Barrow Keep: Den of Spies is a system-neutral Young Adult-themed "old-school RPG zine of intrigue & romance". The back cover puts it as "when you were young, you thought Barrow Keep’s great walls would keep you safe. But now, coming of age, you realize how many troubles were inside these walls all along: duplicitous courtiers, treacherous kin, puritanical heresy-hunters, glamoured spies from the woods beyond the walls, and hungry, ancient spirits of the forgotten past. How will you protect yourself? How will you protect your friends?"
screengrab of front cover, art by Minerva Fox
This 72 page zine is approaching completion following a successful kickstarter campaign by R. Rook Studio, "specialists in the documentation of weird settings and strange locales." This is to be the first in a series of romantic fantasy settings for "adventure fantasy games with an old-school spirit".
So what is in the zine? The content in the zine is system-less for the most part. The nuts and bolts of how to run adventures are found in the playkit packs - I have seen ones tailored to Old School Essentials (which I am more familiar with) and Sharp Swords and Sinister Spells. I like this way of doing things, making most of the zine content universal while the crunch can be switched in and out depending on your system.
The “Welcome to Barrow Keep” section introduces Barrow Keep and its environs to GMs and players alike. We open by setting 3 essential NPCs - the Archon, their Consort and their Heir we get an immediate introduction into the power-players within this court. All these come with tables to inspire their origins and plans. With the masters of the keep in place, we are introduced to the site itself with nice tips on sights and sounds, good for both mood setting but also encounter seeds or adventure ideas. Includes a cast of characters, a broad overview of the nearby locations beyond the Keep and a hint of the distant Capital giving a broad-strokes world. This sets up lots of scope for intrigue and subtle interpersonal relationships. Not quite a powder keg but a smouldering fire.
The technology section includes rules for both powder and plasmic firearms. This is an interesting design choice, one which lends itself to the stated intent of the setting; anyone can carry a brace of pistols and with sufficient guts and a steady hand can face down any potential threat. All of the characters are supposed to be young and this gets us past the 'kids would be just eaten' aspect of threats. Equipment includes another few steam-punk items such as personal wings or walking vehicles that can be acquired.
In the section on ritual magic we find a system where magic can be attempted by anyone, through ritual and with risk. Design notes point to the direct influence of the Young Adult literature inspirations for the setting. I like these a lot - I could see many ways for them to tie into games to push magic in a high-magic prevalence setting out into the hands of the populace. Although not simple, sufficiently motivated people might get up to these things. Many factors can drive success or failure - with a great deal of time and good information on how to succeed these works could be straightforward but they can also be cast under duress and pressure which can be a great challenge for what to risk if a thing must be done. The detailed rituals - Rites of Divination, Speaking with the Dead, Charms of Protection, Oathbonds and Weapon Consecrations - fit well to the setting. I could see myself adding rituals to break or cast curses.
Next the “Secrets of Barrow Keep” section includes rules and random tables for GMs to use. Here we find detail on the sealed East Tower, once home of the keeps last sorceror. Next description and a table of hooks related to the intrigues of the Great Hall - who might be encountered, what might be found rummaging through private apartments, what events are driving upcoming feasts and which new visitors have arrived. Atop all this, a rumours table in case the courtiers might be bored. Plenty to drive intrigue in and around the court.
To ensure the court never settles to equilibrium the next section describes a half dozen strange visitors and a quartet of dangerous delegations who can be introduced to the Keep or its environs. For the stranger visitors we get the major faces of the group and what they want. These range from a bank delegation to a circus through to mercenary companies. For the four delegations there are some potential representatives of these peer powers within the realm. Each is a great house with its own style as reflected that some have lists of ambitions, others proposals or rumors. Each of the characters in this section gets a neat 3-line pen portrait to set any of them as a cat among the pigeons of the court.
Finally comes a trio of sites - the Catacombs beneath the Keep, a ruined train station, and Crows Nest Keep - the stronghold of the major rivals to Barrow Keep. For each of these sites there are tables to generate guardians and treasures for the first two sites. The train station, properly explored, can provide paths to other worlds - for a price. The Crows Nest contains means to generate the origins, goals and potential weaknesses of the House of Drestfall. Drestfall should serve as rivals if not active antagonists of the residents of Barrow Keep. The potential interplay between all these factors gives over hundreds of thousands of potential forms for the house of Drestfall to take.
Accompanying the zine comes the Playkits include 15 pages with 2 scenario guides for the GMs - workbooks effectively to generate and then help run the adventure. These are relatively simple in layout but fitting in that they allow you to plug in the NPCs relevant to your party which will be different for any given game table. The remaining 40 pages of the play kit contains 10 character playbooks for the players. Part bespoke generators, character sheet and class advancement list. These are effectively 7 bespoke classes, 1 fighter with a twist and 2 archetypes that can be any class. The archetypes are familiar and come with a set of tailored background tables to set up their back-story and give some hooks.
Going through the list of options we see:
The Consort's Spy is a thief variant who lives up to their name.
The Foretold is a magic user with a meeting with destiny ahead of them.
The Hostage is a beast-master type who may have conflicting loyalties.
The Lost Familiar is a forgotten imp.
The Revenant is an undead shapeshifter who can only appear in daylight as one of three animal forms. Once a bodyguard here, something brought you back.
The Ward is a seer type with broad divinatory powers.
The Wielder is a child of one of the powers who dreamt of, found and now bears a magical blade that may be changing them.
The Wolf is a shapeshifter who has found a life away from superstition at Barrow Keep
The Archon's Secret can be any class, their hooks being that they are a secret love-child of power.
The Attendant has rocked up to Barrow Keep and made themselves useful.
I recognised a few of the homages to the source material - Hobbs Farseer series (the Archons Secret), Noviks Scholomance (the Ward) - in this list of archetypes and like how it conveys the flavour of the game. Much of the fun here is going to be managing awkward backgrounds, dealing in secrets, trust and loyalties. This is a strong set up for a role-play heavy game and it provides lots of background hooks that are going to be mutually intertangled. Anything that disturbs the web of ties within the court is going to ripple outwards rapidly through a group of these archetypes.
There is a lot of flexibility within the setting. I found the 'feudal with plasma-pistols' very reminiscent of the Books of the New Sun by Wolfe or some of the Culture series by Iain M. Banks such as Inversions or Matter. I think Noviks Temeraire books could be a great stylistic model for this setting - either switch the airships for dragons or keep them as is for your dashing aviators. I could see this being used in high-sci-fi for a backwater planet, you could probably drop this into your Star Wars or Traveller game, it would fit to Eberron or Spelljammer (with a little work). You could also easily fold in things like Dolmenwood into the wild woods beyond Barrow Keep.
Overall I liked Barrow Keep, I will be lifting a bunch of the inspirations and mechanics for my ongoing court based game. I think there is great potential for tuning this to exactly hit your tables preferred tone. Running the character play-kit immediately generates a group of interconnected players and this will almost certainly stand to the good whether you set off on a high-intrigue path (as designed) or or inter-cut those episodes with some more traditional questing (exploring the nearby wilderness for example). By creating a web of connection to Barrow Keep for each character it makes the place important to them. The array of NPCs provided gives a good tool-kit for GMs to maintain and enhance that connection, making the Keep feel alive and building up the stakes for when the dominos fall.
For another review see Ten Foot Pole.
Thanks for this review (and for linking to Bryce's as well)!
ReplyDeleteMy pleasure!
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