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

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Name: Thicker Than WaterPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Jack Currie

Setting: Arkansas, 1933Product: Scenario
What You Get: Thirty-four page, 679 KB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Monstrousness runs through more than the blood.Plot Hook: A kidnapping sends the Investigators down southPlot Support: Staging advice, one handout, one Mythos Tome, One Mythos spell, and one-hundred-and-ten Mythos monsters.Production Values: Plain
Pros# Short and straightforward# Scope for development by the Keeper# Hemophobia# Anthropophagusphobia# Teraphobia
Cons# Needs a good edit# More plot outline than investigation# Why isn’t the FBI involved? # No maps or floorplans# Much, much shorter playing time than suggested
# Scope for development by the Keeper
# If they are tied to the kidnap victim, why no pre-generated Investigators?
Conclusion# More plot outline than scenario with limited scope for investigation# Underdeveloped, but not without potential
# Reviews from R’lyeh Discommends

1974 is an important year for the gaming hobby. It is the year that Dungeons & Dragons was introduced, the original RPG from which all other RPGs would ultimately be derived and the original RPG from which so many computer games would draw for their inspiration. It is fitting that the current owner of the game, Wizards of the Coast, released the new version, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, in the year of the game’s fortieth anniversary, and the new edition of that, Dungeons & Dragons, 2024, in the year of the game’s fiftieth anniversary. To celebrate this, Reviews from R’lyeh will be running a series of reviews from the hobby’s anniversary years, thus there will be reviews from 1974, from 1984, from 1994, and from 2004—the thirtieth, twentieth, and tenth anniversaries of the titles. These will be retrospectives, in each case an opportunity to re-appraise interesting titles and true classics decades on from the year of their original release.

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Tunnels & Trolls was famously written and published in response to Dungeons & Dragons. The designer, Ken St. Andre, wanted something that played like Dungeons & Dragons, but was both faster and easier to play. The result was a short booklet, running to just forty-two pages, that he would write and publish in 1975 and find popularity, first in Phoenix, Arizona, followed by the USA and the rest of the world, being published in the United Kingdom and Japan and going through over eight editions. The Tunnels & Trolls 1st Edition Reprint was published as part of the Kickstarter campaign for Deluxe Tunnels & Trolls and it gave fans of the roleplaying game a chance to look at the original version of the game, previously all but impossible, since only a hundred copies were published.

The Tunnels & Trolls 1st Edition Reprint begins with an introduction by Ken St. Andre, which explains how both it and Tunnels & Trolls came to be, making it available after his last remaining copy was made available to, and selected by, one backer as part of the Kickstarter. He makes clear that his aim was not to invent fantasy roleplaying, but to simplify it and what he created was a style that was not derived from miniatures gaming as was Dungeons & Dragons, but more from literature and comics. In the process, as he says, he showed that there was another way to roleplay. Given that this version of Tunnels & Trolls was written and published in 1975, there are two issues with it in terms of content. One the author addressed in 2020, the other he has not. St. Andre states in a footnote that the spell Obey Me was originally called ‘Yassa Massa’ and that although his original intention was simply to amuse with what he calls his “thoughtless word play”, he changed it to avoid giving further offence as well as giving an apology. Whereas, in the section on ‘Human Auxiliaries’, a hero can hire two types of auxiliary character to accompany him on his delves. One is the hired henchman, the other is the slave, who is said to have no luck and no charisma ratings, and usually be of low I.Q. Female slaves cost extra. This could and should have been addressed at the time of publication, in 2013, or even 2020, but even now, it could be addressed, just as the ‘Yassa Massa’ spell name was.

Tunnels & Trolls 1st Edition begins by explaining the basics of the game, which though very familiar today, would have been strange in 1975. The game is set in, “…[A]n alternate world where fantasy is alive and magic works (a world somewhat but not exactly similar to Tolkien’s Middle Earth) there exist numerous enchanted tunnel complexes with many types of treasure, and abundantly guarded by every imaginable form of monster, magic, and trap.” and that, “Brave men and women arm themselves and venture within the tunnels at the risk of body and soul to seek treasure and experience.” This requires that someone create or ‘dig’ and stock a dungeon with magic, monsters, and treasure, and that as the ‘Dungeon Master’, this person would act as the god within the dungeon, but till be fair to the other players, who will create and equip the character who will venture into this dungeon. Once set up, “The game is played something like Battleship.” Not the sense that there are two boards of which each player can only see their own, but rather that there is only one, which is, of course, known to the Dungeon Master, who will then reveal to the players as their characters explore its depths. It is clear from the introduction that St. Andre is explaining what would have been a very new concept to the reader. After all, Dungeons & Dragons had only introduced it the previous year, which the author acknowledges in thanking both E. Gary Gygax and David Arneson for creating the original roleplaying game. The author also makes clear that the game is not his beyond making it available to others and encourages the reader to improve the rules as their imagination dictates.
After some advice on creating and stocking dungeons, Tunnels & Trolls explains how to create characters, noting here for the first time that their details can be recorded on three-by-five-inch cards. A character has six Prime Attributes. These are Strength, Intelligence, Luck, Constitution, Dexterity, and Charisma. In addition, the character has a note of the Gold Pieces possessed, and the weight he can carry and is carrying. He will also have Armour and Weapons, and will speak Common, but may know some other Languages. In terms of what he can be, the three types are Warrior, Magic-User, and Rogue, inspired by Conan, Gandalf, and Cugel, respectively. The Warrior cannot cast spells; the Magic-User can cast spells, but is extremely limited in what weapons he can wield; and the Rogue can both use weapons and cast spells, but do not start with spells, must find someone to teach him any spells, and cannot rise beyond Seventh Level without choosing to continue as either a Warrior or a Magic-User. Creating a character involves rolling three six-sided dice for each Prime Attribute and then again for the amount of gold he has to spend on equipment. Note that six-sided dice are used throughout Tunnels & Trolls rather than the polyhedral dice of Dungeons & Dragons, the aim being to make the game more accessible since it did not require special dice.
Name: Trigeor Type: Magic-User Strength 11 Intelligence 18 Luck 14Constitution 09 Dexterity 14 Charisma 12 Gold 5Weight Possible: 1100 Weight Carried: 136 Experience Points: 0 Weapons: Dagger (1 die) Armour: None Equipment: Calf-High Boots, Warm Dry Clothing & Pack, Day’s Provisions, Ten Torches, Magnetic Compass, Makeshift Magic Staff Languages: Common, Elvish, Dwarfish, Draconic, Orcish, Trollish, Undead

Tunnels & Trolls quickly moves onto monsters and combat. Monsters have a single stat, called a Monster Rating. It indicates how tough a monster is and how many dice are rolled for it in combat, and it starts at zero and goes up and up. A minimum Monster Rating of ten gives one die, but for every five points after that, it increases the number of dice by one, and beyond one hundred, it increases the number of dice by one for every ten points. On the first round of a combat, half of a monster’s Monster Rating is added to the roll, but only a quarter is added on subsequent rounds. This addition is known as the monster’s ‘Add’. What Tunnels & Trolls does not do is give a list of monsters or a bestiary. The Dungeon Master is expected to set the Monster Ratings for his dungeon denizens according to the level of the dungeon, with the nearest advice given by Tunnels & Trolls is that a good fighter should have an equivalent Monster Rating of between twenty-six and forty and be roughly equal to a troll. However, this is probably the weakest aspect of Tunnels & Trolls since it is not clear what Monster Ratings the Dungeon Master should be assigning to his dungeon dwellers.

Interestingly, the rules do not give a set way in which to handle monsters encountered on the lower levels of the dungeon, but instead give options, because opinions vary in how it should be done. The monster could have more dice and bigger Add, its dice roll could be multiplied by the level, a monster could even be stated up like a character, or simply a bigger Add. This calls back to St. Andre’s statement in the introduction about the game not being his.

Combat is either missile combat, melee combat, or shock combat for that initial engagement. There is advice on the differences between these types, plus monster reactions, wandering monsters, and even capturing monsters, but once engaged, combat is a simple matter of comparing hit point totals. Not the amount of damage that a character or monster can suffer before dying, but the totals of the dice rolled plus any Adds. This can be individually, one-on-one, or it can be collectively. The latter means that the Dungeon Master can add up all of the Monster Ratings for his monsters and roll their dice and add their Adds, all in one go, rather than individually. The lower result is subtracted from the higher result and that is the number of hit points the losing side suffers. For the monsters, this reduces their Monster Rating, but for characters, it is deducted from their Constitutions. Both armour and shields will protect against incoming hit points, but armour will be damaged in the process.

Magic-Users are not expected to fight, and indeed, are restricted to single die weapons and shields, but can use their spells to protect them if they have the right ones. Also, when determining who suffers from hit points taken, the Magic-User also does so last. Warriors and Rogue do get Adds, whereas the Magic-User does not. For each point of Strength and Luck above twelve, a Warrior or Rogue gains one Add to dice rolls in combat, but subtracts one for each point of Strength and Luck below nine. This is the same for Dexterity, except for missile fire where the Adds are increased to two per point above. Although a character will always have a single die to roll in combat, the main means of increasing the dice rolled and the Adds is by purchasing weapons. Later on, a character’s Primary Attributes can be increased, which will raise the Adds and the character will find magical items that will increase both dice rolled and Adds.

Name: Glorimnaeck Orchelm Species: DwarfType: WarriorStrength 26 Intelligence 08 Luck 13Constitution 26 Dexterity 11 Charisma 10 Gold 1Weight Possible: 1300 Weight Carried: 136 Experience Points: 0Weapons: Warhammer (4+1), Poniard (1)Armour: Gambeson, Chain Hauberk, Chain Gauntlets (4 total), Target Shield (2)Equipment: Calf-High Boots, Warm Dry Clothing & PackLanguages: Common, Elvish, Dwarfish, Draconic, Orcish, Trollish, Undead Base Adds: +28 For example, Trigeor and his Dwarven friend, Glorimnaeck Orchelm, have ventured into a dungeon, known as the Orc ‘Ole. Despite carrying a compass, the pair get lost and find themselves being attacked by a band of Orcs. There are three of them, each with a Monster Rating of twelve. Individually, the Dungeon Master would be rolling one die and adding an ADD of six on the first found, but only two on later rounds. Collectively, they have a Monster Rating of thirty-six, meaning that the Referee will roll five dice and add eighteen on the first round, but only nine on later rounds. Glorimnaeck Orchelm’s player will roll four dice and add one for his Warhammer, and then another twenty-six for his Adds.  The Referee rolls two, three, three, three, five, and six for a total of twenty-two, which together with the Orcs’ Adds, gives a total Hit Points of forty. Glorimnaeck Orchelm’s player rolls better with four, four, five, six, and six and adds one to give a total of twenty-six, which with the Dwarf’s Adds, means he has a grand total Hit Points of fifty-two! The Orcs’ Hit Points are subtracted from Glorimnaeck Orchelm’s and the resulting twelve Hit Points reduce the Orcs’ Monster Rating by twelve to twenty-four. The twelve is also enough to reduce one of the Orc’s Monster Rating to zero, so the Dungeon Master rules that Glorimnaeck Orchelm has smashed his head in and he goes flying back into the cave. Next round, the Orcs will have a Monster Rating of twenty-four, meaning that the Referee will roll three dice and only apply an Add of four!The other main mechanic in Tunnels & Trolls is the Saving Throw. It is rolled to avoid a trap, to dodge a missile weapon attack, to withstand a poisonous brew, and so on, and it is always rolled using a character’s Luck. It also varies according to dungeon level. Thus, in the first level of a dungeon, a character’s Luck is subtracted from twenty to give the target number, but on the second level of the dungeon, it is subtracted from twenty-five, and so on. The resulting number gives a target that the player must roll equal to or higher, on two six-sided dice, but the target can never be lower than five. (For example, Trigeor’s Saving Throw will always be six on the first level of the dungeon, rising to eleven on the second level, and sixteen on the third level, until Luck is raised.) Rolls of doubles enable a player to add and roll again, so an impossible Saving Throw can be made if the character is lucky.
Experience points in the game are earned for combat, treasure found, for the deepest level of the dungeon a character visited, using and finding magic, and for successful Saving Throws. The progression table is all the same for all three character types, goes up to Seventeenth Level, and awards a character with a new title at each Level. The main reward for going up a Level is for a player to increase his character’s Primary Attributes, though typically only one can be increased per Level.

Tunnels & Trolls provides a basic list of equipment, in the second half of the roleplaying game, ‘Elaborations’ it includes a lengthy list of arms and armour and further equipment. There is an Advanced Weapons Chart in turn for swords, pole weapons, hafted weapons, daggers, spears, bows, and other missile weapons. Then for shields and defensive weapons, weird weapons, poisons, and armour. There are rules too for weapon breakage, depending on their composition. From flamberge, talibong, and shotel to riding mail, scale armour, and arming doublet, here then is the basis of all the weird and wonderful weapons that have been listed in all of the subsequent editions of Tunnels & Trolls.
Also in the ‘Elaborations’ section is ‘The Peters-McAllister Chart for Creating Manlike Characters and Monsters’, which like the advice and opinions on adjusting Monster Rating per dungeon Level, highlights the collaborative nature of the design of Tunnels & Trolls. This chart lists adjustments for creating Dwarves, Elves, Leprechauns, Fairies, and Hobbits, which can be both used to create monsters and characters. That said, playing characters in general of these species grants greater improvements to Primary Attributes with no downsides. There is guidance too, to adjust for Giants, Trolls, Ogres, Half-Ogres, Goblins, and Gremlins.
The largest section in the ‘Elaborations’, taking up nearly half its length and a quarter of Tunnels & Trolls as a whole, is on magic. Magic-Users are encouraged to use a staff, even a make-shift one through which to cast their magic, as they reduce the cost of casting magic, although a makeshift one will burn out very quickly. A proper magic-staff costs a lot of gold. The section notes that, “There are recognized laws of magic that we have mostly ignored in dreaming up the spells--the Law of Contagion, the Law of Similarity, the principles of necromancy and control of spirits, preferring instead to base most of these spells on inherent abilities of the magic-user a la Andre Norton.” What this means is that casting spells in Tunnels & Trolls is meant to be quick and easy. Spells have a cost in the caster’s actual Strength Primary Ability, which then has to regenerate. (This also means that Strength as a Primary Attribute is still important to a Magic-User and a Primary Attribute that he will want to increase to give spell-casting capacity.). All Magic-Users know First Level spells, whilst spells of higher Level have a minimum I.Q. to learn and cost in gold to purchase. One of the notable spells at First Level is Teacher, which lets a Magic-User teach a spell to a Rogue. Of course, here also, are the first appearances of the humorous, some would say silly, spell names for which Tunnels & Trolls is infamous. For example, Take That, You Fiend as a damage spell, Tunnels & Trolls for the healing spell, and so on. If they are in the main, tongue in cheek in tone, they are not always clear in their intent. The Dungeon Master would have had to adjudicate on things like the Will-o-Wisp spell, whose effect is, “provides light & drains strength”. Yet, the magic system for Tunnels & Trolls is simple and straightforward, even elegant, effectively a points-based system—the first—that empowers the Magic-User and constantly makes him useful in play. As Glorimnaeck Orchelm gamely holds back the band of Orcs, Trigeor holds a torch so that it is not dark and prepares himself just in case he has to cast a spell. Just behind the melee, the Magic-User spots another Orc, bigger than the others. This is their boss and he has a Monster Rating of eighteen, meaning that the Dungeon Master will roll two dice for him and include an Add of nine in the first round and an Add of three in later rounds. Quickly, Trigeor cries out, “Take that you fiend!” and casts the spell of the same name at the newly arrived Orc. It costs him five Strength rather than the usual six, since he is casting it through his staff, which being only a makeshift one, fizzes and burns as the magic passes through it. The spell means that Trigeor will be using his I.Q. to attack the Orc, and in addition will gain a single die as normal. Since Trigeor has an I.Q. of eighteen, it is going to kill the Orc. The Orcs attacking the Dwarf look behind them as they hear a popping sound to discover their boss collapsing to the floor, steam rising from his eyes and ears!Physically, the Tunnels & Trolls 1st Edition Reprint—and thus Tunnels & Trolls 1st Edition—is a scrappy , scruffy, inconsistent affair. It looks and reads very much like a fanzine of the period. Yet it is readable and it is illustrated in very spritely, engaging fashion.

—oOo—The second edition of Tunnels & Trolls was reviewed in ‘Tunnels and Trolls: A Review of Sorts’ by Brant Bates in The Space Gamer Issue Number 3 (1975). He highlighted the differences between Tunnels & Trolls and Dungeons & Dragons, beginning with, “There is no sexist bias In T&T, Female characters come out exactly as created by the dice--not reduced in size and strength by an arbitrary fraction just because they are female.” before going on to look at other differences in terms of character creation and combat. He was overall positive about the art, saying, “It is mostly by a Phoenix fan artist named Rob Carver, and it ranges from the gorgeous to the ridiculous--mostly the latter. The cartoon to illustrate the magical spells are very droll, and the portrait of St. Andre captures his very soul.” He concluded with, “T&T has been sold from coast to coast, but is still most popular in Phoenix, where it has become the official game of the organized SF club there. It is very playable, and a lot of fun--great for stretching the old imagination. I recommend it for fantasy fans who are not purists, and who do not necessarily believe a game’s quality depends on its cost.”  Lewis Pulsipher reviewed the British version published by Strategy Games Ltd. in ‘Open Box’ in White Dwarf Issue No. 2 (August/September 1977). He said, “The excuse for publication here and now, presumably, is that there is a need for a cheap and understandable role playing game for those who can’t afford or make sense of D&D.” but was otherwise not positive, criticising the lack of clarity in the rules, the amount of creative effort that a Referee had to put into the game, and the humour in the game, especially in the names of the spells. His conclusion was that, “Anyone who likes T&T will sooner or later ‘graduate’ to the much more satisfying (and much more widely played) D&D. In considerable wargaming travels in the USA I never encountered anyone who played T&T, though D&D players are everywhere, and I’ve not even heard of anyone in this country who plays it. When it first appeared in America I said there was no point in it, and nothing has occurred to change my opinion.” —oOo—
Tunnels & Trolls is rough and just about ready. It is playable and by modern standards, just about has the bare minimum need to play. This should be no surprise. It was written fifty years ago when no one knew quite what a roleplaying game was—literally, as the term had then yet to be defined—and no-one knew how to write one. So, if the writing is not right and the explanations are not as clear as they could have been, and the contents are not in the order that we might expect them to be, then that is perfectly understandable. Yet, as scrappy as the resulting rulebook is, Tunnels & Trolls 1st Edition is a likeable game, one that is not taking itself too seriously and reads as if it is actually fun to play and faster to play. What is amazing is that within four years, Flying Buffalo would take the very basics of what is here and develop it into the fifth edition of Tunnels & Trolls that would remain its mainstay for over twenty-five years! The Tunnels & Trolls 1st Edition Reprint is an important piece of roleplaying history, the opportunity to look at the first roleplaying response to Dungeons & Dragons, to look at the origins of the world’s second longest fantasy roleplaying game, and to look at the beginnings of the roleplaying hobby as the concept spread beyond Dungeons & Dragons.

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

Whalgravaak’s Warehouse is the start of a new series of scenarios for Troika! from the Melsonian Arts Council. This is the ‘1:5 Troika Adventures’ series, which places an emphasis on shorter, location-based adventures, typically hexcrawls or dungeoncrawls, set within the city of Troika, but which do not provide new Backgrounds for Player Characters or ‘Hack’ how Troika! is played. Whalgravaak’s Warehouse lives up to that, in that it dungeoncrawl takes place in a large, in places, impossibly large interdimensional warehouse that served as major import/export house for the city of Troika. Whalgravaak was once known as the cruel, but efficient logistics wizard who could get anything from anywhere and ship anything to anywhere, which made him and clients rich as the city became a shipping nexus between the sphere without the need or the expense of training staff to crew and maintain the golden barges that still traverse between the spheres today. However, Whalgravaak grew paranoid in his old age, destroyed the instruction manual to the great device by which goods were transported, and retired. When the device became a threat to the city of Troika, the Autarch ordered Whalgravaak’s Warehouse permanently closed and locked. That was centuries ago. Whalgravaak is long dead. His warehouse still stands, a looming monolithic presence in a bad part of the city. Nobody goes in and nobody comes out. Though some claim there is movement on the room. Now, someone wants something from inside and have decided that the Player Characters are best equipped to find their way in and navigate its darkened offices and deep storage bays with their vertiginously stacked crates, which surely must still contain something interesting after all that since Whalgravaak himself died?

Whalgravaak’s Warehouse gives one main reason why the Player Characters might want to break into and explore the warehouse. This is to locate a book called The Tome of Sable Fields, for which they will be paid handsomely, but there are others and the Game Master can easily come up with more. Finding a way into the warehouse is a challenge in itself, but inside, the Player Characters will find strange worm-headed dog gone feral, creeping bandits and burglars looking for goods to fence or places to dump bodies, cultists who worship the still breathing nose of a titan, a clan of dustmen sieving the heaps of dust on the expansive roof of the warehouse where the air glows aquamarine like the Dustmen of Charles Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend, and more. There are rooms full of great lengths of rope that are mouldering into slime, a vegetable store where an onion has become an Onion Godlet, a room of sponges so dry it will suck the moisture from anyone who enters, and a set of employee records laden with bureaucratic despair… The roof is a post-apocalyptic hexcrawl of its very own, a separate environment that is essentially a desert of dust, marked only by the flickering head of one the giants that still work in the warehouse below and an Oasis of Tea, that will take the Player Characters days to explore. They had better come prepared for hot weather!

Locating The Tome of Sable Fields is a relatively simple matter and the Player Characters may do so relatively quickly, but actually getting hold of it is another matter. It is actually suspended over the very means by which Whalgravaak transported goods from one dimension to another by a crane. Unfortunately, none of the parts of the crane are talking to each other and the only way to get the crane operating is to get them to talk to each other. Essentially one bit of the crane is more noble than the other and the Player Characters will probably need to persuade them to overcome their individual problems and snobbery. This will drive them into exploring the warehouse further in the hopes of finding the means of getting each one to co-operate.

As part of the ‘1:5 Troika Adventures’ series and thus a dungeoncrawl, although one in a warehouse, Whalgravaak’s Warehouse is designed to be played like a dungeon and explored like a dungeon. Thus movement, noise, and resources become important, the Player Characters need a source of light and the scenario is played out in ten-minute turns in true Old School style Dungeons & Dragons. This also means that Whalgravaak’s Warehouse is played differently to other adventures for Troika!, with less of an emphasis on narrative play and more on environmental, location-based exploration. In keeping with the style, the adventure is perhaps deadlier and more challenging than the typical Troika! adventure, requiring more caution and care than a Troika! player might be used to.

