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The post Mythic Britain & Ireland appeared first on Vintage RPG.

I feel like there are two other places where there exist similar tensions between the mythical landscape and the mundane one. This is a sourcebook for one of them: Mythic Britain & Ireland (2022). And it’s written by Graeme Davis, who was instrumental in early Warhammer fantasy and writer of one of my favorite Fighting Fantasy books, Midnight Rogue. In his introduction, he writes how he had always wanted to pen a book like this that married British folklore and gaming; his reverence for his subject matter shines through.

Britain, littered with neolithic site and haunted by fae folk, is such a good fit for this treatment. The first 40 pages is a general sourcebook, listing real world places and pairing them with their most interesting folkloric elements, always with an eye toward the tension between the conqueror (the English) and the (sort of) conquered (the Scots, Welsh and Irish). Elegant and thought-provoking, I could read another 200 page of this. Davis then presents us with the Society, which is dedicated to investigating supernatural manifestations in the UK. Following this is a long section of new monsters (Black dogs! The Nuckelavee! Knockers! Pooka!). 

The book wraps up with three scenarios. The first is a delicious bit of folk horror that sees the obvious awakening of an unnatural force (a powerful hag) that becomes more dangerous because the people who could stop it initially muck about trying to find reasonable explanations for what’s going on. The second is a reverse, where a local vicar causes problems by trying to purge the mine of its knockers. The final scenario brings the action to the extremely mundane city of London and an artist’s colony with an extraordinary leader.

It’s a fantastic expansion for the game and ripe with possibility.   

Now do Malaysia.

The post Mythic Britain & Ireland (2022) appeared first on Vintage RPG.

If I were to make an illustrator spectrum, I’d plot Egerkrans somewhere between Tony DiTerlizzi and Mike Mignola. He shares the former’s ability to make his subjects appear both whimsical and dangerous simultaneously. You can see something of Mignola when Egerkrans’ shifts into stylized minimalism. I love his palette (so much golden light, as though this fairy world exists in a perpetual autumn sunset) and his willingness to forgo detail for drama (those slivers of red light in the illustration of the drake are straight delicious). All the art is beguiling, and unified by a sort of light and airy Daniel Cohen-style field guide approach to the subject. Catnip for me, basically.

The book itself is worth mentioning. It feels very nice in the hand. This is partly the choice of coarse woven cover cloth, which feels cozy and old fashioned (Love that shade of blue, too). The interior paper stock is nice too — it feels almost supernaturally airy. Egerkrans has two additional books, Norse Mythology and The Undead. Both combine the tactile pleasure of nicely made books with his gorgeous art and mysterious narrative style. A fourth, entirely dedicated to Dragons, should be coming soon. (And if that’s still not enough, you can more of his art in the Ruin Masters RPG!)

The post Vaesen (2017) appeared first on Vintage RPG.

This is pretty great! No other horror RPG is like this. And I quite like that solving the mystery is only half the problem — once all is revealed, players have to make decisions that impact everyone involved, and more. They don’t get to just call the cops and leave someone else to clean up the mess. In this way, Vaesen feels very much of its place, tapping the vibe of Nordic Noir stories, which often involve the unearthing of deep secrets and end with everyone worse off and sadder than they were at the start.

The post A Wicked Secret (2020) appeared first on Vintage RPG.

The world of Vaesen is one in which humanity is encroaching on the wild regions where supernatural creatures dwell. While not necessarily hostile, they are incompatible with our industrialized world of reason. Thus, the horror of Vaesen is born out of tragedy. There is a sense in some Hellboy stories that in killing the monsters he fights, he is robbing the world of its magic. Vaesen shares some of that — these mythic creatures are only ever acting in accordance to their nature, not out of malice. Humanity is the interloper, but the monsters are the ones that get punished. So a horror game? Yes. But a melancholy one.

Vaesen uses the Year Zero Engine and this one is more at the lighter, more narrative focused end of the spectrum, in the same neighborhood as Tales from the Loop. Skill and attribute values equal the number of dice rolled, sixes are successes, damage is rendered in statuses that remove dice from your pool. Too many statuses, you can’t do anything and are maybe dead. Pretty standard. Non-standard is that monsters also have statuses, and these dictate their behavior, which is interesting, since solving a mystery isn’t usually about killing a monster, but rather finding a solution to a problem that is forcing the monster to clash with humanity. More on mysteries tomorrow, though.

The other main thing with Vaesen is a fun base building meta-game, derived from Mutant: Year Zero. Your characters are part of a larger society and success in the field can lead to upgrades for their headquarters, which in turn give characters an edge in future investigations. This sort of thing is catnip for me and I think Vaesen’s approach strikes an excellent balance — the base building is an engrossing reward that doesn’t overwhelm.

The post Vaesen (2020) appeared first on Vintage RPG.