The Other OSR: Omega City

In the far future of broken landscapes, stretched landscapes, and lost landscapes there is often only the appearance of the Gunslinger and the power of his Gun to bring order to the mouldering settlements and ruins of the uncertain past, to drive back the strange creatures, lurking, ready to pounce and rend the unwary, and to stop the ambitious and the foolish attracted to the power of magic which threatens what remains. The Gunslinger is a wanderer, a member of a brotherly order, arriving unbidden one day, dispensing justice and order, stopping the monster, perhaps engendering a little hope, all before finding the next Slip Door and the next world. Their peripatetic existence is the only constant and perhaps the only certainty they know. This is the Drifted World of We Deal in Lead, an Old School Renaissance-style roleplaying game published by By Odin’s Beard. It is set in a post-apocalyptic dark and weird west that combines a stripped-down presentation with the mechanics inspired by Cairn, Into the Odd, and Knave and it is very much inspired by Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series of novels, but also has the feel of a weird Spaghetti Western with genre-hopping possibilities.

Omega City – Ashcan Edition is the first supplement for We Deal in Lead and presents something very different, almost a point of permanence, even though, like much of the Drifted World, it is subject to decay and decline. It arose out of the Dungeon23 challenge, the aim of which was to design a mega dungeon in one year, one room per day, over twelve levels. Each day creators would add something to their dungeons, but creators also switched format, one of which was ‘City23’. Omega City was born of this switch, a city inspired by two things. One was the city of Lud from The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands, part of the series that inspired we We Deal in Lead, and the other was the author’s home city of Edmonton, Canada. This being the Drifted World of We Deal in Lead, the universe is still breaking down and so this supplement mixes more than it matches its various locations, drawing on a wide variety of locations, situations, and creatures from different time periods and genres. In this instance, the actual setting and its disparate nature means that the designer had more freedom of design than his counterparts working on a more traditional Dungeon23 creation.

Omega City does not so much detail individual locations within a city, but provide small regions—a total of twelve—each with five or six buildings, locations, and landmarks. These are presented over a two-page spread, with the places listed on the left-hand page and a corresponding map on the opposite side. Each location is accorded a listing of two or three bullet points. Each location is accorded a listing of two or three bullet points. For example, Region 9 has five locations, a ‘Shanty Town’, a ‘Cracked Riverbed’, a ‘Lumber Mill’, a ‘Colossal Skeleton’, and a ‘Writhing Mass Grave’. The Shanty Town is described as a “Collection of lost souls and broken travellers”, being home to “Residents from different worlds and times, the languages spoken number in thousands”, and the inhabitants suffer as “More and more victims vanish each night, lost to the red claws in the sands”. Meanwhile, the Lumber Mill is “Overgrown with pungent thorns that ooze vicious orange liquid”, as “Flies swarm constantly, adding to the ooze”, and “Great grey swarms cover the dead trees of the nearby woods”. All of the entries are like this, a clash of the old and new, of the ordinary and the outré.

However, amidst the ‘Burned Out gas Station’, ‘Pitted Gibbet’, ‘Spiral Slough’, ‘Corpse-Corrupted Reservoir’, ‘Flesh-Warping Runoff Pond’, and ‘Partially Phased Office Building’, there is no room for the individual. There are groups of people, such as at the ‘Shanty Town’, but no individuals, and also no hooks. The individual descriptions are intriguing, but possibly not quite enough to get the Gunslingers to investigate every case. Also, ‘Omega City’ itself does not have an overview or broad description. To be fair, both are due to the intermittent nature of the creation process involved in Dungeon23, the creator coming back to the process day-by-day rather than sitting down and working at it. On the other hand, this nature means that lack of connections between locations means that the Warden—as the Game Master is known in We Deal in Lead—can pull them out and insert them into her own content as much as she can develop her own hooks to them.

Physically, Omega City is not yet fully formed. Only an Ashcan version is available. It is handwritten and not always easy to read, whilst the map, though serviceable, are rough. The writing though, is by intent short and punchy, often spurring more questions than answers.

Omega City – Ashcan Edition is by its very nature rough and ready, but it does present some sixty or more locations that present mouldering mysteries and decaying dangers in a minimalist fashion that the Warden can use and interpret as is her wont. In this way, Omega City – Ashcan Edition can serve as a series of prompts for the Warden’s own city or prompts for her own version of ‘Omega City’.

The Other OSR: Summer’s End and Other One-Page Adventures

A mountain infested with rival bandits, a tomb to a saint and a tree of swords on which hangs the saint’s sword, and a giant with stolen horn that can cause avalanches. A lake whose goddess gives swords to high kings, yet there has been no high king in an age, on whose shores stands a fortress commanded by a corrupt captain and manned by a soldiery whose swords have been stolen and who are preparing for mutiny, whilst a Gelatinous King lurks in the nearby forest. A patch of sea shrouded in fog and marked by four islands, one a ships’ graveyard, the second a pirate port, the third home to a sea serpent, and the fourth a tower of friendly and inquisitive liches, plus three pirate crews each with three parts of a treasure map! A desert ruled from a city drawn on skids by a giant across the sands hunted by a Crawling Citadel which slides forward one black monolith at a time. A swamp dotted with shipwrecks and infested with swamp zombies, and home to six witches feuding over which one of them should be ‘The Swamp Witch’. These are just some of the entries in Summer’s End and Other One-Page Adventures, an anthology of adventures for Knave, Second Edition, the Old School Renaissance-style microclone published by Questing Beast.

Summer’s End and Other One-Page Adventures contains a total of twelve different adventures, or rather adventure sites. In fact, technically, they are not one-page adventures, since each one encompasses two pages rather than one. They consist of six wilderness adventures and six dungeons, all independent of each other and each easily dropped into a Game Master’s own setting or just run as is. This applies to the six wilderness adventures especially, since each is a self-contained six-mile-wide hex, which means that if the Game Master has an appropriate spot on her campaign map and the surrounding terrain matches, she can simply drop one of the wilderness adventures onto that map. After that, as with the dungeons, all that Game Master has to do is sow some links and rumours into her wider setting and any one of the dozen entries is ready to be visited by the Player Characters.

All twelve entries in the anthology are written in the same style and laid out in the same fashion. The map—whether hex or dungeon—is placed at the centre. Then individual location descriptions are threaded around the map like a border with arrows to mark the particular locations. Sometimes there is an overview of the dungeon or hex, sometimes not. Those with summaries are easier to grasp than those without, but to be fair, none of the entries in the anthology are difficult to prepare. This is, of course, intentional, since Knave, Second Edition is intended to be played from off the page with a minimum of preparation. And really, a two-page spread does not require all that much in the way of preparation anyway.

Summer’s End and Other One-Page Adventures opens with a fairly basic wilderness hex. The eponymous ‘Summer’s End’ presents a mountain on which the tomb of a saint stands, whilst the sword he wielded is stuck into the nearby Tree of Swords. Rangers hunt the wilds for a group of bandits, which has split into two groups—one of warriors and one of alchemists, and a giant lurks in a ruined tower coveting the great horn he has discovered, which if he ever blew into, would cause an avalanche! It is simple and straightforward, with the Game Master only needing to add hooks such as bounties on the bandits’ heads, a pilgrimage to the saint’s tomb, and so on. Turn the page and the hexes get a lot more sophisticated. For example, ‘The Raiders of Wolfsea’ details a fog-shrouded archipelago of pirate infested islands, a ships’ graveyard strewn with gold watched over by screeching harpies, an island containing a tower of very happy and inquisitive liches, and a pirate port riven by the rivalry between three pirate collectives, each of whom possesses one part of treasure map. The waters are the Wolfsea are dangerous enough with just the pirates, but they are also hunted by Fog Wolves which prey on any ship and Tempest the sea serpent, who likes to disrupt the doings of pirates and harpies (and Player Characters) for his own amusement. ‘The Wizards of Sparrowkeep’ would have a bucolic feel to it, were it not for the fact that the area is home to four wizard’s towers, whose occupants all vie for the affection of the local witch who lives in the woods nearby. What each wizard does each day and what spells he learns each day is randomly determined, but it is all in pursuit of the witch and stopping the pursuit of his rivals and it is all disrupting life and work in the nearby town. The noble in charge of the area wants the petty feud to stop, each of the wizards wants to prove that his love is worthy of the witch, and the witch…? It is a great little set-up that lends itself to some fun portrayals of the NPCs by the Game Master and some good player-driven action.

‘The Alchemist’s Repose’ is the first of the dungeons in Summer’s End and Other One-Page Adventures and needs a little more preparation upon the part of the Game Master as the complex is patrolled and worked by a series of constructs which are programmed by simple punch cards. This gives it a slight Steampunk feel, but also a puzzle element as the Player Characters discover the punchcards and begin to work out how they are used. ‘The Lair of the Keymaster’ also has a puzzle element, this time consisting of locks and keys behind secret doors that the Player Characters need to find and open if they are to open a vault containing the Keymaster’s greatest secret, the schematics to the ‘Lock Absolute’. Which of course, any king or thief would be willing to pay handsomely to obtain (or steal) these plans. ‘Drums in the Deep’ is a mini-sewer crawl, home to a spider so high on hallucinogenic fungus his skin ripples in mesmerising colour, a mini-cult whose members paint themselves as skeletons, and want to summon the King of Nails, whilst a blind sewer squid lurks in the murky effluence that flows through the sewers. There are also three missing teenagers, which is why the Player Characters have descended into the sewer. This is a much simpler affair, easy to slip under any big town or city.

