Borchardbriar: Conquest of Vittles

Food is an abstract measure of foraged and preserved foodstuffs. They could be confit, cured, dried, jellied, jugged, pickled, salted, etc. The everyday meals and snacks your characters consume are not tracked, instead 1 Food is equivalent to a large jar of jam or pickled herring - more food than a prudent Beast would eat alone in a single sitting but not so large that you couldn't transport it easily. The lifeblood of the underground economy since the field's harvest ripens swollen and sour.
Never fit for anybeast's consumption.

When a character would gain an Advancement, they also earn 1 Food which can be spent on the following Downtime Activities:

•  Acquire an Asset - Gain temporary use of a special item, a gang, a vehicle, or a Major Favor outside your Network to use during your next clash.
•  Long-term Project - Researching a lost ballad, developing a sorcerous ritual, investigating a mystery, building trust, or courting a new contact requires a Dramatic Task that may take several Downtimes (or several Food) to complete.
•  Recover - Healing comes at a price in Borchardbriar, it costs 1 Food to bounce back from the Injury Table.

Downtime Activites all require a Test and if you (or an ally) succeed, then you can buy a Raise for 1 additional Food.

You can also keep unspent Food to yourself or pool Food with other players in the Cell's Stockpile. Food in the Stockpile may be spent to:

• Increase the Cell's Rank: Raise the Cell's Rank by 1 which increases Rep and possibly Resistance. Increasing the Cell's Rank costs a number of Food equal to the next Rank.
• Buy a Hideout Edge: Edges cost 2 Food. A Cell's maximum number of Edges is equal to the Rank.

Be aware that if you choose to horde Food, there's a chance it could be stolen though it would be on hand if you need a Favor from an NPC or something. If you keep Food in your inventory you can:

• Sweeten Disposition: You can improve a Reaction Roll by +2.
  
• Wild Chance: Draw and keep an additional card from the Adventure Deck.

GM: If a player is undecided on which downtime activity to perform, offer a long-term project idea. You've got a clue to their interests and what they like. Suggest a project that will dovetail with those.

Borchardbriar Roadmap

So. How did we get here and where are we going?

For the past 2-3 years (do I have longtime readers?) I've been tinkering part time with a Savage Worlds setting called Borchardbriar - a fantasy world of talking animals on perilous adventures and sowing rebellion to overthrow the Fox King Reynard, a grim and terrible monarch. But the pitch wasn't that concise. It hadn't been honed to that razor point.

Stemming from a mash up of  Redwall/Robin Hood + The Old Kingdom + Armello, the summary/pitch meandered and often restated the initial post from May 2017. Trying for a twist on the dark/gritty fantasy settings and stories that have become increasingly popular. And in many ways filling a gap in Savage Worlds' extant settings since Evernight hasn't been updated for a couple of editions.

We even did a podcast mini-series set in this earlier iteration here.

If you listened through the series you'll notice some other influences creeping in, shades of noir like True Detective and Blacksad creeping in. Continued exploration saw bits of Jesse Bullington's Folly of the World (Early Modern period instead of pseudo-medieval), Charles de Lint's Riddle of the Wren (folklore as a window into a mis-remembered past), and Daniel Polansky's The Builders (why you fight) surfacing. At that point I felt ready to start pulling the blogposts and handwritten notes together into something resembling finished work.

However, mapping the older material to Richard Woolcock's Savage Worlds outline showed gaps in the material. Ultimately gaps that were kinda there on purpose. Holes for players and other GMs to fill in, to make their own mark on things. Additionally the scale for Borchardbriar had shifted with SWADE's release. Instead of a paperback, probably a zine. Maybe in time for ZineQuest 2. We'll see.

So what's next for Borchardbriar? How much is being recycled?

Am I reinventing the wheel completely?

Maybe a little bit.

Not to give too much away but, here are the blog posts coming down the pipe:

• Introduction to Borchardbriar - a revised pitch and world overview
• The Furred Folk and Their Kith and Their Kin - how I'm handling different talking animals
• The Way of the World - setting rules new and old, additional edges
• Unseen Principalities and Unclean Spirits - arcane backgrounds and the Watchers
• Odds & Ends - equipment, charms, and superstitions
• The Resistance - a character above your characters
• Conquest of Vittles - hard to rebel on an empty stomach
• We All Lift Together - developing the Resistance
• The Accord - the line that holds us
• Becoming Monsters - when that line breaks
• Clowdertown Blues - The Southern Corner
• How It All Comes Together - session structure
• Smashing of the Van - counterinsurgency, blowback, and other high stakes
• The Hunt - hounded from your boltholes
• Castle Borchardbriar- Reynard's stronghold
• The World Turned Upside Down - The Final Battle
• Hands Raised Against You - foebeasts and the privileged who command them

Borchardbriar: The Resistance

The Resistance
Why do you fight?

