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DARK PLACES & DEMOGORGONS - Survive This!! - Core Rule Book OSR RPG $9.99
Average Rating:4.6 / 5
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DARK PLACES & DEMOGORGONS - Survive This!! - Core Rule Book OSR RPG
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DARK PLACES & DEMOGORGONS - Survive This!! - Core Rule Book OSR RPG
Publisher: Bloat Games
by Wesley A. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 08/22/2023 11:58:27

A very good game when folks take to the 80s and combat the creepy and super-natural with only their wits and, often, allowance money. The layout is hit or miss, but the rules work well and a lot of the art captures 80s retro perfectly. If you want to play an adventure based on a certain streaming show, this is a great option.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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DARK PLACES & DEMOGORGONS - Survive This!! - Core Rule Book OSR RPG
Publisher: Bloat Games
by Jonathan M. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 08/10/2022 21:37:34

I've had a wonderful time running this system for my friends. The flavor of '80s sci-fi and horror is worth the price of admission alone and my players love running into something strange around every corner in J'Town. A word of caution: the rules system is better fleshed out in later SURVIVE THIS! games like We Die Young and What Shadows Hide. This isn't really a significant problem if you stick to the core book; however, most of the sourcebooks and rules editions (like Martial Arts Mayhem and the Class Compendium respectively) will assume you are familiar with mechanics like Morale and Seize the Day. I recommend that if you really find yourself enjoying this D&D rules hack, pick up the Players Options and GM Guide, the Class Compendium, the Jeffersontown Setting book, the Cryptid Manual, and one of the core rulebooks for the newer SURVIVE THIS! products.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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DARK PLACES & DEMOGORGONS - Survive This!! - Core Rule Book OSR RPG
Publisher: Bloat Games
by Seth P. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 11/02/2018 23:08:17

I bought this book a while back after hearing about it through the grapevine of the internet. After reading up on it some more I was impressed! And once I got the book in my hands I was blown away! For being a small company, Bloat Games has really put out a wonderful book which just screams "PLAY ME!" As I read more and more of the book adventure ideas of taking my party through J-Town kept bubbling up, old ideas and inspirations from things like Goosebumps and Steven King constantly coming forth.

So what is DP&D? Well the game itself is based heavily on older editions of the World's Most Popular Roleplaying Game but with plenty of modern twists to make it both familiar and different. With the classic 6 ability scores and a brand new one (Survival) as well as twists on the classic saving throws, the game is easy to pick up for anyone with even a passing knowledge of any d20 system but with enough depth and differences to keep even diehard veterans engaged for many, many adventures in 1980's J-Town.

Would I recommend this game? I already have on several occasions! And here, have a free adventure idea on the house: the party heads out to the country fair and while exploring the spooky haunted house they belive they encountered a real zombie!

5/5 This is a game everyone should play!

Have fun and game on everyone!



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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DARK PLACES & DEMOGORGONS - Survive This!! - Core Rule Book OSR RPG
Publisher: Bloat Games
by Timothy B. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 06/25/2018 11:53:02

Originally posted here: http://theotherside.timsbrannan.com/2018/06/review-survive-this-dark-places.html

I'll start off my week-long look at Survive This! Dark Places & Demogorgons with the core rulebook. A little bit of background thought first. I love the 80s in the way a true child of the 80s only can. Everything about the decade still fascinates me, fills me nostalgia and is a creative well I keep going back to. In truth, I had better decades. The 90s were particularly good to me and the 2010s are also really nice, but the 80s hold my interest more, especially when it comes to gaming.

Dark Places & Demogorgons (DP&D) taps into all of this in such a deep and profound way that it pisses me off me to no end. Pisses me off, because I wish I had come up it myself!

A few things upfront. DP&D owes a great deal to Stranger Things (which in turns owes a lot to D&D), but as fantastic as that is, that is not enough to sustain a game. DP&D draws on deep 80s culture as well. And deep I do mean shallow! Nothing here about the Cold War, or USA for Africa, or the 84 Olympics, or the home computer revolution. This is about what was going on in YOUR small town USA and how it felt like it was the strangest place on the planet. All that "important stuff" is just background noise to what is really important; what are we doing Friday night and who's going to drive around cruising? That of course until your friends start to disappear.

Dark Places & Demogorgons (DP&D) is a 200 page 5"x9" book with color covers and black & white interiors. The art is a mix of new art, some art purchased from collections and (my personal favorite) some photos of the authors and friends from some 80's high school yearbooks. I am reviewing both the physical book and PDF. Both of which were purchased by me so no books were contributed for review.

