Cardboard Anxiety

 

I can't remember how I used to run games in the past, like what I found difficult or easy to GM, was I worried about being unfair or overly generous? I don't think I was ever a killer GM or terribly indulgent with the magic items and such. I was probably always earnest and a wee bit stingy, maybe a tad mudcore. 
Mind you, I do remember one time killing off the whole party so I could get back to playing Berzerk on my pal's Atari 2600, but hey I was a teenager and it was the 1980s.

GNS 

Coming back to it all as an adult I am more self conscious about GMing, whether that's age or because I  returned after reading so much about it online during the pandemic, I'm not sure. Discovering Ron Edwards (long after the end of the Forge) introduced me to the first RPG theory I think I'd probably read, his notion of  there being 3 approaches to play seemed compelling; Gamist, Narrativist and Simulationist. 

These map quite nicely on to our group, I sit squarely in the Simulationist camp. At least that's where I aspire to pitch my tent. I like to set the world going then see where the players push or get pushed by it, see where the momentum will take it. I like to be surprised by what they do even if it does mean binning a lot of prep. The thing I find difficult now, which I suspect bothered me less in the past, is making things happen which are supposed to happen because of the (purchased) adventure or because I want to contrive some particular situation.

The Enemy Within 

For the past 4 years we have been playing The Enemy Within, and to some degree it is a big chain of contrivances. I think at first I found it easier to go along with as I was just getting back into the hobby so maybe lacked the confidence to go off piste. I did feel really awkward about how forced some of it's situations were - i remember feeling an intense flush of cringe pushing the Max Ernst confrontation on the players in Altdorf. The PCs are in a bar and this guy picks a fight with them, but its a whole scene involving these 2 idiot nobles etc. 

It worked fine at the table, the players didn't bat an eyelid, besides due to a fluky dice roll Max Ernst got cleaved in twain and it was the first combat in a few sessions which spiced things up. But it only happens in order get the PCs into trouble with the authorities and push them out of town and on to the next encounter, and they will end up in that trouble regardless of what they do so they are forced to move on. It feels cheap to me and like a deception has taken place.

Pure Cardboard

Skip forwards a year or so and we're on part 2 of The Enemy Within, Death on the Reik. The PC's are on their barge sailing through some treacherous marsh, lead by a local huffer on a skiff ahead of them. For reasons I can't remember, possibly just pacing and world building, I wanted to have the players attacked by a River Troll. More specific than that I wanted the huffer to get killed and the PCs be on their own in the marsh. I wanted to describe this whole thing, the huffer being suddenly pulled from his boat to disappear beneath the misty surface, and not roll dice until the troll came for the PCs. 

By this point I had come come across  a potential solution to my narrativist anxieties. I suspect I had seen a few narrative control meta currencies before, but it was reading Flames of Freedom (a sort of descendant of WFRP set in revolutionary colonial America) which lead me to adopt this house rule: if I as the GM arbitrarily have something happen which would normally require a dice roll, the player's receive a Destiny Token, which can be used before the end of the following session to have the players' exercise some form of narrative control (such as - 'my character knows a reliable Fence in this town we've just arrived in'). So I gave them a destiny token (eh actually a Glen Marnoch cork whisky stopper) and the poor huffer bought it. 

I think we might have used this mechanic a couple of times, but the players would often forget about it and ultimately it just didn't feel quite right. Having the game move along through contrived events in the official adventure was bad enough, adding my own extra contrivances was just too much. Actually back in the day we had a name for this - when a player character did something which everyone regarded as out of character, they were accused of 'being cardboard' - I guess as in a cardboard cut-out rather than a three dimensional person, they were not believable. The GM would be accused of this too if the world behaved in an unbelievable way - 'that's pure cardboard!' would go the cry. 

Somatic Components

As the campaign has gone on I found have myself instinctively trying to minimise all the many deus ex machina, playing it as much like a sandbox as possible. Death on the Reik in particular is full of things which happen conveniently just as the players show up. Where possible I added some kind of conditional logic to these, like the ghost at the comet crater in the Barren Hills only appears when Morrsleib is out, and the Skaven will only break into the cave when the ghost is present. Consequently the players never met the ghost or ran into those Skaven. And when they arrived at Wittgenstein I rolled a d6 to see how many days it would be before the Skaven blew the whole place up. 

I should say I do all my rolls in front of the players, I might not tell them what the roll is for, and more often than not I will get them to roll the actual dice. This way I need to adhere to what the dice say, it keeps me honest. They can't really complain if a failed roll results in character death - it was the dice that did it, see - not me. Is this just abrogation of responsibility? The dice wot did it. 

No its about impartiality and the believable, and playing to see what happens, resisting the urge to shape things towards the story you want to tell, or the story you find easiest to tell. This attitude is clearly a bit Quixotic when it comes to running an off the shelf campaign as story driven as The Enemy Within. Still you live and learn. Now if I'm unsure about something, or even if have a thing I want to happen, I'll set the chances and roll the dice. Sometimes it will give me the drama or convenience I'm after, other times not so much. For me that's the price I need to pay to create the magic circle. The campaign has taken some seriously unscripted forks, but nearly five years later we're still playing it.

Awesome Points & Plot Armour

 

I came across 2 really interesting mechanics this week, I'm not sure either would really suit the whole grim-dark Warhammer thing, but I want to file them away for potential future use anyway...

Plot Armour

From the alchemistnocturne blog, the rule is that a player can turn a failed roll into a maximal success by answering a relevant (to the situation) question about their character's background, for example a missed roll to hit during a fight could be fixed with 'What was that important lesson you received from your master?' The idea is that PCs should start out with minimal background detail and have this serve to both flesh them out and provide some extra protection when their characters are low level and weak. I really like this idea, and wonder if it could be applied more in the abstract, i.e. not requiring strict relevance to the situation but more just in a building future trouble manner, a bit like how taking 'disadvantages' function in some character generation systems; 'What gang in the city holds a grudge against you?' Ideally you would want a set of questions related to career or some key background aspect, or maybe even just some very leading questions 'Where did you bury the tax collector?' I also think, probably given all the 're-roll' systems we currently employ (Luck and Corruption) that this might be better used to save a character from actual death rather than a failed roll and limit it to one or two uses.

