Quick one today. I am not what I consider to be a FunkoPop collector. I have a couple I really like, mostly little witches and Red Sonja. But I saw this new one out and decided to treat myself to an early birthday present.

She looks great next my Funko Pop Larina.

And they share the shelf with my books on witchcraft and demonology appropriately enough.

Like I said, I am not a huge collector, but I think one of The Simbul might be fun.

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

—oOo—
Name: The Haunted Swamp: A 1920s ghost story in Tropical QueenslandPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Jane Routley

Setting: Queensland, AustraliaProduct: Scenario
What You Get: Twenty-seven page, 5.52 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: “Modern morality and manners suppress all natural instincts, keep people ignorant of the facts of nature and make them fighting drunk on bogey tales.” – Aleister CrowleyPlot Hook: Drain the swamp of its crocodiles and its secretsPlot Support: Staging advice, four pre-generated Investigators, six NPCs, five handouts, one map, one supernatural monster, and lots and lots of crocodiles.Production Values: Reasonable
Pros# Detailed NPCs
# Easy to adjust to other eras# Straightforward investigation# Great cover# Phasmophobia# Herpetophobia# Limnophobia
Cons# Needs an edit
# Needs some Sanity losses# Would work better with more developed Investigator backgrounds
Conclusion# Queensland Gothic ghost story# Straightforward, easy-to-run investigation that is heavy on the interaction

 Today marks the 95 anniversary of the birth of American author Lin Carter.  I didn't plan it this way, but I have been going back and rereading some of Carter's work, especially his entries in Gygax's Appendix N. So today I want to revisit a favorite bad guy of mine, the Ophidians or Snake Men/Serpent Men, and recast them as "The Serpent Men of Lemuria." 

I am not trying to cling to one particular idea here. This is a pastiche of many sources. Lin Carter, Robert E. Howard, Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and others. 

This recasting is not designed to be incompatible with my previous post on Ophidians, but rather an enhancement to it. 

Serpent Men of Lemuria (Ophidians)

Frequency: Rare
No. Appearing: 2–20 (nobles 1–4; lesser 2–100; emissaries 1–10; abominations 1–8)
Armor Class: Varies (see below)
Move: 12" (Swim 12")
Hit Dice: Varies (see below)
% in Lair: 60%
Treasure Type: Varies (see below)
No. of Attacks: Varies
Damage/Attack: Varies
Special Attacks: Poison, charm, constriction, magic
Special Defenses: See below
Magic Resistance: Standard
Intelligence: High to Genius
Alignment: Lawful Evil
Size: M to L (5' to 15' long)
Psionic Ability: Nil
Attack/Defense Modes: Nil 

The Serpent Men of Lemuria are the degenerate remnants of an ancient pre-human empire that once ruled the world from their black ziggurats of Lemuria. Worshippers of forgotten serpent gods, they are a deeply hierarchical species whose society is divided into castes: Nobles, Emissaries, Lessers, Abominations, and the rare Progenitors.

The Serpent Men dwell in lost cities, endless deserts, and jungle-cloaked ruins where the bones of their former empire still stand. Their society is steeped in sorcery, cruelty, and ancient blood magic.

Lesser Serpent Men (Rank & File)

Armor Class: 4
Hit Dice: 3+1
No. of Attacks: 2 (weapons) or 1 (bite)
Damage/Attack: Weapon (usually scimitars 1d8) or bite 1d6 + poison
Special Attacks: Poison (save vs poison or die in 1d4+2 rounds)
Special Defenses: Immune to snake venom
Treasure Type: Q×10 (minor trophies, jewelry)

Description: The Lesser caste are the numerous warrior-slaves of the Serpent Men, with humanoid torsos and snake-like lower bodies. They wield cruel curved blades and favor ambush tactics. Though not highly intelligent individually, they are cunning pack hunters.

Noble Serpent Men (Ruling Caste)

Armor Class: 2
Hit Dice: 9+3
No. of Attacks: 1 (weapon or bite)
Damage/Attack: Weapon (1d8) or bite 1d6 + poison
Special Attacks: Poison (save vs poison or die in 1d4+2 rounds); Command lesser castes
Special Defenses: Immune to snake venom; immune to petrification (basilisks, medusae)
Treasure Type: H, S (temple hoards)

Description: The Nobles rule through bloodline purity, cruelty, and mastery of ancient secrets. With humanoid heads covered in fine scales, they resemble blasphemous parodies of men. Their venom is deadlier than the Lesser caste, and their minds sharp with sorcerous knowledge of the old gods.

Emissary Serpent Men (Sorcerer-Priests)
Armor Class: 5
Hit Dice: 6+2
No. of Attacks: 1 weapon or spell
Damage/Attack: Weapon (usually dagger 1d4+1) or by spell
Special Attacks: Charm (victims save at −1); spells as 5th-level Illusionist
Special Defenses: Immune to snake venom; partially resistant to charm (save at +1 vs charm attempts)
Treasure Type: O, R (spell components, magical items, rare scrolls)

Description: Emissaries are the sorcerer-priests of the Ophidians, acting as the voice of the nobles to the outside world. Though appearing nearly human, they bear forked tongues, scaled skin, and slitted eyes. Their spells manipulate the minds of humans, making them ideal infiltrators and agents.

Abomination Serpent Men (Spawn of Forbidden Unions)

Armor Class: 3
Hit Dice: 10+2
No. of Attacks: 2 slams and bite
Damage/Attack: 1d6+3 / 1d6+3 (slams), bite 1d6+3 + poison
Special Attacks: Constriction (if both slam attacks hit same target); poison bite (save vs poison or die in 1d4+1 rounds)
Special Defenses: Immune to snake venom; berserk rage grants +2 to hit when wounded
Treasure Type: None

Description: The Abominations are cursed progeny — bloated masses of serpentine horror, many-limbed or many-headed, each uniquely malformed. Used as shock troops, they know only hatred for all life. The nobles use them as living engines of slaughter.

Progenitor Serpent Men (Ancient Mage-Priests)

Armor Class: 6
Hit Dice: 9
No. of Attacks: 1 weapon or spell
Damage/Attack: By weapon or spell
Special Attacks: Cast as 5th-level Magic-User and 4th-level Cleric
Special Defenses: Immune to snake venom; difficult to detect (treat as continuous nondetection spell)
Treasure Type: Q, S, U (ancient relics, rare spellbooks, forbidden lore)

Description: The Progenitors are the oldest of the Serpent Men, their bodies concealed by illusory human skins. They are few, paranoid, and driven by a desire for immortality. Most nobles seek to destroy them out of fear.

Ecology and Religion

The Serpent Men worship ancient pre-human serpent deities, long forgotten by man. Whether these are true gods or eldritch cosmic entities is unknown. In their black ziggurats, sacrifices are made to these dark powers, feeding the Ophidian sorceries that sustain their dwindling bloodlines.

The Cult of The One Who Remains

In the lost jungles and steaming lowlands of ancient Lemuria, where black ziggurats rise like broken teeth through the mists, the Ophidian Serpent Men whisper prayers to a god few mortals dare name. The humans who know of it call it The One Who Remains; the Serpent Men call it Ssath Ur-Raa, He Who Waits Beyond All Coils.

To the Serpent Men, all things, kingdoms, races, even the gods themselves, are as molted skins, discarded and forgotten. After all, they watched the Old Ones rise into power and then fall into their deep cosmic slumbers. Only the great cosmic serpent at the center of all existence endures. They believe that when the final sun gutters out and the last star grows cold, The One Who Remains will still exist, coiled at the center of the void, the last and eternal devourer. It is not death, but endless, unbroken continuation. Not life, but consumption without end.

Within their ancient temples, deep beneath the crumbling ziggurats of Lemuria, the Serpent Men enact terrible rites in its honor. Victims are dragged screaming into stone chambers and placed upon altars of obsidian and jade. There, their lifeblood is spilled, seeping into channels cut into the floor, flowing in great spirals that mimic the infinite coils of their god. Blood is both offering and currency, traded for visions, power, and the brief illusion of immortality.

The priesthood of The One Who Remains is layered like the coils of their god. At its center sits the High Oracle of the Last Coil, always one of the ancient Progenitors, older than memory and rumored to have gazed directly into the eyes of the Sleeper Beneath the Last Coil. Around the Oracle gather the Lords of the Black Coil, drawn from the most ancient noble bloodlines. It is they who oversee the Abomination-Births, deliberately breeding the most monstrous of their kind as offerings and as weapons in their ceaseless wars. Beneath them are the Coilspeakers, the Emissaries who master the ancient arts of dream-sorcery and illusion. With whispered words and flickering gestures, they cloud the minds of men and bend them to the will of their Ophidian masters.

Even among the Lesser caste, faith in The One Who Remains is absolute, though their understanding is crude. They serve as the laborers, the warriors, and the butchers of the faith. For every sacrifice, for every abomination birthed, for every rival enslaved or destroyed, the Serpent Men believe themselves one coil closer to their god’s embrace.

Yet it is not merely blood and flesh they offer. The Coilspeakers enter trances where they seek visions from the outer reaches of the world, glimpsing patterns spiraling into infinite madness. Those few who return speak of collapsing worlds, of unraveling realities, and of other realms where The One Who Remains reaches through fractured dimensions to consume entire existences. Whether these are prophetic glimpses or delusions born of their own degeneracy, none can say.

To the Ophidians, all is a spiral, the twisting of bloodlines, the coiling of bodies in ritual embrace, the spiraling glyphs carved into the temple stones. And at the center of every spiral is The One Who Remains.

Even now, as the last of their ancient cities crumble, and humanity rises beyond the jungles they once ruled, the Ophidians believe that all victories of man are but passing skins. In the end, when all is uncoiled and the world breathes its final breath, only their god shall remain.

--

I have been hanging on to The One Who Remains for many years now. Trying to find good ways to sneak it into various writings. He made his first appearance in my Buffy RPG adventure "The Dark Druid" and he is the "something else" I mentioned in Fear Dorich's stats. 

Who, or what, is The One Who Remains? That is a much more complicated question and deserves a careful answer. In the future. 

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

—oOo—

Name: Smoke on the Huangpu: A 1930s one-shot in Old ShanghaiPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Matthew Morris

Setting: Shanghai, 1931Product: Scenario
What You Get: Thirty-six page, 19.85 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: “Nobody will laugh long who deals much with opium: its pleasures even are of a grave and solemn complexion.” – Thomas de QuinceyPlot Hook: Murder on the banks of the Shanghai leads to the ‘insanity’ of additionPlot Support: Staging advice, Spotify playlist, four pre-generated Investigators, three NPCs, seven handouts, two maps, one Mythos tome, one Mythos spell, and two Mythos monsters.Production Values: Excellent
Pros# Single-session Shanghai investigation
# Decent pre-generated Investigators# Well organised investigation# Solid addition to a Shanghai-set campaign# Works as well with two as with three or four# Pharmacophobia# Submechanophobia# Speirophobia
Cons# Single-session Shanghai investigation# May drive an Investigator to addiction
Conclusion# Suitably squalid investigation in the seamier side of Shanghai# Feels like it should be longer, or there should be sequels

Tales of Argosa: Sword & Sorcery Adventure pitches itself as a Swords & Sorcery roleplaying game designed for short, sharp adventures built around emergent play. There is no set story, or indeed setting in the roleplaying game, but the intention is that the story and the play will develop from the choices made by the players and the actions of their characters. The Game Master will present to her players the hooks and rumours that their characters will respond to and thus follow up, deciding where to go, what to do, what to investigate, what to explore, who to interact with, and so on. What the player and their characters will discover is a sandbox world full of savage wilderness, treacherous cities, murderous monsters, mysterious ruins, fierce battles, ruinous magic, fabulous treasures, and cosmic weirdness. Wherever they go and whatever they do, fights are fast and brutal and magic is dark and definitely dangerous, and their goal is fortune and glory rather than some heroic cause necessarily.

Tales of Argosa is published by Pickpocket Press, following a successful Kickstarter campaign. An updating of the earlier Low Fantasy Gaming—effectively a second edition—Tales of Argosa is an Old School Renaissance retroclone that draws from Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, but shifts mechanically back to some older editions of the venerable roleplaying game whilst maintaining some modern mechanics. In addition, there are some quite startling changes that make the tone and play of the game a whole lot grimmer than the average retroclone. What this means is that there is a lot that is going to be familiar about Tales of Argosa—attributes, Races, Classes, monsters, types of combat, monsters, and treasures. However, there is a lot in Tales of Argosa that is going to be different and unfamiliar. Much of it is good, but some of it is not so much bad, as irksome—and even then, not for everyone.

