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[christiansorrell]

After The Bomb

There's an official Fallout ttrpg. I've read it. It's okay!

There's also, completely fanmade, After The Bomb.

And I want to put After The Bomb on your radar, because it's very, very good.

ATB uses a simple d20 + stat system, with bonuses from gear and perks factored in. You have a HP track, which burns at both ends from radiation and damage, and also a survival track that breaks pieces of your equipment whenever it depletes. Rolls are player-made, and the system spends a lot of time in that osr headspace where it cares more about the choices the players make than how they built their character. The game's currency is Junk, and you spend it repairing your gear and crafting consumables.

Levelling up is surprisingly rich with choice, and fights and obstacles are tense and deadly. Again, the core mechanics are simple, but they use this simplicity to push complex choices towards the players. You see a piece of valuable Junk floating in a bog. Do you go in and take a point of radiation? Risk coming back later? Waste your own Junk fashioning a contraption to try and get it out?

After The Bomb comes with its own sandbox campaign set in Minnesota, plus a *lot* of GM support for stuff like factions, monsters, and basebuilding.

It's a gem in our current pre-apocalypse, and I strongly recommend giving it a look.

[christiansorrell]

Tacticians of Ahm - Monthly Update #2!

Full spread art by @helenacore depicting Early Graduation's opening field exercises!

Greetings Tacticians!

Tactician of Ahm's Monthly Update #2 is finally here! With it comes the early access version of the setting book, The Ahmian Almanac, which features its first sample region of Ahm, showcasing the style and structure of setting book I am hoping to create with the Almanac. The book will feature lore and locations, of course, but it will also feature more in-depth maps, new NPCs, unique equipment, a complete new Class, and more! I want to create a book that it as much a sourcebook chock full of new things for GMs to bring to the table as it is information about the world of Ahm and inspiration for adventures.

Thanks you so much for the continued support of and engagement with the game! I used more of the raised funds to commission more art from Helena Santana including a new, full-spread art piece for Early Graduation (at the top of the post) and a piece of Dekkin Von Lopesbane character art (also for Early Graduation). Plus, I've worked with Jean Verne on a second preview spread (see above) of our planned look and feel for the game's final layout, this time utilizing some of Helena's awesome art from Monthly Update #1!

Because of my delay of this update (it was originally slated for last month) and the update overall being smaller than I originally was hoping, I am delaying this month's price hike on the game so if you enjoy Tacticians of Ahm now is still a great time to get on board! Tell your friends to do the same! Next update, the price will rise by $5 USD and that will continue apace (barring unforeseen delays like the one I suffered this last month, of course).

Lastly, I recently ran the opening two hours of Early Graduation over on The Weekly Scroll. Check it out if you'd like to see the game in action and see how I run it as the GM!

PATCH NOTES - v0.8.3

Tactician’s Textbook

Clarified Conditions to apply until the end of target’s next Turn (as opposed to confusing wording regarding Rounds).

Renamed “Shield” Condition to “Ward” to avoid having the same name as a shield, the piece of equipment and updated relevant uses throughout the text.

Ward condition now explicitly blocks all damage AND any/all Conditions while in effect.

Updated Mage Ability - Barrier to include “May be cast on self (1 target maximum per use)”

Added clarifying text to Shields in Equipment section: “(does not block Conditions)”

Added clarifying text regarding applying multiple Conditions to a single target: “A target may suffer one or more different Conditions at the same time. If a target currently has a Condition, they may not be affected by that same Condition again (nor does it add turns of effect to the current Condition) until the current instance has ended.”

Gamemaster’s Guidebook

Added Boar (EL1) to Bestiary

EARLY GRADUATION

Added a massive new piece of art from Helena Santana to the title page, depicting the Tacticians sparring with Imperial Army soldiers during the Field Day exercises!

Added Boar (EL1) to “BATTLE: Wolves in the Woods” and adjusted combatant numbers at various party sizes to more accurately reflect typical intended difficulty.

AHMIAN ALMANAC (NEW!)

