#rotted capes

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sketch sale commission for @necronomeconomicism of their character Morai. Get yours for 15 dollars etc etc etc

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Mint Reviews: Rotted Capes: Second Bite (2nd Edition)

The world ended a year ago, give or take a few months. In a regular world, a zombie plague would be bad enough: but this isn’t a regular world. Our heroes, our super-powered saviors rushed in to try and protect us, but they only ended up turning into the very things they were trying to defeat. And now it’s just us, a group of sidekicks, anti-heroes and old villains, all banded together to try and keep our little circles safe against undead creatures with laser eyes, flight, and extreme aggression issues.

This is the world of Rotted Capes.

I played Rotted Capes 1e a few years ago with friends, and I wrote about it here, when I talked about playing new games. The creator of the game reached out to me to ask if I could do a bit of promotional work for the second edition, which is currently funding on Backerkit.

I agreed to do a review of Second Bite, based off of the promotional materials and quick-start I was given access to. Let’s dive in, shall we?

The Setting

When it comes to the premise of Rotted Capes, not much is different. You’re still scrappy almost-heroes, with limited superpowers or technological advancements, in a precarious position trying to protect your community from mundane and super-powered zombie threats. When I read the 1st edition, I remember really appreciating the way the authors provided GM advice to help you walk the tightrope between superhero and zombie fiction: four-color heroes struggle to maintain the proper image in front of their public, and communities experience tensions when trying to survive in a world that has fallen apart. I love the tension in trying to protect a community that could see you as dangerous, over-protective, too-controlling, or untrustworthy. I think a lot of those tensions are going to translate over to Second Bite, regardless of rules.

A bonus that I’m super stoked about in 2nd edition is the addition of extra rules & procedures regarding time between big missions: in 1st edition, there was some general advice on how to role-play in the community, but the bulk of the detail focused on game-play in combat and running missions from locations outside your home base. Second Bite includes procedures to help you track things that matter to your enclave, like Cohesion, Resources, and Security. If you like base-building mechanics, or perhaps game pieces that represent social conflict, these additions sound like a great extension of the post-apocalyptic genre, and I’m excited to see them added.

The Rules

The 1st edition of Rotted Capes was very intimidating to me as the result of its crunch. In fact, it took me over 2 years to rally myself to run a one-shot for some friends of mine. However, I don’t regret the work it took to put into the game: our takeaway at the end of playing was that much of the crunch was front-heavy: we had to do a lot of work to build & understand our characters at the beginning, but in play much of that was already calculated and we didn’t have to go over it a second time. It might have something to do with the character sheets that I created on Google Sheets, but I do think some of it had to do with the fact that a lot of rules became easier to understand once we witnessed them in play.

Original Rotted Capes used a 2d10-based system, with additional dice added to your roll to represent skills & attributes, The size of your additional dice was determined by the value of your trait. This meant that you were always rolling at least 2 dice, and typically you’d be rolling more if you’re doing something you’re good at. This is excellent for players that are dice gremlins, or anyone who loves the tactile experience of games, since you can enjoy the sound and feel of multiple dice in your hand.

Second Bite has had what the author calls a “full rebuild” of the rules. Character creation is streamlined, and the skill lists of the 1st edition are switched out for something called skill sets. One of the biggest things I noticed is that there’s a big change in the basic attributes available: 1e had eight attributes that define your character, but 2e has six attributes that resemble the core stats for D&D. You also roll a d20 instead of 2d10 for typical action rolls, which is a little bit more swing-y than 1e, and you roll an extra d20 when you have advantage or disadvantage, taking the best or worst result. You still get the addition of extra dice for certain skills and such, and you still use Stamina and Wounds rather than Hit Points. As a result, you have a game that might feel more familiar to folks who have played D&D5E, but with some key differences that connect to the 1st edition.

One of the changes that stood out to me the most was the initiative system. In Rotted Capes 1e, tracking initiative involved a clock that you move characters around, with simple actions costing only 1 or 2 slices, while complex actions might cost 4 to 6 slices. The new initiative system is much closer to 5E: actions & reactions, with a limit to how many you can do in a round.

