Blood, Death, Satan & Metal

XENO is a minimalist, pamphlet-sized RPG by Caligaes, where players are the alien threat, serving “MOTHER” and eviscerating the anthropomorphic humans and aliens most games would place you in the boots of. It’s inspired by sci-fi horror classics such as Alien, John Carpenter’s The Thing , Carrion and the X-COM video games. Its mechanics entirely use d4 die pools with few stats, quick resolution, and nearly no math. XENO currently consists of a core pamphlet, a “Victimary” add-on of Z-KOM soldier enemies, and the 36-page HENS & CHICKS module, written in zine format. I was kindly provided a review copy of these materials, and the game will have a BackerKit campaign soon with a physical release and more content. One side- full combat rules on the left. The core XENO pamphlet is a single tri-fold that looks great in black and white or color. It covers, in minimal but evocative text, concept, character class & stats, objectives, combat & defense, and nemeses, referred to as ...

  Long ago, I reviewed Mork Borg quite favorably. I was young, then, and naive. After playing MB a fair few times, I found it to be quite unlike what I'd hoped. I didn't think I'd ever write this post, because I prefer to move forward and focus primarily on positive reviews, but I've been feeling pretty cold towards MB for a while now, and since I love Borgs Pirate and Cy_, it seemed important. Given that information, it can't be the system itself that I don't like- Cy_ & Pirate are fantastic. It's not the aesthetic, necessarily, at least not in whole- though the vivid high-contrast chaos is a more natural fit for Cy_Borg, it's also a part of Mork Borg's identity and why I loved it in the first place.  It's the tone. Frankly, Mork Borg isn't up to the task of more than wacky, low-stakes one-shots, at least in my experience. It's inherently goofy, partly on purpose and partly by virtue of its utter insistence on grimdarkness. "But...