Here’s one from left-field, so to speak.
I was reading Facebook recently and my old gamer friend Jerry Grayson posted a Kickstarter campaign for an indie press role-playing game called The Hammer and the Stake by the company Weaponized Ink. The premise, from the ad: “Following the Great War and the disastrous Treaty of Trianon, Count Dracula engineers a fascist vampire-coup in Hungary and Romania and establishes himself as the autocrat of the newly created Nagy-Magyarország (‘Greater Hungary’).
“Proletariat freedom fighters work to overthrow Dracula’s despotic-aristocratic regime. The threat is very real, Dracula’s magic is powerful enough to make manifest the worst fears of Marx.
“Time is of the essence. If Dracula’s minions are left unchecked, the people will literally lose their identities and become lumpenproles – beaten down degenerate servants of the Dracula regime.
“You play one of the heroic socialists fighting to liberate the people from both the invisible hand of Adam Smith as well as despotic vampire overlords.”
The funny thing is that if you took the whole vampire mythology out of this premise, it’s still fairly similar to what actually happened to Hungary after 1918.
I want to go into that background but if the real-world history doesn’t appeal to you, you can skip over this next part. Of course if a game dealing with Marxism, 1920’s Hungary and vampires doesn’t appeal to you, you probably shouldn’t be reading any of this.
The History
In 1848, Hungary unsuccessfully rebelled against the old-world Austrian Empire, but they were a strong enough plurality in the Empire to where Austria decided to give them autonomy. By 1867, they came up with a compromise: Austria would restore the Kingdom of Hungary (and the historic Crown of St. Stephen) and in exchange the Hungarians would accept Austria’s Emperor as their King. This led to an unusual (and ultimately unworkable) arrangement called the “Dual Monarchy.” Essentially, Austria-Hungary was two nations with one monarch (and even then he had two official titles). The two nations had two capitals, two parliaments, two sets of laws, everything. How did this work when the dual nation had to have one military command and Austria-Hungary ended up starting World War I? Not that well. Austria-Hungary was the main ally of the German Empire (the ‘bad guys’ of World War I) but Germany ended up having to bail out Austria-Hungary in its various campaigns against the Serbs, the Italians, the Romanians and even the Russians.
When Germany’s coalition, the Central Powers, was defeated by the Allies in 1918, the various subject nations of Central Europe, including Poland, rebelled and sought independence. With various peace treaties, not only did Germany lose it’s Polish and French-speaking territory, Austria and Hungary lost everything outside their modern borders. In the case of Austria, that was the Polish province of Galicia, modern Slovenia and Croatia, Tyrolean Italy and the modern Czech Republic. Hungary had controlled Slovakia, a north Serbian province called Novi Sad, and the historic Romanian province of Transylvania. Hungary didn’t want to lose its “Greater” territories any more than Germany did, because there were still large groups of ethnic Hungarians outside the postwar border. The remaining Allied coalition of France, Romania and the south Slavic states tried to advance into Hungary to enforce post-war borders even as Marxist revolution sparked in Russia and other places including Germany and eventually Hungary. Marxists led by Bela Kun and other Jewish intellectuals took over the transition government and in direct communication with Lenin’s Russian government called their state the “Hungarian Soviet Republic.” The Allied land grab made the revolution both easier and more difficult, because the liberal-reformist government that the Marxists overthrew had no plan to defend Hungary’s territory, yet as hostilities continued, the threat of Leninist-style socialism in Central Europe galvanized the Allies even as the Kun government sought to create ethnic Soviet satellites in Slovakia and elsewhere, undermining Hungarian nationalism for the sake of international revolution.
The main fighting occurred between Hungary and Romania with Romania eventually taking the capital of Budapest, with Kun and his comrades being forced to flee. Hungary ended up with a fascist-adjacent government that continued to press for the restoration of “Greater” Hungary and only somewhat succeeded by allying with Nazi Germany after 1940. The right-wing government also persecuted Jews for their disproportionate presence in the Marxist revolt, but they didn’t attack them nearly as much as the Nazis. In fact, it was after the Hungarian fascist regime refused to turn over its Jews to the Nazi death camps that Hitler overthrew the government. Of course by that time the Soviets were on track to take Budapest.
