Heart of Darkness brings to close the trilogy of scenarios for Alien: The Roleplaying Game begun with Chariot of the Gods—also available in the Alien: The Roleplaying Game Starter Set, and continued with Destroyer of Worlds. Like the other two, Heart of Darkness shares the same mode of play, but differs in terms of its campaign model. Thus, it is written for the roleplaying game’s Cinematic mode, and so is designed to emulate the drama of a film set within the Alien universe, emphasising high stakes situations, faster, more brutal play, and deadly encounters. However, where the campaign model for Chariot of the Gods is that of Space Truckers—star ship crews hauling goods and resources, as in Alien, and the campaign model for Destroyer of Worlds is that of Colonial Marines, essentially military missions like Aliens, the campaign model for Heart of Darkness is that of Scientists. This though, has no direct parallel with just the one film in the Alien franchise, but parallels in tone and setting can be made with both Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection. Further, as with the other scenarios, Heart of Darkness can be run as a standalone adventure, as what connects the three is their overall backstory, that of the evolution and development of the Xenomorph and in particular, the 26 Draconis Strain, and the consequences of mankind’s encounters with it and its corporations’ willingness to investigate it and desire to weaponise it in pursuit of profit. Those threads come to a head in Heart of Darkness.
Heart of Darkness—published by Free League Publishing—begins with the arrival an international scientific team at Erebos, a plasma trawling rig and platform stationed in in the Draconis 26 system in orbit above Ablassen Black Hole. Here the few science staff of the appropriately named station has discovered what could be a Xeno-extremophile, a new form of proto-plasmic organism found living in the accretion disc of the singularity. As the members of the scientific team, the Player Characters are to analyse and catalogue the new life form and return it for study, with promises of great rewards and recognition and payment upon completion of the assignment—a book deal, a corporate department head position, promise of tenure, and more. Erebos is no science station though, but a penal workstation whose prisoners have had their sentences purchased by Weyland-Yutani and been made to work operating the energy collection systems which siphon off the power of the black’s whirling, gyrating discordance of plasma and store it in giant batteries for shipment elsewhere. The conditions are hellish, not least because working so close to a black hole not only triggers, but accelerates Neurological Distortion Disorder—or NDD—the condition caused by exposure to Faster Than Light travel when not in cryosleep. This can cause paranoia and loss of memory, and underlies some of the challenges that the Player Characters will discover aboard the Erebos and the challenges that they will have to overcome in dealing with the situation aboard the station. If exposure to and analysis of the Draconis 26 Strain and its effects aboard the station underlie the physical horror of Heart of Darkness, then the effects of NDD exacerbate both its mental horror and the likely tensions between the Player Characters, who of course, have their own Agendas and the Player Characters and the NPCs who have no reason to trust each other.

However, when the Player Characters do arrive at Erebos, aboard the USCSS Cetorhina, a commercial plasma harvester/tanker, it is clear that there is something wrong. The station has been hit by meteors and is severely damaged, as evidenced by much it being dark. Worse is to come as when the ship attempts to dock, sudden gravitational shear from the black hole forces it to crash into the station. It is going to need repairs if it is going to leave the system, but before that, the Player Characters must find out what is going on aboard the heavily damaged station. Erebos is in complete disarray. There are sections which are open to space, others infested with some kind of biomechanical encrustation, and the survivors have divided into factions led by the station commander and one of the prisoners. Plus strange creatures lurk and stalk the corridors and rooms of the station, especially those encrusted by the biomechanical infestation. Not least of which is Adrien, the station’s emotional support tuxedo cat, who can even become a replacement Player Character should one of them die during the events of the scenario.

The emphasis in Heart of Darkness is on interaction and exploration. The Player Characters will need to explore much of Erebos in order to discover what has happened to it as well as find what the Xeno-extremophile file and whether it represents a threat or not. They will need to interest with the factions aboard the station too, both of which have their agendas and will want to recruit the Player Characters to their cause—or at least persuade them not to ally with the other faction. In addition there is another faction aboard the Erebos, which has its own very radical agenda and which very much wants the help of the Player Characters. There are greater consequences for helping—and indeed, not helping—this faction, than for getting involved in the other two factions and what they want. Indeed, their agendas are almost parochial by nature.

Then there is the interaction between the Player Characters. The seven include a Synthetic Psychologist who understands but cannot feel emotions, a radiobiologist with a calming manner, a very methodical biochemist, a close protection operative, a space sciences specialist on long term cultural exchange from the Union of Progressive Peoples, a biotechnologist with a prison tattoo, and a the captain of the USCSS Cetorhina looking for a missing relative. Each has their own character sheet and a set of agenda cards which come into play as they arrive at the station and progress through the three acts of the scenario. As they are revealed to their respective characters and their players, they will begin to pull both apart as they attempt to fulfill competing objectives.

There is an undoubted fantastical scale to Heart of Darkness, its action and rivalries literally taking place under a baleful eye of destruction, but this is not an easy scenario to run. There is a lot going on, both in terms of the Player Characters’ agendas, but also the agendas of the other factions. The Player Characters have a lot of information to discover—and whilst it really is great that as scientists, the Player Characters will be making discoveries—a lot of that information could have been better presented, not just for the players, but also for the Game Mother to help her impart that information. A lot of the information—for example, the situation aboard the Erebos and its staff and penal-workers, some of the initially secret records which can be discovered later—could all have been presented as easy handouts to help the players and their characters more clearly understand the situation and react to it. Ideally, the Game Mother is going to have prepare these and similar handouts for her players, but they are not going to be as good as those included in the boxed set. Similarly, handouts with images of the NPCs, the aliens that the Player Characters will encounter, and even what they see when aboard the Erebos and elsewhere, all would have been useful. In fact, much of this is not illustrated in the book and exacerbates the difficulty of the Game Mother’s task in relaying what their characters can see to their players.

One aside to note is the inclusion of Adrien of the station’s cat. It adds a lightness of touch, even a comedic one, but his presence has the potential to become a distraction. Ultimately, the play of Heart of Darkness could become more about the damned cat and his survival rather than the resolution of the scenario.

Physically, Heart of Darkness comes in a well presented box. Inside is the scenario book, a large, thirty-four by twenty-two inches double-sided poster map of the Erebos plasma trawling space station, seven pre-generated Player Characters and their sheets, thirty-eight cards, deckplans of the USCSS Cetorhin and more, and four handouts. The thirty-eight cards consist of thirteen Story Cards, twenty-one Personal Agenda Cards, and four Equipment Cards. The Story cards are similar to the Personal Agenda cards, but reveal secret aspects of their particular Player Characters which again will affect their motivations and also drive the scenario’s plot further forward. The scenario book itself is organised into a set-up and explanation of the background, a description of 26 Draconis system, the various NPCs, and the Erebos station, the three acts of the scenario, and descriptions of the aliens infesting the station and pursuing their own objectives. Notably absent is the Xenomorph of Alien fame, instead the Player Characters in Heart of Darkness will be confronted with the squid-baby, the giant trilobite, and the deacon from Prometheus and an interesting evolution of the abominations from Chariot of the Gods, the first scenario in the trilogy. Of course, they are all dangerous, but with a great deal of care many of them can be skirted around. The second and third appendices of the book detail the new weapons, items of equipment, and spaceships which appear in the scenario.

Heart of Darkness is another fantastical scenario for Alien: The Roleplaying Game. Like the other scenarios in the trilogy—especially Destroyer of Worlds—it has a lot of moving parts, but fortunately it does not overwhelm the Game Mother with too many Xenomorphs. If the tone and scale of Destroyer of Worlds was an action horror film, Heart of Darkness is existential in nature, a story of scientific hubris and horror, played out against a fantastic background that literally looms over the Player Characters and threatens to send them mad. Although it requires more preparation than it really should, Heart of Darkness brings Free League Publishing’s trilogy of scenarios for Alien: The Roleplaying Game to a fantastically frightening conclusion.

You are dead. It was not a good death. It was not a good life, either. You sinned. You were condemned again and again for your sins, but those that condemned you were no better, just richer and better protected by their peers. You went to your grave a sinner. You went to Hell a sinner. Then you woke up. You are dead, but can die again. You have made a deal with a Demon Baron. You have been pulled from the charnel pit of corpses and souls and chosen by him. Do his bidding and you can walk the world again. He will even reward you with demonic gifts that will aid you in your work even as those gifts mark you out as some not quite human, not quite holy… Here then is your chance to live and breathe again, if only at the back and call of one of Hell’s Demon Barons. Then again, it is a chance to wreak your revenge upon the pious hypocrites, the sinners who cast that first stone, the rich and the corrupt… If that means you get redemption, then great. If not, and all it means is revenge, then get stuck in. This is your chance for payback from beyond the grave, to be the monster they always said you were. If their souls go to feed your Demon Baron master and not yours, then all the better. You are his Demon Dog now…

Demon Dog is a bloody horror game from Nightfall Games, best known for S.L.A. Industries, the roleplaying game set in a far future dystopia of corporate greed, commodification of ultraviolence, the mediatisation of murder, conspiracy, and urban horror, and serial killer sensationalism. Published following a successful Kickstarter campaign, it is a tribute to and designed to be 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. This compatibility embraces both mechanics, so that the Demon Dog is player-facing and he makes all of the rolls in play rather than the Game Master, and the tone, one of grim, pre-apocalyptic times. The joint compatibility also means that whilst Demon Dog can easily be run as a standalone roleplaying game, it can also be smashed together with Mörk Borg. Thus, when a Player Character dies (or ideally when all of the Player Characters have died) in Mörk Borg, they could return as Demon Dogs. Alternatively, the Demon Dog could be a continuing threat in Mörk Borg, perhaps even a continuing threat which turns out to be the Player Characters’ future as well as a threat in the here and now!

A Demon Dog first has a life—how he lived, and a death—how he died. These can be as detailed or as brief as the player decides, and the Demon Dog may not even recall much of his life. He has a Sin, a Demon Baron to who he owes his new existence and a Demon Baron who hates both him and his master. He receives a Gift from his Demon Baron, a Mark that indicates his service to the Demon Baron, scavenges some starting equipment, and lastly has values for Agility, Strength, Toughness, and Prescence, plus a lot of Hit Points (or at least more than you usually get in Mörk Borg.

Bronson
Sin: Graveyard Scum (Grave Robber)
Demon Baron (Master): Rellvox
Demon Baron (Enemy): Fechanalt
Demonic Rite: Sacrifice at Rellvox’s at alter, kill and place a severed head on the alter for +2 damage to all rolls.
Demon Mark: Death Maw (teeth like rusty nails, 1d6 damage)
Demon Baron’s Boon: Shout, one per day. Scare someone (Tier One)
Equipment: Shoulder bag, hangman’s noose
Weapon: Ma Wee Hammer! (Maul, 1d12 damage)
Armour: Leather (Tier 1, -1d2 damage)

Agility 08 (-1) Strength 16 (+2) Toughness 15 (+2) Prescence 15 (+2)
Hit Points: 26

Mechanically, Demon Dog is simple. A player rolls a twenty-sided die, modifies the result by one of his Demon Dog’s abilities, and attempts to beat a Difficulty Rating of twelve. The Difficulty Rating may go up or down depending on the situation, but whatever the situation, the player always rolls, even in combat or as Mörk Borg terms it, violence. So, a player will roll for his character to hit in melee using his Strength and his Agility to avoid being hit. Armour is represented by a die value, from -d2 for light armour to -d6 for heavy armour, representing the amount of damage it stops. Medium and heavy armour each add a modifier to any Agility action by the character, including defending himself. Notably though, whilst a Demon Dog can and probably will die, he can be brought back to life, though at some cost in terms of abilities. These though are not permanently lost and a Demon Dog can work to restore them. However, do this too many times and especially if the Demon Dog has superior abilities, he is returned to life with the mark of an idiot tattooed in a prominent place! Where a traditional roleplaying game might have rest or spells as a means to recover lost Hit Points, in Demon Dog, the Player Characters drink ale—a lot of ale.

Demon Dog describes in detail the seven Demon Barons. This includes their purview and their desire plus a table of ‘Busy Work’, essentially tasks that each Demon Lord wants fulfilled. This actually gives plenty of objectives for the Demon Dogs to complete, since not all of the Demon Dogs are going to share the same Baron Demon as their respective masters. This can also cause some tension in play too, since a Demon Dog can be in the service of one Demon Baron whilst another Demon Dog is in the service of a Demon Baron who hates the first Demon Dog. The Demon Dogs have an Overseer who works as their link between the mortal realm and the demonic realm. He assigns tasks and in return for their completion and other activities—such as successfully raiding abbeys for their beer and killing monks, killing rogue or escaped demons, and even rivel bands of Demon Dogs, he will reward you. This can be money, because after all, a Demon Dog still has to eat and drink and equip himself with items other than ones he has scavenged, and it can also be a Demon Baron’s favour, a one-use ability. Add into all of this, the fact that the Demon Barons feud, fight, and squabble, and each has their own Overseers, and the Demon Dogs will be dealing with the fallout from Demon Baron politics as much as fulfilling tasks, dealing with mobs, and taking down witch hunters, exorcists, demonologists, bishops, and others.

A bestiary of demons and other horrible creatures, from Blighted Hounds and Parasitic Boils to Gobshites and Grave Tappers, and even a Sodding Great Dragon(!) are all detail in ‘’Orrible Sods’. ‘Surly Chaps’ describes mortal threats such as Kings Guard, Unbroken Zealots, Blessed Torturers, Tax Collectors, Filth Peddlers, and more, all described in some detail and with a sense of humour. ‘Them That Rules’ provides a broad overview of both those in power and with influence—including the Crown, the Church, the State, and so on. The setting is medieval, but very grim and very dark, and with a streak of black, sometimes puerile humour. This is confirmed with the actual setting for Demon Dog, a region known as Baneshire, one of the many battlegrounds for the Demon Barons. As well as providing thumbnail descriptions of the various cities, town, and hamlets, the poorest wretches of the setting, the ‘Filthy Bloody Beggar are set up as the most useful, as sources of information and rumour. All of which is rounded out with some extra tables, including one of possible missions for the Demon Dogs, but given by mere mortals rather than the Demon Barons. So essentially, the Demon Dogs can undertake jobs off the books and find further use for mere mortals rather than just killing them.

Physically, Demon Dog is more Splatterpunk than the Artpunk of Mörk Borg. In many ways, this makes it more accessible and easier to read, but in some cases, there is text whose heavy, Gothic fount precludes easy understanding. The artwork though is superb, full of hairy, scary monsters and demons, exactly as you would expect from Nightfall Games. The writing style is sparse—which is not without its consequences—and there is a lairy, schoolboy streak of humour that runs through it.

If there is an issue with Demon Dog, it is that it is not obvious what the Player Characters are doing. Nowhere does Demon Dog clearly explain what is going on and how to run it, either in terms of a scenario or a campaign. The lack of a scenario does not help in that regard, and in fact, the Game Master is very much left on her own to determine this. There is much that can be inferred though, but one aspect which is not really explored is how the setting reacts to the presence and activities of the Demon Dogs. Some means of tracking this which could trigger events could have helped and helped the setting become more dynamic. The lack of one, the lack of advice, and the lack of a scenario means that Demon Dog is underdeveloped in places and definitely not a roleplaying game for the inexperienced Game Master.

Demon Dog is a bleary, sweary punch-up of a game. The Demon Dogs of the title are not just the bastards of Mörk Borg, they are the bastards of Mörk Borg on steroids, bruisers and arseholes out to batter and bash the bruisers and arseholes they hated in life. Although the Game Master will need to develop the setting and the set-up a bit more, Demon Dog is ready to serve up a game or two of snarky, vulgar bastards who want to put the boot in from beyond the grave and make sure those who deserve it, get some.

The war is unending, against an enemy that threatens us all and seemingly cannot be stopped. The only things which can stand up to them are the colossal bipedal robots known the CHVLR—or ‘Chevalier’ units. Developed as part of experimental military programme, it was discovered that the pilots were the young pilots, the adolescents who could combine their brains with their reflexes. Now you have been selected as the newest recruit. You may have been a willing candidate and volunteered for the programme or you may have been drafted unwillingly even though your test scores proved you were capable. Your surgery is complete and you have been fitted with the SCS—or ‘Seiygo Control System’—implant which will keep you connected to your CHVLR and you are ready for basic training. Yet there will be no time for your training, basic or otherwise. You are needed on the battlefield and your only training will be real battles that you learn from or die. Perhaps you will. Perhaps you will survive to become the veteran of many fights. Perhaps you will die, your life cut short. What you have to rely on is hope. Is it powerful enough that you will survive or is its absence so powerful that you fear failure, let alone death?

In CHVLR you are that young pilot, cast onto that battlefield years too early, augmented and unready—perhaps unwilling, but without another choice. CHVLR is a solo journalling game published Black Cats Gaming, best known for The Spy Game: A Roleplaying Game of Action & Espionage. As its set-up suggests, it is inspired by mecha anima such as Neon Genesis Envangelion, Mobile Suit Gundam, and Robotech. For its mechanics it uses the rules and format of The Wretched, Science Fiction journalling game published by Loot the Room. Thus, the game requires an ordinary deck of playing cards without the Jokers, a six-sided die, a Jenga or similar tower block game, and a set of tokens. In addition, the player will require a means of recording the results of the game. It is suggested that audio or video longs work best, but a traditional journal will also work too. In terms of background, CHVLR offers very little—and intentionally so. Beyond the fact that the pilot of the CHVLR is young and inexperienced, and that there is desperate war being fought, nothing else is known and everything else is up to the player to define as he records his experiences and responses in his journal. Where the battle is fought? Up to the player to decide. Who is the enemy? Up to the player to decide. How will the pilot and his CHVLR react to the stresses of war? Up to the player to decide. What will the pilot and his CHVLR encounter? Up to the game to decide.

Play proceeds from one mission to the next. Each mission the player will draw a random number of cards and then turn them over one by one, following the instructions of each and recording the outcome before moving on to the next. The four suites correspond to different aspects of the mission. Hearts represent the pilot’s ‘Personal Files’, his physical health and mental state of mind; Clubs are his ‘CHVLR’ and the bond he has with it; Diamonds represent the ‘Battlefield’, the ruins of cities ravaged by war and beyond; and Spades are ‘The Enemy’, each a direct interaction with them or the aftermath of their actions. The cards correspond to particular prompts in CHVLR and it is these that the player is responding to and recording the consequences and thoughts of his character. As play progresses, there will be prompts too to draw from the tumbling tower. Sometimes, the pulled brick is actually removed from the game, sometimes the player is instructed to track tokens which if they run out will indicate that this is his pilot’s last mission. If at any time, the tower collapses, the game is over as the CHVLR is too damaged to continue operating and the catastrophic failure results in the player’s death. At this point, the player reflects upon his pilot’s career and record, and considers who might be receiving it.

Like all of journalling games based on The Wretched, the subject matters of CHVLR are dark and distressing. Here those subject matters are child soldiers, physical injury and psychological stress, and more. The game advises that the player stop playing should he have issues with the prompts that game gives him.

Physically, CHVLR is cleanly and tidily presented. There is no art bar that on the front and back cover.

CHVLR is a bleak and foreboding journalling game. This is in fact the bleakest and darkest of The Wretched clones given the subject matter and it is almost a relief that the play should no last no longer than a session (or two at most).

A lake from whose waters fishermen go missing. A lake from whose wooded shores fur trappers have disappeared. A lake from whose depths can be seen flashes of light. A local nobleman willing to pay for information about his missing son who was last seen travelling towards the lake. A local fisherman, renowned for being a drunk and condemned for having drowned his son, pleads for help in finding his son, who he claims was dragged overboard by weird tentacled creatures and into the depths of the lake. This sets up Temple of the Wurm, a scenario for use with Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay. If the Player Characters investigate and dive to the bottom of the lake, they find the entrance to a crystal temple and from there access to a complex of rooms below occupied by beings which defy comprehension. Here, creatures fully flat and existing in two dimensions slide across ceilings marked with odd systemic notations and markings and slip through exacting cracks to access other areas, as energy crackles and fizzes up and down one strange device after another. The complex is not just a home, but a laboratory and a space in which they can explore the third dimension—height, and even the fourth dimension—time. Thus, they have the means, which may be science or it may be magic, to extend themselves into the third dimension and beyond, and to manipulate not just shadow, but the dimensionality of others. They add dimensions to other, pushing them into the fourth, fifth, and beyond dimensions… Or they can steal dimensions, pulling them into their dimension, and so making them flat. Lurking here too, if a creature feared by the inhabitants, one capable of freely shifting between two, three, or four dimensionalities, the Wurm of the title, ready to make the complex its own. All that stand in its way are the strange flatlandish inhabitants and the new arrived Player Characters who are about to experience their own adventures in relative dimensions in time and space.

