At each equinox, mythical creatures gather in the magical forest to compete to be the ones to have their tales recorded in the Legendary Story Book and remembered in times to come. Only three will survive to have their stories written down, so the competition is fierce as they confront each other with their magical powers, but they only have one night to prove themselves worthy. This is the set-up for Equinox, a betting and bluffing, card placement game designed by Reiner Knizia, one of the board game hobby’s most prolific creators. That said, Equinox is more of a reimplantation of a reimplantation than a new design, though one which has been given a very attractive retheming. Mechanically, if not thematically, it is a redesign of Colossal Arena, published by Avalon Hill in 1997, which was itself a redesign of Grand National, published by Piatnik in 1996. So, the game has a bit of a history. Equinox itself, was published by Plan B Games, best known for titles such as Century Spice Road and Azul. It is designed to be played by between two and five players, aged ten and up, and can be played through in thirty minutes.

The very first thing that you are going to notice about Equinox is the quality of the components. The cards are large—2¾ by 4¾ inches—and the artwork is superb. The game’s stones, done in pastel colours, add a pleasing tactile feel and heft to the game, and the game even comes with nice little bags to store them in. (To be honest, this is the only thing the bags do, so they do feel superfluous.)

Equinox consists of one-hundred-and-ninety-nine cards, five cloth bags, and twenty-five stones. The cards break down in fourteen Champion cards, one-hundred-and-fifty-four Creature cards, eleven Chameleon cards, three Tree cards, six Row cards, and eleven Disappearance cards. The Champion cards represent the entrants in the competition, and consist of various animals and creatures, such as Squeak (mouse), Stag, Hoot (owl), Ursus (bear), Goatman, and so on. Each Champion has corresponding set of eleven cards in the one-hundred-and-fifty-four Creature cards, numbered from zero to ten. Each creature has a special ability, which is marked on their cards. The Chameleon cards are also numbered from zero to eleven, but do not have a corresponding Champion card. The Row cards, from zero to five, indicate the current round of the game. Their number also indicates the number of Prestige Points they will award the players who placed bets on the surviving Champions. The Disappearance cards are used to identify the creatures who have been eliminated from the game. The stones are used to indicate the players’ bets, each player being able to place a single bet per round.

Each round, the players will take it in turns to play Creature cards on the spaces in the current row underneath their Champion cards and place bets on the cards. A player can also reveal a secret bet made at the start of the game to gain control of a Champion, which allows him to trigger its special ability. At the end of each round, one Champion will be eliminated, so that by the end of the game, only three will have survived. The player who has earned the most Prestige Points from the bets he has placed on the surviving Champion is the winner. Bids placed earlier in the game are worth more than those placed later in the game.
Set-up is simple enough. Each player takes one set of stones and eight Champion cards are selected, either randomly or by choice. The six Row cards are laid out in a column, from zero at the top to five at the bottom. The selected Champion cards are laid out in a line in the top or row zero. They will be the Champions that the players will be betting on over the course of the five rounds. With fourteen Champions to choose from and only eight being used each time, Equinox offers a decent degree of replay value as it means different special abilities to try and activate over the course of the game. The Creature cards corresponding to the chosen Champion cards, the Chameleon cards, and the Tree cards are shuffled to form a single deck. Players then draw a hand of eight cards from this deck.

On each round, the players are playing cards and betting on the one row. A player’s turn has five phases. In the first, the player makes or reveals a prediction. In the first round, this can be an open prediction or a secret prediction, but can only be an open prediction in later rounds. A secret prediction is made on a Creature card from the player’s hand that he hopes will survive until the end of the game. It is placed face in front of him with a stone on top of it. If that Champion does survive to the end of the game, it is worth extra Prestige Points. An open prediction can be placed on a space or a card under a Champion in play, and once placed, no further predictions can be placed under that Champion in that row.

A player can also reveal his secret prediction. This can help him gain control of that Champion, though it means that the other players are more likely to try and eliminate that Champion.

A player can play one of three cards—A Creature card, a Chameleon card, or a Tree Card. A Creature card is placed in the row under the corresponding Champion and it can be played on top of another card. This will alter the strength of combined cards under the Champion, which is important in determining control if a Secret Bid is revealed, and it can activate a Special Ability if the player has control. A Chameleon card can be played on any space in a row and prevents the activation of any Special Ability if played, even if another Creature card is played. A Tree card is not played onto a row, but either forces the other players to reveal if they have made a secret prediction on a particular Champion or allows a player to take a previously played and visible card from any row.

The Special Abilities include drawing three cards for Squeak, retrieving a previously placed stone from any column—including for an eliminated Champion—for the Stag, and play a second card for the Twinz. There are a lot of Special Abilities and some of them are more useful than others.

Lastly, a player can discard cards from his hand, useful if he has cards in his hand for eliminated Champions, and draws back up. If all of the spaces in a row have been filled and one Creature card has the lowest value, its Champion is eliminated and the round ends, otherwise play continues until this happens. The game itself will end when either a Champion is eliminated on the fifth and final round or the deck is emptied.
Equinox is a game of betting and elimination and hoping that the Champion you are betting on is not going to be eliminated. When the Champion player is betting on is eliminated, it is likely to be devastating, because with it goes those bets and the possibility of Prestige Points and victory. It can lead to a player being knocked out of the game early because he cannot necessarily make up for the lost bets, so a player needs to be careful and not signal to the other players which Champion he is backing. Placing a Secret Bet at the start of the game can help with that as can taking control of a Champion if that Secret Bet has been revealed. Taking control of a Champion means that a player can potentially use the Special Ability for that Champion and with the right Special Ability it can give the player an advantage and even a way to counter the losses of backing an eliminated Champion.

However, once a Secret Bet and a potential player’s control of the Champion is revealed, it makes that Champion a target for the other players to eliminate. Also, not all of the Special Abilities are very useful. Further, if no Secret Bets are revealed, none of the Special Abilities will come into play. The likelihood is that only one or two Secret Bets are revealed and so equally, relatively few Special Abilities come into play. The difficulty with that is twofold. One is that sheer number of Special Abilities adds complexity because the players need to know what they are and what they do, despite coming into play infrequently. The other is that their use is an exception, meaning that the players have to look it up in the rules. (And even looking it up in the rules can signal to the other players that a player is about to do something.) It feels as if there should be a way of using the Special Abilities without having to reveal a Secret Bet.

Physically, Equinox is a gorgeous looking game. The artwork really is exquisite. The rulebook is easy to read and contains some good examples of play and scoring. There is an absolutely necessary guide to the Special Abilities on the back of the rulebook, though one per player would have been more useful. That said, the large cards mean that the game takes up a lot of space on the table and the bags, whilst nice, are a frippery too far.

Equinox is a great looking game and it is easy to see it origins as a horse betting game in which the players get to bet on the horses as they run the race and are left behind, one after the other (but hopefully not eliminated). Here though, beyond the core game play of placing bets and cards, it feels overdone in terms of its Special Abilities, that whilst seeming to add replay value, figure surprisingly infrequently during actual play and this makes them harder to teach and thus the game harder to teach and not quite as casual as it wants to be. Equinox is a decent game that will appeal to veteran players looking for a fast-playing cutthroat game of secrecy and bets, whilst for the casual player, its harder edge is hidden by its fantastic looks.

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

—oOo—
Name: William Bailey’s Haunted Mansion: A Call of Cthulhu AdventurePublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author David Waldron

Setting: Ballarat, 1890sProduct: One-shot
What You Get: Thirty-nine page, 6.66 MB PDFElevator Pitch: Unhappy is the man whose home is haunted.Plot Hook: If it isn’t a haunting, then what horrors have been lurking in the home of the town’s most notorious man?
Plot Support: Staging advice, four pre-generated Investigators, eight handouts, six NPCs, and two monsters.Production Values: Decent.
Pros# Scenario for Cthulhu by Gaslight# Investigation starts from the get-go# Historically based pre-generated Investigators# Straightforward investigation# Layout eases the investigation# Phasmophobia# Sugrophobia# Paranoia
Cons# Layout a little tight# Needs an edit
Conclusion# Neatly organised, straightforward, easy-to-run investigation# Decent one-shot for Cthulhu by Gaslight

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

—oOo—

Name: The Silent CurePublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Andrew ‘Lunitar’ Babcock

Setting: Modern DayProduct: Scenario
What You Get: Twenty-six page, 2.69 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Inhalation of the Body Snatchers
Plot Hook: What if the cure is the infection?Plot Support: Staging advice, six hundred NPCs (victims), and four Mythos monsters.Production Values: Spotty. Literally.
Pros# Classic invasion/infection paranoia scenario# Easy to adapt to any modern small town# Creepy atmosphere# Paranoia# Nosophobia# Sternutaphobia
Cons# Needs an edit# No maps or floorplans
# Could have been better organised
Conclusion# Invasion of the Body Snatchers meets Night of the Living Dead# “You don’t have to fight anymore. Just breathe.”

From the detective stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to the ghost stories of M.R. James, from the adventure tales of H. Rider Haggard to the speculative fiction of H.G. Wells, and the social commentary and mystery of Charles Dickens to the fantasies of Lewis Carroll, from the so-called perversities of Oscar Wilde to the murders of Jack the Ripper, from the fog-shrouded streets of London to the dusty frontier of the Punjab, from the refined and mannered lives of the aristocracy with their downstairs servants to the squalor of the slums and rookeries, there is much that we know about the Victorian Age in the latter half of the nineteenth century. This is the period of La Belle Époque, the Golden Age between the Franco-Prussian War in 1871 and the outbreak of the Great War in 1914 when the great European powers dominated the world like never before, their rivalries and tensions affecting millions of people around the world, but barely at home, a situation that would drastically change in the twentieth century when the great alliances that had previously helped to keep the peace calamitously clashed and changed the world like never before. This is a world that will be familiar to many, though both history and fiction, and has been ripe for gaming since “The first ‘Truly British’ role playing game”, that is, Victorian Adventure published in 1983. It is a roleplaying game that William A. Barton certainly saw and reviewed and perhaps was influenced by when he wrote Cthulhu by Gaslight: Horror Roleplaying in 1890s England, published by Chaosium, Inc. in 1986. This boxed set shifted the horror of H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos from the Jazz Age and the USA of the 1920s as presented in Call of Cthulhu in 1981 (and ever since) to the streets of London and the far reaches of the British Empire in the Mauve Decade. It has remained a popular setting for Call of Cthulhu over the years, the setting receiving two further editions in 1988 and 2012, but it returns with a fourth edition with the Cthulhu by Gaslight: Investigators’ Guide.

The Cthulhu by Gaslight: Investigators’ Guide – Mysteries & Frights in the Victorian Age returns the Mythos to the Mauve Decade of the 1890s as a standalone book. What this means is that neither of the Keeper Rulebook or the Investigator Handbook for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition is required to run and play Cthulhu by Gaslight. It thus means that the book include both introductions to roleplaying and the Cthulhu Mythos, as well as a comprehensive summary of the rules in the first of its two appendices. The setting and rules are compatible with Pulp Cthulhu: Two-fisted Action and Adventure Against the Mythos for a more adventurous style of play and with Down Darker Trails: Terrors of the Mythos in the Old West, should a Keeper and her players want to escape the stuffy confines of London and the East Coast of the USA and venture onto the American frontier. It provides a grand overview of Victorian England, paying particular attention to London, but also going far beyond that, as well as looking at Victorian society and attitudes. It also includes a guide to creating Victorian-era Investigators and delves into the quirks and oddities of the period that make history so interesting and help make it come alive. What Cthulhu by Gaslight: Investigators’ Guide – Mysteries & Frights in the Victorian Age is not though, is a guide to the Mythos—its gods and greater beings, alien species and monsters, and its horribly human adherents. That is saved for the companion volume, Cthulhu by Gaslight: Keepers’ Guide, and the Keeper’s eyes only.