Awesome Points

From the Old School Hack, which I sought out courtesy of Chris McDowall's interview with Reynaldo Madrinan. At the beginning of a session the GM lays out a bowl filled with 2 and a half times as many chits as there are players in the game. These are the Awesome Points. Anyone can reach into the bowl and award them to another player for doing something cool, or even just saying something funny. They can be spent on bonuses to die rolls, reducing damage or even, by spending several at once, creating a useful NPC that the character knows. Each player tracks how many awesome points they have spent, and when everyone has spent 12, everyone levels up. 

I really like the sound of this, incentivizing fun and linking character progression to it. Maybe we could use this as part of our current xp system (which is barely any system at all), so the players effectively reward each other from a set pool as we play, though I find myself immediately wanting to tack more conditions on to it (each player can only hand out one or only one can be granted for any given thing etc). With respect to WFRP I am thinking about this purely for XP, not as some kind of gameplay resource for modifiers or narrative control.

Vaesen

 

Vaesen is a 'nordic horror' roleplaying game, illustrated and inspired by the works of Johan Egerkrans. It's a really beautiful book, worth having simply for its aesthetics as an artifact. I got it as an add-on to the Kickstarter for their new Mythic Britain & Ireland source book. I suspect I probably first heard of it on the Grognard Files podcast. It's published by the Free League, the Swedish rpg publisher, and uses a modified version of their Mutant Year Zero engine. This is the first game I've read using MYZ, but not the first one I've actually bought.

It's set in 19th century Scandinavia where the creatures of nordic folk tales are real and the player characters are investigators all gifted with a second sight which enables them to see these creatures, or Vaesen.

It uses a dice pool system as it's core mechanic, exclusively utilizing d6. Like VtM you roll a number of dice equal to the sum of your relevant skill and attribute values. A 6 counts as a success, and for most actions only one is required. For opposed rolls the character with the greatest number of successes wins. Each of it's 12 skills defines what happens should you have more than one success, generally you have some kind of choice, in the case of combat you can do more damage, make the opponent drop their weapon etc.

It seems like a very clean, simple system. Combat is spiced up with the use of playing cards for initiative. These are drawn for all combatants at the beginning of a fight (lowest goes first), but can be swapped by expending additional successes on them. I really like the sound of this, I'd been thinking we should try this in our WFRP game (having heard that  Deadlands does something similar) and only hadn't for fear of nerfing the Initiative attribute, but Vaesen's swapping card mechanic provides an elegant answer.

It feels like a system very much geared to creating a certain mood and kind of story. The rules are more abstract than simulationist. Damage to a character is expressed as 4 mental and physical conditions (exhausted, battered, wounded and broken for physical), each of which reduces your dice pool by one, with a descriptive critical being applied when you reach Broken. Dice rolls can be pushed (i.e. re-rolled) at the cost of sustaining a condition.

Character creation is points based, which everything except memento (a personal object you can use to relieve a condition) being chosen rather than rolled. Your age descriptor determines the number of points you get to spread between your attributes and skills, with your Archetype setting the options for Talents (special modifiers and abilities) and various background details, relationship types and starting equipment. There are 10 Archetypes ranging from Officer and Servant to Occultist and Academic.

The game is presented very much as having a set structure, from the advice on how to create a mystery to the fact that each character can gain an Advantage (2 bonus dice for one roll) on the journey to the site of an adventure, to how you can upgrade your base afterwards. It does away with much book keeping by having a resources stat that you roll on for acquiring equipment rather than tracking money.

 I like the sound of this in theory, and can see how these abstract, almost board game elements could facilitate an evocative mystery story, especially including the fact that each character has a Trauma, a Dark Secret and a specific relationship with each of the other player characters. In theory. The fact is our group seem to gravitate naturally to a more simulationist style of play, where often the most fun seems to come when we're playing out a game moment by moment rather than cutting from one scene to the next. I'm definitely pilfering that initiative system though.

It can be purchased from the Free League webstore.

Warlock! (20/11/21)

 

Not entirely sure what put me on to Warlock! in the first place (though I would have got there eventually via the Mud & Blood podcast), apparently it single handedly created the #BOSR hashtag (British OSR), and is a completely understandable reaction by the author to the over-complex mess that is WFRP 4e. 

Warlock! takes the careers and ethos of WFRP and marries them to the simple stats of Fighting Fantasy (via Troika!), so you have simply Stamina, Luck and a bunch of Skills. The key departure from its inspiration is that its d20 based, roll + skill and score over 20 to succeed, with combat being simple opposed tests. Characters are rounded out with some OSR like career specific random details (What you’ve seen, Who you know etc). It makes me wonder if WFRP was a big influence on Electric Bastionland (re random careers and flavour).

If I had discovered this before I bought WFRP 4e I think I would have used this for playing The Enemy Within.

An elegant little detail I like; each career has its eponymous skill, so if you are a Beggar you get the skill Beggar and this is an average of all your career skills (careers are simply defined by their skills, starting possessions and the random details). Your Stamina increases by 1 when your career skill does (which amounts to every 5 improvements in your career skills). I like this clear indication of ‘level’, WFRP 4e does something similar, but nowhere near as clear or satisfying with no actual career skill. There's no explicit guidance on how to use this skill, but even if it was simply just to make money at your career that would be reason enough.

Combat is similar to WFRP but also feels like a cleaner version; damage done to Stamina is considered  just bruising and fatigue, but once Stamina is depleted every hit is a roll on the critical table with negative Stamina as a modifier. Stamina is regained quickly, criticals affect the character and take time to recover from or just outright kill.

All characters can use magic, they simply require the knowledge of spells via scrolls or books (Initiates & Wizards start with one random spell each). An Incantation Skill roll must be succeeded to cast and each spell consumes an amount of stamina whether successful or not. There is also a miscast table.

I just had a quick go at the combat right now, my Beggar equipped with a club vs an unarmoured, short sword wielding goblin. I did the goblin some damage but got butchered; the 2nd critical killed me after 5 or 6 rounds. It felt pretty fast. The attacker in the opposed roll gets a +5, which I was thinking in the case of evenly matched opponents would lend the combatant with  the initiative a big advantage, it didn’t help me too much though. I missed once with my 1d6-1 damage club when the goblin hit with his 1d6 + 3 shortsword. Our skills were matched and my Stamina (17) was almost double that of the Goblin (10), but the disparity in weapon damage was too much. 1d6-1 seems pretty stingy for a club! Also I’m surprised it doesn’t have critical hits on a straight 20, though the fight would have been even shorter then as that was one lucky Goblin.

