Citizen, congratulations on your appointment as a WATCHER. You will be continuing the work of the whole of BASTION which since 1943 has been studying the continuing effects of THE BREACH which occurred following THE COLLISION as a result of the experiments conducted by the Ministry of Culture and Science of The Enlightened Confederacy to test the theory of Space-Time Flows, developed by Möbius-Higgs. As a WATCHER you will continue your service as a Citizen of BASTION by conducting regular mandated and moderated penetrations of THE BREACH and explore the PARADOX known to exist on the other side. Adherence to the R.A.C.E. Protocol (Research, Analyse, Collect, and Eradicate) is mandatory at all times. You will be equipped with a CLOAK to protect you from any one of the identified and unidentified alien environments known to exist in the PARADOX and a modified DISINTEGRATOR and GUTTER to protect the Citizens of BASTION and The Enlightened Confederacy from any potential emergent incursion from the PARADOX via THE BREACH. Beware that penetrations of THE BREACH for reasons yet to be determined by previous penetrations and study of THE BREACH and the PARADOX are time limited assignments. All PARADOXES are subject to MELTDOWN. Loss of a WATCHER, CLOAK, DISINTEGRATOR, GUTTER, and all samples and data collected is an impediment to the continued study of THE BREACH and the PARADOX and progress by your fellow WATCHERS, the entirety of BASTION, the Ministry of Culture and Science, and The Enlightened Confederacy. Upon return from a penetration, you will report to the WARDENS who will collect and analyse all data from the penetration, including oral, aural, physical, and emotional. Remember your loyalty and safety as a WATCHER to BASTION, the Ministry of Culture and Science, and The Enlightened Confederacy is appreciated at all times. Thank you for your service.
—oOo—
The Breach is a roleplaying game published by Need Games!, best known for the roleplaying game inspired by Japanese console roleplaying games, Fabula Ultima. It is a bleak, dystopian Science Fiction roleplaying game of exploration and survival set in Bastion, a city-sized bunker dedicated to the exploration and examination of the consequences of an experiment that went wrong decades before. The experiment connected the world via The Breach, a portal to other dimensions and planets, which the programme within the bunker sends dedicated teams through to study and collect samples. Contact with the world outside of the bunker is extremely limited and knowledge of its current status and history since the experiment and establishment of the bunker and the programme to study the other worlds and dimensions is known only to the highest echelons of the bunker. It is set some in and inspired by the Science Fiction of the sixties and seventies, as well as range of other influences, including the television series, Chernobyl and Loki—right down to having Miss Goldie, a Miss Minutes-like figure dispense advice to the Operator, and the films, 12 Monkeys and Brazil. One other influence is the book, Roadside Picnic, though via the computer game, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. In overall terms of setting, The Breach is ahistorical as the location of The Enlightened Confederacy is never identified.

Players take the role of Watchers who are assigned to perform a series of missions through The Breach and into the Paradox, randomly generated by the Operator, as the Game Master is known. This includes the Briefing—what the mission objective is, the Paradox Danger Level—how long before its suffers meltdown, the layout of the area to be explored—six such layout maps are provided as Paradoxes frequently exhibit repeating structures, and then what is found within the layouts. Missions are intended to last a single session or so’s worth of play.

A Watcher is defined by four Approaches—Aware, Mighty, Quick, and Sneaky—which represent different means of overcoming challenges, whilst Stamina is a measure of a Watcher’s mental and physical resources. He has two Traits, which can be used to gain an Advantage or Disadvantage when facing a dangerous situation. He also has a call sign, name, a backpack, and two tools. A Watcher is protected whilst in a Paradox by a sealed suit known as a Cloak and carries a Disintegrator for ranged combat and a Gutter for close-in combat. The Cloak also collects data for the Watcher to monitor his health and external readings, which is then analysed by the Wardens when he returns to Bastion. To create a Watcher, a player assigns a d10, a d8, a d8, and a d6 to the four Approaches, and chooses his Watcher’s pronouns and the colour of his Watcher’s Cloak. Everything else is randomly determined. Throughout the process, the player is posed a number of questions which develop his Watcher.

Name: Banca
Call Sign: Supernova

APPROACHES
Aware d10 Mighty d6 Quick d8 Sneaky d8
Stamina d12
Traits: Cunning, Artistic

Disintegrator d10 (Bayonet)
Gutter d8 (Versatile)
Cloak (yellow) (Clock: 4 3 2 1)
Shield Generator d6 Motion Detector d10

Mechanically, when a Watcher fasces a difficult problem or dangerous situation, a Reaction roll is required. This requires the player to select a suitable Approach and describe both his Watcher deals with the problem or situation and what his desired objective is. The Breach uses a dice pool system with the dice being drawn from the Watcher’s Approaches, equipment or weapon, Stamina if extra effort is required, and help from another Watcher in the form of his Stamina die. All of the dice are rolled and the highest counted. A roll of six or more is a success, a roll of four or five is a success, but with consequences, and a roll of one, two, or three is a failure. Essentially then, a ‘Yes’, ‘Yes, but…’, and a ‘No’ result. A Trait can be invoked to gain an Advantage or a Disadvantage. If an Advantage, the player can reroll any dice, but if a Disadvantage, results of one, two, three, four, and five, are treated as failure.

If the result is a success, the player achieves his Watcher’s desired outcome. On failure, a complication might occur or an opportunity is lost, or the Watcher suffer Harm or a Condition. A Watcher’s Cloak will automatically resist both Harm and a Condition, but is limited in the number of times it will do this. If a Watcher does suffer Harm, the player rolls his Watcher’s Stamina die equal to the number of points of Harm suffered and suffers the lowest and worst result on the die. This ranges from instant death or severed limb to dazed or bruised, and even nothing happens. The latter is unlikely. A Watcher can only suffer five Harm before dying.

Combat in The Breach is intended to be swift and brutal. It uses the same Reaction mechanics, but allows the Watchers to take the initiative and whatever plant, creature, and other alien species that the Watchers might encounter in a Paradox to react to the Watchers rather than always attack first. When a player rolls five or less on a Reaction roll, then the Operator can counterattack with an action by the plant, creature, or other alien species. Each enemy has its own table to roll on in terms what attacks it can make, Traits that will grant it Advantage or Disadvantage, and a single die rolled for actions and which also serves as its Harm, being reduced one step for each point suffered.

What is important about the Reaction rolls made by the players that any time the dice are rolled, all of those rolled, are stepped down. Apart from items, a die cannot be stepped down below a d4. Items either break or become exhausted. However, at this stage it means that a Watcher will fail most of the time and at best hope for a success, but with consequences. What the dice are is resources and what they represent is not so much what the Watcher can do, but what the Watcher can do and for how long.

The other key mechanic to The Breach is the Clock. These represent the danger level of a Paradox, the lower the number of segments in the Clock, the greater the danger. It is filled up during the Operator’s turn when she rolls low on the danger die. As it fills up, the conditions in the Paradox will worsen and if it ever fills up completely, the Paradox suffers Meltdown and is destroyed along with everyone and everything in it.

Play of The Breach is to an extent procedural. It begins with the Briefing, which outlines the mission and its objectives. Movement within the Paradox is handled as pointcrawl with movement in the passages between the points, or areas to explore, played out as a montage. Within the areas, play switches back and forth between a turn when the players and their Watchers act and a turn when the Operator acts. During their turn, the players and their Watchers investigate and explore, to which the Operator will respond with answers to the players’ questions, whilst on her turn, the Operator will introduce and handle dangerous obstacles, roll the Danger Die, and so on. If the Watchers are finding a mission challenging, they can take a respite, put up a shelter and conduct actions such as long rests, repair items, analysis, and others.

Besides the six regular layouts for the Paradoxes, the Operator and exploration of the Paradoxes is supported with tables to determine their essence and keywords (essentially their theme), landmarks within an area, and twelve creatures that the Watchers might encounter. These provide some variety in terms of missions.

However, there is a limited description of Bastion, one which focuses on what the Watchers do when they return from a mission. This includes gaining Experience Points for making discoveries in a Paradox, undertaking training, maintenance, research and development, and even hit the bar. Of course, this gives room for the Operator to develop and describe the Bastion of her design in keeping with its period feel and tone. Without this information though, it renders Bastion as a nebulous place without the Operator knowing what its objectives are and to what purpose the leaders of Bastion are putting the discoveries made by the Watchers to. Of course, the Watchers are not meant to know, but that does not stop them asking questions or at least wondering. Thus, there is no greater story to tell, the play of The Breach being all about the short termism of one mission after another. The nearest that The Breach gets to the idea of playing through a campaign is playing a limited number of missions and successfully completing three quarters of them. It feels inadequate.

Physically, The Breach is a great looking book. The artwork is mysterious and has a half-glimpsed look as if viewed through a screen with a poor signal. The manuals and documentation issued by the Ministry of Culture and Science that litter the pages of The Breach are brilliant and develop the weird, near-dystopian tone of Bastion and life as a Watcher. The book is also well written and is packed with good advice for player and the Operator.

There is a lot to like about The Breach. It has a weird desperation to it, a strangely orderly do what we must to survive drive to it, and undertones of authoritarianism, both within Bastion and outside it. Yet whilst it handles the exploration and examination of Paradoxes well, the efforts of the Watchers never seems to have any effect beyond themselves so that they cannot affect any change or have any change to react to. If this is disheartening to the Watchers, it is equally as disheartening to the players. If so, why would the Watchers want to continue exploring the Paradoxes and why would the players want to continue playing? Ultimately The Breach feels like its should be a bigger game with bigger aims, but currently limits itself to one aspect of play without any consequences or change.

In the midst of the galactic war, the authorities are stretched thin. They cannot prosecute crime in the way that they before hostilities began. This role has been supplanted by the Nomad’s Guild, an independent, neutral organisation which licenses individuals to locate persons who have had a bounty placed on their head(s), to bring those persons to justice, dead or alive—no disintegrations, and collect the bounty. Such individuals are called Nomads and as long as a Nomad adheres to the Guild Code—Finish the Job, Only Kill When Necessary, Nomads Don’t Fight Nomads, Your Employer’s Business is their Own, and Don’t Get Attached—he can continue to collect bounties. Break the code and he is in danger of having a bounty put on his own head and becoming a target. In the course of prosecuting a contract, a Nomad will track down his target, scour the underworld and backwaters of the planet where he is hiding, and take him in. Resistance by the target of the bounty will not be the only difficulty faced by the Nomad. There may be suspicious locals and rival Nomads to be faced or avoided in getting to the target. Worse, there are six factions who regularly post bounties, and sometimes rival faction may take exception to the bounty you are about to collect! The question is, should a Nomad finish the job, collect the bounty, and so enhance what may be an infamous reputation? Or may be there is a reason not to collect at all, which means putting a price on a Nomad’s head?

This sounds like a situation in the Star Wars universe with bounty hunters going after criminals and rebels, and whilst it is not that, it is one inspired by the likes of The Empire Strikes Back and The Mandalorian. This is the set-up for Notorious: Hardscrabble bounty hunting aid intergalactic war, a solo journalling game published by AlwaysCheckers Publishing, published following a successful Kickstarter campaign. A Nomad falls into one of six types—the Armour, the Assassin, the Bot, the Brute, the Scoundrel, and the Uncanny. Each provides a Loadout—Ranged and Melee weapons, and Outfit, as well as Origin, Scar, and Trigger. The latter three add colour to the Nomad and the player is encouraged to think about others might react to his appearance and how his Nomad acts. The illustrations for these heavily suggest the influence of Star Wars. For example, the Armour looks not unlike Bobba Fett, the Bot like IG-88, and the Uncanny like Forom. He also has three attributes—Favour, Notoriety, and Motivation—representing a Nomad’s reputation on planet, adherence to the Nomad Code, and drive to succeed. Lastly, he has a Species, a Name, and a Personality. To create a Nomad, a player rolls for everything bar the attributes which always start out the same, or picks the options he wants.

Name: Mako Suds

Type: The Brute
Species: Kimano (Amphibious)
Personality: Assured
Weakness: Expectant father with eggs in his pouch
Origin: Your whole life has been dedicated to pursuing victories in worship of a fickle god
Scar: You proudly wear a belt flaunting teeth, pelts, and other morbid hunting trophies
Trigger: A New Uprising member thwarted your most glorious and lucrative bounty capture

Favour 2
Notoriety 0
Motivation 2
Loadout: rapid-fire Laser Rifle, Power Hammer, no helmet, chest bandolier, ill-fitting jumpsuit

Key to play are the Nomad’s ‘Reactions’ used to interact with Locals, Assets, Hostiles, Leads, and Target on a planet. These are ‘Speak’, ‘Threaten’, ‘Attack’, and ‘Recruit’, and not all of them can be sued against the various persons a Nomad will run into. For example, a Nomad can ‘Speak’ to anyone, but a Hostile; can only ‘Threaten’ a Hostile’; and cannot ‘Attack’ a Local or an Asset. Reactions are generally resolved by rolling two six-sided dice, one for the Nomad and one for the opponent. Whichever one rolls the highest wins the challenge and indicates the outcome. The roll for the Nomad is modified by half the value of his Favour, except for ‘Threaten’, when half of his Notoriety is used. A player can expend a point of his Nomad’s Motivation to reroll. Some Reactions automatically work. For example, a ‘Speak’ Reaction always works against a Lead or a Target. The ‘Speak’, ‘Threaten’, and ‘Recruit’ Reactions have random tables that provide a prompt for the player if successful.

The ‘Attack’ Reaction works differently in that it can be repeated and the roll is modified by Assets and Equipment for the Nomad and by Equipment for the opponent. Assets and Equipment that provide defence simply block a single attack per point. The Outcome of the ‘Attack’ Reaction is more complex and more varied than other Reactions and depends on the opponent. A Nomad will gain Favour for sparing a Hostile or Lead, but lose it for sparing a Target. He will gain Notoriety for killing a Hostile or Lead, and Favour for killing or capturing a Target. Failure can result in the Nomad being badly beaten up or injured, attracting the attention of local law enforcement and lose Notoriety, and so on.

Play of Notorious can be as a one-shot telling the story of one bounty or a series of stories each telling the story of a bounty. There are tables to create planets along with their predominant species and destinations, as well as giving the competing factions on that world. The factions consist of the Old Empire, the New Uprising, the Targ Cartel, the Red Moon syndicate, the Trade Alliance, and the Mystic Order. Each is given a short description and several reasons why it might issue a contract. They are all used to create the details of the contract. The fulfilment of the Contract is told through a loop which consists of two parts, ‘Exploration’ and ‘Destinations’, during which the player rolls on tables for each. These can generate events and Leads that will take the Nomad closer and closer to his Target. Every entry includes two options to add variety and allow for the Nomad to revisit an entry. Some Destinations also enable the Nomad to search the area.

The easiest way to generate a Lead is for the Nomad to increase his Notoriety. Effectively, as the Nomad’s reputation grows, the more likely they are to talk to him, but what this means is killing Leads and Hostiles. There is a table for creating a Lead, but the third Lead becomes the Target of the bounty, whom the players gets to detail based on the prompts on the Targets table. There are also ‘Showdowns’ tables to determine where the Nomad faces the Target down. Lastly, the ‘Epilogue’ table determines the response to how the Nomad completed the Contract.

Physically, Notorious is a short, spiral-bound book, a format which eases the player’s need to flip back and forth between tables. The writing is clear and easy to understand, and the artwork is excellent, cartoonishly invoking the feel of Star Wars without copying from it directly. One oddity is the number of reference numbers, but without any footnotes or endnotes.

Notorious is easy to pick up and play, and at two hours at most, has a pleasingly concise playing time. It can be played with the player taking just a few notes as he goes along, but he also can take the time to write the Contract up as a story in journalling fashion. The latter enables the player to build the planet where the hunt takes place up around the Nomad as he progresses. Much of the setting of Notorious is described with the barest of bones, but this leaves plenty of room for the player to flesh out the world based on the prompts provided in the tables. As the factions come into play, their motivations will also begin to influence the bigger story, especially over the course of multiple Contracts and whilst the Nomad Code says that ‘Your Employer’s Business is their Own’ and ‘Don’t Get Attached’, how long that will last up to the player and his Nomad. There is also another way in which Notorious can be used and that is to generate contracts, bounties, and thus adventures for other Science Fiction roleplaying games. Effectively, a player could play Notorious for himself, but use its content as a Game Master to run it for other players.

