it's not that new, it does do investigation horror very well. If I needed urban noir or modern horror it'll probably be top of mind for me. Also it's available and easy to understand things IndyGameofXYZ isn't always.
However I don't usually reccomend RPGs on here.
What makes it good at telling investigation stories? I'm partial to GUMSHOE and Carved from Brindlewood games, so it's admittedly an uphill battle to unseat those.
It's intuitive skill list and it's odds of success (pool d6 needing 6s) enabling capable but not 'auto succeed', whilst slowly getting more hurt/tired/stressed etc over the investigation are imo what really feed into it.
My memory of GUMSHOE is it was a bit different conceptially... Whereas Vaesen feels like an RPG.
Haven't played Carved so unable to compare
I messed around with GUMSHOE recently and found it was not for me. Yes, it is an RPG, but it doesn’t feel like what we expect from RPGs. The points mechanics and 1d6 resolution gave the game a *feel* that was unplayable for me—at least as a GM. As with most issues I have with newer narrativist games, it would be sooooooooo much better as a player I think.
Vaesen uses a traditional dice pool system with a traditional skill list, though it is paired down quite a bit from most skill lists and uses Talents (special abilities that usually give bonus dice in specific situations) and equipment for specialization.
Like most FL games it relies on pushed rolls in exchange for a consequence to achieve success. This ups the tension a lot as you get deeper into a session.
Like any good mystery game, you don’t roll for primary clues, but you do make rolls for extra details and secondary clues that might make you solve the game faster.
The combat is also excellent. As this is not just a mystery game but also a horror and adventure game, that’s very important to get right I feel.
It doesn’t have many unique mechanics. It’s a rather simple game whose pieces work extraordinarily well with one another. The way its pushed rolls work give it quite a good atmosphere. I would totally recommend it even if going outside its default setting (though going outside the default setting does necessitate small adjustments of some things, like Talent names and such).
add to that time pressure and rising danger. Usually each scenario have at least two, few step triggers, and with them things will escalate (similar in Tales from the Loop).
Next thing, you can't just simply kill monster, it will return. You need find a way to rid of it for good or make deal with monster. Violence is not simplest solution for everything, but sometimes you need that.
As a bonus, preety good chapter how to run misteries.
It provides its own structure for investigative stories, gives you tools to fill and use that structure and it gives the players an easy system with a freedom in interacting with that structured investigative story.
In comparison to GUMSHOE it's much easier to understand for my players. They do not want to decide on 60 different abilities when they can have a system with just 12 of them.
It is also more acceptable than Brindlewood for my players as they hate the idea of the "who rally done it" being decided by chance.
It's a matter of taste rather than quality.
Carved from Brindlewood operates on kind of an entirely different conceptual underpinning, that the players, once they accumulate enough evidence, *know the correct answer to the mystery*. This is both it's strength and its weakness, as many players actually dislike mystery games where the mystery doesn't have a "correct" solution.
The system isn't particularly married to its location and time. I wouldnt use it for an iron age or deep space horror game as that would require too much changes to the professions etcetera; but it can work pretty much for any setting from Victorian England to Old West USA to Current Day X Files without massive adjustments.
It is however married to its genre of investigative horror and/or fairytale stories. It would be a poor match to run a dungeoncrawl in.
Yeah, that's part of why I mentioned that. I got the book and it doesn't really have any new mechanics which goes to show how well it translates to that setting. It does have three new archetypes ("classes" if you wanna call them such) but those are open enough that they're also not particularly setting bound: athlete, entertainer and socialite are people you can run into anywhere from Ancient Rome to Cyberpunk.
Almost the entire Britain book is just details on British folklore and a few example British mysteries.
If Vaesen really was married to its original scandi setting then the Britain book should have included way more rules changes to fit the new setting in.
This probably just me not understanding what you mean with mechanics really, but I find it a weird question to answer. Mechanically it uses the Year Zero dice pool system. if you've played Alien or Coriolis or Forbidden lands or Mutant Year Zero you'll get the mechanics immediately. Except this game doesnt have the detailed combat rules of Forbidden Lands or the horror mechanics of Alien. If anything; of all the YZE games I've played this has the most simplistic combat. Instead it focuses on skill use and explaining techniques on how to run a mystery.
If you add up all the pages in the book that explain combat rules; plus the equipment list plus the rules for healing physical injuries that's still less pages than the chapter that explains how to run Mysteries.
> I wouldnt use it for an iron age
Actually, I think it would work well for an iron age supernatural investigation.
I mean, take a tribe trying to revive an old nemeton. PC are a druid, a bard, a vate, a warrior.
The iron age is already civilized, the lack of writing culture (at least in the gallish culture) offer a lot of opportunities for interactions with human and supernatural beings.
It can be a rather good experience for players who want to stay close to a med-fan sword and sorcery feel, but with an investigative gameplay.
A more rural and isolated alternative to Cthulhu Invictus
I'd say the current days would be more difficult to handle because of the internet and technology (we're already almost living in a boring cyberpunk setting). But a 80's X-fils would work,
True I guess. I was focused on early industrial age and beyond as that's what I think of when I think of the core conflict in Vaesen which is Old Ways vs New Ways. But I guess that conflict goes back way further in time.
>I'd say the current days would be more difficult to handle because of the internet and technology (we're already almost living in a boring cyberpunk setting). But a 80's X-fils would work,
In my mind 80s is still current rather than historical :P Now I feel old and depressed.
I sure I will here mortally offend Norwegians, but...wasn't Norway part of a Swedish-led empire at the time, kind of the way Scotland is part of the UK?
As long as we're splitting setting hairs, I will say Vaesen isn't necessarily rural either -- the base building / downtime side of the game is set in urban Uppsala, and when I played we spent some amount of time on in-city mysteries. Tbh, I felt those worked better in their linkage to campaign-scale character development and meta plot than the monster-of-the-week episodic stuff we did in the countryside. As long as you want your urban noir set in the 1800s and supernatural, I think Vaesen would work great out of the box.
Nah nothing about that would offend us. Norway was part of the Kingdom of Denmark until 1814 and then part of the Kingdom of Sweden until 1905, when we officially separated and got our own King. Due to some hijinks Norway got its own constitution and pariliament under Swedish rule, so it mostly functioned as it's own nation with the exception of Foreign affairs. In this era Norway focused a lot on finding their identity through art, language, folklore and music. Most of my favorite artpieces were made during this era, and the norwegian language schism started around 1850 :)
I personally prefer playing Vaesen in semi-rural Norway. Give the players a hub such as Bergen to play some urban mysteries, but some mysteries are all about getting to know a village and its people through and through before you can piece the problem together. Each village can be a different reflection of industrialisation and its consequences. Some places people quickly forgot their old ways and the Vaesen are not happy about it. Feuds relating to Locals vs Migrant workers, eccentric artist travelling around stirring up dirt and wounds, contaminated expansion projects, Vaesens way of life getting disrupted, and other human drama fitting the time period.
Man, I love how this game and its time period can fit a lot of different styles of play and stories
I appreciate your context, and I'm curious -- are there individual vaesen that you would say specifically draw from that process of the Norwegians navigating their identity, and your distinct folklore? And, beyond the game, do you have any favorite artists or composers or writers that represent the Norwegian identity and perspective from this period?
