Making a Character in the Alien RPG by Free League.

In my first article about the Alien RPG I talked a little about the steps required to make a character. I thought it would be a fun and useful article to go through those 10 steps and actually build the character.

The first thing we need to know as a player is the type of campaign we are going to run. Is this going to be like Alien or do we want something more action packed liked Aliens? For this example I think we will create a character for a "Space Trucker" type campaign.

Building the Character

Step 1: Choose a career.

Who doesn't like Brett from Alien? Right.
We will choose the career: Roughneck.
These guys are the manual labor out on the frontier. Hard working, physical laborers.

Step 2: Spend points on attributes.

We get 14 points to spend between our 4 stats: Strength, Agility, Wits & Empathy. Health starts equal to your strength score.
The minimum value we can have is 2 in each stat, meaning we have spent 8 of those 14 points before we even start. We have 6 points to distribute freeling, but we can't have an attribute higher than 4.

• Strength: 5
• Agility: 3
• Wits: 3
• Empathy: 3
  
  
• Health: 5 - Starts equal to strength score
• Encumbrance: 10 - Starts as double your strength score

*Strength is listed as a KEY career skill, so we can assign 5 points into it.

Step 3: Spend points on skills.

We get 10 skill points we can spend up to 3 points on each of our career skills, and may assign a single point each to any remaining skill you choose.

• Heavy Machinery: 3
• Stamina: 2
• Close Combat: 3
• Ranged Combat: 1
• Comtech: 1

Step 4: Choose a career talent.

We get to choose a single talent for our career from a list of 3. We will choose The Long Haul. We can ignore all stress rolls from a single roll once per game sessions in the campaign.

Step 5: Choose a name.

They give you a list if suggested names for your career, so we will just pick one of those.
Sassy Diaz.
Riiight.

Step 6: Decide on your appearance.

Again, your career gives you some options to go with. For Sassy Diaz, I think I want a shorter, wiry type with short-dark cropped hair and some tattoos on her arms.

Step 7: Decide on your Personal Agenda.

This is the part of your character that drives your action, your career will give you options, but you don't have to stick to those. Sassy is out on the rim to make a buck, and willing to take risks to do it. If she can increase her share, she will.

Step 8: Choose your Buddy and your Rival.

Since we are not creating an entire group, we will skip this step, but be aware this allows you to define your interpersonal relationships with your fellow players.

Step 9: Pick your gear and signature item.

It should not surprise you, but your career determines your starting equipment. We can choose two items from a list of 8 things, however, they are listed as "Liquor OR compression suit" so we couldn't pick both of those. Sassy is going to start with items that will help her with her goal of making some cold hard cash on the frontier.

1. Hi-beam flashlight
2. DV-303 Bolt gun

We also need to pick a small item of significance to the character. Again there are a few suggestions with your career.
We will give Sassy a small silver locket she always wears that stands in stark contrast to her otherwise roughneck appearance.

Step 10: Roll for cash.

And finally, we roll for some cash. Roughnecks get $d6x100. I rolled a 4, giving Sassy $400.

The Character Sheet

Then we just need to fill out the character sheet and we are done!

Creation Summary

Now that I have walked through the process I can say it is a pretty easy creation process that will not take up that much table time, but be aware if you are trying to do it at the beginning of your session each player is going to need the career and talent section, which could easily slow things down quite a bit.

Having a fairly simple character system for campaign play might be a good idea since death out on the frontier is a very very real thing.

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!

If you have questions or comments don't forget to hit me up on Twitter, Facebook, Youtube or Instagram!

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! Finally the Amazon links included in this posts are affiliate links and give me a small kick back, which helps out the blog. Thank you!

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

Alien RPG by Free League

I am excited to finally get my hands on the new Alien RPG by Free League. I received the PDF on Tuesday morning, and while I had looked over the quickstart I was looking forward to seeing the whole book. The quickstart did nothing but make me want more.

Initial Impressions

The book is beautiful, the art is on point and the overall feeling managed to be dark without taking away legibility. I found the layout to be thematic and easy to navigate and read with important text broken into small easy to find bite-sized chunks.

Further, the .PDF is well built and XODO had no issues displaying a fully functional table of contents making things easy to find.

Player Section

The player section accounts for nearly half the book and provides pretty much everything a player might need to build a character and use that character including outlines and examples of skill success, skill failure and skill stunts.

Basic Mechanic

The games basic mechanic is a d6 dice pool where rolling a 6 is a success and rolling multiple 6s grants you stunts, ways to make the success better. In other words, this game allows you to succeed with measure, a feature I love.

The second part of this mechanic is stress. As your character gains stress they begin to roll more dice which also grants your success on a 6, but on these dice, a 1 may trigger your character to panic. It will also indicate you have run out of ammo.

The Setting

The game is set in the early 2180s after Alien 3. Not much more to say here, it's Alien. It is set in the era of Aliens more or less.

The year is 2183—little more than three years since the destruction of the Hadley’s Hope colony on LV-426, the disappearance of the USS Sulaco, and the closing of the prison and lead works on Fiorina 161. The loss of the Sulaco’s Colonial Marine unit along with these Weyland-Yutani sponsored outposts, and the implications of corporate foul play stemming from these incidents, have created an air of distrust between the company and the United Americas. To add fuel to the fire, conflicts between the rival sectors of space have increased exponentially in the past five years. While unconfirmed, many believe that Hadley’s Hope was a test site for one of Weyland-Yutani’s bioweapons and that an enemy state sent a warship to nuke it from orbit. Others believe that the Company is working with a rogue nation to assume control of the colonies on the Frontier. The 2180s are a dangerous time to be alive. -- https://www.alien-rpg.com/

Game Modes

• Cinematic - Designed to be played as one-shots with pre-generated characters.
• Campaign - For those longer games when the characters will span multiple missions. These are generally broken into 3 types of games: Colonists, Marines, and Space Truckers.

Character Creation

The game splits creation into a simple 10 step process.

1. Choose career
2. Buy attributes
3. Buy skills
4. Choose career talent
5. Choose name
6. Choose appearance
7. Choose personal agenda
8. Choose buddy or rial
9. Choose gear & signature item
10. Roll for cash

Many of these choices will be guided by the career you pick. Each of them has suggestions for signature items, agendas, names and appearance. They will also give you a list of career talents to choose from.

The game uses a simple character creation process making character generation easy, which is a pro but on the other side of the coin it doesn't provide much in the way of guidance for a backstory, which is a bit of a con for me, especially for players who are new to the system.

Combat

Combat is a deadly affair in Alien. Like many games having a map layout to determine combat is handy, and Alien is no different. Many of you may be familiar with measuring distances or counting squares, but Alien uses zones. These are spaces in the game where action can take place. Conan 2d20 is a user of zones and I have come to believe they are a superior style of laying out the world. They hit a sweet spot between the tactics of counting spaces and the strict theatre of the mind approach. I have written a few articles on zones and you can check out my latest one here.

