TL;DR: Gravemire presents a darkly horrific game set in the Louisiana Bayou in 1894 following a supernatural event known as 'The Convulsion'. It is beautifully illustrated and well laid out with unique mechanics for play beyond the Border in the Bayou and during downtime in the isolated settlement of Scarstone. There's much to love, but overall I found it undercooked; there just isn't enough about handling or depicting the Bayou and the supernatural threat within. This is a real shame as there is much to like here, especially as it gave me echoes of the Southern Reach Trilogy, albeit in a different century.
Gravemire is a 150-page full colour roleplaying game which is gorgeously illustrated and laid out. It is well edited and proofed (I saw a single typo and it was clear what it should have been) and an easy read. It is set in the the Louisiana Bayou, in the isolated town of Scarstone. Scarstone has suffered a supernatural event, referred to as "the Convulsion". Surrounding towns and settlements have disappeared, monsters roam, and weird magical effects take place. Scarstone is the last refuge before the Border, beyond which lies the Bayou, twisted and strange and full of death. Not unsurprisingly, the town has fallen into decline and many people have left. Scarstone's only connection to the outside world is the daily river boat.
Throughout reading this, Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach Trilogy came to mind. it has a similar vibe, although this is set in 1894.
The game has two modes; carrying out contracts (missions) beyond the Border in the bayou, and times of recovery and and preparation in Scarstone. Detailed description is given on running a session zero. it starts with lines, veils and highlights. There is good flavour text that gives an example of a group working this through. It makes sense when playing a game focused on isolation, grief and loss along with horrifying creatures. There's also a good discussion on how to deal with the more problematic aspects of the location and time period, and recommends discussion on how you will handle such bigotry at the table.
Characters are defined by their name, health points, willpower, aversions, skills and any items or traits gained in play.
You start with a pool of 15 skill points which are used to buy skills or health points. You cannot raise willpower. A player can choose that their character takes an aversion to gain extra skill points.
Aversions represent specific fears that a character may have. If you face them in an encounter, it means you will automatically lose willpower. They're graded in three tiers. Tier 3 are the worst, as they are very broad, whereas tier I are very specific. Similarly, skills are ranked in the same kind of tiers. You can gain a maximum of a +3 bonus from a skill, but it costs you three times more to get that for a broader skill than it does for a narrow one at tier 1. There are no set skill lists - your choices here really define your character.
Character generation ends with each player being asked four questions about why they are at Scarstone and what fears or motivations they have.
It's recommended that the first session starts as you cross the border, putting the characters straight into a contract rather than exploring Scarstone. Not quite "in media res" but certainly a good way to start a campaign. The core mechanic used is the skill check. You identify the goal and roll 2d12. You can add up to two skills as bonuses to the check. You can use one skill that doesn't perfectly apply, as a tangential bonus, for half effect. You only get one chance at a check.
Success and failure is graded. Full success needs a roll over 17, below that there are ranges for partial success and failure. If you roll particularly low, you will get a negative twist. High rolls will get positive twists. Twists are potentially significant boons or penalties to the action. A compounded failure will give a skill point to spend later on. If you deal with something beyond your knowledge, it can be defined as an unfamiliar check. Your normal skills are treated as tangential, and tangential skills are not applicable.
There are no mechanics to assist other characters on skill checks.
Willpower represents a character's resistance to the stresses that come from travelling beyond the Border into a place that is weird and alien to normal human experience. It can never exceed ten points, and will deteriorate in play. You can recover it by making it back to the safety of Scarstone, and also by spending skill points that you may obtain from contracts. However, you can never have more than ten points. Willpower checks are made on 2d8. If you roll more than your current willpower, you reduce its score by a point. If you encounter or experience something for which you have an aversion, you make a willpower check immediately. On a fail, you lose two willpower points, on a success the cost is just a single point.
