Ever spent a shift in a café receiving and trying to fulfil ever more confusing orders from probably annoying customers? Being forced to put on your best customer service and make sure that despite the confusion and despite the probable annoyance, the customer receives the right order with a smile? Well, that is what playing Order Overlord Café is all about. Published by Oink Games—best known for the games Scout and Deep Sea Rescue—Order Overlord Café is a game about memorising confused orders from too many customers in which every employee in the café has to do their very best to remember as much as they can. As the game progresses, the café gets busier and the orders get bigger and more complex. This is a co-operative game and it is designed to be played by between two and six players, aged six and over, with a typical game lasting no more than twenty minutes.

Being an Oink Games title, Order Overlord Café comes in a tiny attractive box which is packed tight—but thankfully, not too tight, with the game’s components, Besides the ‘Game Instructions’, these include eighty-four Order Cards, six Special Ability Cards, seven Level Tokens, and six Salesperson Tokens. The Order Cards include a wide range of drinks and snacks—French Toast, Banana, Chocolate Chip Cookie, Banana Milk, Iced Coffee, Iced Coffee without Ice, Room Temperature Coffee, Extra Hot Café Latte, and more. Some of these items are very specific and detailed. The Special Ability Cards, which can be used once per Level, do things like forcing another player to say the first letter of each card in his hand or allow the player to discard an Order Card from his hand. The Level Tokens are numbered from one to seven, indicating ever increasing degrees of difficulty that the players have to beat to proceed to the next Level. The Salesperson Tokens each have a smiling face on one side and a frowning face on the other. It should be noted that the cards and rules for Order Overlord Café are given in French, German, and Spanish as well as English, meaning that the game could be used in the classroom as an aid to both teaching and learning another language.

Game set-up is simple. The Level Tokens are laid out in order, from one to seven. Each player receives a Special Ability Card and a Salesperson Token. The latter is placed on the table with the smiling face face-up.

At the start of the Level, the current active player draws a number of Order Cards equal to the players multiplied by the current Level. So, with four players, this would be four Order Cards in the first Level, eight Order Cards at Level Two, twelve Order Cards at Level Three, so and on. At the start of each Level, one player is the Order Taker. His task is to read each of the Order Cards that make up the current order out loud and as he does so, all of the other players have to memorise as many of them as they can. The Order Taker then shuffles the Order Cards in the current order and deals them out to all of the players. A player is allowed to look at his cards, but must keep them hidden from the other players. The player to left of the Order Taker becomes the Active Player, whilst the other players are the Checkers.

The meat of Order Overlord Cafévv is checking the order. The Active Player turns to the Checker on his left and asks him if he has one of the Order Cards that the Order Taker read out at the start of the turn. If the Checker does, he discards that Order Card from his hand. The turn now ends. If the Checker does not have the Order Card, the Active Player can ask the next Checker and so on and so on, until either a Checker does have it and can discard it, or no player has it. If no Checker has the Order Card, then the Active Player has failed! The Active Player turns his Salesperson Token over so that the frowning face is visible. The Active Player cannot be the Active Player again, but he can be a Checker. The Active Player can also call out an Order Card in his hand as well as asking the other Checkers.

The aim is for the players—both the Active Player and the Checkers—to discard all of the Order cards from their hand. It does not need to be all of the players, but one player per Level if there are two players, two players per Level if there are three or four players, and three players per Level if there are five or six players. If this happens, a Level is completed and its Level Token is turned over. All of the Order Cards are collected, shuffled, and then dealt out again according to the number of the new Level. Play continues like this until either the players manage to complete the seventh Level or all of the players’ Salesperson Tokens are turned over so that the frowning face is visible. If this occurs, the game is over, and the highest Level completed is the players’ final result.

In addition, the rules do include options for competitive play and for mixing the Order Cards from Order Overlord Café—Order Overload: Burgers, Order Overload: Spiel23, and Order Overload: Insects. However, all three of these alternate versions are out of print and difficult to find. It would have nice if there was more variety in terms of the Special Ability Cards, but other than that, are no real issues with the game.

Physically, Order Overlord Café is very nicely presented and packaged. The cards are of good quality and the cardboard pieces are nice and sturdy in the hand.

Order Overlord Café is not difficult to play and its simple rules means that it is easy to teach and play with the family or with the gaming group. Although it is not difficult to play, it is challenging—or at least it becomes so. The first Level or so is a cake walk, but as one Level is completed and the next Level started, it becomes more and more of challenge as the size of the Order and the number of Order Cards that the players have to memorise increases. Not only that but the balance between the difficulty of the game and the number of the players remains constant, and play progresses, there is the constant feel of success as another Order Card is discarded and the players progress work towards completing a Level, knowing that at any moment, the Active Player might get an Order wrong and move everyone one step closer to failure. And failure is frustrating because you do want to beat each and every Level! Plus, unlike many a co-operative game, there is no alpha player attempting to steer everyone’s turn.

Order Overlord Café is not a game that you are going to play again and again. Especially once you have beaten its top Level, but it is a good game to bring out occasionally or to play with casual or new players as the challenge is very quickly obvious and the rules are very, very easy to teach and the play is relying on memory not skill. Order Overlord Café is a surprisingly good and challenging filler, best suited for the occasional play.

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed how another Dungeon Master and her group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will be compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. However, not all fanzines written with the Old School Renaissance in mind need to be written for a specific retroclone. Although not the case now, the popularity of Traveller would spawn several fanzines, of which The Travellers’ Digest, published by Digest Group Publications, was the most well known and would eventually transform from a fanzine into a magazine.

The publication of The Travellers’ Digest #1 in December, 1985 marked the entry of Digest Group Publications into the hobby and from this small, but ambitious beginnings would stem a complete campaign and numerous highly-regarded supplements for Game Designers Workshop’s Traveller and MegaTraveller, as well as a magazine that all together would run for twenty-one issues between 1985 and 1990. The conceit was that The Travellers’ Digest was a magazine within the setting of the Third Imperium, its offices based on Deneb in the Deneb Sector, and that it awarded the Travellers’ Digest Touring Award. This award would be won by one of the Player Characters and thus the stage is set for ‘The Grand Tour’, the long-running campaign in the pages of The Travellers’ Digest. In classic fashion, as with Europe of the eighteenth century, this would take the Player Characters on a tour of the major capitals of known space. These include Vland, Capitol, Terra, the Aslan Hierate, and even across the Great Rift. The meat of this first issue, as well as subsequent issues, would be dedicated to an adventure, each a stop-off on the ‘The Grand Tour’, along with support for it. The date for the first issue of The Travellers’ Digest and thus when the campaign begins is 152-1101, the 152nd day of the 1101st year of the Imperium.

To best run ‘The Grand Tour’, the Referee will need access to The Atlas of the Imperium, Supplement 8: Library Data (A-M), Supplement 11: Library Data (N-Z), Supplement 7: Traders and Gunboats (or alternatively, Supplement 5: Azhanti High Lightning), as well as the core rules. In addition, other supplements would be required depending on the adventure. Of course, that was in 1985, and much, if not all, of the rules or background necessary have been updated since. The campaign is also specifically written for use with four pre-generated Player Characters. They consist of Akidda Laagiir, the journalist who won the Travellers’ Digest Touring Award; Dur Telemon, a scout and his nephew; Doctor Theodor Krenstein, a gifted-scientist and roboticist; and Doctor Krenstein’s valet, ‘Aybee’, or rather, ‘AB-101’. The fact is, AB-101 is a pseudo-biological robot, both protégé and prototype. Consequently, the mix of Player Characters are surprisingly non-traditional and not all of them are easily created used the means offered in Traveller or MegaTraveller. This is addressed within various issues of the fanzine.
The Travellers’ Digest #4 was also published in February, 1986 and moved the date on from 335-1101, the 335th day of the 1101st year of the Imperium, to 324-1101, the 324th day of the 1101st year of the Imperium. The opening ‘Editors’ Digest’ comes with what would have been then good news. The Travellers’ Digest #3 announced that the publisher would have the supplement Grand Survey by J. Andrew Keith ready for Origins ’86 in Los Angeles. The editorial confirms this and that there would be further coverage in The Travellers’ Digest #5. In addition, Game Designers Workshop would be publishing Traveller Book 8: Robots, written by Digest Group Publications.
The fourth part of ‘The Grand Tour’ in The Travellers’ Digest #4 is ‘Feature Adventure 4: The Gold of Zurrian’, written by editor Gary L. Thomas. In addition to the standard books required by the campaign, the books Alien Module 3, Vargr, Adventure 11: Murder on Arcturus Station, Adventure 13: Signal GK, and the article ‘Jumpspace’ from Journal of the Travellers’ Aid Society, No. 24. As a result of the events in ‘Feature Adventure 3: Tourist Trap’ in the previous issue, the Player Characters were knighted and are now on their way to Capitol, the heart of the Third Imperium where they will be formally ennobled by the emperor. They are travelling aboard the Gold of Zurrian, a Tukera Lines 1000-ton long-liner from the world of Gishuli in the Voskhod subsector of Vland Sector to Iren in the Kagamira Subsector of Vland Sector in the Domain of Vland. All have High Passages and the scenario opens all four are in the ship’s Starlight Lounge where they meet some very interesting fellow passengers. This includes Onggzou, a Vargr diplomat and high-ranking member of the Church of the Chosen Ones, the Marquis and Marchioness of Gemid, the provocative and highly successful journalist Terra Porphyry, and Arde Le, a retired Tukera Lines executive and his partner, Melissa Diimish, a minor actress. Terra Porphyry either knows or knows of virtually everyone aboard. She and Doctor Theodor Krenstein were once engaged; she has written controversial books about the Church of the Chosen Ones and the Scout Service, including Dur Telemon and the captain of the Gold of Zurrian; and she wants to write about the Marquis and Marchioness of Gemid, as well as the newly ennobled Player Characters. She is also involved in a messy divorce with Arde Le. Almost every has reason to hate her, which explains why almost immediately after the long-liner enters Jump space, she is found dead!
With the Gold of Zurrian in Jump space, the Marquis of Gemid, as ranking noble aboard ship has seven days to solve the murder and the number one suspect is AB-101! Because the Marquis of Gemid is lazy, this should default to the Player Characters. Presented in a linear fashion, what this adventure is, is effectively a combination of a ‘locked room’ murder mystery in a ‘ship in a bottle’ episode! It is more of a serviceable adventure than a good adventure, a classic murder mystery that would work well in any Science Fiction setting as much as it does in Traveller. Its main problem is that whilst the solution makes sense, actually getting to it is not as easy as it should be, especially considering brevity of the plot and the fact that the scenario should really take more than two or sessions to play through. And whilst it does offer a change of pace from the previous scenarios in ‘The Grand Tour’, it is an obvious plot to run aboard a starship in Jumpspace when normally, the time spent travelling from one star system to another is ignored.
As with previous issues, ‘Feature Adventure 4: The Gold of Zurrian’ is very well supported. Not just with details of all four Player Characters as is standard, plus the explanation of the Universal Task Profile, but also full stats and details of all of the NPCs in the scenario and full details and deckplans of the Tukera Lines 1000-ton long-liner. Drawn by Guy Garnett, the deckplans are given a pullout in the centre of the fanzine. There is a list too, of the clues for the murder mystery that the Player Characters can search for in the Library Data, though it makes clear that this is a slow process even by the standards of the day! There is even a full write-up of the Church of the Chosen Ones, more cult than proper church, and it should be noted that the Vargr diplomat in ‘Feature Adventure 4: The Gold of Zurrian’, Onggzou, comes across as too polished and just not Vargr-like...
As part of its continued exploration of the Third Imperium along the route taken by ‘The Grand Tour’, The Traveller’s Digest #4 details the Kagamira subsector of the Vland sector with Nancy Parker providing some library data for the Vand sector. Much of this pertains to the scenario in the issue, such as the description of the word of Daama in the Anarsi sector, a non-aligned world renowned for being a haven for smugglers and a source of blackmarket goods, ineffectually governed by the so-called Marquis of Gemid—who appears in the scenario, and Zurrian in the Vland being the source of the famous iridescent surshi cloth.
The issue also continues the fanzine’s development by Joe D. Fugate Sr. of the Universal Task Profile that would later appear in Game Designer Workshop’s MegaTraveller in 1987. As the name suggests, the aim of the Universal Task Profile was to provide a coherent and consistent means of handling skills and actions in the roleplaying game. And the fanzine has been developing this over the course of the four issues and here it reaches the subject of ‘Accidents and Mishaps’. The article highlights what the Universal Task Profile is trying to avoid and that is seeding an adventure with a series of ‘mini-situations’, each one handling by a slightly different means of resolution. It would then have been a relatively modern drive away from the ‘individual rulings’ style of play, one that the more nostalgic sector of the hobby often still harks back to. The article is well thought through and there is a good example of how it works and how it works when the players fail their rolls.
Given that a crime is committed in ‘Feature Adventure 4: The Gold of Zurrian’, it makes sense that the last part of The Traveller’s Digest #4 is devoted to law enforcement, though of course, none of the Player Characters will benefit from it because they are not officers of the law and because they do not have any forensics training! ‘Law Enforcers – A New Character Type’ by Robert Parker provides a new Career, the police officer, noting that for worlds with a Law Level of ‘E’ or more, the Marine Career is more appropriate as law enforcement is paramilitary in nature. It is obviously good for creating NPCs, ex-police officers, and even private detectives, and it adds two new skills. These are ‘Interview’ and ‘Forensic’, with the latter being quite detailed. It is a solid addition and a version of the Career would appear in MegaTraveller and subsequent versions of the roleplaying game.
Lastly, ‘Forensic Science – Traveller Tech Brief’ by Robert and Nancy Parker looks at forensic science in the Science Fiction setting of Traveller. This is a solid overview, looking in particular at the use of the ‘volitile chemical molecular analyser’ or ‘sniffer’ at Tech Level 12 and above in the use of crime analysis, and noting also that the blood groups differ not just between Aslan, Droyne, and Vargr, but also between the various groups of Humaniti, including Solomani, Vilani, and Zhodani. Different types of evidence are also discussed, focusing on that left behind by individuals and on that left behind by weapons, since after all, the sorts of crimes investigated by Player Characters tend to be violent, if not deadly. Of course, the article really is only of use if a Player Character was a member of law Enforcement or the Game Master is running a campaign focused on law enforcement, though it could come in to play if the Player Characters get into trouble with law enforcement, which has been known to happen…
Physically, The Travellers’ Digest #4 is, as with all of the issues so far, very obviously created using early layout software. The artwork is not great, but it does its job and it is far from dreadful. The deckplans are very good. Whilst it looks slightly rough by modern standards, this would have looked clean and semi-professional at the time.
The Travellers’ Digest #4 is not an improvement on The Travellers’ Digest #3, which was an improvement on The Travellers’ Digest #2. The issue feels as if it is waiting to move on to bigger things, primarily because ‘Feature Adventure 4: The Gold of Zurrian’ takes place between the usual avenues of adventure and because it does not push the plot of ‘The Grand Tour’ along, but rather put it on hold. The rest of the content in the issue is decent though and there is content here that would go be incorporated into Traveller canon. The Travellers’ Digest #4 is a serviceable issue rather than a good one.

