The Masterclass Codex is a compilation of compilations. It complies two supplements—A Touch of Class: Seven New Classes for 5th Edition and A Touch More Class: 9 More Classes for 5th Edition—into one volume, both of which compile content from EN5ider, EN Publishing’s Patreon magazine dedicated to supporting Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. Together, it compiles a total of sixteen new Classes, from the Alchemist and the Bloodweaver to the Savant and the Tinkerer. In between there are a lot of new spellcasting Classes, though physical Classes are not totally ignored, and a lot of options for the Dungeon Master and player alike. The player, of course, to play, but the Dungeon Master to pick and choose from in terms of what she wants to see in her game world. Thus, a Dungeon Master could take one, two, or more of these Classes and make them particular to her campaign—or parts of her campaign—or she could throw everything into the mix and say have them all come together in a setting like Planescape.

The format of the Classes in The Masterclass Codex follows that of The Player’s Handbook. It opens with an explanation of the class, suggestions for a quick build, features of the class, before delving into the particulars of the class. Added to this is a little fiction to add flavour. Alongside all of this, there are new Feats and spells, monsters, and a whole bit more. This ‘more’ rounds out the entries in the supplement and develops ways in which they can be brought into a game.

The Masterclass Codex opens with the Alchemist. This combines magic with scientific rigour for a spellcaster that throws acid, cold, or fire bombs, and then concocts potions and mixes for its spells. It is not quite clear if the Alchemist is throwing these vials or drinking them. The Alchemist makes Discoveries, which can be Smart Alchemy which allows a bomb to explode and target only hostile targets, Extend Potion to double its duration, Potion of Rejuvenation to restore a spell slot, and Spontaneous Recovery to amplify his healing without a short rest. Advanced Sciences are the Alchemist’s specialities and include the Sciences of Creation, Destruction, Illumination, Mutation, and Regeneration. These respectively enable the Alchemist to craft a homunculus out of clay and remould it as a servant and combatant; to enhance his bombs; to temporarily enhance mental attributes and gain mental spells; to physically enhance the body though a cost to Intelligence, though this cannot be repeated too often, lest the Alchemist poison himself; and to enhance healing and even gain resurrection! To this, ‘Scientific Sorcery’ gives the Alchemist’s Apprentice Background, new items, and even Feats like the Alchemical Artillerist, making him better at throwing alchemical weapons, and Pernicious Poisoner, to faster produce poisons.

There are a lot of interesting options here, but some step on the toes of other Classes. The Science of Mutation pushes the Alchemist towards the Barbarian Class, whilst the Science of Regeneration leans towards the Cleric Class. Other aspects feel underdeveloped, like the Pernicious Poisoner Feat. It is great for creating poisons, but not using them. What about adding their use to the bomb-throwing ability of the Class, so what you have is a battlefield poisoner? Combine that with Smart Alchemy and you have targeted poison bombs—nasty! Lastly, if this Class is supposed to be about adding science to magic, what about being able to identify potions and poisons?

The Cardcaster draws on the Tarot deck to cast spells, and actually requires a player to have one in order to determine what spells his character can cast. For example, a First Level Cardcaster has a hand size of two and draws two of the Major Arcana. The Fool gives the options Detect Poison and Disease, Expeditious Retreat, Hideous Laughter, and Mage Armour, whilst The Magician lists Burning Hands, Create/Destroy Water, Detect Magic, Floating Disc, Unseen Image, or Silent Image. The Cardcaster selects the spell and expends the card. In game, the Cardcaster can also throw cards to inflict magical slashing damage. In terms of development, the Cardcaster focuses on particular arcana, the Knight of Swords turning the Cardcaster into a sword-wielding spellcaster; Page of Wands gives greater command of the user’s Tarot deck; the Queen of Cups lets the user spread her love by supporting others; King of Pentacles makes the Cardcaster richer; and Jack of Beasts has the caster summon and control beasts. Not all of these are necessarily adventure options, the Queen of Cups and King of Pentacles feel like they suited to campaigns where adventuring rarely done, and the Jack of Beasts is an oddity that does not fit the tarot. Overall, the Class would be interesting play, adding a physicality and uncertainty with its card-drawing aspect.

The Diabolist is an Evil Class enters into dark pacts with devils and possibly demons. It is accompanied by range new types of both like the Accuser Devil or the Coloxus, and includes the feat Voodoo, which raises its own issues in tying an aspect of a real-world religion into an evil Class like the Diabolist. The Diabolist is suited to certain campaigns or in general as an NPC Class, and even then, perhaps it could have been presented as a variant of the Warlock Class which fundamentally is very similar. The Feywalker draws from the powers of the Fey realms to become a chaotic, even whimsical, combatants that flit around the battlefield, gaining a fey companion and fey charm, and binding his soul to the fey through either the Sphere of Beasts, Sphere of Plants, or Sphere of Entropy. Of these Spheres, the first two step into similar areas to that of the Druid Class, whilst the third plays up the randomness of chaos. Ultimately though, this is a fighter best at home in the forest, embracing its mysteries. The Morph Class is a shapechanger, connected to either nature or the fey, either specialising in infiltration and deception as a Doppelganger, raw animal power and presence in Primordial Beast, the scoundrel’s antics of the Trickster. Again, it feels a little like the Druid, one who has specialised in shapechanging, yet at the same time wondering whether Primordial Beast would better fit the Druid and the Trickster the Feywalker.

If the Alchemist is one of the Classes that stands out in The Masterclass Codex, the other is the Noble. Like its Warlord counterpart from Dungeons & Dragons, Fourth Edition, the Noble is all about supporting his allies. The Noble can offer a rallying word for an ally to recover Hit Points direct them to take an action on his turn. The Noble either follows the Path of the Brave to become a better warrior; the Path of the Heart to beguile others with his innocence, though this comes at the cost of martial abilities; the Path of the Mystic Royal to combine spellcasting and command of others; and the Path of the Tactician to further direct and command the actions of his allies. This is very nicely done Class overall, perhaps best suited to larger groups where the Noble has the room to stand to the side offering advice and actions. Of the four subclasses, the Path of the Heart really stands out for its roleplaying potential as everyone around such a Noble works to keep her alive whilst benefiting from her advice and actions. Throw in a few scoundrel-like Classes alongside the Noble and it could be a lot of fun.

The Occultist stands out as the oddity in The Masterclass Codex, because it is not a Class that specialises in the occult per se, although it does bring an element of horror into play. Instead, it is a transformative Class in that Occultist delves into dark lore or suffers from a tainted family bloodline that will turn him into a supernatural beast or monster of some kind. These are represented by multiple paths. These are the Abomination, more Mister Hyde than Doctor Jekyll; the cosmic power of the Horror; the dark energies of the Nightmare; the primal acidity of the Ooze; and the classic powers of the Vampire and the Werecreature. Of these, the Path of the Ooze is the most original. The Class as such feels more suited to either NPC use or a horror-focused campaign or setting.

If the Occultist brings the macabre to The Masterclass Codex, the Bloodweaver uses his abilities to control blood to empower himself and affect others. The Traditions of the Class enable the healing of the Bloodweaver and his allies with Bloodbinder; to curse, cripple, and kill with Crimson Witch; and even to turn the Bloodweaver’s own blood into weapons as a Scarlet Reaper. This is in addition to Disciplines, such as Blood Reach which turns the Bloodweaver’s fingernails into hard-as-steel (surely iron would have been better?), ten-foot-long talons, or Taint Blood, poisoning a target’s blood! The Class lists multiple Disciples, all of which require the expenditure of points from the Player Character’s Sanguine Reservoir. Some of these Disciplines and abilities do require the Bloodweaver to suffer damage as well as expend point from the Sanguine Reservoir. The Bloodweaver is an enjoyably horrible Class, being more akin to a blood-themed superhero—or rather anti-superhero—than necessarily a classic Dungeons & Dragons-style Player Character.

The superhero feel continues with the luck-based Fatebender. Where the Bloodweaver has points from his Sanguine Reservoir, the Fatebender has, of course, Fate Points. They can be expended to have something improbable happen nearby or force someone nearby (including himself) to reroll an attack, ability check, or saving throw. The Destined Prospects for the Class include Mascot who radiates good luck around him to his allies and benefits from their good fortune in return; the Jinx instead radiates bad luck to his enemies and benefits from their misfortune in return—including ‘Under a Ladder’ and ‘Wardrobe Malfunction’; and Weaver lets him change fate around him. The latter is not as fun or entertaining as Jinx, and with both Mascot and Jinx, there is something of the swashbuckler to the Class.

If the Occultist was the oddity from A Touch of Class: Seven New Classes for 5th Edition, then the Gemini is the oddity from A Touch More Class: 9 More Classes for 5th Edition. As the name suggests, the Class is all about twins and doubles, and thematically, it has Balances between the two rather than disciplines or paths. The Atavist plays with age, balancing between young and old; Equalist between mind and body, one embodying the former, the latter the other, and this changes every day; and the Reluctant Hero between fear and fearlessness. Roleplaying wise, this has possibilities, but it forces a player to roleplay two characters rather one and that complicates things. The Geomancer draws from the five Chinese elements—earth, fire, metal, water, and wood—and follows one four different Orders. These are Order of the Apothecary, Order of the Architect, Order of the Conqueror, and Order of the Rune Knight. They are respectively, healers, builders—civil servants and city planners are suggested, seekers of peace through conflict, and mighty warriors. The Geomancer is underwritten and of the subclasses, the Order of the Apothecary and Order of the Architect just about fit, whereas the others do not quite.

The Gunfighter lets the Dungeon Master and her players bring firearms into the game. It has its particular Fighting Styles—Archery, Carbineer (gunfighting from horseback), Harquebusier (using hand cannons!), Matchlock Mobility, Point-Black Shooter, and Sharp Aim—though Archery is the odd one out here. The Codes of the Gun are Bushwhacker, for the Player Character who prefers to ambush his targets; Drifter, for the famous or infamous travelling gunfighter; and Maverick, which brings magical gun tricks to the battlefield. Annoyingly, there are no rules for actually using guns to accompany the Class, a major omission. Otherwise, this is a sold Class inspired by Westerns, but mapped back onto earlier firearms.

The Lodestar begins play with a broken soul, but able to coalesce those pieces of broken soul into physical magical spheres that the Lodestar has to constantly keep tethered to his soul. As tethered as they are, the Lodestar can fling them at an enemy to inflict damage, use them to block attacks, and more. Training method include Control, which grants fine manipulation of the spheres; Imaginative to enhance the Lodestar’s artistic capability and imagination as well as the Lodestar’s form; and Instinct in which the spheres become part of Lodestar’s training and combat regimen. The Class feels inspired by the Ioun stones of Dungeons & Dragons, but then turned into an odd sort of martial artist. Overall, it does not really come together in a way that is enticing to play.

The Monster Tamer offers different ways to capture and train pets. The Class adheres three different Regimens. The Animalist has respect for animals and his pet to enhance it; the Monstrous finds kinship with monsters rather than beasts; the Oddball is drawn to the weirder creatures, like the Gelatinous Cube or the Otyugh! The Monster Tamer also teaches his pets tricks, including attacks, using the features of the creature, and even unnatural behaviour! The choice of tamed monster can be really powerful, backed up with a surprisingly high number of Hit Points for the Class.

Inspired by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, the Savant is a Class with the Aptitudes of Adversary, which is all about manoeuvring the enemy into danger; the Chirurgeon and its focus on healing; and the Co-ordinator, who uses knowledge to aid others on the battlefield and make deductions about others. The third of these then, combines elements of the Noble with classic detective, whilst the first is a fighter variant. These are backed up with Tricks which distract or direct opponents across the battlefield. Inspired, of course, by Sherlock Holmes and similar figures with genius levels of observation and deduction, there is lots of roleplaying potential in the Class, even if, ultimately the Aptitudes slightly underwhelm as choices.

Lastly, the Tinkerer brings the gadgeteer to Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. The Tinkerer—not necessarily a Gnome, of course—craft ‘Affect-Engines’ that consume mystical power and transform into elemental energy, either cold, flame, or lightning, which can be spat out for various effects. One issue is that upon first glance, the Class cannot do anything really interesting until its gets to Second Level. This is not quite the case, as the Tinkerer can build items, which require an Affect-Engine, for example, a hand-rocket or a power-tool. Once a Tinkerer acquires a few Levels and the ability to have more than one Affect-Engine in play, he can construct more powerful items and items which a few more options in their use. All this is really only obvious in looking at the list of example items at the end of the Class description, so only then does the Tinkerer not look as underpowered at First Level. That said, the creation of these devices does not money as well as a bit of time.

Once the Tinkerer is Second Level, he can cast spells and can attack an Affect-Engine to a weapon or object to add its elemental effect, including inflicting extra damage by expending a spell slot. The Tinkerer focuses on one of three Fields of Study. The Bombardier turns his Affect-Engines into artillery pieces; the Mechanic over engineers his Affect-Engine to improve its efficiency; and the Steam Knight turns the heavy armour worn by the Tinkerer into power armour! Overall, this looks like a fun Class to play around with and if there was a suitable Steampunk setting, this would make a suitable addition.

In addition to the extra demons and devils for the Diabolist Class and backgrounds for the Alchemist, The Masterclass Codex adds ‘Tailored Magic Items’ that a Player Character of a particular Class gets better at using. For example, the Diabolist’s Whip increases that Class’s ability to conjure demons and devils and gains bonuses to both attack and damage, but later inflicts extra necrotic damage. There are items listed for both the supplement’s new Classes and the standard ones in the Player’s Handbook.

Physically, The Masterclass Codex is very much two books in one—A Touch of Class: Seven New Classes for 5th Edition and A Touch More Class: 9 More Classes for 5th Edition—with one having a red trade dress and the other a green trade dress. The layout is clean and tidy, and everything is very accessible, especially with its larger typeface. The artwork, some of it publicly available images, is variable in its quality. Overall, it is and it does feel very much a like a compilation.

Ultimately, The Masterclass Codex is what you might call a Marmite book, Marmite soft, dark brown foodstuff that is so salty-tasting—without actually containing any salt—that it divides most people into two groups. They either love it or they loath it. So it is with The Masterclass Codex, and not once, but twice. People are going to either love it or loathe it because it is written for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, and then people are going to either love it or loathe it because they like or dislike one, two, or more of the Classes in its pages. For those that dislike it, for either reason, The Masterclass Codex is book to avoid, though there is nothing to stop a Game Master from taking any one of the Classes in its pages and stripping it down to adapt to the Dungeons & Dragons-style game of her choice. On the other hand, there is a lot to like in the pages of The Masterclass Codex. The sixteen Classes are interesting and will add both a different flavour and a different style of play to a game, as well as presenting challenges in terms of getting used to how they play. Their inclusion both adds to the play of Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition and to the Dungeon Master’s campaign world. The Gun Fighter adds firearms and so they exist in the world, the Occultist suggests a horror element, perhaps similar to that of Ravenloft, and the Noble adds a sense of command and control and so on. The Noble is the one Class that will make it to play, particularly if a group is missing the Warlord from Dungeons & Dragons, Fourth Edition.
The Masterclass Codex is not a book that every Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition group or Dungeon Master is going to want or need. Its contents are, after all, optional. However, as a set of options, having them on the shelf is no bad thing. They are a set of new play options to try out, a set of new play options around which to build a world.
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En Publishing will be at UK Games Expo which takes place on Friday, May 31st to Sunday June 2nd, 2024.

A woman sits at the dining table, the meal ready before her, a housewife and siren awaiting the arrival of her husband home, working late, or is he? Lovers, one poisoning the other to keep them even as they stray. Siblings, monsters all, confined by their father’s love and control until they have had enough and decided to ensure their escape by eating him. A nuclear family of loving cannibals whose predations have become too much and as the police closes in, enjoy one last meal of each other. A New Year’s Eve party at the end of 1999 when the world might end at the stroke of midnight and the ball drops, whilst visions of an alternate present haunt the party-goers. Mealtimes—dinner especially—can be times to celebrate, but sometimes they are performances of tension and despair, each course serving up another dish and another act that ratchets up the tension until it becomes unbearable and someone snaps. Seething. Shouting. Screaming. Raging. Worse. Thankfully, these are not scenes of everyday domestic distress, but of set-ups for—and from—the Suburban Consumption of the Monstrous.

Suburban Consumption of the Monstrous is an anthology of American freeform live action horror roleplaying games that use the themes of food and consumption to explore horror in suburban environments. Published by Pelgrane Press—better known for Trail of Cthulhu and 13th Age and similar roleplaying games—following a successful Kickstarter campaign, Suburban Consumption of the Monstrous is written and designed by Banana Chan and Sadia Bies, and contains a total of fourteen ‘Live Action Role Playing’ games or LARPs. These are not the traditional fantasy LARPS with multiple participants wielding foam weapons, but much smaller, more intimate affairs, that emphasise drama and tension. This is done via the set-up and then through character design and prompts. The players are free to interpret these prompts within the play, but these LARPS are designed to tell a particular story even if the outcome will vary from one playthrough to the next. The format and style is influenced by the Nordic style, but the fourteen here are classified as American freeform LARPS. All fourteen though, are reminiscent of murder mystery parties, each twisted into their own American horror story.
Suburban Consumption of the Monstrous opens with a short explanation of what LARPS, before delving into a discussion of calibration tools and setting expectations, essentially safety tools. Some of these are particular to LARPS, like ‘Tap and Scratch’, tap being used to indicate that a player wants to step out of a scene, ‘scratch’ to indicate that a player is enjoying a scene. Others, such as ‘Lines and Veils’ and the ‘X-Card’ will be familiar to standard tabletop roleplaying games. There are notes too on expectations for solo play, since some of the LARPs in the anthology are designed for one, and the experience of play can be made all the more intense because of the solitary situation. There is advice too for how to handle the debriefing following a solo LARP, necessary because being designed for one, there is no scope for post-play discussion with others as there is in a standard LARP with more participants.

