A small passageway in the back of Room #10 leads down to a rough-cut cave.  

A small glowing stone is stuck into a small pedestal in the middle of the cave.  There is plenty of track around the stone, wearing out the stone ground. The area 5' radius around the stone is untouched. 

The stone is a Chaos Stone, one of the artifacts of the mages.  It is made of pure chaos and its effects are random.

Any character touching the stone rolls a 2d6 and consults the table below.

• 2: The character is transported to a random location within 100 feet of the stone.
• 3-4: The character is granted a temporary penalty to one of their ability scores by -1.
• 5-6: The character is cursed with a minor ailment, such as -3 on attack rolls or saving throws. 
• 7: The stone has no effect.
• 8-9: The character is blessed with a minor boon, such as +3 on all attack rolls or saving throws.
• 10-11: The character gains a powerful boon, such as a +2 bonus to one of their ability scores.
• 12: The character gains a permanent +1 to one ability score determined at random.

A character can only touch the stone once for effect.  Unless noted, the effects last 1d6+6 turns.

The stone is fixed to the pedestal. Any attempts to remove it will cause it to shatter. If the shards are collected they could be sold to a high level magic-user or alchemist for 20-50 gp (1d4+1 x10).

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

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

Polaris Issue 1 was published in the summer of 1987. As the cover states, it is “For Players Of The ‘Call Of Cthulhu’ FRPG’, it is a British fanzine—actually published less than two miles from where I write this review in Birmingham, which came out towards the end of the British fanzine boom of the period and at a time when the highly regarded Dagon fanzine from Carl Ford was going strong. The concerns of the thirty-six-page volume will be familiar to the Keepers of today, and certainly will be familiar to veteran players and Keepers of Call of Cthulhu. Thus, it contains articles about how to create and maintain an atmosphere of fear around the table, examinations of particular Occupations and Mythos tomes, a description of an occult tradition and its parallels with the Cthulhu Mythos. It also contains two scenarios and so edited by Simon Prest, the issue contains quite a lot of content that is both playable and applicable today.

Written for use for Call of Cthulhu, Third Edition and named after H.P. Lovecraft’s short story of the same name, Polaris Issue 1  opens with a very English concern. This is Green and Pleasant Land: The British 1920s-30s Cthulhu Source Pack, Games Workshop’s seminal sourcebook for the United Kingdom. First, in ‘The Lamp of Alhazred’, Andy Smith reviews the book to positive effect, although he does not think much of either Brian Lumley’s short story, ‘The Running Man’ or the scenario which precedes it, ‘Shadows over Darkbank’. Both are notable low points in the supplement, which otherwise still stands up as a very playable affair. ‘Down To Earth With A Bump’ by Peter F. Jeffery is a set of optional rules for handling aircraft damage, whether from another attacking aeroplane or a flying Mythos creature, such as a Byakhee. Originally submitted as an accompaniment to the aviation article in Green and Pleasant Land, the rules were ultimately rejected and printed in the pages of Polaris. They handle the effects of damage as a series of escalating saving throws, with the amount of damage determining the percentile target which if rolled under has the undesired effect. The base roll is to see if the aeroplane crashes, makes a crash landing, a forced landing, or suffers structural damage, the percentile target more or less doubling each time. Supported by several examples, this is both simple and complex at the same time, with lots of dice rolls which would slow down play at the table and it is clear to see why they might not have been accepted for inclusion in Green and Pleasant Land.

Andy Bennison’s ‘The Heat on the Streets’ is the first of the two scenarios in Polaris Issue 1 . It casts the Investigators as private detectives thrown into a classic Film Noir-like case involving a mysterious femme fatale, a missing man, gangsters, Prohibition, and a grumpy police detective. Not only does the police detective not like the Investigators, but he is also not far off retirement, and these are just the most obvious of the scenario’s clichés. Angelica Peach wants her brother, Jonathan, found as their mother is terribly sick. Given some names to contact, the investigation leads to the door The Dragon Club, a restaurant owned by local gangster, Valentino D’Al, and the first of many shootouts in the scenario. The author admits the scenario is linear and it is also heavily plotted. It leans more into the Pulp style of play and is suitable for a group who prefers a more action orientated type of mystery. The Keeper will also need to provide more a few sets of stats for the various NPCs and there are a few areas where she will also need to add names and personalities to various NPCs. It is also never explained who the femme fatale is, but her presence does lead to some nice moments of horror in the scenario.

Under the Keeper’s Lore department, Dave Hallett makes the point that ‘Fear Is The Key’. This looks at ways in which fear can be invoked in Call of Cthulhu and maintained. His advice is to ground the game in the mundane, the engage and keep the attention of the players, involve all of the senses, and so on, before moving on to undermine the Investigators’ sense of reality, and using tools such as false alarms and ambiguity. It is a well-worn path, seen in subsequent articles over and over, but good advice, nonetheless. ‘The Dark Brotherhood’ by Simon Prest is not a regular feature about cults as the title might allude to, but rather a look at Occupations, that, what the Investigator did before he began investigating the unknown and tries to do whilst suffering its travails. Here the Occupation is the Author, with suggestions as to what the author might be writing about, what publications he writes for, and so on. Overall, it provides some useful questions for the player to think about when creating his Investigator.

The subject of ‘Illuminating Manuscripts’ is another perennial favourite of Call of Cthulhu—Mythos tomes, showing even back in 1987, the roleplaying game did not provide much in the way of information about for the Keeper. The particular tome covered by Adrian Jones here is The G’harne Manuscripts, taken from Brain Lumley’s The Burrowers Beneath. The article examines its history and its content, referencing the various works by Lumley where the book has appeared. It is a decent examination of the book with plenty of detail that the Keeper can include should her Investigators want to find and study a copy. Even in 2023, it shows how the Mythos tome is an important part of the game, but there is no definite treatment of them for the roleplaying game. They very much deserve their own supplement. The article adds the spell, Call Shudde-M’ell, and provides guidelines for handling the Chthonian susceptibility to water.

‘The Secret Doctrine’ by Michael S. Carter is an article about Kabbalism, the Jewish esoteric mysticism which for Call of Cthulhu, played a significant role in the scenario The City Without a Name from Curse of the Chthonians. Explored in more detail elsewhere for Call of Cthulhu, the article does not delve too deeply into its subject before making an odd swerve into discussing the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and its dissolution and then back again to link Kabbalism to the Mythos by drawing parallels between the former’s Tree of Life and its circles and Yog-Sothoth of the latter. This includes the travel required by separating spirit from body and journeying onwards to make contact with god. The article avoids the subject of numerology and is thus short, direct, and to the point.

It is also the inspiration for the second scenario in Polaris Issue 1 . ‘The Acolyte Of The Ultimate Gate’ by Simon Prest is set in London, but feels a little like ‘The Vanishing Conjurer’ from The Vanishing Conjurer & The Statue of the Sorcerer and ‘The Hermetic Order of the Silver Twilight’ from Shadows of Yog-Sothoth: A Global Campaign to Save Mankind with a secret cult operating in the city about the enact a terrible ritual. The scenario opens with the Investigators staying at a friend’s house for Christmas, when one of the guests collapses to the floor, and before he dies, thrusts a letter into an investigator’s hand and utters a warning. What dread occurrence is he warning about and what was it that was keeping him working even as the other guests enjoyed the celebrations? The Investigators must overcome doctor-patient privilege to get to the nub of the situation and identify the threat, before finding a way to deal with it. Of the two scenarios in the fanzine, this needs less effort upon the part of the Keeper, the Investigators have greater freedom to explore the situation, and the tone is far more restrained and mannerly. It is thus the better of the two and much easier to add to a  United Kingdom campaign set during the eighteen nineties, nineteen twenties, or nineteen thirties.

Elsewhere in the fanzine, there is a decent piece of poetry from J. Pentalow, The Beast of Yaem’, and as with all fanzines, the adverts capture the feel of hobby at the time of their publication. As the first issue, there is very little in the way of adverts or classified adverts in Polaris Issue 1 , but there is a little dig by author Paul Mason at Games Fair for his own convention, Koancon, which points to the attitudes of the hobby at the time.

Physically, Polaris Issue 1  feels slightly rough and is slightly difficult to read in its choice of typewriter typeface, but this is really only at the beginning of readily available desktop publishing software. Yet, much of the artwork is quite reasonable and the layout is tidy.

It is disappointing that it only ran to the one issue because Polaris Issue 1 is a surprisingly good first issue. There is much that will be familiar to veterans of the Call of Cthulhu, and the various articles would have definitely useful at the time of its publication, if not today. That said, both scenarios could be run today if the Keeper wanted, and likewise, the Keeper could definitely draw inspiration from one or two of the other articles. Overall, Polaris Issue 1 is impressively solid and any Keeper would have been glad to have had this in 1987.

—oOo—
An unboxing of Polaris issue 1 can be found here.

Back in 1966/67 a Doctor Who serial aired called "The Highlanders" and it featured the Second Doctor and introduced us to the soon-to-be companion Jamie McCrimmon, played by Frazer Hines during the Battle of Culloden.

Jaime quickly became a favorite among the fans. In the late sixties, he was often voted the #1 fan favorite, and this also included "the best legs on TV."

One of those fans was author Diana Gabaldon. Who took her love of this episode and crafted her own tale about the Scottish Highlands, the Battle of Culloden, and Time Travel. One of the stars of these novels (and later) series was a Highlander named Jamie Fraser. 

Of course I am talking about the wildly successful "Outlander" novels and TV series.

I have never read the novels, but I have seen the series. It is quite fun really. The time-travel elements are only a plot device, as opposed to something central as in Doctor Who.  Frazer Hines even made a guest appearance. 

Outlander is not the only property inspired by Doctor Who, either directly or indirectly.

"DC's Legends of Tomorrow" (2016-2022) was part of the "Arrowverse" subset of DC Comics TV shows. It dealt with a group of misfit heroes, led by Rip Hunter, played by Arthur "Rory" Darvill (fresh off of Doctor Who). Now DC has always had time travel and Rip is an established character, but the Doctor Who elements here are turned way up.

Douglas Adams who was a script editor and writer for Doctor Who in the Tom Baker years gave us "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy."  Not only was the book inspired by Adams, but Adams was also good friends with Lala "Romana II" Ward, and the Tenth Doctor even name-drops Adam's famous protagonist, Arthur Dent in "The Christmas Invasion."

One could argue that the Borg from Star Trek: The Next Generation are more or less Cybermen.  Comics publisher IDW makes this even clearer with their Doctor Who / Star Trek Crossovers.  It doesn't end there. For years fans speculated that Guinan, Whoopi Goldberg's character, was something akin to a Time Lord.  Same with the Travellers, which now include Wesley Crusher, and the "Supervisors" Tallinn (Star Trek Picard), and Gary Seven (Star Trek The Original Series).  Gary even has a sonic screwdriver-like device. So many in fact that this topic really deserves a post on it's own. Maybe I'll touch more on that later on.  IDW Comics also featured an "Assignment: Earth" comic and the original episode, "Assignment: Earth" which introduces Gary Seven, began with the Enterprise slingshotting to Earth in the 1960.

Bill & Ted, in their movies travels in time and space use a phone booth. You could argue that Rufus, played by George Carlin, was pretty close to a Time Lord.

The shadow of the Doctor is long. Both in their universe and ours.

All images are used with permission from the BBC and are copyrighted 2023 by the BBC.

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

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will be compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. Another popular choice of system for fanzines, is Goodman Games’ Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, seen in titles such as Crawl! One notable feature of the range of fanzines for Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game is that they often support and showcase the settings and campaigns created by their authors. Crawl Under a Broken Moon, for example, details a post-apocalyptic setting which would be collated in the pages of the Goodman Games distributed The Umerican Survival Guide – Core Setting Guide, whilst Ghostlike Crime #01, One of Us, Ninja City, and Black Powder, Black Magic: A ’Zine of Six-Guns and Sorcery Volume 1 all explored familiar genres of their own for the mechanics of the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game.

Similarly, Bronx Beasts Volume 1: Games Rules supports a very familiar genre, one that has much in common with Ninja City. One of the cultural hits of the eighties was the indie comic, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and then for roleplaying, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness roleplaying game, published by Palladium Books. Bronx Beasts provides the rules to create and play bizarre mutant animal characters in wild eighties urban action, much in the mode of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but written of course, for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. In fact, not so much in the mode of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness, but exactly like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness. Republished via a Kickstarter campaign as part of ZineQuest #3 by Bronx Beasts, Bronx Beasts Volume 1: Games Rules provides the rules to create anthropomorphic animals and mutate and modify them, and then the rules for playing them.

Character creation in Bronx Beasts Volume 1: Games Rules is built around a series of tables. Beast Origin is random mutation or deliberate experimentation. Determined randomly, if the former, the player rolls on the Random Mutation Experience Table’, but if the latter, he rolls on the ‘Deliberate Experimentation Origin Table’. The results for this are further tables for ‘Biological Research Origin Experience’, ‘Military Origin Experience’, ‘Criminal Origin Experience’, or ‘Special Interest Origin Experience’. None of these add stat bonuses or other benefits, instead simply creating elements of the Player Character’s background. The ‘Beast Type’ table provides a hundred entries, from aardvark, alligator, and ape to wolf, wolverine, and zebra. None are described, so the player will need to do some further reading, but in the main, these animals are all familiar and easy to read up about. ‘Beast Size’ does modify the character, adjusting Armour Class, Strength and melee check die, Hide and Sneak die, Hit Dice, Movement, and weight. Bigger creatures will have lower Armour Class and Hide and Sneak die, but everything else will be higher.

The player is then free to adjust the ‘Beast Form’ of his animal character, shifting his speech, legs, hands, and looks to be more human-like or more animal-like. Either full, partial, or none, these are randomly determined and adjusted by expending Evolution Points. These can also be spent to change a Beast’s size, for example, to play a larger mouse or smaller elephant, add abilities such as a prehensile tail, natural weapons or natural armour, and better movement. These are not hard and fast rules, so instead the player and Judge will need to work together to create Beast-type character that fits the style and setting of the genre. Otherwise, character creation follows the standard rules for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, although Bronx Beasts Volume 1: Games Rules does have its own ‘Lucky Signs’ table.

Bronx Beasts Volume 1: Games Rules does not provide any new Classes. In fact, a Beast has no Class, and instead, a player can choose between increasing his character’s Base Attack Modifier or Saving Throws Level by Level. In terms of game play, Beasts are Lucky. They always have a bonus on the Lucky Sign and they both benefit and suffer from Fleeting Luck. One way of gaining Fleeting Luck is for the Beast to give into his animalistic urges, typically in socially or intellectually challenging situations. If the player declines the offer of Fleeting Luck in return for his Beast succumbing to his urges, a Beast Check against Personality or Intelligence is required to overcome them. A Player can also do ‘Fur Burn’ or temporarily burn points of Personality or Intelligence to gain a modifier to die rolls. The last big change is to the rules for Armour Class, which is based on Reflex, Beast Size, and any shield carried. Armour is represented by a die and is instead rolled to soak damage. The armour worn is damaged and steps down a die size any time a one is rolled on the Armour Die. The rules for armour use are similar to those for The Umerican Survival Guide – Core Setting Guide, but not as developed.

