I did promise last month after posting the RPG game about Finkelstein’s Laboratory that I’d do a quick review of this RPG. But then I got sidetracked into other things. Earlier this month I painted up the minis for the Fortune and Glory board game (aka the best Indiana Jones board game without the name Indiana Jones in the title.)
The other was of course The Undercity and Widower’s Wood board games that I spent some time painting the minis for so I could play the mini campaigns, as detailed in my previous post.
Anyway, with all the excuses out of the way, here’s my review.
+++
Streets of Peril is an RPG with a (still) fairly unique setting: alternate fantasy Renaissance which happens to be one of my favouritest periods to game in. It’s not set in the real world but in an earth-adjacent reality known as the Cimbrian Empire is how I’d describe it.
Some Mechanics
The game doesn’t use any d20’s at all (yay)* but it uses a dice pool of d6’s. What is a dice pool, you may ask? That’s a system where you roll as many dice as your abilities + skills stats. A number of games do use this. The most well-known being Shadowrun.
In Streets of Peril, each Player Character (PC) has 6 attributes. The usual Might, Toughness, Agility, Willpower, Intelligence, Fate. (Fate is limited and can be used to preroll your dice). Linked to these 6 attributes or stats are some skills. So if you have say 4 for Agility (the Attribute) and 2 for Defense (the Skill), then you’d roll 6d6 trying to evade an attack.
What makes the game interesting and oh so streamlined is the successes you’re looking for depend on the colour dice you roll.
White dice succeed on a 4+
Red dice succeed on a 3+
Black dice succeed on a 2+
What makes this so streamlined is you don’t need any extra rules. Just some skills and abilities that change the colour dice you roll, and the default is white dice. The number of dice in the dice pool stays the same.
After that, all skill checks and abilities depend on the number of successes you roll. A normal check might need 2 successes, and harder ones 3 or more.
Character Creation
The standard game comes with mostly human PCs as it’s a human-centric setting. The one exception is the Changeling (which is exactly what it sounds like). You start by choosing your race (otherwise known by their PC-term “Lineages”) that tells you where you come from and what your background is.
Then you get 8 classes to play with:
- Brute (melee specialist)
- Cultist (cleric, I think)
- Duelist (specialised fighter)
- Engineer (maybe a gnome in DnD 5e?)
- Magister (magic user)
- Man-at-Arms (another specialised fighter... maybe soldier)
- Scoundrel (thief)
- Wayfarer (ranger)
Each class has 3 sub-classes to specialise in. For example, the Scoundrel will have Assassin, Burglar and Highwayman. Just from the names alone, you can see how you can play your character. You can also see there’s a lot of variety to play with. 24 ways you can build your character.
And it’s not like you’re totally locked into your starting class skills. You can get new ones with XP or improve your starting skills. Some skill have prerequisites though, that are locked to your starting class (e.g. Magister). Others remain open to any class. It’s not as free-form as the other game I recently played: Dragonbane (where you really can multi-class so you can start off as a thief and branch of into a sub-speciality of magic).
Then you get the usual equipment, weapons, armour etc. and you’re off!
Beasties
There’s a fairly decent selection of setting-appropriate enemies/monsters in the bestiary. You get stats and some lore for various Beasts and Demons, Drowners, Elves (who are NOT playable characters but malign being who detest humans for taking over the world and driving the elves into hiding), Fomorians, Giants, Goblins, Golems, Henchmen & Hirelings, Mutants (because a meteor struck the outskirts of Sturmburgh and the radiation from said meteor has had an effect on the creatures and beings that come into contact with it), Wildmen and Undead (of which wiedergängers are a subset).
Setting and Background
The game setting by default and the single expansion available so far is the city of Sturmburgh. Very Germanic-based because the game designer is an expert in HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts) and more specifically, German Sword Fighting techniques. There’s lots of scope for urban adventures and factions and rival gangs etc. to play around in.
The rest of Cimbria is not as fleshed out which can be a pro or con depending on how you view things. The positive side is: you get some general guidelines like Zahjik is a desert-based country and very Middle-Eastern in outlook (if you want to play it that way) and then you take what info you’re given and make it your own Zahjik by adding more interesting stuff about it. The negative comes in if you’re a player that wants detailed info about a location that you can base your games in without having to do much of the work yourself. You just want to play.
Happily, I’m pretty content to stick to Sturmburgh for now, because if you recall my 3 PCs were given a place as retainers to House Volker and there’s a lot that can be done with politics and factional struggles that my guys can get involved in. Adding to the world building is the fact that magic is looked down on and feared throughout much of Cimbria (especially Sturmburgh) and Sayeed is both from Zahjik (in conflict with many Cimbrian kingdoms) AND a magic user and you can see things get pretty interesting if I want to play it that way. Right now, Sayeed is undercover as a seller of herb, poultices and benign potions in the marketplace, hiding his true vocation in an adjacent one. Jerzyn is Smolyani (aka a gypsy from Central/Eastern Europe analogue) and a Duelist from the School of Five Swords (apparently based on a real historical school in Renaissance Germany) and Eleanora is of course Italian. She’s also an Assassin sub-class which is why she’s so effective in Intimidation! 🤣
Likes and Dislikes
What I like about this game is once you understand how dice checks work, the game mechanics get out of the way. Just determine what you want to do, and if there’s a chance of something happening (good or bad), you determine how hard the check is and roll the dice. So if you have unlimited time to open a locked chest (say you took the locked chest back to your lair and it’s a standard lock) then you just open it. No check required. But try to open the same locked chest on the spot where you found it before the guards bust down the locked door… THEN you roll the dice to see what happens.
I like it because not once in the game I played was I stymied about what or how to do things. Interactions are based off the same principle above. Example: Once Eleanora won her initial bartering check with Fredrick to get more payment from House Volker, I waived subsequent checks and just settled for him telling her the maximum he was authorised to offer and not a single gold coin more. Take it or leave it.
Of course, Finkelstein’s Laboratory was a more action packed scenario but I hope you noticed there were times when my PCs bargained for better wages etc. and that’s where solo oracles come into play to determine how the NPCs (like Fredrick) would behave or react.
What I didn’t like: Having played a small scenario for Dragonbane, I’m not keen on how you can’t multi-class in this game. In Dragonbane, you can start off as a thief (for example)… but if you run into a mage and somehow persuade them to teach you, you could end up as a thief that can also cast spells. Of course, your XP will be divided between the skills and abilities of both “classes” so character progression is naturally slowed down as a consequence. You can focus all your attention on being an EXCELLENT Master thief… or an above-average thief who can also cast spells.
So that’s my mini-overview of the game. As mentioned earlier, there’s a free PDF of the core rules called Perilous D6 with half the classes, skills and abilities and settings stripped out but there’s enough in there for you to run a game with 4 core classes and starting abilities/skills. So if what I’ve shared here appeals to you… give it a try!
* And you all know how I feel about d20s. Incredibly swingy is the kindest way to put it which is why I don't play much Rangers of Shadowdeep or even Stargrave despite buying several supplements for it.
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