Latest / Sessions Canceled / Ashes Without Number | Tabletop Shout-Out Part. 2: Ep. 188

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Ashes Without Number | Tabletop Shout-Out Part. 2: Ep. 188 · Sessions Canceled

0:15
The GM got very distracted by nonsense arguments about Pokémon
0:20
and then went to go buy Pokémon cards and we haven't seen him
0:22
back since. So like since it's cancelled I
0:24
guess? No, I heard it's too late.
0:27
I heard you. I heard you cracking.
0:32
I did, yes. Oh my God, I was like please,
0:35
please start. I can't hold it.
0:37
I. Had to.
0:38
I had to compose myself. I couldn't, I couldn't go
0:41
straight into it. Oh.
0:42
My God. Tell us in the chat is is
0:47
toxicroc from Pokémon intended to be a ninja frog?
0:51
You just know your opinions. Of the cops, yeah yeah, yeah,
0:54
yeah is. He a ninja frog.
0:57
I love the opinion of yes, he is a ninja frog.
0:59
I'm firmly on no, but I don't, yeah, I don't know.
1:04
I'm not even no. I'm like a tentative maybe.
1:09
We're not talking about ninja frogs or Pokémon though.
1:11
Mostly because I don't actually care that much about Pokémon
1:14
anymore. I feel like every time I bring
1:18
up Pokémon I feel like I'm a a recovering like alcoholic or
1:23
something. You do have the like, we talk
1:25
about Pokémon, but I think you're like, but I don't do that
1:27
anymore. Yeah, well, 'cause I used to be
1:29
deep in that sauce, so like there's.
1:33
Kind of like a specific friend of ours, like I, I used to do, I
1:36
used to go to raves to do Mali, but I don't do that anymore.
1:38
You're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, fucking
1:42
peddle that shit back. I mean not.
1:45
Quite to the same extreme, but sure, yeah.
1:50
Oh my God. It's like, what's the fucking
1:52
bit in Adventure Time when it's like when Jake was like, Oh
1:54
yeah, that was back in the day when I used to mug old ladies
1:56
before I knew it was wrong. And you're like, yeah.
2:00
Yeah, or a certain other friend who told us about being in a
2:03
band out of nowhere. We were like.
2:06
This tragic back story. Yes, yes, You know how he used
2:11
to get into fights all the time and we didn't believe?
2:13
Him. Yeah, how he went from skinny
2:15
string beat to fucking. Swole Jack, swollen, violent.
2:21
Anyway, two friends in question though, you know who you are.
2:26
I can't wait to hear from the women chat.
2:27
Both of you know who you are. You're going to jump into VC
2:31
being like I fuck you. Anyway, we're not here on
2:38
Pokémon business though. We're here on Stars Without
2:41
Number Business, which I was going to make some kind of joke
2:44
about how it's like Pokémon, but I can't actually justify that
2:47
so. I would have been impressed,
2:49
really. Yeah, I couldn't.
2:51
I couldn't think. I, I, if I had time, I I
2:53
probably could have come up with something.
2:55
Anyway, it's fine. It's fine.
2:57
Also, did I say stars without number?
2:59
I think you did. Did it Ashes without number?
3:03
Listen, the they're four games, but they're kind of one game,
3:07
you know? So like, your brain kind of
3:08
smashes them together. Do kind of feel like 4-3
3:12
expansions to one game. It kind of is, Yeah.
3:15
In a way, yeah. Yes, we're here to, we're here
3:20
to get, we're back at again at the Krispy Kreme with the Ashes
3:24
Without Number. And we're going to go over at
3:26
the the GM side of things, as is our, as is our ritual.
3:34
And yeah, I mean, let's give it to you.
3:40
Let's give it to that Skippity before we do, though, hit
3:44
follow, subscribe on your podcast platform of choice.
3:46
And if you're feeling generous, there's a donation link in the
3:49
description. So ashes are that number.
3:54
All right, so we, we, we wrapped up on the the identifying
4:00
mysterious tech rule, which is a rule that I was not a huge fan
4:03
of. And that sort of generally cuts
4:06
the book in half from the PC to the GM section.
4:09
Much like all the other books, there's not actually a
4:12
delineated point of this is for GM and this is for PCs, but you
4:17
can kind of just tell. So the GM section starts off
4:24
with enclaves and settlements, which if you'll have the
4:29
familiarity with the other without number games, this is
4:34
basically our faction turn replacement.
4:39
Cities without number actually forgo to faction turn entirely
4:44
and instead just had more detailed rules about like
4:47
designing missions and designing mega corps and designing like
4:50
faction like enemy faction gangs.
4:54
But we're we're back at it with the faction turn sorta enclaves
5:01
and settlements. It's it serves the same purpose
5:05
as the fashion term, but it's kind of simplified down and it's
5:08
not the scope is quite a lot smaller because you're dealing
5:12
with post apocalypse. So you know, stars without
5:15
number. You can have factions that are
5:17
literally, literally sector wide regional hegemons that like own
5:22
multiple planets and shit. So obviously you're not going to
5:25
get on to that level of craziness with a post apocalypse
5:29
game. That would be, you know, a
5:31
little off color. So instead you have enclaves and
5:36
settlements which you know brings the power scale way down.
5:40
If you want to phrase it that way, if you want to talk about
5:43
power scaling, which I know as I say is I.
5:50
I really it isn't it it I keep getting sucked into these
5:53
conversations, but it really it. Really.
5:55
No, it clearly is, I say. You keep doing it so obviously.
6:00
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Someone brings up fucking power
6:05
scaling and then they do it in a chat that I specifically get
6:08
pinged on so I'm getting fucking interrupted doing whatever the
6:11
fuck I'm doing be looking at. Like I don't know if fucking
6:15
Scribblow Bimblow can beat Glupshitto in a fight and I'm
6:18
like, and then they're like, well clearly because the fucking
6:21
mangaka was in rehab at the time, that means that this
6:25
character is stronger and you're like fuck are you talking about?
6:28
The mangaka was in rehab. Glop shit.
6:30
Oh, has a debuff. Yeah, I like.
6:33
He has the the sickly mangaka debuff.
6:35
Look, I could only have my fucking neurons be insulted so
6:38
much before I got to say some shit, OK?
6:46
All right, So all right, the odd clave rules.
6:50
I mean, do you have any initial opinions before you started
6:53
getting into this? Because I know that this is
6:55
something you really wanted to do in your game.
6:58
Yeah, once again, again, take a shot because we're continuing
7:01
that game of every time. Isaiah was like, oh, this would
7:04
have been fucking great for me. Yeah, yeah, this pretty much did
7:09
this in, you know, about three times as much words but tripled
7:12
the cohesion. I did everything that I was
7:14
trying to do with like my citadels and Guild system.
7:18
And yeah, like it even gives you some like pretty interesting
7:23
stuff a little bit later on for like how to get them to coexist
7:27
in. Like if one is attacking the
7:29
other for resources or trading with the other or building
7:32
settlements, All that stuff that I had to like kind of hand wave.
7:35
And then I'm pretty much fucking gave up on towards the end
7:38
because it just was like not feeling how I wanted it to feel.
7:43
That sounds about right, yeah, yeah, I mean, the thing about
7:47
having some kind of faction turned S mechanic is it's not
7:50
going to slot on to every game, every style of game It you know,
7:54
it's got a the the conceit of the the conceit of the campaign
8:00
needs to fit in such a fashion that that idea flows.
8:05
So you know, yeah. So you start by, you pick, you
8:12
pick, you start the whole thing by deciding a starting enclave.
8:15
This is generally where the PCs are going to begin play.
8:20
It is also also worth pointing out that the factions or the
8:25
Enclave settlement system is going to work best in the Mutant
8:30
Wasteland style of campaign. As a reminder we have the Mutant
8:33
Wasteland style game which is sort of your Mad Max or your
8:37
Fallout style post apocalypse where society is sort of settled
8:41
into a kind of weird new norm even though the new norm is
8:44
horrible. And then you have your dead
8:47
lands campaign, which is your Walking Dead style zombie
8:50
apocalypse situation. And then you have after the
8:55
fall, which is like natural disaster has con caused
8:59
everything to go into complete shit and you're playing in the
9:02
like near immediate aftermath of said disaster.
9:08
So the settlements, the the enclaves and settlements thing
9:10
is, is going to slot easiest into the mutant wasteland.
9:16
And then it probably could still work in the Deadland style
9:20
campaign, depending on how like what span of time you want the
9:23
Deadlands game to cover. And then the after the fall one,
9:27
probably the hardest time making that fit because generally the
9:30
way the book talks about an after the fall campaign is the
9:33
the timeline that it's covering is pretty short, usually like a
9:39
few months at most kind of thing.
9:41
So you're probably not going to have enclaves, but anyway.
9:47
So yes, you start by deciding where the PCs are going to start
9:50
their starting enclave. They don't necessarily have to
9:53
be tied to it or anything, but it's kind of going to be their
9:56
like default home base in some capacity.
9:58
They might not even be wanted there, but it's kind of the
10:00
place they might go back to or whatever.
10:03
Then you generally the book recommends picking 5 enclaves
10:08
near the starting enclave and you can do more but you probably
10:13
don't want to. And instead if you start adding
10:17
additional settlements, just don't make them enclaves, just
10:21
make them smaller settlements that are just kind of minding
10:24
their own business because the enclaves are going to actively
10:27
interact with each other mechanically through this whole
10:30
process. So if you add too many your
10:34
homework is going to get crazy. Which has someone who ran stars
10:37
without number can confirm if you have too many factions, your
10:41
homework does get crazy. So like you do want to be
10:44
careful about that. It is worth pointing out you
10:47
don't have to do faction turns every single session, right?
10:51
You're doing them every few sessions usually, but still.
10:58
And then yeah, basically you kind of ignore the other
11:00
communities that are not like enclaves, the ones that aren't
11:03
as important. Not ignore as in they don't
11:07
exist, but ignore them in the mechanical framework of this
11:10
system. So you start by determining the
11:13
power of the on of the enclave, which goes from like a refugee
11:19
cramp or a little tribal village all the way up to multi regional
11:23
hegemonic city or multi city power.
11:26
And it's a one to five scale that initial you, you determine
11:33
the power SO12345 and then the power determines the enclave's
11:38
action die, which goes from AD 6 to AD 20.
11:43
The action die is what they will roll to sort of attack each
11:48
other or sometimes deal with problems.
11:52
It's sort of their, it's their singular stat that they kind of
11:56
use to, to deal with things. Then your enclave has cohesion,
12:01
which is equal to your enclave's power.
12:04
And it's, it's, it's just the Enclave's HP basically is the
12:08
cohesion. Once the cohesion drops down,
12:12
you know, fictionally speaking, the, the Enclave has become such
12:16
a mess that nobody wants to be there anymore.
12:19
And so everybody fucks off and goes and does their own thing.
12:21
They are not cohesive as a, as a settlement anymore.
12:25
Then you have features. This one's kind of interesting
12:29
because the features don't have a numerical value attached to
12:34
them, which is pretty different to how the faction turn worked
12:37
for stars and worlds. Where in stars, stars out number
12:42
and worlds out number, you bought assets and your assets
12:45
had like numerical data points. They had like an attack and a
12:50
defence value and like and like an HP value and stuff.
12:56
And you would assets would do very specific things.
12:59
They weren't like, like they weren't, they were, they were
13:03
like, the assets were more like abilities that you bought for
13:06
the faction. Whereas the features here are
13:10
more like they're, they're more like fictional tags that you
13:14
describe in like a sentence or a couple of sentences.
13:18
So like one example it gives is features or what it says is
13:22
features aren't measured numerically.
13:24
Instead, they're usually expressed in a single sentence,
13:26
like the campus constructed on a large grain depot, or the
13:30
tribe's warriors are exceptionally well armed and
13:32
disciplined. The features will then the
13:38
sentence of the feature, like what the feature is.
13:41
The tag, as it were, is relevant because if you describe that
13:47
they have a large grain depot and then you try to say, oh,
13:52
this enclave wants to attack another enclave and the only
13:55
thing they have is a grain depot, then they kind of can't
13:58
attack them because they just have no means of doing so.
14:01
So even though they don't have a bespoke mechanical effect, what
14:05
you describe the feature as when you're writing it down as the GM
14:08
is relevant. And then if there's a really I.
14:11
Was going to say to to be clear though.
14:13
Like yes, they don't have a bespoke numerical effect, but
14:18
the the sort of narrative informs the function in so far
14:22
as when something makes a move against another one, you use its
14:25
features to its advantage by adding to roles.
14:29
Well, yeah, that's what I'm saying.
14:30
If they only have a grand Depot, they can't attack.
14:33
Yes, but like you could use like if you were going to use like a
14:35
hostile action, you could be worded like, Oh yes, you know,
14:39
they're going to starve them out and because they have a grand
14:42
depot, they can do that. Oh, I mean, yes, yes, like it
14:47
can, yeah, if you can make it makes sense.
14:49
Honestly, the point, I think the point of what you're supposed to
14:52
do with the features more than anything is use them to describe
14:58
the narrative of what's happening.
15:00
Like Enclave A uses their feature against Enclave B, and
15:06
based on how you worded the feature, that informs what the
15:09
story will become when the players hear about what
15:12
happened. I think that's kind of the
15:13
intention of that. Almost certainly.
15:17
Also, when you have particularly complicated features, you can
15:20
string together like a little a small paragraph where each
15:24
sentence is kind of a different element of the feature and you
15:27
have to break down each part of the feature if you want to
15:31
destroy the feature. Or if a, if an enemy faction
15:34
wants to destroy the feature, I should say, then you have
15:40
problems which are the opposite of features as they kind of
15:44
sound. Problems are literally fictional
15:48
problems that you describe, you know, such as food supplies are
15:52
inadequate and people often go hungry, right?
15:54
That is a problem in the within the within the enclave.
16:03
But problems do get a numerical value attached to them.
16:07
Usually it's only one point, maybe 2 points if it's a
16:10
particularly bad problem. And then you have the enclaves
16:15
trouble score, which is all of the problems added together is
16:22
their trouble score. So if you have a if you have the
16:26
problem of no food and the problem of like trauma as it
16:31
describes trauma and despair has left people numb.
16:33
And those are both 2 point problems.
16:35
You add them together, you have a trouble score of four.
16:38
If your trouble score ever equals your maximum action die
16:42
value, action die roll, the community falls apart.
16:45
So if your action die is AD 10, you effectively have 10 like
16:51
points of problems that you can deal with and if well actually 9
16:54
because if you hit 10 you fucked.
16:57
So they have an so you kind of have two HP values because you
17:00
have cohesion which can drop from getting attacked and then
17:04
you have trouble, which can go up from problems getting worse.
17:10
Both of them have the ability to rip your enclave apart.
17:15
Then you have interest. I I don't like the word interest
17:19
for this mechanic. I don't necessarily have a
17:21
better word, but interest confused me because it made me
17:23
think it had some kind of monetary.