The fourteen LARPs in Suburban Consumption of the Monstrous range widely in terms of length and number of participants. From one to as many as eight players, and from under an hour to no more than three. All follow the same format. This includes, obviously, the playing time and the number of players, but to this are listed content warnings, tone and media touchstones—inspirational reading and watching, calibration tools—safety tools to be observed for the particular LARP, and items needed. The latter typically begin with a dinner meal and a table, and can be as simple as print-outs of the LARP’s prompt cards and a mannequin, or as complex as an unusual ingredient, a washcloth, a bathtub, a cup of water, a coin, and a pair of pyjamas. Others require video recordings, particular room types, and more. Following some background there is always a guide to how the LARP will work, but beyond that, each of the LARPs will vary. Many include character and prompt cards that are required in order to play.
Suburban Consumption of the Monstrous opens with ‘A Housewife in Her Twenties’, a solo affair in which a housewife—who happens to be a siren—who goes through the steps of preparing to have her husband come home from work. Doing her make-up, dressing, and preparing and cooking the evening meal, before sitting down to eat—and all this is actually doing those things rather than describing acting them out as you would in a roleplaying game. Throughout there are prompts and questions as to how you react, and there is potential here for transgression, and it is intentionally designed to scritch and scratch and needle, both physically and emotionally. Similarly, ‘TV Dinner’ is very personal as the player, living alone, enjoys a takeout meal, and suddenly realises that someone in the television series he is watching is talking to him. This explores loneliness and what might change as a result of the interaction. All three of the solo LARPs here have the feel more of solo journalling games, although the LARP aspect calls for a physicality that most journalling games do not.

‘My Love, A Poison’ is designed for two players. It is about a relationship that is about to founder, one poisoning the other after discovering their infidelity. It is intimate, consensually so, the player poisoner lacing the victim’s food with an unusual flavour. There is no reveal in the sense that the poisoned participant is caught unaware, both players knowing from the starter who is the poisoner and the poisoned. ‘Goodbye Father’ is not dissimilar. It is for three players, all taking the roles of monstrous siblings who want to escape the constraints their father has placed on their lives and have jointly decided to kill and consume him. The tension and horror of knowing what is coming is ratchetted up by much of the play being done in silence, communication being done via notes or even texts, except when Father speaks, and ultimately when he is dead and they escape. Then they freely find their voices… ‘Love and Betrayal’ begins with three of its protagonists waking up to encounter a Personal Assistant hurrying to get them to rehearsals for scenes from a soap opera. As they do so, the Personal Assistant interrupts with notes from the ‘Director’ on how he wants them to perform, stuck to their scripts becoming increasingly revelatory with secrets about themselves rather than their characters in the soap opera. It is short and direct and very quickly the players will learn that their characters are in a seriously perilous situation. For more players—as many as six—is ‘What Lies Beneath’ is another family affair, which begins on a sombre note. One of their number, the youngest, recently died, and there are revelations about his death to be made by each of the other members of the family. The LARP requires a fair bit of set-up in terms of questions, both as a group and a player. There is a lot in this LARP that is unspoken, and that includes quite literally the ‘Unspoken’, an unacknowledged presence that literally lurks under the table. The ‘Unspoken’ is almost the LARP’s director, using certain actions to indicate that someone is lying, when to reveal secrets, and ultimately to replace one of the family. It is weird and requires quite a lot upon the part of the person playing the ‘Unspoken’.

Physically, Suburban Consumption of the Monstrous is a lovely book. It is well written, with clear and careful instructions and advice. The artwork is a colourful range of the weird and the disturbing, each piece pointing to the horrors to come in the LARPs that follow. Thankfully, the tooth motif on the dust jacket does not follow through into the pages of the anthology.

Inspired by films such as Get Out and Hereditary, television series like Hannibal and Sharp Objects, the French folk tale Bluebeard, and Jean-Paul Sartre’s 1944 play No Exit, Suburban Consumption of the Monstrous is a demanding set of horrifying situations, fraught with emotion and tension that preys upon the participants, whilst asking a lot of them in terms of commitment. Players new to LARPS, even mature players—which is what the anthology demands—may find that too much, even with the excellent advice on safety tools and running each one. Nevertheless, they likely benefit from the presence and guidance of more experienced players. Who, of course, will find a great deal to engage with and run here. In terms of physical set-up and commitment, the contents of Suburban Consumption of the Monstrous are less demanding, because they are all designed to be run at home.

Suburban Consumption of the Monstrous is an excellent anthology of LARPs that brings the horror of the family and its relationships to the perfect venue—at the dinner table—and keeps it at home.
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Pelgrane Press will be at UK Games Expo which takes place on Friday, May 31st to Sunday June 2nd, 2024.

It is a year to celebrate. The Queen’s Onyx Jubilee is about to begin, marking the ninety-fifth year of the merciful monarch’s glorious reign. Queen Yoros has the good fortune to be so long-lived and so youthful still, and her people rejoice at her fortune and the beneficence of her reign. She is even gracious enough to invite subjects from all levels of society, including the peasantry. For them, this is a chance to see the queen, to enjoy her hospitality, to pay their respects, and to make memories that they will tell their grandchildren. Unfortunately, only one of these facts is actually true. Whilst the queen is holding a celebration—of a sort—and does want the peasants to attend, hence the invitations, this is not necessarily to their good fortune, although it might be the making of them… They awake to find themselves in an opulent palace, a bitter taste in their mouths and bestial death cultists looming over them. Where are they? How did they get there? How do they get out? These are questions to be answered in Dungeon Crawl Classics #101: The Veiled Vaults of the Onyx Queen, a scenario for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game.
Dungeon Crawl Classics #101: The Veiled Vaults of the Onyx Queen is, as the title suggests, the one-hundred-and-first title in the ‘Dungeon Crawl Classics’ line from Goodman Games. Befitting the fact that it has passed that milestone, Dungeon Crawl Classics #101: The Veiled Vaults of the Onyx Queen is a Character Funnel. This is a feature of Dungeon Crawl Classics, a scenario specifically designed for Zero Level Player Characters in which initially, a player is expected to roll up three or four Level Zero characters and have them play through a generally nasty, deadly adventure, which surviving will prove a challenge. Those that do survive receive enough Experience Points to advance to First Level and gain all of the advantages of their Class. Dungeon Crawl Classics #101: The Veiled Vaults of the Onyx Queen certainly is tough, a great mausoleum turned fouled fane, crawling with savage cultists, sepulchres marked with vicious traps, the smell of death and decay unavoidable, all the while something monstrous lurks in the upper halls ready to vomit flesh-burrowing grave worms at intruders, and a mellifluous voice urges intruders to come to her rescue… Inspired by the short stories ‘The Charnel God’ by Clark Ashton Smith and ‘Imprisoned with the Pharaohs’ by H.P. Lovecraft—and surprisingly—Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee. The whole complex has been turned into a temple to Mordiggian, a god of death, and it combines a slightly eerie feel with a Lovecraftian undertone and a sense of dread and uncertainty, all punctuated with screams of terror and death…

Dungeon Crawl Classics #101: The Veiled Vaults of the Onyx Queen begins en media res. The Player Characters awake to find themselves lying on the floor amidst rows of bodies. Cultists pick over the corpses. It is a wonderfully creepy opening. Once the Player Characters have dealt with the cultists—as is typical for a Dungeon Crawl Classics Character Funnel—with a mass brawl relying on luck rather than skill, because after all, they are intentionally incompetent, they can begin to explore. There is a lovely scale and grandeur to what is the royal funerary complex, dwarfing the Player Characters, its opulence, let alone the persistent and pervading stench of the grave, constantly serving to remind them that they are out of place.

The Player Characters have two objectives. One is to find out where they are, the other is to get out of wherever they are. To do that they are pulled onwards by the mysterious voice into the first of several funeral vaults. These are the last resting places of various royal personages, holding not just the bodies of kings and queens, but items that are necessary for the Player Characters’ survival in helping them defeat the ghastly threats they are likely to face towards the end of the scenario. They are also the opportunity for the author to have some fun with the Judge in presenting puzzles and traps for the players and their characters to overcome and/or survive. They often include a great table of random (or appear to be random) events that can befall the Player Characters, either killing them in interesting ways or changing them radically in true Dungeon Crawl Classics fashion. If the Player Characters can overcome these nicely detailed set pieces, they have the means to defeat the threats they will later face. Wielding these means also hints at possible roles or Classes that the survivors can take after completing the scenario, that is, Cleric, Thief, Warrior, and Wizard.

Dungeon Crawl Classics #101: The Veiled Vaults of the Onyx Queen being a Character Funnel means that there is a possibility of a Total Party Kill. Fortunately, the scenario offsets that by providing a ready supply of bodies, some of which like the original Player Characters, may not actually be dead. These can readily replace the original Player Characters, so that a player could easily play through the scenario and complete it with a completely different set of Player Characters. Given the deadliness of the scenario in places, this is a distinct possibility, as is the chance that the Player Characters make an attempt to escape the funeral palace, totally unprepared, get killed, and almost have to start again, looking for the means to defeat the foul foes that killed their forbears and successfully gain their freedom.

Physically, Dungeon Crawl Classics #101: The Veiled Vaults of the Onyx Queen is very well presented. If the frontispiece looks a little goofy, the rest of the artwork is decent and the cartography is excellent, nicely depicting the scale of the funeral complex. The scenario also includes four handouts and these are nicely done.

Dungeon Crawl Classics #101: The Veiled Vaults of the Onyx Queen is a really nicely done Character Funnel with lots of atmosphere and dread, but it does leave the Judge and her players wanting at the end. The issue is that in escaping the funeral palace and in the process, both discovering quite why Queen Yoros has managed both to stay so young and achieve the ninety-fifth year of her glorious reign and ending that reign, their actions have potentially calamitous consequences for her kingdom. The question is, what happens next? What happens to the kingdom which has just lost its (evil) queen? What are the consequences for the Player Characters? Of course, this is entirely up to the Judge to develop, but the idea of having inadvertently brought down a kingdom is such a delicious idea that you wish that Goodman Games would actually publish a sequel exploring what happens next.

Dungeon Crawl Classics #101: The Veiled Vaults of the Onyx Queen is a richly detailed and enjoyably thematic Character Funnel. It gets the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game’s second century of scenarios off to a delightfully grand and morbid start.

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Goodman Games will be at UK Games Expo which takes place on Friday, May 31st to Sunday June 2nd, 2024.

One of the most interesting and innovative roleplaying games of 2021 has to be Inspirisles. Published by Hatchlings Games, Inspirisles is an Arthurian storytelling game in which young teenagers find their way into the mysterious lands of the fae that mirror the British Isles where through the Shaping of magic collect Belief enough to protect the World Tree and so become Pendragons, the descendants of Arthur and Guinevere. It is specifically designed to do three things. First it is designed to be played by young adults. Second, it is designed to be played by the deaf and the hard of hearing. Third, and as a consequence of the latter, it is designed as both an introduction to and to help teach, Deaf culture and sign language—both American Sign Language and British Sign Language. To do that it uses sign language as part of game play. Just as words, letters, numbers, and expressions are shaped out in sign language, in Inspirisles, the players Shape out their characters’ magical control of the Elements, meaning that the players are literally Shaping what their characters are Shaping, and it gives the game a wonderful physicality.

Overisles [https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/460542/overisles-campaign-setting-for-inspirisles?affiliate_id=392872] is the first campaign for Inspirales, following on from the scenario collection, Shapes of Adventure: An Inspirisles Anthology [https://rlyehreviews.blogspot.com/2022/10/scenarios-for-shaping.html]. Published following a successful Kickstarter campaign [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tatteredbear/overisles], it takes the roleplaying game in a wholly direction—into the air and island hopping across the archipelago with the Pendragons riding astride their great feathered beasts, the Nimbus. At stake is the fate of the islands. All over the islands, Disbelief, brought about through greed, corruption, cruelty, and bloodshed, is bubbling up under the Nests of the Nimbus, masses of darkness that enable the great birds’ eggs to be stolen, Belief to weaken, and the islands to be dragged down from the skies. Could the culprits be Wyrm Pirates, infamous for stealing the eggs, or could it be something else? The Silver Apples, former Pendragons who stayed on once their quests were complete rather than returning to their lives on Earth far below, have searched far and wide for the cause, but all they have found so far, are hints of shadowy creatures roaming the islands committing theft after theft.
Although Overisles does include a quick guide to creating Pendragons, but the Inspirisles rulebook is needed to create the Player Characters. In addition, the Grail Guide—as the Game Master is called—requires a pair of six-sided dice for use with the campaign’s various tables. The actual play requirements for Overisles are simple. Just five participants, one of whom will be the Grail Guide, the others taking the roles of the Pendragons, ideally one for each of the setting’s four Elements. Control and use of these four Elements is done via Shaping, the magical means used to overcome Belief Barriers and enter into Disbelief Battles. The former are puzzles or problems which the Pendragons need to solve or overcome, whilst the latter are contests against a threat infused with Disbelief, for example, a troll who has built a bridge into a community and is about to pillage it. Players and their Pendragons work together to solve a problem, explaining how their Shaping and their use of their Element contribute to the solution, working through a Leader. The Leader will change from problem to problem, depending upon which Element is best suited to dealing with the current situation. Key to Shaping, of course, is the use of Sign Language.
Overisles adds another form of Shaping. This is Feathering, which represents communication between the Nimbus and the Pendragon. Eight new words are added in both British and American Sign Language to handle the instructions that a rider will give his Nimbus, whilst in game, his Pendragon will bond with his Nimbus, its feathers coming to reflect the hue of the Element that the Pendragon specialises. There are other means to cross from one island to another, such as the Sky Bridges, but riding a Nimbus gives Pendragon the freedom of movement.
The play of Overisles involves the Pendragons travelling from island to island, encountering NPCs and possibly ‘monsters’, searching for signs of Disbelief, and hopefully solving each situation or problem on each island. Their progress is tracked in two ways. One is by the Pendragons and their players, in terms of the number of Nimbus Eggs and the amount of Belief they retrieve and offer. As they retrieve and offer more of both, they will unlock stronger Shapes and gain access to better items. The other is by the Grail Guide, and is the degree of Calamity which can befall the Archipelago. Whilst Disbelief can be reduced by recovering Nimbus Eggs, if it and Calamity increase, it can trigger calamitous events, starting with a Vorm Storm, when the captain of The Gallant Gull, which takes the Pendragons to Wingrest, the biggest island of the archipelago and the starting point for the campaign, loses control of his emotions all the way up to one of the Nests plummeting to the ground below, and beyond. When this occurs, the Pendragons have to act immediately in order to prevent a disaster.
Overisles details numerous NPCs across the Archipelago, including the four Crests who lead the peoples across the islands, the elite of the Silver Apples—including a very truthful Squirrel, and dangerous beings, like the Corrupted Glow (Glow are winged and birdlike creatures who research Belief, but the Corrupted Glow have been overcome by Disbelief) and Wyrm Pirates. Wingrest is described in broad detail, and there are a number of interesting NPCs that the Pendragons can encounter here in addition to the Crests.
A good quarter of Overisles is dedicated to describing the twenty islands of the Archipelago. For example, Felisia is home to many cats, including its king, Cat Sith. Its notable features include the Great Cat Tree, decorated with colourful tassels and ribbons, and dotted with sun dappled platforms and homes; the Sunning Hills, carpeted with lush grass where the Feliseans can bask or catch fish from the verdant pools; and the Green Fields, which consist of fields of catnip and cat grass, all to please the inhabitants’ sense of smell. It is inhabited by the Feliseans, anthropomorphic cats. Of late though, dark clouds have been rolling over the Sunning Hills at a moment’s notice, and where Cat Sith once hosted picnics, festivals, fishing competitions, and more, he has not been seen in weeks. The Pendragons will want to find out why and this is presented as a series of tasks that will see them climb the Great Cat Tree to Cat Sith’s palace, stand in for him at a festival, and come to his aid. These tasks are presented in succinct fashion and the Grail Guide will want to flesh them out and add a little colour too. All of the island descriptions follow a similar pattern—a description of a handful of important locations and NPCs, the problem causing Disbelief on the island, and the tasks to be done to overcome the Disbelief.
What this means is that the Pendragons have twenty islands to explore in any fashion that they want. That though may be a problem. The Players may not necessarily know which island to visit first and there are no real links in terms of hooks or pointers which will pull the Pendragons from one island to the next. On the one hand, this gives both them and their players a lot of freedom, but that freedom can be daunting. Thus, the Grail Guide may want to throw in some hooks and rumours in order to give her players some ideas as to where their Pendragons should go. One thing that the Grail Guide has to do is decide who is actually responsible for the rise in Disbelief across the Archipelago. Several suggestions are given, but the Grail Guide will need to decide as to who and why.
Physically, Overisles is brightly presented and decently written. The artwork is bright and engaging, one particularly enjoyable piece is of the island of Wingrest floating unseen over the British Isles.
Where Overisles has a problem is that it is underwritten in places and is perhaps too open in its structure, such that it lacks a good starting point and hooks to give reasons for the Pendragons to go to an island and their players to want their Pendragons to go to an island. It is here that it needs development upon the part of the Grail Master and that is in addition to deciding who the villain of the piece is. Inspirales does deserve a campaign, but Overisles is not quite the campaign it fully deserves. It needs a bit more input to run than it should and for less experienced players this could be off-putting. Of course, there are no other campaigns for Inspirales, so Overisles is the only option. Once the preparation has been done, Overisles will be a decent option, not just the only option.

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Hatchlings Games will be at UK Games Expo which takes place on Friday, May 31st to Sunday June 2nd, 2024.

