Zinequest Retrospective: A Rasp of Sand

A Rasp of Sand, by David Cox


The Pitch: A rogue-like OSR module where each player controls a family, sending an adventurer into a procedurally-generated dungeon once per generation.

Why I backed: I love the idea of generational play, and I’ve never seen it in a OSR game before. Pretty art. How it works: the zine uses Ben Milton’s Knave OSR ruleset.

What I received: A DTRPG printed volume with a B&W cover. Although perfect bound, the spine is just green and doesn’t have name or author. Sigh.

What I thought: There’s a lot to like here. Aesthetically, it’s quite lovely, with a whimsical art style and an overall mood that evokes Zelda. The premise reverses the usual dungeon delving story - the protagonists’ ancestors stole a crown from their goddess, and to calm her anger they must return it to her at the bottom of her dungeon.

 The rogue-lite gameplay is accomplished through several clever conceits and mechanics. The PC families send a party of heirs once per generation. They only get to make one attempt at the dungeon. As soon as one member of the party dies, the dungeon starts to flood, and the other characters must retreat and retire. Each family has a trade, and for each generation the family pursues their trade, they improve, unlocking steadily more powerful abilities for the heirs (this is the rogue-like part, linear progress despite starting over). Dying creatures leave behind magic sand that contains their memories and spirits. This allows the PCs to take on characteristics of their defeated foes, but it also provides an in-game way for the families to pass on memories of dungeon-delving through the generations. However, in each generation, the dungeon is different, its rooms rearranged at random - just to keep things interesting. I think the author made a good choice not to procedurally generate the individual rooms (which often yields boring or incoherent areas) but still ensuring that there will be variety between runs, and that the players will get to see new areas each time.

My main concern about the game is that it seems like it may draw too much from the videogames that inspired it. The big difference between roguelike videogames and OSR RPGs is that the former can only tolerate a handful of stylized ways of interacting with the game world, and thus typically lean heavily on combat. In OSR play, by contrast, players can try any creative solution they can think of. A Rasp of Sand seems like it produces a lot of combat encounters in a volume that could be exhausting. The non-combat encounters and abilities also have a strong videogame feel - everything connects very directly to one of a few subsystems, like the in-dungeon merchants. There are very few open-ended abilities that interact with the fictional world. As a result I’m not sure whether the game is fun enough to sustain repeated forays into the same dungeon.

Lastly, my story-gamer side notes that with a premise as rich as the generational effort at the heart of A Rasp of Sand, I think there’s a lot of room for drama and emotional play. How does each generation differ from the ones who came before? What do they think of their mission? Of their families? Of each other? I know it’s outside the OSR mission statement, but here more than in a normal OSR game I would have loved some emphasis on the characters and their relationships.

What I’m going to do with it: Although I have some reservations about gameplay, the game is unique enough that I want to try running it and see what happens. In the keep pile.