Tabletop Game / Oko Yrrhedesa

The 2nd edition cover, deemed more lawyer-friendly

Oko Yrrhedesa (English The Eye of Yrrhedes) is a Polish pen-and-paper role-playing game written by Andrzej Sapkowski, first released in 1990, then re-edited and re-published a few times throughout the 90s.

After the fall of communist rule in 1989 and, along with it, removal of censorship and the opening of borders, Poland gained unrestricted access to Western media. This also included tabletop games, among them, role-playing ones. While the concept of RPG had been around since at least the early 80s and a handful of enthusiasts were already trying their hands at homebrewing, along with using copied rulesets sourced abroad, there were no actual game releases. And even after 1989, translations were few and far between, usually done unprofessionally (not to mention illegally) and so was the initial phase of distribution. As such, there was ever-increasing demand to have a fully playable game that's in Polish and also easily accessible to new players, both with their ruleset and even such banal things as not using "exotic" dice, which were hard to come by.

The Eye of Yrrhedes started out as an enthusiast project by Sapkowski himself, back then titled For those who for the first time.... The first version of it was printed as a 29-page article in a Fenix fantasy magazine in early 1990. The article covered what a tabletop RPG is, an example of gameplay, and, probably more importantly, a short, but consistent set of rules. Despite teasing with the promise of a full version coming out soon, the project fell through. It wasn't until 1994 and the re-release of the article (with a few editorial changes) in Sword and Sorcery RPG magazine that the game started to make any actual splash. Up to the point where that specific, 4th issue of S&S is considered pivotal for the Polish RPG scene. The publisher of the magazine made a deal with Sapkowski to release the game as a full, stand-alone rulebook.

In June 1995, the game, now titled The Eye of Yrrhedes and over 300 pages long, hit stores. The initial article was turned into the opening chapter of the game, and was followed by three, much longer chapters: covering magic, an extensive set of tips for game masters and the titular scenario, "The Eye of the Yrrhedes", as a ready-to-use Dungeon Crawling module, with maps already provided. Aside for Sapkowski, it was co-written by Jacek Brzeziński and Andrzej Miszkurka, two bigwigs in the Polish TTRPG scene back then. It is contested to this day who exactly wrote which part of the new elements, given that there are clear signs of both Brzeziński and Miszkurka heavy involvement when compared with their other works. The original article and the rest of the book also significantly differ in approach to game, first postulating near-free form gameplay, the other being geared towards (an almost obsessive) simulation approach. They did, however, retain the main advantage of the article version: a gameplay loop that's blitzing fast.

The book sold out within just a few weeks and started circulating in the fandom, especially among players that were either just starting out or simply couldn't access anything "better" (read: more established). On popular demand, the so-called "second edition" was released in 1999. It added a chapter with rules for character progression and a new module to it, Yarra, River of Death.

However, despite its near-precursor position, The Eye never gained a lasting following. The initial Fenix articles were quickly forgotten, the mid-90s craze around it was flash-in-a-pan and after the '99 re-release, the game completely disappeared by the early 00s. Ironically, what was the strength of the whole idea behind the game was seen in Poland as its weakness: it was considered "lesser" due to perceived simplicity, a lack of support materials or even an established setting, or the fact it was significantly different in tone from the predominately Darker and Edgier approach to TTRPG that dominated the Polish scene of that era. Even the fact it was written by Andrzej Sapkowski didn't seem to help at all, despite him being at the peak of his popularity around the same time period - and it's very likely that without his name on the cover, the game would be an extremely short-lived project.

As for the mechanics themselves, the game is extremely simple, especially in the article version. First and foremost, the game is designed for Dungeon Crawling and similar adventures, which means it predominately focuses on combat. For the most part, the game only uses d6 (and if one ignores the proposed magic system, d6 is all that's needed). Characters are generated through rolling for their stats and there are only four of them: Endurance (as 12+2d6), Strength, Dexterity and Intelligence (each as 6+d6). A sub-stat, Combat Proficiency, is derived from the average of Strength and Dexterity and comes with further bonuses at really high ranges (maxing out at 14). Wizards, if made, are by design of the squishy variety, being just plain terrible in direct combat and physically weaker. All characters are considered to be adventurers above human average - and even their stats by default can't be less than 7, while typical humans are 6 in all fields. Depending on the version (and chapter) of the game, there might be a severe disconnect with approaching situations: sometimes suggesting using GM fiat (especially in the article version), sometimes using extensive rolling for stats and GM-made tables (particularly in parts clearly written by Brzeziński).

While not exactly at peak popularity back in the day, the game experienced somewhat of a renaissance of interest by mid-to-late 2010s, on the general rise of popularity of so-called retro-gaming. It is nowdays seen in Poland as "a little game that could, but didn't" and often times suggested as a homegrown alternative for retro-players that pick clones of B/X and similar games, especially given D&D wasn't a big part of the Polish RPG scene until the mid-00s and thus hardly being seen as "retro".

The game is also notable for heavily influencing The Witcher: Game of Imagination, even if ironically not a single person working on The Eye of Yrrhedes was involved.