Physically, Whalgravaak’s Warehouse is very well presented. The artwork is as weird and wonderful as you would expert, the cartography is decent, and the layout is clear and easy to use. There is also good advice for the Game Master on how and why she should use Whalgravaak’s Warehouse, and a clear explanation of what is going on in the warehouse.

Whalgravaak’s Warehouse is a great set-up for an adventure. Take the warehouse of an interdimensional import/export house, abandon it for centuries, and then turn it into an industrial dungeon with weird Dickensian undertones. The result is eminently entertaining and constantly going to screw with the heads of both the players and their characters as they discover one example of industrial decline after another and just what happens when you leave a dangerous interdimensional magical industrial complex alone for far too long.

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?Outgunned – Hero to Zero is the quick-start for Outgunned, the roleplaying game of action movies from the eighties and nineties (and beyond), inspired by Die Hard, True Lies, Lethal Weapon, Kingsman, Ocean’s Eleven, Hot Fuzz, and even John Wick.

It is also the English language quick-start for the Italian roleplaying game of the same name.

It is a seventy-one-page, 83.90 MB full colour PDF.

How long will it take to play?
Outgunned – Hero to Zero and its adventure (also known as a ‘Introductory Shot’), ‘Race Against Time’, is designed to be played through in a single session, two at most.
What else do you need to play?
Outgunned – Hero to Zero can be played using a total of nine six-sided dice, ideally per player. (The full game uses its own set of Action Dice.)
Who do you play?
The four Player Characters—or Heroes—in Outgunned – Hero to Zero consist of an undercover police officer, a hotshot driver and pilot, an ever cheerful bounty hunter, and a charming martial artist.
How is a Player Character defined?A Hero in Outgunned – Hero to Zero is defined by his Name, Role and Trope, Job, Age, Catchphrase, and Flaw. The Role and Trope determine a Hero’s starting Skills, whilst the Job grants access to information and contacts. Together with the Catchphrase, they can be combined by the player to define an action film archetype. The Catchphrase is a tag line or a creed, something guides the Hero to act when it comes time for action. The Flaw is an aspect of the Hero that will hinder him throughout his adventures.
A Hero has five Attributes and twenty Skills. The Attributes are Brawn, Nerves, Smooth, Focus, and Crime. Brawn handles action, Nerves handles reflexes and steady hands, Smooth is used for interaction and manipulation, Focus is for concentration, perception, and recall, and Crime is for awareness and secret action. Feats are granted by a Hero’s Role and Trope and typically allow a ‘Free Re-Roll’ when the Hero acts according to one of his Feats.
Experiences, of which there are four types—Achievements, Scars, Reputations, and Bonds—will affect a Hero’s dice rolls. These are not used in Outgunned – Hero to Zero.
Damage suffered is handled by Grit, ‘You Look’, and the ‘Death Roulette’. Grit is the amount damage a Hero can suffer, whilst the ‘Death Roulette’ is what the Director rolls against if there is a chance that the Hero will die. The chance—or the number of Lethal Bullets it holds—increases each time the Director rolls and the Hero survives. ‘You Look’ is actually a measure of how the Hero looks to others, as in, “How do I look?” and is actually a way of keeping track of the Conditions that a Hero might suffer.
A Hero has access to types of luck points, Adrenaline and Spotlight. A Hero has access to Adrenaline, up to maximum of six. It is earned for getting a success against all odds, making a great sacrifice, and so on. It can be spent to gain a bonus to a roll, to activate certain Feats, and to get an immediate Spotlight. The Director is encouraged to be generous with Adrenaline and every player is encouraged to spend it. A Hero can have three Spotlights and they can be expended to gain an ‘Extreme Success’ automatically, ‘Save a Friend’ who has lost at the Death Roulette, ‘Remove a Condition’, and even do something dramatic!
Weapons and gear will help under specific circumstances. There is an emphasis on guns and rides.
How do the mechanics work?
Mechanically, rolls in Outgunned are either an Action Roll or a Reaction Roll. The number of dice rolled for either always consists of the combined values for an Attribute and a Skill. For example, ‘Nerves’ and ‘Shoot’ to fire a gun at someone or ‘Smooth’ and ‘Streetwise’ to persuade a crook that you are one of them. Equipment and conditions will alter the number of dice a player has to a minimum of two and a maximum of nine. To succeed at a task, a player needs to roll sets of the same symbols (or numbers if not using Outgunned dice). The size of the set indicates the level of success. Two of a kind is a Basic Success; three of a kind is a Critical Success; four of a kind is Extreme Success; five of a kind is an Impossible Success; and six or more of a kind is a Jackpot! If the roll matches the difficulty of the task set by the Director—the Difficulty being either Basic, Critical, Extreme, Impossible, or Jackpot!—the Hero succeeds. A higher success can grant a better outcome, an advantage, or even extra actions, whilst a Jackpot! means that the player becomes the Director temporarily.
If the roll is not a success and the player has one success, he can reroll any dice that do not match. If the re-roll is a success, he keeps them, but if not, he loses a rolled success. Certain Feats allow a free re-roll without any possibility of losing successes. Lastly, after a re-roll, a player can go ‘All In’, push his luck and re-roll all dice that do not match any successes. However, if he fails, he loses everything, including all of successes rolled.
Even after a Re-roll and an ‘All In’, a roll that does not succeed is not a failure. Instead, a hero succeeds, but with consequences. Essentially the equivalent of a ‘Yes, but’.
How does combat work?
Combat in the Outgunned – Hero to Zero as per the rules above, but actions become ‘Dangerous’, which means that a Hero can lose Grit if a roll is not a success. If he loses too much Grit, he will suffer from one or more conditions, and even force rolls of the Death Roulette on the Hero. In comparison, the enemies—Goons, Bad Guys, and Bosses—have only Grit, not the Death Roulette, and when this is reduced to zero, they are knocked out. Bosses have Hot Boxes on their Grit track, indicating that they receive Adrenaline to spend on special actions of their own. The rules for combat cover range, cover, counting magazines (rather than bullets), and so on. There are also rules for car chases as well
What do you play?
‘Race Against Time’ is the ‘Introductory Shot’ in Outgunned – Hero to Zero, a classic movie action plot involving a hunt for a MacGuffin. Naturally, it involves lots of a fights, a chase, and an exploding aeroplane! It is, of course, an entertaining affair and is made all the better by the staging advice given alongside the length of the scenario. The advice is excellent, suggesting possible maneouvres that the Heroes might take in the various situations they find themselves in throughout the scenario.
The scenario is open-ended, so the Director could run a sequel by adapting some of the content in Outgunned – Hero to Zero.

Is there anything missing?
No. Outgunned – Hero to Zero includes everything that the Director and four players need to play through it.
Is it easy to prepare?
The core rules presented in Outgunned – Hero to Zero are not easy to prepare. They are not difficult to prepare, but rather they take a slight adjustment as they are not as straightforward or as obviously intuitive as most rules are. So they require careful attention upon the part of Director.
Is it worth it?
Yes. Outgunned – Hero to Zero presents the basics of an exciting action-orientated game that plays fast and encourages the players to both indulge in all of the clichés of the action movie genre and be inventive in when it comes to their Heroes being cool and cinematic. The rules are just different enough to make them initially a little challenging, but after that, the session is full of bullets flying, fists lashing, and wheels screeching action.

Outgunned – Hero to Zero is published by Two Little Mice and is available to download here.

It begins with a great crashing and splashing. The Player Characters are aboard the Morro, caught in a fearsome storm of raging winds and seas that is driving the ship ever closer onto the jagged rocks below towering black cliffs. Despite their efforts, and those of the crew, with a mighty crack, the ship is thrown onto the rock and shattered, and the Player Characters cast into the water. Before them lies the cliffs or a dark cave mouth… Whichever course the Player Characters take, they will find themselves in a Fallen Chapel, guided by a large black goat, a cat, an enormous boar, a raven, a trio of toads, a large snake, a wide-eyed owl, and more before a Witches’ Sabbat where they will learn the true reason behind their current situation. The thirteenth of the robed figures, a hag known as Baba Iaga (yes, really…) will tell them that the coven’s master, the Horned King, lord of the Wild Hunt, who bestows his blessing upon heathen witches, barbarian shamans, and warriors that exalt the wild savage hidden within, has lost his vigour. Instead of riding forth, at the head of pack of hounds, he lazes atop his throne of bones, thrall to the ice giant’s daughter. Baba Iaga tells them to enter the Thrice-Tenth Kingdom that is the Horned Lord’s realm and once in his citadel, steal the great antlered crown from his head and come back through the Black Gate render it into her care! In return, she and the Witches of Asur shall reward them mightily!
This is the set-up for Dungeon Crawl Classics #72: Beyond the Black Gate, the sixth scenario to be published by Goodman Games for use with the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. Designed by Harley Stroh for a group of six to ten Fifth Level Player Characters, which takes beyond the far North into the mystic realms of Thrice-Tenth Kingdom, encrusted in snow and ice and there confront the Ice Giants who have turned his citadel into a foul fane. It has an unworldly feel, grim and dank, and has some fantastic encounters, such as two larger giants bullying a younger one for his cowardice and forcing him to fight the Player Characters alone, refuse chambers full of bones and plague rats, and an ice-mirrored hall slick with frost and ice that turn the cave into a maze of refracted light from the Player Characters’ torches and the hunting ground of a blind, aging Ice Giant Warrior. The Ice Giants are tough challenging, especially when faced in groups, but careful, even cautious play upon the part of the players and their characters will enable them to pick them off one by one.

Penultimately, the Player Characters will confront the gaunt, drained, and haunted figure of the Horned King slumped upon his throne before a Giantess, dancing, twirling, and spinning for this pleasure, whilst the vile, vampiric salamander, feeds upon the Horned King’s blood. She is Vefreyja, the Ice Giant’s Daughter, and the Player Characters should be beware of her kiss, whilst the salamander has secrets of his own. It is a grand fight, but ultimately, the Player Characters have a choice in what they do. They can simply take the crown of the Horned King or kill him, they can free him and take him as Patron, and they can even kill Baba Iaga and her coven. Whatever they decide to do, there are consequences to the Player Characters’ actions. If they return to the Crown of the Horned King to Baba Iaga, she will genuinely reward them—there is no betrayal of the Player Characters here! The Horned King will reward them with his patronage if they rescue him, but alternatively, one of the Player Characters could take the Horned Crown and ascend the throne of the Thrice-Tenth Kingdom. There are great duties involved in bearing the Horned Crown, but great benefits too. This is not as fully explored in the scenario as it should be, but the potential is there and the Judge will need to develop this more fully herself. In addition, there are a number of good magical items to be found and also be earned as a reward if the Player Characters give the Horned Crown to Baba Iaga, so it will not feel as if one player and his character is being rewarded more than another by taking the Horned Crown.
To support the scenario and beyond, Dungeon Crawl Classics #72: Beyond the Black Gate includes details of the Horned King as a Patron, which gives the Patron Invoke effect, Patron Taint, and the spell, Slaying Strike. This is followed by details of the Horned Crown and the other magical items in the scenario.
If there is an issue to the scenario, it is that it is linear and the set-up forces the Player Characters to follow Baba Iaga’s diktats, so it will not seem as if they have much in the way of choice. There is some truth to this, but the players and their characters do have plenty of choice in how they resolve the scenario. Another issue is the maps of the Citadel of the Horned King and the Dungeons of Horned King below it and their accompany descriptions. The description of the dungeon comes in the middle of the Citadel of the Horned King which makes it feel as if the description is forcing the Player Characters to explore below before coming back upstairs to face the Horned King. The inclusion of the dungeon is important because it offers another way into the Citadel of the Horned King, but the inclusion of its description in the middle of the description of the upper Citadel is an annoying intrusion. It would have made more sense to keep the descriptions separate.
Like the Dungeon Crawl Classics #71: The 13th Skull before it, Dungeon Crawl Classics #72: Beyond the Black Gate includes a second, smaller scenario. This is Terry Olson’s ‘Crash of the Sky People’, a short, Science Fantasy scenario designed for four to six Player Characters of Third Level. Designed for convention play and thus having a running time of roughly four hours, it opens with a starship of the infamous winged sky-pirates from the planet Tahlmohl crashing to earth near the Player Characters. When they go to investigate, they discover the wreckage is guarded by robots and strange traps the likes of which they will never have seen before. The scenario has the feel of S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, though on a very much smaller scale. Ultimately though, this is all a set-up to get the Player Characters into a Sky Joust with other Tahlmohlian sky-pirates! The scenario is decent enough for a convention scenario and could easily be tied into other scenarios for Dungeon Crawl Classics which have a similar Science Fantasy feel.
Physically, Dungeon Crawl Classics #72: Beyond the Black Gate is decently presented. The artwork is good and the maps clear and easy to use. In comparison, ‘Crash of the Sky People’ feels more perfunctorily presented, but is okay rather than poor in terms of its appearance.
Dungeon Crawl Classics #72: Beyond the Black Gate is a short, but epic and entertaining Swords & Sorcery scenario. It has a grim grandeur and is brilliantly brutal in taking the Player Characters to the winter of the Mystic North and back again in a thoroughly enjoyable scenario.

What is great about boardgames today is that designers can go back in time to revisit old films and old television series and create if not great games based on them, but then good solid, playable games that at the very least do the films and television series they are based on justice by making you feel that you are playing those films or television series. The design team at Prospero Hall proved this to be the case again and again with multiple titles like Fast & Furious: Highway Heist, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Horrified, Jaws, and more. Back to the Future: Back in Time is Prospero Hall’s version of the classic eighties time travel film starring Michael J. Fox, which happens to be forty years old in 2025. Back to the Future: Back in Time is also published by Funko Games, so from the start, the pedigree of the game looks good. The result is a co-operative game for two to four players, aged ten and up, which focuses not on the obvious theme of the film, time travel, but on what the lead character, Marty McFly, has to do to get back from 1955 to 1985, which is make sure his parents get together and are in love and the DeLorean is in right place and ready for time travel. Of course, this is not easy. The photograph of Marty McFly and his siblings must not have faded away by the time this happens, Biff will be constantly interfering and so needs punching, the DeLorean needs repairing, and there are a lot of other obstacles that the players will face.

Since Back to the Future: Back in Time is from Funko Games, the production values are great. This starts with the image of the Fluxx Capacitor on the base of the board. This adds nothing to the game play, but it is a little detail that just adds a little extra… The rulebook is not presented as a rulebook per se, but as an issue of the ‘Tales from Space’ comic book, this time containing a ‘Shocking SCIENCE-FICTION Rulebook’. The look of the cover to the comic book is matched by the game’s artwork, which is all drawn and painted in the style of a bande dessinée comic book rather than the game using stills from the film. There is no doubt that there are good film stills that could have been used in the game, but the look of Back to the Future: Back in Time is classier and all the better for not using film stills.

Underneath the board, in addition to the rulebook, you will find four Character Mats plus their Starter Power Tiles and Player Figures, three Non-Player Figures, eight dice, a Clock Dice Tower, a DeLorean Car piece, decks of Movement, Opportunity, Trouble, and Item Cards, DeLorean Part Tiles, Knockdown Tokens, a Turn Tracker, McFly Photo Sections, and a Love Meter. The board depicts the various locations in Hill Valley, including the Clock Tower, Town Square, Hill Valley High, Doc Brown’s House, and the houses of both Lorraine and George. The four Character Mats plus their Starter Power Tiles and Player Figures are for Marty, Doc, Jennifer, and Einstein—and yes, you really do play Doc Brown’s pet dog! The Character Mats depict each character, have spaces for the Starter Power Tiles with room for more, and details of each character’s Special Power. Marty McFly can move Lorraine closer to him, Doc Brown can move to the location of the DeLorean, Jennifer can move Marty, Doc, or Einstein closer to her, and Einstein can move Biff away if he is too close to him. The Power Tiles represent Actions that a player can do on his turn, including moving his Character, attempting a challenge, modifying a die roll, and using Item Cards. The three Non-Player Figures are George, Lorraine, and Biff. Throughout the game, the players will be escorting George and Lorraine to get them together and thus fall in love, whilst keeping Biff away.

The Movement Cards give instructions to move George, Lorraine, and Biff. Whereas George and Lorraine will move around the board, Biff will move towards them and if in the same location as either, will reduce the love between George and Lorraine as tracked on the Love Meter. The Opportunity Cards, each based on a scene from the film, present a chance for the players to gain an advantage. For example, ‘Provoke Biff’ Opportunity Card shows Biff and his gang chasing you in his black 1946 Ford Super De Luxe convertible and if the player is successful, he will gain an extra Power Tile and the Skateboard Item Card, whilst the ‘Get Your Damn Hands Off Her’ Opportunity Card shows George punching Biff and rewards the player by moving Biff to the School Parking Lot, knocking him down, and giving him a Knockdown Token. The Item Cards show items and pieces of equipment, many of them iconic to the film, which give a player an advantage each turn. For example, the ‘Remote Control’ Item Card enables a player to attempt a Move DeLorean Challenge from anywhere on the board, whilst with the ‘George’s Notebook’ Item Card, a player can move George closer to him. Apart from the ‘Backpack’ Item Card, which has the constant effect of granting a player more Power Tiles and is never exhausted, an Item card is exhausted after each use and it can be used every turn.

Where the Movement, Opportunity, and Item Cards are quite small, the Trouble Cards are larger and square in shape. They represent factors that will hinder the players throughout the game and come in three levels so that they get more difficult to overcome and have a greater negative the higher their level. For example, the Level One Trouble Card, ‘Strickland Looks for Slackers’, prevents anyone from attempting a ‘Fight Biff Challenge’ and if dealt with, grants a player a new Power Tile, whilst the ‘Starlighters’ Guitarist Injured’ Trouble Card is Level Three and has the chance of forcing sections of the McFly Photo to be flipped over, and if dealt with, grants a player a new Power Tile. There can only be one Trouble Card in play, but remains in play until resolved or removed from the board.

The Love Meter shows two things. One is the McFly Family Photo which depicts Marty McFly and his older siblings, Dave and Linda. The McFly Family Photo is made up of six sections that can be flipped over during play to represent their fading from the timeline. Around the edge of Love Meter is a track that runs from ‘-4’ to fifteen. The top three spaces are marked with a Heart and called the ‘Heart Zone’. If the Love Meter Cube (or marker) is in this zone, George and Lorraine are in love. The lower numbered spaces track the progress of their potentially falling in love and whilst the Love Meter Cube is in this area, there is the chance of the six sections that McFly Family Photo will fade…

Lastly, there is the Turn Tracker, which acts as a countdown towards 10:04 p.m. on November 12th, 1955 when the lightning bolt will strike the Clock Tower overlooking the Hill Valley Town Square and provide the DeLorean’s flux capacitor with the 1.21 gigawatts of pure power needed to propel it forward it in time, back to 1985. One side is intended for player with three players, which the other is for two or four. The spaces on the Turn Tracker indicated what cards are drawn on each turn, including Movement Cards and Trouble Cards and checking the Love Meter and the McFly Family Photo.
Back to the Future: Back in Time does have a lot of pieces and a few moving parts, so that it looks more complex than it actually is. A player’s turn consist of two phases. In the Turner Tracker Phase, he will move the Turn Tracker Cube along one space and resolves the instructions it gives. This will always be a Movement Card to move George, Lorraine, and Biff, but can also be adding new Trouble Card to the game board or having to check the Love Meter and the McFly Family Photo. In the Action Phase, a player uses the Power Tiles to move his character around Hill Valley and Attempt Challenges. The Starter Power Tiles—five per Character—either enable the Character to move or a particular set of dice. Some of the extra Power Tiles, which can be gained by overcoming various challenges, do exactly the same, but others do more than this, such as reroll all dice that show ‘Biff’ symbols or change the symbols rolled on the dice to another. A Power Tile can be used only once per turn, but together with his Character’s Special Power, they give a player six actions on his turn and this can be expanded up to nine if a player overcomes enough Challenges.

There are six types of Challenge in Back to the Future: Back in Time. For the ‘Influence Love Challenge’, George and Lorraine must be together with the Character, whose player rolls the dice to generate Heart symbols to raise the Love Meter and so cause the potential lovebirds to fall in love. The ‘Move DeLorean Challenge’ is done to move the DeLorean around the board to get it to the Town Square in readiness for the lighting bolt striking the Clock Tower, whilst the ‘Prepare DeLorean Challenge’ has the Characters prepare the DeLorean with the Cable, the Hook, and the Gasoline at Doc Brown’s house before it can be moved to the Town Square. This only needs be done once per DeLorean Part per game, unlike the other Challenges. The ‘Fight Biff Challenge’ is conducted to try and knock Biff. This disables his action and movement, in particular, preventing the rolling of ‘Biff’ symbols on the dice. The ‘Opportunity Challenge’ gives a chance for the player to gain an advantage, a Power Tile, and other rewards, whilst a ‘Trouble Challenge’ is a chance for the player to overcome a ‘Trouble Card’ that is hindering everyone’s progress.

The dice come in four sets of two. The different types have certain symbols on them that need to be rolled for the various Challenges, but they all have ‘Biff’ and ‘Wild Card’ symbols on them too. The ‘Wild Card’ symbols can be used as any symbol to meet any Challenge and a player can reroll as many dice as he wants on an attempt against a Challenge, depending upon the Power Tiles used, of course. However, ‘Biff’ symbols are bad. Once rolled, they cannot be rerolled, and for each one rolled, the Biff figure is moved closer to Lorraine or George and once at the same location, lowers the Love Meter. Each Knockdown Token that Biff has counters a single ‘Biff’ symbol rolled on the dice. A player can roll as many or as few dice as he wants, which has its advantages and disadvantages. Rolling more dice means that there is likelihood of rolling Wildcard symbols, which means getting more of the symbols he wants, but it also means that he might roll more ‘Biff’ symbols. Further, as long as he does not roll ‘Biff’ symbols, a player can roll the dice as often as he wants or needs to.

