What value can be found in randomness?  At the time of posting, the asking price of $3 will give you 30 tables of 6 random things.  Random things like "An electric chair" and "Liquidity".  And the purpose of all this randomness?  To shape the world, provide ideas, and challenge yourself as a GM, according to Venger.  Let's put that to the test and roll the dice... 15-2, 22-3, 7-2...

You enter the room where your red-headed contact was supposed to meet you.  She is not there.  Searching the room for clues, you find her black stockings.  Not only do you realize that she is a "real" red-head, but wrapped in the stockings is the Atari 2600 cartridge "Adventure!" which actually contains the Top Secret Algorithm for getting laid.  So, what will you do?  Sell the algorithm and be rich, or find your contact and be a hero?

Would I have come up with anything like that on my own?  Nope.  In fact, I wasted an entire evening rolling the dice to see what I could come up with.  Addictive. This product does what it promises to do, but I think the real value is how it can inspire you in surprising, if not random, ways.

Yep, 30 totally random tables, one ad for Purple Prizm, and on page 9 a cool b&w art piece of a woman leading a dragon. Suggestions for these charts are to get your imagination going before a game or during the game and try to work the results in somehow. You can roll a d30 to determine the chart then a d6 for specific result. The tables are really filled with such random things I don't see a pattern but I do think there is enough oddball stuff in here to spark some really wild adventures. Have fun with it. Was on sale for $2 when I bought it.

Kobayashi Maroon is a 25 page book containing 3 episodes(adventures) and an appendix. Heck of a package in this book, recommended if Alpha Blue is your jam. I like the short adventures because they give you a start and end and are complete. Beginning with a foreward by Venger in which he gives advice on running the sex parts of Alpha Blue and finding a comfort zone for your game group. It's really practical and useful info, just read your table and ease into it. Now, episode 1 is the unwinnable scenario like in that movie with Capt. Kark where he fiddles with the parameters to avoid losing, but you dont have that option and chances are you'll get sucked into the big Pink Hole and meet your maker. It's a ship rescue mission but very dangerous. As is standard for Venger's products there are naughty bits and a couple random tables in here followed by a piece of art thats just quite striking. Episode 2 starts off as a solo adventure, you find out your wife is a plant that has been spying on you, cause that's what Federation Agents do, and you catch her in a compromising position. Hilarity, laser blasts or an impromptu threesome could happen next depending on how you take the news. If you want to get to the bottom of why you're being spyed on you can chase down your wife's boss and get the scoop...and end up in a mexican standoff? Well yeah, you do. So you and 5 others find yourselves in an every man for themself throwdown to bring this adventure to a close. Episode 3 begins with the crew being notified of the upcoming Catalina Wine Mixer which happens to be playing host to the competition to appoint the next Chief over the local systems. Surely the lure of power, respect, and 100,000 credits will be tempting enough? You will also be acting as security for the event...what could go wrong? There is a terrorist to apprehend and a Zith Lord who really wants to win the overlordship of the local systems. The appendix has a blue balls chart and full page tracker, a cunningulus random chart, a new massive damage rule, Venger Satanis statted up as an NPC, some random names, and a huge chart of activities that someone you sneak up on may be engaged in.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

Blood Dark Thirst clocks in at 24 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page kort’thalis glyph, 1 page editorial, leaving us with 21 pages of content, so let’s take a look!

Okay, the first thing you’ll note upon opening this pdf, is that it’s gorgeous: The layout by Glynn Seall, with its blood tint and splotches, is glorious. There are no less than 7 (!!) full-page artworks within, all adhering to a mostly black-white- and-tones-of-red aesthetic. This is easily one of Kort’thalis Publishing’s most beautiful books; perhaps even the most beautiful one.