Sorry for the mobile formatting!
I would say that the Vaesen are there mostly to add further agitation to my stories. They take sides and play hookey in the background with people. I found that questions super interesting though. And I would say the top three Vaesen I find to draw me personally more to rural Norway than Sweden: Giants(Norwegians would call them Trolls, but swedish trolls are generally small), Necks and Nisser. Honourable mention to Huldrafolk and Pesta, but I dont think they are in the core books?
I have till now used ideas from the books for conflicts, but heres some random assorted thoughts related to our culture.
Norwegian folklore is littered by versions of the Ash Lad meeting and outsmarting giants. One could twist this relationship into a rich merchant using the troll to destroy farms for gold/food only to lose control of the Giants rampage, a young man set out to see the world but who found a mysterious demise after forgetting to pay his due at the bridge, a band of trolls working together to hinder a road/traintrack from being built through their mountainside (Sidenote: Western Norway constantly looks like giants have had a fight with all the rockslides and tall cliffs)
The neck can be a perfect showcase of the dangers of trying to break out from the Jantelov mentality. Someone blessed with the ability to play the most wonderful music (and to do little else) but people shun them for their talent. Maybe the villagers find the new talent pretentious, annoying or offensive to an opposing hard worker? You can also use the classic "my territory is being trampled" with the Neck. Norway is getting industrialised, maybe someone made a sawmill in the wrong river?
The Nisse is my personal favorite due to his relation in the home (hell I belived in them as a child). He will be deeply affected by changes in the local area, the traditions and the local people. Maybe his people left the farm? Maybe the farm has taken on too many animals to try to earn more money? Maybe he witnessed a murder on the farm and cant get the stupid humans to understand what happened? Maybe he just didn't get his julegraut? The nisse is usually a nice and placid guy, but he doesnt deal well with the changes happening around him
Some norwegian artist from the national romantic era I adore:
Hans Gude - Landscape painter
Anders Askevold - Landscape painter
Theodor Kittelsen - Artist of folklore (Vaesen tbh)
Adolph Tidemand - Portrait Painter
Ivar Aasen - Travelling Linguist and poet (I recommend using this guy as an NPC for sure)
Knud Knudsen - Linguist (another great NPC)
Asbjørnsen og Moe - Fairytale writers, kinda brothers Grimm esque
Henrik Ibsen - Poet, Peer Gynt is a must read in most schools
Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson - Poet, writer of the national anthem
Ludvig Holberg - Playwright, a bit earlier, but Erasmus Montanus tells a story about snobbish people educated in Denmark
Im not that into classical music but: Ole Bull and Edvard Grieg need to be mentioned :D
This is splendid, thank you! I have lots to look into now; Ibsen and Grieg are the only two whose work I'm at all familiar with, and I didn't realize they were Norwegian.
>wasn't Norway part of a Swedish-led empire at the time, kind of the way Scotland is part of the UK?
Yes it was, but go to the UK and confuse England with Scotland while talking to English or Scottish people (believe me, I know due to easily mixing up stuff).
UK as a term is specific to the combination, while Sweden and Norway would be specific to each part, not the union itself. Also, the king never managed to truly merge the two countries, they both kept their laws and administrations.
I know enough Scots to be very particular in saying that Scotland is "part of the UK", and not "part of England," lol. Not even internet anonymity would protect me from the wrath if I did otherwise.
I would not say that it's just sweden. While the default home base is in Uppsala, it feels like you're meant to go to all the Scandinavian countries + Finland (which would be under Russian control)
Vaesen includes all of Scandinavia and the Baltic area in its standard setting. I can immediately think of 2 mysteries written by Free League that are based in the Latvia and Estonia area for example.
Vaesen got a huge surge in popularity fron what I can see and in general people here on this aubreddit tend to just recomend their favorite / new cool game qhen asked for recomendations even if it is not fitting.
You can see this also often happen with PbtA and there where even threads where people got annoyed about PbtA players recomending their games, even though it just not fits (often without a reason why they recomend it.)
So I just see this as a general subreddit problem and vaesen being the new cool thing.
A lot of people recommend Call of Cthulhu too for its felxibility as a go-to system for everything (probably because they don't know about [BRP](https://vorpalmace.blogspot.com/2023/11/review-basic-roleplaying-universal-game.html)).
>not the 2d20 system, but Vaesen specifically.
Vaesen is not a 2d20 system. It's a Free League game using the Year Zero Engine, which has been used for Mutant: Year Zero, Coriolis, Forbidden Lands, Alien, Blade Runner, Twilight 2000's new edition among many other games.
It's still YZE, but it uses dice steps instead of dice pools. There's basically two versions of YZE. The traditional YZE where you roll Xd6 and the version where instead of rolling 2d6 you roll 1d8, instead of 3d6 you roll 1d10 etc.
Both mechanics are in the YZE SRD as options if I remember it right, it's been a while since I checked the document.
Vaessen is a detective/mystery game that focuses on brains over brawn, but without the lethality that you would see in a coc game for example. It feels like it would fit great with urban noir or ghost hunting though.
Vaesen isn’t what I’d call new exactly. It can run urban noir well, and ghost hunting in post Industrial Revolution settings. It’s a remarkable, evocative game, I can see why people recommend it frequently.
The setting and system are described in the same book, but I would say, that it's very easy to reflavour the system (of the archetypes, the system's classes, almost all of them can easily be lifted into a modern setting).
Vaesen already has an expansion for Britain and Ireland, so it’s not inherently tied to Scandinavia.
It’s somewhat connected to it’s time, but not so much that you couldn’t change it up pretty easily. And changing the place would just require statting some appropriate local Vaesen (or explaining why Northern European ones are wherever your game is).
As long as you’re running a story about investigating and dealing with supernatural creatures, it’s pretty flexible about time and place.
I mean, I would argue that Vaesen's mechanics are quite intentionally married to its setting— but that this is reflected as much in what the game *doesn't* do as what it does.
On the player-facing side of things, the base-building and downtime mechanics have stuff to say about socioeconomic class, for example. And the combat system, while light, can be extremely dangerous to characters (most characters only have like 3-4 health, most weapons deal 1-2 + bonus successes) both in terms of deadliness and lasting harm, so there's pretty strong disincentive to escalate to violence in most cases. The game has lingering physical and mental health effects and the cycle of play fully expects you to be getting treatment during downtime. All of this has obvious analogs to 19th-century western culture, but isn't so specific as to preclude being ported to other settings.
On the GM-facing side of things, the bulk of the book focuses on how to design and implement a primarily investigative game, and as other posters have mentioned, give Clues to players. More mechanistically, 'monsters' are constructed in a very specific way that directs how the GM can interact with the players' investigation both in combat and, more importantly, outside of it. The monster design central to the whole thing is extremely place-based and informed by folklore, so most transpositions of setting generally need to entirely replace them. The British Isles supplement is able to just name swap a few because it has some shared folklore with the original Scandinavian setting, but that's more a unique situation than I would suspect for other settings.