Bronx Beasts Volume 1: Games Rules ends with an announcement of what is in the next issue. This includes an adventure against a criminal ninja gang and ‘Natural Weapon Crit Tables’ amongst other things. It would have been useful to have had the latter in the pages of Bronx Beasts Volume 1: Games Rules to make it more versatile.

Physically, Bronx Beasts Volume 1: Games Rules is well presented. The artwork has a certain rough quality, but is as cartoonish as you would expect.

As standalone product Bronx Beasts Volume 1: Games Rules can be played as is, but it feels incomplete. Certainly, the ‘Natural Weapon Crit Tables’ would have rounded it out. However, plug the pages of Bronx Beasts Volume 1: Games Rules into another setting or genre and the content comes alive. Take it into the post apocalypse of The Umerican Survival Guide – Core Setting Guide for possible mutant action or throw it down alongside Ninja City for some real new York eighties action, and Bronx Beasts Volume 1: Games Rules feels right at home.

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

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will be compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. Not every fanzine is written with the Old School Renaissance in mind, with more recent fanzines being inspired by roleplaying games that, if not part of the Old School Renaissance, are often adjacent to it. One such roleplaying game is CY_BORG, a cyberpunk purgatory that is modelled upon Mörk Borg, the Swedish pre-apocalypse Old School Renaissance retroclone designed by Ockult Örtmästare Games and Stockholm Kartell and published by Free League Publishing.

CY_OPS Issue.One has the distinction of being the first issue of the first fanzine for CY_BORG. Published by LETTUCE following a successful Kickstarter campaign, it also has the distinction of being one of the smallest fanzines, being only A6 in size. Then, at least in its physical format, it has the distinction of coming with its own cloth patches and its sticker, which is designed to be used to fill in the picture of the empty vest (or possibly body armour) found in ‘PATCHES!’ on pages fifty-seven and fifty-eight of the fanzine and then submitted to the editor to not win a prize. Which one of the three distinctions is actually important, if any of them are, is up to the reader to decide. What is important is that CY_OPS Issue.One provides a lot of support and content for CY_BORG and CY_BORG being a Cyberpunk roleplaying game, a lot of that support is technical in nature. Essentially guns and gear. There is more than that in the pages of the fanzine, but nevertheless, a great deal of it consists of guns and gear. Surprisingly, given that its genre is Cyberpunk and it contains a lot of guns and gear, there are no stats in CY_OPS Issue.One. This lack of stats is also intentional. CY_OPS Issue.One is designed to be player facing, meaning that it can be read by both the player and his character and is thus an in-world artefact in its own right. And doing something as low grade as a physical print fanzine would be both punk and low fi, even anti-corporate if you will.

However, the player-facing nature and the lack of stats in CY_OPS Issue.One raises issues of their own. The lack of stats means that the fanzine is all front and no backend. There is nothing for the Game Master to use readily and easily. So the Game Master will need to supply them. Fortunately, the mechanical simplicity of CY_BORG means that this is relatively simple. The downside to the fact that CY_OPS Issue.One is player-facing means that the fanzine is not necessarily a sourcebook for the roleplaying game that the Game Master can simply take something from and add to her game, ready for her players and their characters to encounter and interact with. Instead much of the fanzine works as a series of prompts that the players can choose from and have their characters go and do something with, whether that is undertake a job, make a purchase, or visit. Which the Game Master will respond to, meaning that CY_OPS Issue.One is an improvisation tool as much as it is a fanzine.

Yet the first article in the fanzine very cleverly helps the Game Master out no matter whether she has a copy in print or PDF. The ‘Classified’ section provides a set of adverts that suggest jobs the Player Characters can get involved in. On one level, the Game Master could go away and create her own, but each classified advert is linked to a published adventure, by a QR code in the printed fanzine and a hyperlink in the PDF. For example, “Alert. Reward available for any information on missing C.A.U Board members. Rogue crazed experiment on the loose. Ignore its lies.” links to the scenario, Cybergorgon. This is clever and subtle and nicely done, serving not only as a series of in-game adverts, but adverts for other authors’ adventures.

Only the first article in the fanzine makes use of this device. Elsewhere, ‘BREAKING INTO A CREDITS TELLER MACHINE’ is a guide to robbing every cash dispenser in the city and ensuring the Player Characters have a ready supply of petty cash until some corpo notices and puts in a fix, whilst ‘Know Your Enemy – Rehabilitation Frame’ describes a ghastly piece of ‘police brutality technology’, a prisoner mounted in a remote controlled drone forced to conduct pacification duties and who cannot be freed without setting off the tamper sensors and crushing the captive. Gear comes in a range of forms. The first is in ‘AD BY UNINF3CT3D_R4P3RD0C_666’, who is selling anti-nanite devices, such as the ‘TL.5HAd3s.rcd’ eye mod which visualises nanoswarms and ‘SCREECH_E-Z’ which encrypts your audio and text outputs against nanite detection. There are services too, the best of which is ‘BOTS.4.HIRE’, which offers bots for hire, the payment being a portion of any job undertaken, though a deposit is required if there is the possibility of the bot being damaged. Several sample bots are detailed and nicely illustrated. ‘Bounties’ provide a wide range of targets for the Player Characters to take down, for example, ‘DOLLY _XD’, a pleasure cydroid gone rogue, whilst ‘NuRelics’ describes items and things which the Player Characters could find, retrieve, or steal, such as ‘0x2020’, a master timepiece whose hands stopped at the moment of thermonuclear impact. Doubtless, there are collectors willing to pay to have them. ‘Tech Request’ gets inventively weird with its devices and weapons. For example, the ‘Head_Cannon’, unnervingly, really does shoot heads at targets, whilst the massive ‘Dreihander’ is a sword so big it has to be supported by a mechanical arm all of its own grafted onto the wielder!

Longer pieces such as ‘[Dispatch from an Abandoned Terminal]’ suggest a hacker at work, using a combination of social hacking and subtle hacking to free the bonds of A.I.; ‘Cold Storage Club’ a venue to frequent and an event, a battle of the bands to get involved in—whether as participants, support, or protection; and ‘Rumours About STNGR’ takes the reader into the underground world of street races to talk about “The Queen of the Streets”, known for her electronic eye-scrambling vehicle and her rumoured generosity as well as her determination to win every race. Their length means they are not quite as easy to bring into play. Lastly, ‘Cydonia Hanging Gardens’ describes a hanging footbridge which has been taken over and turned into a venue of sorts, which seems to be a mycobotanist’s dream gone wild, a sterilised, air gapped bar where lichen and other plant life is allowed to grow unfettered and free of the contaminants rife in the rest of the city. The question is, is it just a bar or is there something going on there? And just what are the staff growing and why?

Physically, CY_OPS Issue.One is presented in the Doom Punk style of both CY_BORG and Mörk Borg, though leaning more heavily into the punk style of the former. Consequently, it has a very busy, frazzled and fractured style, though it is not quite as artful as the core rulebook and is thus easier to read.

Ultimately, the contents of CY_OPS Issue.One do need a bit of effort upon the part of the Game Master to bring into play. Some, like the ‘Classified’ section and their linked scenarios are much easier to use than others, but there still is a wide range of content to pick and choose from. This though, is all for the players and their characters to pick and choose from, and for the group wanting more player facing, player driven play, CY_OPS Issue.One is a solid option.

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

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

Love Letters from the Baker House Band is not a fanzine about one author’s campaign or his thought upon gaming, but instead a collaborative project put together by the various members of a long running gaming group hosted by the games designers, Vincent and Meguey Baker. Funded via Kickstarter as part of Zine Quest #2, its content includes art, reviews, and game design firmly placed in the Indie style or storytelling style of roleplaying, which should be no surprise given that Vincent Baker is the designer of Apocalypse World, the 2010 roleplaying game whose Powered by the Apocalypse mechanics have been adapted to numerous roleplaying games such as Matrons of Mystery and Cartel: Mexican Narcofiction Powered by the Apocalypse to drive strong storytelling. However, there is relatively little that is specifically for Powered by the Apocalypse roleplaying games in the pages of the fanzine, and what there is, is easily adapted to the roleplaying game of the reader’s choice.

Love Letters from the Baker House Band opens with Roxanne Gariepy’s tribute to the group, ‘Love Makes a Family’, depicting a group of misfits—the characters if not necessarily, but probably as much, their players—who come together (to play) and are bound by love. Including a bird and a sentient ‘pile of laundry’ and nicely illustrated, this captures the feel of a gaming group sharing experiences and coming together as a family and hints what it is like being a member of the Baker House Band. The gaming group’s influence is also seen in Evan Janssen’s ‘How Gaming at the Bakers’ Helped Me Design Better Video Games’, which recounts how his experience playing and running roleplaying games influenced and changed how he designs video games. Of course, roleplaying and Dungeons & Dragons have been a strong influence upon video games and especially video roleplaying games, but here the author uses the languages and the tools used by a Game Master to improve how he designs video games. The parallels between the two are fascinating and highlight how the skills used in gaming can be useful beyond its confines.

The first gaming content in the fanzine is ‘Barbara’s Book Club & Motorcycle Gang’ by Alix Janssen. This is both a book club and hardcore motorcycle gang of tough women in crisp print dresses, headscarves, heels, and big motorcycles who read and ride. Armed with their rides, their books, their big handbags containing all manner of useful items, the ladies ride the apocalypse bringing manners and a helpful attitude wherever they go. Obviously written for use with Apocalypse World, but pointers and tags rather than stats, this gang would fit into most post-apocalyptic settings, but also a great many other settings if the Game Master wants a memorable set of eccentric old biddies. ‘Tales of Timberwind’ by Elliot Baker and Tovey Baker introduces an anthropomorphic cosy woodland setting in the style of Mouse Guard or Root: The Tabletop Roleplaying Game, which sounds intriguing, but leaves the reader wanting more. However, to learn more, the reader will need to sign up for the family’s Patreon.

Tovey Baker’s other contribution to Love Letters from the Baker House Band is ‘Hvanrost City’. This is a setting for Blades in the Dark, the roleplaying game crime and gang activity set in a Dickensian industrial city. Notably, this city is powered by pipes filled with electric eels or leeches, but it is also ghost haunted and surrounded by a toxic mist which rolls off the sea and changes creatures into giant mindless animals. There is plenty to work with here for the Game Master to use the city for his own campaign.

The highlight and the bulk of Love Letters from the Baker House Band consists of Meguey Baker’s ‘Baker House LARP’. Each year, as a teacher, she has hosted a LARP for her teenage students over a five-day period. This is full of advice on how to set up, run, adjudicate, and get the most out of such event, along with advice and commentary based on her experiences. There is a great deal to work through here and perhaps could have been better presented—likely as a separate guide for other educators—but it is fascinating to how this is done. For most readers, this will be an interesting article rather than a useful one, but for the teacher, or someone with a similar role, looking to host something along the same lines, this is to be recommended.

‘The Care and Keeping of Waifs, Strays, and Castaways – A Practical Guide’ by Adin Klotz is a set of pointers and warnings that works as a narrative too, whilst Micah’s ‘Legend of Mandoom’s Leg’ is a short, four-page comic which hilariously turns a Dirty Harry style confrontation aboard a school bus on its head with an ‘Unnatural Lust Transfixion’ Powered by the Apocalypse-style move. It is funny and weird, but captures that moment a desperate dice roll can send a situation in a completely different direction with an unexpected move. ‘PBTA reviews from the BHB’ by Josh Savoie reviews six Powered by the Apocalypse roleplaying games including Dungeon World and Masks: A New generation, and is a good overview of some of the best of the very many roleplaying games available using its mechanics.

Josh Savoie also provides the Powered by the Apocalypse move, ‘Last Breath’. It is made when a Player Character is reduced to zero Hit points and has the opportunity to utter his last words. It begins by asking the other players round the table a number of questions, the bonus to the roll being determined by their answers. The Player Character is going to die, but this gives him one last action, whether glorious or helpful. It is pleasingly dramatic. ‘Shadow Magic’ by Annika Sturmer is more straightforward and designed for long term play, providing a means of teleportation or travel via the shadows, though it is not without its perils. Failure gives the result, “You bring something with you or leave something behind that you did not intend.”, which is again a dramatically great result. This move would work in a number of genres, whether fantasy, superheroes, or urban fantasy. It would be good to see this developed into a suite of moves rather than just the one here.

Love Letters from the Baker House Band comes to a close just as it started with tribute. Again, this is to the family and the gaming group as a family. Sebastian’s ‘D&D Day’ captures the feel and joy of play in an all-day session which runs to midnight. It is a lovely memory, which perhaps wistfully, as adults we miss a great deal.

Physically, Love Letters from the Baker House Band is a lovely fanzine. It needs an edit here or there, but is decently presented.

Love Letters from the Baker House Band is a snapshot of a gaming group and the pleasure its members take in gaming together and being in each other’s company. There are useful things to be found in its pages, especially for educator wanting to host a LARP for his students, but those are not necessarily what this fanzine is about. As a fanzine, Love Letters from the Baker House Band achieves a rare sense of warmth and feeling that radiates from the title on the cover to the very last page—and that is what sets it apart.

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

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. Another popular choice of system for fanzines, is Goodman Games’ Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, such as Crawl! and Crawling Under a Broken Moon. Some of these fanzines provide fantasy support for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, but others explore other genres for use with Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. One such fanzine is the aforementioned Crawling Under A Broken Moon.

Crawling Under A Broken Moon Fanzine Issue No. 1 was published in in June, 2014 by Shield of Faith Studios. It introduced the post-apocalyptic setting of Umerica and Urth, which would go on to be presented in more detail in The Umerican Survival Guide – Core Setting Guide, now distributed by Goodman Games. This provides the setting’s first details of a world brought about after a rogue object from deep space passed between the Earth and the Moon and ripped apart time and space, leaving behind a planet which would recover and it inhabitants ruled by savagery, cruel sorcery, and twisted science. ‘Welcome to Umerica’ introduces the setting and the ideas behind it properly, exploring its themes—the world is fragmented and strange, very little is new, and advanced science is as rare and as frightening as powerful sorcery, and presents the setting’s first table. This is ‘Table DDD: Found Item Condition Table’, which enforces the idea that very little is new. Then it quickly leaps into the first of the setting’s character Classes. This is the Technologist, which is good at Tinkering, including with weapons, robots, computers, and other devices. He gains different bonuses for tinkering with each depending upon his Alignment. For example, the Class has better bonuses for Weapon Tinkering rather than Computer Use, Vehicle Repair, or General Tech. The Class also receives a ‘Use Alien Tech’ Die which works similar to that of the Action Die in Dungeon Crawl Classics, and again, this varies according to the Player Character’s Alignment. The Technologist Class is rounded out with a set of tables to roll on whenever a Tinkering check is fumbled.

Part-engineer/part-repairman/part-scientist, the Technologist is a really good Class. It gives the Player Character a great deal to do and the player lots of ways in which to interact with an aspect of the setting. In general, Player Characters in the setting know what technology is, and even if not everyone knows how any one item actually works, they often have an idea of how it is operated. The Technologist takes this a step further and embraces it fully.

