Old Gods of Appalachia Review

This is my first ever game review, I hope it is something you good folks enjoy. If so, let me know. I’d love to do a lot more of it!

I have a fondness for folk magic. It’s something I end up making rules for or introducing into just about every horror game I run. Some systems have some kind of magic already. This was the case with Shadowrun and with that I’ve added what I could in new magical traditions to match other folks traditions I know about it. That bit of realism added really pleases me to no end.

Old Gods of Appalachia does what I would do right out of the gate and with a grace and tradition that you can only get from someone who has lived the experience. There is a cozy feel to every episode mixed with a feeling of ancient evil that is right at the edge of known civilization ready to cut a deal with you, “A pound of flesh, for a tonne of coal” indeed. It is a game of speaking the old pacts sealed with blood upon the names of your forefathers and their mothers before them. Really just trying to survive in a time that was already hard on good folks just trying to get by, without factoring in the horrid things that respond to you in the dark when you whistle at night.

It is a game generally set in the early 1900s in and around the Appalachia mountains of south east united states. Its folk horror hiding in plain sight of good folks living and dying in the coal mine boom of the era just trying to get by not truly understanding the terrible dark and wild powers they are surrounded by. Heralds from Gods who have no name that our tongue can pronounce have made pacts with those desperate enough to seal oaths in blood. It’s also a game of cunning folks who see the world for what it is, giving a helping hand with powerful folk magic to ease the sting of haints and boggarts causing strife for families that have no one else to turn to. The real underline of it all is this, everything has a price. Are you prepared to pay when it comes due?

So that’s the feel of it, but what is it like to run it? What’s the elevator pitch for it? What do I do in my games to make things feel a bit more atmospheric? Well I’m glad you asked, because that’s what we are talking about. So sit down with your grandmother’s corn bread and in your pa-paws favorite chair and let’s get into this.

The Elevator Pitch

Player characters will make up the cast of a small town. They can be the school marrams, coal miners, farmers or even the local forest witch who no one talks about above hushed whispers, but everyone knows. Their lives generally get thrown into upheaval, either because someone didn’t make good on a promise they seal or something important was promised that others aren’t willing to give up. They will confront this problem in the city streets, far forests, rocky hills or hidden hollers of Appalachia. Through cunning, fortitude and general heroics they will push back against the dark that tries to consume them. They can do this with fist, firearms or folk magic.

What is the Cypher system?

Old God’s runs on the Cypher system which I have become a little bit obsessed with in the last few months. The system is simple, but offers a lot of customization and makes for very easy and fast game play with still a good punch. The quick introduction to Cypher is that players have characters with 3 pools of points to pull from (Might, Speed and Intellect). They will be given tasks with a difficulty that ranges between 0 and 10. Whatever the final difficulty is, you need that x3 on a d20 roll. So difficulty of 3 means rolling a 9 or higher on a standard d20. You will quickly see a problem where anything difficulty 7 or higher is impossible to roll on a single dice. This is where the skill/effort/assets system comes into play.

Each player character can lower a difficulty with a skill, 2 assets (tools, positioning, other generic advantages the players can come up with that sounds plausible to the GM) and finally effort. The first 2 are pretty static, you either have them or you don’t. Effort on the other hand is your character’s desire to see something done. It’s what they are willing to push themselves for. This is where the resource aspect of the game comes in. Characters will spend points from their pools depending on the task in question. You can throw your all at something but when you do you will quickly become tired and wear down. It’s so beautifully simple but also so delightfully cinematic when it’s done at the table. Damage also comes out of these character pools as well. So you can REALLY feel the characters weakening and scraping the literal bottom of the barrel on some fights.

So speaking on cinemantic, the Cypher system gets its name from another core aspect of the game, which are Cyphers. Cyphers are single shot powers/resources/etc that characters gain and lose through play that allow you to have those picture perfect moments. They can be literally anything you can think, but obviously the book has nearly a hundred of them. Cyphers come in a ton of flavors and each Cypher game has their own flavors. They can be physical objects, inspirations, cinematic moments, you name it! This can be kind of hard to wrap your head around at first, but here are a few examples off the top of my head:

The Will To Fight On (Inspirational) - Restore 6 might after seeing a friend take damage.

The Perfect Punch (Inspirational) -Deal an extra 4 damage on a successful punch.

Ocular Skull (Folk Magic) - You can ask the spirit of the skull one question about the last 20 minutes of life from any corpse you set it on.

Potion of Jump (Magical Item) - Upon drinking this potion you can make one amazing leap up to 100 feet and land safely.

Generally, if it’s a physical item, players can trade them around, but inspirations and the likes tend to not be tradeable unless your table is cool with that.

Finally, each character gets various abilities from their Type, Focus and Descriptors. These are the 3 parts of a character you build to give you the ability to REALLY mix and match stuff. Each of those things can kind of be a deep dive but the short and simple explanation is Type is kind of like a class, descriptors add bonus aspects to your characters based on the descriptor but generally moderately powerful boosts and Foci are like a second class that is much more focused on what you want your character to be able to do. This allows you to mix and match some things to make really unique characters. The best part is that there isn’t really an “optimal” way to use it. It really is all about making the character you want to play rather than trying to ensure you don’t get dumpstered by some basic baddies.

