I encountered this game on my random voyages around the internet, and it held my interest more than most other OSR books have lately, so I thought I'd try giving a proper review on it.



Overview, Setting and Genre:
Ghastly Affair is an "OSR-adjacent" or "Nu-SR" RPG, written by Daniel James Hanley, and published in 2017. The game bills itself as "The Gothic Game of Romantic Horror", but aims to separate itself from other gothic horror games in several ways, with the most obvious being the time period. Most "gothic" games are set in the Victorian period of the mid-to-late 19th Century. Ghastly Affair instead sites itself in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, divided by the game into the "Decadent Era" (broadly the late-Colonial and Revolutionary periods) and the "Bloody Era" (broadly the Napoleonic and Regency periods). This is not a time period I am well-versed in, but the author appears to have done his research.  The Player's Manual is dotted with little asides about life in the period, and the Presenter's (read: "Game Master's") Manual includes a reasonably comprehensive timeline of the period.

It has to be said, however, that the lens through which the author sees this time period is one focused on decadence, vice, and libertinism. Many of the asides and quite a bit of the rules pertain to sexual mores of the time, scandals, seduction, crime and other vices. It's not clear reading the books whether this is an insertion of the author's personal persuasions or merely a sincere attempt at genre emulation. Literature of the time period is often very lurid. Either way, the game is not recommended to anyone of a prudish disposition.



Core System:
The basic system in Ghastly Affair is rolling a d20 under the relevant attribute, with modifiers applied according to class abilities or circumstance. The standard D&D attributes are used, with the addition of a morality statistic called "Perversity" All fine in so far as it goes, and the Player's Manual includes an extensive list of suggested ways of applying these rules to a variety of situations such as stealth, seduction, investigation, research, etiquette, rhetoric, and medicine. My only issue with this system is the way it handles opposed rolls. These are done by the party with the lower attribute making a roll penalized by a modifier derived from the opponent's attribute score. This I do not care for, because it requires checking both parties' attributes before rolling the die.
Combat is handled much the same way. Attack rolls are made under an attribute, modified by the defender's armor class. Sadly, the game uses a rule I strongly dislike. AC is only provided by armor (which most characters in this time period do not wear). In order to actively defend yourself, you have to forfeit your action to dodge or block. HD/HP are used, and most weapons deal 1d6 damage. The game has a rule for "nonlethal" damage and uses a "death at -10" rule similar to the one in 3rd edition D&D. Saving throws are also made as attribute checks, and use the same rules. Curiously, all throws against magic are made with Wisdom, regardless of spell type, which runs a risk of making it a bit of a super-stat.

Player Characters:
Ghastly Affair is a class-and-level based game, with nine available classes:
-Bandit: A fighter-thief hybrid, which can be specialized as a "footpad", "highwayman", or "pirate".
-Demon Hunter: A bit of an urban ranger, gains bonuses to identify and understand supernatural monsters.
-Everyman: An all-purpose class designed to be customizable to fit in any normal occupation not covered by the other classes.
-Grave Robber: A dungeoneering/technical class that gets some additional bonuses when dealing with undead.
-Gypsy: Actually a bit like a monk in function (though not in flavor); gains a bonus to unarmed fighting and some minor supernatural powers; also good with animals.
-Libertine: Something of a social-focused thief; bonuses to deception, dueling and seduction.
-Mad Scientist: Basically a reflavored artificer.
-Magician: A wizard.
-True Innocent: A pure genre-emulation class, effectively the damsel in distress codified into a character class. Has some mechanical utility similar to a standard cleric. Hilariously, this class has to make a saving throw to not faint whenever it encounters a monster or horrific scenario. 
Each class provides adjustments to some attribute scores and has a hit die, damage bonus (though no attack bonus), and a series of special abilities which usually provide attribute bonuses in particular situations. Uniquely, each class also has designated weaknesses, situations in which they either have check penalties or expected role-playing disadvantages.

There are also Vampyre and Werewolf classes included in an appendix, and an interesting mechanism for becoming one. If you contract either condition (the book is very clear that these are NOT biological diseases), you are effectively forced to multiclass, with all future levels being in the monster class. The classes are well enough designed, eschewing some of the modern genre tropes in favor of more folkloric interpretations of the monsters. The Vampyre in particular has an interesting gimmick, where the class is enormously powerful, but every level you gain in it, you acquire another of the classic vampire weaknesses (such as having to be invited into a dwelling).
In addition to class features, the game suggests the use of "Assets and Afflictions", effectively a talents/flaws system like, but left more open ended and up to GM fiat. There is a long list of suggested ones, but you are also encouraged to make up your own.

Magic:
Most of the spell list of Ghastly Affair will be familiar to anyone in the OSR world (Lighting Bolt, Dispel Magic, Knock etc.), but there are some unique additions such as Blast Crops, Bewitch Cattle, or Attract Lover. The Alter Ego spell is particularly interesting, as it has you roll up a second character which you can use the spell to switch between (a la Jeckyll and Hyde).

What is more different is the spellcasting system, or rather systems. Any character can learn an "incantation", which casts a spell at the expense of hit points. Magicians can perform ritual spells with better duration and range, or bind spells into talismans. Mad Scientists can imbue spell effects into their inventions. The only complaint I have with this system is the minimal guidance given on how to design rituals.

