The New Flesh

Bastards is a booklet game (A6 in the physical version) with the author's take on what they call "Dragon Games". It is based on d20 rolls under 3d6 stats (Strength, Dexterity, Wisdom) and over an opponent's Hit Dice rating or Armour Class in combat. Advantage and Disadvantage, is used; examples include weapons conveying Advantage and Disadvantage on Reaction rolls due to reputation. The game uses relatively low hit points (your character might be able to take two hits it seems in combat) but also a pretty generous temporary refresh and all health is restored by a rest period. It feels relatively deadly in the reading but probably a bit more satisfying than games based on "Into the Odd". The interesting ideas Classes Your starting hit points determine your class. Roll 1 HP and you're a wizard, roll 6 HP and your a barbarian. Each class has some special abilities but the thief and assassin could do with a few more options to help differe...

 A mini zine (single A4 sheet folded into a multi page zine) Dungeon Gig is no worse than many larger rule sets. It uses a single abstract stat and that stat is used as a bonus to d20 tests, hit points, inventory slots, pretty much everything in the game. Monsters also have a stat and this again forms their difficulty and hit points. It all feels like something of absurdly minimalist take on D&D inspired games. The fact that the stat is so important but determined randomly (although neatly by taking the middle value of a pool of three d6) feels off as players who roll high simply have more options and more fun. The stat value should have been offset by something like equipment so that the total value is always six. Magic is a "GM judges" situation but provides a rule of thumb that mechanical effects should cost half the numeric value of the effect in hit points. Spells are learnt by sacrifices stat points. The basic mechanism is a roll of d20 with 15 or more being a hit ...

This module's title actually underplays the number of swords present in it's temple. The core conceit at the heart of this adventure is a magical forge that can turn anything it touches into a sword. This means this a temple of countless swords, swords in heaps, flowing out of the temple and steadily flowing into the surrounding environment. This one idea (a surreal take on the fallen Decanter of Endless Water concept) drives everything else described in the module. From a game design point of view you just have to be envious as virtually everything else flows from the question "what would happen if there was a device that turns everything into swords?". There is actually more content in the adventure but it just kind of naturally follows from the core concept. An avatar of the god of swords is present because this is a temple of limitless swords. The presence of the god and countless swords engenders a violent conflict between the inhabitants of the caves surroundin...

Best left buried is a rules-light fantasy heartbreaker that seems to want to be the sidekick of Lamentations of the Flame Princess. It makes a big deal about how going into dungeons is a terrible idea and how nothing but death awaits those foolish enough to do it. Okay, these are interesting points, but the game relies on characters wanting to do it, there's literally nothing else in the rules system. What happens if in the first session the characters get to the entrance of the deep and dangerous caves and then do turn back? What the game lacks is the motivation as to why the adventurers enter the dungeon despite the danger. You're expected to find dungeoneering compelling despite it clearly not being any kind of long term proposition. Into the Odd , for example, deals with this a bit better by making the rewards, in the form of magical items, concomitant with the risks. The copy-editing of the book is poor with repeated sections and grammatical errors. I'm not especially...

Tunnel Goons  is a very small and rules-lite game that seems pitched somewhere between whimsical fantasy and traditional fantasy dungeon crawlers. The basic rules system is very simple: rolling 2d6 and trying to beat a target number. Stats, equipment and so on add to the number. The referee determines the difficulty number and fills in all the other rules. There are three stats that are essentially Physical, Criminal and Education. There is no magic system, no races and no classes. Progression exists and is based on the metagame of the number of sessions played. There is a tiny amount of background in the form of three tables for creating your character. The amount of flavour that jumps out of making the third table imply that most adults have been involved in some kind of world spanning war was quite exciting. Tunnel Goons is very simple and kind of gives a streamlined fantasy PbtA experience. Its subtitle, "An analog adventure for nice people" kind of points to a less viole...

Warlock is a modern rules-light take on British fantasy roleplaying games like Warhammer and Fighting Fantasy . The stats and skills are a lot like Advanced Fighting Fantasy while the careers system is modelled after Warhammer Roleplay 1st edition while the inventory, world and monsters echo Warhammer Fantasy Battle 1st edition. With all these influences the modern flavour sometimes feels like the use of a d20 in skill checks. Clever things Each career offers two random tables that offer details about your characters background if this is their starting career. The core skill of a career is simply named after the career and covers the breadth of what the career is about. In addition stamina (or hit points) is linked to increasing your career skill which provides a double-incentive to focus on the core of your character. The combat system keeps the idea of being fine while you have stamina (hit points) but then taking critical hits once you are at zero. Weapons are categorised into ...

Two quick things about Do not let us die in the dark night of this cold winter : firstly whatever bet existed on the length of a supplement title, it has been won. Secondly, the cover of the book is one of the most beautiful things I've seen. Do not let us die is a mini-game for D&D-style games that focuses on a small community trying to survive a harsh winter in the wilderness. The game requires the player characters to keep as many NPCs as they can alive, keeping them healthy, fed and warm. Doing so requires food, wood and medicine. Each of the PC archetypes is skilled at gathering one of these resources. The players also have to manage how many buildings are being used in the settlement and how many people are in each building. Each round a random event happens, which feels quite a lot like the Quiet Year. In generally the events are all bad, like people falling sick or having accidents. As this is a more crunch than narrative game, generally the events deplete your...

