Zine Review: Black Pudding: Heavy Helping Vol. 2

Author: James V. West & Various Contributors

Publisher: Random Order Creations

System: Labyrinth Lord, OSR Compatible

Marketplace: DriveThruRPG 

 I have been looking forward to reading, using, and reviewing Black Pudding Heavy Helping vol. 2 for a very long time. That I somehow missed its publication is mark of shame upon my standing as an OSR nerd. Especially as Black Pudding: Heavy Helping Vol. 1 was everything I loved about the Old School Renaissance in one place. And doubly so as Heavy Helping vol. 2 is more of the same only better.

Black Pudding HHv2 is the collected material from issues 5-8 of James V. West's Black Pudding Zine  rearranged for easy navigation. BPHHv2 includes character sheets, character  classes, magic items, NPC hirelings and villains, monsters, adventures, a pantheon of gods, a sizable campaign setting, and a set of house rules that can be used in almost any OSR system. 

The mechanics are mostly written with Labyrinth Lord in mind, with occasional references as well to Swords & Wizardry and DCC RPG. As usual, conversion is pretty easy with the exception of the problem that Black Pudding assumes race as class as the default. Even then, extracting the racial traits from the class traits in order to convert racial classes into PC races is incredibly easy.

And as before, the art, tone, and ideas presented in Black Pudding are my kind of off-the-wall gonzo, comic-bookish, and very Punk.

What I Loved

Character Sheets

I first learned about James v West's work through his character sheets, which are frequently circulated around the internet. His intense, cartoony, Payo-influenced work really spoke to me. Whenever I play games with my family I print off some of his wild and wonderful character sheets.

Art

And the Art really does deserve some additional attention: I love James West's art style. It draws a lot from 80s skate-punk aesthetic mixed with French comics and cartoons. It is frenetic, weird, and unique. And it appears on pretty much every page of the 'zines. I don't think there is a bad piece anywhere in the book. It is brimming with chainmail bikinis, muscle-bound barbarians, eyeball monsters, serpents, slime, and cool swords.

Classes

BPHHv2 has a sizable collection of classes designed to be played in a B/X based OSR game.

Alien: a strange martian with the ability to cause potion effects with their mysterious psychic powers. 

Beastfriend: hey character with a supernatural ability to call, calm, and befriend creatures in Wild places. 

Boola: a feminine being who raises, nurtures, and is in turn protected by monsters. 

Death Witch: A Very metal magic user with reduced spellcasting ability and a chance to die every time they learn a new spell. However, they have the ability to speak to the dead and undead, command the undead like an evil cleric, and place a curse on beings that deals damage equal to their current hit points. I also have a chance of coming back from the dead every time they are killed. 

Demodyn: a tiny minor demon with the ability to conjure and manipulate fire, and who exudes a corrupting aura. 

Eyeball: a giant eyeball with arms and legs that has thief abilities and sharp perception but can be blinded by bright lights. 

The fat lady: a heavily armored female opera singer who can enhance her strength, boost her allies, or deaf and her enemies with the power of her voice. 

Feral Knight: a penitent night who has given up armor and weapons after becoming a hermit to repent for some misdeed. As the character advances they gain some clerical and paladin-like abilities, and slowly regain their ability to use the armor and weapons they shed when they became a hermit. 

Fighting wombat: a tough anthropomorphic wombat who has a higher Armor class from behind and the ability to dig at High speeds. 

Flamer: a pyrokinetic character that takes its inspiration from Johnny blaze/the Human torch of the fantastic four. 

Goon Royale: a shaggy humanoid thug with a razor sharp bite that can latch on to his foes and keep gnawing and who climbs like a thief.

Iggy: Iggy pop as a D&D class: a hyperactive bare-knuckle-brawling, shirtless lunatic that never sleeps, is almost never surprised, and gains bonuses when doing things that are stupidly dangerous.

Ninja: a slow-leveling variant of a thief with the ability to use smoke bombs, a high chance of surprising enemies, enhanced ranged attack abilities, and a chance of instant death blows on a backstab.

Norg: A lesser giant with resistance to cold and the ability to communicate with polar bears.

Orbii: tiny, round smurf-like creatures who were once created by a moon goddess to protect her daughters, their holy purpose is long concluded. At first level they get one ability such as a single spell-like power or thief skill. Once per day they can pray for the moon goddess to show her affection and gain a random blessing.

Rat Bastard: a thieving lesser were-rat.