Notorious: Hardscrabble bounty hunting aid intergalactic war successfully combines a thrilling Science Fiction journalling game of investigation and action all of its own with a systems neutral sourcebook for other Science Fiction roleplaying games. It is a winning little combination.

The narrow streets of the city are cast in chaos as men and women flee screaming. Some are cut down by the crossbow bolts fired by the bat-winged and hooting apes from above. Some writhe in agony, set alight by the bearded and hooded wizard sat astride his black stallion with its flaming eyes. The city watch seems powerless to stop this seemingly random assault. The wizard Emirikol, resident of the Shifting Tower in the north of the city, has struck! As death and destruction rain down, the Player Characters are targeted by the flying beasts, and if they can defeat them, they have the chance to chase down the marauding wizard. Before they have the chance to defeat him, Emirikol disappears. Such is the way of wily wizards. The question is, why did Emirikol randomly attack people in the streets of the city? The Player Characters are given the opportunity to find out a day later, when the captain of the city guard approaches them and asks them if they will do what he cannot. This is to enter the Shifting Tower with its ever-changing appearance, investigate Emirikol’s activities, and confront the wizard in order to discover why he attacked the city.

This is the set-up for Dungeon Crawl Classics #73: Emirikol Was Framed!, the sixth scenario to be published by Goodman Games for use with the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. Designed by Michael Curtis for a group of six Fourth Level Player Characters, it is a city-based that primarily consists of an assault on a wizard’s tower. If the name ‘Emirikol’ sounds familiar, then it should be. It first appeared in an illustration by David Trampier called ‘Emirikol the Chaotic’ in the Dungeon Master’s Guide for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition, depicting a wizard riding down a street attacking members of the city watch with a beam of magical energy as onlookers reacted with horror. The street itself, is based on a real location, the Street of Knights, part of the old Hospitaller fortress on the island of Rhodes in Greece. From this first depiction, Emirikol the Chaotic would go on to appear in subsequent editions of Dungeons & Dragons, most notably in the adventure A Paladin in Hell for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Second Edition, as a Twenty-Fourth Level Wizard! (There is an excellent history of ‘Emirikol the Chaotic’ here.) Dungeon Crawl Classics #73: Emirikol Was Framed! is obviously inspired by ‘Emirikol the Chaotic’ in many ways, most obviously the cover. However, as the title of the scenario clearly states, Emirikol was framed and is an innocent man—at the very least, of the most recent crimes people have accused him of. Whether he is innocent of anything else remains to be seen, but the fact that he is known as Emirikol the Chaotic suggests very probably not… In the meantime, if the title of the scenario is giving a big plot point away, what exactly is going on and what is the big plot point which is not being given away?
Once past the guard leopards or after having scaled its weird, ever-changing walls, the inside of the tower is delightfully weird and non-linear—non-Euclidean, even—making it a challenge for the Judge to navigate as it is for her players and their characters. The twelve floors of the tower are not arranged or presented in linear ascending order, so that as the Player Characters move from floor to floor, the Judge is tracing their route back and forth across the map in maze-like fashion. What this means is that the map will need as careful a study as the accompanying text does. As the Player Characters explore, what they find is a classic wizard’s tower full of trophies and projects, some of which are complete, some which are not, laced with traps and the weirdness found in the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. These include a workshop packed with incomplete golems, a library of skulls containing secret knowledge that the Player Characters can access, and an upside-down waterfall which is the only means of accessing the next floor up—which means that the Player Characters will need remove any heavy armour they are wearing! The traps include tower floorplans which animate and attempt to smother the overly curious Player Character and the incomplete Golems themselves which can suck the souls of the Player Characters into them and force them to proceed in entirely artificial bodies. There is also an odd alien plant whose tendrils are embedded in the bodies of several prisoners allowing it to feed on the human bodily fluids and produce a nectar that can be sucked out of the plant’s stalk that provides both sustenance and healing! This is only one of the signs in the tower that Emirikol is Chaotic (and evil) and there are penalties for any Lawful Player Character who makes the woeful choice to imbibe any of this nectar. There is some fun treasure to be found, including Ruin, Chaotic magical sword with a hatred of man, a liquid metal hilt, and the ability to increase both the wielder’s Critical Range and die size when rolling fumbles. Ruin rewards ambition and success, not failure, so has a nasty to sting to it.
Eventually, after having traversed most of the Shifting Tower’s floors, likely having been denuded of heavy armour and possibly occupying now complete Golem bodies, the Player Characters will find their way to Emirikol’s Inner Sanctum. This is a hall of mirrors, a cliché in itself—but one that Emirikol the Chaotic takes advantage of not once, but twice. First, with the Player Characters, who is not pleased to see after their having ransacked his dwelling, and then, against Emirikol the Chaotic. This though, is not against himself, but Leotah, a rival and former lover who staged the attacks in the streets below. The end of the scenario devolves into a mass battle between the two Wizards and their cohorts, one of which the Player Characters will need to support if having both sides turn on them is to be avoided. The actual Spell Duel between Emirikol the Chaotic and Leotah is handled randomly rather being fought, although that is still possible, if complex. It is a big grand battle that will need careful handling upon the part of the Judge, but a fitting finale to adventure.

Dungeon Crawl Classics #73: Emirikol Was Framed! also includes four handouts, including images of both Emirikol the Chaotic and Leotah, and all six of the Golems complete with stats. Plus, there is the new spell, Altered Visage (used, of course, by Leotah to make her look like Emirikol the Chaotic), and ‘Four Scenes From A Conflict Eternal’. Written by Daniel J. Bishop, these are four scenes from the centuries spanning feud between the former lovers. They include the Library of the Order of the Blue Monks where they were said to study and first became lovers, an attempt by Leotah to assassinate Emirikol at the end of the world, and alternate world where, as the only humans, they renewed their romance until fate took another tilt at them. There is no advice on how to use these, the Judge being left to create his own links, but perhaps the most obvious one is have developed into mini-encounters and then stored in the library of skulls for the Player Characters to experience. All four will need some development to be turned into something playable.

Physically, Dungeon Crawl Classics #73: Emirikol Was Framed! is well done. The scenario is decently written and the artwork is overall good. The cartography is good, but problematic given its lack of linearity.
Dungeon Crawl Classics #73: Emirikol Was Framed! takes a classic situation—the need to assault or break into a wizard’s tower and find what has happened to the wizard himself. In fact, so much a classic situation, it is all but a cliché, right down to the Player Characters having to race out of the tower as it collapses behind them. Yet, Dungeon Crawl Classics #73: Emirikol Was Framed! is an entertaining treatment of a cliché, in turns weird and exciting, the result being a fun scenario that is really easy to insert into a campaign and run.

The gaming magazine is dead. After all, when was the last time that you were able to purchase a gaming magazine at your nearest newsagent? Games Workshop’s White Dwarf is of course the exception, but it has been over a decade since Dragon appeared in print. However, in more recent times, the hobby has found other means to bring the magazine format to the market. Digitally, of course, but publishers have also created their own in-house titles and sold them direct or through distribution. Another vehicle has been Kickststarter.com, which has allowed amateurs to write, create, fund, and publish titles of their own, much like the fanzines of Kickstarter’s ZineQuest. The resulting titles are not fanzines though, being longer, tackling broader subject matters, and more professional in terms of their layout and design.

—oOo—
Adventures—beginning, of course, with dungeons for Dungeons & Dragons—had long been a feature of roleplaying game magazines, such as the Dragon magazine and White Dwarf, but they had been included alongside other content such as news, reviews, and other supporting content. So, it was rare for any magazine to be devoted to entirely adventures and nothing. Of course, the long running Dungeon magazine from TSR, Inc. is the major exception, running for some two-hundred-and-twenty-one issues, in print and online between 1986 and 2013. Bootstrap Press published six issues of Adventures Unlimited in 1995 and 1996, but before both that and Dungeon, there was Tortured Souls!. Published by Beast Enterprises Limited—or ‘Beast Entz’—it ran for twelve issues between 1983 and 1988, providing support primarily for Advanced Dungeon & Dragons, First Edition and Dungeons & Dragons, but later RuneQuest.

Tortured Souls! stood out not just for its adventure-focused content, but also for its format. It was magazine-sized, but it was not quite professionally-presented enough to be a magazine like White Dwarf or Imagine, yet it was too professionally-presented to be a fanzine. Instead, it sat somewhere in between, a ‘pro-zine’ if you will. Part of this is due to the heavy look and feel of its style, unbroken by any advertising in the early issues, which at the same time gave it daunting appearance and acted as an impediment to actually reading it. The other oddity was Tortured Souls! was almost designed to be pulled apart, with its featured adventure often appearing the middle with coloured sections or on different-coloured paper more like an insert than a part of the magazine. This meant that adventures would often be split between before and after this ‘insert’ and that the magazine was not a linear read in that sense. 
Tortured Souls! Issue One launched with the following description: “TORTURED SOULS! is unique among fantasy publications, combing high quality module material with an inexpensive magazine format. Every issue contains solid gaming material, consisting solely of ready-to-play scenarios for the leading role-playing games systems, put together by some of the most experienced writers in the country.” That said, none of those writers are credited in the issue, but the editorial continued, “With four or more complete scenarios in every issue, we believe that TORTURED SOULS! gives you a much better deal than ordinary packaged modules.” In addition, issues of Tortured Souls! provided support for its Zhalindor Campaign, designed for experienced players.
Published in October/November 1983, Tortured Souls! Issue One contains three scenarios and one solo scenario, all for Advanced Dungeon & Dragons, First Edition. Two of these are for the Zhalindor Campaign. The first of the four adventures in the issue is ‘The Chevalier’s Shrine’. This is designed for a beginning party of six to seven First Level Player Characters, although not totally beginning players and the introduction to the module makes much of the fact that it is not designed for players inclined to “[M]indless ‘hack-and-slay”, but for players who want a more challenging test for their roleplaying skills. Similarly, the Dungeon Master is advised that the adventure will require some development to bring its description to life as this has been kept to a minimum. What the adventure does make use of is the Dungeon Floor Plans series published by Games Workshop and the Dungeon Master is encouraged to use them and lay them out as shown in map, together with 25 mm miniatures, in order to keep the players interested. There are notes too, on running the scenario with more experienced players and their characters, suggesting two players with a Fighter and a Thief, each of second Level, as well as notes on how to incorporate it into a campaign and possible endings to the scenario.
The setting for ‘The Chevalier’s Shrine’ is the market town of Greendale. It is notable as being besieged by a band of Orcs led by an Ogre some years, the siege being broken by a Chevalier challenging the Ogre to single combat and when he defeated the Ogre, the Orcs turned on him. The quietly conservative townsfolk repurposed an old temple to create a shrine for the fallen chevalier and forbid any townsfolk from entering the shrine or its garden whilst armed. However, as relayed to the Player Characters by a captain of the town watch after he takes them aside from their scandalous behaviour of drinking watered-down beer, something is amiss at the shrine. Since he cannot investigate armed, he asks the Player Characters to enter the shrine, determine what is going on and report back, promising to pay well. What is so delightful about ‘The Chevalier’s Shrine’ is that it has a joyously, grubby and British feel to it. Essentially, the two clerics assigned to look after the shrine have got bored, seen the lack of nightlife going on in Greendale, and decided to turn the shrine into a private members’ nightclub for the town’s wealthiest and most bored inhabitants. This though, has led to further exploration of the shrine beyond hitherto unknown secret doors, dealing with the local Thieves’ Guild with plans for expansion, and an Octopus which would not going back to being worshipped as a god! What this means is that the Player Characters are attempting to get into a medieval nightclub and depending on what they find out during their investigations and when they try to get in, they may actually be able to just waltz in, having arrived at the right time when the club is actually open and the guards thinking them to be new members! The temple is one half nightclub, one half temple to a hungry octopus with delusions of grandeur, and both run by a pair of greedy, petty clerics.
The accompanying map of the temple—done using tiles from Games Workshop’s Dungeon Floor Plans is surprisingly colourful, though very orthogonal in its layout. The secret doors are not as obvious as they could be. There are multiple ways in which ‘The Chevalier’s Shrine’ could end. The Player Characters could simply return with a report for the watch captain, they could end in a fight with the octopus, or they could find the membership for the ‘club’ and blackmail them! More altruistic Player Characters will doubtless want to free the dancing girls who are being kept prisoner in the temple. ‘The Chevalier’s Shrine’ is unexpectedly different to almost any Dungeons & Dragons adventure, almost over the top in its banality, but brilliant at the same time.
‘The Crystal Keys’ is the solo adventure in Tortured Souls! Issue One. Designed for a party of five to seven Player Characters of Second and Third Level, it can be played with a single player controlling all of the characters, with a player reading out the entries and handing the whilst the players control their characters, or with the included notes, it can be run as a standard adventure with an actual Dungeon Master. There is quite a bit of backstory to the scenario, but it boils down to the party having recently come into possession of a Red Crystal Key whilst on an expedition for their friend, the Archmage Rabellion and had it stolen by a Thief. The key is one of three necessary to open Zamgardrar’s tomb which is said to hold a great treasure. To prevent this from falling into the hands of the Thief, the Player Characters are chasing after him north into the Orc and Lizard Men-infested Badlands. 
The set-up and the actual adventure are several pages apart in the issue of Tortured Souls! It consists of two parts. The first is descriptions of the two-hundred-and-thirty hex descriptions which make up the wilderness map. Each entry has numbers indicating which paragraph to turn to as you would expect for a solo adventure book—which were incredibly popular at the time given that The Warlock of Firetop Mountain was only published the year before—as the directions they lie in. If the hex has something of interest, an entry will also refer to a lettered hex type. There twenty-six of these, one for each letter in the alphabet, and each depicts an area of terrain that the player records on his hex map. There are a lot of brigands and the like preying on the locals and other travellers, as well as some annoying Orcs and Trolls, but despite the nonlinear fashion in which the information is presented, this half of the adventure is a decent hexcrawl in which the Player Characters may have the opportunity to find the other two Crystal Keys.
‘The Crystal Keys’ gets complex is the other six-hundred-and-sixty-seven entries which detail the forty or so locations of the adventure’s dungeon. Complex because the individual entries not only have to include a description, but all the possible outcomes to the actions that the Player Characters might take. The dungeon is quite  detailed, built around puzzles involving the three Crystals and their different colours, but it is difficult to get a feel for, or an overview of, the dungeon because it is written in non-linear fashion. What this means is it is complex to play through because the player or players are acting as their own Dungeon Master, and even if run by a Dungeon Master, preparing the dungeon to be run means actually playing through it herself. Which is a time-consuming challenge all of its very own. ‘The Crystal Keys’ is cleverly done, but far more complex than most solo adventures were at the time or have been since.
The third adventure is ‘The Rising Tower’, which is the first of the two scenarios for the Zhalindor Campaign in the issue. It is intended for a party of three to eight Player Characters of Fifth to Eighth Level and takes place several hundred miles outside of the Empire in the Tumarian provinces in a valley in the Yagha-Tsorv foothills. (Unfortunately, neither the scenario nor Tortured Souls! Issue One as a whole give any further details as to the Zhalindor Campaign setting.) The tower was once the place of judgement and execution for a small kingdom, but has long since been abandoned, fallen into partial ruin, and ben occupied by a small tribe of Fire Giants. The tribe has intimidated several tribes of lesser humanoids in the area into paying tribute, but the area beyond the tower is not detailed. The tower is described in odd fashion—from the top down rather from the bottom up. The upper part of the ramshackle tower is home to the tribe of Bugbears that serve and fight for the Fire Giants, whilst the later live on the lower floors and sleep in the underground rooms, making the tower’s former gaol cells their individual sleeping quarters. Underneath are the rooms where judgement and sentence were carried out in the past, and if the Player Characters are too inquisitive, find themselves being judged and sentenced whether they are guilty or innocent.
Unlike both ‘The Chevalier’s Shrine’ and ‘The Crystal Keys’, what ‘The Rising Tower’ lacks is a hook to get the Player Characters involved, let alone anything in the way of plot. The dungeon, tower, and their inhabitants are highly detailed, the execution and judgement chambers in particular, such that the Dungeon Master would need to pay particular attention to how they work with the rest of the tower and how the Player Characters get to them. This is in addition to providing something in the way of plot or motivation for the Player Characters to want to explore the tower in what is otherwise is a big challenging situation rather than scenario.
The fourth and last scenario in Tortured Souls! Issue One—and the second for the Zhalindor Campaign—is ‘Tomb of Qadir’. It is written for a party of four to seven Player Characters of Second and Fourth Level and details the temple dedicated to the god, Ha’esha, which was turned into the tomb of its last priest, after which the cult he led died out. More recently, the tomb, which lies to the east of Eldenvaan on the edge of the desert, has been occupied by a band of Goblins. The Goblins have taken up residence following a failed uprising against their former chief in the Tsorv Mountains (as opposed to the Yagha-Tsorv foothills of ‘The Rising Tower’), but they are well organised and will put up a stiff defence against any attackers. The temple is ruined and run down, but been fortified by the Goblins. They have also moved into the rooms under the temple, but have not explored the furthest extent of the tomb. There are some nice touches here, such as zombies that have a chance to overcome being Turned by a Cleric, who can then attempt to Turn them again, and so on… and a couple of nasty traps. Again, the adventure is nicely detailed, but much like ‘The Rising Tower’, there are no hooks or motivations given for the Player Characters to want to come to the tomb.