In addition to zones and maps this section details player actions, damage, recovery, critical injuries and finally panic. As you can see it is a fairly in-depth section of the book.

Although in general combat is pretty straight forward, you start with health and damage reduces it, I feel the "Signature Attack" that the Xenomorphs have is worth a special mention. Basically during an attack, the GM rolls a D6 and consults the charts....
An Example of this is the face hugger. A roll of 1 and the hugger simply causes stress as the little Alien horror skitters towards the character, but a roll of 6 can come close to immediately jumping on the player and reducing them to near-death instantly. These signature attacks make the Xenos horrifying and if they haven't figured that out yet, your players will soon enough.

“Seventeen days? Hey man, I don't wanna rain on your parade but we're not gonna last seventeen hours! Those things are gonna come in here just like they did before! And they're gonna come in here and they're gonna come in here — AND THEY'RE GONNA KILL US!” -Hudson

Gear

The game has an extensive arsenal of weapons and equipment, showcasing a little of everything, ie we have 4 pistol types and 6 rifle types. We are also given images for each of those fire-arm types. There is, of course, more weapons than that, including melee and heavy weapons.

I am sure some people will want more equipment, weapons, and armor, but realistically there is a lot here, including some of the iconic vehicles from Aliens.

Hard Life

The final part of the players' section is a setting primer detailing life amongst the stars. It gives us some basic ideas of what living in space might be like. Mainly it is information, but it would be critical for a player unfamiliar with the setting, but still useful and in-depth enough for those of us who have had the Xenomorphs as part of our lives for pretty much as long as you can remember.

Besides talking about living in space, the law, entertainment and religion this section also has a detailed section on the spacecraft of the game including a few basic ships and detailing space combat in the Alien Universe. I admit I was a little surprised to see this section, as Alien has never been about ship to ship combat to me. I haven't looked into these rules yet but they should prove interesting.

Game Mother

The GM's section of the book is broken down into 4 major areas: being the GM, the gazeteer, the Aliens and running a campaign.

In keeping with the theme, the typical GM is named after the MU/TH/R computer system first brought to life as the Nostromo's AI. Instead of the basic Game Master, the game leader is known as the Game Mother.

Running the Game

This first section isn't rules oriented, but more a section of advice to the GM. Ideas and themes to use, how to use horror etc. Sections like this often get skipped or glossed over as GMs read the rules and the fluff material and skip over this essential advice. My first pass shows this section to be full of good ideas and advice to elevate your Alien game. Read it.

It also has sections specifically on Cinematic, Campaign play and NPCs.

The Gazeteer

This section contains a couple of chapters within the book, the first deals with governments and corporations and gives us a solid breakdown of each of them. These are the overarching nebulous entities that control the world and probably cause more bad than good in the character's lives.

The second section is about 34 pages in length and deals with planets and systems. Again we are given an impressive amount of background information on each sector of space followed by the systems of interest and finally the planets within the system. We are given stats on worlds like Location, Affiliation, Terrain, Mean Temperature, Colonies etc. as well as a short description of the world.

That's the thing. You were out there for fifty-seven years. What happened was, you had drifted right through the core systems, and it's really just blind luck that a deep salvage team found you when they did. It's one in a thousand, really. I think you're damn lucky to be alive, kiddo. You could be floating out there forever. -Burke

The Alien

Arguably the stars of the show this section will attract people too it quickly, curious to see what an Alien looks like, stat wise, in this world.

We start with the Engineers, where we get a breakdown of who they are and the tech that they posses, including a run down on their starships. We do not however get any stats to use them in the game.

Next up we come to the Xenomorphs. We are given a list of each of the stats used by the Aliens and then we are on to the various special attacks and specification for each Alien species. This section might be my biggest layout beef with the book. Because of the signature attacks there are a lot of tables in this section, which are easy enough to read, but the Alien spec blocks are also in the same format making it harder to quickly pick out the Alien stat blocks from the signature attacks. It might have been nice to have another table style layout for these, more like what we see for the NPCs.

This chapter ends off with a section on other alien species out there, things that are not the bugs. These are not intelligent species spread across the stars, rather they are local fauna characters might run into on other worlds. It would have been nice to have seen a few more of these but their inclusion at all is welcome.

Campaign Play

The final section here is on campaign play and gives us a variety of tools and tables to generate everything from star systems and worlds to adventure seeds to job types based around the campaign type. This section is largely roll tables and ideas to help you build a campaign. Beyond that it contains a list of archetypal human NPCs: pilots, mining experts, ICC inspectors, etc.

The section finished with "Novogrod Station", a fairly fleshed out space station on the edge of space to provide a template you can use to produce your own station, or to be used as is.

Hope's Last Day

Although technically part of the GM section, I thought this could get it's own section since. It's not rules after all.

We are given a quick jump into the action adventure that the players should recognize and get on board with right away. They should be able to conjure clear images of the location they are being thrust.

HADLEY'S HOPE

Yes, that Hadley's Hope. The adventure is about the last days of the colony on LV-426. We all know how it turns out. We all know no one makes it out alive. Welcome to a cinematic adventure. Overall the adventure looks to be pretty short, but for a quick one off intro scenario? it looks pretty good.

Final Thoughts

Overall I really like this book, it's layout is easy to read and yet remains thematic and dark. The text is generally broken down into small easy to digest bites, and this is especially true in the rules section. I have liked the system since I read it, even if I haven't had time to play it, and regret not running a game of the quick-start rules at a convention this year. Because really playing it is necessary to see how it really runs.

If you are a fan of the series. If you are a fan of the Alien. If you like RPGs and you didn't pre-order, you need to pick this up when it is released.

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!

If you have questions or comments don't forget to hit me up on Twitter, Facebook, Youtube or Instagram!

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! Finally the Amazon links included in this posts are affiliate links and give me a small kick back, which helps out the blog. Thank you!

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

What I Learned in a Year: RPG Conventions & PDF Rules

Introduction

One year ago I sat down at a table with 5 strangers, a place way outside of my comfort zone and GMed a game of "Robert E Howard's Conan". I was unsure of what this was going to be or if I would be any good at it. It turned out to be a pretty positive experience and since that time I have gotten to know a few of the people who played in my game. Some because we have continued to GM together at RPG Alliance events, and some because we have talked about game ideas and mechanics a lot since then. That was 2018, I dipped my toes into running a game at a convention.

Since that time we decided we should run RPG Alliance Con again in 2019. It was decided it should be bigger and better but remain a one-day event. It moved to a two-game day on Sunday and remained at Dickens Pub. Some of the GMs involved ran a series of RPG games over the summer at various locations such as Eastridge Sports Cards & Games, Zero Issue Brewing and the now-defunct Titan's Vault. We also ran a few games at the Calgary Expo early in the year and had a definitive presence at FallCon 2019 as the Rpg Alliance.

