An Abominable Fancy

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.

I finally got around to ordering Patrick Wetmore 's gonzo* megadungeon, the Anomalous Subsurface Environment. It is just as fun and inspiring as everyone else said it was a few years ago. The modules are written for Labyrinth Lord, and as a B/X fan, that should have been good enough for me. But I'm an idiot with poor time-management skills, so instead I wrote a Microlite20 variant for it. I also wrote it as a DCC-style meat-grinder. This obviously owes a huge debt to both the DCC funnel and Austin Schaefer's AES Character Tumbler . By huge debt, I mean "look! I can hit copy and paste!" Backgrounds 1-3       Acolyte of an orbital god (1d20 to determine deity)/ Mace / Sacred symbol, Book of Orisons 4-6       Acolyte of Science / Broken Robot Arm (as club) / Religious tattoos 6-8       Acolyte of Starry Wisdom / Sacrificial dagger / Incense burner, foul-smelling incense 9           Apprentice Scribe / Penknife / Bottle of Ink, 10 sheets of paper

Tim Callahan was kind enough to send me a pdf of his new ‘zine, CrawlJammer. It’s Space & Sorcery for Dungeon Crawl Classics . I haven’t read DCC and this ‘zine may contain mechanical elegances that I’m missing out on, but I can recommend this just for the inspiring setting. Tim’s approach to space is admirably divorced from science and complexity. Of course you can breathe in space, although the air is a bit thinner. Of course you can walk the deck of your planet-roving Viking longship—it establishes its own gravity well. Battle between ships uses the same mechanics as battles between characters. There are a few optional rules if you feel like tracking more stuff in order to create a spacier flavor. It takes place in a solar system much like the one gamers of a certain age grew up with: nine planets, including Pluto. And, obviously, they’re all inhabited. Is there anything greater than tales set in the fully-inhabitable Solar System? I’ll never forgive Science for not r