Reviews from R'lyeh

[Free RPG Day 2025] Arzium Quickstart Guide 2

Now in its eighteenth year, Free RPG Day for 2025 took place on Saturday, June 21st. As per usual, Free RPG Day consisted of an array of new and interesting little releases, which are traditionally tasters for forthcoming games to be released at GenCon the following August, but others are support for existing RPGs or pieces of gaming ephemera or a quick-start. This included dice, miniatures, vouchers, and more. Thanks to the generosity of Waylands Forge in Birmingham, Reviews from R’lyeh was able to get hold of many of the titles released for Free RPG Day.

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The Arzium Quickstart Guide 2 is the introduction to the Arzium Roleplaying Game, the second following the release of the Arzium Quickstart Guide for Free RPG Day 2024. It is not, though, an introduction to the World of Arzium. That would be the series of board games designed by Ryan Laudkat and published by Red Raven Games, including Above and Below, Near and Far, and others. It presents a fantasy world filled with mysteries, magic, and forgotten technology, above and below ground. The Arzium Quickstart Guide is a slim affair, providing a very basic overview of the setting, an explanation of the mechanics, a short adventure, and four pre-generated Player Characters. Arzium is described as a world of strange mechanics and strange magics, some of it scavenged from fallen civilisations, some of its developed by the newly arisen city-states, industrialised with devices powered by bottled demons and rare crystals. The world is also a diverse one, being home to Humans, Hogfolk, Fishfolk, Lizardfolk, Birdfolk, and other species, including Robots! In the City-state of Arc, far to the south of Surstrayne Forest, location of the village of Above, and underneath it, the village of Below, the Academy of Gom has been beset by a series of thefts, which are believed to have been committed by a mysterious organisation known as the Shattered Knife! Although the Academy of Gom has tight purse strings, the thefts need to be investigated!

Mechanically, the Arzium Quickstart Guide and thus the Arzium Roleplaying Game, is a dice and resource management game. A Player Character has six attributes—Strength, Reflexes, Knowledge, Cunning, Perception, and Craft. Each ranges in value between zero and ten, and presents a pool of points that a player can spend to modify dice rolls. A standard difficulty is seven, whilst a hard one is ten. The maximum that a player can spend on a challenge is five. To have his character undertake an action, a player rolls a ten-sided die and attempts to equal or exceed the difficulty. Results less than the difficulty have a failure forward outcome in that the story continues despite the negative outcome. The latter might be an actual failure, but it can also be that the action succeeds and the Player Character or an item of equipment suffers damage, or even that the whole situation changes. In addition, if a six is rolled on the die, then a complication is automatically added to the situation. Resting for at least half a day will restore a Player Character’s spent attribute points.

In combat, the Player Characters typically act first and then the enemy. When a Player Character acts, he moves first and then takes an action. All attacks succeed in hitting and inflict damage as per the die type for the weapon or type of attack. The damage inflicted can be increased by spending points from the associated attribute. Armour reduces the amount of damage suffered. Attacks, abilities, and spells can also temporarily affect Power, a measure of NPC and monster ability to inflict more damage. Each monster and NPC gains one Power at the start of each turn, but because the Player Characters act first, they directly affect the monster and NPC capacity to inflict more damage. The rules also allow for gambits, inventive actions which can change the environment or affect monsters and NPCs, but without inflicting damage.

Casting spells requires the expenditure of Attribute points, but not a dice roll. However, a dice roll is required to take account of magic being whimsical and occasionally dangerous. When a spell is cast, the Game Master rolls a ten-sided die and if a one or two is rolled, she also rolls on the ‘Whimsical Magic’ table. This might result in the caster smelling like rotting garbage for a day or temporarily grants a nearby object life as it grows limbs and runs around in a chaotic manner.

Other rules for the Arzium Quickstart Guide 2 and the Arzium Roleplaying Game can be found on the character sheet. For example, it uses an inventory system of boxes for gear and offers Memory Knots as a means to maximise a die roll. This requires the player to explain why a particular memory will help his character in the current situation. The Arzium Quickstart Guide 2 includes four pre-generated Player Characters. They include a Human Treasure Hunter good at exploring caves and old facilities, a Toadfolk Investigator with a grasping tongue, and a Hogfolk Curstic Mystic with a knowledge of curse-related spells.

The scenario in the Arzium Quickstart Guide 2 is ‘Flight into Madness’. The Player Characters are hired by the Academy of Gom in the City-state of Arc following a series of thefts by the secret organisation known as the Shattered Knife and following an attempt by the Academy of Gom’s best and brightest to investigate the thefts thwarted by sabotage upon the part of the Shattered Knife. Boarding a ramshackle airship, the Player Characters are only armed with a couple of leads that their employer, Professor Argof, gave them. Following both will lead them over the seas to a large island and eventually to the secret base where the Shattered Knife has its headquarters. There they will meet, Zaradin, the head of the organisation, who will give them to opportunity to join him. The Player Characters are fee to do, fight, or run away. Fighting is a difficult option as there are so many members of the Shattered Knife that can call upon Zaradin. However, no stats are given for Zaradin.

‘Flight into Madness’ is short. Playable in an hour—or two at the most. Yet, the whole of the Arzium Quickstart Guide 2 is short. Consequently, it feels underwritten and slightly underexplained, particularly when it comes to NPCs and combat, but the mechanics are simple enough that they can be understood. The scenario though is underwhelming and does not give the players and characters much to do beyond face a series of combat challenges.

Physically, the Arzium Quickstart Guide 2 is decently put together. The cartography and artwork are good, and it is all clean and tidy. Yet as nice as it looks, the Arzium Quickstart Guide 2 does not successfully bring the world of Arzium to life and make it a setting that you want to visit in play. There is not enough of the setting and the scenario is cursory and short and not enough to really sell the reader on the Arzium Quickstart Guide 2, let alone on the Arzium Roleplaying Game. Ultimately, the Arzium Quickstart Guide 2 showcases everything that the Arzium Quickstart Guide got wrong for Free RPG 2024 by repeating them exactly. As an introduction to the setting of Arzium,the Arzium Quickstart Guide 2 just about works. As as a quick-start the Arzium Quickstart Guide 2 comes up woefully short at barely four pages long of actual adventure...

[Free RPG Day 2025] Whispers of Chaos

Now in its eighteenth year, Free RPG Day for 2025 took place on Saturday, June 21st. As per usual, Free RPG Day consisted of an array of new and interesting little releases, which are traditionally tasters for forthcoming games to be released at GenCon the following August, but others are support for existing RPGs or pieces of gaming ephemera or a quick-start. This included dice, miniatures, vouchers, and more. Thanks to the generosity of Waylands Forge in Birmingham, Reviews from R’lyeh was able to get hold of many of the titles released for Free RPG Day.

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Whispers of Chaos is a scenario for the Aetherial Expanse setting published by Ghostfire Gaming , one of three released by the publisher for Free RPG Day 2025. Both scenario and setting are written for use with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition and the scenario is designed to be played by a party of five to six Player Characters of Third Level. It opens with ‘Welcome to the Aetherial Expanse’, a much needed description of the setting and its key features, because the scenario does not have a back cover blurb. What it tells the reader is that Aetherial Expanse is a realm of high fantasy which lies on the Astral Plane, one which combines the Age of Sail and Golden Age of Piracy with magic and swashbuckling action under a sky of swirling stars. Wind flows from the Elemental Planes to fill the sails of the ships, rain falls from the Material Plane on the islands that dot the Astral Plane and swirl around the Maelstrom, the enormous aether-storm at the heart of the Astral Sea. Planar Portals lead elsewhere, lost civilisations lie beneath the poisonous liquid aether of the Astral Sea, and aether comes in three forms—liquid, vapour, and solid. Aetherium crystal can be found floating in the Astral Sea like icebergs, but is rare and can even be used as a power source or a weapon. The Astral Emergents are those reborn and healed in the bodies of the recently dead, having been lost in the waters of the Astral Sea. Two powers from the Material Plane have invaded the Aetherial Expanse and founded colonies, the Kingdom of Ayris, a small, but powerful mercantile kingdom, and the expansive Karelagne Empire. It is less than a decade since the warring powers signed an uneasy truce, their rivalry exhibiting in feuds and acts of piracy and privateering.

In Whispers of Chaos, the Player Characters are hired by Professor Delkin Doss, an anthropology teacher. He wants to recover an ancient book of dark secrets, Godlike: Research, Stories, and Theories, which has been stolen from him by a sage, Dr. Marigold Brambletoe. A student, the Gnome, Sophia Blush, has managed to get word to him of where Doctor Brambletoe has taken the tome. This is the uninhabited Tumult Isle which lies close to the Maelstrom, where Nth Degree, a cult of Karelagne zealots, have established a base of operations where she can conduct his research. Unfortunately, Professor Delkin Doss is on a budget and has a booked passage on the Ethnos, completely unaware that some of the crew are very unhappy. So unhappy that they mutiny! This is the first big event of the scenario, throwing the Player Characters into the action, ideally being able to deal with the mutineers before sailing on, though notes are given suggesting what might happen if the mutineers prevail. Either way, the Ethnos is left shorthanded and the Player Characters are expected to pitch in. Here is where the scenario mixes it up with fun with some activities aboard ship—cooking meals, coming across a derelict ship, searching for Moose, the ship’s cat, and much more… These are pleasingly entertaining and keep the Player Characters busy until it throws them into the main action of the scenario.

This takes place in the Tumult Facility. The Player Characters need to find a way past the partially open frond or, but once inside discover a scene of bloody devastation. There are bodies everywhere as if monsters have been rampaging through the facility, and as they explore further, they will not only find several of those monsters, but also that the Tumult Facility has a surprisingly modern feel, including a welcome centre, shower room, and games room! Their progress is marked by the whole facility suddenly shaking again and again, each time the intensity increasing as if Tumult Isle was beset by ground tremors building up to an earthquake. This adds to the creepy tension that pervades the blood spattered facility, but eventually the Player Characters will discover the cause—a Maw, a great toothy mouth protruding from a crack in the ground, spitting monsters into the realm, as its tentacles flail and attempt to draw power from several Astral Emergent prisoners! The Player Characters are likely to have found Godlike: Research, Stories, and Theories by now, but this monstrous thing, even one constrained by the size of the crack in the floor of the facility, needs to be defeated, and even though it is constrained by the size of the crack in the floor of the facility, it is a challenging foe. Defeating the toothy, tentacled terror will bring the scenario to an exciting close.

The scenario comes with three appendices. The first gives stats and details for the scenario’s monsters, including a ship mimic! The second and third describe a card game that the Player Characters might play aboard ship and the effects of aether poisoning. The scenario includes maps of the Tumult Facility, the Ethnos, and the Astral Sea. A set of resources is also available for all three of the scenarios published by Ghostfire Gaming. They include maps, tokens, and pre-generated Player Characters for each. They include a Kobold Cleric with the Aether Domain; a Dwarf Fighter with the Corsair Raider subclass and Starlight Sea Raider Background; an Automaton Wizard with the Technomage Subclass and the Karalagne Naval Magewright Background; a Dragonborn Rogue with the Veiled Guardian Subclass and the Ayrissian Magnate Background; a Bard from the College Of The Blade Dancer and with the Opportunist Of The Expanse Background; and an Astral Emergent Ranger with the Expanse Wayfinder Subclass and the Silvery Sea Wanderer. All six are nicely detailed and come with some background as well as an illustration and an explanation of all their abilities and features.

Physically, Whispers of Chaos is well presented. The artwork and the maps are excellent, and the scenario is well written. The only disappointment is the lack of a back cover blurb to inform the reader what Whispers of Chaos actually is.

The biggest problem with Whispers of Chaos is the background. Not that it is not a good background—it is. Rather that there is a fair bit of it to impart to the players before they can start to play the scenario. Once over this hurdle, Whispers of Chaos is a really entertaining scenario, especially the scenes aboard the ship, that all together serves as a solid introduction to an intriguing setting.

[Free RPG Day 2025] Dragonbane – The Magistrate’s Gambit

Now in its eighteenth year, Free RPG Day for 2025 took place on Saturday, June 21st. As per usual, Free RPG Day consisted of an array of new and interesting little releases, which are traditionally tasters for forthcoming games to be released at GenCon the following August, but others are support for existing RPGs or pieces of gaming ephemera or a quick-start. This included dice, miniatures, vouchers, and more. Thanks to the generosity of Waylands Forge in Birmingham, Reviews from R’lyeh was able to get hold of many of the titles released for Free RPG Day.

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Dragonbane – The Magistrate’s Gambit is a preview of, and a quick-start for Dragonbane, the reimagining of Sweden’s first fantasy roleplaying game, Drakar och Demoner, originally published in 1982. Funded via a Kickstarter campaign by Free League Publishing in 2022, Dragonbane promises to be a roleplaying game of “mirth and mayhem”. It includes a basic explanation of the setting, rules for actions and combat, magic, the adventure, ‘The Sinking Tower’, and five ready-to-play, Player Characters.
‘The Magistrate’s Gambit’ scenario is designed as a tournament style adventure and can be played in two hours. This means that it is intended to be run for multiple groups and their scores at the end collected and compared to determine a winner. However, this does not mean that it cannot be added to an ongoing campaign, but rather that it includes a scoring sheet to determine how well one group of players fared compared to another. That said, two hours is tight for the scenario and outside of a tournament, the Game Master can easily prepare the scenario and run it in a single session. The Game Master will need a timer of some kind. The scenario includes everything necessary to play—pre-generated Player Characters, maps, puzzles, and more. If the scenario is being run as part of a standard campaign, a Rogue and a Wizard are recommended Player Characters. The scenario setting also suggests that it is located near a large town or city.
The five pre-generated Player Characters include a Human Wizard (Fire Elementalist), an Elf Hunter, a Mallard Knight (yes, a duck knight!), a Halfling Thief, and a Wolfkin Warrior. All five Player Characters are given a double-sided sheet with one side devoted to the character sheet whilst the other gives some background to the Player Character, an explanation of his abilities, and an excellent illustration. One issue is with the Human Wizard, whose player will need to refer to the magic section of the rules in Dragonbane – The Magistrate’s Gambit to find out how his spells work. It would have been far more useful for them to be at least listed along with costs for the benefit of the Wizard’s player.
A Player Character has a Kin, which can be human, halfling, dwarf, elf, mallard, or wolfkin. He also has six attributes—Strength, Constitution, Agility, Intelligence, Willpower, and Charisma—which range in value between three and eighteen, as well as a Profession. Both Kin and Profession provide an ability which are unavailable to other Kin and Professions. Various factors are derived from the attributes, notably different damage bonuses for Strength-based weapons and Agility-based weapons, plus Willpower Points. Willpower Points are expended to use magic and abilities derived from both Kin and Profession. A Player Character has sixteen skills, ranging in value from one to fourteen.
To have his player undertake an action, a player rolls a twenty-sided die. The aim is roll equal to or lower than the skill or attribute. A roll of one is called ‘rolling a dragon’ and is treated as a critical effect. A roll of twenty is called ‘rolling a demon’ and indicates a critical failure. Banes and boons are the equivalent of advantage and disadvantage. Opposed rolls are won by the player who rolls the lowest.

If a roll is failed, a player can choose to push the roll and reroll. The result supersedes the original. In pushing a roll, the Player Character acquires a Condition, for example, ‘Dazed’ for Strength or ‘Scared’ for Willpower. The player has to explain how his character acquires the Condition and his character can acquire a total of six—one for each attribute—and the player is expected to roleplay them. Mechanically, a Condition acts as a Bane in play. A Player Character can recover from one or more Conditions by resting.
Initiative is determined randomly by drawing cards numbered between one and ten, with one going first. A Player Character has two actions per round—a move and an actual action such as a melee attack, doing first aid, or casting a spell. Alternatively, a Player Character can undertake a Reaction, which takes place on an opponent’s turn in response to the opponent’s action. Typically, this is a parry or dodge, and means that the Player Character cannot take another action. If a dragon is rolled on the parry, the Player Character gets a free counterattack!

Combat takes into account weapon length, grip, length, and so on. The effects of a dragon roll, or a critical hit, can include damage being doubled and a dragon roll being needed to parry or dodge this attack, making a second attack, or piercing armour. Damage can be slashing, piercing, or bludgeoning, which determines the effectiveness of armour.

