It's time to write more reviews because that can be diverting for me to do and for you to read (review of Warlock! and Gradient Descent)

I hope you won't mind if I cut right to the chase: this article is going to be a review of two products. Here is product the first:

Yeah, it's Warlock!

If you haunt the front page of DriveThruRPG like I (unfortunately) do, then the Warlock! RPG cannot have escaped your attention during the last year or so. In case you didn't know, it's awesome. I'll rhapsodize below.

Here's the other one:

Gradient Descent for cool-kid Mothership

This one is Gradient Descent, an adventure/setting for the Mothership RPG (which I reviewed earlier along with its first adventure, so check that out). Although it's another hot and sexy RPG that has captured eyeballs and zeitgeist, the situation is a bit different because it's not actually out yet.

Yes, yours truly is an RPG insider. Well, actually, I just backed the Kickstarter and thus got my hands on the early release of the PDF. It's been bouncing around my hard drive for a couple weeks and I just got around to reading it. And you know what? It's a banger, in the parlance of the day.

So if you're just looking for information about what to buy, you can stop there and put there both on your list, especially if you're into old-school British fantasy role-playing (i.e. Warlock!) or space-faring sci-fi horror (i.e. Gradient Descent). They both get my rousing approval, so if that's means anything to you, consider picking them up if you're a tabletop RPG GM.

But if you need to hear more to determine if these are right for you, or you just like to read this sort of thing, then follow beyond the fold.

Five Torches Deep - actual review

Have your heard about Five Torches Deep? It's the latest swing at bridging the gap between OSR and 5e. It benefited from the consultation of big name RPG celebrity Ben Milton, so that's helped it get some attention. It was written by Ben and Jessica Dutter, and several others worked on art and graphics.

Not bad, but the murkiness is a sign of things to come

I was pretty impressed and intrigued by its laser-like focus on bringing that OSR feeling to 5e, so I bought the physical copy. Part of this was motivated by the fact that the physical layout was touted as being very table-ready. A lot of people are focusing on the physical UX these days, and that's a good thing.

So what do I think? Well, it's pretty good. There are some solid mechanics and its very nicely laid-out. But it's not perfect. As for the primary mission of sneaking some OSR chocolate into your players' peanut butter, I think it's similarly a mixed bag with a lot of positives.

Most importantly: is this a good product for you? We're going to have to get into the weeds a bit to answer that question, so get your hedge-clippers and follow me over the fold.

(Metaphors aren't always my strong suit.)

Review - MÖRK BORG - Swedish fantasy metal, but what kind of metal?

We've been seeing scads of good RPGs coming out of Sweden in the last couple years, or so I am told. I'll be honest: my familiarity with Swedish role-playing consists of two vectors: Kult and games by Free League (or Fria Ligan if you prefer). Is that representative? Kult is great and Free League does great stuff, so I can't exactly argue with the rumors.

You know this is the shit, right?

Anyway, Free League's latest offering in this vein is this literal bad boy:

Whaaaaaaat?

So what's going on with this? Is this all style, or is there substance? And clearly this is METAL, but I ask you: what kind of metal is it? The marketing suggests its "Doom Metal," but I have my doubts.

Empress rules

Here's the ever-evolving document that represents the Empress rules:

Empress rules!

It's about time, right?

Empress - magic rules, revised

Hey gang!  One of the things I've been doing lately has been tweaking the Empress rules for spell casting.  I didn't change that much, but here's a list of what was added:

• There are now only five spell levels.
• Casting spells now have a price, which is equal to four times the spell level minus the caster level, with a minimum value of twice the spell level.
• The price of a spell is proportional to the cost paid by the magician.  As before, the exact nature of the cost depends on the type of magician - time for sorcerers, physical energy for mystics.
• The precise costs of spells has been tightened up.
• Any spell parameters that scale, like duration, damage or range, scale based on the caster's level plus the appropriate ability modifier (Spirit for mystics, Mind for sorcerers).
• There's a spell list!  This is the biggest change; rather than leaning on the SRD or the Lamentations list, I decided to write my own from scratch.  It really wasn't too hard, since I resolved to keep the descriptions short and sweet.

One thing you may notice about my spell list is that few of them have combat applications.  My conception of magicians is that they are not medieval superheroes, firing beams out of their fingers and flying around like a robed Captain Marvel.  Using magic in combat should be quite possible, but it should be indirect and require some creativity.  When it comes to giving and taking damage, fighters should be kings of the battlefield at all levels.

Summon Answer!

Magicians occupy a strange position in many parties.  It's clear that fighters should have a front line combat role.  Thieves are well-suited to all those non-combat adventuring activities.  But magic-users, in the traditional model, are basically able to do pretty much anything, but only a limited number of times. With a traditional magic-user, you can become a combat powerhouse (with your Fireballs and your Cloudkills), or the perfect burglar (with Invisibility and Knock).  It just doesn't seem fair to the other classes to have magic-users occasionally outshining them in their own specialties. 

