Firebreathing Kittens

Floating jungle islands are rare so when they show up somebody has to explore them. And who better than Qigiq, Ivy Green, and Colette three of the Firebreathing Kittens? Come listen as they find wind monsters, become influencers amongst lizard people, and find something quite unexpected at the center of this mysterious island! Tales of the Wind is an actual play podcast of When Sky And Sea Were Not Named. 

Floating jungle islands are rare so when they show up somebody has to explore them. And who better than Qigiq, Ivy Green, and Colette three of the Firebreathing Kittens? Come listen as they find wind monsters, become influencers amongst lizard people, and find something quite unexpected at the center of this mysterious island! Tales of the Wind is an actual play podcast of When Sky and Sea Were Not Named. 

A simple errand turns into an impromptu audit as Sadie, Mary, and Bartholomew investigate the astronomic inflation in Shireford Upon Emou. Tune in to this Risus Epic adventure to see if they can solve the town's financial woes! 

A simple errand turns into an impromptu audit as Sadie, Mary, and Bartholomew investigate the astronomic inflation in Shireford Upon Emou. Tune in to this Risus Epic adventure to see if they can solve the town's financial woes! 

Join Bill and Maeve as they battle capitalism, Ponzi schemes, and fool's gold. 

Join Bill and Maeve as they battle capitalism, Ponzi schemes, and fool's gold. 

How To Play Risus Epic

Welcome back listeners! Today, Fennis, Mervon and Sadie are playing "Community Radio". In this episode, we draw back a bit, instead of following a single adventure, Niqamui itself is the focus, more specifically- the local radio station's coverage of some of the supernatural events that take place in Niqamui's casual day-to-day. Breaking Council Decrees! Cult politics! 24hr coverage of the slow encroachment of ominous fog! All this and more are coming up, so don't touch that dial! 

Greetings and welcome to the Firebreathing Kittens. This is a short overview of how to play Community Radio. Community Radio is a story and improv focused game. We don't have character sheets. Instead, the players play out slice of life moments from a strange community, while the GM plays the Host of the community's radio station. The mood of a Community Radio game captures the voice of a community the way Welcome to Nightvale or Northern Exposure can capture the voice of a community. The game is written by Quinn Murphy and is available at thought crime games.itch.io. A second edition is currently in development. The Firebreathing Kittens will be playing version 1.2 of the game. Community Radio is also the basis for the excellent game Radio Free Kaiju, which centers on a community surviving a world populated by giant, deadly monsters. Prior to the game, all the players have submitted to the GM the following ideas: * An Innocent Person * A Terror * A Place of Interest * A Mood * A Strange Item * Up to 3 original songs or poems to be aired on the radio station. * Optionally, up to 3 decrees from the Niqamui Community Council, to be read on air. The GM has taken these elements and shuffled them into a very loosely connected series of slice of life scenes that the players will play out in an improv manner. Each slice of life scene is 3-5 minutes long.  After a slice of life scene, there is a short musical interlude. During the musical break, players who were just in the scene write decrees, sometimes about the scene, or about a previous scene, or just about something else entirely. These decrees are secretly passed to the Host, who selects from the available decrees during the Radio Scene. Radio scenes have a bumper, a report from the Host reacting to and interpreting the slice of life scene, and lastly a decree by the Council. The Host is not allowed to break Council decrees, and the decrees often respond to actions during the slice of life scene. You'll notice there is nothing about "how do you fight in this game" or "how do I convince someone to do what I want." As an improv-heavy game, Community Radio relies on players to adjudicate using "yes, and" to narrate what their characters are doing and how successful they are. The game is heavily player-generated, with the Host acting as an interpreter more than anything else. For purposes of the Firebreathing Kittens format, I have added some structure to the scenes so they aren't as random as suggested in the Community Radio rulebook. The key elements are all provided by the players, however, as are all the decrees. I hope you enjoy our episode featuring Community Radio.

FBK is hired to protect two children as they undergo a pilgrimage. What no one yet realizes is the true danger spreading in the blessed grove. Join Bill, Qigiq, and Armando as they seek a sense of justice and work to become true heroes in this actual play podcast of Alaria Valor and Company. 

FBK is hired to protect two children as they undergo a pilgrimage. What no one yet realizes is the true danger spreading in the blessed grove. Join Bill, Qigiq, and Armando as they seek a sense of justice and work to become true heroes in this actual play podcast of Alaria Valor and Company. 

How To Play Alaria Valor And Company

Qigiq Steel Interview

During a regular shopping trip, Demyan and Jimmy Potatoes are rudely whisked off by pirates to break into a mysterious complex, which holds secrets that could change the face of the planet... This episode uses the 'Dicing With Death' Playtest TTRPG. 

During a regular shopping trip, Demyan and Jimmy Potatoes are rudely whisked off by pirates to break into a mysterious complex, which holds secrets that could change the face of the planet... This episode uses the 'Dicing With Death' Playtest TTRPG.

Fennis, Sadie, and Mervon get body swapped with their furry friends. Can they get back? Are greebles real? SHOULD they be? Tune in! CATegorical Success is an actual play podcast of Psychic Cat Chaos. 

Fennis, Sadie, and Mervon get body swapped with their furry friends. Can they get back? Are greebles real? SHOULD they be? Tune in! CATegorical Success is an actual play podcast of Psychic Cat Chaos. 

Mervon The Stolid Interview

May 2024 TTRPG Rules Discussion

Marty, Colette, and Sadie are thrown into a most terrifying retro horror story using Summer Camp Slayers game mechanics. Tag along and see who survives the night, and whose light fizzles out.

Marty, Colette, and Sadie are thrown into a most terrifying retro horror story using Summer Camp Slayers game mechanics. Tag along and see who survives the night, and whose light fizzles out.

