Too much Text in RPGs vs. Not Enough Text

 In 2026 I finally realized that the tabletop RPG market appears to be heavily weighted in two directions: those games of enormous page count, laden with a density of information; and on the other side of this curve is a veritable mountain of tiny, often zine-shaped games filled with what can only be described as a strangely minimalist approach to content. 

I feel like there's probably a line to be drawn from how RPGs used to be, and how for many people the barrier of entry was finding the time and energy to read hundreds of pages of material to get familiar with a game or setting to run it, and today, where you have games like Mork Borg where 90% of the game experience is interpreting the surreal art and parsing out tiny nuggets of rule or setting data. 

The interesting question is maybe not whether minimalist game systems are a response to the older style of dense, text- heavy games, but rather: is the market for more "information lite" game systems and text actually a sign of changing times? Even dense tomes like the newest 5.5 edition of D&D are actually rather information light; these books use less of the page with a bigger font to convey less information per page; just look at the D&D 2014 race write-ups to the 2024 ancestries for a fine example. Or take the 2014 DMG, which is packed with stuff (both to its betterment and its failure) compared to the briefer and lighter 2024 DMG. 

There are plenty of games where word density and system or setting depth is important; just witness Pathfinder 2E for proof this is still a thing. Cyberpunk Red, Shadowrun 6th, Coriolis, Call of cthulhu, Mythras, etc....there are plenty of these sorts of games, the "old guard" if you will out there and in circulation.

But then we have some games where the line is crossed: Shadowdark is what got me thinking about this notion in the first place. I mean, Shadowdark is a minimalist spectacle where you get the Big Fat Rulebook experience with a torrent of supplemental material, but the actual result is a shockingly low word count, a system that appears to be allergic to exposition or setting depth, and a paucity of rules content that borders on a sort of weird art. 

I was going to argue that Old-School Essentials is more of a middle ground here, given it is a precise retelling of the original B/X D&D system, and it really is....but all that demonstrates is that the idea of "rules with lite content in presentation" was also a thing in the early eighties. Indeed, one need only remember the myriad titles of Fantasy Games Unlimited to remember that this is actually a very old concept. So if oneis trying to ascribe the current wave of minimalist RPGs exclusively to short attention spans of modern crowds, I think that is probably not true, because we had plenty of games like this back in the day. What is true now is that the density of informtion in current rulesets is even skimpier and more graphically dependent than the many old FGU games ever were, though.

On the other hand OSE is a great example of how even a famously simple ruleset that has been presented in a somewhat minimalist fashion (B/X D&D editions) later evolves into something much more dense and complex (D&D Rules Cyclopedia). Indeed, for fun just read through the original Basic Set (Otus edition) D&D book, then contrast it with the OSE book (which is probably of the same word count, but manages to organize the information much more efficiently) then contrast the two with the much more elaborate and denser combat rules section of the Rules Cyclopedia. Same game....but just now with more density and more use cases being documented. 

Lately I have been a bit torn about the fact that I definitely fall in to a more old school camp when it comes to how I like my rulesets, dense and thick with too much information, vs. the fact that a game like OSE is so wonderful in its concise get-to-the-point approach of design, and then Shadowdark, which I love because it is designed to reduce complexity that could get in the way of jumping right to the part where you play the game, but perhaps at the expense of making its rules tomes and supplements anything more than utilitarian outlines that feel like a Cliff's Notes edition of D&D. 

This means that....if you are still in a corner of the hobby where part of the experience is reading and figuring out these rulebooks and their systems, then a game like Shadowdark really doesn't offer much to you.

Ah well....I guess while I mull that conundrum over I shall just resume reading the latest batch of Mythras books I just got (a Fioraccita supplement, Mythic Venice, and several third party modules I found on drivethru that I finally took the plunge on). Mythras is unquestionably in the old school camp of "there is no such thing as too much information." 

Or maybe I will read through some of my Mothership books....despite being definitely part of the zine scene where the "rules lite, informtion lite" era of gaming has been flourishing lately, a nontrivial number of Mothership books are actually super information dense (albeit for scenario and setting content), but in a tricky way where it disguises this density through the medium of contemporary short-form module design. 

I guess the one thing I can say for sure is: there's definitely something for almost everyone out there!

Cataloging the Indie RPG by Style and Genre

 As I sit here, I am supposed to be studying for some rather onerous testing exams for licensing (work stuff), but it's taking dozens of hours to get through the study process, a thing I have not had to do in some time now, and at my age its just damned tedious. So I am taking a few minutes' break to clear my mind and chill a bit. In doing so I am staring at a giant stack of various indie RPGs, loads of which are pamphlet sized, and almost all of which are 5X9 format in some form or another. 

My plan to write about this in February has been curtailed so it will bleed in to March now, and maybe even April if my busy non-fun RL schedule keeps up. But I can say this: indie RPGs really do seem to fall into a few distinct style categories, and those categories have some characteristics worth noting if you're trying to figure out what style suits your taste. 

The first style category I'll call "utility," which is to say: the book's author(s) value utility and function over everything else. Both Shadowdark and Old-School Essentials are excellent examples of this category. Some other games manage to fit this bill as well, though it may not be so obvious. Old Skull's publications (such as Screams Amongst the Stars and Running Out of Time) are also very utility driven, with the goal being to get the most useful content to you in the limited pages available. Less indie but definitely worthy of mention for this category is Savage Worlds.

Main Traits of Utility Games: ease of use; clear and concise rules; no authorial overtone or assumptions about expected behavior in play

Best Example of A Utility Game: As I wrote a few weeks back, Old-School Essentials is just amazing for its pragmatic, utilitarian approach to codifying the definitive OSR experience. A close runner up deserves to be given to the insanely no-nonsense Shadowdark. 

The second style category I'll call "Atmosphere;" this means the game is focused heavily on conveying its world, thematics or genre to you, and the rules are focused on conveying the atmosphere with as much energy and effort as can be afforded. Such systems are usually loaded with mechanics designed to build out on a specific style of genre. Mothership is a quintessential example, with its atmosphere being SciFi Horror, usually on haunted ships and space stations. Mork Borg is eschatonic fantasy steeped in the graphical interface of Swedish death metal. Orbital Blues is all about replicating a highly distinct blend of Firefly meets 1970's aesthetic style science fiction. Death in Space is about a collapsing spacefaring society that is grimy, dirty and maybe also facing an eschatonic end times. Heroes of Cerulea is about an NES 1988 era fantasy world ripped straight from the earliest era of JRPGS. 

Main Traits of Atmospheric Games: rules built to enforce the rules of the game's universe/genre; thematics designed to enhance and promote the tropes and expectations of the setting

Best Example of an Atmospheric Game: Mothership, of course! With Orbital Blues coming in a close second.

The third style category is a big one, and I will call it, "experiential;" for lack of a better word. These games are providing you with a set of rules and a setting, often closely tied together, with the intent of providing you a unique experience or take on otherwise well-trod genres. Such games are noteworthy for diving in to corners of fantasy or weirdness, often going a bit off the rails, and it can be clear at times that the gameplay loop involves heavy improvisation on the part of both the player and GM (if the game even supports a GM!) Land of Eem, Into the Odd, Outcast Silver Raiders, Troika!, Ultraviolet Grasslands, maybe Liminal Horror and Cairn, can all be said to fit this category. Such games might feel a bit like roller-coasters riding through strange worlds. Some are settings only, such as the Painted Wastelands, Ronin or Vast Grimm which hack other systems into their own weird universes.

Main Traits of Experiential Games: a strong focus on the weird/unusual, emphasis on random generation and improvised play; often focused on very niche and sometimes cartoonish imaginings of their universes

Best Example of an Experiential Game: So many choices, but I feel I have to give this to Troika!, a game which defies easy interpretation for many, while still being so interesting I can't stop trying to figure it out. Runner up could go to any, but I feel the Painted Wasteland (my current favorite OSE setting) has earned it.

The final style I will label "Graphical;" any game in which it appears that the artist is as important to the process as the author or anyone else. Indeed, you might find that the game itself is less of the point than purchasing the cool book full of neat art. Not quite indie, but sort of in this ballpark I feel you could put The Electric State, along with some noteworthy titles like Ultraviolet Grasslands, the Painted Wastelands, CBR*PNK, Cy-Borg, Mork Borg for sure and all its other spin-offs, and amazingly weird and difficult to parse out products like Ballads of Oread. If Exalted Funeral published it, then it might have some lineage in this department. Don't confuse, "Looks cool," for being in this category, though; I would suggest a key component of games in this category is that you might better imagine them as coffee table books than something you can actually figure out how to play!

Main Traits of Graphical Games: they are really interesting tomes to look at (assuming they come in a conventional book format); they are often hard to decipher, or you can tell that the author was playing second fiddle to the artist

Best Example of a Graphical Game: Mork Borg!!! It's a puzzle to decipher for many. Runner up: Ultraviolet Grasslands

Okay! So with all that out of the way, time to get back to some real work. I'll finally (hopefully) talk about some of the newer games I've picked up here in the next few weeks soon.

February Plans: A Return to the Indie, OSR and ALT-RPG Scene!

 While doing a lot of reorganizing in my home office and study I realized I had a metric ton of small brochure and zine shaped RPGs and sourcebooks, predominantly for Mork Borg and Mothership, but Shadowdark came in at a close third, followed in no special order by Cairn, OSE, Swords & Wizardry and sundry other weird abominations, including one of my latest favorites, Outcast Silver Raiders. 

