Nobody knows what brought about the Time Before The Shit Hit. Or they do, then they are not going to tell you or they do not give a fuck. What does it matter? The world is a Wasteland in between the zones poisoned by biological and chemical contamination, let alone radiation, and that is before even thinking about the dangerously deteriorated buildings, roving gangs, mutant abominations, murderous cannibals, and fanatic disciples with insane beliefs. There are small settlements, invariably fortified against the pricks that would gut them and their occupants, stealing their food, their water, and their wives plus whatever good gear and bullets they might have. Some are true havens with clean water and greenhouses growing fresh food, others are trade hubs ready to drive a hard bargain for goods you got to sell and the bullets you need to buy, and some are simply gang bases which gives the gang a base from which to prove that might is right and murder is righter. In between, Mercs take jobs that the inhabitants of the settlements need done, but are not brave or skilled enough to undertake. Out in the Wasteland they face the dangers of strange beasts the likes of which were never seen the Time Before The Shit Hit, gangers and cannibals, and the very environment which could mutate them.

What happened the Time Before The Shit Hit? The Rich fucked the bourgeois and the poor over—and then over again. In the wake of impending collapse, the ill-educated electorate voted for populism and strong national leaders. Riots broke out and ghastly acts of ethnic cleansing took place as the poor got poorer, the rich got richer, and the middle classes looked for a desperate way to maintain their comfortable lives, and when their lives did not get better, they revolted. In response, governments offered places in the Megalopoli that they planned to build as safe sanctuaries against the increasing environmental damage around the world. Except the places were not offered to everyone and those deemed unworthy or no longer useful were driven out or killed, and then… And then, the Megalopoli seals their doors and the bosses inside solved the problem of having a population outside desperate to get in with the application of nuclear bombs and biological agents. Some Megalopoli blew themselves up as old rivalries from the Time Before The Shit Hit actually hit the fan again, like Jerusalem being bombed by Luxor and Indian Megalopolis Na’i Kalakattä getting destroyed in a sneak attack from the Pakistani Poltohar Abad, which was in turned destroyed by the remnants of the nuclear arsenal in Na’i Kalakattä. Elsewhere United England is an island Megalopolis which uses the remains of Ireland as a dumping ground; New Alamo is split between the New Alamo of the oil barons and the Nuevo

Alamo of the narco-cartel families, with not-rich caught between; Liberty City, built on New York and ruled by drooling, drug-addled paranoids, turned on Maple Leaf City because the Canadians were too nice!; Roma Vaticana exists beneath the smouldering, irradiated ruins of the city above; and Neo-Ronin emerge from among the bored and jaded of Tökyö No Shita go in search of mutants and kaiju to kill in the name of the Empress. Now you have to survive in this Shithole of a future.

This is the set-up for PunkApocalyptic: the Roleplaying Game. It is published following a successful Kickstarter campaign by Schwalb Entertainment, best known for Shadow of the Demon Lord, the roleplaying game of dark fantasy and horror set in the last days of a dying world. It is a post-apocalyptic setting based upon the 30 mm miniature game published by Bad Roll Games. It uses the same structure and mechanics as Shadow of the Demon Lord, so has a number of notable features. First, character generation is fast, taking no more than five minutes. Second, a character starts out simple, but as he progresses, a player has plenty of choices in what he becomes. Third, a campaign starts with characters at Zero Level and ends with characters at Tenth Level, a group of characters going up in Level at the end of each mission so that a campaign can be played in just eleven sessions or scenarios. Fourth, the language in PunkApocalyptic: the Roleplaying Game is strong and of an adult nature. Indeed, the writing makes clear that this is a roleplaying game designed for mature and experienced roleplayers rather than those new to it.

A Merc in is defined by his Attributes, a Background, a Defence value, Grit to heal damage with, an Education (possibly), and a Mutagen score, which represents exposure to the messed-up environment of the world around them. The eight Attributes are Muscles, Meat, Hands, Feet, Brains, Eyes, Mouth, and Guts, and they range in value from one to twenty. Muscles is physical strength and athleticism, Meat is health and durability, Hands is manual dexterity, Feet is speed and agility, Eyes is perception, Mouth is personality and charisma, and Gut is determination and willpower. The Background, which can be Brute, Drifter, Face, Fanatic, Ganger, Genius, Scavenger, or Survivor, provides a bonus to an Attribute, the number of languages a Merc can speak, a Talent, some starting gear and a randomly determined piece of junk—which can be anything from a plastic ashtray from The Dewdrop Inn, a very small spring, and a doctor’s note to a commemorative plate from the Franklin Mint, a moustache brush and stick of moustache wax, and a bag of dildos—and a Mission 4 Benefit. The latter is the benefit gained upon completion of the Merc’s fourth mission. A Merc also has character details, from age, looks, height and weight to motivation, obligation, morality, and name. These can be selected or rolled for on the provided tables.

Name: Grannie
Background: Genius
Genius Background: “You want to build a doomsday weapon and use it against one of the Megalopoli. You’ve been drawing up plans in the hopes of one day getting the revenge you so desperately crave.”
Languages: Spanish, Japanese, Russian
Missions: 0

CHARACTER DETAILS
Age: …an adult. You’re old enough to know better, but young enough to avoid the aches and pains and horror that comes from growing old.
Looks: …not much to look at. Something’s off with you that makes you unappealing.
Height: …of average height.
Weight: …slender

DISTINGUISHING FEATURES
Appearance: Unusual …mismatched eyes
TIME FOR THERAPY
Interactions: You get along with other people about as well as anyone else does. You’re not particularly outgoing, but you’re not all quiet and reserved either.
Connections: You know people, have several friends, including a few close relationships.
Sanity: You’re so fucking stable, you’re probably insane. Nothing gets to you. Nothing affects you.
Goal: You want to be safe.Motivation: You don’t want the world to burn.
Obligations: Question authority! You’re free and do what you want. Fuck the rules and anyone who thinks they can boss you around.
Morality: You do what you feel you must. A pragmatist, the end always justifies the means.

Muscles 10 Meat 9 (-1) Hands 9 (-1) Feet 10
Brains 14 (+4) Eyes 9 (-1) Mouth 11 (+1) Guts 11 (+1)
Defence: 9
Health: 9
Grit: 4
Speed: 5
Size: 1 Reach: 1
Mutagen: 1
Education: Architecture and Engineering, Mathematics/Mathemagics, Chemistry, Physics

Gear: nice set of clothes, a duffel bag, 1 food, 1 water, a slingshot with 10 stones, and a random piece of junk, a little packet of silica
This though is a character at Level Zero who is no more than a prior Background and some potential experience with Mission 4 Benefits. After completing a first Mission, a Merc enters a Novice Path and gains its benefits as well as extra benefits at Level Two, Level Five, and Level Eight. After completing his third Mission, a Merc an Expert Path and gains its benefits as well as extra benefits at Level Six and Level Nine. Lastly, upon completing the seventh Mission, a Merc enters a Master Path and gains its benefits as well as extra benefits at Level Ten. The choice of Paths available widens from Novice to Expert to Master, giving a player more and more options. The Novice Paths are Builder, which creates and develops technological items; the Freak embraces the transformative effects of the mutagens found almost everywhere; the Killer is the ultimate combatant; and the Scum who will do anything to survive. The Expert Paths include the Abomination, the Asskicker, the Boss, the Doctor, the Firebug, Grease Monkey, the Gunslinger, the Murderer, the Parasite, the Psychic, the Psycho, and the Wastelander. The Master Paths are Beast Whisperer, Bleeder, Bullshitter, Daredevil, Explorer, Fighter, Hedonist, Hulk, Jack-of-all-Trades, Martial Artist, Messiah, Mindbender, Monster, Ninja, Preacher, Road Hog, Road Warrior, Saboteur, Shyster, and Survivor. In this way, PunkApocalyptic: the Roleplaying Game offers a wealth of options in terms of Player Characters.

The basic mechanic in PunkApocalyptic: the Roleplaying Game is simple and straightforward, whether you are making the equivalent of a saving throw, a skill check, or an attack roll. Roll a twenty-sided die and add any Attribute bonuses or penalties, and if the result is ten or more, then you succeed. The target may not always be ten—it can go up or down, a target’s Defence typically being higher than ten. In addition, a Merc can also have Assets or Complications—each a six-sided die—that can be added to, or subtracted from, the roll. These may come from a Background, for example, the Brute grants two Assets when rolling a Muscles check; a Path such as the Doctor’s Triage benefit enabling him to perform first aid on someone who has been dead for six rounds with a Brains check with two Complications; and from gear, such as any improvised weapon which has the ‘Shitty’ Property, meaning that it is not designed to be used as a weapon and attacks made with it are with a Complication. Assets and Complications cancel each other out.

Combat in PunkApocalyptic: the Roleplaying Game uses the same rules, but with the addition of Fast Turns and Slow Turns. When a character uses a Fast Action, he can only choose to attack, take an action, or move. When he uses a Slow Action, he can move and attack or move and take an action. Of course, Fast Actions take place before Slow Actions and unless they have been surprised, player characters act before any NPCs. So, player characters take their Fast Actions, then the NPCs do, after which any other player characters take their Slow Actions followed by the NPCs. This is a surprisingly simple and unfussy way of handling both initiative, turn order, and actions in combat. The rules also cover using vehicles, including in combat. PunkApocalyptic: the Roleplaying Game includes rules for travel, chases, and more, which covers the screwed-up terrain of the future world.

Collectively, the Mercs also have access to a pool of Fortune tokens. A token can be used to grant an action two Assets, heal damage, or to maximise damage. However, the players do not know how many tokens they have in the pool. If it runs out, they will be literally out of luck!

At the start of play, there is the possibility that a Merc can start play with a Mutation, though only a minor one. Given the prevalence of mutagens in the PunkApocalyptic, there is a strong chance of a Merc gaining one or more. Every Merc has a Mutagen score, which starts at zero and can go up to six. When it increases, the player rolls a six-sided die and if the result is equal to, or under, a Merc’s Mutagen score, he gains a mutation which is rolled for from several types—Harmful, Minor, Physical, Mental, and more. Alternatively, the type of the Mutagen can indicate the type in a particular mission. So, a merc’s eyes might fall out of his head when he sneezes or have small faces on his knees; his body turns itself inside out, causing him to take double damage from all sources in addition to being a hot mess of nasty or his mouth seals shut, so he cannot talk and has to eat by snorting food up his and choking it down (unless he cuts a hole in his face); he gains frog’s legs or becomes phosphorescent; or can eject Ectoplasm like a money shot or in strands or create Hallucinations. Mental Mutations require the expenditure of Mojo, which everyone with Mental Mutations has, and in addition, Grit can be spent to regain spent Mojo. Whatever the type of Mutation, there are multiple tables to roll on and numerous results, so no Mutant is going to be the same. Similarly, PunkApocalyptic: the Roleplaying Game includes tables of junk and lots of items—armour, weapons, gear, drugs, and vehicle accessories and upgrades—the latter enabling a Merc to build a vehicle the way that he wants.

In terms of setting background, PunkApocalyptic: the Roleplaying Game draws it in broad detail, giving numerous types of landscapes and settlements, before describing Scrapbridge, a large example Wasteland community and its surrounding locations and points of interest. The walled setting is built under the rusting span of a suspension bridge—the remains of I-70—which can be seen from miles away. It can easily be used as the starting location for a campaign, whilst there are numerous locations, such as Samanthia, an ancient industrial park transformed into a maze of steam-powered machinery and bizarre kit-bashed contraptions that attracts nomads; the fighting pits of the dry lakebed of Nowater, where fights take place all day and night; the stinking city of ruins of Pigsty, which keeps many scavengers out, so the junk might be fresh; and Festung Germania, a clean, well-organised, and heavily regimented fortress whose leaders regard themselves to be the heirs of Nazi Germany! The Game Master will need to provide numbers and further detail, but this is a solid start.

PunkApocalyptic: the Roleplaying Game includes advice for both the player and the Game Master. For the player, this is learning the rules, making decisions, noting the outcomes, co-operating, staying alive, finding shit, and completing the mission. For the Game Master, once it settles down to give the reader some actual advice, the basic advice is not so much ‘Keep It Simple Stupid’ or ‘KISS’, so much as ‘Keep It Simple Shithead’. This is more tone than avoiding the subject, and the advice given is very good. It covers pacing, handling the rules and outcomes more than a simple binary result, designing missions and campaigns, how to create and roleplay interesting NPCs, and a whole lot more. Notably, there are tables for activities between missions. These mostly consist of setbacks and windfalls, but if a player rolls very, very badly, his Merc can be killed—and killed without the player having much say in the matter. Equally, the player could also roll very, very well for a strange event. The latter is obviously better than the former, even whilst both are in keeping with the tone of the roleplaying game. This may well be one aspect of PunkApocalyptic: the Roleplaying Game that the Game Master should check with her players that they are okay with before beginning play.

Also for the Game Master is ‘Assholes, Shitheads, And Other Fuckers Generally In Need Of Some Killing’, a good bestiary of NPCs, mutants, creatures, and other adversaries. It is a good selection and more than enough to keep a campaign going, and to get that campaign going, PunkApocalyptic: the Roleplaying Game includes ‘Two Dead In Shit Town’, a beginning scenario. This is a beginning Mission in which the Mercs come across the four intact ranch houses that make up Shit Town where a band of ten wretches has made their home. Recently, Pinkus Dinkus moved in and everyone thought he was a nice fellow, until yesterday when he killed Crawfish and Benny, the two wretches who led the community, after which ran off with several cans of baked beans. The surviving wretches want him found and served a dose of Wasteland justice, and hire the Mercs to do it. It is a solidly, scummy little affair, which gets across the squalid, fucked up nature of the Wasteland in a session or so.

Physically, PunkApocalyptic: the Roleplaying Game is a solid looking game. It is well written and easy to read, and the artwork is good too. That said, the language and tone is strong throughout and this is definitely a roleplaying more for the mature than the immature player. The only thing that it lacks is a bibliography. It would have been interesting to see the author’s inspirations. That said, the only thing it says on inspirations is ‘CASE, or Copy and Steal Everything’, that is, “Except for Zardoz. Don’t use anything from that fucking movie. It made no goddamn sense whatsoever, had Sean Connery dressed up in some kind of weird-ass red twisted up diaper-looking jumpsuit, and had way too much dialogue overly obsessed with penises. Now, I like penises as much as the next guy, but… ummm, wait… I mean… oh, never mind.”

PunkApocalyptic: the Roleplaying Game provides the Game Master, her players, and their Mercs with everything needed to play, not just rules, but paths of progression, gear, mutations, and a setting, all with a fuck you attitude that matches the fucked-up nature of the Wasteland. PunkApocalyptic: the Roleplaying Game feels like Mad Max, but even grimier and grimmer, screwed over by the Time Before The Shit Hit—and very much after. The result is an unhinged, rather than gonzo, but still over the top setting, ready for great game play if the players are ready for its ‘Screw you, you primitive shithead’ attitude.

There comes a point in a roleplaying game when the campaign’s villain delivers such a cutting remark that a Player Character cannot simply be the better man and shrug off the insult. Perhaps it is a matter of honour or a matter of reputation, or it could simply be that the player—and his character—has had enough and is so irked that he cannot but respond. The player clears his voice and looking at the Game Master, says in waspish fashion, “…” Or rather, he dries up. He cannot think of a suitable rejoinder and the game comes to a halt. It happens to the best of us, it happens to the most tongue-tied of us. Not all of us can respond to a jibe or taunt with a suitably derisory retort and not every player is verbally dexterous or creative. Of course, in a such a situation, a player can simply roll the dice, add bonuses from his character’s Charisma and Taunt or Fast Talk, and rely on the numerical outcome to deliver that razor sharp, witty riposte, which will cut his character’s opponent down to size. But then, where would be the fun in that?

“I find the fact that you’ve lived this long both surprising and disappointing.”
Indeed, where would the fun be in that when could simply draw something eminently suitable and appropriately insulting from a deck of cards? The Deck of Many Insults perhaps? Subtitled, “Antagonise & viciously mock your way across the adventuring world”, this is a very simple deck of cards published by Loke BattleMats, best known for publishing volumes of maps such as Big Book of Battle Mats: Rooms, Vaults, & Chambers and Castles, Crypts, & Caverns Books of Battle Mats. The Deck of Many Insults is simply a deck of cards. There are no instructions and perhaps the nearest is the suggestion that The Deck of Many Insults is intended to be compatible any fantasy roleplaying game.

“Have you considered trying your hand at competence?”
The Deck of Many Insults consists of one hundred cards. On the back of the cards, a red dragon is shown about ready to turn and face you, whilst on the front, the red dragon has already turned towards you and is pawing the ground all but ready to pounce! Also on the backs are the insults. These are mostly short and to the point, but some require a pause before the sting can be effectively delivered. The cover of the box does state, “Language Advisory Insulting Content”, which is a bit obvious, because that is The Deck of Many Insults sets out to provide, but it also states “Mature Content Age Recommendation 16+” on the back. This is appropriate because this accessory is not just insultingly rude, it is insultingly crude too, and the language is of an adult nature into the bargain. For example, “This quest reminds me of a cactus. Because everyone on it is a prick.” or “I couldn’t give a gibbering mouther’s jizz about your ill informed opinions.” or “I would have been your father, but the adventurer behind me in the queue had the exact coin”. Most are not quite so scabrous, though they are funny.

“I’d challenge to a battle of wits, but it appears you came unarmed.”
So how to use The Deck of Many Insults? One of the problems with its use, is that it replaces the player fumbling and umming and ahhing as he tries to come up with a suitable response on his own with him shuffling through a deck of cards in search of something appropriate to the situation and the target of his character’s witticism. It is quite likely quicker, but it does lose a certain degree of spontaneity, more so if the players have already pawed and guffawed their way through the cards in the already. An option might be to draw one randomly, which definitely spontaneous, but may lend itself to the player having to utter something out of kilter with the tone of the encounter. That said though, this could in itself be funny and it could lead to some interesting ramifications. Alternatively, a player could keep a handful of carefully chosen cards to keep with his character just in case he needs them or even just in case another player’s character needs them, each player keeping secret what cards he has. This would give the players some choice and allow for some spontaneity. That said, there really is no one definitive way to use these and every Game Master and her players will use them differently.

“Actions will be taken by those who know what they are doing. Not you.”
Physically, The Deck of Many Insults is simply and cleanly presented. The text on the cards is large and easy to read, though a card or two does need a slight edit.

“I’d like to help you out. Which way did you come in?”
The Deck of Many Insults is a deck of cards that everyone needs to agree to have at the table and agree on how it should be used, because it will probably change the tone of game, especially a game with a strong social aspect. Once in play though, The Deck of Many Insults is delightfully defamatory, often hilariously humiliating, and even sometimes reprehensibly rude.

The world has ended, but if a ship can brave the Nine Swells, brace against the storms of the Outer Swells and roll with the waves of the Middle Swells, avoid being becalmed in the thick sargasso of Endswell, and withstand an attempt at becoming a prize for the mermaid pirate Capucine of the Wine Dark Sea, then it can find harbour in Vagabond Bay rather than the Admiralty blockaded Rickety. There the crew and its passengers will have reached Rainy City, a refuge in spite of the continued and variable inclemency. The goods they will have brought with them, especially foodstuffs will quickly find a price for their rarity and variety upon the tongue, and The Port Association for the Beneficial Incorporation of the Refugees and Asylum Seekers will do its utmost charity to find the newcomers a home and support in their time of need, and of course, most importantly of all, find them a hat, should none of them have none. Such a hat will be guild approved, for according to The Master and Four Wardens of the Fellowship of the Art or Mystery of Haberdashery and Millinery, no shall go without a hat, despite what the foolish delugeonists would proclaim or the Droll Union of Brolly-factors would have you believe. Welcome to Rainy City, a city where it never ceases to rain and the only season when fires are strong enough for The Molten Hands to work metal is Firelight. Where Ewts are pets and beasts of burden. Where the Harmonious Chantry of Alchemists will sell your servants ‘boiling salts’ so that you can enjoy a hot meal whatever the season. Where oozes, puddings, and slimes are a constant pest and the Puddinghand’s Union will examine every nook, cranny, and pipe of your dwelling and scour them free with alchemical solvents and powders—for a fee. Where once there was the Grand Academy of Magick, long since sunk into the murk of the waters dividing Old Town and Mids, barring a few of its highest towers that might give access to the secrets locked below. Where rainwater pours off the backs and out of the mouths of Gargoyles as they decorate and some say plot the end of the city on its highest towers and keeps, that is, until the brave members of The Society of Thatch clamber onto the city’s roofs and other slippery heights and sending them scattering so the damage their claws do to the tiles and stonework can be undone.

