Terrible Warriors

Symbaroum is a game that has been on my short list since I came into contact with it at GenCon 2019. I had seen it being offered by Free League and new that it had origins originally as a game only available in Swedish but I foolishly set it aside at the time as yet-another-sword-and-sorcery-rpg.

Then I got to meet Mattias Johnsson Haake, who I got to finally interview last month, and through him learned all about the long journey that Symbaroum and Mattias have taken together. I also looked a little closer at the game itself and what I found was an evocative world with incredibly immersive artwork, a long thought out and lived in history, and game mechanics that didn’t get in the way of it’s rich story about corruption, power, and nature.

To help guide us into Symbaroum we used their recently released Starter Kit to help describe the setting and then quickly opened up the main core book to create our own characters. Character creation was simple, for the most part, and all three of the characters presented in this Session Zero would make for a terrific long form campaign. This trio was hard to leave behind and I hope this isn’t the last time we visit this setting with them.

You’ll meet Sean’s Farsig Unthist, a goblin with a thirst for magic, Velvet’s Gerundin, an elven changeling challenging their destiny, and Justin’s Daramei, a human noble who will compromise everything to gain the power he thinks he deserves. Together they’re all playing with the fires of corruption in their own way as they set foot into the Dark Forest, will they be able to save themselves or will they each drag the other into the darkness with them?