Eat The Reich – Roleplay Letters

Eat The Reich is a roleplaying game about killing Hitler to win the war. Players are a group of crack vampire commandos, coffin dropped into occupied Paris. Being a single, very contained theme of ultra violence towards nazis, it gets to build everything around delivering on that theme. How does it play?

Eat The Reich cover, depicting a vampire commando inside a drop coffin, with only part of their face visible through a slit in the box. The slit in the box is a cutout, with the vampire peering in from the page underneath, creating a three dimensional effect. If you open the flap, you can see the inside of the coffin cover, as well as a full body image of the vampire inside. It's very immersive. — Eat The Reich cover. The physical book is such a beauty, they went *all out* on the print finish and layout. It could be more usable, though – there is no index, and I struggled to find specific rules during play (*Advancement* is under *Übermensch*.)

How it plays

The players are dropped in one corner of a Paris map, and told to get to Eiffel tower, where Hitler’s zeppelin is moored. To advance from a location, you need to clear its Objective. These are outlined in the book. On your way are Threats: different kinds of setups of nazi invaders.

Each turn consists of a player vampire doing something, and the Threats opposing that. You roll off, and the player spends their successes (4+ on a D6 in most circumstances) on negating damage (GM successes), clearing Threats, advancing the Objective, drinking blood, or activating Specials on their sheet. If any successes remain on the GM roll, the acting vampire takes damage. Then it’s the next vampire’s turn.

I made cards for the Objectives, Secondary Objectives, and Threats, as well as most rules, for easy reference during gameplay. I used poker chits to track the remaining points on the Objectives and Threats, and glass beads for blood. I really recommend the poker chits, as they are easy to handle, have a satisfying heft to them, and are easy to read from across the table. (Side note: a laminator can really up your handout game for little cost. All cards and such feel a lot more substantial, and are way more durable.)

The game moves at a fast pace. Players need to be active as they have to come up with a description of their action, detailing how they use their successes on each roll. All players found the initially simple sounding rules surprisingly crunchy and tactical in practice, and really engaged with the rolling.

Some Threats have special rules, and about once per map sector (there are three) you run into a mini-boss: a nazi übermensch, an occult super soldier with heavily themed powers. There’s a well telegraphed werewolf, a cyborg (very Wolfenstein), an entropy witch (my personal favorite), and a corrupt actor.

Self made Objective cards for the game. I put them together in Google Slides, printed out, and laminated. — Adding to the board game feel, I made these cards for objectives, enemies, and specific rules like flashbacks and secondary objectives. We used poker chits to track the objectives and threats, and various other markers to depict changed attack ratings and such. Poker chits worked really well, as they are satisfying to handle and easy to read from across the table.

How did our game go?

I had five players. That might be too much, as the vampires were so powerful that even the