‘Weapons of the Wastelands’ draws from articles previously presented in Crawl! No. 8: Firearms! to provide rules for their use in the Umerica setting. It breaks guns down into four eras—primitive, Western-era, Modern-era, and Futuristic—and provides rules for gunsmithing for each era as well as a table of weapons in the game. Like much of the rest of Crawling Under A Broken Moon Fanzine Issue No. 1, these will work in most Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game settings.

The ’Twisted Menagerie’ is a short bestiary of creatures and species for the setting and has four entries. The Sharkhana are descendants of humanoid shock troops engineered by an alien race and since abandoned after their creators were wiped out by a virus. They now live a nomadic existence, driven by hunger rather than anything else. So, their reaction to anyone else will depend upon whether or not they have fed lately! The ‘Debris Elemental, Lesser and Greater’ is a Trash Titan, comprised entirely of rubble and rubbish, which can be several storeys tall and stalk the ruined cities of Umerica hunting the living. They have slightly different abilities depending what rubbish they are made of. For example, if rubbery, they have extra reach for their melee attacks, whilst if wrapped in wire, can lash out with it. Sentrybots can be programmed for different purposes, such as pest control or crime patrol. The most fun use is as a programmed bodyguard, the Sentrybot attaching itself to a random Human and protecting that person at all costs, but refusing to take orders. Imagine the fun the Judge can have with this? The last monster is the Lobstrosity, an alien crustacean which eats processed wood (which is one way to get rid of MDF!) and is difficult to stop given its size. However, if one of them can be killed, its meat can be turned into a stew that grants a special ability, which depends upon the colour of the Lobstrosity. For example, a Lobstrosity with a black carapace can spray acid, but a stew made from its meat is the equivalent to imbibing a potion of Giant Strength. All but the three of the four entries in this section are relatively easy to use and introduce to a post-apocalyptic setting, lending themselves readily to Player Character involvement. The Sharkhana are suitable for a post-apocalyptic setting, but the Judge will need to work harder to bring them into play.

Lastly, ‘Interesting Places To Die’ presents locations for the Player Characters to explore. Here there is just the one, ‘Blooms Fashions: a store with clothes to die for’. It describes a fashion store where the mannequins are actually undead underneath the plastic of their bodies, or rather ‘Mannekills’ created by a necromancer operating out of the shopping mall. It is a fun, dark little encounter which is easily added to the campaign and further developed by the Judge.

Physically, Crawling Under A Broken Moon Fanzine Issue No. 1 is serviceably presented. It is a little rough around the edges, but overall, it is a decent affair.

The problem with Crawling Under A Broken Moon Fanzine Issue No. 1 is that much of its contents have been represented to a more professional standard in the pages of The Umerican Survival Guide – Core Setting Guide, so it has been superseded. There are several ways in which the Umerica setting can be explored and the fanzine on an individual and thus piecemeal basis is probably not the best. However, this is where the setting has its origins and from here future issues whose content has not been included in the pages of The Umerican Survival Guide – Core Setting Guide can be looked at—and often looked at in more detail than can be done in a review of that book. Nevertheless, Crawling Under A Broken Moon Fanzine Issue No. 1 is a tentative, yet promising beginning to the author’s exploration of Umerica.

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

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

Zine of Wondrous Power Volume 01, Issue 01 was published in September 2019, originally by Highmoon Press, but now by Lightspress Media. It comes with the tag line, “Play / Design / Create/ Discuss Roleplaying Games” aims to provide short essays, small games, new rules and settings, fiction, and ideas, emphasising roleplaying games as a hobby and art form. The issue does include some gameable content in the form of ‘1d6 Items Found in the First Room of a Dungeon, Six out-of-the-ordinary items found right as adventurers enter a dungeon to fuel further adventures.’ This is a table of items to be found in a dungeon and so would work with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition as much as it would Old School Essentials or The King of Dungeons. There are some entertaining items on the list such as a burning lamp still found gripped in the hand of a dead adventurer which is actually fueled by the wielder’s life force or the constantly talking skull of a goblin which promises to guide the Player Characters to where the goblin tribes have hidden their hoards of gold and gems. These are inventive, seriously play affecting items that will influence and change how the opening scenes and more are likely to be played out as the Player Characters begin their exploration of the dungeon… They are all systems agnostic so easily adapted to the rules systems of the Game Master’s choice. However, this table and its contents are not only the issue’s only games content, but they do also feel like afterthought, tucked away at the back of the issue.

The bulk of Zine of Wondrous Power Volume 01, Issue 01 instead very much focuses on t0he ‘Discuss Roleplaying Games’ part of that tag line with the lengthy, ‘31 Days Thinking About Games’. This is inspired by #RPGaDay, the annual event first run by David F Chapman in 2014. Throughout the month of August, Chapman asks a question—or in more recent times sets a prompt—intended to encourage people to think and discuss roleplaying games and their ideas and thoughts about them. In the almost a decade since it began, Chapman has asked over two hundred and fifty questions. ‘31 Days Thinking About Games’ in particular, is inspired by #RPGaDay2019. Rather than asking questions, Chapman posed prompts, beginning with ‘First’ and ‘Last’, but taking in terms as diverse as ‘Space’, ‘Ancient’, ‘Guide’, ‘Vast’, ‘Love’, and more along the way. ‘31 Days Thinking About Games’ collects the author’s answers.

The author begins with ‘First’ and his first Gen Con, reflecting upon his time there, and it is a subject he returns to, not as an attendee, but rather experiencing Gen Con 2019 vicariously through social media. He highlights the similarity between this and his last experience, in games such as Dungeons & Dragons, but focuses on the changes between the two, how much was unfamiliar to him—cosplay, the role of Critical Role, yet comes to conclusion that this is a good thing. In response to ‘Mystery’ he discusses its role in fantasy games, how the role of the Dungeon Master made him powerful because she held all the information that she could reveal to her players little by little almost as if they had to earn it. That was the past, whereas now he disagrees with this method and wants to see how the players and the characters use the information they learn. For ‘Guide’ he suggests that the role for Game Master is similar to that of the tour guide, drawing parallels between the roles after having done research on how to become a tour guide. This is more interesting in discovering what the role of the tour guide is, because as gamers, we have a good idea of what the role of the Game Master entails.

Elsewhere ‘Door’ allows the author to explore a little of the city of Cincinnati with its stairs that go up hills to nowhere, castle tower-like water towers, and doors on the side of hills and wonder what it would be like as a setting for Changeling: The Dreaming, a roleplaying game that is a personal favourite. It would be fascinating for the author to follow up this one entry in the fanzine with articles dedicated to a version of Cincinnati for Changeling: The Dreaming, or indeed, an urban fantasy RPG. There are some lovely memories too, such as for ‘Surprise’ when a player flummoxed the author by running away from an encounter with a dragon and working out how to get the player involved in the adventure, and for ‘Love’, how a love triangle played out in a campaign. These memories are the longer pieces in the fanzine and given the range of prompts that the author is responding to, the entries can be hit or miss, but these are certainly the most engaging.

Physically, Zine of Wondrous Power Volume 01, Issue 01 is decently presented. The layout is clean, tidy, and very lightly illustrated. The wraparound cover is thematically appropriate.

Zine of Wondrous Power Volume 01, Issue 01 is a ruminative affair that does not really offer very much for the casual gamer. There are some nice ideas in here for Changeling: The Dreaming, for example, but this a personal fanzine about a gamer coming out of the ‘deep freeze’—the long period when a gamer is not playing—and finding his way back into the hobby. What makes it interesting is that it is inspired by a global roleplaying event, that is, #RPGaDay. The responses of most participants are posted online to be lost to the churning morass of social media. Consequently, it is rare to see such responses written and even in a small way, recorded for posterity. Zine of Wondrous Power Volume 01, Issue 01 records the almost random thoughts of a gamer coming back to the hobby and responding to what he finds. In doing so, Zine of Wondrous Power Volume 01, Issue 01 captures an experience that many a gamer goes through, but rarely write down.

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

The Miskatonic University Library Association brand is no more, alas, but what we have in its stead is the Miskatonic Repository, based on the same format as the DM’s Guild for Dungeons & Dragons. It is thus, “...a new way for creators to publish and distribute their own original Call of Cthulhu content including scenarios, settings, spells and more…” To support the endeavours of their creators, Chaosium has provided templates and art packs, both free to use, so that the resulting releases can look and feel as professional as possible. To support the efforts of these contributors, Miskatonic Monday is an occasional series of reviews which will in turn examine an item drawn from the depths of the Miskatonic Repository.

—oOo—
Name: Ten.Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: 초ㅑ

Setting: A forest
Product: One-hour scenarioWhat You Get: Seven-page, 892.62 KB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Co-operation is the key to survival, sacrifice the key to getting outPlot Hook: Awake with a stranger, a vending machine with ten holes, and a countdown...Plot Support: Staging advice and recommended listening.Production Values: Decent.
Pros# Two-on-one, one Keeper, two Investigators, one session scenario# Claustrophobic confrontation with consumerism# Terrifyingly nihilistic hour with ubiquitous street furniture # Confronts the Investigators with horrible choices# Weirdly Japanese one-shot# Nyctophobia# Apotemnophobia# Eisoptrophobia# Zidongshophobia

Cons# Needs a slight edit# All but impossible to add to a campaign# Non-Mythos scenario
Conclusion# Short, but weird, creepy, and ultimately sharp dose of J-Horror# Starkly bleak set-up leads to a simple set of choices as to who acts, who survives, and who works together

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

The Miskatonic University Library Association brand is no more, alas, but what we have in its stead is the Miskatonic Repository, based on the same format as the DM’s Guild for Dungeons & Dragons. It is thus, “...a new way for creators to publish and distribute their own original Call of Cthulhu content including scenarios, settings, spells and more…” To support the endeavours of their creators, Chaosium has provided templates and art packs, both free to use, so that the resulting releases can look and feel as professional as possible. To support the efforts of these contributors, Miskatonic Monday is an occasional series of reviews which will in turn examine an item drawn from the depths of the Miskatonic Repository.

—oOo—
Name: Lost LightPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Michał Pietrzak

Setting: A forest
Product: ScenarioWhat You Get: Twenty-four page, 892.62 KB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: The mystery of a lighthouse inland...Plot Hook: Discovery of a lighthouse in the forest!Plot Support: Staging advice, three handouts, one map, one NPC, and four Mythos monsters.Production Values: Decent.
Pros# One-on-one, one Keeper, one Investigator, one session investigation# Nice sense of the weird and unworldly# Another lighthouse scenario, but not at sea!# Three threats not one, separate to each other# Three separate threats provide flexibility# With effort could be interwoven# Strongly plotted# Xanthophobia# Angelophobia# Hotatsosphobia! Who knew?

Cons# Needs a slight edit# Strongly plotted# Another lighthouse scenario# Threats separate with no advice to interweave them together# Using one threat means the other threats cannot really be used for that player
Conclusion# Strongly plotted one-on-one scenario which offers three different threat options# Another lighthouse scenario for Call of Cthulhu, but weirder, more unworldly, and more flexible than usual

As prophesised long ago, in the early years of the twenty-first century, a rogue object from outer space struck the Moon. This triggered a shockwave that fractured the very surface of the Earth and set off the Great Cataclysm. That though is only one story to explain the state that the land of Umerica finds itself in. There are many others, but if the inhabitants of cannot agree about how this world came about, they can agree that is no longer like that depicted in the archives of Hollywood. It is a world of savagery, cruel sorcery, and twisted science, with technology scavenged from the ruins of the past, stolen from aliens from outer space or other dimensions, or inspired by Hollywood and bodged together from scrap. Lying between the Northern Ice Wall and the Amazonian Sea, Umerica is a barren land, dry and dusty, crisscrossed by the shattered highways of the past upon which cars rust and decay, but there are green places to be found, around which cluster settlements and farms. There are larger metropoli too, some still broken and rusting ruins, home to marauding gangs and worse, but others have been reclaimed and fortified through great technology or wizardry—if not both. The greatest of these is the Citadel of Scrap, a marvel of pre-Cataclysm splendour that actually has running water and electricity, sewers, paved streets, and broadcast entertainment in many of its districts.
Located between the Misery and Kansan Rivers, the Citadel of Scrap is also where the train lines run by the various Train barons all meet, making it an important trade hub. The Citadel of Scrap is governed by the Three Royals, technologists and wizards who from the headquarters in the Growling Tower, control the God in the Pit which sits walled off in the centre of the city. Many gods are worshipped in the Citadel of Scrap, including Buddy O’Burger, the Clown God of Feasting, Customer Service, and Cannibalism whose burger franchises can be found across Umerica, Elmos, the puppet host of eternal pain and suffering, Kizz, the mighty intergalactic god of rock and roll, Nuka, the gentle lady of the Holy Glow and mother of all Mutants, Petrolex, deity of Fuel and Fire, and Santa, the giving god. The city also welcomes visitors, but only if they have money! The Ruins, where all of the city’s rubbish is dumped, is a haven for scavengers prepared to put up with decades of refuse dumped on old, broken buildings, but is the source of the tiny brightly coloured plastic bricks which snap together and the city’s very wealthy use from which to build their homes. Beyond the walls of the Citadel of Scrap lie the Burning Lands of Yellowstone, a mixture of churning lava and boiling mud fields; to the south the Glowing Dome of Dinotastic Park, five miles high, two hundred wide, and nobody has ever been inside; to the north, the Floating Iron Isles stand on Lake Mishigun, said to be home to Fairyfolk; to the far west is Old Seattle and the Necromancers of the Space Needle; and to the south-east in Floor-Da is the Kingdom of the False Gods, a realm ruled by mad mascot gods! This is the setting for Umerica, a Gonzo Post-Apocalyptic Campaign Setting and Sourcebook for use with the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game.

The Umerican Survival Guide – Core Setting Guide is published by Shield of Faith Studios and distributed by Goodman Games. Based on articles which originally appeared in issues of the fanzine, Crawling Under a Broken Moon, it presents a post-apocalyptic setting which combines technology and Science Fiction, gods and magic, aliens and mutants, robots and cyborgs, steam trains and Mad Max-style scrap vehicles, and more. It comes complete with new Classes, rules for combat, mutations, vehicle construction and combat, a pantheon of weird gods and their magics, plus lots and lots of tables to help the Game Master run a campaign. It is important to note that The Umerican Survival Guide – Core Setting Guide is really compatible with Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic, Goodman Games’ own post-apocalyptic roleplaying game. Or rather, they are compatible mechanically, but not tonally or thematically. The Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game very much takes its cue from Gamma World with its Player Characters as Stone Age tribesmen who have little grasp of technology, but experimenting with found items being very much part of the play. However, in the setting of The Umerican Survival Guide, the Player Characters know what technology is, and even if not everyone knows how any one item actually works, they often have an idea of how it is operated. This is not to say that the Stone Age tribesmen might not be found in some forgotten corner of Umerica, but theirs is a world where Clarke’s Third Law—‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic’—applies and that is not the case with Umerica. Of course, this does mean that the Game Master will need a copy of the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game to run The Umerican Survival Guide – Core Setting Guide.