When your willpower hits five points, you will gain an aversion to whatever caused that. Unfortunately, this doesn't give you skill points. You also become "pressured". This means that tangential bonuses cannot be applied. At three will power points you gain another aversion, and are "crushed". The pressures of the land beyond the Border are getting to you and all combat or skill checks are treated as unfamiliar.
Willpower represents a character's resistance to the stresses that come from travelling beyond the Border into a place that is weird and alien to normal human experience. It can never exceed ten points, and will deteriorate in play. You can recover it by making it back to the safety of Scarstone, and also by spending skill points that you may obtain from contracts. However, you can never have more than ten points. Willpower checks are made on 2d8. If you roll more than your current willpower, you reduce its score by a point. If you encounter or experience something for which you have an aversion, you make a willpower check immediately. On a fail, you lose two willpower points, on a success the cost is just a single point.
When your willpower hits five points, you will gain an aversion to whatever caused that. Unfortunately, this doesn't give you skill points. You also become "pressured". This means that tangential bonuses cannot be applied. At three will power points you gain another aversion, and are "crushed". The pressures of the land beyond the Border are getting to you and all combat or skill checks are treated as unfamiliar.
If you ever reach zero willpower, you become "pushed to the brink". Any subsequent willpower loss is applied to your health instead. Until this happens it's possible for a character with appropriate skills to help you recover a small amount of willpower, but characters that have been pushed to the brink are incapable of treatment beyond the Border.
Health measures your physical wellbeing. It can be lost through combat, magic, willpower loss and other encounters. It is recovered by resting at Scarstone, but medical aid can be attempted beyond the Border. However, this can make things worse. If your character reaches zero health, they die. There's no way back.
The game has a formal "ritual to honor death", a narrative moment of reflection on the character by their player and the other characters. Magic exists beyond the Border. It is dangerous but powerful. it falls into two types - Substance and Soul. Substance affects matter, and Soul magic affects the minds and souls of its victims: Using magic comes at a cost to the individual wielding it. Substance draws on your Health, whilst Soul magic draws upon your willpower. Magic is tiered, in a similar manner to skills.
The rules:
(The text on the initial PDF release has the same headings for tiers for the two magic types, but the description in the table suggests Soul magic's ties should be titled dissuasion/compulsion/possession.)
Health measures your physical wellbeing. It can be lost through combat, magic, willpower loss and other encounters. It is recovered by resting at Scarstone, but medical aid can be attempted beyond the Border. However, this can make things worse. If your character reaches zero health, they die. There's no way back.
The game has a formal "ritual to honor death", a narrative moment of reflection on the character by their player and the other characters. Magic exists beyond the Border. It is dangerous but powerful. it falls into two types - Substance and Soul. Substance affects matter, and Soul magic affects the minds and souls of its victims: Using magic comes at a cost to the individual wielding it. Substance draws on your Health, whilst Soul magic draws upon your willpower. Magic is tiered, in a similar manner to skills.
The rules:
- Substance magic cannot directly affect an entity in possession of a soul.
- Soul magic can only affect an entity in possession of a soul.
- Magic only works beyond the Border.
(The text on the initial PDF release has the same headings for tiers for the two magic types, but the description in the table suggests Soul magic's ties should be titled dissuasion/compulsion/possession.)
Magic use is quite narrative- the player describes the effect that their character wants to achieve and the Dealer (GM) assigns a difficulty rating between 1 and 3. Casting magic reduces your willpower or health by the difficulty multiplied by the tier of the magic. Clearly, hitting zero health is fatal, and zero willpower means any remaining losses are doubled when applied to Health. The Dealer can require a skill check to succeed; however this should be used rarely, in the cases when a character is pushing to extremes.
Combat is handled in a more structured manner than normal encounters. The mechanic could be used in other situations, such as social challenges, should the dealer feel that it is appropriate.
