[GUMSHOE] Swords of the Serpentine!


Other RPGs


My group has been playtesting a new GUMSHOE-based sword-and-sorcery RPG from Pelgrane Press:

Swords of the Serpentine

Because the game is still in playtest, I can't really disclose too many details... but this game is AMAZING!

I never thought that GUMSHOE would lend itself for robust combat mechanics, but this totally works. And the flavor and mechanics really support a classic sword-and-sorcery vibe: We feel like we're playing a story that would fit perfectly inside a Fafhrd & Grey Mouser or Thieves' World anthology!

I strongly recommend checking it out and getting a copy of the playtest rules for yourself!


Haladir wrote:

My group has been playtesting a new GUMSHOE-based sword-and-sorcery RPG from Pelgrane Press:

Swords of the Serpentine

Because the game is still in playtest, I can't really disclose too many details... but this game is AMAZING!

I never thought that GUMSHOE would lend itself for robust combat mechanics, but this totally works. And the flavor and mechanics really support a classic sword-and-sorcery vibe: We feel like we're playing a story that would fit perfectly inside a Fafhrd & Grey Mouser or Thieves' World anthology!

I strongly recommend checking it out and getting a copy of the playtest rules for yourself!

That seems great. And the cover art just won me over.

I ve longed for Thief-esque urban fantasy adventures, for a while now, and I believe this might do the trick!

Can't wait for release :)


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@stroVal wrote:
Haladir wrote:

My group has been playtesting a new GUMSHOE-based sword-and-sorcery RPG from Pelgrane Press:

Swords of the Serpentine

Because the game is still in playtest, I can't really disclose too many details... but this game is AMAZING!

I never thought that GUMSHOE would lend itself for robust combat mechanics, but this totally works. And the flavor and mechanics really support a classic sword-and-sorcery vibe: We feel like we're playing a story that would fit perfectly inside a Fafhrd & Grey Mouser or Thieves' World anthology!

I strongly recommend checking it out and getting a copy of the playtest rules for yourself!

That seems great. And the cover art just won me over.

I ve longed for Thief-esque urban fantasy adventures, for a while now, and I believe this might do the trick!

Can't wait for release :)

My group has run four sessions so far, and we LOVE this game!


How would you describe the feel of magic and the setting?

I have a player who doesn't like High Fantasy and D&D and hopes its not like that and more sword and sandals kinda

But I personally hope its not too Conan-esque either with the low magic etc. Modiphius already brilliantly covered that, with their Conan Rpg. No need for more

I would prefer if it was its own thing.

(as I mentioned I want to do Fantasy Mystery and something similar to Thief the videogame; how would you call that? Medium Fantasy?)


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In Swords of the Serpentine, magic is a dangerous and foul force that is both extremely powerful and hard to control. Practioners of magic have destroyed themselves and everything they'd loved with magic gone wrong.

True magic is called Sorcery, and it is both powerful and corrupting. There are two sources of sorcery: Spirits or the Serpentine of old. If your source is a Spirit, your power comes from a supernatural entity: a lesser god, an ambitious elemental spirit, am unknowlable Entity from Beyond, or (most commonly) a demon. You let the spirit take control of your mind and body when you cast a spell. If your source is the Serpentine (i.e. the ancient Snake-Men from times forgotten), then foul arcane writing slithered off an ancient tablet and into your brain, bringing on a terrible understanding of how the world really works, and how to manipulate it.

Using Sorcery beyond very minor magical effects has a Corruption cost; the bigger the effect, the greater the Corruption. In addition to the desired magical effect, the sorcerer must choose to internalize or externalize the Corruption effect. If internalized, the sorcerer's body/mind/soul becomes...different. If externalized, the place where the spell was cast and/or the subject of the spell becomes fouled in some obvious supernatural way: Plants blacken and die; animals mutate; structures weaken and/or become infused with evil forces; minds become open to foul whispers from beyond; etc.

Regardless of source, magic is free-form. Sorcerers pick from magical spheres of expertise (e.g. "Illusion" or "Time" or "Transmogrification"). The more powerful the sorcerer, the more spheres they can control. There are no listed spells in the game: The player decides the effect they are going for, and how powerful that effect will be. Anything but the most minor of effects will require burining at least 1 point of Corruption.

The whole game system, its magic included, strongly evokes 1960s-70s sword-and-sorcery fiction: Fritz Leiber, Michael Moorcock, A.E. Van Vogt, Jack Vance, Robert Lynn Aspirin, Marion Zimmmer Bradley, etc. Think of the magic as seen in books like Swords Against Wizardry, Thieves' World, The Goblin Tower, The Dying Earth, or The Sailor on the Seas of Fate.


Haladir wrote:

In Swords of the Serpentine, magic is a dangerous and foul force that is both extremely powerful and hard to control. Practioners of magic have destroyed themselves and everything they'd loved with magic gone wrong.