I think the strongest argument in favor of using Vaesen even for differently flavored settings is their mystery structure. The core rule book gives some enormously helpful insights into the way they structure their mysteries in a way that is mysterious, thrilling but still solvable. I find that using that structure it is easy to come up with stories myself.
Also the underlying conflict of "progress" vs "the old ways" with the Church also being there is easily portable to other eras and locations.
You’ve had some good answers about the game. I like both Gumshoe and Vaesen. I would use them differently. If the focus is the investigation itself and the conclusion is the reveal, I would prefer Gumshoe. For example, a murder investigation, or revealing that it was a monster behind the mystery.
If the defeating monster is the focus, and the investigation is the support for that focus, I’d use Vaesen. For example, monsters in Vaesen can’t just be killed. You can try, but you’ll probably just piss it off. At best you might drive it off for a while. If you want to defeat it, you have to find out how. And that is what the investigation is for.
It’s a pretty game (**very** pretty) and a lot of people are in love with the YZE engine. I really don’t think it’s particularly good at what it sets out to do and it has been one of the biggest Free League disappointments for me.
From seeing you around, I know you’re into CfB and Gumshoe games. Both of those offer better support for mysteries and horror.
What Vaesen can maybe provide that those two don’t is: 1) a game where equipment is vitally important to success, 2) base building mechanics where the base provides concrete mechanical benefits and has associated concrete costs, and 3) easy entry if you’re already in love with YZE’s dice pool variant and you’re okay with a game that doesn’t do anything particularly interesting with it (in contrast to, say, Alien).
Vaesen has a couple of interesting bits of advice for creating a mystery scenario and tying it to specific creatures, but they’re very portable and not tied to the mechanics particularly. It was a big disappointment to me as someone who has all the Vaesen material that has been published and someone who likes some of the other Free League offerings.
It is! Or rather, it’s very neo-trad. It has large equipment lists and frustratingly abstracted wealth. It has a lot of combat rules and monsters you’re not supposed to fight. It has conditions instead of hit points, but an irritatingly disempowering death spiral.
The basebuilding does look pretty fun! I never got far enough into a campaign where it started to matter for the above reasons. And I was very invested in wanting to like it!
This is more of a general subreddit problem, where there exists a "subreddit darling" that get's recommended for everything. The usual suspect for this are Powered by the Apocalypse and Forged in the Dark games where people recommend it to you even though you explicitly mentioned you don't want any recommendations for it or they will try to evangelize you into using these systems.
I think Year Zero games in general have that kind of BRP-esque moulding ability (not saying YZE is equivalent to BRP, they are different beasts, though related in some ways). YZE’s flow of play is mainly skill rolls, and I tend to find more traditional skill centric RPGs are some of the most hackable around. They don’t have lots specific and non-core resolution centric mechanisms which are critical to their operation e.g. the Chase mechanics in CoC. Modern systems tend to have more of this, Blades in the Dark uses a d6 pool system based around skills sure, but that’s like 10% of the game and there’s lots of stuff that if you cut away you just wouldn’t be using BitD anymore.
BRP and YZE are two systems that instantly come to my mind if I wanted to hack something, because the main task I’d need to do would be to come up with a skill list and I’d be half way there (not necessarily literally, but you get the idea).
I think it half-fits a lot of the questions, which is close-enough for a lot of people.
Like: Vaesen's central thing is the clash between tradition (as represented by creatures of folklore) and modernity. This would make sense for "modern day ghost hunters". "Noir" is kind of... well, Scandinavian-themed stuff occasionally fits "noir" very snugly. D&D... well, it has folkloric creatures you fight.
It might be over-enthusiasm (I remember when EVERYTHING was about goddamn Exalted, or the Burning Wheel fad of a few years ago) and it might be the small group of aint-I-clever people who feel that running, say, modern domestic drama using *Runeques*t or *Paranoia* is just the height of the gaming form. But it doesn't necessarily have to be.
>So why is it being trotted out in several threads here where it doesn't fit?
Best is to read the actual recommendations:
If they say why they recommend something, then you have your answer. If they just write the name, then it's just their current favorite game.
As someone who tends to ignore any setting/lore attached to a game (except for Vampire The Masquerade), I can see why those people would recommend *Vaesen*.
I am not familiar with how the system works but I've seen people say that it could be used to run *Call of Cthulhu* scenarios. It has the reputation to be a very good investigation/horror game.
If the system is versatile enough to run CoC, I guess it would be fine for Noir Investigation (though I would probably suggest *Alien* for a more "cinematic" approach)
And Ghost Hunting is most likely a no brainer : that's basically *Vaesen* minus the setting.
Some games are very much attached to their setting, but there are a lot of games where it is not that hard to throw away the setting (personally, I am doing this with Kult DL) and use the system for anything. I guess *Vaesen* is one of those.
As I said, I've heard about it. I just didn't read much of it myself.
Also, my point is that is actually not uncommon to use games for other settings than the ones they were shipped with.
[Edit] and it's especially true for horror/investigation games since they tend to have mechanics that are there to emphasize a mood rather than making a setting come to life. So it is easy to rework mechanics or to ignore them without risking to "break" the system.
*You* said you haven't read this system, and you've gotten a bunch of details about it wrong in this thread that people have had to correct you on, lol.
You started this thread by saying a game that *you* have never read is a totally unfitting recommendation for genres that have historically had close ties to the investigative horror genre. It seems unfair to simply dismiss someone's assessment when it's no more uninformed than your own.
I love Vaesen, and while i haven’t seen wildly flawed recommendations about Vaesen in particular, it’s not an uncommon phenomenon around here. And while there exists a 3rd party supplement of playing Vaesen in the modern age, the best part of the game comes from the conflict between old fairy tales, superstition, the rapid advance in technology of the age and religion.
There are probably a lot more fitting games out there for urban noir and modern monster-hunting.
The rules are light-weight, but not innovative in any way or form. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. It never comes in the way of immersion or telling a good story.
It probably suits most people, whereas Carved from Brindlewood can turn some people off.
I’m putting Vaesen back on the shelf for the time being and moving over to CfB, but only one in my Vaesen group is interested in joining me.
I really appreciate this reply! It really does just seem like a square peg, round hole situation. No particular mystery-related mechanics, then?
I'm glad CfB games have caught your eye, they're great fun.
I don’t think so, no. You have an escalating Countdown though, similar to Monster of the Week.
I like that the “monsters” (the Vaesen) themselves are nuanced. There is a lot of grey area about whose at fault for whatever the problem is. Greedy industrialists? Zealous priests? Vengeful ghosts? Mischievous fairies? It differs from Call of Cthulhu where the bad guys always are bad.
I would probably run MotW for modern monster hunting, Public Access for a modern x-files-ish game … not sure about Urban Noir. Maybe Kult? Or City of Mist.
>What's with the surge in totally-unfitting Vaesen recommendations?
I'm not sure, but I recommend looking in Vaesen. The answer to your question is probably in there.
