by legendsport

by legendsport

by Pods_basement

I can't remember any room specifically but I would say any room in the homemade adventures we wrote when we were just starting out (early 80s AD&D) When you would fill a piece of graph by drawing in walls with some of the strangest shaped rooms. Then grab the monster manual and put a beholder here, a bugbear right next door, and a basilisk down the hall - because the illustrations looked cool. Then follow up with a couple traps and a trip to the list of magic items at the back of the DMG. Much later, I heard the term "monster hotel" - very appropriate.

by rwinder

Related Item: Playing on the Edge

baba44713 wrote:

Absolutely agree on the AH LCG difficulty tweak being the perfect way to turn two short campaigns into a long one. It's pretty weird that not only was this not officialy (or unofficially) suggested by the designers, but rather the rules seem to go out of their way to remove this as a possible option. Baffling.

Thankfully, I imagine my usual Arkham-playing compatriot I think will be amenable to my suggestion of 3+5, so it'll at least get tried out. I guess it also depends on how magnanimous with trauma Children of Blood and its ilk are, but even then, I suspect that would put an even worse halt on the kind of "epic mode" the designers suggest.

by leroy43

An item RPG Item: A Visitor's Guide to the Rainy City has been added to the geeklist 2026 Annual Geek Review Challenge

by leroy43

An item RPG Item: On the Other Side (Cards) has been added to the geeklist [Roger's Reviews] The Complete Collection

by leroy43

An item RPG Item: Deck of Notices & Quests has been added to the geeklist [Roger's Reviews] The Complete Collection

by Epistle to Nemedia

On the western marches of Koth, in the bleak hills near the border with Argos and Ophir, lies an ugly scar in the earth that men call the Red Pit. From its depths, slaves hack blocks of fine rose-hued limestone from the ground – stone ultimately bound for the palaces and villas of Korshemish.

The slaves who are sent here rarely last a season. They live at the whim of the elements, toiling beneath the blazing sun by day and huddling together in their rags for warmth by night. Despite this, some still have dreams of freedom, although most dream only of the rich red froth of vengeance.

by Biotech66

Originally posted at www.throatpunchgames.com - A new idea every day!

Product- Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Mission Kit
System- Cyberpunk Red
Producer- R. Talsorian Games Inc.
Price- $7.50 here https://www.drivethrurpg.com//product/482282/cyberpunk-edger...
TL; DR- Now I can play Cyberpunk the way I wanted! 100%

Basics- Have you watched the Netflix show or the game?! Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Mission kit is the 2077 update to the Cyberpunk Red RPG set in 2020. This is a quickstart product with an adventure, token, and everything a GM and players need for a game.

Mechanics or Crunch: Cyberpunk is a fun system, but it was missing something. That something was the video game's wizard-like powers. This box set brings those to the game. And I couldn't be happier. I LOVE that part of the video game and was disappointed when I couldn't do that on the tabletop. Now I can. It's a smaller list, but It's also a quickstart for new players. There are also all the crunch you need for the show's characters. So, if you loved the anime and game, you now have the tools you need to play that version of Cyberpunk 5/5

Theme or Fluff- Cyberpunk Edgerunners is Cyberpunk Red, but it's got the anime stuff in the box. If you LOVED the anime, here is the fluff to Red you need to play. That's what I wanted, so this is solid. And this has enough world-building to show you how the world works as well. It won't and can't be a whole internet of history, but there is enough here to get you deep enough into the world it will be hard to come up for air. 5/5

Execution: This box is amazing. Honestly, for the price, you get way more than you expect. Tokens, multiple books. Lots of inserts. Maps. This is the whole 9 yards. I love what's here. The books themselves read easily, are organized into sections to guide and divide, and are hyperlinked because it is 2026. An awesome product. 5/5

Summary: I love this product. You get some solid stuff, amazingly executed, and the missing pieces to make the game and anime work on the tabletop. No notes, solid product. Just like the video game, a few years after it came out, this is honestly one of my favorite products in a long time. 100%

by Jpwoo

Exclusion Zone 'Botanist is a solo sketching/journaling style rpg where the player is a scientist entering a dangerous anomaly to gather into on the unique flora inside. My playthrough probably took about three or four hours all together, played over a couple of days. All you need is the short zine, two different colored six sided dice, and something to sketch in. Inside the zine there are the rules, a little map of the exclusion zone, a chart of escalating risk, and a prompt generator for strange sci-fi plants. 26 pages all together, the paper feels nice with a thick cardstock cover. The book is in black and white cover and interior, the art is a mix of photographs, liquid inky scary trees, and the majority of the art however is stylized graphic design simulating government or scientific documents. The book looks and feels good to interact with.

The core loop of the game is pretty simple. You start on the infiltration/exfiltration hex. You roll to see if you find a weird plant. if you do a series of prompts are generated, and you draw them. of you don't find anything. Then you check for corruption, move to a next hex and mark time on the time chart.

My game started out well. I rolled a 1 on my first search roll. There are different sub zones numbered 1 through 6, and you need to roll equal or under to find a plant. So I only had a one in six on the first hex. Next you roll for the size of the plant, between small medium and large. I got a medium result. The next roll determines the alignment of the leaves on the plant, alternating for me. Then you roll 2d6 to describe the leaf type. oblong. Finally there is a 2d6 roll for a weird prompt. this is where the two different colored dice come in, one die picks a list of prompts, the second die picks the prompt. I rolled black oily goo. I was sketching pretty quickly but the prompts were fun, i decided this what a small shrub fairly normal looking with the exception of black sap and the pool of oily goo around it, the central vein on the leaf was also meandering rather than straight.



