Production Progress

Well, I have some artwork to share. Just a bit and not all of it for POP-001. Since I do not have much time to draw, I have to dedicate some time to practice. As spring goes to summer, I have even less time. To that end, I am pushing my release date to the middle of August. Can't be helped so I updated the countdown. 

Anyway, the main feature of this project is a cenote. In order to make the art work for me, I broke it down into layers on paper so I could scan different parts as different layers. I can preserve my ability to change things up without resorting to "Fix it in post" crap.  

The first image is the extent of the waters. As you can see there is a small island with a cave in the image. I haven't decided if I will do color or not, but I might. The two odd features in the center are holes in the roof which provide access to the cen. There is no other way into this area.  

In order to get down to the water and rock shelf around it, characters will have to navigate a series of wooden platforms. There are two paths down, which are loosely based on both the movie Goonies and several amusement park attractions. 

This area would have been a daily trip for most people from the temple surroundings. Life-saving water plus a cool and relaxing place to hang out would have drawn every villager. The platforms are connected by ramps, but on one side there is a slide, and on the other is a floating platform for resting.

You can click each image to enbiggen them. 

One image will be overlayed on the other but there may be special cases where I want to separate them. A bonus map might be one cause. I was thinking of using the same art as a tiny dungeon. I will have to redress the walls, but it's doable. 

I've been practicing with several other images to get used to inking with new pens. 

Many of these spaceships are copies of stuff from the Dynomo Joe comic series, while the last two are of a spaceship I designed for my Star Smuggler campaign.

This ship is called The Waterbuck and is nearly twice as larger as The Antelope class ship. When designing it, I thought about what a next-generation ship would have and would not have. This ship has the ability to mount 3 turrets. The one turret in the nose of the ship can be fired by the pilot as he or she flies. The other two need crew. The Waterbuck also has an advanced medical bay.  

What it does not have is a stasis unit or any concealed compartments. 

It also comes with a larger shuttle that can be carried externally or in one of the cargo bays. This shuttle has its own fusion drive and life support, so it can carry much more than the old shuttles. Older shuttles can still be used but they must be carried inside a cargo bay. 

As time permits, I will write up the details of both these ships. 

POP-001 - The Pantheon of Gods

I'm starting to piece together the Pantheon of Gods for the Lost Temple. It ain't much of a temple with a god or God's to worship. In this particular case, these gods became lost when the temple was abandoned so the PC's will not have any knowledge of them. 

The first god is going to represent liminal spaces. While he is not the most important God in the Pantheon, he is the vehicle behind the PC's ability to explore this magical place. Rather uncreatively, I've been thinking of naming him Lumo. I'll probably come up with something better. Lumo is a placeholder for now.

The term "liminal space" is new to me. This post is talking me through the idea. 

"Liminal spaces" refer to transitional or in-between spaces that are not easily defined or categorized. These are places where boundaries between different realms, states, or stages of being become blurred or permeable, creating a sense of ambiguity or uncertainty. Examples of liminal spaces include doorways, thresholds, bridges, crossroads, and shorelines, as well as certain times of day (such as dawn and dusk) or stages of life (such as adolescence).

This abandoned temple is somewhat like El Castillo, Chichen Itza. At least, that's what I've modeled the cover image after. I have come to discover that pyramids are really very boring as dungeons. They don't have many, if any rooms. El Castillo challenges my understanding pyramid as a dungeon as it was built on top of other structures. It does have interior spaces that have nothing to do with being a pyramid or temple. These would be an example of a liminal space, crossing from one time period to another or one function to another. 

Now this will require a modification of my original idea, adding long tunnels around the perimeter of the pyramid. These would serve as an entry point to the older temples, a sort of dungeon space, and a way into the vertical shafts. 

And Lumo has always been a part of this culture from the beginning. He is a prime mover here. Where these spaces exist, he is able to exist. 

In The Revenants of the Lost Temple, he will have a special, unique role to play in a modified wandering monster mechanic. The fun part of this is the player characters will have the ability to control the wandering monster rolls. It is simple and initiative, while also creating an atmosphere of dread. 

I can't wait to get this thing released. I can't wait to create several other gods to join the heroes in their quest. 

Star Frontiers: Knight Hawks Boardgame and Campaign Expansion Review

I have some more content queued up for POP-001, but I have to get some bugs out of my system. I did a review of Star Frontiers with the intention of returning to review the expansion set Knight Hawks. It's been 2.5 years, so I should do it now. 

Title: Star Frontiers: Knight Hawks Boardgame, The Campaign Expansion, and Warriors of Light Module
Designer: Douglas Niles
Year: 1983
Pages: Boardgame book, 20 pages. Expanded book, 64 pages. SF0, 32 pages.
Number of players: 2+
Rating: ★★★

Star Frontiers is a classic science fiction role-playing game that was first introduced in 1982. One of the most exciting aspects of the game is the Knight Hawks expansion, which focuses on ship-to-ship battles. This expansion provides players with an opportunity to engage in space combat, which is a crucial element of the science fiction genre. This set was a boxed set like Alpha Dawn and even follows the exact same book and page count as the original. 

The key features of the Knight Hawks expansion are the ship-to-ship combat and ship design system. Players have the ability to design their own spacecraft from scratch, giving them the freedom to create vessels that suit their playstyle. The ship design system is complex but rewarding, allowing players to customize every aspect of their ship, from its weapons and defenses to speed and maneuverability. Plus every part of the customized starship simply works with the ship-to-ship combat system right out of the box. 

Players don't need to create ships to engage in ship-to-ship combat, the module will gift them with not just their own ship, but a whole fleet of ready-go ships. The combat system is turn-based and consists of three phases: movement, combat, and damage control. The phases are crucial for setting up attacks and avoiding incoming fire so as not to resort to damage control.

