BUTCHERY

My ZineQuest 2020 project, BUTCHERY, is now available for purchase.

Thanks again to all the backers who made this happen! Check your messages on your Kickstarter account for a code to get the zine for free.

Happy hunting.

BUTCHERY GM Advice(?)

The following will not make it into the final BUTCHERY zine (still time left to back I think??) because the zine format is too svelte to warrant a DMG and I also think writing actual, practical GM advice is a task somewhere between Herculean and Sisyphean (most people seeking it don’t need GM advice they just need life advice, and the best actual GM advice is learned through play).

Still, here’s a thing:

from Dark Cloud - not a direct inspiration for BUTCHERY but it shows up in almost everything I make so

Narrator Styles

The way the Narrator approaches their role is up to your group and specific to your game. Here are some ideas to get your started.

Old School Style

Classic tabletop adventure games leaned heavily on the conversation aspect of gameplay. In the olden days of the 1970s, rules and tools involving dice and numbers were only used as a fallback to adjudicate perilous situations or inject randomness into the proceedings for fun.

To play in an Old School style, the Narrator should present tricky obstacles of all kinds within the fiction - social, physical, mental, etc - and allow the players to come up with creative solutions. Players who think outside the box, work together and make cool things happen don’t have to roll dice; just use conversation to progress the fiction. They might not even end up fighting most monsters!

Storygame Style

Some tabletop games focus on creating a narrative around the table - not just playing around within a fiction, but making the events of that fiction look like a structured story during play. This can be tough for casual gamers, but is great for players who like writing, acting or improv!

Storygames like using rules and tools to govern aspects of the characters that are key to the stories being told; not just rolling for physical danger like the rules in BUTCHERY suggest but during “social” scenes as well. What if a butcher’s Alignment affected their personality, and they had to roll Ritual-style checks to determine how they acted in certain scenes? That could generate a lot of conflict or other interesting events to build a story from.

Modern Style

Mainstream games like those you see on big online streams often include tropes from video games, like stats that go up with each “level” a character attains, or more structured stories that allow the game to focus on the rules rather than working out events through conversation alone.

You could make a game using BUTCHERY more like these kinds of games by letting characters improve their Skill Levels over time, perhaps offering “experience points” to spend each time you play. Focus on the hunt, and make sure you have a dramatic and interesting combat scenario to spring on your players at the end of each game.

It Came From The Blogosphere!: Valentine’s Special

First, a word from out sponsor... you! You’re the sponsor! Because you’re one of the lovely individuals who’ve backed BUTCHERY on KickStarter as part of ZineQuest 2 (hashtagzinequest2)!

If you’ve yet to check out my monster-hunting ruleset of investigative combat, you’ve still got, hm, like just under 48 hours? And thanks to our generous Heart-Eater backers, you can get the whole-ass zine for just £1!

look, there’s even a link to click right here, what a world

Also, and this is important - once you’re over on KickStarter, you can click my profile to check out all the ZineQuest blogs I’ve backed. I’m in an uncharacteristic period of relative financial stability so I was able to support quite a few, but there are absolutely, undeniably, a whole host of other fantastic projects out there worth your cash money. Please use my “backed projects” list as a springboard and thence go ham. Support the games!!

Now then.

It’s Valentine’s Day! So let’s share the love, shall we? As we prostrate ourselves at the feet of the mannequin of capitalism, propped up in place of the soul-affirming ineffability of human connection - let’s read some blogs!

ah yes,,. the world “wide Web”

Prolific OSR-adjacent visual artist Sam Mameli has some good thoughts on why old-school games are good to play. I agree with the thoughts! You can read the thoughts here.

Anne Hunter over at DIY and Dragons is good people. Her voice is one of those I miss from the little bit of the G+ days I’m old enough to remember. In this post, she draws brilliant connections between video game rogue like design and tabletop RPGs. This article is a resource unto itself - do read it.

A late (shoot me, the messenger - it was written well on time) Christmas gift from Dan D - space combat for the world’s other favourite fantasy RPG Troika!, plus d66 brilliant spaceships! Peruse here. Oh, and have you ever considered writing your own gaming blog but not known where to start? Or started one but run out of ideas for posts? Dan’s Joesky Tax d100 table is d100 good blog posts in the making.

