Product– Dagon
System- Necronomicon Gamebook
Producer– Officina Meningi
Price– On kickstarter now! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/officinameningi/the-necronomicon-gamebook-trilogy-dagon-carcosa-and-kadath
TL; DR– A solid implementation of a choose your adventure with combat. 85%
Basics– Choose your own insanity! Dagon is a necronomicon gamebook. These are a series of choose-your-own-adventures where you get to choose an action AND, like other games such as fighting fantasy, you may roll a d6 to determine combat. If you know the choose-your-own-adventure games from the 80s/90s you know the drill and may already be hooked!
Mechanics or Crunch– To determine if you will like this, ask yourself-”Do I like Choose-your own-adventure books with combat?” If you said yes and you also like Lovecraft, then this is right up your alley. This doesn’t reinvent the wheel of these games, but it doesn’t need to. You just choose your action and maybe have combat. It’s solid enough and fun. It might not be the most inventive for the base mechanic, but there are some stats you choose at the beginning and you have a solid time playing. 4.5/5
Theme or Fluff– Just like above, if you like Lovecraft and like choose your own adventures, then you will like this. This isn’t new ground. If you need some crazy new angle to Cthulhu, then you will not be happy. What is novel to this type of book is the Dreamlands. When you rest and when some crazy things happen, you have random visions that can make more crazy things happen as you drift off to another reality. It might not be the newest concept, but it still does the old standard story of the Lovecraft mythos well. 4.5/5
Execution– This is the most conflicted part of this book. The art is good. The flow is good. The story is good and easily readable. What isn’t great is the rules explanation and the hyperlinking. You jump around in the book, but on a PDF there are no hyperlinks. That’s bad in a basic RPG book, but worse in a book where I am going to have to repeatedly jump all over the place. Also, the explanation of rules is a bit off. Not mostly, but one very key thing is left out: dice. The game says use a die. Man, this is an rpg book aimed at nerds; it’s aimed at me with my Horrorclix Cthulhu staring back at me as I write this. If you say die, I literally have no idea what you are talking about. They mean D6. That’s not horrible for the normal person, but me with with over 100GB of RPGs and over 1000 board games in my basement spent 20 minutes trying to understand if they meant d20 to my crazy almost non-euclidean dice I bought at a crazy gaming convention that most people can’t remember for some reason. The things I am not happy with are not even close to stopping me from buying in, but it’s a small thing that escalates to larger things. 3.75/5
Summary– I like choose your own adventure games, I like simple combat in RPGs, and I like Lovecraft. This is a fun way to get new people into Lovecraft, a fun way to get literature nerds into RPGs, and a fun way to get people gaming. I like this product. It isn’t the newest story you will see under the sun or in a terrible old book full of secrets. But, like a classic hamburger from your amazing local diner, the classics are good and don’t need to be changed all the time. What isn’t great are some things I need in this style of product in 2023: hyperlinks and a bit more rules discussion. Tell me I need a d6 and give me a hyperlinked PDF, and I will love this thing nearly unconditionally. I am the geek this is aimed for, and I am glad to have gotten this. Check out the kickstarter now! 85%
Throat Punch Games 