This is Rainy City, home to Achterfusses, the orating cephalopods who reside in the city’s pools and canals and come out in rainiest of seasons when they can breathe the ‘air’ to work, trade, sputter and cough, and give their opinions. To the diminutive Boggies of Bog End in the Sump where they enjoy water rugby and smoking reeds when they are dry enough or working as bottlers in the city’s few remaining wizard towers due to their immunities to enchantment. To Gargoyles and Ghouls, the latter enlightened flesh-eaters of Respectability Row and County Gaunt, perpetually well mannered about their old money and constant hunger, and delighted to have you to tea. To the chirping, wailing, and opportunistic Gulls—the only sea bird found in Rainy City—with wings that can grasp or fly, but not simultaneously. To the Deepsies, sufferers of ‘the Depsis’, who grow fishier and fishier every day, unhappily amphibious who mediate trade with the Underharbour or serve board salvage, sailing, and fishing boats. To the Mermaids who can slip out of their tails to walk as humans, most visiting during the wettest months of the year lest someone steal their shawls and gain power over them. To the Mine Goblins—or bearded cave elves—who hold a market in the Silver Falls Mines, but do not let just anyone attend, and dig endlessly into the Tower Cliffs for reasons they care not to divulge.

This is the setting of Rainy City as described in A Visitor’s Guide to the Rainy City. Ostensibly an actual guidebook to the city—written by no less a personage than Beauregard Hardebard, The Master and Four Wardens of the Fellowship of the Art or Mystery of Haberdashery and Millinery—it is actually a fanzine published in 2020 following a successful Kickstarter campaign by Superhero Necromancer Press (though not, it would appear, as part of ZineQuest #2). It is a systems agnostic supplement that would work with all manner of different systems and settings. Into the Odd and Troika! immediately spring to mind since both are simple to handle the baroque fripperies and arch arcanity of the setting’s strangeness. As a setting it cannot be pinned down to any one time period, the book’s line art suggesting the late medieval or early modern periods, but it could also be Georgian or Victorian as well. Its self-contained nature means it could easily be dropped into a campaign or simply exist in a water bubble all of its very own.

From the personal welcome of Beauregard Hardebard to every new visitor, A Visitor’s Guide to the Rainy City dives into describing the various peoples and places of the Rainy City. This includes its unsurprisingly wet seasons and the highly entertaining festivals that take place over the course of the year, such as The Gentle Exchange of the Fish in which every fisher and fishmonger proudly displays recently caught fish with the Peers of Fishmarket Way lording it over everyone for the duration, with public hangings, bracing auctions, cattlefish shows, crab fights, seaweed spas, flying fish races, a lanternfish brightness show, and the annual fisherfolk games. The latter consist of competitions in knot tying, sail raising, net throwing, bailing out a sinking boat, and anchor raising! There are details of what is commonly eaten and drunk, preferred pets and working beasts, and more. Then it explores the various regions of the city, from Rickety and the Swells, Vagabond Bay, and Old Town to Embassy Row, The Headlands, and Tower Cliffs. These are all given four pages of detail each, which always include the weather particular to the district, who they might interact with whilst there, how law is handled in the district, the degree of disorder and disarray, and more. The more includes the buildings of note, organisations to be found, and lastly things to do, hooks that the Game Master can develop. And every district is different and distinct, and though they are interconnected, a Game Master could, if she so wanted, take one of them and use it on its own. That though, would be to pull apart the richness of the setting as a whole.

In addition to the ‘Things to Do’ for every district, A Visitor’s Guide to the Rainy City gives eight scenario hooks in ‘The Patrons’. These include Madam Lydia, aged diviner of Old Town, noted for her dark prophecies, who now wants them to come true. Which means that the city will fall with the help of the Player Characters and her demons! Or Pizarro, the entrepreneur whose ‘Pizarro’s Dry Baths’ are a grand success and wants to expand his operations with steam baths. Except that requires that somebody capture a salamander. Lastly, there has always been The Sandestin in the Rainy City, a title and office with unclear meaning or purpose, but nevertheless, historically important. So important is the office though, that eras are identified by the holders. The holder could be an actual wizard or a charlatan or even a devil reborn each time some takes the office anew, but now? There are three pretenders to the office. Oh, the calamity.

Physically, A Visitor’s Guide to the Rainy City is charming. The artwork is subtly unnerving if you look close enough, whilst the writing is thoroughly engaging. The cartography is not bad, but it imparts a feel for the city rather than a detailed representation. If there is an issue, it is that the density of information is such that the book needs an index!

A Visitor’s Guide to the Rainy City is engaging from start to finish and you want to read stories set in the city let alone actually run a game set there. It is full of such wonderful little details that are going to astound and confound the players each time their characters visit, that they are going to want to come back again and again. A Visitor’s Guide to the Rainy City is simply delightful.

Once, Brightmoore Manor stood as a house of elegance and civility, a beautiful home to noble Lord Faulken Brightmoore and charismatic elven wife Lady Narielle, and their children. Now, two hundred years later, it is empty, unoccupied in all that time, its dilapidated exterior bedraggled with branches of overgrown trees, its stonework pitted and missing blocks, its eaves rotten, and its roof pockmarked with broken and missing tiles. Grimy windows only hint at the lumps of furniture to be found within, for no-one who goes in comes out. The house has stood alone and forlorn for decades, the original village of Brightwood being abandoned not long after servants from the village entered the house as they did daily, and then, one-by-one, failed to return. None knew what was going on in the house, but they could speculate. Some said Lord Faulken Brightmoore had gone mad in his jealousy of his wife’s continued good looks or wasted away, stricken with grief at his death of his wife or children, or even both. More, Sir Reghinald Moore has discovered amongst his family papers, documents that show that he is heir to Brightmoore Manor and has sent several family retainers to assess the house and its condition, and prepare it for his visit. None have returned, and worried for their safety, hires a band of adventurers to find out happened to them and to determine if the manor is safe. Or the village of Brightwood is beginning to be repopulated, new settlers restoring the long-abandoned ruins of the old village and building anew, but concerned by the presence of Brightmoore Manor looming over their homes, hire a band of adventurers to determine if the building and whatever is inside it, is a threat to them. Or, now, adventurers, caught in a dreadful storm, take refuge in the only place it seem safe—Brightmoore Manor. These are hooks for the scenario, House of 99 Souls.

House of 99 Souls is a scenario published by Hellwinter Forge of Wonders for use with Old School Essentials, Necrotic Gnome’s interpretation and redesign of the 1981 revision of Basic Dungeons & Dragons by Tom Moldvay and its accompanying Expert Set by Dave Cook and Steven M. Marsh. It is designed to be played using Second to Fourth Level Player Characters. It is a haunted house scenario, a Gothic horror scenario played out across the twenty or so rooms of the manor and its two floors, as well as the cellars below. Once the Player Characters have all crossed the threshold, the doors slam shut and they are locked inside until they can find a way to unlock the doors. Doing so requires a detailed exploration and examination of the house, laid as much as it was once, but covered in dust and grime, skeletons sitting or lying there they died, the rooms dimly lit through the dirt smeared on the windows. There are signs of death and despair everywhere, and the Player Characters will encounter members of the Brightmoore family, each desperate in their own way, some forlorn, some dangerous, but each with a twinge of hope…

As the Player Characters progress through the house, they will gather clues and intimations as to what is going on and what happened in the past to the Brightmoore family. From these, they can begin to work what they need to do resolve what is going on in the manor and enable them to find their way back out. Although they will not necessarily be aware of it, the Player Characters are up against the clock, but in terms of the narrative, it is a clever clock, one driven more by their actions rather than the actions of the villain of the scenario. Of course, if the completion conditions of the clock are fulfilled, they will face a greater challenge at the end.

One of the pleasing aspects of House of 99 Souls is its scale. Although a haunted house scenario, it is not a big sprawling affair such that the Player Characters have to spend an interminable amount of time searching it from top to bottom in order to work what is going on. Which means that the story plays out quite quickly. Similarly, the scale of the haunting is quite constrained as well. There are pleasing little moments like when a Player Character attempts to look out of one of the grimy window, a skeleton arms grabs him and smashes his face against the glass or reaches up out of a sink of dirty water to attempt to pull the Player Character into the water to drown him, rotten floors collapsing under a Player Character to temporarily trap his feet, and so on. Another pleasing touch is that atmosphere is allowed to build, the Game Master only rolling for random encounters once the Player Characters return to a room they have previously examined. Most of these encounters are creepy rather than deadly, though the house is definitely not without its dangers.

The scenario is also quite restrained with choice of monsters. It is not overrun with different types of undead. There are skeletons aplenty and there are also new monsters such as Bone Spiders which attack in swarms. Most of the monsters are particular to House of 99 Souls though. Rounding out the scenario is a set of six pre-generated Player Characters. These are all Third Level and are created using basic version of Old School Essentials rather than Old School Essentials: Advanced Fantasy. Some do have minor magical items, but not all. There are some interesting magical items to be found in the scenario.

All together, House of 99 Souls can be played through in a single session, perhaps two at most. It is also very self-contained, which means that it can be played as single one-off scenario. In addition, this means that the Game Master can very easily drop this into her campaign.

Physically, House of 99 Souls is well presented and the layout clean and tidy. The artwork is decent and the cartography good. House of 99 Souls is a charmingly small scale and underplayed Gothic haunted house scenario that is very easy to use and add to campaign.

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

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What is the Nature of the Quest?The Serpent of Mildenhall is a scenario for use with Pendragon, Sixth Edition.

It is a full colour, seventeen page, 36.22 MB PDF.

The layout is tidy and it is nicely illustrated.

Where is the Quest Set?The Serpent of Mildenhall is set in the County of Gentian, just north of Salisbury. The location and extensive travel notes make it easy to add to a campaign.
Who should go on this Quest?
The Serpent of Mildenhall does not have any particular requirements in terms of its Player-knights as written. The skills of Folklore, Hunting, Play, Sing, and Swim are likely to be useful in resolving the scenario.
What does the Quest require?
The Serpent of Mildenhall requires the Pendragon, Sixth Edition rules or the Pendragon Starter Set.
Where will the Quest take the Knights?The Serpent of Mildenhall begins with the Player-knights travelling on the roads north of the County of Salisbury when they hear the cries of a woman. Her son has been snatched and carried away into a nearby pool by a fearsome serpent. The boy’s grandfather suggests going to the local lord and his liege for help and advice in searching for the boy. This sets up the core tensions within the scenario. The local lord, the Baron of Gentian, is barely eighteen and not yet knighted, but likely too reckless to not get himself into trouble, whilst his mother, Dowager Baroness, Joene, resents the presence of Player-knights as they likely to be based in Salisbury and there has long been a dispute between the Barony of Gentian and the County of Salisbury as to the ownership of some land between them.

The aim of the scenario is to rescue the boy before he is eaten. The scenario details several methods of achieving them, and whilst it is possible to resolve the situation peacefully, the players and their knights need to be lucky to do so. Depending upon the outcome of the scenario, the Player-knights may have helped ease tensions between Barony of Gentian and the County of Salisbury or exacerbated them. If one or more players roll very well, their knights may even end up with a very strange friend!
The Serpent of Mildenhall can be played through in a single session, two at the very most. It is easy to slip into a campaign as it begins as the Player-knights travelling on the road.
Should the Knights ride out on this Quest?The Serpent of Mildenhall is a serviceable mini- or sidequest that can be dropped into any campaign. It is easy to prepare and can also be run when a player or two is been unable to attend the next session.

Much like the Jonstown Compendium for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and The Companions of Arthur for material set in Greg Stafford’s masterpiece of Arthurian legend and romance, Pendragon, the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition is a curated platform for user-made content. It is thus, “...a new way for creators to publish and distribute their own original Call of Cthulhu content including scenarios, settings, spells and more…” To support the endeavours of their creators, Chaosium has provided templates and art packs, both free to use, so that the resulting releases can look and feel as professional as possible. To support the efforts of these contributors, Miskatonic Monday is an occasional series of reviews which will in turn examine an item drawn from the depths of the Miskatonic Repository.

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Name: Fear JetPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Andy Miller

Setting: 1970s USA and beyond...Product: Scenario
What You Get: One-hundred-and-twenty-four page, 97.64 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: A flight into The King in Yellow via the liminality of Sinclair Lewis’ It Can’t Happen Here and Groundhog DayPlot Hook: When fear of flying takes you out of this world...Plot Support: Staging advice, twenty-four pre-generated Investigators, twenty-four Investigator portraits, five handouts, one map and one deck plan, fourteen NPCs, two Mythos tomes, and one Mythos monster.Production Values: Excellent
Pros# Bizarrely, fantastically detailed scenario# Can be run as a convention scenario
# Can be run over and over until some Investigators escapes...# Easy to adapt to other periods during the Age of Flight# Has extensive notes to adapt it to other eras for Call of Cthulhu# Xanthophobia# Aerophobia# Fasciphobia
Cons# Highly detailed scenario# Challenging to run as a convention scenario# Would not work half as well without the pun# What happens next?
Conclusion# Weird flight into unreality and back again. Possibly.# Enjoyably, constantly creepy, but too wearing to run again and again?# Reviews from R’lyeh Recommends

1974 is an important year for the gaming hobby. It is the year that Dungeons & Dragons was introduced, the original RPG from which all other RPGs would ultimately be derived and the original RPG from which so many computer games would draw for their inspiration. It is fitting that the current owner of the game, Wizards of the Coast, released the new version, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, in the year of the game’s fortieth anniversary, and the new edition of that, Dungeons & Dragons, 2024, in the year of the game’s fiftieth anniversary. To celebrate this, Reviews from R’lyeh will be running a series of reviews from the hobby’s anniversary years, thus there will be reviews from 1974, from 1984, from 1994, and from 2004—the thirtieth, twentieth, and tenth anniversaries of the titles. These will be retrospectives, in each case an opportunity to re-appraise interesting titles and true classics decades on from the year of their original release.

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Middle-earth Role Playing: a complete system for adventuring in J.R.R. Tolkien’s World was published in 1984 by Iron Crown Enterprises, Inc., then best known for the complex fantasy roleplaying game, Rolemaster, recently republished in a new edition as Rolemaster Unified CORE Law. Known by the abbreviation, MERP, It was intended to introduce roleplayers to the world of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit and the fans of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit to roleplaying, as was made clear in the introduction: “J. R .R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth provides an ideal setting for a fantasy role playing game. It is a reflection of our world as we perceive it, as well as a construction of mythology by a great and learned man. Middle-earth is itself undying, living in the minds of all who tread its paths. Each reader adds to it his or her own vision. It is only natural, then, to use this incredible foundation in a fantasy role playing context. In this way those close to Middle-earth can experience it in a new way, filling the gaps and discovering the mysteries that have always concerned them.”

For the next fifteen years, Iron Crown Enterprises, Inc. would support the roleplaying game with first an updated version of the core rules and then a second edition in 1986, as well as nearly one hundred supplements and supplements detailing Middle-earth. Many of these supplements are highly regarded by fans of the roleplaying game today and much in demand, reaching high prices when they come up for sale. The first edition though, is centred on a slim, if dense, one-hundred-and-four-page book which comes in a strikingly red box that also contains the sixteen-page ‘MERP Counter and Display Guidelines’ which consists of a guide to the roleplaying game’s set of full-colour counters and the fourteen maps and floorplans for the scenario in the rulebook. The maps, which depict a mix of a castle and its various buildings, a set of caves, and wilderness areas, are marked with a hex grid so that the counters can be used with them. There are also two twenty-sided dice in the box, each marked ‘0’ to ‘9’ twice.

The roleplaying game opens with a good introduction to what roleplaying is and notes that Rolemaster is available if a group wants, “…[A]n an expanded combat system, an expanded spell system, a more flexible character development system, and guidelines for a campaign game or larger scale game. These systems allow MERP to be expanded to handle higher level characters and to increase the variations and options available to the Gamemaster and the players.” In fact, Middle-earth Role Playing will only take a Player Character up to Tenth Level. Beyond that, the Game Master and here players will need to switch to Rolemaster, if they had not done so by then. Which is very likely. The introduction also includes ‘A Sample Adventure in a FRP Setting’, a complete example of play. In this, an Elven Mage, a Umli Animist, a Dwarven Warrior, and a Hobbit Scout are escorting a merchant’s caravan from Rivendell to Bree, when after deciding to make camp for the night, discover a partially ruin tower that might offer them shelter. When they move to scout it out for safety, they are ambushed by three Orcs who have been sleeping in the tower’s cellar. It is quite a detailed example of play, having the players roll dice before even the mechanics and rules of the roleplaying game have been explained. Nevertheless, it is fun and it is exciting, and it gives a good idea of what playing Middle-earth Role Playing is like: detailed, tactical, and complex. It is also something that the rules will return to again to show various aspects of the roleplaying game work. From the standpoint of a fan of Tolkien and Middle-earth, what really stands out, is the fact that there is an Elf Mage and he does cast magic, including a Shield spell and a Levitate spell. This inclusion points to the primary complaint about Middle-earth Role Playing and that is the degree of magic which the Player Characters had access to in comparison to what fans read in the novels. It is not an unfair comment or complaint, but this is a fantasy roleplaying game from 1984 and a fantasy roleplaying game from 1984 has magic in it, because after all, just like Dungeons & Dragons and also Middle-earth Role Playing, every fantasy roleplaying game from 1984 had magic and wizards in it. For the most part though, the magic in Middle-earth Role Playing lacked the flashiness of magic in Dungeons & Dragons.

Middle-earth Role Playing sets out a lot of the definitions and conventions of the roleplaying game well before a player gets anywhere near rolling any dice. This includes defining terms from both Middle-earth and the roleplaying game, describes the basics of rolling dice, and the definitions of a character. The latter consists of the mental and physical statistics, and race and culture. There are six statistics—Strength, Agility, Constitution, Intelligence, Intuition, and Presence—each rated between one and a hundred. Race and culture incudes each species’ Physical Characteristics, Culture, and Other Factors, all of which quite detailed and quite lengthy. The physical characteristics consist of Build, Colouring, Endurance, Height, Lifespan, Resistance, and Special Abilities. The Culture lists Clothing and Decoration, Fears and Inabilities, Lifestyle, Marriage Pattern, and Pattern. The Other Factors are Demeanour, Language, Prejudices, Restrictions on Professions, and Background Options. The latter indicates the number of points a player has to assign to his character’s backstory.

The Races are broken down into three categories and two separate Races. For the Dwarves, there are Dwarves and the Umli—or Half-Dwarves from the far north of Middle-earth. For the Elves, there are Silvan Elves, Sindar, and Noldor. The largest category consists of Men and encompass Beornings, Black Númenóreans, Corsairs, Dorwinrim, Dúnedain, Dunlendings, Easterlings, Haradrim, Lossoth, Rohirrim, Rural Men, Urban Men, Variags, Woodmen, and Woses. Lastly, there are Half-Elves, who must decide to live as a mortal Man or as an immortal Elf, and Hobbits. The entry for Hobbits gives three primary varieties, or tribes, of Hobbits—Harfoots, Stoors, and Fallohides—but does not distinguish between them mechanically. There are a lot of options here, including amongst the Men, many cultures who fell under the sway of either Sauron or Saruman, so they do not necessarily feel like a natural fit for a roleplaying game based on The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. Further, included alongside these are entries for Orcs—Common Orcs, Uruk-Hai, and Half-Orcs, and for Trolls—Normal Trolls, Olog-hai, and Half-Trolls. These are not there to be used as Player Characters, but more as background material to help the Game Master portray them, though since this is not explained until ten pages later at the start of character creation, a reader might be led to believe otherwise. (It also suggests that the Game Master might allow them as Player Characters after the events of The Lord of the Rings, during the Fourth Age.) One thing that is missing from the Race and Culture descriptions are any suggestions as to what typical names might be for each.

Beyond the various Races, the definitions include languages, Skill Ranks and Skill Bonuses, Skills, Professions, Backgrounds, Experience Points and how they earned, including Kill Points, Manoeuvre Points, Spell Points, Idea Points, Travel Points, and Miscellaneous Points. Whilst Player Character Rank runs from First to Tenth Level, Skill Ranks run from zero to twenty—and more. Each Skill Rank provides a +5 Skill Bonus up to Skill Rank Ten, but beyond that, it flattens out to grand total of +70 at Skill Rank Twenty. The lengthy list of skills is broken down into Moving And Manoeuvring, Weapon Skills, General Skills, Subterfuge Skills, Magical Skills, Miscellaneous Skills and Capabilities, and Secondary Skills. Of these, Moving And Manoeuvring accounts for a Player Character’s ability to move about the battlefield and gain the initiative, but is not trained in as one skill, but several, each one for different type of armour—no armour, soft leather, rigid leather, chain, and plate. The Magical Skills include Read Runes, Use Items, and Directed Spells.

