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

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

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Name: 52 HzPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Michał Pietrzak

Setting: Modern Day PacificProduct: Scenario
What You Get: Fifteen page, 380.02 KB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: The song of the loneliest whale reveals horrors out of time.Plot Hook: A Miskatonic University research expedition reveals horrors in the most unexpected of places.
Plot Support: One handout, five (forty) NPCs, one map, and seventeen Mythos monsters.Production Values: Plain.
Pros# One session Scientific Action one-shot# Suitable for two to three Investigators
# Mythos on Mythos action
# Nice sense of environment# Literally ends with a big bang# Thalassophobia# Aquaphobia# Megalohydrothalassophobia# Nucleomituphobia
Cons# Needs a slight edit# Tightly plotted# Bland layout# Bland maps# No pre-generated Investigators
Conclusion# Exciting one session scientific action aquatic one-shot let down by a lack of pre-generated Investigators# Horrors out of the past drive a Mythos conflict with everyone else caught up in the Mythos on Mythos action

The Gamma Quadrant Sourcebook is the third setting supplement for Modiphius Entertainment’s Star Trek Adventures roleplaying game following on from the Beta Quadrant Sourcebook and the Alpha Quadrant Sourcebook. Effectively, it lies at the far end of the Bajoran Wormhole which connects the Gamma Quadrant to the Alpha Quadrant and it is what comes through the Bajoran Wormhole which is the primary focus of the Gamma Quadrant Sourcebook. For the supplement is as much a setting update as much a setting sourcebook and as much a companion to the Alpha Quadrant Sourcebook. What the Alpha Quadrant Sourcebook did was to examine the world of Bajor, and the major polities of the region, including the Cardassian Union, the Ferengi Alliance, the Tzenkethi Coalition, the Breen Confederacy, and the Tholian Assembly. It also looked at the Bajoran Wormhole and explored its ramifications of upon the quadrant, in the process, updating the default starting year for Star Trek Adventures of 2371 to 2372 as the early years of Deep Space 9 was explored. The Gamma Quadrant Sourcebook goes further. Not only does it update the default starting year from 2372 to 2375, but it also examines the whole of the Dominion War, looks at the major factions and events involved, supporting with details of new species, ways to involve the Player Characters and run campaigns set during the war, and more. What this means is that the Gamma Quadrant Sourcebook is really only a book for one of the period settings in Star Trek Adventures, that of Star Trek: The Next Generation rather than the earlier Star Trek: The Original Series or Enterprise.

What the Gamma Quadrant Sourcebook does not include is a map of the Gamma Quadrant. As with the television series, Deep Space 9, it remains for the most part, a great unknown, its exploration and possible contact with worlds there made all the challenging by the presence—both implied and actually present—of the Dominion. Nevertheless, there is plenty of scope for the crew of a starship to explore beyond the Bajoran Wormhole, make contact with the various species there, begin to learn hints of the Dominion, its masters and subject species, and wonder at its strangeness. In fact, almost a half of the supplement is dedicated to examining the Dominion and the Dominion war itself. The former starts with the history of the Changelings, how they fled, hounded by the ‘solids’—as they call most other species, to eventually find a world where they could be safe their Great Link, the world-spanning gestalt formed of their combined bodies and minds. It examines their politics, best described as a ‘fascist theocracy’ in which they are worshipped by their subjects upon whom they impose a strict order through their agents, the manipulative Vorta and the feared Jem’Hadar. Numerous worlds and species both within Dominion space and adjacent to it, are also detailed, such as the Drai, who serve as the Dominion’s geneticists and are thus regarded as a privileged member of the Dominion, and the T-Rogorans, a warlike species that aggressively expanding from its homeworld before encountering the Jem’Hadar and being almost wiped out… Notable worlds include the Founders’ Homeworld, essentially rock with little more than an atmosphere and the Great Link as a singular ocean; an Hur’q Outpost, an archaeological treasure house for anyone interested in Klingon history, the Hur’q having fled the Klingon homeworld thousands of years ago; and the Cursed Penal Moon, where the incarcerated are forced to fight in an ongoing war between two factions again and again as they find themselves resurrected each time they are killed. None can leave lest they die. All of these worlds and many of the species are ripe for visit by the Player Characters, whether as members of Starfleet or another faction.

Besides examining various species in the Gamma Quadrant, the supplement also looks at the various species in the Alpha Quadrant and their relationship with the Dominion. This includes the Breen, Cardassians, the Son’a, and the Orions, as well as potential allies like the Tholian Assembly, the Gorn, and the Nausicaans. The consequences of these potential alliances are also explored. Perhaps the most interesting inclusion here is that of the Kzin, a species rarely mentioned by Star Trek. Originally appearing in ‘The Slaver Weapon’, an episode of Star Trek: The Animated Series adapted by Larry Niven from his Known Space setting stories. However, they have been reintroduced into Star Trek in passing, or at least in mention. No stats are provided for them though in the Gamma Quadrant Sourcebook.

A detailed timeline of the Dominion War is also provided. It provides a background to the conflict as well as a look at the Cold War in which the Dominion began to infiltrate the Alpha Quadrant, secure allies, and foment conflict. This would lead to wars between the Klingons and Cardassians and then the Klingons and the Federation. Options are discussed for roleplaying in this Cold War period, before moving on to the loss and recapture of Deep Space 9, and coming to close with the current state of the war in 2374. Fortunately, supplement does not leave it there. Rather, it both gives 2374 as a default starting, ready for the Player Characters and their starship to become involved in the final operations against the Dominion, and then outlines the events of 2375 ready for the Game Master to run a campaign through this period.

To go with the numerous species discussed earlier, some twelve new species are given stats and details to make playable as both NPCs and Player Characters. This includes the Changelings! Their inclusion, of course, allows a player to roleplay a character similar to Constable Odo from Deep Space 9, and to that end, there is a discussion of how to include ‘Non-Starfleet, Unusual, Or Unique Characters’ in a Star Trek Adventures campaign. This is not confined to Changelings, of course, and there are plenty of species in the Gamma Quadrant Sourcebook, such as Lurians, Rakhari, or Wadi, which could be added as an unusual character to a campaign, let alone those in other supplements. A campaign based in a starbase, whether on a planet or in space, would more readily support this option than perhaps aboard a starship, but there are plenty of examples of such characters aboard a starship seen in Star Trek. Another option for a Changeling Player Character is to have them as infiltrators, undermining the efforts of Starfleet, the Federation, and its allies from within. Such an option does need careful handling, by both player and Game Master, with potential for redemption once the Changeling has been revealed and perhaps the person it was impersonating rescued from imprisonment. Notably, neither the Vorta nor the Jem’Hadar are included here. Instead, they remain adversaries, and are fully detailed in the core rulebook for Star Trek Adventures.