On the tail of Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed how another Dungeon Master and her group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will be compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry and the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game from Goodman Games. Some of these fanzines provide fantasy support for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, but others explore other genres for use with Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. One such fanzine is The Valley Out of Time.
The Valley Out of Time is a six-part series published by Skeeter Green Productions. It is written for use with both the Dungeon Crawl Classics RolePlaying Game and Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic, ‘The Valley Out of Time’ is a ‘Lost Worlds’ style setting a la X1 The Isle of Dread, and films such as The Land that Time Forgot, The Lost World, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, One Million years, B.C., and others, plus the artwork of Frank Frazetta. Combining dinosaurs, Neanderthals, and a closed environment, it is intended to be dropped into a campaign with relative ease and would work in both a fantasy campaign or a post-apocalyptic campaign. It could even work as a bridge between the two, with two different possible entries into ‘The Valley Out of Time’, one from a fantasy campaign and one from a post-apocalyptic campaign.
The Valley Out of Time: Danger Valley is the third issue in the series and it is difficult to describe just how disappointing this issue actually is. Then again, the second issue, The Valley Out of Time: Exploring the Valley, was almost as disappointing. What the series promises is set out on the back cover: “The Valley Out of Time is a series of ’zine-sized adventures from SGP. This valley can be placed in any ongoing campaign, and is set in the “Neanderthal Period” of development. Huge monsters – both dinosaurs and otherwise – and devolved humanoids plague the area, and only the hardiest of adventurers will prevail!” The key word here is ‘adventure’. There is not a single adventure in the issue of the fanzine. An adventure has a plot and interaction and motivation and other elements that the players and their characters can grasp and engage with. The Valley Out of Time: Danger Valley does not offer any that. What it does give is a series of fights with some prehistoric monsters, which vary between the Player Characters noticing something over a hill which turns out to be a monster that will attack them and coming upon a fight between two monsters in which they can decide to help one side or the other or run away. All start with the Player Characters wandering through this lost valley and coming across what they are—encounters. They are not adventures and the author even confirms this by describing several of them as an ‘encounter’. The question is, why does the author promise the reader adventures, only to deliver one combat encounter after another, and then to compound them all, make them boring?
Worse, having provided full stats for the monsters in the encounters, the author gives the monsters full write-ups in the first of the issue’s appendices. Why? Why repeat material when there is such a limited page count?
The problems continue with the framing of what the fanzine is. Under ‘Hooks/Motivations’, the author writes. “These ’zines offer a “mini-setting” with some quick and dirty encounters, locations, and obstacles to help fill in a night (or two) of gaming when other plans go astray.” To be fair, this issue offers some encounters—a fight with some Xoth-man raiders, a fight with a cave giant, a fight with some axe beaks, and so on. All nine of them. But not locations or obstacles, and definitely, definitely not a setting, ‘mini’ or otherwise. There is no map, there is no sense of place, in fact, there are no places, and there is barely anyone to interact with—and when there is, the motivations of the NPCs are scarcely touched upon. The author does tell the reader that the NPCs’ village is a good source of rumours and campaign hooks, but not what those might be.
Penultimately, there is some flavour text in the second appendix. ‘The Timeless Valley’ is a short creation myth told to some of the peoples within a lost valley. It may or may not be a foundation myth of the ‘Valley Out of Time’ of the fanzine’s title, but it is engaging and it is interesting and used in conjunction with the some of the people of the valley, it would add to their background. So, the next question is, why is the author not using this to create a setting and to bring the ‘Valley Out of Time’ of the fanzine’s title to life instead of shovelling out one prosaic monster fight after another?
Lastly, The Valley Out of Time: Danger Valley includes three pages left blank for ‘GM Notes’. Three whole pages where the author could have been providing the mini-setting that the issue promised or even an actual encounter that had scope for roleplaying and interaction rather than just another boring fight. Or alternatively, this could be seen as the author being kind enough to leave a space in fanzine for the Judge to write down some details of an actual setting or even an adventure that he steadfastly refuses to provide as promised.
Physically, The Valley Out of Time: Danger Valley is well presented and well written. The artwork is of a reasonable quality.

If the Judge is looking for a collection of fights with prehistoric monsters to pitch at her players, then The Valley Out of Time: Danger Valley is perfect. However, if the Judge wants more than fights and monsters, wants adventures and setting, wants content around which she can build her own campaign, then The Valley Out of Time: Danger Valley is a frustrating failure. Which sadly, is due to the author’s broken promises.

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed how another Dungeon Master and her group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.
Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will be compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry and Old School Essentials. However, other fanzines serve as a vehicle for direct support from the publisher.
The Chaos Crier: An Aperiodical Zine for Black Sword Hack and Other Swords & Sorcery Games, is like the name suggests, a supplement for Black Sword Hack. This is the adaptation of The Black Hack, designed and published by The Merry Mushmen, to emulate the fantasy tales and style of the Eternal Champion—Elric, Corum, et al, by Michael Moorcock. The Chaos Crier, Issue #0 was published as part of the Kickstarter campaign for the Black Sword Hack, but now, The Merry Mushmen has published a full, proper issue, The Chaos Crier, Issue #1.

Like its forbear, The Chaos Crier, Issue #1 is cramped and dense, very much a packed affair, but unlike its forbear, it has a lot more content—a lot more. It includes new monsters, new backgrounds, new factions, and more, mostly notably nine adventures and a return to the city of Nijmauwrgen, previously introduced in The Chaos Crier, Issue #0. This first proper issue of The Chaos Crier describes itself as “…[A] pocket grimoire to feed your world ending campaign with tons of material.”, and there can be no doubt that it lives up to this.
The issue opens with ‘Alternative Backgrounds’ by Troll Mechanik. This gives new ‘Origins’ that a Game master can add to her campaign or build a campaign around, including ‘Primitive Origin’, ‘Nomadic Origin’, ‘Otherworldly Origin’, ‘Feudal Origin’, and ‘Faerie Origin’. Each comes with tables for where the Player Character was born, their Background, and their Weapons. This is a great addition which kicks off the rules sections throughout the issue. Nobboc’s ‘More Monsters’ includes ‘Angel Faces’, giant bats with human baby heads, the aggressive ‘Red Crows’ with blood-red beaks, and ‘Selenite Renegades’, pariahs from the Flotsam Kingdom who have formed a mercenary company and who have large golden eyes and blue skins covered in chitin, and speak in lisping tones. Entries such as ‘The Thing in the Well’ and ‘Ghouls of the Dream Realms’ add a touch of cosmic horror. ‘The Stars Seer’ is an ‘Otherworldy Entity’ and encounter by Tore Nielsen. They can be summoned from their house on a jagged star to answer a single question, but there is a price to be paid, which could be having to polish the Seer’s claws to a high sheen or the questioner losing his tongue!
Eric Nieudan’s ‘The Dominion of Might’ details a Law-aligned ‘Faction’. This is the island kingdom of Myonne which has united its neighbours under the banner of Law and under the leadership of Queen Joosyën XVII, a Champion of Law who deposed her corrupt brother, has sent her Army of Might to coerce and then if necessary, conquer the nations beyond and share in her vision for peace. It is nicely detailed, from the top down, from Queen Joosyën XVII all the way down to minor nobles and inn keepers, forces that the Player Characters might encounter, and both plots and hooks to get them involved as well as events that can occur whilst they are in Dominion territory. This is a big faction and element that the Game Master can add to her campaign and the combination of hooks and events can really pull the Player Characters into their orbit or just have them as a looming threat in said campaign.
It is complemented—in part—by ‘Follow the Code’ by Lars Huijbregts that suggests ways in which an order, sorority, or secret society might act in different circumstances according to doctrine. Covering large conflicts, small happenstances, and who might be evil. None of which are meant to be logical or make sense, but together the Game Master can use them to create a doctrine for an organisation, which could be The Dominion of Might, but could be other organisations just as easily. Eric Nieudan’s ‘Into the Dream Realms’ adds a whole new dimension and a further dash of Lovecraftian horror with the means for the Player Characters to enter the Dream Realm. How it can be entered or left is discussed and there is a table of possible features—really only the start when it comes to dream realms, but the major change is the replacing of the Player Characters’ Doom Die with a Dream Die. It enables a Player Character to interact with the Dream world mechanically, even allowing him to take control of the dream at a cost of the Dream Die being stepped down in size. The downside is if the Dream Die is depleted, it is replaced by the Player Character’s Doom Die and whatever happens in the Dream World affects his physical body too!
‘The Purple Desert’ by Chris Gardiner is a ‘Location’, which could be another world that has fallen to constant grind of the war between Law and Chaos or it could be a dream world. The Player Characters arrive half-buried in the purple sands in the shadow of the head of an enormous statue, whilst in the sky, three broken moons—sallow pink, wet blue, and frail violet—hang and let their essences pour onto the sands. The Player Characters have to find their way out of this desert and onto their destination world and may encounter a brash NPC who hides a few secrets of her own. The presence of the Player Characters will attract the attention of Rag-Wraiths, that initially have no form, but in fighting the Player Characters will emulate their attributes and eventually try to replace them. ‘The Purple Desert’ is an engagingly otherworldly through place, somewhere in between.
The first of the adventures in The Chaos Crier, Issue #1 is Kobayashi’s ‘Bloody Roots’. After hearing rumours of villages sucked into sinkholes, the Player Characters find themselves and the inn where they are staying also being sucked below the earth. Here they find themselves trapped and potential prisoners of the underground Chthonian Empire and they have to find their way out. It is a quick and dirty affair, easy to prepare and set up. It is supported by a short ‘Faction’ guide to the Chthonian Empire, which gives a few options, plus descriptions of the factions who either want to invade the surface world, ally with the surface world, or remain hidden, and stats for various NPCs and monsters. Together it can be run as a one-off scenario or worked into the Game Master’s campaign. The second adventure is ‘Evakius’ Retreat’ by Andrea Gino, which presents a renegade alchemist whose experiments into transforming living creatures through alchemy have led to several disasters and have driven him out of town to take up refuge in an old salt mine. This is presented in cross section and the adventure is supported with decent hooks that will get the Player Characters to investigate the mine and discover just how much trouble Evakius has got himself into! Nobboc’s ‘The Star Envoy’ is a mini-hexcrawl that sees the Player Characters hunting for a twelve-pointed star which has fallen to earth in a small valley instead of attending a planning strategy meeting with Murligen the Wise. The Player Characters might be hired by Murligen the Wise or Zararazarat the Wicked Mage depending upon whether they align with Law or Chaos. Finding the envoy is not enough though as it has lost possessions which it wants back before it will fully co-operate. It is detailed and should provide several sessions of decent gaming.
The highlight of The Chaos Crier, Issue #0 was ‘The Darkness over Nijmauwrgen’, a description of city-port under the thrall of Cult of Dagon. The Chaos Crier, Issue #1 returns to the city of Nijmauwrgen and again, written by Evelyn Moreaux, it is the highlight of the issue, again. ‘The Sunken Moon’ describes a faction in the city which cultivate ‘Moon Urchins’ imported from another world and milks them for their toxin. This is distilled into an elixir which if given to Deep One Hybrid frees them from the urge to transform and blindly serve Dagon—they are given a choice. Both the forces of ‘The Sunken Moon’ and their leader, ‘Mavara’, are detailed as are their facilities and hooks to get the Player Characters involved in ‘Moonlight over Nijmauwrgen’. This is in addition to not one, but two scenarios set in Nijmauwrgen. In ‘The Sad Ancient One’, the Player Characters must descend into the reef off the city and locate ancient and all but forgotten Deep One matriarch and give her the elixir before the Cult of Dagon realise what they are doing, whilst in ‘The Call of the Nautilid’, they receive a psychic distress call from Marava herself. The Cult of Dagon is taking its revenge and whilst Marava is caught up in a battle of her own, the Player Characters must race to keep her alive. Both are exciting scenarios, if linear, and both enable the Player Characters to get further involved in the events in and around Nijmauwrgen.
The issue comes to a close with two final adventures. In the first, the Player Characters definitely find themselves in the Dream Realm in ‘The Sleeper in the Babbling Citadel’ by Eric Nieudan. It is both a short one-session scenario and a mini-setting that the Player Characters can return to after completing the scenario. The involves them exploring the Crimson Caverns originally dug out by Tunneller Titans and in this dry, dusty world climb to a blizzard enshrouded citadel and free the god within. Which it turns out is a wind god, also known as Ithaqua! Nobboc’s ‘Deep in the Salt Mine’ is the second of these two final adventures, oddly inspired by a RuneQuest adventure that the author can recall the name of. It begins with the Player Characters being enslaved and working out in salt mine. The Player Characters are free to try and escape, instigate a rebellion, and so on, but in the process, they discover dark secrets hidden beyond the mine. These are both decent adventures, with ‘Deep in the Salt Mine’ being suitable as a beginning scenario as it gets all of the the Player Characters together!
Physically, The Chaos Crier, Issue #1 is ably presented. It is busy in places, but the artwork is excellent. The depiction of the Purple Desert in ‘The Purple Desert’ is particularly good.
Every time Reviews from R’lyeh receives a package from The Merry Mushmen, there is the anticipation that what that package contains is going to be good, even very good. The Chaos Crier, Issue #1 is no exception. It is packed with good stuff and all of it playable and easy to add to a Game Master’s campaign. The Black Sword Hack Game Master should definitely have The Chaos Crier, Issue #1 and The Chaos Crier, Issue #0 because the two do complement each other. Perhaps that is the only downside to The Chaos Crier, Issue #1, in that it does need the other issue to really work as well as it can. Overall, The Chaos Crier, Issue #1 provides support for Black Sword Hack that is not only good, but also entertaining.

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a non-professional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed how another Dungeon Master and her group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will be compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord, Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay, and Swords & Wizardry have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Old School Essentials.

Scout Magazine is a fanzine that comes packed with content that the Game Master can add to her Old School Essentials or change how it is played. This is no matter whether she uses the basic rules of Old School Essentials Classic Fantasy or the advanced options of Old School Essentials: Advanced Fantasy. Although specially written for use with Old School Essentials, it is easily adapted to the retroclone of Game Master’s choice or even added to Dolmenwood, the setting and retroclone also published by Necrotic Gnome.

Scout Magazine #I was published in July, 2023 by PBenardo. It includes four new Classes, over thirty new magical items, an array of new rules, and articles that explore crime, criminal activities, and punishment. The four Classes start with the Necrourge, something somewhere between the living and the dead, able to walk silently through crypts, strike enemies for an Energy Drain attack that increases the Necrourge’s Strength, hold its breath for an hour, pass as Undead with other Undead, use necromantic scrolls, and possesses all of the resistances and susceptibilities of the Undead, whilst retainers and mercenaries are reluctant to enter its employment. It is an underwhelming start for the fanzine, as the new Class is not that interesting and does not offer a great deal of game play except possibly in campaigns where darker and more evil characters are the norm. The same is true of the second Class, the Crone, but it has more game play to it. The Crone can give herself an illusory appearance once per day, but to do anything else, she must gorge on the fresh remains of humanoid creatures daily in a ‘Cursed Feast’. This is a disturbing sight for anyone watching, including humans, demihumans, and humanoid monsters, and retainers who witness it, have to make a Loyalty check. The ‘Cursed Feast’ restores the Crone’s ‘Bag of Souls’, from which she can cast reversed versions of the Divine spells from the Cleric’s list. Each spell Level cast costs a number of points from the ‘Bag of Souls’. The total number of points in the ‘Bag of Souls’ is equal to the Crone’s Level. Effectively then, the ‘Bag of Souls’ acts as a spell point mechanic for the Crone. Add the Crone’s ability to temporarily enchant items and create a Coven at Ninth Level and whilst a dark, chaotic Class, there is flavour to it that enhances the game play. The Crone also lends itself as the basis for good NPCs.

There have been many variants of the Merchant as a Class, but the version in Scout Magazine #I is all about people. The Merchant gains more rumours than other Classes, learns extra languages, and as a salesman, gains a bonus when bargaining, buying, and selling. He also has the Appraise skill and can join a merchant guild network and eventually open a branch of the guild. Hiring and shipping is cheaper and easier as a guild member. The interesting element of the Class is that the Merchant can build long term relationships with his retainers. The more Levels a retainer gains in a Merchant’s employ, the more his morale improves and beyond that, his Hit Points! This version of the Class does a good job of widening the gaming potential of the role.

Similarly, the Swashbuckler is not a new Class, although this version is. The Swashbuckler can retreat without incurring an Armour Class penalty and replaces his Strength with his Dexterity as you would expect for attack rolls and damage. Thieves tends to be loyal to the Swashbuckler more so than other retainers and if the Game Master is using the optional parrying rule for Old School Essentials, the Swashbuckler doubles his Dexterity bonus for to parry. If an attack against a Swashbuckler misses, he can riposte, though this is at a increasing penalty for each failed attack in a Round. Swashbuckler skills include Climb Sheer Surfaces, Hear Noise, Move Silently, and Pick Pockets. This version of the Swashbuckler is decent enough, more thief or pirate than musketeer.