Physically, Tortured Souls! Issue One looks decent enough for a fanzine, but amateurish for a professional magazine. It does need an edit in places and the artwork varies in quality. The cartography is plain in places, but otherwise decent.
—oOo—Doug Cowie reviewed Tortured Souls! Issue One in ‘Games Reviews’ in Imagine No. 12 (March 1984). He said, “Tortured Souls represents amazing value. The quantity of material for the money  makes it a recommended purchase. The quality of that material makes it an essential purchase. My only worry is — can they possibly keep it up issue after issue?” In answer to that question, he added the following postscript: “(PS: I have just seen issue 2, and I must say that the quality seems to have been maintained and the physical components are improved in that the covers are now thin card rather than thick paper. Issue 2 contains four ref’s scenarios and one solo — all for the AD&D game. After a quick scan, I would say that it looks like  another good issue.)”—oOo—

Tortured Souls! Issue One contains a mix of the potentially good and the excellent. ‘The Rising Tower’ and ‘Tomb of Qadir’ are potentially good because in each case, the Dungeon Master needs to supply the hooks and the motivation. ‘The Crystal Keys’ is an excellent, if complex, solo adventure, possibly the most complex solo adventure then published given it was written for a party of Player Characters for Advanced Dungeon & Dragons, First Edition! Given the complexity of ‘The Crystal Keys’ and its format, it would be very challenging to run it as a standard scenario. That leaves ‘The Chevalier’s Shrine’, which is undoubtedly the highlight of the issue. It comes with both plot and hooks and is not just an excellent scenario, but a fun one too. The overall quality of Tortured Souls! Issue One is good, providing the Dungeon Master with solid material to work with, but with ‘The Chevalier’s Shrine’, the Dungeon Master is really going to want to run.

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: Dead Body ShorePublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Agata Brig

Setting: Scandinavia, 1925Product: One-on-One Scenario
What You Get: Forty-six page, 2.24 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: When your Evil Grandpa is dead, he should stay deadPlot Hook: Go climb a mountainPlot Support: Staging advice, three NPCs, two dogs, seven handouts, one map, two Mythos spells, two Mythos tomes, and three Mythos monsters.Production Values: Decent
Pros# One-on-one scenario, but can be adjusted# More Norse than Mythos# Descent into the depths of Norse myth and betrayal# Necrophobia# Orophobia# Apeirophobia
Cons# Needs an edit# Could be better organised# Underwhelming Investigator hook
# Needs pre-generated Investigator(s)# More Norse than Mythos# The Lockheed Vega is a year out, so why not shift the scenario date?
Conclusion# More Norse than Mythos# Fear of the family is the greatest danger in a linear descent into Norse myth and betrayal

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?Horse Racing Expanded is a supplement for use with Pendragon, Sixth Edition.

It is a full colour, ten page, 1.45 MB PDF.

The layout is tidy and it is nicely illustrated.

Where is the Quest Set?Horse Racing Expanded is suitable to run anywhere where a horse race, whether impromptu or at tourney, might take place.
Who should go on this Quest?
Horse Racing Expanded is suitable for knights of all types, but focuses on the Player-knight with a high Horsemanship skill.
What does the Quest require?
Horse Racing Expanded requires the Pendragon, Sixth Edition rules or the Pendragon Starter Set. Graph paper and tokens may also be useful (but a simple grid of squares and pen works just as well).
Where will the Quest take the Knights?Horse Racing Expanded is a supplement that that focuses on the one skill and a specific use of it. This is the Horsemanship skill and its use in races than in battle. The horse race, whether impromptu or taking place at an organised event is handled over the course of between two and four rounds with the players rolling Horsemanship tests for their knights and the Game Master for her NPCs each round. The position in the race for each Player-knight and each NPC is tracked on a grid with the result of the Horsemanship tests determining how many columns they move forward on the grid—two for a critical result, one for an ordinary success, but nothing for a failed roll and back one for a fumble—and thus, potentially, if they change their order in the race. At the end of the race, the Player-knight or NPC who in the furthest column to the right to win the race.

It is simple enough, but there are modifications for the quality of the horses ridden and even the Size of the participants, and of course, a Player-knight or NPC is also free to invoke a Passion to Inspire their Horsemanship skill. At the end of the end of the race, the winner earns a Horsemanship skill check, prizes are awarded if the race is part of a tourney, and there are Glory awards too.

So far, so good, but Horse Racing Expanded does sound just a little perfunctory up until this point—and to be fair, it is. It also sounds as if it favours the Player-knight with the high Horsemanship skill—and to be fair, it does. However, what addresses this imbalance and gives a chance for participants with a lower Horsemanship skill to gain ground on the rider ahead of them are ‘Events’. Horse Racing Expanded includes a table of ten events which can occur during a horse race, the Game Master rolling randomly or picking something suitable to happen during one or more rounds of the race. Each event is given a simple description, the skill or attribute to be tested, and a list of the possible outcomes. For example, with Awareness or Hunting, the entry reads, “Up ahead, the road meets a wood bridge to allow easy crossing of a brook, but the old, neglected ford can still be seen beside it. A rider could gain time by galloping right through the shallows.” The outcome of this test result will grant a modifier to the Horsemanship skill test for the Player-knight or NPC for that round.
Some of the events are more fanciful than others, but they do two things and have one consequence. The events give a chance for Player-knights and NPCs with better skills other than Horsemanship to use them in the race and so give them a better chance against more skilled horsemen, and they make the race exciting. As a result, the race becomes a narrative rather than just a series of rolls.
Should the Knights ride out on this Quest?Although, there is nothing to stop the Game Master from using its rules and events for chases as well as races, with its limited focus, Horse Racing Expanded is more of a solid, serviceable supplement rather than a must buy purchase. If the Game Master has a player whose knight is good on horseback and wants to show off that skill, then Horse Racing Expanded will provide opportunities for that, whilst still allowing the other Player-knights to shine, and potentially, race almost as well.

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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In 1985, TSR, Inc. published the Conan Role-Playing Game, the first of five roleplaying games to be based on the Conan the Barbarian stories of Robert E. Howard. Which means that it is forty years old in 2025, but this was not the first foray into the archetypal Swords & Sorcery genre by the publisher. After all, the Conan the Barbarian stories had always been an influence upon E. Gary Gygax, TSR, Inc., and Dungeon & Dragons, with stats for Conan actually appearing in Supplement IV: Gods, Demi-Gods & Heroes for the original version of Dungeons & Dragons, which was published in 1976. That though, was unofficial, whereas his appearance in two modules for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition was official. CB1 Conan Unchained! and CB2 Conan Against the Darkness! were both published in 1984 and both were designed for Player Characters of Tenth to Fourteenth Levels and to be played by the four pre-generated Player Characters included in each module, which of course, included Conan amongst their number.
Behind the eye-catching image of Arnold Schwarzenegger as Conan, CB1 Conan Unchained! provides not only a scenario set within the Hyborian Age, but also an introduction to the setting and the rules to run the scenario using Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition. Although the image from the cover was taken from Conan the Barbarian, which was only released two years before, CB1 Conan Unchained! does not use any more images from it and it is not based on its story. Rather, CB1 Conan Unchained! takes its cue from the short stories by Robert E. Howard—‘Queen of the Black Coast’, ‘Red Nails’, and the unfinished ‘The Hall of the Dead’. It is from these stories that Conan himself and two of the three other pre-generated Player Characters come from. Besides Conan, they include Nestor the Gunderman and Valeria of the Red Brotherhood, whilst Juma the Warrior is inspired by later comics. All have weapon proficiencies and secondary skills, whilst Conan has a special ability which means he is very rarely surprised. Conan himself is a Thirteenth Level Fighter and a Seventh Level Thief, Valeria a Tenth Level Fighter and a Ninth Level Thief, Juma a Twelfth Level Fighter, and Nestor the Gunderman a Fourteenth Level Fighter.
One notable addition to all four Player Characters is that of Luck Points. This is the first of several new rules in CB1 Conan Unchained! Conan has twelve of these, Nestor and Juma have ten each, and Valeria has sixteen! These are included because, “Conan is sometimes able to do things beyond the range of the AD&D rules. These impossible actions are part of Conan’s special abilities. It is important for characters to be able to do the same things, so they are given Luck Points.” However, they are not spent by the player per se, but by the Dungeon Master. She is told to encourage the players to have their characters perform “…[H]eroic, amazing, or impossible feats…”, with a player expected to describe what his character is trying to do and the Dungeon Master then adjudicate the cost without the player being told how many Luck Points his character has left. For a single Luck Point, a Player Character can make an extra attack in a round, automatically hit an opponent, climb without falling, leap a chasm, and so on; whilst for two Luck Points, he can knock out a person with fist or weapon, spring back from a trap just in time, and climb while carrying another person; and for three Luck Points, do something heroic beyond the scope of the rules. They cannot be spent on a roll that has already been made, on a Saving Throw, or a Fear Check. Some opponents also have their own Luck Points.
To account for the lack of the Cleric Class in the Hyborian Age and thus the lack of healing magic, a Player Character always heals a single Hit Point per day and Hit Points equal to half the Player Character’s Constitution if he rests for a whole day.
The other major addition is the Fear Factor to found in certain creatures and monsters as well as magic effects and reflect Conan’s own instinctive reaction to the unnatural and things that defy explanation. Whenever a Player Character fails a Fear Check, he is struck dumb momentarily or flees for his life, until he overcomes his fear or is hurt again. Sources of Fear include monsters, spellcasters, and unusual magic items or situations and have a Fear Statistic ranging between one and ten. When a Fear Check is required, the Fear Statistic is multiplied by the Player Character’s Wisdom and the resulting value is rolled against on percentile dice. Succeed and the Player Character is unaffected, but fail and he is filled with fear.
There can be no doubt that the inclusion of Luck Points and Fear Checks are radical changes to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition, that certainly in the case of Luck Points take the roleplaying game far beyond what it is normally expected to do. In fact, what the inclusion of Luck Points highlights is that as much as Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition is pitched as a roleplaying game of heroic adventures and fantasy, it is actually not heroic. Arguably, the fantasy of Conan the Barbarian and the Swords & Sorcery genre is pulp fantasy, but if that is case, then given the fact that Dungeons & Dragons is inspired by Swords & Sorcery, what Luck Points show is that Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition cannot do Conan-style, Swords & Sorcery as written without them. And since they encourage roleplaying in a particular style, they are actually the first roleplaying mechanic to appear in Dungeons & Dragons! (As opposed to Inspiration, which appeared in Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition in 2014!)
In fact, the inclusion of Luck Points in CB1 Conan Unchained! is not only a highly radical design choice for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition and TSR, Inc., but also a very modern one. Top Secret: An Espionage Role Playing Game for 3 or more players, ages 12 to adult, published by TSR, Inc. in 1980 included an optional rule for Fame and Fortune Points which enabled a Player Character to overcome a fatal wound. It would be James Bond 007: Role-Playing In Her Majesty’s Secret Service, published in 1983 by Victory Games, that developed the concept fully as Hero Points that could be used to adjust skill rolls, shrug off wounds and even death, and enable the Player Characters to be more heroic. However, in The Adventures of Indiana Jones Role-Playing Game, published by TSR, Inc. in 1984, only offered Player Points, which can only be spent to reduce the severity of a Player Character’s wounds or injuries. It is incongruous that in two roleplaying products from the same publisher and the same designer—David Cook—released in the same year, it is a scenario for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition that is given Luck Points.
If the Luck Points are a good addition, Fear Factor, less so. It is not so much a case of CB1 Conan Unchained! not needing a mechanic for handling fear, but rather a question of whether it not it needs a specific new rule for handling fear. Could not the Saving Throw mechanics of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition be used instead? That said, the Fear Check mechanic is simple and fast.
One other change that CB1 Conan Unchained! makes is to classify its scenes into several types. These are normal, random, and plot encounters. Normal encounters are those typical of an adventure, such as exploring a ruin or attacking a pirate ship, whilst random encounters are there to spice up the action. Plot encounters are scenes in which the Player Characters have to act through with only a limited number of choices in how they can act. The Dungeon Master is advised that they be handled with care lest the players feel forced in their characters’ actions. Unfortunately, ‘plot encounters’ like this were not well received at the time and are still looked at with some disdain, though more so in the case of DL1 Dragons of Despair—which came out the same year as CB1 Conan Unchained!.
The introduction to the Hyborian Age in CB1 Conan Unchained! is short, but informative. It highlights how the countries and peoples of the Hyborian Age are formed of different individual groups, each easily identified and with different attitudes and behaviours. The latter means that is often possible to identify someone in the Hyborian World just by their actions. Steel weapons are available, but armour is rarely more than chain or scale. Monsters like those of Dungeons & Dragons are very rare, with giant beasts and demons, elementals, giants, and golems being common. Magic in the Hyborian Age is practiced, but rare, confined to summoning, illusions, charms, and death spells, so greatly feared. Magical items are even rarer and invariably dangerous to those who wield them, though this does not stop sorcerers hunting for both them and dusty tomes of magic.
The scenario on both sides of the narrow Sea of Vilayet and opens with the adventurers as mercenaries in the employ of the Khan of Turan, hired to put down a rebellion by Kustafa, the governor of a city who has refused to pay the taxes that are due. However, a strange magical attack by darkness and shadows finds the army they were part of destroyed and the adventurers on the run. This is the first of the scenario’s four Plot Encounters, the second following close on its heels as the Player Characters are captured by the Mongel Horde-like Kozaki nomads who plan sell them to Stygian slavers. The problem with this Plot Encounter is that the Player Characters have to be captured for the scenario to proceed and given that this is at the beginning of the scenario, they have a lot of Luck Points to spend. Now the nomads do use lariats to capture them, but it is possible for the players to burn through an awful lot of their characters’ Luck Points before that happens and this is right at the start of the scenario.
The Player Characters are not expected to escape, but to prove themselves worthy of being one of the Kozaki and then over a series of events make themselves popular, and eventually, challenge the hetman of the group. There is a good mix of events and encounters to throw at the Player Characters throughout this process and they are given plenty of opportunity to prove themselves. There is even an encounter when a rival to the post of hetman attempts to assassinate a Player Character who looks like he is vying for the position. Of course, it also possible for the Player Characters to escape, but it is not nearly as interesting as when the scenario presents. Whether or not the Player Characters escape, or they become part of the Kozaki, they will in the third Plot Encounter of the scenario run into a female NPC. She will reveal herself as Costhiras, the mistress of the Khan of Turan, who was visiting the city that he sent the army that the Player Characters were part of to recapture it after it rose in rebellion and stopped paying taxes. She tells them that Kustafa, the governor of the city did not do this willingly. He has fallen under the influence of Bhir-Vedi, an evil sorcerer who searches for her still—and to enforce that fact, she is attacked by an Invisible Stalker that instant!
Costhiras begs for the Player Characters to help her and offers to guide them to The Citadel of Bhir-Vedi (or they can follow her if she was snatched by the Invisible Stalker). Either way, this leads them to travel with a band of pirates lead by a somewhat tiresome pirate captain (though he does fight with a sword blade attached to the steel cap on the stump of his wrist and if desperate, can fire it on a spring), but eventually the Player Characters will get to the other side the Sea of Vilayet and the entrance to The Citadel of Bhir-Vedi. There is a short maze-like cavern to navigate before coming upon Bhir-Vedi’s tower, a fairly standard sorcerer’s tower by any measure. There are a fair number of traps to avoid, mostly requiring a check to see if the Player Characters are surprising before they can spend Luck Points, and there is the strong possibility of them being captured after being put to sleep and then waking up to find themselves chained atop the tower ready to be sacrificed to some god or other by Bhir-Vedi. Hopefully, they will have retained enough Luck Points to break their chains (or at least make a Bend Bars/Lift Gates roll)! And after that? Enough points to kick Bhir-Vedi off the top of the tower!
Physically, CB1 Conan Unchained! is disappointing. It looks good, with good art and cartography, but the editing is poor with names constantly changing and inconsistent descriptions.
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CB1 Conan Unchained! was reviewed by Steve Hampshire in the ‘Game Reviews’ section of Imagine No. 24 (March, 1985). He said, “The module itself also has some uniquely ‘Conan’ features. Normal AD&D monsters are almost totally replaced by various human opponents and potential opponents. Surprisingly, some of these are good enough to challenge Conan! The plot is simple and rather derivative, but it takes in some interesting settings and encounters. For most part it plays well, despite niggles like a ship that keeps changing its name, and monsters using their useless wings to fly into attack.” He concluded his review by saying, “The mood of this module is different form the normal run of AD&D material, and the players and referee really need to get into the swing of the thing. It helps if one is familiar with the Conan books or film. This scenario is good for introducing the characters, but stronger plotlines will be needed of there is to be series.”
Rick Swan reviewed CB1 Conan Unchained! in the ‘Capsule Reviews’ in The Space Gamer Number 73 (March/April, 1985). Of the new rules—the Fear Factor and Luck Points—he said, “D&D purists may freak, but the rules work and add to the heroic feel of the setting. Fans of R.E. Howard will happy to know that Cook has approached the source material with considerable respect and that Conan Unchained is generally consistent with the Hyborian world we all known and love.” However, he added that, “The basic problem is that Conan isn’t a particularly good choice for the D&D system. Compared to most D&D settings, Conan’s world is pretty barren. There’s no magic or interesting settings to speak off, and the adventure is nothing special (the characters are captured by slavers, negotiate their freedom, and rescue a fair maiden from a nasty castle).” He concluded that, “Conan Unchained can be played as part of a regular D&D campaign without Conan and associates, but what’s the point? There are plenty of better roleplaying modules available from TSR and elsewhere. Conan and D&D go together like peanut butter and tuna fish – it can be done, but you can bet there’s going to be a funny taste.”—oOo—
CB1 Conan Unchained! suffers from several problems. Most obviously, if you going to play it, who plays Conan and why would you want play anyone else? Second, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition does not feel right for it and is not right for, as evidenced by the inclusion of Luck Points which enables the heroic feats that Conan calls for and which Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition is not designed to do. In fact, what it highlights is how staid the design to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition was by 1984. Third, how poorly plotted it is. The adventure does not really start until the Player Characters get captured, so why does that have to be played out and the players waste their characters’ Luck Points? Then the sequence with the pirate captain is tedious, designed to barb the Player Characters into action. The plot really is most straightforward. Yet there are flashes of excitement to found in CB1 Conan Unchained! The sequence in which the Player Characters free themselves from the nomads and then take over is actually quite fun and the inclusion of Luck Points encourage the players to be a little more inventive than Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition necessarily might be in normal play.
Ultimately, CB1 Conan Unchained! feels rushed and underdeveloped, an attempt to bring fans of Conan the Barbarian and Conan the Destroyer to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition and fans of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition to Conan the Barbarian and Conan the Destroyer, that is not really good enough to attract either and satisfies neither.

