Back This: Hell Night by Gavriel Quiroga on Kickstarter

Hell Night, by the incredibly talented Gavriel Quiroga, is on Kickstarter right now and has around 72 hours left to back. Gavriel's work on Neurocity & Warpland is incredible and Warpland is the best looking RPG that I've ever had the pleasure to own.

Here is the set-up for Hell Night:

Hell, the dimension of torment and spiritual atonement, has suffered an insurrection. Its ruler has laid dormant for decades and the domain is convulsed by the inefficacy of a headless hierarchy. A few Archons, powerful demons which rule over the Circles, have escaped their obligations and are now breaking havoc on the land above, Earth. To make matters worse, a celestial herald from the cohorts of Heaven has come with an ultimatum, ¨You have until dawn to remove the deserters from the realm of man or else we will storm your gates¨

It is your solemn duty to hunt down these dangerous, demonic fugitives. So, gather your unholy arms, armor and cursed relics; the fate of cosmic balance lies in your hands. An infernal choir has been summoned to honor your quest and bid farewell as you blaze through the gates of torment on your thundering hellride.

Your strength is as great as your determination, as the fire that consumes your rage. Welcome to Hell Night.

I urge you to back Hell Night before it ends and relish in it's doom biker glory.

Here is the link.

Running Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcery of Hyperborea

I have a great circle of people to role play with, amazing people, and even better friends. We mostly play DnD 5E which I love, but I've been playing it for a while and sometimes I yearn for running something from the OSR. At the moment we are in the middle of running Avernus so there isn't much room on the schedule to run a one or two-shot. Then it occurred to me that since I run a game store and I could run a demo, so yesterday that is what I did. I only had two players but that actually worked out really well. I used the ASnSH Rogue's Gallery II pdf for pre-generated 1st level characters and after about 30 minutes we were off and running.

I ran the Rats in the Walls adventure which is excellent. One of my players is from the regular RPG group and the other was someone I hadn't met before. We all had a blast and finished the session within three hours. ASnSH is a superb game and heaping with flavor. I truly loved it and so did the players.

I asked about making this a regular thing but it wasn't in the cards and I fully understand that. Afterwards as I contemplated the session and the system something occurred to me, we could have had just as much fun with DnD 5E, Swords and Wizardry, Against the Darkmaster, or Champions 4E. The system didn't really affect how well written and playtested Rats in the Walls was and the flourishes I added didn't rely on the system either.

I've always been a system guy, even when I only had one RPG that I owned or played I have constantly been looking at another game. It has short-circuited way too many campaigns to count and has honestly caused me quite a bit of grief.

I'm not going to say I won't fall for this trap again, apparently, I'm a slow learner sometimes. But I'm going to try to remember that the trap is sitting there waiting for me.

Cepheus Sorcery

Over the last year, I've looked at quite a few Traveller/Cepheus Engine products from various publishers. While I understand the appreciation for building your character through Education and Careers it's not something I'm a huge fan of. However, Stellagama is a publisher that has been making Cepheus products that are lighter on rules yet still capture the OSR appeal I think Traveller/Cepheus has.

My favorite of these began with Cepheus Quantum(it's free )and has carried over to Cepheus Atom (think Gamma World) and Barbaric! (think DnD or RuneQuest).

Yesterday, they uploaded Cepheus Sorcery which is a 2 page set of rules for using the Cepheus system in a Sword & Sorcery setting. Like their other Cepheus Quantum games, it's just a masterpiece of getting to the heart of what I find important as a player and a Game Master. I have less time these days and while I love DnD 5th Edition and Shadows of the Demon Lord it's cool to have such a proven set of rules in a mere 2 pages.

I haven't been taken like this with a set of rules since the Cypher System.

It's free and there is literally no reason not to download it. If you like it, pick up Barbaric! too.

Spotlight on Magic World

I remember the first time I encountered an RPG system using percentiles. It was so clear and easy to understand: I have a 60% to Climb, 55% to shoot a Bow, 45% to Dodge. It just made sense.