This is the set-up for Temple of the Wurm, published by Lamentations of the Flame Princess, a scenario inspired by Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbot and Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. Although the scenario talks mechanically about magic and details the abilities of the strange inhabits of the complex, the Arcindians, like spells, for example, Add Dimension/Remove Dimension and Shadow to Flesh, its feel is not that of fantasy. It is more Science Fiction than fantasy, which together with the horrors of what this ‘magic’ or ‘science’ can do pushes into the realms of Science Fiction horror or comic horror. The scenario has a Lovecraftian feel, but very much the austerity of stories such as ‘From Beyond’, ‘The Whisperer in Darkness’, and especially, At the Mountains of Madness. The combination of this and the strange occupants of the complex is likely to confound the players, let alone their characters. What exactly they are expected to do in terms of the plot will be unclear initially, but the Arcindians are not a hostile species, merely a curious one and they are prepared, even want, to communicate if they can. Theirs is a threatened existence and perhaps if they can enlist the help of the Player Characters, they too can provide some assistance. However, getting to that point where communication is possible is probably going to involve a mix of exploration and examination—and that is where the fun starts. Or rather, the fun for both the Game Master and other players as that exploration and examination triggers strange effects. Not simply making a Player Character disappear and reappear again after time has passed, but also quite literally falling flat, his shadow literally substance, and so on.
This will have profound effect on game play, as some Player Characters will be in one state in two dimensions, some in another state in three dimensions, and some even in higher dimensions. Most of the action will take place in either two or three dimensions, which will undoubtedly confusing enough and challenging for the Game Master to corral when it comes to combat. However, it is likely to have its advantages in some situations, such as being able to interact many of the features of the complex and with the Arcindians themselves. Ultimately, this is necessary for the plot of Temple of the Wurm to proceed, otherwise the Player Characters will wander around, triggering weird effects and probably growing increasing frustrated and fascinated at the same time.
Temple of the Wurm is also different to other scenarios for Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay in that it is not set in the roleplaying game’s default era of the Early Modern period. In fact, it is time and setting neutral other than the fact that it is a scenario for Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay.

Physically, Temple of the Wurm is well presented and easy to use. Given the potential complexity of the situation the Player Characters will find themselves in, the book goes to great lengths to explain how everything works to that the Game Master can understand it all and bring it into play. Both cartography and artwork are good, but the cover, with its melting clocks echoes the works of Salvador Dalí, rather than what is actually going on in Temple of the Wurm. This is not to say that it is not a good painting, but rather it does not fit the scenario.

Temple of the Wurm brings a striking combination of austere surrealism and cosmic horror to Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay, making it not so much Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay as Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Science Roleplay.

—oOo—

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

To cut to the chase, Spirits of Manhattan is a scenario which lets you play in an alternate universe not dissimilar to that of the 1984 film, Ghostbusters, or indeed, the 1986 roleplaying game based on it and published by West End Games. In the scenario, the Player Characters are members of Ghostbreakers, who in a previous incarnation, in 1984, prevented the opening of dimensional gate to hell as an outbreak of ghosts, spirits, and other nasties haunted the streets of Manhattan. Once they get the call and are alerted to a supernatural occurrence, they will race from their headquarters in their Ghostmobile—actually a disused Range Rover Popemobile used for Pope John Paul II’s visit to the United Kingdom in 1982, so not only right-hand drive, but also blessed and holy—and confront the ghostly happening. They will be able to detect the ghosts and other apparitions with their ElectroMagnetic Field Detectors, see them with their Spirit-Spectacles Goggles, perhaps consult their copy of Tobias’ Guide to Ghosts, Spooks, and Specters, then blast them into immobility with their ‘Spirit Stopper’’ Anti-Plasm Particle Thrower, and capture them using an Anti-Plasm Binder, all before returning to their headquarters to safely store the captured ghost! Sound a whole lot like Ghostbusters? Well, it does and it actually isn’t the Ghostbusters roleplaying game either because that has long been out of print. Instead, Spirits of Manhattan will do the job just fine until you have either saved up enough money to buy a copy of the original roleplaying game—keep saving if you want the dice too, or someone with deeper pockets than you gets the rights and brings it back into print.

Spirits of Manhattan is a scenario for ACE!—or the Awfully Cheerful Engine!—the roleplaying game of fast, cinematic, action comedy. Published by EN Publishing, best known for the W.O.I.N. or What’s Old is New roleplaying System, as used in Judge Dredd and the Worlds of 2000 AD and Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition, the scenario is, of course, set in New York. With a few adjustments it could be set in the city of the Game Master’s choice. the background to the scenario is quite light, explaining a very little of the history of the Ghostbreakers, their equipment and how ideally it works, and the nature of ghosts and ghoulies. A ghost is measured by its EMF Class, from Class I and a nuisance all the way up to the dangerous Class VIII and the demons, demigods, and worse of Class X and beyond. The Class factor is a measure of its Power stat and the scenario includes a glossary of ghostly terms as well as sample entities, from the Class III Demonkin and Ghostly Creeps up the Class X Gozarr the Devourer. There is even a ghost called Slime Bucket, which, of course, likes to slime people. In addition, the basic equipment of the Ghostbreakers—the ElectroMagnetic Field Detectors, Spirit-Spectacles Goggles, ‘Spirit Stopper’ Anti-Plasm Particle Thrower, and Anti-Plasm Binder—are described in some detail as well as how they work. Users are warned that this equipment is often held together with duct tape and can be dangerous to use to both people and property. In terms of Player Character options, Spirits of Manhattan gives a list that includes Ghost, Demonologist, Exorcist, Inventor, Scientist, Student, and more, all with occupational abilities. For example, the Ghost cannot suffer any damage (apart from any weird gadgets), but cannot pick things up, the Demonologist knows how to hurt demons, and the Exorcist can hurt or hold off a ghost. Of course, the skills of parapsychology, cryptozoology, and parazoology will be useful too.

The bulk of Spirits of Manhattan is devoted to the scenario itself. The plot, which begins with the Player Characters as would be Ghostbreakers with access to the equipment, but none of the other set-up—so no disused former fire station as a base—and working at New York Columbia University Medical Center, has them receive their first call and go to a ghost emergency. This is at St. Peter’s Chapel, also on the university campus and involves an encounter with a minor ghost. It gives both the players and their characters a nice test run and successfully dealing with it also brings the Ghostbreakers to the attention of the university’s Dean, Richard Anderson (!). At first, the Dean is none too pleased with them, but after a second ghostly outbreak, the Ghostbreakers gain his support and he has the university sponsor their efforts. This is the chance for them to set up a base and begin working properly and for the scenario to really swing into action. This is with a series of tasks, including dealing with a ghostly creep at the fancy Glitzman Hotel, rescue crew trapped in a fire station by ghost gone health and safety mad, and capture a punk shrieker at a punk and new wave hotspot. These are nicely done encounters and really capture the feel of the scenario’s inspiration. Plus, there is plenty of room for the Game Master to add her own if she wants to expand the scenario into a longer scenario or even a mini-campaign.

Eventually, the main plot to Spirits of Manhattan kicks in and will drive the action to the scenario’s climax. This climax starts small, but ends big, with plenty of nods here to the source inspiration, but without copying it directly or exactly. So, no gigantic Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, but something similar. There can be no doubt that Spirits of Manhattan goes up to that line, but it does not cross it. One addition is that of ‘P.U.RE.’, the Protection of Undead Returned Entities, a rights organisation dedicated to the proper and humane treatment of the ghosts that the Ghostbreakers are capturing. ‘P.U.RE.’ can become a thorn in the Ghostbreakers’ side, especially in the long term if the Game Master develops the suggested sequels.

Rounding out Spirits of Manhattan is a quartet of four hooks for further adventures beyond its pages. These are thumbnail outlines only, but they ape the various sequels to scenario’s source material and although all four require a fair degree of input and development by the Game Master, they are still fun and engaging, and would make the basis of great sequels.

Physically, Spirits of Manhattan is a bright and breezy affair. The artwork is excellent, often done in a cartoon style, making the Spirits of Manhattan the equivalent of The Real Ghostbreakers. The maps are decent, but a bit too small to use with any ease. The worst aspect of Spirits of Manhattan is the flavour text, which is written in-character and means characters not mentioned elsewhere in the scenario. The Game Master will need to paraphrase a lot of it to really work.

There is no Ghostbusters roleplaying game anymore. Spirits of Manhattan is not the Ghostbusters roleplaying game, but rather a very knowing tribute to Ghostbusters. It captures the flavour and feel of its source material and this gives it a familiarity that is engaging and really easy to grasp, so that everyone knows what to expect and will be happy to play along. Above all, Spirits of Manhattan is a lot of fun and the Ghostbreakers will enjoy playing with its inspiration.

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

—oOo—
Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 1, Hachette Partworks Ltd. (£1.99)Definitely the cheapest entry on this list and likely the oddest, being the introduction to the world’s most popular roleplaying game that was also the first of some eighty issues of a Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition partwork. Later issues would rise in price (which is how a partwork works), but for your £1.99 you got an introduction to the game, four Player Characters, a mini-adventure, and a set of dice in an official Dungeons & Dragons tin! The adventure would provide two hours’ worth of play, set in the Forgotten Realms in the same region as the then recent campaign, Phandelver and Below – The Shattered Obelisk. It was the cheapest and simplest introduction to both roleplaying and Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, that anyone could imagine. A perfectly sized and priced taster if you will. It marked two significant events in Dungeons & Dragons history. It marked the first official gaming product for Dungeons & Dragons from the United Kingdom in decades and it marked the return of Dungeons & Dragons to the shelves of shops and newsagents since the demise of Dragon magazine over a decade ago. Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 1 literally put Dungeons & Dragons back in front of the British public on the high street and it sold thousands.
Pendragon Starter SetChaosium, Inc. ($29.99/£24.99)
The Pendragon Starter Set marks the return of the best treatment of Arthurian legend in any roleplaying game and the return of one the best roleplaying games ever published. Designed to introduce players to the forthcoming Pendragon, Sixth Edition, it presents ‘The Sword Campaign’, which places their characters, each a knight of realm, at the start of the reign of King Arthur and even has them witness the young squire pull the sword from the stone and be acclaimed king! As young knights in his service, they become involved in the turbulent early years of his reign as king after king, lord after lord, has to be persuaded that Arthur is the true King of the Britons. This will see them participate in tournaments, diplomatic missions, great battles, and even the affairs of Merlin, all ready to participate in the next part of The Great Pendragon Campaign, one of the greatest campaigns ever published. The rules are clearly explained, including a solo adventure, and encourage the players to have their knights embrace knightly virtues and be the best that they can be by adhering to their personality traits, which can lead to great opportunities for roleplaying and interesting consequences when they fail or adhere to the poorly regarded personality traits. The Pendragon Starter Set is a solidly packed introduction to a classic roleplaying game with books, dice, and cards enough for a gaming group to get started and play through multiple sessions of Arthurian legend and adventure.
Threat Analysis 1: Collateral
Nightfall Games ($50/£40)
Threat Analysis 1: Collateral is simply put, the bestiary and monster book for S.L.A. Industries, the roleplaying game set in a far future dystopia of corporate greed, commodification of ultraviolence, the mediatisation of murder, conspiracy, and urban horror, and serial killer sensationalism. Its core setting of Mort City is beset by threats from within and without, and it is these threats that Threat Analysis 1: Collateral examines in turn. There are Dream Entities which grow to embody and enforce the fears of the neighbourhoods whose realities they endanger, Cannibals and Carrien Pigs, Serial Killers whose exploits and murders are idolised and feared at the same time and put on primetime TV and even got their own sensational, soaraway serial killer magazine, Ex-War Criminals, and even flora and fauna such as Ganggots and Sector Mutants. All of which is lavishly presented in glorious colour. Threat Analysis 1: Collateral is fantastic monster book that not only surprises in its strangeness and its vibrancy, but also in its ability to bring the horror and the hell of Mort City to life.
Dragonbane: Mirth & Mayhem Roleplaying
Free League Publishing ($55/£39.99)
2023 also saw the return of another classic fantasy roleplaying game, but this time, from Sweden rather than the USA. This is Drakar och Demoner, Scandinavia’s first and biggest tabletop RPG, originally launched in 1982, but in 2023, published in English as Dragonbane: Mirth & Mayhem Roleplaying. It is designed for fast and easy play, fast and easy set-up, and even as the world which the Player Characters explore—the Misty Vale, a hidden mountain valley until recently overrun by orcs and goblins—presents them with grim and brutal challenges, it has room for lighter moments round the table. The core boxed set comes packed with dice, cardboard standees, rulebooks, map, battle mat, and more. Not only does it include a solo adventure, ‘Alone in the Deepfall Breach’ (so the Game Master gets to play too) and not one, not two, but eleven adventures in the Dragonbane Adventures book! These can be played individually, but best work as a complete campaign in the Misty Vale. Plus, the artwork really is great. Lastly, let’s not discount the fact that one of the Player Character species is the Mallard and one of the Classes is the Knight, so the first fight round the table is going to be over who gets to play the Duck Knight!
Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game
Marvel ($59.99/£53.99)
Roleplaying returns to the Marvel Universe for the fifth time with this gorgeous treatment of the superheroes, supervillains, and super setting of the Marvel Universe. It includes over one hundred profiles of the heroes, villains, and minions (and sometimes in betweeen) of Universe 616, from Abomination, Agatha Harkness, and Agent Phil Coulson to Venom, Vulture, and the Winter Soldier, from America Chavez, Ant-Man, and Beast to Wasp, Wolverine (both Laura Kinney and Logan), and Wong. All with an eye to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but derived from the comics rather than what is seen on screen. It gives the players a wide choice of characters to play and the Narrator a wide choice of villains to use, but the Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game does not simply restrict the players and Narrator to its impressive who’s who and villains gallery of characters, but allows them to create heroes and villains of their own so that they can play out their own adventures and stories. The ‘616’ System is not quite as simple as it could be, but it is not too complex and it is thematic, and overall, the Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game is a very accessible and playable version of a fan favourite superhero universe.
Black Sword Hack: Ultimate Chaos Edition
The Merry Mushmen ($35/£25)
2023 was very much a year of the old returning, even if the old cannot exactly return due to licensing issues, for the Black Sword Hack: Ultimate Chaos Edition wears its influences on its sleeve—or is that on its vambraces?—being a Swords & Sorcery roleplaying game inspired by the works of Michael Moorcock, R.E. Howard, Karl Edward Wagner, Fritz Leiber, and Jack Vance, but especially Michael Moorcock and his Eternal Champion, most notably Elric of Melniboné and Stormbringer. Using the simple mechanics of The Black Hack, Second Edition, Black Sword Hack enables a group to play out adventures tales of the constant struggle between the primal forces of the universe, to visit kingdoms of age and youth, to go to the planes beyond, and of course, enter into great pacts of a demonic, spiritual, forbidden knowledge, faerie, and twisted science nature. Mechanically, hanging over every Player Character is his or her Doom Die, which is degraded by fumbled rolls and uses of the gifts granted by the pact he has made with the forces of the multiverse. If the Doom Die is degraded too far, the Player Character becomes doomed and the multiverse comes calling for him. Backed up with lots of detail and supporting content that captures the feel and flavour of Michael Moorcock’s classic fantasy stories, the Black Sword Hack: Ultimate Chaos Edition enables the Game Master to run a campaign in his style across the multiverse without infringing upon it.

Japan – Empire of Shadows: A Call of Cthulhu sourcebook for 1920s Imperial Japan
Chaosium, Inc. ($65/£51)
Japan – Empire of Shadows: A Call of Cthulhu sourcebook for 1920s Imperial Japan does something no supplement in forty years of Call of Cthulhu has ever done and that is to open up the Japan of the Jazz Age and make it somewhere to explore, roleplay, and investigate the activities and presence of not just the Cthulhu Mythos, but the mythos and folklore of the Japanese islands. It examines the reverence for modernity and antiquity Japan and explores how and why an investigation of Lovecraftian cosmic horror might be conducted, as well as looking at the role of numerous Occupations for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition and how they differ from the USA and the United Kingdom. At its heart is a set of three detailed and lengthy gazetteers, first of Tokyo, capital of Japan, then cities and locations across Japan, followed by the territories held by the Japanese empire, some of them for the very first time in roleplaying, let alone Call of Cthulhu. This is all backed by a wealth of cultural and background detail, and then woven through the three gazetteers, are three narrative or scenario threads that will take the Investigators to Nan Modal on the island of Ponape, the island of Hokkaido, and occupied Korea to face Mythos threats old and new. Japan – Empire of Shadows: A Call of Cthulhu sourcebook for 1920s Imperial Japan is an incredible piece of work and research, and both the best release on the Miskatonic Repository in 2023 and the best release for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition in 2023.

Star Trek Adventures Utopia Planitia Starfleet Sourcebook
Modiphius Entertainment ($60/£45)
As a supplement for Star Trek Adventures, the Star Trek Adventures Utopia Planitia Starfleet Sourcebook does three things. First, it provides a history of Starfleet, second, it provides a means of creating starships for both Starfleet and civilian use, and third, it details over seventy Federation and Starfleet starship classes, space stations, and small craft. In the first part, it expands the basic three  eras of Enterprise, Star Trek: The Original Series, and Star Trek: The Next Generation to include Star Trek: Lower Decks and Star Trek: Picard as well as Star Trek Online. In the second part, it lets the players design the starship that they want their Starfleet characters to crew and forge a legend with and the Game Master create ships as needed for her campaign. Lastly, in the third it brings to life the design and purpose of numerous classic starship models from the fifty years of Star Trek history, allowing the players to pick one off the shelf if they wish or adapt it, or simply letting the Star Trek read up about his or her favourite starship. This is a genuinely useful and interesting supplement, whether you play Star Trek Adventures or are just a Star Trek fan. Creating starships is really easy and the book is good read too. A definite must have sourcebook for the Star Trek Adventures Game Master.
Old Gods of Appalachia
Monte Cook Games ($69.99/£59.99)
2023 was also the year of the podcast in roleplaying as several publishers turned to podcasts as inspiration for roleplaying games and roleplaying game supplements. Old Gods of Appalachia is an eldritch horror fiction podcast set in an Alternate Appalachia where man was never meant to step foot in the mountains, where there are dark and bloody things in the deep of the hollers and presences beyond mortal understanding slumber under the ground. The roleplaying game adaptation uses the Cypher System bring the hard scrabble inhabitants of the mountains and their fears and superstitions to life as they encounter the secrets, the desires, and the monsters of the Appalachians that they know should be best left alone. Theirs is a world almost like the twenties and thirties of our, but driven by hardship, horror, hope, and heart they find on their very doorsteps, in the forests, and deep in the mountains. Old Gods of Appalachia draws the players and their characters into dark world of cosmic horror, but one that is very different to that normally seen in roleplaying and one very close to home. This is an excellent adaptation of the source material whose horror feels fresh and original.
Around the World in 80 Games: A mathematician unlocks the secrets of the greatest games
Fourth Estate ($30/£22)
2023 was a good year for books about board games, so it has been hard to just choose one. Around the World in 80 Games by mathematician Marcus du Sautoy explores games from his speciality to examine how they underpin a wide range of games, some we played as children, some we play today, ranging in both complexity and from far around the world. In the process, he looks at the history of games and their backgrounds, why we play, and asks if mathematics can help us be better players. In the process, it takes in Backgammon and the Royal Game of Ur as well as Scrabble, Cluedo, and The Game Life, before coming up to date with modern classics such as Ticket to Ride and Pandemic. It even explores Dungeons & Dragons and non-games such as Mornington Crescent (though that might be getting just a bit silly and very, very British!). The result is an interesting examination of our hobby from another angle that gives a fresh perspective upon it.


Cults of RuneQuest: The Lightbringers
Chaosium, Inc. ($39.99/£33.99)
The ‘Cults of RuneQuest’ line lays the foundation for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, each entry focusing upon a particular pantheon of gods and goddesses and other beings and their associated cults. They are important because the worship of a god or goddess and membership is fundamental to the lives of almost everyone in the world of Greg Stafford’s Glorantha. It defines much of their outlook upon the world, who they ally with, who their enemies are—traditionally, whose values they embrace, and what magics and powers of the gods they can bring to any one situation and thus the play in the game. Essentially, the gods and the cults devoted to them and that the Player Characters worship and belong to, define much of who they are and what they can do, and so act in a fashion similar to the concept of character Classes in other roleplaying games. Cults of RuneQuest: The Lightbringers is the first in the series to define the gods and their roles in society, focusing upon those that performed the famous Lightbringers Quest—Orlanth, Issaries, Lhankor Mhy, Chalana Arroy, Flesh Man, Ginna Jar, and Eurmal—as well as the other gods of the Air or storm pantheon. Each entry provides not just playable details to help create and player a character dedicated to that god and his cult, but further background, myths, and information that can be used to bring the role of the god, the cult, and the Player Character’s involvement into play. Cults of RuneQuest: The Lightbringers provides a definitive and accessible treatment of the gods of the Air pantheon and the other supplements in the line, such as Cults of RuneQuest: The Earth Goddesses, are equally as good.
Lore & Legends: A Visual Celebration of the Fifth Edition of the World’s Greatest Roleplaying Game
Ten Speed Press ($50/£38)
You may not like the roleplaying game. You may not like the publisher. However, what you cannot deny is the influence and reach that Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition has had on the hobby and culture at large. As it turns ten, it is worth remembering that this edition has introduced millions of new players to the hobby, that it made the hobby an acceptable and even normal pastime when in the past it was sneered at and castigated, and that it was successful enough to get a Hollywood film made about it that respected the source material, was entertaining, and was anything other than dreadful. A sequel to the earlier and excellent Art & Arcana: A Visual History, Lore & Legends explores the development, history, and key points of the Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition in a very similar fashion, from its development via D&D Next—the in-between edition—to its release in 2014 and through to today. It is written by the same team and consequently is both a good read and a visual delight, providing perspective on the world’s most popular roleplaying game.

