Low Life Redredged kickstarter

Low Life: Rise of the Lowly, a unique and hilarious post-apocalyptic setting for Savage Worlds is getting kickstarted for a new edition, with more stuff, more full color art and just general more? Why yes, yes indeed!

Within the Radiant Dome review

Within the Radiant Dome, written by Gavin Norman, is the second module in Geoffrey McKinney’s Psychedelic Fantasies line, which focuses exclusively on original adventures filled to the brim with new monsters, spells and items. The modules are home printed and devoid of any artwork, keeping the cost down, though a map of the Radiant Dome is featured on the inside of the detachable cover.

 

Fairness compels me to state that a) Gavin is my friend and GM of several years and b) I’ve recently written a module of mine own for the Psychedelic Fantasies line, so obviously I’m not going to be trash-talking either! So why write this review? Two reasons. Firstly I genuinely believe Within the Radiant Dome is an original and most importantly fun module that you should pick up, you’re missing out every minute that you don’t! Secondly I can write this review from the unique position of having played through the adventure twice with the author, which has given me a good feel for how the module can be/is intended to be played. How much enjoyment you get from any role-playing session is of course dependent on the people you play with and the quality of the GM; but reading through the module afterwards it’s clear to see Within the Radiant Dome is just a very well-thought-out product! Now on to the review proper shall we? A warning for my more erudite readers: this is a module designed for use with any basic (clone) D&D ruleset, and not, as the title would suggest, a Percy Bysshe Shelley pen & paper game!

Any adventurer worth their salt has heard of the Radiant Dome, a fabled place filled with riches that on certain occasions materializes in the earthly realm for a brief period of time. Some enterprising adventurers return as very wealthy men and women, some never return at all... tying it all together are rumours of a wizard that had a hand in the construction of the Dome.

The Dome features three distinct levels, each with their own feel and unique encounters. Some of these can be rewarding, others quite dangerous, but they’re all exciting and once you get your head around the oftentimes weird logic of the place, clever players who enjoy puzzles and a different approach to dungeons than simply loot/smash/kill should have a field day. There are quite a few social encounters, something which is always a nice change of pace in a dungeon crawl, which put the player characters’ alignments to the test.  I think it’s possible to run the module more ‘straight’, but playing and reading it I very much got a funhouse dungeon vibe. Your enjoyment of the module may vary depending on how much you desire ‘realism’ in your D&D game. As anyone reading this blog may have noticed, I’m a fan of wacky fast-paced adventures and all things gonzo, so for me it is an excellent fit.

Once the party makes it way down to the lower levels of the Dome, they start running into a variety of the more dangerous inhabitants of the Dome. I felt the combat encounters work well and are quite memorable thanks to the monster design. Players will do battle with a necrotic flesh golem, happen upon clockwork automata, flush a fetid fecal fiend back to the nether realms and run into a nasty beastie which the locals worship as a god. The adventurer who braves these perils will find him or herself rewarded with a number of interesting magical items which you could easily incorporate in other science fantasy games.

A minor gripe for me was that there are one or two instances where the adventure as written does not allow a save to prevent something from happening, something which I would change if I’d run the module, but on the scale of “screwing players over” it still registers quite low, and as it is easily changed to your personal preference it doesn’t matter much. Also as written there are occasions where the adventure might go off the rails if the players were to decide to take certain actions (i.e. boarding a space ship prepped for departure). Such eventualities should be prepared for beforehand, but otherwise the adventure is ready to be played out of the box, so to speak.

In conclusion, if you’re still reading this and haven’t already rushed over to Psychedelic Fantasies to get your copy of Within the Radiant Dome this instant, then I advise you to take the rest of the day off to do some soul-searching and find out why you hate fun so much, you poor creature.