Armour has a rating, which reduces damage taken. Helmets increase Armour Rating, but work as a Bane for certain skills. If a Player Character’s Hit Points are reduced to zero, a death roll is required for him to survive, which can be pushed. Three successful rolls and the Player Character survives, whilst three failures indicate he has died. A Player Character on zero Hit Points can be rallied by another to keep fighting. Dragonbane – The Magistrate’s Gambit also includes rules for other forms of damage such as falling and poison, plus darkness and fear. Fear is covered by a Willpower check, and there is a Fear Table for the results.
A Wizard powers magic through the expenditure of Willpower Points. Typical spells cost two Willpower Points per Power Level of a spell, but just one Willpower Point for lesser spells or magic tricks. Spells are organised into schools and each school has an associated skill, which is rolled against when casting a spell. Willpower Points are lost even if the roll is failed, but rolling a dragon can double the range or damage of the spell, negate the Willpower Point cost, or allow another spell to be cast, but with a Bane. Rolling a demon simply means that the spell fails and cannot be pushed. A spell cannot be cast if the Wizard is in direct contact with either iron or steel.

Three spells and three magical tricks are given in Dragonbane – The Magistrate’s Gambit. These are all fire-related, designed for the Wizard Player Character. The magical tricks include Ignite, Heat/Chill, and Puff of Smoke, whilst the full spells are Fireball, Gust of Wind, and Pillar.
The scenario in Dragonbane – The Magistrate’s Gambit is ‘The Magistrate’s Gambit’. This takes place in Archmage Kalisial’s palace where each year she meets an old friend, Magistrate Stalomer, for a game of smickleboard. When they were young, they were adventurers, and together they found a magical necklace. Both wanted to wear it, but to decide who would for the following year, they decided to play the game, with the winner getting to wear it. Magistrate Stalomer has never won a single game despite his having studied smickleboard for years, and as he nears the end of his life, he just wants to wear it the once. Yet he suspects that Archmage Kalisial, his old friend, is cheating by using three magical artefacts. These are a wig, a pair of gilded spectacles, and an onyx game board and if he can replace them, he thinks that for once, he will prevail in the annual game. To that end, he hires the Player Characters and instructs them to attend the party, find each of the suspect artefacts and replace them with replicas he has made.

So what the Player Characters have to do is sneak away from Archmage Kalisial’s party and explore the rest of her palace for the location of the three artefacts. Given that they only have an hour to explore the palace, it is actually quite large, with eleven rooms that they will probably want to examine. There is a strong emphasis on puzzles and interaction, with the possibility of a little combat along the way, and the puzzles are actually supported by handouts that the Game Master can cut out and present to her players. All of the locations are highly detailed and there is usually a lot to examine and interact with in each room. The Player Characters will also find plenty of treasure to take away with them, which they will, as this is how Magistrate Stalomer plans to pay them. The Game Master will need to keep track of the Player Characters’ actions as they have the potential to first arouse Archmage Kalisial’s suspicions and eventually alert her to their activities. Her initial suspicions will make it increasingly difficult for the Player Character to sneak about and act surreptitiously, and will ultimately result in her sending servants to investigate if she becomes too concerned.
Eventually, a bell will ring (in other words, the timer set by the Game Master will go off) and the party proper will begin. This will be followed by the game itself being played between Archmage Kalisial and Magistrate Stalomer. How well he does will depend upon how successful the Player Characters have been in substituting the three items. In game terms, the Player Characters earn points for various objectives achieved throughout Archmage Kalisial’s palace, whilst her vigilance level is substracted from this and a twenty-sided die is rolled against the resulting value. If the roll is equal to, or below the value, then Magistrate Stalomer wins!
Physically, Dragonbane – The Magistrate’s Gambit is clean and tidy. The cartography is excellent, but the artwork and illustrations are superb. The handouts are also very good. They are done by Johan Egerkrans, who also illustrated Vaesen and possess a grim, if comic book sensibility.
Dragonbane – The Magistrate’s Gambit is a well done tournament adventure, packed with puzzles and secrets that the players and their characters need to discover and solve before the time limit of the scenario. It is effectively, an anti-heist scenario that is till played out with all of the stealth of a classic heist scenario. As a standard adventure, it can be played out at a more leisurely place and will be no less challenging, though without the time limit. Either way, Dragonbane – The Magistrate’s Gambit is a tightly designed and impressive little scenario, which not only has the potential to be a lot of fun, but which also feels refreshingly different from other scenarios for Dragonbane.

[Free RPG Day 2025] The Scourge of Sheerleaf

Now in its eighteenth year, Free RPG Day for 2025 took place on Saturday, June 21st. As per usual, Free RPG Day consisted of an array of new and interesting little releases, which are traditionally tasters for forthcoming games to be released at GenCon the following August, but others are support for existing RPGs or pieces of gaming ephemera or a quick-start. This included dice, miniatures, vouchers, and more. Thanks to the generosity of Waylands Forge in Birmingham, Reviews from R’lyeh was able to get hold of many of the titles released for Free RPG Day.

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One of the perennial contributors to Free RPG Day is Paizo, Inc., a publisher whose titles for both the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and the Starfinder Roleplaying Game have proved popular and often in demand long after the event. The emphasis in these releases have invariably been upon small species. Thus, in past years, the titles released for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game have typically involved adventures with diminutive Player Characters, first Kobolds, then Goblins, and then with the release of A Fistful of Flowers for Free RPG Day 2022 and A Few Flowers More for Free RPG Day 2023, it was Leshies, where as for Free RPG Day 2024, it was the turn of toys with The Great Toy Heist! However, for Free RPG Day 2025 literally makes a big change by making the scale of its contribution for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game big and make the villain of the piece even bigger!

The Scourge of Sheerleaf is designed for four Tenth Level Player Characters and makes use of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Player Core, the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game GM Core, the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Monster Core, Pathfinder Rage of Elements, Pathfinder Secrets of Magic, and Pathfinder Last Omens Grand Bazaar. It is a lot of sourcebooks and rulebooks, and what it means is that it supports the Game Master and the gaming group who has already invested time in the roleplaying game. This is not to say that the Game Master who has access to all of those books could not run the adventure for players who do not, running it as one-shot or demonstration adventure. That said, being designed for use with Tenth Level Player Characters means that The Scourge of Sheerleaf is more complex to run and play than the useful offering for low Level Player Characters that Paizo, Inc., normally releases for Free RPG Day.
The Scourge of Sheerleaf is set in the town of Sheerleaf which stands below Mount Zoldos,  between the Arthfell Mountains and the Arthfell Forest. It comes to the attention of the Player Characters when come across a pamphlet being circulated in nearby taverns. It tells of how the village has been attacked by a dragon, demanding fealty from the villagers, and wrought its revenge when the demand was rebuffed. When they arrive in Sheerleaf to help, they will find several collapsed buildings, many people now living in tents, and the town’s the mayor, Eliana, waiting for them. She will be able to tell the Player Characters that Zikritrax, the dragon, is an Adamantine Dragon, and with its ‘Avalanche Breath’ attack, was able to pummel the buildings into collapsing; that he has a lair in a cave up on Mount Zoldos; and worse, that Zikritrax not only refuses to negotiate, but because the town has still not acquised to his demands, has kidnapped Eliana’s wife and children. So, not only do the Player Characters have to defeat an Adamantine Dragon, they have to recuse a women and her children!
The action part of the scenario sees the Player Characters ascend the mountain, avoiding an avalanche on the way, and entering the cave. Here, they will face Zikritrax and his Armoured Cave Bear minions. Zikritrax is a tough opponent, being thirteenth Level, possessing 220 Hit Points, fearsome claw and tail strike as well as the ‘Avalanche Breath’ attack, let alone the fact that it has a ‘Fearsome Presence’ and a ‘Resilient Form’. The former inflicts fear, of course, whilst the latter potentially downgrades critical attacks against the creature.
And that is it. As an adventure, The Scourge of Sheerleaf is short. It is also very combat focused and arguably really only consists of combat since there is no other way to resolve the situation.
The rest of The Scourge of Sheerleaf is dedicated to the four pre-generated Player Characters. They are all Tenth Level and they all share a similar feature—their Heritage is ‘Dragonblood’. They consist of Brave Wanderer, a Leshy Sorcerer; Kiana, a Human Figher who has the wings, horns, and scales of a dragon; Ruvior, an Elf Cleric who uses a wheelchair; and Sizkmi, a Kobold Rogue with dragon wings. All four are given a two-page spread each and each includes his background, a guide to playing the character, with notes on whet he will do in combat, exploration, and when healing is required, as well as what he thinks about the other characters. The four Player Characters are very well done and easy to read, and also include references for the various abilities.
Physically, The Scourge of Sheerleaf is professionally presented. The artwork is excellent and the writing is clear. The one map included, which is of Zikritrax’s lair, is serviceable.
Despite how professionally The Scourge of Sheerleaf is done, it is difficult not to be disappointed at the end result. The adventure consists of three scenes, an underwritten roleplaying scene, an exploration scene, and a combat scene, the combat scene being the one that dominates the whole scenario. And that is it. There is very little on the town of Sheerleaf, and certainly no map of it, and the players and their characters have no real agency as to how they tackle the scenario and there is almost no scope for roleplaying. Further, whilst the adventure is simple—arguably simplistic—its Player Characters are complex with a lot of mechanical detail as befitting a Tenth Level Player Character. The end result is that The Scourge of Sheerleaf is likely to be too complex for players new to the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and little more than a single encounter for players who have been playing it for a while. It is thus difficult to work who exactly, The Scourge of Sheerleaf is aimed at. 

[Free RPG Day 2025] Scry, Scry My Little Eye

Now in its eighteenth year, Free RPG Day for 2025 took place on Saturday, June 21st. As per usual, Free RPG Day consisted of an array of new and interesting little releases, which are traditionally tasters for forthcoming games to be released at GenCon the following August, but others are support for existing RPGs or pieces of gaming ephemera or a quick-start. This included dice, miniatures, vouchers, and more. Thanks to the generosity of Waylands Forge in Birmingham, Reviews from R’lyeh was able to get hold of many of the titles released for Free RPG Day.

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Scry, Scry My Little Eye is a scenario for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. It is published by Loke BattleMats and a tester, not to say a taster, for the publisher’s Dungeon Designer Cards. It is designed to be played with four Player Characters, each of Second Level, and completed in a single session, two at most. The set-up is simple. A powerful Mage offers the Player Characters a job. This is to test a dungeon that he has designed and built. All the Player Characters have to do is survive, locate ten Runes that have been hidden around the dungeon, they will be rewarded with a 1000gp for their efforts. The mage, Sazovar, explains that he will monitoring their progress and in return promises no fatalities, even in the if it would appear that the entire party has been killed. What it means is that as far as they are concerned, the Player Characters are being paid to practise their dunegeoneering skills. What it actually means is slightly creepier...

Sazovar has designed the dungeon to be watched. However, not just by himself, but by his friends and colleagues too, and to keep the tension and excitement high, he is quite happy to change things in the dungeon and thus keep the hired adventurers on their toes. This is represented by the key feature dungeon, which itself consists of several connected rooms across two maps included in the centre of the adventure. This feature consists of the Dungeon Designer Cards. These are double-sided. The front depicts a piece of dungeon furniture or dressing, such as a chest, desk, storage shelves, broken floor, pool of water, and so on. Flip them over, and they present the Dungeon Master with a set of four choices. So, the ‘Pool of Water’, “A broken section of floor has filled up with brackish foul smelling water.” The choices on the back consist of a ‘Deep Dive’, ‘Acid’, ‘Damp Coins’, and ‘Watery Dead’. The Dungeon Master can chose one or roll for one, and in the case of ‘Pool of Water’, the ‘Deep Dive’ is a narrow, deep pool containing a glinting Clue; the ‘Acid’ will inflict damage to anything or anyone which falls in; the pool contains ‘Damp Coins’, but the water stinks; and in ‘Watery Dead’, there is a Ghoul hiding just under the surface of the water! The clues in the case of Sazovar’s test dungeon all give the Player Characters a Rune which they need to complete the dungeon and gain Sazovar’s reward. There is a total of sixteen Dungeon Designer Cards, each measuring roughly fifteen-by-twenty feet.

The scenario begins with ‘5E in 5 Minutes’, a very quick guide to Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, followed by an explanation of the scenario’s adventure, the hook to get the Player Characters involved, how the Dungeon Designer Cards work, an explanation of the background for the Dungeon Master. All of this is easy to read and prepare, and there is advice too, on how to run the dungeon. In this case, it means adding audience interaction, adjusting the difficulty as necessary, and so on. There are suggestions to, as how to use the scenario once the Player Characters have through it once. There is scope here, of course, for the Player Characters to replay the dungeon with the different options on Dungeon Designer Cards, ones they have not previously encountered, or for Sazovar to populate it with tougher challenges.

The Dungeon Master is supported, not just with maps she can use and the Dungeon Designer Cards she can cut out, but also tokens for the monsters and the Player Characters. The latter also have their own character sheets and consist of a Half-Orc Barbarian, a Halfling Bard, a Human Wizard, and a Half-Elf Rogue. These are all fully fledged characters with some background as well as their stats.

Physically, Scry, Scry My Little Eye is well presented. The artwork is decent, but the maps are very good. This should no surprise given the publisher. One nice touch is that references to monsters, items—magic or not, and clues are colour-coded to make them easier to spot.

Scry, Scry My Little Eye is an easy dungeon to run with very little preparation since the Dungeon Designer Cards do the dungeon design and dressing. It can be run as a one-shot, a convention scenario, or run as part of a campaign, perhaps with the Player Characters becoming dungeon scouts and surveyors to find wilder and more extravagant encounters to implement in their patron’s dungeon, and even expanding the size of test dungeons with further maps from Loke Battle Mats.

[Free RPG Day 2025] The Avengers Expansion Preview

Now in its eighteenth year, Free RPG Day for 2025 took place on Saturday, June 21st. As per usual, Free RPG Day consisted of an array of new and interesting little releases, which are traditionally tasters for forthcoming games to be released at GenCon the following August, but others are support for existing RPGs or pieces of gaming ephemera or a quick-start. This included dice, miniatures, vouchers, and more. Thanks to the generosity of Waylands Forge in Birmingham, Reviews from R’lyeh was able to get hold of many of the titles released for Free RPG Day.

—oOo—
The Avengers Expansion Preview is the Free RPG Day release for 2025 for the Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game. It is superior in every way over the release for the Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game for Free RPG 2024. The X-Men Expansion Preview, was literally that, a preview of the then forthcoming title. The Avengers Expansion Preview is anything but a preview of the forthcoming supplement detailing Earth’s Mightiest Heroes for the roleplaying game. Instead, it presents a complete scenario that can be played in a single session. What is slightly misleading is that whilst the cover does depict members of the Avengers, the players do not get to roleplay them. Instead as the cover states, they get to roleplay members of the current version of the Thunderbolts! This is more in keeping with the current version of the team’s line-up as vigilantes, founded by Bucky Barnes, the Winter Soldier, prepared to deal out justice to those villains, who time and again, manage to avoid punishment. They are The Destroyer (Sharon Carter), Red Guardian (Alexi Shostakov), U.S. Agent (John Walker), White Widow (Yelena Belova), and The Winter Soldier (Bucky Barnes). Whilst not quite the same, this line-up is similar to that seen in the Marvel Cinematic Universe film, The Thunderbolts, so players could take inspiration from the film in roleplaying them.
The scenario is designed for four or five players, it being suggested that the Narrator roleplay The Winter Soldier as an NPC. There is some advice on running the scenario, what the Narrator will need, and more, but ultimately, the Narrator will need the quick-start rules (available here) or the Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game rulebook, and also the character profiles for The Thunderbolts (also available here). The scenario is a two-act affair in which the Thunderbolts are invited to Tony Stark’s birthday party in the Avengers Tower. In the first act, the heroes arrive at the Avengers Tower in the secure garage, ready to go through security and ascend to the actual party. This is a social affair in which the heroes get to interact with fellow guests and others. They journalists such as Ben Urich of the Daily Bugle, archaeologist and adventurer, Doctor Kate Edwards, and even a celebrity mentalist, The Amazing Merlin. These can be selected by the Narrator or chosen randomly, but they present a good mix of characters, all with different motives and interests, some which actually align with those of the heroes. The scene takes the heroes out of their comfort zone and puts them on the red carpet as minor celebrities, with all of the challenges that entails.
The second act begins with a bang—onscreen! Having got through security and been able to watch the party upstairs on various video screens, the heroes see it crashed by a woman riding in a howdah atop a giant white swan. However, before the Avengers present at the party can react, the woman sends them all into a slumber using a Runestone. It is clear that the woman is using magic and the Runestone suggests that she might be an Asgardian. Security clears the Thunderbolts just in time and tells them to get in there and deal with the problem. If the first act was social, the second act is physical and a big fight. The Heroes are facing none other than the very powerful Enchantress and her henchman, Skurge. The fight is quite a tough one, as in addition to the Asgardians, the Heroes are facing trolls and ice giants. Simply facing them head on is likely to lead to defeat and the success of the Enchantress’ plans, but there are clues around which will suggest an alternate means of stopping her, at least for long enough until the Avengers can be woken up and are ready to enter the fray once again.
Again, the Narrator is given some advice on how to stage the battle and the adventure comes to a close with some suggestions as to what will happen next, which will vary depending upon how well the Thunderbolts succeeded. Lastly, there are some associated adventure seeds that the Game Master can develop if she wants to take the Thunderbolts on further missions.
Physically, The Avengers Expansion Preview is well presented. The map is nice and clear and it should be no surprise that the art is good too, given the sources that the designers can draw upon. The adventure does actually reference a lot of issues of various comics from the seventies, eighties, and nineties, though they are not required reading to run or play the scenario.
Some players may be disappointed that given that The Avengers Expansion Preview is a preview for the forthcoming Avengers sourcebook that they do not get to play the Avengers. This may be a fair point, but the Thunderbolts are far from uninteresting and anyway, according to Marvel Cinematic Universe continuity, they sort of are depicting the Avengers! Nevertheless, The Avengers Expansion Preview is a solid, serviceable scenario for the Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game.

