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Episode: 3283
Title: HPR3283: HPR RPG Club reviews Dead Earth
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3283/hpr3283.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 20:12:49
---
This is Haka Public Radio Episode 3283 for when they became a third of March 2021.
Today's show is entitled, HBR RPG Club Reviews Better and is part of the series, tabletop gaming.
It is hosted by Klaatu and is about 53 minutes long and Karima Cleanflag.
The summary is, escape reality by pretending you live in a dystopia.
This episode of HBR is brought to you by an Honesthost.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HBR15. That's HBR15.
Better web hosting that's Honest and Fair at An Honesthost.com.
Hey everybody, this is Klaatu. You're listening to Hacker Public Radio.
In this episode, me, Benny, and McNalloo get together to review the dead earth tabletop role-playing game.
We're doing this because we meet as the Hacker Public Radio RPG Club which you're invited to join.
Anyone listening to this or should you have a friend who doesn't listen to this but might be interested in getting together to play tabletop role-playing games are invited to join.
Contact me or subscribe to the Hacker Public Radio mailing list for information on when and where that takes place.
Most recently we played a role-playing game called Dead Earth which is a very obscure role-playing game
which we gather from bits and pieces of history that McNalloo found online.
More or less fell apart in the end but was committed to the commons through not a creative commons license, not a public domain license,
but the GNU free documentation license which isn't a normal license I would say for a game product.
But it certainly has worked out I think because it has been preserved on the internet and I myself have taken it and added some missing information from the pages of what we have and I'm working on a wholesale revision as I record this episode in fact.
So eventually there yet may be a version 2.0 of dead earth.
That aside I want to talk really quickly about the game itself because in the review we're talking about aspects of the game and listening to it through the edit I realize that some of it may need some context.
So I'm going to just say that game 1 or game 0 if you prefer of dead earth we got together and we built characters together as a group.
Building a character in dead earth involves coming up with a name for your character and then rolling dice to find out your height I think and then based on your height you find out your weight from a big table there in the front of the book and then you roll dice to find out your age and age is very important because it determines how long up until the game starts next session or whatever your age determines how much experience your character has had in the world and that's represented by experience or skill points rather.
And also by radiation how much radiation they've been exposed to because in the world of dead earth it's assumed that the apocalypse comes not from arbitrarily let's say a virus for instance but from a nuclear explosion so there's a lot of radiation hanging around and so if you've been if you roll a character that is quite old like up to 60 I think is what the cap that they put onto it then you you'll have been exposed to quite a lot of radiation and that is determined.
Or rather that influences how many how many radiation effects your character will will have heaped upon them and there's a big big chart as a whole chapter in the in the book of just literally 1,000 radiation effects so that comes into play and that affects your character in different ways maybe it makes them super weak or maybe bizarrely it goes the mutant route and makes them super strong so it kind of depends on on really the role of the dice and a lot of randomness and you know what I mean.
And once that's done you go through and spend your skill points and when I say spending spell skill points you look at your character sheet which has a hundred skills on it and you can purchase as it were you can spend your skill points on buying dice for your skills and so if you have a skill like driving driving automobiles then you could buy an extra dice for or two extra dice or three extra dice.
So you're you're very good at driving and that's represented by how many dice you're going to roll when the game master asks you for a role on driving and the reason the dice the more dice you have affects the results of of a role is because what you'll do is you're going to add your dice together.
So if you roll three dice together and you roll a three of four and a one then you would add those together and determine that you've just rolled eight.
The game master looks at a chart that determines the difficulty of pretty much any action or or not any action but a difficulty scale and and the game master applies that to an action so for instance if you have the keys to a car and you get into the car and you start the car and you want to drive down to the other end of the city that's probably a pretty easy action so it might be rated at for instance a six or rather a five I think was the lowest number for difficulty.
If I just rolled in eight then I would pass I would pass that check and I will have successfully driven down down the street across the city now if on the other hand I needed to evade a bunch of bad guys who are running towards me with baseball bats trying to smash my windshield then I might have to roll a lot higher than just a five that might be determined more like a 12 or a 15 or a 30 or a 24 whatever obviously at certain at certain numbers of dice you're just not going to be able to roll as high.
For for very complex things so if if I was being pursued by a bunch of bad guys in on motorcycles on foot and in cars the game master might determine that that's a 24 level difficulty task that I'm trying to achieve I've got three dioces of driver you can pretty much guarantee that that character is essentially never encountered that kind of stress before and even if I roll all sixes and get an 18 I'm still under the under the 24 level that I need to succeed at that task.
Now if I add another dice to my dice pool later by getting more skill then of course I can roll on on more complex tasks and that kind of continues on up until I think 51 is the cap of how difficult something is 51 is essentially considered impossible and that would require quite a lot of dice in in one skill.