It is definitely well before tiffin time, but the sun is bright, the day is before you, and your man Mayhew has coffee and kedgeree and bacon and eggs on the table—and if last night’s escapade with ‘Aggie’ Oakeshott, ‘Florrie’ Steggles, Orlando Pendlebury, and Horace Heppenstall were anything to go by, there’s a police constable’s hat with some flowers in it sat in the washstand and a hair of the dog on the beside cabinet. A good man that Mayhew and he will probably know what to do with the poor policeman’s helmet even as he laying out your suit for the day. Refreshed, ready for the off, and full of good ideas, though not necessarily your own, you are ready to motor up to town and see what’s what with your chums at your social club in the heart of Peccadillo! It is the nineteen twenties and as that American writer that everyone seems to like, F. Scott Fitzgerald, said, they are roaring and there is Jazz on the record player, the Great War is over, women have finally got the vote, and there are Bright Young Things abroad! And you want to be one of them and dance and have fun with the other fine fellows of your social club. If that means hijinks and larks and making Hugo Pinker and Wilmot Butt and those other fools at the Spit & Polish, the rival to your social club look like bigger, then so be it! You heard from your cousin Honoria ‘Norrie’ Pinker—Hugo’s much better sister—that Hugo is thinking of entering a club team in the country gala hosted by their parents, Lord and Lady Pinker. So, you are thinking of getting your chums together and making Hugo and his fellows look like stinkers—and if that means your aunt and uncle might stop looking down their collective noses at you, all the better!

This is an episode from Flabbergasted! A Comedy Roleplaying Game inspired by Jeeves and Wooster, Fawlty Towers, and even Downton Abbey, in which the Player Characters—or Protagonists—are members of the same social club and get involved in all manner of scrapes and spots of bother, all in pursuit of keeping both themselves and their club in good standing, all whilst pulling the noses of those confounded arses at the rival club. Published by The Wanderer’s Tome following a successful Kickstarter campaign, Flabbergasted! is a narrative-driven, rules-light and light-hearted storytelling game set in and inspired by the nineteen twenties without being too historically accurate—and certainly not too socially historically accurate. It is designed to be played in episodes, like a television series, with each episode having an opening scene, the episode itself, and the closing credits, though of course there is more to it than that, and that a complete Season is made up of several episodes. Both the players and the Director—as the Game Master is known—are expected and encouraged to improvise during play as much as they use the roleplaying game’s rules.

A Protagonist is one of four Archetypes. The four are Aristocrat, Bohemian, Well-To-Do, or Staff. The Aristocrat comes from a titled family which will give him wealth and comfort; the Bohemian has eschewed materialism in favour of art and performance and a free-spirited life; the Well-To-Do has acquired social standing due to her wealth, whether she inherited it or earned it; and the Staff is a self-reliant and dependable member of the service industry, perhaps in service to an Aristocrat or Well-To-Do. A Protagonist will have a Memento, a Flaw, and a Dilemma. The Memento is an important item that the player can have his Protagonist bring into play, but which will not provide any mechanical benefits; a Flaw is a personality feature or a vice that will get the Protagonist into trouble, such as ‘Persnickety’ or ‘Tippler’; and the Dilemma is an ongoing problem that constantly causes problems, but will probably be resolved over the course of a season.

A Protagonist begins play with four ‘Scene Cues’ which enable a Protagonist to automatically affect a scene without the need to roll dice. However, they can only be used a limited number of times per session. For example, the Aristocrat has ‘Throw A Tantrum’ meaning that he will whinge and wine and kick up a fuss, drawing attention to himself, but eventually getting his way or ‘Virtuous Beyond Reproach’, his moral rectitude being famously strong enough for him to withstand almost any desire or temptation. All four Archetypes have multiple ‘Scene Cues’, allowing a variety of different Protagonist types to be created, and every ‘Scene Cue’ comes with a lovely piece of dialogue to show the reader how it works.

A Protagonist has four Character Traits—bravado & persuasion, culture & etiquette, wit & sharp, and creativity & passion—the nearest that a Protagonist has to attributes in other roleplaying games. Character Traits range in value between one and eight and a Protagonist begins with a point in three of them and two points in the other one, his Archetype’s defining Character Trait, representing his upbringing. The defining Character Trait for the Aristocrat is Culture & Etiquette, Creativity & Passion for the Bohemian, Bravado & Persuasion for the Well-To-Do and Wit & Sharp for the Staff. A Protagonist has access to Readies—the currency in Flabbergasted!—which can be spent to bribe someone, donate to a charity, patronise the arts, and upgrade the Social Club.

Most importantly, a Protagonist has Social Standing. This has its own tracker, which determines if the Protagonist has a Scandalous or a Dignified reputation. Being caught making a bribe—such as paying a policeman to look the other way, will lower a Protagonist’s Social Standing towards a Scandalous reputation, whilst donating to charity or patronising the arts will raised towards a Dignified reputation. Using ‘Scene Cues’ will also affect a Protagonist’s Social Standing. Social Standing starts at zero, neither Scandalous nor Dignified. The benefit to having either a Scandalous or a Dignified reputation is social rather than mechanical. For example, too high a Scandalous reputation and the target of the Protagonist’s ardour might not want to be seen consorting with him, whereas her racy younger sister might! And if a Protagonist’s Scandal or Dignity on his Social Standing Tracker ever reaches ten, he will be invited to join a secret society. Eight of these are detailed in Flabbergasted! and being a member has some interesting, but secret, benefits.

Protagonist creation is really matter of making choices—picking Archetype, Memento, Flaw, and Dilemma, as well as the ‘Scene Cues’ from the Archetype. A player divides five points between the four Character Traits.

Name: Hortense Wiggins

Archetype: Staff
Occupation: Lady’s companion

Memento: My Albert’s war medal
Flaw: Ghastly Gossip
Dilemma: Has fallen in love with the lady’s brother
Social Standing: 0

Readies: 40

CHARACTER TRAITS
Culture & Etiquette 3 Creativity & Passion 2
Bravado & Persuasion 2 Wit & Sharp 3

SCENE CUES
Unflappable, This Way Please, A Stitch in Time, Speciality (Codes & Puzzles)

The Social Club is where the Protagonists get together. There are multiple Social Clubs in the city and each has a theme, name, description, slogan, and an emblem. Each Social Club also has a Rival Club. The players are free choose all of these and create one for their Protagonists or the Director can create one, but several example Social Clubs and Rival Clubs are included, such as the ‘Good Socie-Tea’ and its rival, ‘Java Jivers’, ‘The After Party’ and its rival, ‘The Cap And Gown Club’. Every Social Club begins play with a ‘Public Challenge’, often issued by a Rival Club, and will together with its members face more during the course of play. It might be to get the name of the Social Club into the newspaper before that of the Rival Club or last longer in a haunted house than the members of the Rival Club. Successfully overcoming a Public Challenge garners a Social Club Renown, which is initially set at zero and can rise as high as fifteen. Higher Renown enables a Social Club to spend its Readies to improve its facilities. It will out as a single room, can go on to add a Trophy Room, Cabaret Hall, and even a Printing Press. Renown and membership numbers can go down as well as up, especially if a Social Club fails to deal with whatever Big Trouble is besetting it, but unless the Social Club suffers a series scandal, the primary consequences are more social in nature.

Mechanically, to have his Protagonist undertake an action in Flabbergasted!, a player rolls a number of six-sided dice equal to the Character Trait he wants his Protagonist to use. If the player can persuade the Director that the Character Trait and the way his Protagonist wants to use it is appropriate, there is nothing to stop from doing so. Every result on the dice that is a five or six counts as a Success. A Moderate Challenge requires one Success, Hard Challenge requires two Successes, and a Daunting Challenge requires two Successes. If the roll is a failure or the Protagonist requires more Successes and the Protagonist has earned one or more Lucky Coins—awarded by the Director for creative or helpful play, good roleplaying, and so on—he can flip these, call heads or tails, and hope to generate the needed Successes.

In terms of setting, Flabbergasted! not only details serval Social Clubs and Rival Clubs, but provides a good description of the city of Peccadillo, complete with notable landmarks like the world famous Pender’s Cricket Pitch or the city’s biggest dance hall, Revelry Hall, and a discussion of the things that the Protagonists can up to in the city and outside it. For the Director, Flabbergasted! includes seventy story hooks, two complete Seasons and a sandbox setting. Both Seasons come with a premade Social Club and a set of Protagonists, as well as the outline of nine Episodes. ‘The Sleuth Society’ focuses on solving crime better than its rival Gumshoe Society, whilst ‘The Best Buds’ is about growing and showing the best plants over its rival, ‘The Garden Grandmas’. In both cases, the Director will want to develop the outlines a bit more, whilst the sandbox setting, ‘Welcome to Brabble Manor’ presents the means to do location-focused, either as one-off mini-campaign or an addition to an existing campaign. Lastly, the appendices to Flabbergasted! provide a guide to the phrases and words common to the period, what to wear, what to eat and drink, and tables to generate names, and more, to extra detail and flavour to a campaign.

If the support for the Director is good, the advice for player is very good, and the advice for the Director is excellent. For the player this covers tone and failing forward as well as how to improve his improvisational skill, whilst the Director there is advice on the structure of the roleplaying game and her role in it, and how to adjudicate ‘Scene Cues’, Social Standing, Club Renown, and so on. In particular, the structure of play breaks down the individual episode into its three acts and what each should or could entail. For example, Act One or ‘The Opening’ should ideally include a recap of the last episode, some downtime scenes where each Protagonist is given solo time in the spotlight, and then the conflict for the episode is introduced. Whilst Act Two is the meat of the episode, Act Three, or the ‘Closing Credits’ is more a wrap up for the game just played rather part of the actual story of the episode. Here Renown is awarded to the Social Club, Readies are paid out, both Social Club and the Protagonists can be improved, so on. It is during this act that Nicknames can be awarded—as much as the Director as the players—depending on the actions of the Protagonists during play. A Nickname may change later, but if a Protagonist has one, it can be used as ‘Scene Cue’ once per session, although unlike a ‘Scene Cue’, the consequences of using a Nickname may not have the desired outcome. Overall, the advice is really very good and will help both player and Director get into the swing of Flabbergasted!’s play, whilst the combination example Seasons, the sandbox setting, and numerous examples, combined with refereeing advice really make learning to ‘direct’ Flabbergasted! such an easy task. There are some suggestions too, that Flabbergasted! can encompass other genres, like the murder mysteries of Agatha Christie or the occult, but neither are explored in Flabbergasted! That said, Flabbergasted! need not strictly adhere to the Jazz Age either as it could easily work in the nineteen thirties or nineteen fifties as much as the nineteen twenties, though again, that is outside the scope of the core rulebook.

If there is an issue with Flabbergasted!, it is that as presented as a large hardback, it looks like a bigger and more complex game than it actually is. Really though, Flabbergasted! is a simple storytelling game, actually easy to pick up and grasp once you get past its glad rags. In fact, mechanically, it is so easy to pick up, it is really easy to teach and that, combined with the familiarity of the setting and the comedic tone, means Flabbergasted! can be used as an introductory roleplaying game for new players. In that, it helps that it looks so good and that the Director has a lot of support.

Physically, Flabbergasted! A Comedy Roleplaying Game looks amazing. The artwork is joyously diverse whilst capturing the fun and frolics that lie at the heart of the game. The writing is excellent and a pleasure to read and supported with innumerable examples that capture and reinforce the tone and style of the roleplaying game.

