The Gresseham Miasma - A Hammers RPG AAR [Review/Actual Play]

I bodged the map together on the morning of the game before work. Sepia toning = instant credibility

Last night at the Iglootree Shop in London I ran the first of our MYSTERY RPG sessions, in which we take something weird off of the shelf and let members of the public play something unknown - and are hopefully as surprised as we are. For this session I selected the game HAMMERS: Bell Book and Candle Edition by Sivad's Sanctum aka Jon Davis (no not that one), described as "A Playtest of Horrific Old School System Tools".

The System

Hammers is one of the strange little games that have cropped up in or adjacent to the Thinking Adventures Discord server. The server generally has a focus on old-school gaming in new directions - many of the rules tinkering there uses OD&D as a basis and Hammers is another of these 'sort-of OD&D' type games, though it wears the influence very loosely while it pulls piecemeal from many (many!) other contemporary indie projects.

The most obvious modus operandi to mention is that each 'Hammer' (term used for all PCs) will be playing the same class, something like a cross between a Hammer Horror (natch) protagonist, and the classic OD&D cleric. Implied setting is perhaps 17th C or slightly earlier, since Arquebus and Handgonne feature on the weapons list.

Mechanically, I noticed nods to the following:

OD&D: Turning Undead, Armour types, movement rates, chances to trigger traps and some other details feel very similar to suggestions or rules from the 3LBB. 

Chainmail: the game uses 2d6 on a CRT vs AC to hit - d6s are the only dice used.

Meatheads: HD serves its usual purpose in old-school adventure games, but also has potential to fluctuate quite wildly- often in the space of a single session - both up and down. This affects not only your HP which are rerolled each time this occurs but modifiers for certain clerical abilities. Additionally the single ability Piety seems very similar to the focus on Strength in Meatheads.

Advanced Fighting Fantasy (or possibly Troika): weapon damage values use different power curves based on a d6 roll - in effect each weapon has its own mini-chart of damage based on what you roll.

Dungeon Crawl Classics:

(a) holy healing is aided or hampered depending on alignment of the patient and the healer

(b) Hail Mary is a mechanic to allow a 50% chance of doing some powerful stunt or appeal to the Almighty, similar to Mighty Deeds

(c) A vaguely defined play style called Metanoia in the book is an option to run the game like a DCC funnel, with multiple 0 level PCs per player

Wolves Upon The Coast: "Friendly Wagers" and also "Holy Oaths" are both reminiscent of the Boasts mechanic used by Luke Gearing in this grand campaign setting.



Characters

Next month: SOCKET WRENCHES

Apart from Hit Dice and Armour Class, there is only one Ability score for your PC, which is Piety, rolled on 3d6. High or low results on the bell curve give bonuses or penalties to various priestly adventuring abilities: Turning, Healing, Willpower (resisting charm or other mental effects) and the amount of NPCs you can have in your Flock, which is a neat reframing of NPC hirelings who have converted to your particular branch of the faith during play.

Piety is also used for Tests of Faith, and to advance in level using Sworn Oaths (more on both of these later).

The game has a refreshing amount of rules and suggestions for campaign play compared to many of these zine-type rulesets. There are rules for increasing your Piety permanently by using the Research mechanic (basically a push your luck roll over on 3d6 to get a +1, at the risk of incurring Spiritual Strain) holding a Feast Day for your chosen saint which grants you a death save at 0hp and additional bonuses depending on how lavishly you fund the event. Also included are simple rules for maintaining your Sanctum to hold the treasures and relics you find in your adventuring career.

In Good Faith

It's time to talk about the Piety mechanics and how I found them, to work in play. In some ways I find the use of one Ability stat to be quite admirable. Sometimes in small games, or rules-light games (I am not sure I consider Hammers to be rules-light in this sense, though it is far from complex) it feels as though a stripping back of the Big Six is just done for the sake of it, as design-for-design's sake. Here I felt as though it was used effectively as both grounding assumptions of mechanical play, and as flavour. You tell newcomers that they only have Piety and they are priests here to defeat the ungodly. That works, everyone is immediately on the same page.