The interesting mechanic about the game is that every time you are asked to roll or you ask to roll on a skill you gain a skill point whether you succeed or fail.
So if I say I would like to try to pick that lock or Jimmy the lock as they say on the character sheet Jimmy locks then the game master would determine well how complex of a lock is this if it's just an off the shelf old lock that's been that's been neglected for a long time.
And maybe it's even a little bit weakened by rust and such then maybe it's a it's a very easy thing to open.
Just shim it open whereas if it's a very new lock and is is high security and really really well designed maybe you would take longer for you to to pick that lock.
Whether you whether you succeed or you fail you get a skill point for having attempted it and that represents that your character is learning from experiences.
And that's an interesting sort of life like mechanic I think and so as you gain skill points through the game you can then spend to them on new skills or on rather on on adding dice to your skill pool.
You can distribute that that dice that you purchase to to whatever skill you want and that's how you kind of build up the experiences of your character.
So if you've ever played D&D then you might be kind of surprised by this because there's no class system in dead earth.
You just have a hundred skills and you just build those up in whatever combination that you want.
It's an interesting it's a fun game mechanic the skill sort of the class list just skill list a lot of people quite like that model better than classes because classes assume certain things.
They make you kind of fit into a mold whereas if the skill list is just a skill list then you've got sort of the tools with which you could build your own mold.
That's what we that's what we experienced with dead earth that's kind of the long and short of it there's there's a little bit more to it than that but that's that gives you the basics.
So now let's get into our review and find out what the group thought.
Okay, roll each of you roll initiative this is senses plus move.
35.
All right, I guess you go first because I could only two dice.
Yeah, 10.
So the first question is how was the character build process and I'm speaking specifically about the process not the resulting character.
We'll talk about the resulting characters afterwards, but what was the how did you like the character creation process?
It was I say at first it seemed very daunting.
There was it was it was difficult to understand, although you explained it pretty clearly.
I'm not sure I found it quite so clear having read the PDF.
But it wasn't, but as we got into it, I didn't think it was that bad.
There was a lot of searching through the document.
I mean, there was hundreds of things, not like a tables of hundreds of numbers to look up.
So that was quite tricky.
But then that also added it was actually became quite amusing because you really did not know what you were going to get.
You know, it was all completely surprising when you got to the result of especially what was it called the radiations is that what it was called?
Yeah, so these are these are peculiar effects that are that you apply to your character during the build process.
I presume, you know, because the radio act to fall out there like mutations or something like that or I don't know.
Is that what? Yeah.
Yeah, I thought that that was my favorite, but and all the various effects that had to add to my character, which we'll talk about later, I'm sure.
The build process is a very table driven in a way because like you had to cross reference your weight, your height, tables for everything.
And then there was the big radiation table.
So I think it would be a mistake to come to the character build process with having in mind what character you want to play like that.
I think you'd be setting yourself up for disappointment.
That's exactly one thing I liked about this game that you basically had no control or almost no control over what your character turned out to be.
So you had to just play whatever you ended up with.
They have that weird sort of caveat in the rules where it says you're allowed to discard up to two characters as you're building, but you have to play the third.
And it's kind of funny because obviously there's nobody holding you to that rule.
So it's sort of a weird sort of self-imposed limit.
And I don't know. I guess if you're all building characters together and someone says, okay, I'm going to discard this character because I don't like it, then that would be the way to police whether you throw away a character or not.
But maybe it's just to kind of assure the player that it's fruitless to try to keep rolling up a new character in hopes of getting the exact combination that you want.
There is also a problem with this rule because the character can die during creation, right?
And if you, if basically three character die during creation, you're not going to play.
But I thought there were a couple of things where the rules weren't that well thought out, didn't work that well.
So we had to basically bend them or append things during the character build or you mean in general.
Yeah, this was a general statement for the whole game, not just the character build.
For me, the interesting part and also the kind of weird part was the radiation table where you had this list of numbers you rolled and then you had to go through the PDF.
I went through the PDF and read the first, the first radiation was like, well, that's interesting.
So I tried to figure out what my character can do. And then I went to the second radiation.
And like, like the sixth or seventh radiation was like, well, now you have to roll a number.
And depending on this number, you have to cross out even or the odd radiation.
So I was left with again, that was left with like three of them.
I didn't like it because it kind of left left my character a bit empty.
I didn't get too many features of the characters that others got from the radiation table.
So I think that sort of touches on probably a bigger problem with sort of the design of that process is that there's so much during character creation.
I mean, they're trying to be like wild and crazy and it's like, we're not afraid to blow anything up.
But in the process, the things you go through all this work and then you turn the next page and it says, okay, everything you've just done is negated.
It's like, that's really a frustrating.
If you do the, if you do the character build process rules as written, you're actually supposed to roll for every single skill.