There are six Professions. These are Warrior, Scout, Animist, Mage, Ranger, and Bard. Or in parentheses, ‘Fighter’, ‘Thief’, ‘Cleric’, ‘Magician’, ‘Tracker’, and ‘jack-of-all-trades’. Each provides bonuses in terms the Ranks a Player Character can have in particular skills, and although there is no limit on what skills a Player Character can attempt to learn, learning skills outside of his Profession is more difficult. Each of the Professions has restrictions on what spells they can learn. However, these are not restrictions in terms of Professions not being able to cast spells, except for the Animist and Mage Professions, but limits on what spell lists each Profession can draw from. Here again, we have a case of Middle-earth Role Playing of not just making available magic to specialist character types despite the source material not reflecting this, but also every Player Character, no matter their Profession, which again, the source material does not reflect. Lastly, should a player want to roleplay a character similar to one portrayed in the fiction, it lists several of them along with their Professions in Middle-earth Role Playing. Thus, Aragorn II is a Dúnedain Ranger, Elrond a Half-elf Animist, Éomer a Rohirrim Warrior, Frodo a Hobbit Scout, Galadriel a Noldor Elf Mage, Gandalf a Human Mage (but actually one of the lstari), Gimili a Dwarf Warrior, Glorfindel a Noldor Elf Bard, Legolas a Sindar Elf Warrior, and Radagast a Human Animist (but actually one of the lstari).

Background Options are a way in which a Player Character can stand out. They include Special Abilities, Special Items, Money, Hobby Skill Ranks, Statistic Increases, and Languages. A player can assign his character Background Points as he wants and from this, working with the Game Master, create a suitable background and origins for his character. There is not much in the way of advice to help either the player or the Game Master do this, but it is nevertheless a welcome feature for a roleplaying game published in 1984. Special Abilities can include empathy with a type of animal, which grants an animal companion, being very observant, having lightning reactions, and move. Special items include items that provide a bonus to a skill—examples including ‘+10 Saddle’ that gives a bonus to riding and a ‘+10 suit of armour’ that adds to the wearer’s general Defensive Bonus and a Daily Spell Item that grants spells that that be cast a few times a day without expending Power Points. The Special Items are fairly limited, but feel more in keeping with the source material than the Daily Spell Item does, as they more like well-crafted items than actual magical objects.

To create a character, a player rolls percentile for each Statistic and assigns them as he wants. Elves must assign a high result to their Presence, but each Profession has a key Statistic and this will be set at ninety. If high enough, a Statistic will provide a bonus to skills and Power Points for spellcasting. A player can choose or roll of his character’s Race and Culture, and selects skills gained during his character’s adolescence, chooses his Profession, Background Options, and apprenticeship skills. The number of Ranks in a skill, plus bonuses from a Statistic, the Profession, Race or Culture, and Special Item, all combine to give the total bonus for a skill.

Name: Crugell
Race: Wose
Height: 4’ 7”
Weight: 135 lbs.
Hair: Black
Eyes: Black
Demeanour: Quiet

STATS/BONUSES
Strength 92 Normal Bonus +10 Race Bonus +00 Total +10
Agility 57 Normal Bonus +00 Race Bonus +00 Total +00
Constitution 90 Normal Bonus +10 Race Bonus +05 Total +15
Intelligence 42 Normal Bonus +00 Race Bonus +00 Total +00
Intuition 46 Normal Bonus +00 Race Bonus +00 Total +00
Presence 34 Normal Bonus +00 Race Bonus -05 Total -05
Appearance +00 Normal Bonus +00 Race Bonus +00 Total +00

Realm: Channelling
Power Points: 2
Experience Points: 10,000.

Special: Night-vision; +25 bonus to Tracking manoeuvres; +15 bonus for Foraging; +10 Handaxe; Very Observant +10 bonus to Perception and Tracking; Animal Empathy – Weasel

LANGUAGES
Pûkael Rank 5
Westron Rank 2
SKILLS
Movement And Manoeuvre:
No Armour – Rank/Bonus: 2/+10 Total: +10
Soft Leather – Rank/Bonus: 4/+20 Total: +20
Weapon Skills:
1-H Edged – Rank/Bonus: 3/+15 Prof. Bonus +2 Stat Bonus +10 Item Bonus +10 Total: +37
Thrown – Rank/Bonus: 5/+25 Prof. Bonus +2 Total: +27
Polearms – Rank/Bonus: 2/+10 Prof. Bonus +2 Stat Bonus +10 Total: +22
General Skills:
Climb – Rank/Bonus: 3/+15 Prof. Bonus +3 Total: +18
Swim – Rank/Bonus: 3/+15 Prof. Bonus +3 Total: +18
Track – Rank/Bonus: 2/+10 Prof. Bonus +3 Special Bonus +35 Total: +48
Subterfuge Skills:
Ambush – Rank/Bonus: 3/+15 Total: +15
Stalk/Hide – Rank/Bonus: 5/+25 Prof. Bonus +2 Total: +27
Miscellaneous Skills:
Body Development – Rank/Bonus: 2/+10 Stat Bonus +10 Special Bonus +5 SP: 21
Perception – Rank/Bonus: 2/+10 Prof. Bonus +2 Special Bonus +10 Total: +22
Secondary Skills:
Wood-carving – Rank/Bonus: 5/+25 Total: +25

EQUIPMENT
Handaxe, Javelins (three), Soft Leather Armour

Character generation in Middle-earth Role Playing is not difficult, but it takes time, both to complete and actually to learn. It is helped by a decent example, but anyone new to roleplaying, the process is daunting.

Mechanically, Middle-earth Role Playing is both simple and complex. The simple is the core mechanism, that of rolling percentile dice. Most rolls will be open ended, so that if a player rolls ninety-six and above, he gets to roll again and add the result. This is a successful roll and the higher it is, the better the outcome. Conversely, if he rolls five or under, he rolls again and subtracts the new result. Then as long as he keeps rolling ninety-six and above, he keeps rolling and subtracting. The lower the total result, the worse the outcome. Either way, to this is added the total bonus of the skill that the Player Character is testing. The bonuses are Offensive Bonuses, including weapon and Directed Spell bonuses, Defensive Bonuses for shields and armour, Moving Manoeuvre Bonuses for every type of movement, and Static Manoeuvre Bonuses for actions not involving movement, or really, for just about any other skill in the game.

The complexity comes in the individual resolution for each action, invariably requiring the need for the Game Master to refer a particular table for the outcome. Make no mistake, Middle-earth Role Playing makes use of a lot tables, including sixteen for character generation and experience, and twenty-nine for attacks, critical results, fumbles and failures, manoeuvres, and more.

For a Static Manoeuvre, the Game Master can assign a Difficulty Modifier, which ranges from ‘+30’ and Routine to ‘-70’ and Absurd. The player then rolls the dice, adds Static Manoeuvre Bonuses and refer to ‘Static Maneuver Table (MT-2)’ (which is on page seventy-eight, twenty pages after the explanation of the mechanic and after several pages of tables dedicated to spellcasting and combat). There are entries for ‘General’ results, followed by results for ‘Interaction and Influence’, ‘Disarming Traps and Picking Locks’, ‘Reading Runes and Using Items’, and ‘Perception and Tracking’. Results of twenty-six and under are counted as a ‘Blunder’, ninety-one to one-hundred-and-ten a ‘Near Success’, and above that a ‘Success’, with ‘Absolute Success’ being a result of one-hundred-and-seventy-six or more. For example, Crugell is tracking a band of Orcs which has strayed into Wose territory. It is night and whilst as a Wose, Crugell has good night sight, the Game Master assigns a difficulty of Hard or ‘-10’. Crugell’s player rolls the dice, adds Crugell’s Static Manoeuvre Bonus from his Track skill, which is ‘+48’ and applies the difficulty modifier. The roll is ‘93’, not enough to trigger another roll, but still good, nonetheless. To this, the player adds the Static Manoeuvre Bonus and deducts the modifier. The result is a total of ‘131’, which on the ‘Static Maneuver Table (MT-2)’ gives, “SUCCESS: You gain all of the information on the topic that required the perception roll.” The Game Master states that Crugell has found the track left behind by the Orcs and is following them.Combat lies at the heart of Middle-earth Role Playing and is the most complex part of the game. The sequence of action in a round consists of preparing or spell, missile and thrown weapon attacks—including missile parrying and missile weapon reloading, Movement Manoeuvres, melee attacks and parries, movement, and Static Manoeuvres. The actions are conducted in order of Movement and Manoeuvre Bonus, with an attack consisting of a standard open-ended dice roll, modified by the attacker Offensive Bonus, minus the defender’s parry modifier—also subtracted from the defender’s Offensive Bonus, with the result being determined by consulting the table for the weapon type used and cross-referencing the modified roll with the armour worn by the defender. The outcome ranges from one to one-hundred-and-fifty, as opposed to the possible one-hundred-and-seventy-six or more on the ‘Static Maneuver Table (MT-2)’, and includes various types of fumble to the number of hits inflicted and beyond that critical results, which inflict hits and an extra, severe effect. A critical result requires a further roll on the critical result table, such as the ‘Crush Critical Table (CT-1)’ or ‘Puncture Critical Table (CT-3)’ tables. There are also critical result tables for spell attack effects that involve heat, cold, electricity, and impact.For example, Crugell and the other Wose he is with, have caught up with the Orcs who strayed onto their lands. After the opening ambush, the Orcs have turned and are charging at their attackers. The Game Master gives Crugell and his companions one more round before the Orcs reach them. Crugell has his handaxe in one hand and a javelin in another, which he decides to throw at the Orc who is charging towards him. Crugell has an Offensive Bonus with his Thrown skill of ‘+27’. He waits until the Orc is within 30” of him so that there is no negative modifier for range and throws the javelin. The Orc, wearing chain armour, has a Defensive Bonus of ‘+30’. It is deducted from Crugell’s Attack Bonus, reducing it to ‘-03’. The situation is not good for the Wose, but he is lucky as his player rolls ‘97’. This means that he can roll again. The second roll is ‘56’. So, the grand result is ‘97+56+27-30’ or ‘150’, which is the maximum roll on the ‘Missile Weapons Attack Table (AT-4)’. Comparing that to the chain armour worn by the Orc, the result is ‘25E’, which means that the Orc suffers 25 Hits and Crugell’s player receives a ‘+20’ bonus to the roll on the ‘Puncture Critical Table (CT-3)’ table. He rolls ‘29’, adds the bonus and the entry for ‘49’ reads “Strike alongside of chest. 1 hit per round. Stunned 1 round.” As the Orc is staggered by the impact of the javelin, Crugell readies to launch a charge that will take advantage of his opponent’s current status.Magic in Middle-earth Role Playing is divided into two broad types. ‘Essence’, utilised by Mages and Bards draws from the power of the world itself, whilst ‘Channelling’, cast by Animists and Rangers, draws from the power of the Valar. Spells are organised into six categories: Essence Open Lists, Mage Lists, Bard Lists, Channelling Open Lists, Animist Lists, and Ranger Lists. Individual lists—of which there are forty-eight in Middle-earth Role Playing! Each list contains ten spells, for a grand total of four-hundred-and-eighty spells… There are spell lists for ‘Physical Enhancement’, ‘Unbarring Ways’ for unlocking things, ‘Ice Law’, ‘Wind Law’, ‘Controlling Songs’, ‘Path Mastery’ for paths and routes, ‘Organ Ways’ and ‘Bone/Muscle Ways’ for healing, and so on. The range of spells is impressive and actually some of do feel appropriate to the setting. For example, ‘Plant Mastery’ with its Plant Lore, Instant herbal Cures, Herb Mastery, are suitably low key, but not all spells and not all spell lists.

Casting a spell is simply a matter of the caster having enough Power Points and the player making a successful skill roll, typically the Directed Spell skill. It only takes a round, but a Player Character can spend up to four rounds beforehand to gain a casting bonus. The resolution is the same as Static Manoeuvre, but instead of consulting the ‘Static Maneuver Table MT-2’ for the outcome, the player refers to the ‘Base Attack Table (AT-9)’ to determine if the spell succeeds or fails. This is even in a non-combat situation. For spells cast in combat there is also the ‘Ball Spells Attack Table (AT-8)’ and ‘Bolt Spells Attack Table (AT-9)’.

In addition, magical items like spell adders enable a caster to cast extra spells and spell multipliers increase the number of Power Points a caster has access to. Magic items, such as Rune Paper, Potions, and Daily Spell Items, can contain spells as well, and it is not only possible to find such items during play, but even buy them! Several such items are listed, for example, Staff of Firebolts, Wand of Shock Bolts, and Dagger with Daily II (twice per day) Levitate Spell. These are incredibly expensive in the game, costing hundreds of Gold Pieces, when in comparison, a Player Character starts play with only two Gold Pieces (and needs to devote points from his Background options to gain more). Nevertheless, it begs the question, is there meant to be a magical item economy in Middle-earth?

All of which, again, runs counter to what is depicted in both The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. Middle-earth as a setting in both is not one where magic is common, and yet the Player Characters have ready access to it in one form or another. Worse, Middle-earth Role Playing tells the reader right at the start of the section on ‘Magic and Spells’ that, “Middle-earth had unique ties to the Undying Lands which created a potential for the appearance and use of significant power (magic). Such power manifested itself on a massive scale in the First Age, and to a lesser, but significant degree in the Second Age. By the time of the late Third Age, it was quite subtle - except in the cases of Dragons, the Balrog, Saruman, and (of course) Sauron, This low-key approach to the utilization of great power was a factor relating to the nature of those possessing the gift.” Further, “Men and Hobbits were not great friends of spells and often were unaware of their usage outside of fairy tales and legends. This created an atmosphere where magical occurrences were rarely seen and often became merged or confused with natural events.” It goes on to explain that, “One of the primary reasons for this subtle and secret use of magic and spells is the presence of Sauron in Mordor.” since the use of magic will likely attract his attention. Lastly, the designers compound this by advising, “When constructing the setting for a fantasy role playing game based upon Middle-earth, a Gamemaster must take great care to show restraint regarding the use of magic. Magic-users are relatively rare, although most folk had some “magic” in them, and open displays of power are still rarer.”

For decades, Middle-earth Role Playing has been regarded as a roleplaying game based on Middle-earth in which there was too much magic, in which the Player Characters had access to too much magic. Yet despite the designers warning the Game Master of the dangers of having too much magic in the game, they ignore their own advice and give it to her anyway. It makes no sense.

In terms of Middle-earth as a setting, Middle-earth Role Playing treats it in broad strokes, talking about types of locations and areas and hazards that might be encountered rather than specifics. There is some details about religion in general and the Valar, and each of entries for the numerous Races and Cultures include details of their common religious practices. Where it is specific is in the descriptions of the various creatures and monsters that the Player characters might encounter. The includes Balrogs, Dragons, and Nazgûl as well as Great Eagles and Ents. The former really are as nasty and as fearsome as you would expect, fierce challenges even for higher Level Player Characters. It only touches very briefly upon when the Game Master should set her Middle-earth Role Playing campaign, suggesting that the Second Age and Third Age when Sauron is trying to defeat the Free Peoples does not give her as much freedom as setting her campaign in the Fourth Age. For play in the Second Age and Third Age, it suggests that the Game Master consult Iron Crown Enterprise’s own Campaign and Adventure Guidebook to Middle-earth.

One aspect of the setting of Middle-earth that Middle-earth Role Playing does not explore is the horror of Sauron and the dark influence of the Shadow. There is mention of how fearsome the Nazgûl and Balrogs are, but no discussion of the forces of darkness which pervade the Second and Third Ages of Tolkien’s Middle-earth.

In terms of a specific setting and what a group plays, Middle-earth Role Playing devotes the last few pages of the rulebook to ‘A Sample Game Environment’. It divides its play environs into three areas—a civilised area, a countryside area, and adventure sites. The civilised area is the ‘Inn at the Last Bridge’, located just off the Great East Road leading from the Elven haven of Rivendell to the settled western lands and the town of Bree, with the Trollshaws to the north. The Trollshaws form the countryside area for the scenario, subject to roaming Hill-trolls from the Ettenmoors and Orc patrols from Angmar. The adventure sites consist of ‘A Hill-Troll Lair’ and Herubar Gûlar, a ‘Ruined Castle’. The adventure is set in TA 1640, centuries before the events of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. The inn is run by the Grumm family, and it is the disappearance of the family’s son that forms the plot hook for the scenario. The Innkeeper offers a reasonably substantial reward for his son’s safe return—a whole two gold pieces—and investigating his disappearance leads the Player Characters out into the Trollshaws and a deadly encounter with some trolls hiding out in their caves. Other rumours lead to the ruined castle, once the ‘Dwelling of the Lord of High Sorcery’, which hides secrets and monsters and treasures. This is a challenging adventure as the Trolls and Orcs and other enemies are tough opponents, but the rewards are potentially high given some of the treasures to be found in the castle. This is not a bad scenario, but neither is it a good one. It is perfectly playable, but barring the encounter with the trolls does not feel particularly Tolkienesque. Nevertheless, this is a scenario that has been played by thousands of players because it was the first scenario for Middle-earth Role Playing and the one included with every edition of the roleplaying game.

Physically, Middle-earth Role Playing is well-written and presented. The maps are nice and clear and book is not difficult to read, even though it packs a lot into its hundred or so pages. It could have been better organised. Many of the various sections feel out of place, with there often being several pages between the rules for an action and the table that the Game Master needs to refer to determine its outcome. Consequently, it takes a long time to get to the point where the player can begin to understand how the game is played.

—oOo— 

Although Jonathan Sutherland reviewed several supplements for Middle-earth Role Playing in ‘Open Box’ in White Dwarf Issue 50 (February 1984), it would not be until White Dwarf Issue 58 (October 1984) that he reviewed the core rules. Of A Campaign and Adventure Guidebook for Middle-earth, Angmar: Land of the Witch King, Angmar: Land of the Witch King, The Court of Ardor in Southern Middle Earth, Umbar: Haven of the Corsairs, Northern Mirkwood: The Wood-Elves Realm, and Southern Mirkwood: Haunt of the Necromancer, he collectively said, “In conclusion I would recommend this series, it's not necessary to get them all as they stand up as scenarios on their own, but it would be fun to see all the expanded maps fitted together when all the series is finally released, and play a mammoth campaign spanning the entirety of Middle Earth using the wealth of detail available. My only reservation regarding the system is the price, but when you look at a comparable product both in price and in subject, it’s not bad.” Of the core rules, he was more positive, stating that, “In conclusion, MERP is a well conceived, reasonably well written system. I can’t say it’s easy and ideal for beginners but I can honestly recommend that you try it. MERP gets my vote as best new RPG this year; in fact I’ve not been so impressed since I first read Call of Cthulhu. The system is also geared to readily accept other Rolemaster spinoffs and recommends them often. For an important game, the price is just right – very god value!” (For reference, Middle-earth Role Playing cost £6.95 in 1984). Lastly, he gave Middle-earth Role Playing an overall score of nine out of ten. 

White Dwarf would return to Middle-earth Role Playing the following year in White Dwarf Issue 66 (June 1985), by which time publisher Games Workshop had its edition of the roleplaying game. In ‘The Road Goes Ever On: Inside Middle Earth Role-Playing’, Graham Staplehurst stated that, “Iron Crown has done superb development work on areas that Tolkien neglected or left unspecified.” in reference to the many supplements released by the publisher. Of the mechanics, he said, “The combat system can be rather bloody, which is no bad thing. AD&D players will probably come to grief the first time they meet orcs, as these are the real thing!” Yet as with other reviewers and commentators, he had reservations about the magic system in Middle-earth Role Playing. “The only facet of the MERP system I would quarrel with is the magic system. In Tolkien’s world, magic was a very rare thing when one considers it in the form of lightning bolt and fireball. Magic was present, but as a subtle and inherent quality of many things and people.”, noting the lack of offensive spellcasting seen in the fiction and then only by the extremely powerful, such as Gandalf. Staplehurst pointed out that, “The MERP system gives these sorts of powers to almost anyone after the acquisition of relatively few experience points; for me, it upsets the flavor of the game and its authenticity.” Despite this, his conclusion was positive: “MERP can be used to recreate the great adventures of which Tolkien wrote: going with Frodo or Bilbo or Beren into the lair of evil and trying to escape alive, and it can go some way to fulfilling the desires of people who want to know more about Tolkien’s world.”

Andy Blakeman reviewed Middle-earth Role Playing in ‘Game Reviews’ in Imagine No. 22 (January 1985)—notably in an issue dedicated to the works of Michael Moorcock!—and began by making clear the links that roleplayers have between such a work of fiction like that of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and the feeling that they seek to create in play, and consequently, it was inevitable that the roleplaying hobby and Tolkien’s creation would be brought together. Then, when such a convergence took place, it was important to ensure that all those involved were best suited to the project. His iniatial comments were positive: “Iron Crown Enterprises’ Middle earth Role Playing is this marriage; by its links with Tolkien, it cannot fail to attract many new ganers to the obby; and I am rerasonably sure that these newcomers will not be disappointed.” However, he was not impressed by the order of the layout, but did praise the source material in terms of the linguistics and the detailing of the various Races and Cultures. He was found that the rules were “…[A]n operative deterrent to hack-and-slay gaming.”, but “Where they they fall donw is in mode of play. Rules are supposed to be hidden… In real life there are ‘rules’ — the laws of physics and chemistry and so on — which regulates our actions; but we tend not to be conscious of the rules governing it all. We act, and witness the results. And so it should be in role-playing. In Lord of the Rings, magics is a deeply mysterious phenomenon; yet in MERP the atmosphere is destroyed through the players’ contact with the rules. The results of actions are faithfully recreated but the wonderment which surrounds the magic is lost. This is not a fault peculiar to MERP, however, and it is something a competent GM could overcome…”

William A. Barton provided more of an overview of the core rules and numerous supplements for it than an actual review of Middle-earth Role Playing in ‘I.C.E.’s Middle-earth Modules’ in Space Game Number 73 (March/April 1985). He identified several problems, such as, “Missing from the MERP rules is any in-depth description of the history or geography of Middle-earth, though the sample adventure in the rulebook provides at least a small section of the land in which to start a campaign — the Trollshaws.”, though added that the setting was so well known that information included should be enough to be starting with, before highlighting the poor organisation and the nature of the Rolemaster mechanics in Middle-earth Role Playing. With the latter, he said, “I wonder, also, about the appropriateness of some of the Rolemaster mechanics in the Middle-earth context — the spells in particular. Is this an accurate portrayal of magic in Tolkien’s realm? Of course, the laws of magic were never spelled out (no pun intended) in Lord of the Rings, and the MERP magic system works adequately, so this isn’t a major stumbling block.” Ultimately though, he was positive, concluding with, “If you haven’t yet taken a trip to Middle-earth via the Iron Crown, I recommend you remedy the situation as soon as possible.” 