Hello everybody this is a special episode of the Firebreathing Kittens podcast. I am the Gamemaster for an upcoming episode where I'll be using the mechanics from the tabletop role-play game, summer camp slayers. You can catch me as ‘Tord Unfrid' playing a similar game that uses a different flavour of the same mechanics called Pirates of the Bone Blade in episode 266 of the Firebreathing Kittens Podcast. Summer camp slayers is a table top role-play game designed by Richard Woolcock from Zadmar Games using his universal Tricube game system and you can find this and more on DriveThruRPG. I will speak more on the TriCube system towards the end of episode here but for now let's get into those game mechanics.   General Mechanics:   In summer camp slayers, you roll between one and three D6 6 sided dice, depending on your characters archetype and you compare your highest result against the difficulty set by the game master. For instance, you may roll two 6 sided dice and have a 3 and 5 on the dice the game master set the difficulty at five meaning you have one success. You start with 2D6 add a die to your roll if what you're doing falls in line with your trait and you remove a die if what you're doing falls outside the scope of your concept but we'll get into that more during the character creation section. The main thing to remember going forward is that together your trait and concept make up your characters archetype forming half of your character design, the other half of the character design comes from your perks and quirks.   Perks and Quirks (Archetype) Overview:   Speaking of perks and quirks, they allow you to influence the difficulty of the challenge you face. You can influence the difficulty of the task by expending one of your karma points to reduce the difficulty of the task by 1 if you can explain how your perk aids you in that moment. You can also decide to make the difficulty of the task harder before rolling, increasing it by 1, describing how your quirk negatively effected you. If you fail the task when using your quirk you get a karma back but if you succeed you can choose to regain a resolve instead if you'd like. If a player runs out of resolve they are typically removed from the scene and gain an affliction. Afflictions are described by the victor and are treated as temporary quirks for your player. A character with three affliction is retired from play, although they can be brought back if one of their afflictions is cured. Now that we've talked about how to decide the outcome of a challenge let's find out what happens if you succeed or fail.   Success/Failure:   Succeeding a task with one single die above or meeting the difficulty rating will result in a normal success, any additional successful die roll will be a exceptional success. Exceptional successes typical provide additional removed effort tokens or beneficial effects as decided by the game master. The same is true however for failures as well with the distinction being that you have to roll all 1's on your dice for it to be a critical failure, this typically involves losing double the amount of resolve or additional negative effects as decided by the game master and player such as gaining an affliction. Some tasks are simple and only require a single success to complete them, there are however harder tasks and in these instances effort tokens will be used. A harder task can require anywhere from 2-4 successes or more depending on the situation to whittle down that encounters effort tokens.   Character Creation:   Now that we know how the game works, let's talk about creating a character. In Summer Camp Slayers you select from a list of four different options during character creation, those four options as discussed earlier are Trait, Concept, Perk and Quirk. At first all the these four terms may sound the same however they do function differently from each other, let's get into that.   Traits:   We'll start with trait, in this game system a trait is always the same, regardless of the flavour of the system you're playing. A trait is one of the following: Agile, Brawny or Crafty; the ABC's of Tricube! Agile covers things like quickness, dexterity, reflexes, or stealth; they also roll 3d6 for ranged combat. Brawny covers things like strength, toughness, stamina or athletics; they also roll 3d6 for melee combat. Crafty covers things like charisma, intellect, willpower or perception; they also roll 3d6 for mental combat (magic, persuasion, intimidation). Unless something falls within your trait you will roll 2d6, if it does happen to fall within your trait however you get to roll 3d6 instead! For example. A brawny kid would roll 3D6 when trying to lift something heavy off their friends, but only 2D6 if they were trying to avoid getting pinned by the same object as it's falling as that would be an Agile roll.   Concepts:   Next let's talk about concepts, as it is a bit more of a loose idea and changes depending on the flavour of the game type and world you're playing in. The concepts provided for Summer Camp Slayers are Counselor, nurse, lifeguard, groundskeeper, cook, activity leader or kid. Your concept may provide you additional knowledge or information in interactions with NPC's but mechanically it is only used when you're doing something outside the scope of that concept. Let's put that into perspective, let's say you're a Crafty Kid who is a Bookworm and Cautious, if you were to try to impersonate a police officer to cover a story you had about trying to sneak out late at night to investigate the weird things happening in the woods that would most likely go against your concept as a kid as it would be unbelievable. When something falls outside of the scope of your concept you lose a die from your pool before you roll, making a challenge more difficult. This can be offset with your trait, for example if you were instead trying to hotwire a car it would still be unlikely to happen as you're a kid but more likely because of your crafty trait leaving you with the normal 2D6 to roll.   Perks:   Now that we have gone over what makes up your archetype, and the type of traits and concepts, let's move on to talking about how to influence the difficulty of the roll using perks and quirks and which of each exist in this game. Let's start with perks, as they give you the ability to spend your Karma points to reduce the difficulty of your roll making your chances of success better. The perks available in Summer Camp Slayers are Bookworm, occult insight, quick, perceptive, persuasive, advanced combat training, or supernatural ability. If you can describe how your perk aids you during a challenge you can expend 1 Karma to reduce the difficulty of the check by 1. For example, a player with the perk of persuasive might be trying to impersonate a police office and that character has the persuasive perk they could expend 1 Karma to reduce the difficulty of the check by 1. In addition when making group checks there may be times where your perk allows you to bypass a check altogether, doing so still requires 1 Karma however. For example, a character with a supernatural ability may be able to open a locked door with their powers but doing so would still require the expenditure of 1 Karma, if the character is out of Karma describe how their perk comes up short in this moment.   Quirks:   Quirks are things that define your character and may make you more pre-disposed to having a difficult time in certain situations. The Quirks available in Summer Camp Slayers are Hothead, prankster, cautious, show-off, suspicious, sarcastic, or haunted. You can use your Quirk to make the difficulty of any check harder by 1, if you fail you gain 1 Karma but if you succeed you can choose to regain 1 Karma or 1 Resolve, if you regain resolve describe how your success even when facing insurmountable odds emboldens your resolve.   Karma and Resolve:   Let's talk now about Karma and Resolve. Each player starts with three of each and can spend, lose and regain both throughout the game session. When you run out of Karma nothing bad happens to your character, you just aren't able to influence the difficulty of checks positively anymore. If you run out of resolve however you could be temporarily removed from the scene and at best gain an affliction; if not both. For example, if your character is trying to jump off a roof to a nearby tree and fails their check and you only have 1 resolve remaining, reducing you to 0, your player may go unconscious temporarily and when they awake have a 'concussed' affliction. In another case your character may be trying to like we said before impersonate a police officer and if they fail perhaps they gain the 'untrustworthy' affliction.   Afflictions:   Affliction can be temporary or permanent depending on the severity of the failure. For instance if we use the examples above the concussed affliction would be temporary while the 'untrustworthy' affliction would be a more permanent one. Permanent afflictions cant be turned into quirks when leveling up to take advantage of them to regain resolve instead of them just being a hindrance. For example turning the untrustworthy affliction into a quirk might allow you to lie easier in the future as your reputation fades but the ability to land a false truth sticks like glue.   Leveling Up:   Speaking of leveling up, when doing so in this system you typically choose a new perk or quirk each level and increase either your karma or resolve by 1 every other level. You can opt out of choosing a new perk or quirk and instead choose to turn a permanent affliction into a quirk upon leveling up.   Combat and Challenges:   Now that we know how to create our character and the mechanics of the game, let's talk about combat and challenges. Generally in combat the Game Master will go around the table asking each of the players their actions for their turn choosing the turn order based on what narratively makes the most sense. The players will each choose their action and the game master will set the difficulty and the trait of the action. For example, a person swinging a sword at a Goblin with 2 effort tokens would have to roll a Brawny 5 check, if they were to shoot it they would roll a Agile 5 check and if they were to use magic against it they would roll a Crafty 5 check. The player would take into account their Trait to see if they could add any dice to their 2D6 pool, your concept does not matter during combat as it is assumed each character is trained in some form of combat. The player has an opportunity to make the difficulty higher before the roll using their Quirk or make the roll easier after their roll using their Perk as they see fit. If they roll a 5 or better on one of the dice the attack lands and one effort token is removed from the goblin, if they have more than 1 dice meet or beat a 5 they would remove 2 effort tokens and effectively remove the goblin from combat. The GM will go around the table having each player take a turn until all enemy combatants are removed from combat. Challenges are non-combat events that come up during a game like talking to NPC's, sneaking, lockpicking etc. and work in a similar way with the distinction being that challenges take into account your Concept as well, remove a dice from your 2D6 pool if it is outside your scope. For example, a Brawny Groundskeeper trying to use a flamethrower against zombies would only roll 1D6 as they don't benefit from their Trait and burning the well kempt nature of the camp would go against their concept.   Spells:   Many fantasy, horror, and even science fiction settings describe characters with supernatural powers such as telekinesis, alchemy, psionics, etc. These arcane gifts can be easily represented as perks. A character with such a perk can do anything a trained person in the setting could achieve with   appropriate tools, as long as it thematically fits their type of magic. Spending karma allows the mage to perform even greater feats of magic, overcoming any challenge a professional could manage with specialized gear. Mages can choose three spells during character creation; these determine how and when they can use their magic. Each spell needs to have a name and a limitation—e.g., “fiery bolt (destructive),” “lightning shield (personal),” “illusionary disguise (ritualistic),” etc. You can create more potent spells by giving them additional limitations. This narrows their scope, and the GM should be more flexible when interpreting their effect. Perhaps your “invisibility sphere” is ritualistic and requires a focus, but can be used to conceal the entire party. New spells are learned during play, at the GM's discretion—perhaps a wizard can learn from scrolls or spell books, or maybe the GM awards sorcerers a new spell each time they gain an advance.   For the players in my upcoming session, please level up twice. Each level up will allow you to choose either one additional perk or quirk, if there aren't any on the list that appeal to you feel free to come up with your own. Additionally please choose either your Karma or Resolve and increase it by 1 to a total of 4.   Hopefully this information regarding the rules is helpful to my players as they build their character and try to understand the mechanics of this game system. For everyone listening, we encourage you to find the Tricube system and other variants of it like Summer Camp Slayers for yourselves, and play a game with friends. If you'd like to hear an example adventure, I'm looking forward to playing Summer Camp Slayers in an upcoming session. Thank you everyone for listening and take care.