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Tropes related to the game include:

• The Ace:
  • While unlikely, it is possible to roll a character with 22+ Endurance (or even 24) and 12 in all three stats. For the purpose of the game, that's total overkill and in both scenarios provided, such characters in normal circumstances are completely immune to a variety of situational dangers, as they just can't fail their checks.
  • If the average of Strength and Dexterity comes to 10, such a character receives +1 to their Combat Proficiency. If it's 12, they get +2 instead.
  • Similarly, a magic user gets +2 Magick Capacity if they have Intelligence of 10 or higher. Unlike the above examples, this can make or break such characters, as you want to have the biggest possible bang right out of the gate with mages, or else they won't last long.
• Action Girl:
  • Gender is of zero issue or influence over characters, so by default any female character will be one, given your literal job is adventuring.
  • Bevin Lagerfeld from Yarra is an NPC that was the only female crewman of Cormorant that managed to outlive every other member of the expedition. She is also a surprisingly good combatant despite her half-crazed state when found out by players. Thanks to the game mechanics, unless she dies in direct combat - which is unlikely - she will outlive the party, too, as she comes with hard-earned survival skills and immunity to local diseases, thus being unable to die due to mundane circumstances.
• An Adventurer Is You: As mentioned above, your character is by design a roaming adventurer, ready to slay monsters and loot treasures. The rules outright state that no matter how weak your character might seem (or even if you get very bad rolls during char-gen), you are still exceptional by the standards of the game - the baseline is 6, and PCs can't have less than 7 in their stats.
• All Swords Are the Same: Not just swords, but weapons in general. They are all tiered into specific categories: light, medium, regular and heavy. Swords are in regular, but so are axes, clubs, spears and so on. They all work the same, with no special features, and all deal the same d6 damage. The only "other" swords are the two-handed ones, which fall under the heavy category, along with a variety of polearms, and they all deal the same d10 (or 2d6-1) damage.
• The Apprentice: Directly invoked toward any magic-using player character. You aren't actual wizards and sorceresses, but merely freshly-faced apprentices with a crazy penchant for risking their lives. This also explains in-universe why mages as PCs are all-around weaklings: no actual, self-respecting magic users with decades of experience would leave their study or tenured position to roam the world.
• Arbitrary Minimum Range: The book version of the rules outright states that bows and crossbows can't be used "up close" and there must be at least some space between the shooter and the target.
• Armor and Magic Don't Mix: Exaggerated. Not only wizards receive a penalty to their spell-casting when wearing any armour, they also get a -2 penalty to all their Dexterity check. This comes entirely from being a wizard, rather than a stat cap, so you can end up with a mage that has better stats than a "regular" adventurer and still end up being worse off.
• Armor Is Useless: Zig-Zagged. Armour is completely useless against certain special attacks, like being blasted by poisonous gas or similar, but other than that, it is always effective - even against magic attacks.
• Artifact of Doom: The titular Eye of Yrrhedes is an evil, insanity-inducing artefact left by a long-gone civilisation. The module ends up facing its own security system, but the ultimate goal is to prevent it from falling into anyone's hands.
• Awesome, but Impractical: For the most part, playing as a mage is more detrimental than helpful, as it applies a bunch of powerful debuffs over a random-number character generation, which more often than not leads to characters that just can't survive a single adventure. If that wasn't enough, budget on spells is also random, which significantly limits the choice, and all of them can backfire and even backfire in a spectacular way. On top of that, due to the way the magic system works, it requires additional, d10 dice and the signature speed of the system goes to the bin, as each spell requires four different rolls on two different sets of dice. Oh, did we mention you can only cast a spell only once per three turns?
• Badass Normal: You! Every PC is by default at least a tiny bit above average, but other than that, it is just a human like every other, with no special powers of any kind. Yet both of the pre-written modules pit the party against unspeakable horrors, armies of undead, oversized anthropods, an entire goblin tribe and a random handful of Giant Flyers, including a dragon.
• Big Badass Battle Sequence: Yarra scenario has an obligatory confrontation with an entire tribe of goblins, already waiting for the boat to reach their territories and the ambush they've prepared. It has two distinct stages. First, there is a log-jam on the river, which has to be rammed through and depending on how well it went, leads to different numbers of goblins reaching Dragonfly before it can continue its cruise, forcing a skirmish on a deck as they try to overpower the crew. Then, just when the players are let to believe their troubles are over, they end up stuck in a sandbank. While the goblins are preparing their entire tribe and help of a few ogres as their "siege" weapons. If the party decides to stay and fight, it's potentially 4-8 characters against hundreds of attackers, desperately holding the line. Or at least trying to do so until elves show up and help the crew of Dragonfly, adding to the fry another few dozen combatants.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: A large selection of monsters that appear in both scenarios are oversized bugs of various kinds and shapes, all perfectly capable of tearing off limbs and swallowing characters whole.
• Boring, but Practical: Getting a shield and a helmet as soon as feasible. They are cheap and relatively common (can even be looted from enemies or found in dungeons), but they still provide a very handy damage reduction.
• Bow and Sword in Accord: Since the game lacks a skill system and using ranged weapons is based on a Dexterity check (rather than Combat Proficiency), as long as a character has half-decent Dexterity, they can carry around a bow for optional ranged attacks. And said Dexterity is half the equation for Combat Proficiency anyway.
