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

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The Valley Of The Pharaohs: Role Playing Adventure in Ancient Egypt has the distinction of being the first roleplaying game to explore the idea of roleplaying in ancient Egypt, the first historical roleplaying game published by Palladium Games, the only boxed roleplaying game from Palladium Games, and the only roleplaying game from Palladium Games to not use its Megaverse rules. Published in 1983, the result is a game with a surprisingly simple and straightforward rules system, plenty of solidly researched background and historical material, and some superb illustrations and maps. However, even by the standards of the day, it suffers from cheap production values and a lack of development. Unlike other titles from Palladium Games, such as the Mechanoid Invasion Trilogy, it has not been reprinted. Consequently, The Valley Of The Pharaohs: Role Playing Adventure in Ancient Egypt has remained a historical curio, little remembered by anyone.
The Valley Of The Pharaohs: Role Playing Adventure in Ancient Egypt is a boxed set. Inside is a fifty-page, black and white rulebook, a full colour map of Ancient Egypt, and several sheets which depict the Nile Valley, routes across the deserts and ‘Nomes’ (a regional division of the country), city fortifications, house floorplans, the True Pyramid, the Step Pyramid, the Temple of Hatshepsut, and more. In the roleplaying game, players take on the roles of members of Egyptian society who go and well, not adventure exactly. Society in the setting is described as stable and as is made clear in the ‘G.M. Notes’, “…[T]he government will not allow a band of marauders to plunder the countryside (at least not within Egypt proper).” Instead, it is suggested that the adventurers undertake business trips or pilgrimages, perhaps be representatives of noble or merchant patrons. Alternatively, there are ruins to explore or military ventures to engage in beyond the borders of the country, even though none of Egypt’s enemies are detailed, but suggestions as to what the Player Characters might do in a scenario or campaign are really covered in the barest of details. In some ways this parallels the feel of an earlier roleplaying game, Empire of the Petal Throne, which has always had the repetition of being dense and impenetrable and not easy to run from the material contained in the rules. That said, an experienced Game Master will be able to develop an adventure from the material in the book.
A Player Character in is, of course, Human and Egyptian. He is defined by his Caste, Attributes, Hit Points, Occupation, and Skills. There are four Castes—Nobility, Clergy, Bureaucracy, and Commons—and each Caste suggests possible Occupations and gives an Attribute bonus. For example, the Occupations for the Clergy Caste are Priest and Scholar and its grants a bonus to the Power Attribute. The five attributes are Strength, Speed, Intellect, Power, and Persona, and these range between three and eighteen. Hit Points are equal to double the Player Character’s Strength. There are five Occupations—Soldier, Priest, Scholar, Merchant, and Thief. Skills are given as percentile values, and come from a Player Character’s Caste and Occupation. To create a Player Character, a player rolls for his Caste, Attributes, selects an occupation, rolls for the number of Caste skills and selects them, and then picks four skills from those available from the Occupation. Oddly, the rulebook does not include a list of names. The process is quick, but not necessarily clearly explained. For example, Priests and Scholars can learn spells, but it is not how many they know at game’s start.
AkhethetepCaste: BureaucracyOccupation: Scholar
Strength 06 Speed 09 Intellect 18 Power 16 Persona 14
Hit Points: 12
SKILLSAgriculture 20%, Gaming 26%, Law 18%, Magick 32%, Philosophy 18%, Reading 18%, Swimming 09%, Writing 18%
SPELLSClairvoyance, Detect Truth, Illumination
Mechanically, The Valley Of The Pharaohs employs the percentile system. A player rolls under percentile dice against a particular skill to succeed. Beginning Player Characters are thus far from being very skilled and one of the stated aims of play, at least mechanically, is to improve skills. Skill improvement is done at the end of each session and is done with a roll over the skill as in other percentile systems. A Player Character can also gain training in a skill. Combat is different and uses a twenty-sided die. To attack an opponent, a player rolls the die and adds bonuses based on the character’s Speed Attribute and Combat Skill. The Valley Of The Pharaohs differentiates between the Combat, Military Combat, Shield, Archery, and Throw Skills, and the higher the skill, the more bonuses provided. If the player rolls higher than the Resistance Factor of the target’s armour, which can range from six for simple clothing and eight for padded to eleven for leather and fourteen for scale, then the character is successful in penetrating the armour. Damage is then rolled for and applied directly to the target’s Hit Points. However, if the roll is equal to the Resistance Factor and up to five less than the Resistance Factor of the armour, the attack hits and damage is applied to the armour’s damage capacity before the target. A defending character, though, does have the option of parrying or dodging, which requires a player to roll higher than the attack roll. Either way, a roll of a natural twenty is a critical hit and inflicts double damage.
In comparison to the combat rules, the base mechanic and the rulebook’s explanation of it are woefully underwritten. The combat rules are given much more detail and have a bit of cut and thrust to them with combatants able to parry and dodge as well as attack. Soldiers do feel more skilled though, because there is direct correlation between a Warrior’s skill and what he can do in mechanical terms. As he gains in skill, he has more attacks, bonuses to attack and parry, and more. So even the average warrior is going to have two attacks per round and a bonus to parry if he has the Military Combat skill, although it is not clear what the difference between the Combat and Miliary Combat skills are. 
Magic uses the Magick skill to determine both how well a Player Character casts spells and what spells he might possibly know. His Magick skill is rolled against whenever he wants to cast a spell as per the roleplaying game’s skill mechanic. Its value is also used as the level of a Player Character’s magical knowledge in that a Player Character might know or be able to learn and cast all of the spells of a level under the value of his Magick. Thus, a Priest or Scholar with a Magick skill of 25 might only know the Illumination, Detect Truth, Clairvoyance, and Move Water spells, which are levels ten, fifteen, twenty, and twenty-five, respectively. Spells have a Magic Point cost to cast, a duration, and a casting time, ranging from two to twelve combat rounds, such as with the spells Portal and Speak with Gods, depending on spell level. A caster can also extend a spell and attempt to ward or counter a spell if he knows the spell being cast at him. Characters of all types can access to passive magick through amulets, wax figures, Ushabti, magic pictures, and more. Amulets provide minor bonuses, such as the Serpent’s Head, a red stone amulet that protects the wearer from snakes and to a certain extent from magical snakes, whilst Ushabti resemble objects in the real world which come to life and magically perform tasks that their real-world equivalents would. For example, a bull Ushabti could come to life and plough a field or a soldier Ushabti protect its owner. In the case of amulets, the more someone wears, the less effective they are. Of the two, the passive magic of the amulets and similar objects is much more interesting and much more immersive than that of the active magic. This is not to say that active magic is not powerful, but it is not as flashy as in other fantasy roleplaying games, there are a limited number of spells, and there are few if direct combat spells. Another issue is that the spells feel generic, rather than being specifically tied to the setting of Ancient Egypt, its priesthoods, and its gods, and that is not the case with the passive magic. 
In terms of setting, The Valley Of The Pharaohs provides information on the history of Ancient Egypt, its society, government, law, slavery, army, and more. It pays particular attention to the clergy, which includes temples, medicine, beliefs, and of course, burial customs, plus the gods themselves. A bestiary gives stats for ordinary creatures such as crocodiles and baboons, and for monsters like great serpents and several unnamed man-eating beasts believed to inhabit the deserts. The range of monsters feels threadbare. Rounding out The Valley Of The Pharaohs is a set of tables for random encounters and treasures, the latter slightly at odds with non-marauding style of play the author informs the Game Master is ill-suited to the setting. Even the limited number of spells with their even more limited number of direct combat spells enforce this style of play. Yet the advice for the Game Master is limited in terms of explaining what sort of games and campaigns can be run using The Valley Of The Pharaohs. In particular, military campaigns are severely curtailed because although the roleplaying game is set at a time when Egypt is conducting military campaigns beyond its borders, only neighbouring Nubia is mentioned, and then only in passing. So, no idea is given of who these possible rivals are and what their armies look like. Similarly, whilst priests are discussed in general, the only difference between them is that they worship different gods. So, it is not easy to develop scenarios involving inter-temple rivalries and factionalism because there is not enough information here. This is not to dismiss the amount of information in what is a forty-year-old roleplaying game just fifty pages in length, but rather it can at best be described as a decent introduction to the period—at least for 1983. An experienced Game Master would be able to overcome these issues with research, and there is a bibliography included in the back of the rulebook. Of course, there have been developments in Egyptology since, so even what is here may have become outdated by contemporary standards. Plus, research today is going to be much easier to conduct than it was in 1983. Ultimately in terms of a setting, The Valley Of The Pharaohs is almost too settled and too stable, so that there are no real tensions or rivalries or differences which might drive adventure, conflict, or obvious story.
Physically, The Valley Of The Pharaohs: Role Playing Adventure in Ancient Egypt manages to both please and disappoint at the same time. The production values are disappointingly poor, the quality of the paper a significant factor in that—especially for the various separate maps and illustrations, which consequently feel flimsy. The rulebook’s text is also small and cramped and not easy to read. Yet the artwork, the maps, and so on are really particularly good, strong, bold, and really capture the feel of the setting.
—oOo—The Valley Of The Pharaohs: Role Playing Adventure in Ancient Egypt appears to have been reviewed just the once. This was by designer Jonathan Tweet, in the ‘Game Reviews’ department of Different Worlds Issue 45 (March/April 1987). He wrote, “The biggest obstacle to running a Valley of the Pharaohs campaign is the lack of motives for adventuring. The rules sanely remind gamemasters that armed adventurers freelancing as monster exterminators do not belong in 'the civilized, orderly land of Egypt but do not offer alternatives to the kinds of adventures players usually enjoy. If the game was designed so that the scholar, merchant, and soldier characters could have exciting adventures in civilized country like Egypt using all the noncombat skills described, Valley of the Pharaohs would have been given a better rating, but the game left me with no excitement as to the possibilities for scenarios.” before concluding that, “The Valley of the Pharaohs, then, would be a worthwhile game for those with deep interest in ancient Egypt and for those gamemasters with enough energy and imagination to synthesize historical background and basic game mechanics into an original and exciting campaign. Good luck to those of you who try.” He awarded The Valley Of The Pharaohs: Role Playing Adventure in Ancient Egypt just one-and-a-half stars.—oOo—
The Valley Of The Pharaohs: Role Playing Adventure in Ancient Egypt has all of the right substance—solid, if basic rules, a decent amount of background and history, and plenty of excellent illustrations and maps, but where it comes up short is application. What exactly do you do with it and what sort of scenarios and campaigns do you play? The basic advice that The Valley Of The Pharaohs is a stable and settled society does not leave the Game Master with a great to work with in terms of setting up a campaign or even a scenario. There is no denying that there is the basics of a solid enough roleplaying game in The Valley Of The Pharaohs: Role Playing Adventure in Ancient Egypt, but in terms what adventures can be run, it is underdeveloped and leaves a lot of work for the Game Master to do. One might say that it is all ‘Valley of the Pharaohs’ and not enough ‘adventure’.

Given the origins of the roleplaying hobby—in wargaming and in the drawing of dungeons that the first player characters, and a great many since, explored and plundered—it should be no surprise just how important maps are to the hobby. They serve as a means to show a tactical situation when using miniatures or tokens and to track the progress of the player characters through the dungeon—by both the players and the Dungeon Master. And since the publication of Dungeon Geomorphs, Set One: Basic Dungeon by TSR, Inc. in 1976, the hobby has found different ways in which to provide us with maps. Games Workshop published several Dungeon Floor Sets in the 1980s, culminating in Dungeon Planner Set 1: Caverns of the Dead and Dungeon Planner Set 2: Nightmare in Blackmarsh; Dwarven Forge has supplied dungeon enthusiasts with highly detailed, three-dimensional modular terrain since 1996; and any number of publishers have sold maps as PDFs via Drivethrurpg.com. Loke Battle Mats does something a little different with its maps. It publishes them as books.

A Loke BattleMats book comes as a spiral-bound book. Every page is a map and every page actually light card with a plastic covering. The fact that it is spiral-bound means that the book lies completely flat and because there is a map on every page, every map can be used on its own or combined with the map on the opposite page to work as one big, double-page spread map. The fact that the book is spiral bound means that it can be folded back on itself and thus just one map used with ease or the book unfolded to reveal the other half of the map as necessary. The fact that every page has a plastic covering means that every page can be drawn on using a write-on/wipe-off pen. It is a brilliantly simple concept which has already garnered the publisher the UK Games Expo 2019 People’s Choice Awards for Best Accessory for the Big Book of Battlemats and both the UK Games Expo 2019 Best Accessory and UK Games Expo 2019 People’s Choice Awards Best Accessory for the Giant Book of Battle Mats.
The Castles, Crypts, & Caverns Books of Battle Mats is a ‘Set of 2 Battle Map Books for RPG’. As a set, it comes as two volume set of map books in a slipcase—open ended at either side for easy access. Each of the two volumes is a twelve-inch squire square, spiral bound book, with each containing sixty maps, all marked with a square grid. These start with a pair of maps with just a plain, but quickly leap into depicting particular locations. There are castle walls with towers and stables, great spiraling stairs, a mess hall, temples and dormitories, libraries and ritual rooms, ornamental gardens, befouled sewer tunnels, and caverns set across a variety of terrain types, and much, much more. And this is more or less the same in each of the two books. This does not mean that the maps are exactly the same in each book. Rather they are thematically similar and this leads into what is perhaps the greatest feature of the Castles, Crypts, & Caverns Books of Battle Mats.
Each two-page spread of the two volumes of the Castles, Crypts, & Caverns Books of Battle Mats consists of two linked maps—physically and thematically. The Game Master can use either of the maps on the two-page spread on their own or together, as a twelve by twenty-four-inch rectangular map. That though is with the one volume. With two volumes together, the Game Master can combine any single map from one volume with any single map from the other, and if that is not flexible enough, any two-page spread from one volume can be placed next to a two-page spread from the other, in the process, creating a twenty-four by twenty-four-inch square map. What is means is that the Game Master can connect the two sections of castle walls to create a longer section, the sewers can be extended, and the mess hall, dormitories, and other sections placed together to form a barracks, for example. As with the other titles in the range, this gives the Castles, Crypts, & Caverns Books a fantastic versatility which the Game Master can take advantage of again and again in choosing a combination of map pages from the two volumes to create location after location, and then use them to build encounter after encounter.
The individual maps are excellent, being bright, vibrant, detailed, and clear. They are easy to use and easy to modify. A Game Master can easily adjust them with a write-on/wipe-off pen to add features of her own. This is especially important if the Game Master wants to use a map which has previously featured in one of her adventures. She can also add stickers if she wants new features or even actual physical terrain features.
There are four books in the series—the Castles, Crypts, & Caverns Books of Battle Mats, The Wilderness Books of Battle Mats, The Dungeon Books of Battle Mats, and The Towns & Taverns Books of Battle Mats. There is a difference between the Castles, Crypts, & Caverns Books of Battle Mats and the other titles which is both an advantage and a disadvantage for this set of books. The difference is that instead of focusing of one or two themes, such as dungeons or towns and taverns, the Castles, Crypts, & Caverns Books of Battle Mats obviously focuses on three. This gives its a flexibility which means it slots easily alongside a wider range of maps from the other three books in the series. For example, the castle maps from the Castles, Crypts, & Caverns Books of Battle Mats can abut against the street maps from The Towns & Taverns Books of Battle Mats or the caverns added to those in The Dungeon Books of Battle Mats. However, it is not quite possible to create a complete castle or fortress or other buildings or similar buildings with this book set. Rather, it feels as if the Castles, Crypts, & Caverns Books of Battle Mats is a book of abutments, sections that support and expand the maps in the other entries in the series, ratehr than being a standalone product. Consequently, they are not necessarily that easy to use on the fly, to ready up an encounter at a moment’s notice. Instead, they are easier to use as part of the Game Master’s preparation and then have everything necessary to play. Then obviously, the maps cannot be used over and over lest familiarity become an issue. Neither of these are issues which will prevent a Game Master from using the Castles, Crypts, & Caverns Books of Battle Mats, but rather that she should be aware of them prior to bringing them to the table.
Physically, the Castles, Crypts, & Caverns Books of Battle Mats is very nicely produced. The maps are clear, easy to use, fully painted, and vibrant with colour. One issue may well be with binding and the user might want to be a little careful folding the pages back and forth lest the pages crease or break around the spiral comb of the binding. Although there is some writing involved in the Castles, Crypts, & Caverns Books of Battle Mats, it is not really what a Game Master is looking for with this two-volume set. Fortunately, the writing is a little sharper than in previous entries in the series.
There is no denying the usefulness of maps when it comes to the tabletop gaming hobby. They help players and Game Masters alike visualise an area, they help track movement and position, and so on. If a gaming group does not regularly use miniatures in their fantasy games, the Castles, Crypts, & Caverns Books of Battle Mats might not be useful, but it will still help them visualise an area, and it may even encourage them to use them. If they already use miniatures, whether fantasy roleplaying or wargaming, then the maps in the Castles, Crypts, & Caverns Books of Battle Mats will be useful—but only to an extent and then really only best used with the other volumes in the series. Still there are so many fantasy roleplaying games which Castles, Crypts, & Caverns Books of Battle Mats will work with, almost too many to list here…
The Castles, Crypts, & Caverns Books of Battle Mats is full of attractive, ready-to-use maps that the Game Master can bring to the table for the fantasy roleplaying game of her choice. As with other entries in the series, the Castles, Crypts, & Caverns Books of Battle Mats is both practical and pretty, but its broader focus that it is not quite as useful an accessory for fantasy gaming in general with the rest of the line.