17:25
Name miracle interest and not like they have a a vested in
17:28
like a vested interest. A vested interest is what
17:32
they're getting at. But yes, it made me think
17:34
numerical. It's not numerical.
17:35
So interest is the idea that your enclave has some kind of
17:42
influence or ability to help or harm their neighbors.
17:46
It can be good or bad. So like planting spies, building
17:51
trade routes, installing and occupying Garrison, those are
17:55
all interest. So if you're if the PCs enclave
18:00
installs a Garrison in a nearby enemy enclave they have, that is
18:05
a point of interest in that enclave.
18:08
The points of interest can be will be used for some various
18:12
actions. You can't have more.
18:19
You can't have more points of interest in any in any of your
18:24
neighbors more than twice your maximum action die roll.
18:27
So like if your maximum, if your action dies of D10, you can have
18:31
20 points of interest total. There's only so much, so much
18:35
you can spread around your community's influence.
18:42
And then we have Dominion, which is another one that's weird.
18:46
So the Dominion is kind of the money, which again, slightly
18:52
confusing on the name there, but Dominion is effectively a a meta
18:58
currency that the enclave can spend to help themselves out in
19:02
various ways. So those are all your stats.
19:06
So you have power cohesion, features, problems, trouble,
19:11
interest, dominion. So you every enclave kind of has
19:14
a lot of stats. I kind of lost numbers.
19:18
I was going to say I almost wish Dominion was called wealth.
19:21
But like, it's more than just their physical money.
19:23
It's like more than money, their influence.
19:26
Yeah. So maybe I maybe then just
19:28
recall it influence then. But maybe that would conflict
19:31
with like. Influence would conflict with
19:32
interests. Yeah.
19:35
I know, Yeah. I don't know that's that's the
19:39
that's the way it it it's called wealth in the other two games,
19:43
but that makes more sense in those settings, you know yeah.
19:46
Also the other thing too, the reason it's not called wealth is
19:48
because there's a good chance that your post apocalypse
19:52
doesn't have money, you know? True yeah, in the traditional
19:56
sense. So, so that's all your, that's
20:00
your setup for your enclave and then you have your enclave turn
20:04
so every. Every enclave gets you have two
20:11
kinds of actions. You have internal and external
20:14
actions, which are pretty much what they sound like.
20:16
You can perform, perform, perform.
20:19
You can perform. It can.
20:22
You can perform one internal action per turn, and generally
20:28
internal actions are going to be building up features or dealing
20:32
with problems. And then you can have as many
20:36
external actions as you have power.
20:38
So like if you have three power, you can perform three external
20:41
actions. It also doesn't specifically say
20:48
not all enclaves are necessarily going to do everything every
20:52
enclave turn, so if you have a reason to assume that this
20:55
enclave isn't doing anything, they're just chilling, then
20:58
that's fine. Some actions will require you to
21:03
make a trouble check. This is where you roll your
21:07
action die and then see if it's equal or less than your trouble
21:10
rating, and then based on the number you roll you can.
21:16
That will help you to pick which problem is int is causing
21:22
trouble problem with a capital P you know the your problem
21:29
scores. Right score, right.
21:32
Then there's contests, which are basically what they sound like.
21:34
Contests between two factions attacking each other.
21:38
You roll, your action dies versus each other.
21:41
See who wins the the the numerical contest.
21:45
And like I was saying before, the attacker states what they
21:48
are trying to accomplish and the names the features they are
21:51
using to do it. The feature must actually have
21:53
something to do with the effort. A magnificent school system
21:56
isn't very useful if the attacker's goal is to burn down
21:59
their enemy's granary. So like, yeah, the features have
22:02
to make sense for the action. It's kind of funny because the
22:06
way he words it in this, the way he words the Enclave turn makes
22:12
it sound like you're having this debate with the players, but
22:15
you're not. Yeah.
22:17
No, it's it's you. It's a it's you arguing with
22:20
yourself. So you worded it a little weird
22:23
later about us, but whatever. Now remind me, did did earlier
22:31
games tell you when these roles are supposed to take place?
22:33
Like I know it says in game every month or so, but do you do
22:36
this at the table? Do you do this out of table?
22:40
Between sessions. All right, that's what I figured
22:42
because this this would take me to take you like 3045 minutes.
22:46
Stars without number it would take me like an hour usually to
22:49
do a faction turn. Yeah, I figured as much, Yeah.
22:55
But yes, yes, definitely you want to do this between.
22:58
The intention is you do it between sessions, so like the
23:03
players finish a big adventure or whatever and then some time
23:06
passes and then you do it between the sessions and the
23:09
time having passed sort of changes the game state.
23:12
And then you inform the players in some some fashion how the
23:16
game state has changed. So like in stars is
23:18
outnumbering. They can't like news reports or
23:20
something like that or a phone call from like a boss or
23:23
whatever telling them that something happened.
23:27
Obviously with this game, it's going to be a little bit of a
23:29
different vibe in terms of updating the players and stuff.
23:32
But yeah, so yes, then that's that's how the contest rolls
23:40
deal. Basically the two sides roll
23:42
against each other. And then if, if you feel like
23:45
the contest of you being the GM, feel like the contest is
23:49
particularly uneven, like weighted a little too much in
23:53
one party's favor or the other, you can slap some plus ones and
23:57
some minus, you know, some modifiers on there to basically,
24:03
you know, to, to indicate the like unevenness of the
24:08
situation. So then there's dominion and
24:12
changes. So normally by default, you
24:17
start with 0 Dominion and then your main way you're going to
24:20
get Dominion is through an internal action called build
24:23
Strength, which is where you kind of, you know, you rouse the
24:27
settlement, you rouse the enclave, you get everyone
24:29
working together on a project or whatever, blah blah blah.
24:32
Like fictionally it's the leaders of the enclave getting
24:34
everyone to cooperate and help each other out and purge bad
24:38
shit, blah blah, blah. And that will increase your
24:43
dominion. Also if the player characters do
24:47
something in an adventure in an adventure that will influence
24:53
the dominion too. So for example if the players
24:56
bring bring back a whole bunch of valuable resources, you know
25:03
a fuck load of guns and ammo or like a lot of scrap for a big
25:07
project doesn't you know shit loads of food?
25:09
That can also increase the dominion.
25:12
Generally the Dominion gained should be about the same as the
25:17
average experience points from the player that the players
25:21
would gain. So probably it's going to be
25:23
most of the time it's going to be 3 Dominion gain from the
25:26
players going on an adventure to get something.
25:30
And then the main way you spend Dominion is Enact is the Enact
25:35
change action, internal action where you quite literally you
25:41
spend your gained resources to try and better your settlement
25:45
and some, you know, improve the enclave in some way.
25:48
Build an educational system, build a farming system, build a
25:52
fucking, you know, build irrigation like some sort of
25:55
improvement. If you're trying to do something
25:59
really crazy, then the cost will be, you know, could double if,
26:05
if the goal is not reasonable at all, they can't do it without
26:10
some sort of PC intervention probably.
26:14
And then there can be resistance to change where you might have
26:20
there, there's a table here that has forces opposed to the
26:24
change. So you have some sort of
26:25
figurehead that doesn't want to change in that enclave for XY or
26:29
Z reason, and that increases the cost.
26:31
For example, there's a abandoned army general camped out in the
26:35
enclave and they don't want you to build a school system.
26:38
So that increases the cost by 6 points.
26:41
The base cost of changing things is generally equal to the power
26:48
of the of the enclave. So if the enclave is power 3,
26:54
then the the cost of changing something via dominion points
26:58
will be 3. Until you bring in the modifiers
27:00
of course. But as with everything else,
27:06
also if the players you know take care of the problem for
27:10
you, then that modifier might go away.
27:13
So if there's a bandit captain or abandoned army general who
27:17
really doesn't want a school system built and the players
27:21
have a chat with him, problem solved and then you don't have
27:25
to worry about that. Yeah, we call that shotgun
27:28
politics. Yeah.
27:30
So you know, as is, as is always the case, player action, like
27:36
you have you, you as the GM have all these mechanics to interact
27:42
and like you have your own little chess game you can play
27:44
with, play with yourself, which sounds weird, but you know, but
27:49
the player's actions always supersede it.
27:51
So if they do something that should drastically change it,
27:54
then yes, it happens. And in Stars Without Number and
27:59
Worlds Without Number, the idea that the players are doing
28:02
something so extreme to like drastically change what the
28:05
factions doing is definitely less likely.
28:08
Because they, you know, if the faction that the players are
28:13
interacting with is, you know, a regional business that owns that
28:19
runs on three different planets, 1 little mission the player's
28:21
doing probably isn't going to affect that much.
28:24
But we're dealing with the post apocalypse game like this where
28:26
the enclaves are quite a bit smaller.
28:28
Good chance players will influence this quite a bit more.
28:33
Just from a fictional standpoint, they're more likely
28:36
to interact with shit like that. Yeah, I just given that the
28:38
stakes are far lower and therefore smaller actions will
28:42
evoke larger changes, stakes are lower and the and the like, the
28:47
distance between things is smaller and the the amount
28:50
needed to affect the chain. Like, yeah, all that.
28:54
I would have really loved this system when I was planning the
28:56
whole bandit war thing because I, you know, I would have to be
28:59
like, I had like 4 citadels and like 12 guilds and I had to
29:03
constantly be like, well, OK, this one's doing this.
29:06
And you know, you have to build your own grid of these things,
29:09
which is really frustrating if you don't have like a basis to,
29:11
to set it on. And I don't know if the players
29:16
had this feeling, but to me I was like, sometimes it just
29:18
feels like things are happening and I can't really tie it to any
29:22
tangible mechanic, you know what I mean?
29:24
Like any way that they can stop it or foresee it, it's just kind
29:27
of happening. And like, you know, of course,
29:30
if they were they, they just called people every day and it's
29:32
like, hey, are you getting attacked yet?
29:34
Clearly they would have had an answer, but that's just not how
29:38
anybody would act in the situation they were in where
29:40
they have their own shit to deal with, right?
29:44
Yeah, I mean part of part of the trick.
29:47
I I will say don't assume that this, don't assume that this
29:53
system would totally solve that problem for you either though,
29:56
because part of the trick is how do you deliver the information
30:00
to the players in such a way that they actually know it's
30:02
relevant and are going to interact with it?
30:05
You know what I mean? So there is, there is still
30:08
that. But if you have the more
30:10
concrete mechanics, you have something to show them a little
30:14
bit more exactly. That's that's kind of what I was
30:17
getting. At yeah.
30:20
So then we have our enclave actions.
30:23
So you have 3 internal actions, which is build strength, enact
30:27
change, and restore cohesion. Build strength, like we said,
30:31
that's the one how you gather dominion up.
30:34
Enact change is where you either make a new feature or fix a
30:37
problem. Restore cohesion is basically
30:41
regenerate your health move. And then the external actions
30:46
you have aid an ally, which is give some, you know, give some
30:49
cash, give some help to an ally, attack arrival, which that's
30:53
pretty self-explanatory. Extend an interest, which is,
30:56
you know, embed some kind of interest in a nearby enclave or
31:00
remove an interest, which is to say, take an interest that's
31:03
embedded in your enclave and get rid of it.
31:06
And then there's one special, sorry, there's one special one
31:11
called spend interest, which basically if you have a point of
31:19
interest in a target faction, you have a couple of things that
31:22
you can do, which is to say you can steal some dominion from
31:26
them. You can help them with an
31:28
action. So like if your interest in a,
31:34
if your interest in a neighboring enclave is something
31:36
like a, a Garrison and they go to attack another enclave, the
31:41
one with the interest could say, yeah, we'll help with that.
31:43
Our, our Garrison will help you with that.
31:45
And that can increase the role or you can hinder an action,
31:49
which is to say, conversely, if they attack someone and the
31:52
enclave with the interest says no, we don't want you to do
31:54
that, our Garrison is going to block your troops, that kind of
31:58
shit. There is quite a few.
32:01
There's less actions in this game also than stars, so that
32:05
makes things a little easier too and just kind of less to jangle
32:10
around. Have I like brought forth the
32:13
idea of not that I would want to do this as AGM, but I think it'd
32:17
be really cool if you had AGM who was running multiple games
32:20
of Ashes and each party was a different enclave.
32:25
People have proposed this, yes. So.
32:30
This is kind of the level of work of like the cross, like the
32:33
the world, the darkness, like cross.
32:34
Black book games where like one person's a vampire, one person's
32:37
a mage, one person's a werewolf. I'd never want to run that, but
32:40
I'd love to play it, yeah. The before, not exactly what
32:53
you're talking about, but before the Cobell inning.
32:56
Oh no, I thought. I thought we agreed to never use
33:00
that phrase again. You're the one who came up with
33:03
it. Yeah, I know.
33:05
But you were like, no, we can't. We can't keep doing.
33:08
Well, so before the before it happened, he was running stars
33:12
out number where the the twitch chat was part of the the twitch
33:20
chat was the factions of the game and they would make
33:23
decisions for their factions. So he would, he would get orders
33:28
from the designated faction leaders in like the discord
33:31
group and then the factions he would he would do all he would
33:35
do out all the math based on the orders that the faction leaders
33:38
gave him. So not exactly the same thing
33:41
you're talking about, but a similar kind of vibe where like
33:43
a whole bunch of different people are interacting with the
33:45
faction mechanic. See, that's really cool though,
33:47
because like that, that introduces such a fun level of
33:50
like randomness into things. Correct.
33:54
Yes. I would almost like maybe if you
33:56
weren't going to do the big party thing, you could almost
33:59
have a situation where you have friends who are interested in
34:02
your campaign and you just give them give them a fucking enclave
34:06
and like. Yes, give them a faction, yeah.
34:08
Every four sessions, you're just like, here, y'all?
34:10
I, I want you to pick something and just fucking do it.
34:13
And especially if they know each other, they'll start, they'll
34:15
start acting against each other to be assholes.
34:18
Right, right. You're like your your one friend
34:19
is the Ring of Fire Conclave and your other friend is the fucking
34:23
the horde of ice and you're like, all right guys, here's
34:25
what happened in the last couple of sessions.
34:26
What do y'all want to do? Yeah, Oh my God, that'd be so
34:29
cool. Yeah, I mean, that's certainly
34:32
an option. I mean, you would only need and
34:33
you wouldn't have to do it for every faction either, right?
34:35
You, a couple of them. You as the GM could just manage.
34:38
Yeah, well, it says like you don't like you shouldn't have
34:41
more than six enclaves. You're.
34:42
Operating at six, so yeah. Give them to like 3 of your
34:46
friends and you get 3 for yourself.
34:49
Definitely doable, yeah. So the process for creating an
34:54
enclave, I mean, it's pretty, I don't even know that I really
34:58
need to say much here, but like, decide, you know, decide your
35:03
basic, all right, we're going to have an enclave here.
