In March, Monte Cook Games started a kickstarter for a new game with an interesting overall premise, called The Darkest House.
The Darkest House is pitched as a system agnostic rpg adventure that has been designed with virtual tabletop play in mind. You can plop the house into Greyhawk, World of Darkness or Shadowrun New York, Golarion, or whatever other setting you're using.
The Darkest House successfully funded in April, raising $222.8k, and fulfilment has begun.
I backed TDH because I like Control, Anatomy, and that sort of "spooky, sentient horror location" thing, and I could justify throwing a little bit of money at it, but.... well, between "Monte Cook" and "System agnostic," I was pretty dubious. Also, to be honest, I'm not 100% sold on the idea that this product made for VTT play is *really* going to work well for that, at least in the slick modern way they intend.
I just downloaded my copy, and thought I would review it here.
The Darkest House
Monte Cook Games
I do, honestly, love this image that's used as a sort of splash logo for the product. It's very cool, at least to me. Unfortunately, the best, easiest to use here version of it is the stretch goal tracker, but, whatever.
So. People here know Monte Cook. And this is definitely not the first system agnostic product we've ever seen. So I figure you're all at least as skeptical about this product as I am. Monte Cook has some great ideas, but he needs oversight. He needs an editor that he answers to, someone to reign him in and point out issues in what he's come up with. System agnostic products are... well, anything that's intended to be "one-size-fits-all" inevitably becomes more of a "one-size-accommodates-all." There will always be areas where it just doesn't fit right, and the real test is "do you care about the places it doesn't fit?"The Darkest House, Kickstarter campaign page wrote:The Darkest House is a tabletop roleplaying game (RPG) product built from the ground up for online play, with unique features that take advantage of the online environment for an awesome experience. It's compatible with the game you're playing now. In fact, it's made for it! That’s because The Darkest House derives its horror from the bonds, backstories, ideals, loves, and fears your existing characters bring into it. Experiencing it will add depth to your campaign, your party, and your characters—those who come out alive!
When you buy The Darkest House, what you get is a zip file containing a setup exe, because while the KS says that you'll basically use it like "a typical RPG book or PDF," you are buying a program. Install it, open it up, and you get a sort of landing page with a general welcome/explanation thing, an index of rooms, a blurb about how each room page is laid out and map icons, a quick info piece about navigating the house as you the GM read through before running it, and then "links" for a bunch of actual pdfs that come with but are external to the program:
- Secrets of the House GM's Guide
- the House Diagram (a flowchart of areas, because a normal map wouldn't really work, cuz, haunted house)
- a GM's reference sheet
- a Key Guide (tells you what key is found where and does what)
- an in-universe journal of an npc
- Crossing the Threshold Player's Guide, which "gives players the character conversion rules and everything they need to explore (and try to escape from) the Darkest House"
- the House System Reference for players
- a pdf of Consent in Gaming
- and four separate links that prompt you to download a zip for a one page pdf character sheet when clicked. I looked at two of them, and they are identical save for a quote on the bottom, which is pulled from external haunted house media (one had a quote from Haunting of Hill House, frex).
So. Really, this isn't system agnostic, is it? Rather, it's a thing with its own, ostensibly light, system that lets you convert into it. Double checking the KS campaign, the front page does not say that it is system agnostic, but it doesn't do a lot to make you aware that it is its own thing. It uses the word "compatible" to refer to your ability to use it in whatever game you're currently running, and the two main pdfs mention "conversion rules," without saying what is getting converted into what.
So let's look at that Player's Guide first, and see what it accounts for in conversion.
WELL. Thanks for finally admitting that after I spent $80 to back your project thinking that it would be a lot of fluff and I could worry about the crunch on my end. *sigh* Goddamnit, Monte.Crossing the Threshold wrote: Rather than being designed for a specific game system, The Darkest House has its own internal system called the House System. The House System is easy to use and
easy to understand, although likely quite different from the system(s) you use most of the time.
This is intentional. Because the Darkest House experience isn’t about stats and numbers, it’s about mood and story (both dark).
The pdf then spills some virtual ink justifying this choice, saying that it is a way to communicate in concrete terms that the house does not work the way (whatever world your PCs come from) does, in the best way that all players will understand, game mechanics.
And... sure. I already expected a certain amount of work in order to bring this to my 3.x game I'm running. ...it's just that I expected that work to be "what creature of a party appropriate CR fits this thing from TDH" and "ok, this seems to be a (whatever difficulty) challenge, so I'll say it's a DC n (whatever) roll." Not fucking referring to a whole new system and a conversion document.
Ok, so what's the system? Well, everything in the house is rated from 1-10. Which is to say, you can rate a door from 1 to 10 on how good it is at being a door, or how hard it is to "oppose" the door. A thin curtain that's literally just a suggestion of a barrier that can be opened is a 1, while a big heavy iron vault door that only lets in a very few specific people is a 10. There's a chart to help with some numerical conversions between the House 1 to 10 system and systems that rate things 1-20, 1-4, 1-6, or 1-100. It.... well, it's not covering literally everything you need--you can figure out, say, your Brujah's Humanity in the House system with, well, no conversion, and figuring out their House Rating for Firearms is barely any math at all, but you're going to have to do a bit of not insignificant math and talking to your GM about what their 6 strength means in the House System--but, ok, 1 to 10. We can deal.
