In June 2023 we presented the new Warlock-Warpstar Bundle featuring two old-school RPGs from Fire Ruby Designs inspired by the early days of British roleplaying. Ready your warhammer or slug projector for rules-light adventure in the dark yet wondrous spirit of early Games Workshop and the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks. Designed by Greg Saunders (Golgotha, Summerland, Exilium), the fantasy game Warlock! and its standalone compatible space-opera companion Warpstar! both feature career-based characters, concise rules, and a unified 1d20+skill mechanic that adapts easily to published grim-and-perilous adventures and helps you create your own new stories.
For many UK roleplayers in the 1980s, Games Workshop’s Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay First Edition was a gateway drug. It’s interesting how, for all that WFRP 1E dominated that era in Britain, relatively few indie retro-clones try to emulate its mechanics. Where hundreds of Old School Revival fans have cloned every edition of D&D with varying fidelity, WFRP tributes tend to use other rules systems to emulate the Old World setting’s distinctive atmosphere. Among these spiritual successors, Fire Ruby’s Warlock! stands out for its light-handed, not to say “stark,” approach. Warlock careers match WFRP‘s almost one-for-one. Combat is deadly, magic is low-power (though accessible to all characters), and everything – and everybody – is easily hackable. Concise sourcebooks have fleshed out the sketchy background of the game’s default setting, the Kingdom. The Compendium rules expansions add gunpowder, sanity, and other Old World concerns.
In 2020 Fire Ruby extended the Warlock! system with a rules-compatible space-opera game. Warpstar! lightly sketches a WH40K-style galactic empire called the Chorus, ruled by the Autarch and his feared Nova Guard power armor troops; there are Dune-like feudal houses, a super-drug called Cadence, and spell-like effects called glyphs. Characters can be anything from assassins and bounty hunters to street kids, agitators, and cult leaders. As with Warlock!, the rules, including starship combat, are pointedly light, intended to evoke a spirit rather than systems.
In July 2021 we presented a comprehensive Warlock Bundle featuring the original version of the rulebook and nine early supplements. In 2022 Greg Saunders produced a Traitor’s Edition (2022) with a new layout, new illustrations, and a few minor rules changes. (Your career skill now equals the lowest skill your career grants, rather than the average. On the critical tables, you roll 1d6 + negative stamina, not 2d6. Blast and Foulness stamina costs are reduced by 1, and the Sleep spell by 2.) All Warlock! First Edition material is 100% compatible with the Traitor’s Edition. We presented the new traitorous core rulebook in the January 2021 Non-OGL Fantasy Bundle. This new offer brought back the Warlock! Traitor’s Edition corebook and recent supplements, and added Warpstar! and its whole supplement line.
There were five titles in our Warlock Collection (retail value $65) as DRM-free .PDF ebooks, including the complete Warlock! Traitor’s Edition core rulebook (previously in our January 2023 Non-OGL Fantasy Bundle); the Compendium 3 rules expansion; and three Traitor’s Edition sourcebooks: Kingdom, Rebeck, and Buccaneer!.
Those who paid more than the threshold (average) price also get our entire Warpstar Collection with five more spacegoing titles worth an additional $68, including the complete standalone Warpstar! core rulebook and four Warpstar! supplements: Caldera, Dire Threats, Hegemony, and Omoron.
Ten percent of each payment (after gateway fees) went to this Warlock-Warpstar offer’s designated charity, Direct Relief. Direct Relief sends protective gear and critical care medications to health workers, with emergency deliveries to medical facilities across the US and to regional response agencies across the world.