The Umerican Survival Guide – Core Setting Guide really begins and ends with the Citadel of Scrap, being all but bookended by sections devoted to the city. The first, in the opening section of the book, is done as an in-game travelogue delivered by a citizen as he guides visitors round the city. The last chapter in the book, ‘Secrets of the Citadel’ expands upon this for the benefit of the Game Master’s eyes only. For the most part, this is given as specific background content, such as explaining the source for each Buddy O’Burger franchise’s yummy, yummy meat or who the Three Royals are, what they are capable of, and how to bring them into play. For one of the biggest secrets in the setting, however, just exactly is the God in the Pit, is left up to the Game Master to decide, but she is given a handful of suggestions as to what it might be. The expanded descriptions of various districts in the Citadel of Scrap are accompanied by two or three adventure seeds, and more can be found throughout the book. The Umerican Survival Guide only focuses on the Citadel of Scrap in this fashion, leaving the earlier locations described earlier in the book to be detailed in other supplements,* but city itself is interesting and the book provides a lot for the Game Master to work with. Further, more detailed plot seeds can be found in the preceding chapter, the ‘GM Section’, which examines some of the themes of the setting—the world is fragmented and strange, very little is new, and advanced science is rare and as frightening as powerful sorcery, as well as offering ‘A Few interesting Places to Die’ for the benefit of the Players Characters.

* In fact, many of them are actually more detailed in issues of Crawling Under a Broken Moon.

The Umerican Survival Guide – Core Setting Guide offers nine new Classes as well as rules for creating Zero Level Player Characters suitable for the classic Character Funnel of the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. The Cleric of the Wasteland is relatively little different to the Cleric Class of the core rules, though of course, he has access to a pantheon of some sixteen gods particular to the Umerica setting. The Cyborg gains partial protection from his implants and upgrades at certain Levels, such as a Weapon Port, Rapid Response Servos, or Spring-Loaded Legs, and can self-repair with his Jury Rig die. The Feral Urchin can be a Wildchild which transforms into a mini-beast, a Slinger who is a deadly shot, or a Nerd who is good with language and technology. The Fossorian is burrowing humanoid, much like a badger, has Vicious Claws and is good at Tunnelling. This Class is similar to the Dwarf in Dungeon Crawl Classics, but with claws rather than beard. The Gray is the classic alien of UFOlogy, assigned to Earth by the Gray Directorate for purposes only each Gray knows. The Gray can speak any language, is vulnerable to iron and at various Levels receives Tech Gifts from home like a Holographic Guise or a Hovering Disc. The Mutant has mutant abilities and a pool of Glow Points which can be spent to modify rolls made to use his abilities. At later Levels, the Mutant can force Spontaneous Mutagenesis to gain more mutations. The Petrol Head—much like the earlier Feral Urchin, is inspired by Mad Max—has an Ace Die to roll when driving due to his supernatural bond with his vehicle, as a Fuel Hound can sniff out petrol, and begins play with a battered buggy or motorcycle. The Robot comes from a nearby dimension or timeline and can either be a Domestic/Companion, Labour/Maintenance, or Security/Military model. Again, at various Levels, the Robot can be upgraded, components including Flight Vents, Emergency Medical Unit, and Nth Dimension Non-Euclidean Logic Generator. The Scavenger is good at finding useful scrap and is in general similar to the Thief Class. The Technologist is good at Tinkering whether that is with weapons, robots, computers, and other devices, although his actual skill in each area varies according to his Alignment. The Technologist Class is accompanied by a set of tables to roll on whenever a Tinkering check is fumbled. The Wasteland Warrior is the equivalent to the Warrior Class, but also receives an additional Mighty Deed, ‘Armour Mastery’, which works with the new armour rules in The Umerican Survival Guide. Lastly, the Wizard of the Wasteland is similar to the Wizard from Dungeon Crawl Classics and must take a supernatural patron to cast spells. Overall, the range of Classes are fun and engaging and help bring the setting’s genre into play, even where the changes are relatively minor.

The Umerican Survival Guide – Core Setting Guide introduces significant changes to combat. Although Armour Class is retained, it is no longer modified by armour worn. Instead, a Player Character gains an Armour Die which is rolled to reduce damage suffered and can be increased by wearing better armour or even layering armour. The rules for guns are kept simple, but allow for aiming—this increases the Action Die rolled to attack, and automatic fire—more dice are rolled for damage and more ammunition is expended. There are rules too for gunsmithing and a variety of different grenades, as well as new fumble and critical tables for both firearms and grenades. The equipment focuses on arms and armour, detailing a wide range, including options cheap and/or damaged goods.

The major addition to The Umerican Survival Guide – Core Setting Guide is vehicles and vehicle combat. Operating a vehicle requires a Vehicle Control Roll, especially when performing a stunt or avoiding a hazard, and not every Player Character is necessarily going to be trained to drive. Failure can result in the roll of a Wipeout Die and consultation of the Wipeout Results table, just like critical results in combat. A driver can attempt to pull stunts, the player wagering a penalty, ranging between one and five, on the Vehicle Control Roll which if the roll is failed, also increases the Action Die rolled on the Wipeout Results table. Again, the rules are kept fairly simple and easy to use, in this case, there is a pleasing balance between risk and consequences. There is no list of possible stunts and their possible penalties, so player and Game Master alike will need to improvise. Supporting the vehicle rules are stats for all sorts of vehicles from bicycles and buggies to ultralight aircraft and gyrocopters—very Mad Max, as well as trains and mechs! The latter range in height between ten and twenty feet, and are either light or heavy, and may be used labour or military purposes. All of the vehicles are kept at a low scale rather than being over the top designs capable of inflicting hundreds of points of damage. The damage their weapons would do to a Player Character is deadly enough without overdoing it. One factor limiting vehicle use is fuel supply and the Player Characters may have to spend some of their time hunting and bartering for fuel, especially if they have a Petrolhead amongst their number.

For the Wizard of the Wasteland and other spell-casting characters there is a table for ‘Mercurial Magic of the Wastelands’, whilst the ‘Grimoire of the Wastes’ adds an array of new spells specific to Umerica. These include Curse of Life which can age a target, Tech Jinx, which causes a device to malfunction or go out of control, or Former Glory, which restores an item to its previous condition. For the Cleric of the Wasteland and the Wizard of the Wasteland, there is also a long list of gods and patrons, each with their own spells, powers granted when they are invoked, and Patron Taint when that fails. All are fantastically themed, matching the gonzo feel of the setting. For example, Kizz, the mighty intergalactic god of rock and roll grants the spells Kizz My Axe, Mosh Pit, and Aspect of Kizz, all inspired by a certain rock group to very silly, thematic effect, and this applies to the other Gods and Patrons too.

As per other post-apocalyptic settings, The Umerican Survival Guide – Core Setting Guide includes rules for mutations, which work with the Mutant Character Class in particular. If a Player Character encounters a sufficiently potent radiation source or other form of mutagen, a Fortitude Save must be rolled. If this is failed, the Player Character mutates, although a Cleric can Lay on Hands to prevent this from happening. Mutations can be bestial, botanical, altered biology, freak abilities, or more, and there are table of possible mutations for each of the six categories. For example, the ‘Testudine’ entry on the Bestial Table gives a Player Character tortoise-like features, increased Armour Class, but reduced Initiative, and has a chance of also giving him an armoured carapace, better Stamina and a longer life, as well as slowed speed and poorer Agility. The rules for mutations here differ greatly from those given in the Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, granting straightforward effects which come into play as soon as they are rolled, whereas in many cases, those in the Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game work like spells in the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game and so have to be rolled for each time to determine their effect they are used. As much fun as the mutation are in the Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, those presented here are simpler and not necessarily as complex to bring into play.

Physically, The Umerican Survival Guide – Core Setting Guide is clean and tidy. The artwork varies in quality and most of it is decent enough. It does not have an index, though there is a list of tables. The former is very disappointing in this day and age, but the latter makes up for it a little.

There are four issues with The Umerican Survival Guide – Core Setting Guide. One is that it was compiled from a series of fanzines and it does feel like it in places, a series of parts put together rather than a roleplaying game designed from the start. So, the setting of Umerica does not feel like a complete whole, not helped by the lack of a good overview of the setting. However, everything works together and it is coherent and easy to grasp. The second issue is a lack of maps. There is no map of Umerica or worse, given how much attention is paid to it in the book, the Citadel of Scrap. The inclusion of such maps would perhaps have helped with the first problem, bringing the setting together and making it easier for the Game Master to grasp. The third issue is a lack of scenario which would have given the Game Master something to run and given her an idea of what sort of adventures it is designed to do. That said, it includes plenty of scenario hooks for her to develop. Lastly, a bibliography would have been nice to have seen the author’s inspirations.

Weirdly, what The Umerican Survival Guide – Core Setting Guide is reminiscent of is the roleplaying game Rifts, published by Palladium Books. It has magic, it has technology, it has mutations, it has magic, reasonably sized stompy mecha, it has a world recovering from a great disaster, and more, although not psionics. Both are post-apocalyptic roleplaying games and both share a lot of the same elements and content. However, the twenty-five-year difference between The Umerican Survival Guide – Core Setting Guide and Rifts is important. Rifts can be best described as what is technically known as a ‘Hot Mess’, a nonsensical morass of ideas with all the organisation and accessibility of a rubbish dump given book form accompanied with a complete lack of idea as what to do with it or run with it. The Umerican Survival Guide – Core Setting Guide despite sharing a great many of the same elements, is not that. It is organised in a coherent fashion and it not only includes advice for the Game Master, but it also has adventure seed after adventure seed. If Rifts is garbage dump of ideas, then The Umerican Survival Guide – Core Setting Guide is the equivalent of that rubbish actually having been sorted for recycling meaning that everything in the book is ready to use and accessible in a way that Rifts is not!

The Umerican Survival Guide – Core Setting Guide is not complete or quite fully together, but comes with everything for a gonzo post-apocalyptic campaign. It is accessible, its rules additions are straightforward and easy to use, it has lots of options in terms of Player Characters, and the setting is intriguing and run through with a dark streak of satire. For the Game Master who wants a post-apocalyptic setting and is happy with the mechanics of the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, then The Umerican Survival Guide – Core Setting Guide is a great choice.

Throughout the Cold War and even today, secret messages were broadcast across international borders and around the world, enabling instructions to be passed from handlers to their agents in the field. The means were Number Stations, shortwave radio stations which broadcast formatted numbers, often vocalised, but also broadcast as music or in Morse Code. Perhaps one of the most famous is the ‘LincolnshirePoacher’, which broadcast bars from the English folk song ‘The Lincolnshire Poacher’. These Number Stations and the messages they broadcast form the basis for Numb3r Stations– A Solo RPG. Published by LunarShadow Designs and available in print here, the reader and player takes on the role of a spy posted to a foreign country where he will undertake an important mission. Tuning in to regular broadcasts, he will receive instructions and updates and in turn pass back news of the mission’s progress and what he has learned so far. However, successfully or spectacularly completing each stage of the mission has a price—it brings the activities of our patriotic spy to the attention of counter-intelligence operations in the country he is spying upon. Ultimately, if the spy is too successful, counter-intelligence will identify him as a spy and arrest him. This is espionage in the style of John le Carré and George Smiley rather than Ian Fleming and James Bond.
Solo roleplaying games and journalling games are built around prompts, typically generated in random fashion either through rolling dice or drawing cards from a standard deck of playing cards. Using those prompts, the player typically creates and resolves a scene or encounter, and then writes it down in his journal. Numb3r Stations also uses prompts, but instead of using neutral mechanical means of generating them, it uses prompts that are both random and highly thematic. In other words, it uses the Number Stations and their broadcasts as prompts. During the Cold War, an agent would listen to the designated number station for the code being broadcast and use it to decode a message on a one-time-pad. In Numb3r Stations, the player is doing exactly the same, if not to commit acts of espionage himself, then to tell the story of the agent and his mission. Nevertheless, there is a sense of vicarious subterfuge to Numb3r Stations, as the player listens in, knowing that someone else once did the same on some secret mission far away from his home, or even could be on a secret mission right now, depending upon which number station the player decides to listen to and use for the source of his prompts.
To play Numb3r Stationss, the player requires pen and paper and ideally, access to Priyom.org. This site provide numerous number stations to listen to and all the player has to do is select one to generate a random three-digit code. This is his prompt. Alternative methods of generating this number are also suggested, but for real immersion, the authors suggest using the same number station, such as E11, even if that means listening in at the same time of day to hear its broadcast. Numb3r Stations is played out over five stages—Infiltration, Mission: Objective, Mission: Recon, Mission: Execution, and Exfiltration. At each stage, the player uses a three-digit code to select a one-time-pad from the ten in the back of Numb3r Stations and from this a combination of a letter and a number. The entry on that one-time-pad is then crossed out. The letter indicates the prompt for that stage of the mission and the number the Success Rating. There are five prompts per stage, from A to E and the Success Rating ranges from ‘1’ and “You have failed this stage of your mission so poorly, adversary counterintelligence don’t even know something happened” to ‘5’ and “Outstanding work, among the best your organization has seen. All eyes are on you now, mostly unwelcome.”.Using both Prompt and Success Rating, the player writes a report to his handler. This report must include a code. There are ten given in Numb3r Stations, such as “Your report must contain a secret message that is composed of every 5th word in the message.” or “Include a list within the text, of exactly five items, listed in alphabetical order.”
Lastly, the player determines his Exposure Level based on the Success Rating. If it is too high, his messages have been Intercepted by Counter-Intelligence and his progress is easier to tracked. If he is Intercepted twice, or if a three-digit code indicates an entry on a one-time-pad that has already been used and crossed out, player is captured by counter-intelligence. This is alternative to the fifth and last challenge and gives the player a chance to write one last two-hundred-and-forty-character message to his loved ones. (In other words, a tweet!) If the player or agent completes his mission, his final Exposure Level determines handler’s or even history’s verdict on the mission.
Physically, Numb3r Stations – A Solo RPG is a rather grey, dreary little book. However, that actually feels thematically appropriate, matching the often-drab nature of espionage during the Cold War. The cover is decent though, depicting a man in fedora hat and trench coat and carrying a briefcase. Wholly unremarkable, he could be a travelling salesman, a businessman, or even a spy! The book is otherwise decently written, but in places a close study is required to understand what a player is required to do.
Numb3r Stations – A Solo RPG is at its heart, a writing exercise in five stages. At each stage, the player will be given a prompt as a subject matter, and both a degree of success and a code which will influence and complicate what the player has to write. Even overcomplicate what a player has to write if he is intercepted! Numb3r Stations – A Solo RPG is a delightfully drab espionage roleplaying game, capturing the fraught, grey no-man’s land feel of the Cold War, beginning in thematic fashion by listening into messages from a bygone age before being prompted to draft dreary report after dreary report!