And there are, if you'll recall, a hundred skills.
You're supposed to roll your dice to see if you're good or you know that if you're what did they call it?
If you had a natural aptitude for it or a, I don't know, a disadvantage for it, you're supposed to roll a hundred times.
So one for each skill, it was just crazy. It's like, no, nobody's going to do that guys.
But they knew that this was crazy because they gave an alternative way to do this.
Oh, no, they didn't.
Are you sure? I think I read this in the PDF.
Yeah, that's, that was my, I modified the PDF.
Oh, all right.
All right.
Yeah.
I mean, and all I did was add missing information.
I didn't go through and obviously clarify the rules.
I didn't like rewrite the, the rules that I just added new stuff as I thought, the way that I, that I had played like the one time that I played this game with other people.
So that's why I was why I understood when we were doing it is the, you said you had to modify the rules for that.
The other thing that I think the penny dropped for me, but the whole, the whole process would be like.
Whereas when we, we had very low strength values.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, I think maybe one or more of us had strength values such that we couldn't even stand up.
We couldn't even lift ourselves.
And then you had to use the weightlifting skill to get out of that.
I think that's somewhere, to me, that was like that, that put the money into the whole build process.
You may not even die.
You just might have a character that doesn't make any sense.
Yeah.
I think my character was basically dead when I created it and they just used the weightlifting skill to kind of lift a strength that they could walk and lift easy, light things.
Yeah.
And then by contrast, Philip, who isn't on this call, but our third player had Arnold Schwarzenegger build, like his strength was through the roof.
Yeah.
So I mean, the difference between the characters was just beyond.
And the funny thing is that the rules actually give Arnold Schwarzenegger as an example, unless you added this part to.
No, no, that wasn't on my edition.
That was the rules.
Okay, well, what did you think about your character?
How was it to play the character that you ended up generating?
Were there enough features and abilities for that character?
Give me your thoughts on that, McNally.
Yeah, I mean, there was a huge hurry of different skills, I suppose.
Far more than Dungeons and Dragons.
I think he said there was literally a hundred of them kept a rule for each one.
So that meant there was never a problem that you got playing D&D way.
Hang on, which skill do I use for this check?
You know, it was always pretty clear.
If anything, the problem was being able to hold a hundred in your head, you know, knowing that there was actually a relevant skill.
So, but actually in the end, you know which skills you're good at.
And if there's enough of them, then, and there's a few of you in the party, then actually I thought that that bit worked quite well.
I think the, I found it much more different.
I did find the, you know, in Dungeons and Dragons, I don't know which I'm going to keep comparing it against, because that's the one I know best.
I mean, you've basically got the six fundamental attributes.
I didn't get a feeling that there was a fundamental set of attributes.
It wasn't really clear to me what moves and strength, etc.
I can't even remember the rest of them.
And yeah, it was niche to be added two together, like we did earlier at the beginning.
I felt that confusing. I never, I sort of got better and I got more comfortable with what's taking me on.
But I felt that was something that I never quite got my head around my satisfaction after a few sessions.
The attributes versus skills, I mean, mostly you don't use the attributes.
But then all of a sudden, there is something that calls for the attribute.
So, you're, for instance, your move count.
For combat, you need that all of a sudden.
Your strength, I think you needed that for some reason, but only sometimes.
I think it's indicative of probably sloppy design, maybe, that you just kind of pull in those attributes there on the left of your character sheet once in a while.
But mostly you're writing on your skills.
That does get very confusing, I think.
But I do think that because the character build process, they encourage you to do it together as a group, which we did.
I do feel like you can kind of, as a party, you can kind of plan out the skills that each other are going to have to kind of get that collection of relevant skills.
So, the duplication, I feel, might not happen the way that it could happen, for instance, in a D&D game where everyone goes off and makes their own characters and then shows up.
And says, oh, you're playing a bard? Oh, I'm playing a bard, you know, and then you've got two of the same, whatever. So, I don't know, that's kind of nice.
Does, does data specify that you should do the character creation together?
It's something that they say in the PDF that that's what they recommend. I mean, you don't have to, but they're definitely recommending this too.
But found it, found it a bit weird because in the end, you have to read all these pages of, of radiation table through.
And it just didn't make sense to me to do this together.
I mean, it made sense to me to put together the skill sets and everything together.
But then it took a lot of time to figure out what the radiation table adds to your character.
And you definitely have to do this on your own.
Especially since, as you said earlier, a lot of the radiation results would then force you to go back through and recalculate a bunch of stuff.
What did you think about your character, Benny? How was that for you?
I liked the part about the skills, because the skills were the part where you could kind of design your character a little bit and give it a direction what it can do or what it's good at.
I felt a bit like, my character felt a bit dull compared to the others, because the others had those weird radiations.
