Thoughts on a Delta Green/Mythos Racing Game

On the Night at the Opera discord server, the album cover for the Dukes of Al-Hazred from the band the Darkest of the Hillside Thickets was posted.  

The title of the album “Dukes of Alhazred” is a reference to both the Dukes of Hazzard (the 70-80’s tv show that was essentially a retelling of Robin Hood with a 1969 Dodge Charger named the General Lee) and of course the lovely author Abdul Alhazred, of the famed Necronomicon. 

As a result of this discussion, I had two thoughts. 

I was imagining a heist/racing game, where tricking out your Eldrich car is a thing and you have to decide how much Space Mead you mix in with your ethanol, gasoline, rocket fuel and blood so you can go on a Mythos road trip.

Then I thought of the wargame Gaslands Refuelled by Mike Hutchinson in a Mythos crossover, using the Gaslands rules but with every servitor race of the Mythos specialized with a different vehicle in a racing/demolition derby. 

The following faction splats are a result of that unspeakable rumination: 

Mi-go – In slick black Lexus RX Hybrids, LX SUVs and police cruisers the Mi-go let their Grey drones pilot the wheel while they hang out in the back seat trying to frost their competitors with Mist Projectors that spew freezing air into their opposing racer’s way.  Throwing Mi-go brain cases at an opponent is considered a rude, but acceptable last resort!

Dark Young – Cultists of the Black Goat and Her progeny hit the tract with stripped down moonshine racers with NASCAR symbols.  Tommy guns and banjos are considered a must. 

Shan – Thanks to their PICESE contacts, well dressed Shan piloted humans drive equally immaculate Aston Martins and blast Goldfinger and other vintage 007 tracks as they swerve and cut across the raceway.  Just don’t ask whom those bloodstains belong to in the back seat!

Ghouls – They rock PT Cruisers because they sort of look like hearses. They get the choice to stock extra bodies in the back for roadtrip snacks or to feed into the corpse-eating engine to fuel it.  Opening the windows so they can put their head out the window and let their tongue loll in the wind is mandatory. 

Nightgaunts – Since they are servitors of Nodens, they pilot amphibious cars such as the Gibbs Aquada, clearly a vehicle that only came about through vivid and deep dreaming. These are always convertibles so the Nightgaunts can stretch their wings and catch the breeze with their black, rubbery, faceless heads.

Innsmouthers; Deep One Hybrids/Deep Ones – Built Ford tough, March’s Fisheries has an exclusively American motorpool of delivery trucks. Powered by the F-150, March’s trucks can carry a whole family of Esoteric Order of Dagon worshipers, plus granddad in the aquarium.  Armed with shotguns, clubs and Molotov cocktails made from Zadok Allen’s Best (locally brewed), Innsmouthers provide a formidable opponent on the road to victory.

Elder Things- Competing in Teslas powered by the Shoggoth Engine (TM), Elder Things have to manage their electricity as their electric-Shoggoth prods are their only way to speed up…or slow down!  Running out of power may make the Shoggoth keep accelerating to ludicrous speed or rebel and envelop the racer for a quick snack.  Elder Things can recharge their prods at EV stations all over the USA. 

Yithians – Modified Jalopies. Similar in style to Yithian lightning guns and temporal communicators, this vehicle looks like junk combined with strange lenses, bits of metal and wire and a central crystal that protrudes through the shaker hood of the car, that glows like a disco ball.  Since the racers are possessed by the Great Race, they take more risks than the human (or quasi-human) competition! 

Apart from factions I was thinking there could be a “build your own Mythos car” minigame where you trick out your car with occult and squamous artifacts. Just imagine the possibilities. 

Examples include: Shining Trapezohedrons hanging like dice in the mirror.  A gilt Haunter of the Dark as a hood ornament giving extra speed if you are in pitch darkness. Elder Sign spinners.  Whistles that say Ia Ia or attract Flying Polyps.  

Maybe it’s drag racing down the Plateau of Leng. Or drifting down the streets of Carcosa. It’s always exciting at Top Mythos!

N@tO's Need to Know Part 1, Delta Green Campaigns

 

Fall of the House of Usher, by Mario Jodra 

There have been many discussions on the Night at the Opera discord about Delta Green campaigns. I want to record some of the details of those discussions so that the recommendations and knowledge are not lost to time.  Thanks to Inixis, who came up with the phrase, I will name these details “N@tO’s Need to Know”. 

Without further ado, here are some thoughts on developing Delta Green campaigns.

How do you create a mood?

One way I’ve created a mood is to envision your game like connected movie stills or scenes and come up with vivid descriptions that convey a particular emotion.  For example, if your mood is “decay”, I don’t think you could do better than to steal imagery from Poe’s Fall of the House of Usher.  Let’s take the introductory passage from the short story:

"It was a dark and soundless day near the end of the year, and clouds were hanging low in the heavens. All day I had been riding on horseback through country with little life or beauty; and in the early evening I came within view of the House of Usher.  I do not know how it was — but, with my first sight of the building, a sense of heavy sadness filled my spirit. I looked at the scene before me — at the house itself — at the ground around it — at the cold stone walls of the building — at its empty eye-like windows — and at a few dead trees — I looked at this scene, I say, with a complete sadness of soul which was no healthy, earthly feeling.  There was a coldness, a sickening of the heart, in which I could discover nothing to lighten the weight I felt. What was it, I asked myself, what was it that was so fearful, so frightening in my view of the House of Usher?”

You could describe your intro scene where Delta Green agents meet in a rundown motel as having “cold flimsy walls, empty and grimy eye-like windows and surrounded by a few dead trees.”  Such a description sets the tone for the adventure and story you want to tell. 

Another way is to choose a mood that you want to convey and find words and synonyms that point to that mood. Sprinkle these words in your narrations, descriptions and dialogue. Let’s assume your mood is “decay” again. Synonyms are “decompose, putrefy, rot, and spoil.”  You could talk about the smell of trash decomposing in dumpster outside a greasy spoon. Maybe inside the greasy spoon the cook yells at the manager, saying that the meat in the refrigerator has spoiled.  Perhaps the waitress smiles and has a noticeable decaying tooth. You get the picture.  

A third way to set a mood is to use the idea of synesthesia. Synesthesia, as we will be using it, is defined as when your brain routes sensory information through multiple unrelated senses.  For example, “tasting” a sound or “feeling” a smell.  In the example mood of “decay”, instead of the air smelling like fruiting bodies, perhaps the air tastes like overwarm tobacco chew, gelatinous and unwelcome.  Presenting the senses as “mixed up” can make a stronger impression on the reader or receiver. 

How do you make scenarios mysterious?

Generally, in Delta Green games I think the focus of the adventure is on an event (usually a murder, or more than one) with unusual coincidences (a decaying body is found above an identical decaying body buried three months before) or with details that do not make sense (there was a murder victim found in a room locked from the inside).   Further digging by the players is required to uncover the entire twisted tale you the Handler (Delta Green Game Master) are telling and have the event make sense. 

