Firebreathing Kittens

Vested Interest (Summer Camp Slayers)

Marty, Colette, and Sadie are thrown into a most terrifying retro horror story using Summer Camp Slayers game mechanics. Tag along and see who survives the night, and whose light fizzles out.

Trailer for Vested Interest

Marty, Colette, and Sadie are thrown into a most terrifying retro horror story using Summer Camp Slayers game mechanics. Tag along and see who survives the night, and whose light fizzles out.

How To Play Summer Camp Slayers

Hello everybody this is a special episode of the Firebreathing Kittens podcast. I am the Gamemaster for an upcoming episode where I’ll be using the mechanics from the tabletop role-play game, summer camp slayers. You can catch me as ‘Tord Unfrid’ playing a similar game that uses a different flavour of the same mechanics called Pirates of the Bone Blade in episode 266 of the Firebreathing Kittens Podcast. Summer camp slayers is a table top role-play game designed by Richard Woolcock from Zadmar Games using his universal Tricube game system and you can find this and more on DriveThruRPG. I will speak more on the TriCube system towards the end of episode here but for now let’s get into those game mechanics.
 
General Mechanics:
 
In summer camp slayers, you roll between one and three D6 6 sided dice, depending on your characters archetype and you compare your highest result against the difficulty set by the game master. For instance, you may roll two 6 sided dice and have a 3 and 5 on the dice the game master set the difficulty at five meaning you have one success. You start with 2D6 add a die to your roll if what you’re doing falls in line with your trait and you remove a die if what you’re doing falls outside the scope of your concept but we'll get into that more during the character creation section. The main thing to remember going forward is that together your trait and concept make up your characters archetype forming half of your character design, the other half of the character design comes from your perks and quirks.
 
Perks and Quirks (Archetype) Overview:
 
Speaking of perks and quirks, they allow you to influence the difficulty of the challenge you face. You can influence the difficulty of the task by expending one of your karma points to reduce the difficulty of the task by 1 if you can explain how your perk aids you in that moment. You can also decide to make the difficulty of the task harder before rolling, increasing it by 1, describing how your quirk negatively effected you. If you fail the task when using your quirk you get a karma back but if you succeed you can choose to regain a resolve instead if you'd like. If a player runs out of resolve they are typically removed from the scene and gain an affliction. Afflictions are described by the victor and are treated as temporary quirks for your player. A character with three affliction is retired from play, although they can be brought back if one of their afflictions is cured. Now that we've talked about how to decide the outcome of a challenge let's find out what happens if you succeed or fail.
 
Success/Failure:
 
Succeeding a task with one single die above or meeting the difficulty rating will result in a normal success, any additional successful die roll will be a exceptional success. Exceptional successes typical provide additional removed effort tokens or beneficial effects as decided by the game master. The same is true however for failures as well with the distinction being that you have to roll all 1’s on your dice for it to be a critical failure, this typically involves losing double the amount of resolve or additional negative effects as decided by the game master and player such as gaining an affliction. Some tasks are simple and only require a single success to complete them, there are however harder tasks and in these instances effort tokens will be used. A harder task can require anywhere from 2-4 successes or more depending on the situation to whittle down that encounters effort tokens.
 
Character Creation:
 
Now that we know how the game works, let’s talk about creating a character. In Summer Camp Slayers you select from a list of four different options during character creation, those four options as discussed earlier are Trait, Concept, Perk and Quirk. At first all the these four terms may sound the same however they do function differently from each other, let’s get into that.
 
Traits:
 
We’ll start with trait, in this game system a trait is always the same, regardless of the flavour of the system you’re playing. A trait is one of the following: Agile, Brawny or Crafty; the ABC’s of Tricube! Agile covers things like quickness, dexterity, reflexes, or stealth; they also roll 3d6 for ranged combat. Brawny covers things like strength, toughness, stamina or athletics; they also roll 3d6 for melee combat. Crafty covers things like charisma, intellect, willpower or perception; they also roll 3d6 for mental combat (magic, persuasion, intimidation). Unless something falls within your trait you will roll 2d6, if it does happen to fall within your trait however you get to roll 3d6 instead! For example. A brawny kid would roll 3D6 when trying to lift something heavy off their friends, but only 2D6 if they were trying to avoid getting pinned by the same object as it's falling as that would be an Agile roll.
 