What is clear about the Cthulhu by Gaslight: Investigators’ Guide – Mysteries & Frights in the Victorian Age is the wealth of information it presents, more so than any of the three previous editions. And to no little extent, if the player or Keeper has read or used those previous editions, or indeed, has an interest in the history of the Victorian period, then they will find much that is familiar within its pages. There is a guide to Victorian social class, life in the city and the country—including in the infamous slums known as rookeries, politics including the radicalism of the Fabian Society and anarchism, the Royal Family, the nature of domestic service, religion, philanthropy, death and mourning, women and the law, the place of ethnic minorities, and sex and society. It also covers communications—Royal Mail, the telegraph, and the telephone, as well as crime, policing, and the underworld. Throughout, many of these subjects are accompanied by little timelines of their own that highlight the notable events that changed them, often laws passed by parliament to improve the lot of society.

Perhaps the biggest factor here and the one that will most obviously affect an Investigator is that of class. Obviously, it plays a major factor in almost every social situation and the expectations of the different classes do limit the ways in which a person of one class can interact with another and do so correctly without being seen to act improperly. What this means is that Investigators of all classes are required to access different social spaces. Thus, members of the middle and upper classes would look out of place in a working-class area or space and any working-class person found there would not necessarily be as readily forthcoming in answers to queries as if they were a member of their own class. There is also a general deference to the classes above you, but this does not mean attitudes between classes did not vary. Although campaigns can be run with the Investigators all coming from a single class or group, the nature of Victorian society begs the question, how Investigators of different Classes be seen together given its constraints? Here is where the Cthulhu by Gaslight: Investigators’ Guide begins to get that little bit more interesting. It suggests a number of ‘Multi-Class Set-Ups & Locations’ as possible set-ups, such as charities operating in working-class areas, music hall performances, racecourses, seaside resorts, and so on.

This is the first of three sections in the book that suggest ways in which Victorian society was not quite as straitlaced and corseted as we imagine. Evelyn De Morgan, the female artist who painted male nudes, Benjamin Disraeli, middle class and Jewish, who rose to become leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister—twice, and Lillie Langtry, notorious ‘adventuress’, actress, producer, and theatre manager and mistress to the Prince of Wales and advertising face of Pears Soap, are among the notable Victorians listed as having defied the expectations of their backgrounds and so could serve as possible inspirations for Investigators. Similarly, there is a lengthy section on LGBTQI+ Victorians which explores their lives during the period. Unfortunately, the outwardly prudish attitudes of Victorian society means that what we know of it is drawn from its various scandals and criminal prosecutions, although this is contrasted by some calls for acceptance. The third looks at the subject of Race and place of minorities in Victorian society, highlighting the lives and places they made for themselves in the empire. Together—and despite the social mores of the period—the exploration of these three subjects open up a wider choice of backgrounds for Investigators and wider possibilities in terms of scenarios and storytelling than the Gaslight era might otherwise suggest.

Investigator creation is as per Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, but with a handful of changes. One of these is class, determined by Occupation, as for example, Acrobat and Labourer are working class Occupations, Clergy and Scientist are Middle Class Occupations, and Aristocrat is an upper-class Occupation. Others span the classes, for example, Police Officer is working to middle class and Physician is middle to upper. Some Occupations are particular to Cthulhu by Gaslight, like Inquiry Agent and the Consulting Detective, whilst some are adaptations taken from Call of Cthulhu Investigator Handbook, such as the Alienist which adapts the Psychologist. The Labourer and Criminal Occupations are further split into specialisations, including the Chimney Sweep and the Navvy for the Labourer and the Footpad and the Swindler for the Criminal. The Adventuress is an exception being upper class, but only temporarily. In addition, there are guidelines for creating Heroes rather than Investigators for use with Pulp Cthulhu: Two-fisted Action and Adventure Against the Mythos and there is also a list of Occupations from the Call of Cthulhu Investigator Handbook suitable for use with Cthulhu by Gaslight. There is also a good interpretation of skills in the period along with the addition of Alienism (similar to Psychology), Mesmerism (replaces Hypnotism), Reassure (similar to Psychiatry), and Religion. It is a very broad range of options across the three social classes.

Similar to Regency Cthulhu: Dark Designs in Jane Austen’s England, there are rules for Reputation and how to both damage and repair it in Cthulhu by Gaslight, but they are optional. Suggestions are also provided for several Investigator organisations, including the ‘Mainwaring Society for the Betterment of the Working Classes’, dedicated to self-improvement, the ‘Nonstandard Club’, a slightly dubious dining society for the middle and upper classes which gathers to regale each other with frightening or embarrassing stories, and ‘The Lorists’, a middle-class organisation dedicated to investigating and dealing with goblins, giants, faeries, and weird local customs.

The Cthulhu by Gaslight: Investigators’ Guide provides an extensive price list of equipment, devices, and weapons, including a handful of Pulp Cthulhu devices, essentially everything that an Investigator might want at home and abroad. Once fully kitted out, whether for a night out to the theatre or the music hall or a walking holiday in the Lake District or a boat trip up the Nile to visit the Pyramids, the rulebook takes us there too. The book is self-admittedly London centric, so it warrants a detailed chapter of its own, covering the capital’s districts, hospitals and asylums, places of entertainment, museums and libraries, railway stations, cemeteries, places to stay and shop, clubs, and clubs for ladies and gentlemen. In comparison, the treatment of the four countries that make up the United Kingdom feels brief by comparison and feel as if they need a supplement of their own. Of course, this is not the extent of the British realm during this period, so the British Empire is given a similar treatment. Again, this quite literally has a lot of ground to cover, but from Cyprus, Gibraltar, and Malta in the Mediterranean to Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji in the Pacific, there is a solid overview of the extent of the British Empire at the time. Alongside this, there is advice on the need for the Keeper and her players to discuss the degree to which colonialism and racism should be present in their game, whilst the subject of slavery is explored historically, but not addressed in the same fashion.

The Victorian Age was one of exploration and adventure, with constant news flowing back from the furthest corners of the then unknown world to the European explorer of discoveries made and places reached to fill column inches. British Investigators need not travel very far to gain some semblance of the strange and the exotic, whether it is attending lectures hosted by the numerous societies and clubs, like the Alpine Club and Royal Geographical Society (to which they could also belong) or simply embarking on the Grand Tour of Europe. Again, and although not extensive, the book provides a good overview of exploration during the period.

For the most part, the Cthulhu by Gaslight: Investigators’ Guide – Mysteries & Frights in the Victorian Age is a very straightforward and straitlaced treatment of the period, but it does loose its stays and go beyond its ordinary limits and into the outré—and does so in three surprising ways. The first is to visit the shores of the eastern seaboard of the United States of America, noting both the differences in language during the period and violence between the two societies, before providing thumbnail descriptions of New York, Boston, and Chicago. However, the second is that it turns its sights on New England to visit a totally unexpected region, that of Lovecraft Country. Its examination of the major settlements of the Miskatonic Valley—Arkham, Dunwich, and Innsmouth—is cursory at best, but welcome acknowledgement of their existence in this period. A first for Call of Cthulhu. Of course, the description of Arkham in this period would work well in conjunction with Call of Cthulhu: Arkham.

Third and last, the Cthulhu by Gaslight: Investigators’ Guide goes beyond the mortal realms to examine the Victorian approach to pseudoscience and the occult, having just looked at science and medicine. This begins with the fringe sciences of mesmerism, electrotherapy, phrenology, and more—with a discussion of eugenics along the way—before delving into myth and folklore and the occult. This in turn covers Freemasonry, Druidism, and both the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and The Theosophical Society. Particular attention is paid to both organisations, discussing their history and their beliefs as well as providing biographies of varying lengths of their leading members. So included in the membership of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn are Samuel Liddell Macgregor Mathers, William Butler Yeats, and Aleister Crowley, and in The Theosophical Society, Madame (Helena Petrovna) Blavatsky. Also covered here is Spiritualism and ghost-hunting, including the Society for Psychical Research, although in the case of the latter, it feels slightly underwritten in comparison to the other entries. Again though, these are all good solid introductions to their subjects. Rounding out the volume is a good bibliography.

Physically, the Cthulhu by Gaslight: Investigators’ Guide is a good-looking book. It needs a slight edit, but the book is well written and very readable, and the artwork and the cartography are both excellent.

The Cthulhu by Gaslight: Investigators’ Guide – Mysteries & Frights in the Victorian Age is, of course, the book for both the players and the Keeper, so there are a lot of secrets and details of the Victorian era—at least in terms of Lovecraftian investigative horror—that have been left out. Those will have to wait for the Cthulhu by Gaslight: Keepers’ Guide. This does not mean that Cthulhu by Gaslight: Investigators’ Guide is by any means a bad book. It is in turns interesting and informative, packed with details and interesting facts, many of which will both intrigue the most ardent devotee of the history of the period and help bring the setting to life when brought into play. The Cthulhu by Gaslight: Investigators’ Guide – Mysteries & Frights in the Victorian Age is an impressively informative introduction to the Victorian Era and lays the groundwork for the Keeper to return the Mythos and madness to the Mauve Decade with the Cthulhu by Gaslight: Keepers’ Guide.

Something strange happened in Willis, Alabama at 1:43 am on December 22nd, 1998. The temperature dropped from a typical seasonal average of 3 degrees Celsius to -30 degrees Celsius for a total of four hours. Every person, every creature, is dead. Frozen to death. Is this evidence of an extraterrestrial incursion? Is it freak weather, perhaps a recurrence of a local phenomenon known as ‘Jack Frost’? Or it something else. Above all, what can be learned from it? The authorities want to know. Authorities deep with the U.S. government and they will kill to keep it a secret including even their own staff. Scientists, drawn from an ultra-classified UFO research project, are assigned to investigate the freak incident. They are part of the infamous MAJESTIC programme, specifically PROJECT PLUTO from the top-secret labs at Area 51, supported by the pararescuemen and pilots trained to recover alien technology from OPERATION BLUE FLY, with security provided by NRO DELTA, the lethal ‘men in black’ who keep America’s secrets from America itself. On the ground they will come to realise that what they are examining lies beyond the scope of PROJECT PLUTO and as the weather oscillates, sending temperatures unnaturally plummeting and nerves soaring, events around them exacerbate the growing sense of fear and paranoia. Can the scientists of PROJECT PLUTO discover the cause of the frigidly deadly ‘Jack Frost’ incidents and prevent it from escalating before their own security turns on them? Christmas is certainly going to be one to remember—if they survive!
Jack Frost is a scenario published by Arc Dream Publishing for Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game. This is the modern roleplaying game of conspiratorial and Lovecraftian investigative horror with its conspiratorial agencies within the United States government investigating, confronting, and covering up the Unnatural. In traditional scenarios for Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game set in this period, the Player Characters are members of Delta Green, the organisation, at times official, but in 1998 unofficial and regarded as an antigovernmental conspiracy, dedicated to investigating the Unnatural, limiting its effects, and preventing the wider public from becoming aware of it. Not so in Jack Frost. In Jack Frost, the Player Characters are scientists working for MAJESTIC and PROJECT PLUTO and United States Air Force personnel from OPERATION BLUE FLY. This puts them on the other side, though their enemy is not the itinerant members of Delta Green, but a combination of themselves, their own security, and what they encounter on the cold nights in the Yellowhammer state.

Jack Frost is a one-shot scenario designed to be played in two to three sessions with six pre-generated Player Characters, four of whom are scientists and two of whom are United States Air Force personnel. It is played out over the course of three days and three nights in the lead up to Christmas Day. Potentially, if there are any survivors, their experiences as part of Operation WEATHERWATCHER may drive them to switch sides and begin working for Delta Green rather than MAJESTIC. However, Jack Frost is a challenging scenario—in fact, a very challenging scenario—and the likelihood of the Player Characters surviving beyond the events in Alabama, let alone in the long term, is low. Anyone surviving long enough to work for Delta Green following an operation a la Control Group is going to be a very remarkable individual and it is going to take a lot of skill and luck upon the part of his player.

