Hmm. Light. Light has not been on my mind very much lately.

Shadow has.

Often when talking about light one also brings up dark as in the opposite of, or the absence of, light.  If you pay any attention to what is going on in the world of D&D publishing now there has been a strong push to change, or alter, the nature of certain "dark" races like Drow and Orcs.  I am not going to get into that today, nor do I even find the topic particularly interesting.  Want "good" Drow? Ok. Fine have them. Want good orcs? Sure! They existed in 2nd Ed, nothing new here. My Desert Orcs have been portrayed as "good" since I came up with them.

But if an "evil" race or species can be good, then a "good" race can also be evil.  I pretty much play elves as xenophobic assholes who really don't give two-shits about humans and frankly are just hoping they all kill themselves off.  Are they evil? No, but they are not "good" either.

But extremes are dull. They are cartoon versions of the people I want to represent.  Give me nuance. Give me flaws AND strengths.  Good and Evil. Light and Dark.  

Give me Shadows.

I got to thinking back in June when I was doing my BECMI work I picked a copy of the Shadow Elves guide for the BECMI system.   The Shadow Elves of Mystara are more interesting than Drow.  They are little more nuanced than the Drow are, and this was back in the late 80s.

While reading this I could not help but think of the Shadar-kai from newer D&D. The Shadar-kai from 3rd and 5th Edition D&D are a type of elf/fey, but they were more human-like in D&D 4 where they got the largest treatment.  

There is also the Shadow Fey from Kobold Press which are also interesting.

Between all these treatments there is something I am sure I can use. 

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—


Dune: Chronicles of the Imperium was published by Wizards of the Coast in the year 2000. With the forthcoming DUNE: ADVENTURES in the IMPERIUM roleplaying game from Modiphius Entertainment as well as a new film directed by Denis Villeneuve, the 2020 is the perfect time to re-examine the hobby’s first attempt to bring Frank Herbert’s seminal Science Fiction work to tabletop roleplaying. That Wizards of the Coast published Dune: Chronicles of the Imperium in a limited release is something of surprise, for it had originally been designed by Last Unicorn Games, a publisher best known for its three, highly regarded roleplaying games based on the Star Trek franchise. When Wizards of the Coast purchased Last Unicorn Games, it agreed to publish the roleplaying game, but declined to renew the licence with the Herbert Estate and so there it ended. Dune: Chronicles of the Imperium, limited to just three thousand copies, was destined to become a collector’s piece, often selling for hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars. It would never get a reprint and the supplements announced in its pages, including Federated Houses of the Landsraad and The Spacing Guild Companion, would never see print. Similarly, a d20 System version of Dune: Chronicles of the Imperium from Wizards of the Coast would not see print either, although one of the designers did release The Voice from the Outer World, Chapter One, an excerpt from what would be one the first adventure.

Dune: Chronicles of the Imperium is set before the events of the first novel, Dune. The Imperium has ruled mankind across the Known Universe for some ten millennia following a fierce anti-technological backlash—the Butlerian Jihad—which led to the rejection of all thinking machines and the profound development of the human potential. Over the centuries since these have coalesced into several great schools—the Spacing Guild, many of its members forcibly evolved into the Guild Navigators capable of folding space and enabling interstellar travel; the Bene Gesserit sisterhood and its genetics programme to protect humanity; the Mentat school, its graduates capable of great acts of computation and analysis; the Suk Medical School, its doctors incapable of harming their patients due to their ‘imperial conditioning’; and the Swordsmaster’s School of Ginaz, its graduates peerless soldiers and duellists. 

For millennia, power in the Imperium has rested on several pillars. These are the Padishah Emperor, backed by his elite Sardaukar military forces; the Landsraad Council which represented the Imperium’s Great Houses—was headed by the Emperor; and CHOAM—or Combine Honnete Over Advanced Mercantiles—the great mercantile body which controlled the Imperium’s economy and every product or service manufactured, sold, and purchased. Most of the Great Houses hold directorships in CHOAM as well as their fiefdoms from the Emperor. The most important of these products is the Spice melange, which is only mined on the planet Arrakis, and as well as its anagathic properties, also enables the Guild Navigators to fold space. The last pillar is the Space Guild, which holds a monopoly on space travel and maintains a strictly neutral stance when it comes to Imperial politics.

Although the Imperium is at peace and open warfare is rare, both the Great Houses and the Houses Minor feud with each other, sometimes over rivalries going back to the foundation of the Imperium. The Rules of Kanly guide negotiations and diplomacy, but also govern how the Houses wage war on each other—typically through formal duels, assassination, and political hostage-taking and ransoms. These rules are very likely to play a great role in any campaign of Dune: Chronicles of the Imperium, because the default set-up for such a campaign is to cast the Player Characters as members of the Entourage belonging to a House Minor allied to one of the Great Houses. They will be House Adepts of the Bene Gesserit, House Assassins, House Strategists, House Mentats, House Nobles—perhaps even the heir, House Swordmaster, or House Suk. This leaves a lot of character options, whether that is Fremen Warrior or spice smuggler, to be covered in other supplements—which of course, never appeared.

Dune: Chronicles of the Imperium presents six Great Houses—three known and three new—to which the Player Character House Minor can ally—and three Houses Minor for each. The three Great Houses are House Atreides, both feted and hated for its leadership, courage, and morality—and whose fortunes are the subject of the novel; House Corrino, the Imperial House which sits on the Golden Lion Throne and which fears the influence of the Atreides; and House Harkonnen, the rapaciously mercantile and treacherous enemies of the Atreides. The three new Great Houses are House Moritani, which successfully waged a War of Assassins against House Ginaz and now occupy the world of Grumman; House Tsieda, a withdrawn and traditionalist House which specialises in legal consultation and representation; and House Wallach, a military House staunchly loyal to the Emperor. Each of the six Great Houses is given a solid write-up, whilst allied Houses Minor are given shorter, though enough to develop more details from, descriptions, and one is given full stats.

Alternatively, the Game Master and her players could create their one House Minor. Each House Minor is defined by four Attributes, each of which has two Edges, or particular talents related to the attributes. The Attributes are rated between one and five and the Edges between minus two and plus two. The House Attributes and their Edges are Status plus Aegis and Favour, Wealth plus Holdings and Stockpiles, Influence plus Popularity and Authority, and Security plus Military and Intelligence. A House Minor also has an Ancestry, including Name and Homeworld, a Title and a Fiefdom, Renown, and Assets. The Fiefdom can anything from a City District to a Subfief, and the Title from Magistrate to Siridar Governor or Baronet. To create a House Minor, a House Minor Archetype is selected from a choice of six—House Defender, House Pawn, House Favourite, House Reformer, House Pretender, and House Sleeper—which provide the base stats for House Minor, and fifteen Development Points are spent on various House aspects.

—oOo—
House Molo claims its origins date back to before it was granted to House Harkonnen. Its relationship with its liege has always been rocky and House Molo has long agitated under the Harkonnen grasp, almost to the point of rebellion on a number of times. To date, the Imperial Charter granted to the Tormburg School of Engineering—famed for its petrochemical and chemical engineers—has afforded the House Minor a degree of protection as has a number of careful marriages. The family has a strong tradition of fielding arena champions, which goes to back to the clan matriarch, Althena IX von Molo, successfully settling a legal dispute with the House Minor’s liege, the Harkonnens, some centuries ago. House Minor von Molo has also fielded champions on behalf of other Houses Minor on Gedi Prime and consequently, it is not unknown for the Harkonnen Barons in frustration to appoint von Molo champions to represent its enemies. House Minor von Molo is all but loyal to the Harkonnens, but wants better treatment for the populace and less avaricious policies.

House Minor Profile
Name: von Molo
Ancestry: Harkonnen
Homeworld: Gedi Prime
Title: 3 (Siridar-Ritter) 
Fiefdom: 2 (Free-City of Tormburg)
Renown: 1
Assets: 5
Attributes (House Sleeper archetype)
Status: 3
Wealth: 3 (Stockpiles +1)
Influence: 2 (Authority -1, Popularity -1)
Security: 3 (Intelligence +1)

—oOo—
The stats for the Player Characters’ House Minor come into play during ‘Interludes’, the periods between adventures when both players and the Narrator conduct a   ‘Narrative Debriefing’ during which they can discuss how the Player Characters’ actions furthered their House’s goals, the aim having been to complete anyone of a number of Narrative Ventures. These might be an act of diplomacy or political campaign at the Sysselraad—the planetary equivalent of the Lansraad for all of the Houses Minor on a planet, training military forces, intelligence or counter-intelligence manoeuvres, investing in a business venture, and so on. Mechanically, they require investment upon the part of the players using the House Minor’s Asset points and their success depends upon a Test similar to Skill Test. However, the rewards are simply numerical—more Asset points to spent on developing the House Minor. Arguably there is a missed opportunity here to present something more interesting and more involving, perhaps not dissimilar to what Green Ronin Publishing did for A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying, the RPG based on the fantasy works of George R.R. Martin. Perhaps more interesting and more involving would have been published in the unpublished Federated Houses of the Landsraad?

A character in Dune: Chronicles of the Imperium is defined by Attributes, Edges, Skills, Traits, Renown, Caste, and Equipment. There are five Attributes, and each has four Edges. The Attributes are rated between one and six—the latter the limits of Human potential, and the Edges between minus two and plus two. The character Attributes and their Edges are Physique plus Strength and Constitution, Coordination plus Dexterity and Reaction, Intellect plus Perception and Logic, Charisma plus Presence and Willpower, and Prescience plus Sight and Vision. Skills are rated between one and five, and typically require a specialisation, for example, Culture (House), Computation (Straight-Line), and BG Way (Petit Betrayals). It should be pointed out that the skill list is fairly extensive, and there is no little nuance to them, especially in the Specialisations. For example, the Statecraft skills has the Specialisations of Artifice, Equivocation, Mind Games, and Perjury. In addition, there is some overlap between some Skills and Specialisations, such as Statecraft (Threats), Interrogation (Coercion), and Racketeering (Extortion), which could be used to blackmail or intimidate an enemy—all depending upon the circumstances, of course. Now this is can either be interpreted as too many skills or it could simply be a matter of nuance and as well as circumstances, could represent differing approaches to a task. A nice touch is how example difficulties are given for each skill.

Of course, Dune: Chronicles of the Imperium being set in the Dune universe, it needs certain skills to reflect the special abilities of graduates of schools such as the Mentat and the Bene Gesserit. So for the Mentat there is Computation, Mentat Trance, and Projection, whilst for the Bene Gesserit, there is BG Way, Ritualism, and Voice. Also included are the Prescience and Prophecy Skills, which when used grant glimpses of the future. Apart from the latter two Skills—since they are less likely to appear in a campaign—these all do feel as if they are could use further development and explanation. As useful as the example difficulties given to each skill description are, one thing that is missing is explanations of what the Specialisations are. In general, this is not a problem, it can in some cases leave Narrator and player alike scratching their head. For example, the Mentat Computation Skill has the Specialisations of Probability Computation, Straight-line computation, and Comparative Induction, whilst the Projection skill has the Approximation Analysis, Factual Analysis, Proximity Hypothesis, and Zero-bias Matrices Specialisations, but in neither is there any explanation of how they work or what they are. Given that the Mentat will have these Specialisations, it is frustrating to have them explained. In the short term, the Narrator could probably have said that more information was forthcoming in a supplement—perhaps the Narrator’s Guide?—but not in the long term.

Traits are advantages or disadvantages, such as Bimanual Fighting, Latent Prescience—necessary to raise the Prescience Attribute to one and to be able to choose its associated Skills, Shield Fighting, Addiction, Human—meaning you have been tested as the Bene Gesserit, Genetic Eunuch, and so on. Some Traits are particular to certain Schools, such as Prana-Bindu Conditioning, Truthsaying, and Weirding Combat for the Bene Gesserit, Imperial Conditioning and  Pyretic Conscience of the Suk Doctors, and Machine Logic and Mental Awareness of the Mentats.

Every character will have a place on the ‘Faufreluches’ or Imperial caste system. The Emperor, the Imperial Family, the Great Houses, Houses Minor, and so on, are Regis-Familia. Most Player Characters will Na-Familia—named family, Household vassals, or Imperial citizens, or Bondsman—Bonded Professionals. Dune: Chronicles of the Imperium is not a roleplaying game which dwells particularly on equipment, though there is some discussion of it since it has distinct ramifications upon play, whether that is the use of melee weapons or slow projectile weapons against opponents wearing shields—infamously, shooting a lasgun at a shield can result in an atomic explosion, or the need to contract the Spacing Guild to travel from one star system to another. In general though, a Player Character will have whatever he needs to do his job.

Once the players and Narrator have decided upon or created their House Minor, each player can create his character who will be part of the House Minor’s Entourage. Three methods are provided to create a character. The first is to choose one of the seven pre-generated templates—House Adept, House Assassin, House Strategist, House Mentat, House Noble, House Swordmaster, and House Suk—and then personalise it a few Development Points. The second is to build it out of a series of four packages and overlays. These consist of a character’s House Allegiance, which determines which Great House the House Minor is allied to and his base Attributes, Skills, and Traits; Vocational Conditioning, such as Bene Gesserit Adept or Master Strategist; and a Background History package like Mentat Priming or Slave Pits, House Service like Personal Confidante or Warmaster, ad Personal Calling like Advocate or Sleeper Agent. Lastly, a player has a few Development Points to personalise his character with, and his Caste and Renown to set. The third method is point-based, a player being give one-hundred-and-thirty Development Points to spend. This is the longest and most complex method.

—oOo—
Olifer Taheri grew up in the notorious Harkonnen slave pits on Gedi Prime. He not only survived, but was part of a rebellion in his youth. This was put viciously by the planetary police and many of Olifer’s friends were killed, even butchered. He was captured and thrown into the arenas to fight again and again until he was killed. Not only did he survive, but defeated his first opponents, and eventually he gained some notoriety. House Harkonnen came to hate him and was planning to execute for his ‘crimes’ during the slave rebellion, but House Molo instead offered to purchase him. The Harkonnens did, and House Molo sent him to Ginaz. Currently he serves as the House Swordmaster and takes pleasure defeating Harkonnen fighters in the arena.

