Day 29

Ah, my last d2!

 I am a huge fan of the 1982 Cat People and I have known about the original one for years, but never saw it. Tonight I decided to change taht.

Cat People (1942)

Horror movies in the 1940s hit differently than other eras. They are slower, yes, but there is more of a feeling of psychological dread, I think. I mean, there is an obvious reason, of course. Film-makers of the time could use that and not gore or other features of the horror genre.

This movie is a bit slow, but it is still rather good. Simone Simon plays Irena, our Serbian Cat Person. Simon is also really good in this, displaying a kind of innocence needed for the role that you just don't get with Nastassja Kinski. 

There are a lot of elements of this movie that you will see 40 years later in the remake. The Cat People legend is largely the same, just changing the location where the legends happen. 

The plot is also very similar—closer than I expected, to be honest. The ending is pretty much the same, too. 

I watched this one on Amazon Prime and it looks like it was remastered. It is still black & white but very sharp and clear. 

This movie is also the originator of the Lewton Bus jump scare (at about 44 mins in).

I like how Irena's village's "Cat Women" are also described as witches. I could use that.

I was going to rewatch the 1982 version, but I ran out of time tonight.

Featured Monster: Lycanthropes and Cat Lord

I am fairly certain that Cat People (1942) had a little bit of influence on the weretiger of the Monster Manual, but I am absolutely certain that Cat People (1982) did influence the Cat Lord of the Monster Manual II. Some scenes of Malcolm McDowell remind me of the art of the Cat Lord. 

October Horror Movie Challenge 2024
Viewed: 40
First Time Views: 20

 The update our heroes have been waiting for.

28 October.—Telegram. Rufus Smith, London, to Lord Godalming, care H. B. M. Vice Consul, Varna.

“Czarina Catherine reported entering Galatz at one o’clock to-day.”

Dr. Seward’s Diary.

28 October.—When the telegram came announcing the arrival in Galatz I do not think it was such a shock to any of us as might have been expected. True, we did not know whence, or how, or when, the bolt would come; but I think we all expected that something strange would happen. The delay of arrival at Varna made us individually satisfied that things would not be just as we had expected; we only waited to learn where the change would occur. None the less, however, was it a surprise. I suppose that nature works on such a hopeful basis that we believe against ourselves that things will be as they ought to be, not as we should know that they will be. Transcendentalism is a beacon to the angels, even if it be a will-o’-the-wisp to man. It was an odd experience and we all took it differently. Van Helsing raised his hand over his head for a moment, as though in remonstrance with the Almighty; but he said not a word, and in a few seconds stood up with his face sternly set. Lord Godalming grew very pale, and sat breathing heavily. I was myself half stunned and looked in wonder at one after another. Quincey Morris tightened his belt with that quick movement which I knew so well; in our old wandering days it meant “action.” Mrs. Harker grew ghastly white, so that the scar on her forehead seemed to burn, but she folded her hands meekly and looked up in prayer. Harker smiled—actually smiled—the dark, bitter smile of one who is without hope; but at the same time his action belied his words, for his hands instinctively sought the hilt of the great Kukri knife and rested there. “When does the next train start for Galatz?” said Van Helsing to us generally.

“At 6:30 to-morrow morning!” We all started, for the answer came from Mrs. Harker.

“How on earth do you know?” said Art.

“You forget—or perhaps you do not know, though Jonathan does and so does Dr. Van Helsing—that I am the train fiend. At home in Exeter I always used to make up the time-tables, so as to be helpful to my husband. I found it so useful sometimes, that I always make a study of the time-tables now. I knew that if anything were to take us to Castle Dracula we should go by Galatz, or at any rate through Bucharest, so I learned the times very carefully. Unhappily there are not many to learn, as the only train to-morrow leaves as I say.”

“Wonderful woman!” murmured the Professor.

“Can’t we get a special?” asked Lord Godalming. Van Helsing shook his head: “I fear not. This land is very different from yours or mine; even if we did have a special, it would probably not arrive as soon as our regular train. Moreover, we have something to prepare. We must think. Now let us organize. You, friend Arthur, go to the train and get the tickets and arrange that all be ready for us to go in the morning. Do you, friend Jonathan, go to the agent of the ship and get from him letters to the agent in Galatz, with authority to make search the ship just as it was here. Morris Quincey, you see the Vice-Consul, and get his aid with his fellow in Galatz and all he can do to make our way smooth, so that no times be lost when over the Danube. John will stay with Madam Mina and me, and we shall consult. For so if time be long you may be delayed; and it will not matter when the sun set, since I am here with Madam to make report.”

“And I,” said Mrs. Harker brightly, and more like her old self than she had been for many a long day, “shall try to be of use in all ways, and shall think and write for you as I used to do. Something is shifting from me in some strange way, and I feel freer than I have been of late!” The three younger men looked happier at the moment as they seemed to realise the significance of her words; but Van Helsing and I, turning to each other, met each a grave and troubled glance. We said nothing at the time, however.

When the three men had gone out to their tasks Van Helsing asked Mrs. Harker to look up the copy of the diaries and find him the part of Harker’s journal at the Castle. She went away to get it; when the door was shut upon her he said to me:—

“We mean the same! speak out!”

“There is some change. It is a hope that makes me sick, for it may deceive us.”

“Quite so. Do you know why I asked her to get the manuscript?”

“No!” said I, “unless it was to get an opportunity of seeing me alone.”

“You are in part right, friend John, but only in part. I want to tell you something. And oh, my friend, I am taking a great—a terrible—risk; but I believe it is right. In the moment when Madam Mina said those words that arrest both our understanding, an inspiration came to me. In the trance of three days ago the Count sent her his spirit to read her mind; or more like he took her to see him in his earth-box in the ship with water rushing, just as it go free at rise and set of sun. He learn then that we are here; for she have more to tell in her open life with eyes to see and ears to hear than he, shut, as he is, in his coffin-box. Now he make his most effort to escape us. At present he want her not.

“He is sure with his so great knowledge that she will come at his call; but he cut her off—take her, as he can do, out of his own power, that so she come not to him. Ah! there I have hope that our man-brains that have been of man so long and that have not lost the grace of God, will come higher than his child-brain that lie in his tomb for centuries, that grow not yet to our stature, and that do only work selfish and therefore small. Here comes Madam Mina; not a word to her of her trance! She know it not; and it would overwhelm her and make despair just when we want all her hope, all her courage; when most we want all her great brain which is trained like man’s brain, but is of sweet woman and have a special power which the Count give her, and which he may not take away altogether—though he think not so. Hush! let me speak, and you shall learn. Oh, John, my friend, we are in awful straits. I fear, as I never feared before. We can only trust the good God. Silence! here she comes!”

I thought that the Professor was going to break down and have hysterics, just as he had when Lucy died, but with a great effort he controlled himself and was at perfect nervous poise when Mrs. Harker tripped into the room, bright and happy-looking and, in the doing of work, seemingly forgetful of her misery. As she came in, she handed a number of sheets of typewriting to Van Helsing. He looked over them gravely, his face brightening up as he read. Then holding the pages between his finger and thumb he said:—

“Friend John, to you with so much of experience already—and you, too, dear Madam Mina, that are young—here is a lesson: do not fear ever to think. A half-thought has been buzzing often in my brain, but I fear to let him loose his wings. Here now, with more knowledge, I go back to where that half-thought come from and I find that he be no half-thought at all; that be a whole thought, though so young that he is not yet strong to use his little wings. Nay, like the “Ugly Duck” of my friend Hans Andersen, he be no duck-thought at all, but a big swan-thought that sail nobly on big wings, when the time come for him to try them. See I read here what Jonathan have written:—

“That other of his race who, in a later age, again and again, brought his forces over The Great River into Turkey Land; who, when he was beaten back, came again, and again, and again, though he had to come alone from the bloody field where his troops were being slaughtered, since he knew that he alone could ultimately triumph.”

“What does this tell us? Not much? no! The Count’s child-thought see nothing; therefore he speak so free. Your man-thought see nothing; my man-thought see nothing, till just now. No! But there comes another word from some one who speak without thought because she, too, know not what it mean—what it might mean. Just as there are elements which rest, yet when in nature’s course they move on their way and they touch—then pouf! and there comes a flash of light, heaven wide, that blind and kill and destroy some; but that show up all earth below for leagues and leagues. Is it not so? Well, I shall explain. To begin, have you ever study the philosophy of crime? ‘Yes’ and ‘No.’ You, John, yes; for it is a study of insanity. You, no, Madam Mina; for crime touch you not—not but once. Still, your mind works true, and argues not a particulari ad universale. There is this peculiarity in criminals. It is so constant, in all countries and at all times, that even police, who know not much from philosophy, come to know it empirically, that it is. That is to be empiric. The criminal always work at one crime—that is the true criminal who seems predestinate to crime, and who will of none other. This criminal has not full man-brain. He is clever and cunning and resourceful; but he be not of man-stature as to brain. He be of child-brain in much. Now this criminal of ours is predestinate to crime also; he, too, have child-brain, and it is of the child to do what he have done. The little bird, the little fish, the little animal learn not by principle, but empirically; and when he learn to do, then there is to him the ground to start from to do more. ‘Dos pou sto,’ said Archimedes. ‘Give me a fulcrum, and I shall move the world!’ To do once, is the fulcrum whereby child-brain become man-brain; and until he have the purpose to do more, he continue to do the same again every time, just as he have done before! Oh, my dear, I see that your eyes are opened, and that to you the lightning flash show all the leagues,” for Mrs. Harker began to clap her hands and her eyes sparkled. He went on:—

“Now you shall speak. Tell us two dry men of science what you see with those so bright eyes.” He took her hand and held it whilst she spoke. His finger and thumb closed on her pulse, as I thought instinctively and unconsciously, as she spoke:—

“The Count is a criminal and of criminal type. Nordau and Lombroso would so classify him, and quâ criminal he is of imperfectly formed mind. Thus, in a difficulty he has to seek resource in habit. His past is a clue, and the one page of it that we know—and that from his own lips—tells that once before, when in what Mr. Morris would call a ‘tight place,’ he went back to his own country from the land he had tried to invade, and thence, without losing purpose, prepared himself for a new effort. He came again better equipped for his work; and won. So he came to London to invade a new land. He was beaten, and when all hope of success was lost, and his existence in danger, he fled back over the sea to his home; just as formerly he had fled back over the Danube from Turkey Land.”

