The Other OSR: They Came From The Necropolis

They Came From The Necropolis is supplement for Forbidden Psalm and Forbidden Psalm: End Times Edition is a miniatures game published by Space Penguin Ink. It is a 28 mm skirmish level miniatures game playable with just five miniatures per warband per player and as a systems-agnostic setting, those miniatures can be from any range and publisher. It is also notable for a number of things. First, its background means that 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 published by Free League Publishing. That means that Player Characters from the roleplaying game can be converted for use with Forbidden Psalm and with a bit of effort, content for Forbidden Psalm, could be adapted to Mörk Borg if a more physical, combative game is desired. Or the Game Master and her players want to scale their game up to handle skirmish encounters on a battlefield rather than in the theatre of the mind.

They Came From The Necropolis is a short affair that provides further additions to the dark and dirty world of Forbidden Psalm. The danger of conflict is a constant threat and every incident of conflict is brutal and uncaring, with few surviving such occurrences unscathed. Yet for the right amount of coin there are some that will enter the employ of others. Mercenaries or sellswords, they can join a warband and serve until the task they have been hired for is complete. Their advantage is that they bring their own equipment, but they will jealously guard it as it represents their livelihood, their capacity to go from one job to another. In game terms, what this means is that a mercenary can be hired for 25 gp and will replace a member of a warband at least temporarily. The mercenary does not have to be outfitted, but will not share or drop his own gear.

The supplement describes and gives stats for twelve such mercenaries. Each not only comes with his equipment, but also details of a feat, a flaw, and a special aspect. They include Pigmen, a Duke, a warrior, Knights, a Falconer, the Wounded, an Alchemist, a Zealot, a Bombardist, Necropolis Priests, Village Heroes, and a Knight and Retainer. For example, the Feat for Warrior lets her player roll two dice and take the better result, but the Flaw of never leaving combat, and the Special of granting a bonus to Melee to other members of the warband, whilst the Wounded has the Feat of being hard to kill and takes less damage with each hit, and the Flaw that when he is downed and gets back up, his Toughness increases, and the Special that he is cheap to hire. What is really is that the combination of the Feat, the Flaw, and the Special builds character in each mercenary, adding a little story potential as well as making them different to play. For example, the Village Heroes have the Feat of ‘Defenders of the Innocent’ which gives them a bonus to damage to monsters and a Flaw of being ‘Untrained’ and suffer a penalty to attack rolls, but their Special is that if they kill a monster, they lose the flaw.

The supplement also includes a ready list of names to give the mercenaries and details one monster. This is the Horse Head Knights, which of course, have the head of a horse, are immune to darkness conditions, and are undying. There is a chance that when they are killed, that they will return to life with full Hit Points!

Physically, They Came From The Necropolis is decently presented, with only a hint of the artpunk styling of Mörk Borg. Most of the mercenaries are given a page each which includes their stats and an illustration, which is that of a fully painted miniature (drawn from the Black Crab Miniatures! range). These are very nicely done, the Pigmen having a beady-eyed porcine face, the Wounded limping along on a stick with his right leg capped at the knew, Necropolis Priests possessing a certain creepiness.

They Came From The Necropolis is a solid expansion for Forbidden Psalm. The stats and mercenaries are quick and easy to add to a warband and each one is interesting enough to make play just that little bit different for the single session or battle, they are hired for.

The Other OSR: Dungeons & Death

Dungeons & Death is supplement for Forbidden Psalm and Forbidden Psalm: End Times Edition is a miniatures game published by Space Penguin Ink. It is a 28 mm skirmish level miniatures game playable with just five miniatures per warband per player and as a systems-agnostic setting, those miniatures can be from any range and publisher. It is also notable for a number of things. First, its background means that 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 published by Free League Publishing. That means that Player Characters from the roleplaying game can be converted for use with Forbidden Psalm and with a bit of effort, content for Forbidden Psalm, could be adapted to Mörk Borg if a more physical, combative game is desired. Or the Game Master and her players want to scale their game up to handle skirmish encounters on a battlefield rather than in the theatre of the mind.