The convention this year was split into a morning and afternoon program, which was really more of an afternoon and evening program, running 11:30am-3:30pm and 4pm-8pm. We had sold tickets through tabletop.events, and ticket sales at the door as well. My game had seen good pre-sales with 3 of 5 seats being taken up, and the remaining 2 being filling by day of sales. The end result was a solid table of 5 people who had never played Conan before, including one gentleman who had never played an RPG before. If there was a single daunting aspect to my game, that was it. Being someone's first foray into RPGs and wanting to be a fun and positive experience for them.

At many of my previous games, I attempted to bring in a pretty small kit, looking to only bring what was necessary; using tokens and tiles rather than minis and terrain. By FallCon I had given up on this idea, bought a big tote, switched to UDT(Ultimate Dungeon Terrain) by Professor Dungeon Master on Youtube, and started running pretty much a full kit. These displays of terrain and paper-minis are always a big hit with the players who love seeing all the work and attention that has gone into building the world they are playing in.

Teaching the Rules

Maybe I take a while to come to a conclusion, or maybe I am just stubborn. Either way over the last year I have attempted to highlight Conan 2d20s rules before play in a 20 minute overview. Some of these have gone better than others, but at the end of the day talking at people about rules and mechanics in a lecture setting is boring a dull. This last group didn't even get through them all before we started playing. Either way, this is lesson 1 for this post. Don't spend more than a few minutes going over mechanics. It will be far more fun to have a quick scene where the players can learn the majority of the system. So for Conan we might include a scene where the players do some fighting and other skill checks.

Take Home Message

Keep your rules intro light and engaging with your players.

Finshing on Time

Although I got through an adventure with the same format at Fall-Con, I was a little short on time for this adventure, and we failed to complete the final encounter. There were certain places where we could have cut time down, but for about 90% of the time at the table, I thought we were going to run WAY short. So here is my advice for you, especially if you are teaching the rules: If you have 4 hours, plan for a 3-hour game, or at most 4 encounters. This will give you an hour buffer that will most assuredly be filled with starting a little late, introductions and chat, rule instructions and intro encounters, and hopefully, it will leave you a little time at the end of the game to get some feedback from the players. My biggest issue with my deadlines is I haven't gotten a huge amount of feedback from players, just because we were generally playing right up till the end.

Take Home Message

A four-hour time slot really only allows for about three hours of actual gameplay.

Rules & Adventure Materials

The sheer amount of paper a game uses is mind-boggling. Between rulebooks, adventure materials, character sheets, monster information, etc, you can get swamped in paperwork. At RPG Alliance 2018, my first convention I tried to go lightweight and small with components, but still brought all the actual rulebooks I needed. As you can imagine this ended up making my bag not exactly lightweight. Over the next year, I sought to remove the weight and the rulebooks from my kit. I thought a tablet might be a useful addition, but after looking at them and talking to a friend who tried to use them, I determined they might not be for me, although the idea stayed in the back of my mind.

Game Changer

If we FFWD a little, I was still considering a tablet. Part of my issue was certainly the issue of how LARGE .pdfs loaded, anytime I tried using the CONAN book in-game to find something and to do a search I would have to wait for it to catch up with the load, and it ended up being faster to simply use the hardcopy. This was not really a hardware form factor issue or an old-school connection to physical books, it was simply a functionality issue.

Still switching out all the books for a tablet? Pretty appealing. The solution came through a conversation with Chris, a fellow GM and player in my first convention game. Chris told me about a piece of software called "XODO".

This free PDF reader was everything Adobe Reader wasn't. Documents didn't load in a linear fashion; if I went to page 300, it loaded page 300. It allowed me to set up bookmarks to places in the document and it created a useable table of contents in most circumstances. Without a doubt finding, this application solidified me into getting a tablet for my rulebooks, and so the research began.

Most people I watched and articles I read suggested we need at least a 10" tablet for books, anything smaller wasn't worth it. So I went to look into 10" tablets. These machines range anywhere from ~$100 to over $1000 depending on what you get, and although I would love one of those higher-end tablets, I just couldn't afford it.

The Rules Tablet

In the end, I ended up picking up the Amazon Fire HD 10 for $159CAD (on sale) in Canada or if you are in the US Amazon Fire HD 10 for $149USD, and I couldn't be happier with it after 6 months of using it as my go-to rules library.

PROS Price Aspect Ratio Screen

CONS FIRE OS Speed Memory

Price: Coming in at $199CAD, and often dropping to $159, it is easily on the lower end price point for a 10" tablet.
Aspect Ratio: The Fire HD 10 is a 16:10 tablet, which isn't ideal for the standard rule book. The slightly smaller display on the 16:10, hasn't been an issue for me though and having that ability to display widescreen if I need it is awesome. A second note, I find it be a little narrower than a standard 4:3 tablet due to the aspect ratio. I find this easier to hold, but I am a big guy, so you may not have the same experience. You can check out this video to see the aspect ratio differences and decide if it is a pro, con or neutral feature for you.
Screen: Although the screen is a little shiny, I haven't had an issue with it when playing. Beyond that the resolution is 1920x1200, most are 1280x800 in this price range. Color wise I have been happy with it as well.
FIRE OS: This is probably the biggest single CON the Fire has. the FIRE OS is an Amazon centric android OS. It doesn't natively have access to GOOGLE PLAY, and all apps have to come through the Amazon store. This could well be the nail in the coffin since XODO isn't on the Amazon store. Fortunately, with a little reading and following some simple instructions you can add Google Play to your Fire and run XODO no problem.
Speed: Like many low-end tablets the Fire isn't the fastest machine on the block but using XODO as the app I have no issues with the FIRE being fast enough for the purpose I picked it up for.
Memory: I sound like a broken record here, but as a low-end tablet, it only comes with 32gb of space. You can get the higher-end version of the FIRE with 64gb, but it will cost you a little more, if all you use it for is storing PDFs, 32gb is going to allow you to store 700+ 40MB PDFs. For me 32gb is plenty.

Overall this tablet has been an excellent and inexpensive addition to my arsenal of tools for the convention. It is of note that I use this at home as well for rules. It is just better.

The Reference Tablet

Beyond using the Fire for rules I generally have 3 tabs open in XODO: Rules, Adventure, and Monsters. I don't always use the tablet for the adventure, as I do sometimes write them out in a notebook, but when space is at a premium having everything in a single small tablet is quite handy. It also means you aren't sorting through a bunch of loose pages trying to find your adventure or the stats for the monster they are attacking.

Take Home Message

Tablets are incredibly useful, but you don't need the latest and greatest for it to be an effective tool.

Summary

I recommend trying to GM at a convention if you get the chance. It has been a very positive experience and I have met some great people and had some cool opportunities. Jump outside your comfort zone and be a positive part of this hobby!