In short: the indie RPG zine-scene is thriving, and it is often blending in interesting and weird ways with the OSR scene thanks in no small part to Old School Essentials and Shadowdark, which is admittedly less OSR and more "5E, after you take a weed-wacker to it." 

So, for February I am going to focus on a medley of the choicest gems to have arrived from this otherworldy dimension of chapbooks, fanznes and weird art experiments that exist like mynocks on the fringe of the giant ship that is the conventional expensive hardcover RPG scene. Should be a blast!

In no particular order I plan to dive in a bit on:

Outcast Silver Raiders (the coolest blend of grimdark, weird and OSR yet)

Cairn Boxed Set 2E

Liminal Horror's latest offerings and where its Kickstarter is at

What's up with Mothership stuff lately

Mork Borg....is there no end to the flood?

The Tenth GM Inspiration: Techniques used in Modern Indie Modules

The Tenth GM Inspiration: Techniques used in Modern Indie Modules

Last blog talked about how I use round outlining (as I call it) to work out scenarios and even whole campaign ideas. This time around I wanted to talk specifically how that technique is in regular, constant use in the indie RPG scene right now, and its a very effective way at creating and running ready to go scenarios. The most effective examples of this technique are found in Mothership modules, specifically the trifold brochures which are an extension of the one-page module designs that started becoming popular a decade or two back (from the One Page Module contests, AAW games adventure-a-day and more). The Mothership modules (and there are also Mork Borg, Cairn and other modules of similar nature) are generally built around packing an entire session (or more) on two pages, which can then be folded as a trifold module. This forces the author of the module to maximize their use of space. 

One way to do this effectively merges the module description boxes, the map and the adventure path all into a single mixed graphic....the Haunting of Ypsilon-14 is the first such module for Mothership, and an excellent example of how to execute this (I do a deep dive on it here). Each area of the haunted space station has a quick series of bullet points on the salient elements of the area to be explored, and line/arrow links showing you where in the space station you can then go to from that location. Some extra page two text covers NPCs, the monsters and encounter timers and events. I managed to get three or four sessions out of this module, it's that good.

These modules my design work best for GMs (Wardens in Mothership) who are accustomed to improvisation, because the space limits mean you will inevitably have descriptions or events that cannot be covered; the design is meant to force emergent gameplay, and a GM running a module in this design would be best aided with a notebook on hand to take notes as you expand upon the module as you go, to keep your plot and detail additions consistent.

Doing this for a homebrew is actually a great exercise in thinking about what the core conceits of the scenario should be. You also don't need to limit yourself to a one or two page format, though that can be fun as an exercise in creativity and design. That said, look to systems like Shadowdark, Cairn, Mork Borg and Old School Essentials for examples of how this concept is expanded upon into multi-page modules that are still, at their core, using the "what matters most in this area" conceit of tight design with outline-focused dungeon design. 

The Seventh GM Inspiration: Six of the most useful Randomized Encounter Table Books

The Seventh GM Inspiration: Random Encounter Resources

I thought a bit about how to discuss this, because I have an opinion that sometimes a book or site full of randomized tables can end up being paralyzing to GM inspiration and design, and other times it can be a valuable tool to breaking GM writer's block. Often, whether a chart is useful in the design of a scenario or during actual play can be crucial to its overall value. To that end, I thought I'd group these together and point out a series of randomized table resources I have found to be the most useful. I will note their utility for random generation on the fly (at the game table) and second their utility for background design and inspiration between sessions.

First off...I already addressed this book specifically earlier in the Inspiration series for December, but I will point again to Runequest Cities as an invaluable resource for random encounters and city design. It is equally useful for generating encounters during play and also sculpting out material between sessions. I will not count this one in the following list, but if I had to, I'd rank it #1 of 7. It's only downside: long out of print.

#6. D20 Toolbox 

This harkens back to the 3.0 D20 era of gaming, but the D20 Toolbox (once published by Alderac, now apparently available online through World's Largest RPGs on drivethrurpg.com) was an excellent quick idea generation resource and full of at-the-table encounter generation tables. It had equal utility in both situations and before I retired my copy I got a lot of use out of it in my 3.0 and 3.5 D&D days.

#5. Ultimate Toolbox

After D&D 3.5 came out Alderac released a successor to the D20 Toolbox that I also quite liked, and it contained useful entries for rolling up deep character backtrounds and NPCs, expanding on all ways on what its predecessor did. I found the book, which was written to be roughly system agnostic even though it was still mainly a D20/3.5 styled product, to be mostly useful in setting up scenarios and characters, and less useful for on-the-fly encounters, but it was a great book.

#4. The Book of Random Tables: Ancient World

This is a more recent acquisition, and a fun resource mainly for background development but you can readily roll for things like quick names, ingredients, items found in a market or a room and such on the fly. It's utility is restricted to archaic era gaming, which is to say, games set in a Romanesque or pre Roman era or something approximating such (so for my settings I used it in The River Kingdoms of Anansis and Oman'Hakat), so its utility is rather specific, but its well worth it within that subgenre.

#3. Tales of the Valiant Game Master's Guide

This is a copious tome full of good GM advice but the back of it contains some of the most useful monster encounter tables I have found in a GM Guide. Excellent resource for on-the-fly encounter generation, and could also be used to randomly plan out encounters. Specific to 5E style games, but within that scope it beats out all of the encounter tables I've ever seen WotC generate for regular 5E.

#2. Mork Borg 

The entirety of Mork Borg is more or less a system designed to encourage out-of-the-box, on-the-fly gaming with a high degree of randomization, so the system deserves special mention. In particular, the core rules, plus supplements Cult Feretory and Cult Heretic encompass a trifecta of dark and macabre end-times gaming goodness in a world that resembles a flaming heavy metal record chucked on an 80's record burning bonfire. Of special note is the random dungeon generator in the back of Mork Borg, which so far is how I have done all my Mork Borg one shots. The system is geared for and works best in my opinion on the fly; if you take too much time to design a scenario in Mork Borg you are likely to overthink it, which often happens in some of the copious volume of third party resources out there that sometimes hit the mark and other times completely miss the point of this system.

#1.  GM Gems

Published by Goodman Games, I believe this book has now been reinvented in a larger format for Dungeon Crawl Classics, but I have long used the original one which was allegedly system neutral but was clearly meant to be for D20 D&D/Pathfinder 3rd edition style sytems. This has long been my #2 go-to resource for quick idea and encounter generation in a pinch, and the book includes some pretty elaborate encounter tables for things such as inns and taverns, weird people you might meet and all sorts of oddities not often covered by other random table books. It's only failure is that over time there could be diminishing returns as you gradually use up all the neat stuff in this book from over-use. Equally useful for on-the-fly encounter generation and idea building between sessions, and when I go to a game I have GM Gems sandwiched in with my copy of Runequest Cities and "Random Ancient Tables" for quick use.

This column is a bit of a bonus before the holidays: I could easily have made GM Inspiration columns for each of the six resources I list above. But thematically I felt a discussion of these books as a collective works well together. Besides! I have some other more specific books I want to talk about for Inspirations 8 through 12 coming up.

The Tenth Weird Thing: THE DEATH CRYPT OF GHASTRAL for Mork Borg!

 

The Tenth Weird Thing: THE DEATH CRYPT OF GHASTRAL

My first Mork Morg adventure....I don't think I've published this on the blog, but either way, a good weird adventure. Make your own map (it's fairly linear) and do what I did when I ran it on Roll20: generate images from whatever image generator you want to use to reflect each room. No idea what I did with those images, I think they are still on the Roll20 room I made for this one.

You are at the Bergen Crypt Treeline. A pale one name Savatha has offered you 100 silver to escort her here.

A restless soul named Ghastral has contacted Savatha in dreams. She seeks to commune with him in his crypt.

While meeting with Ghastral in his crypt, an earthquake strikes! The obelisk in the center of the crypt cracks, and beyond a hidden chamber is revealed, exposing rooms of a lost temple.

The crypt is an inactive dungeon, but because a misery was fulfilled: “Brother shall slay brother, and sister shall poison sister (3:6)” it has been exposed once more!

Imminent Danger: senses are being distorted! DR10 each new chamber that is entered, to see what “appears”: 1-2 fabulous treasure, 3-4 a monster; 5-6 the doppelganger of the adventurer

What Dwells Here Now? A meaty mass of slime, larvae and spider eggs! It is alive.

Distinctive Feature: the bony remains of the Basilisk’s spawn litter the complex, like a vast, winding serpent.

Room 0: entrance to the tomb, collapsed rubble, shattered obelisk to the Basilisk which oozes the corpulent mass of slime, larva and spider eggs. If anyone steps in it (DR10 to avoid if rushed) they risk 1D4 damage from serious bites and acid. The hollow presence of Ghastral remains long enough to fade away, with a terrible shriek that the Unformed One has Awakened….searching carefully reveals a random scroll deposited in the crack of the obelisk. If the group lingers too long, 1D3 goblins show up to investigate, dropping from holes in the ceiling.

Room 1: Mirrors everywhere! The mirrors show strange distortions and reflect other lands, some worse and others as if they are the Eternal Fields. Amidst this, a strange beast prowls through the mirrors, distorted and strange…

The Mirror Monster: it drags one arm behind, covered in slime, with a dozen bloodshot eyes frantically casting about for victims. Its bloated body is a mass of bilious organs tied together, covered in weeping maws.