The combat phase is where the action really heats up. Players can choose from a variety of weapons, such as lasers, missiles, and torpedoes, to attack their opponents. Each weapon has its own unique characteristics, such as range, damage, and accuracy. 

The game uses what I call a Chocolate, Vanilla, and Strawberry system of weapons and defenses. There are missiles, lasers, proton beams, and electron beams. I seem to recall neutron beams, but I think stole that from Starfire, another excellent game from the time period. Specific attacks are modified or negated by specific defenses which creates a wild dynamic where ships might have the WRONG type of firepower. As confusing as the terms are, there are only three or four so you can roll with it pretty easily. 

There is a damage control phase, where players can repair any damage their ship has sustained during combat. This phase is vital, as a damaged ship is less effective in combat and can be destroyed more easily. Players can repair damage to their ship's hull, engines, weapons, and defenses, but doing so requires time and rolls against the DRC rating of the ship. It is far less complex than StarFleet Battles and can be adapted to be more Traveller-like by ignoring the DRC for some aspects and allowing characters to use their new starship skills to get stuff done. I wouldn't suggest making every repair a character skill roll, but the nugget of the idea is there. 

I play StarFleet Battles, so I can't call this set complex or deep, but it has Basic and Advanced rules can get new players going with minimal fuss. Was I to stop the review here, the boardgame rules are stand-alone and would get 5 of five stars. 

You'll notice that I gave this set 3 stars. That is because the integration with Alpha Dawn sucks. In Alpha Dawn, we left the characters with 3 PSAs with a max of 6 ranks. Knight Hawks throws in 4 more Star Ship Skills which are not PSA, but dependent on PSA. And require them to be nearly maxed out. 

What?  

On day one of purchasing the box set, you are months away from having your old characters gain the necessary skills to use this set. That's garbage. What does firing a gyrojet weapon at a tank have to do with lobbing a giga-ton nuke at a ship in orbit? Driving a car is related to jumping a spaceship? No. That shouldn't be a thing. 

I could explain the way I handle this hitch, but instead, I will ding this set 3 stars and allow you to engage with your players as you see fit. I WILL give this set one additional star for adding more vehicles and space combat into the mix while resolving the chronic "First World Star Frontiers Problem". 

What I call the First World Star Frontiers Problem is a lack of creativity in the creation of modules. It is really a problem of having too many options or possibilities available in the rules and settings hampering an author's ability to create an engaging scenario. Virtually all of the modules lay out a scenario, then strip the players of some or all of their weapons and kit. That is a systemic railroad if I ever saw one. 

Don't do that to your players, do anything else. 

Knight Hawks actually fixes this problem as even lifeboats have guns and ammo, tools are weapons and the ship is a flying storehouse. Giving the characters a massive starship basically means if they lose their gear, they go back to the ship and gun the f--- up, and come back with a vengeance. This is a better playing experience than losing it all and coming back from nothing. Half of the game is shopping for kit or designing spaceships. Why bother striping gear for every pre-packaged adventure? 

In conclusion, Star Frontiers Knight Hawks is an adequate expansion that adds a new dimension to the already good Star Frontiers RPG. The ship-to-ship battles are engaging and challenging, requiring players to think strategically and use their resources wisely. While the system may be overwhelming at first, the rewards are well worth the effort. If you're a fan of science fiction and role-playing games both halves of this system are for you. 

You can pick up a copy on DriveThruRPG either in PDF or Print. Either is very nice and the two boxed sets are combined together, so it's just one purchase. Personally, I would buy the combo PDF and Print set so you can print off as many of the map pieces and counters as you like. Star Frontiers has really nice counters and starship deckplans. 

Artwork Update - POP-001

Over on Ko-Fi, I am working on POP-001. This takes place in a lost temple. The artwork for that appeared here several years ago. I didn't mean the maps to be a module, but when I discovered that it survived the fire, I decided to go for it. 

These images are very spare and were not meant to be a dungeon. Through the magic of digital media, I can actually adapt them to what I need them to be. Once complete, you will be able to see the original artwork at the same time as seeing how it was adapted for this title. 

Right now I am working on the main battle map, the cenote chamber. For this map, I need to deviate from the simple one-marker, black-and-white design without moving too far from it. This is for clarity.   

You'll have to check out my Ko-Fi posts for the complete ideation of what is to come from this module. What I'd like to write about is my process. 

A lot of times, people will get cagey about tracing stuff. Well, don't be. 

If you look at the 4 images above, they are digital combinations of 3 images that were traced. Granted, they were traced from my own original work, but this is an old-school version "fix it in post". If you zoom in, you'll notice that the gradient lines of the shoreline are exactly the same because it's a scan. With a lightboard and tracing, it would almost impossible to match the lines over and over again. 

At least for me, because I have a tendency to right to ink, no pencil at all. Usually, to create such things I do pencil on graph paper, then trace right to ink. The image is already set on the underlayer, so why not? 

Interestingly, this type of image can be turned sideways for elevation or twisted by some math to give a 3/4 view or whatever I decide, all on paper before the digital process starts. 

My goal is to generate different layers on paper then scan, then combine so I can have multiple images in a variety of styles. This mixed-style allows me to edit stuff digitally to output documents in 8.5x11", A4, or A5 and 5.5x8.5 booklets.  

As I get closer to completion, you'll see more art from me. However, at the end of the day, you'll want to follow me on Ko-Fi to see more of the behind-the-scenes stuff that didn't make the final cut. 

The Temple of Light - Maps

Update: May 3, 2023. These maps will go into a new product called POP-001, Revenants of the Lost Temple. 

This temple complex is the work of an ancient people. The first map is of a traditional family abode. In the past, the tribe dug horizontal homes, as a means of collecting flint. 

