getting to the setting I should mention that the conductor's section provides a complete set of rules to build a scenario, including a macguffin for the PCs to pursue and a range of  ideas on setting up encounters, events, threats and choices for the group to make. It's only a few pages but its some incredibly brilliant stuff, worth reading for anyone who would like to see an elegant process outlined for a GM to use for any system, not just this one.

Similar to the Conductor section, each region overview provides a range of charts, ideas and concept points to use in building your own take on Bastion, the Deep Country and the Underground. Notably absent from this book is something from Into the Odd, which includes a bewildering array of artifacts you can find; here it is mainly a discussion on setting the treasure for your group with a chart of six examples.

The Inhabitants of Bastionland comprise entries on the people of Bastion, things called Mockeries (animated stuff given life by the technomancy of the city), Machines, which manage the underground and may or may not be the instigators behind the ever changing city, then the Aliens, which appear to visit with enough frequency not to be seen as extremely unusual, even though they are. Finally there are the Monstrosities, creatures made not born and ultimately too destructive or threatening not to have to resort to lethal force to exterminate. The rules for each group here is primarily providing guidance on making your own unique types of each group, rather than giving you a concrete stat block.  

The last 40 or so pages of the book are the Oddendum, which contain optional rules, a lot of discussion by the designer Chris Mcdowall on how he runs games and feels they should be run, and a number of sections on example content for specific campaign ideas. This is really interesting reading because Chris has some interesting takes on game design and running games. His one page on Big Impact is especially interesting reading, as it argues that allowing PCs to make a save against a risky effect simply diminishes the impact of the effect. I can't argue with this logic; I just ran my Saturday night D&D game and yeah, it's easy to see monsters once known for being tough opponents cave like a house of cards in the 5th edition system due to the fact that saves are mainly an efficient way for PCs to (usually) sidestep consequence. In a nutshell, the Big Impact argument as framed here is that saves get in the way of the interesting stuff, and the interesting stuff is where consequences and decisions come from. So don't have a "save to resist becoming a fish-man" effect...just have the PC turn in to a fish-man. The logic extends to other player-driven actions, as well: its about impact and consequence. I can see some counterpoints to it, but I can deeply empathize with the core conceit, which is that sometimes bad things really should happen, because the results make the game more interesting.

The Supplements: I don't know of any supplements for it, but EB is part of a subgenre of games powered by the same system, so the cross-compatibility exists. It is by far the most robust of the games within this niche, so consider that. You won't run EB right away, for example; it's going to require a bit of time to sit down and assimilate all this info and design a scenario.  There is also a blog out there (located here) which you may be able to scour for more ideas and content.

Who is this for? Electric Bastionland is an interesting experiment and pushes the indie/zine rpg format into a more mainstream product, at least on the surface. Underneath it is loaded with interesting ideas and useful tools which, even if they don't directly translate to the game or genre you want to use them for, will still inspire you toward thinking about new ways to approach setting and scenario design. I think this game could prove to be fun to play for a lengthy campaign or three with the right group, and a GM who could craft the sometimes specific and other times vague elements of Electric Bastionland into a more concrete setting of their own. It definitely provides plenty of basis for inspiration, and I suspect that playing in the campaign of the author is probably an amazing experience. So yeah....get this if you want to see something that manages to be neat looking, artsy, functional and innovative all at the same time, even if you only use it as a springboard for inspiration in your own preferred setting or ruleset.   

The Indie/Zine RPG Review Part XVII: Troika! RPG

Troika! RPG (Melsonian Arts Council)

$30 at Exalted Funeral

I've gotten behind in September. Time to catch up!

What it is: Troika! is a reimagining of the Advanced Fighting Fantasy game system (the one made for tabletop multiplayer gaming, rather than the solo game books). It's not only a restatement of that game system's mechanics, but a completely new envisioning of the game world, now represented as a bizarre space-fantasy with what are arguably no limits in terms of its scope of imagination. In reality, there are some limits....unless you are deeply into the "yes, and" level of improv which is so heavily catered to by many of these indie zine rpgs. Troika! is also fueled by an exotic art style that evokes turn-of-the-century (19th century) art conventions in books such as Alice in Wonderland or Wizard of Oz, eschewing any more conventional style of gaming for this fairly unique, surrealist style. 

