Lunation: Board Game rulebook download (Alpha)

We decided to not wait until the very beginning of the KS campaign and show you the Alpha version of the Lunation rulebook :) Enjoy!

• Text boxes with the red umm, text contain info about the future changes in the booklet;
• Most of the rules are in their final shape;
• General layout is almost final, however we encourage you to share your feelings and ideas with us :)

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE ALPHA VERSION OF THE LUNATION: BOARD GAME RULEBOOK

Lunation Board Game - approaching the Grand Finale...

It all started in May 2016, when I got the job I dreamt of for eighteen years. With only basic ideas of the game in my mind (planetary systems consisting of cards, custom combat dice and space combat of whole fleets instead of numerous types of ships), I started thinking. And it seems that I thought it out prett well ;)

Now, afer the several delays, in most cases not directly connected with the game itself, we are approaching the end - in the form of the Kickstarter campaign, which will determine whether we are good or we suck.

Game was tested extensively - to the point I was on the verge of throwing up! There was a moment (to be honest, three months-long moment!) I was unable to play the game - I was just sitting there, taking notes, asking and answering questions. Polishing and clarifying the rules, filling up the FAQ section of the rulebook, correcting the minor and major flaws in the game design, card design... you name it.

My work on Lunation is almost done - maybe except the promo vid for the KS campaign (I started to learn the basics of Adobe After Effects). And music, both for campaign video and bonus, Kickstarter-exclusive soundtrack. And texts for the campaign itself. Well, better get back to work!

Here is the main list of the not so obvious aspects and components of the game:

• There will be no cardboard tokens in the box - all counters, First Player marker, Power points and character movers will be laser-cut from acrylic sheets. Most of them in fluo colors (yay!). Fleets will be made of resin.
• As I mentioned before, game will feature custom Combat Dice, produced by Q Workshop.
• We got rid of the gameboard - it was nice but game performs well without it. What is much more important, this will significantly reduce the manufacturing costs - and - what is even more important - the shipping costs.
• Of course there will be lots of KS-exclusive goodies and add-ons, such as battle mats (if you want to have something to replace the now-missing gameboard), OST, T-shirts and posters :)

If you have any questions, feel free to ask! Also, for the IG users, follow us there!

Charon Prime - rumours about the House Alcanter

Roll 1d10 or just pick one.

1. They say that every member of the family must be slain at age 66. Otherwise he / she will transform into some unspeakable monstrosity.
2. Only one-third of their children survive; probably most of them are too mutated to live. 
3. They have numerous followers in the Cult of the Eyeless Face. Most likely they are the cause of the hideous mutations amongst the cultists. 
4. Once in a year, they conduct the Carnival of Blood - an event that engulfs the whole Fifth Quarter in madness.
5. Members of the House carry the jewelry made from precious metals, gems and remains of their ancestors. Obviously, these items are cursed.
6. They cure their madness by consuming the infants of noble blood. In most cases, they devour their own kin.
7. Each member of the Noble House of Alcanter must perform the Ming-Purging Rituals once per year to maintain their sanity. Obviously, these rites make them even more mutated and repulsive.
8. They say that ordinary people invited to their parties and games end up utterly insane. Or just disappear, never to be found again.
9. They keep strange animals as pets, such as talking goats, featherless parrots or levitating fish.
10. There is a hidden meaning in all of their weird acts and words. Probably it's hidden in the Codex Ignis, ancient scripture that's been recently stolen from the Silent Library. 

As the time will pass, I will post rumours about all of the Noble Houses of the Citadel of Rust. Stay tuned!

Charon Prime - general mood

Think of it as a mix of Roadside Picnic and Dune. I think it's the best description.

Duh, once again I became silent. However, there are still some fresh ideas I want to post here, let's hope I will be able to do it before procrastination kicks in again...

Free items

Items listed below can be obtained by PCs for free at various locations (marketplaces etc.). Treat them as a garbage (items, not the PCs!).