Some of the dungeons do defy description, such as ‘The Hollow Prince’, a temple complex dedicated to something named the ‘Hollow Prince’. Although there is a lot of lovely detail to the various rooms and consequences of the Player Characters’ actions, quite what is going on in the complex is never explained. Whilst it is fine to mystify the players and their characters, it is arguably not so fine as to leave the Game Master also mystified. Without some kind of hook—obvious or not, ‘The Hollow Prince’ is just that much harder to add to a game.

Physically, Summer’s End and Other One-Page Adventures is a good-looking book. The layout is clean and simple, the big bold maps for each of the adventures dominating every two-page spread and working like artwork as much as they do maps. The cartography varies in style throughout, but in general is very good, although the wilderness hexes are the better of maps.

Summer’s End and Other One-Page Adventures is great collection of adventures and locations, really stripped down to fit neatly into two pages, but still offering a lot of good game play and adventure right off those pages without needing to refer to anything else. In general, the wilderness hexes are better than the dungeons, offering more plot and story, and whilst they are written for use with Knave, Second Edition, the minimal nature of the stats and the minimal number of stats, means that there is hardly another retroclone or Dungeons & Dragons-style roleplaying game that Summer’s End and Other One-Page Adventures would not work with and work well with.

The Other OSR: Knave, Second Edition

There can be no doubt that Knave, Second Edition succeeds at two things. First, it is definitely the prettiest microclones you can buy, and certainly one of the prettiest Old School Renaissance-style roleplaying games you can buy. Second, it is one of the most accessible of microclones you can buy, and certainly one of the most accessible Old School Renaissance-style roleplaying games you can buy. It is pretty because it uses just the one artist and that gives it a look all of its very own. Peter Mullen’s artwork is excellent. It is accessible because the play style of Dungeons & Dragons is incredibly familiar and because the core rules take up two pages and because every aspect of the rules is neatly and concisely presented on a single page. The rules for Ability Checks and Character Creation together take up a single page; for handling Checks, a single page; Delving, a single page; Combat, a single page; and so on. The core of these are even presented in the inside and back covers for easy reference. Barely thirty of the eighty pages that make up Knave, Second Edition are dedicated to rules, and that is including the author’s own commentary, advice on play, and an example of play and maps that the Game Master can develop as her own adventure sites. The rest of the book consists of tables. Tables for signs, locations, structures, and place traits, tables for delve shifts, rooms, room details, and room themes, tables for mutations, delusions, disasters, and magic schools. Each of these tables has a hundred entries and each of these tables is designed for two elements of play. One of course, is preparation prior to running the game by the Game Master, the other is to generate content through emergent play, the book itself is slim enough, short enough to make it easy to use at the table.

Knave, Second Edition is a toolkit designed and published by the author of The Waking of Willowby Hall, the earlier Maze Rats, and host of the YouTube channel, Questing Beast, following a successful Kickstarter campaign. The toolkit begins with advice on the duties of both the Game Master and the Player. The tasks of the Game Master are to create locations to explore, flesh out the cast, let the players guide the action, keep the game moving, immerse the players, reveal the world, signpost danger, reward smart plans, and so on. The task of the player are to create and play a character, take initiative and ask questions in driving play forward, apply tactical infinity—that is, treat the world as if it was real and turn any and all aspects of it to his character’s advantage, scheme and fight dirty, but be prepared to die! It is really simple and direct advice, in keeping with the concision of Knave, Second Edition. The advice also fits the play style which has each Player Character as a “tomb-raiding, adventure-seeking ne’er-do-well who wields a spell book just as easily as a blade.” Some aspects of the Game Master’s role, certainly when it comes to the ‘Edit the Rules’ set down at the beginning of the book is expanded upon in the Designer’s Commentary at the end of the book.

A Player Character in Knave, Second Edition has the six standard attributes—Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma—of Dungeons & Dragons and other retroclones. Each is rated in value between one and ten, and each one has a specific role in play and is associated with a specific role, or Class, from Dungeons & Dragons. Strength is the Fighter ability and is used for melee combat checks and physical activity. Agility is the Thief ability and covers any action involving reflexes or dexterity. Constitution is the Adventurer ability and is used to resist poison and diseases, but also determines how many item slots a Player Character has and how much damage a Player Character can suffer before dying. Intelligence is the Magic-User ability and is used for cunning, lockpicking—surprisingly not Dexterity, and spell use. Wisdom is the Ranger ability and is used for ranged combat, perception, and willpower. Charisma is the Cleric ability and is used to determine initiative and persuasion. What this means is that there is some shifting of what traditional Dungeons & Dragons attributes do and are used for in Knave, Second Edition, and that in addition, every attribute is useful. In other words, there is no dump stat! In addition, a Player Character has one or two previous Careers which determine his extra equipment in addition to the standard items that every Player Character receives. If his Intelligence is high enough, he can have a random spell book as well.

Character creation is fast and easy. The player distributes three points between the six Attributes (or he can roll), rolls for Hit Points, and two Careers. He also receives some coins with which to buy arms and armour. What he does not do is pick a Race or Class. Knave, Second Edition does not use either. A player is free to decide upon the Race of his character, but there are no mechanical benefits to doing so. Instead of a Class, a player can can choose to have his character specialise in one of his Attributes and its associated role. So, for example, to play a Magic-User type, a player would put points into his character’s Intelligence Attribute so that he knows more spells and is better at casting them or to be a Ranger type, he would put points in the character’s Dexterity and Wisdom Attributes. Alternatively, a player does not have to have his character specialise and can mix and match roles. For example, he could increase his Intelligence to cast spells and his Strength to be a better warrior. Although a Player Character only starts with three points to assign to his Attributes, he will be given more as he goes up in Level.

Crispin Cromditch

Level 1

Careers: Cobbler/Cultist

Hit Points: 1

Armour: Gambeson (AP 1) Armour Class: 12

Helmet: None Shield: None

Weapon: dagger (d6)

Personality: Dogmatic

Goal: Serve the Needy

Mannerism: Slow Speech

Strength 1 Dexterity 1 Constitution 1

Intelligence 0 Wisdom 0 Charisma 0

Equipment: leather roll, fancy shoes, tacks, dagger, ritual robes, amulet, day’s rations, 50’ rope, gambeson

Mechanically, Knave, Second Edition calls for checks to be made against specific attributes on a twenty-sided die. The base difficulty is eleven and may be as high as twenty-one. In combat the difficulty number is the defender’s Armour Class, which is based on the number of Armour Pieces the defender is wearing. In comparison to other roleplaying games, including Dungeons & Dragons, Advantage and Disadvantage is not handled by rolling extra dice, but applying a flat ‘+5’ bonus or ‘-5’ penalty per modifying factor. Beyond this, checks are used sparingly. There are no Lore checks, the Player Characters will know common knowledge and the knowledge granted by their careers, but anything else is waiting to be discovered. Similarly, there are no Search checks, but finding hidden things is handled narratively and through Player Character action.

Initiative in combat is handled by an opposed Charisma check and if the player rolls twenty-one or more on the attack check, his character can perform a manoeuvre such as disarming, blinding, tripping, and so on. Sneak attacks always hit and bypasses Hit Points to Wounds, and power attacks do double damage, but break the weapon. Damage is taken from a defender’s Hit Points and then in the case of a Player Character, from his Inventory Slots, which effectively serve as wounds. As his Inventory Slots are filled, his capacity to carry objects is reduced and if they are all filled up, the Player Character is dead.

Spellcasting is not just done spell by spell, but spellbook by spellbook. A spellbook holds a single spell and takes up a single inventory slot. Spells are not taught, but found, so that a spellbook is a treasure all of its own. Spells are automatically cast, but their effects can be saved against to avoid them. The rulebook includes one hundred spells, each consisting of a short, one or two sentence description. There are some fun spells here, like Astral Prison which temporarily freezes the target in time and space; Catherine, which makes a woman dressed in blue appear and fulfil any polite, safe requests; and Shroud which makes the affected creatures invisible for as long as they hold their breath! In addition, there is a set of tables to create even more spells.

Divine magic is called Relic Magic and is granted by patrons, such as gods, spirits, and saints, through relics. Rather than finding a scroll with a divine blessing on it, a Player Character will visit a shrine to communicate with a patron whose favour he has, and be given both a relic and a quest. Fulfil the terms of the quest and the relic will be imbued with a Blessing which can be performed multiple times per day. Of course, a relic takes up an Inventory Slot just as a spellbook does. The various tables for magic, potions, and powers are intended to provide inspiration for what these blessings might be.

Beyond these basic rules and those for delving, Knave, Second Edition scales up to encompass travel and weather, really simple and easy rules for alchemy, buildings and warfare, and of course, monsters. The bestiary itself, is short, at thirty-five entries, but enough to get started. Their format is close to that of monsters in Dungeons & Dragons, so it is easy for the Game Master to import and adapt monsters from other sources. Outside of adventuring and delving, there are rules too for downtime. The latter includes carousing and gambling, but also career training for everything from carpenter and hunter to lawyer and assassin. The rare careers take a lot of time and are very expensive.

