RfP #012 - Exploring Vaesen: Mythic Horror in the Scandinavian North
Takeaways:
- In this podcast episode, we meticulously explored the intricate dynamics of human relationships.
- We discussed the profound impact of communication styles on interpersonal connections and understanding.
- Listeners are encouraged to reflect on their own communication patterns and how they affect others.
- The significance of emotional intelligence in building and maintaining meaningful relationships was emphasized.
- We examined various strategies for enhancing empathetic listening skills to foster deeper connections.
- Lastly, we articulated the importance of vulnerability in enriching our relationships with others.
Companies mentioned in this episode:
- Free League Publishing
- Gamergeeks
- Coriolis
- Dragonbane
- Tales from the Loop
- One Ring
- Mutant Year Zero
- Alien
Transcript
You're listening to episode 12, exploring Vasin mythic horror in the Scandinavian North. It's time once again to roll for Percept. I'm Terry, your forever GM and lover of all things roleplay.
Evelyn:And I'm Evelyn, role player, GM and unrepentant dice goblin.
Terry:Join us as we roll our dice.
Evelyn:And talk in strange voices and bring.
Terry:To you our excitement and joy for all things tabletop role playing.
Evelyn:For more on Roll for Perceptacast, head over to www.rollforperception.com.
Terry:And yes, we are back this week. Super excited to be back. We have with us a special guest, Eric Andrews.
If you remember, Eric was with us when we talked about Coriolis a couple of sessions ago. Maybe more than that. It was session five, I believe, when we talked about Journey through the Dark. Between the Stars is the title.
So if you want to hear some more of Eric, definitely go that way. But I'm going to go ahead and let Eric introduce himself. Eric, off to you.
Erik:Hi, my name is Eric Andrews. I run a little game store in Alabama called Gamergeeks, specifically the Coleman branch.
We do everything from tabletop role playing games to Warhammer to Mesh at the Gathering, Pokemon and everything in between. We're mostly just a hobby shop for people to get together and have fun. I myself have been on roll for Perception for God, two, three years now.
Terry:Yeah, it's been a couple years.
Erik:It's. It's been a minute now. I've played everything from moa, which Terry killed, to that paladin that Terry killed.
Terry:I did.
Erik:And he hasn't killed me in anything else recently, actually. Oh, the halfling. My halfling. Beck. He killed Beck.
Terry:Oh, yeah.
Erik:I think that was slightly my choice too. Terry has killed many of my characters and led us through some awesome, awesome games. So I'm having a lot of fun and I'm glad to be here today.
Terry:And part of the reason I brought Eric on is Eric was part of the group that played Vasin for our Loremaker Chronicles. Loremaker Chronicles is on a rough hiatus right now.
It hopefully will be coming back once I have a little extra time, but it was my first time GMing vasin, I believe. Evelyn, it was yours first time playing?
Evelyn:Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Terry:And Eric, it was your first time playing as well?
Erik:Absolutely.
Terry:So it was super exciting. But I figured everybody hears me and Evelyn talk all the time.
It'd be nice to bring in a third person who was part of this and talk a little bit about it. So for those that don't know, we're going to start a little bit about what Vasin is. Vasin.
Well, first off, Vasin comes from Free League Publishing and Free League Publishing is one of my favorite publishers of TTRPGs. I said that. We did a podcast. Episode five was on or episode six was on Coriolis. Eric DM'd that. Coriolis is a Free League publishing game as well.
It is. They've Dragonbane Tales from the Loop. Eric, you run a game store. What other games do you do?
Evelyn:One Ring.
Erik:Yeah, the One Ring. Yeah, that one was. That one's awesome. I'll be 100, honest. I've played Vason, I've played Coriolis, and I've played the One Ring.
That's my limit to the knowledge.
Evelyn:So they did Mutant Year Zero. So the Year Zero system, Right. Did Alien, they did some Borum, they did Dragon Bane. Right.
Terry:Oh, Forgotten Lands.
Evelyn:Forgotten Lands. See, I'm the Free League pro over here.
Terry:All right, all right, I got this. I'm just gonna let you talk about Free League moving forward. And Free League, for those that don't know, is based out of Sweden.
Evelyn:Yep. They're awesome.
Terry:If you're interested, they currently have a Kickstarter up for their Dragonbane system. That is a campaign and it's two books. It's a campaign and a book about magic.
So if you are looking to do some kind of low magic fantasy feel, Dragonbane is a good choice. It's a roll under system, which we love.
Evelyn:We've talked many times about how we love roll under systems.
Terry:Evelyn and I played in a game with the family.
Evelyn:Yeah, we did that with the kiddos.
Terry:I did not kill anybody that time. Eric, just so you know.
Evelyn:He tried, though. Goodness knows he tried.
Terry:There may have been attempts.
Erik:It's the best part of GMing, I promise.
Evelyn:He had to dive off a tower into the ocean.
Terry:So Vasin is. It is a where. Call of Cthulhu, which we talked about a couple episodes, is a cosmic horror. This I would call folklore horror.
Evelyn:Right. Yes.
Terry:And what it does is it's a game based. Again, they're in Sweden. The game is based out of Sweden.
Evelyn:Right.
Terry:And it is Scandinavian folklore.
Evelyn:Yes.
Terry:And if you don't know Scandinavian folklore, Scandinavian folklore is creepy as all get out.
Evelyn:Yes, it is.
Erik:It's awesome.
Evelyn:It is awesome. Yes.
Terry:Now it does have. There's a Great Britain.
Evelyn:Yeah. They have the Britain and Ireland one.
Terry:And then we back to Kickstarter. That is another extension that actually moves into the American West.
Evelyn:Yes, yes. Yes.
Terry:That's awesome.
Evelyn:Yeah. I'm very excited.
Terry:So it's. Again, we're excited about what it is.
