ZWEIHÄNDER Hits Kickstarter Goal
ZWEIHÄNDER, a tabletop role-playing game, designed to support grim & perilous adventures, has surpassed its Kickstarter goal, getting three times the amount asked for as of this writing. In short, it is a bloodier, grimmer and grittier version of classic tabletop RPGs you may already familiar with. The community calls this style of gaming the “pathetic aesthetic”, but I simply call it grim & perilous gaming.
ZWEIHÄNDER is a low fantasy, percentile-based system, used to create and run adventures set in grim & perilous campaign worlds. Characters will be comprised of both strengths and flaws, beginning gameplay in one of 72 truly unique Professions. As gameplay begins, the Gamemaster will impose the peril of the wilds, heart-pumping chase scenes, social intrigue and terrifying enemies against you and your fellow adventurers. Dice are rolled to arbitrate success, failure and everything else in between. Over the course of the campaign, your Character may succumb to their injuries, go insane, fall victim to mutation, make Faustian bargains in exchange for infernal might or even worse.
Survival has a more definitive impact than simply winning battles and slaying monsters. In a way, grim & perilous gaming is more akin to a story of survival horror with dark outcomes. As Characters step beyond the threshold of sanity and emerge to the other side, they’ll gain Reward Points. Reward Points can be spent to buy new abilities within your Character’s current Profession. Continued adventure leads to dramatic new developments across three levels of play, called Basic, Intermediate and Advanced Tiers. As they move into each Tier, they’ll gain a new Profession: either by selecting one of the original 72 Professions, or graduating into one of 24 Elite Professions. Over the course of their adventures, a Character will have 3 total Professions, illustrating their descent in a grim & perilous campaign world.
ZWEIHÄNDER is a love letter to everything I enjoy about literature and tabletop gaming – uncompromisingly grey morality, wanton violence, political conspiracy, weird horror and dark humor, all presented beneath a veneer of low fantasy. The system is built to be entirely “world agnostic”, meaning it’s adaptable for any number of home brewed or published worlds. Although the system implies a handful of thematic elements, the system is ideal for tabletop RPGs inspired by or emulating a survival horror version of dark age, medieval or Renaissance-inspired campaign worlds.