Fantastic Odysseys coming to ZineQuest soon

I’ve previously taken part in Kickstarter’s ZineQuest doing zines for Crypts and Things (From the Shroud) and a general one for D101 Games (Grogzilla), so this time its OpenQuest’s turn.

This is an A4 Zine with colour cover and black and white illustrations, which has between 32 and 64 (depending on how well the Kickstarter does) pages of gameable content—adventures, setting information, new religion, GM and Publisher advice. I’ve posted a full contents list on the supporting Patreon for the Zine (which expands what is going on in the zine, as well as having previews).

Dark November: The Darkness


Skyraiders of The Floating Realms is our pulpy hi-action fantasy game of Sky Pirates flying between floating chunks of rock looking for loot and adventure. In-play it’s light-hearted evoking the feel and tone of old Holywood Pirate films such as The Crimson Pirate, and the more recent Pirates of the Caribbean. Not really a candidate for Dark November and its horrors, I initially thought.  That was until I started thinking about the enemy of all the light and jollity in the Floating Realms, the sinister force that animates the dead, whispers in villains minds driving them to evil – The Darkness.

What Can You Tell Me About The Darkness?

There follows a transcript of questions and answer session given by Professor Verda Goodhope, a renowned Dark-Hunter to a gathering of apprentices in the basement of the Lieg Institute in Black Dog Isle.

What is the Darkness?

In short, it is the enemy of every living thing in the Floating Realms.

It has always been the hidden evil in people’s hearts. The dark desires that they keep far away from others, away from their loved ones. Perhaps those in power, or think mistakenly they have power, who think they can act out desires without recrimination, will act to them.

It can influence people’s actions and manifest physically as demons.

How did the Darkness cause the Shattering?

In the Ancient Times before the Shattering, the hidden dark desires became too much in the teaming cities of that time. There was no release, and people lived their lives in denial without confronting their inner demons. I’ve found evidence in the old ruins that they were encouraged by the religions and philosophies of the day, to repress such desires for the good of civilisation.

A group of magicians who we call Sorcerers emerged in the Ancient Civilisation. They initially hid in plain sight as healers who specialised and the drawing out people’s suppressed desires, freeing them of their pain. All the while, they took the Darkness that they captured to bind to themselves as magical servants.

Somewhere along the line, due to the Sorcerers meddling, The Darkness itself became an entity, self-aware and malignant.

It escaped the inner world and shattered the psychical world into a multitude of pieces, which exist today as the Floating Realms. Civilisations fell into the abyss, and Darkness demons rampaged. The sun of Ancient Times was extinguished, and the world lay in Darkness.

How was the Darkness banished?

We’re not entirely sure. The world was in ruins, the survivors starved of hope when suddenly, a New Sun arose in the skies. A horde of avenging angels flew out of this New Sun and purged the Darkness Demons from the Floating Realms.

Where is the Darkness now?

The onslaught of the Angels of the New Dawn greatly diminished the Darkness from the world but did not eliminate it. It still exists in hidden places in the world. In the black hearts of villains. As Darkness Demons, who stalk the Floating Realms looking for victims. It still corrupts people and turns their actions to evil.

Sky Raiders of the Floating Realms is currently in development for release in 2021. Zero Editoin with a playable set of rules and the barebones of the setting is available from the D101 Games web store.

The Voyage of the Flying Circus

The first of two posts today to promote/celebrate the D101’s ZineQuest 2 entry the double zine Grogzilla/Skyraiders of the Floating Realms. This is the short bit of game fiction that starts off Skyraiders with a bang, showcasing the fantastic adventure action of the game and a slight obsession with a certain 70s British comedy show 🙂

Somewhere up in the sky under the New Sun

Bravely the crew of the Flying Circus, brought the skyship around in the sky to avoid the flight of small blue-skinned winged humanoids, known as Zarks, that were bearing down on them.

“They are after the Spam for sure, that Dwarfen tined meat is too delicious for them to resist!” shouted Capt. T’errick Jhoanes in an effort to cheer his terrified crew. He knew that the Zarks being notorious pyromaniacs would fire bursts of flame from their horns at the wooden ship as soon as they were in range, for these s were

Sure enough, the lead Zark fired off a burst of flame and swiftly set the mainsail alight. More explosions of flame hit the bow of the ship where the rest of the navigation gear was situated. “Bugger! Going down, brace yourselves for impact” shouted Capt Jhoanes to his crew, who knew the drill and grabbed on to the nearest thing nailed down to the ship’s deck. With its bow engulfed in flame, The Flying Circus lost its battle with gravity and started to plunge towards a nearby sky island, covered in trees, and no more than ten miles across.

The ship crash-landed on the centre on the wooded sky island. It ploughed through the tree canopy until it came to rest in a glade which seemed to be the start of an ancient paved road. As the crew sounded off, each member stating their condition, either bruised or minor sprains, the Capt jumped off the ship. On a quick look needed a fast repair of the burnt section of the wooden hull. “Right! It looks like everyone’s all right, carpenters start assessing the damage. Rest of you start forming wood gathering parties. No sign of the Zarks, which is good. Hang about what’s that?” He trailed off, his gaze drawn up the paved road into the distance where he saw a magnificent and intact step pyramid a relic from the ancient times before the land broke and floated up into the sky. “Crikey it’s a Vault, perhaps this trip will have a big pay-out after all!” he said rubbing his hands in glee, for such places if undiscovered held the riches from before the land was broken and floated into the sky.