If you know anything about Scandinavia, Scandinavian folklore, it is really kind of cool, eerie Scandinavia being that northern. You know, the northern countries up there, cold, dark. For a lot of the years, it is here. I mean, you got. You two were players in it, right?
What was the feel of the folklore within the game?
Erik:So for me, I. I so enjoyed, like. So the way you have to tackle Basins as just a threat in the world is not like any other game I've ever played.
You can't just run in there with a sword and a gun and blast them out and hack and slash. The aspects of it are absolutely a mystery.
And you solve the problems via thinking about the monster and figuring out, like, how to expel them rather than kill them. And that folklore element leads into it. Like, of my favorite monsters, you have to spit on it to appease it.
And if you don't do that, bad things happen to you and everyone around you. That is amazing compared to every other monster I've ever seen. Like, can't do that with a mimic. Mimics will eat your face.
Terry:That's actually true. They will fully eat.
Erik:What about you, Evelyn?
Evelyn:But, yeah, so, like, I would say, because I've made Call of Cthulhu and Vasa now, they have.
In that sort of sense, they have a very similar feel in that you don't want to just try to tackle whatever this great horrifying entity is head on because either one, you will just immediately be annihilated. So, but the difference for me between Vasen and Call of Cthulhu, so Basin has this. More of this sort of visceral, like, sort of looming horror to it.
Terry:Oh, that's.
Evelyn:That is tied to more of the things that lurk in the dark that we've created stories to explain.
Whereas, like, Call of Cthulhu is the great representative of the great fear of the unknown, that big, like, what is out there beyond our ability to fathom.
So to me, even though in both cases you're not meant to directly fight these things that you encounter, the Vasin stories seem more grounded in who we are as people.
Erik:Right, Homie? Horror.
Evelyn:Yeah. Like, it's. It's. It's meant to be, you know, tied to our history and, like, the things that have frightened us throughout the ages. Because you.
You see across, like, a lot of the different types of folklore, you know, through all of Europe and across, you know, the Appalachian region, which.
That's a different game, of course, but a lot of the the games that deal with folklore, horror, you see similarities, types of things that have always been sort of core to the fears that humans experience. And I think that's. That's very much the nature of Vasin.
Terry:Yeah, I completely agree. It's interesting to note that Vasin actually is based off of the illustrations of Johan and God. I hope I say his name right.
nes, who wrote a book back in:It has been translated into English, so if you want an English version of it. And the artwork alone, I'm gonna just say the artwork alone is stunning.
Evelyn:Oh, yeah.
Terry:Stunning. And so what's nice here is you have an authentic representation of the legends from somebody who lives there too.
Evelyn:Yeah.
Terry:Which is nice because you don't always get that.
Evelyn:Mm.
Erik:Speaking of the book, like, as a whole, like, I've played a lot of TTRPGs. This book, the Vasin book, is so nice and well built.
The hardcover, the texture on the front, the artwork within the amount of love that Fried League has put into this book, just as a physical thing in my life, is amazing and looks amazing on my shelf. I love it so much.
Terry:Set in the 19th century.
Evelyn:Yep.
Terry:Which is a great time period. That's. There is a Call of cthulhu is early 20th century, but they have a 19th century. We got it. The Gaslight.
Evelyn:Yeah, there's the Gaslight.
Terry:Cthulhu.
Evelyn:There's a few different Other books, setting books, essentially, that allow you to put it in different things. Like there's a Regency one. There's the.
Terry:So then I guess the kind of question comes in, why choose 19th century Scandinavia as a setting? And that's thrown out to either of you too.
Erik:Well, it's awesome. So I. I admit to be relatively ignorant on Scandinavia as a whole. My knowledge of it comes through.
Well, it's folklore, which is why Vasin was such a resonating factor with me.
Terry:Right.
Erik:So, Evelyn, please take over, because I'm just gonna ramble here if we don't.
Evelyn:Well, I mean, I could. I could. I could make my guesses as far as the setting goes, but obviously it's going to be tied to that due to the. The. The illustrations. Obviously.
But I think the purposefulness of choosing the 19th century and, you know, kind of where it lands is a lot of people are a lot less skeptical today.
Terry:Yeah.
Evelyn:Then they used to be because we have this thing called the Internet and easy access and like, we can just go, oh, let me thing up. Oh, that's not real. You know, so it's much easier to explain away things that maybe we shouldn't explain away. But like, with the.
Especially like the Victorian era there, they were very superstitious.
Terry:Oh, yeah.
Evelyn:And so kind of that overwhelming sense of superstition tied to. And.
And I could go into a whole discussion about like the way the church worked in the time and various like, things, but we're not going to do that right now. That would be a whole dissertation topic that I am not doing right now.
But you know, the prevailing thing I think that makes it work so well in that is like, because you have such little, like advanced technology, it allows you to sort of immerse yourself because, you know, people wandering completely sort of unarmed into the face of danger. It seems like such a more logical approach. Oh yeah.
And like there's ways to do research, but it's not the same sort of thing because you kind of have to approach people more than you might necessarily have to do today if it were set modern.
Terry:Yeah, I completely agree. And I think what. I mean, if you look at TTRPGS as a whole, other than obviously you have your fantasy setting.
Evelyn:Right.
Terry: But the: Evelyn:Oh yeah. Over and over and over again. Especially, you know, it's such a, like.
Erik:A flux time in our history.
Evelyn:Right.
Erik:So much was happening during that time.
Evelyn:Right.
Erik:The Industrial Revolution, just the way it was changing our world as a whole was so magical, even without the basin.
Evelyn:Right.
her, you know, the night late:And that's why a lot of the, the. The ones that. Where people are contemporary settings, they look toward the familiar because then they can focus on the characters and less on the.
Okay, what does this all mean?
Terry:Yeah, that's exactly it. So hopefully that kind of gives you a general idea of vase. And overall I do.
