We received a digital copy of Shotguns & Sorcery for review, a roleplaying game based on the stories of the same name written by Matt Forbeck. It runs with the 1st edition of Monte Cook’s Cypher System and features rather an alternative setting.
Its author describes it thus:
Imagine if Raymond Chandler had written The Lord of the Rings and transplanted his noir version of Los Angeles onto the Lonely Mountain and then surrounded it with zombies.
I admit that before receiving a copy I didn’t know the game nor the stories on which it is based. My curiosity has been awakened now, however, and I can’t wait to discover with you what Shotguns & Sorcery has to offer.
Matt Forbeck… the name rings a bell…
In the world of role-playing games, the authors of a work aren’t often mentioned. Many times there are more than one author, but by dint of leafing through manuals certain names remain in your head. When I read “Matt Forbeck” I knew I had already seen or heard of him and so, first of all, I went to his site looking for informations.
Matt Forbeck is a very successful writer and game designer. I’ll start from the bottom of the biography: 28 nominations for the Origin Awards, followed by 17 prizes, 10 ENnies Awards plus a whole host of other awards. His curriculum vitae is an 18 pages PDF that describes his activity from 1988 to present. In the image you can see his main works.
The editorial history of Shotguns & Sorcery
Writing an RPG is a time-consuming job, as the nearly 300 pages of this manual clearly attest. For this, the author has delegated production to a third parties, tapping Outland Enternainment with the Jeremy Mohler as artistic leader. Outland Entertainment called on a certain Rob Schwalb to create the corpus of rules, and opted to use Monte Cook Games’ Cypher System. Many of you may remember Rob for the recent Shadow of the Demon Lord, but I prefer to associate him with A Song of Ice and Fire RPG or with classic D&D 3.5 manuals as Fiendish Codex II: Tyrants of the Nine Hells, Drow of the Underdark oTome of Magic. One hell of a bibliography!
From what I could see, the Kickstarter obtained more than 200% of the funding threshold. Delivery was scheduled for 2015 while physical copies to supporters only arrived between the end of 2019 and the first half of 2020. Currently, it can be purchased through DriveThruRPG. The digital copy costs $ 29.95, while the physical copy $59.95.
The world of Shotguns & Sorcery
Welcome to Dragon City, a grim, gritty metropolis ruled over by the Dragon Emperor, with legions of zombies scratching at the city walls by night. Whether in the streets of Goblintown or the prestigious halls of the Academy of Arcane Apprenticeship, people try to scrape by, make a living, and survive from one day to the next.
This is the official description of the setting. But how was it born?
What is practically a classic fantasy realm was the starting point, to which a massive dose of zombie apocalypse has been added, in the person of The Ruler of the Dead. He nearly achieved complete domination, the greatest necromancer of all time, but the last remnants of the population made a deal to take refuge with the second most dangerous creature present, a huge dragon. For defending them long enough for them to build a wall and take refuge inside, they crowned him emperor, the Dragon Emperor of Shotguns & Sorcery. On the one hand I like it but, on the other, I fear the repetition of overused tropes has lowered the quality. We’ll see.
With this starting point Matt Forbeck has created a reality made of rifles that fire bullets of magic, class struggles exacerbated by wealth and longevity, a multifaceted city full of secrets. It is a place where magic is linked to technology (at the level of the early 1900s), where the races have been forced to reinvent themselves to live together, where a noir-like atmosphere reigns.
To quote the author, “In short, it’s a hell of a lot of fun.”
Two words on the Cypher System of Shotguns & Sorcery
For those who aren’t familiar with games like Numenera or The Strange, I’ll give you two words to describe the Cypher System. First, the manual already contains the rules of the system, so no further books are needed to play.
The basic mechanic is to match or exceed a threshold number (three times the difficulty of the test) with the D20. The difficulty varies from 0 to 10 and is modified, positively or negatively, by external factors, skills and resources available. Once determined, multiply it by 3 and roll the D20. Some abilities or items provide a bonus to the roll. The results are in the hands of the players.
Experience points are awarded as rewards between sessions or as a result of the DM intruding on the narrative, in exchange for making things more difficult for the characters. A player can refuse an intrusion, but this costs the PC 1 experience point.
Another very neat aspect in the Cypher System are magical objects, divided into three types based on power, durability and frequency of discovery. The Cypher System gives particular attention to magical objects, making it a good choice for a setting that has a lot of interesting objects due to magic and technology being so closely bound together.
It is a fairly simple system, which favors PCs and their upgrading, keeping the work of the DM rather light and thus allowing him to concentrate on other, more narrative, aspects of his role.
The characters of Shotguns & Sorcery
The starting point is classic, so the races differ little from the known repetitions of the usual clichés. On the other hand, the premise was precisely to start from The Lord of the Rings. But 66 years after its publication, however much you want to create a classic fantasy base, certain concepts are suffering from being used too many times.