I mean, Philip was the one who was always cleaning everything and needed everything clean and freaked out if something wasn't in order.
And McNally was mute and apparently not deaf, as I figured out in the middle of the game.
But he couldn't decide on actions on his own, right?
And this is also a weird thing to play, because you have to somehow figure out how to play something like this.
And compared to those two, my character was a bit like, just, well, I didn't have like special features or anything.
I just had my engineering skills I picked, gave it a direction to play.
That's down to the game's design of like, let's just be wild and crazy and let total randomness actually rain.
Yeah, that's fun if you zoom out and look at the game, you know, it looks really crazy.
But then as an individual player experience, like you're looking at the other players and you're like, they've got these cool features.
And I'm just like a normal bloke and it's kind of a weird, you know, it's like there's a difference between what the game looks like when you're looking at it on the shelf versus like what happens when you get down into the microcosm just one person's experience.
That this game does not do that well. It is not fun if you're the one player at the table who didn't get a cool radiation a feat or whatever.
Well, I mean, I was afflicted with you could argue too many cool radiations.
So if I can recall the most fun ones, I was mute so I couldn't speak.
I was covered in postures some reason.
So I was pretty disgusting. I was geriatric. So I was older than my years.
But I think that the one that was the most debilitating was I was moot.
And what moot means is, as Benny said earlier, is that I couldn't, I couldn't take any initiative by what, you know, I couldn't, I had to wait for somebody else to tell me what to do.
You know, and now, you know, being mute and moot is a pretty killer combination because, yeah, I could even have a conversation verbal conversation what I'm doing next.
And I can't initiate it.
Didn't you have another radiation that basically contradicted those two?
Well, that was the one where you wasn't there one where you wouldn't, you were like very focused or something that you wouldn't give up or something like that.
No, that was, it didn't contradict it. That was, it's called brutality.
And that meant if I started a fight, I could only end it with me dying or the other person dying.
You know, there was no, there was no letting them live.
Yeah, I think that that's not, that's not the one I meant. I mean, this, this kind of works out.
Yeah, I don't think there was one.
I think the, the, the attributes of my character, I was, I had, I had good senses.
I don't know, it wasn't called charisma. I was street wise.
You know, I had that's right. Yeah.
The equivalent is charisma. I had that.
And you got to wonder how a mute, mute person could exude charisma of any kind.
Yeah.
So I'll be street wise even other than seeing.
And how can you be street wise if you, if you can't take the initiative and anything?
I mean, to me being street wise, like, for example, would be knowing when to cross the road when, when knowing who you can approach or not approach.
I really have that.
So yes, the character was contradictory, but I didn't actually feel most of the time.
That was a problem in playing it.
I actually filmed it quite enjoyable because it was a challenge.
It was like, well, how can I, how can I play this character?
You know, I'm quick keeping playing. I'm quite happy.
If I'm very keen playing a character, it's nothing like me.
And so this was a bit of a challenge.
But unfortunately, as it turned out, the challenge was mostly not on me, but on Benny.
You didn't have to do all the thinking, didn't you?
Yeah, true. Especially the one session where Philip, the session Philip missed.
So we were only, there were only two of us.
And there was like, I had basically to do all the, all the playing, right?
So you just, you just followed me along.
Yes. I mean, the one thing that we did sort of discover is that once you started, once you gave me a task,
it was possible for me to then use my, not initiative, but I could, you know, I could,
which you pushed me, I could, I had some momentum, I could keep going with a task
and use some discretion in that.
I think we decided that.
And although, of course, other thing is that the other ability that I had, my character had rather,
was brain sonar, I think it was cold, where underwater, my brain sent up some ways
and I could detect things, but Clattery very kindly extended that to include sand, buildings, and air.
Yeah, I mean, we were in the desert, this was, wasn't a useful thing to have,
unless you extended to something that actually exists in the desert.
Yes, yes, I think that was a great pragmatic choice.
Otherwise, my character was just a burden to the rest of you, I think.
That is an interesting point, though, broadly that you're making.
You do, in this game, I guess, you end up having to lean on each other,
probably a lot more than you would have to in D&D.
Like this might be like the ultimate team building exercise, you know,
because you're going to end up with a party who one person can't make decisions,
the other person can't stand on their own, you know.
And so you start to like, it does become a collaboration of like,
okay, well, how are we going to be a functioning party in this wasteland and make this a game?
It's kind of a weird, it's a weird burden to place on the players,
but it is kind of interesting that it does place that burden on the players.
Like, here's your, here's what you have to work with now,
make it into a game.
I'm not sure what you find a company that actually would use this as a team building.
I think so.
I think though, what I was thinking is realistically,
it's pretty quite a brutal scenario, a whole dead earth thing, you know,
especially the premises adventure where we're all kidnapped and stripped of all our possessions at the start.
