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

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

—oOo—
Name: Swamp Song: A 1920s Scenario for Call of CthulhuPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Keeper Doc

Setting: 1920s New Orleans
Product: ScenarioWhat You Get: Forty-four page, 9.11 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: The dangers of the demon drink will drive you to your deaths...Plot Hook: A missing author pulls the Investigators into the French Quarter of New Orleans and a ghoulish plot.Plot Support: Staging advice, five pre-generated Investigators, three NPCs, four handouts, one map, one non-Mythos tome, one non-Mythos creature, one Mythos tome, one Mythos spell, and one Mythos monster.Production Values: Good.
Pros# Detailed investigation# Nice evocation of the period and louche culture# Fun NPCs for the Keeper to portray# Small, but flexible options included for the Keeper# Easy to shift to Cthulhu by Gaslight
# Easy to add to a Tales of the Crescent City: Adventures in Jazz Era New Orleans campaign# Ligyrophobia# Taphephobia# Methyphobia# Zerevophobia

Cons# Cartoonish NPC portraits# Underwritten explanation for the Keeper upfront# Location floorplans would be useful# Plot not necessarily obvious to the Investigators
Conclusion# Woozy investigation where New Orleans nightlife and occult underground intersect that is easy to add to a campaign# Unclear plotting makes the scenario harder to prepare and the plot may never quite become clear to the Investigators

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

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

—oOo—
Name: Game NightPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Sean Liddle

Setting: 1980s USA
Product: Scenario OutlineWhat You Get: Five page, 173.91 KB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Twixmas Terror.Plot Hook: Students stuck in a store in a snow storm leads to scares.Plot Support: Staging and set-up advice, timeline.Production Values: Undemanding.
Pros# Straightforward plot outline # Phasmophobia# Chionophobia
Cons# Requires development by the Keeper# Requires Player Characters to be created# No Sanity losses or gains# Works hard to trap the Player Characters in place to face the Mythos at the end
Conclusion# More mundane clean-up duties than meeting with the Mythos
# Sit tight until the terror might work for the screen, but for Player Characters, not so much...

The influence of author Fritz Leiber and his tales of the adventures of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser on fantasy roleplaying are undeniable. Of course, they introduced the reader to the world of Nehwon and the city of Lankhmar, also known as the City of the Black Toga, an urban jungle rife with cutpurses and corruption, guilds and graft, temples and trouble, whores and wonders, and more. Sitting on the Inner Sea, it is the greatest city in Nehwon, over which hangs the pall from fire pits, charnel houses, chimneys, and smoke houses, which when combined with the fog which rolls of the Hlal river, turns into a dense smog, the bane of the city’s brown-armoured city watch, and much to the delight of the city’s many thieves, pickpockets, burglars, cutpurses, muggers, and anyone else who would skulk in the night! Not for nothing is Lankhmar called the City of Sevenscore Thousand Smokes. Yet the stories of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser also introduced the concept of urban adventures to the hobby and added both the concept of the thieves’ guild and the assassins’ guild to Dungeons & Dragons, as well as influencing the look and feel of numerous fantasy cities in roleplaying. It is no wonder that their world has been visited by roleplaying not once, but six times!
TSR, Inc. first included the Nehwon mythos, its gods and various characters to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition in 1980 with Deities & Demigods, before publishing Lankhmar – City of Adventure in 1985. This would be followed by The New Adventures of Fafhrd and Gray Mouser boxed set for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Second Edition in 1996. Mongoose Publishing’s Lankhmar, published in 2006, was written for use with RuneQuest, whilst Lankhmar: City of Thieves, published in 2015 by Pinnacle Entertainment Group, was written for use with Savage Worlds. The sixth and most recent version is Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar, published by Goodman Games following a successful Kickstarter campaign, for use with the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game. It is designed to help the Dungeon Crawl Classics Judge run swords and sorcery urban-set campaigns of semi-heroic adventure charting the ups and downs, successes and failures, triumphs and travails of a band of ne’er-do-wells, who will break into homes in the Rich Men’s Quarter and sneak into the temples on the Street of the Gods, run the ‘rooftop road’ to avoid the city watch, fence their stolen goods at the back of the Plaza of Dark Delights, before frittering away their ill-gotten gains by carousing and gambling early into the morning. Then with a heavy hangover, they will probably have to lie low for a week or two as the city watch searches high and low for them. Of course, those particular ne’er-do-wells may not be responsible for the crime that the city watch wants them for, but lie low long enough or bribe the right person, and with pockets empty of coin and stomachs rumbling, they are back out on the streets looking for the next score.

The Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set is a handsome affair, filled to the brim with books and maps. This includes ‘The Judge’s Guide to Nehwon’, ‘Compendium of Secret Knowledge’, ‘Lankhmar: City of the Black Toga’, and ‘Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #0: No Small Crimes in Lankhmar’, plus a 33” × 17” poster map of the City of Lankhmar, 17” × 22” map of Nehwon, and a Judges’ Screen specifically for Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar. As well as describing both the world of Nehwon and the city of Lankhmar, Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar includes stats for the notable characters from Fritz Lieber’s stories, details of the setting’s gods, new magic, and beasts, rules for creating and playing Player Characters—who are heroes rather than cheesemakers or gongfarmers trying to escape their dull lives, and this being for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, table after table to help the Judge create exciting, interesting things and NPCs for those Player Characters to encounter and do, and so bring her Lankhmar to life. The Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set is not designed as a definitive or comprehensive guide to the city and inhabitants, but rather as a combination of guide and toolkit for the Judge. The result will be a campaign that is fundamentally different to a typical Dungeon Crawl Classics campaign—darker, city-based, heroic, and adult in tone.

At one-hundred-and-four pages, ‘The Judge’s Guide to Nehwon’ is the longest book in the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set. When you discover that a lot of those pages consist of spells particular to Lankhmar and you realise just how detailed each spell in Dungeon Crawl Classics actually is, and that ‘The Judge’s Guide to Nehwon’ also details the effects of invoking various patron gods and the possible taints that a Player Character might suffer in poorly invoking said patron gods, then it turns out that ‘The Judge’s Guide to Nehwon’ is actually not that long a book, or least not that dense. ‘The Judge’s Guide to Nehwon’ introduces the setting and the fiction it is based upon, describing in turn the various countries and locations surrounding Lankhmar, the cultures of the Inner Sea and beyond, languages and gods, and more. Some of the cultures do feel like clichés by modern standards—the nomadic horse-riding Mingols who hail from the Steppes, the barbarian Northerners feared as pirate raiders, the Kleshites of the Jungle of Klesh who trade in slaves, and so on—but bear in mind that the stories that Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar is based upon are over fifty years old and this is the swords & sorcery genre. Nevertheless, the Judge may want to be circumspect when dealing with this aspect of the setting.

There are details of Nehwonian alcoholic drinks too, such as the Bubbly Wine of Ilthmar, Ool Hruspian Old Wine, and the notorious Mushroom Wine which can grant the imbiber certain benefits or drive him to madness. These nicely tie in with the rules for recovering Luck in through carousing, later in ‘The Judge’s Guide to Nehwon’, which mostly involve a Player Character spending an evening in the bars and taverns of the city, getting drunk, and suffering the consequences. ‘The Judge’s Guide to Nehwon’ also provides a range of new spells for the setting, such as Confounding Glamour, which makes the caster difficult to detect, or Mouse’s Painful Suffering, which enables the cast to inflict suffering on another using a doll or fetish. These are not readily available to the Player Characters, and any wizard wanting to learn them will have to track down the right tome or scroll, or find someone who can teach it to him. All Player Characters in Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar can be agents and servants to patrons such as the gods. Those who enter into simple agreements become agents, whereas those who enter into magical compacts become servants, much like the Patron bond spell in Dungeon Crawl Classics, and in return, a Player Character can receive certain benefits. The patrons are of course the watchful gods of Lankhmar and Nehwon, including Ningauble of the Seven Eyes, Mog the Spider God, Issek of the Jug, and others, and as well as their possible debts and boons, there are tasks which they can set those who have taken their patronage. The patrons are excellent tools for the Judge to use to drive adventures and bring the setting’s mystical elements into play.

‘The Judge’s Guide to Nehwon’ provides new rules and adjustments for a Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar campaign. This includes the aforementioned Carousing rules for recovering Luck and also Laying Low, including complications associated with both, plus a list of magical items and a bestiary. There is also advice on running urban-set campaigns, which highlight in particular how different such a campaign will be from a standard Dungeon Crawl Classics campaign. This is to primarily run a campaign as an urban sandbox, to have the Player Characters face and hopefully escape the consequences of their actions, with almost everything they do having repercussions—good or bad. Burglarise a jewelry shop and the Player Characters and possibly whomever hired them, will be rich, but the city watch will be after the Player Characters, as will the Thieves’ Guild, who the jewelry shop owner was paying protection money, and then if the person who hired them to do the job turns up dead and the loot nowhere to be seen, who are the primary suspects? What the guidance highlights is that in a Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar campaign, the Player Characters are not going to be comfortable, going from weird dungeon to the next. Instead, they will often be hungry or hunted, forced to rely on each other as well as their wits and their contacts—who in turn may come to rely on the Player Characters at a later date. Consequently, a Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar campaign will often be more player-driven and have an occasional narrative focus as time passes, so is not as straightforward to run.

One big difference between Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar and standard Dungeon Crawl Classics is the lack of a Funnel. This is a standard feature of Dungeon Crawl Classics, a scenario specifically designed for Zero Level Player Characters in which initially, a player is expected to roll up three or four Level Zero characters and have them play through a generally nasty, deadly adventure, which surviving will prove a challenge. Those that do survive receive enough Experience Points to advance to First Level and gain all of the advantages of their Class. Instead of a Funnel, Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar provides the Meet, the moment or adventure when the Player Characters all met for the first time, as First Level—rather than Zero Level—characters, just as in the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser story, ‘ Ill Met in Lankhmar’. Annoyingly the Meet is mentioned before the explanation, so at first the Judge is left to wonder what it is, but the Meet is designed to get a party together, have its members make contacts, and lastly, provide its members with an opportunity to learn more about the world, if not Lankhmar, then at least the neighbourhood. Overall, the advice is excellent and will very much help the Judge make the switch to a Lankhmar-set campaign. Lastly, ‘The Judge’s Guide to Nehwon’ does address the issue of where Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are during the Player Characters’ adventures with several options, but really their presence should not have that much of an impact.

The second book, ‘Lankhmar: City of the Black Toga’, runs to forty-four pages and is the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set gazetteer. It is a more straightforward book covering the history, government, powers, guilds, crime and punishment, known Overlords of the city during the time of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, and more. Its exploration of the various neighbourhoods or quarters of the city, such as the Temple Quarter and Crafts Quarter, are supported by descriptions of places of interest, like the Forbidden Temples in the Temple Quarter, the Thieves’ House in the Crafts Quarter, the Plaza of Dark Delights in the Plaza Quarter, and so on, are backed up with tables of interesting events, random noble tables, curious people found in the Rich Men’s Quarter, and others that the Judge can use to create events and plots, perhaps chaining them together to pull the Player Characters across the city. Other tables enable a Judge to create and populate a neighbourhood, perhaps as a starting point or base for the Player Characters, and there is a table of adventure seeds too.

The third book in Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set is the forty-page ‘Compendium of Secret Knowledge’ and is the book for the Player Characters. As well as being urban-set and using the Meet to introduce Player Characters rather than the Funnel, Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar is a humancentric setting. What this means is that there are no Dwarves, Elves, or Halflings. There are also no Clerics as a Class. This is because any character can enter into a relationship with a god and take him as a patron—even multiple gods—and gain the benefits and drawbacks of doing so. This limits the Classes to just Thief, Warrior, and Wizard, who are all rogues and in play work together as a gang rather than a party. Player Characters begin play at First Level, have more Hit Points, and have a Doom and a Benison. These replace Birth Augurs from Dungeon Crawl Classics and are derived from a Player Character’s origins rather than the sign under which he was born. Sample Boons include Accepted Freelance Thief, Former Wizard’s Pupil, or Mingol Bow, whilst sample Dooms include Bad Reputation in Certain Circles, Illiterate, or Superstitious. It is possible to have an extra Benison, but this costs permanent points of Luck and an extra Doom. Overall, the effect is make the Player Character a more heroic figure, but not that much more heroic!

There are other changes to the rules of Dungeon Crawl Classics too, such as whether or not to retain Alignment, but that is only a minor change. The changes to magic and healing are not so. Nehwon is considered a ‘low magic” world and does not allow for the mercurial magic of standard Dungeon Crawl Classics, so magic takes more effort or has condition to being cast, such as the caster only being to cast spells indoor without a penalty or requiring a large boiling cauldron filled with odd ingredients to be able to cast successfully. In addition to a big table of Spell Stipulations, there tables for spell corruption, which go from minor to greater via major, reflecting the mutative effect of casting more powerful spells. Other options for a Wizard include Black and White magic, divided by spell type and casters of White inflicting less damage versus casters of Black magic suffering more corruption. Without the presence of Clerics, the Player Characters will need to find other means of healing. Some Patrons provide healing, but in the main, the Player Characters will have to obtain ointments, unctions, unguents, and other restoratives, although the Judge is provided other options too. This includes Cinematic healing for an even more heroic style of play. Lastly, Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar adds ‘Fleeting Luck’, reflecting the capricious nature of Nehwon’s gods, which can come and go through play, gained for rolling a natural twenty, pulling off an amazing stunt, or roleplaying, but lost when any player rolls a one. This will give play an entertaining ebb and flow, but potentially even more fun is the optional ‘Banter’ rule, in which a Banter token passes back and forth between the players as they roleplay their characters trading quips and barbs. Whoever has the token can trade it in to gain Luck points for his character’s next role or affect another character’s or NPC’s roll, but after that, the token goes back to the Judge until the quips and barbs begin flying again. For the right group, this really rewards their roleplaying and turns play into a buddy style caper.

The last book in the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set is ‘Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #0: No Small Crimes in Lankhmar’. At just twelve pages, this is also the shortest book, providing a first adventure for First Level Player Characters. It is designed to be run after they have met as part of their Meet adventure, which given that the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set is designed to introduce the setting and provide the Judge with everything necessary to run a campaign, to include an adventure set after the Meet rather than a Meet adventure itself seems like a major omission. However, there is advice on how to run it as a Meet, but another given option is to play Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar: Masks of Lankhmar, which specifically designed to be run as a Meet, and then run ‘Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #0: No Small Crimes in Lankhmar’. Inspired by both The Swords of Lankhmar and The Incredible Shrinking Man, the scenario begins with the Player Characters breaking into a long-abandoned home, rumoured to contain a cache of gold, and suffering a curse—being shrunk down to the size of rats! The Player Characters must brave the dangers of their newly enlarged world in search of a means to lift the curse and restore themselves to full size, all whilst being stalked by a cat! The change of scale makes this adventure both memorable and deadly, but with care and luck, the Player Characters should be able to survive and discover a secret or two about Lankhmar. This a pleasingly inventive scenario and fun to play.

In addition to the four books, the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar comes with two maps. One is a full colour poster map of Lankhmar, the other a black and white map of Nehwon. Both are attractive and useful. Similarly useful is the Judges’ Screen, which includes several of the tables found in the various books in the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set. Of course, those books include a lot more tables and the Judge will need to consult those during play. Lastly, a copy of Goodman Games Gazette, the latest issue of which is included with each new Kickstarter. This issue has an interview with Michael Curtis, the designer of the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set, as well as extra content, meaning that it very nicely complements the rest of the box.

