Game Review: Kal-Arath
The steppe has an un-quenchable thirst for blood...
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On The Tin
“Who will you be? How will you die?”
OSR Stylings
Zine-booklet format (about 50+ pages)
Everything you need to play, including setting specifics, magic system, fleshed out solo play rules focused on emergent story
Sword and Sorcery ala Conan
Demonic lords are conduit to potent and dangerous sorcerous magics
Muscles, Steel, and Blood-magic!
Death comes easily
D6 based gameplay with player-facing rolls
Bad-ass art pieces
Introduction
Kal-Arath is a table top roleplaying game developed and released by Castle Grief. Simplicity with a weighty punch is the name of the game. Everything is based on D6s and obviously derived from other sources, but this is a complete game with an implied setting intended to invoke desperate adventure.
I was one of the Kickstarter backers last year and it was great to see this game to well.
Less interesting is the actual amount of money the project got, which is great, but as an aspiring game creator myself, the number of backers and the thirst of all of us nerds for more indie OSR games that deliver flavor is fantastic to see.
The delivery was on time and everything came through as expected.
This review will cover just the main Kal-Arath rulebook.
The Basics
The following will be enough to provide a clear picture of the game, but will not be extensive, get the game at the links at the bottom if this sounds awesome to you!
Character Generation
Get started quickly by creating your character. Points are allocated amongst five stats that will make sense to any experience player. Strength, Toughness, Agility, Intelligence, Presence.
Skills options are provided to give your character abilities and flavor them in one of four basic archetypes - Warrior, Rogue, Mystic, Explorer. You are not locked into choosing from a single pool, but many of the key abilities can only be taken once.
HP is kept at a premium and XP numbers are low and simple. Play meaningful session to get XP and you just need as much XP as your target level to level up, maxing out at level 9, but the game is deadly the entire time.
Resolution Rolls
The value of your stat is added to a roll of 2D6 to test for success on results of an 8+. Boxcars (double 6’s) are always a critical success and snake eyes (double 1’s) are always a critical failure resulting in setback.
Once per session a PC may use a ‘fate point’ which allows for a re-roll.
Combat
Roll initiative, take your turn moving and taking an action, looking for the story of epic sword and sorcery over strict tactical wargaming. Everything in combat is ‘player-facing’ so the GM does not roll much and the enemies are assumed to hit unless the players dodge it. Armor is direct damage reduction subtracted from the total applied, so it can block damage outright if the amount if low enough. BUT, damage dice explode! meaning if a 6 is rolled, you roll that die again and add it to the total (only once though) So a single D6 could produce 24 points of damage on a damage roll, however unlikely.
The damage swings wildly, do what you can to not take hits. The players and the enemies hit similarly based on the weapon they’re using.
If a player is reduced to zero HP, they roll on the fun ‘Death and Wounding’ 2D6 table which will result in some cumulatively stacking injury or possibly just death.
There is some small healing applied after every combat and a Morale system that triggers a morale check for non-PC enemies when the tide starts to turn against them and means they may flee to be at the PCs mercy.
With any luck these things will keep the PCs alive longer!
Magic
Magic is dangerous sorcery in this game. Roll to cast and possibly critically succeed to double the effects or critically fail to produce an arcane disaster! Access to magic requires a demonic pact with a type of demon that will likely be your undoing at some point: Blood, Destruction, Corruption, Illumination, Shadow, Domination. The pact requires some ‘Doom’ applied - a negative rule or restriction that the PC must adhere to or risk curse or loss of access to their magic.
The spells have interesting names making them very unique and each pact provides access to five spells, one for each tier of strength - which provide greater and greater effects and are more difficult to cast.
In comparison to other games I’ve played, having the ‘dooms’ and mechanical restriction listed out and specific is much better for negotiating around between GM and player. Some games leave these kinds of things vague and it then doesn’t get used or has propensity for misunderstanding and aggravation.
Equipment, Weapons and Armor
Following the rest of the design, inventory has a minimalist bent. A number of items can be carried scaling with character strength and pricing is unified by a tier (D6, D6x10, D6x100).
There’s simple dual wielding and heavy weapon rules, and each weapon has a tier classification for the damage it produces (Light, Medium, Heavy, Missile) and then each weapon has some specific rule it applies or breaks to give them flavor. Any weapon is deadly in hands and anyone you meet on the steppe can kill you.
Armor follows the same line (Light, Medium, Heavy, Shield) and produces a direct amount of damage reduction, while a shield can be sacrificed to zero a single source of damage. Nothing crazy here, but fits the design perfectly.
Gameplay
2D6 tables abound in this booklet for pretty much anything I could think of to play to have a flavorful experience in Kal-Arath. Everything from a starting story for your PC to a complete overland travel Hexporation system is boiled down to simple and straight forward tables.
There are rules, tables, and tidbits for:
Weather, points of interest, random encounters
Foraging
Settlement generation
Dungeon generation
Included is a 1-page conversion tool spelling out how you could take any OSR creature or enemy and bring them into the world of Kal-Arath.
Solo Gameplay
An oracle and two D66 interpretation tables provide all you need for a basic solo TTRPG experience, but having them laid out in a two page spread and focused into the setting is a powerful tool. Combined with the other tools already provided for any group gameplay on the steppe, and you’ve got a good time waiting for you.
Conclusion
There’s alot to like here. As a player and GM, I appreciate being able to pickup and flip through this booklet and feel ready to play this game in this setting in a short amount of time. It is unapologetically a sword and sorcery adventure game that knows how to live that aesthetic.
This game assumes you know your way around a tabletop roleplaying game. It feels like a game made by a player for players. It doesn’t go deep on game master insights or provide much by way of introduction to the world of ttrpgs, but I don’t think it needs to.
For me, the jury is still out on ‘player-facing’, as GM I love rolling dice too, and I have not played many games where most things are player facing because I like rolling dice, but I get the propensity for its existence. It does make for a more streamlined solo gameplay experience and that was likely a large weight on the design choice.
One thing is certain, I have a lot of ideas while reading the rules for this game. I am finding it inspirational from both wanting to play it as a game with my players and as a game design example. I haven’t gotten it to the table yet, but I am thinking to try it out soon.
Till next time!
Where To Purchase
DriveThruRPG - PDF
ITCH.IO - PDF
Thanks for Reading!
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Great stuff thanks so much
Great review and one of my favorite games!