'Barbarism is the natural state of mankind,' the borderer said, still staring somberly at the Cimmerian. 'Civilization is unnatural. It is a whim of circumstance. And barbarism must always ultimately triumph.'

-Robert E. Howard
Beyond The Black River

Corrupt Cliffs

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Showing posts with label RPG. Show all posts
Showing posts with label RPG. Show all posts

Sunday, June 13, 2021

The Rescue of Gunnlief


The following is a write up from a recent Conan 2d20 game I ran over roll20 for my local group.  I hope you enjoy!








Till next time, don't forget to Keep it Weird!






Saturday, May 8, 2021

Torch Hexflower

Welcome back everyone!  It has been a little while since I made a post here, but fear not I haven't forgotten about the blog or my readers!  My morning blog time has been largely (completely) replaced with doing some more post secondary training!  

A little while ago Matt Hayles, who I know through the local RPG community, was making posts about hex flowers.  He in turn picked them up from Goblin's Henchman.  Goblin's Henchman has an instruction cookbook on these things as a mechanic, which I haven't read, but you can grab a copy here!

Looking at the idea, I thought they looked fun and wanted to look into them deeper.  At the same point I was working on a way to make torches more fun in my sword & sorcery games without it turning into a resource slog.  At present I haven't actually attempted this as a mechanic, largely because I think it will work way better during an in person game.

The basic idea is when the players light a torch you place a marker in the middle of the hex flower, and as they progress through the dungeon they roll 2d6, each roll moves the marker through the flower. If the marker moves off the flower simply place it back on the other side of the flower.

The players get to watch and make the rolls seeing the torch staying lit or eventually going out.  My hope is that it will make the torch a fun little mini game and add a little bit of tension to the torch.

Depending on the system you are playing you might even opt to let players re-roll if it is going badly for them.  Perhaps in D&D 5e you could allow them to burn inspiration or an action to get a re-roll as they fight to keep the torch lit.  In Conan 2d20 or other similar games you could use momentum or advantage to allow the players to influence the torch.

Either way I hope this idea will be useful or at least get those creative juices flowing!


Looking forward to getting back around the table with everyone!  

Till next time, don't forget to Keep it Weird!

Thursday, June 11, 2020

Tool Trunk Thursday: Makeshift Torch

Thursday again to all of my dog brothers and sword sisters!  I hope your world is going well and the events of 2020 haven't impacted you too harshly mentally.  If they have don't forget there is nothing wrong with seeking help.

For all those warriors on the front lines fighting for justice or simply trying to save lives.  Thank you for all you have done and continue to do.

Don't forget to pop over to Runehammer's DJ channel and subscribe, even if you don't want to listen, every subscriber brings him closer to being able to run SUPERCHAT, which he uses to raise some gold coins for charity!  So,  if you are reading this and haven't done so yet please get on over to The Dungeon DJ and subscribe!





A properly prepared torch is the best friend of someone who explores the dark depths of Stygian tombs, but as excellent as a real torch can be to illuminate the darkness, sometimes they are not available.  Sometimes all you can do is wrap some cloth or fibrous plants around a stick and hope for the best.

The resulting torch may not burn as bright or as long, but it is better than nothing.

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Equipment icons are found on https://game-icons.net/ and are provided under CC BY 3.0.

Remember this isn't the end times, this is humanity working together to save as many lives as we can through proven methodology for fighting new a new virus. Stay Strong.

Till next time, don't forget to Keep it Weird!


Monday, May 4, 2020

Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells: The Flourish!

Welcome back! Today we are going to look at my first look at a house rule for Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells. If you have followed the blog for awhile you will know I am more of a fan of narrative results or success by measure vs simple pass/fail mechanics. I am also a fan of keeping math as simple as possible, in a basic D20 system, the simplest way is to have a concept something like what we see in Savage World with raises. In my opinion it works less well in a d20 system since that TN or DC is moving all the time.

Fortunately that is not how Sharp Swords works. As a role under system based on stats we can simply take our attribute and subtract 3 or 4 from them and assign a second threshold. So if your Physique score is 12, we can set a second value at 8. Rolling under 12 gives you a success, rolling under 8 gives you your success, plus some other benefits. If you are familiar with Conan 2d20, Year Zero Engine, Genesys, AGE or others you will know the basic idea I am going for. Below you can see what my character sheet looks like with the addition of the Flourish number.



From experience I know having too many choices can slow a game down, having 5 stunt points in an AGE system has the ability to slow things down as the players try and choose how to spend that currency. It was something I was wanting to avoid here since this is a rules light game. Solution? Rolling under the flourish allows a player to choose a single item from a Flourish list, this choice will still add a little time to a turn but I think the reward of having the player narrate how that flourish works will be worth it.

