Bronze-age badasses
JACKALS
PLAYED
Designer: John-Matthew DeFoggi | Publisher: Osprey Games 272
While it certainly isn’t the first game to plum the mystical bronze age for roleplaying fodder, Jackals finds a fertile, combat-heavy middle-ground between historical realism and fantastical excitement that is a joy to explore.
The compact little game is set in a hand-waved approximation of the ancient near-east, where magic and demonic monsters are a fact of daily life rather than relics of legend and story. If you’re willing to squint a bit you could approximate the human cultures to things like Mycenaean Greece and Middle Kingdom Egypt, but everything is painted in broad brush-strokes that leave plenty of room for imagination and adventure to flourish. You aren’t exploring a take on ancient Babylon as it really was, but rather the version found in The Epic of Gilgamesh.