The first Chaosium game I owned was Stormbringer as it was given to me as a gift and I had never read Moorcock (I grew up on comic books, cartoons, and action movies) and the game grabbed me. Unfortunately, the Demon Summoning magic system wasn't my cup of tea (I'm a mid-western Catholic boy and its hard to let that go when you are a young lad), but it led me to the Eternal Champion and it led me to other Chaosium gems, including Magic World.

While RuneQuest and Glorantha are cool, neither is my cup of tea. I'm not a big fan of Hit Locations and Glorantha just doesn't grab me. However, I'm a huge fan of the Basic Role Playing Big Gold Book and that led me to check out Magic World.

What I like about it is that it is closer to Call of Cthulhu and Stormbringer's version of the BRP and not so close to RuneQuest/Mythras. It's more straight forward in my opinion, yes, it might make sense that Climb defaults to your Dexterity + Strength as a Percentage chance of success, but I'm cool with handwaving it at 40% as the default.

While Magic World isn't Dungeons and Dragons it does take all the cool bits of Stormbringer, RuneQuest, and decades worth of BRP and finely tunes them to heroic fantasy without classes.

Even though you probably know how to play a BRP game most take one or two things here and there and make them their own.

One of the things that caught me about Magic World is that while you can have a pool of points to spend amongst Skills you also have the option of assigning fixed percentages to a fixed number of Skill which helps to make sure that your character is competent in the things they want to do best instead of falling into the trap of a bunch of Skills at 40%. This same idea was used in Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition and I think it's just brilliant.

Another cool idea is that if your Power attribute is 15 or higher you can cast spells and have Power Points to fuel Sorcery. Basically, you ready spells in memory and then you spend the appropriate amount of Power Points and the spell is cast. If the spell can be resisted there is a contest between the Caster and the Target. The spells aren't as destructive as DnD, but they work and fit with the more subtle nature of Magic World. There are also other Magic Systems in the Advanced Sorcery supplement.

I can't say when the next time I run Magic World will be, but I think it could a nice change from the Class and Levels of DnD and other OSR games. Chaosium makes good stuff and Ben Monroe who edited MW did a great job. He took all the various parts from some very talented designers and worked them into a cohesive and appealing whole. Its a shame that Chaosium doesn't have plans to support it as several supplements were in production at one time.

If you are looking for a different fantasy game, please think about giving Magic World a try.

Chaosium hosts a free Quick-Start here.

A Manifesto

Recently, a game designer, publisher, blogger, and Ennie winner posted a Manifesto about how to play Dungeons & Dragons on Twitter.  Yes, Twitter. The Internet's equivalent of Mordor.

This Manifesto took a stand about how you should play DnD, used a terrible font, used profanity, railed against Wizards of the Coast and Paizo, used a terrible font, and revealed that game balance was a lie. The font is terrible, please trust me on this.

A discussion was had in a Facebook group and I posted my thoughts there. I don't think any arguments ensued though because Tim Knight hosts a great FB group and its members are very cool people.

But the Manifesto stuck with me. There have been times where I would have completely agreed with its author, but at the moment I almost completely disagree with the author but that could change tomorrow.

And that led me to think about my opinions of games and gaming as I've "matured". My maturity level changes by the hour. I'm not proud of that fact but I am honest enough to admit it.

In the early 90s I loved playing Champions, I wanted to love playing ADnD, and I was looking everywhere for the perfect game to play and run. I consumed games purely to learn their system. I'd run games purely to test them out and abandon them and my player's characters without a second thought.

In the Mid-90s I wanted to love the World of Darkness because I dug its system and I had an interest in horror and serious roleplaying. Or so I told myself. In fact, when I ran the WoD it was more like Shadowrun with Supernaturals as stand-ins for Supers.

At the turn of the century, I fell in love with John Wick as a game designer and his Legend of the Five Rings RPG helped my wife and I fall in love with each other. I would run games with up to 18 players to prove that I could and to impress her. Roleplaying was still very important and story mattered more than anything else.

