Review & Commentary On The Mutant Epoch Expansion Rules For The Mutant Epoch Role Playing Game By William McAusland (Author), Danny Seedhouse (Author), Dr. James Butler (Author), Colin Chapman (Author), Brandon Goeringer (Author), & Timothy Berriault (Author)

 "This is the essential companion book to the Hub Rules, and is a must-have, resource rich sourcebook for the Mutant Epoch RPG. Illustrated and written by William McAusland, along with over a dozen imaginative contributing authors, this is our most ambitious project ever!"

"For the Player this book offers 12 new player character types, along with an incredible selection of 35 new bestial humans. Also included are 100 new prime mutations, 42 minor, 36 flaws, and 8 NPC only deviations. Also, the long awaited plantoid ‘veggie-sapien’ character type appears in this book with 71 prime plantoid mutations and 20 flaws all their own. There are two new character outfitting systems, rules for cybernetic purchasing and sales,healing times for broken bones, the effects of radiation on robots and androids, extensive tables, character sheets, and much more"

Alright it's finally hit the stands, The Mutant Epoch Expansion Rules for the Mutant Epoch rpg is out in the wild! This is an expansive addition to the Post Apocalpytic rpg by William McAusland & co clocking in at five hundred thirty pages of both player & DM goodness. This book is extensive as it completely expands upon the foundation of what's been laid out in the Mutant Epoch rpg itself. 
From the DM's side of the screen for the rpg you get a plethora of new material from new robots, artifacts, relics, plus even more rules and guidelines;"Optional rules offer brutal, attack mode based critical strike outcomes, a system for pushing beyond the daily usage limits of mutations, new combat options, and a robust section on dimensional portals, relic gear, and entities. "

What " The Mutant Epoch Expansion Rules " does for the Mutant Epoch is pushes the limits on the campaign setting, rpg system, and more. Proving both players & DM's a stable foundation for Post Apocalytic rpging. There's expansive rules for everything from cybernetics for PC's to brand new plantoid types as PC classes. There's dimensional portal rules& far more all under the roof of the Mutant Epoch. This contributes to the DM having ample opportunities of where & when they want to set thier game adventures. And this is an especially good book for Post Apocalpytic adventure design with rules & a ton of random charts for that purpose. There's a brand new outfitting system for PC's and more PC options then you can shake a stick at. How does the Mutant Epoch Expansion Rules play with the original Mutant Epoch rpg!? 

Quite nicely because of the fact that the designer & authors spent a good deal of time pouring thier souls into it. And it shows. 
The Mutant Epoch Expansion rules slide into the existing game in spades giving a deeper PC experience for the Mutant Epoch rpg. 
Deeper PC backgrounds, tribal rules, and more all cover the extensive rules and guidelines provided within the book. 
The Mutant Epoch Expansion Rules are very extensive covering many new aspects of the game and building on what's come before in the Mutant Epoch rpg rule book. Plus as an added bonus this book works very well with the other Mutant Epoch rpg books. 
This gives a feeling of overall cohesion often times missing from other rpg books. Is the Mutant Epoch Expansion Rules worth the cost of download?! In a word, yes I believe they are because they add several new dimensions to the Post Apocalytic universe of the Mutant Epoch rpg. From new PC design, generation, background, and much more. To a huge over all download of the relics, artifacts, robots, androids, and more to the game. There's something for everyone within the Mutant Epoch Expansion Rules! 

Review & Commentary On Forever War By Paul Elliot For The Hostile Rpg

 Leviticus. Eden. Paradise. Earth’s first interstellar colony, where many nations established hopeful new settlements. It was no paradise… the planet proved to be hostile and unforgiving: plant life interfering with electronics, intelligent carnivorous vines, jungle rot and leechlike ’jellies’.

But the incredible mineral wealth made Leviticus an irresistible lure. The colonized continent was an ancient asteroid impact crater, packed with valuable ores. The corporations rushed to the planet and began turning paradise into hell. Chaos erupted. Colonials fought their governments as well as the corporations. And the wars continue today.
​

Ignored by the media back on Earth, Levitcus is a now a mercenary’s paradise. Opportunities abound for security work, corporate contracts, training rebels or defending the colonial cities. And there are chancers everywhere: diplomats, mercenary brokers, would-be presidents, warlords, smugglers and thousands of mercenaries seeking work. And there is plenty of war to go around ...

