Cyberpunk Red Jumpstart Kit: A Review

Editing Note: As I prepare to smash the publish button in blogger, I realized that I didn’t quite say everything that I wanted to say. There is so much more to this Cyberpunk Red world and this article is already twice as long as I would prefer. I’ll definitely have to continue my thoughts on this in another post. Thanks for reading and I look forward to your thoughts and comments.

Where do I start Choomba? I suppose the first thing I should mention is my disclaimer. Cyberpunk is not a genera I’m completely familiar with. I’ve read most of Cyberpunk 2020. and Neuromancer by Gibson and have a few other books in my que to read. I’ve played a few games of Shadowrun and watched Johnny Mnemonic, both Blade Runner movies, and a few other not so cyberpunk movies. I've never played any Cyberpunk games by R.Talsorian Games Inc. With this in mind I’d say its fair for me to be impartial between the different versions of Cyberpunk out there.

First off, I have to say that the production value of the Jumpstart Kit is phenomenal. High quality printed materiel and dice are included in the physical box. The current cost of the physical box is $30 plus tax and shipping but if you’re a digital fan or just want to print it yourself, it can be had for $15 over on DriveThruRPG. So head on over to your closest Vendit machine and get you some cyber mods for your VR system.

Before I received the jumpstart kit, I took some time to get familiar with Cyberpunk 2020. I briefly read through the RPG and watched some actual plays to get familiar with the system. My first impression was that it’s a bit clunky and slow, especially for combat. There weren’t any game sessions that used Netrunners so that tells me the rules for that aspect of the game is probably not that great unless the whole party consists of Netrunners.

Once the box arrived, I practically devoured its contents over the weekend. The box contains a 44-page rulebook, a 52-page worldbook, a folded 11x17 quick reference sheet, two 11x17 double sided maps, 6 pregenerated character sheets, a card stock sheet with 19 standees and 4 vehicles, some plastic stands for the standees, and a set of dice (2d10 and 4d6). Everything in the box looks amazing with the only caveat being the 2d10 dice. Those d10’s are almost unusable. You have to pay extra special attention to the orientation of the dice to know if you rolled a 6 or a 9. They certainly can’t be used to roll d100 because both d10’s look exactly the same. Normally you would either use two different colors to denote the ones position and the tens position, or one of the dice would have 00-09 to denote the tens position.

By now you might be wondering what is Cyberpunk Red? This version of Cyberpunk takes place in the year 2045. It’s essentially the in-between for Cyberpunk 2020 and Cyberpunk 2077. Cyberpunk 2020 is the previous tabletop RPG and Cyberpunk 2077 is the upcoming videogame RPG. The premise behind Red is that during the roaring 20’s, two smaller Megacorps went to war with each other trying to scoop up the resources of another bankrupted Megacorp. Well, these smaller corpo’s aligned themselves with some bigger fish that you might have heard of. One sided with the American based Militech Megacorp, while the other was backed by Arasaka. This in turn was the start of the 4^th corporate war. Then came the bombing of the Arasaka towers in Night City. In 2023 a small nuclear bomb was detonated on the upper floors of the towers. Some blame Militech for the disaster while others say Arasaka detonated their own towers to maintain cyber security of their headquarters in Japan. It really doesn’t matter who set off the nuke. What matters is what happens next.

Nuclear fallout occurs for the next couple of years. The detonation at higher elevation flattened the central part of the city but most of Night City was spared total destruction. Then the US president stepped in and immediately nationalized the Militech corporation, effectively seizing the company and its assets under the auspiciousness of ending the global conflict. She then banned Arasaka from operating on US soil. The particulates from the nuclear explosion are floating in the air for the next couple of years giving the sky a permanent red hue. Even still today in 2045 the sky shines red during sunrise and sunset.

I must say, I thoroughly enjoyed reading the world lore of Cyberpunk Red. It evoked many images to pop up in my head but at the same time I felt a bit confused. You see, I always thought of cyberpunk as a bunch of 80’s punk rockers with cyberware all over their body who had a nihilistic approach to life. To me, its about living in the apocalypse and the goal isn’t to save humanity, it’s about saving yourself. There are two groups of people, the rich and the poor. There’s no in-between. The poor scumbags of the city will do just about anything to get ahead and become one of the wealthy. It’s a story about the anti-heroes. The whole time I was reading Red, I kept thinking to myself this is way different than what I imagined. Red seems to be about rebuilding the city and surviving the post apocalypse. Then I look at the images in the books and am quickly reminded that no its not about post apocalypse. It just feels that way to me for some unknown reason.