As the game progresses in level, hitting enemies will probably become easier, they will also probably become better armored and have more hit points. By the RAW your damage output doesn't really increase, the only exception to this might be magic. Either way if you encounter a creature with 6HD, and it ends up having 40+ hitpoints, doing 1d8 damage in a round or less depending is going to make the combat pretty boring IMHO. It will be a lot of players rolling to hit, and the monster rolling to miss. The creatures ability to do massive damage will be scary initially (2d6 in this example), but as the combat drags on I think it will grow dull. Flourish maneuvers like these will also hopefully make these combats quicker and more decisive. Now all of this is just a feeling, I haven't actually played this game at a high level.

Below is my initial list of Flourish options I have worked up for my Sharp Swords game.



My main goal in naming these to have the names be more than just mechanical. I wanted them to spark the imagination about what each one was doing. I didn't want it to be called "extra damage" and have players say ok. I roll an extra d4 damage. At the very least they are choosing "Mighty blow" and rolling that extra damage, which in and of itself is way more narrative.

Well the game is done and after utilizing this system I felt the general idea of it was pretty good, but using a simple subtract 4 from the ability score and making it a strict roll under made the flourish occur too often, which reduced it to a more mechanical effect than the larger narrative effect I had hoped for.

During the game a rule was highlighted that showed that this game isn't really a roll under your attribute mechanic, it is a roll under your attribute but close to it. So if your attribute is 13, 12 is a better roll than 2. The flourish system outlined above works against this.

Going forward, and staying in line with the idea of being close to your attribute, I might take the Flourish number and make it a range band. If your attribute is 14, and the Flourish is 10, activate a flourish on rolls of 10-14. This would reduce the number of times there was a flourish, which would hopefully make them a little more exciting for the players, and hopefully more narrative.

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Monday, April 27, 2020

Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells: Let's Make a Character

One of the things that attracted me to "Sharp Swords and Sinister Spells" was its simplicity. Simple is good, especially when attracting new people to a game and genre. It allows us to jump in easily and not need to be constantly explaining rules and such to the players.

I am looking to use pre-gens for my one-shot I thought it would be good to go over the basics parts of the game. Character creation is a simple 5 step process, although I might add a step 0 or 1.5. I will explain as we go.

Step 1: Roll your 4 attributes.
We roll 3d6 in the order the attributes appear. No rolling 4 and keeping 3. No picking your order. Just a straight up 3d6 roll in attribute order.
  • Physique: 9
  • Agility: 11
  • Intellect: 12
  • Willpower: 10

Step 1.5: The character idea.
Most games I have played list this as a step, get an idea of a character you want to play in your mind. I would sometimes place this as step 0, but since our rolls are in order, it might be better to see what we get before coming up with the idea. It will do no good to want to play a Conan the Barbarian type character if you roll 5 on Physique and 8 on Agility. It is of course 100% fine to come up with this ideas as you go, with that character gaining life and depth with each decision you make.

For us we have two pretty decent stats in Agility and Intellect, or at least this is where our best stats are, lets see how this plays out for us.

Step 2: Choose an Archetype.
Based on our stats the best Archetype for us is going to be a Specialist. The thief, the rogue, the trickster.

Each archetype will give us our base type of HD and Luck dice as well as our special abilities.

Step 3: Choose a Vocation
This is the most open ended part of character creation. There isn't a list, you must simply decide what your character is based on the Archetype. Anytime you do an action related to your vocation you gain a positive die. If you are a Knight and need to test to ride a horse, you could gain a positive die here. If you are a thief and need to open a lock or find a trap, again you could gain a positive die.

This is perhaps the step that Step 1.5 relates to the most. For us we know we have a Specialist who is smarter than they are agile. Something like a rogue or thief would probably be ideal for this character.

Step 4: Determining a complication
This section presents some interesting ideas as well as some potential challenges, it deals with things the GM might use to make someones life difficult during the course of the game and includes addiction. Clearly if you do not know your players it might be best to stay away from that particular category when making this roll. It might be worthwhile having your players look through these and give them the option of "X"ing any particular category out that they personally feel uncomfortable with. This is a game and we are all at the table to have fun.

That being said my 2d6 roll for our character is 1.4, or Debt to a Crime Lord. This ties in nicely to our concept of a thief character.

Step 5: Buy Equipment Everyone starts with a basic set of clothes and a weapon appropriate to their vocation. For us that most likely means a short sword, which is a small weapon that does 1d4 damage. Beyond this everyone starts with 3d6x10 silver coins. Our roll gives us 90sc. Like many games we get a coinage multiplier, 90sc = 9gp or 900cc.

The first thing we will buy is some decent armor. Medium armor costs 50sc, leaving us with 40 for everything else....
  1. Medium Armor - 50sc
  2. Backpack - 2sc
  3. Torches(5) - 1cc
  4. Waterskin - 5cc
  5. Rations(7) - 7cc
  6. rope, 50' - 5cc
  7. Grappling hook - 1sc
  8. Flint & Steel - 2cc
  9. Thieves Tools - 30sc
Total 50+2+(1+5+7+5+2)+1sc+30sc=85sc

Not too bad. Pretty good load out for a fairly average roll.
But wait? What about encumbrance? It is super simple. You can carry a number of items equal to your Physique score without penalty. Beyond that we start getting penalized and we can carry a maximum of the Physique score x2. So we can carry 9 items. Bags and packs do not count towards this limit.

