Sometimes things come together just right and it just feels … right. I guess what I ham-fistedly refer to is something all creators strive for, a synergy of work that resonates with their audience.

Nathan from DM-XP.com here, with a review and breakdown of the Old Gods of Appalachia Roleplaying Game for Mass Movement. Big thanks to Tim and the crew for letting me loose on this!

I first played the game at the Dragonmeet Convention, London in November 2024. One of the guys we went down with had some meetings with game design types so Joe and I tried a demo game of Old Gods. 

The game is based on the podcast of the same name and using an established media franchise as the setting for a roleplaying game is nothing new. But I think that when a pre-existing setting is translated into a roleplaying game, it’s usually something pretty major, like Star Wars, Tolkien’s Middle Earth or Conan. The Old Gods podcast has certainly gone from strength to strength, this is no amateur hour but neither is it Game of Thrones. I’ve been a fan of this ‘eldritch horror fiction’ podcast since its early days (it began in 2019) and it remains one of those shows I dip in and out of. Fantastic as it is, its appeal is wonderfully niche and that’s a good thing for the game.

There’s no sense this game was made to cash in on an established success. It’s a visionary move from Monte Cook games to marry their Cypher System with a background and setting that works so well with their ‘narrativist’, but still gameplay focused, system. This game has been made because it deserved to be made. It’s not for everyone but those who fit the niche will love it. It’s indie and irreverent but made by as slick a game design outfit as you could wish for. It’s a game rooted in its setting rather than bland, vanilla fantasy or one-size-fits-all mechanics but hey, when you take out all the flavour you offend only the connoisseur.

Old Appalachia and ‘the Holler’

Steve Shell and Cam Collin’s podcast show tells stories in an early twentieth century ‘alternate Appalachia’ but you could be forgiven for not noticing the changes made.  Aside from the cosmic horrors that lurk under the oldest mountain range on Earth, it feels pretty grounded. A place in time that we recognise is juxtaposed with horror beyond imagining. 

In this way it finds its fear. It’s eerie and weird, with a dank sort of horror that seeps into you. It’s not a jump scare or visceral slasher vibe. It’s an earthy eldritch folk-horror, like a grown-up fairy tale gone wrong in the Great Depression. There be banjos, shadows and unknown horrors in them there hills. The mundane and hard existence of miners and loggers in the 1920s and 30s is set against the influence of ‘things that should not be’, often following families over generations. Miners disturb beings best left to sleep the eons away, healers and herbalists encounter entities of the ancient world in the dark, forested ravines of timeless hills and even common folk can end up … changed.

But these jarring and alien elements feel sympathetic to the setting. ‘Old Gods’ draws on the horrifying ‘otherness’ of H.P. Lovecraft’s writings but rather than academics in New England, our protagonists are the flawed and impoverished folk of Tennessee, North Carolina and Virginia. Old Gods of Appalachia roots itself in the superstitions and folklore of a simple people. The vibe fits for both the podcast and the game. There’s a harmony between us and our characters, both exploring odd and frightening parts of our own folklore in a world we recognise and yet is unfamiliar to us. The podcast stories and game alike lead to discovering things of an elusively familiar type of weird.

As players, recognising the setting frees up head space and game time for everyone at the table. Without having to trouble the GM with questions about the dominant religion in the region or what technological level society has reached, we can imagine the game space more efficiently and can focus on the ‘alternate’ aspects of Old Appalachia. 

It’s worth noting that Lovecraft’s writings and the social attitudes of 1930’s America bring some problematic elements to say the least. This potential pitfall is addressed and deftly avoided by the ‘alternative’ nature of the setting. The game feels inclusive and positive in its outlook.

The Cypher System

The rich and darkly spooky setting is melded with Monte Cook Games’ Cypher System. Cook himself developed the system alongside Bruce Cordell and Sean K. Reynolds.  Cook was one of the main designers of Dungeons & Dragon’s third edition, Cordell is a multi-ENnie winning designer, familiar to many as author of the famous Sunless Citadel and Forge of Fury modules and Reynolds is also a former Wizards of the Coast big hitter latterly hired by Paizo’s design team for Pathfinder. It’s hard to imagine a stronger pedigree. 