We've already included some Orbii and Death Witches in home games to a lot of laughs. They do a great job of classy setting design to create an off-the-wall gonzo D&D world. 

NPCs 

Like the previous Black Pudding: Heavy Helping collection, this volume includes a section called "Meatsheilds of the Bleeding Ox" with a collection of 33 potential hirelings or henchmen using the classes and abilities published in Black Pudding. A few of these NPCs use classes from the previous volume and may be difficult to use if you don't have the other volume.

This isn't just a showcase of characters that use the new classes, it also includes a few standard OSR-compatible NPCs from classic B/X classes and some truly unique and quirky NPCs, like a damaged alien robot and a haggard level-0 commoner who has an infestation of invisible imps tasked with protecting him no matter what.

The characters here are strange, quirky, and fun. The way they are presented with "turn-ons", "turn-offs" and a 1-3 sentence backstory gives you a lot of material for characterizing them. I've already included several of them in a home campaign.

Magic Items 

BPHHv2 includes 3 unique spellbooks with unusual spells and rituals built around a unique theme and NPC wizard that creates a lot of flavor for the purposes of magic. It also includes 14 named unique magical weapons that are replete with bizarre powers, fun backstories, and an excessive number of puns. They are a prime example of how a magic item can be used to create incredible depth to your game.

Adventures

BPHHv2 has a selection of location-based adventures in a variety of formats including:

• a full-sized dungeon: "The Rat-Queen Dies Tonight" 
• a five-room dungeon style game: "Ghilki's Hole"
• a one-page dungeon: "Climb the Ice Stairs to Discover your Fate" 
• A detailed and well-designed single encounters: "A Trolling We Will go" 
• and an outdoor hex crawl: "The Standing Stones of Marigold Hill" 

All of which have tie-ins to material (classes, monsters, or magic items) presented elsewhere in the compendium, and have the uniquely manic, comic-book energy that makes Black Pudding unique. You can see the full range of popular adventure structures common in the OSR all in one place.

Settings

Beyond the single adventures, BPHHv2 includes a pair of extremely large evironments that are better thought of as campaign settings filled with smaller adventure sites.

"Underground Down Below" is a massive underdark "mapcrawl" style adventure that reminds me a lot of "Into the Depths of the Earth", a labyrinth with numerous small caverns and wondrous locations that have their own factions and ways of interacting to make it dynamic.

"Adventures in the North" is a massive hex-crawl in a barbaric frozen frostfell style environment complete with encounter tables, unique monsters, settlements with complex NPCs, rumor tables, and a handful of faction conflicts. It is bare-bones because of limited space, but would be more than enough to start a campaign and keep it rolling until the mid-levels.

It also has a Black Pudding Gazetteer detailing a world that fits the wild, gonzo material in the magazine thus far. The world of Yria is presented in a large world map with various regions given 1-2 paragraph details, while major city-states are given their own page with a number of random tables with encounters, sights, sound, and weather designed to do a lot of heavy lifting on world building.

Yria also has a fairly sizable pantheon of a dozen gods and a mythos that describes how the interrelate and how the gods relate to the world and each other, along with a creation myth in brief.

Random Tables and Rules Hacks

I love the random tables in Black Pudding; they are often very case specific, odd, and many of them would rarely be useful except for brainstorming, but they are great for mining for inspiration in much the same way Jason Sholtis' The Dungeon Dozen books are.

Tables with titles like "The goblin touched your stuff and now it...", "Then a robot walks in...", "The Wizard is Pissed Of and You are a Target of...", "Overheard Drunken Conversations", or "The PCs Run Across an Island of Hot Amazons..." can lighten up even the most taxing prep session and immediately lighten the tone of any adventure design.

Layout

The Black Pudding zine is hand-drawn and hand written with frenetic energy and fun art. It may not always be the best organized, but every page is fun to look at and brimming with creativity.

Growth Points 

I want a Tank in D&D Now...

One of the villains presented in the bestiary in Black Pudding Heavy Helping volume 2 is Zasto Fillistan, a viscious, ill-tempered wizard with an appetite for destruction, and a wide range of strange objects stolen from other planes of reality. Among his extraplanar curiosities is a "Wand of rapid fire" (an assault rifle) and "Shar-Man, the Rolling Fortress" (a Sherman tank enchanted to burn wine for fuel). While Earthly objects are far from unusual in D&D, that one is a pretty wild choice; and I know for a fact that my players would stop at nothing to get their hands on it, and woe betide the foolish GM who lets it fall into a PC's hands. But seeing it has made me desperately and irrationally want to include tank warfare in my current DCC campaign. 