Numerous starships of the Gamma Quadrant are also described. These start with those vessels of the Dominion and its allies. Thus, the Jem’Hadar battleship and the Vorta Explorer, and the Son’a flagship and battlecruiser. The majority of the vessels are those of the Dominion War, all of them notable vessels. Amongst them are the U.S.S. Prometheus, the first vessel capable of Multi-Vector Assault Mode and the U.S.S. Valiant, the Defiant Class operated by members of Red Squadron from Starfleet Academy. An interesting option given is the vessels from the so-called ‘Frankenstein Fleet’, which saw starship frames previously mothballed by Starfleet upgraded with more advanced equipment and technologies. This would result in a radically different and genuinely unique vessel, a mixture of the old with the new.

Lastly, the Gamma Quadrant Sourcebook includes a wide selection of encounters and adversaries. Alongside a handful of encounter seeds for the Gamma Quadrant, there is a discussion of the Bajoran Wormhole and the role of the Prophets, and the nature of exploring the Gamma Quadrant. There is discussion too, of the types of campaigns that can be played throughout the period of the Dominion War, accompanied by several mission seeds and encounter types. Major NPCs given include General Martok of the Klingon Empire, Kai Winna Bajoran Vedek, the Cardassian leader, Gul Dukat, and the leading member of the Vorta species, Weyoun. Their inclusion enables the Player Characters to encounter and interact with some of the major adversaries of the Dominion War.

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

Throughout the supplement, the descriptions and game content are supported by a series of in-game documents, reports, diary excerpts, and the like. These typically reflect the mysterious nature of the Dominion and then the fraught nature of facing them and their agents in war, adding a sense of desperation in terms of its flavour and feel.

The Gamma Quadrant Sourcebook is three books in one, covering the Dominion, the worlds in and around Dominion space, and the Dominion War. It is also a companion volume, that to the Alpha Quadrant Sourcebook, which will provide the setting material for the Bajoran end of the Wormhole—Bajor, the Cardassian Union, the Ferengi Alliance, the Badlands, and the Demilitarised Zone. Like the Alpha Quadrant Sourcebook, the Gamma Quadrant Sourcebook sort of tiptoes around the subject of Deep Space 9. Yet despite this omission, the Gamma Quadrant Sourcebook is actually the most enjoyable and the most useful of the three sourcebooks dedicated to Star Trek’s quadrants to date. This is because it does not spread itself as thin as they do, its focus being firmly on the Dominion and their allies, the Dominion War, the consequences of the war, and involving the Player Characters. All of which is backed up by solid advice on running a campaign during just four or five years of Star Trek’s history.

To get the best out of the Gamma Quadrant Sourcebook, the Game Master will want access to the Alpha Quadrant Sourcebook, as that will anchor one end of the Bajoran Wormhole and Dominion War. Nevertheless, the Gamma Quadrant Sourcebook is the definite guide to the Dominion and the Dominion War for Star Trek Adventures, as well as the other end of the Bajoran Wormhole.

The year is 2225. For the last seventy-five years, hyperdrive starships have enabled mankind to colonise, settle, explore, and most importantly, exploit the more than three hundred planets in the interstellar space surrounding the Earth. Three arms of exploration and settlement have been developed—American, German, and Japanese. The majority of settled worlds lie within a four to six Parsec radius of Earth, but there are worked, settled, and visited worlds out to a radius of forty Parsecs. It turned out that none of them are true garden worlds. Many of them are tidally locked worlds and all have environmental conditions which make survival difficult if not outright challenging or dangerous. None have been found to be home to intelligent alien species, although many are home to indigenous species deadly, or at least a danger, to man. Even the Earth is no longer safe having suffered partial environmental collapse. Billions reside on the planet, but many make the long journey in hypersleep to make a new life on another world or to work contracts on resource worlds, for in the main, deep space is a place to work. Metals and rare earths, but above all petrochemicals for the plastics industry, remain in great demand.
The need for these resources has led to the rise of several South Korean chaebol and Japanese keiretsu-like corporations whose reach extends to the far edge of explored space, greater than that of any nation. Mining and aerospace company Reiner-Gama dominates and has its operations confined to the Solar System, but others include the engineering-based Leyland-Okuda; the British-based Erebus, built up from oil extraction in the Antarctic; Russian conglomerate Voroncovo, which provides data brokerage and security services alongside heavy engineering; Hong Kong-based manufacturer, Wu-Ketai; the Tokyo-based Matsuyama which specialises in colony construction and support; and the Tharsis Corporation, a mining company which originated on Mars and is led by Compton de Vaille, who at 223, is the longest lived human in history. The activities of these and lesser corporations are regulated by the United Corporate Combine, but peace, law enforcement, and labour relations across human space are still regulated by the political blocs and organisations of Earth. In the American Arm, the Federal Colonial Marshal Service stations officers on every colony, the Union of American Space Labor supports the safety and well-being of the workers everywhere, and the United States Marines provides military protection and peacekeeping. This includes the Tau Ceti 4 colony, originally divided between China and the United States of America, where the collapse of the newly democratic China in 2166 led to the foundation five new states all of whom claimed control of the former Chinese colony, civil unrest on the colony, and then insurgency and counter-insurgency as the United States Marines stepped in as a peacekeeping force, welcomed and rejected at the same time.

This is the setting for Hostile, a gritty, near future roleplaying setting inspired by the Blue-Collar Science Fiction of the seventies and eights, including the films, Alien, Outland, and Aliens. It is a future in which space exploration and colonisation is difficult, harsh, and dangerous, but in which there are asteroid systems and worlds to be exploited and great profits to be made. Conflict is not unknown—between colonies, between colonies and corporations, between corporations, and when that gets too much the Interstellar Commerce Organisation steps in or peacekeepers such as the United States Marine Corps are sent in, but in the main, space is a working environment. One with numerous hazards—the vacuum of space, radiation, adversely high and low temperatures, poisonous planetary atmospheres, potential insanity from being exposed to hyperspace, and strange alien creatures which see you as intruder, food, or incubation for its brood—which humanity must cope with in addition to the stresses of space travel and working away from Earth.

