WFRP4e First Impressions

I have never been scared shitless
by a basilisk - until now...

We finished our first Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4th edition session today, and it was a blast! I might be a bit more biased than usual though, since it was one of those very rare cases when I wasn't GMing: a friend of mine offered in September to start a campaign, and needless to say I couldn't say no. It took some time to get it going, but here we are! The following is by no way a review, just some hastily witten notes after our first session. For those unfamiliar with WFRP some of it might even sound gibberish.

We played If Looks Could Kill, Cubicle 7's first (free) adventure for the system. Our party of three consisted of a human hexer, a human thief-taker, and a high elf apprentice wizard, who were tasked with escorting materials to a mill's construction site, and digging up some rocks the strygani workers weren't willing to. There was no time wasted on preludes: after a short introduction we were shipwrecked, trying to save an old strigany hag from a giant carp, deciphering ogham stones, digging up an ancient fimir sarcophagi, investigating a murder mystery, searching for a lost suspect, and hunting for the fearsome monster of the nearby swamp. And all of these somehow managed to fit into a four hour session. I'm not allowed to read the module yet, but as a player I liked it a lot: it seemed to be an open-ended mini-sandbox with lot of flexibility and some unexpected twists. The module also deserves a huge thumbs up for not having any beastmen, cultists, or skaven in it.

"Are there any pictograms on the bottom of the monolith?"
"He found thousand years old Dharfield comic strips."

I expected the first session to be rough, but except for a few hiccups everything went smooth. We had lots skill tests, a few short battles, two casters throwing spells, and even a chase scene. Having better starting skill values and more forgiving difficulty bonuses meant the beginner characters felt more competent than in WFRP1e or WFRP2e, but not by too much.

Combat felt more tense than in WFRP1e or WFRP2e. While there are no longer exploding damage dice the average +4 damage boost each weapon received, and the chance to land a critical on every strike more than compensates for that. My character's first wound was kind of shocking: half my wounds were gone, and it wasn't even a good roll! I felt a constant pressure after that to be more tactical.

The most welcome change in combat though is turning attacks and parries into contested rolls. You compare the success levels of both rolls (the skill value's tens minus your roll's tens), and whoever has the highest wins. If it's the attacker, the difference becomes the base of the damage. This is an elegant solution that abolishes both the whiff factor of earlier editions, and the need for rolling a damage dice. No matter how bad the contesting combatants roll, someone always wins the test, and earns advantage. 

"If ye call me a witch again I'm gonna fucken curse ye!"

Advantage was one of the most controversial innovations of fourth edition, and honestly, we didn't have any issue with it. For those yet unfamiliar with the game: each successive roll in combat earns you one advantage, which grants you a cumulative +10% on your next roll, but in certain combat situations, or whenever you fail, you lose it all. Managing your foe's or your own advantage is important, and  adds a new layer of depth to WFRP combat.

Magic at first glance felt lackluster, but in practice the petty magic spells so far were damn fine. Both of our casters had some defining moments with their petty spells that saved the day. I have still doubts about the potency of divine magic, channeling eating multiple rounds, and the seemingly low severity of miscasts. I hope my fears will be proven wrong soon.

Overall I'm satisfied with Cubicle 7's new WFRP so far. I was excited for this new edition, but I did have my doubts - many of which ceased after the first session. We've only got our feet wet though! Once I have more experience expect a comprehensive review. Until then, I will have to find a miniature for my bounty hunter, Heinrich Adolph Lundgren. We already have one for the witch, at least.

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Looking for Oldhammer Miniatures?

One of the first minis I was satisfied with. Would order it again
so I can do it with a better paintjob.

I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who uses miniatures for his Warhammer RPG campaigns. I'm also pretty sure many Oldhammer fans are familiar with Tim Prow's name. I only started painting miniatures last summer, and after I was fed up with the quality of the early Reaper Bones miniatures I had I ordered a bunch of metals from Ral Partha Europe. Among them was a Heartbreaker Ratman Leader sculpted by Tim Prow, which not only looked stunning, but was a joy to work with.

In the last few years Tim Prow has been sculpting both fantasy and sci-fi Oldhammer miniatures that could be bought through Kickstarter campaigns or private messages - until now. Today his new webshop has opened its gates, and has some fine old-school slanns, undead, familiars, chaos minions, space dwarves, et al. Time to reduce my painting backlog, so I can get some Eru-Kin Mag Gun Unit I've been eyeing with since August.

[Review] Obscene Serpent Religion

You are not trve kvlt if you can't decipher
the author's name.

Reading Obscene Serpent Religion 2 got me in the mood of checking out Obscene Serpent Religion. Unlike OSR2, OSR1 is not an adventure module, but a supplement devoted to generating serpent cults. That should be enough to justify its existence. Who doesn't have evil snake-worshippers in his fantasy campaigns after all? They are as crucial tropes of a healthy swords & sorcery setting, as evil frog-worshipping cults, or evil spider-worshipping cults.

The book is made of 32 weird 7.5 x 7.5 inch sized square pages. The cover looks like that of a death or black metal album's, and the black & white interior follows the gimmick too. Needless to say, those faint of heart should avoid the product, for there is plenty of gore and nudity within. Most illustrations are exceptionally well done and detailed, save for the last one which looks like something made with Microsoft Paint.

The first half of the supplement is about generating the features of the cult. You can find out what are they ways of the church, who the goddess is, what her teachings are, what missions do the leaders send the members on, et cetera. We aren't talking about tables here in the traditional sense. Each element has six possible results, each explained in a few paragraphs. While six doesn't seem too much, there is plenty of rolling to do until you get the end result, thus it's unlikely you will end up with a similar outcome after multiple usage.

The entries show a rampant imagination behind them. They can add a lot of depth and character to the sect, and can fire up the GM's creativity about how to further expand them - especially the bizarre, seemingly contradictory combinations. The author also proves that serpent faiths don't necessarily mean cloaked dudes worshipping ophidians - they can also be fertility cults, art idolizers, fortune seekers.

My favorite results are those with an ancient, mythic feel. For example:

"She gave birth to the moon, which was the first egg, and when it hatches, all will be devoured. She immolated her husband, who became the sun. His name is forgotten, for he is of no consequence. The Goddess is life, the Goddess is all."

That's evocative, and if you roll with it as truth it can bring some unique flavor to your campaign world. The moon is way too often underused in fantasy campaigns anyway, surprising your players with turning it to a literal snake egg sounds way too cool to not use it once in your life.

Unfortunately the book is not devoid of the edginess of typical LotFP products. Case in point, here is a quest for advancement within the cult:

"In a public place, you must force a serpent into the body of a powerful foe with many allies. The result must be fatal, regardless of whether the serpent is shoved into the victim’s mouth, or into a wound, or in some other part of the body."

