TLDR;
It's James Raggi and Vincent Baker yin-yanging each other on top of a giant
pile of every interesting rules development from the last seven years.
WHAT IS
IT?
The
Nightmares Underneath is Johnstone Metzgers capacious, comprehensive and very
fat game. It's a system and a world. The system draws most heavily from various
old-school D&D variants but has a huge, and wide, range of influences,
making it very much its own thing. It may or may not be a heartbreaker.
There's a
really interesting list at the front of the the book which includes several
different versions of D&D (but not 5th? even though advantage/disadvantage
is used?) and a bunch of storygame stuff. (Chris McDowall you are there, you
not reading this is punishment for not obsessively reading my blog.)
The
setting is a quasi-Islamic medieval world, one based slightly more on real
history than fantasy archetypes. It has the usual modern liberal
fantasy-synthesis in which societal and political structures, social
codes and specific aesthetics are yanked from the past with the patriarchy,
slavery and enthocentrism which, in reality, would justify, intermix with and
often support those elements, turned waaaay down. (This is not a criticism of
that synthesis, it's just my description).
I'll
discuss the systems piece-by-piece as I go through the book. The general idea
of the setting and aesthetic can be described more readily.
THE
SETTING
A
rationalistic, scientific and lawful (in every sense) pseudo-Islamic society,
threatened by, and at low-scale war with, a plane or reality of Nightmare which
infiltrates the 'real world' in a manner similar to what I imagine the House of
Leaves or a Thomas Ligotti story is like (I have read neither).
The
nation is called the 'Kingdom of Dreams, so there's your theme. Dreams and
Nightmares, or more specifically, Reason being corrupted by the Unconscious. A
world where things work, but then a horror movie happens.
The
rationalism, reasonableness and self-confidence of the society make a specific
and deliberate contrast with the unusually squamous, chaotic and dreamlike
incursions of the Nightmare Realm.
Metzger
isn’t the first person to come up with the idea of Dungeons as the infiltration
of another reality, Chris Tamm at Konsumterra in particular has his red-brick
dungeon-dimension thing, it’s practically an emblematic Scrap Princess idea and
I'm sure other people have brought it up as well. This is the first time I have
seen a fully-realised game system built around it though.
The PC's
are special in this setting because they are one of the few people who do not
go instantly fucking nuts in a Nightmare incursion. Instead they go very slowly
nuts, meaning they now have the duty/opportunity/legal requirement to fuck
about in dungeons.
It is the
purpose of the PC's to banish and collapse the reality of Nightmare Incursions,
the fact that they are actually destroying the dungeon by raiding it is another
big difference between this and standard lemniscate D&D setting. Our PC's
restore order, they do not impose it on the frontier.
The
cosmology is arranged in a way roughly similar to any medieval pseudo-platonic
situation. Heaven on top. Earth in the Middle. Deep, dark stuff 'underneath'.
The Nightmare Realm sends its tendrils up like a big squid and tries to hook
onto our world.
This is
very slightly different to Cosmic Horror. The Nightmare Realm isn't Lovecrafts
(or later writers) horrifically-indifferent Outer Dark. It is related to us,
concerned with us and shaped by us. The Outer Dark still exists, as does an
inferred Hell with demons and devils, as do monsters of the material world, as
does the realm of Fairie, with Seelie and Unseelie courts.
There is
a slight tension between the primary engine of the game, based around the
Nightmare incursions, and all the other stuff that might turn up alongside it.
Nightmares are always the main band, but depending on the concert, they might
come supported by scary fairies, classic monsters, lovecraftian-entities or
just good old cults &' criminals. In the same way, there is an area of the
imagined world described that is very much like a standard D&D borderland,
a desert where an ancient empire once existed, now full of dungeons and snake
people and whatever.
If
Metzger had just kept it to the Nightmares he could have made this a shorter
and more focused book. Clearly that isn't what he wanted. He's lost a little in
clarity and drive but has perhaps gained in the ability to incorporate the
setting and ideas into other D&D worlds, thereby making it more modular and
useful.