Hostile Setting is published by Zozer Games. It is the companion volume and setting guide for the publisher’s Hostile Rules, derived from Samardan Press’ Cepheus Engine System Reference Document, the Classic Era Science Fiction 2D6-Based Open Gaming System based on Traveller. The Hostile Setting can be run using the Hostile Rules or the Cepheus rules, but is primarily designed as the setting guide for the former. Instead of offering the chance to begin again in a golden age of opportunity and adventure, the Hostile Setting instead explores a new age of work, industrialisation, danger, retrofuturism, and cynicism. The supplement provides a complete that includes a future history that runs into the twenty-third century, details of major government, corporate, and criminal players along the American Arm, data for some one-hundred-and-fifty world worlds and detailed descriptions of over twenty, rules for character creation, equipment, arms, and armour, a space bestiary, rules for handling and working the hazardous environments of the future—including zero-g, radiation, and mining, starship construction and current designs, a write-up of the USCS Hercules—a newly released commercial towing vessel, including deckplans, over thirty detailed scenario hooks, and nods aplenty to the subgenres it is inspired by.

There is some crossover between Hostile Setting and Hostile Rules. This is primarily mechanically in terms of the Career options—including Corporate Agent, Corporate Executive, Colonist, Commercial Spacer, Marine, Marshal, Military Spacer, Physician, Ranger, Roughneck, Scientist, Survey Scout, and Technician. The Android Career is included also, but primarily for NPCs. The possibility of an Android as a Player Character is discussed and it is strongly—in fact, very strongly—advised that should a Player Character Android be included in a campaign, it should not be able to break its programming. Only six general options are suggested for androids—spacer, survey, scout, physician, scientist and technician. Elsewhere, Hostile Setting and Hostile Rules complement each other. Hostile Setting provides not just the setting that Hostile Rules lacks, but also details of specific arms and armour, equipment, and starships, as well as the rules for creating the latter. The rules for spaceship construction does feel slightly superfluous given the number of vessels detailed as part of the setting, but doubtless, there will be some Game Masters and readers who enjoy tinkering with them and designing their own starships.

In terms of what type of campaigns can be run in the Hostile Setting background, several options are discussed. These include working as troubleshooters, working as a crew of an interstellar transport, members of the United States Marine Corps or Federal Colonial Marshal Service, or explorers out on the frontier. The peacekeeping mission of Tau Ceti 4 lends itself to a low intensity military campaign and Hostile Setting focuses on this colony more than any other in the book with some colourful fiction for the situation there. A Hostile Setting campaign need not even leave a colony or mining station though, the Game Master could easily develop a colony which could support any number of situations involving exploration, survival, criminal activities, technical difficulties, labour relations, and more. For the Game Master wanting a nod to the primary inspiration for Hostile Setting, the film, Alien, there is guidance for creating and handling horror in the setting and a discussion of the types of exomorph—or alien horror—that the Player Characters might encounter in the far, dark reaches of space. Whilst several examples are included, the Game Master is advised to introduce these with care. A number of hyperspace anomalies are also discussed as potential sources of fear. Whatever the type of campaign chosen, there is some solid advice on how to describe the setting, including excellent lists of elements which can help enforce the look and feel of the environment.

Physically, Hostile Setting is serviceably done. The artwork is decent, capturing very much the grim and gritty feel of space being a working environment. One noticeable design feature is the text size, which although sans serif, is large.

The contents of Hostile Setting will feel familiar to anyone who played or read either Traveller or Cepheus, but very much filtered through not one, but three different Science Fiction subgenres—Blue Collar Science Fiction, Horror Science Fiction, and Military Science Fiction—and combined into one heavily implied setting with obvious inspirations. Hostile Setting can use either of those rules, but best works with Hostile Rules, since they complement each other. Further, the Hostile Setting showcases a setting not just where a Xenomorph—or in this case, an Exomorph—could be encountered somewhere far out from the safety of the Earth, but a Science Fiction setting rife with other dangers and other story possibilities. In fact, to come to the Hostile Setting expecting to focus mainly on encounters with dangerous alien lifeforms would lead to disappointment and to solely focus on that in play, would be to ignore those other, in many ways, more interesting story possibilities.

For the Game Master who wants a near future, grim and gritty Science Fiction setting which focuses upon Blue Collar protagonists rather than heroes, the Hostile Setting is a very good choice. The Hostile Setting takes its Blue-Collar Science Fiction inspirations and provides a well-realised background with support and scenario suggestions aplenty.

Scenarios set on or within the bodies of enormous creatures are not new. For example, Genial Jack, is set entirely within the body of a blue whale and On the Shoulders of Giants is set not on the body of a single god, but the bodies of twelve gods. However, Tyrannosaur Inside – A T-Rex Crawl Adventure is very probably the first scenario to be set inside the body of the most notorious dinosaur of all time—the tyrannosaurus rex. Which is both bonkers and fun, but also, a bit “Tell me again, how I use this?”. Published by Beyond Cataclysm Books following a successful Kickstarter campaign, the scenario is designed to be played using with Mörk Borg, the Swedish pre-apocalypse Old School Renaissance retroclone designed by Ockult Örtmästare Games and Stockholm Kartell and published by Free League Publishing. (In addition, it should be noted that a version is also available for use with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition.) It is not specifically set in the same doomed land as Mörk Borg, in fact, it is probably too over the top, if not a little silly, yet if the Game Master wants to set it in the same world, there is nothing to stop her. At best, and because it does involve a fifteen-thousand-pound meat-eating theropod, Tyrannosaur Inside – A T-Rex Crawl Adventure, works as a one-shot. This does not mean Tyrannosaur Inside – A T-Rex Crawl Adventure cannot be dropped into a campaign. It has the same effect as dropping a tyrannosaurus rex onto a village, which is exactly how the scenario starts.
Tyrannosaur Inside – A T-Rex Crawl Adventure begins in small village whose inhabitants have been scared out of their wits after a dinosaur out of the cretaceous period has appeared their midst. Of course, the Player Characters are tasked with dealing with because they are not the ones running away. The first two questions they have to answer are, how much they know about tyrannosaurus rex and how are they going to get into inside to take it down. The answer to the first question, is not very much, no more than their players do, unless one of the players happens to be a palaeontologist, in which that player is going to be very, very, and the author means, very surprised. Otherwise, the nearest town’s leper can tell you that the tyrannosaurus rex is renowned for having an ‘out’ door (underneath the tail) which can be used as a means of access if you are brave and bring lots of hand sanitiser and for having a helter-skelter which spirals down its spine… The answer is either to use the ‘in’ door, the ‘out’ door, or drill their way in via a toenail… In addition, Tyrannosaur Inside – A T-Rex Crawl Adventure does include extra answers to the earlier question, “Tell me again, how I use this?”. ‘d10 Things To Do With a T-Rex In A Fantasy Kingdom’ provides exactly ten answers by Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan, the best of which includes using it as the hiding place for a lich’s soul jar, grabbing it as a wizard’s tower after casting Flesh to Stone, and never, ever giving a Ring of Wishes to a six-year-old (which reads ever so slightly, as if Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan has actually done this…)