Physically, the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set is very well produced and everything crammed into the box is too. The books are all well-written, the art is decent, and the maps nicely done too. The books are in black and white, which is not standard today, but it fits the style of Dungeon Crawl Classics.

The Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set is a thoroughly impressive, boxed set. It has everything to get a Lankhmar-based campaign started and whilst it is not a definitive guide to the world of Nehwon and the City of Lankhmar, it is a definitive guide for the Judge to run a campaign set there. It not only provides her with the background, the tools, and the options she needs to do so, but also the advice to make the switch to doing so. For the Judge who wants to run a grim and gritty, yet heroic Swords & Sorcery campaign on the streets of the greatest city in the world, Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set is perfect.

The CY_BORG Asset Pack is a supplement for CY_BORG, a cyberpunk purgatory that is modelled upon Mörk Borg, the Swedish pre-apocalypse Old School Renaissance retroclone designed by Ockult Örtmästare Games and Stockholm Kartell and published by Free League Publishing. It is both useful and utilitarian, consisting of four things that the Game Master can use to enhance her campaign.

The first of these is a double-sided map, done on heavy stock paper. On one side is a map of the city of CY, the location for CY_BORG. It is done in full, dark, grim glory on black and with interesting touches such as the district of Galgenbeck—the central city in the land of Tveland in Mörk Borg—being marked in gold. At the bottom of the poster is an index to the district locations in the rulebook. This is great to lay out before the players in play, to help them and their doomed characters around the city. On the other side is the diagram showing the major corporations, their logos, and some details connected to them, such as advertising, rumours about them, opinions, and more. Both the diagram and the map are reprinted from the core rulebook, but the map is definitely more useful than the diagram in play, whereas the corporation diagram may provide the Game Master with some possible scenario hooks.

‘Reaper Repo’ is a scenario for CY_BORG. The second item in the CY_BORG Asset Pack, it has the Player Characters hired to steal the new chrome legs of a Killmatch VIP! Instead of resting, Steel Jackhammer is of course, holding a marathon party. Cue the Player Characters getting in amongst the guests, including random other VIPS, subduing Steel Jackhammer, stealing his legs and getting out again. The two-page spread presents a detailed and described floorplan of Steel Jackhammer’s apartment, stats for both him as well as his guards, pet gene-spliced big cats, and random VIP NPCs. The Player Characters then, are reapers, jacking cyberware off an unwilling victim. Getting this done will be a challenge, but doing so without notice even more difficult. The Player Characters have the advantage of the party going on around them and will doubtless act accordingly. The floorplans for Steel Jackhammer’s apartment are very well done and everything that the Game Master needs to run the scenario is placed in front of her on the two-page spread. ‘Reaper Repo’ is a one location scenario, playable in one session—and therefore a good convention scenario—driven by a combination of the Player Characters’ and random acts. Steel Jackhammer’s party would probably have run its course in a few days, but with the intervention of the Player Characters, it will probably turn into a chaotically memorable party.

The third item in the CY_BORG Asset Pack is the ‘Location Pad’. This a thick sheaf of locations—a cargo ship, clinic, dive bar, street alley, bodega, coffin hotel, killmatch arena, underground anarchist art commune, and more—a total of thirty-four of them, which provide a floor plan of each, plus three random tables of what the location is and what might be found there. There is also room for some notes. With a roll of three six-sided dice, the Game Master has some basic details about the location, and with the addition of a hook to get the Player Characters involved and stats for NPCs, she has a ready-to-play location. For example, the Datacrypt, the answer to “What’s in the Crypt?” might be that “Cables merged with roots from forgotten biological experiments below Cy, creating a sentient biotech ghouls that have taken over the crypt.”; “Secured on their local servers you can find”… is … “the far-reaching cyber tentacles of a powerful AI trapped deep in the Net long ago.”; and “Stuffed inside an unused server rack is” … “a motion detector alarm.” Roll again and the Game Master has an entirely different Datacrypt and with three sheets per location, she can mark it up again and add notes as needed. With a mix of contributions from both Stockholm Kartell and freelance contributors, this a resource that the Game Master can come back to again and again, creating new plots and encounters each time. The maps in the ‘Location Pad’ will, of course, work in any Cyberpunk roleplaying game.

The fourth item in the CY_BORG Asset Pack is a pad of characters sheets. These are clearly laid out, simple to use, and have game notes where necessary.

Physically, the CY_BORG Asset Pack is a decent package. The Artpunk style of both CY_BORG and Mörk Borg is kept to a minimum, whilst the ‘Location Pad’ is more utilitarian. The layout of the scenario, ‘Reaper Repo’, is very well done.

With the CY_BORG Asset Pack, the Game Master has some that she can immediately prepare and run for her players in the form of ‘Reaper Repo’. Then the poster map and the character sheets provide useful, serviceable support to a campaign, but in the long term, the Game Master has a set of tools in the form of the ‘Location Pad’ which she can use to quickly create a scenarios and encounters, whether that is before a game or even during a game, if a particular location is needed. Although it does not look it at first glance, the ‘Location Pad’ is actually the best item in the CY_BORG Asset Pack and certainly the most useful. It would be fantastic if Ockult Örtmästare Games and Stockholm Kartell could produce a companion to the ‘Location Pad’, a book of encounters and scenarios built around designed by contributors and fans of CY_BORG. In meantime, the CY_BORG Asset Pack will energise the Game Master’s CY_BORG campaign until the last Miserable Headline…

It is clear from the start that a lot of thought has gone into the design of Doctor Who: Roleplaying Game Second Edition – Starter Set. Open the box and underneath the dice is what appears to be a sheet of heavy paper with an image of the TARDIS on it. Pull it out of the box and it is that and more because the front shows the doors to the TARDIS, whilst the back, shows the other side of the TARDIS. Further, the front opens up almost like the doors of the TARDIS to reveal what is in the box. It is, of course, a classic ‘What’s in the box’ sheet, the first thing you should always see when opening a boxed roleplaying game for the first time, but here done as thematically as is possible. Combined with its ‘READ THIS FIRST’ section and what you have is an explanation of what is the box, what exactly the reader has in his hands, and what it is designed to do. It is great start to the Doctor Who: Roleplaying Game Second Edition – Starter Set, but then the publisher, Cubicle Seven Entertainment, has form here, having published the thoroughly excellent and playable Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Starter Set for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Fourth Edition.
Cubicle Seven Entertainment has held the licence for a roleplaying game based on the adventures of the time-travelling Time Lord known as Doctor Who since 2009, being with the publication of Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space. It was intentionally designed to be played by Doctor Who fans new to roleplaying as well as veterans, and over the years has been supported by supplements covered both Classic Who—the first eight generations of the Doctor—and New Who—the later four generations. Only in 2022, did the roleplaying game come up to date to cover the adventures of the thirteenth Doctor with Doctor Who: Roleplaying Game Second Edition, and by then, the Doctor had once again regenerated into the Fourteenth Doctor and will do so again with the Fifteenth. That though, is all to come. What Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space never received as its own starter set, a box containing basic rules, ready-to-play characters, advice for the Game Master, dice, and an adventure or two, all sufficient to provide a good feel for how the game plays and an idea of whether or not the players want to have further adventures. That though, changes for Doctor Who: Roleplaying Game Second Edition, which has its own starter set. The Doctor Who: Roleplaying Game Second Edition – Starter Set is designed to be played out of the box, its play discovered and revealed as the reader delves deeper into the box. So, delving deeper into the box…

Below the ‘READ THIS FIRST’ folder is a sheaf of five character sheets. These use the same gatefold sheet format as the ‘READ THIS FIRST’ folder. On the front is the name of the Player Character, what he does, a thumbnail portrait, some quotes that a player can bring into play, a quick explanation of who he is, what he is like, what he enjoys, and reasons to play that character. It is kept quick, simple, and clear, making the basics of the character easy to understand. On the back, there is an even larger portrait of the character, but just like the ‘READ THIS FIRST’ folder, open up a character sheet and there is much more information. The character and his stats, skills, experiences, equipment, focus, and more are presented in the middle. To the left, a column explains the character concept and various game terms, including Focus, which is the Player Character’s motivation, Tech Level, Short-Term and Long-Term Goals, Attributes, Skills, Distinctions which mean that the Player Character is an alien or has a special skill, and Conditions that the Player Character might suffer. To the right is given the Character Background, a description of what make the Player Character’s heart sing, family, friends, and rivals, elements which the Player Character is encouraged to describe, and an introduction. The sheets all feel complete, and the five include a twenty-first century IT worker who wants to be a baker, a nineteenth century stage performer who wants to be a double act, an augmented human investigator who wants to uncover a conspiracy, a hospitality android from the Luxury Station Phaeton who wants to make a friend, and a Silurian scientist who wants to make a big discovery. Like the ‘READ THIS FIRST’ folder, the characters are done on heavy stock paper, in full colour, and are attractive to look at.

Underneath the character sheets is the first of two books in Doctor Who: Roleplaying Game Second Edition – Starter Set. This is ‘The Timeless Library’ and it has pictures of the Thirteenth Doctor, some Daleks, and a library with flying books on the front. This is both the first adventure in the starter set and the explanation of the rules, and one of the first things it explains is why the Doctor is not an option as a Player Character, which is because she is missing and the Player Characters have to find her as part of the adventure. The adventures in Doctor Who: Roleplaying Game Second Edition – Starter Set are designed to be played by three to five players and ‘The Timeless Library’ to teach the rules step-by-step. It starts with the Player Characters finding their way into the TARDIS, introducing themselves, having an opportunity to explore the TARDIS, and make a few skill rolls in determining quite where they are. Doctor Who: Roleplaying Game Second Edition uses the Vortex System in which if a player wants his character to undertake an action, he rolls two six-sided dice and add the values of an appropriate attribute and skill to beat a Difficulty. A typical Difficulty is twelve. Rolls of one on either die indicate that an attempt has failed in some way, even partially, whilst rolls of six indicate that the attempt was not only successful, but a superior success too. Story Points—each Player Character starts with several—can be used to modify any result. If a Player Character has the Advantage, three dice are rolled and the lowest value discarded whilst the highest result is discarded if at a Disadvantage.

The scenario of ‘The Timeless Library’ takes place in a vast, fabled library, which when the Player Characters arrive, has been recently attacked and instituted security response. Which makes navigating the different sections of the library a challenge, but if the Player Characters can find the head librarian, a Judoon—which should be lots of fun for the Game Master to portray—they can make progress. As they proceed through the library, the players have the opportunity to learn how the Vortex System works, including the core mechanics, how gadgets work, how to get the best use out of Story Points, extended tasks and conflict, there are points where it is suggested that the Game Master can improvise, and there is occasional appearance of the Doctor to throw in, if only to give words of encouragement as a holographic message. When it comes to conflict, the initiative rules are notable in that who goes first depends not a die roll, but on Player Character actions. Talkers go first (or Screamers if a Companion possesses both a set of lungs on her and the Screamer Trait), followed by Doers, then Runners, and last of all Fighters. Meanwhile, the Player Characters can explore the library—or at least examine its shelves, overcome technological barriers, persuade recalcitrant NPCs, and survive an encounter with the Doctor’s greatest enemy—the Daleks, and in the final sequence, get chased up to the highest levels of the library in order to reach the scenario’s McGuffin before the Daleks do. In other words, get to do all of the things that the Doctor and her companions do in an episode.

However, that is not all there is to ‘The Timeless Library’ or indeed in Doctor Who: Roleplaying Game Second Edition – Starter Set. There is advice on how to use the scenario in ‘The Timeless Library’ as a one-shot, but there is trio of adventure hooks for each of the five pre-generated Player Characters as well as ideas for further scenarios once they have played through the events of the campaign in ‘The Echo Chamber’. The adventure in ‘The Timeless Library’ is fun, taking the Player Characters from their first steps into the TARDIS to running around, saving people, and winning the day in a place that is out of this world. Unfortunately, the step-by-step process of learning the rules to the Vortex System through play does not quite work. Initially, the rules are quick and easy to learn, but as the adventure progresses, they do get comparatively more complex. Certainly, when it comes to conflicts and chases, the Game Master will need to prepare those rather than learn on the go.

‘The Echo Chamber’, the second book, picks up where ‘The Timeless Library’ left off. It contains two scenarios, one which is a direct sequel, the eponymously titled ‘The Echo Chamber’. It begins with an investigation in modern London before taking the Player Characters into deep space and an even deeper mystery, until confronting the villain of the piece and rescuing the Doctor on a planet from Classic Who’s past. The middle section is something of a spaceship sandbox—if the spaceship sandbox is also a travelling theatre—which the Player Characters can explore, interact with the crew and the performers, and try and find out more about what is going on. The scenario also provides opportunities for each of the Player Characters to shine, whether that is baking or performing, as part of the investigation, and the Game Master also scenes and nods from Classic Who to portray. If there is an issue with the scenario it is that it could have done with some floorplans for the spaceship to help the Game Master visualise it for her players, and perhaps a few suggestions could have been provided to help the Game Master portray the scenario’s many NPCs. A more open affair, it assumes that by this time the Game Master and her players will have come to understand the rules, and the boxes of information for the Game Master focus on extra content for the scenario rather than Game Master tips. ‘The Echo Chamber’ is an entertaining adventure and brings the events of ‘The Timeless Library’ to a rousing collection.

The second scenario in ‘The Echo Chamber’ is ‘The Hermit’s Lantern’. It is designed to be run as a sequel with the same Player Characters, who if successful, end up with their time travel device, enabling them to continue on their adventures without the Doctor. Stats are provided for the Thirteenth Doctor, should the Game Master want to involve her in the scenario. ‘The Hermit’s Lantern’ is a race to obtain an artefact of the same name, its location a planet only accessible once every fifty years due to severe storms. Means are suggested as to how to get the Player Characters involved other than at the bequest of the Doctor, but once on the planet, they will have a hard journey ahead of them across rough terrain, often stalked by the local fauna. This is a shorter, straightforward, and linear affair, more physical in nature, which does not go out of its way to bring the various aspects of the pre-generated Player Characters into play. Consequently, it is not as interesting to play through ‘The Timeless Library’ and ‘The Echo Chamber’, but it is a decent enough scenario.

In addition to the ‘READ THIS FIRST’ folder, the five character sheets, ‘The Timeless Library’, and ‘The Echo Chamber’, the Doctor Who: Roleplaying Game Second Edition – Starter Set also includes a sheet of Story Point tokens in thick card, and two reference sheets. One has the ‘Attributes and Skills Reference Sheet’ on one side and the ‘Story Points Reference Sheet’ on the other, whilst the second reference sheet has the ‘‘Making a Roll’ Reference Sheet’ on one side and the ‘Success Reference Sheet’ on the other side. ‘Success Reference Sheet’ is also printed on the inside of the lid to the box.

