Okay. Remember back in 2017 and that weird thing when colouring books were popular once again. Not just for children, but for adults. Walk into any bookshop and you could find a colouring book on any subject or for any intellectual property you care to name, from the Harry Potter Colouring Book, the Vogue Colouring Book, and The Kew Gardens Exotic Plants Colouring Book to the Lonely Planet Ultimate Travelist Colouring Book, the Day of the Dead Colouring Book, and the Escape to Shakespeare’s World: A Colouring Book Adventure. I gave them as presents, but in all honesty, I had and have no interest in colouring books. Except that Chaosium, Inc. published a colouring book, one inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft. It being from Chaosium, Inc. and it being inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft piqued my interest enough to want to review it, but the main reason to do so was to see if I could review an actual colouring book. Well, I could, and the result was a review of Call of Cthulhu – The Coloring Book: 28 Eldritch Scenes of Lovecraftian for you to Color. However, it turns out it was not the only Lovecraft-inspired colouring book.

The latest is Color the Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft. Published by Mythos Monsters, it is the second colouring book by artist Jacob Walker, following on from the earlier The Colouring Book Out of Space: A Lovecraft inspired adult coloring book. It collects some twenty-five illustrations, in turn portraying some of the classics of Lovecraft’s works and others. This includes Cthulhu, Dagon, Nyarlathotep, The King in Yellow, and more, as well as places such as R’lyeh, the Dreamlands, the Mountains of Madness and beyond. These are all presented on single sheets which are perforated for easy removal and can be coloured in using pencils, inks, or marker pens, depending upon the colourer’s choice.

After the classic quote from The Call of Cthulhu, begins with a depiction of the most iconic of Lovecraft’s creations, Cthulhu himself. In ‘Resurrection in R’lyeh’, he pulls himself up out of the sea under the waxing crescent of the moon, amidst the tops of the non-Euclidian spires of the city below. It is not the only depiction of Cthulhu, the other, ‘The Call of Cthulhu’, a close-up of the great god. Numerous gods are illustrated, such as ‘Yig, Father of Serpents’ and ‘Ithaqua Hunting’, whilst in ‘The Crawling Chaos’ he appears in Ancient Egypt, perhaps as the Dark Pharoah, perhaps as The Crawling Chaos itself. Of the various species, an Elder Thing perches atop an obelisk, ‘The Mi-Go of Yuggoth’ appears from nowhere, and a horde of unnamed Deep Ones swarming forth as ‘Dagon Lord of the Deep’ looms… There is often a cosmically comic sensibility too, such as in ‘Alhazred’s Book, The Neccronomicon’, where the scholar is being assailed by tentacles that thrust up from the very book he is studying, or another scholar attempts to ‘Dispel the Horror’. In general, Human involvement is limited to the poor unfortunates facing the ‘Shoggoth from the Void’ or a Ghoul poses as ‘Pickman’s Model’.

The style of Jacob Walker’s artwork here is clear and open with clean lines and plenty of space. There is however, a familiarity to many of the poses, the Mythos often to be found atop something and looming forth out of the picture towards the viewer. This is the case whether it is the batrachian inhabitants with ‘The Innsmouth Look’ looking out at the viewer, the ‘Grave Eating Ghoul’ pulling itself from the graveyard, or the ‘Byakhee Sentinel’.

In terms of inspiration, Color the Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft draws from Lovecraft’s and others’ fiction to focus upon the gods, the races, the monsters, and more. Barring the aforementioned ‘Pickman’s Model’, there are few if any scenes inspired by or depicted in the fiction. This is very much a monsters of the Mythos colouring book rather than a broader Mythos colouring book. Which is as intended, but it does mean that Color the Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft is less useful as a source of inspiration for the Keeper of Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, or as a means to illustrate something in Call of Cthulhu—both advantages held by Chaosium, Inc.’s Call of Cthulhu – The Coloring Book: 28 Eldritch Scenes of Lovecraftian for you to Color. To be fair, Color the Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft was not created with either feature drawn in, but any Keeper of Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition expecting them will be disappointed. Of the two, Call of Cthulhu – The Coloring Book: 28 Eldritch Scenes of Lovecraftian for you to Color is definitely the more interesting and has more to say.

Ultimately, that leaves the point of Color the Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft—the artwork. Clean and simple, every illustration awaits the one thing we are used to seeing in other depictions of the Mythos, and that is colour. The unfussy style of artwork means that this is easy to apply, whether you are a long-time devotee of the Cthulhu Mythos or a three-year-old being introduced to non-Euclidean artwork in readiness for preschool, whether you want to work subtle changes of colour or bold swathes. Color the Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft is then simply okay. The illustrations are decent, and whilst the combination of Cosmic Horror and colouring book is still undeniably weird, it is still just okay.

What marks Tome of Terror: Transylvania—as well as the rest of The StoryMaster’s Tales series—as being different is that it a solo adventure book best played by more than one player and that each and every scene in its story contains a QR code. Scan this and click on the link and the reader will automatically be taken to the narration for the location, which provides a description, some possible actions, and some suitably ominous music. It certainly ups the atmosphere as the stalwart heroes set out to investigate tales of vampires, werewolves, ghosts, and other monsters in the lands of Transylvania and the castle itself. It consists of some fifty locations, comes with four pre-generated Investigators, a means for a player to create his own, maps—some blanks so that the adventures can be played again, a list of potential rewards, and its own neat twist on the dice on the page flipping mechanic. Tome of Terror: Transylvania is inspired by the classics of the genre such as Dracula and Frankenstein, as well as the Hammer Horror films, and so takes place sometime in the nineteenth century.

Published by StoryMaster’s Tales, Tome of Terror: Transylvania is intended to be played by between one and five players—preferably the latter—aged seven and over. Given its subject matter and the text-heavy format, with younger players, more mature players will be required to play alongside them, perhaps with an adult as StoryMaster. Thus, Tome of Terror: Transylvania can be played as a family game.
An Investigator in Tome of Terror: Transylvania has a Name, Occupation—either Author, Explorer, Priest, and Professor, and several attributes. These include Fighting Skill, Supernatural Insight, Fortune, Study Level, Reflex, Health, and LEU. Of these, LEU is a currency which can be spent during the Investigators’ enquires; Reflex is his dexterity; Study Level is his concentration and curiosity; Fortune his luck; Supernatural Sight his capacity to see and face the forces of the unnatural. Alternatively, a player can create his own. If he does so, he sets his Health at ten and Fortune at four, and then divides ten points between Fighting Skill, Supernatural Insight, Study Level, and Reflex. LEU is also randomly determined. He is also free to decide upon his Investigator’s Occupation rather than adhere to those of the given four. These four include a priest drawn to investigate the supernatural, an authoress in search of authentic background for her next novel, a professor in search of an old student—one Victor Frankenstein, and an explorer in search of the strange, the exotic, and adventure.
Mechanically, Tome of Terror: Transylvania uses a four-sided die and a six-sided die. It does not use a simple type of roll, varying depending upon the situation. Sometimes a player will be asked to roll equal to or under a given attribute on a six-sided die. Combat though, requires a player to roll a six-sided die and add his Fighting Skill, the aim to roll higher than the opposing roll made by the StoryMaster. Whomever loses the roll also loses a point of Health and if the latter is reduced to zero, the combatant is dead. Weapons add to a combatant’s Fighting Skill. When fighting against supernatural creatures, a player adds his Investigator’s Fighting Skill and Supernatural Insight to get his attack total. Group attacks, whether by the Investigators co-operating together or the Investigators and their companions, are done with everyone taking it in turns to attack. Lastly, if the Investigators want to flee a fight, then they can do so, but will lose a point of Health in the process. At other times, a four-sided die is rolled to determine a random outcome and Fortune can be gained and lost throughout the story. So simple enough, but not immediately obvious or easy to grasp, although it is clear that the author is trying to make Tome of Terror: Transylvania easy to run.
Alternatively, an eight-sided die and a ten-sided die can be used instead of the four-sided die and the six-sided die if the players want to make Tome of Terror: Transylvania more challenging. If the players lack dice, a player can instead flick through the pages with his thumb and when he stops at a page, the numbers on the dice immediately above where his thumb is on the page, those are his die results. There are seven combinations of four-sided dice and six-sided dice on each and every page, which provides numerous combinations and plenty of random results.

So how does Tome of Terror: Transylvania play? Although it can be played solo, it is really designed to be played by five participants, one of whom takes the role of the StoryMaster. Essentially then, he takes the role of the Game Master. The other players take the role of the Investigators. Then everyone picks a Tale from the four included in the book. These are ‘Horror of the Vampire’, ‘Mark of the Werewolf’, ‘Curse of Frankenstein’, and ‘Spirits of the Dead’. Each of these presents the players and their Investigators with an objective and a reward, and after this is read out, the story proper begins at the Tavern. Each of the fifty entries in Tome of Terror: Transylvania is several pages long, varying in length between two and six pages. Each has its own illustration, introduction in bold (which matches that of its narration) and then four options. For example, “Ask for something to drink”, “See what there is to eat”, “Talk to a local”, and “Search the tavern”. Each of the four entries is then greatly expanded depending upon what the Investigators are attempting to do. The players are free to choose which options they want, though no more than two options chosen per encounter. The combination of this and the multiple tales means that the Tome of Terror: Transylvania can be played more than once.
Of course, Tome of Terror: Transylvania is intended to be dramatic, and the author actually performs many of these tales as the StoryMaster. The StoryMaster in Tome of Terror: Transylvania is encouraged to make the ending of each tale as dramatic as possible, to put on a performance, and to be fair, a certain degree of performance is required, since there is a lot of text to go through and present.
Physically, Tome of Terror: Transylvania starts poorly, but gets better. The initial explanation and set-up, and the explanation of rules, could all be more clearly presented for ease of play. However, once the tale starts, the writing improves as the author is clearly enjoying himself. The artwork and the maps are all good, and like the writing, the layout of the various entries is far better than that of the first part of the book.
Mechanically, Tome of Terror: Transylvania is simple, but as simple as the rules are, they are also messy and could have been more consistent. Put that aside, they are simple enough to use and they are simple to impart to players not used to roleplaying. Where Tome of Terror: Transylvania shines is in the tales themselves and the exploration of Transylvania and the revelation of its horrors. Unlike other solo adventure books, Tome of Terror: Transylvania really deserves a participating audience and a Storymaster who can ham it up!

Released just in time for Independence Day on July 4th—thanks Asmodee (UK)—2022 Valentine’s Day Module: Love in the Age of Gongfarmers is an adventure for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game, the first released specifically for Valentine’s Day. Well, there is always 2023 if a Judge wants to run it on Valentine’s Day… Published by Goodman Games, it is a short, love and romance-themed adventure designed to be played by between four and six Player Characters of Second Level. Originally conceived and performed as ‘The Lost Heart of Valentinus in the Funnel Love” for Spawn of Cyclops Con 2021 with the winners of the ‘Love in the Age of Gongfarmers’ contest, it is mostly a puzzle adventure which will see the Player Characters encounter candy heart puzzles, feral fluffees, and other obstacles. However, given the love and romance theme of the scenario, it should be no surprise that it does touch upon the issue of consent. Although thematically appropriate, it is only a very minor part of the scenario, and the Judge is advised to consider her players’ comfort levels when portraying this in game. Another issue perhaps is that scenario has the potential to be bawdy in tone and when combined with the albeit minor issue of consent, 2022 Valentine’s Day Module: Love in the Age of Gongfarmers is probably best suited for mature players.
2022 Valentine’s Day Module: Love in the Age of Gongfarmers takes place at the Festival of Markhall, the demi-god of courtly love, inspirational messages, and mischief, the town of Terni. The scenario begins with the rather gruesome milking of some giant beavers or ‘gicastors’ for their musk before that musk is used as part of a big game well, ‘kiss-chase’. Thankfully the Player Characters only participate in the latter rather than the former and there are benefits in doing so—although only minor and only whilst they keep the romantic partners they gained during the fertility festival alive. There is potential here for the Judge to create some entertaining personalities that the Player Characters can encounter during this game, and it is perhaps a pity that the adventure does not include any. The scenario proper kicks off when the festival is interrupted. First when the now musk-less gicastors break free and go on the rampage and then wailing coming from, wait for it… the Funnel of Love.

The Funnel of Love is the main adventure site in 2022 Valentine’s Day Module: Love in the Age of Gongfarmers. Its title parodies two things. First, the amusement park ride consisting of a dark, narrow, covered passageway through which small cars or boats are mechanically conveyed, usually frequented by couples for romantic encounters. Second, the classic Character Funnel, one of the features of both the Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game and the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game—in which initially, a player is expected to roll up three or four Level Zero characters and have them play through a generally nasty, deadly adventure, which surviving will prove a challenge. Those that do survive receive enough Experience Points to advance to First Level and gain all of the advantages of their Class. Now obviously, being for Second Level Player Characters, 2022 Valentine’s Day Module: Love in the Age of Gongfarmers is not a Character Funnel, but taking place in tunnel it is linear.

The source of the wailing is a young woman crouching over the body of a young cleric and would be partner. Devoted to a rival god, the young cleric has offended Markhall and so the vengeful deity has not only ripped out the cleric’s heart, but replaced it with a now blood-soaked mechanical bear who must constantly pump the organ to keep him alive! The clues all point to the Funnel of Love and so the Player Characters need to ride the boat through the tunnel, accompanied by both of the distraught lovers—including the clue-bearing heart-pumping bear. Here the love theme swings into high action. There are encounters with love bugs, a lovelorn bard called Ophelia who really wants to be sung to (and the Judge is encouraged to have the players sing rather than their characters), a giant chocolate bunny, and more. All of these encounters are nicely detailed and include staging advice, which is very necessary because for the most part, the encounters are puzzles to be solved. They can be defeated though force of arms, but the non-combat solutions are both far more inventive and fun than merely swinging a sword at the problem. Along the way, the Player Characters will find clues as to the nature of the adventure’s ‘End of Level’ boss and how to more easily defeat him. This includes various types of Cupid’s Arrows, which along with the cherub’s wee bow form the major treasure in 2022 Valentine’s Day Module: Love in the Age of Gongfarmers.

Physically, 2022 Valentine’s Day Module: Love in the Age of Gongfarmers is as decently done as you would expect for a title for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game. It is lightly illustrated in a cheesy style and the map fine. It needs a slight edit in places, but is otherwise easy to read.

2022 Valentine’s Day Module: Love in the Age of Gongfarmers is linear in structure, which should be no surprise that the bulk of it takes place in a ‘Funnel of Love’. It also expects both the Judge and her players to buy into a theme that not everyone will necessarily be comfortable with and together with the comedic elements of story and encounters, it means that not everyone will be comfortable with playing 2022 Valentine’s Day Module: Love in the Age of Gongfarmers and it is not necessarily suitable as an addition to a campaign. However, as a fun, love-themed one-shot 2022 Valentine’s Day Module: Love in the Age of Gongfarmers is great for a single session in between other games or campaigns.