Reliant on Content from BPHHv1

Okay, now for a serious complaint. There is a lot of material here that refers back to material in earlier issues of Black Budding. You will not be able to use about 10% of the book without either earlier volumes of Black Pudding or a copy of Black Pudding Heavy Helping volume 1. This is to be expected when you are buying a compendium of magazines, so I suppose it is to be expected, but it is something that one should be aware of before buying, and is worth mentioning on the sales page.

Consistency

Black Pudding does not really stick to one set of conventions for OSR gaming. Some classes and monsters are clearly built for Swords & Wizardry, others for Labyrinth Lord or Old School Essentials, and yet others include elements for DCC RPG or OSRIC. With a 'zine that is definitely a raw, creative endeavor I am not really surprised that it includes material that is for whatever takes the contributor at the moment, but I would love for it to be a tiny bit more consistent so that there is less conversion work to do.

Definitely Not for Serious Campaigns 

While some of the magic items and monsters could be dropped into a campaign world, Black Pudding in general is focused on weird, gonzo, and decidedly silly game play. Add almost anything from it is going to definitely make you game sillier. That's not a bad thing, but it is something that people need to be aware of.

The Underdark Map

The map for "Underground Down Below" is really dense and can be hard to read. It desperately needs to be put on a two-page spread to make it easier to process. There's just too much going on to be contained on one page and still be easily interpreted.

Nothing for Gozr?

Black Pudding's early issues had a myriad of rules hacks and suggestions that accumulated in a very tightly-presented "Black Pudding RPG", a light, fast-playing B/XD&D based game. Eventually this was separately published by James V. West as GOZR. I am truly surprised we hear practically nothing about GOZR anywhere in BPHHv2 at all, it seems like it would make a lot of sense to point players to GOZR for reference to material that had also appeared in early issues of Black Pudding, and it seems like a lost opportunity not to draw attention to it and use Black Pudding as a platform for expanding GOZR specifically.

Conclusions 

I have come to really look forward to new installations of Black Pudding. It is  frenetic, silly, gonzo, Punk AF D&D that isn't afraid of a little edgy humor. In fact, I deeply appreciate that Black Pudding knows exactly who its audience is: it is rich with spicy humor, chainmail bikinis, naked sorceresses, and goofball 'metal references. It doesn't apologize once for being very much for 80s kids who have no time for politically correct, family friendly D&D. It is happy to say "Look, we're all adults here... adults who want to take a break and be a bit childish and a little stupid" and I love it.

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.

Game Review: Cepheus Deluxe, Enhanced Edition

Author(s): Omer Golan-Joel, Richard Hazlewood, Josh Peters, & Robert L. S. Weaver 

Publisher: Stellagama Publishing

System: Classic Traveller / Megatraveller

Marketplace: DriveThruRPG

 Cehpheus Deluxe, Enhanced Edition is a retroclone that mixes elements of Classic Traveller with Megatraveller and a few more modern upgrades to make it play a little more smoothly.

About two years ago I ran a campaign using White Star: Galaxy Edition as a base set on a starship called the C.H.V. Natani, and posted play reports here (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). It was meant as a short game to give us a little break while some of our players dealt with life issues that made dedicating time to our heavier more involved Silver Gull campaign was difficult. While I was playing White Star with my friends, however, I kept running up against the limitations of the system.

My players didn't find starship battles in White Star as exciting as they wished they were. A couple of players wanted to dabble in mercantile endeavours, which White Star wasn't built for (heck, one of my players was a gmae dev' on Elite: Dangerous and was hoping for a game experience like it) And while they enjoyed some of the silliness of space-faring rockstardom and jedi powers to an extent, they ultimately preferred the adventures where the characters' odd superpowers didn't come into focus. In other words, they really would have been happier playing Traveller.

And so I looked for a Traveller-based game that I could grab in hardcopy at a reasonable price, because I am fed up with .PDFs. Ideally I wanted something I could get both physically and digitally, and so I settled on Cepheus Deluxe and I am glad that I have.

Game Review: Chasing Adventure

Author: Spencer Moore

Publisher: Self-Published

Engine: Powered by the Apocalypse

Marketplace: DriveThruRPG (free vers), game hompage

 Back in November I found myself with a very long series of waits on my hand on buses, in cafes, and in Hospital waiting rooms. I am trying to cut my screen time way back, so I decided instead I would grab Mythic GME and a book off my shelf and play a solo game over the course of the day.