Concepts:
 
Next let's talk about concepts, as it is a bit more of a loose idea and changes depending on the flavour of the game type and world you're playing in. The concepts provided for Summer Camp Slayers are Counselor, nurse, lifeguard, groundskeeper, cook, activity leader or kid. Your concept may provide you additional knowledge or information in interactions with NPC's but mechanically it is only used when you're doing something outside the scope of that concept. Let's put that into perspective, let's say you're a Crafty Kid who is a Bookworm and Cautious, if you were to try to impersonate a police officer to cover a story you had about trying to sneak out late at night to investigate the weird things happening in the woods that would most likely go against your concept as a kid as it would be unbelievable. When something falls outside of the scope of your concept you lose a die from your pool before you roll, making a challenge more difficult. This can be offset with your trait, for example if you were instead trying to hotwire a car it would still be unlikely to happen as you're a kid but more likely because of your crafty trait leaving you with the normal 2D6 to roll.
 
Perks:
 
Now that we have gone over what makes up your archetype, and the type of traits and concepts, let's move on to talking about how to influence the difficulty of the roll using perks and quirks and which of each exist in this game. Let's start with perks, as they give you the ability to spend your Karma points to reduce the difficulty of your roll making your chances of success better. The perks available in Summer Camp Slayers are Bookworm, occult insight, quick, perceptive, persuasive, advanced combat training, or supernatural ability. If you can describe how your perk aids you during a challenge you can expend 1 Karma to reduce the difficulty of the check by 1. For example, a player with the perk of persuasive might be trying to impersonate a police office and that character has the persuasive perk they could expend 1 Karma to reduce the difficulty of the check by 1. In addition when making group checks there may be times where your perk allows you to bypass a check altogether, doing so still requires 1 Karma however. For example, a character with a supernatural ability may be able to open a locked door with their powers but doing so would still require the expenditure of 1 Karma, if the character is out of Karma describe how their perk comes up short in this moment.
 
Quirks:
 
Quirks are things that define your character and may make you more pre-disposed to having a difficult time in certain situations. The Quirks available in Summer Camp Slayers are Hothead, prankster, cautious, show-off, suspicious, sarcastic, or haunted. You can use your Quirk to make the difficulty of any check harder by 1, if you fail you gain 1 Karma but if you succeed you can choose to regain 1 Karma or 1 Resolve, if you regain resolve describe how your success even when facing insurmountable odds emboldens your resolve.
 
Karma and Resolve:
 
Let's talk now about Karma and Resolve. Each player starts with three of each and can spend, lose and regain both throughout the game session. When you run out of Karma nothing bad happens to your character, you just aren't able to influence the difficulty of checks positively anymore. If you run out of resolve however you could be temporarily removed from the scene and at best gain an affliction; if not both. For example, if your character is trying to jump off a roof to a nearby tree and fails their check and you only have 1 resolve remaining, reducing you to 0, your player may go unconscious temporarily and when they awake have a 'concussed' affliction. In another case your character may be trying to like we said before impersonate a police officer and if they fail perhaps they gain the 'untrustworthy' affliction.
 
Afflictions:
 
Affliction can be temporary or permanent depending on the severity of the failure. For instance if we use the examples above the concussed affliction would be temporary while the 'untrustworthy' affliction would be a more permanent one. Permanent afflictions cant be turned into quirks when leveling up to take advantage of them to regain resolve instead of them just being a hindrance. For example turning the untrustworthy affliction into a quirk might allow you to lie easier in the future as your reputation fades but the ability to land a false truth sticks like glue.
 
Leveling Up:
 
Speaking of leveling up, when doing so in this system you typically choose a new perk or quirk each level and increase either your karma or resolve by 1 every other level. You can opt out of choosing a new perk or quirk and instead choose to turn a permanent affliction into a quirk upon leveling up.
 
Combat and Challenges:
 
Now that we know how to create our character and the mechanics of the game, let's talk about combat and challenges. Generally in combat the Game Master will go around the table asking each of the players their actions for their turn choosing the turn order based on what narratively makes the most sense. The players will each choose their action and the game master will set the difficulty and the trait of the action. For example, a person swinging a sword at a Goblin with 2 effort tokens would have to roll a Brawny 5 check, if they were to shoot it they would roll a Agile 5 check and if they were to use magic against it they would roll a Crafty 5 check. The player would take into account their Trait to see if they could add any dice to their 2D6 pool, your concept does not matter during combat as it is assumed each character is trained in some form of combat. The player has an opportunity to make the difficulty higher before the roll using their Quirk or make the roll easier after their roll using their Perk as they see fit. If they roll a 5 or better on one of the dice the attack lands and one effort token is removed from the goblin, if they have more than 1 dice meet or beat a 5 they would remove 2 effort tokens and effectively remove the goblin from combat. The GM will go around the table having each player take a turn until all enemy combatants are removed from combat. Challenges are non-combat events that come up during a game like talking to NPC's, sneaking, lockpicking etc. and work in a similar way with the distinction being that challenges take into account your Concept as well, remove a dice from your 2D6 pool if it is outside your scope. For example, a Brawny Groundskeeper trying to use a flamethrower against zombies would only roll 1D6 as they don't benefit from their Trait and burning the well kempt nature of the camp would go against their concept.
 
