Raiders of the Serpent Sea is a D&D 5e campaign utilizing themes from Norse mythology. This is a product from Arcanum Worlds, the same team that produced Odyssey of the Dragon Lords, a massive adventure product that explored Greek mythological themes through the lens of D&D 5e. The adventure itself is almost 500 pages long, but I still wanted to take a look at the project, so instead of tackling the entire adventure, I’m going to look at the Raiders of the Serpent Sea Player’s Guide.

Disclaimer

I helped crowdfund this project, and my copies have come from my backer rewards. I have not had the opportunity to play or run any of the material in this product, but I am familiar with D&D 5e both as a player and as a DM.

Created by Brent Knowles
Writing and Design: Brent Knowles
Additional Design: Gage Ford, Atlantis Fraess, Carter Knowles, Linden Knowles, Brandon Korolik, Zack Webb
Editing: Marieke Feller Graphic Design and Layout: Michal E. Cross
Illustrations: Chris J. Anderson, Davis Clifford, Amy Cornelson, Michal E. Cross, Wadim Kashin, Sebastian Kowoll, Brendan Lancaster, Erikas Perl, Polar Engine, Tom Ventre World, City, and Dungeon Maps: John Stevenson
Additional Maps: Chicago Fraess, Brent Knowles, Tiffany Munro Player’s Guide Cover
Art: Polar Engine
Campaign Book Cover Art: Sebastian Kowoll
Public Domain Paintings: Wikimedia Commons
Stock Art: Shutterstock
Combat Maps: Inkarnate (www.inkarnate.com), Dungeon Alchemist (www.dungeonalchemist.com)
Proofreading and Playtesting: Chris Crowle, Lisa Crowle, Gage Ford, Atlantis Fraess, Chicago Fraess, Carter Knowles, Linden Knowles, Michael Rinsma

Format and Layout

The Raiders of the Serpent Sea Player’s Guide is 82 pages long, including a title page, a credits page, a table of contents, and a page for the OGL statement. Because the Player’s Guide is presenting information in the core adventure for potential players of the adventure, it shares the art assets of that book.

There are several full-page art pieces in this book, including a two-page spread of the setting map, as well as images of characters and creatures from the setting in addition to maps of various locations and ships. Each of the major clans of the setting also has its own faction symbol as well.

Contents

This book is broken up into the following sections:

• Chapter 1: The World of Grimnir
• Chapter 2: Creating Heroes
• Chapter 3: Playable Races
• Chapter 4: Class Archetypes
• Chapter 5: Ships of the Sea
• Chapter 6: Grimnir World Primer

There is some overlap between Chapter 1 and 6 in terms of the information presented. Chapter 5 isn’t a definitive listing of everything related to ships that the setting has to offer, but does present ships that are either common to the setting or important to the story of the setting, in a format that matches the vehicle rules presented in the Dungeon Master’s Guide.

The Setting

Grimnir is a relatively young world that was born out of the death of an older world. The primary deities of the setting are heroes that ascended to their godhood due to the events that destroyed the old world. Aldyhn, a goddess with traits of both Odin and Frigga from traditional Norse folklore, killed Mirgal, i.e. Loki with a little bit of Odin as well, and formed the new world from his corpse.

This new world is filled with primal extremes, like volcanos, great expanses of sea, and towering mountains. Aldyhn called creatures from across the worlds to populate this new land, and many creatures include giant and dire beasts, as well as ice age species of animals.

The gods were turned to stone through trickery, but still exert their will through their followers. The Yoten, powerful spellcasting giants, are thought to be dead and gone. Thonir, the “almost god,” son of Aldyhn, sits in Valhalla waiting for another Ragnarok to happen. Hel (the only Norse deity that gets to keep her name in the setting) collects the non-valorous dead.

The mortals in this young world are divided into the Raider clans, and the Baendur Kingdoms. The Baendur Kingdoms exist, from a story standpoint, to be raided. The heroes of this story aren’t assumed to come from that land. That doesn’t mean that the PCs will only be Raiders, however. Like Odyssey of the Dragon Lords, Grimnir is assumed to have various visitors from other worlds that arrive due to the shattered Rainbow Spear, meaning you can create a character native to another D&D setting and use this in this adventure.

The Raider clans are further divided into factions, each residing in different locations, with different specialties, and with traditional player species associated with them. For example, the Lutan are traditionally composed of human and dragonborn families, while the Knattle are primarily human and dwarf families. While the clans are often in conflict, at certain times they come together for a great meeting and form the Drifthall, a collection of ships bound together to create a massive seaborn settlement for the duration of the gathering.

In addition to the idea that Mirgal’s essence is still infused into the setting, and the Yoten may not be as dead as they seem, the Witch King is a looming threat that leads the witches of the Ironwood. For the last few years, winter has never fully left the land, and the PCs are assumed to be joining a great expedition that has been founded to journey to the southern edge of the world.

Gear and Equipment

The gear introduced in this guide isn’t too extensive, in part because anything magical or legendary is reserved for the GM in the primary adventure. The standard Viking sax (short sword/dagger) and skeggox (handaxe and woodworking tool) are included, as is the gambeson, a light suit of armor that can be worn to enhance other armors at the cost of stealth and movement speed.

Ironwood weapons are considered magical, but don’t require any particular ritual or magical components to create. That said, it is noted that it’s really difficult to work with ironwood to make it into a weapon in the first place.

Ships get their own section, if only to introduce players to the kinds of ships they are most likely to know about. The guide details three different styles of longship, the carver, the charger, and the explorer, as well as the Faering and the Mercanskip of the Baendur Kingdoms. My favorite addition is the Hjemskip, a floating gathering hall that is used by the clans when attending the Drifthall. These are slow and bulky, but I love the idea of a mobile home base in this kind of setting.

Mechanics

The Player’s Guide introduces mechanical elements that include rules for Oaths, Glory, Epic Backgrounds, new player species, new subclasses for all twelve of the 2014 Player’s Handbook classes, and new spells.

There are three different Oaths detailed in the Player’s Guide, which can result in specific curses if those Oaths aren’t upheld. The Oath of Duty is basically a way to make sure both sides of an agreement get upheld. The Oath of Fellowship binds characters together, and lets them share their Glory. The Oath of Retribution gives bonuses to defeat a specific foe, but must be executed within a set amount of time.

The Curse of the Exile makes it impossible for other Raiders to aid the afflicted character. The Curse of Failed Promises progressively afflicts the character with levels of exhaustion until they die and rise as a draugr.

There is a table tracking the benefits and effects of Glory, from 1 to 20. The benefits of gaining Glory can be advantage on certain checks in specific circumstances, tribute paid to you when visiting lands affected by your deeds, or NPCs dedicated to your service. At certain levels, you may have to react to challenges to your reputation, meaning that Glory isn’t just a benefit, but can also serve as a story trigger as well.

I like the idea that you can wager your Glory to make a boast, introducing a risk/reward aspect ot this mechanic, and I also like that the different tiers of Glory on the list include various points where people will challenge the PCs as their fame and reputation gets higher, and that it doesn’t just serve as only a list of additional benefits the PCs receive.

Epic Backgrounds

Arcanum Worlds has used mechanics similar to Epic Backgrounds in both their DMs Guild adventures, Heroes of Baldur’s Gate, as well as Odyssey of the Dragon Lords. An Epic Background still provides proficiencies, languages, and equipment. They may have more than one Feature, one of which involves a Rune associated with your path in the story, and a more traditional Feature, like gaining advantage when using skills in a specific instance.

Epic Backgrounds also include a starting story connection, which ties you into the beginning of the adventure. There are also heroic tasks, which grant you a reward when you complete that task, and an Epic Goal, the culmination of what you have been attempting to accomplish, which grants you a major reward as well.

The Epic Backgrounds included in the Player’s Guide include:

• The Bonded (someone whose fate is tied to one other specific person)
• The Cursed Raider (someone who can’t die, and can’t get into Valhalla)
• The Fallen (someone that can’t remember their past beyond the last few years)
• The Royal Heir (a royal from one of the Baendur Kingdoms living with the Raiders)
• The Stranger (someone that wandered into Grimnir from another world)
• The Vigilant One (someone from a family concerned that the Yoten would return)

In previous adventures that used this mechanic, the heroic tasks and epic goals from these backgrounds aren’t random events that the DM should add or that the players need to orchestrate, but are often events that happen in the narrative of the adventure, or additional side quests that unfold if anyone has the appropriate background when they encounter an event in the adventure.

I really appreciate having backgrounds that create natural ties into the adventure. One of the biggest bits of advice given out to DMs running published adventures is to personalize it for your players, and having backgrounds that they can pick that tie them into various events goes a long way toward helping the DM do this. That said, it’s not a perfect solution.

For every one of the Arcanum Worlds projects that have used this convention, I’ve always wished for just a few more backgrounds. To use the above as an example, if you have a group of six players, and everyone wants to be from the Raider clans, two of the backgrounds explicitly lean away from that theme. Additionally, if a player changes character, or someone new enters the group, those new characters may have much more constrained options available to them, unless you double up on backgrounds, and make them a little less special and unique in the party.

Additionally, when I tried to run Odyssey of the Dragon Lords, I ran into an issue I was not expecting. Even though my players were playing in a published setting, and the backgrounds tied them to the adventure, several of them actually didn’t like the idea that there was an existing “right” answer for their various tasks. In that particular adventure, for example, the player with the Demigod Epic Destiny didn’t like that the background assumes you are the child of one specific god, and that the story connections are all based on that assumption.

Playable Races

A lot of more recent 3rd party publishers have moved towards using another term for race, even if “species” isn’t the 100% certain replacement term in D&D for the 2024 rules. Unfortunately, this product doesn’t move away from the term, but it does design these player options with the assumption that you can assign your ability scores as you want, in a manner similar to current D&D norms (+1 to one, and +2 to another, or +1 to three).

The species included in this section are all meant to be native to the setting, and they include the following:

• Beastborn
• Grim
• Tallfolk
• Tuss
• Wicker

I love the folkloric feel of the Beastborn, as they are literally animals that watched humans for so long they just decided to act like them. There aren’t communities of Beastborn, there is only the phenomenon that sometimes an animal pays so much attention to humans that it stands up on its hind legs and starts to do things like a human. Beastborn can communicate with creatures of their original kind, but the rest of their traits are custom-built with a point buy system.

Grims are aquatic humanoids that are intrinsically tied to the world of Grimnir, including the essence of Mirgal that was used to create the world. That means that Grim can switch between two drives every long rest, Hopeful and Cruel. A Hopeful Grim has advantage on performance, can grant proficiency with musical instruments, and at higher levels can cast sleep or suggestion, and can use their own spell slots to cast those spells beyond the one time per long rest they can use them based on their nature. A Cruel Grim has advantage on stealth checks, does extra damage based on proficiency bonus, and can cast fog cloud and invisibility at higher levels.

Tallfolk are essentially half-giants, although their background is shrouded in mystery, even to themselves. Tallfolk are a Large player option, do extra damage and can throw weapons farther than normal, and they have reach. They can use a reaction to retaliate against a foe, but it moves them down the initiative track, and they can only use it once per short rest. There are two subcategories of Tallfolk, Earth Children or Cold Children. An Earth-Child has advantage to Stealth in certain environments, while a Cold-Child has resistance to cold.

The Tuss are born to humans, but bear the essence of the Yoten within them. This isn’t evident unless they use their True Nature trait in front of others, which causes them to take on a more monstrous aspect. Without accessing their True Nature, Tuss can spend hit dice when they drop to 0 hit points, once per short or long rest. If they show their True Nature, they have darkvision, add half their proficiency bonus to damage, move faster, and are less persuasive and more intimidating.

Wicker are wooden constructs that come in two different types, Builders and Watchers. All Wicker move more slowly than other species, have a natural armor bonus, don’t need to worry about eating, drinking, or catching a disease, and are resistant to poison. They are also vulnerable to fire. Builders have extra limbs that can have built-in features like extra movement, tools, a permanent shield arm, or a permanent weapon arm, and can switch between them on a long rest. Watchers are constructed to look like a living being, and gain advantage on Persuasion and Insight checks. They can also rip off their face to permanently become Builders.

There are a lot of story-heavy folklore elements to these species, which is great for the adventure. That said, not all of these hit the mark for me. Some of them are just a little too ambitious and push out into aspects of 5e that don’t have enough support to hold the rules elements introduced.

I love the Beastborn’s story, but I’m not a fan of point-buy systems for species. There are two main reasons for this. One is that just seeing that list of options is going to turn some players off that would otherwise love to play this species. The other is that some options are meant to be hindrances that add points back to the pool, and the fiddly math involved in that kind of species building can lead to unforeseen combinations.

While I have seen people cite spellcasting as one reason D&D 5e hasn’t ventured into Large sized characters (for example, pushing out the range of effects that originate from your character), D&D 5e just doesn’t have the same scaling structure that 3rd edition had. The Monster Manual seems to follow the pattern that Large weapons do double damage compared to regular weapons, and that Huge weapons do triple damage, but the only thing that really supports using a Large weapon is a footnote at the bottom of the monster building section in the Dungeon Master’s Guide. Spells like Enlarge don’t rescale your weapons to being Large, they just add a bonus die of damage. Given that the Tallfolk have bonus damage and additional range to thrown weapons, I think the assumption is that Tallfolk are just using regular weapons, but even then, there aren’t a lot of rules surrounding how a Large creature using Medium weapons functions. Can they use a Two-Handed sword with one hand? It’s not defined in D&D 5e. But beyond all of the size concerns, I really don’t think it’s wise to introduce a rules element that changes initiative after combat starts.

Subclasses

The subclasses presented often have an association with one of the clans of Raiders. The guide mentions that you don’t need to enforce this as a hard and fast rule, and some of the subclasses feel more tied to the story of their clan than others.

The Barbarian Path of the Provoked is, at least in part, about getting revenge, and gaining a spendable currency when they get hit to do extra damage. At higher levels, they can Dash as a bonus action, giving opponents vulnerability to their damage when they hit they, and choosing between effects like getting an extra attack when attacking recklessly or stunning an opponent with a hit.

The College of Seers Bard can bestow Bardic Inspiration dice on enemies, afflicting them with a specific curse. They get an extra attack at 6th level, as well as gaining the ability to give bardic inspiration to allies that have a persistent effect. At 14th level, they get additional effects added on to their curses when afflicting enemies.

The Cleric Discovery Domain makes the cleric really good at Survival or Perception, as well as granting them a swim speed. Their Channel Divinity option lets them determine how far away a location is and what direction it lies. They can also Channel Divinity to create a Wrathful Flood that does damage and pushes back opponents. They get a version of Divine Strike at 8th level, and at 17th level they do more damage with their flood, become better swimmers, and can breathe underwater.

The Circle of the Devourer Druid taps into primal energy to modify the druid’s form. As a reaction they can manifest a defensive mutation a proficiency bonus number of times per long rest. They can use Wild Shape to take a primal form, giving them natural bludgeoning, slashing, or piercing attacks, as well as a second attack with their natural weapons. At 10th level they gain special senses in their primal form, and at 14th level, primal protection is restored on a short or long rest, and they can pick the result instead of rolling for an effect.

The Marauder Fighter can push opponents more effectively, as well as move away from opponents that have damaged they. At 7th level they can do a ground strike that can push and knock prone creatures near them. At 10th level, if an ally near them drops an opponent, they can use a bonus action to move and make another attack. At 18th level, they can command opponents to move on a threat, using their reaction to move and attack.

The Monk Way of the Wanderer is an interesting subclass, in that there isn’t an order of Wanderers, there is one Wanderer that learned to be a Wanderer from the last Wanderer. The story of this class is that they wander the land trying to rebalance everything. When they take certain actions, they add or subtract points from their Path of Fate score, which tells them what abilities they have active, and if they are Order or Chaos themed.

The Paladin Oath of the Slain is all about Paladins that are going to get into Valhalla and show others how to get there, too. Their Channel Divinity options include healing others when they hit an opponent, or to mark an opponent so they can get a critical hit on them with an 18 or better. Their aura grants a bonus die that can be rolled and added to hit against enemies. Glorious Sacrifice at 15th level means they can’t become undead, and they can keep going at 0 hit points, but keep taking failed death saves if they get hit, for the next round. Their “avatar” ability gives them resistance to all damage, immunity to being charmed, and the ability to use a reaction to hit an enemy their allies have just hit with advantage.

The Wolf Rider Ranger gains a special wolf at 3rd level, which can be commanded to take actions as a bonus action. They also have enhanced effects when they take the Dodge or Help action. At 5th level, their wolf grows up and they can ride it, and they gain special effects when mounted. Pack Leader gives them special benefits when near their wolf, like being able to hide them from line of sight or letting them shoot at point blank range. Eventually their wolf grows up even more, and increases their crit range when they help them attack. At 15th level, when their wolf gets a critical hit, they can move and attack as a reaction against another enemy.

The True Believer Rogue got into a bad spot at some point, desperately prayed to Mirgal, and now gets divine spells. They get the same spell progression as other spellcasting subclasses of non-spellcasting classes. At 9th level they can basically gamble and give an ally double what they would give them in healing as temporary hit points. At 13th level, they gain a proficiency bonus number of extra times that they can add extra radiant or necrotic damage to their sneak attack, which refreshes on a long rest. At 17th level, they can attempt a check to ask for all of their expended abilities back, but if they fail, they gain a level of exhaustion.

The Misplaced Soul Sorcerer is someone that may have been an extremely real illusion created by Mirgal that has gained sapience. They can summon Misplaced Souls (from a stat block in the subclass) to aid them, and they gain additional effects that interact with this feature on which they can spend their sorcery points. Eventually, they can merge multiple misplaced souls to gain multiple special effects, but the combined misplaced souls may randomly become real people.