Physically, the Doctor Who: Roleplaying Game Second Edition – Starter Set is very well put together, Everything is bright, breezy, in full colour, and easy to understand, with coloured sections in both books designed to highlight and explain rules, give advice for the Game Master, provide NPC details, and so on. They are only light illustrated, with images taken from the series. One issue however is that the books do need an edit in places as there are several incidences of references to other sections of a book or parts of the starter set are inaccurate, and the authors cannot quite decide what the names of the two books in the starter set are. Unlike ‘The Echo Chamber’, the second book, ‘The Timeless Library’ does not have a card cover, so is more like a magazine and less durable. Another issue is that not all of the NPCs detailed in the three adventures in the Doctor Who: Roleplaying Game Second Edition – Starter Set. Mainly due to a lack of ready photographic sources and the expense of producing full colour art, this however leave the Game Master with pictures for some NPCs and not for others. It feels inconsistent and perhaps something that the Game Master might like to source herself.

An experienced player or Game Master will have no problem opening up the Doctor Who: Roleplaying Game Second Edition – Starter Set and beginning play. If the Game Master has run Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space, the previous incarnation of the roleplaying game, she will have even less of a problem. The rules have changed only slightly, and then only to streamline them very slightly. The rules are far from difficult to play, but a little extra attention is needed to understand how conflicts and extended tasks are handled according to the rules, so that does slow down the learn-by-play, step-by-step process. Nevertheless, a lot of thought has gone into the process of learning the game by drawing both Game Master and her players deeper into the box and the game, and the resulting rules are easier to understand and the scenarios engaging and entertaining.

Of course, if the Game Master already has access to the Doctor Who: Roleplaying Game Second Edition, then the scenarios in the starter set can be run from those rules. However, both ‘The Echo Chamber’ and ‘The Timeless Library’ are designed to be played using the pre-generated Player Characters, so they will need some adjusting to suit other Player Characters.

The Doctor Who: Roleplaying Game Second Edition – Starter Set is a great introduction to the Doctor Who: Roleplaying Game Second Edition. It eases the players and their Game Master into the rules and provides them with some exciting adventures to have in time and space!

The Isle of the Plangent Mage is a scenario published by Necrotic Gnome. It is written for use with Old School Essentials, the Old School Renaissance retroclone based on the version of Basic Dungeons & Dragons designed by Tom Moldvay and published in 1980. It is designed to be played by a party of Third to Fifth Level Player Characters and is a standalone affair, but can be easily added to a campaign by the Referee. All it requires is a temperate coastline as a location, and possibly legends of a land lost to the waves in ages past. In the case of the latter, the Player Characters might have the opportunity to restore that, so bringing about a major change to the Referee’s campaign world and giving them somewhere new to explore. Likewise, if there is opportunity here to change the campaign world, there is also the possibility that the Player Characters will be changed and mutated by some of the encounters in the scenario. It is self-contained and so could be run as a one-shot, but unlike the earlier, official scenarios for Old School Essentials, such as The Hole in the Oak and The Incandescent Grottoes, it is not a suitable addition to the publisher’s own Dolmenwood setting. This is primarily due to the coastal rather than arboreal setting, but also because the scenario has a comparatively  technological feel to its magic. Whatever way in which the Referee decides to use the adventure, like so many other scenarios for the Old School Renaissance, The Isle of the Plangent Mage is incredibly easy to adapt to or run using the retroclone of the Referee’s choice. The tone of the dungeon is weird and unworldly, taking the Player Characters deep under the sea into a strange, James Bond villain-like secret base like that of Doctor No, to encounter the results of strange experiments, whilst elsewhere, the adventure has a mournful tone and a touch of the Lovecraftian.
The Isle of the Plangent Mage—‘plangent’ meaning ‘a loud and resonant sound with a mournful tone’—begins in the coastal village of Imbrich, whose inhabitants are possess mutations reminiscent of the Deep Ones from H.P. Lovecraft’s Shadows Over Innsmouth, including gills, scales, webbed fingers, and more. This though is only minor aspect of the scenario, one that the author does not play up and rightfully so since The Isle of the Plangent Mage is neither a horror scenario nor a Lovecraftian one. Instead, this aspect of the village of Imbrich is seen as normal by the inhabitants, and there is even a table of possible responses by the villagers should the Player Characters bring the subject up. Plus, they have bigger concerns. A pod of whales has beached itself along the cove. Cetus, a local wizard who lives on nearby Darksand Isle where he maintains a lighthouse to keep local shipping safe and conducts experiments, has gone missing. Then there are the strange sounds coming from the sea! Could they be the cause of the creatures from the sea beaching themselves?
The Isle of the Plangent Mage is a mini-wilderness and dungeon scenario which takes the classic format of a village in peril with a nearby wizard’s tower, the wizard not having been seen in a few days, and inverts it—literally. The wilderness areas consists of several caves along the coast which the Player Characters are free to explore and once they get to the island, Darksand Isle itself. One of the most notable encounters is with the pod of beached whales, which the players and their characters are likely to feel great sympathy for, but which the villagers see as bounty from the sea! This has the potential to be an interesting roleplaying encounter and perhaps there is the possibility of learning further information if the Player Characters are clever. Once the Player Characters reach Darksand Isle, they can encounter more of the villagers, with even greater signs of mutation, pirates, not one, but two lighthouses, a sad ghost, and the tower of the wizard, Cetus. However—and this is where the scenario inverts the trope to clever effect—the tower is not a tower in the traditional sense. Instead of going up, like an ascending dungeon, it goes down and does so through the centre of Darksand Isle under the sea, with great, magically sealed, observation windows looking out into the briny depths. This is not a tower, but an Undertower!
The Undertower has a weird technological feel to it, heavily themed around sound. A central lift runs up and down the tower, operated by unlabelled buttons, there are doors which can only be opened by musical tones, numerous devices which manipulate sounds and even magic, and combined with the great vistas presented by the various observation levels, the dungeon has a superbly fantastical feel. Yet imparting this to her players and their characters is going to be a challenge for the Referee because of the succinct style in which the location descriptions are presented. These work in helping the Referee grasp the details of any location with ease, but what they do not do in help her bring them to life. There is a sense that actually, sections of purple, descriptive text would really have helped here. An alternative perhaps, would have been to include some illustrations which could be shown to the players to help them visualise what their characters are seeing, much in the mode of S1 Tomb of Horrors, S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, and Dwimmermount. Given the number of buttons on the lift, the Soundkey device used to open many of the doors in the Undertower, the numerous sound devices, and pipes, and more, all of these are begging for illustrations and they are never given that.

One major weakness of The Isle of the Plangent Mage—especially in comparison to the earlier The Hole in the Oak and The Incandescent Grottoes—is the lack of factions and the lack of motivations for factions. In both of those adventures, the factions and their motivations helped drive the story and bring their respective dungeons alive, but not so in The Isle of the Plangent Mage. There are multiple groups throughout the adventure, including the villagers of Imbrich, pirates visiting Darksand Isle, tribes of Sahuagin which want to attack the village, the staff in Cetus’ tower, and more. Yet apart from the individual wants of various villagers, the Referee is not told what the other factions want and are doing. The staff in Cetus’ tower, in particular, are barely mentioned beyond their quarters and the kitchen. They have disappeared without explanation, whereas their presence would really have given some pointers for the Player Characters as to the nature of Cetus’ Undertower and how parts of it work. There are bodies here and there, but it is never stated if they are former staff and if not, who they were.

Another potential is Player Character motivation. The Referee will need to devise a reason for the Player Characters to want to visit the village of Imbrich, but once they get there they will find that various villagers have reasons, if not themselves, then someone else to visit and explore Darksand Isle and the Undertower. Beyond that keeping the Player Characters motivated to continue exploring will be a challenge for the Referee.

Physically, The Isle of the Plangent Mage is as well presented and as organised as previous scenarios for Old School Essentials from Necrotic Gnome—almost. The map of the whole dungeon is inside the front and covers , and after the introduction, the adventure overview provides a history of the dungeon, details of its major NPCs and monsters, the description and purpose of the great device built into the Undertower, and reasons to visit Darksand Isle. The village of Imbrich and its inhabitants are described in detail, and there are tables of rumours, treasure to be found in the adventure, random encounters to had throughout the adventure, and Oceanic Mutations that the Player Characters could, and probably will, suffer. 
In between are the descriptions of the locations up and down the coast, Darksand Isle, and in the Undertower. All sixty-four of them. These are arranged in order of course, but each is written in a parred down style, almost bullet point fashion, with key words in bold with details in accompanying parenthesis, followed by extra details and monster stats below. For example, the ‘Rocky Vestibule’ area is described as containing “Black rock (rough, natural, 6’ ceiling). Puddles of seawater (tiny red crabs, black brittle stars). Pale blue light (glowing snails on walls). Pile of broken coral on floor (very lifelike head, arm and lower leg carved of coral). A rotting human corpse (covered in seaweed, swollen with sea water, slashed and cut up).” It expands up this with “Taking stairs: Down to Area 37.” There is a fantastic economy of words employed here often to incredible effect. The descriptions are kept to a bare minimum, but their simplicity is in many cases evocative, easy to read from the page, and prepare. As with the other official adventures from Necrotic Gnome, much of The Isle of the Plangent Mage is genuinely easy to bring to the table and made all the easier to run from the page because the relevant sections from the map are reproduced on the same page. In addition, the map itself is clear and easy to read, with coloured boxes used to mark locked doors and monster locations as well as the usual room numbers.
In places though, the design and layout does not quite work. This is primarily where single rooms require expanded detail beyond the simple thumbnail description. It adds complexity and these locations are not quite as easy to run straight from the page as other locations are in the dungeon. Elsewhere, the location numbers could have been better placed alongside the rooms rather than on them and the map slips into the gutter of the book and is not as easy to read. The full colour artwork is excellent, depicting many of the strange creatures and monsters that the Player Characters will encounter, and these can easily be shown to their players.
The Isle of the Plangent Mage is a challenging dungeon for the Player Characters, who will often find themselves changed by the encounters in the adventure and many of the encounters are deadly, with some very nasty monsters, such as the betentacled, bipedal Alpha Shark Mutant, and the truly awful Night Trawler. Then there is the puzzle of what the Undertower is and how its various devices work, let alone where Cetus has disappeared too. In fact, unless the Player Characters are clever during an early encounter in the scenario, they may never find out! Depending upon the campaign or what the Player Characters have been engaged to do, that may be an issue all by itself. For the Referee, The Isle of the Plangent Mage is a challenging dungeon to run and present, and to really hook the players and their characters in to want to explore the Undertower. So ultimately, the Referee may want to develop the scenario herself before play, bringing in the factions and their motivations, giving stronger reasons for the Player Characters to act and more. Once done, The Isle of the Plangent Mage is a genuinely fantastical, even memorable environment, that will really need a bit of effort upon the part of the Referee can be genuinely fantastical, even memorable adventure.

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

—oOo—

The third issue of Parallel Worlds magazine was published in September 2020. Like with previous issues, bringing with the the inaugural issue, Parallel Worlds Issue #01 published in 2019, it contains no gaming content as such, but rather discusses and aspects of not just the hobby, but different hobbies—board games, roleplaying games, computer games, films, and more. Much like later issues, for example, Parallel Worlds Issue #21 and Parallel Worlds Issue #22, this third issue is fairly balanced issue, with relatively little, direct gaming content. Further, the standard of writing is better, which when combined with its selection of interesting articles and brevity serves to make it overall an engaging, even sometimes thoughtful read. Of course, Parallel Worlds Issue #03 is readily available in print, but all of the issues of Parallel Worlds, published by Parallel Publishing can also be purchased in digital format, because it is very much not back in the day of classic White Dwarf, but here and now. 
Parallel Worlds Issue #03 opens with its editorial from Tom Grundy, making the point that the value of Science Fiction, horror, and fantasy lies in its ideas and that in addressing and discussing these ideas, suggesting that in doing so, this is actually the highest form of conversation. It is an interesting stance, especially given the dismissive way in which genre content is often treated. Grundy does not take the idea any further, which is a pity. The issue then introduces a new addition, ‘Feedback’. This is the magazine’s letters page, the replies either complimentary or discussing the ‘Thinkpiece’ article ‘Ruling the World 20 – The sci-fi assumption of ‘Government Earth’’, in Parallel Worlds Issue #02, which examined the notion of the ‘global’ or civilisation-wide government. This opens up the magazine a little, making feel less like it exists in a vacuum.

The issue’s interview is with Carsten Damm, previously the developer of the fantasy roleplaying game Earthdawn—now thirty years old in 2023—and now the founder of the German publisher, Vagrant Workshop. This is quite a lengthy piece, exploring the interviewee’s beginnings as both a roleplayer and a designer, how he moved from writing in German and then English for Earthdawn, and then back again for his own content. In addition to learning a little about the publisher’s roleplaying game, Equinox, and more about growing up as a gamer in Germany. One issue with the hobby is that for obvious reasons it is dominated by the English-speaking market, so it is always interesting to hear from another gaming market and culture. The interview is a good start to Parallel Worlds Issue #03, although it is the roleplaying content in the issue.
Parallel Worlds Issue #03 has two articles devoted to wargaming. The second is the ‘Mini of the Month’ by Thomas Turbull-Ross and is definitely the less useful of the two, and probably the least interesting of the two. The figure is the Isharann Soulrender figure from Games Workshop’s range of aquatic elves and it is easy to see why the loves the figure with its lantern hanging from its helmet like an angler fish to be able to see under the sea, its man-catching polearm, and swordfish companion, but difficult to see why it warranted a double-page spread devoted to a single figure and some fiction. The first and infinitely more useful is a discussion on how to get into the miniatures hobby by ‘Wargaming on a Budget’. Written by Allen Stroud and Connor Eddies, this suggests ways and options in which a prospective player can begin wargaming with limited funds, tracking the money spent as they suggest the rules to choose, where to buy models on the cheap, what tools are needed, and so on. The budget is £70—and that includes choosing a free set of rules and opting for the skirmish level of wargaming, that is, twenty or so figures to a side. The article does gloss over the various options in terms of rules, and it might have been useful to look at the relative benefits of each, especially since there is some money left from the budget at the end of the exercise. After all, why include photographs of the Frostgrave line if it is really only going to be mentioned in passing in the text? Overall, a good guide and the most useful article in the issue.
The miniatures and wargames articles are divided by a review by Christopher Jarvis of the board game, Space Base, which at four pages feels too long. The issue is not the words, but the photographs which do not much to the review. Anyway, had the review been cut in half, there could have been room for another review or more content. For the Events article, Jane Clewett takes the reader to ‘FrightFest – Twenty Bloody Years’, to celebrate the longevity of the biggest horror film festival in the United Kingdom. This is an enjoyable piece, which not only tells us what the event is all about, but also what it is like to attend. It sounds like a fantastic event to attend if you are a fan of the horror genre, but Frightfest also showcases thrillers and other genre films too, so it may well be work checking out to what is being shown at the next event.