Once set-up, the play is all about getting the right pieces to the right places. George and Lorraine together and all the way up on the Love Meter, Biff away from them, and the DeLorean, first to Doc Brown’s House to get the items needed for the lightning strike, and then to the Town Square. As the players push all of their characters and pieces into place, the game is annoyingly pulling them apart, splitting up George and Lorraine, getting Biff too close, causing trouble, and so on. And if the game sounds complex, once you actually have it set up and start playing, everything clicks into place, because what you realise is that you are playing out the plot of Back to the Future and quite literally time is against you. This is where the fun of the game comes to the fore along with the tension in the mechanics, so ultimately, the question of the game is, “Can you do as well as director, Robert Zemeckis, and the film’s cast?” And whilst you might not be able to first time, when you do, you will have told your own version of the story.

The fact that Back to the Future: Back in Time hews so close to the film is both a blessing and a curse. It means that the game is familiar to most players and that from the start, they understand what the overall objective is, and from there it is not that difficult to learn how to achieve that objective using the game’s rules. However, it does mean that Back to the Future: Back in Time cannot actually offer all that much in terms of variability and replayability. This is less of an issue for casual boardgame players than it is for the veteran player, but still, play it more than a few times and it begins to feel like you are watching the same film over and over. Lastly, as a co-operative game, it has the potential suffer from the Alpha Player Problem in which one player starts directing everyone else’s action, especially given that this game is aimed at a family audience and an experienced boardgame player may be the one teaching others to play it.

Physically, Back to the Future: Back in Time is very well produced. The standout piece is the DeLorean car which looks really good and there is even a Clock Tower Dice Tower that you can put together and have sat on the board where it can be used to roll dice and to add a little more physicality to the game. The artwork on the cards and in the rulebook is all excellent, capturing the likenesses of the various characters, items, and places an engaging comic book style. What lets the production values down are the figures. They are not particularly detailed and they really just about capture a feel of the likenesses of the characters. Plus, they are a little light. However, done in different colours, it is easy to work out which character is which.

Back to the Future: Back in Time is very good adaption of the classic time travel comedy. Almost too good in fact. Fans of the film will enjoy this game a great deal, but without being daunted by the rules which really do help them tell the story of Back to the Future. Hardened boardgame players will enjoy what is a very well designed, very nice looking, co-operative game (though not much beyond a few plays). Back to the Future: Back in Time is another excellent game from both Prospero Hall and Funko Games.

Since 2001, Reviews from R’lyeh have contributed to a series of Christmas lists at Ogrecave.com—and at RPGaction.com before that, suggesting not necessarily the best board and roleplaying games of the preceding year, but the titles from the last twelve months that you might like to receive and give. Continuing the break with tradition—in that the following is just the one list and in that for reasons beyond its control, OgreCave.com is not running its own lists—Reviews from R’lyeh would once again like present its own list. Further, as is also traditional, Reviews from R’lyeh has not devolved into the need to cast about ‘Baleful Blandishments’ to all concerned or otherwise based upon the arbitrary organisation of days. So as Reviews from R’lyeh presents its annual (Post-)Christmas Dozen, I can only hope that the following list includes one of your favourites, or even better still, includes a game that you did not have and someone was happy to hide in gaudy paper and place under that dead tree for you. If not, then this is a list of what would have been good under that tree and what you should purchase yourself to read and play in the months to come.

—oOo—
The Making of the Original Dungeons & Dragons 1970 – 1977
Wizards of the Coast ($99.99/£75)
In an exceptional year for books about the history of the hobby, the first entry on the list is the most controversial, but an absolute must for the Dungeons & Dragons fan who has an interest in the early history of the world’s most popular roleplaying game. To help celebrate the fiftieth anniversary, this massive volume charts the gestation and development through letters and fanzines of the ideas that would ultimately lead to the publication of Original Dungeons & Dragons in 1974. The hefty tome draws heavily on the archives to fully reproduce Chainmail – rules for medieval miniatures and its Fantasy Supplement that were the precursors to Dungeons & Dragons, the very first draft of Dungeons & Dragons, and much, much more, all the way up to the published version and beyond. Were you so inclined, the reproductions in this book are so good that you could actually run a game based on the rules they present! Everything is faithfully reproduced and accompanied by a commentary from Jon Peterson, one of the hobby’s few historians, the result is a superb book, one that genuinely gives the fan of the roleplaying game the opportunity to look at documents and correspondences that they would otherwise never have the chance to look at or read. The Making of the Original Dungeons & Dragons 1970 – 1977 is like having a Dungeons & Dragons museum of your own, but one that you can pull from your shelf and browse any time you like. If you really have any interest in the development of the roleplaying hobby, let alone that of Dungeons & Dragons, this book is essential.

Eat The Reich
Rowan, Rook, & Decard ($30/£25)
Why bother punching a Nazi, when you can fucking eat a Nazi? Eat The Reich is the all-action roleplaying game in which the Player Characters are a team of crack vampire commandos coffin dropped on Paris in 1943. And then cutting, stabbing, biting, rending, and blood draining their way across the City of Lights and up the ranks of the German occupiers to the top and beyond. And beyond means getting hold of Adolf Hitler himself—currently lurking in his zeppelin moored to the Eiffel Tower, so atop Paris effectively—and drink all of his amphetamine-fuelled blood. If that does not sound like a great hook for a session or three of over-the-top, blood-drenched action, then what the hell are you here for? Eat The Reich is designed to be fast-playing with an emphasis on carnage, blood magic, meaningful flashbacks, and the slaughter of hundreds and hundreds of Fascists. Which is not enough Fascists. All of which is packaged in a swathe of vibrant pinks, blues, and yellows that give the combined roleplaying game and scenario a neon punk energy all of its very own. Play Eat The Reich. Kill Nazis. Drink their blood. Is there anything better?
The Horrendous Hounds of Hendenburgh
The Merry Mushmen ($28/£22.50)
The village of Hendenburgh stands in the middle of the Kryptwood, an ancient forest steeped in legend and history recently beset by murderous demon hounds, ripping apart anyone who dares enter its reaches and even snatching lone villagers from the streets of the small settlement. These are the only dangers faced by the villagers: Highwaymen lurk in the forest, ready to pounce on Hendenburgh’s misfortune; a coven of witches wants everything to be returned to normal; the old silver mine stands abandoned, infested with monsters that drove out the miners and sowed the seeds of Hendenburgh’s poverty; a Bridge Troll has gone on strike after a drunken pixie failed to pay the toll; and at its heart, the Tomb of the Tyrant, the last resting place of the Kryptwood Tyrant, a despot who ruled the region a thousand years ago. This is a great set-up for the fantastically well-produced The Horrendous Hounds of Hendenburgh, a story-packed low-Level hexcrawl with lots going on and plenty of plots for the Player Characters to get involved in. It is also a fine sequel to the equally as good Nightmare Over Ragged Hollow (and that is worth picking up too) and both are written for use with Old School Essentials, but The Horrendous Hounds of Hendenburgh is a just that much more fun with its combination of Hammer Horror with shades of Monty Python.

Aces Over The Adriatic – A Solo RPG
Critical Kit Ltd. ($15/£12)
Since lockdown there has been a rise in interest in and play of the solo journaling games that rather than tell a story in the choose-your-own-adventure-path of classics like The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, provide the situations and the prompts that the player will react to in order to write the story of his character’s experiences and how he reacts to them. Many offer a chance to experience and tell a story of horror or wonder, such as a Thousand Year Old Vampire or Colostle: A Solo RPG Adventure, but Aces Over The Adriatic takes the reader back barely a century to explore the wonders of the age in the gleaming skies over the azure of the Adriatic. In the latter half of the Jazz Age, the cutting age technology and the future of flight lay in the seaplane! In a golden age of aeronautical development, experimentation, and speed, the great nations of the era competed to win the Schneider Cup, awarded to the fastest seaplane in the competition held twice a year. As a pilot, the reader not only gets to fly the greatest aeroplanes of the age and enter the Schneider Cup, but soar into the skies and embrace the romance of the air. However, this is a solo journalling game inspired by Hayao Miyazaki’s Porco Rosso, so the pilot has to deal with air pirates as well as his rivals and the weather! This is a chance for the reader to tell the stories of his pilot’s adventures and encounters with most famous men and women of the time in a glorious epic of another age.
Moria – Through the Doors of Durin
Free League Publishing ($46/£36)
For all the dungeons that the roleplaying hobby has given us in the last half century, there is the one dungeon from literature that inspired them all and lives in our imagination—Moria, from Tolkien’s Middle-earth. In The Lord of the Rings we discover the fate of Balin’s expedition and see Gandalf confronted by the great evil that is the Balrog, Durin’s Ban, but in Moria – Through the Doors of Durin for The One Ring, Second Edition, we get to explore it ourselves. Originally the city of Dwarrowdelf, the seat of a Dwarven kingdom, for centuries it has been infested with Orcs, Goblins, and, of course, much, much worse. However, it has a scope and grandeur that could never be mapped out in a single book, being too large and extensive to map every nook and cranny, so instead, Moria – Through the Doors of Durin details over twenty great Landmarks, each a potential destination involving danger and adventure, and each a major location within the mines. Getting to them is no easy task though, so every trek to and between them these Landmarks, employs the Journey mechanics of The One Ring, so that whilst getting there can be fraught with dread and danger, the focus is what the Player-heroes discover at the Landmarks. Combine this with a hoard of Patrons, foes, encounters, and treasures, and the Loremaster has all the means to take her players and their heroes into the greatest dungeon in literature, whether for a single delve or an extended campaign!

BattleTech Universe
Catalyst Game Labs ($49.99/£45)
Whilst it might be first, Dungeons & Dragons is not the only roleplaying game or game with an anniversary in 2024. BattleTech: A Game of Armoured Combat was published in 1984 and in the forty years since, through multiple publishers, the game has received numerous sets of new rules, supplements, several ranges of miniatures—both plastic and metal, over one hundred novels, a cartoon series, a collectible card game, and multiple computer games. All of which has constantly developed the setting and background and stories to the Inner Sphere—and beyond—at the beginning of the thirty-first century, so that from the beginning of the Fourth Succession War to capture of Terra by the returning the Clans, the focus is upon one-and-twenty-six years of history! It is however, a rich, detailed, and daunting history, so difficult to fully grasp and comprehend. However, BattleTech Universe is a sourcebook that presents the history to BattleTech is an easy to digest and understand fashion, highlighting the factions and individuals and their objectives, at every juncture and turn of events, all lavishly illustrated drawing upon artwork form forty years of BattleTech games, supplements, and novels.
Dreams and Machines
Modiphius Entertainment ($45/£35)
Most post-apocalyptic roleplaying games present harsh and unforgiving futures, with technology that has to be scavenged and hard fought for, but the future of Dreams and Machines is more positive and hopeful, set on a colony world where everyone can see the signs of the technology that turned on their ancestors and triggered the Builder War. These are the Wakers, the mechs built to serve the Builder, a programme to develop resource and power control, which litter the landscape and everyone fears will react and carry out the instructions of their corrupt programming. This is a world where the Player Characters work to build their community and forge links with other communities, to make lives better and protect them against dangers such as the Wakers and the Thralls, humans wrapped in loops of wire and marked with ash and paint, who up out of the ground to aggressively raid and steal food and technology from the communities. One of the interesting legacies of the technology is the way in which it can be interacted with, through GLIFs, or ‘Graphic Layer Instruction Format’ patterns that that once learned enable Archivists to use them spells to instruct technology and the Wakers, whilst the Spears, dedicated to protecting communities with their vicious Electrospears, mark themselves with Hunter-GLIFs that temporarily conceal them from the optical sensors of hostile machines. Overall, Dreams and Machines feels cleaner, more positive, and more hopeful than other roleplaying games of its genre.

Call of Cthulhu: Arkham
Chaosium, Inc. ($59.99/£48.99)
The city of Arkham crown—if not the jewel that is Miskatonic University—in the milieu of Lovecraft’s fiction, the New England town at its heart, witch-haunted and fabled, rich in secrets and conspiracies and crime. Call of Cthulhu: Arkham returns it to print for call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, to detail everything from town and its history, its inhabitants, its shops and its societies to its dread secrets and even worse, the people and things that keep them! Just as the original Arkham Unveiled was in 1990, this supplement is the keystone to the Lovecraft Country series of scenario anthologies and setting books, and it enables the classic Call of Cthulhu Investigator to remain at home and have a family and a job to investigate the strangeness all around him rather than going on some expensive round the world, never to be seen again. This sets up a very different style of campaign, one based in the community as much as it is in the surrounding region with the Investigators discovering secrets and facing threats which are much closer to home. Call of Cthulhu: Arkham is a great updating of a classic supplement and setting that successfully makes them both more accessible and useable, whilst laying the groundwork for a terrible series of encounters and threats to faced by the Investigators in the future. (And if this is not enough Arkham, then Welcome to Arkham: An Illustrated Guide for Visitors to the Town of ARKHAM, MASSACHUSETTS, and Environs Including DUNWICH, INNSMOUTH, and KINGSPORT is also good.)
Outgunned Adventure
Two Little Mice ($55/£45)
Sadly, we do not have an official Indiana Jones roleplaying game, but we do have one which will do all of the action of the Pulp action and archaeology genre. This is Outgunned Adventure, a roleplaying game inspired by Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Mummy, which of course, sends the adventurers off in search of treasures and secrets in the remotest parts of the world, from deep in the jungles of Central America to the sandy deserts of Egypt, from the mountains of the Himalayas to the islands of the South Seas, more often than not, chased by rival archaeologists and treasure hunters, cultists and Nazis. The heroes and heroines of Outgunned Adventure must search and research, jump and duck, and punch and kick their way to glory and success if they are get that invaluable treasure to the right place and prevent it from falling into the wrong hands! Outgunned Adventure is a Genre book for Outgunned, the Cinematic Action RPG inspired by Die Hard, Kingsman, Ocean’s Eleven, Hot Fuzz, and much, much more. Outgunned—and thus Outgunned Adventure—is a roleplaying game in which the Adventurers cannot fail. At worst, they can succeed in an uninteresting way, so it is better to gamble in succeeding in a more exciting and thrilling fashion in keeping with the genre! Outgunned Adventure is fast playing and captures all of the pace and excitement of some our favourite action films.

XCRAWL Classics Roleplaying Game
Goodman Games ($59.99/£45.99)
Imagine a world where the number one sport is not football or cricket, but a death sport called Xtreme Dungeon Crawling! Some adventurers do delve deep into the caverns and labyrinths below the earth, but if they really want to become famous, they turn Professional and form teams which enrol in leagues which stage manufactured dungeons live-streamed via spellphones throughout the North American Empire and beyond. If they can survive the arena, with its horrific monsters, lethal traps, magical hazards, and challenging puzzles, then they had better wish their agent is good, because he has to navigate the shark-infested waters of corporate sponsorship, rival teams and their agents, the networks, and even the Action Guild, responsible for running the events. But then it is the only way to become the superstar influencers and live celebrity lifestyles few in the Empire can imagine, backed up with for endorsement deals and corporate sponsorships, and the fabulous cash prizes earned for slaying monsters. Using the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game rules, what the XCRAWL Classics Roleplaying Game does to take Dungeons & Dragons-style play and modernises it with all of the razzmatazz and energy modern wrestling! This is as witty and as entertaining to play as it sounds and creates some great over-the-top gaming.
Pendragon Core Rulebook
Chaosium, Inc.  ($49.99/£39.99)
The Pendragon Core Rulebook returns to print the classic Arthurian roleplaying game that designer Greg Stafford considered be his masterpiece with a brand new, illuminated edition. It provides all of the rules and details to create young Cyrmic knights ready to ride out in service to the liege lord and ultimately King Arthur, to go in search of adventure and quests, to attend court and participate in tournaments and more. There is so much more to Pendragon with the Pendragon Core Rulebook covering the creation of a Player-knight and the duties he will undertake, combat, and the duties of a knight, but focusing very much on how he will behave and carry himself. At the core of the game are thirteen pairs of Personality Traits—Chaste and Lustful, Honest and Deceitful, Valorous and Cowardly, and so on—that the player will roleplay as they determine how his knight will act, usually in the best interests of the knight in mind, but at other times, especially when the knight is being tested, against the interests of the knight, and possibly those of his fellow knights! The Personality Traits are flexible though, and will change over time, enabling a player to roleplay his knight becoming a better person, knowing that sometimes, the Personality Traits will tell him otherwise. The Pendragon Core Rulebook provides everything that a player needs to begin playing and the Game Master with the basic rules, thus laying the groundwork for the Pendragon Gamemaster’s Book and Great Pendragon Campaign to come.

This is Free Trader Beowulf
Mongoose Publishing ($59.99/£45)
In the year of its fiftieth anniversary, it was no surprise that Dungeons & Dragons got all the fanfare and the attention, but 2024 also saw the release of another good history of another long-lived game. Indeed, there are very few roleplaying games that have the depth and detail and storied history to have an actual book devoted them, but Traveller is one of them. With multiple editions and multiple publishers, Traveller has almost as many years to explore in This is Free Trader Beowulf from Mongoose Publishing. This charts the history and development of the world’s longest running Science Fiction roleplaying game, examining the many decisions and changes made with each new edition and supplement, not just upon the part of the creators and developers, but also the fans who would make their own contributions too. Accompanied discussions of books that would have been and comparisons with the rest of the hobby for context as well as lengthy lists of everything published for the roleplaying game in each of its iterations, This is Free Trader Beowulf is written by the authors of the Designers & Dragons series of roleplaying histories and he provides a thoroughly detailed and well researched book that every fan of Traveller will want and every roleplayer with an interest in the development and history of roleplaying games.

1974 is an important year for the gaming hobby. It is the year that Dungeons & Dragons was introduced, the original RPG from which all other RPGs would ultimately be derived and the original RPG from which so many computer games would draw for their inspiration. It is fitting that the current owner of the game, Wizards of the Coast, released the new version, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, in the year of the game’s fortieth anniversary, and the new edition of that, Dungeons & Dragons, 2024, in the year of the game’s fiftieth anniversary. To celebrate this, Reviews from R’lyeh will be running a series of reviews from the hobby’s anniversary years, thus there will be reviews from 1974, from 1984, from 1994, and from 2004—the thirtieth, twentieth, and tenth anniversaries of the titles. These will be retrospectives, in each case an opportunity to re-appraise interesting titles and true classics decades on from the year of their original release.

