Review: Neon Lords of the Toxic Wasteland

NEON LORDS OF THE TOXIC WASTELAND

Words by Brian Shutter

Art by Mustafa Bekir

Published by Super Savage Systems

“BAD DUDES DUKE IT OUT
IN RAD ADVENTURES IN A FORGOTTEN FUTURE
DO YOU HAVE WHAT IT TAKES TO BE A BAD DUDE?“
Page 2

Two words describe this game.

fuck.

yeah.

I got lucky and was sent a preview copy of Neon Lords of the Toxic Wasteland to review before it goes up on Kickstarter.

This is the goddamn PREFACE!!!

“Neon Lords of the Toxic Wasteland can be summed up as HE-MAN escaping from New York in a post-apocalyptic vehicle blasting heavy metal while his wizard pal spews the most unholy evil spells from the passenger side window at a horde of mutants. It is an ultra-violent and style matters rpg set in the far future, after the neon wars of 1992. Half Medieval Fantasy, half Sci-Fi, all Gonzo. Neon Lords of the Toxic Wasteland stemmed out of my love for 80’s and 90’s action, horror, sci-fi, and pop culture. It’s a pen and paper rpg mix-tape of all the radness that came from those decades.”

The Rules

Neon Lords is based on B/X Dungeons and Dragons (the Basic/Expert edition from the early 80s, if you’re a noob), so the game play is simple, familiar, and easy to pick up. It uses the standard range of dice, but the names of stats have been changed to better fit the setting. This is a great idea that more OSR games should do.

The differences between Neon Lords and B/X are conveniently listed on the first page;

• CORE MECHANICS BASED ON THE B/X RULES
• 9 CLASSES: DEATH BRINGER, WAR WIZARD, COSMIC BARBARIAN, DWARFLING, STAR SPAWN, HOLY SMITER, CYBERSKIN, SKULL JAMMER, AND NIGHT STALKER
• RACE AS CLASS
• PROWESS, AND FORTUNE
• CLASS-SPECIFIC ABILITY SCORE
• ROLLED ABILITY SCORES AND HP
• ASCENDING AC
• NO SKILLS / SMART PLAYERS
• SPELL CHECK / TO HIT MAGIC SYSTEM
• POINTS BASED CLASS ABILITY SYSTEM
• SPELL MISFIRE CHART
• CRITICAL FAILURE AND SUCCESS CHARTS
• SLOT ENCUMBRANCE SYSTEM
• SLOWER, WEAKER REST AND HEALING
• HIRELINGS AND REACTIONS
• SAVING THROWS: GRIT, AGILITY, RESOLVE, AND DEATH

The ATTITUDE of this game is off the fucking charts. It’s obnoxious, loud, brutally honest, and in your face. The writing and artwork both enforce this.

Still on the first page and Brian Shutter writes the following;

“Death is right around the corner. One slip up could end in a new character.”

“Characters die every day. They are not special, and neither are you!”

Neon Lords includes a mechanic called the Neon Blast Roll, which is an exploding die when rolling for damage. Why exploding dice when rolling damage? BECAUSE THIS GAME IS HARDCORE

The game uses Fumble and To the Max! charts. To the Max is the name for a natural 20 critical hit. I wish Fumbles had a cool nickname, but whatever. I love rolling on charts and tables no matter what they are called.

The saving throws are more akin to modern D&D, with Grit (Fortitude), Agility (Reflex), and Resolve (Willpower). There is a fourth saving throw, though; DEATH. Death saves kind of take a little bit from the other three saves and represent the really bad shit that you would need a lot of luck to survive against.

A really cool thing that I don’t recall seeing in other games is that in Neon Lords of the Toxic Wasteland, you can Fumble or take it To the Max! on saving throws. Which is an awesome idea, and without giving everything away, I’ll just say DON’T fumble on a save!

Another thing I haven’t seen before is critical successes on percentile dice rolls. That’s pretty nifty and I wish I had thought of it 20 years ago when I played Rifts.

Character Creation

Hit Points

I’m going to take a moment to talk about Hit Points. I’ve never really understood why many games give your character a number of hit points, but you really have more hit points than that because you don’t die until you go into NEGATIVE hit points. Like, why not just add more hit points and die at zero?

Neon Lords of the Toxic Wasteland does hit points right; at zero, you’re dead. Well, you’re dead unless you succeed on your Death save.

Ability Scores

Neon Lords uses its own ability scores, rather than the old B/X abilities. This is a great thing, because it really enforces the attitude of the setting.

Burliness: equivalent to Strength. Score high enough and you also get a bonus to your Attitude score!

Prowess: equivalent to Dexterity

Endurance: equivalent to Constitution, but with an added bonus if you score really high.

Attitude: equivalent to Charisma, but if you score high enough you can start the game with a meat shield minion!

Brains: equivalent to Intelligence.