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: Flash Cthulhu – Sell YourselfPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Michael Reid

Setting: USA, 2008Product: One-Location, One-Hour Scenario
What You Get: Eight page, 1.35 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: You’ll go through hell to get this job!Plot Hook: In a recession, it is every man for himselfPlot Support: Staging advice and four pre-generated Investigators.Production Values: Plain
Pros# Sanity scouring sweatbox# Calls for strong roleplaying under duress # Easy to adapt to other times and settings# Potential convention mini-scenario# Heliopobia# Rogophobia# Thanatophobia
Cons# Highly adversarial
Conclusion# Short, sharp bloody hour of incandescent interrogation# Aggressively antagonistic affair that calls for good roleplaying

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

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

—oOo—
Name: Dreams to Fill the VacuumPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author Richard Watt

Setting: Detroit, 1995Product: Scenario
What You Get: Thirty page, 23.75 MB PDFElevator Pitch: Dreams aren’t always the right things to havePlot Hook: Talk of demons and cults are a sure sign of distress
Plot Support: Staging advice, eleven handouts, two floorplans, and  four NPCs.Production Values: Good.
Pros# Weird contrast of madness and mirage# Easy to adapt to other times and locations# Delightfully creepy, upfront antagonist# Decent handouts# Designed for experienced Investigators# Easily adapted to Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game# Could steer into the Dreamlands# Oneirophobia# Automatonophobia# Melophobia# Leophobia
Cons# Designed for experienced Investigators# Feels underwritten and more of a detailed outline
Conclusion# The demons are real in a race to save a woman from her dreams# Weird and woozy mix of action and aberration

The world has endured much in the last eight decades in what has been an interesting twenty-first century. December 24th, 2011, marked the end of the five-thousand-year Mayan calendar and the beginning of the next, and with it came unimaginable change. U.G.E., or ‘Unexplained Genetic Expression’, gave rise to the birth of mutant and changeling children, followed by ‘Goblinisation’, in which a tenth of the population mutated into hideous forms. Although their appearance triggered global race riots, they became recognised as Dwarves, Elves, Orcs, and Trolls, separate species in their own right, members of Metahumanity known as the Awakened. Dragons appeared in the skies and were greater than anyone even imagined, owning corporations, becoming media stars, and one even getting elected president—before being assassinated on the day of his inauguration. Corporations were recognised as sovereign states unto themselves, so rose the power of the mega corps, all chasing status on the ten-member Corporate Council, regulating their activities where once national governments had done so. Recognition of the corporations and their extraterritoriality weakened the United States as the Native American demand for recognition turned into an armed struggle that would eventually force Canada, Mexico, and the United States to recognise the Native American Nations under the terms of the Treaty of Denver. Worse was to follow with the data Crash of ‘29 as a killer virus destroyed data and systems worldwide, toppling governments and threatening to destroy the USA. In response, operatives co-opted by the US government and using advanced cybertechnology entered cyberspace and fought the virus. Not all survived, but several of those who did took that technology to market, ultimately leading to personal cyberdecks which allowed individuals to easily access cyberspace and travel anywhere from the comfort of their own homes. In the wake of the Crash of ’29, what remained of the United States merged with Canada to form the United Canadian and American States in order to save both their economies and resources. It was followed by the secession of the Confederated American States four years later, and the founding of Tir Tairngire, an Elf nation just outside of Seattle. The rise of two types of technology—cybernetics and virtual reality would lead to widespread adoption of cyberware as augmentations and the Matrix, the descendant of the World Wide Web, its virtual reality or augmented reality accessed via cybernetic implants, a commlink, even the natural ability of the Technomancer, has run parallel with the rise and study of magic through various traditions.

By the year 2080, the divide between rich and poor, between SIN and SINless has only got wider. A SIN or ‘System Identification Number’ provides state and corporate recognition, access to education, healthcare, and potentially a job, but that job is going to be as a wage slave serving the interests of a corporation. Some of the SINless see their not being part of the system as a badge of honour. It enables them to undertake jobs and tasks that having a SIN would make very difficult, whether that is protecting the rights of fellow slum dwellers or becoming Shadowrunners. Shadowrunners do the jobs, perform the heists and personnel extractions, steal data, babysit assets, investigate mysteries, and the like that corporations and other agencies with a budget big enough do not want to be seen doing. Employed by a ‘Mister Johnson’, they are a corporate fixer’s deniable assets, willingly paid to do underhand tasks that would otherwise ruin a corporation’s reputation, until that is, the Shadowrunners become a liability!

This is the setting for Shadowrun – Sixth World, the roleplaying game originally published in 1989 by FASA, Inc. and subsequently developed over the course of thirty years into novels and short story anthologies, miniatures games, card games—collectible and otherwise, computer games, and more, including, of course, a detailed background and history of the Sixth World setting itself, which also spanned the roleplaying game’s thirty year history, from 2050 to 2080. It combines three genres in particular, two of them particularly not being obvious bedfellows—Cyberpunk, Fantasy, and Urban Fantasy. It is a roleplaying game in which the Player Characters take the roles of Shadowrunners, freelance operatives trying to get by without attracting too much attention, but getting involved anyway.

Shadowrun – Sixth World is the latest iteration of the rulebook, published by Catalyst Game Labs essentially the sixth edition for the setting’s Sixth World. It introduces the setting, provides the means to create the numerous types of Player Characters possible, run the different aspects of the setting—primarily magic and the Matrix, details a wide array of threats and other NPCs and creatures, lists numerous items that the Player Characters can equip themselves with, and hidden at the back, almost like an afterthought, provides a handy introduction to the Seattle of 2080 that includes several NPC contacts and almost twenty scenario hooks! This is all peppered with fiction set within the world of Shadowrun that helps to impart its flavour and feel, examples of the rules in action, and a pair of pullout sections that showcase just a little of the artwork of the roleplaying’s past thirty years. Veteran players will recognise many of these pieces.

One of the first things Shadowrun – Sixth World does is highlight the differences between it and previous editions. This is aimed at the veteran player coming to the new edition. So, what then are those changes? First, and foremost, it includes faster easier rules for Edge, the undefinable element of risk taking, guts, and heedless ignorance in the face of danger, stripped down skills, Armour not being part of the Damage Resistance test, the Elimination of Limits, a hangover from the previous, more complicated rules, simplified action, spells no longer needing Force, and altered Matrix functions. The aim is to provide simpler, more streamlined mechanics that encourage greater, faster, and more dynamic action, whilst ultimately making play easier.

A Player Character in Shadowrun has a mix of physical, mental, special attributes, typically one to six. The four physical attributes are Body, Agility, Reaction, and Strength, and the four mental attributes are Willpower, Logic, Intuition, and Charisma. The four Special attributes are Edge, Magic, Resonance, and Essence. Of these, only magic-using Player Characters have Magic and only Technomancers have Resonance, whilst all Player Characters have Edge and Essence. The latter measures how much cyberware, bioware, and other augmentations that a Player Character can have before he becomes too machine-like. It also measures the capacity for a Player Character to use magic. Install too many augmentations and the Player Character’s Essence is reduced, and so is his capacity to use magic. Skills, on the same scale as attributes are divided between active skills and knowledge skills, plus languages. A Player Character has a Metatype—Dwarf, Elf, Human, Ork, or Troll—which conform to the classic fantasy versions of them, plus a Lifestyle, ranging from Street and Squatter to High and Luxury, which apart from Street has to be paid for and maintained. He can also have Qualities, positive or negative, such as Analytical Mind, Catlike, AR Vertigo, or Combat Paralysis.

A Player Character will also have a broad role, either Arcane Specialist, Face, Street Samurai, or Technology Specialist, but within them there are several ways of achieving what each role is designed to do. The Arcane Specialist can be a Mage, a Shaman, or an Adept, the latter being able to focus his magic inwards to enhance himself either physically or socially; a Face can be skill based, a social Adept, or augmented with the right cyberware or bioware; and a Street Samurai can be all skill focused, a physical Adept, or heavily augmented with cyberware. The Technology Specialist can either hack into the Matrix or operate vehicles and drones, either through technological means or innate magical means. The Decker uses technology to hack the Matrix, whilst the Rigger uses it to control technology. The Technomancer uses innate magical ability to hack the Matrix, whilst the Dronomancer uses it to control technology. In general, Player Characters will be specialists in their role. There is some flexibility in terms of character design and the degree to which a character is augmented, but that degree will always be limited by how much a player wants his Arcane Specialist character to be able to use magic.

Character creation itself is not an easy process and takes some getting used to. It uses an updated version of the Priority System first seen in Shadowrun, First Edition in 1989. A player sets the priorities for his character’s Metatype, points to assign to skills and attributes, Magic or Resonance capability, and Resources. Metatype also includes Adjustment Points, which are then spent on Edge, attributes for that Metatype, and either Magic or Resonance. Resources are not just spent on weapons, armour, and other equipment, but also cyberware. At the end of the process, a Player Character receives some Knowledge and Language skills for free (but can purchase more), chooses Contacts and some Qualities, and spends Karma to customise the character. This is in addition to a series of questions designed to help the player envision his character and his motivation as well as his place in the Sixth World. Alternatively, a set of ten pre-generated archetypes provide ready-to-play Player Characters or examples to show what the end result looks like.

Kimama Sanchez
Metatype: Ork Role: Shaman
Racial Qualities: Low-light Vision, Built Tough 1

Body 6 Agility 4 Reaction 3 Strength 6
Willpower 4 Logic 2 Intuition 2 Charisma 5
Edge 4 Magic 6 Essence 6

Attack Rating: 9 Defence Rating: 6+3 Initiative: 5+1d6
Composure: 9 Judge Intentions: 6 Memory: 4 Lift/Carry: 10

Skills: Astral 1, Athletics 1, Close Combat 1, Conjuring 5, Influence 1, Perception 1, Sorcery 5 (Spellcasting +2)

Knowledge Skills: Spirit Types, Seattle Dive Bars

Languages: Or’zet

Spells: Analyse Truth, Antidote, Armour, Confusion, Detect Life, Detect Magic, Heal, Mindlink, Stabilise, Stunbolt

Rituals: Circle of Healing, Ward

Qualities: Mentor Spirit (Bear), Combat Paralysis, Quick Healer, Built Tough (2)

Contacts: Bartender (Connection 2/Loyalty 3), Beat Cop (Connection 2/Loyalty 3), Fixer (Connection 3/Loyalty 2), Mechanic (Connection 3/Loyalty 3), Mafia Consigliere (Connection 3/Loyalty 1), Mentor (Connection 3/Loyalty 3)

Equipment: Extendable Baton, Combat Knife, Lined Coat, Metalink Commlink, Credstick, Lifestyle – Squatter (Prepaid, One Month), Evo Falcon, ¥3557

Mechanically, at its most basic, Shadowrun – Sixth World is quite simple. To have his character undertake an action, a player rolls a dice pool of six-sided dice, results of five and six counting as successes or hits. If more than half of the results consist of ones, then there is potential for a glitch or critical glitch. The dice pool typically consists of the total of an attribute and a skill, a task having a threshold, which represents the number of hits a player has to roll to succeed. This is a straightforward Simple test, whilst an Extended test consists of two Simple tests, the side rolling the most hits winning the outcome. Extended tests are essentially a series of Simple tests, the Player Character having a period of time in which to roll them in order to achieve a greater threshold. Alternatively, a player can buy hits, dividing the number of dice in his dice pool by four and counting the result as the number of hits.

Edge gives an advantage to a Player Character’s action. The cost ranges from one to five Edge. So, for example, a one-Edge Boost will enable a player to reroll a die or add three to Initiative; a two-Edge Boost lets him add one to a die, give an ally an Edge, or Negate an Edge used by an enemy; a three-Edge Boost grants an automatic hit or heals a some Stun damage; a four-Edge Boost can add Edge to the dice pool and make results of six explode or reroll all failed dice; and a five-Edge Boost can make results if two count as glitches for the enemy or create a special effect, that benefits the action. These are not the only Edge Boosts, but in addition, there are Edge Actions. These include making a Big Speech, a Called Shot, a Knockout Blow, or gaining Sudden Insight, all of which have their benefits. Lastly, Edge can be permanently burned to gain a ‘Smackdown’ when a Player Character really, really has to hit hard, and ‘Not Dead Yet’ when otherwise, it looks like the Player Character should be.

Edge is integral to play. A Player Character can earn Edge through, especially in combat encounters, up to a temporary maximum of seven, so a player should not only be looking for opportunities to earn it, but opportunities to spend it too. Thus, ideally, there should be a constant turnover of Edge as play progresses. Yet, this is hampered by the sheer number of Edge Boosts and Edge Actions and they are a lot to remember. In fact, too many to remember with having a reference sheet to hand for every player, let alone the Game Master.
One Saturday night, Kimama Sanchez gets home from the bar where she has been drinking to find four gangers, members of the 7th Avenue Slashers, attempting to lift her Evo Falcon. They have a Professional Rating of two, so their attributes are all two with skills to match, except for their intimidating manner and willingness to throw their weight around. Kimama Sanchez just wants to go to bed, so to avoid a fight, she attempts to intimidate the gangers. As a tough-looking Ork, Kimama is definitely more physically powerful than any of the gangers. This gains her an extra point of Edge from the Game Master. Kimama’s player keeps that in reserve and rolls her dice pool, which consists of six dice, equal to her Charisma + Influence. This will be opposed by the gangers’ Willpower + Intuition, equal to two each. The Game Master rolls this as a group, stating that for each hit that Kimama’s player scores more than the gangers, one of them will flee. The Game Master rolls three, three, six, and six. Kimama’s player rolls two, three, four, six, six, and six, a good roll, but only enough to affect one ganger. Fortunately, Kimama has the extra Edge awarded because she is tough-looking and her player decides to use it as well as a point of her innate Edge to purchase a two-Edge Boost to add one to one of the die results. She turns the result of four into five and now has two hits. This means that she has successfully intimidated two of the gangers, who after Kimama asks gruffly, “Hey, squishies, you really wanna be trying this, this time of the morning?”, decide that taking on a tough-looking Ork this time of the morning is not for them.The core mechanics are used throughout Shadowrun – Sixth World, including all of the mechanical subsets that handle the different aspects of the rules—magic, Technomancy, the matrix, rigging, and so on. Combat is surprisingly treated in just twenty pages, but that also includes plenty of examples that really help the Game Master grasp the rules. At the core, combat revolves around comparing Attack Rating to Defence Rating, and if one is greater than the other by four or more, that combatant gains a point of Edge. More Edge can be gained from the situation, from gear, and more. Edge can be spent before or after the roll. Damage can be soaked by rolling hits generated from a roll based on the Body attribute. Damage is applied to the defendant’s Condition Monitor. Overall, the combat covers ranged and melee combat, grappling, knockdown, explosives, gas attacks, spray attacks, and more.

Magic is divided into two traditions, Hermeticism and Shamanism, the former being academic in nature, the latter more experienced and performative in nature. The first relies on Logic as its attribute, the second on Charisma as its attribute. The rules cover spells, conjuring, summoning, enchantments, alchemy, and more. Adepts have innate powers, such as Astral Perception, Danger Sense, Killing Hands, and more. One danger of using magic for any tradition is the possibility of Drain because using or casting magic is tiring. Every spell has a Drain Value, and when it is cast, the magic-using character’s player must make a roll to withstand its effect. For every hit, the Drain Value is reduced. Any Drain Value left over inflicts stun damage, but this is stun damage that cannot simply be healed. It must be rested to recover from!
It is Sunday morning following a Seattle night out and Kimama is still facing down two gangers who want to steal her bike and were not put off by her intimidating manner. One of them draws a streetline special and points the pistol at her and with a sneer says, “Whatcha gonna do ’bout it, trog?” The other one pulls out a knife. Things have taken a bad turn, one which Kimama wanted to avoid. Combat is about to ensue, which begins with initiative. The Game Master will roll one die and add four for the gangers, whilst Kimama’s player will roll one die and add five. However, Kimama has the negative Quality of ‘Combat Paralysis’, which not only halves the result, but means that she goes last in the first round. The Game Master rolls one, adds four, for a total of five. Kimama’s play rolls a five and adds five for a total of ten. Halved, this is five. What this means is that after the first round when Kimama has to go last due to her Combat Paralysis, she has the same Initiative as the remaining gangers. However, since her Edge is four compared to their one from their Professional Rating of one, this breaks the tie and she will go first in subsequent rounds.

The lead ganger, armed with his Streetline Special, opens fire at Kimama. The Game Master rolls the ganger’s Firearms 2 + Agility 2, Kimama’s player will be rolling Reaction 3 + Intuition 2, whilst the Attack Rating of the Streetline Special is compared against Kimama’s Defence Rating. The Streetline Special has an Attack Rating of eight, whilst Kimama has a Defence Rating of nine, which includes the benefit of her lined coat. Since the Attacking Rating is not four greater than the Defence Rating, there is no Edge benefit. From the situation, the Game Master states that it is dimly lit in the alley alongside Kimama’s squat, but since she has low-light vision as an Ork, gives her a bonus Edge. The Game Master is rolling four dice, getting a result of four, six, six, and six, whilst Kimama’s player rolls two, three, three, five, and six. The Game Master rolled one more hit than Kimama’s player. This is added to the damage value of the Streetline Special, which is two, for a total of three damage. Kimama’s player now rolls to soak this damage, which is six for her Body. Her player rolls two, three, four, four, five, and five for two hits, leaving Kimama with a point of damage to suffer. Given how tough she is, this really is a scratch! This is marked off on the Physical damage Track of her Condition Monitor on the character sheet. Fortunately for Kimama, the other ganger thinks that the pistol is enough to change her mind and does not attack this round.

