This was *MY* Traveller.  In 1982 I could not get enough Science Fiction.  All the books I read were sci-fi, I was eagerly anticipating the third Star Wars movie that we had heard was called "Revenge of the Jedi" and video games were all the rage.  When I saw this book in the Mail Order Hobby Shop catalog (or maybe it was Games Plus) I thought I had to try it out.  In my recollections, I had ordered both Traveller and Pacesetter Chill at this time, but logically with my paper route money at the time I am sure I only got one at a time.

It came in the mail, it was summer I recall, likely near my birthday, and I jumped right in. 

It was not what I expected.  

By this point, I had been playing D&D for nearly three years, and in earnest (every weekend) for the last two. There were no classes here, no levels, just skills.  It was a shift, but it was a lot of fun.  I recall I had more fun making planetary systems than characters really. I even wrote some BASIC programs for the TRS-80 to do some of the math.

Sadly like those cassette tapes I stored my BASIC programs on, my Traveller book was lost to the sands of time.  I can't even really recall what happened to it. Sad because today it goes for so much on eBay!

Thankfully for me, and everyone else, you can get the PDF and Print on Demand (POD) of the book from DriveThruRPG.  I grabbed it as soon as the PDF was out.  I wish I had gotten the original POD though.  The newer PDF and POD has been replaced with a far better scan, but the cover is the Black and Red of the earlier Traveller books and not the "blue book" I came to know.

Much like Holmes' Basic D&D "Blue Book" combined the Original D&D "Little Brown Books" and other material into a single volume, this Traveller "Blue Book" combined the three "Little Black Books" into a single volume with new material.  This new material included Book 0 "An Introduction to Traveller," some of "Double Adventure 1," and more material. 

The Traveller Book (1982)

160 pages, PDF (Hardcover PoD; original softcover) Color cover art, black & white interior art with red accents.

The Traveller Book was published in 1982 and was the follow-up to the highly successful Traveller boxed set.  Since the boxed set printing and reprints there had been a number of well-received supplements, in particular, Supplement 0 An Introduction to Traveller, DA1 Double Adventure (Shadows), Book 04 Mercenary, and Book 05 High Guard.  These made up what I largely felt was the core of Classic Traveller (or Original Traveller as I thought of it then). Much like how D&D combined their Original game with many supplements to make Holmes' Basic D&D (and later AD&D) these materials were re-edited and re-combined into a new book/game.  This became the Traveller Book.

At the time nearly everyone claimed it was not just a step up in terms of learning Traveller, it was an advanced leap in playing Traveller.

The Traveller Book contains everything from the Little Black Books of the Classic Traveller boxed set as well as new introductory material from Book 0.  

You can read my review of the Classic Traveller boxed set here, https://theotherside.timsbrannan.com/2022/05/review-classic-basic-traveller.html. Today I want to talk about what makes this book new and special. 

For starters, there is a lot of text here that is familiar, but not exactly the same.  The editors took some time to clean up the text and make things a lot clearer. Additionally, there is more art; both of the decorative sort (Captain Alexander Jamison now has a ponytail) and of the help sort (images of weapons and starships).

Among other improvements in text, there are also plenty of redesigned tables and charts.  While the LBBs had charm they did not have a lot of space formatted for digest-size (5½" x 8½").  The Traveller book is a full-sized 8½" x 11".  At the time people even commented that it was a proper sized RPG now to go with the likes of AD&D.

 The sections on worlds and encounters are also expanded. Animals in particular get more text and even more examples.  Trade and Commerce also get more text. My Classic Traveller boxed set had very little on this.  This is closer to the 1980s reprint.  The one the new Facsimile Edition is based on.  It also looks like the Psionics section is more detailed.

There is a "new" (new to anyone coming from the boxed set) section on the Referee's Guide to Adventuring.  Since this is really pre-Traveller as a system AND a setting, there is some good advice here on running any sort of Sci-Fi/Space Adventure game.  There are hints of Star Trek, Star Wars and lots and lots of Classic "Hard" Sci-Fi like you would see from Clarke or Asimov. But it is also none of the things entirely.  I did say "Pre-" but in reality, Traveller was building its universe right before our eyes. Again, much like D&D did.

Also reprinted here is the adventure Shadows from Double Adventure 01. 

The last section, The Traveller's Guide to the Universe introduces us to The Imperium. This is the important setting for Traveller and what sets it apart from other Sci-Fi RPGs.  The history, both in-game and real-world, of the Imperium is impressive and much like that of Dune, Star Wars, or Star Trek, absolutely daunting.  I will admit I read this section many, many times and wondered what would fiction set in any period of this history be like?   Back in 1982-3 I did not have much other than this book, some friends that had played (but were not looking for new players), and a growing case of what I call "Traveller Envy".  Today there are wikis and blogs and entire websites devoted to Traveller and the Imperium.  My cup is full, running over and there are still more cups on the table waiting for me to pick them up.

Recommendations

For ANYONE who is interested in the Classic Traveller, I would say get this book first before looking into the vast catalog of older Classic Traveller books.  There is so much out there and I am going to only scratch the surface this month.  In fact "The Traveller Series" in this book (page 159) covers everything published to this point and where they all fit in.  Including all the board games.   I am going to need to spend some time talking about those as well.

Here we are at the end of another April A to Z Blogging Challenge. I "won," that is I completed the Challenge.  That's not such a stretch for me since I tend to write every day anyway.  For me success is whether not I had an interesting theme (I think I did) and whether or not I got some interaction on the posts (I did).  "Success" for me in this case is about the journey and not the end.

This year's theme Conspiracy Theories was suggested to me by my wife and I really had a lot of fun with it.  The conspiracy theory part was for all the visitors from the A to Z, but the NIGHT SHIFT RPG applications were for my regular audience.   

I do hope that both audiences enjoyed both sections.  

Ultimately I hope that some of my regular audience found some new blogs thanks to the A to Z AND I hope some of the A to Z folks looked into the NIGHT SHIFT RPG.

I have not crunched all the numbers, but my hits were significantly higher this past month.   My Twitter engagement was also quite higher.

Like previous years, I made a Pinterest board for all my posts so if you want to see what I did you have a visual guide.

Follow Timothy's board "April 2022 A to Z of Conspiracy Theories" on Pinterest.

Though this one is less visual than last year's Monsters.

Also, unlike last year, there is no book these are all going in.  It was just a bit of fun.  Though I did do enough research on the side for a new book, that will wait until other projects are complete.

Once again I am considering what to do for 2023.  No ideas yet. I suppose I could do what I had originally planned for this year, but I have less excitement for that now.  I DO however know exactly what I am going to do in 2024!  

So until then!

http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/

Oh.

I suppose that I shouldn't let "May the Fourth" go by unremarked.  It is Sci-Fi month here after all.

So for my small contribution here is the most Science Fiction of all musicians, Thomas Dolby featuring George Clinton on "May the Cube Be With You."

May the Cube and the Fourth and the Force be with you!

It's May and I want to spend the entire month talking about Sci-Fi RPGs, and most of this month talking about Traveller.   Traveller has a long and storied history in both the RPG world and for me personally. It is the second (or the third, more on that) RPG I ever owned after D&D.  

I say second but my memory is foggy and it could have been Traveller or it could have been Chill.  I think for my horror cred I like to claim it was Chill, but in the early 80s, I was all about Science Fiction.  So really it was most likely to be Traveller.  I picked up the Traveller Book and tried to teach to it to myself, but my groups were very D&D focused and no one wanted to play it.  The groups that did play it were all older than I was and they did not want some "D&D kid" in their "Serious Sci-Fi" groups.  I was able to more traction on Star Frontiers a few years later.  Must have been the TSR bias of the time.  I do wish I still had my original Traveller Book though.   I did manage to score an Original Traveller boxed set of the "Little Black Books" so I guess that is even better.

Today I am going to review Traveller and start at the very beginning.  There is just no way I could through everything for Traveller.  I'd need more than a month, I'd need a whole new blog, so instead, I was going to going to concentrate on some core products to get people into the game and a few choice ones that have meaning to me. 

I will admit right up front that I am no Traveller expert.  So it is very, very likely I will miss a few a things.  Just let me, and others, know in the comments.   

Ok, as my friend Greg said on Sunday, let's get this party started!

Classic Traveller

For this review, I am going to be referring to my 1977 Game Designers' Workshop edition of the boxed set of Traveller.   I am also joining to be comparing them the PDFs of the Classic Traveller Facsimile Edition from Game Designers' Workshop / Far Future Enterprises on DriveThruRPG. 

Side Note:  Far Future Enterprises bought the rights to various GDW games a while back and published this pdf as far back as 2001.  They own the rights to republish Traveller, 2300 AD, Twilight: 2000, and Dark Conspiracy. They also work with Mongoose and other publishers of Traveller material.  But more on that in future posts.  Suffice to say that from my point of view they have been carrying the torch of Traveller high since 2000.  Among other things they publish a full CD-ROM of Traveller material that I would love to grab someday. 

The Boxed Set

The Traveller Boxed Set from GDW was released in 1977.  GDW was located in Normal, IL which is along what I learned was a trail the lead from Lake Geneva, WI, and Chicago, IL all the way down to the University of Illinois in Urbana, IL, Illinois State in Normal, IL down to Southern Illinois Univerity in Carbondale, IL.  Tim Kask was an SIU grad, GDW was in Normal, Mayfair would later be founded in Skokie just outside of Chicago, and Judges Guild was founded in Decatur, IL.  I basically grew up surrounded by the growing Table Top RPG scene. 

Much like Dungeons & Dragons of the time, Traveller came in a digest-sized box with three books.  Instead of there being "3 Little Brown Books" there are "3 Little Black Books."   Also, like D&D future printings would combine these books though in different ways. 

PDF Note: The Classic Traveller Facsimile Edition also includes a preface for the whole set of books and gives a brief history of their publications.  This is a great value-add for the PDF.  According to it what I am reviewing today is "Basic Traveller" and published in 1981.  Basic Revised was published in 1981 and the Traveller Book (my first purchase) was in 1982.  

Book 1: Characters and Combat

This is the character generation book and maybe one of the most famous bit of RPG lore ever.  Yes. In Traveller you can die in Character creation!  

I should also point out that very, very often in my conversations with people over the years that Character Creation for Travelller was very much in line with what we would call "Session 0" today.  Everyone worked on their character, developed a back story (yes in 1977) and then got together.  Even the starting character example is a 42-year-old with a pension (and a cutlass it seems). Trust me, at 42 I already had backstory (and a wife, kids, a mortgage, bills...)

Character creation is largely a random affair, but not wholly so. There are choices to be made along the way.  How a character acquires skills and expertise largely depends on which service they were in and how they got there.  You can enlist or you can be drafted. At this point, all characters were assumed to have served in some form of the service. Citizens don't mortgage their pension on a beat second-hand starship to go galavanting across known space. 

As you work through character creation you can go for a few terms of service. This gives you more skill, more experience, more credits, and makes you older.  As in real life, there are benefits and detriments to age.  

