Player characters might not live once. They might live three or four times, being resurrected through powerful magics when bad luck or poor tactics should normally have ended their tale. Very little can permanently end the adventuring career of a mid to high level adventurer. After a certain point, even being reduced to being an extra finely ground powder isn’t an impediment.
So what can permanently kill a PC?
One simple thing: that player having a cool character concept for a replacement PC.
That makes the immortals mortal. Nothing can save an adventurer when there’s a build begging to be tried, a character desperate to be played, or a concept the player can’t get out of their head.
The nature of evil humanoids is a controversial topic in tabletop gaming, and it’s one with no easy answers. Or even hard answers.
Art copyright WotC
There may even be no answers, just more problems.
This recently came up in my last D&D game, and has also come up a few times in the last few weeks in my Twitter feed—which is no surprise as it comes up often everywhere for the last twenty-odd years. If not longer than that when you expand the conversation beyond tabletop RPGs and include fantasy fiction as a whole.
As such, doing a deep dive into the problems of innately evil humanoids and the associated racist connotations seemed like a worthy blog subject.
Now, before I get started, I think the triggers of this article should be obvious. It will be addressing racism and racial violence as well as colonialism, which can be upsetting to some. But it also runs adjacent to free speech, free expression, and censorship in gaming. These can be triggers for an entirely different groups, because people dislike being told how to run their games and no one likes it implied that their game/ campaign setting is racist and, by extension, that they are racist…
Killing the Wicked
I think every gaming table has engaged in the conversation about whether or not to kill a quote-unquote evil humanoid. The captured drow. The sleeping orc. The demon trapped in the summoning circle. The goblin baby.
That last one isn’t even remotely hyperbole. The first Edition AD&D adventure The Keep on the Borderlands has several humanoid encampments in caves, with the expectation that the players are going to kill or drive away everyone inside—including the children—to allow humans to settle the titular borderlands. (Read: colonize.) And the first adventure path released for the Pathfinder product line, Rise of the Runelords: Burnt Offerings features a goblin fortress with several cages of goblin children (which is how goblins rear their young in that world). Every single group that plays that adventure is left with a singular question: kill the goblin offspring, let them go (and likely die in the wilds), try and raise them, or just leave them and let them starve.
And there’s no “right” answer to that particularly effed-up moral quandary. Goblins are “evil” in the Bestiary/ Monster Manual so killing them should be as morally defensible as killing a demon or undead skeleton. Innately evil beings. Unless the DM is of the opinion goblins can be redeemed, in which case the infanticide is a monstrous crime. That’s assuming goblins even need to be “redeemed” and goblin’s evil alignment is societal, the result of evil cultural values, and if raised by humans they’d be functional members of society. Every Dungeon Master has their own opinion on this issue and the truth of each option.
But even considering the idea that goblin society—and all goblin cultures and subcultures—can be “evil” is more than a little problematic. Which brings us to the issue of “evil” as a subrace.
Black is Bad?
For intelligent humanoids, specifically drow and duergar, it’s now considered an outright bad idea to have them be inherently evil. The idea that everyone in a certain culture or of a particular nation is capital-e Evil is problematic.
Art Copyright WotC
Firstly, it taps into the same dislike of “the other” commonly used to demonize the opposing forces in war. The other side is immoral and seeks to destroy your way of life. There’s no reasoning with them. They oppose everything you stand for. Etc. Having evil cultures feels less like a fact of the world and more like propaganda. Something the other elven cultures say to make conflict and murder justified. Drow are evil. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
This is also highly reductive, reducing an entire people to an alignment. Casting all they do and all their philosophy as either good or evil, rather than some values being good and some being evil. Because no nation can possibly be all-good and without flaws. This is even assuming you can identify a value as “evil”, which is ethnocentric: judging another culture based on your own values.
Secondly, predominantly evil races have the additional issue that they’re classically dark skinned. Having the non-white people automatically be evil and associating dark skin with immorality is deeply, deeply problematic, owing to real world history and treatment of people based on their colouration.
There’s lots of counterarguments. Black-as-evil is found in multiple cultures including several African religions. And fair skin is seen as preferable in many cultures across the globe because it’s untanned and implies a life of wealth or leisure rather than the sun-baked skin of a labourer. “Dark elves” predate D&D and come from the svartálfar of Norse mythology (literally translated as black or swarthy elves), and certainly didn’t have modern views of ethnicity.