Knave, Second Edition is round out with an example of play—which probably should have been more up front—and the ‘Designer’s Commentary’. Here the designer explains the decisions he took in redesigning Knave for this new edition. His voice comes through here most obviously—the reader can imagine him actually saying all of this—and pleasingly, he acknowledges the inspirations for each of those decisions. There are some interesting choices made here and the ‘Designer’s Commentary’ brings Knave, Second Edition to a close with a personal touch. Lastly, there is a map of a dungeon and a wilderness area that the Game Master could develop into actual adventuring material.

Physically, Knave, Second Edition is very well presented, the layout done in ‘Command’ style so that everything needed for each aspect of the rules is presented concisely on the one page (two at most). This makes everything accessible and easy to grasp. The artwork is excellent.

From start to finish, Knave, Second Edition has been clearly designed for use and accessibility. The layout is great, the mechanics combine simplicity and brutal Old School Renaissance play with player choice, and the tables provide the Game Master with hundreds of prompts. Knave, Second Edition is the microclone’s microclone, a superb little roleplaying game and toolkit, perfect for playing fast and light in the Old School Renaissance.

The Other OSR: Welcome to Strangeville

Strangeville is a town like any other, which means that it is beset by monsters and robots and dinosaurs and aliens, and because the adults never believe in monsters and robots and dinosaurs and aliens until it is too late, the only standing between the monsters and robots and dinosaurs and aliens and Strangeville’s doom are the kids! Young teenagers on bikes or skateboards or even roller-skates with the curiosity to notice that something strange is going in where else, but Strangeville! Welcome to Strangeville then, an Old School Renaissance compatible roleplaying game based on Knave. Published by Doomed Wizard Games, it is obviously based also on the television series Stranger Things as well as Paper Girls, The Goonies, and just any adventure film or television series set in the eighties in which the kids are the heroes. Being based on Knave it offers fast-playing stripped down mechanics, whilst also suggesting collaborative worldbuilding between the players and the Game Master. What it does not do is provide anything in terms of spells or monsters beyond advice on how to adapt them to Welcome to Strangeville. Thus, the Game Master will need access to a bestiary and a source of spells of some kind. That said, the Old School Renaissance is not exactly short of those.

In Welcome to Strangeville, a Player Character has six abilities—Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma—each of which has a Check Bonus and a Save bonus. The Check Bonus ranges between one and six and is added to the die roll when a Player Character undertakes an action. The Save Bonus is equal to the Check Bonus plus ten, and it is what the Player Character rolls against when tyring withstand various dangers or effects. He has an Alignment, either Nark, Slacker, or Bogus. Nark indicates that the Player Character believes in the greater good rather than the individual, a Slacker cares more about himself, but can be roused to action, and if a character is Bogus, he is definitely selfish, if not downright evil. He has a number of Traits such as Age—between twelve and fourteen, Physique, Hair, Virtue, Vice, Speech, Parents, and Parent Occupation, and so on. He will also have some gear which will include either a bicycle, a skateboard, or a pair of roller-skates so that he can get around.

To create a character, a player rolls three six-sided dice for each ability and assigns the lowest rolled as the Check Bonus. He adds ten to the Check Bonus to get the Save Bonus for the ability. Having done this for each ability, selects an Alignment and rolls for Traits, Gear, and means of transport.

At thirteen Terrell Thompson is beginning to get big and broad, which has made him a pick for the high school football team. He tries to keep himself out of trouble, but as the new kid in the school—his mom having moved to Strangeville to work in the town pharmacy, together with his size, he feels he gets picked on when things go wrong. So, he is not always trusting, but when he does make friends, he stands by them.

Terrell Thompson
Level: One

Strength Check +3/Save Bonus 13
Dexterity Check +3/Save Bonus 13
Constitution Check +4/Save Bonus 14
Intelligence Check +2/Save Bonus 12
Wisdom Check +3/Save Bonus 13
Charisma Check +1/Save Bonus 11

Hit Points 8

TRAITS
Age: 13 Gender: Male
Physique: Towering Face: Wide Skin: Perfect Hair: Dreadlocks Clothing: Torn
Virtue: Loyal Vice: Prejudiced
Speech: Breathy
Misfortunes: Suspected
Parents: Widowed Mother Parent’s Occupation: Pharmacist
Alignment: Slacker

GEAR
Swiss Army Knife, lantern & oil, caltrops, perfume, skateboard

Mechanically, Welcome to Strangeville is straightforward. To have his teenager undertake an action, a player rolls a twenty-sided die, adds the appropriate ability check and if the result is fifteen or more, he succeeds. The target may vary—primarily in combat because the target is likely to have a different value for its Dexterity Save, but otherwise, Welcome to Strangeville uses the standard Advantage and Disadvantage mechanic. Strength is used for physical actions, melee combat, and extra damage, Dexterity for speed and reflexes, Constitution to resist diseases and poisons, Intelligence for anything involving concentration and precision, including tinkering with machinery or picking pockets, Wisdom for perception and ranged attacks, and Charisma whenever a character interacts with someone else. Thus, there are some minor changes in how the abilities in comparison to more traditional Old School Renaissance retroclones.

Combat uses the same mechanics, with the defender’s Save acting as the target. This can be to inflict damage, and Welcome to Strangeville suggests that firearms be extremely be hard to hold of as the Player Characters are teenagers, or it can be stunts such as disarming an opponent or knocking them over. Most weapons inflict a four- or six-sided die in terms of damage, whilst rifles and shotguns do more. When a Player Character’s Hit Points are reduced to zero, he is unconscious and if they are reduced to his Constitution Check as a negative value, he is dead, that is if he has a Constitution Check of +2 and his Hit Pits are reduced to -2, he is dead. Critical hits occur if the player rolls a twenty and a fumble occurs if he rolls a one.

Other rules are quick and easy. Stunts on bicycles, skateboards, and so on, require a Dexterity check, it is possible to subdue an opponent, and a Player Character has a number of item slots equal to his Constitution Save. There are narrative elements too. For example, Group Advantage can be gained for everyone’s next action two or more Player Characters declare a collective action and their players narrate how a previous incident helps them with this one, but the primary narrative element to Welcome to Strangeville comes in the set-up when the players and the Game Master work together to create and describe the town of Strangeville. During Session Zero, each player also creates a handful of rumours and urban legends about places in the town, monsters that lurk, houses said to be haunted, serial killers believed to stalk, and so on. The Game Master takes these and deicides which are true and which are false, using as many or as few as she likes to both establish a sense of mystery and weirdness about Strangeville, whilst also using some as the basis for adventures. Beyond this, the advice for the Game Master is fairly brief, primarily focusing on how to adapt and use monsters and spells from other sources, noting that a spell takes a slot in a Player Character’s inventory.

Physically, Welcome to Strangeville is a bit scruffy in places and the artwork does vary in quality. It is clearly written and anyone with any experience of the Old School Renaissance will grasp how it works with ease. The cover though, is good.

Although it uses the stripped back mechanics of Knave, what Welcome to Strangeville is not, is an introductory roleplaying game. It is not written as such, and is more aimed at the experienced Game Master who can develop the ideas suggested by her players during their Session Zero. Given that it does have to rely on other Old School Renaissance sourcebooks for its content, Welcome to Strangeville is underwritten in comparison to other roleplaying games in its genres and a group looking for a more rounded treatment of the ‘kids in peril’ genre may want to look elsewhere. However, for a group that prefers Old School Renaissance and is prepared to put the development work in to create their own setting and the Game Master their ‘kids in peril’ adventures, Welcome to Strangeville is a succinct little choice.

The Other OSR: Runecairn: Into the Nine Realms

Runecairn: Into the Nine Realms is an anthology of short one-page scenarios and encounters for use with Runecairn: Wardensaga (or its earlier version, Runecairn), the Norse fantasy tabletop roleplaying game published By Odin’s Beard. Unlike most Norse- or Viking-themed roleplaying games, Runecairn: Wardensaga takes place after Ragnarök has come to pass, leaving a world without gods and beset by darkness and danger, into which a lone hero strides, ready to defend the innocent and the weak who still survive amidst this chaos. It is specifically designed to be played by a single Game Master—or Warden—and a single player (although the rules do provide for other options), whilst mechanically, it is inspired by minimalist Old School Renaissance roleplaying games such as Cairn, Into the Odd, and Knave. What this means is that the sixteen entries in Runecairn: Into the Nine Realms can easily be adapted to the retroclone of the Game Master’s choice and their minimalist format makes the processing of adapting that much easier.

The format for Runecairn: Into the Nine Realms is very simple. A single page dominated by a map of the encounter with the accompanying text providing a brief overview and almost as equally brief descriptions of the various locations, plus a legend for the map. The maps are all hand drawn and possess a certain roughness. This does not mean that they are bad maps, but rather they are not as polished as they might have been. There are no stats given for any of the monsters, the Warden expected to simply use those found in the Runecairn: Wardensaga rulebook or the Runecairn Bestiary. The side effect of this means that if the Game Master is adapting the scenarios to the another rules, she can similarly use the stats from the bestiary for the roleplaying game she is using.

