Review of the Cyberpapacy and Tharkold for Torg: Eternity

A few years back I did a review of the first three rounds of supplements for Torg: Eternity--The Living Land, The Nile Empire, and Aysle.  Overall these products were strong, and I got the sense that the designers were getting their "sea legs" as they went along and the overall quality improved.  In the last few years. notwithstanding COVID and all of that, Ulisses Spiele knocked out crowdfunding campaigns for all four of the remaining cosms--Cyberpapacy, Tharkold, Orrorsh, and recently Pan Pacifica.  All of the campaigns had the same format as the previous cosm campaigns, so check the previous post for a discussion of what's involved.  This post will handle the Cyberpapacy and Tharkold, and I will follow up with the other two.

Cyberpapacy:  If there was ever a concept that was designed to appeal to me and my interests personally, it would be the Cyberpapacy.  As one can glean from the name, the Cyberpapacy is basically cyberpunk fiction, but with the Evil Corporations replaced with the worst sort of "burn the witch" inquisitorial expy-Catholicism as the primary antagonist.  I like cyberpunk fiction, and I am really interested in all-things related to Christianity in general and high-church versions of Christianity in particular, both the good and the bad.  So, again, right in my wheel-house.   

I loved the original Cyberpapacy Sourcebook at the time it came out, but having re-read it in preparation for this review, I get the sense that the designers were not entirely sure what they wanted to do with their concept.  It has plenty of cyberware, which is good, and it had some stuff about burning witches, which is also good, but it didn't really deliver a cohesive picture of the reality of the Cyberpapacy.  Part of the problem was that the continuity of the original game had the "cyber" dimension of the Cyberpapacy be a newly imposed innovation into the reality of Magna Verita (the home cosm of the Cyberpapacy).  As a result, all of this cyber stuff was actually layered onto otherwise standard oppressive psuedo-medieval Catholicism.  It didn't fit together, and that was kind of the point.

This new take on the Cyberpapacy abandons that altogether, in favor of a much more interesting vision of the linkage between the "cyber" and the "papacy."  Now, technological innovations come from direct divine revelation (or: in a slight spoiler, from other sources. . . .)  And, critically, from no other source--science is not supported by the reality of the Cyberpapacy, and is in any event completely heretical.  Cybernetics are seen as holy because they channel the Holy Spirit of the Machine, allowing the believer to shed the weak and sinful flesh for the pure, divine mechanical replacement.  Because science is not a thing, the feel remains very culturally medieval--monasteries are basically centers of manufacturing, with monks serving as floor supervisors and the assembly line workers basically taking the role of serfs.

All of this is clearly at least an homage to the Tech Priests of Warhammer 40k, but I think this was a strong design choice.  It makes the whole thing feel like a fully formed idea as opposed to jamming together two ideas.  A small, but I think very clever and flavorful idea is the notion of a "Piety Score"--each person has a numerical rating based on saying prayers and doing Cyberchurch-approved activities (ranging from "spending your Sunday volunteering to make cyberware" to "denoucing a heretic").  Those scores are displayed when you jump into the Cyberpapacy's version of the Matrix, the Godnet, as well as anyone who has a connection to the Godnet (which is basically everyone in the Cyberpapacy).  Reaching certain tiers in your Piety Score brings you access to certain perks, both inside the Godnet and in the "real world."  For example, the "Annointed" (Piety Score 1000+) have the right to use a personal car, as well as grow wings when the they are in the Godnet.  The idea of the "gamification" of faith as expressed with Piety Scores is both brilliant and perfectly on point for the setting.

Speaking of the Godnet.  As in the previous version, the Godnet is basically the Matrix, but with a religious theme--Heaven, Hell and Purgatory are places you can go in the virtual world.  In this version, Heaven takes the form of a seven level mountain, and one's access to the levels is determined by, you guessed it, one's Piety Score.  Conceptually, this works, just like it did in the original.  But, if I may say, the devil is in the details.  Netrunning/decking rules are a notorious pain point in almost all cyberpunk games, and the rules in the original Cyberpapacy sourcebook (and the associated Godnet sourcebook) were no execption, requiring GMs to map out a dungeon-style route to go through to get to the data the PCs are seeking.  The rules in this book are much more streamlined, checking in at only eight pages, and are pitched at a much higher level of abstraction.  

Beyond the rules, I really liked two other design decisions for the Godnet.  The first is the idea of "hard light holograms."  Basically, holograms in the Cyberpapacy take on tangible form, which allows personas that are in the Godnet to project into the real world.  This solves maybe the biggest conceptual problem in netrunning/decking systems, which is that they often become divorced from what the rest of the PCs are doing.  Now, "Nodders" (Cyberpapacy's version of deckers/hackers) can hack a holoprojector and fight in the real space beside all of the PCs.  It's a brilliant solution to a difficult design problem.  The other is to put all of the "paydata" that the PCs are going to want to go get in isolated monasteries or convents, isolated from the broader Godnet.  That way, PCs as a group are going to have to physically travel to locations to get what they want, bringing the non-computer focused PCs into the action.  Also very smart, even if the explanation for why all the good stuff is in isolated locations might be a little hand-wavy for some tastes.

