Wretched Country Second Edition rpg & Down The Dusty Trails of OSR Blood & Glory!

 When it come to the dusty trails of outlaws & raiders on horseback the Red Room might not seem one of the logical choices for your cowboy rpg's but it definitely is! Wretched Country Second Edition is one of my prime choices for classic  Western horror. 

This is following on the heels of our review on this blog of Wretched Country second edition here. Now we're gonna talk about something comepletely different here. And that's the fact that while Wretched Country comes complete with a campaign town baked into the setting. I wanted Hellstone to be the big city and so I turned back to my buddy Dave Woodrum at Fishwife games. And so we turned to his Old West towns and settings  Culpepper Junction and Turquoise Valley respectively. 
And the reason for this is the fact that we've used these two Old Western locations for  Wretched Époque second edition adventures in the past. 
And these two locations have everything that we need to get a campaign right off the ground quickly. 

 Culpepper Junction especially because for our campaigns it's ties to vampires and werewolves. 

For our campaigns a must are the classic Fifties Western precode comic book such as Blazing Sixguns number 1 (IW Publishing, 1958). Blazing Six Guns was a series that had a little bit of everything. Weird murdering NPC's, stoic American Indians, and all of the old standbys for a Wester comic book According to the wiki entry on the gerne; "Western comics gained increasing popularity during the 1950s, surviving well into the so-called Silver Age. Artwork by Everett Raymond Kinstler."

While the rest of the OSR has been focusing on nonsense controversies and the like. We've been concentrating on increasing the campaign options for a cinematic Old West game. This ties into the fact we've got a game this weekend. The PC's are going to be saved from a hang man's noose & given the chance to 'redeem' themselves. Before we go on one of the essential books in my opinion is Wretched Folklore which greatly expands the DM options for spirits, creatures and horror for Wretched Country Second edition. 

The Sanity Erodes - Sine Nomine Publishing's Cities Without Number rpg & The Red Room's Orbital Decay -The Expert D&D Connection - The Caecilia

 Call it nostaglia or simply the fact that a friend of mine suggested that I go back to the Expert set of TSR Dungeons & Dragons for some monster inspiration. What I found however was something horrifying and I thought I'd share. 

We've been looking back through the B/X Dungeons & Dragons expert set today. Why?! Because there were a lot of monsters unique to this set. And we've been looking into these unique monsters for something a bit different and unexpected for our - Sine Nomine Publishing's Cities Without Number rpg & The Red Room's Orbital Decay campaign.  The idea here is that each time the Beyond touches our reality it leaves behind a bit of itself and corruption. And one monster that leaped out immediately is the Caecilia. Which according to the Expert set's stats go something like this; "Caecilia Armor Class: Hit Dice: Move: Attacks: Damage: 6 6* 60' (20') lbite 1-8 No. Appearing: Save As: Morale: Treasure Type: Alignment: 1-3 (1-3) Fighter: 3 9 B Neutral These giant gray wormlike creatures are about 30' long. They attack with their cavernous mouths and sharp teeth. An unadjusted "to hit" roll of 19 or 20 means that they have swallowed their prey whole. The victim will take 1-8 points of damage each round after that until either the victim or the caecilia is dead. Any attack from inside a caecilia may only be made with a dagger, and with a penalty of -4 on "to hit" rolls." 
And then I ran across Al's take from the Beyond The Black Gate blog from 2011 here; 
"Caecilia

AC 6[13]
HD 6
Atk Bite (1d8)
Special Swallow whole
Move 15(Crawl or Dig)
Save 10 (Fighter5)
No. Appearing 1d3
Morale 9
AL N
Treasure Type B
These 30' long, slimy, gray worms are voracious predators, often lurking just behind dungeon walls, floors, or ceilings (or spongy wilderness earth) and waiting for the vibrations of passing prey to bring them forth. Their toothy maws can swollow up anything horse-sized or smaller on a natural roll of 19-20. Swallowed victims are largely helply helpless and suffer 1d8 points of damage per round until dead, though they may attack with a small weapon such as a knife or dagger (at -4 to-hit). A faint scent, reminiscent of cinnamon and ozone, may linger in caecilia hunting grounds, warning savvy dungeoneers of their possible presence. The tooth of a Caecilia is rumored to enhance spells of an earthy nature." 

Now what's interesting about this is the fact that neither entry counterdicts the other. These could actually be merely different species or life stages of the same alien monsters from The Beyond. For our own Hudson River  City game the Caecilia are alien horrors that lurk around whenever a magus has been dallying to much with the Beyond. The Caecilia are corrupted lifelorms that have close ties to cults that use a form of unearthly Lovecraftian magic and they have ties to Bholes within our campaigns. The Caecilia are found wherever blood and magick have been spilt in the name of the Old Gods. 

The  Caecilia manifest whenever a gateway to the Beyond is found. They begin to grow and adapt to our reality very quickly. They hunger for the life and flesh of Earthly life. Any Earthly life that they can find is far game to these monsters. These horrors are fast multiplying branching off 1d6 worm spawn once they find a suitable food source. They are not only tolerated but actively summoned by wizards and occultists because of the fact that they actively sweat a gold like compound or  substance. They leave this behind along with a calcium like depoisit from thier feedings. This 'treasure' like substance is 99.9 % pure gold but is found in a matrice of human bone or animal calcuim as a waste product. 
The  Caecilia are also drawn to feed on psionic energies and so will seek out the flesh of psychics or shamans to feed upon.  This happens numerous times across the stars as the wizard or pychic opens the wrong doors. And instantly regrets it. 
In the Beyond there are often found  'Caecilia pits' places of thousands or millions of the monsters writhing together in obscene displays of inverted psycho sexual energies. The  'Caecilia pits' are the source of immense occult powers and are found in the wastelands of the side time Atomic War wastelands.  'Caecilia pits' beam occult power to the Lovecraftian gods & demons of inner reaches of the qlippoth.