When Demyan and Armando find out a sneaky rabbit has stolen a Bag of Tricks, they hunger for justice! Will they follow their nose and find the culprit? Or will they be serially thwarted by multiple challenges? I Eat Challenges For Breakfast is an actual play podcast of the LUCAS rpg system.

When Demyan and Armando find out a sneaky rabbit has stolen a Bag of Tricks, they hunger for justice! Will they follow their nose and find the culprit? Or will they be serially thwarted by multiple challenges? I Eat Challenges For Breakfast is an actual play podcast of the LUCAS rpg system.

Ivy, Tord, Fennis, and Colette have to save a soup kitchen! Naturally this means a heist of a huge diamond, a fake murder, a duel, a pop song from the 70s, and a spaceship?! Join them on this exciting episode of Firebreathing Kittens! Come Fly To Space is an actual play podcast of the No Port Called Home RPG system.

Ivy, Tord, Fennis, and Colette have to save a soup kitchen! Naturally this means a heist of a huge diamond, a fake murder, a duel, a pop song from the 70s, and a spaceship?! Join them on this exciting episode of Firebreathing Kittens! Come Fly To Space is an actual play podcast of the No Port Called Home RPG system.

How to play No Port Called Home.   Hi everyone, this is a special episode of Firebreathing Kittens. I'm the game master for an upcoming session using the rules for No Port Called Home. This episode is a summary of what I learned after reading the rule book. Hopefully this will be a handy guide for how to play for my players, will help me organize myself, and will be useful for you listeners, too, who are looking to play No Port Called Home yourselves. There are a dozen different races to pick from in No Port Called Home. They include humans, giant jotunn, amphibious nix, genetically enhanced vesp, nomadic hedonistic fae, indestructible robotic archon, freed former worker drone tsuku, and more. When you build your character, you will pick one of these races. Use the race's character sheet as your starting character sheet, that you'll add more and more things to later. The rule book has an example crew mate named Zephyr who is a tsuku race, a freed former worker drone. I will refer to Zephyr's character sheet throughout this how to play guide, using Zephyr as an example. Let's talk about classes. No Place Called Home has nearly forty classes. You will pick three of them to build your character. These classes include a calibrist who obsessively optimizes a firearm, a swordfiend who stabs opponents with point objects, a martial artist who fights with their hands, a brute who fights with this chair they happened to find, a fortress that gains defensive bonuses as long as they hold their position, an engineer who can maintain and improve the team's vehicle, a strategist who can delegate extra actions to their teammates, a con artist who and lies and fibs, a changeling who can rearrange their limbs, a conduit who can splice their mind into machines to remote listen to conversations, a swarmmaster with clouds of loyal insects, and more. Doesn't that sound like a lot of fun options? Great news, you get to pick not one, not two, but three of them. Which three should you pick? The rule book suggests picking a combination of classes that empower you to take action both in and out of combat. Don't limit yourself to only in-combat effects. For our example character build, Zephyr has the three classes of: martial artist who fights with their hands, freerunner who sprints and runs and does flips, and ranger, who prevents their teammates from setting off terrain effects through their expert guidance. Each class has some questions to think and write about. For example, among other questions, the ranger asks you to list four places you have been. The martial artist asks you, among other questions, if you advertise the fact that you are skilled in combat, or do you allow others to underestimate you? The freerunner asks you what you would do if a situation forced you to leave someone behind who could not run as fast. The three classes you pick will have questions that help you think about how your character would act. Let's talk about skills. There are four categories of skills: physical, social, knowledge, and practical. Physical skills include agility, dexterity, strength, your ability to orient yourself in zero gravity, stealth, endurance, and how well you squirm. Knowledge skills include your knowledge of biotech, history, people, places, engineering, computers, and medicine. Social skills include your ability to soothe, entertain, deceive, manipulate, persuade, command, and read people. Practical skills include your perception, survival, research, crafting, and piloting skills. There are more than twenty skills overall. When you pick three classes, each class will come with points in skills and stats. Start out with a zero in all skills, and then add the numbers from your classes and write the total on your character sheet. For example, Zephyr is a martial artist, freerunner, and ranger. The martial artist gives them +2 in all physical skills, so that's a 2 in agility, dexterity, strength, zero-g, stealth, endurance, and squirm. The martial artist also adds 2 in people reading. The freerunner adds 4 to agility and zero g, bringing those up to six, and adds two in stealth, endurance and squirm, bringing those up to four, and also adds two to entertain and perception. The ranger adds two to agility, endurance, stealth, knowledge of biotech, knowledge of places, soothe, perception, survival, and craft. That bumps Zephyr's agility up to eight, and at six their endurance, zero-g, and stealth are pretty high, too. This has been an example of how to add your three classes' skills together to get your character's starting skill numbers. Here are some example skill rolls Zephyr could make in No Place Called Home. Hungry in a field outside town, Zephyr might roll a twenty sided dice, also called a d20, and add their survival skill to forage for edible greens. If Zephyr was trying to think of a low cost bakery in town, you would roll on a twenty sided dice, also called a d20, plus their places skill number. If Zephyr was trying to persuade a non player character, or NPC, to give them a discount on day old baked goods, you would roll a d20 and add your persuade skill number. If you were trying to sneak past the baker to get into the kitchen, that would be a stealth roll of a d20 plus your stealth skill. If the baker found you and you wanted to jump out the window, that would be a d20 plus Zephyr's agility skill. You would roll like this using your skills when attempting to accomplish a goal outside of combat. Let's talk about