My Solo RPG Journey: Marching Order 2nd Ed Curse & Coin. Overview and Character Creation (Playtest Edition)

A gritty grimey gooey game, full of sewers, debauchery, and hopefully coin. And death. Lots of death.

Check out Crumbling Keep here! Check out Marching Order 2nd Ed here!

Greetings to all my imaginary readers out there it has been a bit hasn’t it? I have been burned out from real life but I am finally getting back, slowly and carefully, into the swing of things.

Today I bring to you a look at the playtest version of Curse and Coin, aka Marching Order 2nd Edition. I got access to it thanks to James from Crumbling Keep, so thanks for that. You have caused me no end of suffering. I kid I kid!

This is a sort of boxed Solo / GMLess CoOp RPG, where you play as a team of Rogues delving into dungeons and sewers (a lot of sewers, actually) in search of loot and riches. And hopefully not dying. It’s very much akin to dungeon crawlers like 4 Against Darkness (but without the AI bullshit the new releases have) and Ker Nethalas.

So let’s dive into the playtest doc. Now this is kind of organized, and kind of not, so I am going to break it down by “section” this time around.

The doc opens up with a Welcome, which is told in character by someone named Grizzle talking about Rotbottom, and what it means to be a Rogue. It’s very tongue in cheek and really sets the tone for the kind of setting this game uses, which is gritty grimey and unpleasant but also with some dark humor to it. Grizzle lays it out: being a Rogue is not about heroism, it’s about getting drunk off the coin you scavenge in the dark tunnels under the earth, hopefully not dying, and coming back with all your limbs intact. This ain’t the place for glory, it’s the place for the thieves, mercs, and ner-do-wells to get rich or die trying.

Most likely die trying.

Next, we have your classic “What is this?” section, which every game seems to need anymore. I honestly am unsure why we do this. Unless the idea is for brand new players picking this up and purchasing it without a general understanding of what a tabletop RPG is. I suppose it’s still useful. I guess? Still has the humor that is sprinkled throughout the rules though, which I appreciate. Goblin turds and all.

The next section is all about getting your party setup and goes over how you use “Coins” (points by any other name really) to setup your band. You can play from 1 player to 4 players, although 3 players is a little weird due to needing a 4 person party to play.

What I found odd is the less players you have, the less of a budget you have in Coins (points) to spend. For example, a single player gets 525 total coins to be used on 4 total Rogues, but a 4 player team gets 150 coins for EACH player (600 total coins on the party). This is, I suppose, due to the fact that there is no inherent limit on how much a single Rogue could cost you in budget. While a 4 player team has each player with a 150 limit, a 1 player game means I could, in theory, spend at 525 coins on a single Rogue (because there is in fact a 0 cost Rogue, the Rat Catcher, we will get there), and have 1 GOD ROGUE and 3 Meat Shields. The rules do suggest you do not do this but I mean, come on. Challenge run maybe?

Also that budget is spent on Gear as well. So that 4 player team means each person has 150 coins to spend on their Rogue AND that Rogue’s gear. Which is important to not.

The weird part is 3 player games. Again this involves that humor in the writing talking about how the writer (James or Grizzle I assume) is too hungover to deal with this. Also yes James, that shit should probably be a sidebar. Honestly, I think having one of the players run 2 Rogues is the easiest solution to a 3 player game. The other option is a Construct which works like Monsters (explained later) but that seems convoluted to me.

After you spend your budget on your Rogue you have to setup their Traits. And this is kind of funny. You have 2 types: Qualities and Flaws, which are good and bad, respectively. They can trigger during fights, and on the character sheet will be 6 slots under, I kid you not, BULLSHIT. Your Quality that you roll for (a d6) will end up on the 6 slot, and the flaw on the 1 slot.

Finally we get to the shopping bit, and each Rogue can hold 10 items and you can only move items around between Rogues when they are in town, not on an adventure. Coins are a community resource however.

The next section is an actual list of the Rogue types, and there are a few, organized by cost (0, 100, 150, and 175) with their stats/qualities/etc listed out below the price chart. I will make a Rogue later, just one, to show how it’s done. I will get into why only 1 later as well. I have my reasons.

This section also includes background on Rotbottom, as well as the services the city has, and the basic items you can purchase. It’s the biggest section of the rules by far, and pretty detailed. This is where you find the Rotbottom Events that will come up later in the Rest phase, for example, as well as shop contents, rules for things like Carousing and other activities you can get up to between adventures. You also find the rules for Allies and Mercenaries in this section.

