#fkr

Review: Skorne

by Ramanan Sivaranjan on January 25, 2025

Tagged: skorne osr fkr

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.

1. In Pits and Peril it feels like more of a requirement or your combat will never end. ↩

Paradigms and Gaming

by Ramanan Sivaranjan on March 05, 2022

Tagged: wanderhome skorne osr fkr lotfp

I bought two games that feel like they exist in sharp contrast to one another. The first was Skorne, an OSR/FKR game. It was a $3 PDF I printed at home and folded into a zine. The second is probably the most famous Belonging Outside Belonging game at this point, Wanderhome, which arrived at my door in its fancy coffee table book form.

One player is SKORNE the devil prince: commander of demon rulers and their armies. The other players are renegades, part of mankind’s insurrection against the darkness that reigns. Overthrow the evil Tyrants. Free chained captives. Fight to the last man.

That’s all Skorne has to say about what kind of game you’ll be playing. What else is there to say, I suppose? I already know what I’ll do with this game. Anything else the author has to say is wasted words.

To be honest, it feels rare that an OSR game tells you explicitly what it’s even about. LotFP’s Rules and Magic opens like so:

Roll 3d6 for each ability score (Charisma, Constitution, Dexterity, Intelligence, Strength, Wisdom), in order, and record them on your character sheet.

The book jumps right into the action.¹ Of course, I never struggled trying to understand what I was going to do when I picked up that rule book. I knew, somewhere deep in my brain.

Wanderhome, though. What the hell even is this game? I asked my friends:

So is the source of conflict in Wanderhome dealing with nature and the traits of the people you meet? Am I thinking about this all wrong? Like some totally different paradigm I need to get my head around.

A friend replied to tell me the obvious: it’s a game about going places and meeting people. Whether there is conflict or tension is besides the point. The funny thing is, Wanderhome tells you as much right from the start. Again and again, really. The introduction is long and poetic and detailed. The art is beautiful and evocative. You can picture the Miyazaki movie unfurl in your head.² Still, I found myself thinking, “but why?”, in a way I never do with D&D-a-likes because I have so deeply internalized what those games want you to do. Someone reading Wanderhome without any of the baggage of playing other RPGs will likely intuit what it’s about with ease.

The easy thing to do when you come across a game outside your comfort zone is to dismiss it out of hand: “how is this even a game?” Personal preference turns into condemnation. I try and make an effort to understand where games are coming from. The experience of playing games further afield from my tastes has at times been revelatory. Approaching a game on its own terms with an open mind doesn’t mean you’ll end up liking it. There are many games I read and bounce right off. That’s fine, not all games need to be for me, not should they.

I’m looking forward to playing both of this games. I’m sure i’ll have much more to say.

1. LotFP’s rulebook starts this way because it was originally part of a trio of books, a Tutorial Book that would introduce players to the game, and a Referee Book that further solidfies LotFP’s approach to gaming. Divorced of its siblings when turned into a hardcover, the Rules and Magic book ends up feeling almost aggressive or exciting: this is how you make a character let’s go! Something I really love about that rulebook, actually. ↩

2. Miyazaki minus all the violence that exists in his movies: ha! ↩