Vaesen: Nordic Horror Roleplaying - A Review Bathed in Lantern Light

“The forest is older than your village, older than your grandfather’s grandfather. And in its silence, something waits.
You have seen it in the corner of your eye. You have felt its breath on the back of your neck.
And now… it has noticed you.”

Free League Publishing has made a name for itself in the tabletop RPG scene by producing games that not only provide rules but worlds you want to inhabit. Vaesen: Nordic Horror Roleplaying is one of their most enchanting, and haunting, offerings. Based on the art and folklore catalog of Swedish illustrator Johan Egerkrans, Vaesen invites players to step into a folkloric 19th-century Scandinavia where the supernatural is not only real, but restless.

This review will focus on the storytelling potential of Vaesen, because that’s where the game truly shines. But to understand why it works so well, we first need to explore what it is, how it feels, and why it’s so compelling to both gamemasters and players.

 

A World Built on Shadows and Stories

The setting of Vaesen is a myth-haunted version of the 19th-century Nordic countries. Industrialization is creeping into rural life, bringing with it not only railroads and factories, but also an erosion of ancient traditions. The folk who once left offerings at the old stone by the brook are moving to the cities, and the balance between human communities and the supernatural beings known as vaesen is breaking.

This is not a world of fireballs and dragons, it’s a world of drowned maidens, trolls under bridges, shapeshifting forest spirits, and the Old Man of the Mountain. The supernatural here is not simply “monsters to be killed”, but powerful forces with motives, grudges, and their own strange morality.

And it’s this approach that unlocks such strong storytelling potential: the supernatural in Vaesen is not a random encounter, but a mirror to human fears, traditions, and transgressions.

 

Tone and Atmosphere

One of the first things you notice when opening the Vaesen core book is its art. Egerkrans’s illustrations are both whimsical and unsettling, giving the reader the feeling that they’ve stumbled upon a centuries-old bestiary that might have been hidden in a great-grandparent’s attic.

The tone is one of creeping dread mixed with melancholy beauty. Nature is wild and unpredictable. Human settlements are small islands in an ocean of forests, mountains, and lakes. The supernatural doesn’t exist in every corner, but when it does appear, it demands to be acknowledged.

As a storytelling canvas, this is gold. It invites quiet horror, mystery, and moral ambiguity. The kind of tales where your players might argue for hours over whether to destroy a vaesen or bargain with it.

 

The Premise - The Society

Players in Vaesen are members of The Society, an old and once-powerful secret organization dedicated to understanding, mediating, and, when necessary, confronting the supernatural. In most campaigns, the characters are new recruits, drawn together after each has had a personal encounter with a vaesen.

This premise is elegant because:

• It gives characters personal stakes - Everyone has been touched by the supernatural.
• It provides a reason for group cohesion - The Society is a built-in glue.
• It gives the GM a home base for stories - The Society’s headquarters in Uppsala is a perfect recurring location, a place to research lore, rest, and develop subplots.

From a storytelling standpoint, this structure is brilliant. It balances episodic play (each session can be a new case) with the long-term arc of restoring The Society to its former glory.

 

Mechanics That Serve the Story

The rules for Vaesen are based on Free League’s Year Zero Engine; streamlined, narrative-friendly, and easy to teach. Players roll pools of d6s, and a single 6 means success (multiple 6s allow for extra effects). This simplicity keeps the focus firmly on narrative flow rather than mechanical crunch.

Two aspects of the system are especially suited for storytelling:

1. Conditions

When characters suffer harm, they don’t just lose “hit points.” They gain conditions - things like angry, frightened, or exhausted. These affect future rolls, but they also invite roleplay. A player with the “angry” condition might start snapping at villagers, or one who is “frightened” might hesitate before opening the door to that creaking barn.

 

2. Mysteries

The game’s adventures are called Mysteries, and each one is built around investigation and interaction rather than combat. Every vaesen is unique and tied to a specific folkloric tradition. Solving a mystery usually requires uncovering the vaesen’s true motives and finding a way to set things right, not necessarily by killing it. Often, violence only makes things worse.

This makes the game ideal for players who thrive on social play, deduction, and moral choices. Combat becomes rare and dangerous, heightening its impact when it does occur.

 

Storytelling Possibilities – Why Vaesen Sings

Here’s where Vaesen becomes more than just a set of rules and a pretty book: it becomes a story engine. The folklore framework is so rich that even the smallest seed of an idea can bloom into a memorable session.