I've got feeling the rest of my party should have probably just go rid of me, you know.
And so I was just, you know, until we discovered the brain so on our thing,
I was just a liability in my character.
You know, I wouldn't have objected to that.
If they decided to try and do something to me,
I would have had to kill them and that would be an end of the game for even them or me.
I think most likely we would have gotten rid of you before being kidnapped even.
So I mean, there was no reason for you to still be in our party when the game started.
What did you guys think of the rules set that the rules themselves?
Like once we started playing, how did you find the rules?
Confusing, I think. I didn't find it straight forward.
I don't feel after all the sessions that I was really, I was really,
yeah, I'd really quick up my head around the rules and the PDF,
which was I think fairly well written from the bits that I did read was big.
I mean, it was quite hard to navigate.
Not something wrong with it, just because it was so detailed and big.
And yeah, I guess we're going to come back in a minute.
But yes, it's got a steep learning curve and unlike other learning curves,
I didn't feel we got to the point where it started to get shallower.
I mean, it felt fairly steep all the way along.
Yeah, I agree with what Magnalu said.
I also think reading the PDF is well written,
but it feels a bit like the first version of something that should continue
with a second or third version where they clear up things,
where they simplify things that didn't work out that well.
I mean, it was always like, it was kind of hard to fit all the pieces together.
I mean, the single rules, what they described were simple enough,
but then you had somehow fitted all together and it just didn't.
Sometimes it felt it didn't quite fit.
Yeah, I think you guys are both dead on.
I mean, I don't know that they do fit sometimes.
And it might be because we're all used to D&D,
and maybe certainly I felt like maybe I was trying to fit it into my D&D sort of frame of reference.
But there were things where sometimes you were supposed to roll on skills with your D6s.
But then there's a whole rule in there of rolling a D100 to see what percent of success,
a chance of success that you get.
And it's not really clear as to when you're supposed to do one over the other.
And so I kept falling back on you, I'll just roll against a skill.
But I have a feeling that maybe at some point I was supposed to be using asking for D100 rolls,
but it's not clear in the rules as to what the difference is.
When are you supposed to use the skills and the difficulty table?
And when are you supposed to use a D100?
I don't know.
Yeah, I think that's when you compare it to Shadowrun.
I think that's a huge difference in Shadowrun.
I think the rules are also complexer than the rules of D&D and harder to learn.
But it feels like a well thought out ruleset.
And if you dig in deep enough, you will find your answer to Question X Y said, whatever.
And this didn't quite work out with the doors.
Agreed, 100%.
Also, you guys must have read a different PDF than me, because well written is not an adjective
I would have used to describe that PDF.
Right, okay.
It's a horribly written PDF.
And just for the record, there were sections in there that they don't even try to explain.
They literally just say, like in one, I think it's in the combat section.
They're like, combat is too difficult to explain.
So we'll give you some examples instead.
And it's just like, this is the rule book.
You have to figure out how to explain it in this book.
Because this is it.
I guess it's your only chance, guys.
So yeah, I got the feeling that they really kind of expected maybe back when it was being developed.
Maybe they were just like, well, we'll be online.
People can just message us and ask us.
We'll just, we'll talk them through it.
You know, it's just like they really didn't want to write this stuff down.
So yeah, not, not great.
I guess we just, we just thought it was well written because you added stuff.
Yeah, I did add stuff.
I need to, I almost want to commit here that I'm going to do a full rewrite of that rule book.
But there are no if I'm going to get around to it.
But I feel now that we've played it, because I've only played that, I've played this once before.
Now that we've played it together for, you know, a month, I do feel like I see what they were intending.
And I want to kind of like help them get there, you know, what, 30 years after the fact come in and save the game three decades later.
I was just wondering why either I have a very low bar for what's well written, which I don't think I do have.
Where it might reflect where I spent most of my time, where most of my attention was focused.
And I probably did spend most of my time looking at the radiation table, because I found that the most interesting.
And that's the way that is the most fun part.
And maybe it was the most fun to write as well.
So they put all their efforts on the fun bits and they would come back.
No, I don't understand that myself, actually, to be honest, too difficult.
Let's write another hundred radiations.
I think that is reflective of D&D 3.5.
And I don't know if I don't think either of you have said that you have played that necessarily.
But in 3.5 it was very famous for, and Pathfinder, it was very famous for introducing feats, F-E-A-T-S.
And these were just kind of extra rules outside of the skill system, like things that your character could do.
And so that was kind of in a way like the radiation table, but it was something that players could choose for themselves at certain points of character development.
Whereas the radiation table was totally random and sometimes contradictory to each other and made no sense.
So it's kind of like you get the same kind of complexity and variety of choice.
But in one system, it was actually thought out and in this system, it's just thrown out there and it's like make up at what you will.