So, what are the changes in Tales of Argosa? They start with a level cap—Player Characters can only achieve Ninth Level before they retire. Hit Points are low and remain low in comparison to other Dungeons & Dragons-style roleplaying games, even at Ninth Level. The Saving Throw is replaced by a Luck roll every time the Player Character would be damaged by an effect or the environment, but Luck diminishes each time it is tested. Encounters are designed to be unbalanced and dangerous, forcing the Player Characters when to fight and when to run. Healing takes minutes, not seconds, so it always takes place at the end of combat, by which time, a Player Character could be dead… Magic is dark and dangerous and if it goes wrong can cause madness and mutations, unleash monsters from the Veil, and worse! On the other hand, at each Third Level, a player can design an ability unique to his character (or pick one of the options in the book), so there is scope for customisation. Exploits—Minor, Major, and Rescue—that work alongside damage inflicted enable heroic action upon the part of the Player Characters. There are Exploits too for combat, plus effects for ‘Nat 19’ and Critical rolls, which when combined with Fumble ripostes, Morale checks, and Trauma rolls, give a Player Character more choices and lend themselves to exciting and action-packed battles! Some damage dice can explode depending upon the weapon type and situation. These are not the only changes in Tales of Argosa, or indeed, the only features. They do, however, impart much of the tone of the roleplaying game.

A Player Character has a Race, Class, seven Attributes, and a Background. The five Races are Human, Dwarf, Elf, Halfling, and Half Skorn. Called halfmen or beastmen, Skorn are heavy set, pink skinned proto-humans, whilst Half Skorn are strong and hard-to-kill and inclined to war and conquest, but suffer from poor memory and analytical ability. The Classes are the Artificer, Bard,

Fighter, Barbarian, Monk, Ranger, Rogue, Cultist, and Magic User. The Cultist is the equivalent of the Cleric, with five suggestions given in terms of gods worshipped and the benefits and strictures of doing so, whilst the Artificer can be an expert alchemist, forge master, gear priest, or black powder savant. He gains access to alchemy and mechanica, inventions that he can use once per day per Level. The inventions include a Black Powder Weapon, Chaintooth Weapon, Breathing Mask, Corroding Spray, Ironward, Thunder Gauntlet, Truth Serum, X-ray Goggles, and more. He can also jury rig a device or concoct a mixture a number of times equal to his Intelligence modifier per day to bypass a current obstacle, disarm a trap, or assist the party in some other way. The seven attributes are Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Willpower, Perception, and Charisma. Initiative is derived from Dexterity and Intelligence, whilst Perception is also used to determine ranged attack bonuses. A Background provides an attribute bonus, a skill, and an item. For example, the Rat Catcher Background improves a Player Character Dexterity by one and gives him a wedge of cheese, whilst a Hangman gains a bonus to his Willpower, the Leadership skill, and thirty feet of rope.

Notably, at Third, Sixth, and Ninth Level, a Player Character can have a ‘Unique Feature’, the equivalent of a Feat. These can be created by the player, but Tales of Argosa offers a set of off-the-shelf options. Many of these are ‘Cross Class’ Unique Features, enabling a Player Character of one Class to take an ability of another, such as ‘Alchemy & Mechanica (Cross Class)’, which grants a Player Character one invention from the Artificer’s list and limited use of it. Many also have multiple tiers, meaning that they can be selected three times. For example, with ‘Pilfer Pouch’, a Player Character has wandering hands and is always picking up things and putting them in his pouch. At Tier 1, the player rolls percentile dice to randomly draw an interesting—and hopefully useful item—such as a Skorn tooth or a jar of bees—from the pouch; at Tier 2, the player can reroll; and at Tier 3, the player can make a Luck check to pick an item from the table.

To create a character, a player rolls for his Race and Background. He then rolls three six-sided dice for his attributes, one of which must be fifteen or higher, and another thirteen or higher. He can raise stats to these values if necessary. He selects a Class and takes (or rolls) its options at First Level, and also rolls for a Party Bond, which explains why the Player Characters are together. Everything is either set or derived, notably Hit Points are equal to a Player Character’s Constitution, plus a modifier determined by Class. For example, the Barbarian’s Hit Points are equal to his Constitution plus twice his Level, whilst the Magic-User’s is only equal to his Constitution plus Level. Equipment is a mixture of Battle Gear Slots and Pack Gear, but each Class offers some equipment, including arms and armour, as well as some coins.

Donoso
Class: Magic-User
Level: 1 Age: 30
Background: Prisoner
Strength 14 (+1) Dexterity 07 (-1) Constitution 07 (-1)
Intelligence 16 (+2) Willpower 16 (+2) Perception 16 (+2)
Charisma 14 (+1) Luck 11

Armour Class: 10
Initiative: 12 (+0)
Attack Bonus: +1 Ranged Bonus: +2
Rerolls: 2
Hit Points: 8
Death Save: 12

Abilities: Spellcraft, Sense Magic
Spells Known: Hex of Volcanic Steel (Heat Metal), Whispers of the Watchers (Locate Object)
Skills: Animal Lore, Arcane Lore, Apothecary, Deception, Persuasion, Sleight of Hand
Battle Gear: spellbook, longsword (1d8), leather armour (+1 AC)
Pack Gear: torch, bedroll, rations (5 days), manacles, and tinderbox
Coins: 10 sp

Of the Classes, the Artificer is the outlier. It adds technology such as the Black Powder Weapon and Chaintooth Weapon—the latter effectively a chainsword—that the Game Master may not want in her campaign and do not necessarily fit the swords & sorcery genre. The option is given to make the Class more like the Alchemist, with Poison replacing both weapons, but why not do it the other way round? Make the Alchemist Class the default as it does more readily fit the genre and the Artificer the option?

Mechanically, Tales of Argosa uses a number of different systems. The first is Luck. A Luck roll is a roll against, rolling under the value, typically to resist serious adverse effects such as spells, traps, special enemy attacks, or major environmental hazards, or to perform a Major Exploit, Rescue, or Party Retreat, which rely on the Luck resource to pull off. Depending upon the nature of the situation, a Luck roll can be modified by an attribute. However, each time a Player Character succeeds on a Luck roll, his Luck attribute is reduced by one to a minimum of five.

As with the Luck roll, skill checks and attribute checks are rolled under an attribute. A skill increases the attribute value by one for the skill check. A Player Character has a number of Rerolls, determined by Level, which can be used on Attribute checks, Luck checks, Death saves, and so on. Humans have one more Reroll than other Races. It is possible to roll a Great Success or a Terrible Failure on an Attribute or Skill check. A roll that is equal to half or less of the Attribute or Skill is a Great Success, whereas, a roll equal to or greater than one-and-a-half times the Attribute or Skill is a Terrible Fail. Thus, for example, for Donoso’s Dexterity of seven, a Great Success would be three or less, but a Terrible Failure, eleven or more, whereas for Intelligence, a Great Success would be eight or less, a Terrible Failure, twenty only. Modifiers to skill checks and attribute checks, can be a few points either way, but instead of major modifiers, Advantage and Disadvantage is used instead. There are other difficulty mechanics present in Tales of Argosa which seem to apply to Montage rules, but these are not readily explained.

Combat in Tales of Argosa uses group initiative, rolled against one Player Character’s Initiative. If successful, the Player Characters attack before the enemy and on a Great Success, before any boss or heavy monsters or other enemy. The players take it in turns to roll it, so that it is not always the player with the character with highest initiative always rolling. On a round, a Player Character can act and move once. Most fights are not to the death, but rather to the point when one side’s morale breaks. Typically, an action is an attack, casting a spell, dodging, and so on. Where an Attribute or Skill check requires a low roll on a twenty-sided die, combat requires a high roll to equal or better an Armour Class. A natural twenty inflicts maximum damage plus half the attacker’s Level—rounding up, rather than rounding down as in most situations. A Fumble results on a roll of one, potentially opening the fumbler up to a free attack.

Most weapons have properties that can also be triggered on a roll of a ‘Nat 19’, that is, a natural roll of nineteen. For example, a light mace or hammer inflicts 1d10 damage on a ‘Nat 19’, instead of the standard 1d6. The result of a ‘Nat 19’ gives a player two choices, one is a roll on the ‘Blunt Trauma’ table, the other is pushing a defender back a short distance or knocking him prone. To this, a player can also add an Exploit, which can be Major or Minor. Both require a player to hit and inflict damage, but a Minor Exploit might be to knock an opponent off his feet, drive him backwards, throw him through a window, throw dirt in his eyes, and so on. A Major Exploit might be to shatter a foe’s weapon, grab an enemy in each hand and crack their skulls together to stun them both, cut off a dragon’s wing, or decapitate the head of an orc. A Major Exploit does not increase damage to a single target, but might affect multiple targets, and nor can a Major Exploit kill or incapacitate a target, unless they are particularly weak. Similar rules work for Rescue Exploits, but Exploits in general, bring a narrative element into play as well as the standard rules. Other situations covered under combat include chases—complete with a table of chase events, as well as different fighting styles, knockouts, flanking, and aerial and underwater combat.

Damage, from any source, is deducted from a Player Character’s Hit Points. A combatant who is reduced to half his Hit Points is regarded as Wounded. This does not affect the Player Character, but it does certain monsters. For example, the Banshee’s ‘Death Wail’ recharges when it is Wounded. When a Player Character’s Hit Points are reduced to zero, he is dead or dying, but he and his fellow adventurers only find out which after the battle. At this point, a Death Save is made. If failed, the Player Character is dead, if successful, he is merely dying. At this point, healing can be rendered from any source and the player must still roll on the ‘Injuries & Setbacks’ table to determine the effects of being brought to near death. This can be as simple as a sprained ankle that limits his movement and mobility temporarily or it could be a broken or even a lost leg! Non-magical healing requires Willpower checks for a Short Rest, typically only one Hit Point is recovered following a night’s sleep, and a Long Rest takes a week!

Sorcery requires an Intelligence (Arcane Lore) check to cast, followed by a ‘Dark & Dangerous Magic’ check. If the Intelligence (Arcane Lore) check results in a ‘Great Success’ result, the spell is extra potent, gaining an extra effect as detailed in the spell. For example, A Wisp Unseen, which grants invisibility, lets the caster make a second person invisible too. However, on a ‘Terrible Failure’, both the spell and the ‘Dark & Dangerous Magic’ check fails. A Magic-User cannot cast the same spell more times than his Intelligence modifier per day. A Magic-User casting a spell is not the only situation in which a ‘Dark & Dangerous Magic’ check is required. It is also made when a Cultist invokes a Blessing without Favour from his god, gained from adhering to his deity’s strictures. A Cultist either has Favour or he does not and he can gain it multiple times per day, but the more times he uses it, the harder it becomes to gain. Whilst a ‘Dark & Dangerous Magic’ check may be required due to some magical aspect of a scenario or situation, the other reason why it might be required for a Player Character other than a Magic-User or Cultist is when a magic item is used.

A ‘Dark & Dangerous Magic’ check requires a simple die roll. Initially an eight-sided die, but then a ten-sided and a twelve-sided die as the Magic-User or Cultist goes up in Level. Using a magic item necessitates the rolling of a twenty-sided die. Whatever the die type, on a roll of one, the ‘Dark & Dangerous Magic’ effect is triggered and a roll on the ‘Dark & Dangerous Magic’ table is required, or the ‘Divine Rebuke’ table if a Cultist. The result might be “Fell Fingers – Your fingers turn into tentacles, serpents, leeches or something similarly creepy for 1d6 minutes. You cannot cast spells during this time. You count as Two Weapon Fighting and cause 2d6 acid or poison-based damage on a hit.” or “Plague of Flies – Lingering in the open attracts an abundance of flies, gnats, mosquitoes, locusts, etc, to your person. Atonement ends the rebuke.” There is a table of Atonements for the Cultist. However, if the ‘Dark & Dangerous Magic’ check succeeds, its threshold rises by one until either it is triggered or a new adventure begins and it can be reset.

Tales of Argosa lists some fifty spells, from A Wisp Unseen, Abjure the Unnatural, and Arcane Aegis to Whispers of the Watchers, Wings of the Raven King, and Witchblade. Most of them are familiar, but are renamed. For example, Dark Slumber is Sleep and Riddle of Bones is Speak with Undead. This both adds flavour, but it also confuses somewhat.

