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Warlock!
Warlock is a rules-light roleplaying game that aims to emulate the feeling of old-school British tab-letop games of wondrous and fantastical adventure. Warlock looks to reproduce the play style of its illustrious predecessors but in a light, quick and simple manner, with a consistent rules set that is easily hackable and adaptable as desired.
146 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
August 15, 2020
Fire Ruby Designs released Warlock some time ago and I foolishly dismissed it out of hand when I first heard about it. I had another look this week and ended up buying a copy of the print and PDF version. It's sold as being part of the British OSR. That's really a marketing focus to show that it comes from the more gritty and grim-dark feel of early British fantasy roleplaying games like Dragon Warriors, Maelstrom and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying.
It's not OSR. It's OSR-adjacent. It feels like the love child of Fighting Fantasy and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying first edition, dressed in Dragon Warriors flavours. Of course, you can buy all these games right now so why would you want to get Warlock?
Let's unpick the system to see how it works.
The first sign that this is not drawing on D&D as its inspiration and so is definitely not OSR in the way that most people understand comes with character generation.
Characters are defined with two statistics - Stamina and Luck - and their skills. There are thirty-two skills, which you can see on the character sheet above. They all start at a minimum of 4, with around a third at 5 and another third at 6. You then roll 4d6 and look up each result on a table, which gives you four career options. You pick the one that resonates most with you. This career gives you a set of skills associated with it (each of which has a maximum level that can be reached on that path). You also gain a career skill, which is the average of the skills associated with the career; you can substitute this with the GM's agreement. The career gives you a starting pool of points to spend on your character's skills, two facts about your character (from random tables) and some starting equipment. You then pick some starting behavioural traits and you're good to go.
What D&D historically called 'race' is called 'community' in the game. There are no mechanical implications for the system from your community, just some flavour text that describes how members of that community tend to behave and be viewed in the very light setting implied by the book.
Your character develops by spending advances, of which you will get 1-3 in a typical session. Each advance raises a skill by a point, and your stamina rises each time your career skill goes up. You can spend five advances to change career. If you survive through two careers and have at least three skills at 10+ then you can unlock and change to an advanced career if you have the relevant trappings. You need to max out the skills in an advanced career to change again.
The basic skill test is performed using a d20 roll, adding skill to get 20+ to succeed. Penalties to the roll are suggested if it's especially challenging. Combat tests are opposed rolls, highest wins and does damage to your stamina. So you can attack someone and they hurt you instead. However, if you initiate the attack you get a +5 bonus to your roll as you're the active person in a fight. If your roll is more than three times your opponents you do double damage. Armour protects, reducing damage by a dice roll (a bit like Stormbringer) but you'll always take at least one point of stamina damage.
Once you hit zero stamina, any further damage causes critical which are not good for your character. You roll 2d6 plus the number of points below zero that you are, and reference the table for damage type you have suffered. Rolling ten or more will kill you outright. There are good reasons to disengage from combat; you don't suffer opportunity attacks like those seen in D&D.
Spell casting requires an incantation roll and a stamina spend. Spells don't have levels. A roll of '1' means you have the potential to miscast, which is bad. You make a second incantation roll and hope you don't fail again. The spell list feels very D&D like in effect; there are no cantrips like those seen in 5e.
The bestiary has a decent flavour to it, and will serve most gaming needs. The system is light enough that creating a creature wouldn't be hard.
There is a hint at a background for the game in the text, but it's definitely left very light and suggestive. You can always buy the campaign setting if you fancy this, or just use it with your own or another.
The GM section is very short. The most important part it gives are the following three statements which capture the essence of the game:
Combat is deadly and can have lasting implications. Most enemies would rather escape or surrender than fight to the death.
Magic is low level and accessible by everyone, but real prowess requires specialisation.
Monsters and other creatures are not necessarily evil, but may act as such.
I really like this game. It gave me the GM tingles, and I'd love to run it.
That said, I may hack it a little.
I feel that there's a missed opportunity with advances; I'll probably add some keys based on career and traits that trigger an advance point at the end of a session. I may extend that further to add a set of questions like Liminal for the party to determine the ultimate number of advances. I may also add in advantage/disadvantage (only because I'm not a massive fan of modifiers).
The hacking around only reflects my personal preferences. I could get a game going with this in fifteen minute, running it as is.
