Be Like a Crow: A Solo RPG is a journaling game which enables the player to take to the skies as a corvidae—crow, magpie, jackdaw, or rook—over multiple landscapes and differing genres, achieving objectives, exploring, and growing as they learn and grow old. It is clever and thoughtful in that it makes the reader and player think outside of what they might traditionally roleplay and explore a world quite literally from a bird’s-eye view. It combines the simple mechanics and use of a deck of playing cards typical of a journaling game with five genres—‘Urban Crow’, ‘Cyber-Crow’, ‘Gothic Crow’, ‘Fantasy Crow’, ‘Clockwork Crow’, and ‘Ravens of the Tower’. Each of these presents a different place and time for the bird to fly over, land on, encounter the denizens, and more. The book is easy to read and the rules and set-up easy to grasp, such that the player can start reading and taking inspiration from the prompts in Be Like a Crow: A Solo RPG and begin making recording entries in his journal, with little difficulty.

Be Like a Crow: A Solo RPG is not a roleplaying game about anthropomorphic birds. The player is very much exploring worlds and recording the experiences of an actual bird, as it goes from a fledgling to a juvenile to an adult. Each bird is defined by its size and habits such as nesting, diet, notable characteristics, and habitat. In game terms, each type of bird begins play with a certain number of ticks in various skills. Skills are broken down into four categories—‘Travel & Exploration’, ‘Social Interaction’, ‘Tools & Rituals’, and ‘Combat’—each of which has four skills. A corvidae begins play with two ticks in any one skill and one tick in a skill in each category, plus ticks in five skills for his species. He also has authority with two skills. The player’s choice of setting will add ticks to certain skills as well.

Jay
Species: Magpie
Lifecycle Stage: Fledgling
Setting: Cyber-Crow
Injuries:

SKILLS
Travel & Exploration: Fly 1, Hop 1, Search 2, Navigate 1
Social Interaction:  Befriend 1, Signal –, Scare 1, Mate –
Tools & Rituals: Dance –, Sing –, Use Tool 1, Preen 1
Combat: Peck 1, Claw –, Divebomb 1, Evade 1

Mechanically, Be Like a Crow is simple. It uses a standard deck of playing cards and when a player wants his bird to undertake an action, he draws a card from the deck. This sets the difficulty number of the task. To see whether the bird succeeds, he draws another card and adds the value of a skill to the number of the card if appropriate. If it is equal or greater than the difficulty number, the bird succeeds. If an action is made with Authority, whether due to circumstances or a skill, the player draws two cards and uses the highest one, whereas if made at a Penalty, two cards are drawn and the lowest value one used. When drawn, a Joker can be used or saved for later. If the latter, it can be used to automatically succeed at a combat or skill check, to heal injuries, or to discard a card and draw again. Combat is a matter of drawing a card for each opponent, adding a skill if appropriate, and comparing the totals of the cards and the skills. The highest total wins each round and inflicts an injury. Eventually, when the deck is exhausted, the discard pile is reshuffled and becomes the new deck.

Half of Be Like a Crow consists of prompts and settings. There are prompts for events in flight and on land that are standard to all six settings, but each setting has its set of tables for objectives, objects, characters, and locations. Only one set of objectives is given for each setting, but the objects, characters, and locations are divided between the black and the red suit colours. This gives thirteen objectives per setting and double that for each of the other categories. Each setting also includes a double-page, full colour map. Notes on each setting give the extra abilities and skills that a bird gains at each stage of his lifecycle, from fledgling all the way up to ol’ crow.

The play and thus the journaling of Be Like a Crow is driven by objectives as achieving these will enable a bird to advance through his lifecycle. An objective for the ‘Clockwork Crow’ setting, might be for example, “[character] has gone missing, last seen in [location]. Air ship pirates might be involved. Travel there and find them and return them back to their home in [location].” The player will also need to draw cards to identify the character and both locations, and then as his bird flies from hex to hex across the map, draw cards for events in flight, and then for events when he lands. The player is free to, and advised to, ignore prompts if they do not fit the story, and this may be necessary if a prompt is drawn again, but ideally, the player should be using the prompts as drawn to tell a story and build the life of his crow.

Physically, Be Like a Crow: A Solo RPG is a lovely little book. The artwork throughout is excellent and the book is well written and easy to use.

Be Like a Crow: A Solo RPG is published by Critical Kit, a publisher better known for its scenarios for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, as is unlike anything that the publisher has released. It sets out to provide the means to explore the life of an animal, sometimes in a fantastical setting, sometimes not, constantly prompting the player to tell his crow’s story, where he went, what he did, and who he met, but always to think like a bird. In keeping a journal it enables the player to articulate and express that experience of the world around him, from a very different point of view, and that roleplaying in a non-traditional way. The result is the Player Character in Be Like a Crow soars and flaps, hops and preens, pecks and divebombs, exploring a world from above and below, always through the beady eyes of his bird. The result is that Be Like a Crow: A Solo RPG is a delightfully contemplative and engagingly different playing experience.

We have a fascination with the antics of little people, whether that is of Goblins, Hobbits, or Kobolds. In gaming this goes all the way back to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and thus Middle Earth Roleplaying, but it really comes into its comedic own with Kobolds Ate My Baby!, published by 9th Level Games in 1999. The latest entry in this comedy subgenre is published by CobblePath Games, best known for Locus: A roleplaying game of personal horror. Stacks of Goblins: A Comedy roleplaying game of camaraderie, stupidity, and spite takes the comedy of the raucous antics of small and bumptious persons and literally puts them on top of another gag—the ‘Totem Pole Trench’ or ‘Two Kids In a Trenchcoat’. In other words, Stacks of Goblins puts one goblin on top of another goblin on top of another goblin, and puts them in a Trenchcoat—of seemingly elastic length—and a fedora, and sends them out to do mischief. The situation is simple. Their Snikittyness the Goblin ruler has a mighty need and multiple Goblin minions ready to see that it is met! Plus every Goblin has his heart set on finding something he desires. The best way to meet both that need and that desire is in a nearby People Place. Of course, Goblins are not welcome in this People Place. Hence the Trenchcoat and the fedora.

Stacks of Goblins: A Comedy roleplaying game of camaraderie, stupidity, and spite is a storytelling game involving multiple wants and multiple roles—roles which switch as the Goblins argue and fidget for dominance in the Trenchcoat and quite literally a higher place in the pecking order. Or rather picking (up) order. Designed for between two and six players, it requires one twelve-sided die, one eight-sided die, and several ten-sided dice. It also requires twenty tokens. The tokens represent the ‘Obliviousness’ of the inhabitants of the town or village to the Goblins who have infiltrated in their disguise and to their shenanigans. Over the course of the game, the number of ‘Obliviousness’ tokens in play will decrease to Goblin actions, first limiting their ability to move and act, and ultimately forcing them to flee the People Place. The ‘Obliviousness’ tokens also represent the game’s timing mechanism, twenty tokens being enough for a standard-length game.
A player and his goblin has one of three roles depending upon his place in the Trenchcoat, either Top Goblin, Middle Goblin, or Bottom Goblin. The Top Goblin is the hands and mouth of the operation. He operates the height of Goblin technology—a grabber in each hand. His player rolls a twelve-sided die when the Top Goblin acts. The Middle Goblin can help or hinder the Top Goblin. His player rolls a ten-sided die and can add or subtract the result from any of Top Goblin’s die rolls. The Bottom Goblin decides where the Trenchcoat goes. His player rolls an eight-sided die when the Bottom Goblin acts. His player chooses which locations in the People Place the Trenchcoat visits and narrates the outcome of the Trenchcoat’s actions. The player of the Bottom Goblin is thus both narrator and player. However, the position and role of each Goblin can change in the Trenchcoat. Consequently, the role of the player and the die size he rolls can also change.
Mechanically, to have his Goblin act, a player rolls his Goblin’s die. The result can either be a ‘Screw Up!’, ‘Good Enough!’, or ‘Goblin Success!’. Both ‘Screw Up!’ and ‘Good Enough!’ result in a complication and with a ‘Screw Up!’, another Goblin can also shuffle around and swap places with the Goblin who failed! A minimum roll of five is needed for a ‘Good Enough!’ and a minimum roll of nine is needed for ‘Goblin Success!’. Which means that the Bottom Goblin with his eight-sided die can never roll a ‘Goblin Success!’.

A Goblin can also shuffle around and swap places if his player removes an ‘Obliviousness’ token from the pile. If multiple Goblins want to change places in a shuffle in the Trenchcoat, their players have a dice off. An ‘Obliviousness’ token can also be removed if a player wants his Goblin’s action to automatically succeed. An ‘Obliviousness’ token is also removed if a Trenchcoat makes someone’s life materially worse and when a Goblin successfully acquires his desire. Ultimately, the pile of ‘Obliviousness’ tokens curbs the maximum result on any dice roll, so the more successful the Goblins are in acquiring their desires, the more material harm they cause, the more obvious their actions become to the inhabitants of the settlement, and the harder the Trenchcoat’s actions becomes.
Stacks of Goblins has tables for defining each Goblin, what their Snikittyness the Goblin ruler wants, and what each Goblin desires. Other tables determine the mission, including the target destination, the Goblin means of escape, and events happening in the destination.
When the number of ‘Obliviousness’ tokens drops below the number of Goblins, the Trenchcoat’s cover is blown and it is time to escape. The Trenchcoat must make its way back through the chaos and disarray left in its wake as it progressed through the People Place. Once the Goblins get home in their Trenchcoat, they count their loot, that is, their desires and whatever it was that their Snikittyness the Goblin ruler wanted. A Goblin succeeds if he brings home both.

Physically, Stacks of Goblins: A Comedy roleplaying game of camaraderie, stupidity, and spite is very green. As you would expect. It is simply and clearly written. The cartoon artwork varies in quality, but some of it is really quite decent.

Stacks of Goblins: A Comedy roleplaying game of camaraderie, stupidity, and spite lives up to its subtitle. It is fun and silly. It is semi-cooperative as the Goblins are forced to work together and no one Goblin is in charge, but forced into conflict with each other in order to assume the three roles in the Trenchcoat, each one necessary to grab both need and desire. It is stupid because dice rolls will fail and a Goblin always thinks he can do better, and to do better means a higher role and thus potential for a higher roll. Then as one Goblin gains his desire and their Snikittyness the Goblin ruler’s need, and the other Goblins do not, desperation and spite kicks in as one Goblin looks like succeeding and his rivals do not. All this would be fun enough, but the shifting roles from Top Goblin to Bottom Goblin and back again, enhances all of this, keeping everyone involved, and giving everyone a turn at each role. It does this through play and through each Goblin’s drive to obtain both desire and need. Which means that without knowing it and without it being forced upon him, a player gets to be the narrator of the Trenchcoat’s progress (and thus the roleplaying game’s storyteller or Game Master).

Stacks of Goblins: A Comedy roleplaying game of camaraderie, stupidity, and spite is simple and idiotic, but that simplicity and idiocy hides some clever little design decisions and a Trenchcoat full of silliness, squabbling, and fun.

Escape the Dark Sector: The Game of Deep Space Adventure brought the brutality of the Fighting Fantasy solo adventure books of the eighties to both Science Fiction and co-operative game play for up to four players in which their characters begin incarcerated in the detention block of a vast space station and must work together to ensure their escape. Published by Themeborne, with its multiple encounters, traps, aliens, robots, objects, and more as well as a different end of game Boss every time, Escape the Dark Sector offered a high replay value, especially as a game never lasted longer than thirty minutes. Now, like its predecessor, Escape the Dark Castle: The Game of Atmospheric Adventure, the game has not one, but three expansions! Funded via a Kickstarter campaign, each of the three expansions—Escape the Dark Sector – Mission Pack 1: Twisted Tech, Escape the Dark Sector – Mission Pack 2: Mutant Syndrome, and Escape the Dark Sector – Mission Pack 3: Quantum Rift—adds a new Boss, new Chapters, new Items, and more, taking the path of the escapees off in a new direction to face new encounters and new dangers. Each expansion can be played on its own with the base game, or mixed and matched to add one, two, or three mission packs that increase the replay value of the core game.
Escape the Dark Sector – Mission Pack 1: Twisted Tech takes the escapees off into the tech-based areas of the station. It includes twelve new Chapter cards which represent the encounters the escapees will have as they flee. They may run into security droids which attempt to detain or destroy the escaping prisoners; find a partially constructed android which can be scavenged for devices like a Medical Beam or a Replicator; discover a logistics terminal which can be hacked to determine the location of the nearest equipment stash; and even find a noodle seller to gain some rest and respite! The single Boss card is for Neuroshima, a technological genius with multiple cybernetic implants, such as automatically hitting in ranged combat or close combat. Fortunately, only one implant works each time he is faced—the particular implant being determined by a roll of the ‘Tech Die’.
Escape the Dark Sector – Mission Pack 1: Twisted Tech has nine new Item cards and three Drone cards. The Drone cards—Replication Drone, Surgical Drone, and Sentry Drone—give the escapees a tactical edge. All three drone models have the one basic function, simple healing, which is always guaranteed to work, but each model also has several advanced functions, which unfortunately not guaranteed to work, and may even harm the characters. The Replication Drone replicates items out of the Discard Pile;  the Surgical Drone restores Hit Points and can even remove a mutation (a feature of Escape the Dark Sector – Mission Pack 2: Mutant Syndrome rather than Escape the Dark Sector – Mission Pack 1: Twisted Tech); and the Sentry Drone inflicts damage on designated targets in combat. However, if a Drone malfunctions, it can inflict damage on a character, and whether it malfunctions or uses a particular advanced function determined by a roll of the ‘Tech Die’. Further, the characters can only take one Drone with them, and of course, a Drone can only be used once per action.
The nine Item cards include a mix of new cyberware, gear, and guns. The ‘Drone Commander Implant’ grants a second use of a Drone’s Basic Function before its card is flipped over. The ‘Chrono Rig’ enables any type or number of dice to be rerolled once per chapter (Escape the Dark Sector is played out in four chapters) and the second result used; the ‘Teleporter’ is used and discarded to gain a flanking attack in combat; and the ‘Nutri-Pill’ heals two Hit Points. Escape the Dark Sector – Mission Pack 1: Twisted Tech also includes three new weapons—the ‘Punch-Gun’, the ‘Sniper Rifle’, and the ‘Flame Thrower’. All three work in slightly different ways. Both the ‘Punch-Gun’ and the ‘Sniper Rifle’ need to be loaded using the ‘Special Ammo’ die, but the ‘Sniper Rifle’ must be then primed before it can be fired. If either hits, the Special Ammo die is rolled and can have an extra effect. This is extra damage for the ‘Punch-Gun’, but removes either the chapter dice of one type in the combat or three chapter dice of any type. This is a powerful effect as it helps negate the effects an encounter or chapter. Lastly, the ‘Flame Thrower’ can fire three bursts of flame of varying length, represented by rolling the ‘Flame Ammo’ dice, either one, two, or three per burst. These can result in inflicting damage on a target, no effect, or even engulfing a character in flames and causing them damage. Lastly, of course, there are the dice—the ‘Tech Die’, ‘Special Ammo’ dice, and the ‘Flame Ammo’ dice. (It will be easy to see the ‘Tech Die’ being used in the other two Mission Packs for Escape the Dark Sector.)