“Good, good! oh, you so clever lady!” said Van Helsing, enthusiastically, as he stooped and kissed her hand. A moment later he said to me, as calmly as though we had been having a sick-room consultation:—

“Seventy-two only; and in all this excitement. I have hope.” Turning to her again, he said with keen expectation:—

“But go on. Go on! there is more to tell if you will. Be not afraid; John and I know. I do in any case, and shall tell you if you are right. Speak, without fear!”

“I will try to; but you will forgive me if I seem egotistical.”

“Nay! fear not, you must be egotist, for it is of you that we think.”

“Then, as he is criminal he is selfish; and as his intellect is small and his action is based on selfishness, he confines himself to one purpose. That purpose is remorseless. As he fled back over the Danube, leaving his forces to be cut to pieces, so now he is intent on being safe, careless of all. So his own selfishness frees my soul somewhat from the terrible power which he acquired over me on that dreadful night. I felt it! Oh, I felt it! Thank God, for His great mercy! My soul is freer than it has been since that awful hour; and all that haunts me is a fear lest in some trance or dream he may have used my knowledge for his ends.” The Professor stood up:—

“He has so used your mind; and by it he has left us here in Varna, whilst the ship that carried him rushed through enveloping fog up to Galatz, where, doubtless, he had made preparation for escaping from us. But his child-mind only saw so far; and it may be that, as ever is in God’s Providence, the very thing that the evil-doer most reckoned on for his selfish good, turns out to be his chiefest harm. The hunter is taken in his own snare, as the great Psalmist says. For now that he think he is free from every trace of us all, and that he has escaped us with so many hours to him, then his selfish child-brain will whisper him to sleep. He think, too, that as he cut himself off from knowing your mind, there can be no knowledge of him to you; there is where he fail! That terrible baptism of blood which he give you makes you free to go to him in spirit, as you have as yet done in your times of freedom, when the sun rise and set. At such times you go by my volition and not by his; and this power to good of you and others, as you have won from your suffering at his hands. This is now all the more precious that he know it not, and to guard himself have even cut himself off from his knowledge of our where. We, however, are not selfish, and we believe that God is with us through all this blackness, and these many dark hours. We shall follow him; and we shall not flinch; even if we peril ourselves that we become like him. Friend John, this has been a great hour; and it have done much to advance us on our way. You must be scribe and write him all down, so that when the others return from their work you can give it to them; then they shall know as we do.”

And so I have written it whilst we wait their return, and Mrs. Harker has written with her typewriter all since she brought the MS. to us.

Notes: Moon Phase: First Quarter

Telegram informing our heroes of the Czarina Catherine near Galatz/Galați.

Our heroes are ready, but this, the start of the final act still surprises them. Stoker tells us about Quincy's belt-tightening habit as if it were something he always did, but this is the first time we see it in print. Freud had not published his essays as of yet, but I would have been inclined to have said this was a commentary on Quincey's masculine virility or his impatience. Hmm...maybe there is a Freudian analysis of Dracula out there somewhere. Though I am more likely to write a Jungian one.

We get more of Stroker's via Van Helsing's praise of Mina. Which is fine, but at a point it feels over-done. And more of Dracula's "child thought."  Again I contend that this is a metaphor for the Count's Old World thinking vs. our hunters' New World thinking.

Stoker was obviously very familiar with criminologist Cesare Lombroso as Harker's earlier descriptions of the Count match with Lombroso's own text when describing criminals. Does this mean that Stoker believes that Dracula was a type of "born criminal" as Lombroso describes? Maybe, the idea was certainly popular enough at the time. I am betting that I could use his text to also find a description similar to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Professor James Moriarty; the other biggest villain of the Victorian era.

Despite all that is going on here, Mina still manages to type everything up, with copies no less, and get them to our hunters. Stoker might be going overboard with his verbal praise of Mina, but let's be honest here. Mina is showing up. What was Quincy doing at this time? Oh yeah, adjusting his belt. 

 Every year DriveThruRPG / OneBookshelf has a big Halloween sale and every year I participate.

Head on over to DriveThruRPG to see what I have on sale this year!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/publisher/8419/the-other-side-publishing?promo=45295&src=browse8419&affiliate_id=10748

Near the end of of the life cycle of D&D 3.5 people were beginning to suspect that a new edition was on the way. They were not wrong, but before that happened we saw some changes in the adventure format from Wizards of the Coast. Certainly a trend to more tactical maps. These last few adventures were all mostly re-visions of some of the classic adventures of old. Castle Greyhawk, Queen of the Demonweb Pits, Undermountain, and of course, Castle Ravenloft.

Expedition to Castle Ravenloft (3.5)

2006. by Bruce R. Cordell and James Wyatt. Based on Ravenloft by Tracy and Laura Hickman. Cover art Kev Walker. Interior art, Dave Allsop, Kalman Andrasofsky, Ralph Horsley, William O’Connor, Lucio Parrillo, Anne Stokes, and Eva Widermann. Cartography Jason Engle, Kyle Hunter. 224 pages.

For this review I am considering my PDF and Print on Demand copies

It is not a new edition of D&D unless we have new take on the classic Ravenloft. This adventure sees Ravenloft back in it's original home; not just in terms of the adventure published by Wizards of the Coast after Sword & Sorcery Studios license, but Castle Ravenloft, divorced from the Demi-Plane of Dread. This is the 3.5 revision of the original adventure.

Like the original I6 Ravenloft adventure, this adventure plunges players into the cursed land of Barovia, a realm dominated by a bleak atmosphere and ruled by the vampire lord Strahd von Zarovich. Adventurers take on the daunting mission of navigating Castle Ravenloft, confronting Strahd, and ending his sinister reign over Barovia once and for all.

The revamped (heh) Expedition to Castle Ravenloft expands on the original with enhanced encounters, new rules, and a more comprehensive campaign that immerses players in Strahd’s haunting domain. The new encounter system of 3.5 takes up the later half of the book, but makes it easy for DMs to plan out how they want to do their encounters. Given we are on the eve of 4e, this means which minis to grab and which maps to use.

The adventure is expanded into a mini-campaign of sorts. And really, that has always been one of the strengths of this adventure; its ability to do more. The adventure can cover 20 sessions, raising characters from 6th level to 10th or broken up into smaller sessions. It can even be run exactly like the original adventure as a straight forward 1 or 2 sessions of "Find the vampire and kill it."

While that is a great bit of flexibility for the adventure, I already did that back in the 1980s. It would be a shame not to use all the new great material here that Cordell and Wyatt (two excellent designers) have done here. There are new antagonists and new locations to explore. 

Barovia itself is a character in this module: a mist-laden, gloomy land filled with mystery, danger, and spectral beauty. Players are encouraged to explore its towns, ruined abbeys, and dense forests, meeting unique NPCs who add depth and lore to the journey. The encounters are varied and challenging, balancing tense dungeon crawls with narrative-driven encounters that test both the characters' skills and the players' wits. And then finally getting to Castle Ravenloft itself. A locale that has lost none of its "charm" over the years. 

We still have the Fortunes of Ravenloft here, among other classic notes expanded for this new adventure. And like the original, Count Strahd von Zarovich is front and center. Not just in the adventure but in the book as well. 

I have played and run the original Ravenloft many, many times. I honestly think this version is rather fun. It stays true to the original while updating the adventure is good AND providing more adventure as well. It is rare when a "remake" can improve, but this one does.

Even if I were to run Ravenloft again under the 1st or 2nd Ed of AD&D, I would still import ideas from this version to those, especially all the locales around the castle and in Barovia. The original adventure kinda just drops you in (not a big deal, works fine) but this one gives you more land to explore, more people to interact with. 

Strahd is still awful, tragic, powerful and one of the more interesting villains in D&D. Castle Ravenloft is still wonderful to explore filled with dangers both obvious and hidden. 

The art is amazing, and really the views of Castle Ravenloft alone in both art and maps makes this must have for any fan of the adventure. 

The adventure/book is divided into five major sections, four chapters and an Appendix.

Chapter 1 covers Adventures in Ravenloft. An overview of what one should expect to see (or do since this is a Dungeon Masters' book) in the area. While the demi-plane of Ravenloft is not used here, there are area affects due to Strahd and his evil.  This also features our first encounter areas.

Chapter 2 the Village of Barovia covers D&D's own "Hammer Hamlet." 

Chapter 3 details the Lands of Barovia. We have more encounter areas here and our "Fortunes of Ravenloft" options.

Chapter 4 is Castle Ravenloft itself.

The Appendix details some new feats, a new spell, and various magical items.

About the Print on Demand

Of all the Print on Demand products I have bought, this one might be one of the very best. It is the "Hardcover, Standard Color Book" option and it compares very well to the off-set printing ones of the same era. 

The pages are crisp and easy to read. The binding is solid.

I am pretty sure the idea to divorce Ravenloft: The Adventure from Ravenloft: The Demi Plane was a.) to get a new generation into the adventure in it's "original" form, and b.) maybe part of their larger plans for it moving away from 3.x to 4e. But I have nothing to back that up.

This is a great adventure by all accounts for D&D 3.x. It has everything the original AD&D adventure had and more.Maybe it is my "nostalgia goggles" (as my son would say) but I still prefer I6 Ravenloft.

This adventure also marks the end of the 3.x Ravenloft line. Next time we meet in the Land of the Mists it will be under 4th Edition D&D rules.

  Day 28

A purple sparkly d12.

 Got a chance to check out the two new(er) Ghostbusters movies and I had a blast with them. The two questions that come up here are "Are they horror?" and "What do they have to do with D&D?" The first is "who cares, they have the trappings of horror" and the second, "yeah, for me they do."

Given that the two movies have the same cast and are continuations of the original Ghostsbusters (1984, 1989) I will talk about them together.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021)

This series follows up on the original 1980s with the estranged family (daughter and grandkids) of Egon Spengler (the late Harold Ramis). They move out to Oklahoma, where Egon had been hiding. There is a prophecy about the return of Gozer. The plot is a bit silly to be honest, but the story is a lot of fun.

What really sets this movie apart is the cast. Yes, we get Ray, Peter, Winston, and Janine back, all played by their original actors. Even a bit of CGI and Ivan Reitman playing Harold Ramis as the the now dead Egon. But the real stand outs are the new cast, especially McKenna Gract as Phoebe, the granddaughter of Egon. I have seen her in a lot of movies since Gifted (2017), where she played a seven-year-old math genius.  Here she is not far from that. She is a genius and the spitting image of Egon. 