Game Master's Material and Support:
The Presenter's Manual is 206 pages, and is pretty well-featured GM's book. It opens with a chapter on creating adventures (here called "affairs"), which gives a very thorough method, but one that is over-reliant on scripting scenes. This is followed by a stronger chapter on tone and horror generally, which suffers only from relying on unattributed paraphrasing of Stephen King. Next is a reasonably extensive bestiary. Monster entries are formatted in the standard OSR way, with HD, AC, Attacks, Special Abilities and weaknesses, number appearing, habitat, etc. The only unusual thing is that every monster has its attributes listed (necessary in this system). That is followed by the timeline, and then appendices covering drugs, diseases, genre tropes, "Incarnations" (legendary monsters), special items, a bibliography, cheat sheets and additional rules.

Additionally, there are two "Companion" books, one on designing adventure locations, and one on famous Gothic literature characters. There is also a published setting, "Highdark Hall", though "setting" is a bit of an overstatement. It's an extensively detailed gothic manor and its surrounding environs. If this post picks up enough interest, I'll dig into the supplemental books and report back.

Presentation:

The books are simple, black text on white background, and most illustrations are silhouettes, with the occasional splash page of pretty good grayscale artwork. Text formatting is straightforward and looks like it could have been done in Microsoft Word, but there's nothing wrong with it. Basically the presentation is functional but not impressive.

Politics, Culture War, Etc.:
Ghastly Affair is straddling a line on this. The book is by no means politically correct. It is quite open about the roles of the sexes both in the time period and the source fiction. There is no preachifying about the evils of colonialism or class conflict. It is also very much not a story game. The minimal art deftly sidesteps any issue of wokeness in the illustration, and there is no extensive dictation on safety tools. In fact, I do not believe the term "safety tool" ever appears in the book. However, the book does suggest that the GM ask the players what situations are too horrific for them, and compile them into a list of "Forbidden Topics". It also suggests the group agree on a "Safe Word", which is functionally a verbal X-Card. This section is confined to a single half-page at the end of character creation, and rarely comes up again in the rest of the material.

Opinions will vary, but I'm inclined to find this more forgivable in Ghastly Affair than I would be elsewhere. This is a horror game, and an unusually sexual one at that. It is already asking players to step outside of the usual bounds of good taste in a roleplaying game, so perhaps a degree of concern for not making the game too awkward makes sense. The only concrete commandments given to GMs are things like not having PCs raped forcing them to fall in love against their will, or writing a scenario which requires a PC to have sex with someone to stay on track.  Probably sound advice in any game. Also, the author earns some charity in my eyes through this quite funny disclaimer:



Also, I'm not sure if this counts as a culture war issue, but I don't know where else to put it. The game suggests the use of what is calls "Secondary Player Characters", essentially NPCs which are designated for being played by a given player. This is suggested as a way of keeping players involved when their PCs are absent and taking load off the GM. The intent becomes clearer in the sample adventure given, which suggests certain scenes be intentionally limited to a couple of PCs. I include it here because at one point the book suggests that seductions of PCs should be conducted by an NPC played by someone in a real world sexual relationship with the relevant player. That strikes me as less reliable advice. It opens the door to metagaming, forecloses that option to groups which do not include real life couples, and invites cringe public displays of affection to occur at the game table. Again, I'm sympathetic to what a delicate balance it can be to try and play out a seduction in an RPG, but honestly if your group can't handle it, you probably just shouldn't play this game.

Conclusion:

There's no denying this is a quality product. It's thorough and mostly mechanically sound. A lot of work has clearly been put into applying the OSR framework to the intended genre and tone of the game. The PDFs run on DrivethruRPG at $13 for the player's book, and $10 for the GM's one, with hardback POD copies at $27 and $23 respectively. Cheaper paperbacks are available on Amazon, with the usual caveat that when buying on Amazon it can be unclear where the money is going. At 370 and 306 pages, the value-for-money is decent, though not exceptional.

It's also in a niche with minimal competition. The closest game I can think of is Gabor Lux's Helveczia. Comparatively, I would say that Helveczia is the more mechanically sound game, but Ghastly Affair is arguably more flavorful. They aren't truly comparable, though, as they are set in slightly different time periods and aim for vastly different tones. I would be perfectly happy to own both.

Personally, I'm quite inclined to give this thing a go. Reading it got me thinking up a Gothic horror scenario which I'd quite like to run, and the game would be suitable to the task. The sexual angle is not my bag, but the game really doesn't need it. There's ample material included to run a more conventional gothic adventure with it. The opposed roll mechanic I could easily replace with my own. The lack of any representation of the defender's skill in their armor class is a bigger issue for me. What I might do is port the class and spell system into some similar Nu-SR game like The Black Hack or Index Card RPG and make a Frankenstein. That'd be thematically appropriate, anyway.

Excellent review -thanks!

Great review! I've been aware of Ghastly Affair for quite some time, but never quite had the opportunity to get into it seriously. I for one wouldn't mind reading your take on the supplementary material.

Thank you for the detailed review! In a game set in a historical context, I'd love to see more information about daily life and general living conditions.

I also found it extremely useful that the Presenter's Manual describes interesting events with specific years, which can be used as a basis for creating adventures.

It must be pretty interesting if you want to initiate new players with a nosferatu feel...