With the expansions for Saturday Morning Scenarios’ Whispers in the Dark (5e) available on Kickstarter (The Devil’s City and Horror in the Windy City) as well as the release of The Investigator’s Companion 5e sourcebook, it’s a good time to use my RPG-View Copy of Whispers in the Dark: Quickstart Rules for 5e to experience 1800s investigative horror D&D-style.
Why Whisper?
Whispers in the Dark by Matt Corley and M.T. Black from Saturday Morning Scenarios adapts the Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition to bring 1800s New Orleans and all of its atmospheric horrors to your gaming table. Because of the Kickstarter, I reviewed this book but I’d wanted to pick it up and try it out for a while because I’ve interviewed Matt Corley about Whispers in the Dark (here) and Lamp’s Light Sanitarium, another fifth edition horror sourcebook from Saturday Morning Scenarios (here), on EN World. Matt’s work is exceptional and his resume includes an entry for lead designer at Kobold Press, all good reasons to try out his work. To add to that, both M.T. Black and I freelance for EN Publishing at EN World and I felt it’d be a good idea to support my peer.
The World
This tabletop RPG uses a modified version of the Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition engine to tell tales of investigative horror set in Reconstruction era/Victorian era New Orleans. It’s Great Old Ones in a Southern Gothic dungeon crawl along the streets of America’s supernatural metropolis. You play humans and near-humans investigating and combatting the cults of the Mythos.
D&D Investigative Horror
In this variant of the 5e engine, character creation is largely as you’d expect. The biggest difference is the omission of character classes. Instead, feats are used to differentiate characters as they process through the levels. For your character build, your first choice is ancestry. You can play either a human (common), a human (Lengian), or a human (Deep Blooded). Lengians are descended from the peoples of the Leng plateau, have Darkvision, have advantage on certain saving throws and other abilities. Deep Ones are ocean-dwelling amphibians, and Deep Blooded humans are descents of these creatures and humans. They have Darkvision, the ability to hold their breath for hours and other enhancements. Unlike regular 5e, the non-common humans have minor disadvantages. Lengians smell bad and animals don’t react well to them. The deep blooded have an off-putting appearance resulting in impaired social interactions.
In this quickstart, there are eight backgrounds to choose from (more are available in The Investigator’s Companion 5e), each coming with skill, weapon, and saving throw proficiencies as well as languages, equipment, and starting money. The system utilizes the standard six ability scores and modifiers. Hit Dice are universally d6s and HP is a d6 plus your Constitution modifier per level.
There is no experience in Whispers, instead, the GM determines when a character reaches a new level. Using a simple chart covering levels 1 to 10, you can see your proficiency bonus and what features you’ll gain. The levels that offer a new feat are the important ones. There are thirteen feats in the quick start. As mentioned, feats help to define the differences between characters abilities as they raise in level.
Weapons include a selection of what was available around 1875 in the American South. The list includes some of the melee weapons that were in mass production at that time as well as five guns and rifles (no bows). Melee weapons deal 1d2 to 1d8 in damage while firearms deal 2d4 to 2d8 in damage. Proficiency with firearms allows you to add your proficiency bonus and Dexterity modifier to your To Hit. Your damage bonus comes from Dexterity when using a gun.
Rests between combats and adventures are longer than in standard 5e. A short rest is eight hours and allows you to roll your Hit Dice to recover Hit Points. A long rest is 7 consecutive days that include a short rest per day. A long rest recovers all lost HP and HD.
Sanity and madness in horror RPGs are pro forma as I’ve touched on with Glimpse the Beyond Second Edition (here) and Dark Streets & Darker Secrets (here) reviews. Sanity mechanics are a logistical way of expressing mental stress in the coldest numeric terms. As with all Sanity mechanics, they’re divorced from the realities of mental imbalances. As I try to say in some form with each review, eldritch horror equals mental health mechanics. In tabletop RPGs, it’s a mechanical trope and not something to judge a game on.
For Whispers, “Chapter 10: Madness & Sanity” is the longest mechanics chapter in the book running from page 27 to 37. Only the adventure included in the book has a longer section. For this system, your character’s maximum sanity score is derived from their Charisma score plus their Wisdom modifier. The score fluctuates as you fail sanity checks. If you fail a check, you roll 1d4 and remove that many points of sanity temporarily. Enough fails and you roll on the “Transient and Short-Term Psychoses” table or, if the results are exceptionally difficult, use the “Long-Term and Indefinite Psychoses” table. Whispers version of Sanity mechanics makes sense in the context of the 5e engine and will not require learning a variety of new rules.
