Friday, March 1, 2024

The Savage AfterWorld -- From Gaming Blog To Publishing House

Although The Savage AfterWorld (TSAW, for short) has fallen silent for a while, it's never gone away. Folks still stop by to read old reviews of different RPGS/board games or to pick through the years of free gaming content I've posted. But even if you don't see new material here on this blog, TSAW lives on as my personal publishing house imprint!

OK, so "publishing house" might be overembellishing it a bit...

My first RPG product, Deviant Database, was a compliation of new creatures originally posted here on this blog, so it seemed only fitting that I used the name of this blog as the "publisher". The next few products that followed -- Deviant Database 2.0 and One Year In The Savage AfterWorld -- were also assembled blog posts, so they also carried the TSAW moniker. 

However, time passed and, although my blog posts were becoming less frequent, my game creation and writing was still going strong. My name has been seen on products by several prominent companies, but anything I produce on my own continues to be a product of The Savage AfterWorld. In fact, the following  23 (!!!) products all carry The Savage AfterWorld imprint:

For Mutant Future:

  • Deviant Database
  • Deviant Database 2.0
  • One Year In The Savage AfterWorld

For Cryptworld:

  • Creepy Comic Conversion Issues 1 through 7

For Mutant Crawl Classics:

  • Dead In The Water
  • The Desk In Room 8-10
  • Phage From Below
For Quill:
  • Quill Quest: The Warlord's Downfall
  • Quill Noir
  • Quill Noir: Forgotten Cae Files

For Dungeon Crawl Classics:
  • Country Meat-Grinder Classics: The Hellson Horror
  • Country Meat-Grinder Classics: Wasted
  • Country Meat-Grinder Classics: Harvest of the Wytch
For Weird Heroes of Public Access:
  • 13 This Week
For Fiasco

  • Wonderland Park
And my own RPG:

  • FIE, I SAY! The D6 Comedy-Fantasy-Parody RPG
  • The Smell of Menace for FIE, I SAY!

So fret not, mes amis! The Savage AfterWorld lives on!

Sunday, August 20, 2023

Solo Crawl Classics Part 0: "Prelude to the Great Disaster..."

Full disclosure: I love gaming by myself. Sure, I enjoy running RPGs for others and playing board games with my friends, but I don't need a group to play. I have a wide variety of solo board games, and I'm no stranger to countless solo RPG-ish games like Ironsworn, Four Against Darkness, and various solo oracles like The Gamemaster's Apprentice cards and Mythic GM Emulator. Now, I'm obviously a fan of Mutant Crawl Classics, but I'm typically too busy running or writing adventures to find time to actually experience the game as "just another hapless 0-level Seeker". So this new series will chronicle my attempt to run myself through a solo MCC adventure -- beginning with a small quartet of 0-level hunter/gatherers -- and see what grows from there. And you'll be tagging along for the adventure, both to watch how this works (if it does) and to see how it unfolds along with me...

For this game, I'm going to be using the following rules and tools:


And before I begin, here are the ground rules I set for myself:

  • My randomly generated 0-level foursome will consist of a pure strain human, a mutant, a manimal, and a plantient, just so I have a good mix of genotypes and abilities to work with. 
  • To keep things from becoming too random in this first outing (while I work out the process and gameplay), I shall be running the team through "Rivers of Iron", the 0-level funnel found in the newest core MCC rulebook. Yeah, I wrote it, so I'm familiar with the locations and scenes, which may appear like it gives me a woefully unfair advantage. But I plan to introduce randomly generated hazards, challenges, and foes throughout, replacing the preprogrammed elements with new ones. I may be aware of the map's layout and the Big Scenes, but Fate Itself will determine what lurks within the ruins of the ironworks!
  • In the posts that follow, the game play, dialogue, and color description will be in italics like this.
  • Conversely, the mechanics and behind-the-scenes decision-making will be in normal text like this.
  • I'm sure there might be some other nuances and details that will surface during play, but we'll talk those out as they occur.

So join me in the days to come as I venture into Terra A.D. during this series that I've titled "Solo Crawl Classics!"


