Postcards From Avalidad - As Above So Below

Postcards From Avalidad - As Above So Below
by Miguel Ribeiro
Postmortem Studios, 2021

Available in pdf from Drivethrurpg:  https://www.drivethrurpg.com/

Available in print from Lulu:  https://www.lulu.com/

 The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

As Above So Below is a supplement/adventure to Postcards From Avalidad (hence, PFA), the cyber-horror-punk-noir-ish game I reviewed previously, on May 23, 2022.

The book is 96 pages long, including table of contents, OGL, and map.

Whereas PFA details the Moroccan city above-ground, As Above So Below details the city below the streets.  The city below can be reached from a handful of points from Avalidad, proper.  Avalidad, below, is called Agartha.  As with PFA, this supplement includes stats for both Actual Fucking Monsters (AFM) and *Punk.  As I mentioned on my review of PFA, I know very little about either game system.  From the character's stat blocks, I suspect I would prefer AFM.

Starting with the table of Contents, the reader will realize that this is a beautiful book.  I really like the cover as well, though I wish the picture on it was a bit less busy.  This is a really gorgeous book and it shows that with some extra loving, and a person who can do layout and graphics and all that jazz (I cannot), a relatively cheap print-on-demand book can be made to look fabulous.

The book has a quick introduction (evil monsters living below ground) and then jumps right into the game system chapter.  In this chapter, the author gives some quick notes on the two game systems for which it was written, and has a very handy several pages on loss of sanity, for those who want to rock the supplement in a Call of Cthulhu style.  There is a list of 14 different mental illnesses which a Referee might inflict on a character.  Interestingly, the book also says that the player can choose the illness himself.  I think this can make for a really interesting game.  I can see a couple of my players really having fun with it.  

The Sanity stat in the game is for *Punk but it could easily be worked into any game I feel, and the same goes for the supplement's fear rolls.  I would definitely work both of these mechanics into a game system I was using for the supplement, if the game did not already have the mechanic.

There is a list of "Appendix N" movies to watch for inspiration (I have seen 8 of them I think, and Dark City is the best of the ones which I have seen).

After this, we get into the meat of the matter.  

Chapter 2 explains how the "adventure" starts.  I use quotes since this is not a traditional adventure.  Those familiar with the author's Giallo "adventures" will feel right at home here.  The adventure has an overarching plot which can be summed up as, "A Portuguese sailor whacks off for some creepy alien entity, scores the gizmo as payment, some other stuff happens, and then the gizmo disappears into Agartha.  The gizmo is worth some serious ducats.  What do you do?"  There is more to it than that, of course, but this is the gist of it.

Like Miguel's Giallo adventures, you get a very simple plot and then a slew of NPCs and locations.  Many of the characters are repeats from the main rulebook, but have abilities altered slightly to bring them all to a similar power level, specifically so they can be used as player characters.  The author does note that some of them might actually have been killed previously since there were not designed originally as PCs.  There is a mix of ZoneSec (remember, this is what passes for cops in this setting), Yakuza, hitmen, hackers, mercenaries, and the typical ne'er do well types that players enjoy playing.  Side note, the character on page 35 looks like a model from the magazine Gothic Beauty that I might have, err, uhhh, noticed from part of my misspent early 20s.  On page 52 there is a picture of a gill woman, which is nice since the gillmen live down below, in Agartha.  This brings us to the end of chapter 3.

Chapter 4 is all about Agartha.  This chapter goes over some NPCs, including Pigface the Mayor.  There is a random encounter chart in this chapter and a few of the adventure locations also have random tables with treasure.  The list of locations is pretty fun and characters can perhaps find a copy of the Necromicon, some sexy underwear, a mutant mating ritual, and for those curious, there is a 33% chance that if you shoot someone in the head who is taking matters into her mouth of painfully and permanently "freeing willy", if you know that I mean.  

The book ends with a not-very-helpful map of Agartha.  I think that with the detail spent on layout in this book, a two-page spread with a more detailed map would have been lovely.

So, what does your not-quite-humble reviewer think?  I like it.  I don't like it as much as the setting book for which this is a supplement but I do like it.  It is a very pretty book, it has useful information, and works well as a supplement to Postcards from Avalidad.