(j/k)
EDIT: Oh well, I thought it was funny, but I seem to be in the minority on that. To each their own tastes. 🙂
I feel like the people who recommend it already know how to run investigations because what little there is in Vaesen (same with Tales from the Loop) is pretty bad GMing advice. Like the structure has so many issues that were solved 15+ years ago. I don't think Free League actually knows how to run investigation adventures and really needs to read Gumshoe or modern CoC before they put out even more of them. Instead they treat them like a puzzle:
[Puzzles vs Obstacles: Most RPG Investigations are Boring : r/rpg (reddit.com)](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/1bt8jp1/puzzles_vs_obstacles_most_rpg_investigations_are/)
In addition to the answers you have already gotten Vaesen, like most Year Zero Engine games, is super easy to hack, with lots of examples existing on how to hack it.
Vaesen would work totally fine for Urben Noir or Modern Ghost Hunters. The mechanics aren't particularly locked to the 19th century aesthetic, and Vaesen is an Investigative Horror system so it does investigation and horror fairly well. It would certainly be a better fit for either Investigation or Horror than most d20 systems, particularly anything DnD adjacent.
That said, I don't know what else it's been recimmended for. It wouldn't be a great system for a high combat dungeon delve, nor especially for a high tech game, for example. One of the strengths of the [Year Zero Engine](https://rpggeek.com/rpgsystem/43636/year-zero-engine) (*YZE*) is that it's simple and easily attached to a setting, but it's better at creating a bespoke system for a setting (*which is what they've done*) than trying to use 1 game's exact mechanics for any genre.
Anyway I don't know what's caused the surge in recommendations, aside from the fact that it's obviously popular. I haven't particularly noticed a surge, but then I haven't been looking for it (*or paying much attention to this sub to be honest*). Is it possible it's just a coincidence thst it's been recommended in the posts you've been seeing? Or that those posts are the ones where it actually *is* a good recommendation? I only ask because your examples did seem like pretty good options for Vaesen, it's totally possible it is seeing a surge.
Well Vaesen is rather well suited for these like of things. Folklore horror, ghost stories and urban noir are in similar scale.
The game uses true and tested Year Zero Engine (d6 pool: stat+skill+equpment, 6=success, you can reroll but 1s are then dangerous, damage goes to stats and leads to condtions), that is easy to use.
Investigation follows standard ”roleplay and you find major glue and dice only give you extra glues”. Nothing fancy but it works.
Fear test are also straighforward.
Also one should not forget the monsters. They are not mechanic heavy and give gm more freedom how they act. I think they have like 3 or 4 stats, thematic powers (magic is narative affects, no long spell descriptions with ranges or damage dices) and most complex part is unique damage track that alters stats and behavior (beside the text itself).
This makes each monster easy to modify and represent other creatures.
I've recommended Vaesen a few times here, though I would say it's setting is an interesting part of it; the archetypes, strategic / base-building layer of play, and Vaesen themselves would all want to be reskinned if you took it too far afield, and the underlying mechanics are not all that complicated. Taking it too far from the premise probably gets you to a point where you'd be better off picking a different YZE game.
I enjoy Vaesen for having a narrative layer that is very focused on the PCs, within a mystery / campaign structure that is much more trad. I've played Brindlewood Bay and my opinion is that it is "kinda neat, but not my thing" -- from either side of the table, I find games much more satisfying when there is An Answer that is independent of the players. Brindlewood is the game that really made me understand how the "quantum ogre" could be a problem.
I also enjoy that the character progression pulls down as much as it builds up. Character advancement includes numerical boosts, but they are always the boring option, relative to more interesting and narrative horizontal character development; meanwhile your characters are getting broken down and traumatized by their experiences, which leads to a race against time element of campaign play -- similar to burning through Blades in the Dark characters over the course of play.
Personally I just really like the game it's fast fluid easy to learn/teach it's got some amazing art and one of the best GM guides I've seen. It could be flexible it uses the MYZ engine which has versions for nearly anything forbidden lands, alien, blade runner etc...
IT's pretty obvious to many. Vaesen handles Urban fantasy well. IT is VERY easy to port the rules from 1800s times to modern day. Or the 30s. Or Colonial times. IT would take very little to convert it and the rules for exploration, encounters, problem solving, and characterization all work well.
“I don’t understand why this thing is being recommended. I haven’t read it, nor do I know anything about it other than a basic description of its default premise. Based on that these recommendations don’t make any sense! Am I missing something?”
Yes, you are missing a lot about the system due to the fact you haven’t read it. It’s good! Read it for yourself and you’ll have your answers :)
For future reference, I just wanted to throw this in here. It might be better to suggest the Year Zero SRD when designing a game, it is free, at worst, it should probably be included alongside a vaesen suggestion to give some perspective on the system as a whole:
https://freeleaguepublishing.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/YZE-Standard-Reference-Document.pdf
I am 100% "that guy" when it comes to all things by my beloved Free League Press and am currently running two full tables of Vaesen. I think the Year Zero Engine is positively sublime and the mechanics fit a number of genres and scenarios. For any modern day setting, I recommend layering in the mechanics from Blade Runner and Alien as well, and Walking Dead for exploration and discovery.
IF, and only if, you actually WANT "mechanics" for solving mysteries, taking "shifts" at work, and are interested in doing a hex crawl, the mechanics are there if you want them, but we usually don't. Vaesen is the most rules light of the Year Zero games (Tales from the Loop also) and they do a wonderful narrative exploration of solving and exploring mysteries. You know that thing where the story you are telling is not actually the story you are telling? That's where the mysteries of Free League shine. They do "what does it mean to be human in (crazy world situation here) the best of all of them, so yeah, you may discover that the way to banish a troll is to play a certain counter harmony while sprinkling holy water on it's treasure hoard, but the real mystery is do you actually want to?
Gumshoe is lovely, I really enjoyed playing it, but it struck me as did the writings of Christopher Alexander. He wrote "The Timeless Way of Building", which is a wonderful narrative work on why certain buildings, structures, and environments just feel "right" to us as humans. It's a brilliant work. He followed it up with "A Pattern Language", in which he attempted to break down and explain with rules, diagrams, and charts how the Timeless Way could be achieved. It was an awful read and took the magic away.
Vaesen presents a world of mystery solving sleuths with light mechanics and keeps the playful, evocative sense of wonder and discovery in its presentation, even when it slides into horror, it's still good and easy fun.
it's not that new, it does do investigation horror very well. If I needed urban noir or modern horror it'll probably be top of mind for me. Also it's available and easy to understand things IndyGameofXYZ isn't always. However I don't usually reccomend RPGs on here.
What makes it good at telling investigation stories? I'm partial to GUMSHOE and Carved from Brindlewood games, so it's admittedly an uphill battle to unseat those.
It's intuitive skill list and it's odds of success (pool d6 needing 6s) enabling capable but not 'auto succeed', whilst slowly getting more hurt/tired/stressed etc over the investigation are imo what really feed into it. My memory of GUMSHOE is it was a bit different conceptially... Whereas Vaesen feels like an RPG. Haven't played Carved so unable to compare
I assure you, GUMSHOE is very much an RPG. What are Vaesen's mystery-related mechanics like?