Sleaze: Sleaze is sort of the oposite of Attitude. A character with a high Attitude score and a low Sleaze score is considered charismatic in the human dominated areas, but seen with suspicion in the wastelands. There are some specific examples given of when and where to use Sleaze and the Sleaze modifier. It’s an interesting mechanic and makes sense to have when you consider that in normal D&D, an elf with a high Charisma is going to be hated by the monster races. So an ability that is sort of at the other end of that is welcome.

Fortune: Fortune is a point pool that can be spent to affect certain rolls. It’s essentially Luck points and works basically the same way. However, if your character ever runs out of Fortune (Fortune doesn’t regenerate) you have to roll on a Bad Luck table at the end of EVERY long rest! Most of the items on the table are bad, but not seriously bad. Some are even beneficial!

There are also Class Abilities that have their own scores, charts, and consequences.

After rolling up you Ability scores, the next (and vitally important) thing to do is determine your Hair Style. Everything from the classic Mullet, to the Prince Adam, to the Devil Lock. Not only does this add some flavor to your character, but each hair style also has a special and unique power!

Classes

Rather than have the tried and true (and boring) Fighter, Wizard, Cleric, Thief classes, Neon Lords of the Toxic Wasteland uses nine basic classes. While some of them are basically stand-ins for the classic classes, others are cool and new and all of them have a unique flavor.

For example, the Death Bringer is a re-skinned Fighter. But it also has a special ability that allows it to regain hit points if it “kills and opponent… may bask in the slaughter and drink the lifeblood of his fallen enemy.” Metal.

The War Wizard is a cranked up version of the classic Wizard that, get this… gets an armor class bonus based on their Brains modifier! They also start with a skull that has its own random table to determine whose skull it is. War Wizards have a class ability called Chaos points that they can use to do a variety of powerful shit.

The Cosmic Barbarian is a cocaine (I mean, “space dust”) addled badass who starts the game with a pair of Sick Shades and a fanny pack. They have a special attack called, You Sonofabitch which is when two Cosmic Barbarians high five during battle (like in Predator), it creates a huge blast!

Equipment

Remember those Sick Shades and Fanny Pack I mentioned as the starting equipment for the Cosmic Barbarian? Yeah, those have full descriptions AND special abilities!

Mercenaries

Neon Lords has a series of tables to quickly create Mercenary hirelings, if the PCs want to hire them. In just three rolls you can have a mercenary that is a mutant who is annoyed with taking the job, and has an out of control mechanical arm.

Magic

Spell magic works similar to the classic style, with some differences. Each spell slinging class has Spell Dice. Spell Dice sort of work like a dice pool; roll a bunch of dice, any that come up 4 or higher are good. When spellcasters are at rest and working out which spells to memorize for the next day, they roll the spell dice and the successes equates to the number of spells they can memorize; 4 successes equals 4 spells available.

Neon Lords also uses Spell Checks for spells that rely on a target rolling a saving throw. d20 compared to a DC. Magic classes can spend their Class Ability points to alter this roll.

A roll of natural 1 is a fumble on the spell check and means Spell Misfire and bad shit happens. Roll on the misfire table!

My copy of Neon Lords of the Toxic Wasteland has only spells for level 1 for War Wizards, Holy Smiters, and Star Spawn. Some notable spells are Dub Step Thunder (horrible sound that hurts enemies), Necrotic Regurgitation (acid puke that causes others to puke), and Shield (has a mini table to roll on to determine what the manifestation of the shield is; flesh, slime, etc).

Adventuring

The adventuring section is mostly what you would expect from every role playing game, with some cool additions like different types of unnatural sight (Infravision, Smell-o-vision, Truesight) and a table for Breaking Down Doors based on Class. Intimidation has a cool write-up and works with Fortune and Sleaze to get a Reaction.

Experience Points

Neon Lords uses XP from gold and from killing shit. All the XP gathered from this is put into a pool that the Players then decide how to split. If this turns the session into an argument between the players, the Neon Lord (DM) can decide to take all the XP away and no one gets anything!

Encumbrance

Encumbrance in interesting in that each class has a number of slots they can use for equipment before needing to get a backpack or some other thing to carry stuff. War Wizards and Star Spawn get the most equipment slots, as they can utilize pocket dimensions for stuff.

Combat

Combat works like every other game, except a neat little chart is provided that gives the order for combat. This would probably be really helpful for noobs, and even includes separate sections for single handed and two handed weapons. Good stuff.

There is a Firearms Fumble Chart with results ranging from Nothing happens, to Shooting Yourself in the Foot. Non-firearm attacks get a much larger Fumble Chart.

Critical Hit tables (To the Max!) are specific to each class, which is cool.

Neon Lord’s Section

This part of the book is for the Neon Lord (DM) and players ain’t supposed to look in here.

There is a Fear Table, that PC’s roll against when they could get scared. The die they roll changes as they go up in level, decreasing the chances of being really scared. It’s a cool mechanic that more games should look into using.

Included is a Loot the Dead Dude table, which is always helpful. Other tables include Drug Effects and Minor Mutations.