I’d be tempted to use this for our WFRP campaign if I thought I could get it past the players, though keep WFRP Success Levels and make all weapons do their average damage plus the success level. Hmm.

I bought Warlock! from DriveThru

Lamentations of the Flame Princess (08-08-21)

 

I was very much looking forwards to reading this, having heard many sing it’s praises and listened to a great interview with the author. The presentation of the book is slick and oozes atmosphere. The subtitle is ‘Weird Fantasy Role-Playing’, it can’t be a coincidence that this would have the same acronym as Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play, right? I was very hyped for it, to the point of thinking that when I finally get around to playing something this would be a fine contender. The Rules & Magic core book is fairly short, 159 pages, just over a third of which are spell descriptions, I managed to get through it all today (I skipped the spells).

I was, perhaps a bit unfairly, a little disappointed. 

This is an OSR retro clone of B/X D&D set in the late middle ages/early Renaissance, although the setting exists really only in the equipment lists and the fact that there is an appendix on firearms of the period. It feels like a tidied up version of the Basic D&D rules with a hodge-podge bunch of house rules on top, to cover everything from ship combat to property management.

 My single biggest criticism is that I’m not at all sure about the organization of the book, it all feels a bit random (I would have less of an issue if there was an index), and I think the explanation of many of the rules could be clearer, it could do with bolding key terms. There is however no fluff and no explanations of context, the thing is what you can read from the rules and see in the art. I may be being slightly unfair, it’s possible that my knowledge of Basic D&D was getting in the way, like I have an expectation of what should be explained when etc and that could have been fighting with the text.
If I had not listened to that interview with Raggi I wonder if I would have found the inclusion of Dwarf, Elf & Halfling classes weird? I know he only put them there because of expectation, but they feel at odds with the tone, or would they have made me detect a different tone?

The other key thing which sets it apart from its origins is in its spells, well, one spell.

It has the usual D&D, Vancian inspired magic system with all the usual spells; Magic Missile, Cure Light Wounds etc. with one paragraph devoted to each. Then we plunge deep into Lovecraft with Summon, a 1st level spell which runs to 10 pages! A 1st level spell, which as I'd heard from several sources, can destroy a campaign if it goes wrong!

The details of what comes through from the other sides is a hideous concoction of random tables, a bespoke horror with potentially awful powers rather than just a random creature from a subset of the Monster Manual. One possible disastrous outcome is a bit meta; the player who failed swaps roles with the GM until conditions are met for reverting play to normal!

I should note that there are also a whole slew of rule tweaks which evoke a more low fantasy setting; only Fighters hit chances increase with level and there are no damage bonuses due to Strength or Dexterity.

Reading it has not really dampened my desire to try it, although I do feel like it could maybe use an extra class or 2 in place of the non-human ones, and maybe a few extra skills. Oh and possibly a Sanity mechanic.

It and its many amazing modules and source books can be got from the publishers website.

Prince Valiant (24-05-21)

 

Just finished reading today and generally super impressed with. I bought it in Forbidden Planet on my first walk into town (Newcastle) this year, 2 weeks after having covid jag one. The first I actually heard of it was in the same shop last year sometime, I picked it up and put it back; it was sealed so I couldn’t leaf through it and it looked more like an old Comic Book annual than a game. Then I started coming across references to it, hearing that it was the first proper storytelling focused rpg and revolutionary for the time, the first edition being created by Greg Stafford in 1989!

It’s clearly aimed at younger players, or at least people new to the hobby (interesting that it follows his considerably more complex Pendragon which we actually played back in the day), I think its notable even in the way that it approaches that, it reminds me of Ben Milton’s obsession with usable presentation. The first page says ‘try play this’ then presents ‘Encounter in the Perilous Forest’ to run immediately and uses this to explain the key concepts of roleplaying games. A few pages further on it provides a simple sample adventure to provide more depth, before getting into character creation. In that first encounter you are a Knight, and that is really enough information to start playing with. Then the Basic game rules (the first 50 pages or so) explain how to make up a Knight in more detail. You have only 2 stats Brawn & Presence, between which you allocate 7 points, then have 10 points to spend on 6 skills from a list of 14. Once you're ready for the Advanced rules you can choose to be something else; Merchant, Monk, Viking etc.

The game seems really elegant, it is in effect a dice pool system like VtM, except it simply uses coins! The difficulty of a task is how many heads you need to get, then you throw a number of coins equal to the relevant stat + skill. In combat it’s opposed throws with weapons, armour and potentially strategic advantage adding extra coins to the mix. The difference between you and your opponent's throw is subtracted from the loser's coin pool, then their Brawn once the coin pool is consumed, incapacitating them once this is depleted too.

Fame takes the place of XP and is awarded for your achievements, but since it is also actually fame it can potentially provide a bonus in social contests. At every 1000 Fame you get to increase a skill by one point or take a new one.

That pretty much rounds out the Basic game. The Advanced game adds a few more significant elements and prefigures much later games. Player’s can pick Traits for their character; Greedy, Loyal etc. These reward the player with Fame when expressed in action, the amount of Fame depends on the specific trait, so Chivalrous nets much more than Cowardly. I can’t remember who it was that I first heard say attach XP to the thing you want players to do in your game, but here is a perfect example. It also says players should initially keep these secret from each other and have them come out in play proper. You can also choose to make a trait an Obsession for double Fame, and encouraged to specify a target for the trait (so Lancelot has Love of Queen Guenevere (Obsession)).

Perhaps the most radical idea in the Advanced game is that players should take turns at being the GM or ‘Storyteller’ (although I think Ars Magica may suggest this too?) and it provides a mechanic to facilitate this somewhat akin to Apocalypse World’s Moves; Special Effects.  These are actions that an NPC can do without requiring a dice roll (albeit with some kind of frequency limit), from Incite Lust to Escape Bonds, Terrify to Find Something Hidden. Special Effects do actually exist in the Basic game, but in the Advanced game a player gets one for having taken a turn at being Storyteller; their character can now perform this as a one off action.

The book also contains loads of great GM advice and although there are no actual random tables - the game doesn’t use dice after all - there are 20 pages of ‘Episodes’, or short adventures at the back of the book, each laid out in a super useful format and containing suggestions for how they might be linked to get you playing with minimal prep in no time.

Print copies of Prince Valiant can be ordered in the UK here.