Physically, Escape the Dark Sector – Mission Pack 1: Twisted Tech is as well produced as the core game. The new Chapter and Boss Cards are large and in general easy to read and understand. Each one is illustrated in Black and White, in a style which echoes that of the Fighting Fantasy series and Warhammer 40K last seen in the nineteen eighties. The Item and Drone cards are also easy to use and the dice are clear and simple. The rule book requires a careful read, if only to grasp how the different new mechanics work.

Escape the Dark Sector – Mission Pack 1: Twisted Tech adds new subsystems as well as new encounters with the Chapter and Boss Cards. They add both elements of complexity and luck, though more of the latter than the former. Design wise, this expansion is thematically strong rather than narratively strong, adding new technology that the escapees can use and technology that the escapees must defeat or overcome. What this means is that it has no intrinsic story of its own and is thus easier to integrate with the core game and its other expansions. Overall, Escape the Dark Sector – Mission Pack 1: Twisted Tech is a solid expansion which adds more Sci-Fi theme to Escape the Dark Sector: The Game of Deep Space Adventure.

Normally with my This Old Dragon retrospectives, I talk a little bit about the time when the magazine was published.  This issue was out in July 1982. But that is not the time I associate this issue with. No, the time this issue came out for me was nearly three years later in 1985.  On Tuesday I spoke about my bumpy transition from Basic-era D&D (or just D&D as I knew it) to AD&D.  By 1985 I was fully entrenched into the AD&D camp. My previous DM had just gotten a job working nights (a job he had held until 2021!) so I needed a new group. In a tale as old as...well the 1980s...I fell into a group made up of mostly theatre kids and other science nerds. This issue, Issue #63, was in my DM's collection and I borrowed it one day and was blown away.  

I had already been reading Dragon now for a little over a year, but this one packed more punch per page than any issue I had seen to that point.  So. Come with back, not to July 1982, but June 1985 when I borrowed This Old Dragon.

Let's start with that cover. They say never judge a book by its cover and I extend that to magazines. But in this case, this cover only hints at the great material inside.  The cover gives us two bandits, perfect for the class inside. The cover artist was James Warhola and I can't tell you off the top of my head what other covers he may have done, but I love this one. 

In a preview of things to come, the back cover is an ad from Epyx Computer Games for The Temple of Apshai. For a brief moment there I could consider Epyx my favorite game software company. I had played this and later Rogue (the forerunner to Moria-like games) on my Color Computer 3. 

We jump in head first into this issue with our first article from none other than Gary Gygax himself (the first of a few for this issue).  Featured Creatures gives us some new official AD&D monsters for your game.  This is the first appearance of this feature. Up first, the Devas, servants of the good gods of the higher planes. We know that the "monsters" featured here will later go on be part of the Monster Manual II, which might have been the least controversial update to the hardcover line for AD&D.  The Devas here are depicted as just "Good" aligned and can be Lawful, Neutral or Chaotic as needed. 

Gary hits us with more official official content next with The Big, Bad Barbarian.  Or...Gary really wanted Conan and Fafhrd in AD&D (and we will get more of Gary's opinions on Conan later in the issue). This class looks more or less the same as what we find in the AD&D Unearthed Arcana.  The barbarian would go on to get more life in D&D 3 and D&D 5.  While I appreciate this article for what it is (new content is new content!) I was never a big fan of the barbarian.  I can't even recall if I ever had a barbarian character.

Smile! You're on Fantasy Camera covers how Darlene Kay Blanchard (not that Darlene) takes pictures of miniatures. 

Robert J. Kuntz is next with Greyhawk's World where he covers the events and notes from the Eastern and Southern Flanaess.  This is also accompanied by a map from Darlene (that Darlene) of the Bandit Kingdoms.  I love little bits like this to help expand the game world more.

The Other Side fan and favorite Len Lakofka is up with Leomund's Tiny Hut.  His article is about Charisma in Make Charisma Count for More.  It has what can only be described as a rough draft for the Comeliness score that will appear in Unearthed Arcana and how he proposed Charisma should effect psionics more.

With new monsters, new classes, and now this, it is a wonder that people were not screaming about the oncoming publication of AD&D 2nd Ed or even AD&D 1.5 (as we would eventually call it).

Now on to our cover story. Bandits are an NPC class (snerk...ok, whatever you say) to add to your game. The article comes to us from Tom Armstrong and Roger E. Moore. The idea is very sound, Bandits are thieves that rely on strength and ambush instead of stealth. We toyed with the idea ourselves in the few games were both my highschool DM and my Jr. High DM were both in.  I rolled up a Bandit character for myself. No, he didn't look like Burt Reynolds (though that would have been fun).  It was not long though before we discovered that there was some logic to making this an NPC class. The Bandit has some interesting skills, but in a dungeon crawl setting, he takes a back seat to the thief.  Still the class was rather fun to play.

Roger Moore is back with last of the Demihuman Perspective articles, The Humanoids: Goals and Gods of the Kobolds, Goblins, Hobgoblins, & Gnolls. Again much of the material from this series will end up in Unearthed Arcana, though not this article in particular.  I used this article to help formulate some of my ideas about goblins and how Hobgoblins are different from Bugbears.  The only one I was not happy with here was the gnolls. I was already moving my gnolls to be more demonic.  I had read at some point (likely the Wildlife Treasury Cards we used to get; used the Vampire Bat as a bookmark for my Expert Book) that hyenas are led by an alpha female, so I figured gnolls had to be matriarchal.  This is something that others had grabbed onto as well since I now see it all over.  

The section continues with a few gods for each of these creatures and the Shoosuva the demonic undead gnoll. 

My Dragon goes from page 32 to 49.  So something is missing.  Checking my Dragon CD-ROM (and this rather meta for this issue, more later) I see it is an adventure named Chagmat by none other than Larry DiTillio.  The adventure is for six to eight characters of 1st to 4th levels. Now by my own rules I can't review this piece because it is not in my physical copy.  So...moving on. 

The Man, Myth & Magic ad is interesting since it lists all sorts of Hobby Shops that carry it.  My FLGS is not listed here since it will not open for a bit, but one jumped out at me because it is a.) close to my home and b.) an address that I recognize.  Sure enough The Compleat Gamer in Palatine, IL used to be a game store. Now it is the home of Nancy's Pizza, one of the three pizza places in the Chicag- land area to make the claim of inventing the Chicago-style deep crust.  I mean I used to live just 8 mins away from Games Plus my FLGS, but to have this one here too?  What a treat that would have been.

Ed Greenwood is next with Plan Before You Play. Seems like obvious advice to me but then again right now I have 43 years so of experience. That's 20 years more than Ed was in age at this point, not to mention experience.  BUT I will say this. If nothing else doing these "This Old Dragons" over the years has given me a greater appreciation for the work and scholarship Ed Green brought to the early days of the game.  Gary might get all the glory in this issue, but Ed is here just quietly turning in good material every month. 

An ad/notice from the RPGA.

Gary has a couple more articles discussing the Games Fair 82 convention in London. I should compare this to what White Dwarf was saying at the same time.

There is a mini-section next starting with some Phil Foglio art about Computers in D&D.  Micheal Brian Bently is up first with Computers Games Have a Way to Go.  He talks about how computers for simulating D&D games are not there yet. While the article is interesting as a historical perspective, I don't think the author, or any of us really, knew then how fast computer technology was going to explode.  There are typically two types of software commonly discussed in and around D&D circles; the DM's assistant and the immersive RPG experience type.  By 1986 the DM I had borrowed this Dragon from and I had already written a piece of software for the TRS-80/Tandy Color Computer we called "BARDD" that handled many of the tasks needed to simulate combat.

In fact it was this very computer:

I can only imagine what I would have thought of Skyrim back then!

Speaking of computers even not more than 15 years or so later would Dragon see another breakthrough in computers when Wizards of the Coast released the Dragon Magazine CD-ROM, the same one I mentioned above.  Unfortunately, it was because of articles like this one from Micheal Brian Bently that would be the reason we never saw any updates.  Why?  Because Micheal Brian Bently retained the copyright on his article (as was his prerogative) and TSR and thus WotC did not own it and could not reprint it. 

We get a note on Dragon's Policy on Programs. 

The Electric Eye from Mark Herro gives us two BASIC programs for Top Secret.  Developed for the TRS-80 Model I, Level II BASIC it should be usable by the Apple II or Atari 400/800.  I know from personal experience that the BASIC interpreter shipped with IBM XT machines at the time was a bit different and all programs would need tweaking to your particular machine. Don't even try it on an IBM PC Jr.

David Nallo has an interesting article on coinage with historical examples in For the Sake of Change. We played around with different coinage ideas a bit back then.  I tried to set up a silver-based economy vs. a gold-based one at one point after a discussion in history class about the US using a Silver standard in its early history. But in the end it never really made that much of a difference in the day-to-day lives of adventurers. 

Gary is back one more time in his role as a film critic in A Couple of Fantastic Flops. He reviews and rather hates the new Conan the Barbarian movie and The Sword & The Sorcerer.  We get more about the D&D movie coming out in 1984 or 85 and it is going to be better than Star Wars or Raiders of the Lost Ark!

We end with What's New? with Phil and Dixie talking about computers in RPGs and Wormy.  Dragonmirth has some comics. One, titled Charisma Roll has a player dreaming that the rolls will give him "Richard Chamberlin, Robert Redford, Harrison Ford..." but the dice are thinking "Ernest Borgnine."  Now I am going to say this, after the article we had from Len I would say Ernest Borgnine had a very high charisma. He was a funny, likable guy with a wonderful personality.  

In the end a pretty solid issue of Dragon punching WAY above its weight class here.  The material introduced here is still being used today and it is all good stuff.

Less of a full review but more along the lines of reveiw/my thoughts on what was essentially the Unearthed Arcana of D&D 5th Edition.

Why this particular book now?  There are a few of the classes that I am considering back-porting over to B/X era D&D that my kids have expressed an interest in playing.  I may or may not post those.  They are not OGC and I have no plans to even "file the serial numbers off" to try an post them.  Sometime I do things just for me or for fun.

Xanathar's Guide to Everything

2017, Hardcover. 192 pages. Full-color covers and interior art. 

I called this book the "Unearthed Arcana" of D&D 5 and that is more or less on point. Much of the material here appeared in the pages of the online version of Unearthed Arcana.

The book has a wide variety of tools for Players and the DM and all are listed as being optional. This was published in 2017 so there is no hint here of anything that might be "5.5" or "5r" related.

The book is divided into an introduction, three chapters and two appendices.

Introduction

This covers what the book is about, and its origins from the online Unearthed Arcana. Wizards of the Coast has worked to get the layout of their D&D 5th ed books to be one of clean efficiency.  Maybe not as much as say Necrotic Gnome has with OSE, but still really nice.  For example their Table of Contents fits on a single page.

We get a (tiny) bit of background on who Xanathar is. Not being a huge FR fan I did not know but figured it had to be the same beholder from the 1st Edition AD&D Waterdeep and the North.

There is a page on "The Core Rules" which is really nice to have. There are ten rules that cover most situations.  These are all from the PHB and DMG, but nice to have them repeated here.

Chapter 1: Character Options

We start with a listing of the 31 new subclasses for the twelve base character classes.  Now before someone start screaming "rules bloat" these are not subclasses in the way that AD&D 1st Ed meant them.  These are archetypes of the main twelve classes. So for example the Cleric has the Life and War domains (among others) in the PHB now gains the Forge and Grave domains here.  Each subclass is tailored to the main class. So with Clerics they are "Domains" for Bards they are "Colleges" and Warlocks have "Pacts."   So they are more like the AD&D 2nd Edition Kits.  Both in good and bad ways. There is not much power creep yet. 

This chapter covers about 65 or so pages, so a third of the book. Each main class gets some details that worked for any subclass of that class (Bards get more instruments, clerics have more details on their temples for example). There are a lot of classes in this book. I am not going to get into every subclass here. But I would like to point out a few.

The Bard College of Swords is the spiritual descendent of the AD&D 2nd Bard kit known as the Blade; aka the moment I knew 2nd Ed Power Creep was happening.  The Blade Kit sucked. The fiction for it sucked and the NPC they used as their iconic Blade REALLY sucked. The College of Swords Bards are also called Blades. Their AD&D 2nd ed origins are very plain, BUT there is none of the power creep and thankfully the edgy NPC "Dark" is also gone.

Grave Domain Clerics are the other side of the coin of the Life Domain Clerics.  Where the Life Cleric (PHB) tries to preserve life, the Grave Domain Clerics make sure the dead stay at rest. They are the "good" option of the Death Domain Clerics (DMG).  Cleric Domains have their origin in 2nd Ed and were expanded greatly in 3rd Ed.

Fighters now have an Arcane Archer subclass (known as a Martial Archetype here). This is the 5e update of the 3rd Edition Prestige Class.   Monks (Monastic Traditions) get a Way of the Drunken Master and a Way of the Kensei. Paladins get new Oaths. Rangers get new Archetypes including the Gloom Stalker, a Ranger adept at working in dark places but my favorite is the Monster Slayer.  Rogues get the Mastermind and Scout Archetypes.

The Sorcerers are next.  Their subclasses are known as Arcane Origins, or essentially how you became a sorcerer. In addition to these are some tables on various supernatural marks (think witch mark) and other weirdness due to your bloodline. The one I wanted to convert is the Divine Soul. You have a bit of divinity in your blood.  I would convert these as a B/X Magic-user and allow them to have some free cleric spells based on their divine blood. Cure Light Wounds and Bless for Lawful for example.  Their Charisma would need to be high, like 14 and that would be their Prime Requisite ability too.  While they get the spell for free, they can only still cast it once per day. At the 14th level, they gain their Otherworldly Wings.  There is also the Shadow Magic Sorcerer. This feel like it is from the Shadowfell Player's book from 4e. 

Warlocks also get new marks and new invocations. There is a Celestial Pact for people that want to play "good" warlocks.  Before anyone dismisses this idea remember that Aleister Crowley had a pact with an angel he called Aiwass and believed was his personal guardian angel to who he made invocations to every day. 

Wizards have Arcane Traditions that more or less equated to "Schools of Magic."

The next section of this chapter covers a variety of character background ideas such as origins and life events with lots of random tables. Like an Old-School collection of random tables.  ALL of them are also perfectly adaptable for use in ANY version of D&D.  They remind me a lot of the tables from the 1st Ed AD&D Unearthed Arcana.  

There are some new racial feats, but unlike 3e or even 4e, 5e is not feat centric. You can even have a character that never takes a feat at all.  These are largely mechanical rule manifestations of possible background ideas.  Have weird eyes? Ok, you have weird eyes, jot it down on your sheet. Do these weird eyes do something special? Well, you might need to take a feat for that then.

Honestly, I did not see anything in this chapter that I could not easily convert to an earlier edition of and D&D. 

Chapter 2: Dungeon Master's Tools

This chapter covers a wide variety of topics but mostly expands on material already in the DMG. Topics like Falling, Sleep, Tying Knots, Adamantine Weapons, and Tool Proficiencies are all discussed. Lots of tools. 

Spellcasting gets a bit of special treatment here. The area of effects on a grid is detailed. d6s are used as visual aids to show how to set up on a grid. 

Some more detail on building monster encounters is also discussed, including single and multiple different types of monsters. There is an eye towards balance, but there is no requirement to do so. The only real advice is "avoid monsters that can drop a character in a single hit."  I have seen more than a few TPKs in D&D 5e. 

Again we are treated to what I can only describe as pages of old-school-style random encounter tables. 

