Yesterday I was interviewed for the Grogpod podcast about me and my gaming history, my reviews and editing and so on. One of the topics of conversation was a review I wrote back in 2009, which at the time caused a slight controversy and upset the publisher. Thanks to the efforts of the Grog Squad it has been relocated and I have been asked to repost it on the blog.
Before anyone makes a fuss about this review, please in mind that it was written over ten years ago and the book is now out of print. Further, the publisher and I have a cordial relationship and I had the pleasure of meeting him at Gen Con 50 in 2017. We also have a good working relationship as I first proofread and then edited the rest of the titles in the Age of Cthulhu line. The authors of those books are now friends because of working with each other on those books.
The posting of the review again is purely to assuage my readers’ curiosity and to preserve a little bit of my reviewing history.
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Age of Cthulhu Vol. II: Madness in London Town is the second scenario to be released by Goodman Games for Call of Cthulhu, the RPG of Lovecraftian horror published by Chaosium, Inc. It follows the first scenario, Death in Luxor, set in the same shared world of the late 1920s. Possessing the same high production standards, Madness in London Town comes with five pre-generated investigators, excellent maps and handouts, and a fairly straightforward adventure that can be played through in no more than two sessions of play. As the title suggests, the adventure takes place in London, where the investigators are invited to attend a gala at the British Museum by an old friend. Unfortunately, he is dead before the end of the first act…

Mechanically, Madness in London Town is a better scenario for Call of Cthulhu than its forebear, primarily because it includes the necessary NPC stats and Sanity losses. Yet beyond that, Madness in London Town is outclassed on most counts. Its plot, of a friend’s death putting the investigators on the track of a cult of black druids racing to summon a Great Old One on the right date, is linear in structure and superficial in nature, assumes that the investigators are American and will come armed, lacks the historicity of Death in Luxor, and lacks the sort of historical (not to say geographical) detail and accuracy that many Call of Cthulhu devotees appreciate. The unfortunate truth is that this an adventure set in England written by a non-native, and it shows. Age of Cthulhu Vol. II: Madness in London Town works best as a pulpy, brawns-over-brains adventure, but a Keeper will have to work very hard to make it fit the Classic mode and style of Call of Cthulhu.
To begin with, this is a review of a scenario. There will be spoilers.
Madness in London Town opens with the player characters invited by an old friend, Doctor Vernon Whitlow, to attend a gala dinner at the British Museum. Arriving in something of a hurry, the characters barely have an opportunity to speak to the other guests before the good doctor enters the room and after a few moments’ raving, slits his own throat. Already forewarned that something is amiss at the museum, the scenario’s pull is the mystery behind Whitlow’s death. Clues found at his flat (one thing that the author does get right, as flat is the term used in the United Kingdom) point back to odd goings on at the British Museum, below which the investigators will have a strange encounter with even stranger cats. Even nastier encounters take place at a waxworks museum (no, not Madame Tussaud’s) and at the chief villain’s country dwelling, before the final showdown on Salisbury Plain at England’s most famous monument, Stonehenge.
The cult concerned is a revived ancient order of black druids, using the henge to summon their lord and mistress, Shub-Niggurath. Putting aside the fact that the use of the monument and the druidic faith in this way could be found offensive by some, the plot and cult are both very sketchily detailed. There is very little to either, and apart from the investigative dog work, there is very little for the more scholarly investigator to do throughout the adventure. That the cult’s efforts can be simply stopped by bashing the chief over the head just seems almost anti-climatic.
This being a Goodman Games book, where Madness in London Town does shine is in the quality of its handouts and its maps. It is a pity no map of England could have been provided, as this would have given the adventure a sense of scale and place (or at least shown the distance between its primary locations), and the map of London does feel jumbled. The scenario’s NPCs are nicely presented with plenty of detail, and it includes one or nasty little set pieces – most notably in the waxworks museum, surely a nod to the 1953 film House of Wax, starring Vincent Price. Beyond the adventure itself, Madness in London Town offers a new take on the Milk of Shub-Niggurath and a new spell.
At times, the scenario feels rushed as if the author wants to get onto the next scene. He also rushes into the scenario, never quite setting it up, and it will take a careful reading of the first few pages for the Keeper to grasp what is going on. The inclusion of a better summary would have solved this. The history that the scenario is based upon – the disappearance of a legion during the Roman conquest of Britain – is almost irrelevant, whereas in Death of Luxor, the background is very much part of the story.
So, having told you what the adventure is about and given you some hints of its pluses and minuses, allow me to dig a little deeper and address some of the issues that Madness in London Town raises. To that end I will list them as do’s and don’ts, each highlighting the various issues, before I come to a conclusion. We start with a long “do” before the shorter do’s and don’ts take us to the finale.
Do get your pre-generated investigators right. One of the first things that I do with any scenario for Call of Cthulhu is check its pre-generated investigators – if provided. I do this not just for the benefit of a review, but also out of semi-professional interest, having provided 27 pre-generated investigators for the forthcoming The Complete Masks of Nyarlathotep Companion. So I know how to put an investigator together in terms of the mechanics, how to tie him into the story, and how to use history to make him interesting. As with Death in Luxor before it, Madness in London Town has its own set, and fortunately, the five given are much, much better than those provided in Death in Luxor. They are not as broadly drawn and they are not as absurdly pulpish, being much more like something that a player would create himself. They are still pulpish enough, several having daftly, but not ridiculously, high combat and Dodge skills. That does not mean that any one of the adventure’s quintet is perfect…
Let us examine said investigators from the top, then. First, if you describe an investigator as having dedicated himself to archaeology, actually give him some points in the Archaeology skill – especially if you describe him as having authored two academic papers on the subject with the scenario’s lead NPC. Oh, and learn to spell Archaeology, it really is spelt the correct way in Call of Cthulhu. Second, older characters get extra points to add to their Education attribute. Either these were not added to the Big Game Hunter’s Education or (a) his creator really did roll an Education of 5 – which is impossible (bear with me, but the explanation goes like this: base age of character is Edu+6, so his given Education being 8, his base age is 14, and for each decade after that, an investigator receives +1 Education, so at 50, the Big Game Hunter receives +3; so taking this away from his Education of 8 gives a basic roll of 5, which is impossible on a roll of 3d6+3), or (b) the character really should be 14 years old and a crack shot with an Elephant Gun. My suggestion is that his Education should be 11, not 8, and the extra points should have been assigned to his Dodge skill and some languages beyond the one he learned traveling from one end of the continent to the other. Third, if a character is described as having spent his days racing automobiles (among other activities), why does he not have the Drive (Auto) skill? Plus, if the search for answers to the mysterious nature of said investigator’s parents has led him down many dark roads, why does he have the Cthulhu Mythos skill and not the Occult skill? Then again, why does he have the Mythos skill at all? Fourth, why does an author who follows a solitary life dedicated to intellectual pursuits and her writing need particularly high skills in Dodge and Handgun? Has she been dodging the barbed comments of her critics, and practicing shooting at targets in preparation for her revenge? Fifth and lastly, the average of 12 and 12 is 12, not 13 – Call of Cthulhu is not the sort of game where you give the player characters extra Hit Points…
Don’t make the staff of the British Museum look like idiots. You might not know where lions and tigers can be found in the wild, but the odds are high that the staff of the British Museum does, even in the 1920s. If the staff is setting up an African themed diorama, it is unlikely that they will include a stuffed tiger as part of it, since the tiger is found on another continent altogether. Unless of course, you want everyone viewing the diorama (and indeed reading Madness in London Town) to exclaim, “Tigers! In Africa?”
Do get your geography right. I was not personally aware that during the 1920s that Scotland was in the West Country, specifically, the southern English county of Wiltshire. Then again, as an issue it was probably fixed when the Scotland Act of 1998 was passed and Scottish devolution was allowed, enabling the glens of Salisbury Plain to be returned to their rightful place north of the border. The point is that Salisbury Plain is a chalk plateau not known for glens or wooded river valleys, and that could have been ascertained with a modicum of research. Or just looking it up on Wikipedia.
Don’t name one of your NPCs, even if only a minor character, after a historical figure. This is especially important if that historical figure was a leading member of the German Nazi party.
Do get your geography right. The drive via taxi cab from the docks where the investigators disembark from their transatlantic liner to the gala at the British Museum cannot be in any way, shape, or form be described as short. This is even assuming that their transatlantic liner docked in London, which given the fact that as every good Call of Cthulhu player knows, transatlantic liners docked at either Liverpool or Southampton, is highly unlikely because London is primarily a goods port.
Don’t, and this is more of an aesthetic issue, provide thumbnails of your scenario’s NPCs that are cliches and so enable the audience (that is, the players) to identify which one of them is the bad guy at a single glance. It might well be that my partner is particularly perceptive, but she was able to identify the villain of the piece just by looking at the thumbnails.
Do get your geography right. Soho is not in Bloomsbury.
Don’t assume that the investigators (pre-generated or not) will be armed. Many of the pieces of artwork do, showing an investigator holding a handgun of some kind. The England of the 1920s is not an armed England, and pistols are uncommon compared to shotguns and rifles. Further English Customs take a dim view of Americans attempting to enter the country armed for bear, and not just because bears have been extinct in England for centuries.
Do get your geography right. And do check your maps. Like most European cities, London was not built by design, but rather evolved and is not laid out on grid pattern. The term “city block” is not English.
It should be pointed out that the scenario ends with a note about historical accuracy. Here the author states that although he has taken pains to utilize real locations, businesses, societies, and historical events, the adventure is not meant to present a wholly accurate representation of England during the 1920s and that details have been changed to aid the adventure plot or facilitate play. This rather misses the point of Call of Cthulhu, a very, very historical game, played by many not only for its fine elements of Lovecraftian horror, but also for its history. Further, I would suggest that this is very much the cause of so many of the scenario’s do’s and don’ts.
The other cause is the lack of experience that Goodman Games has with writing for Call of Cthulhu. Not just upon the part of the author, but also upon the part of the editor, who should have been able to spot and correct the do’s and don’ts listed above. Worse still, if you go back to the review of Death in Luxor, there is a note at its end from its author suggesting that I look at a preview of the publisher’s next release (which, of course, is this scenario). I did not see such a preview, but if I had, I would certainly have raised all of the issues above, and no doubt some of them would have been corrected. I want to make clear that my tentacular dissection of Madness in London Town is due my wanting the scenario to be better, not an unhappy response to not seeing that preview. My tentacular dissection, though, is certainly the reason why this review will not be quoted on the Goodman Games website.
Long has the roleplayer of these fair isles, by which I mean, the British Isles, suffered at the hands of authors from the colonies. If you are English, Irish, or Scottish, then the likelihood is that you will have read one or more supplements written about your country by Americans containing groan-worthy – if not highly laughable – facts about your country. The unfortunate fact is that Age of Cthulhu Vol. II: Madness in London Town is just one more addition to that list of supplements.
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Please note that I did not mention the Welsh at the end of this review. I could have put them in and everybody would have been none the wiser. I have instead left the error in and proffer an apology to any Welsh reader. Sorry. Please believe me when I say that I did not intend to omit you from that final list at the end of the review.

1974 is an important year for the gaming hobby. It is the year that Dungeons & Dragons was introduced, the original RPG from which all other RPGs would ultimately be derived and the original RPG from which so many computer games would draw for their inspiration. It is fitting that the current owner of the game, Wizards of the Coast, released the new version, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, in the year of the game’s fortieth anniversary. To celebrate this, Reviews from R’lyeh will be running a series of reviews from the hobby’s anniversary years, thus there will be reviews from 1974, from 1984, from 1994, and from 2004—the thirtieth, twentieth, and tenth anniversaries of the titles—and so on, as the anniversaries come up. These will be retrospectives, in each case an opportunity to re-appraise interesting titles and true classics decades on from the year of their original release.

