In August 2022 we presented the all-new Never Going Home Quick Deal featuring Never Going Home, the Wet Ink Games World War Occult RPG set in the horror-haunted trenches of WWI. In Never Going Home the 1916 Battle of the Somme tore open the Veil between Earth and the world of the Others. These demonic beings promise power and survival to earthly soldiers. Some humans resist, some go mad, and some trade their humanity for arcane powers. Strange enemies now stalk the battlefield, and many soldiers have become monstrosities. Now, as part of a Unit of soldiers in the trenches, surrounded by the horrors of combat, you witness Corruption leaking into the world. The Whispers tempt you, promising power to save your friends. Will you give up some of your Humanity to live another day?
In Never Going Home the players collectively create a group of soldiers called a Unit. You play an individual soldier, or more likely a sequence of soldiers. You hold your character’s memories of humanity in the form of playing cards. You sacrifice these cards during missions and, optionally, to power rituals or avoid injury. You can also trade cards for new skills, additional dice, and dark powers from the realm of the Others. You must balance your goal of personal survival against the goal of your Unit’s success. Each character can have heroic moments, but the story focuses on the Unit.
Rules-light and narrative-based, Never Going Home uses the +One System, a simple dice-pool rules set where you roll a number of six-sided diced based on your character’s Attributes. Each roll of 5 or 6 is a success; you want to match or exceed a task’s Target Number of successes. Each attribute is also a health marker; as a character takes damage, options and proficiency are also reduced. You can already see the doom spiral that sends individual soldiers to death or madness. Fortunately it’s easy and quick to create new characters, so expect to cycle new soldiers in and out of your Unit.
Magic actions known as Whispers offer options more powerful than traditional weapons, but Whispers carry large risks. You can augment a Whisper each time you use it, but each addition raises the Target Number for the attempt. Learning Whispers also opens up casters to Corruption. A character who gains too much Corruption leaves the Unit and becomes an enemy of all humanity.
Wet Ink Games (Into the Wyrd and Wild, Jiangshi) funded Never Going Home in an October 2018 Kickstarter campaign. The RPG is based on an art book by Charles Ferguson-Avery, World War Occult (itself funded in a December 2017 Kickstarter). Like the artwork, the game is intense and eldritch, a sortie onto a dark field where every decision matters and no one makes it home alive.
This Never Going Home Quick Deal presented the entire game line for an unbeatable bargain price. There were seven titles in our Never Going Home Collection (retail value $65) as DRM-free .PDF ebooks, including the complete Never Going Home core rulebook, the magic supplement Book of Whispers, the Tome of Corrupted Beasts bestiary, three campaign dossiers – Blood on the Snow, Tears in the Sea, and Bones in the Dust – and a collection of short adventures, Once More Unto the Breach.