The use
of Dreams as a motif is an interesting trend in DIY D&D/OSR circles as
well. They turn up a little in VotE, David McGrogan is writing his 'Gently
Smiling Jaws' set inside a Crocodiles mind. We are pushing, collectively,
against the borders of the kinds of places you can set D&D and it looks
like the psychosphere is the next place that is going to get colonised.
THE ART
The art
is curious. Metzger has used almost entirely public-domain images
("written, illustrated and published by Johnstone Metzger") but he
has done so in a novel and unique way.
Firstly,
he must have become an expert in scavenging through the many varied places you
can now get public-domain images. It’s a surprisingly tiring and un-fun job
beachcombing the data-banks and he must have put a hell of a lot of time into
it. That's effectively a skill of its own.
Then he's
taken a range of images, largely from orientalist paintings and 19th
century/early 20th century book illustrations and then changed them in a
variety of ways, applying filters and adding layers, visual elements,
re-drawing parts and bringing everything into line so it all expresses a
particular aesthetic.
I can
tell, most of the time when I'm looking at something that used to be an oil
painting. A few are obvious, there is a theme of female portraits with what I'm
sure is weapons and swords added, but for the rest of it I have no idea when I
am looking at an illustration or which parts were added by Metzger either his
own creation or cut & pasted from another image.
I can't
emphasise what a huge and complex job this must have been and how fully and
distinctly the art is integrated into the aesthetic as a whole. There is a lot
of art.
Really
you could write a full review on exactly what he's done, how he's done it and
what that means for the aesthetic impact of the book and the relation of its world.
I'm not really qualified to do that. Long story short - Apocalypse World +
Orientalism + Golden Age of Illustration. The one thing I miss is colour.
Islamic civilisation had a talent for luxury (orientalist I know, but probably
true) and you feel it a lot less in black and white. That is a rather churlish
complaint though, considering the scale of the achievement.
As well
as the page-by-page full-bleed images there’s quite a lot of digital patterning
and general layout stuff, tables, maps and informational layout.
Informational
design by-page is within tolerances with a handful or telling spatial shifts
made in order to keep particular informational clusters on single pages and on
opposing-page spreads where possible.
Informational
layout as a whole is more complex. There are a lot of highly
interactive rules systems, many of them arranged to produce complex feedback
responses across the play of the game. A more radical guy might have shoved
rules and combat right at the front, since they will be references more
regularly, buut it's always hard to tell considering the range of ways an RPG
book has to work and the large interlocking scales and types of information. It
has what looks like a full, and useful index, an index of spells and an index of
tables, along with a full table of contents. Informational hierarchy by page is
clear, broken by headings, sub-headings, bullet-points, page break lines,
tables alter-tones by row, rules sections for the elements of fictional
positioning and big chunky page numbers on opposing corners.
I might
still disagree in some cases about the compiling of different elements of rule
consequences and decision trees inside paragraphs. But that could be a taste
thing.
Essentially,
he's done a full publication job on a 400+ page book. For one guy its pretty
impressive.
DICE
MECHANICS
He uses
ALLLLLLLL the rolls. This is perhaps a formalisation of the way any DIY D&D
DM might play, yanking dice mechanics from pretty much everywhere, but here we
have them listed. So this will all be blindingly intuitive for any hipster
'plugged in' to OSR rules development, but god knows what anyone else would
make of it.
- A * in
6 d6 roll for chance events.
- A 2d6 +
modifier roll for contests.
- A
straight d* roll for damage. (Your Hit Die is your damage die here).
- An
Apocalypse World roll for complex-outcome stuff.
- A d20
under attribute roll for unopposed task resolution (1 crits, 20 fails).
- A d20
under half (rounded down) attribute roll for unopposed task resolution where
you don't have the skill or the stuff.
- A d20 +
modifier over opponent attribute roll for opposed task resolution, including
combat (20 crits, 1 fails).
PLUS
- The
advantage system from 5e, which can be applied to most of the above.
- Saves!
This depends on the level of the threat. Your level or below means roll under
attribute, higher means roll under half (rounded down) attribute.
AND
You can
lose attribute scores from a lot of attacks and effects so you better keep
track of those, and your original score for when you heal up.