The two computer game-themed articles suffer from the same issue as the miniatures articles—one good, one not so good. The first, ‘Homeworld’, by Allen Stroud, explores the history and the story of the Homeworld real-time strategy computer game with its combination Star Wars-like space opera and Battlestar Galactica-like story. It places the series in context of the computer games of the late nineties and its genre and game type, which thankfully in the modern age is made all the more interesting because its three entries and extra content are readily available. Further and with the benefit of time, the article is also useful as a primer for Homeworld: Revelations, the roleplaying game from Modiphius Entertainment. Either way, it is a solid introduction to the series. ‘Terraria – The Success of Simplicity in Modern Gaming’ by Richard Watson is the not as interesting counterpart to ‘Homeworld’. Terraria is a two-dimensional, side-scrolling sandbox which is hugely popular given its relative price and despite there being any number of multi-million dollar titles which a player could choose to play instead. A relatively short article, it nevertheless takes too long to get to what the game is about, concentrating instead on updates and what the game is not. So it never fully sells the game and the fact that it is fun to play.
In comparison, the articles on books are uniformly good. Allen Stroud’s ‘Diamonds in the Rough: Read Adventurous!’ examines the joys and dangers of reading self-published books. It highlights the difficulty of picking your way through the innumerable genre titles available today to find the proverbial diamond in the rough, providing some pointers as to what to look for—reviews, blurbs, cover designs, price, and more. It is backed up with quintet of recommendations as a starting point. They include dystopian future, tales of epic fantasy, space opera, and others, all useful pointers. This is followed by a trilogy of book reviews—Tade Thompson’s Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning Rosewater, Beyond Kidding by Lynda Clark, and Duchamp Versus Einstein—by Allen Stroud, Louis Calvert, and Tom Grundy. These three reviews are surprisingly succinct and to the point, with little in the way of wasted space—not always the case with other articles in the issue.
Penultimately, ‘TV & Film’ completes a two-part article dedicated to Star Trek begun on the previous issue. In the first part of ‘Keeping Trek’ by Ben Potts looked at the origins and history of the franchise, all the way up the earliest films. Here he picks up with Star Trek: The Next Generation and explores the franchise over the course of numerous series, Star Trek: Deep Space 9, Star Trek: Voyager, and Enterprise, and to a lesser extent, the films of the nineties and noughties. It comes up to date for for the first two seasons of Star Trek Discovery, but does not give them more than a passing mention. Essentially, this continues the solid introduction begun in the first part, turning the two-part series into an overview primarily intended for the casual or uninitiated would be fan of Star Trek as there is nothing here that the dedicated fan will not already know. As with the first part, it highlights some of the issues of the various series as well as some of the issues too. It pays particular praise to Star Trek: Deep Space 9, especially in its capacity to tell more interesting and often longer stories, whilst acknowledging the parallels with Babylon 5.
The other ‘TV & Film’ article in Parallel Worlds Issue #03 is ‘Let’s Talk About... The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance’, which is a noted departure in format for the magazine. Together, Tom Grundy, Allen Stroud, and Beth Faulds discuss and give their opinions. There is room here for the trio to agree and disagree, the discussion good-natured and everyone has room to give their opinion. This is a solid format with little wasted space here, and hopefully, future issues will return to it to discuss other genre television or film. Lastly, the issue is rounded out with a short piece of horror fiction. ‘Erden Foe’ by Mehzeb R. Chowdhury is a short piece of Lovecraftian military fiction which nicely rounds the article off.
Physically, Parallel Worlds #03 is printed in full colour, on very sturdy paper, which gives it a high-quality feel. As with both Parallel Worlds #01 and Parallel Worlds #02, it does suffer from a lot of empty space and just too many of the articles do feel stretched out. More concision when it comes to the layout and perhaps there might have been room for more content. 
Parallel Worlds Issue #03 swings widely in tone and content. Once again roleplaying does come off a poor third in comparison to other types of gaming, too many articles feel stretched, and it does not yet escape the feeling that there should be more to it. One board game and one miniature review does not feel as if it is enough in comparison to several books. Yet there are good articles to be found in the pages of the issue. ‘Wargaming on a Budget’ is useful and informative, as are ‘FrightFest – Twenty Bloody Years’ and ‘Diamonds in the Rough: Read Adventurous!’ because they help the reader do things, whilst  ‘Let’s Talk About... The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance’ is spirited and engaging. All four articles are ones that might bring the reader back to the issue to follow up on that help or read again, whereas the others, less so. Overall, Parallel Worlds Issue #03 is still just a bit too light, but there are sections worth reading.

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

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

—oOo—
Name: The Depths of BermudaPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Thomas S. Lawrence

Setting: 1920s Caribbean
Product: ScenarioWhat You Get: Forty-nine page, 10.85 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: The dangers of the deep will colour this dive.Plot Hook: The chance to strike it rich is undone when something else is struck.Plot Support: Staging advice, nine pre-generated Investigators, fifteen NPCs, four handouts, one map, four non-Mythos monsters, and two Mythos monsters.Production Values: Thematically ambitious.
Pros# Winner of a Miskatonic Playhouse Bronze Award# Engaging set-up and staging for the adventure# Physical, technical adventure rather than mental adventure# Lots of pre-generated Investigators, but advice given for players to make their own# Good scenario for a journalist or author# Has a Jaws moment# Aquaphobia# Thalassophobia#& Claustrophobia

Cons# Needs a strong edit# Underwritten explanation for the Keeper upfront# No deckplans# Has a Jaws moment
Conclusion# Action-packed one-shot which makes great use of its environment and staging for an enjoyably original encounter with a classic Mythos monster
# Scenario let down by underwhelming set-up and poor editing

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

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

—oOo—
Name: Saturday the 14thPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Sabrina Haenze

Setting: 1980s Maine
Product: ScenarioWhat You Get: Twenty-Eight page, 9.55 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Friday the 13th meets Groundhog Day (sort of...)Plot Hook: How many times can you die before you solve the crime?Plot Support: Staging advice, four pre-generated Investigators, four NPCs, twenty-five victims, three handouts, and two Mythos monsters.Production Values: Plain.
Pros# Clever twist upon the repetitive slasher movie horror cliché# Straightforward and very direct plot # Movie night one-shot# Diokophobia# Chronophobia

Cons# Clever twist upon the repetitive slasher movie horror cliché# Straightforward, linear, and very direct plot# Needs an edit# This is a cliché # Pre-generated Investigators scruffily presented
Conclusion# Ups the ante on the clichéd slasher movie by making the Investigators relive it multiple times to solve the crimes# Undemanding movie night horror

Since 1978 and the publication of Heritage Models’ Star Trek: Adventure Gaming in the Final Frontier, there have been ten roleplaying games that have visited the world’s largest Science Fiction franchise that is Star Trek, notable titles being FASA’s highly regarded Star Trek: The Role Playing Game, the original Star Trek RPG for many in 1982 and 1998’s well received Star Trek: The Next Generation Role-playing Game from Last Unicorn Games. The tenth is Star Trek Adventures: The Roleplaying Game, published by Modiphius Entertainment in 2017 of which Star Trek Adventures: The Roleplaying Game – Core Rulebook provides a full introduction to both the setting and the rules. (A shorter introduction is provided in the Star Trek Adventures: The Roleplaying Game Starter Set.) The eleventh roleplaying game based upon the Star Trek universe is different because it is dedicated to the Klingons.

Much like its predecessor, Star Trek Adventures: The Klingon Empire has a big job to do—perhaps an even bigger one than Star Trek Adventures: The Roleplaying Game. Despite there having been ten roleplaying games set within the world of Star Trek, only two of them have received supplements dedicated to the Klingons, the most notable of which was The Klingons. Written by the late John M. Ford for FASA’s Star Trek: The Role Playing Game, for many years this supplement would heavily influence the portrayal of Star Trek’s second most popular alien race on both screen and in print. However, much of the background the Klingons has subsequently been rewritten and how they are portrayed today differs greatly. The other difference between the previous supplements devoted to the Klingons and Star Trek Adventures: The Klingon Empire is that this book is a standalone roleplaying game, rather than a supplement. Like Star Trek Adventures: The Roleplaying Game, it enables players to create characters and the Game Master to run a game in three different eras of Star Trek. It not only has to do this, but it also to present a culture and an outlook that is the antithesis of both the United Federation of Planets and Starfleet, make both characters and campaigns playable whilst highlighting how both differ from a standard Star Trek Adventures game, and accounting for the differences in the portrayal and appearance onscreen over the course of Star Trek’s history. Further, it updates the core rules for the Star Trek Adventures roleplaying game.
As with Star Trek Adventures: The Roleplaying Game, the default setting in Star Trek Adventures: The Klingon Empire is late twenty-fourth century, late in the period of Star Trek: The Next Generation, at the beginning of Star Trek: Deep Space 9, and before Star Trek: Voyager. The specific year is 2371, but it explores further than this, right up to the end of the war with the Dominion, fought with an alliance with both the Federation and the Romulans. With both rebuilding in the wake of the war and Cardassia much reduced, there is scope for exploration and expansion, for every warrior in the Klingon Defence Force to gain glory and honour for the empire. There is guidance too on the Klingons in the twenty-third and twenty-second centuries, during periods portrayed by the Star Trek: The Original Series and Star Trek: Enterprise respectively. However, of the two periods, it is the Star Trek: The Original Series-era Klingons which get the most attention, since that is when we see them first portrayed on screen, almost piratical in their untrustworthiness and scheming.
Star Trek Adventures: The Klingon Empire—the House of Duras, the House of Mogh, the House of Kor, the House of Kang, and more—as well as the explanation of the High Council is important in game terms because unlike a Star Trek Adventures: The Roleplaying Game campaign, one involving the Klingons is very likely to involve politics as well as exploration, expansion, and war. The chapter on worlds and locations, of course, starts with the Kingon homeworld, Qo’nos, but also an explanation of the Klingon Department of Stellar Records’ system of Planetary Classification. It divides them into three levels— ‘Conquerable’, ‘Exploitable, Of Use’, and ‘Habitable’, given as an in-game rejection of the Federation Planetary Classification System that succinctly sums up the Klingon mindset.

In Star Trek Adventures: The Klingon Empire, players take the role of honourable warriors and other members of the Klingon Defence Force, serving aboard a starship. What exactly constitutes honour is neatly summed up not once, but twice. First from the Klingon point of view as you would expect, but then from the Vulcan perspective, which provides another way of understanding it and making it easier to roleplay. Unlike Star Trek Adventures: The Roleplaying Game, where the players have numerous options as to what they can play, Star Trek Adventures: The Klingon Empire only offers two—Klingon or QuchHa’ Klingon. The latter, also known as ‘the unhappy ones’, are the Klingons portrayed on screen during the Star Trek: The Original Series, genetically changed as a result of a cure for a lethal plague that would leave them appearing more Human-like, aggressive and more ruthless in their cunning, along with a reputation for being less honourable and trustworthy. In campaign terms, they best suit the Star Trek: Enterprise and Star Trek: The Original Series periods rather than later periods when medical treatment has restored them to the Klingon norm.
A Klingon in Star Trek Adventures: The Klingon Empire is defined by Attributes, Disciplines, Focuses, Traits, Talents, and Values and Dictates. The six Attributes—Control, Daring, Fitness, Insight, Presence, and Reason—represent ways of or approaches to doing things as well as intrinsic capabilities. They are rated between seven and twelve. The six Disciplines—Command, Conn, Engineering, Security, Science, and Medicine—are skills, knowledges, and areas of training representing the wide roles aboard a starship. They are rated between one and five. Focuses represent narrow areas of study or skill specialities, for example, Astrophysics, Xenobiology, or Warp Field Dynamics. Traits and Talents represent anything from what a character believes, is motivated by, intrinsic abilities, ways of doing things, and so on. They come from a character’s species, upbringing, training, and life experience, for example, the Klingon species Talent is Brak’lul, which is their general physiological hardiness, whilst a security officer might have Warrior’s Strike Talent. Values represent a Klingon’s attitudes and beliefs, whilst Dictates are specific orders which a Klingon must obey. Both can be triggered to provide various benefits by spending a character’s Determination points, but also challenged to gain complications and Determination points. Their use in play can also lead to both gain and loss of honour, depending on the circumstances.

To create a character, a player puts him through a lifepath—much like previous Star Trek roleplaying games—the seven stages of which for Klingons encompass his species, home environment, caste, training, career length and its events, and current status. At each stage, a player adjusts Attributes, selects and adjusts Disciplines, and picks Focuses, Traits, Talents, and Values. Some of these elements a player has to select, but he can choose to roll for them and determine randomly. Our sample character is Kargan, a QuchHa’ Klingon who grew up on a poor frontier world who enlisted in the Klingon Defence Force to prove to the empire that he can be more than a farm labourer. He is ambitious and always on the look out for chances and opportunities that will get him noticed and promoted. This includes undermining his superiors and his fellow soldiers if it will fulfill his ambitions and does not reflect poor on him. So far this has including killing his immediate superior during a boarding action by Romulans and taking command of the engineering department’s defence and being promoted into his position.
KarganRace: Klingon (QuchHa’)Department: Engineering Rank: Corporal

AttributesControl 10 Daring 11 Fitness 10Insight 9 Presence 8 Reason 7
DisciplinesCommand 3 Conn 2 Engineering 3Security 4 Science 1 Medicine 1
FocusesAnimal Handling, Lead by Example, Starship Maintenance, Survival
TraitsKlingon, QuchHa’
ValuesAlways the outsider, Worth the risk
TalentsFollow My Lead, Killer’s Instinct, Quick to Action, Untapped Potential
Environment: Frontier WorldCaste: AgricultureTraining: LabourerCareer Events: Required to Take Command
The result is a Klingon Defence Force member of varying though still competent experience, but Star Trek Adventures provides other options in terms of what can be played and how they are created. One is supporting characters, which are other members of the crew and although not as fully detailed as the Player Characters—essentially members of the main cast—they enable players to roleplay other types of character, to be involved in scenes their main character would not, and to provide support where there are relatively few players in a game. Supporting characters can be fully played, but are not fully developed, having neither Talents or Values. These will come up in play as the Supporting Character reappears again and again, meaning that the players will learn more about him as the campaign goes on and he slowly grows from a Supporting Character to a Main Character. The option for creating is via play rather than at the start of a campaign and so is created in response to the narrative. One issue with character is the lack of ready Values for a player to choose or take inspiration from.
In terms of progression, a character does not earn Experience Points as he might in other roleplaying games. Instead, to reflect the fact that the characters on screen in Star Trek grow and change only periodically, player characters in Star Trek Adventures: The Klingon Empire achieve Milestones and Arcs, which are recorded in a character log, including the Values which came into play. Arcs take longer to achieve through play, but both Milestones and Arcs can reward a Player Character or a ship and its crew. Reputation is also crucial for a Klingon and his family and house. It fluctuates over time, reflecting a Klingon’s actions, meaning it can go up and down. It can can be used to substitute an influence roll over others and it can rolled to generate Glory, which can then be spent on Favours, be granted Awards, given promotion, and so on. However, a poor performance will generate Shame and these can spent to ruin a Klingon’s Reputation, have him demoted, imprisoned, and more. Both Glory and Shame are spent immediately, but if Shame is not spent or expunged with negative consequences, it can grow and grow.

