Scribbles and Horrors

The Realm of Yolmi has 8 combat matrices: Land Combat, Hand-to-Hand Combat, Underwater Combat, Ship vs. Ship Combat, Air Combat, Spaceship vs. Spaceship, Spaceship vs. Creature, Spaceship vs. Planet. Besides this, weapons of a sufficiently high tech level skip combat to-hits altogether, automatically hitting unless a saving throw is made.

So the answer to the question “well, do I hit it? What do I roll?” could be on one of 9 tables, depending on what weapons are being used and in what circumstance.

This is typical Realm of Yolmi excess—the breadth of possibility is impressive and awe-inspiring.

Usually, of course, Land Combat is what adventurers will be using. The rest are special cases clearly understandable—naval combat is between ships, phasers are phasers, etc. But Land Combat and Hand-to-Hand combat seem to be weirdly intermingled, and I’m having trouble figuring them out.

Land Combat is a straightforward percentile to-hit vs Armor Type, with modification by weapon, strength, and tactical positioning.

Unless surprised, initiative is rolled individually on d8s with bonuses, and damage is dealt on a hit. Standard stuff.

Firearms are extremely powerful in Land Combat. They automatically jump to the top of the initiative against other opponents and have a 15% chance to kill outright any creature hit. Additionally, a successful hit allows the shooter to “empty the clip”, dealing as successive rounds-worth of damage. Firearms are mitigated by being expensive and rare, and requiring scientists to reload them.

My basic understanding of the combat sequence is this:

1. Determine surprise
2. Determine initiative order
3. Within each combatants turn:
a. Move
b. Resolve to-hits
c. Resolve damage
d. Reload firearms, other actions, etc.

So far so good. But then there’s this whole other section…

The Hand-to-Hand system is described right after Land Combat, and has a similar initiative process, except that non-firearm weapon-wielding characters get +3 initiative. The attacker rolls 1d20 and subtracts 1d8 rolled by the defender, trying to meet a target based on armor type.

It is said elsewhere that Scientists do damage “openhanded”, as do several creatures. The damage calculation in the H-2-H section is appropriately weak (level x STR). Presumably “doing damage openhanded” has something to do with the Hand-to-Hand combat system, right?

But when is this system supposed to be used? It is not simply a hit resolution mechanic which could be swapped into the initiative order, because H-2-H adds +3 to initiative where Land Combat does not. Could it be that initiative is supposed to be rolled each and every combat round? That seems quite cumbersome.

An appendix (containing errata and additions) says that close range (½”) is required for hand-to-hand. Perhaps the initiative order is set at the beginning of combat, but when Hand-to-Hand begins (forced by closing ranks) it triggers a re-assessment of the initiative situation.

A thorough statistical analysis might reveal whether there are advantages to one matrix vs another—I can imagine it being tactically useful to move into hand-to-hand as a way of making it harder to be hit—but I leave that to better calculators than me.

For the most part Yolmi is more coherent and complete than, say, OD&D. But this is one area where things don’t quite seem to fit together. Unfortunately I have not yet made contact with anyone who played Yolmi back in the day, who could answer this question.

Watching E.R. has fried my brain, so here’s a Realm of Yolmi creature:

Medical Doctors

These professionals will insist on treating anyone who has been hurt, by force if necessary. Treatment heals all damage and takes one day. Their personal lives are quite chaotic, however, and there is a 20% chance that they will become overwhelmed and kill a patient.

Type: Men
N.A.: 2-12
Armor Type: 9
Move: 15”
Hit Die: 4
T.P.: G
% Lair: 35%
L.N.A.: 2-24
T.L.: H

Attacks: Openhanded, 1-4 + treatment (20% chance of death)

A PDF of this session report is available here: escape-from-special-operations-complex-903.pdf

Players: Shy Owl (Ref), Jenx, xaoseed, Oldhawkeyes, Jay_zer0
5/31/2026 7:00 AM - 8:40 AM PST
Discord voice chat

Deep within the complex, lights flicker on. Cryosleep pods open in unison, waking from indefinite slumber 5 new adventurers eager to escape out into open air…

Diorama Jones, Fool ; Ostiana Mulch, Footman ; Quern Zadoki, Fool ; Garamond Micron, Fool | Later joining the party was: Shunt Organman, Assistant

The party began with a poster map of the complex plastered to the wall, and set to work finding where they were on it.

The party climbed through a vent and went westward, revealing a room which seemed to contain an immaculate red car. The party descended into the room to take a closer look, and the car was revealed to be a shimmering illusion put up by an Omegacron, armed with submachine guns and a phaser.

The omegacron warned against intruders and asked for authoritative identification, but did not engage immediately, enabling the party to slip down the western passage.

The beeping sounds of the omegacron drew a group of 3 heavily armored True Ones, however, who immediately challenged the party to a one-on-one unarmed combat, loser to be eaten.

Quern Zadoki rose to the challenge and put up a good fight, but, lacking the necessary training and chivalric military prowess, could not stand up to the muscular foe.

Moving south as the True Ones feasted, the party went up another vent in hopes of reaching a room from which to mount their escape. Within the room were 6 Galics, horrifying and smiling creatures which rolled a “friendly” on the react roll.

Upon descent, the Galics were quite happy to meet the party, and gave somewhat unhelpful-seeming advice about rafts and boats to make their escape. The galics were eager to shake hands. When shaking the hand of Garamond, a galic named Nine refused to let go and shook so hard that Garamond’s arm fell off. At this point the galics broke into uproarious laughter the arm started twitching, lurching towards its owner aggressively, and the party simply made a break for it eastwards. The new member of the party, Shunt, grabbed the arm in the midst of the flight in case it might be useful later. Honestly the galics didn’t mean much harm, and did not pursue.

