Dark Lore II: Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells - Brilliant Design

Ok, this is great stuff, ladies and gentleman. It' plenty of in depth resources/reviews about Ss&Ss, so I'll just jot down what compels me the most: why this game is absolutely awesome.

This game is published by Old Skull Publishing and written by Diogo Nogueira, a kind guy you should really meet on G+. It's a less than 50 actual pages long full fledged game, with more meat than you might even imagine: it has personality, doesn't clone anything. It is loosely based on our favorite game, but the author puts enough fun into the mix to make it a completely different beast. 

I'm not against classic d&d, but I always support cleverness. Nogueira is a clever guy, who discovers the truth above all else: nothing can be created from scratch, but you can get what you know and improve it following your istinct and tastes.

Not only he does this at full power: Ss & Ss is an insanely refreshing game, with tons of inputs. All within one book, with the proper aid of the Addendum, a nice compilation of optional rules: they are incredibly spot on, you'll see.

For now, we'll focus on the Core Rules.
I won't write a "clear review", but a flow of ideas and emotions: the same flow I got the first time I've read this awesome book.

3 Reasons Why

1. It's Different, It's Versatile, It's Classic but New

No demi-humans, no frills. Archetypes instead of classes (it's not the same, nope...). Nice ideas like "vocations" (sub-class descriptor granting a Positive Die - recalling the advantage/disadvantage mechanic in D&D 5e - on related rolls, with no extensive list, just common sense... which is great!), complications (storytelling based factors you can "compel" - read: call for a bonus telling the GM you want to have a tough life) and many other, thrilling and easy to get frameworks.

4 attributes (Physique, Agility, Intellect, Willpower), all matter (since "resistance" tests and saving throws are tied to them): roll under mechanic (so no modifiers, but the actua score works), with the possiblity to alter it with +/- depending on the situation. Very flexible: it puts down any "old school dead ringer" about "who can try what", since everyone can try everything, considering positive / negative dice, considering the situation and altering the chance of success applying difficulty as +/-. 

So, a Warrior character with the "knight" vocation might be created with a High Intellect to refelct his studies and abilities to deal with heraldry, nobility and court. You will be get the same "core" features of the other warriors, but the way you are playing your character is going to be different, thanks to the vocation, thanks to the awesome input in the Addendum to introduce story/training based powers (so that you can meet a master teaching two warriors two completely different tecniques) and thanks to the fact that, again, attributes matter.

The game includes a Luck Roll mechanic: a dice that "worsens" in size (d8, d6, etc) everytime you use it to gain some form of benefits. It regenerates as its full size at the end of every "adventure", while the Specialist archetype can restore it by 1 step every "morning". 

Archetypes are specific and still generic enough to let you create any character you want: the Warrior is able to deal more average damage, to specialize on specific weapons and the like... but your vocation, your complications and in game achievements will heavily differentiate your warriors in style and gameplay.
At the same time, while Specialists are the "game's rogue", you can alter them as you see fit to gain an edge on specific tasks and give body to an assassin, a pure spy or a ranger...
Magic-Users, as we'll see in a moment, are even more flexible, unless you are a boring player with a boring GM, putting no effort in detailing your character's concept. Try to be a sorcerer or a shaman and play out like that. It will be extremely rewarding.

If you ever played FATE Accelerated you will notice some similarities in the approach: what you put in your sheet actually matters and can be found in game. It is there to make the story more interesting, not to put any sort of limits.

2. Magic is Weird and Versatile

The game tells you that Magic is weird and dangerous from the get go. It is fuckin' true. If you fail a spellcasting test (roll under Willpower), you are messed up, unless you do something to avoid it. You might lose the ability to cast other spells for a limited period or suffer harsh consequences very similar to death. 

Spells have a generic and simple format, based on a factor called "PL" (power level), which is basically the difficulty you are applying (as a caster) to the spellcasting roll: the more PL you want, the more risky spellcasting will be, the more the final effect will be... effective. 
I.e., Summoning allows you to summon creatures with HD (hit dice) equal to or lower than the PL. If you want a mouse, go ahead with 1 PL (-1); if you want a Wyvern, go ahead and hope.

Most spells are really deadly (d6 damage x PL, i.e.), but the dire consequences you might suffer are enough to make you feel like a glass cannon suffering its own art.

All Magic-Users can sense magic as an archetype feature (THANKS ODIN! HALLELUJAH!) and suffer some point loss in Physique and Agility to boost spellcasting (blood sacrifice is the name of the feature), so you feel like you are playing a TRUE MAGE.
You can obviously put the accent on whatever mood you prefer through the vocation: wanna play out as a Warlock? You will probably be able to deal with extraplanar creatures, but you will have to deal with an entity to preserve your powers!
Wanna play like Gandalf? Choose a wide selection of utility spells and go for your beard and pipe. 