To perform a Test of Faith, you roll 1d6 and add to your current Piety, with a target number of 20. Now - this is obviously going to be impossible for anyone with a Piety of 14 or less. Starting Piety is rolled on 3d6*, which means that basic Tests of Faith are going to be impossible for the poor folks rolling even average scores on their single Ability. A ‘useless’ character never seems far away (I know, there is no such thing – still, it’s very easy to see how the average rolls will put most players on Hard Mode).

Now - two caveats here.

First is that other Hammers can assist you, by rolling d3 and adding to your total. As many other PCs can assist as needed/wanted, which is fun and thematic - especially since the consequences of failure are then shared by all.

Second, you can push your Piety (a funny sounding term that) and add an extra d6 to your roll. However - this can ONLY be done alone, and if you fail you suffer a negative effect due to Spiritual Strain (a concept I really like, actually). Spiritual Strain has a short d6 table of negative effects that require a week of rest to recover – things like needing a Saving Throw before you can engage in combat.

Double 6's is always success, Double 1's is always a failure that gives you a choice of a Spiritual Strain condition or dropping 1HD.

If the intent here is for Tests of Faith to be very difficult unless you receive help from your fellow acolytes, then I like it. However, talk about a mechanic that's difficult to explain to newbies. I'm almost wondering if there is a typo, and the base roll is supposed to be 2d6 plus Piety for the base Test of Faith, with a third d6 being added if you push.

Much more important - what IS a Test of Faith and why would you roll for it?? What does it represent in your game? If it's to resist temptation or being coerced in some other way, there's already a Willpower mechanic in the game for that. If it's supposed to be a catch-all mechanic, why is it so damn hard to achieve a success (we had a pregen with 5 Piety in last night's game...)?

Reasons specifically given in the text to roll a Test of Faith are few: in fact, unless I missed it, there is just the one – for recruiting members of your Flock.

*(I note here there is a section on Insight, allowing you to reroll your 3d6 and keep it if higher. If lower - instant death for the character, consumed by The Unholy! While I appreciate the all or nothing, I just could not figure out when this is done. Character generation as a sort of condensed Traveller lifepath thingy? At any time during play? Another frustrating ambiguity.)

Fuckin' Oath Cobber!

Sworn Oaths. This is portrayed as the method by which you advance in HD and therefore 'level' (the term level for a PCs power level is never used in the text.) Essentially, you make an oath - which must be "announced, dangerous, and done alone". Except for this, the test is identical to a Test of Faith as explained above, with an extra difficult target number, since you add your current HD to the target number - so a Hammer advancing from 1HD to 2HD makes their check with a target of 21.

This....seems nearly impossible to me. Perhaps this is the intention. As mentioned above, Tests of Faith are incredibly hard to achieve when performed alone. This only gets more difficult if your Test is a Sworn Oath. It can only be attempted once per game session. Failure is brutal if you have recruited people to your Flock - failing to complete a Sworn Oath means your Flock desert you instantly. It also - if I understand correctly - means you've pissed away your single chance to "level up" using this mechanic on this session.

We only had one successful Sworn Oath in our game session last night, and it did come at a particularly climactic moment, so it felt appropriate (see below for play report - it was Harishes leaping attack at the BBEG). I didn't even make the player roll, because they said they were going to do something badass involving self-sacrifice, and then we used combat and some DM fiat to resolve it – and they did it!

However - this leads to a difficult question which is one of the main narrative problems I have with Oaths and Tests. You state your aim - and then you pass and/or fail based on the in-built mechanic. However, you also have the in-world task itself to resolve, using combat, negotiation or whatever. So how is this supposed to work? Is it a mechanic to encourage play, or is it a done deal based on one mechanical roll?

