Speaking of blood, this is Eat the Reich (2023).

I love conventional campaign play, but more and more, the things that get me really, really excited to read and play are short run games that are attempting to convey a specific experience. The cinematic scenarios for Alien and the SMS RPG Alice is Missing both come to mind. But now, holy cow, Eat the Reich.

You’re vampires. That’s a broader umbrella than you might expect but, you’re all monsters that eat people. And you’re air-dropped into Paris with one mission: to drink all of Hitler’s blood. Bonus: you get to carve your way through ranks of nazis in the ulta-est ultraviolent way possible on your way from Point A to Point B. Characters are pre-generated and aim to satisfy a range of individual play styles. The system is a fast, hard-hitting, high-powered dice-pool system designed make players feel incredibly strong and the nazis extremely squishy as they traverse (and destroy) points of interest on the way to their goal. And that’s the entire experience; three two-hour sessions of glorious nazi annihilation. Inglorious Basterds wishes it was this good.

Yes, it’s bombastic, cathartic wish-fulfillment and self-described propaganda and I have zero problem with it. It’s a joy to read — Grant Howitt’s prose makes the act of reading rules bizarrely entertaining. Few, if any, RPGs have this amount of zip. Will Kirby’s consciously excessive art ties it all together. There’s heaps of personality in every portrait, more than enough to fuel play for a pre-gen for a couple sessions. The book practically glows with an unholy magenta radiation.

And I know, they set out to deliver this very specific experience, and I shouldn’t expect more. But in the back, Howitt suggests several ways to hack the game. Go after Mussolini and Hirohito (the latter suggestion bears the header “HiroEATo”)! Team up with George Orwell against Franco! End the war, go back to the UK and drink Winston Churchill! I would pay good money for all these books.