Firebreathing Kittens

Season 2025 Epilogues

Pulled through time and space to the Prancing Pony, Newson and Wilford race to save Tobald Heatherfoot from the curse of the Barrow-downs. An actual play of The One Ring, the official Lord of the Rings role-playing game. 

Pulled through time and space to the Prancing Pony, Newson and Wilford race to save Tobald Heatherfoot from the curse of the Barrow-downs. An actual play of The One Ring, the official Lord of the Rings role-playing game. 

1000 Enter 1 Leaves is an actual play podcast of the L.U.R.P.S. game system. Follow FBK members Norbert, Grumm and Pippinprick as they navigate the hazardous environment, rabid contestants and the worst dinner bell of all time in the annual Niqamui Fight Club Contest. At stake is the most coveted prize in the land, two minutes of open mike time broadcast far and wide...oh...and something worth a million dollars. Can our intrepid guild members makes the cut, or will they be cut down? Tune in and find out. 

Trailer for 1000 Enter 1 Leaves

A priceless watch goes missing, and the Firebreathing Kittens are the likeliest culprits! Join Tracey and Hefty in this Blade Runner ttrpg mystery adventure as they try to uncover the real culprit and discover something even more important in the process.

A priceless watch goes missing, and the Firebreathing Kittens are the likeliest culprits! Join Tracey and Hefty in this Blade Runner ttrpg mystery adventure as they try to uncover the real culprit and discover something even more important in the process.

An abandoned guardhouse, blood and broken glass.  What befell Plant 4D, and what awaits Deli and Wilford within? Working for Packing Peanuts is an actual play podcast of The Walking Dead RPG.  

An abandoned guardhouse, blood and broken glass.  What befell Plant 4D, and what awaits Deli and Wilford within? Working for Packing Peanuts is an actual play podcast of The Walking Dead RPG.  