Flabbergasted! A Comedy Roleplaying Game is an ever so hotsy-totsy duck soup. This is a ritzy, swanky roleplaying game that sets everything up for hijinks and hokum and then supports it with all of the accoutrements you should ever want. Flabbergasted! A Comedy Roleplaying Game is the bees knees and it should be everyone’s cup of tea.

Webworld is a disc-shaped planet spinning through the cosmos tethered to the web of the great spider, An’Ansee. It is a world of fantasy and magic, of dragons and dungeons and trolls and tunnels and orcs and oubliettes, where all manner of creatures and peoples can be found, but there is no better place to the start than the heart of the realm, the city that welcomes all visitors from next next door and the next universe, which dangles at the centre of the web spun by An’Ansee, who hangs below. This is Heq Moreveg, whose inhabitants can look up to the fantastic disc from they descended and out into the night sky of the universe from they came. Just as the disc dwellers have the pleasure of looking down on the Heq Morevegians! It is a raucous city of dwellers from hither and thither, who rub along at the best of times, brawl with each at other times, and riot at the worst of times. Under the shadow of the disc above, it is the dubious duty of the Dusk Watch to keep the peace, whether through hard graft, honest graft, or dishonest graft—and if that fails, through serendipity and stupidity. And sometimes, if a dusk’s patrol goes very, very badly, the members of the Watch have to descend into the Underweb… Unfortunately, on their very watch, some new members of the Dusk Watch are not only going to find themselves voluntarily being led into the Underweb, but they are also going to find themselves very involuntarily being thrown into it! And with the future of Heq Moreveg at stake, they are going to have to find their way back out again. This is the set-up for Beam Me Up, a scenario and mini-supplement for ACE!—or the Awfully Cheerful Engine!—the roleplaying game of fast, cinematic, action comedy. Published by EN Publishing, best known for the W.O.I.N. or What’s Old is New roleplaying System, as used in Judge Dredd and the Worlds of 2000 AD and Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition, where previous entries in the series have tended to be one-shot, film night specials, here the given scenario (or scenarios) is more expansive.
Orcs & Oubliettes is actually very slightly more than a scenario and mini-supplement for ACE! In fact, it is actually a roleplaying game all of its very own within the various worlds of ACE! There are numerous points within the adventures set in these worlds when the Player Characters can relax, take time out of their own adventures, to play out fantasy adventures with characters of their own. (Even to point as in thirties-set Montana Drones and the Raiders of the Cutty Sark where roleplaying games would have been an anachronism.) The genre for Orcs & Oubliettes is, of course, fantasy, and in particular, as its ‘noun-ampersand-noun’ name suggests, the roleplaying game fantasy of Dungeons & Dragons. Yet, Orcs & Oubliettes is not fully a parody of Dungeons & Dragons, for it is also by inspired by another fantasy, that of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series of novels. It is not set on a disc-shaped world per se, but rather Heq Moreveg is suspended in the webs spun by An’Ansee below it.
Heq Moreveg is described in broad detail, noting that although ruled by a king, but that the role is not hereditary, chosen from the members of the ‘Brazen Yeopersons of the Elective Council of Keepers’—or ‘BY’ECK’, whose are themselves elected representatives from amongst the city’s many and varied trade bodies. The city is built on stone slabs suspended in the web and subject to the strange cycle of light and dark from a sun that loops around the disc above casting regular periods of day and night. The three main districts of the city swirl out from the city centre—the Monarch’s Spiral, which contains the government buildings, guild headquarters, and houses of the rich; the Residents’ Spiral where most Heq Morevegians live; and the Traders’ Spiral, where most of the city’s trade and business is conducted.
In terms of characters, Orcs & Oubliettes provides four pre-generated members of the Dusk Watch. One is an experienced Watch Captain, a silver-plated mechanoid with a heart, but the other three are totally inexperienced. They include a larcenous faerie Sprite, a teenage wizard, and an inattentive Troll, but details of the Sprite and the Troll are included for the players to create their own using the ACE! rules. There is also a list of equipment and gear to buy and find, all the way up to magical items like a Climbing Potion and a Riveted Rod that always stays in place, Bag of Storing and Lidded Eye lantern whose light reveals anything invisible, Bracers of Giant Strength and even a Lamp of Wishes!
More than half of Orcs & Oubliettes consists of the eponymous scenario. On their very first shift, the Dusk Watch’s newest patrol is caught up in a diplomatic incident. An emissary from a warlike and carnivorous plant species has been kidnapped and dragged into the Underweb, so they have to rescue the diplomat before war breaks out! Despite their efforts, the newest members of the Dusk Watch find themselves ex-members after the rescue attempt goes awry, the emissary turns on them in a murderous rage, and they are not only blamed for his death, but put on trial and found guilty too! Their sentence is to be thrown into the Orphic Oubliette, an interdimensional pocket where the city’s most notorious criminals and darkest secrets are dumped and forgotten. The Orphic Oubliette actually turns out not be quite as dangerous as its reputation suggests, and the Player Characters will find some help coming from unexpected quarters—at least in traditional fantasy roleplaying terms—a tribe of helpful Orcs, and be able to get back out with relative ease. They will also have found the means to clear their names, but that still leaves the question as to what is actually going on and who is responsible.
‘Orcs & Oubliettes’ clips along at a handy pace, a classic fantasy tale, slightly tongue in cheek in tone, of despicable plans and unbridled ambition. Along the way, the Player Characters will bargain with a demon, gain a mighty forgotten weapon, and uncover a grand conspiracy hidden within a grand conspiracy, all before facing a dragon, stopping the city from going up in flames, and so saving the day! The scenario itself should take a secession or two, to play through, three at most.
Physically, Orcs & Oubliettes is well presented with decent, if dark artwork.
Although Orcs & Oubliettes does indeed involve orcs and oubliettes, and does descend into dungeons—or oubliettes—not once, but twice, yet this supplement for ACE! is not the parody of Dungeons & Dragons that the title suggests it to be. Instead, this is more about the weird mélange of city hung in strange circumstances above the oubliettes and the schemes and shenanigans going on there. The obvious inspiration and its familiarity may result in some players finding it too familiar and some finding that it is not familiar enough, so Orcs & Oubliettes is not going to sit—like Heq Moreveg, hang—in everyone’s sweet spot. Nevertheless, Orcs & Oubliettes is an entertaining scenario that will provide a couple of fun sessions’ worth of play.

In ages past there stood on the edge of the kingdom the dwelling of a great wizard. He was known as the Hand Mage, for the tower in which he experimented and hoarded his magics and his treasures was purportedly shaped like an open hand. After standing at the edge of the kingdom for many years, the Hand Mage’s Tower disappeared without reason and without a trace. Of course, the Hand Mage being a wizard meant that there were rumours that he had offended the gods and cast into hell or that the pact he had made with a demon for his powers had run its course and he was paying his due, likely having also been cast into hell. It has been so long since the disappearance of the Hand Mage’s Tower that it has passed into legend, a mere footnote in the history of the kingdom and some sage’s dusty notes. Now though, the Hand Mage’s Tower has reappeared exactly where it once stood. Where has it been? Is the Hand Mage still inside? If not, what has happened to him, let alone the tower itself? And can his secrets and treasures be found within its walls?

This is the set-up for Module T1 – Hidden Hand of the Horla, a short, but detailed scenario 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 published by Appendix N Entertainment and is part of the publisher’s ‘Gateway to Adventure’ series of supplements. What this means is that adheres to an ‘Old School’ ethos in terms of its design. So, there will be encounters and threats in the adventure that will be too challenging to defeat or overcome for the Player Characters of the Level that it was written for, although there is nothing to prevent players using lateral thought or cunning; traps and puzzles rely on the players solving them rather than a mere roll of the dice; player creativity is encouraged; and adventures are designed as toolkits with scope for the game Master to develop details during play. Certainly, this applies to Module T1 – Hidden Hand of the Horla, as there is one threat which will be difficult for the Player Characters to defeat.

Module T1 – Hidden Hand of the Horla is designed for Player Characters of First to Third Level, and can be easily slotted into a campaign and played through in a session or two. It uses Dyson Logos’ ‘The Stone Sinister’ as the map of the Hand Mage’s Tower and includes new monsters and new spells. What brings the Player Characters to the Hand Mage’s Tower is essentially treasure, which feels rather drab. The adventure includes a table of rumours, but most of them are not very interesting either. What is interesting is that the Player Characters are not the only ones with an interest in the tower. A tribe of Chaotic Goat Folk, led by the shaman, Sha’aazra’aak, are set on looting the tower for its magical treasures and will already have been in the tower for a number of days before the Player Characters and barricaded the most obvious entrance. The scenario includes a table of options for what the Goat Folk have done and what they are up to. This is to make the scenario replayable, but it is debatable as to how replayable the scenario actually is, given the fact that the whole scenario consists of a tower with thirteen locations and four options in terms of Goat Folk actions. Plus, the tower is shaped like a hand, so it is highly memorable and if the Game Master really has to give a good reason why the characters would want to return to the Hand Mage’s Tower, let alone the players play through it again.

In fact, there is a reason why the Player Characters might want to return to the Hand Mage’s Tower, but it requires a magical item which enables control of the tower and which the scenario only mentions, but does not detail, and finding that magical item lies very much outside the scope of the adventure. Of course, in the event that the Player Characters obtain this item, by the time they return to the Hand Mage’s Tower, it will have changed as the Goat Folk will no longer there and the Player Characters will have looted all of its valuables previously. Now perhaps a table of motivations and hooks beyond simply looking for treasure could have supported the scenario actually being replayable, but again, as written, highly debatable.

Once the Game Master has decided upon what the Goat Folk are doing, the Hand Mage’s Tower is nicely detailed with particular attention paid to the Hand Mage’s working areas. Careful investigation of these will reveal some of what happened to the Hand Mage before he disappeared and thorough searches will uncover plenty of treasure to take away if the Player Characters came equipped for haulage! In fact, the Hand Mage’s Tower is a treasure in its own right. Claiming it though means facing the true danger that lies hidden in the tower and then the Game Master developing the means to take control outside of the adventure itself. This danger lies behind the scenario’s big puzzle—depicted very nicely in the scenario’s on handout—and is insidiously nasty. This is the Horla, based on the short story ‘Le Horla’, published in 1887 by the French author, Guy de Maupassant. An invisible creature, it will attempt to possess a Player Character and then proceed, in the long term, to betray and kill the rest of the party. This then, is the threat that the Player Characters are unlikely to be able to overcome at their Level, merely be lucky enough to make a successful Saving Throw to avoid being possessed. That said, destroying the Horla may be a good reason for the Player Characters to return to the Hand Mage’s Tower. Of course, handling the possession and roleplaying the betrayal requires careful play upon the part of both Game Master and players.

In addition to the scenario, Module T1 – Hidden Hand of the Horla includes three appendices. In turn, these detail the various monsters in the adventure, such as Animated Books and Winged Vipers as well as the Goat Folk and the Horla; a selection of spells with a hand-theme, like Mage Hand, Forceful Hand, and Crushing Hand, with a guide to spells beyond Sixth Level (and thus outside the scope of Old School Essentials); and a list of Inspirational Media. The latter does include ‘Le Horla’ alongside Twin Peaks and Diary of a Madman.

Physically, Module T1 – Hidden Hand of the Horla is very nicely presented. The layout is clean and tidy, and the artwork is good as well. Naturally, the cartography is excellent. The adventure does need an edit in places.

Module T1 – Hidden Hand of the Horla is a toolkit in that it will need working into a campaign given that it has consequences beyond the limits of the Hand Mage’s Tower and it really does need a hook or three to get the Player Characters involved beyond mere treasure hunting. Further, its claims of replayability are dubious at best as written and so again, will require some development upon the part of the Game Master. Module T1 – Hidden Hand of the Horla is a decent mini-scenario, an easy to run introductory adventure, though one which does have a sting in its tale that needs careful handling.

A mountain infested with rival bandits, a tomb to a saint and a tree of swords on which hangs the saint’s sword, and a giant with stolen horn that can cause avalanches. A lake whose goddess gives swords to high kings, yet there has been no high king in an age, on whose shores stands a fortress commanded by a corrupt captain and manned by a soldiery whose swords have been stolen and who are preparing for mutiny, whilst a Gelatinous King lurks in the nearby forest. A patch of sea shrouded in fog and marked by four islands, one a ships’ graveyard, the second a pirate port, the third home to a sea serpent, and the fourth a tower of friendly and inquisitive liches, and three pirate crews each with three parts of a treasure map! A desert ruled from a city drawn on skids by a giant across the sands hunted by a Crawling Citadel which slides forward one black monolith at a time. A swamp dotted with shipwrecks and infested with swamp zombies, and home to six witches feuding over which one of them should be ‘The Swamp Witch’. These are just some of the entries in Summer’s End and Other One-Page Adventures, an anthology of adventures for Knave, Second Edition, the Old School Renaissance-style microclone published by Questing Beast.

Summer’s End and Other One-Page Adventures contains a total of twelve different adventures, or rather adventure sites. In fact, technically, they are not one-page adventures, since each one encompasses two pages rather than one. They consist of six wilderness adventures and six dungeons, all independent of each other and each easily dropped into a Game Master’s own setting or just run as is. This applies to the six wilderness adventures especially, since each is a self-contained six-mile-wide hex, which means that if the Game Master has an appropriate spot on her campaign map and the surrounding terrain matches, she can simply drop one of the wilderness adventures onto that map. After that, as with the dungeons, all that Game Master has to do is sow some links and rumours into her wider setting and any one of the dozen entries is ready to be visited by the Player Characters.

All twelve entries in the anthology are written in the same style and laid out in the same fashion. The map—whether hex or dungeon—is placed at the centre. Then individual location descriptions are threaded around the map like a border with arrows to mark the particular locations. Sometimes there is an overview of the dungeon or hex, sometimes not. Those with summaries are easier to grasp than those without, but to be fair, none of the entries in the anthology are difficult to prepare. This is, of course, intentional, since Knave, Second Edition is intended to be played from off the page with a minimum of preparation. And really, a two-page spread does require all that much in the way of preparation anyway.

Summer’s End and Other One-Page Adventures opens with a fairly basic wilderness hex. The eponymous ‘Summer’s End’ presents a mountain on which the tomb of a saint stands, whilst the sword he wielded is stuck into the nearby Tree of Swords. Rangers hunt the wilds for a group of bandits, which has split into two groups—one of warriors and one of alchemists, and a giant lurks in a ruined tower coveting the great horn he has discovered, which if he ever blew into, would cause an avalanche! It is simple and straightforward, with the Game Master only needing to add hooks such as bounties on the bandits’ heads, a pilgrimage to the saint’s tomb, and so on. Turn the page and the hexes get a lot more sophisticated. For example, ‘The Raiders of Wolfsea’ details a fog-shrouded archipelago of pirate infested islands, a ships’ graveyard strewn with gold watched over by screeching harpies, an island containing a tower of very happy and inquisitive liches, and a pirate port riven by the rivalry between three pirate collectives, each of whom possesses one part of treasure map. The waters are the Wolfsea are dangerous enough with just the pirates, but they are also hunted by Fog Wolves which prey on any ship and Tempest the sea serpent, who likes to disrupt the doings of pirates and harpies (and Player Characters) for his own amusement. ‘The Wizards of Sparrowkeep’ would have a bucolic feel to it, were it not for the fact that the area is home to four wizard’s towers, whose occupants all vie for the affection of the local witch who lives in the woods nearby. What each wizard does each day and what spells he learns each day is randomly determined, but it is all in pursuit of the witch and stopping the pursuit of his rivals and it is all disrupting life and work in the nearby town. The noble in charge of the area wants the petty feud to stop, each of the wizards wants to prove that his love is worthy of the witch, and the witch…? It is a great little set-up that lends itself to some fun portrayals of the NPCs by the Game Master and some good player-driven action.
‘The Alchemist’s Repose’ is the first of the dungeons in Summer’s End and Other One-Page Adventures and needs a little more preparation upon the part of the Game Master as the complex is patrolled and worked by a series of constructs which are programmed by simple punch cards. This gives it a slight Steampunk feel, but also a puzzle element as the Player Characters discover the punchcards and begin to work out how they are used. ‘The Lair of the Keymaster’ also has a puzzle element, this time consisting of locks and keys behind secret doors that the Player Characters need to find and open if they are to open a vault containing the Keymaster’s greatest secret, the schematics to the ‘Lock Absolute’. Which of course, any king or thief would be willing to pay handsomely to obtain (or steal) these plans. ‘Drums in the Deep’ is a mini-sewer crawl, home to a spider so high on hallucinogenic fungus his skin ripples in mesmerising colour, a mini-cult whose members paint themselves as skeletons, and want to summon the King of Nails, whilst a blind sewer squid lurks in the murky effluence that flows through the sewers. There are also three missing teenagers, which is why the Player Characters have descended into the sewer. This is a much simpler affair, easy to slip under any big town or city.

