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

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The first thing you notice about Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 1 is the dice. Of course, you are meant to. A set of black polyhedral dice with red lettering in a silver tin on a red cardboard background. It stands out. After all, what gamer does not like a set of dice? And they are nice dice. They sit on the front of the first issue of Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer, a partwork from Hachette Partworks Ltd. A partwork is an ongoing series of magazine-like issues that together form a completed set of a collection or a reference work. In the case of Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer, it is designed to introduce the reader to the world and the play of Dungeons & Dragons, specifically, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. With the tag line, ‘Learn – Play – Explore’, over the course of multiple issues the reader will learn about Dungeons & Dragons, how it is played and what options it offers, the worlds it opens up to explore, and support this with content that can be brought to the table and played. Over the course of eighty issues, it will create a complete reference work for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, provide scenarios and adventures that can be played, and support it with dice, miniatures, and more.
Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 1 does not come with the dice. There the first issue of the magazine, there is the ‘Introduction to Combat’, there are four ready-to-play character sheets, and there is advertising. The main item is Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 1. Future issues of the partwork will include secretions dedicated to the seven gameplay elements—‘Sage Advice’, ‘Character Creation’, ‘The Dungeon Master’, ‘Spellcasting’, ‘Combat’, ‘Encounters’, and ‘Lore’—of Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, but Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 1 concentrates on ‘Sage Advice’, ‘Character Creation’, and ‘Lore’. This starts with the basics of play, ‘The World of D&D’, ‘The Structure of Play’, and more… Notably, in ‘The World of D&D’ it mentions several worlds, including Dark Sun and Ravenloft, but notes that the Forgotten Realms is where all of the adventures to come in Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer will be set. It mentions the origins of the roleplaying game too and its creators, alongside a photograph of the original Dungeons & Dragons. Then it explains the ‘Structure of Play’, how the dice work and the concept of Difficulty Classes, the role of the Dungeon Master, and then it breaks down the elements of a Player Character, including Species and Class, equipment, and more. This includes the backgrounds for the four pre-generated Player Characters included in Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 1. There is advice too, throughout. Some of this is done in ‘Top Tip’ boxes, split between those for the Dungeon Master and those for the player. For example, a ‘DM Tip Top’ gives advice on how to present an NPC using a one sentence description and motivation, whilst a player ‘Top Tip’ suggests that he think about not just his character’s best qualities and abilities, but also his worst, in particular, as a means to aid in roleplaying the character. Elsewhere the advice is more general, covering aspects such as the Session Zero, the lack of necessity to know all of the rules to play and run the game, and rolling the dice behind the screen. The latter is perhaps the most controversial piece in Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 1 suggesting as it does that the Dungeon Master use a screen to anonymise her dice results in order to prevent an unnecessary party death if she is rolling particularly well.
Is this good advice? Well, yes and no. Yes, because you do not want the players to necessarily fail on their first encounter or exposure to Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition and because if they do, there is no real advice as to what to do next in the pages of Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 1 in the event of Player Character death. Yes, because the publisher wants the Dungeon Master and her players to remain interested in Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth edition, and thus, Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer. Yet no because it is not entirely fair on the game itself which relies on the randomness of the dice rolls and the possibility of death is part of the game itself. It will be interesting to see how this issue is addressed in future issues.
The ’Lore’ section in Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 1 describes the town of Phandalin, the location for the scenario from the original Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set and also the more recent release from Wizards of the Coast, Phandelver and Below – The Shattered Obelisk. It gives a one-page introduction to the town in readiness for the ‘New & Exclusive Adventure’ in Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 1, which is more of a detailed Encounter rather than a full adventure. It is, nevertheless, described as ‘Adventure 1 – 1 King of the Hill’, so that suggested that there is more of the adventure to come. ‘King under the Hill’ is set in the Stonehill Inn in Phandalin. It is intended to be played in one or two hours and involves a mix of combat and exploration with a little roleplaying thrown in. It is clearly explained, involves just the two linked monsters, and as with the rest of the magazine, there are DM Top Tips throughout such as describing particular feature of one of the monsters and reminding the Dungeon Master should describing the scene for her players and asking them what they want to do next. It is all clearly presented and easy to read from the page. In addition, the events of ‘King under the Hill’ are tied into Phandelver and Below – The Shattered Obelisk so that a Dungeon Master could add this encounter to that campaign if she wanted.
In comparison to the rest of Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 1, the included bonus ‘Introduction to Combat’ booklet is digest sized and has wire hoops to help it sit in the binders designed for the partwork. In eight pages, the booklet takes the reader through ‘The Rules of Engagement’, covering surprise, establishing positions, initiative, actions such as attacking, casting spells, helping, hiding, and more, before explaining Hit Points and damage and its effects. Then, in the ‘Combat Example’ it gives an example of combat using the pre-generated Player Characters included with Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 1 and the scenario, ‘King under the Hill’. It is designed to show how a round or two of combat could play out rather than should.
The four Player Characters in Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 1 have their own sheet each. They include a Human Rogue with the Charlatan background, a Hill Dwarf Cleric with the Acolyte background, a Wood Elf with Outlander background, and a Halfling Wizard with the Sage background. They are done on standard Dungeons & Dragons character sheets and are completely filled with all of the details needed to play, including a range of spells for both the Cleric and Wizard. They lack background on the sheets though, but otherwise they are fine.
Then, of course, there is the advertising, all pushing the reader to subscribe to future issues of Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer. The simplest of this is a request to the reader’s nearest newsagent to reserve forthcoming copies, but the more complex highlights the Special Subscription Offer and the free gifts that the reader will receive if he decides to subscribe. These include more dice, a dice tray, binders for issues of Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer, and so. Perhaps the most ridiculous of these the ‘Dice Jail’, a wooden mini-dice jail into which a player can temporarily imprison dice because they have been rolling badly. The six-page flyer is a mixture of the informative and the advertising, providing a good overview of Dungeons & Dragons at the actual table with a photograph also used in the first issue of Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer. It includes a quick and dirty overview of the seven gameplay elements— ‘Sage Advice’, ‘Character Creation’, ‘The Dungeon Master’, ‘Spellcasting’, ‘Combat’, ‘Encounters’, and ‘Lore’—and just some of the extras that will accompany future issues. It all feels unrelenting and over the top, but its inclusion is understandable.
Penultimately, consider this. Bar the Dungeons & Dragons Annual, it is difficult to identify anything to have been published for the current edition of Dungeons & Dragons, let alone prior editions, in the United Kingdom since the days of TSR (UK) and the mid-eighties. Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 1 might very well be the first in several decades, and unlike the Dungeons & Dragons Annual, what Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 1 does is show the reader what the roleplaying game is like and how it is played, rather than simply telling him.
Ultimately, there is the cost to consider with Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer. There is no denying that Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 1 is inexpensive, but that is how the partwork concept works. The first issue or two is inexpensive to draw the purchaser in, its contents designed to entice him to buy further issues or even subscribe. However, as the subject of a partwork, Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer is going to be different to other partworks, which traditionally collect a series of figurines or the parts of a big model. Dungeons & Dragons already exists as a complete game in its own right and a gamer need not collect any of Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer to start playing. He can just buy the core rules or purchase a starter set. What Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer offers as an alternative is a gentler introduction to the roleplaying game, released in easily digestible and playable issue. Plus of course, the gifts that come with the issues. It is eighty issues though and that though does come to a grand total of £770. It is as they say a definite investment in Dungeons & Dragons.
Physically, Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 1 is very well presented, in full colour using the Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition trade dress and lots and lots of Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition artwork. So, the production values are high, colourful, and the writing is supported with lots of ‘Top Tip’ sections. The result is that Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 1 is physically engaging. The core of it though, differs from a traditional magazine. Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 1 and the pre-generated Player Characters are glued together and designed to split and store in the partwork’s binders.
There is no denying that Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 1 is great value for money. The set of Dungeons & Dragons dice with the tin is worth the price alone, and that may well be the only reason that some purchasers buy it. But if you have never played Dungeons & Dragons then not only do you get your own set of dice, but you also get something that is easy to sit down and digest, prepare, and then explain and run in the space of an evening. By the end of session, both Dungeon Master and her players should have a good idea of how the roleplaying game is played and know whether they want to continue with Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 2—or even leap to the full Dungeons & Dragons experience. Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 1 is quite possibly the most cost-effective introduction to Dungeons & Dragons to have been released to the general public.

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

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

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What is it?The Gaia Complex – Quick Start is the quick-start for The Gaia Complex – A Game of Flesh and Wires, the Science Fiction, Cyberpunk roleplaying game published by Hansor Publishing.

It includes an extensive explanation of the setting, rules for actions and combat, details of the arms, armour, and equipment fielded by the Player Characters, two ‘Data Seeds’ (or scenario outlines and hooks), and five ready-to-play, Player Characters, or Agents.

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

The quick-start is lightly illustrated, but the artwork is decent. The rules are a slightly stripped down version from the core rulebook, but do include examples of the rules which speed the learning of the game.

How long will it take to play?
The Gaia Complex – Quick Start and its two ‘Data Seeds’ are designed to be played through in two or so sessions.

What else do you need to play?
The Gaia Complex – Quick Start requires two twelve-sided dice and three three-sided (or six-sided) dice per player.

Who do you play?
The five Player Characters a Human Operator, an ex-cop, made redundant, turned mercenary, a Human technician and drone operator, Human Operator, an ex-gang member and corporate enforcer, a Feral with his partner dog, and a Human Hacker.

How is a Player Character defined?
An Agent has seven stats—Brawn, Reflexes, Guts, Brains, Allure, Perception, and Grit. Stats are rated between one and ten. There are multiple skills. These do not have a value. A Player Character either has them or does not have them and his proficiency in them is determined by their associated stat. Endurance represents his physical health and Pressure his mental health.

How do the mechanics work?
Mechanically, The Gaia Complex uses two twelve-sided dice to determine the outcome of a skill attempt. A roll equal to or below the skill’s associated stat, after any modifiers for complexity, counts as a success, on either die. If both succeed, the Player Character will succeed at the skill attempt, whether he has the skill or not. If both roll higher than the modified stat value, the attempt is a failure, and if both are equal to twelve, it is a critical failure. If the stat value is below the difficulty rating of the skill test, the player has to roll the dice, but if higher, his character automatically succeeds. A specialisation in a skill allows the reroll of a single die if the result was not a twelve. Grit can be spent by the player to modify the die result.

How does combat work?
Combat in The Gaia Complex uses the same mechanics. It includes support actions such as ‘Jack Into a Hacking Rig’, ‘Perform a Hacking Action’, ‘Perform a Drone Action’, and ‘Meld – Feral Only’ which fit the setting. The range of other options are what you would expect for a modern modern game with firearms, included aimed shot, snapshot, and burst fire. Burst fire enables the attacker to reroll a single damage die. Combat is deadly, with Endurance reduced to zero indicating death, whilst Pressure reduced to zero, either from a Vampire special ability or the effects of a program in the Core.

In addition to the rules for combat, there are rules for drone use and access and hacking The Core, a virtual space akin to Cyberspace. Hacking usually targets secret data stores and other locations below the extensive data archives of The Core. It requires a hacking Rig and Jacking in and in combat, a hacking Player Character can only do one action per round. Out of combat, hacking is handled in narrative fashion rather than rolling for every encounter. Several dangerous countermeasures are detailed to ward off any hacking attempt.

How do Vampire and Feral abilities work?
A Feral can Meld with a ‘partnered’ animal, which requires the use of the Meld skill. This enables him to imprint his consciousness into the animal and see through its eyes and act as if he is the animal. Damage suffered by the animal is suffered as Pressure damage by the Feral.

Vampires are not included in The Gaia Complex – Quick Start.

What do you play?
The setting for The Gaia Complex – Quick Start is the year 2119. Following the Resource War of 2039 and the damage done to the environment, humanity was forced to retreat into sealed metropolises. New Europe, which covers most of the European continent is the largest. in addition to the development of atmospheric processing and other meteorological protective technology, cyberware was developed and spread, true A.I.s came online, including in new Europe, Gaia. Her technological developments would revolutionise society, including heavy surveillance and increasingly, robotic law enforcement. The streets exploded into guerilla warfare as a resistance, augmented by cyberware, arose against the surveillance and law enforcement as hackers attempted to stop the influence of the A.I.s. In between horrors out myth have swept onto the streets—vampires! Eventually, a synthetic blood source was developed as food for the vampires, but that does not stop vampire gangs in search of real from being a problem. Another species are the Feral, which are capable of melding with the consciousness of an animal, which are mostly biogenetic closes in 2119.

The Gaia Complex – Quick Start includes two of what it calls a ‘Data Seed’. This is not a scenario as such, but rather an expanded hook that includes an idea, one or more suggested scenes, and more. In ‘The Raid’, the Player Characters are hires to infiltrate and steal a file called ‘Hivemind’ from a research facility in Bruss (old Brussels). The three suggested scenes describe the research facility and what might be found inside and below it, followed by a difficult escape. The second ‘Data Seed’, ‘The Hack’, the Player Characters are hired to kill a mercenary hacker. Its suggested scenes involve the Player Characters hunting down the hacker and confronting him in his base.

Is there anything missing?
The Gaia Complex – Quick Start is complete.

Is it easy to prepare?
The core rules presented in The Gaia Complex – Quick Start are relatively easy to prepare. However, the Game Master will need to do some extra preparation in order to have either ‘Data Seed’ ready to play.
Is it worth it?
Yes and no. Anyone wanting something that can be run with relatively little preparation, including a read-to-play scenario is advised to look elsewhere as each ‘Data Seed’ in The Gaia Complex – Quick Start requires more preparation than a standard scenario would. So, no. However, a Game Master happy to undertake that preparation or run either ‘Data Seed’ from the given information will have no issue with The Gaia Complex – Quick Start. So, yes.
Where can you get it?
The Gaia Complex – Quick Start is available to download here.