The creation of the character in the Cypher System begins with the construction of a simple sentence: I am a [noun] [adjective] that [verb] “. In these sentences the adjective is called a descriptor, the noun is the type of the character and the verb is called focus.
The type of the character represents its essence and is what in other RPGs is referred to as a class. In Shotguns & Sorcery the types are the freelancer, the veteran and the wizard. Respectively they enhance skills, combat and magic. The descriptor attributes an adjective to the character and places him in an initial game situation (also providing ideas for the start of the campaign and objectives to be achieved in the short or long term). It is possible to choose between 20 descriptors, which change the character both statistically and for the purposes of roleplaying. The focus outlines what the character does better than anything else: his special abilities and peculiarities. Examples of focus are “… summoning monsters”, “… exploring dark places” or “… fighting dirty”.
PC creation is quick and easy, quite versatile and easy to translate into the reality of the game.
The setting, the engine of the game
The corpus of rules fills about 20 pages, after which the description of the setting begins, which fills about 30 more. All neighborhoods of the city of Dragon City are described, which occupies the whole mountain and is home to tens of thousands of creatures that probably represent what remains of living beings. It goes from the top, where the dragon lives, down to Goblintown. Almost every neighborhood is home to a breed and is described briefly, again with an abundance of clichés. I would have preferred a little more details and ideas.
A chapter on organizations follows, in which the races are distinguished by means of names taken from existing, Real World nations. Thus, the elves have Italian names, the dwarves have German names, the gnomes are Russian, and so on. I would have liked fewer lists and more background. A final part of the setting is used to briefly describe the world beyond the mountain walls.
Space for creatures and magical items!
The bestiary is quite large and well represented. The descriptions of the monsters are broad and include elements such as objectives, environment and interaction that allow you to easily elevate these creatures from the simple status of statistics to be fought.
About forty NPCs are also described with the same completeness and clarity, including the Dragon and the Ruler of Death.
For a world of magic and magical technology, obviously the space dedicated to magical objects should be ample. Thus, there are 34 pages of dense lists covering a great variety of objects, here. In these years of Kickstarter and the flowering of manuals for in-depth study of any subject, we cannot speak of originality, but certainly not because of the authors of the manual. They are certainly very much in-tune with the fantasy-noir tone of the game.
The section for the master
The last part of the manual is dedicated to playing Shotguns & Sorcery. Advice is provided regarding both adjudication (in particular on the intrusion system), and how to make the game and its setting shine. This last part helps to complete and bring the information given on the setting and the prominent NPCs together as a whole.
There is some pretty useful advice for managing rules and settings, as well as the usual advice and warnings given to newbies to learn how to manage the delicate role in the narrator. It is a clear choice: including this part is a noble attempt to create a complete manual and help those who are new to role-playing games. On the other hand, however, the manual is lengthened by pages that do not give anything new to more experienced players (although repeating the concepts every now and then is good for all).
Graphic and layout
The layout is promoted. Clear, elegant, homogeneous. Reading it is pleasant and the text and tables are well ordered. I would have added a few more features to break up some more monotonous pages or to highlight some important concepts, but it is still a very good job.
On the other hands graphicss aren’t particularly on my tastes. If Shotguns & Sorcery is fantasy that meets noir, I would expect illustrations that carry that atmosphere, that feeling. Instead I found very little noir and the fantasy too cartoonish. The backgrounds are flat, not evocative. This is too bad, because more impactful images would have promoted immersion in the setting and would have conveyed more originality.
My doubts about Shotguns & Sorcery
It is always difficult to make an RPG based on other works. I don’t know the stories behind the setting, but the game can’t just be for fans of the narrative version. I wonder why there are no quotes from the stories, excerpts of paragraphs that help to give the idea and at the same time create interest in the stories themselves.
If I rely on what I have read in the manual I find but few ideas. There is a lot of information, but little appeal or attempting at engaging the reader. A setting based on two classic and abused formulas such as the fantasy kingdom and the zombie apocalypse must also give something more, otherwise there is no need for a dedicated manual. Any narrator can combine the most common clichés to create a setting. Even if not quite as complete as that of Shotguns & Sorcery, it would still be just as credible and usable.
From how it was described at the beginning I expected something more lively, with more aspects outlined, some compelling conflicts, something that would make me say “I absolutely want to play it!”.
Final considerations
Shotguns & Sorcery looks like a nice manual, full-bodied and well made. It uses a simple and popular system, easy to learn and with interesting dynamics. The setting starts from a very clear and simple idea and develops it with the same simplicity. Novice storytellers or those with little time to prepare something of their own will find plenty of material to use. I fear that more experienced players won’t find anything that stretches their comfort zone, even if they have fun with it. There is absolutely no outstanding reason to use this game and this manual above others, even though it is a relatively sound product.