Now
again, this is not a huge step away from what a lot of DM's might be doing
already, but holy fuck that's a lot of decision methods. Your attitude to this
will probably be a reflection of your attitude to the whole game, the rules are
a distillation of the Metzger-ness of the whole thing. If you thought either
"Cool, loads of stuff for me to use" or "Eh, I'll just do
whatever the fuck I want" then read on. If you noped the fuck out then The
Nightmares Beneath may not be for you.
I'm going
to skip ahead through Char gen to combat because that interfaces most with the
dice mechanics and because it also has some extreme examples of
Metzgerfication. Not trying to put you off, just aiming to lay it all out.
FIGHTIN'
A neat
thing to begin with, Metzger directly tells you to draw a sketch map for
combat, which I and a lot of people already do, but I think this is the first
time I can remember seeing it formally advised. I like that he said that.
Ok, so,
STATS;
Charisma
- is now Charisma.
Dexterity
- is now Dexterity.
Strength
- is now Ferocity, less physically-related and a little broader and more
abstract but works in combat a similar way.
Constitution
- is now Health. Again, works in a similar sort of way but is now something
similar to 'Flesh' in Wolf packs and Winter Snow and Logans rules.
Intelligence
- is now Intelligence. This is often used as a perception stat instead of WIS.
Wisdom -
is now Willpower, related to morale and generally going crazy.
Hit
Points - are now Disposition but they way it/they combine with Health is,
again, more like Grit and Flesh. Disposition is re-rolled every day and can be
re-rolled and come back between fights in some circumstances.
HOW
HEALTHY ARE YOU?
Well you
might not know. The rules for when you do and don't re-roll disposition are a
little bit blurry, first as to exactly when you do or don't have to re-roll
and when you can re-roll;
Page 226
- You re-roll after a full nights sleep or after 4 hours rest with a proper
meal.
- After a "short rest" you may re-roll.
page 232
- After an hour resting, eating and re-hydrating. You can re-roll if you want
unless you have already done "a full days work" (?)
- When you sleep for 6 or more hours "depending on how exhausted you
are" you *must* re-roll disposition.
Secondly
as consequence of that, the difference between a game where you roll
Disposition when you wake up, so you know exactly how tough you are feeling
that day, and one where you roll just before a fight, so you have no idea how
tough you are before you need it, is pretty massive, especially at low levels
where your fighty-guy might get a 1 or an 8 on the die.
I would
personally go with not rolling disposition until combat or danger so players
had to think more and didn't know how well they would fight, but since its not
clear in the text, you will be deciding that largely yourself.
HITTING
PEOPLE
Hitting
people is mercifully simple in hand-to-hand, at least to begin with. He has
kept AC and it works the usual way (starting from 10 rather than Raggi's 12).
Shooting
people, well;
There are three different
classes of ranged attack, with multiple different fictional positioning
mechanic alterations each depending on target speed, cover and
time spent aiming.
-
Firearms & heavy Crossbows. Roll under your own DEX.
-
'Regular' Missile attacks. d20 + modifiers against AC.
- Thrown
items (not knives & axes made for throwing) Roll under DEX or half
DEX depending on circumstance.
>Unless they are dodging, in which case roll d20 against their DEX &
try to get over.
I'm
summarising a lot here.
Now, as
above, I actually like a lot of these rules when taken on their
own. I noted specifically that I intended stealing them when I was reading the
book. I like that gunpowder feels different mechanically to arrows. But, again,
holy fuck Metzger that's a lot of situations and a lot of mechanics.
People
can dodge, grapple and run around. In a neat move, closing with someone with a
longer-ranged weapon gives them a free attack, which I like, there's also an
effective overwatch shot for firearms and prepped ranged weapons, which I also
like.
Rules I
don't like, even on their own;
Rolling
your HD for damage - not fond of this.
Oh and
Fighters do damage on a miss, which I think is a bullshit rule.
GETTING
HIT
There is
a Hit Location table, and not the simplest version possible either, which I
would consider to be this;
1
2 3
4
5
10
6 7
8
9
There's a
d6 column for close combat, a d20 version for ranged attacks and a second
column in the first table for specific areas of the head. and face.