Unhallowed Data is the adventure path, and it is different from the previous cosm's adventure paths. It is both a mystery-focused adventure and designed for the PCs to take the quiet approach as opposed to going in guns blazing.  Stealth-oriented adventures, depending on the personalities of the players at the table, may require the GM to "gently remind" the PCs of the consequences of breaking cover, and the adventure is clearly aware of this and provides plenty of hand-holds.  It also has a very well done Act set in a convent, where the PCs have to infiltrate the convent and the nuns to get access to the key data to move the story forward.  It also features the Godnet in a later portions of the adventure path, which makes perfect sense for the Cyberpapacy adventure path.

All told, the Cyberpapacy package takes a set of sneakily difficult ideas and fuses them together in a clever, accessible, gameable set of products.    

Original Torg
Tharkold Sourcebook,
with High Lord Jezrael
a/k/a Cyber Benetar

Tharkold:  I also went back and read the original Tharkold sourcebook, and I am reminded what a fun bit of early 90s RPG cheese it was and why it was one of my (and I think many people's) favorite original Torg products.  It is just chock full of big guns and cool powers and recycling trucks that will recycle people and a major bad guy named "Sterrett of the Blades" and some half-assed social commentary on early 90s Los Angeles and a High Lord, Jezrael, that kinda looks like a cyber version of singer Pat Benetar on the cover art.  Is it all well balanced?  No.  Does all of it make sense and fit together?  Not entirely.  But it is fun.  

With the exception of the Living Land (and arguably Pan Pacifica), Tharkold got the biggest make-over for Torg: Eternity.  Much of that change has to do with relocating Tharkold back to its original location of Russia (in the original Torg continuity, Tharkold attempted to invade Russia, was defeated, and then arrived in Los Angeles and later Berlin later the war).  Some of the change was a straight-up nerf--Tharkold is now inferior technologically to the Cyberpapacy, and no longer has access to religion and miracles, getting instead psychic powers.  But reading the Tharkold sourcebook, it is also clear that the tone and mood of Tharkold has been radically changed. 

One of the more subtle but far-reaching changes has to do with the nature of the headliner antagonists in Tharkold--the techno-demons, or Tharkoldu.  In the original version, the Tharkoldu are monsters, in the sense that they are normal, albeit magical, creatures native to the Tharkold home-cosm.  In this version, they are demons in the classical, theological, and ontological sense--pure evil incarnated into a physical form via the power of magic.  Rather than the eternal predators of the humans of Tharkold ("the Race"), it is stated that these Tharkoldu were originally summoned into the cosm from Tharkold's version of hell by the wickedness and sins of the Race.  As we learn in the opening fiction, the creed of the Tharkoldu is "the evil we do lives after us"--they exist to make the world worse, to spread pain and abuse.

In fact, let's talk about the opening fiction for a moment.  I will admit that I often skip the opening fiction of ttrpg books, as it is often not that great.  The opening fiction in the Tharkold sourcebook is some of the best I have ever read.  It's so well done, in fact, that I think it probably should come with some sort of content warning.  In a few pages, the authors depict an abusive relationship between Kranod, the Tharkoldu High Lord, and Jezrael, Kranod's (at the time) human woman thrall, and the psychology that underlies such a relationship.  There is a small detail where Kranod licks Jezrael's face, and we are told that he has done that so often that hair doesn't grow on the side of her head in that region.  That detail made my skin crawl.  The resolution of the story (which I suppose it's OK to talk about as the designers have talked about it publicly) is that Jezrael kills Kranod, and Kranod accepts this because he knows that he has so traumatized her that she will never be free of the effects of the abuse she suffered at his hands.  

The new Tharkold, expressed most clearly in this story, is in a very real way an exploration of generational trauma, and how evil gets passed down and transmitted across time.  That's pretty heavy material for a game like Torg.  But it also acts as a glue to the genre elements embodied by the cosm--basically Hellraiser meets Mad Max.  Both of the component genres are pretty grim, and the synergy of them is definitely grim.  To take a single example out of many--Tharkold's version of the Matrix/the Godnet is Kur, which is literally hell, populated by lost souls and horrors who must be bargained with to find the information you are looking for.   

Upping the grimness factor is the fact that Tharkold is in the midst of a three-sided struggle for power in the cosm in the wake of Jezrael's assassination of Kranod.  One side is the completely sociopathic Jezrael; side two is fan-favorite from the original Torg Thrachen, a Tharkoldu with big ambitions and an alliance with the Gaunt Man (the High Lord of Orrorsh and the leader of the overall invasion).  And the third side is the President of Russia, a former intelligence officer who wormed in way into power pre-invasion and has used the crisis as an opportunity to not only solidify power in Russia, but also invade and annex Russia's neighbors.

I mean, it's Putin.  I know it says in the book "President Volkov," but it is clearly Putin, so much so that I would just call him "Putin" in my games.  Keep in mind that this was written prior to the invasion of the Ukraine, which I actually think is really fortunate, given the apparent unwillingness of the Torg: Eternity team to engage with current events (see my next post on Pan Pacifica).  The idea that a "native" would use an invasion as an opportunity for power is a dimension that was not really present in the original game, but it makes sense and is a fertile field for game stories.  And reading the material in the context of real-world events adds an additional edge--as over-the-top as Tharkold is, it feels more real somehow.

