Preamble

Preamble

Drawing inspiration from Medieval romance stories, dungeon synth, and dungeoncrawlers of the past 50 years, Vagabond is a tabletop action roleplaying game where the Players take on the role of daring and powerful Heroes exploring dungeons and thwarting villains.

Pulp Fantasy

Also known as ‘sword and sorcery’, pulp fantasy stories are tales of high-action and dangerous adventure. You're in the right spot if the cover is illustrated by Frank Frazetta, Boris Vallejo, Julie Bell, Darrell K. Sweet, or Michael Whelan. Its name comes from pulp magazines like Weird Tales that published these sensational fantasy stories of epic Heroes with rippling 8-pack abs saving a hot chick from lizard men on Mars. This evolved into full-length novels which inspired Dungeons & Dragons in the 70s and 80s. Peoples’ first impression of fantasy tends to be of a hobbit walking a vast world with a fellowship of capable friends. This is fair considering the impact of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, but this series doesn’t quite fit the mold of what we consider ‘pulp fantasy’ and is most-often distinguished as ‘Tolkienesque fantasy’. While Tolkien was the first to create a vast fantasy universe with its own history and mythology, his stories are focused more on a journey than punchy fights and dialogue that became prevalent in series like Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian or Michael Moorcock’s Elric of Melniboné. It leans in on character studies through an exploration of established fantasy archetypes. We didn't exactly explore Gandalf's wizardry impacting his worldly outlook like Conan’s barbarism. You’re not just shown the world the author has created, you’re given a protagonist to experience it through. Tolkien fantasy is a zoo, pulp fantasy is a safari.

Origin of Pulp Fantasy

It was Arthurian legends, Norse mythology, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, and stories like Beowulf that originally inspired fantasy as a genre in the 1900s. The worlds, gods, and creatures of these tales can be found spattered throughout fantasy stories and games, but they aren’t themselves “pulp” fantasy. This subgenre’s birth can likely be dated to around 1932, when Robert E. Howard’s “The Phoenix on the Sword” was published in Weird Tales, the first published appearance of Conan the Barbarian. The focus of narrative in the Conan series shifted towards action over exploration and introspection. That’s not to say it didn’t have these elements, just that Howard leaned heavier on the fights than what we had seen in fantasy previously. This push towards the thrilling with less emphasis on the fantastical helped to define the fantasy stories we read today, and more-directly influenced the first tabletop roleplaying game developed by Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax.

The Familiar Strange

There's a saying in the field of medicine, "When you hear hoofbeats, think of horses, not zebras." This is the polar opposite for fantasy. When making Conan, Howard seemed to have originally envisioned the story taking place in the real-world, but worried about the time and research required to maintain historical accuracy. Instead, Howard chose to place Conan in Hyboria, a fantastical “vanished world” that blended Celtic, Germanic, Greek, Mesopotamian, Norse, and Slavic mythology with magic rooted in the high fantasy of Tolkien. This kept Hyboria recognizable and relatable as a world like our own, helping readers relate to an otherwise unrelatable world with wizards and lizardmen. This is an immersion technique authors have used for decades, “Take the familiar and make it strange.” This phrase is attributed to

the German Romantic poet Novalis, and was a core philosophy to Romantic era artists. Think of any fantasy world and consider how it applies this principle:

• Brandon Sanderson’s allomancy is magnetism

keyed out to an entire metal magic system.

• Terry Pratchett’s Discworld is balanced on

four elephants standing upon a giant turtle.

• Fullmetal Alchemist adapts the law of

conservation of mass as a magic system. These techniques helped flesh-out the worlds and make magic systems understandable and relatable. Many of these stories pull monsters from real-world mythologies, use horrors that prey on our human fears, analogously explore real-world topics through a fantasy lens, and even go so far as to just use real-world locations.

Thwart the Villains

Pulp Fantasy stories are about the successes and failures of the Heroes, not the enemies. A story isn't made more interesting if a villain's plans don't work because they failed a check.

Tactical Action Fantasy

Vagabond doesn’t gamify social interactions. That is handled by roleplay with your table. This system is built for quick Combat and engaging Exploration. You have tools at your disposal to think of alternatives to violence, but don’t be sword-shy. Feel free to stab the bad guy. Further, combat is intended to flow seamlessly with exploration. Combats should be moments of confrontation, not a reason to milk tension out of every action. Combats will be short. Some foes may die in a single blow. Bosses might be entirely thwarted by clever players. That’s the intent. As such, it is the Heroes who must prove their attempts at thwarting the villains' plans succeed. Enemies do not roll for their attacks, defenses, and checks as they are assumed to succeed unless the Heroes intervene.