Beyond adventuring, the Player Characters are given numerous options for their downtime. Of course, this includes advancement, but it also covers buying or constructing buildings, black market trading, carousing, gambling, training pets—including monstrous pets, brewing potions, recovery—from addiction, madness, and injuries, conducting research, inscribing scrolls, and rumour mongering. For the Game Master, there is guidance on running wilderness and dungeon adventures, supported by encounter tables for both, hireling creation tables, running mass battles, and handling madness. This is typically suffered after encountering monstrosities, aberrations, and demons, or reading forbidden lore and requires a Luck (Willpower) check to resist. Symptoms manifest in acute episodes once per symptom per adventure and cannot be cured by magic, only through recovery during downtime.

Tales of Argosa includes an extensive bestiary of monsters with guidance on customisation and set of templates that will turn a monster into a boss, demon, heavy, lycanthrope, and more. Again, most of the entries will be familiar from other Dungeons & Dragons-style roleplaying games, but many also have scope for customisation. Rounding out the roleplaying game are sample traps and an extensive list of magic items. There is also a set of Oracle Tools, intended for use as ‘quintessential improv enablers’ and which make use of The Bones or Deck of Signs. They work well, but they feel out of place in a retroclone, more so because they require a completely separate set of dice to the standard polyhedral dice or cards. Obviously, they are also available online, but that adds complexity when Tales of Argosa is played at the table. There are rules too for solo play and a dungeon generator to work with normal and solo play.

Physically, Tales of Argosa is cleanly, but occasionally, tightly laid out. In general, it is well written and apart from the occasional piece that feels out of place, the artwork—all black and white—is excellent, a mix of classic Dungeons & Dragons combined with swords & sorcery.

Tales of Argosa is an attempt to create a grimmer and more perilous version of Dungeons & Dragons-style play, and in this, it succeeds. This is primarily through the lower number of Hit Points, the lack of immediacy of healing in combat, reliance on a diminishing luck resource rather than standard Saving Throws, and spellcasting being ‘Dark & Dangerous Magic’. Yet this comes with a complexity that echoes Advanced Dungeons & Dragons more than it does any other edition. None of the roleplaying game’s various subsystems is necessarily complex in themselves, but the roll low for Attribute, Luck, and Skill checks versus the roll high for combat versus the roll low for ‘Dark & Dangerous Magic’ check is outmoded, counterintuitive, and adds unnecessary complexity. Similarly, the roll of a natural twenty versus a ‘Nat 19’ is counterintuitive and in the case of the latter adds further complexity, as well as forcing the question, “Which is the better result?” Or rather, which has the more interesting result? Invariably, it is the ‘Nat 19’ result because the player gets to roll on the various trauma, or critical hit, tables. The inclusion of Exploits add an extra narrative effect as well, and then the Oracle Tools seem to have been dropped into the roleplaying game from an entirely different game and age. And yet…

Not every player or Game Master is going to have an issue with the differing subsystems in Tales of Argosa, but there will also be those that do. It simply means that Tales of Argosa is not for them. Yet to be fair, they all add flavour and detail to play as well as enforcing the fact that adventuring is dangerous and for the foolish. Tales of Argosa: Sword & Sorcery Adventure is undoubtedly an entertaining roleplaying game, but Game Master and player alike are going to have to adjust to its complexities to get to the entertaining part of play.

A new life awaits you in the far reaches of the galaxy! A chance to begin a life of adventure and excitement in a dark region of opportunity and adventure! There is no future for you at the heart of civilisation, let alone on some backwater planet. You can take the government scrip and the government slop and live an existence of hopeless lassitude. Or you can sign up with the Extracsa Conglomerate and receive training that will make you useful to the corporation and to society, contributing to the future of humanity. The operations of the Extracsa Conglomerate are expanding into the far reaches of the galaxy, a bleak region of space, dominated by a golden scar-like object known as the Glitch. Having completed your training, you have been assigned to this expansion area for the period of your indenture. Rumours swirl about your assignment, that the region is somewhere where life, technology and reality can become twisted and wrong. This is the set-up for Cosmic Dark, is a game of weird space horror from the designer of Cthulhu Dark and the highly regarded Stealing Cthulhu.

Cosmic Dark is a storytelling game of cosmic and Science Fiction horror that is significant in three ways. First, it offers a complete six-part campaign that can be played through in roughly twelve or so sessions. Second, it provides complete guidance for the Director—as the Game Master is known—to create more scenarios of her own. Third, it is designed to be played straight from the page with a minimum of effort, using a very light set of mechanics. The players learn the rules of the roleplaying game as they play, including Employee generation, although the Director will still need to read the rules and the scenario beforehand to get the best out of the story. Thankfully, the core rules run to just seven pages, requiring no more than some six-sided dice, preferably of different colours.

A Player Character—or Employee—is very simply designed. He has a Specialism, such as Medical Officer, Mining Engineer, Geologist, Comms Officer, and Team Leader, and then a series of stats on a one-to-six range. Changed represents how much space affects an Employee. It is rolled every time an Employee is hurt or something weird happens to him, and when it reaches six, he is broken and their story is over. In addition, he has a Reality Die and a Specialism Die. These are rolled when the Employee wants to investigate something. The highest result determines the amount of information the Employee gains. This is the bare minimum on a roll of one and everything the Employee can be expected to discover on a four. In addition, the Employee can also gain access to Records from Extracsa’s databases on a roll of five, but on a six, the Employee learns all of this and worse, gains a glimpse of the Anomaly, which may trigger a Changed roll. (The Director can hold a five or six if there is nothing appropriate in a scene.) If someone—which can be another player or the Director—thinks the story would be more interesting if the Employee failed, they roll a Failure Die against the Employee’ player. If the Failure Die rolls higher than the Employee’s die, the Employee fails. Combat is handled in this way, failure triggering a Changed roll. However, it should be noted that the focus of Cosmic Dark and its campaign is upon interaction and exploration and discovery, and not on combat.

In the long term, it is possible for an Employee to reduce his Changed. This might be through surgery, drugs, Memory Anaesthetic, or something else, but it is not guaranteed to work. However, an Employee’s Changed does reset to one at the end of an assignment. He also gains a new attribute, Burnout. This starts at one and is gained between assignments and potentially from moments when his mistrust in Extracsa Conglomerate is triggered or grows. If an Employee’s Burnout reaches six, he is unable to work anymore, gains one more scene, and he retires.

Mechanically then, Cosmic Dark is fast and simple. Obviously, this means that it leaves space for the Director to focus on the narrative and presenting the story and the setting.

The campaign of Cosmic Dark consists of six parts. Each part consists of a different assignment by the Extracsa Conglomerate. The first assignment, ‘Extraction’, begins by establishing who the Employees are, where they all grew up together, and more, elements of which will be reinforced again and again at the beginning of each assignment, and then pushes the players to use the rules to Comic Dark. This is intended as a learning process, though the Director should read through the rules at the end of the book as it is more directly presented. The Employees are assigned to excavate a never before mined asteroid and find it strangely invasive. They also find signs that it is not as pristine as promised. ‘Time Murder’ is a weird murder mystery where the Employees are assigned to sister-company to help harvest energy, whilst in ‘Transparency’ they are given a twenty-four-hour window to salvage what they can aboard an Extracsa Conglomerate starship. To their surprise, the Employees find survivors, but ones with unreliable memories of what happened to the starship. This Assignment does get gory in places, but it is a decently cosmic twist upon the ship in peril set-up. The fourth and fifth Assignments—‘Every Sunrise’ and ‘Every Sunset’—parallel and mirror each other, and can be played in any order, although they work slightly better in the order given. They explore the same or similar planets from different angles, one a desperate evacuation mission, the other a terraforming mission. The campaign comes to a close in ‘The Invisible Hand’ in which past discoveries give a chance for the Employees to put their employer on a different path—or has that already happened?

Cosmic Dark is a roleplaying game of weird space horror, in which life, technology, and reality break down, change, and go wrong. When not describing the situations that Employees find themselves and the outcomes of their actions, the Director is in many ways exactly that, someone who ‘directs’, and who does this through direct questions and prompts intended to provoke an emotional response, such as “What scares you most about space?” or “What is your most painful memory?” The advice for the Director suggests ways in which to do this and enhance the horror, building from the players’ answers to the prompts, but is also on how to write scenarios for Cosmic Dark as well as run it. Here the advice suggests creating situations that the Employees cannot correct and giving them choices where the only options are bad ones. Just as the questions to the players and their Employees are very direct, so too is the advice to the Director, pointedly telling her what to do as she takes the players and their Employees through the stages of a Cosmic Dark Assignment, first ‘Weird’, then ‘Dangerous’, before escalating into ‘Deadly’. All three stages are explored as are a variety of different situations, such as the Employees contacting the Extracsa Conglomerate, using the preceding scenarios as examples. What is clear from the advice throughout is that in each of the Assignments in Cosmic Dark there is a story to be told, one that the players and their Employees cannot easily deviate from or disengage from. In the case of the former, although the ending of any one story is not set in stone, there is still room to explore and investigate, and even add details to the world around the Employees, whilst in the case of the latter, the Director is told to make it clear when certain actions simply will simply not work. Conversely, where necessary—and especially if it enhances the horror—the Director is encouraged to work player suggestions into the story. Overall, the advice is strong and to the point.

Physically, Cosmic Dark is well presented with a clean and tidy layout. The book is black and white and lightly illustrated, but the artwork is starkly appropriate. As with previous books by the author, his voice shines through, especially in the advice for the Director.

To be clear, Cosmic Dark is in no way Lovecraftian in its cosmic horror. Its horror is environmental in nature, born of the clash between the alien spaces the Employees are instructed to explore and in the case of the Employees, the need to first understand them and then second, survive them, whilst in the case of the Extracsa Conglomerate, to exploit them. The Extracsa Conglomerate is not necessarily evil, but it is a corporate entity with all of the dispassionate, self-serving drive and scientific pride you would expect. The play of Cosmic Dark is interactive and investigative in nature, but also introspective given the number of questions that the Assignments and thus the Director is ordered to ask. Here it feels as if the author himself is asking them, but were it not for these questions, there would be an overwhelming sense of depersonalisation of each Employee by the Extracsa Conglomerate. What remains still serves to enhance the disconnection that the players and their Employees are likely to feel in the face of the Glitch as they are bounced from one Assignment to the next.

As a roleplaying game, Cosmic Dark is a simple set of rules combined with good advice and suggestions as to how to use prompts to elicit responses from the players and their Employees to drive good storytelling. As a campaign, Cosmic Dark depicts an uncaring universe and the consequences of Humanity interacting, unwittingly or not, with it. Together they showcase each other. Ultimately, Cosmic Dark presents a campaign of Science Fiction horror in which the only compassion belongs to the Employees and the real monsters might be humanity and its drive to explore and exploit.

—oOo—
Cosmic Dark is currently being funded via Kickstarter.

The year is 1395. The Hundred Years War has long been over, but neither Europe, or indeed, Christendom is stable. The Crusades continue in the Levant to the great cost of Europe’s great kingdoms. Outbreaks of the Black Death are all too frequent. The peasantry and the labouring classes bristle against the continued abuse of privilege and ill-treatment they suffer at the hands of both government and nobility, resulting in civil unrest and uprisings. Trade and production are held in the vice-like grip of mercantile and craft guilds, limiting scope for growth, enrichment, and improvement. And the Papacy is itself riven in two. In the past, unrest in the Holy See and Rome forced the Pope to flee to the French city of Avignon. Now there are two members of the church claiming to be the Bishop of Rome and thus head of the church. Pope Boniface IX sits in Rome, whilst Benedict XIII sits in Avignon. Which of the incumbents has the right to call himself the Holy Father? Which of the incumbents is ready to accept the other as the rightful Pope? Which of the incumbents is willing to resign, so that a new Pope can be elected and so reunite the church? It does not matter, for now Pope Benedict XIII fears the influence of the other Pope and outside influences, undermining his authority and that of the faithful. In the city of Avignon, made grand by his beneficence and that of his predecessors, all legitimate Popes, the paranoia of Pope Benedict XIII runs deep. The security and integrity of the Papal Court must be maintained in the face of continuing subversion, greedy priests, proud kings, angry mercenaries, lazy clerks, not said the neuroticism of the Pope, and so Papal Investigators must be deployed.