But how does a Handler carry out the mystery?   To answer this question, I will recommend two blog posts by The Alexandrian. The first blog post deals with the (rather well known now) Three Clue Rule, that explains how to present clues so players will not miss them. The second post is about how to run mysteries and why the failure to find a clue is so important. Both of these posts discuss actions a Handler can use to build a mystery that can be successfully unraveled in their campaign.   

What is the theme/premise of your DG campaign? Have you made deliberate choices? Should you?

While one could make a campaign out of Delta Green adventures casually strung together, some Handlers want more connective tissue or a theme throughout the campaign for a richer experience for themselves and the players.  If you are creating a campaign with a theme, pitch it to your players. One way to do it is to present it as a summary (we are focusing on X, Y and Z).  

Another format is to do what Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition did with its campaign settings. They had defined characteristics about the campaign setting world in the introduction.  Mechanically, each of the characteristics had a sentence with a paragraph explaining it.   For example, in the Dark Sun Campaign Setting for 4th edition D&D, the first three characteristics of Athas (world of Dark Sun) are “The World Is a Desert”, “The World is Savage”, and “Metal is Scarce.” There are eight characteristics in total, but you can get an idea just from the first three statements where this world is going.  Use this technique to craft a very clear campaign theme for your players. 

What do your players want to do in the campaign?

Ask them! No seriously, asking players what they would like to accomplish during the game gives them and the Handler (you) goals and ready-made plot ideas for your campaign.  You can also reflect at milestones during the campaign or after missions and ask your players if they feel like they are achieving their goals or what else needs to be done in order to do so. Player feedback provides instant scenario ideas. 

Should you have a home base in a Delta Green campaign? What is your local area?

Some DG Handlers have stated that they feel the 5th edition D&D community has scooped them. 5th edition D&D Game Masters often start their campaign in a single village or town (or even just a tavern) and expand the adventuring area surrounding the village as the campaign progresses. After each adventure the player characters regroup back at the central village, meet established NPCs and engage in inventory management and/or shopping of some kind.  

The D&D players have a home base, and that seems to be missing from the majority of Delta Green campaigns, but there is no rule saying you can’t steal from D&D!  First, establish what your home base will be. Is it a town, a city, a Holiday Inn, or a Delta Green safehouse with really good Thai food down the street?  Having a home base allows the players a sense of familiarity and relaxation once they complete a mission. Maybe they would be wrong to relax because you want paranoia to reign supreme, but that is a discussion for another post.  Also, players can interact with NPCs and see how they change over time; possibly for the better if the DG agents are successful in their missions, and maybe for the worse depending on what you the Handler wants to do. 

Home scenes are more than just reciting that bonds were damaged for Delta Green agents to protect their sanity or acquire new skills or whatever.  Setting a home scene (say an important phone call to a loved one) at a home base may increase the poignancy and could give an excuse for important PCs and NPCs to give commentary on a player’s home scene.  Is everything falling apart at a PC’s home, but the Delta Green team is hale and hearty?  Does the PC spend their time meeting commitments at home but get dirty looks from the team whey they are down important gear that no one can afford (without burning bond points)?  Having home scenes at a home base, or interspersed with scenes at a home base can add additional emotional weight to a scene.  And that may be just what you want for your campaign. 

On the flipside, maybe you want a globetrotting campaign. Hey, 007 gets along fine.  Masks of Nyarlathotep (the classic Call of Cthulhu campaign) does this as well.   In an international campaign you may want to focus on the local area on each “hub world” stop for the players.  As a Handler, ask some questions of the area before you introduce it to give it flavor.  What are the gun laws of the location? Can firearms be trafficked into a location by land, sea or air?  How do the locals and the local government respond to criminal activity that the players will surely get up to? How friendly are the citizens to foreigners or shady types like the investigators? Do the PCs have access to all resources in each “hub world” they land in?  Or does this require additional skill checks or expenditure of resources to get what they are looking for?  

What is the quantum language skill and should you use it? 

The Delta Green “quantum language skill”, comes from the concept of a “quantum ogre” which is a Game Master technique. A quantum ogre is the idea that the Game Master has designed an ogre encounter, and no matter what choice in the dungeon the players take (i.e. right or left passageway) the players will always run into the ogre. 

In Delta Green, deciding your character can read Latin, Ancient Greek, or whatever; and never having that particular language show up in the campaign can be very frustrating.  Thus, some Delta Green Handlers allow for the choice of a language to be a “quantum language skill”.  The language skill the player has is undefined until a foreign language is encountered in the campaign. Then the player with the quantum language skill may spend that slot to know that given language at a skill level that they bought upon character creation. This is a bit metagame-y but it prevents language skills from being useless in the campaign. 

Alternatively, if you the Handler know all the languages that will be used in the campaign, because you just did that much preparation, you can give a list of languages used to the players at the beginning of the campaign and have them decide what they want.

Acknowledgements

I want to thank the following people from the Night at the Opera discord for ideas and review of this post: anonymous, zomner, Splizwarf, and Inixis. 

Things on my Radar

 It’s been a while.  Here are a list of games and authors that I am either actively reading or actively pursuing.  I do not have enough information to review any of these products yet, but they have all piqued my interest. 

Games

Holdout- a solitaire, roll-and-write resource management game in which you must grow your wasteland settlement, deal with mishaps that drain your resources and daily bandit raids and achieve certain objectives to win.  

I am interested in this game, because I wanted to examine simple and fun resource management games, what makes them tick, and how they can be iterated off of.

Holdout is by Humble Bard Games. $5. This is a print and play game. A video overview is here.

Dangerous Space- A sci-fi solo game that is published by PNP Arcade and designed by Jason Greeno and Jason Tagmire.

The description for Dangerous Space says: 

"Dangerous Space is a dungeon crawl experience in futuristic starships.

This solo, roll & write game has a tactical emphasis on dice management and careful placement. 

With puzzle-optimizing challenges combined with a hero tech tree, you’ll find yourself racing the clock, dodging enemy laser blasts and confronting some deep space terrors.”

The Dangerous Space Core Set is $4.

Stoneburner- I’ve been reading through this game. Stoneburner is about being a Space Dwarf and inheriting a space mine in an asteroid that is infested by demons and worse.  It takes its inspiration from Deep Rock Galactic, Doom, Dwarf Fortress, The Expanse and Firefly. In addition, it claims it is “solo friendly.”

Mechanically, to perform a check you roll a skill die, or a die from an item.  The roll result of 1-2 indicates you outright fail, or you may succeed with a major complication. A roll of 3-4 means you succeed in your endeavor, however there is a minor complication.  A roll of 5+ means you greatly succeed, and the higher the roll result the better. 