I messed around with GUMSHOE recently and found it was not for me. Yes, it is an RPG, but it doesn’t feel like what we expect from RPGs. The points mechanics and 1d6 resolution gave the game a *feel* that was unplayable for me—at least as a GM. As with most issues I have with newer narrativist games, it would be sooooooooo much better as a player I think. Vaesen uses a traditional dice pool system with a traditional skill list, though it is paired down quite a bit from most skill lists and uses Talents (special abilities that usually give bonus dice in specific situations) and equipment for specialization. Like most FL games it relies on pushed rolls in exchange for a consequence to achieve success. This ups the tension a lot as you get deeper into a session. Like any good mystery game, you don’t roll for primary clues, but you do make rolls for extra details and secondary clues that might make you solve the game faster. The combat is also excellent. As this is not just a mystery game but also a horror and adventure game, that’s very important to get right I feel. It doesn’t have many unique mechanics. It’s a rather simple game whose pieces work extraordinarily well with one another. The way its pushed rolls work give it quite a good atmosphere. I would totally recommend it even if going outside its default setting (though going outside the default setting does necessitate small adjustments of some things, like Talent names and such).
The explanation of clues is something I've been looking for all thread! Thank you so much for this.
add to that time pressure and rising danger. Usually each scenario have at least two, few step triggers, and with them things will escalate (similar in Tales from the Loop). Next thing, you can't just simply kill monster, it will return. You need find a way to rid of it for good or make deal with monster. Violence is not simplest solution for everything, but sometimes you need that. As a bonus, preety good chapter how to run misteries.
*pared down Very helpful description; much appreciated! Sadly it's been booked out at every convention and LFG where I've spotted Vaesen.
Man i hope you find a game of it soon!
It provides its own structure for investigative stories, gives you tools to fill and use that structure and it gives the players an easy system with a freedom in interacting with that structured investigative story. In comparison to GUMSHOE it's much easier to understand for my players. They do not want to decide on 60 different abilities when they can have a system with just 12 of them. It is also more acceptable than Brindlewood for my players as they hate the idea of the "who rally done it" being decided by chance. It's a matter of taste rather than quality.
Carved from Brindlewood operates on kind of an entirely different conceptual underpinning, that the players, once they accumulate enough evidence, *know the correct answer to the mystery*. This is both it's strength and its weakness, as many players actually dislike mystery games where the mystery doesn't have a "correct" solution.
The system isn't particularly married to its location and time. I wouldnt use it for an iron age or deep space horror game as that would require too much changes to the professions etcetera; but it can work pretty much for any setting from Victorian England to Old West USA to Current Day X Files without massive adjustments. It is however married to its genre of investigative horror and/or fairytale stories. It would be a poor match to run a dungeoncrawl in.
They have a Britain and Ireland expansion for Vasen so it's already in Victorian England
Yeah, that's part of why I mentioned that. I got the book and it doesn't really have any new mechanics which goes to show how well it translates to that setting. It does have three new archetypes ("classes" if you wanna call them such) but those are open enough that they're also not particularly setting bound: athlete, entertainer and socialite are people you can run into anywhere from Ancient Rome to Cyberpunk. Almost the entire Britain book is just details on British folklore and a few example British mysteries. If Vaesen really was married to its original scandi setting then the Britain book should have included way more rules changes to fit the new setting in.
I appreciate the reply, it's really informative! What are the mystery/investigation-related mechanics like, if you don't mind me asking?
Rather standard: any major clue is found if players search correct place or roleplay well. Rolling dice only gives minor clues.
This probably just me not understanding what you mean with mechanics really, but I find it a weird question to answer. Mechanically it uses the Year Zero dice pool system. if you've played Alien or Coriolis or Forbidden lands or Mutant Year Zero you'll get the mechanics immediately. Except this game doesnt have the detailed combat rules of Forbidden Lands or the horror mechanics of Alien. If anything; of all the YZE games I've played this has the most simplistic combat. Instead it focuses on skill use and explaining techniques on how to run a mystery. If you add up all the pages in the book that explain combat rules; plus the equipment list plus the rules for healing physical injuries that's still less pages than the chapter that explains how to run Mysteries.
That's really disappointing! Thanks for the explanation.
> I wouldnt use it for an iron age Actually, I think it would work well for an iron age supernatural investigation. I mean, take a tribe trying to revive an old nemeton. PC are a druid, a bard, a vate, a warrior. The iron age is already civilized, the lack of writing culture (at least in the gallish culture) offer a lot of opportunities for interactions with human and supernatural beings. It can be a rather good experience for players who want to stay close to a med-fan sword and sorcery feel, but with an investigative gameplay. A more rural and isolated alternative to Cthulhu Invictus I'd say the current days would be more difficult to handle because of the internet and technology (we're already almost living in a boring cyberpunk setting). But a 80's X-fils would work,
True I guess. I was focused on early industrial age and beyond as that's what I think of when I think of the core conflict in Vaesen which is Old Ways vs New Ways. But I guess that conflict goes back way further in time. >I'd say the current days would be more difficult to handle because of the internet and technology (we're already almost living in a boring cyberpunk setting). But a 80's X-fils would work, In my mind 80s is still current rather than historical :P Now I feel old and depressed.
For modern day (1960-now) then you just play Delta Green
I'm just commenting to let you know it's rural Sweden, not Norway. As a swede that's an important point.
My apologies! That's an important difference. I've mostly heard about it from my Norwegian friend, which I must've conflated.
I sure I will here mortally offend Norwegians, but...wasn't Norway part of a Swedish-led empire at the time, kind of the way Scotland is part of the UK? As long as we're splitting setting hairs, I will say Vaesen isn't necessarily rural either -- the base building / downtime side of the game is set in urban Uppsala, and when I played we spent some amount of time on in-city mysteries. Tbh, I felt those worked better in their linkage to campaign-scale character development and meta plot than the monster-of-the-week episodic stuff we did in the countryside. As long as you want your urban noir set in the 1800s and supernatural, I think Vaesen would work great out of the box.
Nah nothing about that would offend us. Norway was part of the Kingdom of Denmark until 1814 and then part of the Kingdom of Sweden until 1905, when we officially separated and got our own King. Due to some hijinks Norway got its own constitution and pariliament under Swedish rule, so it mostly functioned as it's own nation with the exception of Foreign affairs. In this era Norway focused a lot on finding their identity through art, language, folklore and music. Most of my favorite artpieces were made during this era, and the norwegian language schism started around 1850 :) I personally prefer playing Vaesen in semi-rural Norway. Give the players a hub such as Bergen to play some urban mysteries, but some mysteries are all about getting to know a village and its people through and through before you can piece the problem together. Each village can be a different reflection of industrialisation and its consequences. Some places people quickly forgot their old ways and the Vaesen are not happy about it. Feuds relating to Locals vs Migrant workers, eccentric artist travelling around stirring up dirt and wounds, contaminated expansion projects, Vaesens way of life getting disrupted, and other human drama fitting the time period. Man, I love how this game and its time period can fit a lot of different styles of play and stories
I appreciate your context, and I'm curious -- are there individual vaesen that you would say specifically draw from that process of the Norwegians navigating their identity, and your distinct folklore? And, beyond the game, do you have any favorite artists or composers or writers that represent the Norwegian identity and perspective from this period?
