Latest / Sessions Canceled / Ashes Without Number | Tabletop Shout-Out Part. 1: Ep. 187

Transcript

Ashes Without Number | Tabletop Shout-Out Part. 1: Ep. 187 · Sessions Canceled

• 0:12
  Up Internet the GM got really, really pissed off that this game
• 0:18
  we're about to talk talk about didn't come out sooner so he
• 0:22
  could have used it because it has all the stuff he wanted.
• 0:24
  Instead he had to use some jank ass hack nonsense, so he's still
• 0:28
  kind of getting over that for a little bit.
• 0:31
  So Sessions cancelled until he feels better.
• 0:33
  It's why the fuck you calling me House?
• 0:38
  Because I just think it's really because it's just funny, and
• 0:42
  it's just funny every time I think about.
• 0:46
  Fucker. Yeah, it's correct.
• 0:47
  Because it is. It is me.
• 0:49
  I am pissed that this game came out four years after my fucking
• 0:52
  game started. It's just one of those things
• 0:55
  where I look at it and I'm like, I'm like lol lamau even dog
• 1:01
  like. I don't know.
• 1:05
  I guess I, I, I just, I'm, I'm curious, how long did it take
• 1:10
  you till you got to the point where you were like, oh damn,
• 1:16
  this is doing everything I wanted to do?
• 1:18
  Literally the second it got some mutations.
• 1:21
  This. Yeah, this.
• 1:22
  So it's OK. So character creation.
• 1:24
  Literally. Yeah, it took a long time.
• 1:28
  Literally none. Yeah, yeah, right.
• 1:33
  My brother in Christmas. It's funny because when the
• 1:37
  Kickstarter came out I was I was looking at some of a lot of the
• 1:40
  early play tests of this game. Or not even play tests, just the
• 1:43
  like early unfinished version. I was like jumping around and
• 1:49
  skimming through. And with every subsequent
• 1:51
  release I'm like, oh, Isaiah was trying to do that in his game.
• 1:55
  Oh, he's trying to do that in this game.
• 1:56
  Oh, he's trying to do that in this game too.
• 1:58
  Wow, this just keeps. OK.
• 1:59
  Well, that's interesting. Yeah, it took almost no time at
• 2:04
  all for me to be like, oh, that would have been useful.
• 2:06
  Yeah. Oh, that would have been useful.
• 2:08
  Oh, shit, that would have been useful.
• 2:11
  Oh, that's literally what I was trying to do.
• 2:12
  Oh, OK. Yeah.
• 2:15
  Even when it came to like radiation poisoning, you know
• 2:17
  that thing, that was a massive thing point in my campaign.
• 2:20
  Point in your game? Yeah, yeah.
• 2:21
  Yeah, the whole, you know, the whole thing.
• 2:23
  That Ant was dying of insane radiation poisoning.
• 2:26
  Yeah, that would have been useful.
• 2:30
  Yes, Sir. Or, you know, the lingering
• 2:32
  injuries. Oh yeah, you did do a lingering
• 2:36
  injuries thing too, didn't you? That's right.
• 2:40
  Yeah. Well, to be fair though late,
• 2:43
  the major injuries thing has been in there since Worlds
• 2:45
  Without Number. I don't think Stars had it, or
• 2:47
  if it did I don't remember it. But I don't.
• 2:49
  Remember that's been there for that's been there for me and it
• 2:55
  but yes, indeedy we are back. We are back with the without
• 2:59
  number games, the 4th installment, ashes without
• 3:04
  number. I don't know if it's the final
• 3:10
  installment or not, but it kind of feels like the final
• 3:15
  installment to me just because I don't know what other major like
• 3:21
  wide scope genre you would hit, you know?
• 3:26
  Westerns. But you could just I think you,
• 3:29
  but this is the thing you start trying to think of other genres
• 3:34
  that he could potentially do a without number game for.
• 3:37
  And what you realize is that because you can mix and match
• 3:41
  the four games, you can kind of almost make anything with these
• 3:46
  four. I feel like like I don't think
• 3:48
  WI think you could do a Western with Ashes pretty easily.
• 3:51
  And maybe a little bit of like, depending on your flavour of
• 3:56
  Western, throw in worlds if you want some magical stuff, or like
• 3:59
  throw in cities if you want to throw in some weird tech shit.
• 4:02
  You know what I mean? Like, I don't know, I, I don't
• 4:08
  know. I, I had that thought I was
• 4:09
  like, is this the final without number game?
• 4:12
  And it it might be, I have no idea.
• 4:14
  It very well could be. I mean, you do have a good
• 4:16
  point. I, I, you can't.
• 4:18
  Off the top of my head I can't think of anything but.
• 4:21
  Right, that's the thing I couldn't either.
• 4:22
  I I I tried, I tried being like, what else would there be?
• 4:26
  But it's, you know, once you hit sci-fi, fantasy, cyberpunk, post
• 4:31
  apocalypse, it's like those are kind of the big boys in the like
• 4:36
  in the table top. I mean, you can get into really
• 4:39
  niche specific things, but if you're starting to do really
• 4:42
  niche specific things, that's when you start operating in the
• 4:45
  world of like combining the four of them in various ways, you
• 4:48
  know? Yeah, that the like whole mix
• 4:50
  and match thing that they got going on.
• 4:51
  Yeah, I guess. I guess anime shonen nonsense
• 4:57
  isn't in there, but I know he's not going to make a game like
• 4:59
  that so. Yeah, that doesn't really fit
• 5:01
  into the OSR. That one probably wouldn't,
• 5:04
  yeah. But yeah, it's so the the 4th
• 5:09
  game, Ashes Without Number, which is primarily focuses on a
• 5:15
  post making a post apocalypse game.
• 5:18
  I say primarily 'cause there is some sci-fi esque tidbits that
• 5:23
  throw in there. Although post apocalypse does
• 5:24
  have a lot of sci-fi elements often.
• 5:26
  So that's not that out of character, I suppose.
• 5:31
  But yeah, where if it's fucking, it's in ashes without it's ashes
• 5:36
  without number. It's another without numbers
• 5:37
  game. Before we get into all that,
• 5:40
  take a moment, say hello to Jesus, and hit, follow or
• 5:44
  subscribe on your podcast platform of choice.
• 5:48
  I got to say hello to G. Say hello to Jesus.
• 5:51
  Yeah, you do. It's it's because I don't know
• 5:54
  why not I. Don't know, we and I'll talk in
• 5:56
  turn. Jesus is always on talking terms
• 5:59
  with everyone. It's his dad who's the asshole.
• 6:05
  So this is the big G man who's got problems with people for no
• 6:08
  reason, You know, I mean, you know, that's just like my
• 6:12
  opinion, man. But like, you know, I'm just
• 6:14
  saying that's off here, bro. I'm just saying.
• 6:15
  I'm just saying saying big G man does some questionable shit.
• 6:20
  It is just kind of like my opinion, man.
• 6:21
  It's true, All right. I mean, we don't need.
• 6:25
  To be here, to be friends with a Christian when someone's like,
• 6:27
  yeah, Old Testament God kind of an asshole.
• 6:29
  I'm like, oh, you're my favorite kind of Christian, but.
• 6:32
  Kind of an asshole. I mean, yeah, yeah, I mean, no
• 6:38
  need, no need to beat around the proverbial Bush on this one.
• 6:41
  Fucking, you know, lock and load.
• 6:45
  Ash is that number? Yeah, Ash is that number post
• 6:50
  apocalypse game. So as with all the other Without
• 6:54
  Number games that we've talked about, which is to say the other
• 6:56
  3, we are not going to get into the nitty gritty mechanics of
• 7:02
  each individual thing. If you would like to get into
• 7:04
  the Super specific nitty gritty mechanics, go back and listen to
• 7:07
  the Stars Without Number episode.
• 7:08
  That will get into like the core mechanics.
• 7:11
  But as with all the Without Number games, the core mechanics
• 7:14
  of Ashes Without Number are still the same as the other
• 7:17
  three by design. So I will be skipping things,
• 7:23
  jumping around, glossing over shit, etcetera etcetera.
• 7:32
  I think, was there another thing, another caveat?
• 7:35
  I don't know, probably not. We start the the book starts
• 7:38
  with some fiction, a little like story bit, which I think all of
• 7:41
  them start with. Then some really basic broad
• 7:45
  strokes explaining of what the players in the GM should bring
• 7:50
  to the table and like what kind of game.
• 7:52
  This is important note with this one that the other without
• 8:00
  number games don't necessarily do is that this game in
• 8:03
  particular, although it covers the idea of post apocalypse, it
• 8:07
  covers kind of three sub genres of post apocalypse, that being
• 8:15
  the mutant wasteland, the dead Lands and after the fall.
• 8:20
  As he puts it. Mutant wasteland is kind of the
• 8:25
  default assumption for the game, which is somewhere along the
• 8:30
  lines of Mad Max Fury Road and Fallout is basically kind of
• 8:35
  where the mutant wasteland bit falls.
• 8:37
  I get you could also say maybe a little bit of Borderlands, at
• 8:40
  least the first Borderlands. I can't speak past the first
• 8:42
  one. The Borderlands.
• 8:45
  OK, that kind of vibe there's like another good mutant
• 8:51
  wasteland example being the the metro books and the metro games
• 8:55
  you know Metro 203334 and 35 or if you play the video games 2033
• 9:00
  last light and exodus. That's all mutant wasteland
• 9:04
  style post apocalypse. That's kind of the default
• 9:06
  assumption for this game and the default setting in this game,
• 9:09
  which is the called the Albuquerque dead zone is a
• 9:13
  mutant wasteland setting. But if you don't necessarily
• 9:18
  want to do that, we also have Dead Lands, which is your
• 9:21
  classic zombie post apocalypse. Your, you know, your Walking
• 9:26
  Deads, your Last of Us. Although I would argue Last of
• 9:29
  Us has some of the mutant wasteland vibes also.
• 9:32
  But you know, Walking Dead, Last of Us, Dead Rising, right?
• 9:36
  The Deadlands campaign is your zombie specific thing and there
• 9:40
  are zombie specific rules and like bespoke things about how to
• 9:45
  deal with zombies as like an enemy.
• 9:49
  It's the the Deadlands rules feel very left for dead.
• 9:53
  I would say there's like specialized super zombies and
• 9:58
  there's rules for dealing with big hordes of zombies and rules
• 10:00
  for like sneaking through big hordes of zombies and shit like
• 10:03
  that. It's very left for dead vibes.
• 10:05
  And then there's the after the fall campaign, which is
• 10:09
  basically society just collapsed like like a day ago or like a
• 10:15
  couple of or like a week ago, like the like something just
• 10:18
  happened and the P you, your player characters are in the
• 10:22
  immediate aftermath. So like.
• 10:25
  This is your like battle Los Angeles or, or like 2012 like.
• 10:30
  Yes. Everything went to shit
• 10:32
  overnight. Everything went to shit
• 10:34
  overnight and you're dealing with the immediate
• 10:36
  ramifications. So in the after the Fall style
• 10:39
  campaign, you're probably going to be playing normal Joe Schmo
• 10:44
  people who are just in a shitty situation and the the player
• 10:49
  characters are brought together by pure random circumstance.
• 10:53
  You know, Anuk went off, everything went to shit and the
• 10:57
  player characters happened to be all in the same store at a mall
• 11:01
  or whatever. And so they're just they're
• 11:03
  together because of that, that that's the kind of after the
• 11:06
  fall style vibe. So within within this game, you
• 11:12
  have kind of these 3 mini sub genres and the rules kind of ebb
• 11:16
  and flow out of the three sub genres.
• 11:19
  And some of the rules are more useful to one than the other.
• 11:23
  Blah blah blah. Most of the rules, again,
• 11:26
  because the default assumption is the Mutant Wasteland vibe.
• 11:30
  Most of the rules will fit pretty well into the Mutant
• 11:33
  Wasteland campaigns, but the Deadlands and After the Fall,
• 11:36
  you're probably going to be taking more stuff out.
• 11:38
  Especially in After the Fall campaign, I think you're going
• 11:40
  to be taking quite a lot of rules out because that's a quite
• 11:44
  a different stretch of the vibe from a Mutant Wasteland game.
• 11:50
  Actually. Honestly, I feel like you could.
• 11:53
  Kind of have a bit of both. I think the, the, I think the
• 11:56
  after the fall can have some interesting connotations by
• 12:00
  taking little chunks of each, right, like the, the dead lands,
• 12:03
  you can have an after the fall where the zombie outbreak is
• 12:07
  happening right now, right? Not like Last of Us where it's
• 12:10
  been 20 years. We're kind of dealing with it
• 12:11
  versus the. Very the very early stages of
• 12:14
  the zombie outbreak. Yeah.
• 12:15
  And then, you know, the the mutant wasteland thing, you can
• 12:18
  have it like, you know, what's the one like Borderlands is a
• 12:23
  good example, right? Like Borderlands kind of
• 12:24
  presumes that there was this big corporal war and then like right
• 12:28
  after the war ended, when all the corporals left, that's
• 12:32
  Border, that's Pandora at that point with all the like Iridium,
• 12:35
  crazy tech that's mutating people and all the like toxic
• 12:38
  waste. Yes you can definitely mix and
• 12:42
  match them for sure, but the kind of the way they slot by
• 12:47
  default, I think most of the rules apply to the mutant
• 12:51
  wasteland vibe. The the the easiest with the
• 12:54
  least adjustment, you know what I mean?
• 12:56
  Yes, I'll give you. That and also I I think it's
• 13:00
  worth pointing out that this idea of the like sub genres to
• 13:05
  the campaign also highlights this particular without number
• 13:12
  game is a lot more modular than the other three are even like
• 13:18
  all of the without number games are are built on the idea of
• 13:21
  modularity at at base for sure, but this one I would say is even
• 13:26
  more modular. And what I mean is that there's
• 13:30
  a lot of rules in the book that are very take it or leave it for
• 13:35
  your needs. And so depending on the kind of
• 13:39
  game you're trying to run and shit, you might end up in a
• 13:42
  situation where you're trying, you're combing through a lot of
• 13:44
  rules you don't need because this one is intended to be, this
• 13:52
  one is intended to cover a, a pretty broad scope.
• 13:57
  And basically like 80% of the rules are optional, even though
• 14:04
  the book doesn't actually phrase it exactly that way.
• 14:07
  It's kind of how it works. Like we'll get, we'll get to
• 14:12
  what I mean, but there's a ton of shit that definitely is
• 14:16
  heavily optional. Character creation, which is
• 14:22
  where all these books start. Character creation in this game
• 14:25
  is the same. Attributes, skills, backgrounds,
• 14:29
  foci, all that stuff is the same.
• 14:32
  The skill list. The skill list has not changed
• 14:37
  the the the major. Oh and much like Cities Without
• 14:43
  Number, Ashes without Number does not use classes, they use
• 14:46
  edges and edges act as class style abilities.
• 14:54
  It is worth pointing out that the edges in this game though
• 14:57
  are split up into the sub genres.
• 15:00
  So there are edges that are, how does it phrase it, Universal
• 15:04
  survivor edges? And then you have Mutant
• 15:07
  wasteland edges, Deadland edges, and after the fall edges.
• 15:12
  So there are a couple that are also chopped into their own
• 15:15
  vibe. Which isn't to say you can't
• 15:17
  cross them over. If you're mostly doing mutant
• 15:19
  wasteland and you want to use a Dead Lands 1, you can.
• 15:22
  Just you know it's not intended for that.
• 15:25
  So if you do it that way, let the GM know so they can make
• 15:28
  adjustments. The big showcase, though, and
• 15:33
  character creation is the first, the first big optional rule
• 15:39
  optional thing here, which is mutations.
• 15:46
  This is kind of what I'm this is kind of what I mean on the on
• 15:50
  the modularity where if you're playing a dead lands or the
• 15:53
  after the fall campaign, it's assumed the characters are
• 15:56
  completely human, so you're just going to ignore them.
• 15:59
  You the mutations part of the character creation.
• 16:03
  Now like Isaiah said, if you want to mix and match for some
• 16:06
  reason, maybe the characters do have mutations, that's a
• 16:08
  different story. But default assumption is you
• 16:10
  will ignore mutations if you're not using the Mutant Wasteland
• 16:16
  setting. So basically if you are using
• 16:20
  Mutant Wasteland and you as the GM are letting players be
• 16:23
  mutants, it's pretty simple. It's very much a like.
• 16:30
  It basically works the way you would think.
• 16:32
  It's a simple but effective system.
• 16:34
  You declare that your character's going to be a
• 16:36
  mutant. You don't need to take an edge
• 16:40
  or anything like that or no, sorry, you do.