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 BattleMats does something a little different with its maps. It publishes them as books, such as the Big Book of Battle Mats: Rooms, Vaults, & Chambers, but the publisher also offers its maps in a year long, one map per month package. In other words, a calendar! However, the calendar offers a lot more than just a map per month. Every month comes with an adventure of its very own.
The Calendar of Many Adventures 2024 is almost like any other calendar that you hang on the wall. Exactly twelve inches it folds out to reveal each month as you would expect and an illustration as you would expect. The calendar is mostly as you would expect. Days of the week, month after month. One thing to note is that the traditional days and festivals are not marked. So, no Good Friday or Easter Monday, no Spring Bank Holiday, no Halloween, no Christmas Day or Boxing Day. Consequently, the user will need to add them himself. Instead, there are less traditional days, such as ‘International GM’s Day’ on March 4th and ‘Talk Like a Pirate Day’ on September 19th. However, instead of some random fantasy picture, every month we are treated to a map. An ice cold, ruined village with a bridge over a frigid river for January, a tropical beach with a ruined boat on the shoreline and a fallen moai a la Easter Island, and a mine tunnel with tracks and trucks and a work and storage area. Each map is marked with two-inch squares and is nicely detailed, such as hats and documents on a table.
In addition, each month is accompanied by a QR code. This downloads two items. First is the map itself for that month. Of course, the physical copy of the map can be used at the table, whilst the digital copy can be used online. Of course, the maps can also be combined with maps found in other Loke BattleMats products, especially the Giant Book of Battle Mats series. The second is a single adventure for that month, a PDF for use with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, which is designed to be used with the map. They average as being suitable for Third Level Player Characters, but most can be played by Fourth Level Player Characters. Most f the adventures are eleven pages in length and come with ‘5E in 5 Minutes’, a quick primer (or remainder) of the rules, advice on running and balancing the adventure, hook to get the Player Characters involved, background for the Game Master, an introduction for the players, a description of the map and what the Player Characters will encounter, a suggestion as to what might happen next, and then the stats for both the monsters and the NPCs for the scenario. Names for monsters, NPCs, and special items are colour coded to indicate that they are given further detail at the end of the adventure.
For example, ‘Out in the Cold’ is the adventure for January, 2024. It is designed for a group of Third to Fifth Level Player Characters. The village of Derrow has fallen on hard times, its rich hunting grounds spoiled by heavy, icy winters and monsters that kill the stock and terrorise anyone who dares enter the surrounding forests. The local lord, Galfrin Albrent, hires the Player Characters to retrieve an artefact currently on display in an inn in the rundown village of Derrow. When they attempt to do so, a curse is activated throwing the Player Characters into the Winter Realm and a very snowy, ruined version of Derrow. It is here that the main events of the scenario take place on the given map. The Player Characters find themselves trapped here and as they try to find a way out—or a way back—they are attacked by wave after wave of wintery Derrow Wolves and it gets colder and colder. The Player Characters need to survive long enough to do so, and once done, the scenario ends. There are four suggestions as to what could happen next or in later adventures, and stats for an NPC who could accompany the Player Characters if they need help, another NPC, and the villain of the piece. Oddly the NPC, the bartender at the village inn, is given more detail than the villain, in terms of background.
‘Out in the Cold’ is a short adventure, offering no more than a single session’s worth of play, but it is serviceable and easy to drop into a campaign. It is followed by ‘Together We Stand’, a more complex affair for February in which the Player Characters are hired to investigate an alchemist’s lair under a tavern as part of dispute between rival guilds; ‘Fear Under the Sun’ for March opens with the Player Characters shipwrecked and washed ashore, coming to the rescue of cute creatures as the ground shakes; and for April, ‘How Green Your Garden Grows’, the Player Characters come to the aid of a local midwife and herbalist whose garden of prize-winning plants and flowers is under attack. This is important because the award for best garden is due to given very soon. Unfortunately, Granny Green, whose garden is under attack has under attack, has secrets of her own…

Physically, Calendar of Many Adventures 2024 is decently presented, bar of course, the traditional holidays on the calendar. The maps are as well done as you would expect and they are all compatible with the rest of the maps from Loke BattleMats. The adventures themselves are well written and easy to use, and short enough to drop into a Game Master’s campaign, perhaps a side quest or diversion. Plus, whilst the adventures might be written for use with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, they are easily adapted to the retroclone of the Game Master’s choice.

The Calendar of Many Adventures 2024 is a very nice product, providing the Game Master with a selection of easy to prepare scenarios that she can drop into her campaign. The format is fun and if the scenarios are not connected this year, then perhaps for next year, the Calendar of Many Adventures 2025 could contain a linked set of adventures to form a mini campaign throughout the year.

As the decade of the twenty-tens began, so too began a rise in the number of events and encounters that were strange and inexplicable except when using magic as the answer. Ghosts. Men and women acting in strange ways without their knowledge. Antiques and artefacts with strange provenances being stolen. Rivers seeming to come to life. People disappearing in strange ways. Foxes seeming to talk. If you are prepared to accept that magic real, then it is obvious that its power and occurrence is on the rise, causing the life of the Demi-monde, those persons and creatures who have been touched or changed by magic, to grow and interact with wider society. Of course, the police, even London’s Metropolitan Police Service, is unprepared for such a change in circumstances. Except, that is for the Folly. The Met’s ‘Special Assessment Unit’, its headquarters in a grand building on Russell Square, has long been on decline by the twenty-tens, its operational staff having dwindled to just one—Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale—its commanding officer and a registered practitioner of Newtonian magic. With the resurgence of magic, Nightingale’s own powers have grown again and he has recruited his first apprentice in many years, Constable Peter Grant. In the decade since, Constable Grant has investigated numerous strange cases, known as ‘Falcon’ cases, both inside London and outside it, and become a significant figure within the Demi-monde himself. Yet there has also been the growing need to hire outside consultants on a range of subjects and recruit and train more apprentices. The Folly, is, once again, playing an important role in police matters, even the police’s attitude towards it is not always a positive one. This is the background to the Rivers of London series of novels and graphic novels by Ben Aaronovitch and so too, to Rivers of London: the Roleplaying Game.

Rivers of London: the Roleplaying Game is published by Chaosium, Inc.. In it, players will take the roles of men and women newly recruited or attached to the Folly, a few able to learn and cast magic, most with other gifts and advantages. Under the aegis of the Metropolitan Police Service and its code of conduct and legal powers, they will investigate occurrences of magic and other strange phenomena, hopefully to learn more about its practice and the Demi-monde, but primary to protect the public at large and ensure that no laws have been broken. It is thus an investigative roleplaying game, one notably written for both those new to roleplaying and those not new to roleplaying. For those new to roleplaying, the Rivers of London: the Roleplaying Game offers a solo case file or adventure—based on the short story, ‘The Domestic’ from Tales of the Folly—which will the player how to roleplay and how the rules work. This is much like the solo adventure Alone Against the Flames to be found in the Call of Cthulhu Starter Set , which also teaches a player the basics of the rules, how to create an Investigator, and the possible outcomes of various choices. This is no coincidence. Rivers of London: the Roleplaying Game not only includes an introductory solo investigation, but it also employs the same mechanics as Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, although in a much cutdown, highly streamlined version. Consequently, anyone who has played Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition or even the Basic Roleplaying: Universal Game Engine, will be able to pick up and play Rivers of London: the Roleplaying Game with ease.

It should also be noted that Rivers of London: the Roleplaying Game comes with Ben Aaronovitch’s full endorsement. It uses the Basic Roleplaying: Universal Game Engine—which is always what he has wanted for a roleplaying game based on his book—and includes notes and asides throughout that add extra commentary to the setting of the roleplaying game. Here he even says that, “Rivers of London: the Roleplaying Game could even be described as “Call of Cthulhu—now with added hope!” However, it should be made clear that although there are occasional elements of horror within the novels, their genre and that of Rivers of London: the Roleplaying Game is Urban Fantasy. Much like novels themselves, the roleplaying game ties in with Aaronovitch’s own nerdiness and geeky knowledge of games, roleplaying games, and random Science Fiction and fantasy. It also be noted that Rivers of London: the Roleplaying Game is set after the events of False Value, the eighth novel in the series. Consequently, there will be spoilers in the roleplaying game for anyone who has not read either the novels or the graphic novels up until then.

After the delightful opening fiction of Peter Grant explaining roleplaying to other members of the Folly by running a session of Call of Cthulhu, and ‘The Domestic’ solo case file, Rivers of London: the Roleplaying Game begins explaining how to create a Player Character. An Investigator has five attributes—Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Intelligence, and Power—which range in value between thirty and eighty. He will also have a Luck value, which ranges in value between fifty-two and seventy, but will go down as it is spent to modify and succeed at various rolls. He will have one or two Advantages, such as Connected, Fast Reactions, Silver-Tongued, or Magical. The Magical Advantage is a Major Advantage and if selected means that the Player Character can learn and cast spells, but also means that he cannot take another Advantage. He also has an Occupation—some marked as being typical of the Rivers of London setting, some not, such as Architect, Dilettante, Firefighter, Lawyer, Police Officer/Detective, or Social Worker. This Occupation lists the skills that the Player Character must have and the skills it is recommended that he have, plus contacts and possible equipment.

To create a Player Character divides a pool of points between the five attributes and selects both an Occupation and one or two Advantages. He then assigns a value of sixty points to a total of six skills and rolls for his Luck value. These six skills must include the required skills for his character’s Occupation, but he can choose as many or as few of the recommended skills as he likes. Some Occupations may list less than six skills in total, so the player is free to choose other to ensure his character has a total of six. Lastly, he creates a backstory for his character, ideally including an explanation of how he came to be associated with magic or the supernatural, and then equips him. The process is easy and well explained. Apart from the fact that a Player Character can learn magic and that they have all encountered magic or the supernatural, all Player Characters are ordinary human beings. There are, however, advanced options for veteran players who want to roleplay more experienced characters—with more skills, but also Disadvantages as well as Advantages—or characters who are Fae or Quiet People. (Sadly, there are no rules for creating Talking Fox Player Characters, because after all, who does not want to play a Talking Fox who knows he is a spy!)

Avtar Chakora is a London black cab driver who got involved in the Folly when his cab began taking fares and trips of its own across the city. It turns out that it was haunted by a previous driver, Dickie Stacy, who was giving fares to other ghosts, often to various locations in the Demi-monde across London. After several near accidents and an investigation by the Folly, Dickie and Avtar have come to an arrangement. Avtar will give rides to ghosts and more recently, other members of the Demi-monde, but Dickie would advise rather than drive. In return, Avtar, a fully trained accountant only because his mother wanted him to get a respectable job and he did not get the science grades at ‘A’ Level, provides the occasional fare for Folly and consults on accounts and financial records in cases. He finds this more interesting than normal accounting, though he does do the accounts and taxes of many other black cab drivers as well as his mother’s catering business. His cab is never without a box of snacks freshly cooked by his mother.

Name: Avtar Chakora
Gender: Male Age: 32
Occupation: London Taxi Driver
Strength 50 Constitution 50 Dexterity 60
Intelligence 60 Power 60 Luck 64
Advantages: The Knowledge, Silver-Tongued
Common Skills: Athletics 30%, Drive 60%, Navigate 60%, Observation 60%, Read Person 60%, Research 30%, Sense Vestigia 30%, Social 60%, Stealth 30%
Combat Skills: Fighting 30%, Firearms 30%
Language Skills: English 60%, Punjabi 60%
Expert Skills: Accounting 60%

Mechanically, Rivers of London: the Roleplaying Game uses the system as Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, beginning with the skills. These have been divided between Common, Expert, and Combat skills. All Player Characters have the Common skills and may have one or more Expert skills depending upon their Occupations. It is possible to use an Expert skill, such as Astronomy, Locksmith, or Zoology, temporarily with the expenditure of Luck points. Combat skills are broad in their application and consist of just Fighting and Firearms. It is possible to take the Signature Weapon or Signature Firearm—bearing in mind that as the authors point out, Rivers of London: the Roleplaying Game is a British roleplaying game set in the United Kingdom, and firearms are exceedingly rare—and this grants bonus dice for damage. Rolls under a skill or characteristic are a Regular success, under half the skill or characteristic value a Hard success, and rolls of one a Critical success. A roll of one hundred is a fumble, which will typically lead to an involuntary action such as freezing on the spot or becoming enraged. The circumstances of the skill or characteristic roll may also grant the player Bonus or Penalty dice, which work like Advantage and Disadvantage dice found in other roleplaying games.

Depending upon the situation, a failed roll does not mean that the Player Character has completely failed. He might succeed, but with consequences, or he might fail, but without consequences or perhaps learning something that will help him. If the roll is a failure, then the player has two options. He can expend Luck points to improve a roll, typically to turn a failure into a Regular success, or he can Push the roll. This allows him a second roll, but this raises the stakes. Not only does it take more time, but the player has to define how his character is undertaking this second attempt and the Game Moderator sets out consequences of failure. This is always worse than the consequences of failure for the first roll. All of the skills in Rivers of London: the Roleplaying Game include suggestions for Pushed rolls and there are plenty of examples of the consequences if failed, as well.

Combat is designed to be fast and simple. It consists of a series of opposed rolls between the combatants, most commonly Fighting versus Fighting for mêlée, but a combatant can choose to dodge instead of fighting back, or even dive for cover or flee, both good options if the opponent is armed with a firearm. The results of the opposed rolls—Critical success, Hard success, Regular success, Weak success (more typically a failure in a non-combat situation), or Fumble—are compared and the combatant with the best result achieves his desired objective. Damage is determined by a Strength roll for mêlée or a Dexterity roll for firearms or spell combat. The number of points inflicted depends upon the quality of the roll—one for a Regular success, two for a Hard success, and three for a Critical success. Some weapons add to the result, such as a shotgun or rifle. This looks to be a very low level of damage in comparison to other Basic Roleplaying: Universal Game Engine roleplaying games, and it is. This is because a Player Character does not have Hot Points. Instead, he has a Damage Condition, either Bloodied, Hurt, Down, or Impaired. Each point of damage ticks off one of these conditions, and suffering four points of damage is a Mortal Wound and five points will kill a Player Character. Consequently, firearms are really dangerous in Rivers of London: the Roleplaying Game, an assailant only requiring a Hard success to inflict a Mortal Wound and a Critical success to kill someone one. In general, once a fight gets to the damage stage, Rivers of London: the Roleplaying Game can be brutal, but the Player Characters do have Luck on their side as well as careful play before then.

In general, the mechanics are very forgiving. Together with access to Luck points and Pushed rolls, and the possibility of failure not being absolute, but a chance of a Player Character being able to succeed, but with consequences or fail, but without consequences, there is a design choice here that focuses on the Player Characters succeeding and moving the story forward, getting to the next clue, and so on. This is not to say that there is no chance of failure in the Rivers of London: the Roleplaying Game, but rather that it has been de-emphasised. As a result, the chances of absolute failure—the Fumble—are very low, but when it does happen, the consequences are likely to be woeful indeed.

Magic plays a big role in the Rivers of London setting and so it does in Rivers of London: the Roleplaying Game. There is a discussion of Vestigia, the trace left behind by magic and of the Signare, the signature unique to every magic practitioner. To use magic, a Player Character must have the Magical Advantage. This grants him a Signare, the Magic skill, and three starting spellings. He will either be a Newtonian apprentice—studying under a master the school of magic laid down by Sir Isaac Newton, or a Hedge Wizard. Spells are organised into Orders, typically five. A practitioner must know a certain number of spells from one Order before learning spells of the next, plus higher order spells typically have their perquisites. A spell can also be mastered, meaning that the Magic skill roll is made with a bonus die, and once mastered, can be boosted with extra Magic Points to extend the duration, range, and other effects, beyond the base cost. Not quite forty spells are detailed in Rivers of London: the Roleplaying Game, but this is enough. It takes time to learn and then master spells, matching the pace with which Peter Grant learned magic in the novels.

In addition, casting magic and using spells can be very dangerous—and not only to electronic components and devices, which it will turn to sand. Use too much magic, cast too many spells, and a practitioner can suffer from Hyperthaumaturgical Degradation (HTD), damage to the brain that makes it look like a cauliflower. This occurs if a Pushed roll for the Magic skill is a failure or a Fumble, or if practitioner casts magic after running out of Magic Points. To check against the effects of Hyperthaumaturgical Degradation, the player makes a Power roll. At the very least, it will result in the loss of all Magic Points, which happens whatever the result, but at the very worst, it will inflict a fatal wound on the practitioner. Consequently, magic in Rivers of London: the Roleplaying Game will give a Player Character the edge in a situation, but it has to be used with care as the consequences are grave.

Police Detective Constable Winifred ‘Fred’ Messam was seconded to the Folly after investigating a case a series of forged antiques which led to an encounter with some very angry spirits which the forgeries were being used to imprison and transport the spirits. She managed to protect herself and her colleague, despite him being knocked out. When the Folly investigated, it was discovered that she had inadvertently cast her first spell—Shield. She was recruited after the case was further investigated and the culprits arrested. As yet, Winifred is unsure if she likes being a wizard. It just adds to her workload with more training and studying as well as bring up her two children as a divorced mother. Consequently, she feels tired a lot, but is trying her best, especially given that most of the recent recruits to the Folly are younger than she is.

Name: Winifred ‘Fred’ Messam
Gender: Female Age: 38
Occupation: Police Detective Constable/Apprentice Newtonian Wizard
Strength 40 Constitution 50 Dexterity 50
Intelligence 60 Power 80 Luck 62
Advantages: Magical
Disadvantages: Slow-footed
Common Skills: Athletics 30%, Drive 30%, Navigate 30%, Observation 60%, Read Person 60%, Research 30%, Social 60%, Sense Vestigia 60%, Stealth 30%
Combat Skills: Fighting 60%, Firearms 30%
Language Skills: English 60%
Expert Skills: Appraise 40%, History 20%, Law 60%, Magic 60%
Spells: First Order – Werelight (Mastered), Impello; Second Order – Shield
Signare: A clash of Indie band guitars accompanied by the smell of Belgian chocolate and the feeling of hands in a bowl of washing up

For the Game Moderator, there is a wealth of background and advice—and that in addition to advice dotted throughout the book on various rules and aspects of the roleplaying game, all give out by friendly Mister Punch. This covers law enforcement in London and the Metropolitan Police Service, including diversity, equipment, crimes and how they are investigated, police powers and how to handle them. There is advice on running the game, including handling consent and good gaming at the table, and more. It notes that the tone of Rivers of London: the Roleplaying Game is not gritty realism. The setting has magic after all, and is optimistic in outlook. The background for the Game Moderator includes ‘A Rogue’s Gallery’ of the various characters from the novels, such as Peter Grant, Thomas Nightingale, Abigail, and Toby. Various members of the Demi-Monde are given too, including Molly, genius loci of London’s rivers such as Beverly Brook and Lady Tyburn, Talking Foxes, and Zachary Palmer. All come with an illustration and full stats and write-up, though they are written from the point of view of Peter Grant—even himself—so there is a certain bias. If there is any write-up missing from here, it is that of Lesley May, Peter Grant’s former colleague and now rogue practitioner. There is also a history of London and magic in London, as well as a guide to central London. The Folly itself is described and mapped in some detail. Scattered throughout are case seeds that the Game Moderator could develop into a fuller adventure. This is backed up with ‘The Bookshop’, an introductory adventure adapted from the short story, ‘The Cockpit’, from the anthology, Tales from the Folly. Having already had one story adapted from the anthology, it would have been nice to have seen something original here lest the roleplaying game give the impression that all of its scenarios are going to be directly adapted from Aaronovitch’s fiction. It is also a short affair, meaning that the players could create characters and run through this in a single session.

Beyond ‘The Bookshop’, numerous additional rules are supplied for more advanced play and options. These enable experienced Player Characters or even Fae or even Quiet Person Player Characters to be created, new Occupations to be designed, and discusses the possibility of using organisations other then the Folly or even creating a Folly elsewhere. Besides revisiting various aspects of the rules, such as magic and enchantments, there is advice too on writing case file or scenarios, lastly, along with a set of ready-to-play, pre-generated Player Characters.

Physically, Rivers of London: the Roleplaying Game is very well presented. The artwork and the cartography are excellent, and the book is very well written, although in need of a slight edit in places. There are some amusing in-jokes dotted here and there throughout the book, and the tone is fairly light from start to finish. There are also a lot of good examples of the rules throughout the book as well.

There is only the one issue disappointing about Rivers of London: the Roleplaying Game to date that is the lack of support for it and the lack further case files to investigate. Otherwise, Rivers of London: the Roleplaying Game is absolutely the roleplaying adaptation that Ben Aaronovitch dreamed of for his novels. Not only does it use the rules he wanted, but it presents both rules and background in a simple, straightforward, easy-to-grasp fashion that will not overwhelm the fan of the novels coming to Rivers of London: the Roleplaying Game as his first roleplaying game or the roleplayer coming to the setting of the novels through the roleplaying game. Rivers of London: the Roleplaying Game is an excellent adaptation of the novels, capturing their lightness of tone and detail, and delivering it to the gaming table. The Rivers of London series have long defined the Urban Fantasy genre in the United Kingdom. Now Rivers of London: the Roleplaying Game can do it in the roleplaying hobby.