Olifer Taheri
House Allegiance: House Harkonnen
House: Molo
Vocational Conditioning: Swordmaster 
Background History: Slave Pits
House Service: Weapons Master
Personal Calling: Arena Fighting

Attributes:
Physique 2 (Constitution +1, Strength +1)
Coordination 4 (Reaction +1) 
Intellect 2 (Perception +1)
Charisma 2 (Presence +2, Willpower +1)
Prescience 0

Skills:
Armament 3 (Operation 2, Repair 2)
Armed Combat 3 (Duelling 4)
Athletics 2 (Climbing 1, Running 1)
Charm 1 (Flattery 1)
Culture 1 (Harkonnen 1)
Dodge 4 (Evade 2, Sidestep 1)
First Aid 1
History 1 (Harkonnen 1)
Leadership 2 (Guerrilla Operations 2)
Military Operations 2 (Guerrilla Warfare 2)
Observation 1 (Search 1)
Politics 1 (Harkonnen 1)
Ranged Combat 2 (Stunner 1)
Security 1 (Systems 2)
Stealth 1
Survival 1
Unarmed Combat 3
World Knowledge 1 (Gedi Prime 1)

Traits
Alertness 1, Bimanual Fighting 2, Duelling 3, Heroism 2, Information Network 1, Resilience 1, Shield Fighting 1, Whipcord Reflexes3, Code of Conduct +3

Renown: Valor 1
Caste: 3 (Bondsman)

Karama: 3

Equipment: House uniform, personal shield, slip-tip, stunner, sword

—oOo—
Mechanically, Dune: Chronicles of the Imperium uses the ICON System, as used in Last Unicorn Games’ Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Star Trek Role Playing Game. It is a six-sided dice mechanic. To undertake an action a player rolls a number of dice equal to an Attribute plus an applicable Edge, one which should be of a different colour. This is the Drama Die. The player takes the highest value rolled on the dice and adds the Skill to get a total. This is compared to a Test Difficulty, which ranges from four or Routine all the way up to thirteen or Difficult. If a six is rolled on the Drama Die, then the player can use that and add the result of the next highest die to the total. Rolling a six on the Drama Die will typically result in a critical success, whilst rolling a one on the Drama Die and not succeeding, a grievous failure. 
For example, Olifer Taheri is attending some arena games with his master, Tobias Molo and they are accompanying Adan Fosconi, the Master of the Arena on a tour of the training area. Fosconi asks Taheri his opinion of the fighters there and the swordmaster decides to flatter the Arena Master. The Narrator describes this as a Routine Test, giving Taheri a Difficulty number of six. Taheri’s player will be rolling a total of four dice, two for his Charisma and another two for his Presence Edge. He will be adding one for his Charm Skill and one for his Flattery Specialisation. Taheri’s player rolls one, three, six, and six on the Drama Die. This means he adds the next highest value die—also a six—plus Taheri’s skill for a total of fourteen. This is an exceptional roll and being both six higher than the Difficulty and a six was rolled on the Drama Die means that a critical success has been scored. Master Fosconi laps up Taheri’s praise and is already thinking of how much money he can win by betting on his fighters in the arena that afternoon.In addition, each Player Characters also has Karma, which can be spent on a one-for-one basis to modify the results of Test. However, he will only have a few points and this may not be enough given how difficult it is to roll overcome a Moderate or Test Difficulty of seven if a character has a low skill value, and a Challenging or Test Difficulty of ten or more   with medium or high skill values. The problem here is that rolling high is dependent on roll a six on the one die—the Drama Die. Thus, rolling high is a relatively rare occurrence. Otherwise, the ICON System is generally simple and easy to use.

In comparison, combat in Dune: Chronicles of the Imperium is much more complex. Its focus is on personal combat and it leaves the larger combats, guerrilla actions or other acts of warfare to be handled as House Ventures. What this means is that combat is tactically rich, but strategically poor, which undermines so much of what the roleplaying game is about—the fortunes of a House Minor and the Player Characters’ involvement in that. The rules do cover elements particular to the Dune universe, and much like the setting there is an emphasis on melee combat and duelling. So the Duelling Trait grants access to various special manoeuvres in combat, as does Shield Fighting, which teaches a fighter to be slower in combat in order to penetrate an opponent’s shield, but penalises them when unshielded, because he trained to be slow. The Bene Gesserit have their own form of martial arts, called Weirding Combat.

Mechanically, combat is not merely a matter of trading blows back and forth from one round to the next. Combatants receive a pool of Option Points to spend on manoeuvres in combat, but effectively this pool becomes two, because each combatant will be spending and tracking points spent on two types of manoeuvre Option—Actions and Reactions—and each combatant can spend an equal number of points on both. Actions include Aim, Hand attack, Slow Attack, and Autofire, whilst Block, Parry, and Riposte, are Reactions. Some can be both, such as Attack Sinister and Slow Sinister Attack. With each subsequent manoeuvre—Action or Reaction—the cost in terms of Action Points goes up, and as long as a character has Action Points to spend, he can act. Traits such as Weirding Combat and Duelling grant access to particular subsets of manoeuvre, invariably better than the standard attack and defensive manoeuvres. The range of manoeuvres available in combat is what makes combat so tactically rich and used effectively, it can reflect the cut, thrust, block, counter strike, and more of a duel or combat. Although it helps that there is extensive example of combat in the rules, there is no denying their complexity and the fact that they give a lot for both Narrator and player to keep track of from round to round.
For example, later the same day at the arena, Adan Fosconi, the Master of the Arena enraged at the loses made on the bets he placed on his gladiators decides to take his revenge by sending some thugs to beat up Olifer Taheri and perhaps even kidnap his master, Tobias Molo. Olifer Taheri has the Alertness Trait and the Narrator has rolled in secret to determine if the swordmaster spots the thugs. He does and with a shout of, “Get behind me, my lord!”, reaches down to his belt to activate his shield and draw his sword and dagger. Taheri’s Initiative is equal to his Coordination of 4 and Reaction +1, so a total of five, and this is also the number of Option Points his player has to spend. The Criminals have Coordination of 2 and Reaction +1, so have three Initiative and three Option Points. The Narrator declares that the first action of the Criminals is to Attack. This costs them one Option Point each, leaving one point remaining for Attack Options and three for Reaction Options. Taherio declares that his is to Parry Sinister, a Reaction which will cost him one, leaving five points remaining for Attack Options and four for Reaction Options. The Narrator rolls for the first Criminal—two dice for his Coordination of 2 and adds his Armed Combat of 3—and gets a total of eight. Tehari’s player rolls five dice for his Coordination of 4 and adds his Armed Combat of 3 and Duelling of 4. His total of ten easily beats the Criminal’s eight, and Tehari blocks the attack with his dagger. Tehari then declares a Riposte. This has a cost of one, but because he has done one Reaction, its cost goes up to two, leaving him with two for Reaction Options. The Narrator states that the first Criminal will attempt to Dodge, which will set the Difficulty Test for Tehari’s Riposte. The Dodge will leave the Criminal with one point for Reaction Options. The Criminal rolls three dice—two for his Coordination of 2 and one for his Reaction +1—and adds the Criminal  Dodge Skill of 1. The Narrator rolls a total of 6. Tehari’s player rolls four dice for his Coordination of 4 and adds his Armed Combat of 3 and Duelling of 4. Unfortunately, Tehari’s player rolls a total of 13. This is more than the Criminal’s Dodge value and likely a critical hit, so the first Criminal is probably badly hurt. However, there are still two other Criminals to Tehari to defeat and they have not attacked yet…In terms of background, Dune: Chronicles of the Imperium provides a history of the Imperium—though no timeline, a discussion of the Great Convention which keeps the peace, details of six of the Great Houses and their worlds, technology and equipment, the Great Schools, and some of the personages of the Imperium. It is overall, a good overview, but in the long term will likely be found wanting as the Narrator wants more information. Where there is focused information is in the presentation of ‘Chusuk, the ‘Music Planet’’, which gets a whole chapter of its own. This is the presentation of a single planet as an example setting, Great House, and Houses Minor. It is home to a relatively new Great House, House Varota, renowned for its musicianship, craft as instrument makers, its devotion to the arts, and also spies. Chusuk is also home to a notable religious sect, the Navachristians. It is a good example of what a Narrator could come up with as a world for his own chronicle and showcases perhaps what a supplement devoted to the worlds of the Dune universe would have looked like. It is followed by short scenario in its own chapter, ‘Instrument of Kanly’, which continues the musical theme and sees the Player Characters’ Entourage come to Chusek in search of a stolen musical instrument. Again, this is a decent, a low-key adventure suitable for beginning players and characters, only really let down by the fact that it is the first part of a two-chapter story arc. It involves lots of diplomacy, interaction, treachery, and some combat, effectively showcasing various elements of the rules, and along the way, allowing the authors to have fun with some musical puns. That said, both chapters containing the adventure and the planetary description do feel out of place in the middle of the book.

In addition, the Narrator is given not one, but effectively two chapters on how to be a good Game Master. ‘Chapter VI: A Voice from the Outer Void’ is general advice, covering how to set a scene, using the mechanics, keeping the players interested, and so on. It is useful, solid advice. It is followed by ‘Chapter VII: Pillars of the Universe’ which delves into themes and ideas particular to Dune—Human Conditioning, Plans within Plans, Preservation of Bloodlines, Messianic Prophecy, and more, before going on to discuss how to create a chronicle of the Narrator’s own. The discussion of the themes and ideas is fascinating, but ultimately feels too short. Hopefully the release of a supplement like the Narrator’s Guide would have presented these subjects in much more of the depth they deserved, but of course, this was not to be.

Physically, Dune: Chronicles of the Imperium is very nicely presented. There is plenty of artwork, much of it very good, the book is generally well written, and well laid throughout. No little thought has been given to the organisation of the book thematically. So, the book is divided into ‘Book One: Imperium Familia’, introducing the setting and rules, and ‘Book Two: DUNE Oracle’ and ‘Book Three: Imperial Archives’ providing more background and a scenario. Then Skills and Traits are organised thematically into Valour of the Brave, Learning of the Wise, Justice of the Great, and Prayers of the Righteous—covering physical and combat, knowledge, political and social, and other Skills and Traits respectively.

Dune: Chronicles of the Imperium is a fantastic game, there is an undeniable depth to its treatment of the Frank Herbert’s Dune universe—which comes the quantification necessary when designing and playing a roleplaying game, it enables players to create characters which feel right for the setting, it provides a decent enough of background, and it provides both a reason to play in what the player characters do and something for them to play in the form of the scenario. However, that background is unlikely to be enough to support a campaign in the long term, especially when delving into the intricacies of the Bene Gesserit or the Mentats, and the other Great Schools, and much of the background is not presented in an easy-to-use fashion—for example, there is no chronology attached to the extensive history. The focus of Dune: Chronicles of the Imperium is also narrow in terms of what you can play, the types of campaign, and the scope of the background—Arrakis is very much an afterthought and it is not possible to create characters from there with any ease. The rules feel overwritten in places, for example, in the number of Skills available, and underwritten in others, in their explanation, whilst the ICON System does not feel quite up to the task. Nor do the rules effectively support or explain the House progress through the use of the House Ventures, which is disappointing given the fact that the Dune: Chronicles of the Imperium is all about roleplaying the fortunes of a House Minor.

Today, Dune: Chronicles of the Imperium is a collector’s piece, worth no little amount of money. Unless you are a collector or an avid fan of the Dune setting, it probably is not worth your having. As a roleplaying game, Dune: Chronicles of the Imperium is everything that want to start playing the Dune universe—characters, background, advice, starting adventure, and more. Only in a particular way though—as a House Minor Entourage—but a resourceful playing group could deconstruct the rules to run other games in the Dune universe with some effort. However, as written, the scope of Dune: Chronicles of the Imperium is limited, indeed the clue is on the front cover where it says, ‘Limited Edition’, and any Narrator would probably exhaust those limitations fairly quickly. This is not necessarily the fault of the Dune: Chronicles of the Imperium Core Rulebook itself, which really should be seen the starting point for the rest of the line, just as with any other roleplaying game. Although underdeveloped in places, Dune: Chronicles of the Imperium successfully gives you the means to roleplay in the Dune universe and makes the setting a believable one to roleplay in, both for fans of the Dune universe and roleplayers in general, but ultimately, its potential will remain lost and untapped.

I was going to do something today on Shadow Elves and the Shadar-kai, but I am going to hold off on that since my son pointed out some more 5e material on them. 

So lets go with another favorite Shade of mine.  Djinn in the Shade.

Djinn is a a very talented artist who loves to draw her D&D characters and others.  
I featured her as a Featured Artist a while back (and I really need to do more of those).   But she is just so much fun I was looking for any excuse to talk about her again.

You can find her on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, but the best place is her Pateron site where she has a lot of art. 

Now a lot of it ranges to the adult to the very adult end of the spectrum, but all of it is so much fun.

I am particularly pleased with all the art she has done for me over the last year or more, including a lot of my iconic witch Larina. 

In fact she rather loves my little witch and has included here in this AWESOME comic where all her patrons of her Pateron site submitted their D&D characters to a pirate cruise, battle, and party afterward.

The battle itself is a little too risque even for my blog! But here are some pieces of it.

To see all the rest you will have to become a patron. Want to join here D&D parties like these? Then absolutely become a patron.

You can find her at:

• Pateron: https://www.patreon.com/djinnintheshade/posts
• DeviantArt: https://www.deviantart.com/djinninthebox
• Twitter (sometimes NSFW): https://twitter.com/Djinninthebox
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To date, Pulp Cthulhu: Two-fisted Action and Adventure Against the Mythos, Chaosium, Inc’s supplement of Pulp action set during the nineteen thirties for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition has been supported by not one, but two campaigns. The better known of these is The Two-Headed Serpent: An Epic Action-Packed and Globe-Spanning Campaign for Pulp Cthulhu, a campaign in the traditional sense of Lovecraftian investigative horror. It presented a world-spanning conspiracy, which took the heroic investigators from Bolivia, New York, Borneo, and Oklahoma to the Belgian Congo, Iceland, and Brazil—and beyond! The other campaign is A Cold Fire Within: A Mind-Bending Campaign for Pulp Cthulhu, which although like The Two-Headed Serpent is set in New York and takes place in the nineteen thirties, is very different in tone and scope.

A Cold Fire Within: A Mind-Bending Campaign for Pulp Cthulhu takes place in 1935, ‘technically’ never leaves New York State, and focuses on investigators with Psychic abilities—using the optional Psychic ability rules from Pulp Cthulhu—or have an interest in Parapsychology. It takes two works of fiction as its inspiration. The first is ‘The Mound’, the horror/science fiction novella ghost-written by H. P. Lovecraft for Zealia Bishop, which tells of a mound that conceals a gateway to a subterranean civilization, the realm of K’n-yan. The second is Sinclair Lewis’ alternate history satire, It Can’t Happen Here, in which populist demagogue Berzelius ‘Buzz’ Windrip is elected President of the United States and with the help of a ruthless paramilitary force imposes totalitarian rule similar to the Germany and Italy of the Desperate Decade. Against this febrile background, the campaign draws links between the fringe science—whether Parapsychology or Occultism—and the fringe politics of the period.

Campaign set-up is supported by six pre-generated Investigators. They include a diverse range of backgrounds, from a Russian Cult Leader, an African American female Mechanic/Aviator, and a female Investigative Journalist to a Hispanic ex-Soldier, a female Scientist, and an Explorer. Only two of them have Psychic Talents, but the campaign can be run with the optional Psychic Talents rules from Pulp Cthulhu or without. It also adds a new Investigator Organisation, The Open Mind Group, a hero organisation whose members are fascinated by the possibility of powers of the mind—whatever their source. In general, the organisation is apolitical and politely asks members who are overtly political to refrain from discussing their views or leave.

