Black Gate

Empire of the Ghouls (Kobold Press, April 2020)

The Free City of Zobeck, a booming trade city in Kobold Press’ popular Midgard, is one of my favorite modern adventure settings. It’s a terrifically imaginative urban environment with guilds, gangs, and gods, a notorious Kobold Ghetto, the Arcane Collegium, a clockwork wizard school, and much more. It was originally designed by Wolfgang Baur and, according to Kobold Press, is where the setting of Midgard was first born, “a clockpunk city forged in the fires of revolt, with monsters and magic drawn from the dark folktales of medieval Eastern Europe — plus details of devils, Kobold kings, and plots galore.”

Zobeck has been well supported over the years, with releases like Tales of Zobeck, Streets of Zobeck, and multiple editions of the Zobeck Gazetteer. But the most ambitious supplement to share geography with the free city is Empire of the Ghouls, funded by a hugely successful 2019 Kickstarter that raised over $168,000.

Weighing in at a massive 345 pages in full color, the standalone Empire of the Ghouls is a complete adventure campaign for characters from 1st to 13th level, fully compatible with 5th edition D&D and other modern RPGs. It details a Ghoul Imperium in the depths of the underworld and a series of interconnected adventures that delve deep into its secrets.

This heavy and highly readable volume is one the more ambitious and entertaining adventures to cross my desk in years, and it’s now available to all. Here’s a look at the wonders within.

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Since Disney’s acquisition of Star Wars and its consequent films and streaming episodic shows — the very good The Mandalorian being only the first of several planned — many would be forgiven for forgetting the very long time between The Return of the Jedi and The Phantom Menace. 1983 to 1999. In that time, novels and comics were the primary vehicle for keeping Star Wars stories going, including the Thrawn Trilogy of novels by Timothy Zahn, published from 1991 to 1993.

For roleplayers, West End Games published a Star Wars role playing game in 1987. This game proved to be successful, and the quality of the material was so good, that Zahn referenced — at the instruction of LucasArts — the sourcebooks when writing the Thrawn Trilogy. With the game, players could finally engage in the universe and with supplemental materials to help expand and frame the universe that was — until that time — largely confined to the original trilogy of films and a poorly received Christmas special.

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For many RPG gamers, creating characters is one of the highlights of gaming. They get to make significant choices and craft and hone their character to their vision. If they are invested in the character, players typically engage more in the collaborative storytelling environment that RPGs are. For many players, this is the most creative time in the process, for thereafter they engage in the setting as laid out by the game master (GM). They may have an influence on the game and that setting, but the act of creating primarily — if not exclusively — resides with the GM after character creation. Even in truly sandbox games where the players can go wherever and do whatever, they are operating within the construct of the GM.

RPGs across the spectrum devote pages to character creation, often taking up a significant portion of any rulebook and entire supplements that provide new options. Most games lay out these options as a series of choices the player makes — though always reserving GM fiat.

Dungeons & Dragons, Star Wars: Force and Destiny, and others use a process whereby you select a species (if applicable), select a career, apply a number of adjustments to the basic character template, and then make choices about talents and specializations and skill choices. The names may vary (class, feats, etc.), but the basic principles remain. For example, in Force and Destiny from the core rulebook, players choose from one of eight species. These have default attribute score adjustments and some level of unique trait or ability (breathing underwater for Nautolans for example). Players then choose from one of four careers and then choose from one of three specializations in that career. One of the narrative or logical challenges with this construct is that if you want to play a 40-year old human smuggler, you may have the exact set of skill points, etc., as other players, who may have a 20-year old bounty hunter just making her mark on the world. Truth be told, this is not a significant challenge, but one nonetheless. Particularly in class-based systems. My 40-year old cleric is at level one — the same as that 20-year old barbarian.

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I always enjoy catching up with my Australian friend Michael O’Brien (“MOB” to his friends). We met back in the nineties when we were part of the so-called Reaching Moon Megacorp, a group of ardent Glorantha fans working on the pioneering RuneQuest/ Glorantha magazine Tales of the Reaching Moon – he was an editor, I was the dogsbody. (I should mention that MOB is a director of the Chaosium now, alongside our American Reaching Moon Megacorp colleague Rick Meints – it’s a small world, sometimes).

As MOB and I live on opposite sides of the world, we usually only bump into each around conventions. And so, the last time we met was at Dragonmeet in London last November. MOB was about to launch the Jonstown Compendium, Chaosium’s community content site for RuneQuest and Glorantha on DriveThruRPG. And he talked to me about things that might now be possible…

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In my last article, I reviewed one of the most rules light systems I have ever read. Some game masters (GMs) and players like games with a hefty amount of crunch — that is, game mechanics that require dice rolling or calculations and with a level of specific details for certain types of tasks. Dystopia 23 may take this to the most extreme I have ever experience. The Primer is 149 pages. By comparison, the quick start rules for The Expanse were 42 pages. For The Witcher TRPG (called Easy Mode) they were 32. For Cyberpunk Red Jumpstart Kit, two booklets were a total of 98 pages — including a lot of flavor text. In terms of crunch, Dystopia 23 pummels those quick start rules into the ground.

When the Dicegeeks podcast interviewed Dystopia 23’s creator, Jason Carruth, he made no bones about how he loved to see a lot of crunch in a game. He reveled in the joy of designing crunchy games.

Before I cover the mechanics, however, let’s talk about the setting. Dystopia 23 covers familiar cyberpunk ground. The game takes place in the 23rd century. After economic collapses and mismanagement, the corporations have become the power in the world. Hordes of impoverished people struggle in the sprawls — vast favelas and slums that buttress up to the walled cities where the middle and upper classes live. Sprawls are unpoliced anarchy, which gangs and other various power brokers seize upon to exert control, often with as careless disregard of human lives as corporations. Even the cities are divided, with corporations having purchased areas for their exclusive use.

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One often learns about small, independent, or quirky games from game store owners or fellow RPG enthusiasts. So it was from a friend and player in my ongoing Star Wars campaign that I heard about Party First by Gamenomicon published in November 2019. This rules light game has some intriguing mechanics and a setting waiting to be fleshed out by the ambitious game master.

After reading it, I imagined a group of friends were together one evening and wanted to roleplay, but they did not have their rule books and did not want to be weighed down with a lot of runway to get to a game. Pure speculation, but it has that feel that players can pick it up fast and be gaming in minutes. The book is only 46 pages. 46. I do not have a source book on my self that is that short, and while the brevity speaks to a rules light devotion that does not mean that the system is not well thought out or complete.

The setting is a familiar yet alternative Earth. I have long been interested in history, and World War I, the fall of the Russian Empire, and Rasputin have always been of interest. Party First hits all of that sweet spot for me. However, it is not Earth. Countries and people have recognizable but different names. Rus for Russia. Anglia for England. Dervish Empire for the Ottoman Empire (another particular area of history I enjoy). Vladislav Lesnik for Vladimir Lenin. All of these are laid out in an alternative history.

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