Halls of the Nephilim

Martian Crawl Classics is a third-party sourcebook for Mutant Crawl Classics. It was written by Tim Snider of The Savage Afterworld and contains art by Aaron Siddall. The book takes The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells and turns it into the reason the Ancients society fell and Terra A.D. (the default setting of MCC) was created. Essentially the Martians invaded and the Ancients fought back with everything they had (including nukes which irrevocably changed the world), though like the original story, it was weapons that stopped the Martians, but rather Earth bacteria and viruses. However, like we adapt to things of that nature, some Martians did too. The small enclaves still lurk in Terra A.D.

Wanting to help spread the word for some current and upcoming Kickstarter projects from my friends.

Fantastical Classes: Blobs vs Blades is a class compendium for OSE by Josh Burnette. The classes are inspired by classic JRPG video games and include Adept, Blob, Dancer, Fury, Ophidian, and Swordmage. Josh makes fantastic content and I am looking forward to great things from this one. Speaking of Limitless Adventures, Andy from LA has an independent project up now too. Ratcatcher: The Sewers of Merestal is a dark fantasy game set in the sewers beneath a corrupt city. They game with use the X-1 core mechanic (which unsurprisingly is really similiar to the X-2 core mechanic used in another of Andy's works)
Ninja City: Drug Demon Disco is now legendary Gen Con after hours adventure that will finally see print and an official release. While I don't know much about the adventure, Joey Royale is one of the most talented cats in the game and Ninja City is awesome.

Because of the upcoming upcoming release of Comic Crawl Classics, I thought I'd share some comic related DCC content. The first bit that comes to mind is the Kamandi tribute by Sanctum Secorum.

I've shared this before, but the July 15th 2016 episode of Sanctum Secorum focused on Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth. The folks discuss the comic and then talk about statting creations. If you plan on playing a post apocalyptic campaign, they talk about great literature references and there's also a discussion about how to create props. You can find the accompanying DCC game stats that are available here for free.

Classes

• Canine Scientist - inspired by Kamandi's friend Doctor Canus, these humanoid canine's have deeds of mighty intellect and can use and enhance items of technology
• Earth A.D. Human - unlike Kamandi, most of the humans in Kamandi's world are devolved primitives, they have extra raw strength, can rage, and have limited use of Mighty Deeds of Arms
• Hybrid - this class is designed to let players play of the humanoid animals, they gain different abilities depending on what animal they evolved from
• Nu-Men - Based on Kamandi's friend Benjamin Boxer and the Nuclear People, they wear protective suits and have nuclear punches, they can also explode... I believe of the new classes, this is the one I'd want to try the most.

• Beast of Monster Lake - a lethal 30' tall crab creature found in Monster Lake
• Zone Devil - in Kirby's world there are irradiated mutant insects from the Dominion of the Devils

• The Star Child - honestly, I'm not 100% on this patrons relation to the the comic, the patron is an ascended being and is connected to divine balance, in the comics the starchild Kamandi is told about is actually Superman. 

Y'all know I love FNAF. I'm really excited about the upcoming Blumhouse movie. Matthew Lillard and Josh Hunterson have joined the cast and Jim Henson's Creature Shop is involved. The movie starts filming next month.

Here's gaming stats I've created related to the franchise:

Here’s a music video and live recording if JT Music’s Five Nights At Freddy’s Christmas song.

Of course I have relevant game content.

Black Lung was a special zine created to benefit rpg author, Rocky Gardner. This is what you get with Black Lung. 

Mutant High School is a limited release for MCC by Goodman Games. Written by Brendan Lesalle, this short zine takes MCC away from Terra A.D. and places it in something a bit more fun. Inspired by The Toxic Avenger, Class of Nuke'Em High, Weird Science, and The Breakfast Club, this zine lets players take the role of high schoolers in the sealed off community of No-Go City. Unlike typical MCC games, there are no pure strain humans. Players play mutants, manimals, and plantients (though they all started off as normal folks). 

Characters begin at level 1 and roll a d24 on the arc
hetype chart to build their characters. There are some new optional MCC rules that give the game it's vibe. AI and Artifacts work a bit differently, because characters are familiar with ordinary tech. Characters get a cool mutation, which doesn't necessarily have any overt game effect, it just makes them look dope. They also get to be the Best in Town (BIT). There is one they, based on the character's background, that they can do better than anyone else in town. What this means is based on what the player declares they are the best at. 

