Conan the Mercenary is a supplement for Robert E. Howard’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of published by Modiphius Entertainment. It is the third in the ‘Conan the…’ series of supplements which focus on and take their inspiration from Conan himself at various stages of his life and what he was doing. Over this series, the supplements will track our titular character’s growth and progress as he gains in skills and abilities and talents. Thus this third supplement, following on from Conan the Barbarian and Conan the Thief, looks at Conan as a young man and his life what he did after he left his homeland and took his next steps on his career which will take him from barbarian to king, essentially the equivalent of a Player Character having taken the first steps in his adventuring career. Yet whilst the stats for Conan himself at this stage of his life do appear in the pages of Conan the Mercenary, and so hint at his step as covered in the next supplement, Conan the Pirate, they are more a side note than a feature, for the supplement continues the path south begun in Conan the Barbarian to examine and explore more of the countries of the centre, where East meets West in the Hyperborean Age—Khoraja, Koth, Ophir, and Shem. Not necessarily the most warlike of countries, but the most likely to hire and in need of mercenaries, or sell-swords, dog soldiers, and sword-sisters. Conan the Mercenary supports the role of the mercenary and warfare in Robert E. Howard’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of. It includes new archetypes, talents, backgrounds, and equipment to help players create more varied Mercenary characters and Game Masters more varied Mercenary NPCs; a gazetteer and guide to the fractious lands where the rulers have good reason to employ mercenaries of all kinds, whether that is to protect borders, put down insurrection, buy off rampaging mercenaries, and to strike at their rivals—whether internal or external an array of detailed NPCs and monsters, including unique nemeses; and mechanics to help bring mercenary campaigns and other activities and attitudes to your game, including sieges, battles, skirmishes, small operations, and more.

Conan the Mercenary opens by introducing new options for the Mercenary type character, building upon the content in the core rulebook for Robert E. Howard’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of. This includes the fact that the mercenary can have two Homelands (although only gains the benefits of one) to reflect how well-travelled he is, and has access to two new Mercenary Castes, Born Soldier and Child of Camp Followers—the latter tying to the vivid description of the camp followers later in the supplement, and both complete with stories and associated traits, whilst there is just the single new caste Talent, ‘Scrounger’. Similarly, there are two Mercenary Natures—Professional and Blood-crazed, whilst the Archetypes include ‘Asshuri’, ‘Captain’, ‘Champion’, ‘Messenger’, ‘Unseasoned’, and ‘Veteran’. Mercenary Educations add tables for War Stories, Personal Belongings and Garments, notable Weapon and Provenance, possible Mercenary Names. These add flavour and detail, whilst the Mercenary Talents are primarily built around the ‘Veteran’ Talent tree, only available to those who have served in a mercenary company, whilst the other ten Talents, such as ‘Hostage Taker’ or ‘If it Bleeds…’, are available to all Player Characters. The new ‘Tools of War’ begin with ‘Engines of Destruction’, the siege weapons employed by armies and mercenary companies to break castles, fortresses, and cities, but they get more personal with oddities such as the mancatcher and repeating crossbow. Perhaps more interesting for most players is the examination of high quality Akbitanan steel, whose forging is kept secret by the skilled craftsmen of Shem. The resulting weapons can strike fear into the opponents of anyone wielding them and so they are in great demand.

Supporting these new character options is a gazetteer of the lands in the centre of the West—Khoraja, Koth, Ophir, and Shem. Khoraja is a nation founded by mercenaries. They captured the city of the same name from the kingdom of Koth, taking advantage of the mountains which separates it from the rest of the kingdom. It also controls Shamla Pass, not only an important trade route through the mountains, but also the route that a major invasion force would take going north or south. The kings of Khoraja repudiate their mercenary origins, but that does not stop them from employing them. Koth itself employs mercenaries not only to protect its borders, but to put down insurrections that intermittently arise as one city ruler or noble aspires to the throne. The country’s fractiousness severely hampers the efforts of King Strabonus, its much feared and much derided ruler, to chart its future, not helped by the presence of Tsotha-Lanti, the sorcerer who at best is regarded as an advisor to the king, at worst the power behind the throne. Ophir is the opposite of Koth, a settled, extremely wealthy, and decadent nation, unambitious under the rule of its king, Amalrus, but not his wife, Queen Yrrane, who secretly plans to take the throne from her husband. To that end she has gathered the fealty of many mercenary captains who would command their companies to aid the ambitious spouse. Shem, known for its highly skilled craftsmen, is divided between meadowlands and desert, the latter providing a protective bulwark against invaders from the east. In each case, an overview of each country is provided, along with a look at their major cities, traditions, culture and faiths, ruins, notable features and citizens, and more. In each case, the content of Conan the Mercenary is set before the events of Conan’s stories, enabling the Game Master to run them as adventures for her Player Characters.
If the Gazetteer examines the places where mercenaries are most frequently employed or stationed and particular reasons why, ‘Events’ is more about the general reasons for war in the Hyperborean Age—not just war between kingdoms, internecine warfare, barbaric raids, and religious upheavals, but also natural events such as plague and famine, and unnatural events like the rise of a sorcerer and incursion from the Outer Dark. These are relatively short overviews so feel slightly generic. Fortunately, the supplement shifts away from this when it focuses on the NPCs in the setting in ‘Encounters’. This includes both a look at Conan’s involvement in the politics and events of the nations of Khoraja, Koth, Ophir, and Shem, in particular, his command of mercenary companies in the defeat of the Thugra Khotan and later defeat during Prince Almuric’s uprising against King Strabonus in Koth. These are backed up by a good range of ‘Encounters’ or NPCs. Even the most basic of mercenaries, such as the Asshuri, the Free Company mercenary, or Khrajan Solider are all given good write-ups alongside their stats, those done for the persons of renown, such as Thugra Khotan—self-entombed sorcerer in the city of Kuthchemes in Khoraja, King Strabonus, and Tsotha-Lanti, are excellent, helping to bring their ambitions and resulting plots to live and ready for development by the Game Master. Oddly, although mentioned in the gazetteer, there are no stats or write-up for Queen Yrrane and given its focus later in the supplement, there are no camp followers detailed here. Nevertheless, the ‘Encounters’ section enables the Game Master to have her Player Characters encounter them if running her campaign before the events of Conan’s stories.
As with previous supplements for Robert E. Howard’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of, ‘Hither Came Conan…’ places our titular hero in the context of the supplement and provides a playable version of him early in his long career. This also ties him back into the contents of the previous two chapters and in doing so, outlines one possible plot for the Game Master. ‘The Mercenary Way’ explores mercenary life in the Hyperborean Age. It is the most entertaining chapter in the supplement, starting with a discussion of camp followers and their way of life training behind a mercenary company. Technically called a ‘tross’, it looks at the different roles—blacksmiths, camp boys, cooks, gamblers, healers, priests, prostitutes, and more—all of which lend itself to a scenario or two, if not a mini-campaign around the ‘tross’. Despite their not being involved in the thick of the action, such a setting still lends itself to plenty of conflict, roleplaying, and social dynamics that would lead to good, if likely grubby and sometimes desperate, storytelling. Several mercenary companies, from the good to the bad, from the Nemedian Adventurers which only serves the King of Nemedia to the Free Companions, are described and a Mercenary Code of conduct is given as well as an explanation of how mercenary companies are structured. Tables provide loot to be taken from a battlefield and a city, events whilst ransacking, and events whilst carousing as a mercenary. The latter are always fun, providing a nice selection of random encounters and events that the Game Master can develop. The loot tables though, do feel as if they could be longer.
Supporting the earlier discussion of reasons to go to war in ‘Event’, the section on ‘Mercenary Adventures’ looks at the types of scenarios and campaigns that the Game Master can run with the supplement. These start with scouting and reconnaissance missions, patrols, securing prisoners, and more before slipping into the weird looking how cursed ruins, ancient battlefields, and even demons and gods of the Outer Dark could get involved in a mercenary campaign. These sections are fairly broad in their overview and should be treated as starting points for the Game Master.
Surprisingly, it has taken to almost the end of Conan the Mercenary to include rules for battles and mass combat. Part of that is due to the format of the series, but it does seem like a long wait. In general, the rules for small skirmishes are provided in the core rules for Robert E. Howard’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of, but here they scale up to handle full battles and sieges. These are not wargaming rules, but a means to handle a battle in a more narrative fashion whilst still involving the Player Characters on an individual level. To that end there is advice on ‘Narrating Battles the Howard Way’ and using cut scenes for ‘Heroic Actions’ where a Player Character has an opportunity to influence the battle and be courageous, such as opening a gate to let soldiers through or sabotaging a siege engine. It does add complexity to play and the Game Master should definitely run through a few examples to get the feel for it before running it for her players. There is an example too, which can be studied. Lastly, ‘Heroes of the Age’ adds a pair of potential Player Characters or NPCs developed by backers for the Kickstarter campaign for Robert E. Howard’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of. Of the two, Freya the Red would make an interesting mercenary commander for any campaign, whether as employer or enemy.
Physically, Conan the Mercenary is a slim hardback, presented in full colour, illustrated with an excellent range of fully painted artwork. It is well written, is accessible, and comes with a reasonable index. The maps of the nations detailed in Gazetteer are a bit bland though.
Conan the Mercenary opens up new campaign and scenario possibilities, whether that is as a special operations squad involved in civil war or a rebellion in Koth or going to war against the forces lead by Thugra Khotan, as Conan did, or surviving in the tross from one campaign to the next. However, it does take a while before it comes together and begins to feel like a supplement for Robert E. Howard’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of, doing so when it begins to draw more directly from the adventures of Conan himself and the characters he involves himself with in Howard’s stories. The book needed more of that and so it comes across as being a rather slight book in places, not helped by it being shorter than other supplements in the series. 
Conan the Mercenary does feel slightly underwhelming in paces, but it shines through where it counts—and that is on the personal level. For the Robert E. Howard’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of Game Master who wants to send her Player Characters into the heat, blood, sweat, and hell of battle, to let them sell their martial skills to the highest bidder, and have them influence the fate of kingdoms at the point of a sword, Conan the Mercenary unsheathes its sword and strikes the right blow!

Much like the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, the Jonstown Compendium is a curated platform for user-made content, but for material set in Greg Stafford’s mythic universe of Glorantha. It enables creators to sell their own original content for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, 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?In Search Of Baroshi is a scenario for use with RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha.

It is a twenty-seven page, full colour, 1.56 MB PDF.

The layout is plain and it does need an edit. There is no artwork, but the scenario makes use of classic Glorantha maps.

Where is it set?
In Search Of Baroshi is set in Sartar, specifically near the Caves of Chaos as detailed in the classic scenario, Snakepipe Hollow. It is a sequel to events which occurred in that scenario.

Who do you play?Any type of Player Character can play In Search Of Baroshi, but worshippers of Babeester Gor, Ernalda, Humakt, and Storm Bull will all be useful.
What do you need?
In Search Of Baroshi requires RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, the Glorantha Bestiary, and The Red Book of Magic. In addition, The Smoking Ruin & Other Stories and the RuneQuest Gamemaster Screen Pack will both be useful for details on Clearwine and its notable inhabitants.
What do you get?In Search Of Baroshi is a scenario which takes the Player Characters from the city of Clearwine north to the outskirts of the Caves of Chaos in Snakepipe Hollow, the Chaos-infested valley in the north of Sartar. They are asked by the temple to Ernalda in Clearwine to rescue an ancient godling known as Baroshi who had been freed by a previous expedition which had subsequently worked to establish an Erath temple in his name. The temple was subject to multiple attacks by the forces of Chaos and during a recent attack, the body of Baroshi was destroyed and his spirit seized. The Player Characters are directed to locate the godling, free his spirit, and locate the surviving members of the expedition—if any.

In Search Of Baroshi is divided into three parts. In the first, the Player Characters are briefed and have a chance to gain some information about the region around Snakepipe Hollow, some of the threats they are likely to face, and more. In the second, they make their way from Clearwine to the other side of Snakepipe Hollow, the scenario discussing several routes and what might be encountered along the way. The third part describes the caves where the Chaos cultists have taken Baroshi and are now planning to sacrifice him. A third of the scenario is devoted to the various NPCs that the Player Characters will encounter first in Clearwine and then in the caves where the climax of the scenario takes place. These sets of stats are all decent enough and will present a group of Player Characters with a decent challenge.

In Search Of Baroshi has a solid plot and an interesting set-up, and opportunity to roleplay in the initial section. The last section is a strike and rescue mission. In some ways it is the least interesting aspect of the scenario. In no way unplayable, it nevertheless, does feel undeveloped and in places, bland. The NPC monsters are not particularly engaging and the descriptions of the caves where the action takes place is perfunctory at best. They do not feel lived in or occupied locations and some descriptive text would help the Game Master set the scene whilst descriptions of what might be found in individual caves would have given the Player Characters things to look at and interact with, rather than each location just being the site of another fight. Further, whilst the scenario gives two options as which of the Chaos factions is in charge, the description of what they plan to do is underwritten and consequently made all the more difficult for the Game Master to describe to her players.

In addition, the fate of only one of the original expedition is detailed in the adventure, and she is only rendered as both someone to rescue rather than as an NPC in her own right and a reward condition at the end of the scenario depending upon if the Player Characters save her or not. The other members are ignored all together and it would have least been useful to have been given their names, let alone few items belonging to them that might have wound up in the possession of the Chaos cultists.
Is it worth your time?Yes—In Search Of Baroshi is a straightforward scenario which does need development in terms of flavour and detail to help bring it alive and help the Game Master work it into her campaign. No—In Search Of Baroshi is too location specific being near Snakepipe Hollow and it involves fighting Chaos which may not be an activity that the Player Characters are ready for.Maybe—In Search Of Baroshi needs work in terms of flavour and detail to help bring out the details of its plot, but if the Game Master is willing to make that extra effort, the scenario is serviceable and it could lead into further activity in and around Snakepipe Hollow.

