itch.io

Thanks for the comment! Sorry I've been super quiet around here lately; I've been extremely booked with personal commitments and job interviews. Updates to QZ should email everyone who purchased it on Itch, and you can also subscribe to my (admittedly also neglected) WordPress blog at pretendo.games, where I will post design diaries and updates when there's news.

Thanks for the heads up. I can remove the link for now; if you do create a new translation you’d like to have linked, please let me know!

Thanks — holdover from an earlier version!

Parenthood was in fact a driving force behind this game's form factor! As for short adventures, some of my personal favorites have included…

• The Haunting of Ypsilon 14 (for Orbital Decay/Cosmic Highway, originally for Mothership)
• Dead Planet, especially the one-page-dungeon "The Screaming on the Alexis" (also for Orbital Decay/Cosmic Highway, also originally Mothership)
• Ultraviolet Grasslands (for Exiles; see also Luka's "Deep in the Purple Worm," from One Page Dungeon Contest 2012)
• Aeon Wave (for Inner System Blues/Resistors, originally for Fate Core)

That’s great to hear, thanks!

Still actively playtesting, so any answer I give you now may or may not be true in a week— but yes, there’s still a trog in the package deals!

And to be honest, I’m also fiddling with ability score spreads in playtesting. We started our trog with an extra +1 Strength and extra +1 Toughness, and -1 to 2 other abilities. 

Thanks for sharing! (And yeah, Hulkification has proven so annoying to work with for me that it is no longer in the latest as-yet-unreleased revision.)

Thanks for your comments! I haven't tried converting from Modiphius yet, but I will have to give that a shot. When I've run it so far, I've just tried to use my own randomly generated stuff, or quickly convert stuff on the fly from post-apocalyptic OSR/D&Dish D20 games like The Wasted Hack and NUKED!

Well hey, NUKED! is great, but it isn't stopping me! And actually, I'm trying to design this one in a way that makes it easy to use bits of it with other post-apocalyptic games with similar rules, so if you end up making one too, please share a link!

Thanks for the tip!

Thanks! I am wary about crowdfunding, but it would certainly help fund production costs. I should think on it!

Thank you, and no worries: This is a safe space for puns.

Thank you for the well wishes! I am doing much better health-wise, thank you. Working on QZ and Wastoid a little bit at a time have slowly helped me get back into shape (though I still have some ways to go on both). 

On QZ, I've been replacing the copyrighted images with CC-licensed images (same artist), using full-bleed images at the start of each section, updating the layout to A5 sized pages, expanding the artifact list, updating the alterations list, and making some other edits based on playtesting and feedback. I'll be back to update with more info!

With apologies, I won’t be able to do that at present due to other commitments, but the files posted here include a Word doc with freely available fonts in case you want to rearrange the pages for home printing. 

Oh gosh! I will try to post an excerpt ASAP—hoping to share the sample adventure after I playtest it very soon. Been really busy trying to find a new day job, but still actively working on this too!

They're both traditional D&Dish games, but the specific dice rules are pretty different. (I did adapt this specific dungeon to Grave rules for Dungeon23, though—just haven't had a chance to publish that yet!)

Ummm, let me get back to you on that! I think I saved a backup of this that I could export from, but I need to find it, and I’ll be tied up with some family obligations for a couple days. There has been a lot more design work since this last version, and the working file is not ready to export from just yet. Feel free to pester me again about this shortly!

Thanks so much!

By some miracle, I found that Discord conversation and confirmed we did work something out! (Basically: You're good to go, send a link when ready.) But it looks like it was not ready, and the most recent link I have for it is not usable. If TealShadows can read this and has something usable, though, feel free to jump in and correct me!

Thanks so much! Still actively working on this!

Thanks for the heads up — just added it!

Thanks! Still coming, yes. Been putting a lot of work into it recently, including editing old pulp magazine art (now with fewer damsels in distress and more ladies with laser guns) and writing up a sample adventure this week. 

That's so kind – thank you!

Thank you!

Thanks for posting! I had to step away from this for a bit to deal with some health issues, but am (admittedly very slowly) working on finishing it up. I'll send out a message via Itch when it's ready!

Thank you for being so nice after I wrote maybe the nerdiest thing I have put on the internet since my PhD dissertation. Hope you enjoy the game!

This was a gag, and it was probably more trouble than it was worth.

Long story short: A "tachyon communicator" is basically a radio that can communicate instantly even when you are millions of miles apart. Don't worry about the rest.

If you still want the long, nerdy version: A tachyon is “a hypothetical particle that travels faster than light” (in the words of Wikipedia). The term was coined in an academic paper back in the 1960s, and made its way into sci-fi in the meantime. 

Sending messages faster than light could come in handy for spread-out space explorers, as light takes a decently long time to reach across an entire solar system. For instance, if you were to use a powerful radio here on Earth to talk to somebody in orbit of Neptune, it could still take 4 hours for your words to reach them at the speed of light. With a tachyon communicator, though, there's no such "in-system lag" (i.e., no delay in communicating with somebody in the same solar system), as tachyons move faster than light.

So what's up with the rest of that line in Cosmic Highway? ("When used in the same room, signal plays a split-second before you speak.")