The System: Troika! is at its core AFF and anyone who knows AFF will feel at least somewhat comfortable here. What's interesting about Troika! discussion online is people complaining about the roll under system and other basic elements of the game such as initial random stat generation, which are completely logical elements on an OSR style game system that is not D&D derived, but still very much a traditional style of play....the many critics (including those who "like the system, but...") try to find equitable workarounds for non random stats or roll under vs. contested roll-high mechanics. I am not sure why this is an issue for so many, other than that the Troika! edition of these rules is essentially a very traditional old-school approach wrapped in the sheepskin of an artsy improv RPG aimed at high-concept, imaginative tale-telling as opposed to the original purpose of AFF, which is gritty solo dungeon delves without too much book-keeping.

What Troika! does strangely is initiative. Without looking back in my copies of AFF I am reasonably sure that the token system of Troika! is not what AFF did. In Troika! you determine initiative by assigning colored tokens (beads, poker chips, cards, dice, whatever) by foes and allies and throw them in a pot. You pull from this pot until you get the "turn ends" token and start over. It's in concept sort of neat, but in reality it's a horrendous pain in the butt, and can lead to odd situations where long pulls from the pot are of tokens only for certain (usually GM) enemies and such. For a game based on one of the original ultralite RPGs, its needlessly cumbersome and potentially weird in an unfun way. I noticed someone released an alternative initiative system based on cards for Troika! on Drivethrurpg, so I suspect I am not the only one who dislikes the initiative system (okay, a large Reddit forum is also dedicated to working around it, too).

Ninety percent of Troika! is not rules or mechanics at all, though: it's character types, which you can roll randomly for on a D66 to determine your Background. The backgrounds are evocative and interesting reading for the players, but ultimately necessary for the GM because almost all of the implied setting is embedded in these background descriptions; there is no other GM guidance on the world beyond what is inferred here and in the meager sample scenario. Later books such as Acid Death Fantasy take a similar approach and also ditch the core book setting entirely (sort of), meaning that if you are the sort of GM who likes a section that helps you out, Troika! is maybe not the ideal game for you. 

In any case, backgrounds give you an evocative description that alludes to a weird world, some possessions, skills, and a special trait. Some examples of base backgrounds include some very interesting and at times extremely abstract descriptors, best exemplified by quoting from the text. For example:

Cacogen: You are Those-Filthy-Born, spawned in the hump-backed sky lit only by great black anti-suns and false light. Your mother was sailing on the golden barges or caught in some more abstract fate when she passed you, far from the protective malaise of the million Spheres. You were receptive to the power and the glory at a generative time and it shows in your teratoid form.

And: 

Demon Stalker: You stake your reputation upon your ability to hunt and kill demonic creatures and those who break bread with them. Goat men in the wilds or the Angel cults of the slums, all need to be driven back off the edge of the map and onto the shores of chaos.

Also: 

The Fellowship of Knidos: Mathmologists honour the clean and unambiguous truths of mathematics and coordinate them with their observations of the multiverse. All things can be measured and predicted with the application of the correct mathmological ratios, those methods applied to penetrate the ethereal surface and glimpse the fundamental numbers below.

And in case it isn't obvious enough that Troika! backgrounds are expansive, here is one more:

Zoanthrop: At some point in your past you decided you didn’t need it anymore: you found a Zoanthropologist and paid them well to remove your troublesome forebrain and elevate you to the pure and unburdened beast you are today

Those are all backgrounds for the same world/multiverse of the spheres. There are 36 such backgrounds, ranging from the familiar to the completely ephemeral. Sometimes literally! The backgrounds are generally  simultaneously neat and also filled with questions for which few or no answers are forthcoming. So when I say that Troika! is designed around the Imrpov playstyle, this is what I mean! No two games are going to be quite alike, and your enjoyment of the game will be inversely proportionate to the level of contribution you and your players are willing to engage with on the fly.