There is also a section on Traps that while not quite as gleeful as a Grimtooth product, will still make that Chaotic Evil DM smile. How much?  One trap has a save DC of 20 and does 24d10 damage.

There is a discussion on downtime and the reason why my youngest bought this book, magic item creation rules. More magic items are also detailed.

Chapter 3: Spells

This last full chapter covers new spells. About 30 pages worth. The spell economy of 5e is different. There are no Cure Light Wounds, Cure Moderate Wounds, and Cure Serious Wounds spells for example. There is only Cure Wounds and it is a low-level spell for Bards, Clerics, Druids, Paladins, and Rangers.  IF you want a more powerful version you cast it at a higher spell level. So instead of a 1st level spell, it is treated as a 5th level spell for example. This means less print space is needed for spells. 

Appendix A: Shared Campaign

This covers working on interlinked campaigns and working details out.  Not everything you need to know is here, some more could have been written, but it is a great start.

Appendix B: Character Names
This section is just tables and tables of names. Various cultures (English, French, Egyptian, and more) as well as other nonhuman ones ( Elf, Dwarf, Dragonborn, and more).  The nonhuman includes a personal name and a family or clan name as well.  I did notice that two Tieflings from "Brimstone Angels," Farideh and Havilar, are listed under the Dragonborn names.  Why? Well their adoptive father Mehen (51-52 on a d100) was a Dragonborn so he gave them Dragonborn names. 

So. I picked up this book for the various subclasses, but found a wealth here for many of my other D&D games.

I would say that most of this book is easily adaptable to any version of D&D you choose to try it with.  The exception might be 4e. There are some seriously interlinked mechanics there.

Xanathar's did quite well for a splat book and was even listed as one of Publisher's Weekly best-selling books for December of 2017. 

Despite his name and picture on the cover there is not a lot of material on Xanathar himself outside of the sidebars.  Wizards would later do a much better job with Tasha in her book.

The art is amazing as to be expected.  The layout is a step up from the Core Rules and shows what the design team has learned in the last few years.

You can see bits and pieces of D&D's DNA from all editions here, though this is largely true for 5th edition in general. 

It's June and I have mentioned that it is D&D month around here. 

The natural question then is, "Which D&D?" All of them! "Even that one?" Yes. Even that one.

I was going through a bunch of material I need to review and Review (reading for my own benefit vs. a full review) and it got me thinking about a bunch of topics.  Should I play more Castles & Crusades? What should I do with all this Pathfinder stuff? Where did my copies of Dungeoneer's and Wilderness Survival Guides go? (seriously. where are they??).

This got me thinking about the various editions and edition wars.  I want to share the story of my first skirmish in the never-ending edition wars, but first I want to talk about the latest side battle in it and my point of view on this in general.

D&D Edition Wars

I am not sure if this will be a regular feature or not.  Typically I avoid edition wars and find them remarkably pedantic to be of any actual use. Don't like a particular edition? Fine. Don't play it.   BUT every so often something bubbles up that takes my notice and I want to comment on it.  The latest one comes to us courtesy of Stranger Things.

If you have not seen the new Season 4 of Stranger Things, please do. It is back to form and good drama.  Sure there are a LOT of characters now and no one is getting the spotlight for very long, but the last episode of Part 1 did a great job of tying together many of the seasonal arcs to set us up for the epic finale.  

They also get to play some D&D.  There is a bit where they deal with the Satanic Panic of the 80s.  I would talk about that now, but I have done that already and most recently back in April. So no real need for me to do that. But in the same milieu of edition wars we are getting some nagging from older gamers like myself complaining that Erica Sinclair's character should have been a Thief and not a Rogue. Well. That is technically correct yes. It was supposed to 1986 and the Rogue does not come into play until 1989. Lots of people are claiming this is a mistake.  Here is my point of view on that.

The Duffer Brothers did not make a mistake. 

Look in the very next scene of their game Dustin (played by the wonderful Gaten Matarazzo; seriously this kid is going to be a hell of an actor someday) drops lines about Vecna (the focus of their game and the season) having been destroyed by Kas. They already mentioned the lack of an eye and hand.  This is not deep lore to us, but to the causal viewer, it is.  And that's the thing. This show has to appeal to all viewers. Those that know D&D but mostly the vast majority that do not.  Here is her line.

"My name is Lady Applejack, and I'm a chaotic good, half-elf rogue, Level 14. And I will sneak behind any monster you throw my way, and stab them in the back with my poison-soaked kukri."

Remember the character is Chaotic Good (which we all understand) and supposed to be a heroic character.  IF she had said "Thief" it would not have the same level of understanding to the causal viewer as "Rogue" does.  Han Solo was a rogue. Robin Hood was a rogue. The normies get what a rogue is. A thief is someone who steals. Yes, yes, it has a different connotation in D&D but that is not the majority of the audience.  I posit that the Duffers knew exactly what they were doing. 

It reminds me of when my main character at the time was a Paladin.  I'd explain to others, who I was trying to get into the game, that my character was a Lawful Good Paladin. Which would ALWAYS be followed by "what's a Paladin?"  Eventually, I gave up and just started saying "Knight."  This is the same thing.  Also it is a nice segue into my next section.

Why CAN'T I Play a B/X Paladin?

The 80s were an amazing time for a lot of reasons. Even in my small home town there were multiple independent D&D groups and clubs happening all the time.  I got invited to a game by a friend one evening. This had to have been either very late in Jr. High I am guessing summer of 82 or 83.  In any case, I was going with my regular DM, he got to play for a change, and a bunch of people I never met. The DM called me ahead of time and asked if I would be willing to play a Lawful Good Paladin. I said sure! I was already playing a Lawful Cleric in my other game so this seemed like a good fit (and it was, but more on this).  Now is the time to be pedantic.  See I was playing a "Lawful Cleric" as in B/X D&D. My regular DM played AD&D and we ran our games as an unholy mix of the two. Not uncommon from what I know now and we had a lot of fun. My first experience with D&D was Holmes Basic and the AD&D Monster Manual.  My new DM just told me to bring my Expert book.

Well...that was a mistake. I brought my Expert D&D book to an Advanced D&D game and you would have thought I had brought a D&D Coloring book instead with the reactions I got.  Thankfully my DM was still cool about it, even if the other players held their noses in disgust.  

Nowadays of course people talk about their B/X days with pride and fond memories. Especially me.  But that was a contributing factor to me not picking up the BECMI sets when they came out soon after.  I was all in on AD&D from that point on.  No "kiddie" D&D for me! 

That was the first salvo in what I would later come to know as "The Edition Wars." There were many skirmishes between the Basic and Advanced folks back then. Nothing major, I can recall though.  The next battle was fought over the fields of "Unearthed Arcana" and then the "Proficiency Battles" connected with Dungeoneer's and Wilderness Survival Guides (seriously, where the hell are mine??) 

I still have my Paladin from that game. He went on to great glory in the Bloodstone series. I would also roll up my own paladin later, he was the son of my B/X Cleric. 

Now thanks to the OSR scene I have a lot of options to play a B/X Paladin.

If Johan II was my Advanced D&D Paladin and son of D&D Cleric Johan I. Then maybe I need to make a Kara Foke II as an OSE Paladin, son of Kara Foke that AD&D Paladin I played so long ago. 

I have been in a bit of a creative slump here lately. By "lately" I mean the last few months.  I do want to get my various monster books done though.  So here is a guy been rattling around in my brain now for a while.  I am combining a couple of different ideas here that I have wanted to explore for a bit.

Faerie Lords

I have been working on a number of Faerie Lords for the Basic Bestiaries and the High Witch book.  These lords provide a number of interesting background NPCs and are also the various Powers that both Faerie Tradition Witches and Fey Pact Warlocks can honor/serve.   I have already detailed a few here, Titania, Queen of Faerie, Nicnevin, Faerie Queen of Witches, the Queen of Lies, and the Prince of Beasts.

My focus lately has been building the court of Nicnevin (also known as Nic an Neachneohain).  Hers is not a court of deep intrigues like Mab's or Titania's, but a powerful court all the same. Since those Courts are typically (if somewhat incorrectly) described as the Dark and Light courts (more properly Winter and Summer) I need a few independent "Shadow" Courts.  Nicnevin is the Queen of the Autumn Court.  Not a major court to be sure, but still powerful.  

Shadow Elves

There are more than one "Shadow Courts."  Last year I did a big series on Shadow Elves and various other shadow fey.  I was trying to come up with a good idea for Shadow Elves in my world and I looked to the Shadow Elves of Mystara and the Shadow Fey from Kobold Press and even into the ideas of the Shadowfell from D&D 4th Edition.   This lead me to do an adaptation of Kobold Press' The Dusk Queen.  But she is PI so I won't be using her in my books, save for maybe as a special guest in my home games. 

While reading more about the Shadowfell, the mortal world, and the Feywild for D&D 4 and 5 I came up with an idea of my own.

Just as the Mortal World (the Prime Material) intersects with the Shadow World (Shadowfell) and the World of Faerie (Feywild) they also intersect with each other.

So less this:

And more this: 

Excuse my lack of artistic ability here.

All three worlds intersect.  The intersection point of the Mortal and the Faerie is already detailed in many D&D books as the Feywild.  The intersection of the Mortal and Shadow is the Shadowfell.  The Shadowfey is the intersection of the Realms of Shadow and the Faerie Realms independent of the mortal world.  This is the area I am working on.  This is the home of the Umbral Elves.

Last Bits

Among other things I also needed a Faerie Lord, or at the very least a high level Faerie/Elf to be the father of a particular character.  I needed to have that character spend 13 years "stuck" in the faerie realms while she was getting instruction by her "faerie godmother" (Nicnevin).  And finally, I needed to develop a group of Elven Cavaliers for various reasons.  This particular group of Cavaliers is linked to witches and witchcraft.  Essentially they are the Elven Cavaliers from Dragon Magazine #114 tied more closely to the witch class that appears in the same issue. 

I also wanted a character that recalled the B/X Elf class that used sword and spell with equal proficiencies. 

Putting all of this together a new Faerie Lord emerges.

Scáthaithe, The Umbral Lord
Faerie Lord

Frequency: Unique
Number Appearing: 1 (1)
Alignment: Neutral [Chaotic Neutral]
Movement: 120' (40') [12"]
  Fly: 240' (80') [24"]
Armor Class: 2 [17]
Hit Dice: 13d8+52*** (111 hp)
To Hit AC0: 6 (+13)
Attacks: Sword +2 x3 or by spell
Damage: 1d8 +2 x3 or by spell
Special: Attacks three times per round, darkvision, harmed only by cold iron and magic weapons, 30% magic resistance, Wizard spells (12th level) 
Languages: Common, Elven, Sylvan, Giant, Abyssal
Size: Medium
Save: Magic-user 13
Morale: 12 (NA)
Treasure Hoard Class: U (VI) x10, See below
XP: 5,150 (OSE) 5,300 (LL)

Str: 16 (+2) Dex: 18 (+3) Con: 20 (+4) Int: 20 (+4) Wis: 16 (+2) Cha: 24 (+5)

The Faerie Court of Autumn is ruled very loosely by Nicnevin the Faerie Queen of Witches.  Her sometimes consort and Cowan is a being known in court as the Knight of Swords. He is also known as Scáthaithe ("skaw-he"), the Umbral Lord.  He is the melancholy lord of the Shadow Elves. 

Scáthaithe appears as a tall (7') tall elf-lord.  His skin is pale with an almost bluish tint to it. His hair is long and black and often tied back.  His eyes are bright green and his pupils are slitted like that of a cat's.  He wears the armor of a knight and carries a long darkened sword he calls "Moonblade."  He is often astride a black warhorse with large black wings.  The barding of this warhorse makes it at first appear to be some dark unicorn but is more akin to the pegasus.

When not in the court of the Witch Queen he will be found with his six sons, the Umbral Knights, patrolling the lands of the Shadowfey.  His sons act as 8-10 HD versions of their father. Their role is to patrol the Shadowfey and keep intruders out. This includes mortals and creatures of the outer planes.  Elementals can be found here if they have the leave of the local lords or ladies. 

Scáthaithe will attack intruders to the Shadowfey with both sword and spell.  He will use a long-range spell, such as magic missile to start with and then switch to his sword which he can attack three times per round.  He can cast spells as a 12th level magic-user.

The Umbral Lord has a keep deep in the Shadowfey, Scáthchoimeád where he resides with his sons. He had a Lady, his sons' mother, but that was long ago and he never speaks of her.  Presently he has taken up with a young human witch. It is also rumored that he is the son of a great lord of the Summer Court and a great lady of the Winter Court, possibly even Oberon and Mab. 

Scáthaithe as a Witch/Warlock Patron:  By agreement with his Queen Nicnevin, Scáthaithe does not take on witches as part of the Faerie Tradition. Though he can be invoked by these witches through Nicnevin.  He does however work as a Patron for warlocks. He can be used as a Fey Pact Patron and is particularly well suited as a Pact of the Blade warlock.  His warlock can manifest a dark sword similar to his one Moonblade.  He is also favored by half-elf warlocks who see themselves as being a member of two different worlds and also being of neither; like a shadow.

No Security: Horror Scenarios in the Great Depression is an anthology of five horror scenarios notable for three things. First, they are written by Caleb Stokes, best known as the author of Lover in the Ice, a horrifyingly adult body horror scenario for mature audiences for Delta Green, but which was originally released as part of the No Security Kickstarter. Second, they are systems agnostic, meaning that the Game Master, or Keeper, can and will have to adapt them to the roleplaying game of their choice, typically a roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative horror, such as Call of Cthulhu or Trail of Cthulhu. As an aside, it would be possible to the quintet straight from the page, but that would take a well-prepared Game Master. Third, they are all set in the Desperate Decade of the nineteen thirties, a period of turmoil and uncertainty as the banks crashed, the soil turned to dust, and the Great Depression drove millions into poverty, which is relatively unexplored in terms of Lovecraftian investigative horror, at least in terms of the preceding Jazz Age of the nineteen twenties.

No Security: Horror Scenarios in the Great Depression is published by Hebanon Games following a successful Kickstarter campaign. All five scenarios are available as ‘Pay What You Want’, but have been collected into the No Security anthology. In addition, the anthology does address the social iniquities of the period and gives advice on how to handle them in play. Even though the author does give the suggestion that the disparities and attitudes be ignored in favour of ‘game fun’, his preferred option is to include them in play, but of course, handle them with sensitivity and care. In some scenarios, he also suggests that the Player Characters (or Investigators) be from a mixed background—for two reasons. First, it enables them to access all levels of society, both African American and White. Second, it enhances and contrasts the horror of society and its disparities in the Desperate Decade against the Cosmic Horror of the anthology’s monsters and madness. It should also be noted, that as a consequence of being systems agnostic, No Security does not use of the traditional Mythos monsters or entities. Which means that whatever Cosmic Horror threat that the Investigators find themselves facing in No Security, their players will have as little clue as they do.

The anthology opens with Wives of March. This is longest scenario in No Security and takes place in Barefoot Crossing, a sharecropping community on the rural outskirts of Savannah, Georgia, in the early part of the decade. Here the Unifying Word Revival Church preaches to the community and brings much needed relief to its parishioners, but the community is sent into uproar when the pastor, Dashell March, is murdered, and worse, an African American is the prime suspect, an African American who is also suspected of corrupting a young White girl! The set-up for the Investigators’ involvement really works best with their being hired by different parties, each with an interest in solving looking into the murder, though not necessarily solving it. Local lawyers want the pastor’s will investigated, a rival church wants to prevent any retaliative violence against its African American congregation, an heir wants his claim to the will confirmed, and lastly, the local sheriff’s office do want the crime investigated, again, primarily to prevent an outbreak of violence.