Microscope (24-05-21)

 

Like Universalis this is as much a communal world building tool as it is a GM-less game.
I was led to it by watching my first Matt Colville video where he suggested using it to create the setting for, then running a West Marches style campaign D&D (which the Microscope designer Ben Robbins coined or at least has written extensive guidelines on).

The big difference with Universalis is that the players decide what the game will be about and how it begins and ends, then they take it in turns to fill in everything between, with each person in their turn adding a new period, an event within a period or a scene within an event (an actual scene in which everybody roleplays). 

There are less gamey features and rules than Universalis, there are no tokens for example and no dice in sight (not that there are in Universalis either). The rules take up  just over half of the small 80 page book, it is all very succinct. I would very much like to try it,  I especially like Matt Colville’s idea of using it to generate a setting, then playing another RPG within that setting, this sounds like it would be a great match for the whole FKR thing which I stumbled on recently...

 Microscope can be ordered from the developer's website.

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Thousand Year Old Vampire (25-04-21)

 

A beautifully produced solo, journaling RPG, a real artifact. I'm not sure where I first heard mention of it but I know that it was reading a review in Wyrd Science and then coming across The Magus which is clearly (and admittedly) inspired by it, that made me take the plunge and shell out (I think the postal costs alone might have been $20!).

First up - I did not finish it, I spent 3 sessions playing and guiltily abandoned it last night - I did enjoy it though, the ideas are great and the execution beautiful.

It is a clever game, with the fiction, theme and rules beautifully intertwined. Like The Magus you roll 2 dice subtracting one from the other (d6 from d10) then move back or forwards that many passages and deal with what you find, creating an experience from your interpretation of it. That experience is written into one of 5 memories - each of which can hold 3 experiences, the idea being that a memory is a sort of themed set of experiences. You can have a diary to retain one extra memory, but otherwise you have to erase a remembered experience to accommodate a new one. This is such a brilliant idea that cuts straight to the heart of much that is really interesting about vampires; guilt and immortality.

The other rules are fairly simple. You start out by defining your character with a number of formative experiences each tied to 3 mortals, resources and skills which you also define. The passages will tell you to gain and lose from among these traits and all ends badly for you if you reach a point and have nothing more to lose. And that is essentially that, it’s pretty elegant.

Initially I had the same minor gripe as I have with English Eerie and The Magus too, namely that I would have liked some random tables or something to give me a hand create a character, spark some ideas to get me going. In the end I did like my flavourful local character (a Monk at the run down St Pauls, Jarrow, 1048AD) but I still had that is-this-good-enough/am-i-doing-it-right anxiety.

So why did I stop? Too much work, too much history I don’t know. Making up stuff which is going to be remotely correct across a long stretch of time is just intimidating. I really enjoyed the start of my story in England, but once I’m heading into 12th Century Uzbekistan, what then? I should probably just not get too hung up and go for it, but knowing its still early days and how lacking my historical knowledge is until we hit the 18th Century, and that mostly just Europe is just, jeez. 

I may well go back to it sometime, although writing this reminds me how much I enjoyed The Magus - which is less demanding and easier to get to grips with, the whole random words to create your spells from was an easily engaging proposition. The other thing is the passage of time. I did not really have a feel for how much time should be passing and this again was a cause of anxiety, some strong pointers on this would have helped a lot, giving me more license to invent.

The official website is here.

Whitehack (17-04-21)

This is another game I got due to Questing Beast - specifically him showing the beautiful 3rd edition, its almost like an opposite to Mork Borg, clinical and austere, and with the practical attention to detail that Ben Milton reveres.

Out of the OSR rules systems I have read so far this might be my favourite, although admittedly I do have  a tendency to think that the last thing I read is the best. It seems like a great combination of rules and fiction, with everything being kept as elegantly simple as possible. 

It features the usual Attributes, rolled on 3d6. There are only 3 Character Classes: the Deft, the Strong & the Wise, which cover the obvious key archetypes. Each has ‘slots’ to fill, essentially abilities which get chosen at each level, for the Wise this is spells, the Deft its bonuses of sorts etc.
 

It is a roll under system. There are no skills as such, but once Class is chosen you pick a Species, Vocation and Affiliation, i.e. Elf, Wizard, Devout to Arioch, or whatever. On one hand these are the key fictional details that define your character, on the other, you write each beside an attribute - whenever you are rolling for a task that is relevant to that Group you roll 2d20 and pick the best.


In addition to the 6 attributes each character also has an Attack Value and a Saving Throw specified by their class. To attack you need to roll under your attack value and over the target’s Armour Class. This sounds super elegant and smart. A similar logic is applied to skill contests, where its the character who rolls the highest (but also under their relevant stat) who wins.


Magic is fairly freeform, in that the players get to design their own spells and the DM assigns them a hp cost - using magic depletes your hp, but Wise characters recover hp fairly fast.


The one rule I didn’t really get when I first read it was the concept of ‘Auctions’ the idea being that these should be used for extended contests where the outcome would not be lethal. In a way these are kind of like what I was thinking of as the Scene System for Skippy (working title of a cancelled video game). The example given is of a chase sequence. All parties involved roll a d6 in secret, then bid on their roll, i.e. they say 'I will roll over n and still succeed on my attribute roll'. Whoever bids highest rolls first, so they have to roll over their bid and under the relevant attribute plus the secret d6 roll. Whoever succeeds first wins the ‘Auction’, with the idea being that each player should dress their bid with appropriate fiction (‘I take a shortcut only known to members of the thieves guild’ etc).


The writing is a lot like the presentation - it is very spare and exact. He tells you only the minimum. Most rules require some thought before you have the moment of click - ah, I get why its like this… Perhaps that's partly why it has impressed me so much, because I had to think about it, I experienced that satisfaction of understanding, of discovery.


I hope the book for his setting ‘White Curse’ comes out soon, I’d like to see the content he creates. I would really love to try this system.

You can get Whitehack 3e from it's website here.

Troika! (21-03-21)

I picked this up as I kept seeing references to it via various OSR peeps, then spotted a review on Amazon saying that the book itself was a beautiful artifact and that was the clincher. It is a pretty enough book, smaller than I imagined, but a solid, well presented little hard back. It is a lot like Electric Bastionland which i suspect it predates, in fact it seems even more hardcore than Bastionland; there are no passages presenting lore at all, the setting is entirely evoked in specific content, which kind of reminds me of UVG too - you play to find out (as Apocalypse World would have it), the GM is flying by the seat of their pants, past golden sky barges piloted by robotic mandrills (why do all trippy games feature monkeys!).