Then there’s the bit where Hungary, Marxism and vampires link up in the real world: Bela Lugosi, the legendary Dracula actor, was not only a Transylvanian Hungarian, he was a union organizer in a film actors’ union in Hungary, which may have been one of the first screen actors’ unions in the world. Since the unions were aligned with the Hungarian Soviet Republic, Lugosi ended up having to flee the country when the revolution was quashed, and he ended up in the States.
And now you know… the rest of… the story.
The System
The product currently available for The Hammer and the Stake (on the DriveThruRPG site) is called The Workers’ Primer. It specifically says “THIS IS THE PLAYTEST!” It also says that to get full rules you would go to the Discord or Facebook pages for Weaponized Ink, which seem to be more update pages than anything else. So keeping all that in mind, the book currently is 53 pages in PDF, very little layout and very little art.
The opening section goes into how the “Greater Hungary” of this fictional world is that much more backward and repressed than historical 1920s Central Europe on purpose. “Dracula, now elevated to lord of Greater Hungary, tears away the structure of progress to permanently keeps the people as his slaves.” Page 8 has a map confirming that this isn’t the only difference. There is still a Soviet Union, but Finland is still owned by Sweden, Ireland is still part of the United Kingdom, and France is called the “United Angevin Kingdom.” In the south, Italy and Albania have cut big chunks out of Yugoslavia. But the Nagy-Magyarország described in the setting isn’t on the map, just the borders of real-world Hungary and Romania. (This territory also has a crayon mark around it, which implies this is something they’re going to correct later.) So clearly this isn’t just “take the real world and add vampires”, it’s a straight-up alternate history, but at this point there isn’t much background or explanation for it.
After page 8, the book goes into the rules. The core mechanic of The Hammer and the Stake is where you take two six-sided dice and bet against a number. In other words, craps. In the game terms glossary, they also refer to this mechanism as The System (‘A shooter is trying to beat The System’). However (also not unlike craps or roulette) only one player at the table rolls the dice. They don’t say how the players decide who this is, or whether the shooter position is allowed to change during a game.
The only input other players have on task resolution is wagering what number comes up on the dice, where the number of wagers a player can make is based on their relevant Attribute (so if Physical is relevant and the character has Physical 2 they can place two wagers on the roll) and the range of numbers they can bet is based on their rating in a relevant Skill (where a Skill rating of 1 means you can only bet on 12, and a Skill rating of 5 means you can bet on any number but 7, which automatically fails). You can also bet banked Experience Points on a wager but this is another one of those bits that needs editing- on page 12 it says a successful wager with XP gets the point back, but page 17 says you get the point back plus an additional XP. But it also says that you can wager on rolling a 7 regardless of your skill level, then says “An XP wager is lost if a 7 comes up the number before the wagered number.” I’m not even sure this is grammatical. And the rules already confirm a 7 is normally a failure, but does it count as a success if you actually bet on it?
Not only that, it’s an unorthodox role-playing system – and not in a good way – because most games assume that every player gets to roll dice. In this system you basically bet that a certain result comes about and then wait to see if the other player succeeds for you. Is this mechanic the game designers’ attempt to simulate democratic centralism?
The system also has some narrative-style modifiers. Pages 20 to 22 go over how one uses Advantages and Hindrances to set up the stakes of a scene and the characters’ end goals. In game, an Advantage allows a player to ignore the results of one roll. A Hindrance expands the range of failure, so that one Hindrance cancels a success on a 3 and four Hindrances would cancel success on 3 through 6. As with other narrative games, the factors are agreed to by the GM and players, and are pretty subjective. A violent crowd might count as an Advantage if a character is trying to slip away from a Vampire’s goons. Cover or poor visibility would be examples of Hindrances in combat.