Morale 10; Damage D4 (bites and scratched); -D6 armor (regrows wounds); 5 HP

Goal: collect your eyes to add to its own so it can see through the mirror realm to Nechrubel!

Room 2: sooty walls from floor to floor, it looks as if an eruption of fire annihilated this chamber. A strange sooty wet trail leads from the next room into this one, where a mass of water surrounds a Zodiac Lung (Feretory), lying in the floor.

Room 3: graffiti in terrifying inscriptions covers the walls of this chamber. The center of the chamber is bifurcated by a vast chasm with intense rushing water deep below, roaring as loud as the ocean. Salty sea smell fills the air, and a lone gull flies up from below to land on the ledge.

The water trail in Room 2 leads to this chamber and ends at the chasm. Footholds are carved in the chasm and descend to a small grotto below, where 150 Silver, 20 gold and 1D6 trinkets can be found, along with a Galgenbeck Deathmask (Heretic) and one scroll. Guarding the hidden alcove is a Bent hiding in the chamber! His name is Sparrow, and he knows that the raging river leads to the coast.

A lone stone bridge crosses the chasm. A single black form in a cloak resides at the center of the 25 foot span. Wearing the cloak is a Belze, a bloody skeleton named Pavrak, an ancient lost priest of the temple destined to protect the bridge. He will let the group pass if they use the Galgenbeck Mask to tell him how he died….from poison slipped to him by his rival, Onmater.

Room 4: fire damage to walls show recent destruction, and in the center of this chamber is a vast altar to Nechrubel. The altar’s center is a deep pit, from which the endless bones of its spawn appear to have emerged. Amidst the rubble and debris are human skeletons as well. The Formless Priests will rise, randomly assembling, within two minutes of the group entering:

Formless Priests (D4), Morale 10, Damage D6 (clubs and rusted metal), Armor none, 4 HP (will drop lifeless if someone falls into the center pit).

FINALE: On defeating the priests, a ghostly basilisk-form rises from the pit and hovers there. If a sacrifice is made (an artifact or a living being) the ghostly serpent spews forth a random occult artifact from its mouth and then disappears. The chamber rocks in a destructive quake, striking again! The group must make DR10 agility checks to avoid 1D6 damage from falling rubble. When it ends, the pit is sealed, and a crack in the far wall reveals the ominous night of the Bergen Crypts. A cloudburst of rain greets the party as they leave. Everyone may roll to see if they improve.

As the Werewolf Changes

 During last night's game I was surprised to notice that Jackalweres no longer have a problem with silver in the 2025 Monster Manual. So in checking out the other lycanthropes I discovered that hey, it turns out in D&D 5.5 you can harm werewolves with anything, normally, now. They get a few extra HP and a slight AC boost but lose all the mythological flavor of the thing they used to be.

This got me to thinking about how they looked in other systems, so I thought I'd plunge down that rabbit hole a bit to see:

AD&D 1E/2E: Can only be harmed by silver or +1 weapons. So at this stage in the game, low level PCs who have trouble finding magic weapons really need to carry a silvered weapon with them just in case.... In rereading their entries I assume they transform as an action but maybe it was as part of their movement. I seem to recall running AD&D where they could move, transform and attack all in the same combat round, which makes sense in the longer 1E turn cycles.

D&D 3.5: Gain damage reduction 10/silver but only in hybrid and wolf form, interestingly! Shapeshift is an action. Looking at the old format for D&D 3.5 stat blocks on monsters reminded me of how convoluted and information dense they were; how interesting to see that the 2025 MM swung so far to the opposite direction that the current stat blocks feel anemic and drained of all color and flavor.

Pathfinder 1E: Have resistance 10 to all attacks except silvered weapons! Change shape is a move equivalent action, and they induce lycanthropy on a failed saving roll following a bite.

Pathfinder 2E: They have shapeshift as an action, and are vulnerable 5 to silvered weapons. Lycanthropy is induced on a failed save.

D&D 4E: they have regeneration 5, but silver stops their regeneration. They shapshift as a minor action, and they do extra damage against bloodied opponents. Instead of imparting lycnathropy as a disease they induce moon frenzy, which behaves a bit like the confusion spell (but does not end with the inflicted turning into a lycanthrope, interestingly). Diseases and curses in 4E were notoriously weak and ineffectual.

D&D 5E (2014): resistant to nonmagical or silvered weapons, but shapeshift as a standard action. Still have some flavor text that leans into making werewolves interesting in a traditional way. If bitten, on a failed save you just have lycanthropy now.

D&D 2024 (5.5): They gain 13 hit points and get a better AC, but lose any special resistance to ordinary damage, and silver is not even mentioned. They can shapeshift as a bonus action. Lycanthropy if bitten, but you have to reach zero hit points for it to take effect.

Tales of the Valiant: Werewolves are resistant to non-magical damage (silver is not mentioned here either). They induce lycanthropy as a curse after biting someone who fails a save.  

How about some of the other games out there? Let's see:

Swords & Wizardry Complete: mirrors AD&D 1E; so they can probably shapeshift as part of their turn, and are immune to nonmagical, non silvered attacks. Lycanthropy is automatic in an opponent reduced to 50% of their hit points by the werewolf.

Dragonbane: Werewolves hate silver as it deals full damage (along with fire) and messes with their senses. They take half damage from non-magical weapons. taking even 1 point of damage from the werewolf induces both paralysis (potency 9) and lycanthropy, and can only be cured with powerful magic or wolvesbane. And on its monster attacks a 6 induces a berserker frenzy in which your party probably dies!

Basic Roleplaying/Call of Cthulhu: They have regeneration, are immune to most damage (silvered weapons will do full damage and kill them on a serious wound, though), and taking any damage from a bite induces lycanthropy, which can maybe be avoided on a luck role if the bite also severs the limb that was bitten. Nice! The BRP statblock addresses magic and fire doing full damage as well.

Cypher System: they are level 4 creatures, which normally would mean 12 health but they have 24 health. They can cause lycanthropy if you are sufficiently injured to be reduced on the damage track. They take a long time (1D6 rounds) to shapeshift if caught in the act.

Dungeon Fantasy RPG (GURPS): These things are terrifying with damage resistance 15 against all attacks except silver (which does double damage and ignores the DR), and they regenerate 1 HP per second (GURPS combat rounds are 1 second long, so for D&D purposes that's 6 HPs of regeneration for a D&D round). Interestingly Dungeon Fantasy punts on the lycanthropy as a bite-induced curse with some flavor text about how the local temples try to keep that under control, and the rest of the statblock ignores it. GURPS Werewolves from the 3rd edition sourcebook of course does a lot more that I won't belabor here.

Fantasy AGE: They show up in the Bestiary sourcebook, and can induce the lycanthropy curse on a stunt, with the difficulty being based on how many stunt points are applied. The inflicted makes checks each night until the full moon; if they don't kick it before the full moon they go full lycanthrope. There's a section on lycanthrope vulnerabilities, but silver is mentioned as only one possibility, with the GM encouraged to customize for the campaign.

Mythras: Mythras punts on this one terribly and you need to go dig in the wolf section to get a sense of it. Ostensibly they are emulating older, more archaic notions of shapeshifters rather than more modern takes on lycanthropy, I guess? 

Mork Borg: It's actually a character class, the Cursed Skinwalker (in Feretory). You die, and your body is possessed by an animalistic presence, returning you to life as a cursed skinwalker. a bloody, skinless wolf is only one of your options. Tangentially werewolfish, but it wouldn't be Mork Borg if it was conventional now, would it? 

Okay, it was at this point that I ran out of energy (I was looking at The Fantasy Trip's take, which is to lump werewolves and vampires together as cursed/diseased species when mental fatigue just overwhelmed me). I have to say, if you want a werewolf to be scary, then there are two games that do this exceedingly well: Call of Cthulhu/BRP and Dragonbane (with honorable mention to GURPS/Dungeon Fantasy). The least scary edition of the the werewolf can be found in the current D&D Monster Manual for 2025, which is a real shame; it really lacks any of the color and vibrancy of the mythology it derives from. Curiously, they have done a better job with some other monsters in the book (medusa got a slight improvement imo, for example) so it is a shame to see them drop the ball here just because, apparently, someone might not want to be bothered with finding a silvered weapon? Weird. Very weird. Aside from D&D 2024, the next worst take on werewolves is (imo) Mythras, which puts the least amount of effort into the concept, delegating lycanthropy to a paragraph in the wolf statblock section.

This is making me want to consider Dragonbane for gaming in the very near future now, though. 

Scrutinizing Systems for 2024 - or "What to Play While Waiting for D&D Totally-Not-6E" - Dragonbane, Traveller, Cypher System, Tales of the Valiant and More

 I guess Wizards of the Coast is A: not selling to Tencent (good), and B: not releasing their books in May, which seems like a good time to do it, but apparently they said they will still be working on them in May so now the holidays seem like a stretch too. This is good news, though! It means we should all be trying other things while cooling our jets on trad D&D experiences so we can be ready for whatever the new thing is going to be.

For me, it sort of boils down to a handful of games which have my attention, and not all of them are "unlike D&D" since Tales of the Valiant is in the mix, but hey, you know what is coming out in May? Tales of the Valiant, that's what! So yeah, going to be playing some of that for sure.