• Bows Versus Crossbows: If players insist on getting more supplies in Yarra before departure, they will be provided with a handful of bows and large supply of arrows. Later on, they will stumble upon a group of elven rangers, all armed with their special bows, keeping their land safe from goblin incrusions and a group of explicitly evil, cut-throat river pirates, that are all armed with crossbows. If you face the latter using bows, they will go into a frenzy, indicating they already got their taste of elven archery.
• Brainwashed: Certain spells are about influencing or outright bending the will of their targets. Beware of them backfiring, however, or you can end up hypnotising yourself!
• Breather Episode: They are discussed as a concept in the book version of the rules, suggesting to let the party recover at least partially after particularly tough challenges. Also, "Yarra" scenario comes with a few notable ones:
  • In the case of Dragonfly requiring repair after crashing through the White Bull waterfall, the area surrounding the waterfall is peaceful and free of malaria. The main issue is time wasted on the repair, rather than external dangers.
  • Since Cul-de-sac Marshland can trap the party in malaria-ridden bog for up to two weeks, and with no place to camp, after leaving the place and Yarra entering the Lake of the Rising Sun, there is a spawning pool right at the mouth of the lake full of easy-to-catch fish. The scenario outright tells the GM to let players camp and rest there for up to 3 days to get back to strength.
  • The final stretch of the journey is intended as such. Shortly after dragging Dragonfly through the near-dry marsh, there are no more pre-defined encounters, and random tables are reduced only to a small handful of non-dangerous ones (only slowing the journey down, but with no additional effects). However, that part of the journey goes through a Death World: there are no animals, the marshy forest on both shores is decaying, and mosquitoes are flying in huge swarms, making malaria almost guaranteed. Easily three out of five parties that reach this far perish due to either lack of food or diseases, despite being safe from any sort of danger.
• Cap: Inverted. When making a non-human character, it is pre-requested to have specific stats at specific ranges: dwarves must be stronger and more durable, elves require higher dexterity and intelligence, halflings must be dexterous and gnomes require slightly higher values of all stats. Any races players want to add on their own should follow the scheme.
• Cast from Hit Points: Two varieties of it:
  • Once they run out of their current Magick Capacity, mages can continue casting from their Endurance.
  • Various spells either outright require to directly cast them from Endurance or backfire by taking them from the mage. Most notably, a completely botched healing spell will harm the target, but also subtract Endurance from the wizard casting it.
• Chainmail Bikini: As far as the rules are concerned, any chainmail that isn't full body is treated as light armour and thus reduces the damage only by -1 (as opposed to -2). It is still better than not wearing any armour at all.
• The Coconut Effect: From time to time, the descriptions of rules are peppered with random rants of authors, complaining about either conventions or cliches. At the same time, they reinforce other conventions and stereotypes, citing "genre realism".
• Concealment Equals Cover: Due to the abstraction of the combat system, any concealment is equal to effective cover. As long as the thing you're hiding behind still exists, that is.
• Cool Sword: In general, any sword that's one way or another inbound with magic can qualify:
  • Few are scattered through the labyrinth of tunnels in the "The Eye of Yrrhedes" scenario. Notably, not only are they exclusive to each other, but all of them are hidden and can be obtained only via random chance.
  • Anhalas, the leader of the elves from "Yarra" scenario, carries a magic sword that not only deals d10 damage rather than d6, but also a +1 to rolls against orcs and goblins - and the area is teeming with goblins.
• Critical Existence Failure:
  • As long as your character has at least 1 point of Endurance left, he's no worse to wear than if being at full capacity.
  • Played with in "Yarra", where losing more than half of Endurance while sick from malaria means a permanent decrease of Strength for the rest of the scenario, but otherwise, everything else is the same as normally.
• Critical Failure: Spells have a two-tier critical failure system. In case of a failure to cast, the GM checks how severe the failure is. 5 out of 6 cases, it just means nothing happened at all, but in the case of a critical failure, each spell applies instead its negative effect. No other aspect of the game has critical failures, which only adds to the reasons why magic is Awesome, but Impractical.
• Critical Hit: Notably, the game has no such mechanics whatsoever.
• Damage Reduction:
  • The basic role of armour of any kind, shields included. Due to the way gear operates, it's an additive modifier to incoming damage: -1 for carrying a shield, helmet or wearing light armour (each), -2 for full body mail and -3 for plate armour. A full "set" of a shield, a helmet and plate armour (-5 in total) can render a character almost entirely impervious to damage.
  • Certain creatures can come with "natural" armour due to having particularly thick or protective hides, shells and so on. It works just the same as armour worn by characters.
• Death from Above: "Yarra" has two encounters that can end like this, both optional and both leading to a Non-Standard Game Over - along with the author calling the party out for their stupidity.
  • There is an island with a roc nest. Should the party tamper with it or, God forbid, decide to destroy or simply eat the egg, once the adult bird shows up, it will attack by hurling boulders from above. If the boulder is thrown on Dragonfly, the vessel the party is travelling on, it will sink it, ending the adventure. The only way to prevent it is to deal an absurd amount of damage to the giant bird in the very first round, which might be outright impossible if the party lacks a sufficient number of capable archers.
