Review: Unconquered

Edit 8/12/23 - Plagiarism in Unconquered recently came out and casts a new light on things. I looked at Ultraviolet Grasslands myself seperately and failed to catch this. As of time of writing this update, Unconquered appears to have been yanked from most places it was available by the author.

A kickstarter by Monkey's Paw Games I backed in 2020 - because it looked interesting - the chunky bright colours, the promise of Bronze age mayhem and adventure - coming shortly after doing some reading about the Bronze Age collapse and an awareness of the very different world of that time, it struck the right chord at the right time.

From the publicity "UNCONQUERED is a beginner-friendly, rules-light, bronzepunk swords & sorcery & sandals & sci-fi fantasy tabletop adventure role-playing game, inspired by classic pulp serials such as Savage Sword of Conan, Flash Gordon, and John Carter of Mars; the Dying Earth genre; the Dark Souls video game series; and webcomics such as Kill Six Billion Demons and Necropolis."

Cover art by Peter Violini

First impression - we get a clear aesthetic wrapped around a stripped down ruleset; lots of the world building is through random tables. The art throughout is bold, stylised and evokes the mythic bronze age well. In full disclosure I got sent a press kit by the team at Monkey's Paw and was amused to be able to go 'hang on, I already backed you' - it did prompt me to expedite this review from the giant backlog and I am glad I did because I like the world generation tools a lot.

Shiny TTRPG links #120

A somewhat eclectic mix this week. More can be found on the previous list found here. The original inspiration for all of this is weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links. You can find even more links on the newly-automated weekly blogroll on r/OSR or the RPG Blog Carnival or a roundup of non-blog news on Third Kingdom Games roundup.

Michael E. Shea of SlyFlourish.com generously shares The Lazy GM's Resource Document as Creative Commons

ABC radio gives us The Health Benefits of Dungeons and Dragons

The Alexandrian launches their book So You Want to Be a Game Master

On its own site Rebellion acquires trailblazing Tunnels & Trolls Tabletop Roleplaying Game

Megan A. Connell on Shepherd lists The best books for taking your first step into learning and running tabletop role-playing games

Richard's Dystopian Pokeverse shares Architectural history for gamers 2b: mountains and misdirection

d20 Sector Defense Assets

Following up on this Cosmic Defense Brigade I had ideas of a system for domain defense on a stellar scale.

As mentioned, no-one told you all the problems, you got volun-told to take charge here. You arrived to find a bunch of dossiers on your desk - your options in the case of things going wrong.

I have an idea - back in a previous life I would have called it the widget to hang a Con game on, now I'll call it a bolt on rules module.The idea cycles back to my previous DIO - your sector, your problem campaign. The player may or may not have combat capabilities but they certainly have command and control.

Inspired by the opening cinematic of the Space Marine game

Review: Path of the Planebreaker

tl:dr; a great, highly polished planar supplement crammed with locations and finished with two adventures to let you bring them to the table.

We have long standing form here for planar supplements - when I saw Monte Cook kickstart Path of the Planebreaker it was a 'take my money moment'. I went in hard on early Numenera and the Strange hoping for what I finally got in this book. I am a bit behind the curve on this as I was waiting for the Bestiary to become available so I'd only get walloped by shipping the once. Finally, all is here.

The premise of the book/setting is that the mysterious moon the Planebreaker smashes through the boundaries between planes and creates a link that can be traversed by those who know the art of it. The book is about the places so connected and the people who know how to walk this path - giving you all need for a planar campaign.

A chunky book, gorgeous production quality, a great distinct aesthetic to it - excellent stuff. We have a tour-de-force of MCG standard indexing, cross-referencing, world-building through random tables, all the good stuff. Details throughout like DCs for the checks to know parts of the text are woven in making it all very easy to use. This is a very high gloss production, obviously MCG in a groove, delivering solidly into an area of expertise. Just details like the chapter striping on the outside edge that lets you find a section while the book is closed are really handy touches of polist. I have one or two personal preferences that aren't aligned with how MCG does things but the quality of the stuff that I do like is really excellent. It has been a long while since I read through an RPG supplement this big with such sustained interest.

So what is all this stuff you get in the book?

Shiny TTRPG links #119

Interesting links found around the internet this week. More can be found on the previous list found here. The original inspiration for all of this is weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links. You can find even more links on the newly-automated weekly blogroll on r/OSR or the RPG Blog Carnival or a roundup of non-blog news on Third Kingdom Games roundup.