35:05
You throw some tags on it like every other without number
35:09
games. There's a whole shit load of
35:11
tags provided that can give you all sorts of different ideas to
35:14
generate. Decide what kind of power rating
35:17
they have. You know from the 1:00 to 5:00.
35:22
Give them at least at least one feature, potentially 2.
35:25
If they're power rating three or more, they probably would have
35:27
at least two. Assign them some problems.
35:31
Recommended to do half the action die size.
35:34
So if there's a town of and D8 action die, they should probably
35:38
have like 4 points worth of problems.
35:43
Give them Dominion points, although most enclaves are
35:46
probably going to start with 0, but if for some reason you feel
35:49
like they should start with a couple, then give them a couple
35:50
dominion points and then give them interest in other enclaves
35:58
for the neighboring enclaves that they're involved with.
36:00
You roll the action die and whatever number comes up, that's
36:03
how many points of interest they have to spread around, which
36:05
means the interest thing starts at a random amount.
36:08
And then give them a basic goal that the leadership is trying to
36:11
do at the enclave. An immediate, you know, short
36:15
term thing they're trying to do. And then there's a little
36:18
section again explaining basically if the PCs do some
36:24
shit that completely upends the situation, then that just
36:27
happens. You don't, you don't need to
36:29
obey the rules in any way. The PCs just get to do that
36:31
shit. They're player characters, they
36:32
get to break things. And then it gives you a couple
36:38
of sample enclaves, basically little, they're basically little
36:44
stat blocks for various, for the various enclaves.
36:47
If you want to sort of play around and you know, look at the
36:52
examples and get an idea. They're very, they're very,
36:58
they're very generic examples too.
37:00
Like one of them is just a military base turned village,
37:04
doomed refugee camp, post apocalyptic tribal village.
37:08
So like they're really simple samples.
37:11
So you could take them nice and easy.
37:13
And then you have the big long list of enclave tags, which as
37:16
you might imagine, goes on for pages and pages because so
37:21
without number game baby, we got tables.
37:23
Oh yeah, So lots of enclave tags.
37:26
Shocker, I'm sure. And then at the end.
37:29
Of all that, personal favorite is Uplifted Beasts.
37:31
It's just the like the Fallout 2 village of Death Claws.
37:34
You're just like. Yeah, just like weirdly, Yeah,
37:37
all these animals that are sentient for some reason, Yeah.
37:43
And then if all of that explanation for the Enclave turn
37:48
didn't make no God damn sense to you, there's an example Enclave
37:51
turn to walk you through it. Again, it's a without number
37:55
game, so of course we have that. Or do you expect?
37:59
Anything else? Anything else?
38:02
Then we get to the whole creating your campaign bit
38:06
again, much like all the other. I say this with every single
38:10
Without Number game, but we're just going to say it again for
38:11
the sake of it. I'm going to go through this
38:14
kind of quick because it's not necessarily something that
38:16
requires a ton of yapping about, but there is a very detailed
38:21
step by step, lots of good information.
38:23
Create your own campaign system. So I'm going to hit like, you
38:30
know, going to hit the the high level stuff.
38:36
You start by, you know, you establish your themes, you know,
38:39
like your tropes and your stylistic choice, blah, blah,
38:41
blah. Figure out which genre you're
38:43
done going to do. So the the three genre types of
38:46
ashes, you know, your mutant, your dead lands or your after
38:48
the fall. Figure out what kind of campaign
38:53
structure you're going to do, which is to say, is it going to
38:56
be focused more around like survival or more around
38:59
explanation? Exploration.
39:04
Exploration, yes, or around exploration, because that's a
39:11
really hard word. It's fine.
39:17
Design your region to play in, obviously.
39:21
Stock up your region with crises and encounter sites and then
39:25
figure out your initial adventure.
39:28
Your initial adventure, as is always the case, it's
39:31
recommended, should be really simple, straightforward, and
39:34
should only take the players like a session at most.
39:38
You know, maybe a session and a half if you lag behind a little
39:40
bit, but it's the initial adventure should be simple and
39:43
straightforward just to like get their feet wet, get and get the
39:47
point across and get them into the flow of the mechanics and
39:50
shit. Then there's a big thing on
39:56
things to think about, like problems that might arise.
40:00
The one thing I do want to mention with this one is there's
40:02
a section that says is there a victory state?
40:07
Which I think is a really interesting point because I
40:12
think people have a tendency to jump into campaigns often where
40:17
they just kind of start running and don't know if there's like a
40:20
decided end point really. So the idea of pre establishing
40:24
to yourself, is there a victory state?
40:26
Is there a final achievable goal?
40:29
I feel like it's a good thing to keep in mind.
40:32
Just glad the book brought it up I guess is what I'm saying.
40:36
It is something that like, I mean like like let's take me for
40:40
example, I've every game I've run, I've had an end state like
40:44
in mind, but it is a situation where you kind of lose track of
40:50
that, right? Like you're so focused on the
40:53
current thing they're doing or or you've given 1 arc way more
40:56
attention that you originally wanted and now your end state is
40:59
not what it was originally. Like keeping that in mind to
41:01
kind of at all times is probably good advice.
41:04
I. Mean that's.
41:06
Not at all times, but you know what?
41:07
I mean, but yeah, all times. But keeping it in the back of
41:10
your brain actively, I think is relevant.
41:12
Yeah. And then it goes through a bunch
41:16
of campaign themes, which is to say the kind of themes that will
41:21
come up in in the post apocalypse style of game.
41:26
Themes being like death, despair, exile, fragility, hope,
41:31
hunger, you know, ignorance, paralysis, privation.
41:38
Basically just going through like what kind of themes, what
41:41
kind of issues usually come up in the style of game and how
41:44
much do you want to utilize them?
41:45
It also talks about in each of the theme sections how likely or
41:51
like how much of these, each theme should come up based on
41:55
the type of campaign you're doing.
41:56
Because they will come up, you know, in varying degrees in the
42:00
different kinds of campaigns. And then it talks a bit more
42:05
about the genres, which is to say the mutant wastelands, the
42:07
Deadlands, and the After the Fall and just gives you some
42:10
advice on what mechanics to use for which one, so on and so
42:14
forth. And then the idea of structuring
42:19
your campaign, which is to say is your campaign structured
42:23
around crisis, which is like the PCs are constantly running into
42:28
problems and constantly have to resolve said problems.
42:33
For example, if you're doing an after the fall campaign, good
42:36
chance you're doing the crisis thing where every little, like
42:41
every couple of sessions a new problem happens because you
42:44
know, the, the apocalypse is happening right the fuck now
42:50
versus building a proactive exploration campaign, which is
42:54
the idea that, you know, the, the main crisis is past.
42:59
We're in kind of a somewhat stable state and the PCs are
43:03
travelling around exploring the world, looking for resources,
43:06
looking for allies, looking for stuff.
43:11
And just, you know, be clear what, which of the which of
43:15
these two you're generally tell your players which of these two
43:19
you're generally leaning towards.
43:21
Obviously you'll, you'll probably ebb and flow between
43:23
them a little bit from time to time, but like, which lane are
43:27
you generally riding in? And then it explains how to like
43:35
the step by step of how to set up the crisis versus the
43:40
exploration campaigns, basically how to go from that, like, you
43:45
know, make the region and pick the locations, everything, put
43:49
them on the adventure. What do you do after the
43:51
adventure? How do you keep the ball
43:53
rolling? And it just just goes through
43:55
like a 10/10/11 step. I think it's a 10 step process
43:58
for the two of them, 11 for the first one, nine for the other.
44:04
Just a process of yeah, how to how to go through it again.
44:09
There's a lot of there's a lot of guidance.
44:13
That's the idea behind the without numbers games is GM
44:16
guidance. That's why they were these games
44:19
were literally created because the designer was annoyed how how
44:24
many games out there in the wild just kind of leave their GM high
44:27
and dry, which entirely valid, completely valid point.
44:36
Yep, Isaiah says, looking over at Lancer being like.
44:46
Kind of. At least a little bit.
44:48
At least a little bit. More than a little bit, yeah.
44:51
Like I really wish Lancer came with something for like the the
44:58
faction slash enclaves. Just some way of keeping track
45:01
of shit that's going on on different planets because the
45:04
game is going for kind of like a Lancer, not a Lancer, like an
45:07
armored core. Like these, these corporations
45:10
are doing their own machinating and then the planets are doing
45:13
their own thing. And like, you're not going to
45:15
drive meaningful change because you're just one pilot.
45:17
But like you do got to keep track of what all the mega
45:19
powers are doing. Or maybe you don't have to, but
45:21
like, I feel like the intent is to keep track of those things.
45:26
So yeah, I, I, I do wish those were there.
45:28
And I, I really wish that I, I, as the GM, had more information
45:33
and more sort of control on how to not generally control the
45:37
campaign, but how to like lean things in One Direction or the
45:41
other, you know? Yeah.
45:45
Some some sort of mechanical guidance on what that flow
45:48
should look like? Would have been nice.
45:52
Fair enough. So then we get into the that's
45:59
the creating your campaign bit. And then you have the creating
46:02
your region bit where it gives you advice on 1st how to set up
46:06
your set up your map. You know, your edition and it
46:09
gets quite specific. It tells you what size paper to
46:12
use and like this book assumes you're doing everything still at
46:17
the table, paper and pencil style, what size paper to use,
46:20
how many hexes you want. Like it recommends doing a what
46:25
is it 20 or what is it where I just I just saw it roughly 20 by
46:33
30 hex grid. And then once you have your, you
46:41
know, your map kind of laid out and everything and ready to
46:43
roll, then you want to start placing your enclaves for after
46:48
a fall in a dead lands campaign. It mentions that enclaves,
46:52
stable enclaves, may or may not be a thing yet really, because
46:55
the collapse happened very recently.
46:58
Whereas with you're dealing with the Mutant Wasteland campaign,
47:01
which is a little further in the future.
47:03
Good chance that there are established enclaves all over
47:06
the place doing their own thing, making their own plans.
47:12
And then it gives some advice on how to think about placing the
47:14
enclaves, such as putting them near fresh sources of water and
47:17
like putting them in areas that make sense to be habitable right
47:21
at a base in the literal smack dab middle of the desert with
47:25
nothing around it probably doesn't make sense unless
47:27
there's some sort of weird justification for what it does.
47:33
Then you talks about placing major ruins, which is ruins kind
47:39
of act like your dungeons in a game like this.
47:44
You know, they're they're large relevant areas that are not
47:48
enclaves but can be explored or interacted with in some capacity
47:52
where like a fight might happen or some kind of event might
47:56
happen again for after the fall and the Deadlands campaign.
48:01
Ruins might not be a thing in the same sense, but you probably
48:07
would make like city zones, for example, would probably make
48:10
sense if you think about something like left 4 dead
48:12
right? You go through major like city
48:14
zones in the Mutant wasteland campaign.
48:17
They probably will be big ass ruins of lost places.
48:29
Then you want to decide on the starting location where the PCs
48:33
will start. The game recommends putting them
48:35
towards the center of the map so that all the other crap is
48:39
roughly equidistant from them, so they can choose to go in kind
48:42
of whatever direction they want. And then you're also going to
48:46
make encounter sites, which can be again, kind of like dungeons,
48:55
also like ruins and counter sites.
48:57
They both kind of act like a sort of dungeon E concept, but
48:59
like being the ruins are probably going to be larger big
49:02
places and the encounter sites might be smaller, a little more
49:06
focus, but basically spots on the map where like shit's going
49:10
to go down in some capacity. And it recommends having two
49:13
encounter sites ready to go at all times.
49:16
As like basically you, you want to you want to prep 2 encounter
49:21
sites that you don't decide where they are on the map.
49:23
And then if the PCs go in a direction randomly, you can just
49:27
plop the encounter site down in front of them and go look, you
49:30
found this thing even if you weren't initially planning for
49:32
it to be there. And once you have done, it says
49:36
once you've done that, make another one so that you always
49:39
have two in your back pocket ready to go.
49:41
You could do more than two, obviously, but two generally is
49:43
probably going to be enough, which having GM for a while,
49:46
yeah, 2 is probably going to be enough.
49:51
Then it gives some advice on obviously making travel
49:53
encounters, which are going to be kind of a big thing in a game
49:56
like this, right? Travelling around, beating
49:58
random people or random enemies or fucking Raiders or monsters
50:02
or mutants or some shit. You know, we were zombies.
50:04
In the case of the zombie stuff, and, you know, creating it, it
50:12
recommends creating random tables of 6 to 10 encounters,
50:15
although not all the encounters have to be bad.
50:19
And then you want to create your intro adventure, which I don't
50:22
think I need to explain to anyone how that works.
50:25
Make an intro adventure like any other fucking game.
50:27
Yeah. And then you have the there's a
50:33
page on building crisises. Crisises, Crisises.
50:37
Never crisises. I don't like that word.
50:40
It's never easy to say. Yeah.
50:41
Because you want to say crisises, but it's not actually,
50:44
not how you pronounce it. Sees.
50:45
Yeah, Brian. Crises.
50:53
Crises. Crises, I think is I think I
50:55
think it's one of those both are correct situations.
51:01
Basically this one more applies to a after the fall or dead land
51:06
situation. It's just what kind of bad shit
51:10
happened to cause the collapse to occur.
51:14
There's a table, there's a couple of like various examples
51:17
describing how this particular thing might cause a collapse to
51:21
happen, like communications, food, law enforcement, medical,
51:24
power, sewage, waste, transport, water.
51:30
It's just, it's pretty much advice on, it's basically saying
51:33
think about how the bad shit happened, you know, And then for
51:39
each type of crisis, it gives you a dedicated page or like a
51:44
dedicated section for each of them.
51:45
So like communication, what went wrong with the communications,
51:48
food, what went wrong with the food, law enforcement, what went
51:52
wrong with the law enforcement, so on and so forth.
51:57
You might use the crisis thing for a mutant mutant wasteland
52:00
campaign if you just want to think about like how far back
52:03
the past, you know, if you want to think further back into the
52:06
past like that, I kind of like maybe this is a me thing, but I
52:11
kind of like it when the post apocalypse setting, the
52:15
apocalypse is just like, we don't know what happened.
52:18
It's a mystery. Yeah, I, I in my game, it
52:22
started off that way and like just being, yeah, the, the big,
52:27
like, you know, beginning of the final arc reveal was like, not
52:32
necessarily how, but what happened, you know what I mean?
52:36
Right. And so you know, I'm with you
52:38
there. And then you get building
52:44
encounter sites, which again, you know, basically populating
52:49
your hex map with interesting sites that the players can run
52:51
into and be like, oh shit just went down, you know, or
52:54
something's happening, blah blah blah.
52:59
Again, as is always the case, you know the game recommends
53:03
building 2 encounter sites and. This game is constantly
53:15
reiterating you only ever need to prep for the next session
53:19
right? So you don't need to.