1. Slightly rusty chain, 1ft;
2. Short oar;
3. Half a loaf of bread, somewhat stale;
4. Clay mug with missing handle;
5. Small tallow candle;
6. Half-burned incense stick (3% that it's magical)
7. Mouse trap;
8. Fishing rod made of stick. Line is snapped after 3ft;
9. Short stick of chalk;
10. Club made of table leg;
11. Smoked sardine;
12. An apple (9% that it's a worm inside it);
13. Padlock without a key;
14. Knife / shank made of a half of scissors;
15. Small stool;
16. Horseshoe in perfect condition;
17. Dusty linen bag;
18. Flea-ridden felt hat;
19. Pair of wooden shoes;
20. Pot lid made of tin.

Legends of Krshal now with reduced price!

I've reduced the price for the Legends of Krshal supplement. Now you can grab a PDF (both on Lulu and RPGNow) for $2 and print for $7.50.

Perilous Ages - another review

I just found a review of the Perilous Ages, written over a year ago. Yeah, sometimes my google-fu sucks alot...

This game is not complete but it's 'rules-enough', there to be ruled. It's tough to produce a pleasing game in this style and still rein back on adding more details at the design stage but Albert has tastefully avoided rules-bloat and delivered a bold intriguing ruleset.
Refreshingly different for the OSR (but yet familiar) and inspiring.

LINK

Charon Prime - versions of the game

Previously, I wanted to make the Charon Prime standalone supplement, compatible with 0e and clones. However, now I plan to create two versions of the game. First one I want to do is a complete game, compatible with a ruleset already used in the Perilous Ages. Second (which I guess will be much more popular), will be of course compatible with most OSRish games / rules systems / whatever.

You probably wonder why I decided to create a version which most likely will be unpopular, plus will require much more time and effort to complete. The answer is simple - I want to run the game this way. Simple :)

I guess the next question is when - I do not know. Usually I work on several projects at the same time, which is not good in terms of publication time but - for me - is much better than focusing on just one setting and burn out relatively quickly.

More info soon. Next time, with more content.

Charon prime - map from The Archives

The map above was found in The Archives belonging to the House Strakarson. Most likely it was drawn by some adventurer. File is partly corrupted and no date was assigned to it, thus it's impossible to determine map's age.

Click to enlarge :)

HERE you can find the reason why the map is so primitive and lacks almost any names. In fact, it may be the most detailed map of the planet ever created (or rather ever shared with anyone)!

Charon Prime - Aldenson's Sorrel

The only one edible plant that can be found on the surface of the Charon Prime. Actually, Aldenson's Sorrel is the one of two plants that are known to be existing on the planet!

It has thick, rubbery leaves, usually two to three feet-long. They are the main source of food for the inhabitants of the Citadel of Rust, as well for all animals that are kept and bred for their meat. Unfortunately, the plant has one peculiar ability - and pretty dangerous and unsettling ability.

It can be best described as the collective psychic powers. Even the single specimen can affect one's mind. And the more Sorrels are gathered in single place, the more powerful they are.

• Single to few plants: humans experience the sensation of being watched;
• Few to dozen plants: strange whispers and noises can be heard;
• Several dozen Sorrels: nausea, headache, short and chaotic visions of distorted images;
• More: losing control of own body, coma, catatonia

Some people say that they saw their companions disappear in the Sorrel thickets, never to be seen again. Ordinary persons usually cannot overwhelm the psychic force of the plants but they just start act strangely (or try to escape the Citadel, probably to find Sorrels growing in the wild). Aggression, hyperactivity or paranoia were never noticed (or, at least, no one survived such occurrence).

So, who grows the Sorrels to feed the Citadel's inhabitants? Monks belonging to the one particular sect or people who were already insane.

More info soon (or in five years or so - it seems that I don't post anything about Charon Prime campaign setting very often)...

Legends of Krshal - first review!

