Skills: Stealth 50, Cthulhu Mythos 40%, Fast Talk 80%
Spells: Break Mind,create barrier of Naach-Tith,Create External Umbilus,fist of Fist of Yog-Sothoth, Shriveling, , Call Shub-Niggurath, create star mite
Crawling with Mites: the star priests body becomes a nest to the star mites. The star mite in its body make a nest and constantly produce mites with ints body as the host slowly deteriorates and holes and tunnels form in its body. The mites crawl across and through the host and can jump onto nearby creatures at the will of the star priest as an attack.
Sanity Loss: 0 on seeing a clothed star priest. 1d4/2D6 Sanity points to see a naked star priest’s body.
TL; DR-Another surprisingly well done year zero system. 99%
Basics– The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs…. Time to track down those replicants or be one! Let’s look at how to play.
Mechanics- Ah Year Zero… the system that Free League uses for everything, but is never quite the same. This one uses attributes and skill dice for each roll. Each thing you want to do be it hack a computer or shoot a guy is grab the attribute and the skill die for the activity and roll. Dice range from d6 to d12, but you do not use the basic number! What you do is check if you roll a 6 to 9 or 10 to 12. A 6 to 9 is one success, and a 10 to 12 is two successes. Doing a thing requires one success. Criticals have two successes. Slick and simple!
Rerolls- Rerolls and player control are the parts of the Year Zero system that mostly stay the same between all the different games they produce. If you want to reroll a physical thing, you reroll and if you roll a 1 on any die you take a point of physical damage. Do a mental thing, and you take stress damage on a 1. Humans can only reroll once, but replicants can reroll twice. However, replicants ALWAYS take stress on their 1s. This is bad – if you hit enough stress you basically need a reboot and your max stress can PERMANENTLY be reduced! But, the choice is always yours to make!
Combat- Another thing that is the same across Year Zero systems is combat and rounds. At the start of combat, players and the GM draw cards from 1 to 10. Players then take their turns doing simple things like moving and more complex things like attacking. Actions like attacking are handled just like any other roll described above. The more interesting thing is that weapons do a set amount of damage, and any two or more successes is a critical. Each weapon has a set critical die with rolls on that die above 10 resulting in instant death! Guns are VERY deadly!
Ok, Let’s discuss.
Mechanics or Crunch– I love the Year Zero system. I don’t know if I’ve ever honestly seen it entirely, as every Year Zero system uses a COMPLETELY different set of dice and die mechanics, but be it a pile of d6s, a single d20, or different skill dice, I LOVE it. It’s complex enough to build fun characters and simple enough to play fast with enough depth to keep even my Shadowrun loving self engaged. I also like player choice. This system always gives the players the option to do something, even on failure, and the story keeps rolling. The total package builds toward a fun system to dive into quickly, but you’ll find a lot to play with when you are there. 5/5
Theme or Fluff– Free League does their homework. Blade Runner is a dark, fun cyberpunk romp, but if you JUST saw the two movies you would miss large amounts of material. Free League did not do that. They dug deep into some crazy pieces, and there is a whole world that is out there now. Most adventures are gonna be against the corporation and world of the movies because that’s what your players know. But if you want more, there is a whole world to see there and Free League wrote that for you to find. 5/5
Execution– This book is well done with one small thing that drives me up a wall. First the good. It’s hyperlinked, laid out well, reads easily, and the art fits the aesthetic. This is a solid, well done book. What drives me crazy is the way the die system is discussed. You have a d6, d8, d10, and d12. The books refers to them as rank, D, C, B, and A. So, the GM screen needs to have a table on it so you can change back and forth from letters to dice. Just use the dice and leave it out. This drives me up a wall, but honestly, this complaint feels like being mad that they changed the color of the toilet paper in your favorite restaurant. If you get past my one crazy hangup, you will enjoy this book’s production. 4.9/5
Summary– I love this book. It’s got a simple, yet interesting system with a solid world and story put together in an excellently made product. I have my own idiosyncrasies, but if you want a dark, gritty detective story in a cyberpunk world with no magic, I would easily suggest this to anyone. Keep in mind, though, that this is not a big damn heroes game. Like the movies, this is a world without happy endings. If that’s not your preference in a game, then I would pass this by. I enjoy a good sad story, so this is one that I will bring to the table. 99%
A star mite is a child of the outer mother. It looks like a gangly starfish with six tentacles resembling hairy centipedes. Its center is a pulsing mass of yellow flesh. It is very week, but it moves very quickly!
STR 30
CON 30
SIZ 10
DEX 80
POW 10
Hitpoints: 2
Damage Bonus: –
Build: 0
Magicpoints: 10
Move: 10
ABILITIES
ATTACKS
Attacks Per Round: 1
Dodge: 40%
Fighting: 30% damage: 1
Burrow: 40% damage: a star mite can burrow into the flesh of a creature causing one damage per round. The mite be be removed by opposed strength checks.
Create Greater Things: – A star mite can burrow into a willing host, restrained person, or a dead body. If it burrows into a willing host or restrained person, it will create a star priest. It if borrows into a dead body, it will create a star child.