It is time for Kimama to act. She is not keen on violence, so decides to cast Stunbolt at the ganger with the gun. Kimama’s player will roll her Magic 6 + Sorcery 5 (Spellcasting +2) for a total of thirteen dice! This is definitely four higher than the ganger’s Defence Rating of three, so Kimama is awarded a bonus point of Edge, plus another one because of the poor light conditions and her Low-light Vision. So, she has two. The ganger will oppose the roll with his Willpower + Intuition total of four. Kimama’s player rolls one, one, one, one, three, three, four, four, four, five, six, six, and six, which is four hits and four ones. Fortunately, for Kimama, the number of ones rolled is not enough to cause a glitch. Her player decides to spend the two bonus points of Edge to turn two of the fours into fives, and now she has six hits. This is added to the total effect of the Stunbolt, which is five. The ganger is about to take eleven points of damage, though it is only stun damage. Since damage from direct combat spells cannot be resisted, this is applied directly to the ganger’s Condition Monitor, which is only nine. So down he goes, asleep in charge of a cheap gun. Still, Kimama must check for the effects of Drain because she has cast a spell. Stunbolt has a Drain value of three, so Kimama’s player must roll three hits or more, using her Willpower 4 + Charisma 6, to negate the effect. Kimama’s player rolls one, two, two, two, four, four, six, six, and six, which means three hits and no effect due to Drain! In the meantime, the last ganger is standing there with a knife, just having seen his compatriot fall over, wondering if he should run for it, grab the gun, or use his knife…The general effect of simplifying the mechanics is to streamline play, most notably with the different subsystems. The magic feels a lot more fluid and easier to run, whilst the rules for handling the Matrix, hacking, and the Decker character type have been adjusted so that Hackers are no longer quite playing what was essentially a separate game or combat to the rest of the Player Characters. This has been done by reducing the number of hacking related skills in the roleplaying, just as the number of skills have been reduced elsewhere in the rules; keeping Noise—the factor, such as distance, which occludes hacking attempts, which ensures that a Decker is on-site with the other Player Characters rather than somewhere else; and by shifting the timeframe of hacking attempts to be in line with that of the other Player Characters in the ‘real’ world. It is still quite technical, so actually something that both Game Master and a player whose character is a hacker, need to learn, and do so separately from the other players. As does the Technomancer, but there is a more personal feel to the play of this character type in comparison to the Decker. Similarly, the Rigger has a lot to encompass in terms of what the role can do, with the Technomancer’s equivalent feeling a bit more fluid. All of which stems from the efforts of the designers Shadowrun – Sixth World to ease play and reduce the seemingly insurmountable technicalities of the different subsystems in previous editions. This is not to say that they have not been removed completely, but they have been reduced.

The other aspect of Shadowrun—cyberware, is listed at the back of the book in the lengthy chapter of gear. Here is where the Game Master and her players will find all of the guns, katanas, armoured trench coats, cyberdecks, and cyberware they will need. Much of it is illustrated, and it also includes vehicles and a wide range of tools as well, all of which can be used to outfit the Player Characters as well as the NPCs, the latter according to their NuYen, the latter according to the needs of the budget. Here is where the players will spend the amount of money listed under Resources in the Priority Table for character creation.
For the Game Master there is a good selection of NPCs, including threats and surprisingly detailed contacts for the Player Characters, and critters, both mundane and awakened. Many of the latter are quite nasty, such as the Basilisk, the Ghoul, and the Vampire, and listings also include dragons, though not the named dragons of the setting. The section on running the game is fairly short, but the advice is good and there are rules here too, for handling ‘heat’, the measure of which the Player Characters might have come to the attention of the authorities. Beyond this—and beyond the numbered pages of the book, the Game Master is given an extra set of bonus content. This includes an overview of Seattle in 2080, its isolation and independence from the United Canadian and American States making a good spot in which to base a campaign, just as it did in the 2050 and the first edition of Shadowrun. There are even some extra Qualities which a Player Character can have as an inhabitant of particular districts in and around the city! The four NPCs given are fully rounded out and detailed, all ready for their involvement in some of the plots and hooks listed here at the end of the book. There are almost twenty of these, all ready to be fully fleshed out by the Game Master, so they will need some work to prepare for use with a playing group. Overall, the support for the Game Master is generous.
However, as complete as Shadowrun – Sixth World does feel, it is not perfect. Whilst it goes out of its way to explain what the changes are with the new edition and what the slang means in the setting, what it does not do is give a glossary of game terminology. That would have helped in places where game terms are mentioned before they are properly explained. There is no full example of character creation, so it is different to know quite what you are doing with the creation process, at least initially. There are just too many nuances to it for it to flow easily. There is no example of play. There is plenty of in-game fiction and examples of the rules, but not of general play, and again that would have helped ease the learning process of the game. In terms of background, anywhere beyond Seattle is glossed over, which is disappointing for anyone coming to the city from the surrounding area, especially from any of the Native American Nations or Tir Tairngire.

All that aside, the biggest issue with Shadowrun – Sixth World is its complexity. It is a complex game, one with several separate sets of rules for handling the activities of various roles in the game. All of which need to be learned and understood by a player and the Game Master if they are going to be brought into play. None of which is insurmountable, but it is a hurdle nevertheless, and it always has been since Shadowrun first appeared in 1989 and subsequent supplements and rulebooks added new roles. That said, the rules for Shadowrun – Sixth World really have been streamlined and they do a great deal to reduce the complexity. The challenge of learning to play is still there, but it has been eased.

Physically, Shadowrun – Sixth World is decently presented. In general, it is well written, but it does need an edit in places. The artwork though is good, and it is very nice to see the artwork of past editions presented in the book’s several pullouts.

Shadowrun – Sixth World is a great setting with a lot to explore and experience. That is not quite present in Shadowrun – Sixth World, which instead hints at it whilst presenting the means to access it and explore the wider world presented in other supplements. That means—magic, hacking, rigging, technomancy, combat, and more—have been reworked to be streamlined, and faster and easier to run and play, and so make playing or running Shadowrun not as daunting as it has been in previous editions. That is an impressive feat, and whilst Shadowrun still remains a roleplaying game that calls for more than a casual commitment, Shadowrun – Sixth World has made it more accessible and easier to learn.
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Catalyst Game Labs will be at UK Games Expo which takes place on Friday, May 31st to Sunday June 2nd, 2024.

In 2013, Cubicle 7 Entertainment celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the world’s longest running Science Fiction television series, Doctor Who, with the ambitious launch of a series of sourcebooks for its Ennie-award winning Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space roleplaying game. Beginning with The First Doctor Sourcebook, each of these would detail the complete era of one individual Doctor, his adventures, his companions, his character and outlook, the monsters he faced, and the themes of his incarnation, all supported with content that the Game Master can bring into her own campaign. The result has been a very well done series of sourcebooks that in turn has enabled the Game Master and her players to explore the different eras—all twelve of them to date, though there are more to come—and run adventures set during this period and encounter monsters and threats from this period. Ten years on and in 2023, the sixtieth anniversary of Doctor Who was celebrated. What would the publisher release to celebrate the world’s longest running Science Fiction television series this time around? The answer is Doctor Who: Sixty Years of Adventure.

Doctor Who: Sixty Years of Adventure is a two volume set which together provides an overview of Doctor Who, his Companions and adventures, themes and adversaries, from the First Doctor to the Thirteenth Doctor—and not only that, but the Fugitive Doctor too! Plus, the two volumes include a complete campaign between them, ‘A Lustre of Starlight’, which encompasses every Doctor and more. The two volumes of Doctor Who: Sixty Years of Adventure are divided into Doctor Who: Sixty Years of Adventure Book One and Doctor Who: Sixty Years of Adventure Book Two. Both are, of course, written for use with with Doctor Who: The Roleplaying Game – Second Edition, but easily compatible with the first edition. Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space roleplaying game. Each book details a different era of the television series. Thus Doctor Who: Sixty Years of Adventure Book One examines the First Doctor all the way up to the Eighth Doctor, essentially ‘Classic Who’, whilst Doctor Who: Sixty Years of Adventure Book Two details the period of the Ninth Doctor to the Thirteenth Doctor (and the Fugitive Doctor) before acknowledging at least visually, the Fourteenth Doctor, which of course, is all ‘Nu Who’.

Doctor Who: Sixty Years of Adventure Book One introduced both the pair of volumes in the series and to Doctor Who, explaining its origins and history from its inception in 1963 to the beginning of its interregnum following the Doctor Who film in 1996, before explore the eras, companions, and adventures of the First Doctor through to the Eighth Doctor as well presenting the first eight parts of ‘A Lustre of Starlight’, a campaign that ultimately all of the Doctors detailed in the two volumes. Doctor Who: Sixty Years of Adventure Book Two picks up where Doctor Who: Sixty Years of Adventure Book One left off with another introduction. This though, is not of Doctor Who in general as with the first volume, but of what it calls ‘The Revival Era’. This gives an overview of the last—almost—two decades and thirteen series of Doctor Who, including the Fiftieth Anniversary, as well highlighting the differences between the old the new. Not just the budget, of course, and the single story episodes, but with the arrival of the Ninth Doctor and his encounter with Rose Tyler in ‘Rose’, how the stories of Doctor Who were not just about the adventures of man—and with era, woman as well—in a blue box that could travel in time and space, but about his companions too and how they reacted to and were changed by those adventures and their time with the Doctor. In roleplaying terms, what this sets up is a greater role for the Companions. They cannot be the Doctor or even his equal—except under very special circumstances, because there are always circumstances—but they can run alongside him, be the best that they can hope to be, and see the universe and the future and the past all at the same time.

The format for each volume in the Doctor Who: Sixty Years of Adventure set is the same for each Doctor. Every Doctor’s era opens with an introduction, asks who each Doctor is and who his Companions are, what the themes of the era are, gives an overview of his adventures, and details both the Doctor and each of his campions, complete with stats for use with Doctor Who: The Roleplaying Game – Second Edition. Each of these sections is given a couple of pages each, with the section dedicated to the adventures typically being double that, though there are exceptions and for very good reason. Rounding out chapter is the next part of ‘A Lustre of Starlight’, the campaign which runs throughout both books.
Thus, for the Tenth Doctor, he is unlike the initially callous and slightly arrogant Ninth Doctor, who carries the burden of his predecessor’s actions and his belief that he destroyed Galifrey to prevent the Daleks from winning the Time War, and so is direct and forceful in manner. He would retain many of these characteristics throughout his Generation, but the presence and influence of Rose enables him to heal and his manner to soften. The Tenth Doctor retains the smile of his predecessor, but otherwise is younger, more energetic, and always, always running. His combination of compassion and pride will see him confront danger after danger, attempt to reason with the madness and the madmen of the universe, but ultimately be his undoing. The themes of the Tenth Doctor revolve around change. There is the change in the place of the Earth in the universe in the twenty-first century, because this is the era when humanity is confronted by the fact that they are not alone in that universe, and there is change in terms of how the earth is protected. First with the founding the Torchwood Institute following the werewolf attack on Queen Victoria in 1879 and then its destruction and collapse following the Battle of Canary Wharf.
The Tenth Doctor’s companions begin with Rose Tyler, who like so many before her must adjust to the radical change in manner and appearance in the Time Lord she had come to know, but they quickly joined by her boyfriend, Mickey Smith, followed by the brave Martha Jones who would go on to work for UNIT, and lastly the brilliantly brash and curious Donna Noble and her reliable grandfather, Wilfred Mott. The run through of all the Tenth Doctor’s adventures has a lot to cover, so does feel slightly underwritten and all too brief, which is an issue the pervades the supplement for all of its Doctors and those of the first volumes. Thankfully, nearly all of the Doctors in this volume have their own supplement which details their adventures, adversaries, and so on in much more detail, beginning with The Tenth Doctor Sourcebook. The chapter comes to a close with the next part of the campaign which runs through both volumes of Doctor Who: Sixty Years of Adventure. This format and level of examination is repeated over and over throughout the book.
There are two chapters that are notable exceptions to this format. This is because of the paucity of information upon which to base a chapter as fulsome as those devoted to the Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh, Twelfth, and Thirteenth Doctors, either because the Doctor made only the single extended appearance or a series of quite fleeting appearances. These are chapters devoted to the War Doctor, the unacknowledged Doctor between the Eighth Doctor and the Ninth Doctor and the Fugitive Doctor who appeared very late in the adventures of the Thirteenth Doctor. The inclusion of the War Doctor and the Fugitive Doctor top and tail the chapters in the book, and where the other Doctors have their adventures and companions detailed, neither of them have their adventures so described. After all, there is a dearth of adventures upon which they can draw upon and it is the exact same problem that beset The Eighth Doctor Sourcebook. Where the War Doctor has no companions (though one os suggested for his adventure), the Fugitive Doctor does have one in the form of Karvanista, the Lupari Warrior, who is bound to Dan Lewis, but adventured with the Fugitive Doctor long in the past. Here at both the beginning and the end of the sourcebook is where Doctor Who: Sixty Years of Adventure Book Two is at its most interesting, examining the unexplored possibilities of Doctors whose stories have yet to be, and indeed, may never, be told.
The campaign, ‘A Lustre of Starlight’, begun in Doctor Who: Sixty Years of Adventure Book One, continues exploring the fate of the Taaron Ka, a mysterious diamond—perfect then for what is a treatment of the sixtieth anniversary of Doctor Who—over the course of thousands of years of history. Each part runs to three pages and three acts and is a complete story in itself, the connective thread being the diamond itself. As written, each part is designed to be played using the Doctor and his Companions of that era. For example, in ‘The Dalek Death Diamond’ for The War Doctor must team up with the Rani in a charge up the tower of a Gallifreyan time station in order to prevent the daleks getting hold of a Time Lord weapon of war, whilst for Ninth Doctor, ‘The Diamond Heist’ takes both him and Rose to south-east France towards the end of World War 2 where they team up with photographer Lee Miller to investigate an abandoned town where the Nazis have teamed up with aliens! The Tenth Doctor attends an auction on the dark side of the Moon in ‘Green with Envy’, whilst in ‘Search for the Stars’, the Eleventh Doctor comes to the aid of an Indian Space Agency mission on Mars that tumbles into the Ice Warriors. ‘Debt Repaid’ is set in twenty-first century India which is where Kate Stewart of UNIT sends the Twelfth Doctor where the Taaron Ka diamond was almost stolen and is likely to be stolen again, as is ‘Reparations’ for the Thirteenth Doctor, but in 1950, where the Taaron Ka diamond is being returned to its rightful place despite the objection of outside criminal interests.
Lastly, the secrets of the Taaron Ka diamond begin to be hinted at in ‘Division of Angels’ as the Fugitive Doctor and Karvanista, on the run from the Division and attempting to find something which will give them an advantage when dealing with the Division. This takes them deep into the Earth’s past and deep underground for a much more physical and combative encounter with the Weeping Angels. In general and as written, the episodes that make up the ‘A Lustre of Starlight’ campaign suggest three Player Characters—the Doctor and two Companions—but this does not strictly have to be adhered to. Each part should take no more than one or two sessions play through. Of course, a group is also free to create their own Timelord and set of Companions to play through the campaign, but if played as written, the players should swap roles from episode to episode based on preferences or bring in different Companions as needed.
This though changes with ‘An Unearthly Power’, the last part of the campaign, given in the first of the supplement’s two appendices. The Doctors—at least two, if not more, potentially all fifteen (not counting the Fifteenth, because he is not detailed in this supplement)—arrive, one by one, on a ‘Mystery Murder Cruise’ with a sixties theme on a steamship in the North Sea. This allows the players to go full Doctor, to each play one of the incarnations of the Doctor, their favourites bouncing off each other as personalities and quirks clash. Or possibly to dive deeper into troupe style play so that not only the players roleplaying their favourite Doctors, but their companions too! Where the previous adventures felt all too brief, this is a much more developed affair and so feels more realised and playable as a result. Consequently, this is the best adventure in the whole campaign, and it is a pity that others are each like a précis than fully rounded affairs.
Lastly, the second of the appendices in Doctor Who: Sixty Years of Adventure Book Two looks at an aspect integral to the Doctor and Doctor Who over its sixty years—‘Regeneration’. This is a solid guide to the process and what it involves, drawing from the multiple times that the Doctor has regenerated.
Physically, Doctor Who: Sixty Years of Adventure Book Two is superbly done. The cover is eye-catching and has a lovely tactile feel to it with the combination of lightly embossed text and the contrast between gloss and mat. The book is well written and laid out, but does need a slight edit here and there. There is, though, a nice use of colour and tone throughout. The paintings of each Doctor at the start of their respective chapters are excellent.
One thing that each volume does acknowledge is that the amount of information on the various Doctors is limited and that more information—in fact, much more information of each Doctor can be found in his or her respective sourcebook. This is also aided by the compatibility between the two editions of the roleplaying game. It is also a limitation for each volume, since there is going to be information in those sourcebooks which is not included in either of this set. Of course, neither volume of Doctor Who: Sixty Years of Adventure is intended to be the definitive guide to a particular Doctor, but rather an overview of each era. For that, the reader and the Game Master will need access to the thirteen or so sourcebooks. Instead, each volume of Doctor Who: Sixty Years of Adventure is something else.

As we reach—and pass—the sixtieth anniversary of Doctor Who, both Doctor Who: Sixty Years of Adventure Book One and Doctor Who: Sixty Years of Adventure Book Two are a chance for the Game Master and her players to look back as the series moves forward with first the Fourteenth Doctor and second the Fifteenth Doctor, now newly arrived with his first series. It provides an overview of what has gone before and gives them a chance to visit that past and decide whether they want to explore it in more depth with the other sourcebooks. Doctor Who: Sixty Years of Adventure Book Two continues the examination of what has gone before begun in Doctor Who: Sixty Years of Adventure Book One by looking back at the first two decades (or so) of Doctor Who’s revival in an entertaining and engaging fashion. Doctor Who: Sixty Years of Adventure Book Two completes the pair, giving a solid introduction to roleplaying in the era of ‘Nu Who’ with the knowledge that there is more available.
Of the two, Doctor Who: Sixty Years of Adventure Book One is the more interesting overall, because it is all in the past, and less familiar, but the Doctor Who: Sixty Years of Adventure Book Two has the most interesting content because it does encompass both the War Doctor and the Fugitive Doctor, both incarnations with untapped potential and scope for different stories.
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Cubicle 7 Entertainment will be at UK Games Expo which takes place on Friday, May 31st to Sunday June 2nd, 2024.