The year is 1635. The village of Landskrona has nothing to recommend it except perhaps for a legend about a dragon having been killed in the past—nobody can remember exactly when—and that is all. Landskrona is utterly forgettable except… In the past few months two teenage girls have gone missing, as have several children. There are rumours of witches in the area, because, well, it is 1635 and there are witches in the area. Also, a unit of mercenaries recently passed through the area looking for bandits. However, the missing girls and children, let alone the rumours of witchcraft are not the only problems besetting the village of Landskrona, let alone the rest of Norway, Europe, and even the whole of the Earth—though they are just the most obvious ones! This is the set-up for Earth Incubation Crisis, a scenario for Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay. Written by the designer of Wight Power, the good news is that whilst Earth Incubation Crisis is another ‘hidden, apocalyptic monster waiting to be unleashed, whilst surrounded by monsters’, it is more interesting, better developed, and less provocatively titled than Wight Power, and whilst it contains content that is prurient in places and is adult in tone throughout, it is not thoroughly as unpleasant or as tasteless as Curse of the Daughterbrides. In fact, inspired by Japanese Science Fiction, Earth Incubation Crisis has the potential to be a lot of fun.
Earth Incubation Crisis is essentially a hexcrawl set in the Norwegian countryside. Like other scenarios published by Lamentations of the Flame Princess it is set in the game’s default early Modern Period. Specifically, in 1635 Norway, so it could work with several of the other publisher’s titles or equally easily adapted to the retroclone of the Game Master’s choice. It could even be shifted to another similar location. The scenario begins when the Player Characters arrive in the village of Landskrona and quickly learn of its problems—the missing persons and the rumours of witchcraft, as well as the possibility of discovering a dragon’s hoard. This is motivation for them to set out and investigate the nearby forests, marsh, and mountains. Barring the village of Landskrona, there are only five set locations in the scenario, set across the region. As the Player Characters move about the area, they will run into encounter after encounter, and it is with these encounters that the scenario begins to come its own. The author has made an effort to make every encounter detailed and interesting. For example, brown bears are sighted in the area, but a pair of corpses are later found which turn out to be of a couple who tried to live in harmony with the bears and unfortunately, it did not go as they intended. An abandoned home will be found, but its former occupant might be found later. There is the mercenary band out looking for the bandits and the bandits themselves, hiding out after a robbery went wrong—which is why they are being hunted. The mercenaries are not just soldiers and the bandits not just bandits, there is a bit more to them in each case, which can work in the Player Characters’ favour as much as it could hinder them under different circumstances. Some of the NPCs are monstrous, but the major NPCs in particular are well drawn and often elicit the sympathies of the Referee, let alone the players and their characters. In other cases, what would ordinarily be seen as in monsters in other Dungeons & Dragons-style adventures are here treated as completely sympathetic. There are some genuinely entertaining NPCs in Earth Incubation Crisis and the Referee will have a lot of fun portraying them.
Ultimately, clues found across the area will point to something else going on in the region and following those clues will reveal a secret area where the real threat at the heart of the scenario can be found. Directly inspired by classic Japanese Science Fiction films, this is a truly gargantuan threat. Discovery of this sets up the second of two moral dilemmas in the scenario. This is a much bigger one, one which fits the scale of the threat. The scenario includes a solution, again on a similarly grand scale. If there is a downside to the solution and the final denouement in the scenario, it is that it can only really involve the one Player Character, who gets a very big role in the spotlight. 
Physically, Earth Incubation Crisis is a handsome hardback, done in orange shades throughout with slightly cartoonish illustrations. However, the artwork is unnecessarily prurient in places in way that adds nothing to the situation described in the book. Also, giving a robot the name ‘P3N1S’ is immature, if not puerile.
Like many scenarios for Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay, Earth Incubation Crisis is best run a as one-shot, because with the likelihood of the world being ended, a campaign is really difficult to carry on. Despite that, Earth Incubation Crisis is a lot of fun. It takes the standard format for a Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay scenario of there being a ‘hidden, apocalyptic monster waiting to be unleashed, whilst surrounded by monsters’, and themes it around two genres which normally do not meet, but clash suitably here, whilst also presenting the players and their characters with a moral dilemma (and a way out of it). Earth Incubation Crisis then sets this in a superbly detailed, hexcrawl populated with interesting encounters and a cast of grotesques, and then lets the Player Characters loose upon the Norwegian countryside to discover the horrors, both natural and unnatural for themselves.

Osprey Games is primarily known for its wargames rules, such as Frostgrave: Fantasy Wargames in the Frozen City, but it also publishes board and card games and roleplaying games too. The latter includes Gran Meccanismo: Clockpunk Roleplaying in da Vinci’s Florence, Jackals – Bronze Age Fantasy Roleplaying, and Heirs to Heresy: The fall of the Knights Templar, whilst the former includes titles such as Undaunted Normandy, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, and Village Rails: A Game of Locomotives and Local Motives. The latter is rail-themed board game designed for two to four players aged up fourteen and over, and designed to be played in less than an hour. It has a delightfully cosy feel to it, being set in the English countryside during the Age of Steam during the thirties, forties, and fifties. Play is simple with each player only having to make a few choices and the game ends once everyone has taken twelve turns after which each player’s tableau or rail network is scored and the player with the highest score wins.
Village Rails: A Game of Locomotives and Local Motives consists of eighty Railway Cards, thirty-eight Terminus Cards, four Reference Cards and four Scoring Dials, Border Pieces, and almost fifty coins. The Border Pieces and coins are done in thick cardboard, as are the Scoring Dials, which do require some assembly. The Border Pieces are marked with the start of seven railway lines and are used to create an ‘L-shape’ into which the Railway Cards are placed as a three-by-five twelve-card grid. The Railway Cards are double-sided. On one side is Track, which depicts two single tracks running across terrain such as fields, pasture, forest, lakes, and villages. The Track side are also marked various symbols, including Barns, Farms, Halts, and Sidings. When they appear on a completed line, these will all score a player points, except for Sidings which are scored at the end of the game. On the other side of the Railway Cards are Trips, which score a player if their conditions are met. For example, ‘2 per type of feature on the line.’, ‘No Bulls on the line: 4 points’, and ‘Only straight tracks on the line: 6 points’. Terminus Cards earn a player money when played, the amount depending on the indicated features on the cards, for example, the number of tractors on the line, number of different terrain features on the line, and so on. The greater the number of features on the line, the more money a Terminus Card will earn.
At the start of the game, each player receives an ‘L-shape’ border and £5 in coins. Once the Railway Cards are shuffled, cards are drawn to form two markets—the Track Market and the Trip Market. These are two lines of cards from which a player can select a single Track card and a single Trip card respectively on his turn. The first card in each market is always free to take, but the cards further along the line and closer to the deck must be purchased, with cards closer to the deck being more expensive. This money is placed on the cards further away from the deck and if a player subsequently selects one of the cards with money on it, he receives both card and money. Each player receives three Terminus Cards which he keeps secret until played. On a turn, a player can conduct two actions. The first is to build tracks, which the player must do, the second is to plan a trip, which is optional, but can be done before or after building tracks. Planning a trip always costs money and the Trip card selected is placed next to the player’s L-shape border at the start of a line. Each line can have two Trip cards like this. When selected a Track card is placed into a player’s tableau, either next to a border or another Track card. If as a result of a Track card being placed, a railway line runs from the player’s ‘L-shape’ border to the edge of his tableau, it is considered completed and can be scored. Points are scored for the features on the line, for the bonus provided by the adjacent Trip card, and money if a Terminus card has been played. The Reference Cards help scoring easy for each player.
In Village Rails, each player is working to complete his own tableau and the game does not involve any direct interaction with each other. The interaction comes indirectly through the game’s two markets—the Track Market and the Trip Market. Here each player will be watching them for the best cards to become available, hopefully free in the case of the Track Market and cheap in the case of the Trip Market, and before another player takes them. Another reason to take a card is that it has money on it. Money will enable a player to purchase a better Track or Trip card than before another player can, or simply just buy a Trip card, and the right Trip card will score more points. What this means is that the players have to spend their money with care and take the opportunity of their Terminus cards to earn more. A player will always have three Terminus cards, so fortunately, there is always the opportunity for him to earn money when completing a line.
Placement of the Track cards also takes care and players tend to place their first Track cards at the outer corners of their L-shape and work inwards to fill in all twelve spaces in their tableaus. This is because those placed at the corners can often be completed first, scoring a player some points and potentially earning him money. It also initially gives a wider choice as to what cards a player can draw and play, but as more and more Track cards are placed, the choices begin to tighten as a player tries to balance trying to find the right Track card to add to a tableau and purchase the Trip card which will score him the most points. Throughout, a player will always be considering how he can maximise the number of points he can score and how much money he can earn. Play continues until every player has placed his twelfth Track card and the final scoring is done for the Sidings.
Physically, Village Railways is delightfully and sturdily presented. The first thing that you notice upon lifting up the rules booklet from the box is one single piece of design to the components—and not to the components of the game, but the packaging of the components that the players pull out to assemble the Scoring Dials and the Border Tiles. There is a notch in the corner where a finger can be inserted and the thick sheets of card pulled out. This only has to be done the once, but it just makes things that little bit easier. Otherwise, all of the game’s components are sturdy, appropriately cosy in theme, and easy to use, although the symbols on the Track Cards are not always easy to spot, especially on the Track Cards with a darker theme, such as the forests. The rule book itself is clearly presented and includes a good example of a single turn, and the artwork has a lovely period feel, especially the locomotive illustrations on the Trip cards.
If there is an issue with Village Railways, it is that it pitches itself as a railway game set in the English countryside where the locals are happy to allow tracks to be built by the players or railway companies, but make specific demands of them. Which sounds like the players are laying tracks, but where they go will often be dictated by intervening or vociferous busybodies or persons of note, but it is not that. It is instead, more of a puzzle game in which each player attempts to fill a grid with tracks and maximise their points. Essentially, Village Rails combines drafting from a marketplace, tile placement, and route planning and building with the almost puzzle-like element of placing Track cards and connecting railway lines in a way which every player hopes will optimise his railway network and his score. Not as light a game as it first seems, Village Rails: A Game of Locomotives and Local Motivess is simple to learn and quick to play, but it is more challenging and thoughtful than the average filler game.

The reputation of B2 Keep on the Borderlands and its influence on fantasy roleplaying is such that publishers keep returning to it. TSR, Inc. of course published the original as well as including it in the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set, which is where many gamers encountered it. The publisher would also revisit it with Return to the Keep on the Borderlands for its twenty-fifth anniversary, and the module would serve as the basis for Keep on the Borderlands, part of Wizards of the Coast’s ‘Encounters Program’ for Dungeons & Dragons, Fourth Edition. Yet since then, Wizards of the Coast has all but ignored B2 Keep on the Borderlands and the module that preceded it, B1 In Search of the Unknown, barring the publisher’s 2012 Dungeon Module B2 The Caves of Chaos: An Adventure for Character Levels 1-3. This was the playtest scenario for D&D Next, first seen in Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle, which was essentially previewing what would go on to become Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition.

Instead, it would be other publishers who would revisit both scenarios in the twenty-first century. So Kenzer & Company first published B1 Quest for the Unknown, a version of B1 In Search of the Unknown for use with HackMaster, Fourth Edition, and would follow it up with not one, but two versions of B2 Keep on the Borderlands. First with B2 Little Keep on the Borderlands: An Introductory Module for Characters Level 1–4 in 2002, and then again in 2009 with Frandor’s Keep: An immersive setting for adventure. Another publisher to revisit B2 Keep on the Borderlands was Chris Gonnerman, with JN1 The Chaotic Caves, a scenario written for the Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game. In addition, Faster Monkey Games published its own homage to B1 In Search for the Unknown with The Hidden Serpent, whilst Pacesetter Games & Simulations has published a number of extra encounters and sequels for both scenarios, most notably B1 Legacy of the Unknown and B2.5 Blizzard on the Borderland.

Yet Wizards of the Coast did not ignore its extensive back catalogue. It would release numerous titles in PDF, and even allow Print on Demand reprints, including both B1 In Search of the Unknown and B2 Keep on the Borderlands. Further, in 2017, it published Tales from the Yawning Portal, a collection of scenarios that had originally been published for previous editions of Dungeons & Dragons, including Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition, Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition, and even D&D Next. These scenarios though, did not include either B1 In Search of the Unknown or B2 Keep on the Borderlands. Which upon first glance seemed a strange omission, but then came the announcement from Goodman Games about Original Adventures Reincarnated #1: Into the Borderlands. 
Arguably, Original Adventures Reincarnated #1: Into the Borderlands would prove to be the ultimate version of the classic module, but authors have continued to revisit the original even since such as with the fanzine version from Swordfish Islands LLC, which so far consists of Beyond the Borderlands Issue #1 and Beyond the Borderlands Issue #2. Yet there remain oft forgotten visits to the famous ‘Keep on the Borderlands’ and the equally infamous, ‘Caves of Chaos’, which are worth examining and shining light upon. So it is with ‘Warriors of the Gray Lady’. Written by Jeff Grubb, ‘Warriors of the Gray Lady’ was published in 1999 as an insert in InQuest Gamer #50 (June, 1999), the monthly magazine for game reviews and news from Wizard Entertainment, which ran between 1995 and 2007 and had a particular focus on collectable card games. Nominally known as ‘IQ3’ and just sixteen pages in length, it was written for use with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Second Edition and designed as a prequel to the soon to be released Return to the Keep of the Borderlands. It is for Player Characters of between First and Third Level and takes place before they arrive at the eponymous keep on the borderlands.

‘Warriors of the Gray Lady’ opens with the Player Characters on the road to the frontier and the border castle there, aiming to use it as a base of operations as they explore and potentially clean out the Caves of Chaos that their parents told them about. Their path is blocked by a caravan where a cleric is vociferously complaining that the caravan’s guards failed to stop the theft of an important magical item, the Helm of Perception, he was taking to the keep. The cleric hires the Player Characters to go after the thief. When they accept, the thief’s tracks lead into the forest to the north and then to a clearing when his body, not far from a cave mouth in a low hill. Inside the cave is a classic kingdom of the mushroom men or Myconids, but it is a kingdom in disarray. Some time prior to the Player Characters’ arrival, another party of adventurers entered the cave in search of treasure. They were all killed in the attempt, but as both the last of the adventurers and the king of the Myconids lay dying, the king released the spores to create a new king, but the spores mingled with the dying human warrior and kept her alive—sort of. Now she is the ‘Gray Queen’, twisted by the fungus as much as her thoughts twist the shared thoughts of the Myconid collective mind and drive them all mad!
Although the final confrontation will involve combat, the Player Characters do not have to resort to combat in the earlier encounters in the caves. If they refrain, they will be able to learn what has happened in the caves since the invasion of the previous adventuring party. This is done in a pleasingly entertaining and alien fashion, which involves the Myconids still free of the Gray Queen’s disturbing influence blasting messages spores into the faces of the Player Characters! Although quite lengthy, the description of this is nicely done and the experience should be a weird one for player and characters alike—and actually one the Player Characters are likely to be wary off of if the Myconids have used spores on them earlier in the scenario. ‘Warriors of the Gray Lady’ should last no more than a single session.
Since the events of ‘Warriors of the Gray Lady’ do not take place at the Keep on the Borderlands, what does the scenario add to Return to the Keep on the Borderlands? Well, it sets things up for the Player Characters’ arrival. If they are able to recover the Helm of Perception, they will have made possible allies and contacts at the keep, ones who can supply ready healing. Very likely something they are going to need after a visit or two to the Caves of Chaos! One of the NPCs—the complaining cleric encountered at the caravan—is fully written and could become a recurring figure at the keep for the Player Characters, even though he is likely to be very annoying. The scenario includes some advice for the Dungeon Master which discusses most possible eventualities and outcomes of the scenario, including the Player Characters stealing the Helm of Perception or the annoying cleric getting killed.
Physically, ‘Warriors of the Gray Lady’ is done in full rich colour—something that not even featured in the official releases for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Second Edition at the time. Notably, it is illustrated with a range of fully painted pieces, all of them drawn from the covers of previous books for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Second Edition, including pieces from the Dragonlance line. One issue perhaps with this is that nearly all of the illustrations showcase Dungeons & Dragons in general rather than the scenario itself. This is confirmed by the pieces of descriptive text accompanying the artwork which are generic in nature and verging on the trite. At least for Dungeons & Dragons, that is!
‘Warriors of the Gray Lady’ is a serviceable scenario which could be run as a prequel to Return to the Keep on the Borderlands. However, it is not vital to that scenario, even though it does help set up the Player Characters and their reputation for when they do arrive at the keep. Similarly, the scenario would be a reasonable side quest or side trek adventure for most campaigns for low Level Player Characters. Overall, ‘Warriors of the Gray Lady’ is an interesting, if minor side note to the history of B2 Keep on the Borderlands.