In addition to creating a Player Character, a player can also create a House for his Klingon to below to, each House having its own status, legacy, and temperament. The Player Characters might be from the same House or different ones, but in play a House can support or aid a Player Character, but is equally expecting the Player Character to bring honour and glory that will last for years to come. The presence and role of the House is to give a wider stage for the campaign, to bring intrigue and politics into play, and thus greater potential for roleplaying.
Star Trek Adventures: The Klingon Empire employs the 2d20 System previously used in the publisher’s Mutant Chronicles: Techno Fantasy Roleplaying Game and Robert E. Howard’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of. To undertake an action, a character’s player rolls two twenty-sided dice, aiming to have both roll under the total of an Attribute and a Discipline. Each roll under this total counts as a success, an average task requiring two successes. Rolls of one count as two successes and if a character has an appropriate Focus, rolls under the value of the Discipline also count as two successes.
For example, during the Romulan boarding action, the engineering section of Kargan’s ship has been breached and he and his superior, Barot, have fought off the invaders. Both are wounded and as they eye each other after the fight, Kargan sees an opportunity to better himself by killing Barot and claiming that his superior died gloriously in the defence of the ship. Barot realises what Kargan is about to do and they both dive for the Romulan disruptor pistol on the floor. Kargan’s player says that he will spend a point of Determination to ignore the injury he suffered in the fight and taps the ‘Worth the risk’ Value to do so. The Game Master states that Kargan’s attempt will have a Difficulty of one, whereas rolling for Borat, she has a Difficulty of two due to the wounds he has suffered. Kargan’s player selects Daring and Security, meaning he has a target of fifteen to roll under and rolls under four will generate extra Successes. A roll of two and nine generates three successes. This gives him two Successes taking into account the Difficulty. With a Control of eleven and Security of three, Barot’s target is fourteen and three if the Game Master wants to generate extra successes. Her roll of four and eleven generates only two Successes, not enough to overcome the Difficulty and get the weapon before his subordinate can. With a grin, Kurgan has the drop on Barot and pulls the trigger. He will tell his superiors that Barot did not die in vain…Main characters like the player characters possess Determination, which works with their Values. A Value can either be challenged once per session in a negative or difficult situation to gain Determination or invoked once per session to spend Determination to gain an extra die for a check (a ‘Perfect Opportunity’), to get a reroll of the dice in a check (‘Moment of Inspiration’), to gain a second action when time of the essence (‘Surge of Activity’), and to create an Advantage (‘Execute!’). They also have Talents and Traits which will grant a character an advantage in certain situations. So Bold (Engineering) enables a player to reroll a single twenty-sided die for his character if he has purchased extra dice by adding to the Game Master’s Threat pool or Dauntless, which allows a player to roll an extra twenty-sided die for his character to resist being intimidated or threatened.

Now where the players generate Momentum to spend on their characters, the Game Master has Threat which can be spent on similar things for the NPCs as well as to trigger their special abilities. She begins each session with a pool of Threat, but can gain more through various circumstances. These include a player purchasing extra dice to roll on a test, a player rolling a natural twenty and so adding two Threat (instead of the usual Complication), the situation itself being threatening, or NPCs rolling well and generating Momentum and so adding that to Threat pool. In return, the Gamemaster can spend it on minor inconveniences, complications, and serious complications to inflict upon the player characters, as well as triggering NPC special abilities, having NPCs seize the initiative, and bringing the environment dramatically into play.

What the Momentum and Threat mechanics do is set up a pair of parallel economies with Threat being fed in part by Momentum, but Momentum in the main being used to overcome the complications and circumstances which the expenditure of Threat can bring into play. The primary use of Threat though, is to ratchet up the tension and the challenge, whereas the primary use of Momentum is to enable the player characters to overcome this challenge and in action, be larger than life.

Conflict uses the same mechanics, but offers more options in terms of what Momentum can be spent on, which includes both social and combat. Obviously for combat, includes doing extra damage, disarming an opponent, keeping the initiative—initiative works by alternating between between the player characters and the NPCs and keeping it allows two player characters to act before an NPC does, avoid an injury, and so on. Damage in combat is rolled on the Challenge dice, the number of ‘Heart of Virtue’ or ‘tIq ghob’ symbols rolled determining how much damage is inflicted. A similar roll is made to resist the damage, and any leftover is deducted from a character’s Stress. If a character’s Stress is reduced to zero or five or more damage is inflicted, then a character is injured. Any Starfleet insignia symbols rolled indicate an effect as well as the damage. In keeping with the tone of the various series, weapon damage can be deadly, melee or hand-to-hand, less so. Rules cover stun settings and of course, diving for cover, whilst a lovely reinforcement of the genre is that killing attacks generate Threat to add to the Game Master’s pool. Combat of course, has to take into account the fact that Klingons are lot tougher than those puny members of Starfleet!
The rules themselves in Star Trek Adventures are not difficult to understand and in the main they remain unchanged in Star Trek Adventures: The Klingon Empire. However, they are better presented and are better supported with examples, and also cleaner layout. As thematic as the use of LCARS is in Star Trek Adventures, it is not always easy to read. The adjustments to the rules are in some places cosmetic, such as renaming Talents to reflect Klingons rather than Starfleet, but the addition of the Reputation, Glory, and Shame are excellent and will help drive further roleplaying upon the part of the players.
Where Star Trek Adventures: The Klingon Empire cannot ease the complexity of the rules is Star Trek Adventures is starship combat, although it does its best. Details of ships of the Klingon Defence force are provided for all three eras, though sadly no really useful images. Starships are treated in a fashion similar to characters, but have Systems and Departments instead of Attributes and Disciplines. Star Trek Adventures: The Klingon Empire covers just about everything that a crew might do with their ship, from general operation to going toe-to-toe with a Romulan Bird of Prey in starship combat. The latter works in a similar fashion to that of personal combat, except that as Department Heads, the player characters are in control of different aspects of the ship. Instead of injuries for taking five damage in one hit, a ship suffers breaches which can knockout a ship’s systems. Her crew or a player character can repair them, but too many breeches and ship is disabled or even destroyed. As with Star Trek Adventures, the roleplaying game also covers starbases and personalising both starships and starbases.

In terms of threats, again, a wide range of vessels and NPCs are given. These include Starfleet Constitution, Defiant, and Excelsior Class vessels, D’Deridex Class Warbirds of the Romulan Star Empire, Galor Class cruisers of the Cardassian Union, and the Dominion’s Jem’hadar Attack Ships. NPCs include major and minor characters from across the eras, for example, Commander Kang and his wife, Mara; ‘Arne Darvin’, who attempted to poison the grain shipment for Sherman’s Planet and then go back in time to stop his efforts from being thwarted; and Chancellor Gowron of the High Council as well as Worf! The other NPCs, whether from the Romulan Star Empire, Cardassian Union, United Federation of Planets, the Dominion, and the Borg Collective, are more generic in nature, awaiting the Game Master to personalise them to suit her campaign. The ‘Beasts of the Galaxy, does of course, include the terrible Tribbles!
For the Game Master, there is general advice on running Star Trek scenarios and campaign, but also specifically Klingon scenarios and campaigns too. It suggests campaign styles such as ‘Proud Sons and Daughters of Kahless’, ‘The Empire Needs Loyal Soldiers’, ‘Lower Decks’, and more. There are some interesting ideas here, but they are not developed to any real extent, the advice really covering character creation, handling the rules, and the role of the Player Characters aboard a vessel. The latter is specifically from a Klingon point of view, as is the advice for creating Kling campaigns and scenarios. This highlights the expansive nature of the Klingon Empire’s objectives and the use of the Klingon Defence Force as its primary tool. Theatres of operation included are the Klingon-Romulan border, the Klingon-Federation Neutral Zone, and The Shackleton Expanse, the campaign setting for Star Trek Adventures, and even the Officer Exchange Program with the Federation. The plot components are based on the Red, Gold, and Blue components for Command and Conn, Security and Engineering, and Science and Medical respectively, taken from The Command Division, The Operations Division, and The Sciences Division supplements. However, these have been adjusted to include Klingon elements, such as Matters of Honour, Obligations to House, Political Rivalry, and more, as well as Oaths of Vengeance and Espionage Missions. They are primarily pointers here, awaiting development by the Game Master, but they are all good starting points.

In addition to twelve mission briefs, including an adventure where the ship’s cook has to gather and prepare enough food to ensure the crew’s survival following a disastrous battle with the Dominion and the ship has been stranded, Star Trek Adventures: The Klingon Empire includes an introductory adventure. This is ‘The Oracle of Bar’Koth Reach’, a short affair in which the crew of a Klingon vessel set out to locate and gain the wisdom of the fabled Oracle of Bar’Koth Reach. It is scientifically challenging in places, but involves a lot of combat and opportunities to save the honour of a lost warrior and thus the honour of the empire. The scenario offers perhaps a session or two’s worth of play, but is a good start for a campaign.
Physically, Star Trek Adventures: The Klingon Empire is cleanly presented in a fashion that is much more accessible than Star Trek Adventures. Consequently, it feels and looks more like a traditional roleplaying game than Star Trek Adventures does. The roleplaying game, like the other books in the line, is illustrated, not with photographs from the films and television series, but fully painted depictions of Klingon life and culture, and the Klingon Defence Force and its ships and warriors. Again, some thought has been put into organising the book’s content thematically, so ‘Reporting for Battle’ covers character creation and ‘To Command the Stars’ details starships and starship combat, for example. The book could have done with a tighter edit in places though, but a nice touch is the inclusion of a map of the Klingon Empire marked in both ‘tlhIngan Hol’, the Klingon language and English. The book includes a primer to ‘tlhIngan Hol’ as well.
Star Trek Adventures: The Klingon Empire places the Klingons front and centre in the world of Star Trek Adventures, enabling a Game Master and her players to play out campaigns of aggressive action and intrigue, honourable combat, defending or expanding the empire, and more. It depends on the period when a campaign is set. One set during the period of Star Trek: The Original Series will differ from that of Star Trek: Deep Space-9, but whatever the period there is also plenty of scope for political intrigue as well as the search for honour and glory. This is in addition to the possibilities of crossovers between Star Trek Adventures and Star Trek Adventures: The Klingon Empire—each serves as a supplement for the other! Ultimately, Star Trek Adventures: The Klingon Empire is the definitive guide to playing Klingons and renders them not just glory and honour, but also justice!

Drakkenhall: City of Monsters takes you right into the home of one member of the thirteen Icons of the Dragon Empire of the 13th Age—the Blue, a Blue Dragon also known as the Blue Sorceress. Once it was the city of Highrock, which protected the Midland Sea and the empire from invasion, but four centuries ago it was invaded and reduced to ruins. So, it remained until one hundred years ago, when the Blue Dragon took the city for herself and rebuilt half it, making it a haven within the empire for all of the monsters who would not normally be allowed to reside within other cities. Even as she allows the Goblin Market—famous for its deals, steals, and buyer’s remorse—to operate within the walls of Drakkenhall, an Ogre Mage to head her secret police, and numerous cults to practice their dark faiths in their profane temples—yet denying access to the city by any Orc, the Blue Sorceress serves as the Imperial Governor of Drakkenhall under geas from the Emperor and the Archmage. The question is, has the power of the Blue been constrained within the limits of Drakkenhall by making her part of the Dragon Empire’s hierarchy, or is this part of the Blue Dragon’s plan to subvert the empire from within? Ultimately, this is not question that the supplement will answer, but like other supplements in the line, it is one that is explored and multiple answers suggested.

Drakkenhall: City of Monsters is a supplement for 13th Age, the roleplaying game from Pelgrane Press which combines the best elements of both Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition and Dungeons & Dragons, Fourth Edition to give high action combat, strong narrative ties, and exciting play. Designed for adventurer and champion-tier campaigns, it explores the various different aspects of a city infested by monsters, run by monsters, and constraining monsters. It is both radically law-abiding and radically criminal, fastidiously good mannered and rudely brutal, a half city built on the shattered remains of an old city, the ruins hiding dungeons and secrets which stretch from the former city walls into the depths of the city harbour waters. Alongside this, ordinary folk of the Dragon Empire get by and know how live alongside the turbulent nature of the city’s other, often unpleasant or difficult inhabitants, and in between New Rat City which provides a safe, if expensive underground route into Drakkenhall, the docks of Saltside where the lowlifes encountered are likely to be tourists as much as other visitors, and the Goblin Market, where getting fleeced is just part of doing business, there are points of goodness and light. The most notable of which is Pleasantville, an old Highrock city block in the rubblehood run by the Halfling, Uncle Papa Brother Knuckles, which is clean and minty fresh, covered in flowers and vines, and even has a supply of good drinking water, as well as the Scales enclave, a place of business barely tolerated by the Blue despite its normality, but such places are far and few between, and very much at odds with the rest of the city.

Drakkenhall: City of Monsters is not a conventional city guide in that it does not explore the city as a whole. Rather, it focuses on particular aspects of the city, with each chapter written by a different author, but it begins with an overview of its power brokers and pawns. It starts by highlighting the huge divide between the manors and estates of the wealthy and the surrounding shantytown ruins, little details such as the city’s odd status and high criminality making food supply and trade highly irregular, that many inhabitants of the city have to swear an oath of fealty to the Blue Sorceress, and instead of having a rat problem, Drakkenhall has an ooze problem! It divides its manors and estates—its ‘Estates of Significance’—between ‘Estates of Decadence’ and ‘Blood Houses’, connecting them to cults, demonic salons of science and discovery, fashion trends, and best of all, a social season with Enchanted Dance Cards each of which tracks the holder’s points with each of the Three. Suggestions are included too for the other Icons, but primarily it is with the Black, Blue, and Red Dragons, and the bearer can possibly earn one-time relationships with each one of them. There are even Fashionista Oozes which accompany their owners to parties and often react badly to fashions and styles their owners hold in poor regard and mechanical barber-surgeons like the Cut Monkey and the Amputation Mechanoid, which partially fill the void left by the lack of ready healing in the city. There are rules too for prosthetic limbs, so if a Player Character needs healing, the party had best keep a healing spell or two in reserve lest one of the automatons comes cutting… Much like the rest of Drakkenhall: City of Monsters, this opening chapter explores various aspects of the city, but in places, such the ‘Estates of Significance’, it leaves the specifics up the Game Master, and so in comparison, there are elements of the chapter that are not as interesting as the rest of the supplement.

‘Welcome to the Rubblehood’ hits some of the highlights of Drakkenhall’s ruins, for example, Hobtown, the fortified compound where the Jagged Company, a Hobgoblin mercenary unit drills daily, or the Float Royale, a pirate haven which floats just offshore, where the best beverages in the city can be found and the worst magical items in the empire go to be lost, whilst the bay itself is protected by a sleepy Dragon Turtle, who just happens to have a tame Kaiju-Shark at its beck and call. Every entry, as with the rest of the book is accompanied by a numerous adventure hooks and links to the Icons. There are more of the latter here than in other chapters, there being thirteen per Icon. ‘The Docks of Drakkenhall’ begins where the previous chapter left off at the shore’s edge, Saltside, the docks that are very much everyone’s idea of what dockside dives should be. There are Drakkenhall touches though, like the Dybbuk Inns, where guests get drugged of a night, their bodies possessed and put to some nefarious task, only to wake up with a terrible headache, but none the wiser or the Drowned District, an underwater remanent of Highrock just off  the coast, where the ghosts of the district’s former inhabitants, known as Lamenters, silently wail on the seabed, when they are not marching on the shore, likely with the aid of the Liche King. Accompanying these are quick and dirty rules for sea travel in the Dragon Empire, essentially handling them as travel montages as per the 13th Age Game Master’s Screen & Resource, whilst the Isles of Doom in the Midland Sea, Omen, which constantly spawns living dungeons that attack ships, and Necropolis, home to a massive army raised by the Liche King to threaten local shipping, are worthy of chapters of their own.