The rule system is very light, in fact its basically Fighting Fantasy - you roll Skill, Stamina and Luck, then a d66 to decide one of 36 character Backgrounds which provide some unique flavour, skills and maybe some equipment. The range is fairly nuts, from Chaos Champion to Sceptical Lamassu. 

Skill tests are roll under (on 2d6, everything is done with d6), though roll highest versus tests are used for combat, rolling on individual weapon based look-up tables for damage. Luck tests can be made to get damage bonuses or avoid death in combat and is reduced by one every time it is tested. 

The most striking mechanic is its initiative system - each character has a number of initiative tokens (usually 2), these are drawn at random from a bag to decide who goes when, with the inclusion of an end round token adding more random drama to the mix. When i first read this I thought it a case of being different from the sake of it, but then I heard Blythy on the Grognard Files podcast praising the way it brought tension and simplicity (no comparing numbers or having to remember order) to every combat round.

The book is split between Rules, Character Backgrounds, Enemies, Spells and a starting adventure. The enemies provided (about 40 in all) are almost as exotic as the character backgrounds and each features it's own d6 Mien table to set its attitude when encountered which is a great way of making enemies distinct at the table.

The starting adventure sees the characters arrive in the city of Troika and go check in to the Blancmange & Thistle hotel, but there is some big party event in progress so only one room is available and that's right by the party on the top floor and the players have to travel up via stairs or elevator. I suppose it's a deconstructed dungeon of sorts with trippy encounters all the way to the top rather than the bottom.

It is a lovely book and much as I admire the whole - there's just exactly what you need to know and no more. I would find it intimidating to run as each of the character classes and enemies is so unique it would difficult to develop a holistic grasp; everything would need to be handled on the fly and there's nowhere near the number of helpful tables as in UVG. It does feel very much like an art house rpg or proper indie comic book even though the system itself is fairly conventional.

It can be purchased on Amazon, but also directly from the publisher's website.

UVG (21-03-21)

 

Ultraviolet Grasslands and the Black City, Psychedelic Metal Roleplaying - to give it its full title, is not so much a trippy adventure game as a whole campaign, rule system and aesthetic template all in one. The layout of the book speaks volumes, there is a brief intro then 130 pages defining all the locations on the map for the eponymous setting, starting at the Violet city and getting stranger with every step east to the Black City at the edge of the world/universe/campaign. Then there's 50 pages or so of rules at the back.


The actual rules are fairly OSR, using a Difficulty Target with a d20 + Stat + Skill roll over system. Stats are simply the bonus they provide (like Knave), you get 7 points to spread across the 6. Skills are just things you are very good at, with the bonus they provide being dictated by character level (so all skills provide the same bonus). Hit Points (called Health) are a flat amount, also set by level. There are no classes as such and races range from cats, through humans and elves to robots and ghosts! The whole thing has a really great tone, its all very much about the play experience and has that OSR ethic of providing systems and tables rather than definitive, authoritative encounters. He does say explicitly that he is very anti-cannon. The game should belong to each group. History for example is rolled from a bunch of big tables of random facts - the lore is what you make of it, which bits you choose to run with. It provides rules and tables for all its key aspects, with plenty on caravans as traveling from a to b is basically the whole game.


I did not read the actual world stuff much - I read the rules, the starting location, the end location and then dipped into bits and pieces in between. There is such a wealth of material in the book and the writer’s love for it comes through loud and clear. It is simply bursting with maps, illustrations and table after table. I think i would have really loved this if it had been around when i was in my early 20s, I'd have been dying to play it. 

I’m not sure what first lead me to it, except that I discovered it on Itch.io and was blown away by everything about the aesthetic. Luka Rejec - the designer and writer did it all - i.e. including all the many awesome pieces of art that it contains - there is something about the clean airy line style that reminds me of Moebius, it's great stuff though not quite up to the god tier draftsmanship of the master! I wish I had caught the kickstarter, it would have been nice to get a proper fancy version of the book, the POD version I have (at least I assume thats what it is) is not up to the prestige quality the material deserves.

Theres lots of great samples of the art and tables on Luka's Itch page where you can order the pdf and find links to physical sales too.

The Wretched (21-03-21)

 

Another solo journaling game, this one was recommended to me by an old work colleague when i told him during a twitter convo that I had bought (but at that time not yet played) English Eerie. It is by Chris Bisette who’s blog I’ve enjoyed since I discovered it (Loot the Room - he was doing a weekly post where he rolled up a character in a system he hadn’t played).
 

The Wretched is the name of a spaceship you are stranded on, this is basically Alien and its really good. You are advised to do the journaling as audio logs using a microphone. I did and actually decided to save after playing as they sounded pretty cool, but only really because I was playing the soundtrack that comes with the game and the jump cuts between each log create sudden mood changes and give the whole thing a great atmosphere.

I have to say I did not enjoy the actual journaling process as much as I did with English Eerie due to the performative nature of it - the fear of getting something wrong while recording and trying to make up details on the fly ‘in the sub station below engineering’ etc. I found that a bit stressful and not in a way that was germane to the game.

The game system however worked really well. It’s played with a Jenga set, a deck of cards, a d6, and 10 tokens. You roll a d6 at the start and remove that many blocks from Jenga tower - this is a representation of the damage to the ship (you were both hit by an asteroid and have a deadly xenomorph on board). 

Each day you roll a d6 and draw that many cards. There is a look up table for each card, broadly Hearts concerns the ship systems, Diamonds its structures, Clubs the crew and Spades the alien. Each card presents the outline of a task or experience you have that day. Many stipulate removing a block from the Jenga tower, should the tower fall it's game over man!

The most exciting card result was one which told me I had got the distress beacon working; now I should place 10 tokens on the card. Each day roll a d6 and on a 6 remove one token. When there are no tokens remaining a rescue ship shows up, remove one final block from the tower and if you manage that, happy ending, hurrah!

On day 14 some other event demanded I remove a block and my tower came tumbling down. At that point I had not managed to remove a single token...

Yeah I really enjoyed it. It only took about an hour to play. I think next time I’d make more of an effort to set up the right atmosphere like i did with English Eerie. I think a map of the ship may have improved the experience for me, maybe given me a more concrete way to imagine it all and more confidence in making up details on the fly.

You can order a print + pdf copy from his website here.