The Old World Anew (Part I)

The Empire, located at the heart of the Old World, has stood for two thousand years, ever since it was founded by Sigmar following his alliance with the Dwarves and defeated the hordes of goblins and orcs at the Battle of Black Fire Pass. Yet for half that time, scholars and Elector Princes have been muttering that it has been in decline, ever since the time of Emperor Boris Hohenback, divided into a series of independent counties, duchies, and principalities, feuding and occasionally skirmishing with each other. Unity between them is rare, the last time being during the Vampire Wars a century ago. Now, in the year 2276 IC, the Empire stands without an Emperor and four claimants. Count Sigismund Ulric of the Grand County of Osterlund and the great city of Middenheim, descendant of the Wolf Emperors of the north, who must contend with his own independently-minded subjects. Empress Elspeth Magritta VI rules the Barony of Westerland from the wealthy port city of Marienburg, but nicknamed the Empress of Coin, she is dismissed for her youth and the influence that the rich Burgomeisters of Marienburg and the volatile cult of the Sea God Manann have over her. Prince Wilhelm I of the Principality of Reikland and his subjects live in the heartlands of the Empire, but are often regarded as being fanatical Sigmar worshippers, ready to fall upon the neighbouring Duchy of Talabec which they claim to be rife with witches! Duke Ludwig XII of the Grand Duchy of Talabec looks to be a fool who prefers hunting and drinking, but his private political manoeuvring is limited since he cannot leave the city of Talabheim and the surrounding forest that filled the Taalbaston, the giant crater in which they stand, lest he lose his right to return. This is despite the fact that Talabheim and the lands within the Taalbaston remain independent. Internal strife is not the only threat that the Empire and its ordinary peasantry, who rather focus on the day-to-day, a good day’s pay for a good day’s pay, cold ale, and solid boots, let alone a warm fire, faces. The County of Sylvania and the marsh Hel Fenn remain sinister regions on the border, despite the Vampire Counts having been defeated a century ago. Orcs and Goblins skulk in the mountains, Beastmen and Undead lurk in the woods despite only being seen as old wives’ tales designed to scare children, and worshippers of the Dark Gods run rampant in the north and practise their vile entreaties in secret elsewhere…
Perched between the Talabec River and the towering walls of the Taalbaston, Talagaad stands on the Wizard’s Way, the road that crosses over the bridge known as the Wizard’s Crossing and up over the walls of the Taalbaston and is the only legal route into the crater. It is a rough, grimy port, its inhabitants working the docks and the ferry crossings and servicing the merchants and other visitors, but seeing relatively little of coin that is raised through sales or taxes. It is a town rife with crime and corruption, petty and otherwise, the town’s notorious ferrymen ready to transport goods and people across the river as much as they are stop mid-river, exhort additional payment, or toss passengers and cargo alike into the river. Smuggling operations closely guarding knowledge of other routes into the Taalbaston that can be followed to avoid paying taxes, whilst Talagaad’s excise officers have garnered a well-deserved reputation for corruption that rivals that of any other port in the Empire.
Taalbaston is the default setting and starting point for Warhammer: The Old World Roleplaying Game, with the game referring to it again and again. Published by Cubicle 7 Entertainment, this is the roleplaying adaptation of Warhammer: The Old World, the miniatures combat rules from Games Workshop. This is set in a period two centuries prior to the better-known roleplaying game set in the Old World, that is, the venerable Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Fourth Edition. Its focus is less on the assaults and attacks by the forces of Chaos and on the Chaos within, and more on internal strife, whether political, between the Elector Counts, or religious, between the Sigmarites and Ulricans and others. The Old World as a setting has always drawn heavily from history, particularly the Early Modern period of Europe, but with Warhammer: The Old World and thus Warhammer: The Old World Roleplaying Game, the inspiration is more heavily that of the Thirty Years War and its political and religious strife.
Warhammer: The Old World Roleplaying Game Player’s Guide is the first of two core rulebooks for the roleplaying game. It provides the means to create characters, the core rules, a guide to what Player Characters can do between adventures, details of both magic and religion, and some background on the setting. Essentially, it introduces the Warhammer: The Old World – Roleplaying Game, which combines an earlier setting in the history of the setting with lighter, faster playing rules than those presented in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Fourth Edition.
A Player Character in Warhammer: The Old World is defined by his Origins, Characteristics, Skills, and Careers. The six Origins, which provide the base value for Characteristics, consist of Dwarf, Halfling, High Elf, Human Bretonnian, Human Imperial, and Wood Elf. Each Origin provides a random Talent, base Skill ratings, Lores, and beginning Fate, plus it suggests some names. There are nine Characteristics which are Weapon Skill, Ballistics Skill, Strength, Toughness, Initiative, Agility, Reason, Fellowship, and Fate. Each Characteristic has two associated skills, for example, the skills for Weapon Skill are Melee and Defence, and Willpower and Recall for Reason. Both Characteristics and Skills range in value between two and six. Each Career adds further Skill bonuses and Lores, plus Trappings, Assets, and Contacts, as well as Career Recipe. The Careers range from Apothecary, Artisan, and Boathand to Wildwood Ranger, Witch, and Wizard. Many will be recognisable from Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, such as Bounty Hunter, Charlatan, Labourer, Rat Catcher, and Road Warden, whilst others are less so, such as a Lothern Sea Guard or Waywatcher. In addition, a Player Character has some connections and assets. Most of the Origins have a unique career. Thus, there is the Knight-Exile for the Bretonnian, the Brewguard and Slayer for the Dwarf, Lothern Sea Guard and Shadow Warrior for the High Elf, Priest for the Imperial, and Waywatcher and Wildwood Ranger for the Wood Elf. Sadly, nothing for the Halfling.
To create a character, a player rolls for his Origins, three random Characteristic bonuses, applies the bonuses from his Origins and rolls for another Talent, and then rolls for his Career. Contacts—all of which are tied into the roleplaying game’s NPCs in Talagaad, and assets—based on the Player Character’s Status are rolled as is physique, demeanour, extra quirks or accessories, and character relationships.
Name: BrittaOrigins: DwarfPhysique: Red-nosed, vigorous, bright as steel Demeanour: Angry, vengeful, fierce as brightstoneCareer: EngineerCharacteristics (Skills): Weapon Skill 3 (Melee 3, Defence 3), Ballistics Skill 3 (Shooting 3, Throwing 2), Strength 4 (Brawn 2, Toil 4), Toughness 4 (Survival 2, Endurance 3), Initiative 2 (Awareness 3, Dexterity 3), Agility 3 (Athletics 3, Stealth 2), Reason 3 (Willpower 3, Recall 2), Fellowship 2 (Leadership 2, Charm 2), Fate 2Lore: Blackpowder, Engineering, Literacy, Lore: Dwarf Mountain Holds, Smithing, Extra ModificationsTalents: Intense Scrutiny, Hatred: OrcsAssets: ArmouryTrappings: Warhammer, handgun, burgher’s apparel, worker’s leathers, engineering kit, blackpowder kit, writing kitContacts: Hunter Lord Leonard Van Obelmann, Commander of the Talabheim 11th regiment occupying Talagaad; They ignored your advice and lost a critical battle as a result—a fact you never let them forget. Malko Matasca, A reputed druid, tortured by visions of dark futures; You have fought alongside them, and seen what happens when they get angry.
Mechanically, Warhammer: The Old World uses a dice pool system. To have his character undertake an action, a player rolls the number of dice equal to the associated Characteristic, aiming to roll equal to or lower than the character’s skill on one or more dice. Each roll equal to or lower than the character’s skill counts as a success. The difficulty of the task will add or subtract dice depending upon if it is easier or harder, and various Lores, Talents, trappings, and Status expectations can also modify the number of dice a player has to roll.
Depending on the circumstances, a test can be Grim or Glorious. If it is Grim, then the player rerolls all successes again and determines his character’s success from that outcome, whilst if Glorious, the player rerolls all failures and determines his character’s success from that outcome. Typically, only a single success is required, but in certain situations, a Player Character might require as many as three successes for a Total Success. In this case, if only one success is rolled, the Game Master can impose a Complication, such as forced expenditure or the Player Character becoming flustered in front of someone important. If the player rolls a Total Success, he can suggest an extra bonus, such as the task being done more efficiently or impressively. If a task is going to take time or require the expenditure of resources, then an Exacting Test is rolled, which requires multiple success over time.For example, Britta is a gunsmith and her Engineering Lore enables her to invent, operate, and build prototypes of experimental mechanisms, whilst her Smithing Lore means that she knows how to work metal to produce weapons, armour, or tools. Her Blackpowder Lore means that she is used to using and firing blackpowder weapons. She wants to create a clockwork device that will automatically reload her pistol up to two times before it needs reloading. Her Game Master tells her that this will be a detailed test. On a marginal or one success, it will work, but there is a chance that it will take an extra round time to reload rather than doing so ready for the next round; with two rolled success, or a Success, the clockwork mechanism will reload without any problem; and three success, or a Total Success, there is a chance that the reload mechanism is so fast, it enables the pistol to be fired twice in a round!
Britta has a Strength of four and a Toil of four. Her player will be rolling four dice, equal to Britta’s Strength, the aim being to roll four or less on each die as per her Toil skill of four. Unfortunately, Britta’s player rolls a four, seven, eight, and ten, resulting in one or a marginal success. Britta’s player decides that the Dwarf thinks the spring is not strong enough and a new one needs to be fitted to get the right tension. Despite the majority of inhabitants of the Empire not quite realising that they are living in an age of relative peace and prosperity, their fears are not totally unwarranted. Some have begun to detect signs and patterns and for the Player Characters, this means that their fates are bound to a Grim Portent of things to come, having come to the attention of a powerful, probably evil person or entity. When this happens, it results in a life or death or struggle that will leave the Player Characters scared if they manage to survive. In game terms, a ‘Grim Portent’ is an adventure or session in itself, and really the only discussion of what a Player Character is going to be doing in Warhammer: The Old World. Even then, its description is obtuse.
To survive a Grim Portent, a Player Character will likely need to rely on Fate, of which he will have several points. Fate can be spent or burned. It can be spent to make a test Glorious, to gain a second action, or to help make a tactical retreat. It can be burned, thus reducing the Player Character’s total Fate permanently, to succeed on a test outright, to suffer a near miss and negate a wound, or to make a last stand, and do something incredibly heroic and memorable, but die in the attempt.
Combat is fought in Zones to handle range and each combatant can act and move once per turn. Athletics Tests are required to cross difficult or hazardous terrain without falling prone. It is possible to set up actions, like aiming or helping to set a trap, which will offer bonuses on a subsequent round, and it is also possible to Run to move an extra Zone, to Charge into combat to gain a bonus die on the melee attack, Move Quietly, and even Move carefully to better move around difficult terrain. The Improvise action covers everything else, including shoving a bandit off a cliff or disarming a drunk or taunting an opponent. Combat rolls themselves are opposed. So, an attacker will use his Melee skill to attack with a sword, whilst the defender will use Defence to parry or Athletics to dodge. Whichever combatant rolls the most successes is the winner, with ties going to the attacker.
Failed attacks will actually stagger the attacker, but successful attacks inflict damage equal to the weapon’s damage value plus the number of successes rolled. The resulting value is compared to the defender’s Resilience, which is equal to his Toughness, armour worn, shield carried, and any other abilities. If the total damage is greater than the defender’s Resilience, the defender suffers a wound. If not, the defender is just staggered. If the target is already Staggered, he must either Give Ground, fall Prone, or suffer a Wound. The Give Ground response enables the defender to put some space between himself and his attacker. If all else fails, Retreat is an action all of its very own.
Wounds and their effects are rolled on the ‘Wounds Table’ individually. For example, a ‘Battered Leg’ gives “Your legs buckle as the impact threatens to pitch you to the floor. Test Endurance to avoid suffering the Prone condition. You can remove this condition by using your free move, or the Recover action.” whilst ‘Decapitation’ gives “Your head is struck from your body — if your killer is in Close Range, and has a hand free, they may opt to catch your head and hold it aloft as a trophy. You are dead.” A ten-sided die is rolled for the first Wound suffered, two ten-sided dice for the second Wound, and so on and so on… In this way, damage suffered has the potential to escalate in severity and effect. The table is only used for Player Characters and Champion NPCs. Minions are defeated after suffering one Wound, whilst Brutes and Monstrosities are not, but how they suffer Wounds depends on their profile.
The combat rules also cover mounts and vehicles, whilst the other rules cover investigation, exploration, social encounters—including the class divide, and what the Player Characters do between adventures. This covers various endeavours, including aiding a contact, banking money, changing career, formalising a spell and inscribing it into your grimoire if a wizard, gathering information, investing money, laying low, labouring or crafting, rekindling fate—if the Player Character’s Fate is lower than starting Fate because it has been burned, study lore, test might, and so on. There are a lot of options, or endeavours, here that will definitely keep the Player Characters busy. However, undertaking endeavours is the only way to increase skills rather than from adventuring. Failures on associated tests are tallied and when they exceed the current skill value, the skill will increase.
Religion and belief is covered in the Warhammer: The Old World Roleplaying Game Player’s Guide with a particular emphasis on how the different gods—Ulric, Taal, Rhya, Sigmar, Manann, Morr, Ranald, Verena, Myrmidia, and Shallya—are worshipped and regarded in Talagaad. The gods of the Elves, Dwarves, and Halflings are also discussed, though to a lesser degree. A Priest Player Character does not immediately gain the ability to call upon his god for miracles. The Faith Talent grants him the favour of his god. For example, Ulric’s Favour grants immunity to the cold, recognition as an equal by any wolf, and after suffering a Wound in battle, makes the Favoured one’s next attack Glorious. The second time the Faith Talent is chosen, the Priest gains the blessings or prayers of the god and the third time, the miracles of his god. Each time the Faith Talent is acquired, the Priest is expected to undergo a trial of faith. Whilst several prayers are given for each god, the player is expected to talk with the Game Master to determine what is possible. In general, miracles are more narrative in nature than mechanical. In return, the Priest is expected to adhere to the strictures of his faith. Should he not do so, then there is the possibility of his losing the right to call for miracles, pray, and so on.
Name: SimoniusOrigins: Human (Imperial)Physique: Charmless Demeanour: BrashCareer: WizardCharacteristics (Skills): Weapon Skill 3 (Melee 2, Defence 4), Ballistics Skill 3 (Shooting 2, Throwing 2), Strength 3 (Brawn 2, Toil 2), Toughness 3 (Survival 2, Endurance 2), Initiative 3 (Awareness 3, Dexterity 4), Agility 3 (Athletics 2, Stealth 2), Reason 3 (Willpower 3, Recall 4), Fellowship 2 (Leadership 2, Charm 2), Fate 3Lore: Lore: The Empire, Lore: Altdorf, Talents: Thirst for Knowledge, Touched by the Winds, Arcane StudyAssets: LibraryTrappings: Staff, dagger, burgher’s apparel, arcane paraphernalia, writing kitContacts: Ambrosia Waxwing, Halfling librarian, studying the threat of the northern marauders; They pay you to bring them information, be it local gossip or scrolls from the Great Library of Altdorf. Valda Kracht, Devoted of Sigmar, spreading the proscribed faith in secret; Be they a fanatic of Sigmar, Ahalt the Drinker, or stranger gods still — you believe you can save them
The status of magic varies across the Empire. It is outlawed in the Reikland and its users are accused as witches and burnt at the stake, whereas in Talabecland, Wizards enjoy greater freedom to practise magic. However, Wizards everywhere are looked upon with superstition and distrust. Most are self-taught, but the recently founded Hexenguilde, attempts to protect and teach Wizards. A Wizard or a Witch has the career Talent of Wizard. Each level in the Wizard Talent grants the Wizard three spells from their Magic Lore. Every spell as a Casting Value, as well as a Target for the spell, and its Range and Duration. A Casting Test is needed to cast a spell, the caster’s player aiming to roll a number of successes equal to the Casting Value with his Willpower skill. No matter the total number of successes rolled, the final number of successes rolled determines a spell’s Potency. It is possible to keep rolling a Casting Value in order to get a better Potency value. The Potency value determines the actual effect of the spell, which will vary spell from spell. Rules are provided for improvised magic, but a selection of spells, organised Lore by Lore is also included. The Lores include Battle Magic, Elementalism, Illusion, and Necromancy.
Not rolling enough successes does not mean that the spell is miscast and a wizard’s player can continue making a Casting Test from one round to the next until the wizard has sufficient successes equal to the Casting Value. However, when the Casting Test is interrupted, the wizard adds a die to his Miscast Pool. As does rolling a nine, since this exceeds the Eight Winds of Magic. If the Miscast Pool exceeds the wizard’s level in the Wizard Talent, the Wizard’s player rolls all of the dice in his Miscast Pool and consults the Miscast Table. The results do not always mean that the spell fails, but rather that the Wizard has drawn too heavily on the Winds of Magic and the backlash causes noticeable side effects.For example, Simonius, the ‘Worst Wizard in the Old World’, is in a fierce fight with some goblins. His long-suffering companions are putting up a strong resistance and driving the goblins back, with many lying about in pieces from the Slayer’s axe or decapitated from the Halfling’s surprisingly deadly punches, but now a big brute is charging him. He attempts to cast Lightning Blast at the goblin, which inflicts four damage (or five if armoured) plus the casting Potency. It has a Casting Value of two—so unlikely to be too difficult, thinks Simonius’ player, who will be rolling four dice for Simonius’ Reason characteristic and attempting to roll equal to or under his Willpower skill of three. As the goblin charges at Simonius, his player rolls one, seven, nine, and ten. So, one success, but also three failures, one of which is a nine. A die is added to Simonius’ Miscast Pool. The spell has not yet attained its Casting Value, and on the next round, the charging goblin attacks, forcing Simonius to dodge. He is successful, but since this interrupts the casting, it adds a second die to his Miscast Pool. This means it exceeds his Wizard Level and forces a roll on the Miscast Table. Simonius’ player rolls the two dice in his Miscast Pool and gets the result of thirteen: “A hideous stench erupts from you. All those within Short Range of when you rolled this Miscast must immediately Give Ground or suffer a –1d penalty to their next Test. All your Fellowship Tests are Grim until you can next bathe.” This resets the Miscast Pool to zero and even though the goblin is used to horrible stenches, it gives ground. Simonius still has one success and continues his attempt to cast the Lightning Blast. His player makes a second roll with the results of three, six, seven, and nine. This means that Simonius has gained successes equal to the Casting Value and can cast the spell, but the Potency is only one, equal to the number of successes on this round. His Miscast Pool rises by one also. With the goblin on the ground, Simonius’ player decides to roll one more time to increase the Potency. Unfortunately, he rolls one, two, nine, and nine. This not only means that the spell succeeds with a better Potency of two, but it also means that Simonius’ Miscast Pool increases by two to a total of three because of the two nines rolled. This is, of course, a rare result, but then Simonius is the ‘Worst Wizard in the Old World’. Simonius’ player has to roll again on the Miscast Table and the result is twenty-one, or “An unnatural wind whips up around you. Anyone within Medium Range, including you, must make a Hard (–1d) Endurance Test or be knocked Prone.” This includes most of the other Player Characters and the goblins they are fighting, including the goblin that wanted to chop Simonius to bits. Simonius finally decides to unleash the spell and the goblin is blasted for four damage plus the Potency of two. Meanwhile, the other adventurers, now lying on the ground, are once again looking at Simonius askance…Overall, Warhammer: The Old World Roleplaying Game Player’s Guide presents a set of options that are Warhammer through and through, all set in the Empire, and backs it up with a fast playing, easy to use set of rules. The combat mechanics are straightforward and whilst they do not cover every eventuality, they do allow for some flexibility, especially under the Improvise action, which offers more options than just hitting things. In comparison, the magic rules are more complex, but not overly so, but they are still fast-playing whilst also being more than just a simple matter of casting a spell and triggering its effects. There is some nuance as the player attempts to balance the potential effect of the spell versus the possibility of a miscast and side effects. In comparison, the magic rules are better explained than the combat rules, primarily because as a player’s book, there are no monsters in the Warhammer: The Old World Roleplaying Game Player’s Guide and so there is not an effective example of combat to help the player or Game Master better grasp its play. A table giving the likely outcome for differing dice rolls would also have been useful.
Of course, Warhammer: The Old World Roleplaying Game is not Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Fourth Edition. It even states this on the cover with its subtitle, ‘Grim and Glorious Adventures in the World of Legend’ as opposed to ‘A Grim World of Perilous Adventure’. It does not have the options or the detail of the latter, but at the same time, it does not have the complexity of the latter either. To be fair, whatever its edition, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay has always been a relatively complex game, but to have a faster playing and easier ruleset will be an attractive feature to many players and Game Masters.
One of the big problems with Warhammer: The Old World Roleplaying Game Player’s Guide is that it does not really tell you what it is. The introduction to the setting is slight and it does not expand upon that until the very end of the book when there is more detail on the setting and on the four claimants to the Imperial throne. So, it leaves the reader wondering when, and to some extent, where, it is set. It is obviously a Warhammer roleplaying book, obviously not a Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Fourth Edition book, but it lacks context. If you are coming to the Warhammer: The Old World Roleplaying Game Player’s Guide new to the hobby there is a little note to explain what a roleplaying game is and that the best place for the reader to find out more is to look at the Warhammer: The Old World Roleplaying Game Starter Set. However, if you coming to the Warhammer: The Old World Roleplaying Game Player’s Guide from Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Fourth Edition—which is a distinct possibility—then the reader is likely to be at loss due to the lack of context and a direct explanation of what he is holding in his hands. When is this set? How does this differ from Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Fourth Edition? What does it offer that is different from Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Fourth Edition? What is it that the Player Characters will be doing that sets it apart from Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Fourth Edition? These are really simple direct questions whose answers could have been used to really sell the Warhammer: The Old World Roleplaying Game.
Physically, Warhammer: The Old World Roleplaying Game Player’s Guide is well presented and has some excellent artwork throughout. It does need an edit in places and in others the explanations need more careful read throughs than they necessarily should.
Ultimately, at this point, the main problem with the Warhammer: The Old World Roleplaying Game Player’s Guide is that it does not have its counterpart, Warhammer: The Old World Roleplaying Game Gamemaster’s Guide. Or even the Warhammer: The Old World Roleplaying Game Starter Set. There is nothing for the Game Master to run or the players and their characters to react to or fight. That will, of course, change, but even then the Warhammer: The Old World Roleplaying Game Player’s Guide does not really explain what it is that the Player Characters are going to be doing, what its differences are between it and its older forbear, and so on. There is a lack of context which means that it is not as grounded as it should be and means that it is not as easy for the Game Master to pitch the roleplaying game to her players as it should be.
The Warhammer: The Old World Roleplaying Game Player’s Guide is everything that a player needs to get started in a version of the Old World and the Empire that is both older and newer. It promises ‘Grim and Glorious Adventures in the World of Legend’ and with its faster playing, easier mechanics it offers a more heroic, more knockabout style of play.