"Is it really just a coincidence that this perfect world, this unspoiled paradise is right there, 33 light years from home? Or is it part of a much larger plan? This isn't just a dream for me. It's a calling. - Megan Tanner, one of the first colonists on Leviticus" 

Forever War By Paul Elliot For The Hostile Rpg just dropped. Forever War is a whole craft campaign setting from the ground up with an over arching mercenary slant to it. Levitcus is a world of war and exploitation fought over for it's vast mineral wealth and a continant sized war torn problem just waiting for a group of PC's mercenary PC's. Forvever War is particularly well written with lots of hotspots, points of violence, and opportunities for PC's to be killed. This is a perfect campaign for both beginning or experienced PC's. This is not a campaign to be trifled with. As a world Leviticus is a world on the edge and totally ingnored by the Hostile rpg. This is a world where the horrors of war are visited upon the populations of the colonies. The situation is spiralling out of control because these are failed colonies who are hanging on the edge of the war. 

The situation on Leviticus is a microcosm of what can go completely off the rails within the Hostile universe. Corporate powers at each other's throats through warfare with colonists caught in the middle. This is a situation where the rope of diplomacy has been cut long ago. Everything about Leviticus is dangerous but there is plenty of opportunity for those bold enough to take it.  This is a solid campaign setting and weird interstellar warfare location just waiting for PC's to stumble into the 'low end' of the warfare here.  All artwork within Forever War is done by human artists. 

The world of Leviticus is a place where the plants & animals want to eat and destroy the PC's without mercy from the super leech 'Jellies' to the vines that thread thier way through electronics. Leviticus is a world of contrasts from it's deserts to it's jungle infested plains. This is world that rebels against it's occupants and colonists. This is not an easy place to wage war.

You will be waging war against the colonists, the corporate forces, thier handlers, and encountering every slimeball who comes to this world. All of this in a hundred and thirteen pages of nasty warfare infested Hell. 

OSR Commentary On MA6 The Silver Age Sourcebook by Keith A. Kilburn For The TSR Marvel Super Heroes Rpg

 When it comes to play around with Alternative Histories & worlds of 'What If'.  MA6 The Silver Age Sourcebook by Keith A. Kilburn is an excellent resource book to use as a basis for such an adventure or campaign. This source book marks campaign setting period as the end of World War II up through the exploitive Seventies. The appearance of the Fantastic Four 1961 marks the beginning of the modern 

 We get a boat load of various pre Avenger's Intiative teams & looks into Marvel Plastic era teams like the 'Monster Hunters'. And then we get the mover & shakers of the Marvel comics universe with characters like the original Colonal Nick Fury, The Agents of Atlas, The 70's Avengers, The First Line, & even pre Fantastic Four solo heroes. All of this adds to the fact that this all takes place long before the appearance of the Fantastic Four. 

MA6 The Silver Age Sourcebook by Keith A. Kilburn creates a solid foundation of Marvel Super Heroes rpg & Marvel Super Heroes Advanced rpg campaign setting for the player's PC's to make a mark. 'What if'' it never went away?!  'The Silver Age' is the age of the Blue Marvel and the power houses of the Marvel universe haven't even appeared, yet.

There are millions of 'What if' Marvel universes and the age of the Blue Marvel may have occurred & never went away?! What would this mean for PC's?! A whole new universe to adventure in where things are slightly tilted! 

Back Track on Trade Part I - Trey Causey's Strange Stars - Session Report

 We're picking right up from two week's ago session here on the blog.  After tracking back on the Old Earth blasters & our map. We began investigating several leads on the whereabouts to the system the blaster had come from. Had any more of these been sold on Circus?! 

We learned about the alien trader who'd traded the blasters on Circus. We tracked him to the space station orbiting the hyperspace gate. 

He or it had gotten the blasters off a party of adventurers for cheap. They'd needed fuel for thier space rig badly and were willing to deal in cash or trade goods.
They were in a bad way after catching a senient disease or micro lifeform. 
That meant that they were probably in the  decontamination wing of Circus. We didn't want to go all of the way back to the giant trade venue. 
So we made our own trading with a flock of Wanderers.  Who had crossed paths with the adventurering party after leaving Circus. They provided us with thier route and we provided them with VR 'entertainment' of thier species. 

And then we'd found what we were looking for a United Planet cruiser's wreckage. We didn't want to go in because of the micro life form that was living on the interior of the wreckage. 

We had a few tricks up our sleeves as the UP cruiser was equipped with a reactor that was good for a few hundred years. Thier computer systems were still active. And with our hackers we were able to down load thier data banks. We wanted the cruiser's departure point. After dropping a beacon warning of the micro life form. We departed the wreckage. There was no way we were going near that thing. We dived deeper into a local station to look at the data. 