So the first really big surprise about the tyrannosaurus rex is that it not actually a tyrannosaurus rex. Well, it is, but just not the traditional sense. It is in fact, a tyrannosaurus rex operated by comparatively tiny—and that we mean, man-sized—tyrannosaurus rexes, some of whom are actually really bored of being the crew of a tyrannosaurus rex, some of which really hate their tyrannosaurus rex being boarded. Especially by the mostly hairless ape-like descendants of tree rats. So essentially, the tyrannosaurus rex is a giant t-rex-shaped mecha, but with teeth and really good skin. In game terms, Tyrannosaur Inside – A T-Rex Crawl Adventure is a hexcrawl adventure up the length of a tyrannosaurus rex, with each of the creature’s limbs, tail, abdomen, thorax, and head making up one hex. Some of the locations are quite expansive, such as the thorax with its maze of intestinal pumps, whilst others, like the Piddly Left Arm and the Piddly Right Arm, are narrow and constrained. There are some entertaining encounters throughout, such as the Dinogängers, which appear and attempt to replace the Player Characters, a lecture on dental hygiene by a T-Rentist, and a very cosy stop-off with the Old-Rexes!

As to getting around the insides the non-tyrannosaurus rex, it is relatively easy, even it is technically a tight squeeze, since this being a relatively modern tyrannosaurus rex, it is wheelchair accessible with signage in braille, the language of the user’s choice, and so on.

For the Game Master, there is mixture of tips and playtest notes—which mostly point out how silly the adventure is—and a table of motivations for the tyrannosaurus rex actually in charge, written by Grant Howitt. Dave Emerson contributes ‘d6 Reasons You Are Scared Of Dinosaurs’ which does not quite work with the medieval style settings of the roleplaying games that Tyrannosaur Inside – A T-Rex Crawl Adventure is actually written for.

Physically, Tyrannosaur Inside – A T-Rex Crawl Adventure is very well laid out and a lot of thought has gone into how the whole thing is organised. The various locations are always marked with a mini-version of the tyrannosaurus rex map with the right hex highlighted in red. Directions to nearby locations are marked with big teeth, very big teeth…

Tyrannosaur Inside – A T-Rex Crawl Adventure is dinosaurously ridiculous, but for that one instance where the Game Master wants to run a t-rex incursion recursion, Tyrannosaur Inside – A T-Rex Crawl Adventure is exactly what she wants.

Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #3: Acting Up In Lankhmar is a scenario for Goodman Games’ Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game and the third scenario for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set. Scenarios for Dungeon Crawl Classics tend be darker, gimmer, and even pulpier than traditional Dungeons & Dragons scenarios, even veering close to the Swords & Sorcery subgenre. Scenarios for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set are set in and around the City of the Black Toga, Lankhmar, the home to the adventures of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, the creation of author Fritz Leiber. The city is described as an urban jungle, rife with cutpurses and corruption, guilds and graft, temples and trouble, whores and wonders, and more. Under the cover the frequent fogs and smogs, the streets of the city are home to thieves, pickpockets, burglars, cutpurses, muggers, and anyone else who would skulk in the night! Which includes the Player Characters. And it is these roles which the Player Characters get to be in Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #3: Acting Up In Lankhmar, small time crooks trying to make a living and a name for themselves, but without attracting the attention of either the city constabulary or worse, the Thieves’ Guild! The job in this scenario is a night spent proving protection to a theatre performance.
Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #3: Acting Up In Lankhmar is a short, one-session scenario which takes place over the course of a single evening. Designed for four Player Characters of Second Level, it opens with them being approached by Jallo, the lead actor and head of a troupe of actors, mummers, dancers, and street performers, known as the Dungsweep Players. Performing at the run down Marshlight Theatre, Jallo has a hit on his hands, ‘The Fiascos of Duke Hogfat’, a satire about the personal habits of one Duke Borvat, a relatively important noble in Lankhmar. Unfortunately, the success of the play means that word of the play and its scurrilous subject matter, has reached the ear of the subject and he is not happy. He has already despatched the head of his house guard, Captain Dimman, and several of his men to threaten the theatre and the troupe with closure, and if they fail to comply, the inference that the troupe will end up dead. Thus, Jallo and the Dungsweep Players want protection and Jallo is prepared to pay for it. For one night’s work, this pay is perfectly reasonable.

Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #3: Acting Up In Lankhmar is all about the Marshlight Theatre. Apart from being located down an alleyway in an old warehouse, the theatre can be placed anywhere in the city and could easily be placed near the slums between the Old Slave Barracks on Chapel Street, Rookery Way, the Shrine of the Rat God on Squalor Row, and Pimp Street, the setting for Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #1: Gang Lords of Lankhmar. In fact, Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #3: Acting Up In Lankhmar can easily be run as a sequel to Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #1: Gang Lords of Lankhmar, and it can be the events of that scenario which led to Jallo learning of their exploits and their reputation and thus hiring them. The scenario describes the theatre in some detail, and there is a large map of the building which can be placed in front of the players as their characters attempt to stop any attacks by Captain Dimman and his agents.

Bar an initial scene, all of the action of the scenario takes place in and around the theatre. At its core, it plays out as a theatrical ‘tower defence’ style scenario as the Duke’s men and his agents—plus other forces, make their play in striking at the theatre and the performers. There are also scenes unconnected with this main plot thread, which add colour and flavour to the activities in and around the theatre. In addition, the scenario adds an ‘Audience Mood’ tracker as an adventure specific to keep a gauge of the audience and its reaction to the play. Depending upon the actions of the Player Characters, this ranges from the performance being heralded as a triumph to the audience breaking out into a riot! Further, there is a big event in the scenario which potentially, literally puts a Player Character centre stage...
Physically, Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #3: Acting Up In Lankhmar is as decently presented as you would expect from Goodman Games. The scenario’s ‘Audience Mood’ tracker and its use is clearly explained and should be easy to use.

Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #3: Acting Up In Lankhmar is huge fun—for both the players and the Judge. The Judge gets some juicy NPCs to portray and verily roleplay, whilst the players and their characters get a fun, exciting adventure with lots going on and a desperate situation to deal with which gets ever more fraught as the night goes on. Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #3: Acting Up In Lankhmar is a short adventure, but it inventively shows another type of story and scenario that can be played out and run in a specific setting such as Lankhmar. Clever, witty, and engaging, Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #3: Acting Up In Lankhmar is a great addition to campaign run using the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set.

A city under siege. The City by the Bay sits in the crosshairs of a gunsight, the scope of a sniper rifle wandering across the buildings and streets of San Francisco ready for the trigger to be pulled and another victim felled. The sniper has sent city hall demands for money and is holding all of San Francisco to ransom. Fortunately, San Francisco Police Department has assigned its finest police officers to deal with both the demands and track down the psychopathic killer before he strikes again. If that sounds like the plot of the 1971 film, Dirty Harry, starring Clint Eastwood and directed by Don Siegel, it is. However, it is also the set-up for a board game inspired by Dirty Harry and the cop cinema of the seventies. Published by Next Dimension Games, Go Ahead Punk! is a game set in the San Francisco of the seventies in which the sadistic killer known only as ‘Stinger’ stalks the streets and rooftops, looking for his next victim. Instead of the San Francisco Police Department assigning only the one Cop to the case, it has assigned three—Inspectors Katherine Lacey, Eddie Johnson, and Frank Brannigan. Stinger only needs to carry three more hits, which can be from atop a building if he can obtain a Janitor Key to its side entrance or in the city’s parks if he can find a Park Ranger uniform. Then it is a matter of making his escape from one of the city’s four port exits and the man who scared San Francisco will have eluded the law! All the Cops have to do is locate Stinger and bring him to justice, whether that is before he has made all of his planned hits or after, during his escape attempt.

Go Ahead Punk! is a classic hidden movement game of one player versus many, much in the mode of the classic Fury of Dracula or the more recent Jaws. It pitches one player—Stinger, up against one to three Cops, each with their own means of handling sadistic killers like Scorpio. Inspector Frank Brannigan always knows where to put a bullet in a criminal if he has to; Inspector Eddie Johnson’s preferred weapon is a pump action shotgun, so up close, he rarely misses; and Inspector Katherine Lacey’s knowledge of Personnel & Records means she brings police intelligence to the streets in the manhunt for the marauding murderer. When she spends cash on intel to reveal Stinger’s location, his player must reveal Stinger’s exact location, not just the district. They start with their own equipment, but can find more and make themselves deadlier in a fight. Stinger has his sniper rifle, but might find a .38 revolver, a silencer for his sniper rifle to make hits harder to detect, or even a LAW rocket launcher (useful for taking down that pesky police chopper), whereas the Cops can equip themselves with shotguns and rifles, don bulletproof vests, keep track of each other with police radios, and if they have cash, get intel from their connections on where Stinger might be. They can even get the keys to a muscle car and race across the city in pursuit of the unknown sniper.

Go Ahead Punk! is played out on a 17¼ by 28½ inch map of San Francisco, divided into its various districts and parks and crisscrossed with the major roads and freeways as well as Street Car and Cable Car routes. All players can move using the major roads and freeways, but only Stinger can use the Street Car and Cable Car routes and then only when he has a Transit Pass. There are over one-hundred-and-fifty numbered locations on the map which the Cops will move across openly, whilst Stinger will move across them in secret, his player tracking Stinger’s movement and location on the Movement Tracker sheet which he keeps hidden behind a screen. The various districts are also marked with Hit Locations—black for rooftops, green for the parks, and red for locations where a hit cannot be performed for the third and final hit. There are several hospitals, marked with ER, where both the Cops and Stinger can gain first aid, but Stinger must reveal his location if he does so and there are also four Port locations, the Stinger needing to get to one of these to escape and win the game after performing the three hits. Lastly, there is Hunch Tracker, which tracks the San Francisco Police Department’s general progress in hunting for Stinger. The net closes on him every fourth round, forcing his player to reveal Stinger’s current district, which will narrow it down to a handful of locations.

At the beginning of the game, each player receives a board for his character. This has a health Tracker and space for equipment carried—up to eight spaces’ worth of equipment can be carried in this inventory—and for the Cops, space for any vehicle currently in their possession. Each player is also given their character’s starting equipment, a set of combat dice in their character’s colour, and a reference card. Stinger’s player has access to the Stinger Deck and the Stinger Key Deck. During play, these provide Stinger’s player with key cards to particular locations, the Park Ranger uniform, weapons, and so on. In addition, the Stinger’s player also receives the Movement Tracker sheet and a screen to hide it behind. This screen has a great image of Stinger, sniper rifle in hand, looming over the city as a whole, making him a constant presence, despite everyone not knowing where he is.

The Cop players have access to the Cop Deck and the Cop Inventory Deck and together these provide the Cop players with weapons, vehicles, cash for intelligence, and more. There are some fun cards in here too. For example, ‘Complaint’ sends Inspector Brannigan straight to city hall following a claim of police brutality; ‘Donuts!’ ends a player’s turn; when ‘Car’ card is drawn, the Cop not only gets that card, but gets to pop the trunk of the car and draw another card to see what is inside it; and a ‘Hood! Fight Now’ card means that the Cop has busted down the wrong door and the occupant is not taking it lying down!

A turn consists of two phases. In ‘Phase 1: The Hunt’, Stinger acts first. He can either move, play a card from his hand, draw a new card (and play it if he wants), declare a Hit, or get some first aid at an ER. Both declaring a Hit and going to the ER reveals Stinger’s location. Next the Hunch Tracker marker is moved. If on the ‘Reveal’ space, Stinger’s player reveals the district where he currently is. Then the Cop players take it to turn to do one of five actions. This can be to move—three spaces as opposed to the four of Stinger, play a card, draw a new card to play or keep, share inventory items with another Cop if they are in the same location, or get some first aid at an ER. Play progresses through ‘Phase 1: The Hunt’ again and again until Stinger has performed three Hits. This triggers ‘Phase 2: The Escape’. However, play in ‘Phase 2: The Escape’ is pretty much the same as ‘Phase 1: The Hunt’, but without the need to perform any further Hits.