The game uses Oozing Luck. Is similar, but not exactly like, fleeting luck presented in other DCC variants. This trait is also connected to storyline npc's known as Mute-Guffins and Anti-Mute-Guffins. Being a high school based game, the zine includes rules for taking tests, which is a nice touch, tbh. New equipment and the difficulty of getting new equipment is also discussed.

Finally No-Go City, Bullroar High School, factions, events, and an adventure idea are discussed. There are a few stat blocks here and enough info to lay the foundation for a game.

I think Mutant High is a great variation on a fun system. It's definitely a step away from the new stone age of MCC's Terra AD and I'd love to see more MCC content in this vein. Grab your copy here while you still can.

I really planned on watching/rewatching all of the Friday the 13th movies and do a big post for today. Work has been stressful and I've been tired, so I watched two of them. Maybe for the October Challenge I can watch them all. Anyway, no new Friday the 13th themed content for today, but I still thought I'd share some Voorhees love.

Here are a couple of great Jason songs from my biggest musical obsession, Ice Nine Kills.

"She raised him right and he'll come out to play, when mother whispers, "Thank God it's Friday."

If you want to add Jason or Uber-Jason (Jason X) to your DCC and/or MCC games, check out the stats here and here. Also The Ghoul Prince is essentially a Jason/80's slasher flick turned into a DCC adventure.

Created by Wayne Snyder and Doug Kovacs, Inferno Road is a wild ride. Ran at conventions like GenCon, this game is DCC meets Mad Max in Hell. Players are grubs, damned creatures that serve Hellish princes and seek to gather and consume souls. They do this by forever running the titular Inferno Road. As you collect souls you upgrade your form. You do this until your group stops playing. Much like the torments of Hell, the Infernal Road is eternal.

I previously mentioned this being ran at conventions. As written, the rules show this. Some of the evolved creature types have abilities that focus on fucking around with other tables. That being said this can be a useful book for other DCC games too. The upgrades in particular are a fun way to customize mutants and demons. Also the vehicle generation could be helpful in Umerica.

The Plague Edition (pictured below) also comes with a few double-sided posters. These feature art, new stuff to find and encounter, and placemat for a spinner (used in upgrading). This edition also contains wonderful gorgeous and awful (in the good way) art from Doug Kovacs and Wayne Snyder. 

You can order your copy from the same cool shop I grabbed mine, Weird Realms. 

One of Us is a new third-party zine for Dungeon Crawl Classics and introduces a new setting to the rules. The overall setting is post-apocalyptic dustbowl. Essentially the Bomb (with a capital B) went off in the desert and it released something dark that corrupted the land. This is referred to as The Big Mistake. The players are take the role of carnies indentured to the Madame, a mysterious mystic being bound to a traveling carnival. 

Given the new setting, the zine gives us a new starting occupation chart. These are always fun and I really like this one. Three new carnival themed classes are added to the game. The strong-person is capable of doing INCREDIBLE feats of strength, though this also comes at the risk of permanently losing themselves the the dark impulses of power. The acrobats fly through the air and dodge attacks with the greatest of ease. The final new class is the natural wonder, a "freak" class. These individuals are the pride of the carnival and are noted for their mutations. Mutations are based on the DCC RPG Annual Volume 1, Chapter 9. You can expand these mutations with that chapter or even the mutations from MCC. There's a brief discussion of using other classes from DCC and MCC in the setting (specifically Wizard, Cleric, Elf, Dwarf, and Halfling). These classes are given new names, which are cool.

The equipment section presents new weapons and armor. The Madame is presented as a patron. The actual wording of the bargain with the mystic is presented. Invoke patron and patron taint for the mysterious mystic is given. The book ends with four new monsters from the authors and three bonus content monsters from one of my favorite DCC writers, Michael Curtis.

The zine is a lot of fun. It's a really striking setting and the artwork and prose conveys that. I also like that I think it's one that with a little bit of adjusting could be used with many other DCC settings. It easily fits in Weird Frontiers and with a slight tech change Crawling Under A Broken Moon. While there is nothing innately connecting them, I think it would be fun to use with Country Meat-Grinder Classics. The early modern tech level and fact both are very American in setting makes me think they'd fit together nicely. The setting also makes me think of one of my favorite mini realms of Dread in Ravenloft, the Carnival. You could combine this with Macabre (which is in its last 25 hours of funding) to do a DCC take on Ravenloft and the domains of Dread. 