I have in my hands Dragonbane Core Rules and Bestiary, the expanded books that will nicely replace or compliment their initial Boxed Starter Set from last year. The Starter Set was a fine product on its own merits, but there is additional content in the new Core Rules for GMs to make it worth checking out, and the Bestiary is a no-brainer whether you stick to the Starter Set or get the Core Rules, it's full of good stuff that is all new content. Dragonbane manages to sit in a hard to achieve sweet spot for me. I like to call this zone the "point at which a game can work to power one or more of my campaign worlds without requiring me to simply ditch said worlds and revise them to match the game's setting and rules expectations." Secondarily, it also fits the category of "alternative fantasy systems which are unique or interesting enough to explore on their own merits, but close enough to D&D in terms of content and accessibility to be an easy sell to players." 

I could go on and on about Dragonbane like this, but it boils down to some simple facts: the game provides a robust system with enough content that you won't find yourself wishing something was in the game that isn't; it offers a setting but does not demand you use it; it provides enough content that you feel like it could substantively replace D&D for a protracted campaign without you feeling like you wish you had access to all the D&D stuff when running or playing. For me, Dragonbane accomplishes all of this, and in the smallest form factor in terms of content for a "robust fantasy RPG" that one could imagine and still fit it in to a single carry bag. 

A lot of other fantasy games out there fail at these requisites I set. Some of my demands are more specific to my tastes; for example I like the Dragonbane skill system (and I also like the D&D skill mechanics, especially once you get back to 3rd edition), but I dislike game systems that eschew skills entirely without good reason. I can forgive an OSR emulator like Swords & Wizardry Complete for this, as skills weren't a thing in the 0E era of D&D, but it means that the S&W experience will forever be limited to merely emulating that style of play, afterwhich there will be no further modifications to the game system. I was modding skill systems in to Tunnels & Trolls and AD&D back in 1982 after experiencing Runequest, so for my experience in a hobby that was at the time a venerable 8 years old I will forever see skills as OSR and necessary to a proper gaming experience. 

Anyway, aside from Dragonbane, which looks to hit the sweet spot in a unique way few other systems have come close to, we have Traveller, which is getting a renaissance of upgraded rulebook editions as well as more content of a general sort of use beyond running Imperium Campaigns. I have a real keen interest in more Traveller soon, tempered only by the fact that I know Mothership will finally be released soon as well, and Mothership is the very genre-specific Traveller counterpart.

Monte Cook's Cypher System is also about to finally release more books, too. Rust & Redemption is the one I am specifically keen on, their Cypher sourcebook for post-apocalyptic tales. I feel that Cypher System works best when you can have weird settings that cater to improvisation, and I expect their post-apoc genre book will prove to be well worth it. 

I should also mention Pathfinder 2E v2. They have more tomes on the way, including the ever important revision to their Bestiary series, and the Player Core 2 to complete the class range my group is used to dealing with. Although my group understands that the backwards compatibility is 99.5% they still seemed more interested in waiting for the rest of these core books to release so we haven't done anything with Pathfinder 2E yet. I personally am more interested in playing it at the game table; Pathfinder, along with D&D 5E and others, can easily devolve into "Find a battle map, populate with virtual tokens, watch encounter turn in to fight because the players have hammers and see nails all over the map" kind of experiences. I guess what I am trying to say is that VTTs work really well on average when you are focused on a map and minis, and are at times terrible when trying to just enjoy the game for its more exploratory and discovery/role play based elements.

I have other games, too. Vast Grimm still commands my attention and several new books released for it, making the world of Vast Grimm a more comprehensive and interesting place to explore. Mork Borg continues to fascinate me, and I think a live campaign should be in order; I am intrigued to experience t least one deliberate attempt to play the game for multiple sessions to see how it works for long hauls. Finally, I still have a shelf full of Free League Titles I need to explore in actual play, especially and in particular Alien RPG, Blade Runner RPG, Forbidden Lands and both CY_Borg and Pirate Borg. 

Don't even get me started on the brilliant 5E reimagining of D20 Modern in the form of Everyday Heroes! Ever since I snagged it last October I've been obsessing about what to do with it, and the array of weird cinematic properties they have congealed around the game to provide support is impressive. That I would even contemplate a campaign in the universe of Universal Soldier, Rambo or Escape from New York is a testament to how engaging and interesting the EH team has been with these sourcebooks. It does crack me up, though, that each sourcebook seems to start with a "I never even heard of or watched the movie this book is based on until I was hired to write it," followed by a thoughtful and engaging approach to taking a wildly dated action film from thirty years ago and turning it in to a must-play setting. 

As always, the problem is too many cool games and not nearly enough time! 

Mork Borg Adventure: THE DEATH CRYPT OF GHASTRAL

 Here's that adventure for Mork Borg I ran last year. It was generated using the adventure generation tables, then I flesh it out a bit. In the Roll20 edition I used some AI generated art assets to illustrate each room.

Mork Borg Adventure: THE DEATH CRYPT OF GHASTRAL

The scenario begins at the Bergen Crypt Treeline. A pale one name Savatha has offered you 100 silver to escort her here. Savatha is cold and listless, and prefers to travel at night under the light of the moon. A restless soul named Ghastral has a close tie to Savatha, and she seeks his crypt for communion. The group is to escort her to this location.

While meeting with Ghastral in his crypt, an earthquake strikes! The obelisk in the center of the crypt cracks, and beyond a hidden chamber is revealed, exposing ancient rooms of a lost temple.

The crypt is an inactive dungeon, but because a misery was fulfilled: “Brother shall slay brother, and sister shall poison sister (3:6)” it has been exposed once more! Make note of the misery, should any of the adventurers be siblings.

Imminent Danger: senses are being distorted! DR10 each new chamber that is entered, to see what “appears”: 1-2 fabulous treasure, 3-4 a monster; 5-6 the doppelganger of the adventurer

What Dwells Here Now? A meaty mass of slime, larvae and spider eggs! It is alive. It grows and pulses; slow groups who are too careful will notice is seems to "grow" after them, eventually filling and sealing the doors they pass through.

Distinctive Feature: the bony remains of the Basilisk’s spawn litter the complex, like a vast, winding puzzle serpentine remains.

Room 0: entrance to the tomb, collapsed rubble, shattered obelisk to the Basilisk which oozes the corpulent mass of slime, larva and spider eggs. If anyone steps in it (DR10 to avoid if rushed) they risk 1D4 damage from serious bites and acid. The hollow presence of Ghastral remains long enough to fade away, with a terrible shriek that the Unformed One has Awakened….searching carefully reveals a random scroll deposited in the crack of the obelisk. If the group lingers too long, 1D3 goblins show up to investigate, dropping from holes in the ceiling.

Room 1: Mirrors everywhere! The mirrors show strange distortions and reflect other lands, some worse and others as if they are the Eternal Fields. Amidst this, a strange beast prowls through the mirrors, distorted and strange…

The Mirror Monster: it drags one arm behind, covered in slime, with a dozen bloodshot eyes frantically casting about for victims. Its bloated body is a mass of bilious organs tied together, covered in weeping maws.

Morale 10; Damage D4 (bites and scratched); -D6 armor (regrows wounds); 5 HP

Goal: collect your eyes to add to its own so it can see through the mirror realm to Nechrubel!

Room 2: sooty walls from floor to floor, it looks as if an eruption of fire annihilated this chamber. A strange sooty wet trail leads from the next room into this one, where a mass of water surrounds a Zodiac Lung (Feretory), lying in the floor.

Room 3: graffiti in terrifying inscriptions covers the walls of this chamber. The center of the chamber is bifurcated by a vast chasm with intense rushing water deep below, roaring as loud as the ocean. Salty sea smell fills the air, and a lone gull flies up from below to land on the ledge.

The water trail in Room 2 leads to this chamber and ends at the chasm. Footholds are carved in the chasm and descend to a small grotto below, where 150 Silver, 20 gold and 1D6 trinkets can be found, along with a Galgenbeck Deathmask (Heretic) and one scroll. Guarding the hidden alcove is a Bent hiding in the chamber! His name is Sparrow, and he knows that the raging river leads to the coast.

A lone stone bridge crosses the chasm. A single black form in a cloak resides at the center of the 25 foot span. Wearing the cloak is a Belze, a bloody skeleton named Pavrak, an ancient lost priest of the temple destined to protect the bridge. He will let the group pass if they use the Galgenbeck Mask to tell him how he died….from poison slipped to him by his rival, Onmater.

Room 4: fire damage to walls show recent destruction, and in the center of this chamber is a vast altar to Nechrubel. The altar’s center is a deep pit, from which the endless bones of its spawn appear to have emerged. Amidst the rubble and debris are human skeletons as well. The Formless Priests will rise, randomly assembling, within two minutes of the group entering:

Formless Priests (D4), Morale 10, Damage D6 (clubs and rusted metal), Armor none, 4 HP (will drop lifeless if someone falls into the center pit).

FINALE: On defeating the priests, a ghostly basilisk-form rises from the pit and hovers there. If a sacrifice is made (an artifact or a living being) the ghostly serpent spews forth a random occult artifact from its mouth and then disappears. If a member of the party falls in to the pit they must make a DR14 presence check or succumb to the will of the Basilisks. Each day at dawn a new check may be made, to see who is in control that day.

The chamber rocks in a destructive quake, striking again! The group must make DR10 agility checks to avoid 1D6 damage from falling rubble. When it ends, the pit is sealed, and a crack in the far wall reveals the ominous night of the Bergen Crypts. A cloudburst of rain greets the party as they leave. Everyone may roll to see if they improve.

