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Néandertal #1
Le Cristal de Chasse
Habile tailleur de silex et affligé d'une légère malformation qui le rend boiteux, Laghou est tenu à l'écart des chasses dangereuses. Mais pour venger la mort de son père, il va entreprendre ce qu'aucun chasseur n'a jamais pu parvenir à faire : vaincre LongueBarbe, le plus grand bison noir qui ait jamais foulé la steppe du territoire avec sa harde. Pour y parvenir, il part à la rencontre d'un clan, seul détenteur d'un arme extraordinaire, celle que l'on nomme le Cristal de chasse.
56 pages, Hardcover
First published November 7, 2007
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August 15, 2025This is my review for Emmanuel Roudier's prehistoric RPG Wurm.
How? I was curious about this and someone had a lot of the Nocturnal reprint (English translation of the 1st edition): the core, the kickstarter exclusive Black Machairodus, and Voice of the Ancestors #1 and #2.
What? As far as I can tell, Emmanuel Roudier is a French graphic novelist who is very interested in the Paleolithic. At some point, he put out a French-language RPG based in this setting called Wurm. This version was in turn translated and brought out by Nocturnal Media, the side project of Stewart Wieck, an old White Wolf manager. There was a second version of Wurm brought out in French, but since Wieck died in 2017 (at 49!), the first edition has basically sunk. Will there be an English version of the second edition?
I don't think so, partly because the first didn't make a big splash in English -- and also partly because it's an odd game.
The system is pleasantly simple at its core -- roll 2d6 (or 3d6 if you have a strength or 1d6 if you have a weakness) against a target difficulty number -- which lets you get into a lot of setting material. Like, what kind of tasks might you be engaged in? Of course, combat (standard in most RPGs), but also knapping stone into useful tools, hunting, making art, holding rituals -- you know, all the things we know from Paleolithic humankind.
Now, there is magic and monsters in this game, but it's not all that flashy, like D&D, and there is a sidebar about playing this game just as a historical game.
And that gets to the weirdest thing about this game, which is that it seems really interested in the historical and scientific aspect. Like, the game talks about the historiagraphical swing from considering the time period as the age of peril to considering it a golden age before technology and war and kings; the game talks about what it would really be like to be a Cro-Magnon or Neanderthal (both playable) and what their language and thought process might be like. (Oddest passage here was probably the note about how Neanderthals probably had more testosterone, and so might be "brutal and sensual".)
The softcover material -- the adventure, the magazine Voice of the Ancestors -- is all fine enough, with mostly adventures that all had some kernel that might be interesting, and one essay on cannibalism beyond the horror aspect.
Yeah, so? Reading a game is not exactly like reading a book -- it's more like reading a screenplay or looking at blueprints. One can ask questions like "does this move me?" as you would with a complete work of art, but you could also ask questions like "does this have the promise of turning out something that will move me?"
And this game has something here: the idea of people trying to survive and thrive without dealing with terrible supernatural evil (the Tolkien-ian dark lord); the idea of trying to recapture something human but different; the idea of a simple system that focuses on a lot of what makes us human (art, striving, ritual).
Now, mostly the adventures let me down by focusing on things that don't interest me about the game; and the idea of there being a sidebar with Paleolithic vocabulary, including god names and whatnot seems at odds with the overall desire to be historical. And that may be the central bit of sand that keeps my gears from working on this. A completely made up Paleolithic might be easier to get into than this half-half work. Or maybe something a little less open, with more of a POV, might be interesting. Like: this game takes place in the Paleolithic and you can play Homo sapiens or Neandertalensis, and there's one adventure included in the core that's about the die out of the Neanderthals (with a melancholy tone, explicitly), but there's also (perhaps semi-comic) adventures about kids trying to handle a ritual by themselves and to make a marriage plot come off successfully.
In other words, if this game is trying to move me or set up tools with which to tell stories to move me, I cannot tell what way I'm supposed to be moved.
How? I was curious about this and someone had a lot of the Nocturnal reprint (English translation of the 1st edition): the core, the kickstarter exclusive Black Machairodus, and Voice of the Ancestors #1 and #2.
What? As far as I can tell, Emmanuel Roudier is a French graphic novelist who is very interested in the Paleolithic. At some point, he put out a French-language RPG based in this setting called Wurm. This version was in turn translated and brought out by Nocturnal Media, the side project of Stewart Wieck, an old White Wolf manager. There was a second version of Wurm brought out in French, but since Wieck died in 2017 (at 49!), the first edition has basically sunk. Will there be an English version of the second edition?
I don't think so, partly because the first didn't make a big splash in English -- and also partly because it's an odd game.
The system is pleasantly simple at its core -- roll 2d6 (or 3d6 if you have a strength or 1d6 if you have a weakness) against a target difficulty number -- which lets you get into a lot of setting material. Like, what kind of tasks might you be engaged in? Of course, combat (standard in most RPGs), but also knapping stone into useful tools, hunting, making art, holding rituals -- you know, all the things we know from Paleolithic humankind.
Now, there is magic and monsters in this game, but it's not all that flashy, like D&D, and there is a sidebar about playing this game just as a historical game.
And that gets to the weirdest thing about this game, which is that it seems really interested in the historical and scientific aspect. Like, the game talks about the historiagraphical swing from considering the time period as the age of peril to considering it a golden age before technology and war and kings; the game talks about what it would really be like to be a Cro-Magnon or Neanderthal (both playable) and what their language and thought process might be like. (Oddest passage here was probably the note about how Neanderthals probably had more testosterone, and so might be "brutal and sensual".)
The softcover material -- the adventure, the magazine Voice of the Ancestors -- is all fine enough, with mostly adventures that all had some kernel that might be interesting, and one essay on cannibalism beyond the horror aspect.
Yeah, so? Reading a game is not exactly like reading a book -- it's more like reading a screenplay or looking at blueprints. One can ask questions like "does this move me?" as you would with a complete work of art, but you could also ask questions like "does this have the promise of turning out something that will move me?"
And this game has something here: the idea of people trying to survive and thrive without dealing with terrible supernatural evil (the Tolkien-ian dark lord); the idea of trying to recapture something human but different; the idea of a simple system that focuses on a lot of what makes us human (art, striving, ritual).
Now, mostly the adventures let me down by focusing on things that don't interest me about the game; and the idea of there being a sidebar with Paleolithic vocabulary, including god names and whatnot seems at odds with the overall desire to be historical. And that may be the central bit of sand that keeps my gears from working on this. A completely made up Paleolithic might be easier to get into than this half-half work. Or maybe something a little less open, with more of a POV, might be interesting. Like: this game takes place in the Paleolithic and you can play Homo sapiens or Neandertalensis, and there's one adventure included in the core that's about the die out of the Neanderthals (with a melancholy tone, explicitly), but there's also (perhaps semi-comic) adventures about kids trying to handle a ritual by themselves and to make a marriage plot come off successfully.
In other words, if this game is trying to move me or set up tools with which to tell stories to move me, I cannot tell what way I'm supposed to be moved.
November 5, 2022
Voir tome 3
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews