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(+4)

Beneath The Broken Sword is a starter adventure for Runecairn---a Norse Dark Souls osr adventure game.

The PDF is 16 pages, with a very well organized layout and some great crisp and evocative illustrations. There's a full map and a helpful overview to give the adventure context, and the whole thing feels very clean and easy to run.

Broken Sword, as a Runecairn adventure, is meant for duo play. It also has some noticeable crunch to it, and losing the game due to careless play (or extreme misfortune) is possible.  That said, Runecairn's system is not unforgiving, and it allows you to come back from death a number of times equal to your Vigour. In true soulslike fashion, there's also a bonfire, minor enemies respawn, and progression is hard-won.

The adventure's feeling is *very* soulsy, and there's everything from soapstone messages to red invaders to you can do it skeleton in the text. This produces a nagging sense that maybe in-universe the player character is an avatar in a video game, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad spin on the setting. And the gameplay is compelling regardless.

Everything that works in Dark Souls' normal gameplay loop works here. There are listless, non-responsive creatures in the first room. There's a difficulty spike starter boss. Important elements of gameplay are tutorialized, but not in a way that requires any direct explanations (getting ambushed by skeletons teaches you to check your surroundings; seeing a stone fall out of a wall teaches you to check for hidden doors.)

Beneath's dungeon isn't particularly long, but it does have quite a bit of combat and it's almost a textbook starter area. It feels very polished, and there's plenty of room for the GM and player to lean towards or away from roleplaying.

Overall, if you're looking for a moderately crunchy duo trpg, or if you're a fan of souls games, or if you want to see a stellar adaptation of video game mechanics to tabletop, I would strongly recommend giving Beneath The Broken Sword (and Runecairn) a shot.

(+2)

Thanks so much for this thorough and detailed review. I really appreciate it!

For every review added, I’ll add 5 additional community copies.