Cavegirl's Game Stuff has Another take on demihumans as social constructs.

Chicagowiz's Games proposes Session summaries in 500 characters of less!

Codex Anathema wraps the April RPGBlogCarnival in Hemos creado un entorno

The Lair of Secrets kicks off the May RPG Carnival: Changing Gears

Wizards were on folks mind this week:
The Cosmic Orrery shared Wizards Rule The World (badly)
3d6 Polar Bears wrote Kill The Wizard (AWAB)
Coins and Scrolls gave us OSR: Eight Diseases of Wizards

Grumpy Wizard asks How Do I Play a First Level OSR Thief?

u/Shieldice gives us a D6 Wizard's Tower Generator

Alchemist Nocturne writes On Rules-lite or Rules light

Attributes for shaping the Planes

This is a response to Monsters and Manuals WizardKnighting Planescape - where he posits an alternative Planescape with mechanics better reflecting the ability and imperative to shape the planes.

Read it all, it is good stuff, but the relevant piece for this is "In Planescape, one of the idealised things that PCs are supposed to be doing - it is suggested - is reshaping the planes through their actions [or] by acting in the name of a God (although the writers called these 'Powers') of one kind or another, they can literally physically enlarge his or her sphere of influence. And, of course, the PCs can themselves aspire to ascend to Godhood and carve out a realm of their own, individually or collectively. [...] There is an unwritten but much better version of Planescape out there in the ether, in which PCs' stats are largely to do with belief and values, and they roll against these stats in order to effect change in their surroundings."

This is a very interesting take - I agree with the critique in that the setting and a bunch of the adventures made it clear that such things should be happening - Recruiters in Well of Worlds is about exactly that. Sig

My immediate reaction to 'other stats about belief and values' is to think of Spire/Heart. There Dark Elfs start a revolution with all the different stats like wealth, blood, magic to stress to get things done. For this ether-Planescape it could be belief (strength thereof), alignment, might, whatever - a bunch of stats that would fit to different circumstances to stress/flex. Playing Spire for me it took a lot to get away from 'I hit it' to 'stress silver to just pay the guy to look the other way' but once I got into the groove it gave a much better sense of getting things done without going blades drawn all the time.

Spire had stats of -
Blood: Physical damage and exhaustion.
Mind: Mental stress, instability and insanity.
Silver: Loss of money or resources.
Shadow: Loss of secrecy, damage to cover identities, police and government attention.
Reputation: Loss of social standing in a group or community.

I like the range there, lots of different ways you can get burnt, which I would like to flip to become what are the many ways that one can mystically affect the planes. Sig, City of Blades is nominally a Blades in the Dark refit of Sigil that is kind of the right system in kind of the right setting but is not looking to achieve the effects we want - it does have the stress system but it is focused on personal prowess, kinetic action and the like - not this more cosmic, warping of realms idea.

My initial thoughts are on a model with axis of matter/mind and dominating/persuasive:
Strength of Will = push through resistance, shape the stuff of a place around you like a cloak
Arcane Cunning = twist to shape, recognise the threads of fate and pluck and tease them to your preference
Belief = resonance, pull others to your vision, be as a beacon
Dreamworking = envision the thing and convince others they perceive it too

Review: Plethora of Potential Partners

tl;dr: A zine to give you more in the toolbox than 'roll Charisma to seduce the NPC'.

This was a Zinequest 2023 "A DnD supplement to fill your games with romance and romantic intrigue" by Evil Pigeon Games out of Nottingham, UK. At its core this is a supplement to give you more in the toolbox than 'roll Charisma to seduce the NPC'. No doubt some will roll their eyes and say 'play something other than D&D, I beg you' which is fair, but as the old story goes answering a question with "I wouldn't start from here" is not helpful. This is for when you have a campaign already spun up or you're running a published adventure that you don't want to convert to some other system but you still need some sort of framework for NPC relationships.

Best viewed as a relationships bolt-on for games that don't go deeply into that plus some mechanics and a whole bunch of pre-made NPCs to drop in and use. We have shelves of books of combat opponents and a fair selection of shop-keepers and other NPCs to populate the world with - it is useful to see a broad selection of NPCs worked through specifically with links, hooks and persistence in a campaign in mind - you may not use them exactly but seeing it all worked through it useful if you want to add it to a game that is not already set up for such things.