Finalize Your Character
So now we simply need to come up with a name, description and roll some Hit Points.

We got a 7 on our d8 hit die roll, which is pretty good! I can see a potential issue to this as an unmodified roll, a PC rolling 1 hit point isn't going to be much fun for most people. Although I don't think this is something unique to Sharp Swords.

For a name I popped over here and used the random name generator here: https://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/hyborian-names.php, and came up with 'Talma'.

Finally we need to write this all onto a character sheet, and below we see the completed character sheet.


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Remember this isn't the end times, this is humanity working together to save as many lives as we can through proven methodology for fighting new a new virus. Stay Strong.

Till next time, don't forget to Keep it Weird!

Monday, April 20, 2020

Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells: Intro & Quick Reference

Recently a member of the Conan Gaming Group, over on facebook, posted some materials to play a custom game of Monolith's Conan board game based around the 90s Cartoon, "Conan The Adventurer". I immediately chuckled and started to think of running an RPG scenario based on the cartoon.

If you have followed along here at all you may be aware I GM at a local convention here in Calgary Alberta, the RPG Alliance, and throughout the year various GMs run monthly sessions. With the current pandemic I thought this might be a perfect time to run this game and advertise it to the convention community. In keeping with the concept of what I wanted, a light fun sword & sorcery romp, I decided to stay away from the 2d20 system, as much as I enjoy it I didn't feel it fit the Saturday morning vibe.

As I continued to look through systems I found various ideas that I thought would work out well, many took ideas from FATE or similar systems, and while I think they have some great ideas, they had a little steeper learning curve. Not because they are complex, but because they are fairly different. My desire for a fun Saturday morning vibe shifted and my rules search shifted to a rules light Sword & Sorcery setting.

Enter "Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells" from Gallant Knight Games & Old Skull Publishing from Diogo Nogueira. It is billed as a rules light rpg with old school spirit and it came recommended from one of the Conan Gaming Group members so I thought I should give it a look. At the time of writing this it was even on sale for $5cad for the PDF, hard to go wrong with that price.

After having a quick look through the shortish rules I decided this system was simple and easy to learn, everything from combat to spell casting was incredibly easy to do. For new players this would be a breeze. I will give a more full review of the system after we play our game using it as our rules, but between now and then I thought I write a few articles about the mechanics and various things I have come up with for the game. So without further pre-amble, I give you the single page quick reference sheet.


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Remember this isn't the end times, this is humanity working together to save as many lives as we can through proven methodology for fighting new a new virus. Stay Strong.

Till next time, don't forget to Keep it Weird!

Thursday, April 16, 2020

Tool Trunk Thursday: Portable Toolbox

The frigid snows of the north continue to assault the stronghold, but I believe the worst is done now. Surely the winter storms are over and the mental benefits of more sun and warmer weather are felt soon. But I know you are not here to listen to me ramble about the weather. So without further introduction.

Portable Toolbox



All manners of craftsmen in the Hyborian Age are called upon to make repairs away from their shops. These kits are employed by such artisans and consist of basic tools such as hammers, punches, saws, files, etc. Anyone with a modicum of skill can benefit from having a selection of tools at their disposal. Adventurers who are planning to be away from civilization for an extended period of time would do well to take a selection of tools to help with the maintenance of their equipment. If you liked this article then don't forget to subscribe to get the next exciting installment on pulp gaming both Sci-Fi and Fantasy!

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Make sure you don't miss a single post and subscribe by e-mail today!

If you need to check out any of these great games stop on by DriveThruRPG and pick something up through my affiliate link to help support the blog!

Equipment icons are found on https://game-icons.net/ and are provided under CC BY 3.0.

Remember this isn't the end times, this is humanity working together to save as many lives as we can through proven methodology for fighting new a new virus. Stay Strong.

Till next time, don't forget to Keep it Weird!

Thursday, April 2, 2020

Tool Trunk Thursday: Rune Sword

Dog Brothers and Sword Sisters, welcome to another installment of Tool Trunk Thursday! We are 3 weeks into our self imposed isolation to slow the stem of the COVID-19 virus. One of the great things about the Hyborian Age is that we can see the monsters that need slaying, although sometimes maybe our heroes might need a keen edge to do it....

Rune Sword



Before the Hyborian Kingdoms spreads across the world in the west, before the mighty kingdoms of the east, before even Stygia there were people that dwelled in these lands. Their mark upon the world is largely erased by war and cataclysm. Still, some places hold glimmers of those long forgotten kingdoms and times, ancient ruins or tombs untouched by the shifting lands. Some of these even hold rare artifacts like this, an ancient sword forged by some unearthly metal. It's edge remains sharp even after the centuries; it's balance is unlike that of the swords of the Hyborian age.

