I've found a lot of sales on DriveThruRPG lately, including a couple Deals of the Day, and here is what I have been reading as a result of those tantalizing discounts.
The Last Caravan
I've purchased and have been reading the Forged in the
Dark rpg The Last Caravan. The game is, at base, an Oregon Trail-like
game where survivors of an Alien invasion travel West from the East coast (in
North America) to avoid increasing winter weather and alien activity to find a
sanctuary on the West Coast.
I like it. I like it lots. Currently I have read more than
83 pages out of 212, which is the entirety of the main mechanics and
descriptions of the character options and your vehicle rules. I have specifically avoided the chapter on
Aliens to avoid spoilers as I hope to play it eventually.
The "character classes" are called Travelers or
Imprints, and while 6 of them share "normal" Blades in the Dark
mechanics, two of them, the Innocent and the Good Boi (doggie), are variations
upon the "normal" character mechanics theme and thus pretty
interesting. The Innocent is sort of an
untested "pre-survivor" who can be the Hero of the group, but has a
mechanic that indicates their growth/innocent's nature wearing off as they
become a full-fledged survivor. The Good
Boi is a dog, but they have a series of limitations AND unique skills for
making them part of the group. Yes, you can go fetch and get cuddles.
I do also like the vehicle rules and detailed pros and cons
for making your vehicle unique ... but frankly I want more tables. More tables for equipment, more detailed
rules for combat with maybe Harm types and Armor types (like Fire or resist
Fire weapons), and certainly more interesting possible mechanical failures for
vehicle cons and more pros to make your vehicle more
comfortable/badass/interesting.
The Game Master section (Part Three, The Atlas), has a lot
of very specific information about the world and the Regions the players will
be traveling through, but I have avoided the specifics of the Regions, because
I intend to play the game.
Still, I have read the generic guide to what each Region
(1-6) should do narratively on pages 150-151.
These pages suggest details like “Region one should be a tutorial that
focuses on the characters and their initial personal problems” and “Introduce
at least one Major Faction in Region two.”
The Last Caravan was originally intended to be a video game
design document, so there is a great deal of detail for the “canon” Regions and
the multiple paths through North America. However, I think that the game could
also function well with random generation in each of the six Regions the Last
Caravan must traverse. For example,
Region one could have a random table where all the character’s personal
problems are delineated, and another random table with small encounters that
describe the major themes in the book like introducing alien wildlife, trying
to survive the increasing cold, dodgy scavengers, and subjects like that. One
could roll on both tables and the Game Master could combine a highlighted
personal problem with an encounter for Region one for one game session.
This idea is a departure from Blades in the Dark and the
book specifically, but after reading the book one gets inspired to iterate and
build on the framework that The Last Caravan provides.
So, I think The Last Caravan is good and sets up a nice
survival, cozy game but you may require some modification to get more details
that suit your table. The thing is, that
will be no trouble since the book generates inspiration in spades.
Gods of the Forbidden North: Volume 2
I bought Gods of the Forbidden North: Volume 2 a
couple of days ago as it was the Deal of the Day on DriveThruRPG for $10. It is
normally $25 for this 532-page tome of a West Marches style sandbox location
and series of dungeons in the frozen north.
I am 36 pages into it and quite frankly very impressed by the amount of
detail and guide to how to run the campaign as the whole thing is designed to
be run in OSR, or more specifically the “Old-School Essentials Advanced
Fantasy tabletop role-playing game by Necrotic Gnome.”
You can adapt it easily for any D&D-like you want, but it
is easiest for OSR.
So, what do you get in Volume 2? You get an initial
introduction to a hidden dwarven underworld, a full hexcrawl description of
said gloomy mystic underworld, one urban investigation, and five independent
dungeon crawls linked to the underworld. The adventures range from level 5
through 12. There is a Gods of the Forbidden North: Volume 1 which contains the races and worldbuilding of the
setting as well as initial adventures from levels 1 through 5.
This book is really fantastic and I will now happily pay $25
for Volume 1 because I am so impressed by it. Volume 2 is worth the money ($25)
if you want a hexcrawl with several dungeons.
Specifically, one of the sections I have read deals with a
warm home base tavern called “The Beating” with endearing characters and three
fully fleshed out unique games of chance that can be played in the tavern,
along with a rumor table and regular visitors all with plot hooks.
The
Shrike
The Shrike is a brilliantly creative OSR
point crawl in a distinctly unique fragment of Hell. The story is, there is a
Nameless God impaled through their undying heart on a mountain of iron called
The Shrike. Divine blood, imbued with
the ability to generate life from inanimate objects, flows down the spire to
its deepest depths in the tempestuous ocean waters below. Jailor-Devils, Sinners, and creatures
animated by the divine blood called Partials, all occupy The Shrike up and down
its length; and since food is scarce, weave plots to feed on each other. Yes,
cannibalism is a major theme of this sliver of Hell, so content warning there.
The
Shrike is a 46 location pointcrawl with 3 keyed dungeons and a procedurally
generated depth-crawl. In addition,
there are plenty of interesting tables to use to populate a setting with
infernal beings in this 169-page book.