But none of that matters.
Because, in the end, D&D is predominantly a North American game, and Western racism is steeped in abusing those with darker skin. So while having fantasy people with black skin be evil may not be intentionally racist or historically racist, it doesn’t feel non-racist. And racism, like bullying or harassment, is all in how the person being affected feels. No one gets to tell the victim how to feel or that their feelings are wrong. So dark skinned evil races are at the very least racially insensitive.
And it never hurts to be sensitive to others.
Art copyright WotC
D&D has actually tried to move away from this in recent editions. Drow became pitch-black in 2nd Edition rather than brown-skinned, before becoming purple/blue in 3e. And both drow and duergar are a medium-grey now, being much more light skinned than in the past. (Arguably, drow are fairer skinned now than the sun elves of the Forgotten Realms, who have been described as “bronze skinned” since 1st Edition.) And like duergar and drow, orcs are also a lighter grey; in bright light they’re almost closer to my pasty flesh than any of the myriad skin tones of Africa.
But, honestly, short of making drow albino I don’t think this will matter: the cultural zeitgeist knows drow are “black” and that can’t be changed. Much like how DC comics can’t stop jokes about Superman & Batman wearing their underwear on the outside, even if they’ve removed the briefs from their costume for the last decade. The trope is too well known.
The only way forward might be to shift away from drow and similar societies being evil. Or even just predominantly evil by introducing good settlements and non-demon worshipping drow in addition to the more overt evil kingdoms. Diversifying the alignment and culture of drown and instead just having the Lolth worshippers be evil. So they’re not evil because they’re drow, but because they worship a demon-goddess.
Nature Versus Nurture
The above gets harder with more “savage” humanoids like goblins or orcs, who seldom have organized nations or kingdoms that can be labelled “evil” like the above demon worshipping drow of Menzoberranzan. Instead, there’s individual groups and bands, which are largely separate and unconnected to other goblinoids and orcs and not organized into a single nation. Despite their social groups being separated and scattered, all orcs tend to roughly look and act the same. Which is evilly.
This raises the question of whether these humanoids are inherently evil and uncivilized or if their evil deeds is the product of upbringing. If it is cultural and the result of being raised in the orc bands, and if raised elsewhere they’ll have human or elven behaviour. Or the alternative, which is they’re just the humanoid equivalent of “undomesticated”—like wolves or foxes—and no amount of careful raising will prevent them from being a wild animal and behaving in an unpredictable manner. You can raise a coyote from when it’s a puppy, but it will never truly behave like a dog.
There’s no correct or easy answers here. It’s horrible all the way down.
If it’s nurture, then all orcs have the same capacity for civilization and virtue as all other humanoid beings. Which raises the question of why they live in tribal lands in the wilds of other kingdoms, using scavenged or roughly-made equipment. You have to ask why they don’t have farms and build cities. Why they aren’t welcome in human or elven settlements. This strongly implies other humanoid civilizations have a long history of oppressing goblins and orcs. Forcing them into reservations. There’s shades of colonialism and systemic abuse. Even having orcs just be nomads who choose to maintain their traditional lifestyles and reject human culture while living inside the nations of others feels similar to the Romani people or Irish Travellers. This makes orcs being unwelcome in human settlements unintentionally parallel to the racism directed at those peoples. And most significantly, having orc behaviour being “nurture” means adventurers going into orc/goblin villages and killing everyone are perpetuating hate crimes and committing ethnic cleansing.
And man is that not a good take.
Making the reason orcs are less civilized a result of their nature avoids the above. Orcs may not be inherently evil, but they’re inherently chaotic: irrational monsters that you can kill for the good of innocents. Adventurers aren’t performing racial genocide but keeping the pest population under control.
However, having it be their nature still invokes some pretty horrible real world analogues, where certain peoples were considered less advanced or evolved. How orcs are being presented is a little too close to comfort with how people of African descent were commonly seen just a hundred and fifty years ago. Dismissed as savages and inherently uncivilized or uncouth. This can be really upsetting for some people, especially those who might have first hand experience being told they’re innately more aggressive, less intelligent, more subservient, or predisposed to certain tasks. (Which is, of course, all bullshit.)