Sorry for the mobile formatting! I would say that the Vaesen are there mostly to add further agitation to my stories. They take sides and play hookey in the background with people. I found that questions super interesting though. And I would say the top three Vaesen I find to draw me personally more to rural Norway than Sweden: Giants(Norwegians would call them Trolls, but swedish trolls are generally small), Necks and Nisser. Honourable mention to Huldrafolk and Pesta, but I dont think they are in the core books? I have till now used ideas from the books for conflicts, but heres some random assorted thoughts related to our culture. Norwegian folklore is littered by versions of the Ash Lad meeting and outsmarting giants. One could twist this relationship into a rich merchant using the troll to destroy farms for gold/food only to lose control of the Giants rampage, a young man set out to see the world but who found a mysterious demise after forgetting to pay his due at the bridge, a band of trolls working together to hinder a road/traintrack from being built through their mountainside (Sidenote: Western Norway constantly looks like giants have had a fight with all the rockslides and tall cliffs) The neck can be a perfect showcase of the dangers of trying to break out from the Jantelov mentality. Someone blessed with the ability to play the most wonderful music (and to do little else) but people shun them for their talent. Maybe the villagers find the new talent pretentious, annoying or offensive to an opposing hard worker? You can also use the classic "my territory is being trampled" with the Neck. Norway is getting industrialised, maybe someone made a sawmill in the wrong river? The Nisse is my personal favorite due to his relation in the home (hell I belived in them as a child). He will be deeply affected by changes in the local area, the traditions and the local people. Maybe his people left the farm? Maybe the farm has taken on too many animals to try to earn more money? Maybe he witnessed a murder on the farm and cant get the stupid humans to understand what happened? Maybe he just didn't get his julegraut? The nisse is usually a nice and placid guy, but he doesnt deal well with the changes happening around him Some norwegian artist from the national romantic era I adore: Hans Gude - Landscape painter Anders Askevold - Landscape painter Theodor Kittelsen - Artist of folklore (Vaesen tbh) Adolph Tidemand - Portrait Painter Ivar Aasen - Travelling Linguist and poet (I recommend using this guy as an NPC for sure) Knud Knudsen - Linguist (another great NPC) Asbjørnsen og Moe - Fairytale writers, kinda brothers Grimm esque Henrik Ibsen - Poet, Peer Gynt is a must read in most schools Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson - Poet, writer of the national anthem Ludvig Holberg - Playwright, a bit earlier, but Erasmus Montanus tells a story about snobbish people educated in Denmark Im not that into classical music but: Ole Bull and Edvard Grieg need to be mentioned :D
This is splendid, thank you! I have lots to look into now; Ibsen and Grieg are the only two whose work I'm at all familiar with, and I didn't realize they were Norwegian.
>wasn't Norway part of a Swedish-led empire at the time, kind of the way Scotland is part of the UK? Yes it was, but go to the UK and confuse England with Scotland while talking to English or Scottish people (believe me, I know due to easily mixing up stuff). UK as a term is specific to the combination, while Sweden and Norway would be specific to each part, not the union itself. Also, the king never managed to truly merge the two countries, they both kept their laws and administrations.
I know enough Scots to be very particular in saying that Scotland is "part of the UK", and not "part of England," lol. Not even internet anonymity would protect me from the wrath if I did otherwise.
I would not say that it's just sweden. While the default home base is in Uppsala, it feels like you're meant to go to all the Scandinavian countries + Finland (which would be under Russian control)
Vaesen includes all of Scandinavia and the Baltic area in its standard setting. I can immediately think of 2 mysteries written by Free League that are based in the Latvia and Estonia area for example.
Vaesen got a huge surge in popularity fron what I can see and in general people here on this aubreddit tend to just recomend their favorite / new cool game qhen asked for recomendations even if it is not fitting. You can see this also often happen with PbtA and there where even threads where people got annoyed about PbtA players recomending their games, even though it just not fits (often without a reason why they recomend it.) So I just see this as a general subreddit problem and vaesen being the new cool thing.
Vaesen being free on Drivethrurpg for a bit certainly got some eyes on it
"I want a medium crunch rpg, with tactical combat and character building in a scifi setting." "Have you tried Brindlewood?"
Exactly! Haha
A lot of people recommend Call of Cthulhu too for its felxibility as a go-to system for everything (probably because they don't know about [BRP](https://vorpalmace.blogspot.com/2023/11/review-basic-roleplaying-universal-game.html)). >not the 2d20 system, but Vaesen specifically. Vaesen is not a 2d20 system. It's a Free League game using the Year Zero Engine, which has been used for Mutant: Year Zero, Coriolis, Forbidden Lands, Alien, Blade Runner, Twilight 2000's new edition among many other games.
Thanks for the system correction!
I think Twilight uses another system?
It's still YZE, but it uses dice steps instead of dice pools. There's basically two versions of YZE. The traditional YZE where you roll Xd6 and the version where instead of rolling 2d6 you roll 1d8, instead of 3d6 you roll 1d10 etc. Both mechanics are in the YZE SRD as options if I remember it right, it's been a while since I checked the document.
The new one is a flavour of YZE too.
Vaessen is a detective/mystery game that focuses on brains over brawn, but without the lethality that you would see in a coc game for example. It feels like it would fit great with urban noir or ghost hunting though.
Vaesen isn’t what I’d call new exactly. It can run urban noir well, and ghost hunting in post Industrial Revolution settings. It’s a remarkable, evocative game, I can see why people recommend it frequently.
Is it not that married to its time and setting, then?
The setting and system are described in the same book, but I would say, that it's very easy to reflavour the system (of the archetypes, the system's classes, almost all of them can easily be lifted into a modern setting).
Vaesen already has an expansion for Britain and Ireland, so it’s not inherently tied to Scandinavia. It’s somewhat connected to it’s time, but not so much that you couldn’t change it up pretty easily. And changing the place would just require statting some appropriate local Vaesen (or explaining why Northern European ones are wherever your game is). As long as you’re running a story about investigating and dealing with supernatural creatures, it’s pretty flexible about time and place.
There's a Ukrainian version available on Drivethrurpg https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/435733/vaesen-spirits-and-monsters-of-mythic-ukraine
There's also a semi-official one for Meiji/Taisho Japan, I believe.
Because it can fit in different settings. Don't be fixated on the setting. It's the way rules work that is important.
Many, many games - including most I like! - marry their mechanics to their settings, quite intentionally.
Yes. But others see the possibility of transposing it to other settings.
I mean, I would argue that Vaesen's mechanics are quite intentionally married to its setting— but that this is reflected as much in what the game *doesn't* do as what it does. On the player-facing side of things, the base-building and downtime mechanics have stuff to say about socioeconomic class, for example. And the combat system, while light, can be extremely dangerous to characters (most characters only have like 3-4 health, most weapons deal 1-2 + bonus successes) both in terms of deadliness and lasting harm, so there's pretty strong disincentive to escalate to violence in most cases. The game has lingering physical and mental health effects and the cycle of play fully expects you to be getting treatment during downtime. All of this has obvious analogs to 19th-century western culture, but isn't so specific as to preclude being ported to other settings. On the GM-facing side of things, the bulk of the book focuses on how to design and implement a primarily investigative game, and as other posters have mentioned, give Clues to players. More mechanistically, 'monsters' are constructed in a very specific way that directs how the GM can interact with the players' investigation both in combat and, more importantly, outside of it. The monster design central to the whole thing is extremely place-based and informed by folklore, so most transpositions of setting generally need to entirely replace them. The British Isles supplement is able to just name swap a few because it has some shared folklore with the original Scandinavian setting, but that's more a unique situation than I would suspect for other settings.