As far as the game mechanical content, it is what you might expect--lots of cyberware (known in Tharkold as "occultech") and psychic powers and magic spells with a suitably demonic theme.  In a nod to the original game, there are rules for playing a demon who rebels against their demonic nature; unlike the original version, these rules are relatively well balanced, which is nice.  There are also mutant powers that come with random negative side-effects, which do a nice job of being meaningfully negative without being unworkably punitive.  Nothing is world-shaking here, but everything is well done and flavorful.

The adventure path for Tharkold is Blood on the Blasted Lands.  I have discussed previously that Torg adventurers tend to have a "theme park" quality, designed to show off all of the varied elements that a particular slice of the Torg universe has to offer. Blood on the Blasted Lands is absolutely an example of this, but it is a really, really well done version of the Torg theme park.  The PCs will be traveling across the Tharkold realm, hitting both the irradiated wilderness areas as well as the major cities.  One of my favorite elements in its structure is that it starts out as a fairly conventional quest structure to travel around and find clues about The Thing while fighting off baddies and dealing with horrors, and then organically immerses the PCs in the political elements of setting.  That's tricky from a writing perspective, and it is easy to make awkward and clunky, but here it is done very well.  Getting players to care about politics in a setting and getting buy-in for difficult moral choices is often a struggle, but I think this is going to work, even for groups that already drinking deep from the Torg lore.  It's more conventional in its structure than Unhallowed Data, but it works and is very evocative of the brutal complexities of Tharkold.  

I can't decide whether Cyberpapacy or Tharkold are my favorite cosms in Torg: Eternity.  Design-wise, I think Cyberpapacy had a higher degree of difficulty, if for no other reason than coming up with good and workable netrunning rules has been such a white whale for some many games.  And I think Unhallowed Data is one of the best of the adventure paths (rivaled only by the Orrorsh one, about which more in the next post).  But there is something about Tharkold's grimness and splatter-violence mixed with a more sophisticated-than-you-would-expect political intrigue that really works.  Tharkold is still every bit as fun as the old version, but now much better balanced.  Either way, I think these two really show off the best of the genre mash-up fun that Torg has to offer.

Review: Level Up (Advanced 5th Edition)

There is a set of people out there for whom Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition (hereafter, for simplicity, "LU") from EN Publishing is exactly what they have been waiting for--for several years now.  If you are a D&D 5e player that is starting to (or have been for some time) chaffing at the limitations and restrictions in the game system as presented (particularly in terms of character creation and mechanical support for non-combat activities), but you otherwise like playing 5e and are not really interested in checking out a whole new game and structure, then LU is an extremely compelling product.  And even if you are not (and I am not exactly in that particular space), it's impossible not to see and be impressed with the game design craft at work here.

The initial challenge in approaching LU is to understand exactly what it is, something that didn't really become clear to me until I got the PDF copies of the three core books in my hands [Note: as of this writing, it is only available to Kickstarter backers, of which I was one].  The simplest way to explain what is going on here is that LU takes D&D 5e, strips it down to the skeleton (dice mechanics, action economy--things like that), and then rebuilds it from scratch.  While nothing you will see is unrecognizable for people who have played d20 games, I was not expecting the scope of the changes LU makes to the 5e paradigm (I think, in part, because the EN Publishing people made a strategic choice to undersell how much work they were doing--more on that in a bit).  Not only is it a different, albeit recognizably so, game from 5e, it is very clearly designed to be used on its own, as a replacement to the 5e rulebooks as opposed to a supplement to them (and, like D&D, LU consists of three core books--the Adventurer's Guide, the GM-focused Trials & Treasure, and Monstrous Menagerie).  LU is not a set of house rules to 5e, nor is it an expansion in the mode of something like Xanathar's Guide to Everything, but instead its own game.  The best comparison of the relationship between 5e and LU is between Pathfinder 1st Edition and D&D 3.5, and even that might undersell it.

In fact, there are so many changes that summarizing all of them would be tedious and unproductive.  But I think the changes can be grouped into two major buckets, with a couple of other interesting single shot ideas that are worth talking about.  Major idea #1 of LU is to make good on the (IMO, wholly unfulfilled) promise of 3 pillars of play in D&D 5e--combat, exploration, and social/roleplay.  To that end, Trials & Treasure has a lengthy section providing mechanical support, with examples and random tables, for non-combat, environmental-based encounters.  There is also a robust set of journey rules, similar to those found in the now out-of-print Adventures in Middle Earth (in turn based on The One Ring rpg).  And while I love the AiME/The One Ring journey rules, I think LU's version is better in that it contemplates a wider variety of non-combat challenges.  There are puzzles and lore-based challenges and weather and a whole host of different ways for all PCs to engage with the exploration portion of the game, all of which is simply not present in 5e as written.  And no one can say that the exploration mechanics are a throw-away or something tacked-on, as Trials & Treasure devotes about 120 pages to these new mechanics.

