jaerdaph
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I picked up Mongoose Publishing's OGL Horror by Gareth Hanrahan today and thought I'd post some of my first impressions.
First off, it's a beautiful book (complete with interior color). The layout is well done, Scott Clark's cover art is great (it's nice to finally be able to see it clearly in full size!), and the interior illustrations are top notch. I also like how the material was organized by chapter - what rules were where.
It's a complete game - you won't need any other books (or SRD downloads) to play. Published under WotC's Open Game License (thus the OGL) only, rules are present for ability score generation, character advancement and awarding experience. More on this later.
As an OGL game, it's built off of the Modern SRD from WotC. If you are familiar with WotC's d20 Modern Roleplaying Game or the Modern SRD, you'll recognize a lot of the material in this book, such as starting occupations, equipment, Reputation and the Wealth system. Many of the skills and feats are the same, there are some new ones as well.
While starting occupations are from the Modern SRD, this game does not use the basic or advanced classes from that game. There are 4 new character classes presented, each 10 levels, in OGL Horror: Combatants, Scholars, Investigators, and Ordinary People.
By default, OGL Horror characters are recommended to start at Level 3 (a rule I always use for other d20-based games), and 1st and 2nd level characters are considered "weaker" characters such as children or regular folk. This game only has rules for characters of 10 levels (rather than the traditional, non-epic standard of 20), but unrestricted multiclassing is allowed. Character advancement/experience is considered optional in this game (see next paragraph), but as mentioned above, the rules are there (at least for levels 1 - 10) if you want them.
So why only 10 levels, and why is character advancement optional? Because this is a horror, and survival isn't always the goal or the outcome, or even realistic, if you want to properly emulate the genre. This is similar to the idea behind a classic BRP (non-d20) Call of Cthulhu Roleplaying Game campaign, where characters continue to slide into insanity or face death at the hands of creatures they could never hope to defeat.
Speaking of Call of Cthulhu, it's almost as if OGL Horror takes some of the great ideas presented in the d20 version of that game and addresses the issues people had with that game as well. New mechanics of course, but the inspiration is there.
Monsters - while complete, extensive rules are given for creating your own monsters, I thought the selection of monsters and templates was a bit sparse. Classics like vampires, werewolves, ghosts and zombies are there, but mummies were noticeably absent. There were a handful of new monsters though such as the demon child and the cosmic mess, and I especially appreciated the inclusion of the animated corpse (a construct) for that Frankenstein/Re-Animator feel. A grey alien is included, but it is presented as an Outsider, which I thought was an odd choice. The monsters have no challenge ratings (CRs), but CR isn't a factor in awarding experience in OGL Horror. Of course, since this is an OGL game, you can use certainly use any of the hundreds of monsters available from other d20 and OGL license products.
I haven't looked at the Horror checks section yet, so more on that later as I delve in deeper.
OGL Horror takes occult supernatural abilities (FX from the Modern SRD) in a totally new, non-Vancian direction, similar to what you see in d20 Call of Cthulhu. There are five types of supernatural abilities (Not to be confused with Su supernatural abilities of monsters, which are also still there): Rituals (anyone can cast), Spells (non-level based, ability to cast accessed through feats, Knowledge [occult lore] checks to cast, penalty via ability score or hit point drain for casting), psychic abilities, faith, and artefacts. I've only looked at spells so far, and I was greatly impressed, primarily because you could easily port these rules verbatim into a d20 Modern game. Guidelines are also given for converting leveled spells from other d20 and OGL license products into this system as well, which was the selling point for me on this section.
One more important point: While much of the rules for the game (combat, movement, equipment etc.) come from the Modern SRD, in many cases the material is presented as it pertains to a horror game. For example, Light Sources and Illumination: there are two radii of a torch, for example, given. 20 ft. in bright illumination, 40 ft. in shadowy illumination. Things like that matter in horror...
I'll gladly post more thoughts and observations as I dig deeper. So far though, I'm very pleased with this book. Congratulations to Gareth, Matt and the MGP crew!