Lake Traecine region added, includes the following:

5 Major Points of Interest: New locations for your Tacticians to travel to and explore!

20 Calls for Aid: Adventure hooks and strange happenings across the region!

1 Class: New classes, accessible only to Tacticians who prove their worth!

11 Abilities: New combat skills, taught to those favored by a certain faction!

2 Enemies: New combatants, unique to the specific region or faction!

2 Relics: New guarded/lost pieces of equipment, be they mundane, magical, or corrupt3d!

2 Factions: New groups, wielding political, cultural, or magical power!

1 Shop: A New specialty establishment carrying new and rare items!

4 Characters: New NPCs for your Tacticians to meet, interact with, and fight alongside!

More detailed (placeholder) map of the region with travel paths!

[christiansorrell]

I haven't posted anything here for a long time, but hey, I am actually doing some art for the Cloud Empress – the ecological science fantasy TTRPG inspired by Nausicaa, Fullmetal Alchemist and Dune (among other things), and right now is the last week to back it on kickstarter! Don't miss out on it!

[christiansorrell]

[christiansorrell]

[christiansorrell]

Art by Bob Eggleton. You can still find his book Alien Horizons: The Fantastic Art of Bob Eggleton (1995) on the second hand market for a not insane price

[christiansorrell]

when i was 16 i went through a phase where I decided I had to read a bunch of "classic" novels just to say I had read them. The Prince, Catch 22, Slaughterhouse 5, etc.

Starting to think I should do that with RPGs, I haven't even read Apocalypse World for christssake

[christiansorrell]

My view (sped up) of eclipse in Indiana.

[christiansorrell]

Play-By-Blog #22: The Isle by Luke Gearing

Welcome to my ongoing play-by-blog of The Isle by Luke Gearing! We are playing this adventure with its original system, The Vanilla Game (adjusted somewhat to fit the format). You can check out the Play-By-Blog Repository to get all caught up if you wish.

How Play-By-Blog works:

I write up the situation, NPCs, and more, just like a DM.

You vote in the poll to help decide the character's course of action.

I roll the dice, resolve actions, and write them up next week.

So on and so forth for the rest of the adventure!

Notation:

[Text in brackets is out-of-character/GM text!] "Non-italicized quotes denote text from the original adventure!" "Italicized quotations denotes NPC dialogue."

Our character: Medon Girou - Magic Cutpurse

Our maps: The Isle, Floor 2, Floor 3

[You can use the links above to find Medon's Character Sheet and map of the Isle and the so far uncovered portions below the surface. On the Dungeon map, you are currently in Floor 3, Room 3.]

Now, back to the adventure!

You look over the group of Legionaries in front of you and remember the undead warriors you'd encountered on the last floor. Better to leave them be, but you can't stop here. There must be something valuable behind a group like this.

With the low light of your amulet, you prepare the ritual casting of Teleport, eyeing the passage to the north of the warriors as well as you can among the ever-encroaching dark and through the mass of weapons and bone. [Teleport (5/6 Chance of Success): 1 - FAILURE]

You whisper the incantations and aim to place yourself in what appears to be the middle of the passage. In the next instant, you are across the gap... or mostly across, but something has gone wrong. You look down at your stomach and find your chest wrapped around and grown over the banded armor of the last Legionary. The warriors short sword is pierced through your right side. Before the pain hits, the blood begins to flow. Dark and red, escaping from deep veins and arteries now open to the air of the dungeon. Your vision is blurred on the left side. In horror, you raise your hand to touch where your eye should be, finding instead one of the warrior's helm's horned protruding through your skull.

The undead warriors shift for a moment, reanimating to attack, but then go still a moment later. You are dead within seconds, your brain and body perforated by the effects of the malformed teleportation spell. The Legionaries have nothing from which to defend the chamber and all goes quiet, save the slow dribbling of your gut blood among the sea-things corpses at your feet.

[Well then.... such is the life of a thief in a place as treacherous as The Isle! I went back and forth with my commitment to sticking to the dice and to the rules of The Vanilla Game, but in the end, I knew that I had to stick with my initial impulse to play it all rules-as-written. A botched teleport is instant death, and despite the great chances, our luck ran out. A disgusting end for Medon, but so it goes. What else lies within the halls of The Isle? LOTS!]