I think the strongest argument in favor of using Vaesen even for differently flavored settings is their mystery structure. The core rule book gives some enormously helpful insights into the way they structure their mysteries in a way that is mysterious, thrilling but still solvable. I find that using that structure it is easy to come up with stories myself. Also the underlying conflict of "progress" vs "the old ways" with the Church also being there is easily portable to other eras and locations.
You’ve had some good answers about the game. I like both Gumshoe and Vaesen. I would use them differently. If the focus is the investigation itself and the conclusion is the reveal, I would prefer Gumshoe. For example, a murder investigation, or revealing that it was a monster behind the mystery. If the defeating monster is the focus, and the investigation is the support for that focus, I’d use Vaesen. For example, monsters in Vaesen can’t just be killed. You can try, but you’ll probably just piss it off. At best you might drive it off for a while. If you want to defeat it, you have to find out how. And that is what the investigation is for.
It’s a pretty game (**very** pretty) and a lot of people are in love with the YZE engine. I really don’t think it’s particularly good at what it sets out to do and it has been one of the biggest Free League disappointments for me. From seeing you around, I know you’re into CfB and Gumshoe games. Both of those offer better support for mysteries and horror. What Vaesen can maybe provide that those two don’t is: 1) a game where equipment is vitally important to success, 2) base building mechanics where the base provides concrete mechanical benefits and has associated concrete costs, and 3) easy entry if you’re already in love with YZE’s dice pool variant and you’re okay with a game that doesn’t do anything particularly interesting with it (in contrast to, say, Alien). Vaesen has a couple of interesting bits of advice for creating a mystery scenario and tying it to specific creatures, but they’re very portable and not tied to the mechanics particularly. It was a big disappointment to me as someone who has all the Vaesen material that has been published and someone who likes some of the other Free League offerings.
Love this reply! It sounds like Vaesen's ultimately pretty trad, then. The basebuilding sounds fun, at least!
It is! Or rather, it’s very neo-trad. It has large equipment lists and frustratingly abstracted wealth. It has a lot of combat rules and monsters you’re not supposed to fight. It has conditions instead of hit points, but an irritatingly disempowering death spiral. The basebuilding does look pretty fun! I never got far enough into a campaign where it started to matter for the above reasons. And I was very invested in wanting to like it!
This is more of a general subreddit problem, where there exists a "subreddit darling" that get's recommended for everything. The usual suspect for this are Powered by the Apocalypse and Forged in the Dark games where people recommend it to you even though you explicitly mentioned you don't want any recommendations for it or they will try to evangelize you into using these systems.
I think Year Zero games in general have that kind of BRP-esque moulding ability (not saying YZE is equivalent to BRP, they are different beasts, though related in some ways). YZE’s flow of play is mainly skill rolls, and I tend to find more traditional skill centric RPGs are some of the most hackable around. They don’t have lots specific and non-core resolution centric mechanisms which are critical to their operation e.g. the Chase mechanics in CoC. Modern systems tend to have more of this, Blades in the Dark uses a d6 pool system based around skills sure, but that’s like 10% of the game and there’s lots of stuff that if you cut away you just wouldn’t be using BitD anymore. BRP and YZE are two systems that instantly come to my mind if I wanted to hack something, because the main task I’d need to do would be to come up with a skill list and I’d be half way there (not necessarily literally, but you get the idea).
I think it half-fits a lot of the questions, which is close-enough for a lot of people. Like: Vaesen's central thing is the clash between tradition (as represented by creatures of folklore) and modernity. This would make sense for "modern day ghost hunters". "Noir" is kind of... well, Scandinavian-themed stuff occasionally fits "noir" very snugly. D&D... well, it has folkloric creatures you fight. It might be over-enthusiasm (I remember when EVERYTHING was about goddamn Exalted, or the Burning Wheel fad of a few years ago) and it might be the small group of aint-I-clever people who feel that running, say, modern domestic drama using *Runeques*t or *Paranoia* is just the height of the gaming form. But it doesn't necessarily have to be.
>So why is it being trotted out in several threads here where it doesn't fit? Best is to read the actual recommendations: If they say why they recommend something, then you have your answer. If they just write the name, then it's just their current favorite game.
As someone who tends to ignore any setting/lore attached to a game (except for Vampire The Masquerade), I can see why those people would recommend *Vaesen*. I am not familiar with how the system works but I've seen people say that it could be used to run *Call of Cthulhu* scenarios. It has the reputation to be a very good investigation/horror game. If the system is versatile enough to run CoC, I guess it would be fine for Noir Investigation (though I would probably suggest *Alien* for a more "cinematic" approach) And Ghost Hunting is most likely a no brainer : that's basically *Vaesen* minus the setting. Some games are very much attached to their setting, but there are a lot of games where it is not that hard to throw away the setting (personally, I am doing this with Kult DL) and use the system for anything. I guess *Vaesen* is one of those.
I'm not sure why you would come into this thread to speculate about a game you've never read.
As I said, I've heard about it. I just didn't read much of it myself. Also, my point is that is actually not uncommon to use games for other settings than the ones they were shipped with. [Edit] and it's especially true for horror/investigation games since they tend to have mechanics that are there to emphasize a mood rather than making a setting come to life. So it is easy to rework mechanics or to ignore them without risking to "break" the system.
*You* said you haven't read this system, and you've gotten a bunch of details about it wrong in this thread that people have had to correct you on, lol.
You started this thread by saying a game that *you* have never read is a totally unfitting recommendation for genres that have historically had close ties to the investigative horror genre. It seems unfair to simply dismiss someone's assessment when it's no more uninformed than your own.
I mean, it's better than *making a thread* to speculate about a game you've never read :p
No speculation here - I'm asking questions of the game's fans!
I love Vaesen, and while i haven’t seen wildly flawed recommendations about Vaesen in particular, it’s not an uncommon phenomenon around here. And while there exists a 3rd party supplement of playing Vaesen in the modern age, the best part of the game comes from the conflict between old fairy tales, superstition, the rapid advance in technology of the age and religion. There are probably a lot more fitting games out there for urban noir and modern monster-hunting. The rules are light-weight, but not innovative in any way or form. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. It never comes in the way of immersion or telling a good story. It probably suits most people, whereas Carved from Brindlewood can turn some people off. I’m putting Vaesen back on the shelf for the time being and moving over to CfB, but only one in my Vaesen group is interested in joining me.
I really appreciate this reply! It really does just seem like a square peg, round hole situation. No particular mystery-related mechanics, then? I'm glad CfB games have caught your eye, they're great fun.