Through the next decade, I found Story Games and bought games like John Wick's Thirty, Dark Pages, Spirit of the Century, and Sorcerer. Only a handful of my players could live up to my expectations as a Story Teller and I was obsessed with forming some kind of Invite-Only Uber Role Playing Group. I was a turd looking for drama and I found plenty of it.

In fact, I found so much drama that I stopped role-playing at all. Except that's not 100% true. I began to realize that being a Husband and a Dad was more important than role-playing and they damn well should be. I should have realized it sooner but I still needed to grow up.

Eventually, I found the OSR, started this blog, and came back. Except I don't have time for drama and this takes a backseat to everything else now. I won't lie, I'm pretty darn tired and I'm not yet 50. All I expect from my players is that we all be kind to each other. All that I want from a game is to blow off some steam, laugh like heck, and roll some dice. That's it. Will things change? I assume so, but that is where I'm at right now.

My point to all of this is to say that I could have written that Manifesto at any time between 1991 and yesterday and I might not even feel the same way about it an hour later. We change. And that means we are alive.

And in 2020 that might be the only thing we have left.

I hope to reach a point in the near future where my biggest concern is how people play DnD. I'd like that a whole lot. That would be a nice change of pace.

Percentile Systems

For the record, I loathe the Zocchihedron.

I'm not sure if the first time I encountered a Percentile system was FASA's Star Trek or Call of Cthulhu. I do know that when I saw how clear my odds of success were I was kind of gobsmacked (I was equally transformed upon learning Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0.'s mechanics). No probabilities to work out on a d20, 2d6, or 3d6 -- just a flat percentage.

Sadly, for many years, I avoided them because I felt many Percentile systems had a fairly low chance of success even though analysis of other games like D&D shared similar probabilities that were merely camouflaged. Additionally, you shouldn't have to roll your Drive of 40% skill whenever your character gets behind the wheel, but you have to learn that as a player and game master.

I will say that Chaosium's Magic World and Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition's option of assigning a certain number of percentages to skills in a similar fashion to FATE's skill pyramid helped me look past that flaw. I'd always enjoyed assigning points to skills but I often would only assign a 40 or 50% chance of success in my most important skills so I literally ignored the probabilities even as naked as they were.

Over the last few years, I've also been working out my own twist to Percentage systems. Its basically a riff on the D20 system in that the GM assigns a Difficulty (generally 30, 50, or 70%) and the Character's skill (say between +10 & +30%) alters the Difficulty. E.G. Earl wants to climb a wall at night to get past some armed sentries to steal some important data for ESCHELON. Earl's Climb is +15% and the GM sets the difficulty at 40% so Earl has an adjusted Difficulty of 55%.

I'd like to do something with this but so far haven't mustered the gumption to get it done.

If my group needs a One-Shot in the next few months, I'm thinking about running the Storm Trooper game with this system.

I've often been torn over wether I like a game system with some neat dice tricks like 13th Age, Unknown Armies, and Fantas AGE or ones that just get out of the way like D20, Unisystem, or Basic Role Play. My answer changes depending on the hour, but I find myself looking for simpler options as I get older. Additionally, with such a large number of newer and younger players in my stores I feel that teaching a Percentile system is pretty straightforward and can let you get into the action fairly quickly. Especially, if you play around with a

Ascendant, A New Super Hero RPG is Coming to Kickstarter Very Soon

Yesterday, I discovered that Autarch would be launching a Kickstarter for a new Super Hero RPG, Ascendant, before the end of this month.

Immediately, I wondered if it would be based on Adventurer, Conqueror, King, and Alexander Macris, Autarch's owner, and Ascendant's author was kind of enough to confirm that "No, it's built on an entirely new core that uses logarithmic math. Imagine a hybrid of FASERIP and MEGS."

Then, he was kind enough to give me a preview and I was completely sold within a few pages. All I can say is that if you are a big fan of Marvel Super Heroes (FASERIP) or DC Heroes (MEGS) then you are going to fall in love with Ascendant. Alexander's new game fixes the problems I have with both MSH and DCH and I think the whole project is ingenious.

I don't know exactly when Ascendant will launch this month, but I urge you to back it when the Kickstarter launches.