This all sets up and opens numerous paths of investigation—paths that might be closed or difficult if the Investigators are not from diverse backgrounds—and leads them into multiple levels of local society. What they discover, at least initially, is that the March family, and the Unifying Word Revival Church, are incredibly interested in helping them out beyond the mere murder investigation, as well as how helpful the March family is in the community and how pervasive their presence is. Yet oddities soon become apparent—the March family and their church seems impossibly wealthy; so many of the family appear alike (perhaps due to inbreeding?); and there is a preponderance of oddly deformed people in the community. As the scenario progresses, these oddly deformed people will begin to take an intense interest in the Investigators’ activities, to the point later on in the scenario where it becomes insanely intense!

At the heart of ‘Wives of March’, which has a The Midwich Cuckoos feel, is conspiracy between a husband and wife, one which is currently confined to the immediate area, but which has tendrils which can be traced around the world and back into prehistory… The truth of the matter is that they are effectively immortal, bound to each other, but loving and loathing each other after millennia of being together. They have died again and again, but been reborn each time remembering both how they died and what they learned in their previous lives. They cannot have children together, for any offspring would be an inhuman Un-thing, due to bargains they struck with not-Gods in their original lives, and so have children with others, but these children also remember their immortal parents’ history and have their knowledge, and so are born as insane as they are. Thus the Marchs cannot effectively die and cannot truly be together lest they unleash monsters into the world. They and their family are a brilliantly intense, psychotically focussed foe—especially if the players prefer their Investigators to take a more direct or combative approach, they are really going to scare the Investigators—as well as being actually a sympathetic foe. They are monsters true, but theirs is a burden which has made them so even as they stopped worse entering the world.

‘Wives of March’ has a strong set investigative threads, each built around the four different ways of involving the Investigators and each taking the Investigators into different strands of Georgia society. The scenario also goes into some detail about how the antagonists live and operate, explaining how they became the inhuman monsters that they are, how to portray them, and more, ultimately depicting them as victims of themselves. They are very much monsters we can sympathise with to a degree—but monsters, nonetheless. However, ‘Wives of March’ is not going to be an easy scenario to run. First, the investigative strands could have been better organised, and it does not help that it fails to explain what happened to initiate the events of the scenario until four-fifths of the way into it. Which is frustrating for the Game Master. Second, the antagonists are an almost impossible threat to deal with—even they do not know how to deal with themselves and their predicament. So how are the Investigators expected to solve it? 

Ultimately, ‘Wives of March’ requires a fair degree of effort upon the past the Game Master to prepare and run effectively. It has the potential to be an incredibly intense affair, but also a frustrating one primarily because there is no real solution to the larger problem at the core of the scenario. It also has the scope to be expanded if the Game Master wants to take the March conspiracy beyond the confines of ‘Wives of March’.

‘Bryson Springs’ is the second scenario in the anthology and shifts from the Deep South to the border of California, the destination for many escaping the Dust Bowl, and actually takes place on a stop on that route, the declining town of Byron Falls. Here, ‘Okies’—farmers and others fleeing the Dustbowl in the Midwest—have established a Hoover-town around a WPA built washhouse, as they try and find work and a way to survive. Here a Chinese ex-railway worker has been found bloodily battered to death just as the Investigators arrive, perhaps as State Police or the FBI sent to investigate the murder, bank robbers being transported to Leavensworth, relatives of the ‘Okies’ in town, Socialist labour organiser trying to rally the transient population, journalists with an interest in the Hooverville or the murder, and so on. The Game Master will probably want to develop more of the ‘Okies’ than the scenario does, and prepare carefully. Again, the scenario is not presented for ease of use—for example, the initial murder scene is described at the end of the scenario rather than at the start—and portraying that information to the players and their Investigators will be challenging. This is a much shorter scenario and more confined investigation which will probably reveal some nasty secrets other than what is necessarily going on. Like ‘Wives of March’, the ‘monster’ in the scenario also is also similar implacably unstoppable, which will likely frustrate the players. Ultimately, the solution to the problem in ‘Bryson Springs’ feels opaque, but not as much as in ‘Wives of March’, and is likely to be slightly easier for the players and their Investigators to work out. ‘Bryson Springs’ does make good use of its setting and it has some horrifyingly deadly moments. 

The third scenario, ‘Revelations’, is set in the Illinois town of Toil in 1938. The town has managed to weather the effects of the Depression and the Dust Bowl due to the local farms being able to grow soybeans, but times are still hard. They get harder still as a rash of strange events—axe heads floating in the river, a teacher in school spewing water as she teaches multiplication, sacramental bread in the town’s church turning to flesh, and much, much more. The rash becomes an onslaught as the vents turn stranger and weirder, never letting up. Responding to the incidents are members of the Toil City Police Department, who the players will roleplay, directed by the voice of the elderly, but kindly police despatcher. The scenario is inspired by the Bible—as the title might suggest, unleashing a barrage of apocalyptically biblical events each given a horribly entertaining and clever modern interpretation. This potentially leads to two problems. First, is the Biblical theme, which some may find offensive or inappropriate and second is that the players may not necessarily be aware or as knowledgeable of Biblical scripture as others, and so miss some elements in the scenario. These are not the only issues. The Game Master is handed a lot of events to throw at her players and their Investigators, so unless the Investigators decide to split up and look into different reports, it is unlikely that they will get to encounter them all. It is also unlikely that they will survive them all, for whilst they are not all necessarily deadly, the near constant onslaught does stretch and strain at the Investigators’ Sanity. The players may also not necessarily be aware of the scenario’s Biblical inspirations, so may so miss much of its religious overtones. Lastly, identifying the solution is not an easy task either, and the scenario needs staging advice as to when the Game Master should being dropping clues to that solution, or at least clues that lead to it. Ultimately, Revelations takes its cosmic horror in an unexpectedly weird direction and then ramps up the weirdness and the cosmic horror again and again. For the Game Master and players who understand and appreciate its inspiration—and who do not take offence—this is likely to be a fascinating and unnerving playing experience, just wondering what is going to happen next, and how it happens next. 

‘Red Tower’, the penultimate scenario in No Security takes place in Chicago in 1931, in and around its infamous Meatpacking District in the wake of Al Capone’s arrest. It is not a gangster scenario, although the Mob is involved tangentially. Like the earlier ‘Wives of March’, the scenario has multiple means of entry—a reporter from a Socialist newspaper looking for a missing colleague, Bureau of Investigation agents looking for associates of Capone, agents of the newly formed FDA wanting to check on the local slaughterhouse operations, mobsters looking to take down rival operations that have stepped up following’s Capone’s arrest, and more. Consequently, only a few of these Investigator concepts will work together, so the Game Master will have her work cut out as she switches back and forth between players as their Investigators follow different or similar paths of enquiry. This does mean that sat round the table the players are likely to learn more than their Investigators until either they follow the same lines of enquiry or they meet up and share knowledge. That is likely to come about as they penetrate a slaughterhouse which does not seem to be quite there, but which appears to purchase a lot of cattle for slaughter, but without producing any meat… If they meet earlier in the scenario they are likely to be odds with each other rather than co-operative. One advantage of the Investigators working separately, at least initially, is that they are more likely to find the solution to the situation inside the slaughterhouse which is not there (whether they are prepared to share is another matter), but descriptions of the final encounters which would involve that solution are underwritten and not as well described as they could have been. Getting to that point and dealing with the threats surrounding the slaughterhouse is the more interesting and the more horrifying—and longer—part of the scenario though.

The last scenario in the anthology is ‘The Fall Without End’, in which the Player Characters team up in pairs to climb Mount McKinley—more recently renamed Denali—as a great story that the American government can use as a distraction from the ongoing effects of the Depression. There is advice for both players and Game Master on the types of character to create and on the skills required to climb mountains, which both will need to understand as obviously very technical in nature. Beyond a few encounters around the base of the mountain, ‘The Fall Without End’ is a linear affair, that is, straight up the mountain, via two routes. There is a plan of the chosen routes up Mount McKinley, but no illustration of the mountain, which is disappointing. In comparison to the other four scenarios in this anthology, there very little investigation involved and the scenario is primarily action-orientated. It is also much shorter, but no less deadly. This both due to the monsters and secrets to be discovered and the environment to overcome and survive as the Player Characters climb the mountain. This combination, together with the competition to be the first to reach the top of Mount McKinley, is reminiscent of Chaosium, Inc.’s Beyond the Mountains of Madness, but as a short one-shot rather than a full campaign. One advantage of this scenario is that it could be run using the rules of a non-Lovecraftian investigative horror roleplaying game so as not to forewarn them of the horrors to come up the mountain…

Physically, No Security: Horror Scenarios in the Great Depression is a black and white book, so one advantage of the PDF is that artwork is clearer and in colour. The book does need an edit in places and many of the scenarios could have been better organised.

The primary problem with No Security: Horror Scenarios in the Great Depression is that it is a set of systemless scenarios with a great deal of detail which means that it is going take a great deal of effort upon the part of the Game Master to adapt any one of the five to the roleplaying game of her choice. The primary advantage with No Security: Horror Scenarios in the Great Depression is that it is a set of systemless scenarios with a great deal of detail which means that the Game Master can freely adapt to any one of the five to the roleplaying game of her choice, and adjust them as necessary. Overall, No Security: Horror Scenarios in the Great Depression is a solidly scary set of one-shots which takes excellent advantage of their period setting and brings Cosmic Horror to the Great Depression without involving Lovecraft, which will take effort upon the part of the Game Master to prepare and run.

Condemned to time in chokey. Put behind bars. Going down for a crime you definitely did not commit. Doing a stretch or bird. Serving time in prison can lead to some great opportunities for storytelling, whether it is The Count of Monte Christo, films such as The Shawshank Redemption or Escape from Alcatraz, or even television series such as Oz. In terms of roleplaying, prisons are typically somewhere to break out of, probably because the Player Characters have been wrongly imprisoned. What though, if they had not been wrongly accused, tried, convicted, and sentenced to term in prison, perhaps a life sentence, or even a death sentence? What if you were guilty? Did you get caught? Did someone rat you out? Perhaps you got sloppy in the end? It makes no difference now. You are in the system, and only the sentences are longer than the shadows and the grudges held in this god forsaken place...

This is the situation in Life & Death at Freedom Penitentiary, a Swedish roleplaying game published by FantastiskFiktion. It is set within the grey walls of Freedom Penitentiary, the most notorious prison in Sweden. It stands amidst the tundra ten miles from the nearest town, home to over a thousand inmates, who serve out their sentences under the watchful and shadowy presence of the hated Warden and his often-corrupt Corrections Officers.

An Inmate in Life & Death at Freedom Penitentiary is defined by his General Features, Talents, Archetype, Crime, and Job. He has six General Features—or attributes—Muscle, Sense, Smarts, Acting, Notoriety, and Precision. Talents like ‘Hiding’ or ‘Dialects’ or ‘Killing Blow’ each increase a General Feature’s modifier by one, whilst an Archetype adds two or three adjustments to modifiers and determines the Inmate’s Hit Points. The Crime adds further modifiers, two Talents to choose from, and options in terms of an Inmate’s Sentence Level. The latter ranges between one and four, and represents the Inmate’s sentence length, security level, and extra Talents and modifiers, if any. For example, a Sentence Level of three has a sentence length of fifty years to life and a security level of High, as well as two extra Talents and an extra modifier of one. The Archetypes include Member of the Family, Good, Activist, Professor, and more, whilst the Crimes include Assault, Murder and Mass Murder, Drug Trafficking, Money Laundering, as well as others. The Job is the work that the Inmate does whilst incarcerated, such as Wood Shop or Canteen. Again, this adds another modifier.

To create an Inmate, a player assigns an array of values to his General Features, and selects an Archetype and a Crime, as well the Sentence Level. It is quick and easy.

Name: Gudmund Ekerlid
Archetype: Goon
Crime: Manslaughter
Sentence Level: 2
Job: Road Crew
Hit Points: 10
Muscle 4 (+3) Sense 3 Smarts 2 (-2) Acting 2 (+1) Notoriety 3 Precision 3

Talents
Act on Impulse

Mechanically, Life & Death at Freedom Penitentiary is straightforward and simple. It uses a pool of six-sided dice, either two, three, or four, depending upon the Imamate’s General Features. The modifier of the General Feature is added to the total, whilst a Talent lets a player reroll one die. A roll of nine or more is a Conditional Success, twelve or more is a Regular Success, and fifteen or more a Flawless Success. Essentially, a ‘Yes, but…’, ‘Yes’, and ‘Yes, and…’. If any two dice result in Snake Eyes, or rolls of one, the action is an automatic failure. Effectively, the more dice an Inmate’s player rolls, the greater the chance of his rolling Snake Eyes. This is due to the Inmate’s overconfidence.

Combat uses the same mechanics. Brawling inflicts one point of damage, with improvised melee weapons inflicting two or three points.

During play, an Inmate can acquire Nods and Dots. Nods are awarded for good behaviour (and play). Gain three Nods or three Dots and the player can expend them to increase a modifier for a General Feature or gain a Talent. Dots are gained for negative or disruptive behaviour. When an Inmate gains three Dots, also receives a punishment from the Corrections Officers (or even from the other Inmates depending upon the situation). The player describes what the punishment is, but the record is then wiped clean. Nods and Dots are handed out at the end of each session.

For the Game Master, there is a description of Freedom Penitentiary—or ‘Frihetsfängelse’—and advice on running the game. This is to keep up the tension, constantly keeping the Inmates on their toes, with their guard up against threats from either the Warden, Corrections Officers, or the other Inmates. The Inmates are in constant danger, their meagre belongings likely to be stolen, and more. It also advises that unlike the boring reality of prison life, life in Freedom Penitentiary should be eventful, plus it should involve an element of horror. This can play a more prominent role in a campaign in Freedom Penitentiary depending upon the type of campaign that the Game Master wants to run. And of course, the Game Master should be bringing story elements into play which remind each Inmate of the crimes he committed.
Before each session, the Game Master should also roll to see if the Corrections Officers search the cells and if so, if they find any contraband. The other event he should roll for is to see if any Inmate with a Sentence Level of four, that is, a death sentence, has had his execution date brought forward. Lastly, there is a list of NPCs and a short scenario generator.

Physically, Life & Death at Freedom Penitentiary is almost presented as an Inmate’s record. It has a rough, mimeographed quality, although one done on quite sturdy paper. The artwork is rough, but suitably utilitarian. It does need an edit in places, but the main issue
is the organisation which switches back and forth between Inmate creation and rules, often making it difficult to quite keep track of things.

Life & Death at Freedom Penitentiary is not a game for everyone. Its theme and setting is mature in nature, with the players taking the roles of criminals who have done wrong, committed crimes, including murder. And that is even before taking into account the fact that it involves capital punishment. That said, its themes are universal, and it does suggest that the Inmates’ crimes and the effects of those crimes be brought into play and explored in terms of storytelling. Likewise, although Life & Death at Freedom Penitentiary is set in a prison in sub-artic climes, its themes are so universal that the roleplaying game can easily be set in the prison of the Game Master’s choice. The real issue, at least mechanically, with Life & Death at Freedom Penitentiary is that it does not really help the Game Master in running the game in the long term—what is the ultimate story that the players and their Inmates are going to tell? In addition, the Game Master will also need to look beyond the pages of Life & Death at Freedom Penitentiary for further inspiration. As written, Life & Death at Freedom Penitentiary has a very short-term feel and the Game Master will need to work hard to develop it beyond that. Whilst keeping that in mind though, Life & Death at Freedom Penitentiary does have the potential for rich, dark storytelling about the lives of offenders and recidivists.