Lastly, let me mention that this world will include magic, but that’s not a part of the Whispers in the Dark: Quickstart Rules for 5e. Instead, magic is detailed in The Investigator’s Companion 5e sourcebook.
1800s Paperwork Character Sheet
I want to call out the character sheet as it looks fantastic. Laid out as a hospital ledger of the era, the top row is for name, level, background, ancestry, alignment, and experience. The second page covers age, height, weight, eyes, skin, and hair along the top row as if it’s a sheet from a hospital. For easy of play, there’s some logic in its attribute lay out with each attribute including its saving throw and skills beneath it. It’s a solid character sheet that adds to the feel of the game.
Art
Jumping from the character sheet to the design and art makes sense when you see the work as it continues the good decisions seen in the character sheet. The cover by Rooster Republic is a black and red affair that conveys the age and genre expertly. The interior art is handled by Daniele Serra, Matt Ray, Toby Lancaster, JL Giles, and, author, Matt Corley. The art pieces built from historic photos elevate the project, giving it a rounded fill that I enjoy. Taking known photos and giving them a supernatural spin is a good call for this game.
The Book
I’m working from a proof copy of the quick start. As an aside, proof copies are tabletop artifacts giving you the last view of the work before the product goes to press. I dig them as a unique collector’s item.
The hardcover is 75 pages plus cover. The PDF is 78 pages (no difference in content, just laid out differently).
Beyond the mechanics, the Quickstart includes an adventure, “The Crow Man”, an appendix featuring seven monsters and NPCs, and another with six pre-generated characters. This game is fully playable as it, but with M.T. Black Games sourcebook, The Investigator’s Companion 5e, with more options and a magic system, this becomes a solidly built project.
H.P. Lovecraft
Evil Hat Productions generated controversy when they discussed their opposition to H.P. Lovecraft’s racism in their take on Lovecraft’s mythos, Fate of Cthulhu. Saturday Morning Scenarios’ Whispers offers a similar acknowledgement in the book and I’m glad to see Lovecraft’s work and person separated, and his worst qualities addressed.
From Whispers:
“The Problem with HPL
Please allow us a brief sidebar on H. P. Lovecraft. Chances are good that if you’re reading this you are aware of HPL’s beliefs as they relate to race, religion, and gender. We do not in any way, shape, or form condone those views. They are despicable. To think that Yog-Sothothery is limited to his writings is to do a tremendous disservice to the folks of all beliefs, backgrounds, and genders that have since shaped the genre into what it is today. This is not the mythos as it was written a century ago. It is the mythos as it is today, a voice for anyone and everyone.”
Should You Whisper?
There are many types of gaming groups, and one that I hear about with frequency are the D&D-Or-Die gaming tables. These groups are set in their system choice and they will not try a new system. They’re not necessarily opposed to a new setting, just opposed to learning a new ruleset. If that’s the case and your gaming group is hardcore Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition yet you want to spice it up with a new setting with some Victorian era horror, Whispers in the Dark is waiting for you.
Backing away from that subset because you’re not 5e-For-Life, is this a good game? Yes. Whispers combines a solid engine (D&D 5e is a winning version of d20) with the right mythology, setting, and art to make a game you’ll want to dive into. Using the 5e engine adds an additional dimension that some Mythos RPGs miss out on, there’s room for character longevity and a campaign. Instead of the root of the game being a race to solve the mystery before your character burns out, this game allows enough recovery to go the distance of a campaign. Which is good because this is a growing world with sourcebooks out already and a Kickstarter for a novel and a sourcebook that are funding right now. If Victorian horror and a refined RPG engine appeal to you, Whispers awaits.
Whispers in the Dark by Matt Corley and M.T. Black from Saturday Morning Scenarios is available through DriveThruRPG as a PDF and POD. The Investigator’s Companion 5e sourcebook is available through M.T. Black Games as a PDF offering new backgrounds, feats, optional rules, and a magic system.
Kickstarter
The Devil’s City: Horror Fiction & 5e Gaming Conjoined by Saturday Morning Scenarios
END DATE: Thu, April 30 2020 12:59 AM EDT.
SYSTEM: Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition
“An illustrated, collectible novella & companion 5e RPG setting exploring the growing darkness in Chicago of late 1800s. The Devil’s City, a novella, and Horror in the Windy City, a full-length RPG campaign sourcebook expanding the Whispers in the Dark RPG universe. Whispers in the Dark is compatible with the 5th edition of the world’s oldest rpg and set in a world adjacent to our own.”
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