The Cypher System was introduced in 2013 with Numenera, the Science Fantasy roleplaying game of exploration and adventure the very far future, published by Monte Cook Games. Numenera would go on to win the 2014 Origins Award for ‘Best New Roleplaying Game’, the 2014 Ennie Award for Best Writing, the 2014 Ennie Award for Best Setting, and 2014 Ennie Award for Product of the Year, be the basis of its own set of mechanics in the form of the Cypher System, and introduce new ideas in terms of roleplaying, such as player-facing mechanics and Game Master Intrusions, a new way of narratively increasing tension and awarding Experience Points. The Cypher System also offered numerous options in terms of Player Characters, expressed in a way that clearly described what each did and which was also exciting. Since the Cypher System first appeared, it has gone on to cover numerous different genres and even be used as the rules for roleplaying games based on a podcast or two. Whilst Numenera would receive its introduction to the game and setting in the form of the Numenera Starter Set in 2017, and even a starter campaign in 2024 with The Glimmering Valley, it is surprising to note that the Cypher System has not had its own starter set, its own introduction to the core game rules in all of that time. However, the Cypher System Starter Set, published in 2024, changes that.
The Cypher System Starter Set comes with two books, ten character sheets, a cheat sheet, a poster map, two mini-decks of cards, and two dice. The two books are the ‘Player’s Book’ and the ‘Game Master’s Book’, both thirty-two pages in length. The ten characters provide pre-generated Player Characters for the two scenarios included in the ‘Game Master’s Book’, one Science Fiction and one fantasy. The poster map provides maps of two locations, the cards—the XP cards and the GM Intrusion Cards—are for handling certain aspects of play, and the dice consist of one twenty-sided die and one six-sided die.
The ‘Player’s Book’ is marked ‘Read This First’. The starting point is an introduction to the Cypher System rather than roleplaying in general, but it provides an overview of what is in the box before leaping into an explanation of the rules. These begin with the eight basic rules, explaining in turn that there are four character types—Warrior, Adept, Explorer, and Speaker, there are three stats—Might, Speed, and Intellect that are pools of points which can be spend for various effects, that players make all the rolls, that the use of abilities can cost points, by spending points or ‘applying Effort’ an action can be made easier, damage suffered reduces the stat pools, but they can be recovered through rest, and any skill can be learned and both skills and assets can make actions easier. With this groundwork laid, the ‘Player’s Book’ expands on these so that in five pages, including how a GM Intrusion works on a roll of one, spending XP for rerolls, the benefits of high rolls, and the damage track, and the reader has a clear and simple explanation of how the rules work. This is followed by an example of play, which to be fair, is not a new example of play, but it works, illustrating how the game works for the reader after he has been told how it works. Having it this close to the rules is also more helpful than having it appear at the end of the book as in some rulebooks for the Cypher System.
This is followed by an explanation of the system’s namesake, the Cyphers, the one-use benefits or powers that can grant a Player Character in play, a list of arms, armour, and equipment for the fantasy and Science Fiction genres as well as the modern day.
Perhaps the biggest surprise in the Cypher System Starter Set is it includes rules for character generation. This is unheard of in any starter set which instead makes use of pre-generated Player Characters. It begins with explaining how the descriptive sentence at heart of every Player Character in the Cypher System works. This sentence has the structure of “I am a [adjective] [noun] who [verbs]”, where the noun is the character’s Type; the adjective a Descriptor, such as Clever or Swift, that defines the character and how he does things; and the verb is the Focus or what the character does that makes him unique. For example, “I am a Fast Warrior Who Needs No Weapons” or “I am a Clever Adept Who Command Mental Powers”. There is a guide for modifying characters, but the rules here, complete with explanations of what each character Type—Warrior, Adept, Explorer, and Speaker—can do along with options for both the Descriptor and Focus. This allows a player to create a wide range of characters, though they cannot advance beyond Tier 1 (the full rules take a Player Character up to Tier 6). Rounded out with a glossary, the ‘Player’s Book’ is a very good introduction to the Cypher System, which the players could refer to in play beyond the contents of the Cypher System Starter Set. It also provides a means of creating characters as well, one with limited options, but also one that does not threaten to overwhelm the prospective player like the Cypher System Rulebook might.
The longer ‘Game Master’s Book’ is marked ‘Read This Second’. It explains how to be a Game Master and handle the rules, including setting task difficulties, awarding XP, combat, and so on. There is an explanation of how Cyphers work in the game and a list of twenty or so Cyphers that can be used in either scenario contained in the ‘Game Master’s Book’. GM Instructions have been mentioned previously in both books, but here they are given a fuller explanation. They are designed to make a situation and the Player Character’s life more interesting or more complicated. For example, the Player Character might automatically set off a trap or an NPC important to the Player Character is imperilled. When this happens, the Game Master hands the character’s player two XP cards. He can keep one of these, but must give one to another player. The player can refuse the intrusion, but that means his character and someone else’s character do not earn any XP. Plus, it is not any fun. A GM Intrusion can also occur if a player rolls a one on any action. There is also a short bestiary in the ‘Game Master’s Book’, but the latter half of the book is taken up by two scenarios.
‘Creeping Ooze’ is the fantasy scenario. In it, the Player Characters are hunting for an Elf Necromancer when they are ambushed by a Necromantic Ooze (and the players’ first GM Intrusion) whose slime leads back to a vault known as the Shattered Seal. The scenario is short, but offers opportunities for combat, exploration, and interaction, including being able to deal with a threat without having to resort to combat. Notes and stats are given in the sidebars, including some inventive GM Intrusions. The Science Fiction scenario is ‘Xambit Station’. The Player Characters are accompanying their friend, Arbiter Jemsen, to Xambit Station where they are to act as his bodyguards and eyes and ears whilst he conducts some talks between the rival Crimson Conglomerate and Ranj Alliance factions. This adventure is more complex than ‘Creeping Ooze’, having a plot and requiring the players and their characters to be more proactive. Arbiter Jemsen directs the Player Characters to essentially snoop around and investigate the station and its personnel to determine if there is any plan or attempt to disrupt the talks. The relative complexity of the scenario means that the sidebars are much busier and there is much for the Player Characters to do, especially in technical and social terms. There is scope for combat in the scenario, but consists primarily of tavern brawls and fistfights in space. Overall, a decent little adventure. Of the two, the ‘Creeping Ooze’ will probably take a session to play through whilst ‘Xambit Station’ will probably take two.
Both scenarios are supported with a set of five pre-generated Player Characters each. The fantasy ones consist of a ‘Stealthy Explorer who Moves Like a Cat’, a ‘Learned Adept who Bears a Halo of Fire’, a ‘Clever Speaker who Works Miracles’, and an ‘Exiled Explorer who Masters Weaponry’, whilst the Science Fiction ones consist of a ‘Stealthy Explorer who Moves Like a Cat’, a ‘Sharp-Eyed Explorer who Pilots Starcraft’, a ‘Clever Adept who Talks to Machines’, an ‘Honourable Warrior who Fuses Flesh and Steel’. Effectively, there are only slight variations in terms of the Player Characters between the two scenarios and whilst that does showcase how very similar characters can work in different genres, it does mean that Player Characters do not make the fullest use of the options presented in the ‘Player’s Book’.
In addition, the poster map gives a map of the Sealed Vault in the ‘Creeping Ooze’ and a map for the scenario called ‘Entombed in Ice’. Which is odd, because that scenario does not appear in the Cypher System Starter Set. The cards in the Cypher System Starter Set consist of two types. The XP Deck is made up of just XP cards. These are nicely illustrated and come with tips for the players and Game Master. The Intrusion deck consists of ideas for GM Intrusions for combat, interaction, and miscellaneous situations that the Game Master can draw from for inspiration.
Physically, Cypher System Starter Set is very nicely produced. It is superbly illustrated and solidly written, so that anyone with some roleplaying experience can pick up the rules very easily.
However, the Cypher System Starter Set is far from perfect. The tuck-style box that it comes in is flimsy, more so given the current format for starter sets. There is probably too much similarity between the Player Characters for the different genres of the two scenarios and more than one Reference Card would have been useful. As would a map of the space station in ‘Xambit Station’, which is a major omission. And the players are definitely going to want more twenty-sided dice. One is not enough. Lastly, it would be nice to see further support for the content of Cypher System Starter Set, perhaps a book of scenarios that would allow the Player Characters in the two scenarios have further adventures.

Overall, the Cypher System Starter Set is a solid introduction to the Cypher System. It is well written and presented with character options aplenty to showcase some of the choices available, and if the scenarios are a little short, they do demonstrate some of the flexibility and possibilities of genre that the Cypher System is capable of supporting.

Your nation and your homeland is peaceful. You and your fellow citizens have known peace for a thousand years. You have prospered and gained great knowledge, but not in the arts of war. That lacking in the arts of war is both your undoing and that of your homeland. For it is under attack. The conquering armies of Styrovites have invaded Lannia and are now sweeping across its green and pleasant land, putting all to the sword and the flame. What hope have you, if not soldiers to field in battle and to protect the innocent, than to turn to that great knowledge—of science and of magic—and seek a remedy in that? As a member of the Council of Sages you have decided that if you cannot train and field an army in time to save Lannia, then you will create an army. Through ancient sorcery and desperate science, you will create soldiers that will serve Lannia and save Lannia, capable of standing up against the barbaric hordes of the Styrovites. In so doing, you have turned to ancient myths and legends for inspiration and named your creations after a spirit who killed the wicked. That spirit was called Orcus. Thus, your super soldiers will be called Orcs, and although you do not know it, they may well be your nation’s undoing and not the Styrovites!

This is the set-up for Dawn of the Orcs, a collective storytelling game played without a Game Master. Published by Lyme and Plasmophage, it can be played solo or it can be played by as many as eight players. It is designed to be played in about two hours or less and requires a six-sided and a ten-sided die to play. The rise of the orcs, the defeat of the Styrovites, and ultimately, the fall of Lannia is told over the course of eight chapters. In the first chapter, the players, as members of the Council of Sages create the Orcs, then in subsequent chapters, they send the Orcs to war and have a chance to modify the Orcs, either to improve their prowess or curb it if a trait is proving too difficult to handle. Whilst all of the members of the Council of Sages agree on the aims of creating the Orcs and using them to defend Lannia, there is scope for betrayal—at least in terms of what the Orcs are. Lastly, although the roleplaying game does not require a Game Master, the players do take it in turn to narrate the outcome of each chapter and break any ties if disagreements about what the council should do are deadlocked.

Each player in Dawn of the Orcs roleplays a member of the Council of Sages. He does not have any stats, but does have a descriptor, an area of expertise, and a title, as well as a motivation. These can be rolled for or created by the player and provide the basis for his roleplaying. The process is simple and fast.

Title: Assistant General of the West
Motivation: Wreak terrible vengeance for all that I have suffered

The Orcs are different. They have four stats—Numbers, Loyalty, Brute, and Clever. Their creation involves deciding how they are made and how they are bound in loyalty to the Lannia. So, if they are forged from sorcery and raw materials, they gain +1 Numbers, but +1 Loyalty if any Lannian can be turned into an Orc. Similarly, if they are bound in loyalty to one person, they gain +2 Loyalty, or bound in loyalty to nothing, they gain +1 to any other stat. In each, the players decide on the answer to a prompt, such as in the case of the being forged from sorcery and raw materials, what they are made from, and if they are bound in loyalty to one person, who that is.

Orcs
Numbers -1 Loyalty 2 Brute 1 Clever 0
Only children under five can be turned into Orcs
They are loyal to the Holy Mother

In subsequent chapters, the Orcs are sent into battle. For example, the first is ‘The Slaughter of Shrike Forest’ when the Orcs strike at an encampment of Styrovites in the middle of the night. To determine if the Orcs win, the Council of Sages decides on a stratagem. This is a value equal to the combination of any two of the Orcs’ stats, to which the roll of a six-sided die is added. If it beats the target set for the battle, the Orcs are victorious. At the end of the battle, the Orcs Warp and almost bodily learn from the conflict, as if in constant flux through the stress of combat. For example, the Orcs might learn to fly into a battle rage and gain +1 Brute or gain the ability to see at night and +1 Clever. The Orcs gain more of these Warps from victory than from defeat. In the aftermath of the battle, the Council of Sages can Shift the Orcs, each Shift granting a benefit as well as a penalty. For example, the Council of Sages could decide to educate the Orcs which means that they gain +1 Clever and suffer -1 Loyalty. The Council of Sages can choose as many or as few Shifts as it once, but they do balance each other out and they may also be cancelled if a Sage decides to betray the council to change a decision. Each Sage only gets to betray the council once.

The play of the game revolves around selecting the right stratagem—the combination of two stats—to add to the roll to defeat the enemy and win or lose each battle, and decide on what stats to improve afterwards. The catch is that once a combination has been used, whether that is Clever plus Numbers or Loyalty plus Brute, it cannot be used again. So, the players also need to improve as many stats as they can to defeat the invaders rather than focus on the one stat, since it can only be used a limited number of times. At the end of each chapter, the narrator will tell the story of what happened, whether the Orcs were defeated or triumphed.

After five chapters, which will see the Orcs fight the Styrovites again and again, eventually invading the Styrovite heartlands, the Orcs are no longer wanted in Lannia and no longer want to serve Lannia. They mutiny. The members of the Council of Sages can side with Lannia or with the Orcs and the outcome of the mutiny decided on the highest roll of the two factions. There are multiple outcomes for the result, depending upon whether the mutiny was successful and what the highest Orc stat is. For example, if the Orc mutiny is a success and Clever is their highest stat, they overthrow the government of Lannia, but if a failure and their highest stat is Clever, they form nomadic bands which serve as mercenaries. Each of the possible outcomes is accompanied by a narrative prompt.

Although there are eight different outcomes at the end of Dawn of the Orcs, there is limited variation in terms of the battles fought. To that end, Dawn of the Orcs includes four bonus chapters that can randomly replace the middle chapters of the campaign against the Styrovites. This adds further variety and replayability beyond the first few playthroughs of Dawn of the Orcs. The roleplaying game does include forms that the players can use in chapter, but they are not absolutely required to play.

Physically, Dawn of the Orcs is a short, clean and tidy book. It is easy to read and the artwork is decent. The forms for the game are slightly tight in their layout.