Dungeons & Death is itself notable for the fact that it contains three scenarios created from fantastic terrain created and painted by the members of the Forbidden Psalm Community. The supplement makes a point of including photographs taken of these three pieces of terrain and each of these is amazing! Not only do the photographs show off the skills of the contributors in terms of sculpting and painting, but they are great handouts should the Game Master want to show them to her players to give them an idea on what they are facing. Otherwise, Dungeons & Death is a short anthology that contains three scenarios and a new set of rules for creating random dungeons that players can take their warbands delving into their depths.

All three scenarios follow the standard format for Forbidden Psalm scenarios, which are presented on two-page spreads. On the left-hand side are entries for the scenario’s ‘Goal’, ‘Reward’, ‘Set-up and Treasure’, ‘Deployment’, and ‘Threats’, plus suggestions for ‘Solo Play’ and ‘Co-op’ play. A time limit is given last. On the right-hand side are mechanics and elements specific to the scenario, which typically includes the stats for monsters and the rules particular to the scenario, a basic map of the set-up, plus a piece of descriptive text to be read out when the players’ warband arriving at the objective for the scenario.

The first of the scenarios is ‘Skull Cave’. Based on a fantastic model and painting of a skull, partially overgrown with vines, its jaw lying separate, and its mouth, gaping wide open. It is claimed that this the skull of giant and it still contains the calcified remains of the giant’s brain. If the Player Characters can get inside the cave, then they can mine the brain fragments. These can be sold for gold or they can be consumed to remove all conditions and heal damage. However, neither the mining of the skull or consuming of the brain fragments is without its risks. The skull could collapse and consuming a brain fragment could transform the Player Character into a monster! A monster that he and his compatriots fought earlier at the mouth of the cave. ‘Skull Cave’ basically takes a classic fantasy roleplaying adventure, that of discovering a body, typically that of a god or a giant, which can then be explored and navigated as it were a dungeon, and turns it in a wargaming encounter.

‘Pies and Lies’ is the second scenario and starts with the Player Characters inside a pie shop. A very quaint pie shop with some utterly lovely pies on display. They have come to steal the pies, but unfortunately, the shop furniture has other ideas and is going to batter the Player Characters as they make a run for it with pies in hand. The treasure consists of the pies themselves and so the aim is to get out of the windows before the pie shop easts someone. Otherwise, ‘Pies and Lies’ is a bit silly.

‘The Statue’ is set in Dawnblight, where the Player Characters suddenly come across a square where a band of hooded people stand around a strange goat-headed statue, chanting for it to awaken. The Player Characters a limited amount of time before the hooded strangers complete their ritual and the statue comes alive! If the statue wakes up, the battle gets even more difficult, but if its is defeated, its skull can be worn as the Helm of the Goat, which has some fun magical effects.

‘Endless Dungeons’ is a set of tables for creating dungeons—networks of corridors and rooms below Dawnblight—which can be mapped out by hand or using dungeon tiles. The starting room is always a standard size, but once a Character opens a door, he can begin rolling dice on the various included tables. These include room size, contents, doors, conditions, monsters either from the Forbidden Psalm rulebook or the Footsteps supplement, NPCs, and so on. The NPCs are daft, including an ‘Intelligent Sock Stealing Goblin’ and a ‘Little Saucepan Man’, who will both join the Player Characters on their search of the dungeon. There is a table of special events that is more sensible. Essentially, a dungeon played using these rules can be played for a long as player wants and can still get the members of warband out of the dungeon. The environment, of course, is dangerous, but there is plenty of opportunity for reward too.

Physically, Dungeons & Death is decently presented, with only a hint of the artpunk styling of Mörk Borg. The wargaming scenarios are clearly laid out and easy to read, and the rules for creating dungeons are easy to use at the table. The illustrations are not too bad, but the photographs are good.

Dungeons & Death is a solid enough expansion for Forbidden Psalm. The scenarios are easy to set up and play and do not demand too much in the way of miniatures or terrain, which is what you expect of Forbidden Psalm. Plus, the dungeon rules are serviceable, but there is an element of silliness which runs counter to the tone of Mörk Borg and some may find to be out of place. Dungeons & Death is not as much use for Mörk Borg—since Mörk Borg and Forbidden Psalm are compatible—and the scenarios are more single encounters than proper adventures. That makes them easy to add to campaign though.

