Guys, this thing is a freaking tome. I've got a good hunch if I took this monster of a book and hit you at the base of your skull you'd be dead. Or at the very least in a coma. It's not the largest RPG I own by page count - that's either Burning Wheel or Burning Empires - but the paper is this wonderfully thick and heavy stock and it's definitely a thicker (and larger) book. The fact that this book could double as a weapon is part of the point. This game is what would happen if you put the Iliad and put it to a heavy metal soundtrack.
That's explicit.
Parts of the game actually ask you to copy and paste heavy metal lyrics in. We'll get back to that. It's glorious.
Against the Darkmaster is a rules-heavy combat game, inspired principally by Tolkien and heavy metal. It's a d100 system: roll d100 (usually 2d10 with one die as the 10s and the other the 1s), add your modifiers, and pray to get 100+, for standard checks.
You probably won't.
The dice engine is deliberately evil. If you just go by it you're not going to get a straight success, not terribly often. We'll get back to that.
For combat rolls you get all your modifiers, knock off an amount equal to your enemy's defense, and compare to the proper table. Roll as high as you can, cause the higher you roll means you not only do more damage but can also roll on a critical hit table.... and those get mean. Instant death mean. Better wear armor, because if you don't you'll find yourself in a coma for weeks. One strong roll and your character may be so critically injured that there's barely anything anyone can do to save them. And that's the point.
Drive, Passions, Advancement Lists, and Other Walls of Text
The dice engine in this game can be compared to a box of needles and knives and rusty forks, especially at lower levels. Because there's this awesome thing called Drive. Drive allows you to fudge the numbers, reduce critical hits, get rerolls, and make your stuff much more effective. Spending 10 Drive nets you a Milestone, which means you have the ability to have what's called a Revelation. Most of the time Revelations require time to process the events since the last Revelation, so usually you need some serious time off, but once you do you can increase stats, buff items, get more HP, and other little bumps. Considering that Drive should be flying off your character the issue is not in getting the Milestone, but having the time to get a Revelation (although the game does say that a dramatically appropriate moment can suffice).
How do you get Drive? You act on your Passions. Yes, folks, this game has Burning Wheel in its list of inspired games! You choose three priorities for your character. Like Burning Wheel what these three Passions could be is totally up to you, but the game has three default assumptions: Nature (behavior/demeanor), Allegiance (love/hate of another character), and Motivation (an actual concrete goal). Other classifications can and do exist, but these are the three assumed by the game. Whenever you willingly put yourself into a dangerous situation or challenge, put yourself in a bad light because of your Passions, or put the story in a new or unexpected direction because of your Passions, increase your Drive by one.
Oh, there's an alternate rule where you can use heavy metal lyric quotes for Passions. I don't know why it's an alternate rule, because that's just too cool for words! At that point Passions become a reference to music... and the places you could go with that is amazing.
Your Drive caps at five. The game says you can either award Drive on the spot or at the end of the session, whatever you think is more appropriate to your story.
Now, I've read more than a few RPGs that claim to have Burning Wheel as an inspiration. Some of them it's a very surface level inspiration (cough Beyond the Wall cough hack), and others actually seemed to learn something from it (Blades in the Dark is definitely in this category). Against the Darkmaster is the only game I know of that actively apes Burning Wheel's core engine: two advancement engines which are fed by an open-ended "input" system. In Burning Wheel that's your Beliefs, Instincts, and Trait, which feed into the epiphany (grey-shading) and skill advancement systems.
For this game we've already talked about the Passion/Revelation engine, but there's also the Achievement List/XP engine, which completes the resemblance to Burning Wheel. The Achievement List is decided upon by the GM and the players, who determine which concrete actions in the world warrant XP or not. Against the Darkmaster openly wants your group to customize their own list of at least six options. The game gives two examples of such lists, with solid guidance on how to make your own. And the game expects the group as a whole to draft the list. Now, the game seems to imply that once the list is made that's it; no changing it. But there's nothing explicitly saying that you can't. And I have every intention of encouraging the list to change to reflect new situations.
Oh, and if you die a heroic death you just pass on your entire experience track to the next character. Kill your darlings, because more are coming. That might be an important rule, no?
An Open Tome of Deadliness
Now, here's where my predilections as a reviewer come the most into play. I am of the opinion that folks should not modify a game to suit their tastes when they're just starting. They need to adapt to the game and see if they can work with it, as written. The designer spent some time crafting a piece that works (in theory), and it's not up to somebody who's never even touched the darn thing to determine on a surface-level read whether or not they should change it. That doesn't mean you shouldn't eventually house-rule the game to your preferences: just take some time learning the game as it is. I currently have one house rule for Burning Wheel, with another in consideration, with seven years of gameplay under my belt. When I was playing 4e DnD I played a full three years before I started hacking it. Learn the game. Then figure out what you wanna do with it.
Against the Darkmaster takes a bit of a softer approach than I'm used to: it provides several alternate rules, with active advice on what that does to the system. Most of those alternate rules are the way the designers prefer to play the game. That leads to a more collaborative experience, with players using heavy metal lyrics as inspiration for Passions, deliberately softening the blows for deaths that are not heroic, and a couple of other rules that make your games about badassess dying deaths of badassery.
Most of the time alternate rules seem to dilute the experience for me, but here the designers seem to legitimately think the "other" way is just as much a legit way to play their game. The rules have a polish to them that suggest play-testing, as opposed to "Hey, this might work", without much of a thought as to whether they'd actually work. That suggests to me that there's more than one way to play this game in the very heart of the design team. And that I don't mind, as it seems genuine enough.
The Bonk on the Back of the Neck
I called my brother John, who is not an RPGer, not by any stretch, but used to be in a heavy metal band, and threw the pitch for this game as I understood it his way: in order to destroy the Darkmaster you have to exist in an world of pain, suffering and death. Your characters live short, but incredibly intense, lives dying in blazes of glory that will be forever remembered. You pass on your experience track, creating stronger and stronger characters, until you're waist deep in the blood your characters have spilled, all to get to the Darkmaster. And when you win and end the series of campaigns you've been playing it's drenched in blood, with all the weight of the dead behind you.
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