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A fan podcast celebrating (mostly Swedish) RPGs including, but not limited to: Coriolis; Forbidden Lands; Symbaroum; Tales from the Loop; and, Alien.
Hello, and welcome to episode 229 of Effect, Critical Thinking. I'm Dave.
Matthew:And I'm Matthew. And we have a packed program for you in this episode.
Dave:We always. We always
Matthew:Don't we always?
Dave:We always say that anyway.
Matthew:We we do always say that because, you know, it's like us saying it's goodbye from me and it's goodbye from him.
Dave:It's just entirely pointless content that that pads out the length of the podcast.
Matthew:Honestly, we've got enough content. We don't need, sides asides like this to get to the full hour or over the hour. No. You don't. Where are we?
Matthew:Well, our content does include an old west update, which is now a regular feature for this podcast and will be until we have released Tales of the Old West. Indeed. We've also got plenty of news for the world of gaming, including a project that we haven't talked about much today, but one that you have worked on. So I'm kind of interested to hear about that.
Dave:Indeed.
Matthew:And a, frankly, I feel really crazy new year zero engine game that I might just have to buy just because of its craziness. Then we have got an essay with the the long promised episode comparing all the critical tables of the various Free League Year 0 games. I didn't go into War Stories, Dave. That's a whole different mechanic.
Dave:And, That's not true. Yeah.
Matthew:And that became a bit of a search to find the what is the deadliest Free League Year 0 game? The answer will surprise you.
Dave:Clickbait. Clickbait.
Matthew:That is our clickbait. You gotta you gotta stay listening to the end now to find out what the answer is.
Dave:It's a bit like when you see something Or skip forward. See something online on television where it says, could it be that such and such and such a well, obviously, if they say, could it be? The answer is always
Matthew:It isn't.
Dave:No. Of course, it can't be. Don't be fucking stupid.
Matthew:Yeah. Right.
Dave:Anyway
Matthew:So, the other thing we ought to say is, we have no new patrons to thank today, but thank you to all our existing patrons. Indeed. We love you all.
Dave:We do.
Matthew:You make this possible. We, yeah, we we we do do I I can't remember whether we've already mentioned this, but we we did our annual, fee to our hosting providers. I might have mentioned this couple of
Dave:I think you probably did, but, you know.
Matthew:And, you know, that can't happen without without the support of our patrons. So thank you all.
Dave:Indeed. Thank you very much. Right then. Moving on to the old west update. So, exciting news.
Dave:We've been working on the quick draw rules for the last, few weeks. The text is finished, edited, off to the layout artist, which is superb. The maps are pretty much done, if not actually done. The artwork is coming along very nicely, and there are some fabulous pictures, coming along from our artist, Malin. And,
Matthew:Superb was the word you used on one of them.
Dave:It was. And that is a superb picture. It's exactly what I was kind of thinking, when I when I suggested it, and it looks really good. So, yeah, that's great. That's coming along.
Dave:It's all on schedule, which is brilliant, because we need to have it done, within the next month, to make sure we can get it ready for UK Games Expo. But, yeah, that's that's great. I'm really pleased, how well it's gone. I also got back, feedback, which I don't think you were copied into, Matt, from Cool. Our friend, Saul.
Matthew:Oh, right. Yeah.
Dave:He's been giving us seeing that. Giving us the sort of Mexican Spanish perspective on, on everything we've done. And, yeah, he was very, very, positive about it. He he made a couple of comments about some of the Mexican naming conventions. But
Matthew:Ah, I was wondering if he would.
Dave:But only only as only for information. He wasn't just saying that we he felt we ought to change it. Basically saying that the Mexicans would often have a lot of names. They would often take their the the the pet the father and the mother's name. They would have a middle name, and they'd have a first name.
Dave:So there's a lot of names for for many Mexicans, or Spanish, I assume. But, yeah, great to know that. We kinda
Matthew:I think I've heard that or maybe Yeah. Even Sula told me before that a lot of Mexicans of Spanish descent Obviously. Kinda like to map Yeah. In their name, map their heritage all the way back to Spain
Dave:or something
Matthew:like that. Yeah.
Dave:And with, obviously, a great deal of pride in in that heritage and therefore in in their in their family names. But he was he was happy. He said he loved the names I've chosen. He thought they were the the meaning of the names was really relevant, which is great. And I Cool.
Dave:Cool. I did kind of intend that mostly. There might have been one name I threw in there that I hadn't quite realized the meaning, but the meaning of it is brilliant. We talked about,
Matthew:the the term, chivalero. Oh, yes. Because we had a bit of a discussion about whether there was a feminine form for that as well.
Dave:So actually, interest interestingly, Saul had never heard the term, which actually isn't necessarily an unsurprising because chivalera is a very specific term for a specific, you know, a a buffalo hunter, Mexican buffalo hunter, specifically at that time. So it's not a word that's in use now. It was not a word that was in use before. It was only Well,
Matthew:there's hardly any buffaloes to hunt nowadays.
Dave:Well, indeed. But it's but it's not a word that's come down in some other form. So that was great. But he he suggested that we could. For one of our characters, who's a female chivalero, he said
Matthew:One of our non player characters.
Dave:One of our non player characters.
Matthew:Yeah.
Dave:Because because we were talk we were wondering whether we should be chivalera or chivalero. And he said, well, you know, technically, it could be chivalera, but chivalero would be absolutely fine. So for for for simplicity's sake, I've decided to stick with chibilera. But that was great.
Matthew:I think that sounds great.
Dave:So so, I mean, so we had lots of feedback. Say, Neil did a great job editing. Really, really good job. Contributed loads to the text. So thanks thanks very much for his, very thorough and very, expert, work for us.
Dave:Yeah. So the But
Matthew:he is a professional editor.
Dave:He is. Yeah. And you can tell. So, that was great. So so that's a quick draw.
Dave:Other things that we've been doing, in terms of
Matthew:Before we go on the quick draw, we we we mentioned Saul. We've mentioned, Neil. Just wanted to give a shout out to Nick Brook, who is doing our layout for us.
Dave:Yes.
Matthew:And, Nick Brook is, I've got to admit, not a professional layout artist, but he has done a lot for a huge chunk of all the publications in the Johnstown Compendium, which is the equivalent of the Free League workshop for Rude Quest. Mhmm. So, so, yeah, he's a very experienced layout artist. And, I'm sure he's gonna do a great job for us. Yeah.
Dave:No. That's brilliant. And it was it was great with Nick to to to agree to to do this for us. That was fabulous. Thank you.
Dave:Yeah. So the other thing, in terms of the, rules and stuff, so I've been doing a bit of work sort of reviewing some of the things we wanted to look at. In the quick draw, I'd slightly changed the horse rules, which I think was an improvement. So I've just worked through that in the for the core book.
Matthew:In the main book?
Dave:The I've I've kinda gone over the the chasing and the manhunt rules again and made a few minor changes, but not not loads. But but it simplified slightly. Made it a bit bit, kind of easier to grasp, I think. So I think that works. That should work really well.
Matthew:Simplify slightly is generally what I always tell you to do. So even though I haven't seen those changes yet, I'm confident I will approve them.
Dave:Yeah. I mean, the main simplification I'm actually on the manhunt rules. I think the manhunt rules are pretty good and work quite well. So they they haven't really been changed very much. The the chase rules I think the the one problem I had with the chase rules was grappling with the idea that I wanted one set of rules that would work for any kind of chase.
Dave:For a horse race, horse chase, foot chase, you know, whatever it might be. Yeah. That led to kind of range tables that didn't not that didn't make sense. They did make sense, but they weren't consistent. So the ranges were different if you're on a horse and if you're on a person.
Dave:So what I've done is I've got rid of all of that. You now have, you just use the basic ranges that you have in the game, which makes more sense. Mhmm. And you get a modification. So if you are if you're on horseback and you are chasing a man on foot, you'll get bonus dice to your animal handling role in chasing down
Matthew:Right.
Dave:The guy on foot. If, you know and so the so it's simplified in that sense. So I think that works quite well. Cool. So I've been doing things like that.