A ‘Fantasy Heartbreaker’ is a roleplaying game designed to emulate all that is good in another roleplaying game, but fixing all that is bad in said roleplaying game. Originally the term applied to the number of roleplaying games published in the wake of Dungeons & Dragons which all wanted to be better than Dungeons & Dragons. In DIE Vol. 1: Fantasy Heartbreaker takes the fantasy of Dungeons & Dragons and oh so many other fantasy roleplaying games and breaks both it and our hearts—and the hearts of his protagonists. DIE tells the story of six teenagers who back in the nineties played fantasy roleplaying games and when they were sixteen, on the night of one character’s sixteenth birthday they disappeared. When they returned, there were only five of them and one of them was missing her arm, and none of could talk about what happened. Twenty-five years later and they are adults, coping with adult life and still coping with the trauma of what happened to them in the past when they were missing. Then one of their number—the one on whose sixteenth birthday the roleplaying game session they were playing when they disappeared took place—receives a die on his birthday. A bloodied die. Together they know it can help them search for some answers, and perhaps heal some of their trauma. Yet it means going back to the game they were playing twenty-five years before, revisiting their youths, knowing the terrible truth is that it was never a game, it was real.

DIE Vol. 1: Fantasy Heartbreaker is written by Kieron Gillon, best known for Wicked + The Devine, and published by Image Comics. It is inspired by asking the question, “What happened to the children who were lost in the fantasy world of the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon when they got home?” Whilst the cartoon never got to answer that question, Gillon does with DIE Vol. 1: Fantasy Heartbreaker, which takes the basis of stories such as the Chronicles of Narnia, that of children visiting a fantasy world, and updates them via the vehicle of roleplaying games to ask what happens if a world created by children through their consensual roleplaying was one where they were ready to suffer the consequences of their immature actions, even though their characters were adults? What if they had to go back to that world not only to face the traumas of their past experiences, but also the traumas their actions inflicted upon that world? And traumatised they are… Ash because he took his sister, Angela, to the game to keep her happy and did not have to. Angela, who as a Cyberpunk—in a fantasy setting!—gained her powers through faerie gold, and who must constantly find more to buy her powers, all but making her addicted to gold, and who returned to our reality without her cyberarm or her actual arm. Isabelle, able to summon and call upon the power of the gods like some kind of reverse demonologist, always with a price to pay. Matthew, already heartbroken over the loss of his mother, uses the tragedy to become a mighty Grief-Knight, but in reliving memories over and over again, is literally grief-stricken, to the point where it takes Ash as the Dictator to force him to use them. And even as they return to the fantasy world of their creation to try and heal the trauma of the past, they have something to lose—the lives they have led, and the relationships created in years since their return from their original visit. Which would exacerbate the ordeals they have already suffered…

DIE Vol. 1: Fantasy Heartbreaker is horror-fantasy rather than fantasy. It approaches the latter genre and roleplaying from a different angle, subverting both as well as pulling the rug out from under that sense of nostalgia that so many of us have for the roleplaying games and the time spent roleplaying in their youth. Just as the story forces the protagonists to revisit their past and the consequences of their actions, it is asking the reader to do that same, to think about back to their youth. Yet this does not wholly work unless the reader really is a roleplayer, since the language and the nostalgia of DIE Vol. 1: Fantasy Heartbreaker is very much that of roleplaying and even though the language and ideas behind roleplaying have become vastly more prevalent in the last decade, they are not necessarily familiar to every reader—and certainly not necessarily as familiar as Kieron Gillon is with them. This comes through in the dice assigned to protagonists and their roles in the world, explored in more detail in the essays reprinted at the end of DIE Vol. 1: Fantasy Heartbreaker, of the subtle shift in gender identity of the protagonist (something that roleplaying has always possessed scope for), and of subverting the tropes of the genre. The essays are fascinating reads, exploring in turn the author’s own history with roleplaying and how that influences the story of DIE Vol. 1: Fantasy Heartbreaker, how roleplaying design and theory influences the story, and lastly, the design of a roleplaying game based around the story. These are fascinating companion pieces to the story itself and once it is released to the forthcoming roleplaying game from Rowan, Rook, and Decard.

Of couse, DIE Vol. 1: Fantasy Heartbreaker is a comic book and Stephanie Hans’ artwork is simply gorgeous, switching from the dark tones of both the past and the now to the bright, sunlight lands of the fantasy and the often-fiery nature of combat. So much of the sense of loss and trauma and the emotion of the characters is conveyed through her artwork, whilst at the same time depicting the magic and the wonder of the world that the players and their characters in DIE Vol. 1: Fantasy Heartbreaker create. In addition, DIE Vol. 1: Fantasy Heartbreaker includes her alternate issue covers and many of the character designs. Without her artwork, the story is underwritten in places and the speed at which it is told does undermine the intended emotional impact.

DIE Vol. 1: Fantasy Heartbreaker is not a comic book that will be readily accessible to anyone not steeped in roleplaying or roleplaying lore. Yet there is a powerful sense of anguish and regret that any reader will grasp in its story, let alone the sense of nostalgia misplaced. Where they intersect with roleplaying and roleplaying culture is where the story comes alive and even were there not a forthcoming roleplaying book, DIE Vol. 1: Fantasy Heartbreaker is a story that will be enjoyed and appreciated by many in the roleplaying hobby.

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

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

—oOo—
Name: Cat’s CradlePublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Aaron Sinner, Todd Walden, and Christopher Olson

Setting: Jazz Age BostonProduct: Scenario
What You Get: Fifty-four page, 31.62 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Suffer the little children’s wrathPlot Hook: Nightmares linger in the wake of your descent into the Corbitt house. 
Plot Support: Staging advice and two Keeper aids, twenty-four handouts, four new spells or spell variants, three NPCs, and one Mythos creature.Production Values: Decent.
Pros# Sequel to The Haunting# Deep investigative dive into the backstory to The Haunting
# Advice on making the horror personal# Advice for the Keeper to run Cat’s Cradle with other sequels to The Haunting.# Focused investigative sequel# Creepy, creepy children
Cons# Needs an edit# Scenario does involve children# Better aids for the Keeper than handouts for the players?# Photographic anachronisms?
# Good clue links to locations, but not from locations# Better sequel than standalone scenario

Conclusion# Solid sequel to a classic scenario, The Haunting, which both explores the backstory to the scenario and personalises the consequences of the Investigators’ actions in the Corbitt house.# Creepy, creepy children should leave the Investigators with paedophobia

For all that the major role they play in so many scenarios and campaigns for Call of Cthulhu and other roleplaying games of Lovecraftian investigative horror, the cult is too often, never quite their focus. Whether it is the Hermetic Order of the Silver Twilight from Shadows of Yog-Sothoth, Brotherhood of the Black Pharaoh and Cult of the Bloody Tongue from Masks of Nyarlathotep, or the Brotherhood of the Beast from Day of the Beast (Fungi from Yuggoth), the cult itself seems to get lost in the Mythos itself and its various so-called ‘gods’ and entities and ‘alien’ species. Where such ‘gods’ and entities and ‘alien’ species and their motives lie beyond mankind’s grasp and can never be truly understood, once its secrets are revealed, what the cult represents is an enemy that stalwart Investigators into the Mythos can understand and whose motives can be grasped. For in serving the Mythos and its forces a cult is likely betraying mankind and for whatever reason that may be, it reveals a true, all too human face of evil. In the return, the cult and its members are likely to understand the Investigators in ways that the things they serve do not, and so have ways and means of retaliating against the Investigators. Which makes for dangerous villains—and all the more so because of their lack of humanity.

Cults of Cthulhu is a supplement which at last explores the role of cults in Call of Cthulhu. Published by Chaosium, Inc., the supplement for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition explores a particular type of cult, the signature cult in both Call of Cthulhu and H.P. Lovecraft’s own fiction. That is the cult of Cthulhu, the cult dedicated to “That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die.”, the dread alien being which lies dreaming, trapped beneath the Pacific ocean in the strange city of R’lyeh, waiting for that time when the stars come right and he can be released to have dominion over the Earth once again. In doing so, it draws extensively upon H.P. Lovecraft’s seminal story, The Call of Cthulhu, as well as The Shadow Over Innsmouth, and The Whisperer in the Darkness, as well as delving back into the history of Call of Cthulhu, most notably Shadows of Yog-Sothoth and Masks of Nyarlathotep. From this, the authors develop a history of the Cthulhu cult, detail five individual cults, provide a means for the Keeper to create her own Cthulhu cults,* describe various new spells, monsters, and artefacts, and give three scenarios. The resulting volume is not just for use with Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, but also with Pulp Cthulhu: Two-fisted Action and Adventure Against the Mythos, and it also carries a ‘For Mature Readers’ advisory because, well, cultists are evil, and do evil things. Cults of Cthulhu is anything other than explicit when it comes presenting the evil of its cultists, but it does not shy from doing so either.

*In the game.

Cults of Cthulhu opens with a discussion of the ‘History of the Cthulhu Cult’. Initially, this is presented as the collected writings of the journalist, Mildred Schwartz, who comes into possession of Professor George Angell’s infamous box containing his papers concerning the Cthulhu cult and continues both his research and that of Francis Thurston. This begins in prehistory, but quickly comes up to date to detail the events surrounding the awakening of Cthulhu in 1925 (as told in Lovecraft’s The Call of Cthulhu) and beyond. Besides describing the beliefs of the Cthulhu cult, the history presents a timeline of Cthulhu worship not year by year, but cult by cult, beginning with the Cult of Sumer in 2000 BC and going round the world from civilisation to civilisation. This includes the now lost city of Iram, as well as other familiar cults such as the Louisiana Swamp Cult and the Esoteric Order of Dagon, also drawn from Lovecraft’s fiction. Mildred Schwartz’s papers similarly discovered in the twenty-first century and continued by David Eberhart, who identifies and describes numerous post-war modern cults, such as the Church of Perfect Science. Cults are also identified as being behind events like the Paradise Massacre and the Oregon standoff. With the modern cults, and in some cases the events associated with them, it is easy to identify the parallels that the authors are drawing with certain organisations and cults.

Five of the cults identified in the ‘History of the Cthulhu Cult’ are greatly expanded upon—Elevated Order of Morpheus, the Louisiana Swamp Cult, the Society of the Angelic Ones, the Esoteric Order of Dagon, and the Church of Perfect Science. Together, these cover the Purple Age of Cthulhu by Gaslight, the Jazz Age of Call of Cthulhu, and the modern age too, with two of them, the Louisiana Swamp Cult, the Society of the Angelic Ones and the Esoteric Order of Dagon being drawn from Lovecraft’s fiction. These all come with extensive backgrounds, descriptions of their goals, structures, financing, and means of recruitment, along with full stats for their leading members, and suggestions as to where and when else the Keeper can shift the cult. Also included is a pair of scenario ideas for each cult, which along with the recruitment means provided further means of the Investigators getting involved, perhaps even getting recruited themselves. The first, Elevated Order of Morpheus, is a classic Victorian Age cult modelled on Freemasonry, whilst the second, the Society of the Angelic Ones, has all the feel of a Los Angeles evangelical church between the wars. Perhaps the one that players of Call of Cthulhu will have the most fun with is the Church of Perfect Science, mostly because it most readily parallels a modern religious organisation begun by a Science Fiction writer. The Louisiana Swamp Cult and the Esoteric Order of Dagon are ones that the Keeper and players have the most familiarity with from Lovecraft’s fiction, and the authors do as good a job of extrapolating from the fiction as they do developing the entirely new cults. Whether new or old, all five cults are well written and thus easy to use.

The five cults are not the only ones detailed in Cults of Cthulhu. Three others are developed as fully worked examples of ‘Creating a Cthulhu’. This guides the Keeper through the step-by-step process of creating an organisation devoted to Cthulhu, whether for a single scenario or for a campaign. At every stage, from the basic concept behind the cult and creating a leader to developing the enemies of the cult, the Keeper is constantly prompted with questions and given three examples. There are tables too, which the Keeper can roll on or pick from, but the end result is that the Keeper three fully detailed and worked out cults, even down to the filled in examples of the Cult Worksheet included in the supplement. Although the questions all relate to the Cthulhu cult, there is nothing to stop the Keeper going through the same process and asking the same questions, but substituting the ‘gods’ and entities and ‘alien’ species of her choice to create the desired cult.

The selection of ‘Cultists, Monsters, & Artifacts’ further supports the cult creation process. This includes numerous examples of Cthulhu’s Blessings, such as Throat tentacles or Give pain, which are as creepy as you would expect. Notable amongst the various cultists given here are the Deathless Masters. Cults of Cthulhu presents its subject matters as primarily being sperate and different. They all have their worship of Cthulhu in common, but how they worship him and to what end, differs. This need not be the case, the authors leaving it up to the Keeper to decide if she wants to keep them apart or if she wants to connect them up in a greater, conspiracy. One way of doing that is through Deathless Masters or Undying Ones, potentially the ultimate villains when it comes to Cthulhu cults, their being able to move from one cult to another and so have a greater idea—if anyone does—of what the various cults are doing and what Cthulhu himself, might want. Full guidelines are given for the Keeper to create her own, but included are stats for Carl Standford, the immortal sorcerer who first appeared in Shadows of Yog-Sothoth.

The three new cults in Cults of Cthulhu are further supported by a single scenario each. ‘Loki’s Gift’ is set in Victorian London in 1896 and has the Investigators as mostly Middle Class or Upper-Class characters asked to look into the apparent suicide of a young composer. The second scenario is ‘Angel’s Thirst’ and is set in Los Angeles in 1922 with the Investigators asked by a young woman to search for her missing father whom she thinks is still alive after seeing him in a dream. Unfortunately, he has been caught up in the activities of the Society of the Angelic Ones. The scenario has a slightly woozy and weird feel to it, but is infused with sense of noir. Lastly, ‘God’s Dream’ is set in modern-day Chicago and sees the Investigators being pulled to look into the strange events concerning a detective friend who suddenly finds himself in Antarctica. It all ties back to strange land grab in metropolitan Chicago. There is a common, physical thread which connects all three of the scenarios and they can be run as a loose trilogy or as standalone affairs. All are good strong horror scenarios which deal with mature themes, and all are well organised.