I like the irony how the hole everyone first will think of is not mentioned among the examples. Still, the above was one of the tame options. There are others with more mutilation and sadism. Around the Tenets of Faith and Quests for the Hexagram was where I noticed the major difference between OSR2 and OSR1: the former pits the PCs against a cult, while the latter assumes they are the members of one. While I have no issue with having a serpent-worshipper or two in the party, I would avoid most of the tenets and quests presented, because they are just wanton torture porn.

After generating the faith's details come the appendices. The first is for generating random NPCs, and has plenty of names, epithets, situations. The only place where its lacking is the random items they are carrying. The second is encounters in the wilderness. It requires three rolls too to find out who the party meeets, what they are doing, and what they are carrying. Solid chart, well worth injecting into your campaign if the serpent cult becomes a prominent feature  of it. Third and fourth are two magic items. Sable Nectar is created from Sweet Nectar and the blood of a half-serpent creature. The juice grants random bonuses for 1d6 hours, at a cost - like blindness, or losing abiltiy score. Scarlet Nectar is made of Sweet Nectar and the blood of a snake. Its effects depend on what kind of snake's blood was used. Predictability has its cost too, though: drinking Scarlet Nectar is considered blasphemy by snake cults. The book ends with stats for Skin Vessels, which follows the good old (but not overused) cliché of a body filled with wriggling and writhing creatures - this time with snakes, of course.

Obscene Serpent Religion is a mixed bag. It's an evocative book, but some of the ideas you can end up with don't live up to their full potential. I understand it was meant to be an LotFP product. It's just a pity that if it wasn't one, it could have ended up with being something so much more. Its usefulness can also be limited depending on how prominent role are you planning to give the serpent cult(s) in your campaign. Still, it's a relatively cheap sourcebook with some excellent ideas. Having it on your shelf won't hurt.

Tl;dr: Obscene Serpent Religion is an imaginative supplement that limits its potential to fit the grimdark edgy weird fantasy of LotFP. You can buy the pdf on DriveThruRPG, and the paperback on Lulu.

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Christmas in October

Last year I celebrated the arrival of my ZWEIHÄNDER rulebook with a post called Christmas in September. Little did I know back then, that next year I will cherish the arrival of another similar release: Cubicle 7's Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4th edition. Like its cousin, it's a sight to behold, but that's the least one should expect that from the publishers of The One Ring RPG. Embossed cover, beautiful full color interior, overwhelming book smell... Browsing through the tome felt like opening the WFRP2e rulebook years ago, which was the first English rpg I bought. If it managed to achieve something, it's whetting my appetite for more, and convincing me to pre-order the Starter Set too.

That cover looks awfully familiar...

This doesn't mean the end of my ZWEIHÄNDER campaign of course. My party just reached second tier, and I got the MAIN GAUCHE supplement's early access, which is full of juicy content we can't wait to try. Neither will I start a parallel campaign. My hands are already full with running ZWEIHÄNDER and HackMaster. For the first time in many years I am going to be a player. I can't wait to jump into the Old World and try the new edition! There are rules I'm excited about, there are rules I'm skeptical about, and there are rules I'm curious about. Once I got my feet wet expect a review about the game.

[Review] The City That Dripped Blood

The cover promised me a huge ass dinosaur,
but all I got was a 3 HD giant lizard.

The City That Dripped Blood is the result of a crowdfunding campaign started by Frog God Games this August. You would think there is nothing new under the sun, but that's far from true: this time the campaign wasn't on Kickstarter, but on indiegogo, and it wasn't gathering funds to release another massive tome, but to publish a short module - the first product of a four part series. Badass title, a premise reminiscent of R. E. Howard's Red Nails, and an initiative worth supporting - needless to say I threw some money at them without thinking. Things started to look even brighter as the updates came in: not only did Frog God Games get the talented Michael Syrigos to do the cover, but they also managed to finish the book early: instead of January the pdf arrived early October. The review will be about the Swords & Wizardry edition.

The City That Dripped Blood is a 23 pages long adventure. The cover is a sight to behold, an astonishing piece that effectively evokes the classic howardian sword & sorcery feel using a style similar to Frank Frazetta's. The interior is full color, with solid illustrations, an abstract city map, and a page of uninspired dungeon maps. Layout follows the usual two-column Frog God Games template. At first glance everything appeared nice and dandy, but once I started reading the book thoroughly, issues began to surface.

I was startled for a second when the back cover told me that this is a 5e adventure for 4th-level characters. I had to double check if I got the correct edition. Such mistakes are not surprising from Frog God Games - just ask someone with the S&W version of Stoneheart Valley about the Pathfinder logo under the sticker. Nevermind, I don't make a big fuss about honest mistakes. On the other hand, my pulse swiftly rised when I reached pages 2 and 3. The City That Dripped Blood became the first book that pissed me off with its Table of Contents. Not only it is a waste of valuable space that could have been used for content, but it is so useless and uninformative, we wouldn't have lost anything if it was left out. Thank you very much Frog God Games, but I can figure out by myself that the adventure begins at the beginning of the book, and the Legal Appendix nobody reads is in the back. At least the digital version is properly bookmarked.

Why even bother?

The adventure was written for a group of 4-6 characters of levels 4-5. Extraplanar vulture-men called skelzis became vampiric thanks to the magical blood orchid, and with the help of their weredactyl servants rule over the forgotten desert city of Temelpa. The population consists of humans, who wear masks to show their place in the rigid caste system, and halfling slaves, who worship a helpful aranea. Instead of burial or funerary pyres the residents practice a ritualized form of cannibalism. Hiding in the city live a small number of outcasts, who no longer believe the skelzi propaganda. The outcats want to topple their oppressors, but are unprepared and unequipped to do so.

While the backdrop is amazing, and full of potential, the adventure begins with a hook as tired as possible: an army of gnolls attacks a caravan, and chases the party into the ruins of Temelpa. If you don't like it, you get three other options, but they aren't much better either (fetch quest, delivery quest, original hook expanded). No matter which one you choose, the gnolls will appear, and surround the city to keep the adventurers within. Needless to say the monsters stay out of the range of missile weapons and spells, and conveniently stay until the DM wants them to stay. Blockade is a cheap and ineffective way to keep the PCs from leaving the area. If the players can kill something you can rest assured they will try to do it. It's an army of gnolls? Don't worry, the players will have a plan, and waste an entire session on executing it. Second, why would an army of gnolls besiege a whole city for 4-6 escapees? Even a magical sandstorm that lasts for days would have had been a better choice, especially if you connect it in some way to the skelzis.

After the hook the module introduces the factions and important NPCs, giving the reader a good overview about what's going on in the city. The events are next, beginning with garbage exhaustion rules and an NPC meant to railroad the PCs if needed, then moving unto the mildly interesting funeral procession, and finally explaining in great length the interaction with the guards and skelzis. Short summary of the latter: no matter what the PCs do or who they are, the rulers are absolute bastards, and will do everything to enslave them, or throw them into the arena, or eat them. These are explained in long paragraphs, without any kind of highlighting or bullet points that would make it easier to scan the text and find at first glance what you are looking for. Among the walls of text there is a detail I found amusing: the Crimson Guards are totally incompetent in handling unusual situations. Meeting people without masks, or getting the wrong answer to a ritual question can lead to confusion and guards running to their superiors for advice.