 I know. Redundant.  A few things.

1. I was spending some time going through old posts and I have a bunch of dead links, more or less dead pages, and the like.  So I was thinking a site redesign might be in order.  Nothing confirmed yet.

2. Have you been OUTSIDE yet?  I don't about where you are, but here in Chicagoland it is GLORIOUS! I am thinking of moving my work laptop out to my patio and working there the rest of the summer.

Hardening a few more plants

3. I have an Itch.io profile now.  No idea what I am going to do there.

4. Stranger Things. Watch it. Now.

5. I promise this will get back to D&D.

6. Seriously. Go outside.

A village in peril. The villagers are suffering from a strange curse which leaves them listless and aimless before ultimately killing them. Fields full of sickly looking, ash-coloured crops. A swollen river which smells foul and looks like old blood. Could it be the curse of Ursodiol the Mad, the greatest mind to have ever breached the great Cosmic Void? Ursodiol the Mad who recently died, his body was interred in the nearby crypt of his famous ancestor, G’vane the White, the heroic paladin of Meth, the goddess of justice, judgement, and the soul? This is the set-up for Ominous Crypt of the Blood Moss, a scenario designed to be played with Necrotic Gnome’s Old School Essentials, but easily run with the Old School Renaissance retroclone of your choice. Designed for a party of Second to Fourth Level Player Characters, Ominous Crypt of the Blood Moss starts with the cliché of the village and a nearby source of peril, and goes beyond that to present have them face a threat of Cosmic Horror confined—for now, that is—within the walls of a mini-dungeon.

Ominous Crypt of the Blood Moss is published by Oneiromantic Press and offers one or two good sessions’ worth of play. It is easily adapted to the setting of the Game Master’s choice, needing only the combination of an isolated spot and a river to fit. A simple map of the village is provided, along with a table of random village descriptions should the Game Master be running the scenario as a one-shot and not one, but three sets of motivations to get the Player Characters involved. And if that is not enough, the surviving villagers are throwing the dead onto a funeral pyre when the Player Characters arrive, and three of the corpses get up and start attacking everyone. Including the Player Characters. Opening with burning zombies is one way to get a scenario off to an exciting start!

The scenario is straightforward. The village priest states that the late Ursodiol the Mad and his curse are responsible, points the Player Characters at the nearby crypt where he is buried, and away they go. The crypt itself consists of just ten locations and can be divided into two sections, an outer and an inner section. The outer areas are dusty with nothing seemly untoward going on there, but within the walls of the inner area, it is a different matter. The walls are covered with slime, and everywhere can be found strands of sticky red tendrils… Sticky red tendrils which reach out hungrily for new victims.

At the heart of Ominous Crypt of the Blood Moss is the Blood Moss itself, “…[A]n extradimensional protoplasmic mycelial network of nanofibers that feeds on consciousness and hungers for the experiences of sentient beings.” Which means it not only ensnares its victims, it also infects with its spores and draining their intelligence and if they have it, their magic, in the process gaining in intelligence itself and even becoming able to cast that magic. In the scenario, its tendrils creeps through the G’vane family crypt, layering it in a moss and reanimating its victims as nodes through which it can act. This is a scarlet and scary take upon the zombie genre, creating it as an extension of an otherwise seemly sessile monster.

Ultimately, the Player Characters will encounter the true monster—and victim—of the scenario, changed through his exposure to the Cosmic Void and the Blood Moss. Defeat him, and his greatest (or worst) treasure becomes theirs, a four-dimensional object known as The Crystal Tesseract. This begs to be looked into and in doing so, exposes the viewer also to the Cosmic Void. The accompanying table describing the possible effects of staring into The Crystal Tesseract—and you really, really wants to stare into The Crystal Tesseract—only has the twenty entries, but all are nicely odd. At this point, it does feel like a darker, but mini-version of The Deck of Many Things. The Game Master could have a lot of fun inventing entries for the table and expanding it into a much more significant magical artefact.

Physically, Ominous Crypt of the Blood Moss is decently presented, the environment of the crypt in particular. Everything is described in either short punchy sentences or bullet points that are easy to read with key points in bold. Each of the ten location descriptions includes its maps taken from the larger map of the crypt with any monsters given in grey boxes. The format, typically across a two-page spread for each room, is simple, clear, and easy to read, giving the scenario an accessibility that makes it painless to run with minimal effort. The maps are decent too, although it would have been nice if the map had been reprinted in side the front or back cover. The artwork consists of public domain pieces and are for the most part, well chosen. The scenario does need another good edit in places though.

If there is one single problem with Ominous Crypt of the Blood Moss, it is that naming your primary god in the scenario, ‘Meth’, is simply asking for trouble. There is no way that your players will not rise to taking the mickey out of any Game Master who retains that name. 
Ominous Crypt of the Blood Moss is easy to prepare and run, and relatively easy to adapt to a Game Master’s own campaign. The set-up of the scenario is a cliché, but Ominous Crypt of the Blood Moss takes that cliché in a challenging and creepy direction, to present an enjoyably weird and cosmic experience on a small scale.

The last couple of months has been really busy here at the ole' Other Side. I went from the "April A to Z"  right into SciFi month.  I think June is a great time to get back to the bread and butter of this blog; D&D.  Plus watching Season 4 of Stranger Things has really put me back into the mood.

June was always a great D&D month for me.  While in school it meant summer break. After I got married and had a house it was the month when the planting season was mostly over.  My wife has always had a huge garden (+2,000 ft2, that's a lot for the burbs) so in April and May, every weekend is spent outside working.

I have to admit that of late I have been in a sort of creative lull.  Oh I am still picking at the various Basic Bestiaries and I am collecting art for them. My goal/plan/desire is NOT to do a Kickstarter for it. So I am collecting and buying art as I can.  I have not done much if anything on the High Witchcraft book. I have been sorting through the 800+ spells I have written over the years and trying to figure out which ones need to be used.  Both of these projects will be generic OSR, so not tied to any one rule system. I will use my own Compatibility Logos on them.  But the ideas have not been flowing really at all.  Oh I have picked some Fey Lords and a few different types of Angels (both are also discussed in the High Witchcraft book) but that is about it really.   You may have noticed that outside of NIGHT SHIFT I have not produced anything during Covid-Times. You also may have noticed the uptick in reviews here vs. new content.

My friend and day-job co-worker Richard Ruane pointed me in the direction of something going on on Itch.io.  Itch.io is an RPG PDF storefront similar to DriveThruRPG but catering more to the Indie crowd.  All I know about it is the prices of the PDFs are usually twice to three times what I expect to pay on DriveThru, but whatever.  The thing he pointed out to me was the OSR June Jam. 

https://itch.io/jam/osr-june-jam

I have never participated in a Design Jam for RPGs before. I have done plenty at my day job. So I thought I should give it a go.  

This sounds like a fun idea really, and I do have two completely brand new ideas I could do with this. I will talk about them later since I am looking into some details now. But a hint for one is "Halfling Folk Horror."

It is hosted on Itch.io but I have to look at my contract with DriveThruRPG since I think I signed exclusivity. I don't know yet.  Submissions are due at the end of the month so that gives me 28.5 days to get it all in.

I will also use my Compatibility Logos above for these, but my target system is likely to be Old School Essentials Advanced Fantasy and/or Advanced Labyrinth Lord.   Though there are some logos on the site they recommend.

Maybe this is something I need to shake off the cobwebs in my brain.

In the meantime check out all the empty space on my Itich.io profile: https://timsbrannan.itch.io/

I can't believe we are at the end of May now.  My plans had been to do a Sci-Fi month featuring Traveller but also doing some other games as well.  The month got away from me and as I started my deep dive I decided to focus more and more attention on Traveller alone. And that is ok. This is something I have been wanting to do for a long time.

I do feel bad I did not get to Starfinder or the Expanse RPGs. I also wanted to review The Lucanii Drift adventure.  I am sure I will get to those sooner or later.

Here is a list of all the Traveller posts I made in May.

• Mayday, Mayday! This is the Free Trader Beowulf... (Introduction)
• Review: Classic (Basic) Traveller
• Review: The Traveller Book (1982)
• Review: The Traveller Adventure (1983)
• Review & Retrospective: Traveller Board Games
• Review: Traveller Starter Edition (1983)
• Review: Traveller Alien Modules (1984 - 1987), Part 1
• Review: Traveller Alien Modules (1984 - 1987), Part 2
• This Old Dragon: Retrospective, The Traveller Articles
• Review: 2300 AD Traveller: 2300 (1986)
• Review: MegaTraveller (1987)
• Review: Traveller: The New Era (1993)
• Review: T4 Marc Miller's Traveller (1996)
• Review: Traveller20 (2002-2007)
• Review: Traveller Main Rulebook (2008)
• Review: T5 Traveller5 Core Rules 3-Book Set (2015)
• Review: Mongoose Traveller 2nd Edition (2016, 2022)
• Review: Traveller and Cepheus SRDs

There is much, much more I could have done. There is 45 years worth of Traveller materials out there and I only scratched the surface.

I do want to thank everyone that came by and commented, shared their own interactions with the various rule systems, gave me advice and corrections.  You helped make this a better series.

I suppose the natural question to ask is "Which edition(s) will I be playing?"  I think it is a toss-up between the Classic 1977 Traveller and the new Mongoose Traveller.  Both seem like they will do everything I want. 

Next May I am thinking of doing Star Trek RPGs. Focusing on the FASA and Mōdiphiüs versions but also looking into the Last Unicorn Games and Decipher versions as well as the various versions of Starfleet Battles.  It would have been great to do that one this year given all the Star Trek we have had on TV of late, but Traveller really had to come first.  Maybe one day I'll do Star Wars.

Moving into June where I want to get back to some D&D!  (Stranger Things is back!) I also want to get more monster book reviews in.  

Soon after that, I have something special planned I am calling "100 Days till Halloween."  So keep an eye out for that.

Much like the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, th 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.

—oOo—

What is it?
Day’s Rest is a supplement for use with RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha which describes the first stop along the Caravan Alley, a trade route running from Sartar to the Eiritha Hills in eastern Prax, its inhabitants, and their daily lives.

It is a twenty-seven page, full colour 2.82 MB PDF.

The layout is tidy and the artwork excellent.

Notes are provided to enable the content to be used with QuestWorlds (HeroQuest).
Where is it set?Day’s Rest is set at an oasis in Prax whose lake is sacred to Waha.
Who do you play?
As an oasis and trade stop, Day’s Rest is a location designed to be visited. So any character may do so, whether travelling from Sartar or from the nomadic Praxian tribes. The waters of the oasis are sacrosanct, so any tribe can visit, including the reviled Morokanths, to water their beasts. Waha worshippers will also visit the lake as its waters have received the blessing of Waha.
What do you need?
Day’s Rest requires RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha  and The Book of Red Magic.
What do you get?Day’s Rest presents what is in effect a mini-sandbox (literally!) location, one of the many oasis along the trade route between from Sartar into Prax. It sits amidst the harsh chaparral of the plains, providing a respite where travellers can stop and rest, water their animals, and even trade. It was the first place that Waha stopped after he rescued the Protectresses of the Herds from the Devil and is one of the founding locations of Praxian culture, a small and pitiful remnant of the Garden that once covered the lands.
Notably it is also a possession, being under the control of one of the tribes of Prax, currently the Bison tribe since 1624. This extends to the oasis’ inhabitants, part the Oasis Folk of Prax, who farm the fields that the oasis irrigates and thus support their masters with the goods and foods that they cannot source elsewhere. No matter who holds Day’s Rest, the nomads look down on the Oasis Folk, considering them pitiful and insignificant, worthy only for exploitation by their betters—those that ride. The Oasis Folk have their culture which they practice quietly and in a subdued manner, including worship of Daka Fal. Where the nomad tribes do not accept outsiders amongst their numbers, the Oasis Folk do, accepting them and their children as slaves alongside themselves. This occurred in numbers during the recent uprisings against the Lunars in Sartar and Tarsh.
In addition to providing a decent description of the oasis, Day’s Rest details fourteen NPCs, including members of the Bison Tribe, loyally, but unhappily assigned to protect the oasis against raids from other tribes and to keep the peace, slaves of the Oasis Folk, and visitors, most of the latter being merchants. These are each given a full page of details and stats, and there is a sold cast of personalities given.
Rounding out Day’s Rest is a description of Oasis Folk and the means to create them as characters, whether Player Characters or NPCs. It notes that they do not make good Player Characters as they are limited in what they can and the lives they lead. The guidelines here are better as a means to create NPCs as occupants of oasis and trade stops in Prax.
As solid a description as Day’s Rest gives, there are two or three issues attached to. A minor issue is that the map of the oasis could have also been placed at the front of the supplement for ease of reference. A few story hooks would have not gone amiss either. There are a few written into the descriptions of the NPCs, but a few more to get the Player Characters more readily involved in the doings there would have been useful. The main problem with the supplement is that it does involve slavery. Now this is part of Glorantha as a setting and whilst the treatment of the Oasis Folk as a slaves is not exploitable, but this does not mean that everyone is going to comfortable with either its portrayal or even its inclusion.
Is it worth your time?Yes—Day’s Rest is a useful addition for any campaign set in or passing through Prax, or involves Praxians or worshippers of Waha. No—Day’s Rest is specific to Prax and a Game Master’s may not be set there or may not want to enter an area of Glorantha where slavery is obvious.Maybe—Day’s Rest is a useful addition for a campaign involving Prax or Waha worshippers, but it involves themes which not every player will be comfortable with.

Getting back to my Monstrous Mondays with a review of a Monstrous Compendium, but this is a new Monstrous Compendium for 5th Edition D&D. 

This might very well be the new format for monsters for D&D 5.5/5r.  

Monstrous Compendium Vol One: Spelljamer Creatures

Wizards of the Coast released this free in PDF format and on DnDBeyond.  

Inside are 10 new (to D&D 5) monsters.  They are,:Asteroid Spider, Clockwork Horror, Eldritch Lich, Fractine, Gadabout, Goon Balloon, Nightmare Beast, Puppeteer Parasite, Star Lancer, and Yggdrasti.  They range from CR 1/8 to 15. 

It is a fun little sampling, a nice appetizer till we get some proper Spelljamer materials later this year.

What I find interesting is the switch from Wildspace to the Astral Sea. Personally, that is what I wanted to do back in the 2nd ed days, but the point became moot when I never got my Spelljammer game off the ground, literally and figuratively. 

So I am really looking forward to the new setting this summer.

--

This is my, rather late, contribution to this month's RPG Blog Carnival.  This month hosted by Rising Phoenix Games. Check out all the posts about Spelljammer from this month.

One of the most elegant pieces of roleplaying design in recent times is Jim Henson’s Labyrinth: The Adventure Game published by River Horse Press. Adapted from the 1982 Jim Henson film of the same name, this presented a way to explore a story similar to that of the film, with the Player Characters chasing the Goblin King through the labyrinth, visiting many of the locations in the film as well as others new, in random order, but always pushing forward. It presented what was in effect a roleplaying game and a roleplaying campaign in the one book, and because it included some one hundred locations, the randomness meant that it could be played more than once because the players and their characters were unlikely to visit the same location twice between play throughs. Further, the complete nature of the roleplaying game was cemented with a pair of six-sided dice which sat in a cut-out within the book’s pages. The result was simple, elegant, and clever, and the good news is that River Horse Press has gone and done it again with The Dark Crystal Adventure Game.