Skills are detailed next.  This is going to come up again and again, but let's talk about it here first. The Computers of Traveller are the computers of 1977.  Not very advanced and require special expertise to use them.  Today of course I am writing this post in one window, monitoring email and chat in another, watching the weather in another, and reading the PDF in yet another.  I have dozens of active programs running that I am paying attention to and who knows how many more running in the background.  I am not going to apply 21st-century biases though to these rules.  Let's just leave them as-is for now and see how future versions of this game treat it.   For me I am going to assume there are computers (with a lower case c) that do all the work we think of today and anyone can use and then there are specialized Computers (with an upper case C) that do specialized work, like today's supercomputers.  

Side Note: The best super-computer of 1977 was the 80mhz, 64 bit Cray-1. It cost $8M and was capable of 160 MFLOPS. For comparison, my three-year-old smartphone runs at 130ghz and is capable of 658 GFLOPS. Newer phones are more than double that. 4000x's the power at 1/10,000th of the cost. And I can put it into my pocket. 

After your terms of service are figured out along with your skills then comes the time to learn combat.  Combat always gets more ink than say hacking a computer since there are so many things going on and a failure usually means death.  Also, as an aside, there are a lot of bladed weapons in Traveller. I attribute this to two different elements. The first and obvious is Star Wars, though Traveller obviously draws more from Dune than Star Wars which only came out in May of 77.  The other and likely more important source is D&D.  For the obvious reasons.  The end effect is that officers in Traveller often carry swords in my mind. 

Combat gives us our basic roll for the game and the introduction of the Traveller basic mechanic. The PDF is a little clearer on this than my print book. Roll 2d6 and beat a roll of 8.  This is modified by various skills and experiences.  

Wounds affect the character's Strength, Dexterity, and Endurance. The more wounds you get, the worse those stats are.  D&D would not do this in earnest until 4th Edition. 

PDF Notes:  My copy is dedicated "To Mary Beth" and the PDF (and I think the Traveller Book) are dedicated "To Darlene."  There are other minor differences as well. The PDF for example has a "Personal Data and History" aka a Character Sheet on page 28 (36 for the PDF). 

Book 2: Starships

This is what makes Traveller, well, Traveller. There are two types of travel dealt with here, Interplanetary (worlds within the same star system) and Interstellar (different star systems). Also if you are afraid of math this book is going to give you a bad day.   

The main focus of this book in my mind is buying a starship and keeping it running.  Starships are expensive and in Traveller, those expenses are more keenly felt than say keeping up a castle in D&D.  If your castle runs out of food you can leave to go buy some. In a starship, in space, your options are more limited.  In space, no one can hear your stomach grumble. 

I have no idea if the economies of Traveller work. I mean is 2 tons of fuel really worth the year's salary of a gunner?  No idea. I am going to handwave that and say it works.

There is also a lot on Starship construction here too. Before I could get anyone to play I would write up sheets of starships and their costs based on what I thought was cool.  Kinda wish I had a couple of those. The only one I can remember was the FTL Lucifer.  It was designed to be small, but fast.  It would later make it's way into Star Frontiers, but that is another tale.

We get some details on starship combat and some basic world data.

Book 2 also covers experience and various drugs.  I get the feeling these were put here to pad out Book 2 so all three books were the same size; 44 pages. 

PDF Notes: The PDF has more art, in particular how to orbit a planet and the necessary equations made more clear.  Like Book 1 for Characters, this volume has sheets for ships. The PDF also adds a Trade and Commerce section.

Book 3: Worlds and Adventures

This book covers worlds.  And if there was one thing I did more than creating starships that never traveled to other worlds, it was to create worlds that starships would never travel to.  World creation was fun.  

This book also covers various personal equipment and various encounter types.

Note at this point there are no aliens, no Imperiums, and really nothing other than the most basic adventuring outline.  Very much like OD&D in that respect.  I like the psionic system in Traveller and maybe I should explore the differences between it and the one in Eldritch Wizardry for D&D. 

The last part of this book covers Psionics. Maybe one of the reasons I like to draw a pretty hard line between Magic and Psionics is that one is for Fantasy (and D&D) and the other is for Sci-Fi (and Traveller).

PDF Notes: The PDF again has more art (vehicles) as well as hex maps for working out star systems.

Final Notes

How does one review a classic like Traveller?  How does one compare an RPG from 1977 to the standards of 2022?  It's not easy under normal circumstances, but with Traveller it is easier.  Why?  Because so much of this game was ahead of its time you could brush it off, get some d6s and play it out of the box as is today.  More so than OD&D is I think.

But both games are classics, no, Classics. With that capital C. It is no wonder that now, 45 years later, Traveller is still the goto science-fiction game.

As I move through the editions and versions I'll also talk about all the other materials that have been used with Traveller (board games for example) and how these "3LBBs" expanded to cover an entire universe. 

Nice meeting of topics here today.  It is May which this year will be the start of my Sci-Fi month.  We have the normal May the Fourth celebrations, and Mayday for Traveller was yesterday.  Plus we get Star Trek Strange New World premiering this week.  AND there is a new D&D Spelljamer on the horizon. So there are a lot of great reasons to celebrate SciFi. 

I also just got finished with my A to Z Challenge for April where I did Conspiracy Theories.  I leaned heavily on a lot of UFO-based ones.  So my appetite has been whetted for more.  And today is Monstrous Monday!  So I thought I would bring all of these ideas together today into a special Monstrous Monday!

Greys (Zeta Reticulians)

Of all the alien species that have purportedly visited the Earth few are as popular as the Greys.  These creatures are also known as Zeta Reticulians since they supposedly come from the Zeta Reticuli star system, approximately 40 ly from Earth.  This is based on a drawing from one of the most famous alien abductees ever, Betty Hill.  

Greys are called such due to their skin color. The skin seems to be a uniform grey.  While some are depicted as not wearing clothes, others have suggested that they are wearing skin-tight suits of the same color as their skin to protect them from Earth's atmosphere.  They typically stand 4 to 5ft in height (1.2 to 1.5 meters), are hairless, with large black eyes.  They have no ears nor a nose, save for small slits or holes where such external sense organs would be.  Their bodies are small, thin, and somewhat elongated. Their heads however are large with large foreheads giving the impression of large brains inside. Their hands are long with long delicate fingers. They typically only have four fingers (three fingers and a thumb) per hand, though there are reports of "hybrids" that appear to be greys with human eyes and five fingers per hand.

They do not speak but instead communicate via a form of telepathy. 

Their purpose with humanity is still unknown.  They may not even know themselves just yet since all evidence seems to point to them observing and experimenting on humans. Their experiments in removing eggs and sperm as reported by abductees, and the existence of hybrid forms at least point to an interest in our reproductive abilities.  It is postulated that they are using humans to help deplete their own lessening numbers.

Grey (Dungeons & Dragons 5e)

Grey (NIGHT SHIFT)

No. Appearing: 3-12 (3d4)
AC: 6
Move: 30 ft.
Hit Dice: 2-4
Special: Cause fear, psychic abilities (chosen at random), telekinesis, telepathy, Can't use magic
XP Value: Varies

Greys are aliens from the Zeta Reticuli star system. They have enhanced psychic abilities, but are vulnerable to all forms of magic.  They never speak but communicate via telepathy.  A group of Greys are typically a scouting party with various scientists onboard their spaceship. They will abduct humans or cattle, do experiments on them, erase their memories and return them to where they found them.

Grey (OSR)

Frequency: Very Rare
Number Appearing: 1d4+3 (1d10+2)
Alignment: Neutral [True Neutral]
Movement: 90' (30') [9"]
Armor Class: 7-5 [12-14]
Hit Dice: 
   Scientist: 2d8+2* (11 hp)
   Monitor: 3d8+3** (17 hp)
   Leader: 4d8+8** (26 hp)
To Hit AC 0: 18, 16, 15  (+1, +3, +4)
Attacks: 0 or 1
Damage: None, stun 
Special: Cause fear, paralysis, mind blank, telepathy, vulnerable to magic
Save: Monster 3
Morale: 10 (10)
Treasure Hoard Class: Special
XP:
   Scientist: 35 (OSE) 47 (LL)
   Monitor: 100 (OSE) 135 (LL)
   Leader: 275 (OSE) 290 (LL)

Str: 7,9, 11 (-1, 0, 0) Dex: 16 (+2) Con: 14, 14, 16 (+1, +1, +2) Int: 22, 18, 18 (+5, +3, +3) Wis: 16 (+2) Cha: 14 (+1)

Greys come in three castes; Scientists, Monitors, and Leaders.  Scientists perform the experiments, leaders lead the missions, and are the fighters of the group.  Monitors are a blend of the two, acting as leaders amongst the scientists.  The castes are not hierarchical, they are designed so that each role is filled by the most capable individual.  A group of greys encountered outside of the ships will all be scientists with at least one member a monitor or leader. 

Greys have psionic abilities to cause fear, paralysis by touch (save vs. Paralysis or be frozen for one minute), and to erase the memories of their victims.   Scientists do not attack. They leave this to the Leaders and if needed the monitors. 

Additionally, greys have no concept of magic, they save at -2 against all spells and take an additional +1 point damage from magical attacks. 

--

I might tweak these a bit more, but so far they look great to me.

As its title suggests Bayt al Azif – A magazine for Cthulhu Mythos roleplaying games is a magazine dedicated to roleplaying games of Lovecraftian investigative horror. Published by Bayt al Azif it includes content for both Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition from Chaosium, Inc. and Trail of Cthulhu from Pelgrane Press, which means that its content can also be used with Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game and The Fall of DELTA GREEN. Published in March, 2022, Bayt al Azif Issue #04 does not include any content for use with the latter two roleplaying games, but instead specifically includes three scenarios—stated for both Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition and Trail of Cthulhu (and therefore would actually work with The Fall of DELTA GREEN if the Keeper made the adjustments necessary), discussion of various aspects of Lovecraftian investigative horror, interviews, an introduction to Call of Cthulhu in Finland, an overview of Lovecraftian investigative horror roleplaying in 2020, and more. All of which, once again, comes packaged in a solid, full colour, Print On Demand book.