Now after you use a skill or item, your die for that skill or item decreases by one step, (ie 1d6 turns into a 1d4).  Skills cannot go lower than a 1d4.  Dwarven classes have three skills: Strength, Dexterity and Willpower.  These skills may vary from 1d4 to 1d8, depending on starting class. 

Stoneburner is created by Fari RPG’s, specifically by René-Pier Deshaies. It is $15. 

Bandit Republic- The Bandit Republic OSR hexcrawl from itch.io is set in an alternate history 1925 where the Republic of Jelenia broke off from Poland and the characters are all deserters from the Army of Jelenia. There are artillery, radios, soldiers and spies from East Prussia, Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia; guns galore, witchers, leshy and other supernatural oddities along with revolutionaries and communists.

The system is based on the Wolves Upon the Coast hexcrawl's system. Bandit Republic was created by Tom Mecredy who some of you may remember as the author of the Napoleonic naval OSR hexcrawl Shot and Splinters that I liked so much I designed two additional random tables for.  

 

Bandit Republic is currently 50% off through 1/30/24. Normally it is $20 as of January 2024. As the hexcrawl is further developed, the price will increase.  

Over War: Monarch Edition-  

UPDATE **Kickstarter is LIVE Through Feb 15th** 

Patreon post link about Over War: Monarch Edition here. 

Over War: Monarch Edition is a tactical tabletop rpg (inspired by Fire Emblem, Yggdra Union, Langrisser, and the works of Yasumi Matsuno) soon to be a Kickstarter (possibly in February) by author Richard Kelly and expanded by Blackoath Entertainment.  Blackoath was responsible for Across a Thousand Dead Worlds which I enjoyed reading and wrote a review of.  So, expect the Blackoath touch of a solo mode and tons of interesting random tables with Over War: Monarch Edition. 

Here is the blurb that got me excited about Over War: Monarch Edition from the Patreon post.

“But how does it play, I hear you ask? Well, players maintain a warcamp, unlock new units and supplies between missions, then take to the field, relying on the types of characters they've recruited and the formation they've put them in to carry them through battles.

Missions take place on hex maps covered in unique terrain types. Cities can be conquered, swamps can be slogged through, units can take to the air to avoid the effects of terrain or stand on mountains and fire downward into foes for extra damage. Throughout all this, the emphasis is on keeping things simple and keeping choices meaningful. Dice are rarely rolled. Attacks typically hit. And good formations, tactical choices, and resource spending carry the day.”

Want to see how the original Over War plays? There are FREE Community Copies of Over War: The Night Comes Down on the itch.io page. Make sure you scroll down to the bottom to get it. 

Books

Mark Samuels; The Age of Decayed Futurity- I’m sorry to say I first heard of Mark Samuels and his weird and Lovecraftian fiction upon an announcement of his passing on r/WeirdLit. The blog Wormwoodiana had a very nice tribute for Mark Samuels, specifically saying that he was a passionate advocate for Machen, Lovecraft and Ligotti. I am looking forwards to reading some of Mark Samuels’ “best” short stories as collected in The Age of Decayed Futurity once I get my hands on a physical copy.   

Premee Mohamed; No One Will Come Back For Us - From her bio on Amazon, Premee Mohamed is “a Nebula, World Fantasy, and Aurora award-winning Indo-Caribbean scientist and speculative fiction author based in Edmonton, Alberta.” Her science degrees are in molecular genetics and environmental science. 

I recently downloaded the Kindle sample of Premee’s book No One Will Come Back For Us. It contained two and a half short stories: Below the Kirk, Below the Hill; Instructions; and The Evaluator.  In Below the Kirk, Below the Hill; and the section of The Evaluator that was present in the Kindle sample, Premee Mohamed creates a mood of a normal world but with pinpricks of oddity that she pulls on to lead the reader through mystery and horror indicating that what these people live in, is not our world, or if it was; something very alien has happened to their surroundings and they are trying to cope.  I’m very eager to continue reading The Evaluator to see how the story develops.  I’ll report back if she is one of the authors who also treads the path of cosmic horror in her tales.  

Adapting the Laird Barron Mythos to Delta Green, Part 1

 Laird Barron, the weird fiction and supernatural horror author has crafted a Carnivorous Cosmos with several entities that may be similar to each other, but they all view humanity with various unholy lusts, including love.  In this post I describe some of my thoughts on Barron’s Children of the Old Leech and how the mechanics and mythos of Delta Green could handle them. 

WARNING: Heavy spoilers for Laird Barron’s work, in particular The Croning and on the subject of the Children of the Old Leech. 

I am convinced Barron’s creativity and views on Lovecraftian Cosmic Horror are rich places to mine for horror that would be fresh and new to players of Call of Cthulhu or Delta Green.  In fact, mellonbread submitted two shotgun scenarios to the 2002 Delta Green shotgun scenario contest, inspired by Laird Barron’s works: Saturnalia and BUGS BUGS BUGS.  Saturnalia won the People’s Choice and Second Place awards in the 2002 Delta Green shotgun scenario contest.  I had the opportunity to speak with mellonbread and he told me Saturnalia was based on two of Barron’s stories: Termination Dust from Swift To Chase and Jaws of Saturn, featured in The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All. BUGS BUGS BUGS was inspired by the story Proboscis in The Imago Sequence, and the X-Files episode Folie a Deux.

Recently I saw a blog post from fellow Delta Green enthusiast, magnificentophat, and part of it inspired me to consider how Barron’s dreadful supernatural aliens the Children of the Old Leech could be generated in a Delta Green context. Barron mentions the Children of the Old Leech in several stories (which I may delineate in a future post) but for today I will focus on Barron’s novella The Croning where the Children are most explicitly described in the climax in the following passages:   

p. 221 "“…behold the portal. To be taken through it is to be carried to the home of the Children of the Old Leech, chief among the Dark Ones who serve vast blind things in the lightless wastes where mortal physics collapse into nonsense.”"

p. 220 "“The Dark Ones don’t procreate as we do.” Rourke said. “Their system of reproduction is via assimilation, absorption, transmogrification.”"

p.131-132 "“Hey,” Mr Dart said, “I’m curious-you ever ask yourself what the connection is between the Wolvertons, Rourkes and Mocks? Other than big fortunes?”

“You gotta include the Redfields too,” Mr. Claxton said. “Although, I don’t know how deep that goes.”"

How deep indeed Mr. Claxton, how deep indeed. 

These passages suggest that there are mortal families that will be “adopted” and transmuted into Children of the Old Leech in a terrifying ritual or procedure. The Children of the Old Leech are the top Servitor race of a group called the Dark Ones, all of whom serve the Old Leech or apparently comparable beings, i.e. “vast blind things in the lightless wastes where mortal physics collapse into nonsense.” And the Children of the Old Leech, they love us, yes they do. 

