Scan barcode
A review by cybergoths
Warlock! by Greg Saunders
5.0
Fire Ruby Designs released Warlock some time ago and I foolishly dismissed it out of hand when I first heard about it. I had another look this week and ended up buying a copy of the print and PDF version. It's sold as being part of the British OSR. That's really a marketing focus to show that it comes from the more gritty and grim-dark feel of early British fantasy roleplaying games like Dragon Warriors, Maelstrom and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying.
It's not OSR. It's OSR-adjacent. It feels like the love child of Fighting Fantasy and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying first edition, dressed in Dragon Warriors flavours. Of course, you can buy all these games right now so why would you want to get Warlock?
Let's unpick the system to see how it works.
The first sign that this is not drawing on D&D as its inspiration and so is definitely not OSR in the way that most people understand comes with character generation.
Characters are defined with two statistics - Stamina and Luck - and their skills. There are thirty-two skills, which you can see on the character sheet above. They all start at a minimum of 4, with around a third at 5 and another third at 6. You then roll 4d6 and look up each result on a table, which gives you four career options. You pick the one that resonates most with you. This career gives you a set of skills associated with it (each of which has a maximum level that can be reached on that path). You also gain a career skill, which is the average of the skills associated with the career; you can substitute this with the GM's agreement. The career gives you a starting pool of points to spend on your character's skills, two facts about your character (from random tables) and some starting equipment. You then pick some starting behavioural traits and you're good to go.
What D&D historically called 'race' is called 'community' in the game. There are no mechanical implications for the system from your community, just some flavour text that describes how members of that community tend to behave and be viewed in the very light setting implied by the book.
Your character develops by spending advances, of which you will get 1-3 in a typical session. Each advance raises a skill by a point, and your stamina rises each time your career skill goes up. You can spend five advances to change career. If you survive through two careers and have at least three skills at 10+ then you can unlock and change to an advanced career if you have the relevant trappings. You need to max out the skills in an advanced career to change again.
The basic skill test is performed using a d20 roll, adding skill to get 20+ to succeed. Penalties to the roll are suggested if it's especially challenging. Combat tests are opposed rolls, highest wins and does damage to your stamina. So you can attack someone and they hurt you instead. However, if you initiate the attack you get a +5 bonus to your roll as you're the active person in a fight. If your roll is more than three times your opponents you do double damage. Armour protects, reducing damage by a dice roll (a bit like Stormbringer) but you'll always take at least one point of stamina damage.
Once you hit zero stamina, any further damage causes critical which are not good for your character. You roll 2d6 plus the number of points below zero that you are, and reference the table for damage type you have suffered. Rolling ten or more will kill you outright. There are good reasons to disengage from combat; you don't suffer opportunity attacks like those seen in D&D.
Spell casting requires an incantation roll and a stamina spend. Spells don't have levels. A roll of '1' means you have the potential to miscast, which is bad. You make a second incantation roll and hope you don't fail again. The spell list feels very D&D like in effect; there are no cantrips like those seen in 5e.
The bestiary has a decent flavour to it, and will serve most gaming needs. The system is light enough that creating a creature wouldn't be hard.
There is a hint at a background for the game in the text, but it's definitely left very light and suggestive. You can always buy the campaign setting if you fancy this, or just use it with your own or another.
The GM section is very short. The most important part it gives are the following three statements which capture the essence of the game:
Combat is deadly and can have lasting implications. Most enemies would rather escape or surrender than fight to the death.
Magic is low level and accessible by everyone, but real prowess requires specialisation.
Monsters and other creatures are not necessarily evil, but may act as such.
I really like this game. It gave me the GM tingles, and I'd love to run it.
That said, I may hack it a little.
I feel that there's a missed opportunity with advances; I'll probably add some keys based on career and traits that trigger an advance point at the end of a session. I may extend that further to add a set of questions like Liminal for the party to determine the ultimate number of advances. I may also add in advantage/disadvantage (only because I'm not a massive fan of modifiers).
The hacking around only reflects my personal preferences. I could get a game going with this in fifteen minute, running it as is.