I was unfamiliar with Circas K and their blog Sword of Mass Destruction - until this post made I and many others sit up and pay attention. The thoughts I’ve had on clerics and “religion” in fantasy games, crystallised into not only a well-written article but actual gameable resources(!) by a genuine scholar of religion?! Yes please.

Arnold K at the esteemed Goblin Punch has some things to say about all these Birds.

Dai Shugars does a lovely bit of theory writing here, recrafting 5 guidelines for libraries written by a Tamil librarian in the 30s into 5 guidelines for RPGs. It’s all good stuff!

Over on her goldmine of a scrapheap of a blog A Monster Manual Sewn From Pants, the luminous Scrap Princess provides campaign frames for games that last about 2-4 sessions, and oh boy howdy am I here for it.

And finally, I always enjoy reading Zedeck Siew’s words. Here’s a big crab.



Read the blogs, write the blogs, share the blogs. See you next time, losers x

To Quest, Perchance to Zine

BUTCHERY is now live on KickStarter!

Get the system I wrote for my home game and try it out for yourself! The e-zine includes:

- full rules including a shortcut character creation checklist

- an investigative combat system that makes fights brutal, heroic and engaging

- a complete magic system in like two paragraphs

- a starter adventure (not the one from the play reports, something fresh!)

- developer commentary and play examples throughout so you can get your head around how and why I made this ruleset the way it is

- an introductory guide to hacking the rules

- and... more???

Back BUTCHERY on KickStarter as part of ZineQuest 2!

Campaign ends on the 16th of Feb!

yet more BUTCHERY

The little makeshift coffin bursts open.

A thin tendril of flesh shoots out, plunging into the dark earth and planting itself like a root. Then, raising up by the mottled cord that extends from its torso, something wholly unlike the newborn it once was. It screams, mouth splitting open in a cross, full of too many needle-like teeth, its white eyes rolling and bulging. It reeks of death.

The butchers grimace at the sight. This being is not a child of witchcraft. They know the fell, unnatural magic that birthed it from the grave - the magic of monsters. These are not beasts of the natural world, but are created by humanity when they meddle in nature’s laws. And this abomination is what happens when a parent murders their own child.

Dannoll and Allas look to each other and nod. Dannoll flings his spear, aiming high but just missing the monster’s twisted body, the silvered point of his weapon instead severing the cord that binds it to the earth. With a fleshy, snicking sound, the stump of the cord grows anew, regenerating, shooting back down to the ground. The monster barely has time to fall before it has rooted itself in the soil once more.

The thing opens its mouth once again, an otherworldly scream building in the air - cut short, as Allas sends a silver-tipped crossbow bolt through the creature’s head.

It splutters and falls in a heap on the ground.

Under a dusky sky just beginning to fill with stars, the butchers set about placing the stricken monster on its pyre. It hasn’t been human for a long time now, but even so they feel as though they are putting the child to rest.

Returning to the farmhouse, Dannoll and Allas aim to wring the truth from the family. Confronting the women with what they know of the truth - that the blight was caused by a monster taking root in the ground, one that can only be created by infanticide - they ask what happened. If the young woman is the true mother of the dead child, and its killer, then she must atone.

The older woman, silent this whole time, finally speaks. She confesses everything: how her husband was wracked with worry over her pregnancy, how he believed they would never survive a winter with another mouth to feed. And then when the child came, and there were two... He did the unspeakable. The mother, seeing her child killed by its father, flew into a rage and took his life in revenge.

Overcome with guilt, she breaks down, weeping. The young girl has tears in her eyes too, but her expression is resolute as she takes her sister from her mother’s arms.

The butchers do not begrudge the older woman her actions, it’s not their place to judge. But men have their laws just as Nature does, and they tell her they will take her into town to face the guard’s judgement. She comes quietly and willingly, leaving her daughters clinging to one another, alone by the glow of the hearth.

