Release Blood Engine Essential: are you ready to bleed to survive?

[Oddplan!]

Blood Engine: Essential is a new tabletop RPG book that blends the classic OSR mechanics with new exciting tools and mechanics. Designed for groups who crave the tension of a high-stakes adventure, Blood Engine Essential provides everything you need to craft a haunting, unpredictable world seamlessly compatible with existing OSR modules, creatures, and adventures.
The cover of the book

Old trope for a fresh experience​

Blood Engine Essential is inspired by games like Mörk Borg, Mausritter, and Mordheim but is bound by none. With streamlined rules for character development and an adaptable tag-based item system, the game lets players create unique and twisted characters without losing that fast and loose approach of Old-school games.

Feel the mounting tension with the Dread Tracker​

Blood Engine Essential uses a Dread Tracker system: a series of Clocks that measure the mounting danger, the dwindling resources, and the creeping darkness around every corner. Clocks are also used to track primary and secondary objectives, always giving a fair view of your chances of success. In Blood Engine Essential, every Clock tick brings players closer to discovery or hopeless doom.

A Player-Driven Experience​

Blood Engine is designed to help you take center stage rather than your character’s sheet. The game is so mechanically hostile and unforgiving in its rules that it actively encourages you to find a solution without rolling the dice; asking the right questions and pursuing action without uncertainty in results is always the best choice.

If you are forced to a direct confrontation, the combat is a fast, lethal matter: there is no “to hit” roll; everything always hits. In this way, every roll matters, and even the most minor fights can have ruinous consequences.

Easy on the GM, Thrilling for the Players​

Creating a Blood Engine session is as simple as it gets; the book provides a couple of pages of handy tools and procedures for creating lethal adventures that are fast to set up and thrilling to play.

Beautifully Dark Illustrations​

Blood Engine sets a haunting atmosphere with evocative illustrations by OSR Veteran Simone Tammetta that bring your nightmares to life. Every page is a visual feast, with inky sketches that draw players into the game’s shadowy world before a single dice roll.

What’s Inside​

Blood Engine Essential is a 79-page-long digital-only book with all the rules, every character creation tool you need, a solid progression system, a quick adventure, and dozens of weapons, spells, equipment, and monsters.

Blood Engine Essential is free to all Oddplan’s subscribers on Substack until November 23rd. It’s also already available with a Pay-What-You-Want model on itch.io and DriveThruRPG.