And nobody should be forced to remember being insulted and dehumanized while playing an escapist hobby game. Ever.
Again, 5e has tried really, really hard to find a middle way. 5e has doubled-down on the connection of orcs to the god Gruumsh, even identifying them as “Godsworn” in Volo’s Guide to Monsters. So they’re not evil because of their nature or nurture but because the divine external force who created them is literally exerting His will on them, altering their culture and mindset.
But I’m not sure even this is enough, as orcs are well-known for their problematic representation elsewhere. Most famously in Lord of the Rings; even fantasy fans who have never played D&D might be familiar with the discussion on whether or not orcs in the book and/or movie are a problematic racial caricature. And not just of people of African descent, as Tolken’s orcs have been seen as Japanese caricatures following the book’s publication shortly after World War II. Even the Wikipedia entry on “orc” raises this issue, despite only including passing references to D&D. Many Tolkien scholars have wrangled this question, weighing it against the needs of having an epic fantasy with enemies that can be faced without sympathy from the audience.
Image copyright New Line Cinema
Green Lives Matter
If humanoids such as orcs and goblins have the same capacity for morality as humans or elves, this makes elements of the game difficult. Specifically, this makes it really awkward to have disposable action scenes.
While this is a larger issue that applies to fantasy fiction as a whole, it applied doubly here because Dungeons & Dragons is still a game and you want to have the occasional combat, roll some dice, and use the cool powers your character has that lets them kick ass. For some players, that’s their main reason for playing. From a gamemaster’s perspective, sometimes you need a quick combat encounter to shift the tone of the session, give people’s minds a break, and get the dice rolling. The incidental encounter that doesn’t impact the plot afterward or alter the direction of the session.
However, if the players start questioning the morality of their actions, this becomes harder. If they try to take captives or find out what drove the orcs to raid a village this makes the scene less of a quick tonal break or narrative palate cleanser between scenes.
In Dungeons & Dragons there are some inherently evil beings (demons and devils) along with beasts and undead. But these aren’t always as easy to have roaming the countryside. Demons don’t summon themselves and zombies seldom arise with no reason. They make for a poor wandering monster. But even then things get fuzzy. There are good vampires in D&D, such as Jander Sunstar. And the most recent storyline adventure was about an angel (a being of literal Good) that became evil and may potentially be redeemed. If an angel can become the ruler of a layer of Hell, can’t a devil be turned good? A demon used for noble ends like an extraplanar Incredible Hulk? Even monstrous beasts aren’t always simple: who hasn’t seen the party druid try and tame or negotiate with an owlbear? Should the pack of wolves be murdered because they’re hungry? They have just as much right to live as the PCs.
To some extent. simple action scenes can work with regular PC races, like humans and elves, but even then these only work if no one stops to question the bandits or ask if the minions of the Evil Overlords were volunteers or conscripts (or victims of propaganda). Let’s face it, if the PCs ever stopped to ask why someone became a highwayman, the answer isn’t going to be pleasant or simple. People don’t just decide to roam the countryside as wanted fugitives performing regular acts of violence because they were well fed and clothed at home.
Plus, assuming someone is evil because they’re from “the depraved nation of Simorgya* known for its wicked lifestyle” isn’t particularly better than demonizing orcs, and raises just as many ugly real world parallels.
(*Simorgya from the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser story The Sunken Land, which I’m currently reading, invoked because I rolled my eyes at the name.)
Some people like the moral complexity of questioning the treatment of orcs and goblins. Navigating a morally complex world where there are no absolute right or wrong choices and things are ethically grey may appeal to some. And that’s fine. But others simply want more escapism in their fantasy and to play the hero without unintended consequences.
Again, no easy answers.
Pink Ninjas
Another wrinkle to the issue is the desire to be special. To make your player character unique in some way. And an easy way to do this is to subvert a racial trope. The dwarven wizard or the heavily armoured elven knight or the tiefling paladin or the feral halfling. As more races became playable in D&D, a particularly dramatic way was to play a good version of a traditionally evil race. The good drow. Which became the iconic example of this subversion of expectations.