On reflection, I think I would have preferred playing the recent section of the Enemy Within campaign we've been in using this rather than Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying 4th Edition. Needs a bit of test at the table of course, but my gut response to this really positive.
I like it. A lot.
Recommended.
It's not OSR. It's OSR-adjacent. It feels like the love child of Fighting Fantasy and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying first edition, dressed in Dragon Warriors flavours. Of course, you can buy all these games right now so why would you want to get Warlock?
Let's unpick the system to see how it works.
The first sign that this is not drawing on D&D as its inspiration and so is definitely not OSR in the way that most people understand comes with character generation.
Characters are defined with two statistics - Stamina and Luck - and their skills. There are thirty-two skills, which you can see on the character sheet above. They all start at a minimum of 4, with around a third at 5 and another third at 6. You then roll 4d6 and look up each result on a table, which gives you four career options. You pick the one that resonates most with you. This career gives you a set of skills associated with it (each of which has a maximum level that can be reached on that path). You also gain a career skill, which is the average of the skills associated with the career; you can substitute this with the GM's agreement. The career gives you a starting pool of points to spend on your character's skills, two facts about your character (from random tables) and some starting equipment. You then pick some starting behavioural traits and you're good to go.
What D&D historically called 'race' is called 'community' in the game. There are no mechanical implications for the system from your community, just some flavour text that describes how members of that community tend to behave and be viewed in the very light setting implied by the book.
Your character develops by spending advances, of which you will get 1-3 in a typical session. Each advance raises a skill by a point, and your stamina rises each time your career skill goes up. You can spend five advances to change career. If you survive through two careers and have at least three skills at 10+ then you can unlock and change to an advanced career if you have the relevant trappings. You need to max out the skills in an advanced career to change again.
The basic skill test is performed using a d20 roll, adding skill to get 20+ to succeed. Penalties to the roll are suggested if it's especially challenging. Combat tests are opposed rolls, highest wins and does damage to your stamina. So you can attack someone and they hurt you instead. However, if you initiate the attack you get a +5 bonus to your roll as you're the active person in a fight. If your roll is more than three times your opponents you do double damage. Armour protects, reducing damage by a dice roll (a bit like Stormbringer) but you'll always take at least one point of stamina damage.
Once you hit zero stamina, any further damage causes critical which are not good for your character. You roll 2d6 plus the number of points below zero that you are, and reference the table for damage type you have suffered. Rolling ten or more will kill you outright. There are good reasons to disengage from combat; you don't suffer opportunity attacks like those seen in D&D.
Spell casting requires an incantation roll and a stamina spend. Spells don't have levels. A roll of '1' means you have the potential to miscast, which is bad. You make a second incantation roll and hope you don't fail again. The spell list feels very D&D like in effect; there are no cantrips like those seen in 5e.
The bestiary has a decent flavour to it, and will serve most gaming needs. The system is light enough that creating a creature wouldn't be hard.
There is a hint at a background for the game in the text, but it's definitely left very light and suggestive. You can always buy the campaign setting if you fancy this, or just use it with your own or another.
The GM section is very short. The most important part it gives are the following three statements which capture the essence of the game:
Combat is deadly and can have lasting implications. Most enemies would rather escape or surrender than fight to the death.
Magic is low level and accessible by everyone, but real prowess requires specialisation.
Monsters and other creatures are not necessarily evil, but may act as such.
I really like this game. It gave me the GM tingles, and I'd love to run it.
That said, I may hack it a little.
I feel that there's a missed opportunity with advances; I'll probably add some keys based on career and traits that trigger an advance point at the end of a session. I may extend that further to add a set of questions like Liminal for the party to determine the ultimate number of advances. I may also add in advantage/disadvantage (only because I'm not a massive fan of modifiers).
The hacking around only reflects my personal preferences. I could get a game going with this in fifteen minute, running it as is.
On reflection, I think I would have preferred playing the recent section of the Enemy Within campaign we've been in using this rather than Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying 4th Edition. Needs a bit of test at the table of course, but my gut response to this really positive.
I like it. A lot.
Recommended.