Spells:
 
Many fantasy, horror, and even science fiction settings describe characters with supernatural powers such as telekinesis, alchemy, psionics, etc. These arcane gifts can be easily represented as perks. A character with such a perk can do anything a trained person in the setting could achieve with
 
appropriate tools, as long as it thematically fits their type of magic. Spending karma allows the mage to perform even greater feats of magic, overcoming any challenge a professional could manage with specialized gear. Mages can choose three spells during character creation; these determine how and when they can use their magic. Each spell needs to have a name and a limitation—e.g., “fiery bolt (destructive),” “lightning shield (personal),” “illusionary disguise (ritualistic),” etc. You can create more potent spells by giving them additional limitations. This narrows their scope, and the GM should be more flexible when interpreting their effect. Perhaps your “invisibility sphere” is ritualistic and requires a focus, but can be used to conceal the entire party. New spells are learned during play, at the GM’s discretion—perhaps a wizard can learn from scrolls or spell books, or maybe the GM awards sorcerers a new spell each time they gain an advance.
 
For the players in my upcoming session, please level up twice. Each level up will allow you to choose either one additional perk or quirk, if there aren’t any on the list that appeal to you feel free to come up with your own. Additionally please choose either your Karma or Resolve and increase it by 1 to a total of 4.
 
Hopefully this information regarding the rules is helpful to my players as they build their character and try to understand the mechanics of this game system. For everyone listening, we encourage you to find the Tricube system and other variants of it like Summer Camp Slayers for yourselves, and play a game with friends. If you'd like to hear an example adventure, I'm looking forward to playing Summer Camp Slayers in an upcoming session. Thank you everyone for listening and take care.

I Eat Challenges For Breakfast (LUCAS)

When Demyan and Armando find out a sneaky rabbit has stolen a Bag of Tricks, they hunger for justice! Will they follow their nose and find the culprit? Or will they be serially thwarted by multiple challenges? I Eat Challenges For Breakfast is an actual play podcast of the LUCAS rpg system.

Trailer for I Eat Challenges For Breakfast

When Demyan and Armando find out a sneaky rabbit has stolen a Bag of Tricks, they hunger for justice! Will they follow their nose and find the culprit? Or will they be serially thwarted by multiple challenges? I Eat Challenges For Breakfast is an actual play podcast of the LUCAS rpg system.

Come Fly To Space (No Port Called Home)

Ivy, Tord, Fennis, and Colette have to save a soup kitchen! Naturally this means a heist of a huge diamond, a fake murder, a duel, a pop song from the 70s, and a spaceship?! Join them on this exciting episode of Firebreathing Kittens! Come Fly To Space is an actual play podcast of the No Port Called Home RPG system.

Trailer for Come Fly To Space

Ivy, Tord, Fennis, and Colette have to save a soup kitchen! Naturally this means a heist of a huge diamond, a fake murder, a duel, a pop song from the 70s, and a spaceship?! Join them on this exciting episode of Firebreathing Kittens! Come Fly To Space is an actual play podcast of the No Port Called Home RPG system.

How to play No Port Called Home

How to play No Port Called Home.
 