True magic is called Sorcery, and it is both powerful and corrupting. There are two sources of sorcery: Spirits or the Serpentine of old. If your source is a Spirit, your power comes from a supernatural entity: a lesser god, an ambitious elemental spirit, am unknowlable Entity from Beyond, or (most commonly) a demon. You let the spirit take control of your mind and body when you cast a spell. If your source is the Serpentine (i.e. the ancient Snake-Men from times forgotten), then foul arcane writing slithered off an ancient tablet and into your brain, bringing on a terrible understanding of how the world really works, and how to manipulate it.

Using Sorcery beyond very minor magical effects has a Corruption cost; the bigger the effect, the greater the Corruption. In addition to the desired magical effect, the sorcerer must choose to internalize or externalize the Corruption effect. If internalized, the sorcerer's body/mind/soul becomes...different. If externalized, the place where the spell was cast and/or the subject of the spell becomes fouled in some obvious supernatural way: Plants blacken and die; animals mutate; structures weaken and/or become infused with evil forces; minds become open to foul whispers from beyond; etc.

Regardless of source, magic is free-form. Sorcerers pick from magical spheres of expertise (e.g. "Illusion" or "Time" or "Transmogrification"). The more powerful the sorcerer, the more spheres they can control. There are no listed spells in the game: The player decides the effect they are going for, and how powerful that effect will be. Anything but the most minor of effects will require burining at least 1 point of Corruption.

The whole game system, its magic included, strongly evokes 1960s-70s sword-and-sorcery fiction: Fritz...

Great explanation and that sounds amazing!

And how does combat evoke the sort of sword-mastery seen in those stories?

Maneuvers? A dueling sub-system?


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@stroVal wrote:

Great explanation and that sounds amazing!

And how does combat evoke the sort of sword-mastery seen in those stories?

Maneuvers? A dueling sub-system?

I'm not at liberty to get too detailed about the game mechanics, but I will say that they have done a FANTASTIC job of tweaking the GUMSHOE investigative skils mechanic for fantasy combat.

When you fight, you can choose to attack you're opponent's Health or Morale. Attacking Health means that you are trying to physically beat the fight out of them. Attacking Morale means that you're trying to break their spirit and/or will to fight. You really can have a battle of wits in this game, with opponents trying for a psychological victory. This simulates the kind of fighting that includes deception, insults, and revealing ugly truths that you see in the genre fiction that inspired the game.

In general, you use your Warfare skill to attack an opponent's Health, and your Sway skill to attack an opponent's Morale. There is a third combat stat called Sorcery that represents your skill at magic: This attacks either Morale or Health, depending on your magical Sphere and the effect you're trying to do.

When your Health or Morale drops to 0, you must make appropriate checks to stay in the fight. If you take additional damage, the negative score is a penalty on your checks. It becomes mechanically impossible to pass such checks at -12. If you fail the check, you are out of the fight: The opponent chooses specifically what happens (knocked out, captured, curled in a ball weeping, killed, conscious and bleeding out, surrendered, switching sides, running away, etc.) The only constraint is what makes sense in the narrative.

It's also possible to perform Maneuvers in combat. These are other things you can try to do to constrain your opponent's options in combat, such as throwing dust into their eyes to temporarily blind them, trying to trip them, or throwing them out a window.

A very interesting mechanic in all GUMSHOE games is that your rank in each of your skills is equal to a number of points that you can spend in an action to affect the die roll. For example: If you have a Warfare score of 10, when you are using your Warfare skill, you have a total of 10 points you can spend during the fight. Similarly, you use your Sway skill to attack your opponent's Morale.

In addition, your character's other skills can come into play during combat, although you can only use one such skill at a time. For example, you make a Warfare attack against an assassin and hit. At that point, you can choose to spend one of your ranks in Skullduggery to increase your damage. The GM asks how that skill applies, and you have to explain how using that skill could affect the fight in your favor. If the GM agrees, then you spend the point and do an extra die of damage.

I love how this system keeps specifics fairly loose and abstract, and requires the GM and the players to be creative and to tell the story of their characters. The mechanics reinforce the narrative, which reinforces the mechanics.


More on how combat works in Swords of the Serpentine:

Why GUMSHOE for Swords & Sorcery? by Pelgraine Press


Haladir wrote:
@stroVal wrote:

Great explanation and that sounds amazing!

And how does combat evoke the sort of sword-mastery seen in those stories?

Maneuvers? A dueling sub-system?

I'm not at liberty to get too detailed about the game mechanics, but I will say that they have done a FANTASTIC job of tweaking the GUMSHOE investigative skils mechanic for fantasy combat.

When you fight, you can choose to attack you're opponent's Health or Morale. Attacking Health means that you are trying to physically beat the fight out of them. Attacking Morale means that you're trying to break their spirit and/or will to fight. You really can have a battle of wits in this game, with opponents trying for a psychological victory. This simulates the kind of fighting that includes deception, insults, and revealing ugly truths that you see in the genre fiction that inspired the game.