Those threes and fours are all feeding and
sleeping chambers. So exciting!

Next are the district descriptions, a crucial part of any location-based adventure. Unfortunately they get around half page. No, not per district, all in all. The book presents only the two dungeons, the Crimson Ziggurat and the Ziggurat of the Dead in details, the remaining locations get a few paragraphs of trivia each. As for the ziggurats, they are as bland as their maps. Together they have 26 keyed areas, and more than half of them are generic rooms with nothing interesting going on in them. The rest isn't that exciting either. There are barely any meaningful encounters, and the dungeons lack traps, objects to interact with, puzzles. Even the treasure is abysmal! Almost all the loot is sitting in a single chamber in form of a decanter of endless water, a +1 spear, a scroll of protection from evil, a gem worth 625gp, three items of jewelry worth 115gp, 160gp, and 380gp, 2600gp, 1560sp, and 1080cp. I had to check again if I bought the 5e version by accident... In old-school D&D you get most of your XP for the treasure you retrieve. The module was written for a party of 4-6 level 4-5 adventurers. The swag above is maybe enough for a thief to get from level 4 to 5, and they advance super fast compared to other classes. The magic items are as boring and useless as it can get. In the city of vampire vultures is a +1 spear really the best magic weapon the author could come up with? Also, a rule of thumb: if you want to run a desert adventure, don't hand out a decanter of endless water to the party, otherwise it will turn into a trivial trip.

Beside the above treasure hunters can loot 50-200gp more by following the good old cliché of prying out the gemstone eyes of an idol. There is a 4 in 6 chance for the barbed devil living inside to manifest. I wonder why not 6 in 6. Don't rob the players from their actions having consequences. The idol's description is a short, but good example of my issues with the writing: fillers.

"The idol is similar to those venerated by any of the many gluttony cults: a rotund humanoid with exaggerated mouth and teeth, tiny eyes, shrunken limbs, and a swollen belly. The necklaces and crown adorning it are made from linked fingerbones, teeth, short ribs, and other small bones from humans and halflings. The whole thing is about 4ft tall."

No need to pad the text with generalization about other gluttony cults, because it's irrelevant concerning this statue, and it might not be true. What if a gluttony cult follows a bulimiac god who teaches to visit the vomitorium after every meal so you can keep eating? I'm also surprised when authors use weak words like "thing" casually in a published book. The idol's description can be easily shortened into the following, without losing any flavor:

"The 4ft tall idol depicts a rotund humanoid with exaggerated mouth and teeth, tiny eyes, shrunken limbs, and a swollen belly. Its crown and necklaces are made from linked fingerbones, teeth, short ribs, and other small bones."

Weredactyls? Always two there are; no more, no less.
Probably the result of the D&D5e CR calculations.

The module ends with appendices. Appendix 1 contains random encounter tables. They are just dull lists of monsters and quantity - 8 centipedes, 2 skelzis and 2 weredactyls, 2d4 halflings, and so on. Expanding the entries into a whole sentence would have livened them up and could help a lot in turning Temelpa into a living, breathing environment. 8 centipedes are crawling on the corpse of a halfling outcast who is holding a scroll in his hand. 2 skelzis are trying to capture 2 weredactyls that went feral after being in pterodactyl form for too long. 2d4 halflings are climbing down into the cellar hastily while the shouts of the Crimson Guard echo through the alley. Such details can be inspiring and expand the adventure.

Appendix 2 has the three new monsters entries: Fuulagh the Blood Orchid Savant, skelzi, and weredactyl. All three of them are imaginative creatures with an interesting symbiotic relationship between them. The skeksis... err, I mean skelzis are conquerors from another plane, and were turned vampiric (but nut undead) by the blood orchid. The weredactyls are their stupid servants, who the skelzis have to keep an eye on, for if they spend too much time in pterodactyl form they go feral and have to be retrained from scractch. The latter is a detail I would love to see abused by players, and turned against the skelzis!

The book ends with a legal appendix, and an empty page.

The City That Dripped Blood is not the kickass mix of city and dungeon crawl I expected. While the background and factions have enough detail to work from, the environment is seriously lacking, either because the information is close to zero (districts), or because of the content's weakness (ziggurats). Cutting the filler text, better organization, more interesting dungeon rooms, more exciting loot, and spending the two empty pages on giving the districts some character would turn The City That Dripped Blood from another shovelware adventure into an excellent one. Unfortunately that work is left to the buyer. But hey, at least the cover is nice!

Tl;dr: Beautiful cover, kickass premise, lackluster implementation. You can buy it on the official Frog God Games website.

Main Gauche Early Access Now Available

After many years I have a reason
to use Discord again.

The Kickstarter campaign for the Zweihänder supplement Main Gauche has barely ended, but the early access documents are already here, and available on DriveThruRPG for those who missed the campaign. No layout or art yet, just raw content waiting to be playtested. I didn't have the time yet to read them in depth since I'm still wading through the pages of the new WFRP4e core rulebook, but what I saw so far while flipping through the pages seemed fun. New professions (including Blitzballer, Grognard, and Hexer), expanded arsenal with special materials, rules for vehicles, more alchemy recipes (including mutagens), more daemons (including daemonic gifts and taints), covenant magick (with new rituals and sigils), monster creation rules, tools for running conspiracy, and a new adventure called There's Something About Marié.

Some of my players are already drooling because of the new professions, and since we reached the point where their characters are ready to move into second tier, I'm eager to allow them to choose something from Main Gauche and playtest the hell out of it. This meany my Old World will drift probably further away from lore accuracy, not that I ever cared about it. I have gnomes, zoats, gods of Law in my campaign after all (should have mentioned fimir too, but they are canon again).

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Zweihänder Character Sheets, Part Deux

Of course the jolly wound man stays.

Since my ZWEIHÄNDER character sheets have been released last May I received a lot of positive feedback and requests from the community. Kudos for that! My players have been using these sheets for more than a year now, and naturally they had their own ideas too about how to improve upon the original design. So did I, as there were some painfully obvious problems I wanted to fix - typos, redundancy, lack of space, and so on. Daniel's character sheet competition gave me the final push I needed to dust off my files, and revamp the design - which you will hear more about very soon. I'm proud to announce that the new version is complete, and is available now on the various OneBookShelf sites. You can find it under the following link:

ZWEIHÄNDER - Vorpal Mace Character Sheet v2.01

Update #1: Some minor issues with the layout have been fixed, and the form fillable version has been finished.

Update #2: Movement had PB+3 instead of AB+3 under its box. Kudos to Robert S. K. for noticing it.

