So I am getting on a train today, to go home from Uni, and I was looking over today’s reading so I could make the blog post in the morning, before getting on the train. Like the child I am, I forgot that some TTRPGs have words in them. This is a 154 page TTRPG. I will be posting from the train, apparently. This intro is being written as of the morning, but it will be posted much later I’m sure.
UPDATE:
It’s been two minutes. But. This is a Game Master’s Book. I was curious, so I went to the store page, and yep, there is a corresponding Player’s Book, and yes, it is in the bundle. So today is a 2-for-1, I’m reading 300 pages of two books, and finishing off 18 and 19 in this 467 PILE. I figure it’s unfair to not read the PB at the same time as the GMB, so yeah. Strap in.
What if DND was more problematic than it already was.
Sorry, I have to be that one friend that’s too woke today. Mhar Fantasy is a perfect encapsulation of ye old fantasy systems, featuring casual racism (a feature DND also shared until recently) and Gender Essentialism (that one’s fun).
Look. If you’ve played DND, you know this one. It’s claim to fame is that it is more inspired by political and relational motives rather than “high fantasy.” It’s not some “hollywood B-movie,” it’s taking notes from “Arthurian legend” instead. Which just seems- I mean. I like B-movies. I love them, in fact. So.
Originality: ⭐
If your main points of comparison are DND and the legends of Camelot, you are not doing anything I need to know about.
Mechanics: ⭐⭐⭐
Now you might think I’m being too mean to this game. I will take this section to explain, in part, why I am not being too mean, because there are MECHANICS that correlate to some of the things I’m being mean about.
For starters, a positive. This uses a roll-under-system, the combat is intended to be lethal, I actually would steal these mechanics rather than play 5e combat. They have parries! They do overcomplicate things in ways I think could be simplified but overall combat seems super engaging and I dig it. That’s about all I dig.
Now let me give you some hits from the mechanics I don’t like.
You have to gender your character, with an implied male-female dichotomy.
The above is a perk.
This counts as a mechanic, it’s in a stat block. They don’t even let the demons be gay, can you believe that.
Replayability: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Yes, you could play a campaign with this.
Variability: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
I mean it’s pretty locked in against violence and high fantasy shenanigans, but it’s got variance within the actual theming, especially with the world lore that it dumps across some several dozen pages between the two books.
Character Creation: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
There’s a lot of neat systems in here, actually. I would recommend glancing at it. I won’t even remove a point for gender since I already covered that. Oh, wait, you guys don’t own it and it costs money, so... I should give an overview of what I like, huh? Er. Uh. It’s got archetypes instead of classes, so there’s nuance within each “class,” it’s got interesting takes on the way you go about buying things via an initial point system, it has flaws as a game mechanic and talents, too. It’s got a lot going for it. I should also really take a point off for race. Trust me. The races kind of suck. There’s goblins, and the goblins are warlike and “naturally aggressive,” and treat women like “chattel.” And then the cat people have a vaguely buddhist religion, with the “Seven Paths of Truth.” And shamans are exoticized and belong as a religion to goblins. And Christianity is also here, and THAT belongs to humans, of course.
Overall: ⭐⭐
I just don’t feel like being charitable today. This one has cool mechanics to some degree but is so snooze-inducingly long (I’ve expressed my preference for light rules, but if you like it, this one does have some meat), filled with lore that makes my eyebrows raise progressively higher, and just bringing nothing interesting to the table in any way other than applying mechanics in a SOMEWHAT new way. I should be clear, roll–under is not a new concept. Neither is parrying. I just like the way they did it. What I don’t like is just how… generic and… “normal,” it is. Does that make sense? TTRPGs are for nerds, but this bundle I expected a certain kind of nerd appeal, as well. I mean, it’s for the queers (me), so, like… come on. But this contains all the regular implicit biases and lack of scrutiny of itself and the inspiration its drawing on that I would expect rrom a generic TTRPG. It’s accidentally built a setting where despite the fact that it wants to create a “morally grey” scenario, it still has, in lore, extreme differences that are biologically programmed into each group, as well as SEVERE gender essentialism which really bothers me for obvious reasons.
If you are not That One Friend Who is Too Woke, give it a read. It’s not a bad system. If you wish DND was (mechanically) good, then scrap as much of this one for parts as you want. If you’re looking for something even slightly new, you can skip this one.