This may not be a surprise to anyone, but I’ll state it nonetheless: Blood Dark Thirst is another rules-lite modification of Venger’s VSd6-system, which is also employed in Alpha Blue, The Outer Presence and Crimson Dragon Slayer. This means you roll 2d6 for most tasks, with advantages and disadvantages reducing or increasing the numbers rolled. 0d6 means rolling 2d6 twice and taking the lesser result. The system then is about interpreting what happens. 1 is a critical failure, 6 a critical success – “Yes, and”… or “No, and…” are the key words here. 2 is a failure, 5 a success, and 3 and 4 are partial failure and success, respectively. These are the base rules; they’re very simple and easy to grasp, can be explained in less than a minute, and is all you need to know to play.

Character creation is similarly painless: You choose three things your character is good at, and thus gets a 3d6 pool; 2 that you’re bad at (1d6) – there is a 20.entry table to randomize these, should you choose to go that route. These are not all equally helpful. Investigation/Perception and Awareness/Alertness are two entries, for example, that could have used specifying for what they’re used respectively. The character gets three flaws (d20 table provided) and picks a quirk that sets him apart. Then you pick your birth, the age when you were turned and mannerisms. A d30 table with a column of male and female names is provided.

The game does have a couple of more crunchy bits, though: Each character starts with 6 humanity, looking human; evil acts decrease humanity, at a maximum rate of 1 per night, and humanity 1 means you look like a monster. Vampires can hold up to 6 points of blood, and only one may be spent per round. Rising at dusk actually costs 1 point of blood, so yeah, you will need to feed. A human has 6 blood; 3 may be drained sans medical attention. Often. Also due to blood being the resource to heal. A vampire begins play with 25 Health. Humans regain 1d6 per day, vampires need to spend one point of blood to regain the same amount. Vampires do not die unless decapitated or consumed by fire, so yes, you can be revived! This is important to keep the combat system in check.

Who describes first acts first, which isn’t a system of initiative I enjoy –iit results in competitive shooting matches by the players, but that’s just my preference. Damage incurred is based on the attack dice pool size, and damage explodes – 6s are rolled again, results added together. Damage can carry over to others when killing NPCs.

Vampires can have up to 6 Willpower, and up to 3 may be spent per scene/encounter, but only 1 per round. New characters begin with 0 Willpower and earn Willpower by roleplaying flaws. Willpower may be spent to resist supernatural effects, resisting bloodlust/frenzy, making a new vampire or adding 3d6 to the dice pool. Frenzy? A vampire down to 3 Blood rolls an additional red d6; less blood means you roll more red d6s. If one of them comes up as a “1”, you enter bloodlust. Here’s the thing: there is power in bloodlust: If the red die comes up 6, the vampire may take the critical success result, provided he is roleplaying the flaw or immediately feeds.

Now, as far as vampire abilities are concerned, the vampires all get the ability to influence minds, have better speed and attacks and more devastating attacks – however, all of these require the expenditure of, bingo, blood. 20 more sample powers, with another one gained every level. Sounds like Vampire: The Masquerade/Requiem? Well, kinda. But not really – the pdf has Vengerized the vampire, taking a cue from vampsploitation movies: Vampires are not living or undead, but rather bloodthirsty demons; they are monstrous and not necessarily noble; there are no bloodlines, though sunlight, religious symbols, stakes, fire, etc. are all covered as traditional weaknesses. Vampires do not have to be invited in, can cross water, etc. – many prohibitions that would impede gameplay have been designated as false. And yes, they can have sex. This is from the man whoo brought us Alpha Blue, after all. ;)

Vampires can form bloodbonds, which may enthrall or affect the relationships. Vampiric slaves for blood and a d6 table to establish the grip on the victim is provided. Similarly, a d6 table to determine whether you were seen, and a general list of 6 NPC challenge levels is provided. Leveling is simple and governed by completed story-arcs, here designated as campaigns.

The pdf also provides an introductory scenario of sorts that features a handout-ish letter; beyond that, a few words summarize a sketch to develop; this is supported by a d20 table of occurrences in the city, and a d6-table of information about the city’s ruler.

