Monte Cook's The Darkest House

[Prak]

Just on the chance that someone might find this with a Google search- This review will include spoilers. If you're going to be playing in it, probably best to not read it (also if you raise some of my points with your GM, don't be a jerk, they're probably really excited to run it).

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.

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!

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?"

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).

Wait. Conversion rules? System reference? Character sheets?

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.

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).

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.

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-

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.

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.

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.

[Whatever Jr.]

For d20 systems, does the house's 1-10 system match up to a DC/CR range of 3-30? I'm just curious whether this system is a lot like numenera, or literally exactly numenera (with 2d6 replacing 1d20).

[Thaluikhain]

So...it works in any system by replacing the system with it's own? That kinda makes sense, technically.

"It's compatible with the game you're playing now"

Sounds like a challenge. For all the game knows I'm playing the Fighting Fantasy spin off RPG, and I've only got 3 stats and a bonus to talk to camels.

[Prak]

For d20 systems, does the house's 1-10 system match up to a DC/CR range of 3-30? I'm just curious whether this system is a lot like numenera, or literally exactly numenera (with 2d6 replacing 1d20).

Yeah, with open-ended d20 systems, I'm really not sure. It doesn't call that out specifically, but makes reference to systems that track levels from 1-20, which I interpret as a way to kind of catch all refer to D&D and Pathfinder editions. It's not precisely accurate, but I think it's a reasonable way do so. So your fifth level character translates into a Rating 2 character (it says to take the lower when you're between two ratings), and when you do things, you roll 2d6+2. If you're, like, a Rogue, then maybe you get a +1 to stealth rolls. And a Barbarian maybe gets +1 to hit rolls when raging. Something like that.

So...it works in any system by replacing the system with it's own? That kinda makes sense, technically.

"It's compatible with the game you're playing now"

Sounds like a challenge. For all the game knows I'm playing the Fighting Fantasy spin off RPG, and I've only got 3 stats and a bonus to talk to camels.

I mean, then you just look at whatever the average of your three stats are, and then (*looks up Fighting Fantasy mechanics), subtract 6 from your score and divide by .6 (it's not perfect, but it's good enough). And if your ability to talk to camels comes up in TDH, you add +1 to your roll after adding your rating.

Like, the simpler a system is, the easier it is to translate, because the less you really have to worry about. Like, I'd kinda worry more about how the fuck you would bring Eclipse Phase characters into TDH, or something. The more moving parts, more things you have differing scores in, the harder it's going to be to compress down into TDH's simpler system.


Right now, I'm running a 3.x game, in my own horror media-inspired D&D setting. So, I saw this kickstarter, and I know that Monte at least has cool ideas, if the execution isn't always there, so I figured "hey, maybe I can run this in my game."

But... given that I started this game and found these players with the specific desire to play in 3.x's sandbox, and I think two of my players are already having to learn 3.x "on the job," so to speak, I'm not going to convert their PCs into TDH's system. If I run this as an adventure, I'm going to convert TDH into 3.x.

But, I don't like the idea of doing that straight out, the first time I'm running TDH, so I'm going to try to get my friends who would usually be my group to make some time for a one shot, and we're just going to make characters specifically for TDH, maybe stat the players themselves up.

... which I guess means that I'm still not really running it as intended...

[Prak]

Also, this is a small thing, but the pdfs are laid out landscape, single column, so as I've now moved to my couch and I'm looking at my phone and want to start going through the GM's Guide...



... it could be laid out in a format more conducive to this...

[Thaluikhain]

I mean, then you just look at whatever the average of your three stats are, and then (*looks up Fighting Fantasy mechanics), subtract 6 from your score and divide by .6 (it's not perfect, but it's good enough). And if your ability to talk to camels comes up in TDH, you add +1 to your roll after adding your rating.

Like, the simpler a system is, the easier it is to translate, because the less you really have to worry about. Like, I'd kinda worry more about how the fuck you would bring Eclipse Phase characters into TDH, or something. The more moving parts, more things you have differing scores in, the harder it's going to be to compress down into TDH's simpler system.