This is the set-up for Ship of Fools, a ‘Genre Set-Up’ for Sanction: A Tabletop Roleplaying Game of Challenges & Hacks. Published by Just Crunch Games, this is setting in which the Player Characters are members of the Office of Papal Investigation charged with finding peaceful—or at least the least disruptive—solutions to the issues that the Avignon papacy faces, ensuring the safety of the Pope, and enforcing the pronouncements and decrees made by Pope Benedict XIII. The setting is based upon historical research, its bibliography referencing The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco and Ars Magica by Jonathan Tweet, let alone books on the Avignon Papacy and the Medieval world. In tone it suggests the setting is Father Ted meets Kafka’s The Trial, but add to that the roleplaying game Paranoia and the animated Dungeons & Dragons cartoon. The degree of research shows succinctly in the first few pages, which in turn describe the world of Avignon, the papal palace, the ladder of stations—from Pope all the way down to the Monk and the layman—in the Catholic Church, and its world in turmoil.
A Papal Investigator in Ship of Fools has three Resources, here called Influence, Eminence, and Passion, the equivalent of Charisma, Reputation, and Willpower (or faith). These are not necessarily physical abilities, although there is nothing to stop a Papal Investigator from applying them to physical situation, but rather ways in which a Papal Investigator can apply his standing and belief in his standing in the church—that belief being his own and that of the NPCs around him. He also has three Abilities, one for each of his three Lifepaths. One Lifepath is his Curia Role, what was his original assignment within the Avignon court before being appointed to the Office of Papal Investigations; one is from his Secret Order which gives him secret purpose; and one from his Papal Duties, the training that marks him as a Papal Investigator. There are eight orders of the Curia, which together run the church. For example, the Camera Apostolica, whose lawyers extract taxes, whilst their most devout examine and catalogue relics for signs of their divinity; the Hospitallers protect the church, but their lack of faith is  doubted by the Inquisition; and the Transitus maintains the Papacy’s means and lines of communication across Europe, leading to rivalry with the Supportare, which maintains the infrastructure of the Papacy and Avignon. The other Curia include the Chancery, Dominican Order, Roman Inquisition, Apostolic Penitentiary, and the Supportare. The Secret Orders consist of the Adminsitratum, Anarcho-Syndicalists, Black Friars, Clementines, Committee, Free Spirits, Gardeners, Knights of the Holy Ghost, Metéora, Mumblers, and Occamites, whilst the Papal Duties include Barber Surgeon, Cellarer, Lector, Sacrist, Almoner, Financial Steward, and Liturgist.
In addition to two devices and pieces of equipage, the Papal Investigator has Corruption. This is a measure of his lack of Piety. It begins play at one and can go as high as ten. When his player fails a Challenge, that is, rolling one or two on a Challenge, the Papal Investigator suffers doubts and his piety is tested, requiring a roll higher than his current Corruption score. Calling upon a relic for its divine power or making a confession—as every Papal Investigator must do at the end of a Calling—also requires a similar test. If failed, the Papal Investigator gives into a sin or Folly, such as pride, sloth, deceit, or petulance. One point of Corruption and its associated Folly can be expunged between adventures, but a Papal Investigator can also beg an indulgence of another Papal Investigator (though if this fails, both suffer more Corruption) or pay a penance to remove more.
Although the Camera Apostolica controls the vast archive of holy relics held by the papacy and access to them, each Papal Investigator has his own that he can pray on and draw inspiration from. He may even find more in play, though not all of them may be ‘holy’. A Papal Investigator’s Relic is supplied by his Secret Order. Each Relic grants a particular power, but the Game Moderator is encouraged to create and fully develop Relics to make them interesting and unique. Several sample Relics, all nicely detailed, are provided. (The Game Moderator might want to look at Burgs & Bailiffs: Trinity – The Poor Pilgrim’s Almanack for more information on Relics.)
Catalina the BenignantOrigins: ToledoInfluence D8 Eminence D4 Passion D6Curia Role: ChancerySecret Order: ClementinesPapal Duties: Barber SurgeonAbilities: Ciphers, Dance, Craft (Tailor)Pressure Track: 0Equipment: Vial, Medicinal Cordial, Scribe’s KitHits: 3Corruption: 1Relic: Candle of St. Thomas (Extinguish: Fervour)
An adventure or assignment in Ship of Fools is known as a ‘Calling’. There is a little discussion on what a ‘Calling’ is, as well as an example as a suggested opening. At the start of a Calling, one Papal Investigator is appointed the leader, or Prior. He has two Fortune which can be sued on anyone’s roll, but at the end of the Calling, his player assesses the other Papal Investigators and rates them. The Game Moderator then tests their Corruption on this basis. This adds a tense and slightly adversarial element to play, the feeling that the Papal Investigators are constantly being monitored. To balance this, the Papal Investigators can take turns being the Prior.
Rounding out Ship of Fools is a set of short, sample Calling hooks and five sample pre-generated Papal Investigators, some enemies, and a complete Calling. This is ‘The Relic, The Ruse, and The Ridiculous’ in which the Papal Investigators are tasked with locating a missing relic. It is an entertaining affair which can be played through in a single session, perhaps two. The final pages discuss what might happen in the future of the twin Papacy.
Physically, Ship of Fools is well presented, but lightly illustrated with nicely period artwork. The supplement is a pleasing read.
Ship of Fools is a thoroughly engaging and enticing setting. The idea of playing papal investigators in a world of apostolic bureaucracy, religious dogma, and papal perturbation is a delight. This setting definitely deserves more content and even a campaign, but in the meantime, Ship of Fools is a very good introduction to a world of papal paranoia and sacred shambles.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the city of Stockton, California, was beset by a rash of strange deaths amongst its Hmong community. The Hmong were refugees from the Vietnam War and subsequent conflicts in southeast Asia. A total of one-hundred-and-seventeen immigrants and their descendants died under strange circumstances in their sleep, suffering from what doctors called ‘Sudden Unexpected Death Syndrome’ or ‘SUNDS’. However, the community did put these deaths down to medical causes, but to a supernatural creature that had accompanied individual families to the USA, continuing to prey upon the men of the families as they slept, literally pressing upon their chests and paralysing them in waking nightmares and feeding upon their terror, killing them in the process, whilst to outsiders making it appear as if they died in their sleep. The Hmong call this creature the ‘Dab Tsog’. That was decades ago, but now the city and its Hmong community has once again been beset by an outbreak of deaths due ‘sleep paralysis’. Could the Dab Tsog have returned to prey on the Hmong community? After losing one of her patients to these nightmares, Dr. Maria Vicente, who conducts studies at a sleep clinic, is beginning to suspect that something is stalking the sleep of her patients and so asks for help from anthropologists, folklorists, and investigators. Published by Yeti Spaghetti and Friends, The Nightmare is a short, one-night horror scenario, part of and third in the publisher’s ‘Frightshow Classics’ line. Ostensibly written for use with Chill or Cryptworld: Chilling Adventures into the Unexplained, the percentile mechanics of the scenario mean that it could easily be adapted to run with Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition and similar roleplaying games.

The Nightmare, like the first in the ‘Frightshow Classics’ line, Horror in Hopkinsville, before it, is inspired by a real incident, one that also inspired the Nightmare on Elm Street series of horror films. It returns to the story in Stockton and opens with the Player Characters attending Dr. Vicente’s sleep clinic where she is attempting to study the disrupted sleep patterns of a young boy. The Player Characters will have had the opportunity to conduct some research about Stockton, the deaths amongst the Hmong, and the community’s belief that a Dab Tsog was responsible. They will also have discovered that strange lights have been seen in the city as well, but most notably they will have made the link between the Dab Tsog and figure of the ‘Night Hag’ found in other cultures. Thus, the scenario really sets the players and their characters up with what they need to know right from the start. After an encounter in which Dr. Vicente’s young patient has his sleep interrupted in a frighteningly scary fashion and one, if not more, of the Player Characters are lured away, the narrative in the scenario is not to discover that there is supernatural threat abroad in Stockton, but rather to confirm what the Player Characters already think it to be. To do this, they will need to visit the Hmong and ask some questions of the not always trusting members of the community, calling for some good roleplaying.
The Nightmare is a three-act story. In the first, the Player Characters ‘witness’, or at least, experience someone suffering from the predations of the Dab Tsog and the second investigating the reactions of the community. The third brings the story to a climax back at the sleep clinic where, with local help, the Player Characters can lure the Dab Tsog into striking and thus revealing her presence and making her vulnerable. This will result in an intense physical battle in which the Player Characters have very little time in which to attack—so they had better be prepared. She is not the only threat that the Player Characters may face, but she is the toughest one.
In terms of support, the scenario includes a handful of handouts and eight pre-generated Player Characters. They represent a good mix of ages and backgrounds, several have the Investigation skill, others the Paranormal Folklore skill, and a couple the Sense Monsters Paranormal ability. The latter will be very useful, whilst one is a very dab hand with the dagger, which will be extremely useful in the final encounter.
Physically, behind its creepy cover, The Nightmare is decently presented. The artwork is decent and is dark and foreboding throughout, whilst the floorplans of the sleep clinic are nicely done (though oddly, there is no toilet on the floor where it is located). Although the handouts are plain, the pre-generated Player Characters portraits are good.
The Nightmare is short and direct, no surprise given that it is intended to be played in a single session. Like The Blood Countess before it, the scenario very much has the feel of an episode of a television series. For The Blood Countess, this was Kolchak: The Night Stalker, but for The Nightmare this is The X-Files, though a standalone episode, not one tied to the Series’ ongoing plot to do with UFOs and aliens. Overall, The Nightmare is easy to prepare and will provide a good sessions’ worth of creepy horror that might put the players, let alone the characters, off their sleep.

 Had to switch my Friday posts here, was going to do this one next week and have a Fantasy Friday for today, but fell down a rabbit hole and ended buying three more games to talk about. That's fine I have Kickstarters today that seem to be speaking to me directly.

Up first, Tales of the Valiant.

Player's Guide 2: New Power for 5E and TOV Players

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/deepmagic/players-guide-2-new-power-for-5e-and-tov-players?ref=theotherside

Tales of the Valiant is Kobold Press' 5e-compatible RPG sans the OGL. I don't play a lot of 5e these days, but I do keep my eye out. And this one grabbed me. I already detailed Tales of the Valiant in previous Fantasy Fridays.

You can easily see why if you download their preview. 

Yup. That's right, a 5e-compatible Witch class. Now I have played a lot of 5e witches thanks to DMsGuild and other sites. Some are great, some less so. But this one looks like a lot of fun, really. Honestly, I don't really care what else the book has, that is enough for me. There are three new classes here and sub-classes for all the base classes. That's 16 classes total for ToV. There is a witch and a warlock. 

Vanguards are featured in the preview and remind me of Pathfinder 2's champions or even the Cavalier of old. Yes, I already have a character in mind to make for this. In fact, he is perfect since it was Kobold Press' Shadow Fey book that made me want to make the character in the first place. With this book I could actually do Scáthaithe, Larina, and their daughter Taryn all in the same system for a change. In my Fantasy Friday coverage of ToV I mentioned that there were no good options to do Larina with. That changes with this.

The Kickstarter is funded, so they don't need my help at all. But there are a lot of good add-ons and stretch goals. I think I am going to get the fancy-looking limited edition cover. I am a slut of a book with a ribbon.

Sadly, it won't be out till January of 2026. 

I have the Tales of the Valiant books in PDF. I'll need to get those in hardcovers, too, now. 

I already featured this one, but I want to do it again. 

Frightshow Classics LIVES!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/frightshowclassics/frightshow-classics-lives?ref=theotherside

This Kickstarter will feature a lot of art from the late Jim Holloway. They have been working with Jim's family to get this art out there in remembrance of him and the game he did so many illustrations for, 1st Edition Chill.

This round also features an adventure adapting the famous gothic story "Carmilla" for use with this system.

What system is that? Good of you to ask! The adventures are overtly for Chill first Edition. The Pacesetter version. BUT these adventures can be played on their own with no extra rule book since everything you need is included in the adventure itself. You can even move them over to your system of choice.

I wrote a couple for this line, The Golem and The Nightmare.

I even provided a video tribute featuring my favorite Jim Holloway art. 