Dave:I've now moved on to writing the campaign chapter. I've written about
Matthew:Oh, excellent. Yes.
Dave:A third of that so far. Cool. Cool. Cool. And that's cool.
Dave:I think that's that's coming along nicely. It's it's the way I want to do it is it's complicated as wrong word. I could, but I wanna make use of all the material that we we've created. So I wanna be able to draw in Steaming Rock and Carson's Folly from the introductory scenarios for the quick draw and for the book into the wider New Mexico campaign Yeah. Setting.
Dave:Because we've got that stuff there. We might as well use it if the if the GMs want to use it. So it's trying to draw that into, an overall kind of framework with Leonardo Springs as the kind of the recommended key location. But actually, I want to do it so that if the GM master set it in steaming rock because his players liked it having run that game or Carson's Folly for the same reason that you can actually do that. So, we'll see how it is.
Dave:Obviously, I'll let you know when I finished it, and you can have a read and, see if I succeed in that aspiration.
Matthew:And, also, the other thing, you know, about the different settlements is, they're of different sizes and, different states of development and things like that. They can be an indicator to you if you wanna make as a GM or as a group you wanna do your own town. You you've now got more examples to to pull from in thinking what what your settlement could be.
Dave:Yeah. Absolutely. And each of them is is kind of subtly different because they're set in different they're they're located in different places in in the state. So the reason for them existing is different. So, you know, Yanada Springs is in the Rio Grande River Valley.
Dave:So it's much to do with cattle and horse ranching.
Matthew:Farming.
Dave:Yep. That's what you're doing there. There were it's next to some mountains, so there might be some mining interest going on, but it's principally a
Matthew:Indeed, some mining.
Dave:Principally a ranching town. Steaming rock is set kinda in the Gila Mountains on these, southwestern side. That's principally gonna be timber, but also mining interest there. And then you've got Castle's Folly up in the north. Started out as a trading post and a hunting camp.
Dave:Yeah. So, obviously, there's a lot of hunting and stuff around that one.
Matthew:So my impression is that Carson's Folly is the smallest of the 3 in terms of population. It Yeah.
Dave:But yeah. So so all that's happening at the moment. The other thing I was gonna mention is, we've been thinking about some of the other things we need to do over the next few weeks, like how do we go about advertising and marketing what we're doing and getting people out there. So I've I've spoken to a couple of people about trying to use their reconstruct western reconstruction towns as a backdrop for us to do things like videos and stuff. So I haven't got an answer yet on any of that, but I am making progress.
Dave:So I I spoke to a guy who runs a, a wild west larping. I'm not sure if he runs it, but he's certainly involved in the organization of it. A wild a wild west larp called The Good, The Bad, and the Dead, which just this last weekend had one of their weekend larping sessions. And they obviously run it in a town, which I think is called Deadwood, but they don't own it.
Matthew:I believe that is their name.
Dave:Yes. They don't own it. They they rent it off the owner. So he's gonna put me in touch with the people who own it. And then I can talk to them and see if we can come to an arrangement where we can come along and just spend a couple of hours recording some videos in a authentic location.
Matthew:Mhmm.
Dave:And, you know, we can obviously promote them as well. So there's lots of little bits and bobs going on. All making progress in the right direction, it feels.
Matthew:Yeah.
Dave:So it's been a good couple of weeks.
Matthew:Cool. Cool. Cool. Right. So that's that's our little world of gaming going on there.
Matthew:What's happening in the wider world of gaming? I have noticed your name attached to a project that might excite a bunch of people. Do you wanna tell us more?
Dave:Indeed. So, Planet of the Apes role playing game, I I I joined the team for that, a year ago, I guess now, and, had the opportunity to work on on on some of the some of the material for it. It's, it's a game that's based on the old movies and the old movies only. So it's the it's the 5 movies from back in, what, the seventies. So obviously starting with Planet of the Apes, and then you've got or if I can remember them all, Escape from the Planet of the Apes, Battle of the Planet of the Late Apes, Beneath the Planet of the Apes, and another one, I think.
Dave:But yes. So I got to work on some of that doing sort of setting material and scenario and campaign sort of backgrounds. And, yeah, they announced that literally 3 days ago that, you know, finally, I think there's been a lot of negotiation with the IP holders, about, you know, how it's gonna be managed. So it's it's been a long process getting there. But finally, they've also got to the point where where they can, announce it.
Dave:And she
Matthew:announce it.
Dave:And they did that. And say, I think the the the cover art, the the the art picture they've put on looks looks very reminiscent of, I think, Battle of the Planet of the Apes, but it looks very cool with apes on horses with a sort of orange golden background sunshine behind them. And, and yeah. So it's using the d 6 system from the old Star Wars West End Game Star Wars system. The system that Drew Gaskett and Eric Thomas used in carbon gray That was also that also produced by them and, Magnetic Press.
Dave:So this is a Magnetic Press game with, obviously, Drew and Eric are kind of the leading designers and writers.
Matthew:Cool. Who's Eric? Do I know Eric?
Dave:Eric Eric Thomas. So he's, a game designer of sort of kind of like long repute. He's been writing stuff for for a long time. But he and Drew kind of came together to do Carbon Grey.
Matthew:Oh, bank.
Dave:Eric is, kind of like Drew's partner in crime for, for putting Planet of the Apes together. And a great guy. Really a real really, really nice chat. I really much enjoyed, chatting with him. But yeah.
Dave:So I'm I'm not sure there's much else for me to say. I think my work on the on the game is done. But it'd be interesting to see how see how it does. I mean, it's an interesting I mean, it's one of those things that, it's an IP that people are big fans of. I mean, it it it carry I was using the phrase nostalgizing.
Dave:So I think people nostalgize
Matthew:Yes.
Dave:A lot over Planet of the Apes. And when you
Matthew:Nostalgizing isn't a word.
Dave:It is now though, because I've used it and people understand what I mean. So it's a word. It might not be in the dictionary. I haven't checked.
Matthew:Definitely isn't in the dictionary. I've looked.
Dave:Have you? Okay. Fair enough. It will be soon if we use it often enough. And, actually, I think if you if you go back, I mean, obviously, the original Planet of the Apes movie was was superb, groundbreaking, of its time.
Dave:You've got some performances in in all of the movies, particularly like the likes of
Matthew:Roddy McDowall. Roddy McDowall.
Dave:Who I absolutely love. I could watch Roddy McDowall in anything, and I would enjoy it.
Matthew:As long as he's in an ape mask.
Dave:Not even that.
Matthew:No. No.
Dave:He's he's
Matthew:He does have the shingle as well. But but he's particularly good in an ape mask.
Dave:But I think, actually, some of the other movies back from then are don't come up to the standard of the original.
Matthew:No. No. Definitely.
Dave:So
Matthew:it's an interesting example of an early sort of franchise where they, you know, they had the IP, and, you know, they they they tried to make loads of movies and a TV series famously out of it. And and to really push at the boundaries of what the setup could do when, if you like, the the punchline of, oh my god. It's Earth. Okay. That that's gone in the first series, and that was part of the groundbreaking nature of Planet
Dave:of the Apes. And Completely. Then Yeah.
Matthew:And then your, oh, spoilers, by the way. Sorry. Sorry. Anybody who hasn't
Dave:seen Planet of the Apes.
Matthew:It's not a different planet at all. If you
Dave:haven't seen Planet of the Apes by now, then you deserve to get get it spoiled, I'm afraid. So probably means you're not that interested.
Matthew:And I guess we should also point out that this is, Ronnie MacDowell Planet of the Apes, not Andy Serkis Planet of the Apes, which is an entirely different IP. So not
Dave:part of it. So the role playing game is not isn't does not cover the the the modern movies. No.
Matthew:No. And And I guess it doesn't cover, what I like to think of as Helena Bonham Carter fringe acting Planet of the Apes over.
Dave:No. It doesn't cover that. No. Yeah. I mean, there were some there were some good things in that movie.
Dave:Tim Roth
Matthew:Which one? I
Dave:thought was The
Matthew:hell on the bottom card.
Dave:The I think that was the one with
Matthew:Tim Roth. Go on. Name 1.