Deathbat's 2023 Best and Worst in Tabletop Gaming (and VTT)

 I got to try a variety of different new RPGs this year which was nice....I didn't stick to my usual barrel of tried-and-true regular games entirely, and as a result some interesting gems such as Mork Borg and Vaesen rose to the surface. I did a lot of collecting and reading this year, but much of it was focused on indie zine RPGs (see that series I have temporarily been ignoring!) and I managed to get aquainted with an entire subset of the hobby that I consider to be a movement toward hyper-focused, art zine style minimalist RPGs with a goal toward simple but effective rules and exotic, creative settings. This style of RPG is essentially a reproach to the modern obsession with giant books, huge campaigns, lavish color paintings for art and big price tags. I also got heavily in to collecting and reading the many offerings of Swedish gaming giant Free League Publishing, which relies on its own special brand of game system (the Year Zero Engine) to build various RPGs. 

What I didn't do this year was make a clean break from D&D though I did do so, fairly decisively, with Pathfinder 2E around --I want to say March?-- of this year. An inter-player conflict and a generally negative response toward the way Pathfinder 2E plays (using Roll20) from about half the players left me with a really bad taste in my mouth for the whole experience, which was made worse by the fact that I as a GM was really enjoying the system from the GM perspective. I subsequently got to be a player in another game, and while I did enjoy it, I found the excess tedium , of the mechanical gravitas of PF2E less to my liking as a player. Now that the new books are out, I am considering a re-entry, but I am also a bit gunshy.....and I know that choosing Pathfinder again may mean some players simply won't show. 

Anyway, here's my take on the Best and Worst for 2023!

RPG of the Year for 2023: Basic Roleplaying System

The new edition of BRP (5th edition) brings lots of minor tweaks and clarifications and a tighter focus, while still containing all the content of prior editions and the framework for any number of BRP powered genre adventures. It does not incorporate the Call of Cthulhu 7E changes as such, so that's about the only issue one might have with it (if you love the 7E changes, that is), though it does remain compatible and you could easily mesh the two iteratons together with minimal or no effort (as I have already done). So this is my Book of the Year overall!

Best RPG Discovery of 2023: Mork Borg

Sure its been out for a while, but Mork Borg was new to me! Sort of....I think I got the RPG a year or two ago, but found it perplexing as to full intent and set it aside. Following the OGL kerfuffle in January I decided to start exploring other RPGs (and simpler ones following the March meltdown as I call it), and Mork Borg rapidly grew to the #1 place on my list as I was able to finally grokk its deceptive emergent complexity out of a simple mechanical premise, and its elaborate yet deliberately obscure setting. Mork Borg may or may not be an ideal system for long term gaming, but it is most definitely a game you can pick up and play at any time and have fun with (as long as you enjoy brutal, grimdark Swede-punk eschatonic nightmare worlds, that is!)

Worst RPG Trend of 2023: Eternally Delayed Books 

There's a BattleZoo Book that was supposed to release months ago (EDIT: literally hours after writing this I got a notice the book "Strange & Unusual" is shipping today, so I guess this one is off the list). There's An Esper Genesis book that's like three years or more past due now. I'm still waiting for the Mothership 1E boxed set and it may not be out until March or later. For my own purposes, I've cut back on backing Kickstarters. By the time the books arrive I am often completely disinterested in the game at that point, having played and finished with it, and the new product is not enough to engender new interest. For various reason 2023 has felt like a tipping point for me: I am done with wondering if or when these products will ever manifest, time to stop pre-ordering or backing these uncertainties once and for all.

In a sense this issue has been around for many years and is as old as Kickstarter, but with one exception all of the delayed books I am waiting on are pre-orders or an ordinary sort, so I guess for me at least 2023 is the year this issue hammered in to the old noggin that its a bad idea.

Best RPG Style of 2023: The Zine RPG

I've spent a lot of time blogging about it this year, so it is no surprise that I think the new style of RPG fostered over the last few years has finally become its own cottage industry and now holds it place as a special subset of gaming in contrast to more mainstream RPGs. The focus on creativity, artistic exoticism, minimalist design and a very conscious effort to foster ad hoc play styles are all fairly unique to this new style of RPG, and those elements which are not unique still get realized in new and unique ways.

Worst Flub of 2023: Wizards of the Coast's OGL Kerfuffle

I won't belabor the issue, but WotC's attempt to destroy the OGL and force third party publishers into draconian contracts where they get a cut of the take backfired and caused the core supporters and fandom to lose trust in WotC. While the giant can no doubt continue with a broader casual fanbase, it will be interesting to see how this impacts them next year when the next edition of D&D arrives, ready to push people into WotC's online D&D Beyond playspace, located just west of micrtransaction hell, I am sure. What we're seeing here (I think) is the idea that D&D as an RPG may now be transcendent to RPGs as a hobby...the hobby will continue on and find new corners and darlings, while D&D itself becomes more, just, "D&D the hobby" and very occasionally a D&Der might be tempted into seeing what the whole other "tabletop are-pee-gee" hobby is all about. Honestly? It's kind of already like that, but the really interesting things is going to be whether or not the concept space of D&D Beyond and a focus on online microtransaction-based VTT gaming can sustain in a hobby who's key appeal has traditionally been that you can socialize around a table. Maybe, in the end, this just further bifurcates the hobby.

Best VTT Environment of 2023: PlayRole

I have to say that Role20 has done a lot to improve this year, so its a good VTT to play with, but my accidental discovery of PlayRole.com was rather profound, and our experimenting with it has proved to me that it is not only a viable place to run games, but preferential to my style of play. We're about to start a full fledged Mothership game tomorrow using PlayRole, so I expect to have a lot more to say about it as we go forward, but my current experiments with OSE, Mork Borg, Dead Mall and UVG has so far been rather satisfactory. 

I'm out of "Worsts" so is one more "Best" to ponder:

Best Revision of 2023: Pathfinder 2E V2    

Not much to say here, other than the new books (Player Core and GM Core) are considerably better organized and laid out, and I really appreciate that. The color scheme is nicer on the eyes, the focus on a new player experience is better, and the minor changes (Mainly extracting OGL content) are non-invasive for the most part. It is enough to tempt me back to trying Pathinder 2E again even though I've had a string of unfortunate incidents with it leading up to March when I abandoned the system entirely due to disgruntled player issues.   

I'll mention a runner-up: Swords & Wizardry Complete was revised by Mythmere Games (and is also back to publishing it), and the revision is very nice indeed! It's mostly the familiar system, but a bit more exposition and some minor but relevant additions make for an even more complete 0 edition retro experience.

2024 Expectations

So for 2024, what do I foresee? 

I'm focused on trying out more of these cool games I have read and discovered in 2023. I want to try out the Mork Borg spin-offs (CY_Borg, Death in Space, Vast Grimm and Pirate Borg) if opportunity presents itself. I want to use Liminal Horror to run The Bureau module, and Runecairn (or regular Cairn!) look fascinating.

I am 100% on board for 2024 with a not-too-distant BRP powered supers game, and I want to play a straight up Open Quest 3 game, especially now that Open Quest Dungeons is out. I am ready for ducks and mallards alike, because I still want to run Dragonbane and am disappointed the chance never presented itself in 2023. I would like to try the Alien RPG and Blade Runner RPG as well, but we'll see; I have never been as good at running IP-property-based games as I have more original fare. Most importantly though I plan to run a ton of Mothership and Traveller 2E, and I predict 2024 will be a big year for me when it comes to science fiction RPGs. We'll see!

I also want to chill out on collecting next year. I did a pretty good job this year, overall, but probably not by volume (I still bought as many books as ever, just many are smaller zine RPG books). I still need to reduce my overall collection, or my descendants will be cursing me in the future with the mess I leave behind. 

I may not get another chance to post before 2024, so see you all in the New Year!

The 2023 Death Bat Year in Gaming and Looking to 2024

 What a weird year it has been for me. I spent a lot of this year overworked and with less free time for fun than I would like, but on the plus side I got a bit better at managing what free time I did have. My son, who is now 12, monopolizes a fair amount of that, but he's also very into D&D now and plays in a school group as well as my Wednesday night group....which doesn't play D&D as often anymore, but hey, we're starting a new campaign this week, so there ya' go.

This year kicked off with Wizards of the Coast annihilating trust in their shepherding of Dungeons & Dragons through the OGL, resulting in numerous spin-off games appearing under a creative commons or new license (ORC) through Paizo, including the revamped Pathfinder 2E v2, and the imminent Tales of the Valiant from Kobold Press. It's a boost for existing products like level Up! A5E RPG, though honestly Morrus and his ENWorld crew are not really the sort to dramatically capitalize on the negative hype aimed at WotC, and they continue to do their own thing. 

I spent a lot of time this year deep diving into the alternative and indie RPG market that I dub "zinerpgs" because most of these seem to have spun out of the zine scene where small publishers and authors (usually one and the same) along with their art-generating college buddies create elaborate, minimalist, starkly artistic and utterly weird entries into the market. I stalled out a bit on that project of reviewing all I had found but need to get back to it. Maybe 2024 will be a slower year for me....sheeya right!