The Cypher System exists as a setting neutral set of game mechanics that can plug into any number of settings. I know, this is a grey area – after all, some people will claim you can play D&D in a Victorian Steampunk themed game or use it to run a dystopian horror. Well, I guess … but there’s usually a better tool for the job. Setting neutral games are pretty boring books for my taste. They don’t excite the imagination and trigger new ideas. So sure, you can buy the Cypher System as a standalone set of rules but each Cypher System game is heavily tailored to its genre and setting. The core mechanics remain the same but the game elements; the classes, creatures and their abilities are specific to each game and create its ambience and ‘feel’ when you play it.

Staying with the Old Gods game specifically, the system fits well. Cypher is roughly equivalent to D&D in overall complexity. It’s a bit lighter on the rules but it’s in that ball park.

Characters are defined by three statistics; Might, Speed and Intellect which are further split into ‘pool’ and ‘edge’. The Pool of the stat is its overall value. Damage can lower your pool (usually Might but speed and intellect damage certainly happen too). A player character can also spend points from their pool to activate special abilities or apply ‘Effort’ to a task. A stat’s Edge reduces the cost of activating abilities; you simply deduct it from the ability’s cost in pool points. 

For example, say Cleetus has a Might Pool of 18 with a Might Edge of 1, and Jeb has a Might Pool of 14 with Edge 2. Cleetus has more points to spend for activating special abilities than Jeb and he can absorb more damage due to his higher pool. However, an ability that costs 3 might points to activate requires Jeb to only spend 1 might point whilst Cleetus must reduce his pool by 2. It’s remarkably simple and allows for a lot of customisation and nuance in how characters not only work in game but how they feel narratively. Two characters can each be presented as physical and strong, but one may be reliable and dependable, whilst the other capable of occasional mighty feats.

The action resolution system is d20 based but doesn’t use any modifiers to that roll at all. The GM assigns a task a difficulty from 0 to 10 and the target number is three times that. It’s clear and fairly predictable. But the real benefit of this system is how is harmonises all the other rules. Each skill, item or ‘Effort’ you can leverage reduces the difficulty by one step, a difficulty 6 task becomes a 5 meaning the target number for the dice roll lowers from 18 to 15. ‘Effort’ is where the stats come into play; it allows a player to spend points from their stats to reduce the difficulty of the task.

This is very simple in practise. Imagine a character tries a very difficult task, let’s say climbing a vertical and crumbling cliff, and the GM assigns a difficulty rating of 7 meaning a target number of 21, impossible on a d20. However, the character is skilled in climbing so the 7 drops to a 6. With a useful asset like a lasso or something the 6 becomes a 5 and if the player spends three might points to apply Effort it drops to a 4, requiring a 12 to be rolled to succeed. 

The key is that the task difficulty is absolute but character circumstance can ‘ease’ or indeed ‘hinder’ it. The entire range is usable, difficulty 10 tasks can be passed and difficulty 1 tasks can be failed.

Character Creation

Monte Cook Games makes great play of how simple character creation is. They have a mantra to it; “I am an [adjective] [noun] who [verbs]. Simple, right … ? This is an aspect of MCG’s design philosophy; to use words not numbers in game design.

First you choose your noun; one of Sage, Protector, Explorer or Speaker. This is what other games might term your ‘type’. 

Next up is your adjective or ‘descriptor’ and the game offers a list of forty to choose from, like Brash, Lucky and Cursed. Finally is your focus, the verb. Actually, it’s more like a phrase as the game offers twenty-five options including ‘Becomes the Beast’, ‘Gets Rough and Rowdy’ and ‘Possesses the Gift’. So you could be a Brash Protector who Possesses the Gift, a Cursed Explorer who Becomes the Beast or any one of the 4,000 possible combinations. 

“Most roleplaying games are grounded in math, because most often die rolls ultimately determine success or failure, and dice give us numbers. In some fashion, determining success or failure is what the game’s mechanics are for. But here’s the problem—it can be sort of dull.” Monte Cook, 2025.

On one hand, that much customisation is great but equally it can be a bit paralysing. When creating a D&D character you have to go really off-road to make a truly poor character. As long as you don’t go too zany with your stat allocation, you’ll get a playable persona for the game. With 4,000 combinations possible in Old Gods it’s possible to make a character that … well, isn’t quite what you thought it would be. A criticism that’s been levelled at Monte Cook is his tendency towards ‘Ivory Tower’ game design; the idea that a player needs to really know the game to be good at it, that experienced players should be able to build more powerful characters than novices. For a lot of people, that’s not their juice. I don’t know if that’s true here or even fair, but it’s how some people feel.