How To Play The Walking Dead   Hi everyone, this is a special how to play episode of Firebreathing Kittens podcast. I’m the game master for an upcoming session using the rules for The Walking Dead. This episode is a summary of what I learned after reading the rule book. Hopefully this will be a handy guide for how to play for my players, will help me organize myself, and will be useful for you listeners, too, who are looking to play your own The Walking Dead game at home.   I’ll organize this how to play guide into sections. Game category Skills Pushing and stress How to attack Armor Cover Moving Dueling Sneak attacks Brawling Leadership Swarms Threat levels Single walker attack Fighting a swarm Sacrifice someone Relieving stress Dying Healing Helping allies Jargon Building a character   Game category. This is the official tabletop roleplaying game of the famous TV show, The Walking Dead. You are role playing as a character in a world where society has collapsed. An unidentified malady has spread to all living people, infecting everyone. Anyone who dies, regardless of the cause of the death, is reanimated into what is called a Walker, an undead shambling corpse driven by a compulsion to consume living flesh. If one of the living gets scratched or bitten by a walker, they will succumb, quickly becoming one if the bitten limb is not amputated. Your character can kill an individual Walker, but never enough of them to make a dent in how many there are in the world. It’s not safe out there. You might be able to clear the Walkers from a small haven, such as a roof top, so you can sleep. At your haven you can store food, water, medicine, and other resources, maybe collaborating with a close knit group of fellow survivors. But in a world with no law enforcement, can you trust the people you meet? They might be robbers eyeing your limited food, or murderers, or cannibals, or could simply make too much noise and attract a Walker swarm, a gathering of the undead so numerous that they overrun anything in their path. How long will you survive in this roleplaying game before you become one of… the walking dead. To describe the mechanics in five sentences, this is a game where you will roll six sided dice, also called d6. You succeed when you see at least one six in the dice you rolled. You can push to re roll failures, which adds stress dice. If you get a one on a stress dice, something goes wrong. Weapons deal a set number of damage depending on the weapon, and all characters have three hit points.   Skills. When your character tries to accomplish something in the game world, you might roll dice to see if they are successful or not. A good game master will call for a dice roll any time the character failing could increase tension, make the situation much worse, or make the game more exciting. How do you know how many dice you will roll? Find the skill that best fits what you’re trying to do, and the attribute associated with that skill. The number next to the skill, plus the number next to the attribute, are how many dice you get to roll.   Here is an example skill roll. Rick is trapped, surrounded by Walkers on all sides with no way out. Glenn’s player wants to help Rick. She proposes that Glenn sneak through the Walker filled streets, find a car without being detected, hot wire it, and drive it back to Rick to pick him up. Because the first part of her plan is sneaking, and because if that fails that dramatically changes the outcome of this plan, the game master calls for a roll. Glenn’s player looks at his character sheet. The number three is written next to the stealth skill, and it’s one of three skills under the agility attribute, which has the number four. With three dice from the stealth skill and four dice from the agility attribute, Glenn’s player rolls seven dice total. There are very good odds that at least one of them will be a six. The player rolls and the result is… two sixes! Excellent. Glenn’s stealthy sneaking through the streets was successful, he found a car with no Walkers around. For the extra six, the game master rewards Glenn’s player with a little something extra, such as asking her what color the car is. She says orange. Sweet. The next step will be hot wiring it.   