It is odd to think that in over forty years since Call of Cthulhu was first published, it has been supported by numerous supplements detailing other times and places, from the classic period of the Jazz Age and the here and now to the Roman Empire of Cthulhu Invictus and the more recent late Georgian period supplement, Regency Cthulhu: Dark Designs in Jane Austen’s England, but not the Age of Sail or indeed, anything piratical. This is not to say that that that have been no scenarios involving both Lovecraftian investigative roleplaying and roleplaying. Arguably, Green Ronin Publishing’s Freeport Trilogy for Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition was the first to do it in 2000, but there have been a few scenarios since specifically for Call of Cthulhu, such as Lost Port Royal and The Curse of Black Teeth Keetes, which have involved pirates, if not actual piracy. That changes with Corsairs of Cthulhu – Fighting Mythos in the Golden Age of Piracy, a supplement for Chaosium, Inc.’s Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, published by New Comet Games following a successful Kickstarter campaign. This is a rules and setting supplement detailing the Golden Age of Piracy—between 1650 and 1730 CE, for Call of Cthulhu, and further, it provides a complete campaign in which the Player Characters, or Corsairs, will set sail on the high seas to face and fight the evil of the Mythos. They will chase and board other vessels, encounter strange ice demons in the frigid lands to the far south, sail across the Pacific to make land at numerous islands and encounter strange practices the inhabitants engage in, and travel far beyond their imagination before returning to sail into battle against an alien foe they could never have imagined!

Corsairs of Cthulhu – Fighting Mythos in the Golden Age of Piracy is an ambitious book. Which given that it is published by New Comet Games should be no surprise given that the publisher has aimed high with each of its previous titles for Call of Cthulhu. However, in the case of all three of those books— The Star on the Shore – Struggles Against Evil in 1920s New England, Devil’s Swamp – Encountering Ancient Terrors in the Hockomock, and A Time For Sacrifice—that ambition remained undeniably unfulfilled. The question is, has New Comet Games again sets its ambitions too high with Corsairs of Cthulhu – Fighting Mythos in the Golden Age of Piracy, its first period sourcebook and campaign? If not, has the publisher actually fulfilled those ambitions and presented content that the Keeper can bring to the table with ease, without need for further development, and be both enjoyable and engaging for her players? The answers to those questions are ‘yes, but no’, for although Corsairs of Cthulhu is a very straightforward sourcebook and campaign, explaining how good both the source background and the campaign actually are, is far from straightforward.

It is important to note what Corsairs of Cthulhu is not and that is an examination of the Mythos during the Age of Piracy, the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Thus, there is no background at all pertaining to the presence of the Mythos in the Caribbean or indeed what its adherents, races, or entities might be doing during this period. Its background and source material is wholly mundane then. This though does not necessarily mean that it is bad. In fact, the source material is decent enough. There are roleplaying books which do it far better, such as Skull & Bones: Swashbuckling Horror in the Golden Age of Piracy, but nevertheless, Corsairs of Cthulhu is decent enough in terms of background content. It starts with a solid if repetitive overview of both the period of the Golden Age of Piracy and the Caribbean before diving into the rules. Character creation follows the standard rules for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition but adds a wide selection of new Occupations—Adventurer, Boatswain, Coxswain, Criminal, Fisherman, Master Carpenter, Master Gunner, Sailing Master, and more. Many of them are specific to positions aboard ship, although Alchemist and Voodoo Priest/Priestess are included as optional. There is an array of new equipment, as well as skills such as Antiquarian—the equivalent of Archaeology, Artillery—for cleaning and firing cannon aboard ship, Language: Pirate Chant, and Seamanship, whilst Art/Craft (Voodoo Rituals) and Science (Alchemy) are for the optional rules and Occupations.

Alchemy is based on Hermetic sorcery and practitioners study a variety of formulae—divine and greater and lesser arcane, but can only learn a relative few. For example, Transmutationibus, one of the Arcanum Mortis Divina Formulae, creates a salve which can be spread over lead to turn it into gold as per the legendary aims of the science of alchemy, whilst the Orbis potion, one of the Arcanum Mortis Luminare Minus Formulae, allows the imbiber to always know magnetic north. What an Alchemist knows in terms of formulae is very much limited by his skill rating, and learning more as the Alchemist gains in skill will be a challenge in itself and for the major formulae, likely sanity draining. Finding ingredients and mixing up the potions also takes an Alchemist time and effort, countering their often-powerful effects. Voodoo practitioners—known as Bokor or Caplata—call upon the deities and saints known as Loa, through song, dance, and other rituals to cast rituals such as Create Zombie, Curse of Misfortune, and Gift of Tongues. All rituals cost both Magic Points and Sanity to cast, and like Science (Alchemy), a practitioner’s skill in Art/Craft (Voodoo Rituals) limits the number of rituals he can perform. Learning a new ritual takes time, but are faster to cast than creating potions. In addition, Bokor or Caplata may begin play with an understanding of the true nature of the world and thus the Cthulhu Mythos. The rules for Alchemy and Voodoo are optional, but workable enough should a Keeper decide to bring them in to her game.

For all things nautical, Corsairs of Cthulhu details the ship’s crew and their duties, pirate culture and life, as well as the major parts of a ship, ship types and sizes, ship’s weaponry, as well as how to handle ship-to-ship combat. The rules for chases and combat are succinctly described, but an example of combat does help the Keeper understand how they work. Once ships start exchanging volleys of cannon fire, combat can become very deadly for the crew. Unfortunately, the critical result tables for combat do not include the possibility of the Player Characters killed unless they hold one of the important positions aboard ship. This is not all of the background content in Corsairs of Cthulhu, although the rest of it is at the back of the book, separated by the campaign itself and placed in a series of appendices. ‘Ports of Call’ details several notable pirate ports across the Caribbean, ‘Pirates and NPCs’ give stats and write-ups for notable pirates such as Anne Bonny and Edward Teach, and ‘Slang, Swears, Songs & Shanties’ is exactly that and can be used to add colour and flavour to a Corsairs of Cthulhu campaign. Apart from rules for using Pulp Cthulhu: Two-fisted Action and Adventure Against the Mythos in Corsairs of Cthulhu and ‘More Adventures’ which provides several extra adventures for the Keeper to develop, the rest of the appendices support the campaign. They consist of the ‘Bestiary’, which has full stats for the monsters and NPCs in the campaign, plus the officers of the ship in the campaign, whilst ‘Pre-generated PCs’ provide read-to-play Corsairs, and finally, all of the handouts. One change to the ‘Pre-generated PCs’ which is absolutely necessary is to ensure that one of them speaks Ancient Greek when transposed onto Investigator sheets as none of them do, and for the campaign, they do need to be able to read Ancient Greek.

The Corsairs of Cthulhu campaign is set in 1697 and begins en media res in exciting fashion, chasing down another vessel and about to engage it in an exchange of cannon fire. The Corsairs are crew members recently hired, aboard the Cronos under the command of Captain Kristoff, who is in search of a treasure known as the Astronomer’s Map. This treasure plays a major role in the campaign. It has been broken into multiple pieces and as the Corsairs locate more and more sections of it, they will gain further clues as to what the campaign is about and where the next sections are located. Full colour illustrations are provided for the various sections of the Astronomer’s Map, but the Keeper can also use STL files to print copies of the section as physical handouts so that the Corsairs can piece the artifact together as they progress further into the campaign. As members of the crew of the Cronos, the Corsairs are directed, if not led, by Captain Kristoff, and as members of the crew they sail from capturing the ship in the first scene to shore leave in Nassau and then onwards into the Pacific after a difficult journey through the Drake’s Passage. From Easter Island—visited by the Cronos some twenty-five years before Europeans actually visited it historically—to Galapagos and beyond, the Corsairs track the sections of the Astronomer’s Map across the Pacific to experience one extremely strange encounter after another. This includes hunting wererats on Easter Island, dining with the vampire daughter of Nyarlathotep in the Dreamlands, freeing and being thanked by Mother Hydra, being transported into a post-apocalyptic future of a city that is yet to be, and so on. Ultimately, as written, the Corsairs will discover the true nature of the Astronomer’s Map and the identity of the villain of the piece, and sail on the risen isle of R’lyeh, ready to unleash volleys of cannon fire upon Great Cthulhu himself!

Given all this background material and the great scope of its campaign, the actual campaign itself in Corsairs of Cthulhu should be good. Yet it is not. In fact, it is far from good. The idea of sailing the high seas to ultimately face Cthulhu as pirates sounds good, but in practice, the campaign is linear and the Corsairs themselves have no agency over the direction of the campaign. Instead, the Corsairs essentially island hop back and forth the Pacific Ocean, first at the direction of the captain of the Cronos, then from clues given on the Astronomer’s Map, until the final confrontation. Much of the action in the scenario takes place in the Pacific and thus away from the Caribbean. Consequently, barring a couple of scenes, the Corsairs have extraordinarily little opportunity to engage in piratical activity of any sort. And although they start play aboard the Cronos, the Corsairs have little motivation to be aboard to begin with or really engage with the campaign except for the fact that Captain Kristoff will them throw overboard if they do not swear to remain aboard as part of the crew. This applies to the pre-generated Corsairs, let alone what the players might come up with. Once under sail, there are all too often scenes where the Corsairs have to stand around and await until some ceremony is over and an NPC can advise them before they can act. Then there are scenes which are more plot fiat rather than actually adding to either play or plot, such as automatically, but accidentally killing a cat in the Dreamlands or when sailing through the Drake’s Passage to the Pacific, the crew of the Cronos have the choice of sailing the quicker, but more dangerous route closer to the shallows of the coast of South America or the calmer, slower, but much colder waters to the south. It does not matter what choice they decide on as ultimately the Cronos will be driven south into the colder waters where they will be attacked by Ice Demons which skip across the sea to board the ship. The encounter is pointless, an excuse for some combat and dice rolling which only serves to scrape some Hit Points and Sanity Points from the Corsairs—and that is ignoring the fact that Ice Demons add nothing to the Mythos. Similarly, there are points where one of the Corsairs has to sacrifice himself to in order for the campaign to progress, and whilst there are ways round this, it makes progress that much more difficult. Then, when the Corsairs do encounter the Mythos, it is with Elder God after Elder God—Nyarlathotep, Nodens, the Yellow King, as well as Father Dagon, and Mother Hydra—all put in an appearance, like some sort of Mythos medley. Father Dagon and Mother Hydra do make sense, but the others? Lastly, the campaign drops hints as to who the villain of the piece is, mostly coming from the dead Corsair who can appear in his former comrades’ dreams, but never really lets the Corsairs act on it as if trying to forestall the inevitable showdown at the end of the campaign.

Physically, Corsairs of Cthulhu – Fighting Mythos in the Golden Age of Piracy looks clean and tidy, and for the most part it is. Unfortunately, the layout is not always consistent and certainly early on in the book, Corsairs of Cthulhu needs the input of a professional editor, as the content is repetitive and oddly phrased. The maps are actually nicely done, but the artwork is highly variable in quality. Some of it is good, the rest is often just artless.

Yet for all of its faults, Corsairs of Cthulhu – Fighting Mythos in the Golden Age of Piracy is not necessarily a bad campaign or a bad supplement for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition. It does provide the rules for running a pirate scenario or campaign for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition and it does provide a campaign that can be played. In that, New Comet Games has achieved its aims and definitely fulfilled its ambitions. However, that does not mean that those ambitions have been in any way exceeded, or as the publisher’s best book to date, that Corsairs of Cthulhu is a good supplement. The new rules and background included in the pages of Corsairs of Cthulhu are undoubtedly fine. A Keeper can take those and can run a scenario or campaign using them. The campaign though, is not fine, and definitely not good, but at the same time, not terrible. Fundamentally, it is too linear and does not give the players and their Corsairs enough agency, and it is more like a heavily plotted Derlethian video game than a roleplaying campaign. Ultimately, Corsairs of Cthulhu – Fighting Mythos in the Golden Age of Piracy is arguably the best book for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition that New Comet Games has published to date, but then only for part of the book.

The classic hex crawl is an open-ended sandbox-style adventure in which the players and their characters explore a large geographical area, containing various Points of Interest, each of which can be explored individually or perhaps in a sequence determined from clues found at each location. Typically, the Player Characters will have a good reason to explore the area, such as being tasked to find a specific location or person, but instead of knowing where the location or person might be, only know that they are somewhere in that region. Armed with limited knowledge, the Player Characters will enter the area and travel from one hex to the next, perhaps merely running into a random encounter or nothing at all, but perhaps finding a Point of Interest. Such a Point of Interest might be connected to the specific location or person they are looking for, and so might contain clues as to its location, then again it might not. In which case it is just a simple Point of Interest. Initially free to explore in whatever direction they want, as the Player Characters discover more clues, their direction of travel will typically gain more focus until the point when they finally locate their objective. Classic hex crawls include X1 Isle of Dread for Expert Dungeons & Dragons and Slavers for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Second Edition, whilst more recent examples have been Barrowmaze and What Ho, Frog Demons!.

Bottled Sea is a hex crawl—or sea crawl (seabox?)—from Games Omnivorous dotted with the flotsam and jetsam of the ages, coral-reefs stung together from debris from across the universe, wrecks both sunken and afloat, technology scavenged and jury-rigged to new purpose—survival, dolphin-riders, Mother Sea Cucumbers spraying acid, Mimic-Islets that swallow ships whole, strange tides that sweep ships away, and more. The Bottled Sea is an in-between dimension where ships lost at sea end up, from past, from today, from the future, and from elsewhere. Here survivors search for the food and water necessary to survive, but also myths of the Bottle Sea, rumours of solid land, and salvage that can be used to make repairs or even something better. At the heart of the Bottle Sea is the Harbourage, a palimpsest of waste and rubble kept assiduously buoyant, where Travellers are always welcome, especially if they have resources, in particular, the rare dirt, paper, and plants, to trade and use as currency. Four factions vie for control of Harbourage. The Collectors are a masonic lodge of inventors working haphazardly to create an article island. The Ichthys are amphibious mutants, highly capable deep-sea salvagers, who want a greater unity between the sea and the surface. The Shepherds are an ascetic cult which worships and herds Sheep for their wool and their milk, and want to take its herd home. The Rainmakers are priests of the rain.
The Bottled Sea takes its cue from the publisher’s earlier The Undying Sands, being part of its ‘Hex-n-Screen’ format series. It is thus a hex crawl of a different stripe. First, it is systemless; second, it is improvisational; third, it is random; and fourth, it is physical. The Bottled Sea consists of four elements. These are forty hex tiles, Game Master Screen, two double-sided card sheets, a cloth bag, and two pamphlets. The hexes, done in sturdy cardboard and full colour using a rich swathe of tones, measure six-and-a-half centimetres across. Their backs are either blank or numbered. The former show simple calm seas on their front, whilst the latter have locations on their front. There are eighteen such locations, all of which are different. There is the floating city of Harbourage, home to the four factions which dominate the Bottled Sea. On their journey across the Bottled Sea, the Player Characters may run into the Alabaster Fingers, colossal rocks scoured by guano and inscribed by Myths; the Drifting Dealers aboard their lashed-together ships, ready to trade salvage and other goods; the Hives, where enigmatic Beekeepers harvest and sell hallucinogenic honey; and the Great Dross Reef at the shallowest point in the Bottled Sea, a combination of rubbish and coral. There are many more, the most notable of which is the Floating Hexahedron, a sealed cube of highly polished, reflective material, which so far nobody has been able to gain access to and has any idea as what might be inside. The style of the artwork on the hexes is busy and cartoonish, but eye-catching, and gives the Bottled Sea a singular look which sets it apart from both other gaming accessories and neighbouring regions.