Rounding out the supplement is a pair of appendices. One provides an overview of the various tomes which might have content pertaining to Cthulhu and his worship, whilst the other is decent little bibliography which should provide entertaining further reading and viewing.
Physically, Cults of Cthulhu is up to the expected standard that Chaosium, Inc. currently sets for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition. The book is well written, the illustrations are excellent, and the cartography good.
The first reaction to Cults of Cthulhu is to wonder why it is has taken forty years for Call of Cthulhu to receive a book like this? The importance of the role of the cult and seminal nature of Cthulhu would suggest that such a book—other either aspect—would be very useful, and indeed, Cults of Cthulhu, very much proves the point in providing a much needed exploration of the nature of both together. Ultimately, Cults of Cthulhu takes the Keeper back to Lovecraft’s The Call of Cthulhu to look at some of the roleplaying game’s fundamentals and inspirations with fresh eyes. The result is an excellent examination of both cults and Cthulhu, supporting the Keeper with advice and the means to create her own cults and cultists, as well as backing everything up with examples and scenarios.

The Anyworld Tabletop Roleplaying System is a generic system designed to handle any genre and any setting using quick, dicepool mechanics and handfuls of six-sided dice. Published by Netherborn following a successful Kickstarter campaign, the complete rules to play the game all the way up to mass battle rules and miniature skirmish rules, along with rules for generating unique magical items and creatures and enemies. The core rules also come with six introductory adventures, one each for the zombie apocalypse, post-apocalypse, superhero, fantasy, space opera, and modern horror genres, as well as an omniversal setting that allow for Player Characters to visit any world. All packed into a one-hundred-and-eighty-page book. It is designed as a toolkit and as written, to support both player-driven and Game Master-driven play.

The Anyworld Tabletop Roleplaying System very quickly gets down to explaining its rules. A Player Character has six attributes—Strength, Toughness, Agility, Precision, Mind, and Spirit—which are rated between one and ten. If a player wants his character to undertake an action, he rolls a number of six-sided dice equal to the attribute and each result of a four, five, or six is counted as a Success. Results of six explode and can be rolled again to possibly generate yet more Successes and even more sixes and more exploding dice… One of the dice is counted as the Fate die and is a different colour. If the result on the Fate die is a one, the outcome of the action is accompanied by a Setback, whilst if it is a six, it is a Critical Success. It is possible to succeed and still suffer a Setback or fail and roll a Critical result. A Critical Failure occurs when a Setback is rolled, and the result is failed. Advantage reduces the target number to be counted as a Success, whilst Disadvantage increases the target number. A player can also spend Edge to negate Disadvantage or gain Advantage, and also can expend Skill points to add a die to a roll. The number of Successes required for an action vary from a Target Number of one or Easy up to Epic or seven or more, with two being Routine and three being Challenging.

Combat—which Anyworld Tabletop Roleplaying System slides into without any demarcation—uses the same mechanics. The Target Number to hit an opponent is equal to his Evasion score, derived from his Agility attribute, a Player Character has a move action and an attack action per round, and initiative is determined with Agility tests. In Close Combat a defender can attempt a single Dodge and a single Counterattack. Strength or Precision is rolled depending upon the type of attack. Damage is a combination of the weapon’s base damage plus the extra Successes rolled beyond the Target Number. Armour reduces the Damage, and the remaining Damage value becomes a Target Number against which the defender’s player rolls his Toughness attribute. If successful, the defender shrugs off the damage, but if not, the defender’s player rolls three six-sided dice and deducts the Damage value from the result which is compared to the Damage Table. A critical hit reduces the roll of three six-sided dice to two six-sided dice, the results ranging from staggered or stunned all the way down to wounded or wounded. Wounds reduce a character’s Health Level (of which he has five) and injuries necessitate a roll on the Injury table for even greater effects. Rules also allow for stun damage, unarmed combat, two-weapon fighting, and more.

Madness is gained by failing Spirit checks following encounters with the horrific or the traumatic, including being in combat. Fail means gaining points of Madness and if a subsequent Spirit is failed against the points of Madness, the Player Character gains a mental trauma, rolled on the Trauma Table. Unless the Trauma is permanent, it can be overcome should the Player Character’s points of Madness are reduced to normal.

Character creation in Anyworld Tabletop Roleplaying System consists of choosing an array of values—Balanced, Mixed, or Specialist—to assign to attributes, and then selecting an Archetype. Each of the Archetypes—Gifted, Flexible, or Skilled—grants Experience Points to spend on Traits and Ability and Ability Upgrades, Gear Points (or GP) to spend on equipment, and both Skill and Edge points. A Player Character also has an ‘Essence’ which describes the core of the character, such as ‘Cybernetic Enforcer’ or ‘Wondering Swordsman’ (sic). Once per session, this can be used to gain Advantage on a check and is also used by the Game Master to award Experience Points. Similarly, a Player Character has a Flaw such as ‘Mean’ or ‘Outcast’, which can be triggered to add Disadvantage to a check once per session. This gains the Player Character an Experience Point.

Henry Brinded
Essence: Stalwart, But Nervous Classics Scholar
Flaw: Deafness
Archetype: Skilled
Strength 2 Toughness 3 Agility 3 Precision 3 Mind 5 Spirit 5
Traits: Expertise (Classics), Leadership, Skilled
Skill: 4
Edge: 3
Gear Points: 20

Traits are divided into Mental, Social, Speed, Brawn, Combat, Shooting, and Unique categories, and further divided into basic, advanced, and special traits in each category. For example, Insight is a basic Social Trait which grants a Player Character Advantage when his player rolls a Mind check to detect lies or read body language, whilst an Advanced Shooting Trait like Killshot grant all aimed attacks the Deadly quality which means that the attack deals a critical hit if the Fate die rolls a Success. Abilities push the Anyworld Tabletop Roleplaying System into the realms of the fantastic, with powers such as Bolt, Flight, Might, Morph, Phasing, and more, all the way up to Immortality and Impervious. In addition, each of the Abilities upgraded not once, but three times. Gear is purchased using Gear Points or ‘GP’. There is an emphasis in the Anyworld Tabletop Roleplaying System on arms and armour, and especially the qualities that either can have to give the wielder an advantage or extra bonus, all the way up to being sentient. There are a few limitations too, but not as many qualities. In general, there is the means here to create some individual weapons and armour, and so help make each Player Character different.
For example, Henry Brinded and his team have located a secret cult temple in Rome. As a result of the ensuing fight with the cultists, the temple is about to collapse, but Brinded knows he needs to study the invocation on the wall, an invocation to the abominable god the cultists worship. His player will be rolling five dice for his Mind attribute. The Game Master tells him that he needs to roll four Successes because the task is formidable due to the poor condition of the invocation. She also points out that the task is being done by torchlight and Brinded is in a hurry, so applies Disadvantage not once, but twice! So now Brinded’s player need to roll not four, five, or six to gain a Success, but a six only. However, Brinded has the Expertise Trait of Classics, so gains Advantage on translating the Latin of the invocation, reducing the number needed for a Success from six to five. His player spends a point of Edge to reduce it even further, back to four, five, and six, and then, because Brinded has the Skilled trait, adds two Skill dice to the roll instead of one. So now Brinded’s player is rolling seven dice and attempting to roll four, five, and six. He rolls two, three, five, five, five, and six, plus six on the Fate die. That is five Success, plus the critical result on the Fate die, which means that Brinded not only succeeds, but spots the intentional error in the invocation. Which means he will be better able to reverse the invocation and at the right time, cast it to dismiss the cult’s terrible mistress…For the Game Master there is advice on handling challenges and NPCs, and preparing a game. This includes both one-shot and campaign games, and it shows how the Game Master can create random adventures or collaborate with her players to create a campaign setting. The advice is decent and supported with several introductory adventures, each one in a different genre and each one suitable for a one-shot or even a convention game. Each comes with a background, some points of interest, and in some cases one or more alternate ways of play It begins with ‘Diner-Bite’ in which the Player Characters stop at a diner whilst the USA is caught in the middle of chaos. This arrives at the diner in the form of on-the-run, undercover crooks, with a dead policeman in the bus who will soon turn into a zombie as will the poor little boy who looks sick, but whose family is hiding the cause of his sickness. The optional way to play is have one group take the roles of the crooks and another be the diner patrons. Typically, each of these six introductory adventures is two or three or so pages in length, presenting a decent outline and possibly a campaign starter. ‘Rise from Ruin’ is a post-apocalypse setting much like the Mad Max films, whilst ‘Fallen Heroes’ is a stand-up-knockdown confrontation with a supervillain who has captured the city’s premier superhero team. Of course, the Player Characters can come to their rescue or even play villains who want to take kill the superheroes themselves, or there could be one group of players roleplaying the supervillains whilst the other plays the superheroes. ‘Ghosts in the Flesh’ is a bloody horror romp a la Hammer Horror, whilst ‘The Thing in the Woods’ is a straightforward monster hunt in a fantasy setting. ‘Red Colossus’, the last scenario in the Anyworld Tabletop Roleplaying System is the Space Opera genre and the longest in the book. After being attacked by pirates, the Player Characters and their space freighter take refuge at the nearest mining base only to find it also threatened by the pirates and terrible outbreaks of radiation sickness.

Penultimately, the Anyworld Tabletop Roleplaying System includes a description of ‘The Outer Realm’, an in between network of routes and places between multiple worlds. Certain persons, known as Travellers, can detect the routes between places, whilst others, Shapers, can modify the reality around them. There is the chance that the Player Characters can become Travellers or Shapers, the latter gaining abilities such as teleport or telekinesis. The downside to the latter is that can become a Reaver, lusting for ever greater power and ability. Several strange locations are also detailed, and there is overall a weirdness and an unreality to the whole of this in-between place. Rounding out the volume is a bestiary and a set of ready-to-play characters, for use as examples, Player Characters, or NPCs.

Physically, the Anyworld Tabletop Roleplaying System is decently presented and illustrated, all in black and white. However, its organisation does hamper ready play even as the system is relatively straightforward and easy to understand. There is no index or even a glossary, and for actual ease of play, many of the roleplaying game’s tables could have been reprinted at the rear of the book instead of multiple blank character sheets. Similarly, an example of character creation, as well of actual play and the rules would all have been useful. In fact, all of these are inexcusable omissions by any standard, let alone those of modern roleplaying book design.

Overall, the Anyworld Tabletop Roleplaying System, issues with organisation aside, is straightforward and easy to run and play. The result is that Anyworld Tabletop Roleplaying System provides cinematic and pulp action style roleplaying across a variety of genres without getting too complex and by keeping play fairly fast with handfuls of six-sided dice.

For fifteen years the Latterdyne estate has stood empty ever since the family, including two children, vanished without a trace. Behind its walls, the house has stood shuttered up against the elements whilst the surrounding grounds have been left unattended, long since overgrown and abandoned to grow wild, including extensive woods. To the locals, the estate and its mystery, the estate has become a looming presence down the lane as well as the source of much speculation. They say that the family suffered a great accident and subsequently vanished during a storm, but then no one really knows for certain, and so when the fate of the Latterdynes is discussed it is done in whispered speculation and rumour. Both are fuelled by stories of hikers and other travellers going missing on the estate. Some dismiss this as mere rumour or even embellishment to already idle speculation, but others will swear blind that such tales are true. True or not, the locals avoid the estate, though they all know of the broken wall which can be clambered over to gain easy access to the grounds. Now word of both ramblers having gone missing on the estate and the missing Latterdynes has reached the Society for Psychical Research, which has duly despatched a team to investigate the grounds of the Latterdyne estate.

This is the set-up for Sticks and Stones: A Story of Betrayal and Sorrow for the Locus Horror Tabletop Roleplaying Game. Published by CobblePath Games, this is the first scenario for Locus: A roleplaying game of personal horror, a horror roleplaying game in which the Player Characters bring as much horror to a location as they will encounter there. It is a roleplaying game about Broken Places, locations where the line between reality and the horror and emotional truth of a story has thinned to the point that they have become damaged or broken and transformed into something else. Each is or has a Genius Locus, that in becoming damaged or broken, is transformed into a Malus Locus, a bad place which feeds off negative energies and emotions. The Malus Locus draws in outsiders and residents alike, using reminders of their old wounds and bad memories to inflict fear, terror, and pain. It manifests Monsters which remind the victims trapped inside the Malus Locus of their dark secrets and feelings of guilt, and if the monster can kill them, they leave behind Echoes of their guilt that the Monster can feed off for years. Echoes are likely to be interpreted as ghosts, and when the Player Characters enter a Malus Locus, it may already be inhabited by Echoes.

A Malus Locus consists of a single location and is actually composed of layers. The location can be large or small, and might be a single house, a neighbourhood or housing block, an oil rig or space station, or even a whole town. The layers are Layers of Reality, each layer a reflection of the one above, the same but different, darker, weirder, scarier, and worse… The deeper the Player Characters venture into the Malus Locus, the further away from reality they move, the closer to the heart of the Malus Locus they get, the greater the manifestations and signs of the unreal and the Player Characters’ Haunts—or guilty secrets—appear, and the more openly the Monster will move against them. Each Layer is separate, but bleeds into the one above and the one below, though they become more and more distinct as the Player Character descends through them.

Sticks and Stones: A Story of Betrayal and Sorrow for the Locus Horror Tabletop Roleplaying Game presents one such Malus Locus, an area of woodland on the Latterdyne estate. Here the Society for Psychical Research investigators will find themselves caught between three locations in Latterdyne Dell, each connected by ever changing paths through the woods. As they explore these locations and are pulled down through the layers of the Malus Locus, the weather and the ground underfoot both worsen, the wind grows and carries strange voices, and something begins to stalk them… However, that something is not the only monster that the Player Characters will face in Sticks and Stones, as they bring their own monsters with them. Each of these four monsters is associated with the acts of betrayal committed by each of the pre-generated Player Characters, these acts and their associated monsters accentuating the horror in Sticks and Stones, making the horror all the more personal even as they confront the personification of the Malus Locus in the dell on the Latterdyne estate.

Although Sticks and Stones is intended to be played using pre-generated investigators, and to that end comes with its own quartet of partially pre-generated Player Characters. The four—the Custodian, the Dilettante, the Fabricator, and the Sleuth all have their own goals, base attributes, haunts, virtues, and more, including base backstories, virtues, and items. Each player is then free to assign further attribute points and answer some questions in order to customise the character to his liking. Notes are included should a player want to create a character of his own from scratch, but ideally, Sticks and Stones should be run and played using the given quartet.

As well as a starting script and a handout or two, Sticks and Stones comes with details of and clues for its primary mysteries—the fate of the Latterdynes and what is exactly going on in the Latterdyne Dell—and suggestions as to how the events of the scenario might play out… lastly, the scenario also includes the cards for its characters, items, and monsters. They are perhaps somewhat fuzzy and it would probably better for the Game Master to download and print them out. If there is perhaps an issue with the scenario, it is that the set-up of the scenario could have been stronger and easier to present to the players and their characters—essentially how they get involved. It is fine once they reach the Latterdyne estate, but the Game master will need to put something together herself.

