His Majesty the Worm: First Impressions

 I return from the grave to discuss the best game I have ever read: His Majesty the Worm. Before we begin, allow me to specify a note on terminology: This is a first impressions, not a review. I have not played HMTW, and definitely not to a level where I could give a comprehensive review. This is simply how I feel after reading through the book a few times.

When Comes the Worm

HMTW is, ostensible, a game about megadungeons. You could do something else with it, but at its core HMTW wants you to play a group of a questionably moral adventurers and go dig through an ancient dungeon beneath your home city with the goal of collecting treasure. This is not a unique idea (not that that's bad), but unlike other games that have a similar gameplay loop, HMTW is so well designed, such an immaculately well crafted game I am not surprised it took 8 years to make.

Let's start with the biggest weirdness of the system: you don't use dice. You instead use a standard 78 card deck of tarot cards, dividing into a 57 card player deck (the minor arcana and the fool), and the 21 card GM deck. A lesser game would treat this as a gimmick. HMTW instead makes the most out of every card. HMTW uses a simple core resolution system: draw a card and add its number to your relevant stat. If it beats 14, you win! The keen eyed among you might know that a deck of minor arcana only goes up to 14, and thus the likelihood of any random card + four (your maximum attribute score) is not particularly likely, and the system knows this as well. Risk/reward is built into the fundamentals of HMTW, even in the basic resolution of actions. You can always draw a second card and add it to your total, allowing you to succeed when you fail, or fail far harder than you would've before.

I cannot stress the elegance of this design. Yes, all of this could be done with dice, but HMTW goes further. If the suite of your card matches the roll, you can critically succeed, but only if your first card is a success. Most interesting of all is that you don't shuffle cards back in until you draw the fool, so as time progresses you get better knowledge of what's in the deck and can make more informed decisions. You would not be doing that with dice.

I could go like this about every mechanic in this game, and perhaps I could be persuaded too, but not here, not now. Instead, allow me to gush about my favorite part of this game: the combat.

A Duel of Cards

During combat, each player draws a hand of 4 cards. They play one of these cards as their initiative (lower is better). Their initiative is also their AC (high is better), so going fast is risky, but that risk is interesting because initiative is played face down. You don't flip it over until you are either 1) attacked or 2) it is your turn.

On your turn, you can play a card from your hand to do one of a list of actions, ranging from disengaging to attacking to riposting, which (along with every defensive action) is also played face down. You can even play cards when it isn't your turn, though these cards must match the suit of the action being used and you never add your attribute to these actions.

This system is simple, yet amazing. The hiding of information allows for very interesting questions from the GM. Is that player bluffing? Are they riposting for 2 or for 11? Is it worth finding out? These kind of questions are so interesting and make HMTW's combat more than the normal affair of move, attack, pass.

I'm not scratching the surface here. Health is very low (you can take 5 hits before dying without armor), so not getting hit is valuable. Zones make combat fast yet still tactical. Each weapon type is incredibly varied and has a niche it excels in.

Combat is dangerous in HMTW, but unlike most games its something to look forward too.

Rapid Fire Likes

• Backstory matters, and is naturally built into character creation, but it also isn't overbearing. This isn't the story of what once was, this is the story of the dungeon.
• Ancestries are interesting and encourage you to play in a way befitting of what you are. Snooty and ethereal elves, arrogant and self centered humans.
• Asking the GM for stuff your character knows but that you don't know is a mechanic.
• Experience is based on the party agreeing to do something and then doing it: completely self directed.
• No hirelings. Yes this is a positive in my eyes.
• The party isn't just a bunch of random idiots, you are members of the same guild. You have relationships with each other. Playing into these relationships is actively rewarded. You want to be best friends with another guild member? Act like it.
• Characters don't get better at doing stuff over time, they just get access to more options.
• The game encourages you to play the way I think is most fun, where its less about what you do and more about how you do it. You don't find traps by rolling to check for traps, you find traps by describing how you'd find them.
• Slot based equipment.
• The GM advice isn't concerned with what an adventure is or anything trivial like that, it's about how to make an interesting game. Add that to the rules on how to make a megadungeon and you have everything you need to play present in the book.
• Alchemy: you can cook and eat monsters to gain their powers.

Conclusion

I know I spent this entire impression gushing over HMTW, but frankly I utterly adore this game. There are few things I can critique. Perhaps spells are a bit whatever.. I appreciate the lack of spell slots, instead using inventory slots to hold the spell reagents to cast spells. What I don't appreciate is that only one of the games 4 'classes' gets magic, and they get all the magic. I likely would have preferred it if magic was a toy everyone could get, but you had to earn (same with alchemy).

My other complaint is the price. I payed for this book and I don't regret it, but HMTW's pdf is a whopping 40 dollars american, and its book and pdf is 60. Now, while I hesitate to call this over 400 page book anything other than a tome, that's still a steep asking price.

But I recommend it regardless. A new school game made with old school sensibilities is what HMTW is, a game with unique ideas and amazing implementation of them. HMTW is a game designed to be your forever game, and it has to legs to stand on to do it.

Buy this game. Read this game. Play this game. I beg you, nay I implore you. And while you're at it, check out Rise Up Comus, the creator's blog, and peer more into his impressive mind.