PLAYING THE GAME

The next section is where you get to the rules of the game. I can see that the upcoming Victims of the Demon Lord, being a PDF you can print off for your players, will consist of this chapter and the Character Creation one.



At 22 pages it is the biggest chapter so far. But it literally covers everything outside of character options, spells, magic items and monsters. Overall, this chapter is reminiscent of D&D5e being both clear and concise.



It covers:

- rolling dice

- damage

- afflictions (insanity and corruption)

- environment

- roleplaying

- combat



The first up is Rolling Dice. The base system is roll a d20 and add your bonus. Attributes grant a bonus or minus depending on whether they are above or below 10. So a STR of 13 grants a +3. Why even have the number as well? That is because the attribute score is the difficulty you need to hit if attacking the person. So your Agility of 13 is also your AC, for example.



Outside of combat rolls, the difficulty is set at 10. This makes the system very simple to use as the player will always know what to roll against. But what if something is harder? Well, this is where boons and banes come in. Outside of attributes, there is normally no set modifiers. Instead, you grant either banes or boons. These are represented by d6s and you aggregate them giving you a number of d6s that are all boons or all banes. For example, if you have 3 banes and 1 boon, you will roll 2d6 of banes. You don't add these boon/bane dice together. You simply take the highest. This means that you will only ever be adding two dice together, but getting more boons or banes increases the likely result.



I personally love this approach. It feels like the best of all worlds. Its a lot like FFG's SW game where the GM can more freely award modifiers without needing to be too precise and reference or remember tables of modifiers. However, the design didn't stop there and along with the take only the highest the set difficulty number, it should be an incredibly easy system to use.



Next is a detailed description of each attribute and its use. Each attribute (Strength, Agility, Intellect and Will) has a derived attribute. Your Health is your Str, you Defence your Agility etc.



Madness is a simple subsystem which sees a PC take insanity points up to your Will and then getting an insanity. These are all temporary, though seriously impairing. Once the madness is passed, you reduce your insanity score. There is no permanent or truly debilitating insanities like in WFRP and Call of Cthulhu. It just looks like plain and dark fun.



Corruption works in a similar way though it isn't tied to any attribute and is more permanent. If a PC becomes corrupt they get penalties to socialise with others, gain marks of corruption, and eventually your soul gets trapped in Hell if you are incapacitated.



Next up comes sections on movement, damage, healing, vision, social interaction etc. Nothing notable in here, except being nice and concise.



There is an simple D&D5e "inspiration" mechanic. Interestingly, rather than being able to give it to other players, you can spend it for better benefits it you help another player.



Last up is combat. It is reminiscent of WEFRP2e and D&D5e. The most notable thing is that there is no initiative. Instead, players always go before monsters (though PCs may not be able to act due to surprise) and there are two turns in each round - fast and slow. Fast turns allow PCs to more or take a single action. Slow turns allow PCs to more and take a single action. It may look strange to begin with but it actually seems to have a good effect. The tension of initiative is retained throughout combat as players need to decide whether to sacrifice speed for doing less things every turn. It also allows ranged or reach weapons to hit first, as they don't require movement, which is nice. And it does so much faster than rolling dice every round.



The rest of the combat chapter is as expected at something like 6 pages. There is a list of special manoeuvres and most work with making an attack roll against a select attribute (Disarm - Str/Agi and Distract - Int) and often taking 2 banes.