⇒ GRIT: ★★★★☆  As a supplement, this book does what I believe it has set out to do.  I hesitate to use the term adventure for it, since, to me, an adventure is Keep or the Borderlands or Masks of Nyarlathotep.  The book is an adventure location for under the streets of Avalidad, and it is good for what it is.

⇒ VIGOR:  ★★★☆☆ There just aren't enough adventure locations for me.  I think that if the author cut out all of the possible player characters which were duplicated from the core setting, and replaced those pages with more locations, this book would be better.  I also would have loved to see a few pages with notes on other reasons why characters would adventure to and from Agartha.  The adventure won't take very long without a lot of stuff added by the Referee

⇒ GRACE:  ★★★★★ This book is freaking lovely!  The only two complaints I have are that the page numbers on what I assume to be an Islamic pattern are not readable (there are not that many pages like this) and the map at the end.  I'm not going to ding a star for these issues.  This book, to me, is a benchmark on what a home-based, indie rpg publisher can do.

Cowpunchers

Cowpunchers
Crunch-light Roleplaying in the 1870s Southwest
by Jonathan Torres "The Basic Expert"

Available in pdf from Drivethru RPG:   https://www.drivethrurpg.com/
Or in print from Lulu:  https://www.lulu.com/

 

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Cowpunchers is a short, 22 page, game.  It is set in the desert southwest of the USA, following the American Civil War (or 2nd Revolutionary War, the 2nd War for Independence, or a few other options, depending on where you call home).

The book is illustrated by the author, giving it a nice, consistent look.  

Cowpunchers is a d6-only dice pool system.  If you don't like die pool games, you probably won't like this one.  There is no limit for the amount of dice rolled from what I read, which can conceivably cause problems as characters grow in power.  Yes, this is also a level-based game; fortunately, it is classless, so the author did not need to shoehorn in "cowboy", "train engineer", or "Apache" into classes.

Right off the bat, we learn that the Referee in this game is called the Range Boss.  I like that.

Characters have three ability scores (vigor, finesse, and smarts), which should be self-explanatory.  Ability scores are rolled with 3d6.  The first brush with the dice pool system happens here.  Characters with low scores (3 to 6) get 0 "bonus dice", average characters get 1, and high scores give 2 dice.  These dice are added to a single d6 that everyone gets to roll to succeed at tasks.  Each ability score also has a modifier, which is used in rare circumstances.  The modifier matches the number of bonus dice.

Characters will roll from one to three 6-siders to ability score tests and saving throws, which are ability score tests.  This is one "core die" and 0, 1, or 2 bonus dice, based on ability score.

There is an average-sized list of skills and all of them could potentially be important in a campaign.  Most of them make perfect sense, a couple are for social encounters, and one is escamatoge.... gezundheit!  My favorite description of a skill is for "Cookin'".  When the posse sits down around the camp fire and ol' Cookie hands out the beans and bacon, a cookin' roll is made; if successful, the posse each gains 1d3 hp.  I know that I usually feel better about life after a good meal!

Characters begin with 3 to 18 skill dice, depending on how smart they are and how well they roll.  This is a place where one character can be significantly outclassed by another.  Doing some of that there cowboy math, I reckon that the average dummy (smarts 1-6) will have 4 skill dice, the average cowpoke will have 8, and that educated feller from back east will have 12.  I don't mind this spread but since there is no limit, from my reading of the book, of points to be assigned to a skill, our high IQ snake oil salesman from some yankee hellhole city might be able to drop 18 points into one skill!  This means 19 dice on a roll!  This is pure on crazy, I reckon!

This is where my first house rule would come into effect.  I would have some sort of limit to skill dice.  Maybe at 1st level, players can put 0-3 dice in a skill, allow a 4th die at 6th level and a 5th at 10th level.   Or, not allow skill dice more than half the character's level, rounded up.  Or, something. 

So, when the player grabs that handful of dice and rolls it, he is looking for 5s and 6s, which are successes.  Moderately difficult tasks require 1 success, hard tasks require 2, and extremely difficult tasks require 3, or whatever the Range Boss determines is needed.  A 1 or 6 on the core die is a fumble or critical.