As the people transitioned to a bronze age culture, they began the construction of the Temple of Light. The structure is a gleaming white, the effect was achieved with a decorative coating of quartz and flint. 

The Temple was a beacon of solidarity for the people, but it also proved to be a beacon for raiders. The pirates devastated the village proper, taking valuables and prisoners. The raiders returned seasonally to plunder the people. For a time, the villagers disbursed to escape the onslaught.

One day, several young children entered the Temple and discovered a pair of holes in the central hall leading to a deep natural cavern. When the chief was informed, he ordered a return to the old ways of digging pit homes under the Temple.

In a few months, the tribe had relocated under the Temple. By concealing the upper openings with floor tiles, the villagers were able to exact revenge when the raiders breached the Temple. The surviving pirates completed the turnabout with tales of a diamond-encrusted temple protected by spirits of the earth.

Epilogue:

The children discovered the leader of instability in the rock. Future generations will tell the story of a fortress of diamonds beneath the crystal blue waters of a cenote. The stone age villagers speak in hushed tones about the mighty Sea Mage sinking the fortress in anger for the king's refused tribute payments. Adventurers may find tablets of stone that tell of the powerful shaman who levitated the entirety of the Temple to allow her people time to escape the collapse into the waters below.

This series of maps are based on a mix of real-world places and cultures, Grime's Graves, Ancestral Puebloans and people of Teotihuacan in particular.

POP-001 - The Pantheon of Gods

Welcome back. Tick-tick-tick! The counter is down to 90 days. What do I got? 

A lot more and less than what I need. First, let me do a shout-out to Evlyn Moreau over on Dice.Camp. You can also find her on:

patreon.com/evlynmoreau
https://ko-fi.com/M4M85ZSV
https://evlyn.itch.io

She sent me a collection of jungle-theme images, which will go in POP-001. So I'd better get this thing done. 

One item that stands out in this work is that I must devise a pantheon of gods. Typically, I don't do whole pantheons of gods in my campaigns. I let the players tell me about what gods they know. 

It's easier that way. The alternative is: "Hey... can you fit your character in this tiny box you can see? Perfect!" 

When roughing out a campaign, I will typically have the barest minimum of divine beings. I'll have one God of Light, one of Dark, one in between, and one alternative choice that doesn't fit within these three groups. The last category is for the first NPC cleric or druid the characters encounter and it is a hint that the players can be creative in what they believe. 

When I have a city where a large number of different people reside, there is a Temple Row. I keep the gods non-descript unless someone asks me about them. Invariably, the players will come up with a god that won't fit any of my description and I will have to wing it.  

I personally love this trick. 

As the players search the Temple Row, they will not find a temple to their god but they will have a feeling that they are in the presence of something powerful and familiar. If they continue searching, they will find a place that feels right. An NPC will mention this is "the place of the lost ones" and if the character makes an offering or prayer in this space, they will find a path to their God's temple. For a while, they will be able to interact on a personal level with this space, describing it to me. When they have given me a good idea of what it is like, I let them leave. As they exit, that temple, their temple bends and warps reality until it becomes real. Even if the row, the road, the city, or even the world itself has to get bigger to accommodate it. 

Players often find this experience wonderful. 

An AI rendering of a Moon Goddess

This is a consequence of my trying not to impose my will on the players, nor waste time creating stuff that will never be used. It's cool if the players hop right into my world, but I can't expect this outcome and need to invoke a bit of magic. 

Revenants of the Lost Temple must be different than what I am used to doing. I lead with "its a temple". It must follow that I must have gods here. These creatures will be cameo actors to be sure as the module is created for first to third-level characters. I need them to be unique avatars for a whole culture that vanished. 

I have selected a couple of ideas for them to embody. A goddess of the sea, a god of the land, a goddess of the Moon, and a god of the Earth. That sounds like a good AI photo prompt. 

It's pretty... pretty much not what I wanted. As I flesh these beings out, I will post updates over on my Ko-Fi page. Why don't you follow me there? 

One More Add to Favorite Blogs

I just realized I follow Evlyn Moreau over on Dice.Camp. 

I might as well add her to the favorite blogs roll. 

 

Too Many Irons in the Fire

I'm working on a few too many projects. I need to get myself on a posting schedule. The countdown tells me I have 92 more days to finish my first module, POP-001. 

To that end, I am working on artwork. Or at least, sharpening my skills. 

This is a copy of Frank Frazetta's style, which I hope will assist in creating pictures for POP-001. 

Project 2 is a little more down to earth. I'm getting the raised beds ready in the backyard. I'll have two 8x4 foot areas this year to prevent the overcrowding I experienced last year.

In addition to the tomatoes, cucumbers, strawberries, and peppers I grew last year, I'll be trying out lettuce, beans, radishes, and herbs. I plan to keep the strawberries, beans, and herbs out of the raised beds with a new area plus large planters. 

Ideally, at the end of the year, I'd like to bring the herbs inside. I didn't plan for that last year and managed to kill off everything by mid-December. There was some saving grace as a had a ton of dried herbs from the summer. 

Next up is a slow-moving project, one that may turn into a regular series here. I'm making a castle. I really love the classic look of Bodiam Castle and I recall drawing a rough floorplan for fun and as a blog post. 

Funny, I apparently forgot to blog about it and you are seeing the rough plan for the first time today. 

Anyway, I am upcycling some junk I have lying around to make this happen, I will probably detail my progress as I go. 

I don't plan on being too faithful to Bodiam or even rudimentary scale. I am letting the supplies on hand control the look. For a base, I used a bit of wood used for packing material. The towers stand 6 inches tall and will be spaced out 2.5 to 12 inches. The idea is to have something that would help out as a game space. 