[Review] Obscene Serpent Religion 2

One of those babies can be your character,
if the dice says so. No save against it.

Public Service Announcement. The following review cointains the OSR acronym multiple times, but with different meanings. For the sake of clarity, OSR refers to Old-School Revival (or Renaissance), while OSR1 and OSR2 refers to the corresponding Obscene Serpent Religion product.

OSR2 is one of the new Lamentations of the Flame Princess products debuting on this year's Gen Con. Since I didn't even know there was an OSR1, I did some research to figure out what's going on. OSR1 is a LotFP supplement about generating serpent cults, written by Rafael Chandler, published by Neoplastic Press. OSR2 is a LotFP module about a small serpent-infested hamlet, written by Jeff Rients, released by LotFP Publishing. Other than spending 32 pages on serpents and cultists they don't have much in common. Jeff Rients, besides being an excellent blogger, is also the author of Broodmother Skyfortress, which I consider one of the best OSR adventures. That should mean sky-high expectations, but because OSR2 is a different kind of animal, I tried my best to avoid unfair comparisons with BMSF.

OSR2 is a 32 pages long digest booklet. The color cover is a sight to behold, beautiful and slightly disturbing at once. The black and white interior illustrations are good, though not outstanding. The art is surprisingly tame, so if you are expecting gore and naughty bits you will be disappointed. The layout is a clear and breezy two-columns affair with a faint grey scaly background, which fortunately does not harm readability.

The first half of OSR2 introduces the bucolic hamlet of Nonsbeck, along with its notable features, personalities, hooks. Good writing and intriguing details make the small community come alive: the settlement feels like a real place, with real people, who have real problems. The realistic nature of Nonsbeck is further emphasized by the lack of supernatural elements: there are no fantastic beasts, weird horrors, haunted places, or anything unusual to speak of. This is a double-edged sword. On one hand, the events depicted in the second half will feel more effective because of this. On the other hand, the DM is tasked with making the players care about an unremarkable little rural village enough to return there several times. You can make it a recurring feature of your campaign, but I find it a cheap solution. I prefer my players visiting something because it caught their attention for some reason, and you don't need big spectacular tricks to achieve it. The chapter ends with some useful random encounter and random local name generator tables.

The second half of OSR2 is about how the appearance of a snake demoness fucks up Nonsbeck while the PCs are away. Where she comes from is up to the DM - the book offers three different options. What's more important is her ability that turns the place upside down: she can travel time through one's genetic material, and alter past events. What I loved about the changes is they aren't immediately evident, but revealed slowly as the players begin looking around. Even if they go right to the inn ignoring everything else they will have a chance to feel that something is amiss. The blacksmith's apprentice turned into a mute roadside beggar who doesn't want to return home. The church is barred, the blacksmith is closed. People are gone, the stories about their departures are out of character. There are new graves in the cemetery, while others are missing. The serving girl in the inn was replaced by two boys with the same name as the innkeeper's stillborn sons. If the players stay or investigate, they will soon learn that the village turned into the nest of serpent worshipping human-snake hybrid cultists, hellbent on sacrificing them. I enjoyed Nonsbeck's shift from simple boring hamlet into a horror movie village a lot, especially the details that can help building tension.

Too bad there is no real climax to the adventure. "Remember that village? Now it's corrupted, FIN." The lack of third act makes the events of OSR2 feels more like a lengthy side-encounter, than an actual adventure. The second half ends with a few ideas about the possible fate of some NPCs, a few paragraphs about the LotFP way, and the stats of the demoness herself, in case the PCs want to take revenge. There is nothing about her whereabouts or plans, not even seeds like about how she surfaced. At least the monster's abilities are unique and interesting, and in true LotFP fashion many fall into the "your character is fucked up, no save" category. The creature can murder the PC's father which can totally change or even erase him, help his parents in a time of need and turn them into snake cultists, implant viper eggs into the victim's stomach that hatch in the present, and so on. Use it only if you are not afraid to wreck your campaign.

Overall OSR2 is an uneven adventure. It requires a long setup to be effective, delivers a short and powerful confrontation, then leaves you hanging without meaningful resolution. While I like terse adventure kits and love using them as framework I can build upon (heck, I filled the Sunstone Caverns once), in case of OSR2 I can't help feeling that it's missing something. It's only a few pages away from being an amazing product. Still, it was an entertaining ride, and it whetted my appetite for more gaming material about ophidians. Time to get OSR1!

Tl;dr: OSR2 does a great job at building up, then corrupting a mundane rural village, but would benefit greatly from some more content. You can buy it on DriveThruRPG.

Disclaimer: The DriveThruRPG links on this site are affiliate links. If you buy something through the link we'll get some credit for your purchase too.

[Review] The Dragon's Secret

This is the ideal drakon body. You might not like it, but
this is what peak performance looks like.

The Dragon's Secret is a Swords & Wizardry Complete adventure for a party of 6-8 5th to 7th level adventurers. It's one of the biggest surprises of the year, for it is the first module released by industry veteran Jennell Jaquays in three decades. She worked as a game designer and artist of tabletop role-playing games and video games - including  names like Dark Tower, Caverns of Thracia, Griffin Mountain, Age of Empires, Quake III. She wrote some of the finest dungeons the hobby has ever seen. What made them so great? Complex non-linear maps, vertical level design, interesting factions, and an attention to details, among others. The Alexandrian blog has a series of articles about the nuts and bolts of jaquayian dungeon design, which I consider a must read for every aspiring Dungeon Master.

The Dragon's Secret is not an entirely new product. It's based on salvaged dungeon maps from the seventies, and an abridged version was already published last year as part of the North Texas RPG Con fundraiser (Legends of Adventure, by Pacesetter Games & Simulations). The revamped version was originally part of the Dungeons of Doom IV Kickstarter campaign by Star Hat Miniatures, along with its sister product Quack Keep. After all the limited editions it's no wonder I got giddy with excitement when I saw it finally being released on DriveThruRPG. I was also a bit worried though. Does Jennell still has her edge after three decades?

The Dragon's Secret is a 52 pages long book. The cover is the most drool-inducing I saw recently. I have a soft spot for ugly dragons, dragons with beaks, dragons with ears, dragons with hair, and Jennell's artwork hits the mark in every way. If the art wasn't enough in selling the module, there are still blurbs, taglines, summaries to help you make up your mind. They have all the right words that make my D&D-senses tingling: dungeon, doom, dragon, mystery, hoard, treasure! I usually don't linger much on covers, but this is so well laid out, written, and illustrated, that I had to stay and praise it a bit more than I planned. Time to move on! The interior has a nice two-column layout, and great black and white art done by Jaquays, Darcy Perry, Rick Hershey. My favorites are the medieval etchings, and the cartography, which is easily on Dyson Logos level.

