Welcome to What is Roleplay: a podcast from Beyond Cataclysm exploring the very basics of Roleplay, Role Play Games, and what it means to be part of this awesome hobby.
We will be exploring the nuts and bolts of how to play role play, with each episode themed on a particular concept or idea. Even if you know literally nothing about role play games currently, this podcast is at a level that assumes no prior knowledge.
We will have interviews with leading designers from the indie scene, and take a look into games you may have heard of, and others you haven’t heard of, but should.
Each episode ends with some short live-play examples too, to put flesh on the bones we've laid out earlier on.
Welcome to Episode 25 of ‘What Is Roleplay?’
This episode CM Lowry is joined by Steph Windross to discuss Crits
To start the conversation CM Lowry asks Steph to define what the meaning of a Crit in roleplay games
Crit is short for Critical Roll, either a Critical Success or a Critical Failure. In short that means you have a rolled either the highest (success) or lowest (failure) number on the dice. These usually have interesting results which impact on the game as you continue to play.
CM reminds us that if your unsure about dice you can revisit Episode 1 of What Is Roleplay
Most games and systems will require that the dice actually land on a natural 20 in order for that to be considered a Crit Success – so if you roll 18 and add some sort of bonus that makes your score 20 that would not count as a Crit.
Steph shares some about a brilliant Crit Success from her real life adventures in roleplay games such as DnD and Blades in the Dark.
In Blades in the Dark Crits create narrative currency for collaborative story telling moments
CM & Steph chat about some of the things that can happen when you roll a critical fail – a sort of doubling down on the things that go wrong.
CM asks Steph to chat about some games that don’t use Crits. Steph mentions lots of the current batch of OSR (Old-School Renaissance) games
CM chats about the exploding dice mechanic, in which a Crit Success means that you get to roll again and add further details to the game story.
Steph brings up ICRPG (Index Card Roleplaying Game) as a game that has a set of really interesting mechanics for dice rolling and crits.
CM & Steph totally nerd out on MOTHERSHIP and the Panic Engine System that it’s built on.
CM asks Steph if there are any card games that use Crits
They discuss The Wretched by Chris Bissette and it’s use of a Jenga Tower. If the tower falls that’s a huge Crit Fail and ends the game!
CM and Steph agree that they enjoy the rolling dice and allowing chance to determine how the game processes and how the story unfolds.
Listen as CM and Steph enjoy an actual play involving Crits, the city of Manchester and trying to park your car without getting a fine from a civil service demon!!
Actual Play Quick-Map drawn by Jog Brogzin
Steph chats about her latest project, CAPINI, which is based on the rules light A Dungeon Games by Chris Bissette, which is also compatible with MORK BORG
Links to things we discussed:
Games:
Dragonbane
Dungeons & Dragons
Blades in the Dark
OSR
GURPS
Cairn
Mausritter
Savage World
ICRPG
Mothership
Call of Cthulhu
The Wretched
Bloody & Alone in Appalachia
Dread
The Sealed Library
MORK ORG
SOLO BORG
More about Steph
Fistful of Crits on ETSY
Fistful of Crits on BlueSky
Fistful of Crits on Instagram
Fistful.ink for all your printing needs
More about Us
Beyond Cataclysm on Bluesky @beyondcataclysm.bsky.social
CM Lowry’s website – All About Chris
Website – beyondcataclysm.co.uk
Patreon – Patreon.com/beyondcataclysm
Our most recent project is Mork Org
Our upcoming project is Lucky for None in Space
Actual Play Quick Map drawn by Jog Brogzin
Jog on Social Media:
@jogbrogzin on IG, FB and X
Bluesky – @jogbrogzin.bsky.social
Patreon – patreon.com/jogbrogzin
With music generously provided by:
Powerplant & Imploders
Actual Play Soundscape by Traveling LightThe post What is Roleplay #26 Crits with Steph Windross first appeared on Beyond Cataclysm.
19 Jun 2025
What is Roleplay #25: No Prep Play with David Blandy
Artist and tabletop roleplay game designer David Blandy joins host Chris to explore the concept of No Prep Play in tabletop roleplaying games, emphasizing spontaneity and collaborative storytelling in game design; this is an interview.
20 May 2025
What is Roleplay #24: Space with Marco Serrano
Welcome to Episode 24 of ‘What Is Roleplay?’
This episode we are joined by Games Designer and Spicy Tuna RPG head honcho Marco Serrano to discuss Space
After a brief opening chat Chris asks Marco ‘Why is Space brilliant’? To which Marco answers that it creates a realm of endless possibilities within the game. Sci-fi gives us input from the science and technology that we currently have available and also the possibility to extrapolate how things might look in the near future. The unknowns of Space gives us room to explore, within our games, all the possibilities that could come from life as we know it improving or getting worse!
Marco shared his experiences of playing MOTHERSHIP, the first game he ever played that was based in space. Like in many games your health can dwindle, but you also have stress that builds up and can lead to long lasting conditions. Narratively your character is forever changed, but without necessarily affecting the mechanics of how you roll and whether you can still actually achieve things. This builds into the horror aspect while allowing the game to continue to run – something that’s especially great if your running longer campaigns rather than just one-shots.
Chris asks Marco if there are any other kinds of stories that space lends itself well too, other than just horror. Marco points out that there are lots of stories from the Ray Bradbury era that are more Thriller than Horror. Many stories based in space are about experiencing the unknown – coming across things that are eye opening and beyond our abilities, that maybe make the reader think ‘wow, we shouldn’t do this again!’
Chris agrees that the vastness of space tends to make the mind boggle, as explored in the Ringworld Series by Larry Niven. The Ad Astra expansion to Mutant: Year Zero by Free League Press has a wonderful engine that explores this by factoring in the decay caused by year adrift in space.
Marco also mentions Orbital Blues, another game that takes place in space and does really interesting things with the concept of space, scratching the itch of space cowboys and focusing on shore leave rather than big missions.
Chris makes the point that Space themes are far less common in roleplaying games than fantasy themes, whilst its the other way round when it comes to other media such as TV and Films, and asks Marco if he has any comment as to why that might be the case? Marco feels that, with the popularity of Mothership, we’re at the beginning of a new revival of the sci-fi games niche.
There is a discussion regarding the fact that most space based games are also horror, with the general understanding that you’re going to die a horrible death
Marco tells us a little bit more about his game Greenhorns
It uses some familiar adventuring game play mechanics and would appeal to fans of old-school gaming and mixes in narrative storytelling as well. When you build a planet in Greenhorns and begin to explore it feels a lot like dungeon diving. In Greenhorns you serve a god-machine and go out on missions to build planets. It’s focused on the chaos of creation and the ramifications of that chaos. Your job is to stabilise the planet, via different narrative options, and bring peace to the inhabitants. It’s a collaborative world building experience.
There is also a Loot system, which is the way the characters make money, but these items of loot also carry recordings and enable the players to build the lore of the planet and wider solar system too.
Chris and Marco move into a real play in which they play two characters in a space based adventure. Listen as the dice determine how things will go with them as they fly through a wormhole at hyper speed smuggling a cargo of unrefrigerated luxury fruit past the intergalactic Police to a resort planet, before it goes bad!
Actual Play Map drawn by Jog Brogzin in 1 Hour
Links to things we discussed:
Games:
Constant Do
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Podcast Authority Score: 23 / 100
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