The ride into town and back sees the moon rise high in the sky. Ivar and his guard hear the butchers’ tale, and take the woman prisoner as a formality. Their people will feed her better than she could’ve done otherwise. Good as their word, the guard load Donnall and Allas’ horses with enough supplies for a few weeks’ journeying.

The butchers look at one another as they pass the farmstead again. Tying up their horses once more, they unload the supplies. This family, or what remains of it, will need it more than they.

Under the waxing moon, the two traipse into the field one last time, to try their hands at an old ritual. Entreating the aspects of Spring, season of new life and regrowth, they attempt to encourage the land into bearing a healthy crop once more.

Nature is silent. No matter. She will take the land again in due course, now that the curse has been lifted. The smell of decay is gone, at the very least. Time will tell how the valley fares from here.

The butchers set off down the road again.

*

That concluded the session. BUTCHERY is nicely episodic like that, mirroring how I tend to play games anyway. That first quest was very Witcher-esque, wasn’t it? The full game takes from a wider pool of inspiration.

Now, let’s finish off talking about the combat mechanics in BUTCHERY, and get into why I call this an investigative combat system.

My earliest RPG gaming memories, outside of tabletop, come from Pokémon. I could go on and on about the hows and whys of what makes those games so dang good, but for now I’ll focus in on one particular aspect of the battle system.

Each of your lil boys can learn four moves, which are like cool combat techniques. Attacks, buffs, all the JRPG things you’d expect. And monsters also have types, abilities and other aspects unique to a species which mean certain moves are going to work better when executed by certain ‘mon, or against a particular opponent.

Mastering all these interactions is the first key to high-level play - but the initial rush I felt as a kid is what I’m chasing here. Something as simple as the three-step mental process of:
- hmm, that guy looks fiery. I haven’t seen him before, but he seems to have a big Fire thing going on.
- I have a water guy. Water puts out fire, right? So... What happens when I use this water move?
- “Super effective”! I win!

The appeal to a little kid is straightforward. It’s hardly master strategy, but at that age it feels like it is. And it’s a thought process that I think is at the core of good problem-solving in games, video and analog. This thing *should* work, so I’ll try it... and it does! Games that focus on letting the players try things and having them produce at least some result, like Breath of the Wild or, I dunno, all OSR games, tap into that creative problem solving loop.

Which brings me to BUTCHERY? Well, kinda. First it brings me to Monster Hunter.

Monster Hunter is a HUGE franchise of action-RPG games from Japan that’s only recently started breaking through overseas in a big way. I came onboard with MH Tri back on the Wii and have been hooked ever since.

MonHun hides that core problem-solving loop within layers upon layers of design. Everything about the game’s boss-level enemies - their creature design, animation, movesets and game stats, even the local ecology where they’re found in-game, all feeds back into that loop.

It’s not just “Fire... water!” with MH, although that’s one of the layers for sure. It’s big footprints... big target” and “old scattered bones... carnivore?” and “tunnel... shortcut... trap?” and “bathes in mud... protective coating... wash it off during the fight somehow” and “if I can find out what it eats I can drug the food, or leave a trail to get it close enough to this other monster’s territory and get them in a fight, then jump on the monster’s back and ride it away as it flees to its nest where I can fight it one-on-one -“

*inhale*

And you find all this out through playing. Fighting monsters makes you - the player, not the character, characters don’t level up - better at fighting monsters. It was Dark Souls before Dark Souls.

It’s a good game.

Etrian Odyssey’s battle system - also an inspo

Which, finally... BUTCHERY.

I’m loathe to put more mechanics in a TRPG. So much of what I love about these games I found through the OSR and subsequent takes on that genre - light and streamlined rules that you hack apart and work around in play.

But you, or at least I, need that intersection between pure freeform play and The Rules to really hit a sweet spot, and when i run BUTCHERY I feel like I’ve hit that same spot that Pokémon and Monster Hunter did for me. People burnt out by 3e through 4e often complain about TRPGs that try to bring in “video game” elements, but if my dang golf game hadn’t clued you in yet, I’m all about that noise. Or, at least, if not bringing in elements directly, then the feeling they evoke.