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another DM and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.
Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will be compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry and Old School Essentials. However, other fanzines serve as a vehicle for direct support from the publisher.
The Chaos Crier: An Aperiodical Zine for Black Sword Hack and Other Swords & Sorcery Games, is like the name suggests, a supplement for Black Sword Hack. This is the adaptation of The Black Hack, designed and published by The Merry Mushmen, to emulate the fantasy tales and style of the Eternal Champion—Elric, Corum, et al, by Michael Moorcock.
The Chaos Crier, Issue #0 was published as part of the Kickstarter campaign for the Black Sword Hack. It is a dense, black and white affair, which really provides two items—a pair of scenarios. In the process though, it also details new monsters and a new threat, a dark and evil cult, and a complete city. There is here, enough content here for multiple sessions of gaming, all of which can easily be slotted into the Game Master’s campaign. It opens with Alexandre ‘Kobayashi’ Jeanette’s ‘A Sky Full of Swords’, the first of the two scenarios in the issue. It is a tale of greed and death, as the Player Characters come across the town of Pardesh, where a group of miners have gathered as meteorites crash to the ground in them. The meteorites contain cold iron, each enough to make a brittle weapon that inflicts maximum damage on ghosts, spirits, and the undead, but also enough to make plenty of coin if sold. There is tension in the town because a local astronomer did not warn the townsfolk, but she complains that they did not pay her for the information. If the Player Characters save her from a possible lynching, she might tell them where the next cold iron meteorite will land, but that has its own problems. ‘A Sky Full of Swords’ is a nicely balanced affair, offering a session or two’s worth of play, in which the Player Characters will need to tread carefully as throwing their weight around could get them into trouble.
The two articles that follow specifically support the issue’s second scenario, but can easily have a wider influence upon a Game Master’s campaign. All three are by Olivier ‘Nobboc’ Revenu and all three are of a Lovecraftian bent. ‘The Sons of Dagon’ (also known as The Deep Ones) is a treatment of H.P. Lovecraft’s amphibian fish-like creatures, which gives stats for the Hybrid, Deep One, and Deep old One, as well as detailing the horror of the life of the Hybrid. This is followed by ‘The Black Sun of the Deep’, a nihilistic or apocalyptic faction or cult which serves the forces of Chaos by proliferating the earlier detailed Sons of Dagon, and hiding behind a façade as a conventional cult dedicated to a sea god. It is favoured by sailors and fishermen, the latter benefiting from the bounteous catches of fish. The primary means of spreading its influence is by abducting healthy male Humans, using them as part of their effort to spread their Hybrids, and breeding and substituting them for ordinary Human babies. Full stats are provided for Black Sun cultists, Templars, Deep Infiltrators, Priests, and so on. All of which as the Sons of Dagon appear in the scenario that follows.
‘The Darkness over Nijmauwrgen’ presents a complete city and scenario for the Player Characters to explore. Sat in a cleft on the coast with a reef just off the shore, Nijmauwrgen is a port and fishing city that has fallen into the clutches of the Black Sun of the Deep cult. Designed for Player Characters of Second to Fifth Level, they may be drawn to Nijmauwrgen by a request for aid by Alcantor of Zysifus—who appeared in the scenario, ‘The Blood God’, in the Black Sword Hack—or they might even be hired to find him by the Black Sun of the Deep cult. Other hooks are provided, but for the most part, the scenario is plotted around Alcantor’s desperate need to find a lost weapon. What the Player Characters discover in the free-state city is a port known for its abundant fishing, the sullenness of its inhabitants with their bulbous eyes, scaly skin, and webbed hands, gloomy by day and worse by night, its streets bustling by day, but empty and haunted by night by ghastly fish-eyed creatures that come from the harbour and skulk in the long shadows. There is a distinct Dutch feel to the city, especially in the names used for possible NPCs, each of the various forty or locations being described in some detail, with the two places important to the overall plot being fully detailed. This is backed up with a big table of events and encounters and events during the day, and a smaller table for during the day. Then to push the plot along, the scenario adds an ‘Anonymity Die’, a Utility Die which is rolled whenever the Player Characters investigate and ask questions that might attract the attention of the Black Sun of the Deep cult. As it is rolled and stepped down, it brings the Player Characters ever closer to being hunted and it also triggers other events too. It is a clever timing mechanic. Overall, there is a lot for the Player Characters to do and explore in Nijmauwrgen even they do not engage in the actual plot. In preparation, the Game Master is advised to give ‘The Darkness over Nijmauwrgen’ the one single, thorough read through, and then run from the page as it goes along. However, she does decide to run it, the combination of the Eternal Champion meets H.P. Lovecraft’s ‘The Shadow Over Innsmouth’ is gloom-laden, fish breath delight.
Rounding out The Chaos Crier, Issue #0 is ‘Shanizar’s Bazaar’, also by Olivier ‘Nobboc’ Revenu, adds a strange establishment down a dead end street, where the voice of the proprietor can guides the shopper through his merchandise, weird and wonderful, like the Mantle of the Stars, a shimmer cloak of stars as good as any armour—under the night sky only, and a Ceramic Parrot capable of repeating everything said to it in the last hour. Shanizar offers other services too, but at a much, higher price. Then on the last page is Tales of the Dull Lotus #247, James V. West’s comic highlighting the worst that runic weapons have to offer…
Physically, The Chaos Crier, Issue #0 is ably presented. It is busy in places, but artwork is excellent.
The Chaos Crier, Issue #0 is a very good first issue of ‘An Aperiodical Zine for Black Sword Hack and Other Swords & Sorcery Games’. It provides excellent support for the Black Sword Hack and every Black Sword Hack Game Master should have this, and The Merry Mushmen should definitely publish more like this.

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another DM and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.
Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will be compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. Then there is also Old School Essentials.

The Kalunga Plateau – Issue 1 is the beginning of a ‘Lost World’ setting, detailing a plateau only whispered of lying deep in the southern jungles, Classes for the tribesmen atop the plateau and the surrounding area, Invocations, and a scenario designed to get the Player Characters up onto the plateau itself. ‘The Kalunga Plateau’ opens with an overview of the plateau and some rumours with which the Game Master can seed her campaign. ‘The Setting’ explains a bit more, that the Plateau was once home to an alien civilisation whose presence was destroyed when an enormous sphere hit the planet. The sphere still remains, buried deep in the earth under the plateau that its impact threw up. What ruins remain are regarded by the current inhabitants of the Plateau as having been built by the gods. It then quickly settles down to present the first of three new Classes.
‘The Hunter’ specialises in the hunting and trapping of animals to feed the tribe. It gains points in the skills of Climb, Stealth, Bushcraft, Booby Trap, Sneak, and Tame. The latter is used to domesticate animals, whilst Bushcraft is used to handle survival in the jungle. The Hunter inflicts increased damage as the Class gains Levels, reflecting greater skill at killing creatures cleanly, and gains greater skill when working with fellow Hunters. ‘The Shaman’ can recognise the divine aura of another Shaman, makes for a poor combatant, and can conjure Invocations, such as Animal Spirit, Heal Wounds, Sleep, Feel the Evil, and so on. These are detailed separately in ‘Primal Invocations’. ‘The Combatant’ is the tribal warrior, which gains an attack bonus and can use all weapons. All three Classes are simple and straightforward, with the Hunter being the most complex. If there is an issue with the Classes, it is that they do not offer much in the way of choice to differentiate between one Player Character and the next. ‘Experience’ lists options for gaining Experience, such as killing dangerous enemies and creatures, surviving attacks, and exploration. ‘Gear, Weapons, and Coin’ gives a list of the prices for various items in the South Kingdoms, although without naming actual kingdoms. That and their details are promised for The Kalunga Plateau – Issue 2.
Almost half of The Kalunga Plateau – Issue 1 is dedicated to a single scenario, ‘Journey to an Unknown Land’. This is designed to get standard type Player Characters from their ‘civilised’ lands of the north to South Kingdoms and from there into the jungle and up onto the Plateau. It presents several hooks to get them interested and then details the journey south to the Last Sip Inn. With the help of a guide—who exacts a high price—they can then follow the Bone Road to the Plateau. Once atop the Plateau, they are first chased by a tyrannosaurus rex and then rescued by a tribesman. His tribe will offer refuge, but in return for gaining its trust, the Player Characters must perform a task for its shaman. They must recover an artefact from the nearby Cave of Pain. It is a fairly deadly dungeon, linear, but if the Player Characters succeed, they will gain the trust of the tribe and be released to explore the Plateau further. Likewise, the adventure is linear itself, without any room for the Player Characters to do anything other than follow the plot.
The Kalunga Plateau – Issue 1 does not really achieve what it wants to do. Essentially, there is not enough attention paid to the Plateau itself and too much attention is paid to getting Player Characters from elsewhere to the Plateau with the linear and limited adventure, ‘Journey to an Unknown Land’, whereas attention is paid to Classes, native to both the Plateau and the surrounding jungle, which cannot be used in conjunction with the rest of the content. It leaves the first issue unfocused. For example, only the one monster—the tyrannosaurus rex—is given for atop the Plateau, the rest either being in the cave of the adventure or on the route to the Plateau. Then the description of the Plateau never amounts to more than an overview, so that the Game Master is never really given a good feel for it.
Physically, The Kalunga Plateau – Issue 1 is well presented. The artwork and the cartography are both decent. The fanzine is overwritten and slightly heavy going.
As a first issue, The Kalunga Plateau – Issue 1 is disappointing. There is good content within its pages, such as the Classes—despite their limitations, and the Invocations for the Shaman, but the rest feels randomly chosen so as not support the other. Fundamentally, the inclusion of the adventure, ‘Journey to an Unknown Land’, was a mistake. It could and should, have been saved for a later issue, when perhaps the author can focus on getting the Player Characters from elsewhere to the Plateau. Instead, that space could have been better devoted to developing and presenting the Kalunga Plateau as a playable addition for the Game Master’s campaign. Perhaps this will change with The Kalunga Plateau – Issue 2.

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

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will be compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry.
Black Pudding is a fanzine that is nominally written for use with Labyrinth Lord and as of Black Pudding No. 6, for use with Old School Essentials as well, so is compatible with other Retroclones, but it is not a traditional Dungeons & Dragons-style fanzine. For starters, it is all but drawn rather than written, with artwork that reflects a look that is cartoonish, a tone that is slightly tongue in cheek, and a gonzo feel. Its genre is avowedly Swords & Sorcery, as much Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser as Conan the Barbarian. Drawn from the author’s ‘Doomslakers!’ house rules and published by Random Order via Square Hex, Black Pudding’s fantasy roleplaying content that is anything other than the straight-laced fantasy of Dungeons & Dragons, but something a bit lighter, but still full of adventure and heroism. Issues one, two, and three showcased the author’s ‘Doomslakers!’ house rules with a mix of new character Classes, spells, magic items, monsters, NPCs, and adventures, whilst four also included the author’s ‘OSR Play book’, his reference for running an Old School Renaissance game, essentially showing how he runs his own campaign. Issue five included a similar mix of new Classes, NPCs, and an adventure, but did begin to suggest a campaign setting, which six also continued as well as containing its owning wilderness area for the Player Characters to explore.

Black Pudding No. 7 continues in the same vein as Black Pudding No. 5 and Black Pudding No. 6, containing a mix of new Character Classes, a few monsters, and expanded descriptions of Yria, part of the ‘Doomslakers’ campaign. The issue, though, begins with four new Classes, whose quality varies. The first is the ‘Rat Bastard’, the offspring of Wererat and Human parentage. Treated like a Chaotic Thief, the Class has the ability to shift into a Wererat and use a Claw and Bite attack, but takes extra damage from silver. The Class also has a strong sense of smell, is naturally stealthy and sneaky, including being able to escape bonds and cages. The Turncoat ability forces the ‘Rat Bastard’ to betray everyone if offered more money than the Class is currently receiving… The ‘Rat Bastard’ is intentionally evil/Chaotic Class, suitable for NPCs, most obviously, but also for a campaign where the players are playing evil/Chaotic Classes. If the ‘Rat Bastard’ has a role in certain campaigns, the role of the remaining three Classes is uncertain except for sillier or gonzo campaigns. The ‘Iggy’ Class is a crude, shirtless risk-taking brawler whose ‘Lust for Life’ random, jerky battle dance gives him Armour Class bonuses despite being able to wear armour on his head and legs, make unarmed attacks, steal weapons and use them, and whilst he is partially immune to mind-affecting sleep and spells and all manner of intoxicants, he throws himself into danger, often harming himself in the process. The ‘Flamer’ is an Angel, but on fire, which inflicts fire damage, including the Magic Missile-like Fireburst, block damage with a Fire Shield, can Fly daily, and is, of course, immune to fire. Unfortunately, the ‘Flamer’ incinerates any armour not magically designed for it, has a chance of melting any weapon it uses, and can take double damage from the cold. The Class essentially feels like the Human Torch from the Fantastic Four. Lastly, the ‘Eyeball’ is a walking, talking eyeball, with sight-based abilities, such as being able to read any scroll and spot hidden and invisible things, plus it has the Thief abilities of Sneak, Pick Locks, and Pick Pockets. It suffers penalties in bright light though. It is intentionally a humorous Class, but really all three—the ‘Iggy’, the ‘Flamer’, and the ‘Eyeball’—are pieces of humour rather than necessarily humorous Classes. Their inclusion in any game would change its tone and it would have to be a specific type of campaign, gonzo and absurd, that they would work in.

The five new monsters in Black Budding No. 7 are quick and simply presented, with abilities and their minimal background details, all delivered as a series of bullet points. They include the ‘Rocky’, ‘Grave Crusader’, ‘Dracowisp’, ‘Tyrano-X’, and ‘Queen of the Dark Light’. The ‘Rocky’ and ‘Dracowisp’ consequently feel underwritten because their descriptions do not give them a role, whereas the ‘Grave Crusader’ is an Undead protector of burial sites. The ‘Tyrano-X’ is a Tyrannosaurus Rex-type creature, but intelligent and whose eggs are used in potions and royal breakfasts, so their eggs are hunted, even though one egg per nest poisons the eater. The ‘Queen of the Dark Light’ is a villainous sorcereress, who relishes in the shadows, maintains a coven of witches to serve her, is protected by Shadows, can summon Zombies, and so on. Both the ‘Tyrano-X’ and the ‘Queen of the Dark Light’ are given a full page each—the ‘Queen of the Dark Light’ on an appropriately black page—and so are given more detail, even if only mechanically, that the Game Master can more easily bring into her game.

Half of Black Budding No. 7 is devoted to ‘Yria: A Black Pudding Gazetteer’. It primarily focuses on the five cities of one region—Darkmirth, Frimmsreach, Kanebok, Seapath, and Summertop—with the spaces in-between filled in with rolls on the accompanying ‘d66’ table. These are only given thumbnail descriptions, whereas the individual cities and their environs are given a page each. Darkmirth is described as being ruled by a one kind king whose mind has been lost to the darkness of the Shadow Shrine and black sword in hand, demands the city be made black… Seaport is perched on a cliff over an angry sea and behind a mountain range, but the protection of the god, Krolton, the Blazing Heart, ensures it offers a safe harbour and posterity for the incredibly wealthy guilds and merchants. Underneath lie broken layers of the sewers and older cities, infested and haunted by creatures and monsters that lurk deep within. Here there is opportunity for adventurers to delve deep and find work in a city dominated by guilds—merchants, thieves, and assassins.

‘The Mythos of Yria’ present the pantheon of gods worshipped across Yria. How Mother Nest, the Moon, screamed and birthed life into the world over and over as the Black Wing, the great bird of death, swooped down and snatched it up again and again from around Nexus, the World Tree. The twelve gods are described in detail, including each one’s physical form, how it is worshipped, the requirements of its clerics, what is seen when standing in its presence, and what are the portents of its coming… This the Worm Witch, Mother of 100 Dooms takes the form of a medusa with worm hair, her robes tattered and old, her belly swollen with child, silver mirror eyes, surrounded by one hundred children, each one a monster. She is worshipped in foul festivals of feasts of worms and rotten meat, child sacrifice, and worse… Her clerics must carry and eat worms to know her mysteries, carry daggers, smell disgusting, and summon worm-like monsters daily. Her Alignment varies between Neutral Evil and Chaotic Evil, and standing in her presence is to smell her foul breath, see her black fingernails, and hear her hissing rasp, whilst surrounded by wriggling worms, skittering creatures, and nausea. The portents of her coming include flowers wilting, hordes of bugs, food rotting, the Moon clouding over… Each of the twelve gods is detailed in similar fashion, in each case, adding to the richness of the Yria setting. There is a brutality to all twelve of these gods that suits the Swords & Sorcery genre.

Physically, Black Pudding No. 7 adheres to the same standards set by the previous issues. So plenty of good, if cartoonish artwork to give it a singular, consistent look, accompanied by similar cartography. As with previous issues of the fanzine, the potential and obvious problem with Black Pudding No. 7 is that its tone may not be compatible with the style of Dungeons & Dragons that a Labyrinth Lord or Game Master is running. The tone of Black Pudding is lighter, weirder, and in places just sillier than the baseline Dungeons & Dragons game, so the Game Master should take this into account when using the content of the fanzine.
In terms of quality, Black Pudding No. 7 really divided in two. So, whilst it starts poorly with the four Classes, three of which are unlikely to see a lot of use in any game, the other half, consisting of ‘Yria: A Black Pudding Gazetteer’ and ‘The Mythos of Yria’ which together present a world and help bring it alive. Here there is scope for the Game Master to expand the world and make it her own by developing adventures for it and bringing it to live through play. A starting adventure or two would not go amiss in one of the locations detailed in ‘Yria: A Black Pudding Gazetteer’, perhaps in the pages of Black Pudding No. 8, but Black Pudding No. 7 really does provide a good introduction to the author’s home campaign of Yria.