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 can 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?Death Valley: A Horror/Western TTRPG – Quick-Start Rules introduces the roleplaying game of the Undead in the Wild West. The Player Characters are the undead residents of Bardo’s Bluff—Skeletons, Zombies, Ghouls, and Vampires—who have returned to their unlife following their wrongful deaths, whether by accident or wrongly executed for a crime they did not commit.

It is an thirty page, full colour book.

The quick-start is decently illustrated with some excellent maps.

How long will it take to play?
Death Valley: A Horror/Western TTRPG – Quick-Start Rules can be played through in a single session, or two sessions at most.

What else do you need to play?
Death Valley: A Horror/Western TTRPG – Quick-Start Rules requires multiple six-sided dice.

Where is it set?
Death Valley: A Horror/Western TTRPG – Quick-Start Rules is set in and around the town of Bardo’s Bluff, a sanctuary located in California governed by vampires who keep the peace, but there is always something or someone determined to make their lives hell.

Who do you play?
There are four ready-to-play Player Characters given in Death Valley: A Horror/Western TTRPG – Quick-Start Rules. They consist of a Skeleton Bounty Hunter, a Ghoul Gravedigger, a Zombie Ranch Hand, and a Vampire Preacher.

How is a Player Character defined?
A Player Character has four attributes—Strength, Agility, Wits, and Empathy—and a single stat, Life Force, plus one or more skills. He also has an Undead Form, a Former Life, and a Wrongful Death. Each Undead Form provides an Undead Boon, an Undead Hindrance, and a form of Healing. For example, has the Undead Boon of ‘Hard Target’, which means that all attacks against it, except at Close range, are at a Disadvantage and the Undead Hindrance is ‘Rattle of Bones’, which imposes a penalty on all Sneak checks because of noise he makes. His means of healing is to use the bones of any dead to repair himself.

How do the mechanics work?
Mechanically, Death Valley: A Horror/Western TTRPG – Quick-Start Rules and thus Death Valley: A Horror/Western TTRPG, uses the Year Zero engine, first seen in Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days. To have a Player Character undertake an action, a player rolls a number of dice equal to a combination of attribute and skill. A single roll of a six indicates a success. Multiple successes improve the outcome, especially in combat and conflict. 

If no sixes are rolled, the action fails. However, the Law Master—as the Game Master—can decide that the action succeeds, but with consequences. Alternatively, if the roll is a failure and no sixes are rolled, or a player wants more successes, he can Push the roll. This enables him to reroll any dice which did not result in a one or six. A roll can be Pushed once and any rolls of one on the Base Dice indicate that the Player Character has failed, but with greater consequences as the Law Master determines.

A roll can be made with Advantage or Disadvantage. Rolling with Advantage means that the player can Push the roll, but not suffer the consequences of any ones rolled. Rolling with Disadvantage means that the player cannot Push the roll.

How does combat work?
Conflict in Death Valley: A Horror/Western TTRPG – Quick-Start Rules uses the same core mechanics. The rules for conflict cover both ranged and close combat, or ‘Scuffles’, as well as special attacks such as wrestling and grappling, ambushes and mounted combat. The rules are a very cut down version of those available in the Death Valley: A Horror/Western TTRPG core book, so the Law Master and her players will have to adjudicate in more complex situations. Nevertheless, they are serviceable enough.

There are no rules for social conflict and the Law Master will need to judge the use of the ‘Poker Face’ skill on a case-by-case basis.

What do you play?
The adventure in Death Valley: A Horror/Western TTRPG – Quick-Start Rules is ‘Showdown at Scorpion Gulch’. A Warmblood bounty hunter comes to Bardo’s Bluff, offering the Player Characters the chance to come to the aid of a recently risen revenant before she has to kill them. They will have to travel north to the Warmblood town of Scorpion Gulch via mystical means and there determine where he has gone, persuade him that they are there to rescue him, and deal with rogue undead who would take advantage of the situation. 

The scenario includes two maps. These are decently done, as is the map of Death Valley

Is it easy to prepare?
The core rules presented in Death Valley: A Horror/Western TTRPG – Quick-Start Rules are easy to prepare, especially if the Law Master has any experience with the Year Zero engine. The scenario itself is quite straightforward and overall, it requires very little in the way of preparation.
Is it worth it?
Yes. The Death Valley: A Horror/Western TTRPG – Quick-Start Rules are a solid introduction to both its setting and its concepts, which are very easy to grasp as everyone is familiar with the Wild West and likely familiar with the Undead! 
Where can you get it?
The Death Valley: A Horror/Western TTRPG – Quick-Start Rules is available for purchase here.

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Critical Kit will be at UK Games Expo which takes place on Friday, May 31st to Sunday June 2nd, 2024.

A year ago, the astronomer Giovanni Conti died and his student, Vincenzo Costa, set out to fulfil his last oath to his master. That is to protect his master’s work, which the Roman Inquisition and the church has good reason to be heretical. Thus, he took several tomes and notebooks from Giovanni Conti’s Florence villa and hid them around the city. Since then, Costa’s work has enabled him to revisit these locations and check that the books are still there. However, now they are missing. In desperation, he hires the Player Characters. They will need to check on the former locations and follow up on the clues that Costa will give them. This will lead them to a cult which has stolen the books for their astronomical knowledge and is using to bring about the culmination of its aims—the summoning of a second God. So far, the activities of the cult, the Cult of Secundus Deus, have not attracted the attention of either the city authorities or the Roman Inquisition, so both activities and beliefs are heretical. Of course, there is the possibility of the Player Characters’ investigation attracting the attention of the city authorities and ending up before the magistrates…

This is the set-up for The Jovian Visitor, a scenario for Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplaying published by Lamentations of the Flame Princess. Designed to be played by three to five Player Characters of First to Third Level, it is written by Glynn Seal, best known as the creator of the Midderlands Old School Renaissance setting, this is, thankfully, a much simpler, shorter, and above all, cleaner affair than his previously, quite literally, excrescent Faecal Lands. Set in Florence in 1642, The Jovian Visitor can also work as a sequel to Galileo 2: Judgment Day. That scenario involved the persecution of the famed astronomer Galileo Galilei by Pope Urban VIII using a Automaton or ‘L’Assassino Meccanico’, and the attempt by the astronomer to escape his house arrest and the mechanical man who has been tormenting him. Now neither Galileo Galilei, or his assistant, Vincenzo Viviani, actually appear in The Jovian Visitor, Giovanni Conti and his student, Vincenzo Costa, are modelled on them. Replacing them with their real world counterparts is easy to do, and it makes the scenario more interesting if the Player Characters encountered him when playing through the events of Galileo 2: Judgment Day.
The investigation itself is relatively straightforward. Vincenzo Costa will be able to furnish the Player Characters with some initial leads, including the locations where he hid the four books and the identity of a previous assistant. Following these will lead them down a number of blind alleys and possibly into punch-ups with the citizens of Florence if they irk them too much or getting arrested by the city watch of they cannot explain their interest in the four locations across the city. It is encounter with the latter that the scenario is at its weakest, not quite explaining what the outcome is if the Player Characters are brought before the city magistrates. If, however, the Player Characters can avoid entanglements with the authorities, they will also learn that they are being watched by a mysterious lady in red. It turns out that she is an important figure in the Cult of Secundus Deus, and will go out of her way to persuade the Player Characters to curb their interest in the books.
Coloured a little by a random encounter or two, persistent Player Characters should soon learn that something is going on in the woods on the hills to the north of the city, where flashes of light have been seen in the sky. Clues found there point to the imminent fruition of the plans of the Cult of Secundus Deus. Can the Player Characters act in time to prevent the summoning of the Second God? And if he is not a god, just what is he? That though, is not something that the Player Characters, or indeed, the whole world really wants to find out.
Physically, The Jovian Visitor is well presented. The artwork is decent, and of course, the cartography is excellent. The map of Florence, in particular, is very nice.
The Jovian Visitor is a short affair, easily played through in a single session, two at most. It has the feel of Lovecraftian investigative horror scenario, though of course, without the Mythos, and that is no bad thing. That it can work as a sequel to Galileo 2: Judgment Day is a bonus, but even on its own, it is a serviceable, if short little mystery that can easily be added to a campaign or adapted to fit elsewhere. That is a whole lot cleaner than the last book from the author for Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplaying is a double bonus!
—oOo—
DISCLAIMER: The author of this review is an editor who has both edited titles for Lamentations of the Flame Princess on a freelance basis and edited titles for the author of this book on a freelance basis. He was not involved in the production of this book and his connection to both publisher and author has no bearing on the resulting review.

—oOo—
Lamentations of the Flame Princess will be at UK Games Expo which takes place on Friday, May 31st to Sunday June 2nd, 2024.

On the tail of Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showcased how another DM and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will be compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry and the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game from Goodman Games.
Tales from the Smoking Wyrm No. 2 is another fine looking issue of the fanzine published by Blind Visionary Publications. It continues to provide long-term support rather than immediate support for use with the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. This is not say that none of its content is not of use or even useless, for that is very much not the case, but rather that it requires a bit of effort upon the part of Judge to work it into her campaign. In fact, all of content is detailed, interesting, and worth reading. Published in April, 2020, following a successful Kickstarter campaign, where the previous issue, Tales from the Smoking Wyrm No. 1 strayed into the territory of the Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic, this issue very much remains in the territory of Dungeon Crawl Classics.
Tales from the Smoking Wyrm No. 2 opens with ‘King of Beasts’. This is a new Patron, one who is the noble lion, wily tiger, nimble hare, slithering snake, and fluttering crow—and includes tables for invoking him as a Patron, suffering Taint when that goes wrong, and so on. The new spells include Speak with Animals; Bloodsense, which enables the caster to sense the blood in his quarry and track where they are; and Awaken enables the caster to activate a spirit animal, and so gains two boons and a bane from them. The roll is really for the length of the effect, which can be days or months, and then the Player Character gains the effect of a selected spirit animal. For example, the Toad spirit animal grants the ability to breathe underwater for thirty minutes and extra jumping distance, but becomes lazy and will act if there are immediate and obvious benefits.
The Dwarven Jäger is a subclass of dwarf, a warrior that allows the use of ‘Mighty Deeds of Arms’ like the Warrior Class, but prefers to fight with two weapons rather than a weapon and shield. They have a Deed Die that increases as they go up in Level for both attacks and damage, and if strong enough, can fight with a battle axe in each hand! This though, reduces the Class’ Initiative die. With ‘Mighty Defence’, the Dwarven Jäger can increase his Armour Class at a cost of stepping down his attack dice. Stats are also included for the throwing hammer and the hand crossbow. The Class is a serviceable variant, offering a viable alternative, especially for the player who wants a two-weapon wielding Warrior.
‘Rites & Rituals Part II’ continues the expanded use of magic and rituals in Dungeon Crawl Classics, begun in Tales from the Smoking Wyrm No. 1. Rituals are more powerful than normal spells, and their inherent power, unlinked to any god or deity, means that anyone can cast them. What this leads to is the creation of standardised rituals to achieve the same objective, but which are different from one cult or organisation to another. To support this aspect, it provides more than the one variant for several rituals, the variants being for different faiths, in this case, worshippers of Cthulhu and of Osiris. The rituals include Blessings of the Grave is a ritual that protects those buried in graveyards, cemetery, or necropolises, from raised via the animate dead and similar spells; Liturgy of Blessing, which brands the faith of a consenting worshipper with an imprint of their god, which puts them on the path to becoming a member of the clergy; and Rite of Consecration, which creates a sanctuary space for the specific deity. These are very nicely detailed, and of the two choices of deity, the rituals dedicated to Cthulhu rather than Osiris are probably more gameable, but both series of rituals do serve as examples upon which the Judge can base her own.
‘Cullpepper’s Herbal’ continues the regular feature begun in Tales from the Smoking Wyrm No. 1. Here there is a guide to creating decoctions and herbal restoratives, and this is followed by detailed descriptions of agrimony and bastard agrimony. This includes descriptions, flowering times, astrology, shoots, and more. In some ways, there is too much information here, on too few herbs, but for a Player Character with an interest in alchemy or herbalism, the degree of detail is wlcome.

As the name suggests, ‘Shoggoth’ continues the Cthulhu theme. This takes the Mythos monster which first appeared in At the Mountains of Madness and gives a potted history of its appearance in gaming before providing stats for its for use with Dungeon Crawl Classics. The Judge can roll for Shoggoth size, age, and martial abilities, such as poison glands, hypnotic glands, and of course, mimicry. They can also also have esoteric abilities like Assume Form and Bioluminescence, and all together this provides the Judge with the means to really individualise one Shoggoth from another, and so make them unknowable for the Player Characters.
Accompanying this is ‘Find Familiar (Cthulhu)’, which enables the Wizard with Cthulhu with Cthulhu or other Lovecraftian horror entity, such as Mother Hydra, Father Dagon, Nyarlathotep, and so on, as a Patron, to gain an appropriate familiar. Options include Zoog, (Brown) Jenkin, and Cat of Ulthar, but there is an emphasis on gaining a Shoggoth as a familiar. It cannot be fully grown, so is typically young or newborn (budded? decanted?), small or medium. Of these, having a Shoggoth as a familiar is going to be the most fun and again, this and the previous ‘Shoggoth’ article lets the player and the Judge really individualise a Shuggoth, whether a familiar or a threat.
Joel Philips’ ‘Onward Retainer’ continues the comic strip about the retainer in the fantasy roleplaying games begun in the first issue. It is nicely drawn and is a reasonable enough read, though not as funny as it is trying to be.
Penultimately, ‘What is the Smoking Wyrm?’ is the editorial in the second issue of Tales from the Smoking Wyrm. It is a more personal piece than in Tales from the Smoking Wyrm No. 1, recounting how Joel Philip got his start in gaming and how those adventures and characters influenced the creation of the ‘Onward Retainer’, so gives a bit of context. This is more interesting than the comic strip is either entertaining or amusing. Lastly, ‘Wyrm Words’ is a word search puzzle of Gygaxian words which is okay if you like that sort of thing, a waste of space if you do not, and this review leans towards the latter rather the former.
Physically, Tales from the Smoking Wyrm No. 2 is well written and the fanzine as a whole, has high production values. The artwork is good throughout, and the front cover again echoes the illustration from the Dungeon Master’s Guide for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition, by Dave Trampier, which is based on the Street of the Knights on the Greek island of Rhodes. This is an illustration that the fanzine will return to again and again for its front covers.
Tales from the Smoking Wyrm No. 2 picks up where Tales from the Smoking Wyrm No. 1 left off. It is a second solid issue, especially if the Judge wants to add the Lovecraftian mythos to Dungeon Crawl Classics with the inclusion of Cthulhu—as detailed in Tales from the Smoking Wyrm No. 1—and Shoggoths. None of the content is necessarily ready to be dropped into a campaign, but for the Judge who wants to add the Lovecraftian mythos and more detailed herbalism, there is good amount here to further develop.

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another DM and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.
Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will be compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. A more recent retroclone of choice to support has been Mörk Borg.
Published in November, 2020, Strange Visitors to the City is one of three similar fanzines released by Philip Reed Games as a result of the Strange Citizens of the City Kickstarter campaign, the others being Strange Inhabitants of the Forest and Strange Citizens of the City It follows on from the publisher’s Delayed Blast Gamemaster fanzine, by presenting a set of tables upon which the Game Master can roll and bring in elements to her game. Whilst Delayed Blast Gamemaster detailed monsters, environments, and more, with a cover which reads, “Roll 2d6 and say hello to Evil”, Strange Visitors to the City is all about the encounter and all about encounters with evil coming to the city, the cover reading, “Roll 2d6 and Greet a Visitor”. For Mörk Borg, the city can most obviously be that of Galgenbeck in the land of Tveland, but it need not be, instead any city with a dark seamy underbelly where the strange is accepted and allowed to fester.
Strange Visitors to the City follows the format of Strange Inhabitants of the Forest and Strange Citizens of the City, consisting of four tables—or rather sets of entries—which populate and add detail to a large location, in this case, as with Strange Citizens of the City, a nameless city. In fact, Strange Visitors to the City is really a companion to Strange Citizens of the City, complementing it with another array of ghouls and grotesques, this time visitants and vermin passing in and out of the city gates. The issue opens with the eponymous ‘Strange Visitors to the City’ which presents a table of mostly villains or villain-like NPCs to be encountered in and about the city. Each is given their own two-page spread, with a large illustration, a full page of text providing background, and of course, notes and stats. The notes typically suggest how much money the Player Characters might make from their loot or handing in proof of their deaths, though not always—as the number of ‘No Reward’ entries suggest.
The entries include Sava Yegorovich, Collector of Soiled Souls, a legless traveller wreathed in toxic smoke, who visits the city on an arcanomechanical contraption to purchase vials containing soiled souls for his dreadful experiments that carries out in his laboratory deep in the forest. Babatyev Ilyich, Escaped Killer from Elsewhen, an extraplanar murderer who travels from world to world, killing, and then escaping to the next, though this time he is trapped, his route elsewhere having been destroyed. Now he is wanted by the authorities and there is a bounty on his head which grows as the number of bodies pile up, so there is a rush to find him. He usually attacks with his talons, but he can unleash a nightmarish fiend from the portal in his stomach! Nicolas Mocanu, Wizard of the Woods, rarely visits the city, but only does so when he needs spell and alchemical ingredients and components, and since he is short of time, he will hire likely adventurers to find them for him—and will pay handsomely if they do. The entry includes a list of some twenty items, like a Troll’s eye or the mummified remains of a beloved pet, each one a spur to entice the Player Characters to action.
Not all of the entries describe the vile and the villainous, though there are a number of visitors of extraplanar origins, murderers or not—and plenty of those. Otherwise, the less threatening includes Svetlana Botnari, Unliving Seamstress, travels to the city every full moon, and earns money with needle and thread, but is undead and the needles are her fingers, but despite this, her skills and speed are highly valued. Further, she is friendly, and is willing to hire adventurers prepared to protect her undead kin from raiders on the value where they live. Which means that the Player Characters might be protecting the undead from the living! Richards and Roger, a Ruffian and a Gentleman, are a pair of ordinary fish, magically transformed, enlarged, and enhanced, though without legs—instead they each wear a suit of armour with the necessary legs—and with their master and creator dead, they have taken up residence in the city. One works as a hired thug and goon, the other a gentleman trader, but are otherwise inseparable. They are easily found in the city, meeting up in a tavern to catch on their activities of the day.
‘Strange Visitors to the City’ takes up over half of Strange Visitors to the City. It presents a collection of monsters and the monstrous, many of them evil in nature, and if not that, evil looking. They are invariably challenging opponents should the Player Characters go after then for their bounty, if there is one, that is. As with Strange Citizens of the City before it, the entries described in the ‘Strange Visitors to the City’ table—and elsewhere in the fanzine—do all feel as if they would fit in the one city. A dark twisted city with a Slavic feel where arcanotech, a mixture of magic and technology is available.
‘Strange Visitors to the City’ is followed by a shorter table. This is ‘1d6 Unusual Places’, a companion piece to the ‘1d8 Places in the City’ in Strange Citizens of the City. They include Jelena Romanovna’s Home for Orphans, a three-storey tower where wayward children are taken in and unfortunately beaten until they accept training as pickpockets and thieves. The Broken Clock Tower, a spire located deep in the city centre, long abandoned and in a state of disrepair, such that some have called for it to be pulled down and replaced, but moans and the rattling of chains from within indicate that someone or something is using it still, but who? Adventurer and raconteur, Godzimir Mazur, has won a former gambling hall and turned it into coffee shop, but he has no head for business and it is failing. Can he be helped or would he be happier just to sell up?

