My players don’t really like using skill feats, so let’s build for them!
General Skill
Prerequisites expert in Medicine
You’ve learned how to make sure your healing at least is a guaranteed to be more than the minimum. When you do an action that restores hit points, you reroll any 1s on any dice. Continue to do so till you do not roll a 1 on that die.
Product– Cryptid Creeks
System- Cryptid Creeks
Producer– HatchlingDM
Price– Pay what you want here https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/480826/cryptid-creeks?affiliate_id=658618
TL; DR-Girl Scouts Call of Needful Things! 93%
Basics– Time to fight the peddler! Cryptid Creeks is a cartoon monster of the week RPG where players are all members of River Scouts. Ghosts and an enigmaticWatcher (think Zordon from the Power Rangers) guide the new scouts as an evil thing called The Peddler gives gifts to people of Clawfoot and bestows curses on them, making them more evil every day. Will you have the day? That’s the hook, and let’s dig into how we play.
Base mechanics- This is apocalypse engine basically with additional parts built in. You want to do a thing? You roll 2d6+modifier. You score 6 or less, bad. 7-9 good with a but. 10-11 good! 12+ CRITICAL and you get some awesome stuff to happen.
Advantage and Disadvantage– If something is good, you have advantage and if something is bad, you have disadvantage. In either case you roll 3d6. For advantage you take the best two and for disadvantage you take the worst two.
Bad things- As you do things, you get misfortune. These are the bad things that happen and give you those disadvantages.
Investigations- The bulk of the game is spent trying to remove curses given to townspeople from the Peddler. To get rid of the curse, the scouts have to investigate. This mostly is the players running around and gathering clues via investigating with their abilities and checks. When the players think they have enough they make a check like above but use the clues they gathered as a bonus and the difficulty of the curse’s investigation as a negative. Know enough and you know how to end the curse.
Sashes and abilities-Players have tools in their arsenal to fight the evil. Players start with one of three classes that give the a watcher’s gift and a playbook move. Both of these give you places where you can throw advantage at a situation. You also have sashes from the past dead members of the River Scouts. You can remove one to gain a bonus to a situation. And lastly you recover clubhouse collections of random things that you can take with you to fight evil.
Ok, let’s review!
Mechanics or Crunch– What’s here is good, but there is not enough to fully help me. I don’t have much experience with the apocalypse engine for RPGs, though it’s easy to run a 2d6+mod as a system. But, the rules discuss moves. I don’t think that term is ever fully discussed. Also, there are examples of how to do all these things, but not enough to fully run through how to do it. That said, I think I understand it. Again, the math is 2d6+mod to see how you do. And furthermore, the game is not designed to be a smash mouth, grind the PC to a paste dungeon crawler. It’s a collaborative story where the GM and the players both have equally active roles in playing and running the game. It just needs more description of how to do this to really make me more comfortable running. 4/5
Theme or Fluff– I love Gravity Falls, and as a child of the 80s, I love Saturday morning cartoons. This is an episode of Scooby Doo that I get to play. If there was a talking dog class, it couldn’t get more on the nose. It’s got a lot of soul in its delivery and world building. 5/5
Execution– While I might be playing by ear for figuring out exactly how to play, there is a lot here. The basics are well covered with hyperlinks, pictures, layout, and two full adventures in the book. What’s more, there are player handouts, black and white maps of the town, character specific character sheets, and even handouts from the get go. This was three bucks for me, and worth every penny. 5/5
Summary-Cryptid Creeks is a fun Saturday morning cartoon. I like the theme and the execution of it, but I need more explanation. It’s very much a narrative RPG and not an adversarial RPG. This is a game you play when you and your friends want to tell a story together and don’t just want to write a book by yourself. So, keeping that in mind, you will have fun. But maybe read the base Apocalypse World book to get a bit more of an idea on the mechanics. 93 %
Let’s REALLY heal some people!
Cleric
Prerequisites Harming Hands
Your ability to channel the power of the gods grows. When you cast harm, you roll d12s instead of d10s and reroll any 1s.
thoughts?
People flock to your healing hands.