Physically, Sticks and Stones is grey and dreary. That though is entirely keeping with the tone of the scenario and the terribly British weather that the Player Character will face as they delve deeper and deeper into the mysteries of what happened on the Latterdyne estate. Barring the cards for its characters, items, and monsters, Sticks and Stones is nicely illustrated with photographs that hint at the ombrophobic and the Xylophobic, imparting a sense of the unease which will grow and grow over the course of the scenario.

Sticks and Stones: A Story of Betrayal and Sorrow for the Locus Horror Tabletop Roleplaying Game contains everything necessary for the Player Characters to bring their own horrors to the woods and get lost in the horrors already there…

Paperback: A Novel Deckbuilding Game is a clash of the old and the new. It combines concept of classic word games like Scrabble with the very modern playstyle of the deckbuilding mechanic from games like Dominion and Star Realms. In Paperback, each player is novelist, desperately writing one novel after novel, jumping from one genre to another with titles such as The Chinatown Connection, Dead Planet, and The Angel of Death, all to satisfy the voracious demands of their editors. Pump out enough of this pulp fiction and perhaps the novelist will get a bestseller and make a mint! That though is the extent of the theme in Paperback, the game being more mechanical than thematic, since what each player will be doing is spelling out words using Letter cards and generating a score which can be used to buy both more Letter cards and Fame cards, which will be used to spell out more valuable words and so on and so on until the end of the game when the player with the most Fame points from his Fame cards wins the game. Paperback is published by Fowers Games, best known for the heist themed Burgle Bros. and Burgle Bros 2: The Casino Capers. It is designed to be played by two to five players, aged ten and up, and has a suggested playing time of forty-five minutes.

Each player begins play with a deck of ten cards—five Wild cards and the letters ‘T’, ‘R’, ‘S’, ‘L’, and ‘N’. On his turn a player will five cards from his deck and attempt to spell a word using both the cards drawn, whether letter cards or Wild cards and the current Common card, which anyone can use, typically a vowel. If it is a viable word—it cannot be a name, place, or proper noun—then it generates a score. Whilst Wild cards can substitute for any letter and so help spell a word, they do add to the Score value of the word. The value of this score be used to either purchase a new letter or letter combination card (such as ‘ST’ or ‘ER’) or a Fame card. Letters purchased will all generate a greater score than the base cards in a player’s deck, but they often have special abilities. For example, the letter ‘M’ costs seven cents to purchase and generates a score of two, but if the word is correctly spelled, it doubles the total score value of the word. It also has to be placed in the trash after use. The ‘V’ costs seven cents to purchase and generates a score of four, but if the word is correctly spelled, it allows a player to draw an extra card on his next and potentially spell out a bigger word. Some letters are Attack cards, which means that their special ability affects other players. For example, the ‘H’ letter costs six cents to purchase, and generates a score of four, but if the word is correctly spelled, its attack is that the other player cannot purchase anything with a value of greater than eight cents. The ‘Q’ letter costs eight cents to purchase and generates a score of five, but if the word is correctly spelled, its attack restricts another player to just using the ability on the one his next turn.

Alternatively, a player can purchase a Fame card, each of which has a cost and depicts the cover of a fairly pulpy book from various genres. For example, The Angel of Death is a pulp novel, whilst Dead Planet is Science fiction. These generate four, seven, ten, or fifteen fame points, so generating enough score from the correctly spelled words is the aim of the game. When added to a player’s deck, the fame cards work like Wild cards in that they can be used to substitute for any letter, but do not add to a player’s score.

Game play continues until either of two conditions are met. One is to exhaust two stacks of the fame cards, each being organised by price and adjusted according to the number of players. The other is when the last Common letter card is taken. Throughout play, the current Common letter card can be used by all of the players to help them spell their words, but if a player spells a word of sufficient length, he can add the current Common letter card to his deck. This will bring in a new Common letter card into play and if a player wants to add it to his deck, then he needs to spell an even longer word. There are only four Common letter cards available throughout the game and the length of word required to add them to a player’s decks goes from seven to eight to nine, and then ten letters long. Once the end of the game is reached, each player adds up his Fame points from both the Wild cards and the fame cards in his deck, and the player with highest total wins the game.

The play of Paperback is about increasing word length. Increase the length of the words that he can spell, and player has a greater Score with which to buy better or more letter cards and fame cards, and potentially more abilities to bring into play. It entirely possible that a player can spell a word and bring two, three, four, or more abilities into play. Balanced against keeping an eye out for letter cards with special abilities, a player needs to keep an eye on the letter cards available and what he thinks he can spell with them. He also needs to bear in mind that the higher the score a word will generate, the more difficult it will be to successfully spell a word with it is. He will also want to maintain a good mix of consonants and vowels too, along with the two-letter combinations on some letter cards. Favour one letter type over the other and a player will have difficulty finding words that he can spell. It is also possible to combine special abilities for enhanced effects, but these are not as common as in other deck-building games.

In comparison to other deckbuilding games, Paperback is not necessarily all about trying a way to find a way to get rid of the initial cards in a player’s deck. This is because there are special abilities which work with the Wild cards in a player’s deck and all of the cards in a player’s deck, whether Wild cards or starting letter cards, are useful throughout the game. Nor is Paperback as adversarial as other deckbuilding games. There are elements of it with the attack cards, but these impede player for a turn rather than directly attacking him. Rather it is competitive, not combative.

Beyond the base game, Paperback adds various options and extra rules. These include adding a reward if a player helps another who is stuck on what word he can spell out using his current hand, adding awards and themes as bonuses to towards a player’s final score, playing in simultaneous mode, and even a co-operative mode played against the game itself. These all change the game in various ways, but do not stray too far from the core mechanics of spelling words, purchasing further letters and Fame cards, and so on.

As clever a combination as Paperback is, it does suffer from the problems of both game types. As a word game, players with greater word knowledge and vocabularies will be at an advantage and often, players with lesser word knowledge and vocabularies will sometimes lead to slower play as they try and work out what they can spell. The deckbuilding means that it can be more adversarial and fiddlier with a lot of cards than a word game like Scrabble. Yet, Paperback does not rely on needing to know lots of short, high-scoring words or needing to have to put them on a board building from what is already there, and as deckbuilding games, the focus is on the letters rather than the special abilities per se. However, the use of the special abilities on the cards do go towards countering the spelling, so that a player who is more used to word games such as Scrabble can still play against players more used to deckbuilding games.

Physically, Paperback is well produced and well designed. The cards are colour-coded according to cost making them easy to tell them apart, the artwork on the Fame cards—each is done as a pulp novel—is excellent, and the cards are all easy to ready. The rulebook is also decently done. Lastly, it all fits into a neat little box which comes with dividers so that everything is neatly organised and easy to find.

Paperback: A Novel Deckbuilding Game is a novel clash of two game types that surprisingly, work well together and can be used to introduce the fan of one type to the other. So, a fan of word games can be introduced to a deckbuilding game (that fan of word games also likely to be used to family games too), and the fan of deckbuilding games to word games. As a word game Paperback forces a player to strategise beyond the spelling to gain extra abilities through latter cards’ special abilities and as a deckbuilding game, it forces a player to think about what he can do—rather spell—right now rather focus on the strategy. Paperback: A Novel Deckbuilding Game is a witty, wordy game, that as hybrid deserves a place on your shelf between the traditional and the modern game designs.

Dyson’s Book of Swords is exactly that, a book of swords from a writer best known for his cartography, especially his fantasy cartography. However, over the course of September and October 2021, he wrote and illustrated a series of entries on his blog under the labels ‘#Swordtember’ and ‘#Choptober’, each one describing and depicting a blade which could be added to the fantasy roleplaying game of your choice. Now following a successful Kickstarter campaign, all fifty entries in the series have been collated into the one volume and published as Dyson’s Book of Swords by Squarehex, better known as the publisher of The Black Hack. This little volume comes in an odd size—six inches square—and each sword is given a two-page spread consisting of a full-page illustration opposite its description. None of the descriptions run to more than two paragraphs each and the descriptions concentrate on telling the reader what the sword looks like, its history, and what its capabilities are. The numbers amount to no more than each blade’s to hit bonus, damage bonus, and against what, although some cases a special ability will also be referenced. In the main though, the language is not so much systems neutral as systems adjacent, meaning that any one of the fifty swords in Dyson’s Book of Swords will work with the fantasy roleplaying game of your choice.

Dyson’s Book of Swords is not arranged in alphabetical or indeed, nay kind of order, but flip through its pages and you find Spite, a gladius-style currently wielded by the Elven mercenary, Rhador. It is a Short Sword +1 which becomes a flaming blade upon command and when it is aflame is +2 versus trolls, pegasi, hippogriffs, and rocs, and +3 versus treants and the undead. It casts light and ignite things as a torch. Rhador wields this weapon until he regains his family blade from his nemesis. Flip to another and the illustration and description is of the Last Blade of the Lich Shogunate, the last ‘perfect’ blade to be forged by the master swordsmith of the final Shogun. It has no name of its own, but is a +2 sword which also grants a bonus on saving throws versus all effects, spells, and abilities of the dead. Of the two, Spite is the more difficult blade to include, in part because it is wielded by a particular NPC and in part because it has such a wide range of enemies which it can affect. However, it raises the questions, “Where did Spite come from?”, “Who is Rhador?”, “Who is his nemesis and how he did come into possession of Rhador’s family blade?”, and ‘What are the abilities of Rhador’s family blade?” All these point to story possibilities, as does the Last Blade of the Lich Shogunate, but they are perhaps a bit more straightforward. These include “What was the Lich Shogunate?”, “Who wielded the Last Blade of the Lich Shogunate?”, “Who was the Last Blade of the Lich Shogunate made for?”, and “Who wields it now and where did she find?”

Dyson’s Book of Swords harks to the noughties and the slew of books for the d20 System with its supplements dedicated to just rings, just spells, just monsters, just swords, and so on. Fortunately, with the advent of Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, or even with the Old School Renaissance, there has not been the avalanche of books and supplements dedicated to singular aspects of Dungeons & Dragons-style gaming, and so Dyson’s Book of Swords does not fall into that. Fundamentally, Dyson’s Book of Swords just keeps everything simple—illustration, description, and minimal stats. This means that its contents are compatible with just about every Old School Renaissance roleplaying game and retroclone, including Old School Essentials, Mörk Borg, Whitehack, and more. They would also work with 13th Age and the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game, and even Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition!

Physically, Dyson’s Book of Swords is clear, simple, and easy to read. It is a little book of weapons that the players will want their characters to wield, the Game Master to arm her NPCs with and inspire or scare her players and their characters, and lastly, Dyson’s Book of Swords is a little book of inspiration.

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

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

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Name: Pickman’s Action FigurePublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Todd Miller

Setting: Modern Upstate New YorkProduct: Scenario
What You Get: Thirty-Two page, 3.57 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: When his last action models failed, what else does an action model designer design instead?Plot Hook: Your brother disappeared years ago, so when you get a phone call from him in the night...
Plot Support: Staging advice, four pre-generated Investigators, three handouts, one set of  floorplans, two NPCs, and two Mythos creatures.Production Values: Decent.
Pros# Really great backstory and set-up# Decent pre-generated Investigators# Focused investigative one-shot# Interestingly Ghoulish twist upon the the Changeling myth# Solid convention scenario
Cons# Needs a slight edit# Confrontation needs careful handling# Few options for the Investigators to prepare for the confrontation
Conclusion# Great back story and set-up leads to a freaky family confrontation# Interestingly Ghoulish twist upon the the Changeling myth makes a creepy one-shot.

From Unaussprechlichen Kulten, Revelations of Gla’aki, De Vermis Mysteriis to the dread Necronomicon, the Mythos and its fiction is replete with awful tomes of all too inhuman, alien knowledge, spells or formulae whose invocation all too lead to the summoning of or contact with things and beings beyond understanding, and the ravings of madmen. Their treatment in Call of Cthulhu and other roleplaying games of Lovecraftian investigative horror has varied over the years. At worst they have been treated as treasures to be plundered from cultists as in some of the very early scenarios, but in more recent times they have been properly treated as horribly insidious works of true knowledge, with even their possession having a subtle effect upon the fragility of man, whether his mind or his very being. Perhaps their first expansive exploration in Call of Cthulhu would have been in The Keeper’s Companion Vol. 1 and The Keeper’s Companion Vol. 2, and the evocative exploration and presentation would have been in the almost mythical Masks of Nyarlathotep Companion. It is strange that given their place within the fiction and their use to both impart knowledge of the Mythos and enforce its corruptive influence, that there has never been a Call of Cthulhu supplement dedicated to just these great works within the fiction.

Tomes of Cthulhu, published by Azukail Games, is not that supplement, but it points towards such a supplement even if cannot be that supplement itself—primarily for copyright reasons, of course. It is instead a generic supplement for roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative horror which describes some twenty different tomes and their reprints inspired by the works of H. P. Lovecraft. Each entry follows a standard format. This includes both the name of the work and its author, a description of its format and its contents, plus size and weight, number of pages, primary language it is written in, the amount of knowledge it contains about the Mythos and the effect upon the reader once the book is read, and a suggested period of study time. This is followed by notes and perhaps discussion of copies or reprints. All of which apes the descriptions and formatting of details about the Mythos tomes in Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, but Tomes of Cthulhu shies away from supplying the Game Master with actual numbers. Thus, the suggested amount of knowledge it contains about the Mythos and the effect upon the reader once the book is read runs from Least through Lesser, Moderate, and Greater to Greatest, equating to much as 2% for the Least category to as much as 15% for the Greatest. Take any of the entries in Tomes of Cthulhu and the Game Master should be able to adapt them to the Lovecraftian investigative horror roleplaying game of her choice.

The entries range from ancient stone tablets to typed reports. A Translation and Interpretation of the Pre-Minoan Tablets Found in the Aegean is an example of the latter, supposedly written in a language belonging to a pre-Minoan civilisation and discovered by adventurer Jonathan Smedlock during a dive off the coast of Crete. The tablets were regarded as fakes and his claims ridiculed, and the tablets were either lost or are in a museum, and Smedlock was last seen in Africa. The translations in Smedlock’s own cheap hardback are based on several other works, none of them on the Minoan languages, and the Game Master is free to insert whichever Mythos she wants in here. An example of the latter is A Report of the Investigation into the Events in the Punjabi Himalayan Region in 1873 by Captain James Sutton is the typed report based on The Journal of Captain James Sutton, a soldier sent to investigate strange goings on in the Punjab in the shadow of Himalayas. The diary records weird, unearthly colours, and draining, grey effect that killed man, beast, plant, and the ground itself. The official report, not wholly written by Sutton, and since mimeographed, gives poisoning as the cause. Most of the other entries in Tomes of Cthulhu are books or reports, but Giants in the Earth by Private Tommy Atkins is a volume of horrifically grim poetry published after the Great War under an obvious pseudonym, the author consequently being confined to Bedlam where he committed suicide. The second, expurgated edition was published in 1959, its often lurid and disturbing replaced with more mundane depictions of the Western Front. The second edition is thus not of interest to book collectors or Mythos scholars, but either version reveals something about the Ghouls that prowled the Western Front.