If you describe your aim, and then roll to see if you pass or fail, followed by narrating the result in turn, then...we're almost playing a storygame, no? So what's that mechanic doing in amongst all the cool adventure gaming mechanics? It's not that I have anything against the incorporation of storygame elements when it feels right. I'm just not sure of the intent or what it's supposed to add. Simply using Luke Gearing's Boasts mechanic in its as written would seem to do what Sworn Oaths is driving at, without this odd mechanical system.

Further -  if I make my Sworn Oath and (for example) it is to dispel Ranulf the Bastard from the brothel for his cruel treatment of the staff, we have mechanics for that already - combat etc - or we have roleplaying and negotiation. So then the Sworn Oath mechanic is redundant, and success or failure depends on good play.

So which is it? Perhaps I'm missing something. Examples of play would have helped enormously here! 

Friendly Wagers is the other method to advance your HD. It sets a goal (again, essentially a Boast) that one PC challenges another to prove they can accomplish. Winner gains a HD, loser (the PC betting against them managing the task, or the PC failing to achieve it) drops down one HD. This can be done as many times as you like in a session, seemingly. Again, I see the idea here – it’s to drive player action (I can now cause the entire Thinking Adventures server to implode by saying it incentivises it). Yet I can’t feel – again – that you could bundle this and Sworn Oaths together, and you’d end up with something very similar to the Boasts. We had one wager in our game, and I think it was pulled off successfully. It just seemed too risky with everyone hovering at 1 or 0HD.

Losing a whole HD/level is not exactly a punishment that befits a "friendly" wager I would say, particularly since almost all weapons on the damage matrix hit incredibly hard! Which brings me to...

Combat, HD and Damage

Weapons in this game are MASSIVELY brutal if you haven’t somehow achieved some extra HD. The easily affordable Morningstar (just 15 ducats) will hit for up to 18 damage if you roll a 6 after hitting. Whether this is deliberately done to discourage combat and find non-violent, holy solutions to problems I’m not sure. Our combats felt very swingy and very violent – honestly, I quite liked it! PC churn was high though and we had three deaths in a short 3.5 hour session.

Regardless of how much I enjoyed brutality, another issue surfaces when we see how quickly HD might go up and down. Using the healing ability at all will subtract one from the HD of the person making use of it, whether they are particularly successful or not. Same with double 1’s on a Test of Faith, and with the loser in a friendly wager. It might not seem that big of a deal, but consider that HP are re-rolled each time you go up or down. 

Going up uses the OD&D houserule of “re-roll all HD, and if higher, keep new value / if lower, increase by 1”. Now – I used to love this houserule as a way to “keep things gritty”. After using it in practice in a long form campaign, I think I am done with it for good. I don’t know the odds of it (I vaguely understand that it leads to extremely flat HP progression), but it seemed to very frequently give punitively low results for HP, and what’s more, it just feels bad when you roll humiliatingly low and just get a bump of 1. That extra 1 means basically nothing in a world where everyone can swing around the previously mentioned Morningstar.

There are no guidelines given for what happens when you go down to 0HD from 1HD - last night I simply ruled that any damage against you would kill you instantly unless you had Feasted.

Some other odd things in here - AC goes from 2 to 9 a la OD&D, but reversed so that plate and shield is 9! As far as I can tell this was done for neatness in tracking armour encumbrance, as it takes up a number of your 12 inventory slots equal to its AC value. This is fine, but the cognitive dissonance of someone used to the OD&D armour classes from the 3LBB (ie me) is high. It would have been better to just keep the same AC values but simply state on the equipment list how many slots it takes up.

Some weapons are noted as "a weapon that damages its armour, negating its protection". No explanation for this is given, and there is no AC given for unarmoured (the lowest is 2, for Leather). Does being hit with an armour breaking weapon move your AC down by one, or remove it altogether? Do strikes against an unarmoured combatant auto-hit? It's a mystery.

Apart from this, combat was fine. As mentioned, weapons do an insane amount of damage, and it's pretty easy even for a single HD character to hit someone in Scale Armour (just 7+ on 2d6). Good? Bad? In this case perhaps just an issue of flavour and gamefeel. We had a fun combat, followed by faux-surrender and then flight into the darkness with bandits.