We're going to go a little deeper into the setting and atmosphere next, since we're kind of on that talk. And let's. Let's start with kind of the. We did the game online, right?
Evelyn:Yep.
Terry:We used alchemy rpg, I believe for our. We did, we did for our vtt.
Evelyn:And we shout out Alchemy quite a bit because it. It especially for our non Pathfinder games. That's kind of our go to.
Terry:Oh yeah. And they're coming close to their releasing version one. So if you're looking for a.
A VTT that is not crunchy, something that's about atmosphere, check out Alchemy. No, they're not paying me. I wish they were. That'd be cool. But definitely check them out.
We use them, we have a subscription to them, so definitely check it out. But what's nice in Alchemy, and the reason I bring it up is that we were able to really get a sense of visual cues and sensory cues.
I used a decent amount of sound while we play.
Evelyn:Oh yeah.
Erik:I think sound and visuals are so important for a game like Vase and which is so atmospheric.
It's hard to feel in danger from a tiny little myling or something like that when you're all sitting around a table eating popcorn and Mariah Carey's playing on the jukebox. Because everybody has a jukebox with Mariah Carey in it. This is just something that all D and D players have. It's true, it's true.
But that kind of creepiness, that kind of, ooh, is that a dusty closet or it's an abandoned church? Like all of those different themes come out through the music.
And just Terry, like flashing up a picture of like, this is where you are right now was like, okay, I'm gonna be terrified. And let's hope whatever's here is a weird little lake goblin and not a revenant.
Terry:Yeah, it's so true. So we played the starter game and you travel, you're traveling south and end up at an inn. And there are issues in the inn.
You're actually meeting somebody else there and that person wants you to check on things at this inn. And so there's a lot of. I don't want to give.
You know, I'm very careful about how I talk about games because I don't necessarily want to give spoilers. But one of the things that was really cool is the descriptions within the book on what the place looks like.
Evelyn:Dripping from the roof tiles because the roof was leaking. And just the general, like sort of. It wasn't like, it wasn't a very full tavern or anything.
Like it was, it was pretty, like pretty sparse and everybody seems sort of kind of head down, minding their own business.
And that kind of automatically, that separation that, that Individual, like where everybody had kind of tied themselves off to their own corner, so to speak. Kind of began to. To develop that sense of isolation and. Which always leads to a bit of dread, I think.
Terry:Yeah, I want to read a little bit. The name of the starter is called the Dance of Dreams. And for example, this is a handwritten note advertising the shadow play the Dance of Dreams.
It's a handout within the game, but just the way it's written. A shadow play of horror, murder and revenge. Let yourself be enraptured and terrified by shadow theater.
With clockwork as amazing as that of the master's constructions on the continent. Watch as evil smiles, good people go to their doom and spirits come to life.
Follow Oscar Hjort's encounter with the Black One, his struggle, and finally the betrayal which claimed his life. Hear the tunes of the Enchanted Flute. That sense souls dancing to hell. The show will premiere at the Witch Cat in Not for the Faint of Heart.
You know, just the writing. Like you can immediately imagine what it's going to be like as you arrive at this place, right? And you know, the.
The Beginner's box has a bunch of pre written stuff that you can read just like D and D does or Pathfinder 2e. But again, this is just another small section. It is fall when you leave Upsala. Upsala is the main city in the game.
If you start a campaign in a coach heading south and there's a terrible storm raging. Isn't there always a terrible storm raging?
Evelyn:There should always be. In a good horror game, there should always be a terrible storm raging. You can't have a bright sunny day and experience horror, can you?
Terry:I mean, maybe it's hard to be.
Erik:Like, we're going to the lake today again. It's nice and sunny.
Terry:But it continues. Black clouds blanket the sky with the wind howling and rain and hail pouring down, leaving you soaked to the skin.
That type of imagery, first off, automatic.
Evelyn:Mod automatically makes you feel cold, like you. You kind of turn in on yourself.
Terry:Like you're shivering and it feels like Scandinavia. Like what I imagine, obviously not being from there.
Evelyn:I mean, it's not all gray clouds all the time. That's. No, that's more.
Erik:Yeah, no, that's England.
Evelyn:They get a lot of rain.
Terry:From what I've heard the English, but you know, it. It does. My feeling is, is that Scandinavia as a setting really allows some of that atmosphere to come out. The other thing, sparsely populated areas.
It is, you know, it's not. It's not like the New York City metropolitan Area. You know, cities are spread out, there's a lot of open land, villages, smaller places.
Evelyn:Feels a little more remote. And once again, back to that theme of kind of isolation and stuff that, you know, makes things extra spooky.
Erik:And yet once you've been in those areas for a minute, it almost feels more intimate because, you know, the people there.
Evelyn:Right, Exactly.
Erik:I have a vested interest in Sven the Butcher, and I don't want him to die to a horrifying silky pulling him into the lake because he's the only guy that gets me my bacon.
Terry:Bacon.
Evelyn:Gotta protect. Spin.
Terry:So we only had one creature within our little mini game.
Evelyn:Right.
Terry:How'd you feel about it as a folkloric type feel to it? It was a revenant.
Evelyn:Yeah, it was good. I mean, like, I liked the fact that. Okay, so one thing we haven't spoken on yet, by the way, is the vasin actually refers to monsters, doesn't it?
Does it not? It's like, that's the actual, like, what vasin are. They are the.
Terry:The.
Evelyn:What the monsters are called. And, like, as a group, obviously, they have their own individual names.
Terry:Right.
Evelyn:But, yes.
Terry:So, yeah, supernatural creatures or spirits, again, within the context of Scandinavian and Nordic folklore.
Evelyn:Yeah. So. But that was kind of an aside. But, like, that way we're.