One of the fascinations with Traveller is with its starships. Ranging in size from one hundred tons up to hundreds of thousands of tons, the players are exposed to them in the rules fairly on—during the process of character creation. Careers such as Scouts, Merchants, and Nobles all have the possibility of giving the characters starships of a small, but capable size. Of course, a starship will take the Player Characters from star system to star system, from adventure to adventure, but the starship also becomes a home too. As a home, the players doubtless want to know what their starship looks like and if they have a role aboard her, as no doubt they do, where their normal station is and where their stateroom is. Then of course, starship deck plans are just like maps. They provide locations to visit, to adventure in, to explore, to attack and defend, and so on. Which can of course be for the theatre of the mind or with miniatures. Starships in Traveller are also highly technical, designed to be realistic within their setting of the Third Imperium, with much their displacement and tonnage given over to fuel, power plant, and jump and manoeuvre drives. There are plenty of supplements dedicated to starships in the Third Imperium—official and unofficial, but of these few, barely a handful are dedicated to the really large starships, space stations, and other big installations and locations. This is where Starship Geomorphs comes in handy.
Starship Geomorphs is a vast collection of geomorphs—or map sections—which can be slotted together to form larger locations in a wide variety of layouts. This includes starships, space stations, buildings, and massive structures. They are all designed using the architecture and map iconography of Traveller, so there is a high of familiarity for long-time fans of the venerable roleplaying game. However, none of the geomorphs are official Traveller content despite their compatibility. Further, their use lends itself to form and function rather than technical design, with the geomorphs here being slotted together to create their locations and ships rather than the Game Master designing a ship using the rules for naval architecture and adhere to the rules for realisation as a set of deck plans. Consequently, Starship Geomorphs possesses a greater utility than a set of deck plans for a single starship or location might.
Presented in landscape format, Starship Geomorphs opens with an introduction and an explanation of the geomorphs. These are organised into standard, edge, corner, and end sections. In addition, there are aerofins too, the aim being to reduce the starships being more aerodynamic and less boxy. There are suggestions too to flesh out a ship design, including its overall look, occupants, gear, age, level of wear, sounds heard aboard ship, and more. There are suggestions also, to add flavour and detail, including what might be found in the ship’s locker and down a ship’s corridor. Other uses of the geomorphs suggested include combining them to create space stations, like the small Dyson-Class modular Star port, corporate facilities, and so on. In the case of the sample starship and sample corporate facility, references are provided to the particular pages where the geomorphs can be found that make up the particular object or location.
The bulk of the book is understandably given over to the geomorphs themselves. They begin with a multipurpose geomorph, a research area geomorph, cargo bay—full and empty, engineering/sensor ops, flight hanger/crew area, brig/prison, arboretum—upper and lower, a drop capsule/troop deck, an auditorium, a sports complex, high passage (first class) passenger deck, promenade decks—food/retail and casino, cloning facility (or alternatively low berth facility), bride areas, gunnery and sandcaster decks, and much, much, more. Some are quite mundane, such as the battery deck, office space (or cubicle farm, proving that office design does not get better in the future), waste processing, and so on. Very quickly the Game Master can put together a troop or fighter carrier, an exploratory or laboratory vessel, a passenger liner, an imperial throne ship (yes, there really is a throne room geomorph!), a strike vessel complete with weapon turrets and barbettes, and more. Punctuating these are some delightful cross section three-dimensional illustrations of the various geomorphs, including a ‘Flight Hanger with Launch Tube’, a cargo bay with an armed crewman outside ready to shoot some scuttling creatures inside, a corridor with doors off and a window through which can be seen a poor, glowing man having suffered a strange mishap in the laboratory, a low berth area, a steerage compartment for passengers travelling on the cheap, and lots more. There is a sense of humour to a few of these, but in the main, they help bring their locations to life and add an extra dimension to the deck plans.
This is just the starships possible with Starship Geomorphs. Space stations and star ports are also possible, again using many of the same geomorphs. However, mix up the office space, auditorium, lobby, and so on, and what you have is a corporate building. The arboretum, promenade areas with and without casino, swimming pool, and passenger decks all combine to form a hotel, with the steerage decks becoming the equivalent of a coffin hotel. There are tram and train layouts, interstitial spaces for between floors and decks, connecting bridges between buildings and space station sections, and a lot more.
Starship Geomorphs is cleanly and clearly laid out. The writing is fairly light in tone and there are notes here and there throughout. The geomorphs are all well done and easy to use.
As a book, Starship Geomorphs is a superb catalogue of maps, plans, deck plans, and more. If there is an issue, it is that there is a high number of geomorphs labelled ‘Multipurpose’, in fact too many of them, to the point where their purpose is lost without the Game Master going through them one by one. Another issue is perhaps that whilst the print version is lovely, the PDF is actually of greater use because the user can separate the geomorphs and put them together onscreen. Further, Starship Geomorphs is not just of use for Traveller, but will work with any Science Fiction roleplaying. Thus, Star Wars: Edge of the Empire, The Expanse, Star Trek Adventures, Star Frontiers, and Cyberpunk Red—all of these would work with a lot of the geomorphs in Starship Geomorphs. If Starship Geomorphs is missing anything, it is a guide or suggestions to create particular ship’s deck plans or building floor plans, but there is plenty of inspiration to be found in the individual geomorphs. The geomorphs can of course be used to create locations for confrontations between miniatures in skirmish wargames.
Starship Geomorphs is delightfully, usefully utilitarian and inspirational in its design and purpose. This big book of map sections is a terrific addition to the toolkit of any Game Master running just about any Science Fiction roleplaying game or even wargame.

The Angry Sun bleeds on the Broken World. Some days it burns hot and cold. Some days it burns the land. Some days it drains the Wiz of their powers. Others it is cool and sleepy. Sky Wyrms hunt for meat below. Fallen towers radiate magic and hide spells. Ruins hide the secrets and treasures of the past. This is the Broken World. The Broken World is the world of the Gooz now. Warty, hairy, dirty, ugly, flute-eared Gooz. Once they were just vermin, but the Pretty Ones are long dead in the ground. The Gooz explore the world, search the ruins, and climb the towers, sometimes to save the Broken World, but mostly to get rich. They set out from Gooz City ready to face danger such as the Quetzplow, which will slurp out a Gooz’s brains, Assassin Bots, and coin-eating Mooku which can glue a Gooz to the ground with its snot. This is the setting for the Gozr – Sci-Fantasy RPG, a post-apocalyptic roleplaying game designed and drawn by James V. West. The author and illustrator is best known for the fanzine, Black Pudding, the Old School Renaissance, Swords & Sorcery fanzine, which he also draws and writes—just like the Gozr – Sci-Fantasy RPG. Black Pudding brought a slightly gonzo sensibility to the Old School Renaissance and every issue left the reader wanting to see a roleplaying based on its content. That roleplaying game is Doomslakers. It not the Gozr – Sci-Fantasy RPG, which instead is an over-the-top, gonzo, underground comic style post-apocalyptic roleplaying game in which everything is hand drawn and handwritten. Literally nothing in the Gozr – Sci-Fantasy RPG is printed using traditional founts or layout. Coloured in vibrant shades, it is a riotous mass of tables, rules, and illustrations that boggles the mind!

Gozr – Sci-Fantasy RPG is published by Random Order Creations following a successful Kickstarter campaign. It has an Old School Renaissance sensibility, one it shares with microclones such as Into the Odd, Knave, and Cairn, and in comparison with those roleplaying games and other retroclones, it has two primary issues—one obvious, one less so. The former is the presentation. It is bold, it is bright, it is a jumble, and that makes it inaccessible—or at least difficult to access with any ease. Everything jumps off the page, so it takes just that little more effort than another roleplaying game would. The latter is the lack of a ready to play scenario. Gozr – Sci-Fantasy RPG does include a table of ‘Recent Events of Some Gravity’, an ‘Adventure Machine’ table, and a ‘Towers’ table to help the Gooz Master create adventures from these prompts, but a scenario would have been a useful inclusion.

A Gooz in Gozr – Sci-Fantasy RPG starts with three attributes or Action Classes as they are called here—Cunning, Magic, and Prowess. Confusingly, they are abbreviated to ‘AC’, which sort of makes sense when the Gooz Master asks a player to roll against an ‘Action Class’. These are initially rated eight, ten, or fourteen, the lower the Action Class the better it is. He also has Hit Points; a Defence value, which reduces damage taken directly; and points of ‘Gooz’ to spend on doing extraordinary things. Creating a Gooz is a fourteen-point step, as a player rolls not just for starting Hit Points and armour, but also starting weapon, money, colour of blood, colour of skin, eyes, and hair, hair style, lucky symbol, talent, background, clothes, name, possessions, and ears. Talents include Alchemy, Psionic, Strong, Eyebeam, and more. Alternatively, many of these a player can simply pick from the table. A Gooz is just a Gooz unless he is a Gooz Wizard and even if not, there is a chance of his knowing a single vulgar spell or possibly more (if he knows more, he might as well be a wizard).

Name: Finus
Cunning: 8
Magic: 10
Prowess: 14

Hit Points 15

Gooz 5

Talent: Extra Arm
Armour: None
Weapons: Falx (2d4), Pistol (2d4 six-shot)
Lucky Symbol: Cat
Money: 3 Tossers
Blood: Orange
Skin: Pink Hair: None Hair Colour: Grey Eyes: Pink Ears: Triangles

Wearing: Crude loincloth
Possessions: Pyramid puzzle, lockpick kit, blanket
Background: Burglar
Need: Set up the best cat sanctuary in all of Gooz City
Deed: Stopped Kern from eating another cat

Mechanically, Gozr – Sci-Fantasy RPG is simple. It is player-facing, so a player rolls the dice both to attack and defend in combat, rather than the Gooz Master rolling for the latter. To have his Gooz undertake an action, a player rolls against the appropriate Action Class, aiming to roll equal to or higher than the value. Thus, lower Action Classes are better than higher ones. A natural twenty is a critical hit and a special effect will always apply, such as a knockdown or a disarm, whereas it may apply if the roll is a ‘Solid Hit’, five or more higher than the value of the Action Class and . A natural roll of one is a fumble, in which case the player describes the unfortunate outcome. However, a roll of just one under the Action Class is called a ‘Graze’ and while counted as a miss or failure, allows for a small benefit. A Gooz can be Lucky or Unlucky, in which case a +2 or -2 is levied on the roll, respectively. It is also possible for a Gooz to be luckier or unluckier than this. One nice touch about the Gooz Sheet for Gozr – Sci-Fantasy RPG is that space is given for both ‘Solid Hit’ and ‘Graze’ values for each Action Class.

Gooz can also be spent for the Gooz to be amazing. A point allows a Gooz to pull off a cool stunt, steal the initiative, succeed at die roll, learn a fact from the Gooz Master, gain an extra action, and even add a fact to current game. Gooz is the equivalent of hero or luck points and refreshes daily.

Combat in Gozr – Sci-Fantasy RPG is similarly simple, but can also be deadly. On a turn, a Gooz can do one thing—take an action or move, plus do something trivial. The Defence value is deducted from any damage rolled, but all damage dice explode, so can inflict a lot of damage and easily kill a Gooz. If an enemy’s Hit Points are reduced to zero, then it is dead, but a Gooz has a choice—death or debasement. The former is the noble choice and the player’s new Gooz gains a small boon. The latter means that the Gooz is knocked down, scarred, and suffers from the permanent effect of the deadly blow. Damage can also be ‘Real’ such as that suffered by a Wizard from his weakness. This ignores Defence. Beyond this, Gozr – Sci-Fantasy RPG covers rules for fumbles, cover, conditions, morale, poisons, nasty scars, travel, exploration, and more.

Magic in Gozr – Sci-Fantasy RPG is divided between the Vulgar, the Wizardly, and the True. . Vulgar magic includes spells such as Bite It or Sparkler or Hold Breath. Whilst magic requires a roll against a Gooz’s Magic Action Class, a Wizard can undo, counter, and even reverse the effects of Vulgar spells. True magic is not to be trifled with and all Gooz believe that doing so was what killed the Pretty Ones and really, really annoyed the Sun. An actual Wizard must adhere to the three Laws of True Magic—bear a Wizard’s mark, suffer a weakness that is his bane, and be followed by a Watcher who will always be following and judging the Wizard’s exploits. Wizard spells are more powerful than Vulgar spells and include spells such as Blend In, Exploding Doom, Ice Burst, and Liar. All cost Wiz to cast and a Wizard begins play with between two and twelve points of Wiz. Points of Wiz are recovered much like Hit Points, but the Wizard must choose between the two—he cannot recover both at the same time. A Wizard can also have a familiar and know a few tricks. One major difference between ordinary Gooz and Gooz Wizards, at least mechanically, is that ordinary Gooz begin with the equivalent of having gained a Level prior to beginning play. Gooz gain Levels by surviving adventures and with a new Level gain two out of more Hit Points, a spell, increased Wiz, a treasure, or some lucky rolls.

Treasure is where Gozr – Sci-Fantasy RPG begins show off the weirdness of its setting. Items of power can sacrificed in return for fortune. At worst, this result in scorched earth as the Sun rains down fireballs on the land and everyone knows about it, but at best, not only all the Gooz go up a Level, but the land is healed for a time… Quite what that means is left up to the Gooz Master to decode. There are long tables of treasure, including Frivolous Junk, Strange Items, Odd Armour, and Super Tech. The Gooz Master can even give any treasure secret properties with another table. In terms of setting, Goozer City, the last beacon of civilisation, first bastion of Gooz ascendancy, is detailed in terms of more tables that the Gooz Master can roll on to create streets, buildings, routes, smells, vendors, and more. Beyond the city there is map of the immediate regions with short encounter tables for each, an ‘Adventure Machine’ table and tables to create towers that leak sorcery and secrets, the daily effects of the Sun, and both a table to create monsters and a decent bestiary too.

Physically, Gozr – Sci-Fantasy RPG is cartoonishly presented, in a style that echoes Ralph Bakshi’s Wizards. It is busy, vibrant, and full of little embellishments that seem to sneak into view as you are trying to find something else. It is not so much well written as well hand drawn and written giving it a highly distinctive look. However, it could be better organised as the section on Wizards and magic is the middle of the section that ready should be for the Gooz Master.

There can be no doubt that the Gozr – Sci-Fantasy RPG is as much a piece of art—cartoonish art—but art nonetheless, as it is a roleplaying game. As a work of art it is more accessible than as a roleplaying game, its funky, gonzo fanzine-like style often inhibiting the technical nature of the roleplaying game. Not necessarily to the point where the Gozr – Sci-Fantasy RPG is unplayable, but rather to present the reader with a hurdle that has to be overcome in finding where everything is and thus learning how to play.  The other hurdle is the lack of scenario. Now there are plenty of tables which the Gooz Master can take inspiration from, but given that Gozr – Sci-Fantasy RPG includes a handful sample Player Characters, it seems odd not to have a starter scenario too.
Gozr – Sci-Fantasy RPG looks—and is—fun. Weird and wacky, funky and freaky, gonzo and goofy, Gozr – Sci-Fantasy RPG is a joyously higgledy-piggledy toolkit for cartoonishly post-apocalyptic fun.