The Game Master Screen is a horizontal, three panel affair. The front depicts a paddle-galleon on the Bottled Sea itself, about to be overtaken by a tempestuous storm. The back is the meat of the supplement. Here, from left to right, it explains what Bottled Seas is, how to use and the best way to use it; tables of myths, salvage, pelagic—meaning open sea—encounters, weather, and details of the locations across the Bottled Sea—including areas of Solid Ground and the Mythical Whirlpool. Two locations are described in detail, one The Beacon, a lighthouse home to a Wizard, said to be able to use magic or psionic powers, depending upon, of course, who you ask, whilst the other is the Harbourage. Here can be found the Sea Lion Milk Farm, the Museum of Discarded Curiousity, the Blood Polo Sharkadrome, the Oyster Ranch, Wishing Windows, and other establishments. These require development upon the part of the Game Master, as they are not as detailed as other locations (and tiles) on the Bottled Sea, and similarly the entries on the tables of tasks and jobs will also need some development.

The first of the two posters has a full illustration of The Beacon on the one side and Harbourgae on the other. The second depicts and describes not what is on the Bottled Sea, but in the Bottled Sea. On the front is a cross section of the sea below the surface with various creatures and features illustrated and numbered, whilst on the back, ‘What is in the Sea’ provides a quick description, plus rules for fishing and deep-diving.

The Bottled Sea also includes two small pamphlets. ‘The Floating Hexahedron’ describes the six-sided, very shiny polyhedron, which literally floats above the surface of the Bottled Sea. The Shepherds from the Harbourage make an annual pilgrimage to wherever it is currently located, but like everyone else, cannot find their way in. What is inside is thus a mystery for everyone. The means to open it can be found somewhere across the Bottled Sea and locating said mean will form part of the backdrop to any campaign set on the Bottled Sea. The pamphlet provides basic descriptions as to what is inside the Floating Hexahedron, its major features, and also some adventure hooks to bring into play. The one piece of advice for the Game Master is that she should watch the 1997 film, Cube. The smaller, but longer pamphlet, ‘Watercrafts’ details some ten of the water-going vessels on the Botted Sea, from Rubbish Raft and Hydro-Cage to Catamaran Wavecutter and Benthic Bell. All have a lovely illustration, a short description, and details of their speed, price, crew requirement, power source, and cargo capacity. These are very nicely done and the illustrations are thoroughly charming. These are all vessels that the Player Characters can encounter, build, purchase, or sail—or depending upon their scruples, attack and/or capture.

So that is the physicality of Bottled Sea. What of the random nature of Bottled Sea? Simply, the hexes are placed in the cloth bag and drawn one-by-one, as the Player Characters cross or explore one hex and then move onto the next, creating the region hex-by-hex. If the hex is simple sand dunes, the Game Master might roll on the ‘Pelagic Encounters’ or ‘Weather’ tables to create random encounters. When the Player Characters reach a numbered location, they can explore one or more of individual places there, the Game Master improvising what will be encountered there based on the sentence or two description given for each. There is more detail for Harbourage, The Beacon and the Floating Hexahedron, especially the latter, and thus more for the Game Master to base her improvisation upon. This randomness means that playing Bottled Sea will be different from one gaming group to the next, more so than with other hex crawls or scenarios.

So that is the random nature of Bottled Sea and the improvisational nature of Bottled Sea? What of the systemless aspect of Bottled Sea? No gaming system is referenced anywhere on Bottled Sea, yet there is an assumed genre within its details. So it is weird. It is more Science Fiction than fantasy, especially with the inclusion of the Floating Hexahedron and many of the watercraft. However, it would work with Player Characters from any setting with a tradition of sailing, whether the ancient world or the Age of Sail or the modern day. Player Characters can come from the same setting, perhaps the same ship, or from an array of backgrounds or settings. Then depending upon what style and tone of game that the Game Master wants to run, a Bermuda Triangle style game could be using a fairly mundane ruleset, such as Savage Worlds or Basic Roleplay. However, there are numerous choices for a more fantastic style of play considering the Science Fiction elements of the setting. Numenera would be an obvious choice, as would Electric Bastionland: Deeper into the Odd, Hypertellurians: Fantastic Thrills Through the Ultracosm, and Troika!. It could even be run using Rifts if the Game Master wanted to! A more generic rules system would also work too, as would any number of Old School Renaissance retroclones. Another genre to shift Bottled Seas into would be that of the Post Apocalypse, for example, using Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic or Barbarians of the Ruined Earth. However, Bottled Sea underplays its Post Apocalyptic elements, so the Game Master will need to bring them into play more. Ultimately, whatever the choice of rules, the Game Master will need to know them very well in order to improvise.

As suggested by the range of roleplaying games which Bottled Sea would be a natural fit for, its influences are equally as diverse. Those given include Waterworld, New Weird, and a Canticle for Leibowitz, but there is also the feel of boy’s own adventure or Saturday morning cartoons combined with elements of horror, such as the Floating Hexahedron. Of course, Bottled Sea need not be run as a standalone mini-campaign, but as an extension to an existing one. All the Game Master need do is provide a reason for the Player Characters to visit the Bottled Sea. For example, the Bottled Sea could be a rumoured location of a device of the Ancients in the Third Imperium for Traveller or what if the Player Characters were passengers from a crashed starship in the MOTHERSHIP Sci-Fi Horror Roleplaying Game?

In terms of play, Bottled Sea sort of traps the Player Characters within its confines. It keeps them within its limits until the last hex is drawn from the bag and they can find their way out. By that time, the Player Characters will probably have visited every hex and encountered multiple threats and dangers, and if they have engaged with any of the four factions to be found in Harbourage, they are likely to have found employment too, and that will drive them back out onto the Bottled Sea again. How or when that will happen all depends upon when the city location is drawn during play. What this means is that the Bottled Sea is a mini-campaign in its own right.

Bottled Sea is fantastically thematic and fantastically presented. A Game Master could grab this, set-up the Game Master’s Screen, pull the first tile, and start running a mini-campaign. However, that would take a lot of improvisation and improvisational skill upon the part of the Game Master, who also has to know the game system she is running the Bottled Sea with very well to run it easily. All of which is needed because the textual content of The Undying Sands really consists of prompts and hooks with little in the way of detail—if any. Perhaps a better way of approaching Bottled Sea—especially if the Game Master is not as confident about her ability to improvise—is to work through the locations, especially Harbourage, and prepare, prepare, prepare. Some Game Masters may relish the prospect, but others may wish that there had been more information given in Bottled Sea to make the task easier for them.

Ultimately, Bottled Sea gives a Game Master the means to improvise and run a fantastically pulpy campaign in a range of genres against a weird Science Fiction, lost worlds, lost at sea background. How much improvisation and how much preparation is required, will very much be down to the individual Game Master.

The Black Hack – Classic Monsters is a bestiary for use with The Black Hack, Second Edition, the player-facing retroclone originally published in 2016. It is both incredibly dull and incredibly useful before it gets a bit interesting. Designed to support the play of classic fantasy, it contains some the stats and mechanical details of some two-hundred-and-forty monsters based on those that appeared in Original Dungeons & Dragons and the version of Basic Dungeons & Dragons and Expert Dungeons & Dragons designed by Tom Moldvay. So almost everything from Ankheg, Ant, Giant Worker, Soldier, and Queen, Ape, Man-eating, Basilisk, Bat, Giant, Bear, Black, Grizzly, Polar, and Cave—and that is just on the first page, to Wraith, Wyvern, Xorn, Yellow Mould, Yeti, and Zombie—and that is on the last page! Which is a lot of monsters to get on the one page. So, the question is, how does The Black Hack – Classic Monsters manage to cram as much monster on the one page?
The Black Hack – Classic Monsters is not a bestiary in the classic sense, despite containing a large number of classic monsters. To get as many monsters as it does in its forty-six pages it forgoes any monster description and almost any monster illustration. Instead, it contains just the stats, or rather the stat for each monster and a list of each monster’s abilities or notable features. Often with a little bit of humour. This for example, is the entry for the classic Dungeons & Dragons monster, the owlbear.

Owlbear – HD5
Claw, Claw, Bite – STR (1 Close) 6 dmg

• Huggy bear! If a failed Defence Roll is an odd number, the target takes Ongoing Damage until they make a successful STR Test as an Action.

The result is short, to the point, easy to use, but not necessarily all that interesting to read or look at. Certainly, in comparison to The Black Hack, Second Edition, which has its own bestiary and illustrations. However, The Black Hack – Classic Monsters is handy, especially if the Game Master is running an old module or scenario which itself draws from the same sources, as a ready reference to have at the table. The Game Master will still need to add some flavour to any encounter using these stats, but the likelihood is that either she would actually know many of these monsters and what they look like or her players will—if not both. Further, the scenario she would be running would have details she could use to add flavour and detail as well. So, an eminently serviceable supplement then? Well actually, The Black Hack – Classic Monsters contains a bit more than just one big list of monsters and their stats virtually free of any illustrations.

In fact, The Black Hack – Classic Monsters contains several lists. The main and longest lists contains the aforementioned monsters. The rest of the slim book consists of appendices. The first of these is a page of dinosaurs—just the one?—whilst the second consists of ‘Monsters of Legend’. These are reinterpretations of monsters extremely specific to Dungeons & Dragons. These include the Bestial Eye, Dimension Cat, Hooked Lurker, Koi-Ped, Mushroom Men, Under-Mauler, and more. These are decent adaptations, slimmed to the minimum of information necessary. However, in contrast to the easier entries in the book, the ‘Monsters of Legend’ are illustrated. This is as much to indicate to the Game Master what they are actually given the fact that the names have been changed for reasons! So, the Bestial Eye is a floating orb with a single large eye, a maw full of large teeth, and a halo of tentacles each ending in an eye of their own. The third appendix is the ‘Monsters’ Spell Index’. This lists all of the spells used by the monsters in the supplement for easy reference. It includes on how monsters cast spells according to the rules, that is, the players rolling to avoid or reduce the effect of a spell rather than the Game Master making the equivalent of a casting roll. There are guidelines too for creating shaman and witch doctor Humanoid monsters.

The fourth appendix is more expansive and possibly the most useful section in book. The ‘Conversion Guide’ provides a means for the Game Master to adapt any monster from Dungeons & Dragons to The Black Hack. This is a step-by-step process, explaining which stats and elements of Dungeons & Dragons monsters to adapt to The Black Hack. It is a quick and easy process, which with a bit of practice, the Game Master can even do during play. The notes also cover how to create powerful foes as well, and there is a list of sample abilities too. Most of these have been drawn from the abilities given for the various monsters listed earlier in the book, and of course, the Game Master can peruse their entries for other ones as well. Lastly, the final appendix, ‘Poison Tables’, provides a set of tables for determining poison effects other than death of Out of Action. These work with the book’s monsters as well as any assassins wielding a poison-coated blade!

Physically, The Black Hack – Classic Monsters is a handsome little book. The artwork is decent, if occasionally cartoonish, but the writing is clear and the layout clean and simple.

The Black Hack – Classic Monsters is more serviceable than it first appears to be. The lists of monsters are useful—and with some adjustment could be used with other microclones such as Knave or Cairn, but the ‘Conversion Guide’ makes just about every scenario or supplement monsters for classic roleplaying fantasy accessible and convertible to The Black Hack. Which is why every Game Master for The Black Hack should have it on her shelf.

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

The Miskatonic University Library Association brand is no more, alas, but what we have in its stead is the Miskatonic Repository, based on the same format as the DM’s Guild for Dungeons & Dragons. It is thus, “...a new way for creators to publish and distribute their own original Call of Cthulhu content including scenarios, settings, spells and more…” To support the endeavours of their creators, Chaosium has provided templates and art packs, both free to use, so that the resulting releases can look and feel as professional as possible. To support the efforts of these contributors, Miskatonic Monday is an occasional series of reviews which will in turn examine an item drawn from the depths of the Miskatonic Repository.

—oOo—
Name: Swamp Song: A 1920s Scenario for Call of CthulhuPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Keeper Doc

Setting: 1920s New Orleans
Product: ScenarioWhat You Get: Forty-four page, 9.11 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: The dangers of the demon drink will drive you to your deaths...Plot Hook: A missing author pulls the Investigators into the French Quarter of New Orleans and a ghoulish plot.Plot Support: Staging advice, five pre-generated Investigators, three NPCs, four handouts, one map, one non-Mythos tome, one non-Mythos creature, one Mythos tome, one Mythos spell, and one Mythos monster.Production Values: Good.
Pros# Detailed investigation# Nice evocation of the period and louche culture# Fun NPCs for the Keeper to portray# Small, but flexible options included for the Keeper# Easy to shift to Cthulhu by Gaslight
# Easy to add to a Tales of the Crescent City: Adventures in Jazz Era New Orleans campaign# Ligyrophobia# Taphephobia# Methyphobia# Zerevophobia

Cons# Cartoonish NPC portraits# Underwritten explanation for the Keeper upfront# Location floorplans would be useful# Plot not necessarily obvious to the Investigators
Conclusion# Woozy investigation where New Orleans nightlife and occult underground intersect that is easy to add to a campaign# Unclear plotting makes the scenario harder to prepare and the plot may never quite become clear to the Investigators

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

The Miskatonic University Library Association brand is no more, alas, but what we have in its stead is the Miskatonic Repository, based on the same format as the DM’s Guild for Dungeons & Dragons. It is thus, “...a new way for creators to publish and distribute their own original Call of Cthulhu content including scenarios, settings, spells and more…” To support the endeavours of their creators, Chaosium has provided templates and art packs, both free to use, so that the resulting releases can look and feel as professional as possible. To support the efforts of these contributors, Miskatonic Monday is an occasional series of reviews which will in turn examine an item drawn from the depths of the Miskatonic Repository.

—oOo—
Name: Game NightPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Sean Liddle

Setting: 1980s USA
Product: Scenario OutlineWhat You Get: Five page, 173.91 KB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Twixmas Terror.Plot Hook: Students stuck in a store in a snow storm leads to scares.Plot Support: Staging and set-up advice, timeline.Production Values: Undemanding.
Pros# Straightforward plot outline # Phasmophobia# Chionophobia
Cons# Requires development by the Keeper# Requires Player Characters to be created# No Sanity losses or gains# Works hard to trap the Player Characters in place to face the Mythos at the end
Conclusion# More mundane clean-up duties than meeting with the Mythos
# Sit tight until the terror might work for the screen, but for Player Characters, not so much...