The Warlock Patron of The Ironwood is a patron that is the essence of an especially old Ironwood tree, a remnant of the Old World that died as Grimnir was born. Many of the Warlock’s abilities surround the heartseed, which can grant temporary hit points and enhance speed at lower levels, then at 6th level can turn into armor with specific effects. At 10th level, they can merge with trees. Intelligent trees heal them, while unintelligent trees just blow up. At 14th level, they can ride around in giant tree armor that gives them extra hit points, a slam attack, and other abilities.

The Cohesion of the Primal Wizard is a tradition of Wizards that seeks out ancient, primal sources of power. The tradition is split between Dreamers (those seeking to find lost or new power sources) and Seekers (those seeking to suppress ancient and dangerous new power sources). Dreamers can swap spells known from their spellbook, while Seekers are excellent investigators that can expend spell slots to detect other spellcasters. Dreamers can cast spells and not have them take effect until a given time, while Seekers can remove spells from an opponent’s mind by making them forget the spell in the past. At 14th level, Dreamers can cast a spell when they fail a concentration check, and Seekers can curse an opponent to deny them the use of a specific spell.

In general, I like most of these subclasses, but there are some speed bumps on my road to enjoyment. I’m not sure if the Path of the Provoked means that you sacrifice an attack action or an attack to turn an attack into an area attack, because that’s an important distinction, and I feel like maybe it was meant to be an attack action, not a single attack. The Marauder’s story is that they are a raid leader, but until 10th level, they are actually just a fighter good at fighting on boats. The Oath of the Slain’s Mark of the Executioner feels a little weak compared to features that grant vulnerability to damage, for example. It might pay off long term, but it’s less satisfying than getting a big swell of damage on a single hit. The wolf stat blocks for the wolf rider use proficiency bonus for damage, but not anything else, but if everything scaled with proficiency bonus, they could have slimmed down the number of stat blocks.

I think the Wanderer Monk could be fun, but because of the constant tracking of the character’s point total to see what abilities they have available, it may be a tricky subclass to get a good feel for. I think the Misplaced Soul may also share this balance between a fun theme and the effort put into using the abilities.

The College of Seers, Circle of the Devourer, Wolf Rider, True Believer, and Ironwood Patron are my favorite subclasses of the bunch, both for doing fun things with the mechanics and for reinforcing their stories well.

New Spells

 There are a lot of fun elements in this Player’s Guide, even though there are a few places where it feels like the ambition of the final effect got a little ahead of the mechanics. 

I’m not going to go into a deep dive on all of the new spells, but I did want to touch on how on theme some of these spells are. Fair Play gives a smaller animal a boost when fighting a larger one. Rings of the Wise creates arm bands that can add to a caster’s defense, or be thrown and caused to blow up. Blood Sharing involves contributing blood to a circle of allies to share the effects of healing spells. They all pick up on some theme from Norse stories and make them just a little more fantastic to fit in with D&D.

Final Thoughts

There are a lot of fun elements in this Player’s Guide, even though there are a few places where it feels like the ambition of the final effect got a little ahead of the mechanics. I think the guide does a good job of introducing players to the setting with enough information to know what they are getting into, without deluging them with content.

Looking at this product on its own, as a way to introduce Norse-themed game rules into your game even if you don’t use the adventure, I think you can use it that way, although some of the species definitely feel tied to a greater story that isn’t even fully explained in these rules. For example, I’m not sure how the Tall Folk story is going to compare to the Tuss, since the Yoten are a type of giant. I do think some of the species options get a bit messier than the subclass options, and if you’re not going to use the Raiders on the Serpent Sea adventure, the expanded rules for Goliaths that we saw in recent Unearthed Arcana playtest rules look to address half-giant characters well.

The glimpses at the greater setting, and the implied story of the campaign, do make me want to carve off some time to dive into Raiders on the Serpent Sea in more depth. I enjoyed Odyssey of the Dragon Lords, and think it did a good job engaging with classical Greek mythology, which is a good recommendation for how Raiders might present a Norse epic.

The first time I heard about Osprey Publishing, it was regarding their various military history books. Fast forward a few years, and my friend was explaining to me that they had introduced some miniature wargaming rules based around various themes, that were “miniature line agnostic,” meaning they were putting out their own lines of minis, just showing you how you could use existing minis for the game. Then I encountered their line of fantasy military supplements, creating similar books for dwarves, orcs, and elves as they had for real-world armies. 

All of this led me to realize that Osprey has been expanding into the RPG market as well. They have published RPGs on British folklore, prehistoric fantasy, science fiction, wuxia, the bronze age, the Knights Templar, cyberpunk noir, and, what we’re looking at today, 1940s-era hard-boiled noir stories. I wanted to get a feel for what Osprey is offering, so today we’re going to look at Hard City.

Disclaimer

I have not had the opportunity to play or run Hard City. I did not receive a review copy of the game, and purchased the game for review on my own.

 Hard City

Publisher Osprey Games
Author Nathan Russell
Artist Luis F. Sanz

Layout and Format

The PDF of this product is 161 pages long. This includes a title page, a copyright page, a three-page table of contents, a glossary, a character sheet, and an acknowledgment/credits page. The book is arranged in single page layout, with bold red headers for new topics. Sidebars are simple outlined sections that take up the full width of the page. Each of the chapters has full-page artwork, and there is half-page artwork included on various pages inside the chapters. 

The artwork is thematically appropriate for a 1940s-era noir story. In addition to portraying hard-bitten characters in different noir-appropriate situations, there is a diverse range of people in the images, in both gender presentation and race/ethnicity.

Contents

The PDF is divided into the following sections:

• Welcome to the City
• The Basics
• Characters
• Getting Into Trouble
• Hitting the Mean Streets
• Downtime
• The City
• Cases
• Game Master Advice
• Threats
• Case: Engagement with Death
• Case: In at The Deep End

The Rules

At its most basic, in terms of mechanics, Hard City is a game about assembling a dice pool of Action Dice based on the character’s traits, adding Danger Dice based on the difficulty of the situation and complicating factors, and rolling them. Each Danger Die that matches an Action Die cancels that die out, and the highest of the remaining Action Dice is the result of the check.

• 6–Success
• 4 or 5–Partial Success
• 3 or less–Failure
• No Action Dice uncancelled or only 1s remaining–Botch

If there are additional 6s beyond the first, this may allow the PC to add boons to their result. These boons may just be additional positive narrative results, or they may have mechanical weight (for example, in extended tests or in combat). All of the rolls are player-facing, which means if the GM’s characters are taking an action, the PCs are rolling to react to that action, rather than the GM rolling. 

Extended Tasks require characters to score three successes before three failures, and might be used for situations like chases or interrogations. 

Combat or any more structured scene calls for characters to be sorted into a specific resolution order. Most of the time, this will mean that the PCs go first in each of these phases. There is no check to see who goes first, the PCs just determine what they are doing, get sorted into the appropriate phase of the structured scene, and take turns whenever it makes sense. The structured scene order looks like this:

• Talking
• Moving
• Shooting
• Fighting

Threats all have the same general format, which means you could have a warehouse on fire as well as several goons, and each will be formatted with a series of tags that might serve to help frame how many Danger Dice to add to the pool when addressing that threat, as well as drives and actions. Each of the goons may have one Grit, and the fire might have three Grit, meaning it takes one successful action to remove a Goon from the scene, and three successful actions to put out the fire. Boons generated from additional 6s rolled can be applied to these numbers, so someone getting a boon while putting out the fire may remove two Grit instead of one from the threat.

It’s interesting to see the hybridization of various games going into these rules. It’s not a Powered by the Apocalypse or Forged in the Dark game, but it borrows from both of those, as well as other games like Fate, and even a little bit of the Doctor Who Roleplaying Game.

Player Characters

Player Characters are built by picking a Trademark for their Past, Present, and a Perk. So in your Past, you may have been a Performer, in your Present you may be a Negotiator, and for your Perk, you may be Famous.

You have five Edges that you can arrange under your Trademarks, as long as you have at least one under each Trademark. Whenever you take an action, you gain an Action Die for the Trademark that you are using for that action, and an additional Action Die for each Edge that applies to the action that you are taking.

Each character also takes two Flaws. Whenever a Flaw causes problems for a PC, they get to refresh their Moxie pool. Characters also assign a Drive and Ties, which are used to determine XP awards for advancement.

Each character starts out with a maximum of three Moxie and three Grit. Grit represents the number of injuries you can sustain until you are out of a scene. Moxie is a resource that you can spend to change a die result, remove a Condition, or use a Voice-over to add details to a scene. Moxie can also allow you to use a second Trademark in a check, which could potentially also grant you more dice for relevant Edges under that Trademark.

Conditions are generally gained as consequences for not receiving a full success, and if they are relevant to a particular action, they also add Danger Dice to your pool. Grit represents the number of injuries you can take, but each of those injuries can have varying severity. Injuries can be Light, Moderate, or Serious. You can decide if you want to mark a new injury or upgrade an existing one when the Injury is suffered. You can’t upgrade a Severe Injury. If you don’t upgrade your Injuries, you may be taken out more easily, but are less likely to be dying when you are taken out.

When creating characters, the group is encouraged to come up with a campaign framework that explains why the PCs are working together to do what they do. The suggested frameworks include:

• Wrong Place, Wrong Time
• Private Eyes
• Operatives
• Special Division

Wrong Place, Wrong Time represents regular people who get caught up in a dangerous situation that they have to work through, and is noted as being appropriate for one-shots. Private Eyes assumes the PCs all own their own PI firm, with different PCs having different specializations. Operatives assumes that the group is working for larger organizations as fixers or investigators of some sort. Special Division assumes that the PCs are working as part of a law enforcement task force on corruption.

I like the campaign framework idea a lot, but I wish there were a few more examples or a few more granular subdivisions under each of those. I wouldn’t even mind if the Campaign Framework had its own tags that could be accessed when appropriate. 

The Setting

Hard City uses a broadly drawn setting known as, appropriately, The City. By default, the starting year of the campaign is 1946, allowing for the fallout of War World II to be factored into the fabric of the story. There are three pages of tables that show some of the common goods for sale and their prices in this era, although the game itself isn’t especially concerned with buying or selling gear or goods.

The highest tier of organized crime is The Syndicate, but several crime families and organizations are mentioned. For example, the Johnsons run Anvil City, and the Sullivan Clan runs Bridgetown, but the biggest family is the Cesares. It’s a little disappointing that the Triad is mentioned as being active in Chinatown, but ends up being less detailed than any other criminal organization in that it has no families or NPCs detailed.

There is a section on personalities of the city, including the categories Movers and Shakers and Troublemakers. Most of these characters get a sentence or two to broadly define their roles in the city. 

Various sections of the city get one-page descriptions, usually a few paragraphs each, in addition to a section on places in that district, and tags that can be used to portray that district (we’ll get to tags a little bit later). In addition, each district gets its own set of example hooks, four each, to help explain what kind of stories might relate to what districts.

While not given any specific geographic location, The City is mentioned as having an ocean on one side, hills on the other side, with farmlands and oil fields bordering The City on the other sides. This is a broadly drawn setting to allow for a wide variety of hard-boiled or noir themes, without dwelling on real-world history outside of the broad generalities of the era.

I’m not exactly sure where the best place to put this observation is, so I’ll throw it here in the Setting section, because a lot of what I’m about to say is about how the book presents atmosphere. In the technical sections, when presenting the game as a game, the book does a very good job of reinforcing that the table needs to avoid harmful stereotypes, like those associated with race/ethnicity, gender, or other marginalized identities. However, the thematic use of language reinforces some aspects of the stereotypes of the era, especially when describing women. Gendered terms are used a lot without a lot of text used to contextualize or broaden those terms. For example, “tough guys” and “femme fatales” as different archetypes.

Some of this feels like a consequence of how the book is doing things. When it’s talking about the game as a game, it makes a strong statement, but does so in a very focused and concise manner, but when it is presenting atmosphere, it tends to linger a bit more.

For the Game Master

In addition to the general rules for the game, there are about seven pages of GM advice on how to structure and run a game session. Game sessions are broadly organized into either Investigations or Heists. One of the biggest takeaways in this section is that the GM shouldn’t keep clues locked away from the PCs, and that they should provide more clues than they need to move the plot forward.

The GM section also has a number of threats detailed, each one having the following elements:

• Name
• Drive
• Grit
• Tags
• Actions

As mentioned above, Grit serves the same purpose as it does for PCs, but in this case, you aren’t tracking the severity or assigning specific injuries. It’s just a measure of how many successes you need to remove the threat. The threats in this section are organized into People, Environments, and Organizations. For Organizations, PCs may be in a position to damage that organization and reduce its Grit, and with enough successes, may remove that organization as a threat.

I like framing Organizations as threats in this manner. I can easily picture PCs, after they have dealt with a member of a crime family, doing some research to tie that person back to the organization in question, and moving them “one step closer” to bringing the whole thing down. Not only is it a fun campaign timer, but it also fits very well with themes like a Hard Boiled detective trying to make their name by toppling a major crime figure in The City.

The advice that is here is good. It is advice that someone brand new to RPGs or to this particular set of genre tropes is going to need to make sure they don’t make some major mistakes that spoil the mood. I do feel that it could have used a few more examples to back up those best practices. Admittedly, it’s hard for me to gauge because I’ve read so many GM chapters, and I’ve read a lot of chapters that deal with presenting stories similar to what this RPG is facilitating.

Example Cases

There are two example cases provided in the book. I’m always a fan of example adventures, even if you never end up using them. It shows you what the designers feel is important in an adventure, as well as how to incorporate elements of the game. In this case, there are two example cases, one being an investigation and one being a heist.

The first case involves finding a man who is engaged to be married and has disappeared, and the second case involves artwork smuggled back to the States after World War II and being sold to a private buyer. 

I appreciate that the “heist” case has notes on how you can use the heist framework and tropes, but model it on infiltrating the location to gather evidence for a story or a prosecution, as well as just breaking in to steal the artwork. The investigation is definitely steeped in the tropes of the genre, but it’s a good example of what I mentioned above in the setting section.

Let’s look at the tags and actions of the two women that appear in the adventure:

• Gloria Davenport tags: Attractive, Athletic, Charm, Make a Deal, Seduction, Lie, Strong-willed
• Gloria Davenport actions: Fluster you, Distract you, Pay you off, Make a scene, Make you beg for more
• Sylvia Rossi tags: Empathy, Alert, Notice, Always Watched
• Sylvia Rossi actions: Give you a sob story, Spot impending trouble, Spill the beans, Run away

What makes this even more awkward is that Sylvia is an abused wife, and there is a particularly vicious trope that is thrown into the mix as a plot twist. 

If nothing else, I would have liked a little more discussion around the intentionality of using these tropes, and if there is a way to engage them with more depth or meaning, instead of just perpetuating stereotypes found in noir or hard-boiled media.

Happy Ending

 If you want to do the work, it’s a solid foundation 

I enjoy how the tag system presents narrative-focused elements and translates them into mechanics for resolution. I think the book makes some good choices in presenting The City as a more abstract setting that is flexible enough to use for multiple noir and hard-boiled stories. I appreciate that you can frame environments and organizations with the same rules as dangerous villains, which gives you more flexibility in framing action scenes than just shooting or punching the opposition.

The Big Sleep

There are two paragraphs on safety, which largely point you toward other resources you can research on your own. While the technical game aspects of the game make it clear that you shouldn’t spend time on the harmful stereotypes of the genre, the presentation of the setting and adventures is somewhat at odds with that message. There could have been more work done to either contextualize and take a deeper look at including and deconstructing those stereotypes, or even building an alternate reality that plays with some of the themes of noir and hard-boiled fiction without others, but instead, the book relies on the GM to do that work on their own.

Tenuous Recommendation–The product has positive aspects, but buyers may want to make sure the positive aspects align with their tastes before moving this up their list of what to purchase next.

Hard-boiled detective stories are one of the genres that I really want to spend more time with in gaming, and I like the foundation that this game lays down. However, it lacks the more intentional engagement with the topics that many of the best modern games include. If you want to do the work, it’s a solid foundation, but you really should do the work to make your game a safer environment, and you’re going to be doing that work largely on your own. 

One of my favorite developments in Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition was formalizing concepts from other editions and settings into the Shadowfell and the Feywild. The concept of these “funhouse mirror” versions of the prime material plane added several adventuring options. The Shadowfell made for a more interesting transitive plane between the living and the undead than the much more difficult-to-navigate Negative Energy plane.

The Shadowfell remains part of the D&D 5e cosmology, but most of the emphasis has been placed on the Domains of Dread, spending most of the word count on the plane to describe what was once the pocket dimension of Ravenloft. While Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft details some imaginative locations to adventure, the paradigm of Darklords and the Mists that act as their prisons moves the narrative away from some of the storytelling elements that dominated the 4e version of the plane, such as the cities of Evernight and Gloomwrought.

That brings us to today’s review. The Book of Ebon Tides is a campaign setting book from Kobold Press, detailing the Plane of Shadows as it exists for the Midgard Campaign setting, but is also portable to other settings.

Disclaimer

I participated in the crowdfunding for the Book of Ebon Tides, and I did not receive a review copy. I have not had the opportunity to use the setting although my players have used some of the options from this book in my home campaign.