‘The Goblin Market’ is the standout chapter in Drakkenhall: City of Monsters. It describes the structure of the market from its outer Stalls to the deepest sections of Rock Bottom via the Underways; its own argot, a Goblinoid gang cant; and scam after scam, starting with all trades having to be in the market’s Blue Imp coins rather than Imperial coins, meaning currencies have to be exchanged, and then planting items on customers and claiming them to be stolen, drugging unsuspecting tourists and not only relieving them of their valuables, but delivering them ready to fight in the Fighting Pits, escalating a spilled drink into a demand for satisfaction which can only be settled in the fighting pit, and even demanding visitor’s fingers—especially if they are an Elf (such sweet meat)—as compensation for intruding on gang territory. Parts of the Goblin Market shift, but mostly it remains in Rubble City, run by the feudal mafia-like Organisation of goblinoid gangs, the most notable of which are the Rippers who operate the Double Draught speakeasy. This complete with gambling pits, a stage where even the most famous of the Dragon Empire’s entertainers have performed, impromptu blood brawls are set up, and a Halfling chef—so the food is good. Located in the depths of Rock Bottom, the Double Draught is going to be somewhere that the Player Characters are going to have to work to get to and get into, but once there, there are plenty of adventure hooks and ongoing plots to keep them coming back.

Drakkenhall: City of Monsters includes lots and lots of adventure hooks, but one thing it lacks until ‘Smash and Grab’ is a sense of an overarching plot that might keep the Player Characters in the city and crossing back and forth from one location to another. What ‘Smash and Grab’ suggests is a big scavenger hunt, leading to a treasure hunt. The ‘Society of Monster Archaeologists Searching for Hoards’—or ‘SMASH’—a secret society whose members possess a degree of immunity in a city of criminals. This is because members have a reputation for being tough, even mad, having delved into the deepest, darkest, most dangerous parts of Drakkenhall and the former Highrock in search of treasure and returned. Can the Player Characters join? Of course, they can! They just have to find the headquarters first, which is a hunt in itself, then when they have, they have to prove themselves worthy. This provides reasons for longer term play in Drakkenhall as well suggestions as to where to look for treasure worthy of SMASH. There are ideas too, for the Player Character who has SMASH as part of his Background during character creation.

Penultimately, Drakkenhall: City of Monsters presents some ideas as to why exactly, the Blue does not allow Orcs into the city. None of the four options are simple, but all four of them point to the deviousness of the Blue Sorceress. They are useful if the party includes an Orc Player Character. Lastly, there are stats for the Blue Dragon as the Blue Sorceress, though whether this is who she is, is open to conjecture…

Physically, Drakkenhall: City of Monsters is well written. However, the map of the city is not particularly detailed, so not as useful as it could have been, and the artwork does vary in quality. 

As written, Drakkenhall: City of Monsters does not feel like a coherent book. There is no overview which might pull all of the book’s content and city description together and its treatment of the city is scattershot. That though is by design. Drakkenhall is far from a cohesive city, raucous and rowdy, lawless until someone steps out of line, order of a sought being maintained by fear, dread oaths of fealty, and the Blue Sorceress’ secret police and Kobold force of the Glinting Legionnaires. The result is that a Player Character is never going to quite get a true grasp of what the city is like and how it really works, and even if he did, there is no knowing quite what would be different if he left and came back. The Game Master is supported with plenty of new threats, a handful of new magical items, and too many adventure ideas and hooks and more to mention, so that each time a Player Character comes back there will be a new scam he has not run into, a new plot to get tied up in, and more. It also means that from one visit to the next, the Game Master never has to keep all of the city in mind, but can rather focus on particular locations and how the Icons might be involved. There are elements which Game Master will need to develop, but with half a city reduced to rubble, there are plenty of places to put them.

Ultimately, Drakkenhall: City of Monsters is a criminally chaotic—to a point—and an evilly entertaining city to visit for a 13th Age campaign. Probably more than once. However, full of malevolent magics and would be marauding monsters, with a government lamentably legitimate, and almost everyone ready to swindle almost everyone else, Drakkenhall: City of Monsters is probably not somewhere to stay for long.

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

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

—oOo—

What is it?SLA Industries 2nd Edition: Quick Start is the quick-start for SLA Industries 2nd Edition, a roleplaying game of dark dystopian splatter punk and corporate noir horror.

It includes a basic explanation of the setting, rules for actions and combat, details of the arms, armour, and equipment fielded by the Player Characters, the mission, ‘The Cleaners’, and five ready-to-play, Player Characters, or SLA Operatives.

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

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

The themes and nature of SLA Industries and thus the SLA Industries 2nd Edition: Quick Start means that it is best suited to a mature audience.

How long will it take to play?
SLA Industries 2nd Edition: Quick Start and its adventure, ‘The Cleaners’, is designed to be played through in one or two sessions.

Who do you play?
The five Player Characters are all SLA Operatives who recently graduated from training and formed a squad called ‘Blistering Rain’. They consist of a Malice Stormer 313 with the Close Assault package, an Ebonite Medic, a Neophron with the Investigation & Interrogation package, a Frother with the Heavy Support package, and a Human with the Strike & Sweep package.

How is a Player Character defined?
An Operative has six stats—Strength, Dexterity, Knowledge, Concentration, and Cool. The sixth is Luck, except for the Ebonite, who have the Flux stat instead. Stats are rated between zero and six, whilst the skills are rated between one and four. Ratings Points represent an Operative’s ratings in various areas, such as televised action, corporate sponsorship, or faith in his own abilities. They are expended to overcome obstacles, perform cinematic feats, or avoid certain death or defeat. They are divided between three categories—Body, Brains, and Bravado—and indicate the ways in which an Operative will perform best on camera. For example, with Body 5, Brains 0, and Bravado 2, the Malice Stormer 313 will best seen performing an ‘Impossible Feat’ or going to ‘Tear Right Through Them’.

An Operative also has various traits such as Anger, Ambidextrous, Drug Addict, Arrogant, and so on. Each Operative sheet includes a thumbnail headshot illustration, some background, and several weapons. Each ‘SLA Operative Security Clearance Card’ or character sheet is clear and easy to read and understand.

How do the mechanics work?
Mechanically, SLA Industries, Second Edition uses the ‘S5S’ System. This is a dice pool system which uses ten-sided dice. The dice pool consists of one ten-sided die, called the Success Die, and Skill Dice equal to the skill being used, plus one. The Success Die should be of a different colour from the Skill Dice. The results of the dice roll are not added, but counted separately. Thus, to each roll is added the value of the Skill being rolled, plus its associated stat. If the result on the Success Die is equal to or greater than the Target Number, ranging from seven and Challenging to sixteen and Insane, then the Operative has succeeded. If the results of the Skill Dice also equal or exceed the Target Number, this improves the quality of the successful skill attempt. However, if the roll on the Success Die does not equal or exceed the Target Number, the attempt fails, even if multiple rolls on the Success Dice do. Except that is where there are four or more results which equal or exceed the Target Number on the Success Dice. This is counted as a minimum success though.

How does combat work?
Combat in SLA Industries is designed to be desperate and dangerous. It is detailed and tactical. It takes into account offensive and defensive manoeuvres, rate of fire, recoil, damage inflicted on armour, cover, aiming, and so on. The scenario features a lot of combat and the Game Master should pay particular attention to those rules in the quick-start.

All SLA Operatives are combat trained, though some do specialise. The Frother is also addicted to a combat drug which gives him an advantage in combat.

How does the Ebb work?
One of the pre-generated SLA Operative is an Ebonite and can calculate the formulae underlying the Ebb disciplines. In play, each discipline is treated as a separate skill, requires the expenditure of Fluxx points, and can be used in and out of combat. The Ebonite has the Heal, Thermal: Blue, and Communicate disciplines. Thus she is capable of conversing by thought, healing wounds, resisting heat, manipulating the cold, and forming temporary blades of ice.

What do you play?
The SLA Industries 2nd Edition: Quick Start includes ‘The Cleaners’, a short BPN or Blue Print News file assignment which starts out in intentionally frustrating and dreary fashion with the SLA Operatives waiting around to receive and assignment, before being transported by a squad of Shivers—local law enforcement and occasional riot squad—to the site where strange sounds coming from the sewers are heard. No one is really pleased to see the Operatives, but they are least pleased that someone will deal with the problem. There are some nice opportunities for roleplaying here before the SLA Operatives climb down into sewers.

The BPN involves a sewer sweep and clear of rats and other vermin, such as carrien and carnivorous pig. As the Operatives work their way through the sewers they will find clues suggesting that something else is going on. 

Is there anything missing?
The SLA Industries 2nd Edition: Quick Start is complete and it even comes with a pair of extra BPN files which the Game Master could develop and run if her players want to discover what happens next to the members of Blistering Rain. If there is anything missing which would made the scenario easier to run, it would be a map of the sewers, but this is not absolutely necessary. The Game Master may want to assign some names to the antagonists of the scenario as it is something that the players and their Operatives will ask about.

Is it easy to prepare?
The core rules presented in the SLA Industries 2nd Edition: Quick Start are relatively easy to prepare. The Game Master will need to pay closer attention to how combat works in the game as it is the most complex part of the rules and highly tactical in play. There is decent advice for the Game Master on how to run the scenario.
Is it worth it?
Yes. Although the SLA Industries 2nd Edition: Quick Start does not touch upon the weirdness and true horror that is part of the World of Progress, it  presents a solid introduction to the ‘S5S’ System and the rules for SLA Industries 2nd Edition, as well as to the World of Progress and how it works for Operatives at the bottom of the ladder, being assigned a rotten job and not getting the full recognition for it. This means that it will work as a one-shot as a taster or convention scenario, but can also be added to or used to start a campaign. The scenario has an atmospheric tension from paranoia and the lack of trust that those around have for the SLA Operatives, which will ultimately end in a crescendo of violence down the sewers... 
Where can you get it?
The SLA Industries 2nd Edition: Quick Start is available to download here. 

Board games have got big recently, as just about any newspaper headline on the subject will tell you, so much so that the headline has become a cliché. Yet there is some truth to the headline, for as long as anyone can imagine board games have always been popular, but board games really, really have got popular—and relatively recently. By recently, we mean the last forty years, and definitely the last thirty years as the board game evolved from something played during our childhoods to something that could be played and enjoyed by adults, who happened to be board game devotees. Then from this niche, the playing of board games as a hobby gained wider acceptance and moved into the mainstream to become an acceptable, even normal, pastime. Pioneered by classic titles such as Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne, and Ticket to Ride, board games have got big in the last few years. What these three designs have in common is that they all won the Spiel des Jahres, the German ‘Game of the Year Award’ which recognises family-friendly game design and promotes excellent games in the German market. To win the Spiel des Jahres is the equivalent of winning the Oscar for Best Picture. It is a mark of recognition not just for the game itself, but also for the designer and the publisher, and winning the Spiel des Jahres can mean tens of thousands of extra sales as everyone wants to try out the new critically acclaimed game. So, the question is, “What makes a Spiel des Jahres winner a good game?” It is answered some forty or so times by James Wallis in Everybody Wins: Four Decades of Greatest Board Games Ever Made.

Wallis, has of course, already explored the history of board games in the company of Sir Ian Livingstone with Board Games in 100 Moves: 8,000 Years of Play, but in Everybody Wins: Four Decades of Greatest Board Games Ever Made, published by Aconyte Books, he delves into the more recent forty-three years of the hobby to examine and give his opinion upon every one of the Spiel des Jahres winners, from the award’s inception in 1979 to 2022. The majority of them are good, some indifferent, and a few disappointing. Along the way he charts the changes in the hobby over the period as reflected through the awards, although as the author makes clear, this is not an actual history of the Spiel des Jahres award, its jury, and the deliberations it makes each year and the decisions it comes to. Its focus is very much on the games themselves and its tone and style is lighter, more that of a coffee table style book than some dry history. Consequently, this is a book which can be enjoyed by the casual board game player as much as the veteran. Further, the big, bold, bright format means that the book can be put in the hands of someone who does not play board games, and they will not be intimidated by the book itself or the games it showcases.

Everybody Wins is divided up into five colour-coded sections which each explore the different eras of the Spiel des Jahres, including the themes, the changes in design, and trends in the hobby in that time, beginning with ‘Opening Moves’ of 1979 to 1985, and going through ‘The Golden Age’ of 1996 to 2004 and ‘Identity Crisis’ of 2005 to 2015, before finding ‘New Purpose, New Direction’ since 2016. Each section opens with an overview of the period. For example, ‘Opening Moves’ explains how the award came to be founded and what it set out to do, which was to highlight, if not necessarily the best game of the year, then the most interesting, the most playable, and the most fun game of year, which had been published in German in the last year, and in the process, to broaden the acceptance of board games beyond just the hobby. Later eras examine the changing fortunes of the award and game design, for example, ‘The Golden Age’ exploring the effect that Settlers of Catan, winner in 1995, had on both hobby and industry, and how the period would not only see the rise of classic game, but also several heavier, more complicated games would not necessarily appeal to a family audience. Each overview is then followed by the winners for that period, every title receiving an essay that details its background, gameplay, the author’s opinion, and more. Notes give both the publisher and current  availability, plus whether or not the game was a worthy winner and is still worth playing now. The occasional sidebar explains particular rule types or gives a thumbnail portrait of a designer and every entry concludes with a full list of the nominees and winners of the various awards the Spiel des Jahres jury has given out over the years, initially special awards, but more recently the Kinderspiel and Kennerspiel awards.

Everybody Wins does not look at the winners of the other two awards that the jury gives out— the Kinderspiel and Kennerspiel awards. Neither are quite as important as the Spiel des Jahres, nor do they quite have the same effect on the industry, but where Everybody Wins does come up short is in not looking at the ‘what if’s’ of the Spiel des Jahres. Only once does the author look closely at another nomination for the award, Matt Leacock’s Forbidden Island, a nominee in 2011 when Quirkle won. This is less of an issue when what is regarded as a classic won in a particular year, such as Settlers of Catan in 1995, Dominion in 2009, or Codenames in 2016, but what about in 2002 when the stacking game, Villa Paletti won? Wallis tells the reader that, “In no possible sense was this the game of the year.” It would have been interesting to pull the other nominees out and give them the space to explain why they should have won instead. For example, Puerto Rico and TransAmerica in 2002, but also for Niagara in 2005 and later, Keltis in 2008. Later, Wallis does look at ‘The Ones That Didn’t Win’, but this is only a brief overview, primarily highlighting the commercialism of a game or it not suiting the Spiel des Jahres criteria, but there are games here that do fit those criteria, and would have been worthy winners, such as Pandemic in 2009.

Physically, Everybody Wins: Four Decades of Greatest Board Games Ever Made is lovingly presented, with every entry very nicely illustrated and accompanied with an engaging description. One obvious issue with the presentation is the book’s sidebars. Done in white on colour boxes, the text is not strong enough to read without the aid of good lighting.

The response to Everybody Wins will vary according to how much of a board game player the reader is. If the reader is a veteran, this will send him scurrying back into his collection to pull out titles and try them again, checking them against past plays and the author’s assessment. Or scouring online sellers for the titles that he does not have. The more casual player is more likely to pick and choose from the range of titles discussed in the pages of the book, probably looking for the classics and the titles that the author recommends as worth his time and the reader’s time. Whatever way in which the reader responds to the book, Everybody Wins: Four Decades of Greatest Board Games Ever Made is an entertaining and informative primer on the past four decades of the board game hobby and the winners of its greatest prize.