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

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will be compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry and the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game from Goodman Games.
Tales from the Smoking Wyrm No. 1 is a fine-looking fanzine which provides long-term support rather than immediate support for use with the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. This is not say that none of its content is not of use or even useless, for that is very much not the case, but rather that it requires a bit of effort upon the part of Judge to work it into her campaign. In fact, all of content is detailed, interesting, and worth reading. Published by Blind Visionary Publications in 2020, following a successful Kickstarter campaign, Tales from the Smoking Wyrm No. 1 also strays into the territory of the Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic, if only a little. In the main, Tales from the Smoking Wyrm No. 1 is very much a fanzine for Dungeon Crawl Classics.
Tales from the Smoking Wyrm No. 1 opens with ‘The Paladin’. What this does not do is introduce the Paladin as a Class for Dungeon Crawl Classics. Instead, it presents a means by which any other Class—though ideally a martial one—takes on the role and responsibilities of the Paladin. The article though, begins with a history of the role and Class in fantasy and fantasy roleplaying, from its origins in Supplement I – Greyhawk, all the way up to The Gongfarmers Almanac 2017 and DCC Annual, along the way taking in Poul Anderson’s Three Hearts and Three Lions and Elizabeth Moon’s The Deed of Paksenarrion and Legend of Paksenarrion. It is nicely done, pleasingly informative, providing plenty of background and context before it details the Third Level Spell, Investiture, which is cast upon the candidate, who if it is successful, gains limited Cleric Class abilities, including Lay on Hands, Invoke Deity, and Turn Unholy. Invoke Deity is a spell-like effect which can grant the Paladin greater protection or even enable him to unleash blasts of divine power. Included also is a table of Investiture Trials that the potential Paladin must undertake. What this does is open up the possibility of a Player Character taking up a stronger religious role in a campaign setting other than already suggested by the Cleric Class and is nicely done.
The fanzine takes a darker turn with the inclusion of ‘Cthulhu’ as a Patron. Like any Patron for Dungeon Crawl Classics, this includes a table of Patron Results, which are fantastically invocative. For example, a pale emerald mote appears and emanates a glow surrounding the Invoker and everyone nearby, the invoker designating a target within range, who is grabbed by several tentacles as a sacrifice. The invoker gains a bonus to his next spell check and multiple targets can be designated to gain a bigger bonus. Unfortunately, using this inflicts patron taint upon the invoker, and there is a table for that and the effects of Spellburn, most of which involves taking on the cast and form of Great Cthulhu himself. To this are added the spells, Summons of the Deep, which summons bands of Deep Ones, Breath of the Deep, which inflicts drowning upon targets (or the ability to breath water upon a willing target), and Form of the Deep, which if successful, grants insights into the mind of Cthulhu himself. Cthulhu as a Patron should not necessarily work, the possibility being that the Elder God be reduced to window dressing and little in the way of flavour, but ‘Cthulhu’ invokes a sense of dread in worshipping him and enforcing the fact that doing so is not always beneficial and even it is, has its downside. This is nicely judged between its flavour and its effect and would make a great addition for an NPC cultist or in a really eldritch campaign for the Player Character Cleric. The inclusion of two extra ‘Appendix N Suggestions’ is an added bonus.
‘Cullpepper’s Herbal’ is the first in a regular feature in issues of Tales from the Smoking Wyrm. In game, it consists of the notes of famed herbalist, Willhomeena Cullpepper, whose bibliography is given too. Two herbs—Aconite and Adder’s False Tongue—are described in no little detail, including uses that the parts can be put to, including means of healing and poisoning. There is a lot here to research and use, but the level of detail requires work to include it in a campaign. For the herbalist Player Character or the Player Character in need a cure though, this is useful content.
Tales from the Smoking Wyrm No. 1 takes a weirder turn with ‘The Silver Ball’. This is a device, a floating silver ball, invulnerable to almost all forms of damage, that just appears in a dungeon and absorbs a Player Character. It may or it may not return the Player Character, but the likelihood is that he will be changed when returned. There are tables for strange memories and physical changes, as well as surprising items which might be ejected from the Silver Ball. It can be used as a random encounter, a way to account for a player not being present at a session, or even a way to deliver a new Player Character deep into an adventure when no other method makes sense. As a recurring motif, even though its effects upon play are often humorous, the players and their character could come to hate it as it seems to appear at odd times, haunting their adventures, and so on… Almost equally as odd is the addition of the ‘Telepathic rat’, which is drawn from Mutant Crawl Classics. There is even a chance that the one that latches onto a Player Character is actually a miniature Giant Space Hamster, but all have a quirk and a minor special ability that can benefit the Player Character and possibly the rest of the party too, such as the urge to groom all of the party members, who if they accept it, gain a bonus Hit Point back when resting due to the lack of vermin infesting both them and their clothing.
‘Rites & Rituals Part I’ expands upon the use of magic and rituals in Dungeon Crawl Classics. The primary way in which a ritual differs from a spell is that it has its own action die rather than using the spellcaster’s. This can then be modified by using circles of both casters and followers, sacrifices, rare ingredients, accepting Corruption, and so on. This is simple and straightforward, but the two sample rituals—Rites of Schlag-Ruthe, which creates a dowsing device for magical sources of power and Dark Phylactory, which creates one or more vessels to protect the caster’s soul though at the cost of corruption—are detailed and complex, but add to play rather than impede it. That said, Dark Phylactory is in general, better suited to use by an NPC, whereas a Player Character can use Rites of Schlag-Ruthe as well as an NPC. Either way, the elements required by the spellcaster to perform a ritual will add to play, whether that is the Player Character collecting them or the Player Characters tracking an NPC who is collecting them to their own ends.
Joel Philips’ ‘Onward Retainer’ is a classic comic strip about the retainer in the fantasy roleplaying games. It is nicely drawn and touches upon several well-known jokes about that style of play. Although not too original, it is nevertheless amusing.
Penultimately, ‘What is the Smoking Wyrm?’ is the belated editorial in the first issue of Tales from the Smoking Wyrm No. 1. It provides a potted history of roleplaying and roleplaying games, which flits around a bit, but basically makes the point that the fanzine builds on what has before, comparing the flowering of the fanzine in the twenty tens within the Old School Renaissance and since the publication of Dungeon Crawl Classics, with that seen in the late nineteen seventies following the publication of Dungeons & Dragons. This is a fair point, but the editorial is lengthy and overwritten in comparison to the rest of the fanzine, making it feel self-indulgent if only a little. Lastly, ‘Wyrm Words’ is a crossword puzzle of Gygaxian words.
Physically, bar the editorial, Tales from the Smoking Wyrm No. 1 is well written and the fanzine as a whole, has high production values. The artwork is good throughout, and the front cover echoes the illustration from the Dungeon Master’s Guide for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition, by Dave Trampier, which is based on the Street of the Knights on the Greek island of Rhodes. This is an illustration that the fanzine will return to again and again for its front covers.
Tales from the Smoking Wyrm No. 1 is a solid first issue. It has some excellent content, but this is content that will have to be worked into a campaign, rather than simply added and brought into play immediately. For the Judge that wants to add depth to her Dungeon Crawl Classics game, Tales from the Smoking Wyrm No. 1 has material that will help her do that.

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

—oOo—
It is curious to note that in 2003, two supplements were published which addressed the subject of romance, sex, sexuality, pregnancy, and more in roleplaying games—or rather, fantasy roleplaying games. One would pass by almost unnoticed, was written under the terms of the Open Gaming Licence, and was one that I was able to review. The other caused no little controversy, forced Wizards of the Coast to rewrite the terms of the d20 STL forcing publishers to comply with ‘community standards of decency’, has since passed into legend as one of the most notorious books of the roleplaying hobby, and was one that I was not able to review at the time. Indeed, it would take over a decade before a copy could be found and imported into this country—thank you Brendan LaSalle—to enable me to not only own a copy, but review. The one that I could and did review was Naughty And Dice: An Adult Gamer’s Guide to Sexual Situations, published by Sabledrake Enterprises. The one I could not review was the Book of Erotic Fantasy, published by Valar Project. Having forced a rewrite of the d20 STL to prevent Wizards of the Coast from being directly connected to the project and so tarnish its image and reputation, the Book of Erotic Fantasy would eventually published without the d20 System trademark of the Open Gaming Licence, but with the words at the top of the front cover, “This product is compliant with the Open Gaming Licence and is compatible with the world’s best selling Fantasy Roleplaying Game”. Thus, it arrived ready for use with Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition, but was not specifically written for Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition.

The Book of Erotic Fantasy does not only cover sex and sexuality, but also conception, marriage, love, relationships, and more. That more includes relationships between different species, new Classes and new Prestige Classes, monsters, and organisations. It begins though, by discussing sex. The authors advise that, “Believing it acceptable to expose our audience to a variety of lifestyle choices, we did our best to include the broadest possible array of sexual choices, including celibacy, in the book.” But warn that, “At times, we found it a challenge to keep our own preconceived ideas from creeping in.” As a consequence of this, there is an open attitude to the subject that runs throughout the book, one reflected in a lot of the new mechanics and in some of the choices made by the authors. Further, despite the authors stating that “The world has changed and it is time for fantasy roleplaying to change and mature.”, theirs is not an attitude or outlook that was shared by all, even by their own society. Criticism from those what did not share that outlook was certainly one motivating Wizards of the Coast to rewrite the terms of the d20 STL, despite the authors warning over and over that the Book of Erotic Fantasy is aimed at mature adult audiences.

The supplement really gets underway with a discussion of why sex should be included in the game, how to handle it and roleplaying, and covering subjects such as romance, sex, seduction, sex and humour, and a lot more. It states that the point is not necessarily the sex itself, but rather that sex and romance can be used as means to add spice or flavour to campaign, to help create memorable plots and NPCs, to make it part of the story, and so on. Acknowledged here is that the bawdiness of sexual humour is okay, as it helps keep everyone relaxed, but it has its place. It suggests using the Motion Picture Association film rating system (of 2003) to measure the amount of sex in a campaign, and acknowledges the difficulties of bringing the subject into a game, clearly stating that, “Just as in real life, no means no.” and that relationships between Player Characters can become as fraught as those between adults. It means clear also, that mechanically, sexual orientation has no bearing on game, but like prostitution and marriage, it can have a cultural bearing. How a culture views sexual orientation, prostitution, and marriage varies from one to the next. So, one, two, or more of them might be venerated in one country, even sacred, whereas they might be reviled and even outlawed in another. Again, such attitudes can be used to enforce the cultural outlook of different countries, to bring the world to life, and be the basis of a plot or storyline.

Also worth noting is that any emphasis placed upon sex in a campaign is likely to affect the design of Player Characters and NPCs and that the contents of the Book of Erotic Fantasy are not aimed at the combat veteran or highly skilled wizard. Instead, the need to optimise the Player Character in Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition will require a campaign of its own, a campaign focused more on social (and now sexual) interaction. In general, the advice and discussion here is decent and mature.

Where the Book of Erotic Fantasy goes slightly awry is in illustrating the views on sex according to the Alignments of Dungeons & Dragons. So, a Lawful Good values honesty and respect and can be celibate or chaste, but when an adherent does have sex outside out of marriage, he is clear in what he expects and is offering, whereas a Lawful Evil simply uses as a means to accrue power. So, the paladin in the accompanying text engages in a romantic encounter, but leaves room for the other participant to withdraw, whereas for Lawful Evil, the character is bloody tyrant engaging sadomasochistic torture. It feels such a shame to have decent advice followed by such clichés. Chaotic Evil does not even get any accompanying text, but then the included quote sums the Alignment up nicely: “Fuck You! No, Fuck You! Fuck You All!” Similarly, though the attitudes of the various Races of Dungeons & Dragons follow expected patterns—Dwarves are conservative, but enduring; Elves are bisexual, adventurous in that they like to share, and have transitory relations over their long lives; Gnomes are even more adventurous, using self-built toys, and writing manuals like the Gnomish Kama Sutra(!); Half-Elves have problems because they mature too early for Elves and too late for Humans; Half-Orcs like it rough; and Halflings view sex like a party. Other Races are covered too, along with how pregnancy and childbirth occurs for each Race, even the Undead and Dragons. These are a bit more inventive though than the sexual backgrounds to the standard Player Character Races.
In terms of new rules, the Book of Erotic Fantasy starts with the addition of Appearance, a new attribute for Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition, at least, including adding it to all of the Races and species discussed so far. There are rules for sustaining sex, with a rising Constitution Difficulty Check after every ten minutes, and a list of new skills. There is the alternate use of Appraise and Bluff, along with new Knowledge skills and Perform (Sexual Techniques), complete with a table of possible results. Having already looked at the social and biological consequences of sex—marriage and pregnancy—another consequence, the possibility of disease is also discussed, along with a list of fantasy sample diseases. Included among them are Ghoul Fever, Lycanthropy, and Mummy Rot, essentially providing new vectors for old diseases. The others are equally unpleasant, such as Whore’s Delight, which causes the sufferer to excrete a paralysing poison and so freeze the other partner in place (obviously having acquired immunity to it in the meantime), allowing them to be robbed or taken advantage of… Here also, is a table indicating which Race can interbreed with which Race and a variety of new Feats. These are mix of Sexual Feats, such as Dominating Demeanour, Limber, and Quick Recovery; General Feats, like Chaste Life, Seductive, and True Submissive; and Background Feats, for example, Sexually Open Society and Sexually Private Society.

The Classes in the Book of Erotic Fantasy begin with the Imagist, a spellcaster who is both beautiful and reveres beauty itself, wanting to make the world a more beautiful place. The Class casts spells like a Sorcerer, but instead of Charisma, uses Appearance as the spellcasting characteristic. The Class’ spells are a mix of the arcane and the divine. The Kundala Class is similar to the Monk, but with spellcasting abilities derived from its sexual practices. Again, these are a mix of arcane and divine spells, but they can only be cast by a Kundala on others with great difficulty. Where it is not exactly clear how the sexual practices of the Kundala Class affect its spellcasting ability except being presumably lost if not engaged in, the Tantrist Class is more obvious. An arcane spellcaster, the Tantrist inscribes spells as runes on the practitioner’s body and must engage in sex to renew its magical ability, at least for an hour. Which of course, requires a willing partner and a ‘Sustain Sex’ endurance check. The Perform (Sexual Techniques) skill and Endurance Feat add bonuses of course, to the check, as does a high Constitution. Of the three, the Imagist feels underwritten, if not slightly flat; the Kundala Class underwhelming and too similar to the Monk; and the Tantrist, the best explained and possibly the most interesting to play as a flashy spellcaster.

The supplement’s Prestige Classes are the Disciple of Aaluran, the Divine Celibate, the Dominator, the Fey Enticer, Frenzied Disciple, Harem Protector, Knot Binder of Kaladis, Metaphysical Spellshaper, the Pierced Mystic (complete with a eyewatering list of piercing locations), Rake, Sacred Prostitute, and Voyeuristic Seer. The mix manages to be interesting in places as well as both good and bad. It is even unintentionally amusing in places, such as the box of text labelled ‘The Divine Celibate’s Mount’ (which of course, is the unicorn). However, the bad includes the Dominator and the Voyeuristic Seer, both of which are as clichéd and as distasteful as their names suggest. The Voyeuristic Seer is described as “Profoundly visionary or merely prurient, voyeuristic seers might be either or both.”, but definitely feels like the latter and is essentially a specialist in divining and scrying spells, so not that much different to a Wizard that specialises in either. The good includes the Frenzied Disciple, essentially a whirling Dervish-type which uses dance to enhance magical and combat abilities, and the Rake, a classic figure with plenty of roleplaying potential. Most though feel as they are better suited to NPC rather than Player Character use. This includes the Dominator and the Voyeuristic Seer, but is joined by the Harem Protector, which not only needs the Sterile Feat, but be castrated as a eunuch. This is not to say that none of the Prestige Classes in the Book of Erotic Fantasy can be taken by a Player Characters, but rather that some of them cross that line from tasteful to distasteful.

Magic in the Book of Erotic Fantasy includes new Domains, new spells, and new uses for old spells. The Body Domain and the Pleasure Domain are obvious, whereas the Perversion and Voyeur Domains, again, like some of the Prestige Classes seemed suited to NPCs rather than Player Characters. And there are the spells, some of which are amazing, though not in a good way, because this is where the Book of Erotic Fantasy goes awry, not badly awry, but seriously awry. Command can be used to force someone to masturbate or have an orgasm; Cursed Orgasm inflicts damage on the target whenever he has one; Disrobe undresses the target; Grope works in way that Mage Hand does not; Infestation inflicts a sexually transmitted disease on the victim and is accompanied by a ‘delightful’ image of a crotch infested with lover’s lice; Orgasmic Vibrations that can daze a target and force him to miss an action; and Wet Dreams… The problem with all of these spells is that they run counter to the supplement’s opening advice that “Just as in real life, no means no.” as the levels of consent required to include them in a game make their inclusion beggar belief. As does the fact that they are even included in the supplement since without that consent, they all have the potential to amount to sexual assault in one form or another. That potential would vary according to the context and degree of consent, but as written all of these spells are cringeworthily unpleasant. Yet there are spells in the selection which avoid any of this and would even be useful in a standard Dungeons & Dragons game not using the Book of Erotic Fantasy. Mirror Talk and Mirror Walk, for example, as well as Pleasant Dreams to give the target a restful and safe night’s sleep.

The equipment section covers everything from sex toys and aphrodisiacs to birth control devices and services. There are magical items too, including a Ring of Disease Detection, Staff of Holy Pleasure, Ghost Sheath (so you have intercourse with the incorporeal!), and more. It even lists the Book of Erotic Fantasy as an artifact in its own right! The Book of Erotic Fantasy should perhaps, have been on surer ground when it comes sex and deities, since the sexual activities of the gods have always provide fertile grounds for good storytelling, except that the book goes its decided way. Some of the gods, or versions of them, would have a place in many a campaign. For example, Alilial the Childbringer, Midwife to the Gods, Cevelis the Chaste One, Lady of Denial, and Kaladis the Binder, Guardian of the Sacred Vow, all of which are nicely done, but then there is Zanbos the Defiler, the Abusive One, who is the “[D]eity of wanton rape, brutality, and sexual cruelty.” Now it is stated that he is rarely worshipped, but that does not excuse his inclusion because again, it crashes into the supplement’s opening advice that “Just as in real life, no means no.” In a sex-based campaign, like the one that the Book of Erotic Fantasy, there is undoubtedly going to be a need for a dark or villainous or evil god, but the inclusion of Zanbos in this role so obviously, is horrifying.

The bestiary also adds creatures of passion such as Bliss Motes, Cherrubs—both Celestial and Fallen, and templates for variants such as Demonbreed, Devilblooded, Felids (essentially cat people), Feykissed, and more. Some of these do feel more developed than others. Penultimately, the book includes a list of one hundred adventures, all no more than a sentence and all very much in need of development by the Dungeon Master, followed by a handful of sample organisations, such as ‘Damio’s Companionship Service’, an escort service dealing in the exotic, ‘The Velvet Room’, a sample brothel complete with floorplans, and the ‘Seekers of the Eternal Sensation’, a cult of hedonists. All are quite well developed and include NPCs too. The Book of Erotic Fantasy is rounded out with a list of Appearance values for the creatures found in the Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition core rules, and a ‘What’s New with Phil & Dixie’ comic strip by Phil Foglio, which turns the opinions of games rules lawyers to the subject in hand…

Physically, the Book of Erotic Fantasy is cleanly and tidily presented. Then of course, there is the artwork, which includes photography, much of photo-manipulated, and which does involve a lot of nudity. Whether or not any of its is erotic is in the eye of the beholder, but none of it would have been regarded as being extreme in 2003, though not exactly tasteful, perhaps even a little boring and a little creepy in places, is the worst that can be said of it. Today it all looks a bit tame.

The Book of Erotic Fantasy is definitely a curate’s egg. The advice, given at the beginning of the book, is good. The rest varies wildly in tone and content, but ultimately it comes down to the spells in the book. All too many are distinctly unpleasant in their use and connotations, and indicative of how times have changed where those spells might have been acceptable then, they would not be in the here and now.

In the twenty years since the Book of Erotic Fantasy was published, there can be no doubt that attitudes towards sex and sexuality have changed—both in general and in the gaming hobby. In general, there is a wider acceptance of both and within the hobby, numerous roleplaying games, such as Green Ronin Publishing’s Blue Rose: The Roleplaying Game of Romantic Fantasy and Bully Pulpit Games’ Star Crossed have explored romance and accepted LGBTQ+ characters into the hobby. Yet there really has been no other supplement like the Book of Erotic Fantasy or Naughty And Dice that has reached a wider gaming audience, for the subject of sex—especially in roleplaying—still remains a taboo subject, a subject matter or activity that we rarely want to cross over into and bring into our games. So, in that regard, little has changed. What it would take is a brave group of players—Dungeon Master and players alike—to want to explore and fully embrace what the Book of Erotic Fantasy presents, and it would mean all of the players and the Dungeon Master. After all, the Book of Erotic Fantasy is an ‘all-in, or none in’ kind of supplement. How many such groups there were prepared for what the Book of Erotic Fantasy offered at the time of its publication is debatable, and the same can be said of today. Which leaves the reader to wonder how many actually bought the Book of Erotic Fantasy to use and how many simply bought it for its notoriety? And then to hope that they never learn the answer to that question.

Ultimately, the Book of Erotic Fantasy has three problems. One is its subject matter, which not everyone is comfortable with, which in places is exacerbated by the second, that some of the content is more than enough make the reader recoil in distaste, let alone think about bringing it into play. The third is that its subject matter is very personal, even if the personal is via the construct of a Player Character in a roleplaying game. Not everyone, arguably very few, are willing to engage in the kind of intimacies that the Book of Erotic Fantasy calls for, even if they are the kind of intimacies involving a Player Character rather than the player, in the semi-public sphere of a roleplaying group. So, in 2003 the Book of Erotic Fantasy presented a final frontier that few were prepared to cross, which is understandable given that although it did include a basically mature treatment of sex and sexuality that for the most part belies its reputation, elsewhere its content crossed over into the unpleasant and distasteful for which the supplement fully deserved its reputation for tawdriness and unsavoriness. Ultimately, whilst some of its writing is mature and helpful, the Book of Erotic Fantasy is as unpleasant a book and as useless a book in 2023 as it was in 2003. It was a supplement that whilst fantasy, was very few gamers’ idea of erotic, and that nobody wanted in 2003 and nobody would want in 2023.

All Rolled Up is best known for the eponymous gaming accessory, a cloth dice bag with a wrap containing pockets for pens, pencils, notes and notepads, and other gaming accessories, which can be rolled around the dice bag and tied close. The innovative design has become known for two things. First, its ubiquity. Attend a gaming convention in the United Kingdom and when you sit down to roleplay, at least one of your fellow gamers will pull one from his bag and unwrap it to get out his dice. Second, its sturdiness. I have an unofficial Doctor Who-themed one that I have had for a decade and it has travelled to gaming session after gaming session, convention after convention, and even to Gen Con (twice). It remains in almost perfect condition, a little grubby around the edges, and although I have several other All Rolled Ups via Kickstarter campaigns, it is not the fact that they are too nice to use—which they are—that explains why I have not switched to another All Rolled Up. (Were All Rolled Up to do a good duck-themed All Rolled Up, I might change my mind. Seriously. I have two sets of duck-themed dice that need an All Rolled Up home.) However, in addition to high quality, award-winning All Rolled Up, the company also produces a wide range of equally high-quality gaming accessories—dice trays, write-on/wipe-off counters and cards, tokens, and more. These are all available separately, but many have found their way into All Rolled Up’s All Rolled Up Mystery Roleplaying Starter Set.

Each All Rolled Up Mystery Roleplaying Starter Set rattles with goodies and promise. Each contains fourteen items, which always includes dice and a dice tray—another of the innovate products from All Rolled Up, along with the other twelve items. One of which will be a standalone mini-game. What exactly will be found in one All Rolled Up Mystery Roleplaying Starter Set to the next, varies, and because every box comes sealed, is of course, a mystery. The standalone mini-games also vary. Three consist of mini-roleplaying games, the fourth another game. Open up your All Rolled Up Mystery Roleplaying Starter Set and this is what you might find. A cloth bag containing a set of polyhedral dice, including a percentile die as well as the standard ten-sided die. This marked with the price of £10, which alone is two-thirds the price of the All Rolled Up Mystery Roleplaying Starter Set itself. Two extra six-sided dice. A ‘Pad of Geomorphic Intent’ or a mini-notepad of squared paper from Square Hex. A slim plastic box. Not one, but two sets of Stone Skull Counters, one in bone colour, the other in blood red. A set of five tentacle-themed Dry Wipe Counters to use as markers on the table. (Note: The slim plastic box will hold both sets of Stone Skull Counters, but not the Dry Wipe Counters as well.) A Drywipe pen. A compact Neoprene Folding Dice Tray. A large notepad. A pencil. Plus, the roleplaying game. This is a lot of goodies.