Pushing and stress. In The Walking Dead, a roll isn’t necessarily over if you don’t get any sixes. You can choose to push. Pushing is when you pick up all those dice, add one point of stress to your character, and roll again. For each point of stress, you add one more special dice to the pool. This special stress dice could be a different color than the other dice, or have different symbols on its faces, or can be rolled after the other dice on its own, or could be rolled in a different location on your table, etc. Anyway, to push, you pick up all those failed dice and re roll them, and also re roll as many extra dice called stress dice as you have points of stress. This is another chance to see a six. If you get at least one six as a result, congratulations, your skill roll succeeded. From now on, you’ll roll as many extra dice on all rolls as you have points of stress. If you’ve pushed once, you have one stress, and roll one extra dice. If you’ve pushed twice, you have two stress, and roll two extra dice. Now here’s where keeping track of which dice are the stress dice matter. If you get a one on specifically a stress dice, not your regular dice, then the one on the stress dice means you’ve quote, “messed up”. When you mess up, the threat level on page seventy nine raises. For example you didn’t notice a Walker until it got close enough to attack you, or you were loud enough to get the attention of a Walker Swarm, etc. Something goes very wrong. Stress stays with you until you do something to relieve the stress. This includes narrating a roleplaying scene with your anchor, narrating a roleplaying scene with another character, and resting. When you sleep a full night’s rest, roll two dice and relieve the lower number of stress.   Here is an example of pushing. Glenn is at the car he found. There aren’t any Walkers around. He’d like to try to hot wire the car, so he can drive it back to where Rick is trapped and rescue him. Hot wiring a car is the tech skill. The player looks at Glenn’s character sheet. There’s a zero written next to the tech skill, uh oh. But the tech skill is under the wits attribute, which Glenn has a four in, whew. Glenn’s player will be rolling four dice. She rolls the four dice and gets… four, one, two, two. Yikes, there aren’t any sixes. Glenn’s not going to be able to hot wire this car because he doesn’t have any tech skills. But wait! She can push! Glenn’s player adds one point of stress to his character sheet. This means all future rolls will be made with one extra dice, a stress dice. She picks up the dice and rolls them, and then rolls one extra dice to represent the stress dice. Three, six, two, one, and the stress dice is a… five! Excellent. She narrates how the first time, the car’s engine turns and sputters, sputters, sputters, and fails to roll over. Glenn was about to give up, rather than risk the noise of the engine attracting Walkers. But then he remembered how he knows, based on his knowledge gathered while working as a pizza delivery driver before the outbreak, that this road is a dead end surrounded by the tall concrete walls of a warehouse. There’s not likely to be many Walkers, kept out by the anti tresspassing architecture. It’s safe to make a bit of noise here. He tries the engine again, symbolically re rolling. And gets that six! The engine rumbles to life, the car starts, and Glenn drives away, off to rescue Rick. Huzzah! Because this is a training guide, let’s also discuss what would have happened if Glenn’s player had gotten that six and also gotten a one on the stress dice. The rule book calls this succeeding and also messing up. Yes, the car would have started. And also, something would have gone terribly wrong in a different aspect. The game master gets to choose how. For example there’s the classic attract a swarm of Walkers result, or the classic you didn’t notice a Walker was about to attack you result. You might run out of bullets, get lost, break an important item, or get injured. Or the GM can do something creative, like, Glenn didn’t know the previous occupant of the car had seen the zombie apocalypse, panicked, and hidden in their trunk, not realizing they didn’t know how to open it. Days trapped in the hot trunk had led to their demise, until they had reawoken, undead, but still trapped. Grumbling in zombie speak, the former car occupant now thumps their head softly into the roof of the trunk, shaken and stirred by Glenn’s speedy driving, as Glenn whips around curves and flies over speed bumps, off to rescue Rick, unaware he’s bringing a Walker companion along for the ride. Depending on the scene and how creative they’re feeling at the moment, the GM might ask the player to pick and describe how they messed up.   How to attack. Attacks in The Walking Dead are basically skill rolls. Your weapon will come from the list of gear. Each weapon gives you a specified number of extra dice you roll, and does a set number of damage if it hits.   Here’s an example attack. Rick is trapped. He’s surrounded by Walkers. His weapon is a Colt Python .357 Magnum revolver. You can see the revolver’s stats on page 74 of the rule book. They can target enemies a short distance away, they give the player two extra dice on their ranged attack skill roll, and they deal two damage if they hit. Rick has three in the ranged combat skill and two in the agililty attribute. Three dice from the ranged combat skill plus two dice from the agility attribute plus two dice from the revolver equals seven dice overall. The ranged combat skill says that for every extra six you get, you can increase the damage you deal by one. Rick gets two sixes! That’s g