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 Night Terrors of Joseph PidulskiPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Matt ‘Doc’ Tracey

Setting: Jazz Age Toledo
Product: ScenarioWhat You Get: Twenty page, 22.96 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Some secrets of the past are passed down to haunt you. Plot Hook: The investigators are asked to investigate the protruding dreams of a young artist.Plot Support: Two NPCs, two handouts, one map, one Mythos tome, and one Mythos monster.Production Values: Plain.
Pros# Solid treatment of the ‘haunted by an ancestor’ plot# Short, straightforward investigation# Takes the Investigators to Toledo# Easy to adapt to other modern time periods and settings# Easy to adapt to elsewhere# Wiccaphobia# Oneirophobia# Dendrophobia# Artphobia
Cons# Needs a good edit# No map of Toledo# Plain handouts# Sanity reward a little high?# Mythos tome could have been better developed# Underwritten clues and investigation# Not pulling the Investigators into the dreams a missed opportunity?# Not enough Toledo
Conclusion# Short, straightforward investigation into a classic plot that does not involve the Investigators in the threat until the final confrontation.# Underdeveloped and underwritten in places, but a solid enough plot and investigation.

It is the year 2007 and the Sinaloa Cartel, the largest drug trafficking organization in the world, operates a vast network of narcos, halcones, y sicarias whose sole purpose is to ensure the flow of drugs north across the border into Los Estados Unidos and the flow of dollars into the cartel’s coffers. Mexico is a narcostate in which the influence and corruption of the cartels has reached deep into every level of society, backed up by both bloody violence and corruption. One stop on that path is the Free and Sovereign State of Durango in northwest Mexico and it is here that the Sinaloa Cartel runs into primary enemy—Los Zetas. This rival cartel is renowned for its even greater, more obvious acts of cruelty than the Sinaloa Cartel to the point where both ordinary Mexicans and members of Sinaloa Cartel fear the Los Zetas, which mostly consists of ex-army special forces soldiers. The Sinaloa Cartel has few other enemies. Most of la Policía and los federales—the local police and the Mexican federal police—are in the pockets of one cartel or another, as are local businessmen and both local and national politicians. At the local level, that of a territory or plaza, the biggest dangers come from rival cartels, upstart gangs, and ambitious members of the cartel who more control of the drug trade in the area. Within the plaza, el narco wants everything to run smoothly and everyone to know he is in charge, el halcón wants to both protect the interests of his boss and have a greater involvement in it, el concinero wants to cook the drugs in safety, la esposa wants to protect her family even as it is in volved in the drug trade, la polizeta takes el narco’s money to protect his own life even as he giving information to los federales, la rata wants out of the cartel and has plenty of information to spill if she can last long enough, and la sicaria has been brought back to protect the interests of el narco and the plaza, but whose side is he on? All are desperate, all have made bad decisions and will likely suffer the consequences, and all will do their utmost to survive as their secrets and ambitions collide in Cartel: Mexican Narcofiction Powered by the Apocalypse.
Cartel: Mexican Narcofiction Powered by the Apocalypse is a decidedly mature and darkly themed roleplaying game published by Magpie Games following a successful Kickstarter campaign. Inspired by the television series Breaking Bad and The Wire and the films, El Mariachi and Siccario, this roleplaying game draws heavily on the stories about the manufacture and trafficking of narcotics—cocaine, crystal meth, and heroin—in Mexico and north across the border into the USA. The players take on the roles of archetypes or Playbooks, each of which is involved with the Sinaloa Cartel and has one or more connections with each other. A combination of these connections, the characters’ agendas, their obligations to the cartel, and the cartel’s agenda serves to drive the drama of the roleplaying game, establishing tensions and hooks that will drive the story in a playthrough of Cartel. Which with all of that criminality, money, power, and obligation on the line, means that Cartel has potential for some great roleplaying.
Cartel is ‘Powered by the Apocalypse’. What this means is that it uses the mechanics first seen in Apocalypse World, the 2010 roleplaying game which won the 2010 Indie RPG Award and 2011 Golden Geek RPG of the year and is from the designer of Dogs in the Vineyard. The core of these mechanics is a roll of two six-sided dice, with results of ten or more counting as a complete success or ‘strong hit’, results of between seven and nine as a partial success, a ‘weak hit’ or a success with consequences, and  and results of six or less counting as a failure with consequences—or ‘no, but’. The dice are rolled against actions or ‘Moves’. For example, ‘Get the Truth’. When ten or more is rolled for this Move, the player using the Move gains a ‘strong hit’ and picks two out of three option. The options are that the target of the Move cannot mislead with the truth, confuse with falsehoods, or stonewall with silence. If seven, eight, or nine are rolled, the player has achieved a ‘weak hit’ and can only select one of the three options. The character making this Move also loses a point of Stress, reflecting a lowering of tension as the target of the Move is forced to be honest. When the Move is rolled, the player adds the appropriate stat, which typically ranges in value between -2 and +2. The four stats in Cartel are Face (social influence), Grit (tenacity and good fortune), Hustle (fast talk and persuasion), and Savagery (violence and reading others).
For example, El Coninero, Yolanda, has problem—the shipments she is sending out are arriving short, so she wants to ask El Halcón, Pepe, if he knows anything about this. Having cornered Pepe, Yolanda says to him, “Hey, Pepe, my last shipment came up short. This isn’t the first time. What do know about it?” The Master of Ceremonies says that this is a ‘Get the Truth’ Move. Yolanda’s player has to roll the dice and add her Hustle, which is +1. Her player rolls six, but the +1 makes it a seven. This is not a complete success, but it is a hit and Yolanda does get to reduce her Stress (well, she is going to get some of the truth after all). The options are that Pepe cannot mislead Yolanda with the truth, confuse her with falsehoods, or stonewall her with silence. If Yolanda’s player had rolled ten or more, her player could have selected two of these options, but can only choose one because of the roll. Yolanda’s player opts for Pepe not confusing her with falsehoods, which means that Pepe cannot lie. He responds with, “Look Yolanda, it was me, okay? I’ve been selling it on the streets. I had too though… there’s some dumbass cop taking a bigger cut of my pandillo’s money. He’s not one of ours, so…”
Cartel has ten basic Moves, which every Player Character has access to. These include ‘Justify Your Behaviour’, ‘Propose a Deal’, ‘Push Your Luck’, ‘Turn to Violence’, and more. Two other types of Move are conditional. Stress Moves such as ‘Verbally Abuse or Shame Someone’, ‘Lose Yourself in a Substance’, or ‘Confess Your Sins to a Priest’ are triggered when a character is in danger of suffering too much Stress. Heat Moves are triggered when a Player Character wants to avoid the notice of, or entanglement with, la Policía or los federales. These are ‘Avoid Suspicion’, ‘Leave a Messy Crime Scene’, and ‘Flee from Los Federales’. The basic Moves are detailed in a two-page spread each, while the others are given just the one page each. Half of each description is given over to detailed and engaging examples of play.
Further, players have access to Moves known only to their characters. These Moves, what a character knows or can do, are defined by their archetype or Playbook. Cartel itself has seven Playbooks. These are ‘El Concinero’, who cooks or manufactures the drugs; ‘La Esposa’, the spouse entangled in the lies of their partner; ‘El Halcón’, the ambitious young gang member; ‘El Narco’, the local boss in charge of an area or la plaza; ‘La Polizeta’, the cop corrupted by the cartel as much as he is trying to bring it down; ‘La Rata’ is the compromised mole in the cartel who wants out, but the only way is through the cartel; and ‘La Sicaria’, the cartel veteran enforcer or killer who has managed to survive thus far. The Moves in each Playbook are unique and thematically appropriate to the archetype. For example, the ‘Amante’ Move for ‘La Rata’ is made when the Player Character shares an intimate night with a lover, the player rolls and adds the character’s Face stat. On a strong hit, the Player Character can ask two questions of her lover, but only one on a weak hit. A hit also clear the Player Character’s Stress. On a miss, the Player Character reveals something about themself and so places themselves in danger.
Besides Moves, each Playbook has Extras and Llaves—or Keys. Extras represent a Playbook’s connections or resources, essentially their support. So, El Concinero has a lab where the drugs are cooked, La Esposa a family and obligations, El Halcón his loyal Pandilla or gang, El Narco a Plaza through which drugs are moved and sold, La Polizeta connections to an anti-cartel taskforce, La Rata his wretchedness at his situation, and La Sicaria his weapons and gear, which represent how they conduct his tasks. Each Key or Llave represents a means of a character gaining Experience Points. Thus, El Concinero has Secrets, Debt, and Arrogance. The first grants him Experience Points when he lies to someone close to him about his illicit activities; the second when he takes on a new loan or has to ‘strain your finances’ to meet family needs; and the third, when he uses his superior knowledge or experience to verbally shame or abuse someone they care about. Earned Experience Points are spent on Advances which range from improved Stats and support options to new Moves and resolving support issues. All seven Playbooks are highly detailed, including a guide on playing each Playbook, notes on each of the Playbook’s Moves, as well as a list of inspirations for the Playbook.
Character creation in Cartel is in part a collaborative process. Each player selects a Playbook and together work through the options it gives, deciding on a name, look, and gear as well as adjusting a Stat and deciding on Moves, Llaves, and connections or resources. Each player also establishes ‘Los Enlaces’ or links with other characters, ideally other the player characters, but NPCs are acceptable too. Guiding the players through this process is the Master of Ceremonies—as the Game Master is known in ‘Powered by the Apocalypse’ Games—who will be asking questions and helping to build the relationships and backgrounds to each of the Player Characters. 
In play, this is the primary role of the Master of Ceremonies, to ask questions, push and prompt the players, and build their characters’ involvement in the setting. For this she has the Moves of her own, such as ‘Inflict stress’, ‘Escalate a situation to violence’, and ‘Lean on a secret’, but the most important one is more of a directive—to be always asking the Player Characters, “What do you do?”. The Master of Ceremonies’ Moves are not as extensively described as the others in the game, but they are not as complex. The advice for the Master of Ceremonies is extensive though, beginning with how to set up and frame scenes, and to keep them meaningful to the fiction. It also covers how to use and pace her own Moves, examining each Playbook, managing the player versus player interaction and conflict at the heart of Cartel, using NPCs, and how to set up, run, and end the first session. It is supported by a lengthy, six-page example of play.
Damage in Cartel is managed as either Stress or Harm. The first represents mental damage, whilst the second is physical damage. Both are greatly deleterious to a character’s wellbeing. Interestingly, whilst the outcome of the ‘Turn to Violence’ Move will inflict Harm on the intended victim, it also inflicts Stress on the person doing it. Should a character suffer from too much Stress or Harm, then a player can clear by undertaking certain related Moves. For example, ‘Verbally Abuse or Shame’ or ‘Lose Yourself in a Substance’ as Stress Moves and ‘When You Get Fucking Shot’ as a Harm Move. Most damage-related Moves inflict Stress though and when a character suffers enough Stress, a Stress Move is obligatory. Stress Moves invariably have negative consequences as much as they relieve a character of Stress and further add to the drama of the game.
In terms of background, Cartel offers details of the city of Durango in Mexico, located between Mexico City and the US border, near the Pacific coast. This is part of the Sinaloa Cartel’s territory, although there are rival cartels working the area. It is here that the Player Characters are supplying, working, operating, and protecting a plaza, essentially a personal territory they are responsible for. Both the cartels and the law are covered as well as a broad history of both Mexico and the Drug War, the major players in the Drug War, and the culture which has developed as a result of the Drug War. The city of Durango is described, though in more of an overview than any great detail, and here the Master of Ceremonies may want to conduct some research or gather some photographs of the city to help her players visualise where their characters are living and working.
Physically, Cartel: Mexican Narcofiction Powered by the Apocalypse is a very well-presented book. It is clean and tidy with a large typeface and excellent artwork throughout, often in the calavera or ‘Catrina’ style. One standout feature of the writing is the number of examples of play, typically two for many of the Moves. These clearly explain how each Move works and highlights not just how the game is played, but also how the Moves work the tensions in the game and thus its incredible storytelling potential.
However, as rich and as powerful as the storytelling possibilities are with Cartel, the roleplaying game has a number of problems. The most obvious of which is the subject matter, the players are creating and roleplaying characters involved in the drug trade and if not committing the acts of violence and savagery perpetrated by some members of the cartels, then very much connected to the cartels that do. This is different than merely reading about it in a work of fiction or watching it on television. The experience is not vicarious, but personal, often viscerally so. As much as Cartel does not glorify its subject matter or its protagonists, it demands a degree of involvement and complicity that some players will not want to engage in and that is understandable. Cartel is not a roleplaying game for them, but even those who are prepared to play a roleplaying game of this nature need to be aware of what they are playing and the maturity which that demands.
Another issue is that Cartel is specifically written with Mexico and the Latino experience in mind, and that may well be alien to some of the game’s audience. Especially outside of North America. Even the writing here is an issue given that although primarily written in English, there are a lot of Spanish phrases and Mexican colloquialisms used throughout (which in some cases turn out to be terms of abuse), and as much as this adds to the flavour and feel of the book, it can come across as slightly mystifying. A more expansive glossary might have helped, even if that meant publishing bad language in the book. Being able to portray the world of the cartels on the streets of Durango with any degree of verisimilitude, let alone accuracy—and to be fair Cartel is aiming to create the feel of the former rather than the latter—demands a lot of the player and his skill as a roleplayer. 
Cartel: Mexican Narcofiction Powered by the Apocalypse is an incredible piece of design which brings to life the greed, desperation, and drives of men and women living and working in a narcostate that pushes them to make poor choices and suffer the consequences. It makes great demands of both players and the Master of Ceremonies, asking them to commit to telling tough stories, have their characters carry out terrible deeds, and pay for them. If not in their deaths, then emotionally. By any standards, Cartel: Mexican Narcofiction Powered by the Apocalypse is about roleplaying in a horrible situation with no clear paths to absolution or redemption, but that situation and its Player Characters—through their Playbooks—encourage, even demand, great roleplaying and powerful storytelling.

It has been over thirty-five years since the publisher of Britain’s longest running Science Fiction comic, 2000 AD, dabbled in the field of roleplaying. Both times, it was with solo adventure books, first with the Diceman comic, and then with You are Maggie Thatcher: a dole-playing game, but that all changed in 2021 with the first release in the Adventure Presents series. Published by Rebellion, best known as the publisher of 2000 AD, this is essentially a complete roleplaying game and scenario in a magazine format. The first issue was Tartarus Gate – A Roleplaying Game of Sci-Fi Horror, from the designers of Spire: The City Must Fall, a full Blue Collar Science Fiction Horror roleplaying game. Each entry in the Adventure Presents series a simple roleplaying game and a full, three-session scenario designed for up to six players and the Game Master for which everyone will need three six-sided dice and some pencils. Following a successful Kickstarter campaign, the second entry in the Adventure Presents line is Tiny in the Tower – Cosy Fantasy Roleplaying.
Adventure Presents Tiny in the Tower – Cosy Fantasy Roleplaying is a fantasy roleplaying game and scenario all in one, in which a group of courageous adventurers is employed by Azra Zathra to investigate the disappearance of her wife, Zura. Zura Zathra is a wizard and has not returned from her tower for the last two days. Her wife is thus worried, but cannot investigate herself because the tower is full of volatile and dangerous magic. Fortunately, being braver and more capable, a stalwart band of adventurers can! Unfortunately, when the adventurers enter the tower, things go terribly wrong for them. They are shrunk down to a diminutive size, which gives the adventure a whole new dimension! The adventurers must negotiate their way through an environment in which almost everything to them is a threat where previously they were the threat or anything other than a threat! Can they find they find a way to complete their towering trip, avoid the hazards of a world made both big and small, avoid or least find a way to confound the curious cat, and lastly, discover the means to restore themselves to full size, let alone discover what happened to  Zura Zathra?
The format of the Adventure Presents series and thus Tiny in the Tower is important. The centre twenty-two pages are intended to be pulled out. These include six Character Sheets, the Allies booklet which details all of the adventure’s cooperative critters, all of its antagonists, two Map handouts, and both the How to Play booklet and the Special Rules booklet. Zura Zathra’s wizard’s tower is mapped out across seven floors in lovely detail with full illustrations of each.
A character or Protagonist in Tiny in the Tower is simply defined. He has four Abilities—Toughness, Agility, Smarts, and Wits—each ranging in value between one and four. He has a value for his Health and his Resolve—his willpower, the former as high as twenty, the latter as high as twelve. He also has three Drives, for example, Calm, Swift, and Heroic. Each character has a background and a given role, such as The Daredevil or The Knight, and an excellent illustration. It is left up to the player to name the character.

Mechanically, Tiny in the Tower is simple and straightforward, its key mechanic, known as the ‘Adventure system’, best described as ‘roll three and keep two’—mostly. For his Protagonist to undertake an action, a player rolls three six-sided dice and removes one die. Which die depends upon the rating of the Ability being tested. If the Ability has a value of one, the highest die value is removed; if two, the die with the middle value is removed; if three, the lowest die value is removed; and if four, no die is removed, and all are counted. Either way, the total value of the remaining dice needs to equal or exceed the value of a Target Number to succeed, the Target Numbers ranging from six or simple to twelve or extreme. The Game Master can adjust the difficulty of a task by temporarily increasing or lowering the Player Character’s Ability value. A supporting Protagonist can help another and so temporarily increase the supported Protagonist’s Ability, whilst the acting Protagonist can spend Resolve to also increase his Ability value. Resolve can be regained by a Protagonist pursuing one or more of his Drives and at the beginning of each chapter, as can Health.