stats. Your character's starting stats are the sum of the stats they get from their three classes. Add together the numbers in the symbols from each of your three classes and your race to get your starting stats. There are eight stats in No Place Called Home. Hit Points, attack, defense, initiative, skills per level, willpower, reflex, and fortitude. Hit points are the cross symbol. If your character reaches negative ten hit points, they die. Zephyr has twenty two hit points, so if they take twenty two points of damage they would reach zero hit points and fall unconscious, and if they take thirty two points of damage, they would hit negative ten and die. Attack is the symbol that looks like a sniper scope, and defense is the shield symbol. The attack skill is the number you add to a roll of a twenty sided dice, also called a d20, when you attack. You hit your target if you meet or beat their defense roll. When someone attacks you, roll a twenty sided dice, also called a d20, and add your defense number. If you beat their attack roll, their attack missed you and you take no damage. For example Zephyr has a three in attack and a four in defense. When trying to attack someone, Zephyr rolls their twenty sided dice and adds their attack of three. When being attacked by someone, Zephyr rolls a twenty sided dice and adds their defense of four. Because the average is a ten on a twenty sided dice, Zephyr's average attack is thirteen and average defense is fourteen. Here is an example attack. From their class bonuses, if they're attacking unarmed, Zephyr gets two more conditional attack bonus from martial artist and one from freerunner. Their hands are 2 d4 bludgeoning weapons from their martial artist class. Zephyr swings a punch at their target. You roll a d20 and add your base attack, which is three, and also add your conditional attack because you are attacking unarmed. That's a ten on the dice plus three base attack plus two plus one for conditional attack bonuses for being unarmed for a sixteen total to hit. Meet it to beat it. You would hit any enemy that has a sixteen, fifteen, fourteen, thirteen, etc lower defense. To calculate the damage dealt, you would roll two four sided dice, also called d4, and add the results together. For example if one dice was a a three and one dice was a one, that would be four bludgeoning damage total from your martial artist's fists. Initiative is the symbol that looks like a diamond floating above a ripple on a pond. Initiative is the order people take action during combat. When a fight starts, everyone rolls a twenty sided dice and adds their initiative number. The highest rolls go first. For example Zephyr has a four in initiative. If Zephyr rolled a ten on their dice and added their four in initiative, the total would be fourteen. With fourteen as their initiative roll, Zephyr would take action before people who rolled a thirteen or below. But someone who rolled a fifteen or higher would get to take action before Zephyr. Skills per level is the symbol that looks like a concave triangle with three dots on its three sides. Your character's skills per level stat is how many skill ranks you gain each time you level up. These skill ranks are spread out amongst all your skills. When you level up, if you have the skill point for it, you can increase a single skill one point. Zephyr has a six in their stat of skills per level. This means that of the twenty six skills, they can increase six of them by one point each time they level up. For example, they level up and choose to increase their agility, dexterity, stealth, endurance, craft, and piloting skills by one point each. Because we're talking about leveling up, I should mention that when you level up, you get to pick two feats that must be in different classes. My players, you will be leveling up twice, so you should have four feats total, with at most two of them in the same class. Willpower is the circle symbol, reflexes is the diamond symbol, and fortitude's symbol is a rectangle wider at the base than the top. Willpower, reflexes, and fortitude are all resistance bonuses. When a danger is attacking you in a specific way, your game master might prompt you to roll a saving throw. Zephyr's willpower is 2. If the game master says the enemy is very scary and Zephyr should roll a willpower saving throw to see if they're afraid or not, they would roll a twenty sided dice, also called a d20, and add their willpower of two. For willpower, Zephyr's lowest possible roll is a three and highest possible roll is a twenty two. Zephyr's reflex stat is seven. If the game master says the floor is collapsing under Zephyr and a successful reflex save will let them jump out of the way instead of falling, Zephyr would roll a d20 and add their reflex stat, seven. For reflex, Zephyr's lowest possible roll is an eight, and highest possible roll is a twenty seven. The last resistance type is fortitude, which Zephyr has a two in. If the game master says that Zephyr has just been poisoned, Zephyr would roll a d20 and add two to their roll to resist this challenge to their fortitude. Along with numbers for stats and skills, your character's three classes will also come with a variety of other conditional bonuses and physical equipment. For example the ranger gives Zephyr the equipment of a tent, ten meters of rope, a compass, matches, a 2 d4 hunting knife, a water filter, sturdy shoes, bug spray, and sunscreen. The freerunner gives Zephyr an extra reaction per round, and +1 to attack when attacking unarmed. The martial artist gives Zephyr a +2 to attack when attacking unarmed, and Zephyr's hands now count as 2 d4 bludgeoning weapons. Write these conditional bonuses, equipment, and other details from your three classes on your character sheet. For the players in my upcoming session, please level up twice. Each level up will increase your feats and your skills. For feats, choose two feats that must be from different classes. We're leveling up twice, so you should have four feats on your character sheet for this session. For stats, with each level up you can increase the level up stat's number of skills by one. For example if you have a five in your level up stat, you can increase five stats by one point each time you level up. You can choose different skills the second time you level up if you'd like. Hopefully this little rules chat helps my players build their characters and understand combat and skills. For everyone listening, we encourage you to find the No Port Called Home rule book yourself, and play a game with friends. And if you'd like to hear an example adventure, I'm looking forward to playing No Port Called Home in an upcoming session.