We also get Finn Wolfhard as her older brother Trevor. He is sorta the comic relief here and that works. Paul Rudd is here playing seismologist turned science teacher. Carrie Coon plays mother (and Egon's daughter) Callie Spengler. New characters include the entertaining Podcast (Logan Kim) and Lucky (Celeste O'Connor). 

They have to battle Gozer again, but that is fine. Gozzer this time is played by Olivia Wilde and her voice is done by Shohreh Aghdashloo. I mean, what a combination. 

The most fun of this movie is watching all the references to the first two movies and other horror movies/shows, including Stranger Things. Lots of cameos; stick around for Sigourney Weaver. And special cameo/casting of  J. K. Simmons plays Ivo Shandor, looking and sounding just like Ketheric Thorm. 

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024)

This one is not quite as good, but it has some fun moments. This one expands on the Ghostbuster myths and makes the case for more sequels. Winston Zeddemore, now an entrepreneur, funds all sorts of Ghostbuster related technology and keeps the whole place funded.

The cast is the same with the additions of Kumail Nanjiani and Patton Oswalt. We even get the return of William Atherton as Mayor Walter Peck. For the record I have heard from people I know that William Atherton is actually one of the nicest guys you can ever meet.

There are good moments, the battle at the end is a lot of fun. The big bad, Gahraka is rally scary looking and that is great. Nice to see Dan Ackroyd is still crazy. 

Confession, I thought it was great that McKenna Grace's Phoebe was the hero of both movies. 

The first movie was dedicated to Harold Ramis and this one was dedicated to Ivan Reitman.

Featured Monster: Ghosts and Ghostbusters

These movies, even the originals, had no influence on the D&D books, but they had a huge effect on my games. I loved playing undead hunting clerics and even created special gens to fight and trap ghosts. Yeah, they're not original, but hey, I was 14. 

There are lot of ideas here for a game. Maybe a "Ghost Hunting" game for NIGHT SHIFT! 

October Horror Movie Challenge 2024
Viewed: 39
First Time Views: 19

More updates from Seward about Mina.

Dr. Seward’s Diary.

27 October, Noon.—Most strange; no news yet of the ship we wait for. Mrs. Harker reported last night and this morning as usual: “lapping waves and rushing water,” though she added that “the waves were very faint.” The telegrams from London have been the same: “no further report.” Van Helsing is terribly anxious, and told me just now that he fears the Count is escaping us. He added significantly:—

“I did not like that lethargy of Madam Mina’s. Souls and memories can do strange things during trance.” I was about to ask him more, but Harker just then came in, and he held up a warning hand. We must try to-night at sunset to make her speak more fully when in her hypnotic state.

Notes: Moon Phase: Waxing Crescent

Mina reports nothing new. I have wondered whether or not the Count could lie to Mina about what he sees and hears. She is getting this information as if it were from a mis-wired wireless set; something used to receive instead of transmit or something like that. 

Obviously our hunters should have seen sight of the ship by now.

 Slept through the night last night. 

Yesterday I got up after only a couple of hours of sleep. Voted and my wife said "Hey it is beautiful outside, lets go on a hike."

So six miles later I crashed.

Slept now, will resume tonight.

  Day 27

A purple d8

 Seward gives some more updates.

Dr. Seward’s Diary.

26 October.—Another day and no tidings of the Czarina Catherine. She ought to be here by now. That she is still journeying somewhere is apparent, for Mrs. Harker’s hypnotic report at sunrise was still the same. It is possible that the vessel may be lying by, at times, for fog; some of the steamers which came in last evening reported patches of fog both to north and south of the port. We must continue our watching, as the ship may now be signalled any moment.

Notes: Moon Phase: Waxing Crescent

Not much here.  More examples of the Count controlling the weather. 

Interesting how he was such a presence in the first part of the book and now he has no lines to speak of.

Reviews / October 25, 2024

The Possessed
Directed by Jerry Thorpe 
NBC (1977)

The ladies, eh? Can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em and all the perfectionism, repressed frustrations, sexual/sibling rivalries, and fear of aging that make them the perfect conduits for Evil to manifest itself. 

Before I’m rent limb from limb by justly enraged women, let me explain that those are not my sentiments: they’re the thesis that, at least superficially, seems to underpin 1977 TV Exorcist knock-off The Possessed. Because women—sorry, I mean Evil—is up to its old tricks as the academic year comes to an end in the Helen Page School for Girls in, natch, Salem. Not that Salem, though—Salem in Oregon, though the school is actually snooty Reed College in Portland, going incognito here because, despite annual tuition fees today of around $70,000, you presumably can never have enough cash to guarantee the kids of the elite the basic amenities they require.

Never fear, though: sullen ex-priest Kevin Leahy (James Farentino, who I will refer to mononymously as just “Farentino” not out of any desire to sound like a proper writer but rather because, like Sembello, when you’ve got a surname that punchy, the Christian name feels like it’s just dangling there to no real purpose) is here to pace gloomily and seemingly randomly around the corridors of the school until Evil is kicked the fuck back to hell. We first meet him still frocked but with his faith in tatters, sucking on a bottle of Jack Daniels in the sacristy and morosely pronouncing mass in a doomed-pilot-episode-esque flashback prologue. Driving home from the day job that evening, he drunkenly totals his car against a utility pole and finds himself facing the final judgement. He’s fallen from God’s grace, he’s informed, and his only hope for redemption is to “seek out evil and fight that evil by whatever means… possible.” Next thing you know, he’s been Lazarused back to life with a powerful “in this week’s episode” vibe.

Cut to the Helen Page School, where graduation is coming up. Our introduction to the place is an incongruous and oddly unnerving scene of screaming girls riding bikes along the school’s corridors, which is a nice way of evoking the charged atmosphere: the girls are restless to get the hell out of there, and the following year the school’s going co-ed, so everyone’s a little itchy, especially brittle and unhappy-seeming headmistress Louise Gelson (Joan Hackett), whose widower sister Ellen Sumner (Claudette Nevins) is a teacher at the school. Before long things start bursting into flames—curtains, pieces of paper, girls’ clothes. What’s the cause? Is it some kind of prank by the student body, bored teenage girls famously a nexus for mischief in the popular imagination? Is it Ellen’s daughter Weezie (Ann Dusenberry) pulling a Carrie? No—counterintuitively, it’s Han Solo. 

Because the cause of the upset turns out to be hunky biology teacher Paul Winjam, played by a young Harrison Ford in what looks like his last role before Star Wars. After breaking off his secret fling with headmistress Louise, Paul’s now taken to fooling around with her niece Weezie. Plus, he’s also kind of a dick in other ways, as evidenced by his edgelord biology lessons where he gets his yuks by putting the girls on the spot to nominally teach them important lessons about fear. Before long, though, Winjam gets his comeuppance in a scene that feels weirdly and cathartically like the Indiana Jones franchise terminating itself with purifying flame. The film culminates in a poolside battle between good and evil that’s resolved by Farentino meting out a couple of hysteria-resolving, patriarchy-affirming slaps before nonsensically jumping into the water and disappearing into the limbo where un-picked-up pilots go to be judged.

Blatantly trying to ride the audience numbers of 1973’s The Exorcist, the same year’s Satan’s School for Girls, and 1976’s The Omen and Carrie, The Possessed is, predictably, imbued with the whole period’s ubiquitous post-Watergate feeling of gloom and hopelessness—so grim and overheated that at times even the stolid Farentino looks afraid. It’s almost as if the real supernatural force at play is the dumb joie de vivre of the almost-Gen-X teen schoolgirls pushing against the cynicism, fatalism, and malaise of the conscientious but emotionally misshapen adults. “Is this happening because of me?” asks a tormented Weezie. No, Weezie—it’s happening because of depressed boomers. 

Written by John Sacret Young, who also wrote We Are the Mutants “favorite” (trauma nexus) Testament, directed by stalwart Jerry Thorpe, and starring a cast of troopers so seasoned they would never need refrigeration, The Possessed is more a work of competence than inspiration. And yet. Despite everything daft, derivative, pedestrian, and flagrantly sexist about it, The Possessed does somehow contrive to be unsettling. Like all horror that actually horrifies, as opposed to performing the spectacle of “horror,” there’s a vague sensation that even the people making it didn’t really grasp quite what they were channeling. It’s a feeling that lurks in inoffensive yet surreal scenes like the one where a group of girls prank their roommate by covering her bed with a disgusting pile of gunk, or that strange introductory image of the girls riding bikes through the corridors. I’ll be honest, I went into this review half-hoping to write a smug guffawing takedown, but the unhealthy miasma of repressed and unacknowledged emotion that fills the school and the film—and maybe Hollywood itself?— wrongfooted me completely.

As is often the case, the dreariness of the plot and the film’s visuals—which presage 1980’s The Changeling—actually contribute to its oppressive mood, and the cast all put in far more effort than a cheapo TV knock-off like this probably deserves. The poolside denouement is both oddly underwhelming and deeply strange—who the fuck ever got machine-gunned with the Nails of Christ?—and the possession make-up weirdly effective, however low-rent. And I can’t think of many other films where the sensations of being physically hot or cold seem quite so tangible.

In conclusion, The Possessed is gloomy fun, and it’s a shame it didn’t end up getting commissioned as a series. Who in their right mind wouldn’t have wanted to watch an episode of this shit every week to wash the foul taste of Highway to Heaven out of their mouth?

—Richard McKenna

Dreams and Machines is a post-apocalyptic future set on another planet. One that has suffered not one, but two calamitous events. The world is Evera Prime, settled as one of Earth’s colonies following the establishment of the Gateway that enabled relatively fast travel between the Earth and Evera Prime. The first disaster the colonists faced was when the Gateway stopped functioning, cutting off contact with Earth, forcing them to adapt and survive on their own. The second would come centuries later, after the colony had prospered and developed, establishing Project Builder, a programme to develop resource and power control that was so successful that it would usher in a golden age of post-scarcity and rapid scientific advancement. Then the Builder and its connected systems began to glitch. It stopped anticipating the needs of the people of Evera Prime, and worse, when scientist tried to fix the problem, it turned on them, unleashing its Mech servants and its armoury in a conflagration in which cities would be destroyed, the landscape pockmarked with craters, populations atomised, and worse. Two centuries have passed, and the people of Evera Prime survived and then thrived, hoping one day that a way would be found to make contact with the Earth again. The broad background to the setting are detailed in the Dreams and Machines: Player’s Guide, which also includes the rules for character creation and action, as well as some of the technology of the setting, a mix of high-tech nanotechnology and low-tech scrap, the former almost having magic-like properties.

