The New Flesh

Mothership is a game of sci-fi horror/survival. It has an old-school element in that it is a collection of rules with an implied background. That background is kind of like Aliens and Dead Space . The rules allow you to create crew members on a ship that is exploring a huge and dangerous universe. Core mechanics The main dice used are d10s are the main mechanism is a d% check as per so many Runequest-inspired games. The other elements such as saves and advantage and disadvantage will probably be familiar to most people through Dungeons and Dragons though. Skills The skills are maybe the most distinctive thing about the system as they are setup in a tree with three tiers where higher-tier skills have prerequisites. Higher-tier skills cost more to buy and offer a bigger percentage towards checks (which seems like a sensible way of dealing with percentile whiff). While a bit involved (and with the naturally debatable choices about whether given skills sit in the right tier...

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...

I loved and was frustrated with Summerland in equal measure and when a second edition was Kickstarted I was excited and immediately backed it. To be honest I didn't read the prospectus too deeply as I would have been happy with any improvement over the original rules. However now in possession of the second edition I feel that the issues I had with the game are clearly not those the author did. The game is set after human civilisation has been wiped out virtual overnight by the strange appearance of a forest over most of the land mass of the globe. It's a situation that reminiscent of sci-fi such as the Southern Reach trilogy or Roadside Picnic. From computer games then we are very much in the territory explored by *The Last of Us*. The biggest issue I have with the game is its split game system. It has one game system for most things in the game, in this case a version of the Open d6 system. It then has a specialised sub-system for handling the thing that is the core o...

Belly of the Beast has a very unusual premise. An alien giant worm has consumed the surface of a conventional fantasy setting and now the shattered remnants of civilisation live inside the vast intestine of the creature, struggling to scavenge enough to survive from either the creature itself of the remains of its other meals. I guess you might summarise it as post-apocalyptic body horror. The Swallowed live in small communities learning to live on what they can scavenge within the complex tract of the worm and the body of the creature itself. Life inside the creature is defined not by day or not or the passing of the seasons but the structure of the creatures body, its movement and the arrival of new resources in the form of newly devoured territory. It really is new levels of "grimdark". The game is structured around "pulls" which is where the characters try and acquire what their community needs to get through another day. The communities are world-built o...

I picked up this odd little (and quite anonymous game) at Leisure Games. It uses cards, d4s and pieces of acrylic to tell a story about someone whose body is being changed against their will. Influences seem to be Tetsubo, The Fly, Teeth and Videodrome. The game plays 1 to 3 but while the solo option is intriguing I think the full trio sounds like the best option. Looking forward to giving it a go.

I backed Tremulus on Kickstarter so I had access to the PDF version of the game for a while, although the print copy turned up last year I've struggled to formalise my feelings on it. I didn't find the PDF that accessible and was hoping, like a lot of games, that the ideas would be easier to absorb on the written page. However it turns out that the PDF was representative of the game generally and it is not the easiest of reading. Tremulus is a horror game based on the Apocalypse World engine, it aims to create a Lovecraftian atmosphere by revisiting the sources, side-stepping the baleful gravity of Chaosium's classic interpretation of the genre. This does give the game an original spin and also means it can handle a broader range of horror themes than fishmen in the harbour or dangerous geometry. The playbooks are pretty standard for the AW family and you cannot really judge them without giving the game a go. The thing I'm finding most intriguing about the gam...

I finally got round to reading my physical copy of Murderous Ghosts , the game of an urban explorer discovering more than they can handle in an abandoned factory. The game comes in a DVD case, echoing The Ring  movies with its haunted video tape. Inside are two books and a CD with the electronic files. A game for two people each player takes a book which consist of numbered entries. Play then revolves around each player reading an entry, playing out the requirements of the entry and then sending the other player to a new entry. It's a neat way of heavily codifying the gameplay and structure but one that makes for poor reading and a need to actually play the game.