Psychedelic Fantasies module #3

In the spirit of shameless self-promotion I'm very happy to announce module #3 in the Psychedelic Fantasies line by Geoffrey McKinney, author of Supplement V: Carcosa among other things. If you like the sort of thing that has appeared on this blog over the last few years (disclaimer: some of the monsters already posted here show up in the module again), you might also like The Fungus that Came to Blackeswell: a tale of a small subterranean village suddenly overrun by aggressive fungi. I can guarantee it's the best module penned by me that you'll read all year!

The Whole Hole: A Gadabout’s Guide to Mutha Oith: Vol. 01 Keister Island review

The Whole Hole: A Gadabout’s Guide to Mutha Oith is intended to be a series of supplemental books expanding on the Mutha Oith setting from Andy Hopp’s tongue-in-cheek post-post-apocalyptic Low Life role-playing game. Volume 01: Keister Island (V01KI) deals, not surprisingly, with the continent of Keister Island, also the starting setting for the plot point campaign found in the core book Low Life: Rise of the Lowly.

Let me start of by saying that just physically this is a beautiful book. At 222 pages, the book is chock-full of wonderful drawings and cool maps; only a small number of pages don’t sport any artwork whatsoever. V01KI is a perfect example of how having the same person both write and illustrate makes the resulting product more than just a sum of its parts. Personally I’m not convinced yet by the new, smaller format, but it admittedly does make the book easy to carry around and use around the table.

There is a lot more flavor text in V01KI as compared to Rise of the Lowly and I’m glad to say Hopp’s writing is just as funny and whimsical as his artwork. The book is presented as written by a famous explorer and we view the world through his eyes: this really does a lot to flesh out the setting and gives it a great deal more depth, even when it sometimes turns into a historical yarn which doesn’t provide the game master (or Boss as (s)he’s called in Low Life) with immenintly gameable material. The book is a blast to read, period.

To get the most out of V01KI it is advisable to own a copy of the core rulebook Rise of the Lowly, as V01KI doesn’t rehash already established races, creatures and arcane backgrounds to name a few, and since every idea penned by Hopp is unlike those of any other role-playing game you might know, readers without prior knowledge of the setting will probably have a hard time keeping up.

V01KI starts with a general introduction to the island, dwelling briefly on its many diverse wilderness and fluminous areas before moving on to two locations which feature prominently in Rise of the Lowly: the Garden of Smellemental Glee and the Bitchin’ City of Floom. Ninety pages of the book deal with Floom alone, and I must say it does wonders to make the locale come to life. Running the Rise of the Lowly campaign with the help of V01KI suddenly becomes a breeze, as you now have some sixty detailed points of interest and colorful NPCs to populate the city with. If you plan on running the plot point campaign, I would recommend V01KI for this chapter alone. In this part the book also cleverly provides the Boss with dozens of ideas for possible adventures, often in the form of a short hook when describing a particular locale or character, which is a good thing as V01KI sadly doesn’t feature any ready-made adventures.

It should also be noted that in many places the descriptions are necessarily brief and will require quite some work from the Boss to make them work in a on-going campaign. The other twenty-odd towns of Keister Island get a total of twenty-five pages among them. Also some interesting adventure locales are hinted at, such as the Temple of Smellemental Evil, but you will have to make the place up from scratch if the players actually want to venture there. Of course this is an understandable restriction due to space constraints unless Andy Hopp wanted to produce a tome the size of a phone book, but prospective Bosses should keep in mind not everything in V01KI can be played straight from the box, so to speak.

The rest of the book deals with new rules and game-mechanical features and additions. Like Rise of the Lowly, V01KI is intended to run on the Savage Worlds rules so this mean very little in the way of pages filled with stat blocks. Some new Edges and Hindrances are introduced; setting rules such as Body Buddies and the hilarious Gubertinct; new equipment; an expanded bestiary featuring a few doozies such as the Lichenthrope, the Sphincs and Some Kind of Weird Worm-like Thing With Teeth On Its Face; and three new playable races. Of these last the Funguys are by far the superior addition; the other two, Flews and Snells, I found to lack mechanical uniqueness compared to the existing races and miss a certain iconic quality that made the races from Rise of the Lowly such instant classics. Some of the new critters such as Shmurves or Blor Porples might have made more interesting player races.