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!

If you have questions or comments don't forget to hit me up on Twitter, Facebook, Youtube or Instagram!

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! Finally the Amazon links included in this posts are affiliate links and give me a small kick back, which helps out the blog. Thank you!

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

Episode 89: Desert Ruins!

Welcome back! I recently decided to do full terrain at conventions, and because of this, I found myself in need of a few new desert ruin pieces. I decided I should video the build and put out a youtube video for it!


I have provided a table of contents to take you to the pertinent locations in the video you may be interested in.

• Video Start 0:30
• Beer 1:47
• Build 7:44
• Painting 12:10
• On the Table 14:14

The ruins will be built from XPS and based on MDF board.

Needed:

• MDF Base (1/4")
• XPS Foam
• PVA GLue.
• Hot Glue.
• Sand.
• Various colors of brown from dark to light.
• Black paint.
• Gloss varnish.
• You will also need Sculptamold,

I mentioned a few other things that I used at the convention that I thought people might be interested in as well.

18" Lazy Susan for Ultimate Dungeon Terrain
Amazon Fire HD 10

These last three links take you to Amazon, which gives me a small commission on each sale, helping to support the blog.

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!

If you have questions or comments don't forget to hit me up on Twitter, Facebook, Youtube or Instagram!

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!

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

Persuade & Social Encounters in Conan 2d20

I often have players try and talk there way out of a situation. In one game the characters had been shipwrecked and a band of beach scavengers showed up with the intention of taking what was theirs and killing anyone in their way, the solution, "We should talk to them." In another example I had a group of players come across a barricaded path guarded by some Khitan warriors, they wanted to talk their way past the guards. It is almost like no one has seen 1984's Conan the Destroyer, which I only bring up because of the line enjoyed by Matt John over at Rogues in the House Podcast...

ENOUGH TALK!

Still despite that, it is an RPG and the characters have social skills like "Society" and "Persuade". This article is going be about a simple mechanic you can use to help control how a social encounter might play out using these skills. Keep in mind this is a mechanic for a time when a social encounter is appropriate, you probably don't want players to be able to negotiate with the skeletons that populate your tombs.

In the past when this has come up I have made it into a struggle and a single roll; either they convince them or they don't. It has the advantage of being simple, but it has the disadvantage of resolving something of importance in a very very simple way, which can take the spotlight away from players who excel in social skills, and while the struggle isn't slow to resolve, it isn't as fast as a single die roll.

For me, the heart of how the social encounter will go is going to be based on two factors; how open the NPC is to listen to the PCs and how easily their mind can be swayed once they are listening. A friend is going to be willing to listen a lot easier than the bandit leader attacking you, but it is possible your friend will be harder to sway than that bandit leader. With the system, I have in mind and momentum spends you still might be able to convince a friend to help you quicker than an openly hostile opponent.

Likely to Listen?

This is how difficult the actual negotiation is, and so it makes perfect sense to make this into the difficulty of the skill test, running from close friends to hostile enemies we can set up a simple difficulty chart.

• D0 - Good Friends
• D1 - Friendly
• D2 - Neutral
• D3 - Dislike
• D4 - Veiled Hostility
• D5 - Outright Hostile

This gives us a place to work from that we can apply to the social encounters the players find themselves involved in. You can either make note of them beforehand or implement them on the fly. Like all difficulties, feel free to modify these as you see fit by other factors. Are the PC and NPCs Good Friends, but the PCs failed to do something for them? Move the difficulty up 1 or 2 notches. Perhaps the NPC is generally neutral towards the party, but they have a high level of renown in the area, you can move the difficulty to 1.

Success and Failure: If the social test is successful, simply determine momentum and move on to resolving the effect, "Are they Swayed" of the roll in part 2 of the test. However, if they fail to move the difficulty of the test up by 1 notch. If they fail at D4 or D5, the test is an outright failure.

Complications: The simplest complication for these sorts of encounters is putting your foot in your mouth or offending the person you are talking to. Keeping in mind a complication is about 2 doom we have a few simple options.

1. Increase the difficulty one step.
2. Reduce the generated momentum by two.
3. If the test was D3 and there was a failure with the complication, make the test an outright failure.

Are they Swayed

This part of the mechanic centers around convincing the NPC once they have heard what was said. It might take several rounds of convincing to get them on board, but anytime during that negotiation, we might see that NPC stop listening and have the communication break down. The easiest way to work this is with a "hit point" or "effort" system, which will require a point pool for the NPC to resist with and a way for the PC to whittle away at that pool.

Conan has a mental damage track that might work for this, resolve and trauma. Generally, we see this damage track in regards to actually trying to scare away or mentally break the opponent, or simulate the effects of fear and is soaked by courage. I don't think it is the perfect fit for what we are trying to accomplish. We also don't have a great "weapon" to use to try and convince the NPC. We aren't trying to Steely Glare them into seeing our side of things and convince them we are correct. This is supposed to be a social encounter and not a scare the pants off of the local bürgermeister.

I think the Willpower attribute will work well for this number, which sits around 7-10 in most humans. Adding a simple modifier based on how easily swayed they are will let us make the NPC a little more interesting.

• Easy to sway - -1/2 willpower attribute
• Default - Willpower attribute
• Difficult to sway - +1/2 willpower attribute

With that in mind, we still need a way to bring that value to 0 and convince them to buy into the social encounter. Give the players 1 combat die for each level of FOCUS they have in their social ability (generally Persuade or Society) and use the following momentum spends as a guideline.

• 1M - add 1 to the combat die roll - repeatable
• 1M - Re-roll any number of combat dice
• 2M - Reduce the difficulty of the test by 1

Example

Example 1
Balor is trying to convince the local sheriff to let his friends go. They were captured and locked up after a night of drinking. You could of course just do a 100% roleplay if that suits your group better, but if you want to work it mechanically it might go something like this.....
Balor says, "Ah come on man, they didn't mean any harm to the village, they were just blowing off steam after all the horrors they have seen defending this place!"
The sherrif looks Balor up and down and says.....
GM - Balor, make a D2 Persuade test, he dislikes you and your crew, but will be neutral due to the aid you have rendered the village.
Balor - Ok my Persuade TN is 8 with a focus of 1. I will roll 3d20, and give you a point of doom....

Balor - 4,14 and 12...So 1 success. The Sherrif looks at Balor up and down and says, "no harm? they burned down the blacksmith and caused considerable damage to the tavern. You may have defended the village, but perhaps we would have been in better shape with the creatures of the dark!"
"Balor replies with, "Ah come on, you know that isn't true! It was only a little fire!"
GM - Ok, if you continue the difficulty will now be at D3. Do you want to continue?
Balor - I roll 4d20, and give you 2 more doom.....