However, we then get to this part-
And... *sigh* Why? If I'm bringing Mutants and Masterminds supers into TDH, I'm not going to look at their power level, compare it to the maximum power level possible in the fucking game, and then tell them "Ok, so your PL 10 Strong Man is a House Rating 5 character" because... that's fucking meaningless. It's way more meaningful to know what Superman's M&M Strength score translates to in House Rating. I mean, sure, in that specific case, it's probably or might as well be 10, but you get my point.If the original system uses points of some kind to build a character, use the number of points a player would need to build the current character and compare it to the number of starting points and a maximum (or a high but realistic number). For example, if
characters start with 150 points, and could get as high as, say, 500 points, but the character in question was probably built with about 200 points (about 40% of 500), we would call that a Rating of 3 or 4.
It does go on to recognize this sort of thing, broadly, admitting that "The toughest Call of Cthulhu character is likely not the equivalent of even a moderately tough 5e character." and (replace CoC with 5e and 5e with Champions). "Basically real world humans" are said to have a max rating of 4, superheroes and equivalents start at 5, and heroic fantasy characters can be anywhere from 1 to 10. So. At least it recognizes that it's asking you to use this one system to address everything from "Moe the Shit-Covered Rat Catcher" to "Literally actually Superman." Your character gets an "overall rating," and then you can modify that up or down (they suggest no more than 1) to represent being really good or really bad at something specific. It addresses items, saying that armor is worth a 1 or 2 point modification, depending on it's coverage, but says most other things are narrative things.
So, "What about all my spells, magic items and other special abilities?"
Well, it's GM fiat. The Fly spell still lets you fly, but it's probably going to be more narrative ("sure, you can use magic to fly") than "you gain a flight speed of X ft, with (whatever) manurverability, for n (time units)."
Ok, I'm not going to go through every single point. Basically, the conversion isn't a granular "here's how you convert from (game) into our system," it's a "here's how our system works, and some guidance, and work with your GM. We care more about narrative and feel than strict mechanics." It also talks what amounts to a philosophy of system- The player always rolls, the GM doesn't. So if the PC casts Fireball, they roll to see if they get who they're targeting, rather than the GM rolling to see if the targets evade, and if an NPC casts Fireball, the players in the area roll to see if they evade, rather than the GM rolling to see if they get them. Which.... I like. I can see the reason for this. If I don't have to worry about rolling to see if NPC does the thing, I can focus more on the story of the house. I don't think it's one size fits all, but we've kind of already addressed that this is more a "you can bring anyone into this realm" thing, than a "this thing can be used for any setting" thing.
There's also a mechanic called The House Die. Basically, whenever a player rolls for an action (ie, to hit, not to see how much damage they do, that sort of thing), they also roll an additional die for the House, and if that additional die is higher than either die the player rolled (the house system is a 2d6 system), then the House doesn't like what the PC did, and retaliates. PCs can also "call upon the House" for aid, and if they do that, they add the House die to their result, but the House will always do A Bad Thing, and the PC gains a "Doom," which will "always come back to haunt them."
All the Player's Guide really says about dooms is to subtract your doom tally from any checks you make to see if you die after being wounded into unconsciousness. I imagine the GM Guide talks about what to do with dooms beyond that.
There's also Boons and Banes to account for circumstances which help or hinder you, which are sort of like Advantage and Disadvantage, but with the system's resolution mechanic, you're rolling an additional d6 and if you have a boon, you take the two highest, and if you have a bane, you take the two lowest. You never roll more than three dice. Boons and Banes cancel out 1 for 1, however, so if you're two boons up (you have a magic sword and, like, aid) and one bane down (it's dark, or whatever), then you still roll 3d6 and take the two highest dice, and if you're only one boon up, but two banes down, then you roll 3d6 and take the two lowest.
TDH has its own damage thing, and cares about both physical and mental damage, and every wound your PC has counts as a bane, but, again, they're not cumulative. If you're seven wounds towards the grave, you're still only rolling one additional d6 and taking the two lowest dice.
NPCs have a simplified system for suffering damage, and just suffer critical existence failure when their total wounds are three their their rating, or if they suffer a single wound that is three points higher than their rating. So you've got a Rating 3 NPC, and they basically have 9 hp, but a single Rating 6 wound would kill them outright. Don't like that for something like D&D, but for this sort of thing, I think it's a pretty good way to handle things.
Ok. So that's it for the Player's Guide, plus some examples, and the pdf is more in depth than my summary. I'm just not going to go through and precisely re-explain everything in it point for point, for several reasons.
I'm going to close out this post, and come back in a bit to look through, I think, the GM's Guide.