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Sword Noir: A Role-playing Game of Hardboiled Sword & Sorcery

Sword Noir: A Role-playing Game of Hardboiled Sword & Sorcery

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conan-cityImagine Conan in Shadizar, meeting with a beautiful woman calling herself Fortuna who pays him to find Thuris, the man who kidnapped her younger sister. Conan accepts the woman’s coin but finds himself in the middle of double and triple crosses as Fortuna — known as Brigid the Bold in the underworld — seeks for the Falcon of Maltus along with her betrayed confederates, Jubliex Cairo, Wilmer the Younger, and Gutmar.

Think of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser hired by the powerful merchant Sternwood to scare ne’er-do-well Geiger away from the merchant’s daughter Carmen, only to be caught up in blackmail, murder, kidnapping, and family secrets.

Yes, those were the plots of The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep using three of the iconic characters of sword & sorcery. That’s what I’d call Sword Noir, and that’s what I called the role-playing game I just published, subtitled A Role-playing Game of Hardboiled Sword & Sorcery.

Sword Noir is a game now, but it started as something a little more than a conceit and little less than a genre. Basically, I attempted to give some kind of short-hand to the stories I wrote.

sword-noirAs usual, the kind of stories I was reading and writing bled into the kind of games I was playing, and this took me down a path I did not expect. I ended cobbling together a system that was purpose built to play “sword noir.” In order to do that, I had to define the term.

This is what I came up with: Characters’ morals are shifting at best and absent at worst. The atmosphere is dark and hope is frail or completely absent. Violence is deadly and fast.

The characters are good at what they do, but they are specialists. Trust is the most valued of commodities – life is the cheapest.

Grim leaders weave labyrinthine plots which entangle innocents. Magic exists and can be powerful, but it takes extreme dedication to learn, extorts a horrible price, and is slow to conjure.

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Game Review: Conquest of Nerath

Game Review: Conquest of Nerath

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No matter if its the cover or the interior shots, this game's art is off the hook
No matter if its the cover or the interior shots, this game’s art is off the hook

In my lifetime I’ve played a lot of games, some more than others, but if any board game stands out above the rest as eating away massive chunks of my time it’s the WWII classic Axis and Allies. In the 80s, upon the game’s release, I fell in such deep infatuation with this game that I actually left it out on a table in my living room and played against myself for the length of an entire summer. Yeah, you know how you see ‘smart people’ in movies playing chess against themselves? Well, that was me and Axis and Allies.

I was so devoted to it, that I’ve actually only lost a single game in twenty-six years, and that was the first one I ever played [although I do have a draw in there someplace].

Now, you might be wondering why I’m bringing Axis and Allies up in a post concerning Wizard’s of the Coast’s new epic game Conquest of Nerath. Well, quite simply, because in all my years of gaming, and all the games I’ve played, I’d yet to find something in the same realm of awesome as A&A until I sat down to play Conquest.

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Art of the Genre: Leiber, Mignola, and Graphic Novels

Art of the Genre: Leiber, Mignola, and Graphic Novels

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Mignola... when doves fly...
Mignola... when doves fly...
In 1991 I wasn’t a fan of the Mike Mignola. To be frank, I actually couldn’t stand his artwork, but again I was twenty and my taste in art leaned much toward the polished standard and less toward the truly talented.

At that time I also wasn’t much of a reader. Sure, I read almost every day, taking in as much fantasy as I could, but for the most part it was also commercially driven stuff that in the final call of ‘what matters in fantasy’ it would almost all be found woefully lacking.

So it was with great interest that I discovered Epic Comics rendition of Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser on my comic shop’s shelves. It was noteworthy because it featured art by Mike Mignola, was adapted by Howard Chaykin, and had a kind of darkness to it that was antithesis to the flare of most superhero books coming out of the early stages of the comic boom.

For me this series created a kind of enigma, that being that I loved fantasy but had only associated with Fritz Leiber in the TSR gaming supplement Lankhmar: City of Adventure. [Note: At the time I role-played in TSR’s Lankhmar, the song ‘One Night in Bangkok’ was on the radio and to this day I can’t say the world Lankhmar without setting it to a British vocal intonation accompanied by the words ‘City of Adventure’, just as Murry Head would began his song with ‘Bangkok, Oriental Setting’. BTW, it has to be the only Top 10 song in history that makes Chess seem downright cool.]