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It is all but impossible to start a review of Rifts and not acknowledge the problems it suffers from being published by Palladium Books. In terms of physical design, Rifts is a terrible roleplaying game, first because it is organised in such a fashion as to make it difficult to play and second, because it has no index. Now these are standard features of any book from Palladium Books, but in a roleplaying game which is as badly organised as Rifts and therefore needs an index to make it easier to use, the designer’s stupidly stubborn refusal to include one is nonsensical. Similarly, there is no character sheet, but to be fair, no character sheet could encapsulate just how much information a player has to note down when creating and playing a character in Rifts. This is of course, a given with all Palladium Books, but in a roleplaying game with as many separate elements as Rifts, it is an extraordinarily big given. That given aside, Rifts remains physically imposing, a slab of a softback book, neatly, cleanly, and tidily presented throughout, with uniformly, if cartoonishly good black and white artwork and excellent fully painted inserts. The standard of presentation—if not the organisation—was very good for 1990.
So what is Rifts? It is a post-apocalyptic roleplaying game set hundreds of years into the future which combines big robots, magic, psionics, and bruising combat on an incredible scale. It is a roleplaying game in which Glitter Boys piloting big mecha suits, chemically enhanced Juicers, psionic Cyber-Knights, ley-commanding Ley Walkers, Techno-Wizards, Dragons, psionic Mind Melters, and more combat the ‘Dead Boy’ soldiers in their deaths head armour, Spider-Skull Walkers, and Sky Cycles of the evil Coalition States as well as supernatural monsters, D-Bees (Dimensional beings), and the instectoid Xiticix from other dimensions. It is a future in which a golden age was destroyed by nuclear conflagration as billions died, their Potential Psychic Energy—or P.P.E.—was unleashed as surges into the Earth’s many, long forgotten ley lines, coming together at nexus points and causing rifts in time and space to be ripped open. As the planet buckled under the psychic onslaught, millions more died and fed more energy into the now pulsing ley lines, causing a feedback loop which would grow and grow. The oceans were driven from their beds to wash over the lands, Atlantis rose again after millennia, alien beings flooded through the rifts, and magic returned to the planet. 
In North America—the primary setting for Rifts—the land consists of feudal states, though the Coalition States, a hundred-year-old, mutant-hating, magic hating, psionic-hating totalitarian empire is spreading its influence out of Chi-Town near the old ruins of Chicago. Its current target is the city of Tolkeen which stands astride a ley line nexus on the bones of the pre-rifts city, Minneapolis, and is home to many wizards; the Coalition States operates the Lone Star City, a huge pre-rifts military complex with the most advanced manufacturing, animal genetics, cybernetics, bionics, and robot facilities on the planet, whilst the rest of the former state is new frontier across which high-tech desperados range; the remains of Georgia and Florida are marshlands populated by dinosaurs; and the former St. Louis is a demon infested no-go zone dominated by two hundred ley lines and thirteen nexus points. Elsewhere, Mexico is aid to the home to Vampire Kingdoms; England, Scotland, Wales have become a Realm of Magic; and the Germany of the ‘New Republic’ is as advanced as Chi-Town.
So what can you play in Rifts? Here a player is faced by a deluge of choice. Rifts is a Class and Level roleplaying game, and the Classes are either Occupational Character Classes or Racial Character Classes. Occupational Character Classes are further categorised into Men of Arms, Scholars and Adventurers, and Practitioners of Magic, whilst Racial Character Classes are natural psionics—although many characters other than Racial Character Classes can be psionic—and actual separate species like Dragons. The Men of Arms Occupational Character Classes consist of Borgs—bionic superhumans or cyborgs; the Coalition Grunt is the Coalition States’ infantryman, Coalition RPA Elite or ‘Sam’ Coalition its pilots of robots and vehicles, the Coalition Military Specialist its espionage and reconnaissance specialists, and the Coalition Technical Officer its military technicians; Crazies are neurologically enhanced through nano-technology, a process which physically enhances them, but sends them literally crazy; the Cyber-Knight is a psionic paladin, complete with psi-sword and a chivalric code; the Glitter Boy pilots the famous Glitter Boy power armour complete with its ‘boom’ gun; the Headhunter is a bounty hunter and warrior for hire; and the Juicer is super-chemically enhanced at the cost of a much shortened lifespan. The Scholars and Adventurers Occupational Character Classes consist of the Body Fixer—a medical doctor, the City Rat—dwellers of a city’s lower levels and sewers, the Cyber-Doc—a cybernetics specialist, the Operator—freelance engineer or technician, the Rogue Scientist—scientific explorer and researcher, the Rogue Scholar—seekers and teachers of knowledge, the Wilderness Scout—hunter and guide; and the Vagabond Non-Skilled—the equivalent to the ordinary person in Rifts.
The Practitioners of Magic consist of the Line Walker who draws energy from and can ride ley lines, the Mystic—a sensitive and healer who combines magic and psionics, the Shifter who open up dimensional portals and summon creatures from the other side, and the Techno-Wizard who combines magic and technology to create and power wondrous devices. The Racial Character Classes start with the Dragon—the creatures of myth, but from an unknown dimension and merely weeks old at game start and is followed by the Psychic Character Classes. These consist of the Burster or pyrokinetic, the Psi-Stalker who hunts and feeds on other psionic-users, Dog Pack—genespliced canines used by the Coalition States to hunt wizards and psychics, and the Mind Melter—a superpowered psychic!
That is a total of twenty-seven characters Classes!
Every Class comes with its own abilities and skills, plus a choice of other occupational skills and secondary skills. Suggested equipment is given as well as starting funds and cybernetics—if any. Many also come with supplementary mechanics. So for example, the Crazy Occupational Character Class includes for how the Crazy’s madness expresses itself—covered in five pages compared to the two devoted to the actual Crazy Occupational Character Class, and six pages of Techno-Wizard gear in comparison to the two pages devoted to the Techno-Wizard Occupational Character Class.
A character in Rifts is defined by eight attributes—Intelligence Quotient (I.Q.), Mental Endurance (M.E.), Mental Affinity (M.A.), Physical Strength (P.S.), Physical Prowess (P.P.), Physical Endurance (P.E.), Physical Beauty (P.B.), and Speed (Spd.). The base attributes range from three to eighteen, with results of seventeen or more granting bonuses, though low rolls do not impose any penalties. A character will also have Hit Points and Structural Damage Capacity or S.D.C., essentially stun points. To create a character in Rifts, a player rolls three six-sided dice for his character’s attributes, rolls for his Hit Points and S.D.C., rolls to see if he has psionics, selects an Occupational Character Class or a Racial Character Class, chooses equipment and rolls for money, and lastly looks at rounding out the character. 
Cyber-Knight (Level 1)Alignment: Scrupulous (Good)
I.Q. 13M.E. 13M.A. 08P.S. 22P.P. 18P.E. 17P.B. 11Spd. 20
Hit Points: 12 S.D.C. 107
Save versus Coma/Death +5%Save versus Poison & Magic +1 
Psi-sword Damage: 1d6 Mega-Damage (M.D.)Automatic Kick Attack: 2d4Body Block: 1d4 (Opponent must dodge or parry to avoid being knocked down; lose one melee attack if knocked down.)Pin/incapacitate on a roll of 18, 19, or 20. Crush/Squeeze: 1d4
Attacks per Melee +4+7 damage in hand-to-hand combatInitiative +1, Parry +5, Dodge +5, Strike +2, +8 to roll with punch or fallW.P. Blunt +1 Strike, +1 ParryW.P. Knife +1 to throwW.P. Sword +1 Strike, +1 Parry
PsionicsBase P.P.E. 23Saving Throw versus psionic attack: 12 or higher.I.S.P. 24Psionic Powers: Object Read, Sense Evil, Sixth Sense
O.C.C. SkillsAnthropology 40%, Athletics (General), Automotive Mechanics 25%, Basic Electronics 35% Bodybuilding, Boxing, Climbing 67%, Cook 40%, Detect Ambush 40%, Gymnastics (Sense of Balance 60%, Work Parallel Bars & Rings 68%, Climb Rope 77%, Back Flip 80%, Prowl 40%), Hand-to-Hand: Martial Arts, Horsemanship 59%, Intelligence 36%, Land Navigation 52%, Language (American) 96%, Language (Dragonese/Elf) 96%, %, Language (Euro) 75%, Language (Spanish) 75%, Literacy 55%, Lore: Demon 45%, Lore: Fairie 30%, Paramedic 55%, Pick Lock 35%, Pilot (Automobile) 54%, Pilot (Motorcycle) 64%, Sewing 45%, Streetwise 24%, Swimming 65%, Tracking 30%, Wilderness Survival 35%, , W.P. Automatic Pistol, W.P. Blunt, W.P. Knife, W.P. Energy Pistol, W.P. Energy Rifle, W.P. Sword, Wrestling, Writing 30%
EquipmentSuit of personalised, heavy, M.D.C body armour, suit of light M.D.C body armour (Crusader Full Fibre Environmental Body Armor, M.D.C. 55), set of dress clothing, set of black clothing. Gas mask and air filter, tinted goggles, hatchet for cutting wood, knife (or two), sword, modern handgun (NG-S7 Northern Gun Heavy-Duty Ion Blaster 2d4/3d6 M.D.) and rifle (L-20 Pulse Rifle 2d6 M.D. single shot/6d6 burst) and three extra ammo clips, first-aid kit with extra bandages and antiseptic, suture thread and painkiller, tent, knapsack, back pack, saddlebags, two canteens, emergency food rations (two week supply), Geiger counter, and some personal items.Money: 300 credits, black market item worth 4000 creditsCybernetics: Cyber-armour (A.R. 16, 50 M.D.C.).
This process is not an easy one, nor is it quick. Some of the shorter Occupational Character Classes and Racial Character Classes may take half an hour to create, others an hour or more, all depending upon the particular elements of the Class and what extra elements the player needs to choose. Further, a lot of cross referencing is required as both Class abilities, hand-to-hand combat styles, and skills can sometimes enhance a character’s attributes. Then there are options too, for example the finishing touches to creating a character is a player choosing his character’s Alignment. The tables for birth order, disposition, and more are all optional…
Mechanically, Rifts is quite simple. Combat is handled by rolls of a twenty-sided die, a player having to roll high to hit, usually four or more. Mechanically, Rifts is also quite complex. If a target is hit and does not avoid the attack, the player whose character is attacking rolls to beat the target’s Armour Rating. If he does, the target take damage, if not, the armour takes damage. However, not all armour has an Armour Rating. This is because where Rifts gets even more complex is because characters will find themselves fighting on two scales—Structural Damage Capacity and Mega Damage Capacity. Both measure the amount of damage that an object or a person can take. So for Structural Damage Capacity, this is the amount of damage that a car or a house or the character can take before being destroyed. Mega Damage Capacity—previously introduced in Palladium Books’ Robotech roleplaying game—represents high-tech armour like Glitter Suits and vehicles such as Coalition Spider-Skull Walkers and dinosaurs and supernatural creatures. Only weapons which do Mega-Damage can inflict damage on anything with a Mega Damage Capacity.
Roughly, one hundred points of Structural Damage Capacity is equal to one point of Mega Damage Capacity. So a single point of Mega-Damage actually inflicts the equivalent of one hundred points of Structural Damage. However, anything which possesses Mega Damage Capacity cannot be harmed by weapons or attacks which just do Structural Damage. Conversely, anything or anyone hit by a Mega-Damage attack which does not have Mega Damage Capacity is essentially obliterated. Fortunately, whether through weapons, beweaponed suits of armour, magic, or psionics, most characters have the capacity to inflict Mega-Damage. Yet this means that Rifts is really fought on two levels and unless everyone does have access to Mega-Damage attacks and Mega Damage Capacity armour, then they cannot really play at that level. This divide is really present between those Occupational Character Classes which have this feature, for example, between the Men of Arms and the Adventurers and Scholars. That said, it does lend itself to interesting situations where the player characters might have to solve a problem or engage in a fight where Mega-Damage attacks and Mega Damage Capacity armour is inappropriate and that is all they have…
Rifts is a game about augmentation as much as it is big stonking battles against robots and strange monsters, and what it offers in terms of augmentations is bionics and cybernetics, magic, and psionics. In terms of magic it provides some one-hundred-and-fifty spells across fifteen Levels and powered by a spellcaster’s Potential Psychic Energy—or P.P.E. Psionics only offers some sixty or so abilities, divided into the Healer, Physical, Sensitive, and Super Psionics categories, some of which are particular to certain Classes, but all are powered by a character’s Inner Strength Points—or I.S.P. In terms of bionics and cybernetics, Rifts lists some hundred or so implants, some available to purchase freely, some only available on the black market. Many of these upgrades and implants will be familiar from the Cyberpunk genre with the protection that various items provide capable of withstanding damage by Mega-Damage attacks and inflicting Mega-Damage. In the case of magic and psionics, many of the powers and spells can be powered up to provide from and inflict Mega-Damage.
In terms of background, Rifts actually includes quite a lot, some twenty pages providing a potted, sometimes detailed overview of the former states of the United States, Canada, and Mexico along with thumbnail descriptions of places around the world. It focuses mainly on Chi-Town and the Coalition States as the primary enemies in Rifts. This is accompanied by full colour maps of North and South America. In general, there is a lot of room for the Game Master add her own content, but there are some details which she will have go digging for because they are in other sections. In terms of advice for the Game Master, Rifts is sorely lacking, the half page of advice just telling Game Master and players alike not to be put off by the magnitude of the game. Now there is a set of tables for creating monsters quickly and stats for the Xiticix and various generic NPCs, but there is no advice on running a campaign, on what sort of games could be run, no campaign ideas, or anything else. For a roleplaying with such big ideas and concepts, it is so frustrating not to have such small details. So for example, the Shifter Occupational Character Class is all about opening up portals and summoning things through them and doing to other dimensions, but there is not a single discussion of what these dimensions are like anywhere in the book. Essentially, a Class has been designed with a cool feature and then that feature has been ignored.
Of course, the lack of advice for the Game Master might have been less of a problem for anyone attempting to run Rifts for the first time, had the roleplaying included a starting scenario. Which of course, it does not. So the Game Master is left wondering what to do with a disparate bunch of character types, working out why they are together, and then write a scenario which will satisfy one or more of them. However, the designer does acknowledge that, “This is not a beginner’s role-playing game, nor one conducive to hack and slash gaming. Like many of our games, Rifts is a thinking man’s game. Perhaps the hostile environment makes it all the more important that one uses his head.” The fact that Rifts is not a beginner’s is undeniable, but whether it is ‘a thinking man’s game’ is debatable, given the emphasis in the roleplaying game upon combat and the amount of playing called for by combat, with player characters having multiple attacks and options and very many different combat abilities.
The other reason why Rifts is not a beginner’s game is because of the way it is organised. So the rules for psionics follow the Psychic Racial Character Classes, but the rules for magic do not follow the Practitioners of Magic Occupational Character Classes, but some eighty pages later after the Psychic Racial Character Classes, the rules for psionics, and some background. Likewise, the rules for bionics and cybernetics are placed over a hundred pages after all of the Character Classes at the back of the book. Then the relatively few pages of background are squirrelled away in the middle of the book. It simply makes no sense. 
In terms of design, there is a certain identikit feel to Rifts in that so many of its elements are pulled from other Palladium Books roleplaying games. So the Mega Damage Capacity rules are from Robotech, the bionics and cybernetic rules from Ninjas and Superspies and Heroes Unlimited, the magic rules from Palladium Fantasy Role-Playing Game, and so on. Although that said, the magic rules have been tweaked up for Rifts. Notably, the stats for the various mundane weapons—melee weapons and guns (the latter all dating from pre-apocalypse of Rifts)—seem to have been reprinted from just about every Palladium Books roleplaying game and have an oddly seventies feel to them. Part of this is intentional, to make Rifts part of the whole Palladium Books family of roleplaying settings and genres, part of its Megaverse.
Rifts was reviewed in Challenge 48 (January/February 1991) by Eric W. Haddock who said, “A preponderance of organizational problems and simple editorial errors (like incomplete sentences and spelling) all detract from the overall quality of Rifts.”, followed by “Without a doubt, Rifts is one of the most abysmally organized books I’ve seen. It is extremely difficult to find rules within a section easily and quickly when one needs to. A GM should not expect to start running a game and assume that whatever rules he isn't clear on can be looked up during play. In the games I played and ran, it took more time to find a rule than it took to read it, despite the Quick Find Table.” Despite this, he ended on a positive note, “I highly recommend Riffs because of its setting and potential for great scenarios, which can have as much connection with other Palladium games as the GM wants. However, until the Rifts Conversion Book comes out, not everything in Palladium’s previous games can be put directly into a Rifts campaign. There is enough here, though, to keep any GM busy thinking up new scenarios and creating new archvillains for players for quite a while.”
Rifts was subject to a Feature Review by Joshua Gabriel Timbrook in White Wolf Magazine Issue 26 (April/May, 1991). He said that, “The only real problem with Rifts is that inexperienced game masters are left almost completely in the dark. Although the book is over two hundred-fifty pages long, the most the game master gets is a couple of creature charts and the setting. As it is so aptly stated, “...that initial set-up is likely to take a bit of effort...” In short, it is a lot of work to run the game. However, the atmosphere is so rich with ideas for adventure that intriguing plots and stories shouldn't be difficult to develop. In fact, some may discover that it is very worthwhile and rewarding to create a campaign working from such a blank slate.” He concluded by saying that, “Overall, Rifts is an incredible roleplaying experience, and its setting seems to be as original and fun to play as the recent multi-genre games, Shadowrun and Torg. Those who are into bleak worlds, hi-tech magic, twisted rituals, fascist empires, brutal weaponry, min-boggling power armor, and fantastic stories should really give it a try.”
Rifts would appear in the twenty-second slot of ‘Arcane Presents the Top 50 Roleplaying Games 1996’ in Arcane #14 (December, 1996). The article described it as “It’s the ultimate in old-style high-energy RPGs. It uses a class-and-level system, and its supplements are full of new character classes, as well as weapons, robots and power armour. Fantasy-style creatures are a bit less common, and tend to be rather conventional elves and orcs - although it’s perfectly possible to play a baby dragon. One of the key concepts is ‘mega-damage’, which is important when you're playing with giant robots and such. This is the game for people who want to have everything possible in their campaigns - and then to blow a lot of it up with cool super-weapons.”
Rifts is not a subtle game. It is a roleplaying game for those who want to play a game in which everything goes ffizzacckk!, bada-bada-bada-bada-bada, boom!, and really, really BOOM! It presents a fantastic array of character options which should make players champing at the bit to get their gaming—if not their roleplaying—teeth into. In terms of the rules, Rifts is workable, but there are a lot of numbers and stats to keep track of—by the players as well as the Game Master. The background works as a decent enough backdrop whilst still leaving room for the Game Master to add her own content. But then, Rifts does everything it can to undermine its potential. Not just with the illogical, nonsensical organisation and idiotic lack of an index, but with the lack of advice for the Game Master and the failure to explore or discuss what to do with everything it gives the Game Master and her players, to get them to work together. Plus there are elements of the setting left undeveloped which relate directly to the Occupational Character Classes, and so on. 
Rifts is essentially the kitchen sink of roleplaying games, but without any advice as to how to turn the taps, which of course, have been put on backwards. And of course, people have played and loved and bought the eighty odd books published for it. Just think how much better it would have been if…?
—oOo—
With thanks to Doctor Andrew Cowie and Matt Ryan for providing access to a copy of White Wolf Magazine Issue 26. 