Dreams of a beautiful dark-skinned woman asking to be returned to the ocean and a temple hidden within its depths. A local coastline being beset by deadly storms and attacks by monsters and spirits which rise from the deep. A scholar wanting to visit an ancient subaquatic site as part of his research and asking the adventurers to help him locate it. A strange bleaching is spreading along the coast, destroying ships, marking fish stocks, and spreading panic, and merchants want to hire some to determine the cause and put an end to it. An ancient, underwater temple is said to be home to a great jewel called the Ocean Jewel, said to grant great powers to the user when at sea or under the water. One, more, or all of these are reasons to visit the ‘Temple of the Forgotten Depths’, an ancient temple said to have collapsed into the sea decades ago and become a beacon for drowned souls and those who would turn upon any and all seafarers! They are also the hooks for Temple of Forgotten Depths.

Temple of the Forgotten Depths is an adventure written for use with ‘5E+’, so Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition and Dungeons & Dragons 2024. It is a playtest adventure, the first, in an anthology of scenarios published by No Short Rests! called One Room One Shots. Each entry in the collection is a short adventure themed around a single room or structure and intended to be slotted readily into a campaign or more readily, played in a single session with either no preparation or preparation required beforehand. This might be because some of a group’s players are unable to attend; because they want to play, but not want to commit to a longer scenario or campaign; or because a group wants to introduce new players to the roleplaying game. Temple of the Forgotten Depths is written for a group of Player Characters of Fifth Level. The scenario has no other requirements beyond this and its setting, but knowledge of the Aquan language will be useful or any ability to speak other languages.

However they are drawn to the ‘Temple of the Forgotten Depths’, the Player Characters begin the encounter after having swum down from the surface, having imbibed a Potion of Water Breathing. However, once inside the temple, apart from certain locations, they will not need this as there is air. The temple is a giant dome constructed of stone and coral that is no longer as magnificent as it once was. This is due to the coral having been bleached through exposure to corruption and this bleaching has not only affected some of the inhabitants of the temple, it can also affect the Player Characters like a cosmetic curse. The location of the temple’s treasure, the Ocean Jewel is easy to discern, but getting to it is less obvious. Although they will receive some hints from an intriguing variant of the mermaid drawn from African mythology, the Player Character’ progress will be hampered by the temple itself corrupted as it is from dark influences and that dark influence’s attempts to stop them. Throughout the scenario there are some encounters with some nicely thematic monsters like the Drowned Ones, the spirits of those who died at sea, and the malign influence behind the temple’s corruption. In this, any Warlock should beware. Contact with this malign influence may result in the Warlock’s pact suddenly shifting, though this is not explored in the scenario.

Penultimately, the Player Characters will get within sight of the Ocean Jewel, but to get to it with any ease, they will need to solve three highly thematic and decent puzzles. This will enable access to the Ocean Jewel, but not before the threat at the heart of the scenario and the threat to the temple reveals itself. The climax of the scenario is a big boss fight against the Hydra of the Deep, a huge monstrosity with multiple Hit Points per head, its own Mythos Actions, which escalate into Legendary Actions if it loses two many heads! It is an appropriately challenging fight for both the environment and the scenario. Once the creature is defeated, the Player Characters can decide what to do with the Ocean Jewel. Several options are given for this and they are discussed in detail. Temple of the Forgotten Depths comes to a close with full stats and descriptions for all of its monsters and creatures and details of the magical items that can be found in the adventure.

However, one option not discussed in Temple of the Forgotten Depths in detail is what happens if a Warlock Player Character is forced into a Pact of the Deep through prolonged contact or another Player Character is affected by a Pact of the Deep. It is suggested that there is the possibility of such a pact turning that Player Character—Warlock or not—against the other Player Characters. These are only suggestions though and it would have been useful to have been given advice and mechanics on what has the potential to be an exciting turn of events.

Physically, Temple of the Forgotten Depths is well presented. It is lightly illustrated, but the artwork is excellent, and the maps of the temple are clear and easy to use. If there is an issue with Temple of the Forgotten Depths, it is that the text is small, making it a challenge to read!

Temple of the Forgotten Depths delivers a solid, enjoyably thematic scenario for a good session’s worth of play. It is presented as a playtest adventure, but in truth, Temple of the Forgotten Depths is ready to play, whether that is as a one-shot for an evening or an encounter for a campaign, and ready to play with a minimum of effort.

Last month, I made the claim that D&D 5.5/2024 Edition should have its own campaign world. This generated some very lively discussions. However, more than a few people were confused as to the purpose of that post.

Yes. You can make your own game world. Everyone can. Everyone does.

But that post wasn't about that.

It was about Wizards of the Coast making a new world. A product for sale and a marketing tool. Something to help emphasize and feature the new rules and vision of the D&D 2024 game. A flagship setting that tells the players, “This is what this edition is for.”

So, to be up front, here are the objectives of this post:

To identify what makes the 2024 Edition of D&D 5e different, and what a campaign world should do to support these new rules and views.

So, what should a world for D&D 5.5/2024 look like?

A world that welcomes heroes of every species, that speaks the same bold language as the rules and art? It shouldn't just retrofit old kingdoms, it should feel like the start of a new mythology. Not a museum for nostalgia, but a canvas for discovery.

What is the Point of View of the New Game?

The new D&D game is not the same Sword & Sorcery game rooted in the pulp epics of R.E. Howard, the epic fantasy of Tolkien, or the weird horror of Lovecraft. Sure, those roots are still there, but they’ve become fertilizer for something new. D&D fantasy is now its own genre, just as recognizable and distinct as High Fantasy or Grimdark.

D&D 2024 is Heroic Fantasy, Reforged.

The rules assume you are powerful, competent, and connected to a world that matters. This isn’t about crawling through dungeons looking for 14 copper pieces and a rusty dagger. This is a game where characters shape the world, not just loot it.

And the world they shape should reflect that.

This quote from early in the Player's Handbook (p. 4) sets the tone.

“There’s no winning and losing in D&D, at least not the way those terms are usually understood. Together you and friends create an exciting story of adventurers who confront perils. Sometimes an adventurer might come to a tragic end. Even so, the other adventurers can search for powerful magic to revive their fallen comrade, or the character’s player might create a new character to carry on. No matter what happens, if everyone has a good time and creates a memorable story, they all win.”

This new world is not the Realms. It is not Greyhawk. It is not born of Dragonlance’s epic saga or Eberron’s intrigue. Modules or boxed sets from the 1980s don't hold this world together. It doesn't need to be. It can stand on its own, because the new edition does. This new world draws on all of those, but it is, or should be, its own new thing.

D&D 2024 is no longer just inspired by existing fantasy genres; it has become its own unique blend: a fusion of classic fantasy, modern storytelling, video game logic, and collaborative heroism. Most of the players of this game have never read any of the books in Appendix N, nor do they need to. It's not required reading, it's not homework. 

The 2024 Rules Philosophy: Why This Edition Feels Different

The 2024 edition does not simply revise the math or tidy up the rulebooks. It reflects a new philosophy that reshapes how players engage with the game world:

• Heroic from Level 1: Characters are competent, capable, and connected from the start. They are agents of change, not fragile wanderers.
• Background Defines Destiny: Backgrounds carry some mechanical weight, adjusting ability scores, granting a starting feat, and shaping a character’s narrative role.
• Species, Not Race: The old assumptions are gone. Every ancestry is valid, integrated, and part of the world’s core mythology from the beginning.
• Epic Play Is Expected: Epic Boons and expanded high-level content create long arcs where characters leave permanent marks on the world. Bastions given them a place to grow.
• Rest and Recovery Shift: Revised rest rules and healing mechanics de-emphasize attrition gameplay and resource management in favor of narrative pacing.
• Inspiration & Heroic Dice: The system encourages cinematic moments, rewarding bold choices and emotional storytelling.
• Moral Complexity Over Alignment: The world emphasizes choices, consequences, and motivations rather than rigid alignment tags.
• Collaborative Worldbuilding: Bastions, crafting, and political influence give players tangible ways to build and shape the world around them.

This isn’t just new mechanics; it’s a new gameplay rhythm. The world that supports this edition must reflect these values: vibrant, inclusive, and full of heroic possibility.

A Place for Everyone

Last time, I mentioned that human-centric is no longer the norm. Tieflings, kenku, rabbitfolk, genasi, and goliaths are not "weird options," they are the foundation. We’re not explaining their presence as magical accidents. They are the world’s people. Full stop.

And that means designing a world where they belong from the start.

This is not just a question of species, but of society. The world needs to be built from the ground up as a multicultural setting. Not a monoculture with elves here and dwarves over there, but a place where cities are melting pots, just like our own. Diverse, imperfect, growing, and alive.

The landscape must reflect this (we are not drifting too far afield here):

• Forests for Elves, Firbolgs, and Gnomes.
• Mountains for Dwarves, Goliaths, and Dragonborn.
• Elemental zones, volcanoes, storm-swept coastlines, and crystal deserts for Genasi (and maybe Dragonborn too).
• Planar-infused regions where Githyanki, Tieflings, and Aasimar emerged from divine or infernal events not exiled, not feared, but part of the world’s mythic history.
• Underground realms and deep caverns, not evil hives, but mysterious cultures for Svirfneblin, Kobolds, even Goblinoid societies.

You don't explain these people as oddities or invaders. You explain them as native to this world’s story.

And yes, it must use 'species,' not 'race.' Background and culture shape identity as much or more than biology. This is a world that embraces the idea that what you choose matters.

By everyone, I don't just mean "Characters" but "Players" as well. A new world would not just serve veteran players looking for a fresh canvas; it would provide an accessible, self-contained starting point for brand-new players who are being drawn into D&D through its growing cultural presence.

A Place for Bastions, Magical Shops, and More

Blame Skyrim, Minecraft, Animal Crossing, or Critical Role, modern players want to build. The 2024 edition's rules for Bastions are a direct response to this.

So the world must support that mechanic. Not just as a gimmick, but as a narrative engine.

• Frontier zones and wild lands for players to reclaim and shape.
• Urban districts where old guildhalls, mage towers, or abandoned temples can be refurbished into faction bases.
• Political factions that reward player heroes with lands, titles, or responsibilities.
• Magical areas, ripe for discovery and filled with mystery and potential.

A Bastion isn’t just a stronghold; it’s a symbol of the character’s impact on the world. A forge, a sanctuary, a school, a demiplane, it should reflect the kind of hero, and the player, who built it.

And magic items? They’re not just loot anymore, they’re craft. The world should have rare components, legendary artificers, and magical economies that support the idea that players make as much as they take.  Characters no longer search for a magical weapon, they search for the items, rare and wonderful, to craft this magical weapon. 

A Place for Heroes, Not Murder Hobos

This is maybe the most important shift of all.

D&D 2024 assumes that the characters will be heroes from the start. The world should provide the challenges to allow them to do that. 

In that vein, while the emphasis on alignment is lessened, the heroic deeds of the characters, informed by their backgrounds and motivations, is pushed to the front. 

That means the world must reinforce heroism:

• Villains have goals, not alignment tags. They make choices that harm others, threaten communities, or disrupt the world’s spiritual balance, and heroes rise to challenge them.
• NPCs matter, not just as quest-givers or obstacles, but as people whose lives improve (or suffer) depending on what the heroes do.
  
• Monsters have new and updated lore. A new world needs to feature the unique abilities, behaviors, and updated lore of the 2024 monsters as integral parts of its ecosystems and mythos. Old "evil" species have new motivations, and old "heroic" creatures have new purposes. All of these have to have a place in the world
• Factions reward good deeds not only with gold and magic but with respect, stories, and influence.

When characters act heroically, the world should respond. They gain allies. They inspire others. They become part of the land’s living mythology.

This is a world that expects heroes to rise, and needs them to.

Don't get me wrong here, I have seen D&D 5e characters do things that can be classified as war crimes, but characters are always going to that. This is about the world that the new rules tries to build and how the PCs can build within it. 

A Place Worth Saving

Lastly, the world itself must be beautiful.

Not just dangerous or mysterious, it is those, but also wondrous. Filled with things worth protecting.

• Floating islands with gardens tended by treants and air genasi.
• A continent slowly awakening after a divine slumber, its forests singing with echoes of lost gods.
• Cities built in the bones of giant beasts, their spires crafted from dragonbone and crystal.
• A golden river that flows backward, carrying visions of future destinies.
• Hidden portals, ancient mysteries, new lands still becoming.
• A world that has a unique, even special, place in the D&D Multiverse.

