The Tome of Zhu

Friday, 17 December 2021

Orsa the Fearless

A look inside the Orsa the Fearless, the first Feature Pack for Crooked Dice's 7TV:FANTASY  

VHS Box Cover

Front cover is a duo-toned blue version of the original poster created for 7TV:FANTASY, in a tough VHS clamshell case which contains all the materials need to recreate the epic adventures of Orsa on your tabletop (providing you've got a copy of 7TV fantasy and some miniatures of course!):

Inside the VHS box

Profile, Injury, Trilogy and Artefact Cards

Injury Cards

The injury cards are a new rule expansion that adds a bit of barbaric 80s grit and gore to the game so instead of taking a normal wound and losing a health point, characters can have a broken lib, blinded eye, smashed jaw, cracked skull severed arm or crushed shell, each with it's own unique illustration.

Artefact cards

Three new artefacts drawn from norse myth - The Brisingamen, a torc of power, Gleipnir, a chain of might and wonder, and Skidbladnir, the boat that crosses land. The norse-fantasy world-building is supported with Profiles and descriptions of Jotun, Draugr and Svartálfar, and it's easy to see how Orsa could be used as a platform for an even larger nordic fantasy campaign.

ORSA logo

With a female lead, rather than the rough and contrasted with a fluid and smokey, art nouveau style 80s fantasy inspired logotype, letterforms should be familiar to gamers and fantasy literature fans of a certain vintage...   

The book also contains a couple of unique duotone illustrations by myself, featuring characters and scenes from the campaign:

Battle at the Farm

Terror of the Lichemistress

The campaign itself is a linked series of narrative battles that propose to emulate a series of 1980s fantasy movies that follow the adventures of the she-barbarian Orsa across the frozen nordic wastelands.  Each scenario also has a hand drawn isometric battle-map to help with table layout, and scenery placement.  





The full range of  Orsa: The Fearless products includes the Feature Pack alongside the miniatures designed for the game. 

3 comments:

  1. Beautiful stuff! I love the design of this range.

    I do have a question: are the "VHS" boxes made for this, or are they being repurposed from all those videos even charity shops won't take any more?

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    Replies
    1. Cheers Kelvin!

      Amazingly the VHS boxes are new stock, rather than stripped from vintage ex-rental copies of The Beastmaster, although with the fun of supply chains in 2020s, that might not be a bad idea.

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  2. Wow! This completely slipped under my radar! :-)

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