I decided to give Dungeon World another whirl. I was not disappointed: I rather enjoyed the narrative complexity that came out of a storygame played solo (even if my players are still not interested in them.) I came up with a fantastic tale of a young princess, a squire, and an apprentice magician playing a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with dwarf terrorists in the Underdark. I gave the overall experience a 7/10, it was a good solo run, but in a lot of places it was marred by some of the flaws of the system, such as how easy it was for a bad roll or two to turn into an quagmire of bad events, and the fact that magic was often fickle and ineffectual. I made a pile of notes about how I would tweak the game in the future.

In March, I had to move house, and as I packed, hauled boxes by the dolly-full between houses, and unpacked every day for a month, I found myself binging a lot of solo semi-actual play podcasts that I was behind on, including the entire third season of the amazing The Lone Adventurer by Carl White. TLA tells a cohesive story of spies, thieves, and manapunk fighter pilots that is deeply engrossing. And one of the things he does that I really enjoy is that he periodically changes game systems to suit the kind of adventure he wants for the specific arc of the story. When he wants Bondesque action he plays D&D5e; when he tells crime stories he uses Blades in the Dark; when he is engaging in a long skyship voyage he plays Ironsworn; and airship battles are played in Warbirds. And for each he works very hard to explain the system and how it is producing the story he wants. After a few episodes in a given system, you have got a pretty good sense of how to play it and how it plays.

For one recent segment of The Lone Adventurer, Carl switched over to Chasing Adventure, a PbtA fantasy adventure game that was designed to work similarly to Dungeon World, but was intended to smooth off DW's rough edges, be mechanically a little lighter and more free-flowing, and a little less beholden to Dungeons & Dragons. Listening to Carl play got me quite intrigued, I went out and grabbed the free version immediately, and liked it enough to buy the full version a few days later.

Product Review: One Shot in the Dark: Return to Duervar (& OSitD Expansion Module Maker Kit)

Author: Jon Cohen

Engine: One Shot in the Dark

Publisher: Tale of the Manticore

Marketplace: DrivethruRPG 

(Expansion Module Maker Kit DriveThruRPG)

I have recently had the privilege of being a playtester for Jon Cohen on One Shot in the Dark: Return to Duervar and I really had a blast doing it.

By way of full disclosure, Jon and I have been collaborating along with a few others to create a network for solo semi-actual-play podcasts, and he has been a voice actor on my podcast, so it is fair to say I consider him a friend and colleague. And I am a massive Tale of the Manticore fan. Portion your salt appropriately.

One Shot in the Dark is an ultra-light solo RPG scenario that allows you to have a pretty satisfying solo dungeon crawl in 15-50 minutes using a deck of cards and some D&D dice. You can read my review of One Shot in the Dark here. Suffice it to say that it is a great way to scratch the dungeon crawling itch, makes very few demands on your time, and costs as much as a large coffee. It is good fun, and I have played it a few times over the years.

Game Review: Along the Leyline

Author: Cole Wilkinson 

Publisher: Piranha Squirrel Productiind
Engine: Custom variable die roll over
Marketplace: DriveThruRPG

 I was recently sent a copy of Along the Leyline with the most Gen-X review request I'd ever seen. 'Here's a role playing game I made, I like your reviews. Have a copy, review it if you like.' It made my withered 80s kid heart grow two sizes. 

And so I was quite happy to sit down and peruse Along the Leyline and I have to say, I am glad that I have this game in my collection. Of all the games I've picked up in the last year, it is in the running for my favorite alongside Death in Space and for very different reasons.

While Death in Space is a beautifully designed book with a simple and elegant rule system and incredible production values, Along the Leyline is what what "roll your own" looks like! It is built with such incredible love and enthusiasm that it is impossible not to be charmed by it, even if it is full of simple hand drawn sketches, doesn't use any fancy layout or information design, and has rules that feel a little kludgy. Those just make the effort put into creating this from an army of one feel all the better. 

My Holiday in Outer Space: Cepheus Engine and Mongoose Traveller

Is is January 12 already?!

2025 has been absolutely crazy for me, readers! And not necessarily in a good way. I haven't had much time for hobbies since my Christmastime Dead in Space solo game. But I have had some new things land in my lap and on my hard drive over the Holidays.

