Vermis: Lost Dungeons and Forbidden Woods RPG artbook review (w/ bonus Goblin Knight stats!)

Your console boots up. You switch the input to TV03. Color bars flash, static fizzles. The CRT scanlines reveal the words Vermis: Lost Dungeons and Forbidden Woods. MIDI synth music issues forth, soft and sinister --what we would call Dungeon Synth today, but what was mysterious and unnamed in childhood-- fades in, filling the dark room lit only by the glow of the screen and the power button of your console. A jarring flash occurs, with the words Which flesh is your flesh? appearing, briefly, before you are given the prompt Press Start to Enter the Darkness.

Vermis (volume 1, with more to come?) is a guide to a game that never existed. It’s a lo-fi dark fantasy action RPG, with Dark Souls being an easy point of comparison, but of the era of Eye of the Beholder grid-based movement and sprite-based Doom engine graphics but with an off-putting layer of grime. In those days, a guide book would sometimes contain a world unto itself, with the world lore, character options, and select item and enemy types in there to accompany the experience of the game. Sometimes sections of the map or levels would be teased too, but not enough to spoil everything. Implication was the name of the game, to make you want to fill in those gaps and see the sprites in motion, to experience the endings to the quests introduced in the little tome.

This is an unfilled niche in the RPG business. We have diegetic books like The Book of Gaub and Fungi of the Far Realms, we have statless bestiaries like Fire on the Velvet Horizon and Field Guide to Hot Springs Island, we have artbooks of inspiration. But we didn’t have the fusion of all of them that Vermis represents. It is an experience to read and fill in the gaps of.

There is no table of contents in Vermis, nor pagination throughout. You need to flip through to see what’s in there. If you read it from the beginning, it will come out more or less as you’d expect an RPG intro/character creation section to, with character types, status effects, “alignment”, gods, starting gear, that stuff. All of this is tantalizingly vague and atmospheric, perfectly giving the feeling of missing information that you would grasp immediately if only you could hold the controller and select the options alluded to on the page. Then it jumps into the environments or “levels” themselves, starting with the Deadman’s Gardens on the Capital Outskirts- only a brief paragraph is given to say that factions war in the Capital and it is in a dire state. You are leaving on your quest, and this is where you start, Level One: The Graveyard. Enemies, NPCs, Items, introduced with the same tone, over just a few pages, before moving on to Level Two: Paupers’ Catacombs. The “level” part is mine, it’s not so cut and dried within the text. In fact, only through reading somewhat closely can you place how these spaces interconnect, that there is a linearity to them. It is nebulous and holistic enough that you will burst with ideas how to use this content, where to place it and how to run it.

As you read it, the art will engross you on every page. It is aggressively lo-res, with muddy but carefully selected color palettes, ragged edges to sprites, and ubiquitous pixelation and dithering creating a texture of gloom and pushing your eyes to search for details hidden within. Layouts are varied and carefully composed, some like comic book frames, some like dungeon maps, some like screen captures. The variety keeps you constantly engaged from page to page, and several pictures and the accompanying text pack quite the punch.

In terms of usability, it is first and foremost an inspiration resource, but it has strong potential for almost anything else you would want to do in a Dark Fantasy setting. It could be used almost as-is for Mork Borg, with the flavor being an incredible fit but also the size of the dungeons and simplicity of creatures. Other rules-light systems like Into The Odd would likely be nearly as easy, as those systems require a bare minimum of mechanical justification to integrate material. More meaty systems like retroclones or even modern games would take more work, but also yield more reward, with the ample flavor of any given aspect pushing you to create nuanced, baroque material.

If you’re interested in this at all, get it. You won’t be disappointed. Even if you’re not sure, at its price of €15 it is a chance well worth taking. You will get, at the least, an afternoon of rapt immersion in the experience of flipping through this mysterious artifact, and likely much more in the form of misty sepulchers and dreamlike dungeons.

666/666

Bonus Gameable Content:

Retroclone Stats:
Goblin Knight Armor as Plate+1 (19 [2]) HD 8, 40 HP, MV 60’, ML 12, Axe 1d10
Every other round Goblin Knight may make 2 attacks. It may choose to make only one attack to stagger an enemy in addition to dealing damage normally, causing the target to Save versus Paralysis during its next turn or fall prone, unable to take actions. A creature which has been staggered will suffer the effect again anytime it receives damage from the Goblin Knight, even from normal attacks. A successful Save ends the effect.
When the Goblin Knight reaches 0HP, it instead goes into a rage, making 2 staggering attacks each round. It does not suffer damage from attacks, but each round it makes a Save versus Poison (DC 10, as an 8th level Fighter) or die, with a penalty to the roll equal to damage dealt to it that round.

Mork Borg Stats:
Goblin Knight HP 36, Morale - , Heavy armor -d6 (DR 14), Axe 1d10
Every other round Goblin Knight may make 2 attacks. It may choose to make only one attack to stagger an enemy in addition to dealing damage normally, causing the target to test Toughness during or be staggered and fall prone, unable to take actions for one turn. A creature which has been staggered will suffer the effect again anytime it receives damage from the Goblin Knight, even from normal attacks. A successful Presence test ends the effect.
When the Goblin Knight reaches 0HP, it instead goes into a rage, making 2 staggering attacks each round. It does not suffer damage from attacks, but each round it must succeed at a DR 7 test or die, with a penalty to the roll equal to damage dealt to it that round.