 The Book of Ebon Tides

Design Wolfgang Baur, Celeste Conowitch
Additional Design Richard Green, Sarah Madsen, Kelly Pawlik, Brian Suskind
Development And Editing Scott Gable Proofreading Jeff Quick
Cover Artist Marcel Mercado
Interior Artists George Johnstone, Mike Pape, David Auden Nash, William O’brien, Roberto Pitturru, Addison Rankin, Kiki Moch Rizki, Florian Stitz, Bryan Syme, Egil Thompson, Alexander Yakovlev
Cartography Jon Pintar, Samantha Senn, Dean Spencer
Graphic Design Marc Radle Layout Marc Radle
Additional Layout Amber Seger
Art Director Marc Radle
Editorial Director Thomas M. Reid
Director Of Operations T. Alexander Stangroom
Sales Manager Kym Weiler
Community Manager Victoria Rogers
Publisher Wolfgang Baur

Layout and Format

This review is based both on the PDF and physical copy of the product. The book is 256 pages long, including the following:

• Credits and Product Identity (2 pages)
• Table of Contents (2 pages)
• Two-page map of the lands detailed in the book (2 pages)
• Monsters by Challenge Rating native to the setting (14 pages)
• Shadowfell Battlemaps (6 pages)

Like most Kobold Press books, there is a border that consists of artwork from the book repeated on the pages. Purple, gold, and tan are the predominant colors in this work. All the artwork is full color, and while the theme is the Plane of Shadows, the book remains colorful, balancing warm lighting against the shadows created by that lighting. The book has a two-column layout, containing sidebars with excerpts from the titular Book of Ebon Tides. There are also numerous tables and stat blocks in the traditional 5e SRD style.

The book itself feels nice and solid, with glossy pages. It’s worth noting that the maps of the lands detailed in the book and the battle maps are not pull-out sections of the book but printed on regular pages. The book itself looks wonderful, but I’m an easy mark for lots of purple.

The Contents

The book is divided into the following sections:

• Introduction
• Overview and History
• Umbral People and Heroes
• Heroes From the Shadows
• Magic in the Shadow Realm
• The Nature of Shadow
• Fey Courts and Servitors
• Realms Beyond the Courts
• Umbral Pantheon
• Monsters and NPCs
• Magic Items and Trickery
• Appendix
  • Life in the Shadow Realm
  • Shadow Realm Encounters
  • Shadow Realm Creatures by Terrain

There are about 15 pages of setting information, which then launches into player options, before transitioning into more detailed setting information. This moves into details on the gods worshipped in the Plane of Shadow, monster and NPC stat blocks, and a miscellany of setting details that can be used in campaigns in the Plane of Shadows, such as magical effects and random encounters.

The Setting

Like the Shadowfell in D&D’s official cosmology, the Plane of Shadows is, in part, a shadow of the Prime Material Plane. But unlike the Shadowfell, where we have some geography that is more specifically mirrored in some sources (for example, Evernight in the Shadowfell is the direct analog of Neverwinter in the Forgotten Realms), the Plane of Shadows is more nebulous in this regard. If you cross over, there is likely a city near where a city would be located on the material plane, but it’s less likely a direct mirror of the geography of the city back home.

Locations that aren’t anchored in the Plane of Shadows start to drift around the plane, on the Ebon Tides. The locations detailed in the book primarily focus on those areas where the inhabitants have taken pains to make regions more stable. In addition to locking down the locations of cities and fortresses, establishing roads is important to the inhabitants as well.

Because of the importance of these roads, and the danger of the wilder regions of the Plane of Shadows, the paths are protected by various Road Wardens. Because of the sympathetic structure of the Plane of Shadows to the material plane, those on the material plane that can access the Shadow Roads can travel across distances much more quickly by traversing most of the distance in the shifting Plane of Shadow.

As presented, the Plane of Shadow in this book is less dark and grey gloom and more of a colorful balance between subdued light and shadows. The darkest and gloomiest parts of the plane still exist, but it’s the lurking periphery, waiting to catch those that wander away from the cities or stray off the Shadow Roads. Non-native creatures risk Shadow Corruption when they spend time on the plane. This is tracked much like exhaustion, with each level bringing a new hindrance. For example, you start with disadvantage on all social interactions with people not native to the plane, progress through penalties when you are in bright light, and settle on taking radiant damage in sunlight and becoming a shadow thrall who doesn’t want to leave the plane.

I like that the Shadow Corruption rules are more targeted than exhaustion, and leave the player character in better shape than exhaustion does. The penalties reinforce the theme of Shadow Corruption, although the shadow thrall stage feels a little messy, as it causes some rolls to fail automatically and gives the PC the charmed condition against certain creatures above a certain intelligence threshold. This could have been streamlined to assess disadvantage on a wider range of checks.

Locations

Unlike the Domains of Dread, the Plane of Shadows has a very “Unseelie Court” feel to it. Many of the courts detailed in the book are the domains of various powerful fey, including many of the Archfey introduced in Kobold Press’ monster books. These include courts of Archfey like Reynard the Fox Lord, the Mistress of Midnight Teeth, the Queen of Night and Magic, the Witch Queen, and the Moonlit King. These domains not only have their own quirky NPCs in various positions of power, but most of them also have their own laws and rules that reflect the personalities of their rulers.

The archfey aren’t the only rulers that have their own domains. The Shadow Goblins have their own trade city, and the Bearfolk have their groves, which they founded long ago, to keep the prime material plane safe from incursions from the Plane of Shadows. Oshragora is a city of vampires that has not been anchored against the Ebon Tides, and parts of the city manifest on the edges of other domains from time to time. The Shadow Fey are elves who have been infused with the essence of the plane by their dealings with The Queen of Night and Magic, and the Sable Elves are remnants of a fallen society of elven glory. The Twilight Empire is the shadow analog of the Empire of the Ghouls, a region ruled by the darakhul, who supplement their diet of humanoids with flesh-bearing trees imported from Evermaw, the afterlife of the undead.

Not unlike the Shadowfell, the Plane of Shadows is a plane of transit for the souls of the dead. In this setting, it is manifested by the presence of the River Styx and the River Lethe running through the plane. Some creatures make a living by either fishing for souls, or extracting lost memories from the rivers’ waters, as memories are a hot commodity for the Shadow Fey, who suffer from muted emotions due to the changes the plane has wrought on them.

Gods of Shadow

While many of the gods detailed in this source have already appeared in other Midgard setting books, almost all of them have more information provided about them, in context to how they relate to the Plane of Shadows. Hecate’s exploits in the Midgard setting are expanded, as many consider her the creator of the Plane of Shadows. Her worship is widespread in a variety of domains.

The Black Goat of the Woods, an entity borrowed from the Lovecraft Mythos, is given some Midgard-specific backstory elements. This blurs the line on whether this is the same entity, or a deity native to Midgard that was corrupted by the influence of something beyond the Void.

One of the things I have consistently appreciated about how gods are presented in Kobold Press’ books is that the entries include a “What X Demands” section. This explains what members of the faithful consider important. As someone that doesn’t need to be talked into playing a cleric, I love anything that is going to help me get into character, and I honestly wish more cleric-facing material was this clear. It might convince a few more people that it’s actually fun to take on the cleric role from time to time.

Player Facing Material and Rules

There are many new player-facing options in this book. These include new races and subraces, subclasses, backgrounds, feats, and spells. The new ancestry options include:

• Bearfolk
  • Shadowborn (Bearfolk born in the Plane of Shadow)
• Darakhul
  • Bearfolk Heritage (Bearfolk that succumbed to ghoul fever)
  • Shadow Goblin Heritage (Shadow Goblins that succumbed to ghoul fever)
• Elf
  • Shadow Fey (Elves bound to the Plane of Shadows)
  • Lunar Elf (Shadow Fey born with a connection to the moon)
  • Sable Elf (Fallen elves that have retreated to the Plane of Shadows)
• Shadow Goblin (Goblins that are partially camouflaged in shadow and can taunt)
• Umbral Human
  • Changeling (Human children kidnapped and raised in the Plane of Shadows)
  • The Gifted (Humans “gifted” with abilities from Shadow Fey)
• Quickstep (Basically Quicklings)
• Ratatosk
  • Clever Tusk (Tiny squirrel folk)
  • Tree Protector (Small squirrel folk)
• Spiritfarer Erina (Erina brought to the Plane of Shadow to serve the Shadow Fey)
• Stygian Shade (Shades that have lost even more of their past lives)
• Sublime Ravenfolk (Ravenfolk drawn to a psychic song of the cosmos)
• Unbound Satarre (Satarre that travel the planes and can sense portals)
• Gnome
  • Wyrd Gnome (Gnomes born with a natural ability for Divination)

While some of these ancestries were already presented with subraces in other sources, some exist as completely new implementations, because the core ancestry from which they diverged wasn’t designed with a subrace. The entries all include assigned ability score bonuses tied to race, but there is a sidebar mentioning that players should work with their GM to rearrange bonuses to better suit their character concept.

Some of these ancestries carry with them some quirks that I’ve never fully warmed up to, when used in previous Midgard products. For example, Darakhul have appeared several times, and the list of species traits that need to be added to them to model ghouls of different species is unwieldy, and some species definitely pair more advantageously with the base traits of the Darakhul.

I really want to like Ratatosks, but there are a few messy elements entwined in the implementation. The core ancestry gets a -2 to strength, and even before 5e SRD design started to move away from assigned ability scores, errata eliminated the only racial traits that required an ability penalty years ago. While I can empathize with wanting a wider range of sizes for PCs than just small and medium, most of 5e design is predicated on supporting this paradigm. The tiny version of Ratatosk can only use light or finesse weapons, but the entry refers to being able to use weapons made for their size normally. But there aren’t any rules for tiny-sized weapons.

There are a lot of fun options that I think work better with the core rules of D&D 5e. I really love the idea of the Quickstep introducing a player character Quickling. They have a massive movement rate and can use their speed to go invisible for a number of rounds equal to their level, which I feel captures the main beats of Quicklings without adding in some other issues, like extra actions. Human Changelings just gain the ability to glamour their appearance, but I like the story elements introduced with playing an Unseelie changeling.

I enjoy Shadow Goblins as a sort of hybrid of typical goblin traits with some Kender elements. They do remind me that official D&D 5e products are moving away from some traits that I like that used to be in the toolbox for species. I know Sunlight Sensitivity can be a huge disadvantage to a character, but I also feel like making some kind of eye protection available for these characters preserves the story aspect without automatically making daylight surface adventuring a problem.

The subclasses introduced include the following:

• Barbarian
  • Shadow Gnawer
• Bard
  • College of Shadow
• Cleric
  • Keeper Domain
  • Shadow Domain
• Druid
  • Circle of Shadow
• Monk
  • Way of the Prophet
• Rogue
  • Umbral Binder
• Sorcerer
  • Light Weaver Origin
• Warlock
  • Mother of Sorrows Patron
• Wizard
  • Shadow Arcane Tradition

I am a firm believer that a subclass needs to enforce its theme with the first couple of features, and hopefully also tell a consistent story. Most of these subclasses do a pretty good job of living up to this, and there are some really fun subclass stories being told. For example, a College of Shadows Bard uses darkness to tell scary stories, which just happens to manifest in combat useful abilities. The Light Weaver Sorcerer plays with moving back and forth between being light-shifted or dark-shifted. The Umbral Binder Rogue tackles the subclass issue that Rogues are stuck with (their second ability doesn’t come until 9th level) by giving them three different shadow effects to choose from after they take a rest.

The Keeper Domain Cleric has a little bit of a “story” issue, not because its abilities don’t help and support others, but the Channel Divinity move feels a lot more like a Warlord/Battlemaster move, rather than an ability that supports a community. The Shadow Gnawer probably has the biggest core loop issues. The story of the subclass is that Shadow Gnawers ingest dangerous shadow-stuff to protect others. But the subclass, at lower levels, gets defensive abilities and teleporting abilities that don’t involve absorbing or combatting shadow threats. The actual ingesting shadow mechanics don’t show up until higher levels.

Many of these subclasses lean on granting a player darkvision, or extending darkvision if they already have it. While I appreciate that these features still do something for someone that already has the ability, it’s my experience that darkvision when you don’t have darkvision is a much bigger deal than having darkvision 60 turn into darkvision 120.

Magic, Magic Items, and Magical Effects

It may not be surprising to find out that the Plane of Shadows is heavily steeped in magic so much so that optional rules are modifying a host of spells that draw on light, dark, shadows, and illusions. In theory, I like modified magic in campaigns that reinforce a theme, but in practice, I know it’s really easy to forget some of these effects in the moment, at the table.

There are over fifty new spells introduced in the book. Many of these spells have categories attached to them. These subcategories have been used in other Kobold Press products to interact with some feats or abilities, as well as to denote what kind of instructors a character would need to seek out to learn them. These include more spells of the Illumination school, which have already been introduced in other Midgard products, as well as the fey, elemental, shadow, liminal, and weather subcategories.

Every spellcasting class in the 5e SRD gains new spells in this section, so on behalf of Rangers that have been shafted in many products that add new spells, thanks!

There are more than 80 new magic items included in this book. There are specific charts for generating magic items that include both 5e SRD items as well as Book of Ebon Tides items, for generating thematically appropriate treasure hoards. In addition to the categories of magic items we’re accustomed to in other products, this book introduces Illusion Seeds and Memory Philters.

Illusion Seeds conjure shadow-stuff to produce an effect that is effectively real but fades after a few hours as the shadow-stuff unravels. In the Plane of Shadows, however, Illusion Seeds don’t naturally fade the same way they do on the prime material plane. Memory Philters are technically used to experience certain types of captured memories, but they also provide various additional game effects. I like the concept of these, the idea that the effect that the player wants to trigger is a side effect of why the item was made. That is made a little more uncomfortable by the Philter of Lust. The only requirement for someone under the effects of the Philter is to “seek out a person whose affection you desire,” so it’s not as bad as it could be, but definitely in “tread carefully” territory.

Some of the included items are epic items tied to the history of the setting. These items include the actual Book of Ebon Tides, the Crown of Infinite Midnight, and Hecate’s Lantern. These are items that are less rewards for a player completing an adventure, and more an item that falls in the PC’s lap to tie them into a narrative.

In addition to more formalized rules elements like spells or magic items, there are magical phenomena native to the Plane, random fey items, and a list of tricks and pranks. These range from whimsically enchanted clothing, pets, foods, omens, mounts, and trinkets. Some of these probably could have been represented with common or uncommon magic items, but honestly, I like the whimsy for a lot of these effects, and I think not detailing how PCs can do these wondrous, weird, random things adds to their charm.

Inhabitants and Stat Blocks

There are about 25 or so stat blocks included in the book. While there are definitely some monstrous creatures, like the Birch Siren, Memory Thief, Molefolk, River Spirits, Rose Golems, and Wandering Ponds, there are also a lot of NPC stat blocks to represent people in the setting. I like NPC stat blocks, but I feel like it’s worth noting that these aren’t just “guard” or “wizard,” but often characters that have unique and quirky abilities.

Bearfolk Thunderstompers can imitate giant footsteps. Gnomish Distillers have multiple effects they can mix up in their backpack. There are members of different fey courts, like Oma Rattenfanger, a pixie who has bonded to the Shadow Plane, or the Radiant Lord, a fey so obsessed with the stars that he can burst into a radiant form. There are even Umbral Tailors that can stitch together souls when they detect psychic distress in a client.

Despite years and years of both oozes and mimics being in the game, I still love the Wandering Pond, an ooze that casts an illusion to make it look like a pleasant location, until someone gets too close. As a fan of giants, I like the River Giants that travel the Styx and the Lethe in their boats, using their nets to catch memories to sell, as well as the Styx Giants, River Giants that have encountered the waterways too often. I really enjoy the story elements surrounding Rose Golems. These constructs can put intruders to sleep so that their masters can take prisoners, and the golems themselves are considered artwork to show off at garden parties for the fey.

Radiant Energy

 The material in this book can present what feels like a dark reflection of the Domains of Delight in The Wild Beyond the Witchlight, and still just be just around the corner from a Domain of Dread from Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft, or even down the shadowy path from locations we haven’t seen since D&D 4e like Evernight or Gloomwrought. 

The setting material presents a creepy setting without making it too oppressive and instills some fey whimsy into the material with a bit of an edge. The lists of tricks and glamours, as well as the encounters, are all great elements to drop into an adventure. The hazards, portals, and details on the shadow roads are all solid mechanical support for the tone present in the book.

Necrotic Damage

I understand the additional cost that comes from adding pull-out maps, but even the PDF download doesn’t include the battle maps that are included in the last few pages of the book. Some of the abilities of the subclasses presented are thematic, but also play with some very similar effects, like darkvision. Some of the species presented are ambitious in a way that the 5e SRD doesn’t support well.

Recommended–If the product fits in your broad area of gaming interests, you are likely to be happy with this purchase.

The great thing about an entire plane of existence is that it can theoretically be infinite. The material in this book can present what feels like a dark reflection of the Domains of Delight in The Wild Beyond the Witchlight, and still just be just around the corner from a Domain of Dread from Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft, or even down the shadowy path from locations we haven’t seen since D&D 4e like Evernight or Gloomwrought. While much of this lore ties in well to the Midgard setting, it’s modular enough to lurk in the gloom just beyond everything else in the Shadowfell. I hope we see a campaign setting book for Silendora, the Midgard equivalent of the Feywild, so we can see what the more “Seelie” side of things looks like.

Do you have a favorite RPG product that details other planes of existence? Does it provide for short visits or long-term campaign play? We want to hear about your favorites in the comments below!

Disclaimer:

My Bloody History

I didn’t get into Vampire the Masquerade in the 90s like many gamers I know. In fact, by the time Vampire was ascendent, I was one of those poor souls that was moving into Magic the Gathering rather than playing RPGs, so I could play over lunch with my coworkers. I didn’t engage with any version of Vampire, Werewolf, or the associated games until the last decade or so, and even then, my vector of entry was Werewolf the Forsaken.