Did they snatch your young? Or did your da' take your place? Does a Wyldbreaker lean on you for "protection" money? Are you just trying to make some quick coin? Inspired by an unlikely bard in the public house? Or easing the hurt in the world?

There's a gash in things these days, you can see it with your eyes. Everyone's at least a little hungry. An ache in your stomach spreads through your bones. A weariness you just can't shake like rot on fruit. A grey-green bruise on your soul.

While it might all be falling to pieces 'round our ears, it doesn't have to be.

That's why I fight.

The Means
How does your Cell oppose Reynard's regime? Choose one of the options below: 

• Agitate - Flare tempers.
• Sabotage - Break stuff.
• Liberate - Release folks.
• Terrorize - Sow fear.

When you perform actions in line with your Cell's Means, roll an additional Wild Die. You still use the highest result.

The Network
Who is on your side? Choose 2 of the options below:

• Yasmine - The Gunsmith. Has a new method for creating Salamanderdust she needs to perfect.
• Sebastien - The Patrician. Holds sympathies with the working families who pay most of the Tithe.
• Toni - The Pot-Stirrer. Born under dubious signs, things never go smooth.
• Keith - The Medium. Chased out of Stonebones, he claims to hear the dead.
• Cass - The Raconteur. Spins a yarn so fine the oak tree bends to listen. Wanted for sedition.
• "Lucky" Luci - The Gangleader. Gathered disenfranchised youth for mutual defense.
• "Miss Kitty" - The Madam. Operates a feralhouse where genteel folk can stretch their claws and behave badly.
• Horace - The  Merchant. Snakebite's illegal but that doesn't mean thirst went away.
• Roland - The Stevedore. The biggest paws and the strongest back down on the Docks.
• Aderfi - The Explorer. From the Burning South, been to Manykings and seen the Edge.
• Pedro - The Astronomer. Used to be a navigator but retired from salt spray to soft soil. Owls cluster close.

They will do Minor Favors for you without cost but Major Favors cost Food.


Rep 
Your starting Rep is 0


Resistance 
Your starting Resistance is 0 

Reviewsday: TROIKA! and PROSPECT

Published by the Melsonian Arts Council, TROIKA! is a science fantasy RPG sharing a wavelength with Michael Moorcock’s Eternal Champion, Book of the New Sun, Vimanarama, Etched City, and the Archive 81 podcast (I’ll talk about these later). Humanity escaped the crushing grasp of Earth’s gravity a long time ago and things have only GOTTEN STRANGER. Bollywood space gods plunging through eldritch portals to explore the crystal spheres are the tip of the weirdo iceberg when you thumb through the randomized backgrounds. Some quick examples – questing knight, cacogen, thaumaturge, rhino-man, and monkeymonger for starters. The setting is filled out and explained in item and background descriptions, in the margins of the text like a Dark Souls or Bloodborne game.

Mechanically speaking, it does everything you want an OSR-style game to do – create tension and sense of danger – and only uses the D6. It also leans on D66 tables which I’m a huge fan of. The most unique design feature is how it handles initiative via a blind grab bag, very similar to the system used in the miniatures game Confrontation. You pull a token from a grab bag and the corresponding character takes their turn, but there’s also an End Turn token so… someone might not get an action that turn.

It’s elegant, it’s pretty, and gets the most out of the book-as-physical-artifact with tables inside the covers.

You can find a no-frills/artless version here under the SRD and a physical copy on Amazon here.

PROSPECT was released earlier this year and it’s a space western focused on activities nearly always overlooked – prospecting, mining, and claim jumping! Not gonna get too deep on this, I’ll just say – if your favorite parts of Ridley Scott films are the world-building via material culture and how the camera feels in the scene then you should carve out the time and watch PROSPECT before the year is over in…
13 days? That sounds about right.

You can watch PROSPECT on Hulu right now.

You can browse the props here and the concept art here.

2019 Gift Guide

Full disclosure: some of the products below were provided by the publisher for review and I contributed to the Tome of Mysteries.

With Christmas around the corner let’s be honest , it can be difficult to shop for us. For as much time and money gamers spend accumulating geegaws: books, maps, miniatures, dice towers, dice trays, dice bags, and, hell, dice in general. Folks outside the Culture are likely not aware of differences between core books and supplements (ex: White Wolf used to publish player’s guides in addition to core rulebooks but the player’s guides weren’t really useful) or which games utilize extra components that are evergreen presents (ex: Savage Worlds’ reliance on playing cards means a cool deck is always welcome). So if you have relatives who don't know what to get you for Christmas or your birthday next year, point them at this.