The social pillar is less mechanically engaged, but there are some actual rules (including rules for awarding XP!) for social encounters along with advice on how to run them.  But LU approaches the social dimension in a slightly different way, bringing back the once ubiquitous but now somewhat out-of-fashion stronghold and domain management rules.  There is also a Prestige rating, measuring how well known a particular PC is, which provides concrete mechanical hooks for the standard "unknown wanderer to world-renowned hero" arc of most fantasy campaigns.  Critically, every PC has class-related abilities that interact with both the social dimension and the exploration piece, making them a central part of play as opposed to an afterthought or something only specialized characters interact with.  For example, the 1st level Cleric selects a "Sacred Call" ability which provides circumstantial social advantages, while at 3rd level the Cleric selects a "Sign of Faith" which is an ability that provides meaningful, if cabined, advantages while traveling.

This transitions into the second big-picture change in LU--all of the classes are rebuilt and redesigned.  Part of this redesign is adding class abilities tied to the exploration and social pillars, as mentioned above.  But it is more than that, and the changes can be seen most clearly in the martial classes.  Martial classes now have access to combat maneuvers, which are divided up into "combat traditions" (think different kinds of martial arts in the real world) that unlock progressively more powerful abilities along a fairly simple tree.  There are also a short list of maneuvers that are now available to all characters, fleshing out the combat turn.  Most of the discrete class abilities given to martial characters in 5e are wrapped up into the maneuver system, giving martial characters more options to choose from at each level.

Indeed, choice is a consistent theme of all of the revised classes is LU. In many places where 5e simply assigns a particular ability at a particular level, LU provides options.  It's not nearly the breadth of options found in the feat system in Pathfinder 2nd edition; instead, there are usually three or four specific options for a particular level.  As a result, it sits in a middle place between 5e and Pathfinder 2e on the character creation complexity scale, a place that I think is going to be a sweet spot for many people who are looking to ratchet up the character creation mini-game.  My one comment here is that, given that there is increased choice at all levels, I wonder whether including the 5e sub-class system was the right choice.  I get that it helps establish a theme for PCs within the broader class concept, but much of that work is being taken up with the individualized abilities that classes get at most levels, so some of that work is duplicative and maybe a bit more complex than is necessary.  On the flip side, the design for the subclasses in LU is broader and more archetypical than especially the post-PHB 5e subclasses, which often goes in the direction of rather specific character concepts.  I like this better, and the subclasses are well-designed and easy to adapt to almost any possible setting one might be inclined to use. 

A couple of other quick notes on character building.   The game mechanical construct of "race" in 5e is replaced with Heritage (which might be called "species" in a sci-fi context) and Culture, allowing for greater character diversity and avoiding essentialism.  Along those lines, Background is now the character creation piece that provides ability score bonuses and penalties.  This is a small change, but an elegant one and one that makes perfect sense in world--if you were raised as a scholar, it stands to reason to get an Intelligence bonus.  I am less sold on renaming some of the core classes (Barbarian is now "Berserker," Monk is now "Adept," Paladin is now "Herald").  The thinking, I suspect, is to expand the conceptual space encompassed by those classes, but honestly I found it to be more confusing than helpful.  Those names are so ingrained in the collective consciousness of D&D players that re-wiring the brain takes some doing.  A small thing, ultimately, but something that I kept tripping over.     

One last point on character creation--and this is maybe my favorite addition in LU--every PC now has a Destiny, which provides a core character motivation, a way in which the PC gains Inspiration (as opposed to the unstructured and arbitrary "good roleplaying" from 5e, which I hate), a particular way the PC can spend Inspiration to do something thematic for the character, and a grand quest to fulfill the Destiny which provides a special character ability.  It's simple, easy to expand with new Destinies, provides a concrete roleplaying anchor for a new character, and gives them a reason to do things in the world and interact with it.  Love it, 10/10.

On the miscellaneous side, it's worth talking about the Fatigue and Strife system.  I've complained on a couple of occasions about the Short/Long Rest mechanics in 5e, and in order to maintain compatibility those rules are ported over to LU.  However, some of the dimensions I don't like are mitigated by the "Roughing It" sidebar on Page 425 of the Adventurer's Guide that specifically ties full heal-ups to being able to rest in favorable conditions--unless you have a bedroll, are not cold, are not in the rain, etc., you only get half the normal Hit Dice back after a night's sleep.  But the real punch is in the Fatigue (which replaces 5e Exhaustion) and Strife rules, which represent physical and mental strain, respectively.  Those conditions can only be recovered in a "haven," defined as a home or other ideal location for recovery.  And Fatigue and Strife are no joke--the last level of Fatigue means the PC will just die at a story-appropriate time as determined by the GM, and max level of Strife causes permanent mental conditions with concrete game mechanical effects.  This walks the line of creating real opportunities for attrition-based play, without completely gimping a PC's combat effectiveness.  You also gain a level of Fatigue the first time in an fight you fall unconscious, providing a real if perhaps modest penalty for going to 0 HP and avoiding the consequence-free rebounding from the brink of death to being fine that characterizes the 5e death and healing rules.

The problem with all of this, to the extent it is a problem, is that LU is really a package.  Because the pieces interact with each other and fit together pretty tightly, it's not optimized to be a tool-kit of ideas that you can drop into an existing 5e game.  For example, you might think to just add the journey rules to an existing 5e campaign.  You could do that, but the journey rules are designed around the PCs having all the exploration-oriented class abilities.  And if you add those elements, you might as well rebuild all the PCs around the LU class model, in which case you might as well just take on the whole package.  Likewise, because of the way LU redistributes the pieces of what 5e groups under "race," if you want to use the Heritage/Culture system you also have to use the LU Backgrounds, or at the very least re-work the existing 5e Backgrounds to provide ability score modifiers.  The changes that LU makes to the 5e system are pervasive and extensive (I haven't even mentioned that they have redesigned most of the core spells), pushing you at every turn toward adopting it wholesale.  Honestly, probably the most modular portion of the whole project is the redesigned monsters, all of which are both recognizably similar to the stock 5e versions and yet more interesting and dynamic in play.  

