Alan Bahr’s Tombpunk as Outland look to bring the 102-paged, 5.5×8.5 black and white ruleset to life as a way to power a bunch of micro-settings.
Tombpunk has four core ideals;
- Quick, dirty and deliberately incomplete
- Just enough rules to play
- Straightforward and conversational
- Avoid power creep
The game has funded, but the team only asked for $300. That said, the Kickstarter team only gave themselves 7 days to run and so if you want onboard you’ll have to be relatively swift.
Two key mechanics in Tombpunk are already known. To make an attribute test, you roll 1d12, and if that’s equal or lower to your attribute, then you’ve won, if not, you fail. Advantage or disadvantage adds a second d12 and the requirement to take either the best or worst dice.
When the narrator tries to attack your character, they have to roll over your attribute.
Then there are Resource Tests, which roll 1d6 and always pass. If you roll higher than your resource score, though, you lose a point.
Outland had previously led me to believe that Alana Joli Abbot’s Blackguards Anthology would be a micro-setting. Abbot is providing a micro-setting, and it’s “The Jerk in the Castle” which is described as a gender-swapped, Tombpunk spin on Robin Hood.
Tombpunk also ships with the Dirty-Hand Haven, grave robbers and gargoyle micro-setting from Gwendolyn N. Nix.
It takes just a pledge of $5 to get the PDF edition of Tombpunk.
$8 gets you the PDF and the print-at-cost coupon code for a DriveThruRPG made softcover.
The hardcover, which also comes with the PDF, unlocks its print-on-demand at-cost code for $12. It’s the hardcover that’s attracting the backers currently.
All editions are slated for a January 2021 release. How is that possible? Well, Outland say the book, even the art, is done. The Kickstarter is to pay for layout and cover costs so far.
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