Warriors using such a weapon gain an advantage in combat over their foes, how could they not?

If you liked this article then don't forget to subscribe to get the next exciting installment on pulp gaming both Sci-Fi and Fantasy!

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If you need to check out any of these great games stop on by DriveThruRPG and pick something up through my affiliate link to help support the blog!

Equipment icons are found on https://game-icons.net/ and are provided under CC BY 3.0.

Remember this isn't the end times, this is humanity working together to save as many lives as we can through proven methodology for fighting new a new virus. Stay Strong.

Till next time, don't forget to Keep it Weird!

Thursday, March 26, 2020

Tool Trunk Thursday: Ground Crystal

Welcome to another Tool Trunk Thursday! As I write this I am half way through week 2 of working from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic. I have also been crazy busy transferring my in house John Carter game onto Roll 20 so we can continue our adventures on Barsoom. Thinking today was Wednesday I didn't realize I needed to post today's piece of equipment until now, at least it is not Friday like last week!? I hope everyone is doing well and is safe. Stay Strong. Raise your sword against the storm.

Ground Crystal



Similar to the blinding sand implemented by the alchemists of the Hyborian Age, this represents a cruder, less "magical" option. Cheaper and more plentiful than hiring an alchemist to craft a blinding powder this ground dust renders an opponent temporarily unable to defend themselves.

This is certainly not going to make you look like a wizard, but hopefully your opponent dies quickly after this, so who cares?

If you liked this article then don't forget to subscribe to get the next exciting installment on pulp gaming both Sci-Fi and Fantasy!

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Make sure you don't miss a single post and subscribe by e-mail today!

If you need to check out any of these great games stop on by DriveThruRPG and pick something up through my affiliate link to help support the blog!

Equipment icons are found on https://game-icons.net/ and are provided under CC BY 3.0.

Remember this isn't the end times, this is humanity working together to save as many lives as we can through proven methodology for fighting new a new virus. Stay Strong.

Till next time, don't forget to Keep it Weird!

Friday, March 20, 2020

Tool Trunk Thursday: Healing Injections

TOOL TRUNK.....Friday? The world is a little crazy at the moment, and while things here are fine, it has apparently screwed with my schedule more than normal. I have more time, but the days have begun to run together with no actual commute to work. Either way I present to you the new piece of kit for your Conan 2d20 game!

Healing Injections


Those brave enough to drink the concoction of an alchemist know that they can be an effective treatment to many ailments. Some of the crazier alchemists have devised ways to get their mixtures into people in a quicker, less voluntary way. Those who seek to help have developed serums that allow the injured and the weak to be rejuvenated through the injection of some mysterious substance found in the Black Kingdoms.

If you liked this article then don't forget to subscribe to get the next exciting installment on pulp gaming both Sci-Fi and Fantasy!

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Make sure you don't miss a single post and subscribe by e-mail today!

If you need to check out any of these great games stop on by DriveThruRPG and pick something up through my affiliate link to help support the blog!

Equipment icons are found on https://game-icons.net/ and are provided under CC BY 3.0.

Remember this isn't the end times, this is humanity working together to save as many lives as we can through proven methodology for fighting new a new virus. Stay Strong.

Till next time, don't forget to Keep it Weird!

Thursday, March 12, 2020

Tool Trunk Thursday: Arcane Tome

Thursday has come again, as it always does. And much like the inevitability of the changing days, the Tool Trunk grows ever fuller. Sword sisters and dog brothers! Open the chest and take what you may need!

Arcane Tome

Since man could write, or perhaps since man was plagued by the curiosity of the Outer Dark, there have been tomes of arcane knowledge. These books hold the secrets of men and demons. The words, images and rituals held with these pages are ones of great power. The horrors, both physical and mental, shown on these pages are enough to drive the most stalwart wizard insane.

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Equipment icons are found on https://game-icons.net/ and are provided under CC BY 3.0.

Till next time, don't forget to Keep it Weird!

Thursday, March 5, 2020

Tool Trunk Thursday: Map

BY CROM it is Thursday again already! That means there should be another piece in the Tool Trunk! Let's take a peek and see what new item as been added

Map


Maps of the places of man have existed as long as people have been able to make pictures. We have attempted to put order to our world, describe how its parts relate to each other. These maps guided new people to places they had never been before or made note of a place of interest to those who cared; trade routes, fertile soil, buried treasure or ancient places of worship.

The accuracy of these maps varies from time to time and place to place. Often men drew these maps from stories told by travelers, or even just took wild guesses to finish their work. Whether they are to be trusted is left to the care of those who currently possess the knowledge.

