Game Review: The Mecha Hack

Cover for The Mecha Hack
©2018 Absolute Tabletop
Art by Brandish Gilhelm

Author: Matt Click
Publisher: Absolute Tabletop
Marketplace: DrivethruRPG
Engine: The Black Hack

I love the Black Hack it is a smart, fast, flexible adaptation of Dungeons & Dragons that is designed for light, fast, simplified play. It works best with short campaigns that don't take themselves too seriousness.  After reviewing the engine and doing a little solo play, I ran a ten-session campaign of the Wasted Hack, and truly enjoyed it for its fast, frenzied, and silly form of entertainment this engine engenders.

If you want details on the engine, I recommend you read the rules here, or my review and summary of them here.

About 2 or 3 months ago I developed a real itch to play a battlemech-based game. I used to play BattleTech in junior high school, but, my friends found it too slow paced for their liking, and it was hard to sell them on a extended campaign of it. Let alone MechWarrior / Alpha Strike.

While looking at current options, my first impulse was to try Lancer RPG. Unfortunately, the flavor and setting text of Lancer is so politically charged in the way I find repulsive that I couldn't get into the game.  Then I remembered The Mecha Hack.

Art by Brandish Gilhelm, ©2018 Absolute Tabletop

This one got on my radar a couple of years ago when Hankerin Fetinale mentioned that he being hired to just purely do the artwork for someone else's role-playing game on his YouTube channel, which I thought was a great turn of events for him. I love his artwork (which is often credited under the name Brandish Gilhelm,) because of its high energy comic bookish style. Well this technique is definitely improved over the last year or two, akron's work remains simple in its technique mostly black and white are using a three color palette at most, and unpretentious. It's the antithesis of everything that mainstream corporate role-playing game art is. And that makes it glorious and gets hope to less talented artists like myself who want to create games with their own Art.

Game Review: Cairn

Author: Yochai Gal

Cairn cover by CosmicOrrery

Publisher: Self-published
Marketplace: DrivethruRPG, itch.io
Engine: Mark of the Odd / Knave Hybrid

I have played the hell out of Cairn over the last few days. It is a strange, fun and fast hybrid of the OSR's two popular open Engines: Knave and Mark of the Odd, with a few clever twists of its own.

Cairn tends to favor MotO: it uses its three stat model, highly lethal combat system, and armor/hit point rules. This means that combat is a last resort unless you can guarantee an ambush or superior position. Attacks always hit and do damage by weapon type unless the attacker is at significant disadvantage or advantage, at which point the die changes to a d4 or d12, respectively.

Knave lends its equipment slot system (although all PCs have a fixed 10 slots), and a stripped-down d10 version of it's tables for virtue, vice, misfortune, reputation, clothing, skin, hair face, and build. It also has its own variant set of Knave's d20 tables for determining random character equipment. In addition to randomized name tables with a distinctly Anglo-Saxon selection of names. 

Cairn also uses Knave's magic system: characters carry spell books that represent a single spell. However the spell can be cast multiple times; each time a spell is cast it causes fatigue, which fills an inventory slot, a note from Mausritter that I really appreciated.

Alternative spell lists that include spells that deal some damage, along with random character tools and other expansions are available on Cairn's homepage.

Cairn doesn't have a level system like its parent games do instead, characters burn scars whenever they drop to zero hit protection, but don't lose points of strength. When they take these i stars, after they look great they may roll dice to increase maximum hit protection or certain abilities scores as prescribed based on the injury that dropped them to zero. This takes the idea that "that which does not kill me makes me stronger," and interprets of quite literally in the game.

Karen is specifically set at the edge of a large haunted wood full of ruins of some past cursed civilization. A realm haunted with goblins and trolls and vicious animated plans. It takes a lot of its inspiration from Gavin Norman's Dolemnwood setting.

'Zine Review: D12 Monthly Issue#7

Cover to D12 Monthly Issue#7
Art by Dean Spencer

Editor: YumDM

Marketplace: YumDM.com

Engine: Edition Agnostic Dungeons & Dragons

This is my last review in my rapid-fire sequence of review of D12 Monthly. I am all caught up at last! I want to boost creations like D12 Monthly whenever I can with this platform. Cool passion projects by hobbyist designers like me.

I'm always looking for more like it. 

You can read my reviews of the previous issues you can find them here: zero, one, two, three, four, five, and six.

Issue #7 is devoted to outdoor exploration. It offers articles on slot-based encumberance, timekeeping in Overland travel, and solid GM procedures for handling them, advice on best practices in designing random encounter tables, and rules for camping that gives the PCs something important and beneficialto do.