Action First, Cinema Second

Vagabond's combat system focuses on quick, power fantasy violence over narrative tension. This is an action game, not a tactical war game. Mechanics are granted as a storytelling toolkit, so feel free to use its flathead screwdrivers on Phillips-head screws if it works for you. Ancestries, Classes, Weapons, Perks, and Spells grant mechanics for combat and exploration, not fluff and flair. They were designed to say "Yes, and..." for what you want to do instead of saying what you can't do. There are restrictions and limits, and this spirit should always be interpreted in good faith. There are Guidelines to help convey this spirit on (Appendix B: Guidelines, p. 191), but everything therein should be viewed as a guide.

Common Sense is King

The game's expression is intended to allow for quick rulings over precision simulation. If a rule causes a question, try to rule in the Heroes' favor and keep the story moving.

Order of Operations

Follow PEMDAS/BODMAS when applying things like Armor to reduce damage taken. For example, if a Being halves damage from attacks and has Armor 3, and takes 10 damage from an attack, they halve the damage first (for 5 damage) and subtract 3 from the remainder (for 2 damage).

Touchstones

The following touchstones are cultural landmarks for the Pulp Fantasy genre, and a great place to get an idea for the kinds of characters, monsters, and mayhem you'll encounter in Vagabond campaigns.

Anime/Manga

• Berserk. Kentaro Miura (1989)

• Claymore. Norihiro Yagi (2001)

• Faraway Paladin. Kanata Yanagina,

Kususaga Rin (2015)

• Fullmetal Alchemist. Hiromu Arakawa (2001)

• Princess Mononoke. Hayao Miyazaki (1997)

• Record of Lodoss War. Ryo Mizuno (1988)

• Vinland Saga. Makoto Yukimura (2015)

Film

• Army of Darkness.

Sam Raimi (1992)

• The Beastmaster.

Don Coscarelli (1982)

• Clash of the Titans. Desmond Davis (1981)

• Dragonslayer. Matthew Robbins (1981)

• Excalibur. John Boorman (1981)

• The Northman. Robert Eggers (2022)

• Princess Bride. William Goldman (1987)

• Willow. Jonathan Kasdan (1988)

Literature

• Conan. Robert E. Howard (1932)

• Dungeon Crawler Carl. Matt Dinniman (2020)

• Elric of Melniboné. Michael Moorcock (1961)

• Farseer Trilogy. Robin Hobb (1995)

• First Law Trilogy. Joe Abercrombie (2006)

• The Gentleman Bastard. Scott Lynch (2008)

• The Witcher. Andrzej Sapkowski (1986)

Music

• Alchemy of the Stars. Cosmic Sorcerer

• Bubbling Cauldron. Fiendish Imp

• Deja Vu. Mort Garson

• Souls that Dance on the Edge of a Sword.

Jim Kirkwood

• Starguide. Castlesiege

• Tarkus. Emerson Lake and Palmer

• YYZ. Rush

Video Games

• Dark and Darker. Ironmace (2023)

• Dark Souls. FromSoftware (2006)

• Darkest Dungeon. Red Hook (2016)

• Dragon Quest. Square Enix (1986)

• Elden Ring. FromSoftware (2022)

• Fire Emblem. Intelligent Systems (1990)

• Legend of Dragoon. Japan Studio (1999)

• Legend of Zelda. Nintendo (1986)

• Elder Scrolls: Skyrim. Bethesda (2011)

• Slay the Spire. Mega Crit Games (2019)

• Slice & Dice. Tann (2024)

Tabletop Games

• Dragonbane. Free League (2023)

• Drakar och Demoner. Äventyrsspel (1982)

• RuneQuest. Chaosium (1983)

• Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play. Games

Workshop (1983)

• Zweihänder. Andrews McMeel (2017)

TV Series

• Adventure Time. Pendleton Ward (2007)

• Merlin. Julian Jones, Jake Michie, Johnny

Capps, Julian Murphy (2008)

• Mighty Mightor. William Hanna, Joseph

Barbera (1967)

• The Herculoids. Alex Toth, William Hanna,

Joseph Barbera (1967)

• Xena Warrior Princess. John Schulian,

Robert Tapert (1995)