Creativity
is on display in The Shrike. For example, all Devils are shapeshifters, except
for the unique horned mask they wear, which serves as their identity. These masks hold magic powers. Kill one and
take it for yourself. Or trade it! For Hell is Capitalism, and the Infernal
Economy is detailed with creativity. You
may find gold pieces, grave goods given to the dead by sorrowful mourners; and
Umbra, which are the shadows of gold coins destroyed in life. Acquire
black bladed knives called Athames which rise in value if they are used to slay
a distinguished Devil, or even Black Ledgers of infernal debts and the Scarlet
Scales of Mammon himself.
The
languages used in Hell even reflect the cultures on The Shrike and have
mechanical implications. Mortals that
even attempt to speak Old Infernal find the words blister their mouths as if
their tongue has tasted hellfire. Abysmal, the native tongue of The Abyss of
Hell, is a slurping, syrupy speech and carries underwater to communicate vast
distances. Want to piss of a Devil? Speak in Celestial; the language of the
Gods, and those animated by Divine blood. The very utterance of this speech
sounds likes nails upon a chalkboard to Devils and drives them into frothing
rage. I have rarely seen a rpg book so
cohesive in its tone with every written detail as The Shrike.
The
Shrike also has an extensive inspiration and further reading list on page 166.
Sure, everyone recognizes Dante’s The Divine Comedy and some of the
references to it the author makes; but there are also Sinners that become Husks
al la Dark Souls, a reference to China Mieville’s The City & The
City in The Great Snubbing between the Gold and Silver Courts of Devils,
and my personal favorite reference of Sinner’s Soulstones taken from Wayne
Barlowe’s Barlowe's Inferno which is illustrated below. It has been said, creativity stands on the
shoulders of giants, and The Shrike not only wears its inspirations on its
sleeve, it weaves them into a truly new and awesome vista of infernal
fantasy.
 |
| The Examination from Barlowe's Inferno by Wayne Barlowe |
This
is a grotesquerie tour-de-force of a very singular vision of Hell and I am glad
I bought it.
The
Shrike is part of the Bundle of Holding for the OSE Treasures 2 where you get
SHRIKE, WYVERN SONGS, TOWER SILVERAXE, MANTICORE, and more for $17.95. As of the time of this writing, there are
only about four more days for this deal.
The Book
of Oblivion (Wraith 20th Anniversary Edition)
Wraith: the Oblivion is a
Storyteller game from the old White Wolf line in which players are one
of the Restless Dead; a Wraith with unfinished business that compels them to
continue to exist in the Underworld. The
Book of Oblivion is a sourcebook for Wraith, the 20th Anniversary Edition,
and frankly I think they should have called this 130-page book, Wraith: the
Expansion.
I am a
long-term old World of Darkness player who started in the 1990s and Wraith was
one of the first core books I bought. Given that, and my love for the macabre
and wildly creative world painted in funeral greys and blacks of Wraith, I will
do my best to explain the thematic lexicon of the Underworld to a wide
audience.
The Book of
Oblivion contains a hodgepodge of topics that expand on many of the core book
subjects, including: four additional Dark Kingdoms (Wraith civilizations),
Shadows (internal Wraith antagonists), Spectres (external Wraith antagonists),
Soulforging (making useful stuff in the Deadlands), how Wraiths react to mass
tragedies in the Skinlands (real world), more details about the Labyrinth
(basically Wraith Hell where the Spectres and worse live) and more.
But what if
I don’t play Wraith? How is The Book of Oblivion useful?
Although The
Book of Oblivion’s utility is primarily for Wraith specifically and the World
of Darkness in general, the Shadows and Spectres section are great inspiration
for undead antagonists or the psychological profiles of evil bad guys who are
more than just cartoon characters. In Wraith, the Shadow is the
self-destructive, Oblivion-focused and just plain “evil” mirror of the heroic
ghost character (Wraith). Given that,
there are 10 distinct additional Shadow archetypes that describe the psychology
and motivations of truly self-destructive personalities that could be useful
for GMs of say a more traditional fantasy d20 game. What ideas on how competent
shock troops of bad guys who serve an existential evil would function? Go to
the Spectre chapter, which has nasty tricks described in detail that Spectres
use as they go about their dark work.
Want new unique evil-derived magical powers? The Dark Arcanoi chapter is
for you.
The Dark
Kingdoms section is more for World of Darkness players and those interested in
the dark mirror of different culture’s afterlives. These chapters could also be
used as inspiration for funereal otherworlds or pocket dimensions in a fantasy
game too however. On display are the Wraith-coded fantasy afterlife areas for
Africa, India, North America, South America and Haiti.
Soulforging
is a small section describing how Wraiths make practical objects in the
Underworld; the Labyrinth section introduces new ideas for how the Game Master
can scare their players, even if they are playing dead people. There is a nice
but small section on using body horror and unexpected settings for Wraith Hell
that might be useful for other horror systems.
The section
on The Tempest (terrifying Wraith weather essentially) and how Wraiths react to
mass tragedies in the mortal world are mostly of use to Wraith Game Masters who
want to know how the Dead preposition themselves to interfere with the doom of
a population or reap souls that will inevitably come across to the land of the
dead once the mass casualty event hits.
In
conclusion, The Book of Oblivion is mostly for Wraith and World of Darkness
Game Masters, and occasionally useful for fantasy Dungeon Masters with a
macabre streak. Because of the vast
diversity of topics, the book feels jumbled.
Compare this to The Shrike which has a very singular and cohesive view
of a fragment of Hell, and thus that book feels more complete and focused.
