Adventure Perilous RPG Quick Start Rules

As the Adventure Perilous RPG Kickstarter launch date of August 1st approaches (be sure to sign up notifications via the prelaunch page) I wanted to out together a bit of a teaser to give folks a feel for Adventure Perilous, So, I have worked up a small brochure-style version of the Adventure Perilous RPG. Now you can download the Quick Start Rules and take a look at how Adventure Perilous feels and plays. While these rules are super condensed, they are playable and provide the basics of the game. In the Quick Start Rules you will find...

• Basic Mechanics of Play
• Character Creation (along with three Heritages)
• Gear
• Magic
• Monsters
• Treasure
• Combat

Two versions are available for free below.

Adventure Perilous Quick Start Rules (full-color version)

Adventure Perilous Quick Start Rules (print friendly version)

A Consolidation of Sorts

 Greetings!

So, you may notice that the blog has undergone some massive changes. For the last several years I have been running (or attempting to manage) multiple blogs for various games I have made. That has proved to be unwieldy, unfun, and unproductive. So, that has come to an end and everything has been simplified and condensed into a single blog for all of Simian Circle Games products. And that is what the new blog is all about. No more separate blogs. Now you can find Far Away Land, Mere Anarchy and the upcoming Adventure Perilous all under one roof! 

More changes are coming, more content is being added. 

(I should've done this a long time ago.)

Dirk

Adventure Perilous Kickstarter Prelaunch!

 

Kickstarter Prelaunch Page

Adventure Perilous is a rules-lite tabletop role-playing game with an 8-bit aesthetic. The game is built on the Mere Anarchy Engine (available to download for free here) with some slight adjustments and modifications.  Adventure Perilous has an easy to learn set of rules and uses only d6s. The system is streamlined and elegant and welcoming to those who are new to role-playing games while also offer unique modular mechanics and systems that veteran gamers will find interesting. For example...

• Combat uses a simple mechanic composed of 2d6 vs a target number based on Difficulty. These target numbers remain constant at all times so players know if a situation is Easy they will need to roll a 6 or better while a situation that is Hard will require a 10 or better.

• Magic in Adventure Perilous is freeform with spells using single word descriptors and effects to create the base definition of the spell. Spells are later fleshed out with specific stats like duration and range and can change depending on situations.

• Classes use single word descriptors, skills, and heritages to create a mass of opportunities for players to make nearly any type of character they want with only a handful of words describing the class. The Class bonus derived from the description allows player characters to be unique and interesting.

In addition to the core of the game, Adventure Perilous also uses unique modular systems for things such as oracles, treasure, building dungeons, legacy characters, between adventures, and NPC and monster generation. Players and GMs can use these modular systems as they see fit, taking or leaving as needed. Essentially, many of these modular systems act as mini games which can be woven into play.

Character creation in Adventure Perilous allows players to use the Class system as described above to build interesting characters that do not require huge lists of skills and stats to define them. Character creation is fast and flexible and provides a simple system to quickly and easily build characters even if you aren't familiar with role-playing games.

The artwork in the game, as you can see in the images above, is all done in an old school 8-bit style. The book is colorful and fun with elements of humor. In the tradition of pixel art, much of the artwork is iconic and meant to help players get an idea for the content while allowing their imaginations to fill in the blanks (those missing pixels).

Sign up to be notified when the project launches! Kickstarter Prelaunch Page

Mere Anarchy Adventure Awesome!

So, Mere Anarchy, at least the core of what I wanted to put out, is mostly done in its raw (I say raw here because the formatting and design is minimal - although it is not truly raw) but accessible form. The game is available for free here and at this point is available in multiple languages, at least the core rules (however, all of the Mere Anarchy books have been translated to Portuguese). 

Over the last few days I have been thinking about the aesthetic of the game, the black and white simplified layout and art, the do it yourself feel, and while I think it works fine (and that was the intial goal, to get the work out and get it into hands), I am wanting to go in a new direction that I feel is a bit more fitting for the game. What I have decided on is a retro gaming look, sort of like the old Nintendo Power Magazines from the '80s and '90s, or the manuals that came with NES games. 