Dave:Well, was that the one with Tim Roth in it? Tim Roth played the nasty bad ape. Well, whichever whichever film it was. It was the one between them. It was the one that came like 15 years ago or whatever.
Matthew:Mhmm.
Dave:Before they rebooted it again with the Andy Serkis movies.
Matthew:Yeah.
Dave:Tim the the good thing about that movie was Tim Roth was brilliant. Again, he's one of those actors that I think He is
Matthew:a good actor.
Dave:About anything.
Matthew:Good actor. Yeah.
Dave:And that's probably it, actually. The ending of that movie the end of that movie when the pod was coming down spoilers again, but actually frankly it's a shit movie. So if you haven't seen it don't bother. It's got this pod coming down at the end, and there's some kind of like messiah, divine ape thing that everyone was worshiping. And I was just going, don't have the ape in it.
Dave:Don't have the ape in it. Don't, for fuck's sake, have the ape. I'll fuck the apes in it. It was just so stupid. It's just, Hollywood at its worst for story writing.
Dave:Absolute garbage. Anyway, Doug Rush.
Matthew:Anyway, should we move on from Band Aid of the Apes and and the various iterations thereof? Because there is a second iteration of the Laundry Files role playing game, which I thought was worth a mention. And I can't really remember why.
Dave:Yeah. This isn't something that's really come across my radar. So you're on your own with this one, mate.
Matthew:Okay. So The Laundry Files is, a well, originally, a set of novels by Charles Stross about a government branch of our intelligence services called The Laundry, wherein they deal with Cthulhu esque incursions. And originally, of course, there was a Call of Cthulhu licensed version of that from cubicle 7 when they had a license to do a whole bunch of stuff with Call of Cthulhu branding. So the laundry files was originally that. Then at some point, cubicle 7 gave up or lost the licence.
Matthew:I'm not entirely sure about the politics around that. And so, of course, that meant they couldn't sell the laundry files anymore. It's not my thing at all. The setting's not my thing. The closest thing that is my thing that I love is, of course, Rivers of London, which we have talked about in episodes, Passim, which isn't isn't Cthulhu esque at all, but is kind of workaday English investigators of the supernatural.
Matthew:But Cubicle 7 have brought out a or I have announced a new version of Logic Files with now nothing to do with BRP or Call of Cthulhu. It's got their own system which I think they call the c 7 c 7d6 system.
Dave:Okay.
Matthew:It's a bit like year 0.
Dave:The dice pool, is it?
Matthew:You have a dice pool, and your dice pool is kind of, you know, attribute plus skill type dice pool, plus gear, I think. You'd sixes are not well, sixes are successes, but there's a target number. So sometimes it could be fours, fives, and sixes. And slightly, I think, slightly smaller dice ball, but because there's a target number that's lower than 6, very often, probably a little bit more chance of success. Yep.
Matthew:And that's all I have to say about, the laundry files, but I just thought it was worth mentioning because I don't know. It came up in discussion at some point.
Dave:Okay. And that that is that up on Kickstarter at the moment then? Has that just been kickstarted?
Matthew:Oh, I don't know. I think it may have been announced, but not yet on kick starter, but we should look out for it if you're interested. I will either put a link in the show notes to the kick starter if it is or I will put a link to the announcement if that's what we saw. There will be or there is on kick starter Lex Arkana, or a supplement for Lex Arkana which is, all about Rome, which I thought would interest you, Dave, and also about Atlantis, which doesn't exist. I mean, I'm
Dave:yeah. I mean, I'm aware of Lexarkana. I've never played it. Again, it it it falls into those the category of games It
Matthew:was interesting enough on its own. Why have why haven't Yes.
Dave:Thank you for answering my finishing my sentence for me. Yeah.
Matthew:It's only because I've heard it so often.
Dave:I know. I know. So I've I've never looked I've never looked into it. I haven't bought it. I haven't played it.
Dave:So, you know, I've heard some good things from, you know, from a number of people about it. But again, it's one of those that obviously, you know, that they felt Romeo on its own wasn't sufficiently entertaining or interesting. So let's let's chuck in mystical, magical elements. But yeah. So I'm
Matthew:Well, I I I have played it, and I will say it's got lovely art. The books are lovely, like loads of role playing games that come out of Italy. They they do a good job on that side. Yeah. The mechanics, when you look at them on paper, they take a lot of getting your head around.
Matthew:Mhmm. But actually, and I think they take a lot of getting your head around, actually, even at the table. But when you get your head around them, they're amazingly intuitive, and they they kind of rely on you effectively gambling dice. You know, you've you've got a stat, but how you create your dice ball out of that stat can either be more chance of a basic success or less chance of a basic success, but more chance of a critical.
Dave:Right. Okay.
Matthew:So there's a little bit of doing that, which you think is gonna be totally clumsy at the table, but when you get into it, you just get into it.
Dave:Yeah.
Matthew:And it it's one of those things that makes me think a little bit about how sometimes the platonic ideal of a system is I want the system get get out of the way of the game. I don't I don't want to think about the system when I'm in the world I'm in. Yeah. But in this one, with this gambling thing, there's a bit of a there's there's actually fun in playing the game, and the mechanics draw you into the world.
Dave:Okay. Yeah.
Matthew:So, I think it's not a game I'd invest money or time in myself, but it is one that I can hardly recommend if if you're at all interested in it. And it's just anything about
Dave:the Just because I wouldn't I wouldn't mind maybe picking up a PDF or something and having a quick look at it. But, again, it's probably not something I'd run.
Matthew:I think it might be worth it because I I again, I'm not the Roman historian out of the 2 of us, but, the what is the word I'm looking for? I'm trying now desperately not to make any noises, so I'm trying to think of the word. And I'm going to I'm going to turn this around. So in in the in the scenario that I've played, you know, I've played in just one adventure, I think over a number of sessions. And broadly, it was about werewolves.
Matthew:But the setting, the authentic Roman setting around which these werewolves were in was very, in my view, authentic given I know less about Roman history than you do. And the the the Roman politics and stuff like that was of more interest, actually, if you like, than the monster. The monsters were deadly and, you know, we we lost a player character quite early on in the adventure because were also pretty tough to beat. So I it it works. It works really well, and I would recommend that you at least pick up a PDF and have a look through it.
Dave:Yeah. Well, it's interesting as a little aside, you're talking about games that are difficult to, you know, I've got a, you know, a front loaded effort to actually get a grasp of. I I've I I had rain arrive a few weeks ago, which I think I mentioned on on an episode a little while ago. And it's it's sitting since then, it's been sitting in my living room waiting for me to pick it up when I've got a spare few minutes to sit on the sofa and have a read. And I've I've been doing that, but I I'm finding it really hard to, kind of, grasp the system.
Dave:And it's the it's the one role system, where you have kind of the width of your roll is how many duplicate numbers you get on your dice pool. Mhmm. And the depth of your roll is how high those duplicates are. And I'm sure once you get it to the table and play it a bit, it will be as second nature as anything. But just getting it to that point, it's feeling quite cumbersome.
Matthew:Yeah. No. Again, that's that's another one that I've played, and it it is actually really intuitive. It it is it's a one they call it the 1 roll engine because, really, it is 1 roll. So Yeah.
Matthew:Because it you know, and and those can interpret different things. How quickly do you do something? How how much damage you do when you hit a person?
Dave:Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.
Matthew:It it it it is actually great. But that's another one, I think, where the fun of the mechanics of the game actually draw you into the game.
Dave:I
Matthew:can't speak to rain, but, one of the games that I am desperate to bring to the table actually, and I think there may be a new version of it coming out sometime soon, which if it does come out, I or if it is announced soon, I'll make a big thing of, is Godlike. Yes. Where you play actually relatively ungodlike, relatively low powered superheroes in the 2nd World War. Yeah. And, yeah, I I really like that system.
Matthew:I can't remember what it was I played. I think I played World Talents, which is superheroes in a more traditional superhero setting, modern day. But, but Yeah. Yeah. I Cool.