The roleplaying game in my All Rolled Up Mystery Roleplaying Starter Set is Electric Schemes: Feedback Loop Edition. Printed on both sides of a single sheet of A4 paper, which has then been folded down into a small pamphlet. The roleplaying game does not have an introduction, but it is quickly obvious that the players are taking the roles of school age teenagers in a modern industrial society, which might be now or it might be in the latter half of the twentieth century. One is the Leader, not necessarily the boss, but the focus for a group, and the others could be ‘The Brat’ or ‘The Neighbour’ or ‘The New Kid’. Mechanically, the roleplaying game uses the minimald6 rules. These are simple, a player or Game Master never rolling more than three six-sided dice or less than one, the aim being to roll fives or sixes to succeed. (As an aside, it is clear that the contents of an All Rolled Up Mystery Roleplaying Starter Set are not always random. Only the one six-sided die has been included in the full polyhedral set, but the two extra six-sided dice have been included to specifically use with Electric Schemes: Feedback Loop Edition.) The combat rules are kept brief, a Player Character never suffering more than a ‘Bang’ or an ‘Owie’, with the player being expected to narrate the outcome, whether his character wins or loses the fight. In terms of what you play, Electric Schemes: Feedback Loop Edition starts with two tables, ‘Stuff Challenged’ and ‘…By Things’. So, the Game Master might roll ‘Existence’ on the ‘Stuff Challenged’ table and ‘Opportunity, Wrong Decision’ on the ‘…By Things’ table. Further tables can add a hook, organisation, location, motivation, visions of tomorrow, and more. There are notes too for the Game Master on the design and handling of NPCs, including Bystanders and Monsters.

Electric Schemes: Feedback Loop Edition is a barebones affair. After all, it fits onto both sides of an A4 sheet of paper. The Game Master will need to improvise the plot once its basic details have been rolled for, but once done, the genre is easy to grasp—kids have adventures, perhaps on bikes, perhaps not, and the lightness of the mechanics means that there is plenty of room for player input, narration, and improvisation. It does draw parallels with Tales from the Loop – Roleplaying in the '80s That Never Was from Free League Publishing, but the tone is more Children’s Film Foundation.

However, Electric Schemes: Feedback Loop Edition is not an introductory roleplaying game. It barely even has an introduction and there is no explanation of what roleplaying is and how it is done. It calls for an experienced Game Master who can whip up a plot, ready-to-play, from the few rolls on the roleplaying game’s table, and then engage with her players. Indeed, an experienced Game Master, could purchase an All Rolled Up Mystery Roleplaying Starter Set, peruse its contents, read through Electric Schemes: Feedback Loop Edition, and have an adventure ready to play in minutes. What this does highlight though, is the fact that whilst the All Rolled Up Mystery Roleplaying Starter Set has the word ‘starter’ in its title, it is not designed introduce the prospective player to the hobby. If not that, what is it designed for? Essentially, it is designed to outfit the player who is new to the hobby, has a little bit of roleplaying experience under his belt, wants some dice and ready to use gaming accessories—and that it does very well. Of course, if an experienced player turned up at a convention and had forgotten all of his dice and other gaming paraphernalia, if All Rolled Up happened to have a stand at the convention, he could definitely outfit himself with some dice and a dice tray, let alone all of the other surprises, just by purchasing an All Rolled Up Mystery Roleplaying Starter Set. Lastly, if gamer really wanted to, he could actually purchase more than one in the hope of collecting all four games across the various boxes.

Physically, the quality of the All Rolled Up Mystery Roleplaying Starter Set is excellent. The poorest quality item in the All Rolled Up Mystery Roleplaying Starter Set is the game itself, but then that is only a single sheet of A4 paper.

An All Rolled Up Mystery Roleplaying Starter Set will equip a gamer with all of the gaming accessories he is going to need—dice, dice tray, counters, and a whole lot more. Plus, a mini-game as a bonus. You may not know what you are going to get in your All Rolled Up Mystery Roleplaying Starter Set, but what you are guaranteed is useful, of high quality, and good value for money.

Despite its popularity in Japan, it is surprising that there is so little support for it as a setting in Call of Cthulhu. Barring Secrets of Japan from 2005, which was a modern-set supplement, most of the handful of scenarios set in Japan have been placed their tales of Lovecraftian investigative roleplaying firmly in the feudal period, so enabling the Samurai, the classic Japanese warrior to go up against the Mythos. For example, ‘The Iron Banded Box’ from Strange Aeons II and ‘The Silence of Thousands Shall Quell the Refrain’ from Red Eye of Azathoth. Incursions into Japan in Call of Cthulhu’s classic period of the Jazz Age are almost unknown, Age of Cthulhu VI: A Dream of Japan from Goodman Games being a very rare exception. It is a trend that continues on the Miskatonic Repository, Chaosium Inc.’s community content programme for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition. Here, A Chill in Abashiri – A 1920s Taisho-Era Japan Scenario is the exception alongside titles such as Thing torments poet, Daimyo calls on greatest help, Will the players fail? and After the Rain. Even Japan has its very own supplement devoted to the Taisho-Era of the nineteen twenties and nineteen thirties, in the form of ‘クトゥルフと帝国’ or ‘The Cthulhu Mythos and the Empire’, published in 2011 by Kadokawa. All this changes with the publication of Japan – Empire of Shadows: A Call of Cthulhu sourcebook for 1920s Imperial Japan.

Japan – Empire of Shadows: A Call of Cthulhu sourcebook for 1920s Imperial Japan presents a massive guide to Japan and her empire during the nineteen twenties and the beginning of the nineteen thirties. It includes a history of Japan, a guide to her peoples and their culture, a gazetteer of her major cities and locations across the empire including dozens of maps, discusses Occupations and skills for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition for the period and setting, examines the Mythos in Japan and her empire, and gives three narrative threads that throughout the book and around the empire. Primarily, it explores a country that has only been open to the rest of the world for seven decades. It is a country driven by conflicting drives. The drive to embrace the modern world whilst still looking to the past. The drive to emulate great empires such as that of Great Britain, but angry at the efforts of other world powers to curtail its road to greatness. This has fuelled a sense of resentment and frustration, which has led to the rise to nationalism and some terrible acts and attitudes upon the part of the authorities. The authors of Japan – Empire of Shadows do not shy away from addressing these issues as they arise in the course of the book and does so with sensitivity and sensible advice.

Japan – Empire of Shadows begins with an overview and a look at investigating the Mythos in period and setting, bound as it often is with or taking advantage of the greed and politics of the worst of mankind. It lays out the foundations and origins of Japan and its deep connections to the Mythos as lying long ago in the rise and fall of the lost continent of Mu before discussing the role of the Investigator in Japan, both Japanese and foreign-born, suggesting reasons as to why the latter might have come to Japan, Occupation by Occupation. In terms of Occupations, Japan – Empire of Shadows only adds the two new ones, the Martial Artist and the Resistance Fighter. Instead, it primarily discusses the roles that existing Occupations play in Japan in the period, making minor adjustments and adding the Japanese Etiquette skill. It also discusses the role of the Japanese Investigator in terms of gender, class, and ethnicity, noting that like in the USA of the period, they are the reasons given for discrimination in the period. However, such attitudes are not reflected in Japan – Empire of Shadows. Where the changes to Investigators in Japan – Empire of Shadows are relatively minor, the changes to skills are slightly more extensive. These are oddly listed in an appendix rather than after the Occupation descriptions at the front of the book, and are primarily led by Japanese Etiquette and how it works, including the use of honorifics and visiting cards, cultural practices such as the removal of shoes, bowing, and the polite lie. Japanese Etiquette will significantly feature in all three scenarios in the supplement and being able to observe cultural norms correctly will ensure that the Investigators get access to places they would not normally. The Japanese language is discussed as is its relationship to Naacal, before the supplement expands upon unarmed fighting specialities, both armed and unarmed.

Japan – Empire of Shadows shines though, in discussing Japanese Investigator motivations and the outlook of the Japanese in general. These include the acceptance of the fragility of existence, a collectivist ideal that places the survival of the group over the individual, and the moral justification of a lower rank person overthrowing or disobeying a person of higher rank. These provide a basic attitude that the player can use as guidance when attempting to roleplay an Investigator whose culture with which he is unfamiliar. These are bolstered by a general acceptance of the occult and more particular, the Kami, as their presence in Japan is more than mere folklore.

For the Keeper there is some quite lovely advice on how to set the scene for her Investigators. In particular, ‘The Sounds of Japan’ presents the reminiscences of film director Kurosawa Akira as to what his childhood sounded like, and this description can be used to help bring the world of Japan to life, at least aurally. This addition is indicative of the range of research that authors of Japan – Empire of Shadows have engaged in to add further verisimilitude to the setting, and again and again, small details like this help bring the Japan of the Taisho period to life.

Almost two thirds of Japan – Empire of Shadows is dedicated to three big chapters which in turn form a gazetteer of the capital city, Tokyo, then other cities in Japan, and lastly, the cities of the Japanese Empire. First, it spirals out from the Imperial Palace, looking at city ward after city ward, describing building after building, person after person of note, and more. So, in the Kojimachi Ward, this includes Tokyo Central Day, the Japanese Tourist Bureau, Tokyo Station Hotel, the Imperial Retail—noting that foreign embassies where based there following the Great Kanto Earthquake that destroyed many buildings, the Museum of Arms, the British Embassy, the Tokyo Geographical Society, Prince Fushimi’s Estate—the estate of Admiral Fushimi Hiroyasu, cousin to the Emperor, Peeresses School for Girls, the German Embassy, both the Future Imperial Diet Building and the temporary Diet Building, Radio Station JOAK, Hibiya Park, the Peers Club—a private members club, the Metropolitan Police Headquarters, the Imperial Theatre, the Mainichi News Building, Hogaku-za Theatre—converted into a film palace by Paramount Pictures, and more. There is a wealth of detail here given to every building and every location, many with floorplans and NPCs. These can be generic, like the Tokkō Special Higher Police Officer, a member of the secret police, or specific, all the way up to Crown Prince Hirohito and Crown Princess Nagako and other members of the Imperial family, who are often at odds with each other in terms of politics, what they believe to be the best future for Japan, and the factions they align with.

Throughout, and in addition, ‘Kaidan: Mysterious Stories’ presents traditional ghosts stories that the Keeper can develop into scenarios that her Investigators can look into and these again, are tied to particular locations. These are not the only scenario hooks in the three-part gazetteer in Japan – Empire of Shadows, but the others are more of a problem in terms of their accessibility. Too often they are specifically written into the descriptions, such as the plan to broadcast a performance of The King in Yellow on Radio Station JOAK, such that it is difficult to separate the hook from the description. Having presented and explored the eight wards of Tokyo and its outskirts, the supplement spirals further out, from Hakodate and Sapporo on Hokaido in the north to Nagasaki in the south, presenting each city in the same format as the various wards of the capital. Then it whirls away from the shores of Japan to examine the various ‘Cities of the Empire’—the book noting that this is a controversial term—including Seoul and Heijō (Pyongyang) in Korea, Vladivostok in Russia, Shanghai in China, Taipei on Taiwan, and even the island of Ponape. In many cases, this is the first presentation of these cities in roleplaying—at least in English—let alone for Call of Cthulhu. The most familiar city here will be Shanghai, having already been given a rich and deep treatment in Masks of Nyarlathotep, The Masks of Nyarlathotep Companion, and The Sassoon Files, but understandably, the approach here is from a Japanese point of view.

As well as the sections of ‘Kaidan: Mysterious Stories’ boxed text that appear dotted throughout all of this, there is not one, but three other important series of sections of boxed text, each a different colour, that also appear in the three gazetteers. These are parts of three narrative threads with run throughout the three chapters, each following the plot of particular scenario and where they appear, making use of the specific location that each box appears next to. What the authors of Japan – Empire of Shadows have done here is not include three separate scenarios in their own chapters at the end of the book, but literally threaded them throughout the chapters, ‘The City of Tokyo’, ‘Other Cities in Japan’, and ‘Cities of the Empire’. It is a clever idea, but it has its consequences as well as its benefits. Obviously, it specifically ties the narrative threads of each of the three scenarios to their particular locations via its layout so that the Keeper has both thread and location close together and thus easier to use together. On the other hand, the layout, with sometimes three boxes of text—one for each thread—on a single page, makes the layout cluttered and because the threads are so strongly tied to their locations, it is not necessarily easy to grasp the narrative for the whole plot because it has been broken up and spread throughout the book.

Now Japan – Empire of Shadows does attempt to ameliorate this issue. An overview of the supplement’s three narrative threads is given, including a Keeper summary, staging suggestions, historical notes, Mythos background, suggested means of involving the Investigators, and lists of the NPCs involved, handouts, and specific locations. These of course, would have been included at the beginning of a scenario anyway, and whether the format, which again, though clever, really makes the job of the Keeper any easier is debatable. The three are ‘Upon a Stone Altar’, ‘Color from the West’, and ‘Kamuy of the Northern Sky’. ‘Upon a Stone Altar’ concerns an expedition to the strange island of Ponape in the Japanese South Seas Mandate in search of evidence of a highly advanced, prehistoric civilization. When Imperial factions take an interest in the expedition, the Investigators find themselves taking a journey aboard an experimental submarine into Japan’s deep past to lost continent of Mu to confront a dark god. ‘Color from the West’ turns a classic Mythos creature—a Colour Out of Space—into an industrial, political, and experimental nightmare as the Investigators travel to Korea to locate the source of a mysterious coal that glows even when it is not being burned and seems to have a horribly deadly effect when actually burned. The investigation is hampered by the fractious politics in Korea where a resistance has arisen to throw out the Japanese occupiers and the authorities work to suppress dissent. ‘Kamuy of the Northern Sky’ involves a frothy mix of ancient pyramids, Antarctic explorers, native Ainu hunters, Russian mystics, and lycanthropy as the Investigators attempt to find a missing para-historian and prevent the resurrection of an ancient god. One thing that is notable about all three scenarios is how they are not only woven in and around the various cities and locations within across Japan and beyond, but also how they are woven around the lives of real historical figures. There are some that the players and their Investigators will be very surprised to meet. The scenarios themselves are all good with interesting backgrounds and lots of historical detail.

The last few chapters of Japan – Empire of Shadows presents a who’s who with ‘Citizens of the Empire’, including the good, the bad, and the Gaijin, all with Mythos connections big and small; a history of Japan that runs from millions of years ago to the beginning of the nineteen thirties; and a solid overview of the country’s culture, infrastructure, major organisations and institutions, and more. It is also here, penultimately, that Japan – Empire of Shadows explores the Mythos in Japan and her territorial possessions, and her myths in general. It highlights how Japan already has its own myths and legends, often connected to Shintoism. Numerous creatures taken from Japanese folklore described and given stats, such as Bakemono, Gaki, Kappa, Oni, and Tengu, as are numerous Chinese creatures. Some of these, like the Kappa and the Kitsune, actually inflict no Sanity loss! Also discussed here is how occult research, including psychic research, is conducted in Japan along with several sample occult tomes.

Here though, Japan – Empire of Shadows is at its weakest. Its treatment of the Cthulhu Mythos is hit and miss. Where it succeeds is in its practical application of the Mythos, in the three narrative threads which wend their way through much of the book. Where it fails is in the theoretical application, in the supplement’s discussion of the Mythos in Japan. It is understandable that a strong emphasis should be placed upon Japan’s own folklore, but in the process it all but ignores the possible presence of any other Mythos creature in Japan or Japanese held territory or any cult—domestic or foreign. Some creatures like the Mi-Go and the Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath appear in hooks in some locations, and there is a discussion of the Black Dragon Society, but that is all. Now it could be said that this leaves plenty of room for the Keeper to create her own, but some pointers would have been would have been useful…

Lastly, a set of appendices provide lists of equipment and their prices, stats for weapons both those of feudal Japan and the firearms of modern Japan, details of transport to and from and in Japan—covering air, sea, and land, a list of inspirational media (which highlights the lack of gaming material relevant to the period), and all of the handouts for the supplement’s three scenarios. Here too are the supplement’s new skills and a set of six pre-generated Investigators. The latter are mostly Japanese and include a female archaeologist who has studied abroad, a female linguist, a male explorer, a male Shinto priest who has knowledge of several folklore spells, and a female journalist. The exception is a male Korean, a former soldier turned bodyguard. These are all designed to complement each as a group. It would have been perhaps useful to have had a foreign-born Investigator included in the mix.

Physically, Japan – Empire of Shadows is presented in swathes of colour supported by a profusion of period photographs as well as pieces of art. This is alongside the numerous maps of the various cities in the gazetteer and floorplans of various buildings throughout the empire. However, this does give the supplement a rather busy look so that there often a lot to take in from one page to the next. Japan – Empire of Shadows is well written and an easy read from start to finish, but the content of the book could have been better organised, ideally to put all of the background material together in one place and all of the Occupation and Investigator material together for ease of reference and use.

Japan – Empire of Shadows: A Call of Cthulhu sourcebook for 1920s Imperial Japan is without a doubt the definitive guide to Japan in the late Taisho and early Showa periods, for both general roleplaying and Lovecraftian investigative roleplaying. The wealth of detail in this volume is genuinely amazing and presented at a level that is accessible and usable by the Keeper. Although understandably not as ably produced as Regency Cthulhu, Japan – Empire of Shadows is as good as what was the best Call of Cthulhu supplement of 2022, opening up a very different world to the Cthulhu Mythos and making it accessible to play and explore. Japan – Empire of Shadows: A Call of Cthulhu sourcebook for 1920s Imperial Japan is both a standout title from the Miskatonic Repository and a superb piece of work and research that is undeniably the best release for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition in 2023.

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

—oOo—
Published in 1978 in TSR, Inc., Gamma World introduced the roleplaying hobby to the post-apocalypse genre of surviving after the bomb and the fall of civilisation, although its progenitor, Metamorphosis Alpha had explored similar ideas, but set on a giant generation starship rather than the Earth. Gamma World, Second Edition was published five years later in 1983 and shift the setting to a different part of the USA, inherit and develop some of the mechanics, embrace the gonzo aspects of the setting even further, and present a new scenario. Gamma World, Second Edition is also a boxed set, containing the sixty-four-page ‘Basic Rules Booklet’ and the thirty-two-page ‘Adventure Booklet’, as well as dice and a large poster map. Gamma World, Second Edition was designed to be accessible and serve as an introduction to roleplaying taking as its model, Dungeons & Dragons Set 1: Basic Rules, the famous ‘red box’ edition designed by Frank Mentzer which began what is known as the ‘BECMI’ line. This consisted of Dungeons & Dragons Set 1: Basic Rules, Dungeons & Dragons Set 2: Expert Rules, Dungeons & Dragons Set 3: Companion Rules, Dungeons & Dragons Set 4: Master Rules, and Dungeons & Dragons Set 5: Immortals Rules. Yet Gamma World, Second Edition would not fully achieve its intended accessibility and introductory aims, primarily because of an organisation that although better than Gamma World, First Edition, was still not perfect, and because its rules, also inspired by Gamma World, First Edition, are not as easy and as easily presented as they should have been.

Gamma World, Second Edition, as described in the ‘Adventure Booklet’ takes place in a savage wasteland ravaged by radiation, biological agents, and chemical agents used in the ‘Social Wars’ of the early twenty-fourth century. The conflict bent and broke the very land itself, shattering parts of it and sending it into seas as less than one in five thousand of Humanity’s teeming billions survived and the mutagenic cocktail left behind twisted the genetics of every form of life on the planet—including man. Mutated men, animals, and plants twisted into new forms and gained wondrous new powers, both mental and physical. So now humanoid raccoons capable of generating illusions and repulsion fields and of telekinesis and telepathy scavenge for the advanced technology and weapons left behind by the Ancients, three-metre-high jack rabbits with chameleon powers and antlers serve as herd animals or mounts, and land sharks literately swim under the ground of deserts or deep snow using telekinesis, hunting prey. In the century-and-a-half since the conflict, societies have organised into tribal clans and feudal states, varying in their technology use, with highly technological enclaves rare. Found across these blasted landscapes, there are those that seek to forge a better world, though not always for the better… For example, the Knights of the Genetic Purity want to preserve the ‘purity’ of Humanity by wiping out Humanoids, The Iron Society wants to destroy all Pure Strain Humans, the Zoopremisists would stamp out all Humanoids and Pure Strain Humans in favour of Mutated Animals, and the Friends of Entropy would smash all life and mechanical activity! Others, like the Brotherhood of Thought, which fosters a sense of benevolence in all and the semi-monastic Healers who tend to the sick and the injured, seek a more positive future…

A Player Character in Gamma World, Second Edition can either be a Pure Strain Human, a Humanoid with mutant powers, or a Mutated Animal. He cannot be a Mutated Plant—unless allowed by the Game Master. He has six attributes—Mental Strength, Intelligence, Dexterity, Charisma, Constitution, and Physical Strength—which range in value between three and eighteen. A Pure Strain Human does not suffer mutations of any kind, will find it easier to work out how artefacts operate, and be recognised by robots, security systems, and A.I.s as such, which sometimes means the Pure Strain Human will not be attacked by them or can even give them orders. He also has better stats and more Hit Points. A Humanoid can look like a Pure Strain Human, but if he has any physical Mutations that make him look different, he will not be recognised as a Pure Strain Human by robots, security systems, or A.I.s, which will thus not obey his orders and may even attack him. A Mutated Animal can never pass a security check and be recognised by robots, security systems, or A.I.s. He will probably have claws or a similar feature meaning he is better in unarmed combat, and like the Humanoid, will have a number of Mutations and may gain more if exposed to anything mutagentic.

