Game Review: Entity

Author: Peter Scholtz
Publisher: Candlenaut
System: Ironsworn-based d10 System
Marketplace: DriveThruRPG 

Entity caught my attention when it appeared in my recommendations on DTRPG. I looked at it, and wrote it down as a possibility for a future review. Then it started to haunt me: I heard it mentioned again and again in discussions with solo gamers, on TTRPG podcasts I follow, and even unexpectedly in ChatGPT windows. The other night, I was surfing DTRPG and found it front and centre on my recommendations once again and on sale, and decided to heed the gods.

I'm glad I gave it a try! My playtest was a little slow to start, but once I got into the rhythm of the game, I thoroughly enjoyed my journey across the bizarre, desolate and dangerous world of the game. It played fast, put interesting challenges in front of me, and things often came together with compelling serendipity. 

In Entity,  you play an IAP, an android built for deep space exploration by NASA in the late 21st century,  and that has served human expansion for 10,000 years. After a Rogue primordial black hole destroyed the Solar System,  IAP crews became the scouts who serve the dispossessed remnant of humanity by seeking out new places to settle and resources to help them survive. The campaign begins when a  mysterious alien pyramid capable of bending gravity destroys your vessel, and brings your escape pod down on an alien world full of strange vistas, unexpected perils, and ancient ruins.

You conduct missions to gather resources and perform research that will allow you to construct a colony that might make the world survivable for you and potentially safe for human habitation.  As you progress in building your colony, you also begin to discover secrets about the purpose of the alien ruins, the pyramid, and the planet itself.

Entity is built entirely as a solo game, and intended to run through 10 procedurally generated missions of varying complexity. Individual IAPs can be destroyed, but the campaign can continue with the same facilities and discoveries carried over between PCs.

Game Review: Tales of Argosa

Author: Steven Grodzicki
Publisher: Pickpocket Press
System: (Highly Modified) OSR Compatible 
Marketplace; DriveThruRPG 

Tales of Argosa is a new edition of Low Fantasy Gaming that has taken years of community testing, design feedback, and setting development and honed the game into a fast, action-heavy game built for kick-in-the door play and low-to-zero-prep GMing.

My Thursday night group recently switched to Tales of Argosa from Blueholme Journeymanne. It has been a bit of a homecoming for the group, as we started the campaign give years ago as a Low Fantasy Gaming campaign, and returning to it really feels right after two years of Blueholme. There are some things that LFG, and now ToA just do a lot better than a vanilla OSR game.

Tomb of the Apellomancer

 

My oldest son recently formed his first D&D club at school. He is teaching his friends how to play using Basic Fantasy RPG. And, like all first time DMs, he is figuring out running the game for himself. To help him out, I created a mid-sized dungeon for him: the Tomb of the Apellomancer.

This is a light-hearted funhouse dungeon featuring magic and traps themed primarily around writing and paper, and includes a GM's cheat-sheet for first-time GMs. It is written with Basic Fantasy in mind, but, is compatible with any other OSR game you might want to use with minimal fuss.

It hasn't just served my son, either; my wife has recently started a D&D club for students at the school where she works, and has placed this dungeon in her campaign world. She is expecting her students to raid it in the new year. 

I have it up on itch.io as a PWYW title. Personally, I am just happy to have people playing it, and encourage you to grab it for free. 

Get it in Itch.io now! 

Solo Gaming Fiction: Bad Medicine (pt. 3)

 There wasn't time to guess at how stupid the move was; there was just time to move. Lise disengaged her boots and hammered on the controls in her hand, twisting and turning the cargo pod, building up as much momentum as the tons of medicine could manage with nothing but cheap gas jets, as she rode it out between the closing shutters, sighing with relief when the edge of the pallet caused a mighty squawk as the safety system froze the shutters.

