Blood Engine Essential

An Old-School RPG with a modern twist. Will you bleed to survive?

Blood Engine Essential is the complete OSR package in a lean, mean format. Inside the book, you will find everything you need to play brutal, bleak adventures in unforgiving worlds, easily compatible with all the best modules, monsters, and adventures of the Old School scene.

Old School doesn’t mean playing like it’s 1977

While born for the love of classics, Blood Engine's rules are also inspired by games such as Mausritter, Savage Worlds, and Mordheim. Its simplicity in character creation and challenge resolutions hides deep customization options, thanks to a tag system that makes all items and creatures as different (and dangerous!) as you want. 

An elegant and stream-lined Clock mechanic elaborates and dictates the flow of all dangers and threats, giving the player an actionable tracker of their progress (or lack thereof). Clocks also help track torches and resource use, like rations and curatives. Sorry, folks, there is no real-time tracking; clocking in and out at work is enough for us.

Players at the center 

It’s all about players' ingenuity and choices; the Blood Engine is designed to help you take center stage rather than your character’s sheet. The game is so mechanically hostile and unforgiving in its rules that it actively enables you to find a solution without rolling the dice; asking the right questions and pursuing action without uncertainty in results is generally preferable.

And if you still want to feel the thrill of the fight, a tactical and incredibly lethal combat will meet your match; there is no hit to roll; everything always hits. No turns yawning and waiting for a good roll to kill or be killed finally; every roll counts, and even a simple skirmish is a nailbiter.

Is your character already dead? You can roll a new one in two minutes, and a wealth of Roles helps you flesh out your new sacrificial lamb with exciting tools and qualities.

Some fun for the GM, too!

Writing a session should be easy, and a GM shouldn't need to read 200 pages of “procedures” and sift through 100 tables of dubious utility to cobble up an engaging adventure. Blood Engine Essential gives you a couple of pages of handy tools to create adventures with primary and secondary objectives that are fast to run and thrilling to play. 

Moody and beautifully illustrated

Blood Engine does not give you a proper setting to play with, but it does set the mood. Hard.

Thanks to master Simone Tammetta's illustrations and his signature visceral and crunchy inks, your nightmares at the table will definitely be vivid!

What you’ll find inside

Blood Engine Essential is a 79-page-long digital-only book with all the rules, every character creation tool you need, a solid progression system, and dozens of weapons, equipment, and monsters. 

The book was free for Oddplan’s subscribers until the 23rd of November. Now you can download it from itch.io and DriveThruRPG.