 Although the corporations are still around, they aren’t as omnipotent as they were in 2020. The corporations used to control the city council but not so much anymore. The current Night City council is composed of Nomad families, Edgerunner factions, old city government, and a few corporations. Many of the city inhabitants live in apartment megablocs. Much like what you’d see in Judge Dredd. Store fronts are practically nonexistent with your shopping needs met by Vendit machines and your personal Agent (interactive PDA/cellphone). You need some new cyberware or perhaps just an upgrade installed? Time to head over to your favorite Ripperdoc. They can provide you with any of the legal items and cosmetic enhancements. If it’s illegal weaponry you’re after then you better have a good Fixer. They’re the ones who can point you to the Night Market.

Night City is broken up into 5 distinct areas with each one having its own ecology. The Hot Zone Wasteland is what used to be the central corporate zone of Night City (ground zero of the Arasaka towers bomb). The Rebuilding Urban Center Zone is the area immediately surrounding the hot zone that survived the blast. The Overpacked Suburbs Zone is what used to be the outer ring of old Night City (the safe suburbs where the corpo’s used to live). The Reclaimed Perimeter Zone is what used to be abandoned ghost towns of old Night City. Last but not least is The Open Road Zone. Here is the Mad Max area of the game. It is routinely patrolled by pack of Nomads to help keep it a little safer. If you venture out here you better be in a Nomad caravan.

This review is getting rather lengthy so I’m gonna wrap it up. There’s tons more to delve into but I need to talk about the system mechanics and give my overall thoughts. Cyberpunk 2020 used the Interlock system and Red is so similar that I assume its still the same system. They’ve tweaked certain mechanics in Red so I’m not sure. The overall mechanic is easy if you’ve ever played D&D. Its STAT+SKILL+d10 versus a difficulty value (DV) set by the GM. At first glance this seems fairly easy but from what I’ve seen of actual plays, it drastically slows down a game that should be more cinematic in my mind. Characters and NPC’s can have a health value of up to 50 hit points. This means combats are long and drawn out. It’s very similar to mid-level games of D&D in this respect. The attrition based systems are antiquated at best and not all that great.

This is why I’m going to abandon the Cyberpunk Red mechanics in favor of Savage Worlds. I think this game has tons of potential but not with the Interlock System. It’s also worth noting that Red attempts to fix the Netrunning rules by partially dismantling the NET. Yes, the NET is still around but it’s not global anymore. They are more like LAN’s now and the Netrunner has to get their butts off the couch to join the team in meatspace. One more thing to keep in mind is that these are Jumpstart rules. It’s not the full ruleset and this product seems to focus mostly on the world lore and Netrunning mechanics.

I will definitely buy the full rulebook of Cyberpunk Red when it’s released. If for nothing more than inspiration to run my own Savage Worlds Cyberpunk game. I must admit that I’m not opposed to the Interlock System at all. If someone invited me to play in a game of Cyberpunk 2020 or Red, I’d be all over it. For now though I’d still give this product 4 out of 5 eddies. If someone asked me if I’d buy it again, I’d say absolutely! It’s an excellent product. It’s not quite as good as FFG’s starter sets but that’s the gold standard in my opinion. See you on the flipside Choombata’s.

P.S. – I nearly forgot to mention that on Veteran’s Day weekend in the US, the Nerds-International group is holding an online convention open to the public November 8th-11th. We need more players and GM’s. If you’re interested in playing some Savage Cyberpunk with me then head on over to the sign up page at https://piersonjaime.wixsite.com/nivcon If there is enough interest in my game then I could be convinced to run another game on Sunday morning.

P.P.S. – I’d like to give a shout out to the 3 T RPG Podcast. My buddies Harrison and Nikk are very talented podcasters with a hilariously informative production. They have DCC actual plays and talk about all kinds of RPG’s.

Nerds-International MeWe community

Can you hear the Lamentations?

As I’ve been getting into the OSR scene, I noticed that there was some controversy over a game called Lamentations of the Flame Princess. To be honest, at first I made a snap judgement that this game was not for me as it appeared to be predisposed to an attempt to shock the readers with graphic images. I had only read a few posts on a forum up to this point so when I saw the book in my FLGS I picked it up to look at it. I put it right back down into the bin because I saw a $25 price tag on this thin little book. I know, the cost shouldn’t have been a factor and I know several publishers that would scold me for making this statement but I’m being honest here. That thought made me think twice about it and picked it back up before I was heading out the door. As I flipped through the book, I was astounded by the amazing artwork and construction quality of the book.

Even though this book is 176 pages, its A5 size and page thickness made it look like a puny little thing. I think this is where my cost vs. matter kicked in and I bought it. This book is a hardcover with a smyth sewn binding that lays flat easily and every part of the book is expertly utilized. The inside front and back covers have charts and tables that continue on to the flyleaf and include artwork on the normally blank backside. The quality of this book is A+ top notch. My only wish would be to have a ribbon bookmark included. To me this would set it apart from the rest of the competition. Well, that and an edge index. Speaking of an index, this book is missing one. Not to fret though, the table of contents is very thorough.