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Equipment icons are found on https://game-icons.net/ and are provided under CC BY 3.0.

Till next time, don't forget to Keep it Weird!

Tuesday, February 25, 2020

ALIEN RPG: Turn Roster

If you are like me, you might have some issues keeping track of how many turns have past in the game, and frankly what they might have done. This can make answering some questions difficult, and make doing a re-cap even worse. I had a quick idea last night that a simple turn roster for Alien would make all of that a lot simpler. This morning I put together a quick roster sheet for my use, but I thought I should share it as well.



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Tuesday, February 11, 2020

Altered Carbon: The RPG

Introduction

I received my copy of Altered Carbon(AC) novel for Christmas several years ago. This was just before the announcement of the first season of the Netflix show. I had not heard of it before then, but it seemed like it would be a good book and up my alley, more or less. I enjoyed it well enough, although I didn't run out and read more of the series, in fact, I was not even aware of the additional books.

As details came out about the Netflix show we learned our protagonist would be played by Joel Kinnaman, who you may know from the Robocop remake. I came across Mr. Kinnaman in a crime show called "The Killing", which I HIGHLY recommend if you like these types of shows. The two main characters played by Joel Kinnaman and Mireille Enos were excellent. I am willing to give pretty much anything they are in a chance.

With the release of the TV show, AC was thrust into the forefront of sci-fi/fantasy television. It was generally well regarded, despite major differences from the book, and was certainly well regarded enough to launch a second season, albeit without Mr. Kinnaman. Another aspect of this newfound popularity, which should come across as a surprise to pretty much no one, was the announcement of the RPG back at GenCon 2019. Well we finally have the launch of the Kickstarter for the RPG associated with the IP, which currently sits at 687% funded.

What can I tell you about this world if you are unfamiliar?
  • Cyperpunk.
  • Conciousness stored digitally.
  • Death is not common, people can be transferred to new bodies.
  • Humanity exists across multiple worlds.
If you want further details I would suggest grabbing the book, checking out the Kickstarter and watching the show, but for the purposes of this, I will assume you are at least as familiar as I am with the IP; a basic understanding, but not an expert fan.

I grabbed the QuickStart and wanted to give my first impressions of the RPG and the QuickStart document.

Initially, I was curious about the company, there are a lot of RPG companies producing a lot of games, it is hard to keep track of everyone. I hadn't heard of Hunters Books (Now Hunters Entertainment), but with a quick web search I quickly found who they were and some of the other games that had published.
  • Kid's on Bikes
  • Outbreak: Undead
  • Chronicles of Exandria
  • ABC's of RPGs
I had heard of the ABCs for RPGs and Kids on Bikes, even if I didn't own them. I went and grabbed the FREE RPG day offering for Kids on Bikes and had a quick look to compared the core rules. I admit I expected to see a basic similarity between the engines running the two games, not unlike we see with the 2d20 system, Year Zero Engine or the GUMSHOE system. Initially, I thought this might be what I was seeing, but as I read a little bit it became clear that Kids on Bikes is a different system. After a little more digging and watching a few interviews I learned that this system was indeed new and developed for AC. They do have a name for it, so maybe we will see it used in other games in the future.

Once I went back and looked over the campaign a little more closely I realized they had done a pretty good basic write up talking about the new engine in the system and where it derived its ideas from. I was not surprised to see Savage Worlds listed here.

Overview

Initial Impressions of the QuickStart

Upon downloading and opening the PDF I was greeted with a typical cyberpunk cover, dark and a little sexy. Implants and neon are prevalent. As we move past that into the book we find a clean layout that is pretty easy to read, the art is nicely rendered. The part I find a little odd is the mix of rendered art and images from the TV show. I think I would have preferred strictly rendered art.

My biggest complaint about the text is the use of a plethora of icons. With time most of these will be easy to recognize, but on an initial read through it makes understanding things a little muddy.

The Basic Mechanic

Most RPGs are based on a basic mechanic used to resolve skill checks, which are then used to determine how successful a character is at an action in the game world. This is used to resolved everything from sneaking to hand to hand combat. Altered Carbon is no different. Your character rolls a die type (d12 - d4) that represents their ability in a given field, say Firearms, and try to get lower than a Target Result (TR). This means a lower die type is better than a higher die type.

Skills vs Attributes

We should note that these dice represent a character's ability in a particular skill, not the character's physical or mental ability. Generally, the attributes of a character are going to start around 20 and move up from there, 20 being low average. Further, the 10s column of the attribute is the attribute bonus, so Strength of 25 is an attribute bonus of +2.

There are basically two types of tasks that a player may be called on to attempt in AC; a situational based test and an attribute-based test. Both of these require the character to roll under a given TR, the difference is where that TR comes from. In a situational test, the base TR is determined by how hard a test is. Trivial? Start with a TR of 15. In an attribute-based test, the TR comes from the attribute bonus of the test. The final TR may be modified by sleeve enhancements, physical equipment or training. These all act to increase the total TR which will make the attempt easier, by increasing the number you are trying to roll under.

