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Night's Black Agents
Publisher: Pelgrane Press
by Gabriel R. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 05/17/2022 22:50:40

I ran a whole campaign in Night's Black Agents and my players and I had a lot of fun. It's extremely well designed for genre emulation combining investigation, horror, and action. You really do feel like you're in Ronin and then you learn the bad guys aren't working for the IRA but Count Dracula (or mutant zombies or the nosferatu or some kind of Lovecraftian god). One thing I especially loved is that there's not just one type of vampire but a generation system that lets you build different types of vampires. Very different types of vampires that go well beyond the goth aristocrat from some minor province of the Hapsburg empire. Among other things, this avoids the problem of the players having read the bestiary and memorizing all the stat blocks. Go ahead and read the GM section, you'll enjoy it but you'll still be surprised by the vampires in my game. I have a few reservations, all related to Gumshoe rewarding system mastery: 1) If you're not used to Gumshoe, a few of the mechanics can be a bit confusing. For example, in theory the distinction is just investigative (I get clues) vs general (I engage in combat or other action) abilities, but some of the general abilities have complicated rules about how fast you get points back and this gives the resource management aspect of the game an aspect of system mastery. For instance, the noob might choose to put points in network and thereby make their character more flexible, since you can use network to recruit lackeys who can do anything ... except network points don't refresh. The rules make sense once you understand them, but there's a learning curve to it.
2) Character generation is a classless system based on point buys and this can make character gen a bit hard. (There are archetypes, but you still have to spend your remaining points). Pelgrane's character generation website The Black Book helps with the mechanical aspects of character generation but you still have to make choices and there are better and worse ways to do it. 3) You can spend points on a roll, the outcome of which is that you lose more points of the same type. This means that instead of thinking about how scared your character is that he just saw someone rip someone's throat out and drink their blood you're thinking about probability theory of spending points vs taking a straight roll. (FWIW, the expected value is worse if you spend points on the roll so don't do it unless you're in danger of going insane). I suggest a house rule that you can't spend points on stability rolls.

These reservations notwithstanding, I still think it's a great game. I enjoyed the campaign I ran and would gladly run it again for new players or play in someone else's campaign.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Night's Black Agents
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Beyond the Wall and Other Adventures
Publisher: Flatland Games
by Gabriel R. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 05/17/2022 22:20:23

I love this game so much I have been telling all my gaming friends to check it out and bought a print on demand copy after reading the PDF.

I've read at least a dozen versions of OSR looking for the perfect one and this is the one where I thought, that's it, I found it. Mechanically, it combines the best elements of B/X and 3e/5e D&D. And thematically, it gets away from the increasingly played out conceit of a tenth generation photocopy of Tolkien in favor of an assumption that the default otherworld is the realm of fairy, with goblins being nasty fairies. The magic system is based on the 3e/5e distinction between cantrips, spells, and rituals but with the important distinction that a) spells are safe but finite whereas cantrips and rituals are risky but infinite and b) all the powerful spells (anything that in 3e/5e would be 3rd level or higher) are rituals.

The star of the game is the character generation, a brilliant system that I haven't seen used in any other game (except of course for BtW's sword and sorcery edition, Through Sunken Lands). There is a standard character generation option, but the preferred way is to choose an archetype and then roll from a series of tables that in about ten minutes give your character not only stats and gear, but also a backstory and relationships with the other PCs. All this is built on a dead simple three class system (warriors, casters, and rogues/specialists).

Both mechanically and thematically, Beyond the Wall makes the supernatural feel weird and this notion of magic as something that is out there makes magic feel much more magical than "my tiefling sorcerer fires a 1d8 firebolt cantrip again." If you're interested in weird fantasy I highly recommend this. If you prefer sword and sorcery, try Through Sunken Lands (same publisher and game mechanics, different genre). If you want Tolkien-esque standard fantasy in Forgotten Realms maybe still check it out just for the character generation.

I have to admit that I haven't been brave enough to run the scenario packs (BtW's version of adventure modules, which are presented as a series of random tables). It might be that they work great but they require more GM improvisation confidence than "here's a map and a series of keyed entries." However I was very happy running Beyond the Wall with Winter's Daughter, a module written for OSE (a B/X retroclone) -- pretty much all I had to do was tone down the treasure as BtW doesn't use gp=xp. My players (one old grognard who played AD&D in the 80s and another guy who had only played 5e) hadn't read the book but still immediately understood the rules based on my brief summary.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Beyond the Wall and Other Adventures
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The Sea Demon's Gold (5e)
Publisher: Arc Dream Publishing
by Gabriel R. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 05/17/2022 19:28:57

This was the first module I ran for my 5e group. Great mix of sword and sorcery and Lovecraftian horror.