Looking at the map there seemed to be two tactics for how to explore. You could go north, to take a short path to zone 5, where you have a high probability to find plants, or you could take a longer path to zone 6 where every move is a sure thing to find a plant. I opted for the longer path to zone six. i was getting pretty unlucky on the corruption rolls. The first three turns on the time chart are rated a 1 for risk, you roll two dice, and if both of them are equal or lower than the current risk, you take corruption. Of course I rolled snake eyes on my third roll, so i took a corruption early. The corruption track is just a series of six set prompts describing your body becoming more vegital. on the voyage in the hexes moved pretty quickly. i thought the rate of discovery was a good mix of progress and finding stuff. i did get some more bad rolls on corruption as well, so maybe taking the longer path was a bad idea.





With 4 specimens sketched, and some corruption I reached zone 6 and decided to call it for the day. I thought about the game a few times over the course of the day. Mostly about how I was enjoying the process of drawing to document, I was doing a thumbnail of the whole plant, then zoom ins on points of interest, the prompt in particular wanted you to describe leaves. i enjoyed adding little notes, it felt like a visual exercise for developing a monster or rpg encounter, using visual elements to convey function.

The next morning I played the second half of my game exploring zone six. I made it two hexes into 6. and I was about halfway through the clock where I was rolling over 3 to avoid corruption. so I turned around a little early, my corruption was pretty high. I did three drawings in zone 6. Coincidentally the weirdness of the prompts seemed to ramp up, with anti gravity and stunning sonic attacks.



[imageid=9645179 medium}

turns out those were the last three plants I found. I made a mad dash out of the exclusion zone apparenty, taking more corruption along the way, when i made it to the exfil hex I was on threat 5 with 5 corruption. i just needed to pass one roll to escape, which of course I failed, leaving me to join the forest just kilometers away from safety.



Like I said I had a good time with the game. I probably wouldn't do a second playthrough, but there are a few people i have in mind to give my copy of the game to I think they would enjoy it. This game is fun mix of sketching exercise with a little bit of an exploration game. I highly recommend picking up a copy if you are a fan of the movies Stalker and Annihilation, or you have fantasized about being an old timey biologist sketching newly discovered species.

I heard there is a kickstarter for a new edition coming up soon, so keep an eye out for that too.

Random design thoughts:

The plant prompts seemed very tree focused. Leaf styles and arrangements are prominent, I would have liked some more plant stuff to be in the generator. Notably I didn't get any prompts related to flowers. I'm not sure where is a way to get a moss or a lichen. The leaf types being on a 2d6 makes it very hard to get the rarer results, for example you can only get spines on a roll of a 2. I think i would have liked a flat chart rather than a bell curve. The omission of flower types, fruits, seed pods, rhizomes etc stood out to me.

The map did a good job of giving that exploration feeling, and giving you a path to escape on. but ultimately there isn't much for the map to do. There are essentially just two paths as I mentioned in the review. The fact that the map was inside the book meant i choose to draw my map out on a sketch page rather than print one off. i would have been nice to include a loose copy of the map in the game. The map feels like it needs landmarks, some kind of reason to go to different places. Alternatively, the map could have been reduced to a straight line path. I wanted either more map or less map 🙂

The goal of the game is undefined. you have a mechanical procedure but no indication of what is a good playthrough vs a bad one. I got 7 plants? is that a win? is that good, bad, indifferent? I could have gone in sketched one plant and left right away. The game feels like it wants you to press in take risks getting just one more hex, and make your escape. Your motivation to do that for me was entirely internal, it just felt like that was how the game wanted to be played vs the lack of guidance there from the game itself.

I would have liked an epilogue. maybe a prompt based on your previous sketches, and you making a final sketch of the plant you turn into if you succumb to the forest. Or if you make it out, some kind of prompt for what happens after you return to the normal world.

by Derang3d

Derang3d wrote:

Derang3d wrote:

Synopsis:
Supernatural prowess comes at a cost.

Clue #1: The story does not follow a traditional arc, a traditional protagonist, or indeed a traditional structure - but it does follow traditional tropes.
Clue #2: The show was filmed in Canada, but doesn't take place there.

Clue #3: Show has 2 seasons and 44 episodes total, three of which were bundled into a TV movie.
Clue #4: Show was narrated by somebody who was also in a horror franchise in the 90's, executive produced by somebody else who played in a horror movie in the 90's, and had guest appearances by somebody who played in a horror franchise and a horror movie in the 90's, and by somebody who played in a horror movie in 2004.
None of those people are primarily known for those roles - and certainly not for their roles in this series. The first two respective movies are out-genre famous, the "guest appearance" movies are probably less known outside the genre (even if they did get awards).
There were a LOT of guest appearances by people you'd know from other places.
Clue #5: I had a look and it aired on a Premium TV Channel. I'm not sure if that makes things easier.
Clue #6: Nobody other than the narrator is credited for more than 3 episodes.
Clue #7: It's not technically classified as horror. I'm not sure whether it's supposed to be, but on IMDB, it is not.b
Clue #8: It's a real live action TV series, not animated, technically from Canada, but actually from the USA.
Clue #9: Mostly realistic in setting, it does indeed follow sudden bursts of supernatural prowess in various people, who rarely get to enjoy it for long.
Clue #10: It's in a sort of weird sub-genre that's not quite horror, but perhaps a distant cousin to horror, wearing a different coat.
Clue #11: The series doesn't follow a person, but an object, that gives supernatural prowess.
Clue #12: Series aired after M*A*S*H, but before Scrubs.

Clue #13: Series is a Western, specifically I'd say light "Weird West".

 New Image for Midnight Melodies
Posted: Sun, 21 Jun 18:05:43

by MikeAnthony

<div>Midnight Melodies from Critical Kit Ltd.</div>