The structure of the campaign, over the course of five of its six chapters, is linear. It takes the Investigators from New York City upstate into New York state’s Catskill Mountains, and from there, it takes a turn for weird as it plunges deep into the bowels of the Earth and across the sybarite and immortal remnants of the K’n-yan Empire. It begins with a missing persons case, a fellow member of The Open Mind Group approaching the Investigators because Brendan Sterling, her husband, has gone missing. He has a greater fascination with the outré than she does, and this has led him to participate in experiments in past-life regression. Investigating Sterling’s disappearance will first lead them to his links with various populist fringe political movements and then to the scientists who associate with them. Unfortunately, no sign of him has been seen either, and following him will lead the investigators upstate and into the Catskills. From there, the path literally leads inexplicably into the depths and the strange realms of the Empire of the K’n-yan. By now the Investigators will have already encountered some strangeness, most notably their  suddenly being cast into space and having to find their way back—being chased by some very strange cats—and ghosts haunting the halls of a centre for parapsychological studies in what is arguably one of the most bizarre encounters in Call of Cthulhu. These and similar encounters hint at the things to come in later chapters—far below the surface.

What lies below is the remains of the K’n-yan Empire, its immortal survivors divided between indolent sybarites residing in the mouldering towns and plantations, their buildings a combination of gold and weird science, and religious fanatics out in the surrounding wilds. Often cannibals and evilly indifferent, they are not perhaps the worst that the Investigators will encounter for there are surface dwellers other than their quarry down here and some of are looking to re-establish the K’n-yan Empire… It is here too that the Investigators will learn perhaps of the ultimate aims of the campaign’s antagonists and just what they will have to do to stop them. The culmination of the campaign itself is a suitably over-the-top drive further into the depths of the Earth to confront the villains of the piece and prevent their plans. The sixth chapter takes the campaign in an even more radical direction and can be run at any time in the campaign once the Investigators have sufficient means and motivation—even in the middle of other chapters.

As a campaign, A Cold Fire Within does something different. There have been plenty of scenarios for Call of Cthulhu which deal with the Science Fictional aspects of Lovecraft’s Cosmic Horror, but not a campaign. It is very much not a campaign of Lovecraftian investigative horror in the eldritch sense, but rather one of fringe science—or ‘Science!’ and fringe theories ranging from Theosophy to the Hollow Earth. A campaign which sees one ancient subterranean scientific empire attempt to rise again, aided by zealous surface dwellers, as the power and influence of Fascism grows and spreads on the surface world. However, as linear and as straightforward as the campaign is, and as solid a hook it provides to pull the Investigators into its events, the Keeper will need to work hard to keep the players and their Investigators on track and motivated. Especially to the point in the campaign where they learn what is really going on and then have a few more options in what they can do. The Keeper also has a lot of NPCs to portray, there being quite a large cast given the relatively short nature of the campaign. If the campaign misses an opportunity, it is perhaps the chance for a flashforward to see the consequences if they fail to stop the antagonists’ plans—this is only hinted at in the conclusion.

Rounding out A Cold Fire Within: A Mind-Bending Campaign for Pulp Cthulhu is a set of four appendices. These collect the campaign’s handouts and maps for easy copying by the Keeper, new tomes and spells, new skills and psychic power, and K’n-yanian Equipment and Vehicles. The new skills include Lore (K’n-yan) and Language (K’n-yan), and Science (Parapsychology), whilst the new Psychic Powers are Dematerialisation and Telepathy. The section on K’n-yanian Equipment and Vehicles details all of the devices and artefacts which the Investigators will discover in the subterranean world of the K’n-yan and any Investigator with a mechanical bent—especially if he falls into the Grease Monkey archetype—will undoubtedly want to tinker with and repair. Lastly, the six pre-generated Investigators are given.

Physically, A Cold Fire Within: A Mind-Bending Campaign for Pulp Cthulhu is a slim, full colour hardback. In keeping with the other Call of Cthulhu titles, the book looks superb, the layout is clean, the artwork—whether black and white, two-tone, or full colour—is superb throughout, though the cover is not necessarily as eye-catching as could have been. The maps are excellent throughout though, although perhaps the campaign could have benefited from better maps of the Catskill Mountains, New York state, and New York City.

There is a Science Fiction genre called Planetary Romance—best typified by the Barsoom-set of stories by Edgar Rice Burroughs—in which much of the story’s action and adventure takes place on exotic alien worlds, noted for their distinctive physical and cultural backgrounds. Now A Cold Fire Within is not set on another world, but it is set in another world, one which also has distinctive physical and cultural backgrounds in the form of the differing groups of the K’n-yan. Further, A Cold Fire Within is a Science Fiction campaign, involving as it does ‘fringe’ science and strange technologies, but of course against a background of Cosmic Horror. What this means is that A Cold Fire Within is a campaign of ‘Inner Planetary Horror’, one which both proves the existence of fringe science and to the horrific applications it can be put to. 

Copies of NIGHT SHIFT: VETERANS OF THE SUPERNATURAL WARS have ALL been delivered to the Kickstarter backers and people are also getting the Kickstarter special Player's Guide.

You can order your own hardcover version at the publisher's website, at https://www.elflair.com/nightshift.html.
You can also buy the PDF at DriveThruRPG.

One of the things that really motivated Jason and me while working on this is music.  Spend any time here and you know I am a big music fan.  

So I thought it might be great to share some of the music that reminded us of the stories we were telling with NIGHT SHIFT and the games we have run.
Up this Friday Night Videoes are songs from my playlist.  Tonight, songs from The NIGHT SHIFT!

I could go a number of places with this one, but I think I know what, or more to point, who I want to talk about.

Back when I was working The Craft of the Wise: The Pagan Witch Tradition I wanted to go back through my years of notes, not just on witches and witchcraft or even my notes on playing a B/X-style game, but on who were the Pagans I was trying to represent.  So I took a two-pronged approach.

Lars and Siân from HeroForge

First. I looked to the rules I was going to be using.  In this case, it was the Old School Essentials from Necrotic Gnome, in particular, the Advanced Fantasy: Genre Rules. That was the feel I was going with.  

I wanted to create some characters to mimic the feel of a "pagan world."  At the same time I was organizing my other RPG books and was thumbing through the game Keltia and it's companion game Yggdrasill.  Both really captured the feel I wanted in a "Pagan World" game.   So I took two character concepts from here, one from each game, and looked to translate them into OSE, Rules As Written.

What character types fit this notion of both Celtic and Norse/Scandinavian Paganism?

Simple. The Druid and the Bard.  Both classes have their roots in Pagan Europe and might even be two of the most "pagan" classes out there save for the Barbarian. 

Since my iconic witch Larina is often used to test my new witch classes once they are written, I wanted these two other characters to be my tests for the materials I was still writing.  I like to keep my variables to a minimum when playtesting, so starting with established classes is always my first choice.  If Larina is my witch, then these are the parents of the witch.  Who they were now was easy.

Introducing Lars & Siân

Since I was playtesting a Pagan game I used our world circa 350-500AD.  Lars is a Bard from Denmark. He was a member of a raiding party heading towards the British Isles.  I choose to ignore the Romans there for this since it worked out better for me.  The ship that Lars was on was beset by terrible storms (same sort that would bedevil King James over a 1000 years later) and his ship, and all the raiders were lost.  
He washed ashore in Wales (they had gone through the English Channel.  I never said they were good or even smart raiders) and was encountered by the locals where they nursed him back to health.  They recognized that he was a bard (or a skald in his own language) and thought it would be ill-advised to harm him.  He was given over to the protection of Siân, a druidess.  If this sounds familiar then I essentially ripped off the story of Amergin Glúingel and his journey to Ireland. Though Lars was not a Milesian.
There was some initial mistrust, but soon they fell in love and consummated their relationship on Beltane night.  Some 38 weeks later, Larina was born.

It amused me to use these characters, ones really brand new to me, to be the parents of a character I know so well. 

Lars
Lars, son of Nichols 
Lawful Male Human Bard, 12th level

Str: 13
Int: 17
Wis: 16
Dex: 14
Con: 13
Cha: 18

HP: 42
AC: 5 (leather armor, ring of protection)

Spells
First: Detect Danger, Predict Weather, Speak with Animals
Second: Cure Light Wounds, Obscuring Mists, Produce Flame
Third: Hold Animal, Protection from Poison, Water Breathing
Fourth: Cure Serious Wounds, Summon Animals

Lars, despite his name, is not based on Lars Ulrich. If anything he based on a combination of Donovan and Van Morrison. 

Siân
Siân nic Stefon 
Neutral Female Human Druid, 12th level

Str: 10
Int: 16
Wis: 18
Dex: 12
Con: 12
Cha: 17

HP: 38
AC: 5 (leather armor, ring of protection)

Spells
First: Animal Friendship, Entangle, Faerie Fire, Predict Weather, Speak to Animals
Second: Barkskin, Create Water, Cure Light Wounds, Obscuring Mists, Slow Poison
Third: Call Lightning, Hold Animal, Protection from Poison, Tree Shape, Water Breathing
Fourth: Cure Serious Wounds, Dispel Magic, Protection from Fire & Lightning, Temperature Control
Fifth: Commune with Nature, Control Weather, Transmute Rock to Mud, Wall of Thorns

I once said "I don't explore dungeons, I explore characters" and I had a great time exploring these two.

It's like reading the Superman stories that take place on Krypton before the planet explodes. Here I explored the Pagan world before Christianity took over (appealing) AND two characters that shaped one of my most important characters. 

I loved using HeroForge to make these as well.  Lars has Larina's face and hair color. Siân has the same body and staff as my first version print of Larina so many years ago.  This pleases me to no end.  Siân's face is that of a half-elf with human ears since I consider her to have a bit of sidhe blood in her, but that is true of all the Welsh I think. 

I might have to get these. They are two of my new favorite characters. Plus I am so pleased with how the different versions of Larina turned out I am going to have to get her mom and dad!

For those that are curious, yes, I am working on a Digest sized version of Craft of the Wise. Out very soon I hope!

The very latest entry in the Ticket to Ride franchise is Ticket to Ride: Amsterdam. Like those other Ticket to Ride games, it is another card-drawing, route-claiming board game based around transport links and like those other Ticket to Ride games, it uses the same mechanics. Thus the players will draw Transportation cards and then use them to claim Routes and by claiming Routes, link the two locations marked on Destination Tickets, the aim being to gain as many points as possible by claiming Routes and completing Destination Tickets, whilst avoiding losing by failing to complete Destination Tickets. Yet rather than being another big box game like the original Ticket to Ride, Ticket to Ride: Europe, or Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries, it takes its cue from Ticket to Ride: New York and Ticket to Ride: London. It is thus a smaller game designed for fewer players with a shorter playing time, a game based around a city rather than a country or a continent. It is also notably different in terms of theme and period.

Published by Days of Wonder and designed for play by two to four players, aged eight and up, Ticket to Ride: Amsterdam is easy to learn, can be played out of the box in five minutes, and played through in less than twenty minutes. Now where Ticket to Ride: New York had the players racing across Manhattan in the nineteen fifties attempting to connect its various tourist hotspots going via taxis rather than trains and Ticket to Ride: London has the players racing across London in the nineteen sixties, attempting to connect its various tourist hotspots going via buses rather than trains or taxes, Ticket to Ride: Amsterdam takes the Ticket to Ride franchise back to the seventeenth century and the middle of the ‘Gouden Eeuw’, the Dutch Golden Age when Amsterdam was the beating heart of global trade and the wealthiest city on Earth. Of course, it being the seventeenth century, there are no trains! So instead, the players will be fulfilling Contracts by delivering goods across the Dutch port by horse and cart—and if they take the right route, then they can claim a Merchandise Bonus too.

Inside the small box can be found a small board which depicts the centre of Amsterdam, from Nieuwe Waal in the northwest to Blauwbrug in the southeast and De Hendriken in the southwest to Oude Waal in the northeast. Notably, several of the routes are marked with Cart Symbols. When one of these routes is claimed, a player is rewarded with a Merchandise Bonus card. At the end of the game, each player will be rewarded with bonus points depending on the number of Merchandise Bonus cards he has. Besides the board map of Amsterdam, Ticket to Ride: Amsterdam comes with sixty-four plastic Buses—sixteen in each colour, as well as a scoring marker for each colour, forty-four Transportation cards—in six colours plus the multi-coloured wild cards, twenty-four Contract cards—the equivalent of Destination Tickets in other Ticket to Ride titles, sixteen Merchandise Bonus cards, and the rules leaflet. The latter is clearly written, easy to understand, and the opening pages show how to set up the game. It can be read through in mere minutes and played started all but immediately.

Play in Ticket to Ride: Amsterdam is the same as standard Ticket to Ride. Each player starts the game with some Contract cards and some Transportation cards. On his turn, a player can take one of three actions. Either draw two Transportation cards; draw two Contract cards and either keep one or two, but must keep one; or claim a route between two connected Locations. To claim a route, a player must expend a number of cards equal to its length, either matching the colour of the route or a mix of matching colour cards and the multi-coloured cards, which essentially act as wild cards. Some routes are marked in grey and so can use any set of colours or multi-coloured cards. No route is longer than four spaces and a player will score points for each route claimed.

All of which points to standard Ticket to Ride game play. Now as with Ticket to Ride: New York and Ticket to Ride: London, what marks Ticket to Ride: Amsterdam as being different from that of standard game play is most obviously its size, but once it reaches the table, what marks it out as being different is its speed of play. With fewer Cart pieces per player—sixteen as opposed to the forty-five in standard Ticket to Ride—a player has fewer resources and with fewer routes to claim, so play is quick. The shortness of the routes—no route being longer than four spaces—means that a player will spend less time drawing Transportation cards, rather than having to draw again and again in order to have the right number of Transportation cards needed for long routes—routes five, six, and seven spaces in length are common in standard Ticket to Ride. With fewer Locations, fewer Contract cards, and fewer Carts with which to claim them, a player will probably be aiming to complete no more than three or four Destination Tickets—probably fewer given how tight and competitive the board map is, especially when the players want to start competing for the all-important routes marked with Cart symbols.

The other major difference—apart from the theme—is the inclusion of the Merchandise Bonus cards. If a player is careful to claim the routes with Cart symbols, he will be awarded a bonus at the end of the game equal to one or two contracts. The difficulty comes not necessarily in claiming them, but balancing between claiming routes with Cart symbols and those without. For the most part, the routes with Cart symbols lie on the outer edge of the map and they tend to be both longer routes and not as direct as going through the city centre and the centre of the map. Whilst any of the Contract cards an be completed by whatever series of routes a player decides to build, most of them encourage a player to build routes across Amsterdam rather than around it. Of course, this will be complicated by competition for routes between the players which will likely deny one player or another a route that a player wants to use to complete a Contract card.

What the addition of the Merchandise Bonus cards is reminiscent of, is the Stock Shard cards of the Pennsylvania map from Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 5: United Kingdom + Pennsylvania. In that expansion, every time a player claimed he route, he could in most cases, also claim a Stock Share card in a particular company. At the end of the game, a player would score bonus points depending upon the number of Stock Share cards he held in the various companies in the expansion. Now Ticket to Ride: Amsterdam does not have Stock Share cards, but the Contract cards do work like them in that the more a player has, the more points he will score at the end of the game.

Physically, Ticket to Ride: Amsterdam is very nicely produced. It feels a little darker in tone, but the Cart pieces are cute, the cards feel small though are still easy to read, and the rules leaflet is short, but easy to understand. Notably though, the Transportation cards are very well designed, not just clear in colour, but unlike the Train cards in Ticket to Ride, the artwork is obviously and clearly different on each colour card. For example, the pink card has a man rolling a barrel, the blue card a sailing ship, the black card a barge, and so on. This makes them a lot easier to use than the standard Ticket to Ride cards.