As soon as I got home, I started reading this gem. Right away, I noticed that there wasn’t any kind of theme or background info included. Before I continued reading, I needed to do some more research. That means trying to find interviews of the author James Edward Raggi IV. What I found out is that the overall feel of the game was intended to be a weird horror set in the real world 17^th century Earth. When I heard that, I was like oh, ok, that makes sense now and the choice of art throughout the book resembles that. I think the fact that there isn’t a setting included in the book is a good selling point for me. This is the rules and magic book and the lack of a setting allows me to use this in any setting I desire.

Also of note is that the support materiel for Lamentations of the Flame Princess (LotFP) is not a unified product line. This is much like Savage Worlds in the fact that new supplements don’t use the same setting and are vastly different. For more information on this go to the LotFP webpage ABOUT tab or just click on the hyperlink. As far as I can tell, LotFP is based off the D&D B/X rules with his own twists included. For more information on B/X, see my previous post. It should also be noted that I saw recommendations on line to be a little familiar with the B/X rules because it would help me to understand the LotFP rules better. I decided to forego this advice because I wanted to see how well the book stands alone on its own.

Back to the book. The first criticism I have that jumped out at me were the page numbers. Say what? What do you mean the page numbers? I know that seems like such a trivial thing to criticize but it really, really, irritates the shit out of me. The book has two different locations on the page where the numbers can be located. On most pages they are on the top outer edge. At the start of a new section they are at the bottom center of the page. Then you have instances where the pages don’t even have numbers on them. Why did this irritate me so much? It’s because every time I flipped through the book to find a certain page number I didn’t know where to look. Scanning the page to find the number makes me feel lost. Sometimes I even had to count pages backwards to find the right page.

LotFP character creation is straightforward and shouldn’t surprise anyone. They did change the Thief class to a Specialist and allow the Specialist to start with points to use for improving skills. All classes start with a 1 in 6 chance for all skills. Some classes like the Dwarf will increase a skill. Yes, they are still using race as class in this game. Even though the game is intended to be real world 17^th century Earth, he included Dwarf, Elf, and Halfling classes. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of the race as class of D&D old but you can remove it or ban its use if you want to in your game. There also appears to be a typo in the description of the Specialist on page 17. It lists the skills and that everyone starts at 1 in 6 but they omitted the 1 in 6 next to the sneak attack skill. This did confuse me a bit at first but luckily, there is an excellent cheat sheet for character creation in the back of the book on pages 166-167. This cheat sheet is invaluable. If you’re starting a game up, I suggest you copy these two pages and give them to each player.

My next bout of confusion comes on page 35. Here we see rules on some hazards such as ability score loss, aging, and diseases. My problem comes from the table in the upper right corner of the page. Here we see a chart that references the aging rules, which could be important if magical effects cause a character to age rapidly. The chart gives the starting age that a character must make a saving throw versus Paralyzation, at what age there are penalties, and how often they are made. The table has all the information except that the interval, or how often to make a save, is just a number. It doesn’t tell me what the number means. Am I supposed to have the player make the save every round, every day, or every year? I suppose I’d just make something up during the game but I would expect this to be defined in the rules.

This next little bit is a slight departure from the old skool D&D, at least I think so anyway (I’m probably wrong). Character death doesn’t occur at 0 HP. Instead, you are unconscious at 0. When your character reaches -3 HP, it is mortally wounded and will die in 1d10 minutes. If your character reaches -4 HP it is dead, dead, dead. Another great little feature is the language skill. Even if your character doesn’t have a known language listed on the sheet, you can always roll to see if you understand it. There is a 1 in 6 chance your character can understand a foreign language. This roll is also affected by the characters Intelligence modifier. A +1 Int modifier means that your character has a 2 in 6 chance of understanding the language.

I’m not going to go into detail on all of them but there are a total of 9 skills available for everyone to use. They are Architecture, Bushcraft, Climb, Languages, Search, Sleight of Hand, Sneak Attack, Stealth, and Tinker. Tinkering is important for the specialist because this is what is used to disarm traps and unlock doors. There is a caveat of course, the character must be able to see the device they are trying to disarm or unlock. Things like a pressure plate can’t be disarmed because the only way to see the mechanism is to activate the trap. “A character gets one attempt to use Tinkering on any particular object. If that one attempt fails, the character must gain a level before attempting to manipulate that object again.”

It’s refreshing to see that I’m not the only one who wants maritime rules in their game and Mr. Raggi does too. Next up is a four-page spread on Maritime Adventure rules that start on page 43. Here we have ship stats, water conditions, manning the ships, and encounters at sea. Encounters at sea include chases, ship-to-ship combat, ramming, and boarding. It’s in the ramming rules where I came upon another oversight. The ramming rules are separated into two categories, small and large ships. The problem is that these categories aren’t defined. I didn’t see anywhere, where he says these ships are small and these ships are large. This is important because smaller ships do less damage than larger ships when ramming. If I had to make a judgement call on the spot, I’d say ships that require a crew of 20 or less are considered small but that’s just my opinion and others may say that 75 or less is small.