  • Soon after that, one of the dead-ends on the river will lead right into the lair of a black dragon. Unless the party retreats on merely hearing its roar from afar, the giant lizard will attack, in a single swoop from the air attacking Dragonfly and sinking it the very next round. Even if the party will somehow defeat the dragon, the result of its attack will take two weeks to repair, which might end up being lethal by itself.
• Death of a Thousand Cuts: Any sufficiently large number of small and normally not that dangerous creatures can lead to this, especially when lacking armour. And if horde rules are applied and enemies are treated as a single entity, their damage becomes outright unavoidable: ten rats trying to take a bite from an adventurer will be shrugged off due to wearing a padded jacket (essentially 10 times 1 damage vs. -1 damage reduction, netting 0). But a swarm of ten rats will deal 5 damage, which even after accounting for the jacket will still be 4 damage taken.
• Dinosaurs Are Dragons: Played With. The game uses both actual, fantasy dragons (still with a few twists and turns), a dragon-like creatures that only look like them and a handful of dinosaur species that are treated even in-universe as something else entirely. This would carry over to The Witcher: Game of Imagination later on.
• Disc-One Nuke:
  • Depending on which version of the rules is used, heavy weapons can be this. In the 2d6-1 variant^note Actually, it's 2d6-1 and -2 if the outcome is 12, due to probabilities being at play, rolling in the range of 6-8 is the most likely outcome, which translates into a consistent damage output, along with a window for dealing up to 10 damage. And even in a "regular" d10 roll for heavy weapons, there is simply a far, far bigger range for damage dealt than with a d6 of regular weapons. It only stops being significant once magical items start to enter the equipment, but there might be a magical heavy weapon, too. Of course, such a character also starts without any armour and can't use shields at all, but the benefits heavily outweigh that.
  • Since starting spells can be picked at the player's leisure, a particularly lucky wizard with a large enough Magick Capacity might start with some really powerful spells. But it's all up to chance, rather than conscious choice, during character creation.
• Do Not Go Gentle: Certain enemies described in both scenarios are outright noted as too feral, too aggressive or too stupid to know they should back off when their comrades start dropping dead and will fight against the party till their bitter end. In the section dedicated to GMing, there is a sub-chapter about having a small table and additional rules and suggestions to decide when and if enemies might try to keep fighting and do as much harm as they can to the PCs even if the sane choice would be to flee.
• Druid: Cindaria Alkhaar, Cindy for friends, is an NPC druidess that can join the party during the "Yarra" scenario. She's adept at healing, both regular and magical, knows a few protective and healing spells and can handle herself with wild plants. She also doesn't follow the PC-specific rules for mages and, as such, is far more capable of surviving the perilous journey. By implication, druids are a thing in the setting of that particular adventure, with a Sapkowski-specific Wiccan bent to them.
• Dumb Muscle: Entirely possible, given the RNG nature of character creation. In "Yarra" scenario, such a character is a godsend against one of the obstacles: their idiocy becomes weaponised Ignorance Is Bliss against having to go shoulder-deep into a bog teeming with leeches and dangerous bugs, and raw Strength is pre-requested to haul Dragonfly through that stretch of mud and to not get sick from all the stuff attaching to the body.
• Dump Stat: For the most part, Intelligence is completely useless. The only situations where it comes into play are either when someone decides to play as a mage or as some cruel "gotch ya" moment where Only Smart People May Pass.
• Empty Levels: Mages get their Combat Proficiency rounded down, rather than up. Thus, if either their Strength or Dexterity is an odd number, they won't benefit from it.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Grand majority of spells as provided have direct, descriptive names in original Polish (things like "Heal", "Invisible", "Unlock" and so on^{Grammar curio} They are almost all presented as perfective verbs of a first person to indicate the fact that the spell effect has been invoked and magic has been commanded by the person casting it, and the spell is in effect - and as such, their short, commanding nature translates rather poorly to non-Slavic languages) and the rulebook suggests that any additional ones made by players and the GM should follow suit to keep things easy to keep track of.
• Exotic Weapon Supremacy: The only way for a weapon to be in any way outside the regular is either by being enchanted or specially made. They are also, on average, easy to tell as something better, since they tend to look fancy or at least bear magical runes on them.
• Experience Points: Notably, the original ruleset lacked any sort of character progression, and Andrzej Sapkowski outright tells the reader that having any sort of character progression would completely unbalance the existing rules... which didn't prevent Jacek Brzeziński from adding rules for experience points and character progression in the "2nd edition" of the book version. The resulting system bears resemblance to both Dungeons & Dragons (experience points for slain enemies, with it being the main source of it) and Old World of Darkness (experience granted from learning or experiencing something new, being creative as both character and player and staying true to one's own character). The whole thing, while looking impressive at first glance due to the length of the chapter, was clearly bolted to the game in the last minute without much thought, or, for that matter, playtesting put into it.
• Geek Physiques: Wizards as player characters. Citing "realism", the game insists that someone who spends a few years of their life reading dusty books just can't be physically fit and should be frail and less capable. For the rest of their lives.