Combat begins with everyone making a willpower check if they're facing something horrific. Turn order is then determined by the players rolling an "upper hand" check. This is a skill check where no tangential bonuses are applicable. The check doesn't use the normal success criteria, but instead just takes the total rolled. Higher is better, going earlier in the tum order. I couldn't see any guidance for the Dealer in rolling initiative for monsters or opponents that may be encountered.
You can make a regular move and a tandem more each time you act. Each round represents about ten seconds of time; tandem moves are those you can do while doing something else (eg talking, moving, using some objects). There is an option to take a reckless move (a second regular more taken immediately), but that allows the Dealer to take a move out of turn order immediately. Attacks are a skill check. However, they can use some of their skill bonus as a modifier to damage if they want to hold it back (and are successful).
Combat isn't especially crunchy, and fits the feel of the game well.
The next section of the book details life in Scarstone. It's a very deliberate contrasting downtime sequence of recovery and growth.
Returning from a contract back to civilisation will always give you willpower back. Conversely, setting back out beyond the Border now you know what's out there will immediately force a willpower check for your character and they may lose some of what they've recovered.
When they get to Scarstone, each character gets four "let-ups". There are five different kinds of "let-up"; you can do them more than once, but you need to treat each one as a unique incidence, playing through the questions related to the activity you're doing each time. Characters can rest or recover to regain health or willpower (but not both in a single let-up scene). They can also learn from their mistakes; this is a period of introspection for the character which leads to a new skill, at the cost of a new aversion. Skill points gained from contacts are spent to "learn something new and get stronger". This allows you to raise your health, recover your will power maximum and upgrade or gain skills.
There's also an activity that lets characters explore Scarstone and learn what is going on in the community and discover the history of the town by how it interacts with them.
Finally, characters can try to get something that they need, a new item of equipment. There's a short list of example items.
The approach used for let-ups gives a rich roleplaying experience for players when their characters return to civilisation; it will definitely make the feeling of loss when a character passes away for more impactful.
Combat is handled in a more structured manner than normal encounters. The mechanic could be used in other situations, such as social challenges, should the dealer feel that it is appropriate.
Combat begins with everyone making a willpower check if they're facing something horrific. Turn order is then determined by the players rolling an "upper hand" check. This is a skill check where no tangential bonuses are applicable. The check doesn't use the normal success criteria, but instead just takes the total rolled. Higher is better, going earlier in the tum order. I couldn't see any guidance for the Dealer in rolling initiative for monsters or opponents that may be encountered.
You can make a regular move and a tandem more each time you act. Each round represents about ten seconds of time; tandem moves are those you can do while doing something else (eg talking, moving, using some objects). There is an option to take a reckless move (a second regular more taken immediately), but that allows the Dealer to take a move out of turn order immediately. Attacks are a skill check. However, they can use some of their skill bonus as a modifier to damage if they want to hold it back (and are successful).
Combat isn't especially crunchy, and fits the feel of the game well.
The next section of the book details life in Scarstone. It's a very deliberate contrasting downtime sequence of recovery and growth.
Returning from a contract back to civilisation will always give you willpower back. Conversely, setting back out beyond the Border now you know what's out there will immediately force a willpower check for your character and they may lose some of what they've recovered.
When they get to Scarstone, each character gets four "let-ups". There are five different kinds of "let-up"; you can do them more than once, but you need to treat each one as a unique incidence, playing through the questions related to the activity you're doing each time. Characters can rest or recover to regain health or willpower (but not both in a single let-up scene). They can also learn from their mistakes; this is a period of introspection for the character which leads to a new skill, at the cost of a new aversion. Skill points gained from contacts are spent to "learn something new and get stronger". This allows you to raise your health, recover your will power maximum and upgrade or gain skills.
There's also an activity that lets characters explore Scarstone and learn what is going on in the community and discover the history of the town by how it interacts with them.
Finally, characters can try to get something that they need, a new item of equipment. There's a short list of example items.
The approach used for let-ups gives a rich roleplaying experience for players when their characters return to civilisation; it will definitely make the feeling of loss when a character passes away for more impactful.