We did a bit of horse trading at the station unloading some farm animals and animal stock to the local colonists. We made a small profit on that trade but more importantly we had time to translate the data aquired from the wreckage. We ended the session here. 

OSR Commentary - Gunslinger Roleplaying Game by Thomas Denmark

 One of the hearts & souls of the Gunslinger Roleplaying Game by Thomas Denmark is the fact that the Engineer class is a full on beast. As long as they have access to pieces of spacecraft & Science Fantasy relics. Why because Gunslinger could easily be paired with the Warriors of the Red Planet rpg. This blog entry picks up from here on the blog. 

If the Engineer has access to weird tech artifacts then they can create some killer (literally dangerous) technological gadgets. This does not take away from the fact that Gunslinger is a fantastic game! 

According to Timothy Peter on Drivethru rpg;"The game is an outstanding addition to western themed old school games, with ER Burroughs inspired optional weird west lore, critters, and a super-science cross over into sci-fi Mars. As the Mars books of Burroughs began with the hero John Carter in a Western setting, this game situates itself very well to be used with Night Owl Workshops previous sword and planet game, "Warriors of the Red Planet." At the same time, one could easily just run this as an excellent pulpy OSR game for the Wild West in Texas. One thing this game does which is outstanding is include a few Apache archetypes. It is territory that modern games tend to shy away from, but this game approaches it from careful research and does so respectfully without any feeling of stereotyping. This is a lot to say for a pulpy game! Along with many character archetypes (10 in all), this 132 page book includes such detail as name tables, character background tables, extensive encounter and setting tables, and a menagerie of encounters including a host of wild animals and strange monsters. There are great descriptions of devices, contraptions and elixirs that the Engineer can create. And just when you think the book has finished - it continues with several interesting appendices including famous historical people of the wild west fully stated, historical dates, and a several useable maps such as a tavern or cave. The overall game looks very sharp and polished with a two column letter sized page (easily compatible for A4 printing). The art has very appropriate feeling pen and ink drawings of character archetypes and several encounters which are visually stunning. Oh, and did I forget to mention the game is so detailed about riding animals that the horse your cowboy rides even gets its own character sheet and can be trained to do certain things? This book is easily the best cowboy rpg I've seen in a long time, and in short manages to pack an incredible number of things in in a short page length. It is definitely one of these 'one book and happy' rpgs, and one that should not be missed in your collection!" 

Engineers are the wizards & weird scientists of the Gunslinger rpg. Engineers  are literally responsible for any of the weird tech within Gunslinger. And the 'dungeons' and 'ruins' of Gunslinger are ripe with lots of these artifacts. 

Twisting ThingsTowards the Darker Rpg - OSR Commentary On The Darker Rpg By The Red Room Crew

 Let's pick it up from here with the PC's party of military & civilian investigators done. The PC's are an investigative unit of the US government to determine if the world is being invaded by Dark Forces! Hint it is! 

This of course picks up the charcters involved up too thier eyeballs with the Tempus Fugit cult and it's machinations involving the kidnapping of children. These children are also being offered to a dark and twisted travelling troupe.  Here the underworld's influence is much more pronounced. And we have the Hellish underworld certainly being in more evidence. One thing I've had to do is to give the player's PC's smaller minions to bang on and destoy. Something that was evident from Shadow & son's review of Darker. 

Darker has a far faster PC generation set of rules then some of the other OSR games I've seen. This gives a far smoother version of play. I'm certainly incorporating earlier Wretchedverse rpg adventures into our current campaign. The Beyond & the Underworld don't really controdict each other per say. 

Something Wretched This Way Comes  seems to fit the vibe of Darker very well with it's mature themes plugging right into Darker. 

Beyond the cursed travelling troupe bring a front for Dark Powers there's certainly enough here to drive home of the connection betweeen New York City & Wrethed New Flesh's Avilidad. The themes of high weirdness and deabolical Underworld are not too far removed. I think that the Darker rpg reads as if the X files & the 90's show Millinum had a love child. 

OSR Commentary On MSL-1 X Terminate by Dale 'Slade' Henson For The Marvel Super Heroes Advanced Rpg

 ""Dominus. Mister Sinister. Apocalypse. In the old days, these villains operated under the name "Factor Three." But those old days are gone, right?" 