• Giant Flyer: There are a few giant birds and also flying dinosaurs scattered through the modules. Probably the most infamous is the roc guarding its nest in Yarra scenario, which can very quickly escalate into a TPK.
• The Great Repair: In "Yarra", it is possible to get Dragonfly completely destroyed in a particularly unlucky attempt to cross the White Bull waterfall. However, the potential survivors can work with what's left of their ship and the wreckage of Dolphin, a vessel of a previous expedition, to cobble together a new, functional ship. If Vitring, the helmsman NPC the expedition starts with, is still alive, he will name it Dragonfly II. However, not only does rebuilding Dragonfly take up to two weeks, but the resulting vessel will always require an additional hour of repairs to whatever damage it will suffer during random encounters. And this can become a complete nightmare in the final part of the scenario, where out of the three encounters possible, two cause damage and require d3 and d6 hours of repairs by themselves.
• Failed a Spot Check: The game extensively uses a variety of spot checks and spot check modifiers, both in the description of the rules and in both scenarios that came out with it, with quite punitive outcomes. What makes it unusual is the fact the game doesn't have any sort of Perception or similar stat and uses for spot checks either Intelligence or even Dexterity (when quick reaction time is needed). Particularly standing out are:
  • Certain checks aren't even of the stats, but a simple d6 roll, and depending on the outcome, characters' attention was either on a specific object (making it more of a random loot check), danger or a trap in front of them, or some important clue. But you might as well roll a number indicating "failure", thus stepping right into a bear trap or finding nothing interesting among the pile of bones in a monster's lair.
  • A shortcut in "The Eye", which allows the party to avoid 1/3 of the entire labyrinth access to and a double check (thus geared for failure) to get a particularly powerful magical sword, hidden beneath an old statue.
  • Checks from "Yarra" to avoid being attacked by a snake waiting for prey on branches hanging over the river - either your character reacts fast enough, or it's an additional encounter.
• Failure Is the Only Option: Yarra, River of Death scenario has a few moments that lead to an obligatory fail, no matter what the players decide to do:
  • Directly invoked with the basic rules of the travel: any attempt to try to navigate after night will lead to crossing a single "section" of the river and then getting into a collision with either the river bank, a stone, a bunch of logs, or at least a sandbank, which will then result in d6+1 hours of repairs. The rule exists entirely to make sure players will stop for the night, rather than keep pushing, and even at the lowest possible roll, the time needed for repairs will outweigh the gains of the distance traveled.
  • When going through the centre of the goblin territory, no matter which branch of the river will be taken, both have a sandbank that will immobilise Dragonfly. The right branch is still a tiny bit safer, as it offers more distance from the goblins, but the ship is stuck anyway.
  • After reaching Cul-de-sac Marshland, no matter what the crew will attempt to do, they are lost among the floating islands and high reeds, being forced to meander through the whole thing.
• Falling Damage:
  • The game is particularly punitive with it, even in the original article printed in Fenix. When your max possible Endurance is 24, taking d6 damage when jumping down three metres is a lot. The book version of the rules further expanded on it, making it even worse: you can survive an encounter with a giant dragon just fine, but fall from a flight of stairs and you will die.
  • And then there is also an infamous totem pole to climb on in "The Eye" scenario, where each failure deals 2d6 damage, and you have to succeed climbing it, or else you are stuck in a room without a way out.
• Fanservice: The book version of the game has a handful of illustrations by Jarosław Musiał, an iconic ink artist of the era. Pretty much every single female is an eye-candy with a big bust and little clothing, except maybe Chainmail Bikini.
• Fear Is the Appropriate Response:
  • There are specific rules for NPCs and monsters in combat that cause them to either suffer penalties when combat starts going sour for them or outright flee, usually after their leader and/or a sufficient number of fellow combatants have been killed.
  • In "Yarra", when facing an entire goblin tribe and Dragonfly being stuck on a sandbank, the goblins start to prepare for attack. They do so by chanting a magical song, causing the crew on board to start trembling with fear. Anyone failing a resolve check will simply flee in terror, and if more than half of the crew (crew, not the party) flee, then the remaining characters must pass second check, even harder than the first one. Failing it will make them flee, too. Oh, and certain NPCs will flee by default, even without any check, which might start the Disaster Dominoes.
• Forest Ranger: Elves are played up for this archetype in the snippet rules explaining how to make one. The ones in "Yarra" are this trope, too, waging a war to defend "their" forest against invading goblin tribes, while being a group of bow-totting, reclusive nature lovers.
• The GM Is a Cheating Bastard: Played With. The rules explain in detail when and if to cheat and mislead players, along with having a set of rules where to never attempt that.
• Inevitable Waterfall: There are two of those in "Yarra". Unlike typical examples, they are heavily foreshadowed, with all encountered NPCs informing the party about both of them and how dangerous they are^note And if players decide to hire fishermen as their guides and help, they will outright demand to disembark and continue on feet, rather than trying to brave the waterfall on deck of Dragonfly, with White Bull being the final frontier of all pre-existing maps and charters. But there is only one way forward to explore the rest of the river, so the players have to risk the drop, which can have grave consequences they will be well aware of when making the decision.
