As religious war spread,
cities burned, thousands died, and neighbouring powers took advantage of the
weakened Holy Empire of the Sanguine Church. Svea and Orla funded the Puritans
and as one city and town after another declared its allegiance to one side or
the other, one faith or the other, or even none, no army could protect them
all. So out went the call for mercenaries on all sides, and as long as they are
paid, such free companies will serve their paymasters, but if not, they become
as much of a threat as the enemy extracting the pay they are owed, in the
process, making the populace suffer further. The Inquisition and its witchfinders scour
the broken land in search of corruption, signs of the dark arts, and demons,
ready to torture, burn, and hang all it suspects, all in service of the
Orthodoxy of the Church of Light, yet almost as fanatically as the Puritans.
The Inquisition cannot be everywhere and where a witch would be burned where
the Puritans hold sway, a wise woman would be revered where the Orthodoxy
remains, and demons frolic, come to Vaterländ to revel in the pain and
suffering. Worse, even worse than the plague and famine that rolls back and
forth across the land, is the Staggering Pox that blights the dead of the
battlefields in their shallow graves and forces them to walk again… Another
year of Purgatory and winter seems longer and colder than the last…
This is the setting for Black Powder and Brimstone, a roleplaying game which is very obviously inspired by the events of the Thirty Years’ War, the civil war which tore the Holy Roman Empire apart between 1618 and 1648, born of the Reformation that divided Christendom in Western Europe. Published by Free League Publishing following a successful Kickstarter campaign, it is compatible with Mörk Borg, the Swedish pre-apocalypse Old School Renaissance style roleplaying game designed by Ockult Örtmästare Games and Stockholm Kartell and also published by Free League Publishing. This is a setting in which the Player Characters not only have to survive the horrors of war, but also the fanaticism of the faithful, the unnatural and the occult as well as the attentions of the Inquisition in ferreting out signs of apostasy and heresy. Vaterländ is a land where demons lurk and cultists skulk, flagellants scourge themselves into apoplexies of piety and pain, mercenaries and armies tramp the land taking what they want when they feel they have not been given what they are owed, the night folk dart out of the black swathes of forest at night in search of human flesh, the Bandersnatch takes lost children to who knows where, and the Staggering Pox casts a sickly green shadow... They may simply survive or they may form free companies, mercenaries for hire by either side, and so gain employment and responsibilities.
A Player Character in Black Powder and Brimstone has four stats—Strength, Agility, Presence, and Toughness. These range in value between -3 and +3. The values are determined by rolling three six-sided dice, modified by the character’s Archetype and Subclass. The five Archetypes are Mercenary Deserter, Bounty Hunter, Witch, Opportunist, and Practioneer. The Subclasses for the Mercenary Deserter are Rifleman, Greatswordsman (who comes with a Zweihander) and Grenadier; for the Bounty Hunter they are Pistolier, Master Trapper, and Beast Hunter; for the Witch, they are Woods Witch, Herbalist, and Hexen; those for the Opportunist are Adventurer, Sneak Thief, and Silver-Tongued Trickster; and for Practioneer, they consist of Vow of War, Vow of Healing, and Vow of Sustencance. Each Archetype provides the Stat bonuses, some gold, and a little background, whilst the Subclasses provide equipment and a special ability. A set of optional tables provide various character traits including a background skill.
Ottilie Schönlein
Archetype: Witch
Subclass: Hexen
Abilities: Curse (-2/+2 penalty/bonus), Black Candles, Deck of Cards
Strength 0 Agility 0 Presence +3 Toughness +1
Hit Points: 12
Background: Running from a deal gone wrong
Spells: Invisibility, Befuddlement
Character Traits: Ottilie is sullen; Ottilie wants to write a book; Ottilie’s setback is rudeness; Ottilie is good at dancing; Ottilie’s passion is being creative; Ottilie most notable physical feature is her jewellery
Collectively, the Player Characters can form a Free Company. This costs a lot of gold to register, but the members should have a shared goal and will share both treasure and income. If a Player Character is killed whilst a member of a Free Company, a new one can enlist at the same Level and degree of income. Beyond that, being a member of a Free Company does provide any benefits. It is supported with rules for hiring mercenaries and a very light means of handling combat between detachments.
