The Barbarian's Bloody Quest

A wizard once came to the mountainside village where you were born and lived. You were a child. You remember the wizard as a terrible, nightmare figure — man or woman, beautiful or grotesque, you’ll never remember. Your parents hid you and you couldn’t see what happened. The wizard summoned fearsome creatures in armor who butchered your family and all the people you ever knew, butchered many and enslaved the rest for the wizard’s use. You stayed hidden and they never found you.

You were soon taken in by your village’s enemies, a clan of blood-thirsty raiders and brigands. They adopted you not out of mercy or kindness, but indifferently, simply to replace one of their own who had been killed in battle.

You were theirs for two decades, raiding, fighting, murdering, robbing. You found yourself fearless, throwing yourself into deadly peril with no thought of hesitation, driven by the roaring of your blood. You found yourself powerful, strong, and skilled. You wondered if you were conscienceless. At last, not long ago, awash in gore, your sword in your hands, your heart reawoke and you realized who you are.

You’re a killer, but you’ll no longer kill people for their wealth, for pride of place, or to ease your own bloodlust. You’ll kill wizards, and you’ll kill them for revenge. Let all wizards beware!

The Game

To play The Barbarian's Bloody Quest, you need two volunteer GMs to play against you. You have your booklet of rules, which you're responsible for knowing and bringing into play for yourself, and your volunteers have their own document: "The Book of Doomed Wizards," their guide to the wizards you'll face on your quest. Don't read it! It's for them, not for you.

Your goal in the game is to follow your quest for revenge into danger, and to emerge victorious when you can.

Each session that you play is an adventure in your barbarian's quest: an encounter with a wizard, whose magics you'll face and whose magical defenses and guardians you'll hope to defeat. You can play as often or rarely as you like, and you can call upon the same volunteers, or different ones, every time you play. Just pass The Book of Doomed Wizards over to them so that they can mark your progress through it.

System & Dice

The Barbarian's Bloody Quest uses a dice pool version of Powered by the Apocalypse's moves. Here's they're called exertions, and they describe how you exert yourself to get things done:

• You can exert your instincts to grasp and react to a dangerous situation.
• You can exert yourself with openness and warmth, to approach and get to know someone.
• You can exert yourself physically against the mass and momentum of an uncooperative or unsensible thing.

...And so on.

When you exert yourself, roll a number of 6-sided dice and count the 4s, 5s, and 6s as hits. Each hit you roll gives you an option, a chance, or a better outcome.

The Book of Doomed Wizards

"The Book of Doomed Wizards" contains all of the wizards you might encounter in your quest. It gives your volunteers everything they need to help you pursue your vengeance:

• Wizards at a range of powers, from the grasping and lowly, to the secure and masterful, all subject to their own sorcerous ambitions;
• Each wizard's protections and guardians, from warning intuitions and hissed spells of dissuasion, to baroque ceremonies of protection and monstrous otherworldly bodyguards;
• How each wizard, unique in their experience of the world and its impingement upon their plasmic psyches, responds to simple and genuine human acts;
• Whether each wizard is the one who wronged the barbarian, and how the barbarian can tell;
• The useful skills the barbarian learned in facing each wizard, or the useful items the barbarian might discover among their things.

As you play through your quest, your volunteers also record your adventures in the Book of Doomed Wizards.

Content Warning

Content warning: Moderate fantasy violence. Moderate fantasy horror, including body horror, magical enslavement, magical parasites, and questions of personhood.

Suitable for adults, young adults, and teens.

The Files

Free Downloads: Download the printouts here.

The Barbarian's Bloody Quest - Printouts (pdf) contains the pages you'll need to print in order to play. Print two copies of the Volunteer's Guide and the Bestiary, for your two volunteers, and a copy of the Barbarian character sheet for yourself. Download for free below!

The Barbarian's Bloody Quest eZine (pdf) is the digital version of the barbarian's booklet, including the rules of play.

The Book of Doomed Wizards eZine (pdf) is the digital version of the volunteers' booklet, including the wizards you'll face on your quest.

The Barbarian's Bloody Quest - Plaintext (txt) is the plaintext version of the complete game, both the barbarian's booklet and the Book of Doomed Wizards.

The Zine

The Barbarian's Bloody Quest is the second issue of the Wizard's Grimoire zine series. Other issues include:

The Wizard's Grimoire: You're a conjurer, scholar, rogue, and minor wizard, and you've come into possession of an ancient and powerful grimoire. Will it see you to triumph and the achievement of your every ambition, or will you destroy yourself in the pursuit?

The Last Adventure: You’re dead, once a hero, but now old, alone, and dead in the land of death. Will you answer the calling voice? Will you seek the sup of oblivion? Or will you end your last adventure on your own terms?

The Thief & the Necromancer: You’re friends, a thief and a necromancer, both leaving behind oppressive situations, taken together in mutual amity. Let the world marvel at what you will together accomplish.

The Wizard's Library: A collection of three 1st- and 2nd-level spellbooks for use with the Wizard's Grimoire or the Thief & the Necromancer. By studying them, unlocking their secrets, and mastering the dangers within, you can follow in the footsteps of the great and the wise!