Dawn of the Orcs is a dark fantasy roleplaying game that tells the story of the desperate defence of a country and its possible victory and potential fall. The clarity of writing means that it is easy to pick up and play, and in fact, anyone with roleplaying experience will be able to play this from the page. The familiarity of the theme—a country in peril turning to desperate measures and the creation of Orcs as effectively, super soldiers—contributes to that ease of play, that theme almost being a twisted version of Saruman creating his army of Uruk-hai in The Lord of the Rings. To the point that the non-gamers will find it as easy to play as veteran gamers. Lastly, its size and brevity means that Dawn of the Orcs is easy to carry and play almost anywhere. Dawn of the Orcs is a very accessible and very easy to play storytelling game that needs no preparation and has a story that everyone can grasp.

Biplant is the corporate successor to Oritet.  They recently released these sets of elves with dragonriders including three colors of dragons.   They are about 60mm.

In the weird and otherworldly Bazaar of the Gods in Punjar, the City of a Thousand Gates, stand temples, chapels, and churches to gods, goddesses, and demi-gods of almost an unknown number. Cults and faiths have risen and fallen, been promoted and persecuted, banished and proselytised, yet still wide-eyed madmen stalk the streets pronouncing the end of days, heathens fall under mail-clad priests their skulls crushed underfoot, and pale, trembling virgins are offered up in sacrifice within soot-stained temples. Yet none of these cults and faiths have the power and will to challenge the greatest of mysteries and the last great step that every man will take—the terrifying finality of death! Death, though, has come to the company of Player Characters and perhaps they have the audacity to challenge that mystery and not only take that last great step, but come back to the land of the living. For this, they will need to approach the Witch of Saulim, for it is widely believed that this wretched crone, whose strange prophecies are often bewildering, but always unerringly true, holds the secret to stealing souls from death.

This is the set-up for Dungeon Crawl Classics #74: Blades Against Death, the seventh scenario to be published by Goodman Games for use with the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. Designed by Harley Stroh for a group of six to ten Fourth Level Player Characters, this is a swords & sorcery-style city-based adventure that takes place in Punjar, a city in the land of Aéreth, which previously appeared in earlier iterations of Dungeon Crawl Classics scenarios, mostly recently, Dungeon Crawl Classics #70: Jewels of the Carnifex. Where that scenario dealt with one aspect death in the world of Aéreth, Dungeon Crawl Classics #74: Blades Against Death deals with the other, so in some ways, it might be seen as a companion piece to Dungeon Crawl Classics #70: Jewels of the Carnifex. Consequently, it does suffer from the same issue as Dungeon Crawl Classics #70: Jewels of the Carnifex, and that is that the lack of information about Punjar readily available. Fortunately, the scenario does include some knowledge—common and uncommon—that the Player Characters might know, ranging from what serfs, peasants, and common freemen know to what priests, the nobility, and sages know. This at least, should provide the players and their characters with the basics. Also provided is another hook to get the Player Characters if they have not lost a companion to death and want to see him returned to the land of the living. This is a job offer by a pampered son of a merchant lord for the Player Characters to steal back his lover. Now, of course, as the scenario makes clear, Dungeon Crawl Classics is not a roleplaying game that has much truck with the dead coming back to life and even lacks the equivalent of a Raise Dead spell. So, a scenario for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game which does deal with the Player Characters bringing someone back from the dead has at least to be some different, if not something special, and definitely not to be taken lightly.

The quest consists of three acts. In the first, the Player Characters pay a visit to the Witch of Saulim, a seemingly mad old crone who will perform a reading for them using her tarot-like deck of cards, plaques of Thoth-Ruin. These predications both provide a course of action for the Player Characters and the direction of the scenario’s plot. The reading boils down to four cards—all nicely done as full-colour handouts that the Judge can lay out before her players—of which the Witch of Saulim informs them they must choose one. For the players there is no wrong choice. Whichever card they decide on, their characters gain an immediate blessing that lasts the whole of the adventure and also grants a permanent bonus if they survive. In the second act, the Player Characters undertakes the quest’s first task proper. This is to break or sneak into the Temple of the Moon and from there steal the cult’s most sacred relic, the Argent Falx. This is a legendary weapon said to be capable of cutting the chains of death. Stealing this is no easy task as the sword only manifests at the culmination of a ceremony held on the night of the full moon and so the players and their characters have to be both timely and clever if they are to carry of the heist. Staged in the great pyramid Temple of the Moon, this has an epic if sinister feel and once the Player Characters pull the heist off, they will have greatly enhanced their reputations in some quarters. If, however, the Player Characters are careless and leave clues behind as to their identities, the Temple of the Moon will send thief takers after them to capture them and bring them back to the temple for retribution!

The third is where the scenario crosses over with Dungeon Crawl Classics #70: Jewels of the Carnifex as the Player Characters descend into the Charnel Pits below Punjar’s streets. This is a place of foul unreality in which a combination of desire, madness, and revenge have gummed up the works, preventing hundreds of souls from crossing over into the lands of the dead, suffusing the house with ghosts and other undead. There is a tragedy at the heart of this act, one whose groundwork is laid at its start, that perceptive players and their characters can use to their advantage, but to do so, they must pick their way past a perverse bureaucracy and a Masque of the Red-like banquet for the undead. If the Temple of the Moon is ancient in its feel, then the Charnel Pits have a gothic tone of death and decay. Lastly, once the Player Characters have overcome the impasse prevents the dead from passing on, they can following in their footsteps and enter the Realms of the Dead. In gloriously classic fashion, here the Player Characters have to play a game of cards with Death’s concubine and vicereine (and if they dare it, even with Death himself), gambling with their souls for the return of their friend (or the mistress of the merchant lord’s son). The game makes use of the cards used earlier in the scenario in the Witch of Saulim’s reading. It is a great ending to the scenario.

Dungeon Crawl Classics #74: Blades Against Death is a tough adventure—well, the Player Characters are going up against Death—and it may be too tough for Third Level Player Characters. Like the earlier Dungeon Crawl Classics #70: Jewels of the Carnifex, it does feel as if it would be suitable addition to a campaign set in the city of Lankhmar as detailed in the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set, though unlike Dungeon Crawl Classics #70: Jewels of the Carnifex, it is not directly inspired by the tales of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Again though, being designed for Third Level Player Characters for standard Dungeon Crawl Classics play, it is probably too tough an adventure, given the comparitive lack of healing and magic in Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar, for similar Level Player Characters, but adjust that and the Judge will have a fine addition to her campaign. That aside, whether the Judge decides to set it in the city of Lankhmar or not, it is still a great Swords & Sorcery-style scenario.

In addition to the main adventure, Dungeon Crawl Classics #74: Blades Against Death also includes a second adventure, ‘The Abbot of the Woods’, also by Harley Stroh. This is a mini-adventure for a party of five to eight Player Characters of First to Third Level in which they follow the legend of the Abbott’s Hoard, which tells of a high priest who led his congregation into the wilderness in search of a life free of vice and sin and who took with him much in way of treasure and relics. There are also whispers of heresy and rumours of the priest’s true aims, so more than enough to attract the Player Characters. In fact, it turns out that both whispers and rumours are true, for like many a villain in fantasy roleplaying playing, he sought out a way to live beyond his years and stave off death. What the Player Characters discover is a giant reliquary which contains both the treasures that the priest brought with him and the various parts of the priest that live on immortal. As the Player Characters investigate and loot, they quickly unleash him enabling him to take control of the dungeon and turn it against them. It is a really entertaining twist on immortal evil and mad NPCs and dungeons as the enemy, though slightly too tough an adventure, especially for Player Characters of First Level. They are recommended as being accompanied by a ready supply of Zero Level NPCs ready to step in case of Player Characters death, which suggests that the scenario is not quite suitable for player Characters of First Level. Nevertheless, ‘The Abbot of the Woods’ is an entertaining dungeon, which with its theme of immortality could carry on the theme of death from the main scenario in the book.

Physically, Dungeon Crawl Classics #74: Blades Against Death is well done. The scenario is decently written and the artwork is overall good as is the cartography.

Dungeon Crawl Classics #74: Blades Against Death takes what is almost a formality in some Dungeons & Dragons-style games and turns it into an adventure. In other words, instead of simply casting Resurrection to restore a Player Character to life, the other Player Characters have to go and rescue him from Death! And if they manage to do so, not only will they have had a memorable adventure, then they will also have cemented party comradeship. This is definitely a scenario that works better if the Player Characters have to rescue one of their own number, rather than doing it for an NPC because in the case the latter, the stakes are simply not as high. That said, what the player of the dead character who is being rescued is doing in the meantime is left for the Judge to address. In whatever way the scenario is run, it provides a great mix of combat, stealth, and roleplaying encounters.

The gaming magazine is dead. After all, when was the last time that you were able to purchase a gaming magazine at your nearest newsagent? Games Workshop’s White Dwarf is of course the exception, but it has been over a decade since Dragon appeared in print. However, in more recent times, the hobby has found other means to bring the magazine format to the market. Digitally, of course, but publishers have also created their own in-house titles and sold them direct or through distribution. Another vehicle has been Kickststarter.com, which has allowed amateurs to write, create, fund, and publish titles of their own, much like the fanzines of Kickstarter’s ZineQuest. The resulting titles are not fanzines though, being longer, tackling broader subject matters, and more professional in terms of their layout and design.

—oOo—

Most magazines for the roleplaying hobby give the gamer support for the game of his choice, or at the very least, support for the hobby’s more popular roleplaying games. Whether that is new monsters, spells, treasures, reviews of newly released titles, scenarios, discussions of how to play, painting guides, and the like… That is how it has been all the way back to the earliest days of The Dragon and White Dwarf magazines. Wyrd Science is different in that it is about gaming and the culture of gaming as well as the games themselves rather providing support for specific titles—and Wyrd Science Vol. 1/Issue 4 is different to the previous issues. Where both Wyrd Science Session Zero and Wyrd Science – Expert Rules adopted the ‘BECMI’ colour coding of the colours and the focus upon fantasy and the Old School Renaissance, and Wyrd Science – The Horror Issue (Wyrd Science Vol. 1/Issue 3) focused on the horror genre, Wyrd Science Vol. 1/Issue 4 comes with no announced theme. This does not mean that there are no themes with the issue, but rather that they are simply part of the issue rather than a feature. Thus, Wyrd Science Vol. 1/Issue 4 is very much more of an ordinary issue, setting the standard for future non-special issues to come.
Wyrd Science Vol. 1/Issue 4 was published in April, 2023 by Best in Show. It opens with a quartet of interviews. ‘PUBLISH AND BE DAMNED: SoulMuppet Publishing’ is with Zach Cox and explores how he co-founded the company and has developed it to the point where he began to experiment and begin to support authors from outside of the English-speaking hobby, such as with the ‘LATAM Breakout series’ for South American creators. Cox gives his views on the then changing nature of the hobby, how Kickstarter is being used by fewer and fewer would be publishers, who are then looking for other options. Nevertheless, he offers advice on how to run a successful Kickstarter project, but also highlights the difficulties in distribution that affect retail in particular. Although two years old, there is much within the interview that are still pertinent now. ‘CAST POD: What Am I Rolling?’ is part of the magazine’s regular series with podcasters, this time with Fiona Howat of the What I am Rolling? podcast, which hosts and runs one-shot games and in the process, showcases a wide variety of games. It is a nice introduction to the podcast and includes advice on trying new games and introducing new games to other players. ‘MAGIC GATHERINGS: Big Bad Con’ interviews the organisers of the California gaming convention which in recent years has shifted to offering a safer, more diverse, and inclusive space and encouraging the participation of persons from minority and LGBTQI+ groups. This showcases a fantastic effort to make the hobby a more welcoming place, one that should perhaps be looked to by other conventions.
Where the interviews are conducted by John Power Jr., Stuart Martyn kicks off the first of the issue’s themes with ‘The Game is Afoot’. As the title of the article suggests, that theme is investigative games, Martyn highlights roleplaying hobby’s fascination with mysteries and investigations. It pinpoints the issues with this type of scenario—their inherent logic puzzle nature which can frustrate some players and the capacity to miss clues. The primary solutions are twofold. First is to make the clues easy to find or automatically found, as in the GUMSHOE System, or have the solution to the mystery determined through play, as in Brindlewood Bay. Both feature heavily in the article and show how to date, the hobby has yet to come up with any better for the investigative style of scenario. ‘Scry Me a River’ by John Power Jr. neatly complements ‘The Game is Afoot’ and continues the investigative theme. This is a look at Rivers of London: The Roleplaying Game, which is based on the series of Urban Fantasy procedurals by Ben Aaronovitch and includes an interview with its creator, Lynn Hardy, exploring its genesis and development, made all the more interesting because the author has experience of gaming. There is even a list of tips from Hardy about running investigative games to go alongside it.
‘Bandes On The Run’ by Luke Frostick brings the investigative theme to a close with a look at and interview with Krister Sundelin, the creator of The Troubleshooters: An Action-Adventure Roleplaying Game, Swedish publisher Helmgast’s roleplaying game based on French and Belgian bande dessinée comics. This covers a wide range of inspirations from James Bond to the action-adventure television of the nineteen sixties and explores the heavier feeling mechanics. The Troubleshooters is a great little game that has not made the impact it deserved and it is nice to see it covered here. ‘Bad Moon Rising’, Mira Manga’s interview with Becky Annison, author of Werewolves of Britain for Liminal, continues the Urban Fantasy theme of Rivers of London: The Roleplaying Game, in exploring her inspirations for the supplement, some of it quite personal, in creating a very good expansion for the game and its setting.
‘Now is The Time of Monsters’ takes interviewer John Power Jr and Dave Allen, producer for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Fourth Edition in a then totally different direction, something that the roleplaying game had been waiting decades for, despite the wargame it is based upon, visiting it more than once across its numerous editions. This is the supplement, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: Lustria, which details the mysterious continent far away from the Old World. It quickly catches up with the history of the current edition in publishing what is a director’s cut of the classic campaign, The Enemy Within, and then moves beyond that. It explores what an updated version of the Lustria looks like for the twenty-first century hobby and how it presents the players and their characters to engage in different, but no less deadly environment.
Walton Wood’s examination of the retroclone, Errant, and interview with its creator, Ava Islam, ‘Dragons Are Fucking Cool, Man’ starts off in slightly abstract fashion, explaining it pushes away from the classic design of Dungeons & Dragons-style play, attempting to be rules light, but ‘procedure heavy’ in terms of scope. The explanation is not really clear enough, but once the article begins telling you what you play—downtrodden outcasts ever wanting to improve their lifestyles and fund the lifestyles they have combined with Levelling requiring high expenditure of gold pieces in acts of ‘Conspicuous Consumption’—it does impart a sense of what the is about at the least. Ultimately, what is clear is that Errant is the designer’s commentary on the Old School Renaissance movement and it is far from a positive one. This combined with often obtuse explanations upon the part of the designer and the reader is left feeling dissatisfied.
‘Veni, Vidi, Ludo’ by Ciro Alessandro Sacco presents a fascinating history of the Italian gaming and roleplaying hobby, beginning with the importation of Avalon Hill and SPI wargames in the nineteen sixties and seventies and moving through bootleg versions of Dungeons & Dragons to early roleplaying games such as Signori del Caos—or The Lords of Chaos—published by Black Out Editrice in 1983 and then most spectacularly, the Mentzer version of Basic Dungeons & Dragons by Editrice Giochi in 1985. It is a great introduction and it is a pity that there is not scope for further examination of these early Italian roleplaying games. The breezy article comes to a close all too soon, leaving the reader with any interest in the history of roleplaying games wanting more. It is followed by a short overview of some of the Italian roleplaying games and settings then available in English, including Lex Arcana, Fabula Ultima, and Brancalonia.
The last few articles in the issue explore a handful of boardgames that are very close to the roleplaying hobby, whether that is because of their subject matter or because their publisher also publishes roleplaying games. Three of them combine to give the magazine its second theme—dungeon crawling and board games. The first, ‘Dungeon Crawling Classics’ by Matt Thrower is not, as the title might suggest about the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game from Goodman Games, but a history of the dungeon crawler board game, from Dungeon!, published by TSR, Inc. in 1975 to Descent: Journeys in the Dark published by Fantasy Flight Games in 2005 and its more recent 2021 update, Descent: Legends of the Dark. Also discussed here is HeroQuest, the boardgame from Milton Bradley and Games Workshop that introduced dungeon exploration-style play to a wider audience in the early nineteen nineties. It explores the enduring appeal of the format—its familiarity, excitement, and camaraderie—combined with a physical format that leans into the roleplaying style of Dungeons & Dragons, whilst providing a ready realisation of the action that Dungeons & Dragons does not (at least not without a lot of extra accessories). There are a lot of dungeon crawler board games that the article could have covered and it would have been interesting to look at those options, but overall, this is good introduction to the genre.
Matt Thrower follows this up with ‘The Big Chill’ in which he interviews Isaac Childres, the designer of the mammoth dungeon crawler and adventure game, Gloomhaven, discussing its development and that of its follow up, Frosthaven. There is some similarity between this and other interviews with the designer, such as that which has appeared in the pages of Senet magazine. What this means is that there is not much being said here that is new, but for anyone unaware of Gloomhaven and its heft and effect upon the hobby, this is worth reading. Andi Ewington returns to the classic HeroQuest with ‘Quest Drive’ and how he brought the new version of the board game from Avalon Hill into his home and got his family, some of them slightly reluctantly. It is a fun piece that brings the theme to a close with large dollop of nostalgia.
Finally, the issue comes to close with ‘Trading Places’. Here Emma Partlow talks to Max McCall from Wizards of the Coast to explore how Magic: the Gathering has with its ‘Universes Beyond’ line, produced expansions that draw on the intellectual properties of other publishers. For example, the television series, Stranger Things, and the miniatures wargame, Warhammer 40,000. It does point out that the response to these expansions have been mixed, some embracing them, others seeing them as a distraction from the more traditional fantasy releases for the collectible trading card game, but the point is made that the ‘Universes Beyond’ sets are attracting the interest of fans of the universes they are based on and thus attracting new players. The article is illustrated with some great artwork drawn from the series, but does not show how that artwork will be displayed on the cards, which would perhaps have sold the idea better.
‘LOOT DROP: Automatic Dice Roller’ and ‘LOOT DROP: More Random Treasure’ highlights some gaming knickknacks that might appeal to some gamers, the former also including an interview with the creator of the electronic dice roller from Critical Machine for those who want another means apart from rolling dice, whilst the latter includes a The Wicker Man-style effigy wax candle, complete with wax Sergeant Howe and the Win or Booze beer from breweryDeviant + Dandy which has a game on the back of the label. The best though is the Githyanki action figure from Super7 based on the Erol Otus’s classic cover image for the Fiend Folio. More interesting though, is ‘Hit Points’, the reviews section which takes in a good mix of board games, roleplaying games, and books. The board games include Undaunted Stalingrad from Osprey Games and the magazine’s ‘Game of the Month’ and Rebellion Games’ redone Judge Dredd: The Game of Crime-Fighting in Mega-City One, whilst the roleplaying games reviewed range from Cy_Borg and The Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game Starter Set to Out of the Ashes and A Folklore Bestiary. Of course, reviewing reviews is something of a busman’s holiday, so ultimately, although the reviews all both interesting and informative, the most interesting are those of the books, Alan Moore and Ian Gibson’s The Ballard of Halo Jones, and Michael Molcher’s I Am The Law about 2000 AD’s Judge Dredd and how it influenced modern policing, both from Rebellion, are the more intriguing.