My Takeaway

To be frank, some of the changes that bring the system closer to D&D made me a little sad. In my initial brush with Rotted Capes, I really really enjoyed the initiative system. I thought it was fresh and exciting, and I liked that it had a visual representation that helped us visualize how fast or slow combat could move. It allowed players to do a bunch of simple actions in a row before an opponent could fight back, and it broke up complex actions by making those characters wait in between to allow other players to get involved. I found the character creation rather complex, but the product was unique, and the handful of different-sided dice was really satisfying to roll with whenever we entered combat.

There are some elements in Second Bite that I appreciate. There are more options for where superheroes get their powers, and there is a streamlined option for folks who don’t want to engage in a fiddly, granular point-buy system. The character sheet is updated with a burnout track that I super appreciate, as burnout was a little difficult to remember when we sat down to play our one-shot. I like that there’s a cheat sheet, which I would definitely use if I ran this game a second time. The authors have also preserved the ability to emulate powers by using your set of powers in an interesting way, and I like that this game rewards that kind of creativity. Finally, the skill-sets are more descriptive, rather than 1e's list of prescriptive words with numbers attached, and I think this update makes the use of these skills much easier when you're playing the game.

At the end of the day, the flavour of Rotted Capes is still there. It might be able to attract some more people who enjoy D&D, although I think there are plenty of remains from 1e that stuck around to make the game distinct - in fact, the creator doesn’t call this a 5E game, but holds that it is a unique system. I appreciate that there’s more elements that flesh out the non-combat, non-action parts of the game, and also that the book is looking to include a more diverse set of threats: more than just Super-Z’s, now there’s rogue animals, rival survivors, tech gone wrong, and more. Threats are also simplified, with narrative tags that make GM-ing much less of a headache. I just wish that some of the pieces I liked the most about Rotted Capes were still there.

If you have a table that really enjoys 5E and doesn’t want to stray too far from familiarity, Rotted Capes might be a step in that direction. If you have a table that absolutely LOVES zombie media and superheroes, then I’m sure they’ll love this game no matter what. I think I also appreciate the fact that this version of Rotted Capes is an attempt to make it easier to communicate your superhero concept to paper, and requires a little less math to figure out what you’re rolling whenever you do something.

If you really like the setting but you’re not a fan of 5E, you might still like the 1st edition, which is still available on DriveThruRpg, but if you want a physical copy, your best bet is probably through Backerkit.

[tabletopgayventures]

My TTRPG Characters!!!

Hey I just thought I would type up my various RPG characters over the years.  These are just the characters I have played, a few are GMPCs.  I was still learning how to be a game master and I don’t recommend making GMPCs.  

Torn (He/Him):  My very first character ever made.  An Elf Fighter in Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 and named after the resistance character with face tattoos from Jak 2.  I originally planned to make him a druid but when I found out that D&D druids play nothing like Diablo 2 druids I changed my mind.  Honestly I don’t remember too much about him.  None of our characters had backstories and we only played a few sessions after school before the DM killed all of our characters.  I remember he was cautious and wanted to take things slowly.  He wore scale mail and had multiple swords.

Ultorn [Yule-Torn] (He/Him):  Ultorn was a Dragoon Fighter, a homebrewed half dragon race I found online.  Unfortunately I was a new DM and he was a DMPC.  Same level as the rest of the party but definitely over powered and more central to the campaign.  He had a full dragon half sibling but the campaign fizzled out before we could explore anything more.  He was more of a boisterous and in your face fighter, he didn’t take things cautiously.

Petra [Peh-Trah] the Hand  (He/Him/It/Its):  Petra was my other GMPC in my first Pathfinder campaign.  Petra was an undead right hand of a paladin named Petra.  It could project a ghostly humanoid form that looked like how Petra looked in life.  He was not like a level 20+ GMPC but he was still a few levels higher and did some helping out in combat.  I later transitioned him into a background NPC who wouldn’t directly help the party but would still occasionally pop in to say hi or be supportive in some non-combat way. 

Tryla [Tree-lah] (She/Her):  Ahhhhh My Tiefling paladin with daddy issues and my first 5e DnD character.  Daughter of a high ranking devil or demon to lead their armies on the material plane.  Mother was a cultist who worshiped Tryla’s dad.  Mom wants the three to be a happy family.  Tryla did everything to spite her dad.  Left the cult, became a paladin, refused to be romantic or sexual with anyone, and became a vegetarian.  