Matthew:I think it's a good system. I like that system. Now where are we? Where are we? We've gone a little bit off the, running order here.
Matthew:I can't remember. Well, the
Dave:next thing on the list is, the savage world of Solomon Kane. Yeah. So announced by Monolith.
Matthew:This was an interesting story because we saw the announcement. 1 of 1 of our patrons bought it, I say, but I thought, oh, young Dave is gonna be doing some more work for Monolith shortly. I wonder if this is the secret game he hasn't told me about. But it turns out not to be the secret game you haven't told me about, Dave. Doesn't it?
Dave:I'm not working on Solomon Kane. No. And I think this is, as I understand it, a translation of a French version into English, I think, something like that.
Matthew:Yeah. So it it strikes me that, obviously, Dave and I, our listeners may be aware, we play Solomon Kane in one of our private games. We do. We're run by our friend Andy. We will never record it, because Yeah.
Matthew:Let's just say, Solomon Kane has a theme of redemption, and so we're playing some pretty terrible characters. Yeah. Yeah. Say no more. So you'll never hear us play Savage Worlds of Solomon's Gate.
Matthew:It's based on Savage Worlds, which is a system, a pulpy sort of system that, is again, it's another one actually slightly that maybe a little bit harder work than you think it's gonna be when you start. And I think
Dave:It has elements to it that that can be troublesome, I think. It can be fun sapping. But
Matthew:The shaken rules.
Dave:Yeah. Particularly. Yeah. But, actually, the games we played that that had that's been an issue once or twice, but not not consistently. Not a big problem.
Matthew:Yes. It does. It's so so there's some marvelous things. My character is a bit of a swordsman, and effectively, I get a bonus if I if I stand and tell people how good I am before, you know, thereby letting them attack me first. And how bad
Dave:how bad they are in in many in many different ways. Yeah. Let's not go there. Let's
Matthew:So, yeah, it encourages that sort of behaviour. So, yeah, it it it's a good I I think the shaking rules are a problem. And also, I think sometimes when you get into being magical, the powers can feel a bit sappy, but we're generally not magical in this game. Anyway, I think Monolith basically translated that into French or Monolith's parents company or sometime. A few years ago, they took the English language versions, Solomon Kane, translated into French.
Matthew:Since then, they have acquired the gaming rights to Solomon Kane in general, I believe. And and Pinnacle Entertainment who did the English version lost those rights. And I think the way I'm looking at it, they're thinking, well, we'll just translate those back into English or maybe even use the original English version, but with all our new French artwork. And particularly
Dave:mini ranges. Miniatures.
Matthew:Yeah. Yeah.
Dave:Yeah. So that'll be interesting to see what what comes out of that. That's up on Kickstarter from well, it's it's only a week according to Kickstarter. 15th to 22nd May.
Matthew:Right.
Dave:Unless that is their their range of when they're gonna be starting the the the project.
Matthew:Yeah. Or maybe they're just planning a really short one. It might be
Dave:a you
Matthew:know, it's not like they need to pay for any of the work. They've done the work.
Dave:Yeah. Yeah.
Matthew:They've got a bunch of assets, I guess, packaged together into a new English version. And,
Dave:Bob's your uncle.
Matthew:Put out there. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. I don't know how I feel about it.
Matthew:So there are there are certain things in the Solomon Kane that I really would change if I was doing a second edition. But I think, overall, I'd recommend it to anybody that might be interested in that sort of stuff.
Dave:Yeah. I've been I've been pleasantly surprised. I mean, when when Andy first talked about doing Solomon Solomon Kane campaign, I didn't really know anything about it. And and I was like, well, yeah. If Andy wants to do it, fine.
Dave:But I don't really know what I'm letting myself in for. And, but it's great. I've really enjoyed it. The setting is really cool. I know I've enjoyed our little group of characters and the kind of like, you know, nasty people that at least 2 of us are anyway.
Dave:Tony's character is actually kind of a nice one
Matthew:out of all of us. Relatively vanilla. I have no idea
Dave:what he's redeeming himself for. No. No. No idea.
Matthew:But I've
Dave:rules themselves are fine. They haven't got in the way. So a couple of occasions where, you know, over the long period we've been playing it, where we had, you know, the the repeated stun. What do you call it again? Kind of what the name of it is now.
Dave:But, basically, you get stunned. You recover from being stunned. But by the time you recover from being stunned, you get stunned again. So you're basically taken out of a fight for good, which
Matthew:is a
Dave:bit boring as a player. But that hasn't happened very often. So oh, yeah. I'm I'm I I probably won't back it. I don't have enough.
Dave:I'm not gonna run it myself. But actually, as a game system and a setting, it's really cool. I've I had my eyes opened to how good Solomon Kane actually is.
Matthew:Yeah. And it was interesting. So some years ago, Andy and I were chatting over something, and he was thinking about getting Deadlands and running that. He he wanted a new role playing game. And I thought Solomon Kane would be more up his street, and Deadlands is also well, there are a couple of versions.
Matthew:But, look, if you like the the modern version of Deadlands is Savage Worlds. And I thought, actually, no. Andy, I know you. I know you better than you think you you think you know yourself. You'd like Solomon even more.
Matthew:And I think it's really up and Andy Street. And we're playing it again this weekend, aren't we, I think, coming?
Dave:We are. Yeah. So yeah. Yeah. He's he seems to be enjoying it.
Dave:It's good fun. I've I've I've really enjoyed it. Yeah. It's cool. Good luck.
Dave:Good luck to
Matthew:you, mate. Finally then. Finally, the New Year 0 game, is now, put a link in the show notes. I'm only saying that because I can't remember who it's from, but it is called Elder Mythos. Okay.
Matthew:And what you do is you use the year 0 engine to play not just people fighting Cthulhu because, you know, that's been done. There are more than one system that has you fighting Cthulhu. This gives you the opportunity to be Cthulhu.
Dave:Okay. On
Matthew:a dice ball of 4 stats. I'm really intrigued. I'm gonna have to buy this to see how it works. But I have to say, if I was starting a game from the principle of you are the elder gods, I'm not sure that the Year 0 engine is the, system I'd start with. Mhmm.
Dave:Yeah. So it's by a company called Manna Project Studio. I haven't heard of that before. They've got 10 days left to go on their Kickstarter for it and they've smashed their goal already. They've, you know, they're way past that with a 1,000 backers.
Dave:Good stuff. Well done then. Yeah. Is it I don't know. I mean, everywhere I look, there's another game that's basically Cthulhu, you know, in another in another form or another skin or another setting.
Dave:And there seems to be almost an unending enthusiasm from players, for it. You know, I wonder where the well when the well of Cthulhu will dry will run dry. It doesn't seem to be yet. But, yeah. It's a it's a it's an interesting one.
Dave:Yeah.
Matthew:I'm I'm kind of more interested to see how they've adapted the mechanics of the a zero engine Yeah. Fit them than I ever will be in playing it because I don't think they're they're gonna have to stun me with some pretty amazing mechanics to make me go, yeah, I want I want to pick this up. But I'm pretty sure I will pick up the PDF just to look
Dave:Just to have a look
Matthew:at the Yeah. Yeah.
Dave:Well, it says here choose among 12 entities, including Hastur, the unspeakable one, and Cthulhu, the great dreamer, both of whom in in traditional Cthulhu sense are are kind of immortal and unbeatable. Each of its own attributes of powers, and each player will have to see unique and disturbing purposes.
Matthew:So I'm thinking it's kinda like a series of 1 shots. I mean, obviously, being, eternal ancient ones, they can, destroy and remake the universe multiple times. So I'd I'd like to think that every session is we how do we destroy the universe or who gets to destroy the universe and and remake it in their own image this time, I think. But we'll have to wait and see. But, yeah, do it.
Matthew:I'd do it in the one roll engine before I start, I'm I'm I'm packing a Xero engine to do it.
Dave:Yeah.
Matthew:It might be it's one of those ones you kind of feel you done you do it in in the amber doses system or something like that rather than something that, you know, limits you to a dice pool even though dice pools can get pretty big in in year 0. I can't quite see how it works here. Here. I mean, what sort of gear bonus do we add to?