Recently we had an encounter deep in the wastelands of  our Wretched Apocalypse game with a  'Caecilia pit' but it was merely a 10 mile across pit filled with tentacles. The players had no idea what it was after leaving the scene. Actually neither did I but now?! Yeah it was  a  'Caecilia pit' & there were rumors about Lovecraftian horrors after the players encountered an old mutant fortune teller in 

Apocalyptic Territories: Wasted Americana. 

The Sanity Erodes - - Sine Nomine Publishing's Cities Without Number rpg & The Red Room's Orbital Decay

 Over the weekend I got together with a fellow gamer Paul, who reminded me of the fact that we were due to play a Silent Legions Rpg  Phantasm campaign. Then our mutual friend Steve passed & that fell by the wayside. And over the weekend I found those campaign notes. What's interesting is that at the time I had taken the Phantasm gates of the Tall Man to lead into a whole cloth Stars Without Numbers sector. Different gates led to different time periods then the Tall Man sorta fades into the background.This blog post is going to links back up with this post here.  


 I agree with Martin Ralya's Silent Legions comments from the Rpg Geek site; "I like Silent Legions, but I wanted to like it more than I do. It has all of the hallmarks of a Sine Nomine book: clear writing, lots of tools for your sandbox, fun bits to play with.But there's less "faction move" stuff than I was hoping for, and considerably more adventure prep than I wanted -- I wanted zero session prep. Seeding the sandbox with adventures I have to write ahead of time is a dealbreaker.I wanted a Lovecraftian sandbox, and all the other Sine Nomine books I own delivered sandboxes, so it came as a surprise that this one is a sandbox full of plotted adventures. That's weak sauce."

"I guess the alternative is seeding it with Call of Cthulhu modules, but then I might as well just play Call of Cthulhu. Which would be shame, because I like the house system here, particularly for its deadly combat. I've played SWN, and it's a breeze in play; Silent Legions looks just as good."

Going over these campaign  notes I can see where Silent Legion hooks into Stars Without Numbers. Now with the Red Room's the Wretched New Flesh Postcards for Aviladad rpg on the scene I can really see this taking off. Especially if with a us of a combination of Wretched Darkness & the  Orbital Decay rpg setting book. as I stated last time, " Our own campaign is going to take place on the meanstreets of a cyberpunk backwater city. The megacorporations are starting to explore nearby alternative realities and dimensions. And the leap frogging in occult/high technologies are allowing humanity to gain contacts with outside forces that could  easily potentially wreck humanity. " 

Right so according to my notes the PC's encounter the undead of the Tall Man within our campaign city and then the time space gates. And accordingly they run into the back alleys of Avilidad via Fish Wives Games Cyber City Block 001 & finds Switchblade City 01: Randy's Pool Hall (Modern Generic).

The idea here was to start the pool hall & make the NPC  patrons a bit more cybernetic or what not with Stars Without Number. Now that  Cities Without Number rpg book is on the scene it's quite easy that we're going to bring things to a far more sinister direction. 
That being said I really love the monsters within the Wretched New Flesh Postcards for Aviladad rpg. 
So according to our notes there really are other forces at work within the city. The alien realms are starting to encroach upon this reality. 

Go down the wrong alley and you could end up not coming back at all. But this also leads into the fact of why I chose the pool hall as the central starting point for this campaign. 
One is the familarity of my own childhood having grown up around pool halls as a kid. And the sorts of scum that we find within a not typical Cyberpunk bio/cybernetic horror campaigns. 

Starting on a smaller scale allows the DM to scale the encounters to the PC's. This is after all an OSR game. Out of time and out of place means that the forces of outside are primed to exploit the PC's in many and possibly horrific ways. 

Review & Commentary On Wreckside District: A Post Apocalypse Setting From Fishwife Games For Your Old School Campaigns

Good morning I've had a lot of time to think about one of the biggest problems with post apocalyptic gaming regardless of old school & retroclone system. I've been playing a lot of Gamma World 1st & 2nd edition lately. But I've used a mutated ton of systems from Mutant Future to Mutant Epoch as well as several of my own creations in addition to enhancing them with Boot Hill & AD&D 1st edition style system. So I know a bit about post apocalptyic gaming and it always seems to come down to location.
Sure the players have crawled through the ruins of Pitzburke in Gamma World, done with the ruins of California in Mutant Epoch, etc. It really becomes a pain in the ass to keep doing research to some location that they've never heard of for scavenging & ruin creation. The internet has made it that much harder. So the other night I asked my friend Dave Woodrum for Wreckside District: A Post Apocalypse Setting From Fishwife Games

So unlike other Fishwife Games in the past this one has a lot of artwork & some really well done professional layout so its easy on the eyes. The gaming  potential here  for all kinds of havoc at the the table. This is a an urban, post apocalyptic setting that can be used as part loot zone & part city state whole hog & dropped into a campaign.
Its system genric & neutral so its a simple matter to drag & drop this right into a campaign even an on going one with a blank spot on the map like I did with my recent Gamma World/Carcosa game.