Sanity Loss: 1/d6 on seeing a clothed star mite. 2/1D8 Sanity points to see the mite burrow into a body.
Auditory General Linguistic Mental Skill Prerequisites trained in Diplomacy
You bolster an ally’s spirits within 30 feet. Attempt a Diplomacy check. The DC is 20. If you have expert proficiency in Diplomacy, you can instead attempt a DC 25 check to increase the number of affected dice roll to 2. If you have legendary proficiency, you can attempt a DC 45 check to increase the number of affected dice rolls to 3. No matter the result, the ally is temporarily immune to Pep Talk until they either Take a Breather or rest for the day.
Critical Success The ally gains a +2 status bonus to their next d20 roll. Success The ally gains a +1 status bonus to their next d20 roll. Critical Failure The ally takes -1 penalty to their next d20 roll.
Choose a class skill in which you have at least 1 rank and have the additional skill expertise expertise talent. As a swift action, you can spend a resolve point when an ally uses that skill and fails to grant them a reroll on that attempt.
Choose a class skill in which you have at least 1 rank and have the additional skill expertise expertise talent. As a swift action, you can spend a resolve point when an ally uses that skill and grant them your expertise die for that attempt.
Basics– We must face the weird wizard! Shadow of the Weird Wizard is Shadow of the Demon Lord brought to a much more traditional and family friendly world from Robert Schwalb. Let’s break down the quick start and then the review!
Mechanics- This is classic Shadow of the Demon Lord game play. It’s d20 based but numbers are MUCH smaller than your classic DnD 3.5. Bonuses to rolls are attribute – 10. A 12 means you get a +2 to the roll and a 7 would mean a -3. If things are good you get boons where you roll a d6 and add, and banes are roll a d6 and subtract. You get the sum total of boons and banes together and you get a total of up to 3d6 taking the best/worst to any roll.
Combat- Schwalb’s games are not crunch forward. It’s VERY quick! Monsters go, then players go. Each turn you get a move and an action. Interestingly enough, most dice rolls are either a d20 or a d6.
Ok, Let’s discuss.
Mechanics or Crunch– I will admit my bias here, but I love Shadow of the Demon Lord’s simplicity. You won’t have 20 pages of character sheet at level 10 (as high as this system goes), but you also get to play and understand quickly. But, it is a choice. If you need 20 different levels to pull in your game, this won’t be the system for you. Me? I love my 500 points of character building in Shadowrun and love my 1 die systems, so this is just a well done, slick system that will have you playing in under 10 minutes. Aside from that, the other controversy here is game length. Each session you level up. So if you start out level 0, you get about 11 sessions to play. That seems way too short, but in a conversation with the man himself, he brought up that most game groups might not even last that long till life takes them apart. His focus is on much more tight stories that you can complete. And again, that won me over. 5/5
Theme or Fluff– This is the most controversial part of Schwalb’s work, but this system doesn’t do what we would expect here. Weird Wizard is MUCH more traditional fantasy than Demon Lord. Demon Lord I felt was a bit more gothic and MUCH MUCH More grotesque. Now I love me some off the wall Schwalb based horror, but I can see how that would be too much for some people. This isn’t that. This feels much more in line with your classic fantasy. It’s got some interesting elements with the fey, but it’s wizards doing strange things and having to be put down. And given what I’ve seen it looks like it will be a fun ride along the way. 5/5
Execution– This is a free product, but it does give a bit of what to expect in the final production. It’s pretty bland in terms of art, but again it’s there for a system intro. And I have to say, I like it. The art of the kickstarter is good, so if that’s an indication of a full product, I’m happy. The other books have hyperlinks, art, and all the things I now require to be happy. For a free product, this points in a solid direction. 5/5
Summary– Pretty much whenever Schwalb puts out a kickstarter, I drop about 100 bucks getting all the digital toys. And this is no different. I love the simplicity of the system and the craziness of the world that is built. It’s interesting to discuss a new project where the controversy might be the lack of that gore/craziness. If you want a game you can play with the kids, those of a less cast iron stomach, or those who just want to be regular fantasy knights and dragon slaying heroes, then this is your game. A more traditional world with Schwalb’s simple mechanics, and solid production gets you VERY far with this product and I can’t recommend it enough. Check out this free product. 100%
A star child is made when a fresh corpse is infected with a star mite. The might extends it’s tendrils through the body. The mite is the only part of the star child that is alive and the only part that can be killed.
STR 60
CON 60
SIZ 65
DEX 40
POW 10
Hitpoints: 20
Damage Bonus: –
Build: 1
Magicpoints: 1
Move: 8
ABILITIES
ATTACKS
Attacks Per Round: 1
Dodge: 20%
Fighting: 30% damage: 1d3 + weapon damage
Armor: the star child takes full damage from all attacks, but will not stop till fully destroyed. An extreme success instantly kills the star mite and the zombie. If the body is fully destroyed, the mite will crawl from the body.
Sanity Loss: 0 on seeing a clothed star child. 2/1D8 Sanity points to see the mite in the star child’s body.
Throat Punch Games 