Ah, think I misread you there. So your PC gets just one number as their stats? And a PC with 8/10 of Stat A and 2/10 of Stat B in their game becomes the same as someone the other way around?

[Prak]

Ok, so in TDH, characters have a single overall rating, which I guess is where I was getting hung up, too, and why it says to compare, say, current level to max level. It does get weird, I think? Like, that works if you have a level based system, and it says that if there are no levels, but characters are made with pure point buy, you compare your character's point total to the maximum number of points they could have in the system (which still doesn't help with open ended systems!).

So, like, if you have a 200 point character in a system that tops out at 500, then in TDH, your character has a Rating of 4. And if there's a specific thing they're good at, then their rating for Underwater Basket Weaving, or whatever, is 5, and if there's a specific thing they're bad at, then their rating in, I don't know, French Cuisine, is 3.

So, for, say, D&D, divide your character level by two, round down if necessary, and that's your overall rating. And then maybe you're a barbarian and your Rage ability gives you Boon on attack rolls and Bane on defense rolls, or something.

But, like, what the fuck do you do if your character is from Rifts? And has forty different skills, all with different percentages, ability scores with no real cap, and save percentages that are basically completely arbitrary? I guess Rifts is ostensibly level based? But I know that my group never fucking leveled up in any of the three or four campaigns we played, so, like.... practically speaking, no?

Maybe a garou uses their rank? But... like, that's only one particular area of character advancement, and has very little to do with your character's actual power? And then if, working against every element of setting lore, your buddy is a vampire... vampires don't have anything like WtA rank, so, what the fuck do you do then?

It just... ok, it can work if your group usually plays 5e. Especially since you could just, like, convert proficiency bonus into your Rating (subtract 1, multiply by 2, you're done) and anything you don't get your proficiency bonus to in 5e, your specific rating is a point lower. Fine, whatever. And I'm sure the Cypher system converts fine, because that's Monte's own system. But... there are really a lot of systems where the DM might as well just say "OK, your rating is X" and there's no real reason to put the "conversion" rules in the Player's Guide.

[hogarth]

So far, this sounds like a system that a 10-year-old wrote in a day. "Uh, so there's a target number and you roll dice to beat that target number. Yay! I'm an RPG writer!"

[Prak]

To be a little fair to Monte, it really seems to be more about the story and narrative than mechanics. To be cynical, I think he probably wrote the house and story first, and then figured out a system that was simple enough that you could handwave any existing system into the story.

Which... well, OK, I probably wouldn't have dropped $80 on that, at least until I knew the story was really good. But taking the money part or if things, I'm willing to keep reading and see if the story/setting (ie, the house itself) is interesting enough to use this thing.

Edit: but yes, what I've seen so far is almost the simplest, most basic system one could possibly write. More like a 12 year old who's played a moderate amount of D&D

[virgil]

This is clearly using the Cypher system (it's on the cover), which was the core mechanic of Numenera.

[Prak]

Cypher is different, at least in that it uses a d20 while this uses 2d6, but there are similarities. Cypher is really just in the graphic because it's Monte's own system.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

I'm confused as to the point of this. Is this literally just supposed to be a spooky generic haunted house you can plop down into any game setting and use all this fucked up math to convert things?
Haunted houses are the funnest dungeons to make up on your own. Is there at least cool shit here?

[Prak]

I'm confused as to the point of this. Is this literally just supposed to be a spooky generic haunted house you can plop down into any game setting and use all this fucked up math to convert things?

Yeah, pretty much. I don't think Monte realizes how bad the fucked up math is, I think it's supposed to be one of those "it just works!" things. Which of course, they never do.

Haunted houses are the funnest dungeons to make up on your own. Is there at least cool shit here?

Still reading through it. It's got good production values (Which it fucking should, given that Monte's been in the RPG business for, at least, twenty-two years edit: 33 years), and I like that it's ...intentionally channeling House of Leaves, at least, and playing in the sort of general playground of stuff that I actually have consumed like Control and Kitty Horrorshow's Anatomy.