At length it was discovered that a slightly ambiguous part of the map did not correspond to navigation in their favor, and the party was puzzled at how to proceed to one of the exits. No path seemed to take them where they needed to go!

They continued northwards and met some mole-like Snets, who ordered them to disarm themselves in fealty to the metaphysical lord Diss. The party simply turned around and went back.

The party re-checked the map and finally found another, secret path out, through the galic room. As a joke, they tied Garamond’s severed arm to him for the Galic to shake. The galics found this ruse delightful, and did not harass them further as the party scrambled up to the vent, which wound around for a long way.

At length the party found themselves in a used car lot run by a solitary Regik. He offered to sell them a low-end model for 6000r. When the party balked at this, he offered an installment plan at 1000r/month over 6 months, but tempers were not running well and Diorama hit it with their nun-chuks. One the second round of combat Ostiana shot him dead outright.

The party found only rusty cars there, but noticed bank deposit boxes in an adjacent room, from which they recovered 300 Chromis, 400 Galiks, 300 Rupniks, 3 Gems (worth 2500r, 1000r, and 250r), and a suit of -5 mech armor.

Knowing they were close to the exit, the party quickly made their way past a treasury room, deftly evading some Gamblers, and stumbled straight into a conference of Politicians who immediately began haranguing them with all kinds of aggressive nonsense. Eventually kerosene splashed around and lit by Shunt Organman caused enough of a ruckus that the party could escape to the exit and into the open air with their treasure. Their first adventure was a success.

Referee notes:

This game was several firsts for me: The Realm of Yolmi was new, the map was untested, and I’d also never run an online game before. I was a little anxious about how it’d turn out. It went great!

The map worked well. Because of the complexity and difficulty of the map, it proved to be a substantive (but not insurmountable) effort to navigate to the exit. The party made some wrong turns, and were able to make informed decisions and gambles.

My idea of having some passageways be vents, accessible near the ceiling, worked okay, though it got sort of muddled. I might try some other approaches to adding variety to the map.

The Realm of Yolmi is an odd duck, in part because it seems to insist on giving characters very little to work with. In practice, I’m finding that the treasure tables aren’t too bad and the combat is usable and exciting.

Fights are slightly more crunchy than my usual taste–I’m a big group initiative kinda guy–but the ability of firearms/tech devices to completely reshape the combat landscape makes for a cool system. Each weapon has its own little system, which is overwhelming at first but works well in play. We didn’t have a big combat with lots of participants, so this will need to be tested further.

I took the reaction results very seriously, which meant that most creatures didn’t attack. Even creatures which had preprogrammed behavior, like the galics with handshaking, were subject to strict reaction rolls. For the most part reactions were positive. What ended up happening is that each creature they encountered would let the party pass peaceably if they are willing to pay a cost: the True Ones demand one-on-one combat, the Galics take arms, the Snets only wish to see you disarmed, the Regik wants money, the Politicians want one of the party to be taken in as one of their own. It was a neat dynamic.

All in all my crazy idea–The Realm of Yolmi on my Zeta III map–worked really well! It was neat to see that something which I’d assumed would only really work as a wilderness adventure can work pretty well as a dungeon game.

I definitely am interested in others’ implementations of Yolmi. There’s great wealth here.

Here are more illustrations, following my first post.

Taekic

Small flying creatures armed with micro-lasers.

Dalek

Giant creatures that open their mouths and let food walk in. Unfortunately for them, their size gives them away every time. Even the most naive of Adventurer could see that it is not a cave since a large body wearing a fluorescent green tunic is attached to it.

H4 234

The last of the servorobots. It mounts two heavy machine guns on its sides and has delusions of being another “Machine Gun Kelly”

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Gamblers

Gaudily dressed, they invite Adventurers to play with them in obviously crooked games for high stakes. If refused, they will attack 45% of the time. They are also quite adept at passing phony rupniks, etc.

Suu

Stony creatures with three long rubbery necks with a head attached to each. They lash these around with tremendous force and speed, causing utter damage.

Completines

5′ monsters that generate electricity. They throw their eyes when hit in the stomach.

Here is a new class for The Realm of Yolmi. Usually I like my games to have very few classes, but this was fun to make and I think it fits with the vibe. Like Soldiers and Scientists, this class also appears in the creature encounter lists.

Politicians

Politicians have a +20% for all initial creature reaction rolls (though not subsequent ones). This stacks with Personality modifiers, but parties with more than one politician only get the 20% once.

They can employ rhetoric to convince any moderately attentive listeners of any policy position, which succeeds 10% of the time and takes 1 day.

They can use no weapons and wear no armor.

Presidents above 13th level are re-elected with -70%, 14th with -90%, etc.

Politicians use d6-1 for hit dice, maximum level 10. +2 hp beyond level 10.

Politicians do not achieve higher levels automatically: they must be elected. A politician may attempt to be elected to any higher position if they have the required experience. Elections are modified by the prime requisite % bonus or penalty for the politician’s Personality. If a politician fails to win an election for a particular position, they may try again at a -10% penalty for each previous attempt.

There is a 10% chance each month that a politician’s term is ending, and they must choose to either be elected to a higher position or be re-elected at their current position. Otherwise their political life will be over and they must retire.

Each time a politician is re-elected, the chance of being re-elected again in that position is modified by -10%.

In addition to Personality, election success can be modified by the following activities:

Lobbyists with deep pockets will of course be happy to assist politicians with any of these expenses.

Various political offices will have benefits by virtue of their station: Presidents will be the Commander in Chief of any military encountered 60% of the time; Vice Presidents become Presidents if one dies, Mayors can bestow keys to population centers, Representatives can introduce legislation, etc.