Several famous figures are given as authors of Mythos tomes. Sir Isaac Newton wrote Philosophiæ Alchimia Principia Mathematica following a possible breakdown, a treatise on mathematics, the occult, alchemy, and chemistry which describes the true nature of the universe, particularly as they relate to time, space, or dimensional travel, even as far out as the Dreamlands. Suggested entities and races covered in the volume, which is written in Latin, include Yog-Sothoth, Azathoth, Nyarlathotep, and Great Race of Yith. Notes on an Expedition to the Antarctic by Charles Darwin is perhaps the most obvious entry in its inspiration. In 1831, during the second voyage of HMS Beagle, the expedition was given maps of a southern continent, and the book describes how it sailed south and discovered a cave entrance on the frozen land. Inside there were found pieces of green soapstone worked into rounded, five-pointed stars; carvings and murals on the walls, many damaged, depicted strange creatures and maps, perhaps of the Earth; and the strange, fossilised figure of barrel-shaped creature beyond understanding. Then there was the strange piping voice which shouted, “Tekeli-li!”. It is of course, all very At the Mountains of Madness.

Tomes of Cthulhu is relatively underwritten in terms of its ideas, because primarily, it is overwritten, repetitious, and very much in need of an edit. It also suffers from being for roleplaying games of Lovecraftian investigative horror rather a roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative horror, and so is not specific enough, which is not unexpected given the fact that the author must tiptoe around the facts that he cannot supply such numbers and he must be careful of what he can and cannot include. In combination though, the result is that any attempt to extract the information from this supplement is not as easy it should or could be. There are some potentially interesting tomes and titles which the Game Master or Keeper could extract from Tomes of Cthulhu, but it is perhaps best used to inspire the creation her own, as that might be easier.

Across the patchwork of city-states, dukedoms, baronies, and petty kingdoms that make up Brancalonia, great generals ride at the head of their armies into war. Elsewhere honourable knights face down ferocious dragons, save the princess, and win both her hand and her father’s seat. Mighty wizards study the greatest of magical tomes revealing fantastic secrets and learn spells capable of warping reality itself. Brave adventurers and treasure-seekers delve into the ruins and underground complexes of the ancient Kingdom of Plutonia, the collapse of which led to the Thousand Years’ War, returning with treasures and secrets of the long past. The Kingdom of Brancalonia is a land of opportunity and adventure—but fighting wars, killing dragons, saving princesses, studying hard, and exploring deep underground, they are not your adventures, and they are not your opportunities. You might see that brave knight, mighty army, or learned wizard ride by as you step out of the House of Mother Josephine’s Rest into the sunshine, a plate of ‘Extreme Unction’ macaroni* in one hand and a cup of Troglodyte of Panduria** in the other, before you go back inside and return to the revelry you were engaged in before you got distracted by the noise outside. Perhaps to throw your wine and breakfast aside and leap into the brawl which has broken out in the meantime. After all, it is a matter of principle to support the members of your fellow brotherhood. Or you want to discuss your next job, for the silver is running short, your gear is looking shoddy, and who knows when the next bowl of zuppa di topi Bianchi or bottle of Fil de Ferro will come along? You are a knave, a ne’er do well, a scoundrel, a swindler, or a layabout—if not all four, with a misdeed or misdemeanour to your name or two (or three or…) and minor bounty (or two) on your head. You are not a villain though, but just someone from the dregs of society who knows that life is cheap and anything but fair, and so you are going to make the best of it. Just like the fellow members of your brotherhood.

*Consume with care. Known to cause fits of tears and heart-attacks.

**One of the finest wines ever to come out of Ausonia. This is not a good vintage, but it is wine.

This is the world of Brancalonia – Spaghetti Fantasy, a bawdy, sun-drenched, low fantasy campaign setting for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, inspired by Italian tradition, folklore, history, landscapes, literature, and pop culture. Published by Acheron Books following a successful Kickstarter campaign, it is set in a ‘back-to-front’ version of Medieval Italy—even the gorgeous map is flipped from left to right—in which low life heroes, the Player Characters, form Bands and hopefully get hired by hopefully rich merchants, petty nobles, and desperate warlords to undertake the odd job or two, typically illicit, dangerous, and deniable. That is when they are not concocting their own schemes and running into curses, demons, witches, and angry, abandoned spouses. To a wider audience, the most well-known for Brancalonia – Spaghetti Fantasy will be the films Ladyhawke, Flesh + Blood, and The Princess Bride, along with Carl Collodi’s Pinnochio, but the Brancalonia – Spaghetti Fantasy Setting Book numerous others. All of which are likely to be less familiar to a wider audience. And that is a bit a problem because not all of the inspiration is easily available. However, if instead you think of Brancalonia – Spaghetti Fantasy as being distinctly European fantasy—so there is definitely going to be mud and worse underfoot, not unlike Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, but with better weather, better cooking, and definitely better wine, and then directed by Sergio Leone (with Terry Gilliam as second unit director), then you have the feel of the setting.

The Brancalonia – Spaghetti Fantasy Setting Book, which won the Gold Ennie for Best Electronic Book in 2021 (plus Silver Awards for Product of the Year, Best Writing, and Best Setting) keeps its fantasy low in a number of ways. First, Player Characters can only advance as high as Sixth Level. Second, whilst it provides five new Races, it does not provide any new Classes. Instead, it gives twelve new Subclasses, one each for the twelve Classes in the Player’s Handbook, along with new Feats and Backgrounds. Third, it gives rules for brawling, intentionally non-lethal combat, which typically takes place in a tavern or other dive before the Player Characters scarper after being accused of a Breach of the Peace and another bounty put on their heads. Fourth, their arms, armour, and other equipment is likely to be shoddy, poorly maintained, and will probably fall apart at the least opportune moment. It eschews the use of Alignment, and even if used, discourages any Player Character choosing to be evil, as Knaves are rogues rather than villains. The setting for the most part is humancentric and does not include the traditional Races of Dungeons & Dragons, although they are not unknown.

Besides Humans, the five new Races in the Brancalonia – Spaghetti Fantasy Setting Book are the Gifted, the Malebranches, the Marionettes, the Morgants, and the Sylvans. The Gifted are Humans who know a little bit more magic; Malebranche are Devils who proclaimed the Great Refusal and climbed out of the Inferno, typically via the Eternal Gate which stands in the great chasm into which Plutonia fell and now stands, and who still have diabolic features such as Hellwings and the Hellvoice; Marionettes are animated puppets, often in the form of Pinnochio or the Paladin-like Pupo, who can remove and use their limbs in a brawl; Morgants are tall ‘demi-giants’ with great strength and appetite, known as fearless brawlers and champions often stationed at the vanguard of an army; and Sylvans are rustics at home in the forest. In addition, each Race has its brawl feature which gives it an advantage in nonlethal fight. The first of the twelve new Classes in the Brancalonia – Spaghetti Fantasy Setting Book is the Pagan, a Barbarian subclass, inhabitants of the Pagan Plain who favour speed, anger, and violence; the Harlequin is a Bard as street entertainer; the Miraculist is a Cleric who follows the calendar and  favours the saints, and knows several defensive or helpful spells; the Benadante is a Druid as a forest sorcerer capable of interacting with and defending against the undead; the Swordfighter is a duelling archetype for the Fighter; the Friar is a Monk turned religious brawler; the Knight-Errant is the Paladin as rambling protector of the good, and likely the most courageous of any Knave; the Matador, a Ranger who hunts beasts and monsters in the wilds and fights them in the arena; the Brigand is a Rogue who steals from the wealthy and redistributes what he steals, and can always catch his targets by surprise; the Superstician is a very lucky Sorcerer who can also cast protective rituals; the Jinx is a Warlock who has the districting power of the Evil Eye and even cause misfortune; and the Guiscard is a Wizard who specialises in tomb robbing and treasure hunting.

To these Subclasses are added backgrounds such as the Brawler, the Finagler, and the Fugitive, as well as Feats like Ancient Culinary Art, Apothecary, Jibber-Jabber, and Peasant Soul. There are rules too for advancing beyond Sixth Level, but each new Level only grants an Emeriticence, such as Professional Brawler or Blessed Luck. In addition to creating their Player Characters, they come together to create their Bounty Brothers’ den, a comfortable place where they can rest up and hide. It might be an abandoned farmhouse occupied by brigands, matadors, and smugglers, or a tower in plain sight inhabited by knights-errant, swordsmen, and mercenaries, but all begin with one and can be improved with further Grand Luxuries such as Black Market or a Cantina. This though takes gold and Knaves typically only have silver, so there is a community improvement element to play as the Knaves pool their funds. The Den is also where they ‘Rollick’ and rest—the long rest in Brancalonia – Spaghetti Fantasy Setting Book is seven days long, too long to take place during actual play—and perhaps improve their Den, reflect on the Job just done (and note any misdeeds and misdemeanours that lead to further bounties being placed on their heads), and plan for the next Job. This will probably result in some kind of hazard as a result of their past activities, and it can be partially offset by going into hiding for a while.   And Knaves being who they are, can also engage in Revelry, a few days of good food, good wine, and good company, and so fritter away some of what they just earned…

Other activities the Knaves can engage in are brawls and dive games. Brawls are not like combat in that Hit Points are not lost. Instead, a Brawl attack inflicts Whacks, most Knaves being able to suffer five of them before being knocked unconscious. Brawlers can pick up props, essentially the things around them, and attack with them or use them to defend themselves with. These are divided between common props—pots, dishes, bottles, stools, and so on, and epic props—tables, barrels, chandeliers, suits of armour, and more. In general, a prop has a beneficial effect like gaining a bonus attack or increasing a Knave’s Armour Class, rather than increasing the whacks inflicted. Knaves also have Moves, which are divided into General Moves, Magic Moves, Class Brawl Features, and so. There are Stray Dangers, like ‘Rain of Stools’ or ‘It’s Raining ham’ which the Condottiero—as the Game Master is known in the Brancalonia – Spaghetti Fantasy Setting Book is called—can add to a brawl. The brawl rules are definitely designed to be cinematic in style and add a sense of action and comedy to play.

In addition to brawling in Dives, a Knave likes to play games and gamble—though that is illegal in the Bounty Kingdom. The Brancalonia – Spaghetti Fantasy Setting Book includes several different Dive games. These include the card game, Poppycock; Barrel Beating, a combined drinking-barrel smashing game in which the winner smashes the barrel and wins the wagers inside; Brancalonian Buffet, an eating contest. There are also rules for shoddy equipment, counterfeiting, equipment for the setting, like the Scudetto, a medium shield which bears the emblem of a city and is thus a symbol of pride for followers of the local Draconian Football Team, concoctions—tonics and the like for what ails you, and even some magical junk. Lastly, there is memorabilia, items of no ecumenic value, but perhaps personal value to their owning Knaves. A Knave begins play with one, but this is not obvious until much later in the book.

For the Game Master—or Condottiero—there is good advice on running Brancalonia – Spaghetti Fantasy. This is to keep the tone light-hearted, magic low, make the game one of tragicomedy and even ‘Grand Guignolesque’, so there is room here for horror too. There is in effect no budget for special effects, or little else, so a game of Brancalonia – Spaghetti Fantasy should be like a film done on the cheap—recycling character actors and redressing extras, natural backdrops and ruins, and so on. Plus, the brawls of ‘brawly’ fantasy to cut down on the bloodshed, but keep up the tension. There is advice as to what to avoid in play—unnecessary violence, sexual themes—though nature of Brancalonia – Spaghetti Fantasy does skirt the issue, and of course, any bigotry. This is the equivalent to safety tools. Plus, there is advice on handling bounties and the law, creating adventures, dives, random roads which may or may go somewhere, and more. There is also a good overall guide to the Bounty Kingdom, its history, its various regions, and even the kingdoms beyond its borders. Each is given a couple of pages, but each includes suggestions as to the types of Jobs that the Knaves might undertake there, and overall, there is just about enough to make each region different and provide the Condottiero with further inspiration.

Penultimately, Condottiero is given a six-part campaign, ‘In Search of Quatrins’ to run. It begins with ‘Little People of the Grand Mount’ and ‘Rugantino: Tales of Love and the Knife’, both of which are for First Level Player Characters, but the first is specifically written as an introductory adventure, one that younger players can roleplay, but also sets up the rest of the scenarios. To this end the Knaves are offered an easy job and the chance to join a company by Roughger of Punchrabbit. The Jobs include treasure hunts, monster hunts, missing marionettes, and more. All together ‘In Search of Quatrins’ should provide a group with several sessions’ worth of play and give them a thorough taste of life in the Bounty Kingdom. They do need some development in places, but the Condottiero should be able to do that as part of preparation. Lastly, Brancalonia – Spaghetti Fantasy Setting Book includes a bestiary of new monsters and a section of ready to use NPCs.

Physically, the Brancalonia – Spaghetti Fantasy Setting Book looks to be superbly presented, with really good artwork and excellent maps. However, it is a translation from Italian and the localisation and editing is not as good as it could have been. In addition, the index is anaemic, so finding anything in the book will be a challenge. The book could also have been done with a step-by-step guide to creating Player Characters for the setting, as there are several aspects of the process which do not appear until much later in the book. Similarly, a glossary would have been incredibly useful.

Ultimately, whether or not you like the Brancalonia – Spaghetti Fantasy Setting Book will depend on your feelings towards Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. The new rules presented here do add to Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, but at the same time, they add and enforce the setting and genre of Brancalonia—the brawling, the shoddy equipment, and much, much more. Whether you like it or not, the Bounty Kingdoms setting of Brancalonia – Spaghetti Fantasy jumps from every page into uproarious, tankard banging, wine quaffing, lustily voiced song and then at the end of the night, down in the cups mutterings, before another job presents itself the next day even as you are trying to get over a hangover. Brancalonia – Spaghetti Fantasy Setting Book presents a delightfully different take upon fantasy, for which even if you do not know the inspiration, the book is inspiring in itself, and you should be creating a cast list (for which Oliver Reed should be your number one choice) even as you read the book and prepare your first adventure. Once you have finished reading Brancalonia – Spaghetti Fantasy Setting Book and prepared your first adventure, you should be ready to bring an inglorious fantasy to the table.