What it’s like to run it

Cypher is kind of unique in that GM’s never roll dice. All results/chances/etc are handled by the players. So during combat, monsters hit PCs every time they fail to defend, instead of rolling to hit. Players’ initiatives only matter if they go before the monsters instead of setting up rigid initiative lines. All creatures, problems and items have a level. That level set the difficulty for the PC. Some monsters have special advantages that can change their level for specific challenges but otherwise it’s all handled by that 1 number.

It’s actually pretty freeing having most of the burden off your shoulders for tracking 10 different ways something can go down. Though I will say, if a player is having an off rolling day, they can get absolutely wrecked failing to both attack and defend over and over. It feels a bit paralyzing, but generally Cypher is about players working together in order to survive, so they will at least not feel alone.

It abstracts a lot of the crazier aspects of the game as well, so you can lean more into making everything more interesting. Smacking people across the room for super strong guys, massive exchanges

What I would change / rough spots

No matter how perfect the idea or the setting, everyone will want to make their own little flourishes to make the game their own. Cypher makes this pretty easy and I think I have a good idea on how to do it.

Not everyone should have folk magic charms to start

Cyphers for old gods are really very cool, my only issue is that the backwoods farmer who got pulled into this adventure because some horrid thing was happening on their back 40 prolly shouldn’t have a handful of hot foot powder he can use to thwart his enemies. He should more than likely have more inspirational cyphers like “The Perfect Tool for the Job” or “Knowing my Land like the back of my hand” or the likes. Things that make them more heroic and less magical. By all means he should be able to get his hand on binding candles and SATOR squares but he should have to run into someone who knows how to work roots or cast spells before that becomes a super common thing.

Ritual Magic isn’t described, but it highly important to the setting

Speaking of magic, it has a kind of weird status in Old Gods. Instead of handing out magical skills and knowledge by Foci (which I think is really how it should be handled) its handled by type. That makes your “fighter tank” types always not have access to it and your “speakers” (bard types) always have some amount of it which I find kind of an odd choice. I also think this should have been tied more to the focus the character chose rather than the type they chose.

Choice Paralysis can cause magical PCs to struggle at first

Magic can also be overwhelming to new folks to the game, as its not so baked into their DNA as it is for those of us who have either studied on the subject deeply or were born into a place where it’s still pretty common practice. Telling someone they can do almost anything but not having a lot of quick examples to hand over to them is kind of a bummer. It is however something I believe they will be remedying in the future with “All Your Gods Are Dead”. Though if this post does well enough, i’ll be writing my own brief primer for it.

What Shines the Brightest

Unreal amount of art

One thing Monte Cook does better than any other publisher I’ve seen is ensure their books are rife with art. When you get the monster sections of any book, you can bet every creature will have an image with very few exceptions. Their art will aid to the feeling of the material wonderfully and Old Gods of Appalachia is no exception. They have a wonderful spread of art throughout and an image for every single monster/creature/character they describe. They do have some images within the cyphers as well but there are so many it would massively increase the size of the book (and its already 400+ pages).

Attention to historical accuracy on folk magic

One of the big things that drew me too this as a folk magic enthusiast was how accurate the cyphers were to real world folk magic. I often try to slide these kinds of things into my games, its amazing to see it out on full display here. They have 94 individual Cyphers which are folk magic workings that the characters can use. Around 20 are from the Podcast specifically or mention something from the podcast in some capacity. The Cyphers mirror real world applications with good rules for making them work well within the system. There are a few which are a bit out there, but mostly used for combating bigger crazier things. So definitely nothing that fully pulls you out of the mood of the game.

Huge amount of customization

I talked about it above with basics on how characters are created, but one of the things that always drags me down in some systems is how often you end up with the same characters because its either the best way to do it or its the most powerful version of whatever that class is. With as many times as I’ve played Cypher games, I’ve never seen the same character get put down. The different combinations of Foci, Descriptor and Type, makes an insane amount of combinations. Given your powers mostly come from Type (Which there are 4 of) and Focus (which there are 25 of) but Descriptors (which there are 40 of) can add that little bit of zip to make the character lean just a bit more into whatever your going for.

Final Thoughts

Old Gods of Appalachia kind of came out of no where for me. As a huge fan of the Magnus Archives, i was looking for the next podcast to sink my teeth into and saw that Monte Cook picked up the license for their game. Since i knew how much i loved Magnus Archives (and maybe its time to write something up on that as well), i figured id give it a chance and let me tell you. It was an amazing ride. I absolutely devoured the podcast and if your going to run this game for your friends, i recommend you do the same.

If your looking for a game where you can give your players mystery, horror and a historical setting. This is a great choice for you. It offers great chances for players to work together and gives them plenty of tools to over come huge enemies and dangerous situations. Folk monsters that your players won’t know immediately how to defeat (step aside standard vampires, werewolves, etc). It’s just all around a great setting and a good set of rules to play in.

If you’re looking for your own copy of Old Gods of Appalachia you can find it in a few places.

DriveThruRPG Demo: PDF

DriveThruRPG Full Game: PDF

Monte Cook Games: Physical Books here -> Monte Cook Games

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