Cairn 2e arrived on my doorstep as a late gift last week, and it looks amazing! I am trying to steal some time for a solo game to sink my teeth into it so that I can give you all a fair review. I was also able to replace my ruined copy of the Dungeons & Dragons Rules Cyclopedia with the generosity of everyone who picked up Strange Ways last month.

But the more interesting thing that landed in my lap was synchronicitous.

Spending My Holidays in Outer Space

This Christmas I wanted to travel to outer space, so I brought my hard copy of Death in Space along. Death in Space is awesome, and I played a lot this holiday, but I wanted a bit of variety... 

For years I have had wanted to give Traveller a try as well. Originally written by Marc Miller for the impring Game Designer's Workshop in 1977. It was one of the first role-playing games, and was designed to be able to handle a wide range of different kinds of Science Fiction. It's fans have supported the game with such devotion that it has been in publication pretty much constantly since 1977 in some form or another, and the game remains backwards compatible with products released in the 70s today.

It's biggest influence was the book Space Viking by H. Beam Piper (the second of a trilogy), and a lot of elements, including how hyperspace works in traveller, the Sword Worlds faction, and elements of the history of its original setting, The Third Imperium of Man are lifted straight out of Space Viking.

Interestingly, a lot of pop sci-fi makes reference to Space Viking, but if you missed it (which is easy to do) you wouldn't catch them. For example, Space Viking includes a planet called Hoth and a starship called the Rozinante, which are borrowed respectively by Star Wars and The Expanse.

You can read the book on Project Gutenberg if you are curious. I did as part of my hoiday in space, and I don't think you'd be sorry.

I also made sure that Cepheus Deluxe, Enhanced Edition, was on my tablet so that I could finally give myself a taste of Classic Traveller.

If you missed it in my Old-School Science Fiction Roundup, Cepheus Engine is a thrid-party retroclone of Marc Miller's original Traveller RPG, with a few minor quality-of-life tweaks. It was created a few years ago in order to have an open-source version of the game during a lull in its production by its current IP-holder Mongoose Games.

My wife took an interest in Cepheus Engine when I described its life-path character generation Although she didn't enjoy it in practice it led to us both taking a deep dive into the history and various versions of the game.

So imagine my surprise and delight when I saw that Bundle of Holding had a Traveller Bundle featuring a stack of manuals including both the 2024 update of the core rulebook, and the light-weight Traveller: Explorer Edition.

Sourcebook Review: Hogwater: Village of Secrets

 

Author: Travis Miller

Publisher: Self-published

System: Swords & Wizardry

Marketplace: Lulu, Square

I'm going to start this review with full disclosure. I consider Travis Miller to be an internet friend. When I was trying to start an OSR actual play podcast a few years ago, he volunteered to play, and played three sessions of Lamentations of The Flame Princess with myself and Stephen Smith. I've also written guest articles on Grumpy Wizard, and featured guest articles from him on Welcome to the Deathtrap. Travis gave me a complimentary copy of Hogwater: VIllage of Secrets hoping that I would review it, and in the process give him the kind of feedback that people like about my articles.

I will also confess that the article I did on factions with examples from Temple of Elemental Evil last week was to set this review up.

Hogwater is a slightly different way of setting up a home base for the first phases of a campaign.

Rather than provide a map of the village off the bat, and then go place by place describing the people who live in it, Travis Miller describes the village in terms of the NPCs and factions within it. Every NPC of note is given clear motivations, preferences, quirks, and goals with the first few steps described.

What he describes is a small, unfinished keep surrounded by a young borderlands town situated on a new highway that serves as a midway point for some relatively new trading routes. It's a place where merchants pass through to resupply on their way to other places.

The hero that established hog water a generation ago has recently been usurped by the current lord of the keep, who enforces his law through a dangerously skilled marshal, and an incredibly corrupt Reeve.

Game Review: Hero Quest (2021)

Creator: Stephen Baker

Publisher: Avalon Hill

System: Hero Quest

Marketplace: Amazon

I received a copy of Hero Quest (1989) for my birthday when I was 11. A product of Milton Bradley in conjunction with Games Workshop, it was designed as a tool for introducing young people to the concepts of role-playing games, but with minimal amounts of the play-acting and dramatic storytelling.
Hero Quest consisted of a board, and a collection of minis and frogs, along with cardboard tiles and specialized diced resolve combat. The combat system was loosely based on Warhammer Fantasy Battles, with various icons on the dice representing one and six, two and six, and three and six chances of success on a d6 roll.

The symbols were variously a skull to represent a wound (3 in 6), a shield to represent a hero deflecting an attack (2 in 6), or a skull to represent a non-heroic unit deflecting an attack (1 in 6). 