BUTCHERY’s monsters have individual parts, each a hit location with its own HP. (This is never as crunchy as it sounds to prep - there’s a basic template formed around a d6 table that can be easily adjusted on the fly.) Taking parts out can disable a monster’s abilities or kill it outright. Avoiding damaging parts lets you harvest them later. And, crucially to that investigative combat - each hit you make in BUTCHERY, each reaction the monster takes, tells you more about your prey. And the more you know, the harder they fall.

No lore to read or boxed text or intelligence rolls. Just roleplay and combat - the meat of the game.

I didn’t even have to suggest that my players start keeping a Bestiary with details of all the monsters they fought, to reference during that same fight or in case they come across the monster again. But they did. BUTCHERY just makes these things happen effortlessly, and I love it.

BUTCHERY is coming to ZineQuest on KickStarter tomorrow. Click here to follow the project!

further BUTCHERY

The farmhouse door bursts open, and a young woman steps out, brandishing a pitchfork. She is very thin and pale, tall with fair hair that falls limp about her dirty and stubborn face.

The butchers tell her that they have come for the witch. The girl seems confused, but since they seem to mean her no harm she asks the men for aid. Not knowing that Ivar has just done the same, she offers payment if they’ll find the root of the blight that plagues this valley, and has affected her family worst of all these past months.

Allas shoots a knowing look to Dannoll. Twice the reward.

The two accept the girl’s offer, tie their horses to a fence post and stoop inside the home. Within is a warm hearth, two beds, a crooked table with three stools, and little else. On one of the stools sits an older woman, cradling a baby to her breast and staring into the fire.

She does not look up as the butchers enter, nor does her glassy gaze falter as the younger woman tells her that these men have come to help. The younger woman apologises, telling them that since her father’s passing nearly two months ago, her mother has barely spoken.

Allas and Dannoll inquire further, sensitive to the girl’s troubles but clinical in their pursuit of information, like physicians seeking a diagnosis. They learn that the babe is her baby sister, both the other woman’s children, born around the time her father died - and also that there was another child who did not survive. This is no inherent surprise, and the family like many have lost children before, but seeing a faint picture of the truth begin to form the pair ask where the deceased have been buried. There is a grave, the young woman tells them, on the other side of the wheat field.

The two waste no time in setting out, hopping the low fence into the field. Blackened crop falls apart beneath their strides, the smell of decay filling the air.

Then Allas hears a sound. Something rustles from the tall stalks that now surround them. Dalton draws his spear and Allas his meat hook, just in time for a pair of bloated, dog-sized insects to burst out, round mouths chittering with sharp teeth, yellow-green abdomens bulging and heavy.

These are monsters - unnatural beings brought on by humankind’s meddling in Nature. Nature cannot suffer them to live - and it is a Butcher’s duty to enact her will.

The pair set to work, displaying with grim efficiency the skills that earned them their title. Dannoll pierces the gross abdomen of one of the creatures - to his peril, as the wound spurts acid up his arm, burning him. The stuck fiend squeals, running up the spear’s haft as Dannoll retracts his arm and managing to graze the man’s face with its mandibles before he flings it to the ground again.

Allas, seeing his friend’s plight, aims for the creatures legs, landing a sweeping hit with his hook. Dannoll grabs his net, weighted and threaded with the same silver that is forged into all butchers’ tools, and flings it over the remaining monster, trapping it.

Allas hacks away the rest of the first monster’s legs, rendering it immobile, screeching. Dannoll stabs at the trapped one as it writhes and scrapes its way free of the net - to no avail. Soon, both are dispatched.

The men clean their tools. They discuss theories based on the research of similar monsters - these things feed on pollution. Monsters they may be, but they were attracted to the rot, not its cause.

Taking a vial from his pouch, Allas leans in close to the spear wound his friend left, and collects some acid. Most of the carcasses are too damaged to harvest, but a butcher knows to take samples when they can.

The sun is sinking lower, almost at the horizon, as the pair trudge through more decaying chaff to find a clearing at the field’s far boundary. Three cairns here stand - one, grown with weeds and weathered by age such that it barely resembles a pile of stones, the next far newer, and the third likewise fresh, but smaller.