Jhessail [Jess-say-el] Tallstag (All Pronouns):  Jhessail Tallstag Kowalski Von Ebonwood III was a noble’s half orc child.  When his father’s human wife had an actual heir so she started trying to assassinate them.  They were sent away to learn magic from a plane jumping conjuration wizard.  This wizard picked up some chronomancy from Exandria and taught it to me.  I liked him as a character but I eventually retired her for two main reasons.  First, their backstory didn’t come in a whole lot and was kinda disregarded when brought up.  Second, DnD 5e’s magic system sucks ass.  I don’t like it and it made things such a slog.  Jhessail was retired after the first campaign arc.

The Blind Barbarian (She/Her):  AKA, Scarlett Paradox as named by the rest of her party.  An amnesiac blind barbarian/paladin aasimar.  I made this character because I found out that if a character is blinded and they have the alert feat then no one can attack them at advantage.  The extra was just flavor, also I gave her amnesia because I didn’t want to write a backstory.  I was kinda disappointed with this character… I wanted a specific homebrew subclass from the DM but he insisted on giving me one I didn’t want.  During a fight with a kraken while at sea Scarlett jumped on its face to stab the thing in the eye.  Some poison was applied and I wasn’t allowed to make a saving throw against the poison so she ended up dying in the kraken’s mouth as it dived.  I miss this character, I know that jumping on the kraken’s face was a stupid idea but I still think I should have been allowed to make a saving throw against the poison, no matter how powerful it was.

Tonee Stanky [Tony Stank-ee] (They/Them):  A gnome artificer armorer inspired by Iron Man/Robert Downey Jr.  I thought the ending scene of Civil War where Stan Lee called him “Tony Stank” was a great name.  Also that RDJ wears high heeled shoes when on set with the Chris’s since he’s shorter than them.  I worked it out with the DM that Tonee was size small when out of armor but medium when in his armored suit.  It’s just for flavor but it’s fun.  They had an unhealthy amount of knowledge and wanted to learn more and more about technology and magic to empower their armor.  This character only lasted three sessions like Scarlett but it was because I had to leave the campaign to do a class.  Unfortunately, the campaign fizzled out long before my classes ended so I was never able to rejoin.    

Hakuna Moonlight (He/Him/They/Them):  The biggest mess of a character I ever made.  Leonin Werewolf Bloodhunter Barbarian and Rogue.  He travelled through multiple planes and worlds so while his backstory is from Theros and Exandria, they have travelled around multiple worlds and was made to join any campaign anywhere.  I played Hakuna until the end of the second arc of the campaign Jhessail and Scarlett were in.  Then they were retired as I started GMing that group.  I later joined another group and brought Hakuna in for a while but he was min/maxed for a more powerful campaign so I retired him from the new one because I felt like he was taking the spotlight from the rest of the party.  

Bethica Bones (She/Her):  The first, non-fantasy character.  Bethica Bones was created for a series of superhero system games.  Inspired by Jessica Jones but with the power to manipulate her skeleton into armor, weapons, and tools.  I only got to play her once in a Rotted Capes game but I hope I get to play her again soon.  I really really like this character and her concept.  

Ugly (He/Him):  When I retired Hakuna I decided that I wanted to just make a fun, not min/maxed character.  Ugly is an amnesiac, one armed undead drow paladin/rogue.  He’s fun and stupid and unlucky.  I didn’t want to write a backstory so I just told the DM he woke up a week ago and anything before then is all his.  We did talk about a couple connections with certain things in the forgotten realms but I’m letting the DM figure when and where those will come in and how they will affect my character.  

[open-hearth-rpg]

#RPGCovers Week Ten Rotted Capes (2013) Rudy Nurdiawan

This is a gruesome one, but it really works for me on a couple of levels. First, it’s the classic posing of the two sides– reminding me of Justice League and Avengers covers from the 1970s. We have two parallel line ups and they’re slamming together with such force that they blow out the lighting in the center. 

But it’s a general reference, rather than an homage to a specific cover. I like that, especially because the art style here is unique, gritty and doesn’t feel like a comic book panel. I can’t quite put my finger on why that is– maybe about the shadows and lighting. 