• 16:43
  No, I take that back. You do need to take the mutant
• 16:46
  edge to make yourself a mutant. So at character creation, you
• 16:49
  have to pick. It's basically like you're
• 16:51
  picking the mutant class in a sense.
• 16:55
  And then once you've done that, you have it's broken down into
• 16:58
  three chunks where you have stigma, negative mutations, and
• 17:02
  positive mutations. They're pretty much what they
• 17:05
  sound like. The stigmas are physical
• 17:10
  characteristic character characteristics.
• 17:13
  We. I I was thinking about this
• 17:14
  character, your stigma is why are you a weird?
• 17:18
  It's like a, you're a weird little guy.
• 17:19
  What do you look like? And then the mutations are why
• 17:21
  are you weird? It's it's pretty funny.
• 17:24
  Something like that, Yeah. Like the stigma's like, how are
• 17:27
  you outwardly weird? And then?
• 17:28
  Yes, the stigma is how can people tell you're mutated?
• 17:33
  For example, stigmas are like you have glassy texture to your
• 17:39
  skin. You're you're luminescent, you
• 17:42
  have bird wings or feathers or something like that.
• 17:45
  Or you have like Leafs, leaves growing out of your body or like
• 17:50
  mushrooms growing out of your body, right?
• 17:52
  That's what the stigma are. The stigmas are it lets people
• 17:55
  know this guy's a weird mutant and you can actually pick a
• 18:03
  stigma that can be easily hidden.
• 18:05
  But you do take a bit of a penalty to your mutant points
• 18:09
  because what you do is you have your positive and your negative
• 18:14
  mutations and effectively you have a, a pool, a pure, a pure.
• 18:18
  You have a pool, a pool, you have a pool of points to spend.
• 18:23
  You have three, you have three points to spend on positive
• 18:26
  mutations. And then you can choose what you
• 18:32
  want. But there are certain things
• 18:35
  that can, like either increase your mutant points or decrease
• 18:41
  your mutant points. So for example, if you roll, if
• 18:47
  you roll 2, two mutations from the same category, because
• 18:53
  they're broken up into categories, that will reduce how
• 18:56
  many points you have. Because essentially you're kind
• 19:00
  of weighting your luck towards a specific kind of mutation
• 19:03
  because the default way you do it is just roll, die, see what
• 19:07
  happens. And then you roll for your
• 19:09
  negative mutation because you have your positive mutations,
• 19:13
  which are your bonuses, and then your negative mutations, which
• 19:15
  are your downsides. You cannot avoid having a
• 19:18
  downside. So, and just for the sake of for
• 19:27
  funsies mostly, let me come on, let me.
• 19:33
  Oh, stop it. Let's see.
• 19:36
  So we need one. We need one die.
• 19:38
  Just going to roll a die for the sake of it.
• 19:42
  And we need AD 100 die. We'll miss some that that's not
• 19:50
  that one. There we go.
• 19:51
  Sorry. Stop.
• 19:55
  Oh, there's a button for stop. All right, all right.
• 19:58
  So like if I roll and I got a 93.
• 20:02
  So I would go to oh, this is for negative mutations.
• 20:05
  So I got for my negative mutation, I got lightly touched
• 20:09
  roll another negative mutation. It manifests so lightly,
• 20:12
  however, that it has no meaningful effect on you and
• 20:14
  applies no penalties. Wow, that's that's a really good
• 20:17
  one. Yeah.
• 20:18
  Seriously. OK, I got a 5555.
• 20:23
  Negative would be narrow focus. You have difficulty paying
• 20:25
  attention to your surroundings, your wisdom modifier suffers a
• 20:28
  -. 1 penalty and you cannot develop the notice skill.
• 20:31
  OK, I can't believe your negative mutation was having
• 20:34
  ADHD. IA little bit, yeah.
• 20:38
  So then if I do so for my positive, I roll AD 3 to figure
• 20:42
  out category and I got hybrid mutations and then I would roll
• 20:47
  what is AD 10, Yeah, then I could roll AD 10, I got a 2.
• 20:53
  So my hybrid mutation is arboreal aptitude.
• 20:58
  Let's see arboreal aptitude you're you're an unnaturally
• 21:01
  nimble climber able to scale all but perfectly smooth surfaces.
• 21:05
  You can hang from vertical or overhead surfaces so long as one
• 21:08
  hand can purchase all followed damage you take is have rounded
• 21:11
  down. So I got weird tree frog powers
• 21:16
  and like, that's basically the vibe.
• 21:18
  Now you have three points to spend, so you can make multiple
• 21:21
  roles. You can also just pick by the
• 21:24
  way, I, I, if, sorry, I forgot to say if you roll.
• 21:28
  So if you pick, it costs all three of your points.
• 21:30
  If you roll, you spend one point.
• 21:32
  So you can have three positive mutations, but they're random or
• 21:35
  you can just pick the one you want.
• 21:39
  Or you can spend 3 points to roll 2 positive mutations from
• 21:42
  the same category. So there's like, you know,
• 21:45
  there's mix and match options on how you can do it, but basically
• 21:48
  pool of points you have negatives and positives, you
• 21:50
  cannot avoid having the negative and you have to deal with a
• 21:54
  stigma in some way. Yeah.
• 22:01
  I mean, anything you want to throw out on the end there?
• 22:04
  So I I was going to ask you what 3 mutations you would want for a
• 22:08
  character. Oh, I didn't look at enough of
• 22:10
  them to say. Oh, you bastard.
• 22:12
  All right. There's so I mean, why do you
• 22:15
  have an answer? I I.
• 22:16
  Definitely only because I, I joked, I joked about it
• 22:19
  yesterday as I was reading the book.
• 22:21
  I was like, you know, the you have justed a few tations to
• 22:24
  turn yourself perfectly into Satsuru Gojo.
• 22:27
  So I would absolutely do. Oh, right.
• 22:30
  Right, right, right, right, right.
• 22:31
  Yeah, yeah, look, yeah. You just need mind over body,
• 22:34
  which like lets your brain control like how strong your
• 22:37
  body is and then telekinetic reach.
• 22:39
  And then you need the panoptic vision.
• 22:41
  And then you, you too can be the honored 1.
• 22:46
  Oh, sorry. Also, I I'm a filthy liar, I
• 22:49
  said you can't avoid taking a negative.
• 22:51
  You can actually choose not to take a negative.
• 22:53
  I'm sorry I'm. I was going to say I I thought
• 22:55
  the whole point was that you, just you, you get rewarded for
• 22:58
  taking a negative. You get yes, if you take a
• 23:00
  negative you get more points to spend on your mutations, but you
• 23:03
  can avoid taking a negative if you want to.
• 23:06
  Sorry completely. I'm like.
• 23:10
  I guess I was. I must be confusing that with
• 23:12
  another rule. I don't know what is the point
• 23:14
  What? Of of not taking a negative that
• 23:16
  that. That's what makes it fun.
• 23:19
  You know, I the point is I don't know because people are lame and
• 23:24
  don't want to do that. I guess I, I don't know.
• 23:27
  I, I couldn't tell you well. Actually, let's so for for you
• 23:30
  may have said it and I think I missed it.
• 23:32
  So if you don't take a negative, you can only get one mutation.
• 23:36
  If you do take a negative, you get the two extra points which
• 23:38
  gives you 3, or if you do take the negative you get 5 points.
• 23:42
  So if you take the negative, you have 5 points.
• 23:44
  And So what that means is you could potentially have 5
• 23:48
  positive mutations if you roll all of them randomly.
• 23:51
  Or you could pick one mutation and roll 2 random mutations.
• 23:56
  Or you could roll 2 positive mutations from the same category
• 24:02
  and then have two other random mutations.
• 24:06
  Oh, OK. Yeah, All right.
• 24:08
  So I think I get it. You can also take up to three
• 24:13
  negative mutations, which would give you 6 extra points.
• 24:19
  That would be hilarious. So you could make it.
• 24:21
  You can make your character quite a fucking mess.
• 24:24
  I I kind of want to do that. Yeah, like 'cause if you so if
• 24:29
  you took three negative mutations, you would put
• 24:31
  yourself at six total points, which means you could
• 24:36
  potentially roll 6 random positive mutations.
• 24:42
  So that would be wild, but you could.
• 24:48
  And there's also I think it's an edge that lets you gain some
• 24:54
  more mutations later. Lord.
• 24:58
  Oh, no, no, it's, it's an edge that no, no, I'm sorry, the
• 25:01
  mutant acceleration edge. You gain two additional mutation
• 25:05
  points, so you can actually start with eight.
• 25:10
  Holy shit. Assuming you roll them all,
• 25:12
  yeah. Yeah, yeah.
• 25:14
  I don't think anyone ever would because that's kind of a lot.
• 25:18
  But I, I, I think, yeah, you hypothetically could be
• 25:22
  unstoppable, something like that.
• 25:25
  That or you're just a BLOB of gross like.
• 25:27
  Oreo BLOB of gross, Yeah. You can do, you can just get
• 25:30
  really fucked on. It's like, yeah, you know, you
• 25:34
  got thermal vision, all right, that's cool.
• 25:36
  And you got echolocation. OK, that's cool.
• 25:38
  But like, none of them actually do well, a lot.
• 25:41
  Or you could be Sacharu Gojo. There's there's like.
• 25:44
  Yeah, there's, yeah, there's a lot of potential for some really
• 25:47
  weird shit. Also there are pseudo psychic
• 25:51
  mutations where you have like telekinetic powers and like
• 25:55
  Thermo kinesis and a force field.
• 25:59
  Yeah, so like there's that too. So you could have like big
• 26:05
  orangutan arms and also force fields.
• 26:10
  Do with that what you will, I guess.
• 26:11
  Turn yourself into a fucking Joe Caro from 40 Ki.
• 26:15
  Don't know what that is, but sure.
• 26:16
  The orangutan techno monkeys. I have not seen that, but sounds
• 26:21
  about right. I love them so much, all right?
• 26:26
  So yeah, the mutations rules are quite fun and or or the mutant
• 26:30
  rules really are quite fun and you can do some pretty wacky woo
• 26:34
  Hoo nonsense with them. You.
• 26:36
  Should play a game of. Where would Isaiah have used
• 26:38
  this? Because in the rules for
• 26:43
  hellscapes and one of the reasons why I took the rules
• 26:47
  from hellscapes is because you have two like subspecies or sub
• 26:52
  races of human called beast eels and mutants and beast eels kind
• 26:58
  of as it describes you're like a beast skin.
• 26:59
  You know, you're like a a a dog person or a cat person or like a
• 27:03
  crab person. And then there's the mutants
• 27:05
  where you're like an X-Men, which is pretty much closer to
• 27:07
  this. But there's no reason why you
• 27:09
  couldn't use the, you know, hybrid mutations or the exotic
• 27:13
  mutations or the structural mutations to turn yourself into
• 27:16
  like a lion man, for example. Or as what we had in our party,
• 27:21
  a like herd person who's like a pseudo Phoenix person, a shark
• 27:25
  guy and a bat chick. Plus a ant's character, the cryo
• 27:33
  kinetic gremlin. The cryo kinetic tinkerer
• 27:35
  gremlin. So yeah, you could do all those
• 27:39
  things, all those things that I needed several different things
• 27:42
  for and a lot of Jerry rigging you could have just done.
• 27:45
  At the one system side note in the back, in the back half of
• 27:48
  this book, there's also folk eye to let you play beast folk.
• 27:51
  Ah yeah, wonderful, yeah. If you go to the Creatures of
• 27:58
  the Waste chapter and then you get to the beast folk bit,
• 28:01
  there's also beast folk origin folk eyes that let you play
• 28:05
  beast folk. So.
• 28:06
  Wonderful. Yeah, yeah.
• 28:10
  But you can. So yeah, you can do.
• 28:12
  You can also do both too, right? Because the mutation is an edge,
• 28:16
  right? So you can pick a mutant edge
• 28:18
  and then pick a beast skin foci and be a combination of the two.
• 28:26
  So like, you could be a Wolfman with like telekinetic powers.
• 28:31
  So yeah, Yep, Yep. Don't mind me.
• 28:42
  I'm just malding. No, it's it's yeah, I, I, I knew
• 28:45
  you would then. So, you know, you have your,
• 28:50
  your, your final touches and everything for character
• 28:52
  creation. That's all the same stuff, you
• 28:54
  know, your folk eye. And then you add together your
• 28:55
  hit points and your attack bonuses, Baba Yaba Yaba.
• 29:00
  Then we have your starting equipment.
• 29:01
  So there are a couple of different options for starting
• 29:03
  equipment in this game. Also generally based on the
• 29:08
  three types of campaigns, although you do not have to use
• 29:12
  them strictly in that way. So the first one is called
• 29:15
  hapless innocence. And if you go with hapless
• 29:19
  innocence, you, your character literally has access to whatever
• 29:25
  you have on your person in real life right now.
• 29:31
  So like. That one's really fun.
• 29:32
  If you have car keys in your pocket, then you have car keys
• 29:36
  and a car. And it's like that kind of vibe.
• 29:38
  If you have your phone, you have your phone, right?
• 29:39
  If you have a knife, you have your, you have a knife.
• 29:42
  And then you the GM will tell you if you're going with the
• 29:47
  hapless innocence one, whether you're cut off from your home.
• 29:52
  So like your character can't get back home or if your character
• 29:55
  can get back home. And if your character reasonably
• 29:58
  can get back home, then you can also have anything that would be
• 30:04
  reasonable for you to have in your house based on your P CS
• 30:08
  background. So like the character who's a
• 30:12
  psychologist probably doesn't have a gun, but the character
• 30:15
  who's an ex Marine might have a pistol, right.
• 30:19
  So that that's the that's the hapless innocence one.
• 30:21
  It's kind of like whatever you got on hand.
• 30:23
  And then you go from there. The Hapless Innocence 1 is
• 30:26
  generally intended to be used for an after the fall game, or
• 30:32
  well, actually no. So the first two could be after
• 30:34
  the fall or for a zombie game. They kind of work for both the
• 30:39
  other hapless. Innocence One would be so good
• 30:41
  for me. Yep.
• 30:46
  The other one you have is You Saw It Coming, which is
• 30:48
  basically your character is sort of a doomsday prepper of some
• 30:54
  kind. Like your character was prepared
• 30:56
  in some fashion. So there's a big list of gear
• 30:58
  stuff that you can have. So basically I'm a prepper.
• 31:03
  So I have a tent and I have food, I have a flashlight and I
• 31:06
  have a shotgun and there's a there's a list that you have to
• 31:08
  pick, pick four items from the list on top of you also get the
• 31:14
  same stuff that you would get from the hapless innocent
• 31:16
  option. That ones you saw it coming.
• 31:19
  And then the one that you're probably gonna, most people are
• 31:21
  gonna use most of the time, I would say is the wasteland
• 31:24
  warrior option where, you know, you're a, you're a road warrior,
• 31:28
  you're a Mad Max guy, you're a fucking, you're a, you're a war
• 31:32
  boy. You have a primitive melee
• 31:35
  weapon and a bow. You got a knife and a backpack
• 31:37
  and some stuff. You got some clothing, you got
• 31:39
  some food and some water. And then you can pick from a
• 31:41
  list of a couple of other items you might have on hand.
• 31:44
  I think it's you can either pick one item from the list or roll
• 31:50
  randomly for three. And yeah, basically that one's
• 31:55
  like the, you know, the Wasteland Warrior 1 is like
• 31:58
  Apocalypse has been going on for a while and so I'm, you know,
• 32:02
  ready to roll. I got my shit already.
• 32:05
  Again, that's your that's your Mad Max vibes.
• 32:10
  Then we get into like the core rules of the game, all of which
• 32:14
  are unchanged. All the usual your skill checks,
• 32:17
  your saving throws, the injury and healing rules, combat
• 32:20
  rounds, all the hit and damage stuff, and AC and morale checks,
• 32:24
  turns and rounds and scenes are all the same.
• 32:27
  Saving throws still work, as is the the rule for traumatic
• 32:34
  injury or traumatic hits is still in this game, but the
• 32:40
  traumatic hit rule in this game is considered an optional rule,
• 32:44
  whereas technically in cities without Number, which is the
• 32:46
  first time it showed up, not an optional rule in cities.
• 32:51
  So I thought that was kind of interesting.
• 32:53
  I feel like if I'm running this game, I'm pretty much always
• 32:56
  going to use traumatic hits. Agreed, that's just me.
• 33:00
  Worth mentioning as well. You know.
• 33:03
  Yeah, worth mentioning as well, this game takes special note to
• 33:09
  say that combat and Ashes without Number is considered
• 33:13
  brutal even amongst OSR style games, and it is not uncommon
• 33:20
  for a character to just get fucked because of a little bit
• 33:23
  of bad luck. Obviously the game gives you a
• 33:25
  lot of like little knobs and switches to sort of dial in just
• 33:30
  how lethal you want your game to be.