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Game Review: Dragon Dominoes in Looney Labs’ Seven Dragons

Game Review: Dragon Dominoes in Looney Labs’ Seven Dragons

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sevendragons_1Two of my favorite card games come from Looney Labs: Fluxx and Chrononauts.  One of the major selling points of these games, for me, is that they’re creative games that have victory conditions that can change on a dime. You can be close to winning and then, with a lucky and well-played turn by an opponent, you can find yourself on the losing end.

Seven Dragons captures this chaotic feel, mixing it with some great fantasy artwork by Larry Elmore. The name comes from two different aspects of the game:

  • There are seven different colors of dragons represented in the the game: red, black, gold, blue, green, silver, and rainbow
  • The goal of the game is to create a chain of seven dragons of your designated color

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ScrumBrawl: Fantasy-Based Sports Goodness

ScrumBrawl: Fantasy-Based Sports Goodness

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scrumbrawlI’ve always been fascinated by the attempts of gaming companies to turn athletic sports into board games. Fascinated, but not quite intrigued enough to play one, until now.

Some of the most notable of these efforts seem to have historically come when a successful wargaming miniature company has reached its apex and is looking for a new product. (More on this below the fold.)

ScrumBrawl is a sports-based game that doesn’t fall into this category, not least because it is the introductory effort by newcomer VicTim Games. Instead of trying to leverage existing products and success, they’re using this game as their springboard into the marketplace and, I must say, it’s a good effort. It also uses cards instead of miniatures, which is part of the reason why the game goes for nearly half the price of some of the more established competitors.

Overall, the game is extremely enjoyable and easy to get into, with a minimal amount of fuss … and cost. If you can get over the lack of miniatures, and are looking for a quality game, this is a product you would do well to look into.

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Art of the Genre: The Black Company

Art of the Genre: The Black Company

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Kerdark grabs a chance at the original Black Company cover
Kerdark grabs a chance at the original Black Company cover

In 1984 author Glen Cook published The Black Company. In 1990, my freshman year in college, this book was passed to me by a person on my dorm and I spent the next decade following the exploits of the last of the Free Companies of Khatovar.

Now, as a storyteller myself, the book resonated with its rather unique concept, that it was actually a tale written by the Company annalist as he continued the four hundred years of written tradition the company had laid down since its came out of the distant south.

This is a military book, although cast in a fantasy setting. To that point, there are wizards present, although all of them are seemingly either competent illusionists or powerful necromancers. You don’t see any fireballs or lightning bolts, and the craft of a medieval military is kept up in rather precise fashion as the Black Company moves from what I would perceive as northern Europe, through Africa, and finally ending up someplace in India.

It’s a fantastic tale, one so well crafted that I’m actually floored even today when I remember a three-book long twist that had me shaking my head and calling for Cook to be given a Hugo. If you haven’t read the series, I certainly suggest it, even if the first book is over twenty-five years old and what was acceptable for publication then is much different than today. I still think these books hold water and are well worth your time, but on to the reason I assume you’re here, the art.

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Pulp RPG Action with Dicey Tales

Pulp RPG Action with Dicey Tales

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dicey-tales-1Anyone whose been reading the Black Gate game review column knows how much I loved Jeff Mejia’s Legends of Steel, in a large part due to his love for (and obvious knowledge of) the sword-and-sorcery genre. Jeff knew how to present the game material, provide atmospheric and plotting suggestions, and in general wrote a book so useful to sword-and-sorcery gaming that it should be picked up even by those GMs working with fantasy adventure who have no interest in the game system itself.

Now Jeff has turned to the pulps — two-fisted action featuring jungle men, rocket-pack heroes, roving archeologists, Nazis and gangsters, daredevil pilots, and more — and wrought the same kind of magic. Dicey Tales uses the acclaimed (and excellent) Barbarians of Lemuria role-playing system to provide the same kind of loving detail to one of the best eras for high-flying adventure. The e-magazine includes two action-packed scenarios, a character generation system, rules for bringing the pulp era to life, strange powers employed by pulp heroes, and more goodies. Apparently I’m not the only one who thinks Jeff has knocked another product out of the park, for Dicey Tales is already rocketing to the top of the RPGnow download list. Check it out!