[If you enjoyed this Play-By-Blog and would like me to give another system/adventure OR another run of The Isle a go in this format, please let me know! I had a lot of fun writing this, and I still think it's a fairly unique thing on the internet. Thanks for reading and may your next Teleport ritual fare better of poor Medon... - Christian]

[christiansorrell]

Today's Book Market Finds

The Slaves of Heaven (1974) by Edmund Cooper

An Alien Heat (1972) by Michael Moorcock

Matrix (1969) by Douglas R. Mason

Ender's Game (1985) by Orson Scott Card (noted shithead)

Time Out of Mind (1973) by Richard Cowper

[christiansorrell]

Play-By-Blog #21: The Isle by Luke Gearing

Welcome to my ongoing play-by-blog of The Isle by Luke Gearing! We are playing this adventure with its original system, The Vanilla Game (adjusted somewhat to fit the format). You can check out the Play-By-Blog Repository to get all caught up if you wish.

How Play-By-Blog works:

I write up the situation, NPCs, and more, just like a DM.

You vote in the poll to help decide the character's course of action.

I roll the dice, resolve actions, and write them up next week.

So on and so forth for the rest of the adventure!

Notation:

[Text in brackets is out-of-character/GM text!] "Non-italicized quotes denote text from the original adventure!" "Italicized quotations denotes NPC dialogue."

Our character: Medon Girou - Magic Cutpurse

Our maps: The Isle, Floor 2, Floor 3

[You can use the links above to find Medon's Character Sheet and map of the Isle and the so far uncovered portions below the surface. On the Dungeon map, you are currently in Floor 3, Room 2.]

Now, back to the adventure!

You look to the strange door and the wheeled mechanism before it. You've seen enough dangers in this place to no longer fear a door alone. You grab the wheel and twist with all your might. [Strength Check (1d20): 11 - Success!]

The mechanism twists silently as the door slides open. In the low glow of your amulet, you can see the opening beyond the door stretch off into a sizeable chamber, some of which falls beyond the reach of your light.

Before you [in Floor 3, Room 3] stand sixteen Legionaries, strange undead in banded armour, bull-horned helms, porcelain wolf masks and a heavy gold medallion imprinted with a man's face in profile. At their sides, they hold short swords and large, rectangular shields. They are immobile, statuesque in their too still stance.

Among the Legionaries are six sea-things, mutilated corpses of once cadaverous, spiny creatures filled with bioluminescent blood now scattered atop the resting water surrounding the feet of the Legionaries. A shiver runs down your spine.

To the north, a stone passage leads off into the dark. To the south, a hall leads into a partially flooded room. Before you though, stand the Legionaries.

[Sorry for the lengthy delay! I started a new full time gig here locally after our move, then I got COVID, then my wife got COVID, then I worked like 6 days in a row, and here we are now. I'm (mostly) healthy and back at it. Apologies for the delay! - Christian]

PBB #22 is live now!

[christiansorrell]

no. Yourew not allowed to enjoy d&d. ifg you are out there and enojying a game of 5e my elite squad of pbta warriors will crash in yhtough yourt windows and get a mixed success on their roll, allowing them to flawlessly handcuff and arrest you but at the cost of describing to the GM one dream they will never achieve,

[christiansorrell]

FIREDROP - Quick N' Dirty Drop Pod Warfare for 1-4 Players

War! What purpose would we have in this life without it?

It’s been five years since the Siphonapterian scourge was first encountered on Apterion VI. In the years since, the superflea plague has spread across more and more of our great Empire. We still do not know how they spread, but we do know wherever our ships went after fighting them last they would appear, as if following us—clearly aiming to discover our homeworld and consume it. 

Now more than ever, we need good and honorable Soldiers to take the fight directly to the Siphonapterians and show them there’s nothing a little national pride and a heaping dose of lead (and explosives) can’t solve. Oorah!

In FIREDROP, you and your friends play as Soldiers dropped from low orbit to fight the hordes of superflea’s infesting the planet. Each mission will be unique, with its own objectives, Siphonapterian nests, and extraction point. Your job is to complete the objective and, if you can, extract with your life intact. To aid you in battle, you will have a number of clone reinforcements available upon your death as well as high impact firepower like sentries, orbital bombardments, and more.

FIREDROP is a 28-page, half-letter, black and white zine hex and dice wargame using a d20, a bunch of d6s, pens, and paper.