To create a character, the player rolls four six-sided dice and discards the lowest for all six attributes. If the Player Character is a Pure Strain Human, the lowest die is not discarded for Intelligence, Charisma, or Constitution. However, the maximum that a Pure Strain Human can have for Intelligence and Charisma is a twenty-one, and eighteen for his Constitution. To determine the number of Hit Points for a Humanoid or Mutated Animal, the player rolls a number of six-sided dice equal to the character’s Constitution, whereas eight-sided dice are rolled for the Pure Strain Human. A four-sided die is rolled to determine the number of Physical Mutations a Humanoid or Mutated Animal has, and then again for Mental Mutations, both types of mutation being rolled for randomly.

Name: Gronson
Type: Pure Strain Human
Mental Strength 14 Intelligence 14 Dexterity 08
Charisma 18 Constitution 18 Physical Strength 16
Hit Points: 78

Name: Neek
Type: Humanoid
Mental Strength 17 Intelligence 13 Dexterity 11
Charisma 10 Constitution 10 Physical Strength 15
Hit Points: 32

Mental Mutations: Dual Brain – Brain #1: Fear Generation, Heightened Intelligence, Will Force; Brain #2: Genius Capability (Mechanical), Telekinetic Arm, Teleportation
Physical Mutations: Regeneration, Vision Defect (Tunnel Vision)

It is clear that going from Gamma World, First Edition to Gamma World, Second Edition, the designers have not entirely solved the problem of a Pure Strain Human not actually being very interesting to play. It is a problem which besets post-apocalypse roleplaying games. Although Pure Strain Human has higher stats, more Hit Points, and can better interact with technology, both the Humanoid and the Mutated Animal receive mutations which make them different, sometimes difficult to play, but obviously more powerful and more fun. Some powers are limited by the number of times a day they can be used, but others are permanent, but they can be very powerful. It is also possible to roll for defect mutations, both physical and mental. Consequently, it is possible to create a Player Character with more defect mutations useful ones. In the long term though, the Pure Strain Human can find, identify, and use the artefacts of the Ancients. Gaining access to and using technology is not an intrinsic power though, and a Player Character Pure Strain Human has to go adventure to find that technology and the likelihood is that the technology will use a power cell and run out and… Plus this is exactly what the other character types will be doing, although not as handily as the Pure Strain Human. So, until such times as a Pure Strain Human can gain access to advanced technology, he is the ‘weakest’ character type.

The mutations can be what you expect and weird and wacky. So, a defect could be Attraction Odour, mean the Mutated Animal or Humanoid exudes a fragrance that attracts carnivores, but he could have Death Field Generation which means he drains every living within range of all but a single Hit Point, before dropping unconscious, antlers or horns that inflict damage, or Radiation Eyes that emit blasts of deadly radiation. In general, the more powerful a mutation, the more the roleplaying game places a limit on its use. Some do require further explanation or are super powerful, like Time Manipulation, which has the possibility of sending either the user or a target decades into the past or future, or Planar Travel, which opens a temporal portal to another plane. Its use is never fully explained.

Mechanically, Gamma World, Second Edition is quite simple. To have his character undertake an action, a player multiplies the appropriate attribute for the action by the difficulty factor, typically between one and five, set by the Game Master, and attempts to roll equal to or under it on percentile dice. That essentially is it and the rules do not go into any detail than that. Combat is different though and works much like it did in Gamma World, First Edition and Metamorphosis Alpha. It uses three ‘Attack Matrixes’, one for physical combat, one for ranged combat, and one for mental combat. Each weapon has a Weapon Class, such as nine for a blowgun and fifteen for a Black Ray Pistol. The Weapon Class—the higher the better—is cross-referenced against the target’s Armour Class—the lower the better—and this gives a target to roll equal to or greater on a twenty-sided die. Armour Class represents the armour worn only as there is no Dexterity bonus to Armour Class. There are, however, modifiers from high and low Dexterity to attack a target, and from high and low Strength when determining damage for physical attacks. Many advanced weapons can be deadly. The Black Ray Pistol instantly kills an organic target!

The rules also cover Tech Level—either Tech Level I, Tech Level II, or Tech Level III, indicating a tribal, feudal/pre-industrial, or industrial society, respectively; movement and time; encounters and searching—the Player Characters will likely end up doing this a lot; and interacting with NPCs and recruiting NPCs. In general, the rules are straightforward, though they do feel influenced by Basic Dungeons & Dragons in places. The rules also cover the discover and use of artefacts.

As with Metamorphosis Alpha, the setting for Gamma World includes lots and lots of artefacts. These range from stun rays and laser pistols to energy maces and fusion rifles, from photon grenades and concussion bombs to mutation bombs and negation missiles, from plastic armour and powered attack armour to turbine cars and bubble cars, from energy cloaks and anti-grav sleds to atomic energy cells to pain reducer drugs and life rays, from light cargo lifter and ecology bots to security robotoids to warbots. Robots, bots, and borgs get their own section, and there are even some useful descriptions and details given of fixed machinery like broadcast power stations, rejuv chambers, and think tanks. There is, though, a distinct emphasis on weapons and armour to the equipment, all of which the player characters can find in various conditions and use—if they can work out how each device operates. Where Metamorphosis Alpha had the players describe and roleplay what their characters were doing to work out what a device does, in Gamma World, First Edition there were ‘flow’ charts. In Gamma World, Second Edition, there is a simple matrix for this. Each artefact has a complexity number and for every ten minutes a Player Character spends examining an artefact, both he and the Game Master roll a die. The Game Master adds her result to the complexity number, whilst the player’s result reduces the complexity number. Essentially, the player and Game Master are attempting to out roll each other, but the result is time consuming both in and out of the game.

Gamma World, Second Edition describes some sixty monsters of the post-apocalyptic future. From Androids (Thinkers, Workers, and Warriors), Arks (Hound Folk), and Arns (Dragon Bugs) to Yexils (Orange Scarfers), Zarns (Borer Beetles), and Zeeth (Gamma Grass), there are some entertaining creations and some favourites of the genre. For example, Badders or Digger Folk are anthropomorphic badgers with an evil disposition, the power of Empathy, and a penchant for raiding; Hoops or Floppsies are mutant rabbitoids who have the Mass Mind and Telepathy Mutations and the ability to change metal into rubber; and Perths or Gamma Bushes, whose flowers can emit deadly blasts of light or radiation. Plus, some thirteen Cryptic Alliances are detailed, including their Tech Levels, membership, numbers encountered, and secret sign along with their descriptions. These provide a ready source of potential allies and enemies for a campaign.

One thing missing from the ‘Basic Rules Booklet’ are the roleplaying game’s tables. It turns out that these are given at the end of the ‘Adventure Booklet’. So, the table for rolling for Mutations, matrixes for attacks, poison, and radiation, encounters, weapons, and more, are all in the ‘Adventure Booklet’. These are designed to be separated from the booklet, but it is odd to have the rules necessary for character creation in a separate book well away from where they are actually needed.

The primary content in the ‘Adventure Booklet’ is the adventure ‘Rite of Passage’. It sets up the Player Characters as inhabitants of the small village of Grover, a Tech Level I settlement part of Clan Cambol in the remains of western Pennsylvania. To become adults, they must undergo a rite of passage in which they travel to the dead city of Pitz Burke and return with an item which will become their personal totem. In addition to the rite of passage, the Player Characters are assigned a special mission. This is to rescue three fellow clan members held hostage by a band of Carrin and Bloodbird brigands in the city. The Player Characters must cross part of Allegheny—which is nicely detailed in the descriptions of the region—and have encounters and make contacts along the way, including with the Lil, small, graceful humanoids with fairy wings. The Lil actually want the help of the Player Characters as they have a similar situation with their own also being held hostage. The Lil hideout—or Bramble—feels not dissimilar to that of James M. Ward’s ‘Paths of the Lil’, which originally appeared in White Dwarf Issue No. 16 and was then reprinted in The Best of White Dwarf Scenarios. The ruins of Pitz Burke are nicely detailed with particular attention paid to the locations that feature in the hostage plot ‘Rite of Passage’. It is a fairly tough adventure overall, and the Player Characters will want to find and determine how to use some arms and armour above the very basic they begin with to give themselves more of an edge. The Lil will help with this, which will go some way to addressing the initial powerlessness of the Pure Strain Human versus the Humanoid and Mutated Animal Player Characters.

The ‘Adventure Booklet’ also includes advice on running and creating Gamma World campaigns, which emphasises the need to have the Player Characters act with both society and the Cryptic Alliances. The standing of a Player Character with a particular society or Cryptic Alliance is measured by his Rank with it. Rank affects a Player Character’s Charisma when interacting with the society or Cryptic Alliance and his chancing of obtaining or borrowing an artefact from the society or Cryptic Alliance. In order to increase a Player Character’s Rank with any one society or Cryptic Alliance, he must spend Status Points. These are earned for defeating NPCs, donating artefacts, successfully completing missions, and so on. Basically, what a Player Character would do on an adventure. They are the equivalent of Experience Points in another roleplaying game, but spent to acquire Ranks with a society or Cryptic Alliance. Indeed, Gamma World, Second Edition does not actually have Experience Points, it is not a Class and Level roleplaying game, and there is no way for a player to improve his character except through discovering better and better equipment and potentially, improving the equivalent of his social standing.

Physically, Gamma World, Second Edition is well presented, but not necessarily well organised. Everything feels just a little bit too crammed in, especially in the ‘Basic Rules Booklet’, so that finding particular rules is not easy and that is not helped by having the rules for the roleplaying game and explanations of how its tables are intended to work and the tables needed to run the game in a separate book. The artwork is all very good and the cartography, whether of the locations in Pitz Burke, or Pitz Burke itself, the Allegheny region, and the remains of North America on the roleplaying game’s double-sided poster map, are excellent and colourful.

—oOo—Chris Baylis reviewed Gamma World, Second Edition in ‘Game Reviews’ in Imagine No. 7 (October 1983) and was positive throughout. “For a post nuclear holocaust role-playing game, GAMMA WORLD game has just about all the right ingredients, in the correct proportions. It is a very good introduction into the fantasy world of role-playing, and should seriously rival all other RPGs.”

Dana Lombardy reviewed Gamma World, Second Edition in ‘Gaming’ in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Vol. 8, No. 8. (August 1984), describing its redesign as being, “[S]o extensive it should be considered a new game ... Gamma World offers one of the more bizarre and hostile environments to role-play in.” and highlighted how, “[T]he technology is disjointed. You can have a dog-man with a spear fighting alongside a robot with a laser, allied against humanoids with pistols and swords.” Her conclusion was measured, stating that, “If you prefer more straightforward science fiction with known and approximately equal abilities and weapons, then Gamma World may not be for you. It’s a topsy-turvy world, where the average pure-strain human is hard-pressed to exist among plants and animals mutated by humanity’s wars. But if you like a challenge, and want to role-play something really different — Gamma World could be it.”—oOo—
What stands out with Gamma World, Second Edition in comparison with Gamma World, First Edition is the effort to reorganise, codify, and clarify the rules and the setting and bring its presentation more in line with Basic Dungeons & Dragons and Star Frontiers. For the most part, the designers succeeded, although the ‘Basic Rules Booklet’ is just a bit too busy to be fully successful. Nevertheless, it is a far more accessible and easier to understand edition of the roleplaying game than its predecessor, all done with an eye by TSR, Inc. to make it appeal to a wider and more commercial audience. However, with that eye to commercialism, there is a corresponding reining in of the setting’s weirder, wackier elements, that though still there, are kept very much in the background. They would only creep forward and be embraced by later editions, most notably in the D&D Gamma World Roleplaying Game (or Gamma World, Seventh Edition) and arguably in what is its spiritual successor, Goodman Games’ Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic.

Often regarded as the definitive version of the roleplaying game, Gamma World, Second Edition is definitely the classic version and the version that introduced its post-apocalyptic setting and the post-apocalyptic genre to a wider audience.

The Imperium of Mankind has stood for over ten millennia and spans a million worlds across the galaxy. At its heart sits the Emperor, the beacon whose light touches the billions and billions of Humanity unquestioned and blesses them all. Some though, feel his benign imperial blessings more than most. For they are the lucky ones. They have been chosen from amongst the teeming masses to serve him through one of his great servants elevated in great service to forward the Emperor’s divine might and ensure the safety of the empire. At the direction of such a patron, these Imperial Citizens will gain privileges far beyond that imagined by their fellows—the chance to travel and see worlds far beyond their own, enjoy wealth and comfort that though modest is more than they could have dreamed of, and witness great events that they might have heard of years later by rumour or newscast. In return, they will be directed to investigate mysteries and murders, experience horror and heresies, expose corruption and callousness by their patron, whether in pursuit of their patron’s agenda, his faction’s agenda, the Emperor’s will, or all three. Their patron can help them, but not too much lest his involvement become too overt, or it can hinder their efforts, and whilst their success in any mission will ensure they retain his favour, failure can lead to death, exile, or worse. In the Forty-First Millennium, everyone is an asset and everyone is expendable, but some can survive long enough to make a difference in the face of an uncaring universe and the machinery of the Imperium of Mankind grinding its way forward into a glorious future.

This is the set-up for Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum, the latest roleplaying game published by Cubicle 7 Entertainment to be set in Games Workshop’s far future of the Forty-First Millennium. In scale it shares much with Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Fourth Edition, but in terms of tone and scope, as well as what characters the players roleplay, it harks back to Dark Heresy, the very first roleplaying game to be set within the Warhammer 40,000 milieu and published in 2008, the very first roleplaying game that Game Workshop had published in two decades. Dark Heresy would, of course, be later published by Fantasy Flight Games and receive a second edition. Although the scale is similar, there are differences. Apart from being derived mechanically from Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Fourth Edition and the Player Characters serving a Patron rather than a member of the Inquisition—although that is a possibility for the Patron—the major difference is the change in setting. Each edition of Dark Heresy had its own setting, and so does Imperium Maledictum. This is the Macharian Sector. Conquered and then founded by General Macharius, later Lord Solar and Saint Macharius, his death would result in the Macharian Heresy as his generals squabbled over who should succeed him and whole worlds he had conquered rebelled in his absence. Order would eventually be restored, but the sector would subsequently suffer further catastrophic losses as the Great Rift opened and the Noctis Aeterna spread, cutting off communication, trade, and psychic links with rest of the Galactic West that lay between it and Terra. Only recently has the mysterious Noctis Aeterna begun to recede, the Days of Blinding ended, and links reforged with worlds lost under its pall and beyond the sector itself. As the Imperium re-establishes and solidifies its authority, there remain dangers from within and without. From within, heretics turn to the Dark Gods with their promises and falsehoods and corruption is rife, wasting the Emperor’s resources and wealth, and from without, there is always the danger of raids by Orks or worse, Tyranoids.

Play in Imperium Maledictum does not begin with character creation, but with the selection and creation of a Patron. For the Game Master and her players, this is the most important NPC in the roleplaying game. The Patron, a powerful individual, employs the Player Characters, directs and supports missions he assigns to them, and rewards them for their successes. The Patron comes from one of nine factions—Adeptus Administratum, Adeptus Astra Telepathica, Adeptus Mechanicus, Adeptus Ministorum, Astra Militarum, Imperial Fleet, Infractionists, Inquisition, and Rogue Trader Dynasty—and each has a degree of Influence within the faction and owes a Duty to faction. Two roles are suggested for each Faction, for example, Astropath and Sister of Silence for Adeptus Astra Telepathica, and Criminal Mastermind and Guildmaster for Infractionists. These provide the Boon, which the players and their characters will be aware of, whilst the Game Master will secretly select a Liability for the Patron, one per Boon. The Patron has a Motivation and a Demeanour. Apart from the Liability, the creation of the Patron is a collaborative process between the players and the Game Master, and there are tables upon which can both roll for during the process.

Patron Faction: Imperial Fleet
Influence: +2 with the Imperial Fleet
Duty: Voidship Captain
Duty Boon: Voidship
Boon: Astropathic Communication
Liability: Dealbreaker
Motivation: Unity
Demeanour: Sombre
A Player Character in Imperium Maledictum is defined by his characteristics, Origin, Faction, and Role. The nine characteristics are Weapon Skill, Ballistic Skill, Strength, Toughness, Agility, Intelligence, Perception, Willpower, and Fellowship. The Origin is the Player Character’s homeworld, such as a Forge World or a Hive World, and it which provides bonuses to some of the characteristics and an item of equipment. The faction is the organisation which trained the Player Character and to which he belongs to. It provides bonuses to the Player Character’s characteristics, skills and skill specialisations, a Talent, Influence with the Faction, and equipment. These can either from the generic list or a Duty , which provides a complete package. For example, the Duty option for the Adeptus Administratum consist of Clerk, Officio Medicae, and Scrivener. A Player Character has a Role, of which there are six in Imperium Maledictum. These are the Interlocuter, typically investigators and diplomats; Mystic, Psykers who use Warp powers; Savant, scholars who conduct and retain knowledge; Penumbra, spies, thieves, and assassins who specialise in stealth; Warrior, skilled fighters; and Zealot, ultra loyalists who often put their loyalty before their lives. To create a character, a player rolls for his characteristics on 2d10+20 each, and then for Origin, Faction, and Role. At each stage—as per Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Fourth Edition—the player can make choices or keep the results of each roll. If he does the latter, he earns extra Experience Points to spend on improving his character. That is, except for Role, which the Game Master—as the Patron—can select and the Player Character earn more Experience Points or choose himself and gain none. In addition, a player can roll for, or choose, a name, appearance, and connections, and then through answering a few questions develop some background, a Divination, and some goals for the character.

Name: Gaius
Origin: Hive World
Faction: Adeptus Ministorum (Missionary)
Role: Zealot
Divination: Mercy is a sign of weakness
XP: 200

CHARACTERISTICS
Weapon Skill 31 (3) Ballistic Skill 37 (3) Strength 36 (3) Toughness 31 (3) Agility 39 (3)
Intelligence 27 (2) Perception 31 (3) Willpower 39 (3) Fellowship 27 (2)

SKILLS
Discipline 49 (Fear 54), Lore 37, Melee 36 (One-Handed 41), Presence 44, Rapport 37

TALENTS
Faithful (Imperial Cult), Flagellant, Martyrdom

EQUIPMENT
Ugly Filtration Plugs, Autopistol, Chainsword, Laud Hailer, Robes, Holy Icon, Backpack, 200 Solars

APPEARANCE
23, old eyes, orange hair, pox marks

Mechanically, Imperium Maledictum is a percentile system for both characteristics and skills. Notably, there is a relatively limited number of skills, which are quite broad in what they cover, and then three specialisations per skill. There is a limit of how many advances that a Player Character can have assigned to a skill or a specialisation—four or a total of twenty points each—and an advance is worth a flat five-point increase. So, in comparison to Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Fourth Edition, there is a certain streamlining to skills, specialisations, and advances in Imperium Maledictum. The core roll is of the percentile dice versus a characteristic or a skill or a specialisation. Success Levels determine how well a Player Character or opponent did and are determined by deducting the tens digit of the dice result from the tens digit of the characteristic, skill, or specialisation being tested. The situation or a Talent can alter the number of Success Levels generated. Advantage in a situation enables a player to swap the tens and unit dice around if it benefits his character, whilst Disadvantage forces the player to swap the tens and unit dice around if it penalises his character. Rolling the same numbers on the dice indicates a Critical result if successful or a Fumble if a failure, especially in combat.

Throughout the game, players will keep track of two important factors. One is Influence, ranging from ‘+5’ and ‘Honoured’ to ‘-5’ and ‘Hunted’, for each Faction. It can be derived from a Player Character’s own or Personal Level or it can from a Patron, although there may be consequences for bringing the Patron’s Influence to bear on a situation depending upon the circumstances. Influence not only represents standing with a Faction, but when Social Tests are made, indicates the number of extra Success Levels to be added to the roll, and these can, of course, be positive or negative, depending on the Influence value. Influence can be gained or lost through play. The other factor is Superiority, a group resource, which the Player Characters can gain via good play and preparing for situations and in combat by good rolls, and is then spent to add Success Levels. However, it can also be lost for the reverse. Superiority is also measured against the Resolve factor of an NPC and if greater can make the NPC desperate or even run away.