Combat, or conflict, in Tiny in the Tower consists of opposed rolls. The lower roll is subtracted from the higher roll and the remaining value deducted from the losing combatant’s Toughness. Conflict resolution is designed—much like the rules in general—to be fast and in the case of combat, dangerous rather than necessarily deadly. The special rules for the adventure primarily cover movement up and down the tower since this will be a major challenge for the Protagonists because the tower being a wizard’s tower means that it is missing one important feature found in other towers—stairs! How exactly the missing wizard gets up and down the tower, and more importantly, how her cat gets up and down the tower given that the Protagonists are on the same scale as the cat, are an important aspect of the scenario. Consequently, the Protagonists will have to find their own way up and down the tower and the Special Rules provides rules for climbing and falling, and suggests routes the Protagonists can take between each floor.

Tiny in the Tower is essentially a chase and investigation story. The Protagonists are chasing the Wizard to determine where she has gone and consequently find themselves in the same predicament. Their journey is on a grand scale, almost like scaling a mountain, complete with rooms which represent the different stages and base camps, although far more detailed and interesting. Along the way, the Protagonists will have the opportunity to confront enemies and dangers, overcome obstacles, make allies, and ultimately thwart the ambitions of a would-be dictator who wants to take over in the absence of her wizard mistress.

Physically, Tiny in the Tower is very nicely presented. It is well written, but what really stands out is the artwork—which is as good as you would expect from a publisher which puts out 2000 AD each week. If the illustrations are good, then the maps are even better. Overall, the production values, for what is just a ‘magazine roleplaying game’ are stunning. The format does mean that the roleplaying game and scenario requires a little extra preparation, in particular physically as the Game Master pulls it apart, and she will also need to find a means of storing it all together afterwards.
In addition, Tiny in the Tower – Cosy Fantasy Roleplaying comes with an extra adventure, a prologue called ‘The Burglar of Brackwood’. This takes place in and around the village of Brackwood, which over the previous three nights has been beset by a series of burglaries and thefts. Careful questioning of the villagers and examination of each break-in will garner some clues, but ultimately the trail will lead into the nearby forest where the Protagonists will find and confront the culprit. The situation is stranger than the players and their Protagonists might imagine, gives them a big problem to solve (which could go very wrong), and in being linked to Tiny in the Tower – Cosy Fantasy Roleplaying, serves as a straightforward, but enjoyable introduction to the ‘Adventure system’ and prologue to the full scenario. Plus, Tiny in the Tower – Cosy Fantasy Roleplaying comes with its own set of ‘Mice Dice’, bright yellow, cheese-themed six-sided dice. These are very cute and whilst mice do appear in the scenario in this issue of Adventure Presents, Rebellion Games should definitely do a mouse-based scenario in a future issue specifically for these dice. Similarly, there is scope for further adventures in the fantasy world that Tiny in the Tower – Cosy Fantasy Roleplaying presents, a classic fantasy roleplaying world.
Scenarios involving Player Characters being shrunk down to the size of insects or mice and expected to explore what is now a gigantic world are nothing new. Mechanically, what changes in such scenarios is not the Player Characters, the creatures they will face, and the environment they must overcome, but the scale at which it takes place. Jim Bambra’s ‘Round the Bend’, an Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition scenario published in Imagine No. 15 magazine (June, 1984) is a classic example, in which half-orc thieves are punished by the wizard they attempted to steal from by shrunk to two inches in height and then made to recover a magical item that the wizard accidentally dropped down a drain. Then again, there are roleplaying games such as Mouseguard and Mausritter which do a similar thing, but with the Player Characters cast as mice in a world which is much larger than them. Tiny in the Tower does a similar thing to ‘Round the Bend’, but here the Protagonists are definitely more heroic and the story approaches the ‘shrunken adventures’ theme from a different angle.
Adventure Presents Tiny in the Tower – Cosy Fantasy Roleplaying lives up to its description. It is cosy, but not without its dangers or its obstacles. It combines a simple, straightforward plot, set-up, and quick mechanics that are easy for the Game Master to run and easy for the players to roleplay and play. Adventure Presents Tiny in the Tower – Cosy Fantasy Roleplaying is an engaging and friendly all-in-one one-shot package which takes a classic fantasy situation and makes heroes of the Protagonists in letting them explore that situation and solve problems at a different scale.

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

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

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What is it?
The Adventure of the Sword Tournament is the quick-start for Pendragon, Sixth Edition, designer Greg Stafford’s ultimate vision of his classic roleplaying game of Arthurian legend and adventure.

It includes a basic explanation of the setting, rules for actions and combat, the adventure, ‘The Adventure of the Sword Tournament’, and five ready-to-play, Player Characters.

It is a twenty-eight-page, full colour, booklet.

The quick-start is laid out to look like an illuminated manuscript and done in full colour. The artwork is fully painted and the map of Londinium clear.

How long will it take to play?
The Adventure of the Sword Tournament can be played through in a single session. It should take no longer than three hours to play through.

Who do you play?
The five Player Characters are all landless knights. They include a wise-cracking Roman Cymric Christian knight, a chivalrous Cymric Christian knight, a female Saxon Wodinic knight wielding an axe, a romantic Cymric Pagan knight, and a female Pagan knight from Brittany favouring bow and the mystical.

How is a Player Character defined?
A Knight is defined by Homeland, Culture, and Father’s Name, then Father’s Class, Son Number, Liege Lord, Current Class, Current Home, Age, and Year Born. He has five Attributes—Size, Dexterity, Strength, Constitution, and Appearance—which are rated between three and twenty-one. Skills are roughly divided into combat skills and ordinary skills. They range between one and twenty, but can go higher. Every Knight has Glory, a measure of his renown and his actions, the higher it is, the greater the chance of his being recognised.

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

A Knight’s Passions, like Loyalty (Lord), Love (Family), and Hate (Saxons) are strong emotional and psychological tendencies. When a player rolls against one of his Knight’s Passions, it can grant inspiration and a bonus for a task, but should it fail, it can leave the Knight disheartened and suffering a penalty to a task.

How do the mechanics work?
To have his player undertake an action, a player rolls a twenty-sided die. The aim is roll equal to or lower than the value of the attribute, skill, Trait, or Passion. A roll under is a success, a roll equal to the value is a critical, a roll over a fail, and a roll of twenty can be a critical failure. For opposed rolls, used for contests and combat, a roll must not only be equal to or under the value for the knight to succeed, but it must also be higher than the role made by the opponent.

A Trait is rolled against to determine whether a Knight will act in accordance with that Trait or act in accordance with its opposing Trait. A Passion is rolled against to gain a bonus on a skill roll, but failure can trigger a Passion Crisis, which can result in the Passion being partly lost, melancholia, or even madness.

How does combat work?
Combat is handled through opposed rolls. If a player rolls under his Knight’s skill and higher than his opponent, he succeeds in striking him with his weapon. If a player rolls under his Knight’s skill and lower than his opponent, it is a partial success and he does not succeed in striking him with his weapon. However, he gains the benefit of his shield, which together with the armour worn will reduce the damage taken. The rules in the quick-start cover charges, knockdown, broken or dropped weapons, the possibility of suffering major wounds and so on.

How does magic work?
Magic is not the purview of mortal men. Faeries, supernatural creatures, druids, and meddling Wizards such as Merlin know magic and to know this is enough for any man.

What do you play?
The eponymous adventure in The Adventure of the Sword Tournament is set in the Year 510, in Londinium, the greatest city in all of Britain. It has been decreed that a grand New Year’s Tournament, the first of its kind will be held to determine who will be the High King of Britain following the fifteen year interregnum without one. The Knights are in the city to participate, perform well in the tournament, and be a witness to the proclamation of the new High King.

There is not actual starting point for the scenario for the Game Master to read out, but it begins with the Knights exploring a city they have never been to before and eventually coming upon a sword, stuck into an anvil, atop a rock. This is an important moment in the history of Britain and the Knights have the opportunity to be witnesses. The scenario is linear, but presents early opportunities for the players to test out the rules, have their Knight engage in a mass combat, and go in search of a little Glory.

Is there anything missing?
There are some element of the pre-generated Knights that the players cannot follow up or explore fully in the ‘The Adventure of the Sword Tournament’. This is primarily because there will be opportunities for this in the adventures in the Pendragon, Sixth Edition Starter Set, of which ‘The Adventure of the Sword Tournament’ is the first part. There is not really very much for the Knights to do, the only opportunity for them to act outside of the events boiling down to a simple die roll.

Is it easy to prepare?
The content of The Adventure of the Sword Tournament is easy to prepare. The rules are clearly presented and the adventure is straightforward and uncomplicated.
Is it worth it?
Yes. The Adventure of the Sword Tournament presents a clear explanation of the rules in a few pages and provides points in the scenario where the players can put them to work and roleplay too. The scenario is written so as to engage in the first part of a longer scenario and is primarily designed to showcase the mechanics of Pendragon, Sixth Edition and get the Knights involved in a major event in Arthurian legend, and it does both handily enough. However, it does not provide players with enough agency and activities when there is scope for both in the scenario. Although that is not an issue as the first part of a longer scenario, in a quick-start it is a missed opportunity for the players to roleplay and their Knights to do more than be present at the legend.
The Adventure of the Sword Tournament is an enjoyably solid introduction to the rules and setting of Pendragon, Sixth Edition, but just comes up a little short in terms of length and content for a quick-start.
Where can you get it?
The Adventure of the Sword Tournament is available to download here.

The world is dying. It no more than a few scattered lands on the Endless Sea, the beleaguered inhabitants and other survivors scrabbling for one last scrum of comfort, even at the cost others, as the prophecies of the Two-Headed Basilisks are coming true. Seven Miseries as predicted in from The Calendar of Nechrubel – The Nameless Scriptures and the seventh Misery will herald the actual end of the world… In north-western Kergüs, Blood-Countess Anthelia cries out for colour and warmth from her white stone castle in the black glass city of Alliáns, yet in her ice-wracked lands, everything the fragile countess touches, looks upon, and breathes upon is drained of colour. Yet she remains on her throne, clinging to her throne, her youth, her power, and the traditions that ensure that all is right and proper. That includes the treatment of those at her court whom she would count as a rival. No ruler may sentence a member of their court to death. The death of a rival is the rise of the martyr. There are ways and means of treating and punishing a rival that leave him ruined, if not destroyed, rather than death. For the rivals of Lady Anthelia of Kergüs, the Blood Countess, there is Her Lady’s Schackel. This is a prison hulk, once a great ship of Kergüs’ navy, now adrift on the Endless Sea, scored by acid rain, haunted by ghosts and ghasts, and seemingly unwanted by the Endless Sea, but unable to come to shore. Worse, ‘the 7’, those who were once rivals or enemies of the queen and confined to Her Lady’s Schackel have mutinied and escaped their confines, if not the rotting hulk of their prison, their profanities constantly warping the cabins and hallways of the vessel so that no two decks are alike and every deck is different each time someone enters it… Everyone knows that there is an abomination aboard that will soon come ashore and when it does a Misery will fall on the world. Until then it waits aboard the prison barge floating on the Endless sea.
This is the set-up for 7 Aboard the Schackel, semi-randomly generated prison-crawl adventure published by Bite-Sized Gaming following a successful Kickstarter campaign. It is compatible with Mörk Borg, the Swedish pre-apocalypse Old School Renaissance retroclone designed by Ockult Örtmästare Games and Stockholm Kartell and published by Free League Publishing. It includes tables to create Player Character motivations, plots, room and location contents, random events and sounds, curses and trinkets, the state in which the surviving members of the former crew can be found, full details of the seven escaped inmates, and more.
Set-up for 7 Aboard the Schackel begins with the tables ‘2d4troubling Ties’ and ‘2d4 Conceived Plots’. For example, the ‘Lady’s Man/Woman’ entry in the former places the Player Character in fealty to Lady Anthelia who has tasked him with slaying the abomination aboard the barge, whilst the entry in the latter table places Förtära as the primary target abomination aboard, an obese woman who has entered into a bargain with a great beast from the depths of the Endless Sea and is ready to birth a cold foetus on the land which will inherit the remaining land… These two tables provide different motivations and primary enemy for any play-through of the prison-crawl, but in play, the Game Master rolls dice to populate and detail each deck of the Her Lady’s Schackel and does every time the Player Characters move from one deck to another. This includes returning to a deck that the Player Characters have already visited or explored. What the Game Master is rolling for is appearance and placement of a member of ‘the 7’, any ‘Servile Cretins’, ‘Covetous Souls’, ‘Crippled Captives’, and ‘Butchered Flesh’. Named creatures will not reappear if they are killed and the number of dice rolled each time a deck is re-entered if the Player Characters manage to clear a deck. There are five decks on the Her Lady’s Schackel.
The bulk of 7 Aboard the Schackel is dedicated to the denizens aboard the Her Lady’s Schackel. These start with ‘the 7’, monstrously fallen men and women sentenced to imprisonment aboard the prison barge. They include the ‘Falskhet, the False King’, able to command—temporarily—those he strikes with his sceptre, but also cause a target’s bones to snap and pop with his ‘Cruel Wrath’ and suffer any damage he would instead with ‘Egotistical Leech’. In his former life, he was a scapegoat for a failed uprising against Lady Anthelia and now unleashes his anger and resentment against her on anyone around him. All of ‘the 7’ are described in similar detail with clear stats and a background and an agenda. In addition, the denizens include ‘tenth-spirits’, the spectres of those given as a tithe to the Endless Sea and cursed to stay in its cold embrace rather than pass on. They include Thera, a young girl still clutching a seaweed doll and in a search of a parent and even Törgar, the dethroned and dishonoured captain of the Her Lady’s Schackel. The Servile Cretins are lingering, broken creatures which remain aboard the vessel, like the ‘Blick’, plucked eyes animated by profane magic which cast about their withering gaze.

One issue with 7 Aboard the Schackel is the focus upon its denizens, monsters, and creatures. It leaves relatively little room for the tools to help the Game Master detail the Her Lady’s Schackel. There are tables for rolling random room names and mostly useless trinkets for the Player Characters to find, but little else. This leaves the Game Master room of course to create her own descriptions, but more prompts and suggestions would have been useful. Another is that randomising each deck every time the Player Characters enter a deck is time consuming and potentially means more work for the Game Master. If that is the case, an option would be to create a deck’s layout and description just the once per playthrough. Lastly, one issue with 7 Aboard the Schackel is the use of the word ‘cretin’ to describe some of its denizens. It is derogatory and potentially offensive.
Physically, 7 Aboard the Schackel is presented in the artpunk style of Mörk Borg. It does mean that it places it is not easy to read and that may impede play. The artwork is decent, a dark, twisted swathe of the grim and the brutal.
7 Aboard the Schackel brings to life an almost living ship, its random elements giving it a flexibility that a standard would not necessarily possess. In fact, running it as a campaign scenario would mean not making the fullest use of this feature. It would work as a one-shot, with the Player Characters having different motivations for going aboard the Her Lady’s Schackel and possibly with a trimming of a deck or two, as a convention scenario also. In whatever way it is used, 7 Aboard the Schackel is a bloody and brutal grim dark prison crawl caught between the Endless Deep and the end of the world.

There are men and woman who study angels. There are men and women who study demons. What those angelogists and demonologists do not tell you is that they are not just the two sides of the same coin—they are the same coin. That is according to the Order of Mercyful Sepulcher. This sisterhood holds that angels and demons are members of the same race who come from a place called the Empyrean and that concepts such as heaven, hell, angels and demons are a flawed attempt to classify both Empyrean and the entities found there. Rather than fear or revere such angels and demons, the Order of Mercyful Sepulcher summons them, commands them, and uses their power. The nuns of the order, wrapped in their empowering Bad Habits and wreathed with a Halo, armed with Hallowed Hand Grenades and a M.A.C.E. (Masterful Armament for Crushing Enemies), and travelling in their T.O.M.B.S. (Tactical Ordinance Mobile Battle Shrine) travel the Ultracosm on the hunt for heresy, ready to burn it out. Or they too might be regarded as a heretical sect, harbouring blasphemous tomes and adhering to dissentive dictums, and practicing the activities of the apostate! It is all up to the Games Machinator as detailed in Solemn Scriptures of the Battle Nuns of the Mercyful Sepulcher.

Solemn Scriptures of the Battle Nuns of the Mercyful Sepulcher is a setting neutral supplement, a means to add battle nuns to her campaign, whether heretical or in search of heresy. Published by Mottokrosh Machinations, best known for Hypertellurians: Fantastic Thrills Through the Ultracosm, the Old School Renaissance adjacent roleplaying game of retro science fantasy, Solemn Scriptures of the Battle Nuns of the Mercyful Sepulcher could easily be used in that setting to play up the occult aspects of the Games Machinator’s campaign, whether that involves one Player Character or a group of Player Characters from the order. Alternatively, the content of the supplement can be added to a fantasy roleplaying game to add occult and ‘grimdark’ elements, whether that is a Dungeons & Dragons, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, or a Zweihänder Grim & Perilous campaign. To that end, Solemn Scriptures of the Battle Nuns of the Mercyful Sepulcher includes stats and details for Hypertellurians: Fantastic Thrills Through the Ultracosm and a guide to adapt it to Dungeons & Dragons, which means that its content can be used with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition.