The ‘Magic Items’ section does a nice line in named and interesting weapons. For example, Sword +1, Lifegiver is a cursed weapon sword said to have belonged to a selfless saint that is a -2 weapons versus humanoids, but increases its damage die against undead, and can revive someone if they have not been dead for more than a single Turn, but this costs the wielder permanent points of Constitution. There are not just swords described, but also daggers and longbows, and more, as well as miscellaneous items like the Crown Of Spell Absorption which has an empty slot for a gem and when there is a gem placed in the slot, it absorbs spells, the more valuable the gem, the more Levels of spells it can absorb, or the Scoundrel’s Rabbit Foot, said to have belonged to a disreputable outlaw, which enables the owner’s player to ask for a single dice roll to be made again once per day, but also gives the entire party of Player Characters a foul presence, makes them look like criminals to non-Chaotic retainers, and secretly, shift’s the owner’s Alignment to Chaotic. Many of these items are more complex than the average magical item, but then there is more depth and detail to what they can do and how they can make play interesting.

The ‘Optional Rules’ offer a wide range of additions to standard play of Old School Essentials. They start with ‘New Class Abilities’. These are for Classes for both Old School Essentials Classic Fantasy and Old School Essentials: Advanced Fantasy, so ‘Race as Class’ and ‘Race and Class’. For the Barbarian Class, the ‘Berserker’ ability adds the Constitution bonus to Armour Class, whilst also adding a movement bonus, can inflict ‘Brutal Blows’ at a cost of Armour Class reduction, and ‘War Cry’ forces a Morale check on the enemy when committing a charge attack. For the Ranger, ‘Ambusher’ grants an attack and damage bonus on surprised creatures, ‘Pass Without Trace’ removes movement penalties in difficult terrain and means a Ranger leaves no trace of his movement, and the alternative ‘Tracking’ rule accounts for both the Ranger’s Level and the age of the tracks. Not every Class is given new options, but what is given here expands the Classes in interesting ways.

‘Useful Rulings’ provides quick solutions to common situations, such as clearing a jump, curses, diseases, ability drain, hunger and thirst, and more. There is even a quick and dirty guide to handling insanity for settings influenced by the Cthulhu Mythos. In such a setting, a Player Character who fails a saving throw against madness is forever touched by the mythos. If failed, the Player Character suffers nightmares and sleep deprivation, but gains the capacity to better understand and even use knowledge and powers related to the Mythos. The number of times a Player Character can fail a saving throw versus madness is equal to his Wisdom bonus. Unfortunately, the rules do not clearly explain if a Player Character can go insane, so they are a bit too quick and dirty.

‘Dirty Deeds’ takes the Player Characters to the black market where they can buy goods from shady dealers. The latter have to be found first and the effort runs the risk of the Player Characters being ratted out to the authorities. It includes a list of dusts, oils, and tinctures, hemlock dust, peace lily compound oil, and rainbow cactus tincture, some of which a shady dealer might have for sale and if not, another shady dealer might have others. The list restricts itself to poisons and drugs, so it is limited in scope and there is no discussion of possible other goods or even services that a shady dealer might have for sale. Nevertheless, useful for the Thief and the Assassin Classes—and other ne’er-do-wells, as well developing the seamier side of towns and cities in the Game Master’s campaign. The last article in the issue complements this one. ‘Designing Poisons’ enables the Game Master to expand or design the range of poisons available in her campaign. It uses a pair of templates to help the Game Master to create deadly poisons and paralytic agents. It is fairly simple to use and all the Game Master has to do is add colour and detail to the various concoctions.

Should such ne’er-do-wells, though, get arrested and thrown in gaol, ‘Crime And Punishment’ is there to settle the matter. Determining the judgement is a simple matter of rolling two six-sided dice, the lower the result the more severe the punishment and if the player rolls nine or more, his character goes free. The roll is modified by the severity of the crime—the article includes a long list of them under its ‘Code Legal’, plus bribes and skill of the legal representation. The roll determines the judgement and there are suggested sentences for every number, from eight down to minus one. The former may result in a fine, short sentence, or confiscation of arms, whilst the later definitely results in execution. The system is short and dirty, but serviceable.

Physically, Scout Magazine #I is tidily presented. It is very lightly illustrated.

Scout Magazine #I provides the Game Master and her players with a lot of new content. Some of it, such as the Necrourge and Crone Classes have limited use, whilst all of it is optional. Much of it will add detail to a campaign, but some cases, such as the new and alternative Class abilities and the ‘Useful Rulings’, this means adding extra complexity to game play. Overall, a decent collection of new options for Old School Essentials, but the Game Master will want to pick and chose what she does want to use.

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed how another Dungeon Master and her group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. As popular in the Old School Renaissance as the genre is, not all fanzines are devoted to fantasy.

Gamma Zine carries the subtitle, ‘A Fanzine supporting early post-apocalyptic, science-fantasy RPGs – specifically First Edition Gamma World by TSR.’ This then, is a fanzine dedicated to the very first post-apocalyptic roleplaying game, Gamma World, First Edition, published by TSR, Inc. in 1978. Gamma Zine #1 was published in April, 2019, following a successful Kickstarter campaign as part of Zine Quest 1, whilst Gamma Zine #2 was published in February, 2020, following its own successful Kickstarter campaign as part of ZineQuest #2. Published by ThrowiGames!, it came as a black and white booklet, packed with content, including adventures, equipment, monsters, and more. Published as part of ZineQuest #3, Gamma Zine #3 was published in February, 2021 and promised more of the same—adventures, equipment, monsters, fiction, and so on.

Like the previous two issues, Gamma Zine #3 begins with an interview. In Gamma Zine #1, the interview was with the late James M. Ward, the designer of both Gamma World and its predecessor, Metamorphosis Alpha, whereas the interview in Gamma Zine #2 was with Luke Gygax. This was not just because his father is E. Gary Gygax, but also because he is listed as the co-author of GW1 Legion of Gold, the very first scenario for Gamma World. The interview in Gamma Zine #3 is with Bill Barsh, the owner of Pacesetter Games & Simulations. In the interview, he discusses publishing content for the Old School Renaissance, but the main subject was the then forthcoming Gamma X—Gamma World 8thEdition, a retroclone based on the first and second editions of Gamma World, but using the mechanics of the ‘B/X’ version of Basic Dungeons & Dragons. The interview is interesting when discussing what was planned at the time, but since then, sadly, the only title to appear is the playtest adventure, GX0.5 Warrendome.
Otherwise, there is a good mix of content with the issue. This starts with the three monsters in ‘Horrors of the Wasteland’. They include the ‘Bicat’, more akin to a Tyrannosaurus Rex than a cat, bipedal with its arms ending taloned fingers and a preference for attacking the weakest targets; the ‘Chemslime’, a sentient pool of slime combining organic matter, chemical spills, and radiation, and capable of assuming partial humanoid form; and the ‘Lizscorpion’, its back half Komodo Dragon with a stinger tail, its front half scorpion all with pincers and mandibles. These are all nasty creatures, some of them quite big threats. Pleasingly, these are not just monster entries, but they actually appear in the issue’s three scenarios.
Gamma World, First Edition and other early post-apocalyptic roleplaying games did not do Classes in the sense of Dungeons & Dragons. Gamma Zine offers them as an option. In Gamma Zine #1, it was the Artificer and in Gamma Zine #2, it was the Wasteland Blacksmith, but here it is the Wasteland Ghoul, a mutated humanoid which survives and thrives in areas of radiation and other poisons and chemicals. This has come at a cost though, as the radiation and chemicals have destroyed parts their brain and one or more internal organs. In game terms they are impervious to radiation or poison of Intensity 17 or lower and take minimum damage from higher Intensities. Even though a mutant, the Wasteland Ghoul cannot have any mental mutations and is limited in choice, such as ‘Physical Reflection (radiation)’, ‘Radiated Eyes’, and ‘Radioactive Healing’. They have limited Intelligence, but are hardier and stronger. Their primarily role is as a scout for entering high intensity radiation areas that the other Player Characters cannot. The Class feels heavily influenced by the Fallout series of computer games, but that is no bad thing. Like the creatures of ‘Horrors of the Wasteland’, the Class also appears in one the issue’s scenarios.
Similarly, the three weapons of ‘Artifacts of the Ancients’ all appear in the scenarios. Written by Jarred Wray Wallace, they include the Vibro Sword, the Sonic Pistol, and the Stasis Ray Rifle, all nice classic additions to the genre. The issue also continues the fiction begun in the first issue with another two chapters of ‘The Hunted’. ‘The Hunted, Chapter Three’ picks up where the story left off, with Whyla and her faithful cybernetic hound, Arnold, having defeated the bandits who ambushed them, but with Arnold damaged and deactivated. The two chapters track her attempt to get Arnold to a cybernetic doctor. Unfortunately, her efforts do not go as well as she hopes and she finds herself in more danger and separated from her faithful companion. Again, it ends on a cliffhanger, hopefully to be resolved in Gamma Zine #4. Nevertheless, the story is engaging and it nicely depicts the dangerous world of its future.
As with previous issues, Gamma Zine #3 comes with three adventures. The first adventure is ‘The Chemaxis Refinery’ and is designed for starting Player Characters. This details a chemical manufacturing facility which the Player Characters have heard is a ready source of biochemical weaponry and energy cells. They will also have heard about the numerous failed attempts to get into the facility due to the high radiation. What is odd is that the radiation does not extend beyond the fence surrounding the compound. When they do manage to sneak in, the Player Characters discover that it is being operated by a band of Wasteland Ghouls who are siphoning off the contents of the tanks of chemical waste to create the bioweaponry and more. The description of the facility is nicely detailed and there is quite lot going on in terms of the Wasteland Ghouls trying to access and use the chemicals and toxins stored there, but they do come off as a faceless workers to be killed rather than interacted with. There is plenty of loot to be found in the facility and it would make a good potential base for the Player Characters, if cleaned up.
The second adventure, ‘The Petrified Fortress’, is intended for Player Characters with slightly more experience. When travelling in a petrified forest, the Player Characters come across one that towers far above the others. It turns out that this tree was converted into a secret military base and once they have found their way inside, the Player Characters get caught up in a war inside between machine and nature. The robot units are under siege by sentient plants spreading from the facility’s biodome. The robots will not attack the Player Characters and the suggestion in the scenario is that the Player Characters come to their aid and again, that this is potentially a good base for them.
‘Palace of the Bandit King’ is the third adventure and is suited for experienced and well-equipped Player Characters. This has more of a plot right from the start with the Player Characters hired by several settlements who are sick of the predations of a local bandit king and have scraped together enough funds to pay them. Bandit King Prentas Smythe’s palace is sealed in a desert ravine where he and his bandit horde host pit-fighting tournaments! It has only the one known entrance, so either the Player Characters are going to try to find another one or they are going in the front, the suggestion being that they disguise themselves as merchants or would be pit fighters. The bandits’ reputation for being evil is well founded and their base is effectively a slaughterhouse. Their base is very reminiscent of Jabba the Hutt’s palace in Return of the Jedi and as with the previous two adventures, would make for a very good base for the Player Characters. It is also the most straightforward of the adventures in the fanzine and the most familiar in terms of its plot. After all, bandits, pit fighting, and cannibalism in a post-apocalyptic setting? That certainly has a ring of familiarity to it. The inclusion of the plot means that it is the best of the three with ‘The Chemaxis Refinery’ being more of a techno-dungeon than a scenario.

Physically, Gamma Zine #3 is neat and tidy. It is decently written and nicely illustrated with good art throughout. Each of the scenarios is accompanied by excellent maps.
There is much here that the Game Master can use in her campaign, whether that is for Gamma World or another post-apocalyptic roleplaying game. The content is easily adapted, but better suited for post-apocalyptic roleplaying games with a drier, slightly less fantastic tone, such as Free League Publishing’s Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days. With three adventures, all nicely detailed, though varying in terms of how much plot they have, Gamma Zine #3 provides a good amount of playable content.

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed how another Dungeon Master and her group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. Most, but not all fanzines draw from the Old School Renaissance. Some provide support for much more modern games.

Lowborn is ‘An Independent Grim Perilous Fanzine for Zweihänder RPG’. As the subtitle suggests, this is a fanzine for the Zweihänder: Grim & Perilous RPG, published in 2017 and thus modern, but actually a retroclone of another roleplaying game. That roleplaying game is the definitive British roleplaying game, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, published by Games Workshop in 1986.
Lowborn Issue I was published in April, 2020. The content begins with a handful of small articles. They include ‘New Doomings’ by Adrian Kennelly. These are ways in which a Player Character might die in Zweihänder: Grim & Perilous RPG. There are four tables here, one for each season, and they offer alternatives to those list in the core rulebook. ‘Those Two Orx’ is the regular cartoon rather than cartoon strip, but at a whole page, it is taking up space that could have been put to better use, especially given the desperation of the humour. Ingacio M.’s ‘Reaction Spells’ provides a handful of spells that are variants of several Generalist Spells. For an Action Point, they can be cast as a reaction and require a spellcaster to know the original spell and then expend Experience Points to learn these ones. They include Cack-Handed Grasp, triggered when someone moves towards the caster and makes the floor in front of the caster slippery enough that the person approaching the caster might fall over and Magick Missile, triggered when someone runs away, which stuns that person, though it does not work in darkness. This is a solid section of spells, all nicely detailed, which can easily be added to a campaign.

Ingacio M. is also the author of ‘100 One Attribute NPCs’. This is not a second set of tables, but rather one table providing the very minimum of details of one hundred NPCs, including name, archetype, attribute (value), ancestry, age group, complexion, build, and social class, and divided equally between male and female. The Game Master only has to roll once to have an NPC with a few details ready to roleplay without her having to decide a bunch of details on the spot. Or, of course, the Game Master choose one or even roll for each category to add further flexibility—if she has time. Overall, useful.

‘One Roll Combat’ by Petter Rudin-Burgess offers two things. One is an analysis of three different types of combat in roleplaying games and the other is an alternative to the complexity of combat in Zweihänder: Grim & Perilous RPG. In turn, the author looks at Dungeons & Dragons with its use of Hit Points as a measure of combat skill rather than fortitude or endurance, the simulationist nature of combat in Rolemaster, and the slightly more abstracted nature of combat in Zweihänder. What it highlights at the end of this is the length of time that these differing means of handling combat can take. What the author suggests as an alternative in shorter or smaller combat scenes where the action does not need to play out blow by blow, is to have the player describe what he wants his character to do, the Game Master assess and set the difficulty, and then the player roll, adjusting the result with Fate and Fortune points as necessary. The outcome of the roll determines the narrative. Perhaps a little overwritten, this is nevertheless, a useful suggestion that is worth a Zweihänder Game Master taking the time to look at.

‘The Bailiff of the Problem’ is the first of two scenarios in Lowborn Issue I. Written by Sean Van Damme, it is a short murder mystery that can be prepared and played in a single session. Although it is suggested that the Game Master use the Villagers & Villains – 40 NPCs From Humble to Heroic, it is not absolutely necessary. All that is necessary, is that the Player Characters be in their Basic professions. It starts with the Player Characters having been hired by a magistrate to locate a tax collector who has gone missing whilst collecting taxes from the tiny community of Labarn. On the road to the village, they discover the tax collector’s body which has suffered some odd injuries. The scenario really consists of an investigation in Labarn, centred on interviews with several of the inhabitants. Like a classic murder mystery, they all had reason to hate the dead man. There may be a little combat involved, but this is mainly an interactive and roleplaying scenario. It is quite detailed despite its brevity and so should not be too taxing for the players and their characters to solve. It is also left up to them to decide how they resolve the situation. This is short and sweet, its brevity making it easy to add to a campaign.