Art Copyright WotC
A former DM of mine used to refer to these characters as “pink ninjas”. Because the player wants to be something recognisably cool, like a ninja, but to also stand out and be special. Often pushing things to the point of absurdity.
By removing evil races or making all fantasy races equally good and evil, the ability to subvert expectations and make such a character is reduced. People can’t play the exception to the rule or stand out. And this is somewhat undesirable. And, lets face it, one of the most iconic and well known D&D characters is Drizzt Do’Urden. And making good drow more common does make the character less special and unique.
I don’t think being able to play characters you want outweighs people’s desire to be comfortable in the game and not be reminded of racism or bigotry. But it’s part of the conversation and will drive some people’s reactions and cause some push-back.
Moving Forward
I’ll repeat what I said at the opening: there’s no easy answers to this. I certainly don’t think I know how to solve this issue without first solving real world racism, both systemic and personal.
Because of the needs of the game, I do think you need to accommodate some level of murder-hobo behaviour and it’s preferable to permit easy action scenes without moral consequences. In the same way Buffy the Vampire Slayer purposely chose to have vampires lose their souls, to avoid questions of whether vampires could be redeemed and if slaying them immediately was good or bad.
As such, I’m still inclined to have orcs and goblin’s violent tendencies be “nature” in my world and games rather than imply my players have genocidal inclinations.
But I think some of the evil variants of player races shouldn’t be as monolithically evil. And including a range of skin tones from ash grey to slate grey while avoiding darker hues is also ideal. A range of colouration and subcultures. Making them more diverse and varied places less emphasis on the physical difference between them and their surface kin and more on the cultural differences (demon worship and slavery).
There is also one other thing that can be done. Which is probably the only easy answer possible in this discussion. While not a true fix, it does help alleviate this issue and make it less pronounced. And this is just to have more people of colour in the game. Humans, elves, dwarves and the like who appear similar to those of African or Polynesian descent. Examples of non-White and non-Western cultures and people in the world. Because one of the big reasons orcs are problematic in Lord of the Rings is that they’re the only non-White characters in the franchise. If there were more diverse examples of humanity in the cast and characters, with heroic protagonists of colour, than the orcs would stand out less.
And even if it doesn’t end the discussion of these races, we might still end up with a more diverse community for the game. And that is good.
Shameless Plugs
If you liked this review, you can support me and encourage future reviews. My disposable income, which is necessary to buy RPG products, is entirely dependent on my sales.
Additionally, the revision of my book, Jester David’s How-To Guide to Fantasy Worldbuilding is on DriveThurRPG, available for purchase as a PDF or Print on Demand! (Now in colour!) The book is a compilation of my worldbuilding blog series, but all the entries have been updated, edited, and expanded to almost two-hundred pages of advice on making your own fantasy world.
Plus, I have T-shirts available for sale over on TeePublic! The art of which can also be put on cloth masks.
In recent years, the Witcher Saga has moved from the sidelines of popular culture to smack in the forefront of nerdom.
The origins of the series are Polish. The first short story, Wiedźmin (which translates as “The Witcher”), was published in 1986 for the magazine Fantastyka‘s short story contest. From there, author Andrzej Sapkowski wrote numerous additional short stories, which were collected in two anthologies (The Last Wish and Sword of Destiny), published in the early 90s in Poland and translated into English in 2007 and 2015 respectively. These stores led to a series of five novels, published between 1994 and 1999 and followed by a stand-alone novel in 2013. This series was translated into English and published in North America between 2008 and 2017 (with the 2013 novel being translated in 2018).
Yes, this does mean the anthology that led directly into the novels was published seven years after said novels.
From this literary foundation, video game company CD Projek decided to make video games in the world, set after the events of the novels. The Witcher was released in 2007 with sequels released in 2011 and 2015.
The overwhelming success of the third game, The Wild Hunt is likely what led to small RPG publisher R. Talsorian Games licencing the franchise and releasing a role-playing game in 2018.
What It Is
The Witcher RPG is a 335-page book available in hardcover and PDF, although at the time of writing physical copies are almost sold out. The book is full colour with slightly textured page backgrounds and simple headers. It features a lot of full colour art, but much of this seems pulled from the novels and video games—the lion’s share likely from Gwent cards; the characters and details like their clothing match their appearance in Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.