The influence of author Fritz Leiber and his tales of the adventures of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser on fantasy roleplaying are undeniable. Of course, they introduced the reader to the world of Nehwon and the city of Lankhmar, also known as the City of the Black Toga, an urban jungle rife with cutpurses and corruption, guilds and graft, temples and trouble, whores and wonders, and more. Sitting on the Inner Sea, it is the greatest city in Nehwon, over which hangs the pall from fire pits, charnel houses, chimneys, and smoke houses, which when combined with the fog which rolls of the Hlal river, turns into a dense smog, the bane of the city’s brown-armoured city watch, and much to the delight of the city’s many thieves, pickpockets, burglars, cutpurses, muggers, and anyone else who would skulk in the night! Not for nothing is Lankhmar called the City of Sevenscore Thousand Smokes. Yet the stories of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser also introduced the concept of urban adventures to the hobby and added both the concept of the thieves’ guild and the assassins’ guild to Dungeons & Dragons, as well as influencing the look and feel of numerous fantasy cities in roleplaying. It is no wonder that their world has been visited by roleplaying not once, but six times!
TSR, Inc. first included the Nehwon mythos, its gods and various characters to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition in 1980 with Deities & Demigods, before publishing Lankhmar – City of Adventure in 1985. This would be followed by The New Adventures of Fafhrd and Gray Mouser boxed set for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Second Edition in 1996. Mongoose Publishing’s Lankhmar, published in 2006, was written for use with RuneQuest, whilst Lankhmar: City of Thieves, published in 2015 by Pinnacle Entertainment Group, was written for use with Savage Worlds. The sixth and most recent version is Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar, published by Goodman Games following a successful Kickstarter campaign, for use with the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game. It is designed to help the Dungeon Crawl Classics Judge run swords and sorcery urban-set campaigns of semi-heroic adventure charting the ups and downs, successes and failures, triumphs and travails of a band of ne’er-do-wells, who will break into homes in the Rich Men’s Quarter and sneak into the temples on the Street of the Gods, run the ‘rooftop road’ to avoid the city watch, fence their stolen goods at the back of the Plaza of Dark Delights, before frittering away their ill-gotten gains by carousing and gambling early into the morning. Then with a heavy hangover, they will probably have to lie low for a week or two as the city watch searches high and low for them. Of course, those particular ne’er-do-wells may not be responsible for the crime that the city watch wants them for, but lie low long enough or bribe the right person, and with pockets empty of coin and stomachs rumbling, they are back out on the streets looking for the next score.

The Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set is a handsome affair, filled to the brim with books and maps. This includes ‘The Judge’s Guide to Nehwon’, ‘Compendium of Secret Knowledge’, ‘Lankhmar: City of the Black Toga’, and ‘Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #0: No Small Crimes in Lankhmar’, plus a 33” × 17” poster map of the City of Lankhmar, 17” × 22” map of Nehwon, and a Judges’ Screen specifically for Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar. As well as describing both the world of Nehwon and the city of Lankhmar, Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar includes stats for the notable characters from Fritz Lieber’s stories, details of the setting’s gods, new magic, and beasts, rules for creating and playing Player Characters—who are heroes rather than cheesemakers or gongfarmers trying to escape their dull lives, and this being for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, table after table to help the Judge create exciting, interesting things and NPCs for those Player Characters to encounter and do, and so bring her Lankhmar to life. The Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set is not designed as a definitive or comprehensive guide to the city and inhabitants, but rather as a combination of guide and toolkit for the Judge. The result will be a campaign that is fundamentally different to a typical Dungeon Crawl Classics campaign—darker, city-based, heroic, and adult in tone.

At one-hundred-and-four pages, ‘The Judge’s Guide to Nehwon’ is the longest book in the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set. When you discover that a lot of those pages consist of spells particular to Lankhmar and you realise just how detailed each spell in Dungeon Crawl Classics actually is, and that ‘The Judge’s Guide to Nehwon’ also details the effects of invoking various patron gods and the possible taints that a Player Character might suffer in poorly invoking said patron gods, then it turns out that ‘The Judge’s Guide to Nehwon’ is actually not that long a book, or least not that dense. ‘The Judge’s Guide to Nehwon’ introduces the setting and the fiction it is based upon, describing in turn the various countries and locations surrounding Lankhmar, the cultures of the Inner Sea and beyond, languages and gods, and more. Some of the cultures do feel like clichés by modern standards—the nomadic horse-riding Mingols who hail from the Steppes, the barbarian Northerners feared as pirate raiders, the Kleshites of the Jungle of Klesh who trade in slaves, and so on—but bear in mind that the stories that Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar is based upon are over fifty years old and this is the swords & sorcery genre. Nevertheless, the Judge may want to be circumspect when dealing with this aspect of the setting.

There are details of Nehwonian alcoholic drinks too, such as the Bubbly Wine of Ilthmar, Ool Hruspian Old Wine, and the notorious Mushroom Wine which can grant the imbiber certain benefits or drive him to madness. These nicely tie in with the rules for recovering Luck in through carousing, later in ‘The Judge’s Guide to Nehwon’, which mostly involve a Player Character spending an evening in the bars and taverns of the city, getting drunk, and suffering the consequences. ‘The Judge’s Guide to Nehwon’ also provides a range of new spells for the setting, such as Confounding Glamour, which makes the caster difficult to detect, or Mouse’s Painful Suffering, which enables the cast to inflict suffering on another using a doll or fetish. These are not readily available to the Player Characters, and any wizard wanting to learn them will have to track down the right tome or scroll, or find someone who can teach it to him. All Player Characters in Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar can be agents and servants to patrons such as the gods. Those who enter into simple agreements become agents, whereas those who enter into magical compacts become servants, much like the Patron bond spell in Dungeon Crawl Classics, and in return, a Player Character can receive certain benefits. The patrons are of course the watchful gods of Lankhmar and Nehwon, including Ningauble of the Seven Eyes, Mog the Spider God, Issek of the Jug, and others, and as well as their possible debts and boons, there are tasks which they can set those who have taken their patronage. The patrons are excellent tools for the Judge to use to drive adventures and bring the setting’s mystical elements into play.

‘The Judge’s Guide to Nehwon’ provides new rules and adjustments for a Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar campaign. This includes the aforementioned Carousing rules for recovering Luck and also Laying Low, including complications associated with both, plus a list of magical items and a bestiary. There is also advice on running urban-set campaigns, which highlight in particular how different such a campaign will be from a standard Dungeon Crawl Classics campaign. This is to primarily run a campaign as an urban sandbox, to have the Player Characters face and hopefully escape the consequences of their actions, with almost everything they do having repercussions—good or bad. Burglarise a jewelry shop and the Player Characters and possibly whomever hired them, will be rich, but the city watch will be after the Player Characters, as will the Thieves’ Guild, who the jewelry shop owner was paying protection money, and then if the person who hired them to do the job turns up dead and the loot nowhere to be seen, who are the primary suspects? What the guidance highlights is that in a Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar campaign, the Player Characters are not going to be comfortable, going from weird dungeon to the next. Instead, they will often be hungry or hunted, forced to rely on each other as well as their wits and their contacts—who in turn may come to rely on the Player Characters at a later date. Consequently, a Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar campaign will often be more player-driven and have an occasional narrative focus as time passes, so is not as straightforward to run.

One big difference between Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar and standard Dungeon Crawl Classics is the lack of a Funnel. This is a standard feature of Dungeon Crawl Classics, a scenario specifically designed for Zero Level Player Characters in which initially, a player is expected to roll up three or four Level Zero characters and have them play through a generally nasty, deadly adventure, which surviving will prove a challenge. Those that do survive receive enough Experience Points to advance to First Level and gain all of the advantages of their Class. Instead of a Funnel, Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar provides the Meet, the moment or adventure when the Player Characters all met for the first time, as First Level—rather than Zero Level—characters, just as in the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser story, ‘ Ill Met in Lankhmar’. Annoyingly the Meet is mentioned before the explanation, so at first the Judge is left to wonder what it is, but the Meet is designed to get a party together, have its members make contacts, and lastly, provide its members with an opportunity to learn more about the world, if not Lankhmar, then at least the neighbourhood. Overall, the advice is excellent and will very much help the Judge make the switch to a Lankhmar-set campaign. Lastly, ‘The Judge’s Guide to Nehwon’ does address the issue of where Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are during the Player Characters’ adventures with several options, but really their presence should not have that much of an impact.

The second book, ‘Lankhmar: City of the Black Toga’, runs to forty-four pages and is the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set gazetteer. It is a more straightforward book covering the history, government, powers, guilds, crime and punishment, known Overlords of the city during the time of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, and more. Its exploration of the various neighbourhoods or quarters of the city, such as the Temple Quarter and Crafts Quarter, are supported by descriptions of places of interest, like the Forbidden Temples in the Temple Quarter, the Thieves’ House in the Crafts Quarter, the Plaza of Dark Delights in the Plaza Quarter, and so on, are backed up with tables of interesting events, random noble tables, curious people found in the Rich Men’s Quarter, and others that the Judge can use to create events and plots, perhaps chaining them together to pull the Player Characters across the city. Other tables enable a Judge to create and populate a neighbourhood, perhaps as a starting point or base for the Player Characters, and there is a table of adventure seeds too.

The third book in Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set is the forty-page ‘Compendium of Secret Knowledge’ and is the book for the Player Characters. As well as being urban-set and using the Meet to introduce Player Characters rather than the Funnel, Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar is a humancentric setting. What this means is that there are no Dwarves, Elves, or Halflings. There are also no Clerics as a Class. This is because any character can enter into a relationship with a god and take him as a patron—even multiple gods—and gain the benefits and drawbacks of doing so. This limits the Classes to just Thief, Warrior, and Wizard, who are all rogues and in play work together as a gang rather than a party. Player Characters begin play at First Level, have more Hit Points, and have a Doom and a Benison. These replace Birth Augurs from Dungeon Crawl Classics and are derived from a Player Character’s origins rather than the sign under which he was born. Sample Boons include Accepted Freelance Thief, Former Wizard’s Pupil, or Mingol Bow, whilst sample Dooms include Bad Reputation in Certain Circles, Illiterate, or Superstitious. It is possible to have an extra Benison, but this costs permanent points of Luck and an extra Doom. Overall, the effect is make the Player Character a more heroic figure, but not that much more heroic!

There are other changes to the rules of Dungeon Crawl Classics too, such as whether or not to retain Alignment, but that is only a minor change. The changes to magic and healing are not so. Nehwon is considered a ‘low magic” world and does not allow for the mercurial magic of standard Dungeon Crawl Classics, so magic takes more effort or has condition to being cast, such as the caster only being to cast spells indoor without a penalty or requiring a large boiling cauldron filled with odd ingredients to be able to cast successfully. In addition to a big table of Spell Stipulations, there tables for spell corruption, which go from minor to greater via major, reflecting the mutative effect of casting more powerful spells. Other options for a Wizard include Black and White magic, divided by spell type and casters of White inflicting less damage versus casters of Black magic suffering more corruption. Without the presence of Clerics, the Player Characters will need to find other means of healing. Some Patrons provide healing, but in the main, the Player Characters will have to obtain ointments, unctions, unguents, and other restoratives, although the Judge is provided other options too. This includes Cinematic healing for an even more heroic style of play. Lastly, Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar adds ‘Fleeting Luck’, reflecting the capricious nature of Nehwon’s gods, which can come and go through play, gained for rolling a natural twenty, pulling off an amazing stunt, or roleplaying, but lost when any player rolls a one. This will give play an entertaining ebb and flow, but potentially even more fun is the optional ‘Banter’ rule, in which a Banter token passes back and forth between the players as they roleplay their characters trading quips and barbs. Whoever has the token can trade it in to gain Luck points for his character’s next role or affect another character’s or NPC’s roll, but after that, the token goes back to the Judge until the quips and barbs begin flying again. For the right group, this really rewards their roleplaying and turns play into a buddy style caper.

The last book in the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set is ‘Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #0: No Small Crimes in Lankhmar’. At just twelve pages, this is also the shortest book, providing a first adventure for First Level Player Characters. It is designed to be run after they have met as part of their Meet adventure, which given that the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set is designed to introduce the setting and provide the Judge with everything necessary to run a campaign, to include an adventure set after the Meet rather than a Meet adventure itself seems like a major omission. However, there is advice on how to run it as a Meet, but another given option is to play Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar: Masks of Lankhmar, which specifically designed to be run as a Meet, and then run ‘Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #0: No Small Crimes in Lankhmar’. Inspired by both The Swords of Lankhmar and The Incredible Shrinking Man, the scenario begins with the Player Characters breaking into a long-abandoned home, rumoured to contain a cache of gold, and suffering a curse—being shrunk down to the size of rats! The Player Characters must brave the dangers of their newly enlarged world in search of a means to lift the curse and restore themselves to full size, all whilst being stalked by a cat! The change of scale makes this adventure both memorable and deadly, but with care and luck, the Player Characters should be able to survive and discover a secret or two about Lankhmar. This a pleasingly inventive scenario and fun to play.

In addition to the four books, the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar comes with two maps. One is a full colour poster map of Lankhmar, the other a black and white map of Nehwon. Both are attractive and useful. Similarly useful is the Judges’ Screen, which includes several of the tables found in the various books in the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set. Of course, those books include a lot more tables and the Judge will need to consult those during play. Lastly, a copy of Goodman Games Gazette, the latest issue of which is included with each new Kickstarter. This issue has an interview with Michael Curtis, the designer of the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set, as well as extra content, meaning that it very nicely complements the rest of the box.

Physically, the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set is very well produced and everything crammed into the box is too. The books are all well-written, the art is decent, and the maps nicely done too. The books are in black and white, which is not standard today, but it fits the style of Dungeon Crawl Classics.

The Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set is a thoroughly impressive, boxed set. It has everything to get a Lankhmar-based campaign started and whilst it is not a definitive guide to the world of Nehwon and the City of Lankhmar, it is a definitive guide for the Judge to run a campaign set there. It not only provides her with the background, the tools, and the options she needs to do so, but also the advice to make the switch to doing so. For the Judge who wants to run a grim and gritty, yet heroic Swords & Sorcery campaign on the streets of the greatest city in the world, Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set is perfect.

The CY_BORG Asset Pack is a supplement for CY_BORG, a cyberpunk purgatory that is modelled upon Mörk Borg, the Swedish pre-apocalypse Old School Renaissance retroclone designed by Ockult Örtmästare Games and Stockholm Kartell and published by Free League Publishing. It is both useful and utilitarian, consisting of four things that the Game Master can use to enhance her campaign.

The first of these is a double-sided map, done on heavy stock paper. On one side is a map of the city of CY, the location for CY_BORG. It is done in full, dark, grim glory on black and with interesting touches such as the district of Galgenbeck—the central city in the land of Tveland in Mörk Borg—being marked in gold. At the bottom of the poster is an index to the district locations in the rulebook. This is great to lay out before the players in play, to help them and their doomed characters around the city. On the other side is the diagram showing the major corporations, their logos, and some details connected to them, such as advertising, rumours about them, opinions, and more. Both the diagram and the map are reprinted from the core rulebook, but the map is definitely more useful than the diagram in play, whereas the corporation diagram may provide the Game Master with some possible scenario hooks.