• 33:32
  Well hell, there's literally optional lethality rules.
• 33:35
  I I was going to say, there's optional lethality rules and one
• 33:38
  of them is literally just armor. So if you don't want your
• 33:41
  characters to die, you want your characters to really feel like
• 33:44
  Mad Max, where only the narrative can take you out, that
• 33:47
  is an option for you. Yeah, I mean, I, I think Cities
• 33:52
  Without Number had a similar section where it was basically
• 33:55
  like, you know, life is rough, you could die real hard, like
• 33:59
  real quick, real easy. So sort of keep that in mind.
• 34:04
  I mean honestly though, if you want to, one simple way if you
• 34:09
  want the characters to not be able to die on a dime is just to
• 34:13
  take out the traumatic hit rules.
• 34:14
  Just don't use those. And already that will
• 34:17
  drastically increase your the character's survivability.
• 34:22
  Because at the beginning of the game the characters will not be
• 34:25
  super durable or anything, but by the end of the game they will
• 34:27
  get pretty durable. Like you do still get quite a
• 34:31
  bit stronger in in these games, especially if you take the die
• 34:34
  hard folk eye which gives you extra health.
• 34:37
  It's just like lol Lamau, I thought that.
• 34:43
  The traumatic injuries actually increased your sustainability
• 34:46
  because it rather than just going down and dying, it was
• 34:48
  like you have a little something.
• 34:51
  No, well, you're, no, you're confusing 2 mechanics.
• 34:54
  So you have traumatic hits and then you have major injuries.
• 34:59
  A traumatic hit is when you get hit and then the damage is
• 35:02
  multiplied by the trauma, the trauma damage of the weapon.
• 35:07
  So you roll the attack, right? You roll the trauma die for the
• 35:13
  weapon. So like, if it's a, if it's, you
• 35:15
  know, a machine gun or whatever, And the well, actually here, let
• 35:19
  me pull one up real quick. OK so you have a rifle you roll
• 35:26
  to attack. The trauma die of the rifle is
• 35:28
  AD 8. Let's say your target.
• 35:31
  Their trauma target is AD is a six.
• 35:34
  If you roll A7 or an 8 on that trauma die, you then triple your
• 35:39
  damage against that. Target.
• 35:41
  Got it. And the rifle rolls AD 10 + 2.
• 35:44
  So let's say your rifle, you roll AD 10 + 2 and you get like
• 35:48
  a six. The target would then take 18
• 35:52
  damage instead of 6 damage. And that.
• 35:56
  Then. That will drop someone much
• 35:58
  easier versus. That will drop someone.
• 35:59
  Faster provide a little more sustained by making.
• 36:02
  They just don't die out, no. Not at all.
• 36:06
  No. No.
• 36:08
  So the way, no, the way major injuries work is if your
• 36:12
  character took a traumatic hit in that round and then they go
• 36:18
  down, right? Let's say they, they, the
• 36:21
  traumatic hit knocks them, puts them in, What's it called?
• 36:25
  Forget what the game calls it downs them.
• 36:29
  Then they roll on the major injury table also.
• 36:35
  And rolling on the major injury table leaves a permanent injury
• 36:38
  potentially. Or if you roll A1 on the major
• 36:42
  injury table, you just die. Die, Yeah.
• 36:45
  You're just taking it out. So no major injuries and
• 36:50
  traumatic hits make your chance of dying more likely.
• 36:54
  They do not add a buffer at all. Quite the opposite.
• 37:00
  The there, there are buffers in the game.
• 37:04
  But yeah, so you could remove the traumatic hit, you could
• 37:07
  remove the traumatic hits, and you could remove the major
• 37:10
  injuries if you wanted to. But yeah, so if you also, if you
• 37:16
  took a traumatic hit, but that hit didn't immediately down you
• 37:21
  like, like, you take 18 damage, you had 20 HP, you survive, and
• 37:25
  then the next round you go down, you still take a major injury
• 37:29
  because the traumatic hit doesn't go away until the end of
• 37:33
  the scene. So yeah, so like if you get
• 37:40
  traumatic, if you take a traumatic hit, you are in
• 37:42
  danger. You got us.
• 37:44
  You once one of those lands, you better start sweating.
• 37:49
  Conversely though, important thing is once you land one of
• 37:52
  them on the opponents, they better start sweating.
• 38:00
  Then we have a brief little chapter that's examples of
• 38:03
  combat. Obviously I'm not going to go
• 38:05
  through that. They're just, you know,
• 38:06
  examples. Then we have the optional
• 38:08
  lethality rules, which are quite literally they are optional
• 38:13
  lethality. They are what they say on the
• 38:15
  tin. They are various rules that you
• 38:18
  can use to adjust the lethality up and down.
• 38:22
  So the first one is called the Ordinary Survivors rule, and
• 38:26
  this makes it so that your character at character creation
• 38:29
  does not have any edges and does not have any foci.
• 38:32
  So you start with just less stuff.
• 38:35
  You're just a normal ass person, even more so than than by
• 38:39
  default. And instead you acquire those.
• 38:44
  You acquire your edges and foci from adventuring rather than
• 38:48
  starting with any of them. And the next one you have is the
• 38:52
  fragile PCs rule, which is if or no.
• 39:02
  The fragile PCs rule is you only roll for hit dice so your your
• 39:07
  health only increases on odd level UPS.
• 39:10
  So every other level. So like Level 3 increase your
• 39:14
  hit dice level 5, level 7, level 9, not every level.
• 39:19
  So you're going to have quite a bit less HP.
• 39:26
  Then we have the glass PCs rule. This one is this 1 is really
• 39:32
  mean. Like even for me, I was like
• 39:35
  damn bro. So the glass BC rule, basically,
• 39:38
  if you take 10 points of damage, you go down.
• 39:42
  Yeah, you're just doesn't matter how.
• 39:43
  Like doesn't matter how much HP you are, you just go down
• 39:47
  mortally wounded. That was the road I was trying.
• 39:49
  The game being down is called mortally wounded.
• 39:52
  Yeah. If you take 10 damage, you're
• 39:54
  down. That's it.
• 39:54
  End of discussion. You can still take environmental
• 39:58
  damage and damage from like hazards normally so.
• 40:03
  You can't be auto down from like 10 points of falling damage, but
• 40:08
  any kind of attack against you, if it's ten or more, you're
• 40:11
  you're down. That's it.
• 40:13
  So that one's really brutal. That one is like, you're never
• 40:18
  going to be getting into fights like ever because the chance of
• 40:23
  everyone getting murked is so high.
• 40:25
  So I actually I was going to ask you this because having not
• 40:27
  played the game, how often would someone be eating 10 points of
• 40:31
  damage? I mean I I don't remember
• 40:36
  exactly but if you just look at the damage dice on the weapons
• 40:42
  in the game, decently real. I mean like a shotgun 3D4A rifle
• 40:48
  is AD 10 + 2, a combat rifle's AD 12 semi auto combat shotguns
• 40:56
  or three D4 sniper rifles. 2D8 automatic rifle, 2D8I mean the
• 41:00
  bows and the pistols would do between 6:00 and 8:00 damage.
• 41:06
  So those ones are a little less likely to down you, but
• 41:10
  basically anything more than a pistol, good chance, good
• 41:15
  chance, you know, and I like, and then melee weapons, pretty
• 41:20
  much the same deal other than like a, a, a knife or like a
• 41:25
  spear, probably not. But most of the stuff above
• 41:28
  that, good chance that that they're just taking you out.
• 41:32
  So it's very, it's very much a case of, you know, don't it's,
• 41:39
  it's very much a case of do not get involved in this situation,
• 41:47
  which again, you know, for me a little, a little overly mean, I
• 41:54
  might say, you know, but if you want to run a game like that,
• 41:58
  it's on the table. I'm trying to find one thing
• 42:02
  real. Quick I you know, I don't feel
• 42:05
  like I would mind playing in like A and people talk about
• 42:10
  like DND hardcore mode or shit like that.
• 42:13
  I wouldn't mind. I just need to really trust the
• 42:16
  GM, like to understand the balance between brutal and fun,
• 42:22
  right? Because you ideally you want to
• 42:23
  strike the Dark Souls. Kind of harsh, but fair.
• 42:26
  But I feel like it's really easy.
• 42:29
  And it's not even necessarily anyone's fault, but it's really
• 42:32
  easy to fall into the like, OK, this is just kind of annoying.
• 42:36
  Like, Can you imagine if Sam had had really pushed the letter on
• 42:41
  Avernus when you know, when the the rules Avernus are like, it's
• 42:44
  supposed to suck. It's not supposed to be fun.
• 42:46
  And you're like, yeah, kind of. But also, if you just keep
• 42:50
  shitting on the players, that's just going to get fucking in.
• 42:56
  Right. I mean, I, I think that the the
• 43:04
  trick with something like that where you know, 10 damage takes
• 43:09
  you out by the way, you also add your, you add your skill
• 43:12
  modifier to your weapons damage. So if you have like AD 8, but
• 43:15
  you have a + 2 to the weapon, you could still do 10 damage.
• 43:19
  Oh yeah. So that's.
• 43:23
  It is kind of cool. So I I was thinking of the the
• 43:25
  whole because you know, I'm, I'm on this weird with the with that
• 43:27
  number of games. I just want to play a sniper.
• 43:29
  I just want to sit perch on a roof for three days and pick
• 43:31
  some heads off. The rifle does do a good chunk
• 43:35
  of damage. So that plus your your skill mod
• 43:37
  +2, you're probably going to be almost.
• 43:40
  Sorry, plus your attribute mod, not your skill mod, but yeah.
• 43:43
  I bet, yeah. But if you if you build a
• 43:46
  sniper, you're going to be chunking people, which is what
• 43:50
  you want. I mean I mean rules by.
• 43:53
  I mean, you don't even need anything.
• 43:54
  You don't even need anything fancy.
• 43:55
  The default rules, you're going to be chunking people down with
• 43:57
  a sniper rifle. Yeah.
• 44:01
  I think the trick though, with the if you're using something
• 44:03
  like the glass PCs, the ultimately what it comes down to
• 44:08
  is if the if the players know that pretty much any combat
• 44:13
  encounter is incredibly deadly no matter what.
• 44:17
  Like just always. That's always the case.
• 44:20
  Then you as the GM have to be willing to any and all, what's
• 44:28
  the word I'm looking for any and all like plans the PCs come up
• 44:35
  with to get out of a situation. You have to be willing to let
• 44:38
  them do it. You know what I mean?
• 44:39
  Like, you can't you, you have to throw out the idea that any
• 44:44
  fight in the game is mandatory. You just can't have mandatory
• 44:48
  fights. There needs to be a way out of
• 44:50
  like every single fight in the game.
• 44:52
  Because if they can die that easily, you just can't, you
• 44:57
  can't just assume they're going to fight no matter what.
• 44:59
  Like that's just not a reasonable thing to do.
• 45:01
  So that that's really the trick for me.
• 45:04
  And yes, I do think there's a lot of GMs that would have a bit
• 45:06
  of a hard time with that because I think there's a lot of GMs
• 45:09
  that come up with the idea for like a boss fight or something
• 45:12
  like that and then are not willing to compromise with the
• 45:16
  players, do some kind of plan to circumvent the fight, you know
• 45:19
  what I mean? Yeah, I do.
• 45:21
  I so I, I stand proud saying that I'm not one of those
• 45:24
  because as I've said many times on this podcast, the amount of
• 45:28
  shit my players have done and just be like, yeah, we don't
• 45:31
  want to fight that. So they will talk, scheme, bribe
• 45:37
  or beg their way out of a lot of combats.
• 45:40
  And yeah they they got them through a lot.
• 45:45
  Saved them a couple plus fights too.
• 45:47
  Yeah, that's the, that's really what it comes down to.
• 45:49
  You need to be open to that. So after glass PCs, we then have
• 45:57
  sturdy PCs. Which sturdy PCs is really
• 46:01
  simple. It just guarantees that the
• 46:03
  players all start with 12 HP plus con mod right from the
• 46:07
  jump, which is double what they could potentially start with by
• 46:13
  default, because by default they start with AD 6.
• 46:18
  So they couldn't even the highest they would get, you
• 46:20
  know, obviously would be a six. This they start with 12 plus
• 46:23
  comb on. So you just double their
• 46:24
  starting HP no matter what and then you begin to add HP like
• 46:27
  normal. So basically you just give them
• 46:29
  that buffer early level so they're sturdier.
• 46:32
  And then after that we have the plot armor ability or the plot
• 46:37
  armor rule. So this, the plot armor
• 46:39
  basically makes it that the the characters cannot die unless the
• 46:44
  player decides to let it happen. Like ultimately the APC with
• 46:51
  plot armor will survive every encounter they they come into.
• 46:55
  Any bad situation they will survive.
• 46:59
  You as the GM just have to kind of think of a reason, which
• 47:05
  sometimes could be a little annoying I'm sure.
• 47:07
  But yeah, ultimately you just got to figure it out.
• 47:11
  And then the players get 2 new abilities. 1 is called Accept
• 47:16
  Risk which you're if you as an on turn action you can accept
• 47:22
  risk and you can re roll all of your attack, damage and skill
• 47:26
  checks that you make in a scene and take the better result but
• 47:30
  you become subject to normal death or a major injury rules.
• 47:34
  However until the end of the scene.
• 47:38
  The other option, instead of accept risk, the player can
• 47:41
  accept death as an instant action where the player
• 47:45
  character becomes invincible for one D 6 + 4 rounds.
• 47:52
  And also you get the best role on all of your roles possible.
• 47:57
  So every attack, damage, role, skill check, everything you do,
• 48:00
  you treat it as the highest result.
• 48:01
  And you cannot die for one D 6 + 4 rounds, but your character is
• 48:06
  guaranteed to die within the next 24 hours after you do it.
• 48:10
  I fucking love this role. It's it's, yeah, it's a pretty
• 48:14
  fun one. Basically you're like, I'm just
• 48:16
  going to go fucking ballistic and have my last hurrah and
• 48:19
  then, you know, die bleeding out on the floor.
• 48:21
  Like I fought bravely for the boys.
• 48:25
  Yeah, I know. I I love, I love any go down
• 48:28
  swinging rule. Like that's why I really like
• 48:30
  the the sacrifice rule in Fabulous, because it's like, I'm
• 48:33
  just going to do something fuck wild and the DM is just going to
• 48:37
  have to hold this one. Yeah, and you.
• 48:39
  Yeah, and that's the other thing, right?
• 48:41
  The DM can't tell you no on this one.
• 48:42
  If you're like you look at the DM and say GMI accept death then
• 48:46
  the GM goes I fucking king shit here we go.
• 48:52
  I'm not going If one of my players was like Dungeon Master,
• 48:55
  I'd like to accept death. You better believe I'm putting
• 48:57
  the foam finger on. I am now my player's number one
• 48:59
  fan. Yo, he's talking crazy.
• 49:02
  What is he doing? What you're doing?
• 49:03
  Talk to him. And then lastly we have the
• 49:09
  heroic sacrifice rule, which is basically what the rule in
• 49:14
  Fabula is, where if your character's about to die, you
• 49:17
  can do one last valiant hurrah and sort of, you know, subvert
• 49:24
  the event, win the day, do something to accomplish what
• 49:27
  you're trying to do, overcome the problem, and then die
• 49:31
  immediately after. There is a little addition like
• 49:37
  sub rule to the heroic sacrifice where he says for extra grim
• 49:41
  settings there is a one in six chance the heroic sacrifice
• 49:44
  turns out to be futile or fails to achieve its end.
• 49:49
  That's too mean. That one's too.
• 49:50
  Much. Fuck that.
• 49:52
  Absolutely fuck that. No, you.
• 49:55
  Put it in there. But that one's like damn bro,
• 49:58
  that's fucking. That's mean as hell.
• 50:00
  Yeah, Nah, it's got me fucked up.
• 50:02
  I would never do that to my players.
• 50:04
  Like you roll that D6, you see that one come up and it's like,
• 50:09
  fuck, like, yeah, I could. I could.
• 50:12
  That's too much for me, but I did think it was funny that he
• 50:16
  put it there. So yeah, basically you have 3
• 50:18
  rules to make the players more vulnerable or three rules to
• 50:22
  make them less vulnerable, which is good.
• 50:25
  I like that he added those in there because I'm sure there's
• 50:28
  certain people that are going to look at this game and be like,
• 50:30
  that's damn, players can die really easily.