Much like the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, th Jonstown Compendium is a curated platform for user-made content, but for material set in Greg Stafford’s mythic universe of Glorantha. It enables creators to sell their own original content for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, 13th Age Glorantha, and HeroQuest Glorantha (Questworlds). This can include original scenarios, background material, cults, mythology, details of NPCs and monsters, and so on, but none of this content should be considered to be ‘canon’, but rather fall under ‘Your Glorantha Will Vary’. This means that there is still scope for the authors to create interesting and useful content that others can bring to their Glorantha-set campaigns.

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What is it?A Short Detour: An Adventure for RuneQuest Glorantha is a scenario for use with RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha in which the adventurers come to the aid of a mother and her son and become involved in a moral dilemma.

It is a forty-one page, full colour 3.74 MB PDF.

It is cleanly and tidily presented and some of the artwork is decent.

Where is it set?A Short Detour: An Adventure for RuneQuest Glorantha is set in northern Sartar and could easily be take place near Apple Lane as detailed in the RuneQuest Gamemaster Screen Pack.
It is set during Sea Season, 1626.
Who do you play?
There are no specific roles necessary to play A Short Detour, but this can be an interesting scenario for a Lhankor Mhy. A Storm Bull may short circuit the scenario. Martial characters will be needed as combat is likely to be involved (in which case the Storm Bull will be useful).
What do you need?
A Short Detour: An Adventure for RuneQuest Glorantha requires RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, as well as RuneQuest: Glorantha Bestiary and The Book of Red Magic.

In addition, Cults of Terror will be useful for its background information. Depending upon how the scenario plays out, Holiday Dorastor: The Temple of Heads, may also be useful as a sequel.
What do you get?A Short Detour: An Adventure for RuneQuest Glorantha is a short, simple, and straightforward adventure which as written takes place in northern Sartar, but can be adapted to other areas if necessary. The Player Characters encounter, Renuvela and Nemiast, a mother and her son trying to fend off a sounder of boars. After they come to their rescue, she asks the Player Characters to escort them her and her son to Runegate.

This sounds like a simple situation, but if the Player Characters agree, it quickly plunges them into a moral dilemma. Renuvela and Nemiast are being hunted by two different factions with an interest in his future. One group wishes him ill for what will be seen as the ‘right’ reasons, whilst the other wishes him well for the ‘wrong’ reasons. At the heart of the scenario is the agreement the Player Characters will have made with Renuvela and Nemiast and their honouring that agreement even as the truth about the pair is revealed. Ideally, this should lead to a clash between their Passions and their Honour for the Player Characters. In addition, in terms of roleplaying, the scenario challenges the differing viewpoints of the players and their characters within Gloranthan cultures.

A Short Detour requires good roleplaying upon the part of the Game Master in portraying both Renuvela and Nemiast, but she is given good advice to that end, and further supported with a set of highly detailed NPCs, each with well explained and clear motivations. Some of them are delightfully vile and Machiavellian, but others are simply cannon fodder that the Player Characters will enjoy putting to the sword.

The scenario discusses numerous possible options and outcomes, and this includes what can be seen as an optimum outcome, though getting to that is extremely challenging when faced with the rival demands of the others involved. The scenario is supported with an abridged version of the myth behind its plot, notes on the nature of tattoos, and an essay on the nature of the Chaos Rune and its effect in play. This falls into ‘Your Glorantha May Vary’.
Is it worth your time?Yes—A Short Detour: An Adventure for RuneQuest Glorantha confronts the Player Characters with a moral dilemma and excellent opportunities for roleplaying supported with some fantastic NPCs.No—A Short Detour: An Adventure for RuneQuest Glorantha confronts the Player Characters with a moral dilemma which may not fit the group’s play style and a discussion of Chaos which may not suit the Game Master’s campaign.Maybe—A Short Detour: An Adventure for RuneQuest Glorantha confronts the Player Characters with a moral dilemma which may not fit the group’s play style and a discussion of Chaos which may not suit the Game Master’s campaign.

Ker-Splat! is a cartoon action roleplaying game inspired by Looney Toons and Tom & Jerry. Dynamite will get stuffed down trousers. Anvils will land on heads. Walls will be run into. Cheesegraters will be slide up and down. Stairs will be fallen down. Custard pies will be thrown and land in faces. And whether he has fallen down or is still standing, the cartoon character who suffers all or any one of these will be Bamboozled as a scattering of stars or a flight of tweeting birds orbit his head. Published by MacGuffin & Company, Ker-Splat! is a fast-playing silly roleplaying game for anyone who wants to play a chicken with a chainsaw, an otter on a skateboard, a goldfish in a bucket, a squirrel wiseguy, a mouse with a mallet, or anything else. It is ridiculous, it conforms to genre physics, not real physics, and it involves either Ordered Chaos or Pure Chaos, and true to the genre, it is played out in two-dimensional world.

A Player Character in Ker-Splat! is defined by his name, his Pitch, his Drive, his Quirk, his Look, and seven stats. His Pitch is whatever the character is, for example, a ‘Raccoon in a monocle and waistcoat who wants an easy life’ or ‘A Knight on a noble quest who was never told what the quest was and whose visor keeps jamming closed’. His Drive is his motivation, such as ‘Dining on freshly caught chicken’ or ‘Preventing the wolf from eating you and your fellow chickens’. His Quirk is whatever his special ability is, Ker-Splat! listing some nineteen, such as Pocket Dimension, Lucky Duck, Disguise, Wealth, and more.
A Player Character has seven stats. These are divided between the five Humours—Pow, Zip, Umm, Wow, and Pop, and Ouch! and HUH!, the latter measuring how long it is until he is either Ker-Splatted or Bambozzled. Pow is the character’s physical strength and size, Zip how fast and dextrous he is, Umm how brainy, Wow how charismatic, and Pop his ability to use tools and equipment, as well as his ability to order something from the ‘AKMEE™ PLC Catalog’. The Humours are rated between two and nineteen, and there are pluses and minuses to their high or low. For example, a Player Character with a high Zip will be fast and able to run away, but will often miss the little details, be impatient, and so on. With a low Zip, the character will take his time to understand things, not act rashly, trigger fewer traps, and so on. A Player Character with a high Umm will be good at making plans and spotting things, but in the two-dimensional cartoon world of Ker-Splat! will notice that tunnel entrance is just painted on the side of the mountain and so go around, whereas a Player Character with a low Umm would accept that tunnel as reality and race down it (and likely get run over by a train).

Player Character is simple. A player defines his character’s Pitch, Drive, Quirk, and Look, but he only sets the value for one of his character’s Humours. Each of the other players takes it in turn to set one stat before passing the character to the next player and so on round the table until all of the Humours are defined. In each case, a player is simply assigning a value, but in this way, the players collectively define the cast of the carton.

Chuffy the Chicken
Chicken with a Chainsaw, who isn’t going to let the wolf get her or her fellow chickens
Pow 5 Zip 12 Umm 9 Wow 12 Pop 10
Ouch! 3
HUH! 3
Quirk: Lucky Duck

Mechanically, Ker-Splat! is simple, but it does look a bit complex. It all depends if the Player Character is attempting to do something in keeping with his Humour or something that is not in keeping with his Humour. If the Player Character is attempting to do something in keeping with his Humour, his player must succeed or roll under his character’s Humour on a twenty-sided die. If the Player Character is attempting to do something that is not in keeping with his Humour, he must fail or roll over his character’s Humour. For example, if Chuffy the Chicken wants to use her chainsaw, her player rolls under her Pop Humour, but if she wants to break her chainsaw to prevent the wolf from using it, her player rolls over her Pop Humour. Simple enough, but where it gets slightly confusing is the fact that this can also change what a critical result is, depending upon whether the Player Character is trying to succeed or trying to fail. Thus, if trying to succeed, a ‘Good Crit’ is a roll of a one and a ‘Bad Crit’ is a roll of twenty, but if trying to fail, a ‘Good Crit’ is a roll of twenty and a ‘Bad Crit’ is a roll of one. Then if you throw in the usual mechanic for Advantage and Disadvantage…

When it comes to a Player Character’s Quirk, it always works. However, how it works and what the effect is when it does, is not always in the control of the Player Character using it. This is randomly determined by the roll of the die and half the time the player controls it and narrates the outcome, a quarter of the time another player controls it, and the other quarter, the GM controls it.

Player Character versus Player Character conflict is both simple and complex—complex that is in relation to the simple option. Which is de-escalation. Everyone involves keeps rolling a twenty-sided die until one player rolls a one and his character succeeds. Which is both simple and simply counterintuitive to the genre and simply an awkward means of preventing Player Character versus Player Character conflict. Especially given how the game goes out of its way to emulate the genre and give the players control of the outcome in other situations, such as the use of Quirks.

There are two options for combat—Ordered Chaos and Pure Chaos. The more complex of these is Ordered Chaos. In Ordered Chaos, the Player Characters are in order of their Humours depending upon the situation. For example, a martial arts contest would go in order of the highest to lowest Zip, but lowest Zip to highest Zip in a considered confrontation. NPCs, which are kept simple with a strength and a weakness, are slotted into the order as the GM decides. This is simple enough as long as the GM remembers which Humour applies to which situation. If an attack works, the target character’s player rolls a six-sided die against his Ouch! or HUH! depending on the nature of the attack. Roll under and the Player Character is fine, roll over and the Player Character is either Ker-Splatted or Bamboozled. When his character is Ker-Splatted or Bamboozled, his player keeps rolling a twenty-sided die until he rolls a one and comes to… A fight like this continues until either one side prevails or the GM gets bored…

The Pure Chaos variant—which is not recommended for online play—uses the same rules for de-escalation. Thus everyone rolls a twenty-sided die. When a player rolls a one, he can act. It is chaotic and unlike the de-escalation rules it fits the genre.

Ker-Splat! is primarily designed to be played as a one-shot. However, it does include rules for campaign, a Player Character YAY! at the end of each scenario which can subsequently be spent to buy a ‘Spree of Luck’, a temporary ‘Intern’, or even ‘Irritate the GM’. The latter lets a player pass a note to the GM with improv style play notes about how the scenario is being narrated which she must follow. Most of these options are quite fun and play around with the narrative rather than improve a Player Character. The GM also gets her on set of GM YAY options to purchase.

Ker-Splat! includes guidelines in inclusivity that take into account that most Player Characters will be animals—walking talking animals in a world where there are animals who are not! This cover gender and even sex, but also the appropriate use of stereotypes, noting that this is difficult to avoid given the genre. However, the advice is to be careful and considerate, and that includes not characters having a black face after explosions. There is also advice on the use of the Big Red Button as more immediate version of the X-card. There are more usual guidelines for NPC and scenario design and a couple of same scenarios.

Physically, Ker-Splat! is a bright and breezy affair. There is lots of bold, full colour artwork throughout and the book is well written. It does need a close read in places, primarily because it is organised into seemingly random boxes, so does not flow quite so easily.

Ker-Splat! is designed to be chaotic, bonkers fun and it will do that. Some of the rules arguably do not fit the genre and others do need everyone to adjust to them as they are counterintuitive because almost every other roleplaying game does not a player to roll to fail. However, make that adjustment and the ‘roll to succeed/roll to fail’ works and suits the genre. Overall, Ker-Splat! combines light, fast cartoon action with some fun narrative elements which add to the chaos with being quick and easy to bring to the table.

The Christmas Annual is a traditional thing—and all manner of things can receive a Christmas Annual. Those of our childhoods would have been tie-ins to the comic books we read, such as the Dandy or the Beano, or the television series that we enjoyed, for example, Doctor Who. Typically, here in the United Kingdom, they take the form of slim hardback books, full of extra stories and comic strips and puzzles and games, but annuals are found elsewhere too. In the USA, ongoing comic book series, like Batman or The X-Men, receive their own annuals, though these are simply longer stories or collections of stories rather than the combination of extra stories and comic strips and puzzles and games. In gaming, TSR, Inc.’s Dragon magazine received its own equivalent, the Dragon Annual, beginning in 1996, which would go from being a thick magazine to being a hardcover book of its own with the advent of Dungeons & Dragons, Fourth Edition. For the Dungeons & Dragons Annual 2022, the format is very much a British one—puzzles and games, yes, and all themed with the fantasy and mechanics of Dungeons & Dragons, along with content designed to get you into the world’s premier roleplaying game.

Published by Harper Collins Publishers, the Dungeons & Dragons Annual 2022 moves on from the Dungeons & Dragons Annual 2021. It is not so much an introduction to Dungeons & Dragons itself, but rather an introduction to Faerûn and the Forgotten Realms, the principal setting for the current iteration of the roleplaying game. The slim volume begins with the first of several entries in the ‘Peoples of the Realm’ series. This is ‘Exploring Elves’, which highlights the various different types of Elves to be found in the Forgotten Realms, noting their special skills and key Classes, as well as some background and some trivia. Included here are the Drow and the Eladrin as well as the High Elves and the Wood Elves. Also mentioned here are the various types of Gnomes, Dwarves, and Halflings, the latter with the comment, “Overlook these diminutive folk at your own risk!”, which the entry and the Dungeons & Dragons Annual 2022 promptly does by consigning all three peoples to a sidebar rather than their own entry in the ‘Peoples of the Realm’ series. It is continued with ‘Think Big’ which suggests with Goliaths, Firbolgs, Orcs, and more as other character options, refencing Volo’s Guide to Monsters and Xanathar’s Guide to Everything. ‘Plane-Touched’ does a similar with races such as the Tritons, Genasi, Tabaxi, and more.

The first of the two ‘Campaign Spotlight’ entries in the Dungeons & Dragons Annual 2022 is on Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden, the 2020 campaign published by Wizards of the Coast. This covers the campaign’s key features—its entry points, secrets, new rules, locations, and of course, stats for ‘Three Kobolds in a Trenchcoat’. None of it in any detail, but enough to intrigue the reader. Further, this ‘Campaign Spotlight’ is supported by other articles in the annual. The first of the ‘Across Faerûn’ entries looks at Icewind Dale, which of course is the setting for the campaign, and provides more details such as typical monsters—snowy owlbears and frost giants being the most obvious, along with a gorgeous map of the region. The theme of Faerûn and Icewind Dale even continues in ‘Beyond the Tabletop’, the series which looks at Dungeons & Dragons beyond it being just a roleplaying game. The first of these gives attention to Dark Alliance, the Dungeons & Dragons computer in which the Drow Ranger, Drizzt Do’Urden leads his companions into Icewind Dale in search of the magical shard, the Crenshinibon. Drizzt Do’Urden himself is given the spotlight in the next two articles. First in ‘Heroes & Villains’ which introduces him, his companions, and enemies, and second, in ‘Talking D&D: R.A. Salvatore’, an interview with the author of The Crystal Shard and its many sequels which feature Drizzt Do’Urden. Of course, much of this will already be familiar to fans of Dungeons & Dragons—as is the case for the whole of the Dungeons & Dragons Annual 2022—but from the ‘Across Faerûn’ entry on Icewind Dale through the spotlight on Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden to the spotlight on Drizzt Do’Urden and interview with his creator, there is a lovely sense of a theme or thread running through the initial handful of articles in Dungeons & Dragons Annual 2022 and it feels much more thought out.