Lost in happy thoughts, he felt a tap on his shoulder. It was his First mate drawing his attention.  “Captain!” the First mate said, pointing in the opposite direction to the pyramid, to the other side of the Glade. There in full black plate, with a helm that completely masked the identity of the wearer, was a warrior armed with sword and shield.  Except Captain Jhoanes knew the identity of the sinister set of black armour.

“You again!” he exclaimed at his old nemesis.

“Yes, I told you it was but a flesh wound” came the echoing voice of the Black Knight.

Next up: An example Skyraiders character. 

Skyraiders of the Floating Realms in a Nutshell

Currently funded as part of D101’s ZineQuest2 Two for One Zine Kickstarter along with Grogzilla issue 1. It is a zine sized RPG, which is the first pass of about 40-50 A5 pages tidied up, so it is playable. It’s a Zero Edition, with the full first edition coming this summer as a fully kickstarted game.

It comes in two blended-bits :

  • A colourful and action-packed setting, The Floating Realms.
  • A concise d100 system.

The Floating Realms

I wanted a setting that is immediate, easy to explain and sucks the players in. I know the idea of adventurers travelling from one sky island to the next in a post-apocalyptic setting, in search of adventure and loot gets me going. It has done since I came across Skyrealms of Jorune. There’s lots of weird fun fantasy game juice packed into even the Zero Edition. Peter Frain has pretty much nailed the spirit of the game in his front cover of two adventurers at the prow of a Sky Ship, with the New Sun and the Dead Moon in the background.

The D101-System

At the beginning of the year, I sat down and over two days wrote a 20-page concise D100 system. It’s written from the ground up, not from a SRD, because I wanted to get my idea of what I wanted from a D100 across. If you are familiar with OpenQuest it’s a continuation of many of the ideas I introduced in that game.

Characteristics are still the familiar building blocks, except for Size which I’ve dropped,  randomly rolled. I’ve dropped Size from the usual D100 list of characteristics because I never use in my games. Characteristics as well as being the basis of Hit Points (now Constitution) and being used to work out Bonus Damage, characteristics determine the starting values of skills, usually two relevant characteristics for each skill.

Characters have a previous career, which sets them up for play with a set of skills and three magic spells since everyone on the Floating Realms knows a bit of magic, and a default set of starting equipment. They are then individualised with by allocation of small number points to skills they haven’t already advanced with their career, and players get to pick an additional spell. They advance in free form manner, earning Improvement points that the player can spend on the skills and magic they want, as well as gaining contacts, skills and magic through completing missions for their organisations.

There’s one Skill test system. The skills list is short and concise, even compared to OpenQuest, and the system of simple difficulty modifiers is even more aggressively applied. In any given situation only one difficulty modifier applies from a set range (-40%, -20% , +20%, +40%).  And modifiers from magic trumps mundane situational ones.

Opposed skill tests are now so that only player rolls their skill, which is modified up or down if their opponent is more or less skilled than them. I realised I’ve been doing this instinctively for years since it gives similar results to both sides rolling and takes the pressure off me as Referee.

It has one magic system, one list of spells, and no magic points. Instead, you roll against Magic skill to see if the spell is successful and if you fumble the character can not use it again this gaming session. There’s a shortlist of straightforward and powerful spells in this version of the game.

Combat is straightforward, with characters acting in the order of the skill they are using, from highest to lowest, so characters who are more skilled get act first. There’s still attack rolls, followed by defensive reactions to prevent. Armour has a dice armour value, and weapons do damage ranging from 1d4 to 1d12. There are no hit locations.

I’ve moved the system away from resource management and ditched a lot of fiddly numbers. There are no equipment lists and counting of coins and the magic pointless magic system is another example of this.  If it’s necessary to know the outcome, a simple skill test is applied to resolve the situation. So, for equipment acquisition the Referee either says yes to reasonable requests and moves on or makes the player perform a successful Trade skill test, modified for availability in the character’s current location, to gain the item they are after.

Overall this is a heavily modified version of OpenQuest, to the point that it’s become its own thing. Its been written from the ground up, and I won’t be releasing it under the OGL. If I had to give the system a name, I’d call it the D101-System 😊

 

Skyraiders of the Floating Realms on ZineQuest 2 now!

Ok, this one has moved fast, and already funded, the next stretch goal for this year’s ZineQuest2 on Kickstarter is a little zine sized D100 Fantasy Adventure RPG I’ve been working on called Skyraiders of the Floating Realms.

It’s a maximum gaming fun concise D100 with a punchy immediate fantasy setting, centred on adventurers travelling and exploring the Floating Realms of the title using Sky Ships and other methods.

I explain a bit more in this update.

As I said its already funded, and I’m now funding two quick adventures as final stretch goals.

Here’s the front cover by Peter Frain, which is in grayscale because that’s the rules of ZQ2 (all art should be like an old 80s zine in B&W or grayscale), but if you want it in colour there’s a high tier pledge level which allows you to do that.