The Dreams And Machines: Gamemaster’s Guide expands upon the Dreams and Machines: Player’s Guide, both in terms of setting and rules, as well as guidance for running the game. Published by Modiphius Entertainment, this is a post-apocalyptic roleplaying game of exploration and hope, in which the Player Characters delve into the ruins of the past, examine old technology, and protect the many surviving communities against attacks by the Wakers, the robots still working after the events of the apocalypse, and waiting for the moment they detect survivors and the use of advanced technology, to activate and stalk and attack as the last fragments of their programming dictate, the creatures mutated by the affects of the apocalypse, and the Thralls, humans wrapped in loops of wire and marked with ash and paint, who boil up out of the ground to aggressively raid and steal food and technology from the communities.

The Dreams And Machines: Gamemaster’s Guide begins with an exploration of the setting, its history and timeline, its geography, and its factions. There is an overview of technology in the setting, the stats and details of individual devices given in the Dreams and Machines: Player’s Guide. Overall, this expands upon the material given in the Dreams and Machines: Player’s Guide, most notably in developing and detailing more of the factions’ backgrounds. This covers their origins, views on technology, what others think of them, and so on. The various views on technology vary widely from faction to faction, such as the Everans accepting, but not developing technology, the Archivists actively searching for new old technology, and the Dreamers loathing technology. The one faction that is in effect, new here, are the Conduits and the Thralls, barely mentioned in the Dreams and Machines: Player’s Guide. Here they are greatly expanded upon. ‘Thralls’ are the name that the surface dwellers, that is, the Player Characters and others, give to the Conduits. The Conduits are a highly religious group who worship and embrace technology and believe that the Builder saved them from the worst of the war, their fanaticism driving them to raid the surface. They work in secret to restore the technology of the past and the Builder’s network, working from their secret base in the Dark City. Only a very little is known about the Dark City, the Archivists having some knowledge as to why the Builder’s War started, but not necessarily knowing if that is connected to the Dark City and the Conduits.

These are only some of the secrets explored in Dreams And Machines: Gamemaster’s Guide. Also detailed is the history of the Builder and why it was built, and what its current status is now. This is as fragmented and widely dispersed pieces of code, attempting to make contact with each other and rebuild. For most people on Evera Prime, the Builder was intrinsic in triggering the war, and whilst the environmental effects of the war can be found everywhere, the most obvious holdover from the Builder War are the innumerable robots which litter many parts of the landscape, nothing more than mouldering heaps of junk until they receive the right signal, activate, and go on murderous rampages. Such occurrences are rare, but this does not stop most people on Evera Prima fearing the Wakers, as such robots are known. Dreams And Machines: Gamemaster’s Guide also reveals two further hidden aspects of the setting. One is the human involvement in the Builder’s War, whilst the other is the involvement of another ‘agency’. Although the book talks about this ‘agency’ and its involvement in events leading up to the war, it does not actually reveal the identity of what the ‘agency’ is, and nor does it examine how the Player Characters might eventually discover that and other secrets of the setting.

In terms of running the game, the Dreams And Machines: Gamemaster’s Guide provides the Game Master with some excellent advice. It not only covers her responsibilities, but also examines the uses of Truths in play, how to frame scenes and action, handling Threat and how to spend it, and more. In particular, it notes that Threat—the means by which the Game Master can enhance the actions of her NPCs, monsters, and villains—can be used to cajole characters into action when their players are dithering, such as when coming up with a plan, and that it is in the interest of players to give the Game Master points of Theat. This is done when the players have run out of Momentum to give their characters an advantage, and whilst it obviously benefits any opposition that they might face, what the Dreams And Machines: Gamemaster’s Guide makes clear is that it benefits the story too, building tension and making confrontations dramatic. There is advice too on the use of Safety Tools and of Spirit, a Player Character’s inner reserves of concentration and stamina, typically only used in desperate situations.

The advice for the Game Master is both slick and helpful, even well practised. Which should be no surprise given the number of 2d20 System roleplaying games that Modiphius Entertainment has published. Where it disappoints though, is in the lack of advice in terms of what stories the Game Master will tell, what type of scenarios she should be creating for her players. Obviously, the Game Master can draw heavily from the post-apocalyptic genre, but the Dreams And Machines: Gamemaster’s Guide does not explore what makes a Dream and Machines post-apocalyptic story different from that of any other post-apocalyptic story.

The Dreams And Machines: Gamemaster’s Guide does provide a range of NPCs, creatures, adversaries, and other threats. This includes flora and fauna native to both Earth and Evera Prime, as well as mutants. Only the one Earth creature, the Horse, is given stats, though others like the Tiger are mentioned, whilst native fauna includes the Akriti, a nomadic tree that migrates in herds. The arachnid Cryptid, the Prowlcat with its overlapping plates instead of fur, and the wolf-like Snarlback with its extendible mouth, are examples of the Mutant creatures found on Evera Prime. Technology comes in the form of the Nano-Geist, a nanogram capable of interacting with the world as part of its programming, and the Locus, a nanogram tied to an individual location or building. There are random tables for nanogram actions, as there are for Waker functions, which are also detailed in the book. Lastly, there are stats and details for NPCs, including Thralls.

The Dreams And Machines: Gamemaster’s Guide provides a broad overview of the continent of Nedrestia, but goes further in describing a region where the Game Master and her players can begin play. It focuses on New Mossgrove, a trade and exploration hub located in the Regid-Kasteel region, near Kasteel city ruins. Both the ruins of Kasteel and of the mini-city, Sanktejo, provides environments to explore, whilst New Mossgrove serves as a base and source of rumours and possible tasks. It is also the starting point for the included adventure, ‘Secrets in Lost Rios’. This is a sequel to the scenario in the Dreams and Machines Starter Set, but ‘Secrets in Lost Rios’ can be adjusted so that the Game Master need not have had to run the scenario in the Dreams and Machines Starter Set. It opens with New Mossgrove having suffered a Waker attack, a rare occurrence that puts everyone on edge. (This attack is actually the climax to the scenario in the Dreams and Machines Starter Set.) The Player Characters are hired by an Archivist to search for a friend who led an expedition into the wilderness who is missing and is presumed dead. The only known survivor of the expedition was killed in the Waker attack on the town. The expedition was investigating a laboratory in the former resort town of Los Rios, once standing between two rivers, but now between two ravines. There is scope for some decent encounters between New Mossgrove and Los Rios, but when they get there, they discover that someone has already got there before them—a band of scavenging Thralls! The Player Characters will need to drive them off in order to investigate the laboratory fully and confirm that the missing friend is there. The scenario includes some rather ideas as to what happens next and also some ideas for some further adventures. Overall, it is a decent adventure, but probably better as a payoff for the scenario Dreams and Machines Starter Set.

Physically, Dreams And Machines: Gamemaster’s Guide is well presented, the artwork is good, and the writing is really easy to read. Like the Dreams and Machines: Player’s Guide, it has been scribbled on as if it was a child’s journal or diary.

The Dreams And Machines: Gamemaster’s Guide, as intended, completes the core of the roleplaying game with the Dreams and Machines: Player’s Guide. It decently expands upon the information given in the Dreams and Machines: Player’s Guide, coupled with well-practised advice, but the extra information only goes so far. There are still secrets to the setting to be revealed, and there is a lack of advice for creating adventures specific to the setting of Evera Prime that would have been helpful too. That though will have to wait for the Dreams And Machines: GM’s Toolkit. In the meantime, if the Game Master wants to create her own content, Dreams And Machines is probably best suited to someone who already has experience of writing her own adventures. Overall, the Dreams And Machines: Gamemaster’s Guide is a nicely accessible and solid book for the Dreams And Machines Games Master.

In the aftermath of a post-apocalyptic event, there is only one thing standing between the fate of the survivors and the ever-encroaching, ever-hungry, evil known as The Gloom, and that is the Samurai Goths! Which is about as much background as there is in Samurai Goths of the Apocalypse, a roleplaying of gonzo survival horror inspired by the Gothic musical culture that grew out of the Punk movement in the late nineteen seventies. All that matters is that the Samurai Goths look good and know where their tessen, tanto, shuriken, and katanas are. Published by Uknite the Realm, this is a straight-to-DVD action movie of a roleplaying game in which the Samurai Goth face the Gloom and fight creatures like the ‘Danger Louse’, the ‘Tornacrow’, and the ‘Eyelasher’, all before coming home with their shopping for a nice hot cup of tea or a glass of absinthe or a snakebite and black.

A Samurai Goth in Samurai Goths of the Apocalypse has a Goth dynasty, a Samurai weapon, three attributes—‘Samurai’, ‘Goth’, and ‘Apocalypse’, and then a Name, Nature, and Band. The latter is the name for the Samurai Goths’ group as a whole. The seven Goth Dynasties are the Corporate Goth, the Cybergoth, the Gothabilly, the Pastel Goth, the Romantic Goth, the Traditional Goth, and the Western Goth. Each Dynasty provides a Free Ability and an Action Point Ability, the latter needing the expenditure of Action Points to use. For example, the Traditional Goth has the Free Ability of ‘Levitate’, simply floating in the air, and the Action Point Ability of ‘Trailblazer’, which lets them give an ally an extra ally and add a bonus to their own next attack, whilst the Cybergoth has the Free Ability of ‘Neon Night’, a temporary light, and the Action Point Ability of ‘Sonic Rave Blast’, which lets them let out a sonic blast of industrial goth rave music which knocks prone all enemies close by. Similarly, each Samurai weapon has its own Action Point Ability, such as the ‘Counterstrike’ of the katana and the ‘Pinning’ of the Yari.

The three attributes—‘Samurai’, ‘Goth’, and ‘Apocalypse’—correspond to ‘Combat’, ‘Persona’, and ‘Survival’ respectively, and are rated one, two, or three. The Samurai Goth will also have Talents, such as Truck Driver, Accordionist, Charming, and Medicine, but these are selected during play rather than during the creation process. Overall, the process is very quick and easy, a player having only to make a handful of choices.