This year I did manage the following:

First and best, I got the Wednesday group back to live nightly gaming again. This has been a welcome relief, as I tend to associate facetime on web events with work; it is not fun for me. My Saturday game remains on Roll20 out of necessity, but even then I am thinking about making Roll20 a bi-weekly deal and interposing a live event every other week.

As a player I got actual action in this year. I played in a campaign of Pathfinder 2E run by a friend; found that being a player in this edition is more frustrating and unfun (imo) than being a GM. Another friend in Seattle has managed to run a lot of Victorian Gaslight Call of Cthulhu for much of this year until unfortunate circumstances led to that group collapsing (temporarily; three of us wish to resume it in January). He has also run a fun bi=weekly D&D 5E game I have played in for the better part of the year using the Kobold Press Southlands campaign.

I have run live games this year of BRP in a near-future hard SF/Cyberpunk setting, Pathfinder for Savage Worlds, D&D 5E at very high levels (levels 15-20), a couple D&D mini-campaigns on Roll20, an aborted Pathfinder game (what I like to call "the one that made me gun-shy over Pathfinder"), Vaesen (a game I'd describe better as Dark Fantasy and less horror), Call of Cthulhu (both modern day and Cthulhu Dark ages, using the 6th Edition of the Dark Ages rules), Mork Borg (which was a blast but I have not been sure what to do with it next; it is most decidedly a beer & pretzels dark metal RPG), and at the start of the year we had a 1st edition Gamma World holiday campaign wrap up. Fun stuff! I may have blogged less this year, but at least I kept the gaming up. There might have been a game or two I forgot about....OSE maybe? I think I ran that all last year, though.

Of those games I ran, I came away a bit cool on Vaesen (fun but hard for me to get in to, which is damning if you're the GM), happy that Mork Borg was so fun (but also realizing it is best used sparingly), excited for the Call of Cthulhu games, but also realizing I need to give it a rest a bit so my idea engine can recharge, and for BRP I am now intrigued at the idea of exploring how many oddball genres I can get out of it. I really enjoyed the Savage Worlds Fantasy and Pathfinder adaptations, but I am not 100% sure my group did as when I suggested returning to it they all seemed "m'eh" so I think the joyful simplicity of Savage Worlds may not be as endearing to them as it is to me. As for Pathfinder.....man, I want to, but I've had some issues and bad experiences with running it now and that is proving tough for me to get over. D&D remains viable and my energy to play it is recharged, thankfully, but I plan to ditch it entirely for Tales of the Valiant unless whatever WotC pumps out for new editions next year knocks my socks off. My suspicion is it will be a product aimed to steer me toward their online platform, and that will be a no deal situation. Meanwhile, Kobold Press is more or less continuously making smart and fun books and their grip on Shard Tabletop is where I'll put my online money. I am confident the Kobolds won't forget their analog wood-grain table crowd.

My biggest issue this year has been wrestling with GM burnout. Playing more helped a bit, but I have never been very good as a player (I know too much how the cheese is made, so it can be tough to feel invested unless the GM is shockingly good at running things). I got pretty tired of D&D for a bit, but I feel more interested now, especially as I did get a chance to explore other games there, and that, if anything, helped hammer home that the grass is not greener on the other side, and what really makes things fun is what I put in to it more than what system I am using. Getting to play D&D 5E for once was a godsend, and my friend Mike runs a mean, tight game in the Southlands, loads of fun.

For 2024, I hope to run a good long fun D&D 5E game in my Pergerron setting. I think the Roll20 Saturday group would like to do part 2 to an older Pathfinder campaign in Oman'Hakat, and I may be up for that. I have strong plans for a Traveller campaign, maybe before we do D&D or Pathfinder on Saturday, especially now that it seems they finally have some real character sheet support. The 2022-2024 revisions of Traveller have been great books, not really necessary but welcome nonetheless, and I may even use them to continue the campaign concepts I started in the BRP campaign earlier this year. 

Beyond that, I have some hopes of experimenting with Dragonbane, which I almost ran but never quite got to this year, as well as Mutant Year Zero. I'm hopeful that Friday Knight Games finally coughs up the gigantic Kickstarted boxed set of Mothership 1E this year so I can resume running that. Steve Jackson Games is making a big monster book for The Fantasy Trip, too, and I am thinking about what sort of logistics it would take to give TFT a spin. And, of course, Mork Borg and its evil cousins Death in Space, Vast Grimm, Pirate Borg and Cy_Borg call for my attention the next time I have a week with nothing better going on. 

I'll try to do more blogging, too! I have found lots of RPG bloggers on Substack, may forge a new blog over there as well to see how it goes, but I am reluctant to abandon this one as I have so many years behind it now. We'll see, who knows.

The Indie/Zine RPG Review Part XVI: Death in Space

Death in Space (Free League Publishing)

$36.62 (currently) at Free League (print+PDF)

Information Link

Character Generator

What it is: Death in Space is part of the Stockholm Kartel array of games which all owe their origins to Dark Fort, the predecessor to Mork Borg. As such, Death in Space has mechanical parity with Mork Borg, Pirate Borg, Vast Grimm and anything else based on the same core mechanical conceits. Unlike these other games it is not entirely fair to consider it a Mork Borg-based system as Death in Space most decidedly breaks that mold and sets out to do things differently.

If I had to characterize Death in Space in one sentence, it would be something like this: it's an attempt to make a rules lite pick-up-and-go game system which manages to walk a line between pragmatic space opera survival and existential horror, all while providing enough base material to run a lengthy campaign. Death in Space can, like its relatives, work as a one-shot or beer-and-pretzels game, but it actually is meant for something longer, and emphasizes rules that encourage long-form campaign play. So while yeah, you can easily lose a character in Death in Space, the game does not necessarily assume that is how it's all going to go down.

The System: The best way to see what sort of characters are generated in Death in Space is to go click a bit on the character generator, available online (see link above). Your base PC has four stats: body, dexterity, savvy and tech. You have a range from -3 to +3, like in Mork Borg, this time generated by rolling 1D4 twice and subtracting the second roll from the first. You have secondary stats such as hit points and your defense rating. Unlike in Mork Borg, defense rating can go up or down here based on your armor choice, which is otherwise a static modifier and does not reduce incoming damage (so an armor class system, basically). You also pick an origin, which defines what sort of entity your character is in the game, and a variety of background/personality/quirk charts to roll on to flesh out your PC. 

Origins help greatly in establishing theme for the players. The Carbon are spaceborn and most comfortable in zero-gee environments. Chrome are essentially android vessels for ancient AI. Punks are humans as we understand them, tinged with rebellion and anarchy. Solpods are humanity slowed down by the liberal use of cryopods to prolong life and explore stellar phenomena that transcends any one life time. The last two are the most profound: Velocity Cursed, who have travelled at FTL between the stars one too many times and their bodies are beginning to "glitch" in and out of existence, then the Void, who are so profoundly changed by visions and exposure to the depths of space that they have lost their minds and possibly their humanity. It's like Dr. William Weir of Event Horizon is a good starting point for a character concept!

As important as your PC is, the even more important element in Death in Space is the hub, a ship or space station which serves as the base of operations for your group. The game provides some lengthy but still rules lite mechanics for building your choice of hub, which will in turn either be mobile (a ship) or stationary (resting possibly in the Iron Ring of the setting), which also in turn dictates some of the expected themes of your campaign. Like your PCs, the hub will have its own background and quirks. For example, a starship hub could be that it holds "A DNA-locked black box, which has never been opened," on a ship in which "an eerie transmission periodically blares out over communication lines and speakers with strange periodicity." So....possible material to explore and riff off of, right off the bat. 

Death in Space does not use Omens as Mork Borg does, but introduces Void Points instead. In the DiS universe the Void is a palpable threat, a possible manifestation of cosmic threat that is devouring the universe, but it also has mutational and bizarre effects. A PC gains void points when they fail tasks. These can be accrued (up to 4) and used to roll with advantage (what it sounds like) or power mutations. You get mutations through advancement (which in DiS is an XP-purchase based system), misfortune, or occasionally when the void begins corrupting things. If you fail on a check with advantage after spending a void point you have a chance of experiencing void corruption. This can entail some gruesome body horror effects or worse. 

Yet another key element of gameplay is the condition of the PCs' hub and the never-ending need to keep up on repairs and maintenance. This is a drive to encourage the group to explore and salvage the many, many wrecks in the default setting of the game. The rules here feel a tad "non rules-lite" to me but only in a minor way. 

In combat, unlike its sister games, DiS has the GM rolling for enemies in combat. Likewise, enemy stat blocks are a bit more complex (in the most modest way possible), to reflect the need for a tiny bit more granularity. There's a rather funny "true death" table in the combat section as well; players can narrate their deaths when they perish, or you can roll on the table to find out how the PC "really" died. I admit, most of the time it feels to me like the table is going to be unnecessary, but the results are so amusing that it is easy to imagine some players going for it just to see what "really happened!"

There is a section on starship conflicts as well, about four pages, based on range bands for abstract resolution. It's mainly aimed at providing for an efficient resolution mechanic that helps complicate the story, but if you happen to have Vast Grimm and want a decent starship conflict resolution system, I suggest cribbing it from Death in Space. 

The Setting: the next half of the book is setting content. The core setting is the Tenebris System, which is an ancient, overly worn and used star system with a wealth of useful worlds that have over the eons been drained of many resources. The core conceit of the setting is everything is old, worn, and nothing new is being manufactured anymore; this is a salvager society. A war left much of this and countless other systems devastated, divided and depleted of resources. Travel between systems is hard and costly, and ships line up to use the bridging buoy that marks the safest jump point out of (or in to) the system. While you can travel to other systems, the core book for DiS focuses exclusively on Tenebris System and its travails. 