Well, the big news is the rumor that J.J. Abrams has three new shows coming up on HBO Max.  One of them is supposed to be Justice League Dark!

Here are some of the links to various news sites.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/16/21224271/justice-league-dark-jj-abrams-hbo-max-warnermedia-shining-berlanti-dc-comics

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/jj-abrams-sets-3-hbo-max-shows-justice-league-dark-shining-spinoff-duster-1290530

https://variety.com/2020/tv/news/justice-league-dark-series-the-shining-series-hbo-max-jj-abrams-1234582489/



I am looking forward to this, but Justice League Dark has not had a lot of success getting off the page to the screen, save for the one animated movie. And even then they had to throw in Batman.

With a little bit of luck, we will get Matt Ryan to play John Constantine.

The thing I am looking forward to the most is who will play Zatanna.

Related, I did find this video on all the portrayals of Zatanna over the years.




An here she is from the Justice League Dark animated movie.

1974 is an important year for the gaming hobby. It is the year that Dungeons & Dragons was introduced, the original RPG from which all other RPGs would ultimately be derived and the original RPG from which so many computer games would draw for their inspiration. It is fitting that the current owner of the game, Wizards of the Coast, released the new version, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, in the year of the game’s fortieth anniversary. To celebrate this, Reviews from R’lyeh will be running a series of reviews from the hobby’s anniversary years, thus there will be reviews from 1974, from 1984, from 1994, and from 2004—the thirtieth, twentieth, and tenth anniversaries of the titles—and so on, as the anniversaries come up. These will be retrospectives, in each case an opportunity to re-appraise interesting titles and true classics decades on from the year of their original release.

—oOo—
World War III began on Thursday, November 18th, 1989.* The United States of America launched a nuclear attack in response to a Soviet missile attack over the North Pole. The rest of the world would follow in the exchange, the Soviet Union following up its nuclear attacks on the USA with biological attacks, and as first the military and then the civilian population fell victim to disease and radiation, civilisation collapsed. Within six months, some ninety-five percent of the population was dead. Fortunately, if the outbreak of the war had not been foreseen, then it had been prepared for. In 1962, a mysterious man who identified himself as Bruce Edward Morrow appeared and gathered nine of the country’s leading industrialists into an organisation known as the Council of Tomorrow. He warned them of the world’s coming destruction and convinced them to establish a means ensuring a means of humanity’s survival. This was the Morrow Project, a network of sealed bunkers or ‘boltholes’ each containing a cryogenically frozen team of soldiers, specialists, and scientists who would awaken after a nuclear war and using the cache of equipment stored with them, help reconstruct the United States of America. Unfortunately, Prime Base, the headquarters of the Morrow Project was partially sabotaged in the wake of the war, and instead of sending the signal to awaken each team immediately after the war, the signal would not be sent for another one-hundred-and-fifty years... Now each team—whether from the sixties, seventies, or eighties—awakens to find itself in a strange new land, unrecognisable from the one they knew, cut off from Prime Base, but still with their primary mission to fulfill.

*Actually, November 18th, 1989 was a Saturday.

This is the set-up for The Morrow Project, a post-apocalyptic, military orientated roleplaying game published by TimeLine Ltd in 1980. The player characters are members of the awakened teams, unprepared for the world they now find themselves in. Their team may be a Science, MARS—Mobile Assault, Rescue, and Strike, Recon, and Specialty team, such as Engineering, Agricultural, or Psychological. They have access to arms, survival equipment, and a vehicle, typically a Commando V-150 armoured APC. Characters are defined by six attributes—Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Accuracy, Charisma, and Luck. A character is also defined by his Structure Points and Blood Points, both derived from his Strength and Constitution, and his randomly determined blood type. Structure Point and Blood Point values are determined from for some thirty or so different locations on the body. An optional attribute is PSI, which if high enough will grant the character psionic powers like empathy, healing, telepathy, telekinesis, or pyrokinetics. A character is created by rolling four six-sided dice and subtracting four for each attribute to get a range from zero to twenty.

Dave Smith
Strength 08 Constitution 15 Dexterity 08
Accuracy 16 Charisma 11 Luck 10
Blood Type: B+
Structure Points: 220
Blood Points: 220

Apart from his equipment, what is missing from the character is anything representing intelligence or knowledge. To quote the designers, this is because, “We find it best to allow the player to supply the more subtle mental and emotional talents of the character he is playing so as to more readily identify with their characters.” The character has no skills either, and indeed, there are no skills in The Morrow Project. Everything comes down to a raw roll against an attribute—or in fact, the character’s raw ability. There is some discussion of jobs and positions, from scientists and vehicle crews to the lowly kitchen porter, but they are not mechanically reflected in the game. Similarly, The Morrow Project does not address what each player character was before joining the programme and being cryogenically frozen or what their motives were. Essentially, in The Morrow Project, a player character is either a blank slate or an odd representation of the player.

Lacking skills, there is no resolution mechanic in The Morrow Project, but in general, a player is rolling against his character’s attributes using a twenty-sided die. What the roleplaying game does have is an extensive combat system, primarily focused on firefights. A character receives a number of Movements or actions per round dependent upon his Dexterity and when he attacks, his player rolls a twenty-sided die against the character’s Accuracy, aiming to get below, but not equal to the value of the attribute. This is modified for range and visibility, range and weapon modifier, firer and target movement, target size, and terrain. If the attacker fails to hit, there is still a fifty percent chance that a Luck roll will indicate a lucky hit! Only one to hit roll needs to be made for automatic fire—the number of hits by a burst being determined by roll of die equal to the number of rounds in the burst.

Then armour penetration is determined. Every weapon has an ‘E’ or efficiency factor, for example, the E-Factor for a Smith & Wesson M27 .357 revolver is ten and fifteen for a 5.56×45 mm Colt M16A1. The E-Factor represents each weapon and its ammunition type’s penetration value, and if the Armour Class of the material worn by the target is greater than the E-Factor, then the rounds will not penetrate. However, lower Armour Class values will reduce the E-Factor. For example, Armour Class 6 is equal to 0.5 cm of steel, 15.24 cm of wood, 1.52 cm of concrete, and nylon body armour, and will reduce the E-Factor of a round by six. So it would reduce the E-Factor 10 of the .357 round to five, which becomes Damage Points. Then hit location is determined and depending on the Damage Points and location, has a chance to instantly kill the target, amputate a limb, or render him unconscious. For example, the five Damage Points from the .357 round have a ninety percent chance of killing the target if his head is hit. If the target survives, the Damage Points are deducted from the location’s Structure Points. Whatever the wound, there is always a chance of the target being rendered unconscious and then there is the subsequent blood loss from the target’s Blood Points.

Hand-to-hand and melee combat is treated in a similar fashion, though with the likelihood of unconsciousness or death being confined to head hits. Hands, feet, and melee weapons do not have the E-Factor of bullets, but straightforward Damage Points, which is reduced by Armour Class—though Armour Class is more effective against such attacks. The actual damage is determined by weapon type and modified by the attacker’s Strength. In general, hand-to-hand and melee combat is faster than gun combat, and then the one set of combat mechanics you would expect to be complex—that of vehicle combat—is faster and simpler than gun combat, requiring a percentage roll to determine if a weapon is capable of damaging the vehicle, where, and if the occupants are injured. Lastly, whilst other damage types, such as electricity and of course, radiation, are described in some detail, the effects disease are handwaved aside with the application of the Morrow Project’s ‘Universal Antibody’.

The rules for combat are supported by pages and pages of guns and grenades and missiles as well as various other items of survival equipment and vehicles. All of it dates from the nineteen sixties and seventies of course, except for some advanced laser weapons, the HAAM (Hydraulically Assisted Armored Man) suit, and the MARS One all-terrain vehicle, which is reminiscent of the Landmaster vehicle from the film, Damnation Alley. All of these are powered by fusion packs supplied by the mysterious Bruce Edward Morrow.

The future world of The Morrow Project is treated somewhat haphazardly. The core book opens with a detailed list of exactly where the Russian missiles struck the United States of America, but allots the Game Master some one-hundred-and fifty missiles and warheads to drop on whatever targets she wishes. The idea here is help the Game Master apply the effects of World War III to her chosen campaign area. The effects of radiation are also discussed, and unlike its effects in roleplaying games such as Gamma World [http://rlyehreviews.blogspot.com/2018/08/1978-gamma-world.html], the effects are generally negative. That said, the game does discuss how certain biological defects which could result from radiation damage to the human genome could be combined and interpreted as belonging to certain creatures out of myth. It adds to the generally more realistic approach taken by The Morrow Project to the post-apocalypse genre, but it does not make for comfortable reading.

The state of various types of technology—communications, energy, weapons, and construction—are discussed, mostly highlighting its decline following World War III. Guidance and rules are given for creating and running NPCs, either as fully rounded ‘people’ or cannon fodder with the ‘NPC Fast Kill’ table. Possible NPC motivations are also discussed. These are further expanded upon with various encounter groups. Some of these are genre staples, such as Bikers, Cannibals, Children of the Night, New Confederacy, and more, but the Ballooners—airborne traders, the Whale Worshippers, and others are nice additions. The post-apocalypse of The Morrow Project has its own flora and fauna, such as the Blue Undead—radioactive zombies, and Maggots—semi-human nocturnal mutants who live underground. Rounding out The Morrow Project is a little advice for the Game Master on setting up a game, including preparing two maps, one for the players and one for herself, and a standard introductory briefing. Lastly, the roleplaying game includes a glossary, a metric to imperial conversion table, and a bibliography of military works.

Physically, The Morrow Project is an unprepossessing book. The layout is somewhat rough and the artwork scrappy. The best artwork is that of the book’s weapons which seem to take pride of place. The organisation of the contents certainly could have been better, there being little thought given to it. 

The Morrow Project was extensively reviewed at the time of its release. Reviewing The Morrow Project in The Space Gamer Number 39 (May, 1981), William A. Barton began by highlighting the contrast between it and TSR, Inc.’s Gamma World, saying the new roleplaying game, “...[M]ay prove to be the most creditable post-holocaust RPG to date.” His lengthy review ended on a positive note with, “...[O]verall, I’d have to give The Morrow Project the highest of ratings as a SF role-playing system. If it isn’t at least nominated for the Origins awards this year, there just ain’t no justice in gameland.” Bill Fawcett reviewed The Morrow Project in Dragon #50 (June, 1981). After drawing several comparisons between Gamma World and The Morrow Project, he wrote, “These rules will appeal to two groups of gamers: those who are interested in modern weapons and combat, and those who play the GAMMA WORLD game, who will find the ideas in this game readily adaptable to that system. Anyone who considers the GAMMA WORLD game too “far out” may find THE MORROW PROJECT a less futuristic and more realistic alternative.”

Different Worlds Issue 33 (March/April, 1984) was a special post-holocaust issue and devoted much of its pages to The Morrow Project. This included ‘Playtesting the Morrow Project: An Anecdotal Report from Timeline’ and ‘Playing Hints for the Morrow Project: Advice for Players from Timeline’, both by Bill Worzel, as well as ‘Special MORROW PROJECT Module Operation – Link-Up’ by Barron Barnett and William A. Barton. Barron Barnett also reviewed The Morrow Project. He wrote, “Overall, considering the size of the company, Timeline, this critic believes The Morrow Project manual is more than worth small price it sells for.” but asked, “What does The Morrow Project need? I can sum that question in one phrase; character personalities. I generally run my Morrow Project adventures with each roleplayer knowing a little about his character’s personality in the game as well as a little of his character’s background as to why he or she is here in the first place. I think that sometimes a little past for the role-player lets them act out their part in the adventure to a more enjoyable fulfillment.”