‘Carnival’ by Ignacio M. is intentionally and magically odd. Descriptions of carnivals or circuses, typically the façade for a dark cult are a common trope in roleplaying games inspired by Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay such as Zweihänder: Grim & Perilous RPG, but this is different. It is enveloped by magic even to the extent that the wagons and tents are arranged like a magical circle. What that magic hides and embraces is that the operators are all anthropomorphic animals. So, they are different and they are also not members of a dark cult. Many of the wagons and tents are, in their own way, expansive. One offers a library of thousands and thousands of books, and more—if one knows the right incantation to open up the stacks, whilst the House of Mirrors contains a labyrinth of mirrors that in turn can teleport the viewer to a desired location or give a view of a particular person and enable the viewer to cross over to them spiritually for a short time. Only three of the tents or wagons are described, so there is scope for expansion here and also, there are no stats for any of the NPCs. If there is an issue for the article, it is the inclusion of the anthropomorphic NPCs and whether that fits a Game Master’s campaign. She, of course, has the right to change such details and the various NPCs could be hiding something else instead. Bar some scenario ideas or hooks, ‘Carnival’ offers an intriguing and different type of circus, one with plenty of room for expansion and development.
The second scenario in Lowborn Issue I is Peter Rudin-Burgess’ ‘The Bloody Jack’. It takes place in the village of Gürdenstein where the inhabitants have become wary of strangers. This is not for usual reasons found in roleplaying games, but rather because they are being taken advantage. Recently, Erik Hecher arrived in the village with nothing more than a few coins in his pocket and the rough clothes on his back, but in the few weeks since, he has greatly improved himself—new tailored clothes, a haircut, and so on. He has taken up residence and similarly improved the house he has moved into. The monies for this have come from his successful gambling. There is something odd going on and it will not take much for the Player Characters to discover that Erik is in league with a demon! Upon this revelation, the villagers, incensed at their gambling losses, take their revenge on him in an act of mob violence. Unfortunately, this unleashes a curse, one that the Player Characters are in the best place to help lift. This involves a journey to a nearby monastery and the Player Characters will be plagued by demons who still want their revenge for Erik’s death. Puttng aside the question of quite where the villagers got the money that Erik was fleecing from them, the Game Master will need to provide stats and perhaps it would have been good if the Player Characters were given more of a chance to interact with Erik Hecher to learn his story. Otherwise, this is a decently dark and nasty scenario, very in keeping with the ‘Grim & Perilous’ tone the Zweihänder: Grim & Perilous RPG.
Physically, Lowborn Issue I is a bit untidy and rough around the edges, plus it needs a slight edit. That said, it is a first issue, so there are bound to be teething problems.

Lowborn Issue I is an impressive first issue. It has decent content, which includes two, very playable adventures. And the truth is, both of those scenario would work just as well with Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Fourth Edition (or whatever ‘Grim & Perilous’ roleplaying game the Game Master is running) and not just Zweihänder: Grim & Perilous RPG.

On the tail of Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed how another Dungeon Master and her group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will be compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry.
Black Pudding is a fanzine that is nominally written for use with Labyrinth Lord and as of Black Pudding No. 6, for use with Old School Essentials as well, so is compatible with other Retroclones, but it is not a traditional Dungeons & Dragons-style fanzine. For starters, it is all but drawn rather than written, with artwork that reflects a look that is cartoonish, a tone that is slightly tongue in cheek, and a gonzo feel. Its genre is avowedly Swords & Sorcery, as much Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser as Conan the Barbarian. Drawn from the author’s ‘Doomslakers!’ house rules and published by Random Order via Square Hex, Black Pudding’s fantasy roleplaying content that is anything other than the straight-laced fantasy of Dungeons & Dragons, but something a bit lighter and not a little tongue in cheek, yet still full of adventure and heroism. Issues one, two, and three showcased the author’s ‘Doomslakers!’ house rules with a mix of new character Classes, spells, magic items, monsters, NPCs, and adventures, whilst four also included the author’s ‘OSR Play book’, his reference for running an Old School Renaissance game, essentially showing how he runs his own campaign. Issue five included a similar mix of new Classes, NPCs, and an adventure, but did begin to suggest a campaign setting, which six also continued as well as containing its owning wilderness area for the Player Characters to explore.
Black Pudding #8 continues in the same vein as Black Pudding No. 5, Black Pudding No. 6, and Black Pudding #7, containing a mix of new Character Classes, new monsters, NPCs, and mini-scenarios, although no further details or descriptions of Yria, part of the ‘Doomslakers’ campaign are given. The tongue-in-cheek tone of the fanzine begins inside the front cover with the Wizard spell, Foot in Face, which the wizard can prepare a round in advance and then cast instantly as a rejoinder, stunning the defender for a round, whilst on the facing page, ‘The Barbarian Blade’ which parodies Conan and eschews the use of magical swords which makes the men of the south weak. The wielder of this two-handed blade must do so with strength and without fear, but can strike any foe and inflicts 2d8 damage! It is over the top, but in keeping with the genre.
The new monsters are twists on standard types. Thus, the ‘Fee Foe’ is a giant that enjoys the blood of adventurers, lairs on roads and under bridges where it charges a toll. It is also good at throwing rocks and can block passages as if Hold Portal was cast. Hopefully, the players will get the pun in the name. The ‘Troglozyte’ is a version of the Troglodyte, but bigger and nastier with a fast regeneration ability and the possibility that when bitten by a Troglozyte, an adventurer might be transformed into one! The ‘Reeking Rotter’ is an undead thing whose attacks inflict ‘Rot Spatter’ which causes sufferers to retch temporarily and whose bite infests victims with rot worms that reduce their Constitution. The rot worms not only stink, but emit tiny screams! Lastly, the ‘Octonods’ are creepy scientists from another dimension that come looking for wizards’ spells and scrolls that they turn into a noxious gas to incubate their young! They are utterly lacking in joy and can sting with their tentacles, or their gaze attack can inflict damage, cast Charm Person/Monster, cast Telekinesis, or simply teleport a target away. They have the feel of big threat, perhaps an ongoing one.
The first of the issue’s several new Classes is the ‘Alien’. Its strangeness means it suffers a bonus to Reaction rolls, whilst its Weird Food requirements cost more, and Weird Brain makes it immune to Sleep, Charm, and Geases. It adds a degree a complexity with ‘Strange Powers’, which enable it to project powers from its head. These powers are all potion-based, so a player will be looking at the treasure section of the rules—whether ‘Basic’ or ‘Expert’—rather than the spell lists. Whilst the ‘Alien’ is less likely to appear in many a campaign, the ‘Death Witch’ is more obviously useful. She cannot be of Good Alignment and is capable of casting both Cleric and Magic-User spells, can speak to the dead and turn undead as a Cleric, and as a ‘Skull Lover’ turns any weapon decorated with a skull into a magical weapon. In addition, she can make and place a Hex Bag on a target to trigger later for more damage. Should a Death Witch die, she will rise again in three days with a loss of Charisma and indebted to evil…
The ‘Fighting Wombat’ Class is a silly addition, a Fighter type, but with the ability to dig tunnels, store items in its back pouch, and when unarmoured, can hide in natural surroundings like a Halfling. The ‘Goon Royal’, by Jayne X Praxis, is a rare contribution to Black Pudding from an author other than James V. West. Apart from a bite attack which continues to inflict damage until the target makes a successful saving throw versus paralysis and the ability to climb like the Thief Class, there is little to make the Class stand out.
The penultimate Class in Black Pudding #8 is the ‘Feral Knight’. This is a fallen warrior, cursed to wander the wilds until he commits deeds of honour that will restore his lost glory. This is a Fighter Class, but with limited access to arms and armour. Initially only a dagger and a shield, but other weapons and armour become available as the Player Character gains Levels, whilst magical arms and armour can be used at Ninth Level. The ‘Feral Knight’ is ‘Heroic’ and has an attack bonus versus Evil enemies, immune to fear, and his ‘Courage’ gives a bonus versus mind-effecting magic. He also gains Knightly powers as he acquires Levels and does great deeds, including being able to know alignments, casting Cure Light Wounds three times per day, and eventually cast First Level Cleric spells daily. There is a table to determine what caused the fall of the ‘Feral Knight’. There is a lot of detail to the Class, but with it plenty of roleplaying potential.
The last Class is the ‘Norg’, a Giant Kin Class. This is another Fighter Class, but one who fights with a penalty with one-handed weapons, finding armour is difficult because the each member of the Class is at least eight feet tall, is immune to cold magic effects, and has the special abilities of the Polar bear, including knowing their language. The ‘Norg’ can also speak to giants, but they will not trust the ‘Norg’. This is a simple and serviceable Class, easy to add to a campaign and roleplay. Of the six Classes in the issue, the ‘Feral Knight’ is the most interesting and the one with most gaming scope built in.
‘Ghiki’s Hole’ is the first of two scenarios in Black Pudding #8. It is an adventure location, a grated hole in the ground in the wilderness, which opens onto a sheer shaft, two hundred feet deep. The caves at the bottom of the shaft are home to the titular Ghiki, a ‘Cyclops Serpent’, curled up on a pile of bones and treasure. The adventure is short and challenging, but has a pleasingly physicality with the deep shaft, some caves in the walls, and webs near bottom, but above the lair. The lair of Ghiki, quite a tough monster, is shown with the creature winding around the treasure adding further to the sense of place. The second scenario is ‘General Skull Falcon’s Hall’ (possibly, but it is not clear), in which the Player Characters ascend a snowy mountain to consult General Skull Falcon who will respect their bravery in climbing the mountain and reward them with several true facts they did not know and one false fact. This location has a hook built in, but is short enough and compact enough to drop into a campaign when that hook, the Player Character’s need for knowledge they cannot get elsewhere comes up as part of a campaign. So, a good addition in that eventuality.
One of the best features in Black Pudding is ‘Meatshields of the Bleeding Ox’, a collection of NPCs ready for hire by the Player Characters. There is a decent range of NPCs given here, such as ‘Elotar Flatulus’, a Third Level Thief with a love of tea and dislike of loud music, who has seen and done it all, but might just be getting a bit long in the tooth, and ‘Nart Flindasterd’, a Fourth Level Thief who likes precious metals, but hates guards and wizards because as a genius toddler, the son of wealthy wizard, he was dropped on his head, and ever since, he not been a genius and it really irks him. There are eight ready-to-use NPCs and each one will add a little in their own way to a Game Master’s campaign.
The big feature in Black Pudding #8 is ‘Zasto Fillstian, War Wizard, Hellrider, Outcast of Seapath’, a major NPC who is a Seventeenth Level Magic-user and Seventh Level Star Wizard (as detailed in Black Pudding #3) who hunger for power and consequent actions drove him out of the city of Seapath and into a secret sanctuary in the Dweomerdrake Mountains from where he raids hidden and dangerous worlds whilst viciously protecting and hoarding what he finds. This includes, but is not limited to, a Sherman tank, adapted to run on wine or beer, given the lack of diesel. His write-up includes descriptions of his favourite treasures; his trusted agents—an alien as per the Class earlier in the book and a cold-hearted Elf; his Book of Eternal Life, which he won from Hell and from which he cast the spell of the same name; and Golgor, the star from which he gains some of his powers. Together with a map of his lair, this is the real big threat in the issue and would be a major presence in any campaign.
‘Iron Devils II’ describes ten magical swords. For example, Hawkhead is a +1 sword that lets the wielder see through the eyes of a passing bird for a turn or Whiplash, a +1 sword whose curved blade negates bonuses for shields or cover, and can be thrown and will come back if the attack misses, whilst the mirror blade reflects invisible things and lets the user see through a door or over a wall once a day. All ten blades are illustrated and nicely detailed, each one adding a little different flavour.
Physically, Black Pudding #8 adheres to the same standards set by the previous issues. So plenty of good, if cartoonish artwork to give it a singular, consistent look, accompanied by similar cartography. As with previous issues of the fanzine, the potential and obvious problem with Black Pudding #8 is that its tone may not be compatible with the style of Dungeons & Dragons that a Labyrinth Lord or Game Master is running. The tone of Black Pudding is lighter, weirder, and in places just sillier than the baseline Dungeons & Dragons game, so the Game Master should take this into account when using the content of the fanzine.
A new issue of Black Pudding is always welcome, offering as it does a lighter, sometimes sillier approach to Dungeons & Dragons-style fantasy. This gives the fanzine a genuinely unique identity and Black Pudding #8 is no different, offering a mix of content that veers from the instantly useable to the so weird that the Game Master is going to find it harder to add to her campaign. Yet there was the hope that the next issue of the fanzine would further develop the author’s ‘Doomslakers!’ house rules as well his setting of Yria, but Black Pudding #8 does not do that and it is disappointing. Make no mistake, there is good content in Black Pudding #8 and it is a finely produced fanzine, but there is scope to do more than do the same mix again.

On the tail of Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed how another Dungeon Master and her group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons,RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. Another popular choice of system for fanzines, is Goodman Games’ Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, such as Crawl! and Crawling Under a Broken Moon. Some of these fanzines provide fantasy support for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, but others explore other genres for use with Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. One such fanzine is the aforementioned Crawling Under A Broken Moon.

Crawling Under A Broken Moon Fanzine Issue No. 7 was published in in December, 2014 by Shield of Faith Studios. It continued the detailing of post-apocalyptic setting of Umerica and Urth which had begun in Crawling Under A Broken Moon Fanzine Issue No. 1, and would be continued in Crawling Under A Broken Moon Fanzine Issue No. 2, which added further Classes, monsters, and weapons, Crawling Under A Broken Moon Fanzine Issue No. 3, which provided the means to create Player Characters and gave them a Character Funnel to play, Crawling Under A Broken Moon Fanzine Issue No. 4, which detailed several Patrons for the setting, whilst Crawling Under A Broken Moon Fanzine Issue No. 5 explored one of the inspirations for the setting and fanzine, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe and Crawling Under A Broken Moon Fanzine Issue No. 6 continued that trend with another inspiration, Mad Max. The setting has, of course, gone on to be presented in more detail in The Umerican Survival Guide – Core Setting Guide, now distributed by Goodman Games. The setting itself is a world brought about after a rogue object from deep space passed between the Earth and the Moon and ripped apart time and space, leaving behind a planet which would recover, but leave its inhabitants ruled by savagery, cruel sorcery, and twisted science.

Crawling Under A Broken Moon Fanzine Issue No. 7 continues heavily from one of the major post-apocalypse genre’s touchstones for the inspiration for its content, which was the Mad Max series of films. Crawling Under A Broken Moon Fanzine Issue No. 7 continues to draw from that inspiration, but provides content beyond the notions of vehicular combat between radically customised vehicles across the post-apocalyptic landscape. So alongside new vehicles and rules for them, it adds a new Class that continues the mechanical feel of the previous issue and details a major location within the setting of Umerica and Urth.