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1984 produced two of greatest roleplaying games designed in response to the Cold War and two of the greatest humour roleplaying games. One of the Cold War roleplaying games was Twilight 2000, whilst one of the humour roleplaying games was Toon. In both cases, the other roleplaying game was Paranoia. Published by West End Games, previously known for its wargames, Paranoia: A Role-Playing Game of a Darkly Humorous Future is a Science Fiction post-apocalyptic dystopian satire inspired by classics of the genre, such as Nineteen Eighty-Four, Brave New World, Logan’s Run, and THX 1138. It is both a satire on capitalism and communism, a roleplaying game of trust and distrust—mostly the latter, laced with black humour, drenched in irony, and if it was not the first roleplaying game that specifically pitted the players and their characters against one another, it was certainly, the roleplaying game to not only embrace it wholeheartedly, but also to actively encourage it. What it was though, was the first roleplaying game in which the Game Master was as much an adversary to the Player Characters as they were to each other, and it was the first roleplaying game in which knowledge or possession of the rules was punishable by death. The play and the setting of Paranoia is one of ignorance and fear built on a series of contradictions which the players and their characters attempt to navigate, rarely with any success, and generally, with consequences both disastrous and funny for all concerned.
The setting for Paranoia: A Role-Playing Game of a Darkly Humorous Future is Alpha Complex, a vast underground city where the last of humanity survives thanks to the protection and facilities provided by the Computer. The Computer is their friend. Citizens of Alpha Complex are decanted into Clone Families of six identical clones and raised to serve meaningful and satisfying lives in service to Alpha Complex and in return be provided with nutritious food and enjoyable entertainment. Most clones and their families possess a Security Clearance of Infrared. Depending upon the role and assignment of a Citizen, he may achieve a higher Security Clearance (if he is not executed first). This is based on the colour spectrum, so in ascending order is RED, ORANGE, YELLOW, GREEN, BLUE, INDIGO, VIOLET, and ULTRAVIOLET, the latter clearance only available to High Programmers and (on a temporary basis) Game Masters. Unfortunately, Alpha Complex is at war and has been ever since it was established. Three are forces outside of Alpha Complex which want to see it and its way of life it provides its friends with destroyed. Worse though are those who would destroy it from within. First and foremost, Commies. Commies are Traitors. Commies are everywhere. Then there are Mutants and members of Secret Societies. Mutants and members of Secret Societies are Traitors. It is the duty of every Citizen of Alpha Complex to report all signs of treasonous activities, including being a Commie, a Mutant, or a Member of a Secret Society. Not reporting signs of treasonous activities, including being a Commie, a Mutant, or a Member of a Secret Society is treasonous.
Fortunately, Alpha Complex has a solution: Troubleshooters. Troubleshooters are carefully selected Infrared Clones trained and equipped to further serve the Computer, including spotting Traitors and signs of treason. To reflect their training, equipment, and responsibilities, they are promoted to RED Security Clearance level and assigned to a Service Group that can be the Armed Forces, Central Processing Unit, Housing Preservation & Development and Mind Control, Internal Security, Power Services, Production, Logistics, and Commissary, and Research & Design. Unfortunately, each Troubleshooter has a secret. He is a Traitor. He is a Traitor because he is a Member of a Secret Society. So, he has to keep this a secret. Unfortunately, each Troubleshooter has another secret. He is a Traitor. He is a Traitor because he is a Mutant. So, he has to keep this a secret. Guess which roles the players roleplay in Paranoia? And the good news is that in event of a Troubleshooter’s death, whether in the patriotic and glorious service of the Computer or because he has been identified as a Traitor and dutifully reported for Self-Termination, his current assignment and duties will be immediately undertaken by the next member of the Troubleshooter’s Clone Family, who is fully trusted by the Computer and is not a Traitor.
Paranoia: A Role-Playing Game of a Darkly Humorous Future was published as a boxed set. It contained three books and a pair of two twenty-sided dice, marked one to ten twice. The three books are the twenty-four-page ‘Player Handbook’, the sixty-four-page ‘Gamemaster Handbook’, and the fifty-two-page ‘Adventure Handbook’. Notably, the ‘Adventure Handbook’ is actually the scenario booklet and done as a then traditional module format and the page numbers actually run concurrently from the ‘Player Handbook’ through the ‘Gamemaster Handbook’ to the ‘Adventure Handbook’.
A Troubleshooter in Paranoia has eight primary attributes. These are Strength, Agility, Manual Dexterity, Endurance, Moxie, Chutzpah, Mechanical Aptitude, and Power Index. These are range in value between two and twenty, with Chutzpah being defined as, “…[T]he quality of a man who kills both his parents and then pleads for mercy because he is an orphan.”; Moxie as the ability to comprehend the unusual; and Power Index the strength of a Troubleshooter’s mutant power. He belongs to a Service Group and a Mutant Power, and he belongs to a Secret Society. He also has several skills, which are represented as percentages. Skills are organised into skill trees with the lower the skill is down a skill tree, the more specialised it is and the higher the skill bonus it grants. To create a Troubleshooter, a player rolls for everything bar the skills which he assigns points to with the few points a beginning Troubleshooter is given. He is given some mandatory equipment and 100 credits with which to purchase more. The skills are not written down on the Troubleshooter sheet as a list, but drawn as a skill tree.
Name: Budd-R-FLY-1Clone Number: 1Security Clearance: RedService Group: Research & DesignSecret Society: Spy for Armed ForcesMutant Power: Extraordinary Power – Mental BlastCommendation Points: 0Treason Points: 0
Credit: 100
Strength 13 Agility 18 Manual Dexterity 14 Endurance 11Moxie 06 Chutzpah 08 Mechanical Aptitude 13 Power Index 14Carrying Capacity: 30 Damage Bonus: —Macho Bonus: — Melee Bonus: +17%Aimed Weapon Bonus: +07% Comprehension Bonus: -10%Believability Bonus: -05% Repair Bonus: +04%
SKILLSBasic Operations 1 (20%); Melee Combat 2 (25%); Aimed Combat 2 (25%)Technical Services 1 (20%); Robotics 2 (25%)
EQUIPMENTred reflec armour, laser pistol, laser barrel (red stripe), jump suit, utility belt & pouches, Com Unit I, knife, notebook & stylus
The ‘Player Handbook’ does not explain the rules to the game, because, after all, that requires ULTRAVIOLET Security Clearance, but it does have details of bookkeeping, how a typical mission and how combat works, the etiquette to playing Paranoia, and so on. Bookkeeping involves the tracking of several types of points. Credits can be rewarded to spend on more equipment. Commendation Points are earned for completing missions, distinguished service, and eliminating Traitors and will go towards a Troubleshooter being promoted. Treason Points are earned by failing to follow or complete orders, doubting or acting or speaking against the Computer, being a member of a Secret Society or a Mutants, and so on, if at any time they exceed Commendation Points by ten or more, the Computer will issue a Termination Order for treason. Secret Society Points are earned for fulfilling a Secret Society’s aims and will reward a Troubleshooter with promotion and access to information, equipment, and help, some of which might be useful.
A typical mission will begin with a briefing from the Computer and the assignment of useful equipment that will want testing. A Troubleshooter may also receive a private briefing from the Computer, from Internal Security, or from his Service Group. However, because he is also a Traitor, he receive an additional private briefing from his Secret Society. Throughout the mission, a Troubleshooter is expected to route out and eliminate Traitors, complete the mission, and keep safe the lives of the Computer’s valuable agents (including himself). Actual play exacerbates all of the tensions that this sets up because Paranoia is a game of secrets. A Troubleshooter’s character sheet is a secret, the contents of the ‘Gamemaster Handbook’ are secret, and all of the notes passed and the private asides between the Game Master and her players are secret. Consequently, separation of player knowledge and Troubleshooter knowledge is a necessity and some cases, failure to separate the two is treasonous. For example, demonstrating knowledge of the ‘Gamemaster Handbook’ is treasonous. Further, in play, the Game Master is encouraged—and shown in an example of play—to watch and listen for player knowledge being expressed by his Troubleshooter. So, for example, when a Troubleshooter on a mission to the Outside calls the small fluffy humanoid with tiny arms and legs, a tiny nose, and a rearward facing, long and very fluffy arm without a visible hand a ‘squirrel’, the first question on the mind of Game Master as the Computer (and also on the mind of his fellow Troubleshooters), is how does the Troubleshooter know it is called a ‘squirrel’? Followed by, ‘Where did he get such treasonous knowledge?’ Even if the Troubleshooter is a member of the Sierra Club Secret Society and actually does know what a squirrel is, knowledge of what a squirrel is treasonous, as is, of course, being a member of a Secret Society.
Mechanically, the ‘Player Handbook’ does not teach the player the rules of Paranoia because he does not have sufficient Security Clearance. What it does do is show him with a solitaire adventure. It is short at fifty-four entries and three pages long, but it nicely demonstrates the tone and style of play in Paranoia. As the player reads through it, he will earn letter codes, each of which determines whether he has earned Commendation Points, Treason Points, and so on. It will not take a player very long to play through it, but it is short enough for a player to explore the untaken storylines within it to see the consequences of other actions. Doubtless, this is treasonous behaviour, but it gives a player an idea of what to expect.
The ‘Gamemaster Handbook’ does explain the background, setting, and rules to Paranoia. The background is quite slight, almost inconsequential given the post-apocalyptic nature of setting. The setting description covers everyday life in Alpha Complex, the Service Groups, Security Clearances, and so on. All seventeen of the Secret Societies are described—Anti-Mutant, Communists, Computer Phreaks, Corpore Metal, Death leopard, First Church of Christ Computer-Programmer, Frankenstein Destroyers, Free Enterprise, Humanists, Illuminati, Mystics, Pro Tech, Programs Group, Psion, Purge, Romantics, and Sierra Club. In addition, a Troubleshooter can also be a spy for another Service Group or even another Alpha Complex! In each case, their objectives, doctrines, friends, and enemies are listed along with a general description and means of advancement. Special rules cover what a Secret Group might actually teach a member if he survives long enough. Mutant Powers are given a similar treatment.
In terms of mechanics, Paranoia looks more complex than it actually is. The roleplaying game uses ten-sided dice. For an attribute check, a player rolls a number of ten-sided dice and attempts to roll equal to or less than the attribute to succeed. The difficulty is measured in terms of the number of dice a player has to roll, from one for Extremely easy to five for Outrageous. Otherwise, Paranoia is a percentile system and skill-based. The aim is to roll equal to, or lower, than the skill to succeed, with a Troubleshooter always having a minimum chance of success of 5%. A skill is modified by an appropriate Troubleshooter’s Attribute Modifier and by the circumstances. It is the latter where Paranoia does get more complex. The skill categories are described in some detail and there are a lot of modifiers, which vary from skill or skill, and can result in a skill rating being divided or multiplied or simply added to or detracted from.
When it comes to combat, the ‘Player Handbook’ states that it eschews the, “…[E]laborate movement and combat systems reflecting their ancestral wargame heritage.” of other roleplaying games and instead aims for a ‘dramatic tactical system’—“[A] sort of unsystem – to encourage fast and flamboyant action.” Thus, it was writing against what had come before in terms of roleplaying games and their combat systems and what West End Games, the publisher of Paranoia, was best known for doing at the time, which was wargames. It was wholly reliant upon the Game Master, as she of course, had the Security Clearance to know how the rules—fully explained in the ‘Gamemaster Handbook’—worked, and today, the ‘dramatic tactical system’ of Paranoia would be best described as theatre of the mind style play, since it did not rely on maps or miniatures. (The irony here being that miniatures have since been released for subsequent editions of Paranoia.) Some of this seen in how damage is handled in that a Troubleshooter does not have Hit Points, but weapons instead inflict effects such as stun, wound, incapacitate, kill, and so on. If combat is meant to be dramatic and exciting for all, there is still a set of combat mechanics that need to be learned by the Game Master. These are not complex, but the Game Master still needs to know them to apply them to the ‘dramatic tactical system’ that Paranoia wants her to run the game as and there are quite a lot of weapon special effects, such as the various ammunition types of slug throwers and cone rifles, ice guns, and tanglers, which she needs to be aware of. Not necessarily in every mission, but they are there in the rules.
Perhaps the most important section in the ‘Gamemaster Handbook’ is on ‘Gamemastering Paranoia’. This is because Paranoia was—and in some ways, still is—different to any other roleplaying game, certainly in comparison to the ones that came before it. The Game Master has many roles in Paranoia. Like any other roleplaying game, the first was to portray the world and act as the eyes and ears of the players and their characters. After that? All bets are off. The Game Master has to portray an NPC, the Computer that both cares about the Citizens of Alpha Complex and thus the Troubleshooter, and loves them. It even trusts them. It also does not trust them. It also fears that one of them, if not all of them are Traitors. It is a mass of contradictions that builds tension and distrust and instils fear and ignorance with the Game Master knowing everything and the players and their Troubleshooters knowing nothing. As a representative of a nasty, totalitarian enclosed society, the Game Master may not be actively trying to kill the Troubleshooters—though she very probably is—but she is definitely looking for reasons to kill the Troubleshooters.
The advice for running Paranoia is excellent throughout. It amounts to controlling information and rationing it with a miserly reluctance, killing the bastards, fighting dirty, accepting that sometimes situations are hopeless, and letting the players feel that bad luck or idiocy is responsible for their Troubleshooters’ fate, rather than maliciousness upon the part of the Game Master. Similarly, the advice for running combat is to keep things moving, never give the players and their Troubleshooters the time to think, reward flamboyance and strange ideas, to kill the bastards, and to really, really keep things moving. Topped by the fact that the Game Master should ‘Sound Impartial’, despite the fact that she probably being anything other than that. All of which is supported by examples of play that showcase how Paranoia is intended to be run and played. Combined with advice on writing adventures—though the designers admit to liking pre-written packaged adventures for various reasons, and beginning, running, and ending adventures, the advice throughout Paranoia is excellent.
The Game Master is further supported with the ‘Adventure Handbook’. It begins a little oddly with the first ten pages devoted to detailing bots (or robots) and vehicles, before presenting a full, pre-packaged, adventure. ‘Destination: CBI Sector’ is designed as a starting adventure and sample of what a Paranoia adventure is intended to look like. This is for both the Game Master new to Paranoia and her players who are new to Paranoia, and the scenario includes a set of six pre-generated Troubleshooters, each of which comes complete with a ‘Mission Report Form’ to fill in and return to the Computer at the end of the mission. The mission involves the recovery of a robot from a previously abandoned industrial sector and will be complicated by whatever the Troubleshooters find there, their duplicitous group leader, and of course, each other. It is a fun, silly, and infuriatingly absurd affair that captures the tone of Paranoia to a tee.
Physically, Paranoia: A Role-Playing Game of a Darkly Humorous Future is Alpha Complex is well presented and wonderfully embraces its black humour. There are constant messages and interactions with the Computer, there are very examples of play, and Jim Holloway’s artwork perfectly captures the absurdities of life in Alpha Complex and the irreconcilable situations that the Troubleshooters will face. Best of all are the covers to the roleplaying game’s three books in the box. Each cover depicts a scene in which those present are being watched by someone else on another cover so that there is a sense of constant sense of surveillance and mistrust even on who the roleplaying game looks. If perhaps there is an oddity in the look of the roleplaying game, it is that Paranoia looks like and it laid out like the rules for wargame rather than a roleplaying game, irony being that this was everything that it was against!
In 1984, Paranoia: A Role-Playing Game of a Darkly Humorous Future is Alpha Complex was a shockingly radical design that stuck two fingers up and sneered at every roleplaying game that had become before it. It was blatantly uncooperative and adversarial in its play, embracing death in the fragility of its Troubleshooters and almost a nihilism in their uselessness, and possessing a lack of hope given that despite the roleplaying game presenting a means of progression, the actual play was actively obstructive to such progression. This meant the roleplaying game was suited to one-shots and short play rather than campaigns. Lastly, it was the most American and the most anti-American of roleplaying games, especially considering that it was released at the height of the Cold War and the Presidency of Ronald Reagan. It was the most American of roleplaying games because it was rabidly anti-Communist and it fully embraced McCarthyism and pushed the fears that McCarthyism espoused to their fullest extremes—and beyond. It was the most anti-American of roleplaying games because it made every Troubleshooter, every Player Character, what McCarthyism feared—a traitor, effectively a Commie and the enemy within. Of course, that included the Computer and thus Game Master because everyone in Paranoia is the true enemy within. And then the designers of Paranoia effectively turned it into a horrifyingly funny cartoon.
Paranoia: A Role-Playing Game of a Darkly Humorous Future is a brilliant piece of design, a savage satire on roleplaying, politics, and social attitudes at the height of Cold War that set player against player, Game Master against the players, and forced everyone at the table to play differently. All of which it hides behind the blackest of humour and the bleakest of futures, whilst presenting a genuinely different and challenging roleplaying experience.

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

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Despite its popularity in Japan, it is surprising that there is so little support for it as a setting in Call of Cthulhu. Barring Secrets of Japan from Chaosium, Inc. in 2005, which was a modern-set supplement, most of the handful of scenarios set in Japan have been placed their tales of Lovecraftian investigative roleplaying firmly in the feudal period, so enabling the Samurai, the classic Japanese warrior to go up against the Mythos. For example, ‘The Iron Banded Box’ from Strange Aeons II from Chaosium, Inc. and ‘The Silence of Thousands Shall Quell the Refrain’ from Red Eye of Azathoth from Kobold Press. Incursions into Japan in Call of Cthulhu’s classic period of the Jazz Age are almost unknown, Age of Cthulhu VI: A Dream of Japan from Goodman Games being a very rare exception. It is a trend that continues on the Miskatonic Repository, Chaosium Inc.’s community content programme for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition. Here, A Chill in Abashiri – A 1920s Taisho-Era Japan Scenario is the exception alongside titles such as Thing torments poet, Daimyo calls on greatest help, Will the players fail? and After the Rain. Even Japan has its very own supplement devoted to the Taisho-Era of the nineteen twenties and nineteen thirties, in the form of ‘クトゥルフと帝国’ or ‘The Cthulhu Mythos and the Empire’, published in 2011 by Kadokawa. More recently, the well received Japan – Empire of Shadows: A Call of Cthulhu sourcebook for 1920s Imperial Japan further explored the Japan of the Jazz Age in much more detail. However, nearly all of this was one way. Despite popularity of Call of Cthulhu in Japan, few if any scenarios originating in Japan have been translated into English. With the release of Japonism 2024 – Three Modern Day Japan Call of Cthulhu Scenarios, all that changes.
Japonism 2024 – Three Modern Day Japan Call of Cthulhu Scenarios presents three scenarios originally published in Japan in 2019. All three are set in the 2020s, involve technology to some degree or another, and have a running time of three to four hours, making them suitable for one-shots or as convention scenarios. The introduction provides a guide to modern Japan, covering its geography and climate, language and religion, money, education, getting a driver’s licence, ownership of firearms—exceedingly rare and the police, and more. Much of this could easily been discovered with some research upon the part of the Keeper, but it is handy to have it all here. In addition to individual scenarios themselves, the supplement provides an overview of each of the three cities—Tokyo, Kyoto, and Yamaguchi—where the three scenarios are set.
The first of the anthology’s trio is ‘Do Gods Dream Of Digital Drugs?’. Written by Byoushin, it is set in November in Tokyo and it opens in shockingly bloody fashion. The Investigators are meeting a friend who is participating in the ‘Hills Music Festa’, which they are also attending, when the friend as he goes to leave, suddenly screams and then begins stabbing himself in the face, inflicting multiple wounds upon himself before he dies. Investigating the death reveals that the events company organising the music festival and its staff have been the subject of threats and protests from a cult—the Church Of Serialism—and that the friend was not the first to die in similar circumstances. The investigation is hampered by the presence of security guards at many of the locations involved, but in most cases, there are NPCs who will talk to the Investigators who are patient and polite. The threat is tied into cutting edge technology, which if gets out could lead to a series of mass suicides similar to that suffered by the Investigators’ friend. Music related skill such as Art/Craft (Piano) and both Computer Use and Electronics will be useful in resolving this Science Fiction-themed horror scenario which very nicely draws on contemporary fears. If the Investigators fail, the climax of the scenario is even more shocking than the opening scene, one that the media will likely put down to mass hysteria, but of course, the Investigators will likely know better.
The second scenario is Lom’s ‘Sutra Chanting Network’, which continues the Science Fiction horror of ‘Do Gods Dream Of Digital Drugs?’ This takes place in Kyoto with the Investigators being invited to attend a ceremony at Shimogamo Shrine in Kyoto by a relative who is a priest there. The ceremony is the ‘Tsukinamisai’, conducted at the beginning of every month, in which participants pray to the enshrined deity, Kamomioyasume Omikami, for the prosperity of the Imperial Household and peace for the nation. The Investigators have a chance to see Kyoto first, but at the ceremony, the Shinto prayer that the priest is chanting suddenly changes and the attendees are wracked with pain and a feeling of being drained, some actually falling unconscious. Examination of the priest reveals that he has a cut on the back of neck and with further examination that he has had a foreign object implanted in his neck, which turns out to be a computer chip! The son of the priest is actually a hardware engineer. So, could he know something about this? Again, this scenario involves cutting edge technology, this time the Internet of Things, but with a Mythos twist which sees that Internet of Things expanded to include people. And also, again, the scenario involves a threat that can be spread or work through a mass medium. The climax of the scenario is a confrontation not only with the villains of the piece, but also quite possibly the silliest threat that anyone has faced in Call of Cthulhu. Nevertheless, as silly as it sounds, having to fight a mechanised shrine hall as if it was a mini-kaiju feels very Japanese.
The trio comes to an end with ‘Unseasonable Blooming And Minuet’ by Aka with Lom. This takes place in December in the fictional Chugoku-region city of Hodaka in the modern-day Yamaguchi Prefecture. It has a more traditional feel in terms of its threat, drawing upon Japanese history and folklore, but as with the previous two scenarios, uses modern technology and concerns about that technology as vectors to spread its threat. In this scenario, the technology is social media. The Investigators are invited by a friend and his sister, to visit Hodaka, the city where they grew up which is known for the Hodaka Tenmangu Shrine and Mount Hodaka, and not long after they all arrive, the sister goes missing. Her disappearance is not the first of young girl in the city and upon looking into the matter, the Investigators will learn that the disappearances all linked to a particular social media account and the images of a blossoming plum tree posted on the account. This has a horrifying combination of the modern with the traditional and has a very chilly ending, so the Investigators had better come dressed for the cold.
Physically, all three scenarios in Japonism 2024 are reasonably presented, although a little untidy in terms of layout. The writing is dense in places, so the Keeper will need to give the three a careful read through and study.
Japonism 2024 – Three Modern Day Japan Call of Cthulhu Scenarios presents three good, richly detailed scenarios set in Japan. All three share common threads in terms their fears of technology and the ways in which it be twisted—advertently or inadvertently—by the influence of the Mythos to become a mass media threat. Although all three require a little extra time to study and prepare, the scenarios in Japonism 2024 – Three Modern Day Japan Call of Cthulhu Scenarios will very well as one-shots, or even better, convention scenarios.

Much like the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition and the Jonstown Compendium for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, The Companions of Arthur is a curated platform for user-made content, but for material set in Greg Stafford’s masterpiece of Arthurian legend and romance, Pendragon. It enables creators to sell their own original content for Pendragon, Sixth Edition. This can original scenarios, background material, alternate Arthurian settings, and more, but none of this content should be considered to be ‘canon’, but rather fall under ‘Your Pendragon Will Vary’. This means that there is still scope for the authors to create interesting and useful content that others can bring to their Pendragon campaigns.

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What is the Nature of the Quest?The Knights of the Hounds: A Mongrel Order for Pendragon is a supplement for use with Pendragon, Sixth Edition.

It is a full colour, twelve page, 54.41 MB PDF.

The layout is tidy and it is nicely illustrated.

Where is the Quest Set?The Knights of the Hounds is set primarily along the borders between Logres and the Saxonkingdoms and Berroc, Silchester, and Thamesmouth in particular. However, it is potentially of use wherever there is a clash between the Britons and the Saxons.

It opens in the year 508.
Who should go on this Quest?
The Knights of the Hounds is both an organisation that the Player-knights can join if they qualify and if not, an organisation that can serve as an ally or an enemy of the Player-knights, depending on their actions and attitudes.

To join the Knights of the Hounds, a Player-knight requires a high Valorous Trait, a reasonable Honour Trait, and low or no values in either the Hate (Saxons) or Hate (Cymri) Passions.
What does the Quest require?
The Knights of the Hounds requires the Pendragon, Sixth Edition rules or the Pendragon Starter Set.
Where will the Quest take the Knights?The Knights of the Hounds presents an organisation or informal order of knights dedicated to showing that Saxon and Cymric knights can work together for the betterment of all and be one people rather than divided. Members of Knights of the Hounds bear dogs or hounds on their shields and keep their identities secret. They face antipathy, even hatred, from the Saxons who regard its Saxon members as betraying their ambitions to conquer the whole of Britain and from the Britons who regard its Cymric members as betraying the memory of those killed in the Night of Long Knives and in subsequent Saxon atrocities. Their detractors have nicknamed the members of the order, ‘Mongrels’.
The supplement presents its origins as a reaction to the poor treatment of prisoners taken by some Saxons and suggests how its members might react to future events in the Pendragon timeline. Three NPCs are fully detailed who the Player-characters may encounter as is the leaders of the order and their manor, known colloquially as the ‘Kennel-Hall’, which is secretly the base of their operations. Also included is a Battle Card for Knights of the Hounds, which can be used as an ally or enemy, depending upon the situation.
The Knights of the Hounds will feature in releases such as The Serpent of Mildenhall and Spares and Heirs.
Should the Knights ride out on this Quest?The Knights of the Hounds is a nice little supplement that presents the basics needed by the Game Master to further explore the conflict and relationship between the Saxons and the Cymri throughout the reign of King Arthur and do so in multiple ways.

1974 is an important year for the gaming hobby. It is the year that Dungeons & Dragons was introduced, the original RPG from which all other RPGs would ultimately be derived and the original RPG from which so many computer games would draw for their inspiration. It is fitting that the current owner of the game, Wizards of the Coast, released the new version, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, in the year of the game’s fortieth anniversary, and the new edition of that, Dungeons & Dragons, 2024, in the year of the game’s fiftieth anniversary. To celebrate this, Reviews from R’lyeh will be running a series of reviews from the hobby’s anniversary years, thus there will be reviews from 1974, from 1984, from 1994, and from 2004—the thirtieth, twentieth, and tenth anniversaries of the titles. These will be retrospectives, in each case an opportunity to re-appraise interesting titles and true classics decades on from the year of their original release.