Dannoll pauses for a second, the grimness of the situation not lost on him. But they are butchers first, and have a job to do. If there was witchcraft afoot here, they theorise together, then the timing of the recent deaths in this family cannot be a coincidence. They don’t know exactly what they expect to find here, but it’s the best lead they have.

They start to dig.

Dannoll moves black soil, thinking that it looks as though it were disturbed more recently than a month ago, while Allas starts a small fire. The first chill of evening settles into the air as the sun turns dark red and sinks lower still.

Six feet down is a small box.

The fire will cleanse any trace of witchcraft, and should break the spell. That’s old, winter magic. Respectfully leaving it closed, Dannoll places the box on the flames. They flicker, lick and char the wood, beginning to take.

The sun sets. The box rattles.

*

... And that’s your lot. Our tale concludes next week.

Let’s get into the mechanics of what’s happening here, specifically in the fight with the bugs. In some games a lot of that would be pure flavour over a series of to-hit rolls, but with BUTCHERY all the detail in there came organically from the mechanics!

(I like my game, ok? Humour me.)

So combat in BUTCHERY is pretty simple. Players take turns however they’d like. You get one important action on your turn - get to a particular position, use an item, standard fictional positioning stuff. Some of these are gonna be resolved with checks - there’s a basic d10 roll-under thing by way of a “standard resolution” mechanic.

If a butcher is engaging a foe in combat at all, they do a different type of roll, with 1d6 and 1d10. The 1d10 functions a lot like the standard roll-under check, except it does a couple of things:
- if it rolls under (or equal to) the character’s AGI stat, they evade the monster’s retaliation.
- if it rolls under (or equal to) the character’s Skill level in the Tool they’re using, the attack can be a killing blow.

There’s a lot of jargon in that second one so I’ll unpack it a bit in a sec. Firstly, the “retaliation” thing - monsters don’t get turns in combat. They just auto-succeed on a hit if you engage them or if you’re still in range of their attacks from the last round (i.e you didn’t spend this turn defending or moving). The AGI check part of the d10 roll lets you know at a glance if they hit - PCs have 6HP, lose 1 on a hit (and roll a location die if you want to know where you get a cool scar). And the monster action is called a retaliation because obviously they can do more than just attack if they so wish!

The Tool thing: Tools are weapons or anything else a butcher uses in combat. Specially made stuff, like a Witcher’s silver sword. PC attacks always hit - just like the monsters’ attacks - but if your d10 hits the sweet spot of the Tool you’re using it can do more than just damage. There are a bunch of situational rules depending on the monster - more on that next time, don’t worry it’s all v simple - but the main thing is that only a “success” can kill the monster outright. You can wail on it and do damage for free, but important hits need that low d10.

That’s a lot of info packed into the lil d10 roll! But I’ve found it’s super quick to parse, not least because the roll-under system makes it mathless and easy for everyone at the table to work out each little bit of the result at a glance.

As for the d6...

I mentioned it above, but BUTCHERY has hit locations. On PCs they’re mainly just a fun and optional bit of flavour, but for monsters they’re crucial to how the game’s investigative combat style plays out.

And that’s what I’ll cover next time, along with the final part of this session’s play report.

Hope you like what you’ve seen of BUTCHERY so far - stay tuned if so, because I’m looking into getting it into your hands soon so you can have a play for yourselves :)

a little BUTCHERY

The butchers Dannoll and Allas are travelling on horseback along a long country lane, winding through hills, fields and farmland.

No birds sing. Before long, the fields they pass begin to smell. The crops are sickly, wilted and blackened, with each field yet worse than the last.

Hearing hooves behind them, the butchers pause by the roadside, dismounting. Allas hides his silvered hook beneath his cape, small crossbow also loaded and ready at his side - but the precaution is not needed. The riders pass, barely owing the men a glance. These are ordinary folk, peasants in makeshift and scavenged armour, holding old blades and farm tools as weapons.

The butchers follow at a distance, still wary, and come across the ragtag band stopped and deep in conversation, their horses circled and shuffling nervously. A lane leads off the road to a tiny farmhouse, with a hay barn in the dirt patch out back and a field of festering wheat beside it.