1. Layered Mysteries

Each vaesen has a story, but so do the people affected by it. A haunting might be tied to a widow’s grief, a drought to a farmer’s broken promise, a rash of disappearances to an ambitious industrialist cutting through sacred woods. The GM can weave multiple threads: human conflicts, supernatural motives, and the looming tension between old ways and new.

2. Folklore as Moral Dilemma

Unlike in many monster-hunting games, the creatures in Vaesen are not purely evil. They might be dangerous, yes, but often for reasons rooted in tradition or survival. Killing a troll might save a bridge, but it might also doom a nearby village that relies on the troll’s protection from worse things in the woods. Players are often forced to ask: Are we here to destroy, or to understand?

3. The Slow Burn

Vaesen thrives on pacing. A mystery doesn’t begin with a screaming banshee charging through the door. It begins with a letter. A nervous villager who refuses to meet your eyes. An old song the children sing that suddenly takes on a darker meaning. The GM can let tension simmer, allowing small, strange details to build toward a shiver-down-the-spine moment.

4. The Society as a Sandbox

Between cases, players can develop their headquarters, recruit allies, explore their own personal backstories, and follow up on hints from previous adventures. The Society becomes a character in its own right, one the players can shape over time.

 

Running Vaesen – GM Perspective

From a GM’s point of view, Vaesen is a delight because it’s modular. A single mystery can be run in one or two sessions, perfect for groups who meet sporadically. But the same structure also supports long campaigns where small threads from early cases weave into a larger tapestry.

The core rulebook contains a ready-to-play mystery, and the Vaesen supplements, particularly A Wicked Secret & Other Mysteries and Mythic Britain & Ireland, provide even more cases ready to adapt or expand.

One of my favorite GM tools in Vaesen is the Location Questions table. Before a session, you can answer simple prompts about the village, the surrounding landscape, the local legend, and the state of its people. These details bring the setting alive and give the players things to investigate beyond “the monster.”

 

The Joy of Player Backstories

Because every character has already encountered the supernatural before the campaign begins, the GM has an immediate hook. That strange shadow they saw as a child? It might resurface. That ghostly woman who warned them never to enter the west wood? She might be part of a deeper mystery. This allows for personalized stories that interweave with the group’s shared cases.

Players are encouraged to choose Dark Secrets during character creation; Things like “I made a deal with something inhuman” or “I am haunted by a murdered loved one.” These secrets are not just flavor; they’re narrative grenades for the GM to pull the pin on at the right moment.

 

A Living, Breathing World

One of the subtler strengths of Vaesen is that it treats its 19th-century setting not just as a backdrop, but as an active force in the story. Industrialization, class divides, religious shifts, and the tension between modernity and tradition all influence how people react to the supernatural.

A vaesen mystery set in a deeply traditional fishing village will feel different from one in a bustling city where no one believes in old superstitions, even if the same creature is involved.

 

Why It Works for Storytelling Groups

If your group thrives on:

• Roleplay-heavy sessions where investigation and social interaction take center stage
• Slow-burn mysteries that reward observation and deduction
• Moral complexity instead of clear-cut good vs evil
• Player-driven narrative development via personal backstories and headquarters building

…then Vaesen is almost tailor-made for you.

It’s less about “defeat the monster” and more about “discover the truth, decide what’s right, and live with the consequences.” And that’s a fertile ground for storytelling.

 

Positives in Brief

• Atmospheric setting that drips with folklore charm.
• Accessible rules that keep focus on the narrative.
• Unique take on supernatural beings, not enemies, but forces of nature.
• Built-in campaign structure via The Society.
• Gorgeous art and layout that inspire sessions just by flipping pages.
• Expandable and modular, works for one-shots or long campaigns.
  
  

Final Thoughts

As an avid storyteller I must admit: I absolutely love Vaesen.

Vaesen isn’t just a game, it’s an invitation. An invitation to light your lantern, pull your cloak tight, and walk into the fog. It’s for players who want to be unsettled but also enchanted, for gamemasters who love weaving human drama into supernatural tales, and for groups who want to explore the grey spaces between tradition and progress, fear and wonder.

It’s the kind of RPG where the session might end not with the sound of battle, but with the slow toll of a church bell, the creak of a cart departing down a muddy road, or the sigh of the wind through an empty forest… leaving your players asking, “Did we do the right thing?”

If you want a game that turns folklore into fuel for deep, rich, and memorable storytelling, Vaesen deserves a place on your shelf, but even more... on your table.