Welcome to a special episode of Firebreathing Kittens. This is our rules discussion where we talk about how we felt about the rules we played in the past few games, for summer 2025.  We’ll discuss the ttrpgs Tales From The Loop, DC20, Sexy Battle Wizards, Tiny Pirates, Into The Odd, Fudge Lite, Dragonbane, Outgunned, Black Powder and Brimstone, and Coriolis the Third Horizon. 

Norbert, Newson, and Belle are hurled across the galaxy and must find their way home armed only with companionship, a little knowledge, and an accelerator cannon. Just Trying To Pay Rent is an actual play podcast of Coriolis The Third Horizon. 

Norbert, Newson, and Belle are hurled across the galaxy and must find their way home armed only with companionship, a little knowledge, and an accelerator cannon. Just Trying To Pay Rent is an actual play podcast of Coriolis The Third Horizon. 

How to play Coriolis The Third Horizon.  Hi everyone, this is a special how to play episode of Firebreathing Kittens podcast. I’m the game master for an upcoming session using the rules for Coriolis The Third Horizon. This episode is a summary of what I learned after reading the rule book. Hopefully this will be a handy guide for how to play for my players, will help me organize myself, and will be useful for you listeners, too, who are looking to play your own Coriolis The Third Horizon game at home.   I’ll organize this how to play guide into sections. Game category Attributes and skills Icons Initiative Action Points Armor Critical success Distances Ranged combat particulars Reactions Movement and encumbrance Partial damage Zero hit points or mind points Darkness points Building a character     Game category. Coriolis is a tabletop roleplaying game set in space. You can crew a space craft, explore the horizon by traveling to new star systems through portals, unravel secrets such as who built the portals, plot and scheme with factions over power and influence, pray to the icons, and carry out missions. But beware the Dark between the Stars, an unspeakable corrupting force in the intersection between civilization and the endless nothing of space. All of the dice used for Coriolis The Third Horizon are six sided dice, also called d6. You roll the number of dice your character has in a specific skill. If one of your dice rolls a six, you succeed at what you were trying to do. Coriolis has well described combat rules that players who enjoy Dungeons and Dragons will find interesting.   Attributes and skills. Your character has four attributes: Strength, Agility, Wits, and Empathy. Each attribute has a few skills, which are ways you can apply that attribute during gameplay. The strength attribute has the skill of melee combat. The agility attribute has the skills dexterity, infiltration, ranged combat, and piloting. The wits attribute has the skills observation, survival, data djinn, medicurgy, science, and technology. The empathy attribute has the skills manipulation, command, culture, and mystic powers.   Every point you have in an attribute or skill gives you a six sided dice, also called a d6, that you can roll. For example your observation skill is two and your wits attribute is three, so you roll five dice total when you observe. If you roll all the dice but none of them show the number six, that roll was a failure. Read the skill’s failure text out loud for your game master to interpret. If you get one six on one dice, that means you succeeded. One six is a limited success, so you will read the skill’s wording out loud to find out how that specific skill is limited. For example it might take longer than expected or the information gained might be brief. Extra sixes beyond the first one give you cool bonus effects, which vary depending on which skill you used. You can exchange each extra six one for one for a bonus effect. If you roll three sixes, that means you got a critical success. Each skill has words explaining how a critical success is awesome and how you get an extra bonus because of the critical.   There are 16 possible skills you can put points in. Half are general skills and the other half are advanced skills. Anyone can roll a general skill, but you can’t roll for an advanced skill unless you have at least one point in it. One notable advanced skill is command, which can be used to heal a stressed out ally whose mind points have been depleted to zero. You can’t roll for command to help your friend unless you have at least one point in it.   Here is an example skill roll. The airlock is closing. Sabah tries to hurl herself towards the airlock to make it through before it closes. The Game Master calls for a dexterity roll to see if Sabah gets through the airlock or not. Sabah has one point in the dexterity skill and three points in the agility attribute, so that means she rolls four dice total. If zero of the four dice show a six, she failed, and the airlock closes before she can get through it. If any of those dice show a six, she succeeds and makes it through the airlock before it closes. If one dice shows a six, that is called a limited success. For the dexterity skill, a limited success is described as, quote, “Limited success: you manage to pull off the maneuver, but just barely.” End quote. Every extra six beyond your first might let you pick a bonus effect from the dexterity skill’s page, if it has bonus effects. Some skills do, some skills don’t. Dexterity doesn’t have any bonus effects for extra sixes, but the manipulation skill, for example, does. If three of the dice show sixes, that’s a critical success. For dexterity, the rule book says, quote, “Critical Success. You succeed with flawless skill, and you achieve some unexpected, positive side effect, like helping a friend or creating an obstacle for an enemy. The GM decides the details.” End quote. This example of a skill roll shows you that the more dice you roll, the more likely you are to get a limited success, get bonus effects, and get a critical success.   