Reading Against the Darkmaster Part 1

So I caved in and got me that not-quite-MERP-clone I've been eyeing since the quickstarter came out two or three years ago. I played a lot of MERP back in the days, and the gory criticals and the good adventure modules made it a fun system. For us, it was always less "play something that feels like LotR" and more "Let's play some gritty low fantasy that happens to take place on Middle-Earth."

So I was a little wary of Against the Darkmaster's (or vsD's, as they abbreviate it) stated goal to drift the whole game more towards LotR style Epic Fantasy; and I was even more wary of the idea of blending all this with Heavy Metal aesthetics (as in Blind Guardian, not as in Metal Hurlant). Both seemed to imply the danger of making vsD something overly pompous, the RPG equivalent of Zack Snyder's painfully dull and self-important takes on Superman and Batman.

I'm happy to say that it's not.

Oh, there's pompousness to be had here, especially in the art: There's brooding guys in heavy armor smiting orcish scum and beautiful-but-sad women in flowing gowns weaving mystical energies. But it all feels tempered by a certain amount of both black and good-natured humor, and by the whole game obviously not being about wading through your enemies. There's a fine balance struck between the dark fantasy melodramatics of heavy metal, the cheesiness, but also creativity of 80s movies like Krull and Dragonslayer, and the simple good-heartedness of something like Terry Brook's Shannara books or David Edding's Belgariad books, which were pretty much We're going on an adventure to save the world, because, you know, we're the good guys!

Which is pretty much saying: vsD doesn't really harken back to Tolkien as the "source"; it harkens back to a mix of 70s-90s media that has been heavily influenced by Tolkien, which serves not to dilute, but to expand it.The result is the most convincing of the slew of "nostalgic but re-imagined" RPGs I've encountered yet.

In other words, I think I like it.

So let's have a thorough read-through, shall we?

 

Opening Fiction and Introduction

I tend to skip fiction pieces in RPGs, but this one was just two and a half pages, and it's actually quite nice. It leans heavily into the foreboding aspect of vsD's implied setting and into horror, wich has its firm place in epic fantasy. Interestingly, it features a solitary protagonist instead of a group, and there's no combat, just scouting and exploration and a sense of both lost greatness and mounting dread.

The Introduction does a short version of "what's a roleplaying anyway" and follows it up with the core themes of vsD - the headlines are "Good vs. Evil", "Ruins of the Past", "Magic is Rare and Dangerous", "Gods Watch from Afar" and "Heroism & Hope", which tells you what you need to know in a nutshell. The chapter closes with vsD's "Appendix N", which features a lot of the books, movies and RPGs you would expect (Lord of the Rings, Shannara, Tad William's Osten Ard Series, Dragonslayer, Willow, MERP, The One Ring), and some that might seem a little out of place, but still kind of make sense (Earthsea, The Princess Bride, Princess Mononoke, the Ryuutama RPG). I especially liked the inclusion of Lloyd Alexander's YA Chronicles of Prydain and even the Disney movie The Black Cauldron, which is based on it. And I'm happy to say that they ditched the reference to Terry Goodkind that showed up in the early advertisements and the Quickstart for vsD - he is just too awful ...

And then there's a long list of metal bands, well, I'll let someone else be the judge of that.

All in all, a good introduction to vsD. It kept me reading when I wasn't yet sure whether I'd be buying into this game or not.

A Fellowship Gathers (Character Creation)

The character creation as outlined at the beginning of this chapter is pretty traditional: You roll or buy characteristics (rolling is suggested, but a closer look at the pregens shows that they've been created with the point-buy method), choose a kin, choose a culture, choose a vocation (class), distributte skill points accordingly, pick some specials (called Backgrounds), decide on passions and are good to go.

The characteristics are the traditional six (by any other name ...); vsD ditches MERP's 1-100+ scale and just uses what was the characteristic bonus back then, which makes sense, because the percentile values in MERP never saw any use, anyway.

Kins are your classic elves (in three flavour from nature gals and guys to high elves), dwarves and halflings. Orcs and trolls are also present. While orcs are described as often serving the Darkmaster, they're not his creations and not by definition evil - it's more that they are shunned by other kin because of their monstrous looks, thereby being driven into the welcoming arms of evil. It's obviously a departure from Tolkien and MERP, but a welcome one (although the reasoning behind it is a little simplistic). Trolls are simply huge and hungry (and turn to stone when in sunlight), which makes them monstrous, bot not necessarily evil, as well.

I'm not so much a fan of the inclusion of "High Men" as a kin. They're a holdover from Tolkien/MERP, but one I could really do without. At least, vsD doesn't describe them as especially "noble" or anything, basically, they're just bigger, stronger and very long-lived humans.

(As a side-note, there's an interesting departure from Tolkien to be found in the description of the Star Elves, who are said to be the favourite children of the gods, having inherited all their best - and worst - qualities. Among the latter is obviously pride, which made them to try to become gods themselves and led to their expulsion from their home country. Obviously, like most fantasy RPGs, vsD departs from Tolkien's underlying catholicism and instead implies gods who are prone to human failings.)

