Swords of the Serpentine Review

Three years ago, I participated in the Swords of the Serpentine playtest, a new game from Kevin Kulp and Emily Dresner that combines elements of a detective genre and classic Sword & Sorcery. I was delighted with the game, had run several adventures, and began to look forward to the release. And then Swords of the Serpentine got into production hell and got stuck for a long time in the stage of editing and artwork preparation. A couple of months ago, the book was finally released! So it's time to remember about this peculiar game and write a review.

Important Note: This review is a combination of two other reviews that I originally wrote in Russian. You can still read it here and here.

About the Authors

Long before the creation of Swords of the Serpentine, Kevin Kulp had already replenished the line of GUMSHOE-based RPGs with TimeWatch, a very remarkable chrono-detective. Now, in Swords of the Serpentine, he and Emily Dresner were offering to experience adventures in a world of almost classic fantasy. Announcements of the SotS promised "riddles, dangerous magic and political intrigues in a huge city, inspired by Lankhmar and Ankh-Morpork." I don't know about you, but I think it sounds amazing.

Fantasy and... Detective?

Although many people are puzzled by this combination, there is nothing exotic about it. Fantasy heroes are constantly faced with riddles and mysteries. Sometimes these are almost classic detective stories: the Guards novels by Terry Pratchett, the Frax series by Martin Millar, or the "metal" series by Glen Cook. However, much more often the great unknown is just another danger on the way of adventurers. Fantasy heroes often try themselves as detectives without even suspecting it: for example, when they try to figure out who sent the killers on their trail, or what kind of event destroyed the inhabitants of an ancient dungeon. The tricks and techniques of mystery RPGs are quite welcomed in fantasy adventures.

In my opinion, the main reason why no fantasy setting has appeared in the GUMSHOE-based games before is the system itself. Stories in the worlds of sword and magic involve exciting battles, and this aspect (let's face it) has never been a strong aspect of the system. I think that Kevin Kulp understood this perfectly: in interviews, he emphasized that one of the main goals in the development of SotS rules was to make battles more cinematic and dynamic... But before we talk about the clank of blades and terrifying spells, you need to imagine the setting.

Sinking City

The core location of Swords of the Serpentine is the enormous ancient City of Eversink. Most of all it resembles a fantasy version of pre-gunpowder Venice. The Italian specificity of names, intricate architecture, insane labyrinths of channels, and very unkind magic. In just a few paragraphs, the authors make it clear what distinguishes Eversink from all other fantasy cities.

Buildings are always sinking — and no one knows why. The city was founded almost a thousand years ago, and since that time most buildings have sunk into the soil or stone by about 8 centimeters a year (although iconic buildings sink much more slowly and unmemorable buildings sometimes sink more quickly). That works out to most buildings losing their bottom floor underground every fifty years. [...] No one knows why. Over the 40+ generations that Eversink has been settled, huge numbers of buildings have entirely vanished. They’re still down there somewhere, most of them. Know the city well enough, and maybe you can find their ruins.

Statues are everywhere. Burial in Eversink has always been a problem; you can’t bury your dead below ground when floods are commonplace, not unless you want coffins and corpses floating downstream. Nowadays the poor slide corpses into one of the swamps and the rich opt for air burial on stone plinths upriver. But what happens to the flesh isn’t nearly as important as what happens to the soul. As long as a funerary statue is made for someone deceased, whether a tiny statue out of clay or a huge magnificent statue out of cast bronze, the departed soul is guaranteed a place in Denari’s heaven. If that statue is ever destroyed, either the soul disintegrates and ceases to exist — or it returns to the spirit world as a ghost. This means that in Eversink, statues are everywhere. Hundreds of thousands of statues. They’re in canals, on roofs, filling homes and staring out from niches in walls. It’s illegal to destroy a funerary statue, because that could destroy a soul, so families put the statues of their dead anywhere they can find space. A surprising number of crimes in Eversink involve funerary statues.