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

The Pocket Sized Perils series uses the same A4 sheet folded down to A6 as the titles from Leyline Press, or rather the titles from Leyline Press use the same A4 sheet folded down to A6 sheet as Pocket Sized Perils series. Funded via a Kickstarter campaign as part of the inaugural ZineQuest—although it debatable whether the one sheet of paper folded down counts as an actual fanzine—this is a series of six mini-scenarios designed for use with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, but actually rules light enough to be used with any retroclone, whether that is the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game or Old School Essentials. Just because it says ‘5e’ on the cover, do not let that dissuade you from taking a look at this series and see whether individual entries can be added to your game. The mechanics are kept to a minimum, the emphasis is on the Player Characters and their decisions, and the actual adventures are fully drawn and sketched out rather than being all text and maps.

The Beast of Bleakmarsh is the second entry in the Pocket Sized Perils series following on from An Ambush in Avenwood. Designed for Second Level Player Characters, the scenario is more complex than An Ambush in Avenwood, involving a mystery to investigate, things most foul to reveal, and monsters to hunt. It can be played through in a single session, but might take a little longer as the Player Characters follow the clues across an area of marshland. The beginning of the scenario sets the Player Characters up as monster hunters who have been asked by their friend Godric to travel to the village of Bleakmarsh which is being plagued by a mysterious beast. As they make their way towards the ferry station, they hear cries for help coming from the marsh. When the Player Characters investigate the source, they find a women imperiled by a swarm of frenzied swamp beasts. After they have rescued her, the Player Characters will learn that she is a bard, travelling with her band to perform in the village of Bleakmarsh. Unfortunately, the frenzied swamp beasts have eaten her bandmates and their horses, so asks the Player Characters if they will escort her to her destination. As thanks, she offers to split the takings from her performance that night.

When they arrive, the Player Characters have the opportunity to learn more about the so-called ‘Beast of Bleakmarsh’ as well as other gossip, and also discover that their friend Godric has disappeared! With Bleakmarsh as their base, they can then begin their investigations into the locations of both the beast and their friend. Of course, the Player Characters do not have follow this path exactly. The Player Characters could simply be passing by, on their way to another destination, when they hear the cries of the bard emanating from the marsh, though the Game Master will need to make Godric important to the Player Characters in some other way. Instead of being asked by Godric, the Player Characters could alternatively have been asked by the authorities to deal with the beast threatening the village. In this way, the scenario can be be run as short sidequest. Whichever way the Dungeon Master decides to use The Beast of Bleakmarsh, it is easy to add to an ongoing game.

The mystery at the heart of The Beast of Bleakmarsh unfolds at the same time and pace as the Dungeon Master literally unfolds the scenario. The initial three double-page spreads provide and illustrate the scenario’s set-up and opening encounter, then the village of Bleakmarsh and its inhabitants and gossip, and lastly, an explanation of what is going on. Which is not quite as simple as there being a beast threatening the village—the threat comes from within rather them without. There is a list of clues and items to be found which may help the Player Characters, but the adventure literally opens up when the Game Master pulls The Beast of Bleakmarsh apart to reveal a map of the area with its important locations marked. Pull the map apart and the location of the scenario’s final confrontation and the details of those responsible for the disappearances.

The openness of the scenario means that The Beast of Bleakmarsh is slightly more difficult to run than the previous An Ambush in Avenwood. It is not as heavily plotted and is primarily player and Player Character-led as they follow up on the clues littered across the landscape and the scenario. One potential issue is that the Player Characters will weapons that either silvered or magical and it is unlikely that all of the Player Characters will have them. Fortunately, the scenario includes a means of solving this issue—if the Player Characters can find it. If they cannot, then the final confrontation with the real danger threatening the village will be very short indeed.

The Beast of Bleakmarsh has the feel of a bigger scenario parred down to fit a smaller page. In some ways it is more of detailed outline than a full detailed adventure, and the Dungeon Master may want to add a few NPCs for the Player Characters to interact with in Bleakmarsh and probably prepare some notes as the scenario cannot really be run just from the main map. Of course, the Dungeon Master will have to flip back and forth just as in other scenarios, but here there is some page folding too. And that makes running The Beast of Bleakmarsh just that much more fiddley than a standard scenario.

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

The Beast of Bleakmarsh presents a simple little mystery at the heart of the marsh, with a limited trail of clues which lead to a dangerous confrontation with the villains threatening the villagers of Bleakmarsh. It has a slightly humorous, if no less grim—and slightly Lovecraftian—tone which the Dungeon Master is free to ignore or emphasise as is her wont. At its most basic, The Beast of Bleakmarsh is easy to prepare, but the Dungeon Master will probably want to spend a little more time developing it in places, especially if she wants to play up the horror and sense of bleak isolation which the scenario suggests, but does not really give itself the room to really present. The Beast of Bleakmarsh has the same charming physicality of the other entries in the Pocket Sized Perils series, but will need more effort—though not too much effort—than those others to get the fullest out of the scenario.

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

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

—oOo—
Name: Of FathersPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Aleksi Martikainen, Sean Liddle, Jef Wilkins, Jukka Särkijärvi, & Petri Leinonen

Setting: Jazz Age Chicago
Product: ScenarioWhat You Get: Twenty-Six page, 2.09 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Revenge isn’t something you just dream about. Plot Hook: Your father was murdered and the police say you did it. Plot Support: Staging advice, eight NPCs, one handout, and one Mythos entity.Production Values: Decent.
Pros# Straightforward, detailed plot # Potential introduction to the Mythos# Potential introduction to the Mythos for a cultist!# Easy to adapt to other time periods and settings# Somniphobia# Oneirophobia

Cons# Needs a strong edit and further localisation# Underdeveloped in places# Oddly out of period photographs# Linear plot
# No maps# No pre-generated Investigator included
Conclusion# Linearly plotted murder-mystery which wafts in and out of dreams tempting the protagonist with the power of revenge# Murder-mystery with the potential to create a hero or a villain

The Sunless Garden was originally published in 2004 as Dungeon Crawl Classics #10: The Sunless Garden. This meant that that it was first published for use with Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition, but in 2022, publisher Goodman Games took the original module—regarded as a classic of its time—and updated it to not one, but two different fantasy roleplaying games. One is for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition as Fifth Edition Fantasy: The Sunless Garden, and the other is for Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game, as Dungeon Crawl Classics: The Sunless Garden, and both as Gen Con Exclusives at Gen Con 2022. However, the version for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition would be subsequently released as Fifth Edition Fantasy #23: The Sunless Garden. However, it is the version for Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game that is being reviewed here. Dungeon Crawl Classics: The Sunless Garden is designed for a party of Fourth Level Player Characters and details a strange cave below which there is a lengthy dungeon. Whether run for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game or Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, the scenario is easy to add to most ongoing campaigns and needs nothing more than a small village and a forest known for smugglers and Treants.
The Sunless Garden begins in or around the trading post of Garland’s Fork. Perhaps the Player Characters are passing through or visiting, or they have come to investigate reports of smugglers in the area, but when they discover to their horror that all of the inhabitants have been transformed into black trees! The trail of clues quickly leads to a strange cave, full of vegetation which seems to have been warped and mutated under a nauseous purple light. What has twisted the plants and fungi so, and caused the former guardians of the forest to turn dark and monstrous, if not outright evil?

The scenario consists of two levels—‘The Sunless Garden’ and ‘The Dark Garden’. It is entirely possible that the Player Characters will miss the entrance to the lower level, The Dark Garden, and even if they do, it will not necessarily affect the outcome of the scenario. The solution to the problem presented at the beginning of scenario—the villagers transformed into trees and the mutated vegetation—can be found in ‘The Sunless Garden’ and thus never need to go any further. However, this would be miss out on the contrast between the two levels and the contrast in tone between this scenario and others directly written for use with the for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game rather having been adapted. ‘The Sunless Garden’ and ‘The Dark Garden’ vary in several ways. The upper level of ‘The Sunless Garden’ is wide open cavern that almost has the feel of a mini-wilderness area with its lush plots of vegetation, trees, fungi, and mulch, all of it twisted—such as the infamous exploding apples which go off if plucked from the tree—and all under the baleful purple light. In addition, there are several side locations off the main cavern, mostly worked areas in contrast to the main cave, and all populated in intelligent fashion with plenty of detail for the Judge to describe to her players.

Once they discover its entrance, what the Player Characters find below in ‘The Dark Garden’ is much more of a traditional dungeon. It has long, worked corridors, traps, stairs going up and down, mostly empty storage rooms, and so on. Progress is mostly linear through the dungeon, especially through its later parts. There are some fantastic encounters on the lower level, such as with a Sea Hag—washed in via the level’s big trap—who waits manacled to a wall, waiting to be rescued, but ready to strike, and a handful of delightful locations like the smuggler chief’s secret sewing room and display room, the latter including a giant copper piece a la the penny in the Batcave. There are some fantastic treasures to found too. Some are mundane, but many are incredibly bulky and difficult to transport. There is the possibility here of the Player Characters surviving the dungeon with a lot of money if they carry it off. The magical treasures are delightfully inventive, such as a Ring of Dryness, which prevents the wearer from getting wet at all, including sweat. Which means that the wearer pants heavily to help regulate his body’s temperature!

The other contrast to The Sunless Garden is between its editions. The Dungeon Crawl Classics line has always harked back to an earlier age of adventure and dungeon design, indeed that was its selling point when Dungeon Crawl Classics #1: Idylls of the Rat King was published in 2004. Yet the original style of the Dungeon Crawl Classics line was to emulate the style, look, and feel of the modules for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition, right down to the shade of blue used for the maps. This is not something that modules for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game aim for, having their own distinctive look and feel—especially in the isometric perspective of their maps and the taking of inspiration from Appendix N of the Dungeon Master’s Guide. As a consequence, Dungeon Crawl Classics: The Sunless Garden does not feel like a scenario for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game, or rather, one half does and one half does not. The upper half of ‘The Sunless Garden’ does feel like a classic Dungeon Crawl Classics, darker, twisted, and murkier, but the lower half of ‘The Dark Garden’ does not. It is bigger, emptier, and not strongly connected to the cavern above. Part of the issue is the lack of motivation in the scenario for the Player Characters to proceed further into the dungeon if they have cleared the cavern. Here a good Judge should be able to add motivation, perhaps connected to the band of smugglers mentioned at the beginning of the scenario.

Physically, Dungeon Crawl Classics: The Sunless Garden is presented in the classic style of the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game. Thus, artwork is decent, the maps good, and the writing clear. However, it does need an edit in places and feels slightly rushed.

Dungeon Crawl Classics: The Sunless Garden is an adaptation of an earlier module and it shows. The adaptation does not feel as smooth as it could have been and is better in the first half than the second half. Consequently, the scenario will need some input from the Judge to make ‘The Dark Garden’ work as well as ‘The Sunless Garden’ does.

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

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

—oOo—
Name: The Tunnels Under Temple MeadsPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Peter Willington

Setting: Jazz Age Bristol, United Kingdom
Product: ScenarioWhat You Get: Eighteen page, 2.59 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Hell is being hunted for reasons unknown...Plot Hook: The Investigator must find out who he is and why he is there.Plot Support: Two NPCs, four handouts, and three maps.Production Values: Plain.
Pros# One-to-one format more engaging# Good staging advice for the Keeper# Short, one-session, one-to-one scenario# Strong sense of personal horror# Memories recovered via actions and exploration# Could be run player versus player with more players# Potential campaign starter for one Investigator
# Different setting in Temple Meads railway station# Nyctophobia# Diokophobia# Paranoia
Cons# No background beyond the scenario# No advice for continuing the scenario
# No Sanity rewards# No Sanity losses# Combat-focused scenario
Conclusion# Short, one player, one Keeper amnesia-to-memory hunt as the Investigator is thrown into a hunting ground in a railway station. # Potential introduction for an Investigator to a campaign, but no advice or background for that.

Hard City: Noir Roleplaying is a roleplaying game which takes the player into the dark, dangerous world of high streets and long shadows, of uncertainty and ambiguity, of desperation and dedication, of beguilement and betrayal, of the lonely man who would seek the truth and the many who would hide it, where ultimately any resolution will end badly. This is the world of Film Noir and hardboiled fiction, both a genre and a style, best typified by films such as The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, and Double Indemnity, and the works of James M. Cain, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and Mickey Spillane. The heroes are always cynical, often as dangerous and damned as their enemies, who might employ lowlifes and punks, but they are invariably as clever, classy, and charming as they are callous. Some, like the classic femme fatale, is ultimately all of that, often at first demure and desirable, but eventually revealed to be cunning and selfish, ready to betray not just the hero, but her co-conspirators and fellow crooks too. These play out in a city of soaring skyscrapers, between the cracks where the light of what is right and just never seems to shine, even if the cracks run all the way to the highest office.

Hard City: Noir Roleplaying is published by Osprey Games, best known for roleplaying games such as Gran Meccanismo: Clockpunk Roleplaying in da Vinci’s Florence and Jackals – Bronze Age Fantasy Roleplaying, and board games such as Undaunted: Normandy. It enables the creation of Player Characters through trademarks rather than skills, enabling players to create classic archetypes of the genre, and combines this with light, dice pool mechanics designed to facilitate fast play and resolution in a grim, gritty city of America of the middle decades of the twentieth century. The result is a storytelling game in a classic genre, both black and white in its look and in the tales it tells.

A Player Character in Hard City is defined by his Trademarks, Edges, Flaws, Drives, Ties, and Belongings. Trademarks are broad, thematic Tags which are the most obvious interesting thing about a Player Character; Edges are specialisations or advantages; Flaws are difficulties, passions, or disadvantages; and Drives are a Player Character’s motivations. A Player Character has three Trademarks, one from his Past, his Present, and his Perk, five Edges, two Flaws, a single Drive, and two Ties. The Edges are listed under the Trademarks, which also provide options for Flaws. Past Trademarks include Bureaucrat, Button Man, Grifter, and Newshound; Present Trademarks include Enforcer, Finder, Infiltrator, and Performer; and Perk Trademarks include Badge, Dirty Fighter, Femme Fatale, and Weasel. Drives can be Altruistic, Debt-related, and Selfish, and Ties can be with people and places, positive, and problematic, and ideally, they should be with other Player Characters. Lastly, a Player Character has Moxie and Grit, the former a Player Character’s luck and willpower, the latter his toughness and capacity to survive.

The creation process is a matter of making several choices and the choices do lend themselves to creating some classic characters from the genre. So, the Veteran, Investigator, and Brave Trademarks could model Sam Spade; Grifter, Charmer, and Femme Fatale for Brigid O’Shaughnessy; Criminal, Finder, and Weasel for Joel Cairo; and High Society, Leader, and Huge for Caspar Gutman. It is eased by a table of flaws and a table of names, the latter including a list of regular surnames and hardboiled surnames. So, for example, an ordinary name might be Audrey Lewin or Ronald Scott, but their hardboiled versions could be Audrey Shields or Ronald Hawk.