(...I really need to read HoL)

[Dogbert]

When I read "system agnostic," for a moment my hopes went up and thought: "Finally! Finally Monte came to terms with himself. Finally he won't waste any more time and energy doing things he hates (i.e anything related to system mechanics) in favor of doing what he actually loves (fluff, world building, and adventures)."

I guess "when something seems too good to be true..." and all that.

This is what Jerry Holkins called "early onset coot disease" because he already went through his middle age crisis (and the result was Cypher). The saddest part is that, just like old folks who refuse to acknowledge their increasing decrepitude, each new attempt at handling numbers just makes him look like a bigger washout. I pity him, especially when his mentor (Mr. Laws) still has a great mental acuity eventhough he has at least 15 years on Monte.

While "agnostic canned goods" are a tough sale since the main point of sale of canned goods is that they already do all the heavy lifting for you and you having to translate all the encounters' nuts and bolts yourself defeats the purpose, Monte's name should be enough to seal the deal. He should actually do that for real rather than clinging to old tools his feeble proverbial hands can no longer handle.

[Prak]

I think... that this is about as close as we're going to see for Monte leaving mechanics aside. As Hogarth observed, it's basically the simplest mechanical system one could imagine, with a handful of mechanical flourishes so it's not literally just "roll a die, add this one number, compare with a 1-10 rating." I think it's fine. It's basically clearing the "does this game have a game or are you just writing a purely narrative scenario" bar by the slimmest possible margin, and the product is, at least for me, less about the system and more about the scenario.

[Thaluikhain]

I think... that this is about as close as we're going to see for Monte leaving mechanics aside. As Hogarth observed, it's basically the simplest mechanical system one could imagine, with a handful of mechanical flourishes so it's not literally just "roll a die, add this one number, compare with a 1-10 rating." I think it's fine. It's basically clearing the "does this game have a game or are you just writing a purely narrative scenario" bar by the slimmest possible margin, and the product is, at least for me, less about the system and more about the scenario.

Would it not be better to make a self contained system, and not run this halfway through some other campaign?

[Prak]

Secrets of the House: The GM's Guide
This ...file starts with an introduction, which thankfully is not the usual "What's this here Arr-Pee-Gee thang?" intro, but rather Monte talking about sort of what he was thinking about with TDH.

And.... normally, I think a game product should stand on its own without the author explaining themselves. But, I do think there are circumstances where it's reasonable to include. After Sundown and the Tome stuff, it makes sense for Frank to explain what they are. My own yule lads RPG, there's a very short explanation of the premise, because the yule lads are a very specific thing from Icelandic Christmas lore, and someone in America might not know much about them--or what that game is about (while you *can* murderhobo your way through it, it's more about pulling pranks and giving kids candy or moldy potatoes). Anything which is not one of the usual breeds of RPG (action adventure, period drama, getting hot goth chicks to sleep with you), it makes sense to kind of talk about what you were trying to do with the thing.

So what the fuck was Monte thinking when he wrote this?

Haunted house.
The term conjures instant images of spooky, old, run-down houses with a ghost within. Creaking floorboards. Strange moaning sounds. Objects moving on their own. The ghost wants something, probably something that will put it to rest, leaving the house once again at peace.
If that’s what a haunted house is, then the Darkest House is not one.

All worlds touch the house. One way or another, the house exists in every conceivable existence. Whether it seeks out new worlds or the worlds seek out the house, the house can be entered—and perhaps exited—from any world.

That said, The Darkest House—like most horror tales—does have something to say. It’s not just meaningless encounters. Rather than explanations, there are themes at play. The sections of the house have far more to do with the dark side of family and love than ecology or realism.

If the house doesn’t make sense, that’s because it has no interest in doing so, at least from the point of view of some mortal beings. It’s arrogance on the visitors’ part to assume otherwise. Besides, it’s a dangerous and difficult path to begin assigning too much in the way of conventional and comprehensible human goals to the house. The house is more akin to some unknowable entity conjured by Lovecraft’s fevered imagination or dream (or both).

Except . . . except that a Lovecraftian being has no interest in you. You are beneath its notice like a bacterium in the dirt on its metaphorical shoe. But here, you don’t even get the tiny modicum of comfort the anonymity of Lovecraftian nihilism might afford. Because the house is aware of you. It does have an interest in you.