"Legends of Krshal continues the tradition of Towers with imaginative and off the wall ideas, and it is definitely worth owning as a supplement to the original. It should be used more carefully, and some of the really good stuff is hidden in obscure corners you need to carefully and deliberately look for and attack with a highlighter. It is less immediately useful as a game material, but it is an invaluable idea mine – there's gold in them thar hills, if you are willing to do the digging."

- Melan

LINK

Legends of Krshal - sample entry (II)

CLICKY!

34. To date, seventeen people has committed suicide in front of a large, old sculpture standing to one side of the Black Cat Gate. All of them chose really painful ways to kill themselves.

Hypotheses about the nature of the statue, written by the Nameless Scholar (most likely member of the Inquisition):

• Minor Cthonian God is trapped inside the statue. Awakened by an unknown source, he draws power from death, preparing for breaking free;
• Statue was an important element of the ancient sacrificial altar. It must be embedded with powerful magic;
• Sculpture might be devoted to destructive aspect of the Lord of Dreams;
• Some pre-Krshal texts (unfortunately, they are incomplete) contain information about the God of Painful Forgiveness - the name itself can lead to some significant conclusions.

And the list of deaths. It may be extremely difficult and / or time-consuming to gather information about all of them

• Six years ago. Self-disembowelment;
• Six years ago, just two days after the first suicide. He drank a mug of acid;
• Four years ago. Gate’s caretaker set himself on fire;
• Four years ago, at the autumn equinox. Apparently, she infected herself with the Plague of Falling Leaves. She fell apart in front of the statue;
• Three years ago, during the new year’s day. Self-impalement. Apparently, the victim used a ladder to end his life in a very nasty way;
• Three years ago, during the Festival of the Frog. Three people decapitated themselves by jumping from the top of the gate building with iron wire around their necks;
• Two years ago. He died by electrocution by stuffing the Lightning Worm into his… well, uhh...
• Two years, exactly thirteen days after previous suicide. Two children inhaled some kind of gaseous poison, which caused their skin to turn black and fall away. No one ever discovered who provided them with the poison, not even the Inquisition;
• Two years ago, again thirteen days after the death of two kids. Old and respectable wizard struck himself in the abdomen with the Wand of Thousand Thorns;
• A year ago, again during the Festival of the Frog. Knight belonging to the Order of the Twin Angels fell on his magical Flaming Sword;
• Five months ago, during the new moon. One mercenary shot off his own arm with a blunderbuss. When he bled to death, his companion, who just moments before tried to save his friend, took his weapon, reloaded it and did the same thing to himself;
• Two months ago. Member of the Alchemists Guild swallowed a small magical bomb, which exploded in his bowels, tearing him in two;
• Yesterday (day before the rumour was heard by the adventurers). She somehow strangled herself with bare hands...

Legends of Krshal on Lulu

As I said yesterday - Legends of Krshal is now available via Lulu.com, both in print and PDF format.

Buy the printed version via Lulu

Buy the PDF version via Lulu

Buy the PDF version via RPGNow

Legends of Krshal out now!

I managed to finish it really quick!

Legends of Krshal is a huge expansion of the Rumours about the City table from the Towers of Krshal. It contains dozens (over a thirty!) new random tables, lots of adventure hooks, as well as some items, monsters and diseases.

LINK

Right now it's available via DTRPG / RPGNow. Tomorrow I'll try to upload it on Lulu.

Towers of Krshal on RPGNow

LINK

Legends of Krshal - sample entry

If you missed my gibbering about it on G+, Legends of Krshal will be the huge expansion (or rather - explanation) of the ToK rumours list. Here is one sample thingie from it.

14. Strange, deformed corpse was found in the Chapel of the Lost. It was really huge and didn’t looked like human body.

Extra-Dimensional Abomination. This bizarre and somewhat hideous creature looks like a bloated hybrid of humanoid and worm. Its body is covered with thick, rubbery skin, limbs are short and deformed and it lacks head. It has d3 long, whip-like tails, covered with cnidocysts.