Balor - 6,2,9 & 13! for 4 successes! and 1 momentum!
GM - Great! roll 2 combat dice for your persuade focus!
Balor - OK.....

Balor - I roll a 1, and a 2 for 3 points. I want to add 1 more point with the momentum bringing the total to 4!
GM - ok. The Sherif is easily swayed so he only had 4 points.
The sheriff shrugs, "Trouble follows your party around, but we do appreciate what you have done for us..", and tosses the keys to Balor.

Example 2
Ismene is working to try and sell some stolen goods, she is locked into negotiations with a local kothian fence she knows.
"Come on! This is the finest Stygian gold, This statue has to be worth more than a measly 3 bags of gold, how about 5? ", Ismene smiles slyly.
The fence looks at the statue and then at Ismene and says.....
GM - Ismene, make a D1 Persuade test, he is neutral towards you but knows of your skills, so we will treat him as friendly.
Ismene - I will give you 2 doom and roll 4d20.....

Ismene - 2, 17 and 2 20s...... GM - Ok, roll a combat die equal to your persuade focus.
Ismene - OK, I have a focus of 1, I roll..

Ismene - 2!
GM - Ok, you reduce is resistance to moving to your price by 2 points leaving him with 4!
The fence looks at the statue and then at Ismene and says, "The statue is truly of great quality, but I am just can't give you 5 bags of gold."
GM - But you rolled 2 complications.....
GM - During the negotiations, you mention the words "cursed temple" and "dangerous Stygian sorcery" one too many times...
GM - Negotiations are now at D3 as the Kothian fence becomes less certain he even wants this potentially cursed item and is growing untrustful of your intentions.

And so Ismene could continue the encounter attempting to get more money for the Stygian gold she has stolen or cut her losses and take the original gold offered....

Summary

This gives you a way to walk through social encounters in a fair and even manner, and may even convince a few of your players to spend a few points on persuade for reasons beyond simply striking at your opponents. As you can see in the examples it gives us a quick way to mechanically guide the narration between the players and the NPCs.

Games like 2d20 can be mechanically heavy at times, especially if all you do is roll the dice and apply the results. These games really shine when you narrate and work together as a group to not simply roll and apply, but roll, apply AND use your results to guide your narration.

If you thought this was interesting drop me a comment and let me know your thoughts. Is this something you would use? What would you change? Do you think the social struggle is already enough to accomplish this? Let me know.

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!

If you have questions or comments don't forget to hit me up on Twitter, Facebook, Youtube or Instagram!

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!

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

Barbaric Future: A Timeline.

As I started fleshing out the world, I thought a rough timeline would come in handy.

The Timeline

• 2020 - The Modern Era
  The modern era continues much as it has and technology continues to improve. Humanity reaches for the stars. Stress between people based on differences continues to ebb and flow. Nothing is ever solved. Climate change continues and weather patterns become more intense. Global temperatures continue to rise, and we get to a place where they will continue to rise despite our inputs into the environment. Sea level begins its gradual climb.
  
  
  
• 2200 - Global War
  The stresses of the modern world finally come to a head, for the next 100 years the world is locked in an all-out war fought between the communist factions and the capitalist factions; dictatorships vs democracies. The war is fought largely through conventional means, but some nuclear weapons are used against targets of extreme importance. Total armageddon is avoided, but large areas of the world are laid bare and unlivable.
  
  Global temperature rise comes to a standstill due to the layer of dust thrown into the atmosphere by the small scale nuclear war.
  
  
  
• 2300 - A Thousand Years of Conflict
  When the war ends, the conflict doesn't. Nothing between the nations is resolved, they are all simply broken and scattered into component nations. For 1000 years mankind remains trapped in small nations and kingdoms, the shattered remnants of their former glory. For 1000 years war keeps these nations small and technological advancement down.
  
  After 1000 years, the dust from the wars has largely subsided and the temperature begins to rise again. The sea levels have steadily climbed over this time period as well. As more and more dust came out of the atmosphere the temperature rise steadily grew faster until the sea level had risen some 100 meters.
  
  
  
• 3300 - Resource Peace
  The small nations begin to band together, their governments forming together to rebuild semblances of their former selves. Resources are largely exhausted and humanity is forced into an uneasy peace.
  
  
• 4300 - Rise of the Corporations
  With resources largely depleted the governments do what they can to hold their nations together. The corporations grow steadily in power. They still hold the means to production
  
  
• 4400 - Corporate States
  With the corporate states holding the means to production within each new nation, the interm governments are quickly replaced by the corporate bodies that control everything within the borders. Nations become CorpStates.
  
  
  
• 4500 - Rebirth of Tech
  CorpStates trade with each other to exist. What one has, the other needs. The human population is a ghost of its former self and the resources that fueled humanity are gone. Still despite this, and built on the back on the old world, tech has increased. Its level within the CorpStates has outgrown the old world. Breakthroughs in computers and energy systems have pulled humanity back to a place of greatness.
  
  
• 5000 - Barbaric Future
  2500 years of conflict and climate disaster have rendered the memory of the old world a fairy tale to most of humanity, only a few who have kept or who have found old records know of its existence. Humanity lives mostly within the cities of the CorpStates but a few live in the broken shell of the old world. The people living in the cities live behind walls with their lives controlled and monitored by the Corporations. Although personal weapons and armor are allowed for personal defense, the equivalent of modern firearms and greater is tightly controlled. The occasional person may wield a crossbow, but even those archaic ranged weapons are frowned upon.
  
  
  
  Cities that fell during the climate upheavals left places of shelter and life for those strong enough to take it. Much of these places have fallen into complete disrepair and are overgrown with life, only those who know to look can really see. To survive in these places humanity formed into tribes not dissimilar to the dark ages. Major differences being their access to high tech weapons and equipment as they trade with the CorpStates or live off of their spent garbage.
  
  In the wastes beyond civilization lie mutants and radiation zones. Beasts mutated from what was there before and the twisted remains of humanity. Despite these dangers, the wastes hold much of the technology of the old world. These places were once the libraries and strongholds of the old world. Targets of the nuclear strikes hoping to break the backs of some long-forgotten enemy.

Things that made my game better!

If you have been following me for awhile you might have heard me say that I am pretty new to this gaming scene, or more accurately, newly returned. I played AD&D and Red Box D&D back in the 80s followed by Palladium games and finally wargames before I quite in my early 20s to pursue playing in the SCA. Fast forward approximately 20 years, and in my 40s I found myself picking up the torch again and delving back into the depths of the dungeon. Initially coming back to 15mm sci-fi and finally back into the RPG fold with the release of Modiphius's Conan 2d20 system.