As well as contributing to Free RPG Day every year Goodman Games also has its own ‘Dungeon Crawl Classics Day’, which sadly, can be a very North American event. The day is notable not only for the events and the range of adventures being played for Goodman Games’ roleplaying games, but also for the scenarios it releases specifically to be played on the day. For ‘Dungeon Crawl Classics Day 2020’—the very first, which took place on Saturday, May 16th, 2020, the publisher released two items. The first was DCC Day #1: Shadow of the Beakmen, a single scenario for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game. The second was the DCC Day 2020 Adventure Pack, which not only provided support for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game and Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic, but also for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set, with a scenario for each. This format has been has been followed for each subsequent DCC Day, that is, a single scenario and an anthology containing two or three scenarios, all of them short, relatively easy to run and add to an ongoing campaign, or even use as a one-shot of convention game.
DCC Day 2020 Adventure Pack is actually longer than most scenario releases for either Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game, Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic, or the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set! The trilogy opens with ‘Expedition to Algol’, a scenario for First Level Player Characters for Dungeon Crawl Classics. The Player Characters are engaged by the wizard Bartakus-Thrum to participate in an experiment which will see them transported to another planet. Fortunately, the experiment is a complete success and the Player Characters find themselves under the intense heat and light and humidity of an alien world and its three suns—two yellow and one green—in a city of several thousand lizard-men being besieged by another several thousand cat-men. Unfortunately, the Player Characters have no way of getting back home, so as it turns out, the experiment is not actually a complete success. Their situation though, is not quite as dire as it sounds. Their arrival has been foretold and the Hall of Tests awaits them…
The Hall of Tests consists of a hollow tower which descends deeper into the ground and is dominated by a giant statute of a humanoid with three eyes. It has a number of rooms leading off the main tower that the Player Characters will work their way down, exploring and examining its techno-magical features. In the long-abandoned complex, the Player Characters will discover the source of the animal-men outside the tower and of course, in doing so, will transform themselves, some of the secrets of the thoroughly Lawful Evil Space Wasps which once ruled this world and their technology, a very helpful purple arm, and even a way home! The most fun part of this, at least for the Judge, is going to be portraying the arm. Ultimately, the Player Characters can find a way home, but if they are in any way transformed, will they want to? If they decide to stay, the Judge will find further information about the world of Algol in Dungeon Crawl Classics #84: Peril on the Purple Planet and of course, ‘Expedition to Algol’ can be used as an introduction to that campaign setting. ‘Expedition to Algol’ is an excellent scenario, whether used as a one-shot or introduction.
‘The Heist’ is the second adventure in the DCC Day 2020 Adventure Pack. This is for Third Level Player Characters and is written for use with the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set. As small-time crooks—thieves, burglars, and cutpurses—the Player Characters all know that the treasure hoard of the merchant-lord Duke Oraso is only bettered by the Overlord of Lankhmar himself. The most famous of his fabulous treasures are the Stars of Lankhmar, three enormous jewels that the duke has pledged to the Gods of Lankhmar, though not yet delivered. Whilst many a thief has sworn an oath into his cups to steal such treasures, none have succeeded, but when news comes that Duke Oraso will throw open the gates of his city manse and host a grand fête for all the nobles of the city, the opportunity to burgle one of the richest men in the city and do it under his very nose, is not to be missed. With this set-up, ‘The Heist’ is one-part grand soirée, one-part mystery play, and one-part dungeon, and all together, a grand affair.
The Player Characters will need to procure disguises and decide how they want to get into the duke’s manse and then begin their search of it—above and below ground—for the duke’s treasure vault. There are lots of opportunities for sneaking around, roleplaying (especially with dissolute members of the nobility), and larceny, all under the watchful gaze of the duke’s guards and his assistant, the Vizier. For the most part, the Player Characters are free to move around as they want, though their disguises will work better in some areas of the Manse than other, and there are a number of timed events throughout the evening. The Player Characters only really have to be present for grand finale to the duke’s mystery play. The scenario includes a full map of the Manse, both above and below ground, a table of rumours and gossip, timeline, a big table of nobles in attendance whom the Player Characters can mingle and hobnob with, a smaller table of treasures to purloin, and a quick-sheet of rules from the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set for easy reference or if the Judge is running the scenario using just Dungeon Crawl Classics. The only thing missing perhaps is a table of possible relationships between the nobles attending the fête and more item descriptions of the things that the Player Characters can steal to add flavour and verisimilitude rather than just monetary value.
‘The Heist’ is a grand affair and at twenty-four pages in length, not just the longest scenario in the DCC Day 2020 Adventure Pack, but its highlight. This is a great scenario, very well supported, with plenty of options in terms of how the Player Characters approach what could be a very Oceans 11-style heist. However, it is far too big and far too detailed to be really run as a one-shot or convention scenario as suggested, and given how good the scenario is, what is it still doing hidden away in the pages of the DCC Day 2020 Adventure Pack and not being more readily available for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Judge? Hopefully, if there is an anthology of scenarios for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set, this one will be included. It deserves a reprint and to be better known to Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Judges.
The third and final scenario is ‘Ruins of Future Past’. Designed for Player Characters of First Level, this is for use with Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic. It begins with the Player Characters stumbling into a temporal rift and being sent swirling back in time to find themselves in a stone complex inhabited by an annoyed out of time ‘ghost’, and full of weirdness such as edible mushrooms seeking human comfort that sprout from the walls, a puppet show performed by skeletons, a library arranged as a perpetual spiral of book piles, and a thing of wax stretched so membranously thin it covers a whole room. This is the partially abandoned workshop of Ram’Gan, a wizard who specialises in the magic of time and considers himself to be a ‘chronoartist’ and much of the contents of the workshop consists of incomplete or failed experiments from his ‘art’. Located in a former temple to a minor pharaoh, ‘Ruins of Future Past’ concludes with a confrontation with one or more temporal echoes of Ram’Gan, such as ‘Primordial Ram’Gan the Vicious’ or ‘Black Powder Ram’Gan the Leadslinger’ and the discovery of a ‘time tunnel’. This can be used to get the Player Characters home or alternatively, thrown through time to their next adventure.
Although there are some technological treasures to be found at the end of the adventure, ‘Ruins of Future Past’ is only nominally a scenario for Mutant Crawl Classics. Of course, it pulls the Player Characters from Terra A.D. and out of time, but what they end up in feels like and is written as a dungeon more suitable for Dungeon Crawl Classics than Mutant Crawl Classics. The fact that the scenario is not written from the point of view of the Mutant Player Character and that the author suggests that it is “equally suitable for equivalent-level Dungeon Crawl Classics characters” lends itself to the suggestion that this was a Dungeon Crawl Classics adventure quickly repurposed to Mutant Crawl Classics with mentions of Terra A.D. at the beginning and end of the scenario. That said, as a Dungeon Crawl Classics adventure, ‘Ruins of Future Past’ delivers all of the Swords & Sorcery weirdness you would expect of a Dungeon Crawl Classics adventure and as a Mutant Crawl Classics adventure it works as a ‘fish out of water’—or ‘mutants out of time’—scenario. In either, its ‘thrown out of time’ start makes it easy to drop into a campaign and if the Judge wanted to start a time travel campaign using either Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic or the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game, this would be a good jumping off point.
Physically, the DCC Day 2020 Adventure Pack is as decently presented as you would expect from Goodman Games. The adventures are well-written, the artwork decent, and the cartography excellent.
Of course, the DCC Day 2020 Adventure Pack was a bargain when it was released for DCC Day back in 2020. After all, it was free! Plus, all three scenarios are playable, with one scenario—‘Expedition to Algol’—being good and one scenario—‘The Heist’—being really good. In fact, ‘The Heist’ is a must have scenario for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Judge, making the DCC Day 2020 Adventure Pack a worthwhile purchase for that alone. In which case, the other two adventures are a bonus.

The very latest entry in the Ticket to Ride franchise is Ticket to Ride: Berlin. Like those other Ticket to Ride games, it is another card-drawing, route-claiming board game based around transport links and like those other Ticket to Ride games, it uses the same mechanics. Thus the players will draw Transportation cards and then use them to claim Routes and by claiming Routes, link the two locations marked on Destination Tickets, the aim being to gain as many points as possible by claiming Routes and completing Destination Tickets, whilst avoiding losing by failing to complete Destination Tickets. Yet rather than being another big box game like the original Ticket to Ride, Ticket to Ride: Europe, or Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries, it takes its cue from Ticket to Ride: New York, Ticket to Ride: London, Ticket to Ride: Amsterdam, and Ticket to Ride: San Francisco. Part of the ‘City’ series for Ticket to Ride, it is thus a smaller game designed for fewer players with a shorter playing time, a game based around a city rather than a country or a continent. The entries in the series are also notably different in terms of theme and period.
Published by Days of Wonder and designed for play by two to four players, aged eight and up, Ticket to Ride: Berlin is easy to learn, can be played out of the box in five minutes, and played through in less than twenty minutes. As with the other entries in the Ticket to Ride ‘City’ series, Ticket to Ride: Berlin sees the players race across the city attempting to connect its various tourist hotspots. All of entries in the ‘City’ series are both set in their respective and have a them representative of their city. Thus, Ticket to Ride: New York had the players racing across Manhattan in the nineteen fifties via taxis; Ticket to Ride: London had the players racing across London in the nineteen sixties aboard the classic double-decker buses; Ticket to Ride: Amsterdam took the series back to the seventeenth century and had the players fulfilling Contracts by delivering goods across the Dutch port by horse and cart and claiming Merchandise Bonus if they take the right route; and Ticket to Ride: San Francisco continued the lack of trains in the series by having the players travel around ‘The City by the Bay’ aboard its icon form of transportation—the cable car! In Ticket to Ride: Berlin, the players can travel from the Teirgarten to Check-Point Charlie, from Charlottenburger Tor to Alexander-Platzfrom, from the Reichstag to the Zoo, either by the trams that crisscross the city or the underground which encircles it—or both!
Inside the small box can be found a small rectangular board which depicts the centre of Berlin, from Moabit, Charlottenburger Tor, and Kurfüstendamm in the west to Alexander-platz, Humbodt Forum, and Morotz-Platz in the east. The board has a scoring track at its eastern end, running from one to fifty, instead of being placed around the edge. There are Streetcar and Subway Car pieces in four colours (as opposed to the trains of standard Ticket to Ride), the Transportation cards drawn and used to claim routes between destinations, and the Destination Tickets indicating which two Destinations need to be connected to be completed. Both the Streetcar and the Subway Car pieces are nicely sculpted, the Streetcar pieces having a more rounded feel, as opposed to the square, more train-like Subway Car pieces. Each player begins play with eleven Streetcar pieces and five Subway Car pieces. The Transportation cards come in the standard colours for Ticket to Ride, but are illustrated with a different form of transport for each colour. So black is illustrated with a river cruise boat, blue with a taxi, green with a streetcar, purple with a bus, red with a train, orange with a subway car, and the wild card with a bicycle. This really makes the cards stand out and easier to view for anyone who suffers from colour blindness and the range of transport options give the game a greener feel. Similarly, the Destination Tickets are bright, colourful, and easy to read. As expected, the rules leaflet is clearly written, easy to understand, and the opening pages show how to set up the game. It can be read through in mere minutes and play started all but immediately.
In comparison to the boards in the other entries in the ‘City’ series, the one Ticket to Ride: Berlin is more functional than attractive. The various routes are laid out in strong coloours over a light tan streetmap of the city. It is not an unattractive board, but there is an austerity to it. Most routes are one, two, or three spaces in length, though there are three routes four spaces long, all of them grey in colour meaning that any colour can be used to claim them. The major difference with the board is that is that it is ringed by an underground system. Each only has space for one Subway Car piece, but the number of dots alongside the single space indicate the number of Transportation cards which have to be played to claim that route. These are either one, two or three Transportation cards. The board has two Route Scoring Tables, one for claiming the Streetcar routes and one for the Subway routes. In general, a player will score more points for claiming a Subway route than a Streetcar route. However, a player only has five Subway Car pieces to place as opposed to eleven Streetcar pieces.
Play in Ticket to Ride: Berlin is the same as standard Ticket to Ride. Each player starts the game with some Destination Tickets and some Transportation cards. On his turn, a player can take one of three actions. Either draw two Transportation cards; draw two Destination Tickets and either keep one or two, but must keep one; or claim a route between two connected Locations. To claim a route, a player must expend a number of cards equal to its length, either matching the colour of the route or a mix of matching colour cards and the multi-coloured cards, which essentially act as wild cards. Some routes are marked in grey and so can use any set of colours or multi-coloured cards. If the route is a Streetcar route, the player places a number of Streetcar pieces on it equal to its length. If it is subway route, he places just the single Subway Car piece on it, though he still has to expend the indicated number of Transportation cards.

In fact, Ticket to Ride: Berlin feels so much like standard Ticket to Ride that it is not immediately obvious what makes it different from either standard Ticket to Ride or the other entries in the ‘City’ series, each of which has a strong theme and an extra mechanic. For example, in Ticket to Ride: San Francisco, the players also collect Tourist Tokens. In Ticket to Ride: Berlin, the difference is the subway network which rings the city. A player only has five Subway car pieces to place, so they are a limited resource, but when played, they tend to score more points and they tend to connect routes that are harder to connect via the Streetcar pieces. Most Destinations in the centre of the board lie just a single route’s length from the beginning and end of a Subway route. Thus, for the longer Destination Tickets, a player will likely be wanting to claim the Subway routes to get around the board, whilst claiming routes into the city using the Streetcar pieces. It is an underplayed difference in comparison to titles in the ‘City’ series and to Ticket to Ride in general.

What Ticket to Ride: Berlin is reminiscent of is the Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 7: Japan + Italy and its Japan map. This introduced the ‘Bullet Train’ route, which when claimed using the indicated number of Transportation cards, only used a single Bullet Train piece to indicate that it had been claimed. The Subway routes in Ticket to Ride: Berlin work in a similar fashion, although unlike on the Japan map, they are not shared by all of the players and nobody is penalised for not building any Subway routes.

Physically, Ticket to Ride: Berlin is very nicely produced. Everything is produced to the high standard you would expect for a Ticket to Ride game.

Like Ticket to Ride: New York, Ticket to Ride: London, Ticket to Ride: Amsterdam, and Ticket to Ride: San Francisco, what Ticket to Ride: Berlin offers is all of the play of Ticket to Ride in a smaller, faster playing version, that is easy to learn and easy to transport. The balance in the game lies between claiming two different types of route, one that feels faster and goes further, as well as scoring more when claimed, but the player is limited to claiming five of this type in total, the other shorter, more flexible, with more pieces to put down and claim routes, but not scoring quite as much. This is more demanding than the other ‘City’ series titles and in combination with the fact that Ticket to Ride: Berlin is not as strongly thematic as the rest of the ‘City’ series, the result is that Ticket to Ride: Berlin feels austere in comparison. Of course, Ticket to Ride: Berlin still offers the same quick, competitive play of Ticket to Ride, but loses theme in favour of slightly more thoughtful play.

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

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

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Name: The Timeless TerrorPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Marco Danili

Setting: ArkhamProduct: Scenario
What You Get: Thirteen page, 1.17 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: All aboard the Groundhog Day Night Train! Plot Hook: A train ride. A MacGuffin. A murder. A train ride. A MacGuffin. A train ride. A MacGuffin. A train ride. A MacGuffin. A train ride. A MacGuffin. Doom.
Plot Support: Staging advice, twelve NPCs, one floorplan, and one Mythos monster.Production Values: Tidy
Pros# Big structured puzzle of a scenario# Easy to adapt to other time periods# Works well with fewer Investigators# One-shot or easy to add as in-between scenario# Siderodromophobia# Chronophobia# Cleithrophobia
Cons# Needs a good edit# NPC reactions underwritten# No handouts# No Sanity-loss for the alive-dead-alive murder victim?
Conclusion# Trapped on a terror twister train time-teaser# Chronological conundrum mystery that needs development in places, but otherwise a serviceable one-shot

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: On AirPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Quico Vicens-Picatto

Setting: ArkhamProduct: Scenario
What You Get: Fourteen page, 449.09 KB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Coast to Coast AM meets H.P. Lovecraft Plot Hook: The truth is out... side
Plot Support: Staging advice, five pre-generated ‘Investigators’, forty-six NPCs, and one Mythos monster.Production Values: Tidy
Pros# Experience the Mythos at telephone call’s length# Heavily structured plot# Strong roleplaying situation# Innovative and intriguing set-up# Excellent art# Homichlophobia# Radiophobia# Ichthyophobia
Cons# Needs a strong edit# Keeper has a lot—really, a ‘lot’—of NPCs to portray# Heavily structured plot# Reactive rather than investigative# Potential for underwhelming climax# Format needs reworking to be easier to use
Conclusion# Intriguing set-up leads to vicarious encounters with the Mythos# Lack of investigation means scenario relies on reaction and roleplaying in call-in show radio play

If there is revolution and repression above, there is freedom below. Freedom to be who you are. Freedom of expression. Except freedom from desire. Except freedom from your heart’s desire. Or is that what your desire from the Heart… or the Heart desires from you? No-one knows what the Heart is—inquisitive god-cocoon, time-travelling alien terraformer, unknowable world-engine, the land of the dead, the root of all magic, faith, and the occult across the world, or the manifestation of all the sins committed and considered in the Spire far above. In the mile-high tower of the Spire, the Aelfir—the High Elves—enjoy lives of extreme luxury, waited upon by the Destra—the Drow—whom they have subjugated and continue to oppress the criminal revolutionaries that would rise up and overthrow through them. In the City Beneath, where heretical churches have found the freedom to worship their forbidden gods and organised crime to operate the drug farms that supply the needs of the Spire above, the Aelfir find themselves free of conformity, the Destra free of repression. They are joined by Gnolls and Humans. The former are hyena-headed people from the far south, renowned for their demonology-driven mechanoccultism technology, those in the City Beneath free to be close to the Spire despite the cold war between the Aelfir and the Gnolls. The latter are renowned for their interest in the past, retro-engineers and tomb robbers who have developed their rediscovered technology into an arms industry, those in the City Beneath, free to delve and explore as is their wont. Some simply live in the City Beneath, but others are Delvers, driven to survive and delve deep below the Spire and the City Beneath. Here they will the remnants of the Vermissian, the great public transport network that would have bound the Spire and the City Beneath together. Then caves and tunnels, first of stone and rock, then of bone and teeth. The archaeological remainders of lost civilisations. Pockets where science and the occult are what they once were or are somewhere else. Realms lit by the stars of another world. Lost worlds home to mythic predators. The closer the delver gets to the Heart, the more the unreal the City Beneath becomes… In between are landmarks, perhaps points in the darkness where sanctuary can be found, more likely danger and death, but they are always stable points by which delvers can navigate ever closer to the Heart, a “rip in the holes between worlds”, and what drives them deeper…

This is the setting for Heart: The City Beneath, a roleplaying game that explores the horror, tragedies, and consequences of delving too deep into dungeons. Published by Rowan, Rook, and Decard Ltd. following a successful Kickstarter campaign, it would win multiple Ennie awards in 2012, including for Best Writing, Best Setting, and Best Layout. It is both a sequel and a companion roleplaying game to the publisher’s Spire: The City Must Fall. If Spire is punk anarchy and revolution, Heart is the wild frontier and a desire to know what is out there, if that is, the wild frontier is the equivalent of a mega-dungeon and the desire to know what is out there, is the yearning to know what calls to you far below. As a dungeon-delving roleplaying game, it puts the desires and wants of the Player Characters first and foremost, shifting from the simulationist play style of the dungeon-delving roleplaying game to a narrative play style, focusing on story, and the repercussions of the Player Character actions with the Game Master expected to undertake a minimal approach to preparation beyond a location—or Landmark—or two and the elements of their characters that the players want to explore. This shift does not mean that there is any less scope for action and heroism, but rather there is more freedom to interpret and describe how it happens. Although Heart has the feel of a mega-dungeon, or at least, a dungeon frontier, it is really designed to played in short campaigns, roughly ten sessions or so. This does not mean that Heart: The City Beneath is a ‘one-and-done’ roleplaying game, that is, once the Game Master and her players and their characters have delved deep into its bowels, everything that it offers has been played. Heart: The City Beneath offers numerous options within the types of Player Characters it includes and numerous sample Landmarks, as well as a handful of campaign ideas beyond the simple delve, that give it a high replay factor.