Physically, Wyrd Science Vol. 1/Issue 4 is clean and tidy, neatly laid out and well written. The artwork is well judged too and overall, the magazine looks great.

Wyrd Science Vol. 1/Issue 4 is a good rather than great issue. It is at its best when exploring something lesser known like Big Bad Con in ‘MAGIC GATHERINGS: Big Bad Con’ and its diversity programme or the look at Italian roleplaying games in ‘Veni, Vidi, Ludo’, but also taking a sidestep to look at something familiar, the dungeon crawl style game, in a different format, the board game with ‘Dungeon Crawling Classics’ and ‘Quest Drive’.

Much like the Jonstown Compendium for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and The Companions of Arthur for material set in Greg Stafford’s masterpiece of Arthurian legend and romance, Pendragon, the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition is a curated platform for user-made content. It is thus, “...a new way for creators to publish and distribute their own original Call of Cthulhu content including scenarios, settings, spells and more…” To support the endeavours of their creators, Chaosium has provided templates and art packs, both free to use, so that the resulting releases can look and feel as professional as possible. To support the efforts of these contributors, Miskatonic Monday is an occasional series of reviews which will in turn examine an item drawn from the depths of the Miskatonic Repository.

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Name: Blackthorne Bridge Club: New TricksPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Gavin Bastiensz

Setting: New York, 1924Product: Scenario
What You Get: Fifty-five page, 4.39 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Madness in an asylum, who would have thought it?
Plot Hook: Will it take half the corpse to put the plot together, or the whole body?Plot Support: Staging advice, four pre-generated Investigators, thirteen NPCs, and one Mythos monster.Production Values: Plain
Pros# A sequel to Blackthorne Bridge Club# More of a standard investigation than its predecessor# Nicely detailed pre-generated Investigators, complete with secrets# Intriguing showdown# Pleasing sense of closure to one personal plot strand# Chronomentrophobia# Apotemnohobia# Chronophobia
Cons# Needs a slight edit# A timeline would have helped with the structure# What are the Investigators supposed to do with Theodore Roosevelt in 1923?
Conclusion# Disappointing sequel that just feels a bit woolly# Showdown has mammoth ramifications barely touched upon

Much like the Jonstown Compendium for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and The Companions of Arthur for material set in Greg Stafford’s masterpiece of Arthurian legend and romance, Pendragon, the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition is a curated platform for user-made content. It is thus, “...a new way for creators to publish and distribute their own original Call of Cthulhu content including scenarios, settings, spells and more…” To support the endeavours of their creators, Chaosium has provided templates and art packs, both free to use, so that the resulting releases can look and feel as professional as possible. To support the efforts of these contributors, Miskatonic Monday is an occasional series of reviews which will in turn examine an item drawn from the depths of the Miskatonic Repository.

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Name: Hope’s EndPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author Steen Stahlhut

Setting: New England, 1914Product: One-shot
What You Get: Forty-six page, 4.74 MB PDFElevator Pitch: Can a zombie be guilty of making a false instrument?Plot Hook: New England in a time of cholera.
Plot Support: Staging advice, four pre-generated Investigators, nine handouts, three NPCs, three maps, one Mythos tome, one Mythos spell, and two monsters.Production Values: Underwhelming.
Pros# Scenario near Lovecraft Country# Easy to adjust to other locations# Historically inspired scenario# Mythos elements pleasingly hidden under another investigation# Nosophobia# Necrophobia# Kinemortophobia
Cons# Why are grave diggers in Call of Cthulhu always drunk?# Needs a good edit
Conclusion# Medical turned Mythos investigation undermined by poor presentation# Potentially a very serviceable investigation

The light of the Emperor’s divine might reaches everywhere—but not always. Only in recent years has the Great Rift begun to unseal and the mysterious Noctis Aeterna begun to recede, the Days of Blinding ended, and links reforged with worlds in the Marcharius Sector lost under its pall and beyond the sector itself. As communication, trade, and psychic links have been reestablished with Terra, the Imperium has worked hard to restore its rightful authority and ensure that no deviancy from creed has taken place in the Days of Blinding. Despite this still, heretics turn to the Dark Gods with their promises and falsehoods and corruption is rife, wasting the Emperor’s resources and wealth, and from without, there is always the danger of raids by Orks or worse, Tyranoids. Yet routing out such heresies and corruption is no matter, but an issue of politics and influence as well as loyalty and devotion. The Emperor’s great servants search out those they deem worthy to serve them and the Imperium, directing them to investigate mysteries and murders, experience horror and heresies, expose corruption and callousness, whether in in pursuit of their patron’s agenda, his faction’s agenda, the Emperor’s will, or all three. In return they will gain privileges far beyond that imagined by their fellows—the chance to travel and see worlds far beyond their own, enjoy wealth and comfort that though modest is more than they could have dreamed of, and witness great events that they might have heard of years later by rumour or newscast. This though, is not without its costs, for they will face the worst that the forces of Chaos has to fling at them, the possibility of death, and if they fail, exile and loss of all that they have gained. In the Forty-First Millennium, everyone is an asset and everyone is expendable, but some can survive long enough to make a difference in the face of an uncaring universe and the machinery of the Imperium of Mankind grinding its way forward into a glorious future.

This is the set-up in Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum, the spiritual successor to Dark Heresy, the very first fully realised roleplaying game to be set within the Warhammer 40,000 milieu and published in 2008, the very first roleplaying game that Games Workshop had published in two decades. Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum is published by Cubicle 7 Entertainment and now it has its own introduction to the setting in the form of the Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum Starter Set. Given that this is from Cubicle 7 Entertainment, there is the likelihood that this is going to be a good product. After all, since the publication of the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Starter Set, the publisher has been releasing one good starter set after another. Which begs the question, what is a good starter set? Essentially, it has to provide everything that the Game Master and her players need to play a good scenario that showcases the nature of the setting and what the players and their characters do in the game, explains the rules, and provide content that can be played beyond the confines of the box.

Open the Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum Starter Set and the first thing that the reader sees is a set of nice percentile dice and a gatefold pamphlet that screams, “READ THIS FIRST!”. This starts with a broad overview of the setting, shows you what is in the box, what Imperium Maledictum and a roleplaying game are, how you get started and what you need to play, and where to go next once the contents of the box have been played through. In four pages, it provides the reader—both player and Game Master with a solid introduction to the setting. As an introduction to roleplaying games, it is more basic, so the reader might want to look elsewhere. Nevertheless, this does not mean that it does not do a good job. Below this are six Player Character sheets, again done as gatefold pamphlets. On the front they explain who the character is and why a player might choose to roleplay that character, gives the character some quotes that player could use in play, whilst inside the actual character sheet for the character is presented, along with a breakdown of the sheet alongside it and a list of the character’s goals, connections to the other characters, and secrets. Lastly on the back of the character sheet is a full-page illustration of the character. These pack a lot of information into their three pages—four including the illustration—but the layout never threatens to overwhelm the reader, keeping everything to hand whilst the focus remains on the character sheet at the centre. The six include a Zealot, a Penumbra (a stealthy assassin and infiltrator), an Interlocutor, a Psyker, a surgeon of the Adeptus Mechanicus, and a warrior.

In addition, the box also contains a set of tokens that include the Inquisitorial Seal, a prop that is used to indicate who has possession of it in the game, Character Portrait and Environmental Trait tokens for use on a map (there are no maps provided Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum Starter Set), Superiority Tokens to track the party’s Superiority, and Fate Tokens. There is a set of reference sheets that in turn explain the basic rules, combat, criticals and wounds, conditions and environmental hazards, factions and influence, Warp and Psykers, and trading and gear. These are done on sturdy cards and contain rules and background needed for each aspect of the game, and all together serving as the rules booklet in the set.

The meat of the Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum Starter Set consists of two books, ‘Adventure Book: The Blazing Seraph’ and ‘Rokarth: A Guide to the Hive’. The ‘Adventure Book: The Blazing Seraph’ provides a full investigation in the depths of Hive Rokarth where the Player Characters’ patron, Inquisitor Halikarn, assigns them to investigate the site of a purported miracle, Acid Refinery Delta-64, which has exploded, leaving behind a possible survivor. The Adeptus Ministorum is investigating to determine if this survivor is a saint. The Player Characters have three days to investigate, locate the survivor, and confirm whether or not he is actually a saint, or merely very lucky. Inquisitor Halikarn also provides them with the details of a contact who can help, but before he does that, the Player Characters will need to find and rescue him. This is an opportunity for the Game Master to show how the game system works and how combat works in it, and thus for the players to get used to both it and their characters. The investigation takes the Player Characters from the dank industrial confines of the hive deep into its bureaucracy and out again to the governor’s table and further into the foul, fetid bowels of the hive to confront heresy and corruption.

The adventure is designed to provide a learn as you play experience and it certainly does that in its opening steps. It is a relatively straightforward investigation, though with marked changes of pace as the Player Characters navigate the labyrinthine bureaucracies of the Hive Rokarth and particularly in the council with the governor they have to attend. This is probably the most difficult scene to run. In the later scenes the Player Characters descend into the depths of the Hive are quite detailed and require careful preparation that perhaps might have been easier with the inclusion of a map. One element that the Player Characters do need to take into account of, is the fact that their patron does not want to reveal his involvement in the investigation. He does give them an inquisitorial seal as a sign of his authority, but he is never happy with its use. Further, its use will attract the attention of those who are likely to take exception to Player Characters’ presence.