The new Class is ‘The Cyborg’. This Class is adept with any and all missile weapons and one-handed or built-in weapons, and because it has artificial body parts, it is more difficult to damage. This reduces the amount of damage it might suffer from any source and also from critical hits. However, damage suffered to the mechanical body parts cannot be healed, but must be repaired. What this means mechanically, is that any damage suffered is divided into two parts—‘Meat and ‘Non-Meat’—but together still represents the total amount of damage suffered. Although this combines to give an advantage and a disadvantage to the Cyborg, it also increases the record keeping for the player. The ‘Juryrig’ ability and its associated die enable the Cyborg to repair itself—or at least its ‘Non-Meat’ bits—and other bits of technology and even find salvage. At First Level and then every third Level after that, the Cyborg can upgrade itself, with ‘Advanced composites’, which decreases the amount damage that the Cyborg will suffer to its ‘Non-Meat’ bits, ‘Targeter System’ that give a bonus to all ranged attacks, and ‘Armoured Plating’ which increases its Armour Class. All of the Upgrades can be selected more than once, but the bonuses gained are marginal. This is a pared down version of a Cyborg Class which could have been much more complex than it is.
If Crawling Under A Broken Moon Fanzine Issue No. 6 dealt with automobiles, ‘Trains, Planes, and Mobile Suits’ in this issue deals with the rest—and more. First trains, dividing engine types into small and large and adding a handful of cars as well as traits to add to them like ‘Refrigeration’ and ‘Super Hauler’. Driving a train is treated like driving a vehicle, though with minor adjustments and a ‘Locomotive Wipeout Results’ table should the engineer lose control of the train. Added to this are rules for ‘Gyrocopters and Ultralights’ a la Mad Max 2, which are more complex. They have their own cruising height and the higher an altitude a gyrocopter or ultralight is at, the harder it is for its pilot to target ground targets and for anyone on the ground to hit him, whilst there is a lower chance of turbulence at higher altitudes and lower penalties to the aircraft’s Handle Modifier. Crashing from higher altitude increases the damage taken, of course. The Handle Modifier is used for the Vehicle Control roll and if the roll is failed, gyrocopters and ultralights, have their own ‘Aerial Wipeout Results’ table. gyrocopters and ultralights also have their traits, such as ‘Auto Rotate’, ‘Bomb Rack’, and ‘Glider’.
Unlike trains and ground vehicles, aircraft are not easy to pilot and pilots must use a much smaller Action Die whilst learning to fly and getting in sufficient practice. The same is true of the last type of vehicle covered in the article, which are mechs and other robo-vehicles. These are also divided between light and heavy mechs and have their own traits, like ‘High Maintenance’ and ‘Mecha’, the latter means that it can move in an anthropomorphic fashion. All of this mixes and matches a lot of different apocalyptic genres, but the inclusion of trains suggests a post-apocalyptic where societies have been founded and begun to recover or construct old technology and thus create infrastructure and a semblance of civilisation. Of course, there are regions still recovering or still lawless, so the other vehicles are perhaps better suited those.
That sense of growing civilisation is more fully explored in ‘The Citadel of Scrap’, an entry in the ‘Interesting Places To Die’ series. This describes an actual metropolis, best known for some of the best-preserved artefacts from the twenty-first century, surviving infrastructure and railway hub, and being run by a triumvirate magocracy formed of the cybersorcerers, the Three Royals, who together have built the tallest building in the city, the four storey Growling Tower, to encase the Pit of the God in gears and metal, whilst each hopes to be the one powerful enough to control the god when it awakes. Each of the city’s various districts are described, including the Trash Mines in The Ruins, where a greetings card factory has been found and Forgotten Home, an immaculately maintained replica of twenty-first century living where the inhabitants live in denial of the Broken Moon. Included is a small table of job opportunities—there could have been more, and whilst ‘The Citadel of Scrap’ further develops the world of Umerica and Urth. A map of the city would have been useful.
‘The Rail Wastes’ is a companion piece to the earlier ‘Trains, Planes, and Mobile Suits’, a set of short tables of encounters that take on the railway lines or in the ‘rail wastes’ that run parallel to the line through unoccupied or barren territory. Which means that can happen whilst the Player Characters are aboard a train, whilst ‘Spare Change’ covers the coinage and means of exchange in Umerica and Urth, including ‘cp’ or ‘charm pieces’, ‘sp’ or ‘shells and powder’, and ‘gp’ or ‘Gasoline/Petrol or Gas Promissory Note’. It keeps it simple and again builds on the setting’s growing civilisation.
Lastly, the regular ‘Twisted Menagerie’ presents in some detail three new monsters: the Autogiest, the Bounder, and the Discarded. The first is a conglomerate spirit of those who have died in violent car wrecks and joined together to punish the living, searching the wastelands for a suitable vehicle to possess and then it goes on a rampage as an undead car fiend, attempting to run down anyone it finds. Although the body, that is, the vehicle can be destroyed, this only frees the spirit to hunt for another vehicle. It must be exorcised to truly defeat it. Each Autogiest has its own, random special ability. The Bounder is the mutated descendant of kangaroos kept in North American zoos, which can be ridden—often by nomads—and can have its very Australian-themed special abilities. Lastly, the Discarded is an agglomeration of old, broken, or unwanted cyber implants which together hunt those who discarded them! These are all fun additions to the setting.
Physically, Crawling Under A Broken Moon Fanzine Issue No. 7 is serviceably presented. It is a little rough around the edges, as is some of the artwork, but overall, it is another decent affair. Of course, the problem with Crawling Under A Broken Moon Fanzine Issue No. 6 is that much of its contents have been represented to a more professional standard in the pages of The Umerican Survival Guide – Core Setting Guide, so it has been superseded by a cleaner, slicker presentation of the material.

Crawling Under A Broken Moon Fanzine Issue No. 7 is a companion piece to Crawling Under A Broken Moon Fanzine Issue No. 6, continuing the mechanical theme with more vehicles and the Cyborg Class. Yet it also develops the setting itself with the description of ‘The Citadel of Scrap’, providing context for many of the articles in this and previous issues. Plus, the articles in this issue complement each other, with their focus on trains and infrastructure and that major settlement, so beginning to bring the world of Umerica and Urth to life.

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 Bearded Ladies is an adventure supplement for use with Pendragon, Sixth Edition.

It is a full colour, seven page, 743.81 KB PDF.

The layout is a little untidy and it is not illustrated.

Where is the Quest Set?The Adventure of the Bearded Ladies is suitable to run with any campaign for Pendragon, Sixth Edition. It begins at court, whether that is Camelot or Salisbury, and its three mini-quests can be set anywhere to suit the Game Master’s campaign.
Who should go on this Quest?
The Adventure of the Bearded Ladies is suitable for knights of all types. It may not appeal to Player-knights who possess a mercenary streak.
What does the Quest require?
The Adventure of the Bearded Ladies requires the Pendragon, Sixth Edition rules or the Pendragon Starter Set.
Where will the Quest take the Knights?The Adventure of the Bearded Ladies begins when three bearded ladies attend the court seeking aid in lifting the curse that caused their affliction. Calling upon valorous knights, they explain that they have fallen afoul of the sorcery of an evil wizard called Abramelin. To lift this curse, they must wash their beards in the sweat of the holiest stone in Britain, write magic tattoos on the palms of their hands with the magic needle of the sleeping giant Mambrinus, and make the ink for the tattoos with the burnt remains of the Sorrowful Knight’s beard. Each of these involves a mini-quest.
All three mini-quests are nicely detailed and involve a good mix of skills and traits. The first involves riding out into a swamp to talk to a hermit who refuses to leave his treehouse, the second wading into a river to wake up a giant, and the third locating a crotchety old knight and persuading him to shave his beard. Depending upon the actions of the Player-knights, all three of the mini-quests can be completed without any combat, although the old knight will want to prove his Jousting skill. Once done, the Player-knights can return to court and the three ladies will be able to lift the effects of the curse they are under.

The scenario is short and should take no more than a session to play through. Mechanically, The Adventure of the Bearded Ladies is more sophisticated than the author’s previous scenario, The Adventure of the Secret Admirer, though it is not as charming. What it does not do is explore how and why Abramelin cursed the three ladies and nor does it name the three of them.
Should the Knights ride out on this Quest?The Adventure of the Bearded Ladies is a short, straightforward adventure. It is easy to prepare and run, but it does leave a few questions from its background unanswered.

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: Blackthorne Bridge Club: Opening BidPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Gavin Bastiensz

Setting: Washington State, 1924Product: Scenario
What You Get: Thirty-nine page, 3.14 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Mathematics is madness
Plot Hook: Madness in the asylum leads to madness on the campusPlot Support: Staging advice, four pre-generated Investigators, nine NPCs, eight handouts, one map, and three Mythos monsters.Production Values: Plain
Pros# Sequel to Blackthorne Bridge Club and Blackthorne Bridge Club: New Tricks# Nicely detailed pre-generated Investigators, complete with secrets# Socially driven investigation# Mathemaphobia# Chapodiphobia# Astraphobia
Cons# Needs an edit# Outcome from Blackthorne Bridge Club: New Tricks not addressed# Some repetition from section to section # What is the significance of the title?# No advice on travel from New York to Washington State
Conclusion# Serviceable, campus-based investigation strong on interaction# Feels out of place in comparison to the New York of the original scenario

Twilight 2000: Roleplaying in the World War III That Never Was opens with the Player Characters on the run, attempting to escape the last hurrah of the US 5th Mechanized Infantry Division near the city of Kalisz in central Poland or the 2nd Marine Division near the central city of Örebro in Sweden. Where do they go? Where do they find shelter? Where do they find food and water? Spare parts for their vehicles? Extra ammunition for their weapons? Published by Free League Publishing, Twilight 2000 presents an expansive sandbox setting that the Player Characters can explore, forage, loot, protect, and even settle. A sandbox setting consisting of a broken world, torn apart and poisoned by war and weapons of mass destruction, followed by disease and starvation. In the immediacy of the aftermath of the war, it is a grim setting where every day is a struggle to survive at best, a fight at worst. Urban Operations, the first supplement for Twilight 2000: Roleplaying in the World War III That Never Was, examined the status of cities and other settlements in the broken world of 2000, presents new rules and expanded details for playing within their confines, and provides encounters, plots, factions, and scenario sites that the Game Master can add to her campaign. It also presented two location destinations for the Player Characters, urban centres intended for urban-centred campaigns. One of these was taken from the first edition of Twilight 2000 from 1984 and the supplement, The Free City of Krakow, being the city of Kraków in southern Poland, whilst the other is the town of Karlsborg, to go with the new alternative setting of Sweden as presented in Twilight 2000: Roleplaying in the World War III That Never Was.
The Black Madonna updates and expands the scenario and setting supplement of the same name, The Black Madonna, published for use with the first edition of Twilight 2000. Like the original scenario, it is the second expansion to its version of Twilight 2000, following on from Urban Operations. This is despite its setting and the location of the scenario actually being placed geographically between the opening scenes of the roleplaying game, ‘OPERATION Reset’ and for the Poland setting, the ultimate destination of the city of Kraków in southern Poland. For the first edition of Twilight 2000, this did not make a great deal of sense since the Player Characters were likely travelling through the region of southwest Poland before they got to Kraków. In the updated version of The Black Madonna, it makes more sense, primarily because the Player Characters will be travelling through various urban environments and there are rules in Urban Operations that the Game Master will likely want to make use of. Further, the Player Characters, having made it to Kraków, might find themselves retracing their steps back through the region, whether looking for the Black Madonna or on some other assignment given by a contact in the city. One thing to bear in mind with The Black Madonna is that it is designed specifically for use with the Polish setting of Twilight 2000 rather than the Swedish setting that the current edition also includes. There are very good reasons for this, nearly all of them Catholic. There are additions in The Black Madonna that can be used in Sweden, but they are not the focus of the expansion.
As with Urban Operations before it, The Black Madonna is a boxed set. It contains a seventy-two-page book with new rules and campaign material, an eight-page handout booklet used for the core scenario in The Black Madonna, a travel map, sixteen new encounter cards, six new battle maps, and three battle maps for close quarters combat. The maps are divided between those for the core scenario in the boxed set and general battle maps. The former includes a travel map for the specific region where the scenario takes place and specific battle maps for locations within the scenario—internal and external. The latter are for the detailed scenario sites that the Game Master can add to her campaign as expanded encounters, including a former Soviet nuclear bunker, a dam, a Silesian farm, and a gold mine. The handout is the diary which will kick off the scenario proper and the encounter cards are used to determine random events.
‘The Black Madonna’ book begins with an explanation of what it is. Which really do two things that make up a third. One is to present a guide to Silesia in southwest Poland in the months after the Twilight War and the second is to give a plot around the location of a lost icon revered by Polish Catholics. This is ‘Our Lady of Częstochowa’, the Black Madonna of the title and at the start of the scenario, it is thought lost, if not destroyed. Together, they provide the means for the Game Master to create a scenario in which her Player Characters hunt for the icon. This is not the only content in the ‘The Black Madonna’. It also includes new rules and gear. The new rules are for advanced minefields, covering their size, density, condition, and type, as well as descriptions of the types of mines used by both NATO and Warsaw Pact forces. There is something not a little distasteful about their inclusion, adding one more element of misery left over from the war that can affect civilians, but Twilight 2000 is a military roleplaying game and their inclusion is appropriate. The rules cover underground combat with the chance of ricochets and explosions in the mines and tunnels that appear in the scenarios in The Black Madonna, intended to be used in conjunction with the urban combat rules in the Urban Operations supplement, and there is also a list of specifically Polish materiel with which to arm Polish Player Characters and NPCs.
The Black Madonna provides an overview of the region and descriptions of the state of the numerous towns to be found in Silesia. These are marked on a very clear map along with the zones of control and influence for various factions. They include independent factions such as the Margravate of Silesia, a stable feudal state which rejects the overtures from both the KGB and DIA, backed up by the Śląskie Siły Obronne Sso, or Silesian Defense Force; the rickety 20th Guards Tank Division clinging on to Soviet doctrine as unit morale collapses; Soviet Special Signals Detachment 1109, a Spetsnaz unit operating under the command of the GRU with no love of the Americans or the KGB and the ruthlessness to get any task done; and Marczak’s Legion, the former Czech 8th Border Guard Brigade, now a DIA-funded anti-Soviet guerrilla force—supposedly. All of these factions are nicely detailed, with most being location-based whilst the Spetsnaz unit is a tool for the Game Master to drive the plot along.
‘The Black Madonna’ is the plot set-up or scenario in The Black Madonna. It begins with the discovery of a diary on the body of a dead US soldier, along with a gold chalice, pointing to something odd that he and his colleagues found in some tunnels. Research—at least into the chalice—will highlight its religious significance and the possibility that other religious items linked to it somehow survived the nuclear destruction of Częstochowa and the Jasna Góra monastery museum. This includes the icon known as ‘Our Lady of Częstochowa’, solemnly crowned Queen of Poland in the name of Pope Clement XL in 1717 and a symbol of Polish Catholicism and nationalism. Whomever managed to find it would have major influence over the future Polish government if they can hold on to it and so if they find out about it, factions throughout the region are going to be hunting for it. Some may even employ the Player Characters to find it for them, depending upon their allegiances. Others will hunt down the Player Characters to get hold of it. The Game Master can also use errant radio traffic and rumours also to push the Player Characters to investigate if they are not readily taking up the bait. Ultimately, the Player Characters will get to the location of ‘Our Lady of Częstochowa’, which is described in some detail. In between, the Game Master has a lot of work ahead of her, reacting to what the players and their characters want to do. Of course, this is how Twilight 2000 is intended to be run, a military sandcrawl of travel, exploration of the new environment, and survival. Advice is given on this in the ‘Referee’s Manual’ for the roleplaying game, but The Black Madonna gives tools and advice of its own, including what might happen after the Player Characters have got hold of the Icon and Silesian encounters and rumours pertinent to the region.

One issue perhaps is where The Black Madonna is supposed to be a horror scenario. The Player Characters are meant to be frightened in their exploration of the location where the Black Madonna has been kept hidden. The advice to that end is very light and the switch to a different genre may be at odds with the tone of campaign that the Game Master is running.
Physically, The Black Madonna is very well presented. Everything is in full colour, the artwork is excellent, and the maps are clear and easy to use.
Much like Urban Operations before it, The Black Madonna is a toolkit rather than a traditional scenario. Where Urban Operations is a toolkit to run Twilight 2000 within the confines of the damaged and destroyed cities and towns of the aftermath of the Twilight War, The Black Madonna is a toolkit to get the Player Characters through a region of Poland, interact with its factions, and discover a secret that will affect the future of the country and the Catholic Church. That it is applicable only to the Poland setting for Twilight 2000 limits the usefulness of The Black Madonna, but this is still a solid update of a classic scenario for Twilight 2000 that provides everything that the Game Master needs to make the Player Characters’ flight across Poland from ‘OPERATION Reset’ memorable.

As with previous regenerations of ‘Nu-Who’, the Eleventh Doctor arrives with a bang! Building on the foundations laid down by his predecessors, the Eleventh Doctor continues his adventures throughout time and space, but in a great many ways, charts whole directions for the Time Lord. He is young, full of energy, ready to leap into action, especially when there is a mystery or a puzzle to be solved. And there are a great many mysteries and puzzles to be solved during his incarnation—who is River Song? Who is Clara? Who wants to imprison him and why? Who wants him dead and why? Yet his soul is old, at times weary of the things he has seen and done, of the number of times he has saved the universe, though not afraid to wield the reputation he has gained in doing so when confronting evil and bureaucracy. In his darker moments, he may even use force to resolve problems… Like all of the Doctors, he has his companions, but for the Eleventh Doctor, they are not only very special, but they are also family. None more so than Amy Pond, who the Doctor promised would take her with him when she is seven years old. Together with her partner, Rory, they will journey in the TARDIS far and wide, and when they are at home on Earth, the Doctor will make regular visits such that there is always room for Doctor and the TARDIS in their house. Then there is Clara Oswald, her curiosity about the universe as big as the Doctor’s about who she is. Amy, Rory, and Clara are not the only companions to join the Eleventh Doctor in his TARDIS, or indeed have adventures with him, but they are the most consistent and they have the biggest effect upon his incarnation. However, before the final mystery of ‘Doctor who?’ is revealed at Trenzalore, there is a look back with ‘The Day of the Doctor’ to not only the previous incarnation of the Tenth Doctor, but also an incarnation that they had all forgotten existed—and since the Ninth Doctor—whose actions they had all been running from. In the meantime, the ‘Magic Doctor’ has arrived and “The Pandorica will open. Silence will fall.”