Jonathan Tweet reviewed Middle-earth Role Playing in ‘Game Reviews’ in Different Worlds Issue 46 (May/June 1987). He began with, “The game rules, derived from ICE’s popular Rolemaster series, are well thought out and detailed. Unfortunately, the setting and the game rules mesh poorly, facing players with a choice between faithfulness to Tolkien’s genius and fully using the game mechanics.” Although he found that the roleplaying game nicely brought Middle-earth to roleplaying, and the rules to be detailed and appealing, he said in awarding the roleplaying game just three stars out of four, “What keeps MERP from being a four-star game is that the beautiful setting and intricate game rules do not match. Fantasy games have been heavily influenced by the example of Dungeons &  Dragons. Typically, an adventuring group comprising several races and classes  wanders around a fantasy world blasting monsters with big spells and winning lots of magic items, and when someone gets killed they dish out some money and get the character back to life. MERP was designed to be played this way. As a  gamemaster, one would have to be willing to rise above the designer’s expectations to capture the true flavor of Middle-Earth. Monster-trashing and dungeon-looting are available in any homemade world, but Middle-Earth should inspire players to causes more noble than self-aggrandizement.” His criticisms continued with the treatment of magic in Middle-earth Role Playing, adding, “More ill-fitting is the prevalence of magic. The idea of spells being as common-place as the game would have it is a sad concession to role-playing tradition and it cheapens Middle-Earth.” 

The popularity of Tolkien and Middle-earth, and the fact that it was the only roleplaying game based on the author’s creation is likely why Middle-earth Role Playing was placed at number eleven of ‘Arcane Presents the Top 50 Roleplaying Games 1996’ which appeared in Arcane #14 (December 1996). Editor Paul Pettengale said, “The popularity of the books, we would suggest, explains why the game based on Tolkien’s world is so popular. The system is overly complicated (being based on the complex Rolemaster system - see number 15), and it suffers from the problem of timing. For example, at which time do you set your campaign? Set it before The Lord of the Rings and everyone knows what’s going to happen, set it after The Lord of the Rings and you’ve got to make a whole load of stuff up. Still, the supplements are all good, if you get off on bucketfuls of detail and polished prose. Not for everyone, sure, but die-hard Tolkien fans should check it out.” 

—oOo—

Middle-earth Role Playing: a complete system for adventuring in J.R.R. Tolkien’s World was published in 1984 and it shows. Even though it uses a streamlined version of the Rolemaster rules, it possesses a complexity and a level of detail that was prevalent at the time—and in addition, the book encouraged the Game Master and her players to migrate to the even more complex Rolemaster for yet more detail and more options. Further, as a roleplaying game based on Tolkien’s Middle-earth, it does not feel like the Middle-earth depicted in The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit. It is obviously set in Middle-earth with its Hobbits and different types of Elf, its selection of monsters, a scenario set in the Trollshaws, and so on, but the prevalence of magic, whether it is the possible access to magic for all Player Characters, the inclusion of the Mage as a Profession, or the preponderance of magical items runs counter to the world where magic is rare and where and when it occurs, feels special. The problem is that in terms of design Middle-earth Role Playing takes its cue not from Middle-earth, The Lord of the Rings, or The Hobbit, but from other roleplaying games and obviously, on other fantasy roleplaying games. Thus, like Dungeons & Dragons, it has to have Player Characters who are capable of learning magic and casting spells, it has to have plenty of magical items and artefacts for the Player Characters to find and wield, and so on.

Yet for all that Middle-earth Role Playing includes that makes it feel unlike a roleplaying game based on Tolkien’s writings, it still feels like a roleplaying game based on and in Middle-earth because it still has many of the elements taken from the setting. So, the options in terms of Races and Cultures that the players can role play, the monsters that their characters will face, and nods at least to the setting in the included scenario. With the inclusion of magic, what Middle-earth Role Playing really feels like is a high fantasy version of Middle-earth, rather than the low fantasy version we are used to reading about in the fiction and seeing more recently on the screen.

Further, Middle-earth Role Playing is not a bad roleplaying game per se. For all of its complexities, it is a coherent and complete design. It very much requires better organisation to be more coherent and easier to learn, though even if it had that, it is not a roleplaying game suitable for anyone new to the hobby. A fan of Tolkien and Middle-earth coming to Middle-earth Role Playing as his first roleplaying game would at the very least be daunted by the learning curve necessary to learn play it, if not outright confounded and confused.

Middle-earth Role Playing is not without a certain charm, borne of nostalgia more than anything else since it allowed us to visit and roleplay in the world of Middle-earth for the very first time. As a design Middle-earth Role Playing: a complete system for adventuring in J.R.R. Tolkien’s World is coherent and sound, if poorly organised, and is more a roleplaying game which models Middle-earth using the framework of what a roleplaying game should be like, rather than what Middle-earth should be like.

—oOo—
For Dave Paterson because he loves it so.

The universe will not end with a bang, but a gnawing. A gnawing in your brain. A gnawing in the asteroid in which you make grimy, ramshackle home. A gnawing in the remnants of planets. A gnawing in the universe. A gnawing that will grow and grow until the parasites erupt. Erupt and unleash as Würms. Würms that will infect others and spread the gnawing. Würms that grow and grow and erupt from planets shattering them into pieces, to grow and grow and become the Grimm. There have been Würms and Grimm everywhere in the universe for centuries, where once they were only in one place. The Primordial Mausoleum of THEY. It was the Six, the Disciples of Fatuma, who following the prophecies put down in the Book of Fatuma, who made a pilgrimage to the Primordial Mausoleum of THEY and deployed the Power of Tributes to decrypt the Mystical Lock sealing the Mausoleum. It was then that the First Prophecy of Fatuma came to pass. They drew in the stale air of the Mausoleum, becoming one with the THEY and breathing out the parasites. The Six scattered, bringing the word and the infection of THEY to every corner of the ’verse. Almost seven centuries have passed and the survivors cling to life, looking out for any signs of THEY or hiding it inside them in the hope that it never erupt and spread… The Earth is gone. Shattered into large pieces. There are places and planets where the remnants of Mankind survive, squabbling over resources and power, fearing the parasitical infectious word of THEY, but not without hope. There are whispers over the Netwürk of a means to escape the end of this universe by entering another, one entirely free of THEY. The Scientifics call it the Gate of Infinite Stars. Yet time is running out. The First Prophecy of Fatuma came to pass and so has every other Prophecy of Fatuma since. Except the last Seven Torments. Will the last Seven Torments come to pass and allow the Würms and the Grimm to consume the ’verse and with it, the last of Mankind? Or will the lucky few find their way to the Gate of Infinite Stars and at last be free of the Würms and the Grimm in a better, brighter future? That is, of course, if everyone fleeing through the Gate of Infinite Stars is free of the gnawing…

Welcome to the dark, grim future of Vast Grimm. Published by Infinite Black, it is a pre-apocalypse Science Fiction roleplaying game compatible with Mörk Borg, the Swedish pre-apocalypse Old School Renaissance style roleplaying game designed by Ockult Örtmästare Games and Stockholm Kartell and published by Free League Publishing. Not only compatible in terms of mechanics, but also in tone and structure, with little more than a handful of prophecies standing in the way of the Player Characters’ continued survival in the face of uncaring, dying world, in this case, universe. Where it differs though, is offering that hope, that chance of finding the Gate of Infinite Stars and escaping one dread future for another better one. The last Seven Torments are not set in stone though. The Game Master rolls a die, the size collectively chosen by the whole, at the start of each day. If the result is a one, then a Torment comes to pass, randomly determined from the thirty-six given. They are all eschatologically grim, such as “And a pocket will form in the darkness of space. Anything that goes near will be swallowed by its emptiness, and in 11 days the empty will have wallowed no less than 7 planets.” or “Tears of blood will flow from all who have sired children. One hour wept for each seed that has sprouted and taken root.”
A Player Character in Vast Grimm is defined by four abilities—Agility, Presence, Strength, and Toughness. Of the four, Presence is the odd one out. It is not just used for Charisma checks, but also for perception checks, ranged attacks, and wielding Neuromancy. The four abilities range in value from -3 to +3, these being equal to ability modifiers found in Dungeons & Dragons and other retroclones. He will also have a Class of which Vast Grimm offers eight. Each provides equipment, arms and armour, ability modifiers, possible past life events and skills particular to that Class. The eight include the MAnchiNe, a twisted fusion of flesh and machine who fought in the trenches with the Legions; the Soul Survivor, a wretch driven to survive no matter what the cost; the Lost Techno Maniac, who would prefer to be studying the Tributes in order to fully understand Neuromancy; the Twisted Biochemist who has become infected with the Würms in the course of his attempt to find a cure for the infection, and who yet may find that or succumb to the Grimm and self-pity; the Treacherous Merc, a bastard who thinks only of himself and will use violence to prove it; the Emobot’s mechanical mind and body means it is immune to infection, but its soul means it is not immune to the loss of people it cares about to the Grimm; the Devout is a blindly faithful Disciple of Fatuma who works to do all he can to bring about the prophecies of THEY; and the Harvester literally harvests Würms from the bodies of the dead in return for handsome bounties. To create a character, a player rolls for his Abilities, selects a Class, rolls for the details of that Class, and then for his character’s Misspent Youth, Battle Scars, Irritating Idiosyncrasies, and Starting Equipment.
KratarTwisted BiochemistAddicted to Science: Always top of the class, your peers and teachers hated you.Misspent Youth: DistractedIrritating Idiosyncrasies: StarDust junkie. If there’s dust around, it’s going into your oxygen tank.Battle Scars: Missing middle fingers, flipped off the wrong person.Agility +0 Presence +2 Strength -1 Toughness +1Hit Points: 6Armour: Thin grade Carbon Fiber (-d2 damage)Weapon: Inoculation Dart Gun (range 20’, holds 8 doses)Equipment: Portable nanotech/chemical laboratory, today’s creations (two doses of Nanite Dance Party and two doses of Ass Blastin), 50 creditsFavours: Two
Mechanically, Vast Grimm is simple. To have his character undertake an action, a player rolls a twenty-sided die, modifies the result by one of his character’s Abilities, and attempts to beat a Difficulty Rating, typically twelve, but it can be higher or lower depending on the situation. Vast Grimm is also player-facing, meaning that the player always rolls whereas the Game Master does not. So, a player will roll for his character to hit in melee using his Strength and his Agility to avoid being hit. Armour is represented by a die value, from -d2 for light armour to -d6 for heavy armour, representing the amount of damage it stops. Medium and heavy armour each add a modifier to any Agility action by the character, including defending himself. This is pleasingly simple and offers a character some tactical choice—just when is it better to avoid taking the blows or avoid taking the damage?

Combat is potentially deadly. If a Player Character has his Hit Points reduced to zero, he is broken. As a result, he may be unconscious for a few rounds, lose a limb or eye and in the process also Ability points, haemorrhage and bleed to death, or possibly die! If his Hit Points are reduced to less than zero, he is definitely dead!
In addition, characters have access to Favours, of which a Player Character typically has one or two a day. They can be used to deal maximum damage on an attack, reroll any die—not just that player’s, lower the damage die rolled against a character, to neutralise a critical success or fumble, or to lower the Difficulty Rating on a test.

Instead of magic or the scrolls of Mörk Borg, what Vast Grimm gives are Tributes. These take advantage of the Neuromantic energy released at the same time as the Grimm when THEY opened the Primordial Mausoleum of THEY. This Neuromantic energy can be captured and stored on data chips called Tributes. They can be found on data chips or randomly downloaded from the Netwürk. A Tribute can be used by any Player Character. All it requires is a successful Presence Test and the expenditure of Neuromancy Points, which are derived from a Player Character’s Presence Ability. The effects are random, although some have been hacked so that work in a way that was not intended, such as “You’ve Been Spaced: One random creature within 30’ of the Tribute has the air around it sucked away for d6 rounds losing d4 damage each round.”, or still encrypted, clean and clear as intended as in, “Hive Mind Speak: To one of The Grimm, ask questions. For 3 rounds it will answer truthfully before the würm inside of them explodes.” Some twenty example Tributes are given. However, failure to activate a Tribute has its consequences. A simple failure results in the loss of Hit Points and dizziness for an hour. Worse are the results for a critical and a fumble result. Then the player has to roll on the Cataclysmic Condemnations table! (This is actually suggested as being optional, but where would be the fun in that?)

Exploring remains of the known universe, perhaps looking for the Gate of Infinite Stars, is fraught with danger. Vast Grimm both details six of these locations, whilst leaving plenty of space for the Game Master to create her own, like the ‘Waste Barges of Khallar’, the dumping ground for the universe’s trash where it builds and builds into mountains of filth and waste, protected by Shit King Saule’s rat-like army of trash people, and the Marauder’s Cryosfear, home to space raiders who have anchored their ships to the ice planet with multiple ships connected to form havens, and the threats that the Player Characters might face. The worst of these are the six parasitic Würms, which have a chance to infect anyone who comes in close contact with The Grimm. Each of the six—the Flesh Würm, the Blood Würm, the Brain Würm, the Heart Würm, the Gut Würm, and the Spinal Würm—is connected to one of the THEY and the Grimm god they each worship. Each parasite induces both pain and pleasure in the infected as it grows and grows, and has its own set of tables for the various effects, until at some point it gains total control over the character who their player must then give to the Game Master. A new character is then needed…
Other threats include random spaceships, rotten Earth Animal Mutations, Astro Zombies, Big Würms, and more, for a nasty selection of things that are almost, but not quite as bad as the Grimm. Oddly, the advice given in the back of Vast Grimm is more for the player than the Game Master, which probably would have been better placed towards the beginning of the book rather than after the entries for the monsters. The roleplaying game comes to a close with a beginning adventure, ‘DEATH aboard the CONUNDRUM: An Introductory Adventure for Vast Grimm’. The Netwürk is abuzz with rumours of an artefact, needed to operate the Gate of Infinite Stars, located aboard a spaceship, and it happens that the Player Characters are nearby. Unfortunately, so is a band of space raiders and then everyone is on their way to ransack the ship and take possession of the artefact. It is a solid ‘dungeon in space’ style adventure with lots of creeping about in the dark and dealing the people and other things already aboard… lastly, there are tables of adventure sparks, encounters, and so on, to spur the Game Master’s imagination.

Unfortunately, beyond randomly determining where the Gate of Infinite Stars might be located, Vast Grimm is short on advice for the Game Master and playing it beyond the single scenario included. Thus, there is no discussion of campaign or long-term play. In so far as the Player Characters will hopefully find the Gate of Infinite Stars and use it before the end of this universe. Then of course, what happens next... Even though it would have been useful, the experienced Game Master will probably have no issue with this, but the Game Master with less experience may struggle to develop a campaign around the nihilistically grim horror of Vast Grimm.

Physically, Vast Grimm shares a lot of its production values with Mörk Borg. Both embrace the Artpunk aesthetic with its use of vibrant, often neon colours and heavy typefaces. It looks amazing, a swirling riot of colour that wants to reach out and infect everything, but it has to be said, it is not always the easiest of books to read.

Vast Grimm could be seen as Mörk Borg in space and that would not be an unfair assessment. However, Vast Grimm scales up the eschatological horror of Mörk Borg’s pre-apocalypse to cosmic levels and scales it down to make it horribly, infectiously personal with the plague of the Würms contaminating and breeding within every aspect of the universe, including, possibly, probably, the Player Characters. Then it offers hope, an objective, in the form of the Gate of Infinite Stars, for the players and their characters to aim for, though sadly it does not develop this aspect of the setting. This objective, though, is just enough to balance out the dread—even ever so slightly—as a glimmer of comfort and hope, and that actually makes Vast Grimm not quite as, well, grim. Overall, Vast Grimm is a eschatologically nasty Science Fiction horror game made all the more enjoyable because there is hope.

Quick-starts are means of trying out a roleplaying game before you buy. Each should provide a Game Master with sufficient background to introduce and explain the setting to her players, the rules to run the scenario included, and a set of ready-to-play, pre-generated characters that the players can pick up and understand almost as soon as they have sat down to play. The scenario itself should provide an introduction to the setting for the players as well as to the type of adventures that their characters will have and just an idea of some of the things their characters will be doing on said adventures. All of which should be packaged up in an easy-to-understand booklet whose contents, with a minimum of preparation upon the part of the Game Master, can be brought to the table and run for her gaming group in a single evening’s session—or perhaps too. And at the end of it, Game Master and players alike should ideally know whether they want to play the game again, perhaps purchasing another adventure or even the full rules for the roleplaying game.

Alternatively, if the Game Master already has the full rules for the roleplaying game for the quick-start is for, then what it provides is a sample scenario that she still run as an introduction or even as part of her campaign for the roleplaying game. The ideal quick-start should entice and intrigue a playing group, but above all effectively introduce and teach the roleplaying game, as well as showcase both rules and setting.

—oOo—

What is it?
The Fallout: The Roleplaying Game – Quickstart Guide is the quick-start for Fallout: The Roleplaying Game, the post-apocalyptic roleplaying game based on the computer game, Fallout 4, developed by Bethesda Game Studios. It is set in the year 2287, two centuries after a nuclear holocaust that ended a war between the United States and China, in the remains of New England, including Boston, an area called ‘The Commonwealth’.

It is a sixty-four-page, 119.56 MB full colour PDF.

The quick-start is very nicely illustrated with artwork taken from the computer game that captures the retrofuturism of the Fallout 4 setting. The rules are clearly explained and are a moderately complex version of the 2d20 System.

How long will it take to play?
The Fallout: The Roleplaying Game – Quickstart Guide and its adventure, ‘Machine Frequency’, is designed to be played through in one session, two at most.

What else do you need to play?
The Fallout: The Roleplaying Game – Quickstart Guide requires at least two twenty-sided dice per player, four six-sided dice, and tokens to keep track of Action Points.

Who do you play?
The six Player Characters in the Fallout: The Roleplaying Game – Quickstart Guide consist of a Vault Dweller skilled in computers, a charismatic Survivor with gambling debts, a Ghoul who fears mental degeneration, a Super Mutant bibliophile with long history, a Brotherhood Initiate with medical training, and a Mister Handy with personality problems.
How is a Player Character defined?
A Player Character in the Fallout: The Roleplaying Game – Quickstart Guide—and thus the Fallout: The Roleplaying Game—will look more familiar to anyone who has played Fallout 4 than anyone who has played a 2d20 System roleplaying game. A Player Character has seven ‘S.P.E.C.I.A.L. Attributes’. These are Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, and Luck. These are rated between four and ten and will be familiar to anyone who has played Fallout 4. He will ratings in skills including Athletics, Barter, Big Guns, Energy Weapons, Explosives, Lockpick, Medicine, Melee Weapons, Pilot, Repair, Science, Small Guns, Sneak, Speech, Survival, Throwing, and Unarmed. Skills are ranked between zero and six. Some skills are marked as Tag skills, indicating expertise or talent. Tag skills improve a Player Character’s chances of a critical success. Each twenty-sided die rolled for a Tag skill that gives a result equal to or under the skill rank is a critical success, counting as two successes rather than one.
One noticeable difference between Fallout: The Roleplaying Game and other 2d20 System roleplaying games is that the Player Characters have hit locations. This reflects the nature of the computer game. A Player Character will also have several Perks and Traits, essentially the equivalent of advantages and disadvantages, and he will have Luck Points equal to his Luck Attribute. He does have a biography and a list of gear as well.
How do the mechanics work?
Mechanically, the Fallout: The Roleplaying Game – Quickstart Guide—and thus the Fallout: The Roleplaying Game – Quickstart Guide—uses the 2d20 System seen in many of the roleplaying games published by Modiphius Entertainment, such as Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20 or Dune – Adventures in the Imperium. To undertake an action in the 2d20 System in Fallout: The Roleplaying Game, a character’s player rolls two twenty-sided dice, aiming to have both roll under the total of an Attribute and a Skill to generate successes. Each roll under this total counts as a success, an average task requiring two successes, the aim being to generate a number of successes equal to, or greater, than the Difficulty Value, which typically ranges between zero and five. Rolls of one count as a critical success and create two successes, as does rolling under the value of the Skill when it is a Tagged Skill. A roll of twenty adds a Complication to the situation, such as making noise when a Player Character is trying to be stealthy or breaking a lock pick when opening a safe.
Successes generated above the Difficulty Value are turned into Action Points. Action Points are a shared resource and a group can have up to six. They can be used to purchase more dice for a Skill test, to Obtain Information from the Overseer, Reduce Time spent on a test, or to take an Additional Minor Action or Additional Major Action.
With Luck of the Draw, a player can spend his character’s Luck Points to add a fact or detail or item to the area he is in that would benefit him. Other uses include Stacked Deck, which enables a player to substitute his character’s Luck Attribute instead of another, Lucky Timing, which lets a survivor interrupt the Initiative order, and Miss Fortune to reroll dice.
The Overseer—as the Game Master is known—has her own supply of Action Points to use with her NPCs.
How does combat work?Combat in the Fallout: The Roleplaying Game – Quickstart Guide is quite detailed in comparison to other 2d20 System roleplaying games. A Player Character can attempt one Minor Action and one Major Action per round, but Action Points can be spent to take one more of each. Minor Actions include Aim, Draw Item, Move, Take Chem, and more, whilst Major Actions include Attack, Command an NPC, Defend, Rally, Sprint, and others. During combat, Action Points can be expended to purchase more dice for a Skill test, to Obtain Information from the Overseer, to take an Additional Minor Action or Additional Major Action, or to add extra Combat Dice.