Because players want to care. And caring starts with wonder.

Honorable Mentions

I would be remiss if I did not mention some campaign worlds that can do all of this in one form or another.

Eberron did for 3e what this new world should do for 5e. Can it do all of this now? I don't know Eberron is the world I am the least knowledgeable about.

The Forgotten Realms can also do this. And in many significant ways, it does do this. The Forgotten Realms of the Baldur's Gate 3 game does at least and still balances what the old-school gamers like. Take the questline in Act 1 for example. You need to wipe out a camp of goblins. Mind you, you are not doing this just because they are Goblins. You are doing it because they are worshippers of the evil Cult of the Absolute, bent on tyrannical conquest. If you take them out, then a group of tieflings can get to safety (in theory). The different species and factions don't have to get along in this new world.

We will be getting an updated Forgotten Realms campaign setting later this year.

Points of Light of Nentir Vale tried to do this with D&D 4e, but that had many issues of its own to deal with. That world had a mish-mash of all the previous worlds before it in a grand experiment of sorts, but it never took off as well as I think WotC wanted it to do. 

Mystara does this well. Like the Forgotten Realms, nearly every hex on this world (and in it!) has been explored or at least discussed. But my refrain for the last 30 years has been "Mystara can do that" anytime someone asks if a world can do X, Y, or Z. Mystara can do all of the above. Though there are no Gods in Mystara. This may or may not be an issue for some. Certainly, D&D 5.5 can support this, but players like their characters to have gods. 

Exandria is the world from the Critical Role actual plays and supported by four rule books. This world does in fact do all the above and has a place for all sorts of humanoids in the world.  It even has some gods from all over the D&D multiverse, including a few from Pathfinder. It was more or less custom-made for D&D 5 (2014 edition) by Matt Mercer. It is even mentioned in the new 2024 DMG. Its biggest drawback is that it is very much Mercer's world. Unless something changes, we are not likely to see any more Exandria for D&D 5. Mercer and crew have their new Daggerheart game out now, and they are going to want to support that. 

I like Exandria. I love Mystara, and I have grown to love the Realms. But maybe we do need something new. 

Why a New World Matters

A brand-new setting would do more than showcase the rules. It would define the cultural and creative identity of this edition, just as Greyhawk, Dragonlance, the Realms, or Eberron defined their eras. For new players entering through the 2024 gateway, it becomes their first mythology, one unburdened by decades of inherited continuity. 

A world that says: This is what D&D means now.

 Today, let's take a look at one of the key authors from Appendix N: Edgar Rice Burroughs. Gygax himself lists him, citing the Pellucidar, Mars, and Venus series. Burroughs' influence on early D&D is evident in many aspects, including weird monsters, lost civilizations, Hollow Earth settings, and pulp action. But what about witches? Do we find any in his works?

Well… not really. But that absence is interesting in itself.

Where are Burroughs' Witches?

Burroughs doesn’t give us many witches in the traditional sense. No crones stirring cauldrons, no hags in the wilderness, and very few spellcasters as we'd recognize them. Instead, his worlds are filled with cults, priesthoods, ancient science, and psionics, powers adjacent to witchcraft, but rarely crossing the line.

Barsoom: Psychic Powers and Cults

The Barsoom novels (beginning with A Princess of Mars) give us a world rich with ancient cultures and bizarre religions. The white-robed Therns and black-skinned First Born present us with sinister religious orders, but their power lies in manipulation, deception, and lost technology rather than magic. The Lotharians use mental projection to summon phantom armies, an ability that feels more psionic than arcane.

Women like Dejah Thoris, Thuvia, and Tara are formidable, but not witches in a magical sense, or in any sense really. Barsoom lacks the archetype of the spellcasting sorceress; its dangers are physical, political, and technological.  

I will point out that the "goddess" Issus reminds me a lot of the Githyanki Lich-Queen Vlaakith.  Like the Barsoomians, the Githyanki are egg-laying humanoids. The Githzerai, in fact, remind me a lot of Therns and Lotharians. The Githzerai’s ascetic discipline echoes the mental control of the Lotharians and the secretive religious structure of the Therns.

Now I love the Barsoom books. They are great pulpy reads and a lot of fun. Squint and you can see the roots of both Dune and Star Wars here. Their morality is very much black & white. There are no shades of gray. Evil is Evil with a capital "E" and good is always righteous. 

Tarzan: Witch Doctors and Jungle Sorcery

The Tarzan novels get closer to something resembling witchcraft, featuring witch doctors, shamans, and tribal magicians. These characters, as filtered through Burroughs’ colonialist lens, often serve as either dangerous manipulators or comic foils. Occasionally, they seem to exhibit powers that might be called magical, curses, rituals, spirit summoning, but most of the time it's left ambiguous whether their abilities are real or elaborate fakery.

In D&D terms, you might think of them as hedge witches, low-level druids, or non-player character wise men with access to rituals and charms.

Pellucidar and Venus: Weird Science Over Sorcery

In Pellucidar (Hollow Earth) and Amtor (Venus), we again see lost civilizations, bizarre creatures, and strange cults. But again, no true witches. The high priests and priestesses here serve more as political or religious authorities than practitioners of magic. Burroughs always leans toward "lost science" as an explanation for the strange phenomena of these worlds.

I enjoyed the Pellucidar series quite a lot, the Venus ones less so. No reason really, I just think the Venus ones paled in comparison to the Mars tales.

Why No Witches?

Burroughs was far more interested in physical adventure than in metaphysical horror or occult mystery. His heroes battle monsters, topple tyrants, and rescue lost princesses, but they rarely confront dark sorcery or the supernatural. It is possible that he was more of a product of early 20th-century American Rationalism. However, this was also a time of unprecedented expansion in claims of the supernatural, the emergence of new religions, and spiritualism. To be more blunt, ERB just wasn't into that. Perhaps it had something to do with his Military father and his Chicago upbringing, as well as his move west to Idaho as a young man. 

Where Howard or Leiber fill their worlds with sinister witches and warlocks, Burroughs replaces that with forbidden science, hypnotic mental powers, and decaying civilizations clinging to ancient secrets.

Nothing at all wrong with Weird Science. The pulp serial reels of movie houses were filled with them. I would argue that he was one of the driving forces behind the pulp serials of the 1930s and 40s. Same two-fisted action, same blend of heroes, damsels in distress, and lots of strange science. John Carter is the godfather of Commander Cody as much as he is of Luke Skywalker. This is even more evident in the Tarzan movies.

Conclusion

Though witches are virtually absent in Burroughs' works, his settings offer plenty of material for pretty much anything else you can do in D&D. His influence on D&D is undeniable, but primarily through setting and adventure rather than through magic systems. 

Adaptation

Ok, just because ERB doesn't have any sort of magic in his Barsoom books, that doesn't mean I am not going to use them. 

I have always been fascinated with Mars. Either reading about the planet or looking up at it through my old telescope, Mars is fascinating. ERB has his Barsoom tales, Clark Ashton Smith had his tales, and lets not forget H.G. Wells. Mars is a place I keep wanting to go back to. I'll have to expand this thread more.

 It's not a Kickstart Your Weekend, but honestly, I couldn't wait for this one. My friend, Yeti Spaghetti, has a new Kickstarter to support the next batch of Frightshow Classics adventures.  Since I wrote a couple of these in the past I guess that makes me one of the friends of "Yeti Spaghetti and Friends!"

Frightshow Classics LIVES!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/frightshowclassics/frightshow-classics-lives?ref=theotherside

This Kickstarter will feature a lot of art from the late Jim Holloway. They have been working with Jim's family to get this art out there in remembrance of him and the game he did so many illustrations for, 1st Edition Chill.

This round also features an adventure adapting the famous gothic story "Carmilla" for use with this system.

What system is that? Good of you to ask! The adventures are overtly for Chill first Edition. The Pacesetter version. BUT these adventures can be played on their own with no extra rule book since everything you need is included in the adventure itself. You can even move them over to your system of choice.

I wrote a couple for this line, The Golem and The Nightmare.

I even provided a video tribute featuring my favorite Jim Holloway art. 

So check it out.

Maybe I should extend my "Year of Fantasy RPG" to include some "Urban Fantasy!"

Bowing out of a Monstrous Monday post for today since it is the start of June. 

Historically, around here, June has been my time to devote to D&D, with a particular focus on B/X and BECMI D&D. This year, I was going to focus on FRPGs that were not D&D, but I am going to bend my own rules a little here. I do have a few non-D&D Fantasy RPGs I'll cover this month (3 or 4, looking over my notes), as well as some D&D-related content.

Another theme coming up for me is "1985." Including a few projects I am working on that have that as a connecting theme. One you already know about, you just didn't know that was a theme of it yet. My 1357 DR Forgotten Realms campaign is taking on a solid "1985" feel to it.  Since the campaign setting came out in 1987 and is assumed to be 1357, I am setting by "game feel" for how I was playing in 1985-1986. 1987 was a very different sort of year for me, gaming-wise, so I opted for something more mid-80s in feeling. Plus, my son and I were talking a lot about music from that time (he is really getting into the Talking Heads), so I made a new 1985 playlist for background noise. 

June, of course, always reminds me of summers playing D&D (and some Chill, and some DC Heroes). It was a great time. Yeah, I was also working all the time. I started saving for college in 1984, but it was still a great time. 

Posts this month are going to be around this loose theme and moving me closer to completion for a couple of new projects. Among these are a new OSE "Classic Classes" release, a couple more "Myths & Monsters" for 1st Ed. And a few ideas I have been mulling over that are not really ready for the light of day. This is all still part of my efforts to finish up some of the started, but never completed, projects sitting on my hard drives. 

I am rather looking forward to it all.

When you are called into to investigate a violent assault at an address in Putney, Southwest London, it sounds like any other day on the job in Putney, let alone London. When it turns out that that the assailant is described by an eyewitness as looking like, “… [S]omething straight out of one of those pirate films.”, then you know this is no ordinary case. It is, instead, a case for The Folly. Or rather, the ‘Special Assessment Unit’ of London Metropolitan Police Service, which in particular deals with magic and the Demi-Monde, and under the command of Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale, registered practitioner of Newtonian magic, is increasing the number of its operational staff as crimes involving magic also rise. Which includes the Player Characters, who are then assigned to investigate the affray at the house in Kingsmere Close. Whilst the victims of the assault are not saying much, it quickly becomes clear that they are up to no good, as they have turned the house into a cannabis farm and are not the actual owners of the house. Further, once an Initial Vestigium Assessment has been conducted, it confirms that magic was used in the assault, and that very definitely means that this is a case for the Folly. So where is the owner of the house? Who is the man dressed like a pirate, quite likely an unlicensed practitioner of magic, and why did he attack the operators of a cannabis farm in a quiet corner of Southwest London? All pressing questions in Jimmy’s Last Dance: A Swashbuckling Case File of Family Intrigue.

Jimmy’s Last Dance: A Swashbuckling Case File of Family Intrigue is an investigation and case file for Rivers of London: the Roleplaying Game, based on the Rivers of London novels by Ben Aaronovitch. Published by Chaosium, Inc., this is a lengthier case file than previous releases for the roleplaying game, one that will probably take two or so sessions to play through. Or it can be added to campaign, perhaps run after ‘The Bookshop’ from the core rulebook or the case files, Going Underground – A Case File for Rivers of London: the Roleplaying Game and The Font of All Evil: Murder and Mayhem Besides the Thames. One issue perhaps with the scenario is that it set in a specific year and that it involves a political scandal that was at its height at the time. The year is 2016 and the scandal is The Windrush Scandal. Of course, the authors advise the Game Master to handle the issue with care and it is certainly not a problem that The Windrush Scandal is part of the scenario—in fact, it is actually woven into the plot of the case file—but rather that the timeframe is quite specific and thus difficult to shift the case file to another year.

There are multiple plot strands to the investigation, ones that will lead the Player Characters to a criminal gang, a solicitor with less than ethical standards, a rotten son-in-law and a bare-suspecting daughter, and an old lady with interesting secrets of her own. Then ultimately to the ‘pirate’ who attacked the cannabis farm and who has his own agenda throughout the scenario. Sometimes that and his movements will intersect with those of the Player Characters and their investigation. Although they can return to the Folly to conduct research, most of the investigation is confined to the borough of Putney itself and involves lots of Police dogwork—interviews, surveillance, and so on. Over the course of the investigation, the Player Characters will be conducting multiple interviews, all of which nicely presented to help the Game Master answer their questions and portray the various NPCs. In addition, there are some decent handouts that the Player Characters will be able to find through various research avenues.

