RPG Spotlight: ‘Eat the Reich’ Let’s You Kill Hitler… With Vampires
The year is 1943 and you’re part of a squad of vampires on a mission to find Hitler and drink all of his blood; it’s time to Eat the Reich.
Most tabletop RPGs have massive open worlds and an opportunity to make an entirely custom character to explore it with. The DM designs the story, picks the goals, and invites you to play your way through a massive sandbox. It’s a great design for certain games. But sometimes you want a singular, wacky adventure with a predetermined setting and goal. And if that setting is an alternate version of Europe in 1943 and that goal is to join a team of vampire commandoes with the mission of mission of drinking all of Hitler’s blood… Well have we got the game for you.
Eat the Reich
Written by Grant Howitt (Honey Heist) and illustrated by Will Kirkby (Critical Role), Eat the Reich is the sort of off-the-walls RPG concept that feels almost too niche. Only it’s not too niche and a successful 2023 Kickstarter campaign proves it.
But what is Eat the Reich? Sure, vampires trying to eat Hitler sounds like an awesome and hilarious concept, but there’s got to be more to it than that. There’s always more to it than that. Publisher Rowan, Rook & Decard describes it as;
“This over-the-top, ultraviolent game is designed to be played from beginning to end in one to three sessions of carnage, blood magic, meaningful flashbacks and hundreds upon hundreds of extremely dead fascists. It tells one story, it tells it loud, and it tells it brilliantly. Think Wolfenstein crossed with Danger 5 and you’re not far off the mark.”
It’s a “big, gross, stupid evisceration party” that’s meant to be over the top and campy like a slasher film. But also a little super natural and a little historical. This game is a cathartic mess, and I mean that in the most complimentary way possible.
Character Creation and Gameplay
This isn’t a terribly complex game- which make sense since Honey Heist is a one-page RPG system. In Eat the Reich you pick from an assortment of pre-made vampires to create your blood sucking squad. The GM sets the scene and reveals the objectives and threats. And for every objective attempted by the vampires, a number of six sided die are rolled equal to the relevant stats. Fours and fives are successes, sixes are two successes, and the rest are discarded. The GM also rolls for the enemy forces and their threat levels using the same mechanic. Successes (and failures) are described within the scene and narrated.
The outcome is often a game that’s cinematic, narrative heavy, and imaginative. Players are encouraged to add description and flourish to the scene, and make the action (and violence) as over the top as they’d like. And while the six varieties of vampire are predetermined, the game encourages players to add their own backstory, quirks, and general flavor and personality to the mission. It’s your mission to eat Hitler.
If you’d like to check out Eat the Reich for yourself, you can learn more on the Rowan, Rook, and Decard website.
Happy adventuring!