The Morrow Project was also reviewed by the two British roleplaying magazines of the day. Phil Masters reviewed both The Morrow Project and the first scenario, Liberation at Riverton, in White Dwarf No. 42 (June, 1983). He described the roleplaying game as, “…[A] post-holocaust role-playing system with a highly specific American background, some excellent mechanisms, and a number of gaps. Liberation at Riverton is the first published scenario for the game, and looks like a labour of love for the designers. The overwhelming impression is that all this is one group's long-tested game, reflecting its originators’ tastes and personalities.” He concluded that, “The Morrow Project is a game with a very specific style, a lot of strengths, and a lot of weaknesses. Like any post-holocaust game, it may be a little depressing; it is certainly quite violent. It is, by current standards, simple and playable, and could be worse at the price.” (it should be noted that the core rules cost £7.50 in 1980) before awarding it a score of five out of ten. Similarly, Chris Baylis reviewed The Morrow Project and the second scenario, Liberation at Riverton, as well as the third, Project Damocles, in Imagine No. 2 (May, 1983). His opening comments were positive, saying that, “My first impressions of the Morrow Project made me want to begin a game immediately. The idea seemed new and exciting, and the system looked advanced, well thought out and imaginative.” before concluding effusively, “This is initially a very confusing game to play, yet with a lot of time and effort by the selected PD [Project Director], this could be the revelation role-playing game of the ’80s, becoming expandable and popular enough to rival any of the other major role-playing games available at the present time.”

It was also reviewed in Games Review, Volume 1, Issue 6 (March, 1989). Laurance Miller wrote, “Overall the game provides a good background for play, combined with detailed game mechanics for a high degree of realism within a post-holocaust environment. It is short on detailed assistance for role-playing, but this is no problem for anyone who has previously played an RPG and is countered by the addition of such information in the various scenarios that are available. Worth getting in its own right as well as a source of material for use with other similar games.”

Timeline Ltd. would go on to publish numerous supplements for The Morrow Project, as well as the interesting time travel roleplaying game, Time & Time Again in 1984. Of its three designers, Kevin Dockery would go on to write two notable works on firearms for roleplaying. One was The Armory, Volume One from Hero Games and the other was the well-received Edge of the Sword Vol. 1: Compendium of Modern Firearms published by R. Talsorian Games. This then, and the fact that Dockery was an ex-army armourer, explains the emphasis in The Morrow Project on guns. Richard Tucholka would go on to found Tri Tac Games, and notably publish Bureau 13: Stalking the Night Fantastic. A second edition of The Morrow Project was published in 1980 and a third edition in 1983—the later including a boxed set from Chris Harvey Games, a UK-based games distributor, published in 1989. The Morrow Project 4th. Edition was funded by a successful Kickstarter campaign in January, 2013 by Timeline Ltd. 

Despite the positive reviews of the time, The Morrow Project, forty years on, is not a good roleplaying game, or indeed, arguably a roleplaying game at all, given its lack of player character abilities, player character development, and support for the player characters. In fact, the roleplaying aspects of The Morrow Project—or lack of them—would not be addressed until the publication in 1983 of Morrow Project Role Playing Expansion and Personal and Vehicular Basic Loads, a supplement for the third edition of the game. In this earlier edition, because of its focus on guns and combat, The Morrow Project feels far more like a set of miniatures combat rules, but without the miniatures. There is no denying that the background to The Morrow Project is interesting and not without potential, indeed lots of potential, but The Morrow Project fails to develop either that background or its set-up sufficiently. There is an amateurish quality to its production values and it very much feels like a small press product based on a home campaign of survivalist action.

The apocalypse of The Morrow Project is much drier than other post-holocaust roleplaying game of its time. It has the feel of the nineteen seventies television and film Science Fiction—so Damnation Alley and the Gene Rodenberry pilots, Genesis II and Planet Earth. There was a need for the roleplaying game though. When it was published in 1980, The Morrow Project fulfilled the hobby’s need for a military orientated post-apocalyptic roleplaying game, that is until Game Designer Workshop’s Twilight 2000 appeared in 1984.

—oOo—
With thanks to Doctor Andrew Cowie for providing access to Games Review, Volume 1, Issue 6.

A while back I a did a "Plays Well With Others" for Calidar. It's pretty to do, there are a lot of great ideas and it has a system that lends itself well to easy conversion.  After doing a series of reviews I thought another go at another PWWO.

The Reviews

• Calidar, In Stranger Skies
• Calidar, Beyond the Skies
• Calidar Dreams of Aerie
• Calidar On Wings of Darkness
• Conversion Guides to Caldwen
• Calidar Guides for Players
• Calidar How to Train Your Wizard

For this PWWO I think I am going to focus mostly on Calidar On Wings of Darkness and related products.  In particular the various magic schools featured in Caldwen.

Given the various conversion guides and the rules presented in the books, mathematical style conversions are less of an issue, the big factor is more how do I replicate the same feel of Calidar in a different game while still preserving what I liked about the original game.

Calidar and "New" D&D


These are the easiest of course.  The level limits for both D&D 5 and Pathfinder are a set 20. So follow along with the rules for 20 levels.  D&D 5 and Pathfinder characters tend to be more powerful than their same-level counterparts in older editions.  Cantrips really boost what a Wizard can do every round even at the lowest levels.  Plus the addition of cantrips can become an interesting element to the wizard school. 1st level wizards/magic-users have a lot more they can do.

Retro-Clones


These conversions are handled by various current products and upcoming products from Calidar.  Plus these mimic the games played by most of the people involved with the Calidar lines.

Calidar and Glantri


Let's address the obvious mix here.  Bruce Heard is fairly well known for his work on the Mystara lines and Glantri in particular.  You can use details from one mage school for the other, they are roughly compatible in style, and it makes either product a little more robust.  You do lose a little of the unique feel of Calidar this way if you set it all in Glantri.  Though what I have been doing is considering setting the caldera on the north pole.  The whole area is hidden away from the rest of the world.  Still playing with this idea.


I am using the "Mystoerth" map for this. I made a globe, and see there is some room up on top. Enough for Calidar?  I have not done the math yet, but it looks right.   I still to play around with it.

That is if my next idea doesn't take over.

Mage: The Sorcerer's Crusade


This idea has grabbed my imagination.  Calidar has a great early Renaissance feel to it.  So somewhere between Dark Ages Mage and Mage the Sorcerer's Crusade is a perfect time.  In this case I would use Calidar as is, but the game system would be White Wolf's Mage.
What I have not decided yet is if the various schools represent Spheres (which means Mages would need to attend to multiple schools) or Traditions (which would make the rivalries more intense).
So everyone in "How to Train Your Wizard" would be part of the Euthatoi.   I think just to have some fun I would keep the Verbena out of it unless I work in the Glantri Wokani.

There is a lot I would love to do with that idea.  D&D backdrop, Calidar setting, Mage/White Wolf rules.  The possibilities are staggering, to be honest.

Conversion though is a bigger issue.  The Calidar system is pretty flexible, but it is level-based to a large degree. Mage uses the White Wolf Storyteller system which is a dice pool system. So the conversion books won't be much help here save to figure out some guidelines.  Still maybe if I can dig up a copy of Monte Cook's d20 World of Darkness it might give me some ideas.

WitchCraft


Nothing specific yet.  But if I can convert Mage I can convert this a lot easier.

Most likely I would combine a lot of these ideas to make the schools in Calidar a little less D&D and little more Scholomance if possible.

Blue Rose AGE


Ah.  Now here is something that would be a lot of fun.
I would need to make some changes to what kinds of magics could be taught at the schools, but AGE is level-based and so should convert well.  Green Ronin already did some of the heavy lifting for me with their converting for Fantasy AGE.

The bottom line is that Calidar gives me a great magic school that I really want to drop anywhere.

Plus it gives a Fantasy-era Breakbills and an excuse to do this:



And any excuse to put more Brakebills into my games is a good one.

Since 2007, the 2004 Spiel des Jahres award-winning board game Ticket to Ride from Days of Wonder, has been supported with new maps, beginning with Ticket to Ride: Switzerland. That new map would be collected in the Ticket to Ride Map Collection: Volume 2 – India & Switzerland, the second entry in the Map Collection series begun in Ticket to Ride Map Collection: Volume 1 – Team Asia & Legendary Asia. Both of these have proved to be worthy additions to the Ticket to Ride line, whereas Ticket to Ride Map Collection vol. 3: The Heart of Africa and Ticket to Ride Map Collection: Volume 4 – Nederland have proved to add more challenging game play, but at a cost in terms of engaging game play. Further given that they included just the one map in the third and fourth volumes rather than the two in each of the first two, neither felt as if they provided as much value either. Fortunately, Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 5: United Kingdom + Pennsylvania came with two maps and explored elements more commonly found in traditional train games—stocks and shares in railroad companies and the advance of railway technology. The next map collection in the series, Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6: France + Old West provided two maps exploring a common theme—telegraphing each player’s intended placement of their trains—but the next entry in the line is very different again.

The next entry in the Ticket to Ride Map Collection is not Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 7—whatever that might be,* but is in fact, Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6½: Poland. And it only contains the one map, that is, of course, Poland. Originally released as Wsiąść Do Pociągu: Polska and only available to buy in Poland, it is now available with the rules in both Polish and English, and available to buy outside of Poland. Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6½: Poland is designed for two to four players, is played on a square rather than a rectangular board—so two thirds the size of a standard Ticket to Ride board, and thematically shifts into the nineteen fifties and the reconstruction of the Polish railway network following World War II. Like other entries in the Ticket to Ride Map Collection series, it only requires a set of Train cards, train pieces, and scoring markers from a base Ticket to Ride set to play.

* Actually that title is Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 7: Japan + Italy

Poland’s board is depicted in dark green surrounded by the earthy tones of her neighbours, who play a major role in how points are scored in Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6½: Poland. The seven are Biatoruś (Belarus), Czechy (the Czech Republic), Litwa (Lithuania), Niemcy (Germany), Rosja (Russia), Stowacja (Slovakia), and Ukraina (Ukraine). They are also represented by corresponding sets of Country Cards for a total of twenty Country Cards. Each set is also given a set of descending values, so the Czechy set is valued ten, seven, four, and two, and the Rosja set is valued seven, four, and two. Most Country card sets contain three cards, only the Czechy set has four and the Litwa card just has the one. The thirty-five Destination Cards show connections between Poland’s various cities and each comes with a little map showing the positions of the two cities a player needs to connect to complete. In the case of Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6½: Poland, this is almost a necessity as not everyone is familiar with Poland’s cities and where they are.

At the beginning of the game, each player receives just thirty-five Trains, and the standard four Destination Cards and four Train Cards. Play is almost exactly like standard Ticket to Ride. On his turn, a player can either draw Train Cards, draw new Destination Cards, or claim a route between two cities. Where Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6½: Poland is different is how the countries and Country Cards work. From the moment they were introduced in Ticket to Ride: Switzerland, players could score points by completing Destination Cards which connected a city to a country or a country to a country, and they have appeared in several expansions since. In Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6½: Poland, there are no such Destination Cards.

In Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6½: Poland, a player does not score points when he connects a country to a country. Instead, when he does so, he takes the top card from the Country Set for each country he connects to. He cannot repeat this, but if he then connects this connection to another country, then he takes the top card from the Country Set for each country he connects to—even if he has already taken cards from the now connected Country Sets. Plus, the earlier a player makes a connection between two countries, the higher the value of the Country Cards left in the set. This sets up a race between the players to be the first to connect countries because they mean more points.

Although they are not the only means of scoring points in Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6½: Poland, they are an important means. This is because the map has no routes six spaces long, just the one route five spaces long, and just a few routes four spaces long, the rest being short, either three, two, or one spaces long. Which means although they are relatively easy to claim and thus build a series of connections between cities to complete a Destination Card, they do not score a lot of points. Further, none of the Destination Cards score a player more than thirteen points and most score much, much less. Most of the shorter routes are also in the centre of the map, so there will be a scrap in game of Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6½: Poland to build routes across the centre of the country—especially in a four-player game. Whatever the number of players, this map involves a lot of blocking and that means Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6½: Poland is less suited for play by the casual gamer.

So the players will need to find another source of points if they want to do well in the game and win. One is to draw more Destination Tickets and there is some value in that given the possibility of a player having already connected or partially connected the route on a newly drawn Destination Card. The other is connecting countries and thus not only scoring by claiming the routes to those countries, but also by drawing Country Cards from the seven sets. Which is fine, except that everyone is after them, and so there is a race to claim these before anyone else! Unlike the other routes, the actual connection to countries cannot be blocked, so if there are three routes connecting to a country, then all three can be used.

Physically, Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6½: Poland is as well produced as you would expect for a Ticket to Ride expansion. Everything is high quality and the rules are easy to understand and come in two versions—English and Polish. This does mean that Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6½: Poland is not as easily accessible by speakers of other languages as Ticket to Ride typically is. Perhaps another issue with Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6½: Poland is that the map is a bit too dark and oppressive, but that is an issue with the aesthetics and should not affect play.

What Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6½: Poland shows is that you do not have to alter very much in a Ticket to Ride game to change the feel of the game. This expansion is tighter and more competitive with players having to balance the need to complete Destination Cards with connecting countries in order to score points and win. This makes Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6½: Poland an expansion for Ticket to Ride devotees rather than casual or family players of any of the core sets. For the Ticket to Ride devotee, Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6½: Poland is a tighter, more cutthroat expansion which forces players to race for more than Destination Cards.

I make my last stop on my vacation in Calidar to an honest to god Flying Circus!
Monty Python quotes and references are as much a part of the D&D experience as anything else really.  Let's be honest, how many games start out as "Excalibur" but end up as "The Holy Grail"?  Well now, thanks to Bruce Heard and Calidat you can bring a real live Flying Circus to your games.  The Monty Python references might be light in the book, but the games will abound with them.

CA1 Calidar Dreams of Aerie
PDF, Hardcover and Softcover, 132 pages, Color covers. Color and Black & White interior art.

I am reviewing the PDF and softcover book from the Kickstarter.

Dreams of Aerie is for the Calidar world setting, but let me say this upfront, you can use this anywhere with any system. The book uses the Calidar game system, which is not really a system but a short-hand way of talking about stats.  If you have any of the other books you will know what this is and how to convert it.

The book is part source guide and part mystery adventure. The setting is the Amazing Flying Circus a traveling circus that flies overhead.  There is some great in-game/in-universe background to this circus and how it is no longer at its hey-day, but it is also attempting to reclaim its former glory.

Now. If this is all this book was, then it would still be a fantastic bit of work.  But we do get a lot more.

The circus is home to all sorts of entertainers as well as misfits and those rejected by society. In many ways it mirrors a real circus from our, or most worlds.  It is also a religious monument to one of Calidar's gnomish gods, Belgomeer.  That gives it a nice twist.  I'll discuss this more at the end.