The next section is on Gambling, and it includes a few games like Ruffian’s Dice, and Ofucles’ Balls. This appears untested actually but having some downtime activities is always approved in a game like this, because it helps make the “world” feel alive.

The next section is all about building a “Barracks” for your Rogues. That’s right we got BASE BUILDING! This is for, again, that feeling of progression and making the world feel alive with I always approve of. It’s quite in depth too, with plot sizes and different rooms that do different things. What is interesting is that apparently a Barrack’s is only owned by one player, but nothing says each player cannot have their own base? I suppose it’s assumed that the town (Rotbottom) is large enough to allow the 4 possible max players to each have their own home. It also does state you can upgrade your plot size which is nice. Plot Size ranges from Tiny to “Piss Off You Ostentatious Bastard” (yes, that really is the name) and rooms are divided by inside and outside types, and are things like Bedrooms, Bars, a Shrine to Ofucles, Patch of Wizard’s Weed, and more. Each one has an effect or benefit, which means that the base seems to be your main way of improving your Rogue. Importantly, the house is linked to the PLAYER not the Rogue (or Rogues. It does seem to imply that a player can have more then 1 character, interesting) so that means even if you lose all you little dumbasses, you can always get a new one (Oh hai Ratcatcher!) and keep delving.

Next, the section we reach is about the actual “Marching Order” mechanic and honestly without images it’s a little hard for me to visualize. But it SOUNDS like setting things up a la Darkest Dungeon, a literal line of your 4 characters (or more, you can have allies and hire mercs and things as well) that dictates who is in front, who is in rear, and how far their various attacks and abilities can reach. There is also a mention of a battleline, and standees. I am trying to visualize this but yea, without an image it’s kind of difficult for me. That might be a me thing however, but it does seem like this order is very important, kind of like how 4AD did things. Importantly, you can rearrange your order when not in combat however you like.

Yea ok I think the idea is you have ENEMIES | ALLIES like that, in lines facing each other, as if they were in a tunnel or corridor. And that would dictate who is targetable based on distance and type of character in relation to the active character. Yea that has to be it, and if that is the case its basically Darkest Dungeon in tabletop form. I can dig that.

Honestly this whole game so far feels like a more humorous version of Darkest Dungeon if I am being honest. Makes me wonder if that was part of the inspiration for this game. I need to see which came first, 1st Ed or Darkest Dungeon at some point. Anyway!

This section also talks about Delve’s which are one of the two primary ways to play the game. Now the actual sample Delve is another section, but we can talk about the two methods of play here since it makes sense.

First, there are the Sewers. These are randomly generated dungeons. Think 4 Against Darkness again, or any Proc Gen dungeon crawler really. You generate rooms, the contents of those rooms, and move forward in search of random loot. This is the only thing I have access to right now and honestly, I am not in the mood to play something like this, which is why I am only going to make 1 Rogue later to show how it works.

What I want to try are the Delves. My understanding is that there will be 6 of these in the Box Set, and they are basically Choose Your Own Adventure styled books. You will have a preset narrative, little maps, the contents of the rooms are predefined, and there are things like “If you want to search the bookcase, turn to section 105” and the like. There is a little example room in the playtest docs and between that and my discussions with James that is how it has come off. This is much more interesting to me and reminds me the old Fighting Fantasy books.

Ok back to the section on “How to Delve”. Rolling is simple, roll a d6, add a modifier, check if you meet or beat the target. Like if you do a “Physical Roll vs Target’s Defense” you would roll a d6, add your Physical stat, and see if you meet or beat the target’s Defense score. If you meet or beat, you succeed. Easy enough. It also uses the good ol TN (Target Number) abbreviation as well for difficulties and things. I like how easy this is. Attack rolls work the same, however if you make an attack roll you actually subtract the defense score from the roll, and deal damage based on the result. For instance, if they have a Defense of 4, and you get an 8 total, you do 4 damage to their HP plus any other effects the attack would deal. Ties still inflict conditions but do no damage, which is interesting. There is also a section dealing with how to randomize targets but eh, we all have our own methods for that honestly.

The next part of this section is about the Fate Sheet…and it is incomplete. Apparently, the back of your character sheet is where you mark thing’s on the Fate Sheet, but the example of what this means is missing. This has to do with decisions during delves that have “far reaching consequences.” I guess if I make a choice and Rotbottom runs outta Gutrot this is where I would put it. I think the Rogues would hate that.

