Firebreathing Kittens

Bee Plus Students is an actual play podcast of Ultimate Hyper Fantastic Magical Girls, following Meg, Queenie, and Muse as they uncover a deadly cosmetics plot and insect impostors. 

Bee Plus Students is an actual play podcast of Ultimate Hyper Fantastic Magical Girls, following Meg, Queenie, and Muse as they uncover a deadly cosmetics plot and insect impostors. 

How To Play Ultimate Hyper Fantastic Magical Girls   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 Ultimate Hyper Fantastic Magical Girls. 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 Ultimate Hyper Fantastic Magical Girls game at home.   I’ll organize this how to play guide into sections. Game category D3 minus 1 Stats Checks Abilities Empowering abilities Perks Moods Movement rules Combat Going all out Status effects Temporary hit points Dying Healing Daily routines Clubs Building a character   Game category. Ultimate Hyper Fantastic Magical Girls is a tactical grid tabletop roleplaying game themed around the topic of magical girls. Sailor Moon, Cardcaptor Sakura, and Puella Magi Madoka Magica are some examples. Although the genre is called magical girl, you don’t have to role play as a female character to play this game. Sailor Moon has Tuxedo Mask, Cardcaptor Sakura has Syaoran Li, there is even Magical Girl Ore. The genre is about how a regular school kid meets a small cute magical creature such as a cat, a winged bear, et cetera, which leads to her ability to transform and use magical powers. Like how glasses prevent people from realizing Clark Kent is Superman in the superhero genre, the costume change into her magical girl alter ego protects her secret identity, letting her keep her daily routine of a normal school life. Fighting evil by moonlight, attending classes by daylight. In Ultimate Hyper Fantastic Magical Girls, each magical girl has an aspect, sort of like a class in other games, and your specialized abilities from that aspect let you do different things in combat than your team mates. To play this game, everyone should have some sort of way to look at a grid that is twenty squares left to right and fifteen squares top to bottom. When combat starts, magical girls draw half as many cards as their smarts stat rounded down. You spend cards to use and then further empower your abilities. To use an ability, roll as many six sided dice as you have in your stat, dividing the result by two and subtracting one. So ones and twos give you plus zero, threes and fours give you plus one, and fives and sixes give you plus two. To empower your ability, spend additional cards. Empowerment gives a bonus to the ability’s number of dice rolled, area it effects, or duration, based on the value of the card you spend. Apart from combat, there are also mechanics for your daily life, where how you roleplay to balance magical girl combat with attending classes and extracurricular clubs will affect your mood and your report card.   D3 minus 1. This game uses standard six sided dice to generate zeroes, ones, or twos, to use from each dice rolled. To get a zero, one, or two from a six sided dice, you will roll the dice, divide by two, then subtract one. So if you rolled a one or a two, the result is zero. If you rolled a three or a four, the result is one. If you rolled a five or a six, the result is two. The game calls this the three sided result. In this game, every time you round a number, round down. Numbers can’t go negative in Ultimate Hyper Fantastic Magical Girls, including hit points.   Stats. Each magical girl has stats you will use in checks to see if your character accomplishes or fails at what they try to do. These stats are power, style, smarts, guts, and spirit. Power is how strong you are and how much damage you do. A jock who plays sports is an example of a high power character. Style is your speed, agility, and if you can succeed at things that need finesse. Style is your movement speed, unless it’s less than four, and then your movement speed is at least four. Smarts is how intelligent your magical girl is. The honors student is a good example of a character with high smarts. Each magical girl can use their smarts stat number of abilities from their aspect and from the non-aspect abilities list. At the start of combat, each magical girl draws as many cards as half their smarts score rounding down, with a minimum of one. Your smarts number is also your maximum hand size, how many cards you can hold before discarding. Guts is how much damage your magical girl can take. Guts tends to be a higher number for no-nonsense type characters. Each magical girl starts with ten plus one half of their guts score of hit points. When you gain milestones, guts determines how many hit points you gain with the milestone. Spirit is the range of your magical abilities. You can affect things as many squares away from yourself on the battle grid as your spirit number. A moody sullen character might have low spirit while a cheerleader might have high spirit.   