Hit points are rolled with a d6, with a minimum of 6 hp for a character with no bonuses.  these hit points won't last long - see below.

The game has a paragraph for movement and one for advancement.

Next comes weapons, and here is where another eye-opener occurred to me.  Most weapons are reasonable as far as damage goes, basically 2d6 for most firearms, but perhaps with a +1 or +2 bonus, and a 12-gauge shotgun does 3d6 damage.  Just from this, the reader will realize that combat can be very deadly, very quickly.... and then we get to the rifles.... a regular old John Wayne-style Winchester can make 3 or 5 shots per round, depending on model!  A cowpuncher letting loose with his Model 1866 will do an average of 35 points of damage if he targets one foe!

The weapons section finishes with some rules on adapting other real world guns to the system.

The section on combat specifies that a character can do a move and attack, two moves, or two attacks per turn, and nowhere that I've seen limits the shots from a gun.  If a character stands still and uses both attacks with his $45 Winchester, does this mean he averages 70 points of damage?  If this is the case, I would absolutely remove the "shots per turn" from every weapon for house rule #2.

There is a decent equipment list, and I really like that there is a listing for housing costs.  The characters can pool their money and start their own homestead, right from character creation.  Equipment is recorded based on the number of "slots" it needs. 

I've already gone over the basics of combat and the combat section of the rules just has a handful of modifiers for shootin' tests, such as range, firing from horseback, etc.  Losing dice from the pool is a really fun way to do it and saves all them new-fangled mathing that real cowpokes don't know nuthin' bout, anyhow, other than maybe countin' heads of cattle.  There are a few paragraphs on duels, for those posses who want to do the old Main Street showdowns.

Next we get a couple of pages on cover, reactions, damage (you really, really do not want to get hit!), travel, and how much a feller ought to eat.  

A short section follows with some standard critters and townfolk.  The rules end with reaction rolls and random encounters.

The rulebook ends with a sample town, some buildings in said town, and a gang of the villainous sort, who enjoys raiding this town.  I think any genre game really needs to have a section like this.  I would have loved the author to have included about twice the number of adventure seeds (there are six) but I dig that one of them can lead to a supernatural campaign.

The book ends with a character sheet and the standard OGL that most games seem to have.

My overall impressions are that the game is really good.  There are a handful of sentences that needed another couple of read-throughs to fix some grammatical issues.  Of course, this Range Boss durn sure can't find the one that really stuck out to me, but trust me, it was there, two words were reversed.

⇒Grit:  ★★★★☆ The rules seem like they would really work, with the caveats I mentioned above in regards skill dice.  The book is very short but touches on all of the standard cowboy movie tropes.  A campaign based on any of the small handful of cowboy movies I've seen could be played through with this one book.

⇒Vigor:  ★★☆☆☆ My big issue with the skill dice is slinkin' in like a rattler into a bedroll.  If a character starts out with a god-tier skill check, what is the point of advancement?  Other than that pretty big (to me) problem, and the one sample town/adventure, I would really like to see 6 to 10 pages on some historical details, railroads, conflicts between the settlers and Indians, and between the various settlers themselves.  If the War to End Yankee Oppression just ended, I would like to see at least something on why this war led to hordes of people moving to the West.

⇒Grace:  ★★★☆☆ This game is good-looking, in its functional way.  It isn't beautiful, and some blank space between paragraphs would be appreciated, but there is nothing wrong with the book.  I think that if it was reformatted for a 6x9 printing, it would be much better.  The copy I got from Lulu is very floppy due to thinness, and I think that a smaller form would suit it quite well.  The art is really good, I think.  I would like to have some more pieces in it, especially in the equipment chapter so those of us who did not grow up on westerns have some clue what these items looked like.  I know exactly what a Winchester looks like and how it feels in the hands, but I wouldn't know a Mauser 1871 if it jumped up and bit me.

The Legacy of Zorro

The Legacy of Zorro Introductory Adventure Game
By Mark Arsenault
Gold Rush Games 2001

Availability is probably only through Ebay or on the "make it go away shelf" in your local gaming store.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

The Legacy of Zorro Introductory Adventure Game (LoZ, hereafter), like the Masters of the Universe game I reviewed a couple of weeks back, was intended as the first book in a line of RPG books.  