The Eleventh Doctor Sourcebook is part of Cubicle Seven Entertainment’s celebration of Doctor Who’s fiftieth anniversary—celebrated itself with the special episode, ‘The Day of the Doctor’— for the Ennie-award winning Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space roleplaying game. As lengthy as the sourcebook devoted to the Tenth Doctor, it follows the same format of the previous ten entries in the series. Unlike The Tenth Doctor Sourcebook, it is only divided into four chapters rather than five, since it does not have to address the existence and nature of Torchwood. The four chapters are ‘The Eleventh Doctor And Companions’, ‘Playing in the Eleventh Doctor’s Era’, ‘The Eleventh Doctor’s Enemies’, and ‘The Eleventh Doctor’s Adventures’. The first chapter, ‘The Eleventh Doctor And Companions’, first looks at the character of the Doctor and then each of his Companions. Some of those included are whom you would expect—Amy Pond and her partner, Rory Williams, Clara Oswald, and River Song. Others are less expected, such as the members of the Paternoster Gang, Brian Williams—father of Rory. The inclusion of Sexy (or Idris)—from the episode, ‘The Doctor’s Wife’—makes sense, whilst Henry Avery from ‘The Curse Of The Black Spot’ less so. One interesting inclusion here is of the ‘War Doctor’, the incarnation of the Doctor between the Eighth Doctor and the Ninth Doctor. This makes sense in that he appears in the episode, ‘The Day of the Doctor’. Full stats are provided for all of these characters, though the War Doctor might warrant a higher Fighting skill than other generations of Doctors.

In terms of themes, it presents and examines concepts such as ‘Fairy Tales’, ‘Seeing is Powerful’, and ‘Switching Time Zones’ all backed up with suggestions as to how they might be used. The fairy tale quality of the Eleventh Doctor’s stories consist of making them dark and mysterious, adding a dash of magic, and relying upon solutions and outcomes that come from childlike qualities and faith, rather than maturity or science. The senses prove to be a boon and a bane, the infamous Weeping Angels—introduced during the incarnation of the Tenth Doctor—can only be curtailed by staring at them and not blinking, whilst the senses need to be adjusted to see The Silents. ‘Switching Time Zones’ emphasises time travel, often with the Doctor and his companions starting an adventure in one time zone and jumping to another in order to solve a problem or mystery. Numerous characters, including the Doctor and Amy meet alternate versions of themselves and messages pass back and forth across time between the characters, whether that is River Song leaving messages for the Doctor or the Ponds seeing the Doctor turn up in history books. The family feel that runs through this generation sees the Eleventh Doctor visiting the Ponds at home where they have a life away from the TARDIS, as does Clara Oswald, and of course, not only Amy and Rory, but also the Doctor and River Song, get married.

In terms of campaigns, The Eleventh Doctor Sourcebook gives good advice on handling secrets in a game. Whether or not to use them, have them open or closed, and whether or not to have the Game Master maintain secrets about a character without his player knowing. The advice, if including them, is to use them to involve the Player Characters in plotlines and to increase the pressure on all involved, whether they are trying to keep a secret or reveal a secret. There is more advice on building arcs, this time character arcs, rather than the story arcs of The Tenth Doctor Sourcebook. It is longer and better developed here than in the previous supplement. How time works and is played with during the Eleventh Doctor’s era is also different, with the Doctor often bending the laws of time and having it rebound on him, in an attempt to solve the conundrums he faced. There are suggestions on how to utilise foresight—for example, River Song’s TARDIS-themed notebook—can be handled, including ignoring or negating its possibility, to gain some insight from the future and benefit from it for the cost of a Story Point, and foreshadowing or asking a question about the future, again at the cost of a Story Point. None of these should be overused, of course. There is similar advice on having multiple versions of the same character in play at the same time, and the section comes to close with character options. This includes using Regeneration Energy, primarily to heal physical trauma, including right up to bringing someone from the brink of death, as River Song did for the Doctor, at the cost of her future Regenerations. New Traits range from ‘Another Lifetime’, ‘Caregiver’, and ‘Death Habit’ to ‘Scion of Gallifrey’, ‘Talk to Everything’, and ‘True Connection’, as well as New Gadget Traits like ‘Zap’ and new gadgets such as ‘Infrared Sunglasses’ and ‘Superphone’. All of these traits are for the first edition of Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space roleplaying game, rather than Doctor Who: The Roleplaying Game – Second Edition, where such traits are not used.

Monsters for the Eleventh Doctor see the return of old foes, often in new forms, along with the new. One of the most notable returning monsters is the Great Intelligence, not come to the Earth since its encounters with the Second Doctor. Whether it is The Church of the 51st century, and Madame Kovarian and her sect within it, and The Silents, originally genetically engineered to collect confessions, but have so much grown beyond that; the new controlling intelligence for the Cybermen, the Cyberiad; or the resurgence of The New Dalek Paradigm; all of the Eleventh Doctor’s foes are given meaty write ups. These include complete stats and adventure hooks too. Of course, they are not the only threats faced by the Eleventh Doctor, but they are the major ones.

The fourth and final chapter in The Eleventh Doctor Sourcebook is, as with the previous entries in the series, its longest. Again, it takes up some four fifths of the book, adding greatly to its length. ‘The Eleventh Doctor’s Adventures’ details all forty-four of the Eleventh Doctor’s stories, from ‘The Eleventh Hour’ to ‘The Time of the Doctor’. The format is simplified with the removal of the ‘Changing The Desktop Theme’ section—a reference to the changed look of the TARDIS interior after some thirty or so years—which suggested ways in which the story might be reskinned with another threat or enemy, and the like. Instead, all open with a synopsis, including notes on continuity—backwards and forwards to stories past and future, followed by advice on ‘Running the Adventure’. Rounding out the writeups are full details of the monsters and NPCs appearing in the episode. Thus, for the episode, ‘Victory of the Daleks, the synopsis describes how the Doctor and Amy arrive late in London at the height of the Blitz in response to a call for help from Winston Churchill, who unveils his new secret weapon, the Ironside Project. These are, of course, Daleks painted khaki and offering cups of tea! The Doctor confronts them and after they confirm his identity, he leaps into the TARDIS and materialises on their saucer ship behind the Moon. The Daleks reveal that they have the means to rebuild their race following their defeat in the Time War and the Doctor’s confirmation of who they are was the means to activate it. Despite the Doctor’s ruse to defeat the new Daleks with just a jammy dodger biscuit—its big gooey centre obviously a bright red button for something!—the New Dalek Paradigm is rolled out and they attempt to blackmail him. London will be destroyed if he does not leave. Using the technology given to the British by the Daleks, Churchill orders an attack on the Dalek saucer ship to stop the threat to London, but the Daleks escalate their threat to one against the whole world and the Doctor calls off the attack. Of course, the Daleks being the Daleks, trigger that threat anyway and by the time it has been neutralised, the New Dalek Paradigm has escaped.

The ‘Continuity’ lists links between the episode and ‘The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End’ episodes for the Tenth Doctor, that the Daleks can again identify the Doctor no matter his regeneration, that the Daleks escape via a time corridor, a technology they have used before, and more. Plus, they will appear again for the episode, ‘Asylum of the Daleks’, the first appearance of Oswin Oswald/Clara Oswin Oswald/Clara Oswald. The ’Running the Adventure’ section highlights how this episode is a trap, beginning with a threat that only the Doctor can see because no-one else has encountered the Daleks before. In calling out the trap, the Daleks get what they want and ultimately, defeat the Doctor here, because as the supplement points out, they get to regenerate—just as the Doctor does—and then escape! In between the springing of the trap and the escape, which sets up more stories for later on, there is plenty of action and bangs and pops. The advice suggests how traps can be used in a campaign, tying them to the Player Characters’ Bad Traits, and how to present impossible situations and difficult choices—being all alone against an army of Daleks and having to choose between eradicating the Daleks or destroying the Earth. Stats are included for Churchill and Professor Edwin Bracewell, the Spitfires modified for space combat, their pilots represented by Danny Boy, and the Progenitor Device containing the pure Dalek DNA.

The Eleventh Doctor Sourcebook adheres to this format throughout, for all of its forty-four episodes and specials. The write-ups are lengthy, and in the process the Game Master is given detailed background and advice on running an array of great episodes, including the return of River Song and the Weeping Angels in ‘The Time Of Angels/Flesh And Stone’, the sad, yet joyous ‘Vincent And The Doctor’, the mystery of ‘The Lodger’ with complete stats and write-up for 79B Aickman Road, the revelations of ‘The Doctor’s Wife’ and ‘Let’s Kill Hitler’, the ultimate sadness of ‘The Angels Take Manhattan’, all the way to the great celebration in ‘The Day Of The Doctor’ and the ending that the Doctor never wanted to face in ‘The Time Of The Doctor’. There are certainly too many stories to choose from in terms of good stories when it comes to the Eleventh Doctor and certainly one of the features throughout many of them are the long running threads, whether that is the connection between the Doctor, Amy Pond, and River Song, the plot to kill the Doctor, and the secret of who Clara Oswald is, the groundwork for which is laid before the Ponds have left the TARDIS forever. This adds both sophistication and complexity in terms of storytelling, but also richness, and in providing the episode synopsis, a lot for the book to keep track of in terms of continuity. Thankfully, The Eleventh Doctor Sourcebook manages this.

Physically, The Eleventh Doctor Sourcebook is well presented in what is very much a tried and tested format. The supplement is richly illustrated with lots of photographs from the series and decently written, all backed up with a good index.

The Eleventh Doctor brought family, big secrets and mysteries, and long running plots like never before to ‘Nu Who’ and The Eleventh Doctor Sourcebook enables the Game Master to bring these to her campaign for the Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space roleplaying game. This also brings complexity and sophistication, and in the process more challenge for the Game Master, but there is good advice and adventure hooks throughout the supplement to help and support the Game Master. The Eleventh Doctor Sourcebook is an excellent guide to the era of the Eleventh Doctor and how to bring its energy and mystery to a Game Master’s campaign.

Troika! is both a setting and a roleplaying game. As the latter, it provides simple, clear mechanics inspired by the Fighting Fantasy series of solo adventure books, but combined with a wonderfully weird cast of character types, all ready to play the constantly odd introductory adventure, ‘The Blancmange and Thistle’. As the former, it takes the Player Characters on adventures through the multiverse, from one strange sphere to another, to visit twin towers which in their dying are spreading a blight that are turning a world to dust, investigate murder on the Nantucket Sleigh Ride on an ice planet, and investigate hard boiled murder and economic malfeasance following the collapse of the Scarf-Worm investment bubble. At the heart of Troika! stands the city itself, large, undefined, existing somewhere in the cosmos with easy access from one dimension after another, visited by tourists from across the universe and next door, and in game terms, possessing room aplenty for further additions, details, and locations. One such location is The Hand of God.

The Hand of God is the second entry in a new series of scenarios for Troika! from the Melsonian Arts Council begun with Whalgravaak’s Warehouse. This is the ‘1:5 Troika Adventures’ series, which places an emphasis on shorter, location-based adventures, typically hexcrawls or dungeoncrawls, set within the city of Troika, but which do not provide new Backgrounds for Player Characters or ‘Hack’ how Troika! is played. The Hand of God lives up to these tenets, in that it is a dungeoncrawl that takes place in the upturned hand atop the tallest statue to a god in the temple district of the city of Troika. The Player Characters are plucked from their dreams and the scenario opens with them waking to find themselves atop the extended index finger, in the giant nest of THOG, the demon bird. It is a strikingly silly and utterly appropriate cold opening for the Player Characters and the scenario, and it makes the scenario incredibly easy to slot into a campaign. The Players Characters fall asleep one night and when they wake up, there they are. What the Player Characters can see below them is the fingers of the hand, a gondola spanning the distance between the index finger and the thumb, bridges between the other fingers, a tower on the middle finger whilst water rushes out of the tip of the finger to fall to a lake below, a ramshackle wooden town on the little finger, and far below on the palm, forests and mountains surrounding the lake, and even perhaps a way down. It is a wondrous vista, a sight unlike that in any other roleplaying game and The Hand of God never lets the Game Master or her players forget it. There are constant reminders of what the Player Characters can see throughout the adventure.

The Hand of God is a pointcrawl, consisting of locations linked by specific routes and connections, making deciding where to go from one location to the next easy to decide. It is literally laid out in front of them, like the palm of well, a god’s hand. As the Player Characters descend, they will encounter the denizens of the hand, like the Goblins at the Gondola Station led by Frenki, the elderly radical mazematician ostracised for his experimental maze design, and Skink, the priest from Jibberwind Temple, currently riding the gondola back and forth in silent contemplation, who could be provoked enough to start a fight—and would quite like it if you did. In a cave down the thumb, the sleazy, flat cap-wearing Crenupt the Undead, who has been thrown out of Jgigji, the tumbledown town of living dead on the little finger, who might have goods to sell that he very likely stole and if that fails, the means to take revenge by stealing everything from the town if the Player Characters will help him. All he wants is a lot of wine. A lot of wine. The index finger is scored and scarred by Sofia the Giant Serpent as she endlessly circumnavigates the finger, her iron scales cutting deep into the stone of the finger, whilst just above in the crags, three Harpy sisters all want food, but one also wants to hear fine music, another to see beautiful paintings, and a third to read beautiful words, and they all hate each other!
The hand has several major locations. They include Jibberwind Temple, which is home to the cult of the Perfect Fingers, dedicated to Thog, its looping corridors acting more as wind tunnels and its treasure vault the target of many an inhabitant of the hand, whilst Thark Village is being put to the torch by Automonous Arrests and Adjudication Inquisitorial sect of The Indelible Order of Allotted Idols as the villagers huddle in the crypts below and attempt a ritual which might save them. Elsewhere, there is Jgigji, the town of drunken undead, a wizard’s tower/folly where the wizard’s work is likely the actual folly, and a community of Parchment Witches—one of the signature character types in Troika!—who set snares and net traps for beast and intruders, using the skins of the former to create some of the best parchment across the spheres whilst squabbling about anything and everything. All of these locations and their various factions are interlinked and many of the people that they meet will share information or ask for help in return for it, pushing the Player Characters onwards in their exploration of the statue. The descriptions of the scenario’s many NPCs do vary in detail, but all are going to be fun for the Game Master to portray, some of the less detailed ones really leaving room for the Game Master to develop how she wants to portray them and make them memorable.
Escape is the ultimate aim for the Player Characters in The Hand of God. But there are also plenty of mini-locations and dungeons to explore, treasures to find or steal, and of course, there is the view to look at. Other options are suggested as to why the Player Characters might want to go to The Hand of God, whether that is find one of the treasures in the statue, locate a curse-eater, or discover their future from Vow, the Spider-God who can read the threads of fate. Many of these reasons might also explain why the Player Characters might want to return to The Hand of God in the future.

Physically, it all helps that the content of The Hand of God is presented in very accessible fashion. The maps are great and the adventure is decently illustrated. The scenario needs a slight edit in places.
The Hand of God manages to feel big, but is delightfully self-contained, more or less in the palm of a god’s hand, a pointcrawl as memorable for its location as its content, such that it is more of a ‘handcrawl’ than a pointcrawl. The Hand of God is fun, easy to drop into a campaign, and like any good Troika! scenario is weird and wondrous.