Original 1989 box

Game Review: Death in Space

Author: Christian Plogfors, Carl Nibeaus

Publisher: Stockholm Kartel, Fria Lagan

Engine: Mörk-Borg Compatible (OSR)

Marketplace: Fria Lagan, Amazon, DTRPG

Death in Space is a sci-fi horror game set in a distant future where the Universe is beginning the process of heat death, and humankind, after aeons of expansion across Space, are now in steep decline.

The game's setting, which is heavily baked into the structure, is the Tenebris System, a star system that had been at the heart of humanity's final war; many powerful mega corporations and space empires fought for centuries over gems found on moon in Tenebris which were so flawless and possessed such fantastic properties that they would revolutionize the manufacturing of spacecraft, computers, and hyperspace gates 

By the time the war was over, humanity was so beggared and in such steep decline that it didn't matter anymore: no one had the means left to use the gems.

Now humanity is clinging on to an existence where they make nothing new: everything has been repurposed and recycled over and over again. An alien force, the void, is creeping in, infecting, tainting, and mutating everything it touches, and that can be heard in strange whispers on radio waves across the Universe.

 Humans live in poverty in the wreckage of their once great empires. In Tenebris, most of the population lives in The Iron Ring: a hoop of fused hulks of space stations and starships in orbit around the moon where the gems were once discovered.

Day Tripper, Analysis and Thoughts

This is part two of my discussion of my experience with the AI game master and role-playing game Day Tripper. See my previous article for a transcript of the actual play 

When I played Day Tripper, one of the first things I noticed was a slightly wonky pacing. While the game doesn't have a limited number of interactions, the AI game master is designed to really hurry things along: up to and including taking agency away from the player to desc

Sourcebook Review: Fabula Ultima TTJRPG Atlas High Fantasy

Author: Emanuele Galletto

Publisher: Need Games

System: Fabula Ultima

Marketplace: DriveThruRPG

 I have been playing a lot of Fabula Ultima: TTJRPG lately. I am about 8 adventures in to a campaign that has been nothing short of epic. I can add to my observations, having played it as long as I have that combat is terrifying in Fabula Ultima despite its twin roots in the combat-heavy Final Fantasy series and the cozy storygame structure of Ryuutama.; I have never seen so much fleeing in terror, running and screaming on the behalf of PCs as I have playing Fabula Ultima. And that is while balancing the game to be within the parameter recommended by the system. Also, that the storygame elements don't suit my play-style very well, nor are they my favourite as a GM, but my most important player, my wife, is loving them, and they have been useful for hacking a particularly complex sequence in White Star as well.

It is painfully prep-heavy, but once you get into the rhythm of designing NPCs it speeds up dramatically.

One of the most useful parts of the early game is in the section on collaborative world-building (which, as an activity, I have mostly just thrown out, tbh.) In that section it describes the most common modes of play that have appeared in Final Fantasy games, as well as other Japanese RPG video game series like Ys*, Phantasy Star, Dragon Warrior, and Earthbound. Namely High Fantasy, Natural Fantasy, and Technofantasy. It covers the tropes, plot structure, world design, and antagonist character development principles of each of those subgenres.

When it was clear that my family was hooked on this particular Fabula Ultima campaign, which I had decided to go whole hog on the High Fantasy tropes for, and I saw this come out only a couple of weeks after the campaign got rolling, I decided that I needed to grab it. I have found it a very useful and well-designed tool, and I have referred to it quite a bit over the course of the campaign so far.

Game Review: Fateweaver

Author: Omar Aazam

Publisher: self-published

Engine: Tarot-based storygame

Marketplace: Itch.io

Fateweaver has been on my radar for awhile now. I have a lovely collection of Tarot cards and made a living as a psychic for one of the happiest years of my life. The xcuse to break out my favorite deck and the Mythic GM Emulator was hard really appealing.  I was pretty chuffed when Omar Aazam approached me, asking If I would care to review it, even though he knew that old-school games were more my bailiwick.

In Fateweaver PCs play characters from an Edwardian Steampunk world where predestination is an accepted fact for most of the population.  Their whole culture is built around teaching the masses to accept their Fate. The PCs are members of a rare group of blessed people called Fateweavers, who can choose their own destiny,  deny Fate, and even call upon supernatural powers to pursue their own path.