The sixteen scenarios in Runecairn: Into the Nine Realms open with ‘Worldserpent Hollow’, a simple dungeon with clearly marked areas of light and darkness, full of skeletons, draugr, and secrets a Dwarf is excavating, and ends with ‘Limbs of Yggdrasil’, the immense ash tree pockmarked with the stumps of branches long cut from the tree behind which the Hero can hunker down for protection as spectral archers pepper his path with arrows. In between, the Hero will face another ‘Storm of Arrows’ as he crosses a kill zone that is already stabbed with ten-foot-long arrows embedded in the ground; come across a settlement already put to the torch and the inhabitants sacrificed by desperate cultists in ‘Mistbound Village’; discover a ‘Grove of Woe’, with its corrupted trees that reach down and grab passing travellers with a noose and are already strung with hanging cultists, whilst a lindworm lurks on the edge of the grove; and break into ‘The Ring Fortress’ which contains a great hammer-shaped cairn and has cultists are preparing for great unknown event whilst two ghost colossuses circle outside, wailing and smashing their hammers on the ground! ‘The Ring Fortress’ could contain the ‘Cairn of Thunder’, a hammer-shaped cairn, hand-dug, ringing to the constant sounding hammering, and home to a massive bone titan which if it climbs from its pits and stands, will bring the cairn down upon itself and the Player Character!

Many of the encounters are linear in nature, with a set entry and exit, so that not only is there a sense of progression from the beginning of an encounter to its end, but also from the beginning of the anthology to the end, as if the Player Character is on a great journey, perhaps searching for something. In some cases, the Warden will need to work with the player (or players) to provide some motivation for the hero to engage with an encounter. Others can simply be placed in the Player Character’s path as he journeys onward. All encounters begin with a bonfire, a sanctuary of light and rest in the darkness of the after-Ragnarök.

Physically, Runecairn: Into the Nine Realms is presented in as simple a fashion as possible. They are all easy to read and in addition, many of them are accompanied by some very good pieces of art. The depiction of the two ghost colossuses circling the Ring Fortress is exceptionally good.

Runecairn: Into the Nine Realms can be used in multiple ways. As a set of one-shots, as a set of encounters to place in the path of an ever onward moving hero, as inspiration for the Warden, or even as inspiration for the Game Master of another roleplaying game. Whether facing a hammer-wielding, niflmare-riding headless Jotunn in a broken village or crossing a water-logged battlefield contested by the living and the dead, there are some great encounters in Runecairn: Into the Nine Realms and some memorable confrontations with chaos and darkness.

The Other OSR: Runecairn: Wardensaga

Ragnarök came to pass and the world as it was known came to an end. Yet the world did not end, it was only broken, the gods of the Aesir and the Vanir missing or dead, Jörmungandr dead and flensed, the Jotunn forced to flee back Jotunheim. Yet as broken as the world is, and as full of dread and danger as the Nine Realms are, there are heroes who would stand alone against the darkness, to defend villages against roving bandits, hunt a creature stealing children, reclaim a family cairn overcome by the dead, retrieve a great relic lost to the ages, broker peace between warring clans, protect a caravan passing through dangerous lands, and search lands old and new for secrets and mythical beasts. Such activities are dangerous, but these heroes are strong of heart and even when they die, they will find their way back to bonfires that warm the soul and give life and never dwindle—and even link the Nine Realms. A great hero’s failure is only temporary, until it isn’t. Until then, a hero can try again and again to overcome the danger he faces, to find another way now that he is forewarned.

Runecairn: Wardensaga is the most complete version of Runecairn, the Norse fantasy tabletop roleplaying game published By Odin’s Beard, collecting the Runecairn Core Rules, the adventure ‘Beneath the Broken Sword’, and Runecairn: Advanced Rules into one handsome volume. Like the publisher’s We Deal In Lead: A Weird West Wanders Game, it is inspired by minimalist Old School Renaissance roleplaying games such as Cairn, Into the Odd, and Knave. It is specifically designed to be played by a single Game Master—or Warden—and a single player. However, the advanced rules gives options for reducing the players to one and turning Runecairn: Wardensaga into a solo roleplaying game or increasing their numbers for a more traditional roleplaying game.

Runecairn: Wardensaga begins with general advice and then advice for Warden and player alike. It does this as a series of principles presented as bullet points. The general advice states that the Warden’s role is one of neutrality, that the roleplaying game is Classless—the abilities of an Adventurer relying on equipment and experiences, that the possibility of death is ever present though never without warning, that fiction comes before the dice, that an Adventurer has opportunities to grow through his experiences, and that the player should always be presented with choices. For the Warden these include design philosophy—that she is helpful and honest as conduit of information, the context and realism determine difficulty, that the world changes and sometimes changes because of what the Player Character does, the narrative should support the emerging story, that danger is everywhere and obvious, that the player and his character should always have and be presented with choices, and when all that fails, there is occasionally, just luck. For the player, the principles advise agency, exploration, talking, caution, planning, and ambition, and if one path leads to defeat, then he should look for an alternative path. For the most part, these will be familiar to adherents of the Old School Renaissance, but here are not elucidated upon, but rather kept short and to the point. Similarly, the world of Runecairn: Wardensaga has its own principles.

An Adventurer in Runecairn: Wardensaga has four abilities—Strength, Dexterity, Wits, and Spirit, rated between three and eighteen; Vigour and Vitality, which are rated between one and six; and Resilience which is a total of Vigour and Vitality. Vigour is the Adventurer’s self-determination, which Vitality is how hale and hearty he is. A player rolls dice for all of these, and can swap two of the abilities. The player then picks a Class. This can be Warrior, Skald, Scout, or Seer. Each Class provides a range of equipment and skills or special actions that will give the Player Character many of their initial abilities.

Gertrud
Warrior
Strength 17 Dexterity 15 Wits 11 Spirit 12
Vigour 6 Vitality 5 Resilience 11
Def 3
Linden Wood Shield (+1 Def), Chainmail (Bulky, Def 2), Bearded Axe (d8), Ash Wood Spear (d6, 20’), Memento of Defeat, (Free Slots: 4)
Skills: Block (Shield), Parry (Axe), Disarm (Axe), Hack (Axe), Thrust (Spear)

Mechanically, Runecairn: Wardensaga is straightforward. When a player wants his Adventurer to act or react—and it is dramatically appropriate—he rolls a save versus either Strength, Dexterity, Wits, or Spirit, needing to roll equal to or lower than the value. A one always succeeds and a twenty always fails. Standard rules are used for advantage and disadvantage, and can apply to damage as well as standard actions.

In terms of combat, Runecairn: Wardensaga uses the same core mechanic, but in terms of rolling dice, combat in the roleplaying game is all about damage and reactions. Fundamentally, every attack made by an attacker will hit the defender and inflict damage. That is, unless the defender can do something as a reaction. Every Adventurer can ‘Roll’ away from the attack or ‘Withdraw’ from the combat, but each Class adds its own options in terms of Reactions. These require ‘Key’ items, pieces of equipment, that without, the Adventurer cannot perform the Reaction. For example, the Scout’s Key item is a pair of hunting knives. These are light enough that the Scout can perform a ‘Dash’ as a Reaction, which requires a save versus his Dexterity, the Scout able to avoid all damage if successful or impairing it and reducing it to a four-sided die if it is unsuccessful. Attack actions also require an item of equipment and increase the amount of damage inflicted or another effect. For example, the Seer Class has the ‘Clobber’ action. This requires a staff and has the Seer smashing a defender over the head with his staff, granting the Seer advantage for the damage roll, and the defender being forced to roll a save versus Strength or be dazed. Many of the actions and Reactions force the Adventurer to suffer ‘Fatigue’. Each point of Fatigue fills a slot in the Adventurer’s Inventory.

One damage is suffered, the ‘Def’ or Defence value, reduces the amount of damage suffered. Both Classes and monsters and NPCs have a base ‘Def’ and this can be augmented by any armour worn or shield carried. Damage is then deducted from Resilience. If an Adventurer’s Resilience is reduced to exactly zero, he will receive an Omen, a message from the spirits, or gods, or… which can be good or bad. If reduced below zero, damage reduces Strength and counts as a critical strike. This requires a save versus critical damage on Strength, and if failed, the defender dies.

For example, as Gertrude struggles through the last of a snowstorm to get to the next village, she hears yells and screams from up ahead. Over the rise, she sees a caravan which has been ambushed during the storm. It is in disarray as several figures fight the surviving guards and others drag off merchants. Gertrude spots two of the rough-looking fellows attempting to abduct an old woman. Unlimbering her Linden Wood Shield and readying her bearded axe, she charges down the hill. The Warden rules that since the battlefield is noisy and the old woman is screaming, neither of the cultists will spot her charging down the hill and will grant her Advantage on the damage roll. This means that Gertrude’s player will rolling two eight-sided dice instead of one and taking the best result. Gertrude’s player rolls a five and an eight. He chooses the latter and inflicts eight points of damage. The Cultist has a Def of one, reducing the damage he is about to suffer by one to seven. However, the Cultist only has Resilience of six, so it is reduced to zero and the Cultist takes a point of damage to his Strength. It also means that the Warden has to make a Critical Damage save. The Warden rolls against the Cultist’s Strength of ten and rolls a sixteen! The Cultist yelps at the sudden blow and drops dead… At this point, it triggers a special ability which means that when the Cultist dies, a black tentacle bursts out of him and inflicts damage on the nearest person. This requires a roll of one on a twenty-sided die. The Warden rolls seven, so nothing happens.