And the house hates you.

The "book" then goes on to explain the mood of TDH, what it is and what it isn't (and admits that you can do whatever you want with it).

What The Darkest House is:
It’s the descent into madness. It’s old traumas and emotional scars. It’s the fear of death and what we’re afraid might come afterward. It’s a bit of Clive Barker mixed with a little Shirley Jackson with a bit of House of Leaves. It’s one’s own inner demons given substance and life. It’s slow, creeping horror that comes upon you with a lingering dread building slowly to a dark crescendo. It’s the monster you can’t see, but you strongly suspect is there, in the shadowy darkness. It’s the implications of terrible, difficult choices.

What The Darkest House is not:
It’s not skulls and gore, at least not as simply decor. It’s not torture porn. It’s not Stephen King. It’s not Lovecraft. It’s not tentacles. It’s not classic medieval demons or ghosts. It’s not kaiju monsters or zombie hordes. It’s not action-packed, tactical battles.

And then it moves into talking about online gaming. Monte says TDH was "designed with two purposes." The first is to let different games talk to one another (and I'm betting that what this actually means is that it's really a test of an idea he has for Cypher that will "let" you bring characters from different games to it), and the second is "as a tool for online gaming."

Monte talks about having wanted to write a product for this particular medium of gaming for a while, and how the year of Western Civilization Fails To Address a Pandemic (my words, Monte doesn't get political here, he just mentions the pandemic) sort of kicked him in the ass to finally do it.

"Ok, so what the fuck does that mean?"
Right, so, we have two clear, explicit purposes for the existence of this work- bringing characters from disparate systems to one place, and being tailored for playing via internet connection.

The system for bringing characters together ...functions. I don't necessarily think it works well, but given a choice between a mediocre fast food burger and nothing for dinner, I will take the burger. That said, I don't think it's necessary. I think this product could have been perfectly fine with a bunch of obstacles described, and literally just a "difficulty tier" ranking system for them, and let the GM fill in the mechanics as appropriate to their specific game. (to extend my prior metaphor, this would be like a meal plan that helps you decide what you're going to do for dinners for a week, but leaves the cooking and recipes to you to figure out. ...and as a single person with a culinary degree and no executive function who literally just asked people for help with that exact thing...)

Why is there this "system friendly" (Monte's words) "conversion" system, then, when it's not really necessary?

Well, having experience with Monte's work over the last twentyish years, and reading between the lines a little, I have thoughts. I think he had an idea. And he wants to do something for Cypher where people can bring their characters from whatever together--just looking at tropes, expect Monte to write a Tavern Between Worlds sort of thing that's more towards Cypher's system than this is very soon. And, in Monte Cook fashion, it's a cool idea, but it's not necessarily executed well.

At my most cynical, I think it's a marketing thing, a thing that will convince people to buy the product who wouldn't buy something that is more "sort out the mechanics for your own game!"

What about the online play thing?

Well, having looked at the demo when the campaign was still running, I do like that the actual adventure is set up not as a pdf, where you flip through pages, but more akin to a text based adventure game, where you can click words to go directly to the relevant thing.

The adventure also takes advantage of the fact that sharing images to the players can actually be even easier online (especially on Roll20 where you can upload the stuff before your session and then click "show to players"), the increased feasibility of selective information sharing (where you can whisper/DM stuff to one player specifically), and the possibility of saying one thing to the whole group, but then conveying something else.

That all said, the lightness of the system is also part of online-tailored play, where the intent is that people aren't looking at complex character sheets, and can be more directly engaged in a "conversational style of play."

Whether that really works in practice is going to highly depend on your group and your players. We here at the Den tend to be system-heads. We want crunchy mechanics that we can crack open and play with, and more narrative systems don't get high marks here. I know that one of the difficulties I face when I'm joining 5e games is that I keep wanting solid mechanics for things, stuff where I can easily customize my character where the most mother may I that I have to do is ask the GM "are you cool with this specific thing?" And the people I play with don't tend to actually use video when we play online, so... For my friends and I, I don't know if that part of the intention is really here nor there. But, I like the intent.

