Another SF Bundle - Never Going Home

[ffutures]

This bundle is a short term offer of the RPG Never Going Home from Wet Ink Games, an occult horror system set in the trenches of the first world war, ending on August 24th.

https://bundleofholding.com/quick/NeverGoingHome

This all-new Never Going Home Quick Deal presents Never Going Home, the Wet Ink Games World War Occult RPG set in the horror-haunted trenches of WWI. In Never Going Home the 1916 Battle of the Somme tore open the Veil between Earth and the occult world of the Others. These demonic beings promise power and survival to earthly soldiers. Some humans resist, some go mad, and some trade their humanity for arcane powers. Strange enemies now stalk the battlefield, and many soldiers have become twisted monstrosities. Now, as part of a Unit of soldiers in the trenches, surrounded by the horrors of combat, you witness Corruption leaking into the world. The Whispers tempt you, promising power to save your friends. Will you give up some of your Humanity to live another day?

In Never Going Home the players collectively create a group of soldiers called a Unit. You play an individual soldier, or more likely a sequence of soldiers. You hold your character's memories of humanity in the form of playing cards. You sacrifice these cards during missions and, optionally, to power rituals or avoid injury. You can also trade cards for new skills, additional dice, and dark powers from the realm of the Others. You must balance your goal of personal survival against the goal of your Unit's success. Each character can have heroic moments, but the story focuses on the Unit.

Rules-light and narrative-based, Never Going Home uses the +One System, a simple dice-pool rules set where you roll a number of six-sided diced based on your character's Attributes. Each roll of 5 or 6 is a success; you want to match or exceed a task's Target Number of successes. Each attribute is also a health marker; as a character takes damage, options and proficiency are also reduced. You can already see the death spiral that sends individual soldiers to death or madness. Fortunately it's easy and quick to create new characters, so expect to cycle new soldiers in and out of your Unit.

Magic actions known as Whispers offer options more powerful than traditional weapons, but Whispers carry large risks. You can augment a Whisper each time you use it, but each addition raises the Target Number for the attempt. Learning Whispers also opens up casters to Corruption. A character who gains too much Corruption leaves the Unit and becomes an enemy of all humanity.

Wet Ink Games (Into the Wyrd and Wild, Jiangshi) funded Never Going Home in an October 2018 Kickstarter campaign. The RPG is based on an art book by Charles Ferguson-Avery, World War Occult (itself funded in a December 2017 Kickstarter). Like the artwork, the game is intense and eldritch, a sortie onto a dark field where every decision matters and nobody makes it home alive.

We provide each title complete in .PDF. Like all Bundle of Holding titles, these ebooks have NO DRM (Digital Restrictions Management), and our customers are entitled to move them freely among all their devices. (By publisher request, the DriveThruRPG versions of these files are inobtrusively watermarked.)

The total retail value of the titles in this Quick Deal is US$65. Customers who pay just US$12.95 get all seven titles in our Never Going Home Collection as DRM-free ebooks, including the complete Never Going Home core rulebook (retail price $10), the magic supplement Book of Whispers (retail $7.50), the Tome of Corrupted Beasts bestiary (retail $7.50), three campaign dossiers (retail $10 each) – Blood on the Snow (set on the Russian Front), Tears in the Sea (a haunted German U-boat), and Bones in the Dust (Gallipoli) – and a collection of short adventures, Once More Unto the Breach (retail $10).

It's a long time since I've played much horror, I got monstered out with way too much Call of Cthulhu in the eighties and nineties, and to be honest this wouldn't be my preferred setting - WW1 was already horrific without adding monsters. But it looks like you get a good amount of stuff for your money, and if you like this sort of thing it's probably worth a look.