Wann play like a seductive Enchanter? Go for spells like False Friendship or Sinister Pact and use your magic to push other towards your goals. 

This is another element in which you feel that fluff is actually IN GAME RELEVANT. You are telling the character you'd like to play to the GM, automatically including in game consequences. Your choices matter, would it be a good or a bad thing. 

Curiously enough, very near to sexual excitement, in Ss&Ss there is no HEALING. Oh, yes, you can slowly recover from wounds, but magic (by default, you are free to add your... NO don't do it!!!) cannot heal.

You can obviously create magic potions or follow the book's lead and make healer NPC matter in terms of how effective your recovery will be; you can see them more as true medics than actual "priests".
Priests can be magic-users with specific spell-sets or just mundane believers with no powers. That's not the point: Magic comes from chaos. You can even get it from the gods, if you like, but Chaos is not about healing. 

3. Simple but Deep

In the end, what you feel while reading the game and creating a character is that the game does everything to put you into a comfort zone in terms of depth: not enough crunch to feel like the "usual D&D harassement" (which I love, beware), not enough simplicity to feel like you'll be "another character".

Gear management is brilliant, heavily inspired from The Black Hack with the usage die to emulate depletion. Not only the game completely avoids accurate quantities; it indirectly advices against them and plays out accordingly.

Weapons / Armors  / Shield are basically divided into three categories: small/medium/heavy.

For the weapons, that indicates the damage die; for the armors, it indicates the damage you can "soak" from any attack in the form of reducing the damage die of the attack (i.e., a heavy armor will reduce the damage by 2 steps (thus, a weapon dealing d10s will deal d6s).
For shields, you will be able to impose a negative die on a variable number of attacks per round against you (1 for small, 2 for medium, 3 for heavy).

To compensate the obvious advantages of armors/shields, you know that a heavy shield will be bulking, while armor will increasingly impose an Agility limit.
If mobility is not an issue, you can easily go for Heavy Armor + Large Shield, but you will really be the old school cavalier. Nothing wrong with that, i like it!

You can even take Greatwsords as a Magic-User, as I feel it. Wanna replicate Gandalf wielding staff and sword? Go for it! By the book, even the vocation should suggest a weapon making some sense to start with (so a Blood Mage might use daggers since they are pretty common in sacrifices, while a Ranger can easily start off with a long bow).

You can obviously buy whatever piece of gear you like, as long as you can bring it with you (a number of items equal to your Physique is the maximum number of items you can bring without being encumbered).
This makes completely sense, since if you wanna be a battle wizard, you still need to sacrifice something here and there: probably you are gonna have a very low agility, in order to have an impactful Physique rating to be effective and enough Willpower to cast with ease "buffing" spells with decent PL.

The game makes everything matter with astonishing simplicity.

Combat is straightforward, you hit using the same mechanic of any other roll (roll under) and creatures can resist some form of attacks (spells and the like) buy rolling under a stats and getting a higher number than the one rolled by the attacker.
Usually, is all about rolling under and hitting for damage; for everything else, a Resistance check might be required, but in the end everything seem to run pretty smooth and this leads up to a storytelling centered narration. You can tell you want to "trip" your opponent and the GM rules accordingly (notice that Warrior have a funny ability to attack AND apply a maneuver that makes sense with a single roll).

Even distance is abstract: you can go close, nearby, far or distant. That's it. Every spell, effect or other factor will be expressed with that scale and that's awesome: no minis, no emulation. Just describe what's happening and feel free to play the game you wanna play.

As you may have noticed, I created my world in an afternoon, since the pure flow of infos in the book is enough to pull out ideas in a neverending river. Reading this book is a pleasure for the eyes and mind.

Pair it with an awesom editing and portable format and you'll discover the way to go for fantasy play, if you like the deadliness of an old school game with the refreshing inputs of the modern design, all without classic fantasy staples, so that you can finally dig deeper into alternate ways to perceive our favorite genre. 

Conclusions

Buy this game. Get it. As for other games I'm going to review here or the Dark Sagas game by Mikael Hassel, this brand new ways to perceive fantasy are definitely worth your time and money. They are affordable, well packaged and stand alone products.

Open your mind, be ready to deal with a very difficult and creepy fantasy world where you can easily feel over the top and mundane at the same type, depending on many factors: your past might hunt you, but that could lead to a momentary luck... Or you can just cast an incredibly powerful spell, right before your inner demon comes out to reclaim some favors...

Be ready to sharpen your blades and dig into dangerous studies to overcome mysteries and esoteric secrets; be ready to accept your failure or just wait for her to come, while you fight your way through your life.

You will never be the same.