After Every Storm The Sun Will Smile

Since 1979, what has been fundamental to RuneQuest and to the world of Greg Stafford’s Glorantha, has been the integration and prominence of its myths, pantheons, and their worship into the setting and as part of everyday life for the Player Characters. Although the original RuneQuest—more recently published as RuneQuest Classic—mentioned the importance of cults, it only detailed three of them, offering limited choices for the player and his character. That changed with the publication of Cults of Prax, which presented fifteen cults and their myths and magics dedicated to fifteen very different deities. Fifteen very different cults and deities which held very different world views and very different means of approaching problems and overcoming them. Fifteen cults which provided their worshippers with a link to their gods and in turn their gods with a link from god time to the real world. Fifteen cults which provided their worshippers with great magics granted by their gods and with paths to become Rune Lords and Rune Priests and so bring the power of their gods into the world. Cults of Prax provided the RuneQuest devotee or Gloranthaphile with a framework via which his character could enter the world of Glorantha, giving form and function to faith and above all, making it something that you could play and something that you wanted to play. For at its most mechanical, a player and his character’s choice of cult works almost like a character Class of Dungeons & Dragons, giving the character benefits and powers in terms of what he can do and how he does it. However, to reduce the cults of Glorantha to such mechanical simplicity is to ignore the ‘why’ of what the character can do, and it is this ‘why’ where the world of Glorantha and its gods, myths, and cults comes alive. Cults of Prax did not ignore this ‘why’, but introduced it, and that is arguably why it is the most important supplement ever for both Glorantha and RuneQuest. However, in 2023, some forty-four years after its publication, Cults of Prax has a successor—or rather, a series of successors.
Cults of RuneQuest is a ten-volume series of supplements each of which is dedicated to the different pantheons of Glorantha. Each entry in the series details the gods—both major and minor—within their pantheon, along with their myths and cults, magics, favoured skills, requirements and restrictions for membership, outlook and relationships with the other gods, and more. Each book is standalone, but because each of the gods and pantheons has connections and often entwining myths with other gods and pantheons, the series will together provide a wider overview of all the gods of Glorantha as well as differing approaches to them. This is further supported by the two companion volumes to the series—Cults of RuneQuest: The Prosopaedia and Cults of RuneQuest: Mythology. The standalone nature of the series means that the Game Master or the player—and it should be made clear that each of the ten volumes in the Cults of RuneQuest is intended to be used by both—can pick or chose their favourite pantheon and use the gods and cults from that book. However, some volumes are quite tightly bound to each other and some are, if not bound geographically, have strong ties to certain regions of Glorantha. So, for example, the first two entries in the series, Cults of RuneQuest: The Lightbringers and Cults of RuneQuest: The Earth Goddesses are tightly bound to each other as the myths of their gods often combine and cross paths, not least of which is the fact that the heads of the pantheons in both books are married to each other. Geographically, Cults of RuneQuest: The Lightbringers and Cults of RuneQuest: The Earth Goddesses provide support for the region of Dragon Pass, including Sartar, Esrolia, Prax, and Tarsh, whilst Cults of RuneQuest: The Lunar Way provides similar geographical support for the Lunar Empire and its client states. This is not to say that the presence of the cults in these volumes will not be found elsewhere, but rather that these are the regions where their worship is most prevalent and if a Game Master is running campaigns in these locations, then the relevant geographical volume will be very useful. Lastly, of course, the Gloranthaphile will want all of these volumes because he is a Gloranthaphile.
Each of the entries in the Cults of RuneQuest series is well-organised. The introduction explains the purpose and subject matter for the book, highlights how the book is useful for player and Game Master alike, and examines some of the book’s themes and both their nature as myth and mature treatment of subject matters including death, sex, gender, survival, vengeance, and unconscious fears given form. It also notes that the artwork throughout the book is divided between depictions ‘in-Glorantha’, seen within the world itself, and those seen from without in reading the book. All of this is tailored slightly to the pantheon presented in the particular entry in the series. This is followed by a group depiction of all of the gods of the pantheon—which the book notably returns to a few pages later with a labelled version—and a hymn to them all, and then an overview of the pantheon, answering questions such as, “Where does the world come from?”, “Where do I come from?”, “Why am I here?”, “How do I do magic?”, and more. Lastly, there is a discussion of the relationship that the pantheon has with other pantheons and a listing of all of the gods in the pantheon or associated with it.

The bulk of each book though is dedicated to individual entries in the pantheon. Each of these follows the same format. They begin with the Mythos and History of the god, the Nature of the Cult and its Organisation, its membership at various levels—lay member, initiate, God-Talker, Rune-Lord, Rune-Priest, and Chief Priest, and continue with subservient cults, associated cults, and subcults, and more. This will vary from god to god and from cult to cult. This follows the format seen in RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, but in every case greatly expands what is included in the core rulebook, whether in terms of individual entries or additional entries. The number of pages dedicated to each god and thus each cult will also vary. A god whose worship is widespread—and also a popular choice for players to select for their characters to worship—is explored over the course of multiple pages whereas a less popular and less worshipped god many only receive two or three pages. All gods though, receive a full colour depiction at the start of their entry that includes their runes too, in addition to their being depicted elsewhere.
Cults of RuneQuest: The Gods of Fire and Sky is the fourth examination of a pantheon in the series. It is a slimmer volume than the previous three, detailing just thirteen cults in comparison to the nineteen of Cults of RuneQuest: The Lightbringers, the sixteen of Cults of RuneQuest: The Earth Goddesses, and the fifteen of Cults of RuneQuest: The Lunar Way. With the mighty sun god, Yelm, at its head, it looks at the deities of heat and light, fire and sky, order and obedience, who regard the Orlanthi gods, those of the storm, as barbarians who rose up and threw down order, Orlanth himself striking the blow that would kill Yelm, and so began the Gods War. Despite their histories, the members of the differing pantheons maintain a rivalry between each other rather than an open hostility and there are gods, such as Chalana Arroy and Lankhor Mhy, who are part of, or strongly associated with, the Solar pantheon, yet are worshipped by the barbarians. On the other hand, Yelm and his celestial court maintains strong ties with the Lunar pantheon—which the Orlanthi despise—and know the Lunar pantheon as a subcult since the Red Goddess is the reborn daughter of Yelm. Within the Lunar Empire, worship of Yelm, the Red Goddess, and the Red Emperor is intertwined. In regions outside of the Lunar Empire, this is not the case, such as in Sun County, west of Prax, but nevertheless, worshippers of Yelm and his pantheon are far more tolerant of Lunars than any Orlanthi.
The supplement begins with an examination of Yelm’s foundation myth and an overview of the gods of the Solar pantheon in the style of Cults of RuneQuest: The Prosopaedia. The supplement begins with an examination of Yelm’s foundation myth and an overview of the gods of the Solar pantheon in the style of Cults of RuneQuest: The Prosopaedia. The former is examined in more detail in the first examination of the cult in Cults of RuneQuest: The Gods of Fire and Sky, which naturally enough, begins with Yelm. His worship is likely the one to be most recognised by those outside of his cult and so he takes pride of place. His ‘Mythos and History’ is a fascinating read since it directly counters and complements the foundation myth of his interaction given under the similar entry for Orlanth in Cults of RuneQuest: The Lightbringers, but even though they fundamentally tell the same story, the variances between foundation myths do not vary between pantheons, but also between gods. For example, according to Yelm, when the Earth appeared beneath the Sky, his elder brother, Dayzatar, withdrew from its impurity into the Sky World, whilst he ascended into the Middle Sky to become Emperor of the Universe. Their younger brother, Lodril, gave into the temptation of the world and descended into gross matter. According to Dayzatar, who remained the God of the Sky and Above, Yelm descended to the Middle World and Lodril to the Underworld, whilst Lodril, God of Peasants and the Fire Below, says that Dayzatar, his eldest brother, sleepy and selfish, turned his back upon the great work their father asked of them and was rewarded with emptiness, whilst Yelm, his elder brother, asked for another task and received a more challenging task, a disloyal family, and a strength that ebbs and flows. Thus, Lodril gained the greater inheritance, a larger family care of the Central World, and greater inner strength. This all serves to bring out the tensions and differences between the gods and their cults, and so add a little further depth that a player can help enhance his roleplaying.
Many of the entries in Cults of RuneQuest: The Gods of Fire and Sky do not lend themselves to ordinary adventuring types. Indeed, some cults are so dedicated to their respective gods that their members rarely excuse themselves from their worship. For example, worshippers of Dayzatar are monks, ex-priests of other Sky cults, who are typically retired and spend their days in solitary worship and meditation, staring at the sun and going blind! Similarly, the cult of Ourania, his virginal daughter, Goddess of the Sky and Heavens, consists of nuns who devote themselves to maintaining the Celestial Song through its highly regarded choirs. This is not to say that there are not roleplaying potential in the members of these cults and in many cases, they could be the basis of interesting NPCs. Conversely, cultists of Yelm, of course, are ready made as the basis for adventuring Player Characters, but potentially so are worshippers of Polaris, the Polestar and General of Heaven, who is a war god for some of the Dara Happen regiments, of Shargash, the God of War and Destruction, whose worshippers can summon Underground Demons, and of course, Yelmalio, the Bright God, as seen in Sun County and Tales of the Sun County Militia. Certainly, it should be no surprise that the write-ups of Yelm and Yelmalio are the longest in the supplement. Female warriors, seeking life free of the paternal, even misogynistic strictures of the cults of Yelm and Yelmalio, may seek membership of the cult of Yelorna, the Starbringer, though they still chafe under the attitudes of male warriors, despite being reknowned by the knowledgable for their prowess and for the fact that their cavalry ride unicorns into battle. 
Cults of RuneQuest: The Gods of Fire and Sky comes to a close with a guide to the Gloranthan celestial sky at night, when Yelm descends into the Underworld, followed by a description of the Orlanthi hijacking of the Celestial Realm to invade the new Temple of the Reaching Moon in Dragon Pass in Earth Season, ST. 1625, and disrupt the Lunar ritual to consecrate it and so trigger the Dragonrise. It brings the supplement to a dramatic close. In addition to detailing its thirteen cults, Cults of RuneQuest: The Gods of Fire and Sky also describes the various Rune spells known to each cult and delves into the history of the solar-worshipping empire of Dara Happa and its ties to both Yelm and the Lunar Empire today. The origins of the horse, ripped from Hippogrif, during the Gods War are also given. One aspect of Yelm not explored in the supplement though, is his Illumination. That though, lies outside the scope of traditional Solar worship.