This is something fairly new for me, but it’s been a lot of fun to make and really fun to playtest. And yes, it is heavily inspired by Helldivers 2! I started making it while I was waiting to get into the game’s very overloaded servers to play!

You can get it in PRINT over at the MCGW shop!

You can get it DIGITALLY on Itch.io!

You can get it for FREE by subscribing to my monthly newsletter which always has a tabletop freebie, each and every month!

[christiansorrell]

Play-By-Blog #20: The Isle by Luke Gearing

Welcome to my ongoing play-by-blog of The Isle by Luke Gearing! We are playing this adventure with its original system, The Vanilla Game (adjusted somewhat to fit the format). You can check out the Play-By-Blog Repository to get all caught up if you wish.

How Play-By-Blog works:

I write up the situation, NPCs, and more, just like a DM.

You vote in the poll to help decide the character's course of action.

I roll the dice, resolve actions, and write them up next week.

So on and so forth for the rest of the adventure!

Notation:

[Text in brackets is out-of-character/GM text!] "Non-italicized quotes denote text from the original adventure!" "Italicized quotations denotes NPC dialogue."

Our character: Medon Girou - Magic Cutpurse

Our maps: The Isle, Floor 2, Floor 3

[You can use the links above to find Medon's Character Sheet and map of the Isle and the so far uncovered portions below the surface. On the Dungeon map, you are currently in Floor 2, in Room 15.]

Now, back to the adventure!

[Due to the closeness (when backing out my own vote) and the smartness of both of this entry's highest ranking options, I'm ruling that we'll do both!] The adrenaline leaves your system for the first time in what feels like hours. Navigating these dark chambers, hiding from skeletal patrols, and now having slain a pack of pale cave eels--it has all taken a toll on you. You are tired. You lean against the stone wall at the top of the ramp leading down into the floor below, set your pack at your side and rest, letting the eel bodies continue to bleed out.

You have heard their blood is poisonous and that's why they are so often cooked before eating, even in the wild, but you don't have any way to make a fire here and it's too far and potentially too dangerous to head back to Fionn's chamber tonight. You'll chance it on the eels.

After resting for a while, you cut one of the eels into a number of larger steaks, removing the skin and eat it one slice of your fishgutting knife at a time. [Poison Save: 4 - Under Saving Throw of 8 - Success!] It tastes earthy and strange, but already you can feel it beginning to nourish your body and mind.

You rest for the night. In the chambers around you, all is quiet. Nothing disturbs the surface of the flooded chamber and nothing seems to trigger the oil and spark trap to the north. All too is quiet from below, down the ramp. [Healing Roll - 1d6: 3! 3 Grit recovered (up to a total of 5)!]

In the morning (or what you imagine to be the morning in this sunless space beneath the isle), you pick up your pack, stretch your aching body, and begin down the well worn stairs to the floor below.

The flooding continues, to varying degrees, down in this lower level. You walk down into water, keeping your eye out for more eels, until, at a point, it is nearly reaching your chest. With your pack above your head, you continue forward through the dark, quiet water until the hall opens into a large natural stone cavern, the soft glow of your amulet failing to reach the outer edges or ceiling of the chamber. The water lowers as you rise up onto the cavern's floor.

"A natural stone cavern, barely worked with tools. Ankle-deep seawater, and fresh salt smell. A huge brass door blocks the western exit. The metal is not smooth—the surface is a tapestry of screaming faces crushed beneath a rampant bull. Their blood forms a wave, and the foam atop the wave is all wolf heads. The heads pursue running deer, boar and cattle—crowned and faceless... A wheel, 5' across, juts from the door's face."

The metal door itself has a strange, shimmery quality to it. Being near it feels unnaturally cold. Other than the wheel, you can't see any mechanism, even hinges.

[Sorry for the delay in this entry! I had a SUPER busy week last week, missed the original day and then put it off long enough that it just made sense to skip that week and get it going today. As always, feel free to drop any other suggested courses of action in the comments/reblogs! Thanks for much for reading along with Medon's adventures! - Christian]

PBB #21 is live now!

[christiansorrell]

The Udraiken Primer module is available now as a PDF; quite proud of this one, as it is an important step for the development of my Terra Hypnagogica worldbuilding project. Hope you people enjoy reading it! You can get it here: https://thecodexnoirmatic.substack.com

[christiansorrell]

I made a free zine you can download.

