Jackals: Bronze Age Fantasy Roleplaying

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Dumarest

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Anybody familiar with Osprey's ever-expanding line of RPGs? There's a new Bronze Age game scheduled for November. I know their military history books are usually pretty good: how are their RPGs? I dig the Bronze Age.
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I don't own either of the two out right now (yet), but there are two things I understand about them:
  • They have very good production values
  • They both use different systems
With regard to the second point, my understanding is that Perilous is either an OSR or OSR-adjacent game while Paleomythic is a very rules lite D6 game. I can't recall if it's 1D6 or 2D6, but it's super lightweight either way.

Edit: I too prefer faux Bronze Age, so I'll be watching this with extreme interest.
 
I think Jackals is based on OpenQuest (an OGL BRP variant).

As for the other Osprey games, I bought the PDF for Romance of the Perilous Land, and while the production values are nice, the actual system is just OK (a class and level system that kind of reminds of mix of various iterations of D&D with a little bit of Dragon Warriors thrown in). The setting ended up being not all that appealing to me. It's a weird mix; it assumes that Arthur and Robin Hood are contemporaries for example. I have no experience with Paleomythic.
 
Romance of the Perilous Land uses The Black Hack, iirc. Paleomythic uses an original system. I have Paleomythic (as I was a fan of the first edition). It's a gorgeous book, full color hardcover.

Jackals is using OpenQuest; it was mentioned in a thread on the big purple about Romance and Paleomythic. BedrockBrendan BedrockBrendan also co-wrote a new Wuxia game for them as well
 
Anybody familiar with Osprey's ever-expanding line of RPGs? There's a new Bronze Age game scheduled for November. I know their military history books are usually pretty good: how are their RPGs? I dig the Bronze Age.
Well, I've pre-ordered one of their RPGs already, but it's written by our BedrockBrendan BedrockBrendan so i knew what to expect!
I don't remember having seen the author, but a quick Google search told me this:
Mechanics of Jackals are based on Open Quest!
Source: https://www.amazon.com/Jackals-Bronze-Fantasy-Roleplaying-Osprey/dp/1472837428

And he has obviously worked on some games I've never heard about. (Including a supplement for D&D4e and two Fate Core supplements).
Source: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse.php?author=John-Matthew DeFoggi
Though, weirdly, it seems he has worked on 13th Age, too!
Don't ask me why it's not in the previous link:shade:. But I like 13th Age much more than the other 2 systems, giving me hopes about this one, too.

Anyway, make of that what you will. I'm probably going to buy it! Not sure about deadtree, but with the way Osprey price e-books, it just might be the better option:thumbsup:.
 
Romance of the Perilous Land uses The Black Hack, iirc. Paleomythic uses an original system. I have Paleomythic (as I was a fan of the first edition). It's a gorgeous book, full color hardcover.

Jackals is using OpenQuest; it was mentioned in a thread on the big purple about Romance and Paleomythic. BedrockBrendan BedrockBrendan also co-wrote a new Wuxia game for them as well

The wuxia game, Righteous Blood, Ruthless Blades uses a light system modeled loosely after the system I used in Ogre Gate (faster and involves less record keeping than Ogre Gate, more rulings over rules focus). It tries to capture a Gu Long-like dark wuxia feel.
 
Osprey is planning a campaign book with numerous adventures in a 192 page hard cover book. Its to be released with the Jackals book. The title is The Fall of the Children of Bronze. I found a picture but its small so you will have to zoom in. Its very cool looking but I can't upload it because its a .jfif file and this site doesn't support it. Let me see if I can convert it to a .png file.
 
Okay I converted this to .png. Sorry its so small but you can zoom!
 

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Eh, I found a description and have lost interest. I didn't realize it was a fantasy world with made-up places and peoples:

"The Zaharets, the land between the Vori Wastes and the Plains of Aeco, is well-known as the Land of Risings. Dominated by the rising city-states of Ameena Noani and Sentem, facing each other along the great War Road, the Zaharets has always been home to powerful civilizations. Beastmen ruins dot the landscape, a constant reminder of the Kingdom of Sin and the fragility of the Law of Men. Even older are the great ruins of the Hulathi, the legendary sea peoples, and the Hannic mansions sealed beneath the mountains, awaiting those who would seek out the Lost Folk. Scars abound from the wars between ruined Keta in the north and Gerwa in the south. And, far to the east, the legends of Muadah still beckon occultists and Jackals who seek to plunder its corrupted ruins."

I thought it was fantasy game set in the real Bronze Age. Anybody gets it, let me know how it is.
 