We get a great cast of characters including the Ringmaster, Vox Hammerdin, aka The Great Mirabilis.  That's a hell of a name! Based on his style and personality I think he must be related to my Crazy Omar.  There are so many interesting NPCs here I could spend pages talking about them, but instead, I will leave it at that and let you discover them on your own.  These NPCs are needed because of the adventures character can have here.  There is a cult plot to take over the circus, a murder, rival factions, and 11 different guilds that make the circus work. Oh and the dragon in the middle of the maze on the lower decks.

That makes up the first 30 or so pages of the book.

What comes next is the adventure hook for the players. The players, and characters, can be hooked in on the circus' arrival alone or get a letter from the Ringmaster or even the local Mayor.  The main mystery deals with the disappearance of the show's "Bearded lady", Branna “Stubble” Briarchin.  She has been in fact murdered in part of the plots of the cult of Balladoo-of-the-Hoo, who are trying to take control of the circus away from the followers of Belgomeer. The PCs need to uncover the murder and cult plot.  But even if you and the players are not interested in this hook, there are plenty of reasons to visit a Flying Circus.  Let's start with the fact that it is a flying freaking circus!  The murder and cult plot though are well done and plenty of clues are provided for the GM to hand out to the players when they find them.  It also gives them an excuse and leave to explore the entire circus.

There is a detailed description of all parts of the circus, all three decks, with some beautiful maps and art here.  The layout by Calidar's cartographic expert Thorfinn Tait is fantastic.  This book is not just fun to read it is gorgeous to look at.  This part covers about 110 pages of the book. So yeah, really detailed.

There is an appendix with character stats, but keep in mind that most people you run into here are not meant to be fought. These are not "monster" stats even if the person you encounter might be a monster in a different situation.  This adventure is about solving a murder and stopping a cult, not "killing things and taking their loot".  You can use this with any system, but the mindset has to be this is a mystery to solve.

The appendix also covers some "Random Events" to keep the players moving along while other things are happening.
There is a great index of all locations. A 1d20 rumor mill. A banner advertising the circus. And some pre-rolled characters to use.

I have said it before but it is true here, Dreams of Aerie punches way above its weight class.
At 130 pages and $6 for the PDF, there is a lot here.  A complete circus, a FLYING circus no less, a murder mystery and a cult faction war.

The Circus as Setting
While the circus is set in the World of Calidar it can easily be used elsewhere or all by itself.  While reading through it I could not help but think back to the old Ravenloft Carnival product. The two might work well together, in particular some of the NPCs. Plus I can't ever resist adding more horror to my games.

Two of my favorite movies are Vampire Circus and of course Tod Brownings Freaks. Both have strong horror themes.  So I guess I find circuses kinda creepy.

The Circus as Religious Center
Dreams of Aerie was written WELL before the third season of The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.  This season featured a traveling circus full of "pagans" dedicated to the "Great God Pan." Yes. very much in the Arthur Machen vein.  The Amazing Flying Circus is not a collection of the world's misfit monsters and rejected myths.  At least not in the way it was done on CAOS.  There is the faction fighting between the followers of Belgomeer and Balladoo-of-the-Hoo in Dreams that I can build upon.  There is a lot of cult-based conflicts here.

So, in the end, what do we have?  We have a hell of a product with a ton of great ideas, opportunities, and something that can be used in pretty much every game.

Please visit the DriveThruRPG page to see some excellent samples of the maps.

If you want to run a circus adventure then THIS is the one you need. Full stop.

Crazy busy day today.  This working and school from home has me working more than ever.  Hell of a way to get job security.

I checked my email and I got my early access to the new HeroForge 2.0 with color, and I am happy to say that it really exceeds my expectations.

There are a lot of nice features, not all are in yet, but enough to make very, very happy I backed this Kickstarter and the original HeroForge Kickstarter.




You get a bunch of tools and textures to work with.




There are some pre-configured color themes that can really help get you started.



Not everything is ready just yet.  Likely good or I'd be spending too much money now.  This will likely be good for tattoos and designs.  If we can upload our own designs then I have a few custom tattoos I am going to do.



While there are plenty of colors to work with you can use a standard RGB palette to adjust everything.

Here are a few I made tonight.


My superhero character Justice.


A new version of my iconic witch Larina.  I love the shading on her hat.


Iggwilv and The Simbul from my War of the Witch Queens campaign.


Of course my two favorite witches. You may or may not be able to tell, but even Tara's fingernails and toenails are painted.  That is the level of control you have.

And my two newest characters.



Asabalom and Maryah.  These are my new druid and ranger characters for Old-School Essentials.  They have made appearances in my Pumpkin Spice Witch book, in NIGHT SHIFT and other places.  They have been my playtest characters for other things as well including a couple of Blue Rose adventures I have written.  I am quite happy with how they turned out.

Maryah, in particular, is just fantastic looking.  If you compare her and Justice to Willow, Iggwilv or Larina above you can see she has more musculature. Appropriate for a ranger and superhero respectively.


If you look you can see her eyebrow piercings are different metals, copper and two gold.

The minis are $45 each in the color plastic OR $145 to have someone paint it there.  Frankly, I am not sure how they are going to make money at $145 to paint a mini given the amount they are going to do.

I am going to at least pick up four right away.  Though it will likely be a couple of months before I see them.

Gonna have to sell more books to feed my mini addiction!

One of the things I have been doing as part of my Back to Basics is creating characters using all the Basic-era clones I have.  In particular I have been looking for characters that optimize the system in question.  There things you can do in Labyrinth Lord for example that you can't do in OSE and things you can do in Blueholme that you can't do in either of the other games.

Now, keep in mind "can't" is a strong word.  I should rather say "rules as written".

To keep it interesting I am using characters from the fantasy playtests of West Haven that appear in NIGHT SHIFT in my "Ordinary World" setting.
West Haven also makes an appearance in my War of the Witch Queens campaign, so these characters have also been my playtests for that.

One character I needed was a half-elf knight or cavalier that also used magic.  His main job was to protect his half-sister, an elvish princess, who I am depicting as an elvish party girl. Yes, she was originally a "Valley Elf" back in the 80s.

But back to my half-elf.  None of the books I have really had what I wanted. Not exactly anyway.
That is until I got a copy of CAL2a Conversion Guide to Caldwen for Vintage Roleplaying and CAL2b Conversion Guide to Caldwen for the OSRIC System. 
Setting this character in Caldwen makes perfect sense since he is part of a mage school in my concept.  It seemed then at a Mage Knight might be the best choice for him.

So let's try him out.
I am also trying out some new software for character design.
So the art here is from Overhead Software's ePic Character Generator. so far it is pretty fun.

To build this character I am using the following:

• Advanced Labyrinth Lord  (so I can get a half-elf)
• CAL2 Calidar On Wings of Darkness (background)
• PG2 A Players' Guide to Caldwen (base Mage Knight)
• CAL2a Conversion Guide to Caldwen for Vintage Roleplaying (for the LL conversion)

Freyr, Mage Knight of Caldwen



Male, half-elf Mage Knight 6th level, Chaotic Good.

Abilities
Strength  16 (+2)
Intelligence 16 (+2)
Wisdom 10 (0)
Dexterity 16 (+2)
Constitution 12 (0)
Charisma 12 (0)

AC 2 (Chain mail, shield and Dex -2)
HP 25
Base THAC0  15 (13 mod)

Saving Throws
Breath Attacks 13
Poison or Death 10
Petrify or Paralyze 12
Wands 11
Spells, Spell-like devices 14

Powers
+4 to saves vs. Paralyzing touch of Ghouls
Spellcasting
Sense Raw Mana
Demon Enmity
Laying On Hands

Spells
First Level: Light, Magic Missile, Shield
Second Level:  Knock, Detect Evil

Really straight forward and he compares well to the 5e version I also created.

I am still spending a Virtual Vacation in Calidar's beautiful Caldwen.  But you know what every tourist needs?  A tour guide.  Thankfully our thoughtful travel agent Bruce Heard has supplied us with not one, but two new "tour guides" for anyone traveling to Caldwen.

CAL2a Conversion Guide to Caldwen for Vintage Roleplaying and CAL2b Conversion Guide to Caldwen for the OSRIC System.

Both books follow the same format. The only differences are the systems they are being converted too.  The books cover both CAL2 Calidar On Wings of Darkness and CA2 How to Train Your Wizard.  Knowledge of PG2 A Players' Guide to Caldwen and Game Mechanics for the World of Calidar is helpful.  (links are to reviews, not the products themselves.)

The books are 30 pages with full-color covers and color with black & white interior art. Prices at $3.95, but currently $2.95.  You do not need both, but I find it nice for my own system analyses.
Unlike the main Caldwen/Calidar books the art here is sparse, but that is by design since the focus of this book is the stats.  Here Heard make explicit the conversions he discussed in the main books using the Calidar game stats.  Depending on the system book you grab, you get easily familiar stat blocks and guides on how to use the books.  Now obviously the "vintage roleplaying" can be used with any 70s and 80s circa version of the World's Greatest Role-Playing Game. Or as I have called here, any Basic-Era edition.  It is labeled for "Labyrinth Lord" but any game similar enough to Labyrinth Lord can be used (ie. only a Law-Chaos alignment axis, race-as-class), or adapted.  The OSIRC-labeled version can also be used with any Advanced-era version of the game.

One of the main features of these books is the Mage Knight class. I am quite fond of this class so I wanted to try it out.  Now I have choices, a "Basic" or an "Advanced" version.  Now the class has been converted faithfully, so don't expect them to look exactly the same between the Basic and Advanced versions.  There is no description of the powers the Mage Knight has, you still need the Caldwen book for that, but this is expected.

After the Mage Knight, we get into the How to Train Your Wizard material. 

Throughout the book, page references to the sourcebooks are given. 
So the great thing about these books is if you play a particular system then you only need one conversion book.  True, it does mean you need two books, but for me the flexibility more than outweighs this minor issue.  I am a system guy, so I like being able to have multiple versions of the same material to blend between my games.  So yeah for 3 bucks it is totally worth it for me, hell it is worth it for 6 bucks to have both versions. 

There is an obvious logical extension here. CAL2C for Pathfinder and CAL2D for D&D5.

Up next, I try out a Mage Knight.

There are few creatures that say "Americana" than the Jackalope.  Created from the same tall tales that gave up Paul Bunyan, Captain Stormalong, Piasa Bird and the Hodag. Stories I enjoyed as a kid.

The Jackalope, of course, has had the "advantage" of taxidermy where several stuffed Jackalopes can be purchased across the US.  I have lost track of the number of truck stops, gas stations or diners I have stopped in from California to New York that had at least one stuffed Jackalope for sale.  Though I admit I have never had the desire to own one.

Though having a Jackalope in my games?  Yeah, that is doable.

Jackalope
These creatures seem to be a magical crossbreed of a large rabbit and either a deer or antelope.  The jackalope is a large creature, larger than a rabbit, about the size of a large dog.  Its head comes up to about 2-3 feet, with its antlers adding another 12-18 inches.  Some are smaller but rarely larger.
The jackalope is an intelligent creature, capable of speech and is even known to sing.  It is fond of singing in the evening just as the stars are coming out.
When relaxed the jackalope is a cordial creature and good company. It will even share stories of other magical animals it has met in its life.
When hunted, the jackalope is a fierce opponent.  He will run towards hunters to attack with its antlers. The jackalope is also very fast and can outrun most opponents.


Jackalope (Old-School Essentials)
A large jack-rabbit like creature with antlers and intelligent eyes.
Armor Class 2
Hit Dice 3 (13)
Attacks 1 antlers (1d6+2)
THAC0 17 (+2)
Movement Rate 120' (40')
Saves D12 W13 P14 B15 S16 (3)
Morale 10
Alignment Neutral
XP for Defeating 50
Number Appearing 1
Treasure Type none (Jackalopes have no need for treasure)

• Antlers. The jackalope can rush an opponent to attack.  The antlers are sharp and cause piercing damage.
• Fast. Jackalopes are very fast when escaping they can double their speed once per day.
• Speaking. Jackalopes can speak and sing.

Jackalope (Rhy-creature) (Blue Rose)

Abilities (Focuses)
1 Accuracy (Antlers)
3 Communication (Performance)
2 Constitution
2 Dexterity (Stealth)
1 Fighting (Antlers)
2 Intelligence
2 Perception (Hearing)
1 Strength (Jumping)
2 Willpower

Speed 16
Health 30
Defense 12
Armor Rating 0

Weapon Attack Roll Damage
Antlers +3 1d6+1

Special Qualities
Favored Stunts: Defensive Stance, Lightning Attack
Arcana: Calm, Illusion, Psychic Contact

Threat: Moderate

Jackalopes could be considered Rhy-Rabbits if there were such a thing, but they are a unique sort of creature. All Jackalopes are Rhydan. In this respect, they are more like unicorns or griffins, though some would contend as more humble and even "rustic".
Jackalope rhydan love nothing more than to hop through the land, sing and tell stories.  All jackalopes are natural storytellers.  Not for epics involving dragons and great queens or kings, but simple tales like the luck of widow's sons, or small clever creatures that most heroes would ignore.


Of course, the best Jackalopes sound like Bud Luckey from Boundin'.

On the tail of Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another DM and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. Another choice is Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game.

‘Escape from Planet Punjar’ was actually a character funnel. One of the features of both the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game and the Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game is that is possible to play Zero Level characters going out on their first adventure to hopefully survive and return as First Level adventurers. In a character funnel, each player roleplays not one character, but several, ultimately going on to play whichever one of them survives and so achieves First Level and attains a Class. In Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game, the Zero Level characters are likely to be peasants and in Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, they are simple tribal folk ready to undergo their Rite of Passage, but in ‘Escape from Planet Punjar’, the Zero Level characters are citizens living in the lightless, lawless bowels of the ecumenopolis that is Planet Punjar. It is the year 50,000 and the collision of the Doom Planet with Planet Punjar is imminent, and so it has been decreed by the High Lords of Punjar that the planet be evacuated.

Published in August 2nd, 2018 at Gen Con, The Hobonomicon #0 was the inaugural issue of a fanzine written for Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game. Unlike other fanzines, it comes not in A5 format, but letter size. Written and drawn by many of the some writers and artists who work on titles for Goodman Games—whether Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game or Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic—The Hobonomicon is the book of the void and of unbelievers, a legendary shadow tome of doom architects and fallen chaos martyrs. Or rather, it presents ‘Escape from Planet Punjar’, a full scenario based on Doug Kovacs’ after hours game at Gen Con.