When we're referring to these things, the vasin definitely, like, helps to establish a familiarity, if you have familiarity to the folklore in any shape or form, you know, helps tie what you're looking at into maybe familiar themes and things. So that establishes another level of sort of tension and possible, like, character reactions to those things. But also, it just. I mean, it. The.
The folklore, it just adds a different sort of story because it almost becomes these characters, these investigators, become part of the folklore themselves.
Terry:Yeah. Yeah. No, go ahead, Eric.
Erik:I myself, one of the things that draws me to Vason continually is the fact that the monsters aren't always evil. And I will admit I was a little saddened that it was a revenant because revenants are almost 99% EV.
Because I.1 of the things I enjoy about these kind of horror games is dealing with them in weird ways. Revenant. I won't go into how we defeated it, but I love when. How you defeat it is like it wants a cookie every Thursday.
Don't give it a cookie every Thursday. You will die or some random inconvenience. I was really hoping for an inconvenient monster because those are my favorite.
Like the trolls on the bridge. How do you get them to let you cross, I give him a sack of gold or like a sack of something cool.
So I will admit I was a little saddened that it was a revenant, but the absolute darkness of that inn was omnipresent because of it.
It's like I remember, like, as I'm playing Klaus, the character, I was playing my priest, I was like, okay, how do I reconcile the fact this horrible creature is out for revenge against someone else that's not me. How do I help this person? But there are so many other ways to play Vasin as well, and so many different monsters or Vasin in it, which is so cool.
Evelyn:Yeah, absolutely.
Terry:Yeah. No, I, I am a complete agreement. So we've talked a little bit about kind of the setting, the atmosphere, the folklore, which is brilliant.
And if you, if you look through their text, they've got, they've got a list of, of different vase and that you can use. And it is, it's fascinating. I mean, it's from stuff as simple as a fairy to ghosts, of course, giants, lindworms. What's the horse one?
Erik:Isn't there a brookhorse? Technically a silky. I don't know why they changed the name of it.
Evelyn:But, well, different, different selkies are Irish, they're Celtic.
Terry:Oh, yeah.
Erik:I guess that's fair.
Evelyn:Yeah.
Terry:So the, the tears.
Evelyn:Yeah, those kinds of cute.
Erik:I don't know if y' all have like looked through all the monsters yet or the face and. But a lot of them are weirdly water based.
Terry:Yes.
Erik:Like the neck, the sea serpent, the brookhorse. A lot of them are like, ooh, spooky, scary water thing.
Evelyn:Yeah.
Terry:Might it be because there's a lot of water up there.
Erik:But a lot of spooky water?
Evelyn:I mean, but think about it, like, as humans, we have always had an instinctual fear of the water because you can die.
Terry:Yeah.
Evelyn:So it makes it even scarier if there's going to be something that's going to grab you by the ankles and drag you down.
Erik:That's true. That's very, very fair. This is a little known fact about me, but I actually hate the ocean. Like, I have thassalophobia.
Terry:You make me sad.
Erik:I hate the ocean because I can't do it.
Terry:I come from Virginia beach, which is the ocean, and I live for the ocean.
Erik:All I'm saying is if there was something, If I had the vaguest idea that there's something in the ocean trying to pull me down, I would not go anywhere near the water.
Terry:Makes sense. It's funny because my feeling Is lakes have that feeling more than oceans.
Evelyn:Oh, yeah. Because most of the time with the lake, you can't really see what's below you.
Like, I mean, once you get into the deeper parts of the ocean, you know, that's the thing. But most of the time, the ocean tends to be clearer in most places.
Terry:Lakes freak me out.
Erik:There are very small chances you get pulled out into the lake and just die. Unless you're, like, in one of the Great Lakes.
Terry:No, because you get caught up with something underneath and then drown. Okay.
Erik:Odds are you're gonna have someone help you because you're like, oh, I'm dying near the shore or somewhere nearby.
Terry:You have so much more faith in people than me. All right, so let's talk game mechanics. This does use the Year Zero engine.
Evelyn:Yep.
Terry:Coriolis is the same. Right. Year Zero engine for that, which is dice pools. Success thresholds, pushing rolls.
I love dice pools for players because it means they get to roll a bunch of dice.
Evelyn:That's always fun. I like being able to roll all the D6s.
Erik:I also think.
Terry:Go ahead.
Erik:It's better because it's simple. Like, oh, yeah, all right, I'm rolling 36 dice. Do I get a six? Yes. That's all I needed. No adding, no addition, no subtraction.
Evelyn:Just.
Erik:Was there a six in that?
Evelyn:They turn up sixes because. Yeah, yeah. You don't have to add them up. You just need to see them.
Terry:And so for anybody who's listening, who's never played a Year Zero engine game, it's. It is. My feeling is it felt easier to teach people.
Evelyn:Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Terry:Like I was able to say, okay, this is how you roll. This is how you succeed. This is how combat works. Which we'll get into combat in this game in a minute because generally speaking, you.
You don't want to get into combat. But this. It really is. The idea is, is that you're. You're. You're rolling based on your attributes. Yeah, Right.
You get to add dice, which, as Eric said, the more sixes. I believe this one's sixes, right? Yeah, yeah.
Erik:Just sixes.
Terry:Yeah. The more sixes, the better the success.
Evelyn:Correct.
Terry:Or a success at all.
Evelyn:Because sometimes you need more than 1 6.
Erik:Yep.
Terry:Yeah.
Evelyn:Depending on the difficulty of what you're trying to achieve.
Terry:So as now as players. Was that your first time? No, because we had to.
Evelyn:Coriolis.
Erik:We played Coriolis before.
Terry:That's right.
Erik:And.
Terry:Go ahead.
Erik:One thing I enjoy about Vasin, I think I enjoy this more about Coriolis. But the pushing system of it, like you failed the role, you can try again, but at a significant detriment to your personal safety.