Priced at $29.95, I fully recommend Vol. 01 Keister Island. It has charm by the bucketfulls and is still one of the most unique role-playing settings out there, even six years after the original publication of Rise of the Lowly. It won’t win over anyone who did not care for Low Life to begin with (game masters who are of the opinion locations, groups or creatures based on the theme of butts or poo have no place at their gaming table need not apply), but below the surface layer of often nonsensical and adolescent (though family friendly) humor lies a rich and satisfying world just waiting to be explored and used as the backdrop for awe-inspiring, glorious adventures, courtesy of the mad brilliant mind of Andy Hopp. Oh, and watch out for Throbbance the Grope, that guy really is a muthagooser.

Simple stats rolling for Savage Worlds

Something floating around the brainpan...Savage Worlds has a point-buy system but for those wanting a bit more randomness I present a very simple (and probably not very balanced, haven't done the math on the skills part) system for rolling up character stats instead.

Attributes: Roll 2D6 for each Attribute in order and round down to the nearest die type. Ie a result of 7 nets you a D6, a 10 a D10 etc. 2 or 3 would give the character a D4, unless you want to be brutal and dish out attribute scores of D4-1 and D4-2.

Skills: Instead of 15 points, you get 15 rolls of a D12. Decide the skill you want to improve and roll the D12; if the result is equal to or lower than the value of the linked Attribute, the skill improves by one step. As statistically this will get the character less improvements than the point-buy system, you can allow a "raise" on the roll of 4 below the target number to improve the skill by another step.

Low Life random character relationships V2

Updated with even more wacky entries! Find it in PDF form here

D100 Characters together because:

1 Characters have been BFFs all their lives, hanging out and doing everything together and could not bear the thought of being without their bestie for even a single hour.

2 Characters are really swell friends; so swell that one secretly loves the other, adoring everything the other says and does, worshipping the very oith on which he or she walks, but keeps this a close secret for fear of being spurned.

3 Characters are very distant cousins; very, very distant. These two branches of the family tree are about as far away from each other as possible without the tree splitting in half.

4 Characters were both adopted by the same family when they were very young. They led a happy, relatively carefree life and grew up together as siblings. When they came of age, their adoptive parents sat them down and told them the truth.

5 Characters were both adopted by the same family at a young age. Disaster struck when their adoptive parents got killed by giant slogs; the two got separated for a long time but have since reunited; the twosome has since traveled far and wide to find their real parents.

6 Characters are lovers, but time and clashing characters have made the spark go out of the relationship and now both are secretly trying to find a better partner; no one has worked up the courage to dump the other yet, however.

7 Characters are passionate lovers, if you can believe it.

8 Characters were for a time joint together at the hip due to a weirdo device and got so used to each other that they kept hanging out together after they were surgically separated.

9 Characters are both distantly related to yet another being, and met at a family party, which through a little accident on their part turned into a wake. They managed to slip away unnoticed, but a vague feeling of guilt now keeps them together.

10 Characters traveled the Oith together for a while and grew attached to each other during their various exploits.

11 Characters are or originally were pimp and protégé(e).

12 Characters have been hocus-poked to think they are father/mother and son/daughter, and now go through the motions of a normal family life every day.

13 Characters have been hocus-poked to think they are lovers; actually found each other disgusting before the charm was placed on then, possibly as a lark by some hocus-poker they peed off.

14 Characters were in a horrible accident together, involving a wiggly wiggler, two dozen goozera's and a big hunk of cheese. They both required extensive blood transfusions and are now considered blood relatives of the first degree under some obscure, crazy law.

15 Characters met each other at a birthday party of some one neither of them knew, only being there for the free booze. They met each other stuffing canapés down their pants and some mutual respect and/or shame now keep them together.

16 Characters grew up in same village/town, a feud existed between their families for generations, but they hit it off swimmingly, though they had to keep their friendship a secret.