It wouldn’t be D&D B/X if we didn’t have retainers, or cannon fodder as it’s more commonly known as. LotFP has five pages of retainers including a chart on the first page followed by a short description of each type. There are 27 different retainers detailed here and their loyalty/morale rules confused me a bit here as well. This confusion was short lived though as I kept reading these particular rules were better defined nine pages later. I’m not really sure why people do this because this happens more that you’d think. It’s kinda like acronyms, first you define the acronym then you can use it. Same goes for rules. First defined the rules then reference back to them later.

Following the Retainer section is one on property and financial investment. This is an interesting idea to include in the rules but these really should have been put in the appendix. Even though they seem fun, they would rarely be used. Characters with a substantial amount of disposable wealth can buy properties and make investments that will have an annual return/loss. With the roll to see how it turns out only happening annually in game, I would certainly forget about it and would rely on the player remembering for me.

Next up are some encounter rules. Again, I haven’t brushed up on the B/X rules so if this is standard fare forgive me. Spell casters in particular will have a slight problem if they plan to cast anything in combat. Casting the spell takes an entire round and the caster can’t move. Then at the start of the next round, before initiative, the spell activates (unless the spell is labeled as instantaneous, then it goes off immediately). This only works if the spell caster doesn’t take any damage during the round of combat, as this will negate the spell. Does it use up the spell slot if my caster took damage during the attempt? I don’t know the answer to that one. As a referee, I’d say no.

Oh, and firing missile weapons into a melee combat with your friends is an easy way to gain more enemies. Everybody in the melee has a chance to be hit by the missile. The referee randomly assigns a number to each combatant and rolls a d6 to see who is hit. If the shooter takes a full round to aim then the enemy combatant counts as two people for the purposes of determining who gets hit. I’m pretty sure this rule is in B/X.

The oil and fire rules seem a little too conditional to me. When you throw a lit oil flask and hit the opponent, you roll 1d4 damage. If you rolled a 4 for damage then the enemy has to make a Breath Weapon saving throw. If the saving throw fails then the victim must take an additional 1d4 damage on his next action. If this comes up a 4 again, they are engulfed in flames taking 1d8 damage every round thereafter.

After the eight pages of full color, full-page illustrations, we come to the start of the magic section. Just like the rest of the book, those color illustrations are fabulous by the way. The magic section pretty much rounds up the rest of the book except for the appendix. First up are the Clerics, they can cast any spell on their spell list and don’t use spell books. A first level Cleric can cast any 1^st level spell. Each day they must pray for their divine powers at a rate of 1 hour per casting level (otherwise known as memorizing spells). Once they cast a spell, it is lost from memory and must re-memorize it.

Magic-Users start with 4 spells in their spellbook, which are Read Magic and 3 more randomly selected (roll a d20 three times) first level spells. Elves start with only Read Magic in their spellbook. Just like the Cleric, Magic-Users must prepare their spells. They must study their spellbook for 1 hour per casting level at which time they have memorized their spells for the day. Again, once the spell is cast, it no longer is available for use until re-memorized the next day.

These magic rules effectively make casters useless for the first few levels. 1^st level is 1 spell slot, 2^nd level is 2 spell slots, and so on. This really sucks and it would pretty much make the supplement Vaginas Are Magic (VAM) a requirement in my game. VAM allows casters to use unprepared spells even if they are out of spell slots for the day. This comes a risk though. Hence, Risky Casting, the caster must make a Magic saving throw or suffer random consequences. The rest of the magic section is dedicated to the spell lists and descriptions of the spells. I’m not going to cover those but there are some really fun ones like summon. You never know what you’re going to summon or if you’ll even be in control once it gets here.

The last section of the book is the appendix, which contains a glossary, an 8-page section on firearm rules, and the character creation cheat sheet. I’m glad the firearm section was moved to the appendix. That makes if feel more like optional rules than if they were in the main rules section. No, there aren’t any modern firearms included. They’re all of the muzzle loading variety.

Would I recommend this book to anyone? Absolutely! The production value of the book alone makes the price worth the purchase. The pdf is thoroughly bookmarked and easy to navigate. With a digital edition only costing $5, I say you should not be without it. There are some minor issues I have with it but I can overlook them. The writing is concise and easy to understand. It adds more crunch than the White Box Fantastic Medieval Adventure Game (WBFMAG), but that is to be expected since they are based on different versions of D&D. I would say LotFP could almost be my favorite OSR version. That spot still belongs to WBFMAG. There are some free supplements on the LotFP webpage, which I suggest you grab if you’re interested in this game. There are two I suggest at a minimum; the old Grindhouse Edition LotFP Referee Book and Vaginas are Magic.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Weird on the Waves, a LotFP supplement book by Kiel Chenier. He is currently taking pre orders for his weird sea adventuring rules which sound like fun. As far as I know, he’s only planning on releasing a digital version which only costs $5.99.