Ivy Green Interview

Embark on a thrilling journey with Demyan, Nugh, and Maeve in a Dicing with Death adventure! Watch as they cast roles, conquer fate, and spice up the stage to save the play! 

Embark on a thrilling journey with Demyan, Nugh, and Maeve in a Dicing with Death adventure! Watch as they cast roles, conquer fate, and spice up the stage to save the play! 

Bartholomew, Fennis, and Sadie respond to a request for help from Mishui to investigate an epidemic of memory loss. This episode uses the gameplay mechanics from the system Cascade Effect. 

Bartholomew, Fennis, and Sadie respond to a request for help from Mishui to investigate an epidemic of memory loss. This episode uses the gameplay mechanics from the system Cascade Effect. 

Fennis Lightwall Interview

Marty, Demyan, Tord, and Sadie use the Pirates of the Bone Blade system to rescue a bad boy who might not be so bad. 

Marty, Demyan, Tord, and Sadie use the Pirates of the Bone Blade system to rescue a bad boy who might not be so bad. 

Tord Unfrid Interview

Bo, Marty, and Sadie use the Ludus: Nightmares Into Reality system to dive through layers of dreamscapes and rescue someone from Bo's forgotten past.

Bo, Marty, and Sadie use the Ludus: Nightmares Into Reality system to dive through layers of dreamscapes and rescue someone from Bo's forgotten past.

How To Play Ludus: Nightmares Into Reality. Hello! I'm the GM running the game Ludus: nightmares into reality in an upcoming episode of Firebreathing Kittens. This is a brief introduction to the game's mechanics to help familiarize our players and listeners with the game before we play.   Ludus is a game where the players influence a dream using “twists” and try to turn it into a true nightmare. There is no character sheet, nor weapons nor magic. Technically, it doesn't even really need a GM. The players are in charge and it's very improvisation-heavy.   That's not to say there isn't a mechanic. There is, but it's rather tricky to explain so I'll do my best.   The game starts with the characters establishing a dream. Then, they take turns adding a twist to the dream until they reach 20 twists or they decide they're done. A twist is basically “yes, and…”-ing. So if the dream is sheep hopping over a fence, a twist would be “the fence has barbs”, then another twist is “the fence starts to grow and the barbs get closer to the sheep”, etc. etc. until the players decide to stop.   This is where the game's core mechanic comes in. The mechanic to determine whether or not the dream successfully turns into a nightmare is a cursed formula. The best way I can describe it is this: x(y@zD#w). I encourage you to write this down, so I'll repeat it: x(y@zD#w). Where x = the number of twists; y = the dice to roll based on the number of twists to the dream; z = the number of players; and w = the number of dice values that equal the wild die's value. @, D, and # are placeholders within the formula and hold no alternative meaning. The equation will be explained further in a second, but with the addition of twists, we get three values to plug into the formula: x (the number of twists), y (the dice to roll based on x), and z (the number of players). The game rules include a table that tells you which dice to use for what number of turns.   So, we have three values. Now we roll the dice, represented by the variable y. This can be anywhere from one to three dice; no matter what, one of the lowest dice Must be designated as the wild die. If the wild die hits its maximum value, then it explodes and you roll another die of the same value. If that die also explodes, you repeat the process until it no longer explodes. For example, if your wild die is a d6 (or your common six-sided die) and you roll a 6, you roll another d6. If that die also rolls a 6, you roll another d6, etc. etc. until you don't roll a 6.   Next, you sort the dice from lowest face value to highest face value going from left to right. Count the number of dice that have the same face value as the wild die, including the wild die itself. This number is the w variable in our equation which again, is x(y@zD#w). We've finally finished writing our equation. Now we have to resolve it.   Starting with the lowest die, count, from left to right, the number of dice equal to our w variable. The die you land on is the number of Rounds you have to do things in the Ballad section (more on that in a bit). Next, starting from the highest die value, count, from right to left, the number of dice equal to the z variable. Add up the face values of the dice you counted. This sum is the Success value.   Now, compare your Success value to the number equal to your x variable. If the Success value is greater than x, the dream is twisted into a true nightmare. If the Success value is less than x, the dream gets weird but resolves as a dream normally would.   After the resolution of the Success value, we move into the Ballad section. This is where the dream fully manifests into a failed or true nightmare. The players go around taking turns describing what happens, again using “yes, and…” to craft the nightmare. This “yes, and…” is known as a verse in the Ballad section, rather than a twist like it was in the dream section. A round is made up of each player contributing one verse, and the entire Ballad section has a number of rounds equal to the w variable. The nightmare should be a full story that resolves at the end of the last round.   And that's how you play Ludus! In the game I'm running, the players will need to make three true nightmares to succeed in their quest. Before we begin play, though, we'll also go over player comfort and safety. I don't want any of our fellow Firebreathing Kittens to feel overly uncomfortable, and this game has the potential for disturbing stuff to arise. We'll be talking about lines, veils, and x-cards before we play. Lines are firm boundaries: any topic that is a line for a player won't be brought up, period. Veils are more loose, things that players may feel uncomfortable with but also feel ok exploring. X-cards are for players to use if those veils are explored and they don't like how it makes them feel. Anything that is x-carded will be treated as   a line and the subject will be dropped. For anyone playing with me, I encourage use of the x-card. You're the only one who knows your boundaries, so please share them if you are truly discomforted. We're all friends here.   Well, that should do it! I hope this was a helpful guide to understanding the game of Ludus: nightmares into reality. If you're interested in playing the game, I hope you listen to the upcoming game. Let us know what you think of it! Thanks for listening. Bye!