This mini-adventure is by the By Crom! author, Shel Kahn , so the first thing worth saying is it benefits from visual design and is beautifully illustrated and physically satisfying to own. It is a classical fantasy roleplaying adventure with the premise being that you as a group are interested in acquiring some rare magical crystals and have journeyed to the only place that produces them. Once there you discover that the town is in crisis as the crystals have ceased to appear where they are normally collected. The nearby island is a taboo place but it also seems connected to the problems with the crystals as a local has gone missing while investigating it. Having presumably tricked their way onto the island the game then shifts to a clever hex-crawler with the island interior being the hex map and then you roll and place cutout hexes onto the map. As you move around the previous hexes are not fixed and therefore you may double back to find that the landscape has changed. The goa...

Macchiato Monsters  is another descendant of the Black Hack system. Unlike some of its peers though I feel it offers greater freedom with less complicated rules. The basic mechanics are 5th edition D&D, a d20 roll under your statistics with advantage or disadvantage being handle by rolling two dice and taking the higher or the lower value. Risk dice are pretty much from Black Hack making low rolls bad and stepping down the die and high rolls lucky. This means introducing a personal frustration of mine where the reading of the dice is different depending on the type of roll you are making. The remainder of the rules are all some of the simplest and flexible in this family or rulesets that I've seen. Characters have levels but essentially each level up allows you to use the same rules as character generation to expand the character. Spells are particularly satisfying because they don't come from a spell list. You do have to pitch your spell to the GM and the GM is ...

Most OSR community is based around Dungeons and Dragons, however like a lot of Europeans my first encounter with roleplaying or fantasy gaming was not through D&D itself by through reflections of those who had read a copy or heard of the idea and created their own. Like a lot of early British roleplayers my nostalgia is really for Fighting Fantasy, a formative experience that was notable different in tone from American fantasy while being composed of much the same tropes. Troika! is an attempt to create a retro-clone that brings together Warhammer and Fighting Fantasy into a simple rules system that bakes weird fantasy into core of character creation in the same way that the Ratcatcher career did in the 1980s. The basic mechanics are pretty simple. Mainly 2d6 are used and the basic characteristics are Skill , Stamina and Luck . If you are attempting something against the environment you try to roll under your Skill on two dice, if contested you roll and add, aiming for t...

Issue 9 of The Undercroft ( buy digitally here ) marks a step change for the zine, moving to a larger A5 booklet format and switching from its characteristic red covers to black. Cedric Plante contributes an amazing cover in an etched style white on black. Overall the impression is of something more substantial and professional than a regular photocopied zine. The content isn't markedly different, a collection of monsters (including a penis monster, a giant penis you can fight), rule variations for Lamentations of the Flame Princess and a few historic research pieces, this time the subject is the occult properties of those executed by hanging. At a quick glance the interesting pieces look like the Skinned Moon Daughter  class, drawn from a campaign that looks like it is heavily influenced by Arctic Circle cultures and Nine Summits and the Matter of Birth , an adventure that seems to be a fantasy recasting of the Dutch and English exploration of the South China Sea with added a...

Beyond the Wall aims to re-create the classic "first adventure" story of both classic fantasy stories and D&D games. A group of young and inexperienced people venture into the unknown and are tested and changed by the experience. It's looking to recreate that level 1 or level 0 experience in a rules system that is similar to AD&D 1st edition or RedBox D&D . However in an acknowledgement of more modern designs it also aims to be zero prep. There is a collection of playbooks providing tables to roll up a background with attendant stat changes on top of the basic class templates. Scenario packs build on top of this by providing a basic scenario structure with random elements to keep it fresh but within the theme chosen for the pack. These are quite neat structures for OSR play. Beyond the Wall aims to deliver a low-key fantasy experience where the fantastic awes with both fear and astonishment. It roots the adventure experience in the character's lif...

The Seclusium of Orphone of the Three Visions is a fantastic book with a title that deserves some explanation. A Seclusium is the sanctuary of a wizard. It is where they research magic, create arcane devices, study the metaverse and relax away from the world. The book deals with the vunerable phase in the lifecycle of the sanctuary of a wizard. The point where the wizard has abandoned or been forced to leave but much of the defenses and occupants of the sanctuary are still present. Orphone of the Three Visions is a wizard who has become lost in a realm of creation that leaves her in a state of orgasmic ecstasy. In doing so she leaves her creations and failed experiments to wander her laboratories. Vincent Baker has put together an amazing hardback that consists of a scene-setting essay on the relationship between wizards and their place of study and retirement from the world.This is then followed by three wizards whose have abandoned their Seclusiums. Brilliantly each wizard ...

I recently contributed to the Kickstarter projects for two projects that have now delivered their draft PDFs. The Secret Fire and Adventurer Conqueror King  have both ended up delivering projects that seem superficially to deliver yet another Dungeons and Dragons clone. In some cases with some of the OGL 3e improvements but definitely with more retro styling than game design theory behind the system. Since most of the Retro hacks and OSR rules are free I'm not exactly what these projects had to Kickstart for except perhaps artwork costs and physical production fees. It is also not exactly clear to me that these games add a lot more to what was already available and certainly don't capture Redbox, Blue box vibe for me. In all probability, given the number of new and exciting games coming out I'm not sure I'm really going to give either more of a shake than a quick read through.