The Dark Crystal Adventure Game is based upon the 1982 film Dark Crystal and its more recent television series, The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, on Netflix. Instead of taking the Player Characters into a maze as in Labyrinth: The Adventure Game, what The Dark Crystal Adventure Game does is send a band of Gelflings on a grand quest across the strange and magical world of Thra to collect seven seeds from the seven great trees and return them to Mystic Valley within ninety-nine days, before the next conjunction. Together they will journey across Thra and back again, surviving dangers, helping each other, and hopefully returning stronger and wiser. Theirs is a great task and Gelflings are fragile in some ways, but strong in others.

A Gelfling can be from one of seven Clans. These include the aquatic, and direct in manner Drenchen; the nomadic and spiritual Dousan who prefer silence and stillness; the cave-dwelling Grottan, able to see in the dark; the Sifa who have a reputation for gregariousness and roguishness; the Spriton, clever crafters and traders; the Stonewood, dedicated warriors; and Vapra, renowned as crafters and artists and scholars. All female Gelflings, apart from those of the Drenchen clan can fly. Each Clan provides four traits and a Gelfling also begins with two skills selected from Agility, Animals, Brawn, Fighting, Lore, Scouting, and Social, as well as a Specialisation for these skills. Later on, a player can expend Experience Points to give his Gelfling new skills, buy new specialisations, and raise a specialisation to a mastery. A Gelfling also has a flaw and a reason why he was summoned to Mystic Valley.

Greyon
Gender: Female
Clan: Stonewood
Traits: Stonewood, Living Weapons, Unparalleled Fighter, Fated Warrior
Skills: Agility (Reflexes), Fighting (Ferocity)
Flaw: Prideful
Summons: A Lost Wanderer
Equipment: Sharp Blade

Mechanically, The Dark Crystal Adventure Game is very simple. To undertake an action, a player’s Gelfling rolls his creature die, which is a six-sided die for a healthy Gelfling, and attempts to best a difficulty ranging between two and ten. This is typically a single die, but if the attempt is Improved, perhaps because the Gelfling has the right equipment or if there is an appropriate trait, the player rolls two dice and keeps the best result. If the Hindered, perhaps because the Gelfling does not have the right equipment or the Gelfling has an appropriate Flaw, the player rolls two dice and keeps the worst result. Either way, the player adds a bonus to the result if the Gelfling is trained in a skill, for an appropriate specialisation, an appropriate Mastery, and also if an Gelfling is helping out.

Fighting is as equally as simple. Instead of rolling against a Difficulty number, any attack is an opposed roll against the opponent’s Creature Die, which for some monsters can be as high as a ten- or twelve-sided die! When a creature or a Gelfling suffers damage, his Creature Die reduced one step and this is what the Game Master or player rolls until healing is received. In the case of a Gelfling, if his Creature Die is reduced below a four-sided die, he is Injured. This might result in his being knocked out, having his arm broken, her wings torn, and more. It might even result in the Gelfling’s death. This is final, but on the World of Thra and thus in The Dark Crystal Adventure Game, it triggers a special encounter as a funeral for the unfortunate Gelfling is held, everyone tells stories about him (earning them Experience Points), and the player creates a new character, which may or not be a Gelfling.

The campaign in The Dark Crystal Adventure Game consists of thirty scenes and over two thirds of the book. These can be divided into four types—Region, Location, Event, and Darkened Scenes, the latter representing the dark poison which flows across Thra and threatens to corrupt everything if the Gelflings do not fulfil their quest in time. Certain scenes or locations, such as the Plains of the Castle and the Caves of Grot already begin as being Darkened. When Darkened certain scenes cause nightmares, but the general effect is inflict damage when a Gelfling uses ‘Vliyaya’, the essence whose manipulation can lead to amazing magical effects. Play itself is player-led, they together deciding where their Gelflings go in search of the seven seeds, based upon the information they know and rumours they have. The Dark Crystal Adventure Game is thus a sandbox campaign, but one with a countdown, represented by a spiral calendar of Thra. As time passes and the Gelflings travel between scenes, the Game Master will mark off days around this calendar, which can trigger events such as the spreading of the Darkening.

Each scene typically details the particular locations to be found there, an encounter table, an appendix of further details, and the extra effects of what happens if the Darkening spreads there. Spread across a two-page spread, it is often quite not enough information, as the Game Master will need to refer elsewhere in the book—especially the ‘Creatures of Thra’ in the Toolkit chapter. Unlike Labyrinth: The Adventure Game, what this means is that The Dark Crystal Adventure Game cannot as easily be run on the go, there being a constant start and stop as the Game Master quickly refers to and gathers the stats and details she needs to run the Scene. Ideally the Game Master should prepare and read through the campaign pretty much as she would a standard roleplaying campaign. The other indication that the campaign in The Dark Crystal Adventure Game is more traditional is that with thirty scenes it does not offer the same replay value that Labyrinth: The Adventure Game does. The campaign itself is fairly dark as the corrupting effects of Darkening spread across the land and so more mature in nature than that in Labyrinth: The Adventure Game.

Elsewhere, there is good advice for both player and Game Master, and some background on the world of Thra and its history, as well as decent bestiary. The Dark Crystal Adventure Game is not a sourcebook though for The Dark Crystal, its focus being much on its campaign.

Physically, The Dark Crystal Adventure Game is nicely presented. The artwork is excellent throughout, including the fully painted illustrations in the bestiary and the photographs taken from the film. It does need an edit in places and an index in the book would have been useful. There is though an index on the inside of the dusk jacket which also doubles as a map. The cover of the book has been pleasingly etched with suitable symbols and it feels lovely in the hand.

The Dark Crystal Adventure Game is something that fans of The Dark Crystal will enjoy and likely will playing. Yet unlike Labyrinth: The Adventure Game it is too much of a traditional roleplaying game and campaign for the casual roleplayer to really run as is, because it just requires that little bit more preparation than a ‘pick up and play’ game warrants, whereas for the player this is very much less of an issue.

The Dark Crystal Adventure Game is definitely one for fans of The Dark Crystal as it gives them the chance to explore the world of Thra just this once in the face of a spreading doom. Although The Dark Crystal Adventure Game will require a Game Master with some experience, but is more than suitable for players new to the hobby.

—oOo—


River Horse Press will be at UK Games Expo which takes place from Friday, June 3rd to Sunday, June 5th, 2022.

It was with no little disappointment that Cubicle Seven Entertainment announced in November, 2019 that it would no longer be publishing The One Ring: Adventures Over The Edge Of The Wild, the hobby’s fourth and most critically acclaimed attempt to create a roleplaying game based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth. Originally published in 2011, fans had been looking forward to the second edition of the game, which was being worked on at the time of the announcement. When in 2020, Swedish publisher, Free League Publishing—best known for Tales from the Loop – Roleplaying in the '80s That Never Was, Alien: The Roleplaying Game, and Symbaroum—announced that it had acquired the licence, there was some concern that its forthcoming edition would be based on its Year Zero mechanics. However, Free League Publishing made clear from the start that this was not the case, and so the good news is that following a successful Kickstarter campaign, The One Ring, Second Edition not only retains its original design and writing team, but also the same mechanics—with some updates, and it receives its very own introductory boxed set, The One Ring Starter Set.
With The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of Lord of the Rings the changes from The One Ring: Adventures Over The Edge Of The Wild are more thematic and setting than to the rules, but they can all be seen as an evolution rather than a radical shift. The two major changes are to the date when it is set and to its location. Both take place between the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, with The One Ring: Adventures Over The Edge Of The Wild opening in year 2946 of the Third Age, exactly five years after the Battle of the Five Armies and with the death of Smaug, there was a definite sense of hope to be found in many of the cultures across Middle-earth. Yet as the years passed, darkness crept back into the world and in the Twilight of the Third Age as the War of the Ring lies ahead, and rumours spread of strange and fell things moving abroad once again, and hope began to ebb once again. The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of Lord of the Rings begins in the period, in the year 2965—notably five years after the start of ‘The Conspiracy of the Red Book’ campaign found in The One Ring Starter Set. The shift in location is  from Rhovanion, the region to the East of the Misty Mountains which was the main focus for The One Ring: Adventures Over The Edge Of The Wild, to Eriador, the region to the West of the Misty Mountains. With supplements such as Rivendell, Bree, and Ruins of the North, parts of Eriador had been explored, but no further. Here though, the focus has been expanded to take in all of Eriador, from Rivendell in the east to the Lindon and the coast in the west, from the Ettin Moors in the north to Dunland in the south. At the heart of the region, astride the Great Eastern Road stand The Shire and Breeland, and these are likely starting point for any campaign of The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of Lord of the Rings.

The second edition of the roleplaying also introduces new Cultures and Callings, which are like Races and Classes. The Bardlings are Northmen of noble origins from across the Misty Mountains, journeying once again after the death of Smaug, whilst the Dwarves of Durin’s Folk, are also travelling with renewed purpose, their having reclaimed the Kingdom Under the Mountain.  Those native to Eriador include Elves of Lindon, members of the Firstborn who rarely leave the Grey Havens; Hobbits of the Shire, happy and conservative who would prefer that world around them—or at least The Shire—remain unchanged; Men of Bree, who accept many visitors to villages, but rarely leave; and the Rangers of the North, who patrol the North in secret to keep it safe from threats despite their low numbers. The seven Callings are the Captain, who commands and leads through trust; the Champion is a valiant warrior; the Messenger who carries news and missives between settlements despite the increasing difficulties in journeying across Middle-earth; the Scholar who loves learning and the past; the Treasure Hunter seeks out the heritage of Dwarven Kings and Elven Lords, often lost to hoards guarded by fell beasts and hordes of Orcs; and the Warden, who works to protect those who cannot against the dangers beyond civilisation.
A Player-hero in The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of Lord of the Rings is defined by three Attributes—Strength, Heart, and Wits. Each Attribute value, rated between two and seven, determines the Target Number for skill rolls with its six associated skills (meaning that there is a total of eighteen skills), these rated between one and six. He also has points in Wisdom and Valour, the former representing a Player-hero’s trust in himself and his abilities and good judgement, the latter, his courage. To create a Player-hero, a player chooses a Culture and a Calling, then spends extra Experience Points to customise him, assigns equipment, and lastly selects his rewards for his Wisdom and Valour. A Calling provides a Cultural Blessing, a Standard of Living, an array of Attribute values to chose or roll randomly, a set of base skills and combat proficiencies, Distinctive Features to choose from, and a choice of names. To this are added Favoured Skills, an additional Distinctive Feature, and a Shadow Path, the latter the fate the Calling can result in if a Player-hero fails to resist the Shadow’s influence. For example, a Champion might be beset by the Curse of Vengeance and the Messenger by Wandering-Madness.
Daisy Appledore is a Bree-lander whose family often worked in the Prancing Pony where as a girl she learned of news and things from here and there. This aroused her curiosity and she wanted to find out more about the world, beginning to read books when she could find them and asking questions of other when she could not. Her family would prefer it if she settled down and took up a trade, but does not want to become a cook or serving girl like her mother and sisters, even though she could. She knows she will have to travel and find books and scrolls if she is to satisfy her curiosity. 

Name: Daisy Appledore
Culture: Men of Bree Standard of Living: Common
Cultural Blessing: Bree-Blood (Add one to Fellowship rating)
Calling: Scholar Shadow Weakness: Lure of Secrets
Distinctive Features: Fair-Spoken, Inquisitive, Rhymes of Lore 

– ATTRIBUTES –
Strength: 4 (TN: 16)
Heart: 4 (TN: 16)
Wits: 6 (TN: 14)

– SKILLS –
Awe 0 Enhearten 2 Persuade 2
Athletics 1 Travel 1 Stealth 1
Awareness 1 Insight2 Scan 2
Hunting 1 Healing 0 Explore 2
Song 1 Courtesy 3 Riddle 2
Craft 3 Battle 0 Lore 2 

– COMBAT PROFICIENCIES –
Spear 2, Bows 1 

Valour: 1 (Reward: Close Fitting Mail)
Wisdom: 1 (Virtue: Prowess – Strength) 

– GEAR –
Travelling gear, Bow & Arrows, Dagger, Spear, Shield, Mail Shirt (Armour 2d) & Helm (+1 Armour) 

Endurance 24 Hope 14 Parry 16

Mechanically, like its forebear, The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of Lord of the Rings uses dice pools formed of six-sided dice and the twelve-sided Feat die. The six-sided Success dice are marked with an Elven Rune for ‘1’ on the six face, whilst the Feat dice is marked one through ten, and one face with the ‘Eye of Sauron’ Icon and one face with the ‘Gandalf’ Rune. When rolled, these can all together give various results. A simple numerical total that beats a Target Number is a standard success, but if the roll beats a Target Number and one or more Elven Runes are rolled, they indicate a Great or even an Extraordinary success. If the ‘Eye of Sauron’ Icon is rolled, this is the worst result and does not contribute anything towards the roll. Conversely, if the ‘Gandalf’ Rune is rolled, this is the best result and the action automatically succeeds, even if the total does not beat the target number.
The Target Number itself is determined by a Player-hero’s Attributes, either Strength, Heart, or Wits, depending upon if the player is rolling for a skill, combat proficiency, Wisdom, or Valour. In addition, if a skill is Favoured or Ill-favoured, a player rolls two Feat dice, counting the higher result if Favoured, the lower if Ill-favoured. Extra Success dice can be purchased and rolled through the expenditure of Hope.