A monster stalks the streets of Los Angeles as a series of bodies of young men and women are found in bodies of water—although the authorities do not yet truly know it. Are these deaths due to the ‘Shoreline Slasher’ or something worse, something out of history, one of the most prolific murderers of the early modern period? Of course, it is the latter. This is the set-up for The Blood Countess, a scenario that is pretty much upfront about who or what is responsible for the deaths, who or what the Player Characters will be investigating, and who or what they will have to defeat. Anyone who knows their history, certainly their bloodier history, and their macabre history, will know who the Blood Countess is. This is Countess Elizabeth Báthory of Ecsed, who was accused of the torture and murder of hundreds of peasant girls and sentenced to immurement. Over the centuries her reputation as a monster has not only grown, but also become associated with vampiric lore. If Dracula is the preeminent vampire, then the Hungarian Countess Elizabeth Báthory is his female counterpart. Published by Yeti Spaghetti and Friends, The Blood Countess is a short, one-night horror scenario, part of and second in the publisher’s ‘Frightshow Classics’ line. Ostensibly written for use with Chill or Cryptworld: Chilling Adventures into the Unexplained, the percentile mechanics of the scenario mean that it could easily be adapted to run with Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition and similar roleplaying games.

The Blood Countess initially focuses on the most recent death, that of Michael Ventnor, his body found with many puncture wounds, and the disappearance of a student, Veronica Brookes. A nicely detailed and laid out investigation, involving a good mix of persuasion and sidestepping the authorities, as well as sneaking into back offices to look at security footage, plus a trip to the city museum to look at some ghoulish torture implements from the European Middle Ages, will ultimately point to a modelling agency, recently founded in the city, and an address in a neighbourhood full of ‘McMansions’. The name of the agency is the De Ecsed Agency and research into the name of the owner, Bethany De Ecsed, will give the players and their character some intimations as to who might be responsible and what they might be up against. Although not subtle, it should add a little shiver to the scenario for the players. The scenario will culminate in the Player Characters breaking into the home of Bethany De Ecsed, making some unsurprisingly bloody discoveries, and hopefully getting away following a nasty confrontation with the murderess.
The scenario is supported with maps of the McMansion, a handout giving a detailed description of the life and legend of Countess Elizabeth Báthory, and an autopsy report for Michael Ventnor. It also comes with eight pre-generated Player Characters, two of which have Paranormal abilities. None are members of law enforcement, though one is an ex-police detective, and some have interests in the occult or weird crimes. The biggest challenge in the scenario is really getting these Player Characters together in order to co-operate on the investigation. Although there are some suggestions, this is where the scenario is at its weakest. Although set in Los Angeles, the scenario is easily relocated to any big city with a body of water where the bodies can be dumped.
Physically, behind its suitably bloody cover, The Blood Countess is decently presented. The artwork is reasonable, the floorplans of the McMansion are clear and easy to use, and the scenario is well written.
The Blood Countess is not a subtle affair, but it is fun, combining a solid, often sympathetic investigation with the lurking threat of a monstrous murderess that the players are going to be aware of almost right from the start of the scenario, adding a little frisson of anticipation as to how ghastly and how dangerous she is actually going to be when the confrontation comes. The investigation itself feels reminiscent of an episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker—and there is an episode of that series involving a vampire in Los Angeles—and playing the scenario in the style of that series could work quite well. Overall, The Blood Countess is a very solid addition to the ‘Frightshow Classics’ line, offering a good session of American pulp horror that pitches the Player Characters up against a tough version of a classic monster.

The London Spiritualist Society is threatened with scandal! Just three weeks ago, one of the society’s junior members died in the library under strange circumstances and if word got out, its austere and respected reputation as an upright and proper dedication with an interest in the occult and the burgeoning spiritualist movement would suffer greatly. Such is the worry that this will come to pass, that the board of the society has decided that the incident should be investigated properly and fully with the aim of confirming that the society itself was not to blame and that no suspicion of impropriety can be attached to the society. The investigators are of course to be discreet themselves, whilst also bring to bear their experiences in dealing with the occult and the outré. So begins The Strange Case of the Shadow Traveller, a short two-act scenario for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition. It is published by Stygian Fox Publishing, best known for the anthologies Things We leave Behind and Fear’s Sharp Little Needles: Twenty-Six Hunting Forays into Horror, as well as New Tales of the Miskatonic Valley, Second Edition, the return of a classic. As written, it is intended to be compatible with the publisher’s Hudson & Brand, Inquiry Agents of the Obscure, a Victorian Era setting supplement, published in 2017 when there no Cthulhu by Gaslight in print. However, in 2025, there is, and The Strange Case of the Shadow Traveller can be run with just Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition and then with the fourth edition of Cthulhu by Gaslight, and perhaps a little easier now than it can with Hudson & Brand, Inquiry Agents of the Obscure.

The Strange Case of the Shadow Traveller begins with the Investigators at the headquarters of the London Spiritualist Society. They can already be members or even associates, but they should all have some experience with spiritualism and the occult and certainly acquired a reputation for discretion. They are informed that three weeks before, a trio of younger members broke in the society’s library and attempted a ceremony, one in which the board member believes they attempted to summon some malevolent spirit. At the end of the ceremony, one of the three was dead, a second was so traumatised he had to be hospitalised in an asylum, and the third resigned from the society. Each of the three represents the Investigators’ opening lines of inquiry. Of course, one of them is dead, although the Investigators will be told where his grave is, but the other two, Sir Peter Wahlmesey and Miss Sarah Mulberry can be visited and both will recant what happened during the ceremony, though with varying degrees of reluctance. Miss Mulberry can be interviewed at her flat, whilst Sir Peter has been institutionalised for his own good. Pleasingly, the scenario actually points out that he is receiving—by standards of the day—very good care at the asylum, and further, the scenario nicely emphasises the fragility of his current state rather than it actually being horrified.

Although the Investigators can learn a certain amount from both participants in the ceremony, very little of pertains to subsequent events and what pushes the Investigators to investigate further in the second act does feel like a deus ex machina, an intervention signposting where they should go. This comes after a very violent encounter with a horse and carriage which points to the Investigators to the home of the man killed during the ceremony, Richard Keye. This is a small mansion, but one which has been turned into half a slaughterhouse, half haunted house, one marked with some classic horror house motifs, such as something lurking in the bathtub or body parts strangely protruding from the walls. Again, much like the encounter in the asylum, these are nicely underplayed and in some cases, benign in nature and intent, if not outcome. There are some nicely creepy scenes and encounters throughout the house, but ultimately, the scenario funnels the Investigators into a final confrontation with the threat at the heart of the scenario.

Physically, The Strange Case of the Shadow Traveller is short and tidy, neat little hardback like the publisher’s earlier Nightmare on the Necropolis Express. It is done in the style of a penny dreadful, though with some colour artwork, some of which is quite decent. The map is clear and easy to use, whilst the book does need an edit in places.

If The Strange Case of the Shadow Traveller presents its horror stoutly enough, it wavers when it comes to other them, that of impropriety and scandal. With the society of the Victorian Era, there is plenty of scope for it within the scenario, not just due to the death in the library of the London Spiritualist Society, but also because one of the NPCs is transgender. That the latter is included is not a criticism or issue in terms of the story, but The Strange Case of the Shadow Traveller does not explore or really what happens if information about becomes more widely known. Of course, the scenario was written before the publication of the new edition of Cthulhu by Gaslight, but the Cthulhu by Gaslight: Investigators’ Guide – Mysteries & Frights in the Victorian Age does include rules for reputation and suffering damage to it. Obviously, this is less of an issue if the scenario is run as a one-shot rather than being used in a campaign.

Although set in the Victorian era of Cthulhu by Gaslight, there is very little to stop the Keeper adapting The Strange Case of the Shadow Traveller to other time periods, and whatever the time period, its brevity means that it is easy to slot into an ongoing campaign. Whilst it does not concern the traditional Cthulhu Mythos in any way, its themes of spiritualism and propriety are appropriate to the period, though it does not go as far it could have done in examining the consequences of impropriety. Nevertheless, and although quite light on investigation, The Strange Case of the Shadow Traveller is an engaging one-session of body horror and possession.

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

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

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What is it?
Sisterhood – Quickstart Guide is the quick-start for Sisterhood, a roleplaying game of ‘nuns with guns’ who fight demonic possession, cults, and other occult activities that threaten the world. It is published by Parable Games, best known for the horror roleplaying game, Shiver – Role-playing Tales in the Strange & the Unknown.

It is a twenty-nine page, 2.88 MB full colour PDF.

How long will it take to play?
Sisterhood – Quickstart Guide is designed to be played through in a single session. Any longer than that and you are not punching the demons hard enough.
What else do you need to play?
The Sisterhood – Quickstart Guide needs a full set of standard polyhedral dice per player. Tokens (or possibly miniatures) are required to represent the Sisters and the cultists and demons they will face. In addition to the character sheets for the Sisters, the Mother Superior—as the Game Master in Sisterhood is known—will need to print out ‘The Way of the Cross’ battlemap.
Who do you play?
The four Player Characters—or kickarse Nuns—in the Sisterhood – Quickstart Guide consist of an ex-criminal, a seer, a brawler, and an ex-resistance fighter.
How is a Player Character defined?A Sister in Sisterhood – Quickstart Guide has four stats—Faith, Cunning, Empathy, and Fortitude. These represent a Sister’s spiritual power, logical thinking, emotional capability, and strength and resilience, and are measured by die size, from a six-sided to a ten-sided die. Body and Spirit represent her physical fortitude and the fortitude of her Soul respectively. Her ability to call upon divine intervention is measured in points of Divinity, which has a variety of uses. She also has several skills. One of these is her ‘Past Skill’, picked up during her life before she became a Nun and one is her ‘Divinity Recharge’ by which she can recharge her Divinity Points after having used them. For example, in her Past, Sister Agatha was a Criminal. Her ‘Past Skill’ is ‘Illicit Activity’, which grants a bonus to Empathy challenges when dealing with crooks and her ‘Divinity Recharge’ is triggered when she skills an enemy from Ambush or Vantage. Each Sister has two further skills in addition to these.
How do the mechanics work?
Mechanically, Sisterhood – Quickstart Guide uses a Dice Challenge system. When a player wants his Nun to undertake an action, he rolls one his stat dice, whilst the Mother Superior rolls a Challenge die, which varies in size according to the difficulty of the task. A four-sided die is ‘Trivial’, a six-sided die is normal, an eight-sided die is ‘Difficult’, and so on, all the way up to a twenty-sided die or ‘Apocalyptic’! Whomever rolls the highest succeeds. A Sister can gain more dice to roll if another Sister helps her, as well as from Skills, Relics, and Blessings. In general, if a Sister is ‘Blessed’, her player rolls the next highest size die, but the next lowest die size if she is ‘Cursed’. Alternatively, the Sister Superior could simply set a target or Difficulty Class that the player and his Sister has to beat.
Combat in Sisterhood works slightly differently to that found in other roleplaying games. It employs ‘The Way of the Cross’ and is played out on a battlemap made up of the ‘Cross’ and the ‘Pentagram’. Different areas within the ‘Cross’ and the ‘Pentagram’ are marked with terms such as ‘Hidden’, ‘Flank’, ‘Brawl’, and more, which represent manoeuvres and tactics that both sides can move into and make use of, as well as range. A Sister can undertake three actions per turn, such as ‘Reposition’, ‘Attack’, ‘Assist’, ‘Use’, and so on. The Nuns will start a fight from the ‘Cross’, whilst the demons and their servants start in the ‘Pentagram’. In general, combat in Sisterhood has a tactical, if slightly abstract feel.
How does combat work?
Combat in Sisterhood works slightly differently to that found in other roleplaying games. It employs ‘The Way of the Cross’ and is played out on a battlemap made up of the ‘Cross’ and the ‘Pentagram’. Different areas within the ‘Cross’ and the ‘Pentagram’ are marked with terms such as ‘Hidden’, ‘Flank’, ‘Brawl’, and more, which represent manoeuvres and tactics that both sides can move into and make use of, as well as range. A Sister can undertake three actions per turn, such as ‘Reposition’, ‘Attack’, ‘Assist’, ‘Use’, and so on. The Nuns will start a fight from the ‘Cross’, whilst the demons and their servants start in the ‘Pentagram’. In general, combat in Sisterhood has a tactical, if slightly abstract feel.
How Divine are the Sisters?
A Sister in Sisterhood has access to the Divine in the form of points of Divinity. She has three of these at First Level and will gain more when she acquires another Level. Divinity can be spent to gain ‘Divine Intervention’ and an extra six-sided die to a result in a challenge; to trigger certain skills; to gain a ‘Dice of Divinity’ or twenty-sided that replaces a Sister’s main die, which requires every Sister to expend a point of Divinity; and to power certain relics and holy weapons. Spent Divinity can be regained by resting, through prayer, and a Sister using her ‘Recharge Skill’.
What do you play?
The scenario in Sisterhood – Quickstart Guide is ‘The Lost Covent’. The Sisters are tasked with investigating a former, but isolated convent to determine if it is being used for cult activities, recover a relic left, and then cleanse the chapel. It is a quick affair, beginning with an investigation of the former convent before a confrontation with the cultists in the chapel. The Sisters will barely have a chance to recover before the chapel is assaulted by even more heavily armed cultists—including Cultist Rangers(!) and a Machine Gun Team(!)—attempting to stop them from consecrating the chapel once more. It is very combat focused and probably needed a bit more investigation and a bit more room for interaction and roleplaying.
Is there anything missing?
No. The Sisterhood – Quickstart Guide has everything the the Mother Superior and her Sisters will need to play.
Is it easy to prepare?
The core rules presented in the Sisterhood – Quickstart Guide are very easy to prepare. They are light and easy to use as much as they are to teach, although the players will need to to get used to ‘The Way of the Cross’ upon which combat is handled.
Is it worth it?
Yes—for the most part. The Sisterhood – Quickstart Guide presents everything you you need to play a brutal game of Nun-on-Demon action, with an emphasis on the action and combat and the tactics played out on the ‘The Way of the Cross’. However, this emphasis on action and combat means that there is more ‘nuns with guns’ than ‘nuns with anything else’ action in the scenario. More of the latter would have allowed the Sisters to shine out of combat and given scope for all of their past lives to be brought into play. The Sisterhood – Quickstart Guide is a fast and fun, but not quite all it could have been.
The Sisterhood – Quickstart Guide is published by Parable Games and is available to download here.

It is over a thousand years since the great wizard, Kavlov, drew upon his magics to bind and imprison Balthazar, a three-eyed demon of Uzran, in the Halls of Dread below the Dreaded Hills. It is said that he sacrificed himself to ensure that the demon would never again walk the mortal realm and spread his influence, for he was not seen again. This is not the case, for Kavlov not only drew upon his mighty magics to bind the demon in place, but he also bound himself to ensure that they did not fail. Yet failing they are and as the wizard’s power fades, so do the bindings that hold the demon in place. As they weaken, so the influence of Balthazar has spread once again, and many and diverse a group of men and monsters have found their way to the Dreaded Hills and there settle within the network of caves that thread out down the hill under which the demon’s bindings lie. Dread creatures and monstrous men are abroad in the forests and hills nearby, threatening those unwise to be travelling through the region and the nearby village of Sanctuary, noted as haven for the bereaved, its guilds and temples dedicated to ensuring that the deceased are accorded a proper burial. As darkness begins to spread and seep into the hearts of men, what will the Player Characters do? Strike a blow for the safety of all concerned and prevent those that still worship the demon from freeing him of his shackles or do they side with the demon and work to free him and so unleash his dark desires upon the world once again?

This is the set-up for K-1 Kavlov’s Sanctuary, a scenario and sandcrawl for use 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. Published by The Dungeon’s Key following successful Kickstarter campaign, K-1 Kavlov’s Sanctuary may well be written for use with Mörk Borg (there is also a version written for use with Necrotic Gnome’s Old School Essentials, the retroclone based on the 1980-81 version of Basic Dungeons & Dragons), but what it is inspired by, is a classic module for Basic Dungeons & Dragons. This is B2, Keep on the Borderlands, which presented a frontier base of operations—the keep of the title—from which the Player Characters could operate and the Caves of Chaos, the series of caves and caverns in which all manner of humanoid tribes could be found in service to the forces of evil. The inspiration then, provides for a base of operations, in this case, the settlement of Sanctuary, a wilderness area packed with danger, and a big threat, in this case, the caves under the Dreaded Hills, a set of thirteen mini-dungeons. K-1 Kavlov’s Sanctuary, though, manages to provide not just more than this, but ultimately and effectively less than this.