17 Characters are friends; one of them only pretends to like the other, and hangs around the other because he or she suffers from an extremely rare disease that's slowly liquefying the character's spleen; the other character being the only viable match for a transplant.

18 Characters recently met each other, one mistook the other for a friend from the distant past, the other, destitute, opportunistically stuck around to take advantage of that error.

19 Characters met each other in a brothel, in whichever roles or positions they fancy.

20 Characters made a drunken, indecent wager involving a rubber chicken, one now owes the other a (huge) favor or (lotsa) clams.

21 Characters are often thought to be the same person (even if looking nothing alike); this got them into trouble at one point and led to the characters actually meeting each other to sort out this mess. They now hang out together to avoid confusion and getting each other into further trouble.

22 Characters both worship and serve the same gawd and met at a religious service. They now think they are fated to be together for some grand scheme or purpose.

23 Characters are siblings, but grew up hating each other. On her deathbed their momma made them vow to stick together and try to be nicer to each other.

24 Characters met in a convalescent home; one thinks the other is his/her imaginary friend, the other thinks the former is a drunken hallucination. Both agree they are the only sane people around.

25 Characters are object of study and observer; one is an amateur wisenheimer who for some reason has become entirely fascinated with the other.

26 Characters grew up in the same dodgy hood of a large town, and people from there always stick together and watch each other's backs.

27 Characters share an obscure hobby, interest or fetish that makes them stand out from society, and they bonded together in an 'us versus them' kind of way.

28 Characters share a troubled past. They came from a large "family" and their "gawdfather" regularly asked certain "favors" of them, but the sheer amount of euphemisms and quotation marks made them run off together, assume new identities and forgo their old life.

29 Characters hardly know each other; one is obsessed with the other and follows everywhere like a stalker, the other is understandably annoyed and/or creeped out by this.

30 Characters have a platonic relationship. They don't really like each other, but it sort of makes sense to hang out together, if you think about it.

31 Characters are rivals and the only reason they hang out is because they always want to get the better of the other and publicly humiliate him/her.

32 Characters both share the delusion that they once were one being that split into two separate ones; they are extremely protective of each other, thinking that if one dies, so will the other.

33 Characters met each other in a game of chance, where one won the other as a consolation prize, said character may or may not been given back his/her freedom by now.

34 Characters met each other working the same beat as hoinks. They experienced many crazy things together and frequently saved each other's behinds; after their stint they became inseparable.

35 Characters met each other while traveling the dusty trails; they both could use the company and started traveling together; during the long, lonely nights with nothing to do but talking a mutual respect/friendship grew.

36 Characters met each other during an exciting event in a fighting pit; either as spectators, fighters or first the one, then the other, as these things usually go.

37 Characters met each other on a caper; both were part of a different heap, burglarizing the same joint in the same night. The characters hit it off immediately, preferring each other over their fellow heapsters.

38 Characters met each other while buying some kickass gear at Wacky Wongo's Wondrous Weapon Workshop.

39 Characters met in a petrified forest, both running their legs off escaping enslavement and/or being eaten by horrible savages and bumping into each other by chance. One tried to screw the other over to increase his/her chances of escape; the plan misfired but this ended up saving the both of them.

40 Characters met when one fell into a nest of scary ass muthas and the other heroically saved the former. In reality the heroic character didn't know that the other was there, but he/she sort of went along with it once the rescued character started heaping up the adulation.

41 Characters met while hired for the same job, but the whole thing was a set-up. By sheer luck, both managed to get out of dodge and together went after their double-crossing employer.

42 Characters met while hired for the same job, but one was secretly working for a competing employer. Just when the job was about finished, the latter betrayed the other character and ran off with the spoils; the two met again years later. The wronged character pretends to harbor no bad feelings, but secretly looks for an opportunity to screw the other over.

43 Characters are friends; one character is actually paid by a good Samaritan to hang out with the other character for a while, because said good Samiratan took pity on the latter character because he/she is so unlovable.