53:23
You don't need a bazillion Jillian counter encounter sites
53:26
to try and cover every possible scenario right?
53:29
It says make 2 plot them in front of the players as needed.
53:33
You only need shit for the next session.
53:35
So it's constantly trying to say you know you have to prop, you
53:39
have to prep a lot of shit, so only prep your immediate needs
53:42
it. Literally.
53:43
Actually I'll I'll read this one little bit.
53:45
It could be tempting for an ambitious GM to decide to prep
53:48
their entire hex map hand placing suitable sites all over
53:52
the region, given a 1/3 and counter density at 644 hexes in
53:59
a 23 by 28 hex map. However, that can be
54:02
prohibitively that could be a prohibitively vast undertaking
54:06
to accomplish at once, even with the tools in the section.
54:09
Instead, focus only on the chunk of the map that the PCs might
54:12
explore during the next session. And then it you know, then you
54:16
might say like, OK, how do I know where the PCs are going to
54:19
explore? And this game will tell you
54:21
multiple times over and over and over again.
54:23
At the end of the session, ask them where they plan to go next
54:27
and if they say we plan to go north, then you prep the hexes
54:30
up north. That's how you do it.
54:33
I say this as the nicest call out, I don't think my players
54:37
would be able to give me an answer 90% of the time and that
54:39
causes me stress. All right, well then they're not
54:42
playing the God damn game. Nope.
54:45
That that here's the thing. That's the ultimatum.
54:47
Either you tell me what the plan for the next session is or there
54:50
ain't no game game next week, right?
54:53
Like that's that is the. Ultimatum to make.
54:57
That's the only way to do it, right?
55:00
If you want to do the sandbox thing, that's kind of what you
55:02
have to do. Like, there's not really,
55:05
there's not really. The only other alternative is to
55:07
populate the entire map. And like we were just saying lol
55:12
Lamal. Ridiculous amount of work, yeah.
55:15
Yeah, there's also a couple of, it gives you 3 different
55:23
recommended ways that you can stock your map with sites, with
55:27
encounter sites. And it says, you know, you're
55:29
probably going to mix and match between these.
55:33
You know, the methods being create some pre made encounter
55:36
sites and when the PC scout things out, you know, plop it
55:40
down there, create or it says create four or five encounter
55:42
sites or for each hex you're stock, you're stocking during a
55:48
prep session, roll AD 6. If it's a one or two, create an
55:51
in town counter site there. This is more prep work
55:54
obviously, but you can tailor the site more to the area it's
55:57
in or you can look at the hex map and put in counter sites
56:01
only in the hexes where you think something should be
56:04
filling. Roughly 1/3 this method
56:06
guaranteed you won't have dead zones of randomly generated
56:08
emptiness, but it could also be a bit predictable.
56:12
So a bit, you know, mix and match your methodologies there.
56:18
Then it elaborates on how do you make the site itself, which
56:23
ultimately, you know, it's funny because it says get out a three
56:26
by 5 index card. Just thought it was really funny
56:29
that it specified index cards. It was like, oh OK, figure out
56:35
the basic features of the site, you know, main building and
56:39
structures and natural features, and write that down.
56:43
Roll or choose two special descriptors from the table on
56:46
page 173. What a surprise.
56:49
Tables which will help you to flavour the site.
56:54
Decide on three or four characteristic locations for the
56:58
feature and sketch a layout of it on the front of the card.
57:02
For example, a ruined car dealership might have a parking
57:04
lot, a showroom, a mechanic garage, and an office.
57:09
To determine who's at the site, you know the occupants.
57:12
See what their deal is. Try to tie them into a nearby
57:15
nearby enclave in some fashion. Distribute any occupants among
57:22
the site's location and give a one sentence note on what they
57:25
were doing, what they're doing when the PCs first run into
57:27
them. Figure out the loot tables for
57:30
the site. You know what's actually worth
57:32
taking there and then use the twist and hazards table to add
57:36
some extra flavour traps or perils into the place.
57:41
And then you know you got your your site up and rolling.
57:43
And then of course, encounter site tags.
57:46
Oh. Yeah.
57:47
Oh, you bet you're Pippi. And I just there's.
57:49
A lot more tags. The I I just looking through
57:53
these, I have used almost all of them in hellscapes, which is
58:00
wild. I mean, yeah, I just wasn't
58:07
expecting like, I was like, oh, like abandoned traps OK, Ancient
58:10
lore, OK. Autonomous bass, OK.
58:11
Baited trap, OK. Beacon fire Eastman layer, OK.
58:14
The berserk robots, OK. It's just, it just kept going
58:18
where I was like, oh wait, this would have been so useful.
58:23
I mean you did, you did run that game for like 4 years.
58:27
I did. I did run it for four years.
58:29
And what the setting type was. The answer was kind of yes on
58:33
purpose because I wanted my cake and ate it too.
58:37
You did kitchen sink it a little bit, yeah.
58:39
Yeah, regret nothing, but once again, but just take, just take
58:43
another shot the shots about. Then of course we have the the
58:52
one roll pages, the one roll whatever roll pages.
58:56
So in this case one roll in counter site passed, which is
58:59
where you have a whole bunch of tables and you just roll a
59:02
singular die on each of the tables to answer various
59:05
questions. These one roll tables are all
59:08
over the game and are all over the other without number games.
59:14
And then a bunch of a big fucking table for features like
59:17
I was saying, and then a big table for the occupants and a
59:21
descriptor for the various types of occupants.
59:25
And then more tables for one roll occupant details.
59:29
And then we have one roll, occupant leadership, more
59:33
tables, tables there's. So many tables.
59:40
Yeah, I mean, it sounds like I'm skipping over things, but there
59:42
are literally pages of tables so.
59:46
And I'm not gonna read every entry on a fucking table, that's
59:47
for sure. No, when I was trying to read
59:50
this book in preparation for today, I was like, Oh my God,
59:52
it's still another 200 pay. Oh wait, these are all tables,
59:55
okay. And then you realize how many
59:56
tables there. Are yeah.
59:58
And I was like, actually not so bad.
59:59
It's actually a lot less pages than I thought, yeah.
1:00:03
That's true of all the without number books.
1:00:04
You look at the page count and you're like, And then you look
1:00:06
at how many tables are and you're like, oh, I see.
1:00:09
And there's also just a lot of stuff you could skip over if
1:00:11
you're not particularly using it, you know?
1:00:13
True. They they, they did The funny
1:00:14
thing where they packed so much necessary text and a few amount
1:00:18
of pages and it like all the tables just make up for it like.
1:00:23
Yeah. And then there's encounter site
1:00:28
hazards. So this is basically like in,
1:00:30
you know, traps essentially like you have traps and a dungeon.
1:00:34
This is kind of the encounter site hazards.
1:00:36
There's two types of encounter site hazards.
1:00:38
There's environmental hazards and occupant hazards.
1:00:42
Environmental hazards being pretty much what they sound
1:00:44
like, you know, something that makes the environment more of a
1:00:47
danger. And then the occupant hazards
1:00:50
are basically some kind of trap set up by occupants to make like
1:00:54
an ambush or something like that easier.
1:00:57
So like an occupant hazard, for example, is they desperately
1:01:02
need a particular kind of supply and are willing to take risks to
1:01:05
get it. So like, well, actually, well,
1:01:11
that's not what let me find one's a better example.
1:01:13
Oh, they've blocked up most of the entrances to force invaders
1:01:17
to pass through a checkpoint, right?
1:01:18
So like somebody occupied this place and set up a situation
1:01:23
where you have to go through a specific checkpoint and like,
1:01:25
you know that's going to be a hazard because you walk through
1:01:27
choke point and then they shoot the shit at you.
1:01:31
You can of course, roll on the table to determine how many
1:01:34
hazards or just pick yourself. And then you can pick from the
1:01:37
table of of hazards to decide what it is.
1:01:40
Or you can roll because that's how these games always work, and
1:01:45
then jot down the hazard. And then you have the encounter
1:01:51
tables themselves, which I don't think I need to explain.
1:01:54
They work like encounter tables in D&D.
1:01:57
Big table? Put stuff on there, roll on
1:01:59
table, bang, boom, bang. Not all the encounters need to
1:02:06
be bad or anything like that. They can be nice if you know if
1:02:10
you want to be nice, or they can all be bad.
1:02:12
Some of them can be really fucking brutal, and some of them
1:02:14
can be really easy. That's kind of the point of the
1:02:17
sandbox style of game, is the encounters.
1:02:20
Anytime you're designing encounter sites and encounter
1:02:26
tables, it doesn't need to be a fair fight for the players, it
1:02:32
just needs to make sense for the place they're in.
1:02:34
So if the players are in a shopping mall, it doesn't make
1:02:39
sense for them to run into like military assassin robots.
1:02:45
Probably would be a little extreme, but to run into some
1:02:49
random guys looting some shit with pistols on them, yeah,
1:02:52
that's fine. And if it's only three guys or
1:02:54
the players going to just kill them immediately and no problem,
1:02:57
yeah, probably. But like, that's kind of the
1:03:00
point. There which which one is a
1:03:03
particular favorite of mine? The the an old shot shotgun
1:03:07
rigged to fire when a door is opened.
1:03:09
Evasion Saber take 3D4 shotgun hit.
1:03:15
Fucking ow. Yeah.
1:03:16
You're doing the glass PCs things.
1:03:18
Jimmy's fucking dead. Yeah, good chance.
1:03:24
So yeah, that's A and there's a couple of sample encounter
1:03:27
tables that are broken up based on three campaign types also.
1:03:31
And then you have one roll travelling survivor groups,
1:03:35
which is to say like people wandering around.
1:03:40
And then you got to decide how to place the loot.
1:03:43
I my least favorite thing to do in every RPG is deal with loot.
1:03:52
I like. Loot I I don't you know, it's
1:03:55
fun to get as a player. I don't want to have to deal
1:03:57
with it as AGM it. Doesn't like when you see the
1:04:00
loot tables, it doesn't like, I don't know, it doesn't like kind
1:04:02
of excite you to be like, oh, I could give them that.
1:04:04
I could give them that that. Now it just kind of stresses me
1:04:08
out. Yeah, see, yeah, that's just how
1:04:16
a role. I don't know what you want for
1:04:17
me I. Just don't know why you hate
1:04:20
fun. I I do, I hate fun.
1:04:22
It's true. So you know, basically it the,
1:04:29
the book is like, if you think a site, if you think an encounter
1:04:32
site is important enough to require custom loot, then just,
1:04:39
you know, come up with the custom loot table yourself.
1:04:42
If not, just make a whole bunch of pre made loot cards and just
1:04:47
slap those cards into a site whenever you need them.
1:04:50
Oh the players looted the thing? Go through your loot cards, Here
1:04:52
you go. It's funny this.
1:04:55
The game actually recommends making the loot cards and then
1:05:00
if the players loot an area, literally hand them the stack of
1:05:05
cards and have them pull from the card deck randomly.
1:05:08
Oh, that's fun. Yeah, so a little bit of a
1:05:10
tactile, like literally pulling a loot card, but yeah, basically
1:05:16
don't design custom loot for everything because it's not
1:05:19
worth it and your sanity will slip quickly.
1:05:23
There's various types of sight loot that you could potentially
1:05:26
get. Obviously there's ammo,
1:05:28
clothing, food, fuel, gear, materials, wares, weapons.
1:05:32
And then there's special loot, which is to say, like the sci-fi
1:05:35
shit like TL4 scrap and special mod components and shit, you
1:05:42
know, pick the loot type that makes sense, obviously, you
1:05:47
know, and go from there. There's also, as you might
1:05:53
imagine, there's tables for this.
1:05:58
Shocker, I know. I I, I couldn't, couldn't have
1:06:01
believed it unless I seen it with my own eyes.
1:06:03
Yeah, I know. So you you find a given site,
1:06:07
find the closest match on the table.
1:06:09
So like for example apartment, a high rise studio is a good match
1:06:14
for like an apartment, right? Determine whether or not there's
1:06:18
a large cache of resources in the area and then it gives you
1:06:21
some like percentage odds if there should be a large cache or
1:06:23
not. If there is a large cache, you
1:06:25
roll AD 20 for the loot types in the entry.
1:06:32
If the D20 goes over a certain number on the table, then that
1:06:37
means there is additional loot there.
1:06:40
So like for example an apartment.
1:06:41
If you roll A-19 plus, there's 1D6 more random loot if if
1:06:49
there's a large cache at said apartment, each result is 1
1:06:54
encumbrance worth of that type of loot.
1:06:56
So if it says 1D6 of materials, that means the hardware store
1:07:00
has 1D6 encumbrance of useful materials on an 11 plus on the
1:07:05
D20 it would have 1D6 more encumbrance as well.
1:07:10
If the caches of any type roll on the matching, roll on the
1:07:13
matching tables on the following page to see what some what sort
1:07:16
of goods it is. More, yeah, more, more tables to
1:07:22
roll on. Once you've figured out the
1:07:25
large, once you have the large cash to then repeat that process
1:07:28
for the individual items. This represents the bits of bobs
1:07:31
laying around. And then lastly, if the site the
1:07:34
site has any occupants, you can roll for the occupant loot.
1:07:38
So if the players take out some random guys that are there, you
1:07:42
can have a loot A loot card for what they have on them.
1:07:48
Which, you know, I, it probably sounds slightly confusing to me
1:07:53
explain it, but when you see the table and see it in the book,
1:07:56
it's not that confusing. And then the various kinds of
1:08:05
loot that you can get are then further explained on the
1:08:08
subsequent pages, such as perishable versus preserve food
1:08:12
versus clothing versus fuel versus gear versus, you know,
1:08:16
ammo and yadda, yadda, yadda. Gear gets a little bit of an
1:08:20
extra entry because gear can kind of mean anything.
1:08:23
So it's a little further descriptor on how you should put
1:08:27
gear type loot in a in a encounter site.
1:08:34
And then we get to adventure design.
1:08:39
So, you know, it recommends, like I said before, recommends
1:08:42
you start with a basic inductory introductory adventure, which
1:08:49
you don't want to make overly complicated.
1:08:52
Like your three general types of adventures are going to be
1:08:55
crisis exploration or social adventures.
1:08:59
Obviously these aren't like hard and fast categories, they're
1:09:01
kind of loose. Scripters gives you some steps
1:09:06
for making said introductory adventure.
1:09:08
I don't think I really need to go through that.
1:09:09
It's probably what you're used to.
1:09:11
If you've heard anyone talk about how to do this kind of
1:09:14
stuff, there is some There's a Points to remember page.
1:09:20
Which is to say some like GM pointers such as Don't build
1:09:24
more than one session worth a play at a time.
1:09:26
This book says that. So many it reiterates.
1:09:29
That it does reiterate it a lot. So many times, which I think
1:09:34
really says something about how he feels like people design this
1:09:39
kind, like how he feels like people run these games and how
1:09:42
he's basically like, y'all motherfuckers do this wrong.