Well, I was just going to say, the other reason that we, Ben and I have a slightly different view of you, Claire, too, is that we could just look to you to interpret and tell us what the rules were at various times.
Because we didn't really have to parse the rules after time.
I don't understand this.
What do we do?
Yeah, I have to add something to the rules because there was one thing I didn't like about the radiation table.
It's the fact that the numbers are inconcecutive because you're all three D6s, so you don't get all the numbers between 111 and 6166.
So there are holes.
No, you're not supposed to roll the D6s for that. You roll three D10s or something like that, don't you?
Are you sure?
I'm not sure.
I thought it's D6s.
Yeah, I think it's a D10.
Yeah.
Now we know why your character was so boring.
All right.
Yeah.
That's some really interesting design.
Yeah.
All right.
Forget this part.
You can cut this part down.
I don't know.
Cut that out. That's gold.
I'm sure you were.
No, actually, you may be right, Benny.
Let me, let me, I'm the settler.
But carry on.
And I'll just, you know, I'll check.
Oh, true.
So what about combat, Benny?
I guess you get to go first because McNally was referring to the rulebook.
How do you think, what did you think of combat?
At the start, it was quite hard to figure out because as a non-native English speaker, I kind
of didn't know what half of the, of the attacks were all the moves because they were like special
boxing vocabulary.
So I had to, I had to look up quite a few.
I didn't know what any of those meant either, like hammer fist, double hammer fist, stuff
like that.
Yeah, exactly.
By the time I, more or less had an idea what it meant, it was kind of, I like the design
of, of the fights because it gave you more, like, more options.
And also the fact that you actually had to say what you are going to do in reverse.
I'm initiative order.
So you already know what the one that goes after you will do then.
So you can basically react to this.
So this, you felt more like in, in the actual fight in other role or in D and D at least.
Okay.
I have, I have an answer to the, it must require a D10 because there's seven, eights and nines
mentioned.
But the theory that higher numbers are better or worse or more detrimental to character has a very
massive count example here.
So 019, so it's temporary respite, which means you may re-roll the next three radiations
if you don't like them.
So that's some quite a positive thing for something for nine in it.
020, which are of the two, three low numbers, is called decapitation.
Radiation blows your head right off.
Take 10 D6 damage to your head.
There you go.
That's free representative of the radiation table actually.
Oh, yeah.
And I just, okay.
So Benny, now that you've said about combat, I, I realize I probably should explain combat
a little bit just for listeners.
So the, the flow of combat was this, you would roll initiative.
The lowest roller, the person who rolled the worst initiative had to go first, which sounds
like a benefit at first.
But then you realize that means everyone else knows what you're going to do.
So then we, you sit down as a group together and sort of map out what's going to happen during
that round.
And because each player has a certain number of moves that they're allowed to spend.
It's not like in D&D where you can attack once and move once.
You get a certain number of moves.
Now some of your attacks require just a, just a mover to some of them require six moves.
So you have a little bit of a budget that you have to spend during your turn.
And so you sort of build, I literally just opened a spreadsheet and kept track of everyone's actions
in a spreadsheet.
And you build like a matrix of actions.
And then you go through after you're all done and resolve them.
So in reverse order.
So the best person moves attacks and down back through initiative.
So it's a really interesting system.
McNally, what did you think of it?
Okay, I thought the combat system was really good actually.
I mean, it wasn't simple and it was confusing.
But it did mean that you could think, you could, it did allow for some creative thinking
and how you approach the combat situation, where you don't just swing your axe and you roll a dice to see whether you hit or not and then roll your damage.
You have to think through the order in which you, you'll, you'll do things.
And of course, if you, if you rolled a good initiative, then you can counteract.
You know, like for example, I think one example where I could counteract and move that I heard was going on is that somebody was doing a, I think a kick.
So I thought, well, if you do a kick, you'll end up on one leg.
So I'll do a sweeping kick because that's going to take your remaining.
That's exactly what happened, isn't it?
And then of course, it is exactly what happened.
And then there was another case where I think Benny was opening fire with a gun.
And then I thought, well, I'm going to do a close combat thing here because I'll get shot, you know.
And that mechanic just doesn't exist in other role playing games that I've ever played.
And so that made the whole combat.
Yeah, I totally agree with both of you.
I think the combat is really the, it's the one thing in the game that kind of.
Convinced me that this was worth playing like the combat, I think is just so creative.
And it's so different than anything else I've ever experienced.
I always look for places where I can steal this combat system and put it into other games
because it's just such a perfect solution to a lot of the problems.
I mean, one of the, I have D&D players who hate combat in D&D because it slows everything down, right?
Because you all have to start taking turns.
And so then you're sitting there being bored while someone else debates what they're going to do with their combat turn.