The Incandescent Grottoes is a scenario published by Necrotic Gnome. It is written for use with Old School Essentials, the Old School Renaissance retroclone based on the version of Basic Dungeons & Dragons designed by Tom Moldvay and published in 1980. It is designed to be played by a party of First and Second Level Player Characters and is a standalone affair, but could be connected to another scenario from the publisher, The Hole in the Oak. Plus there is scope in the adventure to expand if the Referee so desires. Alternatively, it could simply be run on its own as a self-contained dungeon adventure. The scenario is intended to be set underneath a great mythic wood, so is a perfect addition to the publisher’s own Dolmenwood setting, but would be easy to add to the Game Master’s own campaign setting. Further, like so many other scenarios for the Old School Renaissance, The Incandescent Grottoes is incredibly easy to adapt to or run using the retroclone of the Referee’s choice. The tone of the dungeon is weird and earthy, part of the ‘Mythic Underworld’ where strangeness and a degree of inexplicability and otherworldly dream logic is to be expected.
The Incandescent Grottoes is, like the other official scenarios for Old School Essentials very well organised. The map of the whole dungeon is inside the front cover, and after the introduction, the adventure overview provides a history of the dungeon, an explanation of its factions and their relationships, and details—but definitely not any explanations—of its unanswered mysteries. The latter can be left as they are, unexplained, or they can be potentially tied into the rumours which will probably push the Player Characters into exploring its depths. Or of course, they can be tied into the Referee’s greater campaign world and lead to other adventures, or even developed from the players’ own explanations and hypothesises should the Referee be listening carefully. Besides the table of rumours, the adventure includes a listing of the treasure to be found in the dungeon and where, and a table of ‘Random Happenings’ (or encounters). These are not merely random encounters with wandering monsters, but a mix of those along with strange things like a sudden aura of cold that sends a shudder down the backs of the Player Characters or a floating skeletal hand which points to the nearest treasure before crumbling to dust.
In between are the descriptions of the rooms below The Incandescent Grottoes. All fifty-seven of them. These are arranged in order of course, but each is written in a parred down style, almost bullet point fashion, with key words in bold with details in accompanying parenthesis, followed by extra details and monster stats below. For example, the ‘Ritual Robes’ area is described as containing “Dark stone blocks (pockmarked, walls, ceiling 10’). Green tiled floor (zig-zag pattern). Black robes (flank the corridor, hanging from hooks).” It expands up this with “North (from Area 16): Intermittent crackles and blues flashes.” It expands upon this with descriptions of the door to another area and what happens when the Player Characters examine the black robes. There is a fantastic economy of words employed here to incredible effect. The descriptions are kept to a bare minimum, but their simplicity is evocative, easy to read from the page, and prepare. The Incandescent Grottoes is genuinely easy to bring to the table and made all the easier to run from the page because the relevant sections from the map are reproduced on the same page. In addition, the map itself is clear and easy to read, with coloured boxes used to mark locked doors and monster locations as well as the usual room numbers.
In places though, the design and layout does not quite work. This is primarily where single rooms require expanded detail beyond the simple thumbnail description. It adds complexity and these locations are not quite as easy to run straight from the page as other locations are in the dungeon.
The dungeon itself is driven by factions and their associated rumours. The factions include a demonic cult that has all but collapsed, a band of troglodytes riven by factionalism, a Necromancer who is using the caves as a base of operations, an Imperial Illusionist hiding out, and more… All are given quite simple motivations and wants, often clashing with each other, so that when the Player Characters do interreact with them, the dungeon will come to life and be more than a simple series of rooms, traps, and encounters. The Incandescent Grottoes definitely has the feel of a location on the edge of abandonment, one which swings back and forth between the weirdness and whimsy of caves and grottoes run through with strange crystals and mushrooms and the corridors and rooms of worked stone. Notably, the areas previously occupied by the cult are laced with deadly traps and puzzles, only adding to the often highly dangerous nature of the dungeon. Whilst this deadly nature is befitting of the Old School Renaissance, arguably The Incandescent Grottoes verges on being too deadly and dangerous for First and Second Level Player Characters especially if run as a first-time dungeon for players new to the genre. If so, it is perhaps better run as the deadlier half of The Hole in the Oak. Of course, there will be plenty of Game Masters who will see this as a feature rather than a negative aspect of the adventure and so will not have the potential issue. Either way, The Game Master should at least know beforehand and once at the table, it will encourage careful play, just as any classic Old School Renaissance dungeon or scenario should, and the likelihood is that the Player Characters will be making two or three delves down into it before exploring its fullest reaches.
Physically, The Incandescent Grottoes is a handsome little affair. The artwork is excellent, the cartography clear, and the writing to the point.
The Incandescent Grottoes can be used as an introductory dungeon—and it would be perfect for that, but it begs to be worked into a woodland realm of its own, its various details and connected rumours used by the Referee to connect it to the wider world and so develop context. Whichever way it is used, The Incandescent Grottoes is a superbly designed, low level dungeon, full of whimsy and weirdness and fungal flavour and crystalline detail that bring its complex of caves and rooms alive, all presented in a format that makes it incredibly accessible and easy to run.

Between October 2003 and October 2013, Chaosium, Inc. published a series of books for Call of Cthulhu under the Miskatonic University Library Association brand. Whether a sourcebook, scenario, anthology, or campaign, each was a showcase for their authors—amateur rather than professional, but fans of Call of Cthulhu nonetheless—to put forward their ideas and share with others. The programme was notable for having launched the writing careers of several authors, but for every Cthulhu Invictus, The Pastores, Primal State, Ripples from Carcosa, and Halloween Horror, there was Five Go Mad in Egypt, Return of the Ripper, Rise of the Dead, Rise of the Dead II: The Raid, and more...

The Miskatonic University Library Association brand is no more, alas, but what we have in its stead is the Miskatonic Repository, based on the same format as the DM’s Guild for Dungeons & Dragons. 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: Camp KillPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Nicholas Reardon

Setting: 1980s California
Product: ScenarioWhat You Get: Twenty-six page, 11.15 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Always remember, kids, when making a slasher flick to check that the slasher isn’t already on the set!Plot Hook: A bad movie, just turned really bad and it is every bad person for themselves.
Plot Support: Staging advice, two NPCs, seven handouts, two maps, and one Mythos monster.Production Values: Decent.
Pros# Murder and mayhem on the movie set# Server hunt/slasher flick?# Period style handouts# Enjoyably unpleasant Investigators# Scopophobia# Masklophobia# Eremophobia# Voraephobia# Paranoia
Cons# Needs an edit# Server hunt/slasher flick?# Enjoyably unpleasant Investigators# Investigators could be more unpleasant# Everybody wants to be Kimberly
Conclusion# Slasher killers, UFOs, horrible people, oh my!# Messy twist upon the eighties serial killer in a mask horror film

Between October 2003 and October 2013, Chaosium, Inc. published a series of books for Call of Cthulhu under the Miskatonic University Library Association brand. Whether a sourcebook, scenario, anthology, or campaign, each was a showcase for their authors—amateur rather than professional, but fans of Call of Cthulhu nonetheless—to put forward their ideas and share with others. The programme was notable for having launched the writing careers of several authors, but for every Cthulhu Invictus, The Pastores, Primal State, Ripples from Carcosa, and Halloween Horror, there was Five Go Mad in Egypt, Return of the Ripper, Rise of the Dead, Rise of the Dead II: The Raid, and more...

The Miskatonic University Library Association brand is no more, alas, but what we have in its stead is the Miskatonic Repository, based on the same format as the DM’s Guild for Dungeons & Dragons. 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: Blood on the ChocolatePublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Jarrod Lipshy

Setting: 1930s Pennsylvania
Product: ScenarioWhat You Get: Forty page, 2.21 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: A night in Whishly Chocolate FactoryPlot Hook: Sabotage—unions or something else?
Plot Support: Staging advice, eight NPCs, three handouts, two maps, and one non-Mythos monster.Production Values: Decent.
Pros# Highly detailed location-based investigation# Solid mystery# Claustrophobic setting# Easily adapted to Cthulhu by Gaslight# Easily adapted to other cities and countries# Masklophobia# Mechanophobia# Neraidaphobia# Xocolataphobia
Cons# Folkloric rather than Mythos# Highly detailed location-based investigation# A lot for the Keeper to grasp# Requires non-standard Investigators, but no pre-generated Investigators provided
Conclusion# Highly detailed, location-based investigation which turns into a game of cat and mouse and something else...# Pre-generated Investigators would strengthen player and character engagement in a thematically mechanical scenario

At its most basic, The Labyrinth is an anthology of organisations for Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game, published by Arc Dream Publishing. However, delve into this supplement for 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—the forces and influences of Cosmic Horror—and it some becomes apparent that it is something much more. First, it marked the return of John Scott Tynes, one of the co-creators of Delta Green, to writing for the setting and for roleplaying in general. Second, that it won the Gold Ennie award for Best Supplement in 2020. Third, the organisations presented in the supplement are not just organisations, but also frameworks which slot onto a Handler’s existing campaign with plots and events which play out around that existing campaign. Fourth, although the organisations in The Labyrinth are split equally between four allies and four enemies (or four potential allies and four potential enemies), their roles within a campaign and how the Agents—the Player Characters—view them is likely to change. All eight organisations have their own agendas, their own reactions to the Agents, and that is likely to change as their interaction with the Agents grows. Fifth, these organisations are inspired by and drawn from the here and now. For a roleplaying game of modern conspiratorial horror like Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game, the enemies and allies of The Labyrinth are horrifically contemporary. Sixth, the eight organisations in The Labyrinth are connected. Not necessarily directly, but enough that if the Agents pull at one thread, they will find themselves wandering down a path and investigating and interacting with another organisation before they understand what they got themselves involved in with the first. Yet even as they get lost, the Agents may come to realise two things—that the influence and forces of the Unnatural reach deeper into the United States than they ever imagined, and that humanity is bad enough already…
The Labyrinth was published following a successful Kickstarter campaign. The book’s introduction begins with an overview of the eight organisations and some advice for the Handler on building or mapping her own ‘labyrinth’, essentially how to connect the eight organisations. Or rather connect those that the Handler feels will fit her campaign. Tynes provides his pinboard style, as well as suggesting how that labyrinth of connections can be used to build a campaign. The advice is not extensive, but forms a solid starting point. The other thing that the introduction does is suggest ways in which the Handler can also connect the various operations for Delta Green to the organisations presented in The Labyrinth. For example, ‘Agent Renko’ can be connected to the events of Music From a Darkened Room, Kali Ghati to the ‘Dream Syndicate’, Lover in the Ice to ‘The Prana Sodality’, and so on. Each of the organisations in the supplement is also connected to more than one operation, so there are multiple ways into the maze that The Labyrinth presents.

Each of the organisations is presented with a complete history, a description of its organisation, notable operatives and individuals, its beliefs and mandates, how it operates, and potential for friendly opportunities to work with them. It is followed by a suggested progression—or story arc—of how the interaction between the organisation and Agents will play out and how those involved will react, over the course of three stages. Lastly, the ramifications of this interaction is explored and possible connections between that other organisation and those elsewhere in the book. All of this is background, detail, and structure, but it is not a scenario. The Handler will need to develop the content to fit the nature and events of her campaign.

The first of the allies is the ‘Center for the Missing Child’, a non-profit organisation dedicated to locating missing children and supporting their families, which works closely with law enforcement. This potentially means the Agents as one of their number is likely to work in law enforcement. However, their involvement could lead to one of their consultants taking too much interest in their ‘other’ work and lead him down that path with disastrous consequences. ‘The Dream Syndicate’ examines the members of an online forum who have had very similar dreams of unnatural events. This organisation feels underplayed at first, but contact with them can become very personal for the Agents. ‘Agent Renko’—named in a nice nod to the novels by Martin Cruz Smith—is likely to be huge fun for the Handler to roleplay, an individual rather than an organisation, a GRU SV-8 agent who crashes into their lives and seems to be dogging their every move. The fourth possible ally is ‘The Witness Alliance’, another non-profit organisation, but one dedicated to tracking and exposing the activities of hate groups. Again, this organisation has knowledge that will prove useful to the Agents, but like the scenario, ‘Last Things Last’ in Delta Green: Need to Know, this story arc explores the calamitous effect that Delta Green operations have on their agents to the very last, putting the Agents in deadly peril.

Over half of The Labyrinth is dedicated to it quartet of antagonists, and if the allies were interesting enough and potential contact with them could lead to horror and despair, then the author really gets into his stride with this foursome of fear. The quartet starts with ‘New Life Fertility’, a private company that offers an extremely exclusive, one hundred percent successful fertility treatment and which has the means to protect itself and the families it helps—especially the families it helps. This combines modern science with a classic Old One and links back to the Severn Valley to potentially push forward to a ‘cuckoo in the nest’ situation on a scale never before imagined. ‘New Life Fertility’ could easily have been a campaign all by itself, but will likely form a major strand of any campaign run using The Labyrinth. In comparison, ‘The Lonely’ presents not so much a group as a number of individuals who are likely to prove to be irritants, although potentially very deadly irritants. Already isolated and alone, their loneliness is driven unnaturally deeper into misery, grim realisation, and then outright fury at the world. If other Delta Green content treats the Mythos surrounding the Hastaur Mythos and the Yellow King as a meme, here it is a vector that slips unseen through modern communication… Consequently, investigating this is going to be highly challenging. ‘The Sowers’ begins in the Rust Belt, a devout Christian sect with a secret path to absolution and near divinity, that appears to do good and brings its members prosperity and happiness—its male members at least. The entry points are interesting in that they take on a more personal touch in that an Agent could become involved with the sect as a possible path to redemption. The last antagonist is ‘The Prana Sodality’ and is perhaps the most complicated and isolated of the four in the supplement, primarily because it is so deeply tied into both the U.S. military-industrial complex and the history surrounding many of Delta Green’s adversaries. A photograph of a boy with a disturbing tumour in his eye draws the Agents to the town of Stanton, Washington state, one of the most polluted towns in the country and when they arrive, the Agents literally step into a mass shooting. Is this a coincidence? It only gets worse from there…

Physically, The Labyrinth is very well presented, as you would expect for a supplement for Delta Green. However, the artwork will feel familiar from previous Delta Green supplements. Lastly, if there is any issue perhaps with the antagonists, it is that ‘The Prana Sodality’ could benefit from a few more maps since the investigation is primarily based around the one location.