Shortly before the release, I made the decision to stop thinking about running a game and I got some friends together and I started GMing a Conan Game. We ran that game monthly for about 2 years, wrapping up the 25th session last week and deciding to move on to John Carter of Mars

In those two years I started over as a new GM with little relevant experience and went forward. Not only have I GMed Conan for the home Group, but I have also GMed Conan at 3 conventions in the last year, with plans on doing another of these games at the end of the month. In addition to GMing I have tried given back to the community through my small youtube channel and blog, where I have numerous tutorials on basic terrain and playing Conan 2d20.

This article is aimed at that new GM that is nervous or unsure about jumping into the ring of running games. My advice is to do it. The only way to get better is to run games. Do not worry though, you aren't alone. The wealth of information out there for the new GM is mindboggling, which brings us to the reason I am writing this article. Who did I find useful? What tools did I find that elevated my game?

Advice

The easiest and least expensive place to find decent advice on running the game is Youtube, and the following list are my favorite channels for GM advice. There are a lot of good RPG channels out there, especially terrain channels, but for actual game advice, these guys have a lot of excellent content

• RuneHammer - One of the best. Great videos on encounter design and basic ideas.
• Matthew Colville - Another indosposable individual on the internet with a great series called, "Running the Game".
• Dungeon Craft - Relatively new to Youtube, a gentleman with some exceptional ideas on streamlining and making your game better.
• How to be a Great Game Master - Another series on how to GM well, with several companion series on How to be a Great Player.

I have also put out a little cash here and there and bought a few books from Drivethru to help me along.

• Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master - Inexpensive, easy to read, lots of good ideas. An essential book for a new GM.
• Index Card RPG Core 2E (ICRPG) - Although a full RPG, the sections in the back on encounter design are awesome.

Tools

• Index Cards from RuneHammer - A series of black and white cards that can be used for locations or inspiration.
• Okum Arts - A wonderful set of printable heros and villians for almost any setting.
• Printable Heroes - IMHO, one of the best paper-mini collections of D&D/Fantasy monsters
• Black Scroll Games - one of the best collections of tiles both virtual and real.

Other Things

• Community - Both virtual and real. People to bounce ideas off of, and get feed back from. Online groups can be excessivley toxis at times, so take your time to lurk and see if the group is correct for you.
• Give Back - Write some articles, make some content. Put your ideas out there and take the feedback you get and make yourself and your ideas better.
• Try again - If you feel you failed. Try again. Talk to your group. See what they might like and don't like about your games.
• Play - Find some games to play in. Don't just GM. Take what you like from games you play in and make it yours.

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! If you have questions or comments don't forget to hit me up on Twitter, Facebook, Youtube or Instagram! 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! (the drivethrurpg.com links in this post are all affiliate links, thank you for your support!) Till next time, don't forget to Keep it Weird!

Conan 2d20: Zones and Ranged Weapons. Do they even make sense??

Without a doubt, the ideas behind ranged weapons in Conan 2d20 feel odd to many people, and flat out make no sense to many others. In most RPGs and wargames ranged weapons generally gain damage and range as they become more powerful. There is little reason to use a lower-end bow when you can use something bigger and better. In D&D 5e we can compare two missile weapons: the hand crossbow and the heavy crossbow.

Name	Damage	Range
Crossbow, hand	1d6 piercing	30/120
Crossbow, heavy	1d10 piercing	100/400

Here we have two similar weapons, but the heavier one shoots much further and packs a larger punch. Both have a basic range and a long-range, but the heavy crossbow has little to no disadvantages, why would you ever pick the hand crossbow?

This increase in specs between ranged weapons to differentiate which is the superior weapon is a common idea we see in wargames and RPGs. It isn't specifically what we see in Conan 2d20 though. In Conan 2d20, the weapons change range based on where they should be used. There may be places you want to use one bow over the other. Let's take a look at the stats between two different bows in Conan.

Name	Damage	Range	Special
Hyrkanian Horse Bow	3 Combat Dice	Close	Volley
Shemite Bow	3 Combat Dice	Long	Volley, Piercing 1

These bows are practicaly identical, with the shemite bow being long range and doing slightly more damage, but in the thick of battle, with enemies closing in fast? The short Hyrkanian Bow is going to be the superior weapon. But why does Conan do this? We will start with a basic idea: within an action scene in Conan, generally, a hero is going to be able to hit someone with a ranged weapon. Even in the above D&D example, the hand crossbow can shoot 20 squares, in most areas that range is not going to be the issue. More often, the line of sight will be the limiting factor, not the weapon's range. So if we decide the weapon's range itself isn't the issue at hand, we can forget about it for right now.

Let us talk about the idea of skill vs weapon. We take two archers and we place them on an archery range. Each shoots arrows at identical targets. Each is equally skilled. One uses a Shemite Bow and one a Hyrkanian Horse Bow. They should both be able to do about as well on our target. Neither is rushed, neither has outside forces acting on them, it is simply a test of skill. An average difficulty test if you will.

Still, we see ranges listed in Conan, even though we just decided that, pretty much, anything you can see is going to be in range. Instead of describing how far a bow can shoot, these ranges describe where the bow will be its most effective. It is used to describe a short bow being more effective in the thick of combat and a longbow working better at targets that are further away.

• Close range: Shooting within the zone. The archer and their target are constantly moving, constantly looking for openings. The archer needs to have a nimble weapon and one that can shoot fast in order to get the shot off when they need to.
• Medium Range: Shooting into the next zone. It is possible the archer and the target are in motion within their zones, moving for position against others in their zone, but we can generally assume that since the target and the shooter are further away, the shooter has a little more time to aim and isn't as hampered by the size of the weapon.
• Long Range: Shooting two zones away. The distance starts to be a factor at these ranges, and weapons that excel at close ranges become more difficult to use accurately.

Reasons For Effective Ranges
The Hyrkanian Horsebow. Listed as Close-range, we have a bow that excels at close combat. It is small and can be fired quickly, but the short limbs tend to make it a little less accurate compared to it's larger brethren, this is magnified by the high pace within an action scene. Shooting out to the longer ranges simply takes a more skilled archer, especially under the pressure of combat.
The Shemite bow. Listed as Long-range, the bow is huge and stable upon release allowing its missiles to land more accurately at longer ranges, but up close in the thick of the action, its size simply gets in the way and makes it harder to shoot.

Mechanically this is represented by a bow having no difficulty modifier added to the skill test at its optimal range, and a +1 is added to it as we move away from that optimal range, in either direction. So at Close Range (In the same zone) the Hyrkanian Horsebow is going to shoot at a difficulty of 1 (assuming a base difficulty of 1), while the Long Range Shemite bow is going to suffer a +2 to the skill test, Long -> Medium -> Close, making it a difficulty of 3. If there are environmental concerns like rain or darkness, it just makes everything more difficult.

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!

If you have questions or comments don't forget to hit me up on Twitter, Facebook, Youtube or Instagram!

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!

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

Barbaric Future. A Role Playing Setting.