Combat uses the same mechanics, but uses a Player-hero’s Combat Proficiencies—either Axes, Bows, Swords, or Spears, which are rolled against the Target Number derived from his Strength. This is modified by the enemy’s Parry rating. Damage inflicted is deducted from a Player-hero’s Endurance, which can result in him being Weary if his Endurance is knocked below his Load (essentially what he is carrying), and knocked out if it is reduced to zero. However, adversaries cannot become Weary, but are knocked out or eliminated when their Endurance is reduced to zero. If one or more Elven ‘1’ Runes are rolled on the Success dice, they can spent to inflict Heavy Blows and more Endurance damage, Fend Off the next attack against you, Pierce armour and potentially do a Piercing Blow, which is definitely inflicted if a ten or a ‘Gandalf’ Rune is rolled. If a Piercing Blow is struck, the defendant’s player rolls to see if his Player-hero’s armour protects him. Wounded Player-heroes recover Endurance slowly and are knocked out if a second Wound is suffered. Adversaries are typically killed by Wounds. Stance, whether Forward, Open, Defensive, or Rearward also affects combat, 
The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of Lord of the Rings is played in two distinct phases—the Adventuring Phase and the Fellowship Phase, both undertaken by the Fellowship formed by the Plaeyr-heroes. The Adventuring Phase is when traditional roleplaying tasks take place, primarily built around the Combat, Council, and Journey activities. The Council and Journey activities very much model what happens in the fiction. The Council activity sees the Player-heroes entreaty with those who hold power, perhaps to gain information or aid. For example, the Fellowship might approach Círdan the Shipwright for information about some ruins said to be in the Dark Lands west of Minhiriach or approach a Dwarven overseer to enter a mine. Mechanically, this involves skill tests made against social skills such as Awe, Courtesy, Persuade, and Song, but best combined with good roleplaying.
The Journey mechanics model the long trips that the Fellowship will be making across the rough, inhospitable, and often hostile lands of Middle-earth. A travelling company requires four roles to be fulfilled, Guide, Hunter, Look-Out, and Scout, and in these roles, the Player-heroes to determine the nature of the encounters they might have and where they do along the journey. Depending on location, these can result in the members of the Fellowship suffering Wounds or gaining points of Shadow, or a chance-meeting or viewing a Joyful Sight. In addition, all members of the Fellowship are required to make a Travel skill test as they tire themselves and gain them fatigue. The rules provide some basic encounters, but the Loremaster will need to develop them before play and probably add more for later journeys.
The Fellowship Phase place between adventures, typically at the end of a Season. Mechanically, this an opportunity for the players to improve Player-heroes and have them recover from injury—both physical and spiritual. They can also select Undertakings, some of which can be done during any Fellowship Phase, but others only during the ‘Yule’ Fellowship Phase. The former, such as ‘Gather Rumours’, ‘Meet Patron’, ‘Ponder Storied and Figured Maps’, and ‘Write Song’, really affect the next season, whilst the latter, like ‘Heal Scars’, ‘Raise an Heir’, and ‘Recount a Story’ have longer term consequences, often having an effect which lasts years. For the most part, winters are spent recovering and reflecting upon previous adventures, and preparing for the next, so typically there will be three Adventuring Phases and three Fellowship Phases per year.
For the Loremaster there is advice on running The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of Lord of the Rings as well as tools for doing so. Most notably they include the Shadow, the fell, foul influence of the darkness personified by Sauron himself. A Player-hero can gain points of Shadow through dread, greed, misdeeds, and sorcery, potentially leading to madness and flaws, and pushing them down the path of his Shadow Weakness. Balancing a Player-hero’s Shadow Points are his points of Hope, but the effects of the Shadow can overcome his Hope should he gain too many. Again, this enforces the feel of Middle-earth and Tolkien’s fiction as well as giving evil a tangible effect. Later on in a campaign when the Player-heroes have made a name for themselves, the Loremaster can bring the Eye of Mordor into play and have them full under the effects of Sauron’s baleful glance.
For the Loremaster there is advice on running The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of Lord of the Rings as well as tools for doing so. Most notably they include the Shadow, the fell, foul influence of the darkness personified by Sauron himself. A Player-hero can gain points of Shadow through dread, greed, misdeeds, and sorcery, potentially leading to madness and flaws, and pushing them down the path of his Shadow Weakness. Balancing a Player-hero’s Shadow Points are his points of Hope, but the effects of the Shadow can overcome his Hope should he gain too many. Again, this enforces the feel of Middle-earth and Tolkien’s fiction as well as giving evil a tangible effect.
The list of adversaries in of The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of Lord of the Rings is quite short—Evil Men, Orcs, Trolls, Undead, and Wolves of the Wild, but this is more than sufficient. In terms of setting, there is some unavoidable repetition between the description of The Shire in The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of Lord of the Rings and The One Ring Starter Set, but the core rulebook expands to cover the whole of Eriador, including Angmar, The Barrow-Downs, the Blue Mountains, Bree-Land, The Ettenmoors, The Great East Road, The Greenway, Lake Evendim, Lindon, Mount Gram, The North Downs, The South Downs, Tharbad, The Trollshaws, and The Weather Hills. It includes numerous NPCs, encounter tables, and location specific adversaries. There are some nice touches here too, such as the Summer Smoke Ring Festival, which the Player-heroes can participate in and the common practice of tossing a coin down the well in Bree’s Old Town Well for luck before leaving on a journey. Added to this are Patrons, such as Balin, son of Fundin, Círdan the Shipwright, and even Bilbo Baggins and Tom Bombadil and Lady Goldberry, who in adopting the Player-heroes will grant them Fellowship Bonuses and advantages, but at the same time, providing the Loremaster with ready NPCs to spur the Player-heroes onto further danger and adventure. Once such site of danger and adventure is described in ‘The Star of the Mist’, a landmark in the foothills of the southern Ered Luin. It is not a full adventure itself, but somewhere to be explored, full of dark secrets, more of an adventure site, much like that found in Forbidden Lands – Raiders & Rogues in a Cursed World. It should provide two or three session’s worth of play, but the Loremaster will need to create a reason for the Player-heroes to be in the area.
If there is one single issue with The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of Lord of the Rings, it is simply the lack of examples. There are hardly any examples of play, none of combat, and none of sample Player-heroes. For anyone with any roleplaying experience or experience having played The One Ring: Adventures Over The Edge Of The Wild, this is should not be an issue. However, if new to the hobby or this roleplaying game, working out what is going on will be a whole lot more difficult.
Physically, The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of Lord of the Rings is very cleanly presented in a clear, open style, and the content itself is engaging to read. In particular, the maps are excellent, done in a style reminiscent of Tolkien and will satisfy any Tolkien fan. There are numerous quotes taken from his fiction throughout the book and these add to its feel and flavour. The artwork is also very good, a pen and ink style that captures the old-world rustic charm of the Shire and the region surrounding it. The style and look echoes that of the classic editions of The Lord of the Rings trilogy published by Allen & Unwin, and has a more scholarly feel as if Bilbo himself sat down to write it.
As an update, The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of Lord of the Rings has been mechanically streamlined and given a nip and tuck here and there. Thematically, the shift to Eriador is more open, windswept, and further away from the darkness which pervaded Rhovanion, east of the Misty Mountains. This not to say that the region is without its dangers or sense of foreboding, far from it, but there is more scope for both the Loremaster and the publisher to develop their own content and perhaps avoid running into an abundance of canon.
Fans of both Middle-earth and the previous version of the roleplaying game, The One Ring: Adventures Over The Edge Of The Wild, will enjoy this new edition just as much, opening up as it does a whole region to explore and moving it on a few decades to give new dangers to face and the Free Peoples of the West to help keep safe. Ultimately, The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of Lord of the Rings is a fantastic update of arguably what was the best roleplaying game to date to be set in Middle-earth. Which means it still is.

—oOo—


Free League Publishing will be at UK Games Expo which takes place from Friday, June 3rd to Sunday, June 5th, 2022.

The Woodland is a vast stretch of thick, deep forest, rich with resources and cut with paths which connect the clearings scattered across its far reaches. Here are found the town, cities, and villages where the denizens of the Woodland live on the edge of the dangerous wilds that stretch deep into the forest. In recent times, the Woodland has been controlled by the Eyrie Dynasties, consecutive conservative regimes led by the birds of the region, but their power was disrupted by the Grand Civil War. This left the Woodland in ruins, but freed many of its denizens from the control of their avian overlords as much as it left much work to do in terms of rebuilding. However, this period, known as the Interbellum, left the Woodlands ripe for invasion, and it was a noble from the Le Monde de cat, the Marquise de Cat, who took advantage of its fractured state. First the Marquise de Cat’s forces helped restore the Woodlands and then industrialise it, building sawmills, workshops, and irrigation. Then it became occupation with the imposition of taxes and stationing cat soldiery. In response some denizens fled to the recovering Eyrie Dynasties, which returned to stop the invaders, but others joined the Woodland Alliance. This arose as hostilities broke out between the Eyrie Dynasties and the Marquisate of the Marquise de Cat, wanting to be free of either occupation. Even as war swirls back and forth through the Woodlands, other denizens slip from clearing to clearing, taking on the odd, dangerous job that inhabitants of the clearings will not do, serving one faction or another, sometimes doing good, other times, causing trouble. They are miscreants, outcasts, rebels, mercenaries, vigilantes, and more. All though are known as Vagabonds, regarded as occasionally useful, but all too often a nuisance.

This is the setting for Root: The Roleplaying Game. Published by Magpie Games following a successful Kickstartercampaign,it is based on Root: A Game of Woodland Might And Right, the anthropomorphic asymmetrical boardgame from Leder Games, lauded for both its design and its game play as well as its fantastic artwork. In the board game, the Eyrie Dynasties, Marquise de Cat, and the Woodland Alliance are the primary factions, whilst the fourth, the Vagabond, either disrupted or aided the efforts of the others. In the board game, there was just the one Vagabond, but in the roleplaying game there are many, and they are the Player Characters in Root: The Roleplaying Game. They may be diplomatic Adventurers, stalwart Arbiters, slippery Harriers, Woodland-wise Rangers, wilful Ronin, dangerous but lucky Scoundrels, cunning Thieves, clever Tinkers, and charming Vagrants, but all are Vagabonds. They have bonded together in a band, but for how long?

Root: The Roleplaying Game is not a traditional roleplaying game, since it employs the Powered by the Apocalypse framework, first see in2010’s Apocalypse World, around which its Player Character or Vagabond types, called Playbooks, and the Moves—or actions—they can undertake. Both Player Character types and Moves enforce both the setting and genre of Root: The Roleplaying Game, and the narratives or stories which can be told. In terms of Vagabond types and thus Playbooks, this is primarily done via a Vagabond’s Nature and Drives. Fulfilling either of the Nature and Drives rewards the player and his character, pushing the player to roleplay in particular ways. For example, with the Dutiful Nature, the Arbiter will clear his Exhaustion Track when he takes on a dangerous or difficult task for someone else, whilst he will gain an Advancement (the chance to improve the character) with the Discovery Dive when he encounters a new wonder or ruin in the forest. In terms of Moves, when the Harrier uses the ‘Smuggler’s Path’ Move, he will always find a secret path or door if the location should have one, but depending upon the roll made, he will not only find the secret path, but he will also find something useful to him along the path or even find it being used by someone else. This develops and pushes the narrative along, because throughout, a player is rolling the dice to determine what happens, rather than if it does or does not happen.

There are eight Basic Moves available to all Vagabonds—‘Attempt Roguish Feat’, ‘Figure Someone Out’, ’Persuade an NPC’, ‘Read a Tense Situation’, ‘Trick an NPC’, ‘Trust Fate’, Wreck Something’, and ‘Help or Interfere’. There are other types of Moves, such as Weapon Moves for combat and Session Moves for end of play actions, but for the most part, the Vagabonds will be making the Basic Moves. These are in the main, self-explanatory, but two stand out as different to the others. ‘Attempt a Roguish Feat’ actually consists of eight separate Feats, Acrobatics, Blindside, Counterfeit, Disable Device, Hide, Pick Lock, Pickpocket, Sleight of Hand, and Sneak. Typically, a Vagabond will have two of them, but again they roguish nature of the Vagabonds and thus the genre of Root: The Roleplaying Game. The other is ‘Trust Fate’, which covers anything a Vagabond might do when all else fails or he has no other option or the situation is just too desperate. However, this always comes at accost or complication because it is always a last resort, and ideally the player should be making one of the Basic Moves or one of their Vagabond’s in order to avoid that definite complication.

Mechanically, Root: The Roleplaying Game is designed to be player facing. When a player has his Vagabond make a Move, he selects a Move and rolls two six-sided dice, adding the appropriate stat to the result. If the player rolls seven or more, it is a ‘Hit’ and the Vagabond gets the desired result, but with a complication. If he rolls ten or more, it is a ‘strong hit ‘and the Vagabond gets everything he wants and potentially an extra bonus. However, if he rolls six or less, it is a ‘Miss’ and the Game Master instead gets to decide what happens. Some Moves add one-off bonuses to a Vagabond’s stats, whilst others generate continuing effects. For example, the Ronin’s ‘Well-Mannered ‘Move which is made when the Ronin enters a social situation where manners and etiquette matter, and generates points which a player can hold. Called Hold, these can be used to cover up a social faux pas made by the Vagabond or an ally, to call out someone else’s social faux, to charm someone, and to demonstrate his value. If the result is a Miss, the rules of etiquette are so different that you commit a grave breach of manners! All of these come with mechanical effects too. Any Move though, requires a trigger, essentially the player roleplaying his Vagabond’s actions or response, after which it happens.

The mechanics of Root: The Roleplaying Game handle the effects of danger and damage through Harm. Harm is divided into several tracks—Depletion, Exhaustion, Injury, Morale, and Wear—which are filled up as a Vagabond suffers Harm, ultimately leading to an unfortunate outcome if any of them are all filled in. Depletion represents a Vagabond’s general funds and assorted goods and supplies, and its track is filled in as a Vagabond pulls piece of useful equipment from one of his many pouches and pockets, which can be done retrospectively rather the player noting everything down that his Vagabond has on the sheet. In other words, Root: The Roleplaying Game is not a roleplaying game about shopping. Exhaustion represents a Vagabond’s energy and inner strength, and its track is filled in when he gets tired or he suffers a social slight. Depletion, Exhaustion, and Injury are the primary tracks a player will fill in for his Vagabond. Wear is a track for the durability of a piece of equipment and the equipment belonging to an NPC, whilst Morale is the track for an NPC’s commitment to his drives and beliefs.

A Vagabond also has another set of tracks. These are Reputation tracks, representing how well he is known by each of the factions in the Woodland, either his Notoriety or his Prestige. It is easier to gain Notoriety than it is Prestige, which works up to a point. However, its implementation is not clearly handled as the track really only tracks the positive gain when a Vagabond has Prestige and the negative loss when he has Notoriety, and effectively not when he loses either. This is made that little bit more complex because the Woodland has more than the four factions in the core rulebook. These are detailed in the supplement, Travelers & Outsiders, and if they come into play, they exacerbate the complexity of what the player has to keep track of, because this system is not intuitive.

Character or Vagabond creation in Root: The Roleplaying Game a matter of choosing one of its nine Playbooks. These are highly defined, in terms of species, demeanour, details, Nature, Drives, Connections, Weapons kills, and Background Questions. Species, demeanour, and details do not have any mechanical benefit whereas Drives and Nature, of which the Vagabond has to choose two and one respectively. When a Vagabond fulfils the terms of his Nature, he can clear his Exhaustion track, and gains an Advancement when he fulfils terms of his Drive. A Vagabond has a connection to a partner and a friend, both of which are with fellow Vagabonds, and five stats—Charm, Cunning, Finesse, Luck, and Might. These range in value between -1 and +3, but initially between -1 and +2. A Playbook has six Moves of which a player initially selects three. Each Playbook contains notes further explaining how the Moves work.

From the outset, the process of creating a Vagabond is intended to be collaborative. The players can only have one of each Playbook in play, that is, a band of Vagabonds cannot consist of two Rangers. The collaborative nature continues and is enforced with the players choosing the Connections between their Vagabonds. It continues in play as well, first and foremost because everyone—including the Game Master—is playing to find out what happens, and to facilitate this, the Game Master is advised not codify ahead of play. Instead, she creates Clearings with interesting NPC denizens and general conflicts and issues rather than ready-to-play plots. Root: The Roleplaying Game includes a set of tables to help her design her first set of twelve Clearings, including their denizens, the paths between the Clearings (which themselves can often be difficult and dangerous to travel), and which faction controls each Clearing. Since this is done randomly, the resulting Woodland will differ from that created by another Game Master and had there been a pre-written set of twelve Clearings proscribed by the authors of Root: The Roleplaying Game, it would have differed from that too. This also explains the general nature of the background given to the Woodland in Root: The Roleplaying Game—this is the Game Master’s Woodland, not the publisher’s, but it does come with an example Clearing called ‘Gelilah’s Grove’. This showcases the concept of the Clearing in practice and consists of a description, its conflicts and issues, and a few NPCs. Notably, at the end of the description for each conflict or issue, it states what happens if the Vagabonds do not get involved. So either way, if the Vagabonds get involved or not, the situation in Gelilah’s Grove will change, leading to a sense of things and events developing and changing across the Woodland.