Jack Frost begins with the Player Characters being transported to Willis, Alabama, where the scenario proper opens with a briefing. By the standards of Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game, it is an incredibly extensive and detailed briefing, the wealth of knowledge presented to the players and their characters a radical contrast to that normally given Delta Green agents. What it highlights, even as it threatens to overwhelm the players, is the means and resources that MAJESTIC has to hand with its extensive governmental funding, whereas Delta Green is operating with virtually no budget! However, with that budget comes not just responsibility, but also oversight. In the case of Operation WEATHERWATCHER, quite literally, as there will be a two-man team assigned to the Player Characters from NRO DELTA to provide security, obviously to protect them and and the operation, but also to watch over their actions every day. As the scenario progresses and events get weirder and weirder, this need to watch the actions of the Player Characters transforms into paranoia. The situation is not entirely hopeless for the Player Characters though, as a combination of their persuasiveness and their knowledge, they may be able to convince them that their actions are the right ones...

Over the course of the three nights, the situation gets worse and worse. There are some truly horrible moments in the scenario as you would expect, some of which make you glad that it is a one-shot. The threat faced by the Player Characters is Itla-shua, the ‘wind walker’ of the far north, whose presence is felt nightly until the temperatures are cold enough to facilitate an appearance. Meanwhile, his children rise and if not stopped, will go on a rampage that might not end, but occur again and again in deep winters for decades to come. Stopping his coming and then banishing him is very, very difficult. The situation has to play out in a certain way and things have to go right for the Player Characters. There is definitely no guarantee that this will happen and there is the strong possibility of failure and death for all concerned.

Structurally, Jack Frost feels tightly constrained with its time limits and difficult choices made all the harder by the fact that the Player Characters will often need to get permission to follow them through. The information dump at the start of the scenario is daunting and the two Player Characters who are not scientists, but United States Air Force personnel, may initially find themselves with relatively little to do. As the action picks up on subsequent nights, this changes when they may become vital to the survival of everyone. There is scope for the players to each roleplay a secondary character, again from amongst the United States Air Force personnel, as they are better suited to the action scenes in the scenario.
What marks Jack Frost out as a very different scenario for the Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game is not just the fact that the Player Characters are members of MAJESTIC, but that it is a science horror scenario. It is science that drives the Player Characters to investigate the Unnatural and only late into the their investigative efforts do they realise that what they face is beyond science or even beyond the remit of MAJESTIC with its obsession with obtaining the advanced technology of the Greys. Nevertheless, they have to rely on the scientific process, which lies outside the traditional means of investigating Lovecraftian horror and Lovecraftian investigative horror roleplaying games. As a consequence, both the Handler and her players need to make some adjustment in conducting the investigation and reading the majority of the handouts that take the form of instrument and sensor readouts. This is not to say that there are no traditional handouts, such as newspapers or letters, but they need to be searched for whilst under the watchful eyes of NRO Delta agents.

Physically, Jack Frost is very well done. The artwork is excellent, for the most part, and the handouts are all equally as good.

MAJESTIC has always been portrayed as the villain in the Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game and Jack Frost is no different. Except that the players get to see this from the inside, by roleplaying members of the programme who believe in its aims and know that it is doing the right thing. Their experiences in Willis, Alabama will change that outlook—if they survive. Jack Frost takes Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game through the looking glass to discover just how mercilessly cold it is with a shockingly frigid and fearfully difficult investigation.

In the far future, the Astral Union was invaded by the Strand Fleets of the Nephilim Colossi. It was totally unexpected and the enemy, having come another galaxy, unfathomable. Despite initial setbacks, the Astral Union drove the invaders out and the war was won. That was decades ago, and even today, remnants of the original invasion force, as well as individual Nephilim, can still be found lurking at the furthest reaches of the spatial translation Snap Rifts that bind the planetary systems of the Astral Union together. Perhaps the most significant technological development of the war was the mech. Before the war, it had been designed as an industrial machine for use in construction and mining, and later developed as a combat vehicle, but it rose to prominence during the defence of the Astral Union. Ion Core technology harnessed the latent psionic ability of all sentient beings using advanced A.I. systems to create a Sync-Bond between a mech and its user, enhancing the precision and dexterity of the Mech and enabling the Mech itself to develop a personality of its own and operate independently, but still linked to its Pilot. Today, Mechs are seen far and wide across the Astral Union, the bond between Pilot and Mech celebrated as they were a knight and his steed of old. Together, they adventure and explore, often helping where they can, like itinerant, if armed, ronin of old.

This is the future of Ion Heart: Solo Mech Exploration RPG.It is a solo journalling game published Parable Games, best known for the horror roleplaying game, Shiver – Role-playing Tales in the Strange & the Unknown. In the roleplaying game, the player will take the roles of both Pilot and Mech, who together explore a universe ravaged by war and now recovering, growing together and strengthening their bond. The roleplaying game provides prompts that will drive the story of their adventures that the player will record in short mission logs. These missions typically take the form of an ‘Exploration Loop’—arriving on a planet, discovering a settlement, encountering a Story Circuit, and engaging in combat and travel encounters, as necessary. A Story Circuit is a narrative arc consisting of six parts. The player needs to play through a minimum of three of these before his Pilot and Mech can play out the finale of the Story Circuit, and so complete its narrative before moving. The Story Circuit is pre-written, but the rest is created at the beginning of each loop. To play, Ion Heart: Solo Mech Exploration RPG needs nothing more than some six-sided dice and a means to record a journal.

Between them, the Pilot and the Mech are defined by Pilot Body and Pilot Presence, and Mech Brawn and Mech Reflex. Pilot Body is his physical capability and toughness, whilst Pilot Presence is his mental fortitude and reasoning skills. All of these start at zero, but are first modified by the Pilot’s Temperament and the Mech’s Weight Class. The Pilot is further defined by his Origin, either Apollonian, Varziss, Urvon, Chiros, Kirvae, and Mo’nau. The Apollonians are humans, whilst the rest are anthropomorphic species, roughly reptilian, ursine, bat-like—including being able to fly, centaur-like, and feline, respectively. The Pilot also has a Goal, either ‘Adventure forth’, ‘Return home’, or ‘Escape past’, and a Temperament, either ‘Outgoing’, ‘Reflective’, or ‘Mercurial’.

The Mech has a Class that can either be Light, Medium, or Heavy. This determines whether it favours speed, durability and powerful weapons, or a balance between the two, and thus its starting values for Mech Shielding and Brawn and Reflex modifiers. Each Mech has a Ranged Weapons System, Melee Weapons System, and an Auxiliary System, which will also help in combat. Since the end of the war with the Nephilim, all Mechs have been reconfigured or designed to have a civilian Specialisation and thus the capacity to be useful out of combat. This can be ‘Shepherd’, ‘Harvester’, or ‘Bridgebuilder’. All of this—for both Pilot and Mech—can rolled for or chosen by the player. Lastly, there is the Ion Core Sync Bond, which represents the connection between the Pilot and his Mech, and in play, determines how many Heroic actions or Ion Core engagements that can be conducted per day.

Pilot Name: Aeron
Pilot Origin: Kirvae
Pilot Temperament: Reflective
Pilot Goal: Escape Report
Pilot Presence 0 Pilot Body 0
Level 1
Ion Core Sync Bond 2
Mech Shielding 43
Mech Name:
Mech Weight Class: Medium
Attacks: 3
Mech Brawn 0
Mech Reflex 0
Weapons: Concussion Maul (Damage: 4+D6) [If you hit an enemy with this weapon add +1 to your defence rolls against them]; Auto Blaster (Damage: 3+D6) [You may make a free attack with this weapon when in ranged step of combat.]
Auxiliary system: Liquid-metal armaments
Battle Scars: 0
Mech Specialisation: Harvester
Mech Quirks: 0

At its core, Ion Heart is simple. When a player wants either his Pilot or his Mech to succeed, he rolls a single six-sided die and rolls of four or more means the attempt is successful. A roll of one is always a failure, whilst a roll of six is always a success. For the Pilot, bonuses can come from his Presence or Body as appropriate, but if he fails, the player can decide to have his Pilot undertake a Heroic Action. This automatically succeeds, but at the cost of a Sync Bond slot for that day. The Mech can operate by itself when the Pilot is not in the cockpit. In which case the bonuses for the Mech’s own Mech Brawn and Mech Reflex are used, and the roll required to succeed is still four or more. When a Mech has no instructions, it will revert to the Specialisation it has been programmed with.

Combat uses the same core mechanic, but on attacks, a roll of six is critical hit and inflicts more damage. Similarly, a roll of six to defend against an attack is a critical and deflects part of the damage back at the attacker. A round consists of three steps—Ranged, Melee, and Disengage. A Mech’s Level determines the number of attacks per round, but if the Pilot or Mech decides not to attack, they receive a bonus to the rolls to defend themselves. Damage reduces the Mech Shielding, and this is both when the Pilot is out of the Mech and in the Mech. If the Pilot is out of the Mech, it means that Pilot is not taking damage as such, but his ability to pilot the Mech is being affected.

The Ion Core of a Mech and it’s A.I. means that it can learn over time as it synchronises with the Pilot and it can also overcharge the Mech’s systems. There is no truly safe way to do this, as even if the Pilot and Mech have enough Sync Bond points—which determines the number of times it can be done per day—engaging the Ion Core can still damage the Mech and will damage the Mech if the number of times it is done exceeds the Sync Bond points. When the Ion Core is engaged, it provides the player with a number of choices, such as the aforementioned ‘Heroic Push’, which allows a failed Mech Brawn or Mech Reflex check to succeed; ‘Shields! Full Power!’, which partially restores Mech Shielding; and ‘Meteoric Thunderstrike!’ which enables a single attack that round and has it automatically succeed with extra damage inflicted. In the long term, through play and combat, the latter if the Mech Shielding is reduced to zero and the Mech is disabled, the Mech can acquire Mech Quirks such as ‘Gallant Protector’, which grants a bonus to Defence rolls if Mech Shielding is seriously reduced, and ‘Ocular Misalignment’, damaging its targeting optics! If there is an issue with the Ion Heart: Solo Mech Exploration RPG, it is that it is hard for the Pilot to improve in comparison to the Mech and the Mech is always more interesting than the Pilot as he has no special abilities or skills.

In terms of play and the ‘Exploration Loop’, Ion Heart provides the player with tables to generate its various parts. This includes its biome, a settlement and its amenities, which the Pilot can visit two of per day, Travelling Encounters-which can be friendly, neutral, or hostile, and a selection of enemies, from improved industrial units to one of the most feared mechs in the Astral Union, the Heriot Shieldbreaker. Together these establish a broad environment where the Pilot and Mech will adventure and explore, but what forms the basis the storytelling and the adventures are the Story Circuits. Two of these are provided in Ion Heart: Solo Mech Exploration RPG, ‘The Mech Circus’ and ‘Protecting the Herd’. In the first, the Pilot and Mech encounters Marsha’s Mecha Circus and get to enjoy a night at the circus, but with a Mech! In the second, the Pilot and the Mech find a rural town whose farmers are concerned something or someone has been interfering with their herds of Malhoons, so the Pilot and the Mech have to find the robo-rustlers! Both of these Story Circuits are short and can be played through in single long session of no more than two hours or several, very short sessions in which a single event is played out and recorded.

Physically, the Ion Heart: Solo Mech Exploration RPG is a nicely done roleplaying game. It is fetchingly presented in swathes of primary colours and easy to read and understand.

The Ion Heart: Solo Mech Exploration RPG is a tough little game given that until a Pilot and Mech survives a Story Circuit and can go up a Level, there is not much in the way of modifiers to affect the dice rolls needed for many actions. This is why the Sync Bond and engaging the Ion Core is so important as it can get the Pilot and Mech out of a tight scrape, but it is more important early on in the game when there are fewer modifiers to skill rolls and fewer chances to engage the Ion Core with any degree of safety. However, careful play and some luck will get the Pilot and the Mech through some situations. In the process, the player will discover a rather charming little journalling roleplaying game, one that is engagingly optimistic in its tone and the stories presented in its Story Circuits, which makes the Ion Heart: Solo Mech Exploration RPG a very welcome change in comparison to many other journalling games.

Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #14: Thieves of Cold Corner is a scenario for Goodman Games’ Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game and the thirteenth scenario for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set. Scenarios for Dungeon Crawl Classics tend be darker, grimmer, and even pulpier than traditional Dungeons & Dragons scenarios, veering close to the Swords & Sorcery subgenre. Scenarios for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set are set in and around the City of the Black Toga, Lankhmar, the home to the adventures of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser and the creation of author Fritz Leiber. The city is described as an urban jungle, rife with cutpurses and corruption, guilds and graft, temples and trouble, whores and wonders, and more. Under the cover the frequent fogs and smogs, the streets of the city are home to thieves, pickpockets, burglars, cutpurses, muggers, and anyone else who would skulk in the night! Which includes the Player Characters. And it is these roles which the Player Characters get to be in Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #13: Treachery in the Beggar City, small time crooks trying to make a living and a name for themselves, but without attracting the attention of either the city constabulary or worse, the Thieves’ Guild!

Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #14: Thieves of Cold Corner is a scenario for Third Level Player Characters and is both an archetypal scenario for use with the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set, and like both Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #8: The Land of the Eight Cities and Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #13: Treachery in the Beggar City before it, it takes the Player Characters far beyond the walls of the City of Sevenscore Thousand Smokes. However, it is less of a sourcebook than either of those scenarios, although it does expand the world of Nehwon. Inspired by two stories by Fritz Leiber, ‘Stardock’ and ‘The Snow Women’, it takes the Player Character far to the north to Gnamph Nar and then along the frozen banks of the Mangrishik River to the foot of the Trollstep Mountains, and then from there climb over a mountain pass and down into the Coldwaste. They are providing escort for the merchant-lord Arishot who has arranged to meet the Snow Clan’s at its midwinter camp at Cold Corner and purchase from the clan, a cache of gemestones. Not just rubies, emeralds, and sapphires, but also snow-diamonds, the fabled invisible gemstones said to be worth a king’s ransom. Of course, being good thieves and cutpurses, they have no intention of simply escorting Arishot there and back again to Lankhmar. Instead, this is an opportunity for larceny—and not just petty larceny—but it will be far from easy. Anyone carrying out such a theft is sure to earn the ire of the Snow Clan and it will not only attempt to get the gems back, but is sure to want to have its revenge too. So, anyone who can steal snow-diamonds from the Snow Clan, escape its clutches, and get back to Lankhmar is certain to earn a reputation worthy of any thief in the City of the Black Toga.
The scenario does really need a Player Character who is a Wizard as otherwise they will all be sorely tested throughout the scenario by the abominable weather they will be subject to in the second half. The adventure itself can begin into two ways. The Player Characters can either be hired by the Thieves’ Guild as members in good standing, or they can be thieves who just happened to be in the same dive when a band of Thieves’ Guild members in good standing got hired to do the job and thought they would try and get there first. Either way, the Player Characters will have another band of thieves to contend with throughout the scenario who will attempt to steal the hoard of gemstones before they do or steal it from the Player Characters once they have. The action really begins in Cold Corner, the midwinter camp of the Snow Clan. Here amongst the ice and snow, under the trees, the Player Characters will have to put up with loud and boisterous youths issuing challenges involving ribald rhymes, drunken merchants and drunken barbarians, and perhaps even their rivals lurking, ready to pounce, but worst of all—the women! Known as the Snow Witches, they suffer from both xenophobia and misandry, so men, particularly men from outside the clan are subject to their most severe ire. They also control the clan’s magic, so they are powerful as well.
Of course, once the Player Characters—or their rivals—have made the theft, in their eyes, the xenophobic and misandrist outlook of the Snow Clan’s Snow Witches has been proven correct. Of course, the satisfaction being proven that you are right is not going to be enough and as the Player Characters flee back up and over the Trollstep Mountains the way they came, the Snow Witches bring their most powerful magic down upon the miscreants. Over the course of three days, they are beset by a fiercesome storm of freezing ice and snow as a result of this magic, impeding their flight and forcing them to find sufficient shelter should they freeze. Three such locations are described along the way—if they can recall where they were on the journey there (and doing so may require a little Luck to be expended)—as are the truly nasty weather conditions day and night and the menfolk who have been sent after them by the Snow Witches and are not expected to come back without the gemstones or the bodies of the Player Characters. It is a nasty challenge from start to finish, but any Wizard in the party will have a chance to shine as his continued efforts can alleviate the very worst of the Snow Witches’ storms, whilst all of the Player Characters have opportunities to find some treasure and even strike back if they believe themselves to be capable.
In addition to the stats for the various NPCs, the scenario includes for the ‘Skald’s Challenge’, the rhyming battles consisting of spontaneous songs and poems. The Player Characters will probably be forced to engaged in one of these whilst in Cold Corner and will do so again during their flight south. This time though, the consequences are deadly.
Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #14: Thieves of Cold Corner is a relatively short afair, probably lasting two sessions’ worth of play, perhaps three at most. If they succeed, it does leave the Player Characters rich—though not as rich as they might have hoped once a fence has had his cut—and thus subject to the attention of every other thief in Lankhmar. They might come away with one or two nice items in the meantime. Rounding out is another entry from ‘The Phlogistonic Eye Sees All!’, this time a report from Gen Con 2022, though not as good as the one detailed in The Goodman Games 2022 Yearbook.

Physically, Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #14: Thieves of Cold Corner is well presented. The artwork and cartography are both good, the artwork in particular, having a very frigid feel to it. That said, it would have been nice if the scenario had included a better map of the area where the adventure takes place and the route that the Player Characters are likely to take back over the mountains.
Unlike the earlier scenarios, Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #8: The Land of the Eight Cities and Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #13: Treachery in the Beggar City, before it, in Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #14: Thieves of Cold Corner, the Player Characters are very unlikely to be going back since opportunities for crime are light on the ground and word their involvement in the theft from the Snow Clan is likely to spread. So it is much less of a sourcebook then the previous two scenarios. As a scenario, Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #14: Thieves of Cold Corner provides a clash of cultures, temperatures, and temperaments for a more grueling experience than most adventures for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set. The players and their characters may find it just enough just to survive, but if they are clever and a little lucky, they might get a bit more adventure and reward in addition to their frostbitten extremities and a box of gemstones.

In the far future of broken landscapes, stretched landscapes, and lost landscapes there is often only the appearance of the Gunslinger and the power of his Gun to bring order to the mouldering settlements and ruins of the uncertain past, to drive back the strange creatures, lurking, ready to pounce and rend the unwary, and to stop the ambitious and the foolish attracted to the power of magic which threatens what remains. The Gunslinger is a wanderer, a member of a brotherly order, arriving unbidden one day, dispensing justice and order, stopping the monster, perhaps engendering a little hope, all before finding the next Slip Door and the next world. Their peripatetic existence is the only constant and perhaps the only certainty they know. This is the Drifted World of We Deal in Lead, an Old School Renaissance-style roleplaying game published by By Odin’s Beard. It is set in a post-apocalyptic dark and weird west that combines a stripped-down presentation with the mechanics inspired by Cairn, Into the Odd, and Knave and it is very much inspired by Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series of novels, but also has the feel of a weird Spaghetti Western with genre-hopping possibilities.

Omega City – Ashcan Edition is the first supplement for We Deal in Lead and presents something very different, almost a point of permanence, even though, like much of the Drifted World, it is subject to decay and decline. It arose out of the Dungeon23 challenge, the aim of which was to design a mega dungeon in one year, one room per day, over twelve levels. Each day creators would add something to their dungeons, but creators also switched format, one of which was ‘City23’. Omega City was born of this switch, a city inspired by two things. One was the city of Lud from The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands, part of the series that inspired we We Deal in Lead, and the other was the author’s home city of Edmonton, Canada. This being the Drifted World of We Deal in Lead, the universe is still breaking down and so this supplement mixes more than it matches its various locations, drawing on a wide variety of locations, situations, and creatures from different time periods and genres. In this instance, the actual setting and its disparate nature means that the designer had more freedom of design than his counterparts working on a more traditional Dungeon23 creation.

Omega City does not so much detail individual locations within a city, but provide small regions—a total of twelve—each with five or six buildings, locations, and landmarks. These are presented over a two-page spread, with the places listed on the left-hand page and a corresponding map on the opposite side. Each location is accorded a listing of two or three bullet points. Each location is accorded a listing of two or three bullet points. For example, Region 9 has five locations, a ‘Shanty Town’, a ‘Cracked Riverbed’, a ‘Lumber Mill’, a ‘Colossal Skeleton’, and a ‘Writhing Mass Grave’. The Shanty Town is described as a “Collection of lost souls and broken travellers”, being home to “Residents from different worlds and times, the languages spoken number in thousands”, and the inhabitants suffer as “More and more victims vanish each night, lost to the red claws in the sands”. Meanwhile, the Lumber Mill is “Overgrown with pungent thorns that ooze vicious orange liquid”, as “Flies swarm constantly, adding to the ooze”, and “Great grey swarms cover the dead trees of the nearby woods”. All of the entries are like this, a clash of the old and new, of the ordinary and the outré.

However, amidst the ‘Burned Out gas Station’, ‘Pitted Gibbet’, ‘Spiral Slough’, ‘Corpse-Corrupted Reservoir’, ‘Flesh-Warping Runoff Pond’, and ‘Partially Phased Office Building’, there is no room for the individual. There are groups of people, such as at the ‘Shanty Town’, but no individuals, and also no hooks. The individual descriptions are intriguing, but possibly not quite enough to get the Gunslingers to investigate every case. Also, ‘Omega City’ itself does not have an overview or broad description. To be fair, both are due to the intermittent nature of the creation process involved in Dungeon23, the creator coming back to the process day-by-day rather than sitting down and working at it. On the other hand, this nature means that lack of connections between locations means that the Warden—as the Game Master is known in We Deal in Lead—can pull them out and insert them into her own content as much as she can develop her own hooks to them.
Physically, Omega City is not yet fully formed. Only an Ashcan version is available. It is handwritten and not always easy to read, whilst the map, though serviceable, are rough. The writing though, is by intent short and punchy, often spurring more questions than answers.
Omega City – Ashcan Edition is by its very nature rough and ready, but it does present some sixty or more locations that present mouldering mysteries and decaying dangers in a minimalist fashion that the Warden can use and interpret as is her wont. In this way, Omega City – Ashcan Edition can serve as a series of prompts for the Warden’s own city or prompts for her own version of ‘Omega City’.