Physically, Cults of RuneQuest: The Gods of Fire and Sky is very well written and presented, but needs a slight edit here and there. As with the earlier Cults of RuneQuest: The ProsopaediaCults of RuneQuest: The Lightbringers, Cults of RuneQuest: The Earth Goddessess, and Cults of RuneQuest: The Lunar Way, the artwork in this supplement is of an extremely high quality. Some of it is of an adult nature.
Cults of RuneQuest: The Gods of Fire and Sky is a great counter to Cults of RuneQuest: The Lightbringers and in that it complements Cults of RuneQuest: The Lunar Way. There are fewer cults in the book and fewer straightforward adventuring cults, but none of them are no less interesting for that, and some of the less adventuring cults would still be interesting to bring into a game. Ultimately, Cults of RuneQuest: The Gods of Fire and Sky presenting a fascinatingly different point of view than we normally see in RuneQuest through Orlanthi eyes, and makes it playable. There can be no doubt that for certain regions of Glorantha and for certain campaigns, Cults of RuneQuest: The Gods of Fire and Sky is going to be no less than indispensable. For elsewhere and in other campaigns, it still has the potential to be very useful and if not that, an informative and enlightening read.

Magazine Madness 33: Senet Issue 13

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—Senet is a print magazine about the craft, creativity, and community of board gaming. Bearing the tagline of “Board games are beautiful”, it is about the play and the experience of board games, it is about the creative thoughts and processes which go into each and every board game, and it is about board games as both artistry and art form. Published by Senet Magazine Limited, each issue promises previews of forthcoming, interesting titles, features which explore how and why we play, interviews with those involved in the process of creating a game, and reviews of the latest and most interesting releases. Senet is also one of the very few magazines about games to actually be available for sale on the high street.

Senet Issue 13 was published in the winter of 2023 and it comes with a seasonally appropriate theme, at least for one article. This is highlighted in the editorial, which asks the question, “Why aren’t there more board games about Christmas?”, before discussing the other contents and finishing with, “Please remember that a board game is for life, not just for Christmas.” Even putting aside its somewhat hackneyed, even hacked about a bit, nature, is that really true? Perhaps it is until you run out of room on your shelves and have to sell it on eBay or put it in the ‘Bring ‘n’ Buy’ at UK Games Expo… That might come sooner if the Christmas game turns out to be not very good, a distinct possibly that some designers are attempting to remedy.

The issue proper begins with highlighting some of the forthcoming games with its regular preview, ‘Behold’. The most intriguing title here is Kelp: Shark vs. Octopus, an asymmetrical game in which an octopus hides from a shark that is hunting for it. The Octopus player uses cards to move blocks it can move behind, whilst the shark player rolls dice to find the blocks and then reveal whether there is its prey behind it. ‘Points’, the regular column of readers’ letters, contains a mix of praise for the magazine and a discussion of gaming culture, including representation in the hobby and the appeal of co-operative games. Again, at just four letters, it really does not seem enough. As with the previous issues, there is scope here for expansion of this letters page to give space to more voices and readers of Senet. One way of doing that is perhaps to expand it when ‘For Love of the Game’ comes to end. This regular column continues the journey of the designer Tristian Hall towards the completion and publication of his Gloom of Kilforth. By this entry of his column, he has long moved past this and is more looking at the travails of being a game designer. This time, he discusses how to be an effective designer and representative of the company online. The advice he gives is solid and to the point, far more so than in the column in the previous issue, so is surprisingly useful.

By this the thirteenth issue, the format of Senet is well and truly tried and tested. Two interviews, one with a designer, one with an artist, and one article exploring a game mechanic whilst another looks at a game theme. It is a format that works well since it throws a light on different aspects of the hobby and its creators. However, Senet Issue 13 does strays ever slightly, in a tiny fashion if you will, from this format. Instead of looking at a game theme, it instead looks at a game format. This is the ‘microgame’, a game that has relatively few components packed into a pocket-friendly box and is relatively budget friendly as well. Matt Kelly’s ‘Small Worlds’ explores the history of microgame from Steve Jackson Games’ Ogre all the way to here and now with the superlative Scout, noting that there was a lengthy extensive interregnum between original heyday with Metagaming, Task Force Games, and even TSR, Inc., and their rebirth with what the article calls a ‘micro wave’, really beginning with Love Letter in 2012 from Alderac Entertainment Group, followed by a multitude of mini-games from Oink. This gives the article a pleasing balance with space aplenty given to both the past and the contemporary. It also explores the drive to make games as small as possible and still be playable. Overall, this is a good overview of the history of, and the phenomena that is, the microgame, though it feels all too short and it would have been fascinating to explore some of the titles published during the six years when they were first popular.

The issue’s first interview is with Polish designer, Adam Kwapiński. In ‘The Taskmaster’, he talks to Alexandra Sonechkina about his designs like Terracotta Army and Frostpunk: The Board Game, and the strong theming and difficulty of their play. Also discussed is his book about board game design, Board Games on my Mind. It would have been interesting to see the latter reviewed in the issue, but it is not. It is solid, interesting interview, as is the artist interview by Dan Jolin, which is with Alex Crispin. In ‘Blackout’, he explores the design, and specifically, the look of Escape the Dark Castle: The Game of Atmospheric Adventure and Escape the Dark Sector: The Game of Deep Space Adventure, amongst other games, including the forthcoming title from Themeborne Games based on the television series, The Last of Us. His is a distinctive, grim and scratchy style that also stands out because it is in black and white, and it is interesting to see the style develop into something more subtle with The Last of Us: Escape the Dark.

Matt Thrower examines the issue’s theme, included to catch the winter period when Senet Issue 13 was published, in ‘Christmas Play’. Despite the editor’s joy at the inclusion of the cut out and play game, ‘Sleigh Wars’, which appeared in White Dwarf #72 (December 1985), the theme provides rather paltry pickings and the author has to work hard to make the article interesting. Christmas is often seen as a time to play games, but not necessarily Christmas games. Instead, games like Monopoly are common—and everyone knows that such games are anything other than good. Similarly, the early Christmas-themed board games are all race games and it is not until games like Hen House Games’ Ugly Christmas Sweaters from 2020 and 25th Century Games’ Holly Jolly from 2021, that Christmas games appear to match theme and play. The article even includes a list of other holiday-themed games, so ultimately there is an air of desperation to the piece.

‘Unboxed’, Senet’s reviews section covers a wide range of games. This includes Cosmoctopus from Paper Fort Games, which not only continues the cephaloid theme from the earlier Kelp: Shark vs. Octopus, but also receives ‘Senet’s top choice’! Other titles reviewed include Stonemaier Games’ Expeditions, set in the same world as the publisher’s highly regarded Scythe; the odd Obey the Clay, a clay-moulding game designed by Aardman Animations and published by Big Potato Games; Call of Kilforth from Hall or Nothing, whose designer writes the ‘For Love of the Game’ column in the magazine; and even, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: Slaughterhouse from Funko Games. The range of games reviewed is quite diverse and shows off a wide range of different games for different tastes and play styles in just a few pages. The magazine could easily expand this section or do a whole separate publication of reviews of this quality.

As is traditional, Senet Issue 13 comes to a close with the regular end columns, ‘How to Play’ and ‘Shelf of Shame’. For ‘How to Play’, ‘Growing Roots: lessons for parents in play’ by John Ankers looks at aspect of the board gaming hobby that has become increasingly common over the years—parents teaching their children to play board games. In his case, it is with the board game, Root, and how parent and child learned to play together and what they learned from it. It is a nicely enjoyable piece about forging memories as much it is lessons. Lastly, Rozie Powell of Cozy Boardgames pulls Moon Adventure for her ‘Shelf of Shame’ and discovers a counterpart Deep Sea Adventure—thus continuing the issue’s theme of microgames—that she would play again, but with a different group of players.

Physically, Senet Issue 13 is shows off the board games it previews and reviews to great effect. There are some entertaining articles in the issue, ‘Small Worlds’, in particular, stands out, as does ‘Christmas Play’, though more for the effort that the author has to put into it! Overall, Senet Issue 13 maintains the magazine’s high standards and is a good read.

[Free RPG Day 2025] The Dying Light of Castle Whiterock

Now in its eighteenth year, Free RPG Day for 2025 took place on Saturday, June 21st. As per usual, Free RPG Day consisted of an array of new and interesting little releases, which are traditionally tasters for forthcoming games to be released at GenCon the following August, but others are support for existing RPGs or pieces of gaming ephemera or a quick-start. This included dice, miniatures, vouchers, and more. Thanks to the generosity of Waylands Forge in Birmingham, Reviews from R’lyeh was able to get hold of many of the titles released for Free RPG Day.

—oOo—

Castle Whiterock: The Dying Light of Castle Whiterock is a preview and adventure for Castle Whiterock: The Greatest Dungeon Story Ever Told published by Goodman Games. It comes with a bit of backstory and is the subject of a forthcoming crowdfunding campaign. This crowdfunding campaign brings back and updates Dungeon Crawl Classics #51: Castle Whiterock, originally published in 2007. Further, Dungeon Crawl Classics #51: Castle Whiterock received its own preview for Free RPG Day, in 2007, in the form of Dungeon Crawl Classics #51.5: The Sinister Secret of Whiterock. Now both Dungeon Crawl Classics #51: Castle Whiterock and Dungeon Crawl Classics #51.5: The Sinister Secret of Whiterock were written for use with Dungeons & Dragons 3.5, but both Castle Whiterock: The Dying Light of Castle Whiterock and Castle Whiterock: The Greatest Dungeon Story Ever Told are written for use with two separate roleplaying games. These are the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game and Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition.
Castle Whiterock: The Dying Light of Castle Whiterock is an adventure for Second Level Player Characters for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition and is an adventure for First Level Player Characters for Dungeon Crawl Classics. It is written for use by the Judge in Dungeon Crawl Classics and the Dungeon Master in Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, so there is a lot of technical phrasing and terminology for both games throughout the adventure. This begins with a conversion guide between the two roleplaying games, which covers Level ranges and attribute, saving throw, difficulty class, and damage descriptor equivalents between the two, as well as an explanation of how Advantage and Disadvantage are handled in both. It is an interesting read which explores the differences between the two and how they handle various aspects of similar game play.
The scenario, Castle Whiterock: The Dying Light of Castle Whiterock, opens with news that a beacon of light has been seen shining out of a suddenly revealed watch tower, known as Swornlight Tower, over Galena Pass in the Ul-Dominor Mountains. The Player Characters may be simply travelling through the pass and want to investigate or look for refuge; they may have been sent by the Merchant-Lord, Nigel the Bald, to look for some missing merchants; or a monastic order of scholars, the Order of the Dawning Sun, seek to claim the watchtower, and so employ the Player Characters to clear it out of any dangerous creatures which have made their home within the walls.
The adventure begins with the Player Characters outside a crack in the rock below the watchtower. They can either explore the crack or make the difficult climb up the rock to the top of the exposed watch tower where they find weird moths circling the light. Inside, they will find signs that the watchtower has long been abandoned, covered with rock and debris, some of it filling the windows and flowing into rooms, as well as signs of recent occupation. This is by a lone monk of the Order of the Dawning Sun, who will be more than felicitous in his welcoming the adventurers, apologising for the traps he has laid to protect himself against intruders, and offering them food and ale. The Player Characters may have some idea that there is something wrong in the watchtower, depending upon their means of access. If they climb to the top and descend down through the floors, they will discover hints that something weird is going on, whereas if they enter from below via the crack, they will certainly pick up hints from the monk’s demeanour… There are some nice moments of horror in the tower and the monk is ever so slightly creepy.
Ultimately, the secret of Swornlight Tower will be revealed to the Player Characters in the antechamber below the tower following a tough little combat puzzle. This also sets them up for the scenario’s final confrontation and if successful, prepares for further exploration of Castle Whiterock when Castle Whiterock: The Greatest Dungeon Story Ever Told is published. There is potential that the Player Characters may suffer a curse during the adventure, but lifting it lies outside of the scope of the Castle Whiterock: The Dying Light of Castle Whiterock.
Rounding out Castle Whiterock: The Dying Light of Castle Whiterock is a pair of appendices. The first contains stats and descriptions for the monsters and NPCs in the adventure. The second details the two new magical items available in the campaign and two handouts which help lay the groundwork for the final confrontation and the puzzle before it.
Physically, Castle Whiterock: The Dying Light of Castle Whiterock is cleanly and tidily laid out. The look of the scenario feels like a blend of the two layout styles used by Goodman Games, one for Dungeon Crawl Classics and one for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. The cartography is very clear though is done in an overhead view rather than the isomorphic view normally used for Dungeon Crawl Classics. The artwork has some creepy moments that are very appropriate to the scenes they accompany.
Castle Whiterock: The Dying Light of Castle Whiterock can be run on its own, inserted into a Judge’s or Dungeon Master’s own campaign, or it can be run as a prequel to Castle Whiterock: The Greatest Dungeon Story Ever Told. Either way, this is a creepy, slightly horrifying scenario that works as written, but better as a prequel to Castle Whiterock: The Greatest Dungeon Story Ever Told.

Unseasonal Activities: Die Hard: The Nakatomi Heist Board Game

It is not Christmas until Hans Gruber has fallen from the executive floor of Nakatomi Plaza to his death on the ground below. In Die Hard: The Nakatomi Heist Board Game, you do not only get to make sure that Hans Gruber falls from the executive floor of Nakatomi Plaza to his death on the ground below every Christmas, but also very time you play Die Hard: The Nakatomi Heist Board Game. Published by The Op GamesDie Hard: The Nakatomi Heist Board Game is the board game adaptation of the 1988 anti-heist thriller directed by John McTiernan and starring Bruce Willis, Alan Rickman, Alexander Godunov, Bonnie Bedelia, and Reginald VelJohnson. Designed for two to four players, aged fifteen and over, and playable in sixty to ninety minutes, Die Hard: The Nakatomi Heist Board Game is an asymmetrical board game in which one player takes the role of New York detective John McClane and up to three other players take the role of the Thieves attempting to rob the Nakatomi corporation of $640 million in bearer bonds. For the players who control the Thieves, the game is co-operative. The game is played in three acts on three different sections of the board, the board unfolding to reflect this, and both John McClane and the Thieves having different objectives to achieve in each act. In general, John McClane is trying to achieve his objectives to get to the next floor and the Thieves are not only trying to stop him, but also working together to unlock the vault holding the bearer bonds. John McClane wins if he get to Act III and kill Hans Gruber, but the Thieves win at any time if John McClane dies—by running out of Action Cards, or they break into the vault.