Next is the Bestiary with such monsters as the Barf Bag; irradiated vomit causes mutation and damage, and the Drool-Aid Man; who is filled with acidic liquid and shatters when damaged, drenching everyone around with flesh dissolving gore!

All of the monsters have simple To the Max! tables for the Neon Lord to roll on. Most of these have an Instant Death option, like the Mutant Brawler who is unimpressive overall, but on a 20+ on their To the Max! roll, punches a hole through your chest!

Monsters also have a Fumble Table, because its only fair, right?

Rad Treasure

In the Wastelands, the goblinoids and mutants use human teeth as currency. These are worthless in civilized areas and are not transferable to gold.

We’re given a lot of special, alien, ancient, and magical items in this section. Energy drinks that restore HP, Leopard print spandex briefs that allow you to communicate with Lord Randy (of course the Macho Man is a god in this world!), and the Fanny Pack of Eternity!

Sample Adventure!

The Last Outpost on the Left

Some force has taken over an outpost and the PCs have been hired to see what happened, rescue any survivors, and wipe out the mutant freaks who did the vile deed.

This adventure introduces something called Nightmare Mode, which is like an Expert level version of the game. This increases the deadliness of the adventure but also doubles the XP.

I don’t want to give too much away about the adventure, but it certainly looks fun, the descriptions are all like that of an 80’s action movie, and the final boss is awesome.

Optional Rules

Including the aforementioned Nightmare Mode, there is also Saturday Morning Mode, which makes it super easy for wimpy PCs, and ULTRA-NIGHTMARE MODE! “For the true sadist only!“

And finally, a table for Lasting Injuries and their effects.

Conclusion

Neon Lords of the Toxic Wasteland is… well, its fucking badass and awesome. That’s pretty much it. I can’t wait for the finished version. I reccommend buying into the kickstarter, cause this thing is going to be epic.

Kickstarter happening November 1st

Check out the DrivethruRPG

Sweet Merch at TeePublic

Review: A Guide to Thieves’ Guilds by Third Kingdom Games

A Guide to Thieves Guilds

By Todd Leback (Patreon page); Editing by Brian Johnson; Layout by Tim Bannock; Cover art by Jen Drummond; Interior art by Daniel Comerci, Chad Dickhaut, Rick Hershey/Fat Goblin Games, Jeshields, Patrick E Pullen, Dean Spencer

43 pages including cover and OGL page

Written for use with Necrotic Gnome’s Old School Essentials, but definitely useful for most fantasy role playing games.

This book is a guide for both GM and player on how to create and run a thieves guild. Much of it is geared toward the player side; high level player characters gain followers and are able to start and lead their own guild. To use this book, you also need the Domain Building book.

Chapter 1: A Guide to Thieves’ Guilds

We begin with the basics of the guild. Remember in the Domain Building review when I said that Market Class is extremely important? This is why. Market Class determines the number of guilds an urban center can support without conflict, guides the type of activities a thieves’ guild can pursue, and limits the number of guild members. We’re also given a brief synopsis of the various types of guilds, like assassins, beggars, con men, spies, etc. There will be MUCH more about them later on.

Chapter 2: Guild Traits & Operations

This chapter describes the structure of the guild and profits and losses. The first section describes Guild Structures by breaking down the membership into a flow chart.

There is also a section dealing with player-characters who are guildmasters as well as adventurers. PCs are not going to want to sit around and deal with day to day business of the guild instead of adventuring. So Leback has provided some easy to follow rules and guidelines on how to incorporate these conflicts into your game.

Revenue and Expenses is a longer section with a number of charts. Once again, Market Class shows up as the Market Class determines the maximum amount of possible revenue per month. Revenue is modified by a number of factors including the type of guild, the number and class of guild members, boons, banes, morale, and conflicts. This gets you the gross profits. Then you work on the expenses which include bribes to authorities, pay outs to members, and maintenance on the guildhouse/hideout.

The next section is Guild Focuses, and deals with the various different types of Thieves’ Guilds. The types are as follows; Assassins, Beggars, Burglars, Con Artists, Fences, Smugglers, Spies, and Thugs. Each type has a description of what they do and any modifiers to the standard guild stuff (for example, a Beggars guild have a larger maximum membership than other types, and the guildhouse/hideout costs less), as well as tables showing the amount of monthly revenue that type provides, a table for boons specific to that type (good stuff that happens every month) and banes (bad stuff that happens). While this section is very long, a player is only going to have one or two pages to look at dealing with the type of guild their character runs. The tables are also concise and easy to use.

At the end of the chapter is a nice example of a Burglars’ Guild that breaks down membership, profit, and loss.

Chapter 3: Conflicts

Here we have descriptions of two types of conflicts that affect Thieves’ Guilds; External and Internal. External conflict describes what happens when there are too many guilds or thieves in a settlement. Internal conflicts are those that happen inside the guild itself; membership exceeds Market Class limits, failed morale checks, etc).

Something cool about these rules is that the player character’s thief skills are used to resolve a lot of the conflicts in ways that make sense.