Hail Mary's are the previously mentioned approach to Mighty Deeds, which are implied must be bundled into an action involving to-hit roll. They have a 50% chance to work, and are usable once per encounter. No problems with this in theory, but I had the usual Mighty Deeds problem I have had with DCC - players entirely forget about the option, and then aren't really sure what they can do with it when reminded.

Final Thoughts

I really don't want to dump on this game, as I think there is some nice mileage in taking the classic adventure game framework of OD&D/Chainmail-alikes and setting it nicely in the vaguely Hammer Horror setting. It's not exactly an original concept or tone in OSR/underground RPGs in 2025 though, and so if it's to set itself apart via the mechanics it's using to drive play (and again, I very much appreciate that the game is pitched for campaign play) then they need to be explained further. Terseness and sparseness in rules is not an aim in itself!

Or, alternatively, an opposite approach could be taken where some of the somewhat redundant mechanics could be removed and extra space devoted to examples of play, a Hammers specific bestiary, or a starting adventure site.

Finally, I would question the logic of moving away from the alternate combat system of d20 to 2d6. It is a sharp, sharp difference to go from a flat curve in 5% increments to the quick peak of 2d6, probability-wise, old-school "Chainmail flavour" be damned.

NOW with all of this said, it’s important to note that the game is specifically billed as being a playtest of the rules. I hope SS can take some useful feedback from this review and I wish them all the best in further developments! Several of the issues I have raised seem to already be accounted for in the product description of the booklet, and I hope none of this comes across as mean - we had a great game, and it was some people's first RPG (not counting 5e) and they still enjoyed it a lot, tonally, and engaged with the mechanics well - particularly those used in downtime.

As a final note, I appreciate the low production values and low cost for this game. A little over 24 pages, black and white printing, all space given over to rules, and it costs £7 at Iglootree. Not bad at all considering some of the stuff I have seen marketed as a "zine" game which far less meat on the bone for much more cash. I hope that further iterations don’t got the “RPG PhoneBook” route and jack up the price. Keeping the core book slight and cheap, and then funnelling energy into extra adventures would be the way.

You can grab the PDF version of HAMMERS over at Sivad’s Sanctum’s itch.io page here, and the playtest zine from the Iglootree shop.

The Session
(all artwork from this point on is by the extremely talented Ryan Lovelock)

Dramatis Personae

Foddas (Robby)

Tobias (Leo)

Barnabus [RIP] Pendle [RIP] (Connor)

Ulrich (Ryan)

Aethelwit [RIP] Kalewick (Harish)

Olaf (Nick)

 

Desecration at Travellers Cross

Originally 8 players signed up but we lost one to sickness (he didn’t die, he just couldn’t make it), and another to the most putrid and contagious of diseases – being stuck at work. Of the 6 players I had, two of them had only experienced 5e in their time thus far in the hobby. All of us, including me, were new to the system.

Gresseham valley (map at top of post) had fallen under a cloak of permanent darkness. The Hammers were out to clear this supernatural crepuscular nightmare by seeking its source, and learning what had befallen the innocents (or otherwise) trapped within it.

Once they travelled along the old road to the bridge, utter darkness descended around them - despite it being early morning they could not see more than a few feet in front of their face, even with the illumination of several lanterns in the party. Soon they approached the bridge where they knew the Tollmaster resided.

The Tollmaster's cottage by the bridge sported a new and grisly trophy hanging from the flagpole - the hanging corpse of a bandit riddled with crossbow bolts. It transpired the Tollmaster had hung this lice-ridden fellow from the cottage as a warning to others - the bandits had taken advantage of the permanent darkness in the valley to relieve travellers and residents of their valuables, and in some cases, their lives.

Foddas made an oath to set right whatever the situation was here, and boldly approached the cottage door while Aethelwit and Barnabus took up station either side of the door with weapons drawn. (Foddas’ oath roll was failed – he acquired the Malaise spiritual strain, meaning he would need to roll a Saving Throw (9+) on 2d6 to fight)

Suddenly the Tollmaster came storming out, crossbow aimed straight at Foddas. He was terrified and mistrustful, suspecting them to beasts of the night in priests clothing.