The second book, ‘Rokarth: A Guide to the Hive’, describes the setting for the adventure given in ‘Adventure Book: The Blazing Seraph’, the hive of Rokarth on the world of Voll. Surprisingly, it is only six centuries old, home to thirty billion souls who dedicate themselves through the Cult Imperialis to work that sees hive manufacture material and materiel for the Imperium of Man’s continuing war efforts. However, the facilities are being constantly corroded from without from Voll’s caustic environment and from within by the caustic waste product, as well as the corruption and criminal activity. The supplement provides details of the factions within the Hive Rokarth from House Castyx, the governing family on down. This includes the other noble Houses, the Adeptus Terra, which constitutes the vast bureaucracies and organisations that actually run the Imperium and to which every Player Character and their Patron is associated with, the guilds that hold monopolies on certain goods, and all the way down to the Infractionists, the gangs that control parts of the lower depths of the Hive, some of which have ties to the noble Houses. There are notes too on how commerce, the manufactorums, and how both the open and black markets work, noting that there is a silent trade in xeno artefacts smuggled into the Hive. There is a complete description of the hive from top to bottom, breaking it down from the Spire at the top down through the Upper Hive, Lower Hive, and into the Bowels & Beyond. All of these sections include a lengthy encounter table and descriptions of places and locations found there. Each of these locations is accompanied by a plot hook, and there are almost fifty of them! For example, the Player Characters might be asked by Sister Celestia of the Orders Hospitaller in the Upper Hive to move the last victim of the plague known as the Shivers so she can conduct further research; to find out for Lawrenca Parnam why her family secretly donates to the Cathedral of Obligatory Modesty—out of loyalty to the God Emperor or a shameful history; or either put down a gang war or broker a truce between in the wake of the events of the scenario in ‘Adventure Book: The Blazing Seraph’. Lastly, ‘Rokarth: A Guide to the Hive’ describes the presence and activities of the four Ruinous Powers and their cultists in the Hive. Of course, the plot hooks need development, but for the Game Master willing to make the effort, there is a lot to work with here.

Physically, Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum Starter Set is very well presented. The artwork is good and the books are well written. The inside of the box is illustrated with a map of the Marcharius Sector, whilst the inside of the box cover shows an image of Hive Rokarth, though it is not very clear.
There is a lot to like about the Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum Starter Set—the production values, a meaty scenario, and the combination of setting and extra plot hooks, but it is not quite as good as the earlier Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Starter Set. This is because it does not have the extended content, the mini campaign that is further supported with content in Ubersreik Adventures: Six Grim and Perilous Scenarios in the Duchy of Ubersreik and its sequels, instead giving the Game Master numerous plot hooks that do require development. What Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum Starter Set very obviously does provide is something that the Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum rulebook does not and that is a ready-to-play scenario. Hopefully, Cubicle 7 Entertainment will develop scenarios for the Marcharius Sector from this starter set in the same fashion as the Ubersreik Adventures.

Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum Starter Set is another good starter set from Cubicle 7 Entertainment, providing the Game Master and her players with everything necessary to start playing and learning the rules, along with a dark investigation into heresy and corruption.

Twilight 2000: Roleplaying in the World War III That Never Was opens with the Player Characters on the run, attempting to escape the last hurrah of the US 5th Mechanized Infantry Division near the city of Kalisz in central Poland or the 2nd Marine Division near the central city of Örebro in Sweden. Where do they go? Where do they find shelter? Where do they find food and water? Spare parts for their vehicles? Extra ammunition for their weapons? Published by Free League Publishing, Twilight 2000 presents an expansive sandbox setting that the Player Characters can explore, forage, loot, protect, and even settle. A sandbox setting consisting of a broken world, torn apart and poisoned by war and weapons of mass destruction, followed by disease and starvation. In the immediacy of the aftermath of the war, it is a grim setting where every day is a struggle to survive at best, a fight at worst. Urban Operations is the first supplement for Twilight 2000: Roleplaying in the World War III That Never Was, examining the status of cities and other settlements in the broken world of 2000, presents new rules and expanded details for playing within their confines, and provides encounters, plots, factions, and scenario sites that the Game Master can add to her campaign. Lastly, Urban Operations presents two ready to play urban centres that can form the basis of urban-centred campaigns and potential destinations for the Player Characters. As with the first edition of Twilight 2000 from 1984 and the supplement, The Free City of Krakow, one of these is the city of Kraków in southern Poland, whilst the other is the town of Karlsborg, to go with the new alternative setting of Sweden as presented in Twilight 2000: Roleplaying in the World War III That Never Was.

Urban Operations comes as a boxed set that contains a ninety-six page book, sixteen Encounter Cards, fourteen modular battle maps—ten for urban environments and four for close quarters combat, four scenario site battle maps with two being for close combat quarters, fifty-four battle map tokens, and two double-sided maps. One of the double-sided maps is a city travel map for example city of Kraków in Poland and the example town of Karlsborg in Sweden, whilst the other is a battle map for Wawel castle in Kraków and a battle map for Karlsborg Fortress in Karlsborg. Everything is done in full colour and most of the maps are marked in hexes, whilst the close quarters combat maps are marked sectors. In turn they depict a large housing complex, a church, a nuclear power plant, a bunker, an industrial site, a housing estate, a hospital, a park, even a housing complex where a passenger airliner has crashed, and more. These are ready to be used in the game, the Game Master needing only to add the details of what might be found at each location. The maps also work well with those found in the box for the core rules.

The ‘Urban Operations’ book opens with a discussion of what the Player Characters might find in a town or city. What it emphasises, of course, is the differences between the now of after the war and what it was like before. So, law and order varying from town to city—even devolving on anarchy, but now always at the point of a gun; bartering has replaced currency, whilst in organised towns and cities, citizens sometimes have ration cards and may have to give up their labour in return for this, sometimes willingly, sometimes not; transportation options are extremely limited; politics continues, but is more individualistic, often feudal in nature, the consensus of party politics having been destroyed in the war; and the infrastructure has been broken, so no power, no running water, and so on. Lastly, the survivors are traumatised, damaged by the loss of friends and family and the society that they once knew. Some cities remain uninhabited, too damaged by the weapons of mass destruction deployed in the war. This presents a good overview and introduction to the situations that might be found in the major settlements in post-war Europe, suggesting a variety of different circumstances that the Game Master can use to make places different in her campaign.

New archetypes in Urban Operations include the Cop and the Criminal. Both are roles that can be created using the rules in Twilight 2000, but the archetypes enable the Game Master to create an NPC or the player a character quickly and easily without going through the full character creation process. The other new rules cover fog of war, city movement such as hugging walls, spotting shooters, breaching buildings and blocked hexes, and close quarters combat. These build on the wargaming aspect of Twilight 2000 and play out as a hex (or sector) and counter game. The rules are nicely supported by a decent set of examples. Similarly, the rules for city travel, which is harder than rural travel, are supported by decent examples. As well as the sixteen new encounters, Urban Operations adds Areas of Controls to indicate if a city hex is under the control of a specific faction, primarily replacing the military or marauder encounters with the local faction, whilst the actual encounters burning buildings, robberies, finding a spy dying in an ally, encountering the ‘Baker Street Irregulars’ gang of street kids, a pop-up market, and more. Other encounter tables cover situations when the Player Characters are stationary, radio chatter, and rumours. Four factions are described, three of which can be used in Sweden and three of which can be used in Poland. Each is given a plot and some notes, as well as a detailed description that includes goals and forces under its control. The Free Polish 6th Brigade is the one that can only be used in Poland, specifically tied in with the city of Kraków (though it could be used as a template for other local military forces in Poland), whilst the Life Regiment Hussars is the Swedish faction tied to the town of Karlsborg. The two factions that can used in both countries are the World Health Organisation and the Vorovskoy Mir, or ‘thieves’ world’. These two are also given two interesting NPCs as well.

The four factions are each tied into one or more of the plots described in the book. These are intended to provide a storyline that the Game Master can tie factions and encounters together rather than serve as a full adventure. To help this, each has a countdown of events and notes as to what factions and what sites—or rather maps—might be involved. The plots include a search by a group of fanatics for the lost and holy Spear of Longinus and the race to stop a new plague spreading in the face of desperate and brutal measures being used by the World Health Organisation (its staff in the post-apocalypse have mercenaries). Some are specifically tied to the locations described in the book’s appendices, such as getting involved in a mayoral election in Kraków or stopping a KGB power play in Karlsborg. The biggest plot is ‘OPERATION Reset’, which suggests that there were other aims than just military ones in this operation, which was to obtain secret Soviet technology. Only part of the whole plot is explained and available to play through here—the next part will play out in the supplement, Hostile Waters. Thus, ‘OPERATION Reset’ provides the beginning of an overarching espionage campaign that will carry over into several modules for Twilight 2000 and involve the CIA, DIA, KGB, and GRU at each other’s throats and the Player Characters caught in the middle.

The four scenario sites consist of a housing block where two gangs vie for access to the local resources and turf with the Vorovskoy Mir in between; a church whose flock looks to its faith for answers, but wonders if God failed to protect from the war or used it to punish them, whilst not every member of the clergy is honest; a nuclear power plant that is still operational, but are threatened by marauders and the staff believe it has a traitor amongst its midst; and a bunker, no longer a place of war or survival, but turned into a nightclub that offers many locals a few hours escape drinking and dancing, whilst behind the scenes is the target for a turf war. All four come with an explanation of the situation, rumours to fling about, a countdown of events, a description of the various locations within the site, and full descriptions of the major NPCs involved. Like the plots, these are not full ready-to-play scenarios, but rather storylines that can play out as the Player Characters get involved in them. They are all very nicely detailed, they all have their own scenario maps, and they can all be used in either setting for Twilight 2000—Poland or Sweden, Kraków or Karlsborg. Then again, like much of Urban Operations, they can be used in the city or town of the Game Master’s choice.

The last section in Urban Operations consists of a pair of appendices. These in turn, detail Kraków in Poland and Karlsborg in Sweden, after the events of the Twilight War. The descriptions begin with what the Player Characters might see on arrival before going on to give the history of the population centre, its current status, a handful of rumours, descriptions of its neighbourhoods, and its major NPCs. Kraków describes itself as the only ‘free city’ in Poland, a democracy on the verge of a new election in the face of an extremist political faction, a centre of commerce sat on the Vistula River which manufactures ammunition and various devices to trade for food whilst the Vorovskoy Mir smuggles in everything else, and the holder of one ace—a working Mil Mi-24 Hind helicopter, though fuel supplies are limited. At the heart of Karlsborg is the Karlsborg Fortress, back in control of Swedish forces and possibly the seat of the Swedish king, the town under the protection of a military which has very limited means to extend that protection, especially as more and more refugees arrive, and marauders control much of the surrounding area. Of the two, the description of the situation in Kraków is richer and deeper than that of Karlsborg, though this is understandable given that the authors had a previous work, The Free City of Krakow for the first edition of Twilight 2000, to draw from.

Physically, Urban Operations is very well presented. Everything is in full colour, the artwork is excellent, and the maps are clear and easy to use.

As much as Urban Operations provides further rules to run Twilight 2000 within the confines of the damaged and destroyed cities and towns of the aftermath of the Twilight War, what it really is, is a toolkit for the Game Master to run a series of plots in a variety of different locations in her own campaign, ideally in Kraków or Karlsborg. Each of the plots has its own scenario location and together they can easily be inserted into an ongoing campaign in whatever town or city the Game Master is using, or they can be run in one settlement after another as the Player Characters travel from one town or city or another. Either way, they offer several months’ worth of play as the Player Characters travel, get involved, survive, and build or move on. Lastly, Urban Operations does include the start of ‘OPERATION Reset’, a plot that will run through the next series of releases for Twilight 2000, so that there is an ongoing connection from one to the next. Overall, Urban Operations is an excellent expansion for Twilight 2000, providing the hooks and means to pull the Player Characters into the world around them, interact with the survivors, explore the consequences of a nuclear conflict, and hopefully make the world a better place.

As the world slides towards its seemingly inevitable end, there are those who desperately search for ways to stop its collapse—or at least forestall its ongoing effects, if only not to be the last king, the monarch whose reign would be the ultimate in failure. King Fathmu IX searches for ways in which his realm can be maintained rather than lost and now his eyeless scryers say they have seen traces of Verhu in the catacombs beneath the ruined Hangman’s Church, deep in the Valley of the Unfortunate Undead. Are these visions one more sign of the impending apocalypse or does Verhu’s chapel hide secrets that will enable the kingdom to survive? King Fathmu IX sends the worst of his servants to find out—his crypt breakers. They are given a map and a simple mission. Traverse the ruined paths and lands of the Valley of the Unfortunate Undead, gain entry to the ruins of The Chapel of the Hanged God and descend into the tunnels below, survey their extents, and take what they can, before reporting back to the capital with what information and evidence they can find.

This is the set-up for The Chapel of the Hanged God. This is a pointcrawl and dungeon adventure published by Loot the Room for use with Mörk Borg, the Swedish pre-apocalypse Old School Renaissance style roleplaying game designed by Ockult Örtmästare Games and Stockholm Kartell and published by Free League Publishing. This is a classic scenario for Mörk Borg, packed with its trademark mix of misery, weirdness, and horror. So much so of the latter that it carries a well-deserved content warning for suicide, self-harm, cannibalism, mind control, and more. Make no mistake, The Chapel of the Hanged God contains strong themes, suicide especially, so the warnings are necessary.

In terms of content, The Chapel of the Hanged God is a pointcrawl consisting of eight locations, one of the actual Chapel of the Hanged God. These are connected by a series paths, some known, some hidden, the hidden ones have to be found, but consist of shorter routes. All of the routes, whether hidden or not, shift and change, so that sometimes the journey along them is shorter, other times longer. This is handled by rolling a number of dice to determine how many ‘watches’ it takes to traverse along any one path. Each day consists of six four-hour watches, two of which can be spent travelling, two exploring or foraging, and two resting. So, it might take as little as two watches, or two days, for the Player Characters to make their way along a path, but on another attempt, it might take twenty-four watches, or twelve days.

Similarly, the various locations take a varying number of watches to cross. Seven of these are given a two-page spread, with an illustration on the left hand page and the description, along with a random encounter table on the right hand page. They include ‘The Wetlands’ where those who shamed themselves in service to King Fathmu IX and have been consigned to a pit of black filth which they wade across on stilts trawling the rot and the ordure for treasures that will enable them to return the king’s service; a maze of shifting walls, filled with writhing fat worms, faces leering out of the walls, and beset by torrential rains, as guards stand on the walls to stop the shambling dead and prisoners from escaping, and the Player Characters can search for treasures or a way out; and a Hermit’s Hut, wrapped in thick chains and with thick black smoke and heavy ash pouring from its chimney, whilst inside the hermit is bound and melded to the floor by thorny roots, his mouth the source of both the black smoke and heavy ash, and prophecies of dubious quality.