Solemn Scriptures of the Battle Nuns of the Mercyful Sepulcher begins and ends as a toolkit for the Games Machinator and her players to create their own version of the order of battle nuns. The beginning consists of a list of tenets, goals, and enemies of the order, so that one iteration of the order is likely to be different from another. The end, the first of the supplement’s appendices, consists of descriptions of four members of an example order, the Gallas Coven. They include the Mother Superior, its veteran leader; a former ancient bronze war machine turned sister; a pilot from the future; and a loyal brute of a caretaker, the only male member of the quartet. These are written up with a concept, strengths and weaknesses, background, and secret to which the Games Machinator and her players need only develop stats and abilities. The other two of the three appendices in Solemn Scriptures of the Battle Nuns of the Mercyful Sepulcher consist of a decent bibliography and a good list of inspirational media, such as Buck Rogers in the 25th Century and Zardoz.

The bulk of Solemn Scriptures of the Battle Nuns of the Mercyful Sepulcher is dedicated to the tomes and rituals they contain, and the benefits that the sisterhood gain in performing them. For example, Merarrhythmisis Beatae, sometimes known as the ‘black scrolls’, contains the true names of angels and thus the means to tempt or coerce them into the mortal realm where the rituals can be performed in full. The description of the book includes an extract and several associated rumours, the latter useful should the Games Machinator want to work the book into her campaign. The major spell—being the equivalent of a Seventh, Eighth, or Ninth Level spell in Dungeons & Dragons—requires the participants, willing or unwilling, to be anointed with the true names of angels and can take several hours to cast. Once done, it grants an angelic power, such as ‘Perfect Pitch Singing’, ‘Feathered Wings’, or ‘Compel Good Deed’, as well as an angelic mutation, like ‘Cherubic’ (literally small, chubby, and naked), ‘Caustic’ saliva and sweat, or ‘Goat-Legged’. It can result in a complication such as permanent, uncontrolled, lasting, or traumatic. All of the ten tomes, including The Flaggellant’s Agrapha, Be thou alike Cadat, Ablations of the heavenly host, and Concerning the needle and other instruments are nicely detailed and full of flavour.

‘Reliquary—Tools of the Order’ details items mundane and marvelous both worn and used by the order. Bad Habits are the uniform of the order and grant abilities such as Corseted, which works as light armour or even Symbiotic, which is an entity in itself that provides the wearer strength and healing as long as the wearer follows the motivation of the symbiote. Weapons include ‘Hallowed Hand Grenade’, which has a variety of effect from drenching the target in a vile stench to imposing redemption on them and making them feel the weight of his sins and the aforementioned M.A.C.E., both blunt and flanged, and which requires a ceremony that marks the wielder out to any Empyrean being as being blessed with knowledge of them. The order’s most well-known device is the T.O.M.B.S., part war machine, part shrine, with no two exactly alike. It is accompanied by a full, two-page illustration.

Besides the trio of appendices, Solemn Scriptures of the Battle Nuns of the Mercyful Sepulcher is rounded with a pair of detailed adventure seeds. One involves the haunting of the Player Characters’ T.O.M.B.S., the other a nun whose aims verge on the heretical. Each comes with a list of possible scenes, treasures, and in the case of the first, opponents. Alongside these is a handful of shorter adventure seeds which will require more development.

Physically, Solemn Scriptures of the Battle Nuns of the Mercyful Sepulcher is decently presented and laid out. The artwork is cartoonish in style, matching the slightly tongue-in-cheek tone of the book.

Add battle nuns and their devout militancy to any campaign and it sends the campaign off into the realms of the camp as far as the border with the fetishist and the kinky. That much is at least acknowledged in the list of inspirational media for Solemn Scriptures of the Battle Nuns of the Mercyful Sepulcher and that means that its content is not going to be for everyone or every campaign. Yet there are elements in the supplement, the ten tomes in particular, which would be more than suitable for a grimdark campaign without necessarily dragging in the possibly prurient content elsewhere. This is not to say that the content is prurient, but by the time its reaches the table and players being players… A campaign or scenario involving Solemn Scriptures of the Battle Nuns of the Mercyful Sepulcher could become unnecessarily adult in tone for some players. Overall, there is a lot of roleplaying potential in playing battle nuns and using Solemn Scriptures of the Battle Nuns of the Mercyful Sepulcher, but it needs a group of players happy with its content and a Games Machinator ready for the jokes that are going to fly!

 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: All Part of the GamePublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Matt ‘Doc’ Tracey

Setting: Jazz Age New England
Product: ScenarioWhat You Get: twenty-four page, 2.58 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Murder mystery party most foul! Plot Hook: A university reunion is a chance to renew old friendships.Plot Support: Staging advice, four pre-generated Investigators, five NPCs, two handouts, one map, and three Mythos monsters.Production Values: Plain.
Pros# Murder mystery meets the Mythos in a locked room set-up# Short, focused scenario# It could be the Yellow Sign...# Easy to adapt to other modern time periods and settings# Easy to adapt to elsewhere# Masklophobia
Cons# Needs a good edit# What does the swirling sigil look like?# Not necessarily a Mythos scenario# Underwritten clues and investigation
Conclusion# Murder mystery meets the Mythos—and whilst no spoilers—the culprit is the cliché!# Mythos twist of the knife into the country house murder cliché undone by underdeveloped investigation.

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: Al-Azif Unearthed: The UnravelingPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: John Crowdis

Setting: Jazz Age Boston
Product: ScenarioWhat You Get: Seventy-eight page, 33.73 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: A merging of Mythos events unleashes hotel hell!Plot Hook: A newspaper classified advert announces the existence of an unknown scroll and an auction.
Plot Support: Staging advice, six pre-generated Investigators, fourteen NPCs, nineteen handouts, one map, one ghost, one Mythos artifact, one Mythos spell, and three Mythos monsters.Production Values: High.
Pros# First part of ‘Al-Azif Unearthed’ campaign exploring origins of the Necronomicon# Classic auction goes wrong Call of Cthulhu scenario# Inspired by Paul Carrick artwork# High production values and solid support for the Keeper# Excellent handouts# Solid investigation and set-up# Makes use of the Chase mechanics# Highly detailed NPCs and interaction# Includes map of Boston (in a Call of Cthulhu scenario!?)# Easy to adapt to other modern time periods and settings# Papyrophobia# Dikophobia
Cons# Needs a slight edit# Another hotel hell scenario (in New England)# Makes use of the Chase mechanics# Classic auction goes wrong Call of Cthulhu scenario# Solid investigation and interaction undone by third act chase
Conclusion# Well presented scenario whose initial emphasis on investigation and interaction is undone in the last act with a big chase scene from an unstoppable monster# Decent introduction to the ‘Al-Azif Unearthed’ campaign that works better as a campaign starter rather than a one-shot

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

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It has been a decade since a party of heroic adventurers ascended into the Drachensgrab Hills in the humanoid-infested Pomarj peninsula and infiltrated the secret Slave Lord city of Suderham, only to be captured and cast into the dungeons below, bereft of any possession, including arms, armour, and all magical items. Undaunted, these heroes managed to escape the dungeons, reclaim their possessions, and confront the Slave Lords even as the volcano above Suderham erupted and the god known as the Earth Dragon took her revenge. Their brave efforts put an end to the scourge of the Slavelords along the Wild Coast, ensuring that no man, woman, or child feared capture and being thrown into life slavery and drudgery that would likely only end with their death. However, it appears that is not to be, for ten years they were last sighted, the yellow sails of the Slavelords have been unfurled again. In the ports along the Wild Coast the yellow sailed ships of the Slave Lords have unloaded their dreadful cargo and on the waters of the Woolly Bay they have struck at ship after ship and raided town after town. Yet, their ambition and reach has grown. They have been seen as far north as the waters of Nyr Dyv, the ‘lake of unknown depths’, most surely having sailed the length of the Solitaries in order to get so far. As the half-orc warlord, Turrosh Mak, has unified the bickering humanoid tribes of the Pomarj into a rapacious nation and conquered over half of the Wild Coast, there is a threat of old which seems to sail before him. The Slavelords of old have returned!
This is the set-up for Slavers, one of the last supplements to be published by Wizards of the Coast for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Second Edition and certainly the last campaign to be published for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Second Edition. Published in 2000, this is a sequel to classic campaign for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition, which began life as the 1980 Open Tournament run by TSR, Inc. and would be published as the four part ‘Aerie’ or ‘A’ Series—A1: Slavepits of the Undercity, A2: Secret of the Slavers Stockade, A3: Assault on the Aerie of the Slave Lords, and A4: In the Dungeons of the Slave Lords. This would be collected in 1986 in A1-4: Scourge of the Slavelords, before being later reprinted in 2013 as A0-A4: Against the Slave Lords,which included the addition of a prequel module, A0: Danger at Darkshelf Quarry. If A1-4: Scourge of the Slavelords and A0-A4: Against the Slave Lords can be considered to be ‘Old School’, Slavers is anything but. The original quartet’s beginning as a tournament series of dungeons mark the ‘A’ Series as being tactical affairs, the activities of the Player Characters focused on taking direct action against the Slavelords, and that is even with the expansion of the original tournament adventures into full modules for sale. Slavers opens up the world and plot of the ‘A’ Series, turning it into an investigative and strategic campaign across central Greyhawk as the Player Characters attempt to find clues to the Slavelord’s activities, allies, bases, and ultimately, their location. Slavers has a plot, but it is not one that the players and their characters will necessarily adhere to as they go about their investigations. The Dungeon Master has the busy task of planting clues, directing the activities of the Slavelords and their allies as they become aware of the Player Characters’ activities, and responding to the players’ actions, for Slavers is a very player driven campaign.
Slavers is designed to be played by a group of five to eight Player Characters of Fourth and Fifth Levels and is set in the World of Greyhawk. It is a standalone campaign, but is likely to involve some sea combat, so a supplement such as Of Ships and the Sea, the ninth and last of the ‘Dungeon Master Guide Rules Supplement’ series will be useful. Similarly, the Tome of Magic will be useful for its spells. In addition, C2 The Ghost Tower of Inverness and The Star Cairns are suggested as useful optional extras since the Player Characters are likely to be travelling nearby. Lastly, ‘See the Pomarj—and Die!’ from Dragon Magazine#167 will provide extra background, but an appendix in the back of Slavers greatly expands upon the region.
Slavers will take the Player Characters from the town foyers out into the waters of the Nyr Dyv and down the length of Selintan River out into Woolly Bay. Having first found hidden base on the shores of the Nyr Dyv, the Player Characters will find more hidden bases and Slavelord waystations along the coast of Woolly Bay, and there find more clues which point to the Slavelord operations as originating to the south. Following the clues will lead them deep into the peninsula of the Pomarj, much like the A1-4: Scourge of the Slavelords and A0-A4: Against the Slave Lords, in search of the secret capital of the Slavelords. Once located, the Player Characters can discover and confront the true power behind the Slavelords—the temple of the Earth Dragon. This is given as a ‘Suggested Adventure Outline’ in the opening chapter of Slavers which presents ‘The Dungeon Master’s Notes’. As is clearly stated, “Preparation is required.” since the clues are not pre-written, only the primary locations and NPCs, along with further suggestions and ideas as to what might happen at those locations.
Slavers is divided into four chapters. The first is ‘The Land of Dyvers’, which covers that city and the Nyr Dyv, providing a history of the city and surrounding region, as well as detailed descriptions of both. It is accompanied by a table of random encounters and a breakdown of the slave raids across the area, and who is involved and in charge of them. These are supported by short rules for naval combat if the Dungeon Master does not have access to Of Ships and the Sea. The major Slavelord base, Slavers Cove, is fully written up as a location, as are the nearby Caverns of Blackthorn, home to a hidden lair of various humanoid species. ‘Dyvers Intrigues’ suggests many ways in which the Player Characters can become involved in the activities of the Slavelords. Perhaps investigating an assassination attempt on a priestess leading anti-shipping activity against the slavers, trying to find out why so many of the local Half-Orcs are being offered jobs on the Wild Coast, uncover the true nature of a new religion that has appeared in Dyvers, or simply have them employed as guards on a barge that is attacked by Slavelord ships. The advice here is to tie these plot ideas to local NPCs, whether as potential employers, enemies, or both.
The opening ‘The Land of Dyvers’ chapter sets the format for the other three. ‘North Woolly Bay’ presents the coastal area at the southern end of the Selintan River. In particular, it details the city of Hardby as well as the north end of Woolly Bay and the various locations and regions along its coast. Here the cities and villages not yet conquered by the Half-Orc tyrant, Emperor Turrosh Mak, are at least prepared for war, with anti-piracy activities conducted throughout the region and Greyhawk forces having established Bright Tower Keep, a fortification at the southern mouth of the Selintan River to monitor local shipping. Two slaver bases are detailed here, including the ruined city of Cantona where any operations against it will be hampered by an anti-magic zone! There are also descriptions of how the slaves are transported along the coast, pirate activity in the bay, and as before, various additional adventure ideas for the Dungeon Master to develop.
‘The Orcish Wild Coast’ presents the city of Elredd in some detail as it is a major base of operations for the slavers. Again, its history and current state are described in some detail, a city of mercenaries, pirates, and humanoids, most of them working for Emperor Turrosh Mak and thus the Slavelords. However, there are a few neutral individuals in the city too and just outside it, a party of Good aligned adventurers conducting their own operations against the occupants of the city. The latter are potential allies for the Player Characters as they attempt their own infiltration of the city, whether in secret or in disguise. Discovering quite what is going on in the city and putting an end to it will be challenging any group of Player Characters.
Finally, ‘The Pomarj’ takes the campaign and the Player Characters into the heartland of Emperor Turrosh Mak’s domain. This covers both the rough nature of the local terrain and the many and various humanoid tribes who live there, including Flinds, Gnolls, Goblins, Hobgoblins, Kobolds, and Orcs, as well as various smaller tribes. Two locations are described in detail. One is Highport, the port city where A1: Slavepits of the Undercity is set and begins the A1-4: Scourge of the Slavelords campaign and continues the A0-A4: Against the Slave Lords campaign. Highport is really only a staging post for the campaign because the advice in the chapter is really on how the Player Characters might get across the region to Mount Drachenkopf and the town of Kalen Lekos, the heart of Turrosh Mak’s Orcish Empire and the Earth Dragon cult, and thus the Slavelords. Both locations are described in detail again, with the Temple of the Earth Dragon fully written up ready for the rousing climax to the campaign.
Rounding out Slavers is an appendix which provides a brief history of the Pomarj, a description of the Earth Dragon cult, a list of the new magical items in the campaign, and notes on the hero-deities Kelanen, hero-god of swords, sword skills, and balance, and Murlynd, Gnomish hero-god of ‘magical technology’. The latter two entries are more extras than anything directly useful to the campaign, whilst the rest expands and supports the material already given elsewhere in the campaign. The history of the Pomarj describes the rise of the original Slavelords, their fall at the hands of the original heroes, and the rise of the despotic Half-Orc emperor, Turrosh Mak, followed by the return of the Slavelords and the events which trigger the beginning of the campaign itself.
Physically, Slavers is cleanly and tidily presented. The pen and ink artwork is excellent throughout, small pieces which pleasingly illustrate the various NPCs, monsters, and locations of the campaign. There isa nice use of the ‘greyhawk’ as a motif throughout the book, first watchful, then in flight, and lastly striking in the supplement’s closing chapter. The cartography is more serviceable than interesting. If Slavers is a comprehensive overview of the central region of Flanaess and the machinations of the Slavelords, its omissions are in the main, minor. It does lack an index, greatly hampering its utility and requiring greater study upon the part of the Dungeon Master. This is the main issue with the campaign. The others are that it would have been if there had been a map of the whole region given, rather than one of Nyr Dyv and Woolly Bay and one of the Pomarj, and also the lack of rumour tables. Only one location in the campaign has a rumour table!
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By the year 2000, there were few if any avenues for roleplaying game reviews were limited. The only review would appear in Steve Jackson Games’ online e-zine, Pyramid. In the May 12, 2000, issue, the reviewer wrote, “Slavers is fully self-contained; familiarity with the old modules is not necessary to fully enjoy or utilize Slavers. However, the new adventure is full of references to the originals, including locations, events and NPCs, making it a lot more enjoyable for fans of the classic modules.” However, the review also noted that, “Strangely enough, Slavers in not part of TSR's Silver Anniversary Return to . . . line, even though the Slavelords series, originally published in 1980-81, certainly satisfies their criteria of being part of the shared history of many long-time D&D players. It is, however, better than the aforementioned "nostalgia" products that I have seen.”
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As the reviewer in Pyramid pointed out, Slavers was not part of the series of nostalgia releases published by Wizards of the Coast, which had included Return to Keep on the Borderlands and Silver Anniversary Collector's Edition Boxed Set. This does seem strange, since so many of the campaigns and modules, all of them of a similar era and all of them regarded as classics were given the Silver Anniversary treatment. Further, barring A0-A4: Against the Slave Lords, the series has not been revisited in the modern iteration of Dungeons & Dragons by Wizards of the Coast. That may well be due to its subject matter of slavery as much as the campaign being intrinsically tied to the World of Greyhawk.
Slavers is a tough, challenging campaign for Dungeon Master and player alike. Although there are plenty of opportunities for combat, the campaign will roleplaying and intrigue in equal measure, and both are necessary as a great many of the enemies present in Slavers are a lot tougher than the Player Characters. Slavers mixes the certainty of the evil nature of the Slavelords’ activities with the uncertainty of who the Player Characters can trust and whether they have truly dealt with the true leaders of the organisation. The Slavelords have spies throughout the region taking advantage of local and political resentments and their vile leader, Markessa, has captured a number of fellow Elves and forcibly remade them in her own image. Nor is the campaign necessarily over once the Player Characters have killed the leadership of the Slavelords. Their actions will cause chaos throughout the region and there are likely to be members of the organisation still operating well beyond the decapitation of its leadership. Slavers includes a selection of adventures exploring the ramifications of the Player Characters’ success.
Along the way, there are numerous nods and call-backs in Slavers to A1-4: Scourge of the Slavelords, mostly minor, that the players of that previous campaign will enjoy spotting. Although a sequel, it is not necessary to have played through A1-4: Scourge of the Slavelords to enjoy Slavers and the many differences between the two in terms of plot and structure might even mean that some players might actually enjoy Slavers! One definite absence is that of a dungeon in the traditional sense, Slavers including adventure locations rather than dungeons. However, Slavers can of course be run by the Dungeon Master as is and as intended by the authors, as a sequel to A1-4: Scourge of the Slavelords, set some ten years later in the year CY 591.However, there is some flexibility to the campaign in how it could be used. Although not used in the campaign, the Player Characters could easily revisit the sites—or at least some of them—in A1-4: Scourge of the Slavelords to search for possible clues, enabling the Dungeon Master to repopulate them and so use that older content.
One way in which Slavers cannot be used as written is as a direct sequel to A1-4: Scourge of the Slavelords is with the same Player Characters. This is primarily due to the difference in Levels, A1-4: Scourge of the Slavelords being written for Player Characters of Seventh to Eleventh Levels and Slavers for Fourth and Fifth Levels. One option suggested in Return to Keep on the Borderlands is the Player Characters be the children of those who played the original B2 Keep on the Borderlands. This is not an option for Slavers as written as the time gap between it and A1-4: Scourge of the Slavelords is ten years compared to that of twenty between B2 Keep on the Borderlands and Return to Keep on the Borderlands.
Slavers and A1-4: Scourge of the Slavelords and A0-A4:Against the Slave Lords are worlds apart. If not in theme and basic plot, then very much in terms of plot design, setting, and Dungeon Master input. Slavers is not pre-plotted, but does suggest an outline, one that the Dungeon Master is free to ignore or use as is her wont. The setting, from Dyvers and Nyr Dyv in the north to Pomarj in the south, is greatly expanded upon, describing numerous towns and locations as well as the Pomarj in no little detail. Where A1-4: Scourge of the Slavelords and A0-A4: Against the Slave Lords called for Dungeon Master input in terms of readying and understanding how each is intended to be played out, Slavers calls for the Dungeon Master to study its content and develop clues, plots, encounters, and more. That more being to comprehend the content enough to react to both the actions and courses of actions decided upon by her players and their characters. In effect, Slavers is not a campaign in the classic sense of being heavily pre-plotted, but far more of an overview. Slavers is a campaign for the experienced Dungeon Master, one willing to put the time and effort in to make it her own, and together with her players, memorable. In contrast to its forebears, Slavers feels surprisingly modern and flexible for a module for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Second Edition, but even as that roleplaying game’s last hurrah it showed how far both roleplaying design and the storytelling possibilities of an older system had come.