The regular Weapon Spotlight gives a cool perspective on spears. Location! Location! Location! Gives us a strange, wondrous location in the form of a set of menhirs with magical secrets and a dungeon underneath, and the Personalities article details the culture of the Barbarian tribes in a region that is built up over the course of the examples in many of the articles.

While there are a few slip-ups where mechanics that only apply to later editions of Dungeons & Dragons are used, in general this issue of D12 monthly is one of the best thus far at creating a totally addition agnostic set of tools.

'Zine Review: D12 Monthly Issue #6

Cover for D12 Monthly #6,
Art by Daniel Comerci

Editor: YumDM

Marketplace: YumDM.com

Engine: Edition Agnostic Dungeons & Dragons

I'm still playing catch-up on my quest to review every issue of D12 Monthly. I chose D12 Monthly because Russ over at Yum/DM started blogging about the same time as I did, and I want to be a booster, a guy who helps other people in the indie RPG scene find their best audience.

I'm always looking for more awesome TTRPG content and more content creators to do the same for. 

You can read my reviews of the previous issues you can find them here: zero, one, two, three, four, and five

Issue #6 of D12 Monthly is focused on giving you more options with the Undead, and it definitely adds some cool ones. The only regular column we see reappearing in this issue is Weapon Spotlight.

'Zine Review: D12 Monthly Issue #5

Cover for D12 Monthly #5
Art by DbaldriArt

Editor: YumDM

Marketplace: YumDM.com

Engine: Edition Agnostic Dungeons & Dragons

Until a few months ago, I made it my mission to review every issue of D12 Monthly as a way of boosting Russ over at YUM/DM, for no other teas than I like his writing and I live to boost the signal.

I'm always happy to do the same for other small-time and OSR TTRPG content creators. 

You can read my reviews of the previous issues you can find them here: zero, one, two, three, and four.

But around September, I got tied up writing content in a new schedule with a different Modus Operandi  now I find myself behind by three issues oh, and I hope to pick up the slack before the new year.

Issue #5 of D12 monthly is dedicated to Divine Magic and characters, particularly clerics. It started strong with an article on designing a Pantheon for a homebrew campaign setting, and then goes on to offer an article on thinking through how the rules of clerics in society, what their rituals and rites ought to be like. There are also articles on what happens when clerics fall into disfavour, an alternate turn on dead ruleset, and an article featuring alternate powers for paladins dedicated to Gods that don't fit in the standard law and Valor profile that we tend to associate with Paladin characters. 

By way of regular articles, we have a Weapon Spotlight article on maces, and an expanded location location location article detailing the religious community of Riverbend. The Twisted Tables offering this month is a selection of an alternative ways to start a campaign the usual tavern or slave pit.

Game Review: Ultraviolet Grasslands and the Black City

Cover, Ultraviolet Grasslands and
the Black City, by Luka Rejec,
©2019 Luka Rejec

Author: Luka Rejec
Publisher: Exalted Funeral
Marketplace: Exalted Funeral
Engine: SEACAT

I am treating this December as my month the catch up on things I've really been meaning to do for the blog. That includes articles I've been dying to write, catching up on reading things that I'm dying to read, and creating reviews I have been putting off.

One review I have been dying to get out of my head, but have found the job so big it is difficult to fully articulate my thoughts is Luka Rejec's Ultraviolet Grasslands and the Black City. This book is huge, complex, and gorgeous.

Artwork from UVG
©2019 Luka Rejec

The year before last, Luka put it up as a pay what you want item temporarily to celebrate Karl Marx's birthday. Being the perverse contrary and I am, I decided to promote Luka's capitalist venture by paying a little more than the suggested pay what you want price. Go figure.

I'm glad that I have this book. And it is definitely on my gaming bucket list to run or play in.

So, how do we explain Ultraviolet Grasslands and the Black City?

Artwork from UVG ©2019 Luka Rejec

A Syllogistic Approach to Game Choice

One of the most annoying forms the discourse around  Dungeons & Dragons takes is the discussion as to whether or not there's a right way to play the game.

(I mean, there are some more annoying forms of discourse, but I would rather not engage with them.)

There are a few people, some of whom I played or conversed with who have a clear ideas of what constitutes the right way to play D&D. And they are connected to some guys who are very happy to harp on it ad nauseam at the top of their lungs. And the funny thing is they have great arguments that no one wants to hear because of how they are presented.

I've played D&D number of ways. In fact I've gone through phases that correspond to each of the six cultures of play recently identified by The Retired Adventurer, which is a compelling article. And here's the thing, they each yield radically different results, and have radically different experiences from one another.

None of these are the right or wrong way, but there are wrong ways to play if you are looking for a particular experiences. For example, if you want a campaign that lasts a very long time, do you need to consider having robust Dominion rules.