The city and the goddess are one. The buildings and islands of Eversink are the body of the goddess Denari herself. You literally live inside the Goddess. As the patron of commerce and civilization, Denari blesses the trade that occurs within her borders. Every coin exchanged is a prayer, and every transaction a sacrament. Worship her with soft words in the honeyed darkness of a garden at a masquerade ball, whispered to a fetching stranger; worship her by outwitting a dullard who wouldn’t know the best place in the world to live if it invited him in.

The book pays not much attention to the history of the city. Eversink is about a thousand years old, and it was built on the site of an old settlement of the Serpentine Empire. This is a long-gone civilization of snake-like creatures who possessed terrible magic and who were able to subdue demons. There is enough of the cursed legacy of the Empire in the world. Many people go after it in search of strength, power, and knowledge. Sometimes they find what they want, but the price for it is always the same — corruption.

The blessing of Denari makes Eversink a center of trade and civilization, so there are many visitors from other countries to the city. Nevertheless, the world outside of Eversink itself is described superficially. This chapter of the book has enough details to create a context for the events in the city, but no more.

What is described in real detail is the factions operating in Eversink. There are all kinds of organizations, guilds, and cults with their stories, goals, and interests. And, oh god, how fascinating each of them is. The local nobility is the families whose names are inscribed in the contract with the goddess. Over the centuries most of them have become quite impoverished and are forced to make deals with rich merchants. The church of Denari slowly loses knowledge of the languages in which their sacred texts are written. And loyalty to the mercenary army that protects the city is surprisingly easy to buy…

The book manages to create a sense of fragile balance in the City of Eversink. This place is seething with the intricacies of forces, passions, and intrigues. The conflicts described on these pages are just waiting for the heroes to appear.

Heroes of Might and Magic

Unlike most other games from the GUMSHOE line, there are no restrictions on who the heroes are in SotS. All of them can work in the city guard, serve the Denari church, or be members of the witchcraft underground — the choice depends completely on the premise of a particular game

The principles of creating characters are pretty the same as for (almost) any of the GUMSHOE games. There are general abilities and investigative abilities, and each of them has ability points. But the set of investigative abilities in this game looks quite unusual. Instead of being divided into academic, technical and interpersonal abilities, they are divided into character classes:

• The Warrior. He can be an agile duelist, a skilled tactician, or an unstoppable barbarian. The warrior's abilities include the Know Monstrosities, Spot Frailty, Tactics of Death, and Wilderness Mastery.
• A Thief is a rogue, a spy, and an experienced saboteur. The thief understands City’s Secrets, is skilled in Skulduggery and Scurrilous Rumors like no one else, and he also has Ridiculous Luck.
• The Sentinel. This character class most resembles a cleric from classic fantasy RPGs. Many sentinels are indeed associated with the Denari church or with the Inquisition, but the PC can also be a member of the city guard or just a bounty hunter. Every sentinel has Vigilance, Spirit Sight, and knowledge of Laws and Traditions and he can perfectly recognize the Felonious Intent of other people.
• The Sorcerer. Unlike other classes, there is no wide choice of types of sorcerers. This character is not a mage or a wizard. No, he is a sorcerer. He gained magic power by making a deal with a demon, or by reading ancient cursed texts. There is no "good" magic in the game. All sorts of spells carry Corruption — and this is the key ability of the sorcerer. In addition, he possesses Forgotten Lore, has knowledge of Leechcraft, and can create Prophecies.

Although SotS divides the characters’ abilities by classes, there is no real class system in the game. If all the PC’s investigative abilities belong to the same class, the player receives an additional build point. That's all. Nothing prevents you from gaining a variety of abilities and getting the right combination of skills and talents.

What I really liked about the character creation system is the details that allow you to make the image of the hero alive. For example, one of the mandatory stages is to give three answers to the question "What three things are best in life?" For example: "to crush your enemies, see them driven before you and hear the lamentations of their women" Or, if less fortunate, "hot water, good dentishtry and shoft lavatory paper." Each of these things can be used once per game to get +1 to the dice roll.

Another such example is the approach to equipment. As usual in the GUMSHOE games, most questions related to equipment are resolved by a Preparedness ability check. But since the equipment is a very important aspect of fantasy hero appearance, there is a special rule for it. If you describe three distinguished pieces of a character's equipment, they gets +1 to Morale (one of vital ability), since these things remind them of what they is fighting for.