After the foreword we get a half page long backstory about how the Cathedral of the Golden Dragon has risen, and fallen. The whole institute started out as a scam: the gold dragon Aulde Dawne in reality was the sorceress Dawne Rozyfingers, polymorphed by her partner in crime Steed Bramble, who convinved the locals that keeping a gold dragon nearby at the cost of some golds and jewels would be beneficial. Fast forward an unknown amount of time, and you have a whole cathedral with acolytes worshipping the dragon. Bramble thought this would be the right time to get out, but died before he could finish the preparations. When Aulde Dawne learned the man who can polymorph her back to human form died she lost her marbles and devastated the countryside. Some heroes eventually hunted her down, but found little treasure in her lair.

The next four pages are about using the adventure. I found most of it unnecessary, especially the explanation of how room and NPC descriptions are divided, because it felt self-explanatory: each segment starts with a keyword, so even the long-winded texts are easy to browse. The section ends with hooks, that for some unknown reason are split, and continued at the end of the book. That irks me probably more than it should. Fortunately it's worth flipping a bit back and forth, because the hooks are great! They are many and varied, which already shows that there is a lot to do! Highlighting the involved locations and NPCs at the end of each hook is a nice touch. The only way I think it could have been better is including page numbers, or links in the pdf.

The adventure itself is divided into four major areas containing 34 rooms in all. It starts small with the The Cathedral of the Dragon and Connections, then once the players got their feet wet they characters reach Circular Illogic, which is bigger and more complex than the other three areas together. The final part, The Dragon's Horde, is just one large room - I'm sure you all know what that means... Reachig The Dragon's Horde will require a good deal of exploration. Opening the door requires finding the puzzle, its solution, and the two objects needed for it (optionally,ignoring the red herring). This won't be a linear romp from beginning to end. There are loops, branches, secret doors, illusion walls, and multiple connections between the levels - some of which can be discovered later. Vertical design isn't only used to connect the levels: several rooms are three dimensional, and get cross sections to make their layout clear.

Speaking of rooms, there are some fantastic ones among them! Even the mundane entries get something to spice them up, be it some obstacle, an interesting detail, or a hidden treasure. Then there are those which your players will talk about years later. A spherical room with gravity on its surfaces and a gem at the top, that when removed can disable the elevator to the surface, probably also angering the 39 kobolds with paralyzing sticks living nearby. A huge hangar containing a 30 feet tall clockwork automaton, operated from a hidden control room occupied by two wanted mages. A well guarded false treasury jam-packed with fake objects and massive zombie spiders. A deathtrap with illusion chests, phantasmal floor, and crushing phantasmal walls at its bottom.

A good dungeon needs memorable inhabitants too, and this is where Jennell kicks the ball out of the park. There are several factions and NPCs around the cathedral that can serve as valuable help, or annoying nuisance. Two apprentices who murdered their master are hiding down below. The senior was actually a member of the cult long ago, and hired two werewolf families to keep the place safe while he is away. A gurgle of gargoyles was cursed to guard Aulde Dawn's most valuable treasure. A group of fowl folk adventurers (mostly ducks) and a jerk aardvark are also looking for the dragon's riches, and aren't too fond of each other.

The most prominent NPCs have a whole page devoted to them with illustration, background, rumors, and personality. They have fun quirks and traits, which is what turns them from stat block with some background info into fantastic personalities. For example the werewolf leader Elder Worgg doesn't want to transform because it will ruin his clothes. Glyphic Three-Horn the gargoyle leader who wants to throw off the curse of her kin thinks she was a human before becoming a gargoyle. That sounds like an adventure hook right there! It's also noteworthy that the dungeon's denizens aren't just standing idly stuck in a room, frozen in time, but are on the move. They are parts of the random encounter tables, there are guides how they react to various crises, and the gargoyles even have specific routes that helps them navigate through the dungeon easier.

The book ends with supplemental content. There is a random curio table, which you can roll on whenever the room description says there is one. The table is filled with colorful items, and their value is a random roll on another table, so the results can be interesting, even downrigh ridiculous. The players might find a worthless jade flute, or an extremely valuable magical graffiti on the wall - it will be a joy to see how they will tansport that to the surface! We also get Swords & Wizardry stats for two new races: the fowl folk (ducks, geese, swans, and crows) and aardvarks. They get their own monster entries too, along with zombie spiders, living statues, and the horrible drakghuls, who are the children of Aulde Dawn and some other dragon (maybe?), that were born undead and are calling ghouls to the area with their song. Yes, surprisingly The Dragon's Horde was not a typo.

Surprisingly... The book captures the old-school Judges Guild feel in its editing too. It's full of typos, missing whitespaces, double or missing articles, gibberish sentences, and even Aulde Dawne is refered to as a brass dragon instead of gold somewhere. The room entries have some redundant information too. Another readthrough by someone, or hiring an editor would have helped a lot. Looking past these annoyances I found the writing style amusing, with a good amount of humor and wordplay thrown in.

In the end, it seems my fears were irrational. While The Dragon's Secret has some warts, it is a splendid adventure. It's fun, it's colorful, it's dynamic. It's not Dark Tower or Caverns of Thracia, but it is on par with a good module right out of Dungeoneer magazine. Jennell said this is but a fragment of her Thousand Worlds campaign setting, and more is coming soon. Well color me interested, I definitely want more of this! In the meantime, I will bang my head into my desk, because I didn't buy Quack Keep before it was taken down from DriveThruRPG for revision.

Tl;dr: Even with the bad editing The Dragon's Secret is a fun read, and a good example of how to design a complex and living dungeon. You can buy it HERE.

Disclaimer: The DriveThruRPG links on this site are affiliate links. If you buy something through the link we'll get some credit for your purchase too.

The True Danger of Tabletop Gaming

A monster that makes you quack with fear.

Those christian parents who are afraid that their little angels will turn to Satanism because of Dungeons & Dragons are adorably naive. The real danger of tabletop gaming is not spiritual defilement or moral corruption, but monetary bankruptcy. There are villainous authors and publishers out there, waiting for the right moment to snatch your hard earned cash with a surprise attack. They are quick and efficient: most victims end up confused about where their money went, and when did their DriveThruRPG library grow so big. This summer already had some exorbitant swindles, like the release of Cubicle-7's Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4e preview and R. Talsorian Publishing's The Witcher Pen & Paper RPG. If you thought this will be all of it for the season, well I have some bad news for you...

Frog God Games storms Indiegogo with their The City that Dripped Blood campaign, which isn't a brick-sized tome you can beat players to death with (if character death wasn't satisfying enough), but an approximately 24 pages long adventure. I like small modules and the premise reminds me of R. E. Howard's Red Nails (one of my all-time favorite sword & sorcery stories), so I ended up supporting the Cult of Tsathoggua with $6.

Jennell Jaquays hasn't released any rpg-related products in the last thirty years, until now. It seems she gathered enough strength to return with not one, but two adventures - and there are more coming! The Dragon's Secret and Quack Keep were all parts of various Star Hat Miniatures kickstarters, and are now available on DriveThruRPG. I'm almost done with The Dragon's Secret, so expect a review coming soon. As for Quack Keep, my Wisdom checks were successful so far, but rest assured I'm going to fail next month.