There are a few things in my mind that make Conan, Conan. These things need to be there or we are simply going to get barbarians with laser swords, and that is not the aim of this project.

There are two things that I believe absolutely need to be involved in this setting.

• Barbarism vs Civilization
• Rise and fall, cyclical nature of the rise and fall of society and civilization

Cyclical Nature and the Hyborian Essay

Robert E Howard wrote a short essay titled, "The Hyborian Age". In it, he outlines his world. The rise and fall of civilizations, cataclysms, the migration of the people and the evolution and devolution of mankind. It ends with Howard telling us that the people that populate the world today can trace their origins far older than they know, back to the Hyborian Age.

The ancient Sumerians had no connection with the western race. They were a mixed people, of Hyrkanian and Shemitish bloods, who were not taken with the conquerors in their retreat. Many tribes of Shem escaped that captivity, and from pure-blooded Shemites, or Shemites mixed with Hyborian or Nordic blood, were descended the Arabs, Israelites, and other straighter-featured Semites. The Canaanites, or Alpine Semites, traced their descent from Shemitish ancestors mixed with the Kushites settled among them by their Hyrkanian masters; the Elamites were a typical race of this type. The short, thick-limbed Etruscans, base of the Roman race, were descendants of a people of mixed Stygian, Hyrkanian and Pictish strains, and originally lived in the ancient kingdom of Koth. The Hyrkanians, retreating to the eastern shores of the continent, evolved into the tribes later known as Tatars, Huns, Mongols and Turks. The origins of other races of the modern world may be similarly traced; in almost every case, older far than they realize, their history stretches back into the mists of the forgotten Hyborian age... The Hyborian Age -Robert E. Howard

Barbarism vs Civilization

It is well known that Howard had no love for modern civilization. He saw it as broken and corrupt and felt a kinship to those who came before. He had a special affinity for the medieval Irish, and so it is no surprise that Conan was his ultimate hero in many ways. Several of his writings talk about the evils of boomtowns. How the rise of civilization and money where he lived bred corruption and evil deeds.

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 Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing. -Robert E. Howard Tower of the Elephant

Barbaric Future

So with these two basic tenants in mind, I present the initial stages of the world I imagine...

Thousands of years into the future the initiative of humanity has continued to carry the species forward. Technology has continued to progress, new ideas in genetics, energy, materials, and computing have formed new weapons, new armor and in some cases new people. Despite the massive abilities and technological advances of mankind, we largely remain confined to our world. We have lifted ourselves into orbit and explored much of our solar system through drones and a few manned missions, but Earth remains our home and efficient space travel still eludes us. War remains a reality and several massive conflicts have been engaged in between then and now. Some conventional, some small scale nuclear. Our world has seen the rise of capitalism and the formation of great corporations. It has also seen the governments of nations fall and these new centers of power rise to fill the void. Now the world is dotted by the Corporate States, rife with corruption and greed. Each maintains a stranglehold on their populations through information censorship and military power. They lie in the temperate zones of the Earth, places less likely to be touched by disaster or rising sea levels. Places untouched by radiation and devastation of ancient nuclear conflict. In the places abandoned by the Corporate States live tribes of humans. These people live a more primitive and savage life, sometimes using the discarded junk from the Corporate States, sometimes living in the skeletons of long-abandoned cities, using older technology and still others existing alongside nature. In the wildest places, the far frozen places, the places rife with disease, the irradiated places, live others who have reverted to a more bestial state, over uncounted generations, they have devolved into a beast that is more ape than man, still clever and cunning and still able to use primitive weapons.

---

Corporate States

With a basic idea we can go forward and flesh out our three zones of humanity with a few key points about each area.

• Very high tech. AI, Robots etc.
• Clean.
• State controlled.
• Isolated.
• Crime & Corruption.
• Cybernetics.
• Genetic enhancement.
• Fusion power.
• Projectile & Beam weapons are outlawed.

---

Tribes of the Free

• Generally lower technology.
• Almost post apocalyptic in some places.
• Savages, Barbarians and Canibals.
• Primitive religions.
• Knowledge of the old worlds. Libraries of books, paper and digital.
• Solar, wind, hydro power.
• Ruins.

---

Savage Wastes

• Potential high radiation.
• Mutant humans.
• Mutant beasts.
• Ruins.
• Lost technologies.

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!

If you have questions or comments don't forget to hit me up on Twitter, Facebook, Youtube or Instagram!

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!

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

Conan 2099: The FUTURE!: An Initial idea.

Yesterday as I hopped around the internet this came across my feed...

Apparently, Marvel is looking to add a few characters to their 2099 universe in celebration of 80 years. Conan has been chosen along with a few other characters, such as The Punisher and the Fantastic Four to be full-fledged 2099 one-shots. We will then see the universe show up among regular titles as well. However, we are here to talk about the Cimmerian.

Upon seeing it I chuckled and thought of all the people who would lose their minds as Marvel completed a whole new twist on the character. That is not what this blog post is about. It is about my second thought, "I want to play this!", this would be a super fun setting for an RPG game! First I have no clue about Marvel 2099, so we will just drop that as the rosetta stone of the setting. Instead, we will use our own ideas and inspirations from my own head as well as ideas liberally inspired by other settings.

I thought it might be fun to do a series of blog posts on building this setting and the reasons for choices I might make. To start the series I figured it would be good to introduce the idea in this post and outline some questions and ideas I will fill in as I continue with the series, eventually arriving at a rule system and any other material I might need to play the system, such as setting descriptions, main antagonists, gear and equipment, etc.

Let's start with a list of ideas from the covers of the book.

• High tech
• Not post apocalyptic
• Laser sword
• flying cars
• high tech armor or cybernetics?

Some other ideas we need to incorporate.

• Barbarism vs Civilization
• Magic/sorcery
• Short tales
• Earth
• Why swords? Do we still use guns?

Finally where can we take some ideas from, I have brainstormed these settings and ideas myself or from online input from others.

• Thundarr
• He-man
• John Carter
• Bladerunner
• Shadowrun
• Starwars
• 2099

As I go forward with this I realize I need a system to enact this idea.

• ICRPG
• Genesys
• Modern Age
• Savage Worlds

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!

If you have questions or comments don't forget to hit me up on Twitter, Facebook, Youtube or Instagram!

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!

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

Narrative Terrain Decks.

At the beginning of the year I played a game of Primeval THULE via the Genesys system. During this game we had to make a daring escape, which involved cards drawn and skill checks made. That day is the direct inspiration for these terrain decks.

I worked on the idea and tried it for the first time at the Calgary Expo during my two Conan 2d20 games. The prototype, as you can see, isn't nearly as polished as the current offering. The decks changed from the basic idea to the current idea between day 1 and day 2 at the convention. Those cards would eventually become the "Weird Wood" deck. Since then I have created a desert deck, a cave deck, a passageway deck and a cliff climb. The cliff climb was my second attempt at a deck and I used to for my home players scaling a cliff, where they had a standard room encounter before finding their way into a set of caves which used another cave deck.