I ordered my copy from Weird Realms and as of post, they still have copies available.

 Sometimes inspiration hits and you just have to go with it.

Doritons

The Hellson Horror is the first in (hopefully) Tim Snider's new line of "hicksploitation" DCC adventures. His vision of Country Meat-Grinder Classics is 1930's Appalachian-like area cut off from "proper" civilization and in a perpetual backwoods tech, knowledge, and society. Guns and cars/trucks exist but aren't reliable.  Folk magic and superstition are common, but powerful stuff is the stuff or demonic bargains and dark witches. That being said, this can definitely be adapted to The Shudder Mountains, Weird Frontiers, or my Portsmaw setting. 

This adventure is for a group of 2nd level characters. Years ago a wealthy family came to the aid of starving locals. Unfortunately this depleted what they had and they couldn't keep up. The matron of the family made an infernal bargain and all were saved. Unfortunately a year ago the payment came due and now they most feed folks to a monstrous creature. The party get involved with their cousin Vinny goes missing on a hunting trip.

Tim has done a fantastic job with this one. I love the Hellsons and he's done a great job coming up with creepy features for the family. With just a sentence or two per family member, he's made them all fall unique. The devil-sows and Hawgziller are great foes too. Finally, as someone that grew up in Appalachia, I appreciate his use of polecat. 

If you want to add a taste of Appalachia to your game, grab a copy here. Below I've listed a few things I'd do to customize the adventure to some compatible settings. 

I was lucky enough to snag a free copy of Leighton Conner's comic Sedgwick recently. It really enjoyed it. I'm a huge fan of his art style and apparently also his writing style. Sedgwick is connected to a larger universe featuring the Laser Brigade. If Leighton's name sounds familiar it's because he's the creator of Akashic Titans and co-writer of Leopard Women of Venus (along with my friend Josh Burnett).

If you'd like to learn about Laser Brigade you can visit www.laserbirgade.thecomicseries.com,

If you want to check out other stuff Leighton has done, check out www.leightonconner.com.

If you'd like to contact Leighton and find out how to get your own copy of Sedgwick you can email him at l8onconnor at gmail dot com.

Of course I want to leave y'all with some gamer content so here's DCC/MCC stats for the titular alien.

Dead in the Water is a MCC funnel by your friendly neighborhood Tim Snider(man).

This short review is written primarily for judges, so if you you think you might play in this one day, stop reading now.

Like most funnels, the party will control 12-15 0 level characters. For this adventure, they are all nomads or villagers from the fishing outpost of Narleen.

The village is attacked by aquatic un-dead Ancients. The pure strain and mutated tribesman must gather their strength and courage and take a boat to the Island of Fire. There are a few encounters they can face on this journey. Once they reach the village they most contend with more "Drenched" and other hazards, which will eventually lead them to an elevator and the lab is the source of danger.

In the lab they are attacked by a giant psychic squid (which they could have encountered heading to the island). Once it is killed they aquatic un-dead drop to the ground, their bodies finally at rest.

I think this is a really solid MCC funnel. Being nautical themed, it's quite unique from other MCC adventures I've seen. The art is also pretty special. There some fun pieces, my favorite being this mutant version of Beavis and Butthead.

They aren't a giant variety of foes (stat wise), but you can describe things differently and make them feel unique. When presenting the area Tim does a great job of describing things the way the Judge could refer to them, while at the same time letting them know what the items really are.

If you are starting a new MCC game, definitely pick this one up. Hell even if you aren't starting a new game, this would be easy to throw into early sessions.

You can read my overview of the Con itself here.

I ran five four hour sessions at Con on the Cob. I had a lot of fun and started losing my voice by the last session. Here's a breakdown of the sessions I ran.

Thursday

The Return of Reverend Pancake (Dark Places & Demogorgons)

Source

A group of teens in southern Ohio decide to get revenge on some bullying jocks. Unfortunately one of the jocks accidentally resurrects a puritanical zombie preacher (statted for DCC here). The premise behind this session and the setting were based on my hometown. The highlights of the session were when the nerd built a hard pretzel cannon (because he thought pretzels were the best source of salt) and the karate kid said they needed to get a boombox with Iron Maiden - 2 Minutes to Midnight because undead are weak against "pure metal."

