# Swords of the Serpentine tags: #game/rpg/swords-of-the-serpentine ![[Swords of the Serpentine (cover).jpg]] So, you want to risk your neck in a sinking city choking on its own corruption? **Swords of the Serpentine** is your ticket to Eversink, a fantasy metropolis that's one part Renaissance Venice, two parts Lankhmar, and three parts unsanitary swamp. The game pitches itself as "sword & sorcery," which is a polite way of saying you'll be playing morally flexible Sentinels, Sorcerers, Thieves, or Warriors navigating political intrigue, back-alley justice, and the sort of bloody savagery that gets the cobblestones stained. You're not saving the world; you're trying to get paid, get even, or just survive until sunrise in a city that is the literal body of a commerce goddess, where every building sinks about eight centimeters a year, and where funerary statues are more common than honest politicians because destroying one might obliterate a soul. It’s a game for heroes who understand that sometimes the most heroic thing you can do is make sure your enemy's "unfortunate accident" can't be traced back to you. The core of the game runs on a modified **GUMSHOE** engine, which means the biggest challenge isn't finding clues—it's surviving what you do with them. When a task's outcome is in doubt, you roll a single six-sided die against a target number (usually 4). The snarky bit is that you're not entirely at the mercy of that little cube. You have pools of points tied to your abilities that you can spend to add to your roll, transforming you from a hapless victim of probability into someone who can strategically throw resources at a problem to ensure success. Combat is a particularly charming affair, with two tracks to attack: Health (for stabbing) and Morale (for taunts and terrifying threats). You can also perform **Maneuvers**, forcing a foe to choose between suffering an effect, like being disarmed, or taking damage instead. The real gem of the system is its approach to magic. Sorcery is powerful, illegal, and always comes with a cost called **Corruption**. When you unleash your reality-bending power, you must choose to either _internalize_ the foul energy, risking a failed Health test that results in a hideous physical mutation, or _externalize_ it, scarring the world around you and forcing your allies to make a Morale test or be terrified by your sheer wrongness. Even wealth is an abstraction; you don't count coins, you gain points of **Wealth** which you spend on your **Lifestyle** between adventures. Live opulently and you gain "High Repute" to throw around; live in squalor and the GM gets "Low Repute" points to use against you. ## References - [Buy the game directly from the source - Pelgrane Press](https://pelgranepress.com/product/swords-of-the-serpentine/) - [A Review of Swords of the Serpentine - EN World](https://www.enworld.org/threads/a-review-of-swords-of-the-serpentine.689697/) - [Another take on the game - The Walking Mind](https://walkingmind.evilhat.com/2020/07/23/swords-of-the-serpentine/) - [Buy from an online retailer - Miniature Market](https://www.miniaturemarket.com/pelgss01.html) - [SotS on DriveThruRPG](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/408716/swords-of-the-serpentine)