At the end of ‘Escape from Planet Punjar’ in The Hobonomicon #0, the surviving player characters got off the planet. What happens next is the subject of The Hobonomicon #1. Again, this comes in letter format rather A5 and is written and illustrated by the same team as The Hobonomicon #0. Yet even as you flip open the pages of this issue, you still have to wait to find out. This is because unlike in The Hobonomicon #0, the comic strips appear at the front. ‘Dreams of a Klartesh Fiend’ continues the drug induced nightmare written by James MacGeorge and drawn by Stefan Poag, whilst Doug Kovacs’ ‘Death of a Reaver’ shows us happens to the lone warrior who was beset by a trio of bandits in the first issue who bar her way over a bridge. It is a bloody continuation, but again it does leave the reader on a cliffhanger and really does not tell much in the way of a story in its four pages. In between them is ‘The Cube’, a tale of despair of working in a cube farm by Stefan Poag. It has the style of an underground comic, but really is not adding that much to the issue.

The subtitle of The Hobonomicon #1 is ‘Meat Planet’. It is a continuation of ‘Escape from Planet Punjar’ from The Hobonomicon #0, but not a direct continuation, for it takes place some five hundred or so years after the ships escaped Punjar and joined up with the flotilla of Astro Grenadier vessels. As the scenario opens, the descendants of those who fled doomed Punjar are called to service as part of an Expeditionary Force to the planet below. The player characters are the best that their ships have to offer and in joining the service of the Astro Grenadier, will plead affiliation with one of the flotilla’s four Astral Lords. They will undergo a series of procedures—hypno-training, cyber-surgeries, chemical enhancements, and more—and sent to the planet below.

In game terms, a player can create a character anew, or take the stats of his character who escaped Planet Punjar, but then the player rolls for the character’s Astral Lord Affiliation, mutations from the flotilla effects, flotilla generational effects, and what equipment loadout each Astral Lord provides the character with. The four Astral Lords are Urcommandus, Quintestus Rex, Alpha Divinatus, and Felis Matronus. There is a distinctly Warhammer 40,000 feel to these, but odder and weirder.

Fingle Woznekki IV
Astral Affiliation: Quintestus Rex
Gender: Female 
Occupation: Anarchist Rabble Rouser
STR 18 (+3) AGL 11 STM 16 (+2)
PER 13 (+1) INT 17 (+2) LCK 16 (+2)
Hit Points: 30
Saving Throws
Fortitude +1 Reflex +0 Willpower +1
Mutations: Attracted to anything sticky, only two teeth and ear cancer (immune to sound attacks)
Flotilla Generational Effects: Bad Seals & Low Atmospheric Pressure, Inbreeding and phobia of crowds, Cyber-prosthetics Reliance (genitals), Increased Gravity
Equipment: Robot Legs (+10’ Mov), Flail Arm (1d10), Metal Carapace (+4 AC), Oil-Stained Vestment
Skill: Tinkerer (Combine two items to create a one-use techno-cantrip)

Once done, the newly developed Astral Lord adherents are dropped onto the newly discovered planet. The planet has a strange atmosphere and weirder features, walls which drip fluids, rooms with bone-like supports, veiny-walled corridors, and odd multi-buttoned protuberances. As the player characters explore the planet, they find themselves drawn deeper and deeper towards the centre. What they find there will have profoundly apocalyptic effects…

‘Meat Planet’ requires more preparation than the average scenario. The Judge is provided with a series of tables for randomly generating rooms and corridors, features, and more. She is also provided with a table of possible endings and one of these is generated as part of the scenario preparation. Some of these elements can be rolled on as the player characters progress through the bowels of the weirdly fleshy plant, but these should be mixed in with those already rolled for. Essentially, from the start, the Judge sets up the scenario’s ending and is directing the players and their characters towards it.

Ultimately in terms of a story, there is not a great deal to ‘Meat Planet’. Although there is a certain degree of cleverness to the guidance it gives on running the scenario at a convention as part of an event in which ‘Meat Planet’ is being run at each table, beyond a sense of doom, it is just not that interesting. The main problem is that ‘Escape from Planet Punjar’ from The Hobonomicon #0 is a better scenario, more involving for the players and their characters, and with a sense of urgency to the plot. In ‘Meat Planet’ less so. Plus, the fact that ‘Meat Planet’ is set five centuries after the events of ‘Escape from Planet Punjar’ means it fails to capitalise on the terrific story that ‘Escape from Planet Punjar’ told. 

Bar the cover—which is done in colour, front and back, inside and out—The Hobonomicon #1 is heavily illustrated in black and white throughout. The artwork is excellent, ranging from grim to gruesome, from daft to disturbing, but it all fits. The writing is also good too, perhaps a little underwritten, but enough to nudge the Judge’s imagination, although that will be limited by the environment of the ‘Meat Planet’.

One of the things that The Hobonomicon #0 did do was showcase how the Star Crawl Classics Role Playing Game might start, and one of the things that The Hobonomicon #1 does is showcase how such a Star Crawl Classics Role Playing Game might go in a particular direction. Unfortunately, it is not a desperately interesting direction. Again, if what you are looking for is a potential introduction to a Science Fiction version of Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, a scenario which can be semi-improvised at convention after convention, or perhaps you like Doug Kovacs’ (and others’) art, then The Hobonomicon #1 is perfect for you. Be aware though, The Hobonomicon #1 is simply not as good or as engaging as Hobonomicon #0.

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another DM and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and  Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. Another choice is Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game.

Terror of the Stratosfiend #1 is a of a different stripe. Published by Orbital Intelligence LLC following a successful Kickstarter campaign, it is not a collection of random articles, scenarios, monsters, treasures, and so on, but a slim booklet dedicated to just the one event—‘The Drop’, and its outcome—the ‘Terror of the Stratofiend’.

At some point in the past, portals and warp gates opened all over the Earth and began spilling forth giant aliens from beyond the stars at the same time as aliens revealed themselves on Earth itself. A mixture of tentacles, lasers, and chainsaws, they tower over humanity, wreaking havoc with mankind and themselves, followed by humans from the stars, who spoke the same language, but were ready to fight the aliens… Terror of the Stratosfiend #1 contains four new Classes, two new Patrons—the equivalent of gods in the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, armour, equipment, weapons, and more.

The four Classes are Human Sat-Caster, Half-Stratosfiend Street Whisperer, Stratosfiend Delver, and Stratosfiend Magistrate Gladiatrix. The Human Sat-Caster serves as the eyes and ears of call Orbital Intelligences, able to connect to rogue space stations and weapons satellites to call down hellfire from the skies. Wearing armour of all kinds and armed with the best laser weaponry they can find, they are essentially spellcasters who forge an ‘uplink’ with their Patron who may or may not be in orbit and who really need to maintain line-of-sight with the skies. Created via genetic engineering or unthinkable congress, the Half-Stratosfiend Street Whisperer is half-Human, half-Stratofiend, a tentacled Human despised by both sides, a ‘godkiller’ bound to slay a Patron, who with his volatile genetics, constantly mutates and evolves. As they evolve, their tentacle attacks get stronger and although primarily a stealth-based Class, may also acquire spells through their mutations. The Stratosfiend Delver is one of the terrifying races from beyond the stars, towering bipedal humanoids with combat-capable tentacles protruding from their spines who foster cults around them and who have psionically capable brains which enable them to cast spell-like effects. Lastly, the Stratosfiend Magistrate Gladiatrix are combat monsters, towering even over other Stratosfiends, killing machines whose psionic allure draws their victims in to be slaughtered.  

‘Weapons’ lists traditional weapons like daggers and two-handed swords are joined by modern firearms, such as rifles and shotguns. The warping effect of ‘The Drop’ sometimes leaves its mark upon such weapons, with twenty such effects listed under ‘Upgrades’. So a found weapon might be ‘Homing’, enabling two attack rolls to be made for an attack and the best used or ‘Acidic’, reducing a target’s Armour Class with every hit. ‘Armour’ runs the gamut from the ‘Explorer Exo-Suit’ which is slow and heavy, but is sealed against airborne contaminants and provides a bonus to skill checks and spell casting, to the ‘Twitching Carapace’, which offers increased Armour Class bonus and worse check penalties with every hit to the wearer and if the wearer takes damage when it provides the most protection, can hatch and attack the wearer! The silliest is Beach Gear, which offers less than no protection, but ensures you always hot, oiled, and beach ready, baby…! New items of gear under ‘Equipment’ include parasites, hormonal cocktails, and scanning equipment. For example, the ‘Stealth Organism’ is a living parasite which binds with its owner and uses a combination of pheromones and adrenal boosts to enable the owner to blend with shadows. The organism dies if the owner takes damage. There are downsides to using some of the new equipment. So whilst the ‘Micro-Evolution Syringe’ adds a one-time major boost to the user’s next action, its use—and subsequent use—can corrupt the user.

Terror of the Stratosfiend #1 lists just the one spell. This is Polyphemean Rage, which fires a plasma beam from the user’s single giant eye. This can manifest as the caster’s blinking a million times, the eye glows as particles are sucked into it, the caster winks air around the target begins to boil, or the caster’s eye temporarily turns into a charred gemstone. Like all spells for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, it comes with a full table of its effects plus nasty results should the spell misfire or corrupt.

The first of two Patrons in the fanzine is ‘Sky-Lasher the Everlasting, Trident of the Sun’. Whether appearing as a sentient defence satellite or a a bat-winged flaming demon, it is always solar-panelled and supported by bombers, fighter craft, drones, and zealots, ready to bring its adherents the illumination and cleansing fire of the sun. The other is ‘Terror-Eater, the Earthmother’, who resides in the depths of the Earth and who may be the Earth or simply wearing its skin. She will help her worshippers as long as they feed her… Which mostly consists of her sending tentacles up through the Earth, even if that means destroying everything nearby. Both include tables for effects when the Patron is invoked, gifts or taints, and Patron spells. Lastly, the ‘Bestiary’ details Children of Earth tied to the Terror-Eater, the Earthmother and Children of Space tied to the Sky-Lasher the Everlasting, Trident of the Sun, all seven creatures being suitably weird.

Terror of the Stratosfiend #1 is very nicely presented. It is clean and tidy with some decent artwork, though the artwork is of an adult nature in places. It is also full of ideas and rich possibilities, but the problem with Terror of the Stratosfiend #1 is what to do with it. As written, it is designed for use with the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, so what the Terror of the Stratosfiend #1 does. As written, it is designed for use with the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game and if Terror of the Stratosfiend #1 to a Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game campaign it really is going to upset the proverbial apple cart, changing the campaign’s direction and even its genre with the addition of technology as well as the weirdness of the Stratosfiends. So in some ways, Terror of the Stratosfiend is more applicable for a Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic campaign which already has many of the elements found in Terror of the Stratosfiend #1. Another issue is that Terror of the Stratosfiend #1 does not offer options for playing the Humans who came in the wake of ‘The Drop’. Hopefully Terror of the Stratosfiend #2 will cover these as well as developing more of the post-Drop world…

Terror of the Stratosfiend #1 is weird and wacky and fantastic! Its contents will radically change the nature of a campaign world, but how far will have to wait for future issues.

I was SUPPOSED to be working on some FASA Star Trek characters.  So I was going through my character folders trying to find some of my old characters for Decipher Trek.  I didn't find them.  I DID find characters for my very, very first Generation HEX characters.  Namely Taryn aka "Teen Witch" and Brianna who had a lot of names, but one of them was "Witch Fire."

Imagine my surprise when it finally dawned on me that there was a DC character named Witch Fire AND my complete surprise when I found out Marvel also had a Witch Fire!

I pulled her out, went over her stats and thought it would be great to update her to Mutants & Masterminds 3.0 from version 2.

I also looked over the DC Witchfire and the Marvel Witchfire for some ideas.

DC, Rebecca Carstairs
Fandom: Rebecca Carstairs (New Earth)
Fandom: Rebecca Carstairs (Prime Earth)
ComicVine: Witchfire
Comic Book Realm: Witchfire aka Rebecca Carstairs
Notes

DC Earth-27 Project, Rebecca Carstairs
PhilChoArt: Rebecca Carstairs (Earth 27)
Rebecca Carstairs (Earth 27)
DeviantArt Sheets, Page 1 and Page 2.

Marvel, Ananym
Wikipedia: Witchfire
Fandom: Ananym (Earth 616)
ComicVine: Witchfire


All three characters (Marvel, DC, and Mine) had several similarities.
- All three are redheads
- All three had fire powers in addition to magic
- All had strange, magical parentage.

So instead of trying to do one or the other (and I am partial to the DC version), I'll present my own with some add-ons from the other two.
Here she is!

Witchfire aka Brianna O'Kelly
PL 8
Strength 3, Stamina 1, Agility 3, Dexterity 1, Fighting 1, Intellect 2, Awareness 1, Presence 1

Advantages
Attractive 2, Languages 1, Well-informed

Skills
Acrobatics 1 (+4), Athletics 2 (+5), Close Combat: Fire Aura: Damage 4 1 (+2), Insight 1 (+2), Perception 2 (+3), Persuasion 3 (+4), Ranged Combat: Fire Blast: Damage 8 2 (+3), Sleight of Hand 1 (+2)

Powers
Alternate Form (Fire) (Activation: Standard Action)
   Damage: Damage 1 (DC 16)
   Flight: Flight 3 (Speed: 16 miles/hour, 250 feet/round)
   Immunity: Immunity 0
   Insubstantial: Insubstantial 3 (Energy)
   Teleport: Teleport 1 (60 feet in a move action, carrying 50 lbs.; Medium: Energy Medium)
Dazzle: Cumulative Affliction 1 (1st degree: Impaired, 2nd degree: Disabled, 3rd degree: Unaware, Resisted by: Fortitude, DC 11; Cumulative, Increased Range: ranged; Limited: Sight)
Enhanced Ability: Enhanced Agility 3 (+3 AGL)
Enhanced Ability: Enhanced Strength 3 (+3 STR)
Fire Aura: Damage 4 (DC 19; Reaction 3: reaction)
Fire Blast: Damage 8 (DC 23; Increased Range: ranged)
Magic: Burst Area Line Area Damage 8 (DC 23; Burst Area: 30 feet radius sphere, DC 18, Line Area: 5 feet wide by 30 feet long, DC 18)

Offense
Initiative +3
Damage: Damage 1, +1 (DC 16)
Dazzle: Cumulative Affliction 1, +1 (DC Fort 11)
Fire Aura: Damage 4, +2 (DC 19)
Fire Blast: Damage 8, +3 (DC 23)
Grab, +1 (DC Spec 13)
Magic: Burst Area Line Area Damage 8 (DC 23)
Throw, +1 (DC 18)
Unarmed, +1 (DC 18)

Complications
Fame (well known under real name)
Motivation: Thrills

Languages
English, Irish Gaelic

Defense
Dodge 3, Parry 2, Fortitude 2, Toughness 1, Will 3

Power Points
Abilities 14 + Powers 91 + Advantages 4 + Skills 7 (13 ranks) + Defenses 4 = 120


Not bad.  She is PL 8 since that is where I set all my M&M3 Generation HEX.
I might have to do some more.