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

—oOo—
Deadfellas
Name: DeadfellasPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Christian Grundel

Setting: New York, 1982Product: One-shot (though probably more, plus stabbings)
What You Get: Thirty-two page, 3.46 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: “A road trip is a way for the whole family to spend time together and annoy each other in interesting new places.” – Tom Lichtenheld
Plot Hook: The Drive. The Body. The Hit. The Horror.Plot Support: Staging advice, four pre-generated Mobsters, one handout, two maps, three Mythos spells, and one Mythos monster.Production Values: Excellent
Pros# Classic Mafia road trip set-up# Fantastic tensions between the Mobsters# Mafia memories are the worst# Almost deserves to be staged as if in a car# Paranoia# Thanatophobia# Detection apprehension
Cons# Needs an edit# Short
Conclusion# Four killers, four secrets, one monster, who gets put on ice?# Great set-up demands some great roleplaying # Reviews from R’lyeh Recommends

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

—oOo—
Name: The Exhibition of DreadPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Jared Tallis & The Stars Are Right

Setting: Modern Day Boston, USAProduct: Scenario
What You Get: Forty-five page, 4.97 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Life is art
Plot Hook: What do you do if the haunting for inspiration becomes a haunting for real?Plot Support: Staging advice, five pre-generated Investigators, three NPCs, two handouts, one map, and one (or more) Mythos monster(s).Production Values: Good
Pros# One-session, one-shot# Challengingly creative end scene# Atmospheric haunting# Nice map and decent handouts# Phasmophobia# Ososphobia# Aportaldislexicartaphobia
Cons# Needs an edit# Pre-generated Investigators underdeveloped# Two good halves, barely connected
Conclusion# Art or die decision# Too good halves do not make an engaging whole

The extinction is coming and America is dying. It began in 1974 in the wake of President Ford pardoning Nixon after Watergate and an assassination attempt on Ford. A civil rights spokesman was blamed and in the demonstrations that followed, the Capitol in Washington D.C. was stormed and the US Army was sent into to quell the protestors, resulting in hundreds of deaths when they opened fire with live ammunition. Across the USA, people took up arms in response and incidents of guerrilla warfare broke out across the country. Within a year, the conflict escalated and first California and then Texas seceded, and the country was in civil war. The Second Civil War lasted until 1984, prosecuted by the sophisticated drone technology adopted by the military following the development of scientific field of Neuronics. There were no winners and the former USA remains divided still thirteen years later. In the west, the nation of Pacifica has arisen out of the old state of California, its wealth built on Hollywood and further development and widespread adoption of neurotechnology. The biggest company in Pacifica and arguably the power behind its president, Sentre, made Neuronics available to the public through Neurocasters. Wearers of these high-tech devices are not only capable of controlling drones, but also of accessing neuroscapes, hyperreal landscapes. With the release of Mode 6 by Sentre last year, something changed—and changed for the worse. Some suggested a God awoke within the Machine, some say Pacifica’s enemies were attacking via the system, but whatever it was, users became addicted to their Neurocasters. They preferred it to real life. Some, deeply immersed in the virtual worlds that give them every experience they want, wear their Neurocasters until they die. Others roam the roads and the landscapes, stilling wearing their Neurocasters and controlling hulking great drones. Nobody was immune. As more and more people have become addicted to their Neurocasters, the more services and tasks have begun to break down. This lassitude is spreading and with it an impending apocalypse… Elsewhere there are rumours of technocults hiding out far from the cities and shambling mechanical creatures assembled by the Neuronic network rather than man. Yet there are a few who are immune to the effects of the Neurocasters and there a few who want to move, to become Travellers ready to make the long and dangerous journey to elsewhere, to get away, to find something, to find someone.

This is current situation in The Electric State Roleplaying Game, a pre-apocalyptic Science Fiction dystopia set in 1997, based on the book by Simon Stålenhag, whose artwork has also inspired the roleplaying games, Tales from the Loop – Roleplaying in the '80s That Never Was and Tales from the Flood. All three are published by Free League Publishing and all three use the Year Zero mechanics first seen in Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days. This is the 1997 of Nirvana and Sony Walkmans, Bart Simpson Tee-shirts and Nintendo Game Boys, hoop earrings and slackers, and so on. Recognisable were it not for the rise in advanced technology that has given the world drones, robots, and Neurocasters. It is a world in which the Player Characters want to get somewhere else. They each have their different reasons, but travelling together is safer than travelling alone. Society is not what it was with everyone immersed in the worlds of their Neurocasters. The landscape is not what it was, swathes left untended or poisoned from the Second Civil War. The Journey that these Travellers undertake is the focus of The Electric State Roleplaying Game, its route marked by a Starting Point and a Destination, and in between, Stops. Stops can be a place where the Travellers get food, petrol for the car, find a payphone, and then move on, but they can be a place of danger and mystery…

A Traveller in The Electric State Roleplaying Game has four Attributes—Strength, Agility, Wits, and Empathy, which are rated between two and six. Health and Hope are derived from this, with Hope being a personal resource that can be reduced to push rolls or traumatic events. He also has an Archetype, a role representing what he is. The options here include Artist, Criminal, Devotee, Doctor, Investigator, Outsider, Runaway Kid, Scientist, and Veteran. Perhaps the one signature Archetype is the Drone Pilot, who will not bodily appear in play necessarily, but instead be represented by the Drone that he constantly controls via his Neurocaster. Each Archetype provides options—either chosen or rolled for—in terms of starting Talent, Dream, Flaw, Neurocaster, and Personal Item. The Talent will either grant him extra dice under certain circumstances, such as ‘Drone operator’ or ‘Sleuth’, or provide a more specific benefit, such as ‘Medic’ being able to stabilize someone who is Incapacitated or ‘Neuroresistant’ which means the Traveller is better able to resist the Bliss of neurocasting. Beyond this, the details of Traveller are more personal than mechanical. These start off with a Dream and a Flaw. A Traveller’s Dream is their motivation, their push to go far and make the Journey rather than give into the easy lure of Neurocasting. His Flaw is something that will hold him back and something that he needs to overcome. Roleplaying the Dream and the Flaw will give a chance for the Traveller to improve. The Neurocaster is the model that he owns (though he may not own one) and he also has a Personal Item and a favourite song.

To create a Traveller, a player selects an Archetype and then rolls for the Attributes on a single six-sided die each, with the minimum roll being two Then he rolls for the Talent, Dream, Flaw, Neurocaster, Personal Item, and Favourite Song. This is not the complete Traveller creation process, but that is done collectively during the set-up for the Journey.

Name: Jake
Age: 17
Archetype: Outsider
Strength 3 Agility 5 Wits 6 Empathy 6
Health 4 Hope 6 Bliss 0
Talent: Stealthy
Dream: Get a normal life, like everyone else
Flaw: You don’t trust anyone.
Neurocaster: None
Personal Item: Dog
Favourite ’90s Song: Wannabe (Spice Girls)
Tensions: A dispute about hierarchy (Karen Brooks) [1], Religious or political differences. There’s reason Americans say never discuss religion or politics (Jesus Castillo) [1]

The Journey is the central part of the play to The Electric State Roleplaying Game. Setting this up is a collective process. This includes creating a personal Goal for each Traveller which lies at the end the Journey, whilst the Threat which is working to stop the Traveller from fulfilling his Goal. The Threat is created by the Game Master, whilst key to the Goal is the Kicker, the event that pushes the Traveller to decide to make the Journey in that moment. Together, the Travellers have a vehicle and a shared item, such as a bottle of hard liquor or walkie-talkies. Each Traveller also has a difficult relationship with one of the companions in their vehicle, which could be ‘Hidden contempt pent up for ages.’ or ‘Distrust. Something another Traveler does offends you deeply. It’s all you can do not to scream at them every time they do it.’. This is measured by Tension, which ranges between zero and three. If a Traveller acts against another Traveller who he has Tension with, the Tension value is used as bonus dice. It is possible to reduce Tension simply by talking things through or even arguing about relationships can reduce it and this will restore Hope, but equally, Tension can go up depending on circumstances and roleplaying.

Mechanically, The Electric State Roleplaying Game uses the Year Zero engine, so the rules are light and fairly quick, with dice rolls primarily intended for dramatic or difficult situations such as combat, hiding from members of a Technocult intent on inducting you, making repairs in a hurry, and so on. To have a Player Character undertake an action, a player rolls a number of Base dice equal to the appropriate Attribute (notably, The Electric State Roleplaying Game does not use skills or skill dice), modified by an applicable Talent and the difficulty. To this can be added Gear dice for weapons and other gear if used. Rolls of six on either count as Successes. One result is enough to succeed, whilst extra successes can be used to do it in a showy fashion, quickly, quietly, and so on. However, if the player does not roll any Successes, which is a failure, or needs more Successes, he can opt to Push. In this case, he rolls any dice that are not showing a one or a six, and any Successes rolled count towards the task.

However, any rolls of one after the Pushed roll, have negative effects. For the Base dice, they reduce the Traveller’s Hope for each one rolled, whilst ones on the Gear dice reduce the bonus provided by the Gear used. When Hope is reduced to zero, a Traveller suffers a Breakdown and is in danger of suffering further mental trauma.

Combat in The Electric State Roleplaying Game uses the same mechanics. Initiative is determined narratively, and when a Traveller gets to act, he has an action and move or two moves. An action be an attack, reloading, taking cover, rallying a demoralised comrade, and so on. If in close combat, the defender can choose to take the hit or fight back, in which case it becomes an opposed roll, whilst if being shot act, the defender can dodge, and that too is an opposed roll. Cover provides protection if Successes are rolled on its dice. If a Traveller’s Health is reduced to zero, he is Incapacitated and if he suffers damage equal to twice his Health in one hit, he is dead. If his Traveller is Incapacitated, the player makes three Death Rolls with four dice. If he rolls a total of three Successes in the course of the three rolls, he survives, if not, the Traveller is dead. It is also possible for another Traveller to rally one who is Incapacitated and the Medic Talent means he can be stabilised without the need for Death Rolls. An Incapacitated Traveller also suffers an injury, which can be anything from a broken finger to internal bleeding.

The most important mechanic in The Electric State Roleplaying Game is Hope. It is a measure of a Traveller’s motivation and it can be lost in a variety of ways, such rolling ones on a Pushed roll or suffering a Traumatic Event like seeing a friend get badly hurt or being confronted by your worst fear. When it is reduced to zero, the Traveller suffers a Breakdown and potentially from mental trauma ranging from ‘Confused’ to ‘Personality Split’. The challenge after losing Hope is that there no automatic means of recovering it. Instead, the players and their Travellers have to work at it. It is possible for a Traveller to be rallied following a Breakdown and this will restore Hope, but otherwise the two means to increase Hope are to reduce Tension with another Traveller or spend time with an item of Gear that will increase Hope, like a dog or a Walkman, or a religious book. Certainly, in the case of Tension, this requires dedicated roleplaying between two players, and The Electric State Roleplaying Game makes clear that time should be set aside for this. Further, these scenes should not always be about reducing Tension, but about increasing it. This is because in the long term, if there is no Tension between one Traveller and another, there is no reason to reduce it and thus no means to increase Hope. It also reduces scope for interpersonal roleplay. This then is the ‘Hope Loop’ at the heart of The Electric State Roleplaying Game.

The ‘Hope Loop’ in The Electric State Roleplaying Game is complicated by Bliss. One of the most interesting aspects of roleplaying game is how Hope and Bliss interact. Bliss is a measure of a Traveller’s addiction to using his Neurocaster. A Traveller is going to be spending most of his time on the road or at Stops along the Journey, so in the physical, rather than the virtual worlds. However, this does not mean he will never have to enter a Neuroscape, which can be global or local, as he may need to find information, use or hack a system linked to the Neuroscape—such as drones and alarms, or interact or fight with the other avatars in the Neuroscape. It is possible to act in the physical world whilst Neurocasting, but it is slow and the option are limited. It is also possible for Travellers to help another who is Neurocasting.

However, any time a player fails a roll whilst his Traveller is Neurocasting, whether any ones were rolled or not, his Bliss increases by one. This is before the player chooses to Push the roll, which whilst the Traveller is Neurocasting, has its own extra danger. This is because any rolls of one after a player has Pushed a roll reduce his Traveller’s Hope by one each, and Bliss has dire effects if it equals or exceeds the value of a Traveller’s Hope. If this happens, the Traveller is trapped in the Neuroscape, is lost in the ‘Electric State’, and cannot willingly disconnect himself from it. A Traveller lost in the ‘Electric State’ can be forcibly disconnected, but this has disturbing consequences. It automatically reduces his Hope to zero, which again causes a Breakdown.

Bliss is lost at a point per day spent without doing any Neurocasting. However, this has its own dangers too, since there is a chance that the point lost that day will become permanent. Effectively reducing a Traveller’s Hope in the long term and modelling the effect that Neuroscaping has had on society with the introduction of Mode 6.