A Player Character in Heart: The City Beneath has an Ancestry, a Calling, and a Class. Together, these will determine his Skills, Domains, and Knacks, as well as Abilities. He also has Resistances. Ancestry—either Aelfir, Drow, Gnoll, or Human—does not provide any mechanical benefit, but suggests backgrounds and reasons why the Player Character is in the City Beneath, along with trinkets he has with him. A Calling, either Adventure, Enlightenment, Forced, Heartsong, or Penitent, develops the reason further. The Adventure indicates that the Player Character is looking for excitement, Enlightenment for secrets and answers, Forced that the Player Character is not in the City Beneath by choice, Heartsong that he is somehow connected to the Heart, and Penitent that he is making amends for betraying the trust of the organisation he belongs to. Each Calling gives a Core Ability, some questions to answer that explain why the Player Character is in the City Beneath, and a list of Beats to choose from. These consist of Minor, Major, and Zenith Beats, and the higher the tier of the Beat selected, the longer it takes to complete. A beat is used to signal to the Game Master what the player would like to see his character do in the next session or so. For example, a Minor Beat for the Adventure Calling could be ‘Defeat a powerful foe one-on-one’ or ‘Kick someone off a tall structure (they really deserved it)’. Of course, this forewarns the player as to what could happen in the forthcoming session and the Game Master is going to be enabling it, but not only does completing it grant the Player Character an Advancement within his Class, but it also gives the player a roleplaying and storytelling opportunity in both anticipating and completing it!

Heart: The City Beneath has nine Classes. Each provides a Resource, some equipment, and two core abilities as well as a list of Minor, Major, and Zenith Abilities. A Player Character will begin player with three Minor Abilities and a Major Ability, and will earn more through fulfilling the Beats from his Calling. Zenith Abilities mark the Player Character’s apotheosis, and their use the end of the Player Character’s story when used as they transform the City Beneath around him. The Cleaver is a hunter whose body warps in reaction to wilderness beyond the City Beneath and consume his prey to fuel his untamed powers. The Deadwalker is caught between life and death, having already died once, is never alone from that first death, and can walk between the worlds of the living and the dead. The Deep Apiarist has become a living hive for bees and together, they help him manipulate the magics of chaos and order. The Heretic is a member of the Church of the Moon, driven out of the city Above when the Aelfir first invaded. The Hound is a mercenary who draws upon the reputation and will of a lost regiment which was sent to a pacify the Heart sometime in the past. The Incarnadine was driven into debt so catastrophically deep that Incarne, the Crimson God of Debt, marked as her own, still paying off the debt, but drawing on its divine power too. The Junk Mage is a pioneering wizard who has become addicted to the dreams and thoughts of the godlike things slumbering in the City Beneath and is driven near to madness by both the knowing and the wanting to know. Wearing unique suits of armour scavenged from the wrecks of trains leftover from the creation of the Vermissian, the Vermissian Knight guards and patrol the transport network, as well as explore the routes the network takes deeper into the City Beneath. The Witch carries a blood disease, each of a different lineage, but all from the heart itself, and uses both blood and disease in ways feared and loved.

A Player Character will have Skills, Domains, Knacks, and Resistances. The skills are Compel, Delve, Discern, Endure, Evade, Hunt, Kill, Mend, and Sneak. The eight Domains, which represent experience of an environment or a knowledge of some kind, are Cursed, Desolate, Occult, Religion, Technology, Warren, and Wild. A Player Character either has a Skill or a Domain, or he does not, but if he has a Skill or Domain twice, it becomes a Knack, which means he can roll with Mastery. There are five Resistances—Blood, Echo (representing warping influence on body and mind of the Heart), Mind, Fortune, and Supplies—and these track the amount of Stress the Player Character is suffering in that aspect. Suffer too much Stress and there is the chance of Fallout, consequences which can have temporary or permanent effect on the Player Character.

To create a character, a player selects an Ancestry, a Calling, and a Class. He answers the questions posed by each and then from each Class selects three Minor Abilities and one Major Ability. Our sample character is Redeye. She was a healer serving in the Gnollish military captured by the Aelfir of the Spire. Escaping into the City below following a prison breakout, she fell ill, thinking she was going to die… Then she heard a song and when she awoke knew it was her blood infected. Now it sings to her. She misses being under the moon and being to run under the stars. She dreams of the moon running with blood and believes that the Heart is strongest where diseases touches—for good or ill. Her fellow delver, Urwain, a Vermissian Knight recently recovered from Gnollish Scrofula, which is known to kill a human, so she thinks him strong enough to lead him to the heart. When she blinks, her eyes turn blood red, but then drain back to her normal colour.

Redeye
Ancestry: Gnoll Calling Heartsong Class Witch
Skills: Compel, Discern, Kill, Mend
Domains: Occult
Abilities: Crucible, True Form, The Old Blood, Witch-Spit, Heart-Wise, Crimson Mirror
Resistances: Blood, Echo (Protection +1), Mind, Fortune, and Supplies
Resource: Tattered Finery (D6 haven)
Equipment: Spyglass built by her lover, painted dog skull, ink-blotted dream journal with maps of the places seen in your dreams, Sacred Blade (Kill D6, Bloodbound)
Beats: Let your curiosity lead you into danger, terrify or intrigue an NPC with your obsession.

Mechanically, Heart: The City Beneath uses dice pools of ten-sided dice. Whenever a character wants to undertake an action, his player rolls a ten-sided die. To this, he can add another die for a relevant Skill, relevant, Domain, and Mastery—the lack from a Knack. Once the dice have been rolled, the player removes the highest die if the task is Risky, two if it is Dangerous. The highest die is counted. The result ranges from Critical failure to Critical success, and the Player Character can fail and suffer Stress, succeed and suffer Stress, succeed without Stress, succeed dramatically and increase the Stress inflicted on an NPC or opponent. The amount of Stress suffered by either the Player Character or opponent will vary. It can be from an Ability, a weapon, the environment, or generally how close the Player Character to the Heart. This is measured by Tier, and the higher the Tier, the closer to the Heart and the greater the Stress die rolled. Stress is marked off against the appropriate Resistance and at the end of situation, the Game Master rolls to see if the Player Character suffers Fallout, which the actual consequences of the Stress, which itself only has a narrative effective. For example, a Minor Blood Fallout could be Bleeding or Spitting Teeth, but Minor Echo Fallout could be Buboes on the skin or a Strange Appetite. Blood, Mind, and Supplies Stress is easier to remove than Echo or Fortune. NPCs only have the one Resistance, also called Resistance, meaning there is less mechanical complexity and nuance to them, leaving the Game Master and her players to narrate the effects of Stress and then Fallout upon them.

Combat in Heart: The City Beneath uses the same mechanics. It primarily uses a combination of the Kill skill plus the Domain where the fight is taking place and Blood as the primary Resistance used. This will vary depending on the situation. Notably, it only has optional rules for initiative, included if the players are used to turn-based combat. Instead, combat, including initiative, is handled on narrative basis, as in, does this narratively make sense? Combat in Heart: The City Beneath runs to a single page and even that is impressively comprehensive for a narrative roleplaying game!

Beyond the rules, there is excellent advice for running Heart: The City Beneath, whether as your first roleplaying game, your first storytelling game, or simply the first time running Heart: The City Beneath. The specific advice includes the fact that the Player Characters can change the world, that the Game Master need no longer plan, drop the idea of balanced encounters because no fight is ever fair—though here is some advice if the fight is too hard (or too easy), she should ask questions of the players and give them and their characters what they want—typically tailored to each Calling with the Beats, and so on. It handles the adjustment to the storytelling style fairly well, though it often feels as if it wants to scream out, “Yes, we know you’ve played Dungeons & Dragons. This is like that, but different, and really intense, okay?”

Two fifths of Heart: The City Beneath is devoted to describing the nature of the City Beneath. Although it discusses the main society to be found near the surface, its main focus are the Delves that the Player Characters or Delvers will be undertaking. A Delve consists of a journey between two or more Landmarks, in general the deeper the Delve, from Tier 0 down to Tier 3 and beyond. A Delve has its own route, a Tier, one or more Domains, its own Stress that will be suffered if a Player Character fails an action whilst there, possible events that can occur there, and a Resistance which must be worn down via collective action upon the part of the Player Characters. This typically means using equipment, such as rope to climb down cliffs and crevasses, a compass marked with a fifth cardinal direction—‘H’, a crowbar, and so on. The nearest equivalent are the journey rules in The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of Lord of the Rings and Forbidden Lands – Raiders & Rogues in a Cursed World and they are tough. There is even the possibility that the Player Characters suffer so much Stress and subsequent Fallout that it is not actually worth continuing on the Delve. Some Abilities and having the right equipment can alleviate that, but it may be less frustrating for the players if Delves are handled in this fashion when it is narratively important. Perhaps if the Player Characters have used part of a Delve before, to have them learned its dangers, and so be better prepared? In that way, their experience comes into play and deeper Delves can still be dangerous.

A Landmark has a Domain, a Tier, it can be a Haunt where resources can be exchanged to remove Stress or downgrade Fallout, but it will have its own Stress that will be suffered if a Player Character fails an action whilst there, resources to be found, harvested, or stolen, and potential plots to involve the Player Characters. Heart: The City Beneath describes some forty or so Landmarks, starting with Derelictus, the City Between, the link on Tier 0 between the City Above and the City Below, followed by the God of Corpses, worshipped via its Seven Sacred Ailments which the physickers are more interested in than the patients and which a sect wants to see resurrected; Redcap Grove, a stain of fungal growth over the ruins of a cathedral, home to criminally mad druids from it is possible to purchase hallucinogens; Grin Station, a decrepit folly of an amusement park, which seems to be regenerating; and the Hoard, a vast, predatory library that seeks out books and knowledge, its librarians under the mind control of a maggoty dragon larvae at its centre. Beyond the Landmarks, there are Fractures, including Eight Heavens—each a different afterlife, and time and space seeming to bend this way and that, until finally, there is the Heart itself. If the Player Characters can reach it… There are numerous suggestions as to what the Heart is, all of them true, all of them false. Getting there though, seems beside the point. The journey seems to matter more, and the Landmarks are all brilliant and the Game Master is going to want to use all of them! Fortunately, she need not do so. Heart: The City Beneath suggests mapping the locations of the Landmarks out on a superhex of hexes roughly seven or eight hexes across. Each ring of hexes out from the centre represents a higher Tier, the hexes being populated through play as the Player Characters extend themselves out in Delves. It is very unlikely that a single play through of Heart: The City Beneath would use all of the given Landmarks and many are worth using more than once, as the various monstrous and legendary creatures given in the bestiary. Thus, whether the Game Master is running Heart: The City Beneath as one-shot Delve, a standard Delve campaign, or perhaps having the Player Characters operating or defending a haven, there is still plenty of content for the Game Master to use.

Physically, Heart: The City Beneath is stunning. The book is well written and well presented, but Felix Miall’s artwork really brings the dark, desperate feel of the City Beneath to life, often bruised and bloody, if not brooding, and if you look for it—just like the Player Characters—also wondrous and wonderful.

Heart: The City Beneath is the antidote to the dungeon-delving roleplaying game, to the first style of roleplaying game we knew. It provides a nonet of fascinating Player Character options that twist and change who we expect to be dungeon-delving and maps their progress through what they want and what their players want to see told as part of their story. They are desperate despite the danger, heedless of the horror, careless as to the consequences, and despite the grim dark nature of the City Beneath, they are heroes—at least in their own eyes. Heart: The City Beneath brings a fantastically decrepit and dangerous world to life and lets the players and their characters drive their delving ever deeper, hoping for divine divulgement, more likely to their doom, but always intense and dramatic from start to finish.

Before the advent of the internet, the magazine was the focus of the hobby’s attention, a platform in whose pages could be news, reviews, and content for the roleplaying game of each reader’s choice, as well as a classified section and a letters page where the issues of day—or at least month—could be raised and discussed in chronically lengthy manner. In this way, such magazines as White Dwarf, Imagine, Dragon, and many others since, came to be our community’s focal point and sounding board, especially a magazine that was long running. Yet depending upon when you entered the hobby and picked up your first issue of a roleplaying magazine, you could have missed a mere handful of issues or many. Which would have left you wondering what was in those prior issues. Today, tracking down back issues to find out and complete a magazine’s run is much easier than it was then, but many publishers offered another solution—the ‘Best of…’ magazine. This was a compilation of curated articles and support, containing the best content to have appeared in the magazine’s pages.

1980 got the format off to a good start with both The Best of White Dwarf Scenarios and The Best of White Dwarf Articles from Games Workshop as well as the Best of Dragon from TSR, Inc. Both publishers would release further volumes of all three series, and TSR, Inc. would also reprint its volumes. Other publishers have published similar volumes and in more recent times, creators in the Old School Renaissance have begun to collate and collect content despite the relative youth of that movement. This includes The Gongfarmer’s Almanac which has collected community content for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game since 2015 and Populated Hexes Monthly Year One which collected the content from the Populated Hexes Monthly fanzine. The ‘Best of…’ series of reviews will look at these and many of the curated and compiled titles from the last four decades of roleplaying.

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Bernpyle is a fanzine dedicated to Mausritter – Sword-and-Whiskers roleplaying, the rules-light fantasy adventure microclone in which the very big and very dangerous world is explored from a mouse eye’s point of view. This is our world, but one in which the mice are anthropomorphic and can talk, as can other species. Beyond the walls of their home, the world is one of opportunity and adventure, fraught with hazards natural and unnatural, those untouched by mankind and those imposed by mankind. Using the base mechanics from Into the Odd, mice in Mausritter need to be brave, resourceful and clever, as well as lucky if they are to survive. Funded via a Kickstarter campaign, Bernpyle YEAR ONE collects the most interesting, the most popular, and the best content from first six issues. This includes a regional hexcrawl complete with eight adventure sites and locations, a selection of alternative mechanics inspired by a range of Old School Renaissance adjacent roleplaying games and even a non-Old School Renaissance, new weapons, spells and magic items, two playable species, and more.
Bernpyle: Year One opens with ‘The Earldom of Bernpyle’, a hexcrawl of nineteen sub-hexes. At its heart is the large settlement of Bernpyle, once home to rats, but now home to twelve hundred mice and a minor kingdom where mice reside in some safety and trade is booming. To the west, the woods of the Feylands are home to the Faerie Queen and her people, once at war with the earldom, but now there is a tentative peace between them. To the east is the road that humans built through Cobblefence Park and The Great Spine mountain range. The earl hopes to find a way through the mountains to expand his economic reach into the grasslands on the other side. ‘The Earldom of Bernpyle’ includes a map of the region; a description, but no map of Bernpyle itself; a list of the factions present—including their resources and goals; and stats for all factions, notably The Six, the cavalier mice and their bird mounts, who aid the earl. This though, is only the start, as Bernpyle: Year One expands greatly upon the simple hexcrawl.
The major content starts with two big adventures. ‘A Grizzly Revelation at Badger Burrow’ is set in a series of caves and human-dug mine beneath The Great Spine mountains. A renowned wizard and teacher, a star-faced mole named Suetonius, known to live there, as is a tribe of shrews. However, when the mice venture into the caves, they discover not one tribe of shrews, but two—and they are at war. A religious schism has divided them and the tribes meet daily to battle each other in the caves. The scenario is one of exploration and diplomacy more than combat, with mice choosing the latter option likely to find themselves dead quite quickly. Various outcomes are covered, but to get to the best of them, the mice will need to solve difficult situation. If ‘A Grizzly Revelation at Badger Burrow’ is classic dungeon adventure, then ‘Murky Mysteries of Mice in Marshes’ is traditional hexcrawl—or rather diamond crawl, since it consists of a single hex divided into twelve equal, diamond-shaped segments. The hamlet/town (the fanzine is not quite sure) of Coypu sits on the edge of the Froschsumpf Marshes in the Feylands. The mayor is known for his extensive whisky collection, but has not been heard from recently. Could the swamp’s frogs under their tyrant Mudlord Swelcheeks have something to do with this? The resulting scenario is a boggy bayou horror-tinged affair with some revolting villains.
In addition to the stats for the monsters, NPCs, and treasures to be found in both scenarios, Bernpyle: Year One includes a description of ‘The Missing Wand of Suetonius the Wise’, whom the mice will probably have met in the first scenario. The wand is given quite a good list of its abilities, but an even longer list of magical maladies that can befall the user if he miscasts. There are descriptions, illustrations, and floorplans of the border towers surrounding Bernpyle, each previously used by humans to play something called ‘disc golf’. In ‘Traversing the Feylands’, the author takes inspiration from The Gardens of Ynn to turn the region into layers that the mice will in effect descend as they delve deeper into the forest. This is complicated by the fact that locations within the forest can move, so if the mice may not necessarily being going up or down but both during their delve. The idea is supported by a number of tables which the Game Master will use as prompts.
Separate to the ‘The Earldom of Bernpyle’, ‘A Not So Stille Nacht’ is included as one of the fanzine’s more popular pieces. It is a one-shot, in which the mice are celebrating Christmas at the North Pole when Belsnickel the barn cat and his Pixie allies invade Santa’s polar home. It is as twee as you would expect it to be and if your playing group is partial to that sort of thing, is a passable Christmas one-shot. ‘MausTrap’ is more interesting in that it takes the concept of the Character Funnel from the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game and applies it to Mausritter, only with a crueller touch. The mice are ordinary mice in debt, and to clear that debt they are being sent down a dungeon to return with enough pips’ worth of treasure to repay said debt. Each player has four mice and if any survive, they become First level and can begin play as normal. Tables are provided of occupations and occupational possessions, and the possible nature of their debts. ‘Rodents and Recreations’ adds a set of classic Dungeons & Dragons-style alternative backgrounds, such as wizard, assassin, and barbarian. They are primarily designed for creating mice on the go for one-shots, being ready-to-play packages that can be applied to a player’s mouse.
Other rules cover ‘Foraging Whilst in Human settlements’, whilst ‘Mouserules of Combat’ adds a ‘to hit’ roll where there is none in Mausritter with the intention of keeping players coming to Mausritter from Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, and mounted combat and movement is added with ‘Mauspanzer – A ‘tacti-cool’ brief for Warband Scale Mounts’. The rules cover finding or buying them, and using them in combat, which is only becomes possible after a mount has acquired a Prestige Level or two. ‘Scars’ gives a table of injuries and effects for whenever a mouse is reduced to zero hit points. They include ‘Battle Worn’, ‘Shaken’, ‘Jostled’, ‘Haunted’, and more. ‘Time and Resource tracking in the Veins’ is inspired by Veins of the Earth and adds rules to make Mausritter even harder when delving into deep into the underground. This does run counter to the light nature of Mausritter, but if the Game Master and her group are happy with that, their dungeon delves are going to be tough indeed. Alongside this, there are new spells in ‘Magic from Mayfield’ with a botanical theme, such as Petal Strike and Thorn Bramble, thistles turned into weapons, and even #’A Weapon from Maukbörg’, a big crossbow.
‘Songvogel – A Maus’ Field Guide to Songbirds and other perching avian’ introduces the Songbird as a playable race, all small, and all hailing from Harmony Glade. There are just three Backgrounds—Soldier, Porter, and Companion. The Soldier gets armour, the Porter can carry more with his Traveller’s Duffle, and the Companion has a Saddle and Bridle, enabling a mouse to ride on his back. Songbirds do not have hands, so cannot use weapons. Instead, they use their beak attack and talon strikes. ‘Make a Fienkrieger’ provides another playable race, Fae Warriors whose love of Mauskind have led them to become Faerie Outcasts. The creation involves rolling for Former Occupation, Physical Look, Wing Type, Colour, and Weapon of Choice. Instead of spell tablets, the Fae have Tattoos, for example, Blood Dart, which lets a mouse or fae shoot a projectile out of his skin and Maus’ Paw, which grants the user a spectral paw with which manipulate objects at a distance. Rounding out Bernpyle YEAR ONE is ‘For Mouse, for Home, for Bernpyle!’, which lists all of the releases for Mausritter and even though Bernpyle YEAR ONE was published in 2022, there are a lot!