• Insistent Terminology:
  • It's not Hit Points. It's Endurance. Except it's not a stat, but a HP counter.
  • The game overuses the term "realism" to cover a variety of elements, including both genre conventions and cliches, even the deeply ingrained ones, along with selectively applied real-life physics. None of it has anything to do with real life or, for that matter, believability or the setting's internal consistency, being simply a highly arbitrary set of restrictions and rules. It is especially obvious in bits written by Brzeziński and Miszkurka, and particularly whenever they end up having a tangent about trying to rationalise some coconut effect.
• Instant Leech: Just Fall in Water!: "Yarra" has such situations both as a random result from the table (either after falling into the water or during disembarking for a night camp), along with obligatory leeches in a few places that everyone will get when getting into the water or mud. The problem with leeches isn't that they're disgusting, but that they increase the likelihood of getting sick, and in this particular scenario, that's a life-threatening situation.
• Global Currency: The standard, ubiquitous gold pieces. Everything is measured and accounted in them.
• Good Old Fisticuffs: The absolutely desperate "weapon" is to use your fist. They deal exactly 1 damage. If using rules for character progression, a character can specialise in such way of fighting, but it only increases their attack chance, not damage.
• Honest Rolls Character: Char-gen takes about 30 seconds and consists of a 12+2d6 roll for your HP and three 6+d6 rolls to decide your character's Strength, Dexterity and Intelligence. You then write down the average of Strength and Dexterity as Combat Proficiency, rounding up. You rolled high? Great. You rolled a set of 1s and 2s? Sucks to be you. This is especially prominent in two cases:
  • Combat Proficiency gets a +1 if the average of Strength and Dexterity is 9.5 or higher, and +2 when it's 12. This makes the character significantly better in combat. Not getting that +1 is a pretty big hindrance to being useful in combat, which is 90% of what the mechanics are for.
  • When playing as a magic user, your default physical stats are 4 instead of 6 and your HP pool is also gimped. If you roll low for physical stats, you take the already Squishy Wizard default into a new low. You also have to roll for your Magick Capacity, which is how good you are at magic in the first place, making it very likely that you will be not just squishy, but also inept.
• House Rules: Heavily encouraged by the game by default and also discussed in length in the book variant, with various suggestions and ideas to consider. A popular hobby back when the game was relatively new was trying to follow the various mentions of "realism" and expand the rules toward a more simulation-heavy approach.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: Having Dexterity of 12 means a character can't fail the Dexterity check needed for using ranged weapons, or at the very least is unlikely to do so even with situational modifiers. Since successful ranged attacks directly deal damage, rather than being a contest, this makes high Dexterity PCs excellent ranger material.
• Improvised Weapon: An option for ranged combat. The game doesn't go into specifics, but since they deal only 1 damage, the implication is that they are random, small objects hurled in the general direction of the target.
• Interspecies Romance: In "Yarra", human druidess Cindy will always fall for the leader of the elves, Anhalas, with him also being smitten by her. This unfortunately means Cindy will leave the expedition about 2/3 into it.
• Kidnapping Bird of Prey: One of the special attacks of a roc is doing this to its target. The result is either being fed to its chick or, far more likely, being just dropped from a really high altitude. Either way, it's a nasty way to die.
• Killer Game Master: The game, at least in the book version, at times has pretty bizarre entries, indicating not only that such an attitude is fine, but even suggesting it twice as a way to "get back" on a player - despite a mere page earlier talking about more mature ways of solving conflicts within the group and sorting out problems with players. Then there is the absolute love for lethal traps and encounters that are purely up to chance and encouraging to keep creating luck-based obstacles, with absolutely zero remorse, even if that might lead to a Total Party Kill.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: Both within the scenarios and as a suggestion to GMs on making combat more interesting, there are tables to tell when the enemy "horde" will simply turn tails, rather than mindlessly letting themselves slaughter.
• Life Will Kill You: It is far more likely to die in Yarra, River of Death due to starvation or malaria (or a combination of those) than due to some fantastical dangers or even direct combat. The final stretch of the journey is, in fact, a long journey through an empty, dead land, where not only there are no pre-defined encounters, but even random encounters are limited to the non-dangerous, trivial ones (but still slowing down the journey) - and it's still where the majority of expeditions perish due to lack of supplies and medicine.
• Limited Loadout: The game spends quite some time discussing the concept, but other than logically obvious things (like the inability to carry a shield when wielding a two-handed polearm), it doesn't provide any concrete rules and leaves it to GM interpretation.
• Loads and Loads of Rules: Defied and mocked in the article version and Zig-Zagged in the book variant. The original intention was to provide a simple, easy-to-use game with minimal rules and approach everything more in the "ruling, not rules" style, resulting in a set of rules that can be fitted into a single page of standard text. The book version of the game, for the most part, carries in that direction, but sometimes randomly drops into rule-heavy descriptions. It is especially obvious in the "2nd edition", where new sections are nothing but a bunch of rules, most of which overcomplicate already existing solutions.
