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by Steve

May 17

1749

- English physician Edward Jenner (smallpox vaccine) [microbadge=13996]

1936

- American actor Dennis Hopper [microbadge=34613]

1955

- American actor Bill Paxton [microbadge=2067]

2009

- Minecraft first released to the public in development [microbadge=17364]

May 18

1897

- Dracula published [microbadge=4267]

1897

- American film director Frank Capra [microbadge=17267]

1952

- US writer Diane Duane, author of the Rihannsu novels [microbadge=43969]

1998

- Microsoft sued by US Feds in antitrust lawsuit [microbadge=139]

May 19

1944

- English-American actor Peter Mayhew [microbadge=33682]

1946

- French wrestler and actor Andre the Giant [microbadge=21734]

1952

- Jamaican-American actress/model/singer Grace Jones [microbadge=32538]

May 20

1310

- Shoes were made for both left and right feet [microbadge=15122]

1609

- Shakespeare's Sonnets published [microbadge=11109]

1873

- Levi Strauss patents blue jeans with copper rivets [microbadge=22219]

1891

- Cinema history: First public display of Edison's kinetoscope [microbadge=17201]

1908

- American actor Jimmy Stewart [microbadge=8164]

May 21

1908

- 1st horror movie (Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde) premieres in Chicago [microbadge=2137] [microbadge=2135]

1917

- Canadian-American actor Raymond Burr [microbadge=21188]

1952

- American actor Mr. T [microbadge=24608]

1980

- Empire Strikes Back premieres [microbadge=4494][microbadge=4494][microbadge=4494][microbadge=4494][microbadge=4494][microbadge=4350][microbadge=32323]

May 22

1455

- Start of the Wars of the Roses [microbadge=14409][microbadge=14410]

1813

- German composer Richard Wagner [microbadge=5872]

1859

- Scottish author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle [microbadge=17778]

1907

- English actor Laurence Olivier [microbadge=24272]

May 23

1701

- Captain Kidd hung after being convicted as a pirate & murderer [microbadge=2756]

1785

- Ben Franklin invents bifocals [microbadge=9610]

1910

- American actor & singer Scatman Crothers [microbadge=50398][microbadge=3717]

1969

- BBC orders 13 episodes of Monty Python's Flying Circus [microbadge=7852][microbadge=7853][microbadge=7854][microbadge=7855][microbadge=7856]

I'm sure this list can be improved. Feel free to offer suggestions for this and upcoming weeks. If you want your birthday included just add it to this geeklist: RPG Geek Birthday List

by sdonohue

Strange Skeletons is a 2026 release from Philip Reed Games written by Philip Reed and featuring art by Billy Blue. It is intended for use with any fantasy game and contains very little rules content.

Presentation
This is presented as a 26 page pdf with the unusual size of 8.27" tall and 5.83" wide. It is formatted in a single column. The front and back covers are color while the rest of the book is black & white. The layout is single-column throughout and their are several single or partial page illustrations of skeletons.

Content
This is a list of 22 creative ideas for skeletons. The book starts with a brief introduction from the author where we learn that Phil considers the skeleton the best monster ever and that he expects to be writing encounter ideas for them until he stops writing encounters. He also briefs us on a couple of actual rules being included in the book, then the book moves forward to the encounters.

The encounters range in length from a few sentences to just over a page. They range from some fairly simple things like a skeletal knight who stops the party from heading into a group of skeletal brigands then offers them food & shelter to discuss a plan to finally defeat them to more bizarre things like a skeleton hanging party where the skeletons take turns hanging each other until they spot some fresh meat. There's also fairly bizarre things like a skeleton version of stone soup where the smell of an oversized cauldron of soup is nearly impossible to resist and turns out to be made by skeletons climbing a ladder to throw parts of themselves into the pot. In another encounter, a skeletal scientist has eviscerated a villager to make a kite and prove his theory that any creature can fly.