In general, you use your Warfare skill to attack an opponent's Health, and your Sway skill to attack an opponent's Morale. There is a third combat stat called Sorcery that represents your skill at magic: This attacks either Morale or Health, depending on your magical Sphere and the effect you're trying to do.

When your Health or Morale drops to 0, you must make appropriate checks to stay in the fight. If you take additional damage, the negative score is a penalty on your checks. It becomes mechanically impossible to pass such checks at -12. If you fail the check, you are out of the fight: The opponent chooses specifically what happens (knocked out, captured, curled in a ball weeping, killed, conscious and bleeding out, surrendered, switching sides, running away, etc.) The only constraint is what makes sense in the narrative.

It's also possible to perform Maneuvers in combat. These are other things you can try to do to constrain your opponent's options in combat, such as throwing dust into their eyes to temporarily blind them, trying to trip them, or throwing them out a window.

A very interesting mechanic in all GUMSHOE games is...

Amazing! As someone who has played Rogues and Duelists for a big part of my roleplaying years I am so excited by all this.

Hmm what you mentioned about adapting and using different skills etc does make me wonder if you can combine weaponskill with magic. Kind of like a Spellsword.

Nothing rule breaking or major but I always loved the flair of that


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If you are a sorcerer who also uses a blade, then yes, you could combine swordplay with sorcery. For example, if you have one rank of Corruption, that grants you one sphere of sorcery... let's say you choose the Fire sphere.

In combat, you could choose to use Sorcery to fight your opponents: You describe the effect you're going for: You say that you want your sword to burn with eerie purple flames and that your spell will affect your opponent's Health. You would then resolve the combat normally, using your Sorcery skill instead of Warfare.

Next round, you press the attack, but this time you decide to try to break your opponents' will to fight. You say, "Yes! Keep fighting me! The Spirits of Fire will incinerate your souls!!!" You make the flames on your blade burn higher and more intense. This time, you're attacking your opponent's Morale, using your Sway skill.

The rules are light and narrative-focused. There is a little bit more "crunch" to the rules than in, say an Apocalypse Engine game such as Dungeon World, but the rules are much lighter than D&D 5e (and far lighter than Pathfinder!)


Haladir wrote:

If you are a sorcerer who also uses a blade, then yes, you could combine swordplay with sorcery. For example, if you have one rank of Corruption, that grants you one sphere of sorcery... let's say you choose the Fire sphere.

In combat, you could choose to use Sorcery to fight your opponents: You describe the effect you're going for: You say that you want your sword to burn with eerie purple flames and that your spell will affect your opponent's Health. You would then resolve the combat normally, using your Sorcery skill instead of Warfare.

Next round, you press the attack, but this time you decide to try to break your opponents' will to fight. You say, "Yes! Keep fighting me! The Spirits of Fire will incinerate your souls!!!" You make the flames on your blade burn higher and more intense. This time, you're attacking your opponent's Morale, using your Sway skill.

The rules are light and narrative-focused. There is a little bit more "crunch" to the rules than in, say an Apocalypse Engine game such as Dungeon World, but the rules are much lighter than D&D 5e (and far lighter than Pathfinder!)

Well what you describe is in effect a Spellsword (or a Duskblade from 3.5 .. kinda)

so yeah I am sold baby (was already though haha)


SotS is a skill-based system, so there aren't character classes. You pick your skills to define the character you want to play. There aren't ability scores, either: Just your relative compenency in various skill. You get to define the hows and whys of your competence in any way you want.

There's always the tension of going deep or going broad. You can spend a few points in each of a small number of skills, giving you high levels of competency in your areas of expertise but not much outside of them. Or you could go broad by taking a rank or two of a larger number of skills, giving you flexibility at the expense of depth.

It's a great system: I'd recommend that you contact Pelgraine Press to request the playtest package!

I'm planning to run a demo at PaizoCon in May.


Haladir wrote:

SotS is a skill-based system, so there aren't character classes. You pick your skills to define the character you want to play. There aren't ability scores, either: Just your relative compenency in various skill. You get to define the hows and whys of your competence in any way you want.

There's always the tension of going deep or going broad. You can spend a few points in each of a small number of skills, giving you high levels of competency in your areas of expertise but not much outside of them. Or you could go broad by taking a rank or two of a larger number of skills, giving you flexibility at the expense of depth.

It's a great system: I'd recommend that you contact Pelgraine Press to request the playtest package!

I'm planning to run a demo at PaizoCon in May.

I suspected from your previous posts and especially given how you described damage within the combat system.

Most rpgs nowadays don't have classes but some kind of skill based system (at the very best they have professions or backgrounds which just give a bunch of skill proficiencies) . I prefer that. But I needed a comparison in order to explain what I was going on about/ what that kind of thing reminded me of.

Yes, its the kind of 'jack of all trades; master of none' dilemma of choice. Again very fitting given the setting...

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