Name: Buffy Hayes
Nature: Perky
Band Name: Resist The Bitter Cabaret
Goth Dynasty: Traditional Goth
Samurai 2 Goth 3 Apocalypse 1
Feathers: 1
Willpower: 6
Goth Dynasty Abilities: Levitate (Free), Trailblazer (Action Point)
Samurai Weapon: Tessen (Deflect)

Mechanically, Samurai Goths of the Apocalypse used the CONSUMED6 game system. This uses six-sided dice that the players roll, rather than the Gloom Weaver, as the Game Master is known in Samurai Goths of the Apocalypse. To have his Samurai Goth undertake an action, a player rolls a number of dice equal to the appropriate attribute. A Talent, if appropriate, can add an extra die, as can an ability from a Dynasty. The highest die result counts, and if the result is four, five, or six, the action is a success, but a failure if the highest result is a one, two, or three.

Combat in Samurai Goths of the Apocalypse expands on this quite a bit. Initiative is a simple roll of a single die, a success indicating that the Samurai Goths act first, a failure indicating that they act second. When in combat against the Gloom, it has two effects upon the mechanics. The first is that rolls of six explode and enable a player to roll another die, whilst the second is that rolls of one consume the highest success. If any successes are left over, the number of successes indicates the amount of damage inflicted on the enemy, whilst if there only failures left over, the number indicates the amount of damage suffered by the Samurai Goth.

In addition to standard actions, Weapon Abilities and Goth Dynasty Abilities can be activated by expending Action Points. Weapon Abilities cost two Action Points to activate and Goth Dynasty Abilities cost one. A Samurai Goth has a maximum of three Action Points and is earned by inflicting damage and as a Gloom Weaver reward during play. A Samurai Goth also has ‘Feathers’. He starts play with one and earns more by completing missions, up to a maximum of six. They can then be spent to alter a single die rolled by an ally by a single pip, but more feathers will alter it by more. Once earned, ‘Feathers’ reset between adventures.

When a Samurai Goth suffers damage, it is deducted from his Willpower. He can only suffer a total of six damage, but if he suffers a seventh, the corruptive influence of the Gloom, he will fall unconscious and suffer a ‘Gloomagen’. This means that the Gloom has infected and mutated him. For example, ‘Stygian Sight’ means that one of the Samurai Goth’s eyes has swollen and becomes with a swirling pool of complete blackness, meaning that he can see in the dark and even great distances. The Samurai Goth’s Willpower then resets to six. However, a Samurai Goth can only possess two Gloomagens. If a third would be suffered, the Gloom consumes him and he becomes one of its servants!

For the Gloom Weaver, there is a set of tables for creating Gloom monsters, some sample Gloom monsters, a table of prompts, and that is it. Which is underwhelming to say the least. For a roleplaying game designed for quick play, it does leave a lot for the Gloom Weaver to do in terms of setting and missions for her Samurai Goths to play through. Worse, there are a couple of pages devoted to just art—and as nice as that is—they could have been better used to support the Gloom Weaver. So yes, this is disappointing, but in terms of setting, the simplest thing that the Gloom Weaver could do is actually set her Samurai Goths of the Apocalypse campaign in a twisted, post-apocalyptic version of her own neighbourhood or somewhere that is familiar to most of her players. Then take that community and have it changed and twisted by the Gloom-laden apocalypse and use it to drive plots.

Physically, Samurai Goths of the Apocalypse is a black and neon affair. The book is easy to read and the artwork is suitably scrappy and cartoonish.

Samurai Goths of the Apocalypse is a quick-to-learn, throw down and play kind of roleplaying game. It is a cheesy combination of stereotypes and action that reeks of high-concept, low budget films and offers a few sessions worth stand against the Gloom storytelling once the Gloom Weaver has her setting and a scenario or two in hand.

Given the origins of the roleplaying hobby—in wargaming and in the drawing of dungeons that the first player characters, and a great many since, explored and plundered—it should be no surprise just how important maps are to the hobby. They serve as a means to show a tactical situation when using miniatures or tokens and to track the progress of the player characters through the dungeon—by both the players and the Dungeon Master. And since the publication of Dungeon Geomorphs, Set One: Basic Dungeon by TSR, Inc. in 1976, the hobby has found different ways in which to provide us with maps. Games Workshop published several Dungeon Floor Sets in the 1980s, culminating in Dungeon Planner Set 1: Caverns of the Dead and Dungeon Planner Set 2: Nightmare in Blackmarsh; Dwarven Forge has supplied dungeon enthusiasts with highly detailed, three-dimensional modular terrain since 1996; and any number of publishers have sold maps as PDFs via Drivethrurpg.com. Loke BattleMats does something a little different with its maps. It publishes them as books. To date, this has included the Big Book of Battle Mats: Rooms, Vaults, & Chambers, the Big Book of Cyberpunk Battle Mats, The Dungeon Books of Battle Mats, The Wilderness Books of Battle Mats, The Towns & Taverns Books of Battle Mats, and Castles, Crypts, & Caverns Books of Battle Mats. However, The Veiled Dungeon is something a little different, something more like Dungeon Planner Set 1: Caverns of the Dead and Dungeon Planner Set 2: Nightmare in Blackmarsh.
The Veiled Dungeon is a boxed set containing a set of maps, encounter cards, and a book of encounters and monsters, all of which can be used in the adventure in the book or used by the Dungeon Master to create her own encounters. It is designed as both toolkit and ready-to-play adventure and comes decently appointed in whatever way the Dungeon Master wants to use it. The adventure itself, ‘The Raiders of the Cerulean Ruins’, is designed for Player Characters of between Third and Fifth Level for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. It comes as a boxed set containing twenty separate maps, forty monster cards, and a reference book.

The maps are done on double-sided seventeen by eleven light card sheets, in full colour and marked with a grid of one-inch squares. All are suitable for use with both wet and dry markers. They include hallways, corridors, dormitories, storerooms, workrooms, crumbling bridges over yawning magical chasms, grand staircases, magical circles, ziggurats, shattered rooms, courtyards and entrances, and more. They are bright and colourful and done in the style recognisable from maps from Loke BattleMats. They are also compatible with them, meaning that they can be used alongside all of the publisher’s maps to expand the playing area and add variety.
The monster cards are also double-sided and done in full colour. On the front is an illustration of the creature, which of course, can be shown to the players when their characters encounter them, whilst on the back is its full stats for easy reference by the Dungeon Master. There are one or two NPCs, such as the Veteran Scholar, but the rest are all monsters. Many of them are animated objects—animated objects to be found in the scenario—and it is clear that the author has had a lot of fun naming and designing them. There is the ‘Animated Scroll Storm’, which acts like a swarm of paper that inflicts paper cuts and on a critical can cast a random cantrip; ‘Bad Dreams’ is animated bed that inflicts ‘Things that go bump’ damage and if a target is prone makes them fall asleep ‘Night, Night!’; and ‘Belligerent Bookcase’, a ‘Vindictive Teacher’ that makes attacks against targets with an Intelligence of twelve or less at Advantage and will then ‘Throw the Book’ at them! The most fun, at least in terms of names, is the ‘Chest of Jaws’, that likes to grapple its targets and steal small items with ‘’That’s Mine’ and then hangs on with ‘Lockjaw’ for both Advantage and extra damage. The animated furniture is especially fun and all of the pieces could easily be used elsewhere—as could many of the monsters.
The Reference Book for The Veiled Dungeon is initially somewhat confusing. Is it, or is it not, a scenario called ‘The Veiled Dungeon’? Well, sort of, but first what the Reference Book does is actually break down the elements of the dungeon, not necessarily to help the Dungeon Master run the pre-written version which follows later in the book, but to help the Dungeon Master create something of her own, but still similar. The elements common to both the adventure contained in the box and the one that the Dungeon Master might create include the myth of the Veiled Dungeon and its invasive fog that shifts and walls that move. How scholars keep discovering it and as they dig deeper, becoming obsessed with exploring further, arousing the interest of a deity of madness and obsession, until they make one terrible discovery, and the fog is unleashed, wreathing its way through the complex, changing and twisting the walls and rooms and letting deadly new monsters in!
The Reference Book then takes the Dungeon Master through the different elements of the adventure. This begins with the maps and then provides tables for creating motivations, persons and organisations that might employ the Player Characters, the size of the dungeon and variations upon it, and then multiple different encounters. It breaks these encounters down area by area rather than by individual locations. The last part of Reference Book consists of the bestiary for ‘The Veiled Dungeon’. From ‘Activated Rope’, ‘Animated Scroll Storm’, and ‘Arcane Golem’ to ‘Veteran Scholar’, ‘Unwelcome Rug’, and ‘Wyrmspawn’, every monster gets a decent write-up, typically a paragraph in length. The more major monsters, like the ‘Malevolent Veil Fiend’ and the ‘Sentinel Statue’, get much longer write-ups, as befitting the threats they represent.

The tools are there for the Dungeon Master to create her own version of ‘The Veiled Dungeon’, but the Reference Book also includes its own pre-written adventure, essentially the designer’s own version of ‘The Veiled Dungeon’. This is ‘The Raiders of the Cerulean Ruins’. The Cerulean Ruins are an important ‘Site of Special Arcane Interest’—or ‘SSAI’—currently being excavated by the Yore Institute. The latter hires the Player Characters to investigate the complex after contact has been lost with its staff and students. It is part-scholar, part-archaeological dig, that gets increasingly darker and weirder. The Player Characters will initially gain some information about the status of the complex from a former employee who has turned ‘ruin raider’, but it does not quite prepare them for what they find. Much of the fittings and furniture have been twisted into malevolent monstrosities and there is a growing sense of madness and chaos, the deeper the Player Characters go. Progress through the dungeon is intentionally compartmenalised. This is done by making the Player Characters need to find keys to unlock particular sections of the dungeon. This is not only a device to have the Player Characters explore every section, but also to prevent them from haring through the dungeon, so forcing the Dungeon Master to clear the table of one set of maps and then set up another.

In the epilogue to the adventure there is an interesting line: “One of the scholars also points out that they have uncovered rumours that might lead to another set of ruins similar to this one!” Which, should the players and their characters follow up on, would enable the Dungeon Master to use the tools to create a new version of ‘The Veiled Dungeon’ of her own, which almost exactly, but not like The Cerulean Ruins. What happens if the Player Characters do follow up on this lead is not explored in the Reference Book, sadly, since some overarching plot could have provided more motivation and storytelling possibilities than simple repetition. Nevertheless, ‘The Raiders of the Cerulean Ruins’ is a good scenario with a decent mix of exploration and combat and a few clues to help the players and their characters work out what is going on.

Physically, The Veiled Dungeon is a handsome boxed set. Everything is well presented. The artwork is excellent and the cartography is as good as you would expect.