The game says that The Hammer and the Stake defaults to scene resolution rather than task resolution. The Skill used in the scene should be relevant to the hardest task in the overall goal. Thus, if a player wants their character to sneak into a building and then place a bomb, the GM decides which of the two actions is harder and then has the player roll on that skill. This may be why only one player gets to roll; the game says the GM should only require rolls in high-stakes situations with serious consequences and “in general, scenes are resolved with a single roll that involves multiple characters and multiple actions.” Given that the roll is supposed to be based on the skill deemed relevant for the scene, I assume that the players pick the shooter based on which character in the scene has the best Skill rating, but this isn’t made clear.
Combat in “THATS” is an extension of this concept, with the use of consequences, that is, wounds. Unarmed attacks and most firearms do one Minor Wound, a rifle does two Minor Wounds, a shotgun or sword does a Major Wound and a machine gun or other heavy weapon does a Lethal Wound. “Minor” means that the character suffers one level of Hindrance, where multiple Minor Wounds in excess of Physical Attribute upgrade the Hindrance by one level. Any Minor Wounds after that point increase the Hindrance on a one-for-one basis. A Major Wound acts as a Hindrance but if the character takes Major Wounds in excess of Physical rating, they are taken out by the pain. Regardless of whether the character remains conscious, they must seek medical attention after the battle scene or die within an hour. A Lethal Wound means the character is taken out and will die if they are not attended to in a number of minutes equal to their Physical Attribute. It’s also mentioned that during a combat scene other characters can attempt other actions such as running for cover or rescuing civilians, which I presume is where their wagers come in.
The game also refers to this overall system as the Fides system, which is a bit ironic – I assume this is taken from the Latin for “faith” but it also resembles Fidesz, which is the name of the neo-fascist party that’s actually running Hungary now.
Characters
At page 32, the game details the character creation mechanics that the previous pages alluded to. Before you even go over those, your first step is to pick a faction within the setting’s CRF (Carpathian Revolutionary Front). There are eight of them, including a feminist group that is “no longer formally part of the CRF” and a group of Christian socialists who are considered the group experts on the occult and vampirism. There are a variety of views represented so that you’re not just dealing with The Judean Peoples’ Front versus The Peoples’ Front of Judaea. Each sub-society also has its own game benefit (or Faction Ability) that can be invoked in specific circumstances to either add a bonus wager or give the player a bit of narrative control in the scene.
Character Attributes are simple: Mental, Physical and Social. They are given a 1-2-3 priority such that the primary is rank 3, the secondary is rank 2 and the tertiary is rank 1. Remember, if a roll depends on a raw attribute, the character only gets so many wagers times that Attribute rating. It’s implied that an Attribute can get as high as 5 with XP.
Characters get 15 Skill points that are assigned on a one-for-one basis, with no Skill being no higher than rank 5, where that’s the best you can get in the system above). You can also get a Specialization for any skill of 4 or higher by spending two Skill points. It’s not mentioned here (but is mentioned on page 18) that a Specialization that is relevant to a roll allows the player to spend one XP (that does not come back) to substitute one die on the roll, but the result only applies to your character. You get two Abilities, although one must be the Faction Ability. The general Ability list is on pages 40-41.
“Fifth, and finally, pick a name and a revolutionary handle (code name). Develop a background.”
It’s also mentioned here and earlier on pages 17 and 18 that a character starts with 3 XP and gets 3 XP each game. The character is allowed (or encouraged) to wager them on throws; an XP wager can negate a Hindrance, or allow an additional wager in excess of the character’s Attribute. If the wager is a success the character gets the point back plus an additional point (again, that’s not totally clear). XP can be saved between sessions. An Attribute can be improved at a cost of current rating x 5. Skills can be improved at a cost of current rating x 2 (it’s not mentioned how or if you can buy a Skill you don’t already have). Specializations and Talents can be purchased for 10 XP each. (‘Talents will be explained in the full version of the rules.’)