Stinger’s location can be revealed through four means. A Cop moves into the space he is currently on, Stinger’s player draws a ‘Spotted’ card, a ‘Location Intel’ card is drawn—backed up by Lacey’s knowledge of Personnel & Records or extra cash, or Stinger moves into a location with a Cop there. The latter is a possibility if a Cop has already been injured, whether due to a ‘Hood! Fight Now’ card or an earlier encounter with Stinger, and Stinger’s player thinks he can do enough damage to send him to the ER. Performing a Hit also reveals Stinger’s location, but if Stinger has the Silencer for his sniper rifle, Stinger gets another turn to act before revealing the Hit, reflecting how difficult the Hit was to detect.

Combat takes place between Stinger and the Cops when or more of them are in the same location. It involves the players taking it in turns to roll dice as determined by the weapon they are carrying, modified by combat cards, if any, aiming to inflict damage on the other. Combat continues until Stinger is killed and thus the Cops win the game, Stinger sends the Cops to the ER, or one side attempts to escape and move immediately away. In general, this requires the ‘Escape’ symbol to be rolled on a die, and if the ‘Escape’ symbol does not appear, a player can burn cards from his hand. This removes them from the game, which can be serious for Stinger if those cards are a Janitor Key card or a Park Ranger Uniform card as this prevents Stinger from performing Hits at those locations. Notably, Stinger’s play begins the game with an Escape Token. This can be used once instead of a failed Escape roll and ensures that Stinger escapes once in the game.

In addition to the standard game, Go Ahead Punk! includes rules for solo play. This plays much in the same fashion as the standard game, but the player controls Stinger only—who has been blackmailed into performing the Hits—and the Cops are controlled by the game. The token for Stinger remains on the board at all times with the Cop tokens constantly moving towards Stinger. To make an allowance for solo play, Go Ahead Punk! does feel like a more complex game in comparison to the standard rules.

Go Ahead Punk! is a nicely and highly thematically presented game. All of the components are of solid quality, including the tokens, cards, and various boards—even for a preview version of the game. (Actual figures for the Cops are included in a deluxe version of the game.) The rule book is relatively short, but includes examples of play, combat, and card clarifications. The artwork is terrific though, for example, Stinger is shown on one card wearing the same Mexican style cardigan that Paul Michael Glaser wore on Starsky & Hutch. There are lots of little references like this, and players with any knowledge of the genre will enjoy spotting them.

Go Ahead Punk! has a pleasing ebb and flow to its play. Primarily this is due to the Hunch Tracker, which forces Stinger’s player to reveal the current district he is currently in, tightening the noose around Stinger, forcing his player to send him scurrying away if he does not want to be caught or run into a Cop. Then loosening again, if only for a little while... This in addition to clues left behind by any Hits which can build and build as the Cop players try and work out Stinger’s movements and possible intended location as he performs more hits. Consequently, there is never really a moment after the first Hit when Stinger does not feel like he is being hunted. The Cops are always going to feel like they are responding and successfully tracking Stinger will involve deduction based on first the Hit locations and second, the ‘Location Intel’ cards, as well as a bit of luck. That is, when they are not being distracted by claims of police brutality or doughnuts! Then there is the theme. Go Ahead Punk! feels like the film it is inspired by and familiarity with it will have the players wanting to play in the style of the characters from the cop films and television series and roleplay a little as the game progresses.

Overall, Go Ahead Punk! is a solidly designed classic hidden movement game of one player versus many built around a highly appropriate theme. The combination of the two sets up a brooding sense of uncertainty, never quite knowing when the Stinger will strike again as the Cops desperately search for the deranged killer—and all under the sunny skies of San Francisco.

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Go Ahead Punk! is currently being funded via Kickstarter and an Unboxing in the Nook video is available on YouTube.

Much like the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, the Jonstown Compendium is a curated platform for user-made content, but for material set in Greg Stafford’s mythic universe of Glorantha. It enables creators to sell their own original content for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, 13th Age Glorantha, and HeroQuest Glorantha (Questworlds). This can include original scenarios, background material, cults, mythology, details of NPCs and monsters, and so on, but none of this content should be considered to be ‘canon’, but rather fall under ‘Your Glorantha Will Vary’. This means that there is still scope for the authors to create interesting and useful content that others can bring to their Glorantha-set campaigns.

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What is it?
Veins of Discord is a scenario for use with RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha.

It is a thirty-four page, full colour, 38.59 MB PDF.

The layout is clean and tidy, but needs a slight edit in places. The artwork is decent. However, there are no maps, so the Game Master will need to refer to the maps included in the RuneQuest Gamemaster Screen Pack.

Where is it set?
Veins of Discord is set in Sartar, specifically in and around the village of Apple Lane.

Who do you play?Any type of Player Character can play Veins of Discord, but ideally they should be invested in the future of Apple Lane and they should be capable working in the surrounding wilderness. The scenario presents an interesting situation if a Player Character is the thane of Apple Lane or an Ernalda worshipper.
What do you need?
Veins of Discord requires RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, the Glorantha Bestiary, and especially, the RuneQuest Gamemaster Screen Pack for its information about Apple Lane and its surrounds. The Red Book of Magic may also be useful.
What do you get?
Veins of Discord begins with a strange visitor to Apple Lane. Accius Yuthuppa wants wilderness guides to help him investigate the nearby Thunder Hills for reasons that nobody can quite fathom, though, it turns out, the pay is pretty good. It quickly becomes clear that he ill-suited to the wilderness, even the relatively tame wilderness around Apple Lane, but after collecting numerous sods and clods and rocks, he disappears from the lives of the Player Characters, only to be remembered as an odd encounter.

Not long after Accius Yuthuppa has left, several Dwarves arrival in the Apple Lane, their leader wanting to negotiate for the mining rights to the nearby hills. The Dwarves will compensate the village (and its thane) for these rights, but if the thane or the people of Apple Lane decline, the dwarves will move on and find someone else to negotiate with. Either way, the Dwarves will begin mining in the hills. Naturally—because after all, what the Dwarves are doing could be seen as unnatural—this has consequences.

Veins of Discord confronts the Player Characters with a dilemma as the actions of the Dwarves bring them into conflict with the Elves of the nearby Tarndisi’s Grove. Do they side with those that they made agreement with or do they side with the Elves who want to undo what they regard as the damage that the Dwarves have inflicted on the earth? Whether they gave permission for the Dwarves to mine in the hills, in which case, the Elves will be unhappy with the Player Characters, or the dwarves successfully sought permission from someone else, the Elves will still make a plea for assistance. Whichever side the Player Characters decide to support, the Elves will assault the mine, and there will be long term consequences for supporting one side and not the other. Ultimately, there no easy answer to the situation presented in the scenario.
Veins of Discord is a straightforward scenario, though the Game Master will need to prepare the final showdown in the mine as it involves a lot of combat. Full stats and descriptions are provided for both the Elves and Dwarves involved in the scenario as well as various other creatures. One thing missing from the scenario is a map of the mine. The Game Master can run the scenario without it, but its inclusion would have been useful.