The Magus (14-03-21)

 This is another solo journaling game, a very recent one which i got because some ttrpg person i follow tweeted about it, not so much because they were super impressed by it (which they were) as the fact that it sounded relevant to my videogame side-project 'Seasons of the Tower'. It is beautifully presented - a pdf made of powerpoint slides with Mork Borg like handling of font and brilliant use of AI generated images and public domain paintings as backgrounds. It took me about 3 hours to play.

The game reminded a bit of My Life with Master, only here you play Master. After playing  English Eerie I had actually been thinking that MLWM might make a fine solo game as the system is there to shape a story. 

You start by deciding some background details about the world and who you are, then the game progresses by way of Events, of which 17 are provided in sequence. Each event involves either learning a new Spell or gaining a new Bond (relationship with another person). After resolving the event you roll 1d4 and 1d6, subtract the lowest from the highest and jump that many events ahead. The game ends after 7 events, or when a Calamity occurs, whichever comes first.
 

In terms of character stats there is Focus, Power, Control and you can accumulate ‘Scars’, evocative tags relating to event outcomes.

Focus is gained from positive event outcomes, lost from negative ones, can be spent to re-roll dice, and 3 can be exchanged for a point of Power (I only got one during the whole game and I think I was quite lucky with my rolls).

Power determines what dice you roll when resolving a Spell Event (i.e. a d10, d12 & d20), with each event dictating a Difficulty (they get increasingly higher). Every die roll equal to or greater than the difficulty counts as a success, the more successes the better the outcome, this essentially creates the cost of learning the new spell. 

You can increase your Power by sacrificing a Bond. I did not do this, I only had one bond throughout my entire game and I had to sacrifice that (a frog familiar) to gain a spell. Max Power is 3, at 1 you roll a d8, d10 & d12.   

Control has 3 levels; Perfect, Cracked and Broken. Once you've reached Cracked you have to start rolling a d8 Risk die with every future roll, should it come up 1 a Calamity occurs and the game ends. At Broken the risk die becomes a d4. I went from perfect to broken over the last 2 events of my game (as I had nothing else to spend to stave off the failed spell rolls).

Each Spell Event presents a table of adjectives to roll on, and from this you decide the details of the spell that you are trying to learn. 

I really enjoyed the game, it is very evocative. I would have liked some pointers at the start for creating my character - there are some, but a random table for ‘who you are’ would have got things off to a faster start. I decided my character began as an undertaker which definitely gave the whole game a dark cast from the outset.
 

The only bond I got during the whole thing was the first one, which I feel did likely rob my game of some intensity; I did not get to make the choice of sacrificing Bonds for Power which is kind of what the game is about - like Ron Edwards seminal Sorcerer it asks what are you willing to sacrifice in the pursuit of power? This does make me wonder if playing cards might be better for progressing through events than dice rolls, though the specific dice roll mechanic, subtracting one from the other somehow feels resonant with the theme (and I realize now is inspired by Thousand Year Old Vampire).


I bought The Magus on itch.io 

And my play through (I couldn't really call it a journal) is recorded in a google doc here

Electric Bastionland (06-03-21)

 

This is another game I was led to by Ben Milton of Knave & Questing Beast fame and the last one I read (just for the record, right now I’m almost finished reading Knock a really impressive OSR zine and UVG will be up next). It’s an OSR ruleset but the setting is *much* more like Over The Edge than D&D, in fact it is OTE that it reminds me of the most. It's also a sequel to Chris McDowall's previous game Into the Odd which I have not read.

The system is very stripped down and all the rules are explained in 4 pages - the vast majority of the rest of the book being taken up with Failed Careers (character classes). So the rules - there are only 3 ability scores, Strength, Dexterity & Charisma, all rolled on 3d6. Saves are made on a d20 roll under basis. Combat is fairly radical - there is no roll to hit, you simply roll damage and deduct that from the opponent’s HP - Hit Protection, once you reach 0 HP you are wounded and further damage is removed from your Strength score. Each wound inflicted requires a Critical Damage save (against Strength!), failing this means you are incapacitated and will die within the hour if unattended. There's a Scar Table to roll on if you reach 0 HP, which interestingly is the only opportunity a character gets to improve their stats, there is otherwise no leveling system ("5 Bloody Mess - You need stitches. You are DEPRIVED until its done by a Specialist. Reroll your Maximum HP on 2d6 and keep the result if higher"). Disputed initiative is determined by Dexterity saves. 

The 300+ page book is laid out so that you can start playing immediately and learn what you need as you go. Most of the world flavour comes from the player characters Failed Careers, out of 100 or so: Cryptohistorian; Student of history that never was, or  Inseparable Twins; There are two of you, identical in most ways. Your career is determined from a look up table where you cross reference your lowest and highest ability scores. These give you some random piece of equipment and the answers to two questions specific to your background (“How are you messed up by experimenting with time?”, “What does the elder twin get?”), serving to balance out the roll of the dice with the power of starting equipment/abilities. And to make sure the game has direction from the outset, the failed career of the youngest player determines who the group as a whole owe £10,000 to (The Hot Slab, Morgue and Social Club:Take shared ownership of a case of 12 bottles of Highly Carbonated Formaldehyde. It can be drunk without harm for a mild buzz, but causes foul-smelling trapped wind).

A key difference between this and OTE is that where OTE gives you maybe hundreds of pages about the denizens, gangs and zones of its city, Bastionland just gives you some tables and rules for how to make up what the players will find there. There is something really engaging, vital and incredibly efficient about this. In the words of it's creator Chris McDowall; “This is a game to be played, not a textbook to be studied. It’s designed for the game table, not the library.” That's me told.

Physical and digital copies of Electric Bastionland can be ordered from the creator's website.

Knave (06-03-21)

 

I first heard of Knave when I bought Rakehell (though I have no idea what lead me to that) and did not really know what it was, though I have a feeling I may have looked it up on drivethrurpg at the time. It was after I got Mork Borg that I thought I should read some of the older OSR systems to see how it compared, having seen these references to Knave I assumed it must be old, or at least well established. Then I realized it was created by the Questing Beast guy (Ben Milton) who’s videos I'd been watching. That seems like ages ago now, more from the amount of Questing Beast I’ve watched and the number of games I've bought on his recommendation, than the actual length of time.