Combat

Combat will take a little bit to explain, but I believe it will be a fun combat system once players are familiar with it. The combat turn is broken into 3 basic phases: Intent, Check and Resolution. Each combat turn will have a single Intent Phase, but could have multiple rounds of Check & Resolution.

During the Intent Phase players decide what they want to do in the turn and what equipment they want to use, ie I want to shoot at the escaping criminal with my pistol, or I want to fire the rocket launcher at the escaping air car. Once that is determined characters determine their Speed Dice and roll them. These are used to determine initiative order. During the Check Phase players will roll their skill checks to determine success or failure, and finally during Resolution players determine the results of their Check Phase to determine damage etc.

Speed Dice

What the heck is a Speed Die?? It is a fancy name for a pool of D6s used to control the action economy.

If you recall, attributes have an associated bonus. The bonus for perception controls how many Speed Dice a player may roll during their Intent Phase. The Speed Dice control how many actions a player gets in a round. In their simplest form each player reveals one of their Speed Dice, and initiative is resolved in the order of the die, lowest to highest. In a more complex form a player may decide to combine multiple actions into a single round, such as aiming and shooting. In these cases the players would choose two Speed Dice for their action. These are added together to get the position in the initiative order. It is also possible for players to have Speed Dice taken up outside of their regular turn order due to being stunned, or attempting saving throws to avoid damage. When this happens players simply choose one of their remaining Speed Dice and discard it. It can no longer be used this turn.

Speed Dice are an interesting idea, and could probably use a little more clarification in the QuickStart rules, but I think what I have described is at least their intent based on the rules and examples.

Degrees of Success (or Failure)

Combat also introduces Degrees of success and failure. These are used to determine how effective or ineffective an action is during the Check Phase. These will determine what you can actually do in the Resolution Phase.

This is basically the difference between the TR you are going for and the roll you make. Need a TR of 5 and roll a 2, you get 3 degrees of success, but if you roll a 7 you get 2 degrees of failure. If you roll the TR exactly, you also gain a single degree of success. Pretty simple. Characters max out at 5 degrees of success or failure.

Degree of success: Each degree of success allows a player to use one of the effects of their weapon or equipment, this will allow players to cause damage, use special features of suits, trigger special damage etc. A degree of success remains in play until the combat turn ends, so if you gain 3 degrees of success shooting with your pistol you can choose to save them for a later moment in the round.

Degree of failure: Each degree of failure can be used by your opponent as a degree of success, and these also persist across the combat turn. If your opponent is attempting to dive behind a concrete barrier for cover and fail, rolling 2 degrees of failure, when you shoot at them you could potentially use those degrees of failure as a degree of success for your attack, making it particularly devastating.

Quick Summary of Combat

So that is all very fancy and a lot of wording for a fairly basic idea.
  • Determine what you want to do. (Intent Phase)
    1. Roll the number of D6s indicated by your Perception Bonus, these are your Speed Dice
    2. Decide on the specifics of your actions based on your original intent and reveal the number of Speed Dice to support that.
  • Resolve actions from lowest to highest Speed Dice totals.
  • Make skill check and determine degree of success or failure. (Check Phase)
  • Spend degrees of success if you have them. (Resolution Phase)
  • End of your combat round.
  • If all players complete a round and there are remaining Speed Dice resolve another round of combat in this turn

Ammo and Ammo Depletion

Like many games, we don't track single shots. I am largely in favor of this concept, especially when a combat roll is framed as the outcome of a flourish or set of moves vs a single swing of a sword. In Altered Carbon, weapon tests are rolled with an additional off-color die, which essentially works like a skill die. When this die fails the weapon is exhausted at the end of the round. The QuickStart states that these are the same as the skill check used and that the TR is the capacity listed for the weapon. For the pistol they gave us stats on, it would be 6.

Certain actions cause the weapon to gain depletion points. Each depletion point reduces that TR by 1 point. So if we had 2 depletion points on our pistol, the TR would only be 4.

So what does this mean in a narrative sense? The better you are with your weapon the more efficient you are going to be with your bullets. If you had a D6 for your pistol skill, just shooting that pistol means you are not going to deplete the rounds, or at least not in any meaningful way, you will be able to keep that pistol operational for the duration of a combat. You are efficient with your bullets. If instead you are totally unskilled and have a D12, you are as likely to empty the clip in a single volley trying to achieve your goal.

Looking back at the pistol, as I mentioned simply causing a hit doesn't accumulate a depletion point, but using some of the more specialize pistol actions, such as suppressive fire & focus fire both do. No matter how good you are, firing in these less controlled forms are going to eventually exhaust your ammunition.

Equipment

It looks like equipment will be represented by a basic version of the item, which will then be able to be modified via tech points. The QuickStart has five broad categories of equipment: Weapons, Apparel, Gadgets, Vehicles, and Sleeves.