The other Cultist looks round in surprise. He reacts by throwing the old woman down and drawing his seax, advances on Gertrude. He stabs at the mighty warrior and rolls six for the damage. Gertrude has a high enough Resilience to stop a lot of this damage, but his player decides on a Parry Reaction. This enables Gertrude to deflect the attack and riposte with advantage on the damage roll. Gertrude’s player rolls fourteen, which is under Gertrude’s Strength. Gertrude smashes the seax stab aside and the Cultist suffers enough damage to reduce his Resilience to zero, but not inflict any damage to his Strength. The Cultist screams in pain. This attracts the attention of the other cultists attacking the caravan. They stop what they are doing and move to take down their attacker. She will make a worthy sacrifice.

Two of the Classes—the Skald and the Seer—are capable of casting various forms of magic. These are Runestones and Sagas. Runestones are polished stones into which spells are inscribed, whilst Sagas are memorised tales that are recited to channel the power of the gods. Both Runestones and Sagas take up an Inventory Slot in total and when either a Runestone or a Saga inflicts damage, it bypasses non-magical armour. There is a decent list of spells for the Seer, such as Cloak of Knives or Spectacle, as well as one for the Skald like Laughter or Sense Evil.

As the mighty warrioress comes to her aid and attacks the cultists who would have kidnapped her, the old woman, Tove, finds herself thrown into the snow. She is now free to act, and as Skald, she reaches into the folds of her tunic to pull out her Runic Focus. Concentrating on the key item, she recalls the story in which Thor called down the power of lightning on his enemies. With a crackle of energy, a dagger of lightning appears in her hand. From where she lies, she throws it at the Cultist still standing in front of the unknown warrioress. This inflicts three damage, reduced by one for the Cultist’s ‘Def’. This means the Cultist suffers Strength damage and triggers a Critical Damage save. The Warden rolls eleven for the Cultist, which means that with a zap, the Cultist is blown off his feet. The Warden rolls for the Cultist’s post-death ability. This time she rolls a one and a black tentacle emerges from the dead Cultist and inflicts a six-sided die’s worth of damage on Gertrude!

If an Adventurer dies, it does not necessarily mean that play is over. The Adventurer simply reawakens at the last Bonfire he rested at. He loses all Souls found—Souls are remnants of the power of the gods scattered and hidden across the Nine Realms, that if returned to a Bonfire whilst alive can be used to imbue an Adventurer with power and improve his abilities and Vitality—and has his Strength and Resilience restored to full. However, when this happens, it also reduces his Vigour by one. If his Vigour is reduced to zero in this fashion, the Adventurer truly dies and rises as a Shade… Lastly, any enemy that the Adventurer killed before dying is also returned to life!

This is the extent of Runecairn in terms of its basic rules. What is interesting about Runecairn: Wardensaga is that it shifts what would be the inherent abilities of a Player Character because said Player Character has a Class in another roleplaying game from the internal to external. Much of what a Player Character can do is down to the equipment that he carries and packs into his inventory, and many of them enable the use of skills. What that means is that an Adventurer in Runecairn: Wardensaga could snatch up a spear and carry a ‘Thrust’ attack as per the Warrior Class, enabling him to lunge forward ten feet and make an attack, but suffering from fatigue in return, or after obtaining a Runic Focus, learn spells as can a Skald. In addition to finding Souls and spells, an Adventurer can also find Relics and Rings. Relics are items imbued with magic or spells, often one-use items, which when used do not inflict Fatigue, and sometimes can be recharged. For example, a Skull Beacon, a charred and crumbling skull with faintly glimmering eye sockets, which glows brightly when held. It can be used to light up and area, but only once. To recharge it, it needs to be burned on a roaring bonfire. Rings typically grant a better benefit, but always at some cost. For example, the Iron Ring is wrought of dense metal grants a point of Defence, but at a loss of Speed.

The Advanced Rules of Runecairn: Wardensaga provide two extra Classes, alternate ways of playing the roleplaying game, and a Delve Generator. The two extra Classes are the Berserker and the Pyre. The former is a warrior who calls upon his animal spirit to fight with great ferocity, whilst the latter draws upon fire to burn his enemies and even shield against their attacks. The first of the alternate methods of play is solo play. This suggests playing Runecairn: Wardensaga as a Journalling game, suggesting that the player use an ‘Oracle’ as a means to draw meaning from the randomness of play, such as that created using the Delve Generator. This ‘Oracle’ can be a Tarot deck, but the guidance for solo play in the Advanced Rules of Runecairn: Wardensaga provides a set of tables to roll upon. The co-operative play gives a way of bringing another player into a session, the Adventurer using an effigy stone at a bonfire to summon a fallen hero—from either the past or the future—who will fight alongside the Adventurer, until one of them dies. Conversely, the Adventurer might face a ‘black fetch’ instead of a fallen hero, intent of stripping him of his humanity and vigour. The ‘black fetch’ can be run as a normal NPC by the Warden, or if both players do not object to the situation, by another player, setting up an adversarial situation. Alternatively, the ‘black fetch’ might actually be a fallen hero who believes the Adventurer to be the ‘black fetch’!

The Delve Generator creates locations for play in Runecairn: Wardensaga. This includes locations such as cairn or stronghold, objectives such as infiltrating the mercenary group at a stronghold and convincing its members to join the Adventurer or hunting a cairn for the rock troll that killed the adventurer’s family is hiding out in the family tomb. An extensive set of tables provides encounters within these locations, NPC reactions and actions, and a countdown mechanic which determines how close the Adventurer is to his objective after each encounter. Thus, the Adventurer need not explore the whole of the location to achieve his objective. The process is neatly handled through a flow chart that makes the solo play proceed with ease.

Penultimately, Runecairn: Wardensaga provides a complete delve, ‘Beneath the Broken Sword’. This is designed as an introductory adventure which showcases how to play and how the Adventurer lives and dies. It begins with the Adventurer waking up not know where he is and what he should possess, so the first part is really looking for both, though the inevitable death within the first few locations will teach the player the transient nature of life and death in the roleplaying game and then reinforce the importance of the Adventurer’s possessions as they really are key to his survival. Lastly, the appendices consist of a short, but useful bestiary, and some player options as well as a pronunciation guide.

Physically, Runecairn: Wardensaga is well presented and the artwork is excellent. However, the writing does feel succinct in places, leaving the reader wanting a little clearer explanation. However, there is a good example of Adventurer and a good example of combat. Both do a good job of showing how the roleplaying game works. If there is anything missing from the pages of Runecairn: Wardensaga, it is details of the wider world, of the Nine Realms, which the Warden will have to develop. Another issue is that there is no differentiation within each Class, so that the only difference one Warrior and another is their core abilities. That said, Runecairn: Wardensaga is not designed for that style of play where these are multiple players. Nevertheless, when there are two players involved, they should ideally have their Adventurers each be of a different Class.

Runecairn: Wardensagaa is the complete version of Runecairn, containing everything needed to play, including a beginning scenario, and then more to play further, whether that is just one player and the Warden, as is standard, solo play, or more players. There is a fantastically brutal dynamism to the play of Runecairn: Wardensaga, combined with a strong player agency that the Warden is encouraged to support through the roleplaying game’s principles. In particular, the thrust back and forth of combat is desperate and gruelling, a player whose Adventurer has his equipment, always having choices in terms of how he attacks and he reacts. This reliance upon equipment emphasises the power of these choices and makes the Adventurer feel mortal—even though this is not the case as death returns him to the last bonfire—rather than like some fantasy superhero. Yet the heroic aspect of Runecairn: Wardensaga means that the Adventurer can return from the dead, to come back with the knowledge of what killed him and perhaps be better prepared for the next attempt.

Above all, Runecairn: Wardensaga is a really enticing roleplaying game for two that gives the Warden a set of solid tools with which to create the situations and delves for the Adventurer to get involved in, whilst for the player, there are some great Adventurers to play and bring to life and use their skills, and together the means to explore a broken world. Ultimately, Runecairn: Wardensaga is like a computer game in its one-on-one play-style, but its post-Ragnarök action has all the advantages of a tabletop roleplaying game—player agency, the varied and more reactive world created by the Warden, and the fierce and feisty actions, reactions, and decisions of the Adventurer.

—oOo—

By Odin’s Beard will be at UK Games Expo which takes place on Friday, May 31st to Sunday June 2nd, 2024.

The Other OSR—We Deal in Lead

The world has not so much died as moved on. Landscapes seem to stretch on and on, pockmarked by settlements and the ruins of ages past, as strange machinery rumbles below seemingly straining to keep the sky and the ground moving like they did the day before. Old technology, much of it advanced by the standards of then and now, rusts and moulders where it sits; strange creatures—some said to have been things of legend and myth, lurk, ready to pounce and rend the unwary; and magic weaves a cunning attraction for the studious and the curious, the ambitious and the foolish, its knowledge perhaps lost on this world, but not the next. Figures are seen to stalk this world, sometimes alone, sometimes in the company of beast which seems to understand their every action and word, and never leave their side, sometimes together in brotherly orders, but all wielding the gun, a deadly artefact that they use to kill. To kill the bandit, the robber, the cheat, and the murder, the apostate of their order, and in doing so restore order of society and ensure the men and women of this time can live free of tyranny and banditry. Then they are gone. Perhaps they left with the caravan as a guard, maybe they simply moved on to the next settlement, or they just found the Slip Door they were looking and their Guns knows the location of and stepped through, not to the next settlement, though there is always one, but the next world. This is the life of the Gunslinger, wielder of the legendary gun across the Drifted World and their credo is “We deal in lead.”

