Pyramid Mini-Review
Roanoke: A Game of Dark Mystery & Wicked Action!
Written & Published by Clint Krause with Daniel Bayn
Cover by Glauco Nobre
44-page 1.28meg b&w PDF with Color Cover; $5
Inspired by Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow, Ravenous, and Brotherhood of the Wolf, Roanoke is a roleplaying game of Lovecraftian horror, over-the-top action, civilization against wilderness, and sinister conspiracies at the New World's edge. It explores, but does not explain, what happened to "England's lost colony."
Players take the roles of Roanoke's colonists, protectors, betrayers, and native peoples, each defined by three traits, one combat, one social, one professional, plus a crippling fear. Traits are rated three, four, and five, the fear just one, and everything else two. For its mechanics, each rating is the target to roll under. Simple resolution is a straight roll under a trait. For conflicts, Roanoke employs Daniel Bayn's narrative control Wushu mechanics, players building dice pools of six-sided dice by adding narrative elements, and then rolling for successes. For example, a Witch-Hunter denounces a Heretic, using inflammatory oratory, producing evidence of devilish doings, and witnesses to the Heretic's lies about God. The Witch-Hunter gains a die for each, rolling 3d6 against his professional trait, Witch-Finder (5). The Wushu mechanics actively encourages player input.
Roanoke models the colony's fate with its too-simplistic Doom mechanics. To gain automatic . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: March 9, 2007
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