And it's very regimented and it just feels different, you know.
And there's like the flow of the game changes.
Not so in-depth like in-depth when you go into combat, you're all coming together and sort of talking out what's going to happen.
And working together, it's collaborative. There's no more turn-taking.
It's just a complete, it's a, it's a thing that happens and it feels like you're in combat.
And you're revising your moves based on other people's moves to really dynamic system.
And then it's great too because in D&D, at least in fifth edition, the main thing about combat is really just move economy.
That's what you're planning for is I can only attack once.
What do I do with those attacks?
Whereas in Dead Earth, you've got a budget that you can spend.
I know that I have two moves or six moves.
And this one costs three and that one costs four.
Well, okay, how about if I do this one and then that one, you know.
So yeah, I think it's a really solid system.
If you compare it to computer games, it feels a bit more like one of those old like 80s or 90s kung fu style games where you press this button, then you kick.
And you press this button, then you use your fist or whatever where D&D is more where the RPG computer games come from.
What you said, you just hit someone over the head and the odds tell you whether you hit or not and that's it.
Yeah, yeah, very much.
The one thing that I often do when I'm looking at a rule book, well, I think after we first played it is I thought
I'll go somewhere else and find another source of information about this game other than the rule book.
So I can get maybe a different slant and how to approach this game.
And I've done that.
I did this for, you know, it could be it could be videos, it could be blogs, you know, it could, you know, whatever, be a mailing list.
You know, you find interesting things that you wouldn't get from looking directly at the manual or player handbook itself.
In the case of dead earth, what I immediately found was blog posts have to blog posts of the entitled the worst role playing game ever.
It seemed to be the, you know, I plan to think of a film.
I mean, to me, when I was growing up, the film that everyone loved to hate was a film called Howard the Duck.
I don't know if you know.
Oh my gosh, yeah.
Yeah.
Actually, I could like Howard the Duck.
It was a bad film, but it was something just, you know, it was so bad.
It was good or planning for another space or Santa Claus conquers the Martians.
You know, I think that's an unfair comparison.
I think it's got serious problems with this role playing game.
He has no doubt about that.
But it's not in that category.
I think it's, yeah, I think those blog posts have gone for hyperbole, you know,
for, you know, it makes a good, you know, it makes a, if you're going for a clickbait or a maximum hits in your blog,
saying something dramatic like that, I thought that there was a lot of truth to it.
And I thought that some of the stuff I read was just way over the top.
And it was a bit of a shame because it seemed to me there was something interesting about the way dead earth came about.
I don't know the story.
You'll know much more than I do about this class.
But I did come across posts from when people were excited about it when it first came out.
Our references to those posts that made it look like interesting like this is the next great thing in role playing games.
It seemed to have a bit of a hype of buzz about it in the early days.
Would I be right in thinking that or was it me missing interpreting the web?
I have no idea.
Or maybe it wasn't its origins, but when the company that put together,
if I understand it correctly, I think when it didn't go very well,
they released it and tried to make it an open source type game.
Yeah, yeah, they did. It's a new free documentation license.
So that's why I was able, or that's why I, I mean, obviously I could have done whatever I wanted to,
but that's why I felt fine about modifying the PDF because it's a free documentation license.
Okay, so maybe some of the stuff the excitement I was picking up was when that happened,
the community popped up and got very excited about it for a short time.
I don't know.
I do know from the rulebook that they had a very, well, they had,
they offered an online experience where you would, you could track your characters online.
And if you reached a certain skill level, you would literally become sort of an official character in the dead earth world
and you'd be listed online, your character would be.
So there was some kind of community around it, I gather.
And maybe that was a, that was, I imagine that was probably a unique thing back in the 90s
when the internet was still, you know, the widespread internet was still young.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I did see that.
Of course, the website is long-term.
Yeah, yeah.
What about you, Benny?
I've got basically one question that's missing.
So I'll just ask that one.
I mean, by now, you know that I'm quite fond of this toping future stories and like cyberpunk stories.
So what do you, what did you think about the whole setting of the world?
How well was it suited for a role playing?
I mean, I liked it actually.
There's, so the rulebook is split out into two columns pretty much.
And on the side bars are always or are frequently about sort of the world setting.
And then there's another, there's a bit of a chapter in there about sort of how everything fell apart and the timeline.
And yeah, I quite like it.
I mean, it's not super detailed.
It's not like a setting book where you get all the information that you need.
And I obviously leaned a lot on to Mad Max and Fallout.
The video game Fallout to sort of inform what I built for this game.
And I have to say that I actually intended to run the scenario that they provide.
Like a little scenario, an example game to play in the back of the rulebook.
And I was trying to run that, but you lot did nothing that I expected.
And everything fell apart.
And so everything that happened was just me rolling with the punches because you guys did not do any of the actions that I assumed.