The game also strongly emphasizes that heroes do not exist in a vacuum. Each of them has connections with the factions of Eversink. Every hero has a backstory, and he or she has already managed to make both enemies and friends among the residents of the city.

Rules

Despite the rules of the game has retained the core principles of GUMSHOE, it feels completely different. All the interesting ideas that appeared separately in other GUMSHOE-based games turned out to be systematized in SotS and put at the service of dynamic and vivid action.

There are fewer general abilities (only 10), and each can give a PC an interesting talent for specialization. Investigative abilities are no longer associated with pure knowledge but are related to fantasy class skills. And most importantly, you don’t need to spend investigative points to get any clues anymore. The mere possession of the ability is enough. Every time the player spends investigative points the PC gets the opportunity to do cool and amazing things. This feature is especially clearly revealed in battles and the use of magic.

Combat

Such radical changes, which happened in The Yellow King RPG, did not happen here (and for the better). The basis of the conflict system is the same: the characters have combat abilities with which they make attacks and seek to reduce the vital abilities pools of their foes. However, in detail, everything looks much more interesting.

There are three combat abilities here: Warfare, Sway, and Sorcery.

• Warfare is responsible for the ability to handle weapons of any sort. As is usual in GUMSHOE, weapons have little effect on the damage inflicted by heroes: a dagger will give +0 to damage, and a two-handed ax deals +2, that's all, in general. Much more depends on the skills of the characters. As it is easy to guess, a fight causes damage to the opponent's Health.
• Sway includes any social skills and rhetorical techniques which the character can use. The authors were inspired by stories like "Dying Earth" and sought to recreate scenes in which heroes can win in battle without even raising their weapons. In SotS it is quite possible: Sway damages the Morale of opponents, and this is no less effective in disabling them.
• Sorcery can affect both Health and Morality. But I'll tell you about it a little later.

So far it looks almost typical for any other GUMSHOE-based game. However, the whole secret is in the use of investigative abilities. Points of any of them can be spent to gain an advantage in battle — ignore the enemy's armor or get an additional damage cube. Yes, any ability — but only if the player can justify why this is possible. Sometimes it's quite obvious:

— I want to jump off the balcony and plunge the blade into his back. I spend two points from the Tactics of Death pool to get two extra damage dice.

However, much more often players have to look for more creative ways to use abilities that are not designed for this at all.

— I want to spend a Nobility point to get an extra damage cube.

— It sounds kinda stupid.

— Well... When I was a child, my parents hired a new fencing teacher every year. So I have mastered several fighting styles and now I can kill a person in many different ways.

— Okay, that sounds great. Of course, you can spend a Nobility point.

During the game, it works just amazing. Players have the opportunity to make cool bids and control how effective and deadly their actions will be. But to make this possible, players have to complement PC's backgrounds with new details and come up with unusual ways to use their skills.

When I was running my own little adventure, the heroes came together in battle with a runaway sorcerer who took on a demonic insect-like shape. And although they battered the monster well, the inquisitor PC finished the battle by simply destroying the demon's morality. The player spent several points of Intimidation and stated that PC was steadily reading out the interrogation formulas of the Inquisition. For a sorcerer who had barely escaped from the church's dungeons, this had a terrifying effect.

Of course, the creative use of investigative abilities is not the only distinguishing feature of the SotS combat system. There are special rules for group actions and for combat maneuvers. The last part was rewritten several times during platest stage. And although I really didn't like the first version of the maneuvers rules, the final one looks just great.

Since there are more battles in the game, spending points of general abilities happens more often. So the game provides a special mechanism for restoring general pools. At the beginning of the game, the GM puts a bowl in the center of the table. During battles, he adds tokens to the bowl for each defeated foe. The more serious the enemy, the more tokens players will receive. At any time, players can take tokens from the bowl and restore a general ability point for each of them. To be honest, this is the only part of the rules that does not seem to me a good solution. Micromanagement of tokens makes GM constantly think about how not to forget to throw tokens into the bowl and how many of them there should be. This system works but I personally like the TimeWatch Stitch mechanic more.

