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In Short

The Good:  The sub-systems used in HotB do a great job of building atmosphere while providing easy to use mechanics for resolving situations. The focus on maintaining noble lands is both fun and welcome.

The Bad: The book's organization is a little confusing and results in a difficult to assimilate product. The very casual writing style used by the author may annoy some readers.

The Physical Thing

All that griping aside, there are two things that greatly ameliorate this. First, the PDF is $5. For the cost of a standard gaming book you could buy this game for your entire group and still have money left to print off everything you want. Second, the game does have good online support that aids navigation and using the mechanics. Because of this, my score reflects the many elements of online support that help make this a great game and not the core book alone.

Under the Cover

This game was written partially as a response to D&D's tradition of having powerful monster killing heroes who have little contact with the political power structure and tend to continue on one quest after another with little care for the structure of the society they live in. Wick is partially deconstructing that by choosing to focus on those who are running the society and casting the adventurer into the role of a paid, temporary problem solver who is little more than a minor NPC in the noble's story. It's a fun change and the setting does a good job of supporting it through fairly traditional fantasy elements. Monsters most definitely do exist in the setting, and having a farmland threatened by a hungry ogre is certainly enough for a Ven noble to want to act. It's just that the Ven noble will act by hiring a group of skilled mercenaries to kill the ogre. The real fun comes in where there's only one such group of mercenaries, and a hated rival has already contracted them. Now the noble must play a dangerous political game or risk losing a valuable resource.

The setting is a somewhat traditional fantasy affair. Monsters, called orks, do exist and may trouble a Ven noble's lands. Magic, with roots drinking deep of blood, exists though it is generally outlawed. Magical materials, such as orichalcum, exist though they are very expensive to have created. This is all really just backdrop, though, with the trappings being nothing more than elements to work into stories of passion, betrayal, revenge, that sort of thing. It's a setting that will be easy to identify with after a single read of the book.

With a better understanding of what the book is about taken care of, allow me to switch focus onto how the book goes about achieving this. The core resolution mechanic involves rolling d6 dice based on a character's relevant Virtue (such as Cunning) as well as any additional dice from relevant character qualities, such as Aspects or a character's secret name. The difficulty is a standard 10. If the player meets or beats that then the player narrates the conflict. If the GM wins then the GM narrates. That's the core of gameplay. When opposed rolls occur then the participants roll off and determine how many facts they can narrate about the scene, taking turns narrating those facts.

In play what this is meant to do is force players to talk about what qualities of their character are driving the action forward, take interesting risks, and then narrate out the scene based on trying to obtain clear objectives. I found the game to be at its best with an extremely harsh GM willing to rip characters all over the place as necessary. That's not to say that sometimes it isn't more fun to do a “you succeed but...” moment when the GM wins the roll, but the tension in the scene and the stakes being high tends to produce a lot more fun. Death can potentially be on the table, though it's difficult to achieve, but most conflicts are likely to result in embarrassment, lost secrets, new information, and more of that sort of thing.

The game isn't a good match for everyone. Importantly, shy players or those who use gaming to unwind and don't want to bring their best efforts will likely not enjoy this game. Additionally, any group that is uncomfortable with broad story rights should avoid the game. This is very much a “story game,” a RPG concerned more with who has a right to authorship (to add details and narrate scenes) than any sort of task resolution. Task resolution, as a concept, is something HotB cares very little about. How the task is resolve, what is lost or gained, what the impact is on the story, these are the things the game is really concerned with.

While the resolution mechanic is very easy to work with, the game does have one other big mechanic that is worth exploring. The passage of time is important in HotB since much of the fun involves the long term. Romance, wealth, magic, social climbing, these things all take time. Each character has a noble domain composed of a variety of territories, some of them mundane while others are exceptional. These territories must be maintained and expanded, or else a noble's power begins to wane. A typical season, then, involves a few game sessions and allows the characters to perform big season actions. During each season the character must deal with problems encountered in her lands, gain benefit from those lands, and also manage whatever plots and plans she has in mind. Want to learn a magic ritual? That's a season action. Want to compose an epic play for your beloved? Again, a season action is used for this. These cultivated resources may provide bonuses in play, allowing a player to more easily narrate events. More importantly, the season system provides much needed structure to play and prevents the group from getting bogged down in an extremely small time frame.

All of this comes together to create stories of noble dynasties and the petty passions that rule their lives, encompassing lust for power, glory, love, lust, and more. A huge amount of cooperative story telling takes place in what quickly becomes a rich and easy to understand setting that does a wonderful job of supporting the goals of play.

My Take

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