• 50:33
  What the fuck? I mean, honestly, just going
• 50:35
  with the sturdy PC one is such a minor like you bump their
• 50:40
  starting health and it's a it's a very minor overall change, but
• 50:45
  will will definitely be enough to sort of help them push
• 50:49
  through, you know, yeah. A little bit goes a long way in
• 50:53
  that sense, yeah. Now I'm sure there's other so
• 51:01
  there's other rules in the future or other like I'm sure
• 51:06
  some people say like oh, I still need more optional like the
• 51:10
  lethality stuff. I need to adjust more, but these
• 51:12
  are very good starting points either way.
• 51:15
  Then we have the section on vehicle combat.
• 51:17
  So all the vehicle combat is the same stuff that was in Cities
• 51:20
  without Number. It's a bit different from Stars,
• 51:23
  but the same from Cities. There is a little tidbit on
• 51:27
  mounted combat, which is to say riding like horses or like weird
• 51:35
  mutated beast creatures. There's nothing super fancy, but
• 51:39
  basically there's three types of mounts.
• 51:42
  You have an untrained mount, a combat train mount, or a war
• 51:45
  beast. An untrained mount if you get
• 51:48
  into a fight you have to make a charisma Dr. check or charisma
• 51:52
  ride check to keep the animal you know the horse or whatever
• 51:56
  it is from like freaking out and you have to make that check
• 51:59
  every round while all the fighting is going off.
• 52:02
  If it is a combat trained animal you can fight on them normally
• 52:05
  and that's it. If it is a war beast, the they
• 52:08
  will actually help you to fight. So the war beast gets their own
• 52:12
  main action on your turn. So you get your main action and
• 52:15
  they get theirs and they can potentially attack.
• 52:19
  And then you have a couple of mounted combat actions you can
• 52:22
  do where you have mounted attack, mounted charge, mount
• 52:26
  and dismount and trample somebody.
• 52:29
  So if you want to have like your cool, you know, weird mutated
• 52:34
  animal riding bandits, there you go.
• 52:38
  I you know, now that I'm I'm re watching fry gun.
• 52:42
  I remember how much I like the the Thomas or or the Tomas as
• 52:45
  they say in fucking Stampede, the big fucking Chocobo looking
• 52:50
  things. Yes, yeah, like the big.
• 52:52
  Ostriches. I kind of love those, yeah.
• 52:54
  They're pretty good. Kind of like the idea of being
• 52:56
  just like a, a, a roving like hunter ostrich gang.
• 53:01
  Just like a big no, just like a dude.
• 53:03
  You're like oh wait, well, you know me and my valley and steed.
• 53:06
  Nah, me and my war ostrich. It's very, yeah, you know, it's
• 53:12
  very chokabo. Everyone talks shit until the
• 53:14
  emo kicks their fucking head in. That would have to be it if you
• 53:20
  were doing Mad Max. It's like yes, what's the more
• 53:23
  dangerous than a car? The E Moose.
• 53:30
  The E Moose. Then after that we have the
• 53:37
  vehicle, the chase rules, chase and pursuit again, same shebang
• 53:42
  from cities without number. And then we get into injury and
• 53:46
  healing which is all basically the same.
• 53:48
  There is an optional rule for first aid in the injuries and
• 53:51
  healing section because obviously you are less likely to
• 53:56
  have magical, psychic, or high tech healing in this game.
• 54:00
  So there is some first aid rules.
• 54:03
  Technically the first aid rules are optional.
• 54:06
  I see absolutely no reason why you wouldn't use them.
• 54:13
  Feels like a weird one to call optional but.
• 54:16
  Yeah. It is so whatever, but other
• 54:22
  than that, mortal, mortal wounds, stabilizing, natural
• 54:25
  healing, poisons and system strain, that's all the same.
• 54:29
  Same kit and kaboodle. Your character still heal quite
• 54:32
  quite slowly in this game. You just get your character
• 54:35
  level per your character level in hit points every morning,
• 54:40
  which yes means at level 1 you get 1 HPA night.
• 54:45
  Then we have the major injuries table, which like I was saying
• 54:48
  before, if you take a tratic hit and you go down to zero, you
• 54:52
  take a major injury and then you roll on the table.
• 54:56
  If you roll A1, your character instantly dies from the major
• 54:59
  injury. The rest of them are all varying
• 55:01
  degrees of unfortunate bad things.
• 55:07
  And then if you roll an 11 or 12, you're actually fine.
• 55:10
  Nothing happened, which is funny by the way, statistically.
• 55:15
  Statistically, the flesh wound 1 is the highest probability.
• 55:20
  Oh yeah, 'cause it's, yeah, it's.
• 55:21
  'Cause it's two, it's 11 or 12 yeah, whereas all the other ones
• 55:25
  are just one number so you're actually it's not that high of a
• 55:29
  percentage, but you are statistically more likely to
• 55:33
  just get a flesh from. Then we get into then we start
• 55:38
  with diseases and this basically starts the section of the like
• 55:45
  survival rules. The the survival rules are
• 56:00
  they're so they're not all labeled strictly speaking, as
• 56:04
  optional, but if you read through the section, they're all
• 56:07
  basically described as optional. So if you just don't want to
• 56:11
  deal with one or the other or whatever, you totally can.
• 56:15
  And taking any of them out is not going to upend the game that
• 56:19
  much, with the exception of maybe like the food and water
• 56:22
  stuff. But like diseases, radiation,
• 56:25
  stress and all that, you can definitely just ignore if you
• 56:28
  really just do not want to deal with them.
• 56:31
  Worth mentioning is that within the rules of them, it
• 56:35
  specifically says, you know, if you're not dealing with a like
• 56:41
  after the fall one, radiation might not matter.
• 56:44
  If you're not dealing with the zombie plague, disease might not
• 56:47
  matter. So it it it even goes beyond to
• 56:49
  say like you can just ignore this if it doesn't figure.
• 56:52
  Yes, so that's what I mean, where the survival rules are
• 56:55
  like, they're not all strictly labeled straight up as optional,
• 56:57
  but they very much are built in an optional fashion.
• 57:00
  They can slot in and out pretty seamlessly.
• 57:04
  So the first one is disease essentially, mechanically
• 57:07
  speaking. The way this works is based on,
• 57:16
  is that a typo? Wait, hold on, GM rolls a dime,
• 57:18
  roll 1D4 GM. I know what threatens them
• 57:24
  everyday. And if it's what every debate
• 57:26
  what a disease check is made under the circumstances below,
• 57:30
  the GM rolls a die. Is that a typo?
• 57:35
  What is going on there? I don't think so.
• 57:38
  A disease check is made under the circumstances listed below.
• 57:41
  The GM rolls a die and if the result is one-on-one D4.
• 57:44
  If the result is A11D, four. Oh oh, I see 1D four of the yes.
• 57:50
  OK. And the.
• 57:51
  Yes, and then the result of a one on any of these other
• 57:55
  situate. Yeah, OK.
• 57:56
  I just was completely. I don't know why that red's so
• 57:59
  weird for a second there. Anyway, yeah.
• 58:00
  So basically the way it works is you roll a die based on the
• 58:06
  scenario they're in. And there's a couple of example
• 58:08
  scenarios such as like wandering around in the wilderness or
• 58:11
  drinking untreated water. You roll a die.
• 58:14
  If you roll A1 on the die, then a 1D four of the PCs have been
• 58:18
  diseased, and then you as the gym say OK, they're diseased,
• 58:22
  and then the players get to make a physical save to try and
• 58:25
  resist said disease. They take a -, 4 penalty if
• 58:29
  they're hungry or thirsty or have a problem with exposure.
• 58:33
  If they succeed, they take some system strain, but they're not
• 58:36
  infected. If they fail, they become
• 58:38
  infected. If they become infected, you
• 58:40
  then decide if it's either a mild disease, a severe disease,
• 58:43
  or a lethal disease, which they all have slightly different
• 58:48
  effects. Like the mild 1 you can't
• 58:50
  recover system strain or sorry yeah the severe 1 you can't
• 58:54
  recover system strain. Also if you take system strain
• 58:59
  that puts you over your Max. You have to make a physical safe
• 59:01
  or die and then a lethal disease.
• 59:03
  If your system strain is maxed, you will die.
• 59:06
  If you get any more, you're incapacitated and unable to even
• 59:09
  feed yourself. Basically you're just fucking
• 59:11
  take it out. Then you would have rolled 2D6
• 59:17
  to determine the duration of the disease.
• 59:20
  Then the players make a physical.
• 59:22
  The player in question makes a physical saving throw again.
• 59:26
  If they succeed the disease is downgraded.
• 59:29
  If they only had a mild disease then they fight it off and
• 59:32
  they're good. You can also get medical
• 59:35
  intervention from a character with the heel skill or if a
• 59:38
  character has antibiotics or a medical kit antibiotics that you
• 59:42
  re roll on the diseases. And yeah, basically that's it.
• 59:47
  Your your character is debilitated in some fashion for
• 59:50
  a certain number of days based on the 2D6 role, which it boy,
• 59:54
  if you roll 12 on that one. That is fucking rough bud.
• 59:58
  So actually I had a question on this.
• 1:00:01
  So it says you know for severe lethal 2D6 if it's failed twice
• 1:00:08
  roll you die in 1D four days. Yeah.
• 1:00:11
  You'd still have those 124 days to try to cure yourself.
• 1:00:15
  Or do you just have to sit with the dying character for one D4?
• 1:00:18
  Is there anything you can do? Like once you're in that dying
• 1:00:25
  status, you know? This is one of those scenarios
• 1:00:32
  where I think the intention is kind of follow the fiction.
• 1:00:37
  If there's no, if there's no reasonable way that the player
• 1:00:41
  could be saved, then yeah, you're probably just fucked.
• 1:00:43
  If there is some sort of medical intervention, justification
• 1:00:48
  where you could be cured, then probably allow it, you know.
• 1:00:53
  But if you're, if you have a lethal, if you get the lethal
• 1:00:55
  disease, I mean, especially if you look at the examples of
• 1:00:58
  lethal disease, pneumatic plague, Ebola, you know, it's
• 1:01:04
  like, yeah, I think if the characters are in a situation
• 1:01:08
  where they're kind of out in the middle of nowhere, not in town
• 1:01:11
  or something like that, and you get the that you fail the lethal
• 1:01:14
  disease role, yeah, you're probably just fucked.
• 1:01:17
  If you're in the like the high Tech City where there's a guy
• 1:01:22
  who has like the hyperbaric, the hyperbaric, the hyperbolic or
• 1:01:28
  not the what's the, the VAT they sit in, in Dragon Ball.
• 1:01:30
  You know what I'm talking about. Oh yeah, the the recovery tank.
• 1:01:33
  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, if they have one of those
• 1:01:35
  then like. Yeah, maybe back to tank, Yeah.
• 1:01:37
  Yeah, they're back to tank, right.
• 1:01:38
  If you have a back to tank, then the player, then the the GM
• 1:01:41
  could probably be like, all right, yeah, sure.
• 1:01:42
  But otherwise, yeah. So I think it's just a follow
• 1:01:46
  the fiction kind of thing. Then we have radiation, which is
• 1:01:55
  a a fun one. Basically, if you go into an
• 1:01:58
  irradiated zone, you have to make physical saves every X
• 1:02:05
  number of time, the time being based on like how many how many
• 1:02:09
  saves you're making being based on how bad the radiation is.
• 1:02:12
  So if you're in a mildly irradiated place, you'd be
• 1:02:15
  making a save once a day. If you're near a nuclear impact
• 1:02:19
  point, it'd be once an hour, if you're near an unshielded
• 1:02:23
  radiation source, once a minute, and if you're near a strong
• 1:02:27
  unshielded radiation source it'd be once a round, which would be
• 1:02:30
  6 seconds. Basically you if you're in the
• 1:02:34
  you're playing around the radiation.
• 1:02:36
  On a successful save, you gain 1D4 system strain.
• 1:02:40
  If this pushes you above your maximum, you fail the saving
• 1:02:43
  throw, and when you fail the saving throw you lose 1D6 points
• 1:02:48
  of your constitution and start to feel like shit and get
• 1:02:51
  nauseous and blah blah blah. If your constitution drops below
• 1:02:55
  3 your ass's grass, you are dead in 3D12 hours.
• 1:03:04
  Actually a a good. Here's a good example of what I
• 1:03:07
  was talking about. Isaiah.
• 1:03:07
  The player may feel relatively fine during this period, but
• 1:03:10
  they will inevitably collapse and die unless treated with TL4
• 1:03:14
  medical care or other super science anti radioactive
• 1:03:17
  medicines. So it's that kind of a thing,
• 1:03:19
  right? So that is actually why I asked
• 1:03:22
  because that's where it doesn't say that the disease except
• 1:03:25
  maybe not, right. So I was like, does that
• 1:03:27
  transfer back up to the OR? It's true it doesn't
• 1:03:32
  specifically say it for disease, but I just don't see why it be
• 1:03:37
  fine. Yeah, I yeah, yeah, no, there's
• 1:03:40
  no reason why not. I don't Yeah.
• 1:03:42
  I mean, does it say it can help powerful ones need the
• 1:03:44
  medication implied a number of patients or?
• 1:03:48
  Yeah, it doesn't explicitly put say it that way in the medical
• 1:03:51
  intervention bit for diseases, but I see no reason to say it
• 1:03:55
  wouldn't apply. And I'm pretty sure in the TL4
• 1:03:59
  equipment, like I'm pretty sure in Starz's outnumber there is a
• 1:04:02
  back to tank not called that, but there is like a back to tank
• 1:04:06
  equivalent. So yeah.
• 1:04:11
  And then as a fun little optional rule, if your players
• 1:04:13
  are dealing with radiation, you can also have them potentially
• 1:04:16
  get mutated from the radiation where if they roll a natural 20
• 1:04:21
  they gain a positive mutation and if they roll a natural one
• 1:04:24
  they gain a negative mutation. So yeah, that's a fun one.
• 1:04:29
  You could throw in there if you want to.
• 1:04:33
  I feel like if you're doing radiation, you should throw in
• 1:04:37
  the mutations. Mutations and you.
• 1:04:40
  Have you have idiots like me straight out here, mutation
• 1:04:42
  maxing? It's like I'm just going to sit
• 1:04:44
  right at the edge of this until I get another.
• 1:04:46
  I'm just. Going to go, yeah, I'm going to
• 1:04:47
  go in and out of the edge of the radiation zone.
• 1:04:49
  I'm just going to everyday, guys.
• 1:04:51
  I'm going to make a pilgrimage to the radiation zone.
• 1:04:54
  I'm here to get powers or die. Try and God damn it.
• 1:04:56
  Yeah, or die, Yeah. And it is worth pointing out
• 1:04:59
  that because of the way the radiation rules are set up,
• 1:05:02
  basically if you spend too long in there, you are guaranteed to
• 1:05:05
  die. Like eventually you will just
• 1:05:10
  die from the radiation no matter what.
• 1:05:13
  Because even if you keep succeeding, you stake system
• 1:05:16
  strain, and then once your system strain caps out, you
• 1:05:19
  automatically fail to save, which means your constitution
• 1:05:21
  starts going down. You will eventually just die, so
• 1:05:25
  you can't just like, hang out in the radiation zone unless
• 1:05:28
  there's some sort of, you know, weird justification for it.
• 1:05:31
  You know, pack you some iodine pills and get the fuck out of
• 1:05:34
  there. Yeah, then we have the rules for
• 1:05:37
  stress. This one specifically does say
• 1:05:42
  is not really intended for a mutant wasteland campaign.
• 1:05:46
  Because if you think about like the Mad Max vibe, the stress
• 1:05:51
  thing doesn't really fit thematically because those
• 1:05:54
  characters in that kind of a setting are already used to the
• 1:05:59
  fucked up world around them, right?
• 1:06:00
  But in the Dead Lands and the After the Fall situation, you're
• 1:06:04
  dealing with normal people who have ended up in a bad
• 1:06:06
  situation. So that's where the stress
• 1:06:08
  mechanic is more likely to be used.
• 1:06:11
  This is one of the only games where I've ever seen like kind
• 1:06:15
  of insanity stress, you know, mental breakdown mechanics I
• 1:06:18
  think are done well. I knew usually they're really
• 1:06:21
  annoying and just served to piss me off Literally as this one is
• 1:06:26
  not just you're just a stark raving fucking idiot.
• 1:06:29
  Now it's like, no, I mean like you, you could be that could be
• 1:06:32
  one of the things you do, but like it gives you your own
• 1:06:35
  personal choice over you're kind of crazy.
• 1:06:39
  Pretty much, yeah. I I as I was reading through the
• 1:06:41
  stress mechanics, I was like, oh, Isaiah is going to like
• 1:06:43
  these. Yes and my my only problem is
• 1:06:47
  like. It addresses your biggest peeve,
• 1:06:50
  so. Yes, I mean taking away the
• 1:06:52
  agency of it, Yeah, the one thing.
• 1:06:54
  That and the hardened rule was the other thing I was thinking
• 1:06:57
  of. Yes.