Die Hard: The Nakatomi Heist Board Game comes with a double-sided board game, eighty Action Cards for John McClane, forty Action Cards for the Thieves, twenty-five Lock cards, a John McClane Player Board, Lock Tracker Card, figures for John McClane, Hans Gruber, and seven Thieves, a Combat Die, and then various cubes, tokens, and tiles, plus the rulebook. The board depicts three different floors of Nakatomi Plaza, one for each act. Each floor is marked with spots where Objective Tokens can be found for both John McClane and the Thieves. Both will have to search for these in order to complete objectives which vary from act to act. In Act I, John McClane must ‘Find the Machine Gun’, ‘Find the Radio’, and ‘Acquire the Shoes (that don’t fit)’. In Act II, he must ‘Find the Detonators and Explosives’, ‘Drop the Detonators and Explosives down the Elevator Shaft’, and ‘Kill a Thief, and throw him out a window’. In Act III, he must ‘Scare the Hostages off of the Roof’, ‘Swing on the Fire Hose’, and of course, ‘Kill Hans Gruber’. Complete the objectives in each act and John McClane and the game can progress to the next.

Whereas the Thieves have one objective that does not vary from act to act and then objectives that do. The ‘Draw Blood’ objective does not vary from act to act, the Thieves constantly attempting to punch or shoot John McClane. In Act I, their other objectives are to ‘Track McClane’ and ‘Capture 3 Hostages’. In Act II, they ‘Shoot the Glass’ and ‘Fire the Rocket’. In Act III, they are ‘Open the Sixth Lock’ and ‘Trigger the Roof Explosion’. Most of John McClane’s objectives will grant him specific bonuses, whereas the Thieves’ objectives grant extra attempts to unlock the Vault. All of the objectives match things that happen in the film, whether done by John McClane or by the Thieves.

The John McClane player receives a deck of Action Cards per act, but the cards he plays are carried over into the next act, whereas those he discards are not. Thus, he needs to be doubly careful in what cards he decides to play, whether for effect in the current act or subsequent acts. An Action card will give him options to Move, Sneak, Punch, Shoot, Support, Shove, and Recover. All movement and attacks are orthogonal, not diagonal; any damage done to a Thief kills him, whilst John McClane loses an Action Card and further fulfils the Thieves’ ‘Draw Blood’ action; Shove lets John McClane push a Thief; Recover allows the John McClane player to draw from the discard pile; and Support lets John McClane talk to Sergeant Powell to further fill the ‘Find Radio’ objective, granting a combat bonus when completely filled up. An Action will give John McClane one or more actions, and these can be done in any order. In a round, the John McClane will draw five Action Cards, play three of them and discard the other two. In addition, John McClane can freely use the vents to move around each floor.

The Thief players draw from a shared deck of Action Cards and have five Actions. These are Lock, Move, Punch, Shoot, and Reinforcements. The Reinforcements Action enables the Thief players to return a Thief figure to play if one has been killed. However, this is at the loss of all other actions and it hinders the Thieves’ action to unlock the vault. The Lock Action enables a Thief to cover up a numbered space on the current Vault Lock. The Vault Lock is represented by a series of Lock Vault Cards. Each Lock Vault Card shows a row of four numbers, these being the odd numbers from one to nine. These are arranged in a series of grids, which get increasingly larger as the Thieves crack each Lock, from two-by-four all the way up to four-by-four for the sixth and final Lock.

Each turn, the Thief players will be working together to try and crack the code on each Lock. To do this they try and match the numbers on their played Action Cards to the numbers on the grid. This is done with the highest and lowest on the Action Cards they collectively play to not only match the numbers on the current Lock Vault Cards, but do so for adjacent numbers. These can be horizontal or vertical, but they have to be orthogonal. How they do this plays slightly differently depending on the number of players. With one Thief player, he will draw a separate Action Card, look at its number and place the card face down before playing an Action Card from his hand, also face down, and then turn it over to reveal whether he has a solved part of the Lock Vault Code. With multiple Thief players, the Thief players take in turns to be lead thief. If two Thieves, the lead Thief player will draw an Action Card from the Action deck and show it to the other player before placing it face down. They both then play cards from their hand alongside the face down card. If there are three Thieves, the lead Thief player selects a card from his hand, shows it to the other two Thieves, and then play cards from their hands alongside the face down card. The key here is that the beyond the lead Thief showing the other Thieves the first Action, none of the Thief players communicate with each other. When the cards are revealed, the highest and lowest numbers on the cards are hopefully matched on the Lock Vault Code, whilst the card with the middle value is used to determine the actions for the Thieves that turn.

Breaking open the vault is key for the Thieves to win and whilst it is mainly going on in the background of the film, in Die Hard: The Nakatomi Heist Board Game, it is moved to fore. It becomes central to play with the secret, semi-co-operative aspect of its play as the Thief players try to communicate effectively with each other using the Action Cards, emphasising how disruptive John McClane becomes in upsetting their plans and distracting them. At the same time, they want to be working towards their own objectives for the bonuses they grant and attempting to stop John McClane from achieving his as well as inflicting as much damage on him as possible.

Meanwhile, as the game progresses, John McClane goes from New York cop in the dark to action-hero-in-the-know as he works out what is going on and gains more and better Action Cards with each subsequent act after the first. At the same time, John McClane’s player needs to be aware of how many Action Cards he has still to play. Lose them all and he will be killed and the Thieves will win.

Physically, Die Hard: The Nakatomi Heist Board Game is well presented. However, despite being a licensed board game, that only extends to the intellectual property and not the images of the actors. This means that the John McClane, Hans Gruber, and Thief figures are bland in addition to being small, and the artist has had to illustrate the Action Cards in greyscale with lots of silhouettes in black and grey shadows. Yet this works surprisingly well, making Die Hard a black and white film instead of colour and giving it film noir atmosphere. The rulebook is large, but not lengthy, explains everything well and gives good advice as to what both the John McClane and the Thief players have to do.

There is a lot to like about the Die Hard: The Nakatomi Heist Board Game. It actually feels like you are playing Die Hard with John McClane having to find the radio and talk to Sergeant Powell and feeling better for doing so; the Thieves being able to shoot out the glass in Act II, making it difficult for John McClane to move around because of his lack of shoes, which he has to find (and will be too small); finding a machine gun; and lastly, shoot, punch, and shove Hans Gruber off the roof! On the other side, the Thief players constantly have to think about stopping John McClane at the same time as breaking open the vault and the rules for the latter add further uncertainty because they cannot communicate with each other as effectively as they would like. This comes to the fore with three players as the Thieves and ideally Die Hard: The Nakatomi Heist Board Game should be played with all three.

Yet as much as the Die Hard: The Nakatomi Heist Board Game feels like you are playing film it is based on; it feels too much like you are playing the film it is based on. There is no variation in the game from one playthrough to the next. The objectives are always the same and once you have played through it once as John McClane and won and then played through it as the Thieves and won, it becomes less of a game and more of a puzzle because of that lack of variability. Ultimately, despite the incredible theming in Die Hard: The Nakatomi Heist Board Game which is going to get you cheering as John McClane succeeds and groaning as one more film quote is made, this is a board game you probably only want to play at Christmas.

Companion Chronicles #17: The Adventure of the Phantom Bell

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 use with Pendragon, Sixth Edition. This can be original scenarios, background material, alternate Arthurian settings, and more, but none of this content should be considered to be ‘canon’, but rather fall under ‘Your Pendragon Will Vary’. This means that there is still scope for the authors to create interesting and useful content that others can bring to their Pendragon campaigns.

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

It is a full colour, eighteen page, 3.0 MB PDF.

The layout is tidy, though it does need a slight edit.
Where is the Quest Set?The Adventure of the Phantom Bell is a scenario for Pendragon, Sixth Edition. It can be set in any year, though ideally in early spring or late autumn.
Who should go on this Quest?
Knights of any type are suitable for The Adventure of the Phantom Bell, though they should at least be household or mercenary knights in service to a liege lord. Awareness,First Aid, Folklore, Hunting, Play Instrument, Sing, Bow, and Horsemanship skills will be useful as will combat skills.
What does the Quest require?
The Adventure of the Phantom Bell requires the Pendragon, Sixth Edition Core Rulebook and the Pendragon: Gamemaster’s Handbook.

Where will the Quest take the Knights?
The Player-knights are tasked by their liege lord to attend to Greenway, a remote village where several people have gone missing. He suspects that Picts or Saxons might be responsible, but wants the disappearances investigated and put a stop to. The disappearances have been happening at regular intervals, so the Player-knights only have a few days before another one occurs. The scenario is linear is nature, the players have a choice of routes, a short one and a long one, with the former being more challenging. Taking the short gives the Player-knights more time in Greenway before the next person goes missing. Either way, the scenario tightens up a little as the impending disappearance grows near, and moves towards a confrontation with those responsible. This is nicely handled with the various possible situations being covered in a nasty combat with a surprisingly tough opponent.
The presents one or two interesting dilemmas to the Player-knights that test their Personality Traits in different ways. Some of these do stray into ‘Your Pendragon May Vary’ territory, so the Game Master is free to use them or not, as is her wont.
Throughout the scenario, the Player-knights will encounter a fair and mysterious hunter, ‘Eanswith, the Swan Maiden’, who will aid them on their journey to Greenway, in giving clues as to who—or what—might be responsible for the abductions, and if necessary, aiding them in killing it. Unfortunately, she is not only an intriguing figure for the knights and their players, but also for the Game Master. Simply put, she is not portrayed strongly enough and her motivations and interactions with the Player-knights are underwritten. The Game Master will at least want to develop a little more dialogue so that her portrayal can be easier.
Should the Knights ride out on this Quest?The Adventure of the Phantom Bell is a relatively easy and straightforward adventure to run and play, and ultimately, insert into a campaign. It needs a bit more development, but that should not be beyond the skills of any good Game Master.

Miskatonic Monday #358: Desperate Measures

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: Desperate MeasuresPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Keith Craig

Setting: Modern day Lincoln, NebraskaProduct: Scenario
What You Get: Fifteen page, 1.30 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch:“Can calm despair and wild unrest / Be tenants of a single breast, / Or sorrow such a changeling be?”— Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam A.H.H.Plot Hook: How can a woman turn up dead when she died seventeen years before, less than a year old?Plot Support: Staging advice, one NPC, two handouts, and two Mythos monsters.Production Values: Plain
Pros# Detailed, but uncomplicated plot
# Easy to add to a campaign# Easy to relocate# Would work easily with with Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game# Standard Mythos cemetery monsters, but not a funeral home in sight!# Pedophobia# Ososphobia# Athazagoraphobia
Cons# Needs an edit
# Needs some Sanity losses
Conclusion# Short, sharp modern day investigation# Easy to prepare and run

Achtung! Ardennes

Achtung! Cthulhu is the roleplaying game of fast-paced pulp action and Mythos magic published by Modiphius Entertainment. It is pitches the Allied Agents of the Britain’s Section M, the United States’ Majestic, and the brave Resistance into a Secret War against those Nazi Agents and organisations which would command and entreat with the occult and forces beyond the understanding of mankind. They are willing to risk their lives and their sanity against malicious Nazi villains and the unfathomable gods and monsters of the Mythos themselves, each striving for supremacy in mankind’s darkest yet finest hour! Yet even the darkest of drives to take advantage of the Mythos is riven by differing ideologies and approaches pandering to Hitler’s whims. The Black Sun consists of Nazi warrior-sorcerers supreme who use foul magic and summoned creatures from nameless dimensions to dominate the battlefields of men, whilst Nachtwölfe, the Night Wolves, utilise technology, biological enhancements, and wunderwaffen (wonder weapons) to win the war for Germany. Ultimately, both utilise and fall under the malign influence of the Mythos, the forces of which have their own unknowable designs…

Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: Forest of Fear is the seventh release for Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20, and the second campaign following on from Achtung! Cthulhu: Shadows of Atlantis. It shifts the action forward by three years as previous releases for the roleplaying game are set earlier in the war, even during part of the Phony War, in 1939, 1940, and 1941. It is set in the Ardennes, in the weeks and days leading up to the Battle of the Bulge in late November and early December of 1944. It is also a sequel of sorts, to Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: Assault on the Führer Train, which the Game Master can run as prologue to the main campaign, although that will be with pre-generated Player Characters, or Agents. The campaign, presented in eleven parts, requires experienced Agents with a good range of skills, including ideally, an Occultist with the ability to cast magic. At several points in the campaign, there are scenes of mass combat, so the Game Master may want to check the rules for handling such incidents in the Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: Gamemaster’s Guide. The campaign also differs from more traditional campaigns of Lovecraftian investigative horror in four ways. First, it is heavily directed. Being a military-style campaign, the Agents will find themselves being either ordered to investigate and act by their superiors or being asked for help by the forces of local Resistance, rather than directing or leading the investigation themselves. Second, the campaign environs are limited to under the canopy and under the ground of the forests of Ardennes. This gives it much more of a localised feel than the traditional globetrotting campaign, which is what Achtung! Cthulhu: Shadows of Atlantis is. Third, the campaign develops into two parallel plot strands, one of which explores the relatively recent—in Mythos terms—history of the Ardennes as the German factions in the Secret War—Nachtwölfe and Black Sun, dig and in some cases, quite literally, bulldoze their way into the region’s prehistoric past. Four, the Agents will find themselves making alliances with some very strange bedfellows…

The set-up for the campaign echoes that of the Ardennes Offensive launched by Nazi Germany at the end of 1944 to stop further Allied advances and attempt to bring them to the table to negotiate. The desperation of Germany extends to its two factions in the Secret War—Nachtwölfe and Black Sun, and despite having been rivals for years, the need to defeat the Allies has driven them to do the unthinkable, that is, to co-operate. Their plan is known as Operation Brute Stärke, or Brute Strength, a secret coda to Hitler’s Operation Watch on the Rhine. The Agents are operatives for the British Section M sent to a field base ten miles behind Allied lines. There, Major Archibald Strang, codenamed Hunter, will brief them about the disappearance of Resistance leader Marta Archambaud—as detailed in Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: Assault on the Führer Train, about the sightings and co-operation of Nachtwölfe and Black Sun, and the lack of intelligence about the region coming from Majestic, the American equivalent to Section M. Could the Americans be up to something? Major Strang would appreciate anything that the Agents can learn, but their primary orders are to investigate Nazi activities behind enemy lines in conjunction with the Resistance.

Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: Forest of Fear starts with a good introduction to and explanation of the campaign and its background, along with some decent staging advice. The campaign proper begins with the Agents being sent behind enemy lines to ascertain enemy activity in the region. After making contact with the Resistance, they will be led to a remote farmhouse that serves as their base of operations for the campaign. In comparison to the missions to come, it is an intentionally quiet opener, but the Game Master is given several adventures to enliven the Agents’ stay at the farmhouse or visits to the nearby village. These can be used throughout the campaign, although the timeframe does tighten up near the end. The majority of the missions call upon the Agents to investigate archaeological sites, castles, ritual sites, and so on, often hiding entrances to cave networks that lead deep underground to the discovery of the Elder Thing undercity of Karvarteeli, which the Nazis have been surveying and plundering. The Agents will often find the Nazi efforts in disarray, the enemy either under attack by or having been attacked by eldritch forces. The often-brute force method of the Nazis have unleashed the dread servants of the Elder Things—the Shoggoth! Later in the campaign, it will become apparent that the Shoggoth—or at least the means to manufacture them—are what the Nazis are after, as well as the fact that not all of the Shoggoth are loyal to their former masters. There is even the possibility that the Agents might be able to communicate with the rebels, with one of the more horrifying moments in the campaign being faced by a Shoggoth holding a German soldier up like a puppet and having penetrated its brain, using him as a communications device!