The game comes with a nice, impressive character-sheet.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are very good on a formal and rules-language level. This is probably Venger's best-organized and most concisely presented VSd6-game. Layout is, as noted before, full-color and gorgeous, and the artworks are similarly amazing, particularly considering the low price point. I have never seen such an inexpensive game look so good before. The pdf comes fully bookmarked, and a second, more printer-friendly version is included in the deal.

Okay, I’ll freely admit it. I was not particularly excited about this one. I loved VtM’s lore, disliked VtR and frankly didn’t expect to see this game work; Venger tends to gravitate towards a beer & pretzels style of gaming, and looking at the page-count, I expected this to be too rudimentary. It’s not. The frenzy-dice-mechanic adds tremendously to the engine’s usual iterations and just FITS. The focus on being a blood-sucking demon, coupled with the really high turn around of blood points and unreliable victim-grabbing also means that just remaining fed can be a struggle, evoking a grimy vampsploitation “blood-by-the-buckets” feeling that distinguishes this from VtM et al, in spite of the thematic overlaps. This actually manages to feel differently from the game that inspired it and the other Vsd6-games; it is, mechanically, by far my favorite of the bunch.

That being said, Blood Dark Thirst suffers from a single downside that prevents it from being the crowning jewel in Venger’s games. The length. BDT is super-short, and ultimately, more than his other games, it would have deserved to be significantly expanded. If this had different bloodlines, more powers, perhaps a couple of magic items and the like, it could have been my favorite super-rules-lite game. As presented, this is a basic toolkit, and it delivers what it promises for a fair price point. At the same time, the adventure-sketch could have used further pages, and the game, as a whole, would have benefitted from more room to shine. Frankly, I found myself wishing that, at one point Venger may get back to this and expand it to twice, thrice the size. Blood Dark Thirst is a fun, promising game for those looking for a rules-lite, savage vampire game. (As an aside: In such an expansion, different pool sizes for Willpower, Humanity and Blood could allow for a wide variety of game-styles and extended campaign play…just sayin’…)

I really enjoyed this game; apart from it’s limited scope and length, there is nothing I really disliked or found problematic here. Thus, my final rating will clock in at 4.5 stars, though I can’t round up for this one. Here’s raising a blood-filled chalice to hoping that our thirst for an expanded version will one day be quenched!

Endzeitgeist out.

The Outer Presence manages to put a very Lovecraftian feeling scenario and a light rules system into a 40 page book. Venger presents a d6 pool system up front and gets you a character built quickly in the first dozen pages of the book and the rest of it is dedicated to the jungle setting of New Guinea where you are sent to help recover an expedition...but its a horrible thing you're heading into. Really light rules, dark and deadly trek through a jungle, deadly cannibals...only thing is that some things happen to the adventurers randomly and theres a feeling of luck, but that seems pretty OSR to me.

Venger's take on OSR fantasy gaming, CDS puts you in your choice of race/class combo as you are transferred into an avatar in a video game. Six abilities, 3d6 generated scores, hit points, all familiar if you have experience with DnD/pathfinder type games and a simple advancement chart up to level 10. Warrior, wizard, thief, ranger classes with a couple subclasses and a d6 pool system make this a fairly simple game to pick up and a simple conversion rule lets you use OSR monters from similar systems, really a 40 page book thats got a game system and introductory adventure should be plenty of game time out of this product. Written in the vein of Venger's blue humor, I like this game and plan to use it for some one shots in the near future. I got the softcover and the cover has a nicely colored dragon, the interior art is b&w but very appropriate for the subject and looks like some was from a conan product.

Girls Gone Roque is an excellent sourcebook for Alpha Blue rpg. If you liked Alpha Blue you will like it as well.

Basically you get more of everything, more tables, more character options, more sleaze and more NSFW artwork. Art is again of varying quality although it is still predominantly good.

In addition to all that it includes rather nice, and light like with the rest of the game, system for ship-to-ship combat.