A City Of Wasted Potential…
Aria stood at the edge of the wasted city and peered off towards its most functioning, but violent, part... Wreckside. The crumbling district was given its name years ago for the salvage yard and multiple garages and towing services that sprung up in the area. Now its name is more fitting for the condition of the district and its desperate inhabitants.
"So why are we are going back to that place again?" Aria questioned her companion, Darius, as she stared at the dimly glowing lights of the distant buildings, proof that at least some of Wreckside's inhabitants enjoyed the rare treat of functioning electricity.
Darius took a swig from a metal flask as he walked away from the acrid smolder of the dying barrel fire. "Supplies. Some special stuff. Electronics and some old notes on building things. I'll know it when I see it."
Aria hated it when Darius wouldn't tell her exactly what they were looking for. Still, though, Darius was renowned by the outskirt settlers as a master scavenger and for keeping his mouth shut about what his employers wanted him to recover. The young woman has learned a lot since Darius took her under his wing a year ago, and the scavenger has always managed to keep her alive in the process.
"So its another one of those jobs, eh? Typical orders from Garrett, don't let the new kid in on the details...", Aria remarked with an obvious bit of disgust in her voice.
"Hey, don't be knocking on Garrett," Darius replied as he checked the contents of his backpack and finished loading rounds into his pistol clip. "The old man is a bit of a creeper, yeah, but he pays well. Plus, we're going to get a pretty big bonus this time if we get back with exactly what he's hoping we'll find."
"Big bonus? What he hopes we'll find?"
"You'll see. Now follow me... quietly. I've been told there's a safer route into the district."There are a couple of minor gripes with Wreckside District, the price measures out to about seven dollars and fifty cents for the pdf & I'd love to have seen a print option for these old eyes of mine. But trying to get a print pdf option for Drivethrrpg & Rpgnow is a huge pain in the arse. Artists also cost money & I was surprised at the amount of artwork in this title. Artists cost. Believe me I totally understand why. You've got a ton of NPC's, gangers, adventure locations, and more built into this. This means that this is a drag & drop product for a campaign. The other thing about Fish Wife Games is the fact that they're a company that seems to fade into the background of the OSR & table top hobby. This means that players are not aware of them as a potential resource for some really nasty post apocalyptic material.

Its a good resource for any of the PA games I mentioned & more. This could even be used for as Cyberpunk 2020 adventure location out in the badlands & no go zones.
The price is right up there with other pdfs so I would wait for a Drivethrurpg sale and possibly a code. But is it worth your time & efforts? Hmm with the district's map that contains over two hundred numbered locations which are each provided individual descriptions and details. This can be a resource to base an entire campaign around.
Now in lots of other reviews I mentioned Domain level play. What the hell is that? Well, when a PC gets to certain level in OD&D such as ninth or higher it was assumed that if they were a fighter they'd build a stronghold, a wizard a tower, a cleric establish a temple or church, etc. This is basically the PC's carving out their own pound of flesh or land in a campaign setting. For some players this is a huge pain in the arse but for old schoolers this was part & parcel of old school campaign settings. This started with OD&D & carried on in B/X with the Companion & Master rules sets.



But what does this have to old school DYI Retro Future campaigns such as Gamma World & the Wreckside District? Actually everything. Many old school post apocalyptic games such as Gamma World all the way to Mutant Epoch have factions or Cryptic Alliances or whatever name such groups are under. In a nut shell this is an extension of kill the mutants, take their stuff and then rule their kingdoms! You & your party are looking for food, shelter, safety for you as well as your community by this blaster you rule! So essentially the Wreckside District provides one more filled in space to explore, exploit, & take over or does it?
Not so fast kids this is a large area of a loot, and scavenging zone. Here's where the horror just might start. If your forces are spread too thin then you just might crash and burn at the end of a laser shot.
So here's ten reasons why Wreckside District is a perfect product of opportunity for your old school post apocalyptic games: 

1. This is a system neutral product so drag & drop it into your favorite old school or retroclone rpg systems. 
2. Exploit and expand the NPC's, adventure  hooks, etc. as you the DM see fit. 
3. Situate & expand on some of the adventure locations for later post apocalyptic adventures.  
4. Deal with the gangs that are in Wreckside in your own adventures to dove tail them back into bringing the PC's into the adventure location. 
5. Cut, spin, and multilate the Wreckside District as you need to. You are not going to break this one. 
6. Place artifacts and relics from your home campaign where you want them to hook the PC's into the campaign within Wreckside 
7. Kill off a few major NPC's to provide adventure opportunities and for expansion of the PC's as possible rulers 
8. Use Wreckside as a potential take over point for one of the campaign's major big bads 
9. Port over your D&D style adventurers or cowboys for even more weirdness 
10. Have your favorite Drive in film classic Atomic age monster threaten The Wreckside District. 

The Wreckside District
is available right over here but I'd wait till Drivethrurpg has a sale!

Price Drop Note -Dave had read the review and commentary so he dropped the price folks!
"I'm taking note about the price point and have decided to drop it- I actually struggled with that before I decided on the $7.50, and have kinda regretted it since. As such, I'm going to stick a sale price on it immediately and drop it back to around $5."

Black Market Inc. & Islands In The Stream Campaign Mini Adventure - A DCC Rpg Actual Play Event

What happens when a dungeon  master gets called in last minute for a game of Dungeon Crawl Classics? You dust off some old notes and dive right into the deep end of the game! So here's the episode with lots of new material coming out!