‘4d6 Rumours’ suggests things that the Player Characters might hear in taverns or down alleys, such as the ‘fact’ that Jelena Romanovna’s Home for Orphans is also the location of a black market every week or two; the burning of a red candle attracts the evil spirits of the dead, so anyone doing so is clearly an agent of death and destruction; or that if anyone who easts a sacred scroll is forever transformed into a being of unimageable power capable of surviving any encounter with evil. Plus, the scrolls taste great when smeared with honey! Some of the rumours connect to other entries in Strange Visitors to the City, but most do not. All will require some development by the Game Master.

Lastly, ‘2d4 Hired Goons’ presents another collection of hirelings, simply detailed and each with a special trait, such as ‘Conniving’ or ‘Experienced’. Few are obviously beneficial, such as the ‘Underworld Knowledge’ of Lukas Hofstetter, who can help the Player Characters find information about crime and criminals for a price, but most are not. Darin Masur is ‘Bloodthirsty’ and has trouble ending a fight or a battle if any opponents are still alive, and might even turn on his allies! He has a hatred of the city guard too and that is likely to get him into trouble as well as those who hired him. All seven NPCs are ready to drop into the city.
Physically, Strange Visitors to the City is very nicely presented. Although it makes strong use of colour, it uses a softer palette than Mörk Borg, but scratchier and stranger, though still easier on the eye. The artwork throughout is excellent.
Strange Visitors to the City is a set in some strange city where twisted men and women and other things lurk in the side streets, where great evil hides behind populism, and arcanotech is put to dark uses. It is the same city as populated in Strange Citizens of the City, and whilst it is a standalone title, Strange Visitors to the City strongly complements it. Although intended for use with Mörk Borg—and it shares the same doom-laden sensibility—the contents of Strange Visitors to the City would work with any retroclone or be easily adapted to the roleplaying game of the Game Master’s choice. However, they do all feel as if they live in the same city, a city waiting to be detailed. Perhaps a city that Philip Reed Games could detail in a future fanzine? In the meantime, Strange Visitors to the City is an entertaining and useful collection of NPCs and encounters for the Grimdark roleplaying game of the Game Master’s choice.

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another Dungeon Master and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will be compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. Then there is also Old School Essentials.

In the early days of the hobby, following the publication of first Dungeons & Dragons in 1974, and then Basic Dungeons & Dragons and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, the nascent hobby was awash with creativity much of which would find an outlet in the fanzines of the day. Yet due to the vagaries of time and history, much of the content of those fanzines have been lost. What though, if a creator today, could delve back into that history and resurrect that content for today’s audience? This is the conceit behind The Lost Classes: The Arnesonian Classes, ‘A GATEWAY TO ADVENTURE supplement for use with the Original Edition Fantasy and Old School Essentials Retro Adventure Game’. Published by Appendix N Entertainment, this is an attempt to resurrect two Classes for Dungeons & Dragons that never made into print and present them for use with the Old School Renaissance. Conceit, because truth be told, the author has relatively little on which to base the new Classes he creates for the fanzine, and consequently, they are more his creation rather those of Dave Arneson, the co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons. This does not means that the floor Classes presented are bad, but rather that their heritage is perhaps not as strong as the author wish it to be.

Further, it should be noted that two of the four Classes are not Arnesonian and feel as if they are drawn from other sources, being the creation of the author. The two Arnesonian Classes are the Merchant and the Sage, whilst the two that are not are two of the Beast Folk Classes, the Chimpanzee Folk and the Duck Folk. Then, both the Chimpanzee Folk and the Duck Folk are presented as Races rather than Classes. In this way, The Lost Classes: The Arnesonian Classes supports both the ‘Race as Class’ of Basic Dungeons & Dragons and the ‘Race & Class’ of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, or in contemporary terms, the ‘Race as Class’ of Old School Essentials Classic Fantasy and the ‘Race & Class’ of Old School Essentials: Advanced Fantasy.

The two Arnesonian Classes, the Merchant and the Sage, are highly skill-based. The Merchant knows more languages, and besides ‘Find or Remove Traps’ and ‘Open Locks’, has ‘Bargaining’ and ‘Appraisal’ for dealing with the buying and selling of goods (and treasure found too), and ‘Equivocate’, the ability to hide the truth, avoid commitment, and so on. Combined with the ‘Know Direction’ ability, and what you have is a Class dedicated to travel and trade. The Merchant is also a member of, owes dues to, a merchant’s guild, which the Game Master can use as a factor and influence in the Player Character’s life and career. The Sage also knows more languages and is a member of his own guild, but primarily specialises in ‘Sage Knowledge’, an academic area like Botany/Herb-lore, Astronomy, Theology, and Archaeology. The more Intelligent the Sage, the more areas of expertise he specialises in. Although not a spellcaster, the Sage Class can use arcane magical items, such as wands. Lastly—quite literally—the Sage has one special ability that he can use when dying due to a malicious act. This is the ‘Sage’s Cure’. If bestowed by a high-Level Sage, it can be really powerful, like not being able to make any Saving Throw ever again!

Both the Merchant and the Sage Classes are interesting, the latter perhaps more familiar because it was included as an NPC type in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Both though, are limited as adventuring Classes in the classic sense. The Sage in particular, has limited adventuring skills and whilst he knows a lot, the problem really is how to bring that knowledge into play and have it be useful in a game, since this is not a feature of Dungeons & Dragons-style roleplaying games. This is less of a problem for the Merchant, since the Class does possess abilities and skills that can be useful in a game. Nevertheless, the Game Master is going to have cater for the trading aspect of the Merchant in her campaign for a player to want to play it and use all of the Class’ abilities, whilst working extra hard to bring the areas of knowledge and expertise of the Sage into play and make them pertinent and useful. This may well be so challenging, that the Sage may still be best suited to an NPC role.

The other two Classes in The Lost Classes: The Arnesonian Classes are the Chimpanzee Folk and the Duck Folk. The Chimpanzee Folk is like the Sage in having ‘Chimp Knowledge’, which works like ‘Sage Knowledge’ and extra languages, but otherwise more physical with the ‘Climb Sheer Surfaces’, ‘Falling’, and ‘Tightrope Walking’ skills, whilst the ‘Evasion’ ability enables a Chimpanzee Folk to tumble out of melee and avoid an opponent’s usual bonus to hit. The Duck Folk is viewed as an aberration, touched by Chaos, by almost everyone bar other Duck Folk and the most knowledgeable of Sages. A Duck Folk has the innate abilities of ‘Know Direction’ and ‘Natural Swimmer’, but also loathes the undead, so can ‘Turn Undead’ and has bonuses in combat against the undead with ‘Undead Slayer’. Rounding out The Lost Classes: The Arnesonian Classes is a more detailed examination of both the Chimpanzee Folk and the Duck Folk as Races and the fanzine’s own ‘Appendix N’. In the case of the descriptions of the Chimpanzee Folk and the Duck Folk as Races, it does flesh both out, whether they are being played as ‘Race as Class’ or ‘Race & Class’.

Of the two, the Chimpanzee Folk feels more sensible than the Duck Folk. In both cases, the inspiration is obvious. The Chimpanzee Folk is inspired by Doctor Cornelius and Doctor Zira of Planet of the Apes, whilst the Duck Folk feels inspired by the Humakti undead-hating Ducks of Glorantha of RuneQuest: Roleplaying in the Glorantha as much as Howard the Duck and Duck Tales.

Physically, The Lost Classes: The Arnesonian Classes is well presented. It is well written and the artwork decent enough even if the major inspiration upon the illustrations of the Duck Folk is Disney.

The usefulness of The Lost Classes: The Arnesonian Classes is debateable. The easiest Class to play and include in a campaign is the Duck Folk and that is also the silliest, the one most likely to stick out in a standard campaign, and the least interesting. The Chimpanzee Folk is not quite as silly, but not as easy to bring into play, because catering for the knowledge aspect of the Class, as with the Sage Class, shifts some of the emphasis of play away from action and adventuring. As does the need for trade and barter with the Merchant Class, but that Class does include adventuring skills alongside those required for trade and barter. This does not mean that the Classes in The Lost Classes: The Arnesonian Classes are unplayable, but rather that in many cases they make demands of a campaign that will need to be accommodated. Consequently, the best use of the Classes in The Lost Classes: The Arnesonian Classes is to create worlds where they fit rather than shoehorn them into standard fantasy worlds where they do not.

On the tail of Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another Dungeon Master and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. Another popular choice of system for fanzines, is Goodman Games’ Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, such as Crawl! and Crawling Under a Broken Moon. Some of these fanzines provide fantasy support for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, but others explore other genres for use with Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. One such fanzine is the aforementioned Crawling Under A Broken Moon.

Crawling Under A Broken Moon Fanzine Issue No. 5 was published in in December, 2014 by Shield of Faith Studios. It continued the detailing of post-apocalyptic setting of Umerica and Urth which had begun in Crawling Under A Broken Moon Fanzine Issue No. 1, and would be continued in Crawling Under A Broken Moon Fanzine Issue No. 2, which added further Classes, monsters, and weapons, Crawling Under A Broken Moon Fanzine Issue No. 3, which provided the means to create Player Characters and gave them a Character Funnel to play, and Crawling Under A Broken Moon Fanzine Issue No. 4, which detailed several Patrons for the setting. The setting has, of course, gone on to be presented in more detail in The Umerican Survival Guide – Core Setting Guide, now distributed by Goodman Games. The setting itself is a world brought about after a rogue object from deep space passed between the Earth and the Moon and ripped apart time and space, leaving behind a planet which would recover and it inhabitants ruled by savagery, cruel sorcery, and twisted science.

Crawling Under A Broken Moon Fanzine Issue No. 5 is where the fanzine really begins to deliver on its promise of gonzo post-apocalyptic content. This is because it has to take its inspiration—its very obvious inspiration—and adapt that without incurring any legal issues, making it playable, and making its source recognisable. This is because that inspiration is He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, the cartoon series based on the toy line from Mattel of the same name. Unfortunately, the history of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe and gaming has been decidedly spotty, including a poorly received Masters of the Universe Roleplaying Game published by FASA, Inc. in 1985 and the more recent He-Man and the Masters of the Universe Battleground miniatures skirmish game from Archon Studios. Sadly, the planned Legends of Grayskull: Masters of the Universe Tabletop RPG using Cortex Prime from Fandom, the company behind Dungeons & Dragons online tool D&D Beyond, is yet to appear. In the meantime, there is Crawling Under A Broken Moon, Issue No. 5, which serves up something almost, but not quite like He-Man and the Masters of the Universe.

The issue introduces a land that lies in the northern reaches of Umerica. This is Aetheria, where the Masters of Castle Oldskull do fierce battle with the lich Skull-Or and his mighty minions in the Darklands beyond! The setting is introduced in ‘The Kingdom of Aetheria’, a land of forests and wetlands surrounding the Great Inland Sea, whose scattered tribes were united by the mighty hero, Mach-O [sic] with the strength of his sword arm and mystical arts. Dotted here and there throughout the kingdom are the ‘Grey Castles’, actually bunkers from the Forgotten War, in which can be found powerful arms and armour and even vehicles. The great Aetherian Heroes, worshipped as such by the populous, and employed by the kingdom’s rulers as protectors, covet this leftover technology, so controlling it is important. Thus, many provincial rulers take these bunkers as their headquarters and armories, controlling the flow of the technology into the hands of hired heroes.

This hero is detailed in ‘The Aetherian Hero Character Class’. Each follows the code of Mach-O in fighting evil, though the interpretation varies, so that some just fight evil and do nothing else, whilst others undertake other duties. Either way, the Aetherian Hero expects to be paid for his services. The Aetherian Hero will also need to achieve a great deed or survive a Character Funnel, if he is to be rewarded with a hero’s name and whilst he is trained in the use of most weapons and armour, he regards using anything other than Forgotten Tech artifacts or Aetherian Tech arms and armour as dishonourable and anathema. The Aetherian Hero Character Class begins play with set of Aetherian Armour and one Aetherian weapon, but can go to a Grey Castle at each Level and ask for more. The origins, material, appearance, and even Armour Class bonus of the armour is randomly determined, whilst the Aetherian Tech weapons are impressively oversized, so are not as easy to use, but do inflict extra damage and impress or intimidate in equal measure.

The Class also possesses an Honour Die, which is added to feats of Strength, attempts to intimidate or impress, and all damage rolls with melee or Forgotten Tech weapon attacks. However, it can be lost if the Aetherian Hero uses normal weapons and armour, undertakes menial labour the likes of which the peasantry would do, or refuses a challenge offered by an opponent of worthy stature. Overall, the Aetherian Hero Character Class has the feel of the big dumb, but honourable barbarian warrior, offering a technology-focused option in feel rather than play.

The technology itself is discussed in ‘Forgotten Tech of the Un Men’, the Un Men being robotic warriors programmed with human consciousness. Their technology is leftover from the Forgotten War, and whether it is a blaster, jetpack, armour, or personal vehicle, requires a power cell to work. Worse, the technology is temperamental and if it is used too often—even in the course of a day—it can suffer a meltdown and drain the power cell. The meltdown means that it simply stop functioning after rebooting, suffers a delay in its function, or even detonate! Common devices, once ubiquitous and cheap before the Forgotten War, include Power Harnesses and Power Swords, their abilities varying from device to device.

‘Into the Dark Lands’ describes the blighted, rocky land that lies to the north of Aetheria under sulphurous clouds, riddled with tunnels leading to horrible sites of ancient power and evil. It is home to two different factions which would change Aetheria if they could. The warrior Black Sun leads a number of Aetherian freemen and Tree-Hobbits against the southern kingdom in an attempt to reform the conditions of the common man, whilst the Warrior Lich, Skull-Or, powerful and corrupt wizard-hero

of Aetheria who was imprisoned in Castle Oldskull byMasters of Aetheria, where he learned its darkest secrets before escaping into the Darklands. That secret is very dark indeed—especially for wizards—and adds a nasty twist to the inspiration for Crawling Under A Broken Moon, Issue No. 5. Both Black Sun and Skull-Or are fully statted, so can appear as NPCs in the Game Master’s campaign, and in the case of Skull-Or, cackle a lot. The article really focuses on the NPCs, so the Dark Lands are underwritten.

Penultimately, ‘Castle Oldskull and the Masters of Aetheria’ details Castle Oldskull, a sapient extra dimensional fortress dedicated to the eradication of ‘evil magic’. Interestingly, it is possible for a First Level Player Character to pledge himself to Castle Oldskull and join the Masters of Aetheria. A successful applicant needs to complete a dangerous quest and only then will he become a squire. There are benefits, including healing and free ammunition for ranged weapons, but members cannot use sorcery and nor can they kill evil sorcerers. They have to be returned to Castle Oldskull for imprisonment. Included are descriptions of the current Masters of Aetheria—Mighty Man, descendant of Mach-O, Maste-at-Arms, cyborg with excellent scientific skills, Slam Man who magic helm is so tough he can survive any blow to the head—and more, most notably Geek-O, an inept and bumbling magician from another dimension! Castle Oldskull is essentially a character in its own right with its own agenda, not always aligned with those of the Player Characters.

Lastly, the regular column of ‘Twisted Menagerie’ details two new monsters. These are the ‘Serpentoid’, a muscular two-headed serpent man with an evil outlook and a liking for the mutagenic herbs that grow in the Dark Lands, each has a different mutation, like a prehensile tongue or a hideous rattle, and an ‘Un-Men’, one of the Robotic Tyrants from the Forgotten War, rarely found, but if so, typically in hibernation mode. These range from flamethrowers and plasma cannons to extension arms and Hypno Vox, and that is in addition to the Drones—effectively flying blasters—hosted by each ‘Un-Men’. Together, these add an extra pair of threats to the Dark Lands and are decently done.

Physically, Crawling Under A Broken Moon Fanzine Issue No. 5 is serviceably presented. It is a little rough around the edges, as is some of the artwork, but overall, it is a decent affair.