Be sure to head over to the Nerds-International Google + community and don't forget about NIV Con on September 15th and 16th. You don't need to be a member to sign up to run or play in games. So head on over to the sign up page here. I look forward to hearing some new voices or even seeing new faces during the online convention.

Oh, and one more announcement. Come join the Nerds-International at Con on the Cob this year. It’s in Richfield OH, at the Days Inn & Suites. We will be in the Atrium by the pool. I’ll be running an OSR game on Thursday afternoon and a yet to be determined game on Friday morning. Both of my games are off the books so come over, say hello, and join us in some fun games.

Nerds-International Google+ community page

Back in the O.S.S.R.

Hey everybody, it's been awhile since my last blog post. I've had lots of ideas for new blog posts but my interests have been shifting gears all over the place for the last couple of months and I hadn't been able to focus on the blog. First off, my blog had its one-year birthday back in March and I was going to do a contest give away to celebrate but it slipped past so quickly and never got around to it. So keep an eye out for that because it's coming real soon.

Hang on a sec, I gotta go look through my G+ feed to see everything I was doing 9 weeks ago.

Ok, I'm back. Some of the blog ideas I had in mind are Dark Places & Demogorgons from Bloat Games, The Fall of Delta Green from Pelgrane Press, White Box Fantastic Medieval Adventure Game by Seattle Hill Games, Leagues of Gothic Horror by Triple Ace Games, Saga of the Goblin Horde: Countdown deck from Zadmar Games, White Star: Galaxy Edition and The Hero's Journey Fantasy Roleplaying from Barrel Rider Games, Wrath and Glory from Ulisses Spiele, Cartoon Action Hour from Spectrum Games, For Coin & Blood from Gallant Knight Games, Astonishing Swordsmen And Sorcerers Of Hyperborea from North Wind Adventures, The Pirates Guide to Freeport from Green Ronin, I was a guest on the Finding the Narrative podcast, I also worked with Pete Spahn on a GM aide for WWII: Operation Whitebox, and I did some cartography for the Undead Island module from Cyclops Games.

Whew, as you can see I was all over the place the last two months. If you couldn't tell from the blog title, I've been looking at OSR games more frequently over the past couple of months (if that title doesn't make you think of the Beatles then you're lame brah!) For those that don't know, OSR stands for Old School Renaissance, Old School Revival, or Old School Roleplaying depending on who you talk to. This is an idea of going back to the roots of fantasy role playing. As I delved deeper into OSR I learned that I've played some of these games not realizing they were categorized as OSR. Particularly a game I ran for close to a year falls into this category. Castles & Crusades, which I've blogged about in the past uses the SIEGE Engine mechanic. Another OSR game I've wanted to play but never did was Swords & Wizardry (S&W). Instead I "borrowed" lots of S&W content to use in my C&C game. The great thing about OSR is that most if not all of the modules and creatures are cross compatible.

Hmmm. I think this is going to be a rather lengthy post.

As I was looking more into these OSR games I started wondering what is so different from one to the next. Do I need OSRIC (Old School Reference and Index Compilation), Labyrinth Lord, S&W, C&C, White Box, AD&D, or any of the other retro-clones out there? For those that haven't looked into it, there is a big list of games out there. So, what’s the difference between them? Basically, what it comes down to is which one suits you best. Each one is attempting to clone the best parts of some version of D&D and insert their own "house rules".

In order to figure out what the retro-clones are trying to emulate, we must first look at the progression of the D&D books. First there was Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. They wrote the original 3 Dungeons & Dragons volumes (OD&D) or white box as it is commonly referred to. Then that was followed up with 5 supplements. These OD&D supplements are Greyhawk, Blackmoor, Eldritch Wizardry, Gods Demi-Gods and Heroes, and Swords & Spells.

Next up is the Basic Set. This particular set gets a little confusing as there were multiple versions released. The first version of Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set is written by John Holmes, a few years later Tom Moldvay writes one. Around the same time as Moldvay, David Cook comes along and authors the Expert Set. This is commonly called B/X (Moldvay Basic/Cook Expert). A couple of years later Frank Mentzer comes out and writes a whole slew of stuff. First, he writes the Basic Set (commonly called the Red Box), then he writes the Expert Set, the Companion Set, the Master Rules, and the Immortal Rules. These 5 items from Frank Mentzer are commonly referred to as BECMI.