So after yesterday's entry on The Gong Farmer's Almanac2015, I got a phone call from my friend Steve whose been coming back to the Litchfield Hills with his brothers to take care of their mom whose had a bad turn. They come in on a bi weekly schedule due to their jobs and such. So I've got a built in set of players for infrequent games. That's the problem actually the scheduling for gaming but not too big of a deal. So I've got three or maybe four hours to throw something together. They want a DCC rpg game and want it along the means of a psychotronic 80's cheese fest. Crawling Under A Broken Moon offers me something along the lines I was looking for. But I turned the post apocalyptic vibe way down and up the 80's video rental Beta Max vibe up to eleven. So I was dusting off some notes about 'High Tech Mysticism and High Caliber Adventures' this is a mix of pulpy post apocalyptic goodness and 80's video rental Beta Max/VHS adventures. In the future two multi international corporations the American multinational corporation NTI & the rival German multinational Richter Dynamics control exploration of not only space but have branched into the realm of inter dimensional exploration and time travel. Outfits of adventurers and freebooters like Black Market Inc. are brought in, these are teams of mercenaries and dimensional travelers who risk all to explore and deal with high risk artifacts and relics. Risking anything and all to bring back alien cargoes, high tech relics, and occult treasures of incredible potential! A team was dispatched in a small prop plane and the games began.


Note that the funnel was a hell funnel which begins with 0 level characters from across time and space being put through a time warp meat grinder of minor encounters to test the mettle of the PC's.

Because this is low murmuring post apocalyptic style of pulpy game many of the usual types of  DCC PC's are reversed and dealt with. We also had a few jail house riots and lost world inter dimensional horror funnels.
 Cain who was a a retriever and expert at scavenging ie thief 

'Draft' hit man and expert fighter - fighter
Gonz - Hitman/ mercenary/pilot/ river rat - assassin /pilot 

Corey The Amazing occultist & former pusher of illicit substances who was the psi scout of the party - wizard

Goz The Brutal - last survivor of the land bridge clan and prince - cleric (patron savage bear)
Shana Jungle Princess - last Elven princess of the Hand of Zegula/expert in jungle survival - Elf
For black powder and modern fire arms I used the Crawling Under A Broken Moon zine and some house rules.
The Mission
All of time and space splits across itself as a bubble of pure energy rips across the blackness of the night and other lands enter our world. Brave men and women from across the bounds of the universe risk all to plunder a world of the lost for its greatest treasures.
Recently a time space bubble opened up in the Pacific Ocean and a team was dispatched to take care of it. Who knows what adventures await on the lost world series of islands? Oddly there was a weird  purple sheen to a series of rather large islands further out and this caused much concern among these players. But those are going to be explored another day. The ride in was bumpy and dangerous, the party had its first encounter with a mutated  dinosaur or two straight out of the gate and almost got their heads handed to them by the laser blasting horror.


Then as quick series of encounters with Sulu Sea pirates really give the players a turn, they weren't expecting these time lost pirates to be as dangerous and horrid as they were. Now with the encounter over their ready to plum more of the mysteries of these hellish islands.

Review and Commentary On Fish Wife Games Really Big Island Of Adventure! For Your Old School Campaigns

 While there are a bunch of free maps available out on the net, Fish Wife Games sent me this right when I needed it for my DCC rpg adventure night. And I was trying to emulate a certain brand of old school text style computer games from the early 80's which dove tailed in with old school AD&D style first edition adventures. And that's where Fish Wife Games Really Big Island Of Adventure! hits its sweet spot, this series of maps could conceivable contain just about anything that your twisted imaginations can conceive of.

This is a DM's product, no if or buts about it. This Really Big Island is meant to be used when you've got less then fifteen minutes to print off a section of what you need and to drop several encounters right into the back end of your campaigns. You can grab Really Big Island here

How you use this product is very simply, you've got the map already keyed and ready to print out. Simply write in your description around the presentation and then your ready to go. This product can fit a wide variety of genres and settings. Use it to drop in Really Big Island of Adventure  as a science fiction or science fantasy adventure encounter. Add in your favorite literary book by Jules Verne and populate the adventure locations with dangerous mega birds. This location can be used to house a wide variety of things from a post apocalyptic refuge to a dangerous and forbidden lost world location right next door for a Tales Of the Gold Monkey style pulp game. This is a very useful product that comes in well under budget as you can get for use as a system neutral resource.


At a dollar fifty this really is a nice and thrifty set of maps to use if , A. Your going to DYI your own setting, B. your not afraid to do a bit of OSR finger painting in the backdrop and you've got imagination to spare with a few free resources for your favorite rpg system.

Personally each and every time I look at the title and font of this cover I'm reminded of those old 80's men's magazine covers and keep seeing pulpy Indiana Jones and Tales of the Gold Monkey intro's music playing in my head. There are a ton of uses for Really Big Island of Adventure and I'm only scratching the surface here. There are several draw backs to the product however. This is a series of maps that are aimed squarely at the retro gamer market and these maps are solid in what they do. That is to emulate a certain look and feel of a bygone era of gaming. They've got infinite use within their margin of gaming however.
Using these maps is going to put your gamers in a certain mindset and that's a good thing for a DM who wants to stir the pot of this style of play however and these are very well done for the price point. My personal recommendation is to grab these and run with them.

Islands In The Stream - A DCC Rpg Actual Play Event

So I got together with a bunch of friends Sunday and grabbed my copy of Dungeon Crawl Classics, using a bit of a DYI setting that I threw together. I got a funnel together based around a post apocalyptic post alien invasion setting. We took a bunch of zero level apocalyptic survivors and had them kidnapped by aliens from their villages. All of them were a part of post apocalyptic gangs of one type or another but the PC's didn't know one another. The PC's were quickly pitted against various alien menaces and weeded out based upon performance, intelligence, etc. This was how the players acquired the right PC's to use and the funnel system proved them with a solid beginning.



