Review: Skorne

There is an expanded edition of Skorne, which came out some time ago, but I only noticed recently. Skorne is a very simple OSR/FKR game, available as a PDF, which I printed out like a booklet. Skorne was created by Samuel James, who writes the blog Dreaming Dragonslayer. I have discussed Skorne on the blog, in passing, some time ago. The game deserves more than a passing glance.

Skorne looks to take inspiration from games like Into the Odd and Maze Rats. Skorne is a simple rule set tied to a simple campaign conceit. You are a band of renegades, there are evil tyrants ruling the world, led by the devil prince Skorne. The game begins with the player characters awakening in the ruins of a village destroyed by a warband of Skorne. Like Mork Borg there is a bit of a ticking clock, where the world marches towards ruin as time passes. Classic. If only Final Fantasy games still managed to keep things so tight.

The rules for the game fit on a handful of pages, but ostensibly boil down to opposed 2d6 rolls. Characters have 3 stats: Strength, Dexterity, Willpower. Creating a character will take moments. You roll for your attribute bonuses, and roll for a starting set of equipment, attributes (like a missing eye) or magic spells. Characters have 10 inventory slots. Some situations may cause a player’s character to be fatigued. Like Mausritter, this is tracked by consuming an inventory slot. When a character has ten points of fatigue they die.

Borrowing from Into the Odd, there is no dice rolling to hit in combat damage. Players start the game with 3 HP, each hit doing one point of damage. If players or enemies have a good position, for whatever reason, they may be able to do more hits of damage, or negate some incoming damage. When a character reaches zero hit points they must make a Strength save to avoid death. The combat rules reminded me of one of my favourites, [Pits and Peril][pp], which is also minimal, and expects a lot of adjudication to come from “the fiction”. In that game, as with this one, you will jockey for position and advantage to succeed in combat.¹

The later half of the book is random tables and advice for running the game. Good random tables help sign post what a game is about, and Skorne has good random tables. The advice for running the game is clear, actionable, and to the point. There is a short bestiary, which will help illustrate how to make monsters a game where stats and numbers aren’t really that important. The game concludes with a short page about the history of the setting: loose and open ended to do with as you wish. When I first wrote about the game I commented on how it sort of jumps right to it, assuming the reader will know what’s up. A lot of the additions to the game help frame things more explicitly.

Skorne is a really well executed rules light game. It’s a great example to learn from for people looking to make something minimal. What rules and writing are here all funnel you towards a particular sort of game. It’s a quick read, and one you could get to the table quickly: just my sort of thing.