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Walker in the Wastes is a campaign published by Pagan Publishing in 1994. It was the first of the three campaigns from the publisher, all of which would be designed and written by John H. Crowe III. Designed for use with Call of Cthulhu, Fifth Edition, it is a grand campaign in true Call of Cthulhu style, that will take the Investigators from arctic Canada to Alaska and beyond to the remotest part of northern Japan, New Jersey, and New York state, and from there to the North Pole, with a corollary that culminates in Iraq. It is an ambitious, bruising campaign that is well organised and supported, but which is best run by an experienced Keeper and best played with players who have some experience of Call of Cthulhu under their belts. There is a Pulp sensibility to the campaign in that it involves flight and airships, but Walker in the Wastes is not a Pulp-style campaign. Further, it differs in terms of set-up, rationale, and radically, in terms of the Great Old One the Investigators will face and the plans of the cultists devoted to him, that they must thwart. This is Ithaqua, the ‘Death-Walker’ or ‘Wind-Walker’, a Great Old One who has appeared in many a scenario for Call of Cthulhu, especially rural or wilderness scenarios, but only once, here in the pages of Walker in the Wastes has he been of the subject of a campaign. Running from Saturday, 10th November 1928 to Sunday, 21st December, 1930 (and beyond), Walker in the Wastes details the attempts by the Cult of Ithaqua to fly from various points around the world and congregate at the North Pole where the cult will free its master from the Temple of the Winds in which the Elder Gods bound the Great Old One in times beyond imagining.

“In 1848 the Franklin Expedition vanished in the ice searching for the Northwest Passage. Eighty years later, you and your associates travel to Northern Canada to research the disaster - and find yourselves launched in a globe-spanning race to defeat the terrible god of the icy wastes. Hundreds of hours of research have gone into creating the most realistic 1920s campaign ever. Japanese gangsters, Iraqi archaeological digs, secret airships, and a legend older than humanity serve to challenge even the most experienced of CoC players. Walker in the Wastes is a huge campaign of discovery and horror, and is suggested for experienced Keepers.”

—Back cover blurb, Walker in the Wastes, Pagan Publishing, 1994

Walker in the Wastes has a strict set-up that means that as campaign it cannot easily be run with Investigator types typically found in Call of Cthulhu. Here they are anthropologists, archaeologists, artists and photographers, botanists, geologists, physicians, and zoologists, as well as guides, employed by the University of Toronto and the Canadian government to live and work on a base in the Arctic in the Northwest Territories. This is on the Adelaide Peninsula, near King William Island. This is near the location of some of the remains of members of the Franklin Expedition, the British Royal Navy’s infamous expedition to discover the Northwest Passage which disappeared in 1848. Now unlike the back cover blurb of the campaign suggests, the expedition is not stationed on the Adelaide Peninsula to specifically investigate the remains of the Franklin Expedition. This does not mean that the expedition and its fate will not play a role in the campaign, but rather it is not and should not be the focus of the campaign.

The campaign itself opens with a prologue, ‘The Dead of Winter’. Set in November 1928, the Investigators have already been on Adelaide Peninsula for over a year and the only excitement to date has been the rescue attempt of the crew of the Italia, a second polar airship commanded by the Italian explorer, Umberto Nobile. This changes when two of their fellow expedition members return to the base with the frozen corpses of two Inuit men, both badly mauled. What got their interest is that it is clear that neither man was attacked by a wolf or polar bear. Could they have been attacked by an unknown Arctic predator? Talking with the local Inuit reveals that they believe that the creature responsible for the deaths is a supernatural creature known as a ‘Yiige’, which has awakened to hunt again after many years dormant. Pushing for further information reveals that two particular clans might know more, the Red Caribou clan and the Blue Seal clan, but that the Blue Seal clan attacked the Red Caribou clan recently and all but wiped it out! Taking an active interest in either clan will push the story forward and lead to further discoveries. Most obviously that there is a monster lose on the ice—the dread Gnoph-Keh—and that despite what the rational, scientific minds of the Investigators would believe, that magic is real. The latter discovery is important as it will open up the minds of the Investigators later in the campaign as to the scope of what they face and potentially, prepare them to arm themselves with that magic to use against the cult and its plans.

‘The Dead of Winter’ will end in a chilly confrontation in the snow and ice of King William Island with the vile Blue Seal clan and the awful Gnoph-Keh. The nature of the environment and the advantages that the Blue Seal clan and the Gnoph-Keh have as compared to those of the Investigators make the scenario quite a physical challenge. Defeating both does not mark the end of the expedition, nor necessarily the very end of the scenario. There are some loose ends to wrap up, but otherwise, ‘The Dead of Winter’ could actually be run as a scenario all by itself, without the need to run the full campaign. However, where would the fun be in that? What it does do, is lay the groundwork for what is come and open the eyes of both the players and their Investigators as to the dangers to come.

The campaign proper begins with ‘Into the Realm of the Wind-walker’ after the Investigators have returned to Toronto. Having completed their reports and debriefings for their employer, the Investigators are approached by Doctor Alfred Barrowman, an archaeologist, who has heard reports of a creature similar to the one encountered by the Investigators and worshiped by local cultists, but in Alaska. He wants to hire them and join him on an expedition to investigate. Amidst tales of missing hunters and surveyors and government disinterest, the Investigators will likely make an amazing scientific discovery and come across the first hints that what they encountered in Canada was not an isolated situation. The big questions are, why there is a secret air base deep in the Alaskan forest and what are its highly armed occupants planning to do their aircraft? By the end of this investigation, the Investigators should have learned that the cult has many branches, that December 1930 is an important date to the cult, and that all of the major branches are preparing to fly to the North Pole for this date. The Investigators will also have gained Doctor Barrowman as sponsor, thus funding their efforts to save the world.

At this point, Walker in the Wastes opens up and the Investigators can tackle any of the newly discovered locations—the Kurile Islands in Japan and Camden, New Jersey, back in the USA—in any order. Unlike in Alaska, where government indifference and lack of awareness combined with the isolated location of the cult’s base make it relatively easy to deal with, the sites in Japan and the USA are much harder to deal with. The Kurile Islands are isolated, but the Investigators face a language barrier, a government with a distrust of foreigners that has also been bought off, and a nearby Japanese naval base. Conversely, the base in Camden, New Jersey is in a public location, a shipyard on the Delaware River across from Philadelphia. Further, the airship being constructed there and the expedition to the North Pole are both public knowledge and sponsored by the United States Navy, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Howard Hughes! Of course, the involvement of the cult is not. Although the situations and the challenges are different for each base, the Investigators are essentially attempting the same thing each time. Finding out about the base, scouting the base, infiltrating the base, and ultimately, finding a way to sabotage the activities of the cult and the aeroplanes and airships its members are building. One of the discoveries that the Investigator will probably make in the Camden, New Jersey base is that the cult has a fifth, secret base, this time in Camden, New York state! Its secret nature makes it easier to tackle than the bases for Camden, New Jersey and the Kurile Islands.

Ultimately, the Investigators will join in the flight by the cultists to the North Pole for the Winter Solstice of 1930 where the Temple of the Winds will manifest and they will attempt to break the Great Seal inside which has kept Ithaqua from doing no more than visiting the world’s northern climes for aeons. This has the scope to be a grand, bruising finale, on a scale with the Rising of the Island of R’lyeh in The Shadows of Yog-Sothoth—with the Investigators facing multiple, often well-armed cultists—both in terms of materiel and magic. There is the possibility of aerial combat too if the Investigators have armed their means of transport. If the Investigators travel via King William Island, there is the possibility that as they travel north, they make a startling discovery—the Erebus and the Terror—the two lost vessels from the Franklin Expedition. Should they land and investigate, this leads to a memorable encounter aboard the Erebus (as depicted on the front cover) and although optional, this is a pleasing callback to the Investigators’ original expedition as detailed in the prologue.

Although it may seem that the campaign ends with the thwarting of the cult’s plans and ideally, the prevention of the cult’s attempt to break the Great Seal in the Temple of the Winds and free Ithaqua, it is only a preclimax to Walker in the Wastes. Having stopped an attempt once, the focus of the campaign switches to finding a more permanent solution. One of the aspects of Walker in the Wastes is that air gods are found in multiple pantheons in cultures around the world, some of which appear in the campaign and seen as avatars of Ithaqua. One of these is Enill, the Sumerian and Babylonian ‘storm god’ and ‘chief demon’ who was in possession of the Tablets of Destiny. If they are real and if they can be found, perhaps their reputed great powers can be used to prevent the cult from returning to the Temple of the Winds and making further attempts to break the Great Seal? Unfortunately, the cult is also aware of the existence of the Tablets of Destiny and not only wants to obtain them to prevent from falling into the Investigators’ possession, but also to use them to its own ends.

Where Walker in the Wastes was a race to prevent the Cult of Ithaqua from getting to the North Pole and the Temple of the Winds, now it becomes a race to find, study, and utilise the Tablets of Destiny. If the race to the North Pole was dangerous because the environments and the dedication of the cultists, it now becomes deadly as the cultists possess a hatred of the Investigators and more readily and openly move against them. Previously, the cult was more careful, not wanting to bring attention to itself and its plans, which were, of course, its true focus. The points to the nature of the Cult of Ithaqua and its members. Most are devoted members and fervently want to see Ithaqua freed, but they are not evil per se and do not wish mankind great ill. Of course, by any standards, they are all insane, and of course, there are members, such as the infamous Reinhold Blair (named after the late artist, Blair Reynolds, who are actually evil and he in particular, will take great delight in enacting his revenge upon the Investigators and their associates (if he still lives by then).

Thematically and mechanically, this switch in the campaign is challenging, since its focus changes from northern climes and the Arctic and the often-physical difficulties posed, to warmer environs and a more traditional style of Call of Cthulhu that Investigators may not be suited to if they have survived thus far. One skill required here is the ability to read Sumerian Cuneiform and unless there is replacement Investigator at any point after the Investigators were at the North Pole, they will have to rely on a translator. (One is provided, but he is old, doddery, and incredibly cantankerous. Great for the Keeper to roleplay, but only adding to the Investigators’ woes.) In true classic Call of Cthulhu style, the Investigators have the opportunity to conduct research at the British Museum in London and learn what they can about Ancient Mesopotamia. Obtaining the Tablets of Destiny will potentially involve a trip to a cult-sponsored dig in Iraq and if the Investigators failed at the North Pole, a terrible encounter with Ithaqua, and to the current resting place of the Tablets of Destiny in southern Turkey. Here, there is likely to be tussle between the Investigators and the cultists for possession of the artefacts, spoiled potentially by the obvious interest of the Turkish government, but more likely by the presence of an ancient Serpentman sorcerer entombed at the same location and who is likely to be awoken by the digging at the site.

‘Day of Reckoning’, the actual climax to Walker in the Wastes takes place in British Columbia, back in Canada. Here the likelihood is that the cultists have possession of the Tablets of Destiny given their muscle and the Investigators will have chased back across the Atlantic and North America. There the Investigators have a chance to foil the Cult of Ithaqua once again—and if not permanently—then long enough for almost nobody alive in 1930 to worry about… (That said, if the climate suddenly gets a lot colder from December 2031 onwards…) It does involve making a terrible moral choice though, one that in some ways makes the Investigators as bad as the cultists, but for the greater good…?

Walker in the Wastes includes three separate scenarios, interludes intended as red herrings. ‘Chirihoi’ takes place in Japan and is set on the island of the same name, and is intended to distract the Investigators whilst they investigate the cult’s base in the Kurile Islands and ‘The Osbrook House’ is a supposed haunted house mystery set in Camden, New Jersey. Neither has any connection to the campaign’s main plot and certainly in the case of ‘The Osbrook House’ feel out of place as part of the campaign. The third interlude, ‘The Monolith’, is connected to the campaign—if only slightly—and is an actual red herring. It does involve a cult dedicated to Ithaqua and is a classic rural cult Call of Cthulhu scenario set in Scotland.

Walker in the Wastes is incredibly well supported. The campaign is given a good overview and the aims and motivations of the Cult of Ithaqua is clearly explained and accompanied by good advice. The resources include details of the Wind-Walker, his associated magics—many of which the Investigators have an opportunity to learn, an examination of Ithaqua in multiple different cultures and his role as a god of the air, associated legends, a guide to the Inuit and Inuit mysticism (which is treated with respect), the Arctic environment and survival in the region, and airships and aerial combat. There are then new spells such as Banish Gnoph-Keh and Chill of the Wendigo, and new skills like Boating, Botany, Cartography, Forensics, and Land Navigation and Sea/Air Navigation. Plus, there is background to the Franklin Expedition, which of course, is what would have been as much as was known about its fate in 1994.

Every chapter and scenario includes an introduction and an outline at the start and a list of Sanity rewards and penalties along with the NPC stats at the end. In between, each chapter or scenario is well presented and organised and accompanied with advice as needed. Rounding out Walker in the Wastes is a Miscellany of ‘Player Aids’ which collates all of the campaign’s handouts, though not all of the maps. Indeed, the campaign is lacking versions of many of the maps suitable for the Keeper to give to her players. There is also a lengthy bibliography which showcases how deep the research the author conducted in creating the campaign. Lastly, an engaging afterword by the author explains how the campaign came to be and how it was developed and written.

Physically Walker in the Wastes looks amazing. The campaign is well written and presented, the maps clear and easy to use, and there is a good index at the end. However, the artwork is incredible, black and white, but reversed shadows, giving the campaign a twilight look of foreboding and distrust.

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Walker in the Wastes was not extensively reviewed at the time of its release. It was a ‘Pyramid Pick’ by Scott Haring in Pyramid Number 12 (March/April 1995). He said, “You don’t know when a Pagan product  is going to come out, but when it does, you’re usually in for a treat.” before continuing, “Walker in the Wastes is certainly no exception. A massive 200+ page book, Walker is the first major campaign for CoC that Pagan has ever published. Author John Crowe claims that four years of writing and research went into Walker, and it shows. Walker in the Wastes immediately zooms to the top of the list as one of the finest Call of Cthulhu campaigns ever produced.”

Earl P. Thatony (surely a pseudonym) reviewed it in ‘Reviews’ in Shadis Issue #26 (April 1996). He warned that, “Player need to keep sharp, think about what’s going on, and ask the right questions or they’ll get nowhere. There are some vexing (and possibly deadly) red herrings waiting for them, and even the best groups might, and even the beat groups might get tripped up. The GM needs to be top of things as well. There are several warnings in the introductory pages about the complexity of the scenario and the need for the GM to not just read, but study the campaign. These warnings need to be taken to heart, but rest assured the effort will pay off.” However, he concluded on a positive note, saying, “Walker in the Wastes is an amazing product. It’s organised, tremendously well-researched, engrossing, and fun to read. Anyone interested in running a mega campaign is advised to take a closer look at it, as it’s a fantastic example of how to do a project right. For the GM and players who are willing to spend the time it provide months of entertainment.”

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Walker in the Wastes is great campaign, with a grandeur that showcases both what a highly thematic campaign can be like and the potential of Ithaqua as global threat as never before. At times, with its themes of the Arctic and aeronautics, it can feel Pulpy, but it never lets up on the brutality of the story and the awful aims of the cultists, who with a few notable exceptions, are portrayed as human beings rather than monsters. Above all, Walker in the Wastes is a demanding campaign, for both the Keeper and her players, requiring a great of deal of preparation upon the part of the former and some adjustment in play style from the latter. There are some great moments in the campaign, such as the battle in the snow against the Blue Seal clan, the flight to the North Pole, the return of Ithaqua to Mesopotamia should the Investigators have failed at the Temple of the Winds, and that last, final, agonising choice… Throughout, Keeper and player alike will be challenged by Walker in the Wastes from start to finish, and if their Investigators succeed, they will have done something truly heroic and had an incredible experience doing so.

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Sadly, Walker in the Wastes is a lost campaign. It has been out of print for over two decades and is currently unlikely to be reprinted or made available in electronic format.

Pendragon is a great roleplaying game, considered by many to be a classic, and by its designer, Greg Stafford, nothing short of a masterpiece. It is a roleplaying of high adventure, high romance, and high fantasy set deep in the legends and stories of Britain’s golden age, the mythical period when the country had one true king. That king was Arthur Pendragon, his reign the mythical period of honour and chivalry, courtly love and romance, that arose from the unrest following the withdrawal of the Romans, withstood invasions from the Saxons, before falling to evil and the country to the Dark Ages. In the process it inspired great tales of medieval literature and great tales of literature, including the Welsh The Mabinogion, Sir Thomas Malory’s fifteenth century Le Morte D’Arthur, and T.H. White’s The Once and Future King. Pendragon is a roleplaying game in which the Player Characters are knights in service to their liege lord and then to King Arthur himself, managing their manor and serving in his army, but also going on quests and adventures and so dealing with threats and problems that beset the men and women of the land, including their fellow knights, attending court and tourneys and involving themselves in intrigues and romances, and finding a wife and raising a family. Raising a family is important because a knight may adventure for only so long before age catches up with him. Then his eldest son will take up his mantle and inherit his father’s good name and reputation, and not only uphold it, but follow his ideals and make a name for himself, perhaps even more glorious than that of his father. Like his father, he will aspire to take a seat alongside King Arthur and become one of the Knights of the Round Table, to serve alongside the greatest knights in the country. In turn, his son will follow in grandfather’s footsteps and aspire to the ideals of the age, to be a bastion of duty and honour until the kingdom falls.

The Pendragon Core Rulebook introduces all of this for Pendragon, Sixth Edition. Published by Chaosium, Inc. once again, it remains much the same game as it was when originally published in 1985 in terms of game play and design, but with a few changes to streamline play and a very fetching new presentation. The changes primarily consist of adjustments to how derived characteristics are determined and amalgamating and broadening many of the skills. For example, Folklore replaces Faerie Lore and Folklore, Recognise combines Recognise with Heraldry, Lance is replaced by Charge, and so on. None of these are radical changes and are really only important when adapting content from older editions of Pendragon to this new edition. The presentation of Pendragon Core Rulebook runs counter to typical modern rulebooks, being on buff paper, almost like a medieval manuscript, rather than glossy paper, and like a medieval manuscript, decorated with monkish doodles and depictions of strange creatures of the illuminator’s imagination.

What the Pendragon Core Rulebook is not though, is a complete rulebook. There are aspects of the rules that are missing, notably the rules for handling mass battles, hunting, wider choices in terms of what you can play, and background setting details. Some of this will be presented in Pendragon Gamemaster’s Handbook, and in the meantime, a streamlined versions of the rules for mass battles and setting content can both be found in the Pendragon Starter Set. Wider choices in terms of Player Characters will have to wait for a future supplement, though it is fair to say that any player coming to the Pendragon Core Rulebook expecting a similar range of character options after playing through the Pendragon Starter Set will be disappointed. Similarly, the lack of detailed, specific background to the Britain of before and during King Arthur’s will disappoint the Game Master wanting to create her own content. Again, all of this will be addressed in future supplements, and in the meantime, Pendragon, Sixth Edition is supported by the Pendragon Starter Set and Pendragon: The Grey Knight campaign, both of which are precursors to the epic The Great Pendragon Campaign. That said—and to be clear—everything in Pendragon Core Rulebook is playable and needed to play.

Pendragon Core Rulebook begins by explaining what the roleplaying game is and what its assumptions are. This is that it is set during King Arthur’s reign; that the Player Characters are members of the nobility and by default will be knights—thus Player-knights; and that not all knights and thus Player-knights are the same, for their deeds will be guided by their varying personalities. It is also a roleplaying game and setting in which acquiring Glory and a place on the Round Table is the ultimate goal, but doing so will mean being tested and facing hard choices, the possibility of being killed—the roleplaying game makes clear that world of Pendragon is a brutal one and combat is deadly and that no one has ‘script immunity’. It also notes that it is a modern roleplaying game set in an ancient, mythical past. What this means is that although Pendragon Sixth Edition and The Great Pendragon Campaign might be set in the fifth and sixth centuries of the Christian Era, this is a Britain, and a wider Europe where there are female knights and on-Christian knights, where Pagan belief is accepted, and where justice and equality may be found. What this means is that female Player-knights are acceptable within the setting, the book actually highlighting some examples from the literature, though to what degree is up to the Game Master and her players to decide. That said, the world of Pendragon, Sixth Edition is a feudal one and the Player-knights will owe fealty to their lord and their king, and there are women who will undertake more traditional roles. Lastly, the play of Pendragon, Sixth Edition, as in previous editions, is generational. A player will roleplay his knight as adventures, raises a family, and retires, and then roleplay his eldest child who will also go on adventures, raise a family, and retire. In the course of a campaign, a player will roleplay a knight and multiple members of his family.

Further, Pendragon Core Rulebook makes clear that ‘Your Pendragon Will Vary’, so that for example, whilst in medieval Europe, red hair, freckles, green eyes, and being left-handed were all associated with evil, witches, vampires, and werewolves, this need not be the case in a Game Master’s own campaign.

The entire sweep of the Pendragon setting runs from 415 CE when Constantin is elected as the High King of Britain, establishing the tradition of knighthood and bringing peace and stability to the country, and ending in 566 CE when the Round Table splits and crumbles, Sir Mordred prevails, and King Arthur is carried away to Avalon. In between, the Saxons come to Britain, High Kings rise and fall, and following a period of anarchy, Arthur, the Boy King, pulls the Sword from the Stone, ushers in a new age of conquest and romance, and more. The default beginning and setting, again as in previous editions of the roleplaying game, is the year 508 and the county of Salisbury, with the Player-knights all Cymric knights, either of the Christian or Pagan faith.

A Player-knight is defined by Homeland, Culture, and Father’s Name, then Father’s Class, Son Number, Liege Lord, Current Class, Current Home, Age, and Year Born. He has five Attributes—Size, Dexterity, Strength, Constitution, and Appearance—which are rated between three and twenty-one. Skills are divided into Combat skills, Courtly skills, Knightly skills, and Woodcraft skills. They range between one and twenty, but unlike in previous editions of Pendragon, do not go above twenty. Instead, when a successful Experience Check suggests a skill should, the skill gains a bonus which is added to any roll for that skill. Every Knight has Glory, a measure of his renown and his actions, the higher it is, the greater the chance of his being recognised.

A Knight is also defined by his Traits and Passions. Traits represent a Knight’s personality, consisting of thirteen opposed pairs. So Chaste and Lustful, Honest and Deceitful, Valorous and Cowardly, and so on. Each Trait in a pair is assigned a value, the two values together adding up to no more than twenty. So, a Trusting of ten and Suspicious of ten, an Energetic of fourteen and Lazy of six, and so on. During a game, a player can look to the values of his Knight’s Traits to determine how he might act, but if unsure or wanting guidance, the player can roll against one of them, and the Game Master can also direct a player to roll against one to see how his Knight will act in a particular situation.

