There tend to be two types of cities in fantasy campaigns. The first kind are neo-medieval museum spaces where magic helps smooth over the differences between what the players know and what historians might quibble about. The second are filthy urban nightmares that reflect the anxieties of modern living with a few pockets here and which highlight the strange beauty that can be found by anyone paying attention. The city in His Majesty The Worm feels like the latter, given that it’s built over a massive dungeon where the player characters work. Based on the OSR reference made by Josh McCrowell and moody black and white artwork, it’s easy to think this is another dark and gritty dungeon crawler. Instead, when I read the review copy provided by Exalted Funeral, I found something much cleaner, weirder and interesting. Did I swallow the worm of this game design? Let’s play to find out.
The first thing that stands out in His Majesty The Worm is the use of a tarot deck for, well, everything. The deck is split into two parts, with the Major Arcana deck used by the GM and the minor arcana used by the players.The system splits a character into four traits that match up with each tarot suit. When a player does something like attack a monster or sneak past a card, they draw a card and add the relevant attribute to the number. Situational modifiers add either +3 or -3 to the total. If the player misses, they can push their luck and pull a second card, but if they’re still short after that pull, it’s now a critical failure. If the first card they pulled matched the suit, it’s a critical success. The push your luck mechanic here puts players in control of their fate, but never count against someone only needing a 3 or better and pulling a 2.
Characters are built with simple classes and complex backstories. Each class connects to a suit and also vaguely corresponds with fighter/wizard/rogue/leader. Characters take motifs, which are short phrases that reference what they did before they decided to take the foolish job of adventurers. These motifs often provide favor on pulls like being a sneaky bastard quietly trying to get past a guard. Players also choose bonds between their characters. The character also gives a short motivation for why they are going into the underworld. The motivation should be something personal, or at least something that, should they achieve it, means that character will retire from dungeon crawling.
Heading into the dungeon means a combination of prebuilt rooms and drawing on the Meatgrinder table. As gnarly as that sounds, it’s simply a bespoke random encounter table built for each dungeon, though the encounters are few and far between. More often, the players just consume resources like torches as time passes in between rooms. Sometimes the players encounter a flavorful distraction and sometimes they run into something that connects to one of the player’s personal quests.
Once combat goes down, there are some hard choices to be made. Players are dealt a hand of cards from their deck and the GM gets some from theirs. The initiative card also doubles as a player’s defense. A low car means going first but also opening yourself up to attacks early on. Beyond the main action, players can take minor actions that match the cards in hand. If you’ve got four sword cards in hand, you could, in theory, attack four times. GMs draw a hand of Major Arcana based on certain factors. The main thing they need to know is that the lower half of the deck powers lesser attacks while the higher cards are greater dooms. This makes combat feel halfway between the cinematic displays of PbtA games where fiction controls the turn order and something more tactical like D&D. Damage is monitored by conditions which are generally removed in the camp phase.
Bonds aren’t just for roleplaying; they are what you use to heal injuries from combat during the camp phase.. Instead of a scene where everyone is rolling hit dice and mumbling to themselves as they do math, camp is an opportunity to role play. The Mentee charges a bond when they ask their Mentor for advice, while Best Friends get their Bonds charged when they reveal secrets to each other. It’s an interesting answer to the question of the one hour work day.
Eventually, the players get loaded up with treasure or too beaten down and they return to the city. This is where they spend money and xp. There are a lot of clever mechanics hear that offer simple ways to do the stuff players want to do. If they want to build things or own property they pay 50 gold per syllable of the thing. So buying a “bar” is cheap, while “a statue mocking the mayor’s tax policies” is not. Both have the potential for generating very different adventures. They naturally level up in their initial class but can pay mentors to teach them out of class abilities. Those abilities then use XP when activated in the dungeon. Money can also be spent to honor the fallen; the more elaborate the funeral, the more of the old character’s traits and XP get passed to the new.
Using the tarot doesn’t only happen during play. The game offers plenty of ways to use it to generate dungeons, city locations and more. Some of these could be charts, but there’s something about seeing cards sprawled out on the table to help visual locations. Each location also offers additional actions and plot hooks unique to your vision of the city. While there is an implied setting in the book, it doesn’t take much to make it your own.
Bottom Line: His Majesty The Worm belongs in the same class of amazing next generation OSR-inspired games like Shadowdark or Into The Odd.
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