House rules for Warlock!

In my review of Warlock!, I mentioned that I was running a group of players through my conversion of Deep Carbon Observatory. Now I love the Warlock! system, but if you don't see the gaps in the rules while reading them, then you'll find out when you run it.

The great Mustafa Bekir is coming for you...

Rules for poison? Falling? Combat movement? Nope, none of that. So then you know there aren't any mechanics for sneak attacks! I anticipated some of these things ahead of time, and others came up during play. Along the way, I even decided to make a major revision to the magic system.

What better place to share all that than here?

Review! Wolves of God

I really don't understand why I don't see more people talking about Wolves of God. First of all, it's a Sine Nomine joint, and Kevin Crawford's OSR sandbox systems are universally beloved. Second, it's great!

Look out, it's wol--actually, it's just Gary and Paul

So I'm going to do the world and Mr. Crawford a great service, and bestow upon all of you my review of Wolves of God. Here it comes... 

It's time to write more reviews because that can be diverting for me to do and for you to read (review of Warlock! and Gradient Descent)

I hope you won't mind if I cut right to the chase: this article is going to be a review of two products. Here is product the first:

Yeah, it's Warlock!

If you haunt the front page of DriveThruRPG like I (unfortunately) do, then the Warlock! RPG cannot have escaped your attention during the last year or so. In case you didn't know, it's awesome. I'll rhapsodize below.

Here's the other one:

Gradient Descent for cool-kid Mothership

This one is Gradient Descent, an adventure/setting for the Mothership RPG (which I reviewed earlier along with its first adventure, so check that out). Although it's another hot and sexy RPG that has captured eyeballs and zeitgeist, the situation is a bit different because it's not actually out yet.

Yes, yours truly is an RPG insider. Well, actually, I just backed the Kickstarter and thus got my hands on the early release of the PDF. It's been bouncing around my hard drive for a couple weeks and I just got around to reading it. And you know what? It's a banger, in the parlance of the day.

So if you're just looking for information about what to buy, you can stop there and put there both on your list, especially if you're into old-school British fantasy role-playing (i.e. Warlock!) or space-faring sci-fi horror (i.e. Gradient Descent). They both get my rousing approval, so if that's means anything to you, consider picking them up if you're a tabletop RPG GM.

But if you need to hear more to determine if these are right for you, or you just like to read this sort of thing, then follow beyond the fold.

Five Torches Deep - actual review

Have your heard about Five Torches Deep? It's the latest swing at bridging the gap between OSR and 5e. It benefited from the consultation of big name RPG celebrity Ben Milton, so that's helped it get some attention. It was written by Ben and Jessica Dutter, and several others worked on art and graphics.

Not bad, but the murkiness is a sign of things to come

I was pretty impressed and intrigued by its laser-like focus on bringing that OSR feeling to 5e, so I bought the physical copy. Part of this was motivated by the fact that the physical layout was touted as being very table-ready. A lot of people are focusing on the physical UX these days, and that's a good thing.

So what do I think? Well, it's pretty good. There are some solid mechanics and its very nicely laid-out. But it's not perfect. As for the primary mission of sneaking some OSR chocolate into your players' peanut butter, I think it's similarly a mixed bag with a lot of positives.

Most importantly: is this a good product for you? We're going to have to get into the weeds a bit to answer that question, so get your hedge-clippers and follow me over the fold.

(Metaphors aren't always my strong suit.)

Review - MÖRK BORG - Swedish fantasy metal, but what kind of metal?

We've been seeing scads of good RPGs coming out of Sweden in the last couple years, or so I am told. I'll be honest: my familiarity with Swedish role-playing consists of two vectors: Kult and games by Free League (or Fria Ligan if you prefer). Is that representative? Kult is great and Free League does great stuff, so I can't exactly argue with the rumors.

You know this is the shit, right?

Anyway, Free League's latest offering in this vein is this literal bad boy:

Whaaaaaaat?

So what's going on with this? Is this all style, or is there substance? And clearly this is METAL, but I ask you: what kind of metal is it? The marketing suggests its "Doom Metal," but I have my doubts.