Review of Esoteric Enterprises

Esoteric Enterprises Player Book
By Dying Stylishly Games/Emmy Allen
https://cavegirlgames.blogspot.co.nz/
88 page PDF at Drivethru RPG

TL;DR
The game delivers well on the author’s pitch for a modern day dungeon crawler. It could also serve as a comprehensive sourcebook for adding elements of body horror, mad science, and the occult to other OSR games. It’s close enough to use old school TSR content with only minor conversions.

It’s a gritty contemporary fantasy adventure RPG with overtones of Cronenberg and Brian Yuzna films. Definitely some Clive Barker flavors in there too. You play a gang of occultists and criminals seeking forbidden knowledge and loot—mainly in a supernatural underworld that (intentionally) mirrors the feel of an old school (mega?)dungeon. You get XP for fencing loot and doing dangerous underworld jobs.

With hard work and cleverness, this could be you! (From Beyond, 1986)

HIGHLIGHTS
The gem of this book is the setting. Like the author’s previous game, Wolf Packs and Winter Snow, it’s a complete game that gave me that “I want to play this tonight” feeling.

It includes many pages of easy to use mechanics and tables for medical experiments, occult mishaps, monster powers that could be bolted onto creatures or items, narcotics, insanity, torture, and so on. All ripe for use in any OSR setting.

Very little of that material is necessary to get started, but if a PC says “Hey, since the Yakuza blew my arm off, can I graft this monster’s poison stinger onto the stump?” you’ll be ready.

Overall, the rules emphasize ease of use at the table over high resolution simulation.

The “spook” class is a standout. Build your own creepy monster that grows in power with each level, just like Gary wanted. In the great and hallowed tradition of old school gaming, you can also just roll on a table to see what powers your vampire (or whatever) has.

The rules for combat with modern firearms are as good as anything in the OSR sphere. As a shooting hobbyist who’s usually disappointed by action RPGs set in modern times, I’m satisfied, with only minor quibbles.

alright, now I got that out of my system

If I get the chance to run this, I might prune back some of the options to make a more focused horror setting—mixing gnostic wizards, mad scientists, computer hackers, bigfoot, vampires, and Lovecraftian gods all at once might be too much like mixing pizza and ice cream for me. Kinda cool to have it all in an 88 page book though.

There’s two pages towards the back of the book to flesh out character backgrounds, and help players find the class combo that suits their idea. This is one of those things I didn’t know I wanted, and shows off some of the flexibility of the system.

A e s t h e t i c s
The art is all photographs from stock image libraries, or public domain sources. That said, it suits the tone of the game, and the overall presentation is above average for a single author product.

The layout is professional, with only minor slips, such as the first letter of a white heading text sliding off of a graphic and merging with the white background.

The one exception is the table of contents. There’s major text flow problems that make it hard to read. Luckily there’s a good index and you can search a pdf, but I’d hope for a fix before a print edition is made available.

Many of the pages that I would like to print out for reference are solid black backgrounds with white text, which is a bit annoying. Perhaps this is a countermeasure against bootlegging, in advance of a print on demand offering.

While I normally consider internal linking or PDF bookmarks a luxury, their lack is felt a little more because of these issues.

Lastly, the character class section suffers somewhat for having rules intermixed with descriptive prose. I’d prefer a tight bullet point list for easy reference, separate from the background description.

Nitty Gritty Rules Stuff
There’s a serviceable intro inside for someone to pick this up as their first roleplaying game, if they’re even a little familiar with the format. I’m sure most readers will be familiar with multiple games of this type, but I don’t think it’s right to call an RPG “complete” without this section.

If you’re familiar with old school rules like early D&D or Lamentations of the Flame Princess, the basic system will look pretty familiar. Classes, levels, multiple saving throw categories, and so on.

The major departures in the core mechanics are the flesh/grit system that replaces hit points, and a simple skill system.

Character creation is quick and easy, though some classes have more options that I fear could result in some players getting “build paralysis” at the table.

I’m usually not a fan of a general skill system, but this one is alright. It does the heavy lifting for a number of character classes that would otherwise require their own subsystem.

There are only 11 skills, narrowly suited to the setting. The Criminal is the “skill guy” who gets to build a broad portfolio of skills as he levels up. The doctor gets the medicine skill (as well as an automatic healing ability when in something approximating a clinic). The explorer gets the stealth and athletics skill. You succeed if you roll under your skill rank on a d6.

One gripe I have is that ability bonuses are applied to skills. This makes (randomly rolled) high attribute scores much more important than they are in the average OSR ruleset. Lucky players who want to minmax could begin the game with multiple skills maxed out. It doesn't bother me so much that that's "overpowered", but that it could muddle the line between classes a bit.

Players choose from one of 8 character classes. The Mercenary, the Occultist, and the Criminal map pretty closely to the Fighter, Magic User, and Thief you’ll find in most OSR games. A lot of the spells will be familiar.

Taking a cue from Lamentations of the Flame Princess, the Mercenary is the only one whose attack roll improves with levels.

the Bodyguard class is a “tank” in the way that the old school fighter is not. Along with the explorer, it has the best saves in the game, and a lot of Grit to soak damage.

