Today I am talking a little bit about the new RPG “Torchbearer” of Thor Olavsrud and Luke Crane. I personally see this game as a huge homage to the old fashioned roleplaying game like Dungeons & Dragons that brought most of us “old” veterans into this hobby. Torchbearer achieves this feeling of nostalgia without falling back to clunky old rules.
The rules can be seen as an advanced form of the Mouseguard RPG, which I already play tested a few times and which I grew quite fond of while playing. What works pretty well to capture the theme of the Mouseguard comic books does not look like an obvious choice for a typical dungeon crawl setting, but after reading through the book, the bridge between D&D flavor and new rules was achieved remarkably well. The best way to describe the feeling I had when I started to read the Torchbearer book, is to relate it to the first time I delved into my Dungeons & Dragons book, 30 years ago.
Opposite to more simpler rule books, the Mouseguard/Torchbearer rules are very technical, but without distracting from role playing more than necessary. This is definitely no “rules-light” setting, so groups should give it a few runs to grasp all ways how to influence the mechanics of this game.
Well, as you can see… this game got me a bit inspired. I could not help myself back, creating a few extra character classes for this nice game. Here to start with the monk class, bard and druid will follow soon. If you’ll find the time to play test them, I would be more than happy to hear your feedback about them.
Relborn's Fantasy Blog 