We Deal In Lead: A Weird West Wanders Game is an Old School Renaissance-style roleplaying game published by By Odin’s Beard. It is set in in the post-apocalyptic dark and weird west of the Drifted World that can step sideways into other worlds and genres and back again as legendary Gunslingers stalk the land, perhaps bringing order to the remnants of society, and then moving on to fulfil quests of their own. Perhaps to kill the murder of their order’s elder, retrieve their lost elder’s guns and take up her mantle, restore their honour, or even slay the demon within. It combines a stripped-down presentation with the mechanics inspired by Cairn, Into the Odd, and Knave and presents the tools and tables to create wildernesses, worlds, and excursions, whether the Warden—as the Game Master is called—is running for a single player, a group, or a player is playing it as a journaling game and thus solo. As a setting and roleplaying game, it is very much inspired by Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series of novels, but also has the feel of a weird Spaghetti Western with genre-hopping possibilities in terms of other roleplaying adventures.

We Deal In Lead begins with advice for Warden and player alike. It does this as a series of principles presented as bullet points. For the Warden these include design philosophy—neutrality of the role, that the roleplaying game is Classless, death is always a possibility, the players should always be presented with clear choices, and the players share objectives, and so on, as well as the nature of adventures, content and safety tools, how to handle information, difficulty, narrative focus, and preparation, and present danger, treasure, and choice. For the player, the principles advise agency, teamwork, exploration, talking, caution, planning, and ambition, and if one path leads to defeat, then they should look for an alternative path. For the most part, these will be familiar to adherents of the Old School Renaissance, but are not elucidated upon, but rather kept short and to the point. The same is done when describing the Drifted World, a set of principles that are to the point rather than providing any great detail. On the plus side this means that there are going to be basic elements which will be the same from one Warden’s game of We Deal In Lead to another because the principles are presented in a direct and accessible fashion, whilst leaving plenty of scope for the Warden to develop the details. On the downside, this can leave the Warden with more effort required to prepare and run a game, although the book includes numerous tables designed to help with that. Overall, the sparse nature of these sets of principles reflects the open nature of We Deal In Lead’s Drifted World.

A Gunslinger in We Deal In Lead has three Abilities—Strength, Dexterity, and Heart, ranging in value between three and eighteen. Of the three abilities, Strength and Dexterity are obvious in their use, whilst Heart is used for social interaction, carrying out rituals, and in Gunslinger duels. Grit represents his ability to endure and continue rather than health, plus various physical and mental traits and some equipment. He owns a Gun, a firearm out of antiquity with inlaid stock and engraving. He may also be a member of an order of Gunslingers, led by an Errant. This might be a Player Character or an NPC. To create a Gunslinger in We Deal In Lead, a player chooses or rolls on the tables for name, surname, and background, plus any extra traits, and then three six-sided dice for the Gunslinger’s abilities, followed by two six-sided dice for his Grit. He selects or rolls for the details of his gun and his hat, and then some equipment. The Gunslinger is ready to play.

Maggie Chambers
Age: 38
TRAITS
Background: Bandit Physique: Short Skin: Pockmarked Hair: Braided Face: Sunken Eyes: Distant Speech: Squeaky Clothing: Colourful
Virtue: Tolerant Vice: Cold Reputation: Driven Misfortune: Heartbroken
Strength 13
Dexterity 16
Heart 15
Grit 9

EQUIPMENT
Three days’ rations, torch, 12 lead, Rifle with ironwood grip and hawk engraving, galloner hat

Mechanically, We Deal In Lead is straightforward. When a player wants his Gunslinger to act, he rolls a save versus either Strength, Dexterity, or Heart, needing to roll equal to or lower than the value. A one always succeeds and a twenty always fails. Standard rules are used for advantage and disadvantage. Armour provides some Defence, but only against mundane attacks, not against bullets. Damage is inflicted directly on Grit, then Strength, which can inflict critical damage. When Strength is reduced to zero a Gunslinger is dead. Critical damage necessitates checking on the Scars Table, which depending on the damage suffered, can leave the Gunslinger with concussion, bloodied, touched (and aware of the location of the next Slip Door), or even dead. Gunfire is resolved not through a Save versus an ability, but a roll of two six-sided dice on the ‘Shoot Table’ which might mean maximum damage, a hit or a graze, a miss, or a mishap. It is thus random, but because the gun of the Gunslinger is an artefact or relic gun, it grants certain advantages, including Steel Resolve, in which the Gunslinger draws resolve from his weapon to restore Grit and special attacks. These differ by weapon. Thus, there is ‘Fan the Hammer’ for the six shooter and ‘Give It Both Barrels’ for the shotgun. If a Gunsmith and a forge can be found, a Gunslinger can have his Gun upgraded, although the price is high.

Duels—and specifically duels against other Gunslingers—are even deadlier as you would expect. Contests are required to determine who fires first and hitting an opposing duellist necessitates a save versus Heart. Damage is deducted directly from a Duellist’s Strength rather than Grit. Combat can be deadly, especially duels, and opponents will often flee Gunslingers, their morale broken. Gunslingers themselves can also be affected by the loss of morale, though usually only when they lose their Guns or their Errant is killed. Then they are broken.

Beyond the core rules and combat, We Deal In Lead provides for magic and companion beasts. The latter can bond with a Gunslinger and so become a Gunslinger themselves—bar the Gun, of course, a loyal companion who can help a Gunslinger on his quest. The former mostly involves rituals, often cast by groups. No magic itself is described, but rather the rules suggest that it be rare, knowledge of it having been mostly lost, and not without its cost. Unless presented with the means and motive to cast magic, it is likely to remain a narrative aspect of a campaign’s villain and thus the province of the Warden. Further rules cover wilderness exploration, of which there is a lot in the roleplaying game, so turning parts of its play into a hexcrawl, and traversing to other worlds, primarily through Slip Doors. There are threats and legends that stalk the in-between spaces, but a Gunslinger’s Gun never stops working—though he may need to find a world’s alternative to lead. The wilderness rules are supported by a table of wilderness encounter hooks and a lengthier and more detailed set of tables to create excursions, essentially missions on the other side of Slip Doors on other worlds. Both are designed to work with the solo or journaling rules that allow a single player to stalk the Drifted World via his Gunslinger, including a flow chart to track his progress. In addition, the bestiary in the appendix provides nearly forty monsters to face along the way. Some feel drawn straight of Dungeons & Dragons, some have a cryptological bent to them, whilst others like the Mayhem Beast, Serfbot, Skinshift, Ursborg, and Drifted Third are native to the setting. Lastly, in the scenario, ‘Swampwater Shootout’, the Gunslingers go after the turncoat who killed the Errant of their Order. It is a fairly short affair, designed to introduce the game and its mechanics, and should provide a session’s worth of action.

Physically, We Deal In Lead is well presented. For the most part the book is done in cream, but the thick border of every page is colour coded according to the chapter and its subject matter. This makes finding things in the book that little bit easier. The rules are all very clearly presented and surprisingly, for a book of its length, supported by proper examples both of character creation and combat. The latter is quite lengthy, taking up two whole pages and also serving as an example of play.

If there is an issue with We Deal In Lead it is in its openness and often its sense of the ineffable and the beyond. It leaves a very great deal for the Warden to fill in and develop, certainly in terms of anything akin to a campaign or long-term play. For some Wardens this will not be an issue, but for others, it may be the case. By comparison, the short term is very well supported with encounters and excursion ideas. This does though mean that there is a flexibility to We Deal In Lead, the Warden being free to run it in the slightly done setting as presented, create her own endless prairie, or even switch genres to a standard Western.

We Deal In Lead: A Weird West Wanders Game takes the Old School Renaissance and the Wild West to an empty, endless frontier, its sparseness and openness often matched by the look of the book. Whilst the origins of We Deal In Lead: A Weird West Wanders Game may lie in micro-clones such as Cairn and Knave, the designers do an excellent job of building upon them to present something new, in a different genre with the sense of a world that really has drifted on.

The Other OSR—Cairn

The Old School Renaissance continues to evolve although in small steps. Thus we have Cairn, a small Old School-style roleplaying game derived from two other designs, Into the Odd and Knave, both highly regarded. Designed to be played by a Warden—its term for Game Master and a handful of players, it casts the Player Characters as hardened adventurers who undertake to explore a dark and mysterious Wood populated with strange folk, hidden treasure, and unspeakable monstrosities. As a system, it does not use character Classes, eschews Experience Points in favour of in-world experience to gain new skills and abilities, has death firmly placed around the corner, and play has the Player Characters working together towards a common objective. Thus, from Into the Odd, Cairn employs three attributes, deadly combat with automatic hits which make armour a wise choice and forces a player to ask whether combat is always the right solution, armour deducting damage suffered, whilst from Knave, it uses the equipment slot mechanics for everything a Player Character carries, including the one-spell spellbooks and similar tables for determining traits for the character.