In addition to investigating Nazi activities, the Agents are asked by their Resistance contact, Gaston Moreau, a Druid and secret follower of the goddess Arduinna, to help him in the ongoing fight between the Ardui, Ardenne Forest’s native Celtic deities, and the Crimson Brothers, a cult of evil monks, led by the Cowled Sorcerer, who want to free the Sleeping Horror, Chartotharkis, a godling imprisoned within the catacombs of a nearby ruined abbey. This is the second strand to the campaign, with the missions alternating between the two over its eleven missions, including the Agents actually meeting the Goddess Arduinna and the Ardui in person in their Sacred Grove (though this does involve a fair amount of exposition). The primary aim of the Ardui followers is to prevent the Crimson Brothers from succeeding and securing possession of three artefacts sacred to the Ardui—The Cauldron Which Never Empties, Flesh Drinker Sword, and Trident of the Dark Lake. One problem here is that the Agents cannot succeed in this. The Crimson Brothers do get hold of all three despite the Agents’ efforts and only in the final confrontation do they have a chance to reclaim all three.

The addition of the Ardui is not out of place in Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: Forest of Fear as Achtung! Cthulhu has always had a folkloric and pagan element whose traditions have run parallel to that of the Mythos and which an Agent Occultist has been able to draw upon to be able to cast spells of his own. Often based upon Celtic and Viking traditions, as well as Hermetic traditions, the presence of the Ardui in the campaign brings this aspect of the roleplaying game to the fore and enables the Agent Occultist to interact more directly with those he owes fealty to—especially if he follows Celtic traditions.

The final confrontation with the Crimson Brothers also suggests an interesting interaction with the Nazis as an option. This is to form a temporary alliance with them in order to defeat the Crimson Brothers. It is suggested that this will add extra spice and roleplaying opportunities, the latter in a campaign where roleplaying and interaction with NPCs and the enemy is underplayed in favour of exploration, stealth, and combat. Of course, that is the nature of a more action-focused and combat driven roleplaying game like Achtung! Cthulhu. Nevertheless, it also highlights the underwritten nature of the campaign’s enemy NPCs in terms of roleplaying and their portrayal. Ultimately, if the Agents can help defeat the Crimson Brothers and prevent the summoning of Chartotharkis, they will gain the aid of Ardui in the final confrontation with the Nazis.

Penultimately, the Agents do have a chance to rescue Resistance leader Marta Archambaud, who was captured as detailed in Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: Assault on the Führer Train. This is a big battle, potentially one of the most confusing ones to stage in the whole campaign as it involves a lot of forces. However, much of the battle takes place just slightly offstage to the Agents, so the Game Master could simply narrate it or she cut back and forth between the action. This would work well if the players were given control of the different forces on the Allied side. This also involves the Americans and forces from Majestic, the only time they appear in the campaign and even then, the mystery of what the Americans and Majestic are up to in the region, alluded to as a potential issue at the start of the campaign is never really explored—here or in the rest of the campaign. The campaign itself will come to a climax in a Nazi base atop a mountain, complete with cable car, so it ends more in the style of Where Eagles Dare than the style of the Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade that pervades the rest of the campaign.

Each mission follows the same format. Each starts with an introduction and a brief summary, before breaking the mission down scene by scene. There are typically details of encounters along the way, scene Threat spends for the Game Master, lists of adversaries, details of Truths that can come into play, and perhaps most importantly, the ‘Key Intelligence’, which summarises the important information that the Agents will learn as result of their completing the mission. Throughout there are also ‘GM Tip’ sections which give further information and advice. Some of these can quite extensive.

Rounding out Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: Forest of Fear is set of six appendices. These in turn list all of the spells and spellbooks; treasures, artefacts, and tomes; arcane and esoteric technology; both allies and adversaries of the Ardennes; and handouts. The ‘Treasures, Artefacts, and Tomes’ in particular provides the details of artefacts sacred to the Ardui—The Cauldron Which Never Empties, Flesh Drinker Sword, and Trident of the Dark Lake, whilst the ‘Arcane & Esoteric Technology’ includes numerous Elder Thing devices which the Agents can recover, such as the Sensory Augmenter, Stasis Field Projector, and Ultrasonic Wardstone. For the Nazis, there are detailed write-ups of the Grendel Earth Mover, which Nachtwölfe used to bulldoze into the ruins and cavern systems of the Ardennes, and the Panzer VII Sabre Tooth Tiger, with which Nachtwölfe and Black Sun aim to stop the Allied advance on Germany. The handouts consist primarily of maps of locations where the action of the campaign takes place. All together the six appendices take up a fifth of the book.

Physically, Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: Forest of Fear is cleanly and tidily laid out. The illustrations and the maps are excellent. However, there are two omissions in terms of the campaign’s items and NPCs. None of the new items and certainly none of the NPCs, whether an ally or an adversary, is actually illustrated. This is a less of a problem for the various items, but for the NPC, it is more of a problem, especially for the campaign’s main villains. It does not help that their physical descriptions are limited, leaving a lot for the Game Master to do in trying to impart to her players what their Agents’ foes look like.

Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: Forest of Fear is a big bruising campaign, played out on an ever-bigger scale even though it is geographically limited to the Ardennes forest. The authors admit the campaign is linear and that is certainly true. This is very much a campaign where the players and their Agents are not going to direct the action, rather the reverse, being directed on missions and then fighting out the action. Once at a location, the Agents will have more agency, but on a strategic level, none at all. This has the possibility of frustrating players and it is not helped by the occasional heavy doses of exposition and travelogues before their Agents can get to the action. In effect, Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: Forest of Fear is more a series of connected big scenes and confrontations in which the Agents get to battle it out with ever bigger threats. If the players are happy uncovering ever nastier secrets and punching out ever nastier Nazi threats, then there can be no doubt that Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: Forest of Fear delivers that and delivers that very well, but any Game Master or player wanting more will be disappointed.

A Murderous Miscellany

There have been times when it was very hard to find any support for SLA Industries and times when it was hard to support SLA Industries. The roleplaying game set in a far future dystopia of corporate greed, commodification of ultraviolence, the mediatisation of murder, conspiracy, and urban horror, and serial killer sensationalism, has had a somewhat roving publishing history, but back in 2020, when the publisher, Nightfall Games, just as it was preparing SLA Industries, Second Edition, COVID-19 struck. In response, the publisher released Ex-Mass, a PDF supplement of support that fans of the roleplaying game could play quickly and easily with relatively little preparation. This was followed up with a new series, Progress Reports, which provided further support for the World of Progress, in the form of BPNs, campaigns, threats, and more. By 2022, Nightfall Games had managed to publish SLA Industries, Second Edition and would continue to publish further Progress Reports through the COVID-19 lockdowns and beyond. Today, Nightfall Games has classified the first, Ex-Mass, as a Progress Report, and collected it into a slim volume of its own, Progress Reports Codified – Zero to Five. They are each separate in the supplement, so they come complete with their editorials as they originally appeared, so they feel just a little like time capsules from a very strange time.

Progress Reports Codified – Zero to Five opens with what was Ex-Mass, but is now SLA Industries 2nd Edition: Progress Report Issue Zero, a short piece which offers a Hunter Sheet, ‘Copycat Jack’, in which the Operatives are tasked with tackling a vandal, dressed like a cartoon version of Halloween Jack, who has gone from being a nuisance to a danger. The scenario is built around Halloween as a festival and event on the Contract Circuit, which is popular across the whole of Mort, and is short, but escalates in a surprising, though in both an annoying and a challenging way. Accompanying this is a short history of the battle taxi, which does feel too short, but still informative. A picture or two, would have been useful too, but it is a nice little article.

SLA Industries 2nd Edition: Progress Report Issue One, steps up and provides the Game Master with a campaign. This is ‘The Uptown Funk’, which gets down and dirty and into the Mort’s sex trade—one of several adult themes which run throughout the supplement. Involving a private member’s club and extortion, this is as dark and seedy as you would imagine, and has a nasty sting in the tale for one Player Character. Accompanying it is ‘Family Ties’, an updated scenario that originally appeared in Role Player Independent Volume 1, Issue 12. It opens with the Player Characters working for the Department of Investigation to investigate the death of an Operative. It haphazardly (by intent) shifts into a hunt for a serial killer. The hunt is made all the more challenging by the nature of the serial killer, although it will help if one of the Operative is an Ebon. The scenario is nicely detailed and the updating has been handled well. Rounding out the issue are two NPCs, a Shaktar Operative who is not a warrior as is traditional for his people, but a medic—and one with an embarrassing secret, whilst the other is Wraithen sniper with a sense of humour. Full stats are provided and they can be used as replacement Player Characters too.

SLA Industries 2nd Edition: Progress Report Issue Two expands in size and content, focusing now on new additions for the then new second edition of SLA Industries. Here it is upon the Carrien and the Cannibals and their activities, previously explored in detail in the superb Cannibal Sector 1. First, the idea that the Carrien each might collect trinkets and keep them in boxes is weird and quirky, but ‘Sector Treasures’ shows that they do and provides tables for what might be found in their trinket boxes. Second, the Harridan is a new type of Cannibal, previously unseen, which has been penetrating Inner Downtown where it has been leading cults dedicated to Rawhead. Her description is accompanied by four BPNs that if played through, reveal more and more about the Harridan. ‘Old Meg Rattlebones’ has a folkloric feel, with children in a Downtown Sector telling tales of a hideous witch lurking at their bedroom windows at night, her entry foiled by a cat skull placed on the windowsill. Of course, the authorities have been ignoring such bedtime stories and now it is too late! There are more BPNs in ‘The BPN Cookbook’, ten hooks that the Game Master can develop into fuller missions. ‘Red Head’ is one of several pieces of dark fiction the Progress Reports and Progress Reports Codified – Zero to Five that shows how bad or at least, how bleak, life on Mort is.

SLA Industries 2nd Edition: Progress Report Issue Three carries on from SLA Industries 2nd Edition: Progress Report Issue Two with the second half of ‘The BPN Cookbook’, adding a further six missions for the Game Master to develop. However, the most interesting entry here is ‘Vevaphon: The End’ which explains why the Vevaphon is no longer in SLA Industries, having been introduced in the Karma Sourcebook, published by Wizards of the Coast in 1994. This is an in-game explanation that also charts the rise of the Doppelganger Institute that developed the Vevaphon and not only its fall from grace with the failure of the programme, the efforts of SLA Industries to disavow its sponsorship of the programme and destroy all the remaining Vevaphon. It is an engaging colour piece that is backed up with a campaign seed that begins with a Hunter Sheet for a rogue Manchine and leads into revelations about the last of the reviled and sad creatures. It also enables the game Master to use the Vevaphon in her own campaign. The issue also describes The Pit, the premier, most famous and infamous, night club in Mort, open to SLA Operatives, and a detailed scenario, ‘Beyond the Wall, which needs expanding, but takes the Player Characters on what is supposed to be a milk run into Cannibal Sector 1 to provide protection for a documentary crew. Of course, it goes wrong and the Player Characters find themselves stranded and long way from the wall that separates Mort from Cannibal Sector 1. The issue comes to a close with some good NPCs, including a very pushy Soft Company salesperson, an overly helpful young ganger, and more!

SLA Industries does focus on Cannibal Sector 1, so it is good to see coverage of Cannibal Sector 2 in SLA Industries 2nd Edition: Progress Report Issue Four. However, its description of a former industrial site dedicated to provision of water to Mort is not nearly as interesting as the wealth of information and background given in Cannibal Sector 1. There is much more development required here before the Game Master can use this in her campaign, but she is helped by the addition of stats for common threats and some mission ideas. Overall, a good introduction to the area. ‘Conflict Aliens – Cyclones’ introduces one of the species that SLA Industries is in long term conflict as part of the ongoing wars and their response which would ultimately result in a bioengineered virus being unleashed upon Mort. This is the ‘Cyconaviridae’ virus, which quickly transforms the infected into an enhanced member of a collective that together methodically and quietly works to further spread the infection. It is accompanied with some scenario hooks such as having a viral outbreak amongst a Shiver outpost at a Bridgehead in Cannibal Sector 1 or an accidental outbreak in Downtown. There are no specific BPNs attached to the ideas, but the ideas are very workable if the Game Master wants to bring the horror of infection and loss of personality into her campaign. More light-hearted are ‘Making a Killing’ and ‘Cannibal Run’, although neither sound it! The former discusses the trade in BPN Coins, rewards from SLA Industries for completing missions that Operatives can purchase and if they want, subsequently sell to the thriving market of civilian collectors. It provides another revenue stream for the financially strapped Operative and adds yet more flavour to the World of Progress. The latter, ‘Cannibal Run’, makes entire sense given that one of the SLA Industries authors is a very dedicated racing fan and provides some suggestions races might be run in Cannibal Sector 1. The Game Master will need to develop them further and flesh events with more detail, but the concept is perfect for the Operative with a high Drive skill.

Progress Reports Codified – Zero to Five comes to a close with SLA Industries 2nd Edition: Progress Report Issue Five. It opens on a sombre note, highlighting the sad death of Morton T. Smith, one of the earliest contributors to SLA Industries, at the age of 53. Likewise, it ends on a typically bleak note with ‘The Murder of Croaks’, the last fiction in the issue and the anthology. The issue consists of the single scenario, ‘Here Piggy, Piggy!’. This exposes the Operatives to corporate shenanigans at Bonk!, a soft company specialising in advertising. The ventilation tunnels of the Bonk! Offices have become infested Landorian Bullet Pigs and the managing director has already been attacked. The Operatives are assigned by the Department of Sanitation to clear out the contamination and present the invoice to those responsible! This is an entertainingly detailed scenario with an emphasise on interaction and investigation whose possible outcomes are explored in similar detail. This includes advice on sponsorship and the use of catchphrases in game. Overall, this is a real change of tone from the horror and combat typical of other BPNs and is a really fun scenario.

Physically, Progress Reports Codified – Zero to Five is very well-presented. It needs a slight edit in places, but the artwork is as good as to be expected for a SLA Industries supplement, the writing is decent, and it gets away with not needing an index with its relatively short page length.

Even if the Game Master has the individual issues of the Progress Reports, it is still great to have them in print and all in one place in Progress Reports Codified – Zero to Five. This is a great looking book that really is replete with highly gameable content as well as content that the Game Master can further develop herself. Elsewhere, ‘Vevaphon: The End’ is a terrific piece of world building that also neatly explains a change in SLA Industries, Second Edition, whilst ‘Making a Killing’ adds colour and flavour. Progress Reports Codified – Zero to Five is a miscellany that every SLA Industries Game Master is genuinely going to find useful and want to have with so much playable material in its pages.

Solitaire: SoloDark

SoloDark brings the means to solo adventures to the rules of ShadowDark, the fantasy roleplaying game which combines elements of Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition with those of the Old School Renaissance. He will control both the fate of his characters and those of the NPCs and monsters they encounter in the course of their adventures. Like solo rules for other roleplaying games, it uses an Oracle to generate answers to questions, whilst also making changes to accommodate for the fact that there is only the one player. These include creating between two and four Player Characters instead of just the one that solo play suggests, having group initiative and play in Chaos Mode meaning that it rolled at the beginning of every combat round, and that Luck is earned on any roll of a natural twenty. Perhaps the biggest change is that light sources last ten rounds of game play rather than an hour of real time. Both the presence and absence of light have a significant influence on game play in ShadowDark. Once a torch or lantern goes out, there is always a rough scramble to get a new one lit and in the meantime, there is the fear of the dark and the fear of something attacking out of the dark, since random encounters are suddenly more frequent!

Surprisingly, as SoloDark only runs to ten pages, two of those are devoted to a list of possible sources for further play. One-part sources of help and advice, one-part recommended locations—both dungeons and wildernesses—to play, and one-part suggested resources whether the player needs a monster, NPC, treasure, or encounter, that he can grab and add to his game straight away. Thus, there are links to The Arcane Library where the roleplaying game’s designer runs through some sample solo play and Me, Myself and Die! also offering solo play sessions such as with Free League Publishing’s Dragonbane. In addition to referencing ShadowDark for monsters, NPCs, treasures, encounters, dungeons, and wildernesses, SoloDark also points to Knave, Masks: 1,000 Memorable NPCs for Any Roleplaying Game from Encoded Designs, Ensorcelled Loot from Philip Reed Games, and City Encounters for Swords & Wizardry by Mythmere Games. Plus, dungeons like Dying Stylishly Games’ The Gardens Of Ynn and wildernesses such as The Hexanomicon #1. Overall, this provides not only a solid, useful set of references, but also highlights other authors too.