The problem with Crawling Under A Broken Moon Fanzine Issue No. 5 is that much of its contents have been represented to a more professional standard in the pages of The Umerican Survival Guide – Core Setting Guide, so it has been superseded and superseded by a cleaner, slicker presentation of the material.

Crawling Under A Broken Moon Fanzine Issue No. 5 is a big improvement over Crawling Under A Broken Moon Fanzine Issue No. 4. It has more usable content, even if it is devoted to one theme. And what a theme it is! Over the top, ever so slightly tongue in cheek post-apocalypse Swords & Sorcery, very knowingly inspired by Saturday morning cartoons of the eighties, given an ever so slight, but dark twist. The result is engaging and entertaining, with easy to spot and embrace references, such that even the gamer with the barest of knowledge of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (and to an extent, She-Ra: Princess of Power) can play with the contents of Crawling Under A Broken Moon Fanzine Issue No. 5.

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

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

—oOo—
Name: Mail Order BribePublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author Jade Griffin

Setting: Jazz Age Boston, MassachusettsProduct: Scenario
What You Get: Forty-Five page, 11.37 MB PDFElevator Pitch: Marriage or madness. Is there a choice?Plot Hook: Ownership of a new possession turns into a fight for possession and possession.
Plot Support: Staging advice, six pre-generated Investigators, sixteen handouts, one a map, one NPC, and two Mythos monsters.Production Values: Good.
Pros# Excellent title# Potential sequel to Taken for Granite and Deep-Seeded Secrets# Potential addition for a Lovecraft Country campaign# Delightfully creepy, creepy antagonist# Decent handouts# Pediophobia# Gamophobia# Scoleciphobia# Ophidiophobia# Arachnophobia
Cons# Needs a slight edit# Does force the Investigators into a terrible situation
Conclusion# Which is worse? The monster you deal with or the monster she wants?# Why I do declare, that Southern accent is pure evil. Evil, I tell you!

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

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

—oOo—
Name: The Oracle of YuggothPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Quico Vicens-Picatto

Setting: 23rd Century PlutoProduct: One-shot
What You Get: Twenty page, 9.13 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Memory, mazes, and madness on Pluto
Plot Hook: “UNKNOWN”Plot Support: Six pre-generated Investigators, one map, and one Mythos monster.Production Values: Colourful
Pros# Fantastic cover# Highly detailed Investigators# Interesting new Occupations# Athazagoraphobia# Mazeophobia# Mnemophobia
Cons# Needs a good edit# Unpleasant Investigators# Weird Sanity losses# The Sanity losses never let up# Highly detailed Investigators# No plot or investigation
Conclusion# Uncompelling Sanity-scouring slog# No objectives or agency except to suffer for what they are and what they did

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—
Published in April, 1994, the Planescape Campaign Setting was as a radical a setting for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Second Edition as could be imagined in the 1990s. Perhaps even more imaginative than the Spelljammer setting published five years before that Planescape would ultimately replace in terms of both tone and scope. Based on the earlier Manual of the Planes for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition, it introduced a multiverse that was in part familiar to an audience from that supplement, but in way that was totally unfamiliar. Where perhaps the Manual of the Planes had been a means for the Player Characters—typically of a high Level—to traverse from one plane of existence to another, what Planescape provided was a base of operations, a city, rife with politics and factionalism, from which the Player Characters could leave to visit and come back from realms that before they could have only dreamed of visiting. Whether it is the Astral Plane or the Ethereal plane, the Inner or Elemental Planes of Air or Water or the Quasielemental Planes in between, for example, Paraelemental Plane of Smoke or Paraelemental Plane of Ooze, the Outer Planes divided between the Upper Planes of Good such as Arcadia or Mount Celestia, the Lower Planes of Evil, like the Abyss and Acheron, and the Boundary Planes of Neutrality, such as Bytopia and Elysium, or even whole other worlds on the Prime Material Plane, for example, Krynn of Dragonlance or Athas of Dark Sun, the Player Characters could come and go as they pleased. For the most part, that is. For they needed to know how, they need access to a portal or door, a gate key to pass through, and sometimes, they needed permission. For all of that, they needed to be in Sigil: The City of Doors.
Sigil: The City of Doors literally floats at the centre of the multiverse, spread around the inside of a torus turning atop a towering mountain spire with the surrounding Outlands radiating out below, a cramped city of spires, bureaucracy, and industry under greasy clouds that spit rain upon its streets. It is a neutral point in which all manner of creatures are likely to be seen living, working, visiting, and abiding on its streets. Angels, Avatars, Modrons, Baatezu, Tanar’ri, and Yugoloths—Baatezu, Tanar’ri, and Yugoloths because the Planescape Campaign Setting was published at the tail end of the Satanic panic of the eighties in which references to devils and demons were removed from Dungeons & Dragons to avoid ill-founded allegations that Dungeons & Dragons promoted Satanic worship—could all be found in Sigil. Normally adversarial, they were bound to keep the peace in Sigil because the city’s mistress, the Lady of Pain, caring of the city, callous of its citizens, wreathed in glittering, keen-edged blades, can simply deny them access to the doors to elsewhere in the multiverse. This does not mean that many do not covet possession of Sigil itself, but to move against the city and the Lady of Pain would be to raise her ire and perhaps even spark a war across the planes as the other factions try to prevent such a takeover. There is also the need for a neutral meeting place, especially with the ongoing Blood War between the denizens of the Nine Hells and the Abyss, which to date the Lady of Pain has prevented from spilling onto the streets of the city.
Below the city—far below the city—lies the Outlands, or the Plane of Concordant Opposition. Although the Plane of Neutrality, it is marked by a number of realms close to the Great Ring. These include Tir Na Og, ‘The Land of Youth’; the Palace of Judgement, ruled by Yen-Wang-Yeh, Judge of the Ten Law Courts and King of the Eighteen Hells; the Caverns of Thought, fizzing with the energy of brain waves and thought, whose cold and heartless tunnels always lead back to the court of the god-brain, Ilsenine, god of the Mind Flayers; and the Dwarven Mountain, a realm of merrymaking, belching smoke, and labour. Beyond lie the Inner Planes of the elements and quasielements, and the Outer Planes of morality or alignment. Also connected to Sigil and the Outlands via doors and portals and other means of planar transport are the worlds of the Prime Material Plane, and both Astral and Ethereal Space. From the start, the setting of Planescape is epic in scale.
As befitting a boxed setting for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Second Edition from the nineties, the Planescape Campaign Setting is richly appointed It includes four books, four posters, and a DM Screen. The books consist of ‘A Player’s Guide to the Planes’, designed to introduce the Planescape setting for player and Dungeon Master alike; ‘A DM’s Guide to the Planes’, containing detailed information about the setting for the Dungeon Master’s eyes only; ‘Sigil and Beyond’, a guide and more to the city that formed the heart of the setting; and the ‘Monstrous Supplement’, which provides the additions particular to the Monstrous Compendium—the equivalent of the Monster Manual for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Second Edition. The four posters in turn depict the heraldic-like icons for the setting’s sixteen factions, and maps of the Outlands surrounding the city of Sigil, the Outer Planes, and Sigil itself.
The starting point is the thirty-two page ‘A Player’s Guide to the Planes’ and right from the opening paragraph, it is clear that this is no ordinary boxed set and no ordinary setting. The reader is assailed by liberal doses of Cant, served up by berks, bashers, and barmies—fools, thugs, and crazies—who engage in chants, garnishes, and dark—gossip, bribes, and secrets. Drawn from a mixture of Elizabethan and Dickensian slang, it is jarringly in-game and jarringly informal, but it accentuates the differences between this and any other campaign setting for Dungeons & Dragons, before and since. It introduces the key concepts to Planescape, both in terms of play and design, and these are the idea of the ‘Centre of the Multiverse’ is both subjective and nonsensical; that the Multiverse consists of rings, such as the Outer and Inner Planes, and even the Outer Rings are ringed by a Great Road which lead on to the next infinite plane; the ‘Rule of Three’, that everything—good or bad—comes in threes, thus the Prime Material Plane, the Inner Planes, and the Outer Planes; Law, Chaos, and Neutrality; and so on. The denizens of the Planes also come in three types. These Primes, who were born on the Prime Material Plane, Planars, born on a plane, and Petitioners, the departed spirits of Primes and Planars, who seek to cement a union with the powers of their plane. Petitioners and other beings can be a Proxy, an agent of a Power bestowed with gifts in return for loyalty, whilst a Power is a deity who rules over a plane.
In terms of what the Planescape Campaign Setting offers the player, ‘A Player’s Guide to the Planes’ gives one broad choice, a number of new Races, and more importantly, Factions. A Player Character can either be a Prime, from the Prime Material Plane, which means that they are not subject to the effects of Monster Summoning spells or general planar magic, or a Planar, who can be subject to those effects and more—like Protection from Evil, but inherently has the power to see the gates between the Planes. The new Races are the Bariaurs, goat-like centaurs, whose males have a headbutt attack with their horns and females have stronger senses; the Githzerai, humourless ascetics with a loathing of the Githyanki and the Mindflayers; and Tielflings, halfbreed-orphans often reviled for their supposed ties to the darker powers. The Planescape Campaign Setting marked the introduction of the Tielfling.
The Planescape Campaign Setting does not include any new Classes, but does instead give cultural notes on all of the standard Classes. Instead, what it does introduce are factions. There are sixteen of these, complete with official faction title, faction philosophy, primary plane of influence, allies and enemies, eligibility for membership, and both benefits and restrictions. In general, there are no restrictions in terms of Race and Class for any one faction, though there are exceptions. For example, the Athar do not believe that there are such things as gods, so have a dislike of priests, but gain protection from certain divine spells; the Bleak Cabal believe that the multiverse does not make any sense and so are immune to any spell that causes madness; the Dustmen believe that everyone is dead, but some are dead than others, and benefit from a pact with the undead who will ignore any Dustmen member; the Free League cannot decide upon the exact nature of the Multiverse, so openly debate it and have an immunity to charm effects, since they each of their own mind; and the Mercykillers want to bring about the perfect world through justice, so allow only Lawful members and have the ability to detect a single lie per day. In general, these are relatively minor abilities, but alongside them, what each provides is an idea and a belief, which of course, roughly aligns with those of other factions, whilst bouncing off those of others. Plus, of course, they are a great set-up for scenarios, plots, and storytelling.
The second of the four books in the Planescape Campaign Setting is the sixty-four page ‘A DM’s Guide to the Planes’. In addition to describing the numerous planes of the Inner Planes and Outer Planes, and their cosmology, this book explains how magic and magic items work across that cosmology. Naturally, everyone has a view on why magic and magic items work differently from one plane to the next, but again, unsurprising, the ‘Rule of Three’ applies. The caster needs to be aware of the effect of the spell on the target’s home plane, the position of other planes involved in the spell, and the availability of extradimensional space, but beyond that it does a bit complicated as which spell or magical item works where, and knowing that becomes a bit of hassle for the prospective arcane spellcaster. In fact, mechanically, this is the most complex part of the Planescape Campaign Setting. However, the setting provides an easy way around it—Spell Keys. Which are like the Door Keys that enable the Player Characters to access portals and thus other planes, but they allow a Wizard to cast spells freely on a particular plane, whilst a Power key does the same thing, but for a Priest’s spells. Magical items tend to be less effective the further they are taken from the plane where they were crafted. The combination of keys—Door Keys, Power Keys, and Spell Keys—are a toolkit for the Dungeon Master who can use them to craft and push the direction of her game by choosing when they become available and how they become available.
The ninety-six page ‘Sigil and Beyond’ is the third and longest book in the Planescape Campaign Setting. It begins with advice for the Dungeon Master on how and why she should run a Planescape campaign. ‘A Player’s Guide to the Planes’ suggests campaigns involving all Prime or all Planar Player Characters, or a mixed group, whilst the ‘A DM’s Guide to the Planes’ emphasised the fact that the tone of a Planescape campaign is about ideas and philosophies, and that those can lead to terror and treachery as well as mercy and goodness, most obviously through the factions, but also across the planes, tied as they are, to Alignment. In fact, it could be argued that Alignment plays a role in the Planescape Campaign Setting like no other setting for Dungeons & Dragons ever before. The differences continued to be highlighted throughout the advice, that Planescape is not about straight dungeoneering and plunder, but quests and objectives, exploration and experiencing a sense of wonder, interesting with and against the factions, not about being bullies and beating everything in sight including gods and taking their powers. The advice also covers possible adventures written for low, medium, and high-Level Player Characters.
The bulk of ‘Sigil and Beyond’ is devoted to describing both the various Realms and Towns of the Outland and the City of Doors itself. There are some extra notes on the factions too, but the main focus is on Sigil, which is given enough detail for the Dungeon Master to use and bring to life. Rounding out ‘Sigil and Beyond’ are a pair of campaign quick-starts. ‘For the Price of a Rose’ is designed for low Level Player Characters and is intended to get them from the Prime Material Plane to Sigil, chasing a gang which has been stealing from the world and thus annoying the gang enough to want revenge, whilst ‘Misplaced Spirit’ can be used as a follow on to ‘For the Price of a Rose’ or used to start a campaign with all Planar Player Characters. This has the Player Characters chasing after a petitioner who has escaped the Palace of Judgement, so it gives them the opportunity to run round the city. There are also a pair of new spells and a list of the Cant, which the Dungeon Master can annoy her players and their characters with by learning and using!
The fourth and last book in the Planescape Campaign Setting is the thirty-two page ‘Monstrous Supplement’ presents twelve new monsters for the setting. Some of the entries are tough, like the Aleax, the physical manifestation of the vengeance enacted by a Power, or the Spirit of the Air, a winged monkey-minion of a Power of air and wind, so not necessarily immediately useful. Whereas, the Cranium Rat, vermin whose intelligence is boosted the greater its numbers, including spellcasting, and the Dabus, odd, berobed humanoids who speak in speech bubbles and iconography and are tasked with repairing the City of Doors, are likely to be encountered in Sigil. The longest entry is dedicated to the Modron, the polyhedral creatures of absolute order from the plane of Mechanus. It is more an interesting mix than a useful mix, and is the core set’s biggest omission and disappointment.
The extras in the Planescape Campaign Setting are not perhaps as useful as they could have been. The four-panel ‘DM Screen’ is serviceable, containing a mix of standard tables from the Player’s Handbook and Dungeon Master’s Guide for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Second Edition, along with the few tables from the Planescape Campaign Setting, so more of the former than the latter. This consists of the ‘Faction Reactions’, ‘Wizard School Alterations by Plane’, and ‘Magical Items in the Planes’. So not necessarily all that useful over the standard screen for the roleplaying game. Similarly, the poster showing the heraldic icons of the factions is nice, but not useful, whereas the poster maps of The Outlands, the Outer Planes, and Sigil, are much better and more useful, including extra content on their reverse side.
Of course, the other major difference between Planescape and other campaign settings for Dungeons & Dragons is the physical design. The palette of green, Verdigris, and brown, the use of Exocet typeface which replaced the letter ‘t’ with ‘+’, and the stunning artwork of Tony DiTerlizzi which wraps sinuously around the text and echoes the administrativia and grotesquery of Mervyn Peake’s Gormanghast novels. This is in addition to the iconography of Dana Knutson, who created the symbols for the factions and most notably, that of the Lady of Pain, which adorns the front of the box and each book.
—oOo—The Planescape Campaign Setting would win the 1994 Origins Award for Best Graphic Presentation of a Roleplaying Game, Adventure, or Supplement, but the reviews were limited in number. The Planescape Campaign Setting was reviewed by Rick Swan in ‘Role-playing Reviews’ in Dragon Magazine Issue #207 (July, 1994), giving it a rating of six out of six, or ‘The Best’ as well as describing it as “…[A] spectacular boxed set and TSR’s most ambitious campaign world to date.” and “…[D]esigner Zeb Cook’s finest effort since 1985’s Oriental Adventures and may be his masterwork.” He praised the boxed throughout, before ultimately concluding with a warning: “By covering so much ground and hinting at so many possibilities, the PLANESCAPE set raises expectations that may be tough to meet. Despite five books of material, there’s only enough room to give a taste of what’s in store, hence the tantalizing asides about dungeons made of giant skulls, a link between Toril and Krynn, and cities that change planes when their populations change alignments. This set is a box of promises, and if subsequent supplements fail to deliver, there’s going to be an awful lot of disappointed berks.”
Scott Haring, reviewing the Planescape Campaign Setting in ‘Pyramid Picks!’ in Pyramid Vol. 1 #8 (July/August, 1994) opened with, “I’ll cut to the chase — Planescape is the finest game world ever produced for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Period.” He described it as being, “…[E]verything us cool, jaded, disaffected gamers always complained that AD&D was not — sophisticated, almost adult roleplaying.” Praising the Planescape Campaign Setting throughout—best especially the artwork of Tony DiTerlizzi—Haring concluded with, “Planescape is a revolutionary product, a breakthrough for TSR. If you think you’ve “graduated” from AD&D, that you’ve evolved past it, go back and take a look at Planescape. This is the game world that will get you playing AD&D again.”—oOo—
The Planescape Campaign Setting could have been written by White Wolf in the nineties. After all, its emphasis on the presence and role of factions in the setting do make it feel like a World of Darkness roleplaying game, enabling the telling of stories around politics and beliefs as well as the exploration of the planes and more. The Planescape Campaign Setting includes a wealth of material to support such a campaign, but it is a wealth that does not feel quite enough, especially when it comes to the factions and the planes. The Dungeon Master is definitely going to want to know more to help her bring Sigil: The City of Doors and the Outlands to life. Of course, TSR, Inc. would follow up the Planescape Campaign Setting core box set with numerable supplements, including multiple boxed sets that would add depth and detail to the Multiverse of Planescape. Of these, the Dungeon Master is going to want In the Cage: A Guide to Sigil for a better guide to Sigil: The City of Doors, The Factol’s Manifesto for more detailed descriptions of the factions, and the MC8 Monstrous Compendium Outer Planes Appendix for more foes. The Planescape Campaign Setting is a superb start though, an amazing introduction to the setting and means of getting berks and bashers to Sigil: The City of Doors.
The Planescape Campaign Setting is the most interesting, the most innovative, and the most individual of all the worlds created for any iteration of Dungeons & Dragons. It is a fantasy utterly non-traditional, taking the Player Characters from the Dickensian grubbiness of the alleys of Sigil: The City of Doors all the way out to the infinite splendour of the Outer Planes and back again in time for bub and kip, a setting and a game line whose look and feel, let alone that setting, is genuinely unique and can truly be described as iconic.