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another DM and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. As popular in the Old School Renaissance as the genre is, not all fanzines are devoted to fantasy.

Gamma Zine carries the subtitle, ‘A Fanzine supporting early post-apocalyptic, science-fantasy RPGs – specifically First Edition Gamma World by TSR.’ This then, is a fanzine dedicated to the very first post-apocalyptic roleplaying game, Gamma World, First Edition, published by TSR, Inc. in 1978. Gamma Zine #1 was published in April, 2019, following a successful Kickstarter campaign as part of Zine Quest 1 . Published by ThrowiGames!, it comes as a black and white booklet, packed with content, including adventures, equipment, monsters, and more.

The more begins with a short interview with James M. Ward, the designer of both Gamma World and its predecessor, Metamorphosis Alpha. Just a page long it gives a little history and background to the game, hopefully the author will return to ask the designer more questions. Then it is on to the gaming content, beginning with ‘New Horrors from the Wasteland’, four new creatures and species to add to your post-apocalyptic setting. They include the Spindling, a cross between a snake and a spider which scurries and bites; the Unipede, a slug-like thing with a tooth horn which is capable piercing the hard rock and metal it likes to consume—including the player characters’ equipment and armour, so akin to the Rust Monster then; and the Shuggnagarath is a bat-winged tentacled thing which flies the across the Wasteland in search of skulls to crack open and brain matter to feed upon. Lastly, the Moleman is a new intelligent species, which hoards and uses the ancient technologies it scavenges from burrowing into lost bunkers. So a perfect source of technological whatnots and gewgaws, as foes coming after the player characters’ best gear.

Gamma World is a game without character Classes. Gamma Zine #1 rectifies that with a ‘Class Option for First Edition Gamma World’. This is the Artificer, for which a character needs an Intelligence of 15, at least two beneficial mutations, such as Dual Brain and Molecular Understanding, which grants him a bonus to both find and understand technology. Although it states that members of the Class prefer to build their own technology, this is not explored in the write-up. Notably though, the Class does gain extra Experience Points for finding and identifying technology, but none for combat. This is followed by three new items in ‘Artifacts of the Ancients’, the Type-III E-Fist—powered brass knuckles, the Pulse Grenade, and the KnifE, a vibrodagger. All three are nicely detailed and come with decent illustrations.

‘Adventure #1 – MuTech Test Facility’ is the first of three adventures in Gamma Zine #1 which details a secret pre-war research base in the Appalachian hills. Designed for two to four characters, it is a chance for them to delve into some of the events leading up to the war. The facility is essentially a mini-dungeon, all robots and electrical traps, nicely detailed and ready to add to a campaign. 

‘Adventure #2 – The Hand’ is again dungeon-like, but makes use of the Molemen detailed earlier in the fanzine, so is stuffed with technology for the player characters to find. Designed for three to six player characters, it has a more organic feel than ‘Adventure #1 – MuTech Test Facility’. Not just because it is occupied by Molemen, but also because of its shape. All of its rooms and chambers are inside the concrete stone hand of a giant statue, which gives it a weirdly natural feel despite it being an artificial environment. The complex is also lived in and there are NPCs here which may attempt to interact with the player characters. This is an easier encounter to add to a game and much like a certain statue in Planet of the Apes serves to enforce the post-apocalyptic nature of the world the player characters are in. ‘Adventure #3 – Dark Knights’ is the scenario with the most background and so the easiest to tie into the background of the Gamma World post-apocalyptic future. Knights of Genetic Purity squads have been scouring the region in search of mutants to exterminate and one squad has reopened a coal mine near the village of Gallax. Designed for three to five characters, this is a small complex, but one occupied by an armed opponent. So this is much more of a combat adventure, but one supported by a stronger motive for the player characters to get involved in comparison to the previous two scenarios.

The other continues with ‘The Hunted, Chapter One’, a short piece of fiction which recounts a violent encounter between the protagonist and some motorcycle-riding bandits. There is a desperate tone to it as she scrabbles to defend herself with few resources to hand. It is nicely written and ends on a good cliffhanger, but the introduction could have been better handled. It is followed by a new set of ‘Artifact Use (Solution) Flowcharts’,  seven simplified flow charts to help speed up play when a player character has to items to work out what they are and what they do. This includes items of varying complexity and types of doors. These are quick and easy and work well with the earlier Artificer ‘Class Option for First Edition Gamma World’.

Physically, Gamma Zine #1 is neat and tidy. It is not only decently written, but illustrated with good art throughout and each of the scenarios is accompanied by excellent maps.


As support for Gamma World, First Edition, there is a lot to like about Gamma Zine #1 and fans of the old roleplaying will certainly appreciate the new content. For newer post-apocalyptic roleplaying games, the content in Gamma Zine #1 is perhaps drier in tone, certainly later editions of Gamma World or its thematic descendant, Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic. This does not mean that it cannot be used with those roleplaying games—in fact, it would be very easy to add to them—but the Game Master should be aware that it is not quite as weird or as wacky. Overall, Gamma Zine #1 is both a good first issue and a good fanzine—hopefully, Gamma Zine #2 will be as good.

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another DM and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. Another choice is Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game.

Published by Straycouches Press, Crawl! is one such fanzine dedicated to the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game. Since Crawl! No. 1 was published in March, 2012 has not only provided ongoing support for the roleplaying game, but also been kept in print by Goodman Games. Now because of online printing sources like Lulu.com, it is no longer as difficult to keep fanzines from going out of print, so it is not that much of a surprise that issues of Crawl! remain in print. It is though, pleasing to see a publisher like Goodman Games support fan efforts like this fanzine by keeping them in print and selling them directly.

Where Crawl! No. 1 was a mixed bag, Crawl! #2 is surprisingly focused, as announced by the issue’s subtitle—‘The Loot Issue!’. Published in June, 2012, what the issue does is explore the role of treasure in the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game, highlighting the fact that treasure is a relative rarity in comparison to Dungeons & Dragons and other retroclones—its fantasy world lacks the piles of gold and hoards of magical items and gewgaws found in other fantasy roleplaying games. In the first article, ‘Loot!’ the editor builds a means of determining treasure types from one simple table—the ‘Random Loot by Monster Type’ table. This breaks down the treasure finds by monster type, so ‘Humanoids with Weapons’, ‘Dragons’, ‘Demons’, Un-dead’, and ‘Other Monsters’. What a character finds—the roll modified by his Luck bonus—actually does not vary all that wildly, so handfuls of coins, a few gems, and so on, though a character is more likely to find cursed items with the Un-dead. Further tables expand upon the one table, one in particular adding ‘Items of Note’. These are not necessarily magical, but whether charms, bottles, scrolls, books, and the like, they are valuable, at least to someone. Magical items can be found, but they are rare—really rare in comparison to Dungeons & Dragons—and they are anything other then generic. So no mere +1 swords…

Instead, the fanzine offers ‘Lucky Items’. These are items which not only have a Luck bonus or a ‘magical’ effect, they also have a story. They can also be created during a play, such as when a warrior uses a weapon for the first time and it inflicts a critical wound or a wizard carves a staff from a branch of tree that the wizard witnessed being struck by lightning. Now the Luck bonus or ‘magical’ effect may not always work and it can degrade and even be lost over time, but idea is that over time, instead of a player character discovering yet another shield +2 or Dagger +1, he will come to favour certain weapons or items of equipment, and perhaps they might grow with him as the story and legend of his doings are told, becoming Lucky, and ultimately, Legendary as looked at in ‘Legendary Items’. (Though this does not stop him from discovering the Dagger +1.)

All together, these three articles form a trilogy, one that nicely builds upon its subject matter without the reader necessarily noticing until the end. Although the mechanics for Lucky items are slightly more complex than that might be found in standard Dungeons & Dragons, they make such items fickle—rather than unreliable—and thus more fun. Overall, this trilogy is good alternative to the rules given for Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game, adding depth, but also highlighting the differences between it and Dungeons & Dragons. 

This difference is further highlighted in the fourth article. ‘OSR Conversions: Treasure!’ As this series of articles details, there is a great deal of difference between how Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game and the Old School Renaissance handles treasure. This details how the Judge can take an adventure for another retroclone and adapt its treasure element to Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game. So this extends the utility of the previous trilogy in enabling a Judge to run more scenarios without losing the flavour of Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game.

Jon Marr of purplesorcerer.com provides the first of several articles by other authors in the second issue of the fanzine. This is ‘Honest Orkoff!’, a personality from his Sunken Cities campaign, a generally trustworthy merchant of Mustertown who if he is not interested in making a purchase from you, then can put you in touch with someone who will be interested. Just three are described in a lovely line of patter from the merchant, each really being a little vignette or encounter that the Judge can develop and bring into her game. Colin Chapman offers new rules for both shields and helmets with ‘Shattered Shields’ and ‘Helmet Law!’. The former suggests that shields can be shattered in a single blow in order to offset damage that might otherwise greatly injure a character, whilst the latter details how a helmet can do the same, but if used in that fashion there might be unintended consequences (as detailed on the accompanying table). Much of this will be familiar from any number of retroclones from the past few years or so, but to be fair, these rules would have been nice additions for a more brutal style of game in 2012 and they still are in 2020.

Lastly, Colin Chapman takes the reader shopping. In ‘Helmets & New Shields’, he adds new rules and new types of armour, such as bucklers which can be used with ranged weapons and as weapons and the check penalty to all actions whilst wearing various types of helmets. In ‘Killin’ Time!’ he lists several new weapons, such as Bullwhip and Maul, and the rules for using them, along with notes and suggestions as to which Classes from the  Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game can use them. ‘Be Prepared!’ covers food and lodging, tools, miscellaneous items, and more—even prosthetic items!

Physically, Crawl! #2 is surprising. The layout is clean and tidy, uncluttered and easy to read. The artwork is good too. Overall and though it is a fanzine, there is a feel of professionalism in terms of how Crawl! #2 is presented. If Crawl! No. 1 was a good first issue, then Crawl! #2 is better. The presentation is cleaner, tidier, and easier to read, making the content more accessible. That content itself is useful, helping to develop a Judge’s Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game campaign in terms of how she handles treasure and how treasure can be made important to the player characters, and then making combat more bruising and battering with the rules for shields and helmets. 

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another DM and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. Another choice is Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game.

Published by Straycouches Press, Crawl! is one such fanzine dedicated to the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game. Since Crawl! No. 1 was published in March, 2012 has not only provided ongoing support for the roleplaying game, but also been kept in print by Goodman Games. Now because of online printing sources like Lulu.com, it is no longer as difficult to keep fanzines from going out of print, so it is not that much of a surprise that issues of Crawl! remain in print. It is though, pleasing to see a publisher like Goodman Games support fan efforts like this fanzine by keeping them in print and selling them directly.

Where Crawl! No. 1 was a mixed bag, Crawl! #2 is surprisingly focused, as announced by the issue’s subtitle—‘The Loot Issue!’. Published in June, 2012, what the issue does is explore the role of treasure in the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game, highlighting the fact that treasure is a relative rarity in comparison to Dungeons & Dragons and other retroclones—its fantasy world lacks the piles of gold and hoards of magical items and gewgaws found in other fantasy roleplaying games. In the first article, ‘Loot!’ the editor builds a means of determining treasure types from one simple table—the ‘Random Loot by Monster Type’ table. This breaks down the treasure finds by monster type, so ‘Humanoids with Weapons’, ‘Dragons’, ‘Demons’, Un-dead’, and ‘Other Monsters’. What a character finds—the roll modified by his Luck bonus—actually does not vary all that wildly, so handfuls of coins, a few gems, and so on, though a character is more likely to find cursed items with the Un-dead. Further tables expand upon the one table, one in particular adding ‘Items of Note’. These are not necessarily magical, but whether charms, bottles, scrolls, books, and the like, they are valuable, at least to someone. Magical items can be found, but they are rare—really rare in comparison to Dungeons & Dragons—and they are anything other then generic. So no mere +1 swords…

Instead, the fanzine offers ‘Lucky Items’. These are items which not only have a Luck bonus or a ‘magical’ effect, they also have a story. They can also be created during a play, such as when a warrior uses a weapon for the first time and it inflicts a critical wound or a wizard carves a staff from a branch of tree that the wizard witnessed being struck by lightning. Now the Luck bonus or ‘magical’ effect may not always work and it can degrade and even be lost over time, but idea is that over time, instead of a player character discovering yet another shield +2 or Dagger +1, he will come to favour certain weapons or items of equipment, and perhaps they might grow with him as the story and legend of his doings are told, becoming Lucky, and ultimately, Legendary as looked at in ‘Legendary Items’. (Though this does not stop him from discovering the Dagger +1.)

All together, these three articles form a trilogy, one that nicely builds upon its subject matter without the reader necessarily noticing until the end. Although the mechanics for Lucky items are slightly more complex than that might be found in standard Dungeons & Dragons, they make such items fickle—rather than unreliable—and thus more fun. Overall, this trilogy is good alternative to the rules given for Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game, adding depth, but also highlighting the differences between it and Dungeons & Dragons. 

This difference is further highlighted in the fourth article. ‘OSR Conversions: Treasure!’ As this series of articles details, there is a great deal of difference between how Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game and the Old School Renaissance handles treasure. This details how the Judge can take an adventure for another retroclone and adapt its treasure element to Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game. So this extends the utility of the previous trilogy in enabling a Judge to run more scenarios without losing the flavour of Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game.