‘Reaper Repo’ is a scenario for CY_BORG. The second item in the CY_BORG Asset Pack, it has the Player Characters hired to steal the new chrome legs of a Killmatch VIP! Instead of resting, Steel Jackhammer is of course, holding a marathon party. Cue the Player Characters getting in amongst the guests, including random other VIPS, subduing Steel Jackhammer, stealing his legs and getting out again. The two-page spread presents a detailed and described floorplan of Steel Jackhammer’s apartment, stats for both him as well as his guards, pet gene-spliced big cats, and random VIP NPCs. The Player Characters then, are reapers, jacking cyberware off an unwilling victim. Getting this done will be a challenge, but doing so without notice even more difficult. The Player Characters have the advantage of the party going on around them and will doubtless act accordingly. The floorplans for Steel Jackhammer’s apartment are very well done and everything that the Game Master needs to run the scenario is placed in front of her on the two-page spread. ‘Reaper Repo’ is a one location scenario, playable in one session—and therefore a good convention scenario—driven by a combination of the Player Characters’ and random acts. Steel Jackhammer’s party would probably have run its course in a few days, but with the intervention of the Player Characters, it will probably turn into a chaotically memorable party.

The third item in the CY_BORG Asset Pack is the ‘Location Pad’. This a thick sheaf of locations—a cargo ship, clinic, dive bar, street alley, bodega, coffin hotel, killmatch arena, underground anarchist art commune, and more—a total of thirty-four of them, which provide a floor plan of each, plus three random tables of what the location is and what might be found there. There is also room for some notes. With a roll of three six-sided dice, the Game Master has some basic details about the location, and with the addition of a hook to get the Player Characters involved and stats for NPCs, she has a ready-to-play location. For example, the Datacrypt, the answer to “What’s in the Crypt?” might be that “Cables merged with roots from forgotten biological experiments below Cy, creating a sentient biotech ghouls that have taken over the crypt.”; “Secured on their local servers you can find”… is … “the far-reaching cyber tentacles of a powerful AI trapped deep in the Net long ago.”; and “Stuffed inside an unused server rack is” … “a motion detector alarm.” Roll again and the Game Master has an entirely different Datacrypt and with three sheets per location, she can mark it up again and add notes as needed. With a mix of contributions from both Stockholm Kartell and freelance contributors, this a resource that the Game Master can come back to again and again, creating new plots and encounters each time. The maps in the ‘Location Pad’ will, of course, work in any Cyberpunk roleplaying game.

The fourth item in the CY_BORG Asset Pack is a pad of characters sheets. These are clearly laid out, simple to use, and have game notes where necessary.

Physically, the CY_BORG Asset Pack is a decent package. The Artpunk style of both CY_BORG and Mörk Borg is kept to a minimum, whilst the ‘Location Pad’ is more utilitarian. The layout of the scenario, ‘Reaper Repo’, is very well done.

With the CY_BORG Asset Pack, the Game Master has some that she can immediately prepare and run for her players in the form of ‘Reaper Repo’. Then the poster map and the character sheets provide useful, serviceable support to a campaign, but in the long term, the Game Master has a set of tools in the form of the ‘Location Pad’ which she can use to quickly create a scenarios and encounters, whether that is before a game or even during a game, if a particular location is needed. Although it does not look it at first glance, the ‘Location Pad’ is actually the best item in the CY_BORG Asset Pack and certainly the most useful. It would be fantastic if Ockult Örtmästare Games and Stockholm Kartell could produce a companion to the ‘Location Pad’, a book of encounters and scenarios built around designed by contributors and fans of CY_BORG. In meantime, the CY_BORG Asset Pack will energise the Game Master’s CY_BORG campaign until the last Miserable Headline…

It is clear from the start that a lot of thought has gone into the design of Doctor Who: Roleplaying Game Second Edition – Starter Set. Open the box and underneath the dice is what appears to be a sheet of heavy paper with an image of the TARDIS on it. Pull it out of the box and it is that and more because the front shows the doors to the TARDIS, whilst the back, shows the other side of the TARDIS. Further, the front opens up almost like the doors of the TARDIS to reveal what is in the box. It is, of course, a classic ‘What’s in the box’ sheet, the first thing you should always see when opening a boxed roleplaying game for the first time, but here done as thematically as is possible. Combined with its ‘READ THIS FIRST’ section and what you have is an explanation of what is the box, what exactly the reader has in his hands, and what it is designed to do. It is great start to the Doctor Who: Roleplaying Game Second Edition – Starter Set, but then the publisher, Cubicle Seven Entertainment, has form here, having published the thoroughly excellent and playable Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Starter Set for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Fourth Edition.
Cubicle Seven Entertainment has held the licence for a roleplaying game based on the adventures of the time-travelling Time Lord known as Doctor Who since 2009, being with the publication of Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space. It was intentionally designed to be played by Doctor Who fans new to roleplaying as well as veterans, and over the years has been supported by supplements covered both Classic Who—the first eight generations of the Doctor—and New Who—the later four generations. Only in 2022, did the roleplaying game come up to date to cover the adventures of the thirteenth Doctor with Doctor Who: Roleplaying Game Second Edition, and by then, the Doctor had once again regenerated into the Fourteenth Doctor and will do so again with the Fifteenth. That though, is all to come. What Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space never received as its own starter set, a box containing basic rules, ready-to-play characters, advice for the Game Master, dice, and an adventure or two, all sufficient to provide a good feel for how the game plays and an idea of whether or not the players want to have further adventures. That though, changes for Doctor Who: Roleplaying Game Second Edition, which has its own starter set. The Doctor Who: Roleplaying Game Second Edition – Starter Set is designed to be played out of the box, its play discovered and revealed as the reader delves deeper into the box. So, delving deeper into the box…

Below the ‘READ THIS FIRST’ folder is a sheaf of five character sheets. These use the same gatefold sheet format as the ‘READ THIS FIRST’ folder. On the front is the name of the Player Character, what he does, a thumbnail portrait, some quotes that a player can bring into play, a quick explanation of who he is, what he is like, what he enjoys, and reasons to play that character. It is kept quick, simple, and clear, making the basics of the character easy to understand. On the back, there is an even larger portrait of the character, but just like the ‘READ THIS FIRST’ folder, open up a character sheet and there is much more information. The character and his stats, skills, experiences, equipment, focus, and more are presented in the middle. To the left, a column explains the character concept and various game terms, including Focus, which is the Player Character’s motivation, Tech Level, Short-Term and Long-Term Goals, Attributes, Skills, Distinctions which mean that the Player Character is an alien or has a special skill, and Conditions that the Player Character might suffer. To the right is given the Character Background, a description of what make the Player Character’s heart sing, family, friends, and rivals, elements which the Player Character is encouraged to describe, and an introduction. The sheets all feel complete, and the five include a twenty-first century IT worker who wants to be a baker, a nineteenth century stage performer who wants to be a double act, an augmented human investigator who wants to uncover a conspiracy, a hospitality android from the Luxury Station Phaeton who wants to make a friend, and a Silurian scientist who wants to make a big discovery. Like the ‘READ THIS FIRST’ folder, the characters are done on heavy stock paper, in full colour, and are attractive to look at.

Underneath the character sheets is the first of two books in Doctor Who: Roleplaying Game Second Edition – Starter Set. This is ‘The Timeless Library’ and it has pictures of the Thirteenth Doctor, some Daleks, and a library with flying books on the front. This is both the first adventure in the starter set and the explanation of the rules, and one of the first things it explains is why the Doctor is not an option as a Player Character, which is because she is missing and the Player Characters have to find her as part of the adventure. The adventures in Doctor Who: Roleplaying Game Second Edition – Starter Set are designed to be played by three to five players and ‘The Timeless Library’ to teach the rules step-by-step. It starts with the Player Characters finding their way into the TARDIS, introducing themselves, having an opportunity to explore the TARDIS, and make a few skill rolls in determining quite where they are. Doctor Who: Roleplaying Game Second Edition uses the Vortex System in which if a player wants his character to undertake an action, he rolls two six-sided dice and add the values of an appropriate attribute and skill to beat a Difficulty. A typical Difficulty is twelve. Rolls of one on either die indicate that an attempt has failed in some way, even partially, whilst rolls of six indicate that the attempt was not only successful, but a superior success too. Story Points—each Player Character starts with several—can be used to modify any result. If a Player Character has the Advantage, three dice are rolled and the lowest value discarded whilst the highest result is discarded if at a Disadvantage.

The scenario of ‘The Timeless Library’ takes place in a vast, fabled library, which when the Player Characters arrive, has been recently attacked and instituted security response. Which makes navigating the different sections of the library a challenge, but if the Player Characters can find the head librarian, a Judoon—which should be lots of fun for the Game Master to portray—they can make progress. As they proceed through the library, the players have the opportunity to learn how the Vortex System works, including the core mechanics, how gadgets work, how to get the best use out of Story Points, extended tasks and conflict, there are points where it is suggested that the Game Master can improvise, and there is occasional appearance of the Doctor to throw in, if only to give words of encouragement as a holographic message. When it comes to conflict, the initiative rules are notable in that who goes first depends not a die roll, but on Player Character actions. Talkers go first (or Screamers if a Companion possesses both a set of lungs on her and the Screamer Trait), followed by Doers, then Runners, and last of all Fighters. Meanwhile, the Player Characters can explore the library—or at least examine its shelves, overcome technological barriers, persuade recalcitrant NPCs, and survive an encounter with the Doctor’s greatest enemy—the Daleks, and in the final sequence, get chased up to the highest levels of the library in order to reach the scenario’s McGuffin before the Daleks do. In other words, get to do all of the things that the Doctor and her companions do in an episode.

However, that is not all there is to ‘The Timeless Library’ or indeed in Doctor Who: Roleplaying Game Second Edition – Starter Set. There is advice on how to use the scenario in ‘The Timeless Library’ as a one-shot, but there is trio of adventure hooks for each of the five pre-generated Player Characters as well as ideas for further scenarios once they have played through the events of the campaign in ‘The Echo Chamber’. The adventure in ‘The Timeless Library’ is fun, taking the Player Characters from their first steps into the TARDIS to running around, saving people, and winning the day in a place that is out of this world. Unfortunately, the step-by-step process of learning the rules to the Vortex System through play does not quite work. Initially, the rules are quick and easy to learn, but as the adventure progresses, they do get comparatively more complex. Certainly, when it comes to conflicts and chases, the Game Master will need to prepare those rather than learn on the go.

‘The Echo Chamber’, the second book, picks up where ‘The Timeless Library’ left off. It contains two scenarios, one which is a direct sequel, the eponymously titled ‘The Echo Chamber’. It begins with an investigation in modern London before taking the Player Characters into deep space and an even deeper mystery, until confronting the villain of the piece and rescuing the Doctor on a planet from Classic Who’s past. The middle section is something of a spaceship sandbox—if the spaceship sandbox is also a travelling theatre—which the Player Characters can explore, interact with the crew and the performers, and try and find out more about what is going on. The scenario also provides opportunities for each of the Player Characters to shine, whether that is baking or performing, as part of the investigation, and the Game Master also scenes and nods from Classic Who to portray. If there is an issue with the scenario it is that it could have done with some floorplans for the spaceship to help the Game Master visualise it for her players, and perhaps a few suggestions could have been provided to help the Game Master portray the scenario’s many NPCs. A more open affair, it assumes that by this time the Game Master and her players will have come to understand the rules, and the boxes of information for the Game Master focus on extra content for the scenario rather than Game Master tips. ‘The Echo Chamber’ is an entertaining adventure and brings the events of ‘The Timeless Library’ to a rousing collection.

The second scenario in ‘The Echo Chamber’ is ‘The Hermit’s Lantern’. It is designed to be run as a sequel with the same Player Characters, who if successful, end up with their time travel device, enabling them to continue on their adventures without the Doctor. Stats are provided for the Thirteenth Doctor, should the Game Master want to involve her in the scenario. ‘The Hermit’s Lantern’ is a race to obtain an artefact of the same name, its location a planet only accessible once every fifty years due to severe storms. Means are suggested as to how to get the Player Characters involved other than at the bequest of the Doctor, but once on the planet, they will have a hard journey ahead of them across rough terrain, often stalked by the local fauna. This is a shorter, straightforward, and linear affair, more physical in nature, which does not go out of its way to bring the various aspects of the pre-generated Player Characters into play. Consequently, it is not as interesting to play through ‘The Timeless Library’ and ‘The Echo Chamber’, but it is a decent enough scenario.

In addition to the ‘READ THIS FIRST’ folder, the five character sheets, ‘The Timeless Library’, and ‘The Echo Chamber’, the Doctor Who: Roleplaying Game Second Edition – Starter Set also includes a sheet of Story Point tokens in thick card, and two reference sheets. One has the ‘Attributes and Skills Reference Sheet’ on one side and the ‘Story Points Reference Sheet’ on the other, whilst the second reference sheet has the ‘‘Making a Roll’ Reference Sheet’ on one side and the ‘Success Reference Sheet’ on the other side. ‘Success Reference Sheet’ is also printed on the inside of the lid to the box.

Physically, the Doctor Who: Roleplaying Game Second Edition – Starter Set is very well put together, Everything is bright, breezy, in full colour, and easy to understand, with coloured sections in both books designed to highlight and explain rules, give advice for the Game Master, provide NPC details, and so on. They are only light illustrated, with images taken from the series. One issue however is that the books do need an edit in places as there are several incidences of references to other sections of a book or parts of the starter set are inaccurate, and the authors cannot quite decide what the names of the two books in the starter set are. Unlike ‘The Echo Chamber’, the second book, ‘The Timeless Library’ does not have a card cover, so is more like a magazine and less durable. Another issue is that not all of the NPCs detailed in the three adventures in the Doctor Who: Roleplaying Game Second Edition – Starter Set. Mainly due to a lack of ready photographic sources and the expense of producing full colour art, this however leave the Game Master with pictures for some NPCs and not for others. It feels inconsistent and perhaps something that the Game Master might like to source herself.

An experienced player or Game Master will have no problem opening up the Doctor Who: Roleplaying Game Second Edition – Starter Set and beginning play. If the Game Master has run Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space, the previous incarnation of the roleplaying game, she will have even less of a problem. The rules have changed only slightly, and then only to streamline them very slightly. The rules are far from difficult to play, but a little extra attention is needed to understand how conflicts and extended tasks are handled according to the rules, so that does slow down the learn-by-play, step-by-step process. Nevertheless, a lot of thought has gone into the process of learning the game by drawing both Game Master and her players deeper into the box and the game, and the resulting rules are easier to understand and the scenarios engaging and entertaining.

Of course, if the Game Master already has access to the Doctor Who: Roleplaying Game Second Edition, then the scenarios in the starter set can be run from those rules. However, both ‘The Echo Chamber’ and ‘The Timeless Library’ are designed to be played using the pre-generated Player Characters, so they will need some adjusting to suit other Player Characters.

The Doctor Who: Roleplaying Game Second Edition – Starter Set is a great introduction to the Doctor Who: Roleplaying Game Second Edition. It eases the players and their Game Master into the rules and provides them with some exciting adventures to have in time and space!