Ten years ago, the Abisko Mine was forcibly shut down following an explosion which killed many of the mine workers. Located in the far north of Sweden above the village of Abisko, all that remained of the mine was a crater. There were few if any survivors and no investigation, the cause of the disaster becoming first the subject of conjecture, and then rumour, as the incident was forgotten about. Recently, the mine and its surrounding area was bought by the Svea Mining Corp, owned by Karl Magnusson and his wife Sigrid. They have attracted the interest of scientists, the attention of the military, and the money of investors with rumours of the discovery of a new type of gemstone that could change the fate of Sweden and the course of the world, speeding up the pace of industrialisation which is already sweeping the country. Yet there are those who have not forgotten the explosion that closed down the original Abisko Mine, and worse, they believe that the gemstone is not something that should be exploited, but instead studied and kept careful control of, lest it fall into the wrong hands. One of these is Franzibald Hansen, Danish author and expert on Norse mythology. Although wealthy and knowledgeable, he lacks the means to investigate himself, let alone deal with the problem as he sees it beyond being a lone voice. Thus, he turns to one of his old contacts and through her, the Society, the body of scholars and adventurers based in Castle Gyllencreutz in Upsala, whose gift of second sight enabled them to see the Vaesen, the supernatural creatures who have for centuries lived alongside the folk of Scandinavia. With their help, Franzibald Hansen is sure that he can prevent the Magnussons from bringing their plan to fruition and the gemstones from falling into the wrong hands.
This is the set-up for The Lost Mountain Saga, the first campaign for use with Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying, the Roleplaying Game of investigative folklore horror set in nineteenth century Scandinavia published by Free League Publishing. As well as being the first campaign for Vaesen, what is also notable about The Lost Mountain Saga is that it is based on a podcast of the same name that the author has adapted for use with Vaesen. This continues the phenomenon of roleplaying podcast adaptations previously seen with Critical Role and Tal’Dorei Campaign Setting Reborn from Darrington Press and Old Gods of Appalachia from Monte Cook Games. In the case of The Lost Mountain Saga, the result  is a relatively short campaign, consisting of five parts that take place over the course of a year, from September to August. The only requirement for it is the core rules and the fact that the Player Characters are members of the society and have conducted a handful of investigations, and thus be able to improve the facilities at Castle Gyllencreutz. Optional are other scenarios for Vaesen. There are gaps of several months between the third and fourth parts and between the fourth and fifth parts where the Game Master could run another scenario or two. That said, if the Game Master decides not to run other scenarios between the five parts of The Lost Mountain Saga, then the campaign can be played through quite quickly at a rate of two or three sessions per scenario—at the very most.
All five chapters of the campaign follow the same structure as other scenarios for Vaesen. The ‘Background’ and ‘Conflicts’ explains the situation for each scenario, whilst the ‘Invitation’ tells the Game Master how to get the Player Characters involved. In The Lost Mountain Saga, this includes letters, invitations, and the personal request of Franzibald Hansen, which will lead to the town or village where the mystery is taking place, the getting there detailed in the ‘Journey’, typically a mix of railway and coach journeys. It should be noted that every mystery has a moment or two when the Player Characters can prepare and goes into some detail about the journey. There is an opportunity for roleplaying here, perhaps resulting in longer travel scenes than the core rulebook necessarily recommends. The ‘Countdown and Catastrophe’ presents the Game Master with one or two sets of events which take place as the Player Characters’ investigation proceeds, sometimes triggered by the Player Characters, sometimes triggered by the NPCs, whilst ‘Locations’ cover NPCs, Challenges, and Clues, all leading to a ‘Confrontation’ and its eventual ‘Aftermath’. The mysteries are well organised, a mix of the sandbox and events which the Game Master will need to carefully orchestrate around the actions of her Player Characters. Only the most pertinent of the locations in each town or village is described and the Game Master is advised to create others as needed, though she will very likely need a ready list of Swedish names to hand for whenever the Player Characters run into an NPC or two. That said, the campaign is fairly linear and self-contained, meaning that relatively little preparation is required outside of the campaign itself and it can serve as an introductory or starter campaign the first time Game Master could run after she has run a few scenarios.
The campaign opens with ‘Duty and Despair’,  with news of the reopening of the Great Copper Mountain mine of Falun. This brings the portly bon viveur, Franzibald Hansen, to Castle Gyllencreutz. He has received a letter from the local priest about an outbreak of witchcraft and requests their help in investigating it. Almost everyone in the town seems charmed by the exceptionally stern Reverend Bruselius, who quickly settles on the culprit and prepares to hold a trial. Is she guilty, or is there someone else responsible and can the Player Characters identify them in time? However, in discovering this, the Player Characters will encounter another vaesan, one which will already have taken its first victim—Franzibald Hansen! It seems that he had an interest in Falun more than the outbreak of witchcraft, but quite will be revealed in the next few chapters.
‘The Beginning of the Fall’ shifts the mystery back to Upsala where the university is hosting an exclusive ball which will be attended by members of the nobility, the military, and the science community. This is because Karl and Sigrid Magnusson are going to announce the nature of the gemstones their operation has unearthed at the Abisko Mine. At the same time, there are reports of overcrowding at the city’s asylum, including a journalist who wrote an article critical of the Svea Mining Corp. Is this a coincidence? The ball is a chance for the Player Characters to mix with members of high society—military, noble, and scientific—so the Game Master may want to have some NPCs ready here, as well as a chance to get a good look at the strange gemstones. In addition, some of Franzibald Hansen’s secrets will be revealed!
The middle part of The Lost Mountain Saga is ‘Where the Sun Dies’, and it sends the Player Characters off in an entirely different direction—Norway! Norwegian Police Commissioner Olof Dahl comes to the Castle Gyllencreutz asking for their help. Contact has been lost with the island of Værøya above the arctic circle as it appears have suffered a radical fall in temperature weeks before it is normally due and to date, none of the rescue missions have returned. Having travelled to Bergen, the Player Characters set sail aboard an icebreaker commanded by one Captain Harrock—“Billions of bilious blue blistering barnacles!!”—and so investigate the island. From having to ski across the ace to reach Værøya to confronting the frosty foe responsible, this is an entertaining scenario that is quite creepy and unsettling in places.
‘The Prince and the Witch’ returns the action to Upsala and to the great Valborg bonfire next to the Royal Mounds of Upsala for the ancient spring festival. There a young woman asks for the Society’s help. She is a member of the Vanadisir, an organisation whose members claim to be the descendants of the Norse goddess Freja, and she wants help in rescuing her leader from an evil man in this forest. It turns out that ‘he’ is not a prince, but a snake, and not the only one in this linear encounter which draws the Player Characters back into the past. The confrontation is particularly nicely handled here.
The campaign comes to a close with ‘The Lost Mountain Saga’. A plea from an unexpected quarter sends the Player Characters back to where the campaign begins to reveal the secrets of the Abisko Mine and the true dangers that it represents to all of Sweden. The scenario literally ticks down to the climax in a race to prevent the Svea Mining Corp’s plans coming to fruition and a final confrontation.
Physically, The Lost Mountain Saga is everything that you would expect a book for Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying to be. It is well written and presented, but the artwork and the cartography are both excellent, evoking a mixture of nineteenth century charm and folkloric horror. The book itself is actually a lovely artefact in its own right.
The Lost Mountain Saga is a short campaign as well as being an uncomplicated campaign. This and its year-long, but handful of chapters, structure give it space and a flexibility into which the Game Master can add or develop her own content. This may well be necessary to offset its quite linear nature and the fact that the campaign veers away from its storyline in its middle chapters. If the campaign is instead played through at pace, this may not be an issue though. Overall, The Lost Mountain Saga is a good starter campaign for Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying, suitable for the Game Master looking for a first campaign and the veteran Game Master looking for something lighter.

Just after you review one roleplaying game about running a coffee shop with difficult customers designed to be run on its own or as corollary on top of just about any roleplaying game imaginable, along comes another roleplaying game about running a coffee shop with difficult customers designed to be run on its own or as corollary on top of just about any roleplaying game imaginable.* Coffee & Chaos – Comedy Café Roleplaying Game from Cobblepath Games was the first, a standalone game which used ordinary playing cards, cutlery mattered, and a slice of life was served up with smile and a heart in the foam in the face of difficult customers and dwindling resources (as essentially, there was never anyone to do the washing up!). The Eternal Grind Café is the second. It is published by Mottokrosh Machinations, best known for Hypertellurians: Fantastic Thrills Through the Ultracosm, the Old School Renaissance adjacent roleplaying game of retro science fantasy inspired by the artwork of Frank Frazetta and Roger Dean, the adventures of John Carter of Mars, Buck Rogers, and Barbarella. Certainly, any of those ‘Hypertellurians’ could end up in the Eternal Grind Café, but then again so could any character from any roleplaying game. Definitely though, The Eternal Grind Café does not share the same inspirations as Hypertellurians: Fantastic Thrills Through the Ultracosm.

* If I have to review a third, something weird is going on.

What has happened is that in their hubris, the Player Characters have angered the gods. To teach them a lesson, the gods have cast the Player Characters into Hell. Instead of hellfire and brimstone and eternal torment, it turns out that Hell is actually a minimum wage job in the only growing industry in the world. In other words, work as a barista. So now, where they were once mighty heroes and heroines who braved the odds to defeat dragons and save the princess, long-bearded wizards who commanded cosmic forces of magic, an accountant driven to investigate the unknown, and in the process save humanity unacknowledged, a necromancer who raised an army of the dead, and so on, they now clock on, tie an apron on, smile, take orders for coffee, brew that coffee, and smile again, until it is time to clock off. Unfortunately, the Eternal Grind Café gets at best, the most interesting customers, at worst, the worst customers in the known universe, and all the Player Characters have to do is suck it up until the end of their shift, or if they are really lucky, the gods change their minds. Which is unlucky. So technically, the Eternal Grind Café could actually be called the Infernal Grind Café...

The Eternal Grind Café is a storytelling style roleplaying game for between three and five players, which can be played in a single session. Mechanically, it is very simple, but it provides scope for lots of roleplaying and scope for improvisation. Designed for three to five players, as written, it is intended to be run by a Game Master, who portrays all of the customers who come to the Eternal Grind Café. However, it can easily be run without a Game Master, with the players taking it in turn to portray the bad or difficult customers. A barista in The Eternal Grind Café has two stats or skills. Barista covers anything to do with coffee and running the coffee shop, whilst Character covers everything else—and that includes everything that the barista could do as a Player Character in his home game. The hero’s wielding of a sword, the wizard opening up a portal to the netherworld, the accountant budgeting or casting Elder Sign when he really needs it, or the necromancer commanding the undead… Both skills start at three and are rolled on a six-sided die, the aim being to roll under. If good customer service is given, then both skills move to the right, but if bad customer service is given, they both move to the left. If the stats move to the right, the Barista skill goes up, but the Character skill goes down. If the stats move to the left, the Barista skill goes down, but the Character skill goes up. If either skill is raised to six in this fashion, the Barista loses his and the player loses control of his Barista, but in different ways depending on the stat. A Barista skill at six means that the barista has become a mindless drone, but a Character skill at six means that the barista goes on a murderous rage! Which is truly terrible customer service.

To prevent either from happening, the barista has an outlet—social media. If the player describes a social media post in which his barista complains about his job, he can reduce his Barista skill by one. If he describes a social media post in which he tells of a flashback about his Player Character’s epic deeds in his former life, he can reduce his Character skill by one. In this way, the Barista and Character skills go out of sync.

The aim of the baristas is to gain tips. Each tip is represented by a die type, from four-sided to twenty-sided dice. The bigger the die type, the bigger the tip.* Each die goes into the tip jar. At the end of the shift or whenever the health inspector turns up, all of the dice are rolled and totalled. For each full twenty points rolled, the gods relent, and let a barista return to his former life. If there are not enough points for every barista, then it is every barista for himself and since this hell, betrayal or doing the dirty is just going to be seen as part of the décor.

* The use of Dungeon Crawl Classics dice would be particularly diabolic!

To support play, the Game Master has tables for determining the belligerent nature of the coffee machine—it could be haunted or it could woof and wag its tail like a dog, for random events, and for twenty customers. They include Three Sloths in a Trench coat, Belon Trusk X, a barista’s Mother, Mango Maga Man, and more. Each one comes with roleplaying tips and what the baristas need to do for each to give a good tip. There is a sly sense of humour to the various customers. The Game Master is advised not to say who the customer is, but just describe what they look like and let the players work it out…

Physically, The Eternal Grind Café is lightly and cleanly presented. The artwork is light and suitably humorous. Elements of the presentation will change for the full edition rather than this the Preview Edition. Things that can be added to the game include coffee options, more complications, and more customers.

The Eternal Grind Café is a light and silly roleplaying game that is ever so easy to prepare and equally as easy to run. Perfect to run in between longer games or as a pick-up game, whether at a coffee shop or at home, The Eternal Grind Café is relaxing fun until everyone has the chance to get out of hell and never have to work another shift again!

It is difficult to describe what Asterion is without being as direct as its author is. So not to beat about the bush, Asterion is a sex dungeon. Asterion is a sex dungeon for Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplaying published by Lamentations of the Flame Princess. What it does is take the Ancient Greek myth of the creation of the Minotaur and turn it into a sex dungeon and combine it with a bloody meatgrinder. In the myth, Minos, King of Crete, prayed to the sea god Poseidon to send him a snow-white bull as a sign of the god’s favour and promised to sacrifice the bull to the god. When he did not, Poseidon punished Minos by making his wife fall in love with the bull and eventually she bore a child, a half-bull, half-man. Called Asterius, this is Minotaur. So inhuman and so ferocious was Asterius, that he would only eat human meat. After taking advice from the Oracle at Delphi, Minos had the craftsman, Daedalus, construct a mighty labyrinth to house the Minotaur. Into this, King Minos would cast his enemies. Asterion takes this myth and removes any references to Greece, enabling the Game Master to drop the adventure into her campaign, if, that is, she actually wanted to. Because remember, Asterion is a sex dungeon, as the Minotaur is not only wandering the labyrinth eating anyone he finds in there, he is also living out a priapic fantasy with anyone he finds in the labyrinth—whether they want to or not.

It should be noted that Asterion is written by the author of Beware the Mindfuck. That scenario carried an ‘18+ Explicit Content’ label on the front cover—and it deserved to. As does Asterion. Be warned. The language and the tone of Asterion is strong and of an adult nature and it deserves that exact same warning label. Unfortunately, it does not have one. In the meantime, some of the language and content in Asterion is repeated as part of the review where necessary.

After some immature posturing by the author about how he is not going to tell the Game Master how to run the adventure, how the adventure is not “…[F]or those that get easily butt hurt about touchy subjects”, and that the Game Master should run it if she has a “cool group”, he actually settles down and begins telling the reader what the adventure is about. The set-up is simple. The Player Characters are thrown into the Labyrinth, perhaps with a sword or a spear and some torches and then left to it. Accompanying them is a number of Zero Level tributes to Asterion, the Minotaur. The Labyrinth is described as a series of tight corridors crossed by many intersections, at which Bull Calves, the offspring of Asterion, will be grabbing them and attempting to eat them, have sex them—that is, rape them, take them back to their father, or a combination of all three. The Zero Level tributes are replacement Player Characters. So far, so bad. Fear not though, for it gets worse.

Instead of there being a map of the Labyrinth—the Game Master is expected to make it up—there is simply a table of twenty, increasingly detailed and unpleasant encounters. Screams, statues, mushrooms growing in cow dung, corpses, and so on, seem perfectly normal. Elsewhere an incredibly attractive, incredibly large woman demands sex in return for oracular divinations and will get extremely frustrated if the Player Characters refuse; a male dominant, dressed all in leather, invites the Player Characters to participate in his sex dungeon and attacks them with his handcrafted sex toys when they refuse; and a scene of bestiality. Plus, there are the scenes with the Bull Calves having sex with and/or eating the women imprisoned in the Labyrinth.

Running Asterion involves the Game Master describing the Labyrinth to her players, occasionally rolling for an encounter on the table, and when all of those are crossed off, she can run the scenario’s final scene in Asterion’s throne room. There are promises of freedom, but as the author makes clear in his ‘Wrapping Shit up’, “Everyone will die! Seriously. It’s a fuckin [sic] meatgrinder!” There are stats for the various monsters in Asterion, but that is about it.

Physically, Asterion is thankfully short. It is unpleasantly written and surprisingly, is illustrated with numerous images of statues and vases from Ancient Greece given that this aspect of the background to the scenario is ignored.

So, what you have in Asterion is a meatgrinder—in all senses of the word—one-shot in which the Player Characters are exposed to a lot of sex and semi-cannibalism, not expected to survive, and that is it, really. In fact, there really is very little for the Player Characters to do except wander around and fight. That is the extent of the agency they have. For the players, there is equally as little for them to do, little that is going to engage them or their capacity to roleplay, and ultimately, all Asterion does is expose them to the sexual fantasies of the author.

Asterion is repulsive, immature, and pointless. It does not deserve so much as an ‘18+ Explicit Content’ label, but an ‘Immature Players Only’ label.

—oOo—

DISCLAIMER: The author of this review is an editor who has edited titles for Lamentations of the Flame Princess on a freelance basis. He was not involved in the production of this book and his connection to both publisher has no bearing on the resulting review.