On reflection of all this... I'm kind of surprised that Monte never did anything for World of Darkness proper. Sure, there was Monte Cook's World of Darkness, but that was literally it's own thing that mostly took the idea of WoD and some terms from it, and threw it into a blender to make a sauce to pour over d20. Monte's (at least current) preference for narrative focus over mechanical focus, conversational play, and his ability to have good ideas while the execution comes later seems like it would have fit well with World of Darkness' design culture. ...and that sounds like a slam against WW, but... Iunno. I've gotten to the point where I just can't really work up the energy to really care about that shit. If someone wants to write a more narrative game and they don't care enough to make sure the mechanics aren't full of holes... well, maybe I'll care when I try to run it, but, fuck it's their thing. And honestly, mechanics that aren't full of holes are fucking hard. I think it should be acceptable to basically say "ok, this system is made for X. That is the intent. Other things are outside that purview, and if the game doesn't have a complex system for medieval beekeeping, well... find a system that does if that's what you want."

The way we talk about games here is often like looking at a Tesla and saying "this thing would practically explode if you took it offroading!" Like... yeah. Probably. It wasn't made for that.

That said, I do think that with the loss of certain posters, we're getting better about recognizing that no game system is for all things, and no game system has to be.

The House System
The next section is specifically about the House system, and it reiterates points about how it's a more narrative system focused on mood and story, not "stats and numbers" and reiterates the whole "things work different here" thing. It's not a direct copy-and-paste between this and the player's guide, but it covers the same info.

It also goes into more talk about the conversion system, and... I think it fails at a metaphor. It uses the analogy of translation vs localization, and says that it aims for localization, not translation.

The difference between translation and localization is that, generally, at least in terms of media, translation means literally converting things from one language into another word for word. Localization, on the other hand, takes the social context of the original into account, and tries to convert the words into something that maintains that context, even if it's not a literal translation.

The idea is that rather than one-for-one translating the abilities and attributes of characters from their source game into the House System, it localizes them. I think that this metaphor isn't particularly successful because, well, let's just look at 5e and 3.x Dungeons and Dragons. Those editions have quite different power scales, but a 5th level 5e character, and a 5th level 3.x character get localized to the same House Rating, 2 or 3. Which is to say, that... they're not localized. They're both 5th level, but they have different power levels based on the games they come from, and they get translated to the exact same power level in the House.

Now.... maybe I'm overthinking things, and nitpicking. But... it's still weird. Especially when you're looking at completely different systems--which the game does intend for people to do. It suggests that you can have your characters from your weekly D&D game enter the house, and meet characters from the Call of Cthulhu game y'all played two years ago. So, like... let's say you've got a 12th level 3.x D&D Wizard. In their home system, they're pretty fucking powerful as a person in the world. They're throwing around disintegration and binding efreets to their will. Now, let's look at a PL 12 Mutants and Masterminds character. A level 12 D&D wizard is powerful. I mean, hell, they can turn a single person into dust, or completely disintegrate a 10-ft cube of material with a single action! A PL 12 M&M superhero is... more. It would be entirely reasonable for them to be able to disintegrate everyone in a 100' burst, or completely disintegrate an entire building in one action. And yet, they're both 12th level out of 20, and would be converted to the House system as Rating 6 characters.

It would work in isolation, where you're only dealing with characters from the same system being converted over. Then you can say "the house adapts to its visitors" to explain why Superman has as much trouble opening a given door as a low level thief from D&D. But if you're having characters from different systems meet, it just doesn't. A mid-tier Call of Cthulhu investigator is just on a completely different power level from a mid-tier D&D adventurer. Sure, the Player's Guide talks about how the investigator should be no more than Rating 4 and the adventurer can be anywhere from Rating 1 to 10, but... if that's your fix, then that needs to be actually incorporated into the conversion system, not a guideline tacked on at the end.

Does it matter?

I don't know. I haven't looked at the actual house yet. I don't know what the challenges are like. But I feel like it should matter. I feel like it should be taken into account that, say, a murderous ghost is an entirely different level of challenge for our Wizard than it is for our Superhero, and both of them are going to be much less challenged by it than Lovecraft Sam Spade.