Abominations are only able to clumsily crawl on the ground but - obviously - they can slip through the various dimensions, as well as places within the one plane. When attacked, they start levitating and release clouds of dense, violet gas. Gas has no other effect than hindering the attackers’ vision (-1 to-hit). Monsters are able to perform one attack per tail (standard damage + save vs. poison or paralysis for 2d8 turns). Typical Extra-Dimensional Abomination has AC 4 and 4-7 HD.

Some potentially useful information about this particular, recently deceased specimen. First - where it came from:

1. Cthonic Realm of the Worm Demons;
2. Huge gas pocket deep down under the City, used to gather gas to fuel the street lanterns;
3. Vault of the Noble House of Zanth (maybe it swallowed some valuable treasure?);
4. The Reversed Pyramid (entry 29);
5. Accursed Waterway, connecting all the City’s sewers;
6. The Netherworld. Maybe it brought some spirits of the dead with it back to Krshal.

Why it visited Krshal? Note that even most of the places from the table above are placed in the City, Extra-Dimensional Abominations are not native for City’s plane of existence:

1. It was summoned by d6: 1) a Warlock; 2) Cultists; 3) apprentice wizard unaware what he/she was doing; 4) wizard hired to do it by the noble/merchant; 5) the Thieves Guild; 6) inhabitant of one of the Inner Cities - see entry 5;
2. It wanted to lay eggs. 50% chance that it manages to plant them somewhere in the City’s guts;
3. Just “passing by”;
4. It was escaping from something really terrible. Of course there is a big chance that its opponent is also able to travel through the dimensions and its on its way to Krshal and will wreak havoc in the City;
5. The Nether Storm has swallowed it and spat it out in the Krshal;
6. Cultists / Priests from the Chapel asked their god to grant them the Abomination. They treat it as the angel / messenger of their deity.

And the reasons of death:

1. It died of old age (they are not immortal!), so its body may be in pretty bad shape;
2. It was killed by the cultists being in opposition to the Chapel’s keepers;
3. It was killed by the extra-planar plague. Most likely it’s highly contagious;
4. The All-Seeing Eye of the Inquisition was aware that monster will come and where it will appear, rest was just a formality (really bloody formality);
5.  Band of adventurers killed it;
6. It was badly wounded before it appeared in the Chapel and died of blood loss. There’s 10% chance that its blood is poisoned.

Underworld Kingdom Volumes I-III on RPGNow!

Finally I managed to force myself to upload them!

VOLUME ONE 

VOLUME TWO

VOLUME THREE

Ia!

LOL

Well, to be honest, I'm flattered. Too bad that they are lying about ToK being out of print...

LINK

Lunation - cards, cards, images, cards and cards!

Well, I've already posted quite a lot of artwork from the Lunation Board Game, both here, on FB fanpage and Instagram. Now I feel it's the right time to post something more about the game.

In this post, I want to show you some basic information about the types of cards used in the game. Click on the images to enlarge them:

These are the Planet cards. They are placed on the game board and are used mainly to gather Energy (depicted as triangles) and Resources (square icons) from them. Players do not conquer Planets in any way - they can (and should!) be used as long as we have at least one Fleet and/or Character on them. In addition, Planets deck contains small quantity of places that aren't the planets - such as Ice Fields, Dim Nebulae and even empty space.

Game will contain 48 Action Cards - four copies of each type. There is a big variety of them - lots can be really helpful during combat, others can grant Energy, Resources, more Action Cards and even Fleets. But there's more possibilities :)

Each Action Card contains an info during which phase of the Turn they can be used - funny thing that prototype from the image above has no info about it on the Evasive Maneuver card!

Beginning from the third Turn, First Player draws and reads the Secret Objective card. Effects of these cards apply to the all participants of the game and they can have both negative and positive effects.