Actual play podcasts of the solo play role playing games "You, Beyond The Pale", "Artefact", and "Thousand Year Old Vampire".

Nugh, Ozob, and Colette are hired to use their salvage mechs to brave rock slides, biotitans, and magic scepters to bring back valuable relics and valuable loot on behalf of their employer. We Carry Stuff And Get Paid is an actual play podcast of the Salvage Union RPG system. 

Nugh, Ozob, and Colette are hired to use their salvage mechs to brave rock slides, biotitans, and magic scepters to bring back valuable relics and valuable loot on behalf of their employer. We Carry Stuff And Get Paid is an actual play podcast of the Salvage Union RPG system. 

Ozob Diputs Interview

Colette DeWinter Interview

Electric Boogaloo is an actual play podcast of Savage Union. Join Crud and Demyan as they mount their mechs and search for artifacts and treasure. Our adventures arrive in Havas Sands after a recent earthquake uncovers a ravine. Can these two with Zahra get to the artifacts before other teams do? Listen to find out! 

Electric Boogaloo is an actual play podcast of Savage Union. Join Crud and Demyan as they mount their mechs and search for artifacts and treasure. Our adventures arrive in Havas Sands after a recent earthquake uncovers a ravine. Can these two with Zahra get to the artifacts before other teams do? Listen to find out! 