The Setting: Troika! has an implied setting when you read the backgrounds and sample module. It's a multidimensional world of Ptolemaic nature (perhaps), crystal spheres or something similar, working in a realm which seems to be a city lying adjacent to or amidst many different aligned worlds. Magic is a thing, but steampunk, technomancy and other dalliances may also exist. Physics as the real world knows it may not exist, or maybe it does and no one interprets it right. There are a lot of things to worry about, and in general if its existed in a fantastic tale somewhere, it probably exists in Troika! At least--that's what I got out of it. The sample module is especially vexing to me as it implies a great city, as is alluded to, an takes place in a fabulous hotel filled with weird encounters. It has, to its credit, a dreamlike quality, but maybe not always the good kind of dream; sometimes it feels like the bad dreams induced by food poisoning, too. Who knows! The bestiary is similarly vexing and oddly stated, as are the backgrounds, filled with suggestions of a world envisioned like a dadaist painting, filled with interpretive shapes that could mean everything or nothing. A page or two stating that Troika! is a realm of dream might have been all I needed for this to make more sense to me, but then it might have been a bit more plebian than its hidden goal of randomized exoticism. 

Despite that sense, I think it's an admirable effort in creativity. It's just....so much disorganization in the conceptual space is a burden for many when you're trying to conceive of a coherent plot or setting for an RPG, and from what I have read this ends up true for many, who find it suited at best for short term one-shot game sessions as a result; the inherent incoherence makes it hard to expand beyond surface level experimentation. If you like verisimilitude in your gaming, know that Troika! is in defiant opposition to your will.

Support Material: Troika! has some decent support. I don't have any of it in print, but did grab some in PDF. There are some sourcebooks from Melsonian Arts Council which are (without having dived too deeply) just as eerie and abstract as the core game. I like Acid Death Fantasy, which is a Troka! powered post-apocalyptic setting that provides a more concise initial world overview before diving into myriad backgrounds and creature...enough to hang the mental coat on, if you will. 

Who is this For? Well, right off the bat I doubt any traditional Advanced Fighting Fantasy fan will find Troika! to be to their liking, if the main goal is an old-school and well-defined fantasy gaming experience. Troika! will appeal if you want to embrace OSR rules and a highly unstructured but evocative improv play environment. Troika! does not borrow (yet, that I have found) from the extremely focused and utility-driven style of module design seen in OSE, Mothership or other systems so the module content I have seen is a bit oddly traditional, but its still fairly brief in approach so shouldn't pose much issue. I concede that a lot of this book, despite in principle being of a design bent I should really like, left me mildly discomfited, again as if I had awoken from a disturbing dream brought on by food poisoning. It does not, needless to say, motivate me to run it. But...Acid Death Fantasy is really cool, and I think I could be tempted to give that a swing. Just need to house rule out the nightmarish initiative system!

Savage Flayers - Mind Flayers in Savage Worlds and the Warlords of Lingusia Era

 

The Hyshkorrid

A savage denizen of the Underworlds of Lingusia

Savage Flayers, a Monstrous Wild Card For Savage Worlds Adventure Edition Fantasy Companion

The Hyshkorrid are conquerors of the psionic mindscape, travelers from distant universes, and telepathic masters of manipulation. Though few in number, these cephalopodic humanoids dwell in the depths of the Underworld beneath the shifting Sands of the Hyrkanian Deserts and the Mountains of Madness (the Slithotendan Mountains). The few scholars to interact with them say the hyshkorrid are obsessed with the observation of the mad god Slithotep, though perhaps not in a reverent manner, but they do worship Thasrik, the insectoid god of control and domination.

Hyshkorrid feast on the brains of sentient beings and use their potent psionic powers to lay waste to small armies. They are not physically adept at battle so usually prefer to dominate an opponent first to make their attack certain.