Damage is inflicted per random Hit Location and it is possible to target a particular Hit Location. The number of Combat Dice rolled to determine damage is based on the weapon, Action Points spent to purchase more Combat Dice, Perks, and other factors. Combat Dice determine not only the number of points of damage inflicted, but the ‘Damage Effects Trigger’ of the weapon used. This has an extra effect, such as Piercing, which ignores a point of Damage Resistance or Spread, which means an additional target is hit. Both damage inflicted and Damage Resistance can be physical, energy, radiation, or poison. If five or more points of damage is inflicted to a single Hit Location, then a critical hit is scored. Ammunition is tracked.
Radiation damage is handled differently. It reduces the Maximum Health Points of a Player Character rather than his current Health Points. Until cured, this reduces both his Maximum Health Points and the number of Health Points which can be cured.
What do you play?
‘Machine Frequency’ assumes that the Player Characters are travelling when they encounter Scribe Galen Portno, an elderly member of the Brotherhood of Steel. he operates a listening post and recently monitored a distress call from a Brotherhood Vertibird which crashed. He is awaiting reinforcements, but asks the Player Characters to go to the rescue of the downed crew. They have a chance to conduct some scavenging before reach the Vertibird where they find it being attacked by robots. Further clues will lead them to the controller of the robots as well as provide opportunities to explore and scavenge.
‘Machine Frequency’ is a good mix of exploration, scavenging, and combat. Players who have played Fallout 4 will feel right at home.
Is there anything missing?
No. The Fallout: The Roleplaying Game – Quickstart Guide includes everything that the Overseer and six players need to play through it.
Is it easy to prepare?
The core rules presented in the Fallout: The Roleplaying Game – Quickstart Guide are not too difficult to prepare. A Overseer who already run a 2d20 System roleplaying game will need to adjust for the extra complexities and details of the system used in Fallout: The Roleplaying Game, but will otherwise have no problem with this.
Is it worth it?
Yes. The rules and the scenario presented in allout: The Roleplaying Game – Quickstart Guide really do feel like you are playing a tabletop version of Fallout 4. It is grim and gritty, with a little bit of knowing humour. Fans of both the computer game, the post apocalypse genre, and the Fallout television series will enjoy the chance to play this.
Where can you get it?
The Fallout: The Roleplaying Game – Quickstart Guide is available to download here.

Dungeon Crawl Classics #71: The 13th Skull begins in grim, if slightly bonkers fashion. The Player Characters are present at a public execution. The thirteenth Duke Magnussen has condemned a man to death for the prophecies he has made across the city, calling for the death of the duke’s daughter lest the city be beset by a great disaster. As father and daughter watch the condemned man and his executioner climb the scaffolding, both hooded, one by a burlap sack, the other by a black leather executioner’s hood, and the executioner’s axe falls upon the neck of the condemned, everything seems to go wrong. The decapitated head has the face of the Duke himself and the executioner pulls off his hood to reveal a grinning silver skull. As the grinning metallic visage turns to face the Duke, a great winged lizard flaps down out of the sky to snatch up the Duke’s daughter, before the Silver Skulled executioner leaps on its back and leaps into the sky, heading for the Duke’s mountaintop keep. The city is in uproar and the Duke is determined to get his daughter back and will pay any souls brave enough to do so handsomely for it. The Silver Skull and its beast of burden was last seen entering a mountain cave said to be connected to Duke Magnussen XIII’s family crypts, which is why the brave Player Characters find themselves standing before a stout oak door, ready to venture into the Magnussen mausoleum, rescue the Duke’s daughter, and in the process, discover some dark family secrets.

This is as much set-up as there is for Dungeon Crawl Classics #71: The 13th Skull, the fifth scenario to be published by Goodman Games for use with the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. Designed by Joseph Goodman for a group of six to ten Fourth Level Player Characters, it is an important scenario for four reasons. One is that it is the fifth scenario to be written for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game and the fourth to be written for Player Characters who are not Zero level, and the fourth is that it is the first scenario for Fourth Level Player Characters. It is a short affair, designed to be played in a single session or so, so it can be used as a convention scenario. Alternatively, it can be played in a more leisurely fashion and be played through in two sessions rather than the single session. Either way, it is nasty, deadly affair. The eponymous scenario though, is not the only content in The 13th Skull. There is also a second scenario, ‘The Balance Blade’, designed for Second Level Player Characters and a companion piece, ‘Seven Strange Skulls’, both by Daniel J. Bishop.

The Player Characters have the opportunity to learn a rumour or two before they enter the crypts, which can either given out at the start of the adventure or roleplayed for if running the scenario as part of a campaign. The rumours revolve around suggestions that the first Duke Magnussen made a pact with something—though nobody knows what—and that family is somehow connected to the Silver Skull. Once inside the crypts, the scenario proceeds in rather linear fashion. There is really only one direction and that is down. After a dark and deadly encounter with lurking shadows that are a pleasingly creepy twist upon the classic Dungeons & Dragons version of the monsters, the Player Characters will descend to the main stage for the scenario where most of the action will take place.

The grand set piece for ‘The 13th Skull’ is an enormous cave, split in two by a river that flows out of the mountain via a waterfall and which contains both ‘The Stinking Pit of Hell’, a literal hellhole, and a fifty-foot-wide column whose base has been worn thin by the rushing waters, atop which is a magical circle containing the resting place of the Silver Skull. On either side of the river there is a circle of skulls, a pile of corpses, and access to a room containing a book containing pages that will transport the reader to different planes of existence. There is a sense of momentum to the scenario as the Player Characters explore the cave and move from one encounter to another, ultimately to attempt two tasks. One is to defeat and destroy the Silver Skull, and since this takes place atop a column in the middle of the river with a pit to Hell also in the middle of the river, if the Player Characters defeat it, they really are lined up to throw it off the top and into Hellhole, more or less, below. The other is find the Duke’s daughter and rescue her. This is incredibly difficult to achieve—and intentionally so. The Barbed Devil holding her ready for sacrifice has an area attack likely to kill given that she is Zero Level NPC. To that end, there is advice and playtest reports throughout The 13th Skull and what they make clear is the difficulty of saving the daughter and that few of the playtest groups succeeded. If their characters do manage to save the daughter, then they and their players should definitely feel a sense of achievement and their characters will be rewarded by the Duke. If not, he will castigate them for their failure and they will be dismissed without any reward, bar the fantastical magical items that they might have found below the crypts. Ultimately, ‘The 13th Skull’ feels more like a convention or tournament scenario, although in the case of the latter, a table of possible scores would have been useful.

The second scenario in The 13th Skull is ‘The Balance Blade’. It is designed for Second Level Player Characters and is again intended to be played in a single four-hour session. It has particular requirements in the form of a Wizard Player Character with a patron, and a mix of Alignments in the party, as well as index cards and coloured stickers to use in the adventure. In addition, a Thief is an absolute must. The adventure is littered with traps that will kill—or effectively kill—a Player Character if a Saving Throw is failed.

The set-up is that the wizard’s patron asks to retrieve a weapon called The Balance Blade from The Tomb of the Last Colossus, the resting place of the last of a race of cosmic colossi. The scenario is even more linear than ‘The 13th Skull’ and it only works as a convention scenario, as the last two encounters in the scenario are designed to trigger inter-party conflict. The penultimate scene is one which will be viewed differently depending upon the Alignment of the Player Characters. Lawful Player Characters will see a lonely woman sitting on a bed, Neutral Player Characters will see a lonely woman sitting on a bed with a child, and Chaotic Player Characters will see a succubus sitting on a bed with a strange spider-like creature—and none of this will change. The illusion will be maintained until the woman/woman and child/succubus and strange spider-like creature are dead. So, if a Chaotic Player Character attacks the succubus and strange spider-like creature, the Neutral Player Character will see the Chaotic Player Character attacking a woman and child, and the Lawful Player Character will see the Chaotic Player Character (and possibly the Neutral Player Character as well) attacking the woman, but will never, ever see the child. It is a challenging scene to run, one that really is designed to mess around with the perceptions of the characters and their players.

The last scene and thus the scenario ends with betrayal upon the part of the Wizard’s patron and then upon the part of the Wizard as he turns on the other Player Characters. The Wizard and his player have no choice in this and the scenario will end in the Wizard’s death no matter what his player decides to do. His player may well have some fun with his Wizard battling his fellow Player Characters, wielding the powerful blade of the title and the extra power granted to him by his patron, a la Elric and Stormbringer. For the other players and their characters, it is a distinctly underwhelming climax and an underwhelming scenario as a whole. As with the first scenario, there are some remarks about the playtest results and they are probably more interesting then the scenario itself.

The third and final entry in The 13th Skull is not another scenario, but an article vaguely connected to the eponymous scenario. ‘Seven Strange Skulls’ describes seven weird and magical skulls, two of them with their tables that use the thirty-sided die beloved of Dungeon Crawl Classics. The Crystal Skull of the Alien Juggernaut is the skull of a gigantic creature from another world that gives off a glow and a bonus to spellcasting, but has a chance of exploding when it gives this bonus. Grandmother’s Skull is the skull of a matrilineal ancestor which grants various spell effects to the wearer if sacrifices are made to it in the household shrine it also requires. Of course, the spirit in the skull will have demands of her own which a player and his character will find out if the former rolls a one! The Living Skull of the Emerald Enchanter is a weirdly legged skull with a nasty poisonous bite created in conjunction with the Emerald Enchanter, so would be an entertaining callback for any Judge who has run and player who has roleplayed Dungeon Crawl Classics #69: The Emerald Enchanter. Overall, these skulls are entertaining and fun to add to any game.

Physically, The 13th Skull is a very nicely done book. The maps are good—for both adventures—and the artwork is excellent.
Despite the additions of ‘The Balance Blade’ and ‘Seven Strange Skulls’, The 13th Skull is not a satisfying anthology of scenarios for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. Both scenarios are effectively convention or even tournament scenarios, but not presented as such, because otherwise, they are difficult to use in campaign play. ‘The 13th Skull’ is the better of the two scenarios because it is easier to use, it is linear, but not to the point of a railroad, and it has room for player and character agency. ‘The Balance Blade’ has none of these in comparison. Whereas, in comparison, ‘Seven Strange Skulls’ is actually fun and entertaining. Ultimately, The 13th Skull is the first poor release for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. If The 13th Skull was presented as a pair of tournament scenarios and supported as such, that would have been more truthful and made the scenarios easier to use.

Imagine if you will, that instead of filling your aquarium with fish and crabs and sharks and penguins and boats and mermaids and light houses, you did exactly that, but the fish and crabs and sharks and penguins and boats and mermaids and light houses, were made out of Origami? This is almost, but not quite the theme to Sea Salt & Paper, a beautiful little card game in which every card is illustrated with Origami in delightfully soft pastel colours and uses its own set of folded paper icons to ensure that the game is accessible for any language and also colour blindness. It makes for a strikingly attractive game and although play at first looks simple, there is enough strategy and choice to keep the game being brought back to the table again and again. Published by Bombyx and Pandasaurus Games, Sea Salt & Paper is designed for two to four players, aged eight and over, and combines hand management, open drafting, pushing your luck, and set collection in a lovely little game. Although it did not win, it was on 2023 Spiel des Jahres Recommended list and like Scout before it, this is a little card game which is highly portable and easy to play at the coffee shop as it is at home.

Game set-up is simple. The deck is shuffled and two cards are drawn. These are placed face up to form two separate discard piles. None of the players begin the game with cards in their hand. On his turn, a player can either take a card from either discard pile or draw two from the deck, keep one, and place the other in the discard pile of his choice. He can play ‘Duo’ cards to trigger their effects and if the cards in his hand are work seven points or more, he can trigger the end of the round. In this way, game play is as simple as the set-up. What the cards do though, is where Sea Salt & Paper gets interesting.

Sea Salt & Paper consists of four card types: ‘Duo’ cards, ‘Collector’ cards, ‘Point Multiplier’ cards, and ‘Mermaid’ cards. ‘Duo’ cards are played together as pairs to enable a player to do a particular action. Thus, two ‘Crab’ Duo cards let a player go through one of the two discard piles, select a card, and add it to his hand; two ‘Boat’ Duo cards let a player have a second turn; two ‘Fish’ Duo cards let a player take the top card off the deck; and a combination of the ‘Shark’ and the ‘Swimmer’ enables him to steal a card from another player. A player can play as many ‘Duo’ cards he wants in his turn and is able to. Further, ‘Duo’ card combinations are worth a victory point for the pair, being played on the table.

‘Collector’ cards are the ‘Shell’, Octopus’, ‘Penguin’, and ‘Sailor’ cards. The more a player has of these in his hand, the more points he will score for each particular type of ‘Collector’ card. The ‘Point Multiplier’ cards score points for the other types of card and their icons in the game. ‘The Lighthouse’ scores points for the number of ‘Boat’ Duo cards a player has, whilst ‘The Shoal of Fish’ does the same for the number of ‘Fish’ Duo cards in a player’s hand. The other two ‘Point Multiplier’ cards are ‘The Penguin Colony’ and ‘The Captain’.

Lastly, the ‘Mermaid’ cards score a Victory Point for each of the cards of the single, most common colour in a player’s hand or on the table. Only one ‘Mermaid’ card is applied per colour, so a player might score three Victory Point s because he has a ‘Mermaid’ card and three cards in light pink, but he had two cards in light green and a ‘Mermaid’ card, he would score two Victory Points for those.

From initially having no cards in their hands, players draw cards and begin to build their hands of cards, looking for pairs of ‘Duo’ cards to play and give them an advantage, collecting sets of the ‘Shell’, Octopus’, ‘Penguin’, and ‘Sailor’ cards in conjunction with the ‘Point Multiplier’ cards. Throughout, each player is keeping track of his score. Victory Points will come from the ‘Duo’ cards played and from the ‘Collector’ cards and ‘Point Multiplier’ cards, which will remain hidden in their respective hands. When a player has accrued a score of seven or more Victory Points, he can call an end to the round. This is done in one of two ways. One is to simply call ‘Stop’ and the round will end and the players will add up their total Victory Points for the round. The other is to call out, ‘Last Chance’. This is done when a player thinks he has accrued more Victory Points than the other players and thus will win the round. In this case, the round does not end immediately, but every other player—that is, the one who did not declare, ‘Last Chance’—gets one more turn in an effort to get more Victory Points and potentially outscore the player who brought the round to a close.

Effectively, the player who shouted, ‘Last Chance’ is making a bet that he has outscored the other players. If he has, he scores Victory Points based for cards he has played and also a bonus for the most cards of a single colour he has, whilst the other players only score points for the bonus for the most cards of a single colour they have. However, if he loses, the player who shouted, ‘Last Chance’ only receives bonus for the most cards of a single colour he has, whilst the other players score Victory Points for the cards they played and the cards in their hands as normal.

Play continues like this over multiple rounds until one player has scored a combined total of between thirty and forty points, the target varying according to the number of players. The first player to do so wins the game. The other way to win the game is to have and place all four ‘Mermaid’ cards in the game on the table. When a player does this, he automatically wins the game. This rarely happens, so everyone will likely be amazed when it does.

There are really two issues with Sea Salt & Paper, but they are minor. One is that the card quality could have been slightly better and sturdier. The other is that the game is not that easy to learn because it has multiple icons on the different cards and it is a case the players needing to learn what the multiple different cards do.

Physically, Sea Salt & Paper is beautifully presented game. The artwork is a delight and the design on the cards is clear and simple. Notably, it is designed to be language independent and through the use of icons also suitable for any player who is colour blind. The rules are neatly explained in a small foldout sheet. There are reference cards for the rules and the colours—including their own icons for the colour blind—to make it easier to learn.

looks simple and its mechanisms are simple. However, there are some subtle choices to the play of the game and they really start with the dual discard piles. The players can see what is on the top of the two discard piles, so they can see what is drawn from each pile and going into everyone’s hands. This can give them some indication of what each player might doing, such as looking for particular ‘Duo’ cards or creating a set of ‘Collector’ cards. When a player has a ‘Duo’ card in his hand, playing it at the right time can really give him an advantage. For example, using the ‘Shark’ and ‘Swimmer’ ‘Duo’ card combination to steal a card from another player in the hope of grabbing the one the targeted player has just drawn which you need or two ‘Crab’ Duo cards to go through a discard pile looking for that card you know is there, but which has since been covered up by discarded cards… Which can be all the more satisfying if a player has drawn two cards from the top of the deck and they are both useful, but of course, one of them has to be discarded. Of course, drawing from the top of the deck keeps a player’s objectives a secret from his rivals.

So, there are some pleasing little nuances to Sea Salt & Paper, which combined with the multiple means of scoring, means that the game can be enjoyed by casual players and experienced players alike. Once the players have grasped what all of the icons mean and do in the game, Sea Salt & Paper plays fairly quickly.

Sea Salt & Paper is a lovely looking game that plays as good as it looks and its looks are good enough to attract players of any experience to play it.

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

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What is the Nature of the Quest?The Adventure of the Forester Knight is a scenario for use with Pendragon, Sixth Edition.

It is a full colour, eleven page, 7.51 MB PDF.

The layout is tidy and it is nicely illustrated.

Where is the Quest Set?The Adventure of the Forester Knight is set in one of the remnants of the ‘Wild Wood’, the old forest which once covered the realm, such as the Forest Sauvage or the Forest Adventurous.
Who should go on this Quest?
The Adventure of the Forester Knight does not have particular requirements in terms of its Player-knights as written. However, Player-knights with a good Folklore score will be useful, whilst Pagan Player-Knights and Player-knights with a reasonable score in their Worldly Trait will have an advantage, whereas Christian Player-knights and Player-knights with a higher score in their Spiritual Trait will be at a disadvantage.
What does the Quest require?
The Adventure of the Forester Knight requires the Pendragon, Sixth Edition rules or the Pendragon Starter Set.
Where will the Quest take the Knights?The Adventure of the Forester Knight begins with the Player-knights travelling through one of the older forests in the country. The beasts of the forest seem to huff and snuff around them in the undergrowth either side of the trail they are on, following them all the way to desolate glade where they come upon a fellow knight who has clearly spent the day chopping down the trees all around him. The knight, Sir Hervise, is the Forester Knight of the title, a forlorn figure, who as he later tells the Player-knights, has been cursed by his faerie mother-in-law who thought him an unsuitable match for her daughter. Sir Hervise asks the Player-knights for their help in lifting the curse.

There is some toing and froing, involving roleplaying rather than real investigation, but eventually the Player-knights will learn the answer to the riddle that is the means of the lifting the curse and step over into the faerie realms. There is the issue here that Christian knights will have difficulty doing so and if a player rolls badly, he will find his knight unable to participate in the climatic scenes of the scenario and thus unable to engage in the best part of the scenario which takes place in the faerie realm. This does not mean that they will not earn any Glory at the end of the scenario, but simply not gain the opportunity to use and potentially improve skills and Traits. If successful, at the end of the scenario there is an amazing reward for one Player-knight, especially if his favoured weapon is an axe!

The Adventure of the Forester Knight can be played through in a single session, two at most. It is easy to slip into a campaign as it begins as the Player-knights are travelling and it could easily run in conjunction with The Tree Hazardous, before or after, or even in the middle of!
Should the Knights ride out on this Quest?The Adventure of the Forester Knight is decent mini- or sidequest that does take a while for the story to play out and the Player-knights to become involved in the action. Its easiest use is as mini-quest for a few Pagan Player-knights, since there is a chance that a Christian Player-knight will be stopped from playing out the final scenes, though this does not mean that such a Player-knight could not shine. Overall, The Adventure of the Forester Knight is an engaging quest that the Game Master can prepare and have ready to run when needed.

