The New Flesh

Sanctum is a supplement or perhaps alternative campaign setting that focuses on settlements (or Havens in the cant) in the City Beneath. The idea is that the Haven and it's community form the fulcrum of the campaign play with the longer term fate of the Haven being the key dramatic resolution. The setup echoes Belly of the Beast quite a lot, in particular in how the gameplay loop works for Havens, this felt identical to Belly of the Beast's "Delves" to me. There's also a presence of Blades in the Dark in terms of investing in a community for both storytelling and mechanical benefits. The Beats system all borrows positively from the work of people like Vincent Baker . In sure this slim volume assembles a variety of good mechanics to create a campaign frame centred around a community in a bizarre environment with a twist. It builds on the existing Heart rules for Haunts, Domains and Stress to make the integration pretty seamless and logical. Hav...

Grant Howitt's Patreon powers a series of one or two page games. In the latest batch I found Unfinished Business and The Beast interesting. Unfinished Business is one of the relatively large pool of revenge beyond the grave games, mostly inspired by The Crow . This is slightly different as the game isn't just a single character looking for revenge but a group. Also rather than being returned to life with supernatural powers the ghosts have an object they are linked to that allows them to possess those who touch the object. Once possessed most of the rules are for how the ghost can retain control of their host and use them to enact their revenge. It seems an interesting take on the genre. The Beast is a horror game set in 18th century Eastern Europe, a group of retainers must defeat an ancient and powerful monster or suffer for their failure. The mechanics are fairly typical for the series with a d10 rolled against an opposition die. Abilities, skills and challeng...