Next we talk about Luck, and it’s basically the reroll mechanic. Spend luck on a delve, reroll as long as you have not moved to a new section of the delve / new room. We also have a section about conditions, things like Weakened, Poison, etc. Pretty standard stuff here.

There is also an “Escalation Tracker” apparently, which will be used in Delves but only when called for. There is also a use for it in the Sewers.

Next is a section on Mapping and it actually talks about the Fate Sheet here…but says it will be talked about later. The Fate Sheet was already brought up. This might need to be reordered.

Torches are talked about next and they also use a slider, and again it has to do with the Delve entries reducing your light based on a symbol in the entry. And if you have no torches and run into a dark room and would need to light the room? You get to roll on a Darkness Gathers table which can, in fact, kill the entire party. Brutal stuff here.

We go over items again, and it basically says outside of combat you can use em however you want on whoever you want and can trade, but in combat it takes an action to use an item, and you can only target adjacent targets with it.

Next we go over death / dying. There are no saves. Zero HP = Dead. And if you have enough money, you can just buy a new Rogue, or hell just take a Rat Catcher (the 0 cost Rogue) and keep pushing. Or just give up, and start over. Throwing away all your progress. You loser. (It’s me, I am the loser)

The very last things in this section though, after Dying, are Leaving / Returning to a Delve, and The Rest Phase. Thankfully leaving and reentering is easy, you just say you are retreating, but all monsters reset. Only monsters though. Loot, Traps, all that? Done and gone and handled. There is also a little rule for stopping you from coming into a Delve and then leaving to trigger a “Rest Phase” but Grizzle/James even says they don’t pay attention to that. You track a Motivated buff, which requires you to burn 10 rounds before you can rest again. Me, personally? I would toss that out. That is a bit too much tracking for me, but I can see its use for the more “hardcore” crowd.

The Rest Phase itself actually has city events, which is always fun. This seems to be when the RPG part of this game comes in. This is where you can use a free “Recoup” to heal some of the damage your Rogues took, pay to heal more, use services and buy items and all that jazz before you go on your next adventure.

And now we reach the Combat rules. We again have the mention of the Battle Line, and this specifies that the Rogues are on the RIGHT and the Enemies on the LEFT, so something like this I think? Again, no diagram yet in the playtest docs.

RRRR | EEEE

Initiative is easy. Roll a d6, on a 1-3 Enemies go first, 4-6 the Rogues go first. The order that the active side goes is based on who is closest to the battle line and has not taken an action.

Now what is really interesting is that when the Rogue’s turn starts, the FIRST thing you do is the Retreat Phase. Basically the Rogue at the back of the line gets a chance to decide to run away screaming like the coward they really are. If they succeed at their Evade Roll, they vanish to safety, and the new Rogue at the back can try to retreat. However, if that Rogue fails to Retreat? No one else can try to escape.

If the remaining Rogues win the fight, anyone who escaped comes back and you gotta reset your Marching Order. If everyone escaped (or the rogues who didn’t run die) and enemies are still around, the other Rogues go back to the previous location and reset their marching order.

Once this entire Retreat Phase is over, we get to the individual Rogue Turns, and those are broken up into Conditions/Cooldowns, Action, and Bullshit. No, really, there is a Bullshit phase. Again, this game has a sense of humor.

Conditions/Cooldowns is the phase where you tick down any, well, conditions and cooldowns that Rogue has. If they used an attack that has a Cooldown of 3, it drops to 2, stuff like that. Conditions that hit 0 end, Cooldowns that hit 0 can be reused. Easy stuff.

For the Action section you can use one of the Rogues actual actions from their cards, on some general ones (Move, Use Item, Focus, or Activate Ally). Move lets them shift forward or backward in the Order, and the person they switch with cannot stop them. Item is, well, use an item. Activate an Ally lets you switch places with an Ally, and Focus lets you further reduce ALL your cooldowns by 1.

Beyond that the normal actions on their card have their own rules. You can only do 1 action.

Importantly, Cooldowns and Conditions do NOT RESET between encounters.

Targeting is based on the marching order again. So if your attack says, “Target an Adjacent Creature” and you are in the middle of the marching order you can’t hit an enemy, unless they are next to you somehow. Shit like that. A lot of this seems very self-explanatory, but I like it being laid out for new players who might choose this as their first game. Spaces are counted of course, and there is never a missing space in the Marching Order. Also, specifically, Adjacent Creatures are 1 Space away, so 2 spaces away means jumping over 1 space basically.