The folk argue. Whatever their mission, they’ve faltered, hushed voices raised in dissent. Among the snatches overheard are calls to retreat, to make new plans, and one word repeated - “witch”.

Seeing the butchers approach, and recognising them as such by their bearing and silvery tools of the trade, the leader of the riders hails them. Introducing himself as Ivar, he suggests to the strangers, and his own band, that they could pay a professional to do their work. This seems to satisfy the others, and Ivar asks the butchers their price for dealing with a witch.

It transpires, as Ivar tells it, that crops all through this wide valley have been struck by a blight that has lasted over a month now. After some investigation, he and his militia - the guard for a nearby township - have found the epicentre of the rot to be this very field. Nowhere is the blight worse than here, and it seems to spread from this spot in all directions. Believing a witch’s curse to be at fault, and blaming the woman that lives here, they had come to deal justice... though would be glad of a butcher’s aid.

Seeing that these are poor folk, and wanting little for coin, Dannoll suggests that they be paid in supplies for the road. The group agrees, turning to head back along the road, eager to leave.

The pair, glad to ply their trade but still apprehensive, approach the farmstead.

Aaaand if you want to know what happens next, come back next time.

The above is an actual play report from the first ever session of a new game I’ve been working on for my home group. Here’s how this all came about:

Dec 24th: Watching the new Witcher series (a solid 3 Stars from the Graverobbers Guide) with my partner, I remember there’s a Witcher tabletop game. I browse the pdf on my phone that night, imagining it might be fun to try with my group, the rest of whom are fans too.

It doesn’t seem like my kind of game exactly, so I begin houseruling in the back of my mind. By the time I fall asleep, I’ve scrapped most-to-all of the original and am considering making a new system.

Dec 25th: No time for work. Food, family. The ideas bounce around the back of my brain.

Dec 26th: Yes, this’d make a decent game. Not much more thought put into it, though the ideas are more solid now. Departed from the inspiration somewhat. Finish the series (very much 3 Stars).

Dec 27th: Ask folks round for games the next evening.

Dec 28th: Scribble my ideas on the back of an envelope, think up a quick starter adventure. Playtest over dinner.

It was a hit. I’m having fun with this one. Some notes on the system so far, since I know that’s what you’re here for:

- kind of still the Witcher but also Monster Hunter and a dash of Etrian Odyssey, plus tons of my own low fantasy preferences - big themes of Nature and humanity’s odd place as being both Of and Outside the “natural order”, and also how that natural order is harsh and amoral. Early Britain and Sengoku Japan and all my faves.

- aggressively picaresque, fuck a monomyth. Episodic adventures that feel like short stories or Witcher 3 sidequests. Still tweaking the tone but it’s much more Mononoke now.

- Combat as sport?! But still brutal. Weird mechanics, PCs do one roll that governs a bunch of details and that’s their turn, HP is different, there’s aiming and hit locations are a thing. Already sounds disgustingly crunchy compared to my normal fare but it’s oddly seamless in play. Calling it “investigative combat”?

- Magic is magical, no spells or anything. There’s alignment but it’s different and also good now

- monsters need stat blocks because of how some mechanics are but it’s hugely fun to write for (while I normally spend literally 0 time on that kind of thing) and I’ve never seen players more engaged in a fight.

- Easy to GM once the prep is done (took me an hour? Prewritten adventures wouldn’t need a second). Never felt bogged down by mechanics, most of that is player facing and seemed intuitive enough.

- Planned for an hour’s character creation + mini adventure, played all evening. We were all into it, plus lots of feedback which is great.

Been drafting a rule book and it’s pretty much done barring further playtests. Miiight do a ZineQuest?

Also I want to try and do at least one con this year so if you do UK RPG cons and know a good one, bug me to come and I’ll run a game for you.

Next post will be the next instalment in the play report, with any progress on the game made between now and then. (General trigger warning for the rest of the story as it deals with some darker themes, but if you’ve played or watched the inspirations I mention above it’ll be nothing you can’t handle.)