The first section details External Conflicts; a d100 table is consulted whenever one of more items on a list is triggered. Results can range from a street fight between your gang and a rival or an all out assassination attempt against all of your guild leadership!

The next section examines Internal Conflicts. Like the External conflicts, Internal conflicts are triggered when a particular event happens. When that occurs, you roll on a d100 table. Results range from dissension in the ranks that leads to low morale (which can snowball into further conflict later on) all the way to an assassination attempt against the player character!

The last section in this chapter is Mass Conflict, which occurs when two or more guilds fight or a guild splinters and fights itself. These rules are simple and straightforward and would probably work with little variation for any kind of mass combat.

Chapter 4: Running a Guild

Morale is the first section here and it measures the happiness and loyalty of the guild members. If morale gets too low, you’re looking at mutiny. There are a number of modifiers that affect the Morale Score, and the Morale Score affects guild revenue and Internal Conflicts.

The next section is Experience and Gaining Levels. While running a guild does provide a character with experience points, it doesn’t provide that much which means the character must still adventure. However, the various NPC members of the guild also gain experience and can level up over time, which improves revenue.

Franchising is the title of the next section and details an option you can use when your guild has grown to maximum capacity in the settlement it started in. You can franchise your guild to another settlement! This has benefits and drawbacks but overall seems like a good idea and a fun part of this whole mini-game.

The last section of this chapter is a summary entitled, Order of Operations. Essentially, running a guild requires you to do certain things at the beginning of the month, and certain other things at the end of the month. So, at the beginning of every month, you pay your expenses, recruit new members, roll for banes and boons, and roll for Conflicts. At the end of the month, you collect revenue, pay recruiting costs, add/subtract members, roll for Morale changes.

Chapter 5: Guilds and the Referee

This final chapter uses the previous material to show what a game master can do to easily create and run thieves’ guilds in cities the player characters may visit, and how those guilds interact with the player characters. It’s also useful because just creating these NPC guilds can create conflicts that can be exploited to add depth to the city location or even make the basis for adventures for the player characters.

Conclusion

Overall, this is a wonderful game supplement. It is highly useful and utilitarian, easy to read and comprehend, with clean layout, non-distracting art, and rules that don’t get in the way of the game. In fact, the rules here form a mini game that you and your players can break into while playing your normal session. Keep in mind, you do need the previous supplement, Domain Building, as well as Hexcrawl Basics.

Review: Domain Building by Third Kingdom Games

Domain Building

By Todd Leback (Patreon Page), Cover Art by Jen Drummond, Cartography by Todd Leback, Interior Art by Patrick E Pullen, Dyson Logos, Rick Hershey, David Lewis Johnson, and Miguel Santos

49 pages including Cover and OGL thing

Designed specifically for use with Old School Essentials by Necrotic Gnome, but useful for virtually all fantasy role playing games.

The book is divided into chapters which I will break down here. I won’t go into too much detail, as a lot of work went into making this product and I think you should purchase a copy.

Introduction

These mechanics are an exploration of higher level domain building for the Fighter class. Other classes will have their own higher level activities described in future supplements.

There is a helpful glossary for specific terms used throughout the text; Civilization Rating, Domain, Garrison, Infrastructure (important because this improves value and ultimately Market Class see: below) Land Value, Market Class (this is perhaps the most important to game-y stuff as it determines the availability of goods and services and population size), Resources, Resource Step, Retainers, and Urban Center.

Chapter 1: Retainers

Retainers, henchmen, minions, etc are vitally important to building up hexes and protecting domains. While the player character is off doing high level adventures adventuring, their trusted and loyal Lieutenants are protecting their domain, clearing nearby hexes of low level dangers, and managing various other things on the player’s behalf. This chapter explains how to recruit retainers with a thorough but elegant system, then shows you how to keep your retainers happy.

Chapter 2: Domains

Characters at this point should have already cleared the hex they wish to build a domain in, using the mechanics described in the previous volume; Hexcrawl Basics. Now, the character(s) must do additional things/meet requirements before the domain can actually happen. These include creating a garrison to protect the hex and people and building or taking over a stronghold.

Chapter 3: Developing your Domain

Once your domain is founded its time to acquire money and power! This chapter contains rules for populating your domain hex, growing and improving it over time, details about the very important Market Class, and growth of your domain’s borders.

Chapter 4: Maintaining your Domain

The chapter title summarizes what’s in this chapter pretty well. It contains detailed systems for determining land value and extracting value from the hex, like mining or livestock. Gaining wonderful income from the hex. Then Leback hits us with the dreaded expenses and bills!

This chapter also details and explains how to create and build up Urban Centers; the villages, towns, and cities of your domain. There are even rules for gaining Experience Points just from building and maintaining your domain, albeit much slower than going off on adventures.