Where Cairn starts is in presenting up front its principles of play for both the Warden and her players. For the Warden these deal with how information, difficulty, danger, choice, preparation, narrative focus, treasure, and fate are handled during play, whilst for the player they cover agency, teamwork, exploration, communication, caution, planning, and ambition. For example, when it comes to danger, the Warden is told that the Player Characters face real risk of pain and death; that she should telegraph any danger clearly to the players and their characters; traps should be obvious allowing the players and their characters time to work out to disarm them; and she should provide opportunities to solve problems and interact with the world. For the players and their characters, they are advised to use teamwork, seeking consensus before rushing to act, agreeing to follow the same goals and limits, to respect each other, and consequently accomplish more as a group than single characters. Many of the points are obvious, but here they are placed up front for both player and Warden, and direct and to the point. It is a case of, “Here is what you are playing and here is how you play it to get the best out of it.” It is solid advice and both sections should be read by the Warden and her players.

A Player Character in Cairn has three abilities—Strength, Dexterity, and Willpower. These are rolled on three six-sided dice. He has between one and six points of Hit Protection. This is not Hit Points in the traditional sense of roleplaying games, but rather a measure of resilience, luck, and gumption, rather than health. He has an Inventory of ten slots, which includes backpack, both hands, and upper body. A player rolls for the three abilities, and then on tables for name and background, and various character traits, including physique, skin, hair, face, speech, clothing, virtue, vice, reputation, and misfortunes. He also rolls for armour, helmet and shields, expeditionary gear, tools, trinkets, and a bonus item. In addition, the Player Character has some rations, a torch, and some gold. Optional Gear Packages are listed if the Warden and her players want to play a more traditional style of fantasy roleplaying game. These include Cleric, Dwarf, Elf, Fighter, Magic-User, Ranger, and Thief, but also the odder Dowser, Friar, and Knight. Most of the traits are roleplaying and appearance cues, but the Player Character’s Background suggests an area of knowledge and skills, though this not reflected mechanically in the game itself. It is left up to the Game Master to decide whether that is the case or not, but mechanically, this would have made each Player Character stand out a little more. The process is straightforward and takes a few minutes.

Name: Esme Hunter
Background: Smuggler
Strength: 07 Dexterity: 10 Willpower: 08
Physique: Scrawny Skin: Soft
Hair: Filthy Face: Rat-like
Speech: Formal Clothing: Bloody
Virtue: Courageous Vice: Craven
Reputation: Respected Misfortunes: Cursed

Equipment
Armour: Brigadine
Helmet and Shield: None
Weapons: Dagger, Cudgel, Staff
Backpack: Three days’ rations, torch, Wolfsbane, Drill, Dice Set, Metal File

Mechanically in Cairn, a Player Character rolls a Save against an appropriate ability, aiming to roll equal to or under. A one is always a success and a twenty always a failure. It is as simple as that, and combat does not much more in the way of complexity. In combat, a player will primarily be rolling to gain initiative and to inflict damage. Gaining the initiative—and therefore either the high ground or a point where an ambush can be performed—is important because it means that the Player Character can get a strike in first, inflict damage first, and hopefully defeat an opponent. This is because very attack hits and inflicts damage. Damage is rolled by weapon type, from a four-sided die for sling shots to a ten-sided die for a polearm, but attack damage can be reduced to a four-sided die no matter what the weapon if the combatants are fighting from a position of weakness or increased to a twelve-sided die if fighting from a position of strength.

Armour reduces damage, which is then deducted from the Player Character’s Hit Protection. Once that is reduced to zero, it is deducted from the defendant’s Strength. When this happens, a Strength Save is required to avoid taking critical damage. This is immediately crippling and lethal not that long after… If a defendant’s Strength is reduced to zero, then he dies anyway. If the Player Character’s Hit Protection is reduced to exactly zero without any Strength damage. The amount of damage suffered determines the result. For example, a two means that the Player Character suffers a Rattling Blow, and is disoriented and shaken. The player describes how his character refocuses and rerolls his character’s Hit Protection.

In the long term, Scars are the primary way in which the Player Character improves. Most have the player reroll his character’s Hit Protection. If higher than the character’s maximum Hit Protection, then the new maximum is kept. Others though, do the same for the Player Character’s Strength, Dexterity, or Will. In this way, suffering Scars becomes a learning experience for the Player Character. An uncertain one, but a learning experience nonetheless.

All Player Characters in Cairn can read and cast magic from a Spellbook, each of which holds one spell. The secret to writing spells is unknown and Spellbooks are mostly looted from dungeons and tombs. It is fatiguing to cast spells—modelled by having one Inventory slot filled temporarily to reflect tiredness and ability to carry items. A list of some hundred spells is included, such as Astral Prison, Flare, Ooze Form, or True Sight. Casting a spell can be done again and again, but the caster’s Fatigue grows, until he is exhausted and cannot cast any more. The variety of spells, their relative power, and the fact that they cannot be replicated makes them worth searching for.

Also worth searching for are Relics. These are items of magical power, perhaps imbued with a spell. Although they do not cause fatigue when used, they have limited use and the examples given possess strict means of being recharged. For example, the Honeyclasp is a rusted ring which can shrink the wearer to six inches tall and has three charges. To recharge it, it must be bathed in a thimble-sized cup of royal jelly. The few Relics here are clever and pleasing and different. However, Relics are not Treasure. Treasure—as stated in the principles at the start of Cairn, is always specific to the environment from where it is recovered, tells a story, is highly valuable, likely bulky, rarely useful beyond its worth and prestige, and in terms of game play, used as a lure to exotic locations under the protection of intimidating foes. However, there are no examples of treasure of Cairn and that contributes towards the primary issue with the roleplaying game.

Cairn includes a short bestiary of creatures, such as the Root Goblin, the Wood Troll, and the Frost Elf. These are nicely detailed and possess a certain flavour, and the bestiary is paralleled literally with a guide to creating monsters. Much like the rest of Cairn, these guidelines are short and to the point, and they include guideline for converting creatures and monsters from other Old School Renaissance roleplaying games.

So far, so good. What Cairn does is provide a simple, sturdy set of rules that play quickly and are quick to set up by the players, plus a few examples of what might be found or encountered when playing the game. Then nothing. In fact, not just one nothing, but rather three nothings, all of which could have been addressed in a handful of pages. The first omission is a lack of setting. One is implied, that the Player Characters are exploring a mysterious woodland, filled with all manner of creatures fae and fell, searching and pillaging ancient barrows, stealing powerful spellbooks, and slaying unspeakable monstrosities. Bar the half dozen monsters and four relics presented in the book, there is none of this implied setting on show, and hardly even that… So there is no example of a mysterious woodland at all. One such wood, Dolmenwood, is mentioned in the acknowledgements and that is a possible example of such a wood, but that wood tends towards a certain whimsy that Cairn does not necessarily lend itself to—as written. Nor is there a discussion of what such a woodland might be or any help and advice for the Game Master who wants to create one. That is the second omission, whilst the third is a lack of a scenario, and all three together means that Cairn is not only incomplete, but also fails to follow through on its implication.

Physically, Cairn is well presented, the writing to the point, and the artwork, all public domain, does much to suggest a dark forestial setting.

Cairn feels like it should be suited for a dark and gritty, grubby and mouldering campaign involving intrusions into the wilderness, exploring ancient woodlands, and delving into tombs and barrows of the ancient past, played by fragile men and women who might just learn from their experiences. It has the mechanics and rules to do this, quick and brutal, but backed up with some excellent design philosophies and principles placed at the front of the book. Yet as solid as the rules are in Cairn and as solid as its inspirations are in Into the Odd and Knave, Cairn ultimately fails as a complete RPG because it never follows through on its implied setting. It only tells you what that setting is, it never shows you what that setting is. When Cairn, Second Edition is published with either the setting, setting advice, scenario, or all three that current edition only implies, it will be a complete roleplaying game and all the better for it.

The Other OSR—Kuf

The world is not what it seems. There is a barrier which surrounds reality and gives it the order and natural laws that mankind, blind to the truth that only outsiders, cultists, and the oddballs recognise and follow, for beyond the barrier lies chaos… At first a reflection of our reality, but then a distorted version, and further and further away until there are no natural laws and nothing that can be recognised of our reality. The barrier is not immutable, for in places it is weak and there are things and beings on the other side which want to get through to our reality, and even worse, men and women who would help them, and even welcome them through. Some work alone, but others form cults, hiding behind other organisations and planning and plotting away in secret, hunting for and researching the knowledge that will bring their plans to fruition, whether that is for power, to discover their truth about the cosmos, or simply to destroy reality. There are others on the same path, who through personal trauma have come to realise the true nature of reality, but do not plot, plan, or research ways in which to pierce the barrier for their own ends, but to prevent monsters from succeeding or being let in… They are outsiders, weirdos, and oddballs, pulled into a maelstrom of terrible events which nobody will ever believe, but returning scarred and traumatised, knowing that they may need to do it again and again, because no one else will.

