An Abominable Fancy

Grant Howitt writes some really great games. I've been especially enchanted by Goblin Quest and Doctor Magnethands .  Goblin Quest, in particular, struck me as a game that deserved some lavishly-illustrated professional production. I'd toyed around in my head about contacting Howitt and offering my services to do exactly that, but then the incredible Calamity Jon Morris mentioned that he was interested in turning his amazing Goblin books into a game of some sort. As much as I wanted to illustrate Goblin Quest myself, I wanted a copy illustrated by Jon even more. A short twitter conversation later, the two made a love connection and now they have a bouncing baby Kickstarter ! The kickstarter is funded, the game is written and extensively playtested, Jon is literally the best qualified human being on the planet to illustrate it, and now the stretch goals are pinging away. I begged Grant to fit me in somewhere. I'll be illustrating one of the stretch goal variants, wh

Here is the ruleset I've cobbled together to run the Anomalous Subsurface Environment, Patrick Wetmore 's gonzo megadungeon: Anomalous Subsurface Microlite The chassis is Microlite20,  although I slowed down skill progressions a lot . There's a DCC -style meat-grinder attached, and the weapons list and combat stances are highly influenced/ripped off from Beyond the Wall. Some favorite house-rules from here and there (but mostly from Goblin Punch ) got chunked in, too. The setting and the Scientist and Robot classes are, of course, from the ASE modules . A powerful impetus behind this is to play a game where I can use The Dungeon Dozen as a straight resource. This is intended as the Players' document, and doesn't contain things like advancement. And it only goes up to about level 6, because I'm intending this for PbP and holy geez, we'll all be long dead before anyone gets to level 6 via PbP.

Mi-Go, Frog, Shoggoth, Robot. Drawings ©Joel Priddy 2014 Frogs (Innsmouths, Seb Sadu): Big, burly saber-toothed amphibians. +2 STR. Move in water as normal movement. Can learn human languages but cannot speak them, just as humans can learn but not speak Elder Tongue. Humans (Tasty Morsels): +1 to any 2 attributes. Mi-Go (Caulies, Yuggothi): Pale, knobbly fungus creatures with great plumes of sense organs sprouting from their eyeless heads. +2 MND. Multi-spectrum sense organs: +1 Perception, not reliant on light. Robots: Robots begin as spindly motorized armatures with positronic brain-cases perched on top. Pincer-grip attack (1d4 dmg). As robots gain levels, they scavenge parts to upgrade themselves according to the Robot Enhancement Schedule. Shoggoths (Gibbers, Protties, Droolers): Amorphous blobs of eyes and teeth. Hold and manipulate objects with their mouths. +2 DEX, extra biting attacks (1 + Level, 1d2 dmg each). Immune to undead effects, except mum