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

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

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What is it?Fifth Season: Roleplaying in the Stillness Quickstart is a quick-start for Fifth Season: Roleplaying in the Stillness, the roleplaying game based on N.K. Jemisin’s multiple Hugo Award-winning Broken Earth trilogy, which consists of The Fifth Season, The Obelisk Gate and The Stone Sky. It is a post-apocalyptic survival horror roleplaying game with strong themes of co-operation, community, and ecology. The quick-start is designed to be played by six players.
It is a forty-six-page, full colour booklet.
It is published by Green Ronin Publishing.
How long will it take to play?The Fifth Season: Roleplaying in the Stillness Quickstart is playable in between three and five hours, so can be played through in a single session.
Who do you play?
Six Player Characters are included. These consist of a group of friends or colleagues who all live in the Comm or community of Nuveen and have been randomly selected to investigate issues and gather facts for the Headwoman. They include a scientist and inventor, a community organizer, an expert in plants, medicine, and comm sanitation, an expert forager and hunter, a secret Orogene, and a furniture-maker who works at a crèche.
Characters in the setting of the Broken Earth are members of a use-caste, which represents their primary role in a comm. These are Breeder, Innovator, Leadership, Resistant, and Strongback. Together they have one goal. This is to prepare for the next Fifth Season, those cataclysmic events when Father Earth himself rages against humankind.
How is a Player Character defined?A Player Character has Abilities, Focuses, and Talents. There are nine Abilities—Accuracy, Communication, Constitution, Dexterity, Fighting, Intelligence, Perception, Strength, and Willpower. Each attribute is rated between -2 and 4, with 1 being the average, and each can have a Focus, an area of expertise such as Accuracy (Bows), Communication (Leadership), Intelligence (Medicine), or Willpower (self-Discipline). A Focus provides a bonus to associated skill rolls and, in some cases, access to a particular area of knowledge. A Talent represents an area of natural aptitude or special training. For example, Carousing grants the capacity to outlast anyone else when having fun and Orogeny enables a Player Character to ‘sess’ or sense geological activity. A Player Character also has one or more Relationships with other Player Characters or NPCs and Fortune Points to expend on adjusting die rolls. He is further defined by a Drive, Resources and Equipment, Health, Defence, Toughness, and Speed, and Goals, and Ties.
How do the mechanics work?The Fifth Season: Roleplaying in the Stillness Quickstart uses the AGE System or ‘Adventure Game Engine’. If a Player Character wants to undertake an action, his player rolls three six-sided dice and totals the result to beat the difficulty of the test, ranging from eleven or Average to twenty-one or Nigh Impossible. An appropriate Ability and Focus is added to this. If any doubles are rolled on the dice and the action succeeds, the value on the Drama die generates Stunt Points. The player can expend these to gain bonuses, do amazing things, and gain an advantage in a situation. Stunts are divided into Action, Exploration, and Social categories. For example, ‘Lightning Attack’ is an Action Stunt which gives an extra attack, ‘Assist’ is an Exploration Stunt which enables a Player Character to help another with a bonus, and ‘Spot Tell’ is a Social Stunt which gives the Player Character an advantage when an NPC is lying to him.
Fortune Points are spent to modify a single die when undertaking an action. It costs double to modify the result on the Drama Die. However, modifying the other dice means that the Player Character has a greater chance of succeeding and of rolling doubles to generate Stunt Points.
How does combat work?
The rules for combat are given under ‘Action Encounters’ and are kept to just half a page in length. They are short and straightforward. A Game Moderator or player who is familiar with the AGE System or even other roleplaying games will have no problem with this, but anyone coming to the Fifth Season: Roleplaying in the Stillness Quickstart from the novels and new to the concepts of roleplaying, may find the lack of example unhelpful.
However, it is important to note that in Fifth Season: Roleplaying in the Stillness and in ‘Stress Fractures’, the scenario in the Fifth Season: Roleplaying in the Stillness Quickstart that neither combat nor violence are the solutions to any one situation. In particular, under ‘DON’T START NO SHIT’, the quick-start stresses that there are deep social consequences if the scenario is resolved in such a manner.
How does Orogeny work?
Orogenes are people who have the ability to sense or ‘sess’, as well as control to extent, heat, cold, and the earth itself. This can give them an advantage when sessing seismic activity and other acts of Father Earth. Unfortunately, Orogenes are widely distrusted. Mechanically, Orogeny is treated as a Talent and has its own Stunts.
What do you play?
The Broken World, the setting for N.K. Jemisin’s trilogy of novels and Fifth Season: Roleplaying in the Stillness is one where each comm and society struggles to overcome each season and prepare for the dangers of the coming one. Caches of stored food, medicine, and other supplies are used up and hopefully replenished over the course of a season. In ‘Stress Fractures’, the scenario in the Fifth Season: Roleplaying in the Stillness Quickstart, the Player Characters are asked to investigate a major problem with this activity—someone has been stealing food! However, the situation in the comm makes a turn for the worse when a death occurs in the Comm’s glass smithy. The Player Characters are hurriedly assigned to investigate what develops into a locked room situation with the body and suspects in the glass smithy and an increasingly outraged crowd outside. To restore any sense of order, Player Characters must determine what happened, identify the killer, and placate the crowd. The latter may involve some physical action, but this is primarily a social encounter, though on a larger scale. Overall, the scenario explores the tensions which arise from the setting and the threat of geological, meteorological, and climatic change.
Is there anything missing?
The Fifth Season: Roleplaying in the Stillness Quickstart could have done with a map of the various locations in the scenario. However, they are fairly generic and the Game Moderator should be able to find suitable floorplans or get by without them.
Is it easy to prepare?
The rules are easy to grasp and the various investigative leads and steps of the scenario are easy to follow. The Game Moderator will need to pay particular attention to these as they are the meat of the action.
Is it worth it?
The Fifth Season: Roleplaying in the Stillness Quickstart is a solid introduction to the Broken World and N.K. Jemisin’s trilogy, as well as the roleplaying game itself. ‘Stress Fractures’, the scenario does a good job of presenting and exploring the tensions which arise from the setting and the threat of geological, meteorological, and climatic change, whilst also emphasising social and investigative methods of play over that of violence.
Where can you get it?
The Fifth Season: Roleplaying in the Stillness Quickstart is available here.

Fifth Season: Roleplaying in the Stillness Quickstart is currently being funded via a Backerkit campaign.

Holiday Module #12: Love Mutants of Castle Heartache is a second St. Valentine’s Day scenario for Goodman Games’ Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game following on from 2022 Valentine’s Day Module: Love in the Age of Gongfarmers. It is again a short, love and romance-themed adventure designed to be played by between four and six Player Characters, this time of Third Level. So, it could be played as a sequel. Similarly, given the love and romance theme of the scenario, there is the issue of consent with the scenario—though to a far lesser degree. Consequently, although thematically appropriate, it is only a very minor part of the scenario, and the Judge is advised to consider her players’ comfort levels when portraying this in game. Another issue is that scenario has the potential to be bawdy in tone and when combined with the albeit minor issue of consent, Holiday Module #12: Love Mutants of Castle Heartache is probably best suited for mature players. Another element of the scenario is that it can be played with Player Characters from any background. So that can be the Judge’s own Dungeon Crawl Classics campaign, Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar, and even Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic!
Holiday Module #12: Love Mutants of Castle Heartache is all about lost love and broken hearts, in the case of the latter, literally. As opposed Valentine’s Day Module: Love in the Age of Gongfarmers, which was all about finding and celebrating love. The set-up to Holiday Module #12: Love Mutants of Castle Heartache is that Olathvee, Mad Un-God of mortal passion—who is detailed in The Book of Fallen Gods—has had his heart broken. His romantic overtures to a would-be patron god, a sorceress on the path to her own divinity, have been resoundingly rebuffed and he has fallen into despair and despondency. Being a god, these feelings and emotions have had repercussions. His wretchedness and woe has spread throughout the cosmos, from world to world, breaking up one relationship after another, until no partner can stand the sight of the other, and so threatening to end civilisation within a generation because of the birds and the bees.
The scenario begins with the Player Characters being invited to Castle Heartache. There his seneschal, Sanguecaldo, asks them to help restore the Mad Un-God’s broken heart. So almost like ‘The Key to Time’ storyline of Season Sixteen of Doctor Who, the Player Characters must search for its constituent parts and bring them all together and so repair not just Olathvee’s heart, but everyone’s heart across the entire cosmos. Holiday Module #12: Love Mutants of Castle Heartache takes place inside the lower levels of the castle, the upper levels being accessible, but not of any particular interest or relevance. These lower levels are a demi-plane, a reflection of the Mad Un-God which has been twisted and altered by his current melancholy—as to an extent, will the Player Characters. The resulting dungeon is short, consisting of just thirteen locations, and if not a physical reflection of Olathvee’s heart, then at least a weirdly thematic one. Rooms and locations are themed around tears, memories, misplaced desire, sorrows drowned, and poetry. The locations are each described in some detail, the majority of them involving interaction and roleplaying along with opportunities for combat and puzzle solving. The latter as well as several of the other locations will require some patience upon the part of the players and their characters, and certainly in the case of the puzzle, a knowledge of classic literature.
In addition, Holiday Module #12: Love Mutants of Castle Heartache includes what are either the worst Valentine’s Day cards or ones that the recipient really needs to have an understanding sense of humour upon being given. There is also an afterword from the author in which he explains how the adventure came about, drawing deeply, if (thankfully) humorously, from his own experiences with love and loneliness. A fair warning though, if the Judge has got that far and it is likely that she has, there is a shocking photograph of the author, one which really only his wife needed to see. Thankfully, he is not clutching a rose in his teeth by the stem. That might have been too much.
Physically, Holiday Module #12: Love Mutants of Castle Heartache is as decently done as you would expect for a title for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game. It is lightly illustrated in a cheesy style and the map is fine. It needs a slight edit in places, but is otherwise easy to read.
Holiday Module #12: Love Mutants of Castle Heartache is a mini-dungeon or adventure that can be played in a single session or two. If the players can overcome their cynicism and engage with its themes drowning in the tears of the lovelorn and the lachrymose, Holiday Module #12: Love Mutants of Castle Heartache gives the players and their characters the opportunity to overcome its forlorn fantasy, set things right and return love to the world!

It seems amazing that Fluxx is over a quarter of a century old. The 1999 Mensa Select Winner is the perfect filler game. It is simple to play, but not easy to win. It is easy to learn and not too difficult to master. The difficulty though comes in the changes that will occur through play, because Fluxx is a card game in which its very nature can change from one player’s turn to the next. The number of cards a player can hold can change. The number of cards a player can play can change. The winning conditions can change. Random things will occur—cards will come back into play, cards will be swapped, and so on. The state of the game is literally in ‘fluxx’ and to win, a player must adapt to the changes and make the best use of the current rules and the cards in his hand on any one turn. Published by Looney Labs, Fluxx has proven to be a perennially popular game as well as one that served as the basis for a large number of differently themed variations. From science editions like Anatomy Fluxx, Astronmy Fluxx, and Chemistry Fluxx to Science Fiction such as Doctor Who Fluxx, Firefly Fluxx, and Star Trek Fluxx. With so many versions of the game available, there should be a version for just about everyone.

The core gameplay is simple. On his turn, a player draws one card and plays one card. His aim is to have two cards called Keepers in play, in front of him, which match the Keepers mentioned on the Goal card currently in play. For example, the ‘Squishy Chocolate’ Goal requires the ‘Sun’ and ‘Chocolate’ Keepers to be in front of a player for him to win, whilst the ‘Brain (No TV)’ Goal needs the player to have the ‘Brain’ Keeper in front of him and nobody to have the ‘TV’ Goal in front of them. Fluxx being as old as it is means that the game has become familiar to many players. An old standby that is easily remembered and brought to play. Fluxx Remixx – Extra Chaos Edition is designed not to be familiar. Its game play remains the same as the original 1997 version, but the Keepers have been reimagined to provide the players with a whole new set of unfamiliar challenges as well as a whole new rule and set of cards. Fluxx Remixx – Extra Chaos Edition is designed to be played by two to six players, aged eight and up, with a game lasting between five and thirty minutes. The game consists of one hundred cards, divided into five types. These are New Rule cards, Action cards, Keeper cards, Goal cards, and the new Surprise cards. All five card types are clearly designed, colour-coded by type, and easy to understand in play. Everything on the double-sided rules sheet is boldly presented and includes not just an ‘Exec Summary’ of what the game is, but also examples of a game in play and how the cards interact. Anyone who has played Fluxx before will be able to open up Fluxx Remixx – Extra Chaos Edition and begin play with very little preparation. Anyone unfamiliar with Fluxx will really only need five minutes to read through and prepare the game for play.

