A solo wargame, all with D6, simple but not simplistic where you chase frieghters with your u-boat. Good time playing it and tense on some phases. You write the war logbook of your u-boat as commander so some similarities with solo rpg as well.

I recommand this game. With a nice price you'll get some fun. A bit repetitive so replay value to be . Some rules could be more explicits, had a bit of rules investigations here and there.

I don't want to spoil the adventure, but will say that I enjoyed it and recommend it.  I should mention that there are some supernatural elements, so if you like pulp modules without that, maybe change those bits if you want to use it. (This is an excerpt from a post on my author site at https://markgrisham.wordpress.com). The adventure was easy to understand and play, so give it a go! Also, I want to say thanks to Schweigh for sharing this.

Operation Drumbeat is a great game for only a few bucks. I used it with students in the university and it was great

This is 108 pages of pulp goodness. The first 37 pages is a combination of fluff on the island of Rura-Tonga itself and its inhabitants and historical data on the Imperial Japanese Navy with some other technical data on seaplanes. Fair enough. Then we get to the adventures. There are five of them and a set of notional adventurers to star in them. There is an island of Zombies, there are Japanese genetic experiments gone wrong, a hunt for a lost treasure (which is guarded by.....something), a race to prevent a volcano from erupting (using mystical means) and what are the Japanese doing on that island where the fishermen refuse to go?

There are notional adventurers using the Any-System Key (included in the last 2 pages of the book) so that you can easily adapt this to whatever pulp system you are using (Amazing Adventures is what I use, the HEX Ubiquity system would work too). There are maps with each adventure and they are repeated again at the end of the book so you can print them separately and give them to your players. There are period photographs rather than drawn artwork (an excellent design choice).

This is a very well done book. Highly recommended.

Good game for beginners. We were able to read through the rules in about 30 minutes & get the game started. The game lasted about an hour which is great for a 9 year old's attention span. The rules were simple enough that mini-me ran his own game the next day without assistance. See my AAR here:http://katospage.blogspot.com/?m=1

Building on the solid base of Panzer Kids Basic, this is more of the same (which is good) with additional tanks and rules for flank shots etc. Not complicated therefore not for those who want to count the rivets but if you want a fun game of tank warfare in the desert or on the West and East front, this is for you.

If you want to move a few tanks around with your friends, and don't really want to spend half the game checking rule books, PANZER KIDS DELUXE is for you. Simple, straightforward rules for tanks and anti-tank guns, a few simple scenarios, some optional rules, and a system to rate any tanks NOT in the book at a reasonalble price. Playing a few solo games demonstrated the subtle differences between the tanks. Playing a three players game with eleven tanks on the board showed how well balanced the abilities to fire and manuever can be. A game with three tanks on each side can take as little as ten minutes. Add in the damage rules, which lower firepower and movement, and the game will take a bit longer.

There are a couple of stat lines left out of my copy, but I have notified the creator. (nothing that can't be fixed using the "Rate your own" section

Overall, a load of fun, and a bargain to boot!

Panzer Kids Deluxe is the full version of the pay-what-you-want Panzer Kids Basic rules set that appeared earlier in 2016. I reviewed the basic set when it came out and gave it three stars with anticipation that the full set would earn another star or two if it offered more vehicles and some optional rules. I'm happy to say that it delivers on both counts.

The author designed Panzer Kids to let grownups run tabletop miniatures battles featuring the most iconic armored vehicles of WW2 for their little gamers as young as 7. He succeeds, and at the same time, introduces new gamers to all the classic concepts of miniature wargaming, making Panzer Kids an effective gateway to the hobby. He breaks no new ground in terms of rule design, but this is a feature, not a bug. You use rulers to measure movement and range, and dice to determine hits and misses. Three cumulative hits on a tank knocks it out of the battle. There are rules for cover and concealment, and optional damage rules that degrade a tank's stats with each cumulative hit scored. The list of vehicles features all the classic AFVs from ungainly early-war clunkers to fearsome late-war behemoths. British, French, German, Italian, Soviet, and American vehicles are included. Anti-tank guns are included, but no infantry, to keep the focus on the tank action. A very welcome addition in the deluxe rules is the formula for determining vehicle stats, showing how rationally the author derived each combatant's armor, speed, and attack values, and allowing you to add new ones consistently. How does it actually play? You can get started with minimal prep, and a battle typically takes 20-30 minutes. I can explain the combat mechanic to you in a few words: roll a die and add your attack value; you hit if the total exceeds your target's armor. A natural 6 always hits and a 1 always misses -- this results in some very swingy results against mismatched opponents, but as I mentioned in the review of the basic rules, kids love sudden reversals of fortune in their games, especially when mom or dad is on the losing end. You could easily remove the natural 6 rule if you want the Stuarts to really fear the Tigers. A note on pricing: considering that it's a black-and-white 80-page PDF with single column layout and relatively large print, I wonder if $8 US seems a bit steep. The author was generous enough to send me a review copy, so I can't complain personally, but I'm curious if other potential buyers will find this the right price for them. The market shall decide!

Full Disclosure: I know the author via social media but I have not been solicited to write this review and I'll try to be evenhanded.