The Doctor feels like kind of a healbot (which you’ll need, because with the flesh/grit system, flesh damage can cause lingering, debilitating injuries). However, they also get a subsystem for doing freaky body horror experiments. Be careful, or you’ll wind up turning your friend into a mutant who can only survive with a steady feed supply of cerebrospinal fluid.

Fun! (From Beyond, 1986)

The Mystic and the Occultist draw from the same spell list, but whereas the Occultist memorizes and casts spells in the familiar (“Vancian”) fashion, the Mystic rolls a charm skill to curry the favor of a supernatural patron. So while the Mystic can potentially cast the small handful of spells they know many times, they also risk frequent mishaps and complications.

The spook is a build-your-own-monster class. The GM can allow players to choose from a variety of powers to fit a unique theme, or roll on a table for various known creatures (vampires, underground mutants, faeries, ghosts, etc). The framework is flexible enough to cover anything from Hannibal Lecter to a ghost.

The Explorer seems like the odd man out. The class is themed as an urban explorer and infiltrator, driven by curiosity to seek out the supernatural underworld. He gets good Athletics and Stealth skills, but the Criminal class can potentially match him at first level. The Criminal also requires less XP to level up.

The explorer does less damage in combat than anyone (even the occultist), though he gets bonuses to Armor Class. His saves are good, but otherwise I’m not sure he’s got a lot going for him.

I would be tempted to give him some special ability at navigating in the sewers and mazes of the underworld.

COMBAT
I admit I haven’t play tested the game, but it looks like firefights are a very nasty business. It’s not quite at the “rocket tag” level of lethality, but a couple mooks with rifles have a decent chance of leaving multiple first level PCs limping off or in a bloody heap in the first round of a fight.

Because of the flesh/grit thing, it’s pretty unlikely for characters to die instantly from mundane weapons, unless they stumble into focused fire from multiple enemies. So survivability at low levels is probably somewhat better than a B/X character.

I really hate games that turn what should be an adrenaline filled firefight into an accounting minigame. I also hate rules that treat modern firearms as the equivalent of a noisy crossbow, and ignore the substantial advantages of repeating arms. This game successfully avoids either extreme. There’s no mechanical difference between an AK47 and an AR15 (which is a positive in a light, abstract system) but automatic weapons have real impact on tactics thanks to the Covering Fire rule.

There’s another nice rule for automatic weapons. They run empty the second time you roll an attack roll of 1 or 2 with your current magazine. That strikes me as a really handy, simple way to avoid getting bogged down in tracking ammunition down to the individual bullet, and keep up the intense tempo of a gunfight. (If it ever strains credulity, you might call it a “failure to feed” and allow the player to “reload” by reseating the magazine).

My hope is that it would do a good job of capturing that action movie feeling, where the characters are squeezing off a bunch of rounds, missing, and then reloading on the fly, rather than plunking off one round per attack like charges from a wand of magic missile.

If you need ideas on how to narrate a gunfight, just watch Way of the Gun (2000) three or four times

The only time it might get a little funny is if you’re using a revolver or a double barrel shotgun.

You for sure die at -9 flesh, and all sorts of messy, unpleasant things happen before that, including permanent injuries and lengthy recovery times. Looks like there’ll be plenty of times where the PCs have to decide whether to drag a bleeding, incapacitated ally out, or leave them to be cannibalized by morlocks. Neat!

Leave her! (The Brood, 1979)

Depending on your luck when rolling hit points, it seems like level 4 or 5 is when most characters are only seriously threatened by NPCs with levels (who can get multiple attacks with firearms under some circumstances) and supernatural threats.

The GM would be wise to print off the “horrible injuries” section for quick reference; it’s probably gonna come up, and while straightforward, it’s not something you’ll be able to keep in your head.

This is the player’s book, but the only thing stopping you from running this game immediately is the lack of a bestiary, and detailed rules for treasure and magic items. Crack open an old school monster manual or DMG and you’re on your way.

Hopefully the upcoming GM book will include some conversion rules, or a robust bestiary.

CONCLUSION
The nearest comparison in the OSR-sphere is Silent Legions by Sine Nomine, which is more of a straightforward Call of Cthulhu port. Esoteric Enterprises leans towards pulp action-adventure and dungeon crawling, with a focus on playing lowlifes, cultists, and soldiers of fortune rather than weedy investigators.

Come to think of it, the PCs in Esoteric Enterprises would make great villains for a Silent Legions campaign.

EE is the better product, thanks to a fresher creative vision, and more interesting character classes. It’s also suitable for long term campaign play, whereas Silent Legions is more about the ultimately futile battle against dark, incomprehensible forces. You could probably do a dark survival horror thing with EE by restricting PC class options, but it also does it’s own weird “modern dungeon crawl” thing.

The richness of detail in EE is also more evocative and specific. It strikes me as the work of an author who runs games frequently, playtests her work successively, and has created a toolbox of useful stuff for making a vivid interactive gameworld, rather than simply adapting old school D&D to a different set of tropes.