In 2018, Vampire the Masquerade’s 5th edition release seemed like a good jumping on point for me. Because I wasn’t quite ready to commit, I only picked up the PDF. When I did so, there were a few hurdles to my engagement. The first, and most important, hurdle was the very heavy-handed edge factor that worked into the narrative. This edge factor introduced some very poorly thought-out commentary on the real world, in addition to some characters and scenarios that incautiously introduced topics that might be widely uncomfortable for many players. The second hurdle was the format of the book.

Venturing into the Book

Three-column layout. Large splashes of photo-manipulated images, in addition to splashes of red, and shifting backgrounds, with varying colors. It may have been very stylish, and it may have been presenting a specific aesthetic, but my brain just couldn’t engage with it. Given that I picked up the PDF out of curiosity, and that the tone of the setting was outside of my usual comfort zone, that additional challenge pushed V5 out of my list of games with which to engage.

Two things have made me want to reengage with the game. After the development of the World of Darkness passed to Renegade Game Studios, some of the talent brought on to work on the game caught my attention. For example, I’ve wanted to check out Chris Spivey’s work on Chicago by Night since my last interview with him. The other factor was that Renegade Game Studios was branching out to create new editions of other World of Darkness games, such as Hunter the Reckoning and Werewolf the Apocalypse.

After my review of Hunter the Reckoning, I knew that the approach to sensitive topics was much more measured, and the formatting of the book was much more practical. I wanted to touch base with V5, but that core book still made my head swim. At this point, I wanted to make it clear that I’m sure some people love the format and the aesthetics of the book, and my brain and its ability to retain information isn’t, by any means, indicative of how anyone else’s brain might work. I just know what I can and can’t engage with.

While discussing online with what the Vampire Player’s Guide may have in it and discussing my general dissatisfaction with my ability to engage with the material, Adam Bradford of Demiplane offered me access to the Vampire Demiplane Nexus Ultimate Bundle. This bundle currently includes the following resources:

• Vampire the Masquerade Companion (Online Reference)
• Vampire the Masquerade Corebook
• Auld Sanguine (Adventure)
• Chicago by Night
• Cults of the Blood Gods
• Anarch Sourcebook
• Camarilla Sourcebook
• Second Inquisition
• Sabbat: The Black Hand

In addition, this bundle includes the preorder for the Player’s Guide, which is not (at the time of this writing) available.

What’s on the Nexus?

There are several ways to engage with digital access on Demiplane Nexus. On the main Vampire page on Nexus, there are four banners you can click:

• Digital Reader
• Vampire Clans
• Discipline/Powers
• Character Tools

The Digital Reader presents the book in page order, with the content formatted in the same order as the information in the book, including a list of bookmarks on the left side of the page. For any of the pages that show “handouts,” i.e. story elements that are formatted to look like letters or notes presented as images, you can switch between the text of the page and how that text appears in the book.

Compared to the PDF, the layout of these pages is in a single column. Artwork that was behind the text in the core book appears at the beginning or end of a section. The background is consistently black, since this is scrolling text on a webpage, rather than discreet pages.

The Vampire Clans page has a picture of members of the various clans, the various titles of the individual clans, and a “view clan” button. Clicking on the individual clan pages gives you a description of the clan, as well as their Disciplines, Banes, and Compulsions. The clan pages have a section on information about the clan, formatted by what source the information comes from. For example, there is a section for the information presented in the companion, and the individual sourcebooks, and individual game rules that were introduced in those sources, pertaining to the individual clans, appear on these pages. There are hyperlinks to the Disciplines associated with the clans, and the page ends with clan powers with a drop down button next to them, showing the game rules associated with the powers.

Discipline/Powers has all of the powers in the unlocked sources listed, with the same drop down as the powers have in their summary at the bottom of the clan pages. The Discipline/Powers section has a search bar for searching powers, as well as icons to filter powers by their associated Discipline.

The Character Tools section isn’t currently up and running. When it is, it seems like it’s meant to be a character creation tool much like the tools that appear on D&D Beyond for making D&D 5e characters. People with a Demiplane subscription beyond just owning the individual sources will have unlimited character slots. I’m not sure how many characters will be the default, or if there will be a limit per account or by game by account.

Kicking the Tires

I spent some time poking around the site both on my desktop and on my phone. The website works well on my phone, fitting the format of the screen. The upper left hand of the page calls up general Demiplane Nexus links, including sources, game rules, characters, groups, and notifications. When using the Digital Reader function, the source outline appears in the lower left-hand corner of the page. Without using the Digital Reader, there are hyperlinks to the individual sections of the book.

The search bar that appears at the top of the page has a drop down at the right hand side of the page that lets you select from the sources currently hosted on Nexus, and if you access the search field from a Vampire source page, the search bar will default to Vampire: The Masquerade. This may be the time to bring up a concern I have over this format. One of the things that interests me is that Hunter the Reckoning presents various organizations, but also indicates that some of them have more details in the V5 Second Inquisition book.

It’s not too difficult to switch back and forth between sources, but it is interesting to me that it does not appear that the various World of Darkness sources will be linked under a meta-banner. Given that the character builder isn’t up and running, and the only non-Vampire World of Darkness source currently is the Hunter the Reckoning core book, it’s hard to tell how much this may or may not be a barrier to someone pulling from multiple games in the setting.

Because I’m still getting used to the system, in addition to the site interface, I needed a vector from which to guide my use of the site. Despite not having the character builder up and running, I decided one of the best ways to take a tour of the site would be to make a character. I printed out a character sheet and got ready to dive in.

Making a Vampire

Before I made the character, I decided to just run a test on the search function by searching the various terms on the character sheet. Here are a few things I noticed:

• Even if something is a game term, if it is a term made up of different words, each word gets searched–for example, it will bring up single words highlighted, in addition to the entire phrase, if it finds instances
• Each of the responses has a general topic under which it is organized–for example, Game Element or Compendium Entry
• When some game elements come up, some will have a button that says “view source,” which I assumed would take me to the section of the book where the rule is located, but it just opens the table of contents for the source

After playing around with this search bar, and seeing the kinds of responses it yields, the search bar almost feels more useful for finding proper names rather than game rules. For example, if you search for an NPCs name from a source, you can find where they are referenced in a book. If you look up the name of an organization, you can find where it is referenced in an existing source. But the game rules all have that “view source” button that takes you to the table of contents of the source. I’m wondering if I’m missing something about how this is meant to work.

The process of making a character was actually fairly easy when facilitated by the site. Clicking on the character creation of the core rules takes you to the summary for making a character, but what makes this a better experience than trying to bounce around the PDF is the fact that various hyperlinks allow you to have additional tabs open. You can open the clan page, the pages for clans, the pages for Discipline and Powers, and the pages for Advantages and Flaws. And because the core rules kind of backtrack and have you go back and forth adding elements to your character, having all of these open and hyperlinked was extremely helpful.

Normally, when I review a source, I read it from cover to cover, taking notes while listening to the PDF being read out loud. If the character creation process has multiple levels to it, I tend to create a character in the system as part of the process of reviewing. I didn’t perform that level of review of V5, but I feel like the process of clicking around the site to make my character, as well as being able to follow a few links to other rules or setting elements that were referenced, that I know more about V5 over the last three nights than I’ve picked up since 2018 (and more lore elements that I’ve picked up since the 90s).

Final Thoughts

 I definitely think that online rules reference sites are the direction that the RPG industry needs to move in the future. 

I definitely think that online rules reference sites are the direction that the RPG industry needs to move in the future. Having properly linked pages for quick navigation allows people to engage with the rules to answer questions, quickly, and as they come up. That’s important for keeping newly interested players engaged.

I like how the individual sections group all the items that fall under that topic, but there is something that I want the website to address which may be more of a shortcoming of the game itself. By that, I mean, I wish there was a hyperlinked page with game terms in a glossary. In most cases, it’s fairly easy to determine what section of the books a topic would fall, but I would love it if all of those game terms just lived together in one place.

There is a glossary in the core book, but the only items in the glossary that are game terms are those that are both something in the setting that also has game rules attached to it. A game term glossary would be great, but I don’t know that reorganizing rules outside of the structure the designers build is within the purview of a 3rd party making a website for those rules. But I would love it.

I want to revisit all this once the Player’s Guide is out, to see how that source presents the process of creating characters, and once the Character Tools are up and running. I’m also interested to see if there is a good way to implement some of the “shared” resources, like the Coterie powers or the Relationship Map, so that everyone in a Chronicle has access to those things on the same site as the character.

Moonlight on Roseville Beach is a roleplaying game about a very specific time and a very specific place, but that specificity makes it extremely relevant to the modern world, and the time in which it has been published. The game is set in a resort town with a primarily LGBTQIA+ population, in a region that is deeply enmeshed with the supernatural. When supernatural effects threaten the local residents, the community has to resolve these threats on their own, without the support of nearby authorities which would likely cause more harm than the supernatural occurrence.

It has become a trope in modern urban fantasy to see small communities that exist at the center of a supernatural nexus, with the locals banding together to face off against the strange things that might lurk in the shadows to threaten them. In these stories, the inhabitants of these towns are often misfits and outcasts that have finally found a home in this quirky location, and they are driven to fight for this place that they have found, where they finally belong. Moonlight on Roseville Beach takes this same premise and applies it to a queernorm setting, where the majority of the people in town are LGBTQIA+ people who have found a place for themselves.

Disclaimer

I was not provided a review copy of this game, and my copy comes from backing the crowdfunding campaign that produced the game. I have not had the opportunity to play the game, either as a game facilitator or as a player.

 Moonlight on Roseville Beach

R. Rook Studio
Created by Richard Ruane
Written by Richard Ruane, Rob Abrazado, Bendi Barrett, Sharang Biswas, Rick Chia, Alison Cybe, Ezakur, Ethan Harvey, Maxwell Lander, Catherine Ramen, Erin Roberts, Ennis Rook Bashe, Noora Rose, R.J. Ryan, Sean F. Smith, Anne Toole
Additional Content by Preston Leslie, Eric Moore, Logan Rollins, Ramses Wilde-Wolf
Developmental Editing, Copy Editing, and Proofreading by Jared Sinclair Sensitivity Reading by [Brian Kunde of GaymerX]
Art Direction and Layout by Dai Shugars

Layout and Formatting

The PDF of this game is 162 pages, and is divided up into the following content areas:

• Endpapers (2 pages)
• Credits Page
• Title Page
• Table of Contents (3 pages)
• Artists Dedication, Illustrations Index, and A Note on Representation (2 pages)
• Rook Studio ads (2 pages)

The rest of the book is dedicated to game content. The layout of the book is primarily in two columns, though there are exceptions when the text is detailing subcategories under a primary category, or presenting tables.

The artwork in the book is brought together from public domain LGBTQIA+ pulp novels, and various framing devices, from the single-page short stories that introduce some sections, to the thematic frames of sections like “jobs,” are designed to preserve this aesthetic. This creates a double-edged sword which is addressed in the book itself.

While these pulp novels were often one of the only ways that non-cis or non-hetero people could engage with content that acknowledged their existence, they were also produced in an era where society in general, including the homosexual community, were not expressly inviting to trans, bi, or people of color. The artwork is very white, and no matter how transgressive, still leans heavily towards heteronormative standards of attractiveness in what it portrays.

For the Players

Characters in this game are assumed to be regular residents of Roseville Beach. You aren’t a special monster fighting force, and you probably don’t primarily deal with investigating monsters or dangerous anomalies, even though they do affect life in Roseville Beach on a regular basis. If you’ve read or watched any media that revolves around the “community near a supernatural nexus,” you probably won’t be surprised to find out that even if people have day-to-day regular jobs, some of them also have their own ties to the supernatural. The character types, known as Origin Stories, that characters will choose from include the following:

• The Fresh Face (someone just starting out in life and finding Roseville Beach)
• The Scandalous (someone tied to an important scandal, effectively exiled)
• The Shifter (a local who also happens to have a form of lycanthropy or other shifting condition)
• A Witch (a local who has learned some magic to help them from time to time)
• A Familiar (an animal spirit that outlived their spellcaster, and may be trying to live life inconspicuously, but still knows some magic of their own)
• The Stranger (an alien or supernatural being that has taken human form to live in the community)

Each of these Origin Stories has a special ability native to that character type (like the Fresh Face’s Beginner’s Luck ability that lets them reroll 1s on their dice), two story elements that have related skills and one or more Troubles. Origin Stories like the Fresh Face and the Scandalous will have more than one background with a list of skills associated with them, while the Familiar and the Shifter might have animal forms that give them skill-like abilities, and the Witch, Familiar, and the Stranger may have Words of Power to choose from instead of skills (although these work in a similar manner to skills).

After choosing an Origin Story, there is a list of jobs that each character has to pick from (except familiars–if you’re an animal you may get by on looking cute). Pairs of characters also share a Strange Event between them. This Strange Event is both a story element and the potential for additional mechanical detail. Rolling a die for each of the events determines if encountering that Event produced an additional skill or starts the characters with an additional Scare, Trouble, Ally, or Injury.

Each character also names three Comforts. In downtime, spending time with a Comfort can help to remove a Scare. Allies can provide information or gear that players can’t produce on their own. Once per session, the players can make a Supply Check based on the Supply level of the Bungalow where they live to see if they have access to something. Characters that gain three Injuries are out of action until they can get help, and that may mean rolling a Supply Check to see if they can pay their hospital bill (ouch–like in real life, ouch).

Resolution

Any time characters perform a risky action, they need to roll dice. You get one die to start, and add a die to the number you are rolling under the following circumstances:

• You aren’t injured or scared
• You have a relevant background
• You have a relevant skill (up to two)
• Good timing
• An Ally his helping
• You are protecting someone from dire consequences

Once you roll the dice, you have to a die that you rolled to each of the following categories:

• Goal (what you are primarily trying to do with the action)
• Injured (if what you are doing is physically dangerous)
• Scared (if what you are doing can cause fear)

Additionally, you can assign dice to the following categories as well:

• Clue (to learn something in the aftermath of your action)
• Trouble (if you want to roll an additional die, you add the die, but must assign one to this category)

If you don’t have enough dice to assign to all of the categories that apply, you can still attempt to do what you are doing, but any category without a die is treated as having a die assigned to it that rolled a 1.

This gives players a lot of freedom to craft the narrative they want from their rolls. For example, they may not use their highest die for their Goal, and only get a partial success, because they don’t want to assign a 3 or lower to the Injured category. Magic is similar in resolution, but there is always a die assigned to Scared, and there is an additional category of Control, measuring how well you keep your magic from running amok.

I love the level of detail and player-directed results from this resolution, but it does mean that either events are going to unfold in slow motion, with players doing a lot of narration and assigning dice, or actions are going to need to be framed in much wider terms. For example, if the PCs are fighting a swamp monster with chainsaws, you don’t want to frame these actions as every single swing of the chainsaw.

Guest Stars

There are 23 Guest Stars presented in the book. These are characters designed to be played by someone that isn’t part of the regular gaming group, with a predetermined history, background, skills, and special abilities. These run the gamut from what you would expect the PCs to reflect in the game, to much wilder concepts, like ancient Greek statues returned to life, actors who regularly play monsters in monster movies (and are really good at disguising themselves as monsters), and cryptids that decide to befriend the local kids. My absolute favorite of these is probably The Oblivious Grandma, who doesn’t quite get that she’s vacationing in a town with a large population of LGBTQIA+ people.

It exists in a few other parts of the book as well, but there is some subtle social commentary in many of these guest stars. Not only do they highlight the kind of people whose regular life won’t let them be who they really are, but some of them also highlight the conflicts that arise between people who accept some of the narratives of cis, straight, heteronormative life in the United States of the late 70s, while also trying to connect with the community in Roseville Beach. In many cases, this subtle commentary comes from the acceptance or rejection of disco as a valid form of music.

This section has a lot of utility, not only because it allows for those drop-in, drop-out players that may show up for a session or two, but also gives the group a wide range of potential pre-generated characters for a one-shot, allowing a group to get the game to the table quickly, or with little prep.

For the Game Master

I’m going to throw the discussion of safety into the GM’s section of the review, not because it should be primarily the GM’s responsibility, and not because it is only discussed in this section, but because the GM is the person at the table that is going to be keeping track of a lot of the information surrounding safety. The game itself starts with a discussion on safety and expounds on it in the GM’s section. The game also has a calibration sheet with various topics that can be shared before the game begins.

It’s also hard to talk about the tone of the game without touching on safety because the game makes some assumptions to be both more open, and also to frame a specific kind of story. The LGBTQIA+ community in Roseville Beach is accepting, welcoming, and understanding across the range of queer identities, and to people of color. This is expressly true of the game, even when it may not have been as widely true of similar communities in 1979. But with that greater acceptance of people within the game’s assumed community, this is still America in 1979. The PCs can’t call the police, because they would rather ignore trouble in the community, or address it with violence that would be leveled even against the people most in need of police assistance. There are bigots represented by recurring villains in the setting, and some gay characters appear as antagonists because they can’t accept other queer identities as valid.

In addition to having tables of clues and NPC reactions, the GM section of the book goes into greater detail on some of the locations on Rose Island, where Roseville Beach is located. These locations run the gamut from nearby, more traditional wealthy resort areas, an island prison of an ancient supernatural being and its unlikely jailors, a local gathering of sorcerers that also just happen to be privileged older white men, in what I’m sure isn’t a metaphor for the abuse of power in the pursuit of preserving tradition, and a local cryptic that may be organizing a dangerous cult.