Magic

There is no "good" magic in the Eversink. The sorcerer gained his power either through the knowledge and rituals of the lost Serpentine Empire or by making a deal with a demon, a spirit or a god. In any of the variants, magic is associated with corruption.

If, when creating a character, the player takes at least one Corruption ability point, he gets permission to buy points in the general ability of Sorcery. For each point in the Corruption rating, the sorcerer chooses one of the spheres that he possesses — these are aspects with which his magic is connected: fire, fear, necromancy, and other similar things.

As long as the player doesn't spend Corruption points during the play, magic is just another combat ability, nothing more. The authors have made sure that this skill does not become a universal alternative for any general ability. If a character tries to do something related to lockpicking, hiding, or, for example, first aid, he passes tests with these abilities. He can attribute the effect to the action to magic — but it would be just a description, nothing more. However, Sorcery is very effective in combat, especially when it comes to maneuvers.

Yes, I know, It doesn't look very exciting, but it's safe. The fun begins when the player spends Corruption points to do something amazing. In this case, the PC can create its own spells or inflict unimaginable damage to foes. The problem is that whenever this happens, the magic strikes back. The player has a choice — either to contain the corruption in character's body or to let it break out. In the first case, the sorcerer got the mark associated with his gift. It’s permanent and sorcerers can get rid of the mark only with a part of the body.

Another option is to let the corruption out. In this case, everyone who happens to be near the sorcerer suffers, and the place becomes cursed. The more points the player spent, the stronger the curse. For one point of Corruption, the place became very unpleasant for a month or so. Three or four points literally make all living things in surrounding territories die, and this curse can last for decades.

As you can easily guess, sorcerers are not liked in the city. While the sorcerers keep the corruption under control, they are tolerated. Someone is even taken to church service. But the Inquisition is looking for any of those who poison the lands of Evernsink. Cages with raven-eaten sorcerers at the gate to the city serve as a very emphatic warning that you need to conjure with caution.

Thus, on the one hand, sorcery can be a complete ultimatum in any battle, but on the other hand, the consequences of its use are serious enough that the player thinks twice before spending Corruption points.

Of course, if this approach seems too radical, the player can take a safer form of "magic" — witchcraft or alchemy. They work like normal investigative abilities. The player does not receive additional combat skills, and their effects are not nearly as impressive. However, there is no risk of getting caught by the Inquisition either.

Adventures

“Corpse Astray”, the introductory scenario from the book, seemed kinda straightforward to me but quite pleasant. As is often the case with introductory adventures, the main goal of this is not to smite players with plot twists, but to introduce them to the setting. This adventure copes with this task quite successfully. There are a couple of combats in it, it is built around a curious mystery, and the heroes have to make a difficult decision in the finale. In a word, the scenario is pretty solid.

The thing I liked even more than the scenario is the various plot seeds scattered throughout the book. In the description of each district of the city and each faction, there is a special section with a list of secrets and hooks that the heroes may encounter. Each one of them is full of bright details and literally begs to use them in adventures.

Design and Illustration

In terms of design, the situation is ambiguous. The layout of the document is done perfectly: it is stylish and pleasing to the eye, and the color accents are unique for each section, which makes it easier to navigate through the chapters.

But the illustrations... I can’t tell you much about them. After the project got into production hell, I expected them to be frankly terrible. And they turned out to be just ordinary — both in terms of performance and in terms of expressiveness. So I was rather pleasantly surprised by the result, but only because of extremely low expectations.

Resume

Swords of the Serpentine is a great example of how you can expand the focus of familiar mechanics. It’s really hard to compare it with other games in the GUMSHOE line. It works similarly but it feels completely different — more fast, dynamic, and exciting.

I really want to end up writing something like "all these years have not been wasted, and now we've got a wonderful game," but that wouldn't be entirely true. The game was wonderful even at the playtest stage. Over the past time, it definitely has become better, but this period can hardly be called anything other than production hell. Nevertheless, I am glad that this hell is over, and Swords of the Serpentine has seen the light. This is a wonderful adventurous fantasy RPG, with a unique world and the best embodiment of the GUMSHOE rules on the market.