For the Game Master, there is a fair amount to learn in order to run Root: The Roleplaying Game. Primarily, this consists of really learning how the game’s many Moves work. The likelihood is that on initial play, the Game Master will find herself flipping and forth to remind herself how each Move works as it comes upon play. Once past that, the advice for the Game Master is decent and the bookies rife with detailed and useful examples and explanations.

One of the moments of brilliance in Root: The Roleplaying Game is not necessarily the rules or the setting—though there is no denying that they are good, but the introduction to roleplaying. This eschews the traditional method which often has barely moved on from describing roleplaying as being like playing cops and robbers or cowboys and Indians when you were acid, to instead talk about what it calls ‘The Fundamentals’. This takes right back to basics in describing it as a conversation between the players and the players and the Game Master before building on this. So framing scenes and answering that age old question of “What do you do?” to handling the roleplaying game’s Moves and the uncertainty that involves, and beyond to Root: The Roleplaying Game being a shared experience and explaining what to expect and focus on in play. It ends by giving multiple answers to the question, “Why Play?”. There is such a core simplicity to the advice and guidance that it puts just every other roleplaying game to shame. This is one of the clearest, most elegant introductions to roleplaying in almost fifty years of the hobby and not only should the authors be commended for it, but the publisher should also make a generic version available to everyone. Otherwise, ‘The Fundamentals’ chapter is particularly helpful for players of Root: A Game of Woodland Might And Right wanting to make the shift to roleplaying and continue exploring the Woodland.

Physically, Root: The Roleplaying Game is a charming digest-sized book illustrated with the bright autumnal colours seen in Root: A Game of Woodland Might And Right. The book is well written and an engaging read. Theatre is of course fantastic, although there is arguably not enough of it.

Root: The Roleplaying Game is not a roleplaying game about heroes in a time of war, although it could be. If not heroes though, the Vagabonds are still protagonists, mercenaries, ne’er-do-wells, rogues, and more (until they decide to leave the band and retire, becoming an NPC) who in slipping from one Clearing to another and between one faction and another, perhaps taking advantage of the chaos and uncertainty, have the opportunity to influence and change the Woodland. Sometimes for good, sometimes for ill. This mood and sense of uncertainty, as well as the less than heroic nature of the Vagabonds, very much makes Root: The Roleplaying Game feel different to the traditional and often twee and quaint anthropomorphic depiction of woodland creatures.

Root: The Roleplaying Game is an engaging and attractive book whose rules encourage strong collaborative storytelling and roleplaying, and to not only explore the Woodland, its dangers and its issues, but also to change it and make it something shared between the players and the Game Master.
—oOo—


Magpie Games will be at UK Games Expo which takes place from Friday, June 3rd to Sunday, June 5th, 2022.

Metamorphosis Alpha: The Warden Armoury is a supplement designed for Metamorphosis Alpha: Fantastic Role-Playing Game of Science Fiction Adventures on a Lost Starship. The first Science Fiction roleplaying game and the first post-apocalypse roleplaying game, Metamorphosis Alpha is set aboard the Starship Warden, a generation spaceship which has suffered an unknown catastrophic event which killed the crew and most of the million or so colonists and left the ship irradiated and many of the survivors and the flora and fauna aboard mutated. Some three centuries later, as Humans, Mutated Humans, Mutated Animals, and Mutated Plants, the Player Characters, knowing nothing of their captive universe, would leave their village to explore strange realm around them, wielding fantastic mutant powers and discovering how to wield fantastic devices of the gods and the ancients that is technology, ultimately learn of their enclosed world. Originally published in 1976, it would go on to influence a whole genre of roleplaying games, starting with Gamma World, right down to Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic from Goodman Games. And it would be Goodman Games which brought the roleplaying game back with the stunning Metamorphosis Alpha Collector’s Edition in 2016, and support the forty-year old roleplaying game with a number of supplements, many which would be collected in the ‘Metamorphosis Alpha Treasure Chest’.

Metamorphosis Alpha: The Warden Armoury is written by James M. Ward, the designer of Metamorphosis Alpha and simply gives descriptions of over one hundred and fifty weapons and armour. It also reveals a minor secret—or three—about the Starship Warden and the way it was stocked prior to it leaving the Earth. It is well known that as well as stocking the vast generational ship with assorted supplies and devices to ensure that the crew and their passengers would survive the long interstellar journey, the Starship Warden had whole cargo holds filled with everything necessary to help the colonists set up their new home on the destination planet. The colonisation was entirely peaceful and civilian-led, but what is not known is that a pair of secret holds were filled with powerful military weapons by Earth’s military. The locations of these secret caches are known only to the military command back on Earth and to the military commanders assigned to the Starship Warden. Like other high-ranking members of the ship’s crew, they remain in hibernation, their cryrogenic pods also hidden. Yet despite the locations of these caches remaining hidden, this does not mean that they cannot be found, and what happens if others find either cache before the Player Characters? What if a rival band of mutants found them and start attacking the Player Characters and their allies in their powerful suits of armour, wielding deadly weapons they have never seen before? Or robotic dogs and serpents that rampage across a deck? Well, either the Player Characters have to stop them, find their source, or steal them all for themselves—if not all three!

Metamorphosis Alpha: The Warden Armoury details the content of both caches. In the Secret Military Armoury Cache can be found four types of weapons. These are Bio-Heavy guns, Gamma guns, Kinetic guns, and Plasma guns. They all include grenades, pistols, rifles, throwers, blasters, and artillery. The Bio-Heavy guns fire spheres of bio-material, which when it explodes paralyses and then kills anyone who breaths it in or is touched by it; Gamma guns fire spheres of radiation; Kinetic weapons fire pellets at high velocity; and the Plasma guns, balls of well, plasma. This is a somewhat underwhelming start to the supplement, the weapons being deadly if not all that inspiring and possessing a similar feel. How some of them are fired is slightly more interesting, such as the helmet which has to be worn to fire the Gamma Blaster. Similarly, the suits of mobile armour are not that interesting, although the inclusion of various types of drone provides more of a contemporary feel.

Fortunately, the contents of the Colonisation Weapons & Armour Cache is where Metamorphosis Alpha: The Warden Armoury gets interesting. Especially with the list of non-lethal weapons, because here the designer really has to get inventive. For example, the ‘Anti-Energy Sparkle Dust’ is thrown in the air and negates energy rays and blasts; ‘Battle Gloves’ let the wearer handle energy, radiation, and poison safely, and even provides a pressure-based force field for protection in space or the deepest of oceans; ‘Electric Bolos’ stun targets; ‘Slippery Marbles’ create uneven surfaces; the Blind Pistol’ fires pellets of manganese which explode blind targets; and ‘Tagging Pistols’ fire darts which can be tracked from a thousand miles away. There are lethal weapons, such as lasers and slug throwers, and even caltrops, but again not all that interesting. More fun perhaps will be had with the Player Characters attempting to figure out what the various types of grenades, from Slippery Grenades to Sticky Mist Grenades, and various types of claymore mines, from Freeze to Nano-Cutter versions, can be found in the cache. The Colonisation Weapons & Armour Cache also contains explosives and battle armour, as well as a selection of droids, such as the battering Droid, used for well, battering, and vehicles all the way up to a Force Sphere, which can transport forty troopers into space or the deep ocean whilst providing plenty of protection.  The Special Colonisation Equipment includes a very useful Emergency Hip Container, essentially a survival kit, and a bit with a robot dog.
All of the entries in Metamorphosis Alpha: The Warden Armoury include a short description and ratings for damage, Armour Class, and Weapon Class as necessary. They also include an ICR or Item Complexity Rating to indicate how difficult an item is to understand. The tables explaining these ratings are reprinted from Metamorphosis Alpha, whilst the tables at the back of the supplement combine their rating with an index. All nicely done in one.

Physically, Metamorphosis Alpha: The Warden Armoury is cleanly presented. The illustrations are decent, but the writing is sparse in places.

In a roleplaying game like Metamorphosis Alpha where there no Classes or Levels, and the only way in which the Player Characters get more powerful is through acquiring more mutant abilities or bigger and better weapons and armour, there is always going to be a call for a supplement such as Metamorphosis Alpha: The Warden Armoury. So there is no denying that the supplement is useful, although it does mean that the Player Characters may be capable of dealing out huge amounts of damage whilst wearing armour cable withstanding similar amounts, ultimately upping the scale at which combat takes place. So this may well be a supplement for later in a campaign when the Player Characters are ready to face bigger and deadlier threats.

—oOo—


Goodman Games will be at Gen Con 20220 which takes place from Thursday, August 4th to Sunday, August 7th, 2022.

There have always been encounters in roleplaying because fundamentally, roleplaying is built on encounters, and the most fun has come from great encounters and their outcome and the roleplaying which comes from them. Yet coming up with interesting, involving, or even challenging encounters can hinder the most creative of Game Masters. So it is no surprise that the industry has fulfilled this need all the way back to books such as Dungeons & Dragons Monster & Treasure Assortment Set One: Levels One-Three, published by TSR, Inc. in 1977 and Traveller Supplement 6: 76 Patrons, published in in 1980 by GDW. This need has never gone away, with roleplaying genres such as fantasy, horror, and fantasy, along with specific roleplaying games and settings all being treated to their supplements of encounters, personalities, and places. In each book, each of their encounters can obviously be run as written, but each can also be adapted to fit the Game Master’s campaign, or even simply serve as inspiration. One of the latest entries to join this long list of supplements is Untold Encounters of the Random Kind.

Untold Encounters of the Random Kind is published by Loke BattleMats, a publisher best known for its maps for roleplaying games, such as The Towns & Taverns Books of Battle Mats, The Wilderness Books of Battle Mats, and The Dungeon Books of Battle Mats. Untold Encounters of the Random Kind promises over a thousand random encounters, much like the ‘Books of Battle Mats’ series across towns, wildernesses, and dungeons, as well as adventure generators, random tables, and more. The latter includes six sample adventures.

Untold Encounters of the Random Kind is designed to be compatible with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. However, it is not actually a Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition supplement and there are no Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition stats or content in the supplement. Instead it uses Keywords across seven categories—Mechanics, Damage, Difficulty, Challenge, Enemy Types, Group Sizes, and NPC Types. So for example, Damage which can be inflicted by an attack, a trap, a spell, an environmental effect, and so on, is listed as Minor, Light, Major, and Lethal, whilst the Difficulty of a task is listed as Simple, Routine, Difficult, Very Difficult, or Near Impossible. All of these are easily adapted to the fantasy roleplaying game of the Game Master’s choice, whilst the ‘5E Mechanics’ section suggests how the supplement’s Keywords can be translated into Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. This is via Keywords, primarily the Keywords for Damage, Difficulty, and Challenge—the latter to Challenge Rating, and together it amounts to just two pages. In a supplement which is over three hundred pages long… The point is that Untold Encounters of the Random Kind is just as easy to use with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition as it is with the retroclone of the Game Master’s choice, be it Old School Essentials, Swords & Wizardry, or Labyrinth Lord. In other words, Untold Encounters of the Random Kind is very much Old School Renaissance compatible.

Untold Encounters of the Random Kind is tidily organised into its three sections covering town, wilderness, and dungeon encounters. Each section begins with an overview of the nature of the location type, terrain, district, or encounter types (so cemeteries, docks, and noble quarters for towns, arctic, forests, and sea and shore for wildernesses, and dungeon doors, enemies, and intrigue for dungeons), advice on using the encounters, as well as information particular to the section. Thus for Town Encounters there notes on town dignitaries, wilderness and dungeon crossovers, townsfolk, types of town, and how to create non-human towns. For the different types of wilderness, there is guidance on the weather, visibility, geography, and travel and survival, whilst for dungeons there is advice on traps, denizens, building dungeons, crossovers, and more. None of these entries is accorded more than a few short paragraphs, and arguably, any one of them is likely worth an essay or two of their very own. As a starting point though, the advice in Untold Encounters of the Random Kind is solid throughout.

None of the advice in each section is more than three pages in length before Untold Encounters of the Random Kind delves into its encounters. There are more than fifty entries in each of these tables and each one is expanded upon with a full description. These are given alphabetically following all of the tables. There is a degree of repetition here, for example, the ‘Abandoned Cart’ encounter, found with signs of something heavy having been dragged from it, can be found in the Castle Ward, Guild Quarter, High Street, Lanes, and Noble Quarter, but for most part the encounters are confined to one area or district. For example, the ‘Jury’ is only found in the Noble Quarter and a ‘Hollow Tree’ is found in the Forest. Some entries add flavour and feel, such as ‘Fantastic Music’, the wind whistling through past them sounds so happy as they trek across the Arctic region that the spirits of the Player Characters are uplifted, whilst on the Sea & Shore, the heavy salt content in the water and the air matts hair giving the Player Characters odd hairdos. It also affects fur coats. Boons may also be found in be the wilderness and dungeons, such as a ‘Coin Stash’ or ‘Mechanical Oddity’ with an as yet unfathomable purpose, and a dungeon or ‘Ring of the Lost’ which provides protection and a strange effect on compasses and ‘Salvage Onshore’ of valuable trade goods, similarly both found, though in the wilderness. Wilderness boons consist of coins and valuables, survival and supply caches, and even ores and gems. Similarly, dungeon boons consist of coins and other valuables, but also can be clues and of course, magical items. In both cases of wilderness and dungeon boons there is advice on how to include them and their potential story ramifications.

In comparison to the earlier sections of town and wilderness encounters, the dungeon encounter section goes into a bit more detail. There are tables here for location and back story, plus sample monster suggestions and building particular encounters. Again whole essays or even supplements have been written about dungeon design, so the advice is solid, but not deep.

Included at the end of the three sections—town, wilderness, and dungeon—is a pair of scenarios. These are designed for either Second, Fourth, or Eighth Level Players and each consists of a two-page spread. These have been constructed using the tables and encounters in Untold Encounters of the Random Kind with differently formatted text used to refer to encounter types and also Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition monster types. This is by name only, so again no stats. The six include ‘Wanted’ in which a local watch captain wants a shady relative brought in before the con artist’s enemies catch up with him; ‘Parched’, which opens with the Player Characters shipwrecked on the shores of a desert and a five-day trek to the nearest oasis with little water between them; and in ‘The Cursed Folly’, the Player Characters have been paid well to clear out a folly by a somewhat dotty member of the owning noble family who wants to live in it. Each of the six comes with a decent map of the adventure location, but each will require the Game Master to provide the stats for the various monsters. All six are all decent adventures, each offering little more than a session’s worth of play, and potentially the publisher could take the format and do a whole supplement of full encounters like it.

Physically, Untold Encounters of the Random Kind is decently presented. It does need an edit in places, but the artwork is excellent. Overall, the supplement is a clean and attractive book.

Untold Encounters of the Random Kind is not necessarily a book that as a Game Master you need to own. However, as a book of prompts, ideas, and inspiration, Untold Encounters of the Random Kind is a useful tome to have on the shelf—whichever version of Dungeons & Dragons or retroclone that the Game Master prefers because this supplement will work with them all.

—oOo—


Loke BattleMats will be at UK Games Expo which takes place from Friday, June 3rd to Sunday, June 5th, 2022.