In addition to the plot hooks that present themselves in the descriptions of the locations on the island, there are also five more detailed mysteries that can be used for the game. While all of them present general information about who is in danger, what is causing the danger, why the danger exists, and how to resolve the danger, each adventure presents this information a little differently. For example, one mystery presents two characters, one a likely suspect, and the other the culprit, but doesn’t present the mystery as definitively saying which one is which, but does explain how the mystery proceeds in different directions once the GM decides which one they want to assign to each role.

A Nice Place to Visit

By setting all of that within the LGBTQIA+ community of 1979, applying those tropes tells a much bigger story than “quirky locals deal with the supernatural.”

I really enjoy the resolution mechanic of the game and the degree of narrative control it hands the player, while still working within a mechanical structure. I think having required categories to which dice must be assigned really helps to frame the stakes of what is going on, and I really appreciate how magic feels different, but is mechanically very similar to standard actions. I also appreciate how much information on the setting is given in a concise manner, as well as the copious examples of how mysteries can unfold.

More than some of the mechanical accomplishments, however, I appreciate how the juxtaposition of tone, and the reinforcement of the connection between groups and responsibility to the community says more than it appears to say on the surface.

Cruel Summer

As much as I love the aesthetic of the old pulp artwork, and no matter how much I appreciate the section discussing the shortcomings of artwork from this period, it’s still a lot of white faces in a book that wants to be welcoming to people of color. That’s not on me to judge, but it is in evidence.

Sometimes when a game does something really well, what it does well can also be its weakness. I find the resolution system very appealing, but I’ve played games that have narratively rewarding mechanics in the past, and sometimes they take some time to really dial in for a whole group, and if you make a mistake and call for a roll that doesn’t really have much in the way of stakes, you’re spending more game time dealing with than if you had someone make a d20 roll for the information you were going to give them anyway.

Recommended–If the product fits in your broad area of gaming interests, you are likely to be happy with this purchase.

This is one of those games where I am inclined to pick up the gauntlet of arguing for games as art. This is a fun game with a simple but robust resolution, playing on well-known tropes. However, by setting all of that within the LGBTQIA+ community of 1979, applying those tropes tells a much bigger story than “quirky locals deal with the supernatural.”

In many cases, some of the more supernatural threats are dealt with in a much simpler manner. While the stakes are life or death, the local river spirit isn’t really the threat, it’s the fact that she’s afraid to introduce herself to the community for how she might be received that leads her to stay in a swamp that is dangerous and gets one of her girlfriends killed.

It’s hard to express, but the game had a big impact on me because it’s saying that living your life, day to day, should be something normal. You should be able to seek out joy. Some of your problems don’t require a machine gun and silver bullets to fix, even when they are supernatural in nature. But if you count on the wrong person for help, you could regret it. If you don’t pull together to figure out what’s going on, nobody else is going to do it for you, which pulls a community together while potentially isolating it further. People that should be on your side sometimes aren’t, because they managed to tie themselves to the people that are more than willing to marginalize you.

Dangers can be amusing to address, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t deadly, and that lighthearted resolution shifts hard from humor to dark comedy, reflecting the hardened shell people have to develop when they have a limited number of people they can turn to that will understand them. This game doesn’t go out of its way to hit you with a baseball bat with the words “important social issues” emblazoned on it, but it still hits you hard just by being unflinchingly what it is.

Before I ever had a chance run a game of Dungeons & Dragons, after acquiring my sister’s copy of the 1981 Basic Set, I received my very own copy of the 1983 version of the D&D Expert Set. The Expert Set is what introduces wilderness travel as a key aspect of the D&D experience, and wilderness travel felt very important to my D&D experience from that point forward. This was only reinforced by acquiring the Wilderness Survival Guide as soon as I started playing AD&D, and interestingly, by the clear plastic overlays packaged with the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting boxed set in 1987.

All of this focus on overland travel reinforced to me that traveling between locations was almost as important to D&D as what existed at those locations. I was amazed at the concept of being able to determine who or what was on the road between locations, and even the exact weather for each day of the trip. The problem was, the novelty of knowing exactly what was going on each day wore off quickly. At the very least, I was having more fun if I could roll all of those weather rolls and random encounters as part of my prep, so I could streamline the descriptions and emphasize fun set pieces. But the PCs could easily do things that could obviate all of that prep work.

Modern D&D hasn’t done a lot to address this paradigm. The biggest change in D&D 5e, oddly, was in the Dungeon Master’s Screen–Wilderness Kit, which consolidated rules that appeared across different relevant chapters, as well as introducing the Journey Cycle, an option that explicitly told the DM to use a “per day” cycle for short trips, and a “per week” cycle for longer journeys, effectively telling DMs not to worry about the day to day details if your PCs are traveling halfway across Faerun. But only if you picked up the Wilderness Kit.

Expanding our look at D&D 5e into third-party SRD releases, if there is one thing you would expect in a game based on Middle-earth, it would be a focus on travel. The One Ring RPG had a Journey phase, but that was built into the game from the beginning. When Cubicle 7 published Adventures in Middle-earth, a 5e adaptation of The One Ring, it created Journey rules that married the spirit of The One Ring’s Journey rules with the mechanics of the 5e SRD. Uncharted Journeys is Cubicle 7’s product that adapts the Journey rules, not just to the mechanics of the 5e SRD, but to all of the assumptions of a “standard” D&D setting, rather than a setting with the same assumptions of Middle-earth.

Disclaimer

I purchased my copy of Uncharted Journeys from the Cubicle 7 website, and did not receive a review copy. I have not had the opportunity to use the rules in this product, but I did adapt a version of the Journey rules present in Adventures in Middle-earth for use in a Storm King’s Thunder game that I ran.

Uncharted Journeys

Writing and Design: Emmet Byrne, Alex Cahill, Dominic McDowall, Josh Corcoran, Cody Faulk Editing: Calum Collins, Bryce Johnston, Christopher Walz
Additional Writing: David F Chapman, Walt Ciechanowski, Chris Colston, Zak Dale Clutterbuck, Eleanor Hingley, Elaine Lithgow, TS Luikart, Jessica Marcrum, Pádraig Murphy, Ceíre O’Donoghue, Ross Parkinson, Andrew Peregrine, Jacob Rodgers, Shu Qing Tan, Sam Taylor, Graham Tugwell Editing: Calum Collins, Phoebe Hedges, Brian Johnson, Roz Leahy, Christopher Walz
Production and Development: Emmet Byrne, Alex Cahill, Josh Corcoran Cover: Antonio De Luca
Illustration: Mauro Alocci, Nicola Angius, Carol Azevedo, Alberto Besi, Giuditta Betti, Federica Costantini, Antonio De Luca, Emanuele Desiati, Mirko Failoni, Runesael Flynn, Mariusz Gandzel, Michele Giorgi, Daniela Giubellini, Eve Koutsoukou, Dániel Kovács, Roman Kuteynikov, Vincent Laïk, Christine Leone, Andrea Tentori Montalto, Clara-Marie Morin, Sam Manley, JG O’Donohue, Michele Parisi, Giulio Perozziello, Martin Sobr, Eveline Skibrek, Darko Stojanovic, Kim Van Deun, Mike Wolmarans
Graphic Design and Layout: Emmet Byrne, Diana Grigorescu, Rory McCormack
Proofreading: Alex Cahill, Josh Corcoran, Tim Cox

Format

This review is based on the PDF of Uncharted Journeys. The PDF is currently only available with the preorder for the physical version of Uncharted Journeys, with the physical version arriving in Quarter 3 of 2023. The PDF itself is 294 pages long. This includes a credits page, a half-page table of contents, two pages of special thanks, a redesigned 5e character sheet with room to record the character’s Journey role, a Journey Chronicle with places to track the elements of the current Journey, a full page Cubicle 7 ad, and a full page OGL statement.

The book is laid out in a two-column format, with lots of sidebars and tables. The book is full color, and includes a copious amount of half and quarter-page artwork. A particularly fun bit of thematic art direction is that there are two statues that appear as the borders of facing pages throughout the book. However, these statues have different details based on the type of terrain being detailed in that part of the book. For example, they are spikey, dark red, and surrounded by flames in the Hellscapes chapter, but appear more like angelic cemetery statues in the Haunted Lands chapter.

Layout

The book is organized into the following sections:

• Roles
• Journey Rules
• People Along the Way
• Ancient Ruins
• Encounters

The Encounters section, in particular, has a lot of subdivisions, going into many encounter types as well as encounter locations.

How Does This Work?

Journeys are divided into broad categories based on how long they take to resolve. These are given example distances in miles and travel times, but there are several sections of the book that reinforce that these are general guidelines, not hard and fast requirements. All Journeys are Short, Medium, Long, or Very Long. A short Journey may be one that takes 15 to 150 miles or two days to a week to complete, while a very long Journey is a trip of more than a thousand miles or one that might take two or more months.

Journeys have a difficulty rating. The base difficulty is 10, modified by weather, terrain, and other circumstances. This is the difficulty used for any check referenced in the resolutions later on in the book. The length of the journey sets the number of encounters that will happen, from 1 to 4. But wait . . . there are a few instances that can increase or decrease the number of encounters in the Journey.

The encounter type is rolled individually, and includes the following themes:

• A Chance Meeting (convey information)
• Hidden Reserves (add or remove Inspiration or Exhaustion)
• A Bump in the Road (avoiding Exhaustion)
• Needing Assistance (add Inspiration, lose Supply Dice)
• Danger Afoot (a hostile encounter that starts with the PCs or NPCs acting with surprise)
• Natural Wonders (advantage or disadvantage on checks made in other encounters)
• Monster Hunt (avoiding or surprising a monstrous encounter)
• A Place to Rest (gain a long rest, a short rest, or pick up a level of Exhaustion)
• Old Memories (add or subtract an additional die when resolving other encounters)
• A Dark Place (regain hit dice or lose hit dice)
• Deadly Fight (hostile creatures looking for a fight)
• Fateful Encounters (introduce contacts and impart information)

The themes on this list touch on the three pillars of D&D, roleplaying, exploration, and combat. It’s also worth remembering that some of these encounter types involve getting something extra if you engage with the environment, for example, whenever an option in the rules mentions that an additional encounter may happen during the Journey. This isn’t always going to be something that involves negative consequences (but it might).

Characters can abandon a Journey, so if your players decide that they aren’t going to travel all the way from Waterdeep to Silverymoon in one go, there is a way to adjudicate this change of plans. That said, abandoning a Journey early can involve picking up a level of exhaustion as well as potentially losing hit dice.

The Arrival chart determines how the PCs arrive at their destination. There may be dangerous opponents waiting for the PCs at their destination, looming threats the PCs can detect and avoid, or they arrive at their destination able to take either a short or long rest before the action continues.

The above is an important aspect of the Journey rules to note. You can’t take as many short rests as you like during a Journey, and you can’t take a long rest at all unless you get a particularly favorable result from one of the encounter types. This is an understandable rule to add to the Journey rules, because if you don’t outright kill a party member or inflict an ongoing condition on them during an encounter, long rests wipe out most of the consequences of an encounter in the standard rules. That said, getting that buy-in for suspending the way short and long rests work is important, and ultimately was the biggest problem I had when I adapted the Adventures in Middle-earth rules to my Storm King’s Thunder game. We’ll get back to how the book attempts to bridge the gap toward that buy-in soon.

At the end of the Journey rules, we have rewards, something that the PCs may get for surviving the Journey they just finished. These are broken down by Narrative Rewards, Short-Term Rewards, and XP. Narrative rewards usually take the form of new contacts, while short-term rewards involve getting inspiration or bonus dice they can use on upcoming checks. The XP chart awards XP based on the overall difficulty of the Journey, multiplied by the number of encounters on the trip. While I’m glad to see an additional XP table in the game, I’m not sure how well these XP awards scale, in either direction. As an example, the chart ranges from 100 XP for a Journey with a DC of 11, to 25,000 XP for a Journey with a DC higher than 30. There are a lot of dials beyond just the DC of the Journey, which means you could have low level PCs that get knocked around hard with a DC of 30, who still survive, and then get a staggering amount of XP.

Roles and Class Interaction

The Journey system is predicated on having four roles. If you don’t have one PC for each role, someone can double up on a role, but the PC will be making their checks at disadvantage. If you have more PCs than roles, you can have more than one person in a role, which will usually allow checks for that role to be made with advantage. Each of the roles has a list of skills they can choose from when making the group skill check for resolving the Journey. These are:

• Leader
  • Charisma (Persuasion)
  • Wisdom (Insight)
  • Charisma (Performance)
• Outrider
  • Wisdom (Survival)
  • Intelligence (Nature)
  • Cartographer’s Tools
• Quartermaster
  • Constitution (Athletics)
  • Blacksmith’s Tools
  • Leatherworker’s Tools
  • Cook’s Utensils
  • Brewer’s Supplies
• Sentry
  • Wisdom (Perception)
  • Dexterity (Stealth)
  • Disguise Kit

Each one of these ability checks allows the character to explain how they contributed to the expedition in a different way, which can be unique depending on who adopts the role. Depending on how well the party succeeds, they might end up with anywhere from one fewer encounter to two additional encounters.

In addition to being the party member responsible for making one of the checks to resolve the Journey, each one of the roles has a special ability that functions in context of the Journey. The leader can grant a party member a reroll on a save or an ability check once per party member per Journey. The Outrider can have another dice rolled for an encounter and pick the one they would rather have occur based on the title of the encounter (A Chance Meeting, Hidden Reserves, etc.). The Quartermaster gains Supply Dice that they can spend as a reaction to add to an ally’s ability checks, and the Sentry has Focus Dice they can spend in a similar manner to add to saves or initiative checks.

You may be asking, what about those classes or backgrounds that have “absolutes” that interact with traveling cross country? Because it’s the individual encounters that determine if a character gets lost, a class ability doesn’t obviate the character negating a consequence. Characters that can always find food may count has helping provision the party (see below), and that may be useful for setting the DC of the Journey, but it doesn’t remove potential consequences, either.

Now, let’s talk about pushback and buy-in. The Adventures in Middle-earth version of the Journey rules didn’t allow for short or long rests, unless they were a reward from successfully resolving an encounter. While there are still some additional rests bestowed by encounter resolution in this version of the Journey system, this updated version allows the PCs to take one short rest, in exchange for an additional encounter. They can also spend hit dice to recover special abilities.

While there are specific examples given for all of the SRD classes, in general, regaining a single use of an ability that recharges on a short rest costs a hit die, while recovering a single use of a class ability that recharges on a long rest costs two hit dice. This same structure can be applied to subclass or species abilities in addition to class abilities. The most expensive hit dice expenditure, however, is the recovery of spell slots, which cost one hit die per spell level of the spell.

This recovery of class abilities using a finite resource is essentially an olive branch. The Adventures in Middle-earth rules didn’t really account for how many toys a class has at their disposal, and how limiting it might be to not have a means of recovering those toys. This allows PCs to be a bit freer with a wider range of abilities in the resolution of encounters, while still maintaining the consequences of the events on the trail.

PCs can each make a single preparation before the Journey starts, which can range from charting a course, consulting omens, getting mounts or beasts of burden, procuring supplies, or studying the weather. These different preparations can grant specific bonuses or extra benefits during the Journey, or they can reduce the overall difficulty of the Journey itself. In some cases, the form of preparation has a built in quick resolution for how the PC wants to engage with that preparatory work. For example, if you have someone in your group particularly good at acquiring goods without paying for them, they might attempt a Slight of Hand or Stealth check when Procuring Supplies, Beasts of Burden, or Mounts.

Resolving Encounters

Each of the encounter types has a broad explanation of what should happen in those encounters. There are two ways to resolve these encounters. One is a more standardized resolution, where a character in a particular role is setting the scope of the encounter, and the party rolls a group check to resolve the encounter.

There is still some degree of variability in this form of resolution. For example, a Danger Afoot result determines if the PCs can act with surprise when a fight starts, or if the enemy can act with surprise against the PCs, but what the PCs encounter still needs to be determined.

The second form of resolution is to read one of the prompts that is given in the book under the various locations, and to roleplay out the situation. These scenes are long paragraphs that may have a suggested check and a suggested reward, but don’t include the two-step resolution of the Role character making an overall check, followed by a group check.

Using the more mechanical resolution doesn’t remove roleplay from the situation, but it does mean that there will always be a specific means of resolving that type of encounter, which the DM and the players can work together to detail. Using the prompts creates a more detailed opening scene that may provide enough details that PCs will find ways to resolve the encounter that aren’t as obvious.

The Details

While extensive, the above rules don’t take up that much of the book. So what makes up the majority of the page count? This book provides a lot of examples to plug into encounters in different ways.

There are tables for determining the time of day and location of an encounter, as well as the species, age, demeanor, and purpose of an NPC. There are also several bullet points to walk a DM through information they may wish to have ready for an encounter.

There is a section on ancient ruins that allows you to generate locations with charts for who built it, how old the ruin is, what the ruin’s purpose was, what it looks like now, and how it might have been repurposed. The list of who built the ruin runs the gamut from typical PC species, to wizardly conclaves, evil cults, giants, fey, undead, fiends, celestials, or aberrations. That’s going to affect how old the ruin is, and may make it more or less likely to be used for different purposes on the later charts in this section.

But by far the most extensive section involves the encounter prompts for different types of terrain. These are divided up into tables of ten different events underneath the categories of encounters given above. For example, for each of these terrain types, there is a section on A Chance Meeting which includes ten different detailed paragraphs of an encounter under that theme, for that location. That means each one of these locations has 120 example encounters. The different locations in the book include:

• Coasts
• Deserts
• Farmlands
• Forests
• Frontiers
• Grasslands
• Great Cities
• Haunted Lands
• Hellscapes
• Jungles
• Lands of the Fae
• Mountains
• Open Waters
• Underground
• War Torn Lands
• Wild Magic Lands

In addition to the example encounters, each section has a table of example weather, flora and fauna, local inhabitants, points of interest, and possible reasons to travel through that location.