• 1:06:58
  The one thing that I do wish is they're like, Oh well, you know,
• 1:07:05
  once you're hardened, you can't go back except like maybe you
• 1:07:09
  could, but probably maybe. I know it's the whole play it by
• 1:07:11
  ear. Yes, but I wish there were rules
• 1:07:15
  for like bowling to resist your heart and trait like I like in
• 1:07:21
  my head. I I created a scenario where
• 1:07:23
  you'd have the bloodthirsty 1 and maybe you're fighting like
• 1:07:27
  child soldiers or something and with bloodthirsty you're like,
• 1:07:31
  sorry, kids sucks to suck loser, but I don't know, something
• 1:07:34
  something interesting to being like, no, that's a kid.
• 1:07:38
  Don't do that. You know what I mean?
• 1:07:40
  But bulls is written. It's kind of just like me.
• 1:07:44
  Well, here's the thing, though. Also, given the way that the
• 1:07:47
  without numbers games are function on a broad scale, if
• 1:07:52
  you as a player looked at me and said, all right, I have the
• 1:07:54
  bloodthirsty trait, but can I resist the urge to, like, kill
• 1:08:00
  these children? And then you could be like,
• 1:08:02
  yeah, give me a mental save. You know what I mean?
• 1:08:05
  True enough. Right, like that's kind of
• 1:08:07
  that's in the spirit that is what the game wants you to do is
• 1:08:10
  look at those scenarios and go, OK, there's probably a rule that
• 1:08:13
  I can slap on here that will work and and cover what I need.
• 1:08:16
  So in that case, I would just say to you, give me a mental
• 1:08:18
  save and I might even say you have a + 2 bonus to the role
• 1:08:22
  because even though your character is bloodthirsty, it is
• 1:08:24
  kind of a step above to be bloodthirsty about children,
• 1:08:27
  right? So like, yeah, that's that's
• 1:08:30
  what I would say in that scenario if like I were GM ING
• 1:08:32
  that situation, Yeah. So the stress will.
• 1:08:35
  Just know if you fail you're about to say if you fuck them
• 1:08:38
  kids. Yes, yes, right.
• 1:08:39
  Well, that's the thing, right? Yeah, if you fail and fuck them
• 1:08:41
  kids. Absolutely.
• 1:08:44
  Or BLAM. So the situation, yeah.
• 1:08:47
  So stress, basically, there's a big list of things that can
• 1:08:51
  cause players to gain stress, right?
• 1:08:53
  Killing another person, find a friend gets mortally wounded,
• 1:08:58
  you get mortally wounded, you steal something from somebody
• 1:09:01
  who's not an enemy. And there's also modifiers.
• 1:09:04
  The one that I really like here is the one where it says killing
• 1:09:07
  another person, you gain 2 stress.
• 1:09:09
  If it's your first kill, add one D6 to your stress.
• 1:09:12
  I like that. That's a good touch.
• 1:09:13
  That is a good one, yeah. But yeah, basically, if the
• 1:09:17
  play, if the group now technically the stress rules,
• 1:09:21
  the way it reads is every PC involved in the act gains the
• 1:09:26
  stress. I personally would be willing
• 1:09:30
  to, like, adjust that a little bit based on the fictional
• 1:09:32
  scenario. You know, like I might say, even
• 1:09:35
  though everybody was present for this scene, this is really only
• 1:09:37
  on this one character. So I'm not going to make
• 1:09:39
  everyone else gain the stress, you know what I mean?
• 1:09:41
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:09:41
  But technically rules is written, it says every PC
• 1:09:45
  involved in the act gains one or more points of stress at the end
• 1:09:48
  of the scene. Another important point, by the
• 1:09:50
  way, all the stress rules are at the end of a scene, which means
• 1:09:53
  the bad shit happens in a fight or whatever, but it doesn't fuck
• 1:09:58
  you over in that fight, right? Because it all, it all
• 1:10:02
  culminates at the end of a scene.
• 1:10:04
  So it's not going to mess with you right that second, which I
• 1:10:07
  think is a very good way to kind of mediate the issue a little
• 1:10:11
  bit, you know? Yeah.
• 1:10:13
  But basically, the players acquire stress for various
• 1:10:16
  reasons. There's a big, there's a table
• 1:10:18
  that will, you know, I was going to say big, but it's not that
• 1:10:21
  big of a table. But there's a table that tells
• 1:10:24
  you, you know, this is things that players can gain stress
• 1:10:27
  from. Obviously the game also says you
• 1:10:30
  as the GM might also apply stress for other reasons that
• 1:10:33
  are like contrary to what the players are doing or, or
• 1:10:37
  contrary to the players morals or whatever.
• 1:10:40
  But it does say if you're, if the PCs are doing something that
• 1:10:43
  you as the GM think is stress worthy to warn them before they
• 1:10:46
  do it. Like yes, you could do that, but
• 1:10:48
  you will gain stress, right? Always give them that fair
• 1:10:50
  warning. Essentially.
• 1:10:52
  Like when the video game says, hey, you can steal that item,
• 1:10:55
  but you're stealing, right? Like that kind of thing.
• 1:10:58
  And then there's actions that will reduce stress.
• 1:11:02
  The one that I really like here. So the first three are like
• 1:11:05
  spending a day in a safe, familiar place.
• 1:11:07
  Yep, makes sense. An evening of like heavy
• 1:11:10
  drinking and eating. Yep.
• 1:11:11
  OK, sure. That reduces stress.
• 1:11:14
  Once per day, talk to a friend for an hour and then make a roll
• 1:11:17
  to see how it how well it helps you.
• 1:11:19
  And then you can make a, you know, you make a role from them
• 1:11:23
  helping you and then that reduces your stress.
• 1:11:24
  So basically having like friends and companions around you helps,
• 1:11:27
  which makes sense. But the one I really like is
• 1:11:29
  accomplish a major personal goal or community purpose justifying
• 1:11:35
  the suffering. This must be a task, at least
• 1:11:37
  one adventure to accomplish, but it can subtract 1 D 10 worth of
• 1:11:41
  stress, which is quite a lot. I like that one a lot because it
• 1:11:45
  means that if you do a big thing, you can get like a big
• 1:11:49
  payoff for it, you know? Right out.
• 1:11:54
  I will see. You could also roll A1 on that
• 1:11:56
  D10, which is a little. Shitty.
• 1:11:57
  That's kind of. I might, I might personally
• 1:12:00
  throw a modifier on that to make like a minimum -3 or something,
• 1:12:04
  you know, like one D 10 -, 2 or something like that, or +2 I
• 1:12:07
  guess. Yeah, yeah, 'cause though.
• 1:12:09
  Yeah, right. To the point of you.
• 1:12:11
  Could roll A1. You could roll 1 and that would
• 1:12:14
  really fuck you. And I know that's kind of in the
• 1:12:15
  spirit, but I don't know, I, I feel like little bit of Pulisar
• 1:12:19
  being old school is like you gotta, I think you have to hit
• 1:12:21
  it with a little bit of contemporary know how.
• 1:12:24
  I think it would depend on the the action, right?
• 1:12:29
  What did they, what major thing did they cut?
• 1:12:31
  Like if they if they killed the bandit leader and freed the
• 1:12:35
  entire town, I'm not going to let you roll A1 on that, You
• 1:12:39
  know what I mean? Yeah, In my head, I was thinking
• 1:12:41
  of The Last of Us. Like, you know, you've killed
• 1:12:43
  all these people in the hospital, but you saved Deli
• 1:12:45
  Spoilers. And yeah, I, I see no reason why
• 1:12:49
  you'd be like, I'm sorry, man. That's just kind of how the
• 1:12:51
  rules are. Like Nah, fuck that.
• 1:12:53
  Yeah, I might add a little modifier, but it depends.
• 1:12:56
  So that's how losing stress works.
• 1:12:57
  But you might say, all right, So what happens when you cap out
• 1:13:00
  your stress? So your player, your character
• 1:13:03
  can take as many points of stress as your Wisdom score.
• 1:13:06
  So if you have a wisdom score of 13, you can take 13 points of
• 1:13:09
  stress. Once you cap out, you have a
• 1:13:16
  breakdown or you can have a breakdown technically, once you
• 1:13:19
  cap out, what you do is you make a mental saving throw and at a -
• 1:13:24
  2 penalty at the end of the scene in which you gain the
• 1:13:27
  stress. So you you start at a - 2
• 1:13:28
  penalty. If you succeed the mental save,
• 1:13:31
  you keep your shit together. You might be a little, a little,
• 1:13:34
  you know, a little shaky, a little fucked up the day after,
• 1:13:36
  but you keep your shit together. You don't break down until you
• 1:13:41
  bring your stress down to equal or less than your Wisdom score.
• 1:13:48
  However, each additional breakdown check adds a further
• 1:13:51
  -2 save penalty. Thus the next one will be -4
• 1:13:55
  then -6 so on and so forth. So eventually, either you got to
• 1:13:59
  lower your stress, or you're just going to crack.
• 1:14:03
  If you fail, you undergo a breakdown, and a breakdown
• 1:14:07
  basically kind of takes you out of the scene.
• 1:14:13
  You can't gain any more stress and your breakdown ends when
• 1:14:16
  your stress is reduced to equal or lower than your wisdom score.
• 1:14:20
  So like if your wisdom score is 13 and it bumps up to A and you
• 1:14:23
  take stress and you go up to a 14, you have to bring it back
• 1:14:26
  down to a 13 to to stop your breakdown while you're having
• 1:14:31
  your breakdown. There's a couple of options, but
• 1:14:33
  basically all of them kind of take you off the table a little
• 1:14:37
  bit in different ways. Not not 100%.
• 1:14:39
  You don't like lose complete control of your character.
• 1:14:41
  You don't like lose all agency or anything.
• 1:14:43
  But like for example, the top one is death wish.
• 1:14:46
  Death wish, you become negligent of your own life.
• 1:14:49
  You cannot willingly, you cannot willingly retreat from combat.
• 1:14:53
  And your Max HP total is decreased by two points per
• 1:14:56
  character level due to your recklessness to a minimum of 1
• 1:14:58
  HP. So like you could still act
• 1:15:01
  completely normally, but your chance of dying is way higher.
• 1:15:06
  And then there's another one like cowardice where you just
• 1:15:08
  you won't, you cannot fight and you'll flee and hide from any
• 1:15:11
  combat. You'll do anything you can to
• 1:15:13
  avoid danger. But the really fun rule, this is
• 1:15:19
  the, this is the one I really like, is anytime you would
• 1:15:23
  suffer a breakdown, you can instead choose to become
• 1:15:27
  hardened, which is basically you just you get to that moment of a
• 1:15:33
  breakdown and instead you say, fuck it, we ball you.
• 1:15:36
  You kind of throw away your morals a little bit.
• 1:15:39
  You become a little bit of a of a shittier person, but you
• 1:15:42
  become hard into the situation. Your stress immediately drops to
• 1:15:46
  zero. You ignore the force, you ignore
• 1:15:50
  the first point of stress that you would normally gain in
• 1:15:53
  future scenes, and then you gain a psychic scar.
• 1:16:00
  Technically you, you actually you as the player choose the
• 1:16:04
  psychic scar. I should specify that's really
• 1:16:05
  important here. You pick which hardened scar you
• 1:16:09
  have, not the GM. Also you can, you can just keep
• 1:16:21
  you can just become hardened over and over and over again to
• 1:16:26
  the point where you'll basically take no stress at all, but you
• 1:16:30
  turn into like just a horrible monster of a person.
• 1:16:37
  Couple of the ones that are a couple of example hardened
• 1:16:41
  options is like self-destructive.
• 1:16:43
  You've seen a lot of people die. You know your turn is coming and
• 1:16:46
  maybe you deserve it. Your hit die takes a -, 2
• 1:16:49
  penalty to a minimum of one point per die.
• 1:16:51
  Your current maximum HP decreases by two points per
• 1:16:54
  character level. But then there's ones like
• 1:16:56
  Bloodthirsty where leaving enemies behind you is sure to
• 1:17:00
  get you killed, so you make sure that doesn't happen.
• 1:17:02
  You cannot fight non lethally and will kill any person or
• 1:17:05
  surrendered foe if left alone with them.
• 1:17:08
  You don't gain any stress from killing people, but any form of
• 1:17:10
  stress recovery has a flat 50% chance of not working at all.
• 1:17:15
  So if you if you do the the multiple hardens, yeah, you just
• 1:17:19
  turn into Joel. Yeah, you turn into a like a
• 1:17:23
  real you can if you just keep going, you can turn into a real
• 1:17:26
  fucked up son of a bitch. Technically rules is written
• 1:17:31
  kind of what Isaiah was talking about before.
• 1:17:33
  Once you're hardened, you can't go back.
• 1:17:37
  You can't remove a harden, but the game is basically like you
• 1:17:41
  might be able to remove your psychic scars with a lot of time
• 1:17:45
  and security and safety and and calm.
• 1:17:49
  But given that you're dealing with a post apocalyptic
• 1:17:51
  campaign, it's unlikely that you will find that kind of safety.
• 1:17:55
  But if you can, then maybe you can remove those scars.
• 1:18:00
  It seems like your best bet for actually having it removed is
• 1:18:02
  one of those like, we've accomplished a mission.
• 1:18:06
  We're going to, you know, our characters are going to go on
• 1:18:08
  some sort of extended vacation. Vacation.
• 1:18:11
  Yeah. It's like, oh, you know, you
• 1:18:13
  found, like, a haven where there's water and food.
• 1:18:17
  So your character is just kind of like chill out for a couple
• 1:18:20
  months and like the relative safety until shit eventually
• 1:18:23
  gets fucked again. Yeah, but one of the things, one
• 1:18:32
  of the options under hardened is you can get addicted.
• 1:18:36
  So how about some addiction? Rules.
• 1:18:38
  Oh boy. This one's a little I'm.
• 1:18:40
  I was kind of surprised he put this in here at all, to be
• 1:18:42
  honest. Yeah.
• 1:18:43
  I was I. Was a little surprised, but I
• 1:18:48
  also kind of get why it's there. So basically in terms of
• 1:18:54
  becoming addicted, it's up to the player, right?
• 1:18:59
  If, if your player's constantly drinking and you want to be
• 1:19:02
  like, all right, my character's an alcoholic, ultimately that is
• 1:19:06
  up to the player if they want their character to do it.
• 1:19:08
  So it's not something that it's, it's never something the GM can
• 1:19:12
  be like, you're addicted now, thank God the GM can insist,
• 1:19:18
  right? So it says the GM may insist on
• 1:19:19
  a habit if the PC constantly uses a drug, but normally it's
• 1:19:23
  up to the player as to whether or not their character takes
• 1:19:25
  permanent refuge and chemical relief.
• 1:19:27
  So like the GM may make a comment like wow, your
• 1:19:29
  character's drinking a lot, but they can't decide.
• 1:19:34
  Or your character might be like, or your GM might be like, wow,
• 1:19:37
  you're going to the brothel a lot, bud.
• 1:19:40
  So once you choose to make your player, your character addicted,
• 1:19:45
  you have to spend at least an hour with your indulgence of
• 1:19:48
  some, you know, whatever your indulgence is, you have to spend
• 1:19:50
  at least an hour with it. And you can fight in
• 1:19:57
  self-defense if you're interrupted during your
• 1:20:00
  indulgence, but you're otherwise useless.
• 1:20:01
  So like if you're going on a Bender, you're, you're taken out
• 1:20:04
  of the action for an hour 'cause you're going on a Bender or
• 1:20:06
  whatever. Although if you're going on an
• 1:20:08
  alcohol Bender, really it would be more than an hour.
• 1:20:10
  But whatever game rules. It's fine. 20 minute adventure.
• 1:20:14
  20 minute adventure. You can choose to kick it at any
• 1:20:18
  point and try and become sober. If you don't indulge, you cannot
• 1:20:23
  recover system strain, hit points, or other resources with
• 1:20:25
  a night's rest, and you gain a point of stress from the lack of
• 1:20:29
  your indulgence that is not negated by hardening or other
• 1:20:33
  sources of stress resistance. So basically if you try and kick
• 1:20:37
  it, you're going to go through like withdrawal issues.
• 1:20:44
  If you are in the if you are currently in the addiction and
• 1:20:48
  partaking in the in, you know, whatever it is.
• 1:20:51
  Each addiction decreases any incoming stress by a point and
• 1:20:54
  automatically eliminates 1D four of stress each day when you're
• 1:20:58
  indulging in said addiction. Multiple addictions can provide
• 1:21:01
  stacking benefits, but it comes at a cost.
• 1:21:04
  And read that. Yeah, yeah, but it comes at a
• 1:21:08
  cost. After each month of addiction,
• 1:21:09
  the PC must make a physical save.