On reflection, I think I would have preferred playing the recent section of the Enemy Within campaign we've been in using this rather than Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying 4th Edition. Needs a bit of test at the table of course, but my gut response to this really positive.
I like it. A lot.
Recommended.
It's not OSR. It's OSR-adjacent. It feels like the love child of Fighting Fantasy and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying first edition, dressed in Dragon Warriors flavours. Of course, you can buy all these games right now so why would you want to get Warlock?
Let's unpick the system to see how it works.
The first sign that this is not drawing on D&D as its inspiration and so is definitely not OSR in the way that most people understand comes with character generation.
Characters are defined with two statistics - Stamina and Luck - and their skills. There are thirty-two skills, which you can see on the character sheet above. They all start at a minimum of 4, with around a third at 5 and another third at 6. You then roll 4d6 and look up each result on a table, which gives you four career options. You pick the one that resonates most with you. This career gives you a set of skills associated with it (each of which has a maximum level that can be reached on that path). You also gain a career skill, which is the average of the skills associated with the career; you can substitute this with the GM's agreement. The career gives you a starting pool of points to spend on your character's skills, two facts about your character (from random tables) and some starting equipment. You then pick some starting behavioural traits and you're good to go.
What D&D historically called 'race' is called 'community' in the game. There are no mechanical implications for the system from your community, just some flavour text that describes how members of that community tend to behave and be viewed in the very light setting implied by the book.
Your character develops by spending advances, of which you will get 1-3 in a typical session. Each advance raises a skill by a point, and your stamina rises each time your career skill goes up. You can spend five advances to change career. If you survive through two careers and have at least three skills at 10+ then you can unlock and change to an advanced career if you have the relevant trappings. You need to max out the skills in an advanced career to change again.
The basic skill test is performed using a d20 roll, adding skill to get 20+ to succeed. Penalties to the roll are suggested if it's especially challenging. Combat tests are opposed rolls, highest wins and does damage to your stamina. So you can attack someone and they hurt you instead. However, if you initiate the attack you get a +5 bonus to your roll as you're the active person in a fight. If your roll is more than three times your opponents you do double damage. Armour protects, reducing damage by a dice roll (a bit like Stormbringer) but you'll always take at least one point of stamina damage.
Once you hit zero stamina, any further damage causes critical which are not good for your character. You roll 2d6 plus the number of points below zero that you are, and reference the table for damage type you have suffered. Rolling ten or more will kill you outright. There are good reasons to disengage from combat; you don't suffer opportunity attacks like those seen in D&D.
Spell casting requires an incantation roll and a stamina spend. Spells don't have levels. A roll of '1' means you have the potential to miscast, which is bad. You make a second incantation roll and hope you don't fail again. The spell list feels very D&D like in effect; there are no cantrips like those seen in 5e.
The bestiary has a decent flavour to it, and will serve most gaming needs. The system is light enough that creating a creature wouldn't be hard.
There is a hint at a background for the game in the text, but it's definitely left very light and suggestive. You can always buy the campaign setting if you fancy this, or just use it with your own or another.
The GM section is very short. The most important part it gives are the following three statements which capture the essence of the game:
Combat is deadly and can have lasting implications. Most enemies would rather escape or surrender than fight to the death.
Magic is low level and accessible by everyone, but real prowess requires specialisation.
Monsters and other creatures are not necessarily evil, but may act as such.
I really like this game. It gave me the GM tingles, and I'd love to run it.
That said, I may hack it a little.
I feel that there's a missed opportunity with advances; I'll probably add some keys based on career and traits that trigger an advance point at the end of a session. I may extend that further to add a set of questions like Liminal for the party to determine the ultimate number of advances. I may also add in advantage/disadvantage (only because I'm not a massive fan of modifiers).
The hacking around only reflects my personal preferences. I could get a game going with this in fifteen minute, running it as is.
On reflection, I think I would have preferred playing the recent section of the Enemy Within campaign we've been in using this rather than Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying 4th Edition. Needs a bit of test at the table of course, but my gut response to this really positive.
I like it. A lot.
Recommended.