Wrong! They're back, and they're every bit as formidable as before. Chaos is their middle name. This time, they're using the technology of the day against you: X-Factor. Can you defeat these three emissaries of evil, or will they X-Terminate you in the process?" 

The year is '91 and we'd just finished the Days of Future Past series of modules. Back in our Earth Dominus, Mister Sinister, &  Apocalypse reared thier heads! This wasn't a group of take lightly! The X teams had split up and we found ourselves in the middle of the events of X Terminate by Dale 'Slade' Henson.  We knew we were dealing with the fictious X Factor team after doing some investigation. My uncle tied in the plot hooks from Days of Future Past's series of modules to the awakening of Apocalpyse. 
Things got very vicious as we dealt with X Factor almost fatally. We mistook them for servants of Mr.Sinister. Remember back then not a lot was known in universe about Sinister. There was enough of a mix up that we almost killed Beast! There was some very nasty confusion of our two groups. We accidently exposed X Factor on national television or so we thought. This was actually the hand of Sinister. And what we knew about Sinister went back to the Mutant Masacre event with the Moorlocks. 

So we didn't take any chances, after dealing with Sentinels. And other dire threats our party didn't pull any punches. 

Our party did a forray into the Moorlock tunnels beneath New York City to find out the extent of Mr.Sinister's crew.  We looked deeper into X Factor and began to see the hand of Apocalpyse. X Terminate became far more then most of the module and led into us becoming involved with our Earth's Mutant Rail Road.  Our party filled in the X Men's role in several areas. But our party was far more under the radar and operated from the shadows along the lines of the Wild Pack and Silver Sable. We had zero time for some of the grand standing of the X teams. And clashed with them on a regular basis when they came back. 
We also clashed with Apocalpyse who played for keeps & had little time for the niceties of the super heroic grand standing. We killed the Maruaders with impunity anytime we ran across them. 
X Terminate became a stepping stone X module for our own player's PC's and campaign ideas that my uncle had. 

OSR Review & Commentary On Subsector Sourcebook: Ashima By John Watts For The Earth Sector rpg

 "Is this where you meet your fate?

Ashima Subsector is named for a Semitic goddess of fate and, like all the subsectors in Earth Sector, the names were given long before anyone went into these areas much less settled them. However, here, the name has been rather appropriate. 

Originally, most thought that the Argentinians would end up dominating this subsector, but that was not to be.  Others thought the United States might move aggressively into the
subsector, but that never happened.  Some thought Nigeria would do the same as would Australia but, in the end, nine of the systems of Ashima Subsector would remain independent.  Argentina, the United States, Australia, and Nigeria each hold only one system while Israel, a late arrival to interstellar colonization, holds four."

"Ashima Subsector is a mix of colonies held by nation-states and independent worlds.  Often used as a gateway into the Sacrament Sector frontier, many still come to the subsector for opportunity."

"Filled with system maps, world maps, and physical data for each world, this book is a treasure trove of information for Referees who want to take their Earth Sector adventures further afield or for those who simply want a variety of worlds for their uses. Government, legal, cultural, and population details will assist the Referee in painting a picture of each world for their players.""

 Subsector Sourcebook: Ashima By John Watts For The Earth Sector rpg is the latest in the Earth sector rpg line of books. Everyone seems to forget just how cut throat the Earth sector is.  Subsector Sourcebook: Ashima does an excellent job of reminding the player's PC's just how cut throat and dire the colonial process is. Earth sector unlike other colonial entities is a combination of nation states supported by mega corporations for thier colonies. This creates deadly competition and sometimes outright warfare among these entities. 

 Subsector Sourcebook: Ashima has some great power plays between Isreal,  Argentina, the United States, Australia, and Nigeria colonies. These colonial worlds are varied and very well done. The writing of John Watts is tight and well done. We get a snap shot of each and every world along with it's meshing of the interstellar politics. These politics overlap and influence the Earth sector as well because it takes a lot of cash to support these colonies. 

This presents plenty of opportunities for spacers and adventurers to take full advantage of these colonies for shipping of passengers, gear, food, equipment, and more. There's plenty of trouble to be had as well because these worlds are highly dangerous and full of trouble. 
Is  Subsector Sourcebook: Ashima By John Watts worth getting?! In a word,' Oh yes!' especially if your into the Earth sector like myself. This Subsector sourcebook brings a lot to the table with plenty of new colonial worlds, factions, and opportunties for adventures. At one hundred and twenty three pages it doesn't overstate it's contents and brings fresh Earth sector goodness to the table top of a 2d6