In The Croning, it is implied the mortals chosen for conversion into the Children are flayed of their skin, changed in some terrible fundamental way, then rewrapped into their own skin and can carry out their human roles, looking none the worse for wear except a long scar somewhere on their body which they explain away as one accident or another.  It may also be possible for the newly inducted/changed Children to slip their mortal skin and reinhabit it later as needed.  

See page 152 "A muddy inscription near the bottom of one canvas read, Fathers and Mothers come as slaves and depart as kin." 

So, is there a current Delta Green mechanism that could explain or describe the horrible transmutation that mortals are forced to undergo to rise as Children of the Old Leech? Yes. Magnificentophat created a variant of the ritual Changeling Feast, that is most often associated with Lovecraftian ghouls, that was inspiring to me.  I’ve quoted the full text from the magnificentophat blog, below:

Changeling Feast

The operator may pay part of the WP cost when they consume the body and the rest when they assume the disguise. The latter cost is reduced, as it must be paid repeatedly. Eg: 6 WP and 1D4 SAN during cannibalism and 1D4 WP (or 1 SAN if they have any) every time they ‘change shape.’ Maybe it takes anywhere from a round to a minute to assume someone else’s form and taking damage disrupts the illusion. A successful Ritual Activation roll could enact a speedy change. Unnatural entities always transform quickly. Some versions ‘only’ involve skinning and tanning the victim’s corpse (1/1D4 SAN from violence) to make a cloak or belt that disguises its wearer. It can’t be disrupted but isn’t as easily put on and taken off as the traditional glamour.

Alternate Names: Consume Semblance, Deathly Glamour, Yig’s Deception

For full comparison and reference, below is the original ritual Changeling Feast from the Delta Green Handler’s Guide page 175.

Changeling Feast

Complex ritual. Study time: days; 1D10 SAN. Activation: days; 12 WP, 1D6 SAN.

This ritual allows the operator to consume a human corpse and later assume the victim’s likeness. The likeness is not deep. It does not change the weight of the operator; bright light casts the operator’s true shadow, not that of the likeness; and it does not emulate the victim’s behavior, personality, or mannerisms.

Consuming a human body costs 1/1D6 SAN for violence. Devouring a human corpse takes days for a human operator. Some inhuman entities can do it in far less time and gain access to a victim’s thoughts and memories. How much of the body must be devoured, and whether a human operator can use this ritual to devour and change into an animal or unnatural entity, are up to the Handler.

Now the ritual for conversion of an appropriate human into a Child of the Old Leech is described, either literally or metaphorically, in the following passage from The Croning, page 163:

“The passage in question was accompanied by an elaborate woodblock illustration inscribed, The Croning (fig. i); a depiction of thirteen naked, apparently middle-aged women encircling a massive boulder.  A buxom figure lay supine, draped across the face of the stone, shackled or bound in some manner.  Don instantly recognized this piece as the subject of Michelle’s sketches.

The drawing was exceedingly baroque, freighted with peripheral figures: winged gargoyles; demonic beasts that resembled kangaroos with tusks (these latter feasted upon the carcasses of men in Conquistadors’ distinctive armor); cherubs; flautists, and peeking from the roots of a mighty oak tree, shadowy woodland sprites, imp faces twisted in dark merriment.  Its overall effect was singularly disturbing, like a Bosche simplified and shrunk to minuscule dimensions. Michelle had scratched in a list of initials and alchemical symbols; she’d even gone so far as to make a charcoal sketch of the original on a piece of textured art paper.“

I will be referring to this ritual as The Croning (ritual). The Croning (ritual) may require up to 13 cultist participants, require the presence of an elder or non-human Child of the Old Leech, a human victim (the converted-to-be), an occult location of power devoted to the Old Leech and an auspicious calendar time at night.  In the process of The Croning (ritual), the victim is transformed into a Child of the Old Leech by an unspeakable process that involves flaying the victim’s skin, modifying the victim with biological and physiological processes that are so advanced they appear supernatural, forcing the victim to consume their human parts that are no longer necessary according to the Children, and literally re-wrapping the victim now Child of the Old Leech in their original human skin.  

The idea of “forcing the victim to consume their human parts that are no longer necessary according to the Children” is inspired by the Children of the Old Leech’s predation upon human beings, and I think it is fitting because The Croning (ritual) process can then be linked, in part, to the Delta Green established ritual Changeling Feast.   

I don’t have a full idea of how to mechanically define The Croning (ritual), but inspired by magnificentophat’s version of Changeling Feast, Children of the Old Leech should be able to impersonate themselves when wearing their own human skin.  It is also suggested in Barron’s The Siphon from The Beautiful Thing that Awaits Us All, that the Children of the Old Leech can take on the forms of those humans they have consumed, assuming they have flayed the human victims first.  I am assuming that the supernatural beings described in The Siphon are Children of the Old Leech. 

I suggest the following new magical ritual that Children of the Old Leech would know upon conversion by The Croning (ritual):

Changeling Feast (Child of the Old Leech):

This ritual allows the operator to consume parts of their own body or a complete human corpse and later assume the victim’s likeness, assuming the operator has access to the near complete flayed skin of the victim (themselves or another). The likeness of a Child of the Old Leech’s personal human form is complete and fully convincing, with the exception that there is a long scar somewhere on the Child’s human body. This scar is the location where the Child can “unzip” their skin and regain their true monstrous form.

In the case where the Child wishes to impersonate the likeness of a complete human corpse that they have consumed, the Child may pay part of the WP cost when they consume the body and the rest when they assume the disguise. To be clear, the Child inhabiting the flayed skin of a victim is wearing a disguise and not an illusion. The Child can shed their skinsuit and emerge as their true form in a round. It takes a minute and requires a dark location for a Child to wear a flayed skin and disguise themselves in it. 

I’m not sure whether, like the original Changeling Feast ritual, the inhuman operator does gain access to a victim’s thoughts and memories. I will have to do additional rereads of Barron’s corpus to come up with a ruling that is accurate based on the source material. 

I will note however, that the operator of Changeling Feast (Child of the Old Leech) does not automatically emulate the victim’s behavior, personality, or mannerisms.  That is up to the Child to do through their stats and skills, not the ritual. 

The operator of Changeling Feast (Child of the Old Leech) may be detected by the abhorrent taste or scent of their skinsuit. For example, The Siphon describes the following:

“The group dispersed, shuffling off to their respective rooms, and Landcaster shook the hands of the men and kissed the hands of the ladies – Kara’s skin tasted of liquor, and Mrs. Cook’s was clammy and scaly and bitter. He glanced at her face, and her eyes were heavy-lidded, her thick mouth upturned with matronly satisfaction at his discomfort.” 

“He remembered kissing Mrs. Cook’s hand the previous evening, its repellent flavor of sweet, rotting fruit and underlying acridness.”