I liked in Coriolis that it was like, okay, now the dark between the stars, which is the equivalent of the devil in that which the GM sometimes embodies, gets bonuses for that. Where in this one you just like full on like go further to insanity.
Evelyn:Yeah, exactly.
Terry:Well. And what's cool is, is pushing the roll makes sense.
And what I mean by that is you're trying even harder to do something and that in turn should affect you.
Evelyn:Oh yeah. Because I mean that's. You're over exerting yourself that gonna do.
Terry:Something which you don't get in like Pathfinder 2e. Right. You have a hero point. You just use the hero point and you get to re roll again.
Evelyn:Well, it's essentially the idea is the hero point makes the thing not have happened in the first place. So the second result is the what actually happened. Whereas this is you are actually you.
You feel like you're about to fail and you, you know, push yourself beyond your natural abilities to try to grasp success from the jaws of defeat. Essentially. Yeah. Which is, you know, the very urge to survive in a lot of these instances. So that it just feel it.
I feel like like that helps it tie more to the. I mean. And then that was Coriolis too is the. The sense that like you are in the void of space and.
Which is very similar to being out in the middle of the ocean with nothing around. P.S. because it is that vastness that like you don't know what's below.
Terry:Ah. Did not mean to do that in case everybody. That's our jump scare for you because.
Evelyn:We'Re talking about horror but like because you don't know what's really below or around you. And if something catastrophic happens, you are facing, you know, the possibility of the most terrifying horror that could be worse than death.
And you know, so that's where the pushing I think makes things much more interesting because there's actually a risk to it.
Terry:Yeah. And so just go ahead.
Erik:My favorite thing about the pushing system, just really fast.
Terry:Yeah.
Erik:Is the differences in players that you can see because of it. You have people like Evelyn, which will never push the role unless things are about to go haywire crazy.
Evelyn:Yep.
Erik:And then people like Terry who are like, that's. Why wouldn't I press this button.
Terry:Exactly.
Evelyn:But I also.
Erik:It's a big red button.
Evelyn:Fairly cautious characters too.
Terry:So I don't. I mean, caution throw it to the wind is what I say.
Evelyn:I mean, I did play a goblin once. I think that was the greatest. It was a change away from my. My caution.
Terry:So. Yeah, so, yeah, so dice pools, pushing both. Very cool character creation I felt was pretty easy. In this game. You pick, like, you go through.
You pick your archetype. Your age. Your age actually has some effect on your character because it affects your attribute points and your skill points.
Evelyn:And that applies to, I think, all the Year zero games.
Terry:You get some motivation, some trauma, a dark secret. The attributes make sense in the setting. Physique, precision, logic and empathy. I like.
If I'm going to play an attribute game, I like four attribute games.
Evelyn:Yeah. Keep it simple.
Terry:Meaning there are four attributes, and what I prefer are two mental, two physical. And that's what you get here. You get your physical, which is physique and precision. You get your mental, which is logic and empathy.
My feeling is, as I've started to play more and more games, don't get me wrong, I love my narrative games, the cipher systems, the in the Mists. But if I'm going to play something that has a little more crunch, I want something that is even two and two, not something like, well, PF2E has five.
Evelyn:Six.
Terry:Six.
Evelyn:Yeah.
Terry:Right. You've got Mythcraft, I think has eight.
Evelyn:Yeah. Some of them have more.
Terry:One of them's got 10 and I don't remember. Somebody will message me and tell me.
Evelyn:It was one of our big ones. I don't remember which one, but yeah, like, that's a lot of stats.
Erik:If you like stats guys, we should play cyberpunk. You want to know how many stats are in this game?
Terry:We have the starter box.
Erik:10.
Terry:10. I know.
Evelyn:Yeah, that might be.
Erik:And then let's not get into skills too, because there's like 60, and I'll do that every Sunday with.
Terry:Skills are impressive in that one. Wait, don't you work on Sundays? That's why you quit my games.
Erik:It's like I play at midnight because I'm a madman.
Terry:I'll agree with that statement. So, yeah. So character creation is pretty easy.
Erik:The.
Terry:What do they call them? Archetypes. Yeah, yeah, the archetypes feel very at home. You have, like, academic doctor, hunter, occultist, officer, priest, writer, vagabond.
Evelyn:I was a writer.
Terry:And private.
Erik:I was a priest.
Terry:Yeah. And again, the art, I'm gonna. I'm gonna keep so good commenting on the art because it's. It's gorgeous. Yeah, it's gorgeous, but it's. It's real simple.
You set up your skills, you set up your attributes and most everything is rolled based off of those.
Evelyn:And you get to pick a thing.
Terry:And you get to pick a thing. Yeah. Which.
Evelyn:And everyone has a dark secret which.
Terry:Some of them came up, if I remember correctly in the game, but not full fledged.
Evelyn:I mean there was definitely.
Erik:Wasn't it mine that got brought up?
Terry:Oh yeah, yours definitely got brought up because mine was.
Erik:The devil speaks to me. So I gave you plenty of time. Just go, ah, yeah, yeah.
Terry:And so those sorts of things are always cool. This is a very investigative system. Meaning you're not supposed to get into combat. No, it's very. Call of Cthulhu is like that, right?
Evelyn:Absolutely. You, you avoid combat with non human entities at all costs, basically.
Terry:Essentially these entities are so powerful that if you get into a fight with them, you will probably lose. I won't say guaranteed losses because it does talk about in the book that there you can win. But if you look at.
I'm just going to grab a random, a random vase in. So if we go in and I'm just gonna scroll to the fairy and like it takes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. You've gotta, you've gotta put five conditions on the ferry.
And it doesn't die, it just leaves and comes back later.
Evelyn:Yeah.
Erik:So one of my favorite that I saw was the Brookhorse.
Terry:Yeah.
Erik:You have to really beat on it to kill it. Like.
Evelyn:Yeah.