The game makes use of its own roleplaying system rather than borrowing an existing system. It makes use of both 10-sided dice and 6-sided dice, with the d10s being used for most action resolution (skill checks) and the d6s being damage dice. No d20s required. (Although I do wonder why it went with 1d10 rather than 2d6 and just requiring the one die.)
The book uses a standard class/ profession & species/ race method of character creation. There are 4 races (Witchers, Elves, Dwarves, and Humans) and 9 professions (Bards, Craftsmen, Criminals, Doctors, Mages, Men At Arms, Merchants. Priests, & Witchers). These professions are mostly packages of known skills and some gear. Each profession also has a “signature skill”, along with a simple skill tree of three paths of three skills that characters can specialize in.
Character creation also features an extended Lifepath system where you randomly determine your background, including the number of your siblings and their fate.
The book includes a fairly expansive description of the world. 30-pages is spent detailing the nations and regions of the setting (aka the Continent). This includes both religions and organizations. The default era of the game is between The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings and Witcher 3. (Witcher 1 is set five years the end of the novels, with Witcher 2 following immediately after and 3 being six months after that.) Despite the default era, enough information is present to loosely play in earlier eras; if one is familiar with the setting based on the novels or even the TV series, there’s enough information here to adventure a generation or two before “the present.”
Following the gazetteer is 24-pages on gamemastering. This is mostly full of fairly introductory GMing advice such as avoiding “invisible walls” and a reminder that the GM’s relationship with the players is not adversarial. This isn’t going to teach remotely new GMs anything new, but is an adequate introduction for anyone new to gaming that finds this book.
The book ends with 20 monsters plus some additional animals (all from the Witcher 3) and a short 12-page adventure.
The Good
The writers did their research, and it shows. This is especially true for the setting, both its history as well as its regions. The Witcher books throw out a lot of proper nouns, and this is a fairly easy-to-read guide of locations and small kingdoms. It’s almost useful as a non-gaming reference to figure out locations and places when reading the books or when early in one of the video games.
Most roleplaying games assume large parties of mixed skill sets. While the Witcher RPG does assume some access to a Doctor and a Craftsman, you don’t need a “balanced” party. While there’s no accommodations for “imbalanced” parties, it also doesn’t assume you have a specific party compositions. It might work really well with a smaller group of 1 to 3 players, such as a Witcher and a Bard (like Geralt and Dandelion/ Jaskier) or a wandering crew including a Man at Arms, a Mage, and a Criminal.
In part this is because the game is not just a combat simulator, but also includes rules for verbal combat and a variety of tasks between battles. The system employs opposed and countering skill checks, which means there’s decent opportunities for conflict that mechanically function like physical combat but don’t require literally stabbing people.
Similarly, the book really tries to work in all the subsystems of Witcher 3. This includes crafting, damaged equipment, and alchemy. A lot of character advancement in the game comes down to having access to crafting and enchanting, as there are fewer magic items. However, what few magic items (read: Relics) are in the game are all given a fairly lengthy backstory, which is written in-character. I quite like that level of detail and focus on story.
The book includes lots of sidebars; because of the way the book is laid out, there’s room for sidebars on the outer edge of every page (a formatting style that can be very effective when done properly). These give additional details on the tone of the game while also providing variation rules, gameplay suggestions, bits of lore, or rule clarifications. These sidebars also include optional rules for when the lore of the books differs from the lore of the video games (which is the default). Such as some monsters being vulnerable to meteoric iron rather than silver.
Reputation is a big part of the game. Status is a key part of the Witcher universe, as is people’s opinions and biases. Witchers are unpopular and feared and there is a lot of bigotry. Plus characters can develop reputations for good or ill. The game reflects this.
The Bad
Despite gnomes and halflings being a part of both the books and the video games, neither is in this game. Similarly, the monsters are all the more generic foes in the game. There’s none of the unique critters that drive a full hunt, like a botchling or hym, but also no striga or dopplers. Nor are there really rules for making unique hunts or modifying monsters (although, in fairness, there is a little advice in the Curses section).
Dopplers in particular would also have been a fun idea for a hybrid Profession/ races, like Witchers.