Chapter 5: Domain Supplemental

This chapter has some more rules to consider for morale of your people/subjects, the size of your domain, and trade. The trade section makes a good point separating trade the player-characters conduct themselves on a first person basis, versus the abstract mass trading that goes on within a domain or with other domains. Leback has really mastered the skill of taking complex ideas and gracefully explaining easy to use mechanics for addressing those ideas.

Chapter 6: Domain Building Extended Example

Here Leback takes us through, step by step, the building of a domain using all the rules in the previous chapters.

Each of the previous chapters had numerous detailed examples already, but this one puts everything together. Even though each of the individual rules in the previous chapters were clearly explained, it is extremely helpful to have a full example where everything is put on the proverbial table for all to see.

The Extended Example takes the domain from humble beginnings as a wilderness hex, 150 miles from the closest civilization, to a two-hex domain with a thriving village, within a year of game time.

The extended example really showcases the almost mini-game aspect of domain building.

Conclusion

I’ve found this document to be very well written, concise, and informative. It seems very game-able to me, and in fact almost like a mini-game, making domain management much more fun than it felt with the dry descriptions from old school DnD/AD&D.

I’d also like to add that I REALLY like the cover art for these Third Kingdom Games products.

Review: Hexcrawl Basics

Hexcrawl Basics by Todd Leback (Patreon page), editing by Tim Bannock, Cover art by Jen Drummond, Interior art by Bruno Balixa, Dean Spencer, Rick Hershey, Jack Holliday, Matt Forsyth, Matthew Richmond

Published by Third Kingdom Games

Hexcrawl Basics is written for use with Old School Essentials by Necrotic Gnome.

26 pages including the cover and OGL license info

As the Introduction by Todd Leback states, “There’s a ton of literature out there – both published and on the internet – dealing with hexcrawling. But there is precious little information on how to mechanically run a hexcrawl.”

I couldn’t agree more!

The book is divided into 6 Chapters. I’ll give a brief synopsis of each.

Chapter 1: Hexes

Hexes themselves are defined as being 6 miles from face to face, with sub-hexes (smaller hexes within the hex) being 1.2 miles from face to face. A six mile hex is standard as far as I’ve ever known, but Leback takes the time to give a brief explanation as to why that is the standard and why this is useful to the game master.

There is a difference between travelling through a hex and travelling within a hex. The next section describes these differences and provides useful information like how to determine distances using hex features. Lots of maps are used to illustrate the information as provided examples.

Travelling through one hex to another is pretty straightforward and Leback shows how to have the player-characters do this by following terrain features.

Travel and exploration within a hex is next described and provides, to me, great info right off the bat with a breakdown of the time it takes to explore a hex depending on the terrain, if an aerial spotter is present (which is a GREAT idea that I have overlooked in the past), and how many sub-hexes can be explored in that time frame.

Next is a section detailing more on actual exploration, such as movement rate, noticing tracks, encounter frequency, how long an encounter takes to resolve and how that effects the time it takes to explore the hex, and camping.

Chapter 2: Random Encounters

This chapter begins with Leback explaining the ranges of monsters; the range is the amount of space (number of hexes) a monster needs to do its monstering. Larger monsters generally need more space to get the resources they need to survive. Leback provides ingenious rules that use the monster descriptions from B/X or Old School Essentials or AD&D.

Random encounter tables are explained based on what creatures have lairs in that hex.

Restocking lairs is an oft overlooked or forgotten aspect of hex crawling. If the player-characters explore a hex, wipe out the goblin tribe operating out of the cave they found, and then move on. What happens to the cave? Someone else is going to move in, that’s what! Leback once again provides simple and easy to implement rules for doing this, and includes some optional ways of handling random tables as well.

Chapter 3: Features and Lairs

Leback begins this chapter by defining the number of features and lairs each 6 mile hex will have, and then defining the terms of Features and Lairs. It is another simple and useful idea that is often overlooked.

Leback doesn’t spend a lot of space talking about features, which is fine. Most of this chapter is about Lairs; the difference between a lair and a dungeon, how to determine if the lair is defended or not, what it really means if the monster is determined to not be in its lair when the player-character’s discover it, and rules for monster types and how they relate to their lairs.

Chapter 4: Getting Lost

This chapter provides handy rules for when player-characters are exploring within a hex and lose their way. It also makes the distinction between getting lost and being delayed. Even an experienced team of explorers with aerial support and local trackers can be delayed, no matter how unlikely it is that they would get lost.

It’s also important to note that the Referee rolls to determine if the party is lost or delayed. The party doesn’t realize they are lost until they succeed on a roll or come across a landmark they’ve already seen – just like in real life.

Chapter 5: Random Weather

This chapter has simple rules for determining the day’s weather and how it affects the player characters. This is four step process utilizing easy to use random tables. Daily Outlook, Chance of Precipitation, Precipitation Severity, and Unusual Weather.

Leback notes that there is another publication called Random Weather Generation that has more complex rules that can be used for those that want a bit more detail.

Chapter 6: Hexcrawling in Action

This chapter brings all of the previous chapters together and explains how to use all of the information together in just a few steps in order to flesh out a hex. Each of the previous chapters has examples within it, but this is a massive example that brings it all together to show you, the reader, how it all works.