Ultimately, The Labyrinth is a toolkit, whether the Handler uses one of its tools—or organisations—in her campaign or several. Each one of the organisations, whether ally or antagonist, in The Labyrinth stands up on its own and can be used to supplement existing campaigns or even have campaigns built around them, such as ‘New Life Fertility’. Where The Labyrinth comes into its own is a campaign of its own, but in comparison to the classic campaign of Lovecraftian investigative horror, The Labyrinth greatly differs.
Fundamentally, it would not be a linear campaign and it would not be a campaign against one threat, but an interconnected web of allies and adversaries, threats and dangers, that the players and their Agents can navigate in a more open fashion. Although there would be a beginning and an end of sorts, at least in terms of the content presented in the page of The Labyrinth, neither would be obvious and consequently there is no cathartic sense of finality to the events of the campaign—just one aspect of cosmic horror in Delta Green. This is what the author describes as a ‘narrative sandbox’ and it means that a campaign involving The Labyrinth is going to be structured and very different to that run by another Handler. The horror of The Labyrinth is as evil and unpleasant as you would expect, though of course, dispersed far and wide by the ‘narrative sandbox’ nature of the campaign.

The Labyrinth is not ready to run—and that is the point. It is, however, ready for the Handler to prepare and run, to make it her own around the campaign she is already running. The Labyrinth brings a wealth of interconnected depth and detail to Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game, pulling its Agents deeper into an entanglement of the uncanny and the Unnatural, a secret world where the horrifying layers and links never seem to end.

Bastion stands as the world’s largest city, an industrial powerhouse whose factories pour out guns, chemicals, manufactured goods, and even newspapers that ships carry from the city’s wharfs. Citizens flock to the city for work—the factories chew up their employees almost as much as they take them on! Expeditions leave the city travelling far and wide, many returning with tales of places weird, wonderful, and worrisome, often too far to even map given the size of the world. Yet there are wonders and secrets to found closer to home. The Underground lies beneath Bastion, at first the sewers, then tunnels, and caves below, full of long-lost secrets and ancient vaults. Cultists plot the return of their strange masters, unions counter plot even as they try to protect workers’ rights, and the mill bosses squeeze more and more out of there employees heedless of the religious fervour that undo their industrial empire. Scattered and across these cities and the darkness below are the Arcana, devices from ages past that grant fantastic powers, from pieces of jewellery to almost unmoveable statuary. There are men and women who search for these Arcana, knowing they can make a name for themselves, make themselves rich, if they can find the rights ones and find a buyer. They are Explorers.
This is the setting for Into the Odd Remastered, an Old School Renaissance rules light microclone originally published in 2014 that has been beautifully redesigned and re-laid out and published by Free League Publishing following a successful Kickstarter campaign. It promises fast character creation, minimalist rules, strange things to encounter and be found, a complete hexcrawl and dungeon, and quite possibly the most fun set of tables available for any roleplaying game. However, it is very light in terms of setting, combining elements of cosmic horror, heavy industrial squalor, weirdness and wonder in the ruins of the past—above and below ground. Into the Odd Remastered is both a precursor to the author’s Electric Bastionland and an expanded version of the original, primarily in terms of supporting content.

An Explorer—or Player Character—in Into the Odd Remastered is lightly defined. He has three Abilities: Strength, Dexterity, and Willpower, which range in value between three and eighteen. He also a six-sided die’s worth of HP, or Hit Protection, rather than Hit Points, a Starter Package, potentially a Companion, and some silver shillings. To create an Explorer, a player rolls three six-sided dice each for the Abilities and one die for the Hit Protection. Then by cross-referencing the value of the Hit Protection with the Explorer’s highest Ability, he receives a Starter Package. An Explorer with either low Hit Protection or a low Ability will receive a more powerful Starter Package, including an Arcanum, whilst an Explorer with a high Ability or Hit Protection, will receive a more mundane Starter Package. Thus, an Explorer with six Hit Protection and a high Ability of twelve would start play with a Maul, a Dagger, and a length of chain, whereas if the Explorer’s highest Ability is nine and he only has two Hit Protection, he begins play with a Musket, a Sword (d6), a Flashbang, and the ability to ‘Sense nearby Arcana’. The process is incredibly simple and incredibly fast—two minutes if that!

Hattie Tuggery
Strength 8 Dexterity 10 Willpower 15
Hit Protection 3
Starter Package: Club (d6), Ether, Crowbar, Flute

Mechanically, if an Explorer wants to undertake an action, his player rolls a twenty-sided die against the appropriate Ability, aiming to equal to or under to pass. Initiative in combat is handled with a Dexterity save if needed. Combat is equally as simple. A player rolls the die for the weapon used to determine how much might damage be inflicted. The target’s armour is subtracted from this and the remainder is subtracted from first his Hit Protection and then his Strength. This necessitates a Strength Save and the possibility that the Explorer will be unable to act. Should a character lose all of his Strength, he dies. It takes only a Short Rest to recover lost Hit Protection, but a Long Rest lasting a week to recover lost Ability points. Saves against Willpower are used for several things, maintaining morale of course, but also in a pinch, maintaining civil discourse with others, and more interestingly, to manipulate the powers of Arcana.

Arcana are the motivating force of Into the Odd Remastered and are categorised into three types. Base Arcana are ‘Powers You Cannot Understand’, Greater Arcana are ‘Powers You Can Barely Control’, and Legendary Arcana are ‘Powers You Shouldn’t Control’, but any Arcanum does one specific thing and does it well. For example, a Soul Chain is a base Arcana which forces a Dexterity Save on a target lest he loses points of Will and gives away a glimpse of his current desire; the Book of Despair is a Greater Arcana that fills a floor area with tentacles that grab and constrain unless a Strength Save is made; and a Space Cube is a Legendary Arcana which transports the user and a companion to a location they have been to before. Some one hundred or so Arcana are detailed in Into the Odd Remastered, but there is scope for the Referee to create yet more and there is advice in the book on how they woke and should be handled.

Other advice for the Referee covers understanding how the game is played, handling obstacles, tricks, and hazards, monsters and encounters, money and treasure—including options for the Explorers to invest in enterprises and war, and how to award Experience Levels based on Expeditions completed. They are thus awarded on a narrative basis. Beyond Novice, there are only five Experience Levels and each gains an Explorer Increased Hit Protection and the possibility of an increased Ability. Notable of these is that hazards and traps can invariably be spotted unless an Explorer is running, locked doors can always be picked, and so on. Saves or rolls are required in these cases where there is a time factor involved or the course of action an Explorer is about to take might trigger the trap. In effect, this places the agency with the player and his Explorer and takes into account that when exploring, the Explorer is by nature being careful. Several sample hazards are provided as well as sample monsters. This is all accompanied by a lengthy example of play to help both player and Referee get the feel of how Into the Odd Remastered plays.

However, Into the Odd Remastered is not necessarily a forgiving system. Combat in particular, is deadly as every attack succeeds and what matters is the amount of damage rolled. So, hirelings or playing with multiple characters might be an option if a group wants to avoid a total party kill. That said, it does favour the players and their Explorers when it comes to the exploration and the discovery of obstacles and traps. Here in Into the Odd Remastered, the Explorers choose to engage with obstacles and traps and risk the consequences of doing so, rather than having such obstacles and traps sprung upon them as is the norm in other roleplaying games. Nevertheless, the unforgiving nature of its mechanics and play means that Into the Odd Remastered may initially have the feel of a Character Funnel as in Goodman Games’ Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game and Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, with its set-up of multiple Zero Level characters per player.

In terms of setting, Into the Odd Remastered gives its various locations—the city of Bastion, the Underground, Deep Country and other cities, and beyond civilisation to the Golden Lands and Polar Ocean little more description than a paragraph each. In this it does not expand upon what was in the first edition of the roleplaying game, and is in some ways its biggest disappointment. The Referee is definitely left wanting more flavour and detail about Bastion and the wider world. Some of that though, is covered in the ‘Oddpendium’ a set of tables at the rear of the book for name generation, occupations, abilities, manner, connections, and important little life events, all for quick NPC generation. Others generate city locations, routes, locations, weird creatures, cults, borough decisions and the reaction to the mob of this and anything else, whether or not a thing is an arcanum, and more. There are options for different character groups such as Mutants from the Underground and Simple Folk from the Deep Country unused to city ways, and alternative Starter Packages. These table are pointers, elements that the Referee can use to develop the world of Bastion and beyond around the Explorers.

In between the rules and advice for the Referee and the ‘Oddpendium’, Into the Odd Remastered details three locations as play environments. These are the scum-encrusted fishing town of Hopesend Port, the Last Port of the North; a dungeon, The Iron Coral, which lies off the coast off Hopesend Port; and the hexcrawl, The Fallen Marsh, the soggy stretch of coast which lies between them. Now these are presented in the order of The Iron Coral, The Fallen Marsh, and Hopesend Port, which feels counter-intuitive if the trio is run as a campaign, with the Explorers starting out from Hopesend and then travelling through The Fallen Marsh to The Iron Coral. That said, the inclusion of The Iron Coral first essentially means that it is good for getting straight into play as it can be run with very little preparation upon the part of the Referee.

This new edition of Into the Odd expands upon the original dungeon, The Iron Coral, adding depth and detail, but still presented in a succinct series of bullet points. There is plenty of detail packed into this strange, often random complex of rooms. Expanding out from this is The Fallen Marsh and then a point of civilisation, Hopesend Port, providing all together a complete hexcrawl campaign driven by exploration and rumour. As good as this is, it still leaves Bastion itself untapped and unexplored and even with the tools of the ‘Oddpendium’, a great deal of effort upon the part of the Referee will be needed if she is to do something with the greatest city in the world and actually bring it into play.

Physically, Into the Odd Remastered is as lovely a book as you would imagine given that Free League Publishing is releasing it and Johan Nohr—best known as the ‘Artpunk’ designer of Mörk Borg—did the graphic design. The result is a genuine remastering, elegant often subtle, but always hinting at a clash between the baroque and a lost modernity. The writing itself is succinct and always to the point, although that succinctness does not always help the Referee as it should. Primarily this means that as minimalist as Into the Odd Remastered is, it is not really suited to be played or run by anyone without some experience of doing either.

There is an undoubtable elegance to the highly economic combination of Into the Odd Remastered’s minimalism and its new presentation. Both the rules and the setting of Bastion are very light and very much open to interpretation by both players and the Referee, yet arguably, Into the Odd Remastered all but leaves the city itself and much of the setting begging be to be expanded upon and explored. Room perhaps for a city and underground book for the setting of Bastion? In comparison, Electric Bastionland, the sequel to Into the Odd, is far better at its implicit world building. Yet in comparison to other microclones, Into the Odd Remastered does present somewhere to start playing with The Iron Coral and its associated hexcrawl.

Ultimately, Into the Odd Remastered is a lovely re-representation of a world that is accessible and all but instantly playable mechanically, but remains strange and elusive, oddly Dickensian and technologically fantastical, in terms of setting, and that is by design.

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

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

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What is it?The Pitcrawler Quickstart is a quick-start for a fantasy roleplaying game inspired by classic Fighting Fantasy and Lone Wolf solo adventure books, but instead of being a ‘Choose-Your-Own-Adventure’ game, it is designed to be played by two players. One is the Adventurer; the other is the Games Master.
The Pitcrawler Quickstart includes a basic version of the full game, but covers rules of Adventurer creation, an explanation of the rules and the roleplaying game’s implied setting, a table for creating scenario titles as inspiration, and four sample scenarios.
It is a twenty-seven-page, full colour booklet.

It is published by MacGuffin and Company.
How long will it take to play?
Each of the scenarios in the Pitcrawler Quickstart can be played through in a single session.

Who do you play?
One player is the Adventurer, but not a Wizard. The other player is the Games Master.

How is a Player Character defined?
The Player Character has five qualities. These are Face, Feet, Fingers, Fists, and Heart. Each is rated by a die type, from a four-sided die to a twelve-sided die. The die type attached to each quality is determined randomly. He starts play with seven Hit Points, a Background, three areas of Expertise, a Companion, and some equipment. The Backgrounds, which indicate what the Adventurer did before he came a Pitcrawler, include Artist, Burglar, Crop Farmer, Gravedigger, Mayor, and Sailor. Each Background provides two items of equipment and two areas of Expertise, one of which is mandatory, the other the player can choose. The third is determined randomly. The Background also provides some equipment, two other items are determined randomly, and the player choses a weapon.
The Companion assists with particular types of tests and can perform a particular ability once per scenario. For example, the Priest can assist with tests of willpower and pass a Complicated Heart test for the Adventurer once per scenario. The player should name the Companion and explain why the Companion is accompanying the Adventurer.
How do the mechanics work?
To undertake an action, the Adventurer’s player rolls an appropriate quality and aims to equal to or higher than a Difficulty set by the Game Master. The Difficulty ranges from three or Simple to eighteen or Inconceivable. When a quality die is rolled, it can explode, which means that it is possible for the Adventurer to overcome a challenge even if the die type is low. In addition, the difficulty of the test can be lowered one step if the Adventurer has a relevant Expertise, a Useful item, or is Assisted by a Companion or NPC willing to help.
Failure can lead to loss of Hit Points and/or a consequence which will send the scenario in a different direction. A critical success grants the Adventurer an extra reward.

If failure is likely, the Adventurer can instead ‘Put his heart Into It’ and his player roll the Heart quality die and add it to the total. If the roll is a failure, it is counted as a critical failure.
One clever mechanic is that of ‘Thumbs’, which apes the keeping of the thumb on a previous page in a solo adventure book as the player explores an option on another. In effect, this allows the player to turn back the clock in the scenario to a reset point and there make a different choice. A player can have up to five Thumbs depending upon the difficulty of the play.

In addition, the Game Master is advised to present actual physical or mental puzzles that the player as the Adventurer must solve at the table.
How does combat work?
Combat uses the same mechanics. Most weapons use the Fists quality to roll attacks, except where greater finesse is needed, in which case it is Feet instead. Fingers is used for missile attacks. If the quality roll is successful, the Adventurer inflicts a point of damage, more if it is a critical success. Failures mean that the Adventurer suffers damage. Enemies typically have one Hit Point each, so will be killed on a successful attack. Critical damage is inflicted against multiple opponents. 
How does magic work?
The Adventurer cannot cast magic in Pitcrawler. It is entirely the province of Wizards and their potentially world changing powers. The Adventurer can use arcane items.
What do you play?
There is no given world or world lore in the Pitcrawler Quickstart. It is presumed to be over-the-top grim fantasy, but one which eschews ‘Old School’ elements with its traditional treatment of females and races, alignments, and its play styles. It instead replaces these with Wizards who are powerful magicians capable of changing the world around them, not always to the benefit of the inhabitants. Wizards are also very rich and their tombs are often worth plundering. Wizards are sufficiently powerful that as a group they could destroy a minor god and even face down a major one!
The Pitcrawler Quickstart includes four sample scenarios. These include a raid on a tomb, an attempt to escape a murder-dungeon, a retrieval mission to recover a clockwork device from a swamp, and a retrieval mission on an island surrounded by a rainbow sea with the different colours having different magical effects.
Is there anything missing?
The Pitcrawler Quickstart could have done with more advice for the Game Master on running the individual scenarios and presenting the content to the player as well as mixing in the puzzles and traps, and giving the player meaningful choices.
Is it easy to prepare?
The rules are easy to grasp, but the preparation required by the Game Master could have been supported better.
Is it worth it?
The Pitcrawler Quickstart provides plenty of content to play with and it does something that few roleplaying games do and that is present a roleplaying game for one-on-one play. It is underwritten in terms of support for the Game Master, who will need to work a bit harder to prepare it for her player.
Where can you get it?
The Pitcrawler Quickstart is available here.