Shields
can be splintered and helmets can be splintered if your head is hit but there
are no head-specific doom options. There is a roll-under mechanic for when you
lose health. Unlike Into the Odd, this applies to the area hit not your whole
self, so if you get hit in the head, lose health and fail to roll under I
suppose that puts you out. That's never stated explicitly though. There are
rules for bleeding and rules for shock.
There is
a 2d6 roll for whether you can heal, but when it comes to how
long it takes to heal we get this;
"Injuries
heal as they would in real life. You can look it up yourself, this is a game,
not a medical textbook."
Dude, you
created a location-specific detailed damage system in a game where you included
rules for what happens if you come into contact with a chaotic good apothecary,
you couldn't do a chart for this?
There is
a really good boxed-text description of the effects of crippled characters
which I like a great deal. I'll just reproduce a small part here;
"In
this game, you should be describing and modelling your fictional world with
words, not with numbers. The numbers are there to add the elements of chance,
risk and uncertainty - the game part of a role-playing game.
They are not meant to model physics or to create some kind of realistic world.
They exist to create an interactive experience and to add weight to the choices
you make within the framework of what this game concerns itself with."
Ok, now
we are gonna roll allll the way back to;
CHAR GEN
So, we
have; Assassins, Bards, Champions, Cultists, Fighters, Scholars, Thieves aaand
Wizards.
These are
called 'Professions' not classes, which doesn't quite fit with the idea of
'Fighters' but whatever. And I'm not sure if 'Wizard' is a profession, don't
know how you pay taxes on that one. Self-employed?
Champions
are kinda-Paladins and Cultists are effectively-Clerics. Cultists sounds much
better than Cleric anyway. Scholars are healy, theify magicy people.
The
picture of the Bard here looks like exactly the kind of Bard Zak would most
like to stab, and the description backs that up;
"A
bard is the soul of any company. What fighting force could maintain its morale,
if it lacked such inspiration? A world without music and laughter, or the fire
of oratory, is a dull, greyish hell that few could stand for long. But with a
bard behind him, a man feels like he could take on the world, if he wanted
to!"
-_-
This uses
an attribute-increase roll very similar to ItO, except, with more rules and
specifications and special circumstances. I think the end result is that PC's
are going to advance their 'core' attributes quite quickly to the mid range and
above. I'm really not sure how I feel about this. I'm sure it makes sense
according to the system of the game but I have spoken in the past in favour of
uneven or out of place attributes and how they can create discontinuities and
difficulties that can lead to real role playing opportunities.
There is
a motivation table to help you work out why you are an adventurer, I liked it.
There are also social-class based equipment tables. You roll gold as per
normal and you can buy stuff as usual or roll on this thing. It's tremendous
fun and anarchic, if you are a worthless untouchable you can get a laser gun at
level one.
Right
next to this example of Metzger writing well and with flair, or at least high
energy, we get a pretty good example of the other side of his writing persona,
he has a tendency to ticker-tape prose common mostly with American fantasy
writers; repetitive, redundant, with repeating re-statements, low regular runs
of sound and rueful euphony. Over-description. Or as Metzger would write;
"The
author indulges systematically in over-describing elements in the text. This is
a process whereby items, rules artefacts or playing concepts are depicted or
related via written words, which appear as type (black regular marks on a white
page or screen which convey sound fragments as part of a written language) even
through their content and meaning might be considered blindingly obvious both
to any intelligent reader, and even, in some cases, to an unintelligent reader
via the simple accumulations of context from previously described
elements."
The
description for runaway;
"Runaway:
This person was a serf, servant or slave but they left that position."
No shit.
It isn't
all like this and he is good a fair amount of the time, but it's an element.
Another
thing I dislike is the extra XP you get for having a core attribute for your
class within a certain range. So for a thief if your DEX is 16+ you get an
extra 1 per cent XP. I'm not sure why I hate it. It smacks of old Gygaxian
bullshit where you corrall people into playing the right class
for their stats. The only reason people aren't going to be doing that is if
they either have shit stats or if they are deliberately playing against type
and trying to be interesting in which case why fucking punish them?
More
Metzgerfication;
I thought
not, it's not a story the Jedi would tell you.