In addition, the operator of Changeling Feast (Child of the Old Leech) may force a San check from observers by allowing their monstrous nature to bleed through their disguise for a round. This may generate a 0/1 or 1/1d4 San loss once and only once per observer as determined by the operator.  Note I have yet to define what the San loss would be upon seeing a Child in their full monstrous form. At the moment, I suggest at least 1d6 San loss from a failure or perhaps 1d8. 

Anyway, more to come on this subject and others as I continue to mine the Barron Mythos for nuggets of pure undiluted horror with advice from friends. 

Shot and Splinters, Useful Tables 2

 

Image from chess set here

I’ve mentioned Shot and Splinters, Tom Mecredy’s naval Napoleonic hexcrawl before and I still find myself hearing the siren’s call of the Age of Sail.  In short, I have designed two additional tables for use in naval adventures around the time of 1800, inspired by history and my own flights of fancy. The trinkets and treasures d30 table describes things of value of the era or that are adorned with things of obvious value. For some of the entries I researched for museum pieces of the time and used those as inspiration. An example is the “traveling calendar timepiece from a Swiss watchmaker,” that I discovered in one of the references down below. 

Sailors have always had superstitions, so I mined those ideas and an article on ship leisure to generate the d20 table for incidents aboard ship.  Without much trouble, one could adapt the entries to apply to the crew of a spaceship as well.   

More sources for naval and Napoleonic history:

• Society in Napoleonic France

• Exploration and Discovery in the Napoleonic Era

• Breguet timepieces Napoleon owned

• One of the entries in the trinkets and treasure table is a direct reference to HP Lovecraft’s The Temple. 

• Some sailing superstitions 

• Leisure during the Age of Sail

CRASH//CART After Action Report and Review

 I had the opportunity to play a one shot of the indy game CRASH//CART and I had a blast, even though the group and I had some critiques of the system.  

The Game and Character Creation

CRASH//CART is about a group of paramedics and their flying emergency medical vehicle trying to save patients while working for a for-profit corporation, all in a cyberpunk world. If you are familiar with Cyberpunk 2020, think of Trauma Team International.  If Shadowrun is more of your jam, consider Doc Wagon or CrashCart or one of the other corporate medical services.

CRASH//CART was created by Galen Pejeau and is hosted on itch. 

A Blades in the Dark based game, CRASH//CART uses a modified deck of cards instead of dice to resolve actions taken in game. I’ll get into the mechanics more later. Right now, suffice to say that this was my first exposure to the CRASH//CART mechanics as a player and my first encounter playing with a Blades in the Dark system.  I had read Blades in the Dark in the past, but reading a system and actually playtesting it are two utterly different experiences as you all know. 

Let’s get to how my character, “Action” Jackson (no last name) came to be. I was playing with one other player and a Game Master.  This is significant because CRASH//CART recommends 3-5 players on the itch page. Since we were less than the recommended number of players (page 22 of the pdf recommends four characters), we followed the playbook prioritization of Medic, Pilot, Orderly and Mechanic.  My compatriot chose the Medic and I selected Pilot.    

Summarizing character creation a bit, as a Pilot I started off with one dot each in the Actions Evading and Fraternizing; and I was given four more dots to distribute among my Actions as I saw fit.  Since I didn’t have a full understanding of the system, I chose to put one point in Scuffling (since my character had a Vice of Violence), and a point each into Moving and Hacking. I put the last point in Evading since I assumed that was the “Get the Fuck Out of Dodge” skill.  In retrospect I likely should have put that second point from Evasion into Moving, since Moving was used far more often; but on the other hand, Evading did come into play in a couple of clutch moments. 

Then we got into development of our bird, the flying emergency medical vehicle, which the game refers to as a Ground Effect Vehicle. The game also refers to the vehicle as an EMV at some points in the text, which I’m going to go with and assume it stands for Emergency Medical Vehicle. The important things here were the Crew Upgrades and upgrades to the EMV’s four systems.  We picked the upgrade to the Engines, Smart Gearbox, because it allowed the EMV to take off and land with increased effect. Mechanically, “increased effect” means if a success is pulled from the deck, it will become stronger when resolved.  Ultimately neither of us players wanted issues on takeoff or crashing upon landing so the Smart Gearbox was a solid choice.  We also chose Pathfinder Drones and Smart Gurneys. Smart Gurneys were a no brainer since we didn’t have an Orderly on the team to actually move the gurneys from the EMV to the patient.  Pathfinder Drones were a great decision by my fellow player, since they could scout ahead of the crew, and again we were only two.  Lastly, we chose Skeleton Key under Netlink Upgrades.  Essentially it allows you to have great effect on an intrusive hacking action.  Putting some forethought into our choices was actually very helpful, as we used all four upgrades during our adventure. 

The Adventure

Speaking of adventure, our GM started with an abrupt emergency call for a PLATINUM level client.  We only knew that they were in medical distress. Oh, and also they were a clone. Welcome to the world of Cyberpunk.  The address we were given landed us in an extremely posh estate on the coast with a lavish view of the now-toxic sea. There were floor to ceiling glass doors and one of them had been smashed to pieces. The Medic played it wisely and sent one of our shiny and new Pathfinder Drones into the house through the broken door. The commotion was on the second floor.  Our PLATINUM level client was on his back trying (and failing) to fend off a much hairier and more muscular naked person on him who was trying to gouge his eyes out.  Standing there ineffectually and shouting at the assailant to stop were…two more clones? Yep, something very odd was happening in this house, but that didn’t matter; we had a PLATINUM level client to save! 

Our Pathfinder Drone circled the assailant and yelled at him to stop, as the Medic and I jumped out of the EMV with important gear. The Smart Gurney exited the vehicle autonomously and trundled along behind us. As the Pathfinder Drone got closer to the assailant the hairy man turned around and we got a good look at his face before he backhanded the drone to the floor.  Yes, you guessed it, the muscular naked hairy man was yet another clone, with the same facial features as our PLATINUM level client, who by the way was writhing around in his own blood and screaming as one eye was not so gently removed from his face. Squick. 

As a side note, in CRASH//CART, all playbooks have a list of equipment for each character. The equipment by default is kept in the EMV.  When you exit the vehicle and enter a scene each player may take only two pieces of equipment from their equipment list.  One of the pieces of equipment I took was Fine Buzzknuckles.  They were “impact resistant gauntlet[s] with embedded taser leads and capable of delivering multiple 1,200 volt shocks,” according to the book. When the medic and I raced into the manor and up the stairs, I was smiling. Those Buzzknuckles were just charging up. 

The Medic, professional as ever, quickly introduced himself to the two ineffectual clones (turns out one of them had placed the call for an ambulance) while I dove at the muscular fiend with Buzzknuckles blazing.  I tackled the hairy clone and the electrical discharge sent him slamming into the far wall.  The Medic convinced the two ineffectual clones to help restrain the hairy one (You! Grab an arm. You! Grab the other arm and hold him down!).  I got off our mangled PLATINUM level client’s body and joined the melee to subdue the now angry hairy man. The Medic jumped on our client’s body and immediately began emergency services as he now saw a deep gash along the clone’s stomach, likely caused by a knife or maybe even a shard of glass from the now broken glass door downstairs.  