Bayt al Azif Issue #04 opens with editorial, ‘Houses of the Unholy’, which celebrates the fortieth anniversary of Call of Cthulhu in 2021 and its influences, before diving into ‘Sacrifices’, the letters pages. The inclusion of a letters pages lifts Bayt al Azif above being just a supplement, and whilst the letters are most congratulatory, they continue the role begun in Bayt al Azif Issue #03, that of beginning to create and build a community. The more fulsome content gets underway with ‘Cthulhu in 2020: A Retrospective’. Witten by Dean Engelhardt of CthulhuReborn.com—publisher of Convicts & Cthulhu: Call of Cthulhu Roleplaying in the Penal Colonies of 18th Century Australia and The Apocthulhu Roleplaying Game, this covers the releases, major and minor, through the year, from each of the various publishers, beginning with Chaosium, Inc., before moving on to Stygian Fox, Golden Goblin Press, and Sons of the Singularity. Amateur publications and magazines are not ignored, including Bayt al Azif, and the author also covers Trail of Cthulhu from Pelgrane Press and Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game from Arc Dream Publishing, plus numerous other Cthulhu horror-themed roleplaying games, such as the Sandy Petersen’s Cthulhu Mythos series from Sandy Petersen Games, Campo De Mitos: A Campaign Setting of Lovecraftian Mythology Based in El Campo De Gibraltar from Mindscape Publishing, and Whispers in the Dark for use with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition from Saturday Morning Scenarios. It does touch upon a handful of titles available on the Miskatonic Repository, which to be fair, the magazine could never hope to cope with given the number released each year. It covers a lot of smaller, non-Call of Cthulhu titles too, before examining a few then forthcoming titles awaiting fulfilment on Kickstarter. At the time of publication, there were surprising few of them. Each of the various entries is accompanied by a thumbnail description, enough detail to spur the reader’s interest, but not really a review—although the author does offer an opinion in places. As with Bayt al Azif Issue #03, it dispenses with the references to individual reviews on Reviews from R’lyeh included in previous entries in the series, which to be fair saves spaces as more and more titles are covered. That said, there is scope in Bayt al Azif for reviews, even reviews of titles taken from the Miskatonic Repository if it was highly curated and a mix of the best and the most interesting reviewed. Otherwise, as in previous issues, ‘Cthulhu in 2020: A Retrospective’ is an extensive overview, which again nicely chronicles the year keeps us abreast of anything that the reader may have missed or forgotten, especially for the smaller titles.

Bayt al Azif Issue #04 continues to reprint scenarios originally published in German in the magazine, Cthulhus Rus. This time, there is only one of these though ,the mini scenario, ‘Ultima Ratio’. Meaning ‘Final Argument’, this is set in the nineteen thirties and inspired as so many scenarios are for Call of Cthulhu by a certain airship of the period. Written by Carsten Pohl, it is a one-shot designed for three players to be played in a hour or so. It begins en media res, with the Investigators awakening to find themselves in a strange situation with no idea of quite how they got there or what they are doing. It is an intense little situation which the Keeper will need to study carefully, but for the Keeper one of the pleasures of the scenario is what is an extensive set of playtest notes given the length of ‘Ultima Ratio’. This do help with the staging and explore some of the possible outcomes given its brevity. The second scenario in Bayt al Azif Issue #04 is French. ‘They Are Real’ originally appeared in the magazine, Di6dent #7, as ‘Ils sont réels’. Written by Guillaume Agostini, this is a time-hopping, puzzle box of a scenario which takes the Investigators from the scene of a suicide in an apartment in Toulouse in 1931 back and forth across southwest France to places far beyond their imagination and then beyond that! It has a very M.C. Escher-like quality and makes for an intriguing, if linear one-shot. It does require some development in places upon the part of the Keeper to expand upon certain scenes and so is not ready to run as is. The third scenario is ‘The Box of Sathla’ and is Finnish, originally appearing in Seikkalija #8 as ‘Sathlan Kuutio’ in 1991. This is actually the companion piece to Teppo Toivonen’s ‘Never-Ending Darkness: The History of Cthulhu in Finland’, a short but illuminating examination of both roleplaying and the growth of Call of Cthulhu in Finland.This coninued exploration of how Call of Cthulhu has travelled and been played outside of the English speaking hobby is one of more fascianting strands in Bayt al Azif, and hopefully there will be more of them in future issues (including Korea). In the meantime, the article highlights how it took a few years for Call of Cthulhu to arrive in a Finland and the effect of this delay can be seen in ‘The Box of Sathla’, it not being as sophisticated a scenario as was being published by Chaosium by the early nineties. This is not to say that ‘The Box of Sathla’ is bad scenario, but rather that it does does show its age in terms of plotting and the more muscular foes to be faced by the Investigators. Although originally appearing in Finnish, ‘The Box of Sathla’ takes place in New England and potentially into Lovecraft County. A Boston bookstore owner comes to the Investigators with a strange box which he wants to find out more information about. The box is very strange indeed, seeming to have ties to Ancient Egypt and the Salem witch trials. When asked, the bookstore owner reveals that the box belongs to his good for nothing brother who is conspiring with several strange disreputables, and that the strange history of the box confirms his suspicions. He asks the Investigators to look into his brother and his friends, and when the box is stolen under odd circumstances—though not so odd for Call of Cthulhu—the Investigators must relocate the box and determine exactly what the brother is up. This reveals some dark doings in the woods near Salem and a confrontation with powerful forces of the Mythos. ‘The Box of Sathla’ is overpowered and slightly over-the-top, but not without its charm. It would certainly be easy enough for the Keeper to adjust the potency of its antagonists if necessary.

The fortieth anniversary of Call of Cthulhu is celebrated in Bayt al Azif Issue #04 with a pleasing pair of articles. One is ‘All About Spooky Stories’, an interview with Mike Mason, the Creative Director of Call of Cthulhu which looks at the whole of his gaming hobby and his career. Although there is much that will be familiar here—Mike has been interviewed more than once!—this is an entertaining interview which should assure the reader that the long-running roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative horror is in good hands. Also entertaining is ‘Forty Years of Memories – Anecdotes from playing Call of Cthulhu’, a collection of stories and memories from the roleplaying game’s fans drawn from their experiences playing it. Some of the fun is identifying particular scenarios from the anecdotes, their titles being hidden in the footnotes.

The magazine is also beginning to build a sense of community too, and in Bayt al Azif Issue #04 this shows in a number of ways. One is the inclusion of ‘Blair Reynolds: In Memorium’ by Adam Scott Glancy, Dennis Detwiller, Shane Ivey, and John Scott Tynes, a fitting, often funny tribute to the late author and artist, Blair Reynolds, long part of Pagan Publishing whose striking contributions to titles such as Walker in the Wastes, Realm of Shadows, and Delta Green helped to make them stand out. Having this is in print—and similarly, the interview with Mike Mason—gives a sense of place and permanence.

That sense of community continues with ‘Bloodcurdling Screams: A Roundtable with London Carlisle, Rina Haenze, and Virgina’, which is a roundtable with the three hosts and Keepers of Call of Cthulhu who record and stream their games. Together they discuss the nature and challenges involved in recording streaming roleplaying sessions. There are pointers here too and advice for anyone who wants to try it and of course, links to streamed and recorded games. The article shows how gaming is changing and has been forced to change as a result of COVID-19.

Elsewhere, Andrew Smith examines ‘One of the Most Influential Scenarios’ by looking at Games Workshop’s Trail of the Loathsome Slime and comes to the same conclusions as Reviews from R’lyeh did in 2013, whilst in ‘The Mythos and Modernity: Deep Ones at the DMV’, Tyler Omichinski looks at how the Mythos and its entities can exist and continue to survive in the modern world. Ultimately, the author points to potential peripheries where the Mythos can survive in the face of society’s cultural indifference, but really does not develop its ideas very far and is thus disappointing. The article is all too short. ‘Clues of Cultists: 100 Discoveries’ by Joseph Janda, Bridgett Jeffries, and Jared Smith is a big table of ideas and elements to flesh out a Keeper’s cultists, such as connections to persons in power or what they might know about the Investigators themselves. The article is a serviceable addition which a Keeper can refer to for inspiration. Lastly, Evan Johnston continues his enjoyable comic strip, ‘Grave Spirits’.

Physically, with the fourth issue, Bayt al Azif keeps getting better and better in terms of production values and look. It is clean and tidy, its layout ordinary rather than interesting, 
and though it might need an edit in places, the main issue is still that some of the artwork veers toward being cartoon-like. With Bayt al Azif Issue #03 found its voice and format by offering longer articles and a more diverse range of voices. This continues in Bayt al Azif Issue #04 with content not just from Germany as before, but from France and Finland as well, bringing to light content which would otherwise be inaccessible to the predominately English-speaking community. This is bolstered by the genuinely  interesting history of Call of Cthulhu in another country with ‘Never-Ending Darkness: The History of Cthulhu in Finland’, whilst with ‘Bloodcurdling Screams: A Roundtable with London Carlisle, Rina Haenze, and Virgina’ the magazine looks at the state of how Call of Cthulhu is played in the here and now, and likely into the future too. None of the three scenarios stand out as being great, but they are nevertheless serviceable one-shots or interesting snapshots from the past.
Overall, Bayt al Azif Issue #04 continues the magazine’s solid support for, and about, Lovecraftian investigative horror roleplaying. In this issue, the articles, the history, and the sense of community standout more than the scenarios, but is no less the welcome for it.

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—and Wyrd Science – Expert Rules (Wyrd Science #2) is different in comparison to Wyrd Science Session Zero. Neither contain a single monster, spell, treasure, review, scenario, or the like, but with Wyrd Science – Expert Rules gone is the organisation of ‘Common Items’ and ‘Rare Items’ of the inaugural issue. Instead, it is divided between a ‘Quick-start’ section providing reasonably short introductions to various aspects of the hobby, whilst the ‘Features’ provides even longer pieces that together look at the old and the very new.

Wyrd Science – Expert Rules (Vol. 1/Issue 2) was published by Best in Show in September, 2021 following a successful Kickstarter campaign. If Wyrd Science Session Zero took a little of its cue from the red box edition of Basic Dungeons & Dragons, then with its pastel blue cover and subtitle of ‘Fantasy Adventure Game Expert Magazine’, the second issue of Wyrd Science takes its cue from Expert Dungeons & Dragons—or rather the expert rules of the Moldvay/Cook B/X Dungeons & Dragons published in 1981 and which was forty years old in 2021. However, the modern reader should allay any fears that Wyrd Science – Expert Rules (Vol. 1/Issue 2) is all about the ‘Old School’. No, whilst this issue definitely looks back, it very much looks forward to the here and now with its coverage of current gaming releases outside of the Old School Renaissance. The result is a pleasing mix of contrasts and thoroughly engaging reads.

The ‘Quick-start Section’ dives straight in with a series of interesting interviews. ‘Cast Pod: What Would The Smart Party Do?’ interviews Baz Stevenson of the UK’s long running podcast, What Would The Smart Party Do? This follows on from ‘Zoom Of Horrors – The Smart Party On Gaming Online In 2020’ from Wyrd Science Session Zero which explained how they adapted to playing online in 2020 and how it came to dominate much of their social life and how they coped with so many roleplaying games competing for their attention. This article looks more at Stevenson’s experiences both playing and hosting the podcast, providing a good overview and introduction to the prospective listener. ‘Work In Progress: Coyote & Crow’ is an interview with Connor Alexander, the designer of the now released Science Fiction and fantasy roleplaying game set in a First Nations alternate future where colonisation never happened and created by Native authors and artists. This highlights some of the challenges of creating and then running a highly successful Kickstarter campaign—over one million dollars—and how that affected the design of the game, and again, another good interview.

If ‘Work In Progress: Coyote & Crow’ was looking at a modern design, ‘HEX LIBRIS: Jon Peterson – The Elusive Shift’ is the first article in Wyrd Science – Expert Rules to look back. The magazine’s third interview is with Jon Peterson, who has just then had published The Elusive Shift – How Role-Playing Games Forged Their Identity. This history explores early role-playing games evolved in the nineteen seventies whilst searching for that point where they became roleplaying games. Anyone who has read that book will still find much to be of interest in the interview, whilst anyone else should be intrigued enough to go find a copy.