1:09:46
Because yeah, constantly reiterate.
1:09:48
And I'm OK with the reiterating. I just think it's kind of.
1:09:50
Funny. No, I mean, I think it it does
1:09:51
reinforce the point of like, you're probably overthinking it.
1:09:56
I mean, one one of the things that I really appreciate,
1:09:58
appreciate about the game is it says you have to do efficient
1:10:04
prep. Like don't prep things you don't
1:10:07
need because the otherwise the game's just prep load it, it
1:10:12
falls completely out of control. Yeah, So I, I like that because
1:10:17
I'm one of those people where I get like paralysis on prepping
1:10:20
and then I don't want to prep anything.
1:10:21
And then I just like, you know, I'm like crazily writing shit
1:10:25
down an hour before session because I got to figure some
1:10:27
shit out, you know, and I better know that I'm doing Lancer.
1:10:31
But it still is a problem. Yeah.
1:10:35
Another point that I really like that this book mentions is make
1:10:39
problems, not solutions. As someone who says that a lot,
1:10:44
yeah, right. Like, come.
1:10:49
It's not your job as the GM to plan out how the PCs are going
1:10:52
to resolve a particular crisis. It's your job to give them
1:10:56
interesting problems, one that the PCs will care about and want
1:10:59
to get involved in. Agreed.
1:11:05
And then, you know, a classic advice, which is NPCS are people
1:11:09
too. Which is to say, don't play the
1:11:10
NPCS like just mindless violence robots, Right?
1:11:13
They are people with like drives and objectives.
1:11:17
To that point in the adventure area, something I really like is
1:11:20
it tells you the mood of a place just like what Like when you go
1:11:26
and you're do with like, you know, what is it like bandit
1:11:28
camps mood is like, Oh my God, where was it?
1:11:32
Oh no, my point, it's dying. I lost the page.
1:11:35
I don't know which. Yeah, which page are you
1:11:37
referring to? I don't remember.
1:11:40
Oh, here we go. Like survivor survivor camp
1:11:43
courts. What's the general mood?
1:11:44
Well stocked Numbness at their new shell.
1:11:46
Shocked numbness at the new life crushing air.
1:11:50
Which page are you looking at? 195 The different kind of
1:11:55
adventures. Or 19195 and 195 are say
1:12:02
exploration adventures or. Apologies, 198.
1:12:06
If I say I was like, Sir, what? Oh, Oh yes, the different the
1:12:11
different like courts, the different groups, yeah, the
1:12:14
different kind of groups you could potentially run into.
1:12:18
Yeah. This is kind of like the one
1:12:21
roll tables. Yeah.
1:12:21
It's like tables of stuff that you can roll up to sort of
1:12:26
generate ideas for what the fuck is their deal kind of energy.
1:12:34
So yes. And then in the in the creating
1:12:37
adventures after the points to remember, you then have the
1:12:40
crisis exploration, the social adventures where it breaks down
1:12:44
how to design each version, each kind of adventure.
1:12:51
And then it gives you a table to help you.
1:12:54
First it gives you a table on what the template is.
1:12:57
So, for example, an enemy is exploiting a complication in
1:13:02
order to get a valuable thing is like the base template.
1:13:05
And then there's another table to add table conjunct template
1:13:10
conjunctions that make the situation more complicated, that
1:13:13
add an and, but or because or despite, and then those
1:13:18
qualifiers add more bullshit into the situation.
1:13:22
And it does that for each of the each crisis, exploration and
1:13:26
social. It kind of throws in you have
1:13:29
that kind of starting template design.
1:13:30
You have that complication design and it gives you steps on
1:13:34
how to go through and make a full adventure from back to
1:13:38
front. And then the the courts that I
1:13:42
say courts feels like a real weird word.
1:13:45
But yeah, basically just the kinds of groups.
1:13:49
So like village courts was just to say a small post apocalyptic
1:13:54
village of locals you run into and then it has the stuff Isaiah
1:13:57
was talking about or have tables of like what's holding this
1:14:00
place together, for example, is what it says for the village
1:14:03
courts and then people of the village and then the problems
1:14:06
the village has. And then you might say, OK,
1:14:10
cool, what about the rewards? What do I get?
1:14:14
What's the loot? Tables.
1:14:17
Tables. That's what you get.
1:14:19
Get fucking tables. More tables.
1:14:20
But but but in terms of rewards. So the XP system is basically
1:14:26
just if the PCs accomplished their goal, they received three
1:14:31
XP for accomplishing their goal. This is basically a quest XP
1:14:34
system, which is fine, cool with that.
1:14:38
If they get a partial success, they get 2 XP.
1:14:41
If they fail but just barely survive, they get one XP even
1:14:44
though they didn't achieve anything, which I'm OK with.
1:14:49
And then obviously you want to give them the loot rewards that
1:14:52
you've already figured out from the loot table stuff.
1:14:57
Alternate XP options are so there's milestone rewards which
1:15:01
is basically just you give them XP for like a big goal that use
1:15:06
the GM decide. Honestly this is not really that
1:15:09
different to the baseline reward system so I don't know why it
1:15:12
breaks it out as like 2 separate things but OK I guess.
1:15:19
Because you still it. Because the milestone doesn't
1:15:21
give them a level or anything, it still gives them XP.
1:15:24
It's just you get XP based on the goal that the GM kind of
1:15:28
determined as opposed to the players determined.
1:15:32
And then there's the desperation reward system, which this one's
1:15:35
crazy to me. If a player character dies,
1:15:39
everyone gets 3 XP. If a player character gets
1:15:42
mortally wounded, or a close ally dies, or an important
1:15:46
community faces a crisis, the players get 2 XP.
1:15:50
This XP is given even if the community is destroyed.
1:15:54
So basically, bad shit happens if you get XP.
1:15:58
I don't know that I would ever do that.
1:16:02
I don't really like that idea. I know why.
1:16:04
I get why he's doing it. You know, the idea of emulating
1:16:07
the the idea as it says, this reward model emulates the
1:16:11
gradual hardening of the apocalyptic survivors, where
1:16:14
only terrible traumas and awful events bring forth heroes.
1:16:19
I get that. I just.
1:16:21
I don't know. Yeah.
1:16:22
Don't love it. Don't love it?
1:16:26
And then there's the Plundering Rewards XP system, which is
1:16:28
pretty much you get 3 XP for a session in which you retrieve
1:16:32
valuable resources for your community that make a difference
1:16:35
in some capacity. You know you've plundered.
1:16:39
Pretty straightforward. And then there's a breakdown of
1:16:47
how the players should be rewarded.
1:16:48
Technically the game is like technically the game says you
1:16:53
cash, like money is not necessarily a thing.
1:16:57
But if you want to have like a general baseline to gauge money
1:17:01
by, here's how you would gauge it.
1:17:03
And you base the rewards on the patron who is asking for the
1:17:09
job. So if a if a hardened survivor,
1:17:15
as the game puts it, asks you to do a job, the baseline reward is
1:17:19
100 cash. Then there's a table of
1:17:23
modifiers that apply, such As for example, the job takes a
1:17:29
rare specialist to handle the task, and the job it might be
1:17:33
expected to take about a week. Those two things would add a + 1
1:17:37
to the difficulty of the, you know, to the add a + 1 modifier
1:17:41
to the quote UN quote difficulty and that would get bring it up
1:17:45
to a + 2. And then you then modify the
1:17:47
base pay by whatever the modifiers total up to.
1:17:51
So if it was a + 2, you would take the base pay and multiply
1:17:54
it by two. So basically you start with
1:17:59
who's paying for the job, that's where the money starts.
1:18:01
And then how difficult is the job that increases the pay based
1:18:05
on various modifiers from a few tables.
1:18:09
The players can also be rewarded in favors, weapons, relics, or
1:18:15
items. And if you there's a table that
1:18:18
has the various types of patrons and next to the cash reward,
1:18:23
there is also the other types of rewards they can potentially
1:18:26
forget potentially get. So the hardened survivor could
1:18:30
give them the hundred base cash or one favor, 1 weapon or one
1:18:35
item. So if you don't want to go
1:18:37
straight for the money, you can also split it between money and
1:18:41
the items. And yeah, that's all the
1:18:46
adventure stuff. And then we get into.
1:18:48
Something I'd like to put at the end of that I, I feel like this
1:18:53
more than anything like if you're AGMI think you need to
1:18:57
put make it very clear to your players that this is the kind of
1:19:01
onus that's on them like, oh, you know, like the Patreon will
1:19:05
give you what you want and yes, the game is sandboxy.
1:19:09
It's sort of player LED in the 1st place, but like players need
1:19:13
goals, they need to know what they want.
1:19:15
Like specifically, you're going to the heart and survivor
1:19:18
because you need food, because you need water, because you need
1:19:20
medicine. I mean, yeah, generally it, I
1:19:26
mean, it doesn't necessarily like the, the, the patron could
1:19:30
come to them also, but like, well, I'm saying that, well, I'm
1:19:33
saying the patron could come to them and also offer too.
1:19:37
And it would, but you're still you as the GM in the background
1:19:39
are still doing the same process.
1:19:41
Yes, I, I still think even if the the the patron does come to
1:19:45
you or come to the players, I think it, it puts a lot of
1:19:50
responsibility on them. So if you're kind of like, well,
1:19:54
I don't know what like, you know, I'm giving them favors,
1:19:58
I'm giving this, they're not using it.
1:20:00
It's the players just kind of need to know what they want,
1:20:04
which again. Part of the game, and I don't
1:20:06
know, this might seem. I mean, if you're just talking
1:20:09
about the onus of the players need to be driven to do their
1:20:12
own shit, yeah, the whole game basically operates on that
1:20:15
assumption. Yes, it, it, it does.
1:20:17
But I feel like a reward system requires a little extra special
1:20:20
attention because this is the thing that the players are
1:20:21
playing for, you know? Sometimes, I mean depending on
1:20:29
the situation they could also be playing for like, or you know
1:20:35
they could also be planning to like fix problems in their
1:20:38
enclave and shit too, which would then be a slightly
1:20:41
different reward structure situation.
1:20:43
Well, sort of, but like let you know if you if you do like the
1:20:46
fallout situation, a water chip, like you're trying to find the
1:20:49
water chip for your village. And I guess this then this one
1:20:53
kind of subverts my point because that's like a that's
1:20:56
that's a campaign goal, not a player or like personal goal.
1:20:59
But still, I think the idea is like you need players who knew,
1:21:04
who know what they want. I mean, yes, I don't think
1:21:08
though that this particular patron reward and payment thing
1:21:11
though is only works in that scenario.
1:21:14
Like it can work in either direction it right like.
1:21:22
I I, I am thinking sorry, like yes, it, it can work.
1:21:29
I don't know. I I I'm almost feel like I'm I'm
1:21:31
bringing this up at a personal experience like the because the
1:21:34
I'm. Confused what you're trying to
1:21:35
say? I'll be honest, I don't know
1:21:36
what you're getting at exactly here.
1:21:38
Well, so Lancer does this too, right?
1:21:40
Where, you know, usually you don't pay for your level UPS,
1:21:45
you get reserves for your level UPS.
1:21:48
But it can feel like, OK, I have to figure out how I got to pay
1:21:51
these guys because, you know, we're not doing the money
1:21:53
structure things. One of the reasons why I went
1:21:55
for the money structure and it can feel a little haxing to be
1:22:00
like, oh, we'll have to come up with like things that they might
1:22:03
want or need when it's just better.
1:22:05
If if make it clear that like players, you kind of need to
1:22:09
know what you want and or need. Well, this page is kind of
1:22:13
saying you as the GM are deciding what you're giving
1:22:16
them. It's not how I, it's not how I
1:22:22
interpret it. I mean, like, I, I, I fully
1:22:27
admit this could be like an Isaiahism where I'm thinking
1:22:29
about this a little too hard, but like.
1:22:31
Well I think you're just bringing this up in the wrong
1:22:33
section. Like if you were talking about
1:22:36
the how the loot and looting like encounter sites and stuff
1:22:40
works that I could understand. But this this particular bit is
1:22:45
is talking about like a traditional quest giver type
1:22:47
situation. I don't know, I just felt more
1:22:51
pertinent here, especially when they talk about having like,
1:22:53
giving out favors. I've given out favours before,
1:22:56
right? Favours feel a little useless
1:23:00
unless the players like are actively trying to chip them in.
1:23:05
Well, I mean, sure, if you're talking about just the favours
1:23:11
specifically. Not just the favours, but like
1:23:14
it's a big one. Like if like favours are like an
1:23:18
abstract loot. I I guess again this just
1:23:24
doesn't feel like this. I I'm slightly confused.
1:23:26
While you're bringing. It up now like this section
1:23:28
specifically says well, so like at the top here it says there
1:23:32
are times when the PCs will be working for a patron and the GM
1:23:35
needs to decide how much a given employer is willing to pay for a
1:23:39
specific job. Right.
1:23:40
Yeah, and I get that. I do.
1:23:44
I still like even reading it. I went right.
1:23:46
But they are going to need to know what they want.
1:23:49
Like, yeah, sure, you might be willing to give guns, but or I
1:23:53
don't know, I don't know, move on.
1:23:55
It it seemed important to me. It seemed like something I, I
1:23:57
felt like, oh, this is something I experienced and it, it felt
1:24:00
more relevant here than in the sites thing because the mention
1:24:04
of favors made me feel like there was sort of an abstraction
1:24:06
to the, the looting, the loot in question.
1:24:10
Yeah, I mean, I think you're locking maybe a little too much
1:24:12
on the favors 1 specifically, but it is true that the game
1:24:16
expects the if you're doing an if you're doing an exploration
1:24:20
campaign, yes, it is generally expected that the players are
1:24:23
going to be more self motivated in how they're picking where
1:24:26
they're going because it's assuming that they know what
1:24:30
they want and or need and then they're going to decide what
1:24:34
direction to head in because they have this big sandbox to
1:24:37
head in any direction they, you know, want, you know, in the
1:24:42
same way like an open world game situation.
1:24:45
So like yes, it the game does expect the players to do that.
1:24:48
And actually, I forget where I forget where it brings it up,
1:24:54
but it does specifically bring up the idea of if you have
1:24:57
players that aren't willing to do that, here's how you can deal
1:25:01
with that potential issue. It does talk about it somewhere.
1:25:07
I I can't remember what I I think it's somewhere in the
1:25:10
creating adventures. It might even be the exploration
1:25:13
adventures bit for these adventures.
1:25:19
Yeah, Ruby to create. I can't remember.
1:25:22
But like, yes, the the game talks about the problem of
1:25:25
having players who are not motivated enough to go out and
1:25:28
find their own goals that you that's going to be something to
1:25:32
contend with. I wasn't trying to derail it,
1:25:37
just it felt pertinent to me to chime in there.
1:25:39
Not the sights thing, because. Well, you get what I'm saying
1:25:44
though, right? Now I do I just.