There are also reactions, which do not activate on the Rogue’s turn and have activation requirements. I assume it would like “Riposte” where you counter a hit, shit like that.

Finally, we have the Bullshit phase.

This is where you roll a d6, check your Rogue’s bullshit chart, and see if a trait is triggered. Could be good, could be bad.

Enemy turns are WAY easier. They check conditions (no cooldowns) and then you roll a d6 against their action chart, and they do the thing. That is it. Pretty standard for Solo Games, and I honestly appreciate that.

Allies, if you have them, function like Monsters for their actions. They might have Bullshit charts though so that still applies. Allies can only move if a Rogue moves them via Activate an Ally though.

Next up is everyone’s favorite part, the LOOT SECTION! Our Rogue’s have crawled through literal shit most likely, fought horrors beyond our comprehension (or Rats), and now deserve some fine loot.

Dividing loot is interesting. If you are not solo (and I would be) you actually have to basically do DKP shit. Each player declares they want it, rolls a d6+their current LUCK points, and highest gets it. But then the winner loses 1 luck point for the rest of the Delve. Importantly, if an item can only be used by certain character types and your Rogue aint that type? You cannot roll on it. No Ninja Looting here.

Coins are just divided evenly, rounded up, and we do not talk about the mysterious extra coin that sometimes just appears. Don’t question it. THEY may be watching.

Then we have the loot tables. Enemies can have a LOOT X tag, and that dictates what loot they might have. 16 total tables, and Table 16 is literally “fuck you, no loot”.

Finally the next few sections are things like Special Items, Conditions, and Monsters. These are self explanatory again.

And then we have a section for fun modifiers to your Sewer (Random Dungeon) run.

And that is Marching Order Curse and Coin, and honestly once I can get ahold of a Delve or two, I will want to play it. Privately though. No Actual Plays here, because the Delves, being narrative driven, are things I would want YOU, the readers, to experience.

Let’s go ahead and choose and build a Rogue now though. I will bust out my classic “Spreadsheet” character sheet for this. The Rogue’s available are:

I am going to build a Doctor, because it sounds fun. This would cost 100 coins out of my starting 525.

I set my stats up and then write down my basic action and choose 1 other. I take “I’m a Doctor, Damn It” which lets me reduce cooldowns of allies. Remember, Rogues are Allies of mine (but not an actual “Ally” type)

Now I have to get my Quality, and my Flaw. My Quality is Get Out of the Line of Fire, and my Flaw is “It’s Reacting Poorly with your Biology”. Oh goodie, this doc can just poison people randomly.

Normally I would spend cash here, but I don’t really need to since I won’t be running this character yet. Plus, I will use this if I ever run a delve, so I need to save some cash for 3 other Rogues.

So here is my Doctor. Took no time at all to “roll up”!

Now before we end this post we have a few things to go over about Curse and Coin here.

First, again, this entire post is about a PLAYTEST DOCUMENT. While I do not foresee any of the core rules changing, stuff like the missing charts and the formatting and maybe even the flow will hopefully be fixed before the game goes fully to editing and print.

And sadly, as of the time of posting this, there is no definite release date for Curse and Coin. The Kickstarter I linked above is still taking late pledges IF you are interested in preordering the game however.

But let’s talk about that. This game, currently at time of writing, is intended to be PHYSICAL ONLY. No Digital version. And that physical printing is going to run $125. For me? It’s hard to justify spending that much cash on ANY game. I am not saying it’s not got the value for the price. I have no idea beyond the prototype shown in this video just what is coming in this monster:

And that Prototype is a BEEFY boy make no mistake. I am just a giant ass cheapskate who prefers expensive stuff like this in Digital because, well, it’s cheaper.

I am not sure if this “no digital” thing will change. I hope it does. I know there was someone in a discord who told me they were waiting for a digital release of this to buy it, and when I told them there were no plans for that, they simply said “Guess I won’t buy it then.”

Honestly, I don’t see an exact reason, outside of wanting a purely physical release, to prevent this from having a digital one. Other than ya know, the whole Standee thing. But hey, I am not a game dev, so what do I know!

I just write about this stuff as if I was a crazed street preacher yelling and sometimes people read it.

I do think the system is solid for what it does, and I think the mechanics presented here are simple and interesting and worth checking out if you are interested. I still want to try a Delve or two at some point down the road but for now, that is all she wrote for Curse and Coin.

Till next time everyone!

Thanks for reading, as always.