Evaluation
This product has a lot of creative ideas for using skeletons in ways other than just as tomb guardians or rickety dungeon defenders. It's an inspirational work but it also has some fun and unusual encounters which will likely inspire GMs to even further creativity. GMs will likely need to spend a few moments creating appropriate statistics for the creatures in these encounters, but this is simplified by the fact that many of them are just basic skeletons in strange situations.

I think this is a solid buy if you're a fan of weird encounters, skeletons, or both.

by Rachel Carpenter

Lots of looking at foxes this past week led me to tweak the fox in Last Leaves today. I also needed to put the game's name on the card backs so that players can tell when a card is right-side up (square cards). But, that's all done and I finished up the rules. Box is also started. Tomorrow, I'd like to finish the box and continue working on the fox for Nine Tails. And I should do more on socials (and BGG) too!

Catch you tomorrow and hopefully I'll have some art to share as well :geek_grin:.

Happy Saturday and happy playing!
-Rachel

Thank you for reading my blog. If you liked it; then please click the green thumb [microbadge=23724] at the top of the page. If you really liked it; then please subscribe. And follow me across social media with my Linktree:
https://linktr.ee/rachelncarpenter

by Miriable

Players: 2+
Term for GM: Kami
Term for PC: Avatar
Page count: 310 (yes, you read that right)
Oblique references to real-world anime count: ∞
Comparable media: The entire media output of Japan since 1982

Big Eyes, Small Brains (BESB) is a sandbox full of tropes where you can run around doing anime-inspired buffoonery. That said, there’s still more of an established world in this game than in its namesake and obvious inspiration, Big Eyes, Small Mouth. The rules are neither as comprehensive nor as complex as BESM, yet maybe because of this, they’re sometimes better balanced.

Characters have four Stats: Strength, Speed, Intelligence, and Luck. Players divvy up 7 points between these, with a minimum of 1 and a maximum of 3. Most Classes have a preferred Stat, so you probably shouldn’t take, say, the Combat Butler Class if your Speed's too low.

Classes all generally fill classic party roles: the healer, the tank, the mage, the marksman, etc. A character’s beginning Skills are determined by their Class. All Skills begin at rank 1, and the character has a number of extra points equal to their Intelligence score to either build them up or add more, to a maximum of 3.

Characters then gain one Ability based on their Class, like the Idol’s Hypersonic Tune (a damaging sonic blast that can potentially push enemies away from you). You get more Abilities as you level up. Your Class also determines your initial equipment, plus a small amount of the coin of the realm (Ryo in the case) for accessorizing.

When attempting an action with a chance of failure, players roll 2d6 and add the relevant Stat plus Skill. If they don’t have the right Skill, they just add the Stat -1. Snake eyes is an automatic failure and boxcars is an automatic success. For non-contested rolls, the GM sets the difficulty. If it’s a contested roll, ties go to the defender.

This is a very simple, neat, easy dice resolution method, which also happens to be almost exactly the same as the classic Japanese RPG Sword World. Now I’m not saying the designer lifted the system wholesale, but I’m not not saying it either. (In 2013-ish, when this system was in development, /tg/ was already flogging around partial translations of SW 2.0. However, the rest of this system doesn’t resemble SW that much. I’m willing to give it the benefit of a doubt and chalk this up to some sort of 2d6 carcinization theory.)

When combat breaks out, everyone rolls 2d6 + Speed + Awareness Skill and acts in descending order. Rounds are 5 seconds long, and characters can move up to 25 feet and perform one item from a pretty standard action list: attack, use a skill or ability, draw a weapon, stand up/lie down, grab something, or take a second 25-foot move. There are no “held actions;” if you do nothing on your turn, you miss out.

Each character has a Defense Rating equal to 5 + their Speed + any armor bonus (up to +5). A character’s DR defends against every type of attack from guns to spells to flying cutlery. If an enemy rolls an attack above this number, the character takes damage somewhere between 1d6 and 2d6 + some number, depending on the attack type. At 0 HP, they pass out and will die if they don’t get treatment within as many rounds as their Strength score. Even after all that, they can be revived by anyone with a resurrection-type Ability, but only within the next hour.