The Zorro campaign is set in 1820, in California.  Characters are cohorts of the famous Zorro.  Zorro cannot be everywhere at once so he recruits the player characters to help him in opposing the corrupt governor, comandante, and alcalde in Pueblo Los Angeles.

After the traditional "what is a rpg", websites, and all that jazz, the LoZ book gives some basic information on California in the early 19th century.  You find here forms of address for high status individuals, landowners, and rules for who can carry a gun or a sword.

Following the basic campaign information on the world of Zorro, there are 6 pages of rules, which constitutes the entirety of the rules!  This is amazing.  All games should strive for such concise rules.  The rules are based on Fuzion, which I might review at some point.  

I should note that there are no character creation rules.  Like the MotU game, these rules would have been included in a subsequent release.

Character abilities are ranked from 2 to 6, and include Mental, Physical, Action, and Movement.  Characters have special attributes, two of which make obvious sense - Hits and Defense.  There are a few other abilities that are specific to this game.  The first is Faith, which can be used so gain a bonus on dice rolls which are peaceful or beneficial to others.  The second is Pride, which the player can use to gain a bonus on dice rolls which are selfish or violent.  Both Faith and Pride can be used to reduce damage to the character in combat.  The last special attribute is called Z Points.  By spending a Z Point a character can accomplish extremely heroic feats.  Swinging from a chandelier and flipping into a triple lindy through the glass window, and landing in the saddle of your horse would be a good example.

The list of skills is very broad and very brief - which is perfect for a skill-based game.  Actually, the skill list in LoZ is about perfect.  The skills are:  Athletics, Combat, Education, Reasoning, Social, and Shady (thief skills fall in this category).  Skills are ranked from 1 to 7.  

To succeed in a task, a character will roll 3d6 and add a skill score and ability score to this.  The total of these three numbers must meet, or exceed a difficulty number.  Easy tasks require a 10, average 14, hard 18, etc.  A dice roll of 18 is a critical success while a roll of 3 is a critical failure.

Combat follows this same principle, but includes pinning opponents, breaking pins, blocking, retreating, and whatnot.

An example of play follows, along with the included characters.  The character sheets are simple and have a nice layout, along with a picture of the character.  The characters which can be played are Miguel Galvez, who is a teniente (lieutenant) in the Spanish army, Esperanza Salazar, the daughter of a wealthy land owner, Luis Valasco, a commoner thief, and Father Sebastio Miro, a compassionate priest.  Each character has a special talent that can be used during a game - Esperenza has a knack with horses and Father Sebastio can heal characters by spending Faith, as examples.

The last page of the rules portion of the game is a one-page summary of the rules.  

Following this, the LoZ book includes a sample scenario.  The scenario is 7 pages long and is followed by a 2-page spread of the fort (cuartel, in the lingo).  The scenario has the characters rescuing Zorro.  The scenario is decent but nothing extraordinary.  It functions as a good introduction to get the players into the setting.

So, is this game good?  Yes, it is good for what it is - an introduction.  A follow up book, The Legacy Continues, promised to have character creation rules.  I don't know if this book every came out.  The Fuzion rules are good enough and this book whittles them down to their base, which is a plus.

⇒ Grit:  ★★★★☆  This game is an introductory game and does not pretend otherwise.  The rules are clear, concise, and work for the genre.  I love the short skill list, the broad ability scores, and the lack of over-complicated rules.  I would rate this 5 stars if there were actual character creation rules.  I don't knock it being an introductory but the players won't get much use out of this game after a few sessions.

⇒ Vigor:  ★☆☆☆☆ Players will get very little from a Zorro campaign using just this book.  The base information for a California campaign is good, and the introductory adventure serves to get the players into the genre, but there is next to nothing here to keep the campaign moving along.  Without any rules for character advancement or character creation, players will probably get bored with playing these characters.

⇒ Grace:  ★★★★★  This book looks really good.  The cover is really cool and I like it a lot.  The character sheets are lovely and I really enjoy having examples for nearly all of the rules - remember that the entire rules section is only 6 pages!  I have no complaints with any of the layout choices.  The map of the fort is really well done, too.  The font is readable and not too small.  This short book of rules is nearly perfect when it comes to the Grace category.