Jackals: A Hidden Jewel of a Game

A Mini-Review of Sorts

It’s been a while since I last posted on this blog. For the last couple of weeks, my energy levels have been low for reasons which have little to do with RPGs and I don’t particularly feel like sharing. The situation did affect my hobby, though. I cut down on games, stopped posting, and have generally gone into dormancy. While I feel I am slowly regaining my balance, I am still a little hesitant to promise anything. The blog is likely to remain in a bit of a hiatus for a while.

However, I’ve read a new RPG cover-to-cover over the last month, and I would like to briefly share my thoughts while the inspiration lasts. The RPG is Jackals: Bronze Age Fantasy Roleplaying from Osprey.

It is a d100 game based on OpenQuest, and it will look immediately familiar to fans of Call of Cthulhu, RuneQuest and the like. However, it offers several innovations over your standard “Basic Roleplaying” chassis.

The setting is what would happen if you put the Old Testament, Homeric epics, and Conan the Barbarian in a blender. The game takes place in a land that looks very much like ancient Israel, geographically. Players can play pseudo-Israelites, pseudo-Egyptians, pseudo-Arabs and pseudo-Greeks. However, it is a world in which the fight between Law and Chaos is very much real. Humans have just overthrown their monstrous overlords two generations earlier and try to rebuild their civilization. The land is dotted with ruins, there is magic, etc. The vibes remind me of Glorantha but also of games such as the Black Sword Hack. Player Characters are Jackals: people living on the fringes of society, exploring ruins, hunting monsters and such.

The Clash System

I will caveat with the one thing I don’t like about this game’s mechanics: all the maths. While I personally don’t struggle with calculations, I know plenty of players who do. Character creation especially is maths-heavy, with derived traits, point buy based on summing up and multiplying attributes, etc. For some, this is not a problem at all. For others, it may be a bit much – especially if you’re used to lighter games. Now, on to the stuff that actually matters.

Although RuneQuest’s lineage is immediately recognizable, the game’s mechanics (called the Clash System) feature some interesting additions that feel very modern. You have the standard d100 stuff: rolling a d100 under your skill value, a classless point-buy system for character creation, skills grow based on usage, etc. However, the game is built on strong mechanical loops and procedures which would be right at home in an OSR game, while also employing some more “storygamey” bits like Fate Points.

Combat has all the familiar elements: initiative, attack rolls followed by damage rolls, morale checks, etc. Each character, however, has a certain number of Clash Points which they can use to defend against attacks, boost their own attacks or do any number of special actions (e.g., cast spells, which this game calls rites). If you decide to “clash” against an attacker, it becomes an opposed roll, and if the defender wins, it is them who deal damage to the attacker. I’ve only tested this system solo so far but it seems to create fun, dynamic encounters where players have a reason to pay attention the whole time: since they have ways of influencing combat outside of their own turn.

One additional advantage of this system is that it allows for characters to feel heroic without being overpowered. Player Characters have higher amounts of Clash Points than typical NPCs which lets them take on overwhelming numbers of enemies without making the combat a slog. There is no HP bloat so your hero can still fall to a couple spear thrusts. They do, however, feel noticeably competent and suitably heroic.

The game takes a page from Into the Odd’s playbook, and it differentiates between two types of Hit Points: Valour and Wounds. Valour is like ItO’s Hit Protection: it is your ability to avoid lasting harm, and it is depleted first. Only after you’re out of Valour do you accrue Wounds. However, the system is a bit more complex than ItO’s. You calculate your Valour at the beginning of each combat, and it is affected by how tired you are (so it ties into the exploration subsystem), and whether you are wounded or not. I like how it gives you a reason to take a good care of your character, and it makes health and wellbeing into a crucial resource.

Finally, if your character gets wounded in battle, you roll on a table to see if they got a scar or a permanent wound. You only do it after the combat is over. This is clever as it keeps the momentum going during the battle but adds real danger even if you haven’t been killed. (And it nudges the players to consider retiring their characters at one point – a game loop I’m discussing later in this article.)

I really like the flexibility of the Clash System, and that it infuses decision-making into every action in combat: do I use my Clash Points now to make my attack more powerful and/or to hit two enemies at once or do I save them for later to defend myself? Or maybe I should try to invoke a rite that creates a protective bubble around me and my fellows? But if it fails, I won’t be able to defend anymore. It’s really fun.

Jackals is a skill-based game, and an interesting detail is that there is good reason to increase your skills above 100%. Firstly, while rolls of 91-100 are always a failure, hard tasks can incur penalties of -25% or -50% to the relevant skill. Secondly, you can pick a talent for each 20% over 100% you get in a skill. The game is a great fit for even very long campaigns: there is an almost infinite amount of interesting character options, and this before we’ve even mentioned seasonal actions and retirement mechanics.

In a nod to Fate and similar games, each PC has three Fate Points which they can use for re-rolls, to add narrative details or to avoid death. In a game with such involved character creation, I appreciate a way to mitigate the risk of unlucky demise. Also, Fate Points fix a potential issue with the talent system. Some actions I would intuitively let any character try are locked behind talents: e.g., disarming an opponent. However, you can spend a Fate Point to use a talent you don’t have in a pinch.