Another aspect of the scenario is that although the plot and central idea behind Veins of Discord—modernity and industrialisation versus traditionalism and the natural world—is not necessarily new to roleplaying, it is not necessarily a familiar plot in RuneQuest. The players will need to both roleplay their characters’ reactions to what is to them a very alien concept and the fact that their characters will not at all be familiar with the consequences of what the Dwarves want. Not so much a challenge, but rather something that they should keep in mind.

The format and plot to Veins of Discord means that it actually plays out over the course of several weeks. The Game Master could easily run another scenario as the events of Veins of Discord play out offscreen.
Is it worth your time?Yes—Veins of Discord is a straightforward and enjoyable scenario which presents the Player Characters with a surprisingly modern dilemma that ultimately cannot be solved to everyone’s satisfaction and feels all the more satisfying because of this.No—Veins of Discord is too location specific, being set in Apple Lane, and involves both Elves and Dwarves, and an industrial theme which may not suit a Game Master’s campaign.Maybe—Veins of Discord is flexible in that it can set elsewhere, but its industrial versus the ecological theme may not not suit every Game Master’s campaign.

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

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

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Name: Horror at El Dorado RoyalePublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Ben Burns

Setting: Modern Day MexicoProduct: Scenario
What You Get: Thirty-four page, 38.40 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Some bridezillas never forget, never forgive.Plot Hook: Wedding of a friend at a five star resort. What can go wrong? Then the dreams and the deaths begin...
Plot Support: Six pre-generated Investigators, seven handouts, no NPCs, one map and two floor plans, one non-Mythos monster.Production Values: Decent.
Pros# One-two session one-shot# Encourages the use of mobile phones and Wikipedia by the Investigators
# Non-Mythos horror scenario
# Non-Mythos monster not new to Call of Cthulhu# Nicely detailed ritual# Good mix of interaction and investigation# Solid staging advice# Easy to replace the pre-generated Investigators# Decent artwork# Thalassophobia# Aquaphobia# Gamophobia# Heortophobia
Cons# Needs a slight edit. No, it really does.# Tightly plotted# Handouts a little bland# Monster timeline unclear# Monster stats could be better placed separately# No NPC stats or portraits
Conclusion# Despite the lack of NPC stats, a solidly serviceable movie style one-shot which combines holiday horror and wedding woes.# The best scenario by Ben Burns for Call of Cthulhu to date

First seen in Numenera, a Science-Fantasy RPG set a billion years into the future published a decade ago and then in the multi-realm hopping The Strange, the mechanics of what would become the Cypher System have since been seen in multiple settings and genres and roleplaying games and gained a generic rulebook of their own so that the Game Master can use them to create and run settings of her with dynamic Player Characters. They are designed to be flexible and adaptable and enable players to create characters that do things. The rules enable the use of various powers and abilities by focusing on their effects and how they are perceived in a setting or genre. For example, a fire bolt in a fantasy campaign could only be cast by a wizard, but in Science Fiction setting, it can only be pyrokinesis! Published by Monte Cook Games, The Cypher System Rulebook includes not just a full explanation of the rules and the means to create a wide range of characters and archetypes, plus a bestiary and extensive equipment lists—including the all-important near magical cyphers and artefacts, but also an overview of nine different genres and advice on how to do them using the Cypher System.

The Cypher System Rulebook begins with a quick explanation of the system’s mechanics before focusing upon the Player Character. A Player Character in the Cypher System has three stats or Pools. These are Might, Speed, and Intellect, and represent a combination of effort and health for a character. Typically, they range between eight and twenty in value. Might covers physical activity, strength, and melee combat; Speed, any activity involving agility, movement, stealth, or ranged combat; and Intellect, intelligence, charisma, and magical capacity. In game, points from these pools will be spent to lower the difficulty of a task, but they can also be lost through damage, whether physical or mental. A Player Character has an Edge score, tied to one of the three pools. This reduces the cost of points spent from the associated pool to lower the difficulty of a task, possibly even to zero depending upon the Edge rating. A Player Character will also have a Type, which can either be an Adept, which uses powers akin to magic or psionics or superpowers—depending on the genre; Warrior, a soldier or a police officer or warrior; Speaker, conman, diplomat, or gambler; or an Explorer, an archaeologist, investigative journalist, or treasure hunter. Essentially, these are archetypes which a player can modify as a game progresses over the course of several sessions.

However, what defines a Player Character is a simple statement—“I am an adjective noun who verbs.” The noun is the Player Character’s Type, whereas the adjective is a Descriptor which describes the character and verb is the Focus, or what the character does. For example, “I am a Cruel Adept who Was Foretold”, “I am Brash Warrior who Brandishes an Exotic Shield”, “I am a Charming Speaker who Entertains”, and “I am a Rugged Explorer who Explores Dark Spaces”. This encapsulates the Player Character in the case of the Descriptor, Type, and Focus, provides points to assign to his three Pools, special abilities, skills, and a point in an Edge. To this is added a connection to world and through this to the other Player Characters, plus a Character Arc, which provides a story that the character and player can invest themselves in as well as providing a means of earning Experience Points. Although there are only four character Types, there are some fifty Descriptors and over ninety Foci for a player to choose from, providing for a wide range of Player Characters in a simple, familiar format. To create a character, a player selects a Descriptor, Type, and Focus ,and chooses from the options given under each.

The two sample Player Characters include a standard scholar type character who has seen military service and who would rather spend time with his books and a darker character more suitable for an arcane style of game. Not only does the Cypher System Rulebook include a wide array of options in terms of its characters, it includes guidelines to help the Game Master create further Descriptors and Foci for her own setting, plus adding ‘Flavour’ to colour a character that a player wants.