The aliens then sectioned the PC's off again based upon raw talent and adapted or they were going to die. And lots did, there was an exchange of all of the PC's that others wanted. This went on several times until folks got the player character that they wanted. Several gladiatorial games were conducted until more of the PC's were eliminated and killed. The action was hot fast and brutal, the players loved it.



After this the PC's were whisted away to an alien world where they were involved in an alien hunting safari on an alien planet. There were questions this evening if the action was connected with my Accursed Atlantis campaign? Of course it was, after all this was taking place within the same universe. The answer came when the PC's were teleported to a lost island on some unnamed lost world, there were alien dinosaurs, weird warriors, and all kinds of hazards just waiting for them! All of this was being broadcast to an audience of inter dimensional aliens. Fortunately for me Fish Wife games and Dave Woodrum had cooked up Savage Island Encounters.
All of the hard work was done for me in advance. But I can just hear you asking yourselves, why not use one of the free DCC rpg resources on the net? Because I have very experienced DCC rpg players. 
And because of the popularity of the game I was forced to improvise last night for source material.


According to the description:
The crew of mighty adventurers have landed upon the beaches of a most strange and savage island, where great reptiles still roam and cannibals make meat of men. This is a place ridden with pirates, fanged beasts, and the various hazards of natures. Despite such dreadful aspects, the savage island is a place of potential fortune and glory.  Fortunately the pdf lives up to its name and had players guessing what was going to happen next. The wizard and cleric quickly found the shrines and magical empowerment sites on the island and I added in a few twists and turns to keep things moving and interesting.



Overall DCC was quite a lot of fun but my players do not want to see this become our regular campaign. The post apocalyptic fare that we usually get into has some mix of many of the elements of PA fiction along with bits of D&D thrown into the background. DCC is going to remain a once in a while short set of adventures. The setting implied by the DCC rpg book is expansive and interesting but the players want more of a generic setting that can easily be bolted onto several incarnations of the games of your imagination.

50 Wasteland Caravan Haulers From Fishwife Games For Your Old School Post Apocalyptic Campaigns

    I've been sitting on this pdf for a week, I'm in the middle of constructing another post apocalyptic wasteland one shot. This is where fifty wasteland Caravan Haulers comes,when you need a group of NPC's on the open road.  These folks are the survivors and deviants that haul they're ass across the wasted landscape under an unforgiving sky. For the price of  less then a dollar you get a complete encounter kit and random list of folks to populate your world. 

GRAB IT
HERE

  This product is exactly what it says on the tin, a kit to outfit your game system with gangs of roaming mercenaries, survivors, and adventurers. The list is an expansive echo of weirdness simply waiting to be dropped right into your PA campaigns. Everything is here concisely organized for maximum mayhem in your old school world. Roads and highways are the life blood of the post apocalyptic world and yet very few folks seem to exploit this fact in their games. Well no more. you get a complete break down of the driver's name, the type of vehicle they are using, and the most important goods that they are carrying. Simply perfect to drop that high way pirate right on top of your adventurers or if your PC is that high way pirate the perfect prey. 
 Everything here is tailor made for your post apocalyptic highway adventurers to be pulled into the world of the drivers. This list is very well put together and has very little filler and all meat to exploit for the PC's. The ideas here are simply presented and for a post apocalyptic game solidly done. 

Quick Review Of 100 Wasteland Urbanites From Fishwife Games For Your Old School Post Apocalyptic Campaigns

The 'Shadow Years' are that time period in post apocalyptic games when the world might sort of recover from the apocalyptic events and there's a whole  dystopian vibe running through the game system. This was seen in Gamma World and to a more contemporary example Mutant Epoch. There are Mutant Future adventures and source books with this sort of feel running through them. Well Fishwife games has produced 100 Wasteland Urbanites for a ruined post apocalyptic urban city scene. Think of the movie 'The Warriors' folks, these are the minor NPC's who cross your party's tracks time and again. This random encounter list gives a whole bunch of minor options for the city encounters that come up during games.

GRAB IT RIGHT
HERE

With random tables like this its always a toss up of these encounters are going to be minor side quests or simply another stranger passing in the night. This list gives the DM all kinds of folks to throw the PC's way. The list is well done and concise for its contents and sets up the stage pretty well with a wide variety of options to throw down and for the party to encounter. Dave provides an assortment of types of NPC's and the list has a wide variety of options. This encounter table has a multitude of uses from lower level street gang encounters to three A.M. garbage & salvage raid backdrops that it can be applied to. All in all not a bad list of NPC's to add to your cityscape with little to no hassle all for the price of a burger. Another quick and solid product from the pen of Dave Woodrum. I've got use for these folks in the post apocalyptic landscape. 

Fast Do It Yourself Post Apocalyptic Adventure Encounters With Prime Pickings Of The Toxic Vulture Set I & II From Fishwife Games For Your Old School Campaigns

I'm a fan of post apocalyptic worlds for PC's to visit and its quite easily one of all time favorite things to do is to drop adventurers into the deep end of the wastelands. The one element that many post apocalyptic landscapes have regardless of  genre have  from the zombie apocalypse to a Gamma World 'years of shadow' style adventures is corpses. An often overlooked and under utilized game element. Well no more! 

Dave Woodrum that one man factory of old school goodness from Fish Wife Games has produced two sets of Prime Pickings Of The Toxic Vulture series I & II. 

This is a sick and twisted idea, basically these are a series of two corpse filled booklets with all kinds of background on the corpses. Sweet mother why didn't I think of this??!
With the popularity of the Walking Dead television series this is a really a nice little tool kit for running a post apocalyptic urban, wasteland, or deep wasteland adventure encounter with your favorite location filled with these  corpses. 