The next downtime step is to bid for contacts for the next mission beyond the Border. There are eight different types given as examples. The bidding represents the level of risk that the players are willing to have their characters face. Higher risk leads to more skill points in the payout, should they succeed. The Dealer isn't obliged to honour the level of risk the characters face, but it does represent the minimum payout. If they face a higher risk, the payment increases.
The next sections of the book provide guidance for the am (dealer). it outlines the agenda (core tenets) of the game as follows:
The next sections of the book provide guidance for the am (dealer). it outlines the agenda (core tenets) of the game as follows:
- Encourage bold choices.
- Bring the hammer down hard.
- Punish characters, not players
- Share in the Party's joy, and mourn with them in turn.
- Create doors, present crossroads.
Monsters are presented using a tier system, linked back to the tier of the contact bid upon. There are three examples given at each tier (so twelve in total, as there is a tier 0), and all are quite evocative and give a feel for the setting.
The book ends with some advice on running online, running one shots and how to make the world your own. They're very short sections and the ending feels very abrupt. Reflecting on Gravemire, I find myself a little underwhelmed and disappointed. The book looks gorgeous and is well laid out. There are some errors, but very few, and nothing that affected game play. The game engine is simple and intuitive, and the downtime activities will work really well (based on what I've seen in other games). So what's missing?
The Bayou. The land beyond the Border. That's what's missing.
I'm not expecting to see a gazetteer, or maps, or pages of setting materials; rather, I was expecting to see some guidance on how to evoke the feel and horror of the Bayou. The nearest thing to this came with the monster examples.
When I look at the Liminal RPG (for example), that game focuses on the supernatural elements and how to bring them into play in a modern world setting. I could take what's presented in that game and use it in most modern-day developed countries without an issue. Gravemire deals with a supernatural twisting of the Bayou in the 1890s. This is a distinct setting (the 1890s) and a unique place and culture (the Louisiana Bayou) yet there's nothing there to hang a game on.
Part of me wonders if the author is very familiar with the setting and didn't realise they'd not addressed this. It should have been picked up in editing. It could have been addressed by expanding the contract examples with elements to draw upon or even by providing a starter contract to play as an example.
Overall, this is a miss for me. There's a lot I like (game engine, layout, artwork, concept) but I feel that it failed to land successfully. That's a great shame. That said, something about the game niggles me enough that I may well come back to it. I think it would work well for a game in a setting like Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach Trilogy, and I'm tempted to hack it around. Three stars out of five.
16 April 2022
(disclosure: the author of Gravemire is a relative of mine, although I am not affiliated with Clawhammer Games) This is a really awesome review! You are so thorough and really dig into the game. I just got the book, and I was wondering if you think the field guide at the end helps give more of a sense of the bayou and what the characters might find there? I can see where Lawrence wants to leave everything up to the dealer to envision, and I can also see where that might leave people wanting additional guidance or examples, as you said. After reading the book, I think the denizens of the bayou could be either more than people expect (taller, or more numerous, or with a few more teeth, or a little too much cheer, or closer than you thought, or...), or less (not quite solid, or quieter, or emotionless, or not entirely whole, or...), or something that's purely other (elemental or eldritch monsters). My sense is that it really depends on how the dealer wants to shape the experience and story for the players. I was really interested to listen to the Gravemire episode of the Party of One podcast (https://www.partyofonepodcast.com/game/gravemire/), which helped give me a sense of how to populate the bayou and also really helped me understand the skills part of character generation. I'm looking forward to trying out this game to see how it works. Thanks again for the in-depth perspective!
ReplyDeleteWhen I wrote this, it was the initial version of the 'final' PDF without the Field Guide. I think that final version with the Field Guide does help fill the gap that I had, but not completely. I suspect that my lack of familiarity with the bayou and the surrounding culture was part of the issue. When i get a minute, I'll add an addendum which considers the field guide in. Thanks for your comment.
Delete