While I'm struggling with my last ZWEIHÄNDER session reports and getting the next session going (it's summer after all), the game is growing strong and is about to reach new heights with its MAIN GAUCHE supplement. The content is ridiculously tempting, but I have to moderate my expenses and be satisfied with the pdf version, for now. Daniel, if you're reading this: please call the next supplement BOHEMIAN EARSPOON. I know there are people out there who want to see that title on the shelf.

Oh, and before I forget: Echoes of Fomalhaut #2 is out too.

I should have chosen drugs when I was a teen...

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Updates in July

Christmas in July is here again, and it was both exciting and disappointing for me this year so far. I was enthusiastic when I started wading through the list of books on sale, but later I had to realize that whatever I would buy is either not on sale, not available in the store yet, or it's already in my library. The only product I'm probably going to buy isn't even a module or a rulebook, but a collection of sword & sorcery stories called Tales From the Magician's Skull #1 from Goodman Games - an initiative worth supporting.

I did spend some money elsewhere though: this week I bought the revamped Palace of the Vampire Queen and Dwarven Glory from Pacesetter Games & Simulations, and I'm eagerly waiting for Bill Barsh to upload the missing The Misty Isles pdf. What makes these new versions interesting is they have the original version included too, which makes them perfect to make comparisons. Once I'm done reading all of them I will write a review about these gems.

I'm also about to fix my Zweihänder character sheet to answer Daniel's call. This means my session reports (two for Zweihänder, two for HackMaster) will be delayed a bit more, but I think most of you can live with that after a few months of hiatus.

Disclaimer: The DriveThruRPG links on this site are affiliate links. If you buy something through the link we'll get some credit for your purchase too.

HackMaster Character Records

High crunch, high production values old-school gaming.

HackMaster is one of my all-time favorite role playing games. I already loved what HM4e was doing, but HM5e is where my heart is, because it managed to advance AD&D to the next level: it offers far more realistic game mechanics, while also manages to keep the old school spirit I love. It is a crunchy system full of optional advanced rules that make it seem more threatening than it is, but in practice it flows really well once someone wraps his head around it.

The problem is I haven't run it for years, mostly due to the lack of time. The game also felt abandoned in the last few years by the publisher Kenzer & Company. These are all about to change soon though: with the end of my D&D5e Wilderlands campaign I'm finally able to fulfill my old dream of starting a HackMaster sandbox centered around Frandor's Keep, and after last year's successful Aces & Eights Reloaded Kickstarter campaign the guys at Kenzer & Co. seem to be picking up pace again. What a time to be alive!

My biggest issue with official HackMaster resources is the lack of good character sheets - the official ones are barely enough for HackMaster Basic. Fans were fortunately quick to fix this issue. I too have created a landscape sheet earlier that got a lot of positive feedback (despite being overcrowded), and earlier this year I took my time to put together a portrait sheet that is more breezy and (hopefully) has place for everything. I hope they will get as much use as my ZWEIHÄNDER character sheets. Happy hacking!

Old A4 landscape character record for HackMaster

New A4 portrait character record for HackMaster
New A4 portrait cleric spell record for HackMaster
New A4 portrait mage spell record for HackMaster
New A4 portrait humanoid follower record for HackMaster
New A4 portrait monstrous follower record for HackMaster

[Review] The Red Prophet Rises

AKA Bloody-Handed Buff Dudes Partying Hard.

The Red Prophet Rises is an adventure by Malrex and Prince of Nothing written for the For Gold & Glory retroclone (which means you can run it with AD&D as written). Truth to be told I have never heard of the former gentleman, but the latter is one of those reviewers who has a good grasp of why adventure modules suck, so if he gives his name to a product my expectations skyrocket. Criticising something is much easier than puttig your ideals into practice after all, so The Red Prophet Rises is a proving ground for the dutch reviewer.

The module's physical manifestation is 38 pages long saddle-stitched booklet churned out by the DriveThruRPG print on demand service. The front and back covers look kickass, and they foreshadow what you can expect within: sacrifice, murder, and lots of blood. The interior is black and white. The illustrations range from okay to good - nothing outstanding, but at least the book is devoid of half-assed artsy sketches that look like something done by a five year old with a crayon. There are two maps within, one showing a canyon, the other what's beneath. They are simple, functional, and a joy to look at with all the loops, branches, and large open areas on them. There are 43 keyed areas, so there is plenty to explore. Layout and writing is just as important as a well-made map though, and The Red Prophet Rises does a fine job in this regard. Every keyed area gets a short description with the most important details first, and then lists the rest with bullet points, also highlighting further items of importance with italic or bold fonts. There is no bullshit, no fillers, only the useful or fun information you need in a terse style. A+ in usability. I do have a gripe: the module does not credit its playtesters.

The first few pages are spent on notes, background, and some basic information about the adventure. The premise is short and straightforward. The barbaric People of the Bull have a new chieftain called Khazra, who lead them to an ancient obsidian slab that drinks blood, where he promises to open the Gateway to the Crimson Paradise. To accomplish their goal the People of the Bull begin "an unending rite of sacrifice, bloodsport and druginduced orgiastic revelry", which will slowly awaken the ancient evil slumbering under their feet, within the ruins of an ancient wizard's tower.

The module was originally built as an opportunity for paladins to find their special mount. We aren't talking about a mere stallion here: said mount is no other than Aeryon, Grandson to the King of Horses! Yeah, it's just fluff and fancy name, but it sounds cool and gives enough character to the mount with three words to make it more than the paladin's pokémon. The People of the Bull captured him, and use him as a beast of burden at the moment. If the party has no paladin all is not lost: there are raiders to slay, slaves to free, ruins to check out.

Besides rumors the DM also gets an introduction about the People of the Bull, a few rules about their hallucinogenic Crimson Tear, a guide about their tactics if the shit hits the fan, and a timetable. I don't like timetables much because they add more bookkeeping to my already huge amount of DMing tasks, but fortunately the one provided here isn't complicated, and offers some savage barbaric daily routines the players can either get involved in, or leave as cool spectacle that makes the place feel alive.

The first part of the adventure is Khazra's canyon, where the People of the Bull took camp. The place evokes a barbaric sword & sorcery theme effectively: it's a barren environment with violent savages, which can be summed up as Frazetta's Conan the Barbarian meeting the warriors of Khorne from Warhammer. Until their Gateway to the Crimson Paradise opens (at least that's what they believe) they spend their time having raids, bull runs among slaves, duels in the arena, ritual sacrifices, drunk revelries. Being thus occupied provides a good opportunity for the adventurers to get into the camp, but that doesn't mean there is no chance of getting caught. Besides the barbarians there are jaded slaves, a wereboar looking for his wife, a curious doppleganger, a bugbear archer, and the three champions: the treacherous gnoll Gorelaugh, the blinded basilisk Drak, and the mighty centaur Velan. My favorite though is the head-shaman Luvag, who conspires against Khazra. Even if the players ignore him he has a chance to get Khazra assassinated, or start a civil war that ends with him dueling with the chieftain on the large obsidian slab in the middle of the camp. All in all the camp not only offers an excellent sword & sorcery feel, but it's full of moving parts that turn it into a dynamic, living setting.