While Death in Space does suggest a lot of horror and grim stuff will befall a group of PCs, the truth is its more of a setting for a dark scifi experience with a wider range of scenarios and events. The creeping threat of the unknown "void" is part of it, but many more weird and unpleasant things can befall a group, from something as simple as rival salvagers or pirates to something as horrifying as a dark cult summoning eldritch horrors.

Much of the base action happens around the planet Gliess Galo, where the Iron Ring can be found, a vast ring of debris in stable orbit. The debris is countless millions of prior starships and space stations from the endless settlers, belters, salavagers, miners and corporates who have come and gone from the system over endless generations. A hub station could be situated here easily. The book includes an introduction to one such larger station in The Ring along with an introductory scenario in which the PCs get engulfed in local politics-with-pistols.  

In addition to the core setting content are about fifteen pages of charts to roll on for creatures of the system, things corrupted by the void, encounters and threats in space and so forth. The back of the book includes a contractor/NPC generator as well as some modular ship design rules that allow the PCs to build up on and make their hub more effective over time; building up the hub and becoming more powerful agents in the system is a major end goal for the PCs.

The Supplements: so far one official supplement has been announced, but for most content you will want to look to itch.io for PDF support. Unlike, say, Mothership, Death in Space does not have as rabid a following (possibly because it does require a bit more time to sink in the details of its setting and play focus). The unique white-on-black technical drawings that make up a lot of DiS's character are extremely distinct and articulate, and unlike Mork Borg (which can use graphic design to put lipstick on a pig, if you will) it takes more talent to ape the art style and feel of DiS. Not as many 3PP are going to want to bother, I hypothesize.*

Who is this for? Death in Space requires a bit more time and effort out of a group than its sister systems. You can start a basic game quickly enough, but the majority of DiS is designed for campaign play, and you will get the most mileage out of it if you approach this with the intent of running at least 5-10 game sessions with it. I actually have a keen interest in doing so, and will report more on the experience when it finally happens.

Outside of that, I think any SF RPG fan would be incredibly happy to secure a copy of this book, with the caveat that despite some of its setting elements it is still firmly in the space opera subgenre and not really a hard SF treatment. It's a lush and incredibly well illustrated tome with excellent graphic design, though as usual be aware that the text is entirely "white text on black background" so you have been warned. 

In contrast, I suggest that Mork Borg fans may find Death in Space a bit much, as it is ultimately a more traditional style of RPG play, even if it still manages to be almost as rules lite. If you are mainly looking for a "pick up and play" game I suggest Vast Grimm instead....it's Mork Borg but with space trapping. Death in Space is more like.....Classic Traveller, but with a unique and spicy flavor (and easier rules). 

*After typing that I realized that the metric ass-ton of 3PP output for Mothership puts the WRONG stamp to my hypothesis.

The Indie/Zine RPG Review Part XV: Vast Grimm

Vast Grimm (Infinite Black)

Web Resource

$34.99 in print at Infinite Black

What it is: Vast Grimm is one of several game systems powered by Mork Borg as a core system, but providing an independent and customized version of the ruleset for a complete different hideous and unpleasant universe....this one in the far future at the end of time, where a cosmic elder force is devouring all of known space. Your players roll up a mess of very grim and unpleasant characters who seek a way to escape this doomed universe before it is devoured entirely, and them with it. Sound familiar? It should! It's a very efficient reimagining of Mork Borg in a wretched apocalyptic science fiction setting.

Vast Grimm is not by the Stockholm Kartel, so it has its own style and vibe going on, but it does show how the very distinct and specific formula of Mork Borg can essentially be reskinned and plugged in to any other setting, as long as you are embracing the weird and disturbing as you do. It is also worth noting that Vast Grimm has excellent graphical design and art standards, possibly the best of all the books I've looked at, rivaling Mork Borg, Death in Space and Pirate Borg as the best looking books in this subgenre.

The System: So I talked about the mechanics of Mork Borg before, and that information applies here as well in many ways. Vast Grimm uses the same stats, and some items such as omens are retitled Favors, but essentially still work as points you spend to influence play elements. In Mork Borg you have scrolls, which is its magic system of sorts. In Vast Grmm you have Neuromancy, which lets you use Tributes, that are either hacked (bad) or encrypted (good), and are essentially programming effects that have wide ranging effects and may or may not feel like magic due to corruption from the Vast.

The really interesting thing is seeing how far Vast Grimm goes in emulating the core conceits of Mork Borg. When I get around to reviewing Death in Space you will get to see a sharp contrast, as that system does not take Mork Borg and plug into it like a template or shell; it takes the core system and then breaks it in subtle ways. Vast Grimm takes Mork Borg and goes for a hard reskin. The character classes are fine examples, where each class reflects a miserable sod in this universe. You have the MAnchiNes, who are cyborgs, usually ex soldiers, who have noteworthy features such as hideous mechanical claws; there are The Lost, who practice neuromancy in isolation until they cannot escape the Vast Grimm's presence; the Twisted Biochemist, the Treacherous Merc,  the Emobot, the Devout, and the Harvester. You get the theme.....this is a world of mutants, cyborgs, survivors and the transformed. 

Where Vast Grimm shines is in its application of the Vast Grimm itself, and specifically the wyrms, which are the beings through which the Vast Grimm changes and converts all around it. The wyrms are parasites, and each one can have a different effect on its host. It is likely, even inevitable, that PCs will get infected as many monsters in the setting have a high chance of being infested and passing it on in any melee encounter. Once infected, the wyrms change the host, sometimes for better, other times for worse. It is probably worth mentioning at this point that there is a lot of squicky body horror going on in Vast Grimm; PCs are rarely going to be pretty or even identifiably human at times. 

Vast Grimm includes a lot of subsystems for SF specific stuff as well, such as a random table for determining the group's space ship. This is another contrast with how Death in Space does it, which spends a lot of time making the hub craft/station an important part of the PC's journey. In Vast Grimm it's treated much more simply, though and you pretty much have hit points, how fast it can go, and a list of potential weapons the ship is armed with that have no ammunition. No damage stats for these weapons are given, though some of the monsters in this game are definitely starship-sized threats, so I am a bit surprised on that.

Another SF-themed subsystem is pharmaceuticals, because of course in a crapsack world like Vast Grimm drugs are gonna be a thing, and the drugs of this campaign all come with weird potential side effects. There are 13 monstrous encounters in the book (as well as 6 wyrm subtypes), and more specifically for the introductory scenario in the back. The most interesting of the monsters is the Grimm, transformed end-stage results of parasitic infestation, they are the endpoint of humanity as the Vast conquers and devours all. 

The Setting: Being a reskin of Mork Borg, Vast Grimm has created a suitably wretched universe, now in space, and defined a rough area of play in the form of a corrupted star system (called The Verse), with a (short) discussion of each of the ten or so locations at which things are likely to happen. The Verse is really just a corner of a much larger implied setting (similar to Death in Space), but it also suggests that no one can really escape The Verse....this is the solar system, and everyone is stuck in here with the Vast Grimm. As time progresses, there is a chance the Vast gets closer to overwhelming all, and you check to see if the Prophecies of Fatuma come to pass, revealing new Torments....so just like in Mork Borg. 

The background on the setting, perhaps not unlike Mork Borg, is also a little confusing. There is the legacy of the enigmatic Fatuma, who prophesied the end of the world around which a cult has started. There is some event involving the Six who become They, which is always capitalized and never clearly explained, perhaps to lend mystery to it all or to vex the GM, or maybe to allow for creative freedom of interpretation, but either way it seems that (to me) the Six become They and in turn become the Vast, which unleash the wyrms, to create the Grimm. Or something like that. In the meantime, in a solar system somewhere humanity finds itself at the razor edge of extinction as a result, and there is a rumor of a fantastical Gate which generates a wormhole to another universe called the Gate of Infinite Stars. At the start of the campaign the GM secretly rolls to see which planetary body/location on the system the gate can be found, and if the PCs are lucky they might find it and either escape to a new universe or bring the inevitable destruction of the Vast Grimm with them. This is kind of neat....its a direct end goal for the PCs, and provides a long term arc for any campaign.

The rest of the setting is, similar to Mork Borg, inferred by the design and the descriptive elements. If you want a reference point for this universe, I am reminded of sources such as Heavy Metal magazine, the Metabarons/Incal universe, Alien Resurrection, The Fifth Element, and about half of the really schlocky scifi movies of the 80s. 

The introductory adventure in the book is a decent way to bring new players in to the setting, and provides plenty of exploration as the group seeks a piece of the Gate of Infinite Stars on the derelict research vessel Conundrum, which suddenly starts broadcasting its location. The race is on against other raiders and salvagers to find the relic before it is too late. Decent oppositional forces, a neat map to explore and several mysteries make this scenario worth playing.

The Supplements: Vast Grimm has several supplements so far, all from Infinite Black (here). "Adventures in the Volatileverse" is a magazine they publish with two issues out so far featuring new scenarios and content, and there is also a very nice GM's screen of comparable sturdiness and size to the Mork Borg GM screen. Indeed, the quality of the game is on par with its fantasy counterpart, and to be admired. 