Our figures are generic enough to give us room to come up with our own stories– they aren’t obviously X, Y, or Z hero analogues. Even the figure at the top– is it more like The Flash or Black Lightning. It’s a cover of wide effect and impact giving you a feel for what’s inside. And that’s grim with decaying bodies and powers which look like they’re destroying their user and others. I dig it– even with its considerable hideousness.

[waywardmasquerade]

What was the first RPG you played?

For me it was Shadowrun 2e.

[theresattrpgforthat]

Mint Plays Games: Rotted Capes (And the Lesson I Keep Learning This Year)

Last month I finally played a long-awaited one-shot of Rotted Capes, and I (once again) learned a lesson that’s been leaking into my brain over the course of the past year.

(tldr: you should play games you think you don't like)

The Context

Over the past 4 years, one of the settings my home group has returned to time and time again is our own personal superhero universe. We call it the Dover City Universe (The DCU for short), and we started building it in Spectaculars, by Scratchpad Publishing. Spectaculars is great for folks who like playing in person, and like building their own comics universe, and it comes with a lot of fantastic aids for new GMs who like a structured adventure that they can customize to fit the themes of their table.

Since then we’ve also run games in MASKS by Magpie Games, Henshin by Cave of Monsters, and i’m sorry did you say street magic, by Caro Ascersion. Each game has been an expansion from the original setting, placing a focus on a different location or time period.

Now, one of the players in my group has a really big love for media that turns a bit darker, including post-apocalyptic media, so when we were talking about possible future games, I suggested Rotted Capes, by Paradigm Concepts. He got very excited, and even offered to help me buy it. It then took me nearly 2 years to get it to the table.

The Rules

Rotted Capes is what I consider a crunchy game, far crunchier than what I’m usually willing to tackle. Character creation involves a point-buy system that makes stats and abilities more expensive the higher you push them, and there are many advantages or powers that require you to build your character in a specific way before you have access to them. The rank of your ability, skill or power determines how many dice (and what kind of dice) you roll for any given action, and the ranks also scale the passive modifiers you add to certain things in a very gradual way.

When it comes to the powers, your characters are b-list super-humans - all the A-listers died, disappeared, or turned undead when Z-Day hit, so you’re all that’s left to defend humanity. Not all of you were heroes either. Combat against regular zombies is meant to be reasonably easy (with the bigger threat being bit) while combat against super-Z’s is meant to be terrifying. Rotted Capes provides you with loose categories of superhero types to guide you towards a character build that is going to be useful/effective in combat, but the superhero abilities themselves are general, allowing you to interpret exactly what it means to “generate energy” for your character, or how you have the ability to “entangle” your foe.

When you play the game, your character will roll 2d10 for any given action, and try to beat a difficulty number set by the GM. You add extra dice based on your Attributes, Skills, Powers, and equipment, the dice ranging between d4’s and d12’s, depending on the rank of your skills. As you might see in the above chart, once you get high enough, you might even be adding 2 dice for a rank of something once you get it high enough. Beating a 5 is so trivial, it might not even require a roll. Beating a 40 is an astounding feat, and extremely unlikely.

In combat, players roll Xd10 (X=initiative) and look for the lowest result. This result determines their place on a 12-slice clock. Each player has their own personal clock, while the GM uses a GM clock, which they use to track what slice of initiative is currently happening, as well as where all the NPCs are. Every time the GM moves to a new slice of the clock, whoever is on that slice has a chance to do something, and depending on what kind of move they make, moves a number of slices forward on the clock. They will not be able to act again until the GM hits that slice of the clock. If you do something big and complicated, you can do it, but you’ll have to wait more than a few turns before you can do something else.

There’s also a player resource called Plot Dice, which are dice that you can spend or add to rolls to give yourself a chance of success, help out a friend, resist harm, and re-roll failures. Plot Dice is determined by your lowest Attribute, but they can be refreshed by playing to your character’s personality flaws (the zombie apocalypse changed everyone).

The character sheet for Nautica, the big bad of our session.

The Game

To make this only difficult once, I decided to put the entire table into a Google Sheet, so that I only had to worry about how many points I was spending, rather than continually referring back to the table to change things like passive modifiers or dice sizes.

