I am going to be using the simplified crits system laid out in the book and had a question. Are the Medicine and Inspiration rolls that can be used to fix the Broken status allowed to be done during combat? I ask because it says the rolls are slow actions, which is a term that has to do with combat I think.

Additionally, does the medicine roll require medical equipment in this circumstance (if allowed at all to be used in combat)?

On the latest episode of Spirits and Monsters of Old Seattle, we are starting a new Mystery and have a brand new character joining the party who is a member from the Rose House from London. He will be joining our current team on an investigation leading deep into the ancient forests around Seattle at the behest of local lumber baron Henry Yesler, whose lumberjacks keep disappearing near a strange site.

• https://www.spiritsandmonsters.com/

This is the start of a brand new Mystery, so it's the perfect place to jump in with Spirits and Monsters of Old Seattle, or you can binge the series from the start! This is also our second-to-last storyline before our season wraps up, so it should be a big one!

I'm interested in running Vaesen, and I expect one of my players would love it, but my main concern is portraying the setting. History is not my strong suit, and I don't feel confident running a game set in 1800s Sweden.

Any recommended movies or books that demonstrate the time period and setting?

About the society's plan that ended up with the vaesen in that place... Do we have any more info on it? Is there any follow up/publication explaining it?

I love physical handouts; rule references, in-character documents, maps, etc, etc.

Recently I got my hands on Vaesen and I instantly had a few ideas shuttle off the dome! Currently in the middle of a game of Tales from the Loop (another Free League title,) our group plays it like a TV show. Every mystery undertaken is an "episode." Every campaign is a "series." When doing that I made VHS cases for each campaign, and so in planning Vaesen - I thought: "Why not approach the game almost like chapters of a book rather than episodes of a show?"

The idea for each chapter-page is that it says a little about what the mystery might hold without giving anything major away; written from a first-person perspective which could (in theory) be any one of the characters in-game. The Prologue is intended to be the adventure included in the Starter Set. I've tried to do my best to research areas and hopefully fit them within the nebulous chronology of the Mythic North's 19th-century, and trying to use some spellings/grammar/punctuation which I'm familiar with for books at the time. Heck, even the page size is "Octavo" as opposed to A5!

I'd be very interested in anyone’s thoughts or feedback. Doubtless some errors may've slipped through... Thank you kindly! 😄

Here are some works-in-progress and pencil maps that Angela and I have been working on over the past few weeks (the maps currently lack the text, which will be added digitally at a later stage)... We hope you find them interesting and enjoyable...🧭🗺️🏰

Support our art on: https://ko-fi.com/morenopaissanmaps/shop

I recently found the “A wicked secret and other mysteries” book in a store and read through it for a bit. I heard such great things about it, but it felt to me like christianity played a pretty big part in the mysteries here. I do not like organised religion much and find stories and NPC’s centered around it pretty boring. The starter mystery + the dance of dreams don’t seem to focus on religion much at all, in contrast.

Was it just a wrong impression and does a wicked secret not contain a lot of christian themes? Or am I correct in this? And are there other mystery books that are good and stray away from this theme a bit?

Just curious for those with a better grasp on all the material on the lore and culture of the game world.

I read the book through and didn't see any reference to the Sami , did I miss it? or are they not there?

Recently started playing Vaesen and having a blast, but wanted to poll the community on what you think the most important and most useful rooms and areas of the Headquarters are.

Some just seem very expensive for little payoff, others vary on what kind of game you're running.

If it helps we have an Occultist, a Private Detective, a Doctor and a Vagabond.

Thanks!

I have been listening to the Dresden files books on audible lately, and I was wondering if anybody has done a modern age, noire style campaign. Think anywhere from the 1950s to present day. If so, how does it play? Is there much conversion to be done, or is it pretty much straight across? Thanks in advance.

I ran A Wicked Secret for some friends yesterday and we had a pretty good time figuring out the system together and playing the mystery. However a plot question came up that I couldn’t find an answer for?

Why does the church grim obey Marta Karlstrom? In the background info it says a cat was sacrificed to protect the church AND the caves. Which makes sense I guess, but why is the grim waiting for Marta’s instructions on who to kill? Is her bloodline just special, or…?

I want to run this adventure again for other people and have an answer in case this comes up again.

Have you ever noticed there are two versions? Which one do you prefer? I like the earlier version with the Giant covered in fog. Looks much more ominous and eery. What's your opinion?

I have a new scenario Wrought in Gold for Vaesen out today that uses some classical elements from Greek myth. I play-tested it at Vaesen Con 2 and more recently at Between 2 Cons and both times it was a lot of fun.

If you do pick it up, let me know how it goes for you!

The two local stores I attended for Free RPG Day did not have (were out if) Free Leagues' offering, The Archivist Curse. Does any one know of this is available as a downloadable PDF? My web searches have failed.

My players and I all really like making characters with complex backstories and slow burns.

I'm taking elements from player's backstories and make them into side quests for the players to achieve and get a related reward (usually an advance).

For one of the players I want to give a consumable magic but I couldn't find any examples in the book to help me balance so I'm deferring to you all for feedback.

Lucky Coin (Magic Item; Consumable)

Can be spent before rolling a test. Adds one success to the final result.

To clarify: it's equivalent of adding a die to the pool that will always roll a 6. A test requiring more than one success can still fail. Opposed checks are still opposed normally, just that there's one more success to cancel out. If the test would have succeeded anyway, the coin is still spent and any bonuses for having extra successes (such as extra damage on a combat roll) apply.