Gaming Adjacent:

A Dragon Walks Into A Bar by Jef Aldrich & Jon Taylor

Do you like D&D as a core cultural touchstone? Do you like all those D&D-centric episodes of cartoons, sitcoms, and video games?
How about dad jokes?
If you loved Cameron’s sense of humor from the first 3 seasons of Max’s Minions and want it distilled in a book, then this is it. Just released last week, this original work by the hosts of the System Mastery podcast is sure to elicit a chuckle or guffaw from your friends or loved ones who are into this sorta thing.And it’s not just a book of jokes, there’s some tables useful sidebars which impart information or insight into this weird, young hobby we all participate in.

Here’s a good joke:

Where would you find a blink dogs?
About three feet to the right of where you left them.

Because they.. teleport…
never mind.

The Ultimate RPG Gameplay Guide & The Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Guide by James D’Amato

Covering both of these at once because they contain complementary materials. If you regularly GM the Gameplay Guide provides advice for effective preparation and communication with your players to lean into engagement, exploring themes, and maximizing the stuff your group wants to see at the table. James’ thoughtful essays ring with his experience both as a Second City trained improviser and GM/producer for one of the top Actual Play podcast networks around. The book’s exercises, worksheets, and prompts help you (the GM) with praxis – walking the walking, applying the ideas and shaping table behaviors so you get the best out of yourself and your players.

Conversely, if you’re on the other side of the GM Screen 9 times out of 10 then the Backstory Guide provides prompts and exercises rooted in improv theater that prompts new ways of thinking and applying the most staid and dullest part of character creation – the backstory. The book’s organization is divided into echelons corresponding to character level, over time you develop themes and motifs to form a throughline. Enabling your GM to bring these elements into focus. Something you can hear James do on his current Campaign podcast – Skyjacks.

Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master by Michael Shea

The title directly addresses the 400 lbs. gorilla in the RPG scene but embodies a solid thesis usable in any game – YOU (the GM) will never be as creative as all of THEM (your players), so pull a Tom Sawyer and get them to paint the fence for you. Distribute the cognitive workload.

With great advice, pertinent examples, and checklists this book doesn’t provide as many hand’s on applications as the Gameplay Guide. Instead Return dwells in greater specificity on its topics, whether pros & cons to different styles of combat or conveying the value of reskinning existing monsters instead of creating ones from wholecloth. If The Ultimate RPG Gameplay Guide sounded too hippie-dippie to you then Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master occupies a cozier middle ground.

Games and Game Accessories:

Savage Worlds Adventure Edition by Shane Hensley

The latest edition of our (Carol and I) favorite game dropped back in September and you can get this gorgeous hardcover for only $30. A more in depth review can be found over on Tommy Brownell’s blog over here and I’ll do my own dissection and discussion of the text for the benefit of folks who’ve never played Savage Worlds before at a later time. This thing is the real deal, people often complain about carrying around too many books and D&D is a $150 buy-in for the 3 core rulebooks.

What takes D&D 3 bloated books, Savage Worlds does in 1 sleek volume for 20% of the price.

Monster of the Week by Michael Sands & The Tome of Mysteries by Michael Sands and assorted authors (including me)

Tired of dungeon delving and want to do something else? Love weekly procedural shows but aren’t sure how to get that to the table?

Then Monster of the Week and it’s companion volume have got you covered. Based on the popular Apocalypse Engine you’ll only need to print out the playbooks and 2 six-sided dice to start playing. Character creation is fast and let’s you hit the table running in interesting directions, you’ll have a game full of interesting conflicts and complications in no time.

And, yea, mysteries are hard but there’s a WHOLE TOME OF THEM! Want more Fringe and less Supernatural? The Tome of Mysteries has that too! It’s covers a lot of ground very quickly with scenario seeds, additional playbooks, a ton of sample mysteries, and custom moves you can re-work for your own game. And if you’re doing Call of Cthulhu or another investigation game then use the sample mysteries anyway so you can still inject some weirdness without it necessarily being the Usual Suspects (Cthulhu, Dagon, Yog-Sothoth, etc).

 Dice from Metallic Dice Games

You might think any set of clack-clack stones are the same as any other but if you ask Carol or Larissa or any other person with the dice fever, you’ll find you’re wrong. Can’t go wrong buying more dice, and I recommend Metallic Dice Games’ products, they’re lustrous and have nice hand feel. They have some great color combinations and they’re timely with their deliveries. Their latest kickstarter arrived a little earlier than estimated, a far cry from the Kraken Dice fiasco earlier this year.