At the same time the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set was released, TSR also carried a second line of D&D. This was called Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D). AD&D had many books and supplements from 1977 on through to 1988. In 1989 Advance Dungeons & Dragons Second Edition is released. Then in 2000, the 3rd edition comes out closely followed by v3.5 which lasted until the 4th edition is released in 2008. That finally brings us to the current 5th edition released in 2013.

I know, it’s all very confusing when talking about the early versions of D&D but hopefully this has helped someone figure out what the folks in the OSR community are talking about.

Now we can start looking at some of the books in question. I don't own OSRIC or Labyrinth Lord so I can't really comment on them but from what I understand, OSRIC is most like AD&D (1st edition for the lay folk) and Labyrinth Lord is considered a B/X clone. Let's start with the one I know fairly well. C&C is modeled after 3rd edition but has an AD&D feel to it. I haven't quite figured out why it feels this way but it does and I like it. I don't know if I ever mentioned this before but I cut my RPG teeth on AD&D. My older brother Rob, DM'd for my friend Brian and myself around the age of 8 or 9. Several years ago I attended GaryCon with some friends and I was hooked on C&C ever since. During that same convention I also played in a game of AD&D run by Weird Dave. That was a great game but it reminded me of some of the shortcomings of AD&D. Namely the armor class system. First of all, let me say that I don't like the descending armor class system. THAC0 never made much sense to me whatsoever. I was very excited to see 3rd edition removed it in favor of the ascending armor class. Thank you, Skip Williams, Monte Cook, and Jonathan Tweet.

Shortly after purchasing tons of Troll Lord Games supplements, I was running out of published modules to use and quite frankly, I was learning that published modules weren't always very well written or even very useful for me and my group. What was I to do? I started looking around and realized that all of the OD&D, AD&D, and S&W stuff could easily be converted to C&C. In some cases, I didn't even need to do any conversion at all. So, the next year at GaryCon I was looking around the dealer hall and I came across a booth that said Frog God Games. While perusing the S&W products I talked to the sales man, who sold me on Rappan Athuk and boy did I buy into it. This is one hell of a mega dungeon let me tell you. Anyway, I'm digressing. Back to the conundrum at hand.

All of this was several years ago and then I recently came across WWII: Operation Whitebox from Small Niche Games. You can read about that in my previous post. This game made me realize how simple it is to adapt this so called White Box game. So, I did some digging around and found the White Box Fantastic Medieval Adventure Game written by Charlie Mason which is based on the Swords & Wizardry White Box. Say what? I knew all about S&W but I never heard of a S&W White Box. Well, Charlie did a damn good job with his interpretation. So much so that I went and bought a hardcover from Lulu. This really breaks down the game and I don't think I would want anything simpler than this in my library. I highly recommend you check out Mr. Mason's White Box game.

This brings up another interesting topic, how simple of a rule system is too simple? This will be a good topic for another post so I'll leave it at that.

So now that I'm looking around at other OSR rule books, the question comes in. What makes them so different that I should get multiple books and play them all? I don't honestly think I can answer that question. Some people are trying to over simplify the games to the point where when I read the first 20 pages I'm like UGHH. It's wayyyy too simple for my tastes, I need more. Fortunately, lots of these books are free pdf downloads, so you can read them yourself and decide if you want to spend money on a printed copy.

Whilst I was perusing the OSR Google communities I also came across a post about someone finally getting the last signature needed in his DCC book. In the picture he posted were two hats alongside the book. I thought wow, those are cool. Now this isn't the first time I've seen those patches but I had no idea where anyone is getting them. I did a little digging around and finally found a blog post that talked about Thaddeus Moore's patches. Tenkar's Tavern did a great write up about it so I'm not going to re-write it. Check it out here. 

The person who posted that picture also got me thinking about DCC. I guess I never really thought about DCC as an OSR game. I've had the pdf for some time now and only looked at it for the artwork thus far. It makes perfect sense now though. The art is definitely reminiscent of the black and white line art style we all know and love. Crap, more OSR stuff to start thinking about.

Ooh yeah, I also found these bad boys over on Etsy. Check it out here.

At this rate, I don't think this blog post is ever going to end so I'm gonna call it quits here. I think I've got at least two more posts on this subject coming because I didn't even come close to answering the original question I had and it is such a broad topic. Another question I have is what defines a game as OSR? I don't think this is an easy and straight forward question either. Damn, this post is FUBAR. Well, at least I'm sticking to the moniker of my blog title. These are absolutely random thoughts.

Be sure to head over to the Nerds-International Google + community and don't forget about NIV Con on September 15th and 16th. You don't need to be a member to sign up to run or play in games. So head on over to the sign up page here. I look forward to hearing some new voices or even seeing new faces during the online convention.

