Books & Bullets
A downloadable game
Books & Bullets is a micro tabletop-rpg of weird horror, investigation, and pulp adventure. It shoots the line of complexity between Trail of Cthulhu and Cthulhu Dark, and which avoids the Insanity death spiral without taking the sting out of the horror.
The game includes three single-sided play sheets. (I recommend using the Resources page as the back of both the Player and MM sheets.)
Player – introduction, story hook, character sheet, character generation rules, dice mechanics, and rules for insight, mythos checks, and helping/hindering.
Mythos Master – your agenda, insanity & death, scaling mythos checks, running adventures, and an introductory mystery
Resources – (for everyone) tech by era, word lists, name lists, equipment list, sources of inspiration
This game is released under the CC-BY-NC-SA license.
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Development log
- Minor UdatesJan 22, 2023
Comments
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Hi mate, I'm italian and I can tell that the 3rd file is not the italian translation of this game at all. It's another game about a 60-70s italian tv series. WTF
That being said, I love this game and it would be awesome to have an official supplment to play it solo : D
How bizarre. I thought I uploaded an Italian translation. I have removed it and will go looking to see if I just linked the wrong file. Thank you! Hmmmm. Solo. My wheels are turning. Of course it's a Creative Commons license, so you could make such a supplement too/instead!!
This game has been getting some love online lately. A question came about what happens when you roll "on" your number. The person asking the question noted that L&F treats it as a success. I was like "it does!?" I looked at the latest version online and it does indeed say that. Then I looked at my saved copy from a few years ago and it does NOT. So that is a recent addition by John Harper. I disagree; I prefer it to be insight only. If someone would happen to roll only one die, and get insight only, and chooses not to re-roll (and seriously, how often is THAT going to happen) I would treat it as a failure. After all, in Lovecraftian tales insight often empowers/enlightens, but it rarely is a "good" thing! Chances are, the character is in for a mythos check.
Have you played this yet?
Honestly, no. However, I know Lasers & Feelings inside and out, so this was a quick remix of that with the goal of using Unknown Armies style fear triggers over the insanity death spiral of CoC, which in my opinion engenders a very specific and for me problematic style of play. To be specific, I get tired of playing with people who seem to be more interested in going insane, and comedically playing insanity, than they are interested in experiencing horror or solving a mystery or exploring the unknown.