Much like the Jonstown Compendium for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and The Companions of Arthur for material set in Greg Stafford’s masterpiece of Arthurian legend and romance, Pendragon, the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition is a curated platform for user-made content. It is thus, “...a new way for creators to publish and distribute their own original Call of Cthulhu content including scenarios, settings, spells and more…” To support the endeavours of their creators, Chaosium has provided templates and art packs, both free to use, so that the resulting releases can look and feel as professional as possible. To support the efforts of these contributors, Miskatonic Monday is an occasional series of reviews which will in turn examine an item drawn from the depths of the Miskatonic Repository.

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Name: Lost and Found: A Railway Scenario for Call of CthulhuPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: SR Sellens

Setting: Great Britain, 1926Product: Scenario
What You Get: Sixty-eight page, 66.47 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Classic railway murder mystery meets the MythosPlot Hook: “There’s an unexpected item in the baggage area!”Plot Support: Staging advice, six pre-generated Investigators, ten handouts, one map and one train plan, ten NPCs, one cat, three Mythos artefacts, one Mythos tome, one Mythos spell, and two Mythos monsters.Production Values: Ferroequinologically excellent
Pros# Richly detailed scenario# Wonderfully thematic layout
# Easy to adapt to Cthulhu by Gaslight or other periods with trains# Easy to insert into a campaign# Bonus histories# Has notes on adapting it to The Children of Fear, Horror on the Orient Express, Masks of Nyarlathotep, Shadows of Yog-Sothoth, Tatters of the King, The Day of the Beast, and The Two Headed Serpent# Ferroequinology!# Cleithrophobia# Teraphobia# Siderodromophobia
Cons# Ferroequinology!# Warranted a bibliography# Classic trapped with an unstoppable monster scenario
Conclusion# Classic cosy railway murder gets trapped by the Mythos in a richly detailed and thematically presented scenario# Highly flexible and adaptable to multiple periods and actual Call of Cthulhu campaigns!# Reviews from R’lyeh Recommends

1974 is an important year for the gaming hobby. It is the year that Dungeons & Dragons was introduced, the original RPG from which all other RPGs would ultimately be derived and the original RPG from which so many computer games would draw for their inspiration. It is fitting that the current owner of the game, Wizards of the Coast, released the new version, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, in the year of the game’s fortieth anniversary, and the new edition of that, Dungeons & Dragons, 2024, in the year of the game’s fiftieth anniversary. To celebrate this, Reviews from R’lyeh will be running a series of reviews from the hobby’s anniversary years, thus there will be reviews from 1974, from 1984, from 1994, and from 2004—the thirtieth, twentieth, and tenth anniversaries of the titles. These will be retrospectives, in each case an opportunity to re-appraise interesting titles and true classics decades on from the year of their original release.

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It is surprising to think, that even two years after its publication, Call of Cthulhu, was the only horror roleplaying game in the industry. Of course, it had its own particular brand of horror, the Cthulhu Mythos, cosmic horror rather than traditional horror. Even though it was not specifically designed to do more traditional types of horror, stats were included for monsters such as vampires, werewolves, and zombies. Soon though, it was followed by roleplaying games that did do the more traditional type of horror. First, Stalking the Night Fantastic, published by Tri-Tac Inc. in 1983, and then by CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown. It was published in 1984 by Pacesetter Ltd., a company set-up by a number of ex-TSR, Inc. employees, including Mark Acres, Troy Denning, and Stephen Sullivan. CHILL was the company’s first roleplaying game and it was designed to evoke the feel and tone of films from the Hammer and AIP and Universal studios and of television series like Kolchak; The Night Stalker. Together with fairly simple mechanics, this made it both accessible and familiar, and then the roleplaying game itself, published as a boxed set, made it even more accessible by presenting the adventure in the box, ‘Terror in Warwick House’, as being playable after only reading the ‘CHILL Introductory Folder’.
In CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown, the Player Characters are members or ‘Envoys’ of S.A.V.E., ‘Societas Argenti Viae Eternitata’ or ‘The Eternal Society of the Silver Way’. Founded in Dublin, Ireland in 1844, this organisation discovered the existence of a highly disciplined source of evil that was not recognised or perceived by the scientific community and set out to establish proof of its existence. S.A.V.E. launched expeditions to locate and study creatures around the world, including dragons, basilisks, ghosts, ghouls, and more. Many such expeditions were failures, adding weight to S.A.V.E.’s fears about it came to call the Unknown. S.A.V.E. changed to become a secret organisation dedicated to investigating, cataloguing, and ending the threat of the Unknown where necessary. Today, its primary goals remain the same, and it helps its Envoys with information, equipment, financial aid, and where necessary, legal aid. In return, the Envoys report what they find back to the organisation’s headquarters outside Dublin and keep what they report, what they find, and what they do secret from everyone else.

All Envoys of S.A.V.E. are able to perceive the Unknown World to one degree or another. Those that can to greater degree are also aware of the Art, the ability to drawn energy from the Unknown and communicate with it. The founders of S.A.V.E. realised the existence of the Art and their successors have codified it into four forms—Communication, Restoration, Protection, and the Evil Way. All Envoys can detect when the Art is used, the traces left behind by creatures and monsters of the Unknown, and when the Evil Way is used. Some Envoys can do more than this, harnessing the disciplines of the Communication, Restoration, and Protection forms to combat the users of the Evil Way and the monsters of the Unknown.

Open the box for CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown and what you will find is the eight-page ‘CHILL Introductory Folder’ marked ‘READ ME FIRST!’, the sixteen-page ‘Terror in Warwick House’ scenario, the sixty-four page ‘CHILL Campaign Book’, and the thirty-two page ‘CHILL: Horrors from the Unknown’ book. Below this is the double-sided ‘The World of CHILL’ map, a sheet of counters, and a Range Finder. Both map and counters are double-sided. One side of the half-inch square counters depict a range of Player Characters, creatures, and monsters, all in colour, whilst on there are doors, windows, stairs, beds, tables, and other pieces of furniture. On one side of the ‘The World of CHILL’ map is a map of the world marked with various sites of interest like Stonehenge and Tunguska, whilst on the other is a plain squared battle board for handling combat and the floor plans for Warwick House in the introductory scenario. There are also three ten-sided dice in the box.

CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown begins with the ‘CHILL Introductory Folder’. Subtitled ‘Stepping into the Unknown’, this introduces the reader to roleplaying, explains what is in the box, tells him how to use the dice and play CHILL. It includes eight, ready-to-play character cards, and an explanation of the core mechanic. There is a short example of play as well, so that within a few pages, the prospective player is also ready to play, whilst the prospective CHILL Master—as the Game Master is known—is prepared to dive into ‘Terror in Warwick House’ and reader herself to run that. The eight, ready-to-play character cards cover a then diverse range of ages, genders, and races. They consist of a male Caucasian martial arts instructor, a female Asian drama teacher, a Mexican-American college quarterback (infamously with the ‘Throw: Javelin’ skill), a female Caucasian model, a male Caucasian professor of anthropology and archaeology (complete with pipe and safari suit, including pith helmet), a female Caucasian investigative reporter (in the Kolchak: The Nightstalker mode), a male African-American surgeon, and a female Caucasian biology student. One issue here is the terminology, such as using ‘Oriental’ to describe the female Asian drama teacher, which would have been fine in 1984, but is not acceptable as a term now. So, some of the language in CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown has dated, though of course, this is easily addressed in play and it should be made clear that the mix of pre-generated characters was and is well intentioned by the standards of the day.

‘Terror in Warwick House’ is an introductory scenario and the second thing that the CHILL Master needs to look at. The Envoys are all members of S.A.V.E., many of them with links to Severn College. Recently, the college decided that it wanted to knock down a colonial era mansion that has been shut up due to its poor reputation, in order to expand the car park. Unfortunately, two workmen have been killed before the clearance began, and S.A.V.E. suspects that the Unknown is involved. It contacts the nearest Envoys, that is, the Player Characters, and asks them to investigate. The scenario is effectively a nasty haunted house, deadly in places, one which is played like solo adventure, but with the whole group deciding to move between locations or take actions together—and not splitting apart—rather than individually. Throughout, the Envoys will be taunted and haunted, and there are some creepy moments, like the wooden stairs animating as hands and grabbing the ankles of anyone on the stairs, with the players being shown how to roll dice, have their Envoys engage in combat, and detect the Unknown. It is linear and basic, playable in a single session. Which is fine up to a point, as CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown is designed for players aged twelve and up, but there is no other scenario in the box. So, nothing more sophisticated for the CHILL Master to run properly for her players after running ‘Terror in Warwick House’ or simply a proper scenario that an experienced Game Master would want to run.

An Envoy in CHILL is defined by Abilities and Skills. He has eight Basic Abilities. These are Strength, Dexterity, Agility, Willpower, Personality, Perception, Stamina, and Luck. These range in value between twenty-six and eighty. The Basic Abilities have various uses, such as the basic chance to hit a target using a firearm for Dexterity, Willpower as the chance to overcome the fear of seeing a monster, Personality to persuade an NPC, Perception to notice things, and so on. Luck has more uses. First off, only Player Characters have Luck as a Basic Ability—NPCs and monsters do not. It is rolled to avoid certain death, spent permanently to avoid being shot, and of course, how fortunate or not, the Player Character according to the whims of the dice. Several other abilities are derived from the Basic Abilities. These include Unskilled Melee, Health, and more. The Basic Abilities can also grant bonuses to an Envoy’s skills.

Skills range in value between forty-one and one-hundred-and-thirty-five, and have a base value derived from a Basic Ability, such as Dexterity for combat skills and Stamina for Swimming, or a number of Basic Abilities which are then averaged. A skill is ranked at either Student, Teacher, or Master, and each provides a flat bonus to the basic skill value. This is either ‘+15’, ‘+20’, and ‘+25’ respectively (the ‘CHILL Campaign Book’ lists this as ‘+15’ for both the Student and the Teacher Rank, which is clearly an error). Some skills as Martial Arts cost double the skill points to acquire. The majority of the skills listed are appropriate for the eighties when CHILL is set and in terms of combat skills, all the way back to the medieval era. However, the only real technical skill available is Mechanics, and there are no skills for electronics or computers, which would feel odd in 1984, let alone today.

To create an Envoy, a player rolls three ten-sided dice, totals and doubles the result, and adds twenty to get the total for each Basic Ability. After working out the derived abilities, the player rolls a single die to determine the number of skill points the Envoy has, between one and five. If the Envoy has a Perception and a Willpower that are both high enough, then he will have a single Discipline in one of the Art. There are a lot of combat skills—including Boomerang slightly fewer professional skills, and very few common skills. The oddest skill is ‘Modelling’, is not making models or modelling a theoretical situation, but more social etiquette combined with the ability to walk poised fashion down a fashion runway… The skills are quite detailed in their use, especially the combat skills. So, although an Envoy starts off with relatively few skills compared to Player Characters in other roleplaying games, this is offset by a player and the CHILL Master needing to know how they work.

Veronica Puckett
Strength 42 Dexterity 66 Agility 60 Willpower 62
Personality 66 Perception 70 Stamina 58 Luck 64
Unskilled Melee Skill: 51
Current Stamina: 58

Skills
History (Student) 66 (81)
Language, Ancient (Student) 66 (81)

ART
Clairvoyant/Prescient Dream 68

Mechanically, CHILL is a percentile system that really uses two types of roll. A General Ability Check is a simple roll against a Basic Ability to determine whether or not an action succeeded or not. A General Skill Check works the same, but for skill use. A Specific Ability or Specific Skill Check is used whenever a more nuanced result is required and the CHILL Master needs to know how many degrees of success were achieved. To do this, the player has to make a successful roll and the Chill Master consults the CHILL Action Table. She subtracts the value of Basic Ability or the Skill being used from the value of the roll and cross references it in the appropriate column on the CHILL Action Table. This will give an outcome that is either a Limited, Moderate, High, or Complete Success. The specific outcome will vary from one skill to the next.

Combat in CHILL also uses the CHILL Action Table. Initiative is handled with a roll of a single die and the winning side then uses the Art, fires missile weapons, moves, and then engages in melee attacks. The defending side has the chance to return missile fire. Once done, the defending does exactly the same. Unsurprisingly, this feels like a wargame rather than a roleplaying game. Attacks can be Specific Ability Check or a Specific Skill Check, depending upon whether or not the Envoy has any skill ranks in the weapon he is wielding. What this means is that making a Specific Ability Check for an attack will give the Envoy a lower chance to succeed and a lower chance to get a better roll, whilst someone with the skill will have a better chance of both. As opposed to Specific Ability and Specific Skill Checks, there is more nuance to possible outcomes. The attacker is rolling to determine the Attack Margin which will cross referenced on the Defence Column. The Defence Column is determined randomly for missile attacks, modified by the defender expending points of Luck or by the defender’s skill for a melee attacks. Unarmed combat results can be Scant Damage, Medium Damage, Harsh Damage, Crushing Damage, or Knockdown, and most of these inflict a loss of Stamina points, but some of these can also inflict a Scratch Wound and a Light Wound. Armed combat results include Scratch Wound, Light Wound, and Medium Wound, all the way up to Critical Wound. These inflict greater Stamina loss and possibly continued Stamina loss, depending on the severity.
For example, Veronica Puckett, investigating a mausoleum in the town graveyard is confronted by a zombie. Veronica, as a member of S.A.V.E., has read about zombies and knows that they are slow and relentless, and that they can be destroyed by a bullet to the brain or having their mouths filled with salt and the mouth shut. In some cases, when chopped apart, she has read that a zombie’s limbs continue to attack. Unfortunately, Veronica does not have a gun, so she will have to improvise. Fortunately, the CHILL Master tells her player that there is a shovel left nearby by one of the graveyard workers, and that because the zombie goes last in the Initiative, she can snatch it up and attack. However, first Veronica has to overcome her fear and her player make a Fear Check.
The Zombie has a FEAR statistic of five. The CHILL Master consults the fifth Defence Column on the CHILL Action Table and Veronica’s player rolls the dice. He rolls ‘10’, which gives a result of ‘M’. Veronica is ‘Mildly Frightened’. She loses five points of Willpower, but can still act. Veronica is going to thack the zombie with her shovel. Unfortunately, Veronica has no combat skills, so is relying on her Unskilled Melee Skill, which is 51. She swings wildly! Very wildly as she rolls ‘02’! This is not the best result that she can get, but it is very close. The CHILL Master deducts the result of the roll from her Unskilled Melee Skill to give an Attack Margin of ‘49’, or ‘H’. This indicates a Heavy Wound, which means that the defender would lose Stamina from the blow and continue to lose Stamina from the wound. Unfortunately, zombies cannot suffer worlds, so just loses 42 points of Stamina—more than half of its total. Fortunately for Veronica, the zombie misses its attack and she decides that it would be good idea to find another way to deal with the undead creature. For that she needs a gun or some friends help her. Before the zombie can attack again, Veronica flees the graveyard. As well as the individual outcomes and rules for the skills, CHILL includes rules for travel, weather, vehicle movement, poisons, diseases, and more. As a horror roleplaying, it handles scares and their possible outcome through a Fear Check. These are made against an Envoy’s current Willpower and compared to the column on the CHILL Action Table that corresponds to the Fear statistic for the creature or monster. A Failure on the check results in the loss of Willpower and the Envoy fleeing in panic, as do most results to lesser degrees. On an ‘H’ or ‘C’ result, the Envoy is Courageous and overcomes his fear. The rules for animals cover their reaction to fearful situations, especially in reaction to the Evil Way, and also for creating minor and major NPCs, and their possible reactions. This scales up to larger organisations too, in particular, their relation to S.A.V.E. including the civil authorities, the clergy, the press, and more.

The ‘CHILL Campaign Book’ details the Art, the secret weapon has in its arsenal to use against the Unknown and the practitioners of the Evil Way. There are three Forms—Communication, Restoration, and Protection—that members of S.A.V.E. employ, and then there is the Evil Way. Each Form has its own skill, and costs between two and twenty points to use. In addition, a player can also spend points of his Envoy’s Willpower to improve the chances of a Discipline working one a one-for-one basis. The process can be interrupted in combat, and when that happens, the Envoy will also lose any Willpower spent. The amount that can be spent also depends on the Envoy’s current Stamina. Each Form has three Disciplines and each one needs to be learned individually. Although all nine Disciplines are useful, with some like Mental Shield and Sphere of Protection from the Protection Discipline, providing defence against attacks and other dangers, none of the Disciplines are offensive in nature. What this means is the Envoys will need to find another way to defeat the Unknown rather than simply relying upon the Art. In nature, the Art is more psionics than magic.

Penultimately, the ‘CHILL Campaign Book’ provides both a history of S.A.V.E. and a timeline along with an overview of how it operates and how it helps the Envoys. It gives enough details without being overly specific. Lastly, there is advice for the CHILL Master on running the roleplaying games. The advice is decent, covering what the CHILL Master does and what her responsibilities are, plus writing scenarios, maintaining game balance, and using elements of horror. It also suggests using the locations marked on ‘The World of CHILL’ map as potential starting points as they are all sites that S.A.V.E. has sent expeditions to and they failed to return.

The final book in CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown is ‘CHILL: Horrors from the Unknown’. It describes the Evil Way, the dark counterpart to the Art, as detailed in S.A.V.E.’s own Manual 2B: Devices of the Enemy. Over forty disciplines of the Evil Way are given, from Animation of the Dead, Appear Dead (Self and Other), and Blind to White Heat, Wound, and Write. Categorised into two groupings, Distortion and Subjection, they are forceful and dangerous, and in comparison, to the Art, give creatures, monsters, and practitioners of the Evil Way the edge. Like the disciplines of the Art, those of the Evil Way cost the user Willpower to use, but where an Envoy will have a skill value in individual disciplines of the Art, the user of the Evil Way will have a simple ‘Evil Way Score’.

Nearly two thirds of ‘CHILL: Horrors from the Unknown’ is dedicated to the Evil Way and descriptions of its disciplines. The remaining presents it monsters, beginning with simple animals, before going on to describe some ten corporeal, incorporeal, and special creatures. They include the Ghoul, the Mummy, Werewolf, and the Zombie for the corporeal, and the Banshee, the Fetch, the Ghost, and the Hate for the incorporeal. The two special creatures are the Changeling and the Vampire. The latter is a simple Carpathian Vampire, the weakest of its kind. Nevertheless, it is still a tough opponent—and indeed, all of the entries in ‘CHILL: Horrors from the Unknown’ are hardy monsters, drawn from classic horror stories and films, which will be challenging opponents to the Envoys. There can be no doubt that ‘CHILL: Horrors from the Unknown’ is the highlight of CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown. It is easier to read and use than the ‘CHILL Campaign Book’. Both monsters and the Evil Way are nicely detailed and fantastically illustrated and ready to be used to scare the Envoys, if not their players. If there is anything missing from this list it is the Frankenstein’s Monster type creature and the Witch or Wizard, although it would not be that difficult for the CHILL Master to create them.

CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown is something of a misnomer because nothing in its pages and its horror is really ‘unknown’. All of its monsters are known and that is because they are all drawn from common folklore and from their depiction on screen. This gives them a familiarity that potentially makes them less scary and to certain extent breeds the disdain which CHILL would be held at the time as evidenced by the reviews. Of course, Call of Cthulhu was the ‘superior’ horror game. Its Mythos was then unfamiliar, nihilistic, and the protagonists, the Investigators, were fragile amateurs lacking the backing of a worldwide, secret organisation. Yet, what CHILL offered was a broader, though not deeper, choice in terms of its horror. It could do the Gothic horror of classic Americana and Hammer Horror films, it could do ‘monster of the week’, and yes, it could do Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! if you wanted. The familiarity means that in play, the players have to lean into and embrace the genre that much more. They are not necessarily going to be scared by the unfamiliar, but they can roleplay their Envoys being scared by what is otherwise familiar to them as players.

In terms of design, CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown aims for a universal mechanic with its CHILL Action Table, and almost succeeds. The problem is that the results are not themselves universal, varying depending upon if the player is rolling a Specific Ability or Skill Check, an armed or unarmed attack, a Fear check, and so on. Plus, every skill has its own set of results, so that mechanically, CHILL feels overwritten and fussy. However, the CHILL Action Table is printed on the back of both the ‘CHILL Campaign Book’ and the ‘CHILL: Horrors from the Unknown’ books, so the CHILL Master can refer to the table on the back of the latter, whilst the results of various Specific Skill Checks can be consulted in the former.

For a horror roleplaying game, and certainly one written and set in the eighties, there are some odd omissions from CHILL. There is only the one technical skill, Mechanics, and technology is not addressed at all in the roleplaying game. There is neither an equipment list nor even prices given for the weapons it does list. Some of that is due to the fact that S.A.V.E. pays for the Envoys’ expenses whilst they are on an investigation and they each start with standard set of equipment. Nevertheless, from a technological standpoint, CHILL did not and does not feel like a modern-set horror roleplaying game. The advantage to that is that it can easily be shifted from the modern period to earlier periods, and much of the artwork depicts encounters with the Unknown in the Victorian era. Further, CHILL would be just as easy to run in even earlier periods, although that would be outside of the time frame for S.A.V.E.

