This has rolled across my Kickstarter feed a while back: DIE the Roleplaying Game. The conceit is one we’ve all seen — players of a game get sucked into the “real” thing. I’ve run a couple of mini-campaigns using this idea in the past, but this looked like it was attempting to get a lot more meta about it. Written by Kieron Gillen, a British comic book writer, and Stephanie Hans, a French comics artist, it was a tie-in to a comic series…or maybe the comic was a tie-in to the game. Either way, while you don’t need to have read the comic (and I hadn’t when we kicked the tires on the game last week, I have now).
The rules are really light with influences from several other light weight systems. The basic mechanics are a dice pool — roll the number of die equal to your attribute, plus or minus dice for various advantages and disadvantages, to do what you want. A success is scored on a 4 or higher; a 6 also gives access to a special effect. The rules beyond that are tied to whatever class you play, and these are roughly analogous to Dungeons & Dragons classes, but with a twist — or maybe perversion is a better word.
Before you get to your characters, or “paragons”, you create your players. This involves a session zero where you all decide the backstories and desires, disappointments, etc. of your player, and the connections between them all. The players then create their paragons. This actually was an interesting stage as paragons that would have been perfect for some of the gaming group were not chosen, and paragons perfect for the players were taken.
There are six classes and the game is really set up to be played by six or fewer players. You can have two playing the same class, but that isn’t recommended. There’s the dictator –the bard as monster; you can control people and their emotions with “the Voice”. In the comic, this is used to horrific and tragic effect. It tied synergistically to the Emotion Knight. In the comic, one of the characters is a “Grief Knight” powered by his sadness; the Dictator in the comic powers him up with the Voice…but it’s a pretty awful thing to do. There’s the fool, who is the rogue analogue. So long as they are being foolish, they are pretty much untouchable. Their friends? That’s another issue. There’s the neo — a cyberpunk “wizard” if you will that is powered by “fair gold” — which is found in the “Fallen”, the game’s zombie/orc/bad guys you can kill without remorse (until you know their backstory…) There’s the Godbinder, a cleric who cuts deals with gods for some pretty damned powerful effects…but that debt has to get paid. Lastly, there’s the Master, which goes to the gamemaster; they are a player, after all. The Master is the wizard — he can bend and break the rules, but only so far before the power of DIE — a 20-sided world with different settings per facet — come calling.
(Since I was the GM, I took the Master, of course. My player was the not-great looking buy charismatic drama geek raised by a single mom with all sisters, and who has a tendency to play only female characters. His master is a soft-core leather fetish redhead…of course.) Each of the classes has their own special die — a d4 for the Dictator, d6 for the Fool and so on up to the Master with the d20.
The conceit is that you are either coming back together after a time from your last being together to play a game, but we tweaked that to the “last big game of the summer before we go to college”. You get sucked into the game and then the fun (or horror) begins. The basic premise is that the players wouldn’t necessarily want to go into the game. In the comic, the friends get sucked back to DIE after having barely survived it in their youth. The setting is supposed to be dark fantasy, but you can go light or REALLY dark (see the comics, of which there are four graphic novels.)
Our setting, we decided together was based on the stuff the players all did in the ’90s (we set the game in 1995), so we leaned into a Shadowrun-kind of campaign. The dictator is very much straight out of a White Wolf Vampire game, the Ecstasy Knight is armored up like a low rent Batman, the Fool is a dual pistol wielding street samurai, and the Master…well, I mentioned that.) Following the arrival in a knockoff Night City, they get attacked by Fallen (again, a suggested start for the game), and in the fray, the Master gets spirited away.
Afterward, they find out at their favorite bar from the games they had played, that the world is now in terrible danger and is starting to fall apart. They have a choice to make to save DIE and its inhabitants — they must all agree to play the game, or to leave the game…but they’re short a member.
That’s where we left it last week and we’re picking it up at Nerd Night this week.
It’s an interesting setting and depending on the group you have to play, this could be either light fun that has a dark underside, or a straight-up horror, “oh, shit!” quality to it. The system and its pretenses are interesting, and I could see this being a game to roll through on a semi-regular basis.
To the physical aspects of the game. Hans’ artwork is superb and provides a good sense of what the flavor of the game is supposed to be. There’s bits and pieces from the comic book, but for the most part, the imagery is taken from the sample characters that were used by the authors and their playtesters. It’s well written and understands that needs of getting the rules right and making them easily comprehensible, and the artistic end where you’re setting up the world for the players. The book is hardcover and well-bound; there’s no slop here — it’s high quality. The GM screen is equally good — heavy stock with cool but not distracting artwork on the player side. There’s the basics for the rules on the GM side, but…well, there’s not a lot there. Lastly, it came with a nice heavy cardstock dice box with a magnetic clasp. Inside six red polyhedrons with the top number an image of the die type. Yes, they’re cool. And since everyone get one specifically for their character, they stand out from the d6 die pool, and are supposed to.
This was the first new game in a while that my game group got really excited for, and we had a blast with the player/character, initial introduction session. The game is available through the link above and the comics are available on Amazon or a decent local comic store. (That’s where I got mine.)
So is it worth it? To get the book and all the attendant dice, etc. will set you back £90 or about $100. The quality of the artwork, the production values on the book and attendant materials, is well worth it. If the setting intrigues, do it. I feel I got my money’s worth, and I’m even going to pop for the Fair Gold I hadn’t added on during the Kickstarter.
As for the comics — they are very well done. The writing is a bit forced at the start, but once the plot gets rolling, it’s got a nice flow, the characters are rich and well-written, and the story gets progressively more involved and interesting. I’ll stop there as there’s tons of spoilers. The whole series set me back $60 and was more than worth it. Hell, I may have to have a look at The Wicked + The Divine.
The Black Campbell 