Weapons

We have already briefly looked at guns in the overview of combat. The single weapon listed in the QuickStart is a pistol, but it is useful to see what the specs will look like and how tech points and it's various other attributes will work.

Armor

One of the more interesting things we see here is that armor can have a Protection stat, which is essentially a damage soak, but they can also have a Defense score, which works to make attacks against a player more difficult. I am not sure if I like this or not, generally, most systems use one or the other, allowing the hit/miss/amount of damage be an abstraction of the result of the round.

This may end up being too crunchy for my taste. On the other hand, if this simply represents two different styles of armor in the game I can see it working. For example, a flak jacket might not make me harder to hit but will reduce damage received, whereas an optical camouflage system might make me harder to hit, but not reduce the damage I take. Much like the weapons, we only get one example of a piece of armor, so it is hard to determine how Protection and Defense will work together.

Vehicles

The section on vehicles is a quick outline of what we can expect to see in the core rules. The entire section isn't much more than a page long. It gives us an overview of the types of specs they will have and how they might factor into an encounter. We know they will use speed dice in a similar manner to regular combat. Beyond that, we don't really learn much, no samples of what an actual vehicle will look like.

Sleeves

The section on sleeves is the largest part of the equipment section. We learn that upgrades to natal sleeves are expensive and rare, and this is likewise the case for a cloned sleeve. More common are synthetic sleeves, we learn that upgrading a synth sleeve is no more complex than upgrading a computer.

We are given a sample upgrade, much like we saw with the pistol and the flak armor, but this time we also get a short table of other upgrades that you might be able to apply to a sleeve. This is followed by several pages of descriptions of what each of these upgrades does.

Character Creation

It was obvious after a quick look through the book, that there were no pre-gen characters included, which I thought was odd. Even odder was the inclusion of a section on character creation. Generally, most QuickStarts I have come across didn't have a section on character creation, instead, they included some pre-gens to allow GMs and Players to jump in a start playing quickly. Still, I thought the inclusion of a character-building section instead of pre-gens was interesting and was willing to give it a go.

Unfortunately like much of the QuickStart this section really only serves as an overview of what we can expect to see in Character Creation. We can't actually build a character from the information we are given.

What is missing?

I have seen some chatter on the internet about this document and if it is actually a QuickStart guide? I have seen people wondering if this set of rules is actually playable. If you read all the way to here you will know I am pretty much in agreement. This QuickStart gives us a good feel for what the rules will look like, but they aren't really a QuickStart in the normal, "I can play this quickly."

I am sure you could play something with these rules, but in my opinion, they are lacking a fair bit. Playing these as written will be next to impossible, the GM will need to make several executive decisions. For example, we are not given any pre-gens. We are not given any opponents. We are not given an equipment list. We are not given any idea about movement. The character generation rules aren't complete.

It would have been nice to have had a short weapon, armor and equipment list like we see for the sleeve upgrades, This would have gone a long way to making the QuickStart rules an actual set of QuickStart rules, and not just an overview and teaser of the game.

However, reading over the rules and looking at the examples, we can make a few guesses on most of these things, and probably hit fairly close to the mark, still, I would have liked to have seen something more solid with a short adventure in the back.

Conclusion

Overall I liked the look of the book, despite a few reservations that will be fine once I am more used to the system. As an actual QuickStart set of rules I think this misses the mark by a lot, giving us a set of rules that are close to unplayable without some serious assumptions. But as an overview of what we can expect in the rules? I think this is a pretty good document. We are given a pretty thorough idea of the kinds of things the rules will contain, and a fairly strong look at skill checks and combat.

As a reader of RPGs that I will probably never play, I did in the end back this for my shelf. The QuickStart rules whet my appetite enough that I wanted to know more, and in the end that is probably the actual purpose of it. Still I would have to think a playable document would have the same effect across a wider series of players, although it does not seem to matter. When I started writing this article the Kickstarter was a couple of days in, and as I mentioned 687% funded. It is now 10 or so days in and 1001% funded.

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Thursday, February 6, 2020

Tool Trunk Thursday: Needle & Thread

Welcome Dog Brothers and Sword Sisters to the next installment of Tool Trunk Thursday! The feature where I present a piece of equipment for Conan 2d20 and its effects in a friendly card-shaped format.

Another Thursday! I almost forgot about this feature in favor of work on another article! Have no fear Brothers & Sisters the chest grows EVER fuller!

You can find other pieces of equipment in the Blog's Equipment Chest!

Needle & Thread


From creating items of cloth to mending them, cloth and sewing represent a large outlay of work for the people of the Hyborian Age. Still the tool that does the job of joining cloth is the humble needle, made from all kinds of metal, bone or wood. A common tool, but one that is often not found in your adventurers tool-kit. Maybe it should be? If you liked this article then don't forget to subscribe to get the next exciting installment on pulp gaming both Sci-Fi and Fantasy!

