May 25, 2023 3:31 pm
Hellslayers is a hack and slash of MÖRK BORG, a stand-alone RPG with everything you need to play full campaigns.
This RPG uses MÖRK BORG as a foundation, but incorporates new rules for creating stories of survival, horror, and badassery out in space. A new mechanic called the Painful Success allows you to sacrifice something in order to overcome bad dice rolls. When that’s not enough, you also have a few Badass Points (similar to MÖRK BORG’s Omens) to help turn the tide.
The book includes setting information describing the desperate attempts of the remnants of humanity to establish new places for people to live, work, and thrive beyond their dying homeworld. The Lunar Corporate Alliance represents the greatest exo-terran civilization, with bases covering Earth’s moon. It is the LCA that holds the most sway and sends the unfortunate Hellslayers out on suicidal missions to defend its interests.
The Doomsday Clock nears midnight, which will mark the final extinction of all life on Earth, and if the exo-terran humans fail to establish themselves out in space, they will soon perish as well. All depends upon the efforts of the Hellslayers: the more successes you have on missions, the greater the chances that humanity will not end when Earth dies.
Hellslayers includes four new MOS’s (classes): the grunt, scout, medic, and engineer. Each MOS defines your Hellslayer’s starting equipment and abilities, along with more to reach for as you advance.
In order to complete your missions, you will face deadly threats, including zombified humans, mutant creatures, demons from other dimensions, and invading alien species. Your employers care little for your survival, and so you must augment your equipment by scavenging what you can from the deadly environments you are thrust into.
Stats are included for a variety of weapons, from simple shotguns and melee weapons to advanced plasma weaponry. The equipment section includes advanced armor, med packs, repair kits, energy shields, and a wide variety of additional useful equipment and robotic drones.
Hellslayers are much more likely to die screaming than emerge victorious. When it’s time to make a new character, you will gain new options based on the accomplishments of your slain Hellslayers that will allow you to start out with a greater chance of survival. When you begin your adventure, the LCA has little faith in you, but the more objectives you complete, bosses you defeat, and promotions you earn will convince them to provide more equipment and upgrades to any new troops that are sent in as reinforcements to replace your fallen.
The missions section includes details about how to create adventures for your Hellslayers, including a detailed system for generating random scenarios. Feel free to use these as mere guidelines when designing custom missions of your own, or use them to quickly and easily get right into the game with almost no prep time. You can create whole missions ahead of time, or just roll as you go to see what’s behind the next door.
Hellslayers is designed by Clifton Lambert and will be published by Fragging Unicorns Games, which has two fully Kickstarted and fulfilled games to date. The game will go up on Kickstarter on May 20, 2023 to bring it to the masses. Final book prep, printing, and shipping will follow soon after.
Categorised in: horror games
This post was written by Nadia Vella