Review: The Shrike

Review of The Shrike by Leo Hunt

What it is

To begin, The Shrike by Leo Hunt was published by Silver Arm press with art by Jantiff Illustration, Edited by Christian Sorrell, Layout by Meredith Silver, published by Joel Hines, Cartography by Glynn Seal, consulting by Brad Kerr.

It’s a 167 page book split into about 10 chapters. The beginning chapters detailing the major factions, new character classes, and overall world, and the rest detailing various locations within the Shrike.

Overall I think it’s written for Old School Essentials, or B/X and can pretty much be used by whatever retro-clone or OSR game you like to play.

The Shrike

The Shrike is a purgatory like underworld. A giant metallic spike thrusts into the sky, surrounded by ocean, the tip of it piercing through the body of a god condemned to eternal torment; he lies impaled upon it, visible high in the sky from the black sand beaches below. You wake up upon them as the newly dead.

If this is painting a vivid picture of a strange world that would be interesting to adventure in you would be correct. The book presents some strong imagery and ideas that evokes the imagination and begs to be played. While it may not be everyone’s preferred type of fantasy, despite it’s underworld sardonic nature, it’s not overly grim, violent, or disturbing and could probably be enjoyed by a wide variety of people.

The Factions and People

There are basically three main types of people on the Shrike. Sinners: people who have died and found themselves waking up on the black sand beaches of the Shrike, sin stones emended in their flesh as a record of their crime; Demons: various Hieronymus Bosch like creatures that are a chaotic surreal amalgamation of earthly animals; and Partials: bits of inanimate matter come to life through divine genesis of the impaled Gods blood which is slowly dripping down the spire of the Shrike.

There are several factions, including five courts of demons, and overall several defined ways adventuring could be concluded and which the Players could escape the Shrike, if that ends up being their main goal. The Shrike does a very good job of presenting a setting, and possible endings depending on which factions you decide to side with or quests you take on, but leaving everything in the middle up to you and the players to decide.

The Place

The shrike, being a largely vertical thing, is naturally setup into several layers. There’s the bottommost layer; the ocean and black sand beaches and sea caves. From here we head into the Guts; internal caves and infernal locations. Then, a higher up exterior layer that is like ascending up the side of a mountain with various crags and strange personalities; and a top most layer, the Palace of the Heart, where the primary demon courts are.

It’s all setup as a pointcrawl. There are dozens upon dozens of locations within the book. Much of them very evocative; Cove of Iron Coffins, The Gasp, Forge of Forneus, Court of Air, Bridge of Apostates, etc. The characters that reside in them are equally colourful almost all of them named with a short description that gives a sense of their personality and drives. Additionally, each of the main layers has a dungeon for the players to explore and overall the entire work is riddled in a web of conflicting NPCs, many of them with their own little quests.

Impressions

Plainly stated, this is probably one of the best OSR products I’ve read in a long while, and I’ve read a lot at this point. It’s definitely in my top 5 and I think is what I’m going to reach for when I reach for something to play next.

I can’t really think of anything I’d really change. Most artistic, super creative OSR stuff I read and think of how to restructure it to make it easier to run at the table or what to add to actually sustain play. Less creative but better designed stuff, I generally read and think of way’s I’d add my own spin on it, other creative works I’d mix in to make it more fantastical or weird or dark or kind of less generic.

The Shrike feels like the real deal; a genuine, complete vision of a well designed, evocative setting. One that I think would be a blast to send my players through and which contains enough density of creative ideas and gameable content that both I and the players could just play to find out what happens and come to some kind of a satisfying and dramatic conclusion after many sessions.

Leo Hunt is definitely going on my list of OSR people to watch.

The Design

This is probably one of the best designed things I think I’ve read in a while. There was nowhere in the book that I felt lost or unsure of what the book was talking about. It introduces the major characters and factions up front and does a good job at telling you what’s happened in a short and concise manner so you have a big picture idea of the setting before you get into reading actual locations and gameable content. Nowhere did my eyes glaze over or did I get bored reading this book. It was a joy to read, which for RPG products, can be rare at times.

It also very much feels like a complete work from a game design perspective. It includes appendices for treasure tables and item descriptions, notes about how the players can spend their treasure for XP in the setting, and other things where you can tell Leo has given thought to how the peculiarities of his setting intersect with the rules of B/X.

The whole structure of it is also a bit of masterclass in design. The multiple factions you can interact with; the vertical nature of the Shrike an easy framework for an epic journey as the players ascend it; the multiple endings that could occur depending on which goals of different NPCs the players might take up; it has just enough structure to it to assist play in a deep and meaningful way, but never too much that you feel like you’ve been confined to a straightjacket.

The Ideas

Judging by Leo Hunts inspiration list, he read and mixed in a lot of different works into The Shrike. It really shows where while I’d categorize it as dark fantasy, and while the premise, being stuck in purgatory or hell, isn’t brand new; it’s a hell or purgatory that feels unlike your common depictions of fire and brimstone. It’s a truly unique setting that is quite refreshing. It’s definitely Dark Souls / Elden Ring adjacent and probably captures that whole vibe better than a lot of stuff that hews closer to those sources.

It also feels like a mature work in the sense that it contains multiple stories and little drama’s that convey a variety of emotions and themes rather than being one-note.

The conceptual density is pretty good and overall the world feels very well thought out and understandable despite it’s somewhat surreal or fantastic nature. It feels very much like a lived in place where even though the characters maybe immortal and/or strange, they often have human motivations. It’s a world with cultures, social groups, and rules to some degree and another and so gives your players something familiar to grasp on and navigate.

Criticisms

My only real criticisms are more with the graphic design of the book rather than the content or writing. Overall the graphic design isn’t bad or ugly. But it feels very ‘book’ like and a bit understated or safe compared to the layout and information design seen in a lot of newer OSR products. This didn’t detract at all from my reading of it. But it’s really the only criticism I can muster.

Should I buy this?

If you find the general description of the setting interesting, yes, you should probably buy this. You probably won’t regret it. I didn’t and definitely intend to run it.