Augury - Fleaux!

In my last Kickstarter rampage I fell victim to Fleaux!, a wonderful French RPG (you can find the original french version here) that seems to me to be a mix of Black Hack (roll under attribute) with Warhammer Fantasy.

In Fleaux! (which means ‘scourge’ or ‘plague’) you play with criminals and outcasts at the edges of civilization, trying to survive in a 17^th or 18^th century fantasy world that just suffered a massive civil war. There are ruins, devastation, and opportunity aplenty for rascals like you to get rich.

The B&W art and layout are flavourful and beautiful, with a total Warhammer Fantasy vibe. I say Warhammer because while the world is going down in misery and war, you get a sense that you can dive into it, face its challenges, and come out rich. It is not as satirical as the original Old Word, nor as hopeless as Mörk Borg (which actually is so nihilistic that I can’t stop laughing while reading it… I do love dark humor). The cover art of Fleaux! is one of the best in the OSR.

The rules are ridiculously simple and inspired by many of the best tropes of the OSR. You have six attributes (Strength, Dexterity, Erudition, Charisma, Guts, Melee, and Shooting). Origins are Human or Halfling, Dwarf, Elf, Goblin, and Ogre-Blooded. You can roll or choose one. Each Origin has a d6 table where you find where your grew up (and receive an attribute bump of +1). For example, your Dwarf might have received her education “under the blows of the mine guardian’s instructors”, gaining a +1 to Melee. After that you roll your crime, which basically defines why you run from home. Perhaps you were accused of making a pact with a demon, or of bribing a royal office. The entries provide a nice hook for each character.

Now we roll to see how your survived, which defines your Profession. Your can select Resourcefulness, Isolation, Violence or Knowledge. Each one opens a table with a row of professions, which are occupation-style names like smuggler, mercenary, barber-surgeon (yes, there is a ratcatcher). A profession gives your another +1 do an attribute, plus a small advantage. Mercenaries, for example, increases his damage die by one, while barber-surgeons can restore hit points with a successful check.

In Fleaux! your hit points are determined by your Strength, and damage is abstract, usually fixed at d6. Your equipment is determined by how much money you have, as well as your career (and thankfully there is a simple rule for upkeep, which I always find useful). Finally, you have Willpower, which is a Usage Die rule used for special actions and to resist certain effects.

Fleaux! uses a simple 10 level progression. Character gain XP at a pace set by the referee. Leveling up gives you small +1 bonus to stats and HPs. At certain levels you might gain other benefits, like a second profession, or talents. The last ones are like feats. I quite like the fact that in Fleaux! you gain your first talent at 2^nd level. That is nice because it allows players to first learn the rules and play a little with the game, before selecting mechanical benefits. The fact that you have to choose talent later means that character creation is a lot faster and more immersive. That said, there are only 2 pages of talents and they are easy to understand.

Next are the rules. As I said, these are pretty simple and intuitive. Roll below your attribute to succeed, 1s are criticals and 20s are fumbles. You have 2 actions per round and Fleaux! uses Advantage and Disadvantage (made famous by 5E). We also get the full details on Willpower, which is used, for example, when you want to cast spells or when your want to do 2 actions of the same type in a turn (such as attacking twice). Losing all your Willpower triggers a panic roll (which can be quite deadly). Combat is straightforward: roll below your Melee or Shooting and if you succeed roll damage. You can dodge or parry. Armor grants damage resistance and shields grant Advantage against melee attacks (I do miss a rule for shields allowing you to defend better against ranged attacks). Falling below 0 hit points means that you are out of combat and possibly dead. Fleaux! uses a Helpless table to determine (after combat) the fate of your outcast (it reminds me of the great Roll the Body rule from DCC RPG). You might have survived with some damage, a scar, a permanent injury, or you just died.

Fleaux! characters are scum, but tough scum, so we have rules for short and long rests. We also get 2 pages on Firearms, because this is the frigging Modern Age! There are also a few guidelines on how black powder and sorcery are a dangerous (bot exploitable) combination. And speaking of the Devil, sorcery is next. Spells in Fleaux! might misfire and exhausting your Willpower will trigger a Chaos Revenge roll (which is basically a slow death spiral table, with the classical possibility of a daemon dragging you screaming to another dimension). The spells are are small and flavourful. There is nothing so simple (and boring) as “deal X damage to Y”. For example, there are spells to make your blood turn to acid, or to leave your reflection locked in a mirror, so you can spy on others. After that we get “charms, curses and other incantations”, which give some minor spells that are equally interesting. Fleaux! also covers Alchemy, allowing the party to forage for monster parts and create elixirs (without going into big “shopping lists” as some other rules do). This part of the book ends with a few guidelines for enchanted items. This might be the weakest part of Fleaux! because we only get basic rules on how enchanted items work (Mörk Borg’s list of awesome magic items seems to me to be a better approach).

Next, Fleaux! presents us with a complete bestiary and an adventure. I always believe that new RPGs tells us more about themselves through adventures than through rules or setting and Bloodbath at Castle Kragstein is a fine example of that philosophy. It hits home with all the core points of Fleaux! Bloodbath is an open-ended scenario where PCs start as prisoners (for the crimes rolled during character creation) sent to a forlorn prison in the mountains. The location is going to be the stage not only of a barbarian raid but also of a fell necromancy ritual by cultists hidden among the prison’s wardens. It falls to the PCs to survive this gauntlet (and yes, they can ally/betray/interact with all factions, which is a plus!).

Fleaux! has a setting with an Old World-like vibe (but here the Not-Holy Not-Roman Empire crumbled due to civil war). There is a very brief description of each region, just a paragraph, followed by 6 adventure seeds. Interestingly the main threat appears to be an elven empire from the East that employs changelings as infiltration agents (I loved it). There is considerable racial tension between Dwarves, Elves, and Humans, which lends a nice Witcher flavour to the whole thing. We also get details on Ur-Hundun, a parallel world and possible place of origin of Elves, Dwarves, and magic.

The final pages have references for most of the rules, as well as spells organized in card-like fashion. We also have the (beautiful) character sheet.

Fleaux! is definitely worth a look and it provides a different flavor of OSR, more embedded in European modern fantasy than most games. While it has its own unique setting, I can’t avoid the temptation of using it to run a Warhammer Fantasy roleplaying.