Knave is a 7 page, no frills pdf. Like Mork Borg it dispenses with the D&D Ability scores and uses only their bonuses, but is even more efficient - you roll 3d6 for each and keep the lowest die roll as the bonus. Savings throws are made by rolling a d20 and adding the appropriate ability bonus, with a total of 15+ granting success. To this it adds the concept of an ability Defense score - this is your bonus plus 10, the number which has to be beat (d20) in an Opposed Save, i.e. when an opponent is trying to do something to you, or you to an opponent. Hit Points (1d8) and Armour (the opposed save which must be beat to hit you) round out the character stats. Leveling up improves Armour and 3 other ability bonuses by 1, increases HP by 1d8 and happens every time you gain another 1000 xp.

There are no classes and encumbrance is a simple slot based system. Anyone can cast magic, but a spell book is a weighty item which takes up one slot and holds just one spell which can be used once per day, thus carrying a lot of spells comes at the expense of wearing armour etc.

Character Sheet

In addition to these elegant streamlined mechanics there are a number of really good d20 feature and personality tables to roll on, the combinations of which make for distinct, flavourful individuals. Having spent a considerable amount of time working on a complex procgen character system for a videogame I’m surprised by how evocative this small set is. A Background dictates what you did previous to becoming an adventurer (Alchemist, Cook, Outlaw etc) and a Misfortune explains why you've become just such a knave now (Addicted, Exiled, Robbed). Then there's a Virtue and a Vice, and adjectives for Physique, Face, Skin, Hair, Clothing & Speech.

From Random Charater Generator https://perchance.org/knave-lotfp

It also comes with notes on how to convert D&D monster stats (super easy), a list of 100 random spells, oh and like Mork Borg it has Morale and an NPC Reaction Table.

The whole thing is incredibly elegant and I’m using it as the system for this solo game I’m playing, critically my characters were all rolled using an online generator (the excellent one I used is 404 now, but this one here does the trick, albeit without the ability scores).

Knave is on Drivethru.

Mythic - Game Master Emulator (27-02-21)

 

Mythic is an RPG which has within it a system for ‘game master emulation’, i.e. solo play, apparently there was sufficient interest in this that the author (Tom Pigeon) published just the emulator rules as a standalone, which is what I bought.

How I got here - I read the Questing Beast Newsletter for February (2021), it contains many fascinating links some of which i am still investigating now, one of them under a section on solo RPGs is a video by Geek Gamers. This video is an entire metropolis of rabbit holes all by itself, although solo play seems to be the focus of the channel. In this video she uses the Fate chart from Mythic extensively and its basic structure. Having been inspired by English Eerie I had already embarked on my own solo play rpg before I watched the GG video, otherwise I would likely have tried playing a game using the whole Mythic system, as it is I have only borrowed from its tables on the odd occasion.

Mythic is based around asking questions - which arguably regular rpgs are too in that they essentially progress via the players and GM asking questions of each other. So you frame a question about the circumstances - was the village massacred by a new threat? Is the chest trapped? Then decide the likelihood that the answer is yes and roll on the Fate table which modulates the probability by the Chaos Rank to produce an answer from from Exceptional Yes to Exceptional No and includes the possibility that a Random Event occurs.

The Chaos Rank is an indicator of the general state of control the player has over the world, it is modified by the outcome of each Scene. This is the basic structural unit of Mythic, you decide what the setup and purpose of a scene is then use the Fate question format (or whatever additional RPG rule-set you are using) to resolve it. Randomness is interjected by rolling before beginning the scene to determine if it should be altered or interrupted entirely. The details here are generated from 3 tables, one which sets the focus of the random event (a player character, a story thread etc), and 2 others which are d100 lists of Actions and Subjects to be interpreted into some kind of encounter. Lists of NPCs met, NPCs important to the player character and the Story Threads provide further grist for the random event mill.

Thus far I have only used the Action and Subject tables for my own solo RPG, but I may well give the system as a whole a go at some point, though I generally prefer making my own quick tables for possibilities rather than following the twenty question approach.
 

English Eerie (11-02-21)

 

A solo journaling RPG, so unlike everything else here, I write this after having actually played it, which took some time as I followed the advice of the game and played just one day for each real day. The theme is M R James style horror, the game provides 10 Scenarios which you play through using a d10 and a deck of cards, turning one over for each morning and afternoon, resolving whatever they present and writing up your journal entry to reflect this.

Your character has 2 stats, Spirit and Resolve and 10 points to split between them at the start of the game (I think I went for 6 resolve and 4 spirit). About half of the cards present you with some kind of obstacle the severity of which is a expressed by a target number you have to beat on a d10. You can spend Resolve to gain a bonus, +2 if declared before the roll +1 after. Failing loses you a point of Spirit. The specific end of the game, the story outcome, is determined by how much Spirit you have left when all the cards have been played. As its a horror game the ending is likely to be grim, I had 0 so yeah.

The other key mechanic is the Grey Lady card. The deck is structured around these, you organize the cards such that all are random except the 6th, the 12th and the 19th (the final card) all of which are Grey Ladies. When a Grey Lady is drawn you must lose a point of Spirit or Resolve and consult the Tension Table to see what occurs. The target number of all obstacles is increased by 1 for each Grey Lady that has been revealed.

Beyond their name, Spirit and Resolve, your character is defined by 3 Fears and 3 Defining Features, the idea being that these should give you details to play with when writing your journal entries. This is the weakest bit of the game for me, I completely ignored what I wrote down as they were created without knowledge of the Scenario and consequently not relevant.

The 10 Scenarios included provide the story setup, specify the kind of character you should be and provide the details to use with the cards. The cards cover what Secondary Characters exist and their relationships to you (‘Secondary Character Obstacle' being one and 'Secondary Character Harmed' another), what Environmental Obstacles you must deal and what Clues arise. They also provide the Tension Table which outlines the event caused by each Grey Lady and finally the Spirit Table which reveals your fate.

The game comes with a booklet of cards to print, but it can be played with a normal deck of playing cards. I made my own set as I've been getting into lino-cut printing. 

 

I played one day per real day, and followed all the advice - wrote by candle and well, monitor light  and went one step further by using dip pen and ink to record my tale. I really enjoyed it, I’m almost tempted to try make something of my journal, it was actually fairly long in the end. The only real issue was that a detail I invented, which became central to my story, turned out to be a bit discordant with the end. Although I realize writing this that I could probably have adapted it more to fit. Interestingly this tangent, which involved goat people, essentially 18th century depictions of the Devil, was suggested to me by one of the clues (‘The sound of distant piping in the air’) calling to mind a painting inspired by Tam O’Shanter, but yeah satanic goat people seemed a bit at odds with the alien world ending.
 

