Connect with us

Editorials

Beyond D&D: 5 Horror-Fantasy Tabletop RPGs for Darker Adventures

Published

on

Pictured: 'Heart: The City Beneath'

Both Dungeons and Dragons already have a bit of a horror element to them, but most D&D campaigns end up being fun romps like the upcoming Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, which brings the property back to the big screen this weekend.

If you’re looking for a tabletop RPG that will send your adventure down a bit darker road, however, you should check out any of these horror-themed fantasy tabletop RPGs that would make for great campaigns…


MORK BORG

There are few fantasy RPGs that are more in-your-face grim than the doom metal inspired Mork Borg. The book is most notable for its extremely aggressive art and layout, basically screaming the details of its hopeless world directly in your face. No two consecutive pages share the same arrangement, keeping you constantly off balance in the best possible way. Much like its sci fi follow-up Cy_Borg, even if you don’t end up playing Mork Borg, it’s completely worth owning as a unique and bombastic art book.

Thankfully, the game contained in Mork Borg is a ton of fun for both people new to the hobby and seasoned veterans. The game boils all actions down to a D20 roll modified by one of four simple stats, making it easy to keep the action moving at an exciting pace. All characters are created with randomly rolled stats and abilities, making for some outrageously bizarre characters to face the harsh journey ahead of them. With class options like Gutterborn Scum, Wretched Royalty and Occult Herbmaster, the game makes it easy to embody your characters with a ton of personality and horrific charm. The brutal nature of the combat can make keeping your character alive an issue for long term campaigns, but even if you end up with a total party kill from any number of the twisted creatures included in the book’s bestiary, you’ll have a bloody good time being torn to shreds.


TROPHY GOLD

If you’ve got a party that’s obsessed with treasure hunting, there’s no better way to put their greed to the test than with Trophy Gold. Your doomed characters, driven by their hunger for greater riches, plumb the haunted and forgotten areas of the harsh world of Kalduhr, losing themselves to the ancient evils within. The book’s list of inspirations includes Dark Souls, Green Knight, and The Witcher, and it’s easy to see the fingerprints of all these when flipping through the tables and adventures included in the game.

What makes Trophy Gold, and its companion game Trophy Dark, fun at the table is its highly collaborative nature. Players are given free reign to introduce possible consequences or story ideas for the GM to weave into the tale, pushing the story in unexpected directions. Hunters are fragile, but players go in knowing their luck will run out at some point, so part of the fun is finding a memorable end to your tale. The game includes a wide range of incursions, Trophy’s name for one-off adventures, and if those aren’t enough for you there’s a companion book called Trophy Loom that’s filled to the brim with inventive lore, allowing you to craft your own doomed expeditions.


BAND OF BLADES

Band of Blades begins with defeat. The Cinder King’s army of the dead has overwhelmed the Legion, a storied band of soldiers, and sent them on the run. You take over the members of the Legion as they retreat to the hopeful safety of Skydagger Keep. The game is notable for having a very specific framing and structure, complete with a map of the area that you’ll traverse as you continue to confront the overwhelming forces at your heels. Since this is a military dark fantasy game, you can expect a lot of casualties before your final showdown.

The game uses the system of Blades in the Dark, but heavily modifies it into something all its own. Players each take on a specific role in the squad, such as quartermaster or marshal, each in charge of their own specific layer of the campaign. There’s a pool of characters that are created, so players don’t play as a specific character in every session, but rather choose ones based on the requirements of the mission, like in video games such as Darkest Dungeon or XCOM. At the start of each campaign, you’ll select a specific Chosen, god-like beings who give the players bonuses in mission, and a pair of Broken, twisted former Chosen who now serve the Cinder King, meaning each campaign will feel unique despite using the same map. It’s a mechanically dense game, but it creates an experience that’s wholly unique from other games based on Blades in the Dark.


