Blackstone Barony

About This Game

A century ago the Saint-King of Lyria led a crusade down into the Chasm of Saints to seal what the Ashen Son had built beneath it. Nobody came back up. Now the gnolls come south sick with ash, the graves above the Keep are opened on purpose, and the Castellan's scouts have not returned.

You make a leader at the Bouncing Bugbear, choose three companions from twelve regulars or make your own, and take the Castellan's contracts. Every lair is a place you walk into square by square, by torchlight, and every one of them is drawn: walls, creatures, doors and rulebooks, in the black ink of an old adventure module.

Walk it square by square

Classic grid movement in first person. Map by torchlight, chalk your way, listen at doors, search for hidden ones, and spot the trap before it springs. Torches burn down; food runs out; a lantern of oil can stand between you and the dark.

A company of four

Humans, dwarves, elves and halflings; Wardens, Hexers, Wayfarers and Votaries. Scores are bought with 27 points, skills are chosen, and companions rise in level with what they overcome. Casters draw on mana; bows and hex rods shoot at what has not yet closed.

Turn-based fights, and ways around them

Initiative, a d20 to hit and the weapon's own die for damage. Packs have nerve and break when their leader falls; some will talk, some will yield, some can be bargained with. Each lair can be broken, allied or outwitted, and the Keep remembers which.

Twelve lairs, one story

From the rat-haunted drains under the village to the Iron Kennels, the Mire Chapel and the Hollow Basilica, then north to the orcs of the Bloodfern Hold, the giants of Dunmorrow, the undead wyrm on the Dragon's Tooth and the Ashen Forge itself. How you settled the lairs along the way decides how it ends.

The rulebooks are in the game

A Player Manual, a Monster Manual, a Campaign Manual and a Dungeon Master's Manual, every monster, god and lair drawn in the style of the old rulebooks, with the world of Orm, its gods and its magic set down in full.