In summation if you liked Alpha Blue and it's overtly sexual and sleazy humour you will like Girls Gone Rogue.

Alpha Blue is exactly what it claims to be 70's and 80's inspired sci-fi sleaze.

It has rules almost as light as air but enough structure to not be completely freeform. System is based on simple d6 pools that generally go from 1d6 to 3d6 of which you usually only count the highest result. simple as that. the games does make use of plenty of other dice as well but mostly in it's many random charts which go from small d4 charts up to d100 and does include a few rare d30 charts for those of us with d30 gathering dust on the shelf.

Art in the book is NSFW for the most part in b/w pencil that varies in quality but on the avarege is rather good.

The setting is not defined rigidly and leaves a lot for the gm to use as they will, allowing you to play humorous, and sleazy, versions of your favourite sci-fi franchaises.

The book itself is easy and fast to read, despite it's page count, and contains a lot of old sci-fi references many of which I have almost certainly missed.

As a summary: Alpha Blue is a great rules light system but it's humour is not for everyone, but if you like sleazy humor where playing through intimate scenes is encouraged and comes with slight mechanical benefits then it is the game for you.

Alpha Blue has already established itself in how it runs and rules galore, in it's rule lite fashion. At this point it's about how crazycan you get and what gonzo things have happened you wonder you could turn into a table for randomness. The color layout inside this book is a change for the usual and it looks fantastic. Reading gets your imagination flowing and brings you into a world of possibilities not in the book racing through the readers head. But this book also sends you off with a handful of hooks to run single sessions in thie world or link them together in some crazy campaign across the galaxies. That's the flexability of Alpha Blue. Star Ports, Space Stations, Ship travel, Casino Heist, or just a party gone wrong in the Blue Light District. Any setting works because Venger has touched on all over them across his AB line. This is a strong possible closure to the series. William L.

Like others have said, this is a great installment to the Alpha Blue line up. If you have Alpha Blue, bances are hou have this book grom KickStarter and are loving it. The art in this book is mostly digital. Im not going to say its a big improvement over previous book's art. The art in those books were hand drawn/classic pics that paid homage to old school rpg as much as they decorated the pages and that was/is cool. i will say the art in this one is hot, kick ass, and by far the sexiest stuff to date. If you just get the book for the art, you wont be dissapointed. The last thing Ill say is that this works as a suppliment for almost any space game. The ideas and concepts are laud out in a basic format that is simple to apply. As always, the adventures and tables deliver a charmingly crass social commentary that shines a spotlight on the most ridiculous and stupid nuances of the human condition! I love it!

Every once in a while, a non-game-company book on how to game-master will appear, and it is useful for game-masters to take stock of what they are doing and see if they can learn new tricks. But be warned: this book has mature black-and-white artwork that extends beyond that of the original AD&D First-Edition art, and also Venger Satanis is presenting his own personal ideas on game-mastering, and "Venger will be Venger".

The book is about 2/3rds game-mastering tips, and you will find many pieces of useful advice. There are things even another GM has not thought of before, such as meditating on your campaign for half an hour in-between games. Meditating? Yes! This is in the sense of sitting and concentrating only on your campaign and how it is going, to the exclusion of mundane real-world concerns. That way, you can think more clearly on how it is going and how to steer it better. He also warns not to lose sight of balancing an encounter so it is meaningful: it must have a reason to entice the players into it, a risk, and a reward. If any of these weaken, the players will not bite or lose interest. He made a tip about drawing up a diagram of the names of your players, if you are doing a demo for example and have not met them before. I would have expanded on this tip and said you should take a full-size sheet of paper and draw an outline of the table you are using, write on the outside of the table each player's name in relation to where you are sitting, PLUS on the inside write the name of their character and important stats or information about them, to make an invaluable memory-aid. Unlike social situations, in RPGs we have TWO names to track for people we meet instead of one.

