Supper at The Ravenous Castle by Benjamín Aníbal Reyna is a role playing game supplement published by Mundos Infinitos. This is an entire role playing game based on Cruciamen 9X.
The supplement is available as an eight page Pay What You Want PDF from DriveThruRPG. Half a page is the front cover.
The opening sections explain what is needed to play the game, which is best played by 2-3 main Prisoners, and it’s a combination dungeon-crawl, survival-horror and eschatological horror. One player will be the Dungeon Master; the others are the Prisoners. There is also a list of inspirations.
The Castle starts by explaining that the Prisoners have been left to starve in the Castle’s dungeon, but one night the cell doors are left open. The Map explains that the Dungeon Master is recommended to draw a map of the castle’s Zones in advance and that 9 Zones is enough for a game session. Prologue has the Prisoners told some details about them (though perhaps having the players do this rather than the Dungeon Master would be better). Zones has a chart for generating what each Zone is.
Prisoner has various charts to pick a Prisoner’s details from, with Skills, Taboos and Labours. There are two counters, Hunger and Damage, and when either reaches 3, the Prisoner is dead. There are different States that affect Prisoners, none good, and they have a Sack with two items.
Survive is the game rules. There are Obstacles that must be overcome, some of which are dangerous, items can be crafted and food found or cooked in Safe Zones. There is no money, so things cannot be bought, they must either be taken by force or bargained for. Food can be beneficial or not, depending on whether or not it was properly prepared. Dreg points can be spent for various benefits.
The Dungeon Master has tables for obstacles & dangers, other prisoners, loot and food and drink.
The final three pages of content are maps.
Supper at The Ravenous Castle in Review
The PDF lacks bookmarks and is short enough that these are not essential. Navigation is okay. The text is in a landscape format, but the number and size of the columns varies a lot, even on individual pages, and makes little sense, but appeared to be free of errors. As well as the front cover, there are a few small black and white illustrations. Presentation is adequate.
This is a rules lite and comparatively short game that, like the survival horror videogames it seeks to emulate, is very resource management based. Prisoners have very little in the way of supplies, can’t heal easily and there are many dangers. However, despite the warnings at the beginning, it isn’t that horrific. Yes, the players are in an unpleasant place with unpleasant things, but as far as explicitly disturbing material goes, there isn’t any unless the players create it. It’s definitely not a cheery game, or for everyone, but it’s also not horrific. Supper at The Ravenous Castle can be found by clicking here.
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