- Metzger
is really into alignment. We have Chaotic, Neutral and Lawful
crossed with Good, Neutral and Evil.
EDIT - It has been pointed out to me below that I got this wrong. Chaotic, Neutral, lawful, Evil and Good are all seperate alignments. They do not cross over. I find this a little odd conceptually. Evil means likes doing harm and Neutral is described as "maybe the most self-serving of all". The whole thing strikes me a little queer but perhaps it would work in play.
Alignment interacts a lot with some
classes, opening up certain paths and abilities and closing others. Evil
characters may not become Bards.
I'm going
to skip ahead again
There are
rules for what to do when you get back to your settlement with all your cash
and these are largely interesting. There are rules for investing in or
interacting with certain businesses, institutions and professions are broken
down by importance and by alignment so you can have, for
instance, an exceptional Lawful Geographical society, a notable evil druggist,
a significant Chaotic necromancers guild and all of these will and won't do
certain things.
|
|
|
"It's not a story a _neutral_ apothecary
would tell you."
|
These all
potentially intermix with some of the cities only slightly described in the
opening spiel about the Kingdom of Dreams to make a really potentially quite
interesting and odd city-based section of the game where you run around trying
to find a chaotic neutral printer to print your screed against the lawful evil
explorers guild.
There are
rules for making contacts, making friends, living high, living low, having
enemies and rules for character assassination. Lots of stuff on finding
employees. Even a section on the kinds of inflation you will create when you
try to dump your treasure in some shitty little village and drive up prices.
There are rules for causing and reducing resentment in villages and towns and
all the many and varied ways you can piss off the people around you.
MAGIC
There are
100 magic spells split up into 10 schools. Choices made in char gen open and
close access to some schools for some classes. I think the spells were intended
to be largely level-less, with effects and durations based upon caster level.
Except they aren't because they have levels and lots of extra crap.
Description
is dry and ticker-tapey - if you like that it shouldn't be a problem. They are
generally within the range of standard expected D&D spells. I think these
are based upon Wonder and Wickedness, or the idea of them being level-less is.
W&W is better. Healing stuff is a school and not a separate thing.
I have
never read a spell memorisation section without being so bored to shit that I
blacked out & that is equally true now but that's not Metzgers fault, spell
memorisation is just boring as shit.
DUNGEONEERING
Light,
movement, traps, encounters, none exactly the same but all within the
tolerances any old-schooler will be familiar with. If someone wants to do a
deep dive on the details of encounter distance, light economy and whatever,
they can probably give you better information on exactly how this is going to
play out.
We see
more traces of another Metzger thing; Dungeon level is very important. Much
more than in most games I am familiar with. The difficulty of things in and out
of the dungeon depends on level and if you are level 3 and in a level 4 dungeon
part then you are in the shit because things are going to be much harder.
GOING
MAAAAAAD! o_O
the
Nightmare Curse table just reads like my Meyer-Briggs description. Abnormality,
anomalous Sensation, Anti-Social Lust Parasite, Anything To Kill The Pain,
Apostasy. It's really creepy, paranoid and fun. Mutual madnesses could serve to
bind together a party over time as you will need your dungeon-bros around you
to help ameliorate all the terrible mental shit you've got going on.
WILDERNESS
TRAVEL
Orienteering
- exactly as boring in this as it is in every other game. nearly as dull as
researching spells. I nearly passed out reading this, not Metzgers fault, just
dull unless you are doing it irl.
There is
a weird/interesting storygame confession/flashback thing here that helps you
lock places in your memory so you don't get lost on the way back from places. I
didn’t really understand it at first reading but it meant to be part of another
feedback system in the game. The Nightmare incursions feed off fear, so by
finding out the secret fears of the PC's you can incorporate them into the
Nightmare incursions. Another thing which makes them quite different from
normal dungeons, as we shall see in the next section.
There's a
very short section on seafaring, which doesn't seem fair since ultra-deep
spaces and islands would both seem perfect places for Nightmare incursions.
MAKING
NIGHTMARE INCURSIONS
This is
the most original, interesting, difficult and storygamy part of the book. It's
also where it swings the widest from being 'a bit like James Raggi or Chris
McDowall' to 'a bit like Vincent Baker'.