The book begins with seven Classes for Mörk Borg. These are the Flesh Weaver, which uses a bone needle and bloody sinew to alter the flesh of himself and others; the Blood Baron, who must drink the blood of others to retain his virility; the Degenerate Cannibal, whose own body is nutritious and restores Hit Points, but must eat the raw meat of other humanoids; the Mycotic Fiend, which grows on the body of its host and never needs to eat or drink; the Skinned Bastard, a former child abductee who can invade the dreams of others and whose toughened scar-tissue skin is resilient to damage from magical and physical resources; the Disgraced Court Alchemist, whose surprisingly continued royal patronage gives him advantage in gaining reagents and who is accompanied by a foul smelling, but loyal aide; and a Roach God Emissary, an undying servant to the deity who is sent spells each day by his god, each one scrawled on the wings of its cockroach servants. Bar the Disgraced Court Alchemist, there is a grotesque, even gruesome, quality to all of these Classes, all befitting Mörk Borg. Further, they lend themselves to a play style in which the Player Characters are freaks and monsters and do want Balthazar to be freed.

The given base of operations for the Player Characters is the village of Sanctuary, dominated by its guilds dedicated to mortuary services. They include the Grave Diggers’ Guild, Coffin Makers’ Guild, Embalmers’ Guild, and the Undertakers’ Guild. There is also the chapel, under which the devil (?) Balthazar is bound. The stones of the chapel weep the blood of the demon/devil, which is collected in a cistern underneath the chapel's basement and used in rituals or added to meals for the dying. The head of the chapel, the Master of Rituals leads the town, whilst his deputy, the Deacon, has been corrupted by Balthazar and is leading his acolytes in freeing the demon. The village also has tenement blocks, a general store, a traders, a bake shop, textiles shop, and a merchant bank, and almost none of it is presented in a way that makes it come to life or engage the interest. What is potentially of interest is one NPC is a werewolf, one heads the chapel and the village, and one is his deputy who is working against him. None of them are named and none of them are given suggestions as to what they might do over the course of the scenario or in response to the Player Characters’ actions. Further and putting aside the fact that the facilities feel more suited to an urban area than a rustic one, all of these facilities in the village are only protected by guards at a watchtower. There are no walls around the village so it feels as if Sanctuary could be overrun and raised to the ground at any minute, but the real problem is simply that the village does not feel lived in and none of its inhabitants feel like real people.

There are more interesting elements in the wilderness, like the Fey who lurk in the Deadwoods and instead of killing their victims, flay them and wear their skins. This is the source of Skinned Bastards Class earlier in the book, potentially setting up an interesting plot hook for a Skinned Bastard Player Character. Yet nothing is developed from this and there is no explanation of why the Fey do this. In comparison, the Bog Witch is more developed and thus more interesting, a crone who lives deep in a swamp and will sell interesting wares, such as a Wand of Health that costs one hundred dirty fingernails or a Potion of Verities which forces the imbiber to answer all questions truthfully for ten minutes and costs four flagons of wine and a bunch of spices. These wares are engagingly inventive and the Bog Witch will also ask potential purchasers for help in searching for her missing albino children. Yet again, the author fails to follow through in setting something interesting up as the entry for the Bog Witch does not tell the Game Master where those children might be found.

The thirteen dungeons range from a ‘Dwarfling Cave’ and the ‘Cannibals’ Den’ to the ‘Wight’s Crypt’ and the ‘Halls of the Dead’. Most are just four pages long and all have their maps repeated on each two-page spread for ease of reference. There are some entertaining dungeons amongst this devil’s dozen. For example, the ‘Gorgon Temple’ has an Egyptian-themed, sepulchral feel, whilst the ‘Hobgoblin Arena’ adds a little excitement in the form of gladiatorial games. Yet all of the dungeons appear to exist in a vacuum. There are connections between some of them, but they are very few and far between, and none of the occupants ever appear to interact with the occupants of another dungeon, and certainly never go outside since none of the occupants appear on any of the encounter tables. Further, none of the dungeons have explanations as to what they are, what their occupants are, and what those occupants do before the actual descriptions begin. Instead, K-1 Kavlov’s Sanctuary commits the cardinal sin of ‘Read to find out’ rather than telling the Game Master what she actually needs to know upfront. Even then, when she does find out, it is unlikely to make sense. For example, the ‘Wight’s Crypt’ has no Wights, but is instead full of Vampires and the ‘Cyclops’ lair’ is not just home to a Cyclops, but a gang of feral children who serve him. Why are they there and why do they not just run away? The Dreaded Hills even have ‘Leper Colony’ and a ‘Laboratory’, both places of butchery and torture rather of healing or study, recurring themes which run throughout many of the dungeons.

Physically, everything in K-1 Kavlov’s Sanctuary designed to help the Game Master just gets in the way. Both of the area maps in the scenario are designed to, and do, look like those of B2, Keep on the Borderlands. This is not a problem with the ‘Wilderness Map’, given a two-page spread, but the map of the Dreaded Hills, designed to look like the map of the Caves of Chaos from B2, Keep on the Borderlands, is laughably too small. It represents an area approximately 570 by 460 feet, is marked with entrances and caves of thirteen such cave complexes in that area, and is then fitted onto a single digest size page. It looks vaguely pretty, but is unreadable. What should they do to counteract that? Perhaps include excerpts of this map to use with each dungeon? Well, no, that would have been too obvious. Instead, each mini-dungeon has its own map, redrawn and done in white on muted colours to the blandest effect possible. The maps of each dungeon are functional and utterly lacking in terms of inspiration or style. Then there is the writing. It aims to be concise and to the point, but all too often it leaves the Game Master without any real idea as to what is going on. Over and over, thr Game Master to ‘Read to find out’.

K-1 Kavlov’s Sanctuary is overambitious, but underdeveloped and underwhelming. It attempts to bring the sensibilities of Mörk Borg to classic Basic Dungeons & Dragons-style play and classic Basic Dungeons & Dragons-style play to Mörk Borg. Although it succeeds tonally in bringing the sensibilities of Mörk Borg to classic Basic Dungeons & Dragons-style play, often overly so with its scenes of torture and other gruesomeness, it fails in too many other ways. It simply does not provide enough context and set things up sufficiently to enable the Game Master to run it effectively and engage her players and their characters with any ease, too many things are left unexplained, and tonally, it really only works if the Player Characters are working to release the demon rather than keep him bound under the earth—especially if the players decide to roleplay the new Classes included at the front of the book. Ultimately, K-1 Kavlov’s Sanctuary promises much, but fails to deliver fully and effectively on that promise.

In the not-too-distant future, 2020, civilisation is no more. It was wiped away by the falling of bombs, by the plagues that ran rampant, by rampant starvation, and the desperate, resulting scramble to survive. This was the Boom. It took place years, probably decades ago. What remains is the Waste, where communities cling together for support and protection, as well as access to supplies of clean food and water, hoping with withstand the predations of marauders, cannibals, and worse. One such community is Paradise City and in recent months, its inhabitants have suffered an outbreak of the plague known as Bleeding Fever. Fortunately, Paradise City’s leaders managed to obtain a cure from the Science Council of Heartbeat City. Unfortunately, the truck carrying the antidote was captured by the Saint, a local warlord who notoriously runs fights in her ‘domes of thunder’, or rather in electrified cages. Many communities send fighters to participate in these fights, but not Paradise City. Until now, that is… In order to get the antidote its citizens need, Paradise City is sending fighter for the first time, backed up with a team, the Saint’s next tournament, called ‘Lectric Buggalu’. However, the team is not there just to support the fighter, because if he does not win and cannot get the antidote back, the team is going to have to steal it and drive it all the way back to Paradise City.

The is the set-up for Domes of Thunder, a scenario and mini-supplement for ACE!—or the Awfully Cheerful Engine!—the roleplaying game of fast, cinematic, action comedy. Published by EN Publishing, best known for the W.O.I.N. or What’s Old is New roleplaying System, as used in Judge Dredd and the Worlds of 2000 AD and Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition. Some of the entries in the series have been expansive, such as Orcs & Oubliettes and Strange Science, providing a detailed setting and an scenario, whilst others in the series have tended to be one-shot, film night specials. As with other supplements for ACE!, both the genre and inspiration for Domes of Thunder are obvious. The genre is Post Apocalyptic and the inspiration is the Mad Max series of films, specifically, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. This is a setting where guns and bullets are scare, petrol (or gasoline) is precious, and leather and scrap armour along with a pink mohawk are the only thing seen as fashionable since before the boom. The book provides some basic background and some rules additions before leaping into the scenario itself, which makes up two thirds of the supplement.

Domes of Thunder starts by suggesting some old Roles suitable for setting, as well as giving some new ones. The old include the Barbarian, Bounty Hunter, Cowboy, Outlaw, and more, and these are joined by the Cyborg, Driver, Gladiator, Mechanic, Mutant, and Survivalist. Each has a simple benefit, such as the Cyborg being able to a Brawling attack and inflict double damage by spending a point of Karma, the Driver gains the Driving Focus for free in addition to his other Focus, and the Mechanic can spend Karma to scrounge enough metal and plastics and parts to restore the Health of any vehicle. Since this is a cinematic setting, it adheres to the ‘Rule of Cool’ when it comes to personal armour. If it looks cool, it provides personal protection. Vehicles in Domes of Thunder—automobiles, motorcycles, trucks, and armoured RVs—have all been scavenged, patched, and repaired again and again, and players need to roll at the beginning of every Act to see if their characters’ vehicles have enough fuel. A vehicle is defined by four stats—Health, Bash, Steering, and Plating. Health is the amount of damage a vehicle it can take, Bash how much it can deal out when ramming or sideswiping another vehicle, Steering is its manoeuvrability, and Plating how much damage it stops. A handful of vehicles are given stats, but the game does not really need any more than that.

One of the things that Domes of Thunder makes clear is that it is not a setting in which speed matters. In fact, none of the vehicle have a speed rating. There are two reasons for this. One narrative, one physical. The physical is that the roads are strangely still maintained, but being marked by cracks and potholes, it is impossible to go too fact. The narrative is that all the interesting things happen when vehicles get close to each other, rather than one racing away simply because it is faster. It is possible to get away from another vehicle in a chase and catch up with another vehicle in a chase, but in Domes of Thunder, what determines this is the narrative and manoeuvring rolls. This is about as far as the driving rules and driving duel rules go in Domes of Thunder, essentially keeping them simple and fast.

The ‘Domes of Thunder’ adventure begins in the post-apocalyptic equivalent of the tavern in fantasy roleplaying—an old rest stop, now barricaded and fortified. The Player Characters are hired by the fighter from Paradise City and his manager to provide support and back-up on their journey to Saint’s Compound and help in getting the antidote out if things go wrong. And since, Domes of Thunder is effectively a one-shot, film night special, things are definitely going to go wrong. This starts with the Paradise City fighter being challenged by a rival fighter and ultimately ending up dead the next morning. Which also makes things more complex as one of the Player Characters will have to enter the ‘dome of thunder’ as the fighter representing Paradise City. There are other complications, but they are just bumps in the road. The main action takes place at Saint’s Compound, which turns out to be more like ‘Santa’s Compound’ if it was protected by armed ORCs and Elves. This is because it used to be a shopping mall and it was the mall’s Christmas Santa who fortified the mall not long after the Boom.

Apart from the Player Character who is going to fight in the dome, the other Player Characters are going to have to sneak around and investigate Saint’s Compound in search of the truck with the antidote for Bleeding Fever, try not to get caught—but hey, it is definitely more dramatic if they do as they have to escape the Saint’s (prison) workshop and then have to escape her compound too, and eventually race out of there in the truck with the antidote. It is fairly freeform in its structure and there is scope for the Game Master to add her own encounters and situations or simply play out the story to see where it goes. Ultimately, the scenario will end with the Player Characters with the truck containing the antidote driving hell for leather to Paradise City. There is good reason for this—the Saint is very annoyed with the Player Characters and she unleashes her dragon on them! This is not a dragon, but a helicopter, but it is so unfamiliar to the Player Characters that it might as well be. Finish the ‘dragon’ off, and the Player Characters can ride off into the sunset…

The ‘Domes of Thunder’ adventure is straightforward and should take a session or two to complete. If there are issues, it is that it introduces an NPC under one name and them changes it and that it skirts around what the nature of the apocalypse is. There are mutants and there is prejudice against them. For example, only pure strain humans with neither mutation or nor mechanical modification can participate in the games. Further, the scenario does play around with the fantasy genre a little so it may not be clear to players in particular, if the setting embraces elements of fantasy as well, and if so, quite how far. This is because the security for the Saint’s Compound are called ORCs and Saint’s infiltrators are called Elves. The ORCs are derived from the name of the shopping mall, which was the Odessa Retail Centre, whilst the Elves are essentially Santa’s ‘little helpers’. Nominally, the scenario actually be taking place at Christmas, but that is not entirely clear. So, tonally, Domes of Thunder feels slightly odd in places, but not enough to disrupt the scenario.

Physically, Domes of Thunder is well presented with reasonable artwork. It needs a slight edit in places.
Domes of Thunder is as straightforward an adventure as you want it to be. The plot is none too complex and what the Player Characters have to do is easy to grasp. Where the the complication comes in is whatever mess the Player Characters get themselves into. There is plenty of room for Game Master to add her own content, but as is, Domes of Thunder is easy to prepare and bring to the table for a session or two’s worth of uncomplicated post-apocalyptic, cinematic action.

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

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What is it?
Runequest: Rings of Glorantha is a short supplement for for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. It is by the same author of GLORANTHA: Trinkets from Dragon Pass.

It is a four page, full colour, 893.15 KB PDF.

Runequest: Rings of Glorantha is decently presented, but it could have been better organised. It needs a slight edit.

Where is it set?
Dragon Pass.

Who do you play?
Adventurers of all types who could come across these rare items.

What do you need?
RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. It can also be run using the RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha – QuickStart Rules and Adventure.

What do you get?
Runequest: Rings of Glorantha is a description of seven rings which might be found in the world of Glorantha. However, it begins by noting that finger rings are rare in Glorantha, where rings are worn through the nose or around the arm. Thus magical rings are even rarer and more so in a world and setting in which magic is common, but magical items to be note rather than just functional.

The seven rings in this supplement each come with publicly sourced image and two short paragraphs, one giving its description and the other its effects when worn. The rings are divided between two types. The first suggests that many copies of it have been produced. For example, the Ring of Green Power is one of the Earth Goddesses’ implements of war and is made of tiny, solidified leaves with an emerald stone. Found very occasionally on former battle fields where the Goddesses’ worshipers fought Chaos, it must be worn on the thumb of the right hand and an axe wielded in the same hand for its power to work. This consists of a magical bonus to damage inflicted on creatures with a high affinity for the Chaos Rune or have one or more Chaotic Features.

The second type is unique, there being only one of its type in existence. For example, Charred Hope is ancient Elvish treasure that survived the Moonburn. It is found in Rist by those opposing the Lunar Empire. When worn, the wearer suffers less damage from spells that inflict damage and are connected to the Moon Rune.

The rings detailed in Runequest: Rings of Glorantha do feel as if their powers fit their descriptions and none of the powers they grant are overly powerful, often working only under certain conditions. However, more description of their histories and their legends would have been welcome as that would potentially make each ring more interesting and more special beyond simply its rarity.

Is it worth your time?
Yes. Runequest: Rings of Glorantha is an inexpensive way of adding more magic to give Player Characters or NPCs minor powers that will enhance their legends.
No. Runequest: Rings of Glorantha is simply too expensive for what you get and the Game Master could create her own with a little bit of research which are just as good.
Maybe. Runequest: Rings of Glorantha is expensive for what you get, but the Game Master might want to add a little variety to the treasure found or perhaps take inspiration from the rings presented here and either develop more of their legend or create new ones of her own.