Erik:For it to disappear, it takes a lot. Or you could pull out a piece of iron and touch it with it and it'll dissipate for like 30 minutes.
Terry:Yeah, it's like really super cool.
But that's the thing is your, your goal here is to learn about the things and then figure out how to make them go away in alternate ways, if that makes sense. And it does talk about that in the book on how you can make them stop doing things. That's for the gm, of course. So, and, and, and they're powerful.
I mean you're talking just the fairy alone might of four. That's pretty low. But then body control eight, Magic nine, manipulation of seven. Those are pretty high numbers when you talk about.
You have to like beat those to be able to do things to them, right?
Evelyn:Yeah.
Terry:So it is about investigation. It really is about learning things. Which means as a player, if you're gonna play, you need to be willing to talk.
Evelyn:Oh yeah.
Terry:You've gotta ask questions, you've gotta be inquisitive. This is a game.
When we ran it, I loved it because I let you guys ask all sorts of things and did what we could to make sure that it was moving forward. But if you don't have. If you, if you've got players who are just there to do fights, this is the wrong system.
Evelyn:Oh, absolutely. And you know, sometimes you got to be willing to negotiate with the basin because that's sometimes the only way you can get through to them.
Terry:Now you guys, you guys didn't get into a true fight, right?
Evelyn:We were in a situation that was dangerous.
Terry:You fought some sleepwalkers, right?
Erik:Yes, I want to say that.
Evelyn:I mean there was. There. It was a very dangerous situation because we had dealt with a couple of things where it got tense.
Terry:Yeah.
Erik:And leave the sleepwalkers there.
Terry:You. You had to knock one out and then you guys ran. I remember cuz somebody tried hitting them with a chair or something.
Evelyn:Well, we had to prevent deaths of characters and things that.
So there was a lot of things that were kind of under the time crunch that gives you that same like kind of adrenaline rush that combat can give without having to be directly in combat.
Terry:But remember this was a year ago too. Like it's. It's been a while. And what I should have done is re listen to the full podcast.
Evelyn:But it's definitely a problem solvers game.
Terry:Yeah, it is, it is. And that's really cool. Let me just double check. Talked a little bit about the investigation, a little bit about the character creation.
You know, if you're looking for other Year Zero Engines games, there's several of them.
Evelyn:Oh, absolutely.
Terry:Dragon Bane is not one of them, by the way.
Evelyn:It's not, but it uses some similar things like it. Dragon Bane still has like the age stuff where you get extra points and stuff. But.
But I think that might just be the fact that, you know, Free League found something they liked.
Terry:And so I'm going to ask both you guys as players and having been a year, so it might be a bit more difficult. What was your favorite kind of investigation scene within it? I know what mine is, but I'm curious what you guys remember.
Evelyn:The.
Erik:Go on, Evelyn.
Evelyn:Okay. I was gonna say the reveal at the end. No. In the shadow puppet scene.
Terry:Oh yeah.
Evelyn:I don't want to give too much away with that, but yeah, the reveal, I think that was a, like a tonal shift because up to that point, you know, it just felt like there was a. There was a mystery to it and there was a foreboding obviously, but the whole thing sort of shifted significantly at that reveal.
Terry:What about you, Eric?
Erik:For me, that reveal was important. Yes. But I also Expected it to come because it's the game that we were playing. What.
What meant the most for me was the impact of that on the innkeeper and the people there. The victims slash the perpetrators against the thing. Not gonna get into specifics. Yes. But seeing the agony on them was like, oh, yeah.
And discovering a particular item that was, like, made them react such. That way. It's like, oh, my God.
Terry:There goes our clean podcast.
Evelyn:You can add a bleep effect. I know you're fine.
Erik:Did I say a curse?
Terry:It's. No, it's okay. We don't. We don't. Look, look, it happens now.
Erik:The fairies will haunt me.
Evelyn:The swear fairies, the swearies, the cipher.
Terry:The cipher podcast. I. I don't. Don't worry too much about this one. All right, so let's talk. Let's. Let's.
Let's talk a little bit about the thematic elements of horror and suspense in this game. We've played Call of Cthulhu. Have you other. Eric, have you played other horror. Horror suspense games?
Erik:I played Call of Cthulhu for 20 minutes before my character was sucked into a mirror, and I sat there for two hours watching the game be played.
Evelyn:Oh, wait a minute.
Terry:Your GM didn't bring you back in with another character here?
Erik:So what had happened? Just real quick. Yeah. So I get sucked into a mirror by a terrifying creature.
Evelyn:Yeah.
Erik:Somebody decides to break the mirror so the creature can't get out, but that means I can't get out. And since the investigation just took an entire day, I didn't get added back in.
Terry:Oh, man. Okay. That's rough that we. We should talk about that at some point on a podcast.
Evelyn:Horror stories. Right there.
Terry:But other than Call of Cthulhu, have you played any other type of horror or suspense?
Erik:I have not. No. I've played Pathfinder Games with horror elements.
Terry:Right.
Erik:Playing DND with horror elements. But it's a very different kind of horror where you can actually super murder that thing.
Evelyn:Yeah.
Erik:If you have the right sword.
Terry:Yeah.
Evelyn:Yeah.
I mean, within the traditional fantasy games where they have horror elements added to it, it's not typically the entire right plot of whatever you're doing. It's just, you know, you have moments interspersed.
Terry:We have games that we haven't played yet. The Magnus Archives, Delta Green, Raven. I would put in that category. So we have some.
Evelyn:We just have Gothic horror. Very Edgar Allan Poe.
Terry:It is. It is. We just haven't had a chance to play them, which, you know, of course, we put them on our list of things. But one of the.
One of the cool things about horror and suspense and that feeling is if you have players who are able to buy into it, I mean, you can get some jump scares. And I think that might work a bit better at a home game where you can kind of keep the lights dim. But I think it can still be done online.