Then there are items that affect blah blah, nobody cares, get to the actual game already, you cry. This is a parody game, how to roll the dice is secondary. Just tell us about the funny stuff.

Okay. You asked for it.

The book is written from the point of view of an isekai’d person from Earth who became the god of the anime world of Abika. This conceit only exists to justify the writing’s meandering tone. The enormous-eyed, unnaturally-colored-haired people of Abika live their lives as best they can: running late to school with toast in their mouths, dealing with all-powerful student councils, fighting ninjas while wearing maid outfits, fighting alien catgirls at regional festivals, choosing which of six supermodels to date while being a gormless milquetoast, piloting giant space robots right out of grade school, engaging in interminable tournament arcs when the author runs out of ideas, and about anything else you’ve ever seen happen in Japanese teen/YA media.

… Or so I thought at first. It turns out that there’s something like a plot built into the game setting, but you have to wait until page 200 to learn about it. In true BESB style, I’ll leave you in suspense until we get to that part.

BESB gives up six Classes: Senshi (Sailor Power Moon Ranger transforming warriors), Androids (all-rounder characters with an impressive list of interchangeable parts), Combat Butlers/Maids (agile fighters with a cleaning fetish), Heroes (tank-ish swordsmen doing what Himmel would do), Ayakashi (nature yokai filling the cleric role), and Idols (dancing bards with Cyberpunk 2020 Rockerboy vibes).

Next choose a Trait, which are optional attributes you can apply to your character. This list includes things like Chuunibyo, Crybaby, Family Business, Loli Body (grimace), Nosebleeds, Otaku, Tragic Past, etc. The list reads like anime’s greatest trope hits. These are entirely roleplaying prompts. There’s no bonus for taking them and no penalty for leaving them alone. If they amuse you, go for it.

Otherwise there’s the requisite list of wacky items (Magic Manga Pencil, Harem Whistle, Talking Cat Panties, Phone Charm, Demonic Contract, etc.) and weapons (surprisingly mundane, though there are things like the Bladed Serving Platter and Spiked Stilettos to spice things up).

You can buy cars, trucks, and mecha too. The vehicle and mecha rules are EXTREMELY rudimentary. Mechs are essentially big suits of armor equipped with giant versions of regular weapons. I mean, you don’t really need more than that for goofy Mobile Suit Gundam parodies, but Lancer this is very much not.

There follows a fairly comprehensive list of Foods, like takoyaki and omurice. These can be crafted with Cooking rolls and give minor bonuses upon consumption. It may be the most “anime” thing in this here anime game, and represents a missed opportunity in other games. No rules for cooking monsters, though, which feels like an oversight.

Now we get to the setting, which occupies almost the entire back half of the book. The world of Abika is divided into a number of realms embodying one or more sub-genres of anime. These realms are:

Mitakihara: Rural and/or coastal Japan-alike. Suburbs, safe streets, little shrines, woods, a magic academy, an interdimensional cafe, pretty much everything you’d expect from such a bucolic setting.

Sanzenin: The rich part of town, where most of the Combat Butlers and Maids in the world are employed. Home of the Bouran Academy, an elite school for stuck-up brats with gender confusion issues.

Siak: The wrong side of the tracks. Siak was once the high-tech part of town until the bottom fell out of the market. The BIOME Corporation churns out androids to steal the citizens’ jobs and drive them further into poverty. Gee that doesn’t feel frickin’ prophetic from here in 2026, huh.

Lancastar: The Shibuya neighborhood of Tokyo, expanded into a whole region. Idols and Senshi are thick on the ground here. Home to multiple rival rock’n’roll high schools.

Valis: Where the heroic fantasy happens. Castles, colosseums, adventurer’s guilds, barroom brawls, kidnapped princesses, rampaging dragons. A Hero’s paradise.