44 Characters share the mutual delusion that they are the last two Hoomanracians on Oith; the characters must of course stay together to repopulate.
45 Characters both suffer from amnesia; both of them had a hand painted portrait of the other on him/her, and now try to figure out how they might have known each other.
46 Characters met in a dodgy dockside bar when a no holds barred brawl broke loose; characters were innocent (for once) but both met on the receiving end of a horc's fists. Together they turned the tables on their assailants and make quite the show of it, somehow.

47 Characters met in a raucous bar. One challenged the other to a drinking contest, but after hours of chugging fermented slog milk and eventually passing out, they agreed to call it a draw.

48 Characters met in a big friggin’ storm, sought shelter in the same hollowed-out mushroom. The characters had to huddle very close together to stay warm; now things are sort of complicated.

49 Characters were hired for the same ill-fated caper; the both of them barely escaped with their lives and royally screwed up their assignment, much to the ire of their employer.

50 Characters met in a filthy jail, sitting out a two year sentence; their imprisonment may or may not have been justified.

51 Characters met in a high security prison; their imprisonment may or may not have been justified. They were busted out during a spectacular jailbreak together with some other inmates by a mutual friend, who died during the escape.

52 Characters met each other in a back alley game of chance; one of the characters lost big and couldn't pay up. When the card sharp threatened to cut off some valued body parts, the other character fronted the loser some clams; his/her motives for doing so remain unknown for now.

53 Characters met each other at the craps table in a casino and suddenly scored big, now they stick together because they think they bring each other luck.

54 Characters secretly hate each other, and plot each other’s demise. Both are staunch believers in ‘keep your friends close, but your enemies in stabbing distance’.

55 Characters met on a disastrous adventure; they were the only two heapsters to survive.

56 Characters met on a luxury cruise; for different reasons both were stowaways, but were discovered and kicked overboard. The characters stranded on a deserted island and had to survive with just each other for company for two years before being rescued.

57 Characters met on an Agog-bound ship, chained together as rowers; both had been captured by horcish price-o-corns in a raid two days past.

58 Characters are tethered together by an invisible, hocus-poked rubber band, which has a length of about ten yorts, the punishment for successfully playing a prank on a dweeb.

59 Characters met on a disastrous adventure, in an act of extraordinary cowardice both deserted the heap to a certain doom (or was it?).

60 Characters met on a dangerous adventure; through some clever thinking and good teamwork they got out unharmed and saved each other’s lives.

61 Characters share a not uncommon birthmark; one of them was once told by a doddering weisenheimer that it would be of great significance in his/her life; now he/she hangs around the other character waiting for some mysterious destiny to kick in.

62 Characters met during a bad time in their lives. Both were members of a suicide cult, but even something as simple as drinking from a poisoned cup they managed to bung up, being the only ones to survive.

63 Characters met on the streets, running an elaborate swindle to trick gullible passers-by out of their clams.

64 Characters met when one of them, completely by accident, released the other from a charm that had been placed on him/her by a bad-tempered hocus-poker, which made the character act like a lovelorn schnooble.

65 Characters met when one caught the other running from the hoinks. When the hoinks found the both of them they assumed they were accomplices and proceeded to clobber the twosome; they then both ran away together.

66 Characters met when one character found the other breaking into his/her house at night. After a stern talking to the latter repented and turned away from his/her life of crime, and is now very thankful and feels he/she owes the other character one.

67 Characters met when one freed the other from the bunghole of a giant slog. Why he/she had his/her head there, gawds only know.

68 Characters met when one ran the other down with his/her wiggly wiggler.

69 Characters are friends; hang out together because both secretly think the other is dumber and uglier, and thus make him/her look better by comparison.

70 Characters met when one was out of clams and life-threateningly sober and the other bought him/her a drink.

71 Characters met when both went to get even with a slickster who had scammed them.

72 Characters were part of a heap which got lost in the Phesterance and eventually resorted to cannibalism; they rarely talk about it, but to this day sometimes get a certain ravenous craving.