Physically, Bernpyle YEAR ONE is well presented. The artwork is excellent and the maps clear and easy to use. One issue is that the book does refer to other locations and content from other issues of Bernpyle, so in places the Game Master will need to locate other issues.

Bernpyle YEAR ONE is a lovely little book. It is really divided into the two halves—one devoted to Bernpyle as a location and the other a Mausritter miscellany. In truth, the Bernpyle is better than the rest, being more focused and useable, easier to bring to the table. It is a pity that more of Bernpyle was not included. Bernpyle YEAR ONE has something for every Mausritter Game Master, something to play, something to try, and all nicely packaged.

The Wretched is lost. The crew of the intergalactic salvage ship is all dead, bar one. Adrift between stars with its engines having failed and a hostile alien lifeform having stalked and killed most of the crew, you made one last, brave stand. You drove the alien off the ship, flushing it out via an airlock. You hoped that this would kill it. It did not. Having seen it kill your friends and family aboard, it now scrabbles and skitters across the hull of the ship, searching for a way in, for a way to reach its last victim aboard ship—you. Unfortunately, you cannot truly escape it, but you can hold on and hold out for rescue. Someone out there has to find you. First, you have to keep life support going long enough to repair and activate the distress beacon, and then hope that someone will respond, all whilst fending off the predations of the alien lurking on the other side of the ship’s hull.
This is the set-up for The Wretched, a Science Fiction journalling game published by Loot the Room. Clearly and self-confessedly inspired by Alien and similar films, The Wretched is a game about isolation, fear, and perseverance and potentially, survival in the face of overwhelming odds. The game requires an ordinary deck of playing cards without the Jokers, a six-sided die, a Jenga or similar tower block game, and a set of tokens. In addition, the player will require a means of recording the results of the game. It is suggested that audio or video longs work best, and they are in keeping with the genre. A traditional journal will also work too. The Wretched is a played out as a series of days, the player, actually the flight engineer of The Wretched, undertaking a series of tasks each day and responding to prompts before ending the day by recording its events and his thoughts in his personal log. The odds are that the lone crewman is unlikely to survive, either due to catastrophic failure of the ship’s systems—which will happen if the tower block collapses or the alien finding him. There are multiple ways in which the crewman can fail and die, but only two ways to survive. Either repair and turn on the beacon and then survive long enough for a rescue vessel to come or to repair the ship’s engines and blast out of the situation he is in, leaving the alien behind.

The four suites correspond to different aspects of the ship and its environment. Hearts represents ship’s systems—life support, water purification, and the like; Diamonds are its physical structure—hull, opening and closing doors; Clubs are the crew—remnants of their presence such as their rent bodies and their tools and possessions; and Spades are the Creature—physically present or simply knowing that it is out there… Whilst the presence of the Creature veers between ominous and terrifying, the most horrifying of encounters are to be had with the crew, or rather with what they have left behind, both of themselves and their belongings, as well as memories of them. Here is where the sense of loss and perhaps the nature of sacrifices made in order for the player to survive, come to the fore. The player will have between one and six encounters like this each day, the player taking notes in readiness to record the details in his journal or log. Some end with the instruction to remove a block from the tower block game. Several have already been removed at start of play, so the structural integrity of the ship is imperilled from the outset. It is, however, unlikely that the player will go a turn without having to remove a single block.

Physically, The Wretched is cleanly and tidily presented. It is lightly illustrated, but the artwork is excellent.

The is a fantastic economy of emotion to The Wretched. Like every Journalling game, its tension builds and builds, exacerbated by the looming presence of both the alien and the possibility of the tower block game’s collapse—and thus the end of the game. Yet this is made better—or is that worse?—when the player’s reports and thoughts are recorded rather than simply noted down. Recording the daily logs as either audio or video adds intimacy and emotion to the play through, that is far more difficult to capture on paper. If there is an issue with The Wretched, it is that there are limited options to play more than once, but that experience is going to be fraught, frightening, and claustrophobically intimate.

How do you like your GM Screen?

The GM Screen is a essentially a reference sheet, comprised of several card sheets that fold out and can be stood up to serve another purpose, that is, to hide the GM's notes and dice rolls. On the inside, the side facing the GM are listed all of the tables that the GM might want or need at a glance without the need to have to leaf quickly through the core rulebook. On the outside, facing the players, can be found either more tables for their benefit or representative artwork for the game itself. This is both the basic function and the basic format of the screen, neither of which has changed all that much over the years. Beyond the basic format, much has changed though.

To begin with the general format has split, between portrait and landscape formats. The result of the landscape format is a lower screen, and if not a sturdier screen, than at least one that is less prone to being knocked over. Another change has been in the weight of card used to construct the screen. Exile Studios pioneered a new sturdier and durable screen when its printers took two covers from the Hollow Earth Expedition core rule book and literally turned them into the game’s screen. This marked a change from the earlier and flimsier screens that had been done in too light a cardstock, and several publishers have followed suit.

Once you have decided upon your screen format, the next question is what you have put with it. Do you include a poster or poster map, such as Chaosium, Inc.’s last screen for Call of Cthulhu, Sixth Edition or Margaret Weis Productions’ Serenity and BattleStar Galactica Roleplaying Games? Or a reference work like that included with Chessex Games’ Sholari Reference Pack for SkyRealms of Jorune or the GM Resource Book for Pelgrane Press’ Trail of Cthulhu? Perhaps Or scenarios such as ‘Blackwater Creek’ and ‘Missed Dues’ from the Call of Cthulhu Keeper Screen for use with Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition? Or even better, a book of background and scenarios as well as the screen, maps, and forms, like that of the RuneQuest Gamemaster Screen Pack also published by Chaosium, Inc. In the past, the heavier and sturdier the screen, the more likely it is that the screen will be sold unaccompanied, such as those published by Cubicle Seven Entertainment for the Starblazer Adventures: The Rock & Roll Space Opera Adventure Game and Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space RPG. That though is no longer the case and stronger and sturdier GM Screens are the norm today.
So how do I like my GM Screen?

I like my Screen to come with something. Not a poster or poster map, but a scenario, which is one reason why I like ‘Descent into Darkness’ from the Game Master’s Screen and Adventure for Legends of the Five Rings Fourth Edition and ‘A Bann Too Many’, the scenario that comes in the Dragon Age Game Master's Kit for Green Ronin Publishing’s Dragon Age – Dark Fantasy Roleplaying Set 1: For Characters Level 1 to 5. I also like my screen to come with some reference material, something that adds to the game. Which is why I am fond of both the Sholari Reference Pack for SkyRealms of Jorune as well as the RuneQuest Gamemaster Screen Pack. It is also why I like the Loremaster’s Screen and Rivendell Compendium for The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying, the adaptation of The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of Lord of the Rings to be compatible with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition.
The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying Loremaster’s Screen and Rivendell Compendium is not new, or rather, it is not entirely new. Just as The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying is adaptation of The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of Lord of the Rings, The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying Loremaster’s Screen and Rivendell Compendium is an adaptation of the similarly named The One Ring Loremaster’s Screen & Rivendell Compendium. Similarly, it consists of two items. The first is the Loremaster’s Screen. A three-panel affair in landscape format, it is not a GM Screen for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition in general, but rather just for the specific rules and mechanics of The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying. It opens on the far left with the spot rules for magical success, encumbrance, and resting, before moving onto the three major mechanical and narrative elements of the roleplaying game. The first of these is for Shadow, the insidious influence and effect of Sauron and his minions, as well as certain baleful locations that are best left unexplored. It identifies four sources of Shadow—Dread, Greed, Misdeeds, and Sorcery—and lists various examples and the possible Shadow Points that might be gained through exposure to such sources or committing such misdeeds. The centre panel is primarily devoted to the Council Sequence, taking the Loremaster through the procedure from set-up and Introduction to the End of the Council via Interaction. The accompany table lists useful Ability checks at both the Introduction and Interaction stages as well as possible Experience Point rewards if the Player-heroes are successful—and in some cases, even if they are not! A little bit of the centre panel and all of righthand panel covers the Travelling Company. The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying is a roleplaying game where travel—just as in Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings—really matters and plays a big role. The Loremaster’s Screen summarises the roles for any Journey—Guide, Hunter, Look-out, and Scout, the length of a Journey, and Events and Event Resolution that may occur on that Journey. It gives the Ability checks for each role and provides a list of possible events as well as the Experience Point results for conducting a Journey through a Perilous Area. Across the Loremaster’s Screen the spot rules and tables include page references for the full rules in The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying. Overall, the Loremaster’s Screen is clear, simple, and easy to read, and very serviceable. The front or player-facing side depicts a small fellowship deep in the wilderness about to be assailed by a band of Orcs. It is a nicely tense piece, but different in style to that of The One Ring Loremaster’s Screen & Rivendell Compendium.
The second item is the ‘Rivendell Compendium’. This is a short supplement which details Imladris, the Last Homely House, home to its master, Elrond Halfelven, for thousands of years. His magic has kept this Hidden Valley safe in all that time and protects it still, either making difficult for anyone to find the entrance or actively blocking access. A map is given of Rivendell, though only the floorplans of the ground floor of Elrond’s mansion is given. There are multiple levels of vaults below and storeys above which are not mapped out here, and though that is disappointing, it is unlikely that the Player-heroes will have ready access to them. They are described in broad detail though, so the Loremaster can develop something from this as necessary; more detail being given to particular locations. Not all of the locations are included on the given floorplan. For example, the library is described in the text, but not marked on the floorplan. Ultimately, both the floorplan and the descriptions need to be taken as a guide—good guide—to Elrond’s home.

Also found Rivendell are many Elven folk. The many here include Elrond Halfelven himself, his daughter, Arwen Undómiel, Glorfindel, the great Prince of the Elves, and others. Elrond is described in the most detail, primarily because he is a source of wisdom and a potential Patron for the Player-heroes. In particular, he favours those with the Scholar and Warden Callings, and can be consulted for advice when it comes to making journeys and on particular marvellous artefacts and wondrous items that may have come into the Player-heroes’ possession. Along with the description are spot rules for how to find the entrance to the Hidden Valley, making music in Rivendell which grants Advantage on Charisma (Performance) checks, the moment when the Player-heroes first see Arwen Undómiel and gain Inspiration from her presence and grace, while an Elven character will lose Shadow due to her sorrow, and more. These add to the magic of Rivendell and bring elements of the setting into play.
Lastly, the High Elves of Rivendell are added as a new Culture. They are based in Rivendell as it is one of their last refuges. Their inclusion means that along with the Elves of Lindon, members of the Firstborn who rarely leave the Grey Havens, there are two Elven Cultures available in The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying. The Virtues include ‘Artificer of Eregion’, ‘Beauty of the Stars’, ‘Night of the Firstborn’, and ‘Skill of the Eldar’. ‘Artificer of Eregion’ is for the Elves who have studied the ancient crafts of the Elven-smiths of Eregion, and how can Hand-craft metal arms and armour to grant them an enchanted reward or even a ring or jewel to make it a wondrous item. An Elf who possesses the ‘Beauty of the Stars’ have such poise and grace that he has a surprisingly charismatic effect on non-Elves and Wizards; one of the ‘Night of the Firstborn’ possesses the will with which to deny the influence of the Enemy; and an Elf with the ‘Skill of the Eldar’ has a skill that others see as bordering on magical. Of the four, ‘Artificer of Eregion’ is the most interesting and feels like it bring something markedly different into a campaign.

The ‘Rivendell Compendium’ expands The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying eastwards—if only a little. It provides a potential sanctuary and patron for the Player-heroes as they explore and journey in that direction, although there remains much to be explored in Eriador, the focus of the new roleplaying game. Devotees of the earlier edition of The One Ring—The One Ring: Adventures over the Edge of the Wild Roleplaying Game—may find there is some repetition between the new ‘Rivendell Compendium’ and the earlier Rivendell supplement, but that is inevitable given that they are covering the same subject. In fact, the earlier Rivendell supplement is notable for how many of its elements found their way into The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of Lord of the Rings such as the Eye of Mordor and the rules for treasure, and consequently, The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying.

Physically, the ‘Rivendell Compendium’ is again done in the same style as The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying. The book is nicely presented and easy to read and understand. The only real downsides to the ‘Rivendell Compendium’ are that as a slim book it is easier to lose and perhaps some of this may be repeated in a fuller supplement devoted to Eriador later on.

The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying Loremaster’s Screen and Rivendell Compendium is exactly as it should be, a useful tool to have in front of the Loremaster during play, whilst the ‘Rivendell Compendium’ adds to the setting of The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying with material that the Loremaster can really make use of as her Player-heroes’ explorations take them to further edges of Eriador. Overall, this makes The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying Loremaster’s Screen and Rivendell Compendium a solid, useful package, one that a group playing The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying should get plenty of use out of.

If a copy of each of the Player’s Handbook, Monster Manual, and Dungeon Master’s Guide fell from the sky how would it be received in the archetypal medieval world? Together would they have been taken up as a triptych of holy books and their words accepted not as a of means play and exercising the imagination, but as a way of speaking to god, of determining whether you have his blessing before undertaking any action, including deciding your future career, or rather rolling up your character according to scripture. This is the conceit of FRUP, an unpublished roleplaying game designed by James Wallis, and it is a conceit shared with The Sorcerer of Pyongyang. Not a new roleplaying game or supplement, but a novel by Marcel Theroux which examines the consequences of a work of the imagination and imagineering arriving unbidden in a land that is both real and unreal. For The Sorcerer of Pyongyang asks what would happen if a copy of the Dungeon Master’s Guide accidentally found its way into the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, one of the world’s most isolated and closed off countries. What effect would Dungeons & Dragons have in a society whose government and culture imposes its own reality upon its citizens?

In the early nineties, during the time of the famine known as the Arduous March, Cho Jun-su, an ordinary schoolboy with a love Kim Il Sung and the socialist fantasy comics he has to hire from a vendor at the station to read, discovers by accident, a copy of the Dungeon Master’s Guide for Dungeons & Dragons. Left behind by the son of visiting a professor in North Korean socialist thought, and taken from lost property at the hotel he works by Jun-su’s father, he is fascinated by the book, but his English is not yet good enough to read it, although his later translation of the book will both improve his English and his imagination as he becomes an award-winning poet. Until then he turns to a teacher who has been helping with the illness that keeps him out of school. The teacher comes to understand the book, explaining that it is a game of the imagination and storytelling, and when the boy asks, promises to run it for him. Thus Jun-su takes his first steps into roleplaying, not via Dungeons & Dragons, but the House of Possibilities, an interpretation of the rules that is more faithful by intent than by design, but nevertheless recognisable as roleplaying.