Attributes: Agility D8, Smarts D12, Spirit D10, Strength D6, Vigor D6

Skills: Academics D10, Fighting D8, Intimidation D10, Occult D8, Psionics D12, Stealth D8

Pace: 6, Parry: 6; Toughness: 9 (4 from psionic deflection)

Edges: Arcane Background (Psionics), Power Points X2 (+10 PP), Extra Powers X3 (6 powers)

Power Points: 20

Powers: All powers have a psionic/mental trapping; a typical array of powers include: Blast – Psionic (3 PP base cost), Confusion (1+ PP), Disguise (2 PP), Farsight (2 PP), Invisibility (5 PP), Mind reading (2 PP), Mind Wipe (3 PP), Stun (2 PP), Telekinesis (5 PP)

Gear: robes, masking hood, usually 1D3-1 magic items (potions, scrolls, rings, wondrous items), one roll on special chart below

Special Abilities:

Brain Extraction: STR+D6 damage, 2 AP. Hyshkorrid are incredibly proficient at extracting a brain from a humanoid skull. If a target is reduced to incapacitated by this attack then the hyshkorrid will use its next action as a Finishing Move; the brain is extracted and eaten. An extracted brain immediately restores 1D4 psionic power points.

Psionic Immunity: Hyshkorrid are immune to mind-affecting powers of psionic or magical nature that impact the mind (such as mind wipe, confusion, etc.)

Psionic Armor: Hyshkorrid have perfected the art of telekinetic deflection and gain +4 for toughness due to this trait. If a hyshkorrid is somehow caught unawares this bonus cannot be applied.

Natural Telepath: The hyshkorrid can only communicate via telepathy at will within 120 feet. For 1 PP it can extend the range to 1 mile for a minute.

1D10 Items on the body of a Savage Flayer:

1 – A necklace of grown coral wrapped around a tiny crystal ball showing the image of an eerie cosmic landscape

2 – A hideous holy amulet to Thasrik, the scorpion-like god of domination and control

3 – A carefully folder flayed skin of a humanoid species with a zipper attached to the back

4 – A locket which opens up to reveal a windable watch and the painted image of a blonde woman of Imperial descent; behind the clasp is a carefully folded note: “To my beloved, whom I shall devour last.”

5 – A clutch of what look like marbles but are squishy like eggs, and against a strong light you can see tadpole like beings swimming within

6 – A mimir skull of a kobold imbued with Smarts D8, Common Knowledge D8 and Academics D12 which can speak on any subject but only in draconic or aklo languages.

7 – A belt of threaded shrunken heads, all of gnomes, which begin to animate and laugh hysterically when touched by anyone who fails a Spirit check.

8 – A small, murky globe of swirling coppery color which speaks strange and hideous chants in aklo when held by an unprotected hand, and requires a Spirit check at -2 or the bearer experiences sudden terror and must roll on the Fear table.

9 – a backpack with a folded-up, small animated skeleton of a goblin, which functions as a servant that can carry out three word commands

10 – a tiara of platinum and diamond that looks worth 1,000 GP but if worn immediately requires a Spirit check at -2 or the wearer’s mind is overwhelmed by the commanding presence of the god Thasrik; a new save can be done once per day to break the spell

Troika! Sale

 It's only for 48 hours and I just got the email notice, but Melsonian Arts Council is marking all their PDFs of Troika! RPG off 90%, so if you are in the least bit interested in this system its a good time to check it out. Link here.

I haven't reviewed it in my Indie/Zine RPG series yet, but really need to. Troika! Is mechanically related to Advanced Fighting Fantasy, but deviates in some strange and interesting ways (and in a really obnoxious way with how it handles initiative determination). If you are a fan of weird fantasy/science mashups, planar adventures, the AFF engine and highly improvisational play based on implied settings, Troika! is probably right up your alley. I'll review it next.