Which leads to what I think is ultimately the big question with LU.  This is a project targeted at existing 5e players and DMs, and one of the core marketing pitches for LU is that everything is compatible with existing 5e materials like adventure paths and supplemental material.  And that is true, in the sense that the stats that you will find for opponents in existing published material mean the same things in LU, so there is no direct conversion needed.  But that presentation undersells, I think deliberately, what LU is and what it is trying to do.  Which, ultimately, is to be its own game, albeit one that is backwards compatible with 5e.  As someone who has gotten burned out and frustrated with 5e, and especially with the apparent unwillingness of Wizards of the Coast to do anything interesting or creative with the game for many years running now, this is not a problem for me.  I have no problem moving on from 5e with only casual picking over the carcass for bits and pieces to integrate.  But I wonder whether LU will be a bridge too far for many people in its target audience.  Yes it is compatible and yes many of the core elements are the same, but LU is otherwise very different from 5e.  Given the "stickiness" of the 5e fanbase to changing games, I wonder if this will find its audience.  There are vague hints of a revised set of the 5e core rulebooks in 2024 for the 50th anniversary of D&D, but whatever that looks like I doubt it will be as well done, thoughtful, or as expansive as LU.  It would be a shame if this product doesn't find a home because it looks like too big a change.

There are also some minor quibbles.  I mentioned the changing the class names thing previously.  There are places where they went a little too hard in the direction of edge-case, fiddly rules for my tastes--for example, the Fatigue rule I quoted above is slightly wrong, as you can recover the Level 1 Fatigued condition without resting in a haven, but not any higher levels of Fatigued.  Right now, the PDFs are in a Beta version, and are in need of some smoothing over.  

But, at the end of the day, LU is an outstanding product that is worth putting in the work.  It keeps most if not all of the things about 5e that work well, and it improves the rest of it in basically every way.  While I liked what I saw from Pathfinder 2nd Edition, I think LU also has many of the advantages of that game with less fiddly-ness and complexity.  If given a choice between starting a campaign in 5e, Pathfinder 2e, or LU, I would choose LU.  If I have time over the holidays, I think I'm going to dust off the materials for my old campaign world and convert it over to LU, which would fit it perfectly.  If you were not a Kickstarter backer, and this package is remotely appealing to you, I would strongly recommend keeping an eye out for its general release.  It's a really, really impressive piece of work.

Thoughts on GMing, Part 3--Forbidden Lands, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the OSR (Kinda)

If you engage even a little bit in the online ttrpg scene, you will encounter the term "OSR."  I have struggled with the Discourse around the OSR, because it has been hard to figure out precisely what it is and what it stands for.  There is even disagreement over what "OSR" stands for--does it mean "Old School Roleplaying" or "Old School Renaissance"?

Maybe in part because of this ambiguity, nothing that I have encountered from from the OSR has really grabbed me.  There is a segment of the OSR that in embodies an aesthetic position, trying to recreate the feel and look (often through the art style) of late 70s/early 80s ttrpgs, more specifically D&D.  Probably the best example of this is Goodman Games' Dungeon Crawl Classics, with its Errol Otis art and focus on short character life spans, but there is also the more horror-oriented and sex-forward Lamentations of the Flame Princess.  These games do a very good job at doing what it is trying to do--I fully acknowledge the craft of both DCC and LofFP--but playing them left me cold.  That style and aesthetic was not the feel of D&D that I remember from first getting into the  hobby, as I am a child of 2nd Edition AD&D, Forgotten Realms, and Dragonlance, all of which come after the early-80s touchstones of the DCC and LotFP aesthetic.  So it didn't work for me on the level of nostalgia, and it doesn't really work for me on its own merits.

Then there are the games that are very self-consciously about the mechanics of early editions of D&D.  Gotta say, I have even less interest here.  It's not that those rule systems are bad or necessarily unplayable, but there is so much good design out there going in every conceivable direction that I don't really see the point of locking into a forty-five year old design as a core commitment.  

Finally, there are a set of ideas about the play experience.  The best articulation of this game-play focus is expressed by Ben Milton in a compilation called the "Principia Apocrypha":

"The more of the following a campaign has, the more old school it is: high lethality, an open world, a lack of pre-written plot, an emphasis on creative problem solving, an exploration-centered reward system (usually XP for treasure), a disregard for 'encounter balance,' and the use of random tables to generate world elements that surprise both players and referees. Also, a strong do-it-yourself attitude and a willingness to share your work and use the creativity of others in your game."

This is all very interesting, but none of these ideas never particularly fired me up and got me excited about running or playing in that context.

That is, until I found Forbidden Lands, by emerging Swedish juggernaut Free League (Fria Ligan) Publishing.  Ben Riggs of the Plot Points podcast called the Forbidden Lands the "perfect rpg product," and that seemed crazy when I first heard him say it, but I get where he is coming from.  