Dave:Yeah. I'm just trying to I'm just trying to have a look and try to get a sense. It it it almost feels I I could be completely wrong because I'm this is the first time I've looked at the Kickstarter. It feels like there's, like, board game elements in the same time as, you know, claiming, you know, it is presenting itself as a role playing game, Where you perform actions on the scenario map, players will fight for the control of the setting. You can destroy your cities.
Matthew:And you see there's, you know, there's Cthulhu wars. If I want plastic miniatures of Cthulhu, then Cthulhu wars is the way to go.
Dave:Yeah. Yeah. Or Code of Cthulhu if you wanted a Roman version.
Matthew:Yeah. Well, if we start listing all the games that have got a theme around confusion We'll
Dave:be here all night. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Yes.
Matthew:So shall we, in fact, close the world of gaming for this episode? Look, we're already 42 minutes in. Yeah. Yeah. Do you wanna listen to what I've, discovered about critical hit tables in normal year zero games?
Matthew:Let's wait and see what the critical hit table is in Elder Mythos.
Dave:Well, yeah. Absolutely. It'll be, yeah, 1 to 66 or 11 to 66 dead.
Matthew:Everything's dead.
Dave:Okay. Let's let's test your critical thinking.
Matthew:A few weeks ago, we were talking on the cast about critical hits in year 0 games. We have taken a slightly different approach in tales of the old west, so I thought it might be fun to compare the critical tables of all 3 leagues year zero games. My assumption is that they were or are all pretty much the same but are any more deadly or more lenient than others? How have they developed over time? Is there anything that we can, at this late stage, actually learn?
Matthew:Now first of all, some broad standardizations for comparison. We will find, as we explore these tables, that there are some results that require you to roll up a new character. Or if it's your birthday, get so red in the face that your GM takes pity on you. I'll call these instakills. Then there are some results that are lethal unless the character concerned receives treatment, Successful heal, medtech, or medicurge, or whatever the name is it's called in that particular game.
Matthew:For the purpose of this comparison, we're gonna call these healing save results. The the rest the ones that don't kill you we'll call non lethal results. It's also worth mentioning that most but as we shall see not all of the tables follow the same d 66 format, which means, of course, just 36 results. These tables then will be the easiest to compare, but we can compare all the tables even the non conventional ones by working out the odds of instakills, healing saves, and non lethal results. The granddaddy of year 0 engine games is Mutant year 0.
Matthew:Now I don't have that game, but I do have genlab alpha, and I'm reliably informed, thanks, Dave, that the tables in Mutant and Elysium are the same. So in these games, you get an instadeath on 6566, which makes it a 1 in 18 chance. There is a 1 in 3 chance of needing a healing save to avoid death, And let's just be clear that 1 in 3 chance means 12 results out of the 36. Note that 4 of these have a negative one modifier to the healing role. There are 2 results, which is, I guess, another 1 in 18 chance that cause paralysis, which can be permanent if not cured within 46 days.
Matthew:It's worth pointing out that the time limits to prevent death with lethal wounds are shorter than the recovery period, which I guess makes sense. While the recovery period is always measured in a random number of days, the window to save a character's life in this table can be as short as d 6 hours, minutes, or turns. The very first game to be adapted from the year zero engine is Coriolis, the 3rd horizon, and it starts off with a big difference of its predecessor and, in fact, most of its latest stablemates. Critical hits can be bought with extra successes on your attack roll. Mutant and in fact, most of the year zero engine games only dole out the crits when a character is broken.
Matthew:Another difference with Coriolis is that it takes longer to break a character. The other games use the strength stat as hit points or a similar number of conditions before breaking. But because Coriolis totals hit points from both physical stats, it takes roughly twice as long to break a character. So most players look to take their opponents down with a critical hit. This results in a sometimes game breaking behavior that we have in the past dubbed crit farming.
Matthew:But we are not discussing crit farming here. We are here to look at the chance of death or lethal injury. Coriolis has the same 1 in 18 chance of instakill as year 0, And interestingly, no paralysis results. Indeed, we don't see much more paralysis from here on in. But lethal injuries requiring a healing save are much more common.
Matthew:There are 17, which makes it pretty much, more than 50 50 chance that death is on the line. And 7 of them, fractions are hard. That's, what, a bit more than 1 in 6, almost 1 in 5, come with a penalty to Medicurgy rolls. Is this the deadliest year zero engine gain? Not by a long chalk.
Matthew:Yes. The crits can be bought before a character is broken, but the characters in the 3rd horizon have lots of, high-tech armor to choose from. Let's see if we can rank the remaining year zero games to work out the deadliest. Not in the running is Tales from the Loop, where kids can't die or things from the flood where it is possible to die, but that's a narrative choice. The closest game to these 2, which does have a critical injury table, is Versen.
Matthew:Versen has no instakill criticals. Like Coriolis, the 3rd horizon, 17 results will require treatment to prevent death, but none of the treatment has a negative modifier. So Versen might be the least deadly game that qualifies for the pool. Death pool. However, it bids to be one of the cruelest.
Matthew:One result that leaps out is on the roll of 45, a mortal injury if not treated within 1 d 6 days of crushed genitals. My first thought is that they must be pretty severely crushed to be deadly, And my second is isn't it a pretty patricentric description? And maybe a crushed pelvis would be better. One unusual bonus in Versant is if the crit is serious enough, 61 to 66, you might get an insight which is a once per session bonus plus 3 or even plus 4 on a particular skill. It's worth mentioning that Versen also has mental crits, 36 of them.
Matthew:None of them are deadly, but 17 can be permanent if not treated within the time limit. Forbidden Lands has not one but 3 critical injuries tables for slashing, stabbing, and blunt force weapons. As an old role master hand, I think it's a good compromise to the, heady old days of a critical hit table for every single different weapon. But how deadly are these compared to other games and to each other? The first thing to note even though each one is a d 66 table is that there are roughly half as many different injuries in each.
Matthew:You get a slit throat, for example, on a roll of 63 or 64. The top 2 instakill results, 6566, are separated out, so there's still a 1 in 18 chance of instant death, but there are only 19 results on the table. 2 of which are instant kills, 7 requiring a healing roll to prevent death, and 10 non lethal injuries. 10 out of 19 means that you have over a 50% chance of a non lethal injury, and that is for slashing wounds. Blunt force is even easier to survive.
Matthew:There are 14 non lethal injuries. 1 in 18 chance of insta death from a crushed skull on 65 or 66. 64 gets you a broken neck, which won't kill you, but will leave you paralyzed if not healed. There are just 3 other health save injuries spread over 6 results, giving you a 1 in 6 chance of getting one of those. Stabbing is rightly a little more deadly.
Matthew:An instakill here on 64, 65, and 66, making it a 1 in 12 chance. 6 health saves spread over 9 results, a 1 in 4 chance of getting one of those, and just 8 non lethal injuries. We we shouldn't forget the horror table, which can give you some very cooler Cthulhu like mental conditions. But luckily most of them are only temporary. Horror can kill you though.
Matthew:Roll a 66 and you are dead of a heart attack. Twilight 2,000 is very different. It starts with a roll on a d 6 hit location die. That gives you a 50 50 chance of being hit in the torso and a 1 in 6 chance of being hit in each of the head, the arms, or the leg. Not very realistic, I agree.
Matthew:All Rune Quest players know that the most likely place to be hit is the left leg. And then there is a d ten table for each of those four locations, and a 10 on the head or torso table means instakill. I think that makes it a 1 in 15 chance, and you only have a 24% chance of getting away with a non lethal injury. Next highest in the deadliest crit stakes is alien. Four results on the d 66 table are instakills, which makes death a 1 in 9 chance.
Matthew:There are only 10 health save results, 6 of them 1 in 6 with a penalty on the saving role. The Walking Dead also has a 1 in 9 chance of an instakill and a 1 in 3 chance of non lethal injury, which means over 50% chance of getting lethal injuries and needing a healing safe, but it's worse than that. Of the 20 healing save injuries, 9 require advanced medical equipment. If you can't find it within the time limit you can't even attempt to make the healing roll. And the penalties for healing rolls on some of the injuries go as high as minus 4 or minus 5 which makes The Walking Dead more deadly than Alien.