As you can see from the image above, I have a bunch of different figures arrayed in front. I have a 1:144 scale T.I.E. Fighter, 1/296 Battlemechs, a 25 mm Space Marine from Aliens, a Lego figure, a couple of 25 mm fantasy figures, random plastic animals, and 20 and 15 mm figures. The block in front is 1.25 inches on a side. Roughly, anyway.  

It all seems pretty reasonable. 

A Broken Hearts System

I'm brainstorming ideas for a new game system. Initially, I called it the Hearts System, but that may change. I kind of like A Broken Hearts System or ABHS. 

I am starting to formulate ideas for mechanics. 

The first mechanic I created is generating characters using a standard (or custom) set of cards. I shared this in a post a while ago but I will recap it here. 

Aces are your abilities and they are laid out Spades, Diamonds, Clubs, and Hearts. I have retitled them Swords, Shields, Coins, and Hearts which correspond to: 

(Swords) Fighting ability, 

(Shields) Defensive abilities,

(Coins) Resources, 
(Hearts) Life points.  

Below them are the Kings, the Queens, and the Jacks. These cards map to three classes. Kings are Squares; Squares use brawn more than any other skill. Queens are Pures; Pures prefer to use their mental facilities over everything else. And Jacks are Semis, people who mix physical and mental facilities with ease. 

In the following examples, we are using just Kings to build a Square character. I will write about Pures and Semis in a different post. 

A starting player assigns one or more Kings to their four abilities. Once complete, the player looks down at each pile and totals them up, adding Kings and Aces together. 

Swords: 3

Shields: 2

Coins: 1
Hearts: 2

All starting characters have distributed 8 cards (or points) among 4 stats. 

Now, here is the first twist. Put the Shields over your Hearts, like so: 

It is always Shields on Hearts and the stats are adjusted like this: 

Swords: 3

Shields: 2

Coins: 1
Hearts: 2 (4)

Now this character is fit to fight. We need to talk about dice. This system assumes you'll use six siders and two. I took a poll and this was what the hivemind thought was best. Of course, the hivemind can make its own games, so I will modify this two-die standard later on. 

This is a roll-low game. The lower the better. Nothing special happens if you roll snake eyes. By the same standard, nothing special happens if you roll 2 sixes. 

One of the quirks of this game is we only have two cases where we modify the die rolls directly. We'll handle that later.   

If your Sword is 3, then you need to roll a 2 or a 3 to hit. Damn, that would be a tedious game. At this point, we need some modifiers on your character's skills. Remember, this is not modifying the die roll. We need the player to be aware of what they need to hit before rolling. 

You get +1 for having a weapon, say a spear, and another point for each skill in skill you have. Since you have 3 Swords, you can learn up to three combat skills. In this case, let's make them 3 points or ranks with a spear. Now we have a total of 3+1+3=7. 

See how we didn't add to the dice, but modified the ability to hit? The rationale behind this is all characters should know, roughly, their ability to strike something before they make that attack roll. Remember, I do have an exception to this no-modifier rule which will come into play later. 

You must roll equal to or under a 7. Now that is more like it, there is a good chance of rolling that. Here is my modification on using two six-sided dice. We're gonna use more. In the first step or interval of combat, you roll 2d6 and compare it to your to-hit number which is 7. 

We roll a four and hit. This removes one Shield or Heart from the opponent. There are only hits, we won't use damage dice. A very powerful creature might have 18 Shields and Hearts combined, but against a group of characters making a couple of attack rolls per combat turn, these defenses will go fast. 

The next mechanic is the duration of the combat turn. We're calling each cycle of combat a turn and each one is 12 seconds long, divided into 2-second intervals or steps. Every character may take one action per step. BUT they can only attack once per unit Sword and only once per interval or step of the combat turn.  

Our Square with a Spear can take three swipes with their weapon per combat turn because they only have 3 Swords. They are not skilled enough to do more. This is an inversion of D&D style rules as it assumes characters are pretty quick. 

What does he do with the rest of his time? He can move, open doors, duck, dodge, or whatever.  Basically anything other than sticking a spear in someone. He can move three times and attack three times. There will be cases where this particular character will move four times and attack twice, losing one attack because they ran out of time. Higher-level characters are entitled to swing every combat step or interval, but probably won't for... reasons. 

Now we get the exception on modifying die rolls. Remember when you put your Shields on Hearts? If you get hit, you lose a Shield point. When they are gone, you start losing Hearts. When your Hearts are gone, you are down. Not dead, but down and unable or unwilling to stand back up. 

Here is the modifier on die rolls. A character can choose to defend themselves instead of attacking. They can do this once per Heart, per opponent, per combat step, or interval.  This adds to the attacker's die roll. The cost of doing this is, if you get hit, you lose the Heart you risked instead of the Shield.

Ouch! You can go down by making risky moves. By the same standard, if you successfully defend yourself, you lose nothing but that one attack. This also slows combat, kind of like casting from hit points in reverse. 

If you are a numbers person, you'll realize that a minute of combat is 5 12-second combat intervals. Using our Square with the Spear, this could be 15 attack rolls in just 60 seconds. This would be really violent and quick, which is why I wanted to slow things with defense. 

To slow this down more, I'll modify the number of dice thrown per combat interval or step. The first time you attack in a turn, you need to get a 7 or less on two dice. Assuming nothing changes, the second attack requires rolling 7 or less on 3 dice.

That spear is getting heavy and you are getting tired.

Guess what? The third attack requires throwing 7 or lower on four dice. This continues for each attack, a high-level character could be throwing 7 dice to hit on that sixth swing.  

Also, it makes risking a Heart on Defense more worthwhile later in the combat turn.