Friday

After School Special (Vigilante City)
For this session I used premade VC characters and the pamphlet adventure Ninja Beat'Em Up!. I had a group of seven vigilantes but they were definitely challenged by the massive number of ninjas (though it probably helped that I was rolling like shit). One thing I noticed while running is that the super-soldier, mutant, and true vigilante seemed to be doing the most in the game (the first two because of their powers and the third because she kept critting). Still everyone had fun. I think if I run it again (and I'd like to), I'll make sure that all characters are non-powered.

Road Crew: The Arwich Grinder (Dungeon Crawl Classics)
A naked large man collapses and dies in an inn in the village of Arwich while grasping the bonnet of a local teen. Brave townsfolk must brave the weather and investigate, owing their lives to the family. This is a Lovecraftian funnel that I've ran before (notes here). However, this time it didn't go as expected at all! While some were injured, no characters died in this funnel. Not only that, but they took all of the cult family members alive to be tried, and killed Junior and the Sending of Sliggeth. It was an amazing session, but no one was ground but the horrific monstrosities. My friend from Columbus, Robert, played in this session too, which made it extra fun.

Saturday

Road Crew: Leopard Women of Venus (Dungeon Crawl Classics)
The Humanoid Coalition recruited grunts from the various human tribes on Venus for an importation mission. The setting is coming to Kickstarter soon and you can read more about it here. I loved it and wanted to show it off. Josh gave me his notes from the after hours GenCon session of Leopard Women of Venus game he ran and I used those and my pre-Kickstarter zine to run the session. Most of the group was made up of the red meat eating, gun-toting, God-loving Otram. The most memorable character was little Billy. He was a displaced human school kid whom the Otram adopted. Billy gained a shotgun during the adventure and used it to take out quite a few foes, before his unfortunate death by animated Martian pudding.

Road Crew: Glow-H-I-O The Museum at the End of Time (Mutant Crawl Classics)
My original plan was to run an original funnel for my new Ohio-based MCC setting. I didn't get it finished though, so I ran The Museum at the End of Time instead. I had another large group (seven players total). We had some experienced MCC and DCC players, a couple that had never played the systems, and one player than had never played a tabletop rpg before. I have to say this was my favorite session of the whole con. Everyone got into character as their primitive tribesman. There were some interesting deaths and and I even had one character who ascended to godhood and became the Star Child.

Swag
I also wanted to show off the non-Cob Crate swag I picked up. I grabbed four of these Grimtooth D6'
s. I love the character, want to use him more, and it also seemed fitting after the recent passing of Rick Loomis. I also grabbed several fan-made Critical Role buttons, because I'm a critter and I liked them. I didn't get all of the characters, but I grabbed my favorites (and a cool Zombae button).

Jack Kirby was born August 28th, 1917. I just wanted to take a moment to honor the gent that gave us Marvels. Stan may have been the man, but Jack was the king.



Add some Kirby to your DCC/MCC game with this free pdf.

Retired nerdcore rapper, Adam Warrock's tribute to the King.

Bone Tomahawk Tribesman

Init +2, Atk +1 bone tomahawk (1d6+1) ;  AC 13; HD 2d6+2; MV 30'; Act 1d20; SP unnatural roar; Fort +3, Ref +1, Will +0; AL C

The tribesman communicate with  whistles embedded in their windpipes. Only males are encountered outside of their caves as the females are blinded and have their limbs amputated when they come of child-bearing age. Once per combat, instead of attacking they can release a frightening roar through their throat-whistles. Any opponent hearing this must make a DC 15 Will save or be unable to act their next turn.

I picked up this phenomenal Mutant Crawl Classics adventure at Gen Con this year. Children of the Fallen Sun is the first third party release for MCC and was designed along with the game itself.

A starship crashes near the players' tribe and they are sent to investigate and gain resources from it before rivals can do the same. This brings them into conflict with two other local tribes. Additionally they find themselves embroiled in the political struggle of the Blumans and Rustmen, two genetically altered races of humans who've returned to their species planet of origin.

The adventure is a wonderful combination of exploration and social maneuvering. The combats are challenging and interesting. There's also just a cool factor of having technologically advanced races descended from the ancients to interact with too.

In addition to the fun story the adventure has several crunchy bits too, including:

• Two new patron AI's (with spells) that are an integral part of the adventure
• Nine new artifacts (including one that can create zombies)
• One new mutation

This adventure is absolutely fantastic! The writing and design are top notch. The artwork and layout are excellent. I really love the great impact this 1st level adventure can have on your Mutant Crawl Classics campaign. If you play MCC and don't have this one, pick it up here asap.