Dungeon Crawl Classics Horror #8: Night of the Bog Beast is a scenario for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game, the Dungeons & Dragons-style retroclone inspired by ‘Appendix N’ of the Dungeon Master’s Guide for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition. Published by Goodman Games, scenarios for Dungeon Crawl Classics tend be darker, gimmer, and even pulpier than traditional Dungeons & Dragons scenarios, even veering close to the Swords & Sorcery subgenre. One of the signature features of Dungeon Crawl Classics and its post-apocalyptic counterpart, Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic, is the ‘Character Funnel’. This is a scenario specifically designed for Zero Level Player Characters in which initially, a player is expected to roll up three or four Level Zero characters and have them play through a generally nasty, deadly adventure, which surviving will prove a challenge. Those that do survive receive enough Experience Points to advance to First Level and gain all of the advantages of their Class. Dungeon Crawl Classics Horror #8: Night of the Bog Beast is not such a scenario, but is instead designed for use with Second Level Player Characters.

Dungeon Crawl Classics Horror #8: Night of the Bog Beast not only draws from the ‘Appendix N’ of the Dungeon Master’s Guide for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition, for its inspiration, but also of the American Gothic, the fear of the swamp with its mud and mud, leeches and slugs, DC’s Swamp Thing and Marvel’s Man-Thing comic books, the ‘back woods’ nature of the bayou, zombies and possession, gods of the ‘Old Country’, and just a tinge of the Mythos. The result is a muddy, marsh, muck-strewn mish-mash of pulp horror that is likely going to the players off ever going near swamp ever again, let alone their characters. Designed for Second Level Player Characters, this is a tough adventure and if they are not careful, the Player Characters will get killed. There are some nasty monsters and encounters in this adventure, let alone the environment.

Dungeon Crawl Classics Horror #8: Night of the Bog Beast is a hexcrawl—actually within a hex. That hex depicts part of the Twilight Marsh through which the Player Characters are travelling when they stop at the riverside village of Goz-Blight. Here several families of subsistence farmers, fishermen, and hunters scratch out a living, and they will make the Player Characters welcome hoping that they will help them out with the village’s situation. Goz-Blight was attacked the night before by some strange plant-like figures which shambled out of the swamp and abducted one of the villagers, something that has never happened before. It is not the first time that one of the villagers disappeared—a little girl disappeared a few weeks before, but she was found fortunately, but they fear that it will happen again. Of course, it does, but this time the Player Characters are on hand to stop the abduction attempt and face down the marshland monsters! Hopefully, this combined with the folktales and legends of the swamp, will be enough to intrigue the players and their characters to want to investigate.

Forearmed with the knowledge gained from the villagers of Goz-Blight the Player Characters punt themselves out into Twilight Swamp where the bulk of the adventure takes place. Across the giant hex the author has scattered some classic swam-life encounters, all presented for use with the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. There are pools of leeches, floating logs which turn out to be alligators—or rather Devilgators here, a cabin hoisted aloft by the trees (or is that bird’s legs?) that is home to a witch, a mouldering mansion ready to slip into the marsh, an overgrown cemetery, and more. For the most part, the monsters are there to harass the Player Characters and the monsters and NPCs who can speak, to be interacted with in order to gain allies, or least some clues towards discovering who or what is behind the attacks by the plant-like swamp figures.

Physically, Dungeon Crawl Classics Horror #8: Night of the Bog Beast is short, but well presented. The artwork is decent and the cartography clear, though the handouts are perhaps a bit plain.

There one or two issues that the Judge will need to take account of when preparing Dungeon Crawl Classics Horror #8: Night of the Bog Beast. The hexcrawl has a number of repeated encounters, some of which could and should have been different. The Judge may want to adjust those as necessary. More problematic is the set-up, which could have more direct in presenting what the primary NPCs know to the Player Characters and so making the situation more obvious and thus provide them with a stronger reason to get involved. The information is all there, but the Judge will need to put more effort into preparing this for when she roleplays the NPCs who will provide it to the Player Characters. The other aspect of the scenario the Judge will want to look at is if it will be too tough an adventure for Second Level Player Characters.

Dungeon Crawl Classics Horror #8: Night of the Bog Beast is a leech-infested, muck-strewn, hammy horror scenario which not only wears its many influences on its very swamp sleeve, but serves them up in a gloopy gumbo of American Gothic.

The social deduction game drawn from the parlour game, Murder in the Dark and the classic Russian game, Mafia, has become a fixed staple and genre of the board gaming hobby. This type of game is typically played between two teams, one hidden, one not. The smaller hidden team consist of the murderers or the traitors, whilst the larger team—amongst which the smaller team hides—consist of their victims, the ones they are going to betray or murder. It is up to the larger team to identify the murderers or traitors, as the latter try to keep their identities hidden whilst also undermining or murdering the members of the larger group. The genre reached its peak with the release in 2010 of Indie Boards and Cards’ The Resistance: A Game of Secret Identities, Deduction, and Deception, and Breaking Games’ Secret Hitler in 2016. Although, there were many releases in the genre, it is not as popular as it once was, however, this does not mean that the occasional entry in the genre is being released, such as Dune: Betrayal from Gale Force Nine.

Dune: Betrayal is a social deduction game based on the Dune series of novels by Frank Herbert and the more recent film directed by Denis Villeneuve. Both universe and story of Dune are absolutely perfect for social deduction, especially one involving betrayal as the main characters in the book are betrayed from within and all but destroyed by a rival noble house. Designed for between four and eight players, aged fourteen and up, Dune: Betrayal casts the players as Nobles and Fighters of honourable House Atreides and heartless House Harkonnen. House Atreides has been awarded the fiefdom of Arrakis by the Emperor, but House Harkonnen, in connivance with the Emperor, is planning to retake and destroy House Atreides in the process. Dune: Betrayal is game of secret identities in which House Harkonnen is planning to attack House Atreides. If House Harkonnen can identify the members of House Atreides, it will greatly help in its attack and so win the game for the House Harkonnen team, but if House Atreides can identify the members of House Harkonnen, it will greatly aid in its defence and so win the game for the House Atreides team.

The game consists of a small Scoring Board, which tracks both the seesaw movement of the scoring to House Harkonnen and back again to House Atreides, and so on, five different sets of Cards, and nine tokens. The different sets of Cards consist of eight Identity Cards (four Atreides and four Harkonnen), twenty-four 24 Trait Cards (eight Atreides, eight Harkonnen, and eight Fighter), sixteen Target Cards (eight Attack and eight Defend), thirty Action Cards, and eight Reference Cards. Each Identity Card gives the character’s name, rank—noble or fighter, three scoring Sigils, and Special Attribute. The Sigils are Atreides, Harkonnen, All Nobles, All Fighters, and All Players. The core characters for the four-player game are Baron Harkonnen (Harkonnen Noble), Trooper (Harkonnen Fighter), Duke Leto Atreides (Atreides Noble), and Duncan Idaho (Atreides Fighter). Expanding the game from five to eight players adds more Nobles and Fighters from each side, as well as more characters from Dune.

The Trait Cards are marked Atreides, Harkonnen, or Fighter. Each player will have two in play, matching the identity of his character. Thus, Duke Leto Atreides will have the Atreides and Noble Trait Cards, whereas the Harkonnen Fighter has the Harkonnen and Fighter trait Cards. The Attack and Defend are used to target another player. Ideally, Attack Cards should be played on enemies as this will lose a player points. The Action Cards vary in effect, but all are inspired by Dune and illustrated with stills from the film. Each is marked with a Sigil matching those on the Identity Cards— Atreides, Harkonnen, All Nobles, All Fighters, and All Players. Action Cards can be played immediately, as interrupts against other Action Card, and in the first, second, or either of the two Targeting rounds. For example, the ‘Ornithopter Escape’ Card is marked with an All Fighters Sigil and acts as an interrupt to prevent another player targeting you, forcing him to either target another player or disCard the Action Card played. The ‘Harkonnen Probe Ship’ Card has the Harkonnen Sigil and enables the player to view another player’s Trait Card. ‘Mind Breaker’ has the Atreides Sigil and enables a player to view another player’s Trait if it is Shielded. Any player can draw and use an Action Card, but if the Sigil on the Action Card matches a Sigil on either of a player’s Trait Cards, they will score him points at the end of the game. However, if a player picks Action Cards based on Sigil too explicitly, then that may possibly indicate his Trait Cards and thus his identity for the other players.

At the beginning of the game, each player receives an Identity Card and Trait Cards for the Identity. These are placed face down. The identity is kept secret. Three Action Cards are drawn and placed in the middle of the table. As is standard in social deduction games, some information is initially revealed to the players, or in this case, Baron Harkonnen, who starts the game knowing who the Harkonnen Fighters are and thus who the Atreides characters are—but not which of them is the Noble or the Fighter.

Dune: Betrayal is played out in six rounds—three Action rounds, two Targeting rounds, and one Battle round. In the Action rounds, the players take it in turns selecting and playing Action Cards. The aim here is play them on the Traits of the other players and in the process reveal them, thus giving clues as to a player’s Identity. Once one player has learned a player’s Trait, that Trait Card is turned sideways to indicate that it is Shielded. A Shielded Trait can only be viewed by the ‘Mind Breaker’ Action Card. Obviously, a player will be able to learn whether the targeted player is a Fighter or a Noble, or an Atreides or Harkonnen. In addition, certain Action Cards, ‘Atreides Sigil’ and ‘Master of Assassins’, enable a player to target rival players with two types of tokens—Atreides Sigil and Assassin Tokens. Atreides Sigil Token are played on your house to protect it, Assassin Tokens on a rival player to attack it. Points scored at the end of the game for playing the Tokens varies and depends upon whether the player is Harkonnen or Atreides.

In the two Targeting rounds, players take it in turns to play their Attack and Defend cards. These are placed face down on a rival player’s Identity Card. The aim here is for the player to attack his enemies as they will lose points—especially Nobles, and Atreides Nobles in particular. In the Battle round, Identities are revealed and points are scored for Attack and Defend Cards, Tokens, and Action Cards. The team with the greatest number of points wins.

Physically, Dune: Betrayal is reasonably well presented. The rules are clearly written with explanations of how the game should be played and examples of the scoring system at the end of the game. The latter is needed as it is the most complex part of the game. Good use is made of illustrations from the film to match the Action Cards and give Dune: Betrayal much of its flavour and feel. Even then that flavour and feel is not very much. The card stock is slightly thin and may not stand up to too much handling without card sleeves.

Throughout the rules for Dune: Betrayal there are strategy notes, which primarily encourage the players to discuss with each other what they will have discovered, not necessarily explicitly or even truthfully! Thus they can lie. Plus, of course, the players do need to keep an eye on what their rivals are doing as that will potentially give them clues too. However, the game and its play feels underwhelming, especially in relation to Dune as a setting, with the keeping of Identities secret meaning that the players can only reference the characters in the film in an oblique way rather than fully roleplaying them. A much longer, and more detailed game would allow for that, most obviously with the classic Dune board game published in by Avalon Hill in 1979 and again by Gale Force Nine in 2019. Nor do any of the characters have any real special abilities that might have again added some flavour or feel to the game. Although play is quick, it does not feel it, and the play and thus the social interaction of the game is not working with very much—the Traits and the Action Cards played—in an attempt to reveal very little. So there is little for the players to build on.

There is still scope for a good social deductive game based on Dune, but unfortunately, Dune: Betrayal is not it. It is not interesting enough and it does not make interesting use of the Dune franchise. There are still good social deductive games available—the aforementioned The Resistance and Killing Hitler—are excellent examples and still very playable. There is even another game from Indie Boards and Cards, Coup, published in 2012, which might better have suited the Dune universe, certainly its artwork was reminiscent of Dune as a setting. Dune: Betrayal is at best, a game for the Dune fan to try, but even then, they should be looking at the more recent reprint of Dune and then Dune: Imperium, for a better, more thematic and interesting play experience.

Between October 2003 and October 2013, Chaosium, Inc. published a series of books for Call of Cthulhu under the Miskatonic University Library Association brand. Whether a sourcebook, scenario, anthology, or campaign, each was a showcase for their authors—amateur rather than professional, but fans of Call of Cthulhu nonetheless—to put forward their ideas and share with others. The programme was notable for having launched the writing careers of several authors, but for every Cthulhu Invictus, The Pastores, Primal State, Ripples from Carcosa, and Halloween Horror, there was Five Go Mad in Egypt, Return of the Ripper, Rise of the Dead, Rise of the Dead II: The Raid, and more...