And if that doesn't matter?

Then you should probably have more of a character creation or translation system, than a simple power rating conversion system.

It basically reiterates the character conversion stuff from the Player's guide and I think this is a near copy-and-paste if not exactly that. I do want to take the opportunity to clear up some things that I explained poorly or mistakenly.

So. If your source game has levels or tiers of character, then you compare their level to the max (or, generally highest, I guess, in open-ended stuff like D&D where you can go past 20th but usually don't), and then convert that ratio to the 1-10 system of the House. If your source game doesn't have levels, but has numerical skill ratings, then you take the average of their skill scores and compare it to the max score they could have. So a Call of Cthulu character takes the, iunno, 20 skills they have a rating in, averages them, and then compares them to 100 (IIRC). So, if their average skill rating is 25, then they're probably about a Rating 3 character in TDH. If you build a character with points, then total the points you would need to build that character, and compare it to the starting points and maximum "(or a high but realistic number)." Which I guess is how you'd convert WoD characters. I still think converting WoD characters would be very fuzzy (whether they're werewolves or not), but that may be due to the fact that I'm not super versed in WoD character advancement.

And, yes, there's the rules of thumb about "real world humans" maxing out at 4, and so on. But I really do think those rules of thumb should be incorporated into the conversion, not guidelines given after the rest of it.

I'm not going to rehash all the rest of the conversion stuff, I just wanted to correct myself on that part. I do want to note that the "What about characters' stuff" section adds a paragraph that isn't present in the Player's Guide, saying that there is no contact with areas outside the Darkest House, meaning that if your character has a cellphone or a netlink or whatever, it doesn't work in the House. And it says that they're in fact "pretty dangerous." This makes me wonder about that D&D Wizard with Planar Binding, and how that would transfer. And there are some possibilities, and I think it will depend on the person running the House. Just something that came to my mind.

It also talks about money, language, and PC Ratings in the house. Important stuff is given a value in TDH in case PCs try to loot it, but it otherwise doesn't really matter, characters in the house can understand and be understood, so don't worry about language. Rating 1-2 PCs should be prepared to take a more stealthy approach, 3-6 will be "greatly challenged, but stand a decent chance to make it out alive," and 7 or higher means you can probably take the House head-on.

The final point of conversion talks about converting characters back to their source game. And it's pretty narrative and guideline-y, but I think that's appropriate. It says that wounds could be converted to hp, but it would be easiest to just say "you're gonna need to rest for a week." Dooms, representing lingering curses, trauma, etc are probably more a narrative than mechanical thing, and should be left that way. If your Wizard gets cursed by the house, then they should probably have horrible nightmares, or something, not the effects of Bestow Curse. That sort of thing. Gear changes, like if you drank a potion, or ran out of bullets, you're not (unless the GM says otherwise) going to magically regain those things, so just nix 'em, any magical loot taken from the house that gives a boon should convert to some kind of minor bonus. And finally, it suggests that escaping the House should be a major accomplishment in terms of character advancement, and that should translate to significant advancement.

The Actual System
Ok, so your basic resolution mechanic is 2d6+rating (general or specific, depending), vs TN 7+task rating. Anything Rated (not TN) 6 or more points above the PC's rating is impossible, barring getting help from the House. Anything Rated 6 or more points below the character is impossible to fail (and I bet there are potentially cases where the House changes that, but it's probably handled by Rating modification).

There's a lot of reiteration here between the Player's Guide and the GM's Guide. It does give more detail on things that the GM needs to know more about than the players, like spending Doom, which I missed in the player's guide, but is mentioned. Basically, you can lower your Doom tally, and it gives the GM to "do something terrible." It's sort of a Quantum Bears thing. So, they get to remove some of the doomed-ness, but they get a vision that inflicts a mental wound, or a ghost attacks them, or whatever. I'm... I think a "Quantum Bears" kind of mechanic here is fitting. It's a haunted house, it's horror, so, yeah, shit will come out of nowhere. It's also, mechanically, saying "being doomed makes it more likely you will die if knocked out. You can reduce that chance by turning it into things that will hinder you, but not kill you, necessarily."