‘ART OF DARKNESS: The 1000 Year Play-through’ follows on from Anna Maxwell’s ‘Quickstart – Alone In The Dark’ from Wyrd Science Session Zero, which explored the growth of solo play during the COVID-19 periods of lockdown, highlighting in particular the superb storytelling to found through playing Tim Hutchings’ Thousand Year Old Vampire. Here the magazine interviews the Wellington-based designer, Tim Denee, who began illustrating his play-through of the game. The interview is short and to the point, but is undone by only having two illustrations taken from that play-through. Thankfully, they can be found here, but another page highlighting them would not have gone amiss.

‘KICKSTOPPING: The Shipping Forecast’ examines the impact of the Pandemic on shipping and gaming—and the forecast is not good, whilst ‘CREDIT CARDS: MAGIC COLLECTORS In The Black’ highlights the recent rise in price at auction of some of the rarest cards for both Magic: The Gathering and Pokémon. Anna Blackwell examines another trend in ‘DESIGN OF THE TIMES: Small Games, Big Ideas’. This is the concept of designers challenging themselves to create playable games in as small a format as possible. These include on a business card, on a single page, and in mint tins and even jam jars! There is an emphasis here on the boardgame rather than the roleplaying game, but there are plenty of those to be found if you go looking. There are lots of examples given and these are useful pointers, though the article does lack illustrations. The ‘Quick-start Section’ comes to close with ‘Pierre Mortel’s CROOKED TALES: The Found Diary of a Crowman adventurer – Chapter 2’ which chronicles the further adventures of a hapless adventurer, whilst Mira Manga goes out with ‘MANGA’s MUSINGS: LARPing Around’ taking herself away from the computer screen (mostly) and back into the gaming world.

The Features section begins with coverage of the roleplaying game which inspired the issue—B/X Basic Dungeons & Dragons with a trilogy of articles. ‘Dungeon Life Begins at 40’ is an interview with the surviving members of the team involved in the creation of this version of Basic Dungeons & Dragons—David ‘Zeb’ Cook and Stephen Marsh—and explores the genesis of the edition and its continuing influence today. Along with some crisply produced piece of artwork from this edition, this captures the flavour and intent of the edition, laying the groundwork for the subsequent two articles. Peter Bebergal’s ‘Words Against Wizardry’ highlights how the ‘Inspirational Source Material’ in B/X Basic Dungeons & Dragons was in many ways better than that offered by E. Gary Gygax’s ‘Appendix N’ to be found in the Dungeon Master’s Guide for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, whilst ‘B/X to the Future’ looks at how the Old School Renaissance came about and was really kicked off with Troll Lord Games’ 2004 Castles & Crusades, before coming up to date to examine the many retroclones and near-retroclones have been inspired by B/X Basic Dungeons & Dragons. At the head of them in 2020 when Wyrd Science – Expert Rules was published, and still there today, is Old School Essentials. The article points out that the Old School Renaissance is not all dungeon-delving, and that there are other options within with the movement when it comes to roleplaying and storytelling, such as Troika, Mausrítter, and MOTHERSHIP Sci-Fi Horror RoleplayingGame. Together this is a lovely trilogy of articles which showcase just influential this edition of Basic Dungeons & Dragons has been.

If the first part of the Features section is a trilogy of articles about one game and its influence, the next trilogy focuses on three, much more modern titles, starting with Thirsty Sword Lesbians. Romance is not a new subject in roleplaying, but for the most part, it has been explored in storytelling games rather than mainstream titles. Wyrd Science – Expert Rules leaps into the definite here and now with ‘Violence is Easy. Romance is Hard.’, Rob Wieland’s look at Thirsty Sword Lesbians. This roleplaying game not only brought romance front and centre, it put it into the mechanics, it puts it in the title too. It is a game which promises ‘Queer Action Romance’, and whilst that may not be for everyone, it is nevertheless a valid and exciting genre in which to roleplay, and this article not only makes that clear, it makes the prospect sound fun and entertaining. ‘Hammers Ready, Prepare to Smash!’ leaps into the future of the Warhammer ‘World That Was’ with an examination of Warhammer Age of Sigmar Soulbound, the heroic, action-orientated high fantasy roleplaying game. The Player Characters are the Soulbound, an ancient order of individuals granted a measure of a storm god’s power, drawn into bindings, and assigned missions to fulfil that god’s will. Combining an interview with its creative director at Cubicle Seven Entertainment, Emmet Byrne, it emphasises the strange mix of character types, Daughters of Khaine alongside Priests of Signar; whilst how they are heroes, they cannot necessarily solve every problem they are presented with; and a very different set of mechanics versus Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay as well as the change in tone. The third roleplaying game examined here is Wanderhome in ‘In Wanderhome, They’ll Be Okay, They’ll All Be Okay’, Aimee Hart provides an examination of the anthropomorphic and pastoral roleplaying game set in world that is healing following a great war in which the Player Characters wander and explore the world, as well as interviewing the designer, Jay Dragon. The Player Characters are involved in part of this healing, helping to ease traumas where they cannot solve issues, and where they can, very rarely resorting to violence or combat. Wanderhome comes across as a roleplaying game in which the Player Characters are definitely trying to make the world better, and sounds a fascinating prospect.

In ‘Making Waves – Pamela Punzalan On The Rise Of RPGSEA’, Wyrd Science Session Zero gave space to voices not usually heard in the roleplaying community—those from South-East Asia. Wyrd Science – Expert Rules follows this up with a pair of articles that examine the roleplaying scene in Latin America. The first is ‘South of the Borderlands’, in which Diogo Nogueira examines the scene in Brazil. It is a good introduction to the state of the hobby in the country, noting that it began with imported and photo-copied editions of titles from the English-speaking market and how interest was spurred by the very popular Dungeons & Dragons cartoon. However, it only really mentions a handful of homegrown titles and it lacks a timeline or history that a better overview would have given. Certainly mention and highlighting more of the former might have served as a better hook for anyone intrigued by what might be available would have been useful. The second article, ‘What Was Written Must Be Destroyed’, an interview with the Argentinian designer, Gavriel Quiroga. This focuses on his then new dark Science Fiction fantasy roleplaying game WARPLAND in which science and learning has been shunned as the cause of a barely remembered, now-incomprehensible cataclysm, and in its stead, a hollow religion’s iron-clad fist forces ignorance on surviving members of humanity. This is to ensure that such a disaster never happens again. This is a brief overview of the game that looks to worth examining to really get a fuller idea of what it is about. This pair of articles point to the creativity brimming in Latin  America, but only really skims the surface. It deserves another, more comprehensive visit.

‘Let’s Open Up This Pit’ takes the issue into the realms of wargaming to looking at how that hobby has diversified with a range of new, often radical designs. The article points to shift to simpler styles of play and the shift in role-players entering or re-entering that hobby with the simplicity of designs such as Frostgrave: Fantasy Wargames in the Frozen City and its family of titles. Its coverage of the Indie design movement is backed up with a solid selection of examples. The article also mentions how wargamers miss the old Games Workshop title, Mordheim, of which Frostgrave is similar, and in ‘Streets of Rage’ Luke Frostick goes in search of that long-lost skirmish game to see it is still played and supported. Of course, with the Internet it is. This is an interesting little article which will have certain gamers getting out their boxes of Mordheim rules and miniatures once again. Continuing the miniatures theme on from his earlier ‘Model Behaviour – Luke Shaw On Building Miniature Communities’ in Wyrd Science Session Zero, Luke Shaw enters the community of figure painters to interview four professional miniature painters who offer video tutorials and run YouTube channels. Again, this is another solid article exploring an aspect of the hobby that is being enhanced by social media. The wargaming theme comes to a close with ‘Craft, Work’, Willard Foxton Todd’s lengthy interview with the prolific Science Fiction and Fantasy author, Guy Haley, best known for his Warhammer fiction. Another good piece.

‘A Space Where We Belong’ does feel pushed to the back of Wyrd Science – Expert Rules, which is probably not the intention. Ellen Knight’s interview with four women involved in the industry, including roleplaying and board games, explores some of the attitudes they unfortunately have to face, but it really explores what they are doing to change those and made either hobby a more welcoming space. That is no bad thing, but again, this piece could easily have been more upfront in the issue.

‘Escape to New York’ interviews Pontus Björlin, the Swedish designer of ALTNYC88, the fanzine roleplaying game inspired by The Warriors and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and set in the rundown New York of the nineteen eighties, whilst rounding out Wyrd Science – Expert Rules is over twenty or so review of board games, wargames, and roleplaying games. There is a decent mix here, although some games get more space than others, and then in ‘HIT POINTS: FILM/TV’, Will Salmon gives a round up of watchable content in 2020. Lastly, there is ‘TIMESLIP’, with which Ian Livingstone takes us back to 1976 and memories of Gen Con triggered by a very special photograph.

Physically, Wyrd Science – Expert Rules is impressively bright and breezy. The layout is clean and tidy, with decent use of photographs against pieces of art as more like spot fillers. The issue does need another edit in places though.

Wyrd Science – Expert Rules is less parochial than Wyrd Science Session Zero. This is not say that the first issue was bad, but rather that Wyrd Science – Expert Rules has broadened its coverage of the gaming scene, so less of roleplaying, boardgaming, and miniatures gaming in the United Kingdom, per se, but more of it around the world. Consequently, it feels less constrained, primarily because it is not written with COVID-19 in mind, although its influence is there as you would expect. It covers its broad range of subjects with what is for the most part, an excellent series of articles and interviews, never less than entertaining and informative. In places, it could have done with more history and more context, especially the Latin American article, which would have made the content of Wyrd Science – Expert Rules more useful. Nevertheless, Wyrd Science – Expert Rules contains an excellent mix of interesting and engaging articles that are a real pleasure to see in print.

Mayday! Mayday! 

It's May and Sci-fi month at The Other Side!

 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—

Senet—named for the Ancient Egyptian board game, Senet—is a print magazine about the craft, creativity, and community of board gaming. It is about the play and the experience of board games, it is about the creative thoughts and processes which go into each and every board game, and it is about board games as both artistry and art form. Published by Senet Magazine Limited, each issue promises previews of forthcoming, interesting titles, features which explore how and why we play, interviews with those involved in the process of creating a game, and reviews of the latest and most interesting releases.

Senet Issue 2 was published in the Summer of 2020 and carries the tagline of “Board games are beautiful”. It opens with ‘Behold’, a preview of some of the then-forthcoming board game titles, such as Frosthaven—the sequel to Gloomhaven, Kanban EV, The 7th Citadel, Viscounts of the West Kingdom, and more. Given as much prominence as a full review, what is interesting about these is previews is that each give ‘What they might be’, so Viscounts of the West Kingdom could be the next Gùgong and The 7th Citadel could be the next The 7th Continent. Many, if not all, of these titles have since been released and been subject to their own reviews and analysis, so these previews can be read with the benefit of hindsight to see whether their predictions were right. However, they are pleasingly detailed and enjoyable two years on.