• Low Fantasy: It was created by Sapkowski, what else did you expect? The game has a very peculiar stance towards itself and its rules: the world is fantastical and full of wonder and magic, but you are just a guy or gal with no particular skills or abilities, and you make your living by slaying things on your way to treasures in some dark places or at least exploring the uncharted wilderness. Thus, an encounter with a dragon is less about the awe of there being dragons and more in tune with "Oh, Crap!, we have to fight a giant lizard".
• Luck-Based Mission:
  • As mentioned above, the game puts heavy emphasis on traps, encounters and similar situations being a matter of RNG and solved by a single, d6 roll. With all the consequences it brings.
  • In The Eye of Yrrhedes scenario, there are a hanging bridge, a totem pole climb and a random trap to overcome. Each depends on a d6 roll and failing it means either dying on the spot or continuously taking a large amount of damage until either dying or finally crawling through.
  • Yarra, River of Death is far more forgiving when it comes to outright killing characters, but the big element of the whole scenario is a set of five different tables to roll from almost non-stop. Not only are there a buttload of random encounters to face, with the wide range of dangers they provide, but there is also the matter of getting provisions and catching malaria, both of which are governed by a roll. Each day, every day, until either reaching the port of Dyviken - or die trying. Oh, and of course, various pre-defined encounters come with a roll-based outcome, such as the result of falling down the White Bull waterfall or which route was taken in Cul-de-sac Marshland.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: In a game with a maximum of 24 Hit Points and most attacks dealing d6 damage, an ability to decrease said damage by 1 is no mean feat, especially since shields are one of the easiest pieces of equipment to get (new characters are even allowed to start with one for free). Doubly so since carrying a shield has no disadvantages and it's just a flat -1 to all incoming damage. And there are of course magical artefacts, which will have far better protective abilities (a book example offers a shield with a -3 damage reduction).
• Mana: Magick Capacity, which can be recharged during rests and used as a "fuel" to cast spells. It is also the "budget" mages have for their starting spells.
• The Medic: Cindy the druidess is intentionally introduced in "Yarra" to serve this role for the party. Not only does she come with healing magic and the ability to procure medicine, but a single character under her care regains an extra point of Endurance for that day's rest.
• Medieval European Fantasy: The game notably lacks a setting of any kind, being a sort of Fantasy Kitchen Sink. However, all the rules, commentaries and both scenarios heavily reinforce the most standard and generic elements of such setting and various rules. Their constantly stressed "realism" depends on this convention, too.
• Monster Is a Mommy: Implied with the roc bird - it gets really pissed if something happens to its nest or the egg inside of it.
• Non-Standard Game Over: "Yarra" has few of those, ranging from non-malicious to borderline TPK. Some more notable ones include: reaching half-way through the city of Irin and automatically retiring from the adventure; perishing during the "flight" through the White Bull waterfall or being attacked by a roc, which proceeds to sink Dragonfly in the middle of complete wilderness without a chance to even try rebuilding. Oh, and there is also malaria, which probably killed more parties than all the other dangers combined.
• No-Sell: Anything with 6 or more armour is virtually impossible to damage, since it is unlikely anyone will procure either a heavy weapon or a powerful spell to overcome the Damage Reduction - and even then, they will be doing Scratch Damage.
• One Stat to Rule Them All: You can pretty much ignore Intelligence and get by with low Strength for the most part, as it can be combined with other characters when brute-forcing something. Dexterity, meanwhile, allows to abuse a few mechanics, is half of the equation of Combat Proficiency and probably more importantly, opens a window for various non-combat solutions. The dominance of Dexterity isn't even due to some inherent superiority of it over other stats, but how many applications it is given versus the rather narrow use of either Intelligence and Strength.
• Only a Flesh Wound: Played absolutely straight. Combat is purely abstract. This includes a lack of aiming for specific body parts and treating all wounds as non-lethal as long as the target has at least 1 Endurance left. A dragon tried to burn you with its breath, dealing 13 damage, out of the 19 Endurance you have? You're fine.
• Only Smart People May Pass: Yarra, River of Death has an infamous inversion. Sections 224-226 force the party to disembark and pull Dragonfly over shallows made out of shoulder-deep mud teeming with maggots and leeches. After a few moments in the mud, everyone is required to make an Intelligence check. If they pass it, they instantly get a panic attack due to all the filth crawling all over them and won't be able to help that day anymore. At the same time, to haul the barge over, it requires a Strength value equal to about 3 above-average characters, thus making a Dumb Muscle PCs very handy. That moment is responsible for roughly a third of all Total Party Kills during the scenario, as it's perfectly possible to get stuck there forever and starve to death or die of malaria. And no, no sudden flood is going to save the party.
• Our Dragons Are Different: Directly invoked. So you've prepared for a fire-breathing lizard? Well, here, grab some mustard gas instead! It's one of those moments when the rules go full throttle into a petty, childish Killer Game Master mode for no apparent reason.
• Our Mermaids Are Different: Rusałki show up in "Yarra" scenario, but for all intents and purposes, they are the friendly mermaids out to help. Well, except for being currently kidnapped to be a pet fish due to a fad in the city of Irin to keep your own rusałka in a garden pound. It's complicated.
• Power Equals Rarity: Invoked directly when discussing gear. The stronger something is, the rarer and more expensive it is to obtain.