As his illness keeps him home from school and helps isolate him from the worst effects of the Arduous March, so too the House of Possibilities isolates him from the adulation and respect that he is expected to give the Kim Jong Il, the Dear leader, the self-criticism exercises he is expected to participate in at school, and so on. The notion of roleplaying and of Dungeons & Dragons is doubly dangerous within North Korea. It is nerdish and like to be socially unacceptable just as it was in the West in the nineties, but in North Korea, it could be seen as an artefact of American decadence, one that encourages individualism. Yet it is this individualism that makes Jun-su stand out, his involvement with the House of Possibilities setting him a trajectory through layers and layers of accepted reality, as he first experiences success, then downfall, then success again, before finding hope. It pushes him to Kim Il-sung University in Pyongyang, where he mingles with the elite, he is denounced and imprisoned, before being released and pulled into the orbit of the ultra-elite once, and then finally finding his own release. At university Jun-su isolates himself from the reality of the dangers that House of Possibilities, but its reality is left behind and Jun-su is forced to rely upon the accepted reality in which his love for Kim Jong Il will save him, but just like Winston Smith and Big Brother in Orwell’s 1984, it is Kim Jong Il that is stamping on his face. Nevertheless, it is Jun-su’s connection to the House of Possibilities that will save him again. Which leads perhaps to the most extraordinary reality in which Jun-su finds himself in, spending time in the company of ‘Jimmi’, in fact, Kim Jong-chul, older brother of Kim Jong Un, son of the late Kim Jong Il and supreme leader of North Korea. ‘Jimmi’ is portrayed as a member of the idle rich, when not drug addled, obsessed with the guitar and great rock guitarists, whose reality isolates him from the rest of the country and its cowed masses. Weirder still is the job he is given at a state insurance company, fabricating the reality of serious accidents, so that the country can gain foreign currency from the insurers in London. Even ‘Jimmi’ in his most maudlin state is affected by Dungeons & Dragons, wondering if his influence is sufficient to render Cho Jun-su the status of an NPC, a ‘Non-Player Character’ as controlled in the game by the ‘leader’ or Dungeon Master, or if he too, is an NPC, not for Cho Jun-su, but rather for Kim Jong Un. This is not an aspect that the author really explores, merely bringing it to our attention as he hurtles to the book’s conclusion. It is the novel’s startlingly missed opportunity.

Although he does not belabour the point, it is clear that the author knows about Dungeons & Dragons and roleplaying games in general. It is not a case of the author just having done his research to be able to use Dungeons & Dragons as a literary device. Or if it is, then that research is more than cursory. Readers in the know will recognise the copy of the Dungeon Master’s Guide from the description given, a great red demon (or efrit) grasping a scantily clad women in its left hand, a sword in its right as a knight and a wizard attempt a rescue as being for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition. They will realise too that Jun-su’s battered copy is later replaced by Dungeons & Dragons, Fourth Edition. This could have been the result of simple research, but there is more. British readers will recognise the name of the games shop in North Finchley from where the author in the book purchases a copy of The Habitition of the Stone Giant Lord which is an undoubtedly obscure choice. There is though, Jun-su’s initial reaction to playing the game, his fascination with its imagined world, with it feeling more real than the one around him. This is something that many a roleplayer will recognise, that heady rush of discovery of not just having an imagination, but of being able to explore it too.

It would be trite to have simply explored the imagination as a means of liberation from conformity and repression. The Sorcerer of Pyongyang does that, certainly, but it goes beyond it to examine the dangers of the imagination, not just under the ordinary Orwellian repression of North Korea, but also in the layers of reality surrounding Pyongyang’s elite under radically different circumstances and under two different Supreme Leaders. Again and again, Cho Jun-su finds his imagination pulling him onward in a great journey through a bildungsroman of realities. The Sorcerer of Pyongyang is a fascinating glimpse behind the walls of the Hermit Kingdom that is North Korea with Marcel Theroux using Dungeons & Dragons as a surprisingly sophisticated means to drive its story along in a fashion that would have been unthinkable, let alone acceptable when Cho Jun-su first entered the House of Possibilities.

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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In Strange Seas: Horror in the Royal Navy for Regency Cthulhutakes Call of Cthulhu in a new direction. Or rather, In Strange Seas: Horror in the Royal Navy for Regency Cthulhu takes Regency Cthulhu: Dark Designs in Jane Austen’s England in a new direction and over the horizon. Regency Cthulhu took Call of Cthulhu back to the Regency era where men and women of good character must find a way of confronting the Mythos without the loss of their character and their reputation, let alone their sanity. In Strange Seas takes that sensibility and sets sail with it on to the high seas during the war with France and Napoleon. As crew and officers face death from storms and disasters, let alone battles with the French and her Spanish allies, as well as poor food and rigorous discipline, there is chance of promotion, opportunities to be brave, hope that prizes will taken and fortunes won, and perhaps the happenstance that their names will be made and they will ascend the social ladder and acquire status that their births never gave them.
In Strange Seas introduces the Royal Navy of the later Napoleonic Wars, that which Horatio Nelson served in. In parts more readily egalitarian than the rest of Georgian society, the nature of the Royal Navy of In Strange Seas is more readily egalitarian still, allowing all genders and orientations to serve, but taking a more modern and inclusive approach as modern-day Navies do. This is undeniably anachronistic and as an extension of Regency Cthulhu it goes further than that supplement does in terms of inclusivity, so that adjustments would have to be made to the core Regency Cthulhu setting were an Investigator shift from one setting to the other. Ultimately, the choice whether to accept the anachronism of In Strange Seas will be down to the Keeper and her players and there is nothing wrong in that. However, In Strange Seas could—and certainly should—have handled the issue in a less proscriptive way, and discussed the choices between running In Strange Seas in a historical fashion or a non-historical fashion, so that the Keeper and her players can make the choice.
For the most part, In Strange Seas presents the historical nature of life aboard ship and in the Royal Navy as you would expect. Covering daily life, positions amongst both commissioned and uncommissioned officers as well as the crew, clothing, meals, and discipline, the Admiralty, and the various types of ships serving in the Royal Navy and their typical duties, as well as a tour of a frigate, all of this will be familiar to anyone who has read the Hornblower novels of C.S. Forester or the Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O’Brian or the various nautically themed roleplaying games released in the past few decades, starting with Privateers and Gentlemen, published by Fantasy Games Unlimited in 1983. For the uninitiated landlubber, it is another matter. The content is informative and useful, as are the details on the superstitions and then the prejudices, etiquette, and traditions for landlubber and jack tar alike. It notes that life aboard ship for those that ignore these prejudices, etiquette, and traditions can be worse than for those ashore who simply have their reputations damaged, and that does not take into account the nature of punishments which can arise should the Articles of War be contravened.
Mechanically, naval combat can be complex. In Strange Seas presents a more narrative approach, though one still driven by the Investigators’ skills and time in the spotlight. The advice is to keep it moving, keep orders coming, emphasise the horror—since the noise and the chance of bring crushed by fallen rigging or having a leg blown off are ever present, and keep it fresh and varied. Anyone coming to In Strange Seas expecting detailed naval combat will be disappointed and will have to look elsewhere. The ‘Naval Combat Cheat Sheet for Keepers & Investigators’ does instead, listing the broad actions that the Investigators will take, such as manoeuvring, firing the cannons, boarding, avoiding flying splinters and falling, and suggesting the appropriate skills to roll. For the savvy shipmen, this will be enough, but for the nautical naïve it is likely too little, but after watching some of the suggested viewing given in the bibliography, he should be fine.
In terms of creating an Investigator, In Strange Seas suggests that skills and occupations be adjusted by age. Sailors tend to be young and often lack the more refined skills their land-going counterparts might have. The Occupations include Commissioned Officer—which needs to be adjusted according to rank, Bosun, Carpenter, Chaplain, Gunner, Marine, Master, Purser, Forecastle Sailor/Topman, and Afterguard/Waister. It is otherwise unchanged from Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition. It does, however, give two means of handling Reputation. One is ashore reputation, the other at sea. The first is in line with the Reputation rules for Regency Cthulhu, whereas the latter is Reputation at sea only. Included alongside this are some possible losses and gain in service, from “Dropping your messmates’ Sunday plum duffs on the way back from the galley” to “Taking a severe punishment without complaint or crying out”. The campaign advice is similar to that of Regency Cthulhu, in that Investigators should be roughly of the same or near rank so that socially they can converse and interact, or at least in the same working party otherwise; use other ships or posts of call as a ready source off news and rumour; and of the Mythos, that again, like Regency Cthulhu, the Keeper should allow space in which the social ramifications of encountering the Mythos can be explored. How will affect the more of the crew? Will the Investigators be believed? Of course, defeating the forces of Cosmic Horror cannot be reported in the London Gazette, the Admiralty remains willfully ignorant of such forces. The supplement also include some handouts, a recruiting poster for His Majesty’s Navy and a number of recipes for shipboard food to add that little bit of extra detail.
Scattered throughout In Strange Seas are several Mythos Hook scenario seeds. Some are better than others, but all require full development upon the part of the Keeper. Fortunately, In Strange Seas comes with a separate, eleven-page scenario. ‘Wonders in the Deep’. Set in 1811, the HMS Caliban is sent to the Spanish coast in search of the French brig Prodige. Aboard is an important passenger, who unfortunately is killed on the voyage and the Investigators have to step up and fulfil his mission. With the curse of being an unlucky ship, the HMS Caliban chases down its quarry and battle ensues. It is a solid scenario which combines the ordinary life aboard ship with the thrill of battle and an encounter with a strange adversary. It comes with two, somewhat plain handouts, and a nice selection of new nautically themed spells, such as Bait Humans and inflict Scurvy!
Physically, In Strange Seas is presented tidily enough. It needs editing here and there, but it is neatly illustrated with a series of period pieces.
In Strange Seas is in some ways only an introduction to roleplaying in the Royal Navy in the Napoleonic War. It could have done with more detail about combat to help the Keeper visualise it, and much like Regency Cthulhu, there is no guide to Mythos activity—human or otherwise—during this period, and certainly not as it relates to His Majesty’s Navy. This is despite the far-flung operations of the Royal Navy meaning that the Investigators could find themselves very far away from Bath and its restorative waters. Which gives it potential for a very nautical globetrotting campaign!
A most serviceable supplement—though a Keeper will probably need to do much more research on the setting that a fuller book would avoid needing—In Strange Seas: Horror in the Royal Navy for Regency Cthulhu pressgangs Regency Cthulhu: Dark Designs in Jane Austen’s England into the Age of Sail and In-Sanity.

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: Last Threads of SanityPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Joel Kumpulainen

Setting: Jazz Age Vermont... and beyondProduct: Scenario
What You Get: Twenty-eight page, 4.35 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Inside Out meets H.P. Lovecraft meets Marathon ManPlot Hook: What horrors drove you to the asylum and where are they now?
Plot Support: Staging advice, two NPCs, and three Mythos monsters.Production Values: Tidy
Pros# Sanity is front and centre# Cleverly structured plot# Investigation explored from the end, not the beginning# Cheimaphobia# Entomophobia# Teratophobia# Tomophobia# Trypophobia
Cons# Sanity is front and centre# Mechanically underwritten NPCs# Needs a slight edit# Initial set-up is more toolkit than scenario# No Maps# No pre-generated Investigators# Linear, if back and forth, plot# Misses the obvious reveal of the unreality
Conclusion# Cleverly structured plot explores a post-sanity experience# Innovative, if experimental, scenario shifts the viewpoint of the traditional Call of Cthulhu investigation

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

—oOo—

Twenty years ago, the roleplaying game hobby was very different. There was one dominant roleplaying game—Dungeons & Dragons—and its Open Game Licence enabled its underpinnings to snake out and transform almost every other roleplaying into a reflection of Dungeons & Dragons as publishers harnessed its familiarity and ubiquity. There was also a small, but vocal drive urging the hobby to pull away from this landscape, to set out for pastures new as publisher-creators harnessing the democratisation of design and ready access to self-publishing. How times have changed in 2023. There is one dominant roleplaying game—Dungeons & Dragons—and its Open Game Licence enables creators and publishers alike to harness its familiarity and ubiquity. There was also a small, but vocal drive urging the hobby to pull away from this landscape, but this has fractured into a movement that looks back via the Old School Renaissance and a movement that wants to set out for pastures new. The independent, often small, if not single publisher-creator of this movement is heir to the same one of publisher-creators of 2003 and the rest of noughties. Theirs was the indie role-playing game movement, exploring the boundaries of the roleplaying game as a concept, the types of story that the roleplaying game could tell, and how those stories could be told. Although there were precursors to the indie school movement, such as The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Amber Diceless Role-Playing, and Over the Edge: the Role-playing Game of Surreal Danger, their fervour to discuss, debate, and design would lead to several breakout roleplaying titles, some of which would win awards and a few which are still played today, as well as ideas and concepts that in the next decade would be adopted by the mainstream roleplaying hobby.
My Life with Master was one of the titles to breakout of the indie role-playing game movement. Designed by Paul Czege and published by his Half Meme Press in 2003, it would win the 2004 Diana Jones Award and the 2003 Out of the Box Award for Best Sui Generis RPG and the 2003 Indie Roleplaying Game of the Year, none of them, it should be noted, mainstream rewards. My Life with Master is a roleplaying game—or rather a storytelling game—of villainy, self-loathing, and unrequited love. It is set in an isolated town somewhere in Europe in 1805, over which looms a castle or manse and the monstrous urges of its occupant. This is the Master. The Master is a monster, either intellectually or physically, who has designs on the townsfolk, and they in turn fear him. The Master is served by several Minions, a la Renfield of Dracula or Igor* of Frankenstein. Minions fear their Master and love him too. They also suffer from a self-loathing and a weariness from the monstrous nature of the tasks they commit on the townsfolk on his behalf. These tasks make each Minion see himself as a monster, but there is humanity within him too. They have feelings, even love, for certain townsfolk, and that love might be their salvation, for in asking a Minion to carry out a task too far, the Minion may turn on the Master and kill him, thus releasing the other Minions. The Master will always die at the end, but a Minion killing him is just one possible outcome. Just as likely is the Townsfolk storming the castle. A Minion may also run away, integrate himself into the town, and even establish himself as the new Master in residence. Whatever the outcome, My Life with Master is a gothic tragedy, to be told over several sessions.