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Equipment icons are found on https://game-icons.net/ and are provided under CC BY 3.0.

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Thursday, January 30, 2020

Tool Trunk Thursday: Portable Anvil

Welcome Dog Brothers and Sword Sisters to the next installment of Tool Trunk Thursday! The feature where I present a piece of equipment for Conan 2d20 and its effects in a friendly card-shaped format.

The new year is upon us and as some of us think about heading back to work, and getting back into more normal routines I wanted to wish everyone a great new year!

You can find other pieces of equipment in the Blog's Equipment Chest!

Portable Anvil


Forming metal requires hammers and a surface to work on. Whether it is silver, gold or steel this is unchanged. The smiths of the Hyborian Age know this and from time to time require a smaller version of the anvils you might find in their shops. These pieces of steel are instrumental to field repairs to armor and weapons. Do not let their name fool you though, they may be portable, but they are not light.

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Equipment icons are found on https://game-icons.net/ and are provided under CC BY 3.0.

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Thursday, January 9, 2020

Tool Trunk Thursday: Fishing Net

Welcome Dog Brothers and Sword Sisters to the next installment of Tool Trunk Thursday! The feature where I present a piece of equipment for Conan 2d20 and its effects in a friendly card-shaped format.

The new year is upon us and as some of us think about heading back to work, and getting back into more normal routines I wanted to wish everyone a great new year!

You can find other pieces of equipment in the Blog's Equipment Chest!

Fishing Net


The oceans of the world then, just as now, provide a source of food and survival for those that live along its shores. Many methods are used to gather the bounty of the sea. One of the most common tools used by the men of the Hyborian Age is the fishing net. Common in the countries of Zingara, Argos, Shem, Stygia, Turan and even some of the people of the Black Kingdoms; really any nation that shares a border with the sea.

A strong mesh of heavy rope that can be thrown by several men out into the ocean or another body of water and brought back in, hopefully, full of fish, but who knows what else it might dredge up from the depths?

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Equipment icons are found on https://game-icons.net/ and are provided under CC BY 3.0.

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Thursday, January 2, 2020

Tool Trunk Thursday: Sharpening Stone

Welcome Dog Brothers and Sword Sisters to the next installment of Tool Trunk Thursday! The feature where I present a piece of equipment for Conan 2d20 and its effects in a friendly card-shaped format.

The new year is upon us and as some of us think about heading back to work, and getting back into more normal routines I wanted to wish everyone a great new year!

You can find other pieces of equipment in the Blog's Equipment Chest!

Sharpening Stone


Since man has been using weapons he has used other tools to keep them in working order. Weapons of steel are no different, and in time their edges dull and they require maintenance. These hard, fine grit stones from the mountains of Aquilonia and Nemedia, are prized for their ability to bring back the sharpness that a warrior trusts his blades to have.

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Equipment icons are found on https://game-icons.net/ and are provided under CC BY 3.0.

Till next time, don't forget to Keep it Weird!

Thursday, December 26, 2019

Tool Trunk Thursday: Holly Berries

Welcome Dog Brothers and Sword Sisters to the next installment of Tool Trunk Thursday! The feature where I present a piece of equipment for Conan 2d20 and its effects in a friendly card-shaped format. I thought I would add a slightly more festive item this week, I hope you enjoy it. You can find other pieces of equipment in the Blog's Equipment Chest!

Holly Berries


Within the temperate forests of the Hyborian Age grows bright green holly. The leaves, though prickly, are harmless but the bright red berries these plants produce are not. If eaten the berries can cause intestinal issues and vomiting. If distilled into a potion by a herbalist these easy to find plants can be used to weaken or perhaps kill a man... if you can get him to drink it.

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Equipment icons are found on https://game-icons.net/ and are provided under CC BY 3.0.

Till next time, don't forget to Keep it Weird!

Thursday, December 19, 2019

Tool Trunk Thursday: Stygian Sand

Welcome Dog Brothers and Sword Sisters to the next installment of Tool Trunk Thursday! The feature where I present a piece of equipment for Conan 2d20 and its effects in a friendly card-shaped format. You can find other pieces of equipment in the Blog's Equipment Chest!

Stygian Sand


In the deepest Stygian deserts lie patches of fine off-color sand. Of those that know about it, some say it is the dust remains of the ancient sorcerers that once walked within Acheron, while others believe it to be where beings from beyond the outer dark once walked.

What can be certain about this sand is that it is a fine powder and that on contact it burns with an intensity of fire. Alchemists lucky enough to possess it are able to more effectively create powders than burn and blind those who would cross them.


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If you need to check out any of these great games stop on by DriveThruRPG and pick something up through my affiliate link to help support the blog!

Equipment icons are found on https://game-icons.net/ and are provided under CC BY 3.0.

Till next time, don't forget to Keep it Weird!