The Miskatonic University Library Association brand is no more, alas, but what we have in its stead is the Miskatonic Repository, based on the same format as the DM’s Guild for Dungeons & Dragons. 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: Stolen GriefPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Stuart McNair

Setting: 1920s North of England
Product: ScenarioWhat You Get: Forty page, 46.38 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: There are blacker hearts than those that are grievingPlot Hook: A forced stop reveals a village in sadness behind which hides ancient horror
Plot Support: Staging advice, six pre-generated Investigators, six NPCs, eight handouts, three maps, one Mythos spell, and four Mythos monsters.Production Values: Decent.
Pros# Bucolic horror one-shot# Enjoyably vile villain# Potential side adventure for a campaign# Not Omar Shakti’s cat, but…# Easily adapted to Cthulhu by Gaslight# Ailurophobia# Wiccaphobia# Speluncaphobia# Dendrophobia
Cons# Needs an edit# Slightly underpowered hook to motivate the Investigators to act# No area map# No NPC portraits for the players
Conclusion# Decently described English village forms the setting for a horribly bucolic scenario in which grief is co-opted by greed and desperation
# Solid scenario slightly undone by underpowered Investigator motivation in the second act

Between October 2003 and October 2013, Chaosium, Inc. published a series of books for Call of Cthulhu under the Miskatonic University Library Association brand. Whether a sourcebook, scenario, anthology, or campaign, each was a showcase for their authors—amateur rather than professional, but fans of Call of Cthulhu nonetheless—to put forward their ideas and share with others. The programme was notable for having launched the writing careers of several authors, but for every Cthulhu Invictus, The Pastores, Primal State, Ripples from Carcosa, and Halloween Horror, there was Five Go Mad in Egypt, Return of the Ripper, Rise of the Dead, Rise of the Dead II: The Raid, and more... The Miskatonic University Library Association brand is no more, alas, but what we have in its stead is the Miskatonic Repository, based on the same format as the DM’s Guild for Dungeons & Dragons. 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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Hometown Horrors, Volume 1: A Collection of Unique Locationsfor Call of Cthulhu is an interesting attempt to do something different for the Miskatonic Repository, the community content programme for Chaosium’ Inc.’s Callof Cthulhu, Seventh Edition. The majority of the releases on the Miskatonic Repository have consisted of scenarios, many of them horror one-shots, typically set in the roleplaying game’s default period of the Jazz Age  or in the here and now of the modern day. Behind its superb subversion of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, some fifteen contributors to the Miskatonic Repository take us on a visit to their hometowns and each give a little bit of their histories, their oddities, their personalities, and more. These take the reader from east to west from Martha’s Vineyard on Cape Cod on the Atlantic Coast to Decatur, Tennessee, and from north to south, from across the border in Montreal, Canada to across the Gulf of Mexico, and the capital of Cuba, Havana. Presented as reports of some redacted team from the Archives and Research Division of the US Department of Defense, the anthology takes the reader to places both familiar and unfamiliar and puts some of their hometown’s secrets on show, all ready for the Keeper t o develop, whether she wants a mystery that can intrigue her players and their Investigators as they pass through or a tale of horror that will entice them to visit the towns properly.

Hometown Horrors, Volume 1: A Collection of Unique Locations opens with a visit to the Jersey Shore, taking the reader along the boardwalk of Atlantic City to the infamous sideshow display called the ‘Infantorium’ which puts premature babies on show and then off the coast to suffer a rash of sharks (or is that something bigger?) or deal with some of the strange dealers of prohibition booze on Rum Row. In land, of course, the Pine Barrens are dark and inhospitable, its inhabitants unfriendly to outsiders. Then of course, there is the danger of the Jersey Devil—whatever that is… There is no explanation or indeed stats for William McCoy, this entry’s notable NPC, a real-life figure who built yachts that were much sought after by the gin runners. Locust Valley, New York is popular with the wealthy, and if invited perhaps an Investigator might suffer a strange experience at a séance or stay at the hotel run by ‘The Largest Man in America’, a friendly ready to spill the gossip—with a drink or two inside him. Binghamton, New York is the hometown of Rod Serling as well as New York State Inebriate Asylum which would later become a mental asylum and the Endicott Johnson Shoe Company which brought prosperity to the town as well as the carousels it is also famous for! Hometown Horrors, Volume 1: A Collection of Unique Locations proceeds like this through location after location, often offering interesting snippets, such as ‘The Blue Eyed Six’, the half dozen took out insurance on a neighbour in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and conspired to kill him when he did not die soon enough and it is reported that pairs of blue eyes have been seen floating near where the victim was buried. Just what are the eyes? Plus of course, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania is home to Three Mile Island, the site of the nuclear power station which infamously suffered a partial meltdown in 1979 and shutdown. What if the sensors indicate that it has started again? There are lots of these little snippets throughout the descriptions of Hometown Horrors, Volume 1: A Collection of Unique Locations.

Unfortunately, Hometown Horrors, Volume 1: A Collection of Unique Locations is just not enough by any measure. Every entry for every town or city is too short. A single page is not enough to cover a town’s geography and history, let alone its legends or folklore. Add in a notable personality, rumours, or a story hook and the treatment of too many of these aspects for each of the locations amounts to a paragraph. It is simply not enough information for the Keeper to use without doing a lot of further research and again, in just too many cases, the Keeper could have discovered what is in these pages by conducting her own research. It does not help that once past the history of each of these locations, the entries are inconsistent. All include one or more rumours, but some just that, and some notable NPCs or scenario hooks. Plus the rumours, the scenario hooks, and the notable NPCs vary in period between the seventh century, the Purple Age, the Jazz Age, the Modern Day, and in between, so whilst Hometown Horrors, Volume 1: A Collection of Unique Locations covers a lot of historical ground, it can never quite settle in one period long enough to be of use. The rumours, the notable NPCs, the hooks, and so on, are succinctly described at best.

Consequently, the brevity of the writing and the constraints of space leave many of the authors’ ideas as no more than hints or objects of interest rather than something that is potentially gameable. On almost every page, the reader is left to respond with, “Yes, and…?”, and wonder what ideas the authors had in mind. There is also relatively little attempt to connect any of the mysteries or oddities with the Mythos, but then the authors have almost no space to do that, just as they no space to present the folkloric or even just local horror that they hint at again and again. One more page for every entry would be a good start, but two or three extra pages of developed content would add depth and detail, as well as room for gameable content.

Physically, Hometown Horrors, Volume 1: A Collection of Unique Locations is very nicely presented, with lots of period photographs and a clean layout. It does need a strong edit in places.

Hometown Horrors, Volume 1: A Collection of Unique Locations is an intriguing introduction to a tome of local, often small town, mysteries and rumours and folklore that will provide the Keeper with an array of scenario hooks and ideas once it is finished. Until that happens, Hometown Horrors, Volume 1: A Collection of Unique Locations is a great concept that promises much, but offers only a set of place and placeholder pitches for the bigger, better, and more beguiling book it could have been.

The world has not so much died as moved on. Landscapes seem to stretch on and on, pockmarked by settlements and the ruins of ages past, as strange machinery rumbles below seemingly straining to keep the sky and the ground moving like they did the day before. Old technology, much of it advanced by the standards of then and now, rusts and moulders where it sits; strange creatures—some said to have been things of legend and myth, lurk, ready to pounce and rend the unwary; and magic weaves a cunning attraction for the studious and the curious, the ambitious and the foolish, its knowledge perhaps lost on this world, but not the next. Figures are seen to stalk this world, sometimes alone, sometimes in the company of beast which seems to understand their every action and word, and never leave their side, sometimes together in brotherly orders, but all wielding the gun, a deadly artefact that they use to kill. To kill the bandit, the robber, the cheat, and the murder, the apostate of their order, and in doing so restore order of society and ensure the men and women of this time can live free of tyranny and banditry. Then they are gone. Perhaps they left with the caravan as a guard, maybe they simply moved on to the next settlement, or they just found the Slip Door they were looking and their Guns knows the location of and stepped through, not to the next settlement, though there is always one, but the next world. This is the life of the Gunslinger, wielder of the legendary gun across the Drifted World and their credo is “We deal in lead.”

We Deal In Lead: A Weird West Wanders Game is an Old School Renaissance-style roleplaying published by By Odin’s Beard. It is set in in the post-apocalyptic dark and weird west of the Drifted World that can step sideways into other worlds and genres and back again as legendary Gunslingers stalk the land, perhaps bringing order to the remnants of society, and then moving on to fulfil quests of their own. Perhaps to kill the murder of their order’s elder, retrieve their lost elder’s guns and take up her mantle, restore their honour, or even slay the demon within. It combines a stripped-down presentation with the mechanics inspired by Cairn, Into the Odd, and Knave and presents the tools and tables to create wildernesses, worlds, and excursions, whether the Warden—as the Game Master is called—is running for a single player, a group, or a player is playing it as a journaling game and thus solo. As a setting and roleplaying game, 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.

We Deal In Lead begins with advice for Warden and player alike. It does this as a series of principles presented as bullet points. For the Warden these include design philosophy—neutrality of the role, that the roleplaying game is Classless, death is always a possibility, the players should always be presented with clear choices, and the players share objectives, and so on, as well as the nature of adventures, content and safety tools, how to handle information, difficulty, narrative focus, and preparation, and present danger, treasure, and choice. For the player, the principles advise agency, teamwork, exploration, talking, caution, planning, and ambition, and if one path leads to defeat, then they should look for an alternative path. For the most part, these will be familiar to adherents of the Old School Renaissance, but are not elucidated upon, but rather kept short and to the point. The same is done when describing the Drifted World, a set of principles that are to the point rather than providing any great detail. On the plus side this means that there are going to be basic elements which will be the same from one Warden’s game of We Deal In Lead to another because the principles are presented in a direct and accessible fashion, whilst leaving plenty of scope for the Warden to develop the details. On the downside, this can leave the Warden with more effort required to prepare and run a game, although the book includes numerous tables designed to help with that. Overall, the sparse nature of these sets of principles reflects the open nature of We Deal In Lead’s Drifted World.

A Gunslinger in We Deal In Lead has three Abilities—Strength, Dexterity, and Heart, ranging in value between three and eighteen. Of the three abilities, Strength and Dexterity are obvious in their use, whilst Heart is used for social interaction, carrying out rituals, and in Gunslinger duels. Grit represents his ability to endure and continue rather than health, plus various physical and mental traits and some equipment. He owns a Gun, a firearm out of antiquity with inlaid stock and engraving. He may also be a member of an order of Gunslingers, led by an Errant. This might be a Player Character or an NPC. To create a Gunslinger in We Deal In Lead, a player chooses or rolls on the tables for name, surname, and background, plus any extra traits, and then three six-sided dice for the Gunslinger’s abilities, followed by two six-sided dice for his Grit. He selects or rolls for the details of his gun and his hat, and then some equipment. The Gunslinger is ready to play.

Maggie Chambers
Age: 38
TRAITS
Background: Bandit Physique: Short Skin: Pockmarked Hair: Braided Face: Sunken Eyes: Distant Speech: Squeaky Clothing: Colourful
Virtue: Tolerant Vice: Cold Reputation: Driven Misfortune: Heartbroken
Strength 13
Dexterity 16
Heart 15
Grit 9

EQUIPMENT
Three days’ rations, torch, 12 lead, Rifle with ironwood grip and hawk engraving, galloner hat

Mechanically, We Deal In Lead is straightforward. When a player wants his Gunslinger to act, he rolls a save versus either Strength, Dexterity, or Heart, needing to roll equal to or lower than the value. A one always succeeds and a twenty always fails. Standard rules are used for advantage and disadvantage. Armour provides some Defence, but only against mundane attacks, not against bullets. Damage is inflicted directly on Grit, then Strength, which can inflict critical damage. When Strength is reduced to zero a Gunslinger is dead. Critical damage necessitates checking on the Scars Table, which depending on the damage suffered, can leave the Gunslinger with concussion, bloodied, touched (and aware of the location of the next Slip Door), or even dead. Gunfire is resolved not through a Save versus an ability, but a roll of two six-sided dice on the ‘Shoot Table’ which might mean maximum damage, a hit or a graze, a miss, or a mishap. It is thus random, but because the gun of the Gunslinger is an artefact or relic gun, it grants certain advantages, including Steel Resolve, in which the Gunslinger draws resolve from his weapon to restore Grit and special attacks. These differ by weapon. Thus, there is ‘Fan the Hammer’ for the six shooter and ‘Give It Both Barrels’ for the shotgun. If a Gunsmith and a forge can be found, a Gunslinger can have his Gun upgraded, although the price is high.

Duels—and specifically duels against other Gunslingers—are even deadlier as you expect. Contests are required to determine who fires first and hitting an opposing duellist necessitates a save versus Heart. Damage is deducted directly from a Duellist’s Strength rather than Grit. Combat can be deadly, especially duels, and opponents will often flee Gunslingers, their morale broken. Gunslingers themselves can also be affected by the loss of morale, though usually only when they lose their Guns or their Errant is killed. Then they are broken.

Beyond the core rules and combat, We Deal In Lead provides for magic and companion beasts. The latter can bond with a Gunslinger and so become a Gunslinger themselves—bar the Gun, of course, a loyal companion who can help a Gunslinger on his quest. The former mostly involves rituals, often cast by groups. No magic itself is described, but rather the rules suggest that it be rare, knowledge of it having been mostly lost, and not without its cost. Unless presented with the means and motive to cast magic, it is likely to remain a narrative aspect of a campaign’s villain and thus the province of the Warden. Further rules cover wilderness exploration, of which there is a lot in the roleplaying game, so turning parts of its play into a hexcrawl, and traversing to other worlds, primarily through Slip Doors. There are threats and legends that stalk the in-between spaces, but a Gunslinger’s Gun never stops working—though he may need to find a world’s alternative to lead. The wilderness rules are supported by a table of wilderness encounter hooks and a lengthier and more detailed set of tables to create excursions, essentially missions on the other side of Slip Doors on other worlds. Both are designed to work with the solo or journaling rules that allow a single player to stalk the Drifted World via his Gunslinger, including a flow chart to track his progress. In addition, the bestiary in the appendix provides nearly forty monsters to face along the way. Some feel drawn straight of Dungeons & Dragons, some have a cryptological bent to them, whilst others like the Mayhem Beast, Serfbot, Skinshift, Ursborg, and Drifted Third are native to the setting. Lastly, in the scenario, ‘Swampwater Shootout’, the Gunslingers go after the turncoat who killed the Errant of their Order. It is a fairly short affair, designed to introduce the game and its mechanics, and should provide a session’s worth of action.

Physically, We Deal In Lead is well presented. For the most part the book is done in cream, but the thick border of every page is colour coded according to the chapter and its subject matter. This makes finding things in the book that little bit easier. The rules are all very clearly presented and surprisingly, for a book of its length, supported by proper examples both of character creation and combat. The latter is quite lengthy, taking up two whole pages and also serving as an example of play.

If there is an issue with We Deal In Lead it is in its openness and often its sense of the ineffable and the beyond. It leaves a very great deal for the Warden to fill in and develop, certainly in terms of anything akin to a campaign or long-term play. For some Wardens this will not be an issue, but for others, it may be the case. By comparison, the short term is very well supported with encounters and excursion ideas. This does though mean that there is a flexibility to We Deal In Lead, the Warden being free to run it in the slightly done setting as presented, create her own endless prairie, or even switch genres to a standard Western.

We Deal In Lead: A Weird West Wanders Game takes the Old School Renaissance and the Wild West to an empty, endless frontier, its sparseness and openness often matched by the look of the book. Whilst the origins of We Deal In Lead: A Weird West Wanders Game may lie in micro-clones such as Cairn and Knave, the designers do an excellent job of building upon them to present something new, in a different genre with the sense of a world that really has drifted on.