• Protective Charm: A variety of minor magic items provide just as minor, but useful protective abilities, both explained as random loot, something to buy from a mage, or even as plot-important objects. For example, Cindy from "Yarra" carries a personally-attuned amulet that prevents her from getting sick.
• Railroading: "Yarra" is a curious case, since not only does it obviously restrict the adventure to following the flow of the titular river, but, more importantly, any attempt to leave it or simply reach a town unrelated to the main mission of reaching the port of Dyviken is treated as a failure to meet the requirements of the scenario and instantly ends the adventure. This even includes the fact that the party must be travelling using Dragonfly and isn't allowed to construct a raft in case of losing their ship.
• Rain of Arrows: Possible result of facing a horde enemy that's armed with bows. And when they show up in scenarios, anyone not behind cover has to roll how many arrows struck them, then roll for their collective damage.
• Regenerating Health: Keeping with the style of other Dungeon Crawling games, the main way of restoring health other than magic or plot-mandated situations is by resting. It gives back 2 points of Endurance. Unlike other games, the rules don't specify anything about the duration or conditions required to rest, other than the possibility of being attacked while asleep and offering the GM a simple veto to prevent players from just stalling and resting anytime they see fit.
• River of Insanity: Yarra, River of Death scenario is about exploring an unknown and uncharted river, that is choke-full of dangers, both natural and from aggressive goblin tribes on the way. Surviving the adventure is a feat in itself.
• Scratch Damage: A fully kitted character gains up to -5 damage reduction from any incoming attacks, while "regular" attacks are typed as a d6 roll and only really powerful creatures have a bigger dice pool to roll.
• Shout-Out: There is a variety of nods and direct references to The Witcher, befitting they share the creator.
• The Six Stats: Averted. The game has only three actual stats: Strength, Dexterity and Intelligence. Endurance is just a different name for Hit Points, while anything even resembling Charisma is outright mocked in the rules, for both Sapkowski and Brzeziński find the concept of a character's charm and personality being reduced to a numerical value to be ridiculous and are quite outspoken about it. Combat Proficiency and Magick Capacity are more skills than anything else.
• Sliding Scale of Turn Realism: Round by Round. The round itself is defined as "up to 10 seconds".
• Sole Survivor: Bevin Lagerfeld is the only surviving crew member of Cormorant, the ship sent down Yarra before the scenario. She survived Cromorant sinking on a reef and misadventures that killed other survivors, then was found sick and dying by water nymphs, who took care of her and allowed her to stay among them. If the party allows Bevin to join, she will provide a lot of help due to her previous experiences and partially Going Native prior to Dragonfly arrival.
• Super Drowning Skills: Falling into water in "Yarra" requires passing a Strength check. Fall into it and you start drowning. Whoever jumps to your rescue also has to pass a check when hauling you, or you both start to drown. The far more sensible thing is to just reach out with a paddle or a boat hook.
• Squishy Wizard: Oh yes. Character generation and special rules for a wizard apply a variety of penalties: lower baseline Endurance (10 instead of 12), rounding down instead of up Combat Proficiency, no bonuses for rolling high Strength and Dexterity. On top of that, they are also penalised for wearing armour (and not just for spell casting) and using regular weapons. Or even such absurdities as the lack of bonuses for tactical positions or still applying Dexterity penalty to someone who might have it maxed out at 12. All while citing "realism" (and the quotation marks come from the rules themselves).
• Terror-dactyl: Aggressive pterosaurs are the main reason why crossing a hanging bridge in The Eye of Yrrhedes scenario is so damn dangerous. Not only do you have to fight them, and they can throw you off the bridge, but there is even a chance the whole construction will fall apart due to their attacks, taking down everyone on it.
• Total Party Kill: The game is designed for very high lethality. As a result, TPK is common result of a fight. On top of that, the rules also encourage RNG-based traps and challenges, with potential fatal results - and since they are RNG-based, an entire party might perish.
• Unwinnable by Design: You are not supposed to win the fight against certain enemies. Trying is near impossible, and there is no real benefit to that anyway. In fact, you shouldn't even be provoking certain situations in the first place. The most prominent examples are in the Yarra module, where both the roc and the swamp dragon are close to impossible to deal with before TPK happens - in both cases, the players need to deal in the very first round damage that would require a party of at least 5 characters (and that assuming both Vitring and Bevin NPCs are still alive and present) to get within the range of damage sufficient to prevent the sinking of the Dragonfly.
• Whole-Plot Reference: Yarra, River of Death is one to The African Queen. The main difference is the ultimate goal of the adventure, but a variety of bigger and smaller details match up with the plot of the film, with or even without a coat of fantasy paint over it.
• You Wanna Get Sued?: The first edition cover was in style very similar to those of the first Polish edition of The Witcher Saga, published by SuperNOWA. See for yourself here◊ and especially here◊ and compare with the 1st edition's cover◊. MAG apparently decided to fully coast on the Witcher's popularity. By the time of the 2nd edition, however, the cover was changed to the one presented above, making it distinctively different from the Witcher books, changing fonts and reducing the original cover image to be just the centre-piece of it.

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