I mostly want to talk about the mechanics, because that where I think the game really shines, but I want to say a few things about the lore and setting.  First off, the trailer video that Free League put together is pretty close to being the perfect introduction to a setting.  Check this out:

Evocative, atmospheric, moody, informative without being overly long and expository--that video is great.  Beyond the trailer, the setting walks the line between providing familiar fantasy RPG tropes (so it is accessible) and being distinctive and unique (providing a compelling reason to check it out).  It also walks the line between fun-dark and obnoxious-dark.  Here, I think there is something to the fact that this comes out of Sweden, and is the product of Swedish fantasy writers.  I don't have deep experience with the Swedish fantasy scene, but Forbidden Lands feels different from English-language dark fantasy like Warhammer, and I like this version much better.

But the setting and lore of Forbidden Lands can be swapped out for other fantasy tropes without too much trouble (as, to be fair, the game acknowledges).  The real magic is in the mechanics.  Forbidden Lands is a gritty, survival-oriented wilderness exploration game at its heart.  The boxed set (itself an old-school touch) contains a hex map showing the land forms of the titular Forbidden Lands, and a set of stickers for placing down cities, towns, dungeon ruins, and other examples of what the game calls "adventure sites."  But, in between the adventure sites, the PCs go from hex to hex, deal with potential random encounters, and have to maintain their supplies.  There are very clear systems for handling pathfinding, foraging for food and water, hunting, making camp, even sleeping.

These sorts of systems are not new--early D&D products like the "BECMI" Expert set had similar systems.  But Forbidden Lands puts a subtle twist on each of these elements, reducing the grind and fiddly-ness for the players and GM, grind and fiddly-ness which caused those mechanics to go out of fashion in the first place.  For example, instead of counting individual units of resources like rations and water and torches (and arrows, too), those resources are expressed as a die--d6, d8, d10, or d12.  Every time you have to eat or take a drink or light a torch, you roll the die; on a 1 or 2, you step down to the next lowest die type (i.e. d10 to d8).  Roll a 1 or 2 when your resources are at d6, and you are out of the resource.  Not only does this cut down on book-keeping, but it adds a dramatic tension to resource consumption--failures increase the chances of future failures in a downward spiral, and the more operationally-minded PCs will not be tempted to (or able to) tediously micromanage away resource scarcity.  

While in exploration mode, the GM is encouraged to let events play out according to a well-designed set of random tables.  What sorts of random encounters to do the PCs come across?  What animals are available to hunt?  What happens when they camp at night?  No need at all for the GM to prep any of that--let the tables decide.  The key feature here is that the random tables and systems-oriented, player driven action removes responsibility from the GM to craft a curated game experience for the benefit of the players.  As the manifesto quoted above says well, I think, the outcomes of play are a surprise both for the players and the GM, in a way that doesn't happen in a more standard GMing experience.  Also, and I think this is a key feature of Forbidden Lands, exploration mode in Forbidden Lands requires literally no GM prep.  Between random encounters and the various (mis-) adventures of wilderness travel, it is possible for a GM to run an entire satisfying session with zero prepared, and not feel like he or she has to be constantly improvising and keeping the plates spinning.    

But Forbidden Lands departs slightly from the old-school formula by mixing the procedural elements in with modular adventure sites.  If the players and/or the GM get bored of wandering through the wilderness, the GM just plops down an adventure site and play focuses there.  But, even here, the models we are provided in the core rulebook and in the expansion materials (I currently own the Bitter Reach campaign and the Crypt of the Mellified Mage adventure set, but there is also the Raven's Purge campaign as well) show off sand-box style design, with competing factions and goals that the PCs can insert themselves into.  "The Vale of the Dead" in the boxed set could easily have been a rather boring paint-by-numbers dungeon crawl against a giant, but instead it has four or five different competing groups that can be allied with, and/or played off against each other.  And each adventure site is set up with a rumor that is given to the PCs, which is a great touch for world building, but also allows the GM to situate these adventure sites into a broader narrative without forcing players into a narrative railroad (the Bitter Reach campaign is especially excellent at creating a overarching story while maintaining a truly open format).  And it should be noted that there are robust random tables for generating adventure sites, though I would suggest rolling up the site prior to the session.

All of this is layered over Free League's "Year Zero" game engine.  Forbidden Lands is likely the most complex and mechanics-driven of the Year Zero games, but the underlying dice pool system is easy to learn and easy to teach.  The heart of Year Zero is the push mechanic--you basically have two chances to succeed on every check, but going to the second roll is going to cause some consequences for the PC.  In Forbidden Lands, the consequences of pushing rolls is damage to your equipment and/or to your character.  That might seem awfully punitive, especially as a PC is going to have only a handful of points before the character is "broken" and really bad things happen, but in return every point of damage from pushing rolls nets the PC a willpower point.  Since Willpower points are the currency that powers most Talents (including all spellcasting), this creates an interesting feedback loop, in which players are incentivized to put their own characters through the wringer in order to do more powerful things.  It also incentivizes PCs, especially spellcasters, to get "stuck in" to the other elements of game play, so that they can generate Willpower points to power their magic.  So, in good old-school fashion, PCs in Forbidden Lands are in for a rough ride; unlike other old-school games, much of pain is going to be self-inflicted.