Nerds-International Google+ community page

The Esoterrorists Review: My poor attempt to recruit new assets

The last two Fridays in a row I tried to get an online game together to play The Esoterrorists to no avail. My friend Eric Lamoureux suggested I write a review because maybe people don't quite know what it is all about. I'll explain more about it later but in a nutshell it's about secret agents reacting to threats posed by occult terrorists throughout the globe. I almost liken it to modern Cthulhu type cultists trying to bring these ancient old ones through the thin veil into our world in order to harness the power for themselves. This game uses the GUMSHOE system and I'm also thinking a lot of folks out there don't know much about it. Sure, you may have heard about it before but you're not familiar with the mechanics. I'll also give a brief overview on some of those as well.

First of all, what is this secret organization and what role do the players play in this game? I'm glad you asked. You are elite paranormal investigators working as part of a secret organization known as Ordo Veritatis (Order of Truth). This organization operates in a cell structure on a worldwide basis. Sometimes you are sent out to recruit new assets for the order, occasionally you might be tasked to search and rescue a missing member of the order, but usually you are thwarting the Esoterrorists attempts to weaken the membrane that separates our world from the outer dark. While not operating in the field for the order, you go about your normal daily lives doing your normal mundane jobs. It's your job to protect the innocent, unknowing public from ever hearing about the wickedly evil creatures threatening the world. In fact, that's a part of every mission called the veil out.

As a field agent in Ordo Veritatis, you are somewhat familiar with your teammates. I say somewhat because you never truly know someone in your line of work. You may even recall who recruited and trained you but for the most part you are unfamiliar with who is above you in the chain of command. Mr. Verity is your mission briefer. Sometimes it is a man and other times it’s a woman. The only thing certain is that it's never the same person. You are familiar however with the immediate structure of the organization above you. Field agents who get compromised can't have too much information after all. Your briefer is usually a senior staffer. The staffers are the ones who do the pre-mission research. It's their job to find the jobs. Once a report is deemed viable, the senior staffer puts together the briefing and recalls the most suitable team. You might be in the middle of interrogating a drug addict when the text message comes in or perhaps you're boiling the burned skin off a human skull in order to reconstruct the face for facial recognition software when the message comes in. Again, the only thing certain is you immediately drop what you’re doing to meet at the provided rendezvous point. 

Being a secret agent isn't all it’s cracked up to be. You are of course one of the good guys therefore you do have a certain ethical requirement to adhere to. You are to protect your teammates and human life in general. Protecting the values and morals of civil society and the order are inherent to the job. Things you are prohibited from include assassination human enemies, use excessive force, torture, cause public distress, and of course treason. One caveat is that Outer Dark Entities (ODE's) who possess a human form are exempt from the ethical code. Conversely, in rare cases you can also contact Mr. Verity to apply for a Warrant of Exigency (permission to violate the ethical code). These are usually denied though. Ok, I think you get the jist of the order. Let's move on to the Esoterrorists now.

Simply stated, the Esoterrorists are an international conspiracy organization with a structure far different than your own. They are power bankers bent on obtaining even more power or they could be your backwoods cannibals causing fear and unrest in the world. This public fear and confusion is what thins the membrane which separates our world from the outer dark. When the membrane thins enough, these terrorists poke holes into it and bring forth an entity. This is their attempt to harness the magical power that is inherent to the entities. As of yet, none have succeeded in grasping this power but they still try. They could have come across an old misplaced photograph of a creature and the image calls to them. As they gaze upon the artifact it starts to swirl around and become all too real to them. The image comes alive and takes over their mind, urging them to thin the membrane enough to come through while promising magical powers to the unsuspecting victim. Or something like that.

They may not be behind mass murders like the school shootings rampant in the news today but they are perpetuating the despair by keeping it in the news and in the faces of the public. This type of fear and confusion is what drives the Esoterrorists movement. This movement dates back to the Victorian era where rituals and evocations were rampantly practiced. Back then it was mostly nothing more than parlor tricks but today it is very real and these terrorists are doing everything they can to "enlighten" the public. Their power feeds off of the fear. Places where general public fear and unrest is high in the world is where the Esoterrorists will be. Fortunately for us this is fairly easy to spot via news feeds and intercepted satellite communications.

So what is this GUMSHOE system? Great question!

GUMSHOE is the system that was designed to solve the problem of what happens when you fail your notice roll. The game stalls because you didn't get that all revealing important clue. With GUMSHOE you always get the clues necessary to advance the story. This system is more narrative based with simple combat options. Some people say the combat is too simple and that's why they don't like it. Well then, I say to you, have you read The Esoterror Factbook? This gives you a crunchier set of combat rules for those of you who want the tactical aspect of a game to come alive. Ah, but I'm getting off topic now. Let's get back to the basic rules of GUMSHOE shall we. Oh, I should also mention that I'll be looking at the rules for specifically The Esoterrorists as other GUMSHOE games may change the rules slightly.

