Aquelarre is a medieval demoniacal fantasy role-playing game created by Ricard Ibáñez and released by Barcelona publisher Joc Internacional (International Games) in 1990. It was the first role-playing game completely conceived and created in Spain.
Although Joc Internacional had previously produced Spanish translations of popular North American and British role-playing products, Aquelarre was the first role-playing game to be entirely designed and published in Spain.[1]
Aquelarre is set in the Iberian Peninsula during the 13th and 14th centuries of the Middle Ages.[2] Players take on the roles of normal humans who walk a fine line between living ordinary and legal lives of drudgery, or using forbidden magic to lift themselves out of squalor. Almost half of the book is dedicated to demons and magic.[3]
The setting includes several feuding kingdoms (Castile, Aragon, Portugal, Navarra and Granada). Players not only have to deal with resultant wars, but also the hunger and disease that was endemic to the rigid feudal system.
Aquelarre uses a variant of Chaosium's Basic Role-Playing system developed for RuneQuest.
Each player chooses a class for the character. Each class provides access to a number of skills. Abilities are determined randomly, and skill levels are then extrapolated from the relevant abilities.
In order to succeed at a task, the player must roll percentile dice equal to or lower than the character's relevant skill level (to which the referee may have added situational modifiers.)
One round of combat takes 12 seconds of game time, during which time each character can perform two actions, choosing from Move, Attack and Defend.
Armor has two ratings: how much damage a weapon has to do to pierce it in one strike, and how much damage the armor can take overall before it is effectively ruined.
Although magic is useful and can help the characters to resolve tasks which have been set before them, most other people see magic as evil and demonic. This tension between the characters' use of magic and the commonly held perception of magic forms the centrepiece of this game. The magic system is complex, and unlike many other role-playing games, successful spell completion is difficult to accomplish. Characters must also learn to practice the arcane arts in private, lest they come to the attention of the secretive Fraternitas Vera Lucis (in this role-playing universe, the antecedent of the Inquisition). The penalty for being discovered using magic is immediate death.
Lester Smith was asked by an American publisher to evaluate whether Aquelarre was suitable for an American audience. Smith replied that it was not, and in the October 1992 edition of Dragon (Issue #186), he explained his reasons why. First, Smith felt the American public was not ready for a game where the Spanish title translates as a ceremony for calling up major demons. Secondly, he felt "another stumbling block for American publishers, in regards to the art, is occasional full frontal nudity, both female and male." Thirdly, he felt the American public was not ready for a game where almost half of the book was dedicated to explicitly worded magical spells such as "Sexual Attraction" and demon summoning. Smith did concede that the book itself had "a nice appearance", and the "text is laid out in easy-to-read fashion." He found the "tone of the text is a personable one", and called the book overall "a nice package." He also found the game system "smoothly executed", with "a lot of solid background material" and four sample adventures. Overall, Smith wanted to like Aquellare, but found the product too raw and realistic for his American tastes.