‘Points’ provides a selection of readers’ letters, whilst in ‘For Love of the Game’, Tristian Hall continues his designer’s journey towards Gloom of Kilforth. Here he talks about the difficulties and hurdles faced in its development, overcoming a flawed first version before pushing on to a proper prototype. This continues to be a fascinating path and it will be interesting to follow in in future columns.

The centre of Senet Issue 2 is given over to a quartet of four, lengthy articles. The first of these ‘Decks in Effect’, Alexandra Sonechkina examines the nature and explores the history of the deckbuilding mechanic, which it is surprising to realise is only a little more than a decade old. It goes back its origins in the Spiel des Jahres award-winning Dominion and goes forward to explore how the ground-breaking mechanic has proliferated in those years since. In the process it highlights how many Dominion-like games appeared in the years following its publication, before being used in more innovative ways in games like Mystic Vale. The article also tracks by genre the growth of the deckbuilding game over the course of its first ten years as a mechanic and it is surprising to see just how many deckbuilding games have appeared since. The article is also illustrated with some engaging pieces by Tom Gauld—who also drew the cover for the issue—and it is artwork that is the subject of the second article in Senet Issue 2. ‘Brush with Greatness’ is an interview with the much in demand artist Kwanchai Moriya, whose art has graced games such as Capital Lux, Flip Ships, 7 Summits, and In The Hall of the Mountain King. The interview is interesting, but the artwork is gorgeous and this is a lovely showcase for it.

Owen Duffy is the author of the most thoughtful and controversial article in the magazine. ‘The Empire Business’ explores the difficult subject of colonialism and empire-building and how it became a widespread and then contentious theme in board game design. Stemming from GMT’s cancelled Scramble for Africa, the article looks back to once widely regarded classics such as Puerto Rico with their expansionist mercantilism and casual disregard for its (plantation) workers and whilst pointing out how engaging these themes are, points out that in too many cases, these games are mostly designed from a decidedly European perspective. Even when moving to settings with no inhabitants to disregard, such as Mars with games like Terraforming Mars and On Mars, there is a still a sense of exploitation.

Duffy widens the remit of the article to gain the perspectives and opinions of other designers, who have either looked at the aftermath of colonialism and its impact, such as with Ragnar Brothers’ DRCongo: Hope Out of Horror, which is about building a better country or who are indigenous to those regions which were exploited. In particular, this is with the founder of NIBCARD Games, a Nigerian publisher of boardgames. This gives voice to a sector of the hobby which is only just beginning to be heard in the wider hobby—and barely that, given the dominance of the USA and Europe has over the industry. The article ends with a call for better research into cultures and peoples outside of designers’ own when wanting to explore themes outside of the European perspective. ‘The Empire Business’ is the sort of article that the hobby and industry needs, reflective and looking at itself from outside. More than the other articles in Senet Issue 2 this provides a snapshot of the hobby in 2020 and is not only a welcome snapshot, but hopefully similarly thoughtful articles will appear in future issues of the magazine.

The fourth of the longer articles in Senet Issue 2 is ‘Tearing Ahead’, an interview with Rob Daviau, which explores two strands of boardgame design. One is the legacy genre, in which an outcome of game play can have a permanent effect upon on a game, which Daviau invented with Risk Legacy and has subsequently been seen in the Pandemic Legacy trilogy, as well as a slew of other designs. The other is the restoration and redesign of out-of-print classics, such as Fireball Island and Return to Dark Tower. It is a lengthy and interesting interview that explores both strands in informative fashion.

The ‘Unboxing’ section of Senet Issue 2 includes solid reviews of Europe Divided, Flyin’ Goblin, Monumental, Parks, Rome & Roll, and more, whilst elsewhere Anna Blackwell, designer of the solo map games Delve, Rise, and Umbra tells you ‘It’s Okay to Break the Rules’ in ‘How to Play’ and Jon Purkis, owner of the YouTube channel of Actualol, reveals his ‘Shelf of Shame’. This is a boardgame which has sat on his shelf which he has never played and in this case, it is the Broad Peak expansion for K2, the mountain climbing themed board game. Anna Blackwell’s article is thoughtful and interesting, looking at the benefits and pitfalls of breaking the rules to a game—primarily, not knowing a rule itself properly, and is the closest that Senet Issue 2 gets to touching upon roleplaying. Unfortunately, ‘Shelf of Shame’ is not as interesting, probably because its revelation is far from amazing, but it brings the issue to a lighter close.

Physically, Senet Issue 2 is very nicely presented, all pristine and beautifully laid out. Whether drawing on board game graphics and images, or the magazine’s own illustrations, the issue’s graphics are very sharply handled, living up to the issue’s motto of  “Board games are beautiful” as much as its subject matter does. 

Senet Issue 2 maintains the high standards set by Senet Issue 1. This is a lovely looking issue in its simplicity and its use of artwork to beautifully complement its content, especially the four meaty feature articles at its heart. Above all, Senet Issue 2 is not just an engaging and informative read which treats boardgames and their play in a mature fashion, it is a pleasure to read as well.

The A to Z of Conspiracy Theories: Z is for Zecharia Sitchin

Here we are at the end, which is back at the beginning for me and the topic of my A to Z for this April 2022.

Before I begin I do want to say this one went much better than I expected. I'll get to all of that in the Reflections post coming up.

So Zecharia Sitchin.  

Sitchin was the author of many books on the topic of Ancient Aliens and the Anunnaki of the Sumerians. He was also the creator of the idea of the planet of Nibiru where the Anunnaki supposedly come from. He called this the "12th Planet."  

Much like Margaret Murray, Sitchin took the archaeological record as well as astronomical history.  Also, like Murray, he completely botched his research including some of the translations. 

The conspiracy comes from, as expected, the Government, the Church, and NASA are all hiding the truth. Sitchin's theories remake the history of humanity and of course, everyone is going to hide all of that.

For NIGHT SHIFT

Sitchin's work is not science.  BUT it could make for good science fiction.  

For NIGHT SHIFT I would like to REally go deep on this. Have aliens come Nibriu and try to start some crazy-ass religion or something.  OR maybe it is just people saying they are. 

Sitchin, among other things, is indirectly responsible for a number of UFO Cults.  Bringing a couple of these (or a made-up one) would make for an interesting game I think.

The NIGHT SHIFT RPG is available from the Elf Lair Games website (hardcover) and from DriveThruRPG (PDF).

And there we go.  Another April A to Z for the history books.  Join me next month for Sci-Fi month!

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 Kickstarter.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—

Back in the nineteen eighties, at the height of the popularity of the solo adventure books which had begun with The Warlock of Firetop Mountain and Fighting Fantasy in 1982, there not one, but two solo adventure magazines. Warlock, published between 1984 and 1986 by Penguin and then Games Workshop, ran for just thirteen issues. Its counterpart, Proteus, was published by IPC Magazines Ltd. and then Wimborne Publishing between 1984 and 1988, and ran to nineteen issues. Although both published solo adventures, Proteus was not a Fighting Fantasy-oriented magazine, but a ‘A Complete Fantasy Adventure Game Magazine’, whereas Warlock definitely was. The focus of Warlock was fantasy with an emphasis on the Fighting Fantasy adventure gamebook series. The focus of its successor is much broader. Published quarterly by Arion Games, The Warlock Returns is devoted to Advanced Fighting Fantasy, the full roleplaying game based on the Fighting Fantasy solo adventures series and its Science Fiction equivalent, Stellar Adventures.

The Warlock Returns #01 was published in September, 2020. It presents a medley of things, from monsters to scenarios, from weapons to cartoons, from advice to settings, and more. It opens with Andrew Wright’s entry for the ‘Denizens of the Pit’ column. He details three types of Chaos Dragon—the swamp-dwelling, acid-spitting Yellow Dragon; the wilderness and ruin-dwelling, superheated wind exhaling Orange Dragon; and the jungle and ruins-dwelling, green slime breathing Purple Dragon. These are nicely detailed and tied into the history of Titan—the setting for Advanced Fighting Fantasy—when Death walked the lands and breathed Chaos into the hidden places where dragons were sleeping, mutating some of them into these three forms. They suffer from mutations today. All three are fearsome great beasts and not something that an unprepared adventurer would want to encounter.
The issue includes two lists of equipment. The first is ‘Jungle Mania’, by Stuart Lloyd. Just a page in length, it lists the sort of equipment that adventurers’ might want to prepare themselves with before setting out into the jungle. They include mosquito netting, mosquito repellent, the machete, blowpipes, darts, and poisons. All fairly serviceable, but with little tweaks here and there. For example, the machete is treated as a shortsword which is more effective against plants rather than creatures. Similarly, the weapons listed in Terry d’Orleans’ ‘Chinese Inspired Weapons for the Isles of Dawn’, are also tweaked. They range from the Gong (bow) and the flexible Qiang (spear) to the Liuxingchui (meteor hammer) and the Hudie Shuangdao (butterfly swords). For example, the Liuxingchui can be used to disarm an opponent rather than inflict Stamina damage and the Shengbiao (rope dart) to inflict a penalty to all physical actions rather than damage.
Terry d’Orleans also offers advice for the Director—as the Game Master is known in Advanced Fighting Fantasy—in ‘Sizing Up Monsters’, which explores ways of making encounters and combat more interesting and enjoyable by unbalancing them for and against the adventurers. The aim here is not to make them extremely easy or extremely challenging, but appropriate to the situation, perhaps to make a fight against minions slightly easier and that against their villainous master or mistress that much harder. It is a well thought out article, and solid advice for the new Director and experienced Director alike.
Adrian Kennelly provides two lists of twenty things to be found and read. ‘For the Bookworms’ is a list of books which can be used to flesh out bookshelves, so as to hide that all too important tome which the Player Characters might need to find, which ‘Notes and letters from Arion’ is a list of notes and missives which might be found in pockets (whether their owners are dead or alive) or dropped on the floor, and which might spur an encounter or adventure. There is a certain mundane to some of the latter, but both articles, written for the setting of Arion, would an extra degree of verisimilitude to any Advanced Fighting Fantasy campaign. They could easily be adapted to other settings if necessary.
The Warlock Returns #01 contains two specials. One is a new character sheet for Advanced Fighting Fantasy designed by Dyson Logos, whilst ‘In Their Element’ is a one-page dungeon designed around the elements and their alchemical symbols, along with those for the metals copper, silver, gold, and platinum. By Peter Endean, it is the first of two adventures in the issue and is serviceable enough, emphasising puzzles as much as combat.
Calfiero Risaliti’s ‘Welcome to Arion’ is the second and much longer adventure in The Warlock Returns #01. It takes low-experience adventurers from Allansia and the Old World to Arion, from where they plan to explore Khul. It is not suitable to more than the single magic user, and requires Travels in Arion as well as the standard rulebooks as necessary. It takes a while for the adventure to get going in which the adventurers, along with the rest of the city, find themselves under a curse. To solve the curse, the adventurers have to race round Arion to find and solve a series of riddles. It feels rather lengthy and could have done with editing for clarity. One notable issue is that it does not actually state what is going on for the benefit of the Director until three pages in, which is just too late.
The Warlock Returns #01 has its own comic strip in the form of ‘The Legend of Gareus: The Hero of Karn’. Written and drawn by Shaun Garea, this tells of the adventures—or rather, not-adventures-of the cowardly anti-hero, Gareus. This is quite fun and nicely done, and Gareus is a chancer and a git. Hopefully in future issues, he might even be loveable! Gareus returns at the end of the issue as ‘Agony Aunt Gareus’ with the sort of useless titbits and pieces of advice that you would imagine that only he could offer.
After all of that fantasy, Martin Proctor offers some Science Fiction with a setting for Stellar Adventures. ‘Tora’ is the first part in a series describing the desert world of the same name. Most of its inhabitants reside in clusters of cities where they toil in a strict class system maintained by the wealthy and the Enforcement, which imposes law and order. Travel between the cities—even the clustered ones, is limited; protests and riots by the poor are common; and any potential rebellion made all the difficult by limited access to arms and armour. However nomads do survive in the desert wastelands and smugglers conduct trade off world and between the cities. Guidelines are suggested for finding a home base for the Player Characters, hiring followers, income and prices for vehicles and other equipment, and multiple group combat. The inference here is that the Player Characters establish a base on world and then attempt to overthrow the various cities’ governments or become a criminal network, and so on. It is an intriguing campaign set-up, although not fully realised in terms of the setting here as descriptions of the world’s factions are saved for the next part of ‘Tora’. This though is a solid introduction which has a Mad Max/Blake’s 7 feel and it should all come together with the next part.
Physically,The Warlock Returns #01;is a bit rough around the edges. Although the layout is okay, much of the magazine would benefit from better editing—why every occurrence of the letter ‘l’ is in bold boggles the eyes, let alone the mind. The artwork is decent though.
The Warlock Returns #01 sits at that point between fanzine and proper magazine. It is more a ‘prozine’ than a magazine. There is a certain scrappiness to it and much of it needs an edit to really make the contents easier for the Director to use. It is though a first issue, and its problems can be put down to that. Hopefully, The Warlock Returns #02 will be better in terms of design and presentation. Nevertheless, The Warlock Returns #01 is worth the time to read through and check out its content if you a fan of Advanced Fighting Fantasy and especially so if you are a Director of Advanced Fighting Fantasy.