Wounds has some unnecessary bookkeeping. You're supposed to keep track of not just your running wound total, but each wound you receive and the rating of that specific wound, so that when you're wounded, you can roll against the rating of the highest rated wound you've received, and if you fail, you pass out or are otherwise incapacitated. Then, if you're unconscious, you do that roll again "a minute or so later (but really when it's most dramatically appropriate), but subtract your doom tally, and if you fail, you die. But if you receive "any medical attention" before that death check, then you don't need to make it. If you succeed, you don't have to make any more death checks, and you lose 1 doom from your tally.

Mental wounds are tracked separately from physical wounds, and you don't die from them, but might be rendered catatonic, so, basically the same thing, mechanically. Mental wounds are basically a sanity/fear mechanic.

Sleeping in the house, or being unconscious for non-wound reasons, means the house is going to mentally attack you. Resting, without sleeping, allows you to recover from wounds by rolling against each wound currently affecting you, and if you succeed, you recover from that wound and can now ignore it.

Truth and Lies We Bring With Us
No, we're not done with character creation, just conversion

Oh look!

Even a game designer who's been in the industry for 33 goddamned years cannot format a fucking book correctly!

Like. Ok. Reiterating conversion stuff between the GM and Player Guides... I get it. It's not how I would have done it, but I understand.

What I will not excuse, however, is that not only does this thing have a "conversion" mechanic that's basically creating a new character, and not only does it not explain your fucking character mechanics before using them in conversion, but it splits character creation up into "how to convert" and "adding narrative shit" with "how the mechanics work in detail" in between!

It would be fucking ridiculous if it wasn't the way so fucking many games do things, except that it's fucking ridiculous that so many games do this.

ANYWAY.

After converting the characters and explaining how the system works, you're now told that every character needs a Truth (something the character believes is true, and the player does too), or a Lie (something the character believes is true, but the player doesn't). It doesn't matter which they have, it doesn't, inherently, matter what it is, but they each need one or the other, and then the "book" gives a pretty short run down of character arcs, outlining five basic forms related to Truths and Lies. They're all "character believes X, related event, the character changes or doesn't change," and basically the idea is that escaping the house requires completing a narrative arc. It gives some ideas about how you might make encounters relate to these ideals, and this is all... well, I've been gaming long enough to recognize that this is actually a decent thing to have in a game.


And that's 60 pages, or about 40% of this pdf, and completes the part about characters and system, so I'm calling this post done. Next up is The Nature of the House.

[Prak]

I think... that this is about as close as we're going to see for Monte leaving mechanics aside. As Hogarth observed, it's basically the simplest mechanical system one could imagine, with a handful of mechanical flourishes so it's not literally just "roll a die, add this one number, compare with a 1-10 rating." I think it's fine. It's basically clearing the "does this game have a game or are you just writing a purely narrative scenario" bar by the slimmest possible margin, and the product is, at least for me, less about the system and more about the scenario.

Would it not be better to make a self contained system, and not run this halfway through some other campaign?

I've been thinking about this as I go through. Honestly, I think this is a good candidate for FATE, perhaps FATE Accelerated. Honestly, it would probably actually be much easier to quickly write up characters from another system in FATE, broadly speaking, especially if you're doing some handwaving. I specifically think FA would be a good option, because instead of skills, FA has Approaches. It doesn't care if you're good at climbing, it cares about whether your good at doing things carefully or not. It also has Aspects and Fate Points, which I think are much more successful tools for interacting with a narrative.

Broadly, I think the system works, but isn't necessarily good. Hell, to be honest, my Yule Lads game's core system is a slightly more complex version of this thing. Yule Lads don't have an overall rating, they have abilities and skills, but the idea is essentially the same. I might actually steal the bane/boon idea for it.

But, yes, sort of. I think it would be better to recognize and say that TDH has a self-contained system, rather than trying to make it sound system agnostic. And whatever Monte says about the game, it's marketed as being compatible with any game, and that implies that it is system agnostic. I don't think it's wrong to try to make a sort of neutral ground system that allows characters from different games to interact (in fact, this is far from the first to attempt that), but I think it's just a mostly functional attempt at that, rather than being particularly remarkable.