TEETH: STRANGER AND STRANGER

If you want to see another way the Blades in the Dark system can play out, I’d recommend Teeth: Stranger and Stranger. Instead of making it crunchier like Band of Blades, Teeth strips down and simplifies the rules for its 18th century rural England setting. Built for a mini-campaign, the players embody mutated bumpkins trying to protect their small village, and their favorite pigs, from a rampaging Abomination. After a mysterious stranger visits, claiming to have a way to put a stop to the Abomination for good, you’re off on an adventure to collect bizarre artifacts from the surrounding area. The book provides you with tidbits about potential landmarks and ways for the story to go, but leaves plenty of blank space for the GM to make it their own.

If you find yourself hungry for more after completing the short campaign of Stranger and Stranger, there are two other one-shot RPGs in the Teeth universe. Night of the Hogmen is a more tightly focused game about hapless travelers on the run from a horde of the titular hogmen. You’ll pass through a series of locations on your way to a church where you’ll make your final stand against the horrible beasts. The other one-shot game, Blood Cotillion, takes place at a high-society ball where you play undercover assassins trying to root out the hidden occult forces that lurk in the manor. It’s a game of equal parts ballroom intrigue and monster hunting, making for a unique combination. There’s also a large-scale Teeth RPG in works, hopefully hitting Kickstarter later this year.


HEART: THE CITY BENEATH

Imagine your standard “adventurers meet in an inn” scenario, a classic start to any fantasy campaign. In the strange and twisted world of Heart, those adventurers could include an occultist full of magic bees, a knight with armor made from cursed trains, and a priest to the Crimson God of Debt. Also, that inn is a predatory building that lures people in and slowly consumes them. The subterranean land of Heart is an ever-shifting nightmare that twists and transforms based on the desires of those that travel through its horrific ruins.

The game is beautifully built to keep you on the knife edge of danger while you delve deeper into the world. Whenever you roll, you have the possibility of taking stress, which can come in many different forms aside from physical, and has the potential to end up giving you a condition that has both narrative and mechanical consequences. For example, too much supply stress can leave you out of ammo, while too much fortune stress can result in you getting separated from the party. The only way to clear stress or fallout is by spending the treasures you’ve looted while exploring the various terrifying landmarks of Heart, so you’re encouraged to continue to risk life and limb for more currency to help heal you. Between the finely-tuned mechanics and the evocative yet open-ended lore, Heart: The City Beneath has all the tools to create a memorable and inventive campaign.

Editorials

‘Leprechaun Returns’ – The Charm of the Franchise’s Legacy Sequel

Published

on

leprechaun returns

The erratic Leprechaun franchise is not known for sticking with a single concept for too long. The namesake (originally played by Warwick Davis) has gone to L.A., Las Vegas, space, and the ‘hood (not once but twice). And after an eleven-year holiday since the Davis era ended, the character received a drastic makeover in a now-unmentionable reboot. The critical failure of said film would have implied it was time to pack away the green top hat and shillelagh, and say goodbye to the nefarious imp. Instead, the Leprechaun series tried its luck again.

The general consensus for the Leprechaun films was never positive, and the darker yet blander Leprechaun: Origins certainly did not sway opinions. Just because the 2014 installment took itself seriously did not mean viewers would. After all, creator Mark Jones conceived a gruesome horror-comedy back in the early nineties, and that format is what was expected of any future ventures. So as horror legacy sequels (“legacyquels”) became more common in the 2010s, Leprechaun Returns followed suit while also going back to what made the ‘93 film work. This eighth entry echoed Halloween (2018) by ignoring all the previous sequels as well as being a direct continuation of the original. Even ardent fans can surely understand the decision to wipe the slate clean, so to speak.

Leprechaun Returns “continued the [franchise’s] trend of not being consistent by deciding to be consistent.” The retconning of Steven Kostanski and Suzanne Keilly’s film was met with little to no pushback from the fandom, who had already become accustomed to seeing something new and different with every chapter. Only now the “new and different” was familiar. With the severe route of Origins a mere speck in the rearview mirror, director Kotanski implemented a “back to basics” approach that garnered better reception than Zach Lipovsky’s own undertaking. The one-two punch of preposterous humor and grisly horror was in full force again.

LEPRECHAUN

Pictured: Linden Porco as The Leprechaun in Leprechaun Returns.