1:25:45
I just. Bring the sights, looking for
1:25:47
the loot to find things that you need to bring back to your home
1:25:50
base. Yes, right.
1:25:54
Like oh, we need, we need water and food.
1:25:57
So go out and find some like perishable food items and bring
1:26:00
home or whatever. Yes, this felt like an extension
1:26:04
of that, I guess, which is why I put it here because it it a it's
1:26:07
it is the final part before you get into like combat and counter
1:26:11
stuff, but also it I think yes, I think the mention of favours
1:26:15
made me feel like, oh, right, this is something that like you
1:26:18
need to know what you want. If you're going to try to like,
1:26:20
I'll do it for a favour or someone's like, oh, you need
1:26:22
this thing, I'll do you a favour.
1:26:27
Right. But I, I, I think you're,
1:26:29
you're, you're flipping it slightly because this particular
1:26:31
section is assuming that the, the patron is offering a favor
1:26:35
to the players, not that they're asking for a favor.
1:26:41
Fair enough. You know what I mean?
1:26:42
Yes, I I suppose we we can move on.
1:26:44
I just like a. Then we get into basically the
1:26:52
best diary, the creatures section, you know, the it's the
1:26:59
best theory bits, what you expect.
1:27:01
It starts off kind of talking about the combat in the various
1:27:05
sorts of in the various like sub genres, the after the fall, the
1:27:10
dead lands and the mutant wasteland campaign and and how
1:27:14
you want to think about the combat.
1:27:15
So like for example, in the After the Fall game, which is
1:27:19
sort of normal people thrust into bad situation, you're going
1:27:24
to have way less combat. Combat's going to be really
1:27:26
fucking dramatic when it does happen.
1:27:29
You know, you're going to have a much smaller pool of enemy types
1:27:34
because you're dealing with probably just mostly normal ass
1:27:37
humans who have acquired some guns or some weapons or
1:27:40
whatever. And then the Deadlands campaign,
1:27:43
obviously combat's going to happen because zombies, but
1:27:46
zombies are almost more like an environmental problem than a
1:27:53
straight up fighting thing. And there will be some fights
1:27:58
that merit, you know, full attention in the Deadlands
1:28:01
campaigns, but less. And then the mutant Laceland 1
1:28:04
is going to be your most classical closest to your kind
1:28:09
of DND travel around and like fuck bitches get money kill
1:28:14
monsters type energy because you're plumbing the depths of
1:28:20
weird mysterious ruins or ancient labs or whatever.
1:28:28
There's a page on judge in combat, which is basically how
1:28:30
you do your CR calculations. I feel like this is boring to
1:28:34
talk about so like I'm not going to get into it but basically you
1:28:36
do some math based on the monster the enemies hit dice and
1:28:40
they're hit dice in their attack die I think it is or no, what is
1:28:46
it? Sorry.
1:28:47
Hit dice and how many attacks they have per round.
1:28:49
You do some math based on that. You do some math to figure out
1:28:52
the sort of combat power of the PCs.
1:28:56
Compare the 2 numbers. I'd really like to see how this
1:29:00
this checks out. Like, you know, being the CR
1:29:02
system of the game, I I want to see how far that can get stress
1:29:05
tested. I mean, I don't remember having
1:29:10
a problem with it in stars out number, but it's been a while so
1:29:13
I could be wrong. But also worth pointing out that
1:29:19
the you know, you're not designing combat to be, you're
1:29:26
not designing encounters to be on level with PCs, right?
1:29:29
You're designing encounters based on where they are and what
1:29:32
makes sense. So you're probably, you don't
1:29:37
need to stress it. It's not going to feel like it
1:29:41
needs to be stress tested in stress, stress tested in the
1:29:43
same way because you're not balancing every every single
1:29:46
encounter or most of the encounters.
1:29:48
No, of course not. I'm, I'm not, I'm not
1:29:50
necessarily saying it for balance, but like a situation
1:29:52
where I'm not necessarily sure how it would happen.
1:29:57
But you know, it says here if the enemy is about equal or
1:30:00
smaller, we'll likely win without taking any casualties.
1:30:05
I'm curiously if there's a situation with that where the
1:30:08
number is about how it's not a little smaller.
1:30:11
True is that statement. Yeah, sure.
1:30:15
Like I said, balance sort of notwithstanding, I just want to
1:30:17
see how well each category actually functions.
1:30:22
Fair enough. It also mentioned in the section
1:30:26
do not build unavoidable fights in this game because the game
1:30:30
kind of assumes that they can get out of situations because
1:30:34
they might put them, they might end up in bad situations and
1:30:36
they need to be able to have an out.
1:30:38
And if you just put them in an unavoidable fight after
1:30:40
unavoidable fight, they are not 5 E characters, they will just
1:30:43
die horribly eventually. Then you have reaction roles,
1:30:49
which are basically just when the players run into a
1:30:52
character, you roll 2D6 and consult the table to see if they
1:30:56
react really negatively or really positively when they
1:30:59
first meet the player characters within within reason that makes
1:31:03
sense. If the player characters run
1:31:05
into a a slobbering, violent, you know, giant mutant hell
1:31:10
beast out in the middle of the wasteland and you roll A-12 plus
1:31:14
which the result is as friendly and helpful as is plausible.
1:31:18
Obviously the giant mutant beast is not going to roll over and
1:31:21
suddenly become a puppy, but that just means that the giant
1:31:24
mutant beast maybe already ate and is a little sleepy so it
1:31:27
doesn't try to immediately kill them on sight, right?
1:31:31
That's what a friendly role for that kind of thing would mean.
1:31:35
And then if for some reason you are unsure how to read that
1:31:40
reaction role, like you get a result and you're like, how do I
1:31:42
interpret this? There is another set of tables
1:31:45
that you can roll on or pick from that sort of give you a
1:31:49
couple of reasons to justify it, such as they don't want trouble
1:31:53
right now. The PCs somehow solved a recent
1:31:55
problem for them. They're prejudice in favor of
1:31:58
the PCs. You know, maybe they meet the
1:32:01
slobbering beast and for some reason the players smell like an
1:32:03
animal or something that they that, that thing really doesn't
1:32:06
like eating. So it just kind of like sniffs
1:32:09
them and turns and walks away. And then we have morale checks,
1:32:16
which morale checks are still in the game.
1:32:19
Basically, you make morale checks periodically through a
1:32:22
fight when various conditions have been met.
1:32:26
If the enemy passes the morale check, they stay in the fight.
1:32:28
If the enemy fails the morale check, they try to flee, or they
1:32:31
try to surrender, or they try to negotiate, or whatever.
1:32:34
It kind of depends on the depends on the situation you as
1:32:39
the GM are expected to follow. Like common sense and logic for
1:32:43
how the morale check should flow.
1:32:46
And you make checks when one of their the first ally to go down
1:32:50
on a on the enemy side. You make a morale check if more
1:32:54
of half their allies go down, make a morale check if it seems
1:32:57
like they are likely to lose to the players, morale check if
1:33:01
some sort of dramatic reversal happens in the situation, some
1:33:05
sort of shocking loss. Or like the player characters
1:33:08
whip out a huge fucking weapon and they're like oh shit,
1:33:12
another morale check. The main point of the morale
1:33:16
checks is to give the players the ability to overcome a combat
1:33:20
without having to kill everyone. Like kill one or two guys,
1:33:24
morale check. Oh shit, OK, you win.
1:33:26
That's kind of the intended effect there, because every
1:33:30
fight is not in fact, most fights are not supposed to be a
1:33:34
fight to the last man because that wouldn't really make sense
1:33:38
given the setting and the scenario and stuff.
1:33:40
And also just players aren't that durable and also combat
1:33:44
will get boring if you do that all the time like on a on a meta
1:33:48
game design level. The way that combat works in the
1:33:52
without number games that will start to get boring if you just
1:33:55
like if you try to 5E just hammer them constantly.
1:33:59
Fight down to the last man type of shit.
1:34:02
So actually I got a question in a in an interesting reverse
1:34:05
you'd are are more likely than pretty much every other GM I've
1:34:10
ever had to have enemies just go fuck it and be like we're done.
1:34:14
You think that's because of these games?
1:34:18
Oh what, you mean that I've actively done it in my game?
1:34:21
Yeah, like, like your, your enemy NPCS have a far higher
1:34:25
surrender rate than pretty much everyone I've ever played for
1:34:30
which, you know, that's a. Good thing I don't remember.
1:34:34
It might have been from Running Stars.
1:34:36
I don't honestly remember. I don't know where I picked up
1:34:43
that. Like, I don't know that.
1:34:44
I feel like that's one of those GM advice things I heard in the
1:34:48
days of yore and just kind of stuck with it a lot.
1:34:51
Honestly, the main reason to do it too is just because when you
1:34:54
get down to the point of like, there's two guys left, what?
1:34:59
What's even the If there's four players and two enemies, it's a
1:35:02
foregone conclusion anyway. Why are we playing it out?
1:35:05
You know, there are certain situations where playing it out
1:35:08
can be worth it, but most of the time it's not.
1:35:10
You know what I mean? Right.
1:35:12
Yeah. So yeah, I don't necessarily
1:35:14
remember. I think that's just a thing I
1:35:15
heard one time and then rolled with it to be honest.
1:35:20
And then we get get the page on how to read stat lines.
1:35:24
I'm I'm not going to explain how to read the stat lines.
1:35:26
It's not that exciting. It's also not any different from
1:35:29
the other games. And then we get a bunch of
1:35:31
examples, enemy stuff, example NPC stat lines starting with
1:35:38
just normal ass animals. Alligator, bear, Buffalo,
1:35:42
elephant, horse, mule, shark. Shark's kind of a funny 1.
1:35:50
Yeah, just normal ass animals. You start with a couple of the
1:35:54
normal animals have a little special thing to them.
1:35:56
For example, an alligator gets a + 2 to hit and damage roles if
1:36:01
the player if the thing it's attacking is in waist deep
1:36:04
water. But for the most part the
1:36:07
animals are just like basic stat lines.
1:36:09
Then you have the beast folk which are big animal people.
1:36:17
The game mentions that the beast folk.
1:36:19
Technically the beast folk are coming from the the the preset
1:36:23
setting of the game which is called Albuquerque the
1:36:25
Albuquerque dead zone or Death zone.
1:36:28
The Albuquerque death zone, the beast folk technically are
1:36:32
justified in that setting, but obviously the idea of beast folk
1:36:37
applies to all sorts of weird post apocalyptic settings.
1:36:39
So and they can vary they can vary all the way from bipedal,
1:36:46
mostly human big dog man down to mostly dog thing with the human
1:36:52
brain. So there's there's a wide swath
1:36:56
of the kind of bespoke. And then if your players want to
1:36:59
be bespoke, they can take any of the beast folk origin folk eye
1:37:05
and then picking that focus at level one turns you into that
1:37:09
kind of beast folk. So if you want to be a goat
1:37:12
person, you take the goat folk origin focus Bada Bing bada.
1:37:15
Boom, you're a weird goat person or a turtle kin, for example.
1:37:19
You want to play a fucking oh? Sick I want to play.
1:37:22
Turtle man, why can't I think of what they're called?
1:37:25
DND now. Portal.
1:37:28
Portal. Yeah.
1:37:28
You want to be a little turtle portal or a rat folk like the
1:37:32
rat folk. You remind me of Scaping, so
1:37:36
yes, they are great. Yeah, also the beast folk stat
1:37:39
blocks, I say stat blocks, they're stat lines, Beast folk
1:37:45
stat lines. If they are, if they are of that
1:37:50
beast folk type, they get the origin ability from that beast
1:37:53
folk generally. So they do have each of them
1:37:57
will generally have like a special ability and you get some
1:38:00
more one roll beast folk pack generator tables to figure out,
1:38:04
oh, what's the pack deal? Then we have cyborgs.
1:38:07
I think everybody knows what a Cyborg is, so I don't need that.
1:38:10
I don't know that I need to explain that much but there's a
1:38:14
bunch of different weird cybernetic semi human enemies
1:38:19
you can deal with. Like a cyber corpse or a Ripper
1:38:21
dog of the name Ripper Dog, a Spring Blade or an Iron Cultists
1:38:30
which is a cyber a cyber enhanced servant of the Iron
1:38:33
General given enough tech to smite the fleshies under the
1:38:36
direction of their robotic. Masters fleshies is crazy.
1:38:41
I feel like that must be a Fallout reference.
1:38:43
It feels like a Fallout. Reference.
1:38:44
Oh, to me that was an admec thing.
1:38:46
That's what I was thinking. I would say that I don't think
1:38:50
that the designer is into 40K. That seems unlikely to me.
1:38:55
You think? So I don't know, I feel like 40K
1:38:59
is pretty mainstream now. No, it's really not.
1:39:06
I don't know. So this is the guy who makes
1:39:08
these games is an old man Rose like mid 60s I think.
1:39:14
I don't know, man, if he, if he's if he's into OSRI, feel
1:39:17
like, you know, old fucking rogue Trader and and like I.
1:39:23
I mean it's it's possible but I doubt it.
1:39:28
Also you just assume everything is Warhammer.
1:39:30
Warhammer's a lot like Warhammer might not be doing, but
1:39:33
Warhammer is a lot of places. Most and then also under the
1:39:40
cyborgs you have a whole shit load of Cyborg special abilities
1:39:45
that you can slap on to your various orgs.
1:39:49
There's a weird thing he did with the stat lines where he
1:39:54
marked the hit dice with an asterisk and every asterisk is
1:39:58
an ability for that NPCI. Don't know why he did it with an
1:40:03
asterisk. Those are hard to count.
1:40:06
Like just visually when you look at the a line of asterisk that's
1:40:09
just hard to count. I don't know why you did it that
1:40:11
way. Why didn't you just put a
1:40:12
number? Yes, yeah, that's a little, but.
1:40:16
That was an odd choice, but you know, here we are.
1:40:19
But yes, there's each asterisk counts as an ability.
1:40:21
There's a bunch of abilities under the cyborgs.
1:40:23
Things like, you know, implanted weapon in the fucking nemesis
1:40:27
targeter system, which is, you know, auto gun type shit and
1:40:31
enhanced reflexes and ghost camo and mounted weapons and all the
1:40:34
fun shit that you'd expect and some cybernet.
1:40:37
Some special abilities cost multiple points.
1:40:39
So like enhanced reflexes Omega cost 3 points worth.
1:40:44
So if they have, if they only have three asterisks next to
1:40:48
their stat line, they can only have that one thing because it
1:40:51
cost 3, blah blah blah. Then you have some human stat
1:40:56
lines with some human special abilities, which the
1:41:00
justification for human special abilities could be any kind of
1:41:03
nonsense you want basically like psychic abilities, custom tech.
