Filippo Franco
I got some days ago the digital handbook of Tenebria: Remnant of Rome, a survival rpg set after the fall of the Roman Empire. I backed the project pledging 10$ and now I can finally browse it and share my first impressions.
Art and layout
Amateur. There are some good quality images, but they’re alternated with lesser works resulting very unpleasant for the reader because he loses the sense of immersion and evocation that a more uniform product can obtain. Moreover images have always the same two layouts, total page or almost total page, without varying with vertical shapes or tinier illustrations (apart from creatures in the appendix). Then text has a bold font that makes no difference from the real bold type, preventing from notice the difference and making reading more difficult. Some paragraph titles are simply capital without a change in size or other methods of enhancing. Text lines are uneven making the pages even more messy and worsening the reading. The outcome is a train of similar pages, where is difficult finding a particular entry and the reader’s look gets lost in a ton of indistinguishable ink. I had the clear feeling of a work lacking of experience and professionalism. I can save some textboxes explaining to readers Roman names, traditions and translations.
Project and authors
The project has been founded on Kickstarter on the 22nd September 2019, managing to surpass the threshold of 10.000$ needed to be founded by few hundreds dollars. The promise to deliver a 100 pages handbook (final count is 106) in December 2019 has been kept, at least for the digital version. Tenebria: Remnant of Rome had a good presentation, although there were some details that should have make me think about future flaws. For example it’s impossible not to mention the sad stretch goals table: without images, a title, some colour and with the red line of the automatic editor copied and pasted on the project page. You already know my opinion about art and layout.
The authors, Wet Ink Games, have already completed other three Kickstarter projects. Writing and art are made by Steven Wu (you can see his art on his Artstation page) and the system has been developed by Brandon K. Aten and Matthew Orr, founders of this indie company. I’m astonished that two person that can boast, as they say, “over a decade of experience in the gaming industry working on projects together and separately for prominent companies including Palladium Books (Rifts and Splicers), Third Eye Games (Part Time Gods, Ninja Crusade 2nd Ed. and Amp: Year One), and NerdBurgerGames (CAPERS)” can create products that seems amateur with clear visual flaws.
Game and setting
Tenebria, Remnant of Rome is a survival roleplaying game about the story of a community risen around the camp of the ninth roman legion “Gemini” sheltered in Germany near an aqueduct to reorganize after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. This community grew up slowly and it hosts refugees that must proof themselves useful in order to remain and be accepted. The introduction set the tone properly describing the voyage of the protagonist that loses his wife, two sons and a daughter in a couple of pages before finding Tenebria. This is not an hystorical game, there aren’t precise hystorical entries in the handbook and also the equipment is not hystorically correct. But that’s not a problem or a flaw. The focus of the game is the narration about how that community survived, “where” and “when” are deliberately blur.
Character creation comes in the form of an interview from two roman soldier that ask the future character who he is and how he can be useful to the community. The generation is fast, like it should be in a light system: name’s choice, assignement of 12 points on 3 attributes, choice of 3 skills from a list of 9, a trait, 3 resources and we’re done. In this first impression I was uncertain about the carrying weight skill because, even if we are talking about a survival game, it seemed to me not so useful in a 9 skills system, compared to the other two body skills, combat and athleticism. I appreciated the Resources part, resolved with a card deck. Every suit represents a different kind of resources (body, mind and soul resources) and every card is one resource of that kind. Spades are raw resources that can be exchanged with the others with a 2:1 ratio.
A short illustrative mission lets the system to be introduced. It’s truly minimal, then, before already reaching appendixes (they start at page 46!), we have only the after mission chapter. Apart from the usual character advancement rules, it’s explained how it’s also possible spending resources to improve the settlement of Tenebria with buildings and services that gives benefits in game. Even if it’s very simple, it’s a good idea, like a minigame. In the game there’s magic, in the form of hexes, which explanation and functioning are left to narrators and players.
More than half of the book is dedicated to the appendixes that, apart from hexes, have a lot of missions, brief adventures to help getting in the mood of the game, in addition to a short list of creatures and NPCs, but that shortness is not an issue: the system is so light that NPCs and creature generation is not a problem at all. Let’s talk about the system now!
System and mechanics
Are you not trained in combat? Let’s spend a Body point and you are trained!
Easy, isn’t it?
This system is called +One System and it’s d6 based. You roll the dice depending on skills, “5” and “6” are successes and dice can be manipulated as many times as the linked attribute. What does dice manipulation mean? It means you can obtain training (Are you not trained in combat? Let’s spend a Body point and you are trained! Easy, isn’t it?), add dice, augment the die result or reroll. Players can influence other characters’ dice results with Morale rolls, enhancing the needing of collaboration in a hostile world. Combat, persuasion and ingenuity work in the same way: simply, with few rolls. No space for maneuvers, tactics or other aspects in the rules. This game is made to tell stories, not to detail physical or verbal encounters. It’s really a minimal system, create to make players collaborate and to drain their resources, putting characters’ lifes in danger. It’s useful to carry on narration-centered, solid and engaging stories, because without them there is nothing left.
Conclusions
Too simple. An hystorical moment and a place have been chosen to create a setting, an hyper-simple system has been taken to make the game run, some good ideas have been added, some details, few traits and hexes, some illustrative missions have been written and everything has been given a rushed layout. I don’t say there’s nothing of value. If a good narrator, talented in creating engaging stories, wants a light system for a survival game and the setting is fitting, then I’m sure some good results can be obtained. But as far as you go from this premises, you risk to be disappointed from Tenebria.