Matthew:But the most deadly year 0 game is Blade Runner. Blade runner mixes things up again. There are 2 tables for crushing or piercing damage, and each has results up to 12. But there is a complication, different weapons have differing crit dice. Some roll a d 12, but Sonic rounds, for example, only do a d 6 crits, which makes them essentially non lethal.
Matthew:In a nice abstraction of complex realities blunt melee weapons generally have a critical die equal to the strength of the attacker. But with these complications, what are your chances of deadly wounds and insta kills? A decent d twelve crit projectile weapon is what makes blade runner the deadliest of all the year zero games. Insta kill results happen on 8, 10, and 12, meaning a 1 in 4 chance. There are 5 healing role lethal injuries and 4 non lethal injuries.
Matthew:Crashing injuries are generally less deadly. Only a 12 is an instakill. And there are 3 other lethal results depending on healing saves. Let's briefly finish with Coriolis the great dark. I'm not counting this in the league table because it's an unfinished game.
Matthew:But here are some observations about the critical table in the quick start. 1st, here are 2 paralyzed results, a callback to mutant, but only one instant kill. And there are only 6 healing safe results, just 2 with a negative modifier. At the lower end of the table, the less serious injuries are fewer in number, but each covers two results. Overall, for the game based in part on the novel The Terror, this looks quite like a gentle critical injury table.
Matthew:But be warned we've already seen changes between the 2 different versions of the quick start so it might get more deadly. See what I mean about unfinished?
Dave:Okay. Cool. That was a interesting kind of statistical run through of, of freely crits. Yeah. I mean, it's it's interesting.
Dave:I mean, there's a wide range of of potential death. I mean, how how I was thinking as I was listening to that. How does that compare to ours? It tells of the old west.
Matthew:That's kinda why I did it anyway.
Dave:Yeah. Which is which is a good a good thing. Because I think with with tales of the old west, I, you know, I think we've got a couple of insta kills, but only a couple Mhmm. 2, I think.
Matthew:Yep. We have only got a couple of them.
Dave:We've got one that's almost at insta kill where you you're gonna die in rounds. And that might be as short as one round unless you get medical aid, which if you roll a 1 on that d 6, that might be equivalent of an insta kill. Mhmm.
Matthew:You
Dave:then have including that one, you have 9, I think. 9 or 10, as you call them, heal crits.
Matthew:Yeah. Heal saves.
Dave:Heal saves and then the rest.
Matthew:Yeah.
Dave:But I but I think the thing so it doesn't feel that deadly. So that's No. 2 that's 1 in 18 chance of of an instant death. And usually, when you get the opportunity to make a role to save somebody, somebody comes to your rescue and they usually make the role. They usually succeed.
Dave:But but I think the thing the thing I found with with both playing and running Tales of the Old West is the fear in a player of the critical hit table is what is what makes it powerful. The fear that, oh my god, this this is almost a certain death sentence, when actually it's not. It's a risk.
Matthew:No. It's
Dave:a it's a terrible risk. You know, I don't I wouldn't wanna put my life on a 1 to 18 chance, you know, at any any point in in in, you know, ever. But I think the fear is great because people really worry. And with me as a GM, when I when I call a crip, I worry. But actually the the the the occasions where that crip kills somebody are are quite few and far between, which is probably right.
Dave:I think probably good.
Matthew:Yeah. So we ought to explain to listeners who who aren't at this, like, at this point, our, privileged or stationary patrons, then don't have a copy of the, Quicksart rules, at least, in in in their hands. We we're trying to combine the hit location stuff a little bit that use we saw in the Twilio 2 1,000 version with with the standard 36 table. So your 10s indicates the area you're being hit on and your your units indicates the severity of the wound.
Dave:I'd like I'd like I'd like to point out that I came up with that quick table long before twilight 2000 came.
Matthew:Well, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Matthew:And I I'm gonna take you down
Dave:is There was a
Matthew:we came up with that.
Dave:It was a parallel parallel development Yeah. Between us and 3 d.
Matthew:Well well, we we did it first, and and frankly, they probably saw this crit table well before they they were doing Twilio 2000.
Dave:But when I when I when I emailed when I mentioned it in an email to Thomas, his response was great minds think alike is what he
Matthew:said. No. You're right. I remember that.
Dave:So I assume he was obviously thinking something similar for twilight 2000. At the same time that we were putting this together for for tells the old west.
Matthew:We were doing that. Exactly. Yeah. So so there there are things that I think make Twil Tales of the Old West feel a bit more deadly than it actually is. Because it's it's about the same level of deadliness as as as Coriolis.
Matthew:So the first you get Coriolis and Yeah. And mutant year 0. But I think it feels a little bit more deadly because there's no armor in our game.
Dave:No. Indeed.
Matthew:And there are cold shots in our game.
Dave:Yes.
Matthew:Although we've we've we've we've just after playtesting, we've changed the the penalties on that. So that may be a bit different. And also, there are elective crits. So you can spend extra successes on crits, which in the year zero engine only happens as far as I can see in Coriolis.
Dave:Yeah. And I I I like that. I, you know, you know, you mentioned crypt farming in your piece. Mhmm. We've had conversations about crypt farming.
Dave:Now I I think the term is wrong for me, because crypt farming is a pejorative term, I think. It implies that it's a bad thing. And, actually, I don't think it is. And particularly, maybe in a wild west setting where you don't have armor, you and if you got shot with a gun, you know, you're not gonna shrug it off. It is gonna hurt.
Dave:You know? And I think, you know, the risk of getting a crit is is really important. And actually, in a gunfight in the Wild West, you wanna put your enemy down in one shot, because they then can't shoot back at you. So I think it makes absolute sense.
Matthew:Yeah. Absolutely. I I am absolutely convinced it is right for the genre. Mhmm. And I don't think it's crit farming.
Matthew:So I think some of the things about crit farming, we've dealt with. So I think can can we agree that when we talk about crit farming, we're talking about pushing the role to get more successes so that you get more roles to the quick table and choose the most of the role. It's kind of how I think about that.
Dave:Yeah.
Matthew:And so we we we started out in this game in playtest, you know, there was a version a bit like that where you could roll multiple times on the quick table and then choose the best one. We've actually got rid of that. So, yes, you do get spend more spend more successes on a crit, then the crit is more serious, but it isn't by just rolling 2 or 3 times in choosing the best one.
Dave:No. Because
Matthew:That I think is the element of crit firing that we've actually got rid of and improved.
Dave:Because because that basically completely broke the immersion. Like, oh, do I wanna shoot him in the shoulder or in the foot or in the arm? Or that you know, that just really destroyed the whole the whole ambiance of the moment. So now any extra successes, you get a bonus on your units die. On our table because we're doing it by location.
Dave:The units die is the one you've really got to worry about. Okay. It's not good to be hit in the head. But if you roll a 1 on the units and you get hit in the head, it's a pretty minor it's a minor crit. If you get a 6 on any of your locations, that's gonna be a bad hit on the units die.
Dave:So you gain you gain extra extra pips on your unit die if you get extra successes over and above those you need to cause the crit in the first place, which is great. And you just roll once and take what you get. And that works much better. That really works much better.
Matthew:Yeah.
Dave:But again, so but interesting, going back to your piece and coming away from Tales of the Old West for a moment. Interesting that, you know, they kind of chose Blade Runner to be the most deadly. You would think that taking those, you know, that list of games, you would have either maybe twilight 2000 or walking dead would be
Matthew:would be dead to be the deadliest
Dave:one. Would want death to be more more obvious.
Matthew:And were it not for Blade Runner, it would be Walking Dead that walks away with
Dave:the
Matthew:top prize.
Dave:It was interesting. I had a had a game of Walking Dead last week or week before, that I'm running with my Wednesday group. And we nearly had a TPK very very close. It could have gone horribly horribly wrong. 1 of them was killed.