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 Kickstarter.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—

The second issue of Parallel Worlds magazine was published in September 202o. Like the inaugural issue, Parallel Worlds #01, published the year previously, it contains no gaming content as such, but rather discusses and aspects of not just the hobby, but different hobbies—board games, roleplaying games, computer games, and more. Unlike later issues, for example, Parallel Worlds #21 and Parallel Worlds #22, this second issue is very much about games, and that is not necessarily a bad thing if something interesting is said about them. Where that was not always achieved in Parallel Worlds #01, the second issue is more balanced, which when combined with its selection of interesting articles and brevity serves to make it overall an engaging, even sometimes thoughtful read. Of course, Parallel Worlds #02 is readily available in print, but all of the issues of Parallel Worlds, published by Parallel Publishing can also be purchased in digital format, because it is very much not back in the day of classic White Dwarf, but here and now. 
Parallel Worlds #02 opens with an interview with Adrian Tchaikovsky, the author of the Shadows of the Apt fantasy series and the award-winning science fiction novel, Children of Time. It touches upon his choice of publishers and how alien spiders are, but it also explores his love of roleplaying, mentioning that he is the Dungeon Master for a Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition campaign and also that Shadows of the Apt fantasy series arose from a roleplaying campaign of his own. It is a fairly light piece to start the issue with and although a couple of years old, is intriguing to persuade the reader to check out Adrian Tchaikovsky’s fiction.
Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition is the subject of the first ‘Tabletop Games’ article in Parallel Worlds #02. ‘Box Half Full: Why D&D is so revered and popular’ by Ben Potts is the counterpart to Connor Eddles’ ‘Box Full of Knives: Why Dungeons & Dragons needs to step away from its wargaming roots’ in Parallel Worlds #01, and by far, very much the superior article. In his article, Eddles made the point that Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition is a ‘box full of knives’, that its mechanics are too focused on delivered the means to kill things and take their loot and not enough on providing the tools to provide stories. Yet whilst the points in his article are not without merit, Eddles completely failed to do anything to counter them. Fortunately, whilst Ben Potts both acknowledges Eddles’ points and accepts that many of them are valid, he points out the value of the shared history and storytelling to be found in Dungeons & Dragons, how that can be passed from one generation to another, how Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition has moved in terms of representation and diversity (but remember this article was written in 2020, so the roleplaying game is still on that path), how the sexism of fantasy artwork has been ditched, and how the rules have been streamlined. The article also acknowledges that the origins of Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition do lie in wargaming and medieval history. Overall, this article is everything that ‘Box Full of Knives: Why Dungeons & Dragons needs to step away from its wargaming roots’ is not—balanced, interesting, and informative. ‘Box Half Full: Why D&D is so revered and popular’ does not shy away from the issues with Dungeons & Dragons, but it explores and explains them as well as highlighting the changes made to make Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition a better game.
This followed by a second ‘Tabletop Games’ article, this time a review by Christopher Jarvis of Star Wars: Outer Rim. Published by Fantasy Flight Games, this is the board game of scoundrels engaged in smuggling, bounty hunting, scams, and more as they attempt to turn themselves in legends. This is a decent review which clearly captures just how much the reviewer had playing the game. The third of the ‘Tabletop Games’ articles is the second entry in the ‘Miniature Of The Month’ series, here ‘Miniature Of The Month: Uthred Steelmantle’. Written by Connor Eddles, this looks at a more modern figure, this time a Stormcast Vanguard for Warhammer 40,000. Accompanied by a piece of short fiction, this still feels like page filler rather than being anything interesting. Connor Eddles’ other contribution is ‘Beneath the Waystation’, a piece of ‘Original Fiction’. It is a decent enough short slice of Science Fiction horror. The other review in the issue is ‘Review: Dragonslayer’ by Allen Stroud. This is of Duncan M. Hamilton’s Dragonslayer, and is not wholly positive. 
Tom Grundy’s ‘Thinkpiece’ is titled ‘Ruling the World 20 – The sci-fi assumption of ‘Government Earth’’, which examines the notion of the ‘global’ or civilisation-wide government—including star spanning governments, how the world might get there, and the difficulties associated with doing so, primarily with how a country identifies itself. Numerous options are discussed, such as colonies pushing for independence from home governments, governments existing across multiple worlds, having a ‘mega-United Nations’ across multiple star systems and worlds, and more. The article does suffer from a lot of blank space and it would have benefited from a bibliography listing the various works of fiction, films, television series, and games where the various forms of government appear. Certainly some application and some pointers for the reader would have helped.
In Parallel Worlds #01, with ‘Events’, Allen Stroud took the reader on a guided tour of the United Kingdom’s biggest gaming convention with ‘UK Games Expo 2019’. In Parallel Worlds #02, he takes us to another convention, very different in nature to UK Games Expo—the 77th annual World Convention of Science Fiction. Attended by many of the biggest names in science fiction, fantasy, and horror, this is an even bigger event with its emphasis on Science Fiction and fantasy and fiction all culminating in the Hugo Awards. Stroud does point out that the event was not with its issues, but again captures the scale of the event, highlighting the number of attendees, the breadth of stalls and exhibitors present, and the array of events staged across the weekend. Supported by numerous photographs, ‘Dublin 2019: an Irish worldcon’ brings the event to life and really makes the reader want to attend, which again, post-COVID in 2022 will be a whole lot easier.
The other ‘Video Games’ article is Thomas Turnbull-Ross’ ‘Beyond the Screen: Are games becoming less immersive?’ which examines both whether games are becoming easier to play at a cost of immersion and whether their sense of escapism is being lost with the shift to social-focused gameplay. It is a lengthy piece which examines numerous online games and their communities, pointing to plenty of examples, before concluding that both issues are true, but not totally.

Lastly, Lastly, ‘TV & Film’ launches a two-part article dedicated to Star Trek. The first part of ‘Keeping Trek’ by Ben Potts looks at the origins and history of the franchise, all the way up the earliest films, with Star Trek: The Next Generation saved for the second part. The article is definitely for the casual or uninitiated would be fan of Star Trek as there is nothing here that the dedicated fan will not already know. For the casual or would be fan this is a solid introduction to the series from the sixties and to an extent, the films of the late seventies and early eighties, which whilst not ignoring the sometimes, but in keeping with the era poor portrayal of its female characters or some of the sillier plots, does highlight how the series was socially and inspirationally ground-breaking, as was the technology, and there were some great stories too.
Physically, Parallel Worlds #02 is printed in full colour, on very sturdy paper, which gives it a high-quality feel. As with the first issue, it does suffer from a lot of white space and one or two of the articles do feel stretched out.
Parallel Worlds #02 is better than Parallel Worlds #01—and that is how it should be. The issue has a better mix of articles, even if roleplaying does come off a poor third in comparison to other types of gaming. It does feel as if there should be more to it though. For example, one board game review or one book review or one miniature review just does not feel enough, especially given how much space is devoted to them, whilst other articles could have been improved with bibliographies all of their very own. Overall, Parallel Worlds #02 is a light, perhaps just a little too slight in places, enjoyable read.

The A to Z of Conspiracy Theories: Y is for Yeti

Not just yetis, but bigfoot too!  Now Yetis and Bigfoots fall under the heading of cryptids and not so much conspiracy theories.  The conspiracy part comes in later.

Let's be honest here. I love writing about Bigfoot.  Maybe it was growing up in the 1970s when there was a surge in the popularity of Bigfoot sightings.  But in any case, I have talked about them a lot here.  

• Monstrous Monday: Bionic Bigfoot
• October Horror Movie Challenge: Night of the Demon
• Monstrous Mondays: Illinois Hominids
• Monstrous Monday: Sasquatch (BECMI Special)
• October Horror Movie Challenge: Sasquatch, the Legend of Bigfoot
• #AtoZChallenge2021: Y is for Yeti, Almas

My introduction to RPGs was via monsters of myth and legend in the AD&D Monster Manual and while the Sasquatch was not originally there, the Yeti was.  

With all these posts (and these are just the ones on the subject) you would think I have had said everything I can and...that is accurate. But I have not talked about the conspiracies surrounding these cryptids.

Conspiracy #1: The various governments are hiding the evidence of Bigfoot/Yetis for ... reasons.  
I have seen this one in various books and websites and the one thing they all have in common is that there are no good reasons given for why the government would want to go through the efforts to hide it.  The reason given is usually "to protect the population."  But how this is supposed to happen is never very clear.

Conspiracy #2: All the bigfoot sightings are faked by a small group of fakers. This I am likely to believe except that I doubt they are organized in any way.

For NIGHT SHIFT

I do use Sasquatches, Bigfoots, and Yetis in my games.  They might even outnumber regular animals in my games! Well not really. But close.