How to play Salvage Union.   Hi everyone, this is a special episode of Firebreathing Kittens. I'm the game master for an upcoming session using the rules for Salvage Union. This episode is a summary of what I learned after reading the rule book. Hopefully this will be a handy guide for how to play for my players, will help me organize myself, and will be useful for you listeners, too, who are looking to play Salvage Union yourselves.   The sections I'll talk about are: Writing prompt How to attack Distances Actions Initiative Character creation Pushing a mech How to salvage   Writing prompt: The general idea of this system is that you and your mech are exploring the wasteland of a ruined civilization. You have friends who also have mechs and are exploring with you, which is good, because you wouldn't want to be alone, not with all those Bio-Titan behemoth monstrosities that are amalgamations of creatures and machines, roaming the scrap filled battlefields. Can you salvage something useful from this scarred region, creating opportunity from the debris? Let's find out, in Salvage Union.   How to attack: I will describe the general idea first and then dive into specifics. The general idea is that to attack, first you choose a target you can see who is within weapon range. Next you roll to hit. If you successfully hit, then you inflict your weapon damage. The game master subtracts your weapon's damage from your target's either hit points or structure points. Biological things like pilots have hit points, and constructed things like mechs have structure points. Most player characters start at 10 hit points. Most level 1 mechs range between 9 and 17 structure points. Most allied non player characters have 4 four hit points. Tech level 1 weapons deal between 1 and 4 damage per hit. That means that on average it takes as few as three or as many as ten strikes to reduce something that had 10 HP to 0, at which point they fall unconscious and are at the mercy of a mortal blow or not. Now let's discuss specifics. Salvage Union uses a twenty sided dice, also called a d20. There are no modifiers or bonuses to add onto the roll. If you get a 1, you fail horribly. You miss the target you're attacking, you suffer something called a Setback with a capital S, and a severe consequence of the Game Master's choice happens. Setbacks can affect your health, your reputation, your items, your environment, et cetera. For example with health: you could get hurt, such as taking two HP damage out of your 10 HP total, or roll on the critical injury table, or your module is destroyed. Some examples that affect your reputation are that you could lose an ally, a bounty could be put on your head, you could realize you broke a law and are now cast out of a community. Example setbacks impacting your inventory are that your weapon jams or runs out of ammo, you lose one of your treasured possessions, or your weapon's effectiveness is now less than it should be. Example environmental setbacks are that your path is blocked by debris, or the town you were heading to got decimated by Bio-Titans before you could get there, or enemies are now flanking you. Those are just some of the potential consequences of rolling a 1 on the d20. If you roll between a 2 and 5, you fail and still face the Setback with a capital S, but without the severe consequence. If you roll between a 6 and a 10 on the dice, then you succeed at what you were trying to do, but you face a tough choice. Your gamemaster will give you a choice between setbacks. If you were attacking, you still hit, but you're also going to have to make a tough choice. If you roll an 11 to 19 on the dice, you succeed! If you were attacking, you hit your target and deal standard damage. If you weren't attacking, you achieve your goal without any compromises. And lastly if you roll a twenty on the twenty sided dice, you nailed it. You manage an outstanding success, and may achieve an additional bonus of your choice as well as your intended action. If you were attacking, you can choose to double your damage or do an appropriate bonus effect. Here is an example of how to attack. You're approaching a scrap heap, preparing to harvest it in your mech. You reach out your mech's left hand. Like a pit trap spider, an amalgamation of machine and biology clamps down upon your mech's left hand! It starts to drag you into its pit! You attack the enemy bio-titan with your mech's chainsaw arm. You roll a d20 to see if you hit. You roll a 10, so you do succeed and hit, dealing two damage with your chainsaw arm to the pit trap creature-machine, but your game master gives you two Setbacks with a capital S to pick from. Either the module on your left hand was damaged by the bite, and your rigging arm now takes three energy to use instead of its normal two energy, or something unspecified and negative has happened in the town you were heading to. That's an example of an attack in Salvage Union. You can also roll that d20 to do most skill actions you would do in other roleplaying games, such as convincing an NPC to tell you something, or intimidating an enemy. If you're interested in sneaking, stealing, and performing similar rogue activities frequently, consider the ranger skill tree, where you auto-succeed at those activities if you take the infiltration advanced move.   Distances: Distances in Salvage Union are: close range, medium, long, and far. Close range is like, you can walk up to it in just a second or two. Medium range is you could throw something and hit it. Long range is you can still see it with your unaided eye, and discern its outline. Far range is outside of the accuracy of most weapons.   Actions: Salvage Union defines lengths of times by using a word and then the word action. A downtime action represents one week. A long action takes about one hour. A short action takes about ten minutes and is too long to be during combat. A turn action is something you could do in a minute or so. Yes, you can do a turn action in combat as your whole turn. One turn action is needed for a mech to start up or shut down. A free action doesn't take up much time at all. Talking to other characters is a free action. And lastly a re-action is less than ten seconds and is so fast that someone could re-act on someone else's turn.   Initiative: You and all of your fellow players and allied NPCs act together in what is called a group. The enemy band of five wastelanders that ambushed you also count as one group. This first round, the wastelanders ambushed you, so they go first. One of them takes their action, firing a ranged attack at the players before ducking behind the scrap heap. Then after they're finished, if you're still alive, it's the players' turn. One player can move and take one action, and as many free actions as you like. Then it's back to the enemy group, where again one enemy can attack your group. Then it's back to your group, where one player character can move and perform an action, and as many free actions as they like. It goes back and forth between groups like that. Once everyone has acted, the round is over. At the end of the round, one player character represents everybody and rolls a twenty sided dice. They consult the group iniative table to see what the next round is like. If they roll a 1, well, you're ambushed again. That means the wastelanders attacked you, then hid, and you don't know where they went. Imagine an old west movie with a shootout, and you can't see where they're coming from. If they roll a 2 to a 5, one NPC of the GM's choice, probably an enemy, gets one turn in, and then play passes to the player group. If they roll a 6 to a 10, then one NPC chosen by the players acts first. Then the player group can go. On an 11 to 19, one player chosen by the player characters can act first, with play then passing to the enemy NPC group. And lastly if you roll a 20 on the group initiative table, two pilots can act before the enemy group can go.   Character creation: You're going to be creating three different things in Salvage Union: a pilot, a mech, and a crawler. The pilot is your character. The mech is their vehicle, or steed. The crawler is a slowly moving setting, like a cruise ship. The pilot starts with their appearance, 10 hit points, 5 ability points, 6 inventory spots, a core class, a starting ability from your core class, two tech 1 pilot equipments, a call sign, a background, a keepsake, and a motto. Let's build an example pilot named Sadie. She's a shy macrotous elf, with big old ears sticking out horizontal from her silver hair. Sadie starts with 10 hit points, 5 ability points, 6 inventory spots, the core class of Hacker, and the starting ability of Well Actually… This lets her ask questions about systems, modules, or technology. When she asks a question, her player rolls a twenty sided dice, also called a d20. On a 20 she can ask 5 questions and get legitimately true answers. From 11-19 she can ask three questions and still be getting truthful answers. From 6-10 she can ask two questions and get one true answer and one false answer. From 2-5 you have to make up an answer to your own question. And on a one, everyone knows you don't know the answer. She's got two tech 1 pilot equipments, which are a first aid kit and a portable comms unit. The first aid kit has three uses. It lets Sadie give a target creature in close range 3 hit points as a turn action. The portable comms unit lets Sadie communicate with anything else that has the communicator trait within medium range as a free action. They both take up an inventory spot. Inventory spots are also taken up by weapons, which take up one inventory spot, and scrap, which takes up three inventory spots, so make sure to keep track of how many open inventory spots you have left. Continuing, Sadie gets a call sign of Silver Mouse, which people can call her on their communicator. She gets a background of Corpo Exec, which represents that she comes from being at the top of its hierarchy, and that something caused her to stray away from the luxurious life it gave her. Her keepsake is one of her mother's earrings. She's looking for the other one. And her motto is: be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. You can spend your five ability points on anything you want, have fun browsing through the things