I didn't even think to question.
Like for instance, when you were kidnapped in the truck, I thought I know that players in an RPG are going to try to escape being kidnapped.
So that's what players do.
So there's no way they'll ever reach their destination.
You guys let me take you all the way to the destination.
And I had no idea what to do.
So I had everything else planned out.
I was like, okay, so when they get out of the truck, they'll go either left or right.
So if they go right, this is what we, if they go left, you know, so I had everything mapped out except the destination.
Because in no circumstance, did I expect you to reach to let yourselves continue to be kidnapped?
And you guys did that.
So it actually already fell apart at the very first meeting.
It was like, I can't believe it.
And looking back, I can't believe that I didn't account for that.
But, but at the time, it just didn't occur to me.
I just thought if there's one thing RPG players, hey, it's being put into handcuffs, they will definitely get out of this situation.
You guys were just like, all right, we'll wait till the truck stops.
Yeah.
We did, I mean, I didn't try because nobody told me to try, particularly.
And Kuku, which was thought factor, was preoccupied with cleaning it.
And then there was, there was Benny and Queenie. Queenie was with us there.
I can't, I think we did try to escape.
No, don't, don't think so.
You opened up a wheel well, but you guys didn't want to hijack it because you were afraid that they would notice, I guess.
Fair enough.
I can't remember.
I started to manipulate the brakes, but this just led to us hitting a wall when we arrived in the place.
Oh, that's right.
Yeah.
So we're pulling got to the place marginally quicker than we would have done with another one.
But yeah, I liked the world. What about you, McNally?
I'll be honest, I'm not that keen on post-apocalyptic type dystopias.
I prefer the more blade-runnery type dystopias. I don't know what do I mean by that.
So you want the develop, you want to develop civilization rather than the crumble of civilization?
Yes, I think I think I do.
I quite like the idea of in Shadowrun we had an oppressive civilization in the future.
So it's still a dystopia, but it's something oppressive about it.
There's a big force there to fight with, to resist against, and to subvert.
I quite like that idea.
I think, yeah, I don't know why it just doesn't, the dead earth seems very so miserable.
I mean, part of this is escapism isn't it?
And to escape to reality that's even worse than your own.
It's a strange type of escapism.
I guess the main difference here is that what we have in Shadowrun is a society that just gradually fell apart.
And what we have in that earth is something post-apocalyptic.
So there was one huge event that basically destroyed everything.
And that's what we're left with. And that's what's left from society.
And at least in a developed cyberpunk future, you still get the cool gadgets.
Whereas in post-apocalyptic world where everything just got blown up, you don't really have anything cool.
In fact, quite the opposite.
You have to fight using using...
What did Kuku or Philip have?
A fire extinguisher.
He was carrying around a fire extinguisher.
Fire extinguisher is his weapon.
That's basically what you're left with.
I was quite astonished, of course, that's just what he made up.
I was astonished how developed the world in the end turned out when we entered this room where they had actually a generator.
And you hold developed society underground.
I'm a big fan of Mad Max and Fallout and all the other dystopian into the world stories.
So I feel pretty comfortable in dead earths setting, such as it is.
And especially the underground civilization thing.
As a kid, I used to watch beneath the planet of the apes, which is the worst movie ever.
It's just the silliest thing.
But as a kid, I just thought that was so cool to go underground and find these secret civilizations.
That was you riffing it that whole bit at the end where we discovered these corporate people inhabiting the industrial base.
The example adventure was supposed to be you sort of fighting against what's called the power.
And the power is kind of the group of humans who have managed to sort of like a symbol strength and sort of a unified front.
And you're supposed to go in and take them down.
But just because of how things went, I kind of had to make what would be what I think would have been the power originally had to become the good guys that you guys would join.
So yeah, there was some interpretation there.
So what about, yeah, would you would you guys play dead earth again?
Yes, I think I would because I'd like to experience more of the combat.
I'm also quite curious to try the character creation again, because it's just hilarious to be honest.
It's confusing, but it's also hilarious.
And I think you also get a feeling after putting that much effort and understanding something that you don't want it to go to waste.
So there's a bit of that as well.
I think I played again too, but not like something I would like get into.
As I said before, it's not something I would get into like deeply and spend a lot of time on.
But it's definitely something I would go back to for a fun session another time.
Yeah, I think I share that sentiment.
I think it's a great little foray into that world for like a month, but I can't quite imagine it scaling.
But you never know.
I mean, if someone was going to run like a long a year long dead earth campaign, I'd probably join up.
Yeah, it's definitely a fun, a fun thing to check out.
Cool.
Next month we're going to play or starting next week, I guess we're going to play Star Finder, which is a space themed D&D mechanic based game.
And so you guys or anyone listening are welcome to join in on that.
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