Tuesday, January 13, 2015

The Free OSR Title : Roll XX: Double Damage From Neoplastic Press For Your Old School Campaigns



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So I'm always on the look out for something else to deal with the various bits and pieces of the old school games that I run along with dungeon construction kits and adventure location tables that can provide me with even more mayhem and nastiness to throw at PC's and parties. Roll XX fits the bill nicely. This is the other part of the XX  line of products and this book is keyed specificially for  Old School Dungeons and Dragons style games while keeping well within the system neutral ethos of the line of product.
And the whole thing is open source and very nicely done in thirty two pages of mayhem and malivolence across the board. There are chart after chart of useful randomness that can dress a campaign in seconds flat from whose hired the party to location of the last torch done in a very tight and nicely confident style.
According to the Drivethrurpg blurb: 

What's the automaton's origin?
Who else seeks the treasure within this dungeon?
What was found at the base of the obelisk?
What has the disgraced priest summoned?

Roll XX: Double Damage is a book of random tables for fantasy role-playing games. Packed with adventure seeds, dungeon encounters, NPCs, magic items, treasure, and locations, Roll XX features 20 questions and 450 answers.
It also includes an ugly-as-sin monster generator in the back with over 10,000,000,000 murderous combinations.
And it's open-source!
All proceeds from this book will be used to purchase clothing for the orphans at the Noel Children's Home in Kenya.
Once again I'm a bit suspect of this orphan's home in Kenya but the generators are all damn useful, dangerous, and completely useful for a wide variety of applications right across the board. The label on the tin claims its for dungeons and the like but I can see using these tables a wide variety of pseudo European adventure creation for everything from Dungeons and Dragons to solid old school pulp gaming. This material is damn useful for adventure rpg creation and that's the other beauty about it. Everything in this thirty two page book is open source which means that if you want to tear into this material and create your own line of rpg stuff then the authors are there encouraging it. I can see using this tool kit for everything from Torg to Chill to deal with some solid adventure creation that goes light years into the realm of horror to sci fi. And this is where the authors have gone into some nice tables that fully flesh out your old school adventure creations in one shot with the toss of the dice. 
Everything about this product is user friendly and plug and play, from the fact that's its free to the tables of complete old school lunacy right at the DM's finger tips to create miles and miles of old school dungeons and locations. The fact that I don't see a ton of people using this material baffles me in spades. Everything is right here in between the title pages to get game campaigns right off the ground quickly and easily. The Roll XX family of products should have more lime light because its edition and game neutral just perfect for a whole ton of applications to pull players right into a quick and easy twist of a campaign. Need motives for an NPC, there's a chart for that. This is a perfect product for the old school DM who needs and wants to grab the campaign by the balls and squeeze out of his dice everything right from the ground up to pull his players into a campaign quickly and easily. 
  There are a few highlights to push the PC's noses right into the deep end of the campaign. The first is the ugly-as-sin monster generator in the back with over 10,000,000,000 murderous combinations and believe me this is just perfect for rpg's from Lamination's of the Flame Princess to Call of Cthlhu and every rpg in between. This generator can be used to create every type of monster imaginable and with the location based nature of many of the other generators this one makes pulling elements together a snap. Adventure location generation and dungeon generation is the name of the game with this book and every other random table is built around this premise.
This means that every single random chart can be used to build dungeon after dungeon ANYWHERE you want. This means that filling in some of the background for that time lost dungeon in the post apocalyptic wasteland and combining it with your favorite D&D retroclone has even more dressing to it. 
This makes the application of Roll XX: Double Damage a no brainer. Do I recommend this book? In spades and the fact that its free is a sold plus in my book. The fact that the Roll XX system is open content is the icing on the cake. I can see myself pulling from this line for years to come! 

2 comments:

  1. Thanks very much! Truly appreciated.
    The orphan thing is 100% true. One of the guys in my gaming group adopted a kid from there, and so the rest of us wrote Roll XX to raise funds for the orphanage. But now the book is free, so I need to change the blurb.

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  2. You are very welcome Rafael and I've got to thank you for the book. Hey, thanks for making a positive change in this old hellish world of ours with the orphanage adoption. Cheers and keep on making great games my friend! All my best to you and the family.

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