13 Omens: First Look

Halloween's right around the corner, and Paizo handed us a treat: 13 Omens, a rules-light horror RPG on Kickstarter. We've been reading the preview, and here's our first look. It isn't a full review yet. We backed it like everyone else, and we'll score it when the full game ships.

Watch our first impressions video

A gimmick horror game, in the best way

Joe puts 13 Omens in a category he calls gimmick horror RPGs. Think Ten Candles, where real candles get blown out as you play, or Dread, where you pull blocks from a Jenga tower until it falls. Games like these bring non-gamers to the table without getting complicated, and the gimmick does something dice usually can't: it puts the stress and anxiety the characters feel into the players' hands.

13 Omens isn't a sprawling Pathfinder campaign. It's built for one-shots: a Halloween night, or an investigative horror story with friends.

The dice bag

13 Omens' gimmick is simpler than candles or a tower, and maybe more accessible.

A bag of dice sits in the middle of the table. It starts with eight safe dice. The story runs in three acts after a prologue, and as it goes, the Storyteller adds Omen dice, 13 of them, to the bag.

When you make a roll, you reach in and draw two dice, more if you have an edge, and take the best two. You can't see into the bag. You feel the dice, try to tell what you've got, and pull. If you drew an Omen die, the whole table reacts before you've even rolled. Then you roll, and if an Omen die comes up at or under the current act, you take a wound. That wound might be to your body or to your sanity.

There's no tactical combat. There's no movement. You aren't expected to fight off the monsters. It's an investigative, narrative horror game, and the tension lives in the draw.

A great first RPG

Joe would bring this out for a Halloween party, as someone's first RPG. It's rules-light enough to hook new players, horror fans or not, and close enough to bigger games that it's a short jump to something like Daggerheart: you're still rolling two dice to meet or beat a number.

Run your favorite horror movie

Blaine kept picturing the horror movies he wants to run while reading it. Because the rules are so light, adapting a story is simple: the main question is whether the players need to roll for what they're doing.

The Kickstarter also has zines: one-shot scenarios from a who's who of horror writers. Joe's sold on one name alone: Jonathan Sims, of The Magnus Archives podcast and RPG. The two we've read in the preview, The Haunting of Hollybrook and Bequeathed, are evocative and different from each other, and they made it easy to picture the dread at the table.

Where we've landed so far

13 Omens is a horror storytelling game built around one great idea: you never know what you're pulling out of that bag. We're excited for it.

13 Omens is on Kickstarter. We backed it with our own money; this isn't a sponsored post.

For running horror at your own table, read Build the Dread and They Have to Open the Door.