Eventually, the Player Characters will find their way to the ruins of the Chapel of the Hanged God. Inside is a dead man who speaks with one of three voices, making promises and attempting to persuade them that they can help the Player Characters. Of course, these are all lies and each voice is actually a demon trapped in the corpse. Below lies an ancient crypt dedicated to the Hanged God, full of looters and profane writings and dedications, but long abandoned bar one twisted servant who awaits the return of the Hanged God. There are worse things to be found though, including a gospel of the Hanged God that if read may enrapture a Player Character, proselytise him to worship the Hanged God, and even emulate the Hanged God and string himself up (this is where the content warning is required and the book actually repeats it here again to enforce the point). The ultimate secret below the Chapel of the Hanged God is the existence of the Book of the Hanged God. This vile tome is made from the skin of the god’s last priest, but is not yet complete and at least one of the Player Characters could be driven to follow the directions marked on a number of maps created via foul means—a combination of swallowing a ball of human skin, auto asphyxiation, and vomiting—each of which leads to the location of missing pages from the book. Once the book is complete it creates a book akin to one of the four described in IKHON, each of which provides numerous benefits, but at a cost in terms of sacrifices necessary and potential aftereffects. Although the Player Characters do carry a map marked with routes to the Chapel of the Hanged God, once there, it begins to change and push the owner to seek the catacomb where the Book of the Hanged God is kept, almost as if it wanted to be united with it…

Physically, The Chapel of the Hanged God embraces the neon bright colours of the artpunk style of Mörk Borg, but not the actual style. Thus, the colours are big and bold, and so is the layout with the map of the Valley of the Unfortunate Undead. The cartography, big and blocky, is serviceable at best. Despite the artwork being somewhat better than the cartography, the book does look most basic in several places.

The Chapel of the Hanged God can be run as a one-shot, the Player Characters essentially stumbling upon a map to the Valley of the Unfortunate Undead, but it works better as a scenario in which they in service—willingly or not—of King Fathmu IX and so are driven to search the loathsome, often repulsive confines of the Valley of the Unfortunate Undead to find clues and secrets that might hold back the apocalypse that everyone knows is coming. This is a journey into revulsion and perhaps the only thing driving the Player Characters onwards is the knowledge that they might find something to give them hope in the Chapel of the Hanged God, though this being a scenario for Mörk Borg, they may find something, but it may not be what they, or anyone, is really looking for.

Photo stolen from a demon.

Hello you wonderful people, monsters and other dungeon crawlers.  I am back from my long absence. 

Around three years ago, I was diagnosed with life changing health issues.  Issues for which medical science has no effective treatments.  So, my priorities changed and I went on a personal journey of exploration to find alternative treatments and solutions.  My path turned a bit dark and eventually drew the attention of law enforcement resulting in a host of criminal charges.  My trial was an absolute circus with the prosecution recklessly tossing around terms like "atrocity" and "ritual sacrifice."  I fought the good fight in court but the deck was stacked against me.  The final result was my sad, and untimely, execution by the State.

Fortunately, my younger brother has a real talent for unspeakable acts of necromancy.  This past solstice he pulled me back from my convalescence in the grave.  Sure, I had to give him back his soul and his spell makes me cluck like a chicken whenever he says the word "burrito," but that is a small price to pay for a new lease on life.  I do mean lease as I must pay the rent every equinox and solstice from now on and eat a very restricted diet, if you know what I mean.  At least I was able to get a lot of work done while in the dirt and I will now be able to get back to regular weekly posts for the next several months.  I have a lot of new figures to catch up with.  I hope you will all enjoy. 

Since it first appeared in 2019, Old School Essentials has proven to be a very popular choice of roleplaying game when it comes to the Old School Renaissance. Published by Necrotic Gnome Productions, it is based on the 1981 revision of Basic Dungeons & Dragons by Tom Moldvay and its accompanying Expert Set by Dave Cook and Steve Marsh, and presents a very accessible, very well designed, and superbly presented reimplementation of the rules. There is plenty of support for Old School Essentials from third-party publishers, but Necrotic Gnome also publishes its own support, including scenarios such as Halls of the Blood King, The Isle of the Plangent Mage, The Incandescent Grottoes, and The Hole in the Oak. These are full length, detailed adventures and dungeons, but for the Game Master looking for shorter scenarios from the publisher, there are two options. These are Old-School Essentials Adventure Anthology 1 and Old-School Essentials Adventure Anthology 2. Each contains four adventures of varying difficulty and Level, with many of them being very easy for the Game Master to insert into her own campaign, and working well with Old School Essentials Classic Fantasy and Old School Essentials Advanced Fantasy.

Old-School Essentials Adventure Anthology 1 contains four adventures by noted contributors to the Old School Renaissance. The first three consist of dungeons designed for Player Characters ranging from First to Third Level, whilst the fourth is that rare creation, a high-Level adventure for Old School Essentials, in this case, Ninth Level. It is also different in that it is a hexcrawl adventure and not a dungeon, and it takes the Player Characters somewhere surprisingly odd. This means that in comparison to the other three adventures, it is not quite as easy to add to a campaign. The first two adventures require an urban environment.
The anthology opens with ‘The Jeweler’s Sanctum’ by Giuseppe Rotondo. It is designed for Player Characters of First to Third Level and opens with them being hired to investigate the secret workshop of a long-dead jeweller-magician by his grandson who has been worried by the strange emanating from the complex. He cannot pay, but he will let them take whatever treasure they find as recompense. It actually has multiple sources of noise that the Player Characters have to deal with in their exploration of the workshop. The complex has the rundown feel of somewhere abandoned for decades and despite consisting of just seventeen locations, it has lots of detail and lots of things for the Player Characters to look at and examine. There are some interesting and inventive magical items to be found in the process, like the Glove Of Curse Detection, which detects cursed rings and several items which aid magical research. In the long term, these are very powerful items for any Wizard in the party. Another nice touch is that there are no active threats in dungeon, although there are plenty of dangers. The Player Characters will often be able to make plenty of progress through talking rather than rushing into danger.

It is followed by Glynn Seal’s rather unpleasant ‘Curse of the Maggot God’. Designed for Player Characters of Second and Third Level. This is a sewer crawl, slightly linear in nature—especially if the Player Characters follow the drag marks—which begins with the Player Characters being hired by the Guild of Sewermen to enter a recently opened up set of tunnels and rescue a guildsman who has been lost inside. Inside, they find the cellars, all that remains of an ancient villa, almost Roman in style, occupied by the worshippers of a vile creature they believe to be a god. Rot and decay permeate the whole of the complex, and whilst there is treasure to be found, it is either distasteful or requires rooting around in muck to find it. This is more of an extended encounter than a full scenario and probably the easiest to add to a campaign, though in comparison to the other adventures feels sparse and even underwritten.

Brad Kerr’s ‘The Sunbathers’ is for Third Level Player Characters. If ‘Curse of the Maggot God’ had a slightly Roman feel with its cellar of a villa setting, then ‘The Sunbathers’ is more of a Greek island with a temple and strange cult which has harpies in oversized cloaks as orderlies! The Player Characters are hired to travel to Fos Imeras Island, famous for its healing, perhaps because nothing has been heard from the island in quite some time or because the champion Orsilochus has vanished and was known to be heading there. Once ashore, the Player Characters find men and women blissfully and all but mindlessly sunbathing on the island’s beaches whilst tended to by white-frocked attendants, whilst inside they will find patients catatonic, mindlessly playing instruments, violently playing with children’s toys, and the like. The island then, has been turned into a sanatorium for the insane, its patients and staff a contrasting mix of the silent and the savage, with the staff also accompanied by their lion protectors. If there is downside to the scenario it is that the fate of the former staff is never explored and neither are what happens after the Player Characters visit. Nevertheless, the situation is creepy and unsettling, not unlike a scenario for Call of Cthulhu, ‘The Sunbathers’ being a very quiet horror scenario.

The fourth and last entry in Old-School Essentials Adventure Anthology 1 is as different from the first three as it is possible to be. ‘The Comet that Time Forgot’ is a mini-hexcrawl for Player Characters of Ninth Level by D. M. Wilson and Sarah Brunt. As the title suggests this is a ‘lost world’ style adventure a la Edgar Rice Burroughs or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but also X1 Isle of Dread, but one set on a comet travelling through space. The comet is actually an ark for dying world, comprised of icy mountains and forests at one end, volcano strewn deserts and mountains at the other, with mountains, jungle, and swamp in between. Numerous species live on the comet, including Fire Giants and Ice Giants, Red Dragons and White Dragons, dinosaurs of all types, Neanderthals, White Apes, and more. Thousands of years have passed since their ancestors left their home world and they have long forgotten that they are searching for a new one.
When they arrive via the Portal of Time and Space—the only way off the comet—the Player Characters encounter the Neanderthals in their metropolis of ice and grey stone and discover that they have tasks that perhaps the Player Characters can fulfil. One is to cleanse the Neanderthals’ ancient Necropolis of the White Dragons that have taken up residence there and the other is to rescue the Neanderthals’ leader’s daughter being held prisoner by the Fire Giants. However, when the Player Characters go to the lands of the Fire Giants at the other end of the comet, they learn that the Fire Giants are also having a problem with Red Dragons. There are various different factions across the three zones on the comet, but all of them have similar quests, such as having deal with dangerous beast of some kind, rescuing one of their number held prisoner by another faction, and so on. Consequently, there is a degree of circularity—and similarity—in the way in which the various factions and their quests connect to each other.

The scenario can be played out in a leisurely pace, or the Game Master can add a degree of urgency by having the comet be in imminent danger of collapse. Similarly, the Player Characters can follow the quests or simply explore the comet in true hexcrawl fashion, or more likely, a combination of the two. Ultimately, the primary aim of the Player Characters is to get off the comet via the Portal of Time and Space, but in the process they will change the societies on the comet, so the Game Master had best be prepared for that. Overall, ‘The Comet that Time Forgot’ packs a lot of adventure into its pages, enabling the Player Characters to explore a whole world in a few sessions.

Physically, the Old-School Essentials Adventure Anthology 1 is very cleanly and tidily laid out and organised as you would expect for a title for Old-School Essentials. Notably, the content is split between columns of content and almost sidebars where the monster and NPC stats are highlighted in coloured boxes. Colour is used to spot effect throughout, whilst the maps are excellent. The full colour artwork is also good.

The Old-School Essentials Adventure Anthology 1 contains four good adventures, three of which—the first three—the Game Master is most likely to use as they are for low Level Player Characters and the easiest to use. Of the four, the very first, ‘The Jeweler’s Sanctum’ is the best, full of detail and flavour and with an emphasis on exploration and interaction rather than combat, whilst the third, ‘The Sunbathers’ is quietly creepy and unsettling.

At each equinox, mythical creatures gather in the magical forest to compete to be the ones to have their tales recorded in the Legendary Story Book and remembered in times to come. Only three will survive to have their stories written down, so the competition is fierce as they confront each other with their magical powers, but they only have one night to prove themselves worthy. This is the set-up for Equinox, a betting and bluffing, card placement game designed by Reiner Knizia, one of the board game hobby’s most prolific creators. That said, Equinox is more of a reimplantation of a reimplantation than a new design, though one which has been given a very attractive retheming. Mechanically, if not thematically, it is a redesign of Colossal Arena, published by Avalon Hill in 1997, which was itself a redesign of Grand National, published by Piatnik in 1996. So, the game has a bit of a history. Equinox itself, was published by Plan B Games, best known for titles such as Century Spice Road and Azul. It is designed to be played by between two and five players, aged ten and up, and can be played through in thirty minutes.

The very first thing that you are going to notice about Equinox is the quality of the components. The cards are large—2¾ by 4¾ inches—and the artwork is superb. The game’s stones, done in pastel colours, add a pleasing tactile feel and heft to the game, and the game even comes with nice little bags to store them in. (To be honest, this is the only thing the bags do, so they do feel superfluous.)

Equinox consists of one-hundred-and-ninety-nine cards, five cloth bags, and twenty-five stones. The cards break down in fourteen Champion cards, one-hundred-and-fifty-four Creature cards, eleven Chameleon cards, three Tree cards, six Row cards, and eleven Disappearance cards. The Champion cards represent the entrants in the competition, and consist of various animals and creatures, such as Squeak (mouse), Stag, Hoot (owl), Ursus (bear), Goatman, and so on. Each Champion has corresponding set of eleven cards in the one-hundred-and-fifty-four Creature cards, numbered from zero to ten. Each creature has a special ability, which is marked on their cards. The Chameleon cards are also numbered from zero to eleven, but do not have a corresponding Champion card. The Row cards, from zero to five, indicate the current round of the game. Their number also indicates the number of Prestige Points they will award the players who placed bets on the surviving Champions. The Disappearance cards are used to identify the creatures who have been eliminated from the game. The stones are used to indicate the players’ bets, each player being able to place a single bet per round.

Each round, the players will take it in turns to play Creature cards on the spaces in the current row underneath their Champion cards and place bets on the cards. A player can also reveal a secret bet made at the start of the game to gain control of a Champion, which allows him to trigger its special ability. At the end of each round, one Champion will be eliminated, so that by the end of the game, only three will have survived. The player who has earned the most Prestige Points from the bets he has placed on the surviving Champion is the winner. Bids placed earlier in the game are worth more than those placed later in the game.
Set-up is simple enough. Each player takes one set of stones and eight Champion cards are selected, either randomly or by choice. The six Row cards are laid out in a column, from zero at the top to five at the bottom. The selected Champion cards are laid out in a line in the top or row zero. They will be the Champions that the players will be betting on over the course of the five rounds. With fourteen Champions to choose from and only eight being used each time, Equinox offers a decent degree of replay value as it means different special abilities to try and activate over the course of the game. The Creature cards corresponding to the chosen Champion cards, the Chameleon cards, and the Tree cards are shuffled to form a single deck. Players then draw a hand of eight cards from this deck.

On each round, the players are playing cards and betting on the one row. A player’s turn has five phases. In the first, the player makes or reveals a prediction. In the first round, this can be an open prediction or a secret prediction, but can only be an open prediction in later rounds. A secret prediction is made on a Creature card from the player’s hand that he hopes will survive until the end of the game. It is placed face in front of him with a stone on top of it. If that Champion does survive to the end of the game, it is worth extra Prestige Points. An open prediction can be placed on a space or a card under a Champion in play, and once placed, no further predictions can be placed under that Champion in that row.

A player can also reveal his secret prediction. This can help him gain control of that Champion, though it means that the other players are more likely to try and eliminate that Champion.