There's two other kins (which came about as kickstarter stretchgoals), the Wildfolk and the Firbolg. Wildfolk are animalistic humans, and while I'm not sure if I see the point of them, there's nothing wrong with them, either. Firbolg are horned half-giants who have been cursed by the Darkmaster, for whom they once fought, and have a tragic viking warriors vibe going on.

Generally, vsD tends to enforce clichés like hobbits, dwarves, orcs and trolls not being magic wielders, though it is not as strict in that as it seems at first glance - you can learn some magic without choosing the wizard or the animist vocation; also, you can buy off kin restrictions with background points. Still, I'm not sure why someone who wants to play an orc wizard should be taxed for it (it is not as if that were are very potent combination in terms of min-maxing, anyway). Especially with orcs being potentially more than the foot-soldiers of evil in vsD, I don't quite see why they shouldn't have wizards or animists.

The characteristics bonuses and penalties for the kins can be pretty extreme, as they were in MERP. There's always a balance to be struck between describing a kin and painting it into a corner, with all the ugly racist implications that has. Of course, the high road is creating a rules set that basically tells you: "You decide what being a dwarf/elf/halfling/orc/fluffy creature from alpha centauri means for you", but I can't see that working for something so strongly inspired by MERP. In the end, I feel that vsD gives you just enough suggestions and tools to play against type, but it is a close call.

What is definitely a good decision is to separate kin and culture, with culture being the type of environment you grew up in, from arctic wilderness to city and magically hidden fey realm. The possibility to combine kin and culture freely makes for a lot of potential diversity, Culture determines your starting skill ranks.

From that, you go to vocations, of which there are six - Warrior, Rogue, Wizard, Animist, Champion (which covers all kinds of mystical warrios from monks to paladins) and Dabbler (your basic rogue or bard with a little extra magic). If you're missing the ranger, it can best be realized as a warrior with certain background options you get to choose later.

Your Vocation gives you some fixed skill bonuses and determines how many development points you get to spend in which skill categories when you level up. Again, this is more flexible than it looks on first glance - you get to move points around between categories on a 2:1 basis, so even though a wizard doesn't get any development points in weapon skills, she can, for example, convert some points from her Lore category to invest there.

Skills are pretty broad, with about five skills on most categories, from weapons (bladed, blunt, pole, ranged, brawl) through Roguery (Stealth, Locks&Traps, Perception, Deceive) to pretty general lore skills like Songs&Tales and Culture and Spell Lores. There seems to be some overlap in the Adventuring category between the skills Hunting, Nature, and Wandering, but I'll have to read the travel rules before I can be sure about whether this makes sense to me. I definitely like how most skills are broad enough to encompass bascially everything to do with a certain type of activity. For example, the Culture skill isn't split into knowledge of your own culture and however many knowledge of other cultures skills, it's a catch all for knowing about social rules and rituals; if you want to roll to see if you know how to address some noble from a foreign land, that is simply represented by a higher difficulty.

Languages are treated even more pragmatic - RAW, there is no language skill, and the group should simply decide whether a certain character would know (or be able to pick up) a certain language based on their background or not. A long distance trader will probably have a basic understanding of several language, and the same might be true of a noble (or not, if said noble has spent their life in some backwater castle). A ranger operating at the border to the darklands might know some Orcish. It's a rule not quite in line with the crunchy nature of most of the rest of vsD, and there are some options outlined for languages as skills, but I think they made a good call here in keeping it simple and character-focused.

The vocations section is followed by descriptions of the general and special skills  - yes, there are more specialised skills, and yes, one of them is Assassination, which always seems to be among the first things players will ask about in whatever system. The special skills are strictly optional, and I guess most characters will have a maximum of one or two of them.

The last crunchy bit of character creation is backgrounds - here we get stuff like shape-shifting, magical gifts, animal companions and heirlooms, as well as a few options to get special stat bonuses. Here, we also get the Background "Eccentric", which allows you to buy off all kinds of restrictions that come with your kin, so if you're jsut dying to play a Troll wizard, you can, but you're taxed for it. MERP veterans will find some familiar options (like getting five ranks in a special skill), but vsD's list is much better organized, flavourful and rich.

Equipment is part of the "Finishing Touches" section and pretty much works like: "You get what is implied by your Culture, your Vocation and your Background Options. I you feel there's anything else your character should own, talk to your GM." I'm fine with that, it's much better than buying your stuff from starting money ... vsD has an abstract Wealth system, but that'll have to wait until I reach that chapter.

The last sections in "A Fellowship Gathers" are about Drive, Passions and Experience, but they'll have to wait until the next part of this review ... as will have the actual resolution system, though I'd like to mention that, maybe not that surprisingly, shows some hints of pbtA with a D100.