The next part of SoloDark is not quite so useful, being a table for creating dungeon names such as the ‘Palace of the Draconic Hunter’ or the ‘Asylum of the Fungal Sorcerer’. If there an associated set of tables to generate dungeons in SoloDark, the table might have been more useful. What is useful is the Oracle. This the means by which the player will generate yes and no answers to his questions and there is short simple advice on best practices, such as keeping questions plausible, rely on game rules, asking positive questions, and limiting the number of questions. To use, it the player determines the odds, rolling with advantage or disadvantage depending on the difficulty of getting a ‘yes’ answer. It is possible to roll a critical or a fumble on the Oracle check, leading to extreme results, but the results can be quite nuanced, allowing for a ‘yes, but…’ or ‘no, but…’ answer. If the player needs further clarification, including if he rolls an unexpected twist, the following table of ‘Prompts’, which encompasses a wide array of verbs and nouns, is there to provide more nuance.
Physically, SoloDark is decently presented and written. Lightly illustrated, the artwork is excellent.

SoloDark requires more experience of ShadowDark and running solo sessions of any roleplaying, let alone ShadowDark, than is included in its pages. There is no example of play and perhaps there should have been. Of course, the point of including a suggestion to check a YouTube video is there to alleviate that need, but its inclusion would have been nice and given SoloDark some permeance rather than just saying, look at this or look at that. Still the suggestions are useful and in some cases do show how the designer uses SoloDark and how other players play their games. For the more experienced player, none of this should be an issue and SoloDark should get them delving almost as soon as he has characters ready to play. SoloDark is free and a more than decent aid to venturing into the dark alone.

Friday Fantasy: Dread Shores & Black Horizons

The world stands on the precipice of doom and those dedicated to the forces of darkness that lie beyond the veil, long ripping at the walls that separate them from the mortal realms, claw at the boundaries that have kept them imprisoned for time immemorial tear at them with renewed vigour. The news refreshes anew the ambitions of their servants, members of cults dedicated to the ‘Dark One’, as they congregate to sing and sacrifice to their master… As the omens gather and signal his return, the Archivist Order rush to investigate. Perhaps to gather the knowledge to prevent his return, perhaps to gather the knowledge necessary to welcome his return. The order launched an expeditionary fleet to set sail form the southern peninsula of the Wracked Coast away to the Arcana of the Temples in the East, on the sixth day of its voyage, the second ship of the expeditionary fleet was caught in raging storm in the ice waters of the Maelstrom. Neither the skill of her sailors nor the sturdiness of her hull was enough for the ship to avoid being dashed ashore at the base of a rocky island on the archipelago that was not marked on any map. Thrown into the sea or picked up by the one boat that rowed free of the wreckage, the few survivors find themselves at an ancient carved landing from which narrow, steep steps cut their way through the rock to the top of the island.

This is the beginning of Dread Shores & Black Horizons, a scenario published by Archon Games. Originally funded via a Kickstarter campaign as part of ZineQuest #4, its production values have been elevated beyond that of a simple fanzine. And even then, it is very much a scenario and not a fanzine in the traditional sense. It is a systems-agnostic grim, dark fantasy that could be run in a very minimalist fashion with the included Player Characters and the Game Master improvising, it could be adapted to the fantasy roleplaying game of the Game Master’s choice. There is almost not a single fantasy roleplaying game which Dread Shores & Black Horizons could be adapted to, from Old School Essentials Classic Fantasy and ShadowDark to Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Fourth Edition and the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game. The provided Player Characters, each accompanied by an illustration, includes an eager relic hunter, a seasoned and patient guide and tracker, a loyal guard, an out of their element scribe, a steadfast boatman, and an astronomer with a dark secret.
Once the Player Characters reach the top, they discover a sparse garden and a beacon tower… The door to the tower is locked and the single inhabitant, later to be revealed to be a bruised, battered, and crotchety old man, refuses to let them in. The question is, if this is a beacon tower, why was it not lit when the ship the Player Characters were aboard sailed past? Once the Player Characters get to talk to the beacon keeper, he will explain that its wick will not stay alight and the oil has run out. He will suggest that they descend the steps at the rear of the island to the storerooms there to get more. The way down is blocked by barnacles, but once past these, the storerooms prove strangely to be empty of the needed supplies. Perhaps they could have been taken through the grate in the floor that the beacon keeper kindly provided the key to? Unlocking the grate and descending deeper into the island reveals that it is not a beacon station to warn ships during storms, but a prison for Siren, a Fiend of the Dark One, one that will taunt the Player Characters even as they scramble to gather supplies and escape the thralls that protect the fiend. Fortunately, the Player Characters can escape their clutches and get back to the beacon tower. They need to persuade the beacon keeper to let them in and actually repair the beacon, but it can be kept burning throughout the night, even as the thralls clamour at the door to the beacon tower. Whilst they cannot get in, there is nothing to stop the cultists who arrive in the morning in answer to the call of the fiend below the island. At which point, the Player Characters have a choice. Swear fealty to the Dark One and live or refuse and die…

And that really is it as far as Dread Shores & Black Horizons goes. It is so straightforward as to be described as linear and there really is very little that the Player Characters can do to affect the outcome. There is a hint of something unsettling to the bleakness of the setting, but the scenario never really develops that, never puts the Player Characters in peril over the course of the night, never has the thralls climbing the walls to capture them or the Siren taunt them from below. Perhaps it could be run as a character piece, focusing on the interaction between the pre-generated Player Characters, but their backgrounds do not include details of their knowledge of each other, let alone their relationships, and only one of them has a secret.

Physically, Dread Shores & Black Horizons is very well presented. The scenario itself is short, but packed with decent artwork and maps, all in black and white. It comes in a boxed set that includes a large cloth map giving a cross section of the island that is not in the book and a sheaf of seventeen cards that give the character details and illustrations as in the book, maps—unmarked for the player and marked for the Game Master, and a cross section of the island from the cloth map. Yet whilst it is clearly written, it is overwritten in terms of its directions and advice for the Game Master, yet often underwritten in terms of its explanation.

With its high production values, Dread Shores & Black Horizons promises a lot. It is certainly an eye-catching boxed scenario. However, the intriguing promise of its stark black and white look and hints of horror, remained disappointingly unfulfilled with its underwhelming plotting and character design. There is potential here for a session’s worth of cramped and uneasy tension against a growing sense of dread as a horror slithers up from inside the island where it was imprisoned, to taunt and terrorise the shipwrecked survivors. Yet not as written and not as developed. The high production values of Dread Shores & Black Horizons means that it deserves—or needs—a re-write or more development to really live up to them, but until that happens or a Game Master does the work herself, it remains a bafflingly missed opportunity.

The Other OSR: Vast Grimm – Blood Altared

It has been over six hundred years since the First Prophecy of Fatuma came to pass. The SIX, the Disciples of Fatuma, who following the prophecies put down in the Book of Fatuma, made a pilgrimage to the Primordial Mausoleum of THEY and deployed the Power of Tributes to decrypt the Mystical Lock sealing the Mausoleum. It was then that the They drew in the stale air of the Mausoleum, becoming one with the THEY and breathing out the parasites. The Six scattered, bringing the word and the infection of THEY to every corner of the ’verse. Then the Gnawing began. The parasites of THEY gnawed their way out of the infected. They spread. They gnawed their way out of planets. They spread. The infected split open. The planets split apart. Now mankind clings to life, looking out for any signs of THEY or hiding it inside them in the hope that it never erupts and spreads… The Earth is gone. Shattered into large pieces. There are places and planets where the remnants of Mankind survive, squabbling over resources and power, fearing the parasitical infectious word of THEY, but not without hope. There are whispers of a means to escape the end of this universe by entering another, one entirely free of THEY. It is called the Gate of Infinite Stars. Yet time is running out. The First Prophecy of Fatuma came to pass and so has every other Prophecy of Fatuma since. Except the last Seven Torments. Will the last Seven Torments come to pass and allow the Würms and the Grimm to consume the ’verse and with it, the last of Mankind? Or will the lucky few find their way to the Gate of Infinite Stars and at last be free of the Würms and the Grimm in a better, brighter future? That is, of course, if everyone fleeing through the Gate of Infinite Stars is free of the gnawing…
This is the set-up for Vast Grimm. Published by Infinite Black, it is a pre-apocalypse Science Fiction roleplaying game compatible in tone and structure with Mörk Borg, the Swedish pre-apocalypse Old School Renaissance style roleplaying game designed by Ockult Örtmästare Games and Stockholm Kartell and published by Free League Publishing. Yet there is news of an incident that threatens the future of the survivors even as the ’Verse is abuzz with word of another Torment about to come to pass. Doctor Hellina Hazel, lead quantum scientist working on the Gate of Infinite Stars, has been kidnapped! Although multiple factions have claimed responsibility, the abductors have been identified as members of an elite sect of the Devout. Worse, rumours over the Netwürk suggest that she has been transported to the Mausoleum of They where she will be sacrificed to a giant würm. Without Doctor Hazel’s knowledge, the likelihood is that the Gate of Infinite Stars will never be completed and thus all hope will be lost for mankind.

This is the set-up for Vast Grimm – Blood Altared, a scenario and setting supplement that expands the future depicted in Vast Grimm. The setting is the planet of K2-116B, a bare red-oxide rock renowned for its highly toxic atmosphere. The kidnapping of Doctor Hazel is not necessarily the only reason for the Player Characters to make the trip to the hellhole that is K2-116B—several other reasons are given, which makes the journey much more personal. These can be backed up with Netwürk chatter, but either way, the Player Characters find themselves on a Fatumite colony at the foot of the monolithic Mausoleum of THEY, surrounded by a Rotting Forest. Guile or stealth is required to get past the Devout of the colony and climb the giant würm bones of the tower temple. This is a race against time, a brutal brawl and trawl against fanatics dedicated to preventing anyone from stopping their divine purpose from coming to pass. Should the Player Characters fail, the ramifications are quite literally colossal and campaign changing… The Mausoleum of THEY is linear in structure, and so straightforward to run. Ultimately, the play of the scenario will vary upon how the players and their characters decide to approach it, stealth or out and out attack…
Interestingly, there is another way of running the scenario—and that is defence. There is no scenario for this given in Vast Grimm – Blood Altared, but it is difficult to imagine quite what to do otherwise with the new options for Player Characters given in the supplement. They include the Devoibot, reprogrammed to protect the Fatumites on K2-116B, though they are actually quite cynical about doing so. The character type includes reason why the Devoibots are on the planet and suggest skills such as a Big Databrain which has greater knowledge of THEY, a Blaster Bot with the blaster in its hand, or a Jammer Jaw that emits a high frequency signal that blocks all nearby electronics. The Disciplined Devout is a host to a würm and so might be able to smell the blood of those also infected by the würm, gain a temporary adrenal boost, or have it act as a back brace to increase his armour. The Rotter are descendants of the early missionaries who came to the poisonous world of K2-116B who are inured to its toxic environment, but must take and imbibe the red oxide of the world with them to survive. The Rotter might have toxic spores in his lungs that he can cough at others, an understanding of Tributes so deep that he might be able to understand encrypted tributes, or even possess his father’s skull and talk to it for advice! The Sword of Fatuma is a trained soldier of THEY, who might be tough as nails and survive situations that would kill others, wear a gauntlet made from the plated skull of a würm and bearing the mark of Fatuma, and possess battery-powered that make his eyes shine in a bioluminescent blue and thus look like one of their to the Grimm.
Numerous weapons like the Body Burner—a flamethrower fuelled by decomposing bodies, and Sonic Scream Sticks which cause the blood vessels of victims to pop when struck are detailed, as are cosmic treasures, including Fatuma’s Mitre and the Fang of Fatuma. Stats are provided for Fatumites as monsters as are the Fiendhünds, invisible hounds that hunt the wastes of K2-116B, and Rocnars, insectoid creatures that paralyse prey with a stinger, often multiple times, and then feed on their decaying flesh.
The Mausoleum of THEY, the Fatumite colony, and the surrounding Rotting Forest, are not the only places of interest on K2-116B—or rather under it. A network of caverns is home to the Rotters, those who were born and have adapted to the harsh environment of K2-116B and Teginoids, genetically and necromantically engineered humanoids. The cavern network and its Rotter colony are described in some detail, as some quite nasty weapons, like a blow gun used to target victims with the pellets of compressed Rotting Forest tree bark which causes the terrible, terrible itching, known as the ‘Scratch & Sniff’, that becomes increasingly difficult to resist… The Teginoids are the descendants of experiments which combined Würm and human DNA which live alongside the Rotters and which worship their Würm ancestors and all Würms. They are hostile to non-Rotters.
The caverns are not somewhere that the Player Characters are likely to visit readily. Though that might change by ‘Rotters on Board’, a scenario triggered by the landing of the Player Characters’ ship on K2-116B. Four Rotters board their vessel, perhaps attempting to stow away, steal parts and cargo, or even steal the ship. This could happen whilst the Player Characters are attempting to assault the Mausoleum of THEY, adding a complication to their attempts to get off world, likely in a hurry whether they have saved Doctor Hazel or not.
Physically, Vast Grimm – Blood Altared adheres to the Artpunk aesthetic of both Vast Grimm and Mörk Borg, with its use of vibrant, often neon colours and heavy typefaces. It looks amazing, a swirling riot of colour that wants to reach out and infect everything, but where the core rules were not always the easiest to read, the simplicity of the content in this supplement make it easier to read and use.

There is a weird dissonance in terms of scale in Vast Grimm – Blood Altared, with a big, bruisingly desperate strike mission against the clock to rescue an important scientist at one end of that scale, and the minor, irritating matter of potential stowaways or thieves getting aboard the Player Characters’ starship at the other end of the scale. If the Game Master runs the first mission, there is relatively little reason for the Player Characters to return and potentially encounter the second. There are a handful of adventure sparks which the Game Master can use to get the Player Characters to K2-116B, but will need to develop. Then are the Fatumites as Player Characters, just what is the Game Master to do with them when it is difficult for many of them to even leave K2-116B due to their need to inhale the planet’s toxins? Let alone the fact that they are normally the enemy in the world of Vast Grimm? Ultimately, whilst rescue mission into the Mausoleum of THEY is the selling point of Vast Grimm – Blood Altared, it really should have come at the back of the book and thus be the last thing that the Game Master sees and runs from it, enabling a campaign to build up to its momentous nature and giving to a chance for the Player Characters to explore the vileness of K2-116B a little bit first…

Miskatonic Monday #357: The Haunted Swamp

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 Haunted Swamp: A 1920s ghost story in Tropical QueenslandPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Jane Routley

Setting: Queensland, AustraliaProduct: Scenario
What You Get: Twenty-seven page, 5.52 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: “Modern morality and manners suppress all natural instincts, keep people ignorant of the facts of nature and make them fighting drunk on bogey tales.” – Aleister CrowleyPlot Hook: Drain the swamp of its crocodiles and its secretsPlot Support: Staging advice, four pre-generated Investigators, six NPCs, five handouts, one map, one supernatural monster, and lots and lots of crocodiles.Production Values: Reasonable
Pros# Detailed NPCs
# Easy to adjust to other eras# Straightforward investigation# Great cover# Phasmophobia# Herpetophobia# Limnophobia
Cons# Needs an edit
# Needs some Sanity losses# Would work better with more developed Investigator backgrounds
Conclusion# Queensland Gothic ghost story# Straightforward, easy-to-run investigation that is heavy on the interaction

Miskatonic Monday #356: Smoke on the Huangpu

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: Smoke on the Huangpu: A 1930s one-shot in Old ShanghaiPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Matthew Morris

Setting: Shanghai, 1931Product: Scenario
What You Get: Thirty-six page, 19.85 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: “Nobody will laugh long who deals much with opium: its pleasures even are of a grave and solemn complexion.” – Thomas de QuinceyPlot Hook: Murder on the banks of the Shanghai leads to the ‘insanity’ of additionPlot Support: Staging advice, Spotify playlist, four pre-generated Investigators, three NPCs, seven handouts, two maps, one Mythos tome, one Mythos spell, and two Mythos monsters.Production Values: Excellent
Pros# Single-session Shanghai investigation
# Decent pre-generated Investigators# Well organised investigation# Solid addition to a Shanghai-set campaign# Works as well with two as with three or four# Pharmacophobia# Submechanophobia# Speirophobia
Cons# Single-session Shanghai investigation# May drive an Investigator to addiction
Conclusion# Suitably squalid investigation in the seamier side of Shanghai# Feels like it should be longer, or there should be sequels

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