"Panzer Kids Basic" is a free teaser for the forthcoming "Panzer Kids Deluxe." Set-up can be done in a matter of two minutes providing you have some tanks and terrain pieces. The recommended scale is 15mm but it would work with nearly any scale. Players spend points to create their tank force, ranging from 5 points for an M4 Sherman to 16 points for a Tiger. (Strangely, an M3 Stuart costs more than an M4 -- I know Shermans had their faults but I would think a 75mm main gun and thicker armor would make them more valuable than a light tank such as the M3). Once you've bought your tanks, you and your adversary place an agreed-upon set of terrain features, which provide cover for any adjacent unit. Then you're ready to skirmish. Each tank has a data card with its essential stats: Speed, Range, Attack, Defense, and Cost. The fundamentals of movement and combat will seem familiar to any ruler-and-dice wargamer and are very simple to grasp. Their familiarity actually makes Panzer Kids Basic a good introduction to the standard concepts of wargaming for very young players. To attack, roll a six-sided die, add your tank's Attack bonus, and try to exceed your target's Defense. A "1" always misses and a "6" always hits, which tends to smooth out duels between mismatched opponents. That M3 Stuart will still score a hit on your Tiger 1 out of 6 tries. I see this as a feature rather than a bug -- kids tend to have a higher tolerance for random twists of fate in their games and it makes the battles more lively. Players use counters or tokens to keep track of how many hits each tank has taken. On the third hit, a tank is knocked out. With the right age group, you could be up for a fun evening of battles with your kids, each of which isn't likely to take more than 20 minutes. I hope that the deluxe version will add enough tactical options to keep players interested in the long run. I can't give the game more than 3 stars as is, because it seems a mere placeholder for the complete game -- which could make me add another star or two if it delivers on this bare-bones teaser.

One of my favourite pulp(y) settings. I have used this with Rolemaster and Savage World rules so far. The "Any-System" works well enough for me. The setting has everything you could wish for. Beaches, Zombies, evil Nazis, island hopping, dog fights, intrigue, high adventure and memorable characters. It may be a tad low on memorable villains. And some may find it a little but too focused on the technical details of planes and ships. Heroes of Rura-Tonga is two fifths background material and three fifths adventure. Perfect combination for me.

The adventures contained are short. It's around 60 pages for 5 adventures. A single one will probably only last you for one session. If you want to spend more time on Rura-Tonga, you will have to get creative or get more adventures like "Gift of the Gods" or "The Paranoia Pit".

I and my players really enjoyed the other pulp Egypt adventures so I thought I would add this to the queue. After reading it I found that I want to move it up the list.

I have been looking for a tool to use for solo gaming. This seems to fit the bill. It allows for your creativity and the possibilities are endless. You can scale and design an adventure to your needs which is particularly helpful when designing solo quests. Mr. Schweigs gives you ideas for each dungeon element, showing you how to skew or balance dice rolls to fit the theme of the delve you had in mind. He also provides two examples to get you going.

It will take some trial and error to strike that "perfect" dungeon design but that is part of the fun.

Now back to finding Margog, the giant spider who has claimed too many lives...

This is a cool idea. A simple worksheet that allows one to randomly generate a dungeon weighted with whatever particularities or values the GM desires. Why should you be forced to have a 1 in 6 chance of going right or a 1 in 12 chance of encountering a vampire or alabaster statue of a nude sorceress? This tool is a template so that you can do more than what's in the Dungeon Master's Guide, and it's assumed (I assume) that the concept behind Schweig's Themed Dungeon Generator should be expanded by its new owner.

Make no mistake, aside from 2 filled-in sheets, this will take a bit of effort in order to make it work well. Consider this PDF a middle ground between ordinary random adventure/encounter/dungeon generators and a published module. If you put in 50% of the work, you'll get 100% of the results: a satisfying session... or even campaign. So, yes, it will save you time, but know that time must first be spent.

However, this concept begs to be expanded by the publisher himself. The suggested ideas are decent, but a lot more could be done with them. This is just the bare-bones beginning of what's possible. Perhaps Mr. Schweig will hone his themed dungeon generator, investing more of his own time and energy before re-releasing it in 2014 with three times the content, adding three times the value. Acquiring/using a better cover is also advisable.

VS

This product includes a 1 page random dungeon generator with no percentages filled in, and 2 pre-filled in random dungeon generators. I was hoping it would add more to the rules I already have such as new options for corridors (it only includes straight, turn, T-junction, and 4-way intersection), new options for rooms (it only includes empty, encounter, or trapped), new options for traps and tricks (all already in DMG), or new ideas for things to encounter in dungeos, but unfortunately it doesn't add much. Everything included seems to already be within the DMG.

Basically this is just a fancy worksheet, NOT new ideas. The price is a bit high.

For a 5-star rating, I'd like to see a nice long list of new ideas to populate the blank spaces for each of the subsection. A nice long list for corridors, a nice long list for rooms, a nice long list for encounter ideas and trap ideas.

I had the pleasure of playtesting an early version of this product. This is a fantastic dungeon generator that gives you the tools to create a themed delve with escalating encounters. You populate the generator with your own content which gives you a great deal of control over the results, but not at the expense of sacrificing randomness which makes it perfect for solo play.

The generator works with any system and is versatile enough to facilitate play in multiple genres. Even though it's presented as a fantasy dungeon generator, I used it to play a solo sci fi game with almost no modification. It's also easy to introduce different 'win conditions' if you want to focus on solo games that have goal oriented structures.

While I've only used it for solo games, there's nothing to stop you from using it as a prep tool for group games.

This is a great gaming accessory at a great price. If you're interested in solo gaming or just want a well designed tool for session prep, you can't go wrong picking this one up.