The book is divided into an 80 page Player's Section which includes the Classes and Basic rules, and a 120 Page Game Master Section. The Players section introduces the concept of a Role-playing game and what you can do. We also get a little background on the town this all takes place in, Jeffersontown KY.

We go right into building a character. Now while the book tells us that this is a version of the same game played in 1974, there are more 21st Century rules here. The rules feel like a Swords & Wizardry variant with some Basic (Holmes in particular) thrown in. There are multiple types of saving throws (ala OD&D, Basic, an on up) and ascending AC (S&W, 3e). In short though if you have played any sort of OSR game in the last few years you will pick this up fast. If you have never played before, well you will still pick this up fast.

Unlike its progenitors, this game has Seven Abilities. The new one is Survival. At first, I was not a fan of it, but now I see how it works in the game it makes more sense to me. Much like how another seventh ability, "Luck", works in The Heroes' Journey. I mentioned there are new saving throws too, Courage, Critical, Death, Mental, and Poison. Courage works a lot like a Fear/San test and there is even a terror table.

Where DP&D takes off though are ways you use to describe your characters. We start off with Backgrounds. You can roll randomly here in true 80s style, or choose. Rolling seems better. These include things like "Parents are never home" or "Bratty Kid Sister" and they have in-game effects. Not having your parents home makes for your house to become the natural HQ of your monster surviving endeavors, but having to watch your "Strawberry Shortcake" obsessed little sister is going to slow you down.

After that, you can decide on what your Class is going to be. Classes work here like everywhere else really. They decide your skills, they let you know where you fit in the world and they provide a role-playing guide. The classes in this book are largely based on 80s High School stereotypes. There are five main classes with three subclasses each (similar to how 5e does it) You have The Brain (Kid Scientist, The Nerd, The Geek), The Athlete (The Jock, Extreme Athlete, The Karate Kid), The Outsider (Break Dancer, Goth, Metal Head), The Popular Kid (Preppy, The Princess, Teen Heart Throb), and The Rebel (Bully, The Hood, the Punk Rocker). That pretty much covers everyone in a small high school.

Each class gets 5 levels and new abilities and/or skills each level. So the Karate kid gets new moves and martial arts, the Princess can affect others and so on. Skills cover the things you can do. You can get some via your class or be improved by your class. Others you can pick. Combat is a skill and if you want to be better at it then you need to take the skill otherwise you are just a kid with a +0 to hit.

Character creation then is largely rolling up Abilities, picking a Background, a Class, some skills, determining your saving throws and finding out how much cash you have in your pocket. Then you are set! I recommend a Session 0 for character creation and concept. Sure it is not in the rules and certainly not old school, but it better than everyone showing up for the game playing all playing "The Bully" or "The Nerd".

Lastly, you come up with your age, Alignment and various combat-related stats (AC, attack bonus). DP&D is not a combat focused game. You are kids and the monsters are, well, monsters. You might score a hit or two, but that is it. Otherwise, run!

XP and Leveling are a little "easier" then and there are other ways to gain levels. We end this section with some sample characters, examples of play and a quick breakdown of the 1980s vs. Today.

The Game Master Section is next and this is where the fun is! Here the advice of not making this a combat heavy game is repeated. This is a game of mystery, investigation, and deduction. From the book:

This game draws inspiration from movies like The Goonies, ET and The Lost Boys and T.V. shows like Stranger Things, Eerie Indiana and Scooby Doo. Talk about hitting me where I live!

The rules might say 1974 on the tin, but they are much easier than that. Nearly every rule is simplified and straightforward in a way we never would have tried in the 80s. Among the "new" rules are Difficulty Classes (circa 3e) and Advantage/Disadvantage rules (circa 5e). It makes for a very fast-paced game and the rules will fall into the background.

We get some weapons and explosives, but not a lot.

There is a nice section on magic and the occult which include some really nice Psychic classes. In case you want to dial your game up to 11 (see what I did there!).

The fun part of the book are the Adventure Seeds. Some are familiar to anyone that watched movies or TV in the 80s. But others...well I can only conclude that these must be local legends and myths from the author's own home. Which reminds me how much all these little towns are really the same, just the details differ.

Replace the Pope Lick Monster with the Mobil Monster and they could have been talking about my old hometown of Jacksonville, IL. We even had giant cats, giant birds and bigfoot. But if you know what is good for you stay away from Magical Mystery Lane (if you could find it) or the glowing "things" out by Lake Jacksonville.

The book also has a bunch of monsters in Swords & Wizardry format (more or less). You could add more, but be careful. Just because I have the stats for a Manticore in a S&W book that would work with this there had better be a good reason to include it.