While I didn't have a subscription to Nintendo Power as a kid, it was on my radar and somehow I was able to read and keep up with what was going on. I know I had friends who brought their magazines to school and somehow I had issues (usually random) laying around. Looking in those pages was this sense of awe, discovering how to beat a boss or looking at a map from The Legend of Zelda or Metroid and seeing that world from a bird's eye view was just awesome. Seeing all of the hidden areas and secrets in those ultra colorful pages was inspiration to my young mind and sent it running in so many directions. Reading one of those magazines was like gaining entry into this secret and exclusive world of kids in the know. And seeing pixel art and pixel maps and characters and sprite sheets still creates this sense of joy and inspiration in me today. There is an elegance in pixel art, where everything is as it should be. There is also this sense in leaving so much up to the viewer's imagination that I really love. Let the viewer fill in the empty pixels. So, with that inspiration and all of that nostalgia being said. I am putting together an 8-bit inspired version of Mere Anarchy.

I wanted to post a teaser as a sort of proof of concept of what the finished thing would look like. The idea is to effectively emote that retro (at this point is it even retro?) 8-bit sense which feels incredibly fitting for Mere Anarchy. All of the artwork, characters, monsters, weapons, maps, dungeons, etc. will be pixel art. In future posts I will take a look at some of the tools I am using to make this process a bit easier and more effective as pixel art can be an incredibly tedious and timely affair. For now there is this page to give a sense of what the game will ultimately look like.

This is a project I am ridiculously excited about as it is pulling so many different things I love together. More coming soon!

Site Updates and Generators!

 Greetings!

Creativity is Fluid
I realize that my path to making stuff whether it be games, art, writing, etc. is really dependent on my mood and what is influencing me at the time. This is really a driving force in my creative life and something that guides the direction I move. Mere Anarchy was really a side project to help me cleanse my palette from working on Far Away Land for so long. I just needed a creative outlet and that outlet became Mere Anarchy. And now that I am deeply invested in Mere Anarchy, I feel the creative pull in various directions as you will see below. This is just how I work and while this piece of process has its strengths, keeping things fresh, allowing me to learn new things, etc., it also has a downside in that I get sidetracked by things that inspire me and I want to pursue in the exact moment. For example, I will read a game or watch a video of a video game or see a post on Facebook and that single nugget may become a gravity well of inspiration for the day, week, or even longer. I'm a kite. So, if it feels like I am often all over the place in what I release or the direction I am taking things, that is pretty much the case - just blowing about on a sea of ideas and letting those ideas come to tangibility as I see fit. The nice thing about Mere Anarchy has been the release of finished content in stages. This has allowed me to feel the completion of a project and then the excitement and newness of a new project that I can begin work on. This has also offset the daily toil of creating a project in private over several months or even years. The community around Mere Anarchy has helped greatly with that.

Okay, a couple quick announcements...

Mere Anarchy in Italian
Mere Anarchy in Italiano has been updated with some small changes (thanks to Francesco Catenacci for all of his hard work and expeditious awesomeness in the translation of Mere Anarchy). I have always said that Mere Anarchy is an evolving work and subject to change. There won't be a Mere Anarchy 2nd edition or whatever but changes may take place in the existing rules over time. 

Mere Anarchy Generators
So, I am putting together a series of generators for Mere Anarchy. The NPC Generator is already up and the PC generator is on the way! A monster generator will follow shortly. Also in the works will be a world event generator and possibly an extensive history generator. It might be nice to have an output option and a print option as well? I'm in a learning phase here and starting from the bottom as far as coding knowledge. Fun to learn new things though.

Upcoming Releases
I am hoping to release the Mere Anarchy Kingdom rules here shortly. Playtesting was put on the backburner due to other stuff going on (I get sidetracked with things like the generators etc.). 

Dungeon Design Contest
The Dungeon Design Contest wraps up at the end of February. Submissions will be judged and the winner gets a sweet little miniature that I sculpted. The finished version is below!

Dirk

A Quick Look at Mere Anarchy Kingdoms

So, the Mere Anarchy Kingdoms rules are undergoing some extensive testing as everything gets finalized and balanced. I have included a playthrough of the Beginning Era of a kingdom below but first I want to sort of explain what the rules do and how they work.

Essentially, MA Kingdoms is a group narrative building game where players take turns creating and narrating events in a kingdom. The end goal is to create a history of a kingdom from start to finish (or even to simply establish a bit of backstory and history for a kingdom). 

A kingdom is divided into three eras: beginning, middle, and decline. In each era players take turns determining the year, the event, the scale of the event, and persons and things involved in the event. These event attributes are then used as keywords to create a narrative for the kingdom. After each event is created and narrated, the Era Die Pool is rolled to determine if the kingdom has graduated to the next era in its lifetime. Once a kingdom exists the Era of Decline, it collapses. This event is narrated as well.

