Disclaimer – The author of this game contacted us asking if we would be interested in reviewing his new game and did provide physical product to me as a reviewer. The opinions below are solely mine based on reviewing the material.
I recently got the chance to take a look at the recently Kickstarted science-fantasy game by Gavriel Quiroga called WARPLAND. This is not Quiroga’s first release, coming hot off of last year’s release NEUROCITY. WARPLAND draws much of its inspiration from films like Heavy Metal and Red Sonja and is a darkly fantastical setting. It lays a vast apocalyptic setting at your feet and bids you to explore it if you dare. The cost will be high – likely higher than you can afford. But nothing ventured, nothing gained.
The Warp is what happened after a war between two peoples known as the Eloi and Morlock reached its inevitable and destructive conclusion. The powerful and dangerous machines of the Eloi cities were unleashed upon the hordes of the Morlock, and with them the arcane energies that powered them caused untold devastation to the world. Upon the shattering of their reality the Morlock fled underground into their deep caves while the Eloi dwindled into nothingness, victims of a sickness of their very souls. Mankind rose once again to fill the void left by these two powerful people.
Even though the setting itself is technically post-apocalyptic, I hesitate to call it that – Mankind is still very much living in their own perpetuation of that apocalypse, refusing to allow itself to grow any further than the limited heights they’ve managed to attain. Knowledge of the past and the written word is demonized, perhaps even more so than the very real demonic creatures that exist to the north and those that seek to study the past or understand the remnants of Eloi technology find themselves hunted by a fervent sort of inquisition from the followers of The Tenet of the True Light, a highly dogmatic religious organization that would keep Mankind in this new iron age. Meanwhile the aftereffects of what is known as The Maelstrom still rips through the world, perverting the natural order by creating chimeric monstrosities and mutating people until they no longer resemble man or woman. And the Morlock aren’t gone – they have survived the intervening years in their deep caves below the earth, licking their wounds and biding their time.
It is into this world that your characters will be thrust, struggling against everything, even their own darker impulses. Will they rise above everything? Or will they be consumed like so many others?
WARPLAND is a game that pulls no punches. It’s designed with an old school flare – the world is dangerous and the characters are not “heroes” in the sense of other roleplaying games. They are fragile and bad decisions will get them killed instead of simply setting them back. That said, it’s a very simple system – the players roll 2d6 and try to come as close to a target number without going over it (commonly referred to as “Price is Right” mechanics). The rules themselves including character creation only take up about a dozen or so pages of this book (and if they were presented in a “more traditional” way, would probably be less than half of that). The system puts the outcome of every action into the player’s hands by having them roll for everything. Because of this, threats and NPCs have a level assigned to them that provides a negative modifier to the target number the players are rolling against to make the task harder. Both “box cars” and “snake eyes” results (both dice rolling a result of a 6 or a 1) are bad, and complications will result. All in all, the system works in the service of the kinds of stories that the game wants to tell – tales of struggling against the entire world while also struggling against your darker impulses. Every character has a personality flaw that is a core component to their character sheet, similar to a FATE character’s “Trouble Aspect” that they will either rise above or more likely be laid low by.
The book itself is absolutely stunning. It’s 8.5×8.5 and softcover. The interior is full of absolutely jaw-dropping artwork that help to establish the tone and feeling of the setting. The text is also incredibly stylized, and you can tell that a lot of thought went into just how the book was going to look. I’ve attempted to include some of my favorite pieces from the book just to give you an idea, but if this piques your interest, you really should grab the softcover release from Drivethru RPG for this. It’s absolutely stunning and the first thing I did after getting the book was to flip through it and just marvel at the artwork.
Unfortunately, this is kind of a double-edged sword. While I absolutely love the look of the book and how it’s laid out, I can see other people being turned off by it completely. And it’s also something of a barrier to having an accessible game – it would be nice if there existed a plain text version of the release as well for those that have trouble reading heavily stylized fonts. Another (admittedly minor) issue that I have is the author using “he/she” when referring to the player or characters. I understand that it’s an attempt to be inclusive, but it’s clunky and still less inclusive then just using “they” when referring to these groups.
A lot of the book is devoted to giving you the information about the realm that you need to make it come to life in a convincing way without bogging you down in too much detail. There’s a lot about this world that is undiscovered or just plain weird, and that’s one of it’s big strengths – there’s always something out there to explore. There are pages upon pages of charts that are designed to help you come up with situations and encounters that the characters might run into in various sections of The Warp as they travel as well as some of the major NPCs within the setting. It finally includes several short adventures that can be used as an introduction to the game told from a variety of different viewpoints such as heroes connected to the Society of Technocrats that study the history of the Eloi in secret to followers of a demon-worshipping cult to members of a mutant tribe within the wastes.
I don’t know if this is a game that I would be able to run long term, nor do I necessarily feel that the system supports extended campaigns, but I could see having a lot of fun with it for some one shots or shorter story arcs. If you have an appreciation for the science fiction of the late 70s and early 80s or the music of early metal bands like Black Sabbath or Led Zeppelin, you owe it to yourself to at least check out WARPLAND.
Ben Erickson