Finally, I really like what the author did with adversaries. NPC and monster stats are strongly simplified compared to PCs, so it is easy to wing them if needed. However, the enemies in the bestiary have a variety of attacks which are baked in directly into their attack roll.

E.g., a wolf has a Combat skill of 50. Depending on its attack roll, it will:

• On 1-15, it snaps at a target, dealing damage and then disengaging.

• On 16-35, it tries to hamstring its target, dealing damage and potentially reducing its move and Clash Points.

• On 36-50, it makes three attacks, biting and clawing at one to three targets.

• On 51+, it misses.

I’ve only seen this solution in Dragonbane so far, and it provides a lot of flavor and variety to combat without adding complexity or mental load to the GM.

There’s obviously more to the game rules. I am glossing over the magic system (which is very flavorful), details of character creation, etc. All in all, the mechanics feel satisfyingly crunchy without being overwhelming, the various subsystems are connected to each other in logical ways, and I could see myself running both a one-shot and a campaign of Jackals.

Travel and Downtime

Wilderness exploration and travel are abstracted away into an OSR-like procedure. (In fact, the author mentioned that the first drafts of the game started as an OSR project, and it shows.) You test your Survival skill, and depending on how well you do, you might get fatigued (reducing your Valour, see above) and/or have an encounter. Random encounter tables are given for the two main areas of the setting. I like that the encounters are not always about combat. You might come across an old ruin, for example, creating a new adventure hook. All in all, it feels streamlined enough to not become the main focus of the game but still make travel feel risky, as it should in a Bronze Age world where monsters roam the wilderness.

A real highlight for me is the Seasonal Actions system. The game assumes a cycle of two seasons in a year: wet and dry. For each season, you will participate in up to two adventures, and then spend time in a local community. You can help with harvest, try to find a patron, buy a house, found a school, research, etc. It creates a nice ebb and flow to the game that gives you a reason to invest in a place and try to grow roots. I wish more games had systems like this as opposed to player characters being edgy outsiders with no stake in anything. As you know from my previous posts, I like RPGs that emphasize the human condition, and what’s more human than looking for a place to belong.

Jackals are outsiders who live on the fringes of their society but their quest for a community to call their own and retire in ties the game loop together. In fact, the game expects you to retire your adventurer at some point, and rewards you for it. They become an NPC but you can still partly control them (or even use them as a patron), and they impart some of their experience on your new Jackal. If your adventurer dies, you don’t gain these benefits. This dynamic is highly thematic. It reminds me of Odyssey in its longing search for a home.

It is also something especially post-OSR games should try to emulate and learn from. It roots the campaign in the game world directly, de-emphasizing the specific group of PCs that make it up. From the get go, you know your goal isn’t to tell the story of this one guy, and if they die, it is a tragedy. You tell the story about the wider world, and your one guy might become a mover and shaker in the region and send your second guy to adventure. Your friend’s first character might die but their second one might become a powerful ruin delver or monster hunter. Each player’s characters can have different trajectories without derailing the game or making it unsatisfying. Brilliant design!

Law and Chaos

Finally, the setting embodies the cyclical nature of time the Ancients believed in, with Law and Chaos gaining the upper hand in turn. In times of Law, civilization flourishes; in times of Chaos, it gets swept away by tides of monsters and dark magics. This creates a familiar points-of-light setting known from many RPGs but with a decidedly Near-Eastern twist, and an internal logic that is so often lacking in those other games.

The influence of Chaos is expressed through Corruption points which characters (both PCs and NPCs) can accrue through chaotic actions. This can mean practicing dark magic but it can also mean more mundane activities such as murder, betrayal or bribery. The values attached to the individual actions are rather high, and if PCs don’t want to see themselves become corrupted beyond redemption, they will need to either embody heroic ideals or regularly atone for their actions (which is a part of the seasonal actions system).

The battle of Law and Chaos is the cornerstone of the setting. Chaotic beings (from bandits to monsters to evil sorcerers) are going to be your main adversaries, and ruins of ancient peoples from previous eras of Law are going to be places to dive into for treasure and knowledge. It is all pretty typical, but again, executed in a flavorful, thematic way.

The Verdict

The only criticism I can honestly level at Jackals is the amount of typos in the book. They don’t detract too much from the enjoyment of the book (and I’ve seen worse in the RPG space) but I would’ve expected a better job from Osprey. Also, the book is in an A5 format. While I love the compact size, it forced them to opt for a smallish font which my aging eyes didn’t appreciate.

Beyond these pretty minor gripes, it is an excellent game. It combines a lot of things I like in my RPGs: tons of flavor without overwhelming you with lore, rules that actually provide interesting options to players, robust procedures that make it easy to run and provide a rhythm to the campaign. I initially bought it on an impulse: it’s the only role-playing game released by Osprey that has gotten any expansions, and I was curious what was so special about it. I am really glad I did. Not only is it one of the best low-tech settings I’ve seen (I wouldn’t say it’s better than Glorantha but it’s certainly more approachable, and more directly calls on themes we know from pop culture such as the Bible, Homer, and Ancient Egypt); it is a solid game I got genuinely excited about. For now, I will dabble with a solo run but it is a strong contender for my next game when my current campaign is over.