Play can consist of players all narrating events in the same kingdom or each player narrating events in their own kingdoms. The book contains...

• Overview of MA Kingdoms and how to play
• Event generator
• Event scale
• Historical Figure generator
• Historical Thing generator
• Kingdom Name generator
• Kingdom Attributes (for details on things like population, attitudes, etc.)
• Kingdom Collapse rules

Here is a sample test where I ran through events in the beginning era of the kingdom called Dragonkeep (yeah, that's actually the name that I generated). Don't pay attention to spelling/grammar as these were rough notes.

Just some quick notes: all names were randomly generated. The keywords generated as event attributes were used as the basis to build a story that made sense.

The Kingdom of Dragonkeep

Symbol: A green dragon above a keep.

Beginning Era 

Year 30. Event: Collapse, Figure: Charlatan, Thing: Failed Idea, Scale: Major

The Charlatan known as Gresikmere pretended to be an engineer from a far off kingdom. Gresikmere proposed the creation of a dam to provide a natural reservoir for the kingdom. In the year 27 of the kingdom dam construction began. Three years later and halfway through construction, the dam collapsed and led to the deaths of 50 people. 

Year 90. Event: Ancient Evil, Figure: Trader, Thing: Guild, Scale: Minor

A Trader named Davis Hollowshadow from the Guild of the Swapping Hand, delved into the ruins upon which Dragonkeep had been built and discovered a tomb under Castle Dragonkeep. Hastily the tomb was opened and the demon Glassopheles was released. Upon being released Glassopheles murdered Davis Hollowshadow and made its way to the surface where it fed on several infants and young maidens before escaping Dragonkeep and heading into the wilderness. The people of the kingdom, although disturbed, thought little about this event and blamed greed. The ruins under the castle were sealed off without further investigation.

Year 110: Event: Explosion, Figure: Villain, Thing: Technology, Scale: Major

The Villain known as Flint Distantwind constructed a massive bomb using blackpowder and the dried entrails of fire breathing dragons. The bomb components were placed inside a carriage. Flint detonated the bomb (along with himself) at the gate of Castle Dragonkeep. The explosion was massive and caused great damage to the castle walls. Some 60 people were killed in the blast and a great crater was left that in the subsequent year was converted into a moat around the castle.

Year 140: Event: Trade Route Shifts, Figure: Prisoner, Thing: Structure, Scale: Minor

An escaped Prisoner known only as The Wolf gathered a group of marauders and footpads and took up residence in an old tower outside the kingdom. For the next two years The Wolf and his men robbed and murdered a great many people on the north road that led into Dragonkeep. As news of this grew merchants from neighboring kingdoms stopped sending shipments via the North Road. Eventually the exploits of The Wolf reached the ears of Dragonkeep’s King and soldiers were sent to dispatch the ne'er do wells. The Wolf and his men were quickly defeated but it was years before trade on the North Road from Dragonkeep resumed.

It was at this point the Beginning Era came to an end and the Middle Era began...

Slacking on the Blog But Lots of Work

Past Work and Translations
So, while I haven't posted in a couple of weeks although I have been working diligently on Mere Anarchy. Since the last post we have released Mere Anarchy Dungeons, Battle of the Colossi, and Mere Anarchy Oracles. On top of all of that, all of the books that have already been released have been translated into Italian thanks to Francesco Catenacci! Really amazing work Francesco. Thank you so much for taking the time to do that. Everything can of course be downloaded from here for free 

I know that the Mere Anarchy Core Rules are also being translated into Spanish, Portuguese, and Hungarian. I love that so many people have taken an interest in this little game from all over the world. I really appreciate the effort and work people have put in in these translations. Thank you.

Currently
Right now we are running a Dungeon Design Contest over on our Facebook group. The idea is to use the Dungeon Builder to help create a dungeon for Mere Anarchy. The contest post is pinned in the group https://www.facebook.com/groups/500517761169092 

Upcoming
Projects currently in the works include Mere Anarchy Kingdom Builder, Mere Anarchy Overworlds, Mere Anarchy Book of Violence, and some map books. After these are completed I will probably begin putting boxed sets together. Still some work to be done on this but it is all coming together and the box sets should be really cool. The plan is to hand make all of the booklets and do all of the printing and design and everything in house. As much as possible. I want Mere Anarchy to have a certain feel to it, like something small and niche and evolving. 

Dirk