Characters are meant to experience a number of random events in their life, which are rolled. But not all life events are equal, with some being better for your character concept and others being worse. Players can be seriously penalized and hindered for a random roll during character creation. It’s one thing to have a roleplaying flaw or cosmetic penalty, or to choose a mechanical flaw, and it’s another to have a roll permanently reduce one of your Statistics.
Because of the varied types of character, the game will likely be tricky to run, and building adventures that involve all the diverse Professions might be tricky (let alone adequately challenging them all). You don’t want everyone to play a Witcher, but if someone plays a Craftsman or Merchant they might end up sitting out of a hunt-focused session. Or the reverse, where you have a city-focused adventure, where the Bard, Merchant, and Criminal can get involved in all manner of shenanigans, but the combat-focused Man at Arms and Witcher are just bored. Or worse: become disruptive and get into plot-derailing trouble.
Because the skill packages are locked-in for many professions, it’s hard to build a hybrid character, or play against type. Such as a former Doctor that became a Criminal (or vice versa) or a Bard that has some magic. It can be done, but you need the right Abilities and some system mastery. It’s also harder to differentiate characters, who will be very similar in build.
The rule system is unremarkable. It’s not bad but doesn’t particularly innovate. In fact… it feels almost retro. This is a system that wouldn’t have been out of place in the 1990s, alongside some 3rd edition GURPs and 2nd Edition D&D. It lacks any roleplaying or story manipulation mechanics, and despite hunts being a big part of the game there’s no Gumshoe-esque investigation mechanics. There’s not even Sanity mechanics, let alone the emotional roleplaying, which was highlighted so well in the recently released Alien RPG.
In the Witcher, you have nine base Statistics that can be used to make checks, which are augmented by skills for seven of your Statistics. There are 51 skills in total, plus the extra class skills. You add your points in an ability to a relevant skill plus a d10 roll. Statistics range from 1-2 (Inept) to 13+ (superheroic), with DCs ranging from 10 to 30. A starting character might be rocking a 12 to a 16 in a decent skill, so they can ace an Easy check automatically and have good odds and an Average DC check. Meanwhile, Geralt, the eponymous witcher, has a Dex of 10 and a swordsmanship of 11, so their average result on a sword attack is a 26.5. He’s practically invincible against a starting character.
It’s also a finicky system. It’s the kind of game where after every hit you determine hit location while also tracking damage to your weapons and armour over a combat. There are several pages of modifiers in the combat chapter. Charts of attack modifiers, fumble results, critical damage, and special effects. You’ll be consulting a lot of tables.
Combat is comprised of opposed skill checks. You attack and your opponent tries to dodge, block (which damages their weapon/ shield), or parry. On a success you determine where you hit, which alters the total damage. Then reduce damage based on your armour—which are resistant to certain types of damage—and reduce the damage a second time as your armour takes some of the hit (damaging the armour). Then lose health. It’s a lengthy process for each attack. But it does mean you can have a fight with lots of blocking and dodging and several hard hits without a character being injured while also having an unlucky ambush that rips a character apart.
The Ugly
The layout of the book is—and I say this not trying to be mean—amatuer hour. It’s what an RPG book would look like if you took a simple no-frills book template that came with your publishing software and made as few modifications as possible.
There’s not even any bookmarks on the PDF! This stunned me when I first noticed that, as turning headers into bookmarks is literally just a checkbox in InDesign. While I don’t expect hyperlinked cross-referencing or indexing in every product, bookmarking is a minimal requirement for a multi-hundred-page core rulebook.
Edit: I need to add a correction/ retraction here. Bookmarks ARE in the product. I neglected to check if there was an updated copy of the product and relied on my existing download, which was apparently fifteen-odd months out of date. This was an unprofessional mistake and I apologise.
The book has a simple two-columns layout, with the aforementioned sidebars. But the sidebars aren’t in boxes, coloured differently, or even separated by a dividing line: they’re just to the side with headers that are centered rather than left justified. So at a glance the pages just look like they have three columns. But despite the relatively narrow columns, the tabs/ indentations are huge.
This weak layout is doubly apparent in the character sheet, which is just a wall of boxes. There’s no graphic design to the character sheet at all.
The above details paired with the recycled art really make it seem like an unofficial product released by a dedicated fan, rather than being an officially licenced product.
