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Vogelfrei

Game content

Vogelfrei is structured into several chapters:

  1. Character Creation

  2. Equipment

  3. Retainers

  4. Adventuring

  5. Encounters

What is Vogelfrei?

For some, exile is the only fate. To be vogelfrei is to be cast out, beyond the protection of kings and gods alike, free in the most terrible way: free to be hunted, betrayed, and forgotten.

Yet even outlaws have a chance to carve their own destiny. A knight may fall from grace and take up the life of a mercenary. A peasant may flee the fields and become a bandit lord. A scholar may seek forbidden knowledge, risking soul and sanity. Steel and wit are a person’s greatest allies, for dangers lurk in the wilds and in the depths of the unknown. In this place, you are either bound by the laws of men — or cast out, left to forge your own destiny.

Vogelfrei is an OSR tabletop role-playing game set in a world shaped by feudal and early Renaissance societies. Players create characters from diverse social backgrounds — peasants, academics, warriors, rangers and rogues — where social status heavily influences life in civilized settlements. However, in untamed lands and forgotten ruins, the established order begins to crumble. This game emphasizes exploration across vast wildernesses — forests, mountains, and wastelands — as well as deep dungeons and the remains of lost cities.

Wealth and survival are the primary goals. Characters are expected to seek riches by taking great risks, knowing that death is a constant possibility and often not the even the worst of fates. Deadly and unpredictable, combat is not the universal solution to all problems. You are at war, and at war do not expect fair competition. Use clever tactics and prior intelligence to win. Or, at the very end, it's better to live to fight another day.

There’s plenty of material on the OSR style of play, but one of the most iconic is Principia Apocrypha. Below are some key principles for players from the text, but we highly recommend reading the full document at the link.

  1. Learn when to run: old school adventures often present deadly encounters that, to the eye of a modern gamer, may seem like you're expected to beat them. Learn to dig into the fiction to see the relative power of what you're facing, and don't be afraid to cut your losses. A party that drags away a body is a party on their way to a healer, instead of on their way through a monster's digestive system.

  2. Combat as war, not sport: don't expect encounters to be "balanced". Approach combat with as much trepidation and preparation as you would in real life. Nor are encounters self-contained. Think outside the box, outside the encounter area, outside the dungeon. Think like Sun Tzu. Think laterally or die.

  3. Don't be limited by your character sheet: rules and mechanics are only triggered by what happens as established in the conversational fiction of play. To do something, describe your character doing it; if you need to roll dice, the Referee will let you know.

  4. Live your backstory: don't put much work into a backstory for your characters. Their experiences in play will be more real to you and your friends than anything you write. An early death won't sting quite as much, and a survivor will have real tales to tell, and experience to take pride in.

  5. Power is earned, heroism proven: unlike many modern RPGs, your character starts with little power. Your meager means and abilities at first level encourage lateral thinking to get you out of trouble. Rising to a challenge (or fleeing it) means more when their life is on the line.

  6. Scrutinize the world, interrogate the fiction: discard any assumptions about other fantasy worlds, and be curious about the one you're playing in. Pay attention to details — about characters, the environment, social situations, and more. Take notes on them! Make maps of them! Information is leverage, my crafty friend. Those details can save your life.

  7. Play to win, savor loss: everyone wants to succeed, and certainly everyone wants to play with friends they feel are aiming to succeed — but that may not always happen. Your characters may get turned into frog-people, lose limbs, be stricken by leprosy, turned into stone, cursed to burp up slugs, entombed in the earth for 10,000 years, or just die from being stabbed in the gut by a farmer with a pitchfork. Learn to love the disgusting, horrifying, shocking, surprising, and even disappointing ways your characters are set back. And remember, through play, a story emerges larger than any one character. You will make your mark on the world, be it an unknowingly misleading arrow scratched into a dungeon wall, or a crater where a city once stood.