1:41:06
Or maybe this guy's just built fucking different and you got
1:41:11
fun things like berserker and body shield or bulletproof guns
1:41:15
a blazing which just lets them attack twice as many times with
1:41:19
a gun or actually or with anything Veteran's luck which is
1:41:25
the ability that lets you like re roll attacks.
1:41:28
They can get sure shot to increase their fucking hit
1:41:31
bonus. All sorts of the usual fun shit.
1:41:35
And the human same deal number of asterisks as like a point
1:41:38
value to spend on special abilities.
1:41:42
And then you have mutant mutant animals which are weird monster
1:41:47
animals like a ghoul bear which has the ability to psychically
1:41:53
fuck with your brain and also mimic the cries of their.
1:41:58
Victims. What's the fucking bear from
1:42:01
extinction? That's horrifying.
1:42:04
Maybe or the blinding bird, which can silently strike you
1:42:10
and always wins, always surprises the party if you can't
1:42:14
beat them in a notice check or a this one's nasty.
1:42:19
The Flay Snake, a species of mutated man sized rattlesnake,
1:42:24
was cursed by the high shine or stuff.
1:42:28
Its altered genome prevents it from forming scales, leaving its
1:42:31
body a raw and leaving its body raw and red.
1:42:35
While the high shine nanites force homeostasis and prevent it
1:42:39
from dying of infection or fluid loss, the perpetual torment it
1:42:42
experiences leaves it with a with a savage temper.
1:42:46
That's kind of horrifying. Yeah, their abilities fund.
1:42:51
If they bite a victim, they have to make a physical save.
1:42:54
On a success, you resist. On a failure, you take 1D6
1:42:57
system strain and must make a physical save the next round,
1:43:01
continuing until you succeed or you die when your accumulated
1:43:05
system strain exceeds your Constitution.
1:43:08
Oh. Yeah, the flay snake is brutal.
1:43:12
Don't fuck with the flay snake. Apparently it is fucking brutal.
1:43:16
Yeah, and then we have mutated humanoids, which have all sorts
1:43:21
of fun, weird lore attached to them because the mutated
1:43:24
humanoids also come come with the whole Albuquerque,
1:43:28
Albuquerque Death Zone stuff, such as the dusters who are
1:43:33
weird. They have mirror skin and Chrome
1:43:38
hair and they're called dusters because they have a crackling
1:43:41
electrostatic dust cloud around them at all times and they're
1:43:46
like immune to lasers and can like perceive radio
1:43:49
transmissions and shit. Or the egg or the eggheads that
1:43:54
have subconscious like mind mind control abilities.
1:43:59
Like they can influence people around them to cooperate with
1:44:03
them without even doing anything.
1:44:05
Or the Morlocks, which are they're Morlocks just
1:44:08
underground fucking, you know, cave.
1:44:11
Weird tunnel cave creatures, people, things.
1:44:15
Or the thornies, which are just vine blights from 5 E just like
1:44:20
weird humanoid vegetation. Then you have robots.
1:44:26
Lots of different robot enemies on various degrees of horrifying
1:44:32
robot monster. One that I thought was
1:44:34
particularly fun was the hell rider.
1:44:37
It's called servants. The Hell Riders are servants of
1:44:40
the Territorial Rangers. These centauroid robots fight
1:44:44
with a pair of integral pistols that have an effective range of
1:44:47
100 meters. They're skilled trackers, and a
1:44:50
posse of 2D6 of them inevitably accompany Arranger.
1:44:55
It's weird, like Centaur cowboy enemies rolling around.
1:44:59
That's, yeah, that's that's not horrifying at all.
1:45:01
Yeah, but they're robots. There's also the the the jangle
1:45:07
snake, which is like a big giant metal snake with vibro teeth.
1:45:14
There's also some rules for scrapping said robot enemies,
1:45:18
repairing said robot enemies, and you can play a robot.
1:45:21
There is a free robot origin focus if you would like to play
1:45:24
a robot. And then you get the rules for
1:45:28
the zombies, which kind of get their own whole dedicated
1:45:32
section because they kind of have their own subsystem for how
1:45:35
they work. So basically when you're dealing
1:45:40
with normal ass zombies, zombies by themselves, a singular zombie
1:45:46
is completely trivial. You just literally you just hit
1:45:49
them and they die. They have one HP always and you
1:45:53
cannot miss their they do not have an AC score so you cannot
1:45:57
miss. You can choose to fight zombies
1:46:02
whenever you want because, you know, they're probably not
1:46:06
chasing you that often, barring special circumstances,
1:46:11
obviously, zombies are quite durable because, you know, they
1:46:14
don't need to eat or deal with warm or hot or anything like
1:46:17
that or food or really anything at all.
1:46:21
Zombies are stupid. I mean, yeah, zombies are
1:46:25
stupid. I don't know.
1:46:26
I need to explain much there. And Zombie swarm 1 zombie is
1:46:30
almost harmless. But there is never only one
1:46:32
zombie. And now you might say, well, OK,
1:46:36
that's regular zombies. Are there special zombies?
1:46:39
Yeah, you bet you're bippy. There is, such as leapers,
1:46:42
crushers, spewers, Titans or shriekers.
1:46:47
And if you're thinking those kind of sound like Left for Dead
1:46:49
Zombies, special zombies, they kind of are Left for Dead
1:46:52
special. Zombies, they kind of have that
1:46:54
energy, yeah. Yeah, like the leaper is pretty
1:46:57
much a hunter or a jockey. The Crusher is sort of a
1:47:02
charger, the spewer is the bile spitting 1, the Titan is the
1:47:06
tank triggers the witch triggers the witch.
1:47:09
Although not as terrifying as the witch.
1:47:11
Yeah, but it doesn't do as much damage for sure.
1:47:14
Also, the Titan is described as a giant mound of flesh, like a
1:47:18
like dead flesh smack, like monstrous giants of dead flesh
1:47:23
and undying hunger. So like, not necessarily shaped
1:47:27
like a tank, but yeah. And then there is rules for
1:47:33
zombie hordes. So hordes of zombies either come
1:47:38
in small, medium, or large. A small horde fills up like a
1:47:41
large room or a building or a small building.
1:47:44
A medium horde is like filling the streets or a city block.
1:47:48
And then a large horde is a sea of undead flesh that can fill in
1:47:51
entire entire city neighborhoods.
1:47:55
Basically if they're the horde is the small, medium and large
1:47:59
Hordes are their own stat blocks.
1:48:01
They also do not have an AC. You can't.
1:48:04
The only the only zombie stat line with an AC is the leaper.
1:48:08
That's the only one you can miss.
1:48:11
All the other ones you cannot miss the horde.
1:48:15
So the horde is innumerable, which means they're effectively
1:48:17
immune to like single target weapons.
1:48:19
You need some kind of area of effect explosions or heavy
1:48:23
automatic weapons or collapsing a building on them, or hitting
1:48:25
with a car or some shit. Zombie hordes are considered
1:48:31
ubiquitous. So if you're in an area where
1:48:35
there's a horror where there's a horde, like in a building or
1:48:38
whatever, you are considered within range of the horde
1:48:42
everywhere in the building. Unless for some reason you you
1:48:45
know some sort of fictional circumstance to get you out of
1:48:48
quote UN quote range. Then they have an ability called
1:48:50
savage where every round the horde will use a main action to
1:48:55
use an attack against every single victim within reach.
1:48:58
So if there's four players in the house and there's a horde in
1:49:01
the house, doesn't matter where you are in the house, once the
1:49:05
horde goes for a round, everyone takes an attack and then if
1:49:10
nobody is within reach, the zombie will extend an arm.
1:49:14
Quote UN quote of the horde, which just say a bunch of a
1:49:16
bunch of zombies climb out from the horde at 10 meters per per
1:49:22
round, 10 meters per move action.
1:49:24
And once they reach the target, then you're going to be
1:49:26
attacked. So they they can move.
1:49:29
They're not just like stuck where they are.
1:49:31
And then they have the ravenous ability, which is that you
1:49:34
automatically suffer AD 8 of damage every round simply for
1:49:38
being in the presence of the horde.
1:49:41
You can also get hit for you can also take a traumatic hit from
1:49:44
the automatic damage. So it could, you know, double.
1:49:51
And then they have the roadblock ability, which is basically they
1:49:55
can damage, they can do damage to a vehicle if the vehicles
1:49:58
have been range. And then eventually if they just
1:50:02
bring the vehicle down to 0 points, there's just too many
1:50:04
zombies. It's just too jammed up.
1:50:07
And then they have the grasping ability, which is if if you try
1:50:10
to move through the horde, they can make a grapple attempt
1:50:13
against you at a + 3. And if they succeed, you are
1:50:16
grappled and also they get to do more free damage to you.
1:50:20
So a horde can be quite dangerous if you're, you know,
1:50:23
not being careful. But there are also rules for
1:50:31
distracting and eluding the hordes.
1:50:34
So in terms of distraction, you can basically make a series of
1:50:39
checks to you know, like you can put yourself as bait and try and
1:50:43
make a run for it or drive with a vehicle to try and break the
1:50:46
horde up, again, putting yourself as bait.
1:50:50
And then the GM will roll 2D6. And then if the total is lower
1:50:55
than your check, if the sorry, if the total is let's do higher,
1:51:00
first you make a roll. If the zombie horde rolls 2D6
1:51:04
and beats your check, then that many clumps of zombies are left
1:51:09
around. So if you roll A7 and the GM
1:51:14
rolls A2 and A6, which would be an 8, that beats your check.
1:51:19
There are 8 clumps of zombies still there after you tried to
1:51:22
distract the horde. But if you roll a nine and the
1:51:27
GM rolls a three and a four, OK, that's the total will be 7.
1:51:30
That's less you take the lesser of the two numbers on the D6 on
1:51:34
the 2D6. So the three in this case.
1:51:36
So there would be 3 clumps of zombies left to deal with.
1:51:40
Distracted zombies will start filtering back to their to their
1:51:43
horde in 3D6 minutes, which is not a ton of time, but when
1:51:48
you're dealing with six seconds around is quite a lot if you're
1:51:51
using initiative. And then the other option is you
1:51:54
can, of course, just sneak past the zombies as long as you can
1:52:00
justify how you're sneaking around.
1:52:02
The GM will let you make some nature of like a deck sneak
1:52:06
check or some other, you know, deck something check.
1:52:10
Any kind of ability that you can kind of justify modified by, you
1:52:17
know, a -, 2 or a + 2 if the GM thinks it's like a good or a bad
1:52:20
plan. And if you win the check, you
1:52:24
can sneak past that, the area that the horde is in.
1:52:29
If you fail, you elude, you alert the horde and you have two
1:52:31
D6 rounds to escape the territory before the horde is
1:52:34
roused and they start to suffer and you start to suffer its
1:52:36
attacks. So even if you fail to sneak,
1:52:39
you have a chance to kind of deal with the situation.
1:52:43
And if you are sneaking past a horde or through a horde or
1:52:46
around them or whatever, but you stop to do something else, like
1:52:50
loot a room or like rescue a rescue a stranded victim, you
1:52:54
then have to remake the stealth check after that or the sneaking
1:52:58
check, or however you're getting around them.
1:53:02
But when you make the new check, the zombies get a + 1 bonus to
1:53:05
their role to try and detect you.
1:53:07
So basically the more shit you stop and do along the way, the
1:53:11
higher chance that they will eventually notice you, which
1:53:14
makes sense. And then there are some special
1:53:20
zombie special abilities that work, like the special abilities
1:53:23
for all the other stat lines of the cyborgs and the humans and
1:53:26
everything. You know, things like zombie
1:53:30
regeneration, or like zombies that can move really fast or
1:53:34
zombies that are really big so they have a lot of health.
1:53:39
One that's particularly creepy with the zombie special
1:53:41
abilities is the one called False Friend, which is where a
1:53:44
zombie is so intact that it looks like a perfectly normal
1:53:47
human being. If withdrawn and quiet.
1:53:51
It instinctively uses this appearance to to bait human
1:53:54
prey. Oh, I don't like that.
1:53:58
Yeah, I don't like that. It's cognizant enough to know.
1:54:00
That, that is. Yes, that does imply some
1:54:03
horrifying things. So yes, if you would like to
1:54:07
throw some special zombies in there.
1:54:10
And then there's a whole bunch of rules about dealing with the
1:54:13
infection itself, different options for how do the PC, how
1:54:19
can the PCs become infected, such as a singular bite from a
1:54:24
zombie. You're infected, tough shit.
1:54:26
Well, you make a Lux save if you fail, tough shit.
1:54:29
Or like excessive exposure or the hot zone 1, which is
1:54:33
basically like a radiation zone, but for a zombie infection.
1:54:38
And then there's what does the consequent, what does the the
1:54:41
consequences in the infection, which is to say, what does it
1:54:43
actually do to the player? One thing that's a little weird.
1:54:48
So like the is it the time bomb one symptoms become clear?
1:54:58
No, it wasn't that one. Where's the one?
1:55:04
There's one where it's like, oh, they become infected and but you
1:55:07
have to, you have to track it in secret.
1:55:12
But God damn it, now I can't find it.
1:55:15
Oh, here it is. Zombie roulette.
1:55:17
A very, a very few infected somehow recover.
1:55:20
Once infected, the GM secretly rolls AD 10 on the Oh no it's
1:55:24
not that one. No, it's not that one either.
1:55:27
There's one where it was like you need to in oh it was the
1:55:29
first. I can't read.
1:55:30
It was the first one so it was time bomb.
1:55:33
Once infected, the GM secretly adds 1D4 system strain to the
1:55:38
victim every month, week, day, or hour, depending on how how
1:55:41
quickly the the infection progresses.
1:55:44
Symptoms become clear when their strain exceeds half their
1:55:47
maximum. When it exceeds their maximum,
1:55:49
they become a zombie. My question for that is system
1:55:53
strain is a number that the player tracks on their sheet.
1:55:57
How do you secretly add system strain to their sheet without
1:56:01
telling them how? How would you?
1:56:07
You probably just have to either keep note of what their system
1:56:10
strain is or no maybe. I guess you would just tell them
1:56:14
like above board like oh just like take one system strain and
1:56:17
just never explain it. But that's not secretly.
1:56:21
You see what I, because it says secretly, adds 1D4 system
1:56:24
strain, right? How does that work?
1:56:28
I don't understand that. That confused the shit out of
1:56:30
me. I was like, how would you do
1:56:30
that? There was another one that has a
1:56:33
similar thing. I can't remember what it was,
1:56:34
but there's a similar one in here too.
1:56:36
I was like, what? Maybe you could keep a separate
1:56:39
system strain like you just duplicate theirs.
1:56:43
But their system strain's going to go up and down.
1:56:46
True. And if you say to the player
1:56:48
like, hey, make sure you tell me what your system strain is at
1:56:51
all times, they're going to be like, that's a suspicious thing
1:56:53
to say. Why would you say that, GM?
1:56:55
Yeah, Why'd you say it like that?
1:56:56
You know, like, I don't know, that's just a weird one.