Dave:1 of them got a serious wound that he had to fix himself in the end. But that was the first death. I was saying at the beginning of the game, I haven't killed anybody yet. This is what's going on? This is The Walking Dead.
Dave:And at one moment, it looked like it could have been the whole team was gonna get killed. But, it was great. Great fun. But, Yeah.
Matthew:It felt very dangerous. I I should I want to call on your experience with this game. Do you notice in the year 0, gosh. It's what I'm saying. In The Walking Dead game, in that table, there is a result for coma.
Dave:I'm just getting the book down.
Matthew:Excellent. Well done. So this is a result that is lethal, it says. But it also says you can't make a healing roll. So, we noticed in in Walking Dead that there are some pretty severe penalties on healing roles.
Matthew:Half the healing roles or a bit less than half the healing roles require advanced equipment, which I think is great for this game about, you know, a collapse in society. So if you haven't got a hospital and all the stuff you need you need in a hospital, then you you can't save somebody from dying. But one of the ones you can't save somebody from dying in, well, for different reasons is coma. So there it says you it is deadly, but instead of having an a or a b, it just says cannot take action.
Dave:Cannot take action.
Matthew:And I don't I I looked through the rest of the rules, and I couldn't see what that really meant.
Dave:I wonder if that's a typo, because it doesn't make sense on that column. That column is the penalty that you get as a player if you're trying to save that person's life.
Matthew:And some of the penalties are pretty serious in this game. You know, you get a minus 5. Yeah.
Dave:That's really quite grim. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. I think if I got that result in the game as the GM, I would probably ignore that and, give them a negative to try and try and save their life.
Matthew:My only thought was, is it so, again, going back to and in fact, I I think I remember something else I wanted to talk about a bit. Going back to yes 0.
Dave:Is is penalty here sorry just for that. Is penalty here the penalty that you get as a player for having suffered that critical injury rather than the penalty to the person trying to save you.
Matthew:Alright. Now, we we might be touching on something here. You played the game. I was imagining that isn't a an action penalty, but you might be right. But I do remember that they make very clear in the earlier games, if you aren't broken, that it all.
Matthew:Obviously, generally, you only get one of these crits when you're broken, but you also recover, you know, either somebody gives you a point or you recover a point over time anyway. So when you become unbroken, they specified in a lot of the games, yeah, and yes, you can treat yourself one of these injuries. And, obviously, you can't if you're in a coma. So does it actually mean there's no negative for that?
Dave:No. So no. I think what it is I'm just having a quick look here. So it's not super clear, but it says, the GM rules have died for recovery time secretly. You won't know how long it takes.
Dave:The table states if recovery time you know, don't forget about that. When the recovery time is passed, the penalty is removed. So that it doesn't talk about penalties before that, though I can see. But that strongly implies that that is a dice penalty to your character. And obviously, that makes sense with a coma because if you're in a coma, you don't get a minus on your actions.
Dave:You just can't act because you're in a coma.
Matthew:Yeah. Yeah.
Dave:So, it then says, if you're attended to by someone who uses basic medical gear, makes a medicine role, recovery time could be shortened. That's yeah. So I think the time limit is is how again, it's not super clear. The the time limit is how quickly you've got to act in order to save that person's life with a medicine ball. And the recovery time can be shortest with another medical role.
Dave:Mhmm. I'm thinking. That's the way I'd probably run it. But it's not super clear. The other thing I was oh, sorry.
Dave:You were in the middle of saying something, and I interrupted. Sorry. If you remember what it was you were saying.
Matthew:I don't know. I can. I I guess what we should I know you've been doing it, but maybe we should bring in Douglas, our, our patron who's been running this a lot. He may well have encountered this issue
Dave:Yeah.
Matthew:Already because he's playing with a whole bunch of kids of school age. He runs a school group, and they they thoroughly enjoy the walking club.
Dave:Yeah. Yeah.
Matthew:And I so some of them might be knocked into a coma. We should check with him and see how he Yeah. He Sure. Done that one.
Dave:So the interesting thing I was gonna just come on to next is looking at Walking Dead. So your piece is all about critical injuries and about how kind of how deadly, which is the deadliest game. Did you I'm not sure you did. Did you include the deadliness of the walker attacks in The Walking Dead? Because a walker attack can also be instant death.
Matthew:Mhmm.
Dave:And there's quite a lot of
Matthew:Without even being with the even touching on the crib table at all. I do not know.
Dave:Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. So let's take a look. So from certainly 50 no, 54 onwards to 66 are all death sentences.
Dave:Some of them are instant, some of them take time. And I think some of them Right.
Matthew:So you mean is there a there's another, d 66 table, is there?
Dave:Yeah. So when you take a walker, yeah, When you take a walker attack, if you mess up, for example, or if you're being fighting a swarm and you fail your role, you will then suffer a walker attack. So you roll on this d 66 table, and you basically take the result that comes out of it. And it was rolling on this table that that killed Connor's character a couple of weeks ago.
Matthew:Woah. So what then triggers a crit? Because I haven't played Walking Dead at all.
Dave:So triggering a crit, a trick quits quits? Let me try again. Put my teeth back in. Crits are triggered, when you are broken Right. In Walking Dead.
Dave:Yeah.
Matthew:So yeah. So yeah. Actually, then maybe Walking Dead is, as a whole, the most deadly game.
Dave:Mhmm.
Matthew:Because Even though
Dave:the walker attacks.
Matthew:Crits are more deadly in,
Dave:In blade runner.
Matthew:In blade runner.
Dave:Yeah. But the walker attacks bypass crits completely. They can just kill you in one one swipe.
Matthew:Wow.
Dave:Yeah. Wow. It's cool though. It was cool. It was it was a good death.
Dave:Right in front of Yeah.
Matthew:No idea.
Dave:Right in front of his brother, who was the one who then got seriously in. He got critical, and nearly nearly bled out from a a leg wound.
Matthew:Brilliant. Yeah. Cool. Brilliant.
Dave:No. Good. Good answer. That was excellent. I mean I mean, a couple of other things.
Dave:I mean, one, obviously, one one important thing that comes into all of this is kind of how you manage time in those in those in those Mhmm. In those channels. We've obviously done our own thing. I not not particularly changed at all, but done our own thing for Tales of the Odd West.
Matthew:We have made clear the difference between the different measures of time, haven't we? We started off Yes. Conflict with that. Yeah.
Dave:Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, is there are there other differences in the earlier years in Zero Games?
Matthew:So I I one of the things that struck me, particularly in the early games is I don't feel freely could kind of got their terminology right or, you know, had had sorted their terminology. So, when you look at how long you have to make the healing save that may save somebody's life, We're talking about days, we're talking about minutes, and we're talking about turns. Now, when I looked at that, I thought, well, that's weird because 1 d 6 turns is much longer than 1 d 6 minutes. But I think their turns in year 0 in Mutant Year 0 are more like rounds in the later games. And, you know, we've kind of scrapped a minute.
Matthew:So now very often we talk about a day, a shift, a turn which and a turn might be like 15 minutes if in Alien, for example, as you're
Dave:Yeah.
Matthew:If if you're searching a space or something like that. That could be up to 15 minutes. And then when we're in combat, we're talking about rounds. But I think, probably, I haven't played enough or any Mutant Year 0 or any of the derivatives, actually. I'm just realising to to understand that.
Matthew:But looking at it, I then I went, well, that's weird. But then I thought, oh, no. Do they by turn, do they mean combat round? And I think I'd I'd live with that. So it's interesting how that sort of terminology has developed over time.
Matthew:And
Dave:And it's standardized.
Matthew:We've got a little table in there to kind of talk about that as well.
Dave:I mean, in some respects, I like the idea of saying, you know, around is, you know, 5 to 10 seconds. A turn is 5 to 10 minutes. Yeah. You know, a shift is, you know, 5 to 10 hours. But then when you say you've got 4 shifts in a day, well, it's not 5 or 7.
Matthew:You haven't
Dave:got 14. Or 10 hours, is it? It's 6 hours. So it's Yeah. It doesn't really matter, actually, I think.