A player can play one of three cards—A Creature card, a Chameleon card, or a Tree Card. A Creature card is placed in the row under the corresponding Champion and it can be played on top of another card. This will alter the strength of combined cards under the Champion, which is important in determining control if a Secret Bid is revealed, and it can activate a Special Ability if the player has control. A Chameleon card can be played on any space in a row and prevents the activation of any Special Ability if played, even if another Creature card is played. A Tree card is not played onto a row, but either forces the other players to reveal if they have made a secret prediction on a particular Champion or allows a player to take a previously played and visible card from any row.

The Special Abilities include drawing three cards for Squeak, retrieving a previously placed stone from any column—including for an eliminated Champion—for the Stag, and play a second card for the Twinz. There are a lot of Special Abilities and some of them are more useful than others.

Lastly, a player can discard cards from his hand, useful if he has cards in his hand for eliminated Champions, and draws back up. If all of the spaces in a row have been filled and one Creature card has the lowest value, its Champion is eliminated and the round ends, otherwise play continues until this happens. The game itself will end when either a Champion is eliminated on the fifth and final round or the deck is emptied.
Equinox is a game of betting and elimination and hoping that the Champion you are betting on is not going to be eliminated. When the Champion player is betting on is eliminated, it is likely to be devastating, because with it goes those bets and the possibility of Prestige Points and victory. It can lead to a player being knocked out of the game early because he cannot necessarily make up for the lost bets, so a player needs to be careful and not signal to the other players which Champion he is backing. Placing a Secret Bet at the start of the game can help with that as can taking control of a Champion if that Secret Bet has been revealed. Taking control of a Champion means that a player can potentially use the Special Ability for that Champion and with the right Special Ability it can give the player an advantage and even a way to counter the losses of backing an eliminated Champion.

However, once a Secret Bet and a potential player’s control of the Champion is revealed, it makes that Champion a target for the other players to eliminate. Also, not all of the Special Abilities are very useful. Further, if no Secret Bets are revealed, none of the Special Abilities will come into play. The likelihood is that only one or two Secret Bets are revealed and so equally, relatively few Special Abilities come into play. The difficulty with that is twofold. One is that sheer number of Special Abilities adds complexity because the players need to know what they are and what they do, despite coming into play infrequently. The other is that their use is an exception, meaning that the players have to look it up in the rules. (And even looking it up in the rules can signal to the other players that a player is about to do something.) It feels as if there should be a way of using the Special Abilities without having to reveal a Secret Bet.

Physically, Equinox is a gorgeous looking game. The artwork really is exquisite. The rulebook is easy to read and contains some good examples of play and scoring. There is an absolutely necessary guide to the Special Abilities on the back of the rulebook, though one per player would have been more useful. That said, the large cards mean that the game takes up a lot of space on the table and the bags, whilst nice, are a frippery too far.

Equinox is a great looking game and it is easy to see it origins as a horse betting game in which the players get to bet on the horses as they run the race and are left behind, one after the other (but hopefully not eliminated). Here though, beyond the core game play of placing bets and cards, it feels overdone in terms of its Special Abilities, that whilst seeming to add replay value, figure surprisingly infrequently during actual play and this makes them harder to teach and thus the game harder to teach and not quite as casual as it wants to be. Equinox is a decent game that will appeal to veteran players looking for a fast-playing cutthroat game of secrecy and bets, whilst for the casual player, its harder edge is hidden by its fantastic looks.

Much like the Jonstown Compendium for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and The Companions of Arthur for material set in Greg Stafford’s masterpiece of Arthurian legend and romance, Pendragon, the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition is a curated platform for user-made content. It is thus, “...a new way for creators to publish and distribute their own original Call of Cthulhu content including scenarios, settings, spells and more…” To support the endeavours of their creators, Chaosium has provided templates and art packs, both free to use, so that the resulting releases can look and feel as professional as possible. To support the efforts of these contributors, Miskatonic Monday is an occasional series of reviews which will in turn examine an item drawn from the depths of the Miskatonic Repository.

—oOo—
Name: William Bailey’s Haunted Mansion: A Call of Cthulhu AdventurePublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author David Waldron

Setting: Ballarat, 1890sProduct: One-shot
What You Get: Thirty-nine page, 6.66 MB PDFElevator Pitch: Unhappy is the man whose home is haunted.Plot Hook: If it isn’t a haunting, then what horrors have been lurking in the home of the town’s most notorious man?
Plot Support: Staging advice, four pre-generated Investigators, eight handouts, six NPCs, and two monsters.Production Values: Decent.
Pros# Scenario for Cthulhu by Gaslight# Investigation starts from the get-go# Historically based pre-generated Investigators# Straightforward investigation# Layout eases the investigation# Phasmophobia# Sugrophobia# Paranoia
Cons# Layout a little tight# Needs an edit
Conclusion# Neatly organised, straightforward, easy-to-run investigation# Decent one-shot for Cthulhu by Gaslight

Much like the Jonstown Compendium for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and The Companions of Arthur for material set in Greg Stafford’s masterpiece of Arthurian legend and romance, Pendragon, the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition is a curated platform for user-made content. It is thus, “...a new way for creators to publish and distribute their own original Call of Cthulhu content including scenarios, settings, spells and more…” To support the endeavours of their creators, Chaosium has provided templates and art packs, both free to use, so that the resulting releases can look and feel as professional as possible. To support the efforts of these contributors, Miskatonic Monday is an occasional series of reviews which will in turn examine an item drawn from the depths of the Miskatonic Repository.

—oOo—

Name: The Silent CurePublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Andrew ‘Lunitar’ Babcock

Setting: Modern DayProduct: Scenario
What You Get: Twenty-six page, 2.69 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Inhalation of the Body Snatchers
Plot Hook: What if the cure is the infection?Plot Support: Staging advice, six hundred NPCs (victims), and four Mythos monsters.Production Values: Spotty. Literally.
Pros# Classic invasion/infection paranoia scenario# Easy to adapt to any modern small town# Creepy atmosphere# Paranoia# Nosophobia# Sternutaphobia
Cons# Needs an edit# No maps or floorplans
# Could have been better organised
Conclusion# Invasion of the Body Snatchers meets Night of the Living Dead# “You don’t have to fight anymore. Just breathe.”

From the detective stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to the ghost stories of M.R. James, from the adventure tales of H. Rider Haggard to the speculative fiction of H.G. Wells, and the social commentary and mystery of Charles Dickens to the fantasies of Lewis Carroll, from the so-called perversities of Oscar Wilde to the murders of Jack the Ripper, from the fog-shrouded streets of London to the dusty frontier of the Punjab, from the refined and mannered lives of the aristocracy with their downstairs servants to the squalor of the slums and rookeries, there is much that we know about the Victorian Age in the latter half of the nineteenth century. This is the period of La Belle Époque, the Golden Age between the Franco-Prussian War in 1871 and the outbreak of the Great War in 1914 when the great European powers dominated the world like never before, their rivalries and tensions affecting millions of people around the world, but barely at home, a situation that would drastically change in the twentieth century when the great alliances that had previously helped to keep the peace calamitously clashed and changed the world like never before. This is a world that will be familiar to many, though both history and fiction, and has been ripe for gaming since “The first ‘Truly British’ role playing game”, that is, Victorian Adventure published in 1983. It is a roleplaying game that William A. Barton certainly saw and reviewed and perhaps was influenced by when he wrote Cthulhu by Gaslight: Horror Roleplaying in 1890s England, published by Chaosium, Inc. in 1986. This boxed set shifted the horror of H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos from the Jazz Age and the USA of the 1920s as presented in Call of Cthulhu in 1981 (and ever since) to the streets of London and the far reaches of the British Empire in the Mauve Decade. It has remained a popular setting for Call of Cthulhu over the years, the setting receiving two further editions in 1988 and 2012, but it returns with a fourth edition with the Cthulhu by Gaslight: Investigators’ Guide.

The Cthulhu by Gaslight: Investigators’ Guide – Mysteries & Frights in the Victorian Age returns the Mythos to the Mauve Decade of the 1890s as a standalone book. What this means is that neither of the Keeper Rulebook or the Investigator Handbook for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition is required to run and play Cthulhu by Gaslight. It thus means that the book include both introductions to roleplaying and the Cthulhu Mythos, as well as a comprehensive summary of the rules in the first of its two appendices. The setting and rules are compatible with Pulp Cthulhu: Two-fisted Action and Adventure Against the Mythos for a more adventurous style of play and with Down Darker Trails: Terrors of the Mythos in the Old West, should a Keeper and her players want to escape the stuffy confines of London and the East Coast of the USA and venture onto the American frontier. It provides a grand overview of Victorian England, paying particular attention to London, but also going far beyond that, as well as looking at Victorian society and attitudes. It also includes a guide to creating Victorian-era Investigators and delves into the quirks and oddities of the period that make history so interesting and help make it come alive. What Cthulhu by Gaslight: Investigators’ Guide – Mysteries & Frights in the Victorian Age is not though, is a guide to the Mythos—its gods and greater beings, alien species and monsters, and its horribly human adherents. That is saved for the companion volume, Cthulhu by Gaslight: Keepers’ Guide, and the Keeper’s eyes only.

What is clear about the Cthulhu by Gaslight: Investigators’ Guide – Mysteries & Frights in the Victorian Age is the wealth of information it presents, more so than any of the three previous editions. And to no little extent, if the player or Keeper has read or used those previous editions, or indeed, has an interest in the history of the Victorian period, then they will find much that is familiar within its pages. There is a guide to Victorian social class, life in the city and the country—including in the infamous slums known as rookeries, politics including the radicalism of the Fabian Society and anarchism, the Royal Family, the nature of domestic service, religion, philanthropy, death and mourning, women and the law, the place of ethnic minorities, and sex and society. It also covers communications—Royal Mail, the telegraph, and the telephone, as well as crime, policing, and the underworld. Throughout, many of these subjects are accompanied by little timelines of their own that highlight the notable events that changed them, often laws passed by parliament to improve the lot of society.

Perhaps the biggest factor here and the one that will most obviously affect an Investigator is that of class. Obviously, it plays a major factor in almost every social situation and the expectations of the different classes do limit the ways in which a person of one class can interact with another and do so correctly without being seen to act improperly. What this means is that Investigators of all classes are required to access different social spaces. Thus, members of the middle and upper classes would look out of place in a working-class area or space and any working-class person found there would not necessarily be as readily forthcoming in answers to queries as if they were a member of their own class. There is also a general deference to the classes above you, but this does not mean attitudes between classes did not vary. Although campaigns can be run with the Investigators all coming from a single class or group, the nature of Victorian society begs the question, how Investigators of different Classes be seen together given its constraints? Here is where the Cthulhu by Gaslight: Investigators’ Guide begins to get that little bit more interesting. It suggests a number of ‘Multi-Class Set-Ups & Locations’ as possible set-ups, such as charities operating in working-class areas, music hall performances, racecourses, seaside resorts, and so on.

This is the first of three sections in the book that suggest ways in which Victorian society was not quite as straitlaced and corseted as we imagine. Evelyn De Morgan, the female artist who painted male nudes, Benjamin Disraeli, middle class and Jewish, who rose to become leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister—twice, and Lillie Langtry, notorious ‘adventuress’, actress, producer, and theatre manager and mistress to the Prince of Wales and advertising face of Pears Soap, are among the notable Victorians listed as having defied the expectations of their backgrounds and so could serve as possible inspirations for Investigators. Similarly, there is a lengthy section on LGBTQI+ Victorians which explores their lives during the period. Unfortunately, the outwardly prudish attitudes of Victorian society means that what we know of it is drawn from its various scandals and criminal prosecutions, although this is contrasted by some calls for acceptance. The third looks at the subject of Race and place of minorities in Victorian society, highlighting the lives and places they made for themselves in the empire. Together—and despite the social mores of the period—the exploration of these three subjects open up a wider choice of backgrounds for Investigators and wider possibilities in terms of scenarios and storytelling than the Gaslight era might otherwise suggest.

Investigator creation is as per Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, but with a handful of changes. One of these is class, determined by Occupation, as for example, Acrobat and Labourer are working class Occupations, Clergy and Scientist are Middle Class Occupations, and Aristocrat is an upper-class Occupation. Others span the classes, for example, Police Officer is working to middle class and Physician is middle to upper. Some Occupations are particular to Cthulhu by Gaslight, like Inquiry Agent and the Consulting Detective, whilst some are adaptations taken from Call of Cthulhu Investigator Handbook, such as the Alienist which adapts the Psychologist. The Labourer and Criminal Occupations are further split into specialisations, including the Chimney Sweep and the Navvy for the Labourer and the Footpad and the Swindler for the Criminal. The Adventuress is an exception being upper class, but only temporarily. In addition, there are guidelines for creating Heroes rather than Investigators for use with Pulp Cthulhu: Two-fisted Action and Adventure Against the Mythos and there is also a list of Occupations from the Call of Cthulhu Investigator Handbook suitable for use with Cthulhu by Gaslight. There is also a good interpretation of skills in the period along with the addition of Alienism (similar to Psychology), Mesmerism (replaces Hypnotism), Reassure (similar to Psychiatry), and Religion. It is a very broad range of options across the three social classes.

Similar to Regency Cthulhu: Dark Designs in Jane Austen’s England, there are rules for Reputation and how to both damage and repair it in Cthulhu by Gaslight, but they are optional. Suggestions are also provided for several Investigator organisations, including the ‘Mainwaring Society for the Betterment of the Working Classes’, dedicated to self-improvement, the ‘Nonstandard Club’, a slightly dubious dining society for the middle and upper classes which gathers to regale each other with frightening or embarrassing stories, and ‘The Lorists’, a middle-class organisation dedicated to investigating and dealing with goblins, giants, faeries, and weird local customs.

The Cthulhu by Gaslight: Investigators’ Guide provides an extensive price list of equipment, devices, and weapons, including a handful of Pulp Cthulhu devices, essentially everything that an Investigator might want at home and abroad. Once fully kitted out, whether for a night out to the theatre or the music hall or a walking holiday in the Lake District or a boat trip up the Nile to visit the Pyramids, the rulebook takes us there too. The book is self-admittedly London centric, so it warrants a detailed chapter of its own, covering the capital’s districts, hospitals and asylums, places of entertainment, museums and libraries, railway stations, cemeteries, places to stay and shop, clubs, and clubs for ladies and gentlemen. In comparison, the treatment of the four countries that make up the United Kingdom feels brief by comparison and feel as if they need a supplement of their own. Of course, this is not the extent of the British realm during this period, so the British Empire is given a similar treatment. Again, this quite literally has a lot of ground to cover, but from Cyprus, Gibraltar, and Malta in the Mediterranean to Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji in the Pacific, there is a solid overview of the extent of the British Empire at the time. Alongside this, there is advice on the need for the Keeper and her players to discuss the degree to which colonialism and racism should be present in their game, whilst the subject of slavery is explored historically, but not addressed in the same fashion.