This is a neat mechanic as new players will swipe at opponents very quickly while learning the combat system until they realize that maybe they should hold back a bit once they master it. The mechanic itself is simple, just add a die but your chances of hitting are plummeting. It also encourages players to work together, say having three guys up front taking turns at attacking an opponent, rather than everyone hacking away wildly. 

At the end of the 12-second combat turn, there is a reset moment. Shields are restored at the start of every combat turn, but Hearts are not. If you started with two Shields and lost them to two blows from an opponent, you get them back for the next turn. This restoration isn't repairing a bit of armor or picking up a shield, but making an adjustment to the item itself or modifying their use against a specific opponent. 

I hope you found this interesting. Next time I will get into missile combat and magic. Let me know what you think in the comments. 

Top 20 Sales on DriveThru RPG - Part 2 - Swinging and... Hits?

In finishing this two-post series, I had to modify my thought process. To recap, every time someone clicks a link to DriveThruRPG I make a small amount of money. This occurs every time someone goes from a link here to a product on DriveThruRPG, even if it isn't the product I posted about. 

For example, on the left are links to my products. If someone clicks one of those links but ultimately decides to purchase a completely different product, I still receive a small amount of income. What started this two-post series was the realization that MOST people do not buy what I suggest. I shouldn't be surprised because a review should say why you might like something, not that you will like it. Add in the fact that authors also have varied interests, you will likely see something vaguely related to one of my reviews and enjoy that item more. 

As I mentioned before, this was actually a top 26. I removed my 6 products from the list. This website is dedicated to selling my things. Today that thing is this post, not my books, with the links off to the top left on every stinking page! Yes, I am bad at marketing and I am ok with it. 

To recap, within items 20 down to 11, I only reviewed one item and own only two. Let's count down from 10 to 1 with one hiccup. It seems that 4 of 10 books are part of a series, so I grouped them together. 

Number 10 was Savage Worlds Adventure Edition. I have exactly one post about Savage Worlds and it wasn't a review. The system was used for a Flash Gordon-themed game at a local con. It is a funny story though. Click here to read it. 

This is a jump to 8, as nine pairs with another title appearing high on the list. 8 was A Guide to Thieves' Guilds by Todd Leback. I own this and meant to review it but did not. 

Legendary Bloodragers was number 7. This is a Pathfinder book that I am not familiar with at all. 

Number 6 isn't a surprise to me, but it was not a topic I normally cover here. It was Shadowrun: Better Than Bad (Deep Shadows). This should be no surprise as Shadowrun hit its 30th Anniversary in May of 2019. There was a special banner for it and just a few months later COVID kicked us all and my web stats went nuts:

There was a bit of a lag in the data, there was a small uptick in March followed by that massive spike in May. I started posting daily between March and May which might explain some of it. 

Number 4 was Filling in the Blanks, which I reviewed back in March of 2021. I also fell in love with the cover art and end up posting about Jenna Drummond's artwork. 

Into the Wild was 3 and another excellent product that I reviewed. This one was special because we all received a preview of the product on Kickstart. It also features Jenna Drummond's artwork on the cover, which I love just as much as the other covers in the series. 

The last 4 items were surprising, the Game Outbreak. Nine was Outbreak: Undead Starter Kit Card Set, and five was Outbreak: Undead 2nd Ed - Pocket Book. Two and one were Outbreak: Undead 2nd Edition - GM's Pocket Book and Outbreak: Undead 2nd Edition - Survivors Guide. The card set and the Survivor's Guide don't seem to be available. 

This is a big surprise as I love The Walking Dead and zombie films in general but I have never posted about them here. Maybe I should start posting about these sorts of things. 

Anyway, thank you again for your continued support in this strange adventure. 

Top 20 Sales on DriveThru RPG - Part 1 - Swinging and Missing

When I start an idea, I often have an idea of where something will end or at least how it should go. Not so with affiliate links and such. I've bombed out affiliate sales so many times, I don't even know what to think. My website does not have a lot of traction with cross-sales, all my readers care about is gaming. They totally don't care about non-gaming books, movies, or Legos. 

DriveThruRPG is my most significant revenue stream. So, I must know a lot about it... 

Yeah, no. 

Here is the funny bit. I've reviewed hundreds of products from DriveThruRPG. It would be reasonable to assume that most of my revenue would come from these. It was easy enough to run a top 20 report and see how effective this tactic is. I actually had to run the top 26, to remove my own six products.

Obviously, a whole website revolving around my products is a good way to sell products. Even I know that much.   

With my products removed, number 20 was How to Hexcrawl. My Review of this can be found here. It was really gratifying to see that my reviews were moving product. 

Well, that is where my assumptions and hopes ended. 

19 was a product called Easy Settlements. I purchased it to do a review but for whatever reason, I did not. It's a really nice and helpful product, it packs a lot of details into just 14 pages. As an added bonus it is system and theme agnostic. It just rocketed to the top of my "To Review List".  

Next at 18 is Downcrawl. Never heard of it, but the description is interesting. It's a generator for open-ended adventures. As an added bonus, it comes in pdf and soft cover. Since I lost most of my books, this makes Downcrawl an attractive title. Maybe I'll buy it on payday. 

# 17 was Dishonored: The Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook. Again, I have no familiarity with this title. From the description, it sounds like it would be perfect for a Gray Mouser or perhaps a Thieves World Adventure. 

Again, this is something I find attractive yet I didn't write about it. 

The rest of the list goes the same way. From 11 to 20, I reviewed exactly one title. Here is the rest of the list, with the links leading to DriveThruRPG: 

16. Berlin - The Wicked City
15. The Codex of the Black Sun: Sorcery for Stars Without Number
14. The Black Hack Second Edition
13. Outbreak: Undead 2nd Edition - Gamemaster's Guide
12. Knave
11. Barbarians of the Ruined Earth (Standard Cover)

This is a very curious collection of works. Of the 10 titles, I only have 2 own two. What I find interesting about this part of the top 20 is I can see how these titles run parallel to subjects and topics I really enjoy. Except for one, I don't care for the setting of Berlin. I do love Zombies. Traveler (but not to play) and the concept of a Dying Earth. 