• 1:21:12
  On a fail, you gain a point of system strain that can't be lost
• 1:21:15
  while you're still addicted. If this puts you if, this puts
• 1:21:19
  you over the Max. If this would put you over the
• 1:21:22
  Max they have a month to get clean or die.
• 1:21:25
  They're just OD Oh my God. You can just OD if you want to
• 1:21:31
  break your addiction. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:21:33
  Oh yeah. I I'm not gonna I kind of
• 1:21:35
  skipped this. Spit.
• 1:21:37
  Reasons yeah, so I I didn't really notice that, but.
• 1:21:41
  That's that is. Kind of although I don't know
• 1:21:44
  how you're going to OD on on, you know, if you got like a sex
• 1:21:47
  addiction on how that works. I mean I I guess.
• 1:21:50
  You just run it till your heart stops.
• 1:21:52
  Yeah, your heart gives out or like, or I guess, I guess you
• 1:21:55
  would say like, you know, maybe you pick up a hooker who like,
• 1:21:58
  kills you for money or something.
• 1:22:00
  You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah.
• 1:22:01
  I, I don't know, I kind of like I'm just running it till the
• 1:22:03
  wheels come off, baby. Right, right, right.
• 1:22:07
  Important and then once you you can once you break the you can
• 1:22:12
  break it. So if you want to get clean, you
• 1:22:14
  have to avoid your addiction and suffer all the daily penalties
• 1:22:18
  of the sobriety. After a week of denial, you then
• 1:22:21
  make a physical or mental save to shed the addiction.
• 1:22:23
  If attended by someone they can aid, they can add the medics
• 1:22:28
  heal skill to their saving through.
• 1:22:29
  So like you can get assistance and once you've done it for a
• 1:22:33
  week, you can break it again. The really important thing about
• 1:22:37
  the whole addiction system is that like it's entirely on the
• 1:22:40
  player if they want to take it and what they want to do with
• 1:22:42
  it. And if they find it annoying to
• 1:22:45
  just be like, all right, I'm just going to fuck it, go sober
• 1:22:48
  now, you know, So it's about as generous and reasonable as you
• 1:22:52
  can make that kind of a rule. And then after addictions, which
• 1:23:00
  this is kind of a, a funny jump, but we get to tracking.
• 1:23:05
  Tracking is nothing fancy. Basically, you make wisdom
• 1:23:08
  survival checks and examine the area to try and track down your
• 1:23:13
  target. There's a table of difficulty
• 1:23:16
  levels. You know that you have to DCS
• 1:23:19
  that you have to beat. And then there's modifiers that
• 1:23:21
  will affect it, like if the trackers have trained dogs on
• 1:23:25
  you and you're trying to get away, like they get a bonus if
• 1:23:31
  the person is trying to hide their skill or trying to hide
• 1:23:34
  their trail, they can add their skill level to their tracking
• 1:23:36
  difficulty. Stuff like that.
• 1:23:40
  You know, the tracking thing's pretty straightforward.
• 1:23:43
  And then there's overland travel and scouting.
• 1:23:47
  Basically, this game's going to assume it's sandbox game.
• 1:23:50
  It assumes you move on a hex grid.
• 1:23:54
  When you're moving around, you have two modes of
• 1:23:57
  transportation. You're either exposed or
• 1:23:59
  stealthy Exposed, basically just meaning you're moving at like a
• 1:24:04
  reasonable pace and not trying to like hide what you're doing
• 1:24:07
  or where you're going. You know, you have rules for a
• 1:24:09
  travel day and stuff. I, I'm glazing over a lot of
• 1:24:12
  this 'cause this is the kind of minutiae that could get boring
• 1:24:14
  to talk about. But you have a travel day, you
• 1:24:17
  know, it takes a certain amount of time.
• 1:24:18
  You choose whether you're moving stealthy or moving not.
• 1:24:22
  The GM will make encounter roles for travel encounters.
• 1:24:26
  Generally. It's D8 and then if they roll A1
• 1:24:29
  on the D8, something happens. You can of course adjust that if
• 1:24:33
  you feel like you know there's a reason to, that there might be
• 1:24:36
  more or less encounters. Then there's some rules that
• 1:24:40
  dictate what happens when you get into the encounter.
• 1:24:43
  If he, if the two parties can see each other, if there's a
• 1:24:47
  surprise situation, if you're travelling exposed and you see
• 1:24:53
  and you get into an encounter, like the GM rolls an encounter,
• 1:24:56
  you're, you're always going to be seen first because you're
• 1:24:59
  moving exposed, quote UN quote. And then dangerous terrain may
• 1:25:04
  make the encounter die smaller. Ergo, you know, the D8 could
• 1:25:07
  become AD 6 if it's a really dangerous place or AD 4 if it's
• 1:25:10
  like filled with mutant cannibals or some shit.
• 1:25:15
  And then there's some rules about travel tames and stuff.
• 1:25:18
  The one thing about the travel rules that I think is kind of
• 1:25:20
  interesting is there's also scouting, where basically you
• 1:25:25
  can go to a terrain hex and spend time scouting said terrain
• 1:25:30
  hex. And if you do scout that area,
• 1:25:32
  then you can't go astray. There's a rule called going
• 1:25:37
  astray, which basically just means you get lost and you have
• 1:25:40
  to take like a detour, which if you take if you go astray, you
• 1:25:44
  can either spend 5 hours trying to get your shit together and
• 1:25:47
  figure out the correct path or you can scout out the whole you
• 1:25:53
  can scout out that hex of the map and be like all right, well
• 1:25:55
  now we know where we're at the but the scouting rule is
• 1:26:02
  basically like we're going to scout ahead so we know where
• 1:26:05
  we're going. Also, it mentions that if
• 1:26:07
  players buy, buy or trade maps or get details from an NPC, that
• 1:26:13
  can count as a scout. And then there's a brief section
• 1:26:17
  on rules for travelling with water.
• 1:26:20
  And then we get to the hunger, thirst and supplies.
• 1:26:24
  I'm going to be for real. For real.
• 1:26:26
  This is the kind of thing that's only interesting when you're
• 1:26:29
  actively using it in a game. So I'm not going to go through
• 1:26:32
  the hunger, thirst and supplies rules.
• 1:26:34
  Yeah. I mean it basically it just
• 1:26:36
  describes how much. Water.
• 1:26:38
  Water you need how much food? You need how much water, food
• 1:26:41
  you need how much shelter you need to find how much it weighs,
• 1:26:44
  if you have animals, how much you have to give them, if you
• 1:26:46
  got vehicles, how much, how much storage you can load into it.
• 1:26:50
  Yeah, yeah, really. Not a whole lot pack.
• 1:26:52
  Animal pack Animal encumbrance rules for making a fire.
• 1:26:56
  Yeah, and then you get to like Origin.
• 1:26:58
  Very nitty gritty. It it is cool to read, but not
• 1:27:01
  very cool to talk about. Yeah, it's not exciting to like
• 1:27:03
  explain, but just for the sake of if you're interested in this
• 1:27:07
  game and you're like, does it have rules for like surviving
• 1:27:11
  with water and food and shelter? Yes, all those rules are there.
• 1:27:15
  There's the there's the the food, there's the hunger, thirst
• 1:27:18
  and supplies stuff. And then there's rules for the
• 1:27:20
  foraging stuff, which basically, you know, foraging ultimately
• 1:27:24
  comes down to making a series of roles where the DC adjusts based
• 1:27:30
  on the kind of place you're in, right?
• 1:27:32
  So if you're an industrial zone or a city center, the difficulty
• 1:27:35
  is easier. If you're in a post apocalyptic
• 1:27:38
  wasteland, the difficulty is really hard because there's not
• 1:27:40
  a lot of food or whatever, right?
• 1:27:41
  That kind of a vibe. It's it's most of the stuff you
• 1:27:44
  would expect from rules like these, which is the other reason
• 1:27:47
  I'm not going into it. But yeah, again, it makes it
• 1:27:54
  sound like I'm saying it's boring.
• 1:27:55
  It's not that it's boring, it's just it's only interesting to
• 1:27:58
  use this kind of stuff in context.
• 1:28:00
  A. Little funny thing to know.
• 1:28:02
  So did you not related to this but kind of related, did you
• 1:28:05
  watch XP Level 3's video on the the fallout system he made?
• 1:28:10
  I have not, no. OK, so Jacob loves this shit.
• 1:28:14
  And they they kind of did it like almost like the office vibe
• 1:28:19
  where they do like cutaway bits where it'll like, it'll be like
• 1:28:23
  an interview where like they're like one of the characters was
• 1:28:25
  talking. And there's a bit where
• 1:28:27
  Spencer's like, I knew he did it.
• 1:28:29
  I knew he added the system because I've been sort of
• 1:28:31
  watching him passively build this system for the last couple
• 1:28:33
  months to years now. But man, I really wasn't sure
• 1:28:36
  how much he wanted us to do it. And he was very excited about
• 1:28:41
  making a scavenge for food. And, and the cuts to Jacob being
• 1:28:45
  like, I built the system, I built it for a reason.
• 1:28:48
  If I, if I had my way, I would do this all the time.
• 1:28:51
  This would just be what the games are.
• 1:28:53
  It's just going up like psychotic rant about how cool
• 1:28:56
  survival mechanics are. Honestly, that sounds.
• 1:29:01
  Really. On brand for Jacob?
• 1:29:03
  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, basically.
• 1:29:05
  Yeah, very on brand. So Yep, checks out.
• 1:29:10
  I just love that. I didn't know we were gonna do
• 1:29:11
  it that much. We're doing it a lot.
• 1:29:14
  And he's like, you better believe we're doing it a lot.
• 1:29:17
  You better believe it. You're gonna find some fucking
• 1:29:19
  food. Yeah.
• 1:29:25
  So yes, this game will absolutely.
• 1:29:26
  I will say for you know, for me personally, the way the without
• 1:29:31
  number, cause all the without number games have had some
• 1:29:33
  variation of this kind of thing. It is a little overly minutiae.
• 1:29:39
  For me personally, I would not. If I were making my own system
• 1:29:44
  and I wanted to have this kind of hunger, thirst, food
• 1:29:46
  scavenging situation, I definitely would abstract it
• 1:29:52
  more than this. This is already pretty abstract,
• 1:29:56
  but I would abstract it another level because for me it's less
• 1:30:02
  about the minutiae of the numbers and do we have XY or Z
• 1:30:06
  of what we need and it's more about the drama of making sure
• 1:30:12
  we have food and stuff, you know what I mean?
• 1:30:14
  So for me, I would just abstract it further, probably condense
• 1:30:18
  the numbers down more like food and water wouldn't be separate
• 1:30:21
  numbers for example. Because for me it's more about
• 1:30:25
  watching, oh, our supply number is ticking down, oh shit we're
• 1:30:29
  learning low on stuff. The drama of that is the more
• 1:30:32
  important element. Agreed.
• 1:30:34
  I, I but also. I just agreed all the all the
• 1:30:37
  time. Right, Yeah, I, I just said
• 1:30:39
  agreed. But I'm also like, I kind of
• 1:30:42
  like the, the minutia, the minutia a little bit because I,
• 1:30:46
  you know, something that I liked about hellscapes, not that it
• 1:30:49
  actually fucking extrapolated on this well enough, but something
• 1:30:51
  I really liked is that they had that distinction that you used
• 1:30:54
  like you could use food for bait.
• 1:30:56
  Not that there was any rules for it other than saying that you
• 1:30:58
  could do it. Or like you can use water to
• 1:31:00
  like, to like clean wounds. Again, not that they talk about
• 1:31:05
  it. So the idea was like, Oh, well,
• 1:31:07
  we have all this water that we have we, and we can trade that
• 1:31:11
  water for other things and the food we can use.
• 1:31:14
  And the, the idea being like, I need more water to like make
• 1:31:16
  alcohol or whatever, and someone being like, oh, well, I need
• 1:31:18
  more food to feed my horse. So I I do kind of like that.
• 1:31:22
  It it can have it's like it can't be fun.
• 1:31:25
  If it's really the big thing that you're focusing on like
• 1:31:28
  that, that idea of like the story is the surviving in that
• 1:31:32
  scenario, then it can be fun. But if you're trying to also
• 1:31:36
  tell some kind of heroic journey across the waist to save the
• 1:31:40
  town kind of thing, it can get in the way.
• 1:31:42
  You know what I mean? So it sort of depends on where
• 1:31:44
  your focus is, what you want your focus to be on.
• 1:31:47
  True, very true. And also, again, like I was
• 1:31:50
  saying, with the modularity of this whole game, you could
• 1:31:53
  ignore this shit so easy. You can, yeah.
• 1:31:57
  Like you could throw all the food, water, shelter, shit
• 1:31:59
  completely out the window if you want.
• 1:32:04
  Then it goes on to character advancement, which is kind of AI
• 1:32:07
  don't feels like a slightly weird place.
• 1:32:09
  Advancement works exactly the same as every other game.
• 1:32:11
  Improve your hit points, your attack bonus, your saving
• 1:32:14
  throws, your attributes, your skills, pick your foci and
• 1:32:16
  edges, blah blah blah, all the same shebang.
• 1:32:19
  KitKat and Bootle. And then we have common.
• 1:32:24
  There's a little section of common GM complications, which
• 1:32:29
  is just kind of an advice section talking about some
• 1:32:32
  issues you might run into the game, run into with the game,
• 1:32:36
  such as forgetting the rules or like your players going off the
• 1:32:39
  map 'cause this is a sandbox game.
• 1:32:42
  But you know, even in the sandbox the players could try to
• 1:32:45
  jump around past the borders and just, you know, advice on how to
• 1:32:50
  handle that. And then you get the big section
• 1:32:52
  on mixing all of the Sin nominee games together, You know, choose
• 1:32:59
  your base game. And then, you know, what are you
• 1:33:02
  going to add? Using other creatures, using
• 1:33:04
  other classes, using optional rules, money and gear and
• 1:33:08
  cyberwear, right? Like Stars Without Number and
• 1:33:10
  Cities Without Number have a shit load of cybernetics.
• 1:33:12
  If you're playing Ashes, how do you bring cybernetics into the
• 1:33:15
  situation, right? Stuff like that.
• 1:33:20
  It does specifically call out and I and I like that it
• 1:33:24
  mentions this the the games are designed to work together right?
• 1:33:32
  But there are certain elements of the games that will be
• 1:33:35
  difficult mixing and matching 100% like Cities without number
• 1:33:41
  and Ashes without number don't use classes right?
• 1:33:44
  They have the edge system. So trying to bring in the
• 1:33:49
  classes from the other systems and turn them into edges or make
• 1:33:53
  them cooperate with the edges might be a little awkward.
• 1:33:57
  So just be aware that although the you definitely can smash
• 1:34:03
  them together, there might be some pain points.
• 1:34:08
  But, you know, that's kind of to be expected because the design
• 1:34:13
  has has advanced and changed a little bit over time.
• 1:34:18
  There's also advice on using other OSR games based on and I.
• 1:34:23
  I find this very funny 'cause it says if a game bills itself as
• 1:34:30
  being completely compatible with the early edition of the world's
• 1:34:34
  most famous fantasy RPG, you can probably strip it for parts.
• 1:34:37
  I like that he did not say D&D. Yes, the world's most famous
• 1:34:42
  fantasy RPGI wonder what I'm talking about.
• 1:34:44
  I just thought that was kind of a music.
• 1:34:48
  Just a bit. But yes, he also mentions
• 1:34:51
  throwing other old school OSR stuff into this game, which is
• 1:34:55
  the thing he's been talking about.
• 1:34:56
  Senstars that number and then we get to equipment.
• 1:35:03
  Holy hot diggity dog. Holy Fuckoli, magoli.
• 1:35:10
  This without numbers game. All the without numbers games
• 1:35:13
  have quite a lot of equipment. This one, the equipment is
• 1:35:16
  fucking stacked. Yeah, it is dense.
• 1:35:20
  Holy shit. Yeah, I'm sure you do.
• 1:35:23
  For me. This is it actually pushed into
• 1:35:26
  the too dense territory. I understand that you're not
• 1:35:29
  going to use all of it all the time, which is why it's all
• 1:35:32
  right, but wowie, zowie. Wow.
• 1:35:34
  So. To go a step further, I don't
• 1:35:36
  know. You're not going to use some of
• 1:35:38
  it some of the time. You're not going to use most of
• 1:35:41
  it most of the time, right? Like if you're dealing with the
• 1:35:43
  zombie apocalypse, you're not going to be using high tech
• 1:35:47
  weaponry like a black hole gun or the neutron master, right?
• 1:35:52
  It's the you can sort of treat the gear list as broken up into
• 1:35:57
  the specific campaigns that you are doing and they typically
• 1:36:00
  won't stray from that. It is.