Something that occurred to me as I was reading through all of these different locations is that many of these locations, especially some of the more fantastic ones, correspond with some of the official WotC adventures that have been released, giving you some built in encounter examples for Journeys using those adventures.

For example, Coasts and Open Waters work well with Ghost of Saltmarsh, Haunted Lands provides some solid Ravenloft support, Great Cities dovetails well with Waterdeep: Dragon Heist and the opening sections of Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus, and Hellscapes works well for the Avernus portion of that adventure. Underground provides encounters for the many, many days of travel in Out of the Abyss, Lands of the Fae is a good companion to The Wild Beyond the Witchlight, and War-Torn Lands provides a lot that can be used for traveling through the war-torn sections of Ansalon in Dragonlance Shadow of the Dragon Queen.

Positive Elements

 While I personally am a big fan of the Journey system, the fact that it’s useful beyond its implementation of that mechanic, by providing so many encounter ideas and randomized details, is a great draw. 

There is so much material in this book, it’s going to be hard not to find something useful even if you don’t use the Journey system exactly as written. As written, it greatly expands instances where the PCs can use skills to make an impact on the story of the game. I appreciate that the abstraction doesn’t feel too abstract, but is still loose enough that it allows for some workarounds when compared to the absolutes presented in some of the classes and backgrounds. Examples of weather for the different terrain types do what all of those random weather charts from AD&D didn’t do for me–provide me with context for an encounter.

Considerations

While this modification to the Journey system does do a lot to address allowing players to use and replenish their class abilities, the spell slot recovery cost, in particular, is really harsh. While the book provides some adaptations for using the rules for naval travel, the suggestion to use them for traversing a large city leave a lot to be desired, because many of the options in the Journey system, for example, preparation, don’t work if you try to change the scale of Journeys to minutes through hours.

Strongly Recommended–This product is exceptional, and may contain content that would interest you even if the game or genre covered is outside of your normal interests.

It is going to be really easy to recommend this product to anyone that plays D&D and is looking for a whole lot of broadly useful encounters. While I personally am a big fan of the Journey system, the fact that it’s useful beyond its implementation of that mechanic, by providing so many encounter ideas and randomized details, is a great draw. In fact, there are a lot of fantasy games where all of these examples and details might be useful.

What are some of your favorite ways for handling travel in your games? How do you make it feel important, without having the game grind to a halt? What do you do to streamline random encounters into meaningful narrative elements? We want to hear from you in the comments below!

If you follow my reviews, it’s probably fairly evident that I like modern urban fantasy, especially when it comes to the monster-hunting aspect of the genre. There is another aspect of modern urban fantasy that often seizes my imagination, as well, and that’s stories about how gods and demigods interact with modern life.

Today we’re going to take a look at the theme, viewed through the lens of a Powered by the Apocalypse game. We’re going to dive into Demigods.

Disclaimer

I helped to crowdfund this game, and I have run this game in different phases of pre-release. I was not provided a preview copy of this game for review.

 Demigods

Created by Jason Mills
Cover and Interior Art by Minerva Fox
Character Art Amelia Vidal
Art Direction Adam West
Writing Jason Mills
Copy Editing & Developmental Editing Lauren McManamon
Layout Kurt Potts
Safety Tools Kate Bullock
Project Management Christopher Grey
Contributors Danielle DeLisle, Christopher Grey, Alastor Guzman, J. Holtham, Aabria Iyengar, Sam Saltiel, Pooja Sharma, Samantha Terry, Camdon Wright

Bibliographic References

This review is based on the PDF version of Demigods. The PDF is 189 pages long, including a credits page, a table of contents, a page of acknowledgments, and 10+ pages of artwork in an appendix, showcasing artwork that didn’t make it into the rules proper. Additionally, the PDF version comes with the playbooks, basic moves, and example scenarios all in their own PDFs.

The book itself is in a single-column layout, with gold and blue borders, and full-color interior art. The formatting is clear and easy to follow, and is one of the better-looking RPG books that I have seen. The artwork, which largely features the iconic characters representing the individual playbooks, is wonderful. The chapter breaks contain full-page black and gold artwork inspired by tarot cards.

On the Inside

The book is divided into the following sections:

• What is Demigods
• The World of Demigods
• How to Play
• Creation’s Forge
• Basic Moves
• Gifts
• The Playbooks
• The Herald
• Love Letters
• The Bestiary
• Scenarios

The Setting?

The game takes place in the modern world, with only a few assumptions that inform the general gameplay, allowing individual tables to customize as they see fit. The gods need mortals to believe in them, not know they exist because mortal imagination is where magic comes from. Some gods or families of gods that have few modern followers are a little more likely to still be worshiped in the modern day.

Gods can’t stay on Earth for too long, or they start to warp reality around themselves, so they often have to work through demigods. Too many demigods in one place also start to warp reality, but the PCs have a special bond that allows them to work together without reality collapsing under the weight of their combined presence. The PCs will have a Spindle, a special place that drew all of them together, which is part of their ability to work together.

There are also two modern “pantheons” that have arisen from the (sometimes accidental) worship of mortals, the Science Pantheon, and the Religion of Media. The Science Patheon is composed of a number of gods that embody things like Physics or Chemistry, and who are chagrined that they exist at all, because their existence comes from the belief of humans that science works a certain way, rather than an understanding of actual scientific principles. Media is a monotheistic religion, but Media is served by Celebrants who are aspects of Media that can shift and change over time.

The crew of Demigods will generally have some gods that are nudging them towards making sure the world keeps working the way it should be working, and will likely have a deity that they may not be on particularly good terms with.

I’m going to go ahead and say here that I’ve been amused by the concept of the Science Pantheon from the first time I read these rules, and sadly, the concept that lots of people believe things about science that have nothing to do with actual scientific rigor has only gotten more evident.

Playing and Playbooks

In case you haven’t seen a Powered by the Apocalypse game before, only players roll dice in the game. When a player describes their character doing something that matches one of the moves described in the rules, the player will roll to see what happens. Players roll 2d6 + an attribute. Sometimes they will have Fate’s Favor (roll 3d6, take the best two), or Fate’s Disfavor (roll 3d6 and take the worst two):

• 6- (a significant complication happens)
• 7-9 (a partial success, or success with a complication)
• 10+ (a success without complications)
• 13+ (only unlocked by certain advancements–an exceptionally successful move)

Characters have gifts, items granted to them by divine patrons, which may just give them narrative permission to do certain things, or they may interact with other rules to provide a greater effect (like rolling with Fate’s Favor under certain circumstances, or adding or subtracting harm in combat). The playbooks available to the players include:

• The Arcane
• The Artisan
• The Celestial
• The Elemental
• The Muse
• The Reaper
• The Trickster
• The Verdant
• The Warrior

All of the playbooks also have a Death Move and an Ascendence Move. The Death Move is what the character can do to interact with the mortal world while they are dead, since they only die permanently if nobody “fixes” their condition before 28 days have passed. The Ascendence Move is a big narrative thing that they can declare, but once they do it three times, they have become fully divine, and leave the mortal plane (and play).

Threads are both a player currency for doing things like altering a scene, avoiding harm, or rolling with Fate’s Favor, and the currency you spend to buy advancements for your character. You can gain a thread whenever you roll doubles, and there are also four “once per session” triggers that can also grant a thread, which varies based on the playbook involved.

I have fully enjoyed games that use the same currency for advancement and for modifying aspects of the game in play, but I don’t think I have ever enjoyed those games because they use a dual-use currency. I always have a hard time feeling like the meta-choice between advancing a character and changing what happens in a scene isn’t an interesting choice for the story of the game and just kind of increases player stress.

Many aspects of the playbooks are discussed in terms of how the rules work surrounding those playbooks, but the playbooks do not appear in a generally usable form or template in the book. I know this is a tug-of-war in PbtA game design. They are freely available as downloads, so this isn’t an impediment to running the game, but since inclusion or exclusion has been the topic of discussion in the past, I wanted to mention it here.

The Herald and Running Games

One thing I really appreciate about Demigods is that it spends a good amount of its word count on discussions of safety. Not just general best practices, like lines and veils or active safety and calibration tools, but also addressing the care that needs to be taken when using elements of other cultures, religions, and the aspects of ancient folklore that involve things like the lack of consent by godly beings, as well as their abuse of authority.

In addition to presenting the familiar game facilitator’s elements in a PbtA game, in this case, the Herald’s Agenda (the philosophy of what the game should be doing), and the Herald’s Principals (how to go about reinforcing that philosophy), there are some additional tools. Some of these include:

• Love Letters
• Sample Spindles
• The Bestiary
• Scenarios

Love letters are a custom move that shows that time passes and allows the player to make a meaningful choice about what happened in the interim. The sample spindles show some locations where the supernatural may have occurred, and where the PCs first met one another. The Bestiary has a list of example creatures, as well as guidelines for creating creatures that might be a physical threat to the PCs, including those that should only be handled with special actions rather than by tracking armor and harm.

The sample scenario not only provides a starting scenario for the group to use but also provides a general structure to serve as an example of how to format a scenario for the game. The example scenario involves a Celebrant of Media that suddenly removes all anonymity from the internet, as well as the daemons that serve her. The structure of the scenario goes like this:

• Herald Intro (the behinds the scenes reality of what caused the scenario)
• Relevant Pantheon (some notes on what gods are involved and why)
• Player Intro (what the players know about the scenario)
• Plot Hooks (why the players will want to get involved)
• Investigatey versus Fighty (elements of the scenario that can be resolved via physical confrontation versus elements that can be resolved with problem-solving and negotiation)
• Rewards (what the PCs get out of the situation once they resolve everything)

In addition to the example scenario in the book, there is a 59-page PDF with seven more scenarios, in addition to the scenario in the core rulebook.

Fate’s Favor

Even beyond the PbtA implementation, I think it gets the basics of what you need in a game about modern demigods down, and serves as a solid template for what other games in the genre should be striving for.

I really like how this book looks, and I appreciate how it reads. It’s a very approachable way to address the genre of modern-day gods. The nine playbooks offer a good variety of deific archetypes, and I really like both the existence and the variety of the Death Moves. I appreciate the temptation presented by using the Ascendence moves as well, and it reinforced the genre tropes of trying to balance the godly and the mortal in a single life.

Fate’s Disfavor

There isn’t much that doesn’t hold up well for me. The biggest thing that stands out is the dual purpose of threads as a currency in game and for advancement. I think overall they all lead to a better game, but there are a few places where it feels like the interaction of gifts and extra abilities granted by gifts when combined with different moves could get a little complicated.

Recommended–If the product fits in your broad area of gaming interests, you are likely to be happy with this purchase.

I think if you are looking for something that is Powered by the Apocalypse, that is in the modern urban fantasy mold, Demigods offers you something distinct to play with. Even beyond the PbtA implementation, I think it gets the basics of what you need in a game about modern demigods down, and serves as a solid template for what other games in the genre should be striving for.

What are some of your favorite properties that deal with modern divinity? What does a game absolutely need to do in order to emulate those properties? We want to hear from you in the comments below!

Blades in the Dark made a tremendous splash in the RPG hobby upon its arrival. While its Apocalypse World DNA could still be seen, between the process of narrative negotiation and procedural triggers, it was truly a unique child of an auspicious parent.

We’ve seen many different genres expressed through the Forged in the Dark ruleset, from dark fantasy mercenary stories, space opera crime stories, uprisings against vampires, mech warfare, and the retaking of a stolen kingdom. What many of these games haven’t done is share the same city structure that Blades in the Dark employed with its setting of Doskvol.

Court of Blades introduces a game of intrigue and maneuvering in the city of Ilrien. But the twist is that while Blades in the Dark starts you out as a small gang with little standing and few friends, Court of Blades is almost the opposite paradigm, where your player characters are operatives of one of the Houses Great of the city.

Disclaimer

I was not provided a review copy for Court of Blades. I backed this game when it was crowdfunding. I have not had the opportunity to play this game, but I am familiar with other Forged in the Dark games both as a player and as a game facilitator.

 Court of Blades

Game Design & Writing Shawn Drake
Game Design, Writing, Layout, & Project Management Navi Drake
Copy Editing & Indexing Brent Jans
Title Design John Harper
Art Direction Colmena de Papel
Cover Art Natalia Klimczak
Interior Art Al Lukehart
Interior Art Rafael R. Sinnott
Map Art Tim Wilkinson Lewis

The Measure of the Court

This review is based both on the physical book and the PDF version of the product. This is a 328-page book, including a title page, a legal page, a credits page, an acknowledgment, a two-page table of contents, ten pages of Kickstarter backers (hey, look, there I am!), and a three-page index. The book is the same digest size that many other Forged in the Dark games, including Blades in the Dark, have. The book feels solid and is very pleasant to the eye.

The interior of the book has a single-column layout. The cover is multi-colored, with multiple golds, tans, browns, and grays. The interior artwork is in black and white. Each of the chapters has a three-quarter-page piece of artwork. The book looks great, and it feels great.

On the Inside

The book is broken up into the following sections:

• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: Characters
• Chapter 3: Downtime
• Chapter 4: A Guide to Ilrien
• Chapter 5: Playing the Game
• Chapter 6: Game Masters
• Chapter 7: Roll Charts
• Chapter 8: Change the Game

The PDF version also has separate GM sheets, House sheets, and Playbooks. These resources are also available at www.acoupleofdrakes.com.

The Basics

For anyone familiar with a Forged in the Dark game, the basics will be very familiar. The core mechanic involves the player stating what action they wish to use to accomplish a task, with the GM telling the player what position and effect that action will have.

Position tells you the magnitude of the consequences of your action, while effect tells you how much you can accomplish with that action. A controlled position means you can probably try that action again with little consequence. A desperate position means that there are going to be major repercussions. Limited effect means you make a little bit of progress toward what you want to accomplish, while great effect means if you are successful, you’re going to get a lot done.

You roll a number of dice equal to your Action rating, taking the highest d6. This gives you results that are either a bad outcome, a partial success, a success, or a critical success (if you have multiple 6s on the action roll). Like other Forged in the Dark games, you can get an additional die to roll if you accept an unavoidable twist. In this case, that bargain is called The Lady’s Favor, referring to the setting’s Goddess of Fortune, who might grant you a greater chance to succeed in exchange for a complication.

Characters have stress and harm. Stress can be used to resist harm, but a character that reaches the end of their stress track gains a scandal, and too many scandals, and the character is no longer fit to work as an operative to the House.

Characters determine how much of a load they will take with them on an errand, which tells you how many boxes you can tick for equipment that you have with you, but you do not have to specify what you take on an errand until you check it off. This includes armor, which can be checked off to ignore harm. Additionally, each of the playbooks has a special kind of armor that allows them to ignore other types of harm. For example, The Eye can use their special armor to resist the consequences of being detected. Unlike some other Forged in the Dark games, there are only two options for load, discrete or loaded. A character with a discrete load isn’t going to draw much attention.

Progress for most goals that cannot be quickly accomplished is tracked using clocks, which have four, six, eight, ten, or twelve segments that might need to be filled in, based on how complex the task is. Court of Blades adds a new clock, the Romance Clock. A character starting a romance with an NPC can start a Romance Clock to court a love interest, and if the clock is completed, the PC has access to the heat resource, which can be spent for various effects.

Who Are You Playing?

Blades in the Dark has the players select the kind of crew their gang is, and provides playbooks to show what kind of tasks different PCs excel at. In Court of Blades, you pick one of the Houses Major, which has its own strengths, and one of the following playbooks:

• The Bravo (a professional duelist and muscle for the House)
• The Couth (a streetwise agent that has risen to work for the House)
• The Eye (an infiltrator and spy)
• The Hawk (an urban bounty hunter)
• The Key (a social mastermind)
• The Knack (a character gifted with magical ability)
• The Kiss (an optional playbook for a character with partial fey ancestry)
• The Curse (an optional playbook for a revenant with divided loyalties)

The Houses Major includes the following:

• House Al-Mari (whose strength is supply)
• House Bastien (whose strength is transport)
• House Battalia (whose strength is force)
• House Corvetto (whose strength is magic)
• House Elanda (whose strength is wealth)
• House Lovell (whose strength is intelligence)
• House Bjorn (a special house that only comes into play if one of the other Houses Major drops from that status)

The players can customize their house when they start play, assigning a secondary strength for the House, as well as picking an ability from the House playbook that grants a special ability to the retainers.

The Cycle of Play

The PCs are retainers trying to advance the goals of their House. At the end of each social season, the factions of the city advance their goals. The end of the social season coincides with the progress of the year. While the year consists of Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter, characters can only manage to undertake a major task three times during the year.

Like other Forged in the Dark games, the cycle of play involves the PCs undertaking one of the three errands they can accomplish in the year, and after each one of these errands, players get two downtime actions that they can take, choosing from a list of items that can reduce their exposure, heal their harms, progress side projects, etc. Whenever it makes sense, characters can gather information or engage in free play (roleplaying and dealing with minor consequences of actions that don’t rise to the level of an official errand).

What an errand looks like is going to vary based on the House and its strengths, as well as the kind of retainers at hand. Characters might need to eliminate a rival or steal an item, but they may also need to arrange a marriage or help transport a volatile magic item.

At the end of the social season, the GM checks on all the progress that the various houses. The various dice rolls on the charts provided provide what is effectively an oracle that tells the GM what goals the individual Houses are pursuing and how many ticks they manage to fill in on their clocks.