A Lone Candle, Part 2

A Lone Candle, Part 2

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expedition
"Quick! Get the laser ri- I mean, get the thunder stick!"

If genre-shifting mid-tale is unwelcome in film and literature, where is it sometimes acceptable? I’ve found only one medium in which this sort of thing is easily done, and generally welcomed, if done right.

Role playing games.

Hear me out on this. Role playing games are a lot more fluid, since the storyline just keeps going after the genre-shifted adventure. The players know that, sooner or later the story will return to the main genre, and so they’re more willing to play along. That’s been my experience, anyway.

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Art Evolution 2011: Russ Nicholson

Art Evolution 2011: Russ Nicholson

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nicholson-invite-254Yes indeed, there’s yet another addition to Art Evolution! Now you didn’t think I’d sit idly by after the success of my 2010 Art Evolution Project wrapped up did you? No, certainly not, and although I’d managed to hit twenty artists in that mighty collaboration, I wasn’t satisfied because I knew there were many more artists still out there who deserved spots in what my project finally materialized into.

Still, I must admit I was pretty burned out after the initial run, so I took a couple of months off, focused on Art of the Genre, and retooled as I let brew the countless images of other great RPG artists still on my now venerable list.

By February I was convinced that Art Evolution needed further contributions in the modern era of role-playing, and I also thought that at least one more 90s talent and an old-school contribution would best serve the spectrum of what was already in print. To do this, I decided I’d include only five artists this year, five stalwarts who, like all those before, defined and inspired with work that was a step above their contemporaries.

So, without further diatribes into the ‘why’, let me take you to the ‘who’, but first, we strap into the time machine bound for the dawn of the big 80s…

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New Treasures: Fraser Ronald’s Sword Noir

New Treasures: Fraser Ronald’s Sword Noir

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forsimplecoinFraser Ronald is an author who will be familiar to readers of Black Gate 15. His story “A Pound of Dead Flesh” is a terrific sword-and-sorcery action piece, featuring two legionnaires who become involved in a plot to cheat a necromancer — a plot that very quickly goes very wrong.

Two of the hallmarks of Fraser’s writing are his gift for worldbuilding, and his clear love of sophisticated action tales in the noir genre. Both of these have served him well in his next projects: For Simple Coin, a collection of four tales of “Sword Noir,” and a compact, complete role-playing game called simply Sword Noir:

Hardboiled sword & sorcery – it’s Conan seeking for the Maltese Falcon, it’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser in The Big Sleep, set in Lankhmar, it’s hardboiled crime fiction in the worlds of sword & sorcery.

Inspired by mashing up the novels and stories of Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Robert E Howard, and Fritz Leiber, Sword Noir: A Role-Playing Game of Hardboiled Sword & Sorcery is a new RPG from Sword’s Edge Publishing. In it, characters’ morals are shifting at best and absent at worst. The atmosphere is dark and hope is frail or completely absent. Violence is deadly and fast. Trust is the most valued of commodities – life is the cheapest. Grim leaders weave labyrinthine plots which entangle innocents. Magic exists and can be powerful, but it takes extreme dedication to learn, extorts a horrible price, and is slow to conjure.

Now is the time for your characters to walk down mean streets, drenched in rain, hidden in fog, and unravel mysteries, murders, and villainy.

sword-noirSword Noir is available today from Sword’s Edge Publishing or RPGNow in PDF format for just $4.99, and in print for $10.73. It is a 6″ x 9″ softcover book with black & white interiors — including maps — running 104 pages.

For Simple Coin is 90 pages, and collects three short stories which originally appeared in AtFantasy, Forgotten Worlds, and On Spec, as well as one story original to this collection.  These tales perfectly illustrate the appealing mix of dark fantasy and noir detective fiction that Fraser has perfected.

If you’re a fan of the hard-boiled fantasy of Alex’s Bledsoe’s Eddie LaCrosse novels or Glen Cook’s Garrett, P.I., you’ll want to check these out.

For Simple Coin is $1.99 in PDF, or $6.99 for the print version.  It is available through RPGNow. Cover art is by Paul Slinger.