This book would be perfect if you hadn't forgotten the mummies and the holy water...
First off, it's a beautiful book (complete with interior color). The layout is well done, Scott Clark's cover art is great (it's nice to finally be able to see it clearly in full size!), and the interior illustrations are top notch. I also like how the material was organized by chapter - what rules were where.
It's a complete game - you won't need any other books (or SRD downloads) to play. Published under WotC's Open Game License (thus the OGL) only, rules are present for ability score generation, character advancement and awarding experience. More on this later.
As an OGL game, it's built off of the Modern SRD from WotC. If you are familiar with WotC's d20 Modern Roleplaying Game or the Modern SRD, you'll recognize a lot of the material in this book, such as starting occupations, equipment, Reputation and the Wealth system. Many of the skills and feats are the same, there are some new ones as well.
While starting occupations are from the Modern SRD, this game does not use the basic or advanced classes from that game. There are 4 new character classes presented, each 10 levels, in OGL Horror: Combatants, Scholars, Investigators, and Ordinary People.
By default, OGL Horror characters are recommended to start at Level 3 (a rule I always use for other d20-based games), and 1st and 2nd level characters are considered "weaker" characters such as children or regular folk. This game only has rules for characters of 10 levels (rather than the traditional, non-epic standard of 20), but unrestricted multiclassing is allowed. Character advancement/experience is considered optional in this game (see next paragraph), but as mentioned above, the rules are there (at least for levels 1 - 10) if you want them.
So why only 10 levels, and why is character advancement optional? Because this is a horror, and survival isn't always the goal or the outcome, or even realistic, if you want to properly emulate the genre. This is similar to the idea behind a classic BRP (non-d20) Call of Cthulhu Roleplaying Game campaign, where characters continue to slide into insanity or face death at the hands of creatures they could never hope to defeat.
Speaking of Call of Cthulhu, it's almost as if OGL Horror takes some of the great ideas presented in the d20 version of that game and addresses the issues people had with that game as well. New mechanics of course, but the inspiration is there.
Monsters - while complete, extensive rules are given for creating your own monsters, I thought the selection of monsters and templates was a bit sparse. Classics like vampires, werewolves, ghosts and zombies are there, but mummies were noticeably absent. There were a handful of new monsters though such as the demon child and the cosmic mess, and I especially appreciated the inclusion of the animated corpse (a construct) for that Frankenstein/Re-Animator feel. A grey alien is included, but it is presented as an Outsider, which I thought was an odd choice. The monsters have no challenge ratings (CRs), but CR isn't a factor in awarding experience in OGL Horror. Of course, since this is an OGL game, you can use certainly use any of the hundreds of monsters available from other d20 and OGL license products.
I haven't looked at the Horror checks section yet, so more on that later as I delve in deeper.
OGL Horror takes occult supernatural abilities (FX from the Modern SRD) in a totally new, non-Vancian direction, similar to what you see in d20 Call of Cthulhu. There are five types of supernatural abilities (Not to be confused with Su supernatural abilities of monsters, which are also still there): Rituals (anyone can cast), Spells (non-level based, ability to cast accessed through feats, Knowledge [occult lore] checks to cast, penalty via ability score or hit point drain for casting), psychic abilities, faith, and artefacts. I've only looked at spells so far, and I was greatly impressed, primarily because you could easily port these rules verbatim into a d20 Modern game. Guidelines are also given for converting leveled spells from other d20 and OGL license products into this system as well, which was the selling point for me on this section.
One more important point: While much of the rules for the game (combat, movement, equipment etc.) come from the Modern SRD, in many cases the material is presented as it pertains to a horror game. For example, Light Sources and Illumination: there are two radii of a torch, for example, given. 20 ft. in bright illumination, 40 ft. in shadowy illumination. Things like that matter in horror...
I'll gladly post more thoughts and observations as I dig deeper. So far though, I'm very pleased with this book. Congratulations to Gareth, Matt and the MGP crew!
This book would be perfect if you hadn't forgotten the mummies and the holy water...
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