The Victorian Age was one of exploration and adventure, with constant news flowing back from the furthest corners of the then unknown world to the European explorer of discoveries made and places reached to fill column inches. British Investigators need not travel very far to gain some semblance of the strange and the exotic, whether it is attending lectures hosted by the numerous societies and clubs, like the Alpine Club and Royal Geographical Society (to which they could also belong) or simply embarking on the Grand Tour of Europe. Again, and although not extensive, the book provides a good overview of exploration during the period.

For the most part, the Cthulhu by Gaslight: Investigators’ Guide – Mysteries & Frights in the Victorian Age is a very straightforward and straitlaced treatment of the period, but it does loose its stays and go beyond its ordinary limits and into the outré—and does so in three surprising ways. The first is to visit the shores of the eastern seaboard of the United States of America, noting both the differences in language during the period and violence between the two societies, before providing thumbnail descriptions of New York, Boston, and Chicago. However, the second is that it turns its sights on New England to visit a totally unexpected region, that of Lovecraft Country. Its examination of the major settlements of the Miskatonic Valley—Arkham, Dunwich, and Innsmouth—is cursory at best, but welcome acknowledgement of their existence in this period. A first for Call of Cthulhu. Of course, the description of Arkham in this period would work well in conjunction with Call of Cthulhu: Arkham.

Third and last, the Cthulhu by Gaslight: Investigators’ Guide goes beyond the mortal realms to examine the Victorian approach to pseudoscience and the occult, having just looked at science and medicine. This begins with the fringe sciences of mesmerism, electrotherapy, phrenology, and more—with a discussion of eugenics along the way—before delving into myth and folklore and the occult. This in turn covers Freemasonry, Druidism, and both the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and The Theosophical Society. Particular attention is paid to both organisations, discussing their history and their beliefs as well as providing biographies of varying lengths of their leading members. So included in the membership of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn are Samuel Liddell Macgregor Mathers, William Butler Yeats, and Aleister Crowley, and in The Theosophical Society, Madame (Helena Petrovna) Blavatsky. Also covered here is Spiritualism and ghost-hunting, including the Society for Psychical Research, although in the case of the latter, it feels slightly underwritten in comparison to the other entries. Again though, these are all good solid introductions to their subjects. Rounding out the volume is a good bibliography.

Physically, the Cthulhu by Gaslight: Investigators’ Guide is a good-looking book. It needs a slight edit, but the book is well written and very readable, and the artwork and the cartography are both excellent.

The Cthulhu by Gaslight: Investigators’ Guide – Mysteries & Frights in the Victorian Age is, of course, the book for both the players and the Keeper, so there are a lot of secrets and details of the Victorian era—at least in terms of Lovecraftian investigative horror—that have been left out. Those will have to wait for the Cthulhu by Gaslight: Keepers’ Guide. This does not mean that Cthulhu by Gaslight: Investigators’ Guide is by any means a bad book. It is in turns interesting and informative, packed with details and interesting facts, many of which will both intrigue the most ardent devotee of the history of the period and help bring the setting to life when brought into play. The Cthulhu by Gaslight: Investigators’ Guide – Mysteries & Frights in the Victorian Age is an impressively informative introduction to the Victorian Era and lays the groundwork for the Keeper to return the Mythos and madness to the Mauve Decade with the Cthulhu by Gaslight: Keepers’ Guide.

Something strange happened in Willis, Alabama at 1:43 am on December 22nd, 1998. The temperature dropped from a typical seasonal average of 3 degrees Celsius to -30 degrees Celsius for a total of four hours. Every person, every creature, is dead. Frozen to death. Is this evidence of an extraterrestrial incursion? Is it freak weather, perhaps a recurrence of a local phenomenon known as ‘Jack Frost’? Or it something else. Above all, what can be learned from it? The authorities want to know. Authorities deep with the U.S. government and they will kill to keep it a secret including even their own staff. Scientists, drawn from an ultra-classified UFO research project, are assigned to investigate the freak incident. They are part of the infamous MAJESTIC programme, specifically PROJECT PLUTO from the top-secret labs at Area 51, supported by the pararescuemen and pilots trained to recover alien technology from OPERATION BLUE FLY, with security provided by NRO DELTA, the lethal ‘men in black’ who keep America’s secrets from America itself. On the ground they will come to realise that what they are examining lies beyond the scope of PROJECT PLUTO and as the weather oscillates, sending temperatures unnaturally plummeting and nerves soaring, events around them exacerbate the growing sense of fear and paranoia. Can the scientists of PROJECT PLUTO discover the cause of the frigidly deadly ‘Jack Frost’ incidents and prevent it from escalating before their own security turns on them? Christmas is certainly going to be one to remember—if they survive!
Jack Frost is a scenario published by Arc Dream Publishing for Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game. This is the modern roleplaying game of conspiratorial and Lovecraftian investigative horror with its conspiratorial agencies within the United States government investigating, confronting, and covering up the Unnatural. In traditional scenarios for Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game set in this period, the Player Characters are members of Delta Green, the organisation, at times official, but in 1998 unofficial and regarded as an antigovernmental conspiracy, dedicated to investigating the Unnatural, limiting its effects, and preventing the wider public from becoming aware of it. Not so in Jack Frost. In Jack Frost, the Player Characters are scientists working for MAJESTIC and PROJECT PLUTO and United States Air Force personnel from OPERATION BLUE FLY. This puts them on the other side, though their enemy is not the itinerant members of Delta Green, but a combination of themselves, their own security, and what they encounter on the cold nights in the Yellowhammer state.

Jack Frost is a one-shot scenario designed to be played in two to three sessions with six pre-generated Player Characters, four of whom are scientists and two of whom are United States Air Force personnel. It is played out over the course of three days and three nights in the lead up to Christmas Day. Potentially, if there are any survivors, their experiences as part of Operation WEATHERWATCHER may drive them to switch sides and begin working for Delta Green rather than MAJESTIC. However, Jack Frost is a challenging scenario—in fact, a very challenging scenario—and the likelihood of the Player Characters surviving beyond the events in Alabama, let alone in the long term, is low. Anyone surviving long enough to work for Delta Green following an operation a la Control Group is going to be a very remarkable individual and it is going to take a lot of skill and luck upon the part of his player.

Jack Frost begins with the Player Characters being transported to Willis, Alabama, where the scenario proper opens with a briefing. By the standards of Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game, it is an incredibly extensive and detailed briefing, the wealth of knowledge presented to the players and their characters a radical contrast to that normally given Delta Green agents. What it highlights, even as it threatens to overwhelm the players, is the means and resources that MAJESTIC has to hand with its extensive governmental funding, whereas Delta Green is operating with virtually no budget! However, with that budget comes not just responsibility, but also oversight. In the case of Operation WEATHERWATCHER, quite literally, as there will be a two-man team assigned to the Player Characters from NRO DELTA to provide security, obviously to protect them and and the operation, but also to watch over their actions every day. As the scenario progresses and events get weirder and weirder, this need to watch the actions of the Player Characters transforms into paranoia. The situation is not entirely hopeless for the Player Characters though, as a combination of their persuasiveness and their knowledge, they may be able to convince them that their actions are the right ones...

Over the course of the three nights, the situation gets worse and worse. There are some truly horrible moments in the scenario as you would expect, some of which make you glad that it is a one-shot. The threat faced by the Player Characters is Itla-shua, the ‘wind walker’ of the far north, whose presence is felt nightly until the temperatures are cold enough to facilitate an appearance. Meanwhile, his children rise and if not stopped, will go on a rampage that might not end, but occur again and again in deep winters for decades to come. Stopping his coming and then banishing him is very, very difficult. The situation has to play out in a certain way and things have to go right for the Player Characters. There is definitely no guarantee that this will happen and there is the strong possibility of failure and death for all concerned.

Structurally, Jack Frost feels tightly constrained with its time limits and difficult choices made all the harder by the fact that the Player Characters will often need to get permission to follow them through. The information dump at the start of the scenario is daunting and the two Player Characters who are not scientists, but United States Air Force personnel, may initially find themselves with relatively little to do. As the action picks up on subsequent nights, this changes when they may become vital to the survival of everyone. There is scope for the players to each roleplay a secondary character, again from amongst the United States Air Force personnel, as they are better suited to the action scenes in the scenario.
What marks Jack Frost out as a very different scenario for the Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game is not just the fact that the Player Characters are members of MAJESTIC, but that it is a science horror scenario. It is science that drives the Player Characters to investigate the Unnatural and only late into the their investigative efforts do they realise that what they face is beyond science or even beyond the remit of MAJESTIC with its obsession with obtaining the advanced technology of the Greys. Nevertheless, they have to rely on the scientific process, which lies outside the traditional means of investigating Lovecraftian horror and Lovecraftian investigative horror roleplaying games. As a consequence, both the Handler and her players need to make some adjustment in conducting the investigation and reading the majority of the handouts that take the form of instrument and sensor readouts. This is not to say that there are no traditional handouts, such as newspapers or letters, but they need to be searched for whilst under the watchful eyes of NRO Delta agents.

Physically, Jack Frost is very well done. The artwork is excellent, for the most part, and the handouts are all equally as good.

MAJESTIC has always been portrayed as the villain in the Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game and Jack Frost is no different. Except that the players get to see this from the inside, by roleplaying members of the programme who believe in its aims and know that it is doing the right thing. Their experiences in Willis, Alabama will change that outlook—if they survive. Jack Frost takes Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game through the looking glass to discover just how mercilessly cold it is with a shockingly frigid and fearfully difficult investigation.

In the far future, the Astral Union was invaded by the Strand Fleets of the Nephilim Colossi. It was totally unexpected and the enemy, having come another galaxy, unfathomable. Despite initial setbacks, the Astral Union drove the invaders out and the war was won. That was decades ago, and even today, remnants of the original invasion force, as well as individual Nephilim, can still be found lurking at the furthest reaches of the spatial translation Snap Rifts that bind the planetary systems of the Astral Union together. Perhaps the most significant technological development of the war was the mech. Before the war, it had been designed as an industrial machine for use in construction and mining, and later developed as a combat vehicle, but it rose to prominence during the defence of the Astral Union. Ion Core technology harnessed the latent psionic ability of all sentient beings using advanced A.I. systems to create a Sync-Bond between a mech and its user, enhancing the precision and dexterity of the Mech and enabling the Mech itself to develop a personality of its own and operate independently, but still linked to its Pilot. Today, Mechs are seen far and wide across the Astral Union, the bond between Pilot and Mech celebrated as they were a knight and his steed of old. Together, they adventure and explore, often helping where they can, like itinerant, if armed, ronin of old.

This is the future of Ion Heart: Solo Mech Exploration RPG.It is a solo journalling game published Parable Games, best known for the horror roleplaying game, Shiver – Role-playing Tales in the Strange & the Unknown. In the roleplaying game, the player will take the roles of both Pilot and Mech, who together explore a universe ravaged by war and now recovering, growing together and strengthening their bond. The roleplaying game provides prompts that will drive the story of their adventures that the player will record in short mission logs. These missions typically take the form of an ‘Exploration Loop’—arriving on a planet, discovering a settlement, encountering a Story Circuit, and engaging in combat and travel encounters, as necessary. A Story Circuit is a narrative arc consisting of six parts. The player needs to play through a minimum of three of these before his Pilot and Mech can play out the finale of the Story Circuit, and so complete its narrative before moving. The Story Circuit is pre-written, but the rest is created at the beginning of each loop. To play, Ion Heart: Solo Mech Exploration RPG needs nothing more than some six-sided dice and a means to record a journal.

Between them, the Pilot and the Mech are defined by Pilot Body and Pilot Presence, and Mech Brawn and Mech Reflex. Pilot Body is his physical capability and toughness, whilst Pilot Presence is his mental fortitude and reasoning skills. All of these start at zero, but are first modified by the Pilot’s Temperament and the Mech’s Weight Class. The Pilot is further defined by his Origin, either Apollonian, Varziss, Urvon, Chiros, Kirvae, and Mo’nau. The Apollonians are humans, whilst the rest are anthropomorphic species, roughly reptilian, ursine, bat-like—including being able to fly, centaur-like, and feline, respectively. The Pilot also has a Goal, either ‘Adventure forth’, ‘Return home’, or ‘Escape past’, and a Temperament, either ‘Outgoing’, ‘Reflective’, or ‘Mercurial’.

The Mech has a Class that can either be Light, Medium, or Heavy. This determines whether it favours speed, durability and powerful weapons, or a balance between the two, and thus its starting values for Mech Shielding and Brawn and Reflex modifiers. Each Mech has a Ranged Weapons System, Melee Weapons System, and an Auxiliary System, which will also help in combat. Since the end of the war with the Nephilim, all Mechs have been reconfigured or designed to have a civilian Specialisation and thus the capacity to be useful out of combat. This can be ‘Shepherd’, ‘Harvester’, or ‘Bridgebuilder’. All of this—for both Pilot and Mech—can rolled for or chosen by the player. Lastly, there is the Ion Core Sync Bond, which represents the connection between the Pilot and his Mech, and in play, determines how many Heroic actions or Ion Core engagements that can be conducted per day.

Pilot Name: Aeron
Pilot Origin: Kirvae
Pilot Temperament: Reflective
Pilot Goal: Escape Report
Pilot Presence 0 Pilot Body 0
Level 1
Ion Core Sync Bond 2
Mech Shielding 43
Mech Name:
Mech Weight Class: Medium
Attacks: 3
Mech Brawn 0
Mech Reflex 0
Weapons: Concussion Maul (Damage: 4+D6) [If you hit an enemy with this weapon add +1 to your defence rolls against them]; Auto Blaster (Damage: 3+D6) [You may make a free attack with this weapon when in ranged step of combat.]
Auxiliary system: Liquid-metal armaments
Battle Scars: 0
Mech Specialisation: Harvester
Mech Quirks: 0

At its core, Ion Heart is simple. When a player wants either his Pilot or his Mech to succeed, he rolls a single six-sided die and rolls of four or more means the attempt is successful. A roll of one is always a failure, whilst a roll of six is always a success. For the Pilot, bonuses can come from his Presence or Body as appropriate, but if he fails, the player can decide to have his Pilot undertake a Heroic Action. This automatically succeeds, but at the cost of a Sync Bond slot for that day. The Mech can operate by itself when the Pilot is not in the cockpit. In which case the bonuses for the Mech’s own Mech Brawn and Mech Reflex are used, and the roll required to succeed is still four or more. When a Mech has no instructions, it will revert to the Specialisation it has been programmed with.