The Other OSR: Forbidden Psalm

The end is nigh and there is no denying it. The seas rise. The forests spread. Crops fail. Wars continue without reason. The dead walk the land. Peasants suffer taxes, plague, and worse. As the world takes one more breath closer to dying, the arch-priestess Josilfa stands in the pulpit in the great cathedral to the god Nechrubel in the city of Galgenbeck in the land of Tveland, preaching that prophecies of the Two-Headed Basilisk are coming true. The apocalypse is pending and the inquisition of the Two-Headed Basilisks will see to it that no apostate or heretic turn their face away from the end or find salvation in other gods. Yet there are some who would deny all the signs around them and even say that there is another way. That the masses need heed to the pontification of arch-priestess Josilfa in her doom mongering prophecies of the Two-Headed Basilisk, that the darkness can be held back. Vriprix the Mad Wizard is one such voice. He believes that the Forbidden Psalm, a nameless scripture, contains the necessary knowledge to do so, and is located deep in the ruins of the city of Kergüs. He will not emerge from behind the doors of his castle home, but his pockets run deep, and he has gold aplenty to hire mercenaries and freebooters to undertake tasks for him. This is the set-up for Forbidden Psalm: The End Times Edition.

Forbidden Psalm: End Times Edition is a miniatures game published by Space Penguin Ink. It is notable for a number of things. First—as the background suggests—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 published by Free League Publishing. That means that Player Characters can be converted to use with Forbidden Psalm and with a bit of effort, the campaign that comes in Forbidden Psalm, could be adapted to Mörk Borg if a more physical, combative game is desired. Like Mörk Borg, a set of polyhedral dice is required to play Forbidden Psalm.

Second, it is a 28 mm skirmish level miniatures game playable with just five miniatures per warband per player and as a systems-agnostic setting, those miniatures can be from any range and publisher, meaning that a player can easily tailor his band to his choice. It is played on two-foot square board and Forbidden Psalm does include rules for the co-operative play, solo play, versus mode, and multiplayer play with three or four participants. The scale and numbers of Forbidden Psalm puts it roughly on a par with a Frostgrave: Fantasy Wargames in the Frozen City and Mordheim.

Third, Forbidden Psalm: End Times Edition is not one book, but two. It compiles two volumes. The core rules, Forbidden Psalm, and the campaign, ‘Footsteps of the Mad Wizard’. This is a twenty-six-part campaign and if Footsteps of the Mad Wizard is run using Mörk Borg, it would actually make it the first campaign for Mörk Borg.

A warband in Forbidden Psalm consists of five miniatures. Each has four stats—Agility, Presence, Strength, and Toughness, Hit Points based on his Toughness, a randomly determined Flaw and Feat, and then some equipment. The latter comes out of a starting budget of fifty gold for all of the Warband. If a player wants his warband to include a Spellcaster, this must be paid for, who is then generated as a standard figure complete with stats, Feat and Flaw, and so on, plus two scrolls—one clean and one unclean—that he will begin play with. Pets—including a pet rock, which is good for throwing—and a Slug Wizard can also be purchased and mercenaries be hired. These are more expensive options than hiring the spellcaster. Forbidden Psalm provides examples of both pets and mercenaries.

Råtta Strejkbrytare
Agility +3 Presence +1 Strength -3 Toughness +0
Hit Points: 8
Flaw: Loner (-1 to tests within two inches of an ally)
Feat: Rat Catcher (free Bag o’ Rats)
Equipment: Short sword, light armour, backpack, lantern, bandages

Set-up and game play in Forbidden Psalm is simple. Pick a scenario to play and set up the board, determine weather and conditions, roll for initiative, and deploy according to the scenario. Then from one round to the next, the participants determine initiative, take it in turns to activate a figure, then monsters, and that is it. Play proceeds like this until the objective for the scenario has either been achieved or it proves impossible to do so. Movement is based on a figure’s Agility stat, and each figure can act and move once when activated. An action can be to make an attack, use an item of equipment or a feat, read a scroll, interact with treasure or scenario objects, drag a down figure a short distance, and so on. If a Test has to be made, it is rolled on a twenty-sided die, the aim being to roll twelve or more. A roll of one is a fumble and a roll of twenty is a critical. Combat is equally as simple, though in melee combat, the defender has a chance to strike back, though with a penalty. A figure reduced to zero Hit Points is ‘Downed’, but is killed if reduced to negative Hit Points. A ‘Downed’ can still die at the end of the scenario or he might simply have a wound or even a wound and a new Feat he has learned!