Let's take a look at The Esoterrorists character sheet first. It's a fairly simple sheet with character name, off-duty occupation, weapons, and abilities. Wait, no hit points or armor class, what the heck? Yes and no. You see, hit points in this game is called Health and is covered under abilities. Armor is used to reduce damage taken not to avoid getting hit. Certain types of armor will reduce damage from gunshot wounds such as a Kevlar vest.

There are two types of abilities, General and Investigative. Depending on how many players there are you will have anywhere from 20-32 points to spend on Investigative abilities. Regardless of group size you will have 60 points to spend on General abilities. Next to each ability is a column for Rating and Pool. Rating is your investigators skill level and Pool is how many points are available to spend on using that ability. If you have at least one point in an ability you are considered an expert in that. At the beginning of each mission your Rating and Pool should be equal. Throughout the game your Pool will decrease but not your Rating. These abilities are split up because Investigative abilities will refresh at a different rate than General abilities. During the course of a mission that may take 3 game sessions, your Investigative abilities might not refresh but some of your General abilities will. 

The two most important abilities are Health and Stability. Your Health ability tracks how well your character is doing physically and Stability tracks how well you character is doing mentally. Both of these abilities can be reduced below 0 all the way to -12. Once you go below 0 there are consequences. For Health you need to make a consciousness roll when you reach -0 to -5, and again at -6 to -11. Each of these tiers offers an additional consequence to just simply staying awake. At -0 to -5 you are Hurt, you cannot spend points on Investigative abilities and difficulty numbers increase by 1. At -6 to -11 you are Seriously Wounded, you are no longer able to fight and will bleed out unless someone performs a successful Medic check to stabilize your wounds. At -12 you’re dead, make a new character. Stability has these same tiers labeled Shaken 0 to -5 (difficulty numbers increase by 1), and you acquire a mental illness at -6 to -11. When you reach -12 you are incurably insane. You can commit one last crazy act or choose to be a drooling sack of flesh for the rest of the characters life.

As I said earlier, all important clues are free and will be given to you but there is also a chance to obtain more clues. These additional clues are not pertinent to move the story forward but they allow the players to shine for a moment. The additional clues can be obtained by spending points from your investigative ability pools. The players should narrate what the character is doing, what ability they are using, and how many points they will spend to get the extra clues. It's not uncommon for new players to have difficulty with this aspect of the game and the GM should then tell the players "for this many points in this ability you may be able to get some insight on the matter." 

Alright, let's move on to combat. The rules for combat are simple. Determine initiative by who has the highest rating in Scuffling or Shooting depending on what they want to do during combat. This is group based. If any one of the PC's has the highest rating then all of the PC's act before the bad guys and vice versa. This doesn't change from round to round once its established. The book recommends to just go around the table from left to right when it's the players turn. During the GM's turn he is free to determine which NPC acts at that time and in any order. I think I would take the PC's turn sequence a step further. Let them decide who goes on their turn. That always makes for a more collaborative and fun experience on their part. I also find it engages the players more knowing they can change who goes when.

In order to hit an opponent, we need to talk about Hit Threshold. All PC's start with a Hit Threshold of 3 but if your Athletics ability is 8 or higher then the Hit Threshold increases to 4. What does this mean? Well, when my cannibal cultist tries to attack you he will roll a single d6. If he rolls a 3 he will hit you if your Hit Threshold is 3 but will miss if your Hit Threshold is 4. Or will he? Let’s say the cannibal cultist is trying to claw your knife hand and decides to spend 2 Pool points of Scuffling. He rolls a 3 but now gets to add 2 to the roll for a total of 5. The cannibal just clawed at your forearm and now gets to roll damage which is again a single d6. Shooting a gun acts exactly the same way. The only difference between the two are the damage effects. A punch or kick is -2 to the damage roll, a small or improvised weapon is -1 to the damage roll, a larger club or light firearm applies 0 to the damage roll, a sword or heavy firearm adds +1 to the damage roll, and when firearms are fired at point blank range a +2 is added to the damage roll. Don't forget that if your Health or Stability is 0 to -5 then the attack difficulty just increased as well. 

These are the overall very basics to GUMSHOE. Simple right? I think so. Now let’s talk about what happens when you complete the mission. You just stopped the cannibals from bringing an entity through the membrane but now have all these dead corpses just laying around. What do you do about that? That's what the Veil-Out is. You as a group need to figure out a way to explain what happened to the world in a way that doesn't raise suspicion and keeps any evidence from reaching the public's attention. 

If I were asked to describe The Esoterrorists using movie references then I would say imagine you are Harry Tasker in True Lies but your employer is the Illuminati. Now add in The Void and you'll have it. 

The Esoterrorists is recommended by 9 out of 10 Lotus Masters.

P.S. 

Dont forget to check out the Nerds-Internationl Virtual Convention (NIV-Con) on March 10th and 11th. It's a great way to meet new people and have a fun time gaming online.

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