Eudoxia Lionidze
Trademarks
Past: High Society (Edges: Educated, Charm)
Present: Infiltrator (Edges: Break & Enter, Escape)
Perk: Femme Fatale (Edges: Cunning, Strong-willed)
Flaw: Lack of Trust, Irresponsible
Drive: Pay off my brother’s gambling debts
Ties: I don’t trust Anton Powell because he gambles too much; I’m pretty sure Burt Torres knows who killed Gladys Janes
Moxie: 3
Grit: 3

Mechanically, Hard City uses a dice pool of six-sided dice, consisting of two sets of dice, Action Dice and Danger Dice, each in a different colour. To undertake an action, a player assembles the pool using Action Dice, starting with a single die, whilst the Game Master adds Danger Dice. Action Dice are drawn from a Player Character’s Trademark and an appropriate Edge, plus from any Tags from the Threat or Scene, Position, Belongings, and Help the Player Character might be receiving. Danger Dice come from Injuries and Conditions the Player Character is suffering, plus from any Tags from the Threat or Scene, Position, Belongings, and the Scale of the obstacle. Once the dice pool is assembled, the dice are rolled. Matches between the Action Dice and the Danger Dice are cancelled and the highest remaining Action Dice are counted. A six is a success, four or five a partial success, and three or less a failure. Extra results of six count as Boons and can have an Increased Effect of the success, Set Up an Ally with an extra success, can speed Extended Checks, and Add a Tag to a Scene or Threat. Botches occur when only results of one remain and can lead to Increased Danger, Inflict Serious Harm, and Extra Strikes in an Extended Check.

A Player Character also has Moxie. This can be spent to Demonstrate Expertise and add a second Trademark to a roll, gain A Little Luck to change a single die up or down by one result on both Action Dice or Danger Dice, Take a Breath to remove a Condition, or even details to a scene with a Voice-over. Moxie is refreshed when one of a Player Character’s Flaws comes into play and makes life complicated for everyone.

The outcome of a roll is to inflict Consequences which mean that a Player Character or NPC can suffer a cost or complication, a Tag can be added or removed, whether from the Player Character, Scene, or Threat, a Threat can be added or increased to a Scene, or Harm can be inflicted. Harm can be a Condition such as Angry, Dazed, or Dishevelled, or it can be an Injury of varying severity. All of these can be used to add Action Dice and Danger Dice to the dice pool, depending on the situation. When it comes to what a Player Character might be doing, Hard City does not so much provide extra rules for how investigations, chases, interrogations, arguments, and fights work, as suggest how the rules apply and what the possible Consequences might be, whether to the Player Characters or the NPCs. When it comes to actions within a turn, any shooting and fighting is done last, talking and moving first, emphasising the hard talking and words have meaning nature of the genre.
Eudoxia Lionidze has been hired to retrieve some letters that the mobster, Carlo Garcia, is using to blackmail her client. She has already managed to get the letters by attending a party at Garcia’s house and climbing over the balcony into his study from the room next door. As she exits into the hallway, bottle of champagne and glass in hand, slightly dishevelled after clambering over the balcony, she is confronted by one of Garcia’s goons, asking what she is doing there. Eudoxia is going to have to bluff her way past, and with a grin, says, “Oh I am so sorry. I just needed to lie down. Get my head straight. Too much to drink…” Eudoxia’s player creates his pool of Action Dice by starting out with a single die and adds one for her High Society Trademark since she is dressed like she should be at the party, another for her Charm, and suggests that her appearance and Belongings would earn her another die. The Game Master agrees, means that Eudoxia’s player has four Action Dice to roll. The Game Master adds six Danger Dice to the pool, including one for Goon and another for his Condition, which is Suspicious. The player rolls the dice and gets a one, five, five and six on the Action Dice and three and five on the Danger Dice. The five on the Action Dice and the Danger Dice cancel each other out, which leaves the six from the Action Dice as the highest result, and means that the security goon believes Eudoxia, giving him the Trusting Condition. With a slight misstep of the slightly drunk, she makes her way back down to the party and her companion for the night. In terms of progression, Hard City is about the School of Hard Knocks, and a Player Character can learn from his setbacks as much as he can his successes. Two many setbacks and a Player Character can begin the next case or investigation with lower Moxie or even a Condition even as the Player Character improves.

Hard City is set in 1946 in a large, nameless city, either by the sea or the bay. It could be Los Angeles, San Francisco, or Chicago, but its particulars are described in more than enough detail to be a playable space, covering a little of its history, its movers and shakers and troublemakers, crime, but paying particular attention to its districts, complete with Tags, place suggestions and possible story hooks.

For both the players and the Game Master, there is an introduction to the genre with a decent bibliography, whilst for the Game Master there is advice on running the various aspects of the roleplaying game. This does include avoiding the social attitudes of the period in which the genre is set, but in the main focuses on two types of Case—or scenario. These are investigations and capers, the former more complex than the latter, but the latter requiring more planning upon the Player Characters. There is also a discussion of MacGuffins and suggestions as to possible campaign frames, primarily investigative in nature, but all supported by a list of example films which exemplify their set-ups. Only the ’Wrong Time, Wrong Place’ campaign frame differs from this, which explores ordinary men and women getting caught up in bad situations, typified by Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice. This is all accompanied by a Case Generator.

The advice itself focuses on the fiction and playing to it, and on making the most out of scenes. This includes ‘Enter Late, Exit Early’ and Raymond Chandler’s famous adage that, “When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.” In modelling its genre, the framing of scenes in Hard City is intended to be succinct, focused, and interesting. The players are meant to engage with this, bring their characters’ Drives and Flaws into play as much as their Trademarks, to make the lives of their characters if not difficult, then at the very least, interesting. Though ideally, difficult. As a consequence of this and the need for the players to embrace the various aspects of the genre, Hard City does demand more of its players, that they roleplay hard in every scene their characters appear in. Rounding Hard City is a pair of ready-to-play Cases—‘Engagement with Death’ is an investigation into the disappearance of a wealthy industrialist’s son, whilst ‘In at the Deep End’ is a caper in which the Player Characters must recover a piece of missing artwork. Both are classic Film Noir plots which nicely emulate the genre.

Physically, Hard City is very nicely presented. The book is tidily laid out and quite easy to read, but the best feature is the artwork. Luis F. Sanz’s illustrations are excellent, really capturing the feel and tone of the genre with a wide cast of characters and varying situations. If there is anything missing from the book it is a handy rules reference at the end of the book.

Hard City: Noir Roleplaying is a roleplaying game in which the players need to play hard and talk hard in order to bring out the best and the worst of their characters. Thematically and mechanically, it keeps everything simple by focusing on the trademark aspects of the genre and encouraging the players to bring them into play. The result is an impressively presented and clearly written storytelling roleplaying game whose look and play is designed to emulate the desperate, dangerous, and morally ambiguous tales of the Film Noir and Hardboiled genres.

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

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

Yet Wizards of the Coast did not ignore its extensive back catalogue. It would release numerous titles in PDF, and even allow Print on Demand reprints, including both B1 In Search of the Unknown and ;B2 Keep on the Borderlands. Further, in 2017, it published Tales from the Yawning Portal, a collection of scenarios that had originally been published for previous editions of Dungeons & Dragons, including Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition, Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition, and even D&D Next. These scenarios though, did not include either B1 In Search of the Unknown or B2 Keep on the Borderlands. Which upon first glance seemed a strange omission, but then came the announcement from Goodman Games about Original Adventures Reincarnated #1: Into the Borderlands.

Arguably, Original Adventures Reincarnated #1: Into the Borderlands would prove to be the ultimate version of the classic module, but authors have continued to revisit the original even since such as with the fanzine version from Swordfish Islands LLC, which so far consists of Beyond the Borderlands Issue #1 and Beyond the Borderlands Issue #2. Yet there remain oft forgotten visits to the famous ‘Keep on the Borderlands’ and the equally infamous, ‘Caves of Chaos’, which are worth examining and shining light upon. For example, ‘Warriors of the Gray Lady’ is a prequel to Return to the Keep of the Borderlands by Jeff Grub, but there have also been expansions to B2 Keep on the Borderlands. It is often forgotten that the infamous Caves of Chaos are not the only cavern system to be found in the region. Located in the unforested area between the Caves of Chaos and the eponymous keep are the Caves of the Unknown, mislabelled on the wilderness map as the ‘Cave of the Unknown’. This is mentioned twice in the module. Once on page 12 where it says, “The Caves of the Unknown area is left for you to use as a place to devise your own cavern complex or dungeon maze.” and then again, in location #51, in the ‘Shrine of Evil Chaos’, where a “Boulder Filled Passage” can lead to the Cave of the Unknown. Left up to the Dungeon Master to design and detail, one option has been to simply insert the Caverns of Quasqueton from B1 In Search of the Unknown and this was the option chosen for Original Adventures Reincarnated #1: Into the Borderlands. However, other designers have embraced Gygax’s advice in B2 Keep on the Borderlands and created their own dungeons to fill this spot. Perhaps the earliest was Keep on the Borderlands: The Expansion, published by Usherwood Publishing in 2013, but RC Pinnell, who has a history of writing sequels to classic Dungeons & Dragons modules, would release his own version at about the same time as Original Adventures Reincarnated #1: Into the Borderlands was published.
a designed for a party of between four and nine Third to Sixth Level Player Characters, and consequently intended to be played after the Player Characters have explored the Caves of Chaos. Published in 2018, it is written for use with editions of prior to Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition, and details a cave network of some twenty caves and connecting tunnels which is home to a tribe of Troglodytes. The tribe are refugees from a civil war taking place deeper into the earth and having found a new home in the caves led several raids on the Caves of Chaos above, feeding on the Humanoids they killed and captured until the leaders in the Caves of Chaos determined the source of attacks, invaded the Troglodyte caves, killed many of the tribes’ members, and then sealed the tunnel leading from the ‘Shrine of Evil Chaos’. In other words, the evil clergy practicing their vile faith in the ‘Shrine of Evil Chaos’ and pulling the Humanoids of the Caves of the Chaos into a rough alliance are also responsible for filling in the “Boulder Filled Passage”.

The Cave of the Unknown is much like the other Caves of Chaos home to the various Humanoid tribes. Although a natural cave system with no worked areas, there are guard posts, caves and chambers for the chief of the Troglodytes, his queen, his elite warriors, both teenage males and females, and so on. A supply cavern contains boxes and crates of items gained through and trade which are perfect for adding objects and items that could be stolen or missing and perhaps serve as a possible hook to explore the caverns. Some of the cave descriptions are far from interesting, but there are exceptions. The queen’s chamber is connected to a bubbling mud pool which is difficult to traverse and fight in and she also has a pack of Cave-Dogs, specially bred by the queen so that they have immunity to the infamous stench that Troglodytes excrete. However, this does mean that these Cave-Dogs lack the sense of smell they are typically known for.

Overall, locations and encounters such as with the queen are far and few between and in this, the description of the Caves of the Unknown feels very much in keeping with the Caves of Chaos of B2 Keep on the Borderlands. They are static, all but waiting for an incursion by the Player Characters. There are potential roleplaying hooks present, although they are not explicitly stated. The Player Characters could ally with Gothmog, the Troglodyte chief, in taking his revenge on the clergy in the Shrine of Evil Chaos and their allies and the queen could be turned against Gothmog. There is also the fact that the Troglodytes are trading with someone deeper into the earth. It is not stated who, but that could easily be linked to another scenario—perhaps in the mode of G1 Steading of the Hill Giant Chief and its sequels. In any of these cases, the Player Characters will need to be more circumspect in their approach to investigating the Cave of the Unknown rather than simply slaughtering everything before them. If they do take that approach, they do face some tough opponents and a good number of them, but if they are successful, then there is plenty of treasure to be found. 
Physically, BEX-1 Descent Into The Caves of the Unknown is plain. The map nicely apes the style of B2 Keep on the Borderlands right down to the blue background.

BEX-1 Descent Into The Caves of the Unknown feels as if it could be something more and as if it could be more interesting. The Dungeon Master will need to work hard to bring the back story to the Troglodyte presence in the Caves of the Unknown into play and involve the Player Characters, thus turning the adventure into more of a sidequest than the side note  it reads as written.

March 4th is International GM’s Day which commemorates the death of the later E. Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons and father of the roleplaying hobby in 2008. DrivethruRPG has its own GM’s Day Sale which runs through the first half of the month, but Goodman Games is celebrating with its own ‘Dungeon Day’ which includes the release of three scenarios for free—two old and one new. The two old are Danger Crawl Classics: Danger in the Air and Fifth Edition Fantasy: The Three Wizard Conundrum, both of which were previously released for Free RPG 2023. The all-new adventure is Fifth Edition Fantasy: Ambush at Dragon’s Cove. This is an adventure for use with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition and is designed for four to six First Level Player Characters. Although suitable as a means to introduce players to the roleplaying hobby, it is not written as an introductory product. So, it will need an experienced Danger Master.

Fifth Edition Fantasy: Ambush at Dragon’s Cove is a wilderness adventure with an environmental theme. The village of Port Knell is home to oldest known nesting beaches for dragon turtles, Dragon’s Cove, and both the village and local sailors benefit from the protection of one of these creatures, Lyrdella the Brave. This year, her duties means that she cannot protect her eggs as the young dragon turtles hatch and begin their perilous journey to the sea, so she asks a local druid called Sycamore, to stand in for her. However, the somewhat flirtatious druid has other plans and so hires the Player Characters to stand guard over the dunes. Other suggestions are included as to how to start the adventure, but as written and as is traditional, it starts in a tavern. Since the adventure is set in the wilderness—or at least on a beach—and involves interaction with the dragon turtle hatchlings, a Druid or a Ranger amongst the party will be useful, especially if they have a good Animal Handling skill.

The adventure consists of four encounter areas and has the feel of a race in that the Player Characters have to prepare their charges, that is, the dragon turtle hatchlings, and then hurry them safely to the sea. It also means that the adventure is linear, but for a short, one-session adventure like Fifth Edition Fantasy: Ambush at Dragon’s Cove, designed for First Level Player Characters, this is not really an issue. In the first encounter, the Player Characters will ready their charges for the journey, whilst in each of the subsequent encounters, they will be challenged by foes natural and unnatural, who all see the young dragon turtles as potential food. The natural foes are those which would likely be faced by turtles in our environment, whilst the unnatural foes are more akin to hunters or egg thieves, but both of course, adapted to fit the fantasy setting of the adventure. The unnatural foes are also tied into the background of the scenario and Sycamore’s involvement, although that will not be immediately obvious, and may not be revealed until the very end of the scenario.

Rounding out the scenario are suggestions as to what to play next in the Fifth Edition Fantasy series and rounding out Fifth Edition Fantasy: Ambush at Dragon’s Cove is the regular column for the line, ‘Flog’s Eye Sees All!’ which usually provides updates for the line. It explains the point of GM’s Day and Dungeon Day and extolls the virtues of the hobby and is a slightly tongue cheek to both Gygax and Game Master’s everywhere.

Fifth Edition Fantasy: Ambush at Dragon’s Cove is cleanly and tidily laid out in the standard style for the line. It is easy to read and consequently should be both quick and easy for the Dungeon Master to prepare for her group with no fuss whatsoever. The artwork is excellent and overall, this could easily have been included in a magazine or anthology of adventures and made a fine-looking addition to either.

The Fifth Edition Fantasy line consists of stand-alone, setting-neutral adventure modules, typically one-shots that can be played in one or two sessions. Fifth Edition Fantasy: Ambush at Dragon’s Cove fits that brief, playable in a single session and setting-neutral. However, this makes it easy to slot into an existing campaign or setting, or being for First Level Player Characters, form part of the beginnings of a campaign. Although there is plenty of combat involved, this is not the scenario’s only challenge and the overall objective of getting the newly hatched dragon turtles to the sea gives it a theme and challenge that will probably be more appealing to some prospective players than a simple combat-focused affair.

Overall, Fifth Edition Fantasy: Ambush at Dragon’s Cove is an environmentally engaging one-session race to the sea.