Vulkanus: All future war, all the time. This place is lousy with mecha, gleaming postmodernism, and overt fascistic vibes. Lots of ghosts in those machines, if you get my drift. Plenty of crises involving bubblegum, if you know’m sayin’.

Washinomiya: Shinto-land. Big shrines, cherry blossoms, shrine maidens, new years’ festivals, gurus muttering mantras along the side of the road, that kind of thing. The Abika version of the UN is housed here. Ayakashi feel right at home.

Yotsuya: The spoooooky yokai-infested zone. Superstition city. It’d be scarier if the descriptions of the stuff there didn’t remind me of the Ghost Stories English dub.

Fukusaku: Here we finally learn the “plot” of BESB. Years ago, a rogue Senshi named Tack planted himself on top of the tallest mountain in remote Fukusaku and declared war on anyone who wouldn’t bow down to him. In the ensuing struggle, thousands perished. When Tack was finally defeated, his death set off a dead man’s switch. A forbidden spell reduced Fukusaku to a radiation-ravaged hellscape. The rest of Abika abandoned Fukusaku and mages lifted the entire region into the sky. The few survivors there dwindle each day and horrible mutant monsters wander the land.

… Welcome to our fun wacky parody game. Geez. Note that the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster had happened eight years before this was published. This is so on the nose, it crushed my septum. Every other joke is cartoony clownhammer stuff, then you run into this big clump of dethbludgore. Hey! You got your Dorohedoro in my Konosuba!

Luckily the whole war stuff is only mentioned in passing in the other areas, though Fukusaku is still a place characters can visit if they want something other than sunshine and rainbows.

The book ends with over 70 pages of the enemies found in each area. Standouts include the Sadistic Student Council President, Motorcycle Gang Members, Space Pirates, Tween Witches, Kobolds, Ganguro Girls, Yuki-Onnas, and Insane Cultists. No intro adventure. That feels a bit weird considering how much space they had, but whatever.

At 310 pages, BESB is by far the largest pocket RPG I've found out there. In fact we’re probably approaching the theoretical limit of pocket RPG physics. Therefore, you’d think I’d be raving about how stuffed and huge and sprawling this game is. But somehow it still feels … sparse.

A lot of that comes from the game’s breezy writing style. Just like me, the writers of BESB do like to ramble. Here's an excerpt:

TAKING DAMAGE
Your Avatar takes damage whenever someone successfully takes a swing at them and their total roll meets or beats your Avatar’s defense rating. Your enemy will roll the appropriate dice and add damage bonuses if they have any. You subtract that damage from your Avatar’s current HP. Once their HP reaches 0, things start to grow hazy and grey. An Avatar with 0 HP can be healed, but only for a number of rounds equal to their Strength. During this period, they're considered to be dying. What happens after that? Well, I'm glad you asked! After that point, the Avatar is considered to be dead. As in doorknob. As in expired bologna. As in "toast."

As in croaked. As in snorting dirt. As in pushing up daisies. Wait, what was I saying? Oh no, I got off track again. I’m such a silly billy. My bad. Tehe pero!

There’s a looot of that sort of “wacky” digression. If you picked up the book and squeezed out all those asides like a sponge, the book would lose about a third of its volume.

That’s not necessarily a good thing, either. Without the extra verbiage, you’d start to notice that everything is underbaked. The whole game has a mish-mash feel. Each area in Abika has only three or four landmarks and about four unique enemy types. I’ve seen less wordy games with more variety.

And yes, you need to have a more-than-passing knowledge of anime to get much enjoyment. Otherwise nearly all the jokes will zoom freely over your head and continue on into orbit.

If you are an anime fan, well, here’s a game. It’s loose and unfocused and imperfect, but you can play it maybe. You and your friends may get a chuckle out of it. With a little work, you could even make it shine. As is, though, it’s only a fine beginning. Just … fine.


This review was originally published (by me) at https://ccxp.info/pocket-ttrpg-roundup-attention-span-games-...

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