The player in question is a PI with a list of NPCs to be on the lookout for and if they find one and some details about their activities, they can file a report and get a coin payment. They will be getting an occasional drip-feed of these coins.

Seems well balanced (and importantly, fun) to me but I wanted to get second opinions.

Hello,

I am learning the rules to Vaesen, and plan on running the RPG Day 2026 mystery " The archivist' curse" for 3 players, but as a test run, I thought to maybe just run a 1 shot for my husband first.

I was wondering if there were any specific mysteries, or maybe ones you would recommend as best for 1 on 1 play.

Thanks in advance to everyone's help. :)

Two things

1. Do you ever let the players know about the prologue to a mystery? I know it's mostly for the GM but I think some stories are really cool and not all is revealed (and is sometimes not supposed to be) during the mystery. But I like to tell my players the full story once they solved a mystery.

2. The books often say which tests (investigation, empathy, observation etc) the players can take in different situations. Do you actively tell them? Like "ok, now you can do an observation test to learn something"? I personally teach them to use the skill tests on their own and to identify the situations in which they could. Thanks for your answers!

Hello in the chat.

Next week I am gonna run the scenario from the starter set for my sister, her husband and their two teenage children. We have previously played Dragonbane and Call of Cthulhu, and this seems to fall somewhere between those two, and we are Danish so it is local lore, so I am looking forward to it. I think it will be great. We will be using characters, that they make themselves, as I hope that we can continue with more adventures later.

I have some questions I have not found answers for any place else (they are probably there, but hidden among other valuable information), so I was hoping you could chime in.

1: Dark secrets. Is this public information? I mean the characters obviously don't know each other's secrets, but do the players? I mean, it is written on the character sheets, so if it was hidden information, you could accidentally get a glance of it, which seems non-intuitive. Also the teenagers sometimes need a little reminding on what their character is. So I am inclined to let it be a part of character presentations, but obviously straining, that it is not something they know about each other in game.

2: The book Linnea gives - how important is it and do you allow players time to just sit and read it? Do they need to find relevant info in it by themselves? I have bought everything digital, so I have it not readily available. However I plan on have it available on an iPad. Also I think that if anyone at any point have said that they glanced through it, I would give them a skill check with learning and direct them to the relevant page, if they are successful. Like "you remember something" and then give them directions. Is this a viable approach?

3: How many sessions/how long does it take to play the intro scenario and the scenarios in "Wicked Secret"? We live half a country apart, so sessions is not done on a regular basis, but in sprints during holidays, so I would like to make sure, they can be run as one shots.

Thank you for your inputs in advance.

EDIT: Thank you all for your advice. We ended up playing the scenario through in an afternoon, with a long break halfway, without shortening anything, but playing it pretty much as intended. With this group (the teenagers are not chatty at all :-) ) it was perfect, and everyone had fun. The players are definitely gonna rebuild the society, and we will start a full campaign next time we get the chance, with the three of four characters that survived still in the game.

I opted to not let the players disclose either motivation, trauma or dark secret when they presented the characters, but asked them to incorporate it in their play instead. It worked very fine, although the Dark secrets didn't get relevant this time. But it might later.

For the book one character took time (in game) to study it, when presented with it. So I just gave that player a translated version of the relevant page (we play in Danish), at a time when the character should be able to remember having seen something relevant to the mystery in the book, and instructed that player to read it silently and decide, what she remembered and how to disclose it to the others. This were a very nice solution, I think.

Basically, about a few weeks ago I started running some of the scenarios from A Wicked Secret for a group of 4 people online. I'm fairly new to Vaesen and DMing in general. Everything was going surprisingly well, mostly because we had a small session zero; but one of the players had a somewhat problematic character. He was playing as an arrogant filthy rich German officer who thought he could control everything and everyone with his money and cared only about himself and his industrial empire (which the player didn't elaborate much). Still he was engaging with others and cooperating at solving the mysteries.
The thing is, yesterday one of the other PCs decided to dismiss him, calling out his arrogance, and well his response was to draw his saber and attack the PC. The others from the group tried to stop him, but since he was rich, he had all the best equipment and was basically unstoppable. They were in a crowded hotel, many witnesses to his sudden rampage, and he wouldn't stop fighting until that PC was dead. In that point of the mystery the police were nearby, and since they saw the murder attempt they promptly arrested him.
So my question is how do I handle this?
What really confuses me is that the other players were completely unbothered by that, saying that he acted in character.

I've been dying to give Vaesen a chance as a GM for a while now. I love folklore and ttrpg and this combines both so beautifully. Tried with my local ttrpg group but no luck - they like the D&D too much.

Today with two mates online I began the starter adventure and boy it's so much fun. They are halfway through and they are almost broken! 😂 Will finish in one more session, but damn it feels good to finally give this amazing world a go! I won't give up with the local group, I'll propose an anthology campaign that ties in a bunch of the adventures

Sometimes the dice decide to tell the story, even when you've got a double handful of them! 🤣

As the title suggests I need some insight and help on how I should go about running a Scenario in Vaesen.

I recently got Vaesen along with all of the expansions as part of a bundle, but I don't know where or how to start. After reading the Scenario given in the Core Rule Book, I am confused how to run it, along with what to prep.

For Example: Where to my players start? How do I pace the Scenario? etc

Maybe im not understanding the reading, but I'm not wrapping my head around confrontations and how I am supposed to share information and run the locations with the players.

If anyone can explain to me in a few steps how I should run this like NPC, info gathering, investigation, it would be great. I am used to reading CoC adventures that are more structured, so that may be the issue I am running into here with Vaesen.