Henry Brinded
“I am an Intelligent Explorer who Would Rather Be Reading.”
Tier 1 Explorer
Might 10 [Edge 1] Speed 11 Intellect 15
Effort 1
Abilities: Light and medium weapons, Danger Sense, Decipher, Knowledge Skills, Practiced with all weapons, Knowledge is Power
Skills: Archaeology, History, Occult, Memorisation, Persuasion, Sailing
Arc: Enterprise

Kossos
“I am a Cruel Adept who Was Foretold.”
Tier 1 Adept
Might 7 Speed 12 Intellect 17 [Edge 1]
Effort 1
Abilities: Expert Cypher Use, Light Weapons, Far Step, Magic Training, Scan, Ward, Cruel attacks
Skills: Deception, Intimidation, Persuasion (All related to pain), See through deception, public speaking
Inability: Hindered with motives or emotions
Arc: Mysterious Background

Mechanically, the Cypher System is player facing—and arguably was one of the first systems to be player facing. Thus, in combat, a player not only rolls for his character to make an attack, but also rolls to avoid any attacks made against his character. Essentially this shifts the game’s mechanical elements from the Game Master to the player, leaving the Game Master to focus on the story, on roleplaying NPCs, and so on. When it comes to tasks, the character is attempting to overcome a Task Difficulty, ranging from one and Simple to ten and Impossible. The target number is actually three times the Task Difficulty. So, a Task Difficulty of four or Difficult, means that the target number is twelve, whilst a Task Difficulty of seven or Formidable, means that the target number is twenty-one. The aim of the player is lower this Task Difficulty. This can be done in a number of ways.

Modifiers, whether from favourable circumstances, skills, or good equipment, can decrease the Difficulty, whilst skills give bonuses to the roll. Trained skills—skills can either be Practised or Trained—can reduce the Difficulty, but the primary method is for a player to spend points from his relevant Stat pools. This is called applying Effort. Applying the first level of Effort, which will reduce the target number by one, is three points from the relevant Stat pool. Additional applications of Effort beyond this cost two points. The cost of spending points from a Stat pool is reduced by its associated Edge, which if the Edge is high enough, can reduce the Effort to zero, which means that the Player Character gets to do the action for free—or effortlessly!

Rolls of one enable a free GM Intrusion—essentially a complication to the current situation that does reward the Player Character with any Experience Points, whereas rolls of seventeen and eighteen in combat grant damage bonuses. Rolls of nineteen and twenty in combat can also grant damage bonuses, but alternatively, can grant minor and major effects. For example, distracting an opponent or striking a specific body part. Rolls of nineteen and twenty in non-combat situations grant minor and major effects, which the player and Game Master can decide on in play. In combat, light weapons always inflict two points of damage, medium weapons four points, and heavy weapons six points, and damage is reduced by armour. NPCs simply possess a Level, which like the Task Difficulty ranges between one and ten and is multiplied by three to get a target number to successfully attack them.

Experience Points under the Cypher System are earned in several ways, primarily through achieving objectives, making interesting discoveries, and so on. However, they are not awarded for simply killing monsters or finding treasure. There are two significant means of a Player Character gaining Experience Points. The first is ‘GM Intrusion’. These are designed to make a situation and the Player Character’s life more interesting or more complicated. For example, the Player Character might automatically set off a trap or an NPC important to the Player Character is imperilled. Suggested Intrusions are given for the four character Types and also for all of the ninety or more Foci. When this occurs, the Game Master makes an Intrusion and offers the player and his character two Experience Points. The player does not have to accept this ‘GM Intrusion’, but this costs an Experience Point. If he does accept the Intrusion, the player receives the two Experience Points, keeps one and then gives the other to another player, explaining why he and his character deserves the other Experience Point. The ‘GM Intrusion’ mechanic encourages a player to accept story and situational complications and place their character in danger, making the story much more exciting.

There is the reverse of the ‘GM Intrusion’, which is ‘Player Intrusion’. With this, a player spends an Experience Point to present a solution to a problem or complication. These make relatively small, quite immediate changes to a situation. For example, a Cypher or Artifact is expended, but it might be that the situation really demands the device’s use again, so the player decides to make a ‘Player Intrusion’ and at the cost of single Experience Point, give it one more use of charge.

The other means of gaining Experience Points—a new addition to the Cypher System since Numenera—is the Character Arc. A Player Character begins play with one Character Arc for free, but extra can be purchased at the cost of Experience Points to reflect a Player Character’s dedication to the arc’s aim. Each Character Arc consists of several steps—Opening, two or three development steps, followed by a Climax and a Resolution. Suggested Character Arcs include Avenge, Birth, Develop a Bond, Mysterious Background, and more. For example, Kossos has the Character Arc of ‘Mysterious Background’. This begins with an Opening in which Kossos starts her search, the next steps being Research and Investigation, the first step looking into her family background, the second asking people who might know more, followed by the Climax in which Kossos will make a discovery. In the Resolution, Kossos will reflect upon what she has discovered and how it changes her. The selection of the Character Arc during character creation signals to the Game Master what sort of story a player wants to explore with his character.

Although the rules and the various elements—Descriptor, Type, and Foci—which go to make up a Player Character take up over half of Cypher System Rulebook, a lengthy section is dedicated to discussing the various genres which the Cypher System can encompass and handle. Nine genres are discussed—Fantasy, Modern, Science Fiction, Horror, Romance, Superheroes, Post-Apocalyptic, Fairy Tale, and Historical. Many of these have their sourcebooks and settings for the Cypher System. For example, Godforsaken for the Fantasy genre or Stay Alive! for the Horror genre. In each case, the Cypher System Rulebook provides an overview of the genre, advice on how to create and play a game in the genre, along with suggested roles and associated Types, Foci, creatures and NPCs, equipment, and more. For example, for the Fantasy genre, it suggests how to create a Wizard using the Adept Type, a Druid using the Explorer with a magic flavour, a Thief using the Explorer with a stealth flavour, and so on. There are options for Species—Dwarf, Elf, and so on—as a Descriptor, and for spellcasting. In many cases, it also suggests subgenres, such as childhood adventures for the Modern genre or hard Science Fiction for that genre, and also discusses the mixing of genres, such as Superheroes and Science Fiction and time travel and Historical. Where necessary, extra rules are added, for example, adding shock and madness for the Horror genre. In each case, these chapters are primers for the nine genres, some longer than others—for example, the Romance genre chapter is just three pages long, but the Post-Apocalyptic genre chapter is seven pages long.

In addition to the discussion of the various genres, the Game Master is given solid advice on running the Cypher System, which pays particular attention to handling ‘GM Intrusions’, judging difficulty, encouraging player creativity, handling NPCs, and perhaps notably, teaching the Cypher System. Despite the simplicity of the Cypher System, there being a slight disconnect between the Task Difficulty and the Target Number and how a player is aiming to reduce the Target Number before rolling against it rather than the Task Difficulty. The advice is really to take a step-by-step approach and ease the players into the rules