I'm still not super interested in most of the OSR games.  But I am all-in on Forbidden Lands.  For me, it takes the best ideas from that play style--especially the random tables and open sandbox-style play--and presents them in a thoroughly modern, innovative format.  If you, like me, are or have been an OSR skeptic, this would be the place I would start to maybe change your mind.

How Dark Is The World of Darkness?, Part 2.1--Vampire: the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition

In the intro post, I set up three framing questions for these reviews--(1) do these games speak to me in a way that they didn't when they first came out?; (2) how do the mechanics hold up in light of 25+ years of tabletop RPG design evolution?; and (3) how does the lore land in 2020?  I think it makes sense to tackle these questions in reverse order, so let's begin with the lore, at least in Vampire: the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition (hereafter "V20") form.  Because this got long, even by my standards, this post is just going to deal with the lore and aesthetics, and 2.2 will talk about mechanics and overall impressions.

The Premise

This might be basic to the point of ridiculous, but the premise of V20 is that you play a vampire.  Vampires as presented here are more or less a pastiche of the vampire myths--they drink blood, they are immortal, they have cool powers, sunlight burns them, a stake through the heart puts them into a state of suspended animation called torpor (the first of what is an extensive list of specialized terminology, something that the World of Darkness is known for), etc.  Critically, being bitten by a vampire does not make you a vampire--you must have all of your blood drained and then be fed a portion of vampire blood in order to transform into a vampire, a process known as "the Embrace."

The core mythology of Vampire: the Masquerade is that all vampires are lineal descendants (via Embrace, not by genetics) of Caine, as in "Cain and Abel" in Genesis chapter 4.  The "mark of Caine" bestowed by God on Caine for murdering his twin brother Abel is the curse of vampirism.  The power of a particular vampire is defined by his or her "Generation" from Caine, with 13th being the default for PCs.  Caine and his immediate children lived in a city called Enoch, until the 3rd Generation rose up, overthrew Caine and the 2nd Generation, and then were scattered when the Flood (again, as in Noah and Genesis) destroyed Enoch.  Those 3rd Generation vampires are known as the "Antediluvians" (literally, those before the Flood), and are the founders of the Clans, about which more in a bit.  Caine and the Antediluvians are truly mythological figures, treated in explicitly religious terms by some, and viewed as fictions by others.

Another core concept in Vampire: the Masquerade is the Beast.  A vampire is, unambiguously, a monster, expressed in both the fiction and the game mechanics as the Beast.  When a vampire is hungry, or is put into fear from fire or sunlight, or just gets angry, there is the possibility of slipping into Frenzy, which is basically what it sounds like.

As far as feeding on blood goes, one of the more engaging concepts is the idea of the Blood Bond.  Taking a drink of a vampire's blood creates an emotional connection to that vampire; take three drinks, and you are Blood Bound to the vampire.  This applies both to humans and vampires, and so Blood Bonds are a key element of vampire politics.  As I read it, to be Blood Bound is to be forced to love the vampire you took the drink from, and the implication is that on some level you know the love is fake, but it is nevertheless compelling.  It's also, by definition, entirely one-sided, as the party you love has no similar feelings for you (unless they too are Blood Bound).  This works for me on basically every level, as a metaphor for every kind of distorted and dysfunctional romantic or sexual relationship, as well as for addictions and compulsions of every sort.  And, since this plays on some of my personal fears and insecurities, I found this to be one of the most horrific ideas in the book. 

In terms of V20 specifically, all of this material is presented in an easily accessible form in Chapter 1.  There is a useful pull out box that talks about themes and mood, mixed in with the presentation of the lore itself.  There is a lot of terminology and concepts to take on board if you are unfamiliar with this material, but it is logically organized and easy to digest.  Speaking of terminology, I was a little surprised that I found the bespoke terms for common gaming terms (the gaming group is a "troupe," a campaign is a "chronicle," the GM is the "Storyteller," etc.) to be evocative and flavorful, as opposed to forced and affected.  This, I am certain, is a change from when I first encountered Vampire in the 90s.  I don't know--I think it sets a tone and expectation for the play experience in a subtle way.  It's a small thing, but it's fine.

It's also worth noting that if V20 is deeply immersed in the metaplot developments from the history of the line, I can't detect it.  I mention this because Mage: the Ascension puts the discussion of the metaplot developments front and center, whereas here, if it is there it is tucked deeply into the background.  For newbies, this is clearly to the benefit, as there is no confusion as to what the current state of things actually is.  That's not to say that there is not depth here--I felt like I had a solid sense of what was going on and who the major players were.  But it was also accessible for someone like me who was not deeply immersed in the lore already.