First big
difference is that these Nightmare Dungeons are built around a particular
object that links them to the real world and allows them to exist. This is
something like the cursed object from a horror movie, but it could be anything
closely linked to negative human emotions for any reason.
For some
reason I can't get the idea out of my head that this could be an evil sofa
(which it theoretically could) but it could be anything.
So unlike
most dungeon raids, you are not there for the money, you are there to get to
the deepest Nightmare level, get the sofa and get out. As you leave the
incursion should collapse behind you. The sofa is called the 'Anchor' and there
are rules for creating one. Lets try to create a level 5 'Anchor'.
So it’s
worth 600 'Cyphers' (Gold equivalent)
It's just
one encumbrance to carry.
It's a
tool or toy.
It's
Austere
It's in
an Abstract style.
It's
gold.
And
elegant.
It's
covered.
It’s an
axe?
Huh, so
an abstract ceremonial axe held under a sheet of some kind. That sounds ok.
It's
linked to an emotion off Grief, indicating nightmares related to amputation,
melancholy and weight, death, suicidal ideation and undead, and the faces of
those who have died coming back to haunt the living.
So I
suppose winding sheets covering tottering corpses of the person who had the
original axe, the sheets are all stained with blood, but if you pull the sheet
off its just a superarachnid of severed limbs, and they all come together to
form the giant severed-limb face of someone you know?
So that
gives us some idea of what to make for our crown on level 5.
And this
thing will be associated with a particular kind of Nightmare creature that will
just keep re-generating so long as it is there. If I can get it out then they
will go away and the incursion will be blocked off from this entry to the world
and have to either retreat back to the Nightmare Zone like a big tentacle or
try to latch on to a pre-existing incursion somewhere else. Yep, un-cleared
'lairs' can latch back onto the world in other places and you can encounter
them elsewhere later on possibly.
And of
course, to cover your costs for all this dicking around you will probably need
to sell the cursed thingy in question to some weirdo, and there is an even
chance another incursion may try to form around it, or that the weird in
question will try to use its power to do just that, forming another gameplay
loop.
Because
these are horror-movie spaces, they don't need to look or be like normal
dungeons and can move into horror-movie territory, the passages and rooms can
be natural caves, crystal and glass, the insides of an infinite sinking ship,
the same room repeated again and again, the inside of a modern tower block,
whatever you want.
There are
four main 'types of Nightmare Incursion
-
death-trap dungeon (Tomb of Horrors style)
- heretic
temples (Conspiracies & Cults)
- monster
hordes (Classic)
-
spawning pits (Extra Nightmares)
The way
lairs and levels are described they are quite abstract so you could apply them
to pre-existing dungeon maps or any kind of space. The arrangement can be
linier, linked like a House of Leaves style, or as part of an above ground
Zone, so Castlevania style.
The way
the Anchor relates to human emotion, it seems to me that we are being shown one
fragment of a larger game through an old-school prism. This could just as
easily be an investigatory CoC game where you find out the tragic story of the
object and try to do something about it, or maybe use your specific knowledge
against the Nightmares using it to manifest, or it could be some hippy game
where you do a similar thing but it’s all about coming to terms with your
negative emotions and whatever. We are being shown a tactical solution to a
problem with multiple potential solutions.
Again,
even though you could technically put an Owlbear or an Orc in here, it's going
to be a bit embarrassing for them if you do. It'll be like Peter Jackson
wandering into a Werner Herzog film. Maybe if you make the Orc pale and
hairless and a memory of a fathers abuse, or the Owlbear a giant stuffed toy
full of children’s scalps, that might work.
RUNNING
THE NIGHTMARE DUNGEONS
Monster
advice re each having a specific plus and weakness is kinda good but leads to
slightly box-ticky stuff later on. Box-tickyness is arguably a flaw with the
game, see the chaotic-evil apothecary stuff earlier on.
Some
basic shit again on running dungeons but maybe the reader has never heard basic
shit, "press down the clutch to change gear" is vital knowledge the
first time you hear it
There are
actually three kinds of encounter
- Fixed
encounters, like a normal dungeon.