The remaining 1/3 of the book is a grab-bag of random and sometimes whimsical generation tables to add spice and ideas for your game, plus an imaginary language of his own creation, Viridian, with Viridian-English and English-Viridian mini-dictionaries. Want to come up with the name of a Cult quickly, how they look, and what their motivation is? Venger has a table for you!

But his tips were not organized in any thematic way. I would have liked to see chapters classified in chronological order based on the steps of the campaign: world-design, adventure-creation (he actually now sells another book entitled Adventure Writing Something Something Swear-Word Something), character generation and introducing a campaign (often called Session Zero), running the game, presenting the game in an effective way, the age-old discussion of risk-level and character death (in his games with many players, he says he averages a character death every 3 sessions), and he had a tip on concluding a campaign with a satisfying close, whether it's merely the end of a "TV season" or meant to be the finale episode as the group moves on to some other game. The book could have greatly benefited by classifying tips into some such chronological or thematic scheme. Sometimes there will be tips that don't fit in any particular phase of a campaign (like the tip about dressing neatly and being well-groomed as a salesperson would, as if you are presenting something worthwhile and important, which you should definitely consider your campaign to be!)

So I think it's a great book of fresh tips AND tips that bear restating, broadcast on the inimitable frequency of Venger Satanis's persona.

Once again Venger knocks another supplement for Alpha Blue out of this galaxy! This book adds even more tables, scenarios and characters to the sleaziest space rpg on the planet. The switch to full colour since the last book carries over here with some amazing artwork. The writing is very well done and will add so much to any game with an adult sci-fi theme, not just Alpha Blue. Hopefully this is not the last book in the series, but if it is then it is going out with a bang!

The odds and ends of Alpha Blue. If this is the last one - well, it goes out with a bang. It is not a very structured book, more a collection of adventures, crazy tables and wired encounters. And if you love Alpha Blue, it's exactly as you would want it.

Leasure Suit Larry meets Captain Kirk in adult humor space opera. Nothing more to say.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

This module clocks in at 15 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 2 pages of Kort’thalis glyph, leaving us with 11 pages of content, so let’s take a look!

So, first things first: This module was made for Crimson Dragon Slayer, using Venger’s FREE rules-lite dark fantasy rules. The adventure itself, is in presentation, very much an old-school module, in that it eschews read-aloud text and the like for the most part – there is a box provided for a key scene. When using said rules, a brief table for some effects a cleric might have on unearthly creatures is a potent angle. 4 rumors and 4 reasons for the PCs to arrive at the scene of the adventure are provided. Before the PCs reach the excavation site, they will have to deal with fully-statted winged bat-demon-things. Combat-relevant beings like these tend to be statted for Crimson Dragon Slayer, noting HP and dice pool, but conversion should not be too hard for most old-school GMs, should you use another system.

NPCs are noted with flavorful descriptions and motivations, but don’t have stats. The biggest hurdle, conversion-wise, would be a “spell”, which is thankfully slightly tighter in its codification that CDS’s in my opinion non-functional free-form magic system, which boils down to “I try to convince the GM this works.” (Yeah, I will forevermore complain about the like – I just don’t enjoy it. No, I will not penalize the pdf for this.) The module presented sports a couple of Venger’s trademarks: It is very high-concept, has a couple of delightfully nigh-unpronounceable names and focuses on presenting a situation, without prescribing how it’ll run its course. The adventure features a stunning full-page full-color artwork, but not map for the complex to be explored. It should be noted that I can see this work particularly well for DCC’s aesthetics or LotFP, should you be playing those systems.

All right, this is as far as I can go without going into SPOILERS. Potential players should jump ahead to the conclusion.

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..