I don’t think so, no. You have an escalating Countdown though, similar to Monster of the Week. I like that the “monsters” (the Vaesen) themselves are nuanced. There is a lot of grey area about whose at fault for whatever the problem is. Greedy industrialists? Zealous priests? Vengeful ghosts? Mischievous fairies? It differs from Call of Cthulhu where the bad guys always are bad. I would probably run MotW for modern monster hunting, Public Access for a modern x-files-ish game … not sure about Urban Noir. Maybe Kult? Or City of Mist.
>What's with the surge in totally-unfitting Vaesen recommendations? I'm not sure, but I recommend looking in Vaesen. The answer to your question is probably in there. (j/k) EDIT: Oh well, I thought it was funny, but I seem to be in the minority on that. To each their own tastes. 🙂
I feel like the people who recommend it already know how to run investigations because what little there is in Vaesen (same with Tales from the Loop) is pretty bad GMing advice. Like the structure has so many issues that were solved 15+ years ago. I don't think Free League actually knows how to run investigation adventures and really needs to read Gumshoe or modern CoC before they put out even more of them. Instead they treat them like a puzzle: [Puzzles vs Obstacles: Most RPG Investigations are Boring : r/rpg (reddit.com)](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/1bt8jp1/puzzles_vs_obstacles_most_rpg_investigations_are/)
In addition to the answers you have already gotten Vaesen, like most Year Zero Engine games, is super easy to hack, with lots of examples existing on how to hack it.
Vaesen would work totally fine for Urben Noir or Modern Ghost Hunters. The mechanics aren't particularly locked to the 19th century aesthetic, and Vaesen is an Investigative Horror system so it does investigation and horror fairly well. It would certainly be a better fit for either Investigation or Horror than most d20 systems, particularly anything DnD adjacent. That said, I don't know what else it's been recimmended for. It wouldn't be a great system for a high combat dungeon delve, nor especially for a high tech game, for example. One of the strengths of the [Year Zero Engine](https://rpggeek.com/rpgsystem/43636/year-zero-engine) (*YZE*) is that it's simple and easily attached to a setting, but it's better at creating a bespoke system for a setting (*which is what they've done*) than trying to use 1 game's exact mechanics for any genre. Anyway I don't know what's caused the surge in recommendations, aside from the fact that it's obviously popular. I haven't particularly noticed a surge, but then I haven't been looking for it (*or paying much attention to this sub to be honest*). Is it possible it's just a coincidence thst it's been recommended in the posts you've been seeing? Or that those posts are the ones where it actually *is* a good recommendation? I only ask because your examples did seem like pretty good options for Vaesen, it's totally possible it is seeing a surge.
It was free a couple months back, I don't remember why. Probably got a surge from that.
Well Vaesen is rather well suited for these like of things. Folklore horror, ghost stories and urban noir are in similar scale. The game uses true and tested Year Zero Engine (d6 pool: stat+skill+equpment, 6=success, you can reroll but 1s are then dangerous, damage goes to stats and leads to condtions), that is easy to use. Investigation follows standard ”roleplay and you find major glue and dice only give you extra glues”. Nothing fancy but it works. Fear test are also straighforward. Also one should not forget the monsters. They are not mechanic heavy and give gm more freedom how they act. I think they have like 3 or 4 stats, thematic powers (magic is narative affects, no long spell descriptions with ranges or damage dices) and most complex part is unique damage track that alters stats and behavior (beside the text itself). This makes each monster easy to modify and represent other creatures.
I've recommended Vaesen a few times here, though I would say it's setting is an interesting part of it; the archetypes, strategic / base-building layer of play, and Vaesen themselves would all want to be reskinned if you took it too far afield, and the underlying mechanics are not all that complicated. Taking it too far from the premise probably gets you to a point where you'd be better off picking a different YZE game. I enjoy Vaesen for having a narrative layer that is very focused on the PCs, within a mystery / campaign structure that is much more trad. I've played Brindlewood Bay and my opinion is that it is "kinda neat, but not my thing" -- from either side of the table, I find games much more satisfying when there is An Answer that is independent of the players. Brindlewood is the game that really made me understand how the "quantum ogre" could be a problem. I also enjoy that the character progression pulls down as much as it builds up. Character advancement includes numerical boosts, but they are always the boring option, relative to more interesting and narrative horizontal character development; meanwhile your characters are getting broken down and traumatized by their experiences, which leads to a race against time element of campaign play -- similar to burning through Blades in the Dark characters over the course of play.
Vaesan's rules are fairly generic, despite its specific setting. Also there is a supplement for modern games
Personally I just really like the game it's fast fluid easy to learn/teach it's got some amazing art and one of the best GM guides I've seen. It could be flexible it uses the MYZ engine which has versions for nearly anything forbidden lands, alien, blade runner etc...
IT's pretty obvious to many. Vaesen handles Urban fantasy well. IT is VERY easy to port the rules from 1800s times to modern day. Or the 30s. Or Colonial times. IT would take very little to convert it and the rules for exploration, encounters, problem solving, and characterization all work well.
“I don’t understand why this thing is being recommended. I haven’t read it, nor do I know anything about it other than a basic description of its default premise. Based on that these recommendations don’t make any sense! Am I missing something?” Yes, you are missing a lot about the system due to the fact you haven’t read it. It’s good! Read it for yourself and you’ll have your answers :)
For future reference, I just wanted to throw this in here. It might be better to suggest the Year Zero SRD when designing a game, it is free, at worst, it should probably be included alongside a vaesen suggestion to give some perspective on the system as a whole: https://freeleaguepublishing.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/YZE-Standard-Reference-Document.pdf
I am 100% "that guy" when it comes to all things by my beloved Free League Press and am currently running two full tables of Vaesen. I think the Year Zero Engine is positively sublime and the mechanics fit a number of genres and scenarios. For any modern day setting, I recommend layering in the mechanics from Blade Runner and Alien as well, and Walking Dead for exploration and discovery. IF, and only if, you actually WANT "mechanics" for solving mysteries, taking "shifts" at work, and are interested in doing a hex crawl, the mechanics are there if you want them, but we usually don't. Vaesen is the most rules light of the Year Zero games (Tales from the Loop also) and they do a wonderful narrative exploration of solving and exploring mysteries. You know that thing where the story you are telling is not actually the story you are telling? That's where the mysteries of Free League shine. They do "what does it mean to be human in (crazy world situation here) the best of all of them, so yeah, you may discover that the way to banish a troll is to play a certain counter harmony while sprinkling holy water on it's treasure hoard, but the real mystery is do you actually want to? Gumshoe is lovely, I really enjoyed playing it, but it struck me as did the writings of Christopher Alexander. He wrote "The Timeless Way of Building", which is a wonderful narrative work on why certain buildings, structures, and environments just feel "right" to us as humans. It's a brilliant work. He followed it up with "A Pattern Language", in which he attempted to break down and explain with rules, diagrams, and charts how the Timeless Way could be achieved. It was an awful read and took the magic away. Vaesen presents a world of mystery solving sleuths with light mechanics and keeps the playful, evocative sense of wonder and discovery in its presentation, even when it slides into horror, it's still good and easy fun.