Some of the dungeons do defy description, such as ‘The Hollow Prince’, a temple complex dedicated to something named the ‘Hollow Prince’. Although there is a lot of lovely detail to the various rooms and consequences of the Player Characters’ actions, quite what is going on in the complex is never explained. Whilst it is fine to mystify the players and their characters, it is arguably not so fine as to leave the Game Master also mystified. Without some kind of hook—obvious or not, ‘The Hollow Prince’ is just that much harder to add to a game.

Physically, Summer’s End and Other One-Page Adventures is a good-looking book. The layout is clean and simple, the big bold maps for each of the adventures dominating every two-page spread and working like artwork as much as they do maps. The cartography varies in style throughout, but in general is very good, although the wilderness hexes are the better of maps.

Summer’s End and Other One-Page Adventures is great collection of adventures and locations, really stripped down to fit neatly into two pages, but still offering a lot of good game play and adventure right off those pages without needing to refer to anything else. In general, the wilderness hexes are better than the dungeons, offering more plot and story, and whilst they are written for use with Knave, Second Edition, the minimal nature of the stats and the minimal number of stats, means that there is hardly another retroclone or Dungeons & Dragons-style roleplaying game that Summer’s End and Other One-Page Adventures would not work with and work well with.

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: EctoplasmorphiaPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Hyacinth

Setting: USA, 1926Product: One-shot
What You Get: Twenty page, 3.22 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Two houses, one plot, never the twainPlot Hook: Lost outside two lonely houses, which do they enter?Plot Support: Staging advice, four pre-generated Investigators, three handouts, and one map.Production Values: Plain
Pros# Haunted house mystery# Easy to adjust to other eras for Call of Cthulhu# Taxidermiphobia# Zoophobia# Dysergia
Cons# Why are the pre-generated Investigators together?
# More haunted house mystery than a Mythos one# Two locations for the same scenario, once a location is chosen, the other cannot be reached, so does it actually matter?
Conclusion# Decently done haunted house horror# Sadly, no Hoots Mon There’s A Moose Loose Aboot This Hoose

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: The Bristol Train RobberyPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Chicho ‘Arkashka’ OCARIZ

Setting: London and Reading, 1843Product: Scenario
What You Get: Thirty-four page, 8.12 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: The great mummy robberyPlot Hook: One of our mummies is missing!Plot Support: Staging advice, four pre-generated Investigators, eight handouts, one map, five NPCs, one Mythos tome, and one Mythos monster.Production Values: Decent
Pros# Scenario for Cthulhu by Gaslight# Decent transport-based investigation# Easy to adjust to other ‘Mummy mania’ eras for Call of Cthulhu# Inspired by The Great Train Robbery by Michael Crichton# Pharaohphobia# Siderodromophobia# Kinemortophobia
Cons# Needs an edit
# More an occult scenario than a Mythos one# Inspired by The Great Train Robbery by Michael Crichton, but no train action!
Conclusion# Investigation into a train robbery, but without any train action# Decently detailed investigation that is more Mummy than Mythos

Back in 1991, R. Talsorian Games, Inc. published Tales From The Forlorn Hope. This was not one, but three things. First, it was a special edition of the in-game magazine, Solo of Fortune, detailing a bar in Night City founded by veterans of the Central American Wars that provided a hangout, a sanctuary, and a refuge for themselves, other Solos, and Cops from 2011 onwards. Second, it was a setting supplement for Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0., one which the Edgerunners can turn into a base of operations for themselves. Third, it was an anthology of missions for Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0. suitable for Edgerunners who visit the bar often or even find a home there, enabling them to interact with the regulars, many of whom are featured in the Solo of Fortune Special Edition. That though was in 2011 and a lot has happened in the decades since. What of The Forlorn Hope in 2045, in the Time of the Red?

Tales of the RED: Hope Reborn is a supplement for Cyberpunk Red: The Roleplaying Game of the Dark Future that brings the history of The Forlorn Hope up to date before presenting a whole new chapter that will involve the Edgerunners in first losing and then restoring hope and happiness. This is in the form of a six-part campaign which does two things. One is provide the means for the Edgerunners to effect change, if only at a small scale, and the other is to provide a street level campaign.

The six parts of the campaign are organised as is standard for scenarios for Cyberpunk RED. Each opens with a plot flowchart and then with a ‘Rumours’ table, which as the campaign progresses, begins to work in events that occurred previously and the Edgerunners will have been involved in, as well as hinting at what is to come. It is followed by the ‘Background’ to the scenario, which can be read out to the players, and ‘The Rest of the Story’ for the Game Master’s eyes only, as is ‘The Setting’ and ‘The Opposition’. ‘The Hook’ describes how the Edgerunners get involved, ‘Developments’ and ‘Climax’ detail the individual beats, whilst ‘Resolution’ provides options on how the scenario comes to end depending on whether or not the Edgerunners succeed or fail. ‘Downtime’ covers what the Edgerunners can do between missions and even prepare for the next one. In addition, there is general advice on running the campaign, which suggests that the Game Master uses look for possible hooks in the Edgerunners’ Lifepaths, created during character generation, to tie one or more of them into The Forlorn Hope. Despite both of this explanation and advice, what Tales of the RED: Hope Reborn does lack is an overview of the campaign and an explanation of what is going on. What this means is that the Game Master does not really learn who the antagonists of the campaign are until she reads about them in the campaign itself, which makes it just a little bit more difficult to prepare. All six chapters include an indication of their running time.

What Tales of the RED: Hope Reborn does include is ‘A Tale Of Hope’ by William Moss. Told through the eyes of Aurora ‘Rory’ O’Reilly, livecasting journalist and daughter of C.J. O’Reilly, the famed Solo of Fortune journalist who wrote the original special edition, this introduces The Forlorn Hope and gives its history from its founding in 2011 to 2045 as well as its notable staff and clientele. Now only part of The Forlorn Hope is mapped at this point—and it is the only part that the campaign itself requires—so if the Game Master does want to connect the Edgerunners to the bar before the campaign itself begins, then she will need access to a copy of Tales From The Forlorn Hope.

The campaign itself opens with ‘The Angel’s Share’ by Eddy Webb. Co-owner of The Forlorn Hope, Marianne Freeman, asks the Edgerunners to help with an ‘XBD’, or ‘Extreme Brain Dance’ Dealer, who is threatening her staff and family after she kicked out of the bar for attempting to sell his wares to her customers. She wants them to put him out of business, rather than killed. It is a simple straightforward job, but when the Egderunners return, the action and the campaign switches up a gear. What they hear—and find—when they get back is that The Forlorn Hope has blown up! The Egderunners have another fight on their hands, this time to rescue those still trapped in the rubble of The Forlorn Hope. This is literally handled as a fight, which does feel odd, but it is actually topped off by an actual fight as allies of the ‘XBD’ dealer take their revenge. The rescue attempt is against the clock so the first part of campaign has a frantic feel and pace.

Although The Forlorn Hope is no more, the owners decide they will rebuild and this is the thrust of the campaign proper and asks the Edgerunners to help. This leads into a couple of fun chapters in which the Edgerunners first find a new location and then conduct a long-term reconnaissance of the neighbourhood. In ‘Real Estate Rumble’ by Paris Arrowsmith and Tracie Hearne, the Edgerunners get to work for a property dealer by the name of Jack Skorkowsky as he tries to find Marianne Freeman a suitable new site. Skorkowsky’s properties have been beset by a series of pranks and odd occurrences which are impeding work on them. If the players and their Edgerunners have played scenarios from Tales of the RED: Street Stories and Cyberpunk RED Data Pack, they will likely recognise the threat here. By the end, Jack Skorkowsky will have found a property, enabling the Edgerunners to move into the area in Linda Evans’ ‘Welcome to the Neighbourhood’ and check it out. There are some really fun little encounters here, such as having to rescue a drunken student trapped in the giant leaves of a carnivorous plant being grown as an experiment by the Biotechnica and having to be an emergency replacement team to play the local Roller Derby team. All of these embody the street level nature of the campaign and do so very well.

The preparation for the opening of The Forlorn Hope anew, begins with Melissa Wong’s ‘The Devil’s Cut’. This is a classic heist style scenario in which the Edgerunners go to work for a veteran conman in an attempt to recover some bottles of genuine alcohol, which she believes have been stolen by a special operation run by the local office of a corporation and are being auctioned off. The Edgerunners have to investigate the operation and its staff, plan the heist, infiltrate the launch party—because of course, there is a launch party—and make off with the bottles of alcohol. Lastly—or rather penultimately—‘Hope’s Calling!!!’ by Chris Spivey takes the Edgerunners through the preparation proper for the reopening of The Forlorn Hope. They are taken on by the bar as combination roadies, techies, gophers, and security going through a checklist of things that Marianne wants addressing. This includes getting the right cocktail ingredients, technical checks, and more. As they work on checking these, the Edgerunners discover that someone is actually attempting to sabotage the opening night, so it becomes a race to both undo the efforts of the saboteurs and identify who they are. As soon as they manage that, it is time for the opening night. The Edgerunners’ efforts to undo the sabotage will play an unexpectedly big role in this as the bad guys make a direct assault on The Forlorn Hope. This plays out as a cross between a massive brawl and firefight, which is essentially a make-or-break night for The Forlorn Hope. It has its own mechanic for handling this mass combat, which is kept fairly simple, with plenty of room for player input and room for them to sway the fight.

Although ‘Hope’s Calling!!!’ feels very much like the end of the campaign, it actually is not. In Frances Stewart’s ‘Ripping the Ripper’, the Edgerunners are asked to take revenge on the people who actually blew up the original The Forlorn Hope. This requires them to sneak into ‘The Hot Zone’, the geographical centre of Night City where the tactical nuclear device was detonated almost atop Arasaka Towers and triggered the events of the Time of the Red, and either set the perpetrator up or gun him down! How the Edgerunners go about it is up to the players, but they need to do it without The Forlorn Hope itself being blamed for it. It is a solid ending to the campaign.

One consequence of Tales of the RED: Hope Reborn being a street level campaign, is that the Edgerunners are kept away from the wider plot. That is, who targeted The Forlorn Hope for destruction and who wants the new bar to fail? Neither are connected and neither become apparent until the last chapters of the campaign. How much of an issue this is, really depends on the players, and how much umbrage they might feel at being sidelined from what would be the main plots—or plots—in any other campaign. Essentially, what is really going on is that Edgerunners who are better and more experienced than those of the players are dealing with them. However, the players being players are likely to want answers to those questions and so the Game Master might want to have some answers and some updates as to what is going on and the owners and staff of The Forlorn Hope have learned.
Tales of the RED: Hope Reborn comes to a close with an Appendix of new rules. They include rules for ‘Hacking Agents’, ‘Vehicle Chases’, ‘Roller Derby’, ‘Flash of Luck’, and ‘Headquarters’. The majority of these are fairly general in their application and thus have life beyond the pages of the campaign. ‘Hacking Agents’ enables Netrunners and Techs to remotely hack the devices that everyone carries in the Time of the Red, so opening up options in accessing security and information and so on as well as increasing the versatility of both Roles. ‘Vehicle Chases’ are quick and dirty rules for handling chases and complement the rules for vehicle combat in Cyberpunk RED, relying primarily on Edgerunner Drive skill. The rules cover standard manoeuvres as well as ramming and passenger actions that can help the person behind the wheel. ‘Flash of Luck’ brings a narrative element into play, letting a player spend his Edgerunner’s Luck Points to retroactively bring items and events into play to provide an advantage when the unexpected occurs and so prevent heists, infiltration, and con jobs from becoming extended planning sessions rather than actually playing them through. Playing them out as flashbacks is optional, of course, but whilst ‘Flash of Luck’ is designed to work with the heist of ‘The Devil’s Cut’, it will also work in other situations too.

Other new rules are designed to work with the various Jobs in the campaign and are thus quite specific. ‘Headquarters’ is designed for the long term. It enables the Edgerunners to build their own base of operation, spending Improvement Points earned as a group to add things like an Evidence Wall, Medbay, or Server Room. There is advice too on how to use The Forlorn Hope as a base of operations, Improvement Points being spent to buy ready access to the bar’s facilities rather than actually build them. The oddest rules are for ‘Roller Derby’. They detail how to play the sport which takes centre stage in the ‘Wheels on Fire’ Job from the ‘Welcome To The Neighbourhood’ chapter of the campaign. These allow the Game Master and her players to play out their Edgerunners’ participation in that Job, but they could be useful in other ways. They could be used to handle street battles or chases on skates, but they could also be used as the basis for a campaign in which the Edgerunners actually form their own Roller Derby team!

Physically, Tales of the RED: Hope Reborn is well presented and organised, although it does lack an index. For the most part, the artwork is excellent and the cartography is good.

Although it does feel a little clumsy in places in terms of its mechanics, Tales of the RED: Hope Reborn provides a really fun street level campaign that offers a good mix of roleplaying, combat, and technical challenges, a variety of really different missions and jobs that will keep the players on their toes, and ultimately the opportunity for the players and their Edgerunners to really make a difference. Tales of the RED: Hope Reborn is an impressive first campaign for Cyberpunk RED that delivers on what it promises to do.

Although Avalon Hill published RuneQuest III in 1984 and would work with Chaosium, Inc. for another four, the publisher, best known for its wargames rather than its roleplaying games, would not release any new material for the setting of Glorantha for seven years. The combination of a new company head and a new line editor would change this. Under the aegis of roleplaying game designer Ken Rolston, Avalon Hill published Sun County: RuneQuest Adventures in the Land of the Sun in 1992. It was well received by the fans of the setting and in the next three years, Sun County would be followed by River of Cradles, Shadows on the Borderlands, Strangers in Prax, Dorastor: Land of Doom, and Lords of Terror. All together, these six supplements for RuneQuest III set in Glorantha explored new areas of Dragon Pass and became known as the ‘RuneQuest Renaissance’, rekindling interest in Glorantha that continues to this day. Notably, some of the titles that formed the ‘RuneQuest Renaissance’ have inspired community-created content on the Jonstown Compendium. For example, Sun County is the setting for the ‘Tales of the Sun County Militia’ series and Dorastor: Land of Doom is the setting for Secrets of Dorastor.

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Originally published in 1992, Sun County: RuneQuest Adventures in the Land of the Sun is once again available in print. It is a remastered edition, rather than an updated edition. What this means is that it is still rewritten for use with RuneQuest III, rather than RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, the most recent edition of the roleplaying game. It also means that it has been tidied up and is now available in colour rather than just being in black and white. Plus, it includes a foreword by Shannon Appelcline, author of the Dungeons & Designers series of books about the history of the roleplaying hobby, which explores the origins and consequences of the ‘RuneQuest Renaissance’. This is nicely detailed, but it does not extend that foreword to 2024 and the publication of this new edition of Sun County. This is a missed opportunity. One issue with Sun County is that it is not fully compatible with RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, so some adjustments are necessary and the various NPC and monster stats will need adapting. Fortunately, there is a conversion guide in the appendix of RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, which also includes the details necessary to play a member of the Cult of Yelmalio, which dominates religious and cultural life and outlook in Sun County. Further information is available in the forthcoming Cults of RuneQuest: The Gods of Fire and Sky.