The NIGHT SHIFT RPG is available from the Elf Lair Games website (hardcover) and from DriveThruRPG (PDF).

The A to Z of Conspiracy Theories: X is for Planet X

This one is a last-minute switch.  I might find some use for my "Planet X" post at a future date.  But today I want to talk about the X-Files.  You can't talk about Conspiracy Theories and ignore the X-Files.

This also gives me a chance to go back to the very beginning of my A to Z journey. Not April 1st, but April 2011.

Here is what I said about the X-Files then (with edits to update).

X is for X-Files (2011)

In the 90s everything was conspiracy theories, don't trust the government and the Truth was Out There.

On TV we had the X-Files.

There was a paranoia in the 90s.  Today it has boiled over into disgust about our government (believe I know, I live in Illinois, we have one ex-Governor in prison and another headed there two Ex-Governors that are also Ex-Cons.  But back then it was a general low hum of paranoia, suspicion, and doubt.  It started with Iran-Contra and moved on to movies like "JFK".  It was the climate that allowed the X-Files to grow.

It began on a start-up network called Fox, long before they became synonymous for killing shows, good or bad, too early or shitty news.  X-Files was their hit, their main show outside of the Simpsons really, and they kept it on for 9 years and then again for 2 more in 2016 and 2018.

Let's be honest here, the X-Files did more for genre TV than anything else. It was a cultural phenomenon and most television shows that we enjoyed in the 2000s and on are a result of this little show by Chris Carter.   People go on and on about Whedon, but Carter and the X-files has been nominated for more Emmys and the show had won more collective awards.  Even in its "worst" season X-files still had 3 times the views of Buffy. Plus there is not an episode of Supernatural that doesn't in some way or another recall the X-files.  The Winchesters are Mulder and Scully for the 2000s.

I came to the show late.  I was working on my thesis at the time and I rarely watched TV.  Once I graduated I became a fast convert.  It became my Friday night ritual (I was watching them with my then-girlfriend, so that is ok).  It was also one of the shows I did not invest in any fandom merchandise.  I have an X-files soundtrack CD and Mulder and Scully action figures, but I got them as gifts.  But I really got into the show all the same.  One of the first desktop "themes" I had for my brand spanking new copy of Windows 95 was an X-files one.

I loved the season-long and multi-season-long story arcs, I loved the characters, and I didn't even care when my then girlfriend (and now wife) would go on about how hot Mulder or Skinner were.  That was fine with me.  I got to see Scully, and she was hot and super smart.

The Godfather of the X-files is "Kolchak: The Night Stalker" and Darrin McGavin even made some guest spots on the show.  X-Files, while the "mythos arc" is lauded, sometimes worked the best on the "monster of the week" episodes.  Sure the aliens were great and those were the ones I got excited about, but the ones I recall the best, Flukeman, "Theef", the freaky weird family, the hallucinogenic fungus, the chupacabra.  Like Kolchak, X-files did it's best job when it dealt with "small stories"; episodes that dealt with a local myth, legend, or monster and came at it with Mulder the one ready to believe anything, and Scully looking for the reasoned explanation.  I also liked the "spin-offs" of Millennium and the Lone Gunmen.

One day I am going to go back to the world of the X-Files.  Back when Clinton was still president, freaky half-worm/half-man things lived in chemical toilets, cigarette-smoking men and well-manicured men sat in dark rooms with darker purposes, aliens kidnapped little girls and the Truth Was Out There.

For NIGHT SHIFT

The trouble with X-Files is it was doomed from the start.  You can't keep the characters or the audience in the dark all the time and have a good show, and the more secrets you reveal the less the characters have to uncover.  They kept it up though for a good long run.

The same is true for any conspiracy game.  Conspiracy X, by Eden Studios, is a great example.  You can totally run an "X-Files" game with it, but how often can you keep the players in the dark when they are looking for secrets?  The same is true for the RPG The Unexplained (which was my "U" for 2012).

This is something Game Masters need to keep in mind when running any sort of Conspiracy based RPG. 

For NIGHT SHIFT in particular I tried to capture all of this, via the lens of Kolchak: The Night Stalker in my "Weirdly World News" Night World. But here I only scratched the surface and if this month has shown me anything there is so much more to talk about.

The NIGHT SHIFT RPG is available from the Elf Lair Games website (hardcover) and from DriveThruRPG (PDF).

The A to Z of Conspiracy Theories: W is for Witch Cult Hypothesis

This is a conspiracy theory / modern myth that is more or less implicit in all of my games.  And something a little different than what I have been doing this month.

The hypothesis (and I could argue it is a testable one) is that there has been a more or less unbroken line of pagan magic practitioners and nature worshipers that has existed in Europe and elsewhere since pre-history dating back to at least a time of Goddess worship.  The witch-trails of Europe were an attempt to irradicate these "Witches" in favor of...well, let's look into that.

Ok, that is a lot of variables for a proper hypothesis.  Let's see what we are talking about here.

This idea was put forth by a number of different scholars over the years. The biggest "name" in this was  Margaret Murray, who gave us The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (1921).  It built off of the popularity of James George Frazer's The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion (1917) which was also a study in European and before Pagan practices and Charles Godfrey Leland's Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches (1899).

Murray's central thesis was that these witches have existed for centuries and were a vital part of the pagan community.   With the rise of monotheism and proliferation of just one god (and a Male God at that) these witches were hunted down by members of the Church and State or at the very least with their implicit, if not tacit, approval.   That would be Conspiracy #1.

The trouble it Murray's work is not very good.  She makes a lot of fundamental errors in her book including pointing out that the lack of evidence is evidence that they had been wiped out.

I will admit I was even taken it by the idea when I first read it so many years ago. I have since re-read it after several years of grad school and designing research that I can only see the errors, missteps and sadly outright fabrications.  It is a fun read, but has about as much to do with witches as the Wizard of Oz.  

The second wave of the Witch Cult Hypothesis came in the 20th Century.  Typically post-WWII/1950s thinking.  Building on Murray's work there were those that wanted to see what a witch cult, ala Murray, would have been like if it had survived into the 20th Century.   

Taking this in with other works you folks like Gerald Gardner who invented Wicca and claimed to have these roots. Other writers, like Raymond Buckland, were a bit more honest about what they were doing, but you still had a number of others taking Murray not only at face value but also the "gospel truth."

This brings us to Conspiracy #2.  Not only were these witch cults wiped out, but it continues to this day with the discrediting of anything that might show it to be true.  A stretch maybe, but really no more strange than what any other religion believes about their origins. 

I have also read theories that the witch trials (often called the Burning Times) were the result of the growing professional medical professions (ie. Doctors) trying to get rid of their competition, the local herb woman, healer, and midwife.  A variant on Conspiracy #1. 

The truth is that Murray, not just through her own works but the works of others, has been so deeply embedded in this notion of a pre-Christian witch cult that is difficult to tease out her effects.   Her ideas, wrong or not (no, they were wrong, sorry) are with us now forever.

Maybe that is ok.  Just don't base an intellectual career on it.

For NIGHT SHIFT

Well. Basically. In NIGHT SHIFT everything Murray ever said was true. Yup. The whole lot of it. Whether she meant it to be true or not doesn't really matter here. In the world(s) of NIGHT SHIFT it is.

Again, this largely follows most of the work I do with witches in all my games. Gygax even did the same with his Druids imagining the Celtic priestly caste surviving to the Middle Ages (500 to 1,000 years later).   I do the same with witches.  Here I have a collection of pre-Christian, largely European (but there are other influences), pagan witch cults that have existed in secret for thousands of years.

Intellectually I have let Murray go, but in my games, not so much.

Witches are a big part of NIGHT SHIFT, regardless of where they come from.

The NIGHT SHIFT RPG is available from the Elf Lair Games website (hardcover) and from DriveThruRPG (PDF).

The A to Z of Conspiracy Theories: V is for Vril

Vril is an energy or the species that uses this energy depending on who you ask.  They would be as about as relevant as the Mahars of Pellucidar (the species, not the book) if it were not for the later involvement of Nazis and UFOs.

Vril comes from the book "Vril, the Power of the Coming Race" by Edward Bulwer-Lytton and was published anonymously in 1871. It deals, as was common to many "Science Romances" of the time with an unnamed but wealthy first-person narrator.  This narrator finds himself in an underground world occupied by these majestic angel-like begins, the Vril-ya who have advanced psychic abilities, but of course, need a proper Englishman to teach them how to speak English.  He also finds his lost wife, two sons, and daughter.   He learns that these beings also known as the Ana, used to live on the surface but came here sometime before the Great Flood.  He learns of their energy, the Vril, which is like an "all-permeating fluid."  

It was pretty much pre-Pulp, Victorian Science Romance (the precursor to Science Fiction). While not great, it has some interesting ideas that men and women were 100% equal in society and the notion of wireless communication and the potential of electricity.  It was, I do note, popular in its time.

It would have been a semi-forgotten bit of science fiction had it not been for various theosophists,  most notably Helena Blavatsky, who took it for Occult Truth (yes. with capital letters).  It seems that in addition to his work on Vril, Edward Bulwer-Lytton also wrote books about Rosicrucians and other occult matters.   Blavatsky took this bit of fiction and ran with it.  Ran so hard in fact that when I first encountered it years ago I was a little surprised to learn it had not been her idea.  As learned more and saw she was a con artist who stole ideas and claimed them as her own I became less and less surprised. 

As I said the book had some popularity with Vril becoming synonymous for a bit with "life given exlirs." There was even what amounted to a Sci-Fi convention at Royal Albert Hall in 1891 called the Vril-Ya Bazaar.  It all has the feel of a Star Trek Convention.  I like other sci-fi properties, there were those who really wished it was real.

But what makes this part of a Conspiracy Theory?

The book and the notions of Vril were taken up by various occultists, in particular theosophists, as truth.  They began to ascribe all sorts of properties to it and to Edward Bulwer-Lytton (who they felt was telling a first hand account in some cases).  Blavatsky used Vril and the idea of "The Common Race" (and "Race" in general, but I am getting to that) in her books Isis Unveiled (1877) and The Secret Doctrine (1888).  Likewise, theosophist William Scott-Elliot used "Vril-energy" in his The Story of Atlantis & The Lost Lemuria (first ed., 1896).  

Likely because of Blavatsky, Vril and the Comming Race became wrapped up in the fertile land of German paganism and pseudoscience that lead to the rise of Nazism.   As noted by Willy Ley, a German rocket engineer who came to the US in 1937, pre-Nazi Germany saw the popularity and widespread proliferation of many irrational ideas including Vril. He published "Pseudoscience in Naziland" in the magazine Astounding Science.  There is far more in that article than I can discuss in one post. But suffice to say that it is a gold mine of ideas.  One of the results of this was the belief in the "Vril Society" existing in Berlin prior to the rise of the Nazis.

After WWII the Vril Society supposedly went on to continue the works of Nazi Occultism which gave us ideas like the Black Sun and various UFOs.  That is another rabbit hole I don't feel like going down today.