[christiansorrell]

Play-By-Blog #19: The Isle by Luke Gearing

Welcome to my ongoing play-by-blog of The Isle by Luke Gearing! We are playing this adventure with its original system, The Vanilla Game (adjusted somewhat to fit the format). You can check out the Play-By-Blog Repository to get all caught up if you wish.

How Play-By-Blog works:

I write up the situation, NPCs, and more, just like a DM.

You vote in the poll to help decide the character's course of action.

I roll the dice, resolve actions, and write them up next week.

So on and so forth for the rest of the adventure!

Notation:

[Text in brackets is out-of-character/GM text!] "Non-italicized quotes denote text from the original adventure!" "Italicized quotations denotes NPC dialogue."

Our character: Medon Girou - Magic Cutpurse

Our maps: The Isle, The Dungeon (so far)

[You can use the links above to find Medon's Character Sheet and map of the Isle and the so far uncovered portions below the surface. On the Dungeon map, you are currently in Floor 2, in Room 12.]

Now, back to the adventure!

[As @leatherandtea commented on last week's entry, "the only way out is through!" Time to slice some eels (or die tryin')!]

You look behind you, eyeing the path you took to get into this flooded chamber, but you know that you haven't the time to turn and run, not without risking serious harm from the encroaching eels.

You keep up your offensive and bring down your katana towards the nearest eel. [Attack Roll: 14 - Above your AV of 11 - Miss!] Your attack misses, the blade striking through only water before hitting the stone floor beneath.

The eels strike out! [Attack Rolls: 3, 20 - One is under your AC of 5 due to their out-of-water fighting conditions and the other is above their AV of 11 - Misses!] Both creatures lash out at you, but you quickly recover, sidestepping their attacks.

You take a split second to collect yourself, line up your blade, and bring it across the closest eel. [Attack Roll: 10 - Between your AV of 11 and their AC of 2 - Hit! Damage Roll: 6 - Max Damage!] You sever the eel's head entirely from it's body, cutting a clean slice straight across its throat. Blackish blood sprays out onto the nearby stone wall. Just one eel left. [50 XP gained!]

The remaining eel wriggles and reaches out as your blade flies past, attempting to bite down on your right shin. [Attack Roll: 15 - Miss!] You pull your leg back, just in time and take a stronger stance. Confidence grows in your chest as you realize you've bested two of these creatures with relative ease. Perhaps you will make it out of this flooded hall alive.

You bring your katana back overhead and strike down. [Attack Roll: 3 - Hit! Damage Roll: 6 - Max Damage (again)!] Your blade lands exactly where you intended and it splits the eels from crown to belly vertically. In a spatter of blood, the final eel thrashes at the waters' edge before quieting. [50 XP gained!]

You grab the 3 eel bodies and hang them off your pack, letting their necks drain out their remaining blood onto the floor. Although the skin and eyes are strange compared to other eels you've eaten in the past, the meat itself looks good. You don't know if you'll have means to cook it, but if you can drain as much blood from the bodies as possible, it should be better than nothing to eat (if somewhat dangerous, you've always heard eel blood is poisonous).

You take a moment to rest and nibble away at the last few pieces of your pocket cheese, pondering the raised corridor and slight orange glow you can make out from within it just across the flooded chamber. [Resting roll (1d6): 2 - You recover 2 Grit!]

Seeing few other options (the iron slab to one side of the flooded chamber has no visible mechanics, if its even a door), not wanting to travel back through the trapped oil room, and absolutely not wanting to get in the water after your altercation with the eels, you ritual cast Teleport [Roll (1d6, failure on a 6): 2 - Success!] and appear in an instant in the raised corridor to the west.

Before you, the path curves downward, deeper into the stone of the Isle, bearing faint marks of worn-away stairs. From below, you can smell old seawater [The path heads down to the next floor of this expansive dungeon - Floor 3.]

[It's really fun rolling out this combat because it feels really high stakes, even to me, as I do it! I couldn't believe those 2 max damage rolls in a row. Medon is made of tougher stuff than I imagined, it seems. See you for the next one! - Christian]

PBB #20 is up now!