Sun County: RuneQuest Adventures in the Land of the Sun can be divided into two halves. The first half describes the small, isolated province on the Zola Fel River in the River of Cradles valley, between Prax and Vulture Country, and just south of the city of Pavis. Since 877 S.T., the province has been settled by light-worshipping farmer-soldiers, known for their devout worship of Yelmalio, their extreme conservatism and prudishness, their sometimes-extreme distrust of outsiders, and their skill with the pike and the spear, with many of the county’s young men serving in militias and troops work as mercenary phalanxes far beyond the borders of Sun County. Since 1610 S.T., with the capture of Pavis, the biggest city in the region, by the Lunar Empire, Solanthos Ironpike, Honoured Count of Sun County, has owed begrudging fealty to Sor-eel the Short, Lunar Count of Prax and Governor of Pavis, effectively ensuring a relatively easy peace between the city and the county. Sun County: RuneQuest Adventures in the Land of the Sun is not a gazetteer of the province, but it does give a geographical overview, as well as describing how it is governed, how its deals with and trades with outsiders, and its problem with hazia, the additive euphoric herb, whose cultivation is profitable, but technically, banned.

Full stats are provided for Solanthos Ironpike, as well as his leading captains, Invictus, Light Captain of Sun County, commander of the Templars and the county’s military and Vega Goldbreath, Guardian of Sun County, an exception to the rule in being a Light lady of Yelmalio. Another exception is Belvani, Lieutenant of the Light Captain Light Son and Light Servant of Yelmalio, whose duties actually require him to deal with outsiders and who is accompanied by The Gamon, a crested dragonewt who never speaks, but who Belvani treats as his dogbody! Although the leading members of the priesthood of the Cult of Yelmalio are described, they are not given stats. The cult itself is fully detailed, including its mythos, history, place in the world, and more. How to become an initiate and then a Light Son or Light Priest, as well as a Light Servant who acts as their special servant. Along with the subcults of Monrogh, the cult’s spirit of reprisal, Kuschile the horse archer, and Togtuvei, the cartographer and geographer, plus a list of Yelmalio’s Gifts and Geases, this is an excellent write-up of the Cult of Yelmalio.

One pleasing addition to the write-up of the cult is the map of the Sun County Temple, renowned of course, like all temples to Yelmalio, for its gold dome that catches the light, which is taken from the Pavis: Threshold to Danger boxed set. Besides detailing the temple and its powerful defences—both magical and mundane, the temple description also details terms by which it offers sanctuary, now strictly enforced lest Solanthos Ironpike, irk Sor-eel the Short in Pavis. Which effectively means that if the Player Characters annoy the Lunars in Pavis, they may not have as much luck hiding out in Sun County as they might hope! There is also terrific write-up of an annual ceremony and heroquest, ‘The River Ritual of the Sun People’, which the current count performs to reforge Sun County’s alliance with a daughter of Zola Fel, god of the River of Cradles. (It is a pity that none of the adventures in Sun County deal with this, but that does mean that the Game Master has scope to develop something herself.) Lastly, the Sun County militia is detailed as is ‘Shield Push’, a Sun Domer game that can be best be described as Rugby or Australian Rules Football scrum or ruck played with shields!

Another notable inclusion in Sun County is that of ‘Jaxarte’s Journal’. This is the account of Jaxarte Whyded, a minor relative of Sor-eel the Short given the make-work role of ‘Commissioner of the Imperial Census for Prax’ recounts of his visit to Sun County. It gives a very enjoyable counter to the description of Sun County and a more immediate outsider’s point of view. It also comes with footnotes from a Lhankor Mhy sage which add further commentary, and all together, his account echoes that of the travelogue of Biturian Varosh, the merchant prince of the Issaries cult in Cults of Prax.

In addition to a set of encounter tables with some potentially entertaining entries for Sun County, the other half of Sun County: RuneQuest Adventures in the Land of the Sun is dedicated to four scenarios. Two of these, ‘Melisande’s Hand’ and ‘Rabbit Hat Farm’, are designed for relatively inexperienced Player Characters, whilst the other two, ‘Solinthor’s Tower’ and ‘Old Sun Dome’ require more experienced Player Characters. Most of the scenarios are flexible in who they are run, whether that is with Sun Domer Player Characters or outsiders. The eight provided Player Characters include a good mix of both, though they do come with notes for use with ‘Rabbit Hat Farm’.

The first scenario, ‘Melisande’s Hand’ is a classic festival adventure whose events and intrigues the Player Characters can embroil themselves. It details a harvest festival dedicated to Ernalda—and gives the winner the right to wed a local Ernalda initiate for a year as well as a fair bit of renown—which takes place each year in Garhound, a town on the other side of the river from Sun County. It is a busy affair with lots going on between the various contestants and plenty of opportunities for the Player Characters to shine, whether in the individual events or in between. There are prizes too for each of the individual events, there is the opportunity for everyone to win something. Whilst the scenario is designed for beginning Player Characters, its busyness does mean it is better run by a more experienced Game Master.

‘Rabbit Hat Farm’ is the RuneQuest equivalent of a ‘village-in-peril-that-nobody has heard from lately’-style scenario. Its location, Rabbit Hat Farm has been abandoned following an attack by Praxian nomads and then Broo, and so far, the militia already sent to investigate have not been heard from. The farm is fully detailed, as is what the Player Characters will find below—the remnants of a nasty Chaos nest! This is the scenario that the pre-generated Player Characters are written to play and there are really good hooks to get them involved in the investigation and exploration of the farm. Thankfully, the caves have been partially abandoned as otherwise it would be a very tough adventure. As it is, this is a challenging adventure against some tough opponents for inexperienced players and their characters, as it is effectively, a mini ‘Snake Pipe Hollow’! Nevertheless, clearing the remains out of the caves will be a major achievement.

The Sun County Ruins are site of the Old Sun Dome Temple—abandoned after an earthquake—and the location for the third scenario, ‘The Old Sun Dome’. Lots of hooks are given as to why the Player Characters might want to explore it, including looking for certain artefacts and even mapping it out for architecture-obsessed Jaxarte Whyded, and it makes use of the map of the current Sun Dome Temple (because why would a religiously orthodox society build anything different?) to create what is effectively a haunted house. There are guards outside to prevent anyone from going in, but the real threat lies inside in form of undead who have occupied the otherwise empty complex. There are some interesting secrets to be discovered, no matter whether you are a Sun Domer or an outsiders. The latter especially, as they are unlikely ever to get that far into a functioning Sun Dome Temple!

Lastly, in ‘Solinthor’s Tower’ is more of an encounter than a full scenario. A Lhankor Mhy sage is writing a thesis which collects all five hundred hymns and poems written by Solinthor, a priest of Yelmalio who ‘died’ in 1375 S.T. except that she cannot find the last seven. She thinks they might have been interred with him in his ‘retirement tower’ (which is where all priests of Yelmalio spend their last days) and so wants help in locating the right tower and getting inside. This is challenging since the penalties for looting—and this applies to ‘The Old Sun Dome’ scenario too—are death by ritual combat if they are caught! This sets up a bit of a dilemma because Solinthor is possession of treasures that the count will be pleased to have in his possession, but then where did the Player Characters find them? Getting hold of them though means getting past some tough magical defences which will challenge most Player Characters, especially given the tight space of Solinthor’s Tower. One thing it does share with ‘The Old Sun Dome’ is potential access to Yelm’s realm on the Hero plane, neither of which is actually designed to lead to any Heroquesting, given that at the time of publication for Sun County there were no rules for such activity! (Oh, how times change.) The outcome though of that access is actually better and better handled than it is in ‘The Old Sun Dome’. ‘Solinthor’s Tower’ is by no means a bad scenario, but it feels all too short.

One issue with Sun County is what you play. The core characters are the Sun Domers of Sun County and they are to man, xenophobic, misogynistic, repressive, and strict. This represents a roleplaying challenge because although not necessarily nasty, they are not nice people and they have a dislike of anyone who is different to them. In particular, female Player Characters will struggle in a society that would ideally restrict women to certain roles. Sun County does acknowledge this by suggesting that the Player Characters be outsiders for many of its scenarios, though of course, that has its own challenges. Alternatively, they could be misfits, as per Tales of the Sun County Militia: Sandheart Volume 1. This does not mean that players cannot roleplay Sun Domers, but both the Game Master and her players need to be aware of their cultural attitudes and present them with care.

Physically, the Sun County: RuneQuest Adventures in the Land of the Sun is decently presented. Behind the excellent front cover, the layout has been tidied up whilst still retaining the look and style of a RuneQuest III book, the internal artwork is good, and colour has been judiciously applied to make various elements stand out. This includes a new map of Sun County that now includes the settlement of Sandheart and the various documents done as scrolls, such as ‘The Light List: The Honoured Counts of Sun County’ and ‘Jaxarte’s Journal’.

In terms of a setting, Sun County: RuneQuest Adventures in the Land of the Sun does could have done with a gazetteer and more on the ordinary lives of the Sun Domers, as both would have been useful, especially if running the book’s four scenarios for Sun Domers. That said, the scenarios are easier to run for outsiders than they are for Sun Domers, as the Sun County parochial attitudes do set up tensions that a Game Master and her players might not want to deal with. However, Sun County: RuneQuest Adventures in the Land of the Sun is still a great book with a balanced mix of background and overall decent scenarios, ultimately providing what was a great introduction to the Yemalio-worshipping Sun County in 1992 and still is a good introduction over thirty years later.

The nineties was a decade of Grunge, Britney Spears, and Hip-Hop, of growing up without the Soviet Union and Communism being the traditional bogeyman, of television sensations like Twin Peaks, Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, and Friends, and the rise of easy communication and information with the widespread adoption of mobile phones and the Internet. This is the decade in which Teenage Oddyssey is also set, a decade which was in its own way just as odd and crazy as the previous decade when many ‘Player Characters as Teens’ roleplaying games are set—though of course, without the existential dread and paranoia given that the end of the world was imminent. Published by Cannon Otter Studio, as its title suggests, Teenage Oddyssey uses Into the Odd, the Old School Renaissance-style rules light microclone published by Free League Publishing as the basis for its mechanics. The result is a fast-playing, fast set-up, sometimes brutal roleplaying game.

A Teenager in Teenage Oddyssey will be aged between twelve and fourteen and have three stats—Body, Mind, and Charm—and Luck, Hit Points, a Background, and some starting Gear as well as some cash. The stats range in value between eight and eighteen, but can go up and down. Body will go down because of injury and Mind because of fear, but all can be improved through experience. Luck ranges in value between one and five and Hit Points between one and six, but can go higher. Background might be Arcade Champion, Farmer’s Kid, Drama Club Kid, or even TTRPG Nerd and grants one or two items of Background Gear. Teenage Oddyssey uses an inventory system, so there are limitations on how many items a Teenager can carry, depending on whether they are Big Items or Small Items, carried in the hand or the backpack. High stats means that a Teenager begins play with one piece of Background Gear, whilst low stats mean he starts with two. Creating a Teenager is simply a matter of rolling for all of these and then cross-referencing Luck and Hit Points to determine Background, all of which can be done in a matter of minutes.

Michaela Puckett
Age: 13
Background: Photog
Body 13 Mind 15 Charm 11
Luck: 3
Hit Points: 3
Cash: $8
Gear: Camera, bicycle, backpack, notebook, pencil, House keys

Mechanically, Teenage Oddyssey is simple and straightforward. To have his Teenager undertake an action, a player makes a standard Test, rolling a twenty-sided die, the aim being to roll equal to, or less than, an appropriate stat. Standard rules for Advantage and Disadvantage apply. A Luck Test is rolled against a Teenager’s Luck, but Luck can also be spent to reroll a standard Test or to increase the damage rolled on a damage die to its maximum. The Game Master can reward Luck for good roleplaying or even out of pity! Depending on the situation, a Teenager’s Background can grant an Advantage or even an automatic success on an action.

Combat, in line with Into the Odd, is brutal in Teenage Oddyssey. Initiative is handled in narrative fashion, with combatants acting in order according to what fits the story and then when one participant has acted, he gets to choose who acts next, including the Game Master. Attacks always hit and inflict damage and the only time an Attack Test is rolled is when a Called Shot is desired. Weapons inflict damage according to their size, that is, whether they are Big Items or Small Items. A Small Item that will fit in pocket inflicts less damage than a Big Item carried in the backpack. The damage die can explode, so that it is possible to inflict a lot of damage with a lucky series of rolls. Damage is deducted from a target’s Hit Points and then his Body Stat. Armour—which can be Big or Small (Small Armour is not as easy to spot, whereas Big Armour is obvious to spot)—reduces damage, as does a shield. Once a Teenager starts suffering damage to his Body stat, his player has to roll to avoid Injury. The number of dice rolled for this depends on the Teenager’s current Luck. If it is very low, the maximum number of dice are rolled and there is a slight possibility that the Teenager will be killed straight off. A Teenager will die if his Body is reduced to zero.

In addition, weapons can have Tags, such as ‘Flammable’, ‘Nauseating’, or ‘Shrinking’. Although a combatant targeted by such a weapon cannot avoid the raw damage, he can make a standard Test to avoid the effects of the weapon’s Tags. Some Tags have ongoing effects and some allow further standard Tests to avoid their effects.

Fear is treated as an attack that inflicts damage to the Teenager’s Mind stat. A Mind Test is allowed to resist its effects, but if failed, a roll is made on the Fear Table. This works like Injuries, the player rolling more dice if his Teenager’s Luck is low. If the Teenager’s Mind stat is reduced to zero, a roll is made on the Madness Table, which can result in a permanent loss of Mind. Having a Snack will restore points of Body and Mind, whilst Going to Bed will restore both completely. When a Teenager goes up a Level, he gains more Hit Points and can either increase his stats or choose a Perk. Perk is typically based on the adventure just played, but can include being given a car, getting a job, building a treehouse, getting a companion pet, finding a Freeze Gun in the secret lab of the deranged scientist, or finding an Arcane Spell.

For the Game Master there is some advice, including not being afraid to make it up or keep it weird, and try not to kill the characters (but let it happen if they bring it on themselves). That said, Teenage Oddyssey is brutal in terms of its combat system and a big feature of its rules are combat-related. Enemies and NPCs are provided as templates to which the Game Master can add Tags to individualise them and so create interesting monsters and NPCs.

Almost half of Teenage Oddyssey is devoted to the single scenario, ‘Bad Times at Pazuzu Pizza’. Designed to be played by four to six First Level Teenagers in roughly a session or two, it begins after school with the Teenagers going to their favourite hangout, Pazuzu Pizza, a small hole-in-the-wall pizza shop. Here they can shoot the breeze, watch cartoons, eat greasy pizza, and play arcade videos. Something happens though, and when they wake up, the Teenagers find their hometown and its residents transformed into a hellscape and threatened by madness and monsters and demons. In order to save the town and its inhabitants, at the insistence of the ghost of one of the Teenagers’ crushes, they must destroy the demon responsible, hiding out at a farm on the outskirts of town. Except none of this is actually true. It turns out that the proprietor happens to be a Soviet sleeper agent and has spiked the Teenagers’ pizza with powerful experimental hallucinogens, and when they wake up, the Teenagers are not in a town fill with wrecked cars and broken buildings under roiling purple clouds and spiking red lightning, but suffering from a shared hallucination. In the course of the quest, the Teenagers will fight a Snake Priest at the church and take the Holy Sword, essentially play Frogger with huge insect-like monstrosities skittering along the highway, fight their Science Teacher wearing an exo-suit of hamsters, and so on. Finally, they will face the Demon in the Field.

So ‘Bad Times at Pazuzu Pizza’ is weird and gonzo and over the top. It is also entertaining, but its pay-off is incredibly shocking and downbeat. Essentially, because the Teenagers are on powerful experimental hallucinogens, nothing that they see is true. So, whilst they may think that they are attacking monsters and demons that have infested the town, what they are actually doing is attacking the townsfolk and going on a rampage. A drug-induced rampage true, but a swathe of actual bloody murder all the same. And whilst they are doing that, the scenario never lets them know that this might be the case, that what they are seeing is not real and what they are doing is having tragic consequences.

