A few weeks ago, I started a short run campaign of Wicked Ones. My group set up a sandbox and are playing through it until we’ve had enough of it, or until our dungeon is maxed out or destroyed by adventurers. Yes, we have a dungeon—mostly they do, as one part of my GMing duties here is to attack their dungeon and to push them to fight to make it better and more secure.
I may be getting ahead of myself. It is easy to do with this game. Let me take a moment to better explain its premise and offer some observations about how it works. In Wicked Ones, the PCs are fantasy monsters who build and operate a dungeon. In order to develop and improve their dungeon, the monsters must conduct raids on surrounding targets aboveground. The game rules emphasize how dangerous it is for monsters to venture into the “civilized” world, as they will almost certainly be detected and then crushed by the weight of human (and prosocial demi-human) society.
If you’re conjuring political subtext here, I think you’re on your own. (I can certainly see it—in parodic or more straightforward terms—but it’s not really the purpose here.) If you are flashing on the classic computer game Dungeonkeeper, then you are on the right wavelength. If you are recognizing the potential for tragicomic metatextual hijinks, then you will probably like this game. And, finally, if you think that surface raids seem a lot like heists, and so find yourself looking to Forged in the Dark as the basis of a system, then you should probably be prepping this game ASAP!
Unfortunately, even if all the above applies to you, you may be in for some frustration out of the gate. Wicked Ones is out of print, and unlikely to come back into print anytime soon. It is not even easily available as a PDF, though it can be found with a little digging online. It is a casualty of a catastrophic Kickstarter campaign that is best understood by scrounging through project updates, the last of which more or less put an end to future sales or development of the game. I won’t attempt to explain it, as I don’t fully understand it myself, was not a backer of the KS, but was fortunate enough to buy a physical copy of the core rulebook when the game first saw light, before the campaign. It is an awesome game, and the physical book is both well-designed and pleasing to the eye.
The game itself is somewhat overstuffed with mostly good ideas. While many of these are not exactly new, they tend to be interpolated in interesting ways. All the pieces taken together can be a bit messy, but, being that play is structured into a cycle made up of distinct phases, you mostly only have to deal with subsets of rules at any given time. Phases include: 1) Lurking—when you’re hanging out in and improving your dungeon; 2) Calamity—when unexpected things may happen to your dungeon; 3) Raiding—self explanatory; and 4) Blowback, when you evaluate the effects of your raid and determine whether you’ve drawn the ire of the civilized world. Each phase stands almost as a game unto itself, but they flow together really well.
I feel that the game somehow encourages mutual experimentation. With my group, at least, we seem to genuinely enjoy the process of figuring out things together. All that said, I would not recommend Wicked Ones as a starting point for new GMs. It requires a lot of bookkeeping, improvisation, tricky adjudication, and thoughtful hand-waving (if such a thing exists). I think it is a challenge for players as well, though mine seem to be having a good time with it. Everyone has to be OK with finding their way as the game moves forward—both in terms of the story and of the rules. All of the players have to make some improvisational leaps and to provide some narration and world-building on the fly. At the same time, the point of view remains fairly distant, so the one thing you will not have to do much is speaking in character, unless you want to.
All the energy and creativity that you put into Wicked Ones pays off. It is open and crazy, and really leads to engagement with—even attachment to—your dungeon. Each player is responsible for elements that they introduce—traps, creatures, rooms…even locks. And each player has their very own set of monstrous minions. One of my favorite things about Wicked Ones is the mechanics it sets up to enforce the nonsensical “logic” of traditional dungeon design. You know…where the low level monster always come first—these are probably your minions—and the real bad guys lurk below—and these are the PCs. If your dungeon doesn’t seem “appropriately” designed within those and similarly classic fantasy RPG principles, then your minions may turn against you. It is an awesome conceit, put right out there in front of everyone as a part of the structure of play.
I don’t recall ever running a game where the workload intersected with the rewards in such a strange way as they do in Wicked Ones. Have I said that it’s a lot of work yet? Yes, I know I have. Have I said that it takes you to strange places, and that the scenery along the way is really interesting? I think so. Check it out if you have the energy, the time, and a good group of players who like to expand the boundaries of what a TTRPG might look like.