A Knight’s Passions, like Loyalty (Lord), Love (Family), and Hate (Saxons) are strong emotional and psychological tendencies. When a player rolls against one of his Knight’s Passions, it can grant inspiration and a bonus for a task, but should it fail, it can leave the Knight disheartened and suffering a penalty to a task, or worse. A Trait is rolled against to determine whether a Knight will act in accordance with that Trait or act in accordance with its opposing Trait. A Passion is rolled against to gain a bonus on a skill roll, but failure can trigger a Passion Crisis, which can result in the Passion being partly lost, melancholia, or even madness.

To create a Player-knight, a player can either choose one of the pre-generated knights in the back of the core rulebook, assign points to create his knight, or roll randomly. The first step is determine the father’s life as knight, which provides for some background and possible hooks for the Game Master to develop, and then either roll or assign stats, skills, personality traits, passions, and more. Depending on his appearance, most Player-knights will have one or more distinctive features, for example, a big moustache, scars, dulcet tones, and so on, and also a Family Characteristic, like ‘Musical’ or ‘Equestrian’, which grants a bonus to the Play Instrument and Horsemanship respectively. At this point, a Player-knight is just fifteen years of age and still a squire. For each subsequent year, the player can increase his knight’s skills or add one to either a characteristic, a Trait, or a Passion. However, the Player-knight needs to have a minimum value of ten in Brawling, Charge, Sword, and two non-weapon knightly skills, such as First Aid or Recognise, and be a minimum of twenty-one years old, so the player will need to increase skills rather than anything else. A beginning Player-knight is given a ‘luck benefit’ too, like a broad belt etched with running stags that grants a bonus to the Hunting skill or a Roman spatha sword and scabbard with gold and silver decorations in the Imperial style which grants a bonus to the Courtesy skill when at a Roman court or can be given as a gift to a Roman lord in return for a favour. The Pendragon Core Rulebook also includes details of the knighting ceremony should the Game Master and her players want to roleplay this out for their knights.

As a young knight, Bellangere’s father, Melion fought at the Battle of Mount Damen in 484 and Count Roderick and later fought against King Octa twice. First in 490 when he helped capture King Octa at the Battle of Lindsey, and then at the Battle of St. Albans in 495 when among those who killed King Octa. He stove off more than one invasion by the Saxons, defeating a Saxon chieftain and taking his rune-scribed Saxon sword in 498, much the chagrin of the chieftain’s son, and then later slaying a Saxon berserker and gaining a knob of polished amber in a leather thong. In 500 at the Battle of Dorchester he became a hero to the men of Dorset, but to this day Cornishmen remember him with hate, whilst at the Battle of Royston in 504, was present at the killing of King Aescwine of Essex. Throughout his years, he also went on various quests for Merlin through the years and thus is known to the Arch-Druid. This included killing Djerl the Goblin, who cursed him with his dying his breath, and serving as an emissary to King Nanteleod of Escavalon, convincing him to come to Salisbury’s aid.

Name: Bellangere
Homeland: Culture: Cymric Christian
Father’s Name: Melion Father’s Class: Vassal knight Father’s Glory: 13,000
Son Number: 1
Liege Lord: Robert of Salisbury
Current Class: Household Knight Current Home: The Castle of the Rock in Sarum
Age: 21 Year Born: 487
Glory: 2400

Looks: Fair Distinctive Features: Golden blonde, dazzlingly white smile
Family Characteristic: Melodic (Singing)
Knight’s Luck: A lance blessed by Saint Dewi

CHARACTERISTICS
Size 13 Dexterity 08 Strength 11 Constitution 15 Appearance 14
Knockdown: 13 Major Wound: 15 Unconscious: 7
Total Hit Points: 28
Weapon Damage: 4d6 Brawling Damage: 4
Healing Rate: 3 Movement Rate: 14

PERSONALITY TRAITS
Chaste 14/Lustful 06
Energetic 06/Lazy 14
Forgiving 12/Vengeful 08
Generous 07/Selfish 13
Honest 12/Deceitful 08
Just 05/Arbitrary 15Merciful 12/Cruel 08
Modest 12/Proud 08
Prudent 11/Reckless 09
Spiritual 14/Worldly 06
Temperate 13/Indulgent 07
Trusting 07/Suspicious 13
Valorous 17/Cowardly 03

PASSIONS
Honour 17
Homage (Lord) 17
Love (Family) 17
Hospitality 14
Station 12
Devotion (Deity) 05
Hate (Saxons) 15

SKILLS
Awareness 10, Compose 5, Courtesy 12, Dancing 4, Falconry 5, Fashion 9, First Aid 4, Flirting 9, Folklore 9, Gaming 5, Hunting 5, Intrigue 9, Literacy 0, Orate 9, Play Instrument 4, Recognize 5, Religion 5, Singing 10, Stewardship 5

COMBAT SKILLS
Battle 5, Horsemanship 10

WEAPON SKILLS
Brawling 10, Charge 10, Hafted 4, Sword 10, Spear 4, Two-Handed Hafted 4, Bow 4, Crossbow 4, Thrown Weapon 4

To have his knight undertake an action, a player rolls a twenty-sided die. The aim is roll equal to or lower than the value of the attribute, skill, Trait, or Passion. A roll under is a success, a roll equal to the value is a critical, a roll over a failure, and a roll of twenty can be a critical failure. For opposed rolls, used for contests and combat, the roll still needs to be equal to or under the value for the knight to succeed, but the quality of the success will vary also according to what the opposing knight or NPC rolls. A roll equal to the skill is still critical, whilst a success is under the skill value, but higher than the value rolled by the opponent, and a partial success is under both the value of the skill and the value rolled by the opponent. In combat, the quality of the rolls are compared to determine if the combatant’s armour and/or shield provides him with any protection, if he inflicts extra damage, or even if he drops or breaks the weapon he is wielding. In play, it also avoids the back and forth of combat rolls as first one combatant rolls, followed by the other, then back again, and so on. It gives an immediacy to the clash of arms, with both parties being involved from the off. In addition to covering dropped weapons, there are rules for knockdowns; combat actions such as Reckless Attack, Defend, Mounted Charge, and more; and also, both mounted combat and missile combat. There is an emphasis in the combat rules on the importance of wearing helmets and wielding shields, and on wielding weapons that are regarded as honourable. Although the use of missile weapons is acceptable against a besieging force, one knight using them against another is regarded as cowardly and dishonourable. To accompany the rules on mounted combat, horses get their own chapter, as do weapons and armour. The chapter on horses covers everything from horses trained for combat and the tack needed to equip a horse to training them and horse personalities.

Arguably at the heart of Pendragon and what sets it apart from other roleplaying games are the thirteen pairs of Personality Traits. They ensure that every Player-knight is different, defining both how he feels and how he typically acts. In play, they are used to determine how a Player-knight will act and make decisions, to test his character, to learn something about the world, even to help influence another Player-knight, and more. In most cases, a Player-knight will act in accordance with a Personality Trait, especially if it is high. Should a player want to have his knight act against a Personality Trait, literally act out of character, he will need to test it. If the roll is a failure, then the player must test the opposing Personality Trait. If the roll succeeds, the Player-knight will act in accordance with it, but if the roll is a failure, the player has the choice as to how his knight acts.
For example, Sir Bellangere has captured some Saxon raiders. His player declares that he will execute them, an unknightly act. The Game Master states that the player must make test Sir Bellangere’s Arbitrary Personality Trait, which is fifteen. If it was sixteen or above, the Personality Trait would be categorised as famous and Sir Bellangere would be automatically compelled in accordance with it. However, Sir Bellangere’s player has to roll and gets a result of seventeen on the roll of a twenty-sided die. It means that Sir Bellangere will not be immediately Arbitrary, but his player must still test the opposing Personality Trait, which is Just. Sir Bellangere has a Just of five and rolls three. This means that in this instance, Sir Bellangere will stay his hand and not kill the Saxon. It also means that there is a chance of Sir Bellangere increasing his Just Personality Trait and consequently, decreasing his Arbitrary Personality Trait, literally changing his personality!What this means is that over time, a Player-knight can grow and change, not just in terms of skills or Passions, when it comes to his feelings, but in terms of his personality. This is not always beneficial to the Player-knight, as his Personality Traits might change such that he no longer matches the ideals of a particular type of knight, such as a chivalrous, religious, romantic, or courtier knight. Attaining—or indeed, re-attaining—one of these ideals is typically a long-term goal for a Player-knight, but aspiring to them is a roleplaying challenge in itself. And of course, they model the stories told of King Arthur and his knights, with great tales revolving around the testing of a knight’s ideals, being found wanting, and then attaining them once more. Mechanically, Personality Traits effectively work like advantages and disadvantages in other roleplaying games, but in Pendragon, Sixth Edition, whether a Personality Trait represents an advantage or a disadvantage depends on the situation and unlike other roleplaying games, in Pendragon, Sixth Edition, a Player-knight’s Personality Traits are often going to be tested. Given how integral they are to the roleplaying game, unsurprisingly, Pendragon Core Rulebook goes into some detail about the Personality Traits as well as the Passions, in particular the consequences of failing a Passion roll.

Although Pendragon is not a roleplaying game about money or loot per se, it has a role to play in the game. A knight has to maintain a certain lifestyle, there is his manor and family to maintain, and there are his dues to his liege lord. There will be a certain income form his manor, but a knight may need to spend more perhaps to make repairs to his equipment, pay a dowry, replace a horse that was lost during the Winter Phase, or worse pay a ransom if captured. A Player-knight may find loot on any adventure, be given it as a gift, or he may actually be paid random for capturing and releasing an enemy knight. Pendragon, Sixth Edition includes guidance on handling such situations, on income from other means such as gambling, on how to use such wealth, and on handling favours in the game. Besides the equipment list, here too is a guide to the types of supporting characters that a player might control, most obviously a squire. It seems oddly placed in the book though.

Although the Pendragon Core Rulebook does not include any scenarios, it does include solo activities which a Player-knight can undertake, especially if a session or two of play has been missed. As a Household Knight, a Player-knight has standard duties, such as garrison and patrol, attending a tournament, or even escorting a lady to a destination. Events can even occur multiple times during a year, requiring more checks, but unusual events can occur too, like visiting the royal court or facing an uprising of commoners. Several of these are expanded upon and there is a list of skills and Personality Traits which a player should be testing for his knight. With some development, the Game Master could actually go further and use these as scenario prompts for short adventures or quests.

One of the features of Pendragon is that it is played out in two phases per year. One is the Adventuring Phase, when the Player-knights go on quests and undertake assignments for their liege lord. The second is the Winter Phase. A Player-knight may benefit from a solo adventure in the Winter Phase, but this is the part of the game where player does upkeep for his knight, deals with any personal issues his knight may have had over the course of the year, handle skill and other improvement, changes to his knight’s Personality Traits, and work what happened to his family. The latter is particularly important, because a knight’s family will at some point provide an inheritance and when the Player-knight is killed or retires, a ready-made heir. Of course, the lives of a Player-knight’s family can be drawn upon for more roleplaying opportunities and storylines for the Game Master to develop.

Rounding out the Pendragon Core Rulebook is a trio of appendices. These highlight the changes from the previous edition of the roleplaying game, and then provide the Game Master with a quartet of pre-generated Player-knights and a coat of arms generator.

Physically, Pendragon Core Rulebook is a lovely looking book with a lot of evocative, full colour artwork. The layout is perhaps odd in places with the wandering third column, which typically contains prompts and quotes, changing from the middle of the page to the outer edge and back again, so there is no consistency. However, you do get used to it. The choice of a matte or buff paper stock gives the book a much more tactile feel than is to be expected.

Pendragon is, and always has been a great game, a masterpiece, even. Its matching and modelling of its game design with the source material to create a world and play experience within Arthurian legend is superlative. It is the reason why the previous edition of Pendragon was the thousandth review for Reviews from R’lyeh back in 2019. That has not changed. Pendragon Sixth Edition is a great game, beautifully presented with its elegant mechanics further explained and made accessible in the ultimate version of the roleplaying game that begins in detail in Pendragon Core Rulebook. Whilst there are elements of the roleplaying game and the setting that are missing from its pages, the Pendragon Core Rulebook does give the player everything that he will need to play, whilst the Game Master will want the Pendragon Gamemaster’s Handbook and more for that missing content—or rather, that not yet released content. Because to be fair, the gap between the release of the Pendragon Core Rulebook and the Pendragon Gamemaster’s Handbook is actually not that long and everything in the Pendragon Core Rulebook is playable.

Pendragon Core Rulebook is a great update and explanation of the core rules to Pendragon, Sixth Edition, the perfect book for the players and a good rules reference for the Game Master. And in bringing back Greg Stafford’s masterpiece back to print, the publication of the Pendragon Core Rulebook heralds a new Golden Age of King Arthur and the adventures that Player-knights will undertake in his realm.

The Earth’s skies above are lost in a sea of roiling grey clouds, lit by lightning storms, and boiling with pollution. The world’s skies have been hidden for as long as anyone can remember and no one can remember why. There are those who are brave enough to leap into the air and explore what is to be above the clouds, piloting aeroplanes or dirigibles, searching for treasures said to be found there. Some do return with such treasures, but others come with none, or driven mad from their experiences. This is the setting of What Lurks Above, a micro roleplaying game of pulp exploration and danger in a neo-Victorian post-apocalyptic setting. Published by Parable Games—best known for the horror roleplaying game, Shiver – Role-playing Tales in the Strange & the Unknown, it includes simple easy rules, including for both characters and vessels, and combat between them.

A Player Character in What Lurks Above has four stats—Fortitude, Courage, Intellect, and Agility. These are rated by die type. So, one has a six-sided, eight-sided, a ten-sided, and a twelve-sided die. It is as simple as that. He has a Vigour equal to his Fortitude die size.

The Cook
Fortitude d6 Courage d12 Intellect d10 Agility d6
Vigour 6

To have his character undertake an action, a player rolls the die for the appropriate stat and aims to roll high. The Skipper—as the Game Master is known—sets the difficulty by choosing a die type. The larger the die type, the greater the difficulty faced by the Player Character. If the player rolls higher, his character succeeds, but if the Skipper rolls higher, the character fails. The Vessel, whether an aeroplane or a dirigible, also has four stats, which again are assigned die types. The four stats are Hull Integrity, Engine Power, Radar Range, and Weapon Systems. Combat is also handled as opposed rolls, with the winner inflicting damage to the loser’s Vigour. Bare firsts inflict one point of damage, an antique sabre three points, a missile eight points, and so on. If a Player Character’s Vigour is reduced to zero, then they are dead. NPCs and bigger creatures can have higher Vigour values than the die types.

To power play, What Lurks Above offers a series of prompts in a set of tables. These consist of tables for ‘Discoveries’ and ‘Enemies’. Entries for the former include ‘A castle in the sky run by automata who continue to serve their long dead masters’ or ‘A basking shark with a city in its mouth’ and work as scenario hooks, whilst entries for the latter include a ‘Fog Brain’, a floating sphere of fleshy cloud with hanging moss tentacles, and a ‘Flock of Seagull Warriors’ with a penchant for everyone’s leftovers! The Skipper simply has to roll on both to have a prompt to get an adventure started.

Physically, What Lurks Above is a simple tri-fold pamphlet. It is surprisingly and decently illustrated and is an easy to pick up roleplaying game. Overall, What Lurks Above is a very bare bones game, but that allows room aplenty for the Skipper and her players to develop the world as they want.

2024 marks the fiftieth anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons, something that has been recognised and celebrated with any number of books and products. In addition to the Player’s Handbook for Dungeons & Dragons 2024, there was The Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons 1970 – 1977 and even LEGO Dungeons & Dragons, the former controversial, the latter fun. However, in all of the brouhaha following the release of The Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons 1970 – 1977, Wizards of the Coast—rather Hasbro International Inc.—published another book dedicated to the history of the world’s preeminent roleplaying game. Dungeons & Dragons Museum: Celebrate 50 years of the epic fantasy role-playing game promises to take us on a guided tour of Dungeons & Dragons’ history complete with rarely seen images, an examination of its evolution over multiple editions of the roleplaying game, and a wider look at its influence, such as on television series like Stranger Things and its expansion beyond the gaming table into computer games and big budget films.

From the outset, Dungeons & Dragons Museum feels like museum. It opens with a section called the ‘Entrance’ and from there, takes us into individual exhibits for each of the roleplaying game’s five editions. These are further broken down into various sections, almost like individual displays. In the ‘Entrance’, the reader is told about the beginnings of Dungeons & Dragons with ‘Roll for Initiative: The Origins of D&D’ which introduces both E. Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, and the importance of the Braunstein wargame. This nicely illustrated with portraits of both men and of Chainmail, the forerunner to Dungeons & Dragons, each keyed with a decent description. It is followed by timeline which covers the broad history of Dungeons & Dragons and its publishers. There are some oddities here, such as describing the development of Basic Dungeons & Dragons as a splinter branch, but the timeline does acknowledge changes in the hobby as they affect the roleplaying game. For example, E. Gary Gygax leaving in 1985 when Lorraine Williams gains a controlling share of TSR, Inc. and the publication of the Pathfinder roleplaying game in 2008.

Each of the five editions of Dungeons & Dragons gets its own section, from Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition to Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. Every edition gets its own ‘Knowledge Check’, an overview of the edition before Dungeons & Dragons Museum examines the developments which occurred during the period when the edition was in print and the developments which in turn affected Dungeons & Dragons during that period. For example, ‘Animated Dreams’ looks at the Dungeons & Dragons Cartoon of the eighties, followed by ‘Ware Identification’ which details some of the merchandise released in conjunction the cartoon series—both in the eighties and since, for the ‘First Edition’, whilst for ‘Second Edition, Dungeons & Dragons begins to find itself portrayed on screen in films like Mazes & Monsters and E.T. The Extraterrestrial, whilst Mazes & Monsters would contribute towards to the Satanic Panic backlash against Dungeons & Dragons that would see it undergo significant design changes that would not be undone for decades. This would continue for ‘Fifth Edition’ with the celebrity games portrayed on The Big Bang Theory and the games both played and underlying the various seasons of Stranger Things, and of course, not forgetting the influence of Critical Role.

This is where Dungeons & Dragons Museum is at its strongest. Whether it is discussing the first Dungeons & Dragons novels—Quag Keep by Andre Norton and Dragons of Autumn Twilight, the first part of the Dragonlance Chronicles by Maragret Weis and Tract Hickman—in ‘Read Magic’ and R.A. Salvatore’s Drizzt Do’Urden novels in ‘Legend Lore’, Bioware’s original Baldur’s Gate computer game in ‘City Secrets’, and even acknowledging the disasters of the original Dungeons & Dragons film from the year 2000 in ‘Aetherial Archive’, Dungeons & Dragons Museum is far batter at exploring the corollaries of the roleplaying game rather than the game itself. Indeed, none of the five editions receive more than a page each in terms of description and impact, and Basic Dungeons & Dragons barely warrants a paragraph beyond its description of being a splinter to the main game. Given how influential Basic Dungeons & Dragons has been in the hobby, especially in the last decade with the rise of the Old School Renaissance, it reads as being particularly dismissive. There are interesting points made, such as ‘Comprehend Language’ for ‘Second Edition’ which explores how the language of Dungeons & Dragons with terms such as ‘NPC’ and ‘XP’—Non-Player Character and Experience Points—and others have proliferated through computer games and out into the wider lexicon, but these are far and few between.

Physically, Dungeons & Dragons Museum is well written and presented. The artwork is all well handled and serves to make for an attractive looking book. That said, the book is not illustrated with rarely-seen images as its description suggests. Many of them will be familiar to even casual adherents of the roleplaying game and even those that are not, will have previously appeared in books like Art & Arcana: A Visual History.

Dungeons & Dragons Museum is not a book for the hardcore fan of Dungeons & Dragons—and certainly not the hardcore player of Dungeons & Dragons. The book focuses too much upon the peripherals over the core rules, so its discussion of the game play and how it changes from one edition to the next is all too casual. Yet it does showcase how Dungeons & Dragonss has spread across different media and influenced wider culture that has then influenced Dungeons & Dragons in return. Overall, Dungeons & Dragons Museum: Celebrate 50 years of the epic fantasy role-playing game provides a decent overview of Dungeons & Dragons in a broader sense as an intellectual property rather than as the roleplaying game, which gets pushed to the side.

‘Hollyhock’ is a large walled garden, some two-and-a-half miles across, which lies within the lands of Duke Omer. It contains a forests, a lake, a hedge maze and a famous rose garden. In fact, so famous, the king himself enjoys an annual visit to Hollyhock for a birthday hunting retreat. Now such a visit is unlikely, for the Sun has not set upon the garden in months. It languishes under a hazy late-afternoon sun that has had a deleterious effect upon the flora and fauna contained within its walls. The plants have begun to dry out now than the garden no longer has any rainfall, whilst the constant daylight appears to have maddened the animals found within, driven to aggression and odd behaviour without the regular diurnal cycle. Duke Omer has already sent several of knights inside Hollyhock and he has grown increasingly concerned. In a desperate bid to undo the curse which has beset Hollyhock, he has put out a bounty that he hopes will persuade a band of enterprising sell-swords to undertake the mission. Some already have, but like the knights before them, have no returned. There are rumours that spending a day in the garden will send a man mad, a giant rat—never seen before—lurks inside already having killed two knights, and Duke Omer blames Fabien, the king’s magician, who went missing at about the time that the Sun never set, for the whole situation, this ‘Hideous Daylight’.

Hideous Daylight is a scenario published by Swordlords Publishing for use with Old School Essentials, Necrotic Gnome’s interpretation and redesign of the 1981 revision of Basic Dungeons & Dragons by Tom Moldvay and its accompanying Expert Set by Dave Cook and Steven M. Marsh. (The PDF also includes a version for use with Cairn.) It is designed to be played using First to Third Level Player Characters and is a mini-hexcrawl that can be run on its own or slotted into a Game Master’s campaign with some adjustment here and there. The ‘Hollyhock’ consists of some nineteen hexes, each of which contains something and each of which takes between ten and twenty minutes to cross, but longer to explore, of course. Certain hexes have specific locations with expanded detail, two of them being mini-dungeons, which thus require further exploration. Any players, let alone their characters, expecting to find a bucolic idyll will be soundly disappointed. There are piles of rotting corpses, deer are seen grazing peacefully on the dead, a knight dutifully performing his assigned task despite being dead (though not evil), gazebo containing fire, a murder of possessive crows, an even more possessive mermaid, and a single, circular patch shade exists in one location, never moving and with no cause to be seen. There is the constant sense of a maintained and often manicured garden having gone to seed, such as the tangled rose gardens or the bird bath having become a repository for the crows’ treasures. Then there are signs of strangeness, of oddities that should not be there at all such as rips in reality and overly friendly ‘aliens’ with a deconstructive desire to understand how everything works and the hands to support that. As well as these, the Player Characters will begin uncovering clues as to what is going on, leading them to explore the adventure’s mini-dungeons.