I also took on the bulk of character creation, asking my friends to build half of a character (choosing archetype, highlighting favourite powers, and describing to me their background) and then doing the number crunching on my own, to make sure I knew how their character abilities worked. I did this because I was the only one who had reliable access to the rulebook, and I knew that asking a group of people to study how to play a game just for a single one-shot was not likely to work out.

The players all made very different characters. We had an ex-military martial artist who showed no mercy, a former sidekick who was still learning how to use his fire-powers, and an ex-villain trash man who could talk to rats and mainly fought using sticky bombs and magnets. When we rolled up to game day, we passed around printed versions of the character spreadsheets, the initiative clocks, and a number of polyhedral dice. I set the scene for the culinary school the characters were looting, and ran the group through 2 easy combats and 1 terrifying confrontation with a villain (who was one of my old DCU characters, but in an older, grislier form). After the combat, we spent about half an hour talking about the hideout where our enclave was camping out in, and playing through ending scenes between the heroes and various NPCs.

The Takeaway

I bought Rotted Capes for two reasons, and neither of those reasons were because I was genuinely excited about the game. I suggested it because I knew my friend loved the genre and I knew about it in the first place because I had heard about it because I listened to Fandible’s actual play series and the group sounded like they were having a lot of fun. But zombie media isn’t usually my thing, and crunch makes me hesitate because as a GM, I know the bulk of the work is going to be on me.

However, once the initial hurdle of reading and prepping the game was cleared, we had so much fun. The actual rules for rolling were very easy compared to the amount of math that goes into building your character, and the biggest obstacle for the players was trying to navigate all the cells of our Google Sheets.

The two most exciting pieces of game-play for me were the moments where someone got to roll a whole fistful of dice, and when combat clicked. Moving on the initiative clock was so wonderfully intuitive, and having a visual aid made it so easy to keep track of who was going next, and how long you had until you could do something again. Tying your actions to moves on the clock ensures that no one person is doing a bunch of interesting and complex moves one after another - if you do something really complicated or impressive, you have a kind of cooldown before you can try something again. Meanwhile characters who do something small and simple will be able to act again before you know it, and might get to do something right before a villain gets a chance to respond.

This brings me to the big lesson I’ve been learning this year:

Play Games You Might Not Like.

Three of my most positive experiences over the past year were games that I played for reasons other than because I thought they were really cool. I picked up Last Fleet because I needed another space game to run (that I already owned) for our Galaxy Squad run, and it turned into a big dramatic story that was cathartic, satisfying, and truly jaw-dropping in its narrative twists and turns.

I played A Complicated Profession because my co-GM was really excited about it and wanted to use it to lead out from our Scum & Villainy arc. We ended up having the most hilarious time coming up with various customers (including a goat-man played by Danny Devito and his himbo boyfriend).

I played Rotted Capes because I like my friends, and I really love building a superhero universe with them. I ended up discovering an initiative clock that rocked my world, and had a blast throwing mitt-fulls of dice around with my friends.

There were also games that I was super hyped about to play that ended up not being as much of a fun experience as I was expecting. I think that since I had built up such a big idea in my head of what those games would feel like to play, that when the dice hit the table (or in our case, the Discord chat), the result couldn’t possibly live up to what I’d imagined.

So do it. Pick up the game your friend is asking you to play. Take a chance on that game that sounds like it might fit the genre you’re looking for. Read the rulebook for a system you’ve never tried. Not every game is going to be a hit, but in all of that mess you’re going to find real gems that you carry forward into future projects, and come away with moments beyond what you can dream up.

[theresattrpgforthat]

Rotted Capes Spreadsheets 2.0

Another character sheet updated, another character sheet with a new link! Rotted Capes is a game about super-heroes, zombies, and super-zombies. The golden of super-heroes is dead, and the age of the undead is rising. You are what's left of the super-powered: the sidekicks, low-level heroes and former villains, and the remains of humanity looks to you.

This character sheets has a Safety Tools sheets, as per usual, and then a Character Template that can be copied for multiple characters. There's a lot of drop-down tables and inter-connected cells going on here, since there's a lot of math when it comes to calculating secondary stats. As it stands, right now much of that math should be easier to do!

You can check out the new-and-improved Rotted Capes spreadsheets here, and the entire library of my spreadsheets at the link below.

Clicky.

[rpgcovers]

Rotted Capes: Survivor's Guide, Vol. I ~ Paradigm Concepts (2017)