Conclusion

Hexcrawling has long been of interest to me in a sort of long distance, abstract way. Like, I knew it existed, and it sounded cool, but I never experienced it first hand nor had any idea how to run it myself. I’ve read lots of blog posts by various people extolling the wonder and glory of the hexcrawl, but like Leback says in the intro, there has never really been any mechanical means of conducting a hexcrawl campaign until now.

If you want to conduct an overland wilderness campaign, I think Hexcrawl Basics is definitely something you should check out. In fact, I’m planning on using it to sketch out a Dungeon Crawl Classics campaign setting.

Black Powder Firearms for Dungeon Crawl Classics

Black powder firearms for Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG

[I recommend using the Critical and Fumble Tables from Crawl! magazine No 8.]

Firearms

These are considered Flintlock weapons for those that care about such things.

[I’m trying to keep things simple and easy.]

Reloading

It takes 2 rounds (20 seconds) for a Warrior class to reload with no skill check, or 1 round with a skill check. 2 rounds for a non-Warrior with an appropriate background occupation with a d20 skill check, or 4 rounds for an untrained character with a d10 skill check. The DC is 5. Armor Check penalty does apply.

[It’s crazy to me that a lot of firearms rules I’ve seen have essentially been punishing players for using them with outlandishly long reload times. A 1 second google search shows that it takes 15-20 seconds for someone with minimal training to reload a muzzle-loader. ]

Cleaning

Every time a black powder firearm is fired, it accrues a cumulative increase of 1 to their Fumble range on the to-hit roll, unless cleaned between uses.

Range

At short range, increase the Critical Hit Range by one.

Pistol Short <20, Medium <60, Long <100

Musket Short <50, Medium <100, Long <600

Shotgun fires in a cone 80 feet long, 30 feet wide, anyone in cone must make Reflex save for half damage (rounded down)

Damage

Firearms ignore 5 points of armor (but not less than the base value) to represent their ability to penetrate armor.

Pistol and Musket: 1d10

Shotgun: 1d6 to each target within the cone.

Cost

Pistols and Muskets can be rifled for 2x cost, which doubles each range bracket but increases reload time by 1 round.

Pistol: 50 gold

Musket: 80 gold

Shotgun: 60 gold

One shot powder: 3 silver

Barrel of powder (2500 shots): 150 gold

Bag of shot: 1 gold for 50 reloads

Spare Ramrod: 5 silver (all firearms come with a ramrod included in the cost of the weapon)

Powder horn (holds 50 shots powder): 5 silver, empty.

Cleaning kit: 1 gold

The Witch for DCC RPG

The Witch for DCC RPG v1.0

The Witch is a magic using class that relies on making deals with supernatural Patrons in exchange for magical powers. Whether they are using their powers to climb the political or corporate ladder, or put curses on backwoods hicks who trespass on their property, the witch is a both feared and respected by the common folk.

A few of the the abilities are the same as the Wizard from Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG, and are noted as such.

Hit Points

Witches gain 1d6 hit points per level of experience.

Weapon Training

Same as Wizard.

Alignment

Lawful Witches tend to work within communities and occasionally hold positions of political power. Chaotic witches tend to shun society and are often found in remote shacks in the wilderness doing who knows what. Neutral witches are often seen as gurus or seers and are sought for their knowledge and powers.

Caster Level

Witches have a Caster level equal to their Experience Level minus 1. So a first level Witch has a Caster Level of 0. See; the effects of Glowstone, below.

Magic

Witches start the game with Patron Bond and Invoke Patron. They may cast Patron Bond immediately with a single Patron of choice. For the Witch, each patron they bond with immediately grants the three Patron Spells in their description.

Invoke Patron can also be used to learn a standard Wizard spell of any level of the Witch’s choice. The spell’s rank is subtracted from the roll. I.e. learning a Rank 9 spell is a penalty of minus 9 to the Invoke Patron roll. Success means the witch knows that spell permanently and can cast it in the standard way. Casting this spell does not add to the cumulative Patron Taint total.

Two deer-were witches confronting a traveler who interrupted their foul ceremony of dark magic.

Spellburn

Spellburn tables are located in the description for each supernatural Patron. Patron’s love when Witches Spellburn because it’s just another way they can exert some control over the witch.

Supernatural Patrons

Patrons are the key to a Witch’s magical powers. Without at least one patron, a Witch is just a normal mundane shlub.

A Witch may be bonded to a number of patrons equal to their Experience Level.

They can bond with an additional patron at each level of experience. I.e. a 4th level witch can be bonded with 4 patrons simultaneously.

Patron Taint

Every time Patron Bond, Invoke Patron, or any Patron Spell is cast, successful or not, there is a cumulative 1% chance of incurring Patron Taint. The Patron who taints the Witch is determined by which patron is the focus of the spell being cast.

A lone witch in the woods hearing voices only they can hear.