The second part is the Tower Basement, a surprising departure from the original premise. It is a dungeon crawl within the ruins of an ancient tower, where things went south and is now haunted by the ghosts of the past. It is by no way boring or unimaginative though! There is an imprisoned demon who offers the party to burn down a settlement of their choice when freed, the ghosts of the guests who didn't realize they are dead, the ghost of a scribe who keeps copying scrolls until someone tells him to rest, skeleton janitors that can be controlled with the proper commands, a huge ass obsidian serpent searching food, and so on. The most interesting encounter for me is the Keeper of Names, an entity that looks like a protoss archon and slowly gains control over player characters by revealing their true names. Those who didn't say "fuck this shit, I'm out" after all of these can find the obsidian cavern with blood-drinking obelisk, and the hammer Starfall that can destroy it. The obelisk of course won't let himself get smashed to pieces easily: it sends visions of the void, obsidian skeletons, and finally the obsidian lord on the offenders to stop them. A well written dungeon after all, but it's past the zenith of the adventure, and feels more like a bonus sidetrek than a climax.

All that's left are the appendices. The first one is about new spells - mostly related to blood. Cool stuff, but the quickening was a bit disappointing, because it didn't involve decapitating people and draining their power with lightning zigzagging all over the place. The second details the new monsters the module offers. The third offers more than a dozen magic items, some of which you should totally steal for campaign even if you don't run the adventure. Who doesn't want a chameleon statue that tastes potions and tells its properties by changing his colors, or a gauntlet that reveals the name and dark secrets of the people you point at with it? The fourth details the rest of the NPCs and monsters of the module, and the fifth is a cheat sheet for their stat blocks grouped by areas.

The Red Prophet Rises is an exemplary product that should have a place on your shelves. It's a brilliant example of when the authors understand the topic they are working it. Instead of delivering a pretentious gory spectacle they managed to capture the essence of Howardian hard fantasy and do it justice. This adventure begs to be used. Interestingly if I will ever run this piece it's going to be under ZWEIHÄNDER or Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay - because Blood for the Blood God!

Tl;dr: The Red Prophet Rises is a brutally good sword & sorcery adventure, and should be the gold standard in presentation that all OSR modules should follow. You can buy it on DriveThruRPG.

Disclaimer: The DriveThruRPG links on this site are affiliate links. If you buy something through the link we'll get some credit for your purchase too.

HackMaster in Bundle of Holding

The pdfs might be not as gorgeous as the hardcover,
but at least they have the errata included.

HackMaster 5e is my all-time favorite fantasy heartbreaker. The pinnacle of old-school game design, it mixes the classic D&D gameplay with detailed character creation and a more realistic combat system. It sounds like something right from the late eighties, right?

It's a game I love, but didn't run or play for years now. Fortunately this is going to change soon: during the summer I'm going to start a campaign using Frandor's Keep, In the Realm of the Elm King, and probably a conversion of Quest for the Unknown. Fingers crossed my players will like both the borderlands, and the crunchy combat.

Meanwhile Bundle of Holding has launched two Kenzer & Co bundles:.one for the Knights of the Dinner Table comics where the game originates from, and another for some HackMaster rulebooks and supplements of the current edition. The latter contains not only the core books, but the above mentioned Frandor's Keep, the two Elm King adventures, and the first two Zealot's Guides. If you want to get involved with the game, now is the time!

[Review] Grimoire: Heralds of the Winged Exemplar

Hyperborea, the land of idiotic guardian owls
and buxom blonde sextuplets!

How should I begin a review about a game that has been twenty years in the making? I could write about how it turned into a vaporware, until it resurfaced five years ago in an Indiegogo campaign, only to be delayed again and again until "Next Friday". I could write about the eccentric neanderthal behind the game, Cleveland Blakemore, his epic threads at RPGCodex, his exeggarated promises, and his ludicrous stories - including tales about his time spent in the development team of the never-released Wizardry 8: Stones of Arnhem, which ironically turned out to be true to some degree. That would deserve an article of its own though, one that I don't intend to write, thus researching the game's absurd history is left to the gentle reader. The dark pits of RPGCodex are a good place to start.

Grimoire promises to be a David W. Bradely-era Wizardry game on steroids: a classic first-person party-based rpg (or a blobber in short) that's bigger and better than it's predecessor. I have barely finished Wizardry 6 last July when the game appeared on Steam, and it was a huge dilemma whether I should continue playing through the Dark Savant trilogy, or give it a rest and start playing Grimoire instead. I chose the latter in the end, and after eight months and 170 hours of playtime I feel qualified enough to tell you how successful Cleve's attempt at dethroning the king of old-school blobbers was.

Grimoire takes us to the mythical land of Hyperborea, which is guarded by the White Owl (the titular Winged Exemplar). He kept peace through the mysterious cosmic artifact, a clock called the Metronome Mysterium, which is about to unwind soon. Its whereabouts are written on nine tablets, but the imbecile White Owl forgot about their locations, so it's up to a group of adventurers to find them, fix the clock, and prevent the apocalypse. On their journey they will meet the inhabitants of this weirdly messed up kitchen sink world, including vamphyrs related to a lovecraftian creature, drow raiding their own people, holy knights whose order is built on a lie, ratlings controlling their population by mass sacrifice, the local BBEG Lord Ahriman (whom I managed to murder mid-game for being jerk), and many more!

Our motley crew can have up to eight members, who can be both player characters or recruited non-player characters. There are fifteen races, including the usual fantasy clichés with a twist, various manimal races, and some downright weird choices like vamphyrs who are weakened in sunlight, and the aeorbs who are psychic eye-things from another plane. They can be members of fourteen different professions, but not all of them are available during character creation: a few elite professions have such high requirements that it's nigh (or totally) impossible to start as one.

It was a no-brainer to have an eyeball in my party.

Character creation is very old-school: you roll the number of bonus points you can spend either on attributes, skills, or hit points. Each race has its minimum scores, further modified by gender, each class has minimum requirements, and each race has a multiplier for your bonus points for each class, making it easier or harder to create certain race-class combos. In my case this lead to three or four hours of jolly re-rolling until I got the party I wanted. Needless to say leveling up includes a lot of randomness too: health, stamina, magic, attribute points, skill points are all awarded randomly, which can lead to a rage inducing cycle of reloading until you end up with a tolerable result, no longer care, or get used to the thought of rotting in hell forever for using a save editor.