The focus of play in The Electric State Roleplaying Game is the Journey. As described earlier, setting this up involves deciding on a Starting Point, Destination, and the route. It also involves choosing the number of Stops, each one an adventure in itself that the Travellers’ Dreams and Flaws will drive them to explore. The number of Stops determines the overall play length, from one Stop for a one-shot to a long Journey of eight or more stops. The Game Master creates these Stops using the advice and prompts given in the roleplaying game, including a Setting, the Blocker (which what makes the Travellers pause their journey), and Threats, as well as adding a Countdown that is triggered by the arrival of the Travellers and will push events forward during the playthrough of the Stop. There is good advice for both creating and running Stops, including playing Neuroscapes, and it is supported by a range of threats each of which has their own example Countdown. Mechanically, this makes them easy to insert into a Stop. The Threats include people, such as cultists or local business leaders as well as the expected technological ones, like drone growths and robots, and environmental ones, such as extreme weather or disease. There are only two entries listed for the technological and environmental, which feels too few in either case. There are rules for travel and chases to reflect the nature of play as a Journey.

The Game Master is also provided with a complete mini-campaign, ‘Into the Dust’, which takes up a fifth of the book. This is a three-part Journey, though it could easily be expanded and some of the stops could be used as one-shots, which takes the Travellers from San Francisco Memorial City into the Blackwelt Exclusion Zone (former state of Nevada), but a long route which takes them south via the Sierra Nevadas and the Mojave desert in a run-down 1993 Buick Roadmaster Estate. Between them, the Stops involve a cult, a murder mystery, and a strange festival, and between the Stops, there are encounters that the Game Master can use to make the Journey even more interesting and exciting. There is also a pre-generated Traveller with their own Goals and Threats for each of the Archetypes in the roleplaying game, giving the players plenty of choice. Overall, this is the basis for a decent campaign that could expanded to eight or more Stops. Lastly, in The Electric State Roleplaying Game,  there are rules for solo play.

Physically, The Electric State Roleplaying Game is very well presented. It is clean and tidy and easy to read. Of course, what makes it stand out is the artwork of Simon Stålenhag which depicts an American landscape in decline as Neurocasters wander like zombies and kitschy robots loom and lurk almost everywhere. The Game Master should absolutely be using this artwork to show off the state of Pacifica.

The Electric State Roleplaying Game is not a traditional roleplaying game in that its world is designed for long term play. The story of the Travellers is going to be told in a single Journey rather than in multiple Journeys because the surviving Travellers are going to need new Goals if they are to set out again. Further, there is not a huge scope for development mechanically as arguably, if a Traveller is only doing the one Journey, however long it is, there does not need to be. The emphasis on Pacifica as a setting and journeying across it also limits the scope of the roleplaying game. These are not criticisms, because instead, what The Electric State Roleplaying Game is, is a narrative, storytelling roleplaying game designed for one-shots and short campaigns that tell specific stories about Journeys across a strange new landscape within which there is scope for interaction, discovery, and horror. In this way, The Electric State Roleplaying Game adds a new twist to the classic American road trip.

Miseries & Misfortunes is a roleplaying game set in seventeenth century France designed and published following a successful Kickstarter campaign by Luke Crane, best known for the fantasy roleplaying game, Burning Wheel. Notably, it is based on the mechanics of Basic Dungeons & Dragons. Originally, Miseries & Misfortunes appeared as a fanzine in 2015, but its second edition has since been developed to add new systems for skills, combat, magic, and more. However, the underlying philosophy of Miseries & Misfortunes still leans back into the play style of Basic Dungeons & Dragons. For example, the differing mechanics of rolling low for skill checks, but high for combat rolls and saving throws. Plus, the Player Characters exist in an uncaring world where bad luck, misfortune, and even death will befall them and there will be no one left to commiserate or mourn except the other characters and their players. Further, Miseries & Misfortunes is not a cinematic swashbuckling game of musketeers versus the Cardinal’s guards. It is grimmer and grimier than that, and the Player Characters can come from all walks of life. That said, it is set in the similar period as Alexandre Dumas’ Three Musketeers and Twenty Years After, so will be familiar to many players. The other major inspiration for Miseries & Misfortunes is Les Misères et les Malheurs de la Guerre, a set of eighteen etchings by French artist Jacques Callot that grimly depict the nature of the conflict in the early years of the Thirty Years War.

Miseries & Misfortunes – Book 4: Plus de Misères is the fourth of the roleplaying game’s rulebooks. The first, Miseries & Misfortunes – Book 1: Roleplaying in 1648 gives the core rules for the roleplaying game, and the second, Miseries & Misfortunes – Book 2: Les Fruits Malheureux provides the means to actually create Player Characters, and together they make up the core rules. Miseries & Misfortunes – Book 3: The Sacred & The Profane expands on this with rules for magic and related Lifepaths, whilst Miseries & Misfortunes – Book 4: Plus de Misères offers modes of play and further subsystems that also expand upon the core play. As the introduction to the supplement states, what it it offers is ‘More Misery’, with the majority of the supplement intended for use by the Game Master, but all of the new rules will add detail and flavour to her campaign and affect the lives of the Player Characters in some ways.

The supplement opens in interesting fashion. If the majority of Miseries & Misfortunes – Book 4: Plus de Misères is for the eyes of the Game Master, the opening essay should be read by player and Game Master alike. ‘Modernity’ provides the reader with an eye-opening perspective of what life was like and people believed in 1648. This includes the belief that the world was in decline, the high point having been classical Rome and Greece, that the science and philosophy of thought we know of today were not for the common man, history and its ideas were accepted truths, disease was spread by miasmas and worms, cities had yet to be transformed by the dictates of either mass or public transport and so streets remained as they did in the Medieval period, and so on. It is a fascinating read that does not swerve the worst that the era had to offer, including misogyny and ant-Semitism. This is not necessarily to enforce their presence in play, but rather acknowledge that they were part of the culture in 1648. This is an excellent start to the supplement.

The majority of Miseries & Misfortunes – Book 4: Plus de Misères consists of two sections. One is ‘Mode de Jeu’, or ‘mode of play’, the other is ‘Petits Systémes’. ‘Mode de Jeu’ begins with ‘Moments’, which examines the structure of play in Miseries & Misfortunes, which is made up of the eponymous ‘Moments’ in time, essentially situations or scenarios that the Player Characters can involve themselves in. It divides them into two types—‘Historical’ and ‘Novel’. The first of these are based around actual events, the aim being to involve the Player Characters in their events, whilst the second are plots and events that the Game Master creates herself. The Game Master sets up a timeline of moments, a mix of both types, that he weaves a plot through. The players do not roleplay through them one after another in linear fashion, but have the freedom to dip in and out of the timeline, according to their needs and those of the plot. There is even a full breakdown of a Historical Moment, making you wish that there was a full book of such events for the Game Master to use. To mark the passage of time, after the playthrough of a Moment and any subsequent downtime, the play of Miseries & Misfortunes switches to narrative scenes in which the lives of the Player Characters’ dependents are examined to see what has happened to them in the meantime and how they might have been affected by the actions of the Player Characters.

To support the ‘Moments’, ‘Mode de Jeu’ breaks down two types of plots—quests and intrigues—and discusses how to prepare for play. This includes right at the start of a campaign and comes with some excellent suggestions, such as having the player recap the adventures and heroics of their characters, even just the one of their characters. There is good advice on creating antagonists and the supporting cast too and the chapter ends with a discussion on safety tools. Arguably, given the nature of the setting for Miseries & Misfortunes, this could have been placed earlier in the book.

‘Petits Systémes’ or small systems, provides a number of sub-systems that expands options and rules for Miseries & Misfortunes. These begin with ‘Favour’, the gaining of the patronage from notable figures, based on the traits that these potential patrons seek or value, such as charm or cleverness or piety. If the Player Characters perform tasks and missions in accordance with those traits, they will gain patronage and be rewarded. If not, the patron will feel disappointed and even feel betrayed. The Player Characters can have more than one patron and it is suggested that beyond the first or major patron, the players should each control and roleplay a patron rather than the Game Master in what is another shift to narrative style play.

Perhaps the new addition that most players will be interested is ‘Duello’, which are rules for duelling in Miseries & Misfortunes. This starts with the legal difficulties of duelling, having been outlawed by the king’s father and grandfather, versus the desire of the nobility to satisfy their honour, and goes on to cover issuing a challenge, employing a duellist, the duelling code, and more. A duellist’s Duelling skill is based on his Mêlée and how many Lifepath skills he has in Fencer. This greatly favours the latter as it should, hence the need for some to hire a duellist to protect their honour. Ideally, the duel should be played out on a grid of squares—which can be constrained by the location and its features—with the actual cut and thrust of the swordplay done as series of initiative tests to first see who can outmanoeuvre the other and the options then available to both, such as ‘Barbed Words’, ‘Break Grips’ if the duellists are in a tie, ‘Trip’, ‘Inside Cut’, and more. There is a pleasing back and forth flow to the rules, but whilst they allow for manoeuvre and movement, these are not duelling rules for swashbuckling and cinematic play. So, footwork, but not jumping and leaping. This is all about swordplay and honour, but as the rules suggest, not necessarily to the death. Lastly, ‘Duello’ points out there are legal ramifications for duelling even when a duel does not end in a death, such as a six-month prison sentence for the soufflet—the slapping of another in the face with a glove! Overall, ‘Duello’ adds a nice combination of skill and roleplay to Miseries & Misfortunes and is likely to be one of the most used rulesets in the supplement.

Penultimately, Miseries & Misfortunes – Book 4: Plus de Misères takes an unpleasant turn with ‘Disease’, an examination of maladies and infections in the period. As noted in ‘Modernity’ earlier in the book, disease was rife in the period. The best that a Player Character can hope for is rest and the hope that he receives proper treatment—or at least what can be regarded as the proper treatment of the day. There are three recognised sources of treatment—Barber, Chirurgy, and Physic—which provide different means to treat different diseases. The use of the improper source, insufficient skill (represented by Gnosis , the degree of knowledge a practitioner knows, as detailed in Miseries & Misfortunes – Book 3: The Sacred & The Profane), and even a complete of skill can result in Quackery, the ability to appear to be aiding the sufferer whilst not actually doing anything to help or even inflicting further suffering. This can include a range of tonics, baths, and pills—and even prayer! The section includes a full list of diseases, their symptoms, and cures—both legitimate and quack. It all makes for very grim reading and a player had best hope that his character does not fall ill, because having to roleplay the treatment, let alone the symptoms, is not going to be pleasant. Lastly, Miseries & Misfortunes – Book 4: Plus de Misères gives guidelines on communications and languages in ‘Communications’.

Physically, Miseries & Misfortunes – Book 4: Plus de Misères is well presented and written with lots of period artwork and etchings which helps impart its historical setting. It does lack an index, but this is not so much of an issue given the compartmentalised nature of its various subjects.
Ultimately, Miseries & Misfortunes – Book 4: Plus de Misères is the equivalent of a Miseries & Misfortunes miscellany or a Miseries & Misfortunes companion. Some of the content is more useful than others and some does add more detail and complexity than every group will want to in engage with. ‘Chevaux’ is an example of the latter, whilst ‘Duello’ is an example of the former. Then some of it is fascinatingly revelatory, like the ‘Modernity’ essay, and in the case of ‘Disease’, both revelatory and grim. Elsewhere, Miseries & Misfortunes – Book 4: Plus de Misères provides support for campaigns with its discussion of ‘Moments’ and ‘Favour’ that also at the same time do shift the roleplaying game away from its Old School Renaissance roots towards a slightly more narrative style of play. Ultimately, the ‘Duello’ chapter is what is going attract the Game Master and her players to the supplement, but there is a lot more misery in the pages of Miseries & Misfortunes – Book 4: Plus de Misères to explore and bring into play.

Quick-starts are means of trying out a roleplaying game before you buy. Each should provide a Game Master with sufficient background to introduce and explain the setting to her players, the rules to run the scenario included, and a set of ready-to-play, pre-generated characters that the players can pick up and understand almost as soon as they have sat down to play. The scenario itself should provide an introduction to the setting for the players as well as to the type of adventures that their characters will have and just an idea of some of the things their characters will be doing on said adventures. All of which should be packaged up in an easy-to-understand booklet whose contents, with a minimum of preparation upon the part of the Game Master, can be brought to the table and run for her gaming group in a single evening’s session—or perhaps 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?
The God Beneath the Tree: A Quickstart Playset for Cthulhu Awakens is the quick-start for Cthulhu Awakens, the roleplaying game of Lovecraftian and Cosmic Horror investigative horror using the AGE System published by Green Ronin Publishing.

