Continuing this series in which I sort out my "new" RPG PDF folder. This has been a fun journey because I'm forced to read at least SOME of what I'm sorting. I'm pretty bad for downloading a thing and never looking at it again.
Fuck the King of Space is Nick L. S. Whelan's players' guide to their funky space game. I am not sure if it's still ongoing. The document is a wild mix of classic sci-fantasy art and Nick's own cobbled-together rules that are based in D&D. Right of the bat we're off to a good start because you choose a "boon" for your character during chargen. For example, you might get +2 to hit, a random spell, or some skills. I'm a
huge fan of this move and I'm including it in all my game designs. For example, when I created my level 3 pregens years ago for convention and public play, all of them had little perks and things that are not part of the core B/X rules. Because as much love as I have for B/X, it does not generate interesting characters right out of the gate. Everything interesting has to happen in play. Which is fine... it's very OSR. But you can do better than that.
(Nick also has this wicked
POSER Manifesto on the site.)
The Revelation of Mulmo by Daniel J. Bishop is a level 4 adventure for
DCC RPG. I haven't read it but it seems to be an adventure location related to mean-spirited asshole elves in which there is a kind of resurrection pool. It's a proper dungeon crawl, from the looks of it. Daniel generally does fine work so I'm gonna go ahead and say this is probably keen.
Victorious by Mike Stewart is a sort of Victorian age superhero steampunky RPG based on the SIEGE Engine as seen in
Castles & Crusades. I have written about
C&C before and I still think it is a killer game and is clearly the spiritual successor to
AD&D. In fact, as an aside, if I ever get around to running
Al Qadim I might just use
C&C instead of
AD&D 2e. But that's got nothing to do with
Victorious.
I have been a fan of Mike's since I first heard
Save or Die and I've made my fanboy love for Mike, Liz, and the gang public for years. Listen to the back catalog of
Save or Die and
Save For Half and you'll encounter my emails and junk here and there. Knowing Mike's penchant for old school play and his dislike for crunchy skills systems I can only assume this game is a bit lite in that area. But who knows? I haven't actually
read the damn thing. It looks pretty slick. A bit too shiny for my taste, to be honest, but it's fine. Troll Lords puts together some good looking books and this is no exception.