So I try to find other things for magicians to do.  And I partly succeed.  But you're never going to have a magic system without an Invisibility spell.

Without further ado...

Review: Index Card RPG Core Set

Have you heard of Drunkens & Dragons?  It's a great little channel hosted by "Hankerin Ferinale," who opines at great length about tabletop role-playing, while occasionally getting legitimately hammered.  

Living up to the name

"Hank" records a steady stream of excellent GM advice delivered in a highly entertaining patter.  I recommend his channel without reservation.

Anyway, earlier this year, he started putting out these gaming aids called Index Card RPG Vols. 1 & 2 for his Runehammer Games imprint.  These both consist of nice iconic doodles of fantasy RPG stock gameplay elements - things like treasure chests, animated skeletons, mysterious temples, centipedes, mimics, etc.  

On his channel, Hank explained in greater detail how he intended that these could be used.  The GM could print-and-cut these out and put them on the table to represent elements in play, using card proximity as a simple abstract way of depicting the gamespace.  Not really what you'd call an actual RPG, but this was of course a hint for what was to come.

The other shoe has dropped!  Hank's follow-up arrived in DriveThru the other day, going by the name of Index Card RPG Core Set.

So what do we have here?

Empress 2.0!

This is a bit out of nowhere.  In short, I just drafted a new set of rules for Empress, my homebrew FRPG.  As the post title suggests, we're going to call this Empress 2.0, for now.

Here she is!

What's different?  In a nutshell: it's much simpler.  I reduced the ability count from seven to five, and that's with adding Luck as a new ability.  Armor is handled simply by increasing the Hit Class, with some rare attacks halving or nullifying the armor contribution.

Also, magic is a lot simpler.  Rather than describe a complex framework for custom spell casting methodologies, I reduced it to two: a semi-Vancian system, with slow-cast spells being stored up in a limited container for fast-casting (sorcery), and a fatigue-based system where casters develop mutations or restrictions as they advance (witchcraft).

I've added a few concepts, mostly stolen from Dungeon Crawl Classics (DCC).  There's the aforementioned Luck, of course.  In this case, all characters regain a Luck point per day.  There's also a skill in Cantrips, which can basically be used to apply Luck to other characters (and also as a penalty), and to have it occur based on conditions.  It yields double the bonus of a simple Luck expenditure, as well.  This is an Explorer skill (my renaming of the Lamentations of the Flame Princess' (LotFP) Specialist) rather than a straight-up mage art, and it kind of simulates the mechanics of the DCC Halfling.

I also introduced my own system for feats which is based on Mighty Deeds.  Basically, all characters are encouraged to supplement every attack with some special effect.  The damage will always succeed if the attack hits (assuming the attacker wants to do damage).  The feat will succeed if (1) the attack succeeds by an amount based on the difficulty of the feat, and (2) if the defender fails a saving throw.  Warriors have an advantage, here, since they can take combat specializations that decrease the required margin of success to activate the feat.

The kind of mutations and restrictions that witches accrue, called "marks," are based partly on corruption from DCC, and similar ideas from Crypts and Things. The latter game influenced a number of these mechanics in subtle ways.  They show themselves most clearly in how damage is handled.

Finally, note that this is a work in progress.  Some of the tables are incomplete, and there's plenty of room for things to change.

Latest update: 2/10/2017

Without further ado...

Empress core rules - Section 6.8 - 6.9

Here's where we wrap it up: the master list of spell effects that we are using from LotFP, and some general guidelines for how particular magical effects should be handled.  That's it for the Empress core rules!

Empress core rules - Section 6.5 - 6.7

These subsections cover a few aspects of spells, such as new spell effects, how they are learned, and a standard notation system to describe spell effects.

Empress core rules - Section 6.4

This subsection is a biggie, because it covers (in comprehensive detail) all the ways you can tweak the requirements and challenges of casting a given spell, or even an entire school of magic.

Empress core rules - Section 6.1 - 6.3

We're starting to get into magic.  Here, we cover the basic concepts.

Empress core rules - Sections 4-5

This material is a bit more general.  Section 4 covers the hazards of adventuring that aren't strictly combat-oriented, while section 5 provides rules for experience and character creation.

Empress core rules - Section 3

This is the juicy stuff: combat.  I'd like to highlight the rules for initiative and armor.

Empress core rules - Sections 1-2

I said it would happen, didn't I?  For now, I'm just going to post the rules in chunks, as they currently stand in my big Google Doc.  If I find a better way to organize this stuff, I'll be circling back.

So let's get started.  There's a very brief intro, and then a big chapter on changes to basic character statistics.  Please forgive me for renaming abilities to attributes...in retrospect, there's no good reason for that.  I'll probably change it in a future version, but for now, it's all over the place.