This is one of those places where Court of Blades deviates from the formula of Blades in the Dark which I think becomes a little more complicated than the original game. Blades in the Dark instructs the GM to advance the clocks for factions that the PCs have interacted with, and the factions all have an initial goal or goals they are working towards. While the more randomized goals and the advancement of those goals in Court of Blades can help to make the world even more unique to the game being played, there is a lot going on with those dice rolls, especially when tracking all of the Houses Major.

The Setting

There is an interesting balancing act between presenting setting details and allowing for customization. For example, the Houses all have variable secondary strengths. There are different nationalities, but they are only quickly sketched out so that the PCs can provide details.

Despite leaving lots of blank spaces, there is still a lot of texture provided for Ilrien. While the games of influence are dangerous for the House agents, the city itself isn’t dark or oppressive. We get a list of foods and holidays, as well as commonly held superstitions. Ilrien is a city of canals, and there are gondola races among other sports.

The city districts each have a paragraph describing the district, and include a public figure that is the “face” of that district, as well as ratings for Luxury, Safety, Corruption, Criminal Influence, and Arcane Influence. There are also various factions outside of the Houses Major, including mythical lost nobles, banks, secret societies, vigilantes, and an order of watchers that keeps an eye on the Necropolitan Hill, which might contain a slumbering undead threat.

Other setting details can be found in the chapter with random charts. These include nearby villages, sprites and spirits, random NPCs, threats to the city, and minor holidays.

The Lady’s Laughter

It’s evocative, and paints a picture, but leaves a lot of room for customization.

Much of the setting material in this book hits that balance between too much to handle, and not enough to work with. It’s evocative, and paints a picture, but leaves a lot of room for customization. It’s really a revelation to see how subtle tweaks to the concepts introduced in Blades in the Dark can swing wildly from a gritty, hard-scrabble crime story, to a swashbuckling intrigue game. While it’s going to vary from group to group, and the game spells this out as well, I really like the idea that there are some rules to reinforce romance as an element of the game, if the PCs want to engage with that aspect of the genre.

The Lady’s Back

While I can see the benefit to the randomness and customization, I’m not as enthusiastic with the dice rolling involved with tracking the other Houses Major. Just for replay purposes, I wish there were about two more playbooks that weren’t the special supernatural playbooks, although I’m not sure what I would put in those slots.

Recommended–If the product fits in your broad area of gaming interests, you are likely to be happy with this purchase.

If intrigue and swashbuckling are storytelling elements you enjoy, this book does a fine job of delivering them. Additionally, without doing anything radical to the Forged in the Dark formula, it’s worth looking at this to see how much you can affect the feel of a game with subtle changes in the right places.

Do you like games where intrigue and political maneuvering come into play? Do you want this style of gameplay to have mechanical means of measurement? What are some of your favorites? We want to hear from you in the comments below.

For prosperity, let it be known in the year of this writing, 2023, in the first month of the year, there was much that distracted those who would write about RPGs. In an effort to better serve you, the reader, I have attempted to partition the section of my mental hard drive that contains January 2023, so it won’t intrude on anything else. All smooth sailing so far in 2023, right?

Today we’re going to look at Under the Seas of Vodari, a 5e SRD that utilizes the OGL version 1.0a. I don’t know why I felt compelled to mention that. Anyway, Under the Seas of Vodari is a setting sourcebook that takes place in the same world as the previously released Seas of Vodari, this time detailing the undersea nations in the setting.

Disclaimer

I backed the Kickstarter for this project, and was not provided a review copy. One of the designers, Brandes Stoddard, is a good friend of mine, which I mention for full transparency. I have not had the opportunity to use any of the material in this book, but I am familiar with D&D 5e, both as a player and as a DM.

 Under the Seas of Vodari Credits

Project Lead: Shawn Ellsworth
Designers: Shawn Ellsworth and Brandes Stoddard
Contributors: Jack Houser, Tomas Gimenez Rioja, Michelle Houser, and Colin McLaughlin.
Editing: Amy McGee and Brandes Stoddard
Layout and Typesetting: Dave Jumaquio Illustrators: Mariam Trejo, Westlyn Vast, and Dave Jumaquio
Cartographers: Daniel Hasenbos, Giovanni Zaccaria (gzIllustration), Kate Woodall, and HorribleHouse Studios
Playtesters: Ashley Q. E., Emily G., Greg Benage, Jason Pollack, Joseph L. Kirk, Sam Pike, Samuel Mather, Tiffany Roberts

The Logbook of the Seas

This review is based on the PDF version of the guide, which is 302 pages. This includes a title page, a two-page map spread, a credits page, a table of contents, a page of monsters by creature type and challenge rating, a page of undersea terms, and a full-page OGL statement. Why does that word make my head spin?

The artwork, by Mariam Trejo, Westlyn Vast, and Dave Jumaquio, continues the same style used in The Seas of Vodari and gives the setting a consistent look. Each chapter of the book opens with a full-page, full-color illustration. The colors throughout the book are vibrant and eye-catching.

What’s Inside

The book is divided into the following sections:

• Welcome to the Undersea World (Introduction)
• An Undersea World to Explore (Gazetteer)
• The Undersea People (Species and Cultures)
• Character Options (Classes, Subclasses, Backgrounds, and Feats)
• Equipment
• Magic Items & Spells
• Mounts & Vehicles (Including Undersea Vehicle Rules)
• Running Undersea Adventures
• Allies & Adversaries (NPCs and Monsters)
• The Sunken City of Zuroth (Example Adventure)

There are a few repeated elements in this book, compared to The Seas of Vodari. Sections on Religion in Vodari are repeated, but with added context for how certain events affected the undersea cultures and the differences in how the undersea cultures see some of the gods.

The Gunslinger is repeated, but with an undersea-focused subclass. The Druid Circle of the Deep, and the Sorcerer Tidal Sorcery subclasses are also repeated in this volume, mainly because their themes match the story of the setting both above and below the waves. Sea dragons appear in the monster section of both books, as do the aggressive scientific sapient fish inventors, the Kallidus, although there are different vehicles/constructs built by the creatures in each volume.

Setting Information

Like the previous setting book, Under the Seas of Vodari starts with “Seven Things to Know About this World,” which I appreciate, as it challenges the designers to encapsulate how they envision the setting they are presenting. The themes of the setting are:

• Typical fantasy elements in an undersea setting
• Dangerous exploration
• Varied zones of the sea with different aspects
• The aftermath of the devastation of the Godswar
• Meddling by different gods
• Extraordinary magic
• Technological Wonders

The same Godswar that shattered the continent above the waves, as detailed in the previous setting book, also devastated the cultures under the waves. As societies rebuilt, many nations that were previously unique to individual species were now composed of multiple species working together.

In a manner not unlike the surface world and the Underdark, the different zones of the sea are the home of different species, and the unique aspects of the different zones have shaped the cultures that live in those zones. The seas are divided into the Sunlit Seas, the Twilight Water, and the Midnight Depths.

The Sunlit Seas see many Merfolk, Sea Elves, Grindylow, Voda, aquatic Dragonborn, Selkies, Genasi, Cecaelias, Tiburon, and Siren inhabitants. The twilight waters see settlements of Sea Dwarves, Sahuagin, Merrow, and Storm Giants. The Midnight Depths include settlements of the Dakri, as well as huge deep-sea monsters.

Another region is detailed, which exists between settled regions and spans all three zones, called the Wild Sea. The Wild Sea contains mysterious tunnels, islands, volcanos, barrens, and the eternal hurricane known as Vesi’s Rage, which is a perpetual storm both above and below the waves. There are some scattered settlements of the other sea folk in this region, including the crab-like Karokan. There is also the Stinging Sea, the titanic mass of jellyfish that can kill those that get lost in it with their stinging poison, as well as the mobile community of Shellback City, on the back of a gargantuan sea turtle.

The humanoids collectively known as the Ancients live in hidden communities. The Varu have a hidden city in the Sunlit Seas, while the Dakri have their hidden settlements in the Midnight Depths.

Each of the locations detailed includes a section on adventures that might occur in that region. Some of these adventures tie into adventures that touch on surface lands, while others may carry characters from one location to another. In addition to suggested adventures and encounters, there are also other elements for PCs to interact with, like rival explorer guilds, or a secret society with members above and below the waves.

Merrow and Sahuagin are creatures mutated by the gods during the Godswar, and they aren’t given a lot of perspective, since they have a generally alien demeanor compared to the species that are less likely to, well, eat one another. That said, one of the Sahuagin settlements is less aggressive than the other, with a few plot elements that might pull the PCs into interacting with them.

In addition to random encounter tables for creatures that the PCs may encounter, there is also a section on randomly discovered settlements, complete with a quick sketch of some of the NPCs that might be found there.

Mechanics

The section on running undersea adventures not only summarizes the existing D&D 5e rules, but also expands on undersea adventuring with some optional rules. This covers topics like how far sound travels undersea, what kind of media would be used to record information underwater, especially for wizards and their spellbooks, as well as optional rules for modifying different damage types underwater.

There are examples of underwater traps, difficult terrain, and hazards, as well as unique diseases that might afflict aquatic people. There is even a handy explanation of what being prone even means underwater. I appreciate that the optional rules give you something to work from if you want to figure out how much air someone who doesn’t breathe water has left if they cast a spell with a verbal component, and what water would do to acid or lightning spells, but these rules are both optional and easily summarized, rather than granular and complicated.

Much like The Seas of Vodari, the book provides statistics for vehicles that are similar to the more granular vehicle rules that appeared in Ghost of Saltmarsh. Instead of sailing ships, however, there are many detailed submersibles, both enclosed and unenclosed. In addition to vehicles drawn by sea creatures, there are powered vehicles that use a substance known as fire ice, which can provide combustion under the sea.

Fire ice allows for vehicles with pulse jets, hydro-pulse cannons that fire bolts of condensed water, and plasma cannons that fire superheated charged particles. While these are all high-tech, science fiction feeling items, all of the technology of the undersea societies requires the special fire ice crystals to function.

There are new types of armor and weapons, including the speargun, which is the key to making the Gunslinger class work in this environment. There are also examples of undersea musical instruments, and notes on how different tools function underwater.

There are a number of new magic items. Many of these revolve around either allowing undersea creatures to function on the surface, or allowing surface dwellers to function underwater. There are also some fun new Figurines of Wondrous Power based on sea creatures, as well as relics created by the Ancients in the distant past, varying in rarity from Rare to Legendary.

Friends and Foes

There are nearly fifty new stat blocks for monsters and NPCs in the book. Some of these aren’t shocking additions, such as the Deep Angler, or the Mimic Sunken Ship. There are a few new elemental creatures that have adapted to the environment, such as fire elementals that have developed hardened lava fish scales and forms, or the Lightning Jelly, which is an elemental that has adapted to take the form of jellyfish.

There are several stat blocks that represent NPCs that use the abilities provided by the subclasses detailed in this volume. The spellcaster stat blocks in this section follow the newer trends for caster stat blocks, with a defined magical attack that isn’t strictly a spell, and multi-attack options that can swap out an attack to use one of the creature’s “per day” spells.

Some of the most impressive inclusions are the Deep Dreamers and the Leviathans. The Deep Dreamers are massive creatures that cause untold damage when awakened. There is a specific order of undersea Bards that learn the songs to lull them back to sleep before they can do too much damage. There are four example Deep Dreamers, each one taking the base stat block for the base Deep Dreamer, and modifying it to make the individual Dreamer more unique. While all of the Dreamers are all children of the goddess Dokahi, they vary widely, from an armored hunting swimmer, a rampaging humanoid creature, a mass of endless tentacles, or a crab created out of the bodies of those the Dreamer has absorbed.

The Leviathan is even more devastating than the Deep Dreamers. It is essentially the undersea answer to the Tarrasque, but worse. In addition to being a formidable CR 27 monster, it also uses the rules for Mythic creatures, allowing it to reset its hit points in exchange for losing the damaged outer plates that protect it earlier in the fight.

I love the Deep Dreamers and the Leviathan so much. I love monsters that can be both a campaign goal for high-level adventures, as well as lore to seed into the campaign. I also like seeing the Mythic rules get some play in a product. My other favorite monster, the Kallidu, I’m going to touch on a little more when we get to the sample adventure.

Player Options

I love diving into the minutia of new player character options. Despite that, I’m going to try to summarize a bit more in this review, since there is a lot more going on in a setting book that also offers new player options, than in a book that’s all about the player options. The new species that appear in Under the Seas of Vodari include the following:

• Ancient (Dakri)–clawed, stealthy humanoids, resistant to cold
• Ancient (Varu)–able to use cantrips, swap skills, and resistant to radiant damage
• Cecaelia–part octopus humanoids with camouflage abilities and resistance to cold
• Dragonborn (Aquatic)–Dragonborn with either acid or fire breath and either the ability to grow coral to increase armor or obscure their location with seam bubbles
• Dwarf (Sea)–resistant to poison and either resistant to fire or cold damage
• Elf (Sea)–either resistant to cold or gaining a bonus to nature checks, as well as the normal elf package
• Grindylow–part goblin, part octopus, with a skill based on survival instincts, advantage against fear, and the ability to shoot ink clouds and to dash when taking the disengage action
• Karokan–crab folk with either resistance to cold or resistance to being prone, claws, natural armor, and powerful build
• Merfolk (Sunreach)–humanoids that gain a bonus to nature checks, speak with small beasts, and grow legs on land
• Merfolk (Twilight)–bioluminescent humanoids that can cast dancing lights and are resistant to cold
• Selkie–humanoids that shapeshift into seals, dependent on a special skin they carry, who can speak with seals and gain the fey ancestry trait
• Siren (Seasinger)–humanoids with the ability to charm with their song, a bonus to performance, and fey ancestry
• Siren (Wavedancer)–humanoids that can grow a tail in the water, and gain bonuses to perform dances, as well as having fey ancestry
• Tiburon–shark folk descended from sahuagin, with a bite, frenzy ability, keen smell, and a powerful build
• Voda–humanoids that gain a bonus to insight, and can shapeshift into other humanoid forms

In addition to all of the above species, there is information for using the Cursed Soul character option from the Seas of Vodari, allowing PCs to play a cursed spirit of one of the species in the book.

The species are all presented without assigned ability score increases. They follow the newer trends that appear in Monsters of the Multiverse, such as allowing characters to cast spells they gain with a variety of ability scores and cast them with their own spell slots. Instead of presenting different types of Ancients or Sirens as “sub-races,” they are presented as separate player options. Additionally, the Aquatic Dragonborn follows the same pattern as the Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons version of Dragonborn, with a breath weapon that can be swapped out for one of the Dragonborn’s attacks in an attack action.

Classes and Subclasses

As mentioned above, Under the Seas of Vodari presents us with the Gunslinger class that first appeared in The Seas of Vodari. In this case, we get some sidebars explaining how to adapt the class to undersea use, substituting the speargun for black powder weapons. In addition to the Gunslinger class, the following subclasses are present:

• Gunslinger
  • Speargunner
• Barbarian
  • Path of the Abyssal Delver
  • Path of the Wild Seas
• Bard
  • College of the Deep Dreamer
  • College of the Sunlit Seas
• Cleric
  • Ocean Domain
• Druid
  • Circle of the Deeps
  • Circle of the Sea
• Fighter
  • Warden of the Ancients
• Monk
  • Way of the Dancing Current
• Paladin
  • Oath of the Waves
• Ranger
  • Leviathan Hunter
• Rogue
  • Dreadmask
  • Scavenger
• Sorcerer
  • Ancient Magic
  • Tidal Sorcery
• Warlock
  • Corruption in the Flame
• Wizard
  • School of Bloodbinding

I’m only going to be able to highlight some of these subclasses, but I do want to take some time to call out my favorites.

The speargunner gets to spend bravado points to activate gadgets attached to their shots, ranging from harpoon shots, poison shots, tranquilizer shots, flares, nets, sonar, obscuring clouds, screaming shots, concussive shots, or shattering shots. The more I read this subclass, the more it struck me that this is the closest I’ve seen a subclass adapt characters like Hawkeye or Green Arrow, so I may be looking at reverse engineering these tricks back to bows. I like using bravado points to limit this ability, rather than arduously tracking components for trick ammunition.

The College of the Deep Dreamer does a great job of merging setting lore into class features. Even if you never have this Bard run into the Deep Dreamers, gaining special abilities based on associations with the Deep Dreamers brings them into the story.

I really enjoyed how the mechanical elements of the Way of the Dancing Current took their cues from merging the imagery of dancing with class abilities. I like the flurry of blows that lets you spin away from an opponent, for example, or your ability to dance away from a fight. I’d love to play one of these monks.

I’ve seen several versions of blood magic in 3rd party D&D 5e products, but I really like the School of Bloodbinding. I like that you aren’t just getting access to spells that say “blood” in the title, or doing damage to yourself, but also getting specific effects from gaining and expending blood from specific types of beings.

Many of the new spells allow characters to survive in non-native environments or adapt to hostile environments. There are spells that interact with unique elements of the undersea setting, such as Gemscribe, which allows for copying spells. Many of the combat spells take into account damage types that aren’t hindered by the state of being submerged, while a few of them allow for modified damage types to function normally underwater.

The Adventure (Spoilers Ahead)

If you read my review of The Seas of Vodari, one of the few things that disappointed me was that the sample adventure was a seafaring adventure, which makes sense for the setting, but it didn’t really highlight a lot of what made Vodari unique. This adventure is exactly the kind of thing I want in a sample adventure showcasing a setting. It uses elements unique to the setting to tell its story.

This is an adventure for 3rd-level or higher characters, and there are hooks to introduce the adventure both for characters from the undersea regions of Vodari, or from some of the surface nations of the setting.

