Arriving at S:t Hexen…
As I’m working on the final touches for our next game – Ravenloft using the OpenQuest 2 rules engine, I’ve also started sketching on the next project:
The creepy town of S:t Hexen, in the southwestern parts of Caligari.
The world is Nexus Mundi, which in turn are my hack on The World Between of Tales of the Grotesque and Dungeonesque fame.
Yesterday evening was spent in the bed with a fresh Moleskine notebook and my trusty Muji 0.5 pen, jotting down ideas and concepts – lo tek style.
I’ve also decided to try out the Fantastic Heroes & Witchery OSR rule set for that game. In my opinion, the most Fantasy Horror-y game of the OSR bunch.
I will post notes and stuff here along the way…
“You can always check in, but you can never leave…” – Grumble Crackpötz, Inn Keeper & Purveyor of Fine Meats
“Aaaaaaagh…” – Herr Doppelstöcker, Travelling merchant, last seen at the “Halber Mensch” Tavern (now missing)
Nerd-O-Mancer of Dork 
Reblogged this on Nerd-O-Mancer of Dork.
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“In my opinion, the most Fantasy Horror-y game of the OSR bunch.” Could you explain why you feel this? Any special parts of the rules that makes it more Horror-y than the other version out there?
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As you might know FH&W is a mix of concepts from many different incarnations of the Old Game, mostly 1e/2e with some stuff from 3e sprinkled in and a lot of new ideas from the OSR crowd and other games. First of all I like the game engine. It covers most of the things I miss in most old school games. On the Dark Fantasy side it has rules for fear and horror and insanity. It has mechanics for dangerous magic and rituals. And there’s a bunch of cool classes like Warlocks (evil wizards), occultists, spirit magicians and so on. There’s Witch Hunters, Inquisitors and Templars. Another big difference is that all casters use arcane magic, so there’s no cleric class. A caster priest is basically a religious wizard. The spells (666 of them) are instead divided into black, grey and white magic. Using black magic will lead to corruption. There’s an upgraded combat system with combat stunts, yet it’s very old school and simple. There’s a good skill system and lots of little tweaks that makes FH&W a very complete, yet quite simple and very backwards compatible game. I suggest you take a look at the game’s home page: http://www.dcrouzet.net/heroes-witchery
There’s also a G+ group if you’re into that. Before FH&W I was planning to use Blood & Treasure (another excellent mix-of-all-editions clone) for my forthcoming dark fantasy campaign, but FH&W felt more right, and needed less house-ruling.
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“The spells (666 of them) are instead divided into black, grey and white magic. Using black magic will lead to corruption.”
This sounds very similar to my own hacks for LotFP. Same with the all magic is arcane magic-thing. Should look into how FH&W handles corruption! Thanks!
(Unable to post while logged in to G+ for some reason)
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The corruption section are somewhat sketchy. The author will expand on it in a later book, but I will make my own hack, probably along the rules of WFRP.
There’s a free low-res PDF of the game available at the game’s home page if you’re interested.
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I’ve downloaded the pdf but only been able to glance through it. My current draft for how to handle this can be found here: https://plus.google.com/101717293470433230594/posts/4jWtj26EzKS
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