It starts with a briefing in Edinburgh. The Caledonian Spy Group (CSG) of Scotland assigns a team of agents to investigate US Senator Jamal Campbell. The senator is ambitious and is on the campaign trail as part of his bid to be elected President of the United States, making large expenditures as part of the process. However, not all of the donations to his campaign appear to be legitimate, one appearing to be far more generous than its stated source would normally donate. The CSG wants to examine Senator Campell’s private financial records, verify the source of the donation, and obtain proof of that source. If the source of the donation and the senator’s finances can be proven to be legitimate, then there is no problem. If however, the source of the donation and his finances prove to be illegitimate, then there is possibility that the next President of the United States will have been corrupted and can be again. The Caledonian Spy Group want to prevent this from happening. The mission will take the agents to Hollywood where they will have to infiltrate a film studio followed by a mansion in the Hollywood hills at the height of a party, before breaking into the headquarters of a petrochemical company.

This is the set-up for The Spy Game: Mission Booklet 2 – Fuelish Endeavour, a mission or short scenario for The Spy Game: A Roleplaying Game of Action & Espionage. Published by Black Cat Gaming, this is the roleplaying game of cinematic Spy-Fi action set in the immediate future chases, subterfuge, high-tech equipment, and more, using the mechanics of Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, but eschewing some of the social attitudes and mores of the genre. The Spy Game: Mission Booklet 2 – Fuelish Endeavour comes with everything that the Game Master needs to run the scenario—plot, NPCs, floor plans, details of the equipment the Player Character agents will be issued with, staging advice, and suggestions as what happens the SOUL agents succeed at certain points rather than the Player Characters.

The Spy Game: Mission Booklet 2 – Fuelish Endeavour is easy to add to a campaign. Unlike the first scenario for the roleplaying game, The Spy Game: Mission Booklet 1 – Deadly Data, this is very much a standard sort of mission rather than one which can be dropped into a campaign between other missions. It emphasises infiltration, investigation, surveillance, counter-surveillance, electronics, and computer use as opposed to combat, although there is opportunity for that during the scenario. Designed for Player Characters of Fourth and Fifth Levels, in terms of character types, Classes from The Spy Game such as Face, Hacker, Infiltrator, and Technician will probably have lots of moments to shine in the scenario, but a Hacker and a Face will definitely be needed. Overall though, the scenario places a strong emphasis on roleplaying.

The nature of its plot and set-up means that The Spy Game: Mission Booklet 2 – Fuelish Endeavour is not as flexible as The Spy Game: Mission Booklet 1 – Deadly Data. The involvement of a US Senator, Hollywood, and the race for the Presidency all suggest that the scenario be run in a US election year, so 2024, 2028, 2032, and so on. That said, it could be adjusted to any country which is a republic and has film studios. For example, France and India would work just as well with some effort upon the part of the Game Master.  However, elements such as the agency that the Player Characters are agents of—here the entertainingly post BREXIT, post-Scottish Independence Caledonian Spy Group—can easily be changed, as the enemy organisations, and this is where the scenario is easiest to adapt to the Game Master’s campaign.

The Spy Game: Mission Booklet 2 – Fuelish Endeavour is divided into three acts, one act for each of the infiltrations—the Hollywood film lot, the Hollywood mansion, and the floors of the corporation. Each is accorded a map, plus various technical details which can often be extracted and sued elsewhere. These include an Espionage R.V., security cameras, non-lethal rounds, and the stats for various NPCs. The floorplans for the three locations are slightly too small small to be read with any ease and perhaps a little plain. Another issue is that none of the NPCs are illustrated, so ideally the Game Master should find and provide suitable images as part of her preparation.

Physically, The Spy Game: Mission Booklet 2 – Fuelish Endeavour is clean and tidy, and easy to read. Bar the front cover, it is not illustrated, but the scenario is short and boxes of supplementary text do break up the main text. The scenario comes with three sets of floorplans. Another issue with the scenario is that it is printed without a card cover, so although printed on good paper, it is not as sturdy as it could be.

The Spy Game: Mission Booklet 2 – Fuelish Endeavour is no shorter than the previous, The Spy Game: Mission Booklet 1 – Deadly Data, but it is much more complex and detailed, with very much less of an emphasis on action and combat. Its greater detail means that it needs careful preparation, but once done what The Spy Game: Mission Booklet 2 – Fuelish Endeavour offers is an excellent investigation and infiltration mission that encourages plenty of roleplaying too as the Player Characters go undercover again and again..

Between October 2003 and October 2013, Chaosium, Inc. published a series of books for Call of Cthulhu under the Miskatonic University Library Association brand. Whether a sourcebook, scenario, anthology, or campaign, each was a showcase for their authors—amateur rather than professional, but fans of Call of Cthulhu nonetheless—to put forward their ideas and share with others. The programme was notable for having launched the writing careers of several authors, but for every Cthulhu Invictus, The Pastores, Primal State, Ripples from Carcosa, and Halloween Horror, there was Five Go Mad in Egypt, Return of the Ripper, Rise of the Dead, Rise of the Dead II: The Raid, and more...

The Miskatonic University Library Association brand is no more, alas, but what we have in its stead is the Miskatonic Repository, based on the same format as the DM’s Guild for Dungeons & Dragons. It is thus, “...a new way for creators to publish and distribute their own original Call of Cthulhu content including scenarios, settings, spells and more…” To support the endeavours of their creators, Chaosium has provided templates and art packs, both free to use, so that the resulting releases can look and feel as professional as possible. To support the efforts of these contributors, Miskatonic Monday is an occasional series of reviews which will in turn examine an item drawn from the depths of the Miskatonic Repository.

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Name: The Souls of BriarcroftPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Joshua Callanta

Setting: Cthulhu by Gaslight Black Country
Product: ScenarioWhat You Get: Thirty-one page, 8.89 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Black seeds in the Black CountryPlot Hook: Not yet All Souls’ Day, but souls may be lost by the remembrance…
Plot Support: Staging advice, nine NPCs, ten handouts, nine maps, and two Mythos monsters.Production Values: Vibrant.
Pros# Halloween horror# Bucolic horror one-shot# Seeds of destruction threaten to undo Allhallowtide# Can be adapted to other rural times and settings# Horrifying transformation of traditional Halloween rituals# Pleasing sense of village ecumenical matters# Malusdomesticaphobia# Trypophobia# Dendrophobia
Cons# Long set-up before the Investigators can act# No village map# No NPC portraits
Conclusion# Under-powered player agency and long set-up means the horror takes a while to strike in this tale of ecumenical undoings# Parish life is threatened in this bucolically transformative horror one-shot

Much like the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, the Jonstown Compendium is a curated platform for user-made content, but for material set in Greg Stafford’s mythic universe of Glorantha. It enables creators to sell their own original content for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, 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 Temple of Twins is a scenario for use with RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha.

It is a fifty-two page, full colour, 32.56 MB PDF.

The layout is clean and tidy. The artwork is excellent.

Where is it set?
The Temple of Twins is set in Prax. It is a sequel, but not a direct sequel, to The Gifts of Prax and Stone and Bone. 

Who do you play?Any type of Player Character can play The Temple of Twins, but Eiritha and Ernalda worshippers will be useful. Members of the Straw Weaver clan or Player Characters with connections to or experience with the Straw Weaver clan will have interesting experience playing the scenario. Player Characters with Survival and Herd skills will have an advantage.
What do you need?
The Temple of Twins requires RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha only, but the Glorantha Bestiary may also be useful.
What do you get?The Temple of Twins is a standalone scenario set in Prax. It takes place both outside and inside a temple to Eiritha. The Player Characters may have been sent there by a powerful priestess, by a Khan demanding or offering tribute, or simply because they have heard that water can be found there and it is a convenient place to stop. Whatever the reason for their visit, the guards protecting the temple ask the Player Characters for their help. They take them to an assistant priestess who explains that the Herd Mother, the head priestess of the temple, has gone missing in the temple. None of the guards can enter as it is taboo for them to enter the temple and she herself must remain outside, so she wants the Player Characters to enter the temple and find the Herd Mother. She assures them that the goddess has given her blessing for strangers to enter the temple. The Player Characters are free to conduct a little investigation around the temple, but are otherwise quickly ushered to its entrance. 
The main events of the scenario play out in the temple to Eiritha. The assistant priestess forearms them with the story of how Eiritha survived the early days of the Great Darkness. This is important because what the Player Characters will essentially be doing is re-enacting this in their quest to locate the Herd Mother. In effect, what The Temple of Twins is a HeroQuest, but one in which enforcing its myth, the Player Characters are actually carrying out a rescue mission. Thus, they are moving from one station of the HeroQuest to the next, enabling them to move deeper into the myth and towards its conclusion and so find the Herd Mother. However, the presence of the Player Characters sets up an interesting tension within the quest itself. They are not told that they will be going on a HeroQuest, but that they will face trials, though the likelihood is that the players and their characters will quickly realise that this is what they are on. Consequently, the Player Characters are free to adhere to the myth as told, or alternatively stray from it, and this can affect the final outcome. The balance here is between the female and male paths, between the paths of Eiritha and Waha, but fundamentally, both the guards and the assistant priestess are asking the Player Characters to be women when undertaking this task.
The Temple of Twins is not just a straightforward re-enactment of Eiritha’s legend, although this central section could easily be removed from the scenario and with slight adjustment run as a HeroQuest or even an initiation for an Eiritha worshipper. As written though, once the Player Characters do find the Herd Mother, they will also discover that something else is going on, something that ties back to the scenario, The Gifts of Prax. There is no easy solution to either the discovery of the Herd Mother or the problem that she reveals and the Player Characters will need to work hard to bring the latter to a conclusion that satisfies the various NPCs involved.
In addition to the scenario itself, the Game Master is provided with a detailed location to add to her Prax campaign, an enjoyable breakdown of the myth, various cultural notes, numerous detailed NPCs, and a dozen fully detailed and interesting encounters. Technically only the first is specifically designed to be run as part of the scenario, whilst the rest can very easily be used in any scenario set in Prax. The nature of the scenario means that it does focus on particular skills—notably Herd and Survival—although interaction skills will also be very useful. There are opportunities for combat, but they are not necessarily the focus of the scenario. The scenario also involves birth and sacrificial death as part of myth, which some players might find uncomfortable and so lines and veils may need to be drawn over some scenes.
Is it worth your time?Yes—The Temple of Twins is an engaging scenario which presents a highly detailed myth that the Player Characters can enact as part of another mission and so discover the bigger plot. An absolute must if a Player Character worships Eiritha. No—The Temple of Twins is too location specific and the Game Master’s campaign may not have yet reached Prax, plus a gaming group may not want to confront the bloody nature of survival, even in myth.Maybe—The Temple of Twins can be adjusted to anywhere in Prax or its central myth extracted and used for an Eiritha worshipping Player Character.

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

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50 Fathoms: High Adventure in a Drowned World was the second Plot Point setting to be published by Great White Games/Pinnacle Entertainment and the second Plot Point setting to published. Like the first, Evernight, it was published in 2003 and introduced both a complete setting and a campaign, in this case, a Plot Point campaign. A Plot Point campaign can be seen as a development of the Sandbox style campaign. Both allow a high degree of player agency as the Player Characters are allowed to wander hither and thither, but in a Sandbox style campaign there is not necessarily an overarching plot, whereas in a Plot Point campaign, there is. This is tied to particular locations, but not in a linear fashion. The Player Characters can travel wherever they want, picking up clues and investigating plots until they have sufficient links and connections to confront the threat at the heart of the campaign. In 50 Fathoms the threat consists of a trio of Sea Hags who are downing the world of Caribdus, literally under fifty fathoms!
50 Fathoms: High Adventure in a Drowned World begins with the dark history of its doom. The Sea Hags were once three witches in Ograpog, condemned by King Amemnus to death by drowning from the rising tide. With their dying breath, they cursed Caribdus, the land itself, to drown as they were, and so the rains began and the seas began to rise, flooding the land and forcing the inhabitants of Caribdus to either take to the seas or retreat to ever smaller islands. Caribdus is home to several different species, all of whom have learned to adapt to the changed world. These include the Atani, weak, but winged humanoids who can fly; Doreen, semi-aquatic hunters and nomads, who fell prey to the vicious Kehana when they were forced to flee their drowning island; the walrus-like Grael, strong, but both slow and slow-witted; the cruel and callous shark-like Kehana; the squid-like Kraken whose home is the last of their fleet of their navy’s Great Ships and who have an affinity with elemental magic; the Red Men or Half-Ugak, massive and brutish, unworldly and unwise; and the Scurillians, mean-spirited crabs with an eye for detail. (It should be noted that Half-Ugak are the product of rapes by the Ugak, which twenty years on from the publication of 50 Fathoms, does put the species on a par with the half-Orcs of Dungeons & Dragons.) There are no native Humans on Caribdus, the nearest being Masaquani who always iconically embody their body shape, in form and personality. The choices offered here all lend themselves to a very non-traditional fantasy.

However, there are plenty of Humans on the world of Caribdus. All have come from Earth, caught in a terrible storm and led by the Maiden to the world of Caribdus, sometime between the sixteenth and the eighteenth century—that is during the Age of Sail. Privateers, pirates, explorers, officers, soldiers, marines, merchants, sailors, surgeons, whalers, and more have made their way to the Drowned World and made it their home. Called ‘Visitors’ by those native to the new world, they have been arriving for the last thirteen years, initially caught in the Flotsam Sea, a slowly twisting, sinking whirlpool fouled by a morass of green debris, jutting timbers, and the bloated corpses of things that that could have been human or they could have been something worse. The lucky ones escaped to make a new life, the rest drowned in this sodden aquatic quagmire. Some Visitors have taken up their old lives on this new world, including many pirates, priests continue to practice their faith and have spread among the natives, whilst Torquemada directs the Inquisition against those who practice the elemental magic of Caribdus. Besides the Inquisition, the British East India Company and the Spanish Guild operate trade cartels across the Thousand Islands. Others take to the new world adapting to it and adopting new lives and aims—treasure hunters and salvagers sail and dive on the new sea bed to find the riches lost to the rising waters, ship’s mages take up the study of elemental magic, able to protect and propel the ship depending upon the elements studied, whilst dreaming mastering all four elements, and Questors, perhaps the bravest, most noble of this world seek for a way to end the rain and the reign of the Sea Hags.