There is good advice for the Game Master throughout the scenario. This starts with suggested Player Character types and roles, how to portray a pirate without sounding like Robert Newton, and continues with notes from both Peter Grant and Ben Aaronovitch. It is recommended that at least one Player Character be a police officer or detective and that one be a Newtonian apprentice or hedge wizard. Suggestions are given too, if the players want to roleplay pre-generated characters from the core rulebook. The oddest advice is on various pieces of British vernacular, such as the meaning of the term ‘old bag’ when used as a pejorative to describe a woman, old or not. Whilst a British audience will find this amusing, for a non-British Game Master, it explains the vernacular and gives alternatives where necessary. This gives her the choice of enforcing the verisimilitude with the given terms or using less pejorative ones. The structure of the scenario is nicely supported with both a relationship map and a plot progression chart, to help the Game Master keep track of the investigation and more importantly, the location of the ‘pirate’.

Physically, Jimmy’s Last Dance: A Swashbuckling Case File of Family Intrigue is clean, tidy, and easy to use. The maps and plot progression diagram are easy to use, the advice is good throughout, and the portraits of the various NPCs are excellent.

Jimmy’s Last Dance: A Swashbuckling Case File of Family Intrigue is a richly detailed investigation that combines parochially British charm and menace, backed up with good advice for the Game Master—and if things go right, a cozy ending.

—oOo—

Chaosium, Inc. will be at UK Games Expo which takes place on Friday, May 30th to Sunday June 1st, 2025.

Escape the Dark Sector: The Game of Deep Space Adventure is about survival. About making a break from the cell of the detention block of a vast space station where they have found themselves incarcerated. They have an opportunity to escape their imprisonment, but the route they must take, between the detention block and their spaceship, is fraught with danger. The escapees must find their way out of the Detention Level, through the Heart of the Station, and then the Forgotten Zones to their impounded spaceship—and escape! Published by Themeborne Ltd., Escape the Dark Sector is the Science Fiction sequel to Escape the Dark Castle: The Game of Atmospheric Adventure, which was inspired by the Fighting Fantasy series of solo adventure books and also the dark fantasy artwork of those books. As with its fantasy predecessor, Escape the Dark Sector can be played solo or collectively and offered plenty of replay value and variability with six Character Cards, fifty-three Chapter Cards—fifteen of which form the encounter deck, and five Boss Cards. Then of course, there are game’s three expansions: Escape the Dark Sector – Mission Pack 1: Twisted Tech, Escape the Dark Sector – Mission Pack 2: Mutant Syndrome, and Escape the Dark Sector – Mission Pack 3: Quantum Rift. Each of these provided players with new characters to play, a new mechanic—which meant a new challenge to overcome, new equipment, and of course, a new Boss standing in the way of the players’ escape. However, when it came to death—and there is no denying that Escape the Dark Sector is definitely about death, as well as escaping, if not more so—what neither Escape the Dark Sector, nor any of its expansions, or even Escape the Dark Castle, could offer was much mote than a mechanical outcome whenever a player’s character dies in the game.

The solution is Death in Deep Space, the Science Fiction equivalent of The Death Book for Escape the Dark Castle. This is a book of over one hundred death scenes, each corresponding to a particular Chapter or Boss. It is very easy to use. Whenever a character dies as a result of the events in a Chapter or the showdown with a Boss, he checks the relevant entry in the pages of The Death Book. This is made possible because every card in Escape the Dark Castle as well as in all three of its expansions is marked with a unique code. Cross reference the code with corresponding entry in the book, whether for a Chapter or a Boss card, read out the description provided, and so provide an unfitting, but final end for your character, followed by that of everyone else.

For example, the details on the Boss card, ‘The Alien Queen’ reads as follows:

“Die, humansss!”

The Alien Queen was lying wait! Jets of venom fly towards you as she pounces—YOU must roll two HIT DICE now.

If a player should die in the course of this final confrontation before he and his companions, always a strong possibility in Escape the Dark Sector, he picks up Death in Deep Space and after finding the entry for ‘The Alien Queen’, he reads aloud the following:

The Alien Queen

Once it enters your bloodstream, the paralysing venom of the Alien Queen works quickly – a spreading rigidity coursing through your entire body, locking your joints one by one until you are all but paralysed. Even your eyelids cannot close, and you are forced to watch in horror as the terrible creature captures your fellow crew with equal ease.

With a series of hissed commands to her countless, scurrying servitor spawn, you are all dragged back her vast, deck-spanning nest. There, a slick, black, fleshy membrane covers the walls and beneath the vaguely humanoid shapes of her decomposing victims are still recognisable. Their shallow breaths rise and fall in eerie synchronicity, an indication that their suffering is yet to be ended. Soon, you and your crew join them.

Once in place, your spines are sliced open. The shimmering spools of nerve fibre that spill out are intertwined with those of the other captives suspended around – the connection sealed with a sticky, mucus coating. In this way, you become part of the fabric of the hive, a sensory node in a living web, lining the walls as far as the eye can see, warning the hive of approaching threats and passing the news back through the biotic chain in an instant.

For the rest of your days, your pain is theirs and theirs is yours; you see what they see and hear what they hear, your collective existence painfully prolonged in service to your bestial captor.

Your adventure ends here.

Physically, Death in Deep Space is a neat and tidy, if plain affair. A page of introduction explains how to use the book and contains the book’s single illustration which shows where the unique code for the Chapter or Boss card is located. Then each entry has a page of its own. There is a degree of repetition to the entries, but only a little, and it really only becomes apparent when reading the book from end to end, which is not its intended use. A small and relatively slim book, Death in Deep Space fits easily into Escape the Dark Sector: The Collector’s Box Set.

Death in Deep Space is book of endings, but one that provides a final narrative and some context to that death. Escape the Dark Sector is an enjoyable game, but character deaths can feel little, “Is that it?”. With Death in Deep Space, it is no longer the fact that you died, but very much how you died. Grim and ghoulish, The Death Book brings the death of every character, and with it, the game of Escape the Dark Sector to a nasty and unfortunate, but fitting end.

—oOo—

Themeborne Ltd. will be at UK Games Expo which takes place on Friday, May 30th to Sunday June 1st, 2025.

It could be the seventies. It could be the eighties. It could be nineties. It could be now. Whatever the decade, the world is in danger and refuses to believe it. Creatures of the night stalk the darkness and only you have the knowledge and bravery to face their danger head on. So ready your UV torch, sharpen your stakes, bless your holy water, and load up the mystery wagon, because tonight you are going monster hunting! Are you ready to save the world and have nobody notice? Then that makes you a vampire hunter—fearless or otherwise! This is the simple set-up to Bite Me!, a scenario and mini-supplement for ACE!—or the Awfully Cheerful Engine!—the roleplaying game of fast, cinematic, action comedy, published by EN Publishing, best known for the W.O.I.N. or What’s Old is New roleplaying System, as used in Judge Dredd and the Worlds of 2000 AD and Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition. Some of the entries in the series have been expansive, such as Orcs & Oubliettes and Strange Science, providing a detailed setting and an scenario, whilst others in the series have tended to be one-shot, film night specials. Bite Me! falls into the latter category.

As with other supplements for ACE!, both the genre and inspiration for Bite Me! are obvious. However, there is a twist. The genre involves vampires and vampire-hunting, so the obvious inspiration is Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It is not though, the only inspiration for Bite Me! and the other adds very tongue (or is that fang?)-in-cheek tone to the whole affair. That inspiration is the Hanna-Barbera cartoon series, Scooby-Doo. So, this injects an extra dose of cheesiness into the play of the Awfully Cheerful Engine!. The bulk of Bite Me! is dedicated to a single adventure, ‘Darkness, BITES!’ and to that end, it provides four pre-generated Player Characters. However, it also gives the means for the players to create their own characters. These include suggested Roles such as talking Animals, Clerics, Druids, Slayers, Vampires, and Werewolves. To these are added the new Roles of Fortune Teller and Paranormal Investigator. The Fortune Teller gains the Power stat and can cast magic, but to begin with, does not know any spells. The Role also grants a bonus when using a tarot deck and knows if spirits are harmful. The Paranormal Investigator begins play never having encountered the supernatural, but has unveiled a lot of hoaxes. The Role gains a bonus when looking for clues and interacting with the authorities, and starts play with the Mystery Wagon, a mid-sized van.
In addition, various items of equipment are listed as being of use. These include garlic, holy symbol, tarot deck, EMF meter, pure salt, and more. In addition, there are stats for various things that the Player Characters might encounter, such as devil, mummy, poltergeist, and wolfman. The most amusing of these are the Crooked Property Developer (all together now, “And I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for you meddling kids!”) and the Pirate Ghost.
The four pre-generated Player Characters consist of Fluffy Winters, reluctant vampire slayer; Lilo Thornberg, witty fortune teller; Rooby Roo, faithful dog; and Ted Bones, cheery paranormal investigator. All of whom are very knowingly tongue-in-cheek in being drawn from their sources.
The adventure, ‘Darkness, BITES!’ begins with news reports of strange occurrences at a rundown amusement park. It could be ghosts or it could be something else! In fact, it is both, because the adventure really leans into both of its inspirations. So, if the players are expecting there to be a Crooked Property Developer, they will not be disappointed, and if they are expecting ghosts, they will not be disappointed either. That though, is not the end of the scenario. The Crooked Property Developer is hiding something and that tips the Player Characters into a much darker storyline, which will see them race around town to find signs of occult and even vampiric activity—helped by a local psychic and chased by another classic monster—before finally tracking the evil down and confronting it in its lair. Not so much Transylvania, as Transylvania USA! The scenario is nicely detailed and plotted out and easy to run. It is not set in a specific city, so can be set anywhere the Game Master decides. It just needs to be big enough to have an abandoned amusement park. The play of it should take two sessions or so to play through.

Physically, Bite Me! is well presented with reasonable artwork. It needs a slight edit in places.
Bite Me! is very light in terms of its treatment of its inspirations—but then it has to be. The aim is to make those inspirations easy to grasp by Game Master and player alike and enable the players to engage with them as little or as much as they would like. Which is all part of making the main focus of Bite Me!, the adventure ‘Darkness, BITES!’, just as easy and as quick to prepare. Bite Me! should provide the Game Master and her players with a session or two’s worth fang-tastic and snacka-licious fun. All they have to is provide the snacks.

—oOo—
EN Publishing will be at UK Games Expo which takes place on Friday, May 30th to Sunday June 1st, 2025.

 I was talking to my oldest about my desire to maybe, just maybr running a d20 Dark•Matter game sometime. He laughed at me. I asked him why and he asked if I remembered what a a pain in the ass d20 Modern was at higher levels. Characters having at least three classes, feats all over the place, a recording nightmare. He was right, but undaunted I jumped in. I figure I'd create a few characters. I have three characters from my WitchCraft game that I'd love to get back too. Then there were two others from a Cinematic Unisystem game set in Chicago, brother and sister private eyes, that I always thought migth be fun to revist. 

Yeah. That didn't work out really.

Now, to be fair, I am really, really out of practice building a d20 Modern Character, but damn I don't remember it being like this. In the end, I only did one (sorry, Scott and Heather) from my WitchCraft game. 

While I set out to try to do a fairly straightforward translation of the Alternity material to d20, that also didn't work out really. So in the end I did a "spiritual translation" of Larina's Alternity Dark•Matter version to d20.  They started out the same, but they drifted a bit apart.

I also could not find Scott's and Heather's sheets from my 1999 WitchCraft game, so at this point, I'd be basing them on their D&D alter egos, which may or may not be the best. Heather is a half-elf in D&D after all. I did find Eric MacAlister, Larina's ex-husband. But in truth, I never really did anything else with the guy after the 1999 game. She always worried that he would come after her, and he had kind of forgotten her. Plus, he was unable to fly post Sept. 11, 2001, due to all the restrictions. 

So here is my witch. She took a long time to build here, and I am not 100% sure I got her correct.

Larina "Nix" Nichols

Human Charismatic Hero 5 / Mystic 7

Strength 8 (-1)
Dexterity 12 (+1)
Constitution 12 (+1)
Intelligence 17 (+3)
Wisdom 17 (+3)
Charisma 19 (+4)

Hit Points 66

Speed 30ft.