There’s also inconsistent editing. In the introduction to character creation, pick-up skills has a hyphen, but when these skills are described it doesn’t. So when trying to quickly look-up that section, my keyword search came blank. Similarly, in the combat section on Page 151 the sidebar on your actions includes the reference “see Combat Resolution”, a subheading that doesn’t exist. Tyops happne but those were some key sections of the book and really needed extra attention to detail.
Making referencing the rules harder, neither of the above are in the index, which is also pretty lacklustre and barebones. And also features the abysmally large tabs.
The Awesome
GMing section does touch on consent and making sure players are okay with the topics being presented at the table. This is a highly useful reminder given the game is dark and gritty and horrible things can happen.
There’s little in-character bits of dialogue in the sidebars. This sets the tone of the setting and gives a little extra personality to the book while also providing some lore in a less dry fashion.
Throughout the text, keywords are called out with bold and coloured formatting. This includes conditions and certain effects. This easily catches the eye and draws attention to the key mechanic inside the paragraphs. Always useful in a rules reference product.
The game’s alchemy system is both complicated and fiddly but rather interesting. There are nine key ingredients that can be harvested from a variety of sources, and each are given a unique coloured icon. The recipe for each craftable item requires some combination of these shared ingredients. It’s probably more complicated than I need, but if you’re playing a craftsman and alchemy is your thing the subsystem keeps gameplay interesting. It’s abstract without just reducing all alchemy to a single pool of common resources or having a lengthy list of unique components.
Final Thoughts
At a quick, casual glance the Witcher RPG looks good. Gorgeous art and a clean layout. But once you look closer or hit the rules the game begins to seem clunky and dated, potentially slow and fiddly with a surprising amount of imbalance and almost retro design. The more you look past the art and actually at the book, the uglier the product seems. The layout is clunky and boxy, simply lacking the extra detail and care one expects of a professional roleplaying game product from the late 2010s.
Frankly, I’ve seen better looking products on the DMsGuild or given away on /r/unearthedarcana done by literal amateurs; there are unofficial products done by fans for fun that simply have more care put into their design.
Prior to writing this review I was unfamiliar with R. Talsorian Games, and assumed they were a newcomer to the industry, building a catalogue of products by updating older games—I was familiar with the names Cyberpunk 2020, Teenagers from Outerspace, and others but had never played them or looked at who published them. But having paused to do some extra research/ fact-checking at the end of my review, I was a little surprised to find out R. Talsorian Games has been publishing games since 1985.
Which, honestly, explains the Witcher RPG. It’s not a retro roleplaying game designed like it was being published in the early 1990s. It’s a game designed by a publisher as if the RPG industry hasn’t changed or evolved since the 1990s. It’s an old school RPG that just happens to have been published in modern times with an art budget borrowed from a AAA video game studio.
I’m not sure how to evaluate the game with that new information. Should I praise R. Talsorian Games for sticking to their tried and tested design? Or should I condemn them for not keeping with the times and modern standards?
At the end of the day: does the layout affect the quality of the gameplay at the table? No, that is a merely cosmetic issue. And is this a usable game that will provide a framework for entertaining game sessions? Probably. That’s much harder to evaluate. The game system is still quite fiddly, but a few cheat sheets or a GM screen can mitigate that, and if you want that level of detail it’s a big plus. Furthermore, with only a single combat encounter likely in each session, you almost want that to be detailed and complex. And while you can end up penalized with bad life events during character creation, that’s a theoretical problem.
A skilled GM should be able to design adventures that engage a party of mixed roles. Especially if you have a small number of players. The game might work best if you have two or three players and one gamemaster rather than the expected table for four to six players. It would work very nicely as a game about a Witcher and their Criminal sidekick or a Mage and their Man-at-Arms bodyguard. This game might work very well as an “alternate game” played when you’re missing half a regular gaming group but still want to get together with friends and roll dice.
That said… with the Witcher TV series having caused a surge of Witcher-related attention and print copies of this game becoming harder and harder to find, it wouldn’t be a bad idea for R. Talsorian Games to do a revised edition instead of a straight reprint, tightening the rules and overhauling the layout. Perhaps even expanding the content in a few places, such as additional skill trees or monsters.
C’mon doppler race/profession!
Shameless Plugs
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