Combat uses the same core mechanic, but on attacks, a roll of six is critical hit and inflicts more damage. Similarly, a roll of six to defend against an attack is a critical and deflects part of the damage back at the attacker. A round consists of three steps—Ranged, Melee, and Disengage. A Mech’s Level determines the number of attacks per round, but if the Pilot or Mech decides not to attack, they receive a bonus to the rolls to defend themselves. Damage reduces the Mech Shielding, and this is both when the Pilot is out of the Mech and in the Mech. If the Pilot is out of the Mech, it means that Pilot is not taking damage as such, but his ability to pilot the Mech is being affected.

The Ion Core of a Mech and it’s A.I. means that it can learn over time as it synchronises with the Pilot and it can also overcharge the Mech’s systems. There is no truly safe way to do this, as even if the Pilot and Mech have enough Sync Bond points—which determines the number of times it can be done per day—engaging the Ion Core can still damage the Mech and will damage the Mech if the number of times it is done exceeds the Sync Bond points. When the Ion Core is engaged, it provides the player with a number of choices, such as the aforementioned ‘Heroic Push’, which allows a failed Mech Brawn or Mech Reflex check to succeed; ‘Shields! Full Power!’, which partially restores Mech Shielding; and ‘Meteoric Thunderstrike!’ which enables a single attack that round and has it automatically succeed with extra damage inflicted. In the long term, through play and combat, the latter if the Mech Shielding is reduced to zero and the Mech is disabled, the Mech can acquire Mech Quirks such as ‘Gallant Protector’, which grants a bonus to Defence rolls if Mech Shielding is seriously reduced, and ‘Ocular Misalignment’, damaging its targeting optics! If there is an issue with the Ion Heart: Solo Mech Exploration RPG, it is that it is hard for the Pilot to improve in comparison to the Mech and the Mech is always more interesting than the Pilot as he has no special abilities or skills.

In terms of play and the ‘Exploration Loop’, Ion Heart provides the player with tables to generate its various parts. This includes its biome, a settlement and its amenities, which the Pilot can visit two of per day, Travelling Encounters-which can be friendly, neutral, or hostile, and a selection of enemies, from improved industrial units to one of the most feared mechs in the Astral Union, the Heriot Shieldbreaker. Together these establish a broad environment where the Pilot and Mech will adventure and explore, but what forms the basis the storytelling and the adventures are the Story Circuits. Two of these are provided in Ion Heart: Solo Mech Exploration RPG, ‘The Mech Circus’ and ‘Protecting the Herd’. In the first, the Pilot and Mech encounters Marsha’s Mecha Circus and get to enjoy a night at the circus, but with a Mech! In the second, the Pilot and the Mech find a rural town whose farmers are concerned something or someone has been interfering with their herds of Malhoons, so the Pilot and the Mech have to find the robo-rustlers! Both of these Story Circuits are short and can be played through in single long session of no more than two hours or several, very short sessions in which a single event is played out and recorded.

Physically, the Ion Heart: Solo Mech Exploration RPG is a nicely done roleplaying game. It is fetchingly presented in swathes of primary colours and easy to read and understand.

The Ion Heart: Solo Mech Exploration RPG is a tough little game given that until a Pilot and Mech survives a Story Circuit and can go up a Level, there is not much in the way of modifiers to affect the dice rolls needed for many actions. This is why the Sync Bond and engaging the Ion Core is so important as it can get the Pilot and Mech out of a tight scrape, but it is more important early on in the game when there are fewer modifiers to skill rolls and fewer chances to engage the Ion Core with any degree of safety. However, careful play and some luck will get the Pilot and the Mech through some situations. In the process, the player will discover a rather charming little journalling roleplaying game, one that is engagingly optimistic in its tone and the stories presented in its Story Circuits, which makes the Ion Heart: Solo Mech Exploration RPG a very welcome change in comparison to many other journalling games.

Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #14: Thieves of Cold Corner is a scenario for Goodman Games’ Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game and the thirteenth scenario for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set. Scenarios for Dungeon Crawl Classics tend be darker, grimmer, and even pulpier than traditional Dungeons & Dragons scenarios, veering close to the Swords & Sorcery subgenre. Scenarios for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set are set in and around the City of the Black Toga, Lankhmar, the home to the adventures of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser and the creation of author Fritz Leiber. The city is described as an urban jungle, rife with cutpurses and corruption, guilds and graft, temples and trouble, whores and wonders, and more. Under the cover the frequent fogs and smogs, the streets of the city are home to thieves, pickpockets, burglars, cutpurses, muggers, and anyone else who would skulk in the night! Which includes the Player Characters. And it is these roles which the Player Characters get to be in Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #13: Treachery in the Beggar City, small time crooks trying to make a living and a name for themselves, but without attracting the attention of either the city constabulary or worse, the Thieves’ Guild!

Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #14: Thieves of Cold Corner is a scenario for Third Level Player Characters and is both an archetypal scenario for use with the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set, and like both Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #8: The Land of the Eight Cities and Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #13: Treachery in the Beggar City before it, it takes the Player Characters far beyond the walls of the City of Sevenscore Thousand Smokes. However, it is less of a sourcebook than either of those scenarios, although it does expand the world of Nehwon. Inspired by two stories by Fritz Leiber, ‘Stardock’ and ‘The Snow Women’, it takes the Player Character far to the north to Gnamph Nar and then along the frozen banks of the Mangrishik River to the foot of the Trollstep Mountains, and then from there climb over a mountain pass and down into the Coldwaste. They are providing escort for the merchant-lord Arishot who has arranged to meet the Snow Clan’s at its midwinter camp at Cold Corner and purchase from the clan, a cache of gemestones. Not just rubies, emeralds, and sapphires, but also snow-diamonds, the fabled invisible gemstones said to be worth a king’s ransom. Of course, being good thieves and cutpurses, they have no intention of simply escorting Arishot there and back again to Lankhmar. Instead, this is an opportunity for larceny—and not just petty larceny—but it will be far from easy. Anyone carrying out such a theft is sure to earn the ire of the Snow Clan and it will not only attempt to get the gems back, but is sure to want to have its revenge too. So, anyone who can steal snow-diamonds from the Snow Clan, escape its clutches, and get back to Lankhmar is certain to earn a reputation worthy of any thief in the City of the Black Toga.
The scenario does really need a Player Character who is a Wizard as otherwise they will all be sorely tested throughout the scenario by the abominable weather they will be subject to in the second half. The adventure itself can begin into two ways. The Player Characters can either be hired by the Thieves’ Guild as members in good standing, or they can be thieves who just happened to be in the same dive when a band of Thieves’ Guild members in good standing got hired to do the job and thought they would try and get there first. Either way, the Player Characters will have another band of thieves to contend with throughout the scenario who will attempt to steal the hoard of gemstones before they do or steal it from the Player Characters once they have. The action really begins in Cold Corner, the midwinter camp of the Snow Clan. Here amongst the ice and snow, under the trees, the Player Characters will have to put up with loud and boisterous youths issuing challenges involving ribald rhymes, drunken merchants and drunken barbarians, and perhaps even their rivals lurking, ready to pounce, but worst of all—the women! Known as the Snow Witches, they suffer from both xenophobia and misandry, so men, particularly men from outside the clan are subject to their most severe ire. They also control the clan’s magic, so they are powerful as well.
Of course, once the Player Characters—or their rivals—have made the theft, in their eyes, the xenophobic and misandrist outlook of the Snow Clan’s Snow Witches has been proven correct. Of course, the satisfaction being proven that you are right is not going to be enough and as the Player Characters flee back up and over the Trollstep Mountains the way they came, the Snow Witches bring their most powerful magic down upon the miscreants. Over the course of three days, they are beset by a fiercesome storm of freezing ice and snow as a result of this magic, impeding their flight and forcing them to find sufficient shelter should they freeze. Three such locations are described along the way—if they can recall where they were on the journey there (and doing so may require a little Luck to be expended)—as are the truly nasty weather conditions day and night and the menfolk who have been sent after them by the Snow Witches and are not expected to come back without the gemstones or the bodies of the Player Characters. It is a nasty challenge from start to finish, but any Wizard in the party will have a chance to shine as his continued efforts can alleviate the very worst of the Snow Witches’ storms, whilst all of the Player Characters have opportunities to find some treasure and even strike back if they believe themselves to be capable.
In addition to the stats for the various NPCs, the scenario includes for the ‘Skald’s Challenge’, the rhyming battles consisting of spontaneous songs and poems. The Player Characters will probably be forced to engaged in one of these whilst in Cold Corner and will do so again during their flight south. This time though, the consequences are deadly.
Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #14: Thieves of Cold Corner is a relatively short afair, probably lasting two sessions’ worth of play, perhaps three at most. If they succeed, it does leave the Player Characters rich—though not as rich as they might have hoped once a fence has had his cut—and thus subject to the attention of every other thief in Lankhmar. They might come away with one or two nice items in the meantime. Rounding out is another entry from ‘The Phlogistonic Eye Sees All!’, this time a report from Gen Con 2022, though not as good as the one detailed in The Goodman Games 2022 Yearbook.

Physically, Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #14: Thieves of Cold Corner is well presented. The artwork and cartography are both good, the artwork in particular, having a very frigid feel to it. That said, it would have been nice if the scenario had included a better map of the area where the adventure takes place and the route that the Player Characters are likely to take back over the mountains.
Unlike the earlier scenarios, Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #8: The Land of the Eight Cities and Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #13: Treachery in the Beggar City, before it, in Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #14: Thieves of Cold Corner, the Player Characters are very unlikely to be going back since opportunities for crime are light on the ground and word their involvement in the theft from the Snow Clan is likely to spread. So it is much less of a sourcebook then the previous two scenarios. As a scenario, Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #14: Thieves of Cold Corner provides a clash of cultures, temperatures, and temperaments for a more grueling experience than most adventures for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set. The players and their characters may find it just enough just to survive, but if they are clever and a little lucky, they might get a bit more adventure and reward in addition to their frostbitten extremities and a box of gemstones.

In the far future of broken landscapes, stretched landscapes, and lost landscapes there is often only the appearance of the Gunslinger and the power of his Gun to bring order to the mouldering settlements and ruins of the uncertain past, to drive back the strange creatures, lurking, ready to pounce and rend the unwary, and to stop the ambitious and the foolish attracted to the power of magic which threatens what remains. The Gunslinger is a wanderer, a member of a brotherly order, arriving unbidden one day, dispensing justice and order, stopping the monster, perhaps engendering a little hope, all before finding the next Slip Door and the next world. Their peripatetic existence is the only constant and perhaps the only certainty they know. This is the Drifted World of We Deal in Lead, an Old School Renaissance-style roleplaying game published by By Odin’s Beard. It is set in a post-apocalyptic dark and weird west that combines a stripped-down presentation with the mechanics inspired by Cairn, Into the Odd, and Knave and it is very much inspired by Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series of novels, but also has the feel of a weird Spaghetti Western with genre-hopping possibilities.

Omega City – Ashcan Edition is the first supplement for We Deal in Lead and presents something very different, almost a point of permanence, even though, like much of the Drifted World, it is subject to decay and decline. It arose out of the Dungeon23 challenge, the aim of which was to design a mega dungeon in one year, one room per day, over twelve levels. Each day creators would add something to their dungeons, but creators also switched format, one of which was ‘City23’. Omega City was born of this switch, a city inspired by two things. One was the city of Lud from The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands, part of the series that inspired we We Deal in Lead, and the other was the author’s home city of Edmonton, Canada. This being the Drifted World of We Deal in Lead, the universe is still breaking down and so this supplement mixes more than it matches its various locations, drawing on a wide variety of locations, situations, and creatures from different time periods and genres. In this instance, the actual setting and its disparate nature means that the designer had more freedom of design than his counterparts working on a more traditional Dungeon23 creation.

Omega City does not so much detail individual locations within a city, but provide small regions—a total of twelve—each with five or six buildings, locations, and landmarks. These are presented over a two-page spread, with the places listed on the left-hand page and a corresponding map on the opposite side. Each location is accorded a listing of two or three bullet points. Each location is accorded a listing of two or three bullet points. For example, Region 9 has five locations, a ‘Shanty Town’, a ‘Cracked Riverbed’, a ‘Lumber Mill’, a ‘Colossal Skeleton’, and a ‘Writhing Mass Grave’. The Shanty Town is described as a “Collection of lost souls and broken travellers”, being home to “Residents from different worlds and times, the languages spoken number in thousands”, and the inhabitants suffer as “More and more victims vanish each night, lost to the red claws in the sands”. Meanwhile, the Lumber Mill is “Overgrown with pungent thorns that ooze vicious orange liquid”, as “Flies swarm constantly, adding to the ooze”, and “Great grey swarms cover the dead trees of the nearby woods”. All of the entries are like this, a clash of the old and new, of the ordinary and the outré.

However, amidst the ‘Burned Out gas Station’, ‘Pitted Gibbet’, ‘Spiral Slough’, ‘Corpse-Corrupted Reservoir’, ‘Flesh-Warping Runoff Pond’, and ‘Partially Phased Office Building’, there is no room for the individual. There are groups of people, such as at the ‘Shanty Town’, but no individuals, and also no hooks. The individual descriptions are intriguing, but possibly not quite enough to get the Gunslingers to investigate every case. Also, ‘Omega City’ itself does not have an overview or broad description. To be fair, both are due to the intermittent nature of the creation process involved in Dungeon23, the creator coming back to the process day-by-day rather than sitting down and working at it. On the other hand, this nature means that lack of connections between locations means that the Warden—as the Game Master is known in We Deal in Lead—can pull them out and insert them into her own content as much as she can develop her own hooks to them.
Physically, Omega City is not yet fully formed. Only an Ashcan version is available. It is handwritten and not always easy to read, whilst the map, though serviceable, are rough. The writing though, is by intent short and punchy, often spurring more questions than answers.
Omega City – Ashcan Edition is by its very nature rough and ready, but it does present some sixty or more locations that present mouldering mysteries and decaying dangers in a minimalist fashion that the Warden can use and interpret as is her wont. In this way, Omega City – Ashcan Edition can serve as a series of prompts for the Warden’s own city or prompts for her own version of ‘Omega City’.