The mystery of all these bloody shenanigans would have to remain unsolved for us. We had a client that had to get to a hospital, and the sooner we got there, the sooner we got paid. Wrestling with the hairy muscular clone was hard, even with assistance from his two brother clones. Frantically, I looked around for something heavy and expensive. Luck was with me and I found a crystal brandy snifter. Smash! 

The hairy and now alcohol smelling clone slumped to the ground at about the time the Smart Gurney chimed amicably and arrived.  The Medic and I carefully slid the PLATINUM level client’s groaning body onto the gurney and then we turned and ran out of the manor house.  Was there a story the clones were going to relate?  Was this some sort of clone’s twisted homicide/suicide plot against himself? Don’t know; doesn’t matter.  We had our patient secure in the EMV and began flying towards the hospital. That was until we got a call from the Leland.  

      

What the hell is a Leland? You know them. Everybody knows them on an EMT team. A Leland is that person who is a repeat caller to an EMT squad.  They always seem to be in trouble and they are a fixture of the sector where the EMT team works.  The Medic’s player had an interesting twist on the Leland. They suggested that the Leland was an owner of a night owl dive diner who acted as sort of a den mother to people from the street.  She wasn’t calling for herself, she would call for medical services for her patrons repeatedly, thus she got the Leland nickname.  The Medic added additional details by saying his character would go to the Leland’s watering hole after his shift so he had a motivation to keep her happy. 

As the Medic was treating the gut wound of the PLATINUM level clone client, I gently touched down in the middle of the city where the Leland was flagging us down and clearing a path to her diner for the Smart Gurney to trundle along.  Our new patient, “Dennis”, a youngish man, had overdosed on something and was having seizures. At least that is what we were told when we saw Dennis covered in some strange blue goo emanating from his mouth and hardening enough to prevent us from removing him from the floor.   What the hell was this situation? As I chatted up the Leland to gather more information (using the Fraternizing action), the Medic was using his background as a former medical scientist to Diagnose what this hard blue goo was.  A solid success gave the Medic the information that the blue goo was actually experimental medical nanobots that had been given to some soldiers during the last war. Dennis was evidently a war veteran that had taken some drug that caused this adverse reaction, and he needed help now.  The problem was he was stuck to the floor. Fortunately, the Medic had taken a Laser Cutter from his kit on the EMV and while I was telling the Leland “I’m sure your building insurance will cover this, honest”, the Medic cut a Dennis shaped hole in the linoleum.  

The Smart Gurney chimed and cheerily trafficked Dennis into the EMV where I hurriedly prepared for takeoff.  Because there was a problem. Our PLATINUM level client was groaning because his stomach was expanding with the gut wound, and I’m not a doctor I’m just a pilot but I knew we had to get our patients to the hospital fast.  The EMV was careening through the wild blue yonder when we got two signatures on our radar.  The Medic was using his Microsurgical Rig (designed for brain surgery but it should work on a gut wound in a pinch, right?) on our clone patient when over the radio came the demand “Turn over the criminal to us or we open fire”.  Two corporate black helicopters were on our tail. 

Mere minutes away from the hospital landing pad I turned on the radio, said “No” not knowing or caring who was the criminal; and immediately took evasive action, jinking and swerving the EMV to avoid their missiles from locking on (keep in mind I had two points in Evasion).  Well, these daredevil antics made my compatriot the Medic less happy as he struggled with using his brain surgery rig to try to close the worsening gut wound.  The GM ruled that my shenanigans, though successful in shaking off the weapons lock, banged the patients around in the interior of the EMV and they both took a point of damage as a result.  Not even bothering to say “sorry” I managed to land on the hospital landing zone (thanks to our trusty Smart Gearbox) and the corporate helicopters decided to peel off.  Now the patients were the hospitals’ problem.  We cheered and momentarily celebrated another shift completed in the absolute chaos of the CRASH//CART world. 

Now I do want to point out I usually play characters more empathetic to NPCs, however the world and the design of the game really focuses the players on the EMT job and getting the patients to medical care as quickly as possible. So, I would have loved to delve into the mystery of the clones or been more careful with the patients that I frantically flew to the hospital, but the message from the game was clear. That simply wasn’t our job. Look at the omnipresent Dispatch, Patient, Destination tracker under the EMV schematic.  Our objective was to deliver as many patients to the hospital as possible while being under budget.  And yes, that is gritty and horrific the way cyberpunk can be at times.   

During Downtime for the shift (which I will explain in more detail later), I decided to indulge in my vice of Violence and go pick a fight at a bar a decent walk away from the EMV’s refueling area to Blow Off Some Steam. Fortunately, this action reduced my 8 stress to 2.  Feeling chipper, if a bit sore and bruised, I got back to the corporate canteen where the Medic was just waking up (as he had spent both downtime actions to Catch Some Z’s).   We were ready to go for another run. 

 

The Medic and I suited up, locked in to the EMV, and received a distress call from a GOLD level client.  The client had made the call from her motorbike, screaming down the Interstate-10 with a biker gang in close pursuit. There was only one tiny little problem. The client was legally dead. 

Normally I didn’t think our policies covered dead people, but based on the call and context of the situation I was rapidly coming to a disquieting conclusion. Our client was likely a Shadowrunner, fleeing a botched job.  I brought our EMV to a position above the client’s motorbike, matching her speed as she tore down the highway.  The bikers behind her were shooting and occasionally hitting their target.  Unable to directly talk with the fleeing client for technical reasons, our Medic had the bright idea of using one of our Pathfinder Drones to hover around our client and announce the fact that we were here to help. 

The drone flew down and circled our client’s head, beeping and booping happily.  Watching the video feed, we caught a disturbing bit of audio.  Our client was speaking with two voices. Uncertain of what to do or what state our client was in, things suddenly became clear.  We heard the client yelling in one unmistakably blended voice, “Get them off of me!” 

Then I said something you never want to hear from your Pilot, let alone your EMT. “I’m going to try something stupid,” I said to the GM, grinning. I pulled two black face cards. A critical success. What I had done was to use my two points in Evasion to fly dangerously low between the bikers and the client and to kick up dust with my rotors to give the client time and distance away from the pursuers.  It worked like a charm.  The bikers shot their guns up in the air and booed unhappily as they peeled off. Then we saw the second wave of antagonists. Three police vehicles.   

Disheartened but not exactly surprised (after all, this was cyberpunk), I attempted another risky maneuver; but this time everything hinged on our Medic. I flew radically low to the ground so the Medic could hop out of the EMV and grab the Shadowrunner client as she came to a screeching stop with the motorbike and nearly passed out into his arms. Still flying, the EMV was hovering off the highway by inches when the Medic, our hero, fireman-carried the bleeding client and jumped into the back of the EMV where the Smart Gurney was waiting, chirping invitingly.  