The Veiled Dungeon is a slightly odd product, both an adventure and a toolkit to create similarly themed adventures. It perhaps could have done with advice to connect the adventures or provide a bigger plot perhaps, so that the Dungeon Master would have found it easier to create and link, if that is what she desires, the variants upon ‘The Veiled Dungeon’. Nevertheless, whether she is running the included ‘The Raiders of the Cerulean Ruins’ or a version of ‘The Veiled Dungeon’ of her own devising, the contents of The Veiled Dungeon are going to look good on the table.

Sailing in search of work—the ruler of a distant port is said to be offering a generous reward for investigating a great dungeon under the city—the Player Characters find themselves aboard The Erebus, when it is caught in a sudden storm that brews in ferocity until it and its crew, as well as the Player Characters are dashed onto a desolate shore marked only by cliffs! When they awake, cold and sodden, half the crew are dead and half the crew are missing, drag marks in the rough sand the only indication of their fate. As the Player Characters stare up at the cliffs a pair of glowing red eyes appear over the lip and a brutally bulky creature stares down at them before letting out a thunderous howl that shakes their very souls! This is the start of HOWL: A Horror Adventure of Dark Folklore for Cairn. Published by By Odin’s Beard, best known for Runecairn Wardensaga and We Deal in Lead, it was previously available as The Howling Caverns, written for use with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, but has now been adapted to the micro-clone, Cairn. The name of the ship, The Erebus, the high cliffs, and the howling beast all lend themselves to certain inspirations and HOWL is upfront about them. This is a scenario inspired by Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the Yorkshire port of Whitby where Dracula came ashore after travelling aboard The Erebus, English folklore, and Ravenloft, the classic horror setting for Dungeons & Dragons.

HOWL: A Horror Adventure of Dark Folklore for Cairn begins with the Player Characters aboard The Erebus and have the opportunity to help the ship’s crew and so perhaps help save the ship. Of course, that does not happen, but they may be able to keep some of the crew alive who will help them later ashore. What they also discover once they wake up from the shipwreck, they find a number of skeletons that rise to attack and once defeated, they learn from a note carried by one of the skeletons that they have been cursed! A Barghest—perhaps the beast on the cliff—is abroad and is stalking them. The only solution seems to lie up the narrow cliff path and onwards to the nearby village of Krasnaloz. What is quickly apparent is that the village is run down and its inhabitants disaffected, but they are forthcoming about the Barghest and its legend. This is, that last night, after three days of violent storms, lightning struck a tree and when it fell, it opened up a cave out of which it is said that the Barghest exited and let out its first howl!

The Player Characters have the opportunity to gather more background and clues, many of them freely given by the few staff patrons of the amusingly named ‘The Slaughtered Lamb’. This includes too, the possible means of lifting the cure that they are under and even an offer of help from a bard who recently lost her partner to the Barghest. Other clues can be gathered at a ruined temple, long fallen into disuse, before the Player Characters set out to investigate the caves located in the countryside to the north of the village. Bar a possible encounter or two in the wintery surrounds, the Player Characters will quickly arrive at the cave and begin to explore its depths. The first few chambers in the network show signs of occupation, but have clearly been abandoned, whilst the later ones show signs of exploration and hide secrets. Only in the last chamber will the Barghest be found and in confronting the creature, some secrets will be revealed.

The adventure is linear, but well designed and atmospheric. In the first part, there is a definite feeling of the cold and isolation on a bleak coast, whilst the dungeon itself is a contrasting split between a lair and a magical retreat. The former having abandoned, whilst the latter is being explored, a mixture of puzzles and traps with a dose of the weirdness of the deep thrown in. Altogether, the scenario should provide three or so sessions to play through, a single taking the Player Characters from the shipwreck to the village and the second two sessions into the cave system. At the end though, HOWL may leave the players and their characters unsatisfied. There is resolution, but not one likely to leave them happy. In part, this is due to the fact that HOWL is the first part of an extended campaign, and as yet, the sequel, Colossus Wake, has not been adapted from Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. In part, because the Player Characters are going to feel manipulated by the end of the scenario and without that sequel, there is no way in which they can address the issue themselves.

Physically, HOWL is very cleanly and tidily presented. The layout is excellent and although the location descriptions for the cave do not include individual excerpts from the main dungeon map, there is a relationship diagram showing the links between one room and another. The artwork is decent and the maps are good too. The NPC and monster stats are listed at the back, so the Game Master will need to flip back and forth.

As a scenario for the Old School Renaissance, HOWL is easy to adapt to other retroclones, but as a scenario for Cairn, with a little effort, it could easily be adapted to Into the Odd and run more like a scenario for Masque of the Red Death and Other Tales. Overall, HOWL: A Horror Adventure of Dark Folklore for Cairn pleasingly combines Gothic horror with fantasy horror in a very easy-to-use format.

Much like the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition and the Jonstown Compendium for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, The Companions of Arthur is a curated platform for user-made content, but for material set in Greg Stafford’s masterpiece of Arthurian legend and romance, Pendragon. It enables creators to sell their own original content for Pendragon, Sixth Edition. This can original scenarios, background material, alternate Arthurian settings, and more, but none of this content should be considered to be ‘canon’, but rather fall under ‘Your Pendragon Will Vary’. This means that there is still scope for the authors to create interesting and useful content that others can bring to their Pendragon campaigns.

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What is the Nature of the Quest?The Tree Hazardous – Three Mini Adventures for Pendragon 6th Edition is a scenario for use with Pendragon, Sixth Edition which details a minor quest deep into the forest that can be used as side quest or adventure and played through in a single session.

It is a full colour, twenty page, 2.54 MB PDF.

The layout is tidy and it is nicely illustrated.
Where is the Quest Set?The Tree Hazardous is set northeast of Hertford, deep in the Quinqueroi Forest in Logres. It can very easily be shifted to the forest of the Game Master’s choice.
Who should go on this Quest?
The Tree Hazardous does not require any specific type of knight. However, a good range of skills is required, and each the three mini-quests tests not only tests a range of skills including combat skills, Singing, and Play (Instrument), but also features one or more sets of Personality Traits in the course of their encounters.
It is best suited for play by one, two, or three Player-knights, each of whom will undertake an individual quest when encountering the ‘Tree Hazardous’ of the title.
What does the Quest require?
The Tree Hazardous requires the Pendragon, Sixth Edition rules or the Pendragon Starter Set.
Where will the Quest take the Knights?The Tree Hazardous opens with the Player-knights already having learned of the local legend of the Tree hazardous, which tells of the unusually large yew tree deep within the forest and the supposedly strangeness high up in its branches. With a little time searching, they will be able to locate this tree and as daylight ebbs away and the Tree Hazardous is found, the Player-knights each hear voices from high up in the branches. In climbing the tree and going to investigate the voices will lead the Player-knights to one of the three mini-quests that make up the meat of the scenario.
The three mini-quests are ‘The Ivy Knight’, ‘The Bird Chorus’, and ‘The Devil Squirrel’. In ‘The Ivy Knight’, the Player-knight will have his ‘Valorous/Cowardly’ Traits tested when he is faced by a knight who wishes to escape a curse. ‘Honest/Deceitful’ and ‘Modest/Proud’ are the Traits tested in ‘The Bird Chorus’ as the Player-knight gets to sing or play and engage with some musical birds, whilst ‘Merciful/Cruel’, ‘Trusting/Suspicious’, and ‘Valorous/Cowardly’ are tested in ‘The Devil Squirrel’ as the Player-knight attempts to save both a young boy from the clutches a squirrelly sinister threat and themselves from a similar fate. Each of the three is quite different in tone. Thus, ‘The Ivy Knight’ is quite mournful; ‘The Bird Chorus’ veers between joyous and ever so slightly menacing, and ‘The Devil Squirrel’ is dark and dangerous. All end not only with their possible Glory awards, but also several loose ends that the Game Master and the Player-knights can follow up.
All three mini-quests are clearly presented, so that the Game Master could run them together with a group of three Player-knights, each tackling a different mini-quest. Alternatively, the Gamemaster can take any one of the three mini-quests and present it on its own in a one-on-one session with the player and his knight. All three also make clear which personality Traits and which skills are involved so that not only is each mini-quest easy to run, but easy to tailor to a Player-knight and his personality Traits and skills if the Game Master chooses to do so.
Should the Knights ride out on this Quest?Although there is an element of utilitarianism to collection in that its contents can be run in a single session for a handful of Player-knights or extracted so each of its mini-quests can be run for a single player, The Tree Hazardous – Three Mini Adventures for Pendragon 6th Edition presents three nicely written and engaging little quests that will test both the knights and their players. Their format and their length mean that whether as a single mini-quest or all three, The Tree Hazardous – Three Mini Adventures for Pendragon 6th Edition is quick and easy to prepare and slot into a campaign.

Much like the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, the Jonstown Compendium is a curated platform for user-made content, but for material set in Greg Stafford’s mythic universe of Glorantha. It enables creators to sell their own original content for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, 13th Age Glorantha, and HeroQuest Glorantha (Questworlds). This can include original scenarios, background material, cults, mythology, details of NPCs and monsters, and so on, but none of this content should be considered to be ‘canon’, but rather fall under ‘Your Glorantha Will Vary’. This means that there is still scope for the authors to create interesting and useful content that others can bring to their Glorantha-set campaigns.

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What is it?Night at the Sunshine Inn is a scenario inspired by Night of the Living Dead for use with RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha in which the Player Characters are hired by an Issaries merchant to guard a shipment of ore being transported from Jonstown to Boldholme.

It is a possible sequel to the scenario, ‘A Rough Landing’, from the RuneQuest Starter Set.

It is a full colour, seventeen page, 3.66 MB PDF.

The layout is a bit tight and it is lightly illustrated.

The cartography is excellent.
It needs an edit.
Where is it set?Night at the Sunshine Inn begins in Jonstown, but will take the Player Characters east to the Old Tarsh Road and from there to a stop at the Sunshine Inn overnight, before (supposedly) travelling onto Boldholme.