But again, that's one of those things that I think you need. You need player buy in. We're talking, like slow reveals. We're talking the atmosphere.
We're talking about making it feel like you don't know what's gonna happen next. And, I mean, you need a GM who can play into that too.
Evelyn:100%.
Erik:Absolutely. One of my favorite things that you do as a gm, Terry, is when you just.
And it's difficult to portray over a podcast format, but sometimes Terry will just lock in, get close to his microphone, eyes focused on the camera, and he speaks with such a rhythm that when he breaks it, you're like, ah, fudge.
Terry:Well, and that's exactly it. I mean, that's about telling the story, which we're going to talk about.
Evelyn:Draw them in with the hook.
Terry:Exactly. Which we'll talk about in here.
But this is also a game where you have to balance the mundane with the supernatural, because if your everyday things aren't boring, then that supernatural doesn't have quite the umph punch. Does that make sense?
Evelyn:Absolutely.
Terry:And so when we played the game, I tried to make the inn feel as, like, normal and everything other than the bits that started to lead towards the tension, but as normal and every day as possible. Because you. You want it to feel like, oh, it's just another day, right?
Evelyn:Yeah, absolutely.
Erik:Especially because the NPCs don't have the sight, which is so important to, like, your character in Vasin. So they don't know anything's going wrong. They're like, sure, that's just a weird fellow over there.
Terry:That's a troll. So let's talk a little bit. Finish up with the last area I want to talk about, which is storytelling and GM tips.
Because, of course, anybody who's listened to our podcasts or watched Roll for Perception Stream or seen anything that I do know that for me, storytelling is the crux of what we do as GMs, and really as players too, because I like to surround myself with players who love the storytelling aspect. And one of the things, as a gm, if you're going to gm, this is you have to kind of create an engaging mystery.
Now, there are plenty of prepackaged mysteries, which is a great Way to start. In fact, once we can do Vasin again, I plan on just using one of the campaigns that are available and playing it that way.
But it needs to be compelling, it needs to be mysterious. You've got to. Gotta learn to drip feed information. And that's. That's something that. That takes some work, some. A bit of planning, a bit of setup.
Right. Like when we think of. And. And I'm gonna dip into Call of Cthulhu again because it has that same field when we think. Think of these things.
I was just reading. Was I reading. I was reading on the Alexandrian website. I don't know, Eric, if you've ever checked out that website.
Erik:I have not, no.
Terry:Okay. You need to check out the Alexandrian as a gm, because it has lots of wonderful essays and writing in it.
But one of the things that was talking about is how to build a campaign without over prepping. And one of the things that it talks about is how to make everything interconnect. And so I had started as.
I've been planning things as I started using the Icebergs system that is based in the Mist system, but the system on the Alexandrian is even better. And the idea is that all of your locations and pieces kind of connect in some way. So no matter what direction your players go, there are clues there.
Okay.
And I think that's important in games where you're trying to build suspense, to have these little bitty pieces of truths at all of these locations that they can pick up and continue moving forward and building that tension.
Evelyn:Another thing that helps with that too, other than that, is the little hints at what the horror is as it goes along. So like, when you start sort of not just the clues of the thing, but like actual kind of subtle reveals at what that thing might be.
Terry:Yes.
Evelyn:You know, it's the eyes that are in the dark room, the claws that you see, you know, wrapped around a door for half a second out of the corner of your eye, that sort of thing where it's just that sort of. Is my mind playing tricks on me?
Terry:Right.
Evelyn:Or was that actually there? And like, that should be kind of dropped very carefully and slowly over the time so that you really start to get that sense of dread building up.
So before the full, like, reveal of whatever the. The entity is.
Terry:Yeah.
Erik:I. When I'm GMing scary games, which I don't do a lot, I pull a lot from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his.
The way he writes Sherlock Holmes and even Maurice LeBlanc's Arsene Lupin.
The way that they write their mysteries almost in reverse, you know, the thing that they're going to do and then they explain how they solved it or explain how they did it in these various ways. So when I've been writing them, I've been writing the end point. This is what's going to happen.
And then you write from there of like how they get there and let the players kind of decide those points. Because they're not going to go the way you want.
Terry:Nope.
Erik:They never do. We're insane.
Terry:They're gonna go buy, especially me.
Evelyn:We like sweet buns. They were having a sale.
Erik:They were having a sale and I just. I just wanted to give them currency for product. And it was it. That's how that goes. So things will never go to plan.
So if you already have that kind of anchored in point.
Terry:Yeah.
Erik:That anchor can even change places as the game is gone.
But you already know where you're trying to lead them, what clues you have to give them to go to that point and what details and ambient sounds and stuff like that you can play to let them go. Oh, this might be what that is.
Terry:It's funny, you just gave me an idea of how to build another mystery where rather than writing the ending of. Rather than leaving the ending more in the sense of this is what players need to do, you just write, this is what's going to happen.
Like this happens. And then you see if the players can stop it. You know what I mean?
Evelyn:Yeah.
Terry:Like a lot of times when we think about writing things, we'll write well, this is what the big bad wants to do right now. This is what happens. Can the player stop it? If not, it is what it is. I'm. Now I need to sit down and write some more. Okay. Good ideas in my head.
Obviously things like music and ambient sounds work really well in this situation.
Evelyn:Yeah. When you're doing it online, that's kind of the key to helping establish the mood when you can't control the lighting.
I mean, you can tell all your players, you know, make sure your lights are dimmed for this particular. But you don't. You can't like adjust the lighting as you go.
Terry:Right.
Evelyn:Which kind of, you know, eases you more into the. The creep factor.
Terry:Yeah.
Evelyn:But like, yeah, online, good. Good imagery and good sound is. Is kind of the most important keys.
Terry:And immerse immersing your players.
Evelyn:Yep.