For NIGHT SHIFT

I have spoken about various underground races already, the Derro and the Ophidians. The Derro share some commonalities with the Vril.  The Vril was published as science-fiction and others took them to be real.  The Derro was also published as science-fiction but their author claimed they were in fact real. Both featured anonymous first-person narrators. Both featured an underground lost civilization with advanced technology and energies.  But the Derro are invariably described as insane and stunted humans.  The Vril are "angel-like."  So it is not likely they are the same sort of folk.

There is some similarity between the Vril and the Nordics of UFOolgy.  Throw in some of the ideas of Ultima Thule and the "benevolent" Nordics start looking less benevolent. Sure they want the best for humanity, but only the humanity that looks like them. 

Vril of course is the common thread. It is the energy that both the Derro and the Nordics use.  Hmm...is there an association there that the characters need to tease out?  What are the Derro to the Nordics? Is there more here?  I think there is!

The NIGHT SHIFT RPG is available from the Elf Lair Games website (hardcover) and from DriveThruRPG (PDF).

Between October 2003 and October 2013, Chaosium, Inc. published a series of books for Call of Cthulhu under the Miskatonic University Library Association brand. Whether a sourcebook, scenario, anthology, or campaign, each was a showcase for their authors—amateur rather than professional, but fans of Call of Cthulhu nonetheless—to put forward their ideas and share with others. The programme was notable for having launched the writing careers of several authors, but for every Cthulhu Invictus, The Pastores, Primal State, Ripples from Carcosa, and Halloween Horror, there was Five Go Mad in Egypt, Return of the Ripper, Rise of the Dead, Rise of the Dead II: The Raid, and more...

The Miskatonic University Library Association brand is no more, alas, but what we have in its stead is the Miskatonic Repository, based on the same format as the DM’s Guild for Dungeons & Dragons. 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: Cold HungerPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Paul Dimitrievich

Setting: Jazz Age CanadaProduct: Scenario
What You Get: Seventeen page, 1.40 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: A missing persons case leads to madness on the tracks.Plot Hook: Has a missing reporter on a magazine of the unexplained gone missing because of his current case? 
Plot Support: Staging advice, four handouts, two floorplans, seven NPCs, two monsters and Mythos creatures, and four pre-generated Investigators.Production Values: Serviceable.
Pros# Canada and no sasquatches!# Straightforward plot# Easily adapted to other time periods with trains# Easily adapted to other northern climes# Solid pre-generated Investigators# Wolves in winter inspired by ‘Pickman’s Model’# Potential for Investigator versus Investigator action
Cons# Plain handouts and floorplans# No explanation of what the ‘CPR’ is# Potential for Investigator versus Investigator action
Conclusion# Serviceable plot ends in blood and desperate fashion which does not work as well if the Investigators are armed for bear# Blood, madness, and dinner on the tracks in a straightforward plot at the horrifying height of winter 

Between October 2003 and October 2013, Chaosium, Inc. published a series of books for Call of Cthulhu under the Miskatonic University Library Association brand. Whether a sourcebook, scenario, anthology, or campaign, each was a showcase for their authors—amateur rather than professional, but fans of Call of Cthulhu nonetheless—to put forward their ideas and share with others. The programme was notable for having launched the writing careers of several authors, but for every Cthulhu Invictus, The Pastores, Primal State, Ripples from Carcosa, and Halloween Horror, there was Five Go Mad in Egypt, Return of the Ripper, Rise of the Dead, Rise of the Dead II: The Raid, and more...

The Miskatonic University Library Association brand is no more, alas, but what we have in its stead is the Miskatonic Repository, based on the same format as the DM’s Guild for Dungeons & Dragons. 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: Care ForgotPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: John Almack

Setting: Jazz AgeProduct: One-on-One Scenario
What You Get: Six page, 757.70 KB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Sudden forgetfulness brings fears of its ownPlot Hook: Who am I?
Plot Support: Staging advice, seven NPCs, one Mythos entity, and one pre-generated Investigator.Production Values: Plain.
Pros# One-on-one horror scenario# Classic horror set-up# Classic Mythos set-up made very personal# Easy to adapt to other time periods# Easy to adapt to other cities# Solid cast of NPCs for the Keeper to roleplay
Cons# Requires access to The Grand Grimoire of Cthulhu Mythos Magic# Potentially too personal horror
Conclusion# Classic amnesia set-up made very personal in a one-on-one scenario built around a classic Call of Cthulhu plot# Strong on roleplaying and interaction

The A to Z of Conspiracy Theories: U is for Unmarked Helicopters

Few things say "New World Order" or "Military Industrial Complex" quite as nicely as an unmarked military helicopter.

Sightings of unmarked helicopters began in 1970s, often in conjunction with or near cattle mutilations (which I have not even touched yet).  They were even spoken about in  Hal Lindsey's book "The Late, Great Planet Earth" (which I have talked about before).

 More recently Unmarked Helicopters have been the center of growing concerns about the military arming of local police and the extensive powers used by the US government to keep tabs on the American citizens.  Like what Homeland Security does.

There is also some evidence (though nothing I could easily verify) that the CIA was using a black Vietnam-era helicopter to put in phone taps.  

My first experience with Unmarked or Black Helicopters was from the movie Capricorn One. A movie about a conspiracy to fake the first manned mission to Mars.

The UFO Connection

Many sightings of black or unmarked helicopters will occur after a purported UFO sighting.  The most commonly held belief is that these helicopters are from the government and looking to either investigate or cover up the sighting details.  I even read one where the helicopters are in fact the same people/aliens/group that were responsible for the UFO.

Cattle Mutilations

We never hear much about this anymore, but in the 1970s this was newsworthy stuff.  Typically a rancher or someone would find dead cattle that had organs or body parts removed such as an eye, ear or sexual organs. The wounds would clean and sometimes even cauterized.  There would be a complete lack of blood found in the area leading some to believe that the cattle had lifted up and out where the mutilations would occur and then deposited back.  No mean feat when you consider your average cow weighs around 1,600 lbs and a bull over 1 ton.   Since the helicopters were usually spotted in the area it lead many to believe that they were the cause of it.  Obviously, these people never took my stats courses where I make sure my students know that "correlation is not causation."

The rumors that the military was testing some sort of new "death ray" (these conspiracy types really want a death ray) mounted on silent unmarked helicopters were the most popular. 

For NIGHT SHIFT

I have learned that if I want a crazy conspiracy theory in my games there is nothing I can create that will outdo the theories created by my players.  When I am putting ones together I try to keep a certain level of game logic in place. That way when things come up I have a reason for it.  My players are not burdened by such.  So sometimes I throw something out there just to get them spinning.

Unmarked helicopters are great for this.

Have a scene where the characters are investigating something?  Doesn't really matter what. A murder, a UFO sighing, a kitten stuck in a tree?  All of these things are now suddenly more sinister and involve the "Deep State" by putting an unmarked helicopter in the sky above it.

I got to see this demonstrated in real life at work a few years ago.  We were all sitting in our office on the 5th floor just having a normal day when someone spotted a helicopter hovering over the building across I80 from us.  Now seeing a helicopter over the interstate or expressway in Chicago is not a big deal, there are traffic and new helicopters in the sky all the time.  But this one was just hoovering there in the middle of the afternoon.  Well after the morning rush and well before the evening rush.  We all had to stop and watch it.  To see what it was doing.   Turns out it was changing the light fixtures over the interstate. It was hoovering because we could not see the ground crew affixing the new light fixture to it.  Normally this would have been done by crane, but the light was situated in such a way that a crane was not easily maneuverable in that area. 

So next time I need to shamelessly turn up the tension I'll put an unmarked helicopter in the sky and have it fly off before any of the characters can capture any details about it. 

And I have play this song as well.

The NIGHT SHIFT RPG is available from the Elf Lair Games website (hardcover) and from DriveThruRPG (PDF).

Between October 2003 and October 2013, Chaosium, Inc. published a series of books for Call of Cthulhu under the Miskatonic University Library Association brand. Whether a sourcebook, scenario, anthology, or campaign, each was a showcase for their authors—amateur rather than professional, but fans of Call of Cthulhu nonetheless—to put forward their ideas and share with others. The programme was notable for having launched the writing careers of several authors, but for every Cthulhu Invictus, The Pastores, Primal State, Ripples from Carcosa, and Halloween Horror, there was Five Go Mad in Egypt, Return of the Ripper, Rise of the Dead, Rise of the Dead II: The Raid, and more...

The Miskatonic University Library Association brand is no more, alas, but what we have in its stead is the Miskatonic Repository, based on the same format as the DM’s Guild for Dungeons & Dragons. 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: Pilgrim’s HopePublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Jazmin Ospa

Setting: Illinois, 1885
Product: Scenario for Down Darker Trails: Terrors of the Mythos
What You Get: Eighteen page, 844.50 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Snakes at a show!Plot Hook: Buffalo Bill’s Wild West tour of the USA gets a short, sharp snake shock!
Plot Support: Staging advice, one map, five NPCs, one creature, two Mythos monsters, and six pre-generated Investigators.Production Values: Plain.
Pros# Scenario for Down Darker Trails: Terrors of the Mythos
# Short , gun-toting one-session one-shot
# Emphasis on combat and a chase# Easy to prepare# Ophidiophobia# The chance to roleplay members of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West tour of the USA
Cons# Ophidiophobia# Little investigation# Why does the villain unleash the snakes at the show?
Conclusion# A for Buffalo Bill’s Wild West tour of the USA to ride against the Mythos!# Straightforward action-packed scenario sets up an exciting chase, but leaves the villain’s motivation unexplained

Between October 2003 and October 2013, Chaosium, Inc. published a series of books for Call of Cthulhu under the Miskatonic University Library Association brand. Whether a sourcebook, scenario, anthology, or campaign, each was a showcase for their authors—amateur rather than professional, but fans of Call of Cthulhu nonetheless—to put forward their ideas and share with others. The programme was notable for having launched the writing careers of several authors, but for every Cthulhu Invictus, The Pastores, Primal State, Ripples from Carcosa, and Halloween Horror, there was Five Go Mad in Egypt, Return of the Ripper, Rise of the Dead, Rise of the Dead II: The Raid, and more...

The Miskatonic University Library Association brand is no more, alas, but what we have in its stead is the Miskatonic Repository, based on the same format as the DM’s Guild for Dungeons & Dragons. 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: Tales of the Casket GirlsPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Michael Henebry

Setting: Jazz Age New Orleans
Product: Scenario
What You Get: Twenty-two page, 67.27 KB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: A missing persons case leads to nasty nuns!Plot Hook: A convent of chills
Plot Support: Two monsters, five handouts, three maps and floorplans, six pre-generated Investigators.Production Values: Plain.
Pros# Straightforward plot# Potentially pulpy plot# Good background and history# Vampire nuns# Solid mix of pre-generated Investigators# Potential lead in to a Secrets of New Orleans campaign# Possible campaign set-up with Investigators as new Knights Templars vampire hunters!
Cons# Not vampire nuns!?# Not enough made of New Orleans
Conclusion# Straightforward plot leads to a dark secret hidden in New Orleans and confrontation in a convent