At the beginning of the game, each Player draws one (or more - it's not decided yet - see below) Secret Objective card. They can fulfill their requirements during each Turn's Master Phase, mainly to gain additional Victory Points.

We haven't decided yet if Players will draw one Secret Objective card and will be able to draw next one after he/she "completes them", or rather draw three of them at the start. As game is still being tested, we will figure it out really soon :)

In the next post about Lunation, I will reveal something more about the game setup.

[Perilous Ages] Coming Soon...

Of course, it may be not as soon as expected... But I'll try to do my best.

Underworld Kingdom... Publishing / Games / ...

So, now it's official - the Underworld Kingdom is now a publishing brand, held by the TUTUconcept company.

We plan to refresh some of my older works (available mainly here), mainly in terms of graphics and typesetting. But our main effort is to release two board games we're currently working on.

LUNATION is the child of mine. I already posted some artwork from the game. I'll post something more about the game really soon.

Progress: 90% of artwork is done, rules are done, some minor tweaks are required. And of course, lots and lots of further playtesting.

FB fanpage | Instagram

STWORZE is the game about the Slavic Monsters (and I think is the best way to translate the name of the game) and... that's all I know about it right now, maybe except the fact that artwork for this project is simply amazing :)

Progress: almost all artwork is already done, playtests begin... well, today :) But - as it's not my project - that's all I know. Oh, and sadly, currently only Polish version of the game is taken into consideration.

FB fanpage

(I know it looks gibberish for most of you but at least you can enjoy the artwork!)

***

Also, THE REVENANT. My beloved Role-Playing game I was designing with my best friend for years. But all of us know that writing an RPG rulebook is a really big chore, it will take some time. But everything is arranged for now, we will have full support in terms of typesetting, graphic design and artwork. HERE you can read the brief (and somewhat cryptic) introduction to the setting of the game.

If you need some more info - feel free to ask :)

Lunation - new character artwork!

Marcin has created some amazing artwork for the Lunation board game we are developing for the last several months. More to come soon!

Click to enlarge :)

Fleet Commander

Navigator

Lunation - something more about the game

Time to reveal something new about the Lunation Board Game :)

It's the first time I'm working on the BIG project - with the whole team (artists, testers etc). And despite the fact that some things are absolutely new for me, the creative process remained the same as in case of my previous publications. But things are really exciting, both for me and the rest of the team!

Without further ado, I'll try to share with you some basic aspects of the game.

Lunation is a rather fast-paced game with elements of exploration, trade and resource gathering. And lots of combat. Game lasts seven turns, during which players gather Victory Points, either by capturing opponent's characters during combat, fulfilling the Secret Objectives or simply purchasing VP with Energy and Resources.

Game will feature custom Combat Dice, using to determine the outcome of each battle, as well as Jump actions. In addition, players can modify almost each action by using the Action Cards.

Game's goal is to gather the most Victory Points during the seven turns of the game.

More info soon!

Prototype of the one of the most trickiest Secret Objective card :)

Ortix, Year Seven

It's hard to believe it's been almost seven years since I started this blog. I managed to finish lots of things but even more still remain "in progress" - although there is no progress at all...

I don't want to write any summaries of the past, especially because it's middle of the night here. I just wanted to thank you.

Without you, my readers, posting any new stuff would be totally pointless.

And, speaking of the new stuff, I have a plan.

Eleven years ago, I started one RPG project with my friends. Of course, it was never finished, stuck in development hell and clouded by weed (we definitely smoked too much pot). It was abandoned years ago and all efforts to restart it failed miserably.

Now I have a plan to finally finish it, with or without help. And this time it will be presented as an old school game setting, with a form of presentation slightly similar to the Towers of Krshal. But, most likely, it will be MUCH BIGGER.

Stay in tune for more info about it, also I'll try to post some new info about Lunation, my upcoming board game :)

And this year I WILL TRY TO POST MORE HERE. But of course, I cannot promise anything ;)