Whether or not the shattering hammer blow to his leg swung by Ulrich dispelled this
misunderstanding is hard to say, but Aethelwith stepped in to heal the poor fellow with The Holy Light and the fracture knitted back together. Crawling back to his cottage, the Tollmaster told them that bandits and worse things could be found in the darkness, but he (understandably) said he could not offer the party sanctuary here, as he only had enough supplies for his wife.

After some deliberations the group continued along the road, heading for the ancient monument known as The Traveller’s Cross. Hewn from unadorned rock in the early days of The Faith, it was known both as a waymarker and a monument to Our Lady of Tears. A dull rumble of thunder could be heard as they traipsed through the suffocating darkness.

Soon it became apparent a sad desecration had been visited upon The Cross. The corpse of a mare had been draped over it, entrails looping to the ground in an obscene flow of flesh. The positioning of the corpse was deliberate – the head had been propped up to face down anyone travelling along the road. The porcelalin statue of Our Lady had been dashed in the dirt and smashed to smithereens, only a plaintive section of face staring upwards.

Hoisting the carcass off of cross, the group did what they could to give dignity back to the noble monument. A chuckle in the darkness however, revealed they had spectators to their efforts – coarse mocking voices insulted the priests and their vocation. Bandits!

After the initial mockery they demanded the group pile all of their valuables and equipment for the taking. Refusing, they were rushed by thugs with clubs emerging from the darkness – seven in total. A swift and bloody combat occurred with Foddas suffering under his spiritual strain with a broken nerve, unable to fight – and Barnabus and Aethelwit knocked to the ground and killed by vicious blows. Olaf too was reduced to 0hp, but healing hands of one of his colleagues saved him (DM ruling here since the fight was so brutal and he was at exactly 0 and no lower, and the penalty to the healer is the high cost of a whole level, essentially). The party killed three of the highwayman but eventually were forced to surrender. Brief deliberations occurred as the bandits prepared ropes to tie the party up for ransom (or worse?) before the party split and ran into the darkness, causing chaos amongst the bandits, another of which fell before the mighty strike of Ulrich. The party escaped off the map and regrouped to recruit more members and re-enter miasma in a fortnight.

Sodden river spirits

In the downtime, feast days were held at lavish cost, and spiritual research and meditations were constructed. Rumour gathering was attempted by the locals seemed cowed by recent supernatural happenings, and mistrust of the Hammers was high, perhaps because they had entered the black fog and (partially) returned alive. A plan was hatched to enter from the northwest this time via the river, heading straight to the sawmill in the hamlet of Gresseham itself. Led by Ulrich,  an entreaty was made to the locals to join the faith. His proseletizying was aided by the rest of the party (The Test of Faith I mentioned earlier on – it worked well here and felt thematic) and soon Ulrich had the beginnings of a flock who also had the happenstance to own a river barge – the oddly named Pequod, piloted by a Captain Ahab and his first mate Quequeg (I know I know). Also joining the party were two new Hammers named Kalewick and Pendle.


Making their preparations and setting off, they returned back into the black mist on the Pequod via the River Gresse. A freezing and preternatural wind picked up, causing most of the party to shelter below decks. Tobias and some of the others kept watch, sighting pale figures in the fields to north and south, barely discernable in the darkness. These…things…raised their heads from the ground and stared towards the boat, but seemed weak and palsied. Soon enough, the river in front of the barge became clogged with loathsome forms too. Tobias peered into the darkness, and tried to push the creatures out of the way with an oar. Sad, sighing faces looked up at them – and one, seeming to be a waif-like young woman cloaked in the pallor of death, held out a small bundle wrapped in a shroud…Tobias passed their Test of Faith and managed to concentrate on the task at hand, though it grieved them greatly.

