The Hiding Room

In dark forests, beyond the mountains, by black lakes in hidden groves. At your doorstep. In the shadows, something stirs. Strange beings. Twisted creatures, lurking at the edge of vision. Watching. Waiting. Unseen by most, but not by you. You see them for what they really are. Vaesen. Welcome to the Mythic North – northern Europe of the nineteenth century, but not as we know it today. A land where the myths are real. A cold reach covered by vast forests, its few cities lonely beacons of industry and enlightenment – a new civilization dawning. But in the countryside, the old ways still hold sway. There, people know what lurks in the dark. They know to fear it. Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying is based on the work of Swedish illustrator and author Johan Egerkrans, Vaesen presents a dark Gothic setting steeped in Nordic folklore and old myths of Scandinavia. The game mechanics use an adapted version of the award-winning Year Zero Engine.

I really didn’t think I was going to love Fria Liga’s Alien. I didn’t honestly understand the point of building an RPG around the license — Alien movies end with just about everyone getting killed by an alien, to the point that recent installments of the franchise have resorted to grotesque contortions to mix up the formula. Even so, those films are  pretty unimpressive. Do I really want to play an RPG set in a post-Prometheus Alien universe?

Shockingly, yes! The Alien RPG manages to take bits and pieces of every part of the larger franchise and synthesize them into something astonishingly and consistently cool. Remember how amazing the first Prometheus trailer was? All that promise? You get all that in the RPG, without having to be bound to the details of the movie’s execution. The specifics don’t matter at all, in fact. But the broad implications paint outer space as a hostile, howling void intent on murdering everyone who ventures out into it. It’s great. The look of the game, with its monochrome monitor graphics and dark art supports this well.

Under the hood, the game uses Year Zero Engine and bolts on a stress mechanic that can lead to panic — a quick and easy sanity system with immediate consequences. Similarly, the usual status damage system used by YZE is replaced with a health score, making combat far more deadly. While campaign play is supported (and there is plenty of source material in here to get one going, including a couple call backs to the Leading Edge Aliens RPG, of all things) the focus is really on “Cinematic” one-shots that match the dramatic arc of an Alien film. They play here is fast and deadly, made more complicated by personal agendas that almost inevitably lead to betrayals at crucial moments.

I was a little skeptical of the Alien Starter Kit. Still am, kind of. See, you get the basic rules — the mechanics chapters direct from the core rulebook — two sets of custom dice, a sheet of tokens, some reference sheets and a massive map of the known galaxy. The main attraction though, is Chariot of the Gods, a full example of the game’s cinematic style of adventure.

Broad strokes, the scenario resembles the original Alien film, though with some key twists and turns. This game loves the established Alien mythology, but also loves departing from it when it will most mess with the heads of players. There is a lot here that messes with the players. I don’t actually want to talk to much about it. I’d rather run it for some folks. Let’s leave it at: it ain’t what you expect.

The game’s hidden agendas work quite well, which are tied directly to the narrative and evolve over the three acts of the story. The agendas are delivered via a deck of reference cards (there are also cards for characters, guns and initiative), which is pretty good way of doing it.

Vaesen (2020) is a horror/mystery game from Fria Liga, derived from the work of Johan Egerkrans (specifically his 2013 book Vaesen). His gorgeous art is reproduced throughout and is the lynch pin of the game’s setting. He captures both the playfulness and fearsomeness of the supernatural entities in a warm, autumnal light.

The world of Vaesen is one in which humanity is encroaching on the wild regions where supernatural creatures dwell. While not necessarily hostile, they are incompatible with our industrialized world of reason. Thus, the horror of Vaesen is born out of tragedy. There is a sense in some Hellboy stories that in killing the monsters he fights, he is robbing the world of its magic. Vaesen shares some of that — these mythic creatures are only ever acting in accordance to their nature, not out of malice. Humanity is the interloper, but the monsters are the ones that get punished. So a horror game? Yes. But a melancholy one.

Vaesen uses the Year Zero Engine and this one is more at the lighter, more narrative focused end of the spectrum, in the same neighborhood as Tales from the Loop. Skill and attribute values equal the number of dice rolled, sixes are successes, damage is rendered in statuses that remove dice from your pool. Too many statuses, you can’t do anything and are maybe dead. Pretty standard. Non-standard is that monsters also have statuses, and these dictate their behavior, which is interesting, since solving a mystery isn’t usually about killing a monster, but rather finding a solution to a problem that is forcing the monster to clash with humanity. More on mysteries tomorrow, though.