The time frame for The God Beneath the Tree: A Quickstart Playset for Cthulhu Awakens and thus Cthulhu Awakens is roughly one hundred years. It begins in the 1920s and runs up until the present day and is known as the ‘Weird Century’.

It is a forty-five-page, 22.36 MB full colour PDF.

How long will it take to play?
The God Beneath the Tree: A Quickstart Playset for Cthulhu Awakens and its adventure, ‘The God Beneath the Tree’, is designed to be played through in a single session, two at most.
What else do you need to play?
The God Beneath the Tree: A Quickstart Playset for Cthulhu Awakens needs three six-sided dice per player. One of the three dice must be a different colour. It is called the Stunt Die.
Who do you play?
The five Player Characters—or Character Types—in The God Beneath the Tree: A Quickstart Playset for Cthulhu Awakens consist of an immigrant athletic brawler and aspiring soldier, a stealthy refugee turned farmer, a volunteer farmer good with her hands, a cosmopolitan and observant merchant, and a veteran Soldier. The five Character Types represent a diverse range of backgrounds and origins, including a Black Briton and a Basque, whilst the veteran is a Sikh.
How is a Player Character defined?A Character Type in The God Beneath the Tree: A Quickstart Playset for Cthulhu Awakens is defined by Abilities, Focuses, and Talents. There are nine Abilities—Accuracy, Communication, Constitution, Dexterity, Fighting, Intelligence, Perception, Strength, and Willpower. Each attribute is rated between -2 and 4, with 1 being the average, and each can have a Focus, an area of expertise such as Accuracy (Pistols), Communication (Persuasion), Intelligence (Medicine), or Willpower (Faith). A Focus provides a bonus to associated skill rolls and, in some cases, access to a particular area of knowledge.
A Talent represents an area of natural aptitude or special training. For example, ‘Brawling Style’ increases base damage when fighting unarmed, whilst ‘Scouting’ enables a player to reroll failed Stealth and Seeing tests. A Player Character also has one or more Relationships with other Player Characters or NPCs and Fortune Points to expend on adjusting die rolls. He is further defined by a Drive, Resources and Equipment, Health, Defence, Toughness, and Speed, and Goals, and Ties.

How do the mechanics work?
Mechanically, The God Beneath the Tree: A Quickstart Playset for Cthulhu Awakens uses the AGE System first seen in in 2009 with the publication of Dragon Age – Dark Fantasy Roleplaying Set 1: For Characters Level 1 to 5. If a Player Character wants to undertake an action, his player rolls three six-sided dice and totals the result to beat the difficulty of the test, ranging from eleven or Average to twenty-one or Nigh Impossible. The value for an appropriate Ability and Focus is added to this. If any doubles are rolled on the dice and the action succeeds, the value on the Stunt Die generates Stunt Points. The player can expend these to gain bonuses, do amazing things, and gain an advantage in a situation. Stunts are divided into Combat, Exploration, and Social categories. For example, ‘Lightning Attack’ is an Action Stunt which gives an extra attack, ‘Assist’ is an Exploration Stunt which enables a Player Character to help another with a bonus, and ‘Spot Tell’ is a Social Stunt which gives the Player Character an advantage when an NPC is lying to him.
How does combat work?
Combat in the The God Beneath the Tree: A Quickstart Playset for Cthulhu Awakens uses the same mechanics as above. It is a handled as ‘Action Encounters’ in which the Player Characters have one Minor Action and one Major Action per turn. Major Actions include attacks, running and chasing, rendering first aid, and so on, whilst Minor Actions can be readying a weapon, aiming, and so on. Damage suffered reduces a character’s Health, but a Player Character can also suffer a variety of conditions.

How does ‘Alienation’ work?
Although the genre for The God Beneath the Tree: A Quickstart Playset for Cthulhu Awakens and thus Cthulhu Awakens is that of Lovecraftian investigative horror, encounters with the unnatural, supernatural, or the weird do not cause madness in those that witness them. Instead, anyone who encounters the Mythos suffers from Alienation as his mind attempts to understand what he has witnessed actually disobeys the natural laws as mankind inherently understands them and forces us to challenge our preconception that mankind’s role in the universe matters.
Alienation can come from seeing Entities of the Mythos, from being confronted by Visitations from the Elder Gods and Great Old Ones, other Phenomena, and from Revelations contained in Mythos texts and other similar sources. A successful Willpower Test can withstand the immediate effects, but if this is failed, then the Player Character gains Alienation Bonds, one for the player and one for the Game Master. If either Alienation Bond exceeds five, it resets to one, but the Player Character suffers from distorted thinking. This can be roleplayed by the Player Character or the Game Master can provide false information based on the Player Character’s now flawed thinking.
The points in Alienation Bonds can be spent as bonuses. By the player as bonus Stunt Points in understanding and fighting the forces of the Mythos and by the Game Master as bonus Stunt Points to enhance the actions of the Mythos and its agents. Effectively, Alienation represents a Player Character’s capacity to confront the Mythos, but it also makes him more vulnerable to it.
What do you play?
The scenario in The God Beneath the Tree: A Quickstart Playset for Cthulhu Awakens is ‘The God Beneath the Tree’. This is based on a real historical mystery and takes place in 1940 at the height of the Birmingham Blitz during the Second World War in the nearby village of Hagley. The Player Characters are Home Front volunteers, ordered to keep an eye out for downed Luftwaffe airmen, or worse, German paratroopers, after the local Home Guard is ordered to help in Birmingham, which was badly bombed the previous night. As the Player Characters go about their duties of patrolling the town, there is some lovely period advice for the Game Master in terms of tone and they will be challenged with various tasks that will engender trust with the townsfolk who otherwise regard them as children. It is at this point, all very Famous Five, the Player Characters do begin to detect hints that something is amiss, but are not quite sure what. The scenario takes a dark turn when a storm descends on the village and a German aircraft crash-lands in the surrounding woods.
The scenario really consists of two parts. The first is primarily social, whilst the second is more exploratory and action-packed. Both halves are a lot of fun and all together, the scenario has knowing English sensibility to it. The scenario also provides an interesting explanation for the local and very real historical mystery. It is likely that players who are British and also have an interest in the oddities of history will get more out of ‘The God Beneath the Tree’ than those who are not.
Is there anything missing?
No. The God Beneath the Tree: A Quickstart Playset for Cthulhu Awakens includes everything that the Game Master and five players need to play through it.
Is it easy to prepare?
The core rules presented in The God Beneath the Tree: A Quickstart Playset for Cthulhu Awakens are easy to prepare. Anyone who has played or run an AGE System roleplaying game will adapt with ease.
Is it worth it?
Yes. The God Beneath the Tree: A Quickstart Playset for Cthulhu Awakens presents the basics for a fast-playing and slightly more action-orientated roleplaying game than most roleplaying games of Lovecraftian investigative horror, and supports them with an enjoyably bucolic scenario that turns nasty when something is unleashed from deep in the woods.

The God Beneath the Tree: A Quickstart Playset for Cthulhu Awakens is published by Green Ronin Publishing and is available to download here.

Much like the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition and The Companions of Arthur for material set in Greg Stafford’s masterpiece of Arthurian legend and romance, Pendragon, 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, 13th Age Glorantha, and HeroQuest Glorantha (Questworlds). This can include original scenarios, background material, cults, mythology, details of NPCs and monsters, and so on, but none of this content should be considered to be ‘canon’, but rather fall under ‘Your Glorantha Will Vary’. This means that there is still scope for the authors to create interesting and useful content that others can bring to their Glorantha-set campaigns.

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What is it?The God Skin & Mad Prax: Sandheart Volume Four is an anthology of two scenarios and the fourth and final part of the campaign set in Sun County in Prax following on from Tales of the Sun County Militia: Sandheart Volume 1, The Corn Dolls: Sandheart Volume 2, and Tradition: Sandheart Volume Three for use with RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha.

The quartet is based on material present in Sun County: RuneQuest Adventures in the Land of the Sun.

It is a full colour, one-hundred-and-nine page, 28.95 MB PDF.

It is one-hundred-and-seven page, full colour hardback.

The God Skin & Mad Prax: Sandheart Volume Four is well presented, decently written, and has excellent artwork and cartography. Both scenarios are very well supported with handouts, maps, and illustrations for all of their NPCs, creatures, and monsters.

Where is it set?
As with previous volumes in the series, The God Skin & Mad Prax: Sandheart Volume Four takes place in Sun County, the small, isolated province of Yelmalio-worshipping farmers and soldiers located in the fertile River of Cradles valley of Eastern Prax, south of the city of Pavis, where it is beset by hostile nomads and surrounded by dry desert and scrubland. Where Tales of the Sun County Militia: Sandheart Volume 1 is specifically it is set in and around the remote hamlet of Sandheart, where the inhabitants are used to dealing and even trading with the nomads who come to worship at the ruins inside Sandheart’s walls, The Corn Dolls: Sandheart Volume 2 is set in and around Cliffheath, on the eastern edge of the county, and Tradition: Sandheart Volume Three focuses on  a cave known as Dark Watch on the edge of the county, The God Skin & Mad Prax: Sandheart Volume Four takes the Player Characters onto a bigger stage both in and beyond the borders of Sun County.
The events of The God Skin & Mad Prax: Sandheart Volume Four take place in ST 1621.
Who do you play?
The player characters are members of the Sun County militia based in Sandheart. Used to dealing with nomads and outsiders and oddities and agitators, the local militia serves as the dumping ground for any militia member who proves too difficult to deal with by the often xenophobic, misogynistic, repressive, and strict culture of both Sun County and the Sun County militia. It also accepts nomads and outsiders, foreigners and non-Yemalions, not necessarily as regular militia-men, but as ‘specials’, better capable of dealing with said foreigners and non-Yemalions.

