Dark Dealings (a kinda review of Esoteric Enterprises, part two)

February 12, 2019

The equipment section is quite short, but still manages to include grimoires and occult items along with adventuring gear and weapons. Interestingly it also includes Social Advantages like Off The Grid and Recognised Academic (the authorities won’t bust you for carrying a hand of glory or a copy of the Necronomicon Ex Mortis). These advantages can be picked instead of an item off the equipment list.

The sower works for mastery by turning the wheel. Or whatever.

Instead of counting gold pieces or dollars the game has a Resource stat. It starts at 1 and usually increases with levels. Choosing certain Social Advantages allows you to increase the stat at character generation.

Esoteric Enterprises has saving throws in the way of many OSR games. An inspired choice is to include a Machines save which lets you avoid triping an alarm, spring a trap, or avoid getting caught on CCTV.

The game has two types of hit points. Grit represents exhaustion, bruises, low blood sugar and fatigue. If you have a bit of a sit-down and a bite to eat, you’ll be back on your feet in little time. Flesh points represent actual bodily harm. As levels increase, Grit goes up significantly while Flesh only increases by a single point. Certain kinds of damage takes points off Flesh directly, but usually a character has a ‘buffer’ of Grit.

The remainder of the book is full of glorious tables for when magic goes wrong (or just interesting), random background tables (they’re optional but quite fun). A short but very helpful section details how to make certain characters, from assassins to yetis, from detectives to wandering souls of coma patients.

The games does need an editor. I’m not terribly good at spottings errors and typos myself, but I still came across a bunch. Hardly any of them make the game difficult to use (the wrong die type at the top of a table, say). In one place there is a reference to ‘hunters’, but it didn’t take me long to figure out that it referred to the Mercenary character class.

Esoteric Enterprises is a good game. It takes OSR rules and ideas and applies them to a genre that hasn’t seen much attention from that corner of tabletop gaming. I feel like I’m getting a LOT for my $5.

(Call me crazy, but you could use this game to play KULT)

Here follows a character I rolled up. The background is based on a few rolls on the tables I mentioned.

Name: Asher Payton

Class/level: 1st-level Bodyguard

Strength: 10
Intelligence: 12
Wisdom: 10
Dexterity: 12
Constitution: 13/+1(+1 from Class)
Charisma: 13/+1

Grit: 9
Flesh: 10
AC: 14 (bullet-proof vest)
To Hit: 0

Skills:
Athletics (Str) 1-in-6
Charm (Cha) 2-in-6
Contacts (Cha) 2-in-6
Driving (Dex) 1-in-6
Forensics (Wis) 1-in-6
Perception (Wis) 3-in-6
Stealth (Dex) 1-in-6
Technology (Int) 1-in-6
Translation (Int) 1-in-6
Vandalism (Str) 1-in-6

Saves
Stunning 8
Poison 6
Hazards 13
Machines 9
Magic 12

Gear
Taser (D6, target must make a Stunning Save or lose a turn)
bullet-proof vest
flashlight (light)
nice suit
binoculars
reload

Asher grew up wanting for almost nothing. His mother ran an antiques shop, and his father was a medical doctor, and things seemed dull and safe. One fine afternoon he came home from college to a horror show. His childhood home was in ruins, everything was covered in a rust-like film, and his mother was busy slurping up his father’s intestines.
Asher tried calling emergency services, but before he could explain his predicament he was grabbed by black-clad people, dosed and shoved in the back of a van (“Carlton Taxidermy” it said on the side).
He woke up in a cell and spent two years in a highly secure facility. He was treated well, but allowed no books, TV, or even spicy food. Asher’s later research has lead him to believe that the People in Black wanted to make sure that no part of the gluttony spirit which had taken his mother was hiding within him.
After the two years he was warned against the occult and released. Within a week he was appoached by shady and quite insistent people, demanding that he take up his parents’ old business. By degrees he learned that his parents ran a little side-earner procuring preserved specimen of various creatures (through his mother’s antiques business) and grafted them onto paying customers (this was where his father’s medical expertise came in). To this day there are members of the occult body mod scene who reminisce about the good old days when the Paytons were still working their magic.

Asher immersed hmself in the occult world his parents had hidden from him. He had no home, no credentials and no real experience beyond college, but he was clever and began running errands for local players, particularly disgraced rabbi David Eidelman and an obese entity called “Mother Might”. After a few run-ins with individuals sporting duelling scars and swastika tattoos, Asher learned that he could take a beating and dish it out as well. People took notice of the young man, and Asher soon received jobs as lookout, bouncer and bodyguard.

Presently he is in the employ of Irene McEwan, Beloved of Dis Pater, and spends most of his waking hours looking after her 12 year old daughter Helena. She has grown up next to the dead and the haunted, and has not learned caution or grasped her own mortality.

Asher privately believes that he contracted a curse in the quarantined facility. All his boyfriends turn out to be vampires, magic-addicted cops and even the reincarnation of Idi Amin (that was probably bullshit at least). Asher hasn’t yet shared this theory with anyone, as he fears becoming the butt of everyone’s jokes.

He sometimes thinks he sees the “Carlton Taxidermy” van out of the corner of his eye.