My only reservation is that the bit where the PCs get thrown overboard and caught in a current is way underwritten. (I ended up simplifying it but as written it basically says "make up a bunch of cool stuff here.")

Nonetheless a great module and would gladly run again with a new group.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
The Sea Demon's Gold (5e)
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Winter's Daughter
Publisher: Necrotic Gnome
by Gabriel [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 03/08/2022 01:50:24

Great dungeon layout that tells a story without railroading. The conceit of a two part password to get the macguffin encourages exploration. Clear organization and layout reminiscent of OSE core books. I ran it only having skimmed it for twenty minutes the night before and it ran very fluidly. Statted for OSE but I ran it with Beyond the Wall (very similar thematically to Dolmenwood but less strictly B/X than OSE). Only adaptation I had to make was to tone down the treasure (different xp rules).



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Winter's Daughter
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Winter's Daughter
Publisher: Necrotic Gnome
by Gabriel [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 03/08/2022 01:50:24

Great dungeon layout that tells a story without railroading. The conceit of a two part password to get the macguffin encourages exploration. Clear organization and layout reminiscent of OSE core books. I ran it only having skimmed it for twenty minutes the night before and it ran very fluidly. Statted for OSE but I ran it with Beyond the Wall (very similar thematically to Dolmenwood but less strictly B/X than OSE). Only adaptation I had to make was to tone down the treasure (different xp rules).



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Five Torches Deep
Publisher: Sigil Stone Publishing
by Gabriel R. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 01/03/2022 11:21:56

What I liked: FTD adopts a lot of the best ideas from other OSR games, but at a deep structural level it's 5e. In many ways it prioritizes simplicity. d20 resolution for everything. The class system is essentially a streamlined version of the 2e PHB class system reconceptualized as the 5e class/archetype system (eg, a bard is a thief archetype). Encumberance and supply are both simple enough to be used and supply reminds me of Gumshoe preparedness (a great mechanic). Ascending AC and highly abstracted armor (light vs heavy) and weapons (one-hand vs 2-hand and simple vs martial). In addition to the various simplicity angles, it has several great ideas (some of them presumably borrowed from other OSR games). Like LotFP, the FTD thief is a TSR-style infilitration specialist, not a WotC-style glass cannon. Races are just alternate rules for ability score generation and no race has darkvision. The magic system is a simplified version of DCC's brilliant but overly crunchy weird magic system. (Though note that the odds of a mishap are much higher than in DCC).

What I didn't like: Five Torches Deep is not a playable game that grafts the best OSR ideas onto 5e but an overly terse set of notes on how to do so. As written, it is unplayable. You need the 5e PHB and a lot of work to adapt it. For instance, if you play a warrior with the ranger archetype, you can choose a feat of "adv to track or hunt." What are the rules for tracking? A wisdom roll? FTD doesn't tell us so the DM needs to make it up or look it up in 5e PHB. Another example, healer kits are mentioned several times but we never learn what they do. (In 5e a healer kit stabilizes a character at 0 hp but in FTD you simply die at 0 hp which leaves one wondering why FTD makes a presumably useless piece of equipment a standard part of the warrior and zealot loadout). There are a lot of cases like this. A bit like how little brown books OD&D didn't make sense unless you were an experienced wargamer, FTD won't make sense unless you are an experienced 5e player and even then you'll have to make up a lot on the fly. This is especially disappointing as there's a 5e SRD so there's no legal reason FTD couldn't be written to be playable. FTD has great layout and art so obviously the authors weren't too lazy to make it playable. I suspect the authors deliberately prioritized making it short and sweet but unfortunately there's such a thing as excessive terseness. Inshallah, just as OD&D was unplayable until Moldvay and Holmes rewrote it to be comprehensible for people who weren't experienced wargamers, there will someday be an edition of FTD that is willing to have a slightly higher word count but actually makes sense. On that day I suspect it will be my top pick for OSR, or even F20 in general.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
Five Torches Deep
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