The core card for the game is the ‘Basic Rules’. This tells the players to draw one card and play one card each turn. The yellow New Rule cards either replace a New Rule card in play or add a New Rule card to play. They include ‘Draw 2’, which changes the number of cards each player draws on his turn; ‘Play All’ means that every player has to play all of the cards in his hand on a turn; and ‘Card Transfusion’ enables every player to discard as many cards from his hand as he wants to and draw as many cards as he discarded. The blue coloured Action cards provide single actions a player can play and do on his turn. For example, ‘Draw 3, Play 2 of Them’ means that the player draws three cards, chooses two of them to play, and discards the third; ‘Trade Hands’ allows a player to swap his hand of cards with that of another player; and ‘Taskmaster’, which instructs the player to draw a number of cards equal to the number of player and assign one to each player face down, including himself. The players then reveal and play these cards in turn. The green Keeper cards include Dreams, Love, Peace, Chocolate, Cookies, Music, Moon, and more. The pink Goal cards are the winning conditions for the game. When there is one on the table, all of the players are either working to play Keeper which match the Goal or change the Goal to match the Keepers they have in play in front of them. The Keepers, though, are the biggest change in the new version of Fluxx. They give the players new winning objectives, ones different from the original version of the game, but still using the familiar Keepers. For example, ‘The Wedding’ Goal requires ‘Love’ and ‘The Party’ Keepers to win; ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’ Goal requires ‘Music’ and ‘The Moon’ Keepers to win; and ‘All You Need is Love’ Goal requires ‘Love’ and no other Keepers in front of a player to win.

In addition, Fluxx Remixx – Extra Chaos Edition adds a new card type. This is the Surprise card. Coloured purple, they are perhaps one of the most complex card types introduced to the game. This is because unlike the other four card types in the game, a Surprise card has not one play condition, but three! This is because a Surprise card can be played ‘Out of Turn’, ‘During your Turn’, and ‘At Any Time’. For example, if played ‘Out of Turn’, the ‘Cancelled Plans’ card forces a player to discard the Goal he just played, including if playing the Goal would mean he would win the game. If played ‘During your Turn’, they force the current Goal to be discarded and the other players to discard a Goal or other card in their hand. If played ‘At Any Time’, it cancels the effect of another Surprise as it is played. The ‘At Any Time’ option is common to all four Surprise cards in FFluxx Remixx – Extra Chaos Edition. The Surprise cards increase the interaction between the players in a game already known for its high interaction between the players. Yet the relative complexity of the Surprise cards may mean that they are not suited for play by the younger audience for this game, but this should be adjudicated on a case-by-case basis. That said, if the Surprise cards are removed, Fluxx Remixx – Extra Chaos Edition still plays as Fluxx.

If there is an issue with Fluxx Remixx – Extra Chaos Edition, it is that the cards do refer to a card type not actually present in this version—the Creeper. Originally introduced in Zombie Fluxx in 2007, this card type sits in front of a player and prevents him from winning, very likely increasing the length of game play. Fluxx Remixx – Extra Chaos Edition is a return to the original version of Fluxx, so the Creeper really does not warrant inclusion in its deck of cards. Mention of them here is likely to be confusing. On the other hand, mention of them is a nod to the fact that like many of the Fluxx sets, Fluxx Remixx – Extra Chaos Edition can be integrated with many of the Fluxx variants.

In play, Fluxx Remixx – Extra Chaos Edition is random, chaotic, and frustrating, but nevertheless. It is all but impossible to plan from one turn to the next as the state and nature of the rules fluctuate and change. A player can go from almost winning to having to start again, not necessarily on his turn, but on the turns of the other players. Then again, a player can find himself the winner as the rule changes, cards have to be played, forcing the play of a Goal and Keeper in just the right combination. The new Surprise cards add a new element of interaction and complexity, but more of the former than the latter as they add to the chaos of play. Games can be really quick. A winner could be lucky in the very first round, but a typical game will last no more than twenty minutes. (That said, I have played in games that have lasted twice as long!)
Physically, Fluxx Remixx – Extra Chaos Edition is clearly and tidily presented. The Fluxx format is tried and tested and this variant is no exception. The card stock is not as glossy as in previous variants and it might be an idea to sleeve this one.

The original Fluxx did not have a theme and neither does Fluxx Remixx – Extra Chaos Edition. Or rather, it does and it is a subtle one. The clue is in the title, Fluxx Remix because its theme is music and all of the goals are song titles. Fluxx Remixx – Extra Chaos Edition is as familiar and as fun as Fluxx was in 1997, simple to play, but still chaotic and enjoyably frustrating, with the addition of a new if quiet theme and a new card type for more interaction. Fluxx has always been a great filler game,Fluxx Remixx – Extra Chaos Edition is no exception.

Host and Hostility: Three Regency Scenarios for Call of Cthulhu is an anthology of scenarios for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, and more specifically, Regency Cthulhu: Dark Designs in Jane Austen’s England. Published by Chaosium, Inc., Regency Cthulhu presents a narrow world inspired by the life and times and the novels of Jane Austen, in which men and women of good character go in search of a worthy marital match in a highly conservative and disapproving society. Yet this highly stratified world faces a greater danger than simply the loss of one’s good name and fortune, scandal or sobriety, and the like—the insidiously ill-mannered forces and influences of the Cthulhu Mythos. Seemingly good men and women, indeed their whole families can hide the darkest of secrets, as can places and the very land itself. All of which are a threat to King and country, let alone society! Yet it would be scandalous to be investigating, even prying into such matters, so how can men and women of good name and sensibilities bring themselves to do so without imperilling both, let alone their very reputations? This is the crux of Regency Cthulhu: Dark Designs in Jane Austen’s England and it is again explored in Host and Hostility: Three Regency Scenarios for Call of Cthulhu.

Host and Hostility: Three Regency Scenarios for Call of Cthulhu is published via the Miskatonic Repository, Chaosium, Inc.’s community content programme for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition. Unlike the pair of scenarios in Regency Cthulhu, the trilogy are not designed for group play, but rather one-on-one player, with a single Investigator and the Keeper. They are designed to be run in a single session each, all have a female Investigator as the protagonist, and are in parts heavily influenced by both Austen’s own fiction and the gothic mysteries that were then in vogue. The set-up is simple. Three young ladies, all of marriageable age, have entered into the Season in 1812 in Brighton in order to themselves a good husband. They are Miss. Janitra Chatterjee, Miss. Marina Garrick, and Miss. Georgiana Dillwyn, and each is of different temperament. In turn they are a social meddler and matchmaker, a spirited and frank outdoorswoman, and an intelligent, passionate reader of books, respectively. They are also, in turn, based upon the protagonists of Jane Austen’s Emma, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Northanger Abbey. Full Investigator sheets are provided for each and although different, they all designed to be played with the three scenarios in the anthology. A player could simply choose one of the three to play through all three scenarios, play a different one for each scenario, or choose one and keep the other two as eminently marriageable replacements should the first have unfortunate cause to die under mysteries circumstances or be scandalously confined to the nearby infamous Bedlam hospital! Whatever way the trilogy is used, the Investigator is staying in Brighton as the guest of family friends, Mr. and Mrs. Hampton, and as the Season draws to a close, attends a public ball at the Assembly Rooms where she will receive invitations that involve three eligible men. Which invitation she accepts determines which scenario the Keeper runs, for all three men have secrets to hide and plans to enact—and they all involve the Cthulhu Mythos.

Inspired by the real-life medical case of James Tilly Matthews, ‘Loom and Lucidity’ opens with an invitation from a handsome naval captain with an oddly mysterious past. Scandal threatens the Investigator almost from the start when Lord Cosgrove, about to utter some truths about the man, drops dead at her feet! Nothing seems quite right at Captain King’s London soirée as evening turns odder and odder until the attendees are begin acting in a decidedly strange manner. ‘Loom and Lucidity’ is a short affair which in parts echoes the influences of the Yellow King, but instead combines the sciences, technology, and fears of the period to expose—literally—the Investigator to radical thought. The end does feel mechanical in nature and the outcome of the scenario, certainly in regard to what happens to the NPCs afterwards, is not explored as fully as it could be. It does include some interesting NPCs for Keeper to portray, notably the scenario’s villains, who surprisingly, are not insane, but merely radical! This does not stop them from being villains though, but they would be suitable to return appearance in a future scenario if they managed to escape.

Where ‘Loom and Lucidity’ combined Science Fiction horror with period radicalism, ‘Curate and Curability’ combines classic Lovecraftian horror with classic gothic melodrama. In this scenario, the suitor is the Reverend Henry Mortimer, a widower who recently lost his wife, who invites the Investigator to stay with him and his sister. The vicarage though is dusty and uncared for, perhaps a sign of the reverend’s grief, perhaps something more. There are odd signs about the house that something amiss, which perhaps crystalise when the Investigator sees a ghost in the churchyard! Could the house be haunted by the ghost of the reverend’s late wife? This scenario is linear in nature, although there is room for the Investigator to make enquiries and snoop about, and again, mechanical in terms of handling its denouement. This one is much more physical and combative in nature and the Keeper will need to be conversant with the Chase rules for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition. Overall, the scenario has a nice sense of loneliness and another presence in the house, as well as a certain ghoulishness, but again, does not really fully address what happens if the Investigator escapes the Reverend’s clutches and wants to do something about him.

In the third and last of the anthology’s scenarios, ‘Note and Notoriety’, the Investigator is invited a ball hosted by renowned aristocrat Sir Jasper d’Ulfrey. It promises to be a lavish affair, and will end with the performance of a new dance that the baronet has devised! What promises to be an exciting night, culminating fireworks, turns out to be so for all the wrong reasons. Sir Jasper’s demeanour veers between the oddly distracted and the oddly excitable, only coming alive when talking of the new dance which is due to take place in the ballroom under a ceiling newly painted with stars. Meanwhile his aunt looks on with disdain, likely to relate the strange family history as dismiss the Investigator out of hand, and Sir Jasper’s cousin, Harriet’s infatuation may lead her into folly and ruin. Then at heart of the family estate is a maze which has an otherworldly feel to it… There is a certain heady rush to the events of ‘Note and Notoriety’, the plot lightly tripping forward to a momentous event liked to the d’Ulfrey family history. This has the feel of more classic Call of Cthulhu scenario and it does a better job of dealing with its possible aftermath and in giving the Investigator multiple methods of foiling its plot.

One similarity that the three scenario shares is the procedurally mechanical nature of their final scenes. This would be less of an issue if there was more than the single Investigator involved as it would lessen the chance of complete failure upon the player’s, and thus the Investigator’s part. A way around that would be to have a companion accompany the Investigator, perhaps a chaperone and one of the other two pre-generated Investigators given in the anthology, portrayed by another player. However, there is no advice provided to that end in Host and Hostility, and only ‘Note and Notoriety’ has any advice on running it with more the single Investigator. Otherwise, the player had better be prepared to spend some Luck in completing any one of the three scenarios.

Host and Hostility comes with a lengthy set of appendices. In turn, these provide a further glossary to add to that of Regency Cthulhu, a description of Brighton during the period, reprints of the handouts, and an Investigator sheet each for Miss. Janitra Chatterjee, Miss. Marina Garrick, and Miss. Georgiana Dillwyn. However, these are only the fronts of each sheet and the Keeper and her player may want to develop the content on the back. The scenarios are themselves well written, the various NPCs decently presented, including roleplaying notes.

Physically, Host and Hostility: Three Regency Scenarios for Call of Cthulhu is genially and genteelly presented. Period-style artwork is used throughout and both the handouts and the maps have a suitably period feel. Although the anthology occasionally includes the manipulated portrait, one engaging touch is that where the outré does occur it is always depicted in a style akin to that of the cartoon satirist, James Gilray. It appropriately undermines the sobriety of Host and Hostility as much as the Mythos does society. Also enjoyable is the silhouette of bonneted member of the Great Race of Yith!

On one level, the title of Host and Hostility is a delightful play on words, highlighting the difficulty and unnatural natures of each of the places where the Investigator is invited to stay. On another, it is an exercise in misogamy, since any one of the three scenarios is likely to put the Investigator off the idea of marriage—let alone the player! Overall, Host and Hostility: Three Regency Scenarios for Call of Cthulhu is congenial trilogy of one-on-one scenarios for Regency Cthulhu: Dark Designs in Jane Austen’s England, their engaging plots and menaces all superbly supported and presented in period style.

The Fall that brought about the end of humanity was generations ago. Who knows how long? Most were lost in the balls of nuclear fire that blossomed around the world and then by the biological and chemical agents which ravaged the remainder, followed by disease and starvation. The survivors and their children and their children only lived because they were infected by a fungus, one that mutated into different strains until those infected were different from one strain to the next and they were definitely not human. Some were closer to the zombies which arose from the dead, though they retained a spark of intelligence and even what might be called humanity. Others have mastered the powers of the mind. Whilst the Infection, as the fungus which infects everyone and everyone is known, enables the different Strains to survive the new world, it is far from a safe world. Areas are still poisoned by radiation and other agents from the Fall, the Fungus has also mutated animals and plants, the dead can still rise as zombies or zeds, and towns, settlements, and trade caravans can be attacked by raider clans, cannibalistic scavengers who spread the Bad Brain disease, which turns those it infects and kills into yet more raiders of those clans! Yet there is hope. The survivors of Nor’Merica—and particular, the Nor’East—are rebuilding, recovering old technology and inventing new ones. There are ways to generate electricity, but it is always in short supply. Travel is possible via trade caravans which wend their way between the fortified settlements of the Wastes as well as by sea. Yet there is another strangeness to the Infection. The Grave Mind. Death is not the end. When a Survivor does return from the dead, they often come back having had deeply strange personal experiences… And the more often a Survivor is killed and returns from the Grave Mind, the more of his personal connections with the world are lost.

This is the setting for Dystopia Rising: Evolution, the Post Apocalypse roleplaying game from Onyx Path Publishing. Originally published as Dystopia Rising by Eschaton Media in 2011, the new edition was published in 2019 following a successful Kickstarter campaign. It employs the Storypath system, a simpler and streamlined version of the earlier Storyteller system designed for slightly cinematic, effect driven play, each player able to turn his character’s actions into stunts. The core rulebook includes everything necessary to play—rules for character generation, the Storypath system, the dangers of the wastes, factions and secret societies, faith and belief, psionics, descriptions of the Nor’East, an introductory scenario, and advice for the Storyguide as the Game Master is known.

A Player Character in Dystopia Rising: Evolution has nine Attributes—Intellect, Cunning, Resolve, Might, Dexterity, Stamina, Presence, Manipulation, and Composure; several of the roleplaying game’s sixteen skills plus Skill Tricks and Specialities associated with those skills; and Edges, Paths, and Aspirations. Both Attributes and Skills are rated between one and five. A Speciality provides an enhancement when using it, for example, ‘Knifework’ for the Close Combat skill or ‘Wound Treatment’ for the Medicine skill, whilst Skill Tricks can add more dice to a roll, increase scale of what a character can do, change the Target Number for an action, or provide a free Stunt, for example, ‘Born to Ride’ for Pilot skill or ‘Bomb Awareness’ for the Lore skill. Dystopia Rising: Evolution includes examples of three for each skill, but encourages the Storyguide and players to create their own. Either way, it costs of point of Momentum to activate a Skill Trick. Edges are the equivalent of advantages, and for certain characters can be Faith or Psi Edges. A Player Character has three Paths. His Strain Path represents his history and strain of humanity, as well as his Strain Condition; his Role Path is his occupation or what he is good at; and his Society Path represents his connection to a group or society. The Strain Condition represents a situation or response—whether by the Survivor or to the Survivor—which will penalise his actions. In some cases, it is possible to overcome a Strain Condition, at least temporarily, but with others it is impossible. For example, one of the five pre-generated characters has the Strain Path of Vegasian, which means she is flamboyant and an entertainer, and consequently, the Strain Condition of ‘Born Coward’, meaning she is not always trusted and suffers the complication of Shifty; the Role Path of Scoundrel, good at deceiving others and relieving them of their money; and the Society Path of Black Market. In play, Paths are avenues of progress for Survivors, but also storytelling tools that the Storyguide can pull a player and Survivor into the ongoing story of a scenario or campaign. Aspirations are a character’s goals and are either short or long term.

At the heart of a Survivor is a Strain. Dystopia Rising: Evolution presents eight Strains—Devoted, Elitariat, Evolved, Gorgers, Landsmen, Mutants, Nomads, and Townies. These are further divided into three Lineages to provide a total of twenty-four base archetypes upon which to base a character. For example, the Devolved Strain include the unbreakable Irons, the strong Reclaimers, and the Unstable who are capable of controlling psionicists and the undead. Not all of the Strains get on with each other, but what Dystopia Rising: Evolution makes clear is that they are very much not the equivalent of race. Further, it also makes clear that the post apocalypse of the Fall means that the Survivors have transcended the negative attitudes of humanity from before.

To create a Survivor, a player devises a concept and then selects a Strain Path, Role Path, and Society Path. Each Path provides dots or points to assign to associated skills. Plus, the player has another six to freely assign. Depending upon the rating of the skills, a Survivor can also have a Skill Trick and a Speciality. He has three pools of points to assign to his Survivor’s Attributes to the three Arenas they divided into—Mental, Physical, and Social. Lastly, the Survivor receives all of the associated Edges and gear from the Paths.