But why these decks over a more normal exploration system with a grid or a hex map? The two biggest reasons are player engagement and prep time.

Often some players are left in the back and don't get to contribute as much as the others, sometimes they roll less dice and this often can translate to less fun for them. The second reason is prep time and these cards require almost none. At most you might need a list of monster stats that players may or may not end up fighting in the dark passages or twisted forest.

The Decks

Generally the decks contain about 36 cards in total. 5 of these are the reference cards and the remaining cards are split between terrain and encounters.

• Reference Cards - Basic instructions, sample monster ideas, sample cards.
• Terrain Cards - Each card shows a picture of terrain as well as a skill.
• Encounter Cards - Each card shows a skill or fight that must be overcome before continuing.

An Introduction to the Cards

	Terrain Card Picture of the area the players are crossing. Strictly aesthetic. A good place to place a chit or a d6 to record the difficulty of the card. The default skill a player can use to cross the area. Use the cards base difficulty. When using another skill, add this modifier to the difficulty before making the test.
	Encounter Card: Obstable Description of the obstacle and skill used to pass it. Difficulty of the skill check. Cost of skipping the skill check in doom. Damage a player suffers for failing the skill check.
	Encounter Card: Fight Description of where the fight takes place. Base difficulty for physical attacks in the area.

Using the Decks

Step 1: Set aside the reference cards and split the deck into encounter and terrain decks. Determine the total momentum required to proceed through the terrain, this should be 1 per player at minimum.
Step 2: Shuffle the decks and place them in a convenient place.
Step 3: Draw a Terrain card and place it face-up on the table. Place a D6 or similar in the corner showing the "1", to symbolize a D1 skill test.
Step 4: A player either attempts the skill test listed on the card or chooses another skill test at a +1 or +2 difficulty modifier, depending on the card.
Step 5: Whichever skill the player uses, they must be able to narratively describe how it helps the party move through the card.
Step 6: Assuming success, place a momentum marker on the successful card. Place another terrain card above the first and increase the D6 by 1. ie a 1 becomes a 2. Any excess momentum can be stored in the pool as normal.
Step 7: Repeat the process increasing the difficulty until enough momentum is generated to move the players through the terrain. Each terrain card must be attempted by a new player until everyone has gone, then the process repeats.
Step 8: On a failure draw an encounter card and place the card beside the failed terrain card.
Sept 9: On a skill encounter each player individually attempts to succeed and move past the obstacle. On failure, they can pay the listed doom, or take the listed damage.
Step 10: On a fight encounter describe the terrain listed on the card and the base difficulty the players face. Run a simple combat encounter.
Step 11: Once the encounter card is complete place a new terrain card above it and reset the difficulty counter to 1, repeat steps 3-11 until the players are through the terrain.

NOTE: I don't specifically mention what to do with a complication. I believe they should be open-ended and make things interesting. That being said a simple idea is to draw an encounter card and have the player that rolled the complication resolve it, or the group if you get a monster card. Once complete place the next terrain card down and do not reset the difficulty counter.
*NOTE: The trek through the terrain should be viewed as a single scene giving the players no downtime. They should be weakened and haggard when they come out...iF they come out.

A Sample Play Through

We will assume our party of 4 adventurers need to find something within a dark and twisting forest. We set the number of successes they need to 4, one for each player.

	Card 1: Terrain Card, Difficulty 1 Balor chooses to go first. He chooses to use his Survival skill instead The difficulty becomes 2, as this falls under the "Other" Skill. Balor says, "As we enter the dark forest I look around and try and see an open area to lead the party into the darkness." He rolls 1 and a 15, and gains two successes. The party moves deeper into the woods.
	Card 2: Terrain Card, Difficulty 2 Dorian takes up the lead. He chooses to use his Observation skill instead This is the cards default skill, so the difficulty remains 2. Dorian says, "Continuing into the darkness, I try and build on the path Dorian has found by looking for the signs of animals passing this way, indicating a path to something....." Dorian also chooses to use a bonus die and so rolls 3d20 (Either through Momentum or Doom) He rolls 11, a 12 and a 15, and gains two successes. The party moves deeper into the woods.
	Card 3: Terrain Card, Difficulty 3 Sarina takes up the lead. She notes acrobatics is not her strong skill and so attempts to use her Lore skill Lore is again a +1 difficulty since it is not the default skill. Sarina says, "Using my knowledge of the area and how trees grow from within my vast store of natural world knowledge I take note of the moss on the trees and use it to gain a direction and guide us further into the forest." Sarina knows this will be a hard roll and so chooses to add 2 dice to her pool, rolling 4d20 She rolls 11, a 3, an 18 and a 15, and gains three successes. Her failed roll leads the party astray......
	Card 4: Encounter Card, Cliff Climb The party's path leads them to a sheer, scalable cliff in the forest. The only way forward is to climb.... It is a simple D1 Athletics check. Balor, Nualla and Dorian all choose to make the check and easily scale the cliff. Sarina being less confident in her atheletics skill, chooses to pay the doom cost to join her companions at the top.
	Card 5: Terrain Card, Difficulty 1 Nualla is the last party member to contribute to finding their way through, so it is her turn. She chooses to use her resistance skill, so the test remains at a D1 Nualla says, "As we move beyond the cliff the insects begin to increase in numbers causing us to be maddened by their constant annoyance. I manage to push through the host of insects....." Nualla rolls a 4 and a 20. A success and a complication..... The party gains another success but is ambushed by a group of wolves.
	Card 6: Encounter Card, Monsters! Due to Nualla's complication, the party is set upon by a group of wolves! Note that the battle takes place in a thicket making the base combat difficulty a 2. After taking some scratches the party defeats the wolves and presses on into the darkness, sensing they must be close to their goal!
	Card 7: Terrain Card, Difficulty 2 We don't reset the difficulty as the encounter card was a complication, not a failure. As the whole party has contributed we reset and choose someone else to start again. Sarina using her keen sense of observation, at a difficulty of 2 tries to lead them to their goal. Sarina says, "Excitedly I point into the trees and say, "Look I can see it through that break in the trees!" She rolls a 5 and an 11, succeeding. Finally, after the long trek through the forest, the party emerges at their goal......

And finally we see the final layout, and which cards gave the characters their successes.

As you can see we can create a large variety of terrain maps that are engaging on a role playing level as well as on a visual level with next to no prep from the GM. If you like these you can grab a set of cards over at the Game Crafter for about $10USD.

• The Weird Wood
• Deserts of Doom
• Meandering Maze - Coming Soon

You can also get a set of counters that include numbers which can be used for difficulty markers.

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!

If you have questions or comments don't forget to hit me up on Twitter, Facebook, Youtube or Instagram!

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!

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