- Random
encounters, again like a normal dungeon.
-
Countdown-timer encounters. These are new. From the moment you start crossing
boundaries the active nightmares in that zone start hunting you and they will turn
up, and they can just appear out of thin air or in the reflection of a bathroom
mirror, horror-movie style, so that's new.
- There
are also some creatures with special encounters. One kind, even when you take
them all out, as you go to leave the dungeon there is always one final one
waiting on the threshold to stop you, because it's a horror movie.
A Strejcek-style
'overloaded encounter die' is also used to add stuff like enchantments and
magic wearing off or the lap going out as the Nightmares eat your light.
Feedback
in the hands of a subtle DM could be very useful/important if they get it
right. The horror-movie and alter-reality aesthetic and imaginative structure
opens up a lot of strange and novel potentials not usually available in
dungeons.
MONSTERS,
EXTRA PLAYER OPTIONS AND TABLES AT THE BACK
The
monsters range in quality. Many have some kind of recoverable ingredient or
substance, I like that. The Dragons as failed Fey gods addicted to material
stuff and developing mad obsessions works well. Sun-Court Fey have bronze
muskets that fire wasps, will steal that.
There is
no visual description for the monsters, which I quite like as the DM must look
at the image and interpret it themselves.
There are
player options, in case you couldn't tell that Metzger missed the 90's there is
a god-damn 'Blade Dancer' class. You can play a fucking Hobbit or a fucking Elf
if you really want to. More interestingly, you can play a Child,
which sounds like fun.
At the
end we get a range of tables of the 'Boring but Useful type.
SO WHAT DO YOU THINK THEN, BE IT FOR GOOD OR ILL?
It has, almost to a ridiculous degree, all of the good and bad aspects
of a heartbreaker. It’s mainly good.
The concept is gold and if not entirely, absolutely original (what is?)
in the wholeness of itself it is very original. The world of
order and the infiltrating nightmares is a great idea. The creation and
construction of the Nightmare infiltrations is a welcome new string to the bow.
The concept of yanking out the sofa to collapse the dungeon is excellent,
as is the concept of the bits of the extra-dimensional dungeon searching around
and trying to re-connect elsewhere. All the titting about in-town with printers
and apothecaries and hotels is great fun, surprisingly great fun. The equipment
tables. You got some elegant flows, or at least decent attempts at elegant
flows in the feedback responses for the PC decaying brain state and the
nightmares they have to fight.
It would work more perfectly in its current order/nightmares polarised
imagined world state than in the more rambunctious standard D&D world, if
you just started throwing in nightmare dungeons into your standard melange
world then they will lose something, but every campaign has some tight-ass
kingdom where things generally work, and you need shit to happen there, and
this would work well there, the more tight-assed and self-confident the society
the better the Nightmares will pop.
The Bad
It would take almost as much work to run it as-written as it took
Johnstone to make it, except he made it slowly in his head, through play, where
all the many, many decision trees and dice mechanics made sense because they
grew from his experience, you will have to absorb all of this in one go.
There are a lot of highly-interacting rules systems,
some of them quite abstracted (for an OSR game), many using entirely different
dice mechanics, if you like highly cohesive systems I can see you liking this
for its completeness and interconnectivity but also possibly hating it for its
“irrational” design and the multiplicity of its parts.
It’s over-complicated, unless you like that, in which case it’s just
capacious and detailed, or unless you were going to hack it anyway, in which
case it’s just good fuel
The admirable.
It’s an impressive and well-created thing for even a publisher to make,
for one guy it is truly a heroic effort.
The writing has a range of qualities, as stated above, but I found the
good more than worth the bad.
The godamnn Lulu dust cover warps like the fucking Enterprise so I had
to take it off to read it, but it still looks a bit classy and mysterious
underneath so maybe the hot girl on the train will think you are reading
experimental eastern European fiction. It nearly is experimental fiction.
Lulu won’t deliver to the UK from the UK storefront, but if you log into
the US storefront you can order to a non-US address. You can also wait until
you get a Lulu code to bring down the price.
and here is LULU
Here is the whole thing (bar the illustrations) FREEEEEE