Whilst ‘Explaining the Planes’ takes the reader beyond the Forgotten Realms to look at the Elemental Planes and the Outer Planes, the Dungeons & Dragons Annual 2022 quickly returns to ‘Across Faerûn’ and ‘The Feywild’ in particular. There is a connection between the two in that the Feywild is a reflection of the Prime Material Plane and also back to the ‘Exploring Elves’ article for Eladrin who come from the Feywild. However, ‘Beyond the Tabletop’ continues the journey away from the Elemental Planes and the Outer Planes by looking at the computer game, Baldur’s Gate III, which mentions Avernus, the first layer of the Nine Hells. The other connection to Baldur’s Gate is a two-page spread dedicated to Minsc (and Boo) in ‘Heroes & Villains’ (his counterpart in the annual, is the villain ‘Xanathar’, whilst if not the Forgotten Realms, but still in the annual, is ‘Vecna’), but the connected ‘Campaign Spotlight’ is Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus. This does as good a job as that devoted to Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden.

The ‘Bestiary’ first highlights ‘Common Foes’, so the lowly Kobold at Challenge Rating of 1/8 up to the Manitcore at Challenge Rating of 3, and then ‘Boss Fights’, which includes the Lich, the Tarrasque, and the Kraken, all with a Challenge Rating of twenty or more. ‘Oddities’ add a mix of the different and the weird, like the Gelatinous Cube, the Flumph, and the Modron. Dragons’, the last of these is devoted to iconic monsters and their minions.

There is very little about the play or rules of Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition in Dungeons & Dragons Annual 2022, especially in comparison to the Dungeons & Dragons Annual 2022. ‘Roll for Inspiration’ though focuses on advice and help. First with ‘Combat 101’, which explains the basics of that aspect of the game, whilst ‘Where To Start?’ looks at ways of starting a campaign for the Dungeon Master and ‘Learn From The Dungeon Masters’ gives advice from several Dungeon Masters on how to run Dungeons & Dragons. It is solid, if basic advice. The last entry in ‘Roll for Inspiration’ is ‘Creating NPCs’, which like the others contains solid, if basic advice.

‘Podcasts’ gives time to just the two long running series—How We Roll and Adventure Zone. The former again has a nice callback to Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden, but both are given good introductions here. Again, just the two are covered, High Rollers and Acquisitions Incorporated, but ‘Live Streams’ reflects the move from the podcast as a means of presenting actual play to Twitch streams, from audio to visual. The look at the hobby comes up to date with ‘Find Your People’, which give two community groups—No More Damsels and Three Black Halflings—which work to build communities which are more inclusive and welcome greater representation in the hobby. 

Elsewhere in Dungeons & Dragons Annual 2022, ‘Where It Began: First Edition’ looks back at Dungeons & Dragons from 1974. It is a very basic examination, with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons given only a paragraph. ‘Classic Campaigns’ similarly looks older scenarios, again in thumbnail fashion, but the tie into Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition is definitely highlighted here.  ‘Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything’ looks at everything from character options, magic items, and spells, whilst ‘It Spells Trouble’ examines a variety of spells, from Magic Missile to Wish. Rounding out Dungeons & Dragons Annual 2022 is a quiz and a glossary.

Of course, Dungeons & Dragons Annual 2022 being a British annual, it is not without its puzzles. So there are mazes, word searches, spot the difference, and more. All themed around Dungeons & Dragons. The maze for example, has you attempt to escape from Count Strahd von Zarovich’s clutches, whilst ‘Volo’s (Scrambled) Guide to Monsters’ is an anagram

Physically, the Dungeons & Dragons Annual 2022 is snappily presented. There is plenty of full colour artwork drawn from Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, and the writing is clear and kept short, so is an easy read for its intended audience. It would have been nice to seen a little more artwork from the earlier versions of the roleplaying where they are mentioned.

Over the years, there have been plenty of introductions to Dungeons & Dragons, some of them decent, some them of utterly pointless and useless, such as the Dungeon Survival Guide and the ‘What exactly were you thinking, Wizards of the Coast?!’ Wizards Presents: Races and Classes and Wizards Presents: Worlds and Monsters books that heralded the arrival of the Dungeons & Dragons, Fourth Edition. Fortunately, like the Dungeons & Dragons Annual 2021, its predecessor, the Dungeons & Dragons Annual 2022 is far superior to any of those.

The Dungeons & Dragons Annual 2022 is not so much an introduction to Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, as Faerûn and the Forgotten Realms. There is much less of a focus on the rules and mechanics in the Dungeons & Dragons Annual 2022, but in terms of background and setting is genuinely an interesting and informative read. To be fair, this is not a book or supplement that a dedicated player or Dungeon Master is going to need, or even want, to read. After all, much of this will be familiar to either. The Dungeons & Dragons Annual 2022 is very much a step on from Dungeons & Dragons Annual 2021, and that does mean that some of the introductory elements of the roleplaying game as it is played have been lost, but still as some to receive at Christmas (or not) in your Christmas stocking (or not), Dungeons & Dragons Annual 2022 is a good into Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, and especially, Faerûn and the Forgotten Realms.

Escape the Dark Sector: The Game of Deep Space Adventure brought the brutality of the Fighting Fantasy solo adventure books of the eighties to both Science Fiction and co-operative game play for up to four players in which their characters begin incarcerated in the detention block of a vast space station and must work together to ensure their escape. Published by Themeborne, with its multiple encounters, traps, aliens, robots, objects, and more as well as a different end of game Boss every time, Escape the Dark Sector offered a high replay value, especially as a game never lasted longer than thirty minutes. Now, like its predecessor, Escape the Dark Castle: The Game of Atmospheric Adventure, the game has not one, but three expansions! Funded via a Kickstarter campaign, each of the three expansions—Escape the Dark Sector – Mission Pack 1: Twisted Tech, Escape the Dark Sector – Mission Pack 2: Mutant Syndrome, and Escape the Dark Sector – Mission Pack 3: Quantum Rift—adds a new Boss, new Chapters, new Items, and more, taking the path of the escapees off in a new direction to face new encounters and new dangers. Each expansion can be played on its own with the base game, or mixed and matched to add one, two, or three mission packs that increase the replay value of the core game.
Escape the Dark Sector – Mission Pack 2: Mutant Syndrome exposes the escapees to the further secrets of the Dark Sector. Whether caused by cosmic radiation or proximity to toxic waste, the whole of the Dark Sector is plagued by a mutagen which alters and distorts the bodies of the inhabitants of the giant space station. Some the effects of the mutagen simply kills, but others it leaves with extra limbs and appendages, endowing them with abilities beyond the mere human. The result is that the Dark Sector has a growing population of mutants, which the escapees will likely encounter as well as the possibility that they too will be exposed to the mutagen and changed...

As with Escape the Dark Sector – Mission Pack 1: Twisted Tech before it, Escape the Dark Sector – Mission Pack 2: Mutant Syndrome includes twelve new Chapter cards which represent the encounters the escapees will have as they flee. They may run into raging mutant prisoners, dumping grounds for radioactive waste, hideously mutated guards, three-headed security dogs, gain medical assistance from a hologram, and even a mutant testing station! The single Boss card is for The Mutanoid, a mutant so twisted that his body consistently emit mutagenic spores that inflict damage on the escapees—or mutate them. It makes use of the new core mechanic in the expansion, the ‘Mutation Die’.

The ‘Mutation Die’ is not only rolled for The Mutanoid Boss at the end of the game but also for certain Chapter cards and Item cards—or rather Mutation cards which are added to the Item deck. When drawn, these can force an escapee to discard Item cards from his Inventory as they prevent him carrying anything, but their most immediate effect to prevent an escapee from using his Cybernetic Implant. However, a Mutation can have a greater effect. Depending upon the symbol rolled on the ‘Mutation Die’, an escapee might lose Hit Points, but he might suffer another effect all together. For example, a Mutation to the Arm can add a single Might result to an action or allow a Block in Close Combat, a Mutation to the Leg can add a single Cunning result to an action or prevent the loss of Hit Points from a single die roll, and so on. These are all one use mutations, but others change a roll of the Crew Die to a Wisdom result and reduce Hip Point loss by one, and are ongoing effects. Between Chapters, an escapee can excise a Mutation and permanently lose its effect, whether positive or negative. This is dangerous and painful and means that the escapee again loses Hit Points. Other items in the expansion include the ‘Stun Baton’ which on the successful inflicting of a wound, stuns the enemy and prevents them from attacking that round, whilst the ‘Life Serum’ either restores two Hit Points or removes a mutation.

Escape the Dark Sector – Mission Pack 2: Mutant Syndrome also adds three new escapees. Lieutenants Grib, Parvon, and Xaree are new alien crewmembers and each comes with their Crew die. This introduces the ‘Mixed Double’ consisting of two symbols within a shield, which even though they are different, they count as a double of either symbol as required. This gives the three new Lieutenants some flexibility in terms of their die results. 
Physically, Escape the Dark Sector – Mission Pack 2: Mutant Syndrome is as well produced as the core game. The new Chapter and Boss Cards are large and in general easy to read and understand. Each one is illustrated in Black and White, in a style which echoes that of the Fighting Fantasy series and Warhammer 40K last seen in the nineteen eighties. The Item and Drone cards are also easy to use and the dice are clear and simple. The rule book requires a careful read, if only to grasp how the different new mechanics work.

Escape the Dark Sector – Mission Pack 2: Mutant Syndrome adds new subsystems as well as new encounters with the Chapter and Boss Cards. They add both elements of complexity and luck, though more of the latter than the former. Design wise, this expansion is again thematically strong rather than narratively strong, but the Mutation is only strong when it comes to the Chapter cards and the encounters the escapees can have. In comparison, the potential mutations they might suffer during their escape attempt are underwhelming, in terms of both number in the expansion and theme. Anyone expecting a rioting of weird and wonderful powers and defects will be disappointed. Even so, Escape the Dark Sector – Mission Pack 2: Mutant Syndrome is still easy enough to add to the core game. Overall, Escape the Dark Sector – Mission Pack 2: Mutant Syndrome is not quite as interesting as it could have been, but still a decent expansion which adds more Sci-Fi theme to Escape the Dark Sector: The Game of Deep Space Adventure.

Much like the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, th Jonstown Compendium is a curated platform for user-made content, but for material set in Greg Stafford’s mythic universe of Glorantha. It enables creators to sell their own original content for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, 13th Age Glorantha, and HeroQuest Glorantha (Questworlds). This can include original scenarios, background material, cults, mythology, details of NPCs and monsters, and so on, but none of this content should be considered to be ‘canon’, but rather fall under ‘Your Glorantha Will Vary’. This means that there is still scope for the authors to create interesting and useful content that others can bring to their Glorantha-set campaigns.

—oOo—

What is it?
The Lifethief is a scenario for use with RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha in which the adventurers come to the aid of a shaman of the Impala tribe in a highly testing location.

It is a possible sequel to the earlier Stone and Bone and The Gifts of Prax scenarios.

It is a forty-seven page, full colour 112.04 MB PDF.

It is cleanly and tidily presented and some of the artwork is excellent.

Where is it set?The Lifethief: An Adventure for RuneQuest Glorantha is set in the Dead Place in Prax, northeast of Pimper’s Block.
Who do you play?
There are no specific roles necessary to play The Lifethief, but martial characters will be needed as combat is involved. In addition, a Shaman should prove useful, though will be greatly challenged.
What do you need?
The Lifethief: An Adventure for RuneQuest Glorantha requires RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and the RuneQuest: Glorantha Bestiary will be useful for details of some of the encounters.
What do you get?The Lifethief: An Adventure for RuneQuest Glorantha is a short, simple adventure which takes place in the barren, Chaos wastelands of the Dead Place where the dust itself forms angry spirits and is injurious to the health of anyone who breaths it in. Here, Maserelt, a shaman of the Impala tribe, has set up camp and been monitoring a thing of horror coming out of the Dead Place—something that lived and actually had a spirit, but twisted and warped by Chaos. She cannot face it alone and has reached out for help. In answer, Erhehta, her rival from the Bison Riders, the shaman previously met by the Player Characters in the scenarios, Stone and Bone and The Gifts of Prax, sends them out to render her the assistance she needs. (If the Player Characters have not met with Erhehta or played through either of the earlier scenarios, The Lifethief includes advice and plot hooks to involve them in this scenario.)
The most obvious challenge that the Player Characters will face in the Dead Place beyond the extremely barren nature of its environment is the fact that magic does not work. There is simply not the connection to the spirit world for it to work and the likelihood is that there is no connection to the gods either, so Rune magic may or may not work. Chaos features are another matter. The combination means that The Lifethief is a physically grueling affair which will force the Player Characters to rely upon their innate skills.
Fortunately, the Player Characters have a chance to learn about they are going and gain some skill bonuses in the process in a pleasing little social scene which contrasts with the desolation they will later face. The Lifethief is not the only encounter that the Player Characters will encounter in the Dead Place, being tested by a band of Broo—inventively and vilely designed as you would want with a band of Broo, but it is the main one. Its actions and abilities are decently described, but the illustration of it is bland and uninteresting, especially given the fantastic pieces of the Broo a few pages earlier.
Notes are included as what happens if the Player Characters fail or need to retreat and come back again, along with several plot hooks which can be run after it. Full stats are given for both Maserelt and Erhehta as well as of the latter’s Straw Weaver clan of the Bison riders, which is useful if the Game Master has not run either of the previous scenarios. Beyond the details of the adventure, The Lifethief includes two sets of encounters—Praxian and Dead Place encounters. These take up almost a third of the scenario and range from the mundane to the weird, but are all nicely done and never less than interesting. They include a trapped and angry rhino, an ancient ghost with a hatred of beast riders, Morokanth traders, lost spirits, and more. The Dead Place encounters can of course be used to supplement the scenario and the Praxian encounters used to supplement other adventures on the plains of Prax. Overall, they are a nice edition with the Praxian encounters otherwise could have formed the basis of a supplement of their own.
Is it worth your time?Yes—The Lifethief: An Adventure for RuneQuest Glorantha is a useful and easy addition for any campaign set on the plains of Prax, especially if the Game Master has run Stone and Bone and The Gifts of Prax, and wants an extra set of encounters.No—The Lifethief: An Adventure for RuneQuest Glorantha is setting specific to the plains of Prax and even if the Game Master is running a campaign there, it may be too challenging a scenario for some players as it takes away their characters’ magic.Maybe—The Lifethief: An Adventure for RuneQuest Glorantha is a short but useful filler combat focused adventure, but not much more than that. The extra encounters are inventive and easy to add to a Prax set campaign.