March 4, 2023
My journey through the Old School Renaissance of RPGs continues, this time with a distinctly British slant. Warlock! Is an RPG that is, in the words of the author, “based on old-School British tabletop gaming”. This basically means that it draws its primary inspiration (both thematic, and mechanical) from the original Warhammer Fantasy RPG and the Fighting Fantasy game books, and its art style also leans heavily towards the black-and-white pseudo-gothic style of artists like Russ Nicholson, Ian Miller, and Iain McCaig. Reading through the rule book two things become immediately obvious: firstly that the system looks quick and fun, definitely in the realm of the ‘rules lite’ movement, and secondly that Saunders really needed an editor. There so many spelling mistakes and unhappy sentence constructions that it can be quite distracting while reading the book (and I have the newer ‘Traitor’s Edition’ so you would think there might have been time to have these kind of things corrected). The layout and overall organization of material, while generally fine, could use the inspiration of something like OSE’s sublime restructuring of RPG rules into easily readable and parsable text.
Getting into the game itself: characters only have two main stats - Stamina and Luck. The former could be equated to hits points, and the latter is a special attribute that is used at key points of play, primarily during conflict (you can “test your luck” to resolve sticky situations, which in turn lowers your luck score). Anyone with a passing knowledge of the old Fighting Fantasy gamebooks will be very familiar with this format. This paucity of stats is made up for by characters having a large number of skills that fall into general areas (like Athletics, Large Blade, and Disguise) to which players assign points. Nearly all actions are based on D20 rolls whose result (with any modifiers) is then compared to the PC’s skill in the comparable area to determine success or failure. Players also choose a ‘Career’, such as Rat Catcher (familiar to fans of Warhammer a system from which the career element was no doubt derived), Hunter, Grave Robber, or Entertainer to name but a few. These could probably be loosely equated to D&D classes, but are much less restrictive and also not permanent (PCs can change careers). Each Career has a set of specific skills which the character is able to improve through play by virtue of being in that career.
Combat sounds fast and deadly. As with most other RPGs it occurs in Rounds and PCs (and enemies) can choose to do an action (or more than one if applicable) on their turn that include either moving or attacking. Attacks come down to “opposed skill checks” in which the PC and their target each perform a skill check for the requisite skill for their attack (ranged/melee/blunt/slashing, etc.) and a ‘hit’ is scored by the winner on their foe. They then roll requisite damage which is subtracted from the target’s Stamina score. Being the attacker who initiates the fight gives you a bonus, but the fact that everything is resolved by an opposed skill test means that even the initiator of the attack can be injured…this is pretty cool and seems much more true to life to me than many other combat systems. It’s also important to note that armour soaks up damage instead of making you harder to hit, which I also think a much more intuitive system than the standard D&D armor class rating. There are also critical hit tables, and a magic system based on spells that consume stamina and have a miscast table…both elements that I really like.
I have yet to actually play Warlock! so I can’t say how it pans out at the table, but I really like what I see here…with the Caveat that this book really would have been a step above if a bit more care was put into the layout and text, and an editor would have been a priceless addition. So, 4 stars for the game overall and vibe it gives off, minus one star for the presentation.
Getting into the game itself: characters only have two main stats - Stamina and Luck. The former could be equated to hits points, and the latter is a special attribute that is used at key points of play, primarily during conflict (you can “test your luck” to resolve sticky situations, which in turn lowers your luck score). Anyone with a passing knowledge of the old Fighting Fantasy gamebooks will be very familiar with this format. This paucity of stats is made up for by characters having a large number of skills that fall into general areas (like Athletics, Large Blade, and Disguise) to which players assign points. Nearly all actions are based on D20 rolls whose result (with any modifiers) is then compared to the PC’s skill in the comparable area to determine success or failure. Players also choose a ‘Career’, such as Rat Catcher (familiar to fans of Warhammer a system from which the career element was no doubt derived), Hunter, Grave Robber, or Entertainer to name but a few. These could probably be loosely equated to D&D classes, but are much less restrictive and also not permanent (PCs can change careers). Each Career has a set of specific skills which the character is able to improve through play by virtue of being in that career.
Combat sounds fast and deadly. As with most other RPGs it occurs in Rounds and PCs (and enemies) can choose to do an action (or more than one if applicable) on their turn that include either moving or attacking. Attacks come down to “opposed skill checks” in which the PC and their target each perform a skill check for the requisite skill for their attack (ranged/melee/blunt/slashing, etc.) and a ‘hit’ is scored by the winner on their foe. They then roll requisite damage which is subtracted from the target’s Stamina score. Being the attacker who initiates the fight gives you a bonus, but the fact that everything is resolved by an opposed skill test means that even the initiator of the attack can be injured…this is pretty cool and seems much more true to life to me than many other combat systems. It’s also important to note that armour soaks up damage instead of making you harder to hit, which I also think a much more intuitive system than the standard D&D armor class rating. There are also critical hit tables, and a magic system based on spells that consume stamina and have a miscast table…both elements that I really like.