Every action of the Fateweaver has a butterfly effect on the world around them: their actions can let another person escape their predestination,  setting them on a new course in life. This means that Fateweavers are forces for Change, Dynamism, and Chaos. They are taught to use their powers cautiously and recruited by factions who have a specific philosophy as to how their powers might best be used for the public good... or personal gain. 

Game Review: Autonmnijobs: Small Jobs for Unimportant People

Author: Beth Crane
Publisher: Battle Bird Productions
Marketplace: Gumroad
Engine: Lasers & Feelings

Beth Crane and I don't share the same taste in RPGs, but I admire the hell out of my creativity. I first came across her work while hunting for a new science fiction podcast and discovered We Fix Space Junk, and instantly fell in love with it.

WFSJ is set in a far future where humanity lost most of its digital data due to catastropic solar flares in 2088. One of the only surviving financial instutions was a predatory student loans service that kept its intrusive accounts records sealed in lead boxes in an underground facility. The company was able to allow other financial institutions to recoup some of their losses by selling their data. 

The lending company quickly became the most powerful financial institution in the galaxy. This emergent  megacorporation, now called Automnicon, finds desperate people (usually desperate because of the terrible conditions they create on space colonies in the first place) and offer them loans to for medical or travel expenses. These loans come with ludicrous interest that makes the debtee into a slave of the company. Failure to do the jobs assigned by the company leads them to shut off life support in whatever starship or space colony the recalicitrant employees are located. 

The podcast follows Kilner and Samantha an odd couple of deeply indebted repairwomen who are sent from planet to planet doing menial repair jobs in often psychotically dangerous and volatile situations by a company that couldn't care less if they live or die.

We Fix Space Junk is exactly the kind of dark comedy I love the most, and I have been binging it for days.

When I heard that Beth Crane had made an RPG based on her setting, I decided to grab a copy as much as a way to shoe my appreciate of her podcast as to try to experience the setting myself.

Game Review: White Star Galaxy Edition

Author: James M. Spahn

Publisher: Barrel Rider Games / Gallant Knight Games

Marketplace: DriveThruRPG, Gallant Knight

Engine: OSR Compatible (Swords & Wizardry)

As I have been rounding up my reviews of old school Science Fiction TTRPGs and the New OSR Games (and Storygames) that do them justice on game really caught my attention in part because I had never heard of it (which is unusual,) in part because it was based on the White Box edition of Swords & Wizardry (S&W: Complete has been my OSR game of choice for a long time), and in part because it looked like the right kind of pulpy fun for my household at the time.

We have been in a dark time in the Rideout household, one family member diagnosed with a life-long challenge, and I still in limbo trying to figure out which of a handful of possible life-altering degenerative conditions I have. Bringing the mood in the household up has been my first and greatest priority for awhile. And what better way than a crazy, Star Wars parodying romp through a universe of bad 1970s scifi pulp after binging the worst the genre has to offer? White Star seemed the perfect investment for something fresh for me.

And it worked. I have seen people smiling, laughing, and excited for the first time in a long time. I hope you will indulge me if the review seems to be very positive, accordingly.

SciFi Storygame Roundup

Table Top Role-Playing games are used in several different hobbies; different communities prefer different game types to get different results. One of the types of games that I wish I could get more into, but that just doesn't mesh with my social group very well are Storygames.

While old-school TTRPG players are looking for a VR experience using the imagination and narration as an interface, Storygames are interested in creating an emotionally satisfying story at the end of the day that met the expectations of the players going in based on the conventions of the genre and pre-game expectations they set up. To facilitate this, the game rules are often set up very differently from a more traditionally-designed TTRPG.

Because the goal of Storygames are very different, they are often designed to make world-building more collaborative. they tend to take agency away from the GM, and have mechanics allowing the players to take control of the narrative and make Metagame adjustments.

I like Storygames just fine: I think many of them are clever and innovative in ways an more traditional TTRPG cannot be. But, as my players are not interested in the experience, I have had less reason to collect or learn them. Which in turn means that I haven't got much cause to write about or review them here, but as I went through an extensive list of both classic and OSR SciFi games, I think it is interesting to share these games to offer some comparison and contrast.

Classic SciFi TTRPG Roundup

 Thanks to Thomas for the great prompt.

I haven't got on the Starfield bandwagon. Honestly, I'm not even sure I have the hardware to run it. But it certainly has revitalized an interest in space opera and classic scifi pulp in the gaming world.