Checks. When succeeding or failing at what your character is trying to do would have an important impact on the story, your game master will ask you to check to see if it works. Roll as many dice as your have in the appropriate stat. For example if you’re trying to leap a long distance, you would look at your number in the style stat, three, and that’s how many dice you would roll, three dice. Because Ultimate Hyper Fantastic Magical Girls uses a d3 minus one system, your result from rolling dice could range between zero and twice the number of your stat. For example if you roll three dice and get one, two, one, that’s a result of zero. If you roll three dice and get four, three, four, each dice contributed one so that’s a result of three overall. If you roll three dice and get five, six, five, each dice contributed two so that’s a result of six overall. So you can see how the highest result you can get is twice your stat number, and the lowest is zero. Some dice will be zero, some dice will be two, some will be one, so the average result will be around about the stat number.   Abilities. Magical girls can do three types of magical abilities. Universal, aspect, and non-aspect. Abilities can be attacks that reduce the target’s hit points, buffs that apply a positive status effect to a target, debuffs that apply a negative status effect to a target, environmental abilities that impact the battlefield, healing abilities that restore the target’s lost hit points, move abilities that change the target’s location, AoE area of effect abilities that affect multiple squares on the battlefield grid, self abilities that impact only yourself, and team abilities that affect the allies close enough to you. Action abilities can be used on your turn. Reaction abilities are used on someone else’s turn after being triggered by the other person’s action, like by them attacking you. If an ability says the word target, that can mean any character, object, or empty square on the grid that you can see. If it’s blocked and not in your line of sight, you can’t target it. If an area of effect ability would hit allies, you can’t selectively exclude them from the damage. Areas of effect, such as cones and circles, can extend outside the range of your spirit number of grid boxes of influence, as long as they start within it.   Every magical girl can do the universal abilities, which are listed on pages 37 through 39. These univeral abilities include things like a costume transformation into a magical girl, a basic attack, a basic block, a basic dodge, et cetera. All magical girls know all the universal abilities, and can use them by simply spending their action or reaction doing that universal ability. You don’t have to discard a card to do a universal ability.   Your magical girl’s number in the smarts stat lets her know that number of not-universal abilities. These not universal abilities can be either in their aspect or from the non-aspect list. Non-aspect abilities is a list on page 35 and 36 that can be learned by any magical girl. They don’t require your magical girl to take a specialization, called an aspect. But non-aspect abilities do take up one of your finite number of known abilities, and they do need you to discard a card to use them. You can know as many non-aspect and aspect abilities as the number you have for your smarts score. Any magical girl can learn a non-aspect ability, but they aren’t automatically known like the univeral abilities are. Some example non-aspect abilities are shields up, decoy, healing touch, spin attack, and surprise. Non-aspect abilities are different than universal abilities because they take up one of your finite number of known abilities and cost a card to use.   Each magical girl has an aspect, which is sort of like a class in other tabletop roleplaying games. Aspect abilities can only be learned by magical girls who have that specialization. The aspects are fire, ice, water, lightning, earth, wind, time, and butterfly. Each aspect has seven or so abilities in that category. For example the fire aspect has abilities like cauterize, rocket jump, the floor is lava, etc. The ice aspect has abilities like chill out, snow cone, swirling bizzard, snow clone, etc. The water aspect has abilities like fog, mistform, tsunami, osmosis, etc. The lightning aspect has abilities like chain lightning, energize, lightning bolt, flash bang, etc. The earth aspect has abilities like entomb, stone skin, earthquake, avalanch, quicksand, etc. The wind aspect has the abilities wind blast, aerodynamic lift, draft, air wall, etc. The time aspect has rewind, hurry up, stasis, time jump, etc. The butterfly aspect has abilities like mesmerize, iridescent wings, metamorphosis, butterfly swarm, etc. To use an aspect ability, you first discard a card from your hand.   Empowering abilities. Some abilities have text on them that says they do more when they’re empowered. There are three ways to empower a card: how many dice are rolled which can inc

Hired as movie extras, paid in pizza, neither Josiah nor Sofia raise an eyebrow when asked to withdraw cash from the bank's till. Cameras are rolling in Memory Lane Robbery, an actual play podcast of Never Stop Blowing Up, the role playing game. 

Hired as movie extras, paid in pizza, neither Josiah nor Sofia raise an eyebrow when asked to withdraw cash from the bank's till. Cameras are rolling in Memory Lane Robbery, an actual play podcast of Never Stop Blowing Up, the role playing game. 

Josiah McCoy Interview

Responding to a casting call, Kyyyvvvyynn and Sir Barnabas get suspicious.  Why is the Director more concerned with the vault than the camera?  An actual play of the Never Stop Blowing Up system. 

Responding to a casting call, Kyyyvvvyynn and Sir Barnabas get suspicious.  Why is the Director more concerned with the vault than the camera?  An actual play of the Never Stop Blowing Up system. 

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.