Dave:But, it's just an interesting little kind of thing that I noticed whilst we were doing Tales of the Old West that kind of a not an inconsistency. It was just a different way of of trying to put it together. On the one hand, you're trying to be loose and allow the GM to make their round and their turn as long as they want it to be or short as they want it to be. But then on the other hand, your your shift in the way we're doing it, otherwise, you know, we've done in things like Forbidden Lands is 6 hours. You know, there is there is
Matthew:no You know, that has just alerted me to a bit of a typo,
Dave:I think.
Matthew:This is exciting news for those of us who listen. Now, when we are recovering not critical injuries, when we are recovering, the
Dave:stat damage
Matthew:Quick or yeah. From from our shakes or from our Hertz, it's it's one point a turn, isn't it?
Dave:Yes.
Matthew:But in our table, we talk about the shift. One of the main main reasons for measuring shifts is recovery.
Dave:Yes. I thought that actually, because that doesn't really make any sense.
Matthew:No. It doesn't.
Dave:Actually, the shift I mean is much more about things like manhunting and tracking Yeah.
Matthew:Or travel. Or or longer tasks. Yeah. Yeah. We need to change that word, I think.
Dave:Yeah. And is that in the quick start?
Matthew:In the quick start. That's in the quick start. Yeah. Okay. Cool.
Matthew:Yeah. Gangs is back. Bloody hell. You see?
Dave:Gangs is fine on the fly. That's what you're Well,
Matthew:the other thing I just briefly wanted coming back to Tales of the Old West, and I think we've had the I know we've had this discussion before, but I just wanna revisit it. That in a lot of west in a lot of the genre in in fiction in the genre, wounds, of course, in this time before penicillin and antibiotics, and, you know, what's it? Potentially sterile environments. Wounds can actually be a lot more damaging and in the long term, more debilitating or even more deadly than we are giving them credit for in our critical injury table. Yeah.
Matthew:I just briefly wanted to return to that and say, have we made the right decision there? We we made a decision. It's one of those not fun rules that we decided to make it more fun by being less realistic. But I just given that range of deadliness that we've now seen in the other games, how do we feel about that, Dave?
Dave:So I I think, certainly for the quick draw, we leave it as it is. I don't think we should be trying to make any changes to that right now. So I I mean, I mean, I'm I'm a bit torn between yes. You're absolutely right. At that time, getting a a bit of dirty metal put through your leg, you know, the the disease is as likely to kill you as the wound is.
Dave:Yeah. So we've got the realism, I guess, of it against the how much fun is it to play somebody with gangrene or sepsis.
Matthew:Yeah. I mean, I I, you know, I I my character
Dave:in Sorry. Go on.
Matthew:In the last sorry. I just wanted to say, in my character in the last game that we podcast got a gut shot. And in that was treated, luckily, with a slightly hand wavy, roll at the end of the adventure. I only say that because I've been editing it recently. And it does made me think, you know, does a gut shot actually really write a character out of the game is what I was thinking doing this one.
Matthew:So but that would be that would definitely be unfun. You know, I don't I don't wanna be playing the next adventure, you know, lying on my bed like Harrison Ford in, in 1923, which is a very interesting Western TV series that I can recommend on Paramount. But he spends a lot of the time recovering from being shot. Yeah. And Now
Dave:that that obviously would be more realistic, but how how much fun how much fun is it?
Matthew:How much fun is it?
Dave:I mean, I see I I see I wonder. One of the things that that we that we could suggest to manage this. If GMs are thinking, oh, god. I wish I could have them getting disease after they got shot, is use the turn of the season role to to to dictate that. And it could be on, you know, on that table, you know, a personal fortune could be you're ill.
Matthew:Oh, you know that? The
Dave:GM can then I think I think one of them is you suffer an illness and it deals with it. You know, it might linger on a bit, but it deals with it kind of within the within that phase of the game, the turn of the season. But Mhmm. We could then we could then say to the GM, give some advice that, you know, this could be a festering wound or, you know, something else, of that ilk.
Matthew:And then leave it to them
Dave:to decide how they want to play in the disease. We've I had this conversation with, with Gabe Gabe Garcia when we were doing war stories. And it was a very similar conversation. Gabe was saying, oh, yeah. Now with diseases they were really common and it was a real problem.
Dave:And even though he's had, you know, sort of nascent
Matthew:And penicillin. He knew.
Dave:Antibiotics and stuff. Yeah.
Matthew:It was a new technology at the time.
Dave:Exactly. Yeah. It was kind of the first time it was used in any any any great sense. But again, actually, how much fun is it playing a soldier who's now struggling with gangrene or sepsis?
Matthew:Yeah.
Dave:And and we left the we put the rules in. But again, I think similarly with a this is an optional rule, you know. I mean, I I was of a mind of saying, you know, let's not bother because it doesn't really add to the fund very much. Gabe wanted to add that additional level of reality, so, or realism, so we so the rules were in there. But again, in a hands off, this is up to UGM.
Dave:If you wanna use this, great. If you don't, forget it.
Matthew:I think
Dave:maybe something similar for Toto would would fit the bill.
Matthew:Yeah. One interesting thing I spotted, just to finish this whole discussion off, is there's a little box out in the Year 0 in the Mutant Year 0 games that say, oh, this may take you you may not enjoy rolling on this quick table, and you may wanna simplify it, and this is how you simplify it, which is broadly speaking, take whatever they call the make make if you get broken, make a death save, essentially.
Dave:Right.
Matthew:And I think I I I just have never made those rules. I don't remember it being in Coriolis, but I have to say, in play, in our experience, crit roles have never felt too complex for us or too No. Breakery. Except in that, as we mentioned, that point where you're rolling 3 or 4 times and deciding which which crate you want to deliver in Coriolis. It the Crit table is lovely.
Matthew:It it is lovely. I really enjoy it.
Dave:And as a and as a GM, you know, I I'm quite circumspect and careful about when I force a crit on a on a on a player. Because, you know, it's it's it's a real moment of of life and death tension.
Matthew:Drama.
Dave:And Yeah. And and often I'll say to the players, you know, oh, I'm really sorry, but I think I'm gonna have to quit you on this one. Because the circumstances or the fight is so important, or the bad guy is such a, you know, such an important enemy they've got to fight. But it's great. It works, and the players always go, yeah.
Dave:No. I get it. I get it. And then they pick the dice up and roll to see what happens. No.
Matthew:No. They make you roll. Yeah. Because you're the GM. If anybody's gonna kill me, it's gonna be the GM that Well, I always have a
Dave:falling by death. I always offer it to the players. If they wanna roll their own dice roll, they can. But I'll roll it if they want them to want me to. So you you get a variety.
Dave:But
Matthew:Yeah. Yeah.
Dave:You know, I think the crit the the way crits work and the, like I said earlier, the fear of, oh, shit as a crit, coming on you against the the likelihood of it being instantly killing you or or killing you, that there is a lot more fear than there is real risk of death. And that's brilliant. But also the other way around, when you're creating somebody else as a player, there's a lot more, yeah. This is gonna be epic. I'm gonna put him I'm gonna put this bad man down with one shot against the oh, I've I've hit him in the foot.
Dave:Yes. But but it builds that moment. It builds that excitement. And I think it works really well. I think we've kind of got the balance pretty good.
Matthew:Yeah. I think you're right.
Dave:Cool. Well, we've banged on quite a bit again today, haven't we? Is it about time is it is it about time to end the Tells of the Old West show? This this podcast is becoming a bit of us just talking about Tales of the Old West. But,
Matthew:we're thinking about it a lot. We promise that. Shall we do something different next week, next episode in 2 weeks? So
Dave:Okay. What do you suggest?
Matthew:I have no idea. Okay.
Dave:We'll we'll think
Matthew:of something. Bit of homework. It's your your turn to think of something.
Dave:Okay. I'll have a think. But yeah. Okay. Cool.
Dave:But for now, thank you for listening everybody. And it's goodbye from me.
Matthew:And it's goodbye from him.
Dave:And may the icons bless your adventures.
Matthew:You have been listening
Dave:to the effect podcast presented by Fiction Suit and the RPG Gods. Music stars on a black sea used with permission of freely publishing.