Grab Set One  Right
HERE
And Set Two Over
HERE
They go for one fifty each and their a really nice addition to the arsenal of a post apocalyptic DM's tool kit.
According to the Rpgnow blurb which pretty much lays out everything you need to know :

The Rules Are Simple... If It Is Lying On The Ground And Totally Dead Then It Is Your Right To Pick It Clean.
As the bodies lay the vultures begin to gather- some of them are human, others are of the avian variety. This gruesome little product provides 13 bodies lying dead on the ground- just ripe for you to pick clean for possible loot. In the days after the apocalypse we are all vultures, beggars, looters, and scum. As such, we might as well have some lifeless bodies ready to provide us with the gear, luxuries, consumables, and trinkets we need and desire to see through another day in this miserable, post apocalyptic wasteland...

This supplement product is a perfect companion for various post apocalypse settings. Whether your setting and gamers happen to favor zombies shambling across a parking lot filled with dead bodies or a post nuclear wasteland where small survivor settlements frequently fall victim to merciless highway marauders. Regardless of what your post civilization poison of taste happens to be, we have the dead and decomposing victims to suit your needs. Covered in each of the 13 selections is a given “name”, a general description of what the individual looked like in life, the clothing on their backs, and a listing of basic gear that they still have on their decaying carcasses.

But is it good I can hear you saying? Yes its very well done actually and very useful because there are weird avian corpses as well scattered throughout these products. Suddenly these go from being simply an encounter with some corpses to your party entering into the twilight zone.
Here's a good example of the type of thing I'm talking about:

Rosa Adult Latino female in her late 50's with graying dark hair and dark skin. Rosa weighed roughly 120 lbs and was 5 foot, 4 inches in height. Clothing: Dark blue dress jacket with an off white satin blouse underneath. Gold 14k wedding ring, Long dress skirt with tan nylons, fake leather dark blue belt, and dark blue high heeled dress shoes. Gear: 1 Pair of prescription glasses. Pocketbook containing flip cell phone, 1 tube of maroon lipstick, 1d4 Maxi pads, 1 pack of stale gum, 1 nail file, 1d12x$5 in cash.

Its all in the little details which provide a DM with the adventure hooks he needs to begin to round out an adventure quickly and very concisely in the details. Suddenly this is no longer simply a corpse to raid but a human being. Does Rosa still have a family and are they alive someplace out in the wastes? Would they like back her personal effects and to know how and where she died? There are opportunities for a DM to link into an adventure. If there are family has mutation cropped up and what links might be gained from a search?
With mutations such as the ability to read the past of the dead, the sky suddenly becomes the limit and I know that there are number of old school post apocalyptic games with exactly that sort of a power. The PC can literally read the past of the dead opening up all kinds of routes for a dungeon master to explore and exploit.
Because many of the post apocalpytic Fish Wife products are system neutral they can easily be slipped in the back door of a campaign system like the retroclone Mutant Future or even the grittier comic book styling of the  Mutant Epoch rpg.
Corpses are mysteries in the wastelands with adventures just waiting to grab your PC's and pull them into their world. This is where Prime Pickings Of The Toxic Vulture I & II  will provide you with an instant toxic touch stone for your adventures out in the wastelands.
Is  Prime Pickings Of The Toxic Vulture I & II worth your time and energy as a source of corpses out in the wastelands? I think so, with the right approach these resources can provide a DM with all kinds of CSI style possibilities. 

100 Folks Of The Old West, Set 2 From Fishwife Games As Fodder For Your Old School Space Based Campaigns

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Westerns have always been some of the been the basis for science fiction, there have been a very familial  little pairing with these genres. Which brings us to 100 Folks of The Old West, another Fish Wife Games product which pretty much can be adapted and plugged into the backdrop of your favorite 'New Frontier' sci fi gaming system. 

You can use this as anything from random encounter chart to colony construction kit for your 'New Frontier'  space colony with little to no effort at all. This is a really easy product to adapt as you see fit but wait there's plenty more that can be done.
With a quick twist of genre this product can be used to populate your post apocalyptic American South West alternative Earth. There's plenty that this can be used for in the deep wastelands of the apocalypse. Since these products are system neutral and yes there's a line of them, are easily used anyplace where the 'Old West' is the setting.
The layout here is sold and easily plugged and played in any system. Since my choice of rpg systems is old school & retroclone than this makes things much easier to deal with during adventure construction, location assignment, loot planting, and system implantation.
On the whole this is one the best incarnations of generic Old West system piece products that has come out in the last couple of months, there are a few reasons why I say this. Its cheap, its quickly implemented, the product is system neutral, its no frills and concise, and its stand alone. 

These are all solid pluses for me to buy this product.
Grab this one and ride off into the sunset. 

100 Local Places Of Business From Fish Wife Games For Your Modern and Post Apocaltytic Campaigns

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Fish Wife Games cranks out a great list of  local businesses that can be used as adventure location set dressings or perhaps as random encounter locations. This list sets up a fantastic number of businesses with everything a DM needs to populated your ruins or modern city locations right from the ground up.There's plenty of businesses to explore and for a party of adventurers to stumble upon.
The list can be also used to randomly create a long list of quick encounter locations to populate the ruins of some random wasteland locations in the post apocalyptic landscape with little to no fuss. According to the Rpgnow blurb: 

This 100 list is perfect for quickly churning out local places of business to fill up a modern setting map with. Naturally, as such, this is also a nice way of

getting an idea of what sort of businesses existed prior to a zombie apocalypse, mutant alien invasion, or nuclear war. Simply roll the percentile dice and

consult the chart for a name for each business location and the business type.