I have yet to actually play Warlock! so I can’t say how it pans out at the table, but I really like what I see here…with the Caveat that this book really would have been a step above if a bit more care was put into the layout and text, and an editor would have been a priceless addition. So, 4 stars for the game overall and vibe it gives off, minus one star for the presentation.
June 13, 2022
The more time I spend reading and thinking about this game the more fascinated I become by it. It is extremely rules light and yet has a robust leveling system that supports long campaigns, which is just the right sweet spot for me when it comes to lighter games.
August 18, 2020
This review comes from reading and not playing. Ideally I would have played it, but I only have so much time in a given week.
Warlock! is a mixture of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (with it's career system and lack of levels) combined with some OSR elements, a d20, and some more modern sensibilities.
For skill checks you'll roll a d20 and add the relevant skill and attempt to get a 20 or higher for a success. Anything less is failure. There's a defined set of 32 skills along with career skills (which are the average of a given career's relevant skills and used when nothing else makes sense).
When you create your character you'll start by picking some beginning skills. You choose ten skills to start at 6, ten skills to start at 5, and everything else starts at 4. Keep in mind though that a skill at 6 only has a 30% chance of success! After that you'll roll for stamina (effectively hit points) and luck (which serves as a saving throw of sorts, except each time you test it, you deduct 1 from your luck for the rest of the adventure (recovering it afterwards).
You'll pick a career and have 10 more points to invest in career skills. Careers define a set of five skills that you can advance in as you gain experience. With the beginning careers there's two skills that allow you to advance as high as 10 and three that can advance as high as 12. After advancing at least three skills to 10 or more you can move on to advanced careers that have 6 skills: three as high as 14 and three as high as 16.
Along with your skills, stamina, luck, and career you'll get some basic possessions and career possessions, and pick some character traits. Then you're off to the races.
Combat is made with opposed rolls with the attacker getting a +5 bonus to their roll, so sure your character might start with a 6 in short blades, but that +5 makes it an 11 which gives you a 55% chance of success. Whoever rolls highest in the roll gets to roll for damage (ranging from 1d6-2 to 2d6+3). Armour reduces damage by 1d3 for light armor, 1d6 for modest, and 2d6 for heavy. When an attack hits it will always do a minimum of 1 damage. Critical hits only ever happen if stamina is reduced below 0 and from there you roll a 2d6 on a chart, adding how far below 0 stamina the victim is. For example: you hit a character with 2 stamina for 4 damage, they roll a 1 on their light armor so you do 3 damage. 2 stamina - 3 damage = -1 stamina. This is a critical hit and you'll roll 2d6+1 on the critical hit table.
Initiative is handled by each side rolling a d6 and highest going first, with ties being rerolled, but then it goes back and forth from the winning side to the losing side, with each side choosing a character who hasn't acted yet. I like that wrinkle from B/X D&D.
Recovery is much faster than in other OSR games: characters recover half their lost stamina if they can rest for 30 minutes. A full night's sleep recovers the rest. However, critical injuries take much longer to recover from.
Magic is probably the most interesting to me, mainly because Wizards typically have fewer hit points in D&D to balance their greater strength in offense, but here everyone has the same stamina roll. Instead, in order to cast spells you must sacrifice a certain amount of stamina, whether you're an arcane caster or a divine.
From all of this, I'm definitely intrigued, I think it could make for a very fun romp through a medieval city. I really like how careers are handled and how simple it is (as I typically bounce off of anything too complex). I'm looking forward to running a small arc of this at some point in the future.
Warlock! is a mixture of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (with it's career system and lack of levels) combined with some OSR elements, a d20, and some more modern sensibilities.
For skill checks you'll roll a d20 and add the relevant skill and attempt to get a 20 or higher for a success. Anything less is failure. There's a defined set of 32 skills along with career skills (which are the average of a given career's relevant skills and used when nothing else makes sense).