The three components of character creation set the stat base line, determine what points can be spent to increase stats, the skills open to the character and offer lists of abilities to choose between. As much as it’s billed as simple and descriptive rather than mathematical in nature, those words inevitably boil down to numbers because that’s how dice work. The player even needs to make choices about their relationships with other characters so you can’t finish character design on your own. Now, personally I like this. As a GM, I often inveigle players to build a party as much as creating their own character. It grants a stronger basis for narrative development. Old Gods of Appalachia hardwires this into the very first choices a player makes. 

However, a simple system it ain’t. +1 is pretty easy to grasp but understanding the choice between Delves the Darkness, Cannot Escape the Darkness and Possesses the Gift needs some wading through the rule book.

The Book

£60 gets you 415 pages of lushly illustrated, full colour hard back worthy of any coffee table. It’s well set out and a pleasure to read in its own right. The sizeable page count is softened by the weight of art and boxed text quotes linked to episodes of the podcast show, which is a nice touch. It feels immersive and rooted. The images and quotes triggered my understanding of a real place in time and allowed me to follow my imagination down whatever rabbit hole it led me to. 

The core rules are handled in 35 pages which is about the same as D&D or Pathfinder. The game elements needed for character creation (all those adjective nouns who verb) fill up just over 100 pages with the XP and levelling up system accounting for 17 pages. It’s meaty. There are 80 pages for the GM with enemy creature profiles and just over 70 pages of setting info. Two adventures fill up 13 pages. All in all, it’s balanced well enough.

The setting info is nicely presented and hits a bit of a sweet spot. It’s detailed enough to use without having to do a slew of world-building but it doesn’t become essential reading if you choose to wing it or devise your own stuff. Organised by the US states of the region, it provides a good mix of tonal overview and specifics like NPCs, local history and locations. 

All in all, it’s a great book that you can use and rely on as much or as little as you like depending on your GMing style and game play preferences. The setting is clearly well serviced given it has a podcast show and is based on a real location so those who like to world build have an inexhaustible supply of content without ever having to buy a splat book or supplement.

Gameplay 

Joe and I played an intro game of this at Dragonmeet for about an hour and half. Joe had never played any form of TTRPG before and I’ve got 35 years GMing experience but we both engaged with it and it was really fun. Given that in a busy convention, immersion in your role for a quick one-shot is always going to be different and neither of us knew our specific abilities, we each picked it up quickly.

We played two brothers heading into the depths of a holler (forested valley) to find a healer and get a remedy for a strange sickness that ailed our little sister. Simple challenges and skill checks on our journey felt smooth, intuitive and predictable even with our lack of experience of the game. One thing I really liked is that managing the skill list is handed to the player. Unlike some systems, the GM doesn’t tell the player what skill or ability to use – they just set the difficulty of the task. The player can then point out the relevance of a skill or training they have to the task and the GM adjusts the difficulty accordingly. It keeps players focused on the description of what they are doing over just rolling and adding 5.

At our destination we hatched a cunning plan to deal with the spirit that had struck a bargain with the healer and the mechanics were pliable enough to give a good sense of tactical agency. Combat dovetailed neatly into the non-combat mech with no jarring sense of ‘roll initiative’. 

My pre-generated character was easy to vibe with, and being a ‘brash explorer who hunts’ and knowing that Joe was running my younger brother, a ‘sharp-eyed sage who becomes the beast’ really worked as an intro to our roleplaying. Of course, it was good to see how Joe took to this as a first time role-player. I’ve introduced more people to roleplaying games than I can easily count and maybe Joe is just a natural, but it seemed that the system supported him really well and fostered a good sense of character and narrative in his play. We left feeling that in just 90 mins we had told a cool and spooky story.

I wasn’t brimming with cash to burn at the convention but there was no way I was leaving without a copy of the book!

At the End of all Thought …

Roleplaying games are very personal. For me, this one gives enough meat and crunch to get stuck into but with a lot of the narrative and character focused side of things hardwired into those rules. I think it edges in front of other story focused, rules lighter games like the ‘Powered by the Apocalypse’ systems; which are great for putting story first but I like to feel more sense of ‘game’ and this has both. I’ve enjoyed other offerings that use the Cypher System but this is the game the mechanic needed. 

If you want a dank, grimy fear of the unknown, this pushes Call of C’thulu back into the shadows. Fully recommend! Nathan Mainwaring

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