* Actually in the original Frankenstein film, he was called Fritz.
Later storytelling games would transcend the need for a Game Master, but My Life with Master is not one of them. Nevertheless, My Life with Master involves far more collaboration between the Game Master and her players than a traditional roleplaying game would. This begins with the players deciding what sort of Master that their Minions serve. A Master, always single, tragically insecure, with a driving passion, and ego to match, has an Aspect, Needs, and Wants, plus a Type. The Aspect can either be Brain or Beast, the former more mannered and genteel, willing to converse, whereas the latter is primal, physical, and driven by baser urges. Either will be influenced by the Master’s Needs and Wants as well as his Type. Needs are what he wants from the Townsfolk and what threatens them, and are what the Minions are driven to obtain for him. Wants are something that he desires from Outsiders, which might be recognition for his scholarly endeavours from the university which expelled him or the respect of his family. The Master’s Type can be Feeder, Breeder, Collector, or Teacher. Here the author adroitly examines figures from the Gothic genre to fit each combination of Type and Aspect, including the legend of Elizabeth Bathory, P.T. Barnum, Thomas Harris’ Buffalo Bill and Hannibal Lector, H.G. Wells’ Doctor Moreau, and Charles Dickens’ Miss Haversham. Lastly, the Master is assigned ratings in Fear and Reason.
Richard DraxWould-be ToymakerAspect: Brains Type: BreederNeeds: For the townsfolk to buy and appreciate his ‘wonderful’ toysWants: To be recognised as a master toymaker by the Toymakers Guild of ErzgebirgeFear: 4 Reason: 4
A Minion is beset by scars, deformities, and afflictions—both physical and mental—each a monster in their own right, but still human at heart. They yearn to be happy even as they suffer under the monstrous yoke of the Master. Each has three stats. Self-loathing represents how much a Minion considers himself a monster. It will make it difficult to resist his Master’s orders, but make it easier for him to be monstrous when acting violently against the townsfolk. Weariness increases the likelihood of the Minion failing and getting hurt when being violent to the townsfolk and of failing to resist the Master’s orders. Three points are divided between Self-loathing and Weariness. A Minion is also More than Human and Less than Human, essentially an advantage and an advantage that always work within a narrowly defined scope, and also divide the Minion from humanity. Lastly, the Minion has a Connection to someone in the town. This is unrequited initially, but through interaction with the Connection, the Minion can gain Love points to invest in that Connection, and possibly other Connections.
ZebedeeSelf-loathing: 2 Weariness: 1More than Human: No lock can stop me, except during the hours of daylightLess than Human: I am rooted to the spot when spoken to, except when offered comestiblesConnections:Emilia the seamstress, who makes such pretty clothes (Love: o)
My Life with Master is played as a series of scenes, with the players taking it in turns to frame the scenes that they want to see their Minion in. Within the scene that will be conflict which will be resolved using the roleplaying core mechanic. This consists of opposed rolls of dice pools comprised of four-sided dice. Rolls of four are discarded. The nature of the dice pools will vary according to the situation. If a Minion wants to resist a command, his player rolls a number of dice equal to the Minion’s Love minus Weariness, whilst the Game Master rolls a number of dice equal to the Master’s Fear plus the Minion’s Self-Loathing. If a Minion wants to make an overture to a Connection, his rolls a number of dice equal to his Master’s Reason minus his own Self-loathing, whilst the Game Master rolls a number of dice equal to the Master’s Fear minus his Reason. If a pool is reduced to a negative number, then a single die is rolled. Once the outcome of the roll is determined, it is roleplayed to its conclusion and then the next scene is played out and rolled for, as necessary.
For the most part, the Minions will often fail, and where they do succeed, it is often in doing the worst thing, such as being violent or villainous towards the townsfolk. Consequently, players will find themselves narrating actions that in a normal roleplaying game, they would never contemplate. Within the genre of My Life with Master, it is another matter. One way in which the potential for failure can be offset is through the use of bonus dice. These are earned for dramatically expressive bids of emotion, entirely in keep with the melodrama of My Life with Master’s genre, such as Intimacy, Desperation, and Sincerity. These gain a Minion a four-sided, six-sided, or eight-sided die respectively to be added to a roll. Intimacy could be sharing food or comfort, Desperation is a show of emotional distress, and Sincerity a baring of the soul or weakness. The Game Master is encouraged to be generous in awarding these bonus dice, though the players should work for them too.
One way in which a Minion can eventually withstand his Master’s commands is by increasing the Love that he has with a Connection. This requires successful Overtures to the Connection to be rolled. If after this happens, the Minion’s Love for a Connection is higher than the total of his Master’s Fear plus his own Weariness, then the endgame is triggered. This is a series of scenes, each aggressively violent, depending upon where the Minions are, though the Minion who triggered the endgame will be involved in a life-or-death struggle with his Master. 
When the Endgame occurs, the Minion who made the roll in question begins a violent struggle with the Master which will probably end in the Master’s death. Meanwhile the others have to deal with their current situations without the benefit of Fear to their rolls. The actual end result for the characters is also constrained by various totals of their stats. For example, if Self-Loathing plus Weariness is greater than Love plus Reason, the Minion is killed, but if Self-Loathing is greater than Weariness plus Reason, the Minion kills himself. This might actually play out over several scenes until the Master is actually dead. Once this happens, each Minion has an epilogue. The nature of the epilogue will vary according to each Minion’s stats. For example, if a Minion’s Weariness is greater than Reason plus Self-loathing, the Minion flees from the town, giving up on the struggle within himself, but if his Self-loathing is greater than his Weariness, he is killed. 
The endgame is not the only condition that can be triggered during play. For example, if his Weariness is greater than his Master’s Reason following an attempt to inflict violence, the Minion can be captured or if his Self-Loathing is greater than the total of his Love and his Master’s Reason, following an act of villainy, then ‘The Horror Revealed’ condition is triggered. In this case, the next scene the player has to describe involves NPCs being exposed to or influenced by the horror pervading the town.
Despite the simplicity of the core mechanic and the simplicity of the set-up, My Life with Master is not an easy game to play or learn. This is because the formulae used in the game are highly conditional and from being intuitive and not clearly presented for the players and their Minions. When I reviewed My Life with Master in 2003 for Steve Jackson Games’ Pyramid e-zine, I said that, “Despite the simplicity of the [game] mechanics ... they are not as clearly written as they need to be ... The GM will need to make a close read of the otherwise well-written text to help grasp how the outcome of a scene will alter a minion's statistics.” (September 3rd, 2003.) This still applies today, even with the benefit of storytelling mechanics being adopted into the mainstream some years later. That said, there is advice for the Game Master on how to adjudicate the game and a good example of play. Both will help the Game Master understand My Life with Master and its concepts, but even still, My Life with Master is not a storytelling game for beginners.
Physically, My Life with Master is lovely book. It is well written, the artwork captures the grotesque nature of the roleplaying game’s gothic sensibilities, and the book has the feel of a Georgian manuscript.
With its framing of scenes, its relatively simple resolution, and its narrative agency for the players, let alone the emotional engagement, albeit negative emotional engagement for much of its play, My Life with Master looks and feels like a standard non-traditional roleplaying game, an indie roleplaying game, if you will. This looks perfectly normal in 2023, but remember, in 2003, this was radical. This was giving the players agency in telling the story that traditional roleplaying games would never have contemplated. As a power they had never had, it was both exhilarating and liberating, but it was also very, very much a case of players being daunted by the prospect and the possibilities. The player was being asked to make choices he had no idea how to make, and making that adjustment from the restrictive narrative rights of the traditional roleplaying game to the narrative freedoms of storytelling roleplaying games took time as a whole new skill had to be learned. In addition, My Life with Master was asking a player to make emotional adjustment too, as he roleplayed a character who was emotionally damaged, who was put upon, who was called upon to act in grievous ways, to be a monster when deep down, the character was not, and of course, the player was not. This combined with the counter-intuitive formulae made the play of My Life with Master difficult to get right in terms of game flow. However, if the adjustments can be made, if the players accept that their characters are anything other than heroic, then My Life with Master is a sublimely marvellous, yet malevolent exploration of broken relationships in a melodramatic tragedy, a grotesque tale in which their Minions will emulate the worst of the genre with just a glimmer of hope and humanity.
In 2003, My Life with Master was ground-breaking. In 2023, My Life with Master is a near perfect roleplaying game that demands as much from its players and the Game Master as it did in 2003. It is a pity that it is not in print some twenty years after it first amazed the hobby with its emotional complexities.

1974 is an important year for the gaming hobby. It is the year that Dungeons & DragonsWizards of the Coast, released the new version, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, in the year of the game’s fortieth anniversary. To celebrate this, Reviews from R’lyeh will be running a series of reviews from the hobby’s anniversary years, thus there will be reviews from 1974, from 1984, from 1994, and from 2004—the thirtieth, twentieth, and tenth anniversaries of the titles. These will be retrospectives, in each case an opportunity to re-appraise interesting titles and true classics decades on from the year of their original release.

—oOo—

In 1993, amidst its constant search for sure fire hit in terms of a new setting or starter set for Dungeons & Dragons, TSR, Inc. published something radical. A universal roleplaying system. A universal roleplaying system that was not only mechanically compatible from one setting to the next, but allowed a player to take the core aspects of his character from one setting to another. Thematically and in terms of genre, the character would be different from one setting to the next as well as being an entirely different Player Character, but the core elements would remain the same. If a player preferred to play a dextrous fighter or a glib investigator, the basics of this would be incorporated into the Player Character no matter what the setting. Further, the experience and improvements gained from roleplaying in one setting would be carried over from that setting to the next, so that the new Player Character would benefit from the play of the old. This was no multiverse setting though. Beyond the core rules the settings were discrete and varied in genre and setting. The system was the Amazing Engine, and if its key idea of experience being transferred between different games can be seen as a failure, having not been replicated elsewhere, it does not mean that it was not an experiment worth developing and it does not detract from the eight campaign settings, or Universe Books, published for it between 1993 and 1994.
The Amazing Engine System Guide is the starting point for the Amazing Engine game system. It wastes little time in explain what it is and what its core concepts are, the heart of which are the splitting of the character in two. The traditional Player Character, with its attributes, skills, and abilities, is what a player roleplays in a particular universe. The Player Core is the framework upon which the Player Character is built in a particular universe and it is this Player Core, which is transported from one setting to the next, from one Universe Book to the next. The Player Core has four Ability Pools—Physique, Intellect, Spirit, and Influence. Each Ability Pool has two associated Attributes—Fitness and Reflexes for Physique, Learning and Intuition for Intellect, Psyche and Willpower for Spirit, and Charm and Position for Influence. Attributes range in value between three and fifty. Having two Attributes per Ability Pool means that a Player Character will always have an Attribute that works in a Universe Book setting. For example, in the Magitech Universe Book, Psyche will be of more use than in the Bughunters setting where Willpower will be important.
To create a Player Core, a player assigns a rank, from one to four, for each of the Ability Pools, with one being the best and four the worst. He picks four of the eight Attributes he favours and rolls four ten-sided dice for each, whilst three ten-sided dice are rolled for the other four. Depending upon the ranking of the Ability Pools, a number of bonus points are divided between the two Attributes in an Ability Pool, ranging from fifteen for the best ranking to zero for the worst. No Attribute can be higher than fifty. Lastly, the two Attributes are added together and divided by ten. This determines the number dice rolled during Player Character creation when switching from one Universe Book to another. A Player Core looks like the following. In this example, the player wants to roleplay, brawny, if charismatic characters.
Physique (Rank 1/Dice 8): Fitness 41 Reflexes 33Intellect (Rank 4/Dice 4): Learning 10 Intuition 22Spirit (Rank 2/Dice 5): Psyche 18 Willpower 32Influence (Rank 3/Dice 5): Charm 36 Position 08
To create the Player Character, the player ignores the values rolled for the individual Attributes during the creation of the Player Core. Instead, he divides the number of dice for each Ability Pool between the two Attributes in the Ability Pool. To these dice he adds a total of seven dice between all eight Attributes with no more than a total of five dice being assigned to any one Attribute. These are rolled to give a new value to each Attribute, and then as with the creation of the Character Core, a number of bonus points are divided between the two Attributes in an Ability Pool, ranging from fifteen for the best ranking to zero for the worst. The result cannot be more than fifty, and the Dice ratings for the Character Core do not change. What this means, especially with the addition of the bonus dice, is that a player can adjust for the differences between one Universe Book and another. So that a setting where social status or rank matters would favour the Position Attribute and so a player might assign more dice to that. However, the replication of the process does not feel intuitive, even adding an odd layer of complexity to the process. Lastly, the Stamina—the amount of damage a Player Character can suffer before being rendered unconscious is determined, as is Body, which is the amount of damage he can suffered before being killed.
So, the brawny, but charming fighter type is being shifted from a Universe Book of Swords & Sorcery to one where magic is being studied at an academy. In this case, the player divides the dice from his Player Core between the Attribute pairings, but because the new Universe Book is going to favour the Learning and Psyche Attributes, he divides the bonus dice between them. The result gives the final values for the Attributes for the Player Character in that Universe Book.
Physique (Rank 1/Dice 8): Fitness (Dice 4) 41 Reflexes (Dice 4) 28Intellect (Rank 4/Dice 4): Learning (Dice 5) 38 Intuition (Dice 2) 12Spirit (Rank 2/Dice 5): Psyche (Dice 5) 33 Willpower (Dice 2) 15Influence (Rank 3/Dice 5): Charm (Dice 3) 21 Position (Dice 2) 12
Body: 41 Stamina: 52
This though is the base Player Character in a Universe Book. The latter can also add a Species and the player has to choose a profession and some skills. The Amazing Engine System Guide uses skill groups which break skills done into specialities, from the Basic Skill to the Speciality to the Sub-Speciality. Depending upon what the Player Character is trying to do and the more specialised the task, if the Player Character does not have the Speciality or the Sub-Speciality, he receives a penalty to the task. Some Sub-Specialities can actually be enhancements if the Player Character has them, instead of being penalties if he does not. For example, a gin-running Bootlegger from the Prohibition Era of the nineteen twenties might have the skill of Driving and the Speciality of Automobile. When he is on a bootlegging run, he drives Mabel, a souped-up Ford Model A Coupe. Although a Sub-Speciality, it is treated as an Enhancement when he is driving it. The player selects a number of skills, Specialities, and Sub-Specialities from his character’s Profession first and then any reflecting his character’s hobbies and interests from any skill group. The number for both is determined by the Learning and Intuition Attributes, respectively.
Mechanically, the Amazing Engine is simple. A skill test is a percentile roll versus an Attribute. Penalties are derived from the difficulty of the task, the lack of Specialities and Sub-Specialities, and so on. From just the Amazing Engine System Guide, a Player Character will rarely have more than sixty-percent chance of succeeding at a task, taking into account a high attribute of fifty and an Enhancement from Sub-Speciality. Whilst this is the case, the Amazing Engine not meant to be played alone, but in conjunction with a Universe Book and options within that will increase skill values. The Amazing Engine allows from margin ratings to determine the degree of success of a skill test. This is based on the ones digit of the roll and if it is equal to or less than the Success Margin, it is a critical success, whilst a critical failure would be a failed roll combined with the ones digit being equal to or greater than the Failure Margin.
Combat uses the same mechanics. Once advantage has been checked for—essentially to see if surprise has been gained by either side—initiative is determined by a roll modified by the Reflexes Attribute. Notably, anything beyond the control of the Player Characters will have its own initiative roll, the example being a grenade thrown by the enemy. An attack is rolled against Reflexes, whether melee or ranged, and the attacker has to specify whether the attack is ‘General’, ‘Non-Vital’, or ‘Vital’. ‘Non-Vital’ attacks are more subdual attacks, and are not only harder to hit, but do not inflict as much damage. ‘Vital’ attacks are extremely hard to do and increase the amount of damage done. Weapons can have a Lethality Rating. When digits value of a successful attack roll is equal to or below a weapon’s Lethality Rating the damage is deducted from the target’s Body rating rather than the Stamina rating. Lastly, the Amazing Engine System Guide notes that it is possible for a Player Character to have magic or psionics or other special powers. However, these are not detailed in its pages, but kept specific to the various Universe Books. Arms, armour, and other equipment are given a similar treatment.
Experience is the key to the core concept behind the Amazing Engine. There is advice on having a good play experience too, but in the main the advice is on how to acquire it and then spend it. The means of acquiring it is as you would expect—successful adventures, skill use, and good roleplaying—but the Amazing Engine System Guide details four means of spending it. The first is immediate, spending it to Tax Abilities. This is directly spending it to temporally increase an Attribute on a point per point basis, in blocks of five. This cannot raise the Attribute to more than double its value, but it can lift the chance of success above the sixty percent. The second is to spend it to permanently raise the value of an Attribute. This is more expensive and varies from one Universe Book to another. The third option is improve the Character Core by purchasing extra Dice. This is even more expensive. Lastly, a player can simply transfer accumulated Experience Points to another character based on the Player Core. If a Player Character dies, any accumulated Experience Points are lost, but if the Player Core has any Experience Points, they are not lost.
Physically, the Amazing Engine System Guide is a short book, just thirty-two pages long. It is well written and there are plenty of examples of the rules, including an extended example of Player Core and Player Character creation. The artwork is decent, but of course, generic. The book is notably festooned with the ‘™’ symbol, it appearing every time the name of the rules or a Universe Book appears in the text.
Initially, the Amazing Engine was published as a two-part system. One part would be the Amazing Engine System Guide, the other a Universe Book such as For Faerie, Queen, and Country or Bughunters . It was possible to purchase the Amazing Engine System Guide separately, leading to the situation where there seemed to be more copies of the Amazing Engine System Guide than the Universe Books, but the primary means of obtaining one would be to purchase a combined pack containing the Amazing Engine System Guide as well a Universe Book. Eventually, the Amazing Engine System Guide would be published as part of the Universe Book itself, so that each Universe Book became more of a standalone roleplaying game in its own right.
Ultimately, the problem with the Amazing Engine System Guide is twofold. First, it is not a standalone product. Despite presenting a generic set of rules, those rules are not sufficient to stand on their own and they need a Universe Book to provide all of the details that a fully realised roleplaying game would. Second, it solves a problem that really is not there, the disappointment at losing all of the experience and benefits accumulated through play by switching to another setting and having to play a new character. This is not to say that it does not solve that problem poorly, rather that the need for it to be solved is doubtful. On its own, the Amazing Engine System Guide is simply not enough, but as the core rules and means of character creation for the various Universe Books, the Amazing Engine System Guide is vital—and actually worth it since the various Universe Books are all interesting, often more imaginative than the books which TSR, Inc. would have been publishing at the time. There is even the basis for a proper generic roleplaying game in the Amazing Engine System Guide if TSR, Inc. had wanted to develop it. That was not to be, but an inventive Game Master could draw such details from the full range of Universe Books and create one herself. Ultimately, the Amazing Engine System Guide is good for the mechanical means of access it provides to the eight Universe Books of the Amazing Engine.