As an introductory scenario for a roleplaying game, ‘Bad Times at Pazuzu Pizza’ is a very bad choice. It is a one-shot scenario since the players are unlikely to want to roleplay their Teenagers again as they are now mass-murderers. It is shockingly violent—both in play and in hindsight after the reveal—which runs counter to the advice for the Game Master that she should avoid trying to kill the Teenagers. Most of the encounters in the scenario are about combat. It showcases the roleplaying game poorly. ‘Bad Times at Pazuzu Pizza’ could instead have been offered as a one-shot separate from the core rules and that would have been fine. The scenario also does not have warnings and it really does need them.

None of this is helped by the lack of advice for Game Master on what the nineties were like. There is no background, no bibliography, and no suggestions as to what a scenario for Teenagers set in the nineties would be like. The question is, what makes scenarios with Teenagers in the nineties different from scenarios with Teenagers in the eighties? Teenage Oddyssey does not tell you…

Physically, Teenage Oddyssey is well presented and the artwork has a suitably scrappy look to it.

In terms of rules and play, Teenage Oddyssey is a solid adaptation of Into the Odd. The Game Master can take these rules and run a fun game, based on her own knowledge of the nineties and that of her players. However, the lack of advice and historical background is disappointing and the included scenario is horrifyingly shocking for a roleplaying game that is pitched as one of wild and crazy adventures rather than one of unwitting murderous rampage.

Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #13: Treachery in the Beggar City is a scenario for Goodman Games’ Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game and the thirteenth scenario for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set. Scenarios for Dungeon Crawl Classics tend be darker, grimmer, and even pulpier than traditional Dungeons & Dragons scenarios, even veering close to the Swords & Sorcery subgenre. Scenarios for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set are set in and around the City of the Black Toga, Lankhmar, the home to the adventures of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, the creation of author Fritz Leiber. The city is described as an urban jungle, rife with cutpurses and corruption, guilds and graft, temples and trouble, whores and wonders, and more. Under the cover the frequent fogs and smogs, the streets of the city are home to thieves, pickpockets, burglars, cutpurses, muggers, and anyone else who would skulk in the night! Which includes the Player Characters. And it is these roles which the Player Characters get to be in Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #13: Treachery in the Beggar City, small time crooks trying to make a living and a name for themselves, but without attracting the attention of either the city constabulary or worse, the Thieves’ Guild!
Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #13: Treachery in the Beggar City is a scenario for Third Level Player Characters and is both an archetypal scenario for use with the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set, and like Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #8: The Land of the Eight Cities before it, also a setting supplement that expands the world of Newhon beyond the walls of Lankhmar. This is the Beggar City of Tovilyis, a once mercantile rival located to the south of Lankhmar that had the temerity to attempt an invasion of the City of the Black Toga. That was a century ago and ever since, Tovilyis has been a vassal state of Lankhmar, forced to purchase half its grain from the merchants of its occupiers and its surviving noble families to pay a ‘tax’ to the occupiers to be allowed to survive and feud between themselves for the right to become relatively recently restored Doge of the city. Given that that the ruler of the city is called the Doge, it no surprise that Tovilyis is based on the city of Venice. The city is cut through by canals, its buildings—many of which are sinking into the marshlands upon which the city is built—and alleys connected by bridges, constructed of either stone or rickety wood. Much like Lankhmar, Tovilyis has a thieves’ guild, but it is not as powerful as the one in Lankhmar, and thus thieves from both Tovilyis and Lankhmar can operate in the city without the thieves’ guild getting involved. Even so, Tovilyis is seen as a place of exile and not just by thieves from Lankhmar, but also nobles from Lankhmar.
Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #13: Treachery in the Beggar City begins en media res, with the Player Characters already in Tovilyis. Rumours have reached the city of Lankhmar that the scholar Fremma Inkfingers has discovered a map purported to show the location of the treasure vault where the last Dog, the one who launched the failed invasion of Lankhmar, hid his wealth. It is said that a set of scrolls, known as the Scrolls of Night, on which the Doge recorded all of the dark secrets of Tovilyis’ noble families, is also be found amongst this hoard of treasure. Why exactly the Player Characters are in Tovilyis is left up to the players and the Judge to decide. They may have been hired to find the Scrolls of Night or another object from the hoard, to make sure that Lankhmar’s thieves’ guild gets its cut from the retrieval of the treasures, or even Fremma Inkfingers could have hired them.
The scenario opens with the Player Characters going to meet Fremma Inkfingers to purchase her map from her. In almost film noir fashion, she is struck down by assassins, her map is stolen, and a chase ensues! Chases are a feature of Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar, most typically taking place across the rooftops of the city, but in Tovilyis there are canals and boats and crumbling buildings to contend with, so the chase feels excitingly different, almost as if it were out of a James Bond film! (In fact, it feels not too dissimilar to the end chase scene in Casino Royale.) Ideally, the chase will end with the Player Characters getting hold of Fremma Inkfingers’ map, but if not, the scenario provides other means for them to do so. In fact, it is probably better that the Player Characters obtain the map by other means rather than by chasing down the assassins because it makes the second half of the scenario that much more interesting.
Of course, there is another party interested in getting hold of the Scrolls of Night, which is why they had Fremma Inkfingers killed and stole her map. The second half of the scenario details the vault in which it is hidden, not once, but twice. First, as if the Player Characters get to the vault first and second, if the rival party gets to the vault first. If the latter occurs, some of the traps on the way to the vault will already been triggered and others avoided, and this combined with the confrontation with the rival party gives the scenario a shot of dynamism and an interesting NPC for the Judge to portray and the Player Characters to interact with. This is Settilina, the captain of the guards for one of the city’s noble families. Neither the building hiding the vault or the vault itself are large, but they are detailed and they are full of traps and little details that will perplex the players and their characters, and definitely challenge any Thief in the gang. The vault’s construction also used a lot of magic, so the scenario will also test any Wizard in the gang as well.
The scenario does not simply end with the Player Characters looting the vault. The interesting Settilina may still be about and is as ready to negotiate with the Player Characters as she is to kill them and there is also the matter of what to do with the wealth they find in the vault. The final interaction here with the Settilina is nicely handled, whilst the options for what the Player Characters do with their newfound wealth will require some development upon the part of the Judge as they lie slightly outside the scope of the scenario.
Just under half of Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #13: Treachery in the Beggar City is devoted to describing the city of Tovilyis. This starts with its history, but accompanied by a good map of the city, also describes its districts and landmarks. These though, are really the highlights of the city, which leaves plenty of room for the Judge to add her own content and so enable the Player Characters to revisit a city that is possibly even more corrupt than Lankhmar, but with a very different feel and atmosphere. Rounding out the module is a section on rules for using Tovilyis in play. This includes new Benisons and Dooms for Player Characters who come from Tovilyis, rumours about Tovilyis—not just general rumours, but ones for Thieves, Warriors, and Wizards too, and a table of events should the Player Characters go carousing in Tovilyis! This is a possibility if the Player Characters make off with the loot in the module’s scenario.
Physically, Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #13: Treachery in the Beggar City is well presented. The artwork and cartography are both good, but it would have been nice if the scenario had included a copy of the map that drives the first part of the scenario to give as a handout to the players.

Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #13: Treachery in the Beggar City opens up a whole new city to the Player Characters in which to scheme, scam, and steal, one that is rougher and rottener than Lankhmar. It combines solid background to the city with a fast-paced, entertaining vault-breaking scenario that drops the Player Characters into the action and shouts go. Tovilyis is worth revisiting and is just different enough to making playing there an interesting change of tone and style, but familiar enough that the Player Characters’ skills are not out of place.

Ted Lasso is facing a big challenge. As an American Football coach recently appointed as manager of AFC Richmond, he has to get both the staff and the players of this soccer—sorry, football team—to ‘Believe to Believe’, despite his lack of knowledge and experience, and so win games. However, apart from Coach Lasso and his best friend, Coach Beard, nobody believes that Ted will succeed and while they are busy believing that, everybody is in need of something. Whether its Coaching, Quality Time, Jokes, or even Inspirational Speeches, Ted Lasso can give them all. And if that does not work, there is always that pink box of perfect biscuits which always makes things right. This then, is the set-up for Ted Lasso Party Game, a game based on the Apple+ comedy series, designed for two to six players, aged ten and up, which can be played in twenty minutes. Notably, it is a co-operative game played in four, very short rounds, and it comes with its own Timer App (although it is very noisy). It is designed by Prospero Hall and published by Funko Games.

The aim of the Ted Lasso Party Game is to score forty-five Morale or more. Do this and the players win. Otherwise, they lose. To do this, the players take it in turns to play Believe Cards on the Trouble Tiles belonging to the various Character Cards. This will score Morale. Believe Cards must also be used to the Coaches to the various Location Mats and to gain bonus Morale if there is nothing else to spend them on!

Ted Lasso Party Game is very well appointed. It includes a football-shaped Game Board, five Location Mats, two Coach pieces, twelve Event Cards, fourteen Character Cards, fifty-four Believe Cards, thirty-two Trouble Tiles, a Biscuit Box, a Football Die, a Scoring Clip, a Reference Card, and a Rules Booklet. The Game Board has spaces for the Event Cards, the Self-Care section, and the Move a Coach option. The Location Mats consist of Rebecca’s Office, Coach’s Office, the Locker Room, the Trainer Pitch, and the Crown & Anchor pub. Each has space for a Character Card and multiple Trouble Tiles and a Coach Piece. The two Coach Pieces consist of Coach Lasso and Coach Beard. Event Cards—of which four are drawn in game, provide a random event at the start of each round, such as ‘Silent Treatment’, which means that the players cannot talk that round or ‘Elaborate Set Pieces’ which if ‘Coaching’ Believe Cards are played on it, will score the players more Morale.
The various Character Cards have a special condition and a bonus to Morale. Most have a score, whilst the footballers have Football symbols indicating that the Morale bonus is rolled randomly on the Football Die. For example, ‘Rebecca Welton’, scores seven Morale and allows the use of the Biscuits Trouble Tiles to remove whole Trouble Tiles. The Believe Cards come in five colours, four of which correspond to the Trouble Tiles. The yellow Coaching Believe Cards deal with Characters who are Sceptical; the red Quality Time Believe Cards deal with Characters who are Angry; the blue Jokes Believe Cards deal with Characters who are Sad; and the purple Inspirational Believe Cards deal with Characters who are Insecure. The fifth Believe Card type is pink and are Biscuits, which act as a Wild Card. The thirty-two Trouble Tiles are each marked with two emojis whose colours correspond to the Believe Cards.

There is a fantastic sense of verisimilitude to Ted Lasso Party Game as it draws heavily from the television series. Thus, the Biscuit Box, which is pink, is used to store the Trouble Tiles and looks like the box which Ted Lasso delivers biscuits to Rebecca Welton every day; the Football Die is a four-sided die shaped like a football; and the base box is designed as a football stadium. The Believe Cards also have quotes from the television series.

Set-up is simple. Four Events cards are drawn and placed on the Game Board and, a random Character Card is placed on each of five Location Mats as are a number of Trouble Tiles as indicated on each Location Mat. The Believe Cards are shuffled and dealt out to the players. This is done at the start of each round, which also includes turning over an Event Card. The players are allowed to look at the combinations of the Character Cards and the Location Mats and are free to discuss plans for the round.

Each round lasts two minutes and the players act in turn. On his turn, a player plays as many Believe Cards as possible of one colour from his hand that he needs too. This is done to undertake three actions. These are ‘Be Kind’, ‘Move a Coach’, and ‘Self-Care’. If a Coach is on a Location Mat, a player can be ‘Be Kind’ and play Believe Cards to the Location to counter the emojis on the Trouble Tiles. A Believe Card can be discarded to the Move a Coach space on the Game Board to move a Coach from one Location Mat to another. ‘Self-Care’ lets a player discard cards to the Self-Care space on the Game Board. Once a player has played all of the Believe Cards, either that he can, his turn is over. Play proceeds like this until everyone has played all of their Believe Cards over multiple turns or the two-minute timer runs out.

At the end of the round, for every five Believe Cards in the Self-Care, the players can remove a single Trouble Tile from any Location Mat. Also, at the end of the round, any Trouble Tiles with matching Believe Cards at the Location Mat are removed. If all of the Trouble Tiles are removed from a Character Card on a Location Mat, he is removed and the players are awarded the Morale bonus—a simple number unless rolled for the Footballers. A new Character Card is added for the next round. Morale will be lost if the timer goes off and the players still have the Believe Cards in their hands.

Play of the Ted Lasso Party Game is frenetic as the players scramble from turn to turn to play all of their Believe Cards to their best advantage. Apart from this pace, it plays a great deal like any other co-operative game. There is some variability to the game in that there are fourteen Character Cards and not all of them are going to come out during play and the combination of Trouble Tiles on a Location Mat is rarely going to be the same. As with any co-operative game there is the danger of play being dominated by an ‘alpha’ player, though the frenetic pace of the game does negate that to some extent. The game does require some planning on the part of the players since they need to decide what Believe Cards they are going to play—and where, since with two minutes of play per round, there is insufficient time for planning. That said, a player will likely be forced to think his action if another player does something unexpected or a Coach Piece cannot be moved.

However, there is not a lot of variability and the game play does not really change. Consequently, there is not a lot of depth to the Ted Lasso Party Game and not a lot of replayability. So, it is going to appeal more to fans of the television series than hobbyist board game players. Yet saying that, the game play is challenging for the casual player and the fact that it is a co-operative game is going to be challenging for some players. The fact that it is a co-operative game and that it actually has a lot of components suggests that it is not, as the title of the game suggests, a ‘party’ game, although the theme and speed of play suggests that it might be. Lastly, that speed of play does hinder the enjoyment of the game’s theme—the game is too fast to read the quotes on the Believe Cards, for example, in play.

Physically, the Ted Lasso Party Game is a really great looking game. Photographs are actually used of the cast from the series, except for Coach Lasso and Coach Beard. Otherwise, everything is themed very much around the television series. Lastly, the game app is more intrusive and then useful.

The Ted Lasso Party Game is another good design from Prospero Hall which fits the theme of the source material. It is only a very light game though and only hardcore fans of Ted Lasso are likely to want to keep playing after a few plays.

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: Bride of the WildsPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: H.S. Falkenberry

Setting: Appalachian Mountains, Georgia, 1932Product: One-shot
What You Get: Twenty-eight page, 3.5 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Sometimes the forest is fulsomely fecund.Plot Hook: Witchcraft in the woods and a missing woman. Could they be connected?Plot Support: Staging advice, four handouts, six NPCs, ten Mythos tomes, and four Mythos monsters.Production Values: Decent
Pros# Detailed missing persons case# Solid investigation# Easy to adjust to other eras for Call of Cthulhu# Will end in a gunfight, but who should the Investigators shoot?# Decent handouts# Nyctohylophobia# Wiccaphobia# Tokophobia
Cons# An abundance of Mythos Tomes# Will end in a gunfight, but who should the Investigators shoot?
Conclusion# Detailed investigation leads to a gunfight with a difficult choice# Solid fear of the forest one-shot

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: Heart of HorrorPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Wojciech J. Szpytma

Setting: Congo, 1890sProduct: One-shot
What You Get: Twenty-one page, 111.54 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: “Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster...” – Friedrich NietzschePlot Hook: A missing shipment means going up river... into the ‘heart of darkness’.Plot Support: Staging advice, four (five) pre-generated Investigators, two handouts, two NPCs, and one Mythos monster.Production Values: Decent
Pros# Adapts Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness to Call of Cthulhu# Pre-generated Investigators with decent motivations# Xylophobia# Teraphobia# Thalassophobia
Cons# Adapts Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness to Call of Cthulhu# Sanity losses high# No stats for the actual villain of the piece# Linear# Ignores the horrors of the Congo# Underdeveloped conclusion
# No Sanity rewards# Needs an edit

Conclusion# Serviceable if linear adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness# Lots of trigger warnings, but ignores the horror of the Congo