Mechanically, Black Powder and Brimstone is, like Mörk Borg, player-facing. In other words, the players roll the dice, not the Game Master. This particularly applies to combat whereas as well as rolling for his character to stab a witch, a player also rolls avoid being bitten by the witch rat familiar. To have his character undertake an action, a player rolls a twenty-sided die, aiming to roll equal to or over a Difficulty Rating from six and simple to eighteen and impossible, with an average Difficulty Rating being ten or twelve. To this he adds the value of the stat.
In addition to setting the Difficulty Rating of a task, the Game Master can determine the Position and Impact based upon the situation. These do not adjust the Difficulty Rating, but set out the consequences of the action, Position the outcome if a failure, Impact if a success. Position can either be ‘Shaky’, ‘Risky’, or ‘Dire’, that is, not as bad as it could have been, as bad as expected, or worse than was imagined. There is scope for the player to negotiate with the Game Master as which degree of Position or Impact applies to the situation and a player can even trade Position for Impact, making a task easier to complete, but not be as effective. Position and Impact are also applied to negotiations, a player typically having his character attempting to shift an NPC’s disposition from Hostile/Strong through Indifferent/Fair to Positive/Strong.
Combat uses the same core mechanic. Initiative is simply determined by who acts first, but combat order is rolled with any Player Character with a positive Agility stat at an advantage. Mêlée combat uses the Strength stat, both magic and ranged combat use Presence, and Defence uses Agility. The rules cover stealth, the breaking of morale, cover, attacks of opportunity, grappling and stunning, and more, including simple chase rules for mounted combat. There are a handful of possible outcomes given for rolls of natural one or twenty in combat for mêlée, ranged combat, and using magic. If a character is reduced to zero or negative Hit Points, his player must make a Toughness check. If successful, the character is simply Broken, but fail and he might fall unconscious, suffer a wound, or bleed to death. A wicked scar might be small or might be missing nose or a limb. Worse, there is a chance that rusty, unclean weapons will cause an infection beyond the wound itself…
Most of the weapons have special rules. For example, on roll of eighteen plus, a zweihänder will cut a man in half, whilst its cumbersome nature means that it is at a penalty to use in enclosed spaces, whilst a club will knock someone out on a roll of sixteen or more. All black powder weapons have a misfire die, an eight-sided die rolled in addition to the attack roll. On a roll of two, the weapon misfires, one a roll of one it explodes and injures the wielder—the aarquebus is worse! All take a round to reload, but the advantage of these black powder weapons is that they ignore armour. Armor simply reduces damage for other attacks.
A Player Character also has access to ‘Devil’s Luck’. This can be spent to either lower the Difficulty Rating of a task or to activate a Dark Power. A Dark Power might be to deal maximum damage, neutralise a critical roll or a fumble, allow a reroll of any die, or ignore all damage dealt to a Player Character. However, it has its consequences, as the Player Character might gain a mutation, like small bony horns sprouting from his head or growing an extra finger on his hand.
A Witch can cast between one and four spells per day. Casting a spell is a simple Presence roll, but if failed, the Witch is left temporarily dizzy and whilst dizzy cannot successfully cast another spell. Only a Witch can learn spells, although other Player Characters can consume various potions for similar effects. Spells include Cursed Ammunition which hits easier and harder, but the wielder suffers damage; Wound Eater causes the target to suffer all damage temporarily that the caster would otherwise suffer; Back from the Brink brings a fresh corpse back to life, but reduces his total Hit Points. The spell list is not extensive and includes three spells—Spectral Skeletons, Raise the Dead, and Death Glare—that can only be learned from Gothel, the Mistress of Twilight. A mishap will occur if the Witch’s player rolls a one on the spell casting roll.