Defense 17, touch 17, flat 16

Init +1

Fort +9
Ref +8
Will +10

BaB/Grap +5 / +5
Melee/Ranged +5 / +6

AP 115 (lifetime)
Rep +7

Academic (starting occupation) University Librarian
Decipher Script
Knowledge (arcane lore)

Feats
Alertness
Attentive
Creative
Endurance
Educated (+2 on two knowledge skills)
Meticulous
Iron Will
Simple Weapon Proficiency [free]
Trustworthy
Toughness x1
Wild Talent (Psionic, Far Hand [TK])

Talents
Coordinate
Inspiration
Great Inspiration

Skills

Skill Name Key
Ability Skill
Modifier Ability
Modifier Ranks Misc.
Modifier Balance Dex* 1 = +1 Bluff Cha 12 = +4 +8 Climb Str* -1 = -1 Computer Use Int 6 = +3 +3 Concentration Con 9 = +1 +8 Craft (Structural) Int 3 = +3 Craft (Visual Art) Int 3 = +3 Craft (Writing) Int 3 = +3 Decipher Script Int 13 = +3 +10 Diplomacy Cha 16 = +4 +6 +2 [bluff] +2 [Knowledge, history] +2 [trustworthy] Disguise Cha 6 = +4 +2 Drive Dex* 1 = +1 Escape Artist Dex* 1 = +1 Forgery Int 5 = +3 +2 [meticulous] Gamble Wis 3 = +3 Gather Information Cha 6 = +4 +2 [trustworthy] Hide Dex* 1 = +1 Intimidate Cha 6 = +4 +2 [bluff] Jump Str* -1 = -1 Knowledge (arcane lore) Int 19 = +3 +14 +1 [Academic] +1 Knowledge (behavioral sciences) Int 9 = +3 +6 Knowledge (current events) Int 7 = +3 +4 Knowledge (earth & life sciences) Int 7 = +3 +4 Knowledge (history) Int 8 = +3 +5 Knowledge (popular culture) Int 5 = +3 +2 Knowledge (theology) Int 12 = +3 +8 +1 Listen Wis 9 = +3 +4 +2 [alertness] Move Silently Dex* 1 = +1 Navigate Int 3 = +3 Perform (Act) Cha 4 = +4 Perform (Dance) Cha 4 = +4 Perform (Keyboards) Cha 6 = +4 +2 Perform (Percussion) Cha 4 = +4 Perform (Sing) Cha 8 = +4 +4 Perform (Standup) Cha 4 = +4 Perform (String Inst.) Cha 4 = +4 Perform (Wind Inst.) Cha 8 = +4 +4 Research Int 10 = +3 +7 Ride Dex 1 = +1 Search Int 5 = +3 +2 [meticulous] Sense Motive Wis 5 = +3 +2 [attentive] Spellcraft Int 15 = +3 +10 +2 [Knowledge, arcane] Spot Wis 5 = +3 +2 [alertness] Survival Wis 3 = +3 Swim Str** -1 = -1 Treat Injury Wis 3 = +3

Spells

0-Level
Detect Magical Aura, Haywire, Light, Mending, Read Magic

1st-Level
Bane, Cause Fear, Comprehend Languages, Instant Identify, Sanctuary, Trace Purge

2nd-Level
Augury, Darkness, Daylight, Hold Person, Shatter

3rd-Level
Bestow Curse, Dispel Magic, Magic Circle, Secret Pocket

4th-Level
Divination, Greater Magic Weapon, Via Negativa

Incantations
Bibliolalia, Cast into Shadow, Dedicate Site, Mystic Veil, Quartz Compulsion

Equipment

Knife [1d4, crit 19-20, range inc 10ft., 1lb., one-handed, piercing]
Taser [1d4 special, crit --, range 2ft., 3lb., electricity]
First Aid Kit [Treat Injury DC 15, one use, negates normal -4 to Treat Injury checks, 3lb.]
Vampire Slayer Kit [Mossberg, 5 wood stakes, 5 phos. shls, silver holy symbols, hand xbow, 5 wood bolts, metal mirror, garlic necklace, alum. case, 20lb.]
Business Clothing [3lb.]
Casual Clothing [2lb.]
Overcoat [3lb.]
Digital Camera [connects to computer, 0.5lb.]
Notebook Computer [5lb.]
PDA [connects with computer, 0.5lb.] Portable Occult Library
Total Weight Carried: 41lb. (medium load)

2005 Volkswagen Beetle (Purple) ARCANIX Illinois License Plates.

Larina Nichols

Human Female
Alignment: Independent (Agent of A.R.T.E.M.I.S.)
DoB: 10/25/1969 (36 in 2006)
Place of Birth: Carbondale, IL
Current Residence: Chicago, IL

Hair: Red
Eyes: Blue
Height: 5'4"
Weight: 127 lbs

Handiness: Right* (can write with Left hand, with difficulty)

Aliases: Larina MacAlister, Larina Nix, "Nixie."

So. This is a good build, I can't say I am 100% happy with it. There is so much customization you can do with d20 that the combinations and permutations are practically endless. 

I both miss and hate, at the same time, d20's multiclassing. I love how flexible it is and how you can combine all sorts of classes to get the exact character you want. But it is also tedious. I mean I could have gone down the path of Occultist, or Acolyte, or even going into the various Prestige classes. There is so much choice. 

I showed this to my son when he got off work Wednesday night/Thursday morning. He just laughed and reminded me yet again why we tend to play 5e, AD&D 1st ed and Basic D&D instead.

This exercise has also reminded me that I wanted to do a lot more with A.R.T.E.M.I.S. as well. 

The last two weeks you have spent in the city of Venice have been amazing. You have visited the Doge’s Palace, St. Mark's Basilica, and the Bridge of Sighs, as well as taken a gondola ride on the Grand Canal, explored the Rialto Market, and taken a day trip to the island of Murano to discover its unique glassblowing tradition. The food and wine have been good too, but now your holiday is nearly over. Your flight home leaves tomorrow, but you have one left one last thing you have to do to the last minute—gifts to take home for your friends and family. In fact, you are not really sure that you have enough time to search the shops for right gifts and get to Marco Polo International Airport for your flight home. It is not helped by the fact that the three friends you are buying for, hate it when they are not treated equally, but you have hired a gondola and you are going to search high and low for the right gifts for the right people—or miss your flight trying!

This is the set-up for Souvenirs from Venice, another game from Oink Games, the Japanese publisher best known for Scout. It is a set-collecting game designed for two to five players, aged eight and up, that can be played in thirty minutes, and it is from the same designers who did Deep Sea Adventure. The aim of the game is three sets of matching souvenirs and get to the airport. At the end of the game, each matching set of souvenirs will score points, whilst souvenirs that do not match will lose a player points. The players have to find the right souvenirs, make sure they do not have wrong souvenirs in their hands, and get to the airport. Only a player who gets to the airport in time will have a chance of being the winner.

Besides the rules in French, German, and Spanish as well as English, Souvenirs from Venice consists of forty-eight Souvenir Tiles, thirty Money Tokens, five Summary Cards, an Airport Card, a single die, and five Gondolas. The Souvenir Tiles range in value from five to ten and in turn depict Venetian Glass, Venetian Masks, Leather Goods, Gondolier Shirts, Squid Ink Pasta, and Fridge Magnets. Each Souvenir Tile is actually a shop and items are the goods they sell. Two depict the ‘Pigeon’ and ‘The Pigeon Feed Seller’. The die is marked one, two, and three, rather than one to six, and the gondolas are done in brightly coloured wood. The Summary Cards are reference cards for the play of the game.

Game set-up is simple. Each player receives a gondola, six Money Tokens, and a Sun. The Souvenir Tiles are laid out in a seven-by-seven grid, or five-by-five if two players, all face down, whilst the Airport Card is placed in one corner instead of a Souvenir Tile. The grid is open as the spaces in between represent the canals of Venice where players’ gondolas will travel, moving from intersection to intersection. All of the gondolas are placed on the Airport Card where they start play.

On his turn, each player must do three things in strict order. These are ‘Research’, ‘Move’, and ‘Buying or Selling’. In the ‘Research’ step, the player flips over any tile face down so that everyone can see it. In the ‘Move’, the player rolls the die and moves his gondola that exact number of spaces, hopping over any other player’s gondola in the way. ‘Buying or Selling’ gives a player two options. If he buys, it can be done in secret, looking at a Souvenir Tile adjacent to his gondola, but keeping it hidden from the other players, or he can buy any face up tile. Either way, he replaces it with Money Token. If he sells, he places a Souvenir Tile in his hand on the table face down, replacing a Money Token which he takes.

If the ‘Pigeon’ and ‘The Pigeon Feed Seller’ are both revealed—and they have to be revealed face up when discovered, they force each player to pass a Souvenir Tiles (or a Money Token if they have no Souvenir Tile) to the player on his left. This can mix things up, forcing a player to scramble to find matching Souvenir Tiles with the ones he has in his hand. However, this really comes into play later in the game rather than earlier, as the earlier it happens, the lower the chance it has of mucking up a player’s hand.

Souvenirs from Venice is a primarily a push-your-luck game, although it does have a memory element in that a player may need to remember the Souvenir Tiles he has looked at and where they are. However, what a player is mostly doing is pushing his luck to three sets of Souvenir Tiles, ideally of a higher rather than lower value. Of course, there are more of the latter than the former. Thankfully, a player can choose to sell to get rid of a poor value Souvenir Tile if he knows where one with a better value is or if he simply wants it out of his hand. The latter may be necessary because the other push-your-luck element of game is the timer element. Once all of the Souvenir Tiles have been bought or flipped over and face up, the flight leaves the airport. Anyone not at the airport by then, cannot score any points for the Souvenir Tile sets they have collected and automatically lose. Any player with sets of Souvenir Tiles at the airport gets to score, and the player with highest score wins.

Souvenirs from Venice is decently presented, if as with every Oink Games title, packed tightly into its little box. The quality of the components is good and the rules are clearly written.

Souvenirs from Venice is a solid, satisfying little game. It is a light game, better suited to family audiences and has a surprisingly decent theme that matches that lightness.

—oOo—
Oink Games will be at UK Games Expo which takes place on Friday, May 30th to Sunday June 1st, 2025.

 Last year, I spent some quality time with the Alternity Game system, particularly Dark•Matter. I wanted to spend some time comparing the d20 version with the Alternity version. Actually my plans had been to cover a lot of the d20 Sci-fi games this month, but I just didn't really feel the drive to do it this year.

I wanted to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the d20 system (which I guess doesn't actually happen till Fall) but the desire wasn't there this year. I mean if Wizards of the Coast isn't going to put forth the effort then why should I?

Both games were produced by Wizards of the Coast and still have Wolfgang Baur and Monte Cook as their authors. There are "additional designers" who are basically the designers WotC had on their d20 Modern teams at the time. 

The books "feel" similar with the differences easily chalked up to different game systems, seven years, and the aid of additional designers and editors.

Rather than being the same game with different editions they feel like a "1st" and "2nd" edition of the game. The Alternity edition weighs in at 288 pages. The d20 one at 160 pages. This is expected since the bulk of the rules of the d20 version are handled by the d20 Modern book.

There is a subtle tone difference in the games. Alternity Dark•Matter is post X-files paranoia and distrust of the Government. The d20 edition is post 9/11 and distrust of everyone. Was this intentional or am I reading into it?

The two games' content is largely the same, minus system differences. 

You can play the same sorts of games with either version in basically the same way. The Alternity system was designed to cover a wide variety of Sci-Fi type "modern" games, and d20 is, well, d20. These strengths mean that you can add things to your games as you see fit. Obviously, 20 has a lot more options due to its greater success. 

This is also a weakness. To play d20 Dark•Matter, you need the Dark•Matter rule book and the d20 Modern System rule book. I also added Urban Arcana material to play with as I like. 

The thing is, I am sitting here rereading all these books that I have not touched in years, and I am feeling a little nostalgic. Will I ever run a Dark•Matter game again? No. I can't see that happening, not really. NIGHT SHIFT is where my heart lies now. Which is too bad, really, because there is a lot of fun still to be had with this game. 

As I said last year, Dark•Matter is a great game, and I love the setting. The D20 system is better suited to me than the Alternity system, but both are a lot of fun.  While I could certainly play a Dark•Matter-like game with NIGHT SHIFT, I have so many games to play.