1:56:58
I just don't understand how. I probably would do what you
1:57:01
said and just be like, yeah, add to system strain.
1:57:03
If they asked why, you just kind of shrug at them.
1:57:05
But like, yeah, I thought that was very weird.
1:57:08
I was like, how would you do that secretly?
1:57:10
I don't understand. Anyway.
1:57:15
And then that gives you a couple options for curing infections. 1
1:57:19
is you just can't cure it. You're fucked.
1:57:23
One is you can do like, a drug treatment.
1:57:25
Another one is a golden bullet, which is to say, like it.
1:57:28
You know, there's a beautiful mad.
1:57:30
There's like a miracle drug. The other one is cutting it out,
1:57:33
which is you can, like, remove the infected tissue.
1:57:38
Yeah. And then of course, we have
1:57:40
someone roll zombie plague generator tables and then we
1:57:44
have some zombie encounter, quick reference tables, some
1:57:48
more shit to roll on just to like basically generate some
1:57:51
really quick zombie horror groups to the players to deal
1:57:55
with. And then we get to the last
1:57:58
little bit, the nemesis traits. Did you get to?
1:58:00
Did you look at this? I I'm going to be honest, I did
1:58:03
not. Oh, you should have looked at
1:58:05
this. Oh, so the nemesis traits.
1:58:08
This is a really cool. This is the last thing we're
1:58:10
going to cover. This is a really cool system for
1:58:13
like making like really impactful antagonists.
1:58:19
The nemesis traits are basically you give you take a really like
1:58:25
an explicitly super important NPC.
1:58:28
They don't have to be an antagonist, but they are.
1:58:31
The nemesis traits are assumed to go on antagonists, but it
1:58:34
could technically go on any NPC. Basically you give the NPCA
1:58:38
superpower that is like intentionally broken.
1:58:44
Like straight up it literally says these foes have nemesis
1:58:49
traits. These are special qualities that
1:58:52
are explicitly unfair and unreasonable.
1:58:57
They may completely foreclose certain ways of dealing with
1:59:00
them or make conventional methods impractically difficult.
1:59:05
So the idea is you take like a, a, you know, a notorious NPC of
1:59:13
some nature and slap one of these traits on and this
1:59:16
particular element of them, they are like unstoppable in this
1:59:20
regard. So for example, one of them is
1:59:22
called the invincible. This foe simply cannot be
1:59:26
killed. They just can't die.
1:59:28
You just, you just cannot kill them in any way.
1:59:31
Just get fucked in. There's another one called the
1:59:36
Killer. This one I think is particularly
1:59:39
funny just because I imagine doing this in play would be
1:59:41
hilarious. The Killer can as a main action,
1:59:45
the foe can choose to attack a target susceptible to their
1:59:48
current weapon. That target must make a luck
1:59:50
save. On a failure, they die
1:59:52
instantly. On a success, they are left
1:59:54
mortally wounded with a major injury.
1:59:58
No attack role, no nothing. They just point at the target
2:00:01
and say you Dinah. They just power word kill their
2:00:04
ass. And they can do that infinitely
2:00:07
many times as they want. Wow.
2:00:11
There's another one called the Messiah, which is basically you
2:00:15
can, you're like a super ultimate charismatic cult leader
2:00:18
that can brainwash literally anyone, including the PCs.
2:00:22
Now technically they're still PCs.
2:00:24
So like they can't you can't like straight up mind control
2:00:27
them fully, but the Messiah they can't act against like he can
2:00:34
mentally influence everybody that well.
2:00:38
There's the Omend which lets you just cause roles to change.
2:00:46
The foe and any allies present with them always succeed any
2:00:49
saving throw and are treated as having Veteran's Luck Edge while
2:00:53
enemy and while any enemies present always fail any saving
2:00:56
throws or skilled checks. Twice per round as an instant.
2:01:00
Twice per round as an instant action.
2:01:03
The foe can dictate the outcome of any die roll in their general
2:01:06
vicinity, even if they would normally be unaware that the
2:01:08
associated action is being taken.
2:01:11
That's the Omond. The Perfected is just amazing at
2:01:19
everything. This foe gains a bonus main
2:01:21
action every round. Also, every attack roll, every
2:01:24
saving throw the foe makes is automatically treated as a
2:01:27
natural 20. Every skill chick is treated as
2:01:29
a natural 12. They just don't miss.
2:01:32
They're just that good. They just don't miss.
2:01:35
This doesn't extend to damage roles, but they do crit you
2:01:40
every hit. So yeah, the protagonist
2:01:49
basically you just whatever they want to do, there's no way to
2:01:52
set to there's no set back that will stop them.
2:01:55
They just they will push to their their goal no matter what.
2:01:58
And life see the world seems to bend around them for what
2:02:02
they're trying to do. The strategist who always knows
2:02:06
what. The I think the protagonist is a
2:02:07
little crazy. Sorry, just the they cannot be.
2:02:10
They cannot be killed. They cannot be defeated.
2:02:13
No, they can be killed. Antagonist says they cannot be
2:02:16
killed. Oh, does it say they can't be?
2:02:19
Killed. Yeah, they cannot be killed and
2:02:20
they cannot be defeated for long and incredible luck.
2:02:23
And what? That's kind of wild.
2:02:25
Yes, incredible luck and blessed coincidence will conspire to
2:02:28
carry them through the worst set back.
2:02:30
You're basically glupshidow fighting Daryl Dixon from
2:02:32
Walking Dead. The the protagonist plot armor
2:02:37
ends as soon as their grand goal is achieved.
2:02:41
The Strategist, they just always know what their enemy is
2:02:45
planning. They just always have the
2:02:46
perfect they're just Batman on cocaine.
2:02:49
They're just like they're Batman, but they can see every
2:02:52
possibility across every timeline.
2:02:57
And then you have the tactician, where they just always make the
2:03:01
smartest possible plan, always know exactly what the best
2:03:04
manoeuvre is, and can always intuitively guess what the foe
2:03:07
is going to do. Strategist and tactician are a
2:03:11
little similar. And then the unseen, they can
2:03:14
just if, if they don't want you finding them, you just can't.
2:03:18
You just will not find them. What they like it, whether it's
2:03:21
like they're elusive, they have disguises, they're invisible,
2:03:25
you just, you just can't find them.
2:03:29
So yeah, the nemesis traits are wacky.
2:03:31
Woo Hoo. I do kind of love the idea that
2:03:34
you're just fighting Rambo. It's like there he is and then
2:03:36
he's gone and. Then he's gone.
2:03:37
Yeah, he's bye. Bye.
2:03:40
And the idea is that if the nemesis shows up, if the PCs
2:03:43
want to stop them in some way, they need to come up with a very
2:03:47
complicated plan, maneuver to get around their bullshit.
2:03:53
Which I think for all of them, it definitely I could see how
2:03:55
you could get around pretty much all of them except for maybe the
2:03:58
protagonist. That one I'm like, I don't know.
2:04:01
Yeah, it it Well, so it says you have to either persuade them to
2:04:04
change their goals or twist their plan to serve the party.
2:04:11
Yeah, which is kind of crazy. It's just like you cannot stop.
2:04:15
Them. Yeah, I I think it's like, yes,
2:04:18
but if you blow up this town, we put your daughter in that town
2:04:22
too, and you're like, oh, fuck, that's pretty much you.
2:04:24
Yeah. I kind of like the idea of
2:04:26
fighting the protagonist because you might have to turn
2:04:28
yourselves into villains just to, like, survive.
2:04:32
Right, Right. You might start doing shit that
2:04:34
you're like, are we the are we the baddies?
2:04:42
Yeah, that's the and that's the nemesis traits.
2:04:44
And then there's a brief bit of advice on creating your your own
2:04:48
nemesis traits if you would like.
2:04:51
Also, the, the, the game is very explicit.
2:04:54
If you give a character a nemesis trait, the PCs need to
2:04:58
know. You can't just pull some
2:05:01
bullshit where you pretend like it's a like you can't pretend
2:05:04
like it's a normal enemy. And then, oh, actually they have
2:05:07
the killer trait and they just one shot the players completely.
2:05:11
Like, you know, they, they need to know it's the, it's a guy
2:05:16
with the killer trait. Now, however you deliver that
2:05:18
information is up to you, right? Like what kind of in universe
2:05:21
information? But they need to know that this
2:05:23
guy is not to be fucked with. Don't.
2:05:28
Don't pull some. Don't pull some gotchas just for
2:05:30
the lols. Because if your objective was to
2:05:33
pull gotchas just for the lols, you could always just say rocks
2:05:36
fall and you die. Do you think it's the The idea
2:05:40
is so funny. It's like, I I shoot him in the
2:05:42
face, all right? You shoot him in the face,
2:05:44
nothing happens. You're like what?
2:05:46
Yeah, yeah. Nothing happens.
2:05:48
All right, I'd stab him. You don't stab him.
2:05:51
What? Hey, you just don't.
2:05:54
Do I get to roll? No, no.
2:05:57
Yeah, no, you don't get to roll. I just say no.
2:05:59
See, I just look at you and say no.
2:06:02
I hit him with my truck. Don't.
2:06:04
Yep. Shielding.
2:06:08
That's where we're going to bring it to a close where Ash is
2:06:11
without number. If you're curious what the rest
2:06:14
of the book has in store. So there's the Albuquerque Death
2:06:17
Zone, which is the the preset setting, which is kind of a
2:06:22
weird like Borderlands fall out, but also cowboy weird W thing
2:06:30
going on. There's also an edge in the
2:06:33
Albuquerque death zone called the Cowboy, which basically
2:06:37
gives you a cowboy class. Oh.
2:06:40
That sounds so much fun. Where you have cowboy things
2:06:43
like trusty steed, eagle eye, iron belly, lightning hands.
2:06:48
Something called the Big Iron. There is not the big iron.
2:06:52
Missed opportunity. Yeah.
2:06:55
But yeah, there's basically a cowboy class in there.
2:06:58
And then the supplementary material, by the way, I really
2:07:01
love that for this book, he actually just marked it off as
2:07:04
supplementary material because in all the other books, like the
2:07:08
the deluxe edition content is it is towards the back, but there's
2:07:13
no delineation necessarily. Whereas this, it's literally
2:07:16
under a big section called supplementary material.
2:07:20
Thank you. Just for organization's sake.
2:07:23
I like that you know, in the supplementary material you have
2:07:28
evil techno Wizards. I don't think I need to explain
2:07:31
what that is. They're evil.
2:07:33
It's rules for playing an evil techno wizard or using them as
2:07:37
antagonists. You have ash sorcerers, which
2:07:40
are basically like weird post apocalyptic mages but with like
2:07:44
a little bit more subtle magic, not like full on wizard shit.
2:07:48
And then you have Mentalist, which are if you want to play a
2:07:53
survivor with psychic powers, but you don't want to have, you
2:07:56
don't want to use the psychic abilities from Stars Without
2:07:59
Number, which are a little more higher power and require a bit
2:08:02
more of like an investment, Then you can play the Mentalist.
2:08:06
And then there's rules for modular power armor, which is if
2:08:10
you want your Fallout style, whatever the fuck it's called,
2:08:14
the Brotherhood of Steel armor or whatever, right?
2:08:16
Yeah, yeah, the power armor. Yeah.
2:08:19
And then there's rules for Hub settlement, which is basically
2:08:24
you take the enclave stuff and you make an even more detailed.
2:08:29
You take the enclave that the PCs live in and you make a more
2:08:33
detailed like survival game style mini game out of the hub
2:08:40
where there's like extra rules for like feeding food and water
2:08:46
and pop it. Basically you turn the game into
2:08:47
like cult of the lamb mode with the hub settlement rules, which
2:08:53
actually might have been something that you wanted.
2:08:55
Even more so if you want to, if you want to look at that section
2:09:01
in the future for ideas. But yeah, basically turns that
2:09:06
whatever enclave the PCs are in, the hub settlement rules, turns
2:09:09
it into this little mini game of managing their home, their home
2:09:13
enclave. You could use this you know, I
2:09:17
mean watching Trigun kind of on the brain right now, but if you
2:09:21
gave the players the plot armor like health condition you can do
2:09:25
a pretty solid job making a trigun style game.
2:09:29
Yeah, yeah, pretty easily actually.
2:09:34
I want to play in that. I don't want to.
2:09:36
Once again, I don't want to run that, but I want to play in
2:09:37
that. The only thing you're really
2:09:39
missing out on is like Vash's weird plant powers, but that's
2:09:42
probably fine. I mean, you can put that in a
2:09:45
mutation, like obviously you can't do the fucking Angel arm,
2:09:47
but like I was. Going to say you can't do the
2:09:49
the shoot the moon gun. No, you can't shoot the moon
2:09:51
gun, but you could do like knives as like grow blades out
2:09:54
of your back and like that's true.
2:09:57
I mean shit, you can do Legato's fucking like LED powers.
2:10:03
Yep. So yeah, that's where we'll
2:10:06
we'll wrap it up on Ash's outnumber the 4th of the without
2:10:10
number games. And like we said before, maybe
2:10:13
the last one, the 4th and potentially final, potentially
2:10:16
final, I have no idea. Yeah, that's been us.
2:10:25
Give us a follow on the socials if you want.
2:10:28
You could do a fucking dodo Hey dodo campaign.
2:10:30
It'd be so you could literally be kind of oh.
2:10:34
You could, yeah. Fuck yeah.
2:10:42
Yet another banger I this might Side note, this might be the
2:10:47
best of the without number games.
2:10:50
In terms of its general design, I'm inclined to agree.
2:10:53
It's been streamlined a lot. You know, my, my general feeling
2:10:59
towards the writing of these games, it is, is the writing is
2:11:03
simplified and like, I think it's organized a little bit
2:11:06
better. Yes, I think there's better
2:11:08
organization. I also just feel like the this
2:11:11
one has the most interesting like bespoke mechanics for it.
2:11:16
It does, although like the disease and the radiation and
2:11:19
the stress rules and like the zombie rules.
2:11:22
I love the zombie shit. You know, the the the different,
2:11:26
different enemy this this, this has the most like diverse enemy,
2:11:30
like creatures of the waste, like bestiary bit.
2:11:35
So yeah, I don't know, probably his most solid work, which is
2:11:39
good, but also it's even better because his most solid work and
2:11:45
then you can just take all of the good bits from this game
2:11:48
that you want and put it in the other games no problem.
2:11:52
So it's kind of a win win across the board.
2:11:56
It really is the the modularity in mind does wonders for this
2:12:01
game Dine and longevity yes, and and also makes the older games
2:12:08
like more valid yes, better stars without number becomes
2:12:12
better by Ash's existing. It really does.
2:12:17
Yeah, so and. If you were playing Stars and
2:12:20
you wanted to have Tatooine, now you have bespoke rules for
2:12:22
making Tatooine. It's true.
2:12:24
It's true. All right, get the fuck out of
2:12:28
here.