WHAT IS ZWEIHÄNDER?
ZWEIHÄNDER IS SLATED FOR RELEASE IN EARLY 2013
ZWEIHÄNDER is a tabletop role-playing system designed to support “grim & perilous” campaigns and adventures. This book is nearly five years in the making, adopted from pages and pages (and pages) of personal notes, scribbles in sketchbooks, house rules and the private wiki we use around our gaming table. In November of 2011, lead designer Daniel Fox decided to get serious and produce what was first dubbed Project Corehammer. It was intended to be released as a rules hack for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. However, it was becoming clear that the project was evolving into a wholly unique gaming system. We scrapped the title. We wrote our own rules. We hired artists. We brought one of our playtesters onboard to help co-author and edit. And, after many months of work, it has become its own entity. This system has been revised and rebuilt through multiple iterations with the invaluable feedback our playtest group provided during the entire process. We consider ZWEIHÄNDER our love letter to everything we enjoy about literature and tabletop gaming – uncompromising realism, wanton violence, political conspiracy, weird horror and dark humor presented beneath a veneer of Renaissance-inspired low fantasy.
ZWEIHÄNDER IS A GRIM & PERILOUS RPG It is a pastiche of many familiar themes found throughout low fantasy literature, the gritty portrayal of a society replete with clandestine conflict, political intrigues, vicious reprisals and terrifying supernatural elements. The Gamemaster will impress situations upon players with what we call the Three Pillars of ZWEIHÄNDER: social intrigue events, environmental challenges and combat encounters. These are the foundation of the book, as any one of them can prove lethal in very different ways. These challenges frames the drama of how your character interacts within the campaign world. And whenever the Gamemaster calls upon you to change the outcome, you roll the dice to determine success or failure.
ZWEIHÄNDER IS A THEME The system and its game mechanics are written to describe a motif of stark realism, political intrigue, profane sorcery and unimaginable horrors from beyond. Disease runs rampant throughout cities. Towering asylums upon the edge of civilization ring with the howls of the demented. Tales of twisted monstrosities are whispered into firelight, of evil that consumes the crumbling remnants of a past age, slumbering until stirred by intrepid fools… or lurking in the deepening shadows of a nearby alley, biding its time. Villainy lies within the hearts of men, who engage in all manner of violence and deceit in the name of progress. People live in a state of decay and paranoia, scrambling to keep what little has been afforded them by the higher social classes. The gods are petty and quick to anger, their fickle gifts bestowed upon a vexing few. Those who call themselves priests are often venal charlatans, consumed by the very sins they preach against. And far from the prying eyes of others, sorcerers risk their sanity and their souls to harness the mysterious power of cosmic disorder by striking Faustian bargains with gods, daemons and other less than palatable entities.
ZWEIHÄNDER IS WORLD-AGNOSTIC It is easily adaptable for any number of home brewed or published campaign worlds. The system is ideal for role-playing games inspired by or emulating the European Renaissance. It can also be adapted to support games in the politically-driven stories of George R.R. Martin, medieval-styled horror campaigns inspired by H.P. Lovecraft, the dark fantasy world of Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski, among a host of others. It’s up to you to tailor these rules to your liking; they’ve been written in a modular fashion, so Gamemasters may remove some rules wholesale in support of their style of gaming.