Like Ticket to Ride: New York and Ticket to Ride: London, what Ticket to Ride: Amsterdam offers is all of the play of Ticket to Ride in a smaller, faster playing version, that easy to learn and easy to transport. However, unlike those other titles, Ticket to Ride: Amsterdam is tighter and more competitive, a player needing to balance the need to complete Contract cards against the possibility of extra points from the Merchandise bonus cards, with the reduced playing time only exacerbating this. For younger players, Ticket to Ride: Amsterdam may be too tight, too competitive, but for veteran Ticket to Ride fans, Ticket to Ride: Amsterdam offers a tighter game and an enjoyably different theming.

M.L. Schepps / August 6, 2020

At the break of dawn upon the beach, a thousand representatives of the “Female Planet”—ranging from white-clad Canbomblé, damp in honor of the ocean goddess Yemoja, to realtors from Anchorage—raised mirrors to the pallid sky, seeking to reflect the light of their hope towards the sprawling Riocentro Convention Center that was the focus of the world’s attention. Amid a sense of urgency, representatives from 178 nations gathered for what was the largest United Nations conference in history. Activists, scientists, prominent entrepreneurs, entertainers, and world leaders alike urged unity and immediate action, while one representative of the youth environmental movement emphasized that “we’re all in this together.” The year was 1992, and the Earth Summit was underway in Rio de Janeiro.

Over 40,000 delegates had flown in for this ambitious conference, which sought global cooperation in the face of rising pollution, global warming, and deforestation. Delegates and performers included the headlining Placido Domingo, the Dalai Lama, Shirley Maclaine, and a “who’s-who” of early ‘90s hotness, with River Phoenix, Jeremy Irons, and Edward James Olmos in attendance among what one British paparazzo referred to as “all the nutters in the world.” By the end of the conference, it was already considered a failure. President Bush’s refusal to sign on to the keynote agreement, the Convention on Biological Diversity, had drawn fiery attacks by the presumptive Democratic nominee, Bill Clinton, who asserted that Bush had “abdicated both national and international leadership” in environmentalism, making the United States the “lone holdout” in a world that recognized the urgency of action. In response, Bush defended his record, emphasizing that “environmental protection makes growth sustainable.”

The world hinged on a great axis. The Berlin Wall had fallen only months prior and capitalism stood astride the global stage, triumphant. The American way of life had won, and all that remained was saving the planet. Bill Clinton would go on to be the first baby boomer president, setting the stage for that cohort to at last live up to the world-changing aspirations of their adolescence. It was to be a new and transformative era, one in which the mandates of capitalist economic expansion might be constrained in the service of sustainability. The Secretary General of the conference, Maurice Strong, acknowledged that the road ahead would be a difficult one, but “it will also be a journey of renewed hope, of excitement, challenge and opportunity, leading as we move into the 21st century to the dawning of a new world.”

And it was a new world—but not at all the one the organizers anticipated. 1992 heralded a significant turning point in the mechanisms that define our society: the neoliberal consensus became inviolate and fully bipartisan, with devastating consequences for the environment. Neoliberalism is a word that is often used—and overused—without explanation. George Monbiot has pointed out certain ideological hallmarks that can be taken as representative of the term: the primacy of the individual over the collective; that individual action should be expressed through consumer choices and consumerism; the exaltation of capital and a free market protected by the rule of law but unfettered via regulation; and reduced taxation, increased austerity, and governmental assistance for corporations instead of individuals, coupled with a devotion to  privatization of public goods and services.

It is this ideology, shared by centrist Democrats and “mainstream” Republicans alike for at least the last 40 years, that is responsible for unmitigated inequality, looming environmental collapse, and “our” complete inability—or refusal—to stop any of it.

Despite these realities, my childhood recollection of the early ‘90s is one of hope and determination. “Everyone” knew and believed certain truths, it seemed: global warming was real and an imminent danger, the Amazon Rainforest was being destroyed, dolphins were bloodily decimated to produce tuna. The corollary to this knowledge was the bone-deep conviction that, yes, these problems were real—but they were being taken care of. The good guys (Democrats) were now in charge, and the bad guys (Republicans) were in the rear view. Things seemed set to be sustainably tubular, organically rad, and bodaciously green.

Two pop culture artifacts from the era reflect this sense of optimism: 1990’s Captain Planet and 1992’s FernGully: The Last Rainforest. Both are products of the same “boomer ascendant” zeitgeist as the Earth Summit, full of laudable messages aimed at raising environmental consciousness. And both address the fundamental flaw in mainstream environmental movements—the neoliberal rot embedded at the roots. Their approach to this overarching issue, however, varies dramatically.

***

Billionaire futurist Ted Turner had a simple belief. He was “the second smartest thing on the planet” behind only one entity: “cartoons, because they speak every language.” Possessed of messianic leanings, Turner’s desire to “save the world” fit in nicely with his desire to increase market share through the acquisition of cartoon conglomerate Hanna-Barbera.

Turner and his “chief environmental watchdog,” Barbara Pyle, were both involved in organizing the Rio Earth Summit, and both left feeling disappointed. They felt that the conference had achieved perhaps “ten percent” of its potential due to the compromises demanded by the United States in its pre-conference negotiations, with Pyle going on to say that the summit was more of a “jazz funeral… a wake.” In the run up to the Earth Summit, Turner and Pyle collaborated on a cartoon broadcast on Turner’s networks with a simple if wide-reaching aim: “to arm a generation with the knowledge to find more sustainable ways of living on the planet.” The successes and failures of that cartoon can be seen as a metonym for the successes and failures of the mainstream Western environmental movement operating within the liberal, or neoliberal, paradigm.

The first image of the first episode of Captain Planet and the Planeteers (1990-1992), “A Hero For Earth,” shows an idyllic, prelapsarian forest. Light shines upon a white rabbit hopping about, first in contentment, then in fear. The forest is being destroyed. Trees shatter, birds fall from their nests. A giant walking robot is the agent of this destruction. In the control room sits a grotesque, porcine figure in a pastiche of military uniforms. He snorts with glee and delivers exposition, in the curmudgeonly tone of Ed Asner: “Ha ha ha, with this giant land blaster I’ll be able to drill for oil anywhere!” His crony, Rigger, a wiry caricature of a “good ol’ boy” crossed with Salacious Crumb, responds affirmatively: “he he he, yeah boss, even in a wildlife sanctuary!”

The drill is extended from the walking machine. It penetrates the river below, thrusting through the water and into a glowing pink crack, smashing into a glass barrier. A single drop of liquid falls from the drill and lands on the face of a sleeping woman, draped in vaguely Medditeranean robes. She is awakened. She is Gaia, the living embodiment of the ecosphere.

This “subtext” is hardly sub. Captain Planet, the television show, begins with a rape—that of earth herself by the forces of industrialism. Gaia dismisses the invasion easily enough and repairs the fault, then remarks that she’s been asleep for a century and is now curious as to what those “silly humans” have been up to. We are treated to a flash of all the horrors of the 20th century’s environmental record.

Gaia decides that it is time to fight back. She summons adolescents from different regions of the world (with little more specificity for some beyond “Asia”) and includes a representative of the Soviet state. These are to be her soldiers: a diverse, multicultural coalition, speaking the international language (English with an accent), each one controlling a ring that corresponds to a different elemental control. The fifth team member from South America is given control over “heart.”

The Planeteers, teleported to Gaia’s base of “Hope Island” (the geography is very unclear), then fly north (in a carbon-emitting jet, despite Gaia’s proven ability to teleport) to confront the eco-villain. They are greeted by walruses covered in oil as the robot (now resembling an oil rig) drills. They fight the robot-drill but are forced to withdraw when the pigman threatens to spill his oil on the defenseless walrus. The team escalates, evoking the gestalt effect. By giving up their individual powers they can summon a greater warrior: Captain Planet himself, a mulleted superhero, the white, male, American leader of a diverse multicultural coalition. Again, the subtext is skin deep.

Captain Planet defeats the villains. Greedley escapes, though, and Rigger is given the equivalent of a slap on the wrist (dumped head first into a trash can) for abetting the destruction of a pristine ecosystem. In terms of semiotics, Greedley is the military-industrial complex and escapes any form of consequence; Rigger, just a “good-ol-boy” in search of a job, suffers no real punishment beyond temporary humiliation.

This first episode encapsulates the plot of essentially every episode: an “eco-villain” breaks the rules of conscientious capitalism and is confronted by the Planeteers, but ultimately defeats or traps them, after which they summon Captain Planet who, in turn, defeats the initial villain. The group then teaches the viewer, in an explicitly pedagogical segment, the ways they can help “save the planet.”

It is in this call to action (“the power is yours!”) that the fundamental flaws in the neoliberal approach to activism are most apparent. The Planeteers urge nothing but individual choices: encourage your family to drive less, carpool if you can, turn off the lights when you leave the room. In short: the problems are real but they are caused by consumer choices instead of systemic dysfunction, economic expansion, and unenforced regulation. It is this diffusion of responsibility that has proven a boon again and again to the system itself.

The effectiveness of this strategy is powerful. It can be seen in the way that disposable plastics manufacturers and soda companies devised the “Keep America Beautiful” campaign, absolving themselves of blame while shaming consumers for litter. It’s how 20 fossil fuel companies that have produced 35% of all carbon dioxide and methane released by human activities since 1965 have managed to get away with it.

Diffusion of responsibility is the voice that whispers, “Ah, the oceans are drowning in plastic? Should’ve recycled! Global warming threatens the vast majority of life in the biosphere? Well, it’s on you—should’ve carpooled!” It is the voice of the Planeteers when they tell us that “the power is yours,” but, crucially, not “ours.” There is no place for collective action in this conception of the world. The capitalist system itself is never questioned. The only role for the Planeteers is that of enforcing the “rules” of that system (“yeah boss, even in a wildlife sanctuary!”) and punishing the “eco-villains” (not Exxon or Dow, of course, but purposely exaggerated pigmen) that cause trouble. As a force, the Planeteers are reactive in response to pollution, never proactive in addressing the systems that cause and encourage these behaviors.

***

FernGully was released in 1992,  the same year as the Earth Summit, and, much like Captain Planet, sought to instill a message of environmentalism to its viewership. Unlike Captain Planet, however, FernGully directly addresses the systemic issues responsible for unsustainability and places the blame fully on human agency and ideology.

In revisiting the movie, I was surprised by its maturity. I recalled a simplistic fable in which “fairies fight a pollution-monster with Robin Williams as comic relief.” The reality was far more complex and adult. The fairies are disconcertingly sexualized, with the protagonist Crysta seemingly modeled after a “Dancing in the Dark”-era Courtney Cox, her curves accentuated by crop-top and thigh-slit dress. Her romantic interest Zak is a bronzed-blonde, big-sneakered, mulleted-hunk with a Walkman and baggy jeans. They are both, as described later in the film, “Bodacious Babes.”

The part of the film I remembered most was Robin Williams’s Batty Koda. I recalled a character that was, much like Aladdin’s Genie, just an extension of his persona: a font of manic riffing and out-of-place impressions. Those aspects are there, of course, but the predominant trait of the character is the severe debilitation of trauma in the wake of torture at the hands of humans. Every aspect of the character is a testament to the fundamental evil of humanity’s relationship with nature. Batty (a bat) is a mauled escapee from a biology lab, the loose wires jammed into his brain depicted with pathos and visceral body horror. He suffers periodic seizures and dissociative episodes as a result of post-traumatic stress. He relates a trauma-rap (with that indelible early-’90s tone) wherein he describes being “brain-fried, electrified, infected and injectified, vivosectified and fed pesticides.” It is humor of the darkest kind, and the movie does not shy from it.

In short, this was not the trite, childish eco-fantasy I’d remembered, but rather one aimed at the kind of audience that might appreciate Tone Loc playing a hungry lizard and Cheech and Chong appearing as beetle-wranglers. This film was intended for a far wider and more discerning audience than Captain Planet and was the product of an independent animation studio adapting an original story with blatant environmental themes. Australian producer Wayne Young, enriched by the enormous success of 1986’s Crocodile Dundee, spent 15 years adapting the earnest environmental novel, which was written by his former wife Diane. The big-name stars of the movie worked for scale, forgoing significant payment due to the environmentalist message of what Young described in a 1992 issue of the Montreal Gazette as “a classically simple story… It won’t bend anyone’s brain to figure out what it’s all about.”

The plot of the film concerns a fairy society living in the lush Gondwana Rainforest near Mount Warning, part of what is today Wollumbin National Park in Australia. The fairies are tree guardians living in harmony with the natural world, and most have never seen a human. The movie begins with exposition from the leader, Magi, as she relates a story of long ago, when a primal force of destruction named Hexxus helped sever the harmonious bond between the tree fairies and the Aboriginal peoples of the region following a volcanic eruption. It is here that Hexxus’s identification with exploitative Western modes of thought is most apparent, his presence serving to separate the Indigenous Australians from FernGully itself. Hexxus was subsequently trapped in a tree and fairy society continued.

Crysta, her ‘90s bangs immaculate, is the protege of Magi and chafes under the restrictions of her society. One day she violates taboo by flying above the treeline. She sees a much wider world than she’d ever imagined, a vision of unending green marred by a plume of smoke in the distance. She then meets the aforementioned Batty, who seeks to warn the fairies of the horrors of encroaching humanity, his very body a testament; but, like Cassandra of Troy, he is unable to convince them of the impending threat. Batty’s presence as a victim of humanity is explicit and serves as an indictment of the original sin of Western environmental thought: humankind’s violent dominion over nature.

Crysta sets out to see the plume for herself, traveling through a defiled landscape to a logging site. She passes severed trees, their stumps marked with a bleed of red paint. The viewer is then introduced to mankind in the form of “the leveler,” a piece of forestry equipment based on a leveling track harvester but depicted as a horrific, smoking robot. It is this harvester that is most clearly coded as an abhorrence. The operators, Tony and Ralph, are depicted as bumbling slobs—but they are not evil. The machine itself—gleaming, fuming, jagged technology—is the force of evil. The act of technologically abetted forestry is explicitly identified as wrong.

Crysta sees Zak Young, a young forester, and rescues him from a falling tree, accidentally shrinking him to fairy-size in the process. The two return to FernGully, where Zak at first hides his responsibility for the encroaching deforestation and generally just bros out with the fae, introducing them to cassette tape jams and accompanying Crysta to a narrow aquatic cave for a moist make-out that fades to black.

The leveler, meanwhile, cuts down and processes the tree imprisoning Hexxus, freeing him. Hexxus manifests as sludge (voiced by Tim Curry) and is delighted by the “clever, helpful” humans and the technology they’ve developed, expressing his belief that they’re “destined to be soulmates” with a bump-n-grind burlesque extolling the pleasure of “Toxic Love.” It is his intention to use “the machine they have provided” to convert the natural environment into capital, visualized as animals and trees turning into coins and bills. He then exercises his sole agency throughout the entire movie: impersonating Tony and Ralph’s boss through the radio and directing them to head to FernGully. The mechanism for their coercion is clear, as they are both excited at the prospect of “beaucoup overtime.”