Each entry is given their own separate set up, with a quick little note and that's it. Background, monsters,etc is all up to the DM and this creates a vast amount of room for the DM to add in the flavor that they want. ?By using this product a dungeon master can create entire neighborhoods of ruins and a landscape of random consistence that can be used for anything from Mutant Future, Mutant Epoch all the way to a modern crime game all with the toss of the dice.

Using 100 Local Businesses From Fish Wife Games
For Your Old School Campaigns

So because of the nature of the product there's plenty of room to sneak this into a night of gaming as OSR set dressing. The fact is that it can be used before, during, or at the time of a random ruin encounter during play. Think of the random charts that seem to populate post apocalpytic rpgs. You need a business as a back drop to that ruin you just rolled up. What is it? Why is there a ray gun there. What the heck is this place that has an L23 blaster rifle and a skeleton in body armor?
Right so a look on the handy 100 local businesses and its a pizza joint. The soldier was defending a woman and child. Now that we know that its a pizza joint could there be more loot in the kitchen? That's a perfect spot for an encounter with a one eyed flying fungus colony.

To flip this situation on its ear, there's plenty of opportunity to use this list for a modern crime or super hero adventure. Your hero crashes through a store, shop, or business only to find some crime happening in the erm. Wait roll, roll, the breezy hair salon where the 'Medusa' gang has been hiding importing in energy weapons under the guise of hair products.
How about a murder in the local roll,roll, bowling alley which was owned as a front for the mob and the owner's brother was a powerful Don whose eye on his brother's wife caused a rift. Not to mention the issues with local law enforcement. So it was curtains.
With 100 local businesses there's plenty of opportunity to advance, use, and draw heavily on the back stories of your imagination. All this for the price of less then a fast food menu set of fries and with far more utility. 

100 Customer Types for Spaceport Bars From Fishwife Games For Your Old School Space Based & Science Fantasy Campaigns

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We're taking a look at a great little product from Fish Wife Games Today. 100 Customer Types for Spaceport Bars is a nicely little list of space bar patrons, nasties, and scum suitible for any little space port dive, space station watering hole, or any Exo planet water tap where adventurers can get themselves into the deep end of a bar fight, interlude encounter or general point of mayhem.

According to the Rpgnow blurb: 

100 Customer Types for Spaceport Bars

What sort of characters lurk about in that crowded, noisy spaceport bar? Roll the percentile dice and find out!

Sample rolls from the list:

01- Agritech farmer

25- Drug addict

50- Media personality

75- Science officer

99- Xeno-slaver

Author: Dave Woodrum

100 Customer Types for Spaceport Bars sets out to do one thing and ends up being three products in one. This is another download from Fish Wife Games and again the quality is spot on here. Dave Woodrum provides a varied and interesting list of patrons for that wretch hive of scum and villainy in your local space port or Outer Rim space station. This list can also be used as a quick D100 encounter table as well to really spice games up. The other use for this little list is as a jump point for a group of NPC's right in the middle of an adventure. A few tosses of the dice and wham you've got everything you need to keep your PC's busy for a game dealing with some scum in the center of a bar.

This list is short, sweet, concise, and doesn't spend a ton of time dealing out details. Here the descriptions are brief and varied. The DM can add this list to his or her favorite space opera or science fictional game there's no rule hang ups to get in the way of really going to town with this list. Everything here is geared to get the PC's into interaction with minimum fuss. This is going to happen for under a dollar and this list can be dropped into a game mid stream of an adventure and no one is going to notice at all. The players can deal with the NPC's as they see fit and the same list will give a dozen results per toss to really allow the DM a rapid fire round robin of encounters. This allows an adventure to seem almost like an old school detective novel where the encounters give the skeleton of an urban interstellar Noir back drop adventure. As quick as you please this same formula can whip the PC's into the middle of a planetary tavern with steamy alien political intrigue is the order of the day. The key here is the DM['s imagination and his or her willingness to commit the time and imagination to the backgrounds of those listed here. A clever and well done product which a DM can get a hell of a lot of utility out of for the price of less then a hamburger. Highly  recommended.

Using 100 Customer Types For A Spaceport Bar
For Your Old School Campaigns

While there are a myriad of uses for this product the fact is that because this is a niche product, there's a few other things that can be done with this one.
For example I've used this list to populate a very quick drop into an interstellar bar by some fantasy adventurers traveling across dimensional lines. The way to work this one is to have it not be detected by the players until their adventurers are right in the middle of the encounter. Then its really a matter of placing them in the deep end of the pond. Because the descriptions are some what vague and a bit loose. There's plenty of wiggle room for design and execution of the NPC's. This same list could easily be used in a post apocalyptic wasteland with little to no modification and that's one of the beauties of lists such as this. The flexibility of the utility of the product and how you place it during play.
Use it somewhat sparingly because as soon as players catch on with this one. Give it a rest, the secret to using these sorts of random lists as D100 encounter tables is the variety of the encounters and spacing the bravo of the encounters. All in all I like this one as you might have guessed. This is a perfect coupling with a product like Spungo's Space Bar also from Fish Wife that I took a look at a couple of days ago.  Right over HERE

Space Stops: Spungo's Bar From Fishwife Games For Your Old School Space Opera Campaign

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Spungo's Bar is just the place to pick up a contract or let your adventurers unwind in their favorite space opera. Fish Wife games has done an excellent job of creating the sort of vile space bar, grill , and establishment that can deal out all kinds of adventure links, NPC contacts, and encounters to get your PC's into the seedy and dangerous underside of the galactic culture and society. This is a place that passes among the loathsome and jetsam of the universe. Dave Woodrum does an excellent job of creating the sort of establishment that you'll need a shower after visiting and that's a good thing. 