Setting
Page 43 starts the section “Building The Revolution: Getting Into The Setting”. Marxists are very big on using propaganda to demonize fascists and reactionaries (which often means anyone who disagrees with them) as monsters and bloodsuckers. Since the bad guys in THATS are actual bloodsuckers, this works. Given that this is a world where vampires exist, there is brief speculation on whether Marx in his works referred to the parasite class rhetorically or if he knew the occult truth and was speaking in code. The text refers to a CRF Commissariat that screens cells for internal subversion and potential counter-revolutionary behavior, such as certain underground book clubs selling philosophically fascist material. (‘Those book-clubs no longer exist.’)
The text focuses on Budapest as a setting, even though the CRF knows that Hungary is a front government and Dracula is actually running affairs by proxy from his Transylvanian stronghold, which is why they’re the Carpathian Revolutionary Front and not the Hungarian Revolutionary Front. Budapest is historically two cities, the aristocratic Buda on the left bank of the Danube River and the more industrial Pest on the right. In the real world the two municipalities united ages ago, but in this world the two cities are separated and guarded by the Border Police, as Buda is effectively a “gated community.” Pest is best described as “grey, bleak and industrial” and also “squalid and grim.” Security patrols (and public hangings) are prominent and meant to cow the population into submission. The press is forbidden, the cinema is endangered and radios require a permit. For similar reasons, as mentioned in the introduction, the level of technology is deliberately reduced from the historical norm. “Many middle-class bourgeosies (sic) families who remain comfortable and paid in hard currency think the return of gaslights has made their fair city ‘quaint’ once again. They also gossip that the increase in bicycles has beatified the city, and permitted them to avoid any real traffic while they ride in their petrol-powered cars. These same families also bitterly complain about the homeless workers and their families cluttering up the streets and bridges.”
Then they give you “A Handful of Aristocratic Enemies” – actually two. They are a template for Secret Police and another for a “Nosferatu Human-Thrall” which has some vampire powers although it isn’t clear if this character is an example of a full vampire or merely a “Renfield.” Based simply on Skills the secret policeman is a lot more tough; it’s mentioned that a vampire is vulnerable to holy, magical and wooden weapons but it doesn’t say whether they are any less vulnerable to other weapons.
Conclusion
The premise of The Hammer and the Stake is communist propaganda presented more-or-less straight, amd even though the antagonists are genuine bad guys, I have problems with this approach, because Bela Kun and the other communists of Hungary were bloodthirsty incompetents, they were no less so than the ones in Russia and other countries who had more time to kill the people they didn’t like, and when Marxist revolutionaries did succeed in Russia, China and elsewhere, they created gulags, mass famine, “struggle sessions” and a global death toll that everyone agrees was in tens of millions, and no one can agree on the exact figure of how many tens of millions because of politics and a desire to question exactly how many of those dead were killed accidentally or on purpose, as if it makes a difference.
But that’s just quibbling.
There’s certainly tons of atmosphere and potential in this game’s premise, but the real issue is in the game itself. I mean, if you want to turn people off of capitalism by convincing them it’s a pointless game that can only have one winner, you’ve already got MONOPOLY. If you want to make socialism look like a constructive alternative to the present, you don’t want to communicate to players that they have no agency. Again, having only one person who can roll dice is not only against most people’s assumption of a role-playing game, it works best if you’re already familiar with craps, and the end result of that means the game in play would come off as a lot more Rat Pack than Red Army.
There’s also the point that in its current stage, The Hammer and the Stake is a bit raw; there is an example presented for how The System works from the perspective of the active shooter but it really needs an example of how a player character team places multiple wagers and how they can be used to create multiple successes. The text implies this is possible but it isn’t clear in showing how it works. There are also bits alluded to but not detailed, such as how stress or mystical attacks can spiritually drain a character and turn them into a passive “Lumpenproletariat.” Not to hold this against the authors, since they did explain this is a work in progress. But as such, I’d have to give The Hammer and the Stake a grade of Incomplete.
However, if the concept appeals to you, you can go to DriveThruRPG, buy the Quickstart, and organize to seize the means of platelet production!