Hi everyone, this is a special episode of Firebreathing Kittens. I’m the game master for an upcoming session using the rules for No Port Called Home. This episode is a summary of what I learned after reading the rule book. Hopefully this will be a handy guide for how to play for my players, will help me organize myself, and will be useful for you listeners, too, who are looking to play No Port Called Home yourselves.
There are a dozen different races to pick from in No Port Called Home. They include humans, giant jotunn, amphibious nix, genetically enhanced vesp, nomadic hedonistic fae, indestructible robotic archon, freed former worker drone tsuku, and more. When you build your character, you will pick one of these races. Use the race’s character sheet as your starting character sheet, that you’ll add more and more things to later. The rule book has an example crew mate named Zephyr who is a tsuku race, a freed former worker drone. I will refer to Zephyr’s character sheet throughout this how to play guide, using Zephyr as an example.
Let’s talk about classes. No Place Called Home has nearly forty classes. You will pick three of them to build your character. These classes include a calibrist who obsessively optimizes a firearm, a swordfiend who stabs opponents with point objects, a martial artist who fights with their hands, a brute who fights with this chair they happened to find, a fortress that gains defensive bonuses as long as they hold their position, an engineer who can maintain and improve the team’s vehicle, a strategist who can delegate extra actions to their teammates, a con artist who and lies and fibs, a changeling who can rearrange their limbs, a conduit who can splice their mind into machines to remote listen to conversations, a swarmmaster with clouds of loyal insects, and more. Doesn’t that sound like a lot of fun options? Great news, you get to pick not one, not two, but three of them. Which three should you pick? The rule book suggests picking a combination of classes that empower you to take action both in and out of combat. Don’t limit yourself to only in-combat effects. For our example character build, Zephyr has the three classes of: martial artist who fights with their hands, freerunner who sprints and runs and does flips, and ranger, who prevents their teammates from setting off terrain effects through their expert guidance. Each class has some questions to think and write about. For example, among other questions, the ranger asks you to list four places you have been. The martial artist asks you, among other questions, if you advertise the fact that you are skilled in combat, or do you allow others to underestimate you? The freerunner asks you what you would do if a situation forced you to leave someone behind who could not run as fast. The three classes you pick will have questions that help you think about how your character would act.
Let’s talk about skills. There are four categories of skills: physical, social, knowledge, and practical. Physical skills include agility, dexterity, strength, your ability to orient yourself in zero gravity, stealth, endurance, and how well you squirm. Knowledge skills include your knowledge of biotech, history, people, places, engineering, computers, and medicine. Social skills include your ability to soothe, entertain, deceive, manipulate, persuade, command, and read people. Practical skills include your perception, survival, research, crafting, and piloting skills. There are more than twenty skills overall.
When you pick three classes, each class will come with points in skills and stats. Start out with a zero in all skills, and then add the numbers from your classes and write the total on your character sheet. For example, Zephyr is a martial artist, freerunner, and ranger. The martial artist gives them +2 in all physical skills, so that’s a 2 in agility, dexterity, strength, zero-g, stealth, endurance, and squirm. The martial artist also adds 2 in people reading. The freerunner adds 4 to agility and zero g, bringing those up to six, and adds two in stealth, endurance and squirm, bringing those up to four, and also adds two to entertain and perception. The ranger adds two to agility, endurance, stealth, knowledge of biotech, knowledge of places, soothe, perception, survival, and craft. That bumps Zephyr’s agility up to eight, and at six their endurance, zero-g, and stealth are pretty high, too. This has been an example of how to add your three classes’ skills together to get your character’s starting skill numbers.
Here are some example skill rolls Zephyr could make in No Place Called Home. Hungry in a field outside town, Zephyr might roll a twenty sided dice, also called a d20, and add their survival skill to forage for edible greens. If Zephyr was trying to think of a low cost bakery in town, you would roll on a twenty sided dice, also called a d20, plus their places skill number. If Zephyr was trying to persuade a non player character, or NPC, to give them a discount on day old baked goods, you would roll a d20 and add your persuade skill number. If you were trying to sneak past the baker to get into the kitchen, that would be a stealth roll of a d20 plus your stealth skill. If the baker found you and you wanted to jump out the window, that would be a d20 plus Zephyr’s agility skill. You would roll like this using your skills when attempting to accomplish a goal outside of combat.
Let’s talk about stats. Your character’s starting stats are the sum of the stats they get from their three classes. Add together the numbers in the symbols from each of your three classes and your race to get your starting stats. There are eight stats in No Place Called Home. Hit Points, attack, defense, initiative, skills per level, willpower, reflex, and fortitude.
Hit points are the cross symbol. If your character reaches negative ten hit points, they die. Zephyr has twenty two hit points, so if they take twenty two points of damage they would reach zero hit points and fall unconscious, and if they take thirty two points of damage, they would hit negative ten and die.