If you think planning wasn't hard enough already, then I have some good news: Cleve hasn't released the manual yet. All you have are some short in-game descriptions and hints, but they are neither exact, nor complete. Did you know that drow have shitty spell regeneration? Well I didn't, and neither did the game tell me about it, so I created a drow wizard who felt pretty gimped for a while compared to the other casters in the group. While it has a certain charm to see the community work together in discovering and sharing the details it alienated a lot of people from an already controversial game.

Once your party is done it's time to chose your difficulty, the starting location, and jump into the game. Yes, there are several different starting locations, which can't be reached later if you didn't begin there. Completionists will find this frustrating, but I found it a cool touch, plus it's not a choice in the middle of the game that can alter the rest of your gameplay in unexpected ways.

Wizardry's influence on the game is obvious at first glance: you get a small hand-drawn pseudo-3D game environment framed by a huge ass user interface. There is a lot of information shoved in your face, and you haven't seen the character sheet, inventory, map, journal yet! Heck, I haven't figured out all the symbols on the spell descriptions, or the item inspections... To make things worse Grimoire also borrows the unwieldy shared inventory from Lands of Lore, which is a headache to browse.

That's a nice collection of wands! It would be a shame
if someone stole them...

If this retroshock hasn't scared you away, then get ready for an awesome experience of raw old-school gameplay. Right after your starting zone you are thrown into the Avian Mountains and given total freedom to explore the area, with zero handholding. You have a vague goal, but its up to you to figure out how to advance through exploring the areas, murderng monsters, communicating with the NPCs, reading obscure hints, and solving puzzles. Once you feel on track and your first major objective is complete the game turns it up to eleven by opening the rest of the world for you. It's freaking huge - and dangerous. While traversing the wilderness you will have to climb mountains and set sail to reach your goals. The dungeons are mostly multi-level and non-linear complexes, with secrets, puzzles, traps, hazards, and of course boss fights. There are only a few settlements in the traditional sense, and even those are far from safe havens. You have to travel a lot, but thankfully the game has an auto-path feature, and later allows you a limited form of teleportation.

Most areas have their own NPCs, some of them wandering, some of them staying in a fixed position. Their dialoge is usually well written, and often humorous, or even absurd. Talking is done by typing in keywords, or using one of the several social options. Their reactions may change based on your deeds, but even if it gets worse (usually for killing someone, saying no to a request, or stealing from them) some money, magic, and diplomacy might help getting them in a better mood. A surprisingly large number of NPCs are recruitable, which can lead to optional quests, dialoges, or even loot. There are even NPCs that start their careers as items - like a corpse waiting to be resurrected, an enchanted sword that has to be invoked, or an egg that has to be hatched.

The situation might look dire, but it's under control!
All they need is some freezing and a few criticals.

Being aware of your sorroundings and inventory is crucial in Grimoire. You can easily get stuck if you don't recall having an object from earlier, or because you missed a secret door, an illusionary wall, or a clue. Also, always identify your items properly. They might be cursed or have unexpected effects both malevolent and beneficial. Ignoring spells like Identify, Detect Secret, Locate Item, Wizard Eye, or hanging around with low Inspection, Lockpicking, Scout skills can make journey excruciating. Sometimes though they won't help either. Sometimes you need to persistently interact with your environment in different ways (eg. using seemingly insignifican items or sleeping at the right place) to find obscure sidequests.

Time to get to the most exciting part of rpgs: combat! The battles are turn-based and follow the classic Wizardry suit: you select your commands, press BATTLE, and wait until the turn is resolved. Since combatants act in order of their speed their position on the initiative ladder is usually fixed, the only thing messing up this order being magic, which seems to come after item use and attacks. Combat is far from exciting, not only for the minimal visual feedback, but because the game prefers draining your resources slowly: your party usually encounters a small number of enemies, but often (unless you switched off random encounters). While initially even a fire beetle can pose a challenge, later almost every creature becomes trivial. The exceptions though will make you sweat blood. These are the creatures that fight dirty - those with great speed, huge number of attacks, irritating conditions, and instant kills. If half your party is dead or afflicted by a crappy condition after the first turn you are facing one of them. To prevail you need to buff the party with everything you've got, or find a way to cheese them. By the endgame the arms race seems to turn in the player's favour though. With Lethal Blow, Music skills, Freeze, Time Stop spells, and a bit of luck nothing stood in my party's way. I played on Novice difficulty though, so I have no idea how different harder options are.

This doesn't mean that combat is mindless. Trying to use the same cheese without thinking lead to the death of my characters several times, thanks to ignoring some specific details - many of them being common sense. Don't cast fire spells on fire elementals - it heals them. Don't cast frost and lightning spells while fighting on water - it reflects them back in your face. Do cast sonic spells against bats - it blinds them. And the disease condition? Remove it asap, without healing it gets worse and starts causing other conditions. Small details like these can spice up combat more than you would except.

The most disgusting creature of all Hyperborea
in every possible way.

Partly due to the genre's nature the game can get repetitive, and even tedious in late sections. Around level 9 advancement becomes painfully slow, so if you want some sense of achievement I recommend changing professions. Some of the puzzles, boss fights, and mini-games (lockpicking and disarming) are downright frustrating too, and it's also disappointing to see that some systems (like food and crafting) are still unfinished. Despite these issues, I enjoyed the game greatly. The gonzo setting, the unique lore, the unfolding story, and the involved system kept me interested in Hyperborea. I think I should also mention its catchy MIDI tunes, which I found adorable. While I wouldn't replay it again (life is too short to replay 100+ hours long games), I will sure as hell load my last save state and play a couple more hours if Cleve releases additional content. Grimoire does everything that made me love Wizardry games of the Bradley era. It mixes the depth of 80s tabletop rpgs like RoleMaster, the mercilessly challenging gameplay of a classic AD&D campaigns, and the rampant imagination of a teenage Dungeon Master. It is a beautiful loveletter to a forgotten genre - with lots of strikethroughs and corrections.

It's also kinda expensive...

Tl;dr: An old-school experience in every sense, Grimoire is a rough gem that probably only fans of the genre might enjoy. You can buy it on Steam and GOG.com.

The Sophisticated Barbarian Rises!

Pretty accurate representation.

I met Chomy seven years ago during the afterparty of the first Random Encounters rpg convention, where we realized that we have at least two things in common: we both liked beer, and considered Therion the best band ever. That was enough for me to put him on my "cool guys" list, but of course that's not all what makes him noteworthy. He is a veteran by Hungarian standars: he started playing in the nineties with AD&D2e, ran almost every edition, helped organizing several conventions, and still referees multiple campaigns. Lately he started lamenting about all the stuff gathering dust in his drawers - both unused notes, and homebrews he has already run before. Well, it seems the stars are right, for last weekend he got his shit together, and started revamping and translating them. The first one is already available on his brand new blog: The Sophisticated Barbarian. Fingers crossed his enthusiasm won't dwindle!