The part about being in the same room is a joke based on my (admittedly limited) understanding of Einstein's theory of relativity: If you break the speed of light, you go back in time. Or, if I may steal fromWikipedia again, "Faster-than-light communication is, according to relativity, equivalent to time travel."

Now, as an aside: Have you ever used a cell phone or a walkie talkie to talk to somebody in the same room as you? There's a funny little delay between your voice coming out of your mouth and then coming out of the other person's device. 

The joke is that tachyon communication devices have that delay too, but in the opposite direction — what you’re about to say comes out the other end a half-second before you say it.

Now, you may be wondering: Why would I devote so many words worth of precious page-layout real estate to a joke maybe half a dozen readers will even get? 

The answer is: Because I am a huge dweeb. (But I am hoping from your screen name that we share this in common.)

Thanks for the heads up! I will add the link to the list on my page!

Great, glad that works! If there were ever any earlier ones on Itch than this one, I don’t see them either. 

Thank you! I’m still plugging away on this! 

Thank you! The rules are based on Knave (which is fantasy and very much designed to be hacked too), so that might help!

Thanks so much for sharing this! 

Thank you! I recommend Ben Milton's Knave for this (as Wastoid is based on its rules). Beyond that, I can share with you what I've got from the relevant portion of the manuscript in progress, with two caveats: 

1. I still have to playtest this (especially the part about calculating HP).
2. I'm more concerned with adapting stuff on the fly than careful conversion procedures.

That said, here's what I've got so far…

Ability in Wastoid could refer to the 7 abilities players’ characters have, but most denizens of the wastes are simply represented by a generic “ability” that covers anything vaguely related to what they seem they should be good at. If adapting creatures with hit dice (HD), you can use this as ability. If unsure, give a default ability of +5. [When doing anything else, they have a +0 modifier.]

HP in other games generally runs much higher than in Wastoid. For quick and dirty conversion, add the creature’s HD value to 5. 

AP can be converted by looking for a game’s equivalent of light, medium, and heavy armor (often leather, chain, and plate in fantasy games). Wastoid uses leather (4 AP), scrap (8 AP), and combat armor (12 AP), +1 to 2 for a shield, and another +1 to 2 for a helmet. If unsure, give a clearly thick-skinned creature 6 AP and call it a day.

Damage can usually be simplified as d6 for most attacks, d8 for those with two-handed weapons, and d10, d12, or multiple d6 for only the most powerful attacks (like with explosives and high-tech).

Special effects like “double damage from fire” or “two attacks per action” can generally be used as-written in Wastoid. The GM should just take care to telegraph to players when something looks really, really dangerous. Remember, running away is (almost) always an option!

Oh, and I should add: The upshot of the above is that if your skillset die rolls higher than your stress die, you don’t suffer a stress effect! Stress effects only happen when it’s the adrenaline that helps you succeed. 

Of course, by the time you’ve used the stress die a few times, it’s gotten so big that it’s a lot more likely to be the highest die in the roll…

Thank you, and no need for apologies! I can see how this could be confusing.

The intent is that when you roll to face a risk, you might roll multiple dice. By default, you’re rolling a die from one of your skillsets (or a d4 if hindered by some disadvantage), but you might also roll dice from “help.” You only use the result of the highest die to determine how things go, so usually, more dice means better odds of avoiding risk.

The stress die mucks with that “usually.” Technically, it’s “help” — you can include it in a roll to improve your chances of a high result, avoiding a disaster (1-2) or setback (3-4). But if your stress die is higher than any other dice you rolled (like your one from your skillset), you get a stress effect. This is a trade-off: You’re likely trading one risk (whatever you were rolling to avoid, like accidentally depressurizing the cargo bay) for another (like alerting an alien to your position when you cry out in surprise) .

When that happens, you don’t have to roll the stress die again on that table on the back page; you just consult the number you just rolled.  The way the table is written, the higher the result, the more intrusive the stress effect should be. That way, if you take a chance on the stress die and still roll poorly, you don’t get hit with double the misfortune. (And only rolling once just makes it go quicker.)

Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any more questions about this or anything else. 

That's very kind, thank you! I actually launched a Patreon awhile back, but didn't really work to promote it, so it was de-listed. I'll keep it in mind down the road, though, should I come to a place where that would feel helpful and motivating.

I do not, but thank you for asking! I am hoping I’ll be able to produce more after I recover more from some post-covid health issues. It’s been slow going, but I’m making progress!

Aw, thank you!

You inspired me to finally finish the character sheet I've been working on. It's uploaded now under "Download Demo." 

I am not sure what you meant by the layout being odd for printing out as a booklet, but feel free to let me know if I can be helpful in figuring out what might be going wrong with printing. (I didn't do anything on purpose to make it hard to print.)

Still working on it, but progress on all RPG work has been really slow due to health issues since last year.

I haven’t finished a printed character sheet for this yet. It is part of the plan for revisions, but had been lower priority since I run this online with the spreadsheet I set up, or just have folks jot the few details on an index card when running in person.  

Sorry I don’t have better news just yet, but thanks for checking in. I’ll definitely send out an update message when there’s progress to report.