But it didn’t stop the police from pursuing us. The Medic was screaming at me from inside the medbay that the client was bleeding out due to bullet holes.  To complicate things, some asshole had coated the bullets in some form of acid so they were melting through the Medic’s metal tools.  Our client was none too happy with the fact that she was dying, and was very vocal about it.  

In the eye of this shit-maelstrom, the police were demanding that I land and hand over the “criminal”. They punctuated this by shooting some glue ball into one of the rotors, gunking up the works and forcing me to compensate for the EMV pulling to the side. Things were going to shit and fast.  I sat down for a hot second and tried to strategize with my Medic.  His suggestion was just to stall for time, to comply with the police request while he patched up the patient, and then spring a little trick on the cops.  

Won over by my Medic’s argument, I terminated evasive action and ever so slowly brought the EMV down for a landing on the interstate.  Why is that you Officer Bob? I recognize your voice from this cop bar I frequent … I began attempting to Fraternize with the enemy.  The Medic got the patient stable to some degree, or at least to a less leaking state.  But bullshit can only last so long.  The cops came to a full stop, surrounding our EMV on the highway and slowly started to wander up to our vehicle.  Hey, only half of the cops had guns drawn on us when they approached. I consider that a success! 

As I slowly got out of the cockpit and went to meet and greet our pursuers, I asked for the Warrant for our patient while our Medic was in the back, furiously hacking the computer.  Why? Do you remember the fourth upgrade, the Skeleton Key? As I was talking to the head police officer in charge, our Medic deployed the Skeleton Key to back hack the channel the cops opened to send us the Warrant so we could scramble the cop’s connection to the Warrant database.  “Are you sure your Warrant is up to date officer?” I said. “It’s all blank…”  Just as the cops were decrying their computer glitch, something happened that invalidated CrashCart’s warranty. 

The client, on some very good happy drugs, had had enough of this bullshit, jumped out of the gurney, ran into an unoccupied cop vehicle and hightailed it out of there before we could all blink. “Well, I think that’s the end of the shift,” I mused, smoking an illegal cigarette and looking at our once-client fly off into the yellow-red Pacific coast sunset. Another police vehicle tried to lift off and ended up crashing into a local Wendys.  The smoke enhanced that beautiful reddening sunset between the palm trees.  Synthwave was pounding from the EMV’s speakers as the dejected police officer threw his cap on the ground and said that that was yet another toll runner that they’d never be able to catch. 

Roll credits.   

System Description

Before we get into a description of the CRASH//CART system, let me describe the software we used for our game’s online setup.  Character sheets were hosted for players on the Fari App.  Our GM had generously provided a character sheet for CRASH//CART in a json format that we updated and edited with information from the playbooks.  The gameplay space with the deck of cards and tokens, which you can see in the pictures above, was provided by PlayingCards.io.  PlayingCards.io was very intuitive to use as a player.  We could draw cards from the deck, flip the cards, shuffle and keep cards apart from the deck in our hand in the bar below the graphic of the EMV.  

The basic system of CRASH//CART is based on Forged in the Dark mechanics. However, a major difference is that you pull from a preconstructed deck of cards to resolve actions rather than rolling dice.  The preconstructed deck is created as follows:  Add a black ace through six plus the face cards of both the clubs and the spades to the deck. Next, add the ace through nine for both red suits. Finally, include one joker. Aces are not considered face cards in this game. They count as a draw of “one”. 

To summarize a bit, when you are carrying out an Action, your GM tells you your Position (Cautious, Risky or Desperate) and you draw a number of cards governed by the number of dots you have in a particular action. A mixed success is drawing at least one black card. A black face card gives you a full success and drawing multiple black face cards is considered a critical success. Now here is the trick. If you drew a black face card you may put it in your Cache.  All other black cards (mixed successes) end up in your Trash.  Red cards drawn go into the Discard pile.  When the Joker is drawn, you set it aside and draw another card.  A drawn Joker adds a complication to the story. Also, all cards remaining in the deck and in the Discard pile (only red cards) are shuffled into a new deck.  

Since each player puts successes (black cards) that they drew from the deck into either the Cache or Trash, as play progresses, successes (black cards) become more and more rare to draw.  Also the rate of drawing a Joker increases. All of this is by design. As the author says on page 2 of the book, “The deck runs down as the players take actions, gradually diminishing their future odds of success. The players have opportunities to partially refill the deck during their downtime, but each successive run on a shift will get more and more difficult.”  This “diminishing successes” mechanic ensures that the pressure is kept on the Crash Cart players throughout the game (as the author says the GM should do on page 39). 

There are several mechanisms to enhance a player’s odds of success (if there are any successes left in the deck).  First, the player may push themselves at the cost of two stress to draw an extra card. Also, the player not acting may acquire two stress if they have at least “one dot in the relevant action” to allow the acting player to draw one card. A note about stress, if you ever reach the maximum of 10 stress, you are essentially out of the game as you can no longer interact with the deck in a given scene.  

In the game we played, our GM ruled that if you could justify using a skill you had as contributing to the primary player’s task, regardless of the skill name, then you could obtain two stress and allow the primary player to draw an extra card. I thought this was a flexible interpretation of the rules that made the game as a whole flow faster.     

In addition, in order to draw an additional card, any player may ask the GM for a Devil’s Bargain. A Devil’s Bargain is an exchange; the player will lose something concrete or suffer some narratively interesting disadvantage in exchange for the opportunity to draw one more card. 

So, as you can see, the maximum number of cards you can draw on any one action is 3 (Push self, Help from another player, Devil’s Bargain) plus the number of dots you have in a particular action. 

System Criticism

The trouble our group found with the rules came near the end of the second shift.  Specifically, when we ran into the diminishing successes mechanic for the final few Action Draws in the game; the fact that the players were able to estimate that there were only one or two successes (black cards) in the deck, and that we had about the same chance to draw one of the black cards as to draw the Joker, killed any sense of anticipation as to what was going to happen for those final rounds.  For us at the table, the forgone conclusion of failure made the last bit of the game boring. 

Now given that our opinion is that the diminishing successes mechanic leads to a boring conclusion, were there mechanics in game that could have mitigated the diminishing successes mechanic, for example replenishing the deck with successes (black cards)?  The answer is yes. Let’s look at each of these success replenishment mechanics in turn. 

First of all, let’s look at Downtime. During Downtime after a shift, you have two downtime actions.  If you want the opportunity to replenish the deck with some successes (black cards), you can spend both downtime actions to Catch Some Z’s, which allows you to return half of a player’s combined trash and cache to the deck.  However, since Catch Some Z’s takes both downtime actions, this prevents you from doing anything else in this phase.  