[Thaluikhain]

I still think converting WoD characters would be very fuzzy (whether they're werewolves or not)

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

I'll be frank: You paid $80 for this pile of boring bullshit and you're just trying to inflict its agony upon the rest of us, aren't you? All I've seen so far is "the system sucks, but the mood is good!" And then you got to this:

What The Darkest House is:
It’s the descent into madness. It’s old traumas and emotional scars. It’s the fear of death and what we’re afraid might come afterward. It’s a bit of Clive Barker mixed with a little Shirley Jackson with a bit of House of Leaves. It’s one’s own inner demons given substance and life. It’s slow, creeping horror that comes upon you with a lingering dread building slowly to a dark crescendo. It’s the monster you can’t see, but you strongly suspect is there, in the shadowy darkness. It’s the implications of terrible, difficult choices.

What The Darkest House is not:
It’s not skulls and gore, at least not as simply decor. It’s not torture porn. It’s not Stephen King. It’s not Lovecraft. It’s not tentacles. It’s not classic medieval demons or ghosts. It’s not kaiju monsters or zombie hordes. It’s not action-packed, tactical battles.

And then that tells me the mood is also not good. It's not about splatterhouse gorefests or having your mind blown by the scale of the universe or desperately escaping from a horrific threat with consequences more dire than "you die, lol". It's about.... uhhhh... stuff your character is afraid of, dude! So it's just 3 hours of Monte Cook in a dark room telling me how spooky his house is and how it's totally scary that my character is seeing his dead daughter while I desperate claw my foot off in an attempt to escape this Saw-esque trap.

[Prak]

Eh, really it's more that I thought it would be interesting to talk about TDH since I need to read through it before I run it anyway.

I am probably in the minority in that I don't get something like this for the scares. I don't read cosmic horror for scares or to feel like an insignificant speck in an apathetic universe. I'm 100% in this for the aesthetic. Cuz, what, I'm supposed to be scared by the fictional existence of a ghost? You mean a proof of a noncorporeal existence after death? I'm supposed to be scared by demons hunting people? Meh, I'm a Satanist, I'm used to Christian propaganda. Ooh, your movie is about a fanatical maniac who hunts people down to slaughter them? I'm a trans femme in America, roughly 60% of the country would happily kill me just for existing.

So, I'm totally just in this for a cool haunted house, not some super scary adventure or something.

Edit: I actually also get game products like this because, as someone who doesn't find horror scary, I feel like I'm incredibly bad at creating horror, or at least calibrating it for an audience. So, more than any other form of pre-written scenario, I find value in pre-written horror scenarios. At least if those aren't creepy for my players, I can blame someone else.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Oh, that sucks. I'm great at writing horror. I remember my haunted house had teleporting doors and spooky poltegeists and an edgy backstory, only for the "ghosts" to be a floating brain/nervous system and a flying skeleton with tentacles that could move through walls.
That aesthetic is probably cooler than 90% of what's in this book, but I'm happy to be proven wrong.

[Dogbert]

It also goes into more talk about the conversion system, and... I think it fails at a metaphor. It uses the analogy of translation vs localization, and says that it aims for localization, not translation.

Sweet Madokami. He fails harder at game design each time. The easiest thing would be to really go agnostic and instead write the technical bits in pseudocode. Pseudocode is one of the first things you learn when learning to program. Just do the pseudocode and let the GMs adapt it to their system of choice. You even save up in word count.

Regarding the "What vs What it's not"... well, after his latest Cypher tirade, we all know how fond he has grown of DoubleThink so I'd take that with a grain of salt (to say the least).

[Orca]

Is there anything in the PDF which you could steal for other games or is it all too locked to this particular system? I get that Monte wants you to convert your games to his, but I neither care about that nor think this system looks amazingly good.

[Prak]

I'm still going through the peripheral stuff, haven't gotten to the meat of the actual scenario. I'm hoping so, but... so far I've seen little I couldn't have gotten from Control or Anatomy.