This is a rich scene and one very much at odds with Captain Planet’s depiction of a well-regulated system subject to the malice of rule-breaking “Eco-villains.” It is capitalist consumerism—neoliberalism itself—that is the “machine they have provided” for the spirit of destruction. Hexxus revels in the machine, but it is not his: it is a human invention. Hexxus is clearly identified as the nameless, faceless voice of capitalism, the invisible engine powering the machine. He does not destroy, however—he provides economic incentives and lets the system work for him.

Back at FernGully, the disruption to the ecosystem is apparent in the poisoned rivers and dying vegetation. Crysta investigates and sees a vast clear-cut above the treeline. When she questions Magi as to whether or not it can be healed, Magi responds that she cannot because “a force outside of nature” is responsible, further identifying humanity as aberrant. Zak confesses, acknowledging that “humans did it. Humans did it all.” Zak informs them that their threat is a machine, defined as a “thing for cutting down trees.”

The fairies seem to accept their inevitable defeat and appear to retreat to a sacred tree, with Magi sacrificing herself to provide Crysta with a magic seed. The leveler, ridden by a laughing Hexxus, approaches the tree at the sacred heart of FernGully, its saws whirring implacably. Zak attempts to confront the leveler but is knocked to the ground.

Batty rescues Zak and tries to flee. Zak repays the rescue by physically manipulating the wires inserted in Batty’s brain, inducing a rapid-fire set of dissociative episodes that play out as Robin William’s comic impersonations set to a cocaine cadence. Batty is coerced into confronting  the leveler when Zak triggers a “John Wayne”-type personality that charges the machine. Zak is thrown from Batty and lands on the windshield of the leveler, attempting to warn Tony and Ralph of his presence. They dismiss the warning until they see the actual physical manifestation of Hexxus and flee the cab, allowing Zak to enter and turn the machine off.

Hexxus is instantly diminished by the machine’s shutdown, wondering “what happened to the energy?” After a moment of audience relief, Hexxus rallies, now embodied as the fire from the burning fuel tank, growing as it prepares to consume FernGully after all. Crysta sacrifices herself by flying within Hexxus’s gaping maw, holding the seed. This is enough of a signal for the rest of the fairies to take collective action and “help it grow,” because “we all have a power and it grows when it shares.” This act sparks the regenerative power of nature to again bind Hexxus within a tree. Crysta is then reborn within a petal blossoming atop the tree.

Crysta is reunited with Zak, rapturous that “Hexxus can never harm FernGully again.” Zak disabuses her of that notion by countering that Hexxus might not, but “humans still could,” explaining that he must return to human society to protect FernGully from further encroachment. He is returned to human size and finds Tony and Ralph, telling them “things have gotta change.” The forest, aided by the fairies, regenerates as a farewell gesture, and the movie ends with a dedication: “for our children and our children’s children.”

FernGully’s depiction of humanity as an inherently malevolent force in thrall to consumerism is a powerful one, but it was not all that far-reaching. The movie itself barely made back its budget, either because of its overt environmental messaging or simply because it wasn’t Disney. Its $32 million box office gross was about six-percent of Robin Williams’s other animated release that year, Aladdin.

Unlike Captain Planet’s individualist-consumerist approach to environmentalism, FernGully depicts a world where trees and the ecosphere have fundamental rights, and where real change is possible only through collective action and sacrifice. The “machine” can be stopped, but not permanently, not as long as the system that built it and set it loose remains in place.

***

When surveying the wreckage of the natural world and the inevitability of devastating climate change, deep ecological grief (or solastalgia) is a reasonable response. But there must also be anger over the possibilities that were stolen from us by the neoliberal consensus. Nearly everything we know today about the effects of pollution and the reality of climate change was known in 1992. The past thirty years have been a concerted effort by the forces of capital to engage in predatory delay: ensuring that the longer we wait to make changes, the more disruptive and difficult (and unlikely) they’ll be. The distinction between the left and the right on this topic is meaningless; it’s one where an ostensibly progressive president can oversee a vast increase in American gas production through the environmentally devastating use of hydraulic fracturing and still be considered “green.”

Things could have been very different after the Earth Summit. The reforms we might have made would have been relatively painless compared to the societal transformation that is now imperative if earth is to remain habitable. The world of “might have been” and “if only” is a painful one to revisit. Now, in a time shaped by the nihilism of the international right, the future of environmental collapse feels imminent. Decades of carefully calibrated and incremental environmental “progress” have been gleefully jettisoned by Republican revanche with no greater justification needed beyond destroying the biosphere to own the libs. In the face of this catastrophic intransigence, the conscious consumer can do little more than swear off plastic straws.

Duncan Macpherson/Toronto Star, 1992

Barbara Pyle saw the failures of the Rio Summit in real time, and was correct in predicting the influence of Captain Planet upon a generation. Millennials, staring down the barrel of our second economic collapse, recognize the urgency of immediate action. It is a recognition that is, unfortunately, worthless in the face of the gerontocratic stewards of the Democratic Party. We have been told all our lives that our prime civic contribution is to vote, that through “our powers combined” we might channel a force that is truly bigger than all of us. This generational yearning, growing increasingly urgent as time narrows, is constrained by the limits of what is possible in a neoliberal democracy. The current so-called “progressive voices” of our desperation are the same millionaire centrist old guard (Pelosi, Biden, Schumer, Feinstein, et al.) that have been in power all throughout the unraveling of our hopes—and our biosphere.

As the inherent tensions of America’s rapidly decaying society are exposed via a pandemic response that emphasizes individual choices at the expense of public health—fueled by the environmental consequences of now-irreversible global warming—the limits of individual, consumer-oriented activism are laid bare. Attempts to reform the system from within through electoralism remain stymied by the hard limits of the system itself. There are no superheroes or tree-fairies that we can call upon to deliver us from impending disaster.

This does not have to be the prelude to despair, however. Civil disobedience through collective action (as separate from the feel-good parades that characterize a great deal of public protest in the United States) remains the prime lever by which grassroots societal change is achieved. Over the past several years both Extinction Rebellion and the Black Lives Matter movement have engaged in collective action that emphasizes disruption outside of the inherently constrained limits of “peaceful protest.” We are also seeing an activist movement to remove the entrenched politicians on the “left” that have sleep-walked through the destruction of the biosphere; more diverse and progressive voices like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jamaal Bowman have won primary victories and reflect a very real demand for immediate action and change. Proposed programs like the Green New Deal have the potential to mitigate the ongoing crisis of environmental and ecological collapse while also being broadly popular with a majority of the American public. However, elected progressives remain a small portion of the whole, and have the full force of capital, inertia, and predatory delay arrayed against them.

When the once hopelessly hopeful millennial, now approaching forty, surveys the ruins of the moment via the lens of their childhood pop culture, the gulf between the world we were promised and the world we now inhabit is dizzying. The challenges are overwhelming. We were raised to succeed in a society that no longer exists and—quite possibly—never did. But there are lessons to be found in the fables and allegories that shaped our worldview. We are not powerless. Widespread social change is possible, but it requires collective effort on a mass scale. The power was never “yours.” The power is ours.

M.L. Schepps lives in federally occupied Portland, where he takes many photos of birds. He spent the last year developing a deep appreciation of Kate Bush while also writing a book about 19th century Chinese immigration and Arctic exploration. Find more of his work at MLSchepps.com.

“A witch ought never to be frightened in the darkest forest, Granny Weatherwax had once told her, because she should be sure in her soul that the most terrifying thing in the forest was her.”
― Terry Pratchett, Wintersmith
From the primeval forests of our genetic race-memories to Sherwood to Mirkwood, to forest-covered moons in a galaxy far, far away.  The Forest has long been the boundary between what is civilized and safe to what is uncivilized, untamed, wild, and most definitely, not safe. 


The "Goblin" Forrest of HavenThe forested area outside of West Haven in the Haven Valley is an old-growth forest of ancient date.  The expanse westward left this forested area surprising untouched.  Located north-west of West Haven the forest has always had a reputation of being haunted by all sorts of unsavory creatures. In the mid to late 1600s when the Haven Valley was first settled, the local parish in what would become East Haven decried the forest, claiming it was the abode of Satan himself and set to burn it down.  A tree, that was by all claims to be healthy and sturdy, fell and killed three of the parishioners include the town's Calvinist priest.  Several other "bizarre" accidents and people began to claim that the forest was inhabited by goblins and other foul creatures.  It was here it earned the name "The Goblin Wood" or "The Goblin Forest."
Even when the Industrial Revolution hit in the 1800s and trees for miles around were fed to the Gods of the Furnace and Industry, the Goblin Wood remained untouched.  
Now in the 21st Century, the Goblin Wood remains but there is still an air of mystery and danger about it.  While the general population doesn't believe in goblins, ghosts or even witches anymore there are still plenty of strange occurrences.  
The local USGS office claims the area is rich in naturally occurring magnetic ore.  They claim that the particular features of both the forest and the Haven Valley, in general, disrupt cell phone coverage and GPS signals.  One surveyor even claimed he could see the laser he was using for measuring "bend," though no amount of ore outside one as massive as a black hole could do that.  People walking into the wood with cell phones or GPS devices will find themselves going in circles rather than a straight line.
While scientists, meteorologists, and geologists have all come up with interesting theories about why the Haven Forest is the way it is, the people of West and East Haven know the truth.  And staying out of the forest at night is the one thing both communities can agree on.


If you don't think I have witches guarding all my forests and wild areas in my games you have not been paying attention.

This is not the Greatest RPG in the World.  This is just a Tribute.

I have gone on record many, many times on how I feel that CJ Carella's WitchCraft is one of the, if not the, greatest RPGs I have ever played.  Yes. Even better than D&D.
I have also gone on record stating that my Ghosts of Albion game is really nothing more than an extended love letter to WitchCraft in Victorian prose.
Really, I would love to see an update to WitchCraft from Eden, but I am not holding my breath for it.
Another tribute is NIGHT SHIFT.
Night Shift is a tribute to the types of games Jason and I have been fond of playing over the years we have known each other.  So there are tributes here to Old-school D&D, to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, to Chill, to Call of Cthulhu and of course to WitchCraft. 

As much as I love Ghosts of Albion and Night Shift they can't take the place that WitchCraft has in my heart.  There are some things that both games can do better than WitchCraft, I did have the advantage of playing many games to add to my experiences, but still, WitchCraft remains.
Maybe one day some designer will write their tribute to Ghosts of Albion or to Night Shift!
And since we are talking tributes.


Which is, of course, a tribute to this, 

Michael Grasso / August 4, 2020

Ecotopia (The Notebooks and Reports of William Weston)
By Ernest Callenbach
Banyan Tree Books, 1975

Visualizing a better world has never been more important, or more difficult. The promise of utopia—or at least a world that places its values on health, happiness, and lovingkindness—has been an object of pursuit for philosophers, theologians, and regular folks since the dawn of human civilization. In the early 1970s, thinkers in the West faced the same existential problems that are tearing the world apart in 2020: environmental calamity, geopolitical chaos, racists and reactionaries in power tearing their societies asunder. While the revolutionary counterculture of the 1960s was in a position of retreat against the revanchist forces of reaction during much of the 1970s, plenty of thinkers, writers, and activists were still hard at work imagining a society that would resist and reject the mechanized death-impulse of the West, one that would try to thoroughly reimagine Western lives and lifestyles in the face of energy crises and rampant pollution.

In 1975, writer, film scholar, and University of California Berkeley Press editor Ernest Callenbach envisioned a new nation, born of separatist revolution on America’s West Coast, called Ecotopia. Synthesizing the many threads of cutting-edge ecological and social reformist discourse around him in his time and place—sustainability and recycling, re-wilding and re-forestation, anti-consumerism, educational reform, the elimination of the automobile, and countless other seemingly “pie-in-the-sky” reforms and revolutions—Callenbach created a believable imaginary society born of the contradictory Western (in both senses of the word) cross-currents of self-reliance and community living, all motivated by a societally-fundamental goal of doing the least harm to the Earth possible. Callenbach’s modest book—originally self-published under the aegis of “Banyan Tree Books”—would become an underground classic and end up influencing multiple generations of environmentalists and futurists. Ecotopia also offers to readers in 2020 a world that is simultaneously intimately familiar and deeply alien, one where social, ecological, and technological advances that the West now takes for granted (widespread recycling, renewable energy, video-telephony alleviating the need for travel) jostle shoulders with ones that are only dreamed of in our late capitalist dystopia (a twenty-hour work week, universally socialized necessities of life like food, housing, and health care, and an end to consumerist capitalism).

Like many other explorations of utopias, from Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis (1626) to Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), the conceit behind Ecotopia is that the book presents a record of an outsider encountering and being bewildered by an alien society for which they have very few bases of comparison. Our protagonist in Ecotopia, William Weston, is an American journalist (and apparent agent of American geopolitical interests) who is one of the first Americans to visit the breakaway nation of Ecotopia since its secession from the U.S. nearly twenty years previous. The narrative cannily switches between Weston’s private diary and his published pieces for the “Times-Post,” charting his initially-sober exploration of Ecotopia as he delves deeper into how the revolution has changed Ecotopians on a personal level.

Ecotopia seems to exist, even before its titular revolution, in a slightly alternate history that allows the stage to be set for the breaking away of most of three American states. France is seemingly a Communist republic (perhaps after the convulsions of 1968?) and the tendency towards devolution and the ethnically-based collapse of the nation state that occurred at the end of the Cold War has seemingly happened a decade or two early (Callenbach mentions that the success of Quebec separatism was an inspiration to the Ecotopians). Weston is clearly primarily on a diplomatic/espionage mission, despite his journalistic bona fides—his visit was in the planning stages for over a year at the highest levels of the U.S. government, including meetings with the American president himself. There is unrest in the remaining United States, thanks to rampant pollution, further separatist movements “in the Great Lakes region and the Southeast,” and, probably most direly for the American regime, “Ecotopian ideas are seeping over the border more dangerously” and there is “unrest… generated by Ecotopian ideas among our youth.”

Weston begins his journey through Ecotopia as a chauvinistic American, dubious about Ecotopian progress as compared to America’s industrial might and even a bit credulous of bizarre rumors of human sacrifice and sexual license. But ultimately Weston is a journalist; Callenbach’s canny decision to split the book between Weston’s dispatches for publication and his private diary allows the reader to watch Weston’s reactions to the alienness of Ecotopia change over time. And Callenbach has a real eye for the kinds of things that would immediate hit an American visitor’s own eyes: the alien details of everyday Ecotopian life. On the high-speed maglev train from the border town of Reno to the Ecotopian capital of San Francisco, Weston first notices the differences in material culture in Ecotopia: cushions and beanbags instead of hard-surfaced chairs and benches on Ecotopian transport and in homes; the patchwork motley assemblage of Ecotopian clothes, most of which are homemade; the eerily prescient vision of separate recycling bins for metal, glass, and paper.

Callenbach cares deeply about the minutiae of how such a society would work (one of his primary inspirations to create Ecotopia was an article he’d researched on the failures of contemporary sewage processing), and he treats us to paragraph upon paragraph on the dirty details how Ecotopia actually works: treatises on steady-state sewage processing, Ecotopian forestry and logging, the breakdown of industrialized agriculture into a localized and organic food-cultivation, and the science-fiction advances of Ecotopian biodegradable plastics and extruded structures, all made from plant matter. And it’s not just tangible material goods that get this unceasingly detailed treatment: Callenbach also has Weston observe the minutiae of Ecotopian tax policy and localized politics, the Ecotopian legal system’s focus on punishing citizens who burden the community with poisonous externalities, and Ecotopian economic policy (the inheritance of private—not personal—property is prohibited).