• 1:36:03
  It is, but it can also because you can kind of mix and match
• 1:36:08
  them between each other. It can the the potential for
• 1:36:12
  messiness is. There it is.
• 1:36:14
  Yeah, I I mean, maybe I don't know if it has this, but maybe
• 1:36:18
  the equipment section should come with like a steady your
• 1:36:22
  hand adventure before you do some weird shit.
• 1:36:25
  I did not see anything that says that, but a valid point.
• 1:36:29
  It might say that somewhere. It starts off the equipment
• 1:36:33
  section talking about money and trade and like basically how you
• 1:36:38
  want to think about how does money and trade work?
• 1:36:41
  Because this is a post apocalypse, right?
• 1:36:46
  Basically there's different scenarios and different ways you
• 1:36:48
  can look at it and just, you know, GM make a plan basis is
• 1:36:53
  what it ultimately boils down to.
• 1:36:56
  And then it does talk a little bit about sci-fi gear.
• 1:37:00
  By default, the equipment in this chapter is largely meant
• 1:37:03
  for a near future campaign where technology is similar to our
• 1:37:06
  own. Some some campaigns, however,
• 1:37:09
  need a more expansive gear list. So there is sci-fi gear in the
• 1:37:11
  equipment chapter. If you think about Fallout,
• 1:37:14
  right, Fallout has laser guns and power armor and all that
• 1:37:17
  robots and all that bullshit. So if you want to do the Fallout
• 1:37:20
  stuff, the sci-fi gear is in here.
• 1:37:24
  Then it gets into how the encumbrance and like tracking
• 1:37:27
  your gear works. The encumbrance and stuff works
• 1:37:30
  the way it's worked and all the other without number games,
• 1:37:33
  which I have praised many times. But basically you can carry a
• 1:37:36
  certain amount of stowed items and readied items.
• 1:37:39
  An item takes up a certain amount of encumbrance points.
• 1:37:43
  So if you have 10 points of encumbrance, you pick up a gun.
• 1:37:46
  The gun costs one point of encumbrance.
• 1:37:48
  Now you have 9 leftover. It's you know, it's basic stuff
• 1:37:51
  like that. It's the the load of an item is
• 1:37:54
  a combination of the weight and the size of the thing.
• 1:37:59
  It's not just pounds like in 5 E, which still to this day
• 1:38:03
  drives me fucking insane. And then there's some rules
• 1:38:08
  about dragging down to allies and how that interacts with the
• 1:38:12
  encumbrance rules, which I thought was kind of funny that
• 1:38:15
  he specifically called it out. And then there's an optional
• 1:38:20
  rule for packs and pockets and like, absolutely not.
• 1:38:26
  Get the fuck out of here with this.
• 1:38:27
  Shit. Did you did you read this a
• 1:38:30
  little bit? I.
• 1:38:31
  Didn't I? Did not I?
• 1:38:33
  It's basically so. You mark down your gear
• 1:38:37
  containers on your sheet. You have pockets, body and belt
• 1:38:40
  container for small objects, slung gear and holters, and the
• 1:38:43
  hands containers for things in your hand.
• 1:38:45
  You might have a backpack container, or a rolling suitcase
• 1:38:48
  container, or a garbage bag over my shoulder container, or
• 1:38:50
  whatever else you can haul gear in.
• 1:38:53
  Backpacks and other sturdy bags count as their own stone
• 1:38:56
  encumbrance. When you pick something up,
• 1:38:58
  write it down under the container you're using to hold
• 1:39:01
  it. Basically it adds a bunch of
• 1:39:04
  equipment slots to your character, and then you have to
• 1:39:06
  like minutiae track what items you're storing in what equipment
• 1:39:11
  slots and how many of that thing you can reasonably hold.
• 1:39:16
  Because I kind of like that though.
• 1:39:19
  It's too much minutiae for me. I I I don't fuck with it.
• 1:39:24
  Basically for camp it says for campaigns where groups want
• 1:39:28
  extra granularity, they can use the following packs and pockets
• 1:39:31
  rules. With this rule, it becomes
• 1:39:34
  considerably more important for the PCs to actually have
• 1:39:37
  transport gears such as backpacks or slings, and ready
• 1:39:40
  items have to be in a plausibly accessible place.
• 1:39:43
  A gun slung over your shoulder or holstered on your belt could
• 1:39:46
  be plausibly ready, but one stuck in your backpack couldn't
• 1:39:49
  be reasonably drawn. So like that kind of vibe, it's
• 1:39:53
  not too, it could be worse, but it's still for me.
• 1:39:56
  I think the stowed and readied system already does that plenty
• 1:40:01
  fine. So I don't see the need to get
• 1:40:03
  more granular than the stowed and readied system, you know?
• 1:40:07
  Right. Yeah, fair enough.
• 1:40:11
  Then we have Tech Levels and scrap, so the tech level stuff
• 1:40:14
  is the same as the Tech Levels from Stars Without Number, where
• 1:40:19
  it goes from zero to five. Although actually Stars Without
• 1:40:21
  Number I think goes to 6, but it goes from 0 to 5:00.
• 1:40:24
  And basically it's like 0 is stone tools and like Neolithic
• 1:40:27
  wood implements, and then five is ultra advanced mysterious
• 1:40:31
  technology. 4 being 4, being kind of where Fallout falls,
• 1:40:37
  where it's interstellar sci-fi tech, right?
• 1:40:39
  That's kind of TL4. That's kind of the Fallout vibe.
• 1:40:45
  And then there's some explanation of what kind of
• 1:40:48
  communities could reasonably have the various levels of
• 1:40:51
  technology. So an organized modern day
• 1:40:56
  survivors with basic tools and or advanced post apocalyptic
• 1:41:01
  societies would be like tech level 2, which is to say steam
• 1:41:05
  power guns, Victorian tech, that kind of thing.
• 1:41:11
  Then you have rules. There's like salvaging rules and
• 1:41:13
  scrap rules, which again has been in all the other without
• 1:41:16
  number games. But basically you get points of
• 1:41:20
  scrap based on the tech level of the thing.
• 1:41:22
  So you have like I have three points of tech Level 3 scrap and
• 1:41:26
  you can build things that fall under tech Level 3 using the
• 1:41:30
  tech Level 3 scrap. You cannot use different Tech
• 1:41:34
  Levels for upper or lower stuff. You know what I mean?
• 1:41:39
  You can't use like tech Level 3 stuff to upgrade your tech level
• 1:41:42
  1 knife or some shit. But you can also break.
• 1:41:48
  You can also break items down and use items for repair and use
• 1:41:52
  items for various thing. Like you can also forage for
• 1:41:57
  really primitive stuff. And then we have damage and
• 1:42:02
  repairing on gear for mutant waste this game.
• 1:42:08
  Basically it says for the mutant wasteland, these rules are often
• 1:42:11
  suitable to have like damage and repair gear where advanced
• 1:42:14
  ancient tech has a problem of breaking down.
• 1:42:17
  And like you know, people try to keep it running.
• 1:42:22
  If you're dealing with after the Fall or Dead Lands, it's less
• 1:42:25
  plausible that gear would start degrading so rapidly, so you're
• 1:42:29
  probably less likely to use it. Basically, gear is rated from a
• 1:42:33
  perfect condition to a ruined condition.
• 1:42:36
  There are various penalties along the way going from perfect
• 1:42:39
  to ruin. Once it hits ruin, the gear
• 1:42:41
  piece is completely gone. Can't do anything, can't fix it,
• 1:42:44
  yada yada. Gear can be damaged, so if
• 1:42:49
  you're attacking with a weapon, gear can be damaged on a roll of
• 1:42:52
  A1 or A2. If you're being attacked, armor
• 1:42:57
  can be damaged on a 19 or a 20 from the from the opponent
• 1:43:02
  hitting you rolling a 19 or 20 basically if they crit against
• 1:43:05
  you. And then if you're rolling a
• 1:43:08
  skill check, a result of A2 or a three could potentially damage
• 1:43:12
  equipment you're using for the skill check.
• 1:43:16
  And then you need to have to repair gear.
• 1:43:19
  You need to have an appropriate skill level.
• 1:43:21
  Generally it's going to be the fix skill, but something that
• 1:43:26
  has carried through all the without number games.
• 1:43:28
  If you have a skill that's like related but not explicitly the
• 1:43:32
  fixed skill. So for example, if you have
• 1:43:33
  level 2 in shoot and you're going to repair a gun, you can
• 1:43:37
  use your shoot skill to reasonably repair the gun
• 1:43:41
  because the shoot skill. All of the skills imply that you
• 1:43:46
  are able to do the thing, but also you have knowledge of the
• 1:43:50
  thing and yeah basically you make a roll to try and repair
• 1:43:56
  it. It's the difficulty is 5 plus
• 1:43:59
  the item's tech level. You need to have scrap to repair
• 1:44:02
  the gear and then you can bump it up.
• 1:44:04
  You know a stage of damage. Excuse me one second.
• 1:44:12
  There's also a little loot. There's like a little loot
• 1:44:14
  condition table if the GM decides that they want to have
• 1:44:18
  loot be picked up at varying levels of damage.
• 1:44:20
  So you can roll a little T roll, roll a little TD10T den AT den.
• 1:44:25
  Yep, that's what I was about to say.
• 1:44:28
  AD 10 to see how well the piece of gear is as soon as they pick
• 1:44:32
  it up. And then we get into all the
• 1:44:35
  building and the crafting and the modifying of the gear, which
• 1:44:39
  again, has been in all the games.
• 1:44:40
  So I'm going to roll past this bad boy, but if you are the kind
• 1:44:45
  of person that wants to be the tinkerer character and modify
• 1:44:50
  and maintain a bunch of gear and like upgrade all of your friends
• 1:44:54
  gear, oh baby, this game's got you covered, don't you worry.
• 1:44:58
  Oh hell yeah, I feel so seen. The mod, there's all the mods,
• 1:45:03
  modifications to weapons and armor and you can build, you can
• 1:45:07
  build stuff out of just wholesale.
• 1:45:09
  You can also build entire vehicles.
• 1:45:11
  There's rules for building a vehicle both, both taking a
• 1:45:15
  broken down vehicle and fixing it to usability or building a
• 1:45:20
  vehicle from nothing. So yeah, then we start getting
• 1:45:28
  into the actual gear itself. So it starts with armor and then
• 1:45:35
  it goes range weapons, and then melee weapons, and then high
• 1:45:37
  tech and then heavy weapons. There's nothing to say, much
• 1:45:42
  like with the foraging and the food and all that.
• 1:45:45
  Not interesting until you're actively looking at it and
• 1:45:48
  interacting with it yourself, right?
• 1:45:49
  So I'm not going to read off gear or anything 'cause that's
• 1:45:51
  boring as hell. But if you're the kind of person
• 1:45:55
  like Isaiah who likes a big meaty gear list to choose
• 1:45:58
  weapons and armor from, they got you covered, bud.
• 1:46:02
  Perfect. Yeah.
• 1:46:04
  I mean I am absolutely the loser to play the sniper character and
• 1:46:08
  then pick out gear so I could like set my every little
• 1:46:11
  perimeter up with claymore mines and make sure I've got like a
• 1:46:14
  range Finder and days worth of water because I'm going to sit
• 1:46:17
  on that roof like an asshole waiting for my quarry to come.
• 1:46:22
  Yeah, I mean, ultimately this has been the case since Stars
• 1:46:26
  Without Number, but the gear lists in the Without Number
• 1:46:29
  games are always long and quite thorough, so yeah.
• 1:46:35
  Have I ever told you this just reminds me, Have I ever told you
• 1:46:37
  there's a there's a YouTube. I I don't follow him, but I'm
• 1:46:40
  like aware of it. The ex army sniper and he just
• 1:46:43
  does videos about like shooting and whatnot.
• 1:46:47
  And one of his jokes is like, OK, set distancing, maintaining
• 1:46:52
  wind, all right out for Coriolis.
• 1:46:54
  And he looks at the camera. He goes always account for
• 1:46:56
  Coriolis and then he'll take the OK, this amazing.
• 1:47:01
  Just the idea of like always account for the Coriolis effect.
• 1:47:06
  I, I don't know about always, there's probably some shorter
• 1:47:08
  distances where that's not true, but all right.
• 1:47:10
  Oh yeah, absolutely. But if you're if you're a a long
• 1:47:12
  range precision Cypress, yeah, you got it.
• 1:47:14
  Coriolis plane it, Yeah. So armor weapons, guns and
• 1:47:23
  knives and swords and all that fun shit and grenades, all that
• 1:47:25
  good stuff is in there. And then when you get into the
• 1:47:27
  high tech weaponry of laser pistols and blackout rifles and
• 1:47:30
  heavy cutters and mag pistols and thermal pistol and fucking
• 1:47:33
  whip beams and all that crap. And then there's heavy, heavy
• 1:47:37
  weaponry, which is like demo charges, grenade launcher,
• 1:47:41
  mortars, rocket launchers, rail guns, you know, the fun stuff.
• 1:47:48
  And then after all the gear, you also have all the modifications
• 1:47:51
  you can make to the gear, which can be, you know, for example,
• 1:47:55
  increasing your armor's trauma target, increasing the armor's
• 1:47:59
  AC to making the armor go from obvious to subtle, which the
• 1:48:03
  obvious to subtle thing is if you're sneaking around, if it's
• 1:48:06
  clear that you're wearing armor or not, you know, like MPCCU, if
• 1:48:10
  they can tell you're wearing armor or not.
• 1:48:13
  And much like I think he started doing this with worlds either,
• 1:48:17
  no, he start, I think he started doing this with Cities Without
• 1:48:19
  Number 'cause I remember talking about it.
• 1:48:21
  The armor mods, the table you have, what the mod is, and then
• 1:48:24
  on the right a brief little sentence describing what the
• 1:48:27
  effect does. Thank you.
• 1:48:29
  So I don't have to read through the full paragraph For all the
• 1:48:32
  mods and then weapon mods, you have the same deal.
• 1:48:38
  And then you have all the survival gear, which is stuff
• 1:48:41
  like crowbars, clothes, camping equipment, battery packs, gas
• 1:48:46
  masks, flashlights, tools, Lantern, flasks of oil and rope
• 1:48:51
  and all that sort of shit. Unlike D and DA, lot of this
• 1:48:56
  shit will be relevant. And also there are rules for a
• 1:49:00
  lot of it. Not all of it.
• 1:49:01
  Some of it is a little bit of fluff stuff, but a lot of it
• 1:49:05
  does have rules attached to it. It's not just there.
• 1:49:08
  And then after the survival gear, you have pharmaceuticals,
• 1:49:15
  which is things like alcohol, antibiotics, depressants,
• 1:49:18
  hallucinogens, opioids, stimulants, again, the fun
• 1:49:23
  stuff. And you might say like, do all
• 1:49:27
  of the drugs have rules too? Yes, all of the drugs have
• 1:49:32
  rules. All of the drugs have rules.
• 1:49:36
  There's also crude and refined versions of a lot of all of
• 1:49:39
  them. Oh nice.
• 1:49:41
  Yeah. So you could have like common
• 1:49:43
  alcohol or excellent alcohol, for example.
• 1:49:49
  But yes, all of the drugs have rules.
• 1:49:50
  And then after the drugs, you have high tech stems, which are
• 1:49:54
  sci-fi drugs which also have all of their own rules.
• 1:50:00
  Of course. Of course they do, yeah.
• 1:50:05
  And then it gets into vehicles. Vehicles, again, standard fare.
• 1:50:14
  The vehicles in this game are most similar to the vehicles in
• 1:50:16
  Cities Without Number, obviously, because that's where
• 1:50:19
  you're going to have the most parallel in terms of what kind
• 1:50:21
  of vehicles you might need. There is rules for fuel and gas
• 1:50:25
  and how long the vehicles can run based on units of gas per
• 1:50:29
  hours run, which is again a little more minutiae than I
• 1:50:34
  personally want, but. A lot, yeah.
• 1:50:36
  Yeah, I, I honestly, I might ignore the rules for fuel for
• 1:50:42
  vehicles in my game. That one's a little like, I
• 1:50:45
  don't care enough. You know what?
• 1:50:46
  I. Mean, I mean you can simplify
• 1:50:48
  it. Hellscapes did this pretty well,
• 1:50:49
  right? It's like fuel is a static
• 1:50:51
  number. Every day of travel you subtract
• 1:50:53
  a certain amount from that. Smaller vehicles use less fuel.
• 1:50:56
  Like it's really not at. I mean, that's already pretty
• 1:50:59
  much what it's doing, I just don't care enough to track that
• 1:51:01
  number most of the time. Fair, it does also matter on
• 1:51:04
  your apocalypse, right? Like it does if you're doing
• 1:51:09
  mutant Wasteland and you've got fucking, you know, fusion cores
• 1:51:12
  like Fallout, this is practically irrelevant.