The Delta Quadrant Sourcebook is the fourth setting supplement for Modiphius Entertainment’s Star Trek Adventures roleplaying game following on from the Beta Quadrant Sourcebook, the Alpha Quadrant Sourcebook, and The Gamma Quadrant. It completes the quadrant sourcebooks for the roleplaying game and does a whole lot more. Where the Gamma Quadrant Sourcebook updated the timeline for Star Trek Adventures from 2372 to 2375 to encompass the whole of the Dominion War and its aftermath, the Delta Quadrant Sourcebook advances it another four years to 2379 and the return of the USS Voyager after its long journey home from the Delta Quadrant, some seventy thousand light years from Federation space as told in Star Trek: Voyager. It encompasses details of the species and worlds that the crew of the Voyager encountered and suggests ways in which another starship and its crew might find itself flung across the galaxy, isolated and alone, with only their wits and training to rely upon in surviving and then travelling the long way home. One of the major species that U.S.S. Voyager encountered were the Borg Collective, not once, but many times, and this included crossing the vastness of Borg space. The prominence of the Borg in Star Trek: Voyager, not least because a liberated Borg drone, Seven of Nine, would join her crew, is reflected in the Delta Quadrant Sourcebook, which is as much a sourcebook for the Borg for Star Trek Adventures as it is the Delta Quadrant.

The Delta Quadrant Sourcebook begins with a map like the three books in the series, but not an actual map of the Delta Quadrant, or even of the territory encompassed by the Borg Collective. Where the other supplements in the series have maps of their quadrants, the Delta Quadrant Sourcebook begins with a series of maps showing the flightpath that the U.S.S. Voyager took to get home. It shows an incredibly narrow slice of the Delta Quadrant, but so it should, and so too, does the Delta Quadrant Sourcebook. What this reflect is the fact that although U.S.S. Voyager undertook exploration during its journey home, it was never its primary objective. In fact, exploration was secondary, or even tertiary to its prime objective. Consequently, its encounters with cultures and species and worlds and spatial phenomena was fleeting, lacking the time that scientific rigour would otherwise demand. Thus its reports and analysis can only be seen in most cases as the initial cursory examination of a probe exploring a new region. This is highlighted in one of the pieces of colour fiction in the book and what it means is that once a Game Master has got her Player Characters and their ship to the Delta Quadrant, there is huge scope for her to develop her own content and even change details about a species or culture or a world because Star Fleet knows so little about the Delta Quadrant.

Unlike the earlier Beta Quadrant Sourcebook and Alpha Quadrant Sourcebook, the Delta Quadrant Sourcebook is not as easy a supplement to use in chronological terms. As it depicts an area of space between 2371 and 2379 and given its distance from Federation space, it is difficult to use in the Star Trek: The Original Series or Enterprise eras of play. Options are suggested, but there are far more of them set in the Star Trek: The Next Generation era. The overview of the various species, from the Devore Imperium and the Haakonian Order to the Vidiian Sodality and the Voth, taking in the Hirogen, the Kazon Order, and Species 8472 along the way varies from entry to entry. The length of entry is determined by how many times the U.S.S. Voyager encountered them, thus the Devore Imperium is given a mere half page, but the Hirogen, the Kazon Order, and Species 8472 over a page each. There is good, solid detail here, but it is let down by the lack of art. Only the Hirogen and Species 8472 are illustrated, whilst the rest are given a physiological description and given that they come from a visual medium, this is not really enough. There are descriptions of some of the worlds visited by the U.S.S. Voyager encountered as well.

Over a fifth of the Delta Quadrant Sourcebook is dedicated to the Borg. This includes an examination of who and what the Borg are, how they and their Queen function, how a species in danger of being assimilated might react, and so on. There are some interesting ideas here, such as the potentially immoral option of treating the Borg as invasive vermin, a threat to flee from, and as a viral infection. Another is restricted to worlds with cultures or resources which the Borg has deemed suitable for assimilation. If not yet technologically developed, a culture might regard the Borg as gods who will make the worthy immortal or demons who will steal the unworthy away... Types of drone are detailed, including maintenance, medical, tactical, and adjuncts. Throughout, there are in-game reports from the various governments and polities of the Star Trek universe. For example, the Cardassians are interested in making contact with the Borg Queen, the Dominion is wary of them, and Section 31 of Starfleet are still concerned about how much of a threat Juan-Luc Picard represents following his liberation from the Borg as Locutus. All of these add flavour and opinion that can help the Game Master portray these interested parties in her campaign. In this way, the use of the in-game fiction in this way is far better than has been in other supplements for Star Trek Adventures. In terms of worlds, the supplement is really rather clever. Instead of naming specific worlds, it examines the types of worlds that the Borg Collective is interested in. This enables the Game Master to create some interesting settings for encounters with the Borg, such as aboard their technologically advance floating platforms in gas giants or in the forcefield-protected facilities of demon worlds.

Under Lifepath Options, the most notable addition is that of the Liberated Borg. This is given as being for the Star Trek: The Next Generation era only, representing when they are a more frequent occurrence. This is not to say that they cannot appear in the other eras, but this is not really explored in the supplement. For the player Character, the Liberated Borg is a treated as a Mixed Species character and must have the Borg Implants Talent. This gives the Player Character three implants such as a Critical Array (interlink Node), Cybernetic Arm, or Ocular Sensory Enhancer. Their presence hampers social interaction as much as they grant technological advantages, but they can be removed. This takes a story milestone for each implant and only once all three have been removed, can the Talent itself swapped out.

Other species for the Delta Quadrant presented as fully playable characters include the Ankari, who use the energy from a nucleogenic lifeform to power their starships, the administrative specialist Jye, the Monean who live on a massive waterworld and are good swimmers and as former star nomads, also good navigators, the Occampa, and more. The guidelines suggest how the character generation process of Star Trek Adventures can be used, adjusted, or simply renamed to suit the Player Character.

For starships, the Borg feature again, with write-ups of Borg Octahedron, the command and control vessel for the Borg Queen and the Bog Torus which handles construction, along with the Borg Probe Ship and the Borg Tactical Cube. The Delta Flyer built by Tom Paris is detailed again, but more specific Delta Quadrant starships include the Kazon Raider, Hirogen warship, the Krenim Timeship with its time manipulating technology, Species 8472 Bioship, and many more. Stats for numerous NPCs are also given. Most of these are generic and unnamed, such as the Talaxian Smuggler, Occampa Explorer, or Hirogen Hunter, but there are named NPCs given too. These include Annorax, the Krenim officer and temporal scientist who turned the manipulation of the timeline into a weapon of war; Hugh, the Borg drone rescued by Starfleet; Commander Elizabeth Shelby, who became a tactical expert on the Borg following the battle of Wolf 359; and the Borg Queen. Perhaps the only NPC missing here is Rudolph Ransom, the captain of the U.S.S. Equinox, who used Ankari technology which drew power from nucleogenic lifeforms, to fuel his ship. Given that the Ankari are included, it seems odd that he is not.

The last part of the Delta Quadrant Sourcebook is dedicated to encounters, both the Borg and with other species in the quadrant. These all make good use of the details presented throughout the supplement. They including being caught at an outpost when a captured member of Species 8472 escapes and begins picking off victims one-by-one; Annorax, the Krenim officer and temporal scientist, seeking asylum with the Player Characters’ vessel; helping with a mass planetary evacuation ahead of the Borg arrival; attending an auction for the means to hack into the command structure of the Borg Collective, but the means turns out to liberated drones; and several more. There is discussion of possible ideas for Delta Quadrant-set campaigns, including a more swashbuckling style with non-Starfleet Player Characters, and also of the dangers of running a Borg-focused campaign. This is primarily because the Borg remain one of the most dangerous threats that Starfleet has encountered and going toe-to-toe with them is likely to end in death, disaster, and assimilation. Instead other means of defeating them are explored, typically involving either reprogramming the Borg systems or hacking into them.

Physically, the Delta Quadrant Sourcebook is a decent looking book. It is generally well-written and decently illustrated—though not always effectively—with a fully painted images. With so many species to illustrate, this is definitely a supplement which needed more artwork—and needed more artwork with good reason. It does need a slight edit in places. The layout is done in the style of the LCARS—Library Computer Access/Retrieval System—operating system used by Starfleet. So, everything is laid out over a rich black background with the text done in soft colours. This is very in keeping with the theme and period setting of Star Trek Adventures, but it is imposing, even intimidating in its look, and it is not always easy to find things on the page because of the book’s look. The other issue is that the none-more black pages are easy to mark with fingerprints.

Throughout the supplement, the descriptions and game content are supported by a series of in-game documents, reports, diary excerpts, and the like. Some of these feel a bit too long, but their focus, as with the book as a whole, on the Borg and the Delta Quadrant, means they too are focused and better for it. 

If the Gamma Quadrant Sourcebook was three books in one, covering the Dominion, the worlds in and around Dominion space, and the Dominion War, then the Delta Quadrant Sourcebook is two books in one. One of them focuses on the Delta Quadrant and the other on the Borg, and with such two narrow foci, the supplement feels all the better for it. The supplement presents only a narrow strip of the Delta Quadrant, leaving vast swathes of space for Game Master to develop of her own, and that is even before considering adding the Borg. The Borg content will, of course, be useful throughout the Star Trek: The Next Generation era of play, but whenever or wherever she decides to bring the Collective into play, it should done with care lest the Player Characters be overwhelmed and outmatched. Overall, the Delta Quadrant Sourcebook nicely brings a slice of Delta Quadrant space to life and launches the Borg Collective as a formidable foe for Star Trek Adventures.

The signal arrived six decades ago. Directed from the Tau Ceti star system, it was proof that humanity was not alone in the universe. There was other intelligent life out there and it wanted to say hello. Not just say hello, but invite us to make contact, to journey to Tau Ceti where five great mega-constructs were being built. This of course, would have been impossible, had it not been for the information encoded within the signal. It advanced the study of mathematics and physics beyond the limits of human understanding, and with it, the means to create a technological and scientific revolution that enabled mankind to colonise the furthest reaches of the Solar System and give it a purpose—contact. Contained within the information was the means to construct engines that would enable a spaceship to become a starship and cut the journey from one star system to the next by a factor of ten. Where the trip to Tau Ceti would have taken thousands of years, now it would take hundreds. It took the whole of humanity over sixty years to build the fleet that would take the journey and carry the hundreds of thousands of crew and passengers to another star system and realise a dream. It was a one-way trip, for those chosen to travel aboard the Generation Fleet would never see their home again, let alone their destination. The selection process would split humanity, nations, and families, as would the journey.

It is this divide that is explored in Signal to Noise, an interstellar epistolary roleplaying game—that is, played out as a series of letters, for two players, published by LunarShadow Designs. It is the prelude to the Dyson Eclipse, a setting which explores the voyage of humanity and its subsequent exploration of mega-structures around a distant star. One player takes the role of the Explorer, one of the lucky few chosen to join Generation Fleet, whilst the other player is the Earther, forced to stay behind as their companion departs the solar system. Via a series of prompts—much like the journalling roleplaying games that include Colostle: A Solo RPG Adventure and Numb3r Stations – A Solo RPG, the players will exchange short letters with each other, looking back over their relationship and recent events—either aboard the Generation Fleet or at home—all with a wistfulness that comes from knowing that contact will be lost with each other forever and all they will have is their memories of each other and their pasts. As the game progresses and the Generation Fleet gets ever further from Earth, the ever-increasing time lag and distortion of the signal between ship and planet disrupts the messages, rendering communication and understanding increasingly difficult. How it does this is clever, enabling Signal To Noise to explore loss and regret whilst also putting Communications Theory into practice.

Signal To Noise requires an ordinary deck of playing cards for each player and a text editor, such as Word or Google Docs, which has the ‘Find and Replace’ function. Initially, the Explorer and the Earther establish their relationship and the Explorer the how and the why he is aboard the Generation Fleet and how he feels about it, and the Earther the how and the why he is not aboard the Generation Fleet and how he feels about that. The initial scene takes place before the Generation Fleet and for the Explorer and the Earther it is their last face-to-face meeting before the former leaves. Next, the Explorer sends a message to the Earther saying how much he will miss him, but also how much he is looking forward to the journey. Then the game proper begins. From his hand of cards, each player will draw a single card. The card suit determines which Event Track the event for this exchange of messages is drawn from, whilst its number determines two factors. First, is a personal event, the second is the letters to be replaced in the message that will eventually reach the recipient. As the exchange of messages progresses, the storyline for the Event Track will progress as well as be joined by the storylines from the other Event Tracks, more letters will be replaced in the messages going back and force between Explorer and Earther—representing ever greater communication degradation, and time will increase between messages, growing from a week to several, a month to months, and from one year to ten…
—oOo—
For example, after three turns the Explorer player has drawn the seven of Clubs, the three of Hearts, and on his latest turn, the nine of Clubs. This is the second Clubs card to be drawn and continues its Story Track, which starts with a weak and distorted directional signal being detected coming from an empty region of space. In the second part of the story, the signal is decoded and the shipboard systems begin building a Faster-Than-Light drive, which is only discovered when the drive is completed. The personal event is “You’ve finally read that classic book you always said you would. Did you enjoy it?” The Explorer player sends the following message:David,

Already a month out. We can hardly see the Sun now. In a week or two it will be gone and your messages will be my connection to home. I have spectacular news to tell you and I have amazing news to tell you. You remember I mentioned that the fleet received a signal that we could not understand from a nearby region of empty space? The shipboard systems deciphered it and not only that, but directed the manufacturing systems to build a device. Our engineers are currently analysing it and they reckon it’s some kind of FTL drive. We’re just beginning to work the possibilities. If it is, it could mean we can cut years off the journey to Tau Ceti. It could even mean we can get there and get back again. Who knows? Course, we have to ask ourselves who sent us the instructions for the drive and what they might want in return, but until we switch the thing on or get another message, who knows?

And the amazing news? I finally read Three Men in a Boat. All these years of you saying I should read it and I have to get billions of miles from you to finally do so. Seems appropriate to the journey we are on. Instead of passing villages, we are passing astronomical objects, which have become the topic of conversation when not speculating about the star drive as everyone has taken to calling it. Anyway, it was very amusing and I am glad that I finally listened to you. Your turn next, you should read that Philip K. Dick novel I told you about. I know it is going to be a month before you get this, so happy birthday for seventh. By the time you get my next message, I hope I will have extra news about the star drive. We may even have turned it on and gone somewhere fantastic!

Hear from you as soon as we can.The message is sent, but due to the distance and the signal degradation, Dave receives the following version of the message:
David,

Already a mopth out. We oap hardly see the Sup pow. Ip a week or two it will ke gope apd your messages will ke my ooppeotiop to home. I have speotaoular pews to tell you apd I have amazipg pews to tell you. You rememker I meptioped that the fleet reoeived a sigpal that we oould pot upderstapd from a pearky regiop of empty spaoe? The shipkoard systems deoiphered it apd pot oply that, kut direoted the mapufaoturipg systems to kuild a devioe. Our epgipeers are ourreptly apalysipg it apd they reokop it’s some kipd of FTL drive. We’re just kegippipg to work the possikilities. If it is, it oould meap we oap out years off the jourpey to Tau Oeti. It oould evep meap we oap get there apd get kaok agaip. Who kpows? Oourse, we have to ask ourselves who sept us the ipstruotiops for the drive apd what they might wapt ip returp, kut uptil we switoh the thipg op or get apother message, who kpows?

Apd the amazipg pews? I fipally read Three Mep ip a Koat. All these years of you sayipg I should read it apd I have to get killiops of miles from you to fipally do so. Seems appropriate to the jourpey we are op. Ipstead of passipg villages, we are passipg astropomioal okjeots, whioh have keoome the topio of oopversatiop whep pot speoulatipg akout the star drive as everyope has takep to oallipg it. Apyway, it was very amusipg apd I am glad that I fipally listeped to you. Your turp pext, you should read that Philip K. Diok povel I told you akout. I kpow it is goipg to ke a mopth kefore you get this, so happy kirthday for sevepth. Ky the time you get my pext message, I hope I will have extra pews akout the star drive. We may evep have turped it op apd gope somewhere faptastio!

Hear from you as soop as we oap.—oOo—
Ultimately, Signal To Noise will play out to between seven and ten exchanges of messages at which point time will have passed and the signal will have degraded to the point of incomprehensibility. It will take between two and even five years for messages to travel between Earth and the Generation Fleet. The game will end with the players first reflecting upon the exchange of messages and the story they have told of two lives, far apart, before a debrief together.

It should be no surprise that Signal To Noise was written during lockdown, a roleplaying game entirely built for the exchange of messages via electronic mail. There are alternative rules which suggest it could be done via exchanged and later exchanged and edited video messages, as well as rules for extending play. The format means that it can be played at any distance and only one copy of the roleplaying game is needed as the author has given permission to share the PDF between the two players. As play progresses the game becomes about what we can understand, what meaning we can deduce from the increasingly garbled text from the context of the words and letters we receive at increasingly long intervals. Ultimately, the ‘noise’ of the signal will intrude to the point of incomprehensibility and loss of meaning accompanied by a loss of contact between Explorer and Earther. (As a side note, parallels could be drawn between the loss of communication and eventually, the loss of emotional connection in Signal To Noise and between a couple one of whom is suffering from onset dementia, though obviously it is not designed with that in mind.)

Physically, Signal To Noise is nicely presented. Its play is easy to read and grasp, made all the easier with the example of play included. The artwork is excellent.