During our Downtime, in between getting the clone and overdosing patient to the hospital and before encountering the fleeing Shadowrunner, my character had acquired 8 stress. As previously stated, a player that gets to 10 stress cannot interact with the deck, so it was imperative that I reduce the stress with whatever downtime actions I could. Fortunately, there was the downtime action Blow Off Some Steam, which takes one downtime action, essentially allowing a player to potentially reduce their stress.    

The problem is that I only could carry out the Blow Off Some Steam action to make myself potentially useful in the next coming shift, or ignore my character’s issues and return half of the successes I drew to the deck and hope that my fellow player could capitalize off of them without me, assuming I would take another two stress hit somewhere in the new shift.  

I think a more workable option for Downtime, would be for the Catch Some Z’s action to cost one downtime action and recycle maybe one-fourth or one-third of a player’s combined trash and cache to the deck.   

In addition to downtime actions, if players choose a particular ability from their ability list during character creation, they may have the opportunity to replenish the deck with successes during the game. The Abilities Shortcut Queen (Pilot), Queen of Borrowed Time (Medic), Hustle Queen (Orderly) and Queen of the Grid (Mechanic) all allow a player to discard a Queen from their Cache to allow another player to recycle their Trash (non-face black cards) into the deck, thus increasing the chances of success for successive action pulls.  My fellow player and I did not choose any of these starting abilities because we had limited exposure to the system when we started playing and didn’t quite have the system mastery of CRASH//CART under our belts at the time.  

Another factor that the GM brought up was that he could have massaged the card economy by calling for more Fortune Draws during the game.  Fortune Draws are used to establish the condition of some situation in game. Mechanically someone, maybe a player, draws a number of cards equal to the dots in their relevant action, plus and minus a number of cards depending on the circumstances of the situation the GM gives you. An example in the book is that a player is trying to establish the nature of a landing zone as the EMV approaches.  This could be a Moving Action, so prepare to draw a number of cards equal to the dots you have in Moving. If this is a milk run for the players, add a card.  If the opponent has the Edge or they have had no briefing whatsoever, subtract a card.  Then draw the final number of cards.  As per normal, a black card will give you a partial success and a black face card gives a full effect or success.  

Now this is different. After the draw and the result has been determined, you get to shuffle the deck.  This means that Fortune Draws do not hinder future successes, unlike normal Action draws, and therefore do not change the balance of the deck. If the intention of Fortune Draws is to have the player keep success cards in their Cache or Trash, this is not indicated.  Thus, we are assuming that all pulled cards get to be recycled into the deck.  

Suggestions for New Players/GMs and Final Thoughts

Upon discussion with my GM, we recommend the following suggestions for players and GMs new to CRASH//CART:

• (Players) At least one player should take one Ability at character creation that restocks the deck with black cards.
• (GM) Be mindful of the length of clocks. You'll always have at least three clocks: retrieving the patient, delivering the patient, and dealing with their primary aliment. Keep most clocks at 4 or 6 segments.
• (GM) Understand that Clocks aren't necessarily advanced by card draws. Actions in the fiction can just cause Clocks to advance.
• (GM) Be mindful about the distinction between Action draws and Fortune draws. Many Action draws can justifiably be Fortune draws.
• (GM) Helping Other Players. Allow any other player to justify using a skill, and taking two stress to give the acting player the option to draw one more card during an Action. 

Ultimately, I did enjoy the game of CRASH//CART, but there are issues with some of the systems. If you don’t enjoy the fact that at some point before your shift ending there may be a high or total rate of failure given any action you attempt, you are going to have a bad time. Granted, our group was one to two members below the recommended minimum, but I don’t see how that could have affected our main issues with the mechanics.  I bought CRASH//CART after our game, and though we definitely feel another editing pass to the pdf would be very much appreciated and we had our quibbles with the rules, we had fun.  

Special thanks to Staggered Amusement Machine for introducing me to CRASH//CART, being the GM, revisions, additions and discussions. Additional thanks to Anonymous who played the Medic and for discussions about the system. 

Resources

Here is a link to the CRASH__CART.fari.json character sheet designed and hosted by Staggered Amusement Machine.

How to use the CRASH__CART.fari.json character sheet:

Download the CRASH__CART.fari.json file from the link.

Goto the fari.app website

On the fari.app website, click on My Binder on the upper left

Click on the Characters folder

Import the CRASH__CART.fari.json file  

Click on the CRASH//CART Template

To modify the character sheet, make sure the “Advanced” button is toggled to the right 

Enjoy

Edit: The CRASH//CART character sheets are publicly available on the Fari.App now.

Go to My Binder -> Characters -> New, then on the character sheet click the Templates dropdown and search for "CRASH CART" or find Nightjar games.

All character playbooks and the EMV sheet can be found there.

Shot and Splinters, Useful Tables

 

I bought the ttrpg Shot and Splinters from Tom Mecredy’s itch page. I’ve had it for three weeks and I am preparing to run a game of it. It is wonderful. I’ll let Tom Mecredy describe his product himself. 

Shot and Splinters is a naval OSR hexcrawl set in the middle of the Napoleonic era, at about 1801.  Players will have the opportunity to raid the French coast of Brittany and engage in all sorts of nautical misadventures with the other nations warships and merchants plying their trade in the area. 

The main rules are very brief, in the OSR style and character creation only takes up a couple of pages. Tom Mecredy considers his creation to be a hack of the very well regarded OSR hexcrawl Wolves upon the Coast by Luke Gearing.  The DNA from Gearing’s epic Wolves upon the Coast shines through Shot and Splinters.  For example, in Wolves upon the Coast, each character rolls for three characteristics only: Strength, Agility and Constitution. In Shot and Splinters, each character rolls for four characteristics: Authority, Brawn, Dexterity and Intellect.  Since players will be associated with or on a ship for the majority of the adventures in Shot and Splinters, it makes sense for Authority to be added as a characteristic.  Authority measures respect and reputation among the crew. In a similar vein, since players may engage in intellectual activities like navigation, having Intellect as a characteristic allows the GM to abstract to dice rolls certain elements of ship maintenance. 

In preparation for running Shot and Splinters I did some research about the Napoleonic era. I am not a history buff, but I found the world of 1801 to be a rich and cosmopolitan place. Inspired by this I decided to make a d30 table with interesting travelers that players could encounter on Brittany or off its coast. I attempted to fill the table with an international motley of entries so that each encounter would be unique.  Also, since bandits abound in Shot and Splinters, I made a short 1d6 table to add some color to those encounters, giving some of the bandits an interesting background. I may expand on this latter table in the future. 

 In poking about the world of Shot and Splinters and 1801, I found the following sources to be helpful:

• Galvanism
• Brittany
• Jonathan North’s writings about Napoleonic history
• In addition, one of the characters on the interesting travelers table is a De la Poer. Read HP Lovecraft’s Rats in the Walls to get that reference. I just couldn’t help myself!

Movies:

• Master and Commander
• Napoleon
• Damn the Defiant!