• 1:51:14
  But if you're doing The Walking Dead.
• 1:51:15
  Well, would you believe there's rules for the vehicles using gas
• 1:51:19
  and the vehicles for using like cells, like power cells, fusion
• 1:51:23
  cores? Nice.
• 1:51:24
  Yep. They don't call them fusion
• 1:51:26
  cores, but they yeah, type. If you look at the vehicle sizes
• 1:51:29
  like a medium vehicle, it says uses 12 gas per encumbrance load
• 1:51:35
  or whatever. Or maybe that's how much it can
• 1:51:38
  hold Max, I forget. And then it also says one type B
• 1:51:41
  cell. So Oh yeah, yeah.
• 1:51:44
  Yeah, there are also you have modern vehicles and the sci-fi
• 1:51:49
  vehicles. Again, everything is split into
• 1:51:51
  the modern and the sci-fi. And then there's also vehicle
• 1:51:54
  fittings that you can stick on things, which is the same as all
• 1:51:57
  the fittings that you could stick on your ship in Stars
• 1:52:01
  Without Number. Same kind of shebang.
• 1:52:03
  So for characters like Paladin who want to have their rust
• 1:52:05
  Dragon, here's all the fittings you can stick on it.
• 1:52:10
  Also, all of the fittings have a number of scrap that you need to
• 1:52:14
  spend to build the fitting yourself, so you can either
• 1:52:19
  acquire it or build it. Oh, yeah, this whole part is all
• 1:52:22
  for pallets. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:52:27
  And then you might say, well, vehicle fittings, do we have
• 1:52:29
  vehicle weapons? Of course we have vehicle
• 1:52:32
  weapons. You fool, how could you ask?
• 1:52:34
  How could you say such questions?
• 1:52:36
  We also have things like antimatter rifles, drone
• 1:52:39
  cannons, grenade launchers, headshot pod, heavy machine
• 1:52:41
  guns, main tank gun, headshot pod, headshot pod, Yep Yep.
• 1:52:48
  What the fuck is that? A family of guided missiles
• 1:52:52
  meant for mounted deployment on vehicles or large drones.
• 1:52:54
  They always target AC10 to hit, but require twofold consecutive
• 1:52:58
  rounds of aiming and a visible target to get a target lock on
• 1:53:01
  them and primed for firing on the on the third round, any
• 1:53:04
  bystanders within 5 meters of the impact take damage from it
• 1:53:07
  as if a frag grenade. A headshot pod missile takes 20
• 1:53:12
  TL three scrap to build. Nice.
• 1:53:15
  Yeah, guided missile system. So yes, you also have vehicle
• 1:53:21
  weaponry. And then you might say, can I
• 1:53:22
  mod the vehicle? I have fittings and weapons, can
• 1:53:25
  I mod that? Yes, you.
• 1:53:26
  Can you silly, silly bitch? How could you ask such?
• 1:53:30
  Yeah. How could you ask such
• 1:53:33
  ridiculous things? Yes, you can also mod vehicles
• 1:53:35
  the way you can mod weapons and armor.
• 1:53:38
  And how does that work? You might say pretty much the
• 1:53:40
  same as modding the weapons and armor.
• 1:53:42
  You need to have a certain level of your fixed skill.
• 1:53:45
  You need a certain amount of scrap to create the mod and then
• 1:53:47
  you can maintain you can main a a player character can maintain
• 1:53:52
  a certain number of mods equal to like I forget what it is
• 1:53:58
  equal to 1 of their stats or something like that.
• 1:54:00
  I'm, I'm blanking on at the moment.
• 1:54:02
  But yes it it basically modding the vehicle works like modding
• 1:54:06
  everything else. You need the fixed skill, you
• 1:54:08
  need the scrap and you need the maintenance points to be able to
• 1:54:10
  keep it running. Yeah.
• 1:54:15
  And then this last little bit here in terms of all the
• 1:54:20
  equipment stuff, you have high tech tools and consumer goods.
• 1:54:25
  This is like a really weird basically, if you want to have
• 1:54:33
  your players be able to pick up like pick up loot from random
• 1:54:38
  enemies and get weird high tech stuff, there's a giant like is
• 1:54:46
  it is it 300 something? No 150.
• 1:54:51
  There's like a huge 150 item long table of random stuff that
• 1:54:58
  the players could pick up and it's it's shit like I mean here,
• 1:55:02
  let's just let me just some of the let me just roll AD 100 real
• 1:55:07
  quick. 53 OK, let's do 53 household good.
• 1:55:14
  Where is it? I don't know what that is.
• 1:55:16
  Fun fact, Hellscapes also did this.
• 1:55:18
  They were called trinkets. Like, yeah.
• 1:55:22
  Music generator, right? So you, your players kill a guy,
• 1:55:27
  they loot his body, he has a music generator on him.
• 1:55:29
  Let's see, this AI driven music composer works to the user's
• 1:55:34
  direction, providing the desired sort of music for up to 24 hours
• 1:55:37
  per energy cell. So yeah, it's just like random
• 1:55:43
  kits, bits and bobs that the players can potentially pick up
• 1:55:47
  from random dudes. Kind of a weird thing.
• 1:55:52
  But basically it's just the idea of if the players want to
• 1:55:55
  acquire esoteric weird shit from like the before times.
• 1:56:00
  I don't know if I would use something like this or not.
• 1:56:02
  Maybe, maybe not. But yeah, I mean, I guess it's
• 1:56:04
  fun to be like, oh, I picked up this weird thing from that one
• 1:56:07
  guy. I guess, you know, whatever.
• 1:56:11
  There's a there's a fun one called Omni piercings, which are
• 1:56:14
  just like the little magnetic earrings you get at like
• 1:56:17
  Spencer's or whatever, but they do come with the added effect of
• 1:56:21
  having medicine in them that can cure minor diseases once a
• 1:56:24
  month. Oh, that's fun.
• 1:56:26
  Yeah, so it's like, Oh no, I got the flu.
• 1:56:28
  Hold on, let me just put my earring on.
• 1:56:32
  Hold on, my earring feels much better.
• 1:56:34
  Yeah. And then, oh, sorry, there's one
• 1:56:37
  last little bit in the equipment.
• 1:56:39
  Identifying mysterious tech. I don't like this rule at all.
• 1:56:44
  I just don't like this whole section.
• 1:56:46
  I just don't like the way he did it.
• 1:56:50
  One of the few things where I'm like now, basically if you give
• 1:56:53
  your players some sort of mysterious tech that they can't
• 1:56:56
  immediately identify, you kind of describe it to them and
• 1:57:00
  vaguely what it looks like. And then the players have to
• 1:57:05
  tell you how they're testing it in some way.
• 1:57:08
  So like for example it says a pistol shaped device might be
• 1:57:11
  pointed at a rock and it's trigger pulled, a vial of liquid
• 1:57:15
  might be sniffed and a drop touch to their tongue.
• 1:57:19
  Then the player does the weird test and then the GM makes a
• 1:57:24
  secret wisdom plus skill roll the skill check for the PC using
• 1:57:29
  whichever skill is most appropriate for the item in
• 1:57:32
  question. And then if they succeed, you
• 1:57:37
  can like help them figure out what it is and but if they fail,
• 1:57:42
  they just like can't figure it out.
• 1:57:45
  And after, after three failed investigations, they have no
• 1:57:49
  idea, no idea what it is or no idea what it does and cannot
• 1:57:53
  activate it effectively. If they succeed, they understand
• 1:57:57
  what the tech does and how to operate it.
• 1:57:59
  If they fail by one or two, they think they understand how to
• 1:58:02
  operate it. But the first time they go to
• 1:58:04
  try to trigger it, they'll get the result the GM rolled from
• 1:58:07
  the adjacent identification failure table.
• 1:58:12
  This just feels like overly nitpicky and mean to me.
• 1:58:18
  I just don't love it. It basically the players have to
• 1:58:21
  do all this work to test out the thing, and then you make a role
• 1:58:23
  behind the scenes and they can still fuck it up even if the
• 1:58:27
  test idea they had was really good, you know?
• 1:58:30
  Yeah. So I just don't like this.
• 1:58:33
  And I also just, I don't know, I also just don't see myself
• 1:58:36
  sticking weird like unidentical technology in my game on any
• 1:58:41
  regular basis. The only time I might do it is
• 1:58:43
  if like, like maybe, maybe I do it once or twice as like a, a,
• 1:58:48
  a, like a what's the word? I'm looking for a key, like a
• 1:58:51
  cornerstone of an adventure is discovering the weird thing that
• 1:58:55
  we don't know what it does. You know what I mean?
• 1:58:57
  Other than that though, I can't see myself using this very much.
• 1:59:02
  I mean I you can I just would like I would just say you can
• 1:59:05
  bang your head against it till it works or unless you roll
• 1:59:08
  pretty bad and just break it like.
• 1:59:11
  Right. Yeah, I I almost feel like the
• 1:59:14
  option to roll should be able to supersede the testing, not be a
• 1:59:18
  consequence of the testing. Yeah, right.
• 1:59:23
  But. I treated kind of like a like an
• 1:59:25
  identification role in D&D for magic items.
• 1:59:28
  Like yeah, you can just do it, but if you want to like expedite
• 1:59:33
  the process and not short rest it, then yeah, do a little more
• 1:59:35
  work. Yeah.
• 1:59:38
  So I just don't love the way this this hashed out.
• 1:59:41
  That's fair. Yeah.
• 1:59:44
  And then there's a, there's a couple of tables to generate the
• 1:59:47
  appearance and the usage of the weird mysterious tech thing.
• 1:59:50
  What, Like what? Like what it might be and what
• 1:59:52
  it looks like. And that is that is where we're
• 1:59:55
  going to stop for now. So next time we will start with
• 1:59:59
  enclaves and settlements. Which is basically this game's
• 2:00:04
  equivalent of the faction turn system.
• 2:00:09
  Oh yeah. I'm just, I'm curious because I
• 2:00:16
  remember when we went through Worlds Without Number, you were
• 2:00:21
  kind of like, eh, this game didn't really generate any ideas
• 2:00:24
  for me. Does Ashes generate ideas for
• 2:00:26
  you? Oh, in terms of like character
• 2:00:28
  and stuff like that. Oh yeah, I mean a million it's
• 2:00:30
  it's a lot of them are like the characters that I wanted to play
• 2:00:34
  in hellscapes. So like the right right.
• 2:00:37
  They're like weird kind of or not weird, but like the out of
• 2:00:42
  time old folky gunslinger like Guild master that they had.
• 2:00:47
  I also had like a weird hilarious common rider like
• 2:00:50
  wasteland warrior kind of dude with on a motorcycle.
• 2:00:53
  I also just kind of want to play the old, like almost bring back
• 2:00:57
  Grant, just like the old tired war veteran with a sniper and
• 2:01:01
  like, you know, my cool ostrich and just chill out on a rooftop.
• 2:01:07
  Pink and heads. I I am curious if you, if you
• 2:01:11
  were running this game, would you decrease the lethality a
• 2:01:14
  little bit? I would, yeah.
• 2:01:17
  Because in, you know, in my game, I wanted things to be
• 2:01:21
  brutal insofar as if they didn't play smart, they got hurt and
• 2:01:26
  potentially died, but not that they couldn't get into the
• 2:01:29
  fights at all, right? I kind of wanted my my wasteland
• 2:01:33
  to feel more like Borderlands, where you are getting into
• 2:01:36
  fights more often, but you got to be.
• 2:01:37
  Tactical go full on with the plot armor rule.
• 2:01:42
  I think so. Probably.
• 2:01:46
  Yeah, yeah. That at the very least, it's
• 2:01:50
  kind of like I, I, it's funny. I like the idea of glass.
• 2:01:55
  You know, glass characters like one thing can knock you down,
• 2:01:58
  but the the potential to just die is so high.
• 2:02:02
  It's not like a you're just out for the fight.
• 2:02:04
  I'm sure you could do a little bit of mixing and matching where
• 2:02:06
  it's like, you know, 10 can knock you out of the fight, but
• 2:02:09
  you're not dead, right? You're just down.
• 2:02:10
  Well it doesn't no no it it does down you, it doesn't auto kill
• 2:02:14
  you. I suppose I it just seems like
• 2:02:18
  when you get down, death is just the next step and there's not
• 2:02:22
  no. Not really 'cause you still get
• 2:02:26
  there's death saves in this game.
• 2:02:28
  True. Right.
• 2:02:29
  You have like like 6 rounds I want to say like you go down and
• 2:02:34
  you have a -1 or you have like, now I'm blanking on exactly how
• 2:02:39
  the death saves work, but there are death saves in this game and
• 2:02:41
  you can pick someone up from down.
• 2:02:43
  It's not like as soon as you go down, you're fucked.
• 2:02:46
  And the glass PC thing is not instantaneous death.
• 2:02:48
  It it is instantaneous down. But yes, you're, you're not just
• 2:02:55
  dead. Straight up.
• 2:02:57
  Got it. Where's the hold on?
• 2:03:01
  Yeah, 'cause you become mortally wounded.
• 2:03:08
  Yeah. I don't, I don't know.
• 2:03:09
  I would probably just go with the default level of like
• 2:03:14
  lethality. That's valid because that, yeah,
• 2:03:21
  that kind of sits in the spot where I would want personally.
• 2:03:23
  But if I did want to, if I did want to make it a little more
• 2:03:28
  Borderlands and and bump up the characters, yeah, I probably
• 2:03:31
  would just go with the plot armor rule.
• 2:03:35
  I I really. So you said this is a game you
• 2:03:37
  were thinking about running, right?
• 2:03:40
  Not anytime soon. But it was something that you
• 2:03:43
  were like the next game you run would probably be this.
• 2:03:46
  No, Which one was it? I thought it was a without
• 2:03:48
  number game. At one point I wanted to run
• 2:03:52
  Worlds Without Number, but that became fabulous, right?
• 2:03:54
  Right. That turned into fabulous.
• 2:03:58
  Gotcha. Yeah, I mean, I, I, I don't know
• 2:04:01
  that I would necessarily want to run this game, but I very much
• 2:04:04
  would like to play in it. I I mean, I would, I would run
• 2:04:07
  this game like I don't know, if somebody begged me or something,
• 2:04:10
  I definitely wouldn't happen to. I mean, I've already run stars
• 2:04:13
  so I definitely wouldn't. Do you have a level of expertise
• 2:04:16
  on the topic? And I found Starz relatively
• 2:04:20
  easy to like once you kind of get the flow it's going for,
• 2:04:25
  it's pretty easy to run. And like the without number
• 2:04:27
  games are so easy to make calls on the fly that even if you
• 2:04:32
  don't really even feel like you don't 100% know what you're
• 2:04:35
  doing, you can just kind of wing it and you'll be like 90% good
• 2:04:40
  most of the time. Dog, you know what game I'm
• 2:04:43
  really struggling with the calls on the fly with?
• 2:04:45
  I don't know why I said I would treat it like a question.
• 2:04:47
  It's Lancer. It's Lancer.
• 2:04:48
  I feel like there's a lot where like if I fuck up a call, I
• 2:04:54
  don't know, and to be fair, my my players do prang me about
• 2:04:56
  like, but but the my guys just just just chill.
• 2:04:59
  Like I, I, I have to, I don't know, and then I'll end up
• 2:05:01
  looking to roll up either. Yeah, I mean, 5 minutes go by
• 2:05:05
  and I feel like I wasted an ass a lot of time.
• 2:05:07
  Well, Lancer is designed with a very, very different kind of
• 2:05:10
  mentality in terms of how its rules interconnect with each
• 2:05:16
  other, right? Like the without number games
• 2:05:18
  are essentially designed in such a way that you can RIP pretty
• 2:05:22
  much any singular rule out of the game.
• 2:05:26
  And the rest of the game like still mostly works, you know,
• 2:05:31
  with the exception of like the skill checks, basically, you
• 2:05:35
  know, like you could RIP out pretty much everything except
• 2:05:38
  for the skill checks and you're still, it'll still like function
• 2:05:41
  to some degree. So it's a very different
• 2:05:45
  mentality. Whereas Lancer is meant to be
• 2:05:47
  like a very cohesive web of specific rules interactions.
• 2:05:52
  So it's just, by its very nature is going to be a game that's
• 2:05:55
  harder to make that call on the fly, you know, like there's just
• 2:05:58
  no way to get around that. Yeah, I get it.
• 2:06:05
  Well, that has been us. We will bear back next week with
• 2:06:11
  more of this nonsense. Indeedly doodly.
• 2:06:15
  Be Azure, brush your teeth and read other games.
• 2:06:22
  Yeah, pretty much, yeah.