It’s only when Weston sinks a little deeper in Ecotopian society that we the readers begin to grasp the even more stunning social and philosophical revolution that’s taken place in this new world. The citizenry is united in professing to Weston how much better their quality of life is; one of the revolution’s very first proclamations was the establishment of a twenty-hour work week. The American obsession with production and economic growth was deemed anti-social. In one of Weston’s early dispatches to America, the psycho-emotional motivation behind the Ecotopian revolution is clear:

What was at stake [in the revolution], informed Ecotopians insist, was nothing less than the revision of the Protestant work ethic upon which America has been built. The consequences were plainly severe… But the profoundest implications of the decreased work week were philosophical and ecological: mankind, the Ecotopians assumed, was not meant for production, as the 19th and early 20th centuries had believed. Instead, humans were meant to take their place in a seamless, stable-state web of living organisms, disturbing that web as little as possible. This would mean sacrifice of present consumption, but it would ensure future survival—which became an almost religious objective, perhaps akin to earlier doctrines of “salvation.” People were to be happy not to the extent they dominated their fellow creatures on the earth, but to the extent they lived in balance with them.

The Ecotopians are much more cagey about whether their society is “socialist” or not; certainly, the seizure of corporate capital in the first months of the Ecotopian revolution qualifies as classically socialist (“the forced consolidation of the basic retail network constituted by Sears, Penneys, Safeway, and a few other chains,” Weston notes), but Ecotopia is more properly classified as a mixed economy, as a private market and currency backed by a central bank does still exist. But it’s clear that at its base, Ecotopia is an essentially syndicalist-socialist state, with self-determination regarding labor being its organizing principle. Small groups of people numbering in the few dozens spontaneously form communes, farms, factories, educational foundations, and research facilities based on their common interests and goals. In addition, work assignments change depending on need and demand; students spend more time in university trying out different occupations, and every Ecotopian inevitably ends up owing service to their society outside their own job. The nuclear family has been largely upended by the Ecotopian revolution, with Ecotopian children raised by their “village.” On the larger scale, Ecotopian living communities are smaller and more self-contained. Along with the nuclear family, the commuter suburb has been destroyed in favor of self-sufficient “ring towns” surrounding larger urban conurbations, all linked by low-pollution high-speed trains. These basic changes in living structures have, within a generation, altered the Ecotopian psyche deeply. There is a greater openness to experience and to emotion, a greater sense of the interconnectedness of all Ecotopians.

Weston’s biggest culture shock during his first few days is just how publicly Ecotopians laugh, love, cry, fight, and criticize each other, all while presenting very little of the simmering resentments and lingering neuroses seen in America. American consumer culture has been completely rejected, and that is clear in the changes to Ecotopian mass media: small newspapers and news organizations of all political stripes flourish, and television (brought to Ecotopian households via hard-wired cable and not over-the-air broadcasting, another of Callenbach’s startling predictions come true) is profoundly participatory, with advertising heavily regulated and consumer products made without the needless variety (and deleterious environmental effects) seen in the States. There is also a profound instilled sense of social responsibility among the Ecotopians. In Weston’s examination of logging and forestry policy, he notes that any individual wanting a large amount of lumber (for building a home, for example) must undertake a couple of months of forest service, cutting down the trees needed and replanting new ones. Weston grudgingly accepts that “it may make people have a better attitude toward lumber resources.”

In his examination of the politics of Ecotopia, Weston, as an individualistic American, notes this tension between responsibility, individual desire, and group dynamics, which rears its head everywhere in Ecotopia from economic policy to psychosocial roles. Even while Ecotopian society is profoundly localized and quasi-libertarian, a definite state exists, with clear economic and military responsibilities. And yet it’s clear that this state would not exist but for the clear consent of the governed and their mutual defense of the Ecotopian way of life. In its early years as a breakaway republic, Ecotopia fought a secret “Helicopter War” against the United States that Ecotopia handily won. How did this tiny nation manage to fight off the largest military in the world? The same way the Viet Cong did in Southeast Asia (and, startlingly, in much the way that the Afghan people would repel the later Soviet invasion a few years after the publication of Ecotopia): with individual members of Ecotopian guerrilla militias destroying high-tech American weapons of war with well-placed rockets, sabotage, and other innovative strategies targeting American weaknesses. Granted, not all of these technologically-advanced weapons were developed in Ecotopia; it’s clear that the material support of both Russia and France helped the new nation achieve this victory. Callenbach also describes a slightly more unrealistic nuclear gambit exercised by Ecotopia, telling America that they had secreted nuclear devices in major American cities and would detonate them upon any further attempt at invasion. But the lesson of Ecotopia is the same as anti-American revolutions in Cuba and Vietnam in the 20th century: with a little societal solidarity, outside support, and innovative methods of waging war, David can beat Goliath.

Over the course of Ecotopia, Callenbach shows us Weston’s slow acceptance of even the most alien aspects of Ecotopian culture. In gender relations, Weston demonstrates a quiet chauvinism about the ruling revolutionary party of Ecotopia, the Survivalists, which originally grew out of pre-revolutionary West Coast feminist-environmentalist politics. It’s clear that Callenbach invests the Ecotopian revolution at its foundation with a distinctly 1970s second-wave feminist flavor. Weston, a roving reporter used to participating in exotic conquests on his various overseas trips, finds himself disarmed by the sexual autonomy and confidence of liberated Ecotopian women. Weston falls in love with a forester, Marissa Brightcloud, who comes to represent to Weston everything about Ecotopia that he finds initially alien and even detestable (after one of their first encounters, Weston sees Marissa giving a word of thanks to a tree and remarks, “this incredible woman is a goddamn druid or something—a tree-worshipper!”), but eventually profoundly liberating. As their affair matures, Weston “realize[s] the relation (sic) with Marissa is changing my whole idea of what men and women are like together.” As Weston tries to comprehend these shifted gender relations, he observes (and eventually participates in and is wounded in) Ecotopia’s ritual war games, its anthropologist-designed method of channeling and diffusing the violent testosterone-fueled impulses of young men into a small-scale series of formalized (and ritual-drug-aided) skirmishes.

It’s in moments like the war games where the dated elements of Callenbach’s novel begin to be seen. For Ecotopia (much as with a good deal of the white counterculture of the ’60s and ’70s), ham-handedly emulating what is perceived as a monolithic “Native American culture” is considered a key to creating a more ecologically just society (Marissa’s surname is an example of this tendency, which Weston coolly appraises as “a self-adopted, Indian-inspired name—many Ecotopians use them”). Weston also notes that the Ecotopian’s respect for their tools, food, and inanimate objects also has an animistic tinge to it. But it’s not just in these broad white stereotypes of the diversity of various indigenous American histories and cultures where Callenbach fails to imagine a non-white ecology. He also shows Weston slightly shocked at the racial segregation and nationalism present in the Bay Area’s various ethnic communities. Black and Chinese urban populations have largely rejected working within Ecotopian systems, taking advantage of Ecotopian community-based social organization to create their own enclaves, which white Ecotopians believe may eventually break away completely to form their own sovereign nations. (Even more cringeworthy is Callenbach’s decision to use the section on the “Soul City” enclave as a method to expound upon Ecotopian crime and punishment.) Weston, in a high-handed “egalitarian” American manner, calls this system “apartheid,” although it’s really more akin to Black separatist and nationalist traditions long-represented and respected in our own timeline’s history. But this treatment of race is a rare but striking sour note in Callenbach’s imagination of a better world. One sees the author struggling to untie the Gordian knot of the legacy of American racism to visualize a better, more peaceful and unified ecological utopia; given the miraculous social revolutions that are taken as a given throughout the novel, this elision of race is odd and off-putting to contemporary eyes.

As mentioned, Weston falls in love with Marissa and then eventually Ecotopia itself. His dispatches about Ecotopia sent back home grow less snide and judgmental and more accepting and fascinated. In the final chapters of the book, Weston gets his long-awaited interview (and diplomatic mission) with Survivalist Party leader and Ecotopian president Vera Allwen. During the meeting,  Weston finds his skills of persuasion leaving him; in Allwen he has met a towering personality with whom he is “mysteriously outclassed.” “She is powerful as a person, not as a bureaucrat or the head of an institution. Difficult to express. (Have heard that some of the old-time communist leaders, Ho Chi Minh and Mao Tse-tung, had this quality too.)” Allwen outright rejects any overture at reunification with the United States. “You cannot be serious,” she says in response to this proposal, firmly, twice in a row. Weston leaves the meeting dejected and soon develops a strange illness that seems at least half-psychosomatic (perhaps triggered by Allwen’s relentless psychological probing).

Trying to decide whether to stay in Ecotopia longer to tarry with Marissa or return home to his sometime wife and children, Weston is soon confronted with a group of mysterious Ecotopians who essentially abduct him. All throughout the novel there have been hints that Weston is being followed by the secret police; a meeting with a group of Ecotopian capitalist dissidents early in the novel leads to an explicit warning from some presumed members of state security. But these Ecotopian agents do not take him to some dungeon or black site; instead, they lead him to a mountain retreat full of regular foreign guests enjoying the hot springs. It’s very reminiscent of Esalen, and even more so as Weston’s captors begin to lovingly interrogate him, subjecting him to long soaks in hot-tubs, sweat lodges, and, it seems from the description of his continuing physical ailments, psychedelic drugs. Weston says to himself that he’ll leave for the border city of Los Angeles (still in the U.S. proper), and dons his American “uniform” of suit and tie, but as he looks in the mirror, he says, “The ugly American me was almost sickening—I really thought I might have to throw up.” In the midst of what sounds like a sensory deprivation tank within one of the deep hot tubs, Weston has a sudden “conversion” moment. “I am going to stay in Ecotopia!” he shouts. He has won the victory over his American self. His captors embrace him, love-bombing him as Marissa suddenly appears from where she was hidden on the grounds, ready to accept the newest liberated Ecotopian citizen to their society.

During this final chapter I couldn’t help but think of all the strains of the human potential movement abroad in California at the time of the writing of Ecotopia and how many of them ended up being used for sinister purposes by the rising technocratic consensus, unscrupulous cultic charlatans, and even by the U.S. government and military. What may have seemed to the 1970s readers of Ecotopia as a liberatory experience rife with self-actualization and a rejection of American “squareness” looks, with the benefit of hindsight, like a training manual for social control in our current age of a hippie-derived technocratic power structure that seems to have systematically quantified and manipulated all our emotional responses for the purposes of further solidifying capitalism. One could argue that the Ecotopians’ weapons of defense and war—cobbled together as a mix of both primitive ecologically-friendly defenses as well as innovative biological and social systems of control—are their way of defending their hard-won state and that these reservations are merely around means instead of ends. If the CIA and U.S. military relentlessly used psychological warfare both at home and abroad to solidify American hegemony, what is wrong with turning those same weapons back against them for the benefit of a new republic dedicated to opposing American and corporate imperialism?

But to our contemporary eyes, it’s this slightly ambiguous ending and all the other profoundly ironic moments within the narrative that make Ecotopia so interesting a document. As mentioned earlier, Ecotopia in some small way successfully predicts what the future will look like, for both good and ill. Ironically, after reading it, I find myself interested in a sequel that would take Ecotopia twenty years into the future, to match up with our own year 2020. Would Ecotopian ideals conquer America and lead to a worldwide acceptance of Ecotopian steady-state living? Or would America decide again to try to take back its breakaway republic by force, this time using more brute force than in the Helicopter War? Or would America, facing the implicit rebuke of Ecotopia’s success, fall apart into a series of squabbling balkanized republics? The world of Ecotopia in a lot of ways is an achievable paradise, but one wonders if, given two or three decades, it would end up looking more like our own timeline’s collapsing America than an egalitarian ecological paradise.

Michael Grasso is a Senior Editor at We Are the Mutants. He is a Bostonian, a museum professional, and a podcaster. Follow him on Twitter at @MutantsMichael.

"I was raised by witches boy, I see with more than eyes and you know that."- Frigga to Thor in 2013, Avengers Endgame
Call me biased, but I have always liked the idea that witches see things that other character types don't.  Not just in terms of "infravision" or "dark vision" but in just "other vision."
A couple of house rules that I always use are witches can see ghosts, spirits, and other sorts of magical creatures that are typically invisible to others.  They can see magical auras which they can tell something about the person they are looking at.  Most importantly they can recognize other witches on sight.

Mechanically it really doesn't add much to D&D.  I argue the kinds of ghosts and things the witch can see are harmless to everyone.  But if you can see them, then they can see you.  So they are not always harmless to the witch herself.
In Ghosts of Albion, this type of vision is known as "Lesser Sensing" and it is something all magical creatures, including magicians and witches, have.   
Witches and Warlocks in NIGHT SHIFT do this as part of their class.
I have extended it to my fantasy games where it is just called "The Sight."
In D&D3-5 or Pathfinder1-2, it could easily be a Feat.  For my Basic-era witches an Occult Power.
The SightUsing the Sight requires a moment of concentration but then the witch can See.  She can see magical auras that will give her some basic information on what she is looking at.She can See:- magical effects such as active spells, charms, curses or compulsions on a person- magical lines of force (ley lines)- whether or not a person is a spell-caster* (she can always detect another witch)- undead
With more concentration (1 round) she can See:- Invisible creatures- alignment - polymorphed, shape-changed or lycanthropes
The subject of the witch's Sight knows they are being Seen. They get an uncomfortable feeling and know it is coming from the witch, even if they do not know what it means.
That's the rough version, it would need to be tweaked for the respective games.  For example it would work with D&D 5's perception skill. 

If you are feeling tired, lethargic, or otherwise drained then you could have been attacked by an Astral Spider.  

As their name suggests these demonic creatures are native to the astral plane, but they are attracted to people with psychic or empathic abilities.  The spider, which is normally invisible, attaches itself to a victim and drains Wisdom at the rate of 1 point per day. The Astral Spider stays attached and draining until it's victim reaches 0 Wisdom. Magic that can detect a curse or detect evil creatures can let you know that an Astral Spider is attached to someone or attacking. 
The Astral Spider is immune to physical attacks, including magical and blessed weapons.  They can only be affected by magic.  A specially worded Remove Curse spell will remove an Astral Spider.  A banishment or exorcism will also remove the spider and force it back into the Astral.
Astral Spiders only move in the Astral plane. The only time they are manifest in the real world when attached to a victim and then they do not move. 
Astral SpiderVermin (Demonic)Frequency: Very RareNumber Appearing: 1 (1)Alignment: Chaotic (Chaotic Evil)Movement:  SpecialArmor Class: 9 [10]Hit Dice: 3d6+3* (10)Attacks: 1 special Damage: 1 point Widom per daySpecial: Immune to physical attacks, affected only by magicSize: SmallSave: Fighter 3Morale: 12Treasure Hoard Class: NoneXP: 125
Astral SpiderNIGHT SHIFTNo. Appearing: 1AC: 9Move: Special (Astral only)Hit Dice: 3Special: Wisdom drain. 1 point/dayXP VALUE: 120

Over the weekend two game-related thoughts kept going through my head.  Frist Gen Con and how we were all missing it and the adventures I was going to run for my family and the theme of Thread.
Since D&D 5 had come out I have been running my family through the "Gygaxian Classics." while we technically started with B1 In Search of the Unknown with AD&D 1st ed, we quickly moved to D&D 5.  From here we did B2 Keep on the Borderlands and moved through the Great Greyhawk Campaign.  We have been calling the group The Order of the Platinum Dragon. 