73 Characters are sent on a divinely-inspired quest together by the same gawd.

74 Characters are sent on a procurement-focused quest together by the same snoot.

75 Characters briefly worked together as goons. It quickly became clear the characters weren't cut out for the work however, but by then they had become fast chums.

76 Characters served the same snoot. Eventually they got tired of being treated like peed-ons and quit together to start up their own enterprise.

77 Characters woke up in the same bed together this morning. Neither remembers the other, but no one is willing to admit it (yet).

78 Characters share a tragic death; one deliberately/accidentally killed the other character’s great-aunt, but everyone involved decided it was for the best and there are no hard feelings, quite to the contrary.

79 Characters were slave and lashmaster, but a sudden change of heart or event made them run off together.

80 Characters are goon and master. It's not always clear who the real brains behind the operation is, however.

81 Characters are legally bound to stay within 50 yorts distance of each other, the result of a previous misdemeanor and the experimental ruling of some hippilicious judge.

82 Characters were both in love with the same being, which got tragically killed, being crushed by a giant wheel of cheese cut in the shape of a heart, as the two characters kept staging increasingly grandiose spectacles to win his/her.its affections.

83 Characters were both in love with the same being, but he/she/it dumped both of them for a much more attractive specimen.

84 Characters were both slaves; they escaped together and have been on the run ever since, afraid their lashmasters haven't forgotten about them.

85 Characters were both slaves. During a daring escape they killed their lashmasters and ran far away; their past is now a mutual secret, a source of shared pain, shame and trust.

86 Characters were both slaves. When one earned his/her freedom he eventually came back after saving enough clams to purchase the other character's freedom as well.

87 Characters were in a love triangle, but after being treated quite badly they dumped the third wheel and became fast friends.

88 Characters were from the same village, the only survivors of a horde of savages who pillaged and burned the place.

89 Characters were from the same village, only survivors of a horribly lethal and physically embarrassing disease.

90 Characters were hired muscle for a gangsta; said gangsta turned on one of their mutual friends and out of a sense of loyalty or because he owed them a lot of clams, the two betrayed their employer to save their friend.

91 Characters were hired muscle for a snoot. In a very ill-considered move, one of them slept with the snoot's wife, which peed off the snoot to no small extent of course. He now uses his considerable resources to hunt the characters down; both are now on the run.

92 Characters were good friends once; one now secretly hates the other, being jealous of the other’s real or perceived popularity, wealth or good fortune.

93 Characters were good friends once; one now secretly hates the other for some perceived slight.

94 Characters think the other is his/her evil/good twin, cleverly disguised as to not arouse suspicion, and pretend to be friends, each planning to kill the other when least expected.

95 Characters are worshipper and object of worship, for real or perceived reasons.

96 Characters met wearing exactly the same outfit, which considering the outfit and the characters is pretty unlikely and both took it for an omen or something.

97 Characters were originally goon and master; after the former spectacularly saved the latter's life, the goon character is now treated like a friend and equal by the other.

98 Characters were originally booty hunter and prey. During the hunt the latter gave the former such sport that out of respect and admiration the booty hunter let the prey go without turning him/her in; this turned into a weird friendship of sorts, when they decided to start working together.

99 Characters for a time were both lowly peed-ons stuck in a dead-end job. One of them gained a small measure of success later on; the other now hangs around trying to score freebies and harp the former’s conscience.

100 Characters worked together in a shady business; one character then betrayed the other. This caused quite some problems for the other character; recently he/she tracked down the other character, who now no longer recognizes the haggard shell of his/her former business partner.

 

The Unflushables... coming soon

Hey everyone,

been a little quiet here lately, as I've been working on a full-blown adventure for some time. If you enjoy mysterious sunken cities, ancient evil gods and lots of weirdness, you might be in for a treat somewhere in the not too distant future. :)