It is set after Scared Time, 1625.
Who do you play?
Night at the Sunshine Inn does not require any specific character type, but Player Characters who are capable warriors are highly recommended.
What do you need?
Night at the Sunshine Inn requires RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, the RuneQuest Gamemaster Screen Pack, and the RuneQuest: Glorantha Bestiary.
What do you get?Night at the Sunshine Inn sets up a tale of revenge as the Player Characters find themselves at an inn which is suddenly attacked in the night. their initial challenge will be in properly arming themselves and donning their armour as the Chaos of the attack plays out around them. The Player Characters will need to hold off three waves of attacks from a band of Scorpionmen and their allies over the course of the night. Effectively, this is ‘tower defence’ style scenario, though much like the Zombies mode for the Call of Duty computer games, the Player Characters have access to timber, nails, and a hammer so that they can board up broken doors and windows between attacks. It echoes the classic ‘Gringle’s Pawnshop’ from Apple Lane.
By the time morning comes, the fact that their employer never turns up—he was supposed to join them at then Sunshine Inn—and the person he wanted them to meet at the inn is not there, should suggest to the players and their characters that something very odd is going on here. The likelihood is that the Player Characters are going to want to ask him some questions. He is a rather shifty-looking character, so that may tip the players and their characters off to the fact that he is up to no good.

Night at the Sunshine Inn is a simple scenario, primarily combat focused, though there is opportunity for roleplaying and interaction with the other customers at the Sunshine Inn. The Game Master may want to reduce the Reputation reward as it is a little high and since its climax is the defence of a single location, actually run it as a battle with miniatures to keep track of everything as there are a lot of combatants. One aspect not explored is what happens to the Sunshine Inn afterwards and what effect the attack has upon the fortunes of the Goodhaven clan that own it.
Is it worth your time?Yes—Night at the Sunshine Inn is a quick and dirty scenario that provides a single session of action and combat that can be easily inserted into a campaign or run as a side mission when a player or two cannot make it.No—Night at the Sunshine Inn is simplistic and combat-focused and the antagonist may be too shifty for the players to trust him, let alone their characters. Plus, the Game Master may not yet have run the scenarios from the RuneQuest Starter Set.Maybe—Night at the Sunshine Inn is easy to run and add to a campaign, and may serve as a change of tone and pace between more interesting and sophisticated adventures.

They say that if you want to make it big in Hollywood, you are going to have to sell your soul. Not necessarily the devil, but to some studio executive for certain. Life is hard trying to make it big in Tinseltown, but that does not stop a whole lot of people trying—and when they get there, from working just as hard to stay on top, or as close as they can get. Fame and fortune, and your name up in lights on the marquee at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard beckon if you work hard enough, have got the talent, and get lucky. Right now, you got some of that and more—a contract. A contract with Starfall Studios, where, “The Brightest Stars are brought down to earth, just for you!”. In truth, you are a B-List actor, perhaps on the way up, perhaps on the way down, and also in truth, Starfall Studios has not had a hit in years. However, you know you can change that, because you know you are good and with the new management and the new funding, this could be your chance to get noticed. If not make a big hit, then big enough to maybe get an award nomination, get picked up by a bigger studio, and get put in bigger pictures.

This is the set-up for SHIVER Blockbuster: Legends of the Silver Scream, a cinema-themed campaign for Shiver – Role-playing Tales in the Strange & the Unknown, the horror roleplaying game published by Parable Games. In the campaign, the players take on the roles of actors working for a small film studio in Hollywood, trying to make some blockbusters and get noticed. It has five scripts, each bound to be a surefire hit in which the actors get to prove how good—or bad—they are and make Hollywood sit up and take notice! Effectively, each player is roleplaying an actor who is playing a role in five different films, so five times—and slightly more—the roleplaying as in any other campaign or roleplaying game, unless they always play the same role and play it to the camera. Then, the best thing of all, a roleplaying game like Shiver – Role-playing Tales in the Strange & the Unknown and thus SHIVER Blockbuster: Legends of the Silver Scream, has got a budget bigger than any Hollywood studio. So, it can make any film and it will never blow the budget!

Actor creation in SHIVER Blockbuster: Legends of the Silver Scream works like that in Shiver – Role-playing Tales in the Strange & the Unknown. First, a player selects an Archetype, a Background, and a Fear. Then for SHIVER Blockbuster: Legends of the Silver Scream, he selects a Starring Role. This can be ‘The Leading Hero’, ‘The Stunt Performer’, ‘The Thespian’, ‘The Heartthrob’, ‘The Love Interest’, ‘The Comic Relief’, ‘The Method’, and more. Each Starring Role has a Star Power and Audience Expectation. The Star Power is a unique ability that the Actor can perform once per quarter of the Doom Clock, whilst the Audience Expectation is something that if done on screen will gain the Actor the favour of both the audience and the Director, and so boost his career. So, for ‘The Love Interest’, the Star Power is a ‘A Healing Heart’ that enables the Actor to make a Heart Check and regain Hit Points if they perform a romantic scene, whilst the Audience Expectation ‘Break Heart/Bow Minds’ in which the Actor wants the audience’s favour to fall in love with them and so will make romantic confessions, and have moments of passion or tear-jerking moments to get the audience to love them.

Depending upon how well an Actor performed, he or she can receive an Accolade or a Review. Both are awarded by the Director. Engage in both Star Power and Audience Expectation and an Actor will earn an Accolade, but if not, he or she may be in line for a Bad Review. Accolades include the ‘Performance Award’, ‘Hall of Fame’, ‘Rabid Fanbase’, ‘Top Billing’, and so on, whilst Bad Reviews include ‘Hamming It Up’, ‘Worst Actor Ever’, and ‘Boring Performance’. Accolades provide a minor benefit, whilst Bad Reviews act as minor disadvantage. For example, ‘Performance Award’ gives the Actor a piece of armour to use in the next film, but once used, it is gone, whilst ‘Looking Fit’ grants Advantage on acts of athleticism. The Bad Review, ‘Diva Reputation’ means that if the Actor fails a Check that would advance the Doom Clock, if they also fail a Strange Check, they suffer Soul damage.

It is possible for a player to change his Actor’s Starring Role and the book suggests that if multiple players want their Actor to take a particular Starring Role, then they should audition! However, the awarding of Accolades and Bad Reviews is the purview of the Director and can be subjective. The problem is that they are effectively grading a player’s roleplaying skill and performance—good, bad, or indifferent—and that is not natural to roleplaying as a hobby. The advice on the matter is cursory, but nevertheless, this is a fun mechanic and enforces the film studio and life in pictures set-up of SHIVER Blockbuster: Legends of the Silver Scream. What the Director might want to do perhaps is encourage the input of the players in deciding the Accolades and Bad Reviews, possibly forming an association of Hollywood critics and roleplaying its members too to expand the roles that the players take?

Once set up, SHIVER Blockbuster: Legends of the Silver Scream presents five very different ‘scripts’ or scenarios. Each is very nicely formatted, including a set-up, a Classification Board, details of what the Director knows, enemies, weapons, and items, the epilogue, and the Doom Events. The Doom Events are the four events per scenario that can be triggered over the course of the script, whilst the Classification Board categorises the scenario. Actually the ‘SHIVER Board of Classification’, for each scenario it lists the length of play time, number of players required, Subgenre, Film Age Rating, Content Warning, Recommended Ability Level, and Watchlist. The latter includes the archetypal films that the script references and that the Director should watch for inspiration. Every film lists the roles required as well.

All five adventures in SHIVER Blockbuster: Legends of the Silver Scream can be played through in a single session, or two at the most. The first is ‘A Little Adventure’, which is inspired by Honey I Shrunk the Kids and The Incredible Shrinking Man and finds a family visiting Grandpa for the weekend only to find him missing and themselves suddenly shrunk into a big world where they must battle toys, pets, and insects from doll’s house across the garden to find a way to get back to the right scale. ‘Crossbones’ Treasure’ is inspired by Pirates of the Caribbean and The Goonies, and is a classic pirate tale that has the cast race across the Caribbean in search of pirate treasure and facing ghosts, undead, and a giant crab. The third scenario is ‘Intergalactic Planetary Temple of Terror’ is a Science Fiction film which is in parts Guardians of the Galaxy, Star Wars, and Flash Gordon. The Player Characters are galactic criminals who escape space prison and are chased by their robot masters known as the Authority all the way to an ice planet where they will be faced by a dilemma whose outcome will affect the universe! A combination of Lord of the Rings, Legend, and Clash of the Titans*, ‘Medieval Dead’ is a fantasy romp in which the Player Characters are would be heroes, apprentice members of the Adventurer’s Guild, who are forced to suddenly graduate to actual, proper heroes when at the annual Merry Heroism Festival, an army of skeletons and a skeletal dragon, led by the Necromancer kills them all. Plus, he also kidnaps the princess. So not only a revenge mission, but a rescue one too which pokes a little fun at Dungeons & Dragons too, all the way to Mount Gloom. The last scenario is ‘Deep Red Sea’ which is inspired by the Indiana Jones series of films, Jaws, and Atlantis: The Lost City. What starts as a shark hunt to improve the tourism of a Pacific coast town in 1941 turns into a confrontation with a big sea monster and an evil cult from under the sea!

* Hopefully the original and not the dire 2010 remake.

Now all five of the scenarios in SHIVER Blockbuster: Legends of the Silver Scream are linear. This is to be expected, as after all, they are meant to be films being shot by a film studio. They could also be extracted from the book and run as one-shots, but that would be to ignore the meta-level written into the campaign, that is, the fact that the Player Characters are Actors. Where the players get to roleplay Actors in five different films over the course of SHIVER Blockbuster: Legends of the Silver Scream, in between, they get to play the Actors themselves. Between each film there is an interlude. Starfall Studio is running a very busy schedule, so the Actors will have little time between wrapping up shooting on one picture and shooting the next, so will be confined to the Star Trailer Park. In the first interlude, between ‘A Little Adventure’ and ‘Crossbones’ Treasure’, the players get to introduce their Actors and what their Starring Role is and each is visited by their Agent for the dreaded Performance Review. This is when the Accolades and Bad Reviews are handed out. One odd issue perhaps is that the Actors all share the same Agent, but that does also suggest a certain creepiness to their situation and this is only enhanced by the ominous events which can occur to one or more of the Actors. These ominous events are inspired by the previous films which the Actors have just finished making and serve to add to the creepiness as more and more of them occur as more films are made. One option to offset the oddness of the single Agent, is to have the players roleplay the different Agents for their Actors, which will add another level of roleplay to the campaign and make it a little more like troupe play.

Over the course of the four interludes, life at the Starfall Studio lot gets more and more mysterious, like the scriptwriter on all five films going missing or a rabid fan running amok, until ‘The Last Reel’. Drawing inspiration from This is the End and Scream 2, in this campaign climax, the Actors are forced to step out of their heroic roles and become heroes themselves as they attend the Star Gala at Starfall Studios’ Ciné Star Megaplex and confront one big conspiracy and one big villain, who has been pulling the strings all along, proving, of course, just how evil Hollywood actually is!