She rode the pallet of medicine out into open space, her heart was pounding; oxygen consumption rate alarms blaring over her helmet comm.  She twisted the pallet and let it drift slowly towards the hull of the station parallel to the plating. Keying the pallet to follow her, she began the task of trudging across the hull between her rings of detection. Everything in her screamed to hurry, but in space, as they used to say in the 'Corps, rushing will get you killed.

 "Holden, are you reading?"

"I'm here."

"I just barely got out of the OT. The Bandits were early. I've got the payload. Monitor comms for me, would you?"

"You're cute when you talk like a soldier."

"Scan now; flirt later." 

"Yes Ma'am!"

Lise smiled in spite of herself. She'd needed that. There was nothing to do now but keep walking her strange, drunken route along the Space Station's hull.

"...Okay, there's nothing about the uh... OT.. in the Station Sec' channels, but we did just get an unauthorized work pod launch, and somebody's running interference to keep it from getting intercepted."

"Shit. I want you to start venting the Arrow's cargo bay now, and start warming up the M-Drive. Keep on sensors. Low energy sweeps. Let me know when the pod is coming."

Holden paused she could hear him interacting with her bridge computer.

"Look, Lise, scanners I can do, but I'm not a pilot."

"Take your time, even double-timing it I'm probably 17 minutes out. Remind me to invest in a thruster pack when I get paid."

Breathe easy. Breathe slow. You're in more danger from tearing your suit than anything else. Lise focused on taking slow steps and steering the pallet. She carefully registered a flight plan for the 'Arrow as soon as she was on board. But some part of her wanted to claw out of her skin.

Pain lanced through her ribs, as she took a particularly narrow turn and for a moment she was on one knee crying and cursing softly. 

"What's wrong?!"

 "Another Spasm", Lise said as she knelt on the plating for a moment. Tears floated free, starting to form a shell of liquid on the inside of the helmet. "I just need to breathe and keep my head in the game. I'll be there in 7."

"Is there a reason why you are still wobbling around the ship like a drunken Bwap on Holiday? They already know you're out there."

"The Bandits know I'm out here, but they are avoiding official channels. If I don't trigger any alarms it stays that way. They have no legal right to stop my departure or search the ship."

Come on!

She forced herself back to her feet and started making longer, faster strides. There was no time for pain.

Undeadwood is live!!

I just launched Undeadwood: Weird West RPG on DriveThruRPG!

I am really proud of this one, readers! It is a heavily play tested unique system. The book is full of detailed maps, and beautiful pulp Art from the 1870s to the 1950s. 

Download includes a form fillable character sheet, as well as a static one, and dungeon Alchemist files as well as Virtual Table-Top exports for three locations. The book has two adventure scenarios. One a full size dungeon call, the other a simple shootout. 

They also has the file for a poster-sized map of the campaign setting.

Check it out on DTRPG!

Solo Gaming Fiction: Bad Medicine (pt.2)

This is part 2 of a fictionalized version of my solo game of Mongoose Traveller (2022), which I wanted to share with you all.  

Solo Gaming Fiction: Bad Medicine (pt.1)

One of the things I make a point of doing any time I am reviewing a TTRPG is to play a couple of sessions of it in solo mode so that I can get a feel for how it plays at the table. If I am going to share a game with you, I want to make sure I am doing my best to have good information. It is not enough to describe the mechanics of a game; I want to have a sense of game play.

This unfortunately slows down my reviewing process - a lot.  Recently, one of my kids has developed some pretty extreme issues related to the way his autism expresses itself. I have had to drop everything - including work - to take care of the little guy. Finding the time to sit down and take a trip into a dungeon or into outer space has been hard as of late. And when I do, it has been more for the joy of playing than for the purposes of the blog.

 But I wanted to relate a cool story from a recent solo game. I decided to sit down and play a round of the 2022 Mongoose edition of Traveller so I could have a better basis of comparison to Cepheus Deluxe and Stars Without Number, which I want to finally review properly in the near future.

This is the first adventure of my home Traveller campaign; and I will present it in four parts to make it more digestible than last year's Death in Space story.