Who Should Buy This? Well, it's fairly obvious to state that if you like Mork Borg and like the idea of an SF rendition of that game, then Vast Grimm is a no-brainer. If you are maybe put off by Mork Borg but still like the idea of a rules lite SF setting in a crapsack universe, I think you will find a lot to enjoy here. Unlike Mork Borg the Vast Grimm rules are more coherently stated; either that, or I am just getting used to reading these zine RPGs now and not noticing the vagaries of their design anymore.

Vast Grimm is an exceptional production, though, so if you just want a neat looking book this is totally it. If you have any interest in writing an RPG like this, its probably worth checking out Vast Grimm to see how they did it, and to also contrast it against how Mork Borg did it. Both systems effectively weaponize the concept of random tables and design, and use the economy of information to hint at rather than outright state the nature of their game worlds. I think in that sense Mork Borg is slightly better, if only because the weird future of Vast Grimm builds on some core conceits that are not entirely as clear as they might need to be for the SF setting it is in. 

Still, in the end, if you are only looking for a couple of these rules lite artpunk style RPGs to buy, I'd put Vast Grimm on my "must get" list. In many ways it is better than the closest competitor, Death in Space, which actually manages to be more involved in its own setting, but is also a more stoic approach to the weird future; indeed, while I can see running a long campaign with Death in Space, by contrast in Vast Grimm I can see it being an excellent grab-and-go approach to play, without needing so much to worry about; just generate a haunted space station or a twisted research base and you're off and running. In that regard Vast Grimm excels, much like Mork Borg in catering to a short form play session with long term potential, and I really like that. 

The Indie/Zine RPG Review Part XIV: Forbidden Psalm

 Forbidden Psalm (K.R.D. Designs)

$40 in print 

What it is: breaking the "RPG" part of this series directive, Forbidden Psalm is a miniatures game based on or more accurately fully compatible with/adjacent to Mork Borg. It uses Mork Borg's rules and setting as the springboard for a fast-paced kitbash-powered miniature skirmish game. By coincidence or design it also serves as a useful resource for short scenarios, monsters and locations/ideas for use with a more traditional Mork Borg campaign. 

The System: Forbidden Psalm takes the core conceits of the Mork Borg game system and translates it into a miniature battle game. The focus is on small teams, usually of about 5 models, who get a stat block which is slightly truncated/streamlined from the Mork Borg RPG counterparts, but not enough that you can't directly use content here with the RPG.

For example, Forbidden Psalm units pick a stat array instead of rolling, and get a set number of hit points. You don't worry about class, and focus only on relevant equipment. Units each get a random flaw and random feat instead of a class or other traits. Each player (and the game includes scenarios for just one player with a team of five vs. monstrous threats, for example) rolls up five units this way.  

Forbidden Psalm introduces movement and positioning rules, typical of miniature games but perhaps useful in Mork Borg as well if you want to use minis and terrain. We're not talking a lot of rules here, though...Forbidden Psalm does technically spend relatively dense 4 pages on combat which is more pages than Mork Borg spends on all its rules. 

Actual play in Forbidden Psalm is fairly straight forward: each player builds their squad, then you pick from one of ten scenarios and follow the instruction set to play through for an identified number of turns and goals. You then go to the campaign "between session" rules to see if survivors grow in power and the injured live or die. It allows for a way to play Mork Borg without a GM, for one, by conforming the setting to miniature wargaming, but it also makes for a fun approach to the artpunk death metal setting as a battle game, too.

The back of the book includes some printable standups for minis, but also has a section and examples on how to kitbash with inspirational suggestions. This is a phenomena I was only aware of from my wife, who likes occasionally kitbashing minis for painting. This is probably a good section for gamers interested in Forbidden Psalm, because outside of some Mork Borg minis that I think were only available through a Kickstarter, the only way to use minis in this game will be through a bit of cannibalization.

The Setting: Honestly, Forbidden Psalm doesn't waste time reiterating the Mork Borg universe, instead cutting to the idea that you work for the enigmatic wizard Vriprix, who seeks the mysterious Forbidden Psalm to stop the encroaching darkness of the end of the world. Your team of fighters have a noble cause, you see, though it is also driven by a desire for wealth and power accrual. Each of the ten scenarios in the book provide some locations you could adapt to the RPG easily enough in this regard. It also includes 11 monsters, as well as some scrolls and omens that, while aimed at the miniature skirmish side of this equation, can probably be used with the RPG with minimal adaptation as well.

Graphically it looks good, like a proper Mork Borg supplement, though it is ever so slightly more organized and easier to follow/read. 

The Supplements: I see on the developer website that they have a bunch of supplements, but the only one I have so far is "In the Footsteps of the Mad Wizard," which is an expanded campaign book for Forbidden Psalm featuring a sequel to the campaign in the core book, as your adventurers cheated out of the mythical Forbidden Psalm by the mad wizard Vriprix, chase him to the city of Dawnlight, a ruined edifice of suitable mystery and mayhem for the setting. It includes new rules, 20 new monsters as well as a monster generator aimed at Forbidden Psalms, and a 17 act campaign that also includes a base of operations (the Hogshead Inn) and rules on 3-4 player play. Some more kitbashed miniature examples are showcased as well. The campaign includes RPG-focused expository text, so they seem to assume some people will cobble the skirmish campaign into a proper RPG campaign as well and offer the tools to do so. This supplement ultimately adds a lot of value to Forbidden Psalms, and motivates me to get the other expansion books they have released (looks like seven or so, though not all are in print).

Who is this for? Honestly, Forbidden Psalm will be a fun addition to a Mork Borg fan's collection. It's also a useful game to have if you want desperately to play Mork Borg but maybe can't find a proper group, as it allows for some solo and two-player play without needing a GM. It does require using either stand-ups or miniatures on a minimum size 2'X2' table and you will need to print out or create the maps for play areas (the bulk of the maps are fairly simple to use/make though). And if you don't like the idea of playing it as a skirmish game, this is a wealth of useful stuff that is mechanically cross-compatible with traditional Mork Borg. So...win win!

The Indie/Zine RPG Reviews Part XI: QVKE BORG

QVKE BORG (Exalted Funeral and Bird Silhouette Games)

$14.00 in print+PDF (Exalted Funeral)

$10.00 PDF only (DrivethruRPG) and also at itch.io

What it is: An expansion for use with Mork Borg! It's Quake, but in Mork Borg! It's also part of Exalted Funeral's summer of free games, though I have managed to get exactly zero free games out of the event. I did buy it, however, and have to say I'm not sorry...this is a rockin' little sourcebook/genre pack.

The System: It's Mork Borg powered, so you roll characters like you do in Mork Borg, and the QVKE BORG rules include a few worthy details to Quake-ify your Dark Fortress experience....a task easier done than said, I suspect. The rules add one new class, which can either be the only class if you're going for an exclusively Quake experience: the slipgate ranger, or you can add other standard Mork Borg characters; the game's backstory is that the dark realm of Shub-Niggurath...er, I mean Shub-Nechurath, the QVKEMother, has intruded upon the already eschatonically damned realm of Mork Borg, so some wayward explorers from the core rules could totally fall into this one. That said, the slipgate ranger might survive a tad longer. 

The rules provide an array of eight totally-not-Quake appropriate weapons to choose from, including the usual shotguns, lightning rifles and rocket launchers. There are about 15 monsters in the book done in good traditional Mork Borg format with a grotesque illustration in which a slash of stat blocks are hidden away, In the back is a short treatise on what a slipgate is, a discussion of the four hellish realms of QVKE, some charts for things to find and what you encounter while traversing the QVKE realms. 

It's not quite a module, as such....definitely a mini setting guide. But its exhuberant embrace of the Mork Borg minimalism makes it a fine little book to snag if you can get your hands on it.

Being that this is a supplement and not a rulebook in its own right, you need Mork Borg to play. It doesn't give you a structured scenario path to work with, but its random charts are more than enough for a night of crazy shotgun fun. You could totally throw this at a regular Mork Borg gang, as long as you're willing to accept they will take their freshly found boomsticks if they escape the QVKE Mother and rule all of Galgenbeck with them when they return!

Supplements: I think, although I would have to contemplate it a bit, that you could readily crib from this for a more heacy handed metal SF take on the Quake genre with CY_BORG or Vast Grimm without much or even any difficulty. Just keep in mind that those two systems more explicity support SF as a genre in its mechanics and style, while QVKE BORG here is designed to mesh with the scaling evident in Mork Borg. But....more on the other two SF Borg-likes later.

Who is this for? Well, first, it's for any Mork Borg fan who can't get enough. This book is a trip and a half, and its minimalist ecxpansion for Mork Borg is just enough to have some decent fun. It's undisguised effort to pay homage to the original Quake video game is appreciated, and it meshes fluidly with the Artpunk death metal genre of Mork Borg just fine. I don't know if you'll get a protracted campaign out of this, but I can see having a couple nights of real fun with it.

As a side note, this is one of many zine products which I am noticing have a non trivial level of video game influence. I feel like that influence does exist in bigger productions, but maybe the indie zine scene is more honest about it? Seriously though....it would be hard for a lot of big name RPGs to just spit out a Quake clone book...they'd have to get IP permissions (because anything off-brand might lead to a lawsuit), have to justify the book's existence with hundreds of pages of expository text....and with something like this, you don't have to worry about that, and you can have a couple fun 3-5 hour sessions of crazy shotgun madness, no questions asked.