Enter the World of ‘Zweihänder Grim & Perilous’ With This Dark Fantasy RPG
The ENnie Award-winning RPG Zweihänder Grim & Perilous is a game for only the bravest of adventuring parties.
Zweihänder Grim & Perilous RPG is basically exactly what it sounds like. More commonly just called Zweihänder, it describes itself as a dark fantasy game, with more recent editions even leaning into the horror genre a bit. It’s also one of the more polarizing games out there, either finding its way into people’s ‘top games of all time’ lists, or relegated to the one-and-done RPG systems reserved for the games we tried once and couldn’t stand. Love it or hate it, there doesn’t tend to be a lot of in-between with Zweihänder. But what makes this game so unique and so hotly contested among RPG fans?
Zweihänder
When we talk about the uniqueness of this game, part of what we’re referring to is the world and lore surrounding Zweihänder. And it’s a world of gritty, dark, viking mythology and magic. It’s very much a fantasy game, but it is steeped in reality and well known mythology to feel grounded and approachable and immersive. Sometimes fantasy games have wildly unique settings that can be a little hard to conceive of. Zweihänder isn’t that game. That said, there is a lot of lore and you’ll want to be at least passingly familiar with it for the game to be immersive and fun.
Zweihänder is also one of the crunchier games games I’ve talked about recently. First published in 2017, this isn’t an old RPG by any means. But it’s also not in the same generation as the recent everything-is-apocalypse games. Right now we’re in a bubble of simple games that are easy to learn, jump into, and run with. But just a few years ago crunchier games were king. And sometimes that’s great because you can work out the specifics of hits, dodges, conditions, fate points, etc. D&D is still the biggest tabletop RPG out there, and we have to hammer out a lot of those details every round. Sometimes it clows combat down and makes it a little more difficult for a newcomer to dive into.
Of course, this isn’t good nor bad. Some people like a more detailed game while others prioritize ease of entry.
Character Creation & Game Play
Making your character in Zweihänder is more likely to be it’s own session zero of a campaign as opposed to something players do on their own and in their own time. Which is to say, character creation is a process. And more than that, a lot of it is randomized with dice rolls. Roll for your primary attribute or magical ancestry. Roll for your archetype and profession. Even your character’s age and general description is up to the whims of the dice. On one hand, I hate this. If I’m playing a game I’d like to make my own character, thank you. But on the other… it’s sort of great. So many of us play variations of the same character over and over again. This makes that nearly impossible.
Gameplay itself is, like I said before, a bit intense. Everything is done with percentile dice, and there seem to be rules and statistics for everything. Combat can be slow, but there is also little room for argument. You, as the player, have to keep track of a million little things that may be happening with your character. Everything from injuries to the effects of the weather and sleep deprivation on them must be accounted for. The sort of stuff where in the real world, keeping track would be normal and natural. But in a fantasy game? It can either feel like it disrupts the flow of things or like a fantastically immersive system depending on the player, DM, and group.
Frankly, Zweihänder isn’t a game for everybody. But no game is. The learning curve is steep, the gameplay spends a lot of time deep in the minutia, and at times it feels like there’s little room for improvement or roleplaying. But if you’re the kind of detail-oriented person who loves to sink their teeth into a really in-depth core book, this is the game for you. Zweihänder is truly unique with a ton of lore and a world that’s huge, interesting, immersive, and at times strangely beautiful. So find your also-detail-oriented people and get exploring this dark Viking-inspired world.
If you’d like to know more about Zweihänder, you can learn more and get a copy for yourself here.
Have you played Zweihänder? What is your favorite dark-and-gritty tabletop RPG? Do you prefer your fantasy games more realistic, or more fantastical? Let us know in the comments!
Happy adventuring!