A Player Character in 50 Fathoms looks like a standard Savage Worlds Player Character. This is indicative of how little has changed between editions of the roleplaying game, such that were a Game Master to pick up the current rules the differences are minor. The rules and setting content can really be divided between those that would fit a historical style of game set during the Age of Sail and those that fit the fantastical world of Caribdus. Edges and Hindrances such as Arrogant, One Arm, Close Fighter, Master & Commander, Merchant, and Rope Monkey would all suit a historical, mercantile, nautical, and piratical campaign, whereas Kraken Bone Sword & Armor, Elemental Mastery, and Mark of Torquemada, all integral to the setting of 50 Fathoms. Similarly, the rules for goods, trading, and selling, weapons, ships and sailing, fighting below deck and crew upkeep, and so on, would work in a historical campaign. The weapons include cannon and firearms, noting the problems with having wet powder, gaffs and hooks, whilst also including the Jumani Chain, a fearsome Masaquani pirate weapon consisting of a chain shot with extra links to turn it into a deadly flail. Armour is typically donned only prior to battle as should the wearer end up in the water, there is a greater chance of him drowning. When worn in water, its armour bonus acts as a penalty on Swimming rolls. Boats and ships range in size from the humble dinghy and the wave rider to the galleon and the man of war—only Black Beard and the ‘Hero of the High Seas’, British Admiral Nelson Duckworth command one of the latter vessels. The rules for ship-to-ship combat are written as an expansion to the core rules and bolt on easily enough since Savage Worlds was always designed to scale up from traditional parties of Player Characters to relatively small skirmish battles which can be run as miniatures battles, keeping the players involved in both, of course. The rules barely run to a page-and-a-half in length, so lean towards being run as part of the narrative of the roleplay, rather than as full miniatures rules. There is also a list of pirate lingo.

The main addition in terms of the rules and the setting of 50 Fathoms is for ‘Elemental Magic’. Earth magic is used to help grow crops, speak with and control mammals, mend ship’s timbers, and so on, whilst fire magic is used for destructive purposes. Water magic is used to heal, make sea water drinkable, and control the many beasts of the ocean, and so Water Mages are valued aboard ship, whilst Aire Mages are the most highly valued as their magic move vessels even when becalmed, calm storms, speak with avians to find land, and toss aside enemy missiles! Mages in the setting initially only study one type of elemental magic, but can study the others. Doing so until is difficult as elemental spirits are jealous and actively impede the casting of all magic. This lasts until the Mage has mastered all four elements and becomes an Archmage, able to balance the four elements. In game this is represented by a Mage taking the Elemental Mastery Edge, once for each of the other three elements he needs to study. 50 Fathoms also includes fourteen new element-themed spells and a list of all of the element-themed spells in the rulebook at the time.
There is a short gazetteer of surviving lands and locations of Caribdus, known as ‘The Thousand Isles’, but the setting is really described in the section for the Game Master, called the ‘Captain’s Log’, which takes up two thirds of the book. This presents the world of Caribdus and the background to the campaign in more detail as well as describing the various surviving and interesting places. Many of the have a symbol attached them, which indicated that the location has a Savage Tale attached to it. For example, in the lawless pirate town of Brigandy Bay, almost anything can be bought and sold at the Black Market. Amongst the more exotic merchandise can be found a treasure map for $1000. Allegedly, the map shows the location of one of the dread pirate L’Ollonaise’s cache. It turns out the map is true and leads to the Savage Tale, ‘L’Ollonaise’ Vengeance’. Not every location has an attached Savage Tale, some have more than one, and some require a certain entry to be rolled on a table. The advice for the Game Master covers the types of the adventures that the Player Characters might embark on, including carousing, pirating, privateering, salvaging, and trading, and includes both tables of subplots and booty, but the meat of the campaign consists of some forty-one Savage Tales, ranging in length from a single paragraph to several pages in length. The ‘Encounters’ chapter at the end of the book includes all of the major NPCs and monsters that the Player Characters could run into as part of the campaign.

The campaign itself begins with ‘Maiden Voyage’. This is the opening Savage Tale and places all of the Player Characters as the crew aboard a small sloop. At the end of the Player Characters are invited by an NPC to continue into the events of the second Savage Tale. This is ‘Tressa the Red’ and it is marked with a skull and crossed weapons to indicate that the Savage Tale is part of the campaign against the Sea Hags. There is a total of eight of these and together they form the spine of the 50 Fathoms campaign. However, they cannot be played in linear fashion as there are typically Rank requirements for each one, and in order to acquire sufficient Experience Points to go up in Rank, the Player Characters will need to explore and adventure elsewhere. This gives the chance to learn more about the world and its dangers as well as the nature of the threat they face. This is where the Plot Point format comes to the fore because the Player Characters are free to travel wherever they want and, in the process, discovering more of the world and potentially triggering more Savage Tales contained in the ‘Captain’s Log’. Play then is very player driven and the players have a lot of agency in what their characters do and where they go. This does mean that the campaign is episodic in nature rather than having a great linear plot and this more open structure means that the campaign is easier to prepare and run since it plays through location by location rather than by plot.
The Savage Tales themselves will take the Player Characters back and forth across the Thousand Isles. They will find themselves conducting jail breaks, searching the Flotsam Sea for artefacts, facing down legendary pirates—including Blackbeard himself, who is, of course, immortal, diving on wrecks on the sea floor, fighting ghost ships, going whaling, acting against the opium trade, going bear hunting, and even facing down an invasion from under the sea in dingy Dunich! There is a wide array of Savage Tales in 50 Fathoms, all of them different and all of them offering a variety of excitement and adventure. Beyond that, the 50 Fathoms Companion expands upon the gazetteer in 50 Fathoms and adds another forty Savage Tales. Many of these can be run as part of the 50 Fathoms campaign or specifically after it, and include a a mini-campaign of its own. 50 Fathoms: Fire & Earth also adds another mini-campaign.
Physically, 50 Fathoms is well presented, and the illustrations are suitably practical, nautical, and scurvy! The book is done in greyscale throughout, but that would have been standard for 2003. The map of the Thousand Islands is perhaps a bit small to be used with any ease.
50 Fathoms: High Adventure in a Drowned World combines pulp sea-going action and mystery with pirates and fantasy for a great campaign. It is as still as a fun and exciting as it was in 2003 and it still stands out as one of the best of the Plot Point campaigns from Pinnacle Entertainment Group.

Traveller is one of the hobby’s oldest Science Fiction roleplaying games and still its preeminent example outside of licensed titles such as Star Wars and Star Trek. It is the roleplaying of the far future, its setting of Charted Space, primarily in and around the feudal Third Imperium is placed thousands of years into the future. Since its first publication in 1977, Traveller has been a roleplaying setting built around mercantile, exploratory, mercenary and military, and adventuring campaigns. Inspired by the Science Fiction of fifties and sixties, the rules in Traveller can also be adapted to other Science Fiction settings, though it requires varying degree of effort depending upon the nature of the setting. The Traveller: Explorer’s Edition is presented as introduction to the current edition of the roleplaying game, published by Mongoose Publishing. It is designed for scenarios and campaigns that focus on exploration beyond the frontier and provides the tools for such a campaign, including rules for creating Player Characters, handling skills and challenges, combat, spaceship operation and combat, plus equipment, animals, and the creations of worlds to explore.
The Traveller: Explorer’s Edition begins with a quick explanation of what it and roleplaying are before diving into game conventions—rolling the dice—and creating Player Characters. They are by default Human, and in the Traveller: Explorer’s Edition, have had past careers as either Scouts or Scholars. Character creation primarily involves a player putting his character through a series of four-year terms during which the character will gain and improve skills, be promoted, experience events and mishaps, make connections with his fellow characters, and at the end of it, be older, wiser, and experienced. A Player Character will typically be aged anywhere between twenty-two and forty-two by the end of the process—and if older will have suffered the effects of aging.

The skill system for Traveller is straightforward. To have his character undertake an action, a player rolls two six-sided dice and adds a Dice Modifier from the appropriate characteristic as well as a skill value. If the result is eight or more, the Player Character succeeds. The skill explanations are clear and easy to understand and include plenty of options as to how they might be used and how long a task might take. For example, for the Astrogation skill, “Plotting Course to a Target World Using a Gas Giant for a Gravity Slingshot: Difficult (10+) Astrogation check (1D x 10 minutes, EDU).” All of the skills are listed for the Traveller roleplaying game, so there are skills mentioned here that the Player Characters cannot obtain during character creation. Combat uses the same basic mechanics and covers both ranged and mêlée combat, and allows for differences in technology and weapon traits. Damage is directly deducted from a Player Character’s characteristics—Endurance, followed by Strength and Dexterity. The rules also cover environmental dangers such as gravity and radiation, whilst encounters are with various animal types.

The equipment lists just about everything a mission will need when out exploring the galaxy. This includes arms and armour, augments, communications and computers, medical supplies, sensors, survival gear, and tools. The Traveller: Explorer’s Edition also explains how spaceships are operated and space combat is conducted, although it should be noted that the rules for the latter cover use of skills that the Player Characters cannot obtain during character creation. For example, the Tactics (Naval) which helpful for initiative and then the Gunner skill for actually operating the ship’s weapons! So using the rules in the Traveller: Explorer’s Edition means that any spaceship combat the Player Characters get involved in, they are going to be at a severe disadvantage from the start. Plus, there is only the one spaceship given in the Traveller: Explorer’s Edition and that is the Type-S Scout/Courier, which for an exploration campaign makes sense. However, there are rules for space combat, but no other ship stats or details in the rulebook. So, what exactly will the Player Characters be fighting in space combat in their Type-S Scout/Courier? Other teams of explorers and scientists in their Type-S Scout/Courier?

Lastly, the Traveller: Explorer’s Edition includes rules for subsector and world creation. This cover world distribution followed by how to create a world profile, including Starport type, planet size, atmosphere, hydrographic percentage, population, government type, Law Level, and Tech Level. Much like creating a character this consists of rolling on tables and some of the ramifications of the numbers are detailed. These include Law Level and the likely types of goods banned and potential legal ramifications. In comparison to the earlier rules for character generation, the rules for world generation will provide for a wide range of possible outcomes and world types, but then these are tried and tested rules.

Physically, the Traveller: Explorer’s Edition is an attractive product. It is well written; the artwork is decent and the layout is clean and tidy. It also includes an index.

There is one fundamental question which has to be asked about the Traveller: Explorer’s Edition and that is, who is this book for? It is certainly not for the seasoned Traveller player or Game Master, both of whom will already have access to the content in this rulebook. It is for the Traveller fan and collector who will want to have it to add to the collection, but the rulebook does no more than add to that collection and again, that collection, that Traveller fan and collector will already have access to the content in this rulebook in the collection. Is it for the player or Game Master new to roleplaying? Is it for the player or Game Master new to Traveller? The answer to that question is yes, but very much not an unqualified ‘yes’. There can be no doubt that the Traveller: Explorer’s Edition presents all of the rules necessary to run a game with an exploration theme, from creating scouts and scholars as Player Characters and equipping them and detailing the core rules to animal types, operating a spaceship in and out of combat, and creating worlds and sectors. However, go beyond that and an awful lot of problems begin to appear for the Traveller: Explorer’s Edition.

The Traveller: Explorer’s Edition is not written as an introduction to roleplaying. Its description of roleplaying is cursory at best and there is no example of what roleplaying is. Similarly, its introduction to Traveller as a setting is equally as cursory. It acknowledges the existence of the Imperium—but no other polity—and explains that the Traveller: Explorer’s Edition is set beyond the borders of the Imperium. So, in a sense, the Traveller: Explorer’s Edition is set entirely away from the classic setting for Traveller, and thus arguably not actually an introduction to Traveller as a setting at all. Also similarly, the Traveller: Explorer’s Edition ignores Traveller as a roleplaying game. First in ignoring that the roleplaying game has any sense of history going back decades, and second—and more importantly, as an introduction to Traveller, the Traveller: Explorer’s Edition, by not having anything that asks, “What’s next?”. There is no page or text saying, “If you played and liked this game, here is what you should look at next.” This is a ridiculous omission for what is designed as an introductory product.

As an introduction to the rules and mechanics of Traveller, the Traveller: Explorer’s Edition does a better job. All are clearly and serviceably presented, but no more. This lack of a ‘more’ is where the Traveller: Explorer’s Edition best showcases its inadequacies and omissions. For an introductory product, there is severe lack of examples in the Traveller: Explorer’s Edition. What examples are amount to no more than a handful—an example or two of the core rules and an example world. There is no example Player Character, no example of space combat, no example subsector, no example of what a world actually looks like in Traveller, and so on. So nothing that would help the prospective player or Game Master—whether new to roleplaying or Traveller—with what these look like in the game.

Then there is the advice for the Game Master. Or rather, the complete absence of advice for the Game Master. To be clear, in a product that is intended to introduce a player to Traveller and provide him with the tools necessary to create adventures or even an entire campaign as the Game Master, there is no advice whatsoever. So no advice on running a roleplaying game. No advice on running a campaign. No advice on running Traveller. No advice on running an exploration-themed campaign, let alone a scenario. No discussion of what an exploration-themed scenario or campaign would be like. No discussion of what threats might be encountered. No advice on what mysteries might be found. No advice on what discoveries might be made. No advice on what alien life might be encountered. All of which is compounded by a lack of a scenario, a lack of a setting in terms of a world or subsector, or even a lack of scenario hooks or ideas or even encounter tables. If it were a case that the Traveller: Explorer’s Edition was designed to introduce the rules to Traveller and exactly that—no more, no less—then this would not be so much of an issue. Yet it clearly states that it is intended to do more than that, that it is intended to be used to run a campaign, a scenario, and so on. Then the rulebook completely ignores this whole aspect of its stated remit. Of course, this is a large subject to cover and the likelihood is that the Traveller: Explorer’s Edition could not have covered it all, but none at all? It is as if there are twenty or extra pages that are actually missing from the rulebook. That fact that the Traveller: Explorer’s Edition completely ignores the role of Game Master beggars belief.

Lastly, as an introduction to Traveller, the Traveller: Explorer’s Edition, there is no “What’s next?”. There is no page or text saying, “If you played and liked this game, here is what you should look at next.” This is a ridiculous omission for an introductory product.

Then there is the matter of the price. This varies wildly depending upon format and retailer. As a PDF, the Traveller: Explorer’s Edition is less than a pound or a dollar, but in print, it costs £15 ($19.99) direct from the publisher, and a wallet gouging £25.99 ($24.99) in retail. The PDF than, can at best, be seen as a bargain—an attractive rules reference if you will. In print, the exact opposite is the case. The purchaser is simply not getting enough content for the money that he paid for it.

Ultimately, the Traveller: Explorer’s Edition is an astounding showcase for a staggering lack of vision and imagination. Overpriced, over produced, overly utilitarian and technical, but underdeveloped, the Traveller: Explorer’s Edition is a nothing more than a ‘cut & paste’ job that does not so much miss the possibilities of its title and theme and subject as ignore them all together.