Tuesday, October 11, 2022

Running A Con Game Part 2: Table Prep And Behind The Screen

This summer, I offered some advice on how to plan and write a scenario you'll be running at game conventions. Now that you have your new player-killer in hand and folks are starting to gather at the table, let's talk about some advice on how to run it.

1. Provide pregens, and have more of them than your players. At a convention game, you have 4 hours - tops - to run the entire scenario. If you think you'll have everyone rolling up new characters before getting started, think again. Even if everyone at the table is familiar with the system, it'll likely take them 30 minutes to roll stats, look up skills/magic spells, decide on equipment, etc. And if you have a few players who are first-timers, that will add even more downtime. Steer clear of anything that would take away adventuring time and have pregens ready for folks before they sit down. And as an addendum: the players will still like to have some degree of choice as to who/what they'll be playing, so have twice the number of pregens available. If you have 6 players, have 12 (or more) pregens available so everyone has a chance to pick and choose rather than getting locked into "whatever character's left".

2. Bring extra pencils and dice. But keep rulebooks minimal. Although most players who come to your table are super-prepared, there may be someone who signed up at the last minute and/or showed up with a friend who now wants to play in your cool-looking game. Make sure you have some extra pencils and dice for this late-comer so they're not trying to borrow off of the other players at the table. But conversely, try to keep rulebooks and other tomes away from your table during play. The GM should be the only one who needs to look anything up (and honestly, you shouldn't have to look anything up if you're duly prepared). There may be some table or bit of minutiae to clarify, but you should be prepared to make rulings on the fly rather than get bogged down trying to find Table 3.24 on page 232 just to look up appropriate Exit Wound Size. (And don't let any player bring out a rulebook to debate a ruling you just made. Shut that down ASAP.)

3. Keep track of time. You have 4 hours to run the game, and you don't want to run out of time before finishing, nor do you want to reach the end way ahead of schedule. So keep an eye on the clock while you play. You can use a watch or a timer on your phone. I prefer to use a kitchen timer behind my screen so that I know how much time I have left at a glance. I can use this to gauge my timing of events as we play to ensure we reach the endgame before time runs out. At the 2-hour mark, we should be halfway through the adventure. If not, I start altering future scenes to speed things up (lowering the number of monsters and/or goons or bypassing entire scenes if they don't contribute to the overall scenario). If we're running fast, do the opposite and add a few extra monsters/scenes to slow them down. You also want to try to finish a few minutes early so you can say your goodbyes, thank you players, and clean up the table for the next game. Nothing more frustrating than waiting for folks to clear out from a game that ran long and is now starting to eat into your time. So don't be that person and wrap up on time or earlier.

4. Protect your voice by staying hydrated and have some lozenges. You're gonna be talking a lot. And your voice is gonna be a bit hoarse after that first game. But you have another one to run later that day. And the next day. And the next day. And if you're in a crowded gaming hall, you might be shouting over the din. You'll want to protect your voice as best you can. My suggestion is to have a bottle of water behind the screen and sip from it every so often, even if you're not thirsty. Keep those pipes moist to counterbalance all of the air you're throwing over them. Secondly, I have a pack of sore throat lozenges at hand that I'm constantly munching on. This helps soothe your throat before it gets too sore. I've found that a lozenge every hour or so during gametime keeps you from losing your voice before the convention ends.

5. If you must take a break, have only one, and keep it 5 minutes max. Four hours is a long time at the table, especially if everyone is chugging water, energy drinks, etc. Although folks will often be engaged and will want to keep playing, it's usually a good idea to stop at least once at the halfway point to allow folks to run to the bathroom and/or stretch their legs a bit. However, you don't want to lose too much game time and you certainly don't want to play sheepherder and try to round them all up, so set a firm time limit of 5 minutes on any breaks. After 5 minutes, pick up where you left off regardless of who's back, and have the stragglers join the game in progress. (And do not, under any circumstances, let anyone race to the vendor's room to "pick something up". Nine times out of ten, they'll never return to the game.)