The Big Crunch has begun. The constant expansion of the universe has halted and gone into reverse. The universe is shrinking, grinding down into an inevitable nothingness. It came at a point where civilisation neared a great revolution, but destroyed its potential in a flurry of greed and conflict. In the bleak and dreary Tenebris system, explorers had discovered gemstones which grew naturally cyst-like in the soils of the system’s barren moons and planets. The refractive qualities of these gemstones led to technological advancements such as the giant bridger ships which tore through the fabric of spacetime, as well as a Gem Rush. Individual prospectors and corporations raced into the system searching for gems to mine, the inevitable tensions and confrontations escalating into the Gem War which lasted decades, spread beyond the Tenebris system, disrupting central control and leading the isolation of system after system as the war ended. That was a decade ago. In the Tenebris system, survivors cling to life aboard the outposts and spacestations, aligned with one faction another, trying to get by even as technology breaks down and is recycled again and again… Static seems to emanate from any and all electronics. From the Void between the stars come strange and portentous whispers of things to come, even as it reaches out and corrupts and mutates those it touches.

This is the set-up to Death in Space, the blue-collar Science Fiction survival roleplaying game published through Free League Publishing following a successful Kickstarter campaign. It is from the same design team as Mörk Borg, the pitch-black pre-apocalyptic fantasy roleplaying game which brings a Nordic death metal sensibility to the Old School Renaissance. Inspired by 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Fistful of Dollars, Alien, Blade Runner, Escape from New York, The Expanse, Firefly, IO, Moon, Outland, Prospect, Sunshine, Total Recall, and The Warriors, it is a game of desperate survival and building and relying upon the your reputation, of creating a home or refuge in the face of an unknown future as the universe winds down…

A Player Character in Death in Space has four abilities—Body, Dexterity, Savvy, and Tech. He has an Origin, and details such as a Background, Trait, Drive, Looks, Past Allegiance, and Hit Points and Defence Rating. He also has some starting gear and starting bonus as well as a personal trinket. Each ability is determined by rolling a four-sided die and then subtracting the result of another four-sided die roll from the first. This gives a value between +3 and -3, which is used as the modifier for Player Character actions and dice rolls. The six Origins include four humans—Punk, SolPod, Velocity Cursed, and Void. The Punk is a rebellious non-conformist; the SolPod spends years in hibernation; Velocity Cursed, who have begun to lose their connection with reality and shift and flicker and glitch; and Void are berobed and mask-wearing nihility shamans who visions at the edge of the universe. The other two are artificial, the Carbon being short-lived exo-womb grown androids who prefer to live in an EVA suit, and the Chrome is an ancient A.I. turned cyborg. Each Origin has two benefits. To create a character, a player rolls the dice for his character’s abilities, chooses or rolls for an Origin, picks one of its benefits, and then rolls for Background, Trait, Drive, Looks, and Past Allegiance as well as starting gear and bonus plus the personal trinket. He also determines Hit Points and Defence Rating. He also has some starting gear, and possibly a starting bonus if the Player Character’s abilities are all negative, as well as a personal trinket.

Jameson
Body +2 Dexterity +1 Savvy+0 Tech +2
Origin: Punk
Benefit: Green Thumb
Background: Moon Outlaw
Trait: Cynical
Drive: To never show weakness
Looks: Trucker Cap with Patch
Past Allegiance: The Winning Side
Hit Points: 3
Defence Rating: 13
Holos: 16
Equipment: Nomad Starting Kit

Once the players have their characters, they jointly create a Hub, their home and base of operations which can be a small outpost on a moon, a module attached to a larger space station, or a small spacecraft. Each has a power source and a set of core functions, the latter consisting of a command centre, crew quarters, life support, and a mess. This Hub has a Background and a Quirk, both of which are rolled for. During play, the Player Characters can add further modules, but need to maintain both power and oxygen supplies, and this is a major drive within the game.

XR-3A-29 Hab Bloc
Defense Rating: 11
Max. Condition: 5
Fuel Capacity: 4
Power Source: Standard Industrial Generator (OP 3)
Background: Site of a Holy Pilgrimage. Pilgrims still show up.
Quirk: Interior is painted in luminous colours, charged by UV light.

Mechanically, Death in Space is simple. If a player wants his character to act, he rolls a twenty-sided die and applies the appropriate ability to the result. If the total is twelve or more, the character succeeds. If the situation is combat, the target number is the target’s Defence Rating. If the Player Character is at an Advantage or Disadvantage, his player rolls two twenty-sided dice and applies the higher or lower result respectively.

However, a failed roll grants a Player Character gains a Void Point, to a maximum of four. These can be expended to gain Advantage on an ability check or attack roll, or to activate a Cosmic Mutation. A Cosmic Mutation can be a ‘Code Generator’ which converts part of the brain into a computer that can write programs—encoded with the character’s DNA—and then be transferred by skin contact or ‘Feedback Loop’, which enables them to leap back in time ten seconds at the cost of an important memory. (A Cosmic Mutation can be gained at character creation, though this is unlikely, and instead is usually gained through advancement and then randomly.)

Further, if a Void Point is spent to gain Advantage on roll and that roll is still failed, there is the possibility of the Player Character gaining Void Corruption. This can include suffering daymares and nightmares about a suffocating darkness, a part of the body being surrounded by cloud of darkness, seeing through someone else’s eyes when you sleep, and so on… They are in the main weird or odd and personalise the strangeness of the Big Crunch.

One aspect missing from the rules in Death in Space is anything covering fear or sanity. This is because it is not a blue-collar Science Fiction horror roleplaying game. It is a blue-collar Science Fiction survival roleplaying game, its focus is so much on this that you barely notice the absence of any sanity or fear rules. Then when you do notice, it feels refreshing, to not have to roll for either, to leave that entirely in the hands of the players and their roleplaying as needed.

The technical aspects of Death in Space being a Science Fiction roleplaying game are kept relatively simple in keeping with the lightness of the mechanics. They highlight how everything is wearing out and that repairs are often a necessity. They also highlight how important it is to maintain or obtain supplies of both oxygen and power. Similarly, the rules for combat are kept short and brutal, even those for spacecraft combat.

In terms of a setting, Death in Space begins with a number of principles—that nothing is new, communication is limited, that the scars of the war remain and have not been forgotten, travel takes time and little is known about places or stations at the edge of or beyond the Tenebris System, and whilst it is possible to live beyond the normal human lifespan, typically through cryo-sleep, the result is often a life of loneliness and loss. The actual given setting is the Tenebris System, the focal point of the Gem War, home to seekers, scoundrels, and miners, as well as various cults, all doing their best (or perhaps their worst) to survive. Several planets and moons across the system are described, but the starting point is the Iron Ring, a dilapidated structure consisting of thousands of old space stations and spacecraft shackled together and surrounding the yellow moon, Inauro. The ramshackle structure is divided into numerous irregularly sized sectors, connected to each other, but not always easily accessible, some inhabited, some not. Life is harsh, the inhabitants typically needing to ally themselves with or join one faction or another to get by, often relying upon their word and their reputation as the ultimate currency.

The Iron Ring is the setting for the starting scenario, ‘Welcome to the Ring’. The Player Characters have arrived with their Hub, towed into place and attached at a convenient docking port at Aurum 80 in the Aurum sector. They are low on supplies, and they owe a debt for the docking fees. How they pay this off is up to them, but perhaps they can involve themselves in the growing feud between two gangs which between control the subsector’s main resources. Both the set-up and the areas of Aurum 80 are described in some detail, but there is no one solution to the situation given. How their characters become involved in the situation and how they resolve it is entirely open and up to the players. What is notable about this is that perhaps the most obvious solution—the application of violence—is not immediately available. Player Characters in Death in Space rarely enter play armed, and whilst it is certainly possible for them to obtain weapons, initially it will be down to their wits and their persuasiveness to make any progress. This is indicative of the roleplaying game’s genre, the blue-collar Science Fiction of space as a working environment.

Beyond ‘Welcome to the Ring’, Death in Space provides the Game Master with table after table of ideas and inspiration. These include tables for Iron Ring locations, but deep space nightmares, obstacles, and space encounters, as well lists of modules and spacecraft and more. The Game Master is free to refer to these, but also encouraged to accept player suggestions too. Notable amongst these table are the only mention of aliens in Death in Space. These are a mixture of tools and threats and oddities that add to the unknown of the end of the universe. Their inclusion here also moves them away from being the focus of the game, and they could even be ignored all together if the Game Master wants to keep her Tenebris System wholly humanocentric.

Physically, Death in Space is black, a lot of black. Or rather, rather it is primarily white text or line art on black, with the occasional spot of colour as contrast. It is stark and elegant, befitting the vast loneliness of space and the Tenebris System. At first glance, it does look like the layout of Mörk Borg, but it is far more subtle and less in your face upon further examination, and therefore, may be easier to read. At least visually, the only connection between the two might be the coloured cross motif used on the chapter pages. The artwork is excellent, and the book is well written and engaging.

Death in Space is a roleplaying game about survival in the face of nihilism and an uncaring universe. It is a roleplaying game about hope and co-operation in the face of nihilism and an uncaring universe. Where in Mörk Borg, the Player Characters can be darkly and often humorously adversarial, this is not the case in Death in Space. The Player Characters have come together and need to work together to survive what is a starkly brutal and often unknown future, a future which can see them radically altered, and ultimately, this is what sets Death in Space apart from other blue collar Science Fiction roleplaying games.

What We Give To Alien Gods starts in an odd fashion. It starts with advice as to how to use the module, introduces a new optional rule for Conviction—a Player Character’s belief in an idea or concept; discusses the nature of the Triathal language, its trifold glyphs which combine into layers to form sentences and concepts and used by an alien species which did not vocalise; the Xenoconstellations of star patterns used by a cosmic entity as a form of communication; and examples of both the Triathal language and the Xenoconstellations. Certainly, both are brilliantly alien and both will hopefully help the challenge of the Warden imparting the stellar strangeness of What We Give To Alien Gods to her players and their characters. Yet nearly a quarter of the way into the module and the Warden has no idea as what is going on, what the module is about, and what the significance of anything she has just read is.

Which means that What We Give To Alien Gods breaks one of the cardinal rules of a roleplaying scenario. Which is…

Tell the Game Master what the scenario is about upfront.

What We Give To Alien Gods is a scenario for the MOTHERSHIP Sci-Fi Horror Roleplaying Game, the roleplaying game of blue collar Science Fiction Horror, inspired by films such as Outland, Dark Star, Silent Running, and Event Horizon, as well as Alien and Aliens. Hyperspace anomalies, reports of an alien structure, a missing contact, a seemingly telepathic cry for help, or even an inexplicable urge all hook the Player Characters into travelling Gaelar XII, a distant magellanic nebula. Once inside, they must negotiate dense pockets of cosmic dust, ionised gas storms, ship debris, thermal spikes, and more before alighting before a strange structure. Consisting of three immense pillars with a massive cube suspended between the three, which all together rotate as one, this is Maerkithelth, an unfathomably ancient temple to alien god. The Crew can enter any one of the pillars and begin to explore, finding signs of an alien civilisation—tools and devices left lying about, as well as extensive patterns of glyphs. They will also find indications that someone has already beaten them to the temple.

Discovering both the temple and the existence of aliens can have a profound effect upon a MOTHERSHIP Sci-Fi Horror Roleplaying Game, depending on whether or not they exist in the Warden’s campaign. However, even if they already exist, the presence of the Triathals and what they have left behind—especially the Triathal language, will have a profound upon the members of the Crew. This is intentional since the Scientist in the Crew, in particular, one with the Xenoesotericism, Xenomysticism, and Xenolinguitsics, will be translating the Triathal language and learning more and more of just what Maerkithelth contains and is protecting the universe from. Or even protecting the universe from which the Triathal came. There is such an emphasis upon the Triathal language and upon the role of the Scientist in the scenario that it is not like other MOTHERSHIP Sci-Fi Horror Roleplaying Game scenarios, and whilst the author describes it as a “A dungeon-crawl through an alien temple”, it is not that either. Rather, What We Give To Alien Gods is a puzzle crawl, an exploration of an environment that requires elements of a language to be learned in combination with skill rolls and the clues left behind by other explorers. Which obviously places a great deal of emphasis upon the player with the Scientist role. This is not say that the other roles in MOTHERSHIP Sci-Fi Horror Roleplaying Game do not figure in the scenario—and What We Give To Alien Gods does advice to that end—but the Scientist predominates.

Much of What We Give To Alien Gods is devoted to describing the interior of the three pillars of Maerkithelth and the almighty cube which hangs between them. It is only after this that we read of a major threat to both the Crew and possibly the universe. Doctor Aislin Grahm has an obsession with the cosmos and Xenomysticism and is driven—or possibly pulled—by whatever Maerkithelth actually contains (or keeps contained). However much like the explanation of what the plot to What We Give To Alien Gods, this does not really become obvious to very later in the book, over two thirds of the book in the listing of the NPCs, and it applies to her as much as it does the other, often very alien NPCs the Crew is likely to encounter.

Which means that What We Give To Alien Gods breaks one of the cardinal rules of a roleplaying scenario. Again. Which is…

Tell the Game Master what the scenario is about upfront.

Yet these are not the only issues with What We Give To Alien Gods and to be fair, they can be overcome as part of the Warden’s preparation. The real issue is with the extra element of preparation. For not only does the Warden have to prepare the scenario, she also has to learn how its puzzles work and learn the Triathal language, enough to be able understand and if not teach it to her players, then guide them through their learning process. In effect, the Warden has to play through aspects of What We Give To Alien Gods in order to really grasp what is going on. Then once prepared, the scenario—as the author advises—requires a lot of buy in upon the part of the players and their characters.

Physically, What We Give To Alien Gods is a solid little book. It has a sense of the ineffable and the alien in its look and use of art, of a place that is not quite like ours, and it is lovely booklet to look at. However, the writing is often succinct and there are no maps of Maerkithelth which might make it easier for the Warden to visualise and then impart that to her players.

Inspired by films and television such as Event Horizon, The Expanse, Interstellar, and Arrival, there is no denying that What We Give To Alien Gods is an ambitious treatment of Cosmic Horror for the MOTHERSHIP Sci-Fi Horror Roleplaying Game. It is conceptually brilliant and the result is fantastically weird and creepy and unsettling, but the effort to get that to the table, that is where What We Give To Alien Gods does not quite deliver.