Attack is the symbol that looks like a sniper scope, and defense is the shield symbol. The attack skill is the number you add to a roll of a twenty sided dice, also called a d20, when you attack. You hit your target if you meet or beat their defense roll. When someone attacks you, roll a twenty sided dice, also called a d20, and add your defense number. If you beat their attack roll, their attack missed you and you take no damage. For example Zephyr has a three in attack and a four in defense. When trying to attack someone, Zephyr rolls their twenty sided dice and adds their attack of three. When being attacked by someone, Zephyr rolls a twenty sided dice and adds their defense of four. Because the average is a ten on a twenty sided dice, Zephyr’s average attack is thirteen and average defense is fourteen.
Here is an example attack. From their class bonuses, if they’re attacking unarmed, Zephyr gets two more conditional attack bonus from martial artist and one from freerunner. Their hands are 2 d4 bludgeoning weapons from their martial artist class. Zephyr swings a punch at their target. You roll a d20 and add your base attack, which is three, and also add your conditional attack because you are attacking unarmed. That’s a ten on the dice plus three base attack plus two plus one for conditional attack bonuses for being unarmed for a sixteen total to hit. Meet it to beat it. You would hit any enemy that has a sixteen, fifteen, fourteen, thirteen, etc lower defense. To calculate the damage dealt, you would roll two four sided dice, also called d4, and add the results together. For example if one dice was a a three and one dice was a one, that would be four bludgeoning damage total from your martial artist’s fists.
Initiative is the symbol that looks like a diamond floating above a ripple on a pond. Initiative is the order people take action during combat. When a fight starts, everyone rolls a twenty sided dice and adds their initiative number. The highest rolls go first. For example Zephyr has a four in initiative. If Zephyr rolled a ten on their dice and added their four in initiative, the total would be fourteen. With fourteen as their initiative roll, Zephyr would take action before people who rolled a thirteen or below. But someone who rolled a fifteen or higher would get to take action before Zephyr.
Skills per level is the symbol that looks like a concave triangle with three dots on its three sides. Your character’s skills per level stat is how many skill ranks you gain each time you level up. These skill ranks are spread out amongst all your skills. When you level up, if you have the skill point for it, you can increase a single skill one point. Zephyr has a six in their stat of skills per level. This means that of the twenty six skills, they can increase six of them by one point each time they level up. For example, they level up and choose to increase their agility, dexterity, stealth, endurance, craft, and piloting skills by one point each. Because we’re talking about leveling up, I should mention that when you level up, you get to pick two feats that must be in different classes. My players, you will be leveling up twice, so you should have four feats total, with at most two of them in the same class.
Willpower is the circle symbol, reflexes is the diamond symbol, and fortitude’s symbol is a rectangle wider at the base than the top. Willpower, reflexes, and fortitude are all resistance bonuses. When a danger is attacking you in a specific way, your game master might prompt you to roll a saving throw. Zephyr’s willpower is 2. If the game master says the enemy is very scary and Zephyr should roll a willpower saving throw to see if they’re afraid or not, they would roll a twenty sided dice, also called a d20, and add their willpower of two. For willpower, Zephyr’s lowest possible roll is a three and highest possible roll is a twenty two. Zephyr’s reflex stat is seven. If the game master says the floor is collapsing under Zephyr and a successful reflex save will let them jump out of the way instead of falling, Zephyr would roll a d20 and add their reflex stat, seven. For reflex, Zephyr’s lowest possible roll is an eight, and highest possible roll is a twenty seven. The last resistance type is fortitude, which Zephyr has a two in. If the game master says that Zephyr has just been poisoned, Zephyr would roll a d20 and add two to their roll to resist this challenge to their fortitude.
Along with numbers for stats and skills, your character’s three classes will also come with a variety of other conditional bonuses and physical equipment. For example the ranger gives Zephyr the equipment of a tent, ten meters of rope, a compass, matches, a 2 d4 hunting knife, a water filter, sturdy shoes, bug spray, and sunscreen. The freerunner gives Zephyr an extra reaction per round, and +1 to attack when attacking unarmed. The martial artist gives Zephyr a +2 to attack when attacking unarmed, and Zephyr’s hands now count as 2 d4 bludgeoning weapons. Write these conditional bonuses, equipment, and other details from your three classes on your character sheet.
For the players in my upcoming session, please level up twice. Each level up will increase your feats and your skills. For feats, choose two feats that must be from different classes. We’re leveling up twice, so you should have four feats on your character sheet for this session. For stats, with each level up you can increase the level up stat’s number of skills by one. For example if you have a five in your level up stat, you can increase five stats by one point each time you level up. You can choose different skills the second time you level up if you’d like.
Hopefully this little rules chat helps my players build their characters and understand combat and skills. For everyone listening, we encourage you to find the No Port Called Home rule book yourself, and play a game with friends. And if you’d like to hear an example adventure, I’m looking forward to playing No Port Called Home in an upcoming session.

Ivy Green Interview

Ivy Green Interview

The Show Must Go On (Dicing With Death)

Embark on a thrilling journey with Demyan, Nugh, and Maeve in a Dicing with Death adventure! Watch as they cast roles, conquer fate, and spice up the stage to save the play!