Jon Marr of purplesorcerer.com provides the first of several articles by other authors in the second issue of the fanzine. This is ‘Honest Orkoff!’, a personality from his Sunken Cities campaign, a generally trustworthy merchant of Mustertown who if he is not interested in making a purchase from you, then can put you in touch with someone who will be interested. Just three are described in a lovely line of patter from the merchant, each really being a little vignette or encounter that the Judge can develop and bring into her game. Colin Chapman offers new rules for both shields and helmets with ‘Shattered Shields’ and ‘Helmet Law!’. The former suggests that shields can be shattered in a single blow in order to offset damage that might otherwise greatly injure a character, whilst the latter details how a helmet can do the same, but if used in that fashion there might be unintended consequences (as detailed on the accompanying table). Much of this will be familiar from any number of retroclones from the past few years or so, but to be fair, these rules would have been nice additions for a more brutal style of game in 2012 and they still are in 2020.

Lastly, Colin Chapman takes the reader shopping. In ‘Helmets & New Shields’, he adds new rules and new types of armour, such as bucklers which can be used with ranged weapons and as weapons and the check penalty to all actions whilst wearing various types of helmets. In ‘Killin’ Time!’ he lists several new weapons, such as Bullwhip and Maul, and the rules for using them, along with notes and suggestions as to which Classes from the  Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game can use them. ‘Be Prepared!’ covers food and lodging, tools, miscellaneous items, and more—even prosthetic items!


Physically, Crawl! #2 is surprising. The layout is clean and tidy, uncluttered and easy to read. The artwork is good too. Overall and though it is a fanzine, there is a feel of professionalism in terms of how Crawl! #2 is presented. If Crawl! No. 1 was a good first issue, then Crawl! #2 is better. The presentation is cleaner, tidier, and easier to read, making the content more accessible. That content itself is useful, helping to develop a Judge’s Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game campaign in terms of how she handles treasure and how treasure can be made important to the player characters, and then making combat more bruising and battering with the rules for shields and helmets. 

Been spending some quality time with Calidar this week.  Why? because there is a complete lack of flying cities and skyships in my games.  Plus Bruce Heard is a great writer going way back to the TSR days.  Back when I was in college my money was tight.  Ok I was spending it on alcohol. But the point is that I was not buying a lot of D&D books.  What I DID buy were book by Bruce Heard and anything he did for Mystara.

So these new books (and my Professor's salary) are a welcome addition to my life.
Let's get into it.

Game Mechanics for the World of Calidar
12 pages. PDF and Softcover format. Full-color covers, color, and black & white interior. PWYW

Ok, this book is punching WAY above its weight in terms of value to page count. There are some obvious benefits, that I'll talk about and one or two not-so-obvious that also make this a must-have.  I'll get to those as well.  Let's start with the explicit value.
This book is designed to allow any GM or player to use the Calidar shorthand stats I have talked about all week and then convert them to any game system.
The game mechanics used are detailed first. By doing this Calidar is free to depict stats in any way that works best for the world and not necessarily the game system.  There is an obvious "D&D-bias" here but that is fine really, and expected.
Inbetween the text is the numbers conversion chart.  Ranked by percentages the numbers are grouped by ranges you can convert say Level to a Calidar %.  So let's say your game goes from 1 to 14 (like say B/X or OSE) then you can convert a Calidar character statblock using this.  Or maybe 1 to 30 (D&D4) or 1 to 20 (most D&D).  Spend some time with this chart and the translations begin to happen easily.
The game mechanics continue and include a "Philosophy" stat which is a stand in for Alignment. AND it might actually be a better alignment system.  Now I have never had any issues with Alignment myself.  Maybe because I spent so much time with things like the MMPI and other tests that I naturally gave alignment more subtle gradations.  Actually, I think it was more chemistry come to think of it. Take the "alignment chart" in the old PHB or D&DG and think of an electron cloud where a character can move up or down in the shells.
There is also a map of Calidar and the Great Caldera and some brief descriptions of the lands.
Now what else do you get?  Well this conversion table is fantastic for conversions to all sorts of games. Not just D&D based ones.  Yes, the math is not difficult, actually, it is pretty easy.  But I teach math all damn day. I like having something like this.
Secondly, I want to get back to the new Philosophy system.  It works GREAT in CA2 How to Train Your Wizard. It would be great for someone that doesn't like the Law-Chaos, Good-Evil axes.
So grab this. Throw a couple of bucks at Bruce and have fun!

PG2 A Players' Guide to Caldwen
20 pages. PDF and Softcover format. Full-color covers, color, and black & white interior. $2.99

This covers the basics of the Magiocracy of Caldwen. The various Provinces are covered briefly and other aspects of the land.  We get the calendar with months and some astrology.
There is a new race, the Shatim, which are like Tieflings, humans with demonic heritage. These have their own Caldwenian spin on them. 
We also get a Mage Knight class. They are an armored knight that can cast spells. Using the Game Mechanics for the World of Calidar book you can convert them to your game system of choice.
We get overviews on the various cults in Caldwen and their locations, or at least where the majority are located. Appropriate for a land where magic is the real religion.
Currency, tourism and a brief map are all included.
A good resource for players and a needed one for the Game Masters.
It really sets the flavor of what you can expect in the Caldwen mini-setting. "Mini setting" is actually underselling it a bit to be honest. There is so much in the Caldwen books that you forget it was just a piece of the entire Calidar world setting.

I have the softcover books, but these really benefit from being printed out (bad on the color ink though) so I can put them in a binder to lay flat.  Especially when it comes to referencing the maps, which are a highlight of these books.

I can't wait to see where my vacation in Calidar takes me next.

Next up in the Calidar: On the Wings of Darkness series is sourcebook/adventure for novice necromancers.  So you know I am excited!

CA2 How to Train Your Wizard
PDF 70 Pages, full-color covers, color, and black & white interior art.
This book requires Calidar On Wings of Darkness and A Players' Guide to Caldwen, but it can also be played without those to a lesser degree.  That is, it can be adapted to any game or setting, but I think it looses a bit of the original charm.
This adventure and supplement focuses on the College of Necromancy and assumes novice characters of about 12 years old.  There are guidelines for rolling up novice characters as well as six pre-gen characters you can name and drop into the game.
Given the characters are novices this is a PERFECT introduction game for new, younger players. This is "Harry Potter meets Scooby-Doo (but more like Magicians)." You have young adventures, a mystery and the ghosts are real.

For the background, you get a collection of teachers that will interact with the students, and there is already a built-in rivalry in the school; the White vs. Black Necromancers.  Or Law and Chaos for us old-school types.  The characters are also given homework that can earn them "insight" to be used in the game.  Students can also get "brownie points" from their official Brownie Protector, Bronwen!  These are for good roleplaying that would not necessarily result in Experience Points.
I am just mad I didn't think of this first.

The clues the students/characters can find while working through our plot and subplots.  The adventure is designed NOT to be a railroad. In fact, care is given knowing the characters, being young, will likely go all over the place.

The adventure starts in the classroom (! YEAH, no "you meet in a Tavern/Bar/Inn!) and moves out from there.  The College is very detailed with maps and descriptions of the rooms. There are plenty of NPCs to encounter and combat is NOT expected at every turn.  Clever spellcasting is rewarded, as is finishing homework.

I want to point out here that the maps in this product are a work of art.  Really.


The levels are detailed well and clues to the murder of a student, Odel Talron.

This adventure can be run to support the murder investigation, or as a means to test the new young necromancers, or even just to play out the rivalry between the White and Black factions.  Or all the above.

For my money, I would run it first as an introduction to the College, maybe play up the rivalry a bit, and then hit the characters with the murder in the next session.

The bottom line there is a LOT you can do with this and the ideas are not limited to those above.
It comes in softcover, but for my uses, I grabbed the PDF and printed it out one side per page so I have room to write my own notes.

According to Bruce Heard, there will be Labyrinth Lord and OSRIC compatible conversion guides for this coming soon.

I hope we can see other guides like this for the other Colleges.

I have been meaning to spend some quality time in Calidar lately. If you have been reading this blog for a while you know that I am a fan of the work of former TSR writer and editor, Bruce Heard.  A few years back he began producing some system-neutral books for his World of Calidar.  A world situated around the Great Caldera and the planets in the same solar system.  If you recall Bruce's work on Mystara and in particular his "Voyages of the Princess Ark", then you can see how this is a logical progression of similar ideas.

I have reviewed other Calidar books in the past, in particular Calidar, In Stranger Skies and Calidar, Beyond the Skies.  I figure this is a good week to cover some of the other books. 
Bruce himself has been discussing his books and how they all work together on his own blog, so you can read that there.

Today I want to start with one of my favorites Calidar projects.  Calidar On Wings of Darkness.


CAL2 Calidar On Wings of Darkness
134 pages, Hardcover, Softcover, and PDF. Full-color covers. Color and black & white art interior.
For this review, I am considering the PDF and softcover versions I received via the Kickstarter.

The book is broken up into the following chapters/sections.

A Mage's Conundrum: This is the fiction piece that sets the stage for what readers (and players) can encounter in Caldwen, this country of Mages and Demons.

History of Caldwen:  This chapter covers the time-line of Caldwen and the moon of Munaan where magic comes from.  We learn of early dealing with demons and the start of the mages. Presented in timeline format we are given over 7000 years of history to the present day of the campaign.

Lay of the Land: In this chapter, we are treated to some full-color maps which are always a strong feature of all the Calidar books. Here, of course, we are focused on the Magiocracy of Caldwen.  Now it is natural to make comparisons between Caldwen and Bruce's other magiocracy, the Principalities of Glantri. Yes there are some similarities, but there are plenty of differences too.  The main difference comes from the geography of the land, and the sea.  Caldwen is a coastal country with over two-thirds of its borders coasts.  In some ways I get a solids 7th Sea vibe here and this feels more Age of Sail than it does the dark ages. I have to admit that while D&D is firmly on my mind as the system of choice for this, I can help read it over and think that Mage: The Sorcerers Crusade would also be a REALLY good fit for this.


We get a two-page, detailed map with legend. Again, great cartography from Thorfin Tait.
The nine Provinces (with one Dominion) follow after this in "Gazeteer-like" formats.  We get details on each province and local maps.   The area of the whole country is huge and boasts over 10 million inhabitants.  Just looking at the maps gives me plenty of ideas!

Intrigues of the Magi: This chapter covers the politics of a country that is a magiocracy, a meritocracy, and a dascalocracy. Or one that is ruled by meritorious teaching mages.
This chapter also covers the social structure for these wizards and how the various Provinces interact as part of the central government. Though the central government might be overstating it since much power lies in the rulers of the Provinces.  We see some of the few stat blocks here and they are given in the Calidar shorthand stats. They can be translated into your game of choice using the Game Mechanics for the World of Calidar book (which is PWYW).

Behind the Curtains: Deals with the various non-mage guilds that also keep Caldwen moving. They are a mixed lot and would work well in any game.  I would tend to use them more as background or NPCs, not so much as guilds for PCs to join.

A Cast of Many: The NPCs of note in Caldwen. Again stats are presented in the Calidar stats but easily converted to any game.  Mentally I found myself inserting Pathfinder and D&D5 stats where needed and with a little more thought could see Mage: TSC stats as well.
This section is also heavily hypertexted.  So if someone else's name appears in an NPC entry you can click it to go to their entry. The same is true for titles, colleges and other items.
Some stand out like Kryovata the Icy, a gnome sorceress and leader of the Protectors.

Master & Servant: Caldwen has a fair number of demons running around. These are bound demons and under the control (in theory) of a mage. This chapter covers demons, their ownership and the pacts created. Also, the demonic Black Market is discussed.  Like the previous chapter, this has notable demons detailed.

Beasties in the Dark: The monster section of some of Caldwen's more interesting creatures. Detailed in the same stat system as the rest of the book.

At the Heart of Magic:  Ah. Now here is the meat of the book.  This covers Caldwen's schools of magic and how their benefits, tuition, philosophies, diplomas, and campus rivalries influence the fabric of the entire magiocracy.  The magic schools are treated as colleges and have a similar feel to the American and British collegiate system.    We also learn of two of the sports played, Dracoderby which is like a dragon polo and Pugminton.  Magic use in game is expected.
Each college is detailed and which town and Province their seat is in.  The colleges are Abjuration, Alteration, Conjuration, Divination, Enchantment, Illusion, Invocation, Necromancy, and Grand Wizardry.
Circles of Wizardy are given, roughly levels of academic attainment.  First (Undergrad) to Fourth (Doctorate).  Like all good colleges, there is also outplacement and career counseling.  Sure you want to be a Ruler?  Maybe the Path of Adventurers is a better choice for someone with your grades?

Secrets of the Cabals: What's a wizard's life without Secret Cabals?  Not a life at all!  Here we learn of the various cabals that cover the "Wizard's Guild" of most other settings.  The cabals cover Alchemy, Demonology, Dracology, Elementalism, Necromancy, and Skymastery, with their attendant tests, abilities and philosophies.

Blood of the World Soul: This covers the raw magical force, Mana, that makes Caldwen so special. If you are familiar with ley lines or the Radiance from Glantri then you have an idea here. It also details the order assigned to protect this mana.

Sky City of Arcanial: Now this is the stuff I love.  Floating cities are something I just never get enough of, to be honest.  Arcanial is the home of the High Wizard Chancellor's palace, the ministries, embassies, the Great Library, and the College of Grand Wizardry. Plus all the private dwellings of the Caldwen's Rich and Famous.  And you need flying gondolas to get up to it! How cool is that?
There are wonderful, full-color maps of the city and plenty of details.  This is the sort of thing I keep coming back to Calidar for.  I mean really. If your fantasy game does not have a floating city in it are you even playing fantasy?

The entire book is bookmarked and hyperlinked (PDF version only obviously) and a treat to flip through.  There are so many ideas packed into this book I am unsure where I would start.

There is a lot packed into these 134 pages and there is a lot more that could have been said, but Heard wisely leaves that for you to do.

Adapting to any game is easy, though there is a strong AD&D 2nd Ed or BECMI D&D vibe here.  Maybe that is just me though since I have been liberally mixing my Mystara with Calidar for a while now.  Long, long time readers might recall that in my games there was a revolution in my Glantri and now it is a Theocracy.  Caldwen allows me to have my cake and eat it too.  I can keep "my" Glantri as is complete with the it's French Revolution-style revolt, AND still have a cool country of mages, wizards and a magic school.

I am serious. A Caldwen + Mage The Sorcerers Crusade game would be a lot of fun.

I'll look in to this more when I cover the next Caldwen (Bruce's "Series Two") book, CA2 How to Train Your Wizard.