6. Have some swag or takeaway for the players. It's always a nice gesture to have something to give to the folks who decided to take a chance on your game. Some game companies, like Goodman Games, provide swag for those who run their games. Stickers, note pads, quickstart rules, pencils, dice, etc. remind folks of the fun they had and may prompt them to buy the game and run sessions of their own. I admittedly go a bit overboard with my swag and have had custom dice, supplements, and other giveaways printed up for folks. One year I gave away mini-multitools like the ones found within the scenario I ran. (And this year's convention swag is a very special "parting gift" from one of my NPCs!) You don't need to have anything this fancy; heck, a bowl of candy on the table as you play is a nice gesture for gamers to refuel as they head to their next game.

Stay tuned for "Part 3: Tips and Tricks for Surviving Your First Game Convention" in a future missive from The Savage AfterWorld!

Thursday, October 6, 2022

[GameHack] Kut-Up The Klown: A New Killer For Final Girl By Van Ryder Games

One of my favorite hobbies is playing boardgames. One of my favorite side-hobbies is tinkering with or adding new elements to those same games. I'll create new content or rules for them, or sometimes I'll tweak the game's components to make the playing experience more interesting. Today's project describes a new killer I created for Final Girl by Van Ryder Games.

A quick overview: Final Girl is a solo player game where you try to survive the onslaught of a crazed slasher from straight out of the movies. In fact, Final Girl is very modular with a variety of different final girls, slashers, and locations you can mix and match. In Season One, you have killers such as the masked cannibal, the puppet master, the poltergeist, nature's avenger, and the dream doctor. However, my favorite slasher genre is the killer clown (or "klown" if you will). So, using a basic template and limiting myself to 27 playing cards, I decided to create my own slasher. The following is a playtest photo montage of Kut-Up the Klown!

Meet "Kut-Up the Klown"! (Once called the Killer Kannibal Klown, until some folks pointed out the unfortunate "KKK" abbreviation. Cards have been updated since this photo was taken.) Whether he comes from outer space or the sewers, this creature's rictus grin and maniacal laughter freezes its victims in their tracks!

Where else but at the Carnival of Blood would be appropriate? And of course, Kut-Up pops out of the clown car to begin his rampage...

...running over to attack Laurie as she tries to get her bearings in all the chaos.

Some victims found themselves huddled in The Big Top. But then, EVERYONE ran there for cover...just in time for Kut-Up to bounce in and slaughter a few innocents. He then left to stalk Laurie...

...only to change his mind and pop BACK into the Big Top to kill more victims! Meanwhile, everyplace NOT in the Big Top, Laurie was saving everyone she could.

Kut-Up had taken a few hits from Laurie, but when his Dark Power was triggered, it was all undone due to his "magic trick" and he healed to full!

Laurie was one saved victim away from getting her bonus, so she sprinted across the midway, grabbing the last victim and getting them to the exit.

As long as she kept her strength up, she could use the sledgehammer versus the crazed clown, dealing an additional 4 points of damage! No more victims on the board, so time to go hunting...

Did I say no more victims? Well the next Terror card I drew was discarded if no victims on the board. Drew the next and it was discarded because there were no traps in the item discards. The NEXT card I drew was either take damage or lose victims! Since there were no victims, I took 3 damage! And it was the last Terror card, triggering the Finale!

Th-th-that's all folks! Kut-Up flew into a rage, but Laurie was safe on the other side of the midway. She was able to heal up before he came charging at her. (And no victims on the board kept the bloodlust track from spiraling out of control.)

They traded blows under the ferris wheel, but Laurie's retaliation kept sending any damage dealt back to Kut-Up. Then Laurie landed a furious strike with the sledge, doing 6 points! She lost a bit of health due to the use of the sledge, dropping it to the ground. But Kut-Up was defeated for good.

And there you have it. A custom deck of 27 cards brings a new killer to Final Girl! (You'll have to go find an evil clown mini of your own!)

Kut-Up the Klown can now be downloaded at Board Game Geek in the Final Girl Files section. Click here for the link!