If ultimately, there is a problem with CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown, it is that it lacks a proper scenario. That is, one that the CHILL Master can run for her players. ‘Terror in Warwick House’ is more like playing a novel—and doing so collectively—than actually playing a proper horror scenario. Without that example scenario to get an idea of what a scenario for CHILL would like, the advice on writing scenarios is consequently underwhelming. That said, the inspirations for the roleplaying game’s designers—the films of Hammer Horror and Universal Monsters—are also inspiration for the CHILL Master and so are a ready source of scenario ideas. This is despite the fact that CHILL does not include a filmography. Instead, its list of suggested reading consists of Robert Bloch, Ray Bradbury, H. Rider Haggard, Stephen King, Shirley Jackson, Edgar Allen Poe, Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker—and yes, H.P. Lovecraft.

Physically, CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown is very nicely presented boxed set. The cover to the box is eye-catching and the artwork is excellent, imparting feelings of dread and terror for the poor fortune stuck those situations. This is done by Jim Holloway throughout and it gives the roleplaying game a highly consistent look. The writing, and consequently, the rules, suffer in places from being overwritten unfortunately. The ‘CHILL Campaign Book’ could have slightly organised as certain chapters do feel as if they should be adjacent to each other.
—oOo— CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown was reviewed in ‘Horribly simple to learn: CHILL will leave you shivering for more’ by Jerry Epperson in Dragon #90 (October 1984). Although critical of the economics rules—or lack of them, and for not exploring options outside of being members of S.A.V.E., his main issue with the included scenario. “Experienced role-players will find that “Terror in Warwick House” is much like a guided tour of a national monument. While it portends to be a dangerous place, one gets the feeling that those who fell victim to the sinister occupants before the player characters were called to the scene were either idiots or invalids. The clues required by the characters to dispose of the evil are practically spoon-fed to the players.” Despite these issues, his conclusion was much positive: “At the risk of seeming to contradict all of the above complaints, it must be said that these problems are not major flaws in the game’s design; any CM should be able to alter them with little effort. All things considered, the CHILL game does just what it sets out to do. It doesn’t stall play with unwieldy rules or sub-systems, and it allows the CM to pace the storyline and preserve the intensity of a situation thanks to the game’s elegant simplicity. As an alternative to dungeon delving, superheroing, or chasing after Cthulhu, the CHILL game is something you can really sink your teeth into.”
As was a common occurrence, CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown was reviewed not once, but twice in the pages of Space Gamer. First by William Barton in the ‘Capsule Reviews’ in Space Gamer Number 71 (November/December 1984). He said, “Chill is an impressive and professional first release for Pacesetter and an excellent addition to the genre.” He criticised the turn sequence in combat and did not think that Player Characters started with enough skills, but praised the roleplaying game for its innovations, including the CHILL Action Table. He finished his review by saying, “Still, Chill is a viable alternative in supernatural gaming for those who desire less gunplay than is typical in Stalking or prefer more conventional creatures than the sanity-blasting horrors of CoC.”
Then, as part of an overview of the complete output from Pacesetter Ltd., Warren Spector reviewed CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown in ‘The Pacesetter Line’ as a ‘Featured Review’ in Space Gamer Number 75 (July/August 1985). He highlighted the inclusion of the adventure, ‘Terror in Warwick House’. “This adventure is worthy of comment. Many roleplaying games come packaged with adventures but, as far as I know, Chill is the first to include an introductory folder advising players to begin playing that adventure before they’ve read the rules of the game! To begin, players have only to read a four-page, READ-ME-FIRST! introduction to the rules, pick up the 16-page adventure booklet, and begin playing! And, sure enough, the cockamamie scheme works! The adventure itself is too straightforward and contrived (with CM instructions like “Don't let the players go upstairs yet!” How do you stop them?). But what the heck? At least you don’t have to wait for days while everyone learns the rules.” Although he felt that the mechanics needed work, Spector finished with, “Though superficially simpler than Call of Cthulhu, the clear leader in the horror field, Chill falls somewhat short of the mark.”
No less than Keith Herber reviewed CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown in ‘Games Reviews’ in Different Worlds Issue 37 (November/December 1984). As with other reviews, he paid particular attention to ‘Terror in Warwick House’, saying that, “For ease of use, this scenario offers a set of pre-generated player-characters that can be used and the adventure itself provides but limited choices for the players the results of these choices being clearly spelled out for the benefit of the novice gamemaster. While this does lead to a more or less predictable conclusion, the purpose of the adventure is to demonstrate the rules of the game and this it does admirably. It also proved to be one of the best introductions to role-playing games I have yet seen. While I might question the saleman’s [sic]claim that a group of beginning gamers can be playing within fifteen minutes of opening the box, it is certain they could enjoy an exciting first time with roleplaying on the same evening that they purchased the game.” Although he was critical of the low number of monsters in the books, especially given that once they have been defeated, the Envoys are no longer subject to Fear effects from them, he was positive about the game overall. “I found Chill to be a well thought-out, well-presented game that simulates the world of horror as represented in (particularly) the movies. The rules are flexible enough and complete enough to allow a gamemaster to set whatever tone or mood he desires his campaign to have and there is a large amount of written and filmed material from which to draw adventure designs.” Lastly, he awarded CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown three stars out of five.
Angus McLellan reviewed CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown in ‘Open Box’ in White Dwarf Issue 61 (January 1985). He too, was critical of ‘Terror in Warwick House’, saying that, “Even for an introductory scenario it's rather slow and distinctly lacking in excitement.” and found the creatures in the ‘CHILL: Horrors from the Unknown’ to be, “…a rather drab bunch of werewolves, vampires, ghouls, etc.” Before award CHILL a surprising score of seven out of ten, he finished with, “To sum up, Chill is ideally suited for beginners, the rules are not crystal clear, but the examples give a good idea of how it all fits together. The horrors are, alas, merely scary, the excitement soon palls, as the players expect more than the trick and tease style terror of Chill. Some hard work from the GM would help but for the money I'd want more than this. With both Call of Cthulhu and Daredevils available at the same sort of price why bother. A few years back this would have shaken the RPG community, now it’s second rate.”
In ‘Game Reviews’ in Imagine No. 23 (February 1985), Paul Mason was similarly critical of ‘Terror in Warwick House’. “Unfortunately, the introductory scenario just doesn’t make the grade. Not is it full of arbitrary manipulation (eg ‘Do not allow the players to go up the stars at this time’), but it has omissions, unnecessary repetition and poor explanations in places. I’m dubious of its merits as a means of introducing newcomers to roleplaying.” Nevertheless, in spite of this and objections to sometimes jokey side of the writing, he the review up with, “Still, if you fancy a game of investigation with gothic horror overtones, and you don't much care for H P Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos, then Chill would be the game to buy.”—oOo—
CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown is a horror roleplaying game aimed at younger players, in terms of its horror and tone, its choice of monsters and creatures. This makes its horror more accessible and more familiar, which combined with core ease of the rules and CHILL Action Table, make the basics of the game easy to learn and play. CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown emphasises this aspect by having it so that the CHILL Master and her players can open the box, read through the ‘CHILL Introductory Folder’ and then CHILL Master also read through ‘Terror in Warwick House’, and be playing in thirty minutes. However, beyond this, CHILL is not as complete or easy as it should be. The mechanics to the roleplaying game do feel fussy with lots of different skill and action outcomes depending on that the Envoys are doing, which hinders ease of play, and that despite the universal nature of the CHILL Action Table. The existence of S.A.V.E. suggests that CHILL can be played as campaign game, but what that might look like is barely touched upon and worse, the possible foundation for longer term play, a proper, starting scenario is not included.

Ultimately, if CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown feels lighter and tonally different, it is only in comparison to cosmic horror of Call of Cthulhu. It is still a horror roleplaying game, one that deals with the classic monsters of horror, and just as those confronting those can still be enjoyed in prose and on screen, so can confronting those can still be enjoyed in a roleplaying game. As a design, CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown is not quite as good as it could be, in terms of mechanics or content, but all of the elements are there to make it both playable, enjoyable, and incredibly, initially, highly accessible. Although it deals with classic horror, CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown is a very playable horror roleplaying game that falls short of being a classic.

Since 2013, Goodman Games, the publisher of the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game and Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic has released a book especially for Gen Con, the largest tabletop hobby gaming event in the world. That book is the Goodman Games Gen Con Program Book, a look back at the previous year, a preview of the year to come, staff biographies, community content, and a whole lot more, including adventures and lots tidbits and silliness. The first was the Goodman Games Gen Con 2013 Program Book, but not being able to pick up a copy from Goodman Games when they first attended UK Games Expo in 2019, the first to be reviewed was the Goodman Games Gen Con 2014 Program Book. Fortunately, a little patience and a copy of the Goodman Games Gen Con 2013 Program Book was located and reviewed, so since 2021, normal order has been resumed with the Goodman Games Gen Con 2016 Program Book, the Goodman Games Gen Con 2017 Program Book, and Goodman Games Gen Con 2018 Program Guide: The Black Heart of Thakulon the Undying, and Goodman Games 2019 Yearbook: Riders on the Phlogiston.

With both Goodman Games Gen Con 2018 Program Guide: The Black Heart of Thakulon the Undying, and Goodman Games 2019 Yearbook: Riders on the Phlogiston, the series had begun to chart a new direction. Each volume would contain a mix of support for the various RPGs published by Goodman Games and the content recognising the Goodman Games community, but the major feature of each volume would be a tournament scenario, staged the previous year at Gen Con. Unfortunately, events caught up with the eighth entry in the series, intending to highlight the presence of Goodman Games at Gen Gen in 2020, which would cancel Gen Con and every other event as well as face-to-face gaming. It meant that Goodman games had to adapt and adapts its by now traditional Gen Con Program Guide. The result was Goodman Games Yearbook #8: The Year That Shall Not be Named, a slimmer affair that would alter the direction of the series as whole and also see the traditional Gen Con Program Guide becoming a ‘Yearbook’ instead.
The Goodman Games 2021 Yearbook also marked the twentieth anniversary of Goodman Games, celebrating it with a cover that referenced numerous releases and events from the publisher’s history. The issue proper opens with a moment or two for reflection upon the part of Michael Curtis and Harley Stroh, looking back at how Goodman Games was forced to change as a result of the pandemic and how through online contact and play, the community came together like never before and kept gaming, all before diving into the gaming content of the yearbook. This is a pattern repeated later in the book by Brendan LaSalle and Chris Doyle. Where the previous three talk about Dungeon Crawl Classics, the latter focuses on the development of Dungeon Denizens, Goodman Games’ bestiary for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, as well titles in the ‘Original Adventures Reincarnated’ series, such as The Temple of Elemental Evil and Dark Tower.

As with the previous Goodman Games Gen Con 2018 Program Guide: The Black Heart of Thakulon the Undying, and Goodman Games 2019 Yearbook: Riders on the Phlogiston, what the Goodman Games 2021 Yearbook also offers is a tournament scenario, though to be fair, it is more tournament than scenario. ‘Pits of Lost Agharta’ by Harley Stroh is a winner takes all series of arena ‘battle royale’-style battles that take place on a ziggurat deep underground to the amusement of foul Aghartan slave lords. Everyone roleplays a Warrior, First Level at the beginning, but who will acquire more Levels as he survives more rounds, but always begins a round armed only with a club. His aim is to survive. To do this, he can search corpse mounds for better equipment, gain strange boons from touching the Malachite Crystals which contain an aged and withered sage or wizard, take control of the ballistae mounted on the ziggurat, and so on. Once their characters have all acted in a round, the players get to decide what action the Slave Lords take, which might be to “Release the man-bats!” or command “Forward, feasters of flesh!”. The latter is important because the Player Characters have been held captive for quite some time and been fed on a diet of vile gruel, which consists of either mushrooms or mushrooms and the flesh of their dead comrades. Those Player Characters who turned cannibal get more Hit Points, but are in danger of falling under the influence of the slave lords during the battle.
‘Pits of Lost Agharta’ details and illustrates in full colour the various parts of the tournament and suggests how it might be used in campaign play. One way would be to tie it into the setting of Lost Agharta, as detailed in Dungeon Crawl Classics #91: Journey to the Centre of Áereth and then Dungeon Crawl Classics #91.1: The Lost City of Barako and Dungeon Crawl Classics #91.2: Lairs of Lost Agharta. There are also notes on how the tournament was run and who the winners were. There is a certain tongue in cheek battling charm to this, a way to run a tournament online which can then can also be run face-to-face.
Mike Bolam adds to the tournament with ‘Pits of Lost Agharta Variant Rules’ which suggests a way in which it could run as a board game and without a Judge, as well as setting it in an arena as in Dungeon Crawl Classics #84C: Escape from the Purple Planet from Dungeon Crawl Classics #84: Peril on the Purple Planet. It is an intriguing idea, though it would probably take almost as much time to set up as would running the proper tournament version.
There is a delightful sense of fun in the ever so bonkers ‘The ’Stashe Stash II: ’Stashe of the Titans!’ by Brendan LaSalle. This is a sequel to ‘The ‘Stache Stash: Magic Moustaches for DCC RPG’ from the DCC Annual Vol. 1 and presents yet more magical facial hair. These include ‘The Walrus or ‘The Ubermensch’, ‘The Handlebar’ or ‘The Rollie Fingers’, and even more hilariously, ‘The Hairy Mole’. They have odd magical powers like that of ‘The Antenna’ or ‘The Dali’ to cause any non-magical object to melt without any heat, to stop time whilst the bearer floats away, or catch an opponent in a time loop and so force him to repeat the action from the previous round. Amusingly, the modifier to the Saving Throw to shrug off this effect involves at least one cat. It is clear that both the author and the illustrator, Brad McDevitt, have had a lot of fun with this article.

‘Black Mountain Lights’ is a scenario for Second Level Player Characters for Dungeon Crawl Classics by Michael Curtis. It takes place in the Shudder Mountains, an Appalachian-style fantasy setting with elements of horror originally published as Dungeon Crawl Classics #83: The Chained Coffin. The Player Characters are staying as guests overnight at a remote farm during their travels when strange luminous figures creep out of the night, snatch up the farmer’s infant son, and carry him up the mountain. The Player Characters are implored to rescue the kidnapped boy, an attempt which takes them up the mountain where a witch is said to lurk. There is a dark threat to found up and, in the mountain, but it is not what the Player Characters may think. The scenario is a Shudder Mountains twist upon the classic Dungeons & Dragons-style set-up of goblins threatening the locals and can be played in a single session, so will work as a convention scenario. It is also easy to add to a Shudder Mountains-set campaign.
Although Goodman Games is best known for its content for its Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game and Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic, but it publishes content for use with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition as well. The support for it in the pages of The Goodman Games 2021 Yearbook includes entries from Dungeon Denizens, the bestiary that the publisher is just now funding on Kickstarter, a scenario, and a look at a Twitch channel, all by Chris Doyle. The scenario is ‘The Monastery of the Dawning Sun’, written for Fifteenth Level Player Characters for use with the version of Crypt of the Devil Lich for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition (there is also a version for use with Dungeon Crawl Classics). The scenario is designed to be played as a tournament and as a campaign play scenario, but the introduction to the scenario favours the former rather than the latter. ‘The Monastery of the Dawning Sun’ is designed to offer an alternative opening suited to campaign play. It provides a creepy location, containing ancient defences and signs of bloody violence and destruction, despoiled by evil and marked by hints as what lurks beyond in the ‘Crypt of the Devil Lich’, all ready for the Player Characters to discover its horrors.
‘What is Talking TSR?’ is show livestreamed on the Goodman Games Official Twitch channel. It introduces the backgrounds of the presenters Chris Doyle and Rick Maffei, who together get to highlight their favourite episodes and also provide an episode guide. The article highlights the move that Goodman Games has made into supporting its releases online as does the addition to the usual series of photographs taken at various conventions. Not just Gen Con 2021, the Goodman Games Road Crew, and other in-person events, but also on-line events such as Spawn of Cyclops Con and Empire of the Cyclops Con for lots of screenshots of Judges with their players. Further support for the Goodman Games community takes the form of ‘The Goodies’, the awards given for supporting and contributing to the community, plus there is a list of the winners of the ‘Pits of Lost Agharta’ tournament. Lastly, there is a gallery of the ‘Road Crew Stickers’ from the previous year.
Physically, the Goodman Games 2021 Yearbook is well presented and easy to read. It does need an edit in places, but the artwork and the cartography are as good as you would expect for a Goodman Games release.
There is a certain sense of adjustment having been made with Goodman Games 2021 Yearbook after the Pandemic and its effect on the Goodman Games Yearbook #8: The Year That Shall Not be Named. The inclusion of online content alongside in-person content is more assured, even if that content is restrained and not as ambitious as that of Goodman Games Gen Con 2018 Program Guide: The Black Heart of Thakulon the Undying, and Goodman Games 2019 Yearbook: Riders on the Phlogiston, what the Goodman Games 2021 Yearbook. The result is that the content is both easier to use as well as enjoyable as it tracks the move to a more normal existence than the year before.

Imagine being in a cave. Deep underground. In the dark and the damp and the cold. It is easy to imagine. What though, if you were trapped there? What if there had been an accident and now you simply could not retrace the steps that led you into the depths of the earth and so make your way to feel free again under the light and warmth of the Sun and the vast openness of the sky? What will you do? How will you react? You are not alone. You have friends and colleagues with you, but what will they do and how will they react? You know you will survive and find your way out, right? Not everything is lost, and of course, people know you came down here, so the alarm is sure to be raised soon, right? So put a plan together, check on your resources, and set out to find a new route to safety. Then the sounds starts. The skittering of movement. The moans of something that has your scent. A shadow that seems to move out of your headgear lamp. The sense you are being followed… Does the fear rise? Are you terrified at being trapped here with it? Is that the sound of your friend’s screams or your own? This is the set-up for Squeeze: A Tabletop Game of Subterranean Claustrophobic Horror.

Squeeze: A Tabletop Game of Subterranean Claustrophobic Horror is a micro-game published by Parable Games, the British publisher best known for the horror roleplaying game, Shiver – Role-playing Tales in the Strange & the Unknown. It was funded as part of the publisher’s Parable Games ZineQuest RPG Buffet on Kickstarter. It pitches ordinary men and women who have delved deep underground and due to an unfortunate accident become trapped—and trapped with something else what will hunt them as they try to find a way back to the surface. It provides a set of tables for determining why and where the Player Characters, or Explorers, have ventured underground, as well as the nature of the accident, plus a table of environmental threats that they might have to overcome and a set of ten different monsters that will react to their presence. Combine this with a simple set of rules and means of character generation, and what Squeeze: A Tabletop Game of Subterranean Claustrophobic Horror provides is short, handy roleplaying game that can be pulled off the shelf and readied to play with very little preparation. It does require several four-sided per player, but other than that, this is a very imagination driven roleplaying game for the Game Master and her players who are happy to improvise.

An Explorer in Squeeze has four traits: Head, Heart, Lungs, and Hands. They represent in turn, intelligence and experience, compassion and charisma, health and stamina, and strength and dexterity. They are rated between one and four. An Explorer also has a Health stat and a Calm stat. To determine the value of the four traits, a player either divides nine points between them or they can be rolled for. Lastly, a player rolls for two items of equipment.

Tony Wroe
Head 2 Heart 3 Lungs 3 Hands 2
Health 11
Calm 6
Equipment: Rope, Rucksack

Mechanically, to have his Explorer undertake an action, a player rolls a number of four-sided dice equal to the appropriate trait. The aim is to roll as many successes as possible, in order to beat a difficulty ranging between one and five, with five being considered impossible. A result of two is a failure, but three is a success. A roll of one is a critical failure and reduces the total number of successes rolled by one, whereas a roll of four is critical success and lets the player roll again and again as long as four is rolled each time. In combat, each success rolled inflicts a single point of damage. There will also be bonuses for damage from claws, mandibles, and so on (or even sharp rocks if the damage is environmental in nature.)

Squeeze gives guidance on how to use the mechanics to model the environment, such as using the Hands Trait to handle climbing, the Head Trait to identify safe routes up the climb, and even the Heart Trait if the climb itself is that high… It also shows how it might be used as a timing and distance mechanism, such as swimming and attempting to avoid the danger of drowning. However, what Squeeze does not do is really fully show how Panic works in the game. When an Explorer loses all of his Calm, he suffers Panic and loses a point from one of his Traits. If the Explorer can make a Lungs check, he can draw a deep breath and restore points of Calm, but another Explorer can also calm another panicked Explorer down and also restore points of his Calm. This is the mechanical aspect of losing Calm and it is really only what Squeeze covers. So, there is no advice on roleplaying this and worse, there is no guidance on how Calm is actually lost. It is a major oversight. What it means is that the Game Master is going to have to work out how this works herself. For an experienced Game Master this should be no problem, especially given how simple it is to run and play Squeeze.