Both players begin a scenario with each possessing access to six Omens. These grant fantastic, one-off benefits such as dealing maximum damage, forcing the reroll of any dice, cancelling out one critical or fumble.

Magic takes the form of reading scrolls. This simply requires a test versus the figure’s Presence stat. This does not consume the scroll and the figure can read a scroll again and again over the course of a scenario. On a failure or a Critical, the figure gains a Tragedy. Tragedies are accrued and carried over from one game to the next. They are then used and expunged as modifiers to rolls on the Calamity Table, such as when a player rolls a Fumble when reading a scroll. A Calamity, such as everything feeling fine, but on roll of seven on the twenty-sided die whenever the figure is activated, his head explodes and he dies, or the figure’s arm becomes permanently hostile to the figure and punches him every round until the limb is amputated, lasts for a whole scenario.

The rules for Forbidden Psalm run to some forty pages, but that covers everything—warband creation, magic, movement, action, combat, and so on. They are clear and easy to read and grasp, and anyone who has played another set of miniatures wargame rules will be able to adjust with ease, as to be fair, will anyone who has played Mörk Borg. The remainder of Forbidden Psalm is divided between some twenty-five or so monsters and the campaign. The monsters include ‘The Blind Spider Queen’, ‘Blood Rage Vampire’, the ‘Corpse Collector’ of the front cover to Forbidden Psalm, both ‘Dismembered Ghouls’ and ‘Faecal Ghouls’, the ‘Mutant Chicken of Kalkoroth’ (complete with laser eyes), and lastly, the scythe-armed ‘The Editors’ which stuff the mouths of Downed figures with paper covered in mad ramblings and so kill them, rising the next round as Disciples of the Editors! If a monster is killed, its organs can be harvested as ‘Sweet Meats’ and sold. However, this requires a successful Presence Test otherwise the figure realises that his actions are so disgusting he must make a Morale Test! Overall, this is a solid selection of suitably vile monsters and it would be easy to add more from Mörk Borg.

The campaign in Forbidden Psalm: End Times Edition combines the shorter campaign from the original rulebook for Forbidden Psalm and In the Footsteps of the Mad Wizard, and together they take up half of the book. In this, the extremely reclusive Vriprix the Mad Wizard hires the Player Characters to undertake various tasks, such as exploring a nearby house for Black-Spotted Fungus, killing a rival wizard, finding the culprit who has stolen his socks(!), and more… Each clearly states the goal for the Player Characters, rewards, set-up and deployment, threats, and then how to run it in solo and co-operative play, plus some colour text to read out, especially if it is being run as part of a Mörk Borg game. After Vriprix disappears at the end of the part of the campaign, the rest concerns the Player Characters’ attempts to track him down in the city of Dawnblight in the Kergüs region. Here they will find one of their number imprisoned and have to rescue him from Ice Prisons, scavenge for food to keep the Hogs Head Inn running, kill the innkeeper’s ex-lover-now Faecal Ghoul and return with proof, hunt ravenous monsters and try to survive when they turn on them, and so on. It is a fun campaign in whatever format it is being run. There are notes too on what the Player Characters can do between missions and improve themselves. In general, the scenarios are sufficiently complex for Forbidden Psalm, but they may need a little fleshing out here and there to work as anything other than very straightforward scenarios.

Physically, Forbidden Psalm: End Times Edition is decently done and keeps everything clear and simple, and so it is very easy to read. In terms of art style, Forbidden Psalm: End Times Edition avoids the illegibility of the Artpunk style of the standard Mörk Borg title.

Although not written as one, Forbidden Psalm: End Times Edition has the simplicity and ease of use of an introductory wargame, made all the easier by its low demands in terms of miniatures and terrain pieces required. The compatibility between Forbidden Psalm: End Times Edition and Mörk Borg also highlights the simplicity and adaptability of the Old School Renaissance-style roleplaying game, not just to another setting or genre, but an entirely different type of game—the miniatures wargame—and then back again. All of which is supported by over twenty scenarios which can be played in solo, co-operative, and player-versus mode or run as straightforward roleplaying scenarios. Forbidden Psalm: End Times Edition is a solid set of skirmish miniatures combat rules, perfect for the Mörk Borg devotee, suitable for the wargames enthusiastic wanting a straightforward set of rules, and good for the Game Master who wants an undemanding campaign.