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So, the PCs arrive at basically an archaeological dig, where one person actually has the Al Azif (rename it if you’re as tired as I am of dragging the poor ole’ Necry around) and from nobility to a Rosicrucian and a sage, there are some interesting NPCs to interact with. Touching the strange metal of the tomb that is explored can btw. have disquieting ramifications. When the sage’s brother arrives, he consults the book and deems the excavation unsafe. No one listens. Sure, his agenda is black as the night, but he, technically, is right. As antediluvian air escapes from the breached sepulcher, the PCs can wander into a strange dungeon where drops of acid drip from daemonic flesh, and ultimately lay their eyes upon the eponymous dead god, sleeping or dead. Indeed, a PC may unwittingly bond with a horrific alien entity that acts as basically a symbiotic, living artifact that can halt the flow of time, a servitor creature that may well kill the wielder, one in service to the dread inhuman god-thing lying there. A dark wall contains mighty glyphs that contain a superbly potent spell; essential salts may be consumed to speak to the high priest of the fallen deity and worse, there are hatchlings…

The finding of the dread great old one/deity may well end civilization, the start of a truly apocalyptic campaign…if you, for example, enjoy Shadows over Vathak, it may make for an interesting prologue to the proceedings hundreds of years later. Or you can use this to start something weird. This module pulls out the biggest punches of the mythos in the very first session, connecting because they are not expected then, but rather at the end of a campaign. This presents a couple of interesting variations for you: As the pdf closes with ideas for the benefits of having a dead god under your kingdom. The angles/suggestions here literally can govern whole campaigns, making this a truly efficient kick-off module.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are very good, I noticed no serious glitches. Layout is gorgeous and one of my favorites in the whole Kort’thalis catalogue: With shades of purple and orange, blood-spatters and the like, Glynn Seal really delivers here. The b/w-artworks are nice, and the full-page full-color piece is fantastic and not something I expected to see in such an inexpensive supplement. The pdf comes fully bookmarked with nested bookmarks and a second, more printer-friendly version. Kudos!

Now, Dead God Excavation is not a hand-holding module; it is a sketch for you to fill out; it requires that you flesh out the main locale, potentially stat the NPCs, etc. It has no synopsis that would make spontaneously running it easier. Here, I get why. This is a proposition for a whole campaign or at least a story-angle, disguised as a brief introductory module. A Gm should think carefully about the ramifications of the adventure, of how it will shape the future. The presence of a variety of very potent concepts usually reserved for endgame-scenarios means that this is deadly; greed can kill PCs; so can curiosity. This is unforgiving, but it is brutal for a reason. It makes sense in the context of the adventure. The high impact nature of the module and clever use of player-expectation subversion makes for a fun and ultimately cool scenario. Sure, as always with Venger As’Nas Satanis’ relatively free-form modules, you’ll have to do a little more work structuring/fleshing out components, but for $2.50, it is worth getting!

That being said, I think that this offering suffers a bit from its presentation – DGE can’t seem to really decide whether it wants to be a toolkit/campaign-theme or adventure; as a toolkit, it is a success – the setting of the stage it delivers, is fantastic and evocative. However, the whole thing is billed as a module, and as such, it is more sketch-like than it should be. The descriptions and prose are top-notch, but the adventure doesn’t offer that much meat/substance. As a module, I think this would have benefited from being less abstract, from being more concrete. On the other hand, the aspects of the toolkit function basically almost invalidate the function as a module. No GM/referee/judge will run this as presented. It doesn’t have sufficient details for that; it’s not intended for that. At the same time, the suggested turn of events and characters make the toolkit-aspect feel less customizable than they are.

DGE would have made a truly outstanding, high-concept toolkit for a campaign, had it gotten rid of its pretensions of being an adventure. As written, it does not really qualify as either adventure or toolkit as perfectly as the quality of the prose and set-up would otherwise guarantee – it tries to have its cake and eat it, too, and is weaker off for it. To cut a long ramble short: This is a phenomenal inspiration for a game; a great little supplement to scavenge materials and scenes from, and, much like the eponymous dead god, a nice place to build a campaign on – I just wished it focused structurally in its presentation more on embracing being the modular toolkit that it wants to be. As such, my final verdict will clock in at 4.5 stars, but I feel I can’t round up for this one.

Endzeitgeist out.