Signal To Noise is about the long goodbye. Saying the long goodbye to a loved one or friend, one who is going away never to return, the other one who is staying behind. Within that long goodbye, Signal To Noise combines wistfulness and wonder, about that relationship that is to be lost and the future that is to be reached, and tells a story that will eventually be lost to the void between the stars.

For every Ptolus: City by the Spire or Zweihander: Grim & Perilous Roleplaying or World’s Largest Dungeon or Invisible Sun—the desire to make the biggest or most compressive roleplaying game, campaign, or adventure, there is the opposite desire—to make the smallest roleplaying game or adventure. Reindeer Games’ TWERPS (The World's Easiest Role-Playing System) is perhaps one of the earliest examples of this, but more recent examples might include the Micro Chapbook series or the Tiny D6 series. Yet even these are not small enough and there is the drive to make roleplaying games smaller, often in order to answer the question, “Can I fit a roleplaying game on a postcard?” or “Can I fit a roleplaying game on a business card?” And just as with roleplaying games, this ever-shrinking format has been used for scenarios as well, to see just how much adventure can be packed into as little space as possible. Recent examples of these include The Isle of Glaslyn, The God With No Name, and Bastard King of Thraxford Castle, all published by Leyline Press.

The Pocket Sized Perils series uses the same A4 sheet folded down to A6 as the titles from Leyline Press, or rather the titles from Leyline Press use the same A4 sheet folded down to A6 sheet as Pocket Sized Perils series. Funded via a Kickstarter campaign as part of the inaugural ZineQuest—although it debatable whether the one sheet of paper folded down counts as an actual fanzine—this is a series of six mini-scenarios designed for use with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, but actually rules light enough to be used with any retroclone, whether that is the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game or Old School Essentials. Just because it says ‘5e’ on the cover, do not let that dissuade you from taking a look at this series and see whether individual entries can be added to your game. The mechanics are kept to a minimum, the emphasis is on the Player Characters and their decisions, and the actual adventures are fully drawn and sketched out rather than being all text and maps.
Call of the Catacombs is the third entry in the Pocket Sized Perils series following on from An Ambush in Avenwood and The Beast of Bleakmarsh. Designed for Third Level Player Characters, the scenario is a classic dungeon crawl, or rather a classic sewer crawl in the style of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, though still very much in the realm of Dungeons & Dragons. This because the scenario involves a particular monster—the humble kobold. The scenario is set in a city with extensive sewers, which the city authorities have contracted out the maintenance and operation of to a tribe of kobolds. Which is a little odd, if nevertheless, very forward and trusting of them. Unfortunately, the city’s wells of late have been unfit to drink from and when the inspectors sent to find out why have not returned, the city in desperation turns to freelancers—that is, the Player Characters—to investigate. Accompanying them is a guide to the sewers, a kobold called Scrip, who at certain chance of exploding and inflicting damage on everyone nearby. If there is a problem with Call of the Catacombs, it is this exploding kobold. Why? Why waste a perfectly good NPC that the Dungeon Master will have fun playing?

Call of the Catacombs is a linear adventure. It will take the Player Characters and their guide into the sewers, to the pumping station, and beyond. There are a few clues to be found along the way, such as kobolds emptying barrels of a strange liquid into the water flow and a set-up involving rats being milked! There is a diversion into some tunnels if the Player Characters want, these very nicely presented as a wheel that the Dungeon Master could almost spin to determine the random encounter were it not for the fact that the it is simply printed on heavy paper stock. The final two encounters of the scenario are on the back of all of the pages of the fold-out Pocket-Sized Peril. Here the Player Characters will discover what has been going on and who the culprit is, and face off against the creature in a big confrontation. For the Dungeon Master, there is an explanation, stats for all of the adventure’s monsters—including two new ones, and a random encounter table. The latter is not located in the place to run the scenario, the Dungeon Master needing to flip back and forth between the current location where the Player Characters and the last page. Ordinarily, this would not be an issue in a straightforward book, but the folded format of this scenario means that it is just that more awkward.

Physically, Call of the Catacombs is very nicely presented, being more drawn than actually written. It has a cartoonish sensibility to it which partially obscures the degree of peril to be found within the sewers and nearby tunnels. There is a sense of humour too in the details of the drawings, obviously more for the benefit of the Dungeon Master than her players. The combination of having been drawn and the cartoonish artwork with the high quality of the paper stock also gives Call of the Catacombs a physical feel which feels genuinely good in the hand. Its small size means that it is very easy to transport.

Call of the Catacombs presents a simple little mystery, that is ultimately, too simple. The adventure really only consists of six locations, so the exploration of it is never going to be a challenge. There is scope to expand it if the Dungeon Master wants, but it is not really necessary unless she wants to add more clues. Ultimately, the simplicity of the adventure design and the lack of exploratory, if not combat, challenge means that Call of the Catacombs is a filler dungeon, one that can easily be prepared with minimum time and effort, and then added to a town or city in the Dungeon Master’s campaign. Once done, it can also be played in a single session as well. Unsophisticated, if well presented, unlike the previous The Beast of Bleakmarsh , which was sophisticated given the size and format, but underdeveloped, Call of the Catacombs presents a very straightforward, but very easy to use, scenario. Call of the Catacombs has the same charming physicality of the other entries in the Pocket Sized Perils series, but will need more effort—though not too much effort—than those others to get the fullest out of the scenario.

The Golden Age of Industry has dawned. As skyscrapers—and profits—soar to new heights, now is the time to build your fortune . Launch companies and invest in new industries to earn capital. Buy shares of burgeoning businesses and reap the rewards of lucrative mergers. If you play your cards right, you’ll forge a legacy worthy of the title Big Boss. Big Boss is a radical departure for Funko Games. The publisher is best known for its generally family friendly, more mainstream titles that provide a combination of intellectual property and thematic game play which is attractively packaged and designed. Big Boss is a classic Euro-style board game about setting up companies, expanding them, purchasing shares and increasing their value, and occasionally, merging companies. It also has a bit of history attached to it. Big Boss is designed by Wolfgang Kramer, best known—along with Michael Kiesling—for the Spiel des Jahres-winning board games, Tikal and Torres. It is specifically based on Acquire, the classic board game of multi-player mergers and acquisitions, designed by Sid Sackson and published by 3M in 1964, and so highly regarded that it has been republished multiple times. Unlike Acquire, which has been available in English numerous times over its near sixty-year history, Big Boss was previously only available in German, having been published in 1994. Now available in English for the first time, Big Boss is designed for two to six players, aged ten and over, and plays in about an hour to about an hour-and-a-half.
Big Boss consists of a square board, plain and austere, but marked with a track which snakes around in a loop, running from one to seventy-two. Each number has a corresponding card in the Industry Card deck. In play, these numbers indicate where a player can found a company, and if the company occupies the right numbers where a player can expand the company along the track. The other cards in Big consist of the Level cards, the Share Cards, and Player Cards. There are eleven Share cards in each of the game’s eight companies—these are colour coded and have fantastically aspirational names such as Kingdom, Lunar, and Oasis, as well as a matching counter for the Share price Mat. The Level cards are used to expand any company on the board. The Player Cards are marked with two Radio Towers, which each player has two of at game’s start. The Radio Towers are added to a company headquarters to give a player a bonus of three shares. The Share Price Mat is numbered from one to fifty and is used to track each company’s share value over the course of the game. There is also a big stack of money tokens, ranging in value from one million to five hundred million, a big pile of building pieces, and eight headquarter pieces. The building pieces are black and not only fit into the track on the board, but stack on top of each other. The eight headquarter pieces correspond to the eight companies, sit atop the building pieces in play, and each have a slot for a Radio Tower.

At the beginning of the game, each player receives a hand of ten Industry Cards, two Radio Towers, and forty million in money tokens. Game play is simple. On a turn, a player has two options—buy a card or play a card. He can buy an Industry Card—either from the face up Industry Cards or from the Industry Card deck, or he can buy a Level card. He can play an Industry Card or a Level Card. The Industry Card is played to found a company or expand a company corresponding to the number on the Industry Card. The Level Card is used to expand a company by adding a building piece on top of an existing building piece in any company. When they are played to expand a company, both Industry Card and Level Card will also increase a company’s Share Price. Increasing the level of a Company will increase the Share Price by a greater amount than expanding the Company along the track. A Level Card also gives a player choice in which Company he chooses to expand, whereas an Industry Card does not. Consequently, a Level Card is more expensive than an Industry Card.

Once a player has expanded or founded a Company, its Share Price increases and the player earns money based on the new Share Price. He has then has two optional actions. One is to buy two shares, either from the same company or two different ones, and the other is to add a Radio Tower to the company that he just founded or expanded. He has two Radio Towers, with the second being more expensive to place than the first. Lastly, if a player cannot buy or play a card, he can either sell Shares at their current value or simply pass and take no action.

Initially, companies must be three spaces apart, but as they expand, they grow closer together and then, if they are connected, they merge. The larger company—the one with greater presence on the board and greater Share Price—will take over the smaller one. Anyone who has shares in the smaller company will receive a pay-out, the smaller company is eliminated from the game, and the share price of the larger company is increased by the share price of the smaller, now eliminated company. Eliminated along with the company are its shares, so although there is an immediate pay out, there will be none at the end of the game because neither shares nor company are in the game. So, mergers have a long-term effect as well as a short term one. They are also inevitable since there are seventy-two locations on the board and seventy-two corresponding Industry Cards, and whilst not every Industry card will necessarily be played, most will be and they can only be played the once.

Big Boss ends either when every player has decided to pass or more likely, all of the building pieces have been placed. Everyone receives money according to their shares, their Radio Towers, and the Industry and Level Cards they have their hands. The player with the highest value is the winner.

A notable feature of Big Boss is that the Share Price for any company always goes up, never down. Another aspect is that whilst share and profit games can be dry in tone and feel, but the addition of the building pieces gives Big Boss a physical presence on the table and in play. Although the Share Price of a company is tracked on the Share Price Mat, the players can see it grow, literally physically as the game progresses. Consequently, whilst the use of the building pieces is used as an abstract representation of the company’s Share Price, that use actually does the reverse. Play of Big Boss is quick and easy, the rules being easy to grasp and understand, but once the initial flurry of Industry Cards have been played from the players’ hands to first found and then expand companies, the game can become quite intense as players decide whether they want to expand out along the track in the hope of merging, focus on adding Levels to a Company to increase its Share Price and make it stronger should it face a merger, or perhaps a mixture of the two. The more expensive Level Cards will a player more options, but the cheaper Industry Cards restrict and focus a player’s choice. Equally important are the Share Cards, which enable a player to invest in a company even if he has been unable to directly expand the company.

One strong feature of Big Boss is the rulebook. It is well written, explaining how to play in simple fashion, enabling play to begin quickly even after opening the box for the first time. It also includes clear examples of play and play tips. In addition, the rulebook includes a history of Big Boss, rules for playing the original version of the game as published in 1994, and a section of ‘Frequently Asked Questions’. The original version of Big Boss is slightly more complex and less forgiving in its set-up and play.

Physically, Big Boss is has decent production values beyond the rulebook. The Industry Cards are nicely illustrated even though the number on them is the only thing that actually matters in play and everything has an art deco feel to it, including the eight headquarter pieces, so that you feel like you are building the skyscrapers across the skyline of nineteen thirties New York. One issue is the bulk of the components, especially the building pieces, which come in their own bag. They take up a lot of room in the box and since there is no tray inert, they can knock everything about in the box and that is despite the fact that they do not quite fit.

The game is explicitly based on the Sid Sackson classic Acquire and shares many similarities to that game though mergers are not as prevalent or as necessarily crucial in Big Boss. The main differences between the two games include the more visually satisfying three-dimensional aspect of Big Boss, and the existence of a strong monetary incentive to expand companies that you do not control.

Big Boss is a chance to own a Wolfgang Kramer that has never been seen in English before. The question is, is it worth it. The answer is yes, as Big Boss has a great pedigree, being an alternate, streamlined, and more forgiving version of Acquire. As a competitive game of shares and company growth Big Boss is a good introduction to the financial them in board games which does not get too complex, nor too dry, and with the physical presence of the company buildings, looks just about right.

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?
Caravanserai is a mini-campaign and supplement for use with RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha in which the Player Characters establish operate a Caravanserai, a combined inn and rest stop on a trade route, the likes of which they will have probably stayed at during their adventures.

It is a sixty-one page, full colour 3.50 MB PDF.

The layout is mostly tidy and the artwork excellent.
Where is it set?Caravanserai is set at Two Top village, home to the Red Hand clan in southern Sartar, just south of Wilmskirk near the Heortland road. However, notes and suggestions are given if the Game Master wants to set it elsewhere.

It is set after the events of the Dragonrise.
Who do you play?
Caravanserai is designed for a group of adventurers looking to settle down, or at least establish a base of operations. Ideally, one of the Player Characters should be an Issaries merchant, who should possess or have access to 2,500 Lunars.
What do you need?
Caravanserai requires RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, the Glorantha Bestiary, and The Book of Red Magic. RuneQuest: Weapons & Equipment is a necessity. Plunder may also be useful as will Cults of RuneQuest: The Lightbringers and Cults of RuneQuest: The Earth Goddesses.
What do you get?Caravanserai begins with the Player Characters on the road, stopping for the night at a caravanserai, that one of their number, ideally an Issaries merchant, has fond memories of as a busy, but pleasant place to stay. Unfortunately, in the wake of the Dragonrise, the fleeing Lunars burned the place to the ground and killed its owner, Korister. When Korister’s ghost comes the Issaries merchant in a dream, begging him to rebuild it, the Player Character should have an inkling of what a money-making opportunity he is being given should he and his companions decide to agree to the ghost’s demands. This sets up a mundane, but nevertheless interesting campaign framework as the Player Characters negotiate with the local clan for permission, arrange for the building of the new caravanserai, hire staff—old and new, furnish the caravanserai, and more. The fun bit of the more is deciding what to do with the ghost of Korister. One option would be to exorcise the ghost, but the fun option would be to bind Korister as the caravanserai’s wyter, keeping him as a permanent, but incorporeal presence at the inn. Essentially, what this sets up is the Gloranthan equivalent of the BBC and CBS television series, Ghosts. It also shifts the way in which the Player Characters can become involved in adventures. They will come to the Player Characters rather than the Player Characters going out to find them, the equivalent of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine versus Star Trek: The Next Generation.
The first part of Caravanserai guides the Game Master through the set-up process of the Player Characters having to make decisions of getting the buildings designed and built, who to hire, and what to outfit the place with. There are consequences if the Player Characters get it wrong, but in the long term these are minor and being located near a major trade route helps. This also requires some accounting, and Caravanserai actually comes with its own Excel sheet to help the Game Master and players alike track their characters’ monies. Fortunately, double-entry bookkeeping is not required, but the third end of the supplement consists of a guide to building and outfitting the caravanserai, what it consists of, how to make a profit and where that profit comes from, along with a guide to using the included ‘Caravanserai Annual Profit Worksheet’. The fact that it includes the latter may be more than enough for some players to want to avoid this supplement, but the degree of detail enforces the aim of Caravanserai in wanting to give the Player Characters the opportunity to have real lives and closer ties to Gloranthan society and economy.
In between the set-up and the guide are two scenarios. The first, ‘Epidemic’ deals with an outbreak of wasting disease which threatens both the Red Hand clan and the operation of the caravanserai. As the outbreak threatens the caravanserai’s staff, the Player Characters are pulled into clan affairs in a desperate attempt to stop both the disease and word of it from spreading, locate its source, and thus preventing the closure of the caravanserai. Like the set-up, this will require some decent roleplaying upon the part of the players if their characters are to solve the mystery and resolve the situation. The second scenario is ‘The Bad Guest’. It is a classic set-up for an inn. A guest dies at the inn, but lacks sufficient funds to pay for his stay. He did behind, though, a treasure map! If it is accurate, its contents could pay for the man’s stay and probably have funds leftover. Since this adventure is inspired by Treasure Island, it involves pirates—in this case Wolf Pirates—and betrayal, but the treasure is worth it.
Although ‘The Bad Guest’ is a decent scenario, it does take the Player Characters away from their newly built base of operations, which partly undermines the point of the scenario. It would have been nice to have been given further scenarios, or at least adventures hooks, which take place in the environments of the inn and Red Hand Clan land, or come to the inn, thus pulling the Player Characters further into the community. Similarly, whilst a lot of the NPCs are given stats for and if not, at least a good thumbnail description, there are not many in the way of stats or details of visiting customers. Also lacking are any floorplans for the caravanserai. The supplement does suggest allowing the players to draw what they want as long as it is too not unreasonable and allow that, but some sample floorplans would have been useful. As would some sample visitors and patrons. In the long term, some more adventures would also help to keep the adventurers at their inn. Another issue not fully explored is what roles the Player Characters might take at the inn when not adventuring.
Is it worth your time?Yes—Caravanserai is an interesting supplement which showcases another side of Glorantha and makes it both playable and interesting—especially for an Issaries merchant.No—Caravanserai is just too mundane, plus it involves accounting, and who needs that when we are wanderers and adventurers?Maybe—Caravanserai is perhaps a bit too ordinary an idea for some players and their characters, but the adventures can easily be repurposed and the Player Characters could be working for a money man, instead of one of their number being the money man.