Our order of games has been:
T1 Village of Hommlet (forgotten by the characters, played as a flashback after I6)B1 In Search of the Unknown (Gen Con Game)B2 Keep on the BorderlandsL1 The Secret of Bone Hill  (Gen Con Game)X2 Castle AmberI6 Ravenloft (Gen Con Game)C2 Ghost Tower of InvernessA1-5 Slave LordsC1 The Hidden Shrine of TamoachanG123, G4 Against the Giants  (Gen Con Game)D12, 3 Descent into the Depths of the Earth, Vault of the DrowQ1 Queen of the Demonweb Pits (Gen Con Game)
I wanted my family to have the "Classic D&D Experience) with this.  Communities are often defined by the stories they share. These are the stories we all share.  How did you defeat Strahd? Did you shout 'Bree Yark'? What did you do in the Hill Giant's dining room?   Did you survive the Demonweb?
One of the things I have been doing differently than the original narrative is thread everything together with a massive conspiracy.  Someone, or something, killed all the Gods of the Sun.  The characters (and the players) have come to the conclusion that this something is the Elder Elemental Eye.  But they don't know who or what that is.They have learned that Eclavdra betrayed her Goddess, Lolth, and has incited a civil war within the city of Erelhei-Cinlu.  The followers of Lolth vs the followers of the Elder Elemental Eye.
What they don't know yet is who has been manipulating these threads.  Behind the scenes, the Demon Lord Graz'zt has been scheming.  In my world Graz'zt has always coveted the Drow. He wants their devotion and is jealous of the iron hold Lolth has on them.  So he has been stirring her up into more and more desperate attacks on the Prime Material.  He is using Eclavdra and her devotion to the EEE to get to Lolth.  Eclavdra thinks Graz'zt can free the EEE from his prison in the Temple of Elemental Evil.  To this end Elcavdra has been using what is left of the EEE former followers, or rather their descendants, the Giants.  Titans and Primordials followed the EEE back in the Dawn War.  Graz'zt thinks he can control the EEE once he has the worship of the Drow.
What Elcavdra doesn't know is Graz'zt has no intention of releasing the EEE from the Temple of Elemental Evil, save as far as he wants that power too.  Graz'zt is not a demon at all, but rather a devil sent by Asmodeus to infiltrate the demon hierarchy and discover the source of pure evil for Asmodeus.  Graz'zt has gone too deep into the cold though and now he thinks like a demon lord. Asmodeus suspects this of course.  Both of these powerful evil creatures will betray each other on the first chance.
Graz'zt has long suspected that the Temple of Elemental Evil is the key.  Centuries ago he sent the Demon Lady Zuggtmoy into the Temple. He discovered she was essentially absorbed by the power of the EEE. Now her cults worship it. 
What none of the evil lords and ladies know though is that the EEE is really Tharizdûn. He is manipulating Graz'zt and Asmodeus to free him.  He tried with Graz'zt before and Graz'zt sent in Zuggtmoy.  Tharizdûn quickly overwhelmed, overpowered, and destroyed Zuggtmoy's form and spirit.  This gave Tharizdûn enough power though to put his final plans into action.  He needs the Temple of Elemental Evil open. Only Lolth has the keys to unlock the Temple.
And in my next adventure with the family, Graz'zt is going to get them.
That was supposed to happen this last weekend, but Gen Con shut down due to Covid-19 we did not get to do this.
One thing that never sat well with me, and many others, is that after this epic adventure of Giants and Drow and going to the Abyss the end antagonist is Lolth and her Spider-ship?  It seems a little anti-climatic. 
Instead of that my last layer of the Lolth Demonweb will be Skein of the Death Mother.  


The spider-ship will still be used in my ill-defined Q2 adventure, likely piloted by Eclavdra to invade the surface world, but starting with the houses still loyal to Lolth in Erelhei-Cinlu.
I am going to pull all these threads, and more, together with the grand finale, The Temple of Elemental Evil. 
Then I am looking forward to running my War of the Witch Queens.

Much like the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, the Jonstown Compendium is a curated platform for user-made content, but for material set in Greg Stafford’s mythic universe of Glorantha. It enables creators to sell their own original content for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and HeroQuest Glorantha (Questworlds). This can include original scenarios, background material, cults, mythology, details of NPCs and monsters, and so on, but none of this content should be considered to be ‘canon’, but rather fall under ‘Your Glorantha Will Vary’. This means that there is still scope for the authors to create interesting and useful content that others can bring to their Glorantha-set campaigns.

—oOo—


What is it?
Monster of the Month #7: Dolorous Edd presents an odd, even whimsical creature for use with RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha.

It is a thirteen-page, full colour, 1.49 MB PDF.

Monster of the Month #7: Dolorous Edd is well presented and decently written.

Where is it set?
Dolorous Edd, the subject of Monster of the Month #7: Dolorous Edd,  can be encountered anywhere in Dragon Pass, or even in Glorantha.

Who do you play?
Anyone can encounter Dolorous Edd. Hunters might want to track him, Lhankor Mhy might want to clarify know facts about him, and a Shaman might want to dedicate a cult to him!

What do you need?
Monster of the Month #7: Dolorous Edd requires RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, but RuneQuest – Glorantha Bestiary might be useful. 

What do you get?
Monster of the Month #7: Dolorous Edd details ‘Dolorous Edd’, a singularly strange creature who wanders Dragon Pass seemingly at random and is known to a multitude of different people across the region. He is a tall and looming  beast, long, but with skin wrinkled into folds, tiny feet, and constantly weeping eyes. He is seen watching folk and tends to run—or leap—away if encountered. There are lots of rumours and tales about him, the likelihood being that the Player Characters will know something about him, such that if they do encounter him, they will not be completely unaware of his existence.

As well as providing the full stats and personality of this beast, Monster of the Month #7: Dolorous Edd a rumours table suggesting what both Player Characters and NPCs might know about him (there is much to be learned over a pint), three scenario seeds, a complete description of the cult dedicated to Dolorous Edd, and the folklore about him. Actually, there is no cult devoted to Dolorous Edd—at least not yet. Instead it is up to the Player Characters to do so, especially if one of them is a Shaman. Full details of such a cult is given should a Player Character decide to establish one, including appropriate Rune spells. A good third of Monster of the Month #7: Dolorous Edd is devoted to the folklore surrounding his appearances and activities. If there is an issue with this, it is that it is not really designed to be read by the players, so the Game Master may want to adapt it so should the Player Characters want to do a little more research into Dolorous Edd. That said, the folklore will instead work as inspiration for the Game Master in presenting the rumours related to him and perhaps in creating further encounters with this great, fantastically quaint creature.

Is it worth your time?
Yes—Monster of the Month #7: Dolorous Edd epitomises ‘Your Glorantha Will Vary’ in presenting a “Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim’rous beastie” who may be simply encountered, hunted, be made friends with, a mystery to be uncovered, or even worshiped!
No—Monster of the Month #7: Dolorous Edd is perhaps ‘Your Glorantha Will Vary’ a step too far, a silly creature more Douglas Addams than Greg Stafford.
Maybe—Monster of the Month #7: Dolorous Edd is strange and whimsical, but its weirdness is easy enough to bring to your Glorantha with relatively little preparation.

Change, they tell us, is good. 
It is good in life and in games.  I feel in order to be good at running or playing any RPG you need to change your style of playing every so often and the best way to do this is to change your games.
It is no secret I really enjoy D&D.  But it is also not the only game I play, not by any stretch.
Mark Twain once said "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness."  The same can be said of "travelling" to other worlds.   
Want to make your D&D games scarier? Play Call of Cthulhu.  Want to give it more of a historical feel? Play Pendragon. Want to give your games a more magical feel? Play Ars Magica or it's half-sister Mage.  Occult conspiracies? Play WitchCraft and Conspiracy X. 
I honestly get confused when people tell me they only play D&D. Or even, just one version of D&D. That's like only ever reading one book your entire life (and yes I know those people too).

My interests in RPGs are horror, magic, Celtic-myths and legends, and Victorian-era gaming.  I bring these into my games when and where I can.  Ok, so Victorian era not so much in D&D, but there are ideas I like to bring over. 
My games are better because I have had these other experiences.  My game writing is better because I have had these other experiences.
So maybe when you need to improve your own games, try changing it out for a little bit. 

The format of One-on-One roleplaying—one Investigator and one Keeper—is not new to Lovecraftian investigative horror. It goes all the way back to the scenario, ‘Paper Chase’, originally published in the Cthulhu Companion from 1983 and most recently included in the Call of Cthulhu Starter Set, and more recently explored in Cthulhu Confidential, published by Pelgrane Press for clue-orientated roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative horror, Trail of Cthulhu. Chaosium, Inc. returns to the format for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, with Does Love Forgive? One-to-One Scenarios for Call of Cthulhu, its special release for the ‘Virtual’ Gen Con of 2020. Originally published for the Polish version of Call of Cthulhu by Black Monk Games as Miłość ci wszystko wybaczy? for Valentine’s Day 2020, the two scenarios in Does Love Forgive? are set in the USA, one in 1929 and one in 1932, one in Chicago and one in New York, and both can be played through in a single session or so. Does Love Forgive? is also notable for its all-women writing team and for being one of the few non-English language titles for Call of Cthulhu to be translated and developed for the English market.

From the outset, Does Love Forgive? addresses two difficulty factors related to the format and the subject matter. The first is the difficulty of playing the two scenarios and here it introduces a pair of indicators to show the Difficulty Level and the estimated number of gaming sessions necessary to complete the two scenarios in the anthology. These range from ‘Very Easy’ to ‘Very Hard’ for the Difficulty Level and one, two, three, or four sessions for the play length. The first scenario, ‘Love You to Death’, has a Difficulty Level of ‘Very Easy’ and a play length of one session, whilst the second, ‘Mask of Desire’, has a Difficulty Level of ‘Easy’ and a play length of one session. Both are clearly marked at the beginning of each scenario. Overall, this is a useful addition to Call of Cthulhu, and hopefully it will be used in more scenarios. Both scenarios though, can be played using the Call of Cthulhu Starter Set or the full Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition rules.

The difficulty is with the subject at the heart of Does Love Forgive?—and that is love. Being focused on the one player and the one Keeper, the format of one-on-one roleplaying is potentially more intense and potentially more intimate, which when combined with as emotional a subject matter as ‘love’, means that the some of the situations in the two scenarios have the capacity to make player, Keeper, or both uncomfortable when roleplaying their romantic or highly emotionally-charged scenes. The authors suggest both player and Keeper discuss any potentially problematic plot elements that they might be uncomfortable with and set the parameters for themselves, and that certainly the Keeper should take care in handling the emotional scenes throughout both scenarios. Overall this is good advice and definitely worth reading as part of preparing both. Other advice for the Keeper covers the use of NPCs to provide support to the protagonist and the use of Luck to modify most rolls during play.

The first scenario is ‘Love You to Death’. This takes place in Chicago on Friday, February 15th, 1929—the day after the infamous St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. The Investigator is a Private Eye—either one of the player’s own creation or taken from the Call of Cthulhu Starter Set—who grew up in an orphanage where he was very good friends with two girls, Hattie and Ellen. It has been years since he has seen either, one being now married and the other having been adopted years before. Then on the morning following the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, Hattie knocks on his office door. Her faithful dog has been picked up by the police and is due to be put down. Fortunately, the Investigator has a friend at the police station and not only will he be able to learn how the dog came to be picked up, but also more about the terrible events of the day before. However, by the time the Investigator returns the dog to Hattie, she has disappeared… Could this be related to the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre?

‘Love You to Death’ is of course a love triangle, but one coloured by both other emotions and the Mythos. Being the simpler of the two scenarios, ‘Love You to Death’ should be a relatively easy mystery to solve, and in fact, experienced players of Call of Cthulhu may find it a little too easy. This is unlikely though if the player is new to Call of Cthulhu or he has played through the scenarios in Call of Cthulhu Starter Set. At times it does feel as the player and his Investigator is being dragged around—in some cases literally—a little. There are suggestions if the Keeper wants to add a complication or two and these are probably best used if the player has plenty of experience with Call of Cthulhu. This is a nice little investigation, adroitly framed around the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, but without miring it unnecessarily in the Mythos.

‘Mask of Desire’ shifts to New York and 1932. This is a much less tightly plotted scenario, requiring a slightly more complex set-up. The Investigator lives with two close friends, Anna, a wouldbe singer, and Lucas, a reluctant lawyer. The player is free to decide the nature of the relationship between his Investigator and Anna and Lucas and also what his actual Occupation is, both of which needs to be done before play begins as it will very much influence the interaction between the Investigator and his housemates throughout the scenario. The three have been invited to a party hosted by Madame de Tisson at her swanky apartment on the Upper West Side. The wealthy, and notoriously louche socialite is known for her libertine attitudes and her interest in objects d’art, so it seems odd that Lucas is seen talking to her discreetly, especially since he is concerned about Anna and her worries about her audition the following day with Nancy Turner, the famous jazz orchestra conductor. 

The scenario very much revolves around a nasty MacGuffin which promises a lot, but at a price—and who has it and what they are doing with it. Like any good MacGuffin it quickly falls into the trio of friends’ hands and as the friends learn more about it and what it can do, it is likely to drive a wedge between them. They are not the only ones with an interest in the object—an interest which could turn deadly. The scenario is again quite linear, but being more complex, there are more options to take into consideration, there being quite a lot of ‘If this happens, then this happens’, ‘If the Investigator does this, then this happens’, and so on. In many ways, not that different from any scenario for Call of Cthulhu, but it is more obvious in its format. ‘Mask of Desire’ is, though, far more of a character piece than many Call of Cthulhu scenarios, focusing on the friendships which the player will have helped build during the set-up phase prior to play. That does bring the MacGuffin’s malign influence and what it drives men to do much closer to home than in many Call of Cthulhu scenarios and mean its impact will be all the stronger and more emotional.

Physically, Does Love Forgive? is well presented and well-written. It is lightly illustrated, but the artwork is decent. If the anthology is missing anything, then perhaps a few more NPC portraits would not have gone amiss, though the Keeper can remedy that with some images taken from the Internet, and perhaps for ease of play, a ready-made Investigator, at least for ‘Love You to Death’.

The presence of the Mythos in Does Love Forgive? is quite mild by comparison, but it need not be overly Eldritch given that the two scenarios in the anthology are for a single player and his Investigator. Which makes the anthology more than suitable for play following the Cthulhu Starter Set, not necessarily using the same Investigator, of course. Of the two scenarios, ‘Mask of Desire’ is the more sophisticated and will thus be appreciated by a wider audience—‘Love You to Death’ possibly being a bit too straightforward for experienced players. Then there is the question of the title’s anthology, to which the answer is with some Luck and good roleplaying upon the part of the player, then certainly, otherwise the last thing the Mythos will do is forgive. Overall, as the first release in English for Black Monk Games, Does Love Forgive? One-to-One Scenarios for Call of Cthulhu, is a very welcome addition to the way in which Call of Cthulhu can be played and hopefully the format will be supported with further scenarios, if not a campaign!