Spungo's is just the type of place that might appear in a cheesy late night sci fi cult movie from the 70's thru 90's on VHS or cable. That being said this is a place with plenty of room for DYI game mastering and tinkering in the background. At three dollars this is really an establishment that's a steal. Nicely written and easily thrown into any number of old school science fiction games. Going into Spungo's is going to have many PC's wanting to rethink their lives after one or two patron's use some old school mind tricks on them. That being said the product is well rounded and balanced for encounters. There's room here for expansion or for clear cutting DM customization. But there's enough meat on the bones of the product to flesh out NPC's, background of the location and more adventure location ideas as you see fit. Spungo's Bar is going to making appearances in my games coming up. With Guardians of the Galaxy making its Blu ray appearance last week I thought it was time once again to take a look at a place where Flash or Buck might be passed out in a corner. Just the type of place where the PC's might get themselves in deep trouble.
So I began to think again about one of my all time favorite VHS movies. Space Truckers an old 90's cult film that really isn't that well known outside of certain late night video rental places  and sci fi cult movie sites.
Spungo's is in the same vein as Space Truckers. Don't let that fool you, Spungo's is a smart and quite well done product. 

Clocking in at about fifteen pages,Spungo's has a very well developed sense of itself. The NPC's, patrons,etc. all have a bit of background and motives already in their descriptions. But everything is system agnostic so its going to easily fit into any of your old school gaming systems.
 On the whole the map that comes with it lines up quite nicely with the product's various areas and facilities. The map could be printed out and even used as a player hand out during play. Its not going to give away a thing about bar and its environs.
The bar should be place right off of the main star ship lines in a  campaign close enough to be accessible to PC's but far enough away to escape Imperial or Space Empire observation. A space lane where the patrons and  bar owners can carry out their nefarious schemes. A sector where wretch hives of scum and vile villainy can flourish.
All in all I think that Spungo's is a nice addition to the Fish Wife product line of supplements and its going to a real space dive location for the PC's in my various space based games can appear. 

100 Starport Scum From Fishwife Games For Your Old School Space Opera Campaigns

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Right so here we are with another random encounters table from the twisted mind of Dave Woodrum. This one is right up the alley of those willing to take their adventurers into that wretched hive of scum and villainy. This is a list perfectly suited to that purpose. This simple and easy little encounter chart has all of the space scum, pirates, whores, smugglers, and jerks for your PC's to tangle with.

According to the Rpgnow blurb:
This simple 100 list is perfect for tossing out quick encounters for that shady starport visit. Included are the names of such encounters as well as their role.
I'm partially responsible for this list of hellions because I gave the idea for this encounter list to Dave sometime last week. This is a really nasty twist of several different encounter kits in one. Right off the bat this list can be used for a quick series of throw downs in some nameless space bar, the second is a kit for a quick out fitting of a guild of criminal scum for a group of smugglers and cut throats, further this table could be used to populate a wreck or hyper sleep prison ship quickly.

Using The 100 Starport Scum Table For
Your Old School Campaigns


This chart can easily be converted to wasteland use and like a broken record, this one is being use in my post apocalyptic Mars game. The backgrounds are easily transposed over to a science fiction or fantasy backdrop. The ideas are sold because the backgrounds of the NPC's here are not sketched out with a quick decision on the DM's part. A thumb nail sketch of the NPC can be filled in with as much or as little detail as the players put into it. This will effect the direction, flare, and take of the encounter which might be a small brick into the background of your  world. Many of these encounters are made to be low to mid level throw away bits but they can set a tone and flavor for a campaign.
I do like the definitions that the author has tossed into each encounter. Like a mini thumb sketch it gives the DM a starting point should he chose to fill in more background details of these scalawags and nasty customers. 
With some work these encounters can be used with systems ranging from Traveler, Star Frontiers, and much more depending upon the preferences of the DM. Because they're system agnostic they can be used with a huge variety of space based science fantasy or science fiction rpg systems.
For my own part like the Space Prisons encounter tables its best to roll with the punches that the PCs will be confronted with.
I do love Dave's creativity and ideas that he injects into his products. Fish Wife Games continues to find its uses at my table top and will for years to come. Do pick this one up and have a blast with it. 

100 Space Prisoners: Cell Block 2 From Fishwife Games For Your Old Science Fantasy Campaigns

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I've been using Fish Wife Games supplements for years and 100 Space Prisoners: Cell Block 2 is another of those niche products that they specialize in. This is a nice little 2 page pdf that has all kinds of space scum to fill up your space port cells and detention blocks.
The Rpgnow Blurb:
100 Space Prisoners: Cell block 2:
More prisoners to fill up those star port holding cells, space station jail units, bounty hunter transports, and hulking prison ships. Included in this 100 list is the prisoner’s name, gender, and crime. Simply roll the percentile dice and you are on your way to populating the galaxy with an assortment of incarcerated scumbags!

This is really a small scale tool kit for the Dm to fill in a game's gaps of what actually goes in detention block zeta and alpha, etc. Often for the price of a 'dollar menu' item, you get a nice little list that can fill out with the toss of some dice a whole plethora of incredible NPC's with some really nasty backgrounds for a whole mini campaign of bounty hunting and take downs. These vile space villains could also fill in niches for alien crime lords and mid level space scum to deal PC's a nasty hand of cards. Some of these back alley criminals could act as bridge gaps for DM's to exploit their past crimes for all kinds of lead in adventures. There's lots of potential with these types of lists from Fish Wife.
 Because of the nature of this series its pretty easy to adjust and move this style of lists into a whole range of  interstellar kits for old school campaigns.