Clans and Sects

The political dimension of the game is set up on two axes, Clans and Sects.  The Clans (of which there are 13, plus some "bloodlines" in the Appendix which seem to be mini-Clans) are the heart of what attracts people to Vampire, as the Clans are generally speaking reflections of archetypes of vampire fiction.  So, you have punk, Lost Boys-style Brujah, the animalistic Gangrel, the Nosferatu from the classic 30s film of the same name, the beautiful people Toreador, the aristocratic manipulator Venture, the charmingly monstrous Tzimisce, and the darkly religious Lasombra.  These Clans with a clear theme and antecedent are great--very evocative, and easy to latch onto when developing character concepts.  Some of the other six, however, are interesting concepts but lack a clear thematic hook.  Vampire sorcerers (the Tremere) and crazy vampires (Malkavians) is OK, but not as flavorful as the others.  The remaining four are weird grab-bags of ethnic stereotypes and play concepts that don't really work for me.  I mean "what if the Mafia were also vampires, and also necromancers?" is too many moving parts to be a coherent idea, in my opinion.  There is also the trickster, Romani-associated Ravnos and the Islamic assassin (in both the original and modern meaning of the word) Assamites, both of which come pretty close to line of perpetuating problematic ethnic stereotypes.

The 13 Clans

Despite some missteps, there is a lot of good stuff here.  Most people, I suspect, resonate pretty quickly and strongly with one of the Clans, in a way that makes character creation, at least the conceptual part, easy.  [I always make a character when evaluating a new game system, and it didn't take long to come up with the Irish former priest of Clan Lasombra].  The Clans are different enough that there is going to be significant diversity of characters in a group, and with a few exceptions each of the Clans is broad enough to create space that characters are not going to be pigeon-holed into boring, predictable archetypes.  Though I suspect some of the 90s-era designers of Vampire would bristle at this, the Clans are basically character classes, and generally well-designed character classes.  And it works for all of the reasons that character class work in D&D and other similar games--it's a flavorable, easy to internalize hook for making a character.

As far as the Sects go, there are a couple of smaller ones that are given limited presentation, in the form of the enlightened, detached Inconnu and the conspiratorial Tal'Mahe'Ra.  But the groups that get the most presentation are the Camarilla, the Sabbat, and the Anarchs.  The Camarilla are the Establishment, trying to maintain a stable, quasi-feudal society of vampires while keeping the prying eyes of humans away from their activities.  This effort of secrecy is the titular Masquerade, and becomes the first and greatest commandment for the Camarilla.  By virtue of that focus on staying in the shadows of mortal society, the Camarilla promotes a dark mirror version of human virtues and morality (more on that in the mechanics section).  They also represent rigidity and stasis, as the leadership consists primarily of very old, and thus very powerful, vampires.  This represents a bit of a conundrum, especially as the Camarilla appears to be the default framing for campaigns. . . excuse me, chronicles.  Because of the power disparity between the folks running the Camarilla organization in a city and the PCs, it's going to be hard for the PCs to take over and run things, which is perhaps the most obvious premise for a chronicle.  The leadership in your city is The Man, and you are very much not, and so you are pretty much a permanent underclass.  That's certainly dark, and not inconsistent with the themes in the rest of the game, but I think it limits the creative freedom of the players and Storytellers.

On the flip side, you have the Sabbat.  They are organized around two big ideas--we have to kill the Antediluvians before they kill us, and being a vampire makes you a superior form of life to the mortals.  The Sabbat are, very explicitly, a religion in addition to a political faction, and are organized around a series of religious rituals (including one in which a group of vampires more or less Blood Bound themselves to each other to form cohesive strike teams).  They, too, have a hierarchical structure like the Camarilla, but it's a little more open and fluid than the Camarilla, providing more political opportunities for PCs.  The challenge, however, is that the Sabbat are not at all bound by any sort of human morality, and view mortals as animals to be exploited at will.  So, while the Sabbat present some interesting ideas, a Sabbat chronicle is likely to drift into some pretty brutal and morally challenging territory.

Finally, the Anarchs are the rebels, either trying to overthrow the Camarilla or Sabbat in their particular city, or having done so, trying to govern things on more egalitarian lines.  The Anarchs are the least clearly delineated of the Sects, but also the one that provides the most freedom of action for players and Storytellers.  This gets to one problem with the Sects--they are basically mutually exclusive, as the Camarilla and the Sabbat are at war, and the Anarchs are trying to overthrow both of them.  So, you basically have to pick one of the three as the basis for a particular chronicle, as they don't really work or play well together without some serious contrivances.  As a result, no matter which way you go, a big chunk of the material in V20 is going to be relegated to background or antagonists.

Art and Aesthetics

Probably the most famous of Bradstreet's
Vampire pieces

Vampire always had a distinctive visual look, defined by Timothy Bradstreet's pen and ink pieces.  Of late, I have become more plugged in to the way games communicate the ideas of the game via a unified visual approach--Fria Ligan is the current king of this.  But Vampire and the World of Darkness was ahead of the curve.

V20 blends three different visual approaches--Bradstreet-esque black-and-white pieces, digitally-altered photography, and some more standard painted pieces.  As to the third category, there is a piece on Page 2 of V20 (I couldn't find it on line, otherwise I would have included it here) that shows Caine killing Abel that I found to be particularly striking--it feels like a genuine piece of religious art.

I also really like the photography-based pieces.  They are recognizably grounded in photographs, but the filters made them walk the line between aged photographs and faded portraits.  There is something ethereal about them, and they fit the mood of the game perfectly (my favorite is the woman in red on Page 4 of the V20 book).

The bottom line is that it's a beautiful, evocative book, and it communicates what the game is about, and more importantly how it is supposed to make you feel.

OK, let's turn to the rules.