Personally, I've caught the same bug from playing No Man's Sky lately. I got it for my birthday in June, played the hell out of it for a bit, then went traveling in the Summer. To keep scratching the itch for space exploration NMS gave me, I created the Starfarer setting, and ran a pretty lengthy solo game using a combination of Mythic GM Emulator and RPG Pundit Presents #100: Star Adventurer 

Being able to blast off into space and enjoy some campy Sci-Fi action is definitely on the minds of myself, my gaming group, and a lot of my friends.

That in mind I'm going to talk about some of the classic science fiction role playing games out there if you're looking to scratch that itch and you're not interested in something as new school as Starfinder.

Adventure Review: Slumbering Ursine Dunes, Misty Isles of the Eld, Fever Dreaming Marlinko, & What Ho Frog Demons

Author: Chris Kutalik (w/ writing credits for Luka Rejec)
Publisher: Hydra Cooperative
Marketplace: Drive-Thru RPG (SUD, MIoE, FDM, WHFD)
System: Labyrinth Lord (OSR Compatible)

I have been putting this review off for a long time; if I'd had my head screwed on straight, I would have done so when they were a part of a Bundle of Holding recently.

Slumbering Ursine Dunes, The Misty Isles of the Eld, Fever-Dreaming Marlinko, and What Ho, Frog Demons! are four interconnected modules set in the Hill Cantons setting created by Chris Kutalik, the setting is also detailed in his Hill Cantons blog, and in the Hill Cantons Compendium, Hill Cantons Compenduim II, and Hill Cantons Cosmology.

When I finally got tired of keeping up with the slow, painful bloat of Wizards of the Coast-era Dungeons & Dragons, and started looking for fast, fun alternatives in the Storygame and OSR movements, these books came up on my radar pretty early on. And getting a look through them on Questing Beast's YouTube Channel is what eventually pushed me over into grabbing a bunch of OSR games, especially the free version of Labyrinth Lord, and eventually led me to starting this blog.

The Hill Cantons Quartet look damned good thanks to the expert layout and design by the Hydra Cooperative crew and the art from the mighty Luke Rejec (whose opus magnum, Ultraviolet Grasslands and the Black City is the most beautiful TTRPG book it has been my pleasure to own.)

 What really sells them, however is the sheer wierdness of their setting. The Hill Cantons fuse the oddest bits of Jack Vance's Dying Earth series, with Slavic mythology, and liberal dose of Douglas Adams style humor to create a world that feels like somthing lighthearted, imaginitive, wild, and strange. It definitely is not your standard-issue Dungeons & Dragons setting. And playing it can feel like a breath of fresh air.

Game: Review: Blueholme

Author: Michael Thomas

Publisher: Dreamscape Design

System: OSR (B/X) Compatible 

Marketplace (Prentice): DrivethruRPG,

Marketplace (Journeymanne): DrivethruRPG, Lulu

A few months ago Stephen Smith put his World of Wierth campaign on indefinite hiatus, because he was inspired by the Lost Dungeons of Tonisborg and it's many articles on the original play style during the testing phase of the development of Dungeons & Dragons. Mixed with patron play and one-to-one time, he was hoping to create an experience that feels like the player driven, intrigue riddled version of Dungeons & Dragons described therein. There was a catch, however: he didn't want his other players to require The Lost Dungeon of Tonisborg to play. In fact, he desperately wanted them not to have access to the book at all. 

Which, of course, meant that he needed a different set of rules that players could use. He wanted something as close as he could possibly get to the TAZ rules from Tonisborg without copying anything from the book. After looking through a dozen or so retroclones, he decided that Blueholme was the closest to the extremely light and simple feel of that rule set. And so, I have been playing for several months in a campaign that uses both The Prentice and Journeymanne rules for Blueholme.

The Blueholme Prentice Rules imitates the structure of the original Holmes Basic Dungeons & Dragons manual. It provides only enough rules to play from levels 1 to 3. Everything about Blueholme Prentice Rules is an homage to the original Holmes basic, and where possible, is even simpler. It embraces the idea that light rules and a format that encourages rulings instead of rules is a superior form of play.

Blueholme Journeymanne Rules are their own interpretation of what Cook's Expert Dungeons & Dragons rules might have looked like if they had been designed by Holmes with that same eye to simplicity and universality. The rules cover characters from 1st level to 20th.

Normally when I review a role-playing game, iI read the rules, and then I solo play a test designed to help me understand most of the unusual rules mechanics and systems. 

This one is a little different because I I'm coming from it from the position someone who has been playing the game in an almost-RAW format for nearly 6 months.