First Impression
You either sent to school to learn how to heal, you’ve mastered magic to keep your friends alive, or you just learned on the job enough to keep your chummers guts on the inside. You truly have the hands of a healer
• Cost: 8 Karma
• Game Effect: You gain 2 Edge for any test where you are attempting to restore physical or stun hit boxes via any means.
Thoughts?
Let’s REALLY heal some people!
Cleric
Prerequisites healing hands
Your ability to channel the power of the gods grows. When you cast heal, you roll d12s instead of d10s and reroll any 1s.
thoughts?
Let’s hit that bullseye!
Sharpshooter (level 1)
You gain a +1 bonus to your attack rolls. This replaces Watch Your Six.
Expert (level 7)
You gain a +2 bonus to your attack rolls, replacing the bonus from Sharpshooter. This replaces Situations Awareness.
Thoughts?
Haven’t built in this in a while, so let’s build more!
Archetype Dedication
Archetype Eldritch Armor
Prerequisites Eldritch Armor dedication
You’ve learned ways to burn spells to heal and protect at the same time. As an action, you can lose a spell slot of your lowest available to gain temporary hit points equal to your highest available spell slot and a +1 status bonus to AC until the start of your next turn.
Thoughts?
Product– Slav Borg
System- Mork Borg
Producer– Slavdom Studio
Price– $26.64 here https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/477706/Slav-Borg–PostSoviet-SemiFantasy-RolePlaying-Game?affiliate_id=658618
TL; DR– Mork Borg crossed with Night Watch!. 90%
Basics– Fight the Necromancer Zgol! Slav Borg is Mork Borg set in the eastern block during the fall of communism, but if the world was only goblins, magic, and the fight between the haves, the have nots, people with power(s), and the people caught in the middle, set with the love of cars that Mad Max brings to the table. It has rules for cars, races, multiple new classes, two COMPLETELY NEW ways to play Mork Borg, and even new character elements so your character gets some fun ways to mess with the dice.
Mechanics or Crunch– This is a fun mix, but suffers from some of the same elements that Mork Borg does. What’s here is absolutely amazing. But, I would like a bit more introduction to how to play the game. The new rules are fun, but they also don’t have explanations beyond the basics. Running through a few examples would really help. That said, all the Borgs don’t care about being exact with the rules. If you need perfectly balanced encounters where you can rules lawyer through the encounters, just keep walking. This is absolute a grind house epic set in the world of Night Watch (if you don’t know, go check out that underrated classic!) 4.5/5
Theme or Fluff– From my experience, all the Borgs ooze style and this is no different. Honestly, this book is DOUBLE the page count of the original and it uses a hefty bunch of those pages to build a bigger world for you to play in. It’s still gonzo urban slavic and end-stage communist era fantasy, but I am here for it. 5/5
Execution– Slav Borg is a Borg game through and through, and much like the patriarch of the family, this one sacrifices some readability for style. The book is gorgeous in a grime covered, ork infested, end stage communism kind of way. It is a solid love letter to a tragically underappreciated time and setting. That said, its absolute dedication to style hurts legibility. I also didn’t see hyperlinks, and that makes me a slightly annoyed in a book that came out after 2020. And finally, the book is good and gives two new ways to play, with one being a rogue-like adventure method, but it doesn’t give a basic adventure. Give me an adventure I can instantly play with my friends when I buy your setting book! But it needs to be stated, my issues are absolutely with what is not here, because what is here is amazing. 4/5
Summary– Slav Borg is in good company. I love the mechanics that are here. I love adding new crazy things to the world. I love the community that decides to take a rules-light world and just throw the craziest damn things at it. This is a new deep vision of a part of the world that lots of people don’t know about and a way to bring it to light. It’s well done, and everything from the miniatures used in the art to the lovingly crafted gritty story is handcrafted. That commitment to the grit motif does make it harder to read and leaves some explanation out. That’s what hurts the product a bit. But my complaints are that I’m wanting more. What’s here is phenomenal and if you want a Mad Max goblin commie block world where you fight the necromancer to save the soul of your family, then this is the book you need to pick up. 90%
Throat Punch Games 