For the Game Master there is revelations about the setting and some decent advice on running the game and creating scenarios. The former includes applying ‘Yes and…’ and ‘No, but…’, using failed rolls to make something happen rather negate the action, and the use of countdown clocks, all very modern for an Old School Renaissance-style roleplaying. The latter is backed up with some short frameworks around which the Game Master can build a plot, some sample plot hooks, and a set of tables to generate adventures, locations—and inns in particular, and even dungeons. There is also quite a large bestiary, of which mutants, bandits, free company mercenaries, and puritan martials are the most mundane. More outré monsters include the Grave Colossus, walking graveyards with a hatred of grave robbers, Dryads, and a host of demons. There is even a weird swerve into Science Fiction in the form of the Watchers, cowardly aliens which conduct experiments in secret. There is also a full gallery of villains, friends, and adversaries, some of which more than a little tongue in cheek, like the world-renowned thief, Carmen San Dominira, and Lord Flash, a British mercenary with a silver tongue and a lot of luck, unlike those he leads into battle.
Rounding out Black Powder and Brimstone is a short scenario, ‘The House of Pain and Loss’. The Player Characters arrive in the town of Koch. It is rundown due to the war and the higher taxes, but the town noticeboard has several notices nailed to it asking about the whereabouts of several missing women. There is little to learn in the town except that the local nobleman, Count Lethgar, has not been seen since the death of his wife and that the wife of the innkeeper is missing. The inference is that there might be a creature of the night abroad and it might be the count. It is an easy assumption to come to since the plot to the scenario is underwhelmingly straightforward, ending in an investigation of the count’s manse and discovering his secrets. Annoyingly, the Game Master has to ‘read to find out’ what the plot is as there is no explanation at the start of the scenario, which can played in the same session as the players create their characters.
Physically, Black Powder and Brimstone is stunning. The artwork has a cartoonishly grim and gothic style that is really eye-catching and pivotal in conveying the sense of the game and its world, enticing the viewer to look, find out, and want to play. Black Powder and Brimstone really is a cool looking book. However, it does need an edit.
There is a lot to like about Black Powder and Brimstone. The setting—and the artwork are enthralling, since this is one of the few roleplaying games to specifically draw upon the Thirty Years’ War for its key inspiration. There have been other roleplaying games to do the same, most notably Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, but that does not draw so directly upon the religious schism and the resulting war. Indeed, it could be argued that Black Powder and Brimstone is the Old School Renaissance answer to Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, but the historical parallels between the setting of Black Powder and Brimstone and the Thirty Years’ War and the emphasis upon horror rather than fantasy in Black Powder and Brimstone suggests otherwise. (In fact, it could be said that the parallels between the setting of Black Powder and Brimstone and the Thirty Years’ War are a bit too on the nose, such as naming the instigator of the Reformation, ‘Luther Martin’.) Yet Black Powder and Brimstone is not a wholly satisfying design. Mechanically, it is underdeveloped, in the main, the ‘Position’ and ‘Impact’ mechanic feeling bolted on and being more narrative in play, at odds with the Old School sensibility of Mörk Borg. As an extension of that, the social mechanics are best described as a statement of intent rather than a set of rules. Other issues are more minor, but Black Powder and Brimstone seems to be trying to be modern, yet old and not quite right as either.
The other issue is the setting and what to do with it. That the included scenario is so uninspiring is the coda to the issue of what the Player Characters are going to be doing in setting. There are some plot hooks and advice, but there is no discussion of long term or campaign play.
Black Powder and Brimstone is a really fantastic looking book with what looks to be a very gameable setting, but unfortunately it does not deliver that setting or that game as easily as it should have done. Its lack of development is going to leave the Game Master with some work to do and a lot of rulings during play to successfully run it. Hopefully a companion volume or some scenarios will go a long way to fixing that.
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