Focus

Witches need a focus to summon the eldritch energies to cast the magic gifted them by their supernatural patrons. A focus is a material object the witch can use to concentrate on to cast magic. Wands, rods, staves, dolls, necklaces, rings, headbands, strands of beads, crystals, cool looking rocks, skulls, bones… a focus can be just about anything.

A Witch needs a different focus for each patron. These items should in some way physically resemble an aspect of the patron. For example; a witch with Dagon as a patron may have a focus of a small statuette shaped like a fish-person, or perhaps a wand with a head made of coral.

Luck

The Witch’s Luck modifier can be applied to Patron Bond rolls, and Invoke Patron rolls.

Action Dice

Same as Wizard

Stay away from strange naked goat women in the dungeon — Stay away from the Goat people

Glowstone

[NOTE: This is shit for my home campaign. It can be ignored by you, the reader]

Witches have an innate relationship with glowstone. The weird glowing rock actually increases their magical power! However, there are some side effects. A Witch does not need glowstone in order to perform magic. However, glowstone provides a bonus to casting magic. The size of the glowstone is directly proportional to the size of the bonus. On the other hand, if a spell check ends in critical failure, the bonus of the glowstone is added to the Corruption roll described in each spell description. The bonus generally increases by 1 for every two carats in size of stone. So a 1 or 2 carat glowstone provides a +1 bonus, 3-4 carat is a +2 bonus, and so on up to a maximum of +10.

Each individual glowstone is attuned to a specific patron. No patrons will share a glowstone. If a witch has more than one patron, and one or some of those patrons are not attuned to a glowstone, they may demand that the Witch find a new stone or stones or else suffer consequences.

Sometimes a patron may declare that the stone they are attuned to is too small, and a larger stone must be procured.

Or, a Witch may come across a larger glowstone than what they have and wants to attune it to a patron already associated with a stone in their possession.

In both cases, a new Patron Bond spell must be performed, but because the Witch and the patron already know each other, the spell check succeeds on any roll other than a natural 1.

If no Corruption roll is described, the Witch rolls on the following;

1 no Corruption, 2-4 Minor Corruption, 5-7 Major Corruption, 8+ Greater Corruption.

Fae Idea for Dungeon Crawl Classics

I was reading Phantasmagoria #1 and the 2019 Gongfarmer’s Almanac and came across two specific things that gave me an idea.

GA19 has a Faerie character class. Phantasmagoria has a Gremlin class. I don’t care much for the standard DCC Elf class.

So I’m going to combine them!

My idea, and this is still in the rough stage is the following…

Fae Folk

At character creation, when rolling Backgrounds, there will be a Fae background. Rolling that, gives you a sub table of Faerie, Sprite, or Pixie. All three are fundamentally the same in terms of powers and abilities. They can fly, they are tiny, they use tiny weapons and equipment, their alignment is Neutral, and they have limited innate magical abilities. Physical appearance wise, Sprites have wings like bees or dragonflies, Faeries have wings like butterflies, and Pixies don’t have wings at all. Skin and hair color can be any color imaginable. Clothing is optional.

Still with me?

When the zero level Fae character reaches 1st level, they get to choose a path of advancement. They can stay a faerie, sprite, or pixie and remain Neutral in alignment (and a first level character will get increased and cooler powers and abilities, of course). These dudes are like the peasants/commoners of the Fae folk, while elves are more like nobility and goblins are black sheep.

They can choose to be a Lawful Elf or a Chaotic Goblin.

Elves

Elves are like the fae nobility. Their alignment is Lawful as they are members of the Seelie Court and know and abide its laws (at least when someone important is watching). They are fighter/wizards like in standard DCC RPG, but their patron is ALWAYS an Elf Lord (either the King of Elfland or one of the several elf patrons from Angels, Demons, and Beings Inbetween Volume 2: Elfland edition). Elves no longer get free Mithril shit at level one because it doesn’t make sense and is dumb. Instead they gain the following cool power; Magical sneakery! They can move silently and leave no tracks in snow or dirt, and make no sound when walking on dead leaves or sticks.

Goblins

Goblins are Chaotic and small. They owe no fealty to any elf lord or lady. They aren’t necessarily evil; more like mischievous. They enjoy playing pranks, sabotaging technology (like the Gremlin from Phantasmagoria), and avoiding actual work. Goblins have some limited spell casting ability like summoning small nasty critters, spoiling food and drink, and stuff like that.

Roll20 Review

As I’m writing this, I’m playing in a game of Savage Worlds using Roll20.

Having a way to game during Covid quarantine has been nice, although to me, online RPGs pale in comparison to in-person gaming.

Like, I actually kind of hate playing on Roll20.