I mentioned earlier that I really enjoy the Kallidu, the sapient fish that build war machines and control other sea life. Not only does this adventure feature the Kallidu, a unique setting element, but it also delves into the origin of the creatures. Depending on the outcome of the adventure, the Kallidu might be so numerous that they threaten the setting with their numbers.

The PCs need to gather information from an untrustworthy NPC, who I feel I could run without making them so untrustworthy that the PCs would want to kill her. I may even have fun with some of her personality traits.

Eventually, the PCs travel to a lost Academy of Magic that sunk centuries ago. A high-tech magical construct is holding an ancient archmage within it, drawing power from him, and also creating the Kallidu to help it rebuild the world in the machine’s image. There is even a fun puzzle that I think makes enough sense in the context of the adventure that I wouldn’t feel guilty introducing it to my players.

The Gentle Depths

 This book is almost like a checklist of what I want from 5e SRD setting sourcebook. 

This book is almost like a checklist of what I want from 5e SRD setting sourcebook. The locations are all of examples of how the designers expect those locations to be used, and the mechanics feel up-to-date with current design trends. There are subclasses that advance the story of the setting, but there are also rules elements I want to use outside of the setting. There are some great iconic creatures that give the setting a unique feel, unique setting elements that make this feel like a very specific setting, rather than just “an undersea setting you can use,” and a strong example adventure that not only shows what the setting looks like in action, but clues the PCs into one of the first mysteries they might unravel in the setting.

Churning Waters

One of the few things that I felt was a little thin was the advanced technology in the setting. I realize that a lot of that technology is built on incomplete information and a limited resource, but I would like to see more examples of tech beyond just sea vehicles and high-tech weapons. I fully understand that introducing too much sci-fi might detract from the fantasy feel, I and agree with that, but just a few more lost items that can do things beyond transportation and combat would have been nice. I also understand the tricky balance between presenting cannibal humanoid creatures, and that fish folk aren’t quite the point of view characters that orcs or goblins are, but I would have liked maybe just a bit more from the perspective of the sahuagin and the merrow.

Recommended–If the product fits in your broad area of gaming interests, you are likely to be happy with this purchase.

There aren’t a lot of options for underwater settings out there. But even if you aren’t specifically looking for an undersea setting, there are numerous mechanical options that may make this book worth your time. In addition, it’s a great companion to The Seas of Vodari, providing some strong connections between the above and below aspects of the campaign setting.

What are some of your favorite settings that detail a style of campaign that doesn’t get as much attention as others? What can you take from settings like then when you want to run a more standard campaign? We want to hear from you in the comments below.

When I was young, Harrison Ford was in almost everything I cared about. He was in Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Raiders of the Lost Ark. Then I saw advertisements for this new movie, Blade Runner. It was Harrison Ford, with a flying car, and I heard something about androids. I knew I wanted to see it. Oddly enough, my parents weren’t planning on taking me. I didn’t get to see it until years later, when I was in high school.

When I was young, I thought this was going to be a movie about Harrison Ford as a space cop having shootouts with evil androids. When I saw it as a high schooler, with my budding cynicism in full swing, I immediately fell in love with noir detective stories. Without Blade Runner, I wouldn’t have appreciated some of the media that spoke to me later in life, like the Dresden Files.

Free League produce an RPG that I never expected to see, and never expected to be executed well, in the Alien RPG. The hidden agendas in published cinematic mode adventures and the stress die cut to the heart of what feels like an Alien story. So did Free League manage to work the same magic with Blade Runner?

Disclaimer

I was provided with a copy of Blade Runner the Roleplaying Game by Free League, and I have received other review copies from Free League in the past. I have not had the opportunity to play or run a game with this system or setting. I had initially assumed this was going to be like the baseline rules that Free League has used for games from Tales from the Loop, to Alien, to Vaesen, and while there are some familiar elements, Blade Runner is more of a departure than any of those previous games.

I didn’t have a chance to play the game, but I did watch or rewatch Blade Runner, Blade Runner 2049, and all of the short films produced leading up to Blade Runner 2049. I also read the summary of several Blade Runner novels. I was up to my ears in Blade Runner media as I was taking notes for this review.

 Blade Runner the Roleplaying Game

LEAD GAME DESIGNER Tomas Härenstam
LEAD SETTING WRITER Joe LeFavi
LEAD ARTIST Martin Grip
GRAPHIC DESIGN Christian Granath
MAPS Christian Granath
ADDITIONAL ART Gustaf Ekelund
ADDITIONAL WRITING Nils Karlén, Gareth Mugridge
TIMELINE Clara Čarija, Michael Andrews
PRE-PRESS Dan Algstrand
PROOFREADING Brandon Bowling
FEEDBACK & PLAYTESTING Marco Behrmann, Nils Karlén, Kosta Kostulas, Jonas Ferry, Kiku Pukk

Enhance, Track Right

This review is based on the PDF version of the game. The PDF is 240 pages long, including two-page endpapers with maps of Los Angeles, a credits page, a three-page table of contents, a two-page index, a blank character sheet, and a blank timeline tracker.

Much like the Alien RPG, many of the pages include artwork or images in the background, with various solid blocks of text superimposed over the images in the background. The color scheme is what you would expect from Blade Runner, with a lot of dark colors, along with splashes of light and color. In comparison to the Alien RPG, it feels like there is less “white space” on the individual pages.

I often use a PDF screen reader when taking notes, and due to the way the pages are formatted into distinct boxes, sometimes the screen reader has a difficult time reading from column to column as is intended. Also, all the background elements that have letters or numbers, such as the chapter number headers that are repeated, are formatted to be read in addition to the actual text of the PDF.

Like the Alien RPG, this makes for a visually striking book, especially with the two-page chapter opening artwork. I just wish that the formatting was a little more friendly for accessibility devices.

The Data Bearing

The book is organized into the following sections:

• Chapter 1–Fiery the Angels Fell (setting history and discussion of themes)
• Chapter 2–Your Blade Runner (character creation and archetypes)
• Chapter 3–Skills and Specialties (how to roll the dice to determine results)
• Chapter 4–Combat and Chases (specialized rules for action scenes)
• Chapter 5–A Tale of Two Cities (details on Los Angeles in this period and surrounding environs)
• Chapter 6–The Powers that Be (information on factions active in the setting)
• Chapter 7–Working the Case (details on the LAPD and standard investigation procedures)
• Chapter 8–Tools of the Trade (details on equipment, how to requisition and buy items)
• Chapter 9–Running Blade Runner (themes, adventure structure, NPCs, and random tables)

Unlike a lot of games that I have reviewed, the core book references the starter set often. This is because it contains some tools, like the initiative cards, as well as a larger map of the setting, and the introductory adventure, which the core book does not contain.

Mechanics 

Resolving actions in the game involves rolling a Base Die for an Attribute and a Base Die for a skill. Each Attribute or Skill is ranked from A to D, which then translates into a dice range of d12 to d6. Many of the sample documents that appear in the book list Attributes and Skills by their letter code, as an “in universe” way to communicate those statistics, when they are available.

Rolling a 6 or higher counts as a success. Rolling a 10 or higher (if you have an Attribute or Skill ranked high enough to use a d10 or a d12) counts as an additional success. Characters can roll with disadvantage, adding a second die of the lowest die the character is rolling, and taking the two worst results. You can also roll with advantage, except you pick the best two results.

You can Push a roll, letting you reroll any dice that did not roll a 1, but you take stress or damage equal to the total number of 1s you have after your rerolls. You can also reference how one of your Key Memories affects a roll to gain advantage on that roll.

You can help other players, and instead of doubling the lowest die for Advantage, you provide an extra die equal to your relevant skill. Group action isn’t especially forgiving. When trying to search a location, only one player can roll, and when taking stealth actions, only the person with the lowest skill makes the check.

Players pick whether their character is Human or Replicant, which affects the game in different ways. For example, Replicants can push a second time and gain an additional advance to either their Strength or Agility, but they start off with fewer Chinyen (money) and Promotion points (points that can be spent for various options involving the Police department).

Players can also pick an Archetype, which bundles a starting package of what Abilities and Skills are advanced, how much starting money you have, and your specialties (little rules modifications). The Archetypes include the following:

• Analyst
• Cityspeaker (Human only)
• Doxie (Replicant only)
• Enforcer
• Fixer
• Inspector
• Spinner (Human only)

Cityspeaker (people with lots of wide-ranging connections) and Spinners (crooked cops that have more criminal connections) are human only archetypes, while Doxie (Replicants made for seduction, spying, and assassination) are Replicant only.

Characters have Health and Resolve. If those numbers drop to zero, characters are Broken, which may mean something different for physical injuries than for mental strain. Weapons do a set number in points of damage, increased by the number of successes a character rolls. Close combat is an opposed check, and for any attack, getting two or more successes than an opponent counts as a critical. Critical Injuries have different tables for Human and Replicant characters.

The two major player currencies in the game are Promotion Points and Humanity. Promotion Points can be used to get gear or access to facilities, learn new specialties, or to potentially convert into Chinyen. Humanity can be used to increase skills. In some cases, whether you get Promotion Points or Humanity Points will depend on if you made the LAPD happy, or if you did something you felt was morally right, despite your job.

I like these core mechanics, and I think they work well for a noir detective story. There are some elements I’m not thrilled with. For example, while Doxie has a history as terminology within the fandom of Blade Runner, there isn’t a lot of discussion on what it means to have been created for that specific purpose. I also dislike that Replicants get a lower maximum Resolve because they are “less mentally stable.” I think it misses the point to say that Replicants were less mentally stable, repeating the excuses that anti-Replicant characters would use in the setting, rather than saying that being created as property to perform a specific purpose would impose an ongoing strain to Resolve.

Game Runner Tools

In addition to reinforcing the themes of the game, the Game Runner section spells out the assumed structure of a Case File (adventure). Case Files are broken down into Shifts, with four Shifts in a day, with the assumption that to operate at peak efficiency, a Blade Runner is going to take one of those four Shifts to rest. Case Files have Countdowns, so whenever the set number of Shifts have passed, an event occurs – meaning that it’s possible for a Case File to conclude before the PCs managed to solve the case.

Cases are broken into the following elements:

• Prelude
• Briefing
• Situation
• Countdown
• Main Characters
• Location
• Final Confrontation
• Aftermath

This section clarifies that the objective isn’t for PCs to solve cases, the objective is to lead to conflict that requires the PCs to make a moral decision that has a lasting impact. For example, you could argue that Deckard didn’t “solve” the case in the original Blade Runner, but when he arrived, he did have a Final Confrontation with Roy Baty. The Aftermath involved his moral dilemma in how to resolve the situation with Racheal.

The Chase rules are resolved by characters picking a maneuver they will use for the current round in the chase. There are five chase specific maneuvers, four of which are available to the pursued, and three of which are available to the pursuer. Each maneuver requires a skill check, and the resolution of those determine how far apart the parties move, and what other actions are available to the people in the chase.

Typical NPC statistics are provided for a range of characters, from law enforcement, criminals, business executives, bystanders, and hired muscle. These NPCs are presented on a compact table that rates their attributes and skills using the A through D notation, and don’t include extra abilities, like specialties.

There are a series of tables that serve as a random casefile generator, for Game Runners that want the inspiration. Tables include the following topics:

• Theme
• Assignment
• Main NPCs
• Sector
• Clues
• Twist
• Final Confrontation
• Mood Pieces

In addition to the main tables, there are a number of sub-tables to get deeper information, like types of evidence, locations within a sector, or general themes for the type of criminal investigation going on.

The Setting

The game is set in 2037, about 12 years before the events of Blade Runner 2049, but after a lot of the lead-in events detailed in that movie, and the short films produced for the film. It’s been 20 years since the original Blade Runner, which, if you are doing the math, means that 2017 didn’t look like our 2017, it looks like the 2017 envisioned in 1983 when the original movie was released.

Los Angeles is a mega-city suffering under environmental collapse. San Diego was washed away to sea, and only a wasteland that was drained after the seawall was built remains. Las Vegas is a radioactive wasteland, and anyone that lives on the 100th floor or higher is living a much different life than the little people that must live closer to the ground.

Replicants are manufactured people that are difficult to differentiate from human beings. Replicants don’t have rights, and are purpose built to do jobs that the mega-corporations have determined are cheaper to do with manufactured people. The Nexus-6 line of Replicants were involved in a number of violent events, which caused the creation of Blade Runners, police whose only job is to “retire” illegal Replicants.

In 2020, an EMP shattered LA’s digital infrastructure, destroying many records of various Replicants on world. This allowed many of the newer Nexus-8 to go underground, and the UN banned Replicants from Earth until 2036, with the introduction of the new Nexus-9 Replicants that have been marketed as being unable to break away from their assigned duties.

If you watched Blade Runner 2049, most of that will be familiar. The game adds some additional twists to this formula. For example, in 2049, it is strongly implied that Blade Runners are all Nexus-9 Replicants at this point. Because of the earlier starting date, the game retains the ability to run human Blade Runners.

The mandate for Blade Runners in the game is broadened a bit, so that they investigate crimes that involve Replicants, including crimes involving the abuse of Replicants. They are also included in investigations involving restricted technologies, meaning that they might be called in on a case involving an AI assistant, or Replicant or synthetic organs, etc.

There are also several passages that talk about senseless crimes committed by various gangs, the laziness and mental atrophy of humans that have learned to settle for what exists in modern day Los Angeles, and the decadence of people participating in sexual activities that aren’t considered mainstream. There is one passage that intimates that people’s gender identity is tied to trying to find a community in which they fit.

Other passages talk about the corruption of government and mega-corporations, but stops short of assigning that same level of corruption to the LAPD, saying instead that there are bad actors in the organization, but at the very least, Blade Runners can count on one another as their own “family,” casting them in an us against them role versus the various criminals and malefactors of the city.

When it comes to Replicant rights, this is framed as a positive that has unfortunately not been embraced by the public, but also that “terrorist” activity by Replicants crosses a line. It is also assumed that the Replicant underground is a known thing, and that the LAPD and/or the UN might be able to eradicate them, but even though Nexus-8s are pretty much illegally being alive, the powers that be don’t want the wholesale bloodshed that it would take to eliminate them.

Wherein, I Have Opinions

I have some thoughts on how all the setting information plays into the assumed story arcs of the game. I really appreciate how the Case File structure works, and I love that the assumed resolution isn’t solving the crime, but being forced into a moral dilemma, and everything leading up to that is just kind of framing where and when that dilemma happens. I think the mechanics look fun and solid, and I like having the contrast between Promotion and Humanity, which creates some friction about how you advance your character.

Unfortunately, I think the game loses a lot of focus when trying to make it more “gameable,” especially in making sure you have both Replicant and Human points of view. We know from the source material that Replicant Blade Runners aren’t going to be regarded any better than any other Replicant in the setting. We also know that because Replicants don’t have the rights that humans have, and the entire line of Nexus-8s were made illegal, the remedy is that they get “retired.”

By trying to introduce crimes that don’t involve “retiring” Replicants, and even asserting that some Replicants might be proven innocent of crimes under due process, the entire narrative regarding marginalized communities that aren’t seen as humans is blunted. The game tries to reconcile this a little bit by mentioning that Nexus-9s might be accused of a crime, and the Blade Runners may need to clear them to keep Nexus-9s from being banned as well, and I agree that’s an interesting complication, but it soft-pedals the plight of the Nexus-8s.

I also think that reinforcing the idea that the “good cops” are trapped in an “us against them” scenario, with cops only really having one another to count on, is especially bad in the modern climate. When coupled with cops who are literally framed as being able to kill a certain segment of the population, this really feels wrong. On top of that, our example Blade Runners from the movies didn’t seem to consider other cops their family. It was a lonely, soul-crushing job, which Deckard was trying to get away from, and which Joe had no real recourse to leave due to being a Replicant.

This review is based on the core rulebook, and not the starter set, which includes a sample adventure. That sample adventure might better show how to balance the setting they have carved out, and how to still maintain the very hard-hitting moral examination native to the series, but as it stands, that was made into a separate product, and we don’t get a sample adventure in the book itself. I do think that the idea of “cinematic scenarios” like the Alien RPG would catch my attention, because it wouldn’t imply slowly learning lessons about morality, while taking case after case in a system built to oppress and kill people forced to maintain it.

More Human Than Human

 Trying to make the setting broad enough to allow for a number of different options, and being a little incautious in applying cliches that you might find in a detective story, lessens the impact of this RPG as well as potentially harming the overall message that the property itself sends. 

When the book is presenting how to make Blade Runners, and how to structure adventures, it’s exactly what I would hope for. The idea that solving the crime isn’t really the point of a case file is a great thing to reinforce, and I like any RPG that uses procedure to help progress a story. This game does that with mechanics like the countdown and the shifts mechanics. All the ingredients for a solid, rewarding Blade Runner experience are here.

Tears in Rain

Trying to make the setting broad enough to allow for a number of different options, and being a little incautious in applying cliches that you might find in a detective story, lessens the impact of this RPG as well as potentially harming the overall message that the property itself sends. It may have been better to have the ability to play humans in Deckard’s time, and Replicants in Joe’s time. As cynical as noir stories can be, applying that cynicism to marginalized communities and people that have been exploited by mega-corps and careless bureaucrats is precarious. People’s identities shouldn’t be confused with coping mechanisms.

Tenuous Recommendation–The product has positive aspects, but buyers may want to make sure the positive aspects align with their tastes before moving this up their list of what to purchase next.

I really like the game aspects of this game, and I love the tools that the game provides you to tell those techno-noir detective stories. If feels like the game is fighting itself, knowing exactly how case files should unfold, but muddying the water with a lot of the setting details.