What do you need?
The God Skin & Mad Prax: Sandheart Volume Four requires RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. Both RuneQuest – Glorantha Bestiary and Sun County: RuneQuest Adventures in the Land of the Sun might be useful. 
What do you get?
The God Skin & Mad Prax: Sandheart Volume Four is a collection of two scenarios, ‘The God Skin Incident’ and ‘Mad Prax: Beyond Sun Dome’. The first will involve the Player Characters in a murder mystery and then a quest and several moral quandaries they are unexpectedly required to complete, whilst the second brings the Player Characters to the attention of Solanthos Ironpike, Honoured Count of Sun County, and involves them in events that are a precursor to the Hero Wars.
The Sandheart Militia is called into apprehend a band of murders and thieves at the beginning of ‘The God Skin Incident’. The culprits are already known, a group of Elves, actually allies of Sun County and tolerated visitors, that has murdered the head of a hamlet and stolen an artefact important to the hamlet’s economic future. In the first part of the scenario, the Player Characters chase them down into the scrublands on the edge of Sun County, where they face their first moral quandary. Do they aid the Elves, aid another group chasing them, or do nothing? Either way, as a result of this confrontation, the Player Characters find themselves under a geas to fulfil the same quest that the leader of the Elves had sworn to complete. This is possible because he and his cohorts worshipped a different aspect of Yelmalio known as Halamalao.
The second part takes the Sandheart Militia back into Sun County and out again into Prax, this time on a journey to Biggle Stone to complete against an ancient enemy known as ‘The Betrayers’.  The journey borders on the picaresque with numerous engaging encounters along the way in the company of an interesting, often demanding protector of the stolen artefact. Where the scenario feels weakest is that it does not make very much of the settlements of Horngate and Agape, both stops along the route. The climax of the scenario sour is dark and sour, dank and sodden, unlike anything that the Sandheart Militia are likely to have encountered before, making it all the more challenging. Its grungy, earthy feel and tone make it the more interesting of the two scenarios in the collection.
The epilogue to the scenario again presents the Player Character with a moral dilemma. Unfortunately, the options are presented in black and white, leaving no room for nuance or other choices.
Originally run at Necronomicon III in Sydney, New South Wales in 1991, ‘Mad Prax: Beyond Sun Dome’ has here been updated to bring the Sandheart Militia quartet to a close. When the Sandheart Militia come to the aid of Yelanda Goldenlocks, a would be Yelmalian hero held back by the conservative and misogynist attitudes of her fellow Sun Domers, they come to the attention of Sun County’s ruler, Count Solanthos Ironpike. Despite his disdain for her, he instructs Yelanda Goldenlocks to undertake an important mission, to deliver a package to the Sun Dome military forces which have been despatched elsewhere, and because of his disdain for her, he assigns the Player Characters to accompany her as well as Melo Yelo, a Baboon who is annoyingly keen to become a Yelmalio cultist. Which, of course, is completely anathema to the Sun Domers.
The scenario is again another travelogue, one that takes them to the River of Cradles, the journey interrupted by increasingly odd occurrences and encounters, including the very entertaining one of the title with a berserk Praxian which is made all the more challenging because it triggers all of Yelenda’s geases, riddles with an Orlanthi, and desperately running Trolls. There is a real sense of this part of Sun County being in disarray, though the Sandheart Militia will not discover why until the climax of the scenario. This occurs in Harpoon overlooking the River of Cradles and sees them participate in an assault on a Giant’s Cradle, something which has not been seen on the river for centuries. Ultimately, the Player Characters, posted to the Sandheart Militia due to their non-conformity, have the opportunity to prove themselves heroes in front of the whole of the Sun County military. It brings the  whole campaign to a big rousing climax, literally on a big stage!
Both scenarios are linear in nature and do not provide much in the alternative when it comes to dealing with the situations that the Player Characters find themselves in. To be fair, both are military missions and the Player Characters are under orders, so that they do have their orders. The Game Master will have fun portraying both Yelanda Goldenlocks and Yelo Melo, but there is also the option for them to be roleplayed by a player. This works better if the scenario is being run as a one-off.
Is it worth your time?
Yes—The God Skin & Mad Prax: Sandheart Volume Four brings the series to a rousing climax and provides an opportunity for the Player Characters to prove themselves worthy of Sun County.No—The God Skin & Mad Prax: Sandheart Volume Four is not worth your time if you are running a campaign or scenarios set elsewhere, especially in Sartar.
Maybe—Tradition: Sandheart Volume Three might be useful for a campaign involving Yelmalions and the worship of Yelm from places other than Sun County, but its framework structure may be more challenging to use if the Game Master has already run the previous scenarios in the campaign.

Between the quotas and the quanta, there is time for questions. Between the propaganda and proselytism there is time for pondering. Between the machinations and murders there is time for messages. Between the intrigues and insurgencies there is time for infatuation. Between the assassinations and alterations there is time for assignations. Between these moments, there is time for love. These are not moments that matter to great empires that believe that the only way to survive is to make the past, present, and future theirs, to adjust every version of themselves so that it survives and every version of their rival so that it does not. To wage wars violent in word and deed, but also subtle and imperceptible. There is a war up and down the timeline and sideways across the multiverse fought by armies and agents and two of those agents—one on either side—are beginning to question if the war will ever end? If either side will win? If there is more than the futility of fighting and thwarting each other’s efforts? If the other feels like they do? And if they do, can they shape reality so they are no longer foils for and reflections of each other, but together? After all, as elite agents in the war for time and reality, only they know what the other has experienced.

This is the set-up for The Words We Leave Behind, an epistolary roleplaying game for two players inspired by the multi-award-winning Science Fiction LGBT novella by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, This Is How You Lose the Time War. It is published by Lunar Shadow Designs and uses the same mechanics and format as the publisher’s interstellar epistolary roleplaying game of increasingly challenging communication and saying goodbye, Signal to Noise. In Signal to Noise, the players, as friends, relatives, or lovers, beamed letters to each other back and forth across vast distances of space, between the Earth and a gigantic colony ship. In The Words We Leave Behind, the players take the roles of Proxies on opposite sides of a massive time war, one that has the capacity to spread to other worlds and dimensions. Each is their Faction’s ultimate warrior and agent because they perfectly embody the emotional profile which their Faction views as the ultimate driver behind the rise and fall of civilisations. In The Words We Leave Behind, each player will take the role of a Proxy, each guided by three emotions, which can be opposed to, or in direct competition with, the other Proxy. Over the course of play, the players will not exchange letters as in other epistolary roleplaying games, but draw cards to create points in the future and the past of a Timeline, each an Incursion which their Proxy will enter and alter details. As they play, they may visit previously visited Incursions, adding and changing other details, even to Incursions created by their rival Proxy. These changes can cascade down the Timeline to alter further points in the future. This is all played out on a shared document, meaning that The Words We Leave Behind is intended to be played online.
Besides the shared online document and a means to send each other messages, each player in The Words We Leave Behind requires a standard deck of playing cards. These have their jokers removed, separated into their four suites and shuffled in four decks. A card is drawn from each suit to form the starting hand and there is always a card from each suit in the suit. (An extra Hearts card can be added to simulate the themes of This Is How You Lose the Time War.)

A Proxy is first defined by the three emotions that also define the Faction they serve. The player is free to develop their Proxy’s Faction as much or as little as they want, including its objectives, and will also ask the other player what their Proxy’s Faction thinks of theirs and what their Proxy’s Faction calls their Proxy whom it regards as the enemy. A Proxy also has a preferred form, worn between missions, and three anchors or possessions, which helps maintain the association with their roots, one of which is a trinket, an actual physical object that the player owns. Lastly, each Proxy decides how they perceive themselves and their rival.

Verdigris
I am CALCULATING and you are RECKLESS
Prime Emotion: Hope
Secondary Emotions: Shame, Anger
Anchors: The skull of bird whose species was made extinct by dangerous technology (it reminds me of what we lost); a blade grass from my home farm (it is what we work to preserve and I leave behind on every mission to show what we are working to save); trinket: a single-sided die (from the game we played as children)

Play consists of several turns, typically four to five, in which each player will take control of the narrative and send a message as their Proxy to the other player and their Proxy. In subsequent turns after the first, a player will have their Proxy read the message from their rival, be assigned by their Faction to make an Incursion—roughly between five and thirty sentences long—and manipulate events there, before leaving a message behind for their rival to find. The Incursions are recorded on the Timestream document as are their effects on downstream Incursions. If a Proxy returns to an existing Incursion, their player can edit it by adding text at the beginning or end of the current Incursion, effectively changing the lead into the Incursion or the outcome. These changes can cascade down the Timestream, the current player examining subsequent Incursions and if necessary, adding, deleting, or altering a single sentence in the Incursion description. (Whilst the changes are made directly to the Timestream document, the prior state is tracked via the messages between the players. One of the potential issues with the play of The Words We Leave Behind is losing track of earlier incarnations of the Timestream.)

Cards are played randomly from the hand and provide two important details. First, the number determines the Incursion, whilst the suit advances the emotion which it matches. Once played, the cards represent a Proxy’s emotional state, the more cards a Proxy has in a suite, up to a maximum of three, the more intense the state. Roughly, Hearts equate to the emotion of love, Clubs to anger, Spades to uncertainty, and Diamonds to understanding. The emotional state will influence how the player describes their Proxy’s actions in an Incursion and their Proxy’s reactions to their rival’s actions.

A player can spend his Proxy’s Anchors for various effects. The first two anchors can be used to either let the player choose a card to play, alter three sentences in an Incursion when the changes cascade down the Timestream, or even to reverse the cascade, so back up the Timestream and into the past rather down into the future. The third anchor, a trinket, can be used to revert an Incursion to its original state, place an Incursion under a Temporal Lock so it is immune to the cascading effect, or to take a second turn.

The interaction between the proxies and thus the play of The Words We Leave Behind comes to climax when a player plays the third card from a suit and so acts on the emotional prompt it triggers. As in This Is How You Lose the Time War, this is the point when the Proxies decide to meet, and as in the novel, in The Words We Leave Behind it is not via the messages going back and forth between the Proxies, but in person, face to face (or alternatively, via a video call). Based on the current state of the Timestream, the messages exchanged, and their respective emotional states, the Proxies have a simple choice to make. Will they place their trust in each other or attempt to take advantage of the other. If they both place their trust in each other, their feelings transcend the conflict and they leave both it and their Factions behind together. If they attempt to take advantage of the other, the war continues to a calamitous end. Lastly, if one Proxy attempts to take advantage of the other and one Proxy places their trust in the other, the Proxy who attempted to take advantage prevails and their Faction gains greater control of reality. In all three cases, the outcome is then narrated.

Love and trust are not common themes in roleplaying games, with trust being a more common theme than love because it is easier to deal with via humour or politics or espionage rather than feelings. This is not to say that love cannot play a part in a roleplaying game, but in general, love is not a core theme of most roleplaying games. When it is, it has tended to come out of the storytelling and narrative style of design, such as Emily Care Boss’ The Romance Trilogy, consisting of Breaking the Ice, Shooting the Moon, and Under the Skin. Nor does this mean that more mainstream publishers have not ignored the subject, such as Thirsty Sword Lesbians from Evil Hat Productions and Blue Rose: The AGE RPG of Romantic Fantasy from Green Ronin Publishing. This, though, does not escape the fact that ‘love’ as a theme in roleplaying games is challenging to handle for the players because it requires trust between the participants and it requires them to roleplay feelings that are normally kept private. Lastly, The Words We Leave Behind has the possibility of the most devastating response to both love and trust—betrayal. As with those other roleplaying games, The Words We Leave Behind is best played by mature players.

The Words We Leave Behind can be played from start to finish in a matter of a few hours, but its epistolary format means that it can be played at a more leisurely pace over the course of a few days or weeks. It can also be played on an Earthly, Galactic, or Dimensional scale, but really this only adds to flavour and scope of the setting rather than the themes. Those themes are explored in the messages between the Proxies and in the changes made to the timestream, pushed and prodded by the suits of the cards played and then escalated. Each player and their Proxy is aware of how the other feels as the card details are exchanged in the messages and whilst for the most part the cards themselves are played randomly from their hands, each player has the choice to change how their Proxy feels by playing an anchor and being able to select a card instead of drawing it randomly.

Apart from the aforementioned issue with keeping track of the timestream, The Words We Leave Behind is more challenging to play if the participants have not read This Is How You Lose the Time War to understand the themes and structure of the roleplaying game. The roleplaying game is also part of the publisher’s Dyson Eclipse future setting, the same as Rock Hoppers, Signal to Noise, and The Kandhara Contraband: A System Agnostic Sci-Fi Adventure, but it is not clear how. Lastly, as an epistolary roleplaying game, The Words We Leave Behind feels that it should have more emotional prompts for longer play rather than the three for each suit which befit a game played in one go.

Physically, The Words We Leave Behind is neat and tidy and includes a lot of helpful advice and prompts on handling its themes, which undeniably are all needed give the nature of those themes.

Fans of This Is How You Lose the Time War will doubtless be intrigued by The Words We Leave Behind, but will find it a daunting prospect if they have not played a roleplaying game before or their roleplaying experience is with more mainstream roleplaying games. The Words We Leave Behind is a personally demanding game, asking us to explore themes and feelings that not every roleplaying game, but the epistolary format means that this exploration does not have to be immediate and it can be more considered, which ameliorates some of the challenge to The Words We Leave Behind. Nevertheless, for mature players willing to do so, The Words We Leave Behind presents the demanding means to explore the growth of love and trust—and potentially betrayal—in considered fashion in an age of a time war.

—oOo—
This review is of the ‘Ashcan’ edition of The Words We Leave Behind. The full version is currently being funded via Kickstarter.

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

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

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

Name: Banca
Call Sign: Supernova

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Name: Mako Suds

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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