Hideous Daylight has two dungeons, both quite small, but nicely detailed. These consist of a hedge maze, which the scenario does not make too big a feature of getting lost in, and a network of caverns under a well. Here, along with some very bored shadow demons, the Player Characters will discover the real threat to the hollyhock, although dealing with it is challenging. The scenario suggests multiple ways in which it can end and the possible consequences for each of them, though not all of them are beneficial to the Player Characters or the surrounding region. This also means that there room for the Game Master to write a sequel or two, and that is in addition to the possibility of the dungeon under the well being expanded.

Oddly, there is decidedly pointed advice for the Game Master at the start of the game. At the second location, the author advises that whilst the Game Master roll the dice and refer to the random encounter table, she should instead just send the giant rat barrelling towards the Player Characters. The intention is to get the scenario going with some action and to get the Player Characters to react, especially in the face of as fearsome a creature as the giant rat proves to be. It feels out of place with the rest of the scenario, but it is giving the Game Master the option. Effectively, though, the Game Master can go beyond this and use ‘Scampers’ as he is called, to prod and push the Player Characters to visit particular locations.

Physically, Hideous Daylight is decently presented. The illustration are good and the maps are clear, although the map of the Hollyhock is more pictorial than simply being numbered. This does make it slightly difficult to work out what is what on the map in some cases. A legend would have helped.

Hideous Daylight is a busy little affair. It should provide a two or three sessions’ worth of as the Player Characters attempt to bring darkness to the Hollyhock. It offers a challenging mix of exploration, investigation, and combat in a mini-mystery hexcrawl.

Dexterity games are not a favourite of Reviews from R’lyeh. In fact, Reviews from R’lyeh will go so far as to say that it hates Jenga, would describe Jenga as being boring, after all, it is just a series of plain wooden blocks, and a terrible game—even if it can be called a game. That said, combine Jenga with something like Dread: Dredd (and indeed, Dread) and you actually have a game and a point to Jenga. So, the question is, if Reviews from R’lyeh is averse to dexterity games, what is it doing reviewing a game like Tinderblox? Well, Tinderblox is small, it is bright and colourful, it has a theme, it has challenging situations set up by the game and not by the players, and it has a means of levelling the playing field—or is that camp site?—and making everyone as clumsy as each other. Published by Alley Cat Games, this is a little game that comes in a tin, a little game all about setting fire to a campfire and for that you need tinder and flames, and if it comes in a box, then ‘tinderbox’. And if the tinder and the flames are blocks of wood, then Tinderblox.

Tinderblox is designed to be played by two to six players, aged six plus, and can be played in fifteen minutes. Inside the tin the six-page rules leaflet, a Campfire Card, nineteen Instruction Cards, twenty Logs, ten Red and ten Yellow ‘Cinder’ Cubes, and two pairs of tweezers. The play of the game is simple. Three Logs are placed on the Campfire Card and the remaining logs and both the Red and Yellow ‘Cinder’ Cubes returned to the tin. Then the players take in turn to draw an Instruction Card and do exactly what it says. For example, it might show a Red ‘Cinder’ Cube on top of a Yellow ‘Cinder’ Cube or a horizontal Log with a Red ‘Cinder’ Cube and a Yellow ‘Cinder’ Cube on top of it at either end. The player has to put these new Logs and Cubes exactly on the fire as the Campfire Card shows. The player can do this in any fashion that he likes, as long the pieces he adds remain upright and the fire does not collapse. If it does, that player is eliminated. Play continues like this until there is one player remaining. He is the winner.

Which sounds like it is easy. It is not, because what has not mentioned so is the tweezers. Tinderblox comes with two pairs of tweezers and it comes with two pairs of tweezers because the player cannot use his fingers. Instead, he must use the tweezers. It does not matter which pair of tweezers, because either would be a candidate for the worst pair of tweezers in the world. They really, really, REALLY are rubbish. However, they are all Tinderblox has and they have absolutely no grip. Well almost no grip. Or just enough grip to imagine that a player he could imagine getting hold of Log or a Red ‘Cinder’ Cube or a Yellow ‘Cinder’ Cube and placing it on the campfire. It is possible. It is annoyingly difficult and that is point. It is what makes Tinderblox so frustratingly difficult and gives a player a sense of achievement when he places the Logs and ‘Cinder’ Cubes in the right arrangement.

Physically, everything is nice about Tinderblox. The tin is perfect, the rules leaflet explains everything easily, the Campfire Card is double-sided for different set-ups, the Instruction cards easy to understand, and the wooden pieces are bright, colourful, and simple. The tweezers are crap. Which is the point.

Tinderblox is simple and portable. The tiny tin fits into any bag and as long as there is a flat surface, there is somewhere to set a fire and keep it going with the simplest of Logs and Cinders whilst using the worst tweezers in the world. The only downside to the game is the player elimination aspect, but the game plays quick to start again, so nobody is get waiting for too long, plus the playing time for Tinderblox is very short and so never outstays its welcome. Tinderblox is a lovely looking, delightfully undexterous filler of a game.

It is the time of year when a man’s mind turns to murder. Not because he have had enough of his family and his relatives for one year—and just in one day—but because it is traditional to enjoy murder mysteries, whether on the page or one the screen. And of course, such murders should be as cozy as possible. Then, if that murder is cozy, the detectives need to be equally as cozy. When not cooing and aahing over the very latest tragic death that has occurred under their noses, they like attending to their gardens, participating in the Women’s Institute, reading the next title to discuss as part of their book club, knitting something suitable for a grandniece or nephew, organising the next village fete, and singing in the church choir. These are the Matrons of Mystery, older ladies of leisure whose surreptitious and unobtrusive nature means that they get overlooked when investigating crimes and searching for clues, and eventually putting together a solution which unmasks the perpetrator! Matrons of Mystery is an investigative roleplaying game in which there are mysteries and there are clues to be uncovered, but there is no set solution. And if the Matrons do not get quite get their solution right the first time, they can investigate further and propose another solution!This is what Matrons of Mystery: A cozy mystery roleplaying game—and Brindlewood Bay, the roleplaying game by Jason Cordova it is derived from—both do.
Christmas Crime: Three festive mysteries for Matrons of Mystery presents three more mysteries for the Matrons to solve, but all with a Christmas theme. Each of the three comes with a description of the theme, sets the scene with a set-up, details of the victim, suggests ways in which the Matrons can get involved, and the Teaser, essentially that scene before the opening credits when everyone’s obvious relationships are established and then the dead body of the murder victim is dramatically revealed (cue dramatic music!). This is followed by seven or eight possible suspects, each with a description and reason to want to murder the victim. Lastly there is a lengthy list of clues to be found.

The trilogy starts with ‘Oh No They Didn’t’, which opens with the dress rehearsal for the village amateur dramatics society’s annual Christmas pantomime at the village hall coming to an abrupt halt when Willow Jackson, the lovely young actress playing the lead role of Cinderella, is found lying in the middle of the stage in a pool of blood! Ideally, one of the Matrons should be playing the role of the Fairy Godmother, but the murder mystery suggests other roles too. The second mystery, ‘Bake or Death’, takes place at the village’s annual baking contest with three contests being of note—best mince pie, best biscuit, and best cake. Of these, the best cake competition is subject to the fiercest rivalries. The victim is Lisa Monroe, relative newcomer to the villager and winner of the contest three years in a row. Unfortunately, she is unlikely to winner a fourth time after she is found dead with a cake ribbon wrapped around her neck! The Matrons can be the Judges, contestants, or the organisers. The trio comes to a close with ‘Slay Ride’ in which Bob Chandler, the owner of the local stable yard, who every year plays Santa Claus and provides a carriage as Father Christmas’ sleigh for the village Christmas fete, is found dead in the stables. The Matrons can be organisers of the fete, friends of Bob Chandler, or simply like horses. The teaser as a somewhat gruesome tone when it turns out that Rudolph the Horse’s nose is not red simply because, but because it has something red on it…*

* “Why Rudolph, you’ve got red on you.”

All three cases, the various suspects have secrets and reasons to kill the respective victims. Most of them are not all that nice and all of them are rampant stereotypes typical of the genre. So, there is scope aplenty here for the Game Master to ham up her portrayal of the NPCs, since these episodes—as per the genre—is being broadcast in the middle of the afternoon or the middle of the evening, the perfect cozy, easy spots for the genre. Further, the mysteries themselves are stereotypical, even clichés, of the genre. Or rather as they are properly called, classics. What lifts these classics up above the ordinary is the fact that there is not set solution to the murders. The players and their Matrons can discover the clues, question the suspects, verify alibis, and deduce the identity of the culprit and his or her motivations, and in the process provide a comfortably cozy entertainment, whilst the Game Master gets to portray a cast riddled with jealousies, insecurities, and secrets. Plus, just like the cozy murder mysteries themselves, the murder mysteries in Christmas Crime are just as undemanding when it comes to set-up.

Physically, Christmas Crime is neatly and tidily laid out. It is not illustrated bar the Christmasy front cover. The only that it lacking is some locations for the mysteries to play out in, but the Game Master and her players should be able to improvise those.

What could be cozier than death at Christmas, than the comfortable clichés and mild murders of Christmas Crime: Three festive mysteries for Matrons of Mystery?

A Stitch in Time is both a campaign for Doctor Who: The Roleplaying Game – Second Edition and not a campaign for Doctor Who: The Roleplaying Game – Second Edition. It is a campaign in the sense that there is a connected thread that runs through all ten of its episodes, but not a campaign in the sense that there is no overarching plot or threat that the Player Characters will be aware of and must find a way to deal with by the tenth episode. Instead, the series arc is a threat that the Player Characters must deal with in the tenth episode—just as there is in every episode—but they will not be aware of it until the tenth episode and they will not be aware that they have been preparing to face it for the previous nine episodes. So rather than a campaign, what A Stitch in Time actually is, is a complete series that the Game Master can run for her Doctor Who: The Roleplaying Game. Although written for use with Doctor Who: The Roleplaying Game – Second Edition and thus ostensibly for the Thirteenth Doctor, the ten episodes can easily be run using any of the other Doctors and their Companions, or indeed the Thirteenth Doctor and her companions. Or, of course, it can be run using the players’ own Time Lord and Companions. It could even be run with another team of time travellers, using a means other than a TARDIS to travel through time and space, but although A Stitch in Time does include some advice on the changes needed to make it run without a Time Lord and his TARDIS, it is written with the assumption that the Player Characters include a Time Lord and have a TARDIS. Alternatively, A Stitch in Time could be used as an anthology of scenarios which the Game Master can draw from for her own campaign rather than use as a whole.

A Stitch in Time is published by Cubicle 7 Entertainment and will take the travellers back and forth across time and space, from Earth to outer space, and back again. From an English holiday camp in the here and now, a disused prison complex in the far future, and an animation studio in Burbank, California, 1932 to the Battle of Hastings, a hospital out of time, and a threatened utopia in the twenty-sixth century. On the way, the Player Characters will meet a Dalek, a Silurian, the Nestene Consciousness, a lot of Sontarans and Ice Warriors, a Time Lord, and more. Every episode follows the same format. It has an Introduction, a Call To Adventure—what gets the Player Characters involved, an explanation of What’s Going On, the three Acts of the story, and the Epilogue. The What’s Going On section ends with the ‘Series Arc’ explaining how the episode ties in with the ongoing story. These ties all take the form of objects—objects which all together can be used to defeat the threat in the tenth episode of A Stitch in Time. Effectively, as the Player Characters will eventually learn, they have been on an intergalactic scavenger hunt to defeat a gigantic threat. If the Player Characters have not collected all of the items needed by the tenth episode, then there is a solution. Time travel. Doctor Who: The Roleplaying Game – Second Edition is a time travel roleplaying game, so there is scope for the Player Characters to go back and forth through time, although the does warn about the dangers of meeting themselves, which of course, is the Blinovitch Limitation Effect.

A Stitch in Time begins in slightly underwhelming fashion as the Player Characters protect some escaped political intergalactic prisoners who have crash-landed outside an English seaside holiday camp. There is some fun to be had to playing around with the traditional aspects of setting, but some of the nuances may be lost on a non-British audience, whilst a British audience is likely to want to shift the episode from the present day to the nineteen fifties. More so given that the episode is called, ‘Hi-De-Hide’. The action picks with ‘The Most Dangerous Monster’, which is set on a former prison complex, which has been refitted as a tourist destination in which the tourists come to hunt the galaxy’s most dangerous game. No guesses for what that is, but this a nice homage to the Ninth Doctor episode, ‘Dalek’. ‘Silver Screams’ takes place at an animation studio—that is very definitely not Disney—in 1932 in Burbank, California, where for some reason the film stock and the props take on a deadly life of their own. Cue fun with a giant Merry Mallard! In ‘Everything Most Go’, the time travellers find themselves at the biggest shopping complex in the universe and most find out why every customer is being evacuated except the Sontarans and the Ice Warriors. Just what they shopping for? None of them can come armed, so there is an amusing description of the Sontarans having armed themselves via the kitchenware department! In ‘Protect and Survive’, the timeline becomes imperilled when it is revealed what exactly lies beneath the Battle of Hastings and in ‘Emergency Ward 26’, the Player Characters find themselves in a tricky situation in time that makes it the hardest of the ten scenarios in the book for the Game Master to run. Later episodes include a classic museum heist in ‘The Great Sonic Caper’ and a Cyberpunk-style medical mystery in ‘Green for Danger’ before the series comes to a close with ‘Save Nhein’ which rounds off A Stitch in Time. (And yes, we know...)

There is a coda to A Stitch in Time which suggests directions in which the Game Master might take her campaign after completing the series it presents, whilst also wondering how the episodes are connected in ways more than the scavenger hunt it is. Is there someone or something manipulating the Player Characters? Are they being testing? The coda does not present any answers, so this is really prompts for the Game Master to think about where A Stitch in Time fits in her campaign and what it might link to. Perhaps though, Cubicle 7 Entertainment will answer these prompts in a future supplement?

Physically, A Stitch in Time is cleanly, tidily laid out, decently written, and illustrated with the Thirteenth Doctor and her Companions as well as the monsters that the Player Characters will meet in the course of the series. One of the issues with the ten scenarios in A Stitch in Time is that they are presented in narrative fashion. There are no maps or floor plans, and there are no illustrations of any of the NPCs in the scenarios. Which means that the Game Master has to work that much harder to visualise both locations and characters and impart that to her players.

A Stitch in Time is stronger as an anthology of episodes rather than as a traditional roleplaying campaign. It is also a decent series with many of its scenarios making for exciting episodes that you could imagine being made for the television screen rather than for playing around the table. Of the ten, ‘The Most Dangerous Monster’ and ‘Emergency Ward 26’ are classics, whilst there is room aplenty to lean into the comic potential of both ‘Hi-De-Hide’ and ‘Silver Screams’ with the Game Master and her players acknowledging the obvious inspirations for the pair. In whatever way the Game Master decides to use it, A Stitch in Time is solid support for her Doctor Who: The Roleplaying Game – Second Edition campaign.

Strangeville is a town like any other, which means that it is beset by monsters and robots and dinosaurs and aliens, and because the adults never believe in monsters and robots and dinosaurs and aliens until it is too late, the only standing between the monsters and robots and dinosaurs and aliens and Strangeville’s doom are the kids! Young teenagers on bikes or skateboards or even roller-skates with the curiosity to notice that something strange is going in where else, but Strangeville! Welcome to Strangeville then, an Old School Renaissance compatible roleplaying game based on Knave. Published by Doomed Wizard Games, it is obviously based also on the television series Stranger Things as well as Paper Girls, The Goonies, and just any adventure film or television series set in the eighties in which the kids are the heroes. Being based on Knave it offers fast-playing stripped down mechanics, whilst also suggesting collaborative worldbuilding between the players and the Game Master. What it does not do is provide anything in terms of spells or monsters beyond advice on how to adapt them to Welcome to Strangeville. Thus, the Game Master will need access to a bestiary and a source of spells of some kind. That said, the Old School Renaissance is not exactly short of those.

In Welcome to Strangeville, a Player Character has six abilities—Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma—each of which has a Check Bonus and a Save bonus. The Check Bonus ranges between one and six and is added to the die roll when a Player Character undertakes an action. The Save Bonus is equal to the Check Bonus plus ten, and it is what the Player Character rolls against when tyring withstand various dangers or effects. He has an Alignment, either Nark, Slacker, or Bogus. Nark indicates that the Player Character believes in the greater good rather than the individual, a Slacker cares more about himself, but can be roused to action, and if a character is Bogus, he is definitely selfish, if not downright evil. He has a number of Traits such as Age—between twelve and fourteen, Physique, Hair, Virtue, Vice, Speech, Parents, and Parent Occupation, and so on. He will also have some gear which will include either a bicycle, a skateboard, or a pair of roller-skates so that he can get around.

To create a character, a player rolls three six-sided dice for each ability and assigns the lowest rolled as the Check Bonus. He adds ten to the Check Bonus to get the Save Bonus for the ability. Having done this for each ability, selects an Alignment and rolls for Traits, Gear, and means of transport.

At thirteen Terrell Thompson is beginning to get big and broad, which has made him a pick for the high school football team. He tries to keep himself out of trouble, but as the new kid in the school—his mom having moved to Strangeville to work in the town pharmacy, together with his size, he feels he gets picked on when things go wrong. So, he is not always trusting, but when he does make friends, he stands by them.

Terrell Thompson
Level: One

Strength Check +3/Save Bonus 13
Dexterity Check +3/Save Bonus 13
Constitution Check +4/Save Bonus 14
Intelligence Check +2/Save Bonus 12
Wisdom Check +3/Save Bonus 13
Charisma Check +1/Save Bonus 11

Hit Points 8

TRAITS
Age: 13 Gender: Male
Physique: Towering Face: Wide Skin: Perfect Hair: Dreadlocks Clothing: Torn
Virtue: Loyal Vice: Prejudiced
Speech: Breathy
Misfortunes: Suspected
Parents: Widowed Mother Parent’s Occupation: Pharmacist
Alignment: Slacker

GEAR
Swiss Army Knife, lantern & oil, caltrops, perfume, skateboard

Mechanically, Welcome to Strangeville is straightforward. To have his teenager undertake an action, a player rolls a twenty-sided die, adds the appropriate ability check and if the result is fifteen or more, he succeeds. The target may vary—primarily in combat because the target is likely to have a different value for its Dexterity Save, but otherwise, Welcome to Strangeville uses the standard Advantage and Disadvantage mechanic. Strength is used for physical actions, melee combat, and extra damage, Dexterity for speed and reflexes, Constitution to resist diseases and poisons, Intelligence for anything involving concentration and precision, including tinkering with machinery or picking pockets, Wisdom for perception and ranged attacks, and Charisma whenever a character interacts with someone else. Thus, there are some minor changes in how the abilities in comparison to more traditional Old School Renaissance retroclones.

Combat uses the same mechanics, with the defender’s Save acting as the target. This can be to inflict damage, and Welcome to Strangeville suggests that firearms be extremely be hard to hold of as the Player Characters are teenagers, or it can be stunts such as disarming an opponent or knocking them over. Most weapons inflict a four- or six-sided die in terms of damage, whilst rifles and shotguns do more. When a Player Character’s Hit Points are reduced to zero, he is unconscious and if they are reduced to his Constitution Check as a negative value, he is dead, that is if he has a Constitution Check of +2 and his Hit Pits are reduced to -2, he is dead. Critical hits occur if the player rolls a twenty and a fumble occurs if he rolls a one.

Other rules are quick and easy. Stunts on bicycles, skateboards, and so on, require a Dexterity check, it is possible to subdue an opponent, and a Player Character has a number of item slots equal to his Constitution Save. There are narrative elements too. For example, Group Advantage can be gained for everyone’s next action two or more Player Characters declare a collective action and their players narrate how a previous incident helps them with this one, but the primary narrative element to Welcome to Strangeville comes in the set-up when the players and the Game Master work together to create and describe the town of Strangeville. During Session Zero, each player also creates a handful of rumours and urban legends about places in the town, monsters that lurk, houses said to be haunted, serial killers believed to stalk, and so on. The Game Master takes these and deicides which are true and which are false, using as many or as few as she likes to both establish a sense of mystery and weirdness about Strangeville, whilst also using some as the basis for adventures. Beyond this, the advice for the Game Master is fairly brief, primarily focusing on how to adapt and use monsters and spells from other sources, noting that a spell takes a slot in a Player Character’s inventory.

Physically, Welcome to Strangeville is a bit scruffy in places and the artwork does vary in quality. It is clearly written and anyone with any experience of the Old School Renaissance will grasp how it works with ease. The cover though, is good.

Although it uses the stripped back mechanics of Knave, what Welcome to Strangeville is not, is an introductory roleplaying game. It is not written as such, and is more aimed at the experienced Game Master who can develop the ideas suggested by her players during their Session Zero. Given that it does have to rely on other Old School Renaissance sourcebooks for its content, Welcome to Strangeville is underwritten in comparison to other roleplaying games in its genres and a group looking for a more rounded treatment of the ‘kids in peril’ genre may want to look elsewhere. However, for a group that prefers Old School Renaissance and is prepared to put the development work in to create their own setting and the Game Master their ‘kids in peril’ adventures, Welcome to Strangeville is a succinct little choice.

1974 is an important year for the gaming hobby. It is the year that Dungeons & Dragons was introduced, the original RPG from which all other RPGs would ultimately be derived and the original RPG from which so many computer games would draw for their inspiration. It is fitting that the current owner of the game, Wizards of the Coast, released the new version, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, in the year of the game’s fortieth anniversary, and the new edition of that, Dungeons & Dragons, 2024, in the year of the game’s fiftieth anniversary. To celebrate this, Reviews from R’lyeh will be running a series of reviews from the hobby’s anniversary years, thus there will be reviews from 1974, from 1984, from 1994, and from 2004—the thirtieth, twentieth, and tenth anniversaries of the titles. These will be retrospectives, in each case an opportunity to re-appraise interesting titles and true classics decades on from the year of their original release.