In terms of creating a story, Squeeze includes a table of four story hooks and a table of four accidents, along with a table of eight settings. All the Game Master do is roll on these and she has the basics of the starting point for a game of Squeeze. Thus, the Explorers have descended into an abandoned mineshaft in order to search for a missing child, but are cut off from their route down by a cave-in, or be archaeologists looking for a sunken civilisation in some catacombs when someone sabotages the team’s way back. Environmental threats include falling stalactites or an underground lake, whilst the list of horrors includes Stone Spiders, Wall Crawlers, a White Wyrm, and the Shadowman. Overall, there are enough options here for a handful of games of Squeeze.

Physically, Squeeze is decently laid out and quick and easy to read. It is easy to learn and set up, and though it relies on a great of improvisation by the Game Master, it is not difficult to run. Or rather, it should not be difficult to run. The lack of rules on how Calm is lost so that Panic can be triggered is a major omission upon the part of author and publisher. It is not an insurmountable omission, especially for an experienced Game Master, but annoying, nonetheless. All it would have taken was another page to explain the rules and that would also have allowed space for a bibliography of horror films about being trapped underground far below the surface. Alas, Squeeze: A Tabletop Game of Subterranean Claustrophobic Horror is simply not complete and not what the publisher intended.

The rumours have been spreading for weeks now. The Archbishop of Radiant Vitela has excommunicated the Duke and Duchess of Isla Requia, declaring them heretics and sorcerers, foul worshippers of Chaos, and most recently he sent a fleet to land an army on the island and assault the Obsidian Keep, home to the Duke and Duchess. Word has it that as the Radiant Fleet anchored in Isla Requia harbour, the only part of the island where it is possible to land, a great storm of strange, red lightning descended on the ecumenical ships and shattered one vessel after another. The Duke and Duchess of Isla Requia remain in the Obsidian Keep, protected by the weird storms that some say the Duchess is responsible for, the dark walls of Obsidian Keep, and the distance across the Sakeen Sea to the island. There have been calls put out by Archbishop of Radiant Vitela for brave adventurers to sail to the mouth of Isla Requia harbour and there a launch a rowing boat to explore the harbour and shore for survivors and relics—and if such adventurers put an end to the reign of Duke Avito and Duchess Forza (literally Duke ‘Ancestral’ and Duchess ‘Force’), then there will be an even bigger reward. Similarly, there have been whispers put out by Master Argento of Radiant Vitela for treasure hunters to break into the Obsidian Keep and steal its treasures, with a bonus if the treasures happen to belong to the Duke or Duchess.

This is the set-up for Raiding the Obsidian Keep, an ‘Adventure Module for Characters 2-4’ for use with Old School Essentials, the retroclone based on the 1981 revision of Basic Dungeons & Dragons by Tom Moldvay and its accompanying Expert Set by Dave Cook and Steve Marsh. Originally published as The Obsidian Keep by Dungeon Age Adventures for use with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, like the author’s well received Nightmare Over Ragged Hollow, this edition of the scenario has been expanded, adapted, and transformed by The Merry Mushmen—best known for the Old School Renaissance magazine, Knock!, and the excellent A Folklore Bestiary—following a successful Kickstarter campaign. And what a transformation it is! The digest-sized scenario comes as a thick, seventy two-page booklet in a wraparound card cover. The trade dress echoes that of classic TSR, though the artwork is more cartoonish. The cover has been purposely distressed and inside has been drawn the map of the temple, again in the style of classic Dungeons & Dragons modules. The cartoonish style of artwork continues throughout in a greyscale, depicting the devastation which has been wrought upon the Radiant Vitela fleet and the gothic weirdness that permeates the Obsidian Keep and its inhabitants.

Structurally, Raiding the Obsidian Keep is linear, organised into four stages, one after the other, but within those stages, the Player Characters have plenty of freedom of movement. These are in turn, ‘The Harbour of Death’, ‘Survivor Beach’, ‘At the Foot of the Obsidian Keep’, and ‘Inside the Obsidian Keep’. Each of these stages contains a mix of encounters with survivors—initially from the Radiant Vitela fleet and then from the Obsidian Keep, signs of the recent storm, and other strangeness. There is a distinct atmosphere to each of the four stages. ‘The Harbour of Death’ is a sea salt-encrusted battlefield, strewn with shattered and capsized hulls, with survivors desperate for help among the dangerous waters patrolled by harbour sharks and the leathery black and bewinged Vulgranes. ‘Survivor Beach’ is a shanty town of fishermen, Radiant Vitela sailors and soldiers washed ashore, and servants that have fled from the Obsidian Keep, the narrow area split down the middle by a lava stream. ‘At the Foot of the Obsidian Keep’ is a fractured courtyard split by lava filled vents, marching obsidian skeletons, and a floating cottage, all under an ash-laden sky. ‘Inside the Obsidian Keep’ is decadence and luxury smashed by lightning and Chaos, populated by the mutated lords and ladies of the ducal court acting as if everything was perfectly normal and littered with corpses, many with wrinkled skin, eyeless, and missing their left arms, robed in red.

Throughout Raiding the Obsidian Keep there are some fantastic encounters. some of the most notable include Angelica the Ursaloth, half-woman, half-octopus, in ‘The Harbour of Death’, who welcomes a kiss and gives a boon in return for the gift of a finger; on ‘Survivor Beach’ with the charred and frozen naked skeleton of Prince Orsino, who might tell you his story in return for a promise; in the stables ‘At the Foot of the Obsidian Keep’ with a shining back stallion with a skull for a head, that despite being Chaotic, just wants to be friends; and ‘Inside the Obsidian Keep’ where Pavnutia, vampire alchemist from outer space just wants to be rescued (so she can enthrall the world!). There is plenty of treasure to be found, all artfully designed, like billiard balls of sapphire in the games room or the individual model ships each sailing on a worked sea of silver in Prince Orsino’s room. That though, is just the treasure of artistic or monetary value, for there are numerous magical items to be found and delightfully, not a single one of them actually boring!

As the Player Characters progress through the adventure, both it and their focus will change. In ‘The Harbour of Death’, they will be rowing from wreck to wreck, rescuing people and learning about what happened in the bay, whilst on ‘Survivor Beach’, they will begin to learn about what happened in the Obsidian Keep before entering the courtyard of the keep and then the keep itself to really discover the truth of what happened. As a result, there is tonal shift from one half of the scenario to the other, initially an open water tale of bracing adventure and danger, and then a dark gothic story inside the ruined black castle with echoes of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death via Roger Corman and Vincent Price.

For all of its atmosphere and its details, where Raiding the Obsidian Keep disappoints is in the set-up. Unless starting the scenario en media res, right at the mouth of Isla Requia Harbour, being launched into the long boat, the scenario requires quite a bit of set up in terms of its back story and setting. All necessary to provide context to the reasons why the Player Characters might become involved. The given set-up in underwritten and there is a lot more going on in the scenario some of which the Player Characters will be aware of. Some of this can be facilitated via the included rumour table, but even that feels out of context. Also one thing that cannot easily be done with Raiding the Obsidian Keep is run it as a sequel to either of the earlier scenarios from the publisher, Nightmare Over Ragged Hollow or The Horrendous Hounds of Hendenburgh, whereas The Horrendous Hounds of Hendenburgh has links indicating that it could be could be run as a sequel to Nightmare Over Ragged Hollow. To be fair, Raiding the Obsidian Keep is not written as a sequel to either, but neither does it have links suggesting that it could be.

Physically, Raiding the Obsidian Keep is very well presented. The writing is succinct and laid out in an easy to grasp style, whilst the artwork is entertaining throughout. If there is anything disappointing it is that the cartography of both the courtyard and the keep is are clean, tidy, but dull. Especially in comparison to that of the harbour and the beach. That said, the descriptions of the various locations in the courtyard and rooms in the Obsidian Keep more than compensate for their uninteresting cartography. None will hinder the Game Master running Raiding the Obsidian Keep, but none really help their locations come to life either.

Raiding the Obsidian Keep is self-contained. This means that it is easy for the Game Master to drop into her own campaign world or an existing one she is already using. Similarly, although Raiding the Obsidian Keep is written for use with Old School Essentials, the scenario is easily adapted to the retroclone of the Game Master’s preference.

Raiding the Obsidian Keep is a scenario for more experienced players, being challenging and dangerous. It has a fantastic gothic atmosphere of ruin and tragedy in the face of overweening ambition. However getting to that ruin and tragedy will take some effort upon the part of the Game Master to set-up and get the players and their characters motivated. Once they are, they will discover that Raiding the Obsidian Keep is another fine scenario from The Merry Mushmen and the author of Nightmare Over Ragged Hollow.

Welcome to Arkham: An Illustrated Guide for Visitors to the Town of ARKHAM, MASSACHUSETTS, and Environs Including DUNWICH, INNSMOUTH, and KINGSPORT is just that little bit more than a simple guide to the city at the heart of the H.P. Lovecraft’s stories and the Cthulhu Mythos. In one way it is a simple exploration of the city and its strange history and places as presented in the Arkham Horror family of games published by Fantasy Flight Games, including of course, the Arkham Horror board game and Arkham Horror: The Card Game, and more recently, the roleplaying game Arkham Horror, and in another, it showcases the great artwork from the games. Seriously, the artwork is very, very good. Then in another way, it presents the city and its environs, including the towns and villages of Dunwich, Innsmouth, and Kingsport, in a way that could be used with any horror roleplaying game. Which means that it could works as a companion to the recently released Call of Cthulhu: Arkham for Call of Cthulhu.

What it actually is though, is a reprint of the Arkham gazetteer that was originally in the Arkham Horror Deluxe Rulebook, published separate to the board game, along with expanded details of Lovecraft Country. Yet it is also more that than that. It is a copy of Welcome to Arkham, the introduction to the city published by the Arkham Historical Society after having been updated, revised, and expanded by the society’s curator, Reginald Peabody. Further, it is his personal copy, complete with notes that he compiled in order to update it, and then, now in hands of his niece, Myrna Todd, it has been annotated with her notes and correspondence with a friend in New York, after she begins investigating Arkham and beyond following her uncle’s disappearance. What this means is that there are multiple layers to this book, on one level a simple guide or artbook, on another a story and mystery. Which means that it can be enjoyed on multiple levels…

Published by Aconyte Books, also responsible for a series of novels set in the world of Arkham Horror, this outwardly guide to Arkham and inwardly the mystery of the disappearance of the guide’s author, begins with a letter to young Myrna Todd from the Miskatonic Valley sheriff, informing her of her uncle’s disappearance, and a letter to her friend in New York, before welcoming the reader to Arkham proper. Starting with downtown, the volume takes the reader from one district of the city to another, visiting in turn, its highs and its lows, its weird and its wondrous. The highs include Independence Square with its balmy tranquillity that contrasts sharply with the Gothic grandeur and tenebrosity of Arkham Sanatorium, with its patients receiving the very best care, but so many lost to a stranger madness. Similarly, the newly opened restaurant, La Bella Luna, offers the wonders of Italian cuisine brought to small town New England, but hides an entrance to the Clover Club, the city’s premier speakeasy, whilst the Palace Movie Theatre brings the best of Hollywood to its big screen on which some moviegoers have begun to see odd shadows at moments when the big feature is not show. The description of the Palace Movie Theatre is accompanied by a fantastic film that never was, Mask of Silver. Meanwhile, the Ward Theatre is going to stage a much-anticipated performance of The King in Yellow, following its premiere in Paris! In rougher Eastown, Hibb’s Roadhouse might claim to be ‘dry’, but it is where the city’s less than reputable citizens go to get a shot of booze, whilst Velma’s Diner, a classic railcar diner, might serve good food, but it where the patrons of Hibb’s Roadhouse go after it shuts for the night.

French Hill is home to the even stranger parts of Arkham. There is Silver Twilight Lodge, the meeting place of the Order of the Silver Twilight, headed by one Carl Sanford, known for its generous charity work, but suspected by some for conducting very dark rituals behind its closed doors. This is, of course, a pleasing nod, to ‘The Hermetic Order of the Silver Twilight’ from Shadows of Yog-Sothoth. (These are not the only nods to the source material beyond that of H.P. Lovecraft, as Welcome to Arkham also draws from the pages of the various novels in the ‘Arkham Horror’ range.) Then there is the infamous ‘Witch House’, once home to the reviled witch, Keziah Mason, but now a series of poky apartments let to students at Miskatonic University who complain of strange rodent that stalks the building with its weirdly human face and hands. These are only the start of the strange locations to be found in Arkham, others including ‘The Unnamable’, a collapsed mansion in the Merchant District that Arkhamites strive to avoid, the Black Cave in Rivertown with its odd geology and fungi and the spelunkers often lost within its depths, and Ye Olde Magick Shoppe in Uptown, a cramped premises stuffed with mouldering books, maps, and artefacts linked to places that geographers have no knowledge of.

Of course, Miskatonic University gets a section of its own, including the Miskatonic Museum and the Orne Library, and as a bonus, a working draft of ‘Book of Living Myths’. This is almost a Mythos tome of its very own, penned by Miskatonic University scholar Kōhaku Narukami, which explores the parallels between classic folklore and the Mythos. Beyond this, Welcome to Arkham draws both the reader and Myrna Todd up and down the Miskatonic Valley, visiting in turn Dunwich, Innsmouth, and Kingsport, for similar treatments as that accorded to Arkham. Throughout, the locations are given both a fantastic illustration and a description, but this is not the only artwork in the pages of Welcome to Arkham. There are newspaper front pages reporting on important events such as the widespread, horrific destruction that beset Dunwich and the raid by Federal authorities on Innsmouth. There are also photographs, official reports, tickets, business cards, and plain postcards, the penned by Myrna charting the course of her investigation in the disappearance of her uncle, destined for New York, but not yet sent. Some are illustrated as if to appear attached to the pages by a paperclip, but others intrude into the pages, cut off by the neatness of the pages of Welcome to Arkham: An Illustrated Guide for Visitors to the Town of ARKHAM, MASSACHUSETTS, and Environs Including DUNWICH, INNSMOUTH, and KINGSPORTT. Their creation is so good though, that you wish they were real and that every one of them would stick out between the pages and make the book bulge with the many things, artefacts, and documents stuffed between those pages.

If perhaps, there is anything missing from the pages of Welcome to Arkham, it is a map. Arguably, a book which is ostensibly designed as a guidebook, warrants a map. Perhaps the modular nature of the book’s source material, the Arkham Horror board game, and more specifically, Arkham Horror: The Card Game, means that like the source material, the book needs no map. However, if not coming to Welcome to Arkham via either of those games, the conceit of it begs for a map.

Welcome to Arkham: An Illustrated Guide for Visitors to the Town of ARKHAM, MASSACHUSETTS, and Environs Including DUNWICH, INNSMOUTH, and KINGSPORT is the chance to explore the familiar, but from a different angle, that of source material from a board game and a card game of Lovecraftian investigative horror, rather than a roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative horror. Though all draw from the same sources, there is sufficient divergence perhaps that Welcome to Arkham is ever so slightly odd, slightly less familiar. That said, fans of the Arkham Horror board game, Arkham Horror: The Card Game, and the ‘Arkham Horror’ series of novels, will much that they will recognise and enjoy, as will the devotees of the writings of Lovecraft and of Lovecraftian investigative horror roleplaying. Welcome to Arkham: An Illustrated Guide for Visitors to the Town of ARKHAM, MASSACHUSETTS, and Environs Including DUNWICH, INNSMOUTH, and KINGSPORT is an engaging combination of enticing artwork and literary conceit that constantly hints at the dangers to be found in poking around in places and the doings of people that are best left secret.

Much like the Jonstown Compendium for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and The Companions of Arthur for material set in Greg Stafford’s masterpiece of Arthurian legend and romance, Pendragon, the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition is a curated platform for user-made content. It is thus, “...a new way for creators to publish and distribute their own original Call of Cthulhu content including scenarios, settings, spells and more…” To support the endeavours of their creators, Chaosium has provided templates and art packs, both free to use, so that the resulting releases can look and feel as professional as possible. To support the efforts of these contributors, Miskatonic Monday is an occasional series of reviews which will in turn examine an item drawn from the depths of the Miskatonic Repository.

—oOo—
Name: The White CirclePublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Jonas Morian & The Yellow Hand

Setting: St. Paul, Minnesota, 1921Product: Scenario
What You Get: Thirty-eight page, 26.47 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Sometimes having morals extends to having a conscience too.Plot Hook: “Out of sight, out of mind… Out of memory.”Plot Support: Staging advice, four pre-generated Investigators, three handouts, two maps, six NPCs, one Mythos spell, and one Mythos tome.Production Values: Excellent
Pros# Richly detailed background# Socially challenging to resolve# Open-ended# Swedophobia# Kenophobia# Depersonalisation
Cons# Needs a slight edit# Violence may be the only means of resolution# Socially challenging to resolve
Conclusion# Richly detail scenario of moral cleansing horror with excellent production values
# Socially challenging to resolve and the Investigators may not get away with it

Stefan Meunch is dead. Died three days ago, between weekly visits. Part of the local catalogue round of check-ins for useless and washed-up old spies with nowhere to go and no future beyond a meagre pension, the bottle, and having lived out their usefulness, such as it was, getting by without bringing themselves to anyone’s attention. Only this time he has. The Factory went in and cleaned up as normal, confirmed the death was a heart attack, and was all ready to close the file when an analyst discovered that Stefan Meunch, a retired ex-spy, eighty-five years old, living on a not an entirely unreasonable state pension in a flat over an empty shop in a town in the West Midlands, had quarter of a millions pounds squirrelled away in off-shore accounts. How the hell did he get away with it, where did he get the money from, and who was paying him? More importantly, how did the fuck-ups whose job it was to do the weekly run of the catalogue of hand-me-downs like Stefan Meunch miss the fact that he managed to save quarter of a million pounds?

This is the set-up for the scenario, For A Rainy Day. Published by Just Crunch Games, this is a scenario for Sanction: A Tabletop Roleplaying Game of Challenges & Hacks, which describes itself as a set of “Universal Rules for Challenge-driven Games”. Specifically, For A Rainy Day is a scenario for the second Genre Set-Up in Sanction. This is ‘Agency: Outlet Work’, an espionage setting inspired by the grim, grimy, and pathetic espionage of the Slow Horses series by Mick Herron with dash of John Le Carré. The Player Characters are ex-agents, failures and fuck-ups, washed out of active service, but not out of the service. Reassigned to small towns and cities like Wolverhampton or Grimsby, the Agents do data processing, combing through reports and archives, and so on, before sorting it and sending it back to head office, with no explanations as to why or what the information is for. It is make-work, a window job, and that is all that the Agent will have until he retires. Yet the Agent hopes, and worse, he cannot help but want to apply his tradecraft. Part of the work involves the catalogue run. Just one more part of their tedious day in their tedious week in their tedious no-career between now and retirement. Probably a bit like Stefan Meunch, but without the quarter of a million. It’s their fuck-up and they have to find out what Stefan Meunch did to make them look like even more of bunch of fuck ups, and how he got away with it.
‘Agency: Outlet Work’ is one of the best things in the Sanction rulebook—more so if you are a fan of the Slow Horses series—and For A Rainy Day is an introductory scenario for it. Just as ‘Agency: Outlet Work’ is inspired by the Slow Horses series, it should be noted that For A Rainy Day is inspired by a pair novellas that run parallel to the main novels in the series—The Drop and The List. Although a player may be familiar with the series and with both novellas, For A Rainy Day is only inspired by their set-ups, rather than the whole of their plots. In fact, For A Rainy Day is not a scenario in the traditional roleplaying sense, an adventure with a plot that has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Rather, it has a beginning—a very good beginning with the Player Characters being given a bollocking for their failure and their players a chance to introduce their characters and their very ordinary lives, and a middle, where all of the investigation takes places, with its grubby scrutiny and possible future for the Player Characters. The end is very much down to the players and what their characters think is going on. For A Rainy Day does tell you what is going on, but the players and their characters may get other ideas… Which is fine, since they are fuck-ups…

For A Rainy Day is heavy on investigation and tradecraft, though there are opportunities for violence too—though only for the Game Master, who is accorded good advice on running the scenario. This includes running it as an episode of a television series, using the provided table of prompts when appropriate, such as when a scene drags or is going nowhere, and reacting to the Player Characters and their actions as it is primarily a player-driven scenario. In addition, five pre-generated Agents, one for each of the standard Lifepath archetypes in ‘Agency: Outlet Work’ are provided for quick set-up and use with the scenario.

Physically, For A Rainy Day is short and simple. The layout is clean and tidy, everything is easy to grasp, and the artwork has a suitably drab, drizzled upon kind of feel.

For A Rainy Day can be used in conjunction with the espionage-themed roleplaying game of the Game Master’s choice, but of course, Sanction suits the desperate, down-at-heel grottiness of both ‘Agency: Outlet Work’ and For A Rainy Day. The good news is that For A Rainy Day is the first in a series and it will get sequels, which is probably the most that the Player Character fuck-ups deserve. In the meantime, For A Rainy Day is a delightfully seedy introduction to the wretched world of ‘Agency: Outlet Work’ and its no-hopers.