The Indie/Zine RPG Review Part XVI: Death in Space

Death in Space (Free League Publishing)

$36.62 (currently) at Free League (print+PDF)

Information Link

Character Generator

What it is: Death in Space is part of the Stockholm Kartel array of games which all owe their origins to Dark Fort, the predecessor to Mork Borg. As such, Death in Space has mechanical parity with Mork Borg, Pirate Borg, Vast Grimm and anything else based on the same core mechanical conceits. Unlike these other games it is not entirely fair to consider it a Mork Borg-based system as Death in Space most decidedly breaks that mold and sets out to do things differently.

If I had to characterize Death in Space in one sentence, it would be something like this: it's an attempt to make a rules lite pick-up-and-go game system which manages to walk a line between pragmatic space opera survival and existential horror, all while providing enough base material to run a lengthy campaign. Death in Space can, like its relatives, work as a one-shot or beer-and-pretzels game, but it actually is meant for something longer, and emphasizes rules that encourage long-form campaign play. So while yeah, you can easily lose a character in Death in Space, the game does not necessarily assume that is how it's all going to go down.

The System: The best way to see what sort of characters are generated in Death in Space is to go click a bit on the character generator, available online (see link above). Your base PC has four stats: body, dexterity, savvy and tech. You have a range from -3 to +3, like in Mork Borg, this time generated by rolling 1D4 twice and subtracting the second roll from the first. You have secondary stats such as hit points and your defense rating. Unlike in Mork Borg, defense rating can go up or down here based on your armor choice, which is otherwise a static modifier and does not reduce incoming damage (so an armor class system, basically). You also pick an origin, which defines what sort of entity your character is in the game, and a variety of background/personality/quirk charts to roll on to flesh out your PC. 

Origins help greatly in establishing theme for the players. The Carbon are spaceborn and most comfortable in zero-gee environments. Chrome are essentially android vessels for ancient AI. Punks are humans as we understand them, tinged with rebellion and anarchy. Solpods are humanity slowed down by the liberal use of cryopods to prolong life and explore stellar phenomena that transcends any one life time. The last two are the most profound: Velocity Cursed, who have travelled at FTL between the stars one too many times and their bodies are beginning to "glitch" in and out of existence, then the Void, who are so profoundly changed by visions and exposure to the depths of space that they have lost their minds and possibly their humanity. It's like Dr. William Weir of Event Horizon is a good starting point for a character concept!

As important as your PC is, the even more important element in Death in Space is the hub, a ship or space station which serves as the base of operations for your group. The game provides some lengthy but still rules lite mechanics for building your choice of hub, which will in turn either be mobile (a ship) or stationary (resting possibly in the Iron Ring of the setting), which also in turn dictates some of the expected themes of your campaign. Like your PCs, the hub will have its own background and quirks. For example, a starship hub could be that it holds "A DNA-locked black box, which has never been opened," on a ship in which "an eerie transmission periodically blares out over communication lines and speakers with strange periodicity." So....possible material to explore and riff off of, right off the bat. 

Death in Space does not use Omens as Mork Borg does, but introduces Void Points instead. In the DiS universe the Void is a palpable threat, a possible manifestation of cosmic threat that is devouring the universe, but it also has mutational and bizarre effects. A PC gains void points when they fail tasks. These can be accrued (up to 4) and used to roll with advantage (what it sounds like) or power mutations. You get mutations through advancement (which in DiS is an XP-purchase based system), misfortune, or occasionally when the void begins corrupting things. If you fail on a check with advantage after spending a void point you have a chance of experiencing void corruption. This can entail some gruesome body horror effects or worse. 

Yet another key element of gameplay is the condition of the PCs' hub and the never-ending need to keep up on repairs and maintenance. This is a drive to encourage the group to explore and salvage the many, many wrecks in the default setting of the game. The rules here feel a tad "non rules-lite" to me but only in a minor way. 