—oOo—
Larry Niven’s Ringworld: Roleplaying Adventure Beneath the Great Arch was and is a rare beast in many ways. It is rare because it is a hard Science Fiction roleplaying game, published at a time when the genre leaned more towards the Space Opera subgenre. It is rare because it is one of publisher Chaoisum, Inc.’s only two forays into the Science Fiction genre, the other being the ‘Future World’ setting from Worlds of Wonder, published in 1982. Lastly, it is literally rare because it has long been out of print and copies are hard to come by. Published in 1984, Ringworld is primarily based upon the Larry Niven novel of the same name, published in 1970, which would win Nebula Award in 1970 and both the Hugo Award and Locus Award in 1971. Ringworld tells the story of a group of explorers in the mid twenty-ninth century who travel far outside of Known Space to determine if a massive astronomical object is a threat to their employer. This object is the ‘Ringworld’ of the title, a ring one million miles wide with the approximate diameter of the Earth’s orbit and the inner surface area equal to three million Earths. It is habitable, for it has a breathable atmosphere, rotates to provide gravity, a moderate temperature, and a day/night cycle provided by an inner ring of shadow squares. Ringworld and the ‘ringworld’ was the very definition of the term ‘big dumb object’, but what it presented was a wide-open space to explore, both in the novels and in Larry Niven’s Ringworld: Roleplaying Adventure Beneath the Great Arch.

The setting for Ringworld is Known Space, an area roughly sixty light years across, and beyond in the twenty-ninth century. Earth is a stable society with citizens free to pursue their own ambitions and the time to do it, but need permission to procreate to prevent overpopulation. Scientific research is highly regulated to avoid the creation of weapons of mass destruction. The discovery of Booster Spice enables individuals to live for centuries without dying except via an accident. Psionic abilities such as telepathy and telekinesis—and most notably ‘luck’, are not unknown. Mankind has settled numerous systems and adapted to a number of different environments, and fought the Kzinti, a highly aggressive, male-dominated cat-like species, in a series of wars that would see humanity prevail each time. Hyperspace travel is common and most spaceships are built using one of several types of virtually indestructible General Products Hull, sold by the General Products company. General Products is owned by the Pierson’s Puppeteers, a highly intelligent non-humanoid species with three hoofed legs and two snake-like heads who are fanatical cowards. The Pierson’s Puppeteers hire the original mission to the Ringworld and have been secretly manipulating and influencing the course of both human and Kzinti development in order to protect themselves.

In Ringworld, the Player Characters are either Humans, Kzin, or Puppeteers. The original mission to the Ringworld—as described in the first book in the series—has taken place and the Player Characters have the opportunity to conduct follow up expeditions as well as explore far beyond the relatively small region visited by the original expedition. The scenario included in the roleplaying game, ‘The Journey of the Catseye’ will take the Player Characters to the Ringworld.

Larry Niven’s Ringworld: Roleplaying Adventure Beneath the Great Arch came as a richly packed box which contained the then obligatory ‘What’s in this Box’ sheet, four books, a booklet of extra essays and character sheets, a sheet of ‘Explorer Figures’, and a set of dice. The four books are the sixty-page ‘Explorer Book’, the forty-eight page ‘Gamemaster Book’, the forty-four-page ‘Creatures Book’, and the thirty-six-page ‘Technology Book’. The booklet is the ‘Ringworld: Autopilot Print-Out’. Bar the book covers, everything is presented in black and white with some excellent illustrations by Lisa Free. Everything feels of the highest quality, at least for 1984, and this was reflected in the price, Ringworld costing $25 at the time. This was seen as expensive for a roleplaying game in 1984. In terms of source material, the Ringworld roleplaying game draws from the novels Ringworld, Ringworld Engineers, The World of Ptavvs, A Gift From Earth, Protector, and Neutron Star. Notably, the ‘What’s in this Box’ sheet explains why there is no map of the Ringworld. At the bottom of the sheet is a band, one-half-inch wide. If this represents one million miles—the width of the Ringworld, then the scale circumference of the Ringworld would be twenty-five feet! This it suggests, “…[W]ill give the players a very good idea of the actual proportions (and awesome size) of Ringworld.” The full credits and all those with an input in the creation of the Ringworld roleplaying game are listed on the back of the sheet.

The ‘Explorer Book’ introduces the setting of Known Space, the basic rules, descriptions of Earth and the worlds settled by humanity, plus the rules for creating characters. The latter includes Humans, Kzin, and Puppeteers. The Ringworld roleplaying game uses the Basic Roleplay System, so a character is defined by Strength, Mass, Constitution, Intelligence, Power, Dexterity, Appearance, and Education. These are on the same scale as other Basic Roleplay System roleplaying games, although Education can be much, much higher as Player Characters can be much older than the average in other roleplaying games. A character also has a home world which determines the gravity under which he grew up, a potential defect like albinism, boosterspice allergy, or hyperspace blindspot phobia, and an age. Notably, the age is split between actual age and physical age, as this differs depending upon when the Player Character begins taking booster spice. There is a chance that a Player Character has a psionic ability. Lastly, the Player Character will have a range of skills, which are divided into five categories—Agility, Communication, Perception, Knowledge, and Technical—and also divided between Single and Root skills. A Single skill has a straight value, but a Root skill has a base beyond which the Player Character must specialise. For example, the Hyperdrive skill, which handles spaceship piloting, has a base beyond which the pilot must specialise in Quantam 1 and Quantam 2 hyperdrives.

Player Character creation is a matter of rolling for all of these elements. This is apart from Education, which is an open-ended roll. The final value will determine the basic starting age for the Player Characters. After that, a Player Character can have one or more Occupations which grants access to particular skills, the number being based on years after completing education. A Player Character is given a number of points to spend on Education skills, Pursuits—or Occupations, and Special Interests—hobbies. The process is not difficult, but with older characters this means that the process takes longer and that it can lead to characters with widely varying ages and thus skill values.

Our sample would-be explorer is a journalist and tridee presenter. He has been hearing rumours of a spaceflight out to an unknown object beyond the borders of Known space. He wants to get the first footage and he wants to be famous because of it.

Name: Jonathon Leung
Species: Human
Homeworld (Gravity): Earth (Normal)
Age – Physical: 23 Age – Chronological: 47
Occupations: Journalist
Defect: None
Strength 14 Mass 16 Constitution 14 Intelligence 12 Power 17 Dexterity 15 Appearance 14 Education 26
Damage Modifier: +1d3
General Hit Points: 30
Health Roll: 42% Reasoning Roll: 36% Luck Roll: 54% Dodge Roll: 45%
Action Ranking: 4

SKILLS
AGILITY Root Maximum: 31%
Athletics 31% (Run 35%), Hide 30%, Sneak 25%, Unarmed Combat 20%
COMMUNICATION Root Maximum: 26%
Bargain 50%, Debate 65%, Fast Talk 50%, Fine Arts 25%, Orate 65%, Own Language (Interworld) 100%, Perform 26% (Tridee Presentation 85%), Psychology 26% (Human 65%)
KNOWLEDGE Root Maximum: 38%
Anthropology 38% (Cultural Anthropology 60%), History 38% (Known Space Conspiracy Theories 58%) (Spaceflight and Colonisation History 45%), Law 20%, Second Language (Kzinti) 20%
PERCEPTION Root Maximum: 31%
Listen 25%, Observe 45%, Search 45%
TECHNICAL Root Maximum: 27%

Mechanically, Ringworld is a percentile system as per the Basic Roleplay system. Roll equal to or under the skill or a Health Roll or Reasoning Roll, for example, and the action is a success. If the result is a fifth of a skill or a Health Roll, then it is a Special Success, but a Special Failure if the result is over the target value and in the top twentieth percent. A roll of ninety-six or above is invariably a failure, although this will be modified if the skill is above one hundred percent. In skill contests, the lowest, successful skill roll wins, whilst the Resistance Table is used for contests involving attributes. In addition to improving skills via the standard method of the Basic Roleplay system, it is possible to improve skills and attributes via virtual training in the Simweb (part of the scenario included in Ringworld includes the opportunity to train in the ship’s Simweb).

Combat in Ringworld is not conducted round by round as per traditional roleplaying games, but in Impulses. Each Impulse is a United Nations Standard second long. In terms of time, a character, whether a Player Character or an NPC, can take Minor Actions and Major Actions. Minor Actions include firing a ranged weapon, falling over, and standing up from a kneeling position. A Minor Action takes one second or Impulse to perform. Major Actions include aiming a ranged weapon, attacking with a melee weapon or unarmed, drawing or stowing a weapon, and so on. A Major Action takes a number of Impulses to perform equal to a character’s Action Rating, derived from his Dexterity. For a human, this Action Rating is typically between three and six. For a Kzin, it ranges between four and two. Once the participants in a fight have declared their actions, the Game Master counts the Impulses up and when she reaches the Impulse when an action for a Player Character or NPC triggers, the action will take place, with rolls being made, as necessary. Effectively, this is a continuous count up, allowing continuous freedom of actions rather than restricting actions to the confines of a single round.

The Impulse system for actions for Ringworld remains a radical design, it being very rare to see anything similar in other roleplaying games—Aces & Eights Reloaded from Kenzer and Co. being a rare exception. However, it does force a player and Game Master alike to focus on the constant action, as procedurally, there is never a break in the process as there would be where combat is conducted round by round, and it does favour Player Characters and NPCs with better Action Ratings.

Melee or unarmed attacks can be parried or dodged, whilst ranged attacks in general cannot. Advanced weapons like the variable sword or the flashlight laser, are exceptions to this. Whilst a flashlight laser can be blocked by numerous surfaces, including armour, only a stasis field or the scrith material which the Ringworld is constructed of will stop a variable sword. If an attack is successful, the hit location is determined randomly, but can be adjusted by aiming. This adds an extra Impulse per change in location. Damage inflicted that exceeds a location’s Hit points will either render the limb useless, or render the character unconscious if the head, chest, or abdomen. If the damage suffered is more than twice a location’s Hit Points, a limb will be severed, bleeding or dying if the chest or abdomen, or dead if the head. Make no mistake, combat is deadly in Ringworld, especially given that a laser rifle will inflict ‘1d10+30’ points of damage, a flashlight laser anywhere between zero and fifty points of damage, and a variable sword ‘1d20+5’. Some armour is available, but it varies widely in its effectiveness. Ideally though, the Player Characters should not be engaging in combat unless they have to, and if they do, ultimately, they should have access to an autodoc which will provide effective, but slow healing for most damage suffered.

What is clear from Ringworld is that despite its size and the complexity of background, the rules themselves are not. A group with experience of the Basic Roleplay system will grasp them with ease, but at just eleven pages they are clearly explained and easy to understand. Character creation is slightly more, especially when taking into account the rules for creating Kzin or Puppeteer Player Characters found at the back of the ‘Explorer Book’.

Both the ‘Creatures Book’ and the ‘Technology Book’ provide more background and details of the setting. The ‘Technology Book’ covers all of the devices to be found across Known Space and beyond, some of which the Player Characters will be likely to equip themselves with or take to the Ringworld. It ranges from generators, computers, and medical equipment to vehicles, weapons, and protective devices. Weapons include Slaver disintegrators, hand beamers, flashlight lasers, the euphoria-inducing tasp, and more. Vehicles include the incredibly speedy flycycle as well as General Products Hull Types. All of it is highly detailed, especially the starships, and highly readable.

Similarly, the content of the ‘Creatures Book’ is also highly detailed and highly readable, if not more so in the case of the latter. It can be divided into five sections. The first details the ‘Aliens’ found across Known Space, such as the Bandersnatchi, Grogs, Kdatlyno, and more. Dolphins are also included, although they are not available as a Player Character species. The second presents a lengthy examination of the Pak, the aggressively xenophobic and protective species suspected of being the builders of the Ringworld. The third details the various ‘Hominids’ found on the Ringworld. These include the City Builders, Ghouls, Healers, Sea People, Vampires, and others. The last two sections are devoted to ‘Animals’ and ‘Flora’. The most notable of the latter includes the Slaver Sunflowers which targeted the first expedition to the Ringworld. All of the entries are accorded a full page’s worth of background and detail, if not more in several cases, presenting the various species as different in terms of both culture and biology.

The majority of the entries in Ringworld are essays, whether that is descriptions of the aliens and hominids in the ‘Creatures Book’ or guides to first Known Space, and then the Kzin, and the Puppeteers from the ‘Explorer Book’. This continues in the ‘Gamemaster Book’ and then in the ‘Ringworld: Autopilot Print-Out’. The latter includes essays about ‘Ringworld from Space’, the ‘Infinity-Horizon’ (since the Ringworld has no horizon), ‘A Day on Ringworld’, ‘The Darkside of Ringworld’, and ‘The Starry Night Sky of Ringworld’. The ‘Gamemaster Book’ describes the Ringworld in some detail, covering its physical structure, the technology that maintains it and can still be found on the Ringworld—especially on the rim, and the geography and ecosystem. There is background too on the City Builders, the species which most recently dominated the Ringworld, building floating cities and exploring and trading with other worlds, until a technological disaster caused the cities to fall out of the sky and other technologies to fail, as well as other Hominid Technology found on the Ringworld. These are all excellent essays containing a wealth of detail and background to the Ringworld. Perhaps the most obviously gameable here are the sections on ‘Puppeteer Secrets’ and ‘Ringworld Secrets’, the nearest that the roleplaying game gets to scenario hooks. There are rules for psionics as well.

The ‘Gamemaster Book’ comes to a close with ‘The Journey of the Catseye’. This is an introductory scenario designed to get the Player Characters to the Ringworld. The captain of the Catseye, a General Products No. 4 starship wants to employ a pilot and an engineer as well as security guards and scientists to join him on an expedition to a strange object outside of Known Space where his client hopes an alternative to boosterspice might be found. Both ship and crew are described in detail as is the journey, which gives the Player Characters the opportunity to test out the Simweb. Unfortunately, and much like the Lying Bastard in the Ringworld novel, the Catseye suffers catastrophic damage and is forced to crash land on the Ringworld. Much of the scenario revolves around making repairs to the ship and finding the parts needed, which will sometimes bring the Player Characters into conflict with the indigenous species. The scenario is detailed up to the point where it leaves the Player Characters at a moment of decision as to what they want to do next. There is no satisfying conclusion to the story and if the players have read Ringworld, the plot of ‘The Journey of the Catseye’ is worryingly similar. For all of the set-up, all of the detail, and all of the wonder to the Ringworld, ‘The Journey of the Catseye’ is quite mundane.

The scenario is not the only entry in the ‘Gamemaster Book’ to underwhelm. Not much more than two-and-half pages, the advice for the Game Master is much shorter than it needed to be. It tells the Game Master that she needs to create a logical campaign background with excitement to hold player interest. She is told it entails work and that she should plan for contingencies, but never quite told how. There is good advice on the challenge of how the Player Characters interact with the various natives and civilisations on the Ringworld, that is, to understand Ringworld is not a simple game of banditry in which they wander the land astride their great flycycle steeds ready to impose their will with their trusty flashlight lasers, and that even if they do, there will be someone on the Ringworld who can outfight them. Instead, the Player characters should rely on diplomacy and persuasion. Yet the ready access to highly powerful technology does give the Player Characters an advantage and the Game Master is going to need to work harder in creating scenarios and campaigns where violence is an option, but the least advantageous option. All of this takes place in an environment that has a surface area three times the size of the Earth in a setting that is highly technical and highly detailed technically. This is an issue with any roleplaying game that fits into the hard Science Fiction genre, the players are going to want the technical details and an idea of how things work. Often with a view to the technology providing a solution, which means that there is a tension between the players and their characters wanting to rely on their advanced technology, and the Game Master wanting to occasionally provide scenarios where its use is not as helpful. So, the Game Master needs to have some idea of how the technologies of Ringworld and Known Space work—and that is before writing a scenario or campaign.

The issue with Larry Niven’s Ringworld: Roleplaying Adventure Beneath the Great Arch, ultimately, is what does a Game Master do with it? Everything about it is simply big—the enormous size of the Ringworld, the technology, and the questions about it. There are sixty questions listed in the ‘Ringworld Mysteries’ section, but none of them are really small and manageable. The idea of running Ringworld is already a formidable prospect, without a Game Master having to devise answers to questions that the creator of Known Space, Larry Niven, is best placed to answer. Overall, Ringworld needed more detailed and better advice on being an exploration roleplaying game, of handling technology so that it does not become a crutch, and so on.

Physically, Larry Niven’s Ringworld: Roleplaying Adventure Beneath the Great Arch is very well presented. It is well written and all four books have their own contents listed on their respective back covers, which makes finding anything surprisingly easy. Inside, the black and white layout is dense, but still readable. The artwork is decent, but that of Lisa A. Free is excellent. It needs a slight edit in places.

—oOo—Larry Niven’s Ringworld: Roleplaying Adventure Beneath the Great Arch was reviewed by Phil Masters in ‘Open Box in White Dwarf Issue 59 (November 1984). He awarded the roleplaying game an overall score of six out of ten and said, “This game takes a superb background idea, applies a good system of mechanics to it, and comes back with a disappointing result. It may be that I was expecting too much; as a long-time Known Space addict I’ve been on tenterhooks since the first mention of the project, and (once the Companion appears to complete the system) I may well find myself running or playing Ringworld regularly, despite my feeling that the game as presented lacks the depth (as opposed as size) it could and should have possessed.”

Ringworld was the featured review in Space Gamer Number 71 (Nov/Dec 1984). Reviewer Steve Peterson described it as “A Missed Bet”, expanding on the statement by writing, “Really, the Ringworld universe is not an especially good roleplaying situation in the traditional sense. Most of Known Space is too civilized for true action and adventure. The Ringworld itself is “uncivilized” enough, but the technology of the explorers is so much better that they can walk right over most native threats, Think of starting out your D&D adventurers in the first level dungeon, only the adventurers are armed with +5 armor and vorpal swords. You’d quickly get bored.” He countered this with, “However, the Ringworld game is a good simulation, because the characters in the stories were more powerful than the natives. But the challenges of the Ringworld stories arose from situations that couldn’t be handled with a flashlight laser or a variable sword. Those neat weapons didn’t matter when the whole Ringworld was falling into its sun, as in Ringworld Engineers. The characters had to solve problems with their heads, not with their gadgets.” before continuing, “Unfortunately, the authors of the Ringworld game miss the point entirely. They come heartbreakingly close when they include a section on Ringworld mysteries – they discuss many of the very important questions left unanswered in the books. But they fall short when they don’t tell you how to use those mysteries to create scenarios.”

Peterson’s review included three useful sidebars, or rather sections of boxed text. The first was ‘For the uninitiated…’, which introduced the Known Space setting and Niven’s books for anyone new to either, whilst the second was a review of the Ringworld Companion. The third was particularly interesting. ‘What Niven Thinks About Ringworld’, which gives a short interview with the author. Notable is the fact that the publisher had the rights to explore some of the mysteries of the Ringworld and give its own solutions, though Niven would not be beholden to them. That said, Niven was interested in the roleplaying game’s background essays on the Kzinti and wanted to purchase the rights to those to use as a bible for authors working on the Man/Kzin series of anthologies. Peterson’s review concluded with, “My recommendation: Niven fans should buy it for the essays and background materials. Role-players should be prepared to do some work on scenarios; but if you do, you’ll have some terrific roleplaying in a beautifully detailed world. Science-fiction gamers who want to use it for source material probably won't get their money’s worth.”
Ringworld was reviewed in ‘Game Reviews’ in Different Worlds Issue 37 (Nov/Dec 1984) by Jeff Seiken. He commented that, “Ringworld is a difficult game to run in that it requires a skillful gamemaster to keep play (and the explorers) under control. The demands of running a campaign world roughly the size of three million earths compressed into such a small area are enough to tax the abilities of even the most experienced gamemasters.” and “In Ringworld, with explorers routinely traveling at speeds of 7000 km per hour across an ever-changing landscape, the gamemaster needs to be flexible and able to improvise quickly. Moreover, although the rules claim otherwise, gamemastering a Ringworld campaign requires at least some scientific background on the gamemaster’s behalf.” Despite these reservations, he awarded Ringworld four stars and concluded with, “As mentioned previously, the rulebooks contain numerous essays devoted to specific facets of Ringworld to assist the gamemaster in constructing a suitable (and viable) campaign. These essays are both well-written and invaluable. In fact, as befitting a product which owes its origins to a literary source, Ringworld stands out as an extremely literate role-playing game. Digesting the extensive amounts of factual information presented in the essays may demand a significant commitment of time and energy on the part of the gamemaster, but then the rewards of role-playing in the world of Ringworld will far outstrip the effort.”

Steve Nutt reviewed Ringworld in IMAGINE magazine, No. 21 (December 1984) in ‘Notices – Games reviews’. He said, “Altogether, Ringworld’s advantages and disadvantages stem from its campaign setting. The actual mechanics of the game are top quality, yet background and atmosphere are what make or break a campaign, and in Ringworld this aspect could be somewhat daunting to the uninitiated.”—oOo—
Supported by the Ringworld Companion and the extra content in the aforementioned Different Worlds Issue 37, Larry Niven’s Ringworld: Roleplaying Adventure Beneath the Great Arch did not remain in print for very long. Some of its content would form the basis for the background to the Man-Kzin War series of anthologies and Known Space received its sourcebook a decade later with The Guide to Larry Niven’s Ringworld. What this points to, certainly in the case of the Man-Kzin War series is that as a roleplaying game, Ringworld, was a great sourcebook for the setting. Richly detailed and informative enough for any fan of the Known Space series of novels. In fact, astonishingly good as a guide and bible to and for the setting. Yet that same detail made creating for the game beyond the given scenario a challenging consideration, even more so for a campaign. Which then becomes almost herculean given the underwhelming advice on creating for and running what is a technical and detailed setting.

Much like the story of the novel it is based upon, Larry Niven’s Ringworld: Roleplaying Adventure Beneath the Great Arch is very good at getting the Game Master and her players and their characters to the Ringworld. Unfortunately, once they get there, the roleplaying game does leave them stranded and left to adapt and survive on their own.

—oOo—
With thanks to Lee Williams for the generous and all too lengthy loan of his copy of Larry Niven’s Ringworld: Roleplaying Adventure Beneath the Great Arch. Without that loan, this review would not have been possible.