Entering Gresseham proper, they moored the barge and investigated the sawmill. Foddas, Kalewick and Ulrich headed up the party, leading them all up the short wooden stairs to the ground floor, while the knocking and rasping of the saw in its housing  sounded from inside. As the three priests at the front entered the building, the door slammed shut, and a blue glow coalesced on the other side of the massive saw, which began to rotate at speed! Something indescribable lurked at the centre of the glow, an unholy embodiment of carnal desire, and it lured the hapless Kalewick towards it – and to the rattling, razor sharp saw too! Foddas hurled holy water at the thing, while Ulrich used his Turn ability – banishing the thing forever. Not a moment too soon – Kalewick regained his senses inches from the brutal sawblade – it could have been very nasty indeed if not for his companions.

The rest of the party helped break down the door, and the interior of the mill’s ground floor was searched for supplies of rope and oil – while the glowing trapdoor that led to the immense water wheel in the basement was cautiously avoided.

The group decided to investigate the church of Gresseham, defiled and in ruins from a tremendous blaze – flickering flames and hot ashes still filled the area, the steeple and bell-tower having fallen in. Their plan was to search the font for more supplies of holy water. As they passed under the lich-gate and entered the church grounds, they were shocked to see that every grave and seemingly been clawed open and lay empty, every mausoleum crumbled away to reveal empty darkness within.

Steeling themselves the entered the church ruins, and Tobias was able to garner several more flasks of holy water, narrowly avoiding some collapsing beams and masonry due to the party pulling them out using rope.

A baying sound was heard, and a panting and wounded mastiff, huge in size, loomed large in the archway into the church. Foddas revealed he had some basic knowledge and vocal tricks for use in training dogs, and calmed the beast with soothing sounds, then healing its wounds with his holy channelling. The huge beast stood on its hind legs to lick his face, and was dubbed Pudding. It ran at heel at his side – and immediately began barking a warning at the surrounding darkness. The cause was soon revealed – two dessicated and stumbling walking corpses, surrounded by the stench of peat – Bog Bodies, animated by whatever blasted energies cloaked the vale in shadow!!

Battle was joined, and oil was hurled at the disgusting ancient corpses before torches set them ablaze. One of them gripped Olaf around the neck and sank its bony claws into his neck, choking and choking – but his compatriots (and Pudding’s furious maw) destroyed the creature, granting it eternal rest.

Faithful Pudding

The Hammers walked back to the sawmill with their doughty new canine Pudding in tow, laden with clinking bottles of holy water purloined from the font. The members of Ulrich’s new flock suffered a lapse in faith – they could not face whatever lurked inside – they would return to ready the boat should escape be necessary. The remaining priests split into two sub-parties, one approaching from the upper trapdoor leading downwards from the ground floor, one walking down the slippery steps to the external basement door. Several Oaths were taken – among them Kalewick, who swore he would let himself perish before the evil within would triumph – and Ulrich, who swore the mill would burn and he with it rather than suffer the thing inside to live. Choosing their respective paths, they stepped into the old mill…

Inside was the entity causing this whole nasty situation in the valley - The Blue Hand of the Damned. A literal greyish blue gigantic arm and hand protruded from the floor from depths beyond this world, and when the palm was raised it was seen to be studded with the weeping faces of souls from the village. Swirling about the thing in a vortex were seen many faces – men, women, children – several of them familiar to those who had had occasion to visit Gresseham in the past.

Turning attempts were worthless – the creature was too powerful. Holy water was hurled at the thing again and again, thick steam filling the air as it hissed in pain. It snatched up Pendle in its gigantic fingers and squeezed, snuffing the life out of the cleric’s body before dropping it into the vortex to claim his soul amongst so many others. Enraged by the death of his companion, Kalewick lived up to his oath – he doused himself in the remaining flask of holy water and bodily hurled himself on the thing, striking to and fro with his mace. His holy fury destroyed the creature’s earthly form as it screamed at his touch, and when the smoke and vapour cleared, the sun could be seen shining through the windows of the sawmill. The curse upon Gresseham had been lifted.

Bog Bodies