Supporting the campaign in SHIVER Blockbuster: Legends of the Silver Scream is ‘The Compendium’. This lists all of the NPCs and monsters which appear in the various films, plus the Inventory for each.

SHIVER Blockbuster: Legends of the Silver Scream is not just a collection of film-themed and film inspired horror adventures. It is more than that and in part, that is where the campaign comes alive, in having the players not only roleplay the cast of characters onscreen in the campaign’s five films, but also step back from that to have them roleplay the Actors performing as the cast of characters. It calls for more roleplaying upon the part of the players, which can be as hammy as they like, because, after all, the Starring Roles are archetypes. And if they want to be inspired by particular actors who resemble those Starring Roles, then all the better.

SHIVER Blockbuster: Legends of the Silver Scream is a really entertaining campaign that in presenting five films to make, offers lots of variety, and having the players roleplay both the film casts and the Actors, gives them lots of roleplay to get their teeth into—a clever, well-executed combination.

In between the Infinite Sky above and the fog-bound depths of the Under below, the Bridge goes ever on. Towns sprawl upwards into dense conurbations of towers as if to touch the Infinite Sky, whilst the narrow sewers and undercities thread in and out of between the Bridge’s great stone piles. Were one to descend below, you might discover labyrinths and hidden facilities, and deeper still, horrors and strangeness beyond the understanding of any Bridger, each fascinated by the Bridgers brave—or foolish—enough to descend so far. Some Spans of the Bridge are busy towns. Some the gated estates of the aristocracy. Some are broken—by accident or by too much theft of the Bridge’s stone and metal, the only source of either, for the Bridgers. Some have buildings upon which there are rooftop gardens—the only source of food for the Bridgers. Some have gone to seed and overgrown into wildernesses, as much as the cobbles of the Bridge will allow. There is said to be a Span on the Bridge where it is perpetual night and another where the Span revolves slowly to connect with the rest of the Bridge once a day. It is also said that the Bridge is alive and some can hear its whispers if they listen carefully enough. In between every Span, stands a Gatehouse. Most are operated by the Turnpike Guild, taking travellers money in return for supposedly safe passage, though most regard the supposedly protective guild members as nothing more than extortionists. From the Awful Birds in the Infinite Sky and the Gargoyles lurking seemingly everywhere, everything is hungry and resources are far from plentiful, and occasionally, something strange will happen on the Bridge, though no one will say what. As the Bridge crumbles underfoot, there are those who look beyond their Span, ready to go in search of… something. The Bridgers are at peace now, thanks to the mythical pact between the Trolls and Gruffolk and Humans and Coblins, so now is as good a time as any for a Bridge-Punk to go look for it, somewhere along Bridgetown.

Bridgetown describes itself as a pastoral, liminal roleplaying game. Liminal certainly, as it is always set somewhere in between along the infinite length of the Bridge. Pastoral? Perhaps, but then only so far as the cobbles of the Bridge allows. Published by Technical Grimoire Games, best known for Bones Deep, it uses the TROIKA!, published by the Melsonian Arts Council, this is a roleplaying game of picaresque adventure and exploration along a weird and winding bridge that never seems to end. It is possible for the players to select backgrounds from the core rules for TROIKA!, but Bridgetown has a dozen of its own that all help enforce the feel of the sitting. These are Coblins, Gruffolk, Humans, and Trolls. The Humans include the Cobble Canter, charlatans who beg and spread the word of new gods and ideas like the Unrequited Moon and the Bleeding Stone; the Fallen Aristocrat who has literally fallen out of his tower and been scored by his fellows; the Pebble-Pincher, the homeless of the Bridgetown, who cheerfully avoids the authorities and might be connected to the mysterious Bindlestick Syndicate; the Stonewright, who can shepherd the spirits of the dead into protective keystones and talk to them; and the Turnpike Turncoat, a member who has been turfed out of the Turnpike Guild. Coblins are tiny folk, who typically travel in very large groups, forced out of their homes following the pact that ended their enslavement, finding homes where they can squeeze into. Coblin Cranny-Crawlers travel more openly, whilst Coblins in a Trench Coat disguise themselves in human-sized clothes. Gruffolk are nomadic goat-folk, travelling in braying groups called trips. The Gruffolk Hostler is on an endless quest to feed his Gruffolk travellers, whilst the Gruffolk Pilgrim searches for the perfect destination, the Fat Pastures, the Gruffolk afterlife, with a zeal, but enjoy a good fight along the way. The Troll Sewer Worker maintains and protects the sewers in the Underbridge, and as a member of the Sewer Union, seeks to unionise other works and stand up against the Turnpike Guild, whilst the Troll Shaman, or ‘Croaker’, who sacrifices part of his own stony hide to cast various spells and cures. Lastly, the Stone Keening is a Troll-sized agglomeration of human souls not syphoned into a keystone by a Stonewright, who have animated a pile of rubble and are mostly looking to avoid getting turned into a pile of gravel by a braying mob or for a quiet place to grow moss.

Bridger creation in Bridgetown follows the same process as TROIKA! begins with character creation. A Bridger is defined by his Skill, Stamina, and Luck. A player rolls for each of these, notes his possessions, and then rolls for his Background. Each Background provides several Advanced Skills, which can be actual skills or they can be spells. The process is quick and easy, and also includes an objective or three that each Background might pursue.

Name: Cumil
Background: Troll Sewer Worker
Skill 4
Stamina 18
Luck 6

ADVANCED SKILLS
Sanitation 7, Swim 3, Awareness 6, Tunnel Fighting 6

SPECIAL
See well in dark tunnels and cloudy water
Inoculated against waterborne diseases

POSSESSIONS
Knife, rucksack, lantern, flask of oil, a grimy shovel, miniature trollhole cover (Sewer Union Badge of Membership), slimeproof ratskin cap, snapstipe mushrooms (three provisions)

LOOK’N FOR
Workers to unionise
A place in need of infrastructure
A real breath of fresh air

Bridgetown is described in twelve locations, such as The Heights (and Depths); Craterton with its massive rock that fell from the Infinite Sky; the Squeeze, which is so densely populated that a single path runs through it; the Great Excavation where the inhabitants have dug down so deep into the Bridge, that Bridgers have to climb down deep into the excavated pylon and climb back out again; and Sourstone, which is not home to the Fabled Candy Cobbled Streets where every stone is a treat, but something much worse… If this does not sound that all that many, they are not necessarily one and done locations. All have tables of events and NPCs, so that the Bridgers can visit certain locations again and again, like The Heights (and Depths) and The Wyld Bridge, which are given over to lengths of wilderness.

Between the spans the Gatehouses, massive blocks of stone manned by the various Turnpike Guilds who always charge extra, or special, for ne’er do wells like the Player Characters. The description of each Gatehouse includes the toll that the Bridgers will have to pay to pass. So, The Armistice Gate has a powerful keystone that enforces a ban against the use of all weapons, so the Turnpike Guildsmen have become expert martial artists and brawlers with a penchant for delivering impromptu sermons! To pass through the Gate, the Toll the Bridgers will need to pay is not monetary, but the gruelling ‘Embrace of Peace’ initiation rite and give up their arms and armour. Locations within the Gate include The Hall of Arms where the confiscated arms and armour—some of them actually a rare source of metal on the Bridge—are displayed and stored and The Path of Peace, the temple-point of crossing where travellers cross from one span to the next.
Essentially, every Span and Gate is an encounter all of its own, each unique in their own way and rife with flavour and small details that bring them to life. They can be played in order as written—and Bridgetown includes a full-colour map that both depicts all of the Spans and Gates and allows the Game Master to do that or alternatively, randomise their order. Bridgetown comes with a way to push the Bridgers along in addition to their individual motivations. This is the campaign starter, ‘Stone Soup’, in which the Bridgers come into possession of the Cauldron, a big iron pot with a smiling face in which can be cooked magical stews! Known recipes are few and ingredients rare, but start with a handful of provisions. Possible stews can be boring, fancy, or tainted, and have odd effects such as a fertile stew that makes anything planted in it grow to fruition in a day, turns into a blade that shatters are dealing maximum damage, or makes anyone eating it grow hungrier and hungrier until he finds what he is looking for. The Fertile Stew requires fresh and magical ingredients, the Bladed Stew needs sharp and old ingredients, and the Curiosity Stew wants dull and secret ingredients. In possession of the Cauldron, the Bridgers might be searching for the cure to a horrible disease, for the Perfect Stew that might be the best means of exchange to pass through the many Gates, and so on. The more immediate driver will be the search for more ingredients and recipes, and Bridgetown has lots of information about ingredients and recipes.

Of course, in addition the Game Master can create her Spans and Gates—in fact, a book of reader submitted Gates and Spans would be an excellent companion volume—and she can add her own dungeons to the Under below the Bridge or even insert a ready-to-play one! In addition to the events and NPC tables to be found in most of the Span locations, Bridgetown includes spells linked to the Bridge which require the caster to be touching the Bridge directly and to possess a Spell-Stone. Every Spell-Stone has its own Stamina, which is expended when a spell is cast and crumbles to dust when all of the Stamina is expended. However, overuse of magic in an area causes a Span to weaken and also begin to crumble… Spells include Word on the Street when the caster literally asks the street underfoot what has happened there recently or Stonewall to create a physical wall to slow pursuers or a metaphysical wall to cause obtuse instructions in getting answers! There are further random tables for ‘Weird Weather’, more ‘Bridgetown NPCs or Creatures’, the effects of ‘Magical Spells Run Amok’, ‘Items and Loot’, ‘Awful Birds’, and more.

Physically, Bridgetown is cleanly laid out and accessible. It is clearly designed to be used at the table. The artwork is a mix of the twee and the odd and the doleful, a delightful combination.

As befitting a setting for TROIKA!, there is a weirdness and whimsiness to Bridgetown. In terms of scope, it is designed for short campaigns that would likely take the Bridgers across many of the Spans and through several of the Gates described in its pages, in addition to whatever the Game Master devised of her own. In terms of character, Bridgetown offers some wonderfully engaging choices, but the real character is the Bridge itself, a combination of the original London Bridge and Castle Gormenghast that looms over the Bridgers in their Dickensian flânerie as they in turn trudge and cavort from one Span to the next.