This is the setting for Kuf—meaning oddball or eccentric—a modern-day roleplaying game of Gnostic horror published by Wilhem’s Games. As written, it is set in modern-day Sweden, but can be easily set elsewhere and it uses the light mechanics of Knave. The result is a collision of esoteric horror and the Old School Renaissance, the Player Characters simply drawn and decidedly fragile, both mentally and physically, in the face of the resources that the cults can bring to bear and the things that they might summon. It is played in three distinct phases—Exploration, Confrontation, and Recovery. In the Exploration Phase, the Player Characters investigate, conduct research and interviews, monitor suspects, purchase and ready equipment, and ultimately, prepare for the Confrontation Phase. The Confrontation Phase is when the Player Characters sneak into the cult headquarters or summoning site, pierce the barrier and confront the things on the other side, and hopefully disrupt the ritual or plans of the cultists. The Recovery Phase is more formal and takes a month, but can take place between investigations or sessions. This is when the Player Characters plan the next investigation, seek medical care, study an artefact or read an esoteric tome, buy illegal equipment, recruit companions to the cause, and so on. Mechanically, all of these activities are rolled for, so might work, or even might be cut short because the next Exploration Phases begins—perhaps because the cultists they stopped in the previous Confrontation Phase have come looking for them!

A Player Character in Kuf looks like a Player Character in Dungeons & Dragons. He has the six requisite Attributes—Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. Five of these cover aspects as you would expect. Thus, Strength is used for melee attacks and physical Saving Throws; Dexterity covers agility and speed; Constitution to resist poison and sickness; Intelligence for handling concentration, recall, using magic and more; and Charisma for interacting with NPCs and recruiting companions. The difference is that Wisdom, in addition to covering the usual perception and intuition, actually handles ranged attacks! It is a radical change, but it means that Wisdom can be used as a more active attribute and that ranged attacks are associated with perception, and also it shifts some of the traditional emphasis in other retroclones away from Dexterity.

Each Attribute has both a bonus and a defence. The bonus is equal to the lowest value rolled during character creation. This is done using three six-sided dice, in order, as is traditional. Thus if a player rolled three, four, and five, to get a total of twelve, the bonus would be three. The Defence for an Attribute is the bonus value, plus ten. A Player Character also has a Level, which begins at zero, and represents the degree to which he has been affected by exposure to the true nature of the universe. As gains Levels, he will be changed by the universe, and gain odd powers or gifts, such as halo of light forming around his head which he must constantly concentrate on has to continuously concentrate to suppress, becoming semi-fireproof, or gaining true sight and so be able to see through the disguises of the creatures and things that have managed to cross through the barrier. Both Hit Points and Mind Points—the latter the equivalent of Sanity found in other roleplaying games—are derived from combinations of the attribute bonuses. A Player Character begins play with no armour and thus the base Armour Defence value, though he may be able to purchase armour during play and thus improve it. He will also have a Background or occupation, and a trauma or event which exposed him to the maelstrom. This trauma also grants him starting Experience Points.

To create a character in Kuf, a player rolls three six-sided dice for the six Attributes, noting their Bonus and Defence values, and then rolls for Background and Trauma, plus the starting Experience Points from the Trauma. He can also roll or pick any extra languages the character knows and either pick or roll for a name.

Emma Hansson

Background: Farmer

Trauma: Insanity (Batrachophobia)

Languages: Swedish, Hebrew, French, Arabic, Spanish, German
Level 0

Experience Points: 139
Hit Points: 8

Mind Points: 09
Armour: None Bonus +1/Defence 11

Strength 16 Bonus +5/Defence 15
Dexterity 07 Bonus +1/Defence 11
Constitution 08 Bonus +2/Defence 12
Intelligence 15 Bonus +5/Defence 15
Wisdom 14 Bonus +2/Defence 12
Charisma 11 Bonus +3/Defence 12

Mechanically, Kuf uses a throw of a twenty-sided die against a standard difficulty. If the player rolls sixteen or more, his character succeeds at the action. When it comes to opposed Saving Throws, this can be rolled by the player or the Game Master. For example, if a Player Character attempts to grapple a thief who just robbed him, his player could roll and add his character’s Strength Bonus against the thief’s Dexterity Defence, or the Game Master could roll against the Player Character’s Dexterity Defence adding the thief’s Dexterity Bonus. The option here is whether or not the Game Master and her players want to play Kuf with player-facing rolls or use the standard method in which both players and the Game Master roll as necessary.

The option is also included to use Advantage and Disadvantage, as per Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. Typically, this will come from the situation or the environment, but it could also come from any one of the several Traits rolled or chosen during character creation. The mix of these underlie who or what a character is and so bringing them into play encourages roleplaying.

Combat in Kuf is kept simple. The Player Characters and their opponents both have a fifty percent chance of winning the Initiative, and attack rolls, whether using the Strength Bonus for melee attacks or the Wisdom Bonus for ranged attacks, have to be greater than the Defence value of the armour worn. Alternatively, if using player-facing rolls, the defending player would roll his character’s Armour Bonus to beat the attacker’s Defence value. In addition, Opposed Saving Throws can be used to do Stunts, such as stunning an opponent, knocking them over, disarming them, smashing armour, and so on. Stunts do not do damage though, although they can be combined with an attack attempt if the attacker has Advantage. This is instead rolling the two twenty-sided dice which is normal for Advantage.

Successful attacks do not just inflict damage per the weapon’s die size, but also by the type of attack. Blunt force trauma inflicts light wounds; shots, stabs, and cuts inflict serious wounds; destructive damage inflicts critical wounds; and beyond that, there are permanent wounds. On the character sheet, there are boxes for tracking Hit Points and wounds, each type of wound being marked with a different symbol. One type of wound can upgrade a lesser type, and once all of the boxes have been filled in on a Player Character’s wound track, his player starts again at the beginning, but fills them the boxes in with the worse wound type. For example, if a Player Character has all of his wound boxes filled with light wounds by being beaten up by thugs armed with baseball bats, and the beating continues, his player would start filling up the wound track with serious wounds. In combat critical hits either add another die’s worth of damage or upgrade the wound type.

Kuf then does the same for the Mind and Mind Points with sources of stress, which can be seeing beyond the barrier for the first time, encountering a frightening monster, suffering from a phobia, being the victim of crime, and so on. Like physical wounds, the effects of stress can be light, serious, critical, or permanent, and greater effects can overwrite the lesser effects. However, when a greater stress type overwrites a lesser type, a Player Character can suffer a Stress Reaction. This might be that he freezes on the spot, fleeing, or even attacking the source of stress. Critical trauma suffered through stress can also inflict nightmares, phobias, and worse.

In both cases of physical and mental damage, permanent wounds reduce a Player Character’s attribute bonuses each time permanent wounds are suffered. Player Characters in Kuf are meant to be fragile, but this gives them a greater degree of resilience than is found in Knave. However, there is a brutal nature to that resilience as more wounds are suffered and the damage gets worse and worse—and Kuf applies this to both mental and physical damage.

For the Referee there is advice on running the game and its three phases—the Exploration Phase, Confrontation Phase, and Recovery Phase—as well discussions on the nature of the barrier and what lies beyond it, ritual magic, cults and cultists, artefacts and books, and creatures from nightmare, and in general the advice is good. However, there are problems with it, one lesser, three greater. The lesser problem is that the section for the Referee is not as well presented and in a lot of the table results for various tasks, like seeking medical care or purchasing illegal equipment, there are sections missing. The first of the greater problems is that the Kuf does not give the Referee enough threats or rituals or books or artefacts for her to really get started or take inspiration from. There really is only one of each and it is just not enough.

The second greater problem is that there is no ready-to-play scenario. Now the Referee can take the somewhat frugal examples and inspiration from them to develop a scenario, and similarly, take inspiration from the lengthy example of play that takes up the last quarter of the book. This is quite entertaining and shows the reader how the designer intends Kuf to be played.

The third greater problem is the broad nature of the game’s background. Gnosticism is the belief that human beings contain a piece of the highest good or a divine spark within themselves, and that both these bodies and the material world, having been created by an inferior being, are evil. Since it is trapped in the material world and ignorant of its status, this divine spark needs knowledge—‘gnosis’—in order to understand their true nature. This knowledge must come from outside the material world, which in Kuf is the other side of the barrier. At the same in Kuf, the Player Characters are protecting others from what lies on the other side of the barrier, and yet despite underpinning the roleplaying game, this deeper background is never really explored in Kuf. Perhaps the inclusion of a scenario or better yet, more threats, cults, creatures from beyond, and so on would have given scope for the designer to present this background in an accessible fashion.

Physically, Kuf is plain and simple, without any illustrations. It needs an edit, especially in the latter two thirds of the book.

Kuf works as a brutally nasty horror game—at least in mechanical terms, but does not quite work as a fully rounded, playable roleplaying game. If the Referee is looking for a modern day, grim and gritty horror roleplaying game using Old School Renaissance-style mechanics, then Kuf has the basics of everything she needs. If the Referee is looking for a modern day, grim and gritty horror roleplaying game with an interesting setting, then Kuf is not quite it. With some development (or even a second edition) Kuf could be the Gnostic horror game which the author envisioned, for its pages contain suggestions of it, tantalising the reader and the Referee like hints behind some kind of barrier, waiting the revelation which will reach out and touch that divine spark…