Where's my Zzarchov Stans at?

I speak from impulse and curiosity; whats the gestalt opinion on Zzarchov Kowalski's work?

This is the man who originally commissioned me to make Deep Carbon Observatory, created his own ruleset with Neoclassical Geek Revival, worked with LotFP, did the Gem Prison of Zardax and A Thousand Dead Babies, won a Silver Ennie with The Scenario from Ontario.

Who has played his adventures and run NGR? What did you get out of it? What makes his work interesting?

I asked this on a Discord w a handful of people a while ago and got some interesting and surprising answers so maybe something interesting will happen (like if you read the comments to the Glorantha post there were several very deep and interesting responses.)

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Some responses from the comments which I thought were good.

(If any of these are yours and you would like it removed from the main post let me know and I will do so.)




Dyson Logos30 October 2019 at 00:16

He builds wonderful bite-sized houses of cards that will probably stand up just fine on their own as long as no PCs get involved. Better, he doesn't generally get into whether the chaos engine effect of the PCs is a good or bad thing. The state of the roughly balanced system (usually three-sided) will collapse under the slightest pressure from the PCs, but when you go into the adventures, you rarely know (as DM) which way things will fall - what point of interest will the characters find most attractive to apply pressure to.

Turns out almost everything is a load-bearing plot device.

I think this speaks to Olav's comment about "low on feeling". Knowing Zzarchov, I know he's setting up everything to fall down in one direction or another, but he doesn't want to influence which direction it goes, and this gives the text a detached point of view which to me reads as cynical amusement (because that's exactly how Zzarchov talks, and I believe is how he views the world in general).

Dead Babies is probably my favourite level 1 D&D adventure - I am more likely to run it than one of my own fave level 1 pieces for a new group. Gnomes of Levnec was definitely one of the most fun adventures I have run for a group.

The vast majority of the rules in NGR are brilliant. There are many that I would port over to most games. The escalating dX mechanic especially

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I play NGR, but haven't run it. I find the rules density a bit difficult to track. I love that the same conflict system works for physical combat, social interaction, and stealth... but our group routinely has Zzarchov interpret the rules for us in play.

The weapon and armour tags system is really clever and simple in concept (it is how I would put together a firearms system), but it means that if you switch weapons, you need to remember what a devastating, versatile, exotic weapon gets.

The dX system is BRILLIANT. It takes the "take 10" system from d20 D&D and turns it into something awesome. You start by taking 10 on all actions (most actions have a difficulty of 20, and you roll your dX and add the appropriate stat to it, so if you have average stats, taking 10 gives you average successes). But if you need to push it a bit, you can switch to 3d6 instead of taking 10, but you cannot go back to taking 10 once you start rolling 3d6. And when things get wonky, you can switch to d20 - which suddenly risks criticals on a nat 20 and fumbles on a nat 1, and is super-swingy, and you can't then back down to 3d6 or taking 10 for the rest of the session.

I love that feeling. I love feeling us losing control. And you can spot the character who is ultra-specialized... We had one game where we got into the thick of combat early, and at the end of the session the mighty warrior in the group was still taking 10 (I attack and get a 21) whereas the rest of us were on d20s.


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Stu C29 October 2019 at 12:16

I love the way his stuff is written. Particularly the presentation that is in common across A Thousand Dead Babies, Gnomes of Levnec, Lamentations of the Gingerbread Princess, and The Punchline. You get a quick run-down on "what's happening," a brief review of relevant NPCs, then a well laid out description of relevant locations. Each section tends to be concise, clever, and easy to refer to in play for quick reference.

A lot of his adventures have elements that are grim while maintaining a quirky whimsical vibe that you could lean into if you wanted. Overall though, aside from the efficient clever writing I really like how successful these modules are with framing all the things that are already in motion that the PCs could interact with that are happening and the players can influence - it makes things super easy to run and for PCs to jump in and get involved.


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Alex Chalk31 October 2019 at 08:55

I've run Gem Prison and read through a few of his other adventures, as well as NGR. I liked Pale Lady and his Krampus adventure. In every case it feels like there's a lot of ways things can play out and like they can be really engaging once the players get involved. I do however find Z's writing a little difficult to get through for reasons I can't quite place.

Unfortunately my experience with Gem Prison was... lackluster? There were a few too many moving parts and their workings were not especially intuitive. My players spent a whole session trying to solve a broken puzzle which expressly has no answer. I felt like the whole thing was aiming for a kind of psychedelia that were apparent in its imagery and writing but hard to communicate at the table, which made the whole experience feel a bit dull and meandering.

NGR feels like a beautiful Rube Goldberg machine of a system but my impression is order for it to sing you need players who are at least moderately interested in RPG rules and enjoy learning and thinking about them. This does not describe my usual group at all so I doubt I'll ever get to play it.

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LampLiter Guild4 November 2019 at 07:58

As a player of NGR I find a couple of different elements add to the flavor of the game. I like the rule where if you miss some kind of modifier then it is just lost till you remember it. I would have to say that my favorite elements that was added would have to be in experience awards. Which the dX is also a close second, seeing as I am always going to the 3d6 and rarely having to go to the d20. What I like about the exp awards is the exploration system. It awards the party/group for pushing yourself for going one room deeper. Then there are the rewards to interacting and overcoming the environment. It has elements to award players for taking the risks or playing with the world that has been presented. This idea has been taken over to my 5e games with positive results.

Zzarchov's writing style comes through in NGR and is easily readable and followed with. He is always testing and making this system better for the players and GM which is great to see that this is a living game. When you pick up the NGR PDF you can expect updates. When it comes to the physical artifacts, the different artist books, the different artist styles color the game very differently and would inspire a different play style. Which the game handles quite well. Playing in what I would have to assume is a post apocalyptic/pulp world, with elements of Warhammer sprinkled through is just as easy as playing a bronze ago setting. The weapon and armor tags help.

I appreciate this work and definitely hope that it continues on. Also death is an option and at least once we have survived the adventure/mission just to make it back to town, just to die in the backroom of the shop that we were working out of in our sleep. Injuries are truly horrendous in NGR.

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Unknown4 November 2019 at 13:18

I've been running NGR for the past several months, but I've never run or played any of his adventures. I'm playing with two players who are pretty new to RPGs at all, and we generally meet once or twice a month, so we haven't gotten into any system mastery. But playing with the basic rules and no "fiddly stuff" is working pretty well for us. So, there's a lot of system mastery available, but the game works pretty well anyway if you ignore it.

I'm a big fan of the weak niche protection and simple multi-classing provided by the pie slice class mechanics. Anybody can do anything, but if it's in your class specialty, you have a much easier and/or safer time at it.

I also like the template spell system, as it's encouraged me to come up with odd and unique spells rather than just using a list from a book. The divine miracles are supposed to work the same way, but I've been too lazy to build up the two gods we've gotten involved with. I really need to do that though, so play gets less confusing for the Moon priestess.

It's a pain that enemies are built the same way as characters, especially at first. The rulebook also doesn't have much advice for people who want to GM the game. It seems solid as a player's guide, but I was really struggling at first to understand how to run the game. Zzarchov's posted some helpful play examples to his blog/patreon, but when I started it was just after he'd taken his blog down and he hadn't posted the examples to Patreon yet.