I think this is for the following reasons;

The audio on Roll20 just goes out at random times, requiring a reload of the page and logging back in again.
Many people who use Roll20, turn off the audio and use Discord for audio instead. Which is fucking ridiculous that you need two different applications to do something that should be simple.
For Savage Worlds, there are a lot of exploding dice that need to be rolled. This can get VERY tiresome when you have to type /roll+1d10!+1d6!+2+1d8! and if you forget to put in one of those ! then you’re fucked and have to do it again. It really removes any semblance of immersion.
Some rolls are easily included as a simple button on your character sheet. This is a nice feature.
To get to your character sheet, though, you have to switch away from the chat/dice rolling feed, then you have to switch back to see the result of your roll. Which is annoying.
My character is always twice as large as everyone else and has to be resized at the start of each session by the Referee because I apparently have no power to do that.
In Savage Worlds, having minions, henchmen, and “extras,” is a part of the game. Unfortunately, they don’t have character sheets. So you’re back to writing out long strings of exploding dice rolls.

Now, most of these issues are minor or just annoying. The shit is free for fuck’s sake so I shouldn’t be complaining, right?

Well, voting is free and I complain about that shit as well, so…

Anyway

We’ve been playing this campaign on and off for a decade. The setting is Sundered Skies, which is a lot like the first world in The Death Gate Cycle; floating islands in a sky realm with magical ships sailing between islands.

It’s a rad setting and it’s been a great campaign.

Plus it’s always nice to be a player instead of a Judge/Referee/DM/GM, ya know?

Like I said, I’m writing this as we are playing. The Ref just described an elf with a bronze cock that shoots fiery comets that turn into elementals when he strokes it.

Podcast about world building

If you look to your right, you’ll see a widget with a podcast in it. Unless you’re on mobile in which case you probably see nothing.

Click it. Listen to it. Tell me if you like it. Share it to the world. Subscribe to it so you don’t miss a thing.

Even if you hate it, you should still pass it around and share it to your circle of gaming geeks.

And no, I don’t get paid a thing. There is no advertising, no patreons, just two dudes who are barely functioning adults talking about games and world building.

Commander EDH: Red Land Destruction

When we aren’t playing RPGs, we play Magic the Gathering. Specifically, we play Commander/EDH format.

I like to make decks based on stuff I haven’t tried before. This deck is solid Red, a color I rarely use, and based on land destruction, which is vilified and hated by basically everyone. I’ve used it three times; each time with a different Commander. The first time it did okay, but I wasn’t paying attention and used a terrible card as my commander. The second time I was the first one out because everyone was scared. The third time I won by using Obliterate to clear the board then pecking the shit out of the other players with goblins because I could get them out before the other players could play anything.

After each time using this deck, I’ve modified it based on the play experience. This is the most current iteration.

I don’t want the land destruction element to be obvious, and I don’t want to destroy my own lands except as a last resort. Cards like Stone Rain or Rain of Salt are too limited in the EDH format so I removed them after the first go around with this deck. This is not meant to be a competitive deck (I just play casual with friends), and we don’t pay any attention to ban lists of any sort. Also, I have a very limited budget (I got Wheel of Fortune out of a booster pack when Revised was new).

Name: haven’t thought of one yet.

Commander:

Chandra, Fire of Kaladesh

Planeswalkers:

Jaya, Venerated Firemage
Chandra, Bold Pyromancer – creature wipe
Chandra, the Firebrand

Creatures:

Goblin Razerunners
Neheb, the Eternal
Krenko, Mob Boss
Goblin Chieftain
Goblin King
Battle Squadron
Skirk Prospector
Gempalm Incinerator
Shivan Wumpus
Goblin Fireslinger
Goblin Wardriver
Goblin Welder
Keldon Warlord
Kazuul, Tyrant of the Cliffs
Clamor Shaman
Goblin Rabblemaster
Goblin Glory Chaser
Myojin of Infinite Rage – land wipe
Squee, the Immortal
Sisters of the Flame
Wildfire Eternal
Goblin Motivator

Enchantments:

Goblin Caves
Conquer
Rumbling Crescendo – land wipe
Sarkhan’s Unsealing
Goblin War Drums
Goblin Warrens
Custody Battle

Artifacts:

Darksteel Ingot
Steel Hellkite
Pilgrim’s Eye
God-Pharaoh’s Statue – makes losing your lands even worse
Feldon’s Cane
Crucible of Worlds
That Which Was Taken
Goblin Charbelcher
Sol Ring
Burnished Hart
Throne of the God-Pharaoh
Soul of New Phyrexia
Solemn Simulacrum

Instants:

Radiating Lightning
Desperate Ritual
Lightning Strike
Lightning Bolt
Mudhole – remove all lands from target player’s graveyard
Sarkhan’s Catharsis
Smelt
Shivan Fire

Sorceries:

Relentless Assault
Wake of Destruction – land wipe
Violent Impact
Sarkhan’s Dragonfire
Blasphemous Act – creature wipe
Disintegrate
Goblin Barrage
Surreal Memoir
Act of Treason
Wheel of Fortune
Cleaver Riot
Chandra’s Outburst
Obliterate – last resort board wipe
Fight with Fire
From the Ashes – non-basic land wipe (which is why my lands are all Mountains)

Land:

Darksteel Citadel
Mountain x30