Clearly, I am not reading my audience, and my audience is not guiding me, it seems we are on a parallel adventure together. That is really cool. 

Stay tuned for the next half of the top 20 list. Click here to read. 

My Very Own Appendix N

As my friends and I entered high school, we really diverged in our interests and reading habits. Ryan read Douglas Adams and the Robotech series. Michelle read Doctor Who. I read all of the fantasy stuff like the Dragonlance series. 

This would have been around '84 to 1986. 

Almost every game session started with The Great Book and Mix Tape swap. In that spirit, I'll share a mix for you: The Great '86. This one year was amazing for music. (Editing note: You don't need a Google Music account, you can simply go on Youtube and listen with this link.) 

Anyway, back to the books. In swapping books, I lost more books than I will ever own. I also read more than you can imagine. Many of these books were yellow, pages dogeared and in some cases missing covers. 

I've been feeling nostalgic lately and picked up a Dragonlance book at Barnes and Noble. I am only 100 pages in and it fills me with both wonder and nostalgia. Clearly, I read it nearly 40 years ago. All of the details are gone, but it is strangely familiar.

I think I'll add this series to the review list, Dragons of Autumn Twilight is pretty cool and clearly made an impression on me because I freely stole ideas from it. 

This is the odd part, decades ago things moved with glacial slowness. I had this book from a used bookstore before I ever saw the Dragonlance Modules. I had no idea it was related to D&D until I saw DL-1 in about 1990. Bookstores were wacky like that. 

Since I ran down this memory hole, I've also returned to watching Doctor Who. The whole D&D gang watched the show, the old-school stuff. It was shown out of order, the local PBS station only honored the serial order, so at least you could see a whole story. But we had no idea what was happening in the larger Doctor Who story as they would happily skip from Doctor to Doctor, willy-nilly. 

I didn't care. It sort of matched the way I read the novels. Here is a silly bit. I had to go back to 2017 to pick up where I left off. The Master became Missy and slightly more and less diabolical. I was vaguely aware that Jodie Whittaker took over as The Doctor and I wondered how that would work. 

The transition reminded me of the novels I had read in the 80s. Remember, I mentioned that many of the books I read had no covers? The Doctor Who novels featured the image of The Doctor appearing in the story, so if you are missing the cover and the first couple of pages, you have no idea which Doctor features in the story. 

I thought that Whittaker was pretty great until I reached the episode, "Fugitive of the Judoon". In that story, The Doctor really shines. The series owes its success (and failures) to the author. The Doctor and the actor who brings these stories to the screen has be spot-on in translation from mere words on the page to funny, scary, and amazing stories to life. 

In a strange collision of real life, check out The Other Side Blog. He is doing an A to Z of Doctor. Totally love it. 

Review of dB/dX

Title: dB/dX
Author: C P1R8
Year: 2023
Pages: 31
Rating: ★★★★★

I'm stuck, I don't know how to review dB/dX. It has no art. It claims to be a derivative of many B/X games but isn't. I don't know anything about the author except for the website Save vs Ennui and a thread on Reddit. It's version 1.0 and not all of it has been playtested. 

So... anything I've claimed to enjoy in the past does not exist in this product. Normally, that would not bode well for a review, but by evading my normal likes it has a very charming and engaging feel. I've flipped through the book page by page and realized it does have everything I like. 

This title is meant for web access and in being set up for that, it is excellent and makes a lie of my assertion that there is no art. Nowadays, we get glitzy full-color, glossy coffee table books as basic gaming material. This ain't it. The layout is sparse and elegant in a way only a web product can do. This is artful in its choice of fonts, symbols, layout, white space, and careful use of color. 

Bonus art stars, all around. 

I've already said the title is brilliant in a post and a comment to the author. I love the play on dx/dy, "the derivative of y was taken with respect to x". Here are the nuts and bolts of everything in dB/dX. Each and every section mirrors a great number of OSR products, except virtual every rule and mechanic has been reworked for the sake of brevity and simplicity. It creates this itchy feeling in my brain, where I feel like some sort of new idea has been unlocked and processed. 

It reminds me of one of my favorite OSR booklets, The Moldy Unicorn. 

I took a couple of hours to play around with this ruleset and it only increased my wonder at this elegant little book. 

There are no classes or races, just levels with one major twist. Characters have a background profession, something left over from their life before adventuring. The book lists a whopping 216 backgrounds, which impressed the hell out of me as I wrote a whole book on this one subject in twice as many pages with one-quarter of the professions.  

I have to be honest, I really dug into the character creation and combat mechanics over all other things. Since the whole system is classless and raceless, having good character-building and combat systems is necessary. While I know the author meant to omit demi-humans, nothing bad happens if you use them. You can have knights, peasants, dwarves, elves, or whatever you like. You'll only break a few things here and there but that can be patched over with any number of other rulesets. This happens a fair bit with OSR products, it's almost a design feature rather than a bug. 

One of the great features of this set is the imposition of morale on the PCs. It really changes the game dynamics. You exit combat rather quickly, so players had better be on their toes. 

I had a lot of fun with just the character and combat sections, but reading through the rest of the book just reinforces the author's original idea. This set can be a mini-hex crawl as much as a dungeon delve. Nearly every section of the old Basic-Expert set appears with a simplifying twist.

I really loved having this ruleset bust my rating system. In case the HTML broke, I give this five of 5 gold stars, a rating level reserved for just a handful of wonderful books. 