Icons. If your skill roll isn’t successful, one option you have is to pray to the icons, if that’s a thing you want to do. Praying to the icons can only impact skill rolls, not combat rolls. It’s an instant prayer your character can do that doesn’t take any time out of your other actions. You simply declare that you’re praying to the icon associated with the skill you’re rolling, and you can re roll all your failed dice that weren’t sixes. The rerolled dice now might become successes. If you prepared a prayer to that specific icon beforehand earlier in the session, then praying to that icon not only lets you reroll failed dice, but you also get either a plus one modifier which means one extra dice, or if you prayed in that icon’s chapel, then a plus two modifier which mean two extra dice. Every time you pray to an icon, though, the game master gets one darkness point.   Let’s begin talking about combat rules by starting with initiative. Initiative means turn order. When combat starts, each player rolls one d6, and the game master rolls one d6 for each enemy or group of enemies. The number on the dice is the character’s initiative score, and sets the order that people act in the round of combat. People who rolled a six can take their turn before people who rolled a five, who can take their turn before people who rolled a four, who can take their turn before people who rolled a three, etc. If two people both have the same number, roll a second dice and the higher number goes first. After everyone has gotten to go once, that ends the round, and it’s time to start a new round in the same initiative order as before.   Raising and lowering initiative. There are ways to raise your initiative score. There’s a talent called Combat Veteran that lets you roll twice and keep the higher dice result. Some weapons and certain skill bonuses can also raise your initiative score. If you are performing an attack in a way your GM accepts would surprise the enemy, add two to your initiative. Sneak attacks. To perform a sneak attack on an unsuspecting target, roll the number of dice you have in your infiltration skill and the skill will tell you how to interpret your success or failure. If you wait somewhere to ambush a target and they walk up to you while you remain stationary, you get a plus two to your infiltration roll. Sneak attacks also get modified by the range you are away from your target. Roll only once, and then increase or decrease your sneak attack’s initiative based on distance using table 5.2 on page 86. Lowering initiative. You have the option of choosing to lower your initiative score if you’d like to wait and see how things unfold. For example if you rolled a six for initiative but aren’t sure if these new arrivals are friends or foes, when it comes to you, you can choose to delay until a new lower number, such as a two. Your new score remains your permanent initiative for the rest of the combat.   Action points. At the start of the round of combat, you get three new action points. You can spend your action points to do slow, normal, fast and free actions. Unspent action points do not carry over to the next round.   A slow action costs all three action points. For example, administering first aid is a slow action. Tinkering with a gadget is a slow action. Activating a mystic power is a full action, and takes all three action points and your entire turn.   Normal actions cost two action points. For example, a melee attack in close combat is a normal action. Firing a shot on a ranged weapon is a normal action. Reloading your weapon is a normal action. After a normal action, you still have one action point left for your turn.   You can spend one action point to do a fast action. Some example fast actions are sprinting a short distance, defending, taking cover, dropping to the ground to make yourself harder to hit, getting up off of the ground, drawing a weapon, picking up an item, parrying in close combat, and making an attack of opportunity in close combat. These fast actions all only cost one action point. Note that you can’t attack while you are prone on the ground. While prone, you need to spend a fast action to stand up before you can attack. Quick melee attacks with a light weapon or unarmed also count as fast actions instead of normal actions, although they get a negative two modifier to the attack roll, which means rolling with two fewer dice. Movement is also a fast action. You can move as many meters as your movement rate for one fast action, which costs one action point.   The last category of actions are free, they don’t cost any action points. Some example free actions are when you quickly shout to a comrade, and when your armor protects you against an incoming attack. Those free actions can still be done even if you don’t have any action p

Rock The Boat is an actual play podcast of the Black Powder and Brimstone system. Ships are disappearing off the Crescent Steps and there are rumors of a sea beast.  Deli and Hefty are on the job to restore the safety of the shipping route. 

Rock The Boat is an actual play podcast of the Black Powder and Brimstone system. Ships are disappearing off the Crescent Steps and there are rumors of a sea beast.  Deli and Hefty are on the job to restore the safety of the shipping route. 

Using the Outgunned TTRPG mechanics, Belle, Muriel, Arik, and Muse stop a bar fight and wind up involving themselves in a car chase, high seas heist, and fight against weresharks guarding Atlantis. What more could you want? 

Using the Outgunned TTRPG mechanics, Belle, Muriel, Arik, and Muse stop a bar fight and wind up involving themselves in a car chase, high seas heist, and fight against weresharks guarding Atlantis. What more could you want? 

Join Oliver, Alastair, and Divan as they use the Outgunned mechanics to rescue a lost boat of seamen from a watery grave and learn of secrets hidden in the deep.

Join Oliver, Alastair, and Divan as they use the Outgunned mechanics to rescue a lost boat of seamen from a watery grave and learn of secrets hidden in the deep.