that cost AP. There seem to be a wide variety of ways to customize your pilot. Advanced and Legendary abilities can be unlocked at high levels. For my players in my upcoming game, I recommend choosing one of the character paths or mech builds that gives you access to the salvaging trait, so that you can participate in salvaging, see page 248. Second, you're going to be building a mech. Your mech starts with 20 tech 1 scrap. You can spend this scrap to pick your chassis, which will come with its own stats and ability. You can also spend this scrap to pick your tech 1 systems and modules. Also choose your mech's quirk, appearance, and pattern name. Let's build an example mech. Sadie's mech starts with 20 tech 1 scrap, which you use as currency to buy the mech based on its salvage value, which is like its cost. The symbol for salvage value is a gear, so if you see a 10 inside a gear with a lot of teeth, that's a salvage value of 10. Sadie spends 10 tech 1 scrap buying the 10 salvage value chassis model called the spectrum. That's half her scrap, so she writes down that she has 10 remaining to spend on systems and modules. Systems and modules include things like weapons and salvaging tools, so you might not want to spend all your salvage value on the chassis alone. The spectrum chassis has a bunch of stats, so she writes those down, too. The spectrum comes with 17 structure points, 11 energy points, 3 heat cap, 7 system slots, 4 module slots, 6 cargo capacity, tech level 1, 10 salvage value, those all go on the mech's character sheet. The symbol for systems and modules is a triangle, so if you see a 1 inside a triangle that means it takes up one module slot. From this example, this mech had a maximum of four module slots. Energy points are something you run out of, and heat cap is something you don't want to build up to, or your mech can overheat. The mech also comes with an ability, which for this example is called Data Scanner. This ability lets you spend two energy points to scan a single object in close range. It can be a mech, system, module, vehicle, creature, artefact, structure, fauna, flora, anything. You can ask two questions about the object and the answers given must be true. You also now have its blueprint if it was an intact mech chassis, system, or module. This is a neat combo with Sadie's other ability. She's going to get so many rewards for asking questions during the game. Maybe having all these good possible outcomes will motivate her to overcome her shyness, speak up, and ask a question. If she can just overcome her fear of new people enough to ask a question, so many good things will happen. It's neat when mechanics encourage roleplaying. Next she pick a quirk for her mech, for example the cockpit has far, far too many buttons. And an appearance, which is that it has spiky bits, the better for extending to probe objects it's investigating. Lastly, she gives it a pattern name: Tickle Monster. And voila! Sadie has a mech. For my players in my upcoming game, I encourage you to take a look at the rigging arm on page 167 so that you'll be able to participate in rigging salvage action, see page 249. Triangles are how many system or module spots you need open to take it, the T number is the tech level, and the number inside the gear is the salvage value. Lastly, the party is going to be sharing a crawler. Someone, possibly the Game Master, will pick a crawler type, writing down its ability, stats, bonuses, structure points, upkeep, and upgrade cost. Choose a tech 1 weapons system for your crawler, and give it a name and tag number. Name the crawler's NPCs and give them each their own background, keepsake, motto, and 4 HP each. You Game Master might hand everyone a page with their crawler information on it before the game starts. If you're a player in my upcoming Salvage Union game, that's what I'm going to do, so you don't have to build the crawler yourself. But since this is an example of how to play Salvage Union, let's build an example crawler together. A crawler is basically a roaming settlement. Imagine a tour bus with all the members of a band on it, or a cruise ship, or a generational space flight. In this example, we're building a trade caravan crawler, so imagine a series of covered wagons rolling out from Saint Louis to head to California back in the eighteen hundreds. This crawler has an ability: improved trading bay. When you begin to roll for what is available in the trading bay, use an improved table instead of the one generally available to most players. It also comes with an NPC who is an experienced trader. For example Khairul Smith is on board and they're really good at getting deals on boats. They've got a keepsake of cool person hair gel, and a motto of “success is the best revenge”. By being present, Khairul Smith reduces the cost of any mech chassis, system, or module available in the improved trading bay by one scrap, with a minimum cost of one. And they have 4 HP, so if you let them die you lose that bonus to your trades. Righto, we're done with character creation. We've created a pilot, we've created a mech, and we've explained how to build a crawler, which I imagine might be done by your game master.   Pushing a mech: You can push your mech to add two heat to it and re roll a d20 dice. First, resolve all the effects of the re-roll. Then add two to the mech's heat and roll a heat check d20 dice. If your mech has less heat than the number you roll on the dice, it's fine. If your heat is equal to or greater than your roll, then your reactor has overloaded. Roll on the reactor overload table. Your mech might shut down, blow a module, or explode and be completely destroyed. That's no good. To reduce how much heat you have, shut it down and let it cool off for one hour. After the hour, heat resets to zero. While it's shut off, it's vulnerable and takes twice as much damage from attacks. Here is an example of pushing. A behemoth bio-titan dragged one of the party members back to its lair and has spun it up in a silk cocoon to eat later. The bio-titan is currently sleeping its physical damage off in one corner of the lair. You are trying to sneak your way into the lair to rescue your friend unnoticed. You roll a d20 to make a stealth check. The d20 lands on a 4, which means you fail and are about to experience a Setback with a capital S. Based upon the roleplaying situation, you are guessing that the GM is going to do an environmental Setback, where the behemoth bio-titan wakes up. But you know you're not match for that machine-creature. That's what you told your friend earlier, the one who's now in a cocoon. Even though your mech only has a heat capacity of three and pushing would add two, you think this is worth it, and you push your mech. First, you re-roll that d20 dice. Success! A 15! You succeed at what you were trying to do, which was to sneak up to that cocoon without waking the behemoth up. You achieve your goal without any compromises. Now that we have resolved the effects of the re-roll, we add two to the mech's heat and we roll a heat check. You're haven't reached your mech's heat capacity of three, so that's good. If you had, you would have to make a heat check every turn you start at your heat capacity. But you're not there yet, so it's just one heat check for having pushed and re-rolled the dice. You roll for the heat check and consult the table on page 235. You get a 12, and see that from an 11 to 19, your mech reactor has overheated. Subtract two, the number of heat you currently have, from your structure points, which are like hit points for mechs. The mech shuts down and gains the vulnerable trait, where it takes double damage from any attack. It will re-activate at the end of your next turn, and won't decrease how much heat it has until you shut it down and let it cool off for one hour. But in this example, pushing the mech was worth it. You're at the cocoon with your friend and can beging to cut them free, the bio-titan behemoth none the wiser.   How to salvage: Players who posses the salvaging or rigging traits can area salvage, mech salvage, scrap, repair, patch up, load, mount, and craft. If that includes you, it's not a bad idea to print out or screen capture pages 248 and 249, which lists your salvaging moves. There are five types of item you can find in the wasteland that can be useful to you. Chassis are the core frame of the mech, the part that has all the stats. For example a jackhammer, mule, and kraken are three chassis good at mining, carrying cargo, and swimming, respectively. Systems are hardware that can be mounted on a chassis, such as excavator arms and weapons. Modules are software that you can upgrade your chassis with, like a better sound system or faster RAM. A vehicle is something like a carriage or a wagon that isn't quite a mech. And lastly, scrap is that very last working part pulled from an otherwise completely broken junk heap, a component that might be useful for crafting something one day. The wasteland leaves objects in a range of conditions, ranging from intact, to damaged, to destroyed. To salvage an area, roll to area salvage and if you're successful, reduce the supply of that area by one. Most areas default start at five supply. Chassis, systems and modules take up as many cargo spots as their salvage value number. Each piece of scrap you harvest takes up one mech cargo spot, or three pilot inventory spots.   Hopefully this little rules chat helps my players build their characters and understand combat a bit. And for everyone listening, hopefully now you're excited to find the Salvage Union rule book yourself, and play a game with friends. I'm looking forward to playing Salvage Union in an upcoming adventure.

A precious familiar is missing from Camp Fable and it's up to the Firebreathing Kittens to find it! Join Arby, Bill, and Mary as they search for Puff and unlock the true power of friendship in this Witch Scouts actual play. 

A precious familiar is missing from Camp Fable and it's up to the Firebreathing Kittens to find it! Join Arby, Bill, and Mary as they search for Puff and unlock the true power of friendship in this Witch Scouts actual play. 

Ferris Whee is a Horrible Henchmen actual play podcast episode.

Ferris Whee is a Horrible Henchmen actual play podcast oneshot episode.