When you create your character you'll start by picking some beginning skills. You choose ten skills to start at 6, ten skills to start at 5, and everything else starts at 4. Keep in mind though that a skill at 6 only has a 30% chance of success! After that you'll roll for stamina (effectively hit points) and luck (which serves as a saving throw of sorts, except each time you test it, you deduct 1 from your luck for the rest of the adventure (recovering it afterwards).
You'll pick a career and have 10 more points to invest in career skills. Careers define a set of five skills that you can advance in as you gain experience. With the beginning careers there's two skills that allow you to advance as high as 10 and three that can advance as high as 12. After advancing at least three skills to 10 or more you can move on to advanced careers that have 6 skills: three as high as 14 and three as high as 16.
Along with your skills, stamina, luck, and career you'll get some basic possessions and career possessions, and pick some character traits. Then you're off to the races.
Combat is made with opposed rolls with the attacker getting a +5 bonus to their roll, so sure your character might start with a 6 in short blades, but that +5 makes it an 11 which gives you a 55% chance of success. Whoever rolls highest in the roll gets to roll for damage (ranging from 1d6-2 to 2d6+3). Armour reduces damage by 1d3 for light armor, 1d6 for modest, and 2d6 for heavy. When an attack hits it will always do a minimum of 1 damage. Critical hits only ever happen if stamina is reduced below 0 and from there you roll a 2d6 on a chart, adding how far below 0 stamina the victim is. For example: you hit a character with 2 stamina for 4 damage, they roll a 1 on their light armor so you do 3 damage. 2 stamina - 3 damage = -1 stamina. This is a critical hit and you'll roll 2d6+1 on the critical hit table.
Initiative is handled by each side rolling a d6 and highest going first, with ties being rerolled, but then it goes back and forth from the winning side to the losing side, with each side choosing a character who hasn't acted yet. I like that wrinkle from B/X D&D.
Recovery is much faster than in other OSR games: characters recover half their lost stamina if they can rest for 30 minutes. A full night's sleep recovers the rest. However, critical injuries take much longer to recover from.
Magic is probably the most interesting to me, mainly because Wizards typically have fewer hit points in D&D to balance their greater strength in offense, but here everyone has the same stamina roll. Instead, in order to cast spells you must sacrifice a certain amount of stamina, whether you're an arcane caster or a divine.
From all of this, I'm definitely intrigued, I think it could make for a very fun romp through a medieval city. I really like how careers are handled and how simple it is (as I typically bounce off of anything too complex). I'm looking forward to running a small arc of this at some point in the future.
Read
January 19, 2023I think I actually read an excerpt of this ages ago and forgot that I had, but regardless, reading the whole thing through is a delight. So few rules and yet it has everything you really need. Near the start there's a line:
"These rules are very light as roleplaying games go. If you come across a situation that you cannot find a rule for (and you will!), simply roll a die. Half the results go in favour of the players, the other half go against them."
Boom, every situation covered. A simple and straightforward approach to game design that I can really get behind. The art and layout are clunky, but the actual contents are rich, showing real potential for interesting character growth, tense combats, and easy system and lore malleability. Can't say as I'm all that familiar with the early British gaming traditions on which this says it draws, but to me it does feel like an ideal version of Warhammer Fantasy, cutting out all the many, many extraneous details and focusing down on what really matters. If I wanted to run anything remotely in that sort of tone, this would be my first port of call.
"These rules are very light as roleplaying games go. If you come across a situation that you cannot find a rule for (and you will!), simply roll a die. Half the results go in favour of the players, the other half go against them."
Boom, every situation covered. A simple and straightforward approach to game design that I can really get behind. The art and layout are clunky, but the actual contents are rich, showing real potential for interesting character growth, tense combats, and easy system and lore malleability. Can't say as I'm all that familiar with the early British gaming traditions on which this says it draws, but to me it does feel like an ideal version of Warhammer Fantasy, cutting out all the many, many extraneous details and focusing down on what really matters. If I wanted to run anything remotely in that sort of tone, this would be my first port of call.
April 20, 2024
The looseness of the setting and system is good and honestly quite exciting for someone who's been through the traditional to story game to OSR pipeline however it feels unfinished to me. The game mastery section is extremely short and lacking in guidance, there's no sample scenarios, no indications on how to try and balance combat etc. In other words I think this is a good "player's manual" but as a GM you'd need more. Will probably check out more in the collection to see if that gap is filled anywhere.
May 27, 2021
Great little OSR game, like a mix of WFRP and Fighting Fantasy.
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