Combat in Imperium Maledictum uses the same core mechanics, typically fought out over two or three zones. As you would expect, the rules cover movement, the environment, actions, and more, with options or miniature or grid-based combat if the playing group prefers. A Player Character has a single action and a single movement per round. If an attack is successful, the number on the units die indicates the location of the strike. Critical wounds are gained when either a Critical roll is made on an attack or when the damage suffered exceeds the defendant’s total number of Wounds. There is a set of Critical Hit tables for each body part at the back of the Imperium Maledictum book. The rules also cover vehicles and vehicle combat.

A Player Character also begins play with three points of Fate. This can be spent or burnt. It can be spent to reroll a failed Test, to gain Advantage on a Test, add a Success Level to a test after it is rolled, to gain the Initiative in combat, and to ignore the effects of a Critical Wound or remove a Condition. It can be burnt to avoid dying (‘Die Another Day’), completely avoid one source of incoming damage (‘The Emperor protects’), to not develop a rolled mutation (‘Steel Your Soul’), choose the results of a test (‘For the Emperor’), and to gain Superiority (‘Turn the Tide’), especially when the Player Characters have none. It is also possible for a Player Character to gain Corruption, ranging from one points and Minor Corruption to four points and Major Exposure. This can include witnessing a Lesser Daemon or having contact with a Chaos Mutant or being exposed to the site of a Chaos Ritual or making a deal with a daemon. It can be resisted by a Fortitude Test or a Discipline Test, depending on the source of the Corruption, reducing the Corruption suffered by one point per Success Level rolled. If the amount of Corruption becomes too much, a Player Character can succumb to the Corruption and suffer from mutations or malignancies—and there is a table of both results.

It is also possible to play a Psyker, such as a Sanctioned Psyker of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica, and who have taken the Mystic Role during character creation. A Psyker can have minor psychic powers like ‘Call Vermin’ or ‘Jinx’ and study disciplines such as Divination or Pyromancy. To use a power his character possesses, a player rolls a Psychic Mastery Test, modified by the difficulty of the power, and if successful, applies the effect. The Psyker also gains Warp Charge for using the power, and as long as the total Warp Charge does not exceed the Psyker’s Warp Threshold—equal to the Willpower bonus—he has everything under control. To bleed off Warp Charge, the Psyker’s player must successfully roll a Purgation test, although is only required to do so in stressful situations, like combat. This also requires a roll on the ‘Psychic Phenomena’ table and gives results such as ‘Rot and Decaying’ destroying any foodstuffs in the area or unleashing a ‘Banshee Howl’. If total Warp Charge does exceed the Psyker’s Warp Threshold, a successful Psychic Mastery Test will still keep it under control, but if failed, the power of the Warp contained within the Psyker’s body is bled off catastrophically, requiring a roll on the ‘Perils of the Warp’ table, with results such as ‘Gibbering Wreck’ which causes the Psyker to scream as the insights of the Warp twists his mind, stuns him, and exposes him to Moderate Corruption or ‘Daemonic Emergence’ in which a daemon forces its way out of the Warp. Once a character has the Psyker Talent, he immediately gains a Minor Psychic Power and access to a Discipline, and can later spend Experience Points to purchase further Minor Psychic Powers and Powers within a Discipline. Purchasing the Psyker Talent grants access to another Discipline.

Imperium Maledictum has an extensive equipment list, which includes classic Warhammer 40,000 weapons like the boltgun and the power sword. Services and transport are also covered, as is augmetics, the replacement of missing body parts. There is guidance too, on what the Player Characters can do during between missions, which might be endeavours, like combat training, commissioning a new piece of gear, engaging in religious worship, and more. For the Game Master, there is a very good overview of the Imperium and how the Macharian Sector is tied to the Imperium, and in more detail, Macharian Sector and its history. The various factions and their motivations in the sector are discussed, there are descriptions of each of the major planets—nearly forty of them—and their notable features, personalities, particular cults, and so on. There is also a good bestiary, which provides details of various NPCs such as a Manfactorum Labourer of the Adeptus Mechanicus or a Voidsman of the Imperial Fleet, with advice on how to use them as well as their stats. Enemies include a range of cultists, rogue psykers, daemons, and more.

The advice for the Game Master includes game set-up and Session Zero, getting the tone right for the players, how to create and run investigations, and general advice on handling various aspects of the rules, like encounters and giving out rewards for the Player Characters. There is a map of the Marcharius Sector inside the front and back cover. What there is not in Imperium Maledictum is a beginning scenario and that is its biggest omission. There is plenty of background from which the Game Master can create her own scenarios, but there is no starting point to get the group playing straight away.

In terms of play style, the Player Characters do have limited, but powerful agency and motivation. Theirs is the agency to conduct investigations on behalf of their Patron, but also at his suffrage. If they fail, they embarrass their Patron at the very least, at the very worst they could be discarded and replaced by their Patron just as easily as he plucked them from their ordinary obscurity to serve him. They are also at the mercy of their Patron’s enemies, likely as equally powerful, if not more, so they have to be careful of Imperial factional politics in the Marcharius sector in a way they never had to be before. Consequently, potentially running foul of the system presents almost as much danger as the cultists, rogue psykers, Chaos daemons, and other threats they might face as the obvious dangers to the Imperium. This balance between the ordinary and the outré is one that really did call for a scenario to see how it works and to showcase how an investigation is handled in Imperium Maledictum.

Physically, Imperium Maledictum is very well presented with great art as you would expect from a volume with access to Games Workshop’s vast library of artwork. The book is also decently written and the rules are easy to grasp and understand.

Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum looks both backwards and forwards. Backwards to Dark Heresy and the first Warhammer 40,000 roleplaying game published in 2008 with its emphasis upon investigations into dark cults, Chaos, corruption, and mysteries in the Forty-First Millennium on a par in terms of power level with Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, but forwards because Cubicle 7 Entertainment uses its own setting and also a streamlined version of the same mechanics as Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Fourth Edition, but designed for slicker, faster play. The result is that Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum is a solid introduction to roleplaying in the Imperium of Mankind and facing its perils.

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

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. Another popular choice of system for fanzines, is Goodman Games’ Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, such as Crawl! and Crawling Under a Broken Moon. One aspect of Crawling Under a Broken Moon is that it is designed to be played using the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game and not the Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic, despite it presenting a post-apocalyptic setting. Not so Mutant High School.

Mutant High School is a fanzine inspired by The Toxic Avenger, Class of Nuke ’Em High, Weird Science, et al—and although it does not list it, at least tonally, the roleplaying game, Teenagers from Outerspace, published by R. Talsorian Games, Inc. Published by Goodman Games, Mutant High School is set in No-Go City, some time in the near future. Formerly the city of Fresno, California, the radioactive waste capital of North America, an earthquake burst the underground storage tank for the waste, causing a geyser to erupt and shower the inhabitants in mutagenic goo that not only mutated every single one of them, but also made them sufficiently toxic themselves that any encounter with them who is not already mutated, has a chance of mutating them. So, the authorities swept in, locked down the city, built a wall around it, and with the enactment of the ‘Maximum Extreme Disproportionate Response to Emergent Mutations Act’—also known as the ‘MEDeR’M’ act—strictly controlled access to the city, with guards in hazmat suits on the walls and the ever-present buzzing of surveillance drones. Both internet access and mobile connection have been severely curtailed. Since Ooze Day, the former Fresno has been dubbed No-Go City or the Mutant Quarter.

As a consequence, the inhabitants of No-Go City have to get by on limited resources and information access. Which includes its students at Bullroar High School. For example, with no other high school to compete against, Coach Phelan, a Plantient strain of the coffee plant, has set up rival teams. Elsewhere, the inhabitants of No-Go City have been forced to recycle over and over, including turning vehicles into rough and ready jalopies (or rickety rides), cloths and so on, whilst there is a thriving black market—if the smugglers can get it past the guards and the roly-polys (or robo-police, who only have an occasional identifying No-Go City inhabitants as actually being human!)—for almost everything else. Alternatively, the inhabitants have access to their own homegrown drugs, including ‘27/7 Dust’, a potent stimulant, and ‘Telepathashish’, a telepathic weed that is sentient and encourages everyone nearby to say, “Just say yes”.

In terms of characters, a player takes the role of either a Mutant, Manimal, or Plantient, but not Pure Strain Human, who is a high school student. Otherwise, Player Characters are normal, First Level rather than Zero Level, and instead of rolling for Background, a player rolls for Archetype, such as Band Geek, Goth, or Punk. This provides some equipment and a special ability. For example, the Motorhead starts play with a rickety ride, a piecemeal toolkit, and +1d on all attempts to repair automobile and small engines. Besides their mutations, each Player Character is also ‘Best in Town’ at something, making them stand out, whether that is a specific form of attack, using a mutation, a skill check, and so on, and possesses a ‘Cool Mutation’, a mutation that makes them physically stand out even more, but which does not provide any other detail.
Since the inhabitants of No-Go City have the misfortune to live there, they are prone to bad luck. Instead of Fleeting Luck as per Mutant Crawl Classics, the inhabitants and thus the Player Characters have ‘Oozing Luck’. Gained for rolls of natural twenty and good play and lost for rolls of natural one, Luck ion No-Go City tends to either stick around or ooze away. It can actually go below zero and impose a penalty to the Player Character’s Luck attribute. The use of Oozing Luck is tied into the ‘Mute-Guffin’, which is badly named because it is not a silent ‘guffin’, but rather an NPC with an agenda that is connected to the one of the Judge’s storylines. A Player Character can earn a point of Oozing Luck for successfully identifying the ‘Mute-Guffin’ and for successfully supporting the ‘Mute-Guffin’, but lose a point if the ‘Mute-Guffin’ is identified incorrectly. There is an option suggested for the opposite of a ‘Mute-Guffin’, the ‘Anti-Mute-Guffin’.

Running to just sixteen pages, there is still a lot of background in Mutant High School, covering studying and exams, find equipment, the wall surrounding the city, and various factions in and outside the city. Inside the city, ‘The Church of the Burbling Redeemer’, a law-abiding new cult lead by the mutant fusion of five interfaith council members who preach the beneficence of mutating slime and want to spread its effects beyond the wall; the sheriff and his Robo-Polys in near constant conflict with the criminal motorcycle gang, the Ultras; and the ‘Toxic Truthers’, outsiders who refuse to believe in Ooze Day and its effects, and resent not being able to walk about the twenty-five square miles blocked off by the wall as every true patriot should be allowed to do. Some even believe that the toxicity of No-Go City will cure all manner of ailments, which is why big pharma is denying them access!

Rounding out Mutant City High is a set of descriptions of various events that happen in No-Go City and an adventure hook, ‘Prom Night’. There is just about enough here to help a Judge get a mini-campaign started.

Physically, Mutant City High is decently produced, as you would expect for a release from Goodman games. It is lightly illustrated, but everything else is well explained, although the background does come after the rules for character creation, so that does read oddly, at least initially. A map of No-Go City would have been useful.

Mutant High School offers an alternative to the post-apocalyptic future of Terra A.D. of Mutant Crawl Classics. On one level it reads an alternative roleplaying setting of the nineteen eighties, but there is contemporary strand to it that effectively makes Mutant High School a Lockdown-era roleplaying setting, although one seen through a weird and wacky lens. Mutant High School packs a lot into its scant few pages, its combination of the weird and the familiar making it easy to develop further content for by the Judge, but really Mutant High School deserves more than just the one issue of the fanzine and even its own supplement.

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

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry and Goodman Games’ Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. Some fanzines though, do traditional fantasy, but not in the way that you might expect.

Pregame Lobby Issue #1 is a fanzine for .Dungeon – an alternate reality RPG. Published by Project NERVES, .Dungeon is a storytelling game which plays around with ideas and conventions behind the play of a MMORPG, using this to help the players build and explore a shared experience of playing in a shared play space. The conceit behind Pregame Lobby Issue #1 continues that of .Dungeon as a MMORPG in that it moves the online game from a beta test and into full release, presenting the space onscreen in the game where the publisher can gives updates about the game, a player can find other players, and so on, before leaping into the game’s first event. So there is a ‘Your friend’s list’, a list of your friends that are playing and what their current status and an introduction to the game’s launch event quest. This primarily focuses upon the release of a new play area, ‘Snowbleak’, and even carries the warning, “Don’t fast travel to Snowbleak”. Snowbleak is also a hexcrawl in terms of the pen and paper roleplaying and it turns out that the village and its surrounds atop the wintery mountain are infested with zombies. Zombies that are very difficult to kill! At every server reset, a fresh blanket of snow drops onto both mountain and village and every day at 12:01 Pacific Standard Time, all of the surviving zombies get up and make a co-ordinated attack on the village. The problem is that it takes a lot of co-ordinated damage—for which the players/Player Characters—are going to have to work together to inflict. If they succeed, the zombie is removed from the server, but if they fail, the zombie just gets up again. Worse, if a player/Player Character loses all of his Connection (to the server)—the equivalent of Hit Points in .Dungeon—he will not only die, but a zombie will rise in his image, thus increasing the number of zombies blighting Snowbleak!

As a hexcrawl/region to explore, Pregame Lobby Issue #1 includes a PVP Arena, a cave home to a roaming boss monster, a couple of NPCs to encounter, the location of Snowbleak, and a table of random encounters. The ‘PVP Enabled Dueling Arena’ allows an aspect of the MMORPG to be brought into the traditional roleplaying, which the latter traditionally avoids, and that is player versus player combat. Or rather, the conceit of it. For whilst ‘PVP Enabled Dueling Arena’ includes tables to generate players to face in the arena in .Dungeon, these are, of course, not Player Characters in the traditional roleplaying sense. In this way, Pregame Lobby Issue #1 continues the conceit of .Dungeon. Several NPCs are detailed, including Colossus, a roaming Boss monster which the players/Player Characters can persuade to help them if they know how.

Snowbleak—variously described as a city and a village in Pregame Lobby Issue #1, but definitely a randomly generated settlement from pre-beta best known for the ease of the beginning quests in and around the area. All that seems to remain is a few buildings around a river crossing, inhabited by those NPCs who not yet been driven out by the zombies. The descriptions do feel underwritten, in particular, it would have been useful to have included a Quest or two that the players/Player Characters can undertake. That said, there is plenty of scope for the Game Master to develop these and further content in and around Snowbleak, including on the backside of the mountain, given a cursory description in its own region/hexcrawl at the back of the fanzine. Pregame Lobby Issue #1 is rounded out with a list of cheat codes for .Dungeon to further enforce its conceit.

Physically, Pregame Lobby Issue #1 eschews the landscape format of .Dungeon, but not the bold colours and bitmapped style font for its titles. The layout feel perfunctory, but the artwork throughout is excellent.

Pregame Lobby Issue #1 is both a lovely little supplement for .Dungeon and slightly disappointing. It does feel underwritten, as if there should be more to the location of Snowbleak. Some of that is due to the conceit, that .Dungeon and thus the region of Snowbleak is a MMORPG and their play is not as demanding or as involving as a traditional pen and paper, tabletop roleplaying game typically is. However, .Dungeon – an alternate reality RPG is actually played as a traditional pen and paper, tabletop roleplaying game, so the details and the involvement required are greater. Ultimately, Pregame Lobby Issue #1 provides a good introductory setting for .Dungeon – an alternate reality RPG, but the Game Master will probably want to add her own content to flesh it out further...

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another DM and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.
Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will be compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. Then there is also Old School Essentials.
Carcass Crawler is ‘The Official Fanzine Old-School Essentials zine’. Published by Necrotic Gnome, Old School Essentials is the retroclone based upon the version of Basic Dungeons & Dragons designed by Tom Moldvay and published in 1981, and Carcass Crawler provides content and options for it. It is pleasingly ‘old school’ in its sensibilities, being a medley of things in its content rather than just the one thing or the one roleplaying game as has been the trend in gaming fanzines, especially with ZineQuest. Carcass Crawler #1 focused on Classes and Races alongside its other support for Old School Essentials, whereas although Carcass Crawler Issue #2 does provide new Races and Classes, it instead focuses on general support for the Player Character and playing Old School Essentials. Carcass Crawler Issue #3 continues the fanzine’s thread of providing new Classes for Old School Essentials.

Carcass Crawler Issue #3 describes five new character Classes and four new Races. What this means is that it follows standard Old School Essentials rules in that it allows for ‘Race as Class’ as well as supporting the separation of Race and Class as per Old School Essentials: Advanced Fantasy. ‘New Classes and Races’ by Gavin Norman opens with the first of its new Classes, the ‘Beast Master’. This Class gains a number of loyal animal companions equal to its Level, can identify tracks, and can come to understand the speech of animals and communicate with them. Essentially, this is a Class is going to see the Player Character controlling a pack of animals for various purposes depending upon the animal. Exactly what each animal can do is going for the player and the Game Master to decide. The ‘Dragonborn’ is the first of the four ‘Race as Class’ options in the issue and the first which harks back to an earlier edition of Dungeons & Dragons, in this case, Dungeons & Dragons 3.5. The Dragonborn has a breath weapon and partial immunity according to its draconic bloodline, and so on, and is generally similar to the Dragonborn of Dungeons & Dragons. The ‘Mutoid’ is the first of two radically different Classes. It consists of a demihuman with randomly determined mismatched body parts, such as Beast Ears for improved hearing and Spring Legs for a leap attack. The Class has several Thief skills, plus Mimicry, and can eventually set up a secret lair and start a Thieves’ Guild, but in general, are shunned by society. The second radically different Class is the Mycellian, a humanoid mushroom who can emit a spray of Fungal Spores—either pacifying or hallucinogenic, grow in stature increasing its unarmed combat damage and natural Armour Class, and relies on telepathy for communication. Once a Mycellian reaches Sixth Level it can found an underground stronghold and create a fungal zombie as a minion. The Mycellian is a pleasingly personal take upon the mushroom men-style monster of Dungeons & Dragons. The last of the new races is the second to be obviously drawn from a previous version of Dungeons & Dragons, this time from Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Second Edition. The Race is the Tielfling and it has Fiendish Heritage, Fiendish Appearance, and a Fiendish Gift, typically a spell or resistance. It also has the power to Beguile with its words and knows the Thief’s stealth skills.
These are all a nice selection of Classes, presenting the Game Master with plenty of choice in terms of deciding what Races she has in her campaign and she is given advice to that end. All five Classes though are presented in the standard two-page spread for Old School Essentials, making them highly accessible. Four of the ‘Race as Class’ Classes—Dragonborn, Mutoid, Mycellian, and Tielfling—are in turn presented as Races. This enables their use in combination with a Class as per Old School Essentials: Advanced Fantasy.
Also by Gavin Norman is ‘Expanded Equipment’. For Adventuring Gear, this adds thing such as the bucket, magnifying glass, sledgehammer, and more. Weapons & Armour lists padded armour, furs, studded leather, banded mail, and full plate, so encompassing the wider range of armour found in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, whilst new weapons include bastard sword, blackjack, blowgun, bolas, and more. These also have weapon qualities, like Entangle for the whip and Versatile for the bastard sword, which can be used one-handed or two-handed. Overall, it expands the range of equipment and options available to a campaign and the players and their characters.
Donn Stroud pens ‘Woodland Monsters’. This is a bestiary of eight creatures. It includes the ‘Bracketfolk’, humanoid bracket fungi who live in families on a single tree; ‘Burlbug’ are gnarled nocturnal, and territorial simians who howl when disturbed or annoyed and like to collect gems; the ‘Corpse Vine’ is a carnivorous plant that hangs from trees and pulls up its victims to constrict and slowly digest them, tempting them with prior victims turned into twitching corpses; the ‘Ghoul-Stag’ is a horrible decaying corpse of a deer animated after the bite of a Ghoul; the Skull Spider Nettle is a mobile carnivorous plant which occupies skulls and scuttles around injecting its spores into its victims using its lashes; the ‘Spell Croaker’ is a giant tree frog infused with magic as a tadpole, which can randomly disgorge a spell, whilst the ‘Spell Croaker Tadpole’ is the immature form, which flies around disenchanting magical items and spell-casters; and lastly, ‘Stick-Children’ are insects which cover themselves in branches they saw from trees with their mandibles, giving them a humanoid appearance. There is a good mix here which the Game Master can pick and choose from to populate the woodlands in her campaign.

Lastly, Gavin Norman gives advice on monsters in ‘Creating Monsters’. It is a very straightforward piece, suggesting that the Game Master begin with tweaking or re-skinning an existing monster rather than starting from scratch. However, if that does not work in the given situation, it guides the Game Master through an eight-step process, looking at factors to consider at each step. This starts with the imagination and then goes through Hit Dice, Armour Class, Movement Rate, Attacks, and Special Abilities before calculating Derived Stats and taking into account any final details. To be honest the article is one the like of which has been written again and again about Dungeons & Dragons-style monsters and their creation. This does not mean that the advice or the article are poor. In fact, this is a useful article which lets the Game Master look at monsters from another angle.
Physically, Carcass Crawler Issue #3 is well written and well presented. The artwork is excellent.
Carcass Crawler Issue #3 feels as if it is capping off a trilogy that comprises a character Class compendium for Old School Essentials. Indeed, Necrotic Gnome could present all of the Classes and Races to appear in the pages of the fanzine and it would be a serviceable supplement providing further options for player and Game Master alike. Hopefully, future issues will contain fewer new Classes and open up the otherwise excellent support for Old School Essentials that Carcass Crawler provides to wider content. That said, Carcass Crawler #3 is a solid issue and its Classes and monsters are interesting and the fanzine continues to be an enjoyable old school-style publication.