Erik:It's.
Terry:I mean, it's just so important. Obviously, again, easier to do in person. Handouts are great. That Game on Al has a bunch of Handouts. That was really nice.
But if you're in person, have physical handouts that you can give to people.
Evelyn:Everybody love props.
Terry:Everybody loves props. All right, so one of the things that before we fully wrap up here, I want to talk about is we have a Vasin book. We have a Vasin.
It's the base book, I believe.
Evelyn:I believe so, yes.
Terry:It is an extra book. So we are going to do a giveaway for it. We're announcing it here.
Evelyn:Here.
Terry:It'll run for the next. Let's say it's. It's still early, mate. Look, I haven't even planned this, so you guys are hearing it fresh from my. My thought.
It's June 3rd, so we will pick the winner on June 30th.
Evelyn:That sounds good. Yep.
Terry:Which is end of the month. And it's not just going to be a simple like. Yeah, I want. I want to. I want to be a part of it.
I want you to either give us a piece of fictional writing or a piece of artwork of a. Of a Vasin. Yes, of a Vasin. And. And look, it doesn't have to be a perfect work of art. Right. But this is what we're gonna do.
It's either a, you know, a description of a Vasin, like the history of like a Vasin that you've created or an image of a vase in. And Eric, Evelyn and I will read and look at whatever is sent in.
Evelyn:Yes.
Terry:And we will choose a winner. How does that sound?
Erik:Sounds like a great plan.
Terry:All right, so we've got some other giveaways that we'll be doing in the future. We've got some quest RPG books. We've got a Mad Hatter cipher system book that I know I want to give away.
Evelyn:We have the how to think when you.
Terry:How to write when you. How to think when you write, which is really cool.
So we've got some things that we're going to give away as well, but I feel like this is a great opportunity since we're talking vase and do a giveaway for vase and I'll do a write up, put it on the website, whatnot. So. All right, so recap. You know, Vasin, cool book, cool system, Year zero system.
If you want something that is spooky, something that is really kind of captures your imagination, this is a great piece to use. The art is beautiful. So even if you just buy it.
Erik:The book is well made art.
Evelyn:Such a fan of the book.
Terry:Yeah. And so I'm going to give each of you a chance to talk last Final thoughts about your time playing Vasin, and we'll start with Eric.
Erik:So for me, the whole story of this beginning adventure was so cool.
Vasin is definitely a game that is, like I said earlier, a little bit of, like, a homey horror, not quite cosmic, like Call of Cthulhu and stuff like that. We didn't really get to experience it, but could you imagine going through your everyday life and these things just exist? Oh, yeah.
And there's nothing you can do to fight against them. You can only kind of appease them or call someone special to come stop them. Them. So that's where Vasin shines to me.
Not even the destroying of monsters. The learning to live with the Vasin is such a cool concept and is absolutely absent from almost every other game. Rules as written.
Terry:Right. All right, Evelyn.
Evelyn:I mean, you know, my character spent a lot of time hiding under things and solving problems, because that's what you did. But. No, but really, like, what.
What he gets to is, like, one of the biggest realizations that you have as a person who has the ability to see these is that moment in your life or in that character's life that they realize that they can see the horrible things around them but nobody else can until they, like, are able to find the other people like them. And they're not super common. So, like, how horrifying would it be to be like, I like.
You would feel like you were losing your mind all the time because just things were around you that nobody else could, like, see. And I mean, and then a lot of the.
The nature of these vase and good or ill affects, you know, what that dark secret is, you know, because, you know, the bad Vasin are the ones that are typically the source of that dark secret in a lot of cases. So it's something either that they wrought or an obsession with, you know, stopping whatever they've done. And so, like, it's.
It has such a major impact on your character as an individual, but as the group as a whole. And so, like, like, it. It is inextricable. They. They are fully linked to each other.
You cannot have these characters without the monsters of this world. And so they are just the very, like, lifeblood of this game. It is what it is because of how tied they are together.
And I think that's what makes it kind of. Of really cool, but also kind of terrifying because just the. The. The realization that everything is just bonkers bananas.
And there's only a handful of people that know that everything is actually bonkers bananas.
Terry:Right?
Evelyn:Yeah.
Erik:And sometimes Those people who do know are bonkers, bananas.
Evelyn:I mean, it would make you a little crazy. I'm. I'm just saying.
Terry:All right, Eric, I want to thank you for coming on with us this week on Roll for Perceptic S. As always, love having you on. We'll definitely look at having you on again in the future, I think.
You know, obviously me and Evelyn talk a lot, but it's always nice to have kind of a third voice as we talk about things. Anything, anything. Anybody you want to shout out or anything before we finish up for today.
Erik:Well, I just want to thank you for letting me be on here.
It's always wonderful to talk about RPGs, even though I work at a game store, which, by the way, if you're in Alabama, in the Coleman or Warrior area, stop by. We have a bunch of cool stuff, I promise. Gamer geeks. I'm a manager. I remember how to say things.
Evelyn:They have a TikTok too, by the way, that they.
Erik:What?
Evelyn:You guys have a tick?
Erik:Oh, yeah, we have a tick Tock. That's right.
Evelyn:Yeah.
Erik:Tick tock.
Terry:Facebook.
Erik:Gamer geeks. Colvin or Warrior.
Evelyn:We find them online.
Erik:Find us online. Thank you, Evelyn, for knowing more about my business than I do.
Terry:All right, well, that's awesome. Thank you again, as always. I want to thank you for joining us for this week's podcast.
We hope we inspired you to continue your TTRPG journey, however that may look.
Evelyn:Make sure to stop by at www.rollforperception.com and leave a comment on our podcast page. We're always looking to answer questions and discuss new TTRPGs, so make sure to.
Terry:Have your D20 ready and your goblin voice arrested as you head out into the world of TTRPGs with roll for Perception.