Welp, I just lost all interest as well.
I still hope they succeed as almost anything is a good alternative to dwarves 'n' elves 'n' wizards 'n' dragons 'n' dungeons, at least for me. Paleomythic sounds like it could be cool; do we know if that's in the real world plus mythology or is that a fantasy Stone Age world?
 
I've been waiting...! I even have Mythras and Mythic Rome, but Greece is more my bag by several orders of magnitude.
Yeah I have been waiting since it was supposed to come out in 2016 and then again in 2018. But if it comes out as good as BRP Rome (which is basically Mythic Rome but for BRP) it will be worth it!
 
I still hope they succeed as almost anything is a good alternative to dwarves 'n' elves 'n' wizards 'n' dragons 'n' dungeons, at least for me. Paleomythic sounds like it could be cool; do we know if that's in the real world plus mythology or is that a fantasy Stone Age world?
I don't know anything about Paleomythic. Too far back for my taste. I prefer either the Bronze Age or the Renaissance (yeah I know I'm weird).
 
Dumarest Dumarest Not sure if it would be your thing, but there is also Heroes of Hellas for the Legendary version of Barbarians of Lemuria. It's set during the time of Greek Mythology
 
I've been waiting...! I even have Mythras and Mythic Rome, but Greece is more my bag by several orders of magnitude.
Mythic Greece and Mythic Babylon are the two books I’m most keen for. From what Loz says both are finally visible at the end of what’s been a long tunnel.

It can be frustrating but I find it’s worth giving DM my patience as they always reward it with great product.
 
The wuxia game, Righteous Blood, Ruthless Blades uses a light system modeled loosely after the system I used in Ogre Gate (faster and involves less record keeping than Ogre Gate, more rulings over rules focus). It tries to capture a Gu Long-like dark wuxia feel.

Love me some Gu Long, so I've preordered this. Sadly, work put my Wandering Heroes of Ogre Gate campaign on hiatus after a mere three sessions, with COVID-19 as the final nail in the coffin.

And me down as another person who's waiting on Mythic Greece.
 
They haven’t said but I assume not. I would pay extra for a PDF though.
 
Mythic Greece and Mythic Babylon are the two books I’m most keen for. From what Loz says both are finally visible at the end of what’s been a long tunnel.

It can be frustrating but I find it’s worth giving DM my patience as they always reward it with great product.
Mythic Greece of course will be awesome, but Mythic Babylon is a much rarer RPG topic. I love the art so far.
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I love the simplicity of this version of BRP (OpenQuest), and I love ancient world settings
This only came to my attention not long ago, and I just ordered a copy of Jackals from Osprey last week.
Hopefully I will get a discount off a future pdf version (free would be even better)
In any case, I'm looking forward to Jackals arriving :thumbsup:
 
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Osprey charge quite a large percentage of the hard copy price for a pdf. You've only got to look at their line of Military topic series yo see that so don't expect anything free. S copy of this arrived recently haven't had a chance to do much with it. I notice it uses Traits similar to those in Paleomythic though. As I got The Expanse RPG and a couple of other books at roughly the same time I'm very behind on reading.
 
Osprey charge quite a large percentage of the hard copy price for a pdf. You've only got to look at their line of Military topic series yo see that so don't expect anything free.

For some reason, the Kindle versions seem to be a lot cheaper, at least here in the U.S. Jackals hasn't been released yet on Amazon, but tomorrow it will be on sale for ~$14.50. I'd expect the PDF version to be ~$24.50, based on earlier examples.

The most egregious example is Romance of the Perilous Land, which for some reason is $2 on Amazon in Kindle format.
 
I have the kindle version and hardcopy of Romance of the Perilous Land. The pdf is $24.95. I think the kindle is cheaper because it can't be shared perhaps?

Regardless, I have two hardcover Osprey books- RoTPL and Gaslands Refueled. Both are solidly bound and should hold up to long term table use.
 
I love the simplicity of this version of BRP (OpenQuest), and I love ancient world settings
This only came to my attention not long ago, and I just ordered a copy of Jackals from Osprey last week.
Hopefully I will get a discount off a future pdf version (free would be even better)
In any case, I'm looking forward to Jackals arriving :thumbsup:
Yeah, normally I order from either the company or DriveThruRPG so I can get the PDF with the hardcover. In this case however, they were only doing pre-orders on Amazon.
 
Jackals became available today on Kindle, so I succumbed and bought a copy; it's cheaper that way than in any other format. If I think I might run it I will probably invest in a paper copy someday.
 
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