Where Did I Go?

It's been a hectic month. My wife is traveling for her job, which makes me a single dad again for a bit. Somehow, it is already spring

and the outside desperately needs work. There will be a garden this year. 

I'm throwing out some goals for the next 50-90 days: 

• Review of dB/dX (Done!)
• Review X-Wing game
• Review Classic Battletech  
• Review Battletech: Alpha Strike
• Complete artwork for POP-001
• Review Kingpin Comics
• Review Cosmic Comics
• Review Pulp 716 Comics

Many game shops in my area are also comic book stores, hence the reviews. I will probably throw the local places into their own tab at the top of the site.  

Over the last 2-3 years, I've tried some other social media outlets and rapidly discovered that I don't have time for all of them. I'd like to save some of the content generated from them and pull it back here. What that means to you is, you'll see more garden, craft, and cooking posts. I have already exited Minds, Twitter, and Facebook and I am working on exiting Locals. I am still pulling good content from there. 

Once this step is complete, you'll only see me here, on Ko-Fi, Dice.camp, and MeWe. I have recently entered the world of Discord, so once I get the hang of it, you find me there, too. 

In July, I will post about various outlets for content. To that end, I might re-start sharing web and sales stats under The Tek tab. 

Blarg! The Information Please!

Historically speaking, books contain a lot of "non-content information". An example is the author's name, publication date, writing date if necessary, various titles, the publication city, page numbers, and hopefully a DOI or digital object identifier. 

Of late, many books and publications are missing these pieces of data. Typically they fall into two distinct classes: The author/publisher doesn't know better or the author does not ascribe to copyright in principle. The first is just a lack of knowledge, so considered yourself on notice to make this information available in your productions. 

The second is more complex because of an earnest desire to not participate in a convention that is traditional but not obligatory. My suggestion is to do it anyway, convictions be damn. Even if you make stuff up. 

Why? Because what if "Anonymous" pens a document that becomes a significant point of data in history. This means it is the primary point of data in a stream of data. It would become difficult to ascribe it to a title or location in the stream making events prone to confusion. 

Right now, I am looking at dB/dX for an upcoming review. The book is very nice but lacks a real name, and has a nom de plume which is easily confused with a DOI and lacks a date, publication city, etc. 

When citing or referencing such a work, I end up with this: 

C P1R8. (2023). dB/dX v1.0, 1-31,  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1V_Y-bDPQit2bS7HqzRHwTXvlf9hkkLZB/view

If my citation looks like that, one has to wonder if I had a stroke. God damn, be kind to reviews and historians and put your name on your work, even if you make something up. 

Homosapien, Funky. (1999). dB/dX v1.0, Save vs Ennui, 1-31, https://drive.google.com/file/d/1V_Y-bDPQit2bS7HqzRHwTXvlf9hkkLZB/view

Anyway, I spoiled the surprise with annoyance. My next review will be of dB/dX v1.0. 

POP-001: Making a List and Checking It Ten Frickin' Times

I don't see why AI art is all the rage, but
boy do like it for blog posts.  

Revenants of the Lost Temple will be heavily themed, similar to but different than X-1 Isle of Dread. The climate is humid, very much like Veracruz, Mexico. It's not a primeval jungle, but a staged area. Populated regions run the risk of desertification. Abandon areas show their scars for decades and true wilderness is a riot of greenery. 

This creates an interesting scenario where getting lost on a road or trail is difficult, but leaving the beaten path can quickly shift the travelers into survivors. The Temple was lost due to a combination of environment, climate, and happenstance. Once abandoned, it was swallowed. Hundreds of years later and it is difficult to see the difference between abandoned and true wilderness. 

This flavors the sort of monsters the characters will encounter. Anything intelligent would have the ability to find the Temple. The Found Temple of the Revenants doesn't really ring. So much for my default idea of having the Kobold Tribe of Minwan wandering the area.  

I went through the monster's list from Old School Essentials and made a few choices based on the region and the challenges I wanted. I supplemented this list with animals native to Mexico. I suppressed everything I currently know about The Lost Temple and selected what seemed correct to the theme. 

Wilderness Monsters

1. Bat, Giant 
2. Bat, Normal
3. Boar
4. Cat, Ocolot
5. Centipede, Giant
6. Dryad
7. Frog, Giant
8. Green Slime
9. Grey Ooze
10. Harpy Eagle
11. Horse, Wild
12. Insect Swarm
13. Jaguarundi
14. Jaguar
15. Living Statue, Stone
16. Llama
17. Mule
18. Nixie
19. Pegasus
20. Rat, Giant
21. Snake, Python
22. Spider, Giant Tarantella
23. Spider, Normal Tarantella
24. Spider Monkey

I have a list of 24 critters. It's a bad wandering monster list because it includes a bunch of things that don't or shouldn't wander and more than a few would end in a total party kill. Many of these creatures should be static, events-type encounters. 

My favorite from the list is the normal bats. I've never killed a party with normal bats, nor would I suggest it. They are a perfect thematic encounter for setting the mood. Bats are nocturnal. Once a day the players should see them leave to hunt then hours later return to their caves, fat and satiated. It's not an encounter, it's a themed clock. 

The horses, mules, and llamas are more theming, they are lost, too. No one will die from these encounters but the sense of loss is reinforced by them. The pegasus and the unicorn give a sense of being out of one's normal place, a juxtaposition of the idea of being lost. 

The normal tarantellas, rats, ocelots, jaguarundis, and insect swarms are a part of the background environment, the living jungle. 

I'll have a whole post about the Living Statues, there is no intention of making the characters fight them. 