Name: Mortlake
Strain: Devoted – Unborn (Condition: Not Like the Others)

SKILLS
Academics 0, Athletics 0, Close Combat 1, Culture 0, Empathy 1, Firearms 0, Integrity 1, Leadership 0, Lore 3 (Grave Mind Expert), Medicine 3 (Medical Genius), Persuasion 1, Pilot 0, Science 1, Subterfuge 0, Survival 2, Technology 0

ATTRIBUTES
Force – Intellect 3 Might 1 Prescence 1
Finesse – Cunning 4 Dexterity 3 Manipulation 3
Resilience – Resolve 2 Stamina 1 Composure 3

PATHS
Strain: Devoted – Unborn 1
Role: Sawbones
Society: Psionicists’ Guild

ASPIRATIONS
Short: To rescue his mentor
Short: To find work as a sawbones
Long: To explore the Grave Mind

EDGES
Acute Sense 1
Meditation 1
Mentor 1
Psionicist 3 (Death Shroud, Whispered Insight, Borrowed Memories)
Skilled Healer 2
Unshakable Devotion

GEAR
Bandages, Healing Herbs, Shiv

Mechanically, Dystopia Rising: Evolution employs the Storypath system. The core mechanic uses dice pools of ten-sided dice, typically formed from the combination of a skill and an attribute, for example Pilot and Dexterity to sail a boat, Survival and Stamina to cross a wilderness, and Persuasion and Manipulation to unobtrusively get someone to do what a character wants. These skill and attribute combinations are designed to be flexible, with a character’s preferred method described as a character’s Favoured Approach. So, a character whose Favoured Approach is Force, would use Close Combat and Might in a melee fight; if Finesse, Close Combat and Dexterity; and if Resilience, then Close Combat and Stamina.

The aim when rolling, is to score Successes, a Success being a result of eight or more. Rolls of ten are added to the total and a player can roll them again. A player only needs to roll one Success for a character to complete task, but will want to roll more. Not only because Successes can be used to buy off Complications—ranging between one and five—but also because they can be used to buy Stunts which will impose Complications for others, create an Enhancement for another action, or one that it makes it difficult to act against a character. Some Stunts cost nothing, so ‘Inflict Damage’ costs nothing, though may cost more if the enemy is wearing soft armour, a ‘Critical Hit’ costs four Stunts, and so on. Instead of adding to the number of dice rolled, equipment used adds Enhancements or further Successes for a player to expend, but the player needs to roll at least one Success for equipment to be effective.

Under the Storypath system, and thus in Dystopia Rising: Evolution, failure is never complete. Rather, if a player does not roll any Successes, then he receives a Consolation. This can be a ‘Twist of Fate’, which reveals an alternative approach or new information; a ‘Chance Meeting’ introduces a new helpful NPC; or an ‘Unlooked-for Advantage’, an Enhancement which can be used in a future challenge. Alternatively, a character gains Momentum which can be expended to gain an Enhancement or to activate a Skill Trick or an Edge.

The rules in Dystopia Rising: Evolution cover narrative and dramatic scale, combat—players roll an appropriate Resilience Attribute to generate Successes to be expended on Defensive Stunts, and procedurals such as information gathering, intrigue, influence, and so on. These are all clearly explained and all easy to use in play. In general, the Storypath system is clearly presented and quick to pick up and have a cinematic quality to them, especially with the availability of Stunts and Consolations in the face of failure. The rules specific to Dystopia Rising: Evolution also cover what you would expect in a post-apocalyptic setting—food and water, the dangers of dehydration, weather and radiation, diseases from Bad Brain Disease to Necrosis, scavenging and crafting, and so on.

In addition, neither death nor disability marks the end of a Survivor in Dystopia Rising: Evolution. In the case of the latter, there is discussion of and rules for continuing to play a disabled Survivor, including with the use of assistive devices. Indeed, one of the pre-generated Survivors is depicted as being in an armoured wheelchair and equipped with armoured leg braces. In the case of the former, there is a chance that the Survivor will return anew, the fungus that infects him, breaking down his corpse, and rebuilding it to reappear at a settlement’s Morgue, a site enhanced by psionic crystals, a few days later, memories intact, wounds repaired, but emotional attachments stripped away. If this occurs too often the Survivor may come back as a Zed, a true zombie. It is also possible to actually walk among the Zeds undetected with the Necrokinesis psionic influence, and even reach into the Grave Mind ask questions of it. Other psionic influences are more traditional, for example, Pyrokinetics and Telekinetics.

In terms of setting, Dystopia Rising: Evolution adds factions, a bestiary of strange creatures and things locations, and more across the Nor’East. The factions include genre classics like the bounty hunters of the Lone Star Rangers and the postmen of the Post Walkers of the Postal Service, but also those particular to the setting, such as the Road Crew which scouts out locations for the ‘Guts N Bolts’ racing tournaments, the Psionicists’ Guild—the acceptable face of psionics, and the Priests of the Sound, whose members have the blueprints of radio equipment tattooed on their skin and are zealously dedicated to building radio networks. There are secret societies too, like the Black Market, the Dead Sight Society dedicated to the eradication of psionicists, Murder, Inc, the Servants of the Undying which holds that the Grave Mind is the path to immortality, and more. Add to this a variety of different faith and churches, such as the Church of Darwin and The Nuclear Family, and the Story Guide has a rich source of background and potential NPCs to build upon. The various faiths and their churches are actually more detailed than the other organisations. This is partly because faith can play a key role in the future of Dystopia Rising: Evolution and of the Survivors, especially if a Survivor adheres to a particular creed and backs this up with Faith related Edges. Although Dystopia Rising: Evolution is a not a supernatural roleplaying game and its zombies are not the zombies of classic horror, the use of some Faith Edges push the game in that direction if only slightly.

There is good advice for the Storyguide on running Dystopia Rising: Evolution, from adjusting the tone of the post-apocalypse to bringing the world to life, presenting hard questions and hard choices in play and dealing with difficult players, and more. In some ways it feels familiar, but this does not stop it from good advice. Specific advice is given on how to manage the Grave Mind in play since it is intended to be a traumatic experience for the Survivor. The background hints at the horrifying nature of the Fall, before going on to emphasis the efforts to made to rebuild civilisation, hold off the raider clans, and the wariness of over expanding and exploring too far, the Midwest having become dominated by a spreading mass of trees and foliage that is home to a vast array of mutant animals and creatures. The base setting is that of Philly del Phia, which is described in some details, as are parts of Old York. The rest of the Nor’East is described in broader details and the rest of the world in details broader still. These are areas for the Storyguide to develop. Rounding out Dystopia Rising: Evolution is ‘Let the Dead Lie’, an introductory scenario for the setting which takes place in Philly del Phia. It is a two-session affair which sees the Survivors investigating the death of the brother of an NPC who has suspicions that something is amiss following his own return from the Grave Mind. It should introduce the players to the core aspects of the setting and serve as the starting point for a campaign.

Physically, Dystopia Rising: Evolution is cleanly and tidily presented. It is done in full colour, often with a rust-streaked palette. If there is an issue with Dystopia Rising: Evolution it is that the character generation is not as easy as it could be. Not from a mechanical process, but a conceptual one. Putting together a Survivor means looking at a lot of options and trying to work out what works with what. In preparing a campaign of Dystopia Rising: Evolution, the Storyguide may want to work through some concepts before presenting them to her players.

Dystopia Rising: Evolution is an engaging entry into the post-apocalyptic genre. It shifts the zombie apocalypse in a different direction, dangerous and intriguing, of course making zombies the threat, but also pushing the Player Characters ever closer and right up to that line where they too might be considered zombies themselves. And while the aim of the roleplaying game—like any other—is not necessarily to die, the Grave Mind suggests that there is something more to dying than simple oblivion. As with Onyx Path Publishing roleplaying games, humanity remains at the forefront of the roleplaying game and in Dystopia Rising: Evolution, retaining is about not losing it to the Grave Mind, protecting the community, rebuilding civilisation, and holding off the dangers which threaten from beyond the Wastelands. Dystopia Rising: Evolution is a roleplaying game about still being human even if the body and the mind has evolved, sometimes to the point of near undeath, and it is superbly with an interesting array of character options for the players and a richly detailed background for the players and Storyguide.

Three great islands surround the forbidden Broken Heart Desert—Amberhaven, Alpengreen, and Umberleap. These are the Verdant Isles, formed and protected by The Great Tree that lifted them up from the sea and ultimately perished protecting in the Cataclysm, its remains forming the Broken Heart Desert. The Verdant Isles are a peaceful realm, inhabited by many different peoples who all agree that life is precious, that the best life isa calm and modest, and that both nature and others should be respected. The roots of The Great Tree still run deep and its sap, long crystalised into Amber has magical properties. Ambersmiths refine it using hives of Sprites, like beekeepers, and the resulting Amber used by Kitchen Witches to cast the more powerful Harmony magic. There are five types, known as the Astra—Flame, Flourish, Ripple, Storm, and Twilight. It is not unusual for the peoples, places, flora, and fauna of the Verdant Isles to be aligned with one of the Astra. Other magics are known, including the making of potions and salves, florists grow magical plants from Sprite-grown seeds, and architects design buildings using magical materials. The Verdant Isles are populated by several peoples of different ‘Ancestries’. The original six are the Deerkin, Finfolk, Floradops, Hoptops, Puffwings, and Snootlings. Finfolk are amphibious; Floradops have soft fuzzy skin and large, multi-coloured butterfly wings and fly; Hoptops are frog-like, amphibious, and like to leap; Puffwings are large, birdlike, and also capable of flight; and Snootlings are alligator-like, also capable of swimming.

However, the Verdant Isles are not entirely free of troubles and mysteries. Such as they are, they are not grand troubles and mysteries, but small intrigues and difficulties that upset or unbalance the calm and modesty, and take away the joy of everyday life across the Verdant Isles. It is some of these small troubles and mysteries that the Player Characters will investigate and sooth ruffled feathers—all helped by a nice hot cup of tea and a slice of cake—in Teatime Adventures: A Verdant Isles Roleplaying Game. Published by Snowbright Studios following a successful Kickstarter campaign, Teatime Adventures is an anthropomorphic roleplaying designed to be non-violent, identity and gender friendly, and compatible with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. Thus, it does not have rules for combat or physical resolution, only the barest of suggestions—since it is considered incredibly rude, but it does include an extensive magic system, a gazetteer of the Verdant Isles, four adventures, and most importantly cake recipes galore, a suggested tea or each scenario, and a tea steeping guide!
A Player Character in Teatime Adventures: A Verdant Isles Roleplaying Game an Ancestry, six abilities, an Occupation, a Morale die, and an Astra Alignment. The six abilities are Bustle, Fidget, Vigour, Wits, Sensibility, and Personality, and they range in value from three to eighteen. An Occupation grants a Skill Bonus in three skills and a d8 Morale die or a Skill Bonus in one skill and a d10 Morale die. A Player Character’s Morale Points represents his motivation and will to continue. They can be lost through failure, sad situations, and discovering that you left that tray of scones in the oven for too long. They can be healed through magic, time, and roleplaying reflection. The Astra Alignment is really only important if the Player Character wants to use magic. Skills include Borrowing, Event Planning, Minding Details, Not Getting Lost, Random Facts, and Relish.
To create a character, a player selects an Ancestry, assigns an array to the abilities, and chooses an Occupation. However, deciding on an Occupation is slightly problematic since Teatime Adventures does not list any. Although the example Player Characters have Occupations such as Mason, Event Planner, and Mail Carrier, Teatime Adventures suggests that the Game Master and players work together to decide on their characters’ Occupations and suitable skills. It would have been useful if a list of suggested Occupations and their associated skills had been listed.
Otterlie
Ancestry: Hoptop
Occupation: Librarian
Level: 1
Bustle 10 (+0) Fidget 10 (+0) Vigour 12 (+1)
Wits 16 (+3) Sensibility 14 (+2) Personality 12 (+1)
Morale: 8 (d8)
Skills: The Arts +1, Borrowing +0, Charlatanism +1, Cooking +3, Daydreaming +3, Event Planning +1, Fauna Friendship +2, Flora Friendship +3, Focusing +2, Gardening +0, Labour +1, Local Lore +3, Minding Details +4, Not Getting Lost +2, Noticing +3, Random Facts +4, Relish +1, Snooping +2
Mechanically, Teatime Adventures is simple and straightforward. The Game Master sets the difficulty of a task and the appropriate skill, and the player rolls a twenty-sided die aiming to get a result equal to or greater than the difficulty, adding the skill value in the process. And that really is it to the base mechanics of Teatime Adventures and that is something of an issue with the roleplaying game. Just like the lack of suggestions for Occupations, there is no guidance on skill difficulties or what exactly constitutes a Morale loss and how much that loss might be. An experienced Game Master will have no issue with any of these problems, but Teatime Adventures is designed and written to attract an audience that does not want to embrace Dungeons & Dragons’ traditional focus on combat and ‘power fantasy’ and wants a roleplaying game that is LGBTQ+ and disability-friendly. This is undoubtedly a laudable aim and Teatime Adventures achieves this though the range of NPCs it includes who have their pronouns, details about how they identify and other information clearly presented. Yet if that the members of that audience have bounced off Dungeons & Dragons and similar roleplaying games because the aforementioned issues, the problem they will have is the lack of advice on running the Teatime Adventures, which conversely, Dungeons & Dragons, the roleplaying they do not want to play, actually has.
Where Teatime Adventures expands in terms of it mechanics. It has two types of magic—Kitchen Magic and Harmony Magic, but both are divided into five types of magic each aligned to the Astra. Kitchen Magic involves the casting of Innate spells or cantrips. For example, the Flourish Astra is all about growth and potential, and its Innate spells are Duplicate Food and Soil Check, whilst Twilight Astra is all about the edge of everyday life, hopes, and dreams, and its Innate spells are Beguile and Dim. Beyond that, Harmony Magic requires multiple participants to harmonise and cast a spell together. It is entirely in keeping with feel and tone of the setting, but Teatime Adventures completely undermines the concept. How it is works is that once the players have decided to cast a spell, they select harmony components necessary to cast it. For example, Snowfall has the components of Area, Cold, and Weather and the requirements of a cup of water and a smidge of soot. The players then add Harmony tokens to a pool face down on the table, the number based on their ability bonuses and Astra Alignment. Then against the clock, players flip the Harmony tokens and use them to match the Harmony component’s pattern on their mats. If this is done within the time limit, the spell is cast. It is a lovely idea, making spellcasting a weighty decision and part of play, but…
The section on Harmony magic in Teatime Adventures is a single page in length. The section on Harmony magic in Teatime Adventures is the first time anywhere in the roleplaying game that it is mentioned that physical components are required to play an aspect of the game. The section on Harmony magic in Teatime Adventures lacks an example of Harmony magic works. It is deeply frustrating that an intriguing system is so poorly, underwhelmingly treated in this fashion. It leaves the Game Master to try and interpret how it works on her own, and ultimately, the easiest and simplest solution, is to replace it with another magic system, which what the authors suggest as an alternative.
If the mechanics are underwhelming and poorly explained, where Teatime Adventures: A Verdant Isles Roleplaying Game comes into its own is in describing its setting. The world of The Verdant Isles is described in loving detail and flavour, covering their origins, the nature of the Astra, its holidays and festivals enjoyed by all, and its various places and locations in a lengthy gazetteer. The latter drills right down to Oakenbend, which is where the scenarios in Teatime Adventures are set, describing individual buildings and places in and around the village are set. Thirty or so of the villagers in Oakenbend are given full write-ups ready for the Game Master to portray. In addition, there is a full list of the ‘Spells of the Verdant Isles’, maps of the locations, a set of pre-generated Player Characters, and more.
However, the means to explore the Verdant Isles setting of Teatime Adventures are threefold—and each one is a delight. The first and most obvious, is the roleplaying game’s artwork, which is luscious and rich, echoing the style of children’s stories read to us when we were young or those we read to our own children and grandchildren. The second is plethora of recipes for cakes and sundries scattered through the book, clearly intended to be baked and served at every tea-infused sitting (or session) of an adventure. Golden Corn Cake, Oakenbread, Hoptop Harvest Pie, and more, plus each adventure includes the teas which should be served with it. The third is the adventures themselves, all set in and around the village of Oakenbend where the Player Characters are sent as part of the Arts & Culture Society of Amberhaven as part of a cultural exchange to learn about the village and its life. The scenarios involve the Player Characters attending the autumnal Leaping of the Hoptops festival in which all but one of the entries in the Hoptop Pie competition are sabotaged and find one of their number accused of the crime; investigating how and why the village’s crop of Star Light plants have withered to dust; working who or what is causing the villagers to disappear during the winter solstice festival of the Feast of Forge and Flame; and exactly what the strange crystalline plant is that has bloomed everywhere in the village during the Feast of Flourish. These are all lengthy adventures, typically requiring two or three sessions to play, plus there is plenty of scope and room for the Game Master to add her own content and scenarios.
Physically, Teatime Adventures is lovingly presented. Both the artwork and the maps are delightful and the writing is engaging. However, the lack of an index is inexcusable.
Teatime Adventures: A Verdant Isles Roleplaying Game is utterly charming and engaging, its aims highly laudable, but flawed. Its problems all stem from the underwhelming treatment and development of the rules, the lack of presentation and development of the Harmony magic system a thorough disappointment. Yet put those flaws aside, which is entirely possible because the roleplaying game’s mechanics are light enough for the Game Master to substitute a known system which works in the case of magic, and Teatime Adventures lives up to all of its aims. The roleplaying game is all the more relaxing and thoughtful without the threat of physical violence or combat being present, and of course, the combination of play with tea and cake enhances that. Teatime Adventures: A Verdant Isles Roleplaying Game is a lovely roleplaying game, friendly and amiable, which the Game Master will need to develop aspects of the roleplaying game to get it really working as the designers intended.