One final point; I think the game might be improved by having Fears rolled from a table for each Scenario to make sure that they are always relevant, and potentially do the same with Defining Features, although perhaps those could come from a game wide table. As much as anything this would eliminate any choice paralysis at the start of the game and let the player get into it faster, although maybe that's just the influence of Knave & Mork Borg on my thinking, maybe other people like a reflective character creation phase for journaling games.

English Eerie is on DriveThrough.

Universalis (05-02-21)

 

Arguably harder to write about than My Life With Master, I came across a reference to it while reading around MLWM before writing it up. In some ways more like a board game, Universalis is essentially a structured way to create and tell a story in a group.

There is no GM, at the start of the game each player gets a number of coins which each spends in turn to establish facts about the story. Once play begins coins are spent to introduce or take charge of components (characters, locations, props) and assign them traits. Players can spend coins to challenge each other and dice are used to resolve complications, i.e. when there is a contested outcome. Coins are won from the resolution of complications or minimally refreshed at the start of each new scene. In this way a story unfolds.

It looks like a really carefully considered system, the rules come in at just over 100 pages.
I’d really like to try it and I’m surprised I’ve only come across it now. It looks like a potentially useful creative tool when working in groups, and there are many lovely aspects to it, the advice on adding traits and setting up scenes for propelling a story towards where you want it to go look like good advice for writing generally. The pdf I downloaded is from 2002 and there was an updated edition in 2006, but the publisher website is sadly defunct. Indeed I could not actually purchase it anywhere, which is a real shame as they really deserve the cash.

My Life with Master (30-01-21)

 

I’m not really ready to write anything about this but unless I play it my recollection will just get worse, and right now I'm unlikely to play it so...

I picked this up as I had seen people raving about how original and influential it was, I tried to purchase it from its own site, but its so old (2003) I ended up being sent the pdf by the actual author! The thing it reminds me of the most is Sorcerer and the designer (Paul Czege) cites Ron Edwards as his big inspiration.

The player characters are the minions of some evil genius type like Victor Frankenstein, and the few rules that there are serve to shape a story that will end in the master’s death at their hands. 

The Master is mechanically represented by a Fear value, the environment’s ability to resist them is embodied as Reason, the Minions have Self Loathing and Weariness and their one saving grace, which will cause the master’s doom is Love. The players and GM design the master and their characters in a collaborative fashion with a few elegant rules for defining abilities and character.

The game is then played in Scenes with each player taking one in turn, these tend to end on a dice roll (which will push up at least one of their stats) before moving onto the next player. The balance of stats dictates much of what happens - indeed it's when someone manages to resist Master’s command (which wont happen till their Love has increased) that the end game begins.

It feels like a cleverly calibrated story machine, based on an analysis of these kind of horror movies. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a meaningful set of rules before, as in so intentionally expressive of a take on the world.

Oh and its worth saying, the game makes no effort to tell you what the rules mean, it just hits you with them.
 

Greg Costikyan's MLWM blogpost  is also really interesting…

“To put it another way, a standard RPG is character-centric; its rules define a set of abilities that each character possesses, and the rest is up to the gamemaster and players to negotiate. Master is, by contrast, narrative-centric; its rules define a narrative arc from which there is no escape, and the rest is up to the gamemaster and players to negotiate.”

The full thing can be found here and his actual review which is equally as interesting is here.

I seem to have spent much of my evening reading around MLWM now (including tangentially finding out much more about GC and ordering his book on Uncertainty In Games) - this is from an interview with Paul Czege:

I think intentionally designed RPGs can be better at changing people’s behaviors and beliefs than other media. Playing an RPG imprints its template for how the world works deeply into your brain. My Life with Master infects players with its understanding of the workings of controlling relationships, and how to get out of them. Imagine the social and economic impact of a truly fun roleplaying game that infects players with an ability to resist powerful advertising messages and more consistently make purchasing decisions they feel good about in retrospect.

The full interview is here

Fascinating stuff, I definitely have to actually play this one day.

Mork Borg (28-01-21)

 

As much a work of art as game I think, a punk zine aesthetic with prestige format production values; varied paper types, embossed cover etc, it is a beautiful little artifact. Its random tables seem as much evocative performance as actual rules, not to slight the content. Everything is both incredibly concise and super expressive. I feel like you could open it and just start playing.

‘A doom metal album of a game. A spiked flail to the face. Rules light, heavy everything else.’

Like the VtM core rule book it starts with lore presented directly, a dozen pages or so of a world inspired by metal and medieval millennialism, more Bosch than Tolkien.

The rules are fairly simple and I was going to say hark back to D&D (I feel, with limited knowledge that the system is inspired by Knave and the whole OSR thing - having not actually read Knave yet, though I have dipped into Rakehell) but that may be lazy thinking on my part.

On the face of it it's not terribly mechanically interesting, save that it throws in random tables with eclectic results wherever it feels like it. Random is king. It screams, 'Just roll it! Now!' It feels very anti-math, anti-system.

For action resolution its a roll greater than or equal to a Difficulty Rating system. Throw 1d20 and add the relevant Ability, a normal difficulty being DR 12 with ability scores range from -3 to +3. Abilities (there are 4; Agility, Presence, Strength, Toughness) are rolled like D&D stats on 3d6, but you simply keep the bonus part (a 13 say would give you +1) and throw away the roll.
Like PbtA the enemies don’t roll (I think), the player simply rolls their attack & defence each round, giving and/or taking damage as the dice dictate.

The one stand-out rule character wise is ‘omens’ which are much like fortune points in Conan (re-roll one die, do maximum damage etc) except you are not awarded them but rather have d2 or whatever each day.

I wonder what it would be like to play, I suspect the appropriate way would be with loads of random tables, yet the sample adventure is not really like that, it has a fixed floor plan with some nice details linking its contents.

Oh and how could I forget (because the mad formatting!) - the Calender of Nechrubel. You roll to see when the world will end, each day the GM rolls to see if a misery is activated. Miseries are presented as Psalms. “6:6 And the unnamed enter the earth, passing through the Veil as it is sundered by Daejmon, the left underling of Nechrubel.”

Here’s rpg designer Chris Bisette rolling up 2 Mork Borg characters.

And here’s its own brilliant character generator - its a one click wonder of a thing!

And and here's the official Mork Borg website with shop links etc.