With Warwick Davis sitting this film out — his own choice — there was the foremost challenge of finding his replacement. Returns found Davis’ successor in Linden Porco, who admirably filled those blood-stained, buckled shoes. And what would a legacy sequel be without a returning character? Jennifer Aniston obviously did not reprise her final girl role of Tory Redding. So, the film did the next best thing and fetched another of Lubdan’s past victims: Ozzie, the likable oaf played by Mark Holton. Returns also created an extension of Tory’s character by giving her a teenage daughter, Lila (Taylor Spreitler).

It has been twenty-five years since the events of the ‘93 film. The incident is unknown to all but its survivors. Interested in her late mother’s history there in Devil’s Lake, North Dakota, Lila transferred to the local university and pledged a sorority — really the only one on campus — whose few members now reside in Tory Redding’s old home. The farmhouse-turned-sorority-house is still a work in progress; Lila’s fellow Alpha Epsilon sisters were in the midst of renovating the place when a ghost of the past found its way into the present.

The Psycho Goreman and The Void director’s penchant for visceral special effects is noted early on as the Leprechaun tears not only into the modern age, but also through poor Ozzie’s abdomen. The portal from 1993 to 2018 is soaked with blood and guts as the Leprechaun forces his way into the story. Davis’ iconic depiction of the wee antagonist is missed, however, Linden Porco is not simply keeping the seat warm in case his predecessor ever resumes the part. His enthusiastic performance is accentuated by a rotten-looking mug that adds to his innate menace.

LEPRECHAUN RETURNS sequel

Pictured: Taylor Spreitler, Pepi Sonuga, and Sai Bennett as Lila, Katie and Rose in Leprechaun Returns.

The obligatory fodder is mostly young this time around. Apart from one luckless postman and Ozzie — the premature passing of the latter character removed the chance of caring about anyone in the film — the Leprechaun’s potential prey are all college aged. Lila is this story’s token trauma kid with caregiver baggage; her mother thought “monsters were always trying to get her.” Lila’s habit of mentioning Tory’s mental health problem does not make a good first impression with the resident mean girl and apparent alcoholic of the sorority, Meredith (Emily Reid). Then there are the nicer but no less cursorily written of the Alpha Epsilon gals: eco-conscious and ex-obsessive Katie (Pepi Sonuga), and uptight overachiever Rose (Sai Bennett). Rounding out the main cast are a pair of destined-to-die bros (Oliver Llewellyn Jenkins, Ben McGregor). Lila and her peers range from disposable to plain irritating, so rooting for any one of them is next to impossible. Even so, their overstated personalities make their inevitable fates more satisfying.

Where Returns excels is its death sequences. Unlike Jones’ film, this one is not afraid of killing off members of the main cast. Lila, admittedly, wears too much plot armor, yet with her mother’s spirit looming over her and the whole story — comedian Heather McDonald put her bang-on Aniston impersonation to good use as well as provided a surprisingly emotional moment in the film — her immunity can be overlooked. Still, the other characters’ brutal demises make up for Lila’s imperviousness. The Leprechaun’s killer set-pieces also happen to demonstrate the time period, seeing as he uses solar panels and a drone in several supporting characters’ executions. A premortem selfie and the antagonist’s snarky mention of global warming additionally add to this film’s particular timestamp.

Critics were quick to say Leprechaun Returns did not break new ground. Sure, there is no one jetting off to space, or the wacky notion of Lubdan becoming a record producer. This reset, however, is still quite charming and entertaining despite its lack of risk-taking. And with yet another reboot in the works, who knows where the most wicked Leprechaun ever to exist will end up next.


Horror contemplates in great detail how young people handle inordinate situations and all of life’s unexpected challenges. While the genre forces characters of every age to face their fears, it is especially interested in how youths might fare in life-or-death scenarios.

The column Young Blood is dedicated to horror stories for and about teenagers, as well as other young folks on the brink of terror.

Leprechaun Returns movie

Pictured: Linden Porco as The Leprechaun in Leprechaun Returns.

Continue Reading