This leaves only 14 monsters on the wandering table and I think I will peel away 4 more to make the list 10 long. I think 10 monsters is perfect for a wandering monster list. At this link, I used 10 monsters for a whole campaign setting and I stole the idea from 3 Toadstool Blog over here. 

The goal of this product is to populate the Peninsula of Plenty with exciting, living places. In order to match X-1's page count, I need 15 more pages. Over on Ko-Fi, you can see more about this module. 

Shhhh.... A tiny hint of stuff to come (Update)

Welcome back. 

This could be a great thing... or all the sugar rockin' through my system. Anyway, it's the reason for the countdown timer to the right 

========================================================================>

As you can see, this is a module for 4 to 8 characters. I accidentally covered up the "Levels 1-3" statement with the background color. Not counting retainers. 

Most Favored Author - H. M. Hoover (Part 2)

And the experiment continues. 

Return to Earth: a novel of the future (1980)   

I really enjoyed this novel, one of the few that features both adults and children. Typically, adults are secondary characters for Hoover. 

Galen is a colony governor while Samara is a corporate magnate's child. This one novel could easily be a Traveller campaign all on its own. Dolmen assassins kill Samara's mother, thrusting the child into the role only Elon Musk could want, sole proprietorship of North America. Galen on the other hand simply wants to retire in his sleep hometown. At the end of the day, Galen and Samara don't need to merely defeat Dolmen, they need to counter the dying earth mentality that gave rise to his group. 

I reviewed Another Heaven, Another Earth (1981) back in April of 2021. It's a good book, I gave it 4 of 5 stars. But I'll skip the link to AbeBooks as a paperback is selling at $25. Too rich for my blood. If you follow the link to my review, you can keep an eye on prices without being driven to that high price point. 

The Bell Tree (1982) is another excellent novel, set in Hoover's default universe... which is also no available at AbeBooks. Jenny and her father discover the fossilized remains of fearsome aliens. This particular book is loaded with all kinds of details about alien lifeforms which are core to the central plot. 

The Shepherd Moon: a novel of the future (1984) is a solid performer in Hoover's universe. The protagonist is Merry, the daughter of two explorers. She befriends Mike, a young boy from the Shepard Moon. Later, Merry and Sara join forces with Merry's grandfather to counteract their one-time friend Mike as he unleashes strange forces upon the Earth. 

This novel is special as it clearly states the time period, the 48th century, and highlights some of the fantastic accomplishments of man, such as the artificial Shepard Moon of the title. There are odd references to the spacefaring culture Earth has created, and it is not without its problems. First and foremost, every spacefaring human is following "The Plan" much to humanity and every individual's detriment. There are dark hints that this culture is crazy paper AI, with every possibility arranged for by some long-gone author. 

Ah, Orvis (1987). If you like robots, this one is for you. Orvis is my all-time favorite robot tasked with an impossible mission: Destroy himself. Here is the link to my 5-star review, but I'll give you a little taste of how crazy this final mission is. I have not goofed on my tenses, I believe that Orvis exists beyond the end of all time. This bot was designed for war and after one war, all of the Orvis class bots were repurposed for space exploration. Orvis went to Venus for ground exploration. Not only does he survive a hell-scape planet for a long period of time, but he survived an Earth return mission. That is insane. 

The Dawn Palace: The Story of Medea (1988) is one novel I have never seen. It is one of Hoover's few historical fantasy novels. 

I recently picked up a copy of Away Is a Strange Place to Be (1990) but have not reviewed it yet. So, of course, I have a link. Be careful with this link as I see some copies for 6 bucks and others for $50. 

This one is an odd title, Abby and her friend Bryan are slaves in an artificial world and must escape before they age out and are euthanized. Whoa... tough love there. 

Not all stories about children are for children, but I would still place this in the YA group. 

Only Child (1992) is a strange title for Hoover as she tends to be more poetic in naming. However, it is an excellent book. Cody was born on a spaceship, illegally. Again, that strange paper AI rears its ugly head. In this return to Hoover's default universe, Cody discovers that the crew of the ship plans to colonize a world after they wipe out the sentient insectoid population. 

I reviewed The Winds of Mars (1995) in May of 2021. I feel that this one is one of Hoover's weaker novels, but it has a bit of charm to it. 

Annalyn Court is the daughter of the President of Mars. Mars experiences both rebellion and war with our child protagonist in the middle of it all. If you were concerned that she won't be able to survive, Hoover introduces the punniest robot guardian into the mix: Hector Protector. It's all right on the tin, "Hector Protect Her". 

If you like the Xanth novels of this time period, this would probably be a good read for you. While I did enjoy those Piers Anthony books, the charm of these types of stories rubs off rather easily on a re-reading. 

Or so I thought when I gave Winds of Mars three stars. In retrospect, the dynamic between Hector and Annalyn was a little more nuanced than I expected on my first read. First, Hoover follows Annalyn's life much longer than you would expect for a 190-page book. Annalyn goes from childhood to young womanhood. Initially, Hector is almost a god-like machine, but as Annalyn's world becomes much more serious and dangerous, his ability to cope with defending her was challenged. Hoover builds this slowly from the beginning to the end. There were zero surprises when Hector fails in his task. Which shouldn't have bothered me. The message of the story was growing up and doing stuff for yourself, with all of the knowledge and care of your parental units. 

(I like the term parental units, it's wrong and funny at the same time.) 

Whole Truth—and Other Myths: retelling Ancient Tales (1996) is yet another book I have never encountered. It was Hoover's last title as far as I know. 

Here ends the experimental post on Marketing and Monetization 101. I won't delete these two posts as I am using them for reference for future reviews. However, I have this powerful feeling that it's poor Marketing and Monetization. I hope it puts the nail in the coffin of non-DriveThruRPG links. 

In a future post, I'll be talking about DriveThruRPG. Stay tuned.