There are stats for animals and various types of NPCs. There is even a table of random monster generation. Delving into more game specific tables there is a table (1d100) of basic adventure hooks.

We also get a small guide to the setting, Jeffersontown, or J'Town (I grew up in J'ville. AND we used to call it a "Sinkhole of Evil" YEARS before anyone ever said the words "hell mouth"). The guide is great, not just for use in the game but for the sheer nostalgia. It read like someone had taken a fictionalized version of my old hometown. I think that it is also flexible enough that an lot of people reading it will feel the same way.

We end with a nice solid appendix (the PDF is not hyper-linked here) and their own "Appendix N" of movies, television, and music. Music was too important in the 80s for there not to be a list like this.

We end with a copy of the character sheet.

Wow. Where to begin.

Ok first of this game is very nearly perfect and I hate it so much. That's not true. I hate that I didn't come up with it and publish it sooner. But in truth, I am not sure if I would have done the same quality job as Eric Bloat and Josh Palmer. Plus the inclusion of their yearbook pictures and own background made this book for me. I LOVED reading J'Town because I could see and feel my own J'Ville in it. I would not have been able to do that if I had written it myself, so much kudos to them.

This is a work of art and I love it. Everything feels right about this game, to be honest. I even have a potential "Series" in mind for it.

Can't wait to do more with it! I would love to get some of my old gamer friends from the 80s and have them play versions of themeselves in a "Stranger Jacksonville" or more to the point the Jacksonville we all WISHED it was.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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DARK PLACES & DEMOGORGONS - Survive This!! - Core Rule Book OSR RPG
Publisher: Bloat Games
by CONRAD H. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 05/04/2018 14:45:16

I purchased this and read through it but haven't played it yet. They have taken the D&D system (Str, Int, Wis, Dex, Con, Chr, HP, AC, etc.) and have added skills system that is just enough and not too much to get the job done they want to do. There are no revolutionairy game mechanics in here but that is a good thing because that means you probably know how to play this already. Should you purchase this? If you loved Netflix's Stranger Things then YES. Stop reading now and go purchase this.

The real magic that they have baked into this game is everything beyond the rule system. I honestly they believed they watched every 80s kid adventure movie that I wanted to be a part of and made a game for me. And I know why they did it. See, and I got this from the Stranger Things "Behind the Scenes" interviews, the '80s was the last time when kids could go have these kind of adventures. Parents were not as concerned where you were. Cell phones and instant data wasn't there so hearsay, rumors and superstition was still a parge part of our life. There was just more mystery back then. Things were just starting to get computerized and 2048 bit RSA keys were not in the way. You just had to sneak into the school office and turn on the computer to look at someone's grades. If you wanted to know about a kid, you had to go to the file cabinet.

Being a kid in the 80s in a strange rural town was awesome and I believe they have captured all that with this game.

I couldn't stop thinking of adventures I wanted to write and run. I think this game and setting is best for investigative type adventures. It takes only a little more than a beginner GM to write and run those but if you can then you will rock your table with this book and the other add-ons.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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DARK PLACES & DEMOGORGONS - Survive This!! - Core Rule Book OSR RPG
Publisher: Bloat Games
by Sergio N. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 04/24/2018 10:05:04

This seems like a fun game. I say 'seems' because I have not played it yet, but hopefully will, soon (bought it yesterday). It is a fun to read book, and the pdf adapts well to a 10 inch tablet (even 5' mobile phone), although the pdf does not have a proper table of contents with links for easy access during play (please include one in a future update!). I like the OSR feel, which emphasizes the 80s style. The descriptions and new mechanics/rules seem to adapt very well to the setting. If I had to mention cons, one would be that there's not much description on the product page. For example, what is the vampire source-book about? I still remember The Lost Boys movie, and would be very interested to know if it is an adventure/campaign, separate setting, etc. As there are no reviews or discussions, I cannot tell. These, some minor typos I already forgot about and the lack of a TOC with links are not enough (to me) to take a star from this 5 star product. If, like me, Stranger Things brought you back to RPGs, then buy this!



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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DARK PLACES & DEMOGORGONS - Survive This!! - Core Rule Book OSR RPG
Publisher: Bloat Games
by Ruben F. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 11/03/2017 14:50:27

Great game! Lots of fun! Defiantly recommend to anyone that wants to take a fun brake from the hack and slash and have an easy going laid back not so serious adventur.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Creator Reply:
Thanks Ruben! Very glad to hear that you enjoyed it.
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