It is August.  Where did the Summer go? Plus I should be at Gen Con now getting my kids to breakfast for a day of gaming. 
It is an August tradition for David F. Chapman of AUTOCRATIK to host the month-long #RPGaDAY. Like last year, this year we are given one-word prompts for our reflections.

Here are this year's prompts.

1. Beginning
2. Change
3. Thread   
4. Vision
5. Tribute
6. Forest
7. Couple
8. Shade
9. Light
10. Want
11. Stack
12. Message
13. Rest
14. Banner
15. Frame
16. Dramatic
17. Comfort   
18. Meet
19. Tower
20. Investigate    
21. Push    
22. Rare
23. Edge
24. Humour
25. Lever
26. Strange
27. Favor
28. Close
29. Ride
30. Portal
31. Experience

Some jumped right out at me with ideas.  Others might take a me a bit more to come up with a good idea.
So let's go with today's word Beginning.
I have told the story here of my beginning in D&D and RPG many times. So no need to go over that.
Instead, I want to talk about the beginning of my blogging.


Back in 2007 I had no real intention of starting a blog, let alone one based around old-school games.  My website, The Other Side, was dead and I was working on my 2nd Ph.D. and working full time.
I started the blog after reading online about some old-school games and thought it might be fun to try. There were not a lot of blogs in the old-school scene yet. I started in 2007 but did not get going till 2008.  Grognardia didn't get started till about a year after I did, but built up more steam.  Most of the blogs from then, like Grognardia, are gone. Tenkar's started soon after Grognardia and is still around and has become the hub of the Old-School and OSR movements. 
I did not really plan to get into the OSR even as it was rising up around me.  I just wanted a place I could talk about D&D one day, WitchCraft the next, maybe talk about some horror movies or comics and then go on a little about Mage or other World of Darkness books.
Well...that was over 4331 posts and 13 years ago.
Since then I have spilled a lot of words here. I would like to think this writing has made my games better or at least my own books better. Will I be doing this for the next 13 years? No idea. But it has been a great ride so far!
Make sure you check out all the #RPGaDAY posts at https://twitter.com/autocratik.

Since 2013, Goodman Games, the publisher of  Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game and Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic has released a book especially for Gen Con, the largest tabletop hobby gaming event in the world. That book is the Goodman Games Gen Con Program Book, a look back at the previous year, a preview of the year to come, staff biographies, and a whole lot more, including adventures and lots tidbits and silliness. The first was the Goodman Games Gen Con 2013 Program Book, but not being able to pick up a copy from Goodman Games when they first attended UK Games Expo  in 2019, it was actually the second to be reviewed after the Goodman Games Gen Con 2014 Program Book. Fortunately, Reviews from R’lyeh manages to return to the correct order for Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book.

The Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Guide is a vastly bigger book than either the Goodman Games Gen Con 2013 Program Book or Goodman Games Gen Con 2014 Program Book. In fact, it almost double the size of the first two volumes in the series combined! Its pages contain a mix of interviews, art, scenarios, game support, fiction, and randomness, the Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book starting off with some of the latter with a series of dice-themed articles. The first of these—and the first of the articles in Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book—is Dieter Zimmerman’s ‘Tables For Thieves’, a set of tables for things such as places to meet in secret and buy on the black market. Its companion piece is themed not along one subject matter, but the type of die rolled, ‘Twenty Funky Dice Tables’ by Ken St. Andre offering up tables such as ‘D2: Random Monster Encounters’ and ‘ D7: Random Dungeon Name Generator’. All of which use the various shapes of dice also used in Dungeon Crawl Classics. Of course, even if the Game Master is not going to roll the dice on these tables, they are will at least serve as inspiration. The various non-standard dice used in Dungeon Crawl Classics come under the spotlight in Terry Olson’s ‘Cranking Up the Funk in DCC Dice Rolling’ which examines the probabilities and mathematics of the Dungeon Crawl Classics—and now Mutant Crawl Classics—dice. It is unfortunately the driest article in Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book, but doubtless it will appeal to some gamers who like both dice and the numbers behind them.

The highlight of the dice section though is ‘An Interview with Colonel Lou Zocchi’. As the title suggests, this is with an interview with Lou Zocchi, best known for his dice—in particular, his one-hundred-sided Zocchihedron—and his long involvement with the gaming industry. The lengthy interview goes into this and his development of dice for the industry, how to roll dice, and more. It is an absolutely fascinating piece, but only hints at some of the stories which the interviewee could tell. It would certainly be fascinating to read more of his tales from the industry and have them in print.

The Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book includes not one, but four scenarios. All four have in common the danger of using big magical items—all the more so because two of the four scenarios are for Zero Level characters. The first scenario, ‘The Black Feather Blade’ by Daniel J. Bishop is for First Level characters who are sent to recover the Black Feather Blade of the title, the famed sword of the infamous Bran Corvidu, Feast-Lord of Crows, who was devoted to the Crow God Malotoch and ravaged the Northern Kingdoms a century ago. They may be doing this for greed, or because they are devoted agents of Law or Chaos. The ‘dungeon’ consists of a number of barrow tombs, the Player Characters needing to determine which one belongs to the infamous warlord is buried and giving the dungeon a slightly dispersed feeling. Another difference is that the scenario includes two rival factions also after the Black Feather Blade, which adds some roleplaying opportunities and a bit of friction to the scenario.

Jon Hook’s ‘Evil Reborn’ is for Fourth Level characters. Although this is a standalone adventure, it can also be run as a sequel to Dungeon Crawl Classics #13: Crypt of the Devil Lich. Since the events of that scenario, the devil-lich Chalychia has been trapped for centuries, but that has given the time to devise a means to escape. The Player Characters will have come to the town of Cillamar which has recently been beset by a series of raids that have seen the town’s children stolen. The Player Characters are asked to both rescue them and stop it from happening again, which will take them into frozen stygian wastelands and Chalychia’s tower refuge. This is a good mini-scenario with some fun twists on classic monsters.

The other two scenarios in the Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book are definitely its highlight, presenting as they do variations upon the classic Zero-Level Character Funnel which is a feature of the Dungeon Crawl Classics roleplaying game. In the classic Character Funnel, each player roleplays not one character, but four! Each is Zero Level, hoping to survive an adventure and acquire the ten Experience Points necessary to go up to First Level and gain a Class. Both ‘The Seven Pits of Serzrekan’ and ‘The Hypercube of Myt’ are different in that they are Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG Funnel Tournaments. In these, each player is given a single Zero-Level character and when the character dies, they are out of the tournament and another player takes his place with his own newly created Zero-Level character. Success in the tournament is measured in the number of encounters a Player Character survives. Advice is given on running such tournaments.

Harley Stroh’s ‘The Seven Pits of Serzrekan’ presents just three of the pits and can be run as intended or be played using Third Level Player Characters. The Player Characters are unwitting agents of the warlock Sezrekan who seeks to avert his doom by bringing an end to the multiverse. For this he requires three artefacts—the Crown of the Seraphim, Tyrving, the cursed foebrand, and Tarnhelm, the dragon-helm. Anyone brave enough to wield them gains access to great power, capable of defeating the enemies and servants of Sezrekan, but courts disaster in doing so, for the weapons are terribly dangerous. In terms of traditional fantasy roleplaying adventures, ‘The Seven Pits of Serzrekan’ lacks a conclusion, the point of it being survival rather achieving a particular objective. This makes it difficult to run, even if using Third Level Player Characters, and then there is the logistics of setting up and running a Funnel Tournament—the playing space, the number of players, and so on. Yet there is something amazing in the scope and scale of ‘The Seven Pits of Serzrekan’, supported by a wealth of detail and grim sub-hellish atmosphere, which just makes you go, “Woah!” Sadly, what is included in the Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book is just a snapshot of ‘The Seven Pits of Serzrekan’. It would be brilliant to see the complete version.

The other Funnel Tournament in the Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book is a group effort from ‘The DCCabal’ and unlike ‘The Seven Pits of Serzrekan’, complete. It also has a Science Fiction element. ‘The Hypercube of Myt’ takes place in an artefact of the same name, a tesseract—or hypercube—which is the last remnant of the Keep of Myt, once the estate of grand vizier of the Kingdom of Morr, the chaotic mage Mytus the Mad. The door to the Hypercube opens once a year at the annual Festival of the Fatted Calf. The festival is famous for drawing the curious, the foolhardy, and the incautious from far and wide to ponder the mysteries of the Cube. Inside is a vast space of a limited number of highly detailed locations and there is plenty to be found and interacted with throughout. The rooms and artefacts are weird and wacky and the Judge should have a lot of fun both describing them and what happens as the Player Characters interact with them, as well as portraying some of the actions of the NPCs—including a religious schism between the Player Characters! Unlike ‘The Seven Pits of Serzrekan’, there is definite way of concluding ‘The Hypercube of Myt’ and of getting out of it—there is a definite exit—but perhaps getting to it may well not be quite as obvious as it should be, leading to frustration upon the part of the players and their characters.

Goodman Games’ ‘World Tour’ is a staple of the Gen Con Program series and the Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book is no exception. Since it covers the previous year, this is ‘DCC RPG Worlds Tour 2014’ which has been upgraded into a full colour insert of photographs taken at Gen Con and other events throughout the year, showcasing not just Goodman Games’ Road Crew, but the players and winners of various sessions and tournaments. It is a nice snapshot of the year past and from one year to the next, tracks the doings of the team at Goodman Games. The last few pages of the colour insert showcases the art of both Doug Kovacs and William McAusland. Both of their portfolios are given full space later in the Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book, but in black and white rather than in colour. Both ‘Classic Dungeon Crawl Art Folio: Doug Kovacs’ and ‘Classic Dungeon Crawl Art Folio: William McAusland’ are accompanied by interviews with both artists. Doug Kovacs in ‘D20 Questions: Doug Kovac’ (which originally appeared in Level Up #2, September 2009) and ‘An Interview with Dungeon Crawl Classics Cover Artist Doug Kovacs’ (which originally appeared in Meeple Monthly, July 2014), and William McAusland in an interview new to the Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book.

Naturally, the Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book focuses upon the Dungeon Crawl Classics roleplaying game, but it pays plenty of attention to other titles published by Goodman Games as well. This begins with Brendan Lasalle’s Xcrawl, the roleplaying game of gladiatorial and tournament dungeoneering campaign setting receives attention with a couple of pieces. First with ‘Xcrawl Apocalypse: The Athlete’, a preview of a Class for the post-apocalyptic version of the setting. This is a very physical Class, all about their Strength, Agility, or Stamina, getting in close and grappling—the latter supported by a full table of critical results for grappling attacks and holds. More entertaining is ‘Best Possible Combination’, Lasalle’s short story set in the standard setting for Xcrawl which captures some of the perils and worries of being a participant in the Xcrawl games. This is not only his only piece of fiction in the Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book, the other being ‘Journey to the Hole in the Sky’, which captures the flavour and feel of a Character Funnel in a story rather than in play.

‘Appendix F: The Ythoth Raider’ is ‘An expansion of the Purple Planet Author’s Edition Glossography’ by Harley Stroh for his Edgar Rice Burroughs and Jules Verne inspired Perils on the Purple Planet setting. It describes what is essentially a Prestige Class for the Player Character who succumbs to the power of ythoth mushrooms and becomes a gaunt, blue-skinned raider who searches the multiverse for more of the mushroom. He is an addicted Thrall to the Bloom—and so this piece is more William S. Burroughs than Edgar Rice Burroughs—and will gain mental powers skin to the Magic-User’s spells, though if the powers fail there is the chance that the user’s head will explode!

The post-apocalyptic genre receives a fair degree of coverage in the Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book. This includes two articles for Metamorphosis Alpha: Fantastic Role-Playing Game of Science Fiction Adventures on a Lost Starship, the post-apocalyptic captive world set aboard a massive colony starship, both of which do what their titles say. So Robert Payne’s ‘New Devices for the Starship Warden’, which adds lots of mundane objects like adhesive, musical instruments, and utility belts, whilst ‘Even More Mutations’ by Dieter Zimmerman gives new mutations such as Omniphage which gives the mutant the teeth and digestive tract needed to eat almost anything and Apportation, which enables the Mutant to teleport objects he wants or needs from anywhere within a mile. Both articles are useful additions to Metamorphosis Alpha as more objects and more mutations are always welcome. The coverage of the genre in the Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book is accompanied by a lengthy preview of the forthcoming Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic. Of course, a bit redundant in 2020, but in 2015, this would have really effectively showcased the then forthcoming roleplaying game.

2020 has seen the publication of The Cthulhu Alphabet, but in 2015 it was merely a suggestion. Bradley McDevitt’s ‘The Mythos Alphabet’ was its forerunner, a series of tables such as ‘D is for Deep Ones’ and ‘M is for Madness’, along with ‘A Dozen Demonic Deep One Plots’, ‘Six Fearsome Fanes’, and ‘Six Grisly Decorat ions for a Temple’. This is not the normal sort of thing you see for Lovecraftian investigative horror, but it works as list after list of ideas and suggestions, which a Keeper (or Judge) can grab and add to her game. Again, fun and something to pull off the shelf and consult for inspiration.

Of course, the Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book is not without its silliness and its fripperies. The silliness includes the advice column, ‘Dear Archmage Abby’, in which the eponymous agony aunt gives guidance on life, love, and the d20 mechanics in an entertaining fashion, whilst the fripperies includes artwork for the ‘2015 Mailing Labels’, which capture a bit more of Goodman Games in 2014. The last thing in the Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book is both a frippery and bit of history. This is ‘Judges Guild 1977 Fantasy Catalog’, a complete facsimile of the publisher’s mail order catalogue from 1977. This is a lovely addition to the volume, providing a snapshot of gaming as it was forty years ago, a bit history that nicely bookends the interview with Lou Zocchi at the start of the book.

Physically, the Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book is a thick softback book, which due to the colour inserts in the centre, does feel a bit stiff in the hand. Apart from that, the book is clean and tidily presented, lavishly illustrated throughout, and a good-looking book both in black and white, and in colour.

On one level, the Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book is an anthology of magazine articles, but in this day and age of course—as well as 2015—there is no such thing as the roleplaying magazine. So what you have instead is the equivalent of comic book’s Christmas annual—but published in the summer rather than in the winter—for fans of Goodman Games’ roleplaying games. There is though, something for everyone in the Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book, whether that is lovers of history of the hobby, fantasy roleplayers, devotees of Lovecraftian investigative horror, and more. Some of it is gonzo, perhaps bonkers—the two Tournament Funnels in particular, but overall, the Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book is a bumper book of gaming goodness.

Copies of NIGHT SHIFT: VETERANS OF THE SUPERNATURAL WARS have ALL been delivered to the Kickstarter backers and people are also getting the Kickstarter special Player's Guide.

You can order your own hardcover version at the publisher's website, at https://www.elflair.com/nightshift.html.
You can also buy the PDF at DriveThruRPG.

One of the things that really motivated Jason and me while working on this is music.  Spend any time here and you know I am a big music fan.  

So I thought it might be great to share some of the music that reminded us of the stories we were telling with NIGHT SHIFT and the games we have run.
Up this Friday Night Videoes are songs from my playlist.  Tonight, songs from The Ordinary World!