In combat, unlike its sister games, DiS has the GM rolling for enemies in combat. Likewise, enemy stat blocks are a bit more complex (in the most modest way possible), to reflect the need for a tiny bit more granularity. There's a rather funny "true death" table in the combat section as well; players can narrate their deaths when they perish, or you can roll on the table to find out how the PC "really" died. I admit, most of the time it feels to me like the table is going to be unnecessary, but the results are so amusing that it is easy to imagine some players going for it just to see what "really happened!"

There is a section on starship conflicts as well, about four pages, based on range bands for abstract resolution. It's mainly aimed at providing for an efficient resolution mechanic that helps complicate the story, but if you happen to have Vast Grimm and want a decent starship conflict resolution system, I suggest cribbing it from Death in Space. 

The Setting: the next half of the book is setting content. The core setting is the Tenebris System, which is an ancient, overly worn and used star system with a wealth of useful worlds that have over the eons been drained of many resources. The core conceit of the setting is everything is old, worn, and nothing new is being manufactured anymore; this is a salvager society. A war left much of this and countless other systems devastated, divided and depleted of resources. Travel between systems is hard and costly, and ships line up to use the bridging buoy that marks the safest jump point out of (or in to) the system. While you can travel to other systems, the core book for DiS focuses exclusively on Tenebris System and its travails. 

While Death in Space does suggest a lot of horror and grim stuff will befall a group of PCs, the truth is its more of a setting for a dark scifi experience with a wider range of scenarios and events. The creeping threat of the unknown "void" is part of it, but many more weird and unpleasant things can befall a group, from something as simple as rival salvagers or pirates to something as horrifying as a dark cult summoning eldritch horrors.

Much of the base action happens around the planet Gliess Galo, where the Iron Ring can be found, a vast ring of debris in stable orbit. The debris is countless millions of prior starships and space stations from the endless settlers, belters, salavagers, miners and corporates who have come and gone from the system over endless generations. A hub station could be situated here easily. The book includes an introduction to one such larger station in The Ring along with an introductory scenario in which the PCs get engulfed in local politics-with-pistols.  

In addition to the core setting content are about fifteen pages of charts to roll on for creatures of the system, things corrupted by the void, encounters and threats in space and so forth. The back of the book includes a contractor/NPC generator as well as some modular ship design rules that allow the PCs to build up on and make their hub more effective over time; building up the hub and becoming more powerful agents in the system is a major end goal for the PCs.

The Supplements: so far one official supplement has been announced, but for most content you will want to look to itch.io for PDF support. Unlike, say, Mothership, Death in Space does not have as rabid a following (possibly because it does require a bit more time to sink in the details of its setting and play focus). The unique white-on-black technical drawings that make up a lot of DiS's character are extremely distinct and articulate, and unlike Mork Borg (which can use graphic design to put lipstick on a pig, if you will) it takes more talent to ape the art style and feel of DiS. Not as many 3PP are going to want to bother, I hypothesize.*

Who is this for? Death in Space requires a bit more time and effort out of a group than its sister systems. You can start a basic game quickly enough, but the majority of DiS is designed for campaign play, and you will get the most mileage out of it if you approach this with the intent of running at least 5-10 game sessions with it. I actually have a keen interest in doing so, and will report more on the experience when it finally happens.

Outside of that, I think any SF RPG fan would be incredibly happy to secure a copy of this book, with the caveat that despite some of its setting elements it is still firmly in the space opera subgenre and not really a hard SF treatment. It's a lush and incredibly well illustrated tome with excellent graphic design, though as usual be aware that the text is entirely "white text on black background" so you have been warned. 

In contrast, I suggest that Mork Borg fans may find Death in Space a bit much, as it is ultimately a more traditional style of RPG play, even if it still manages to be almost as rules lite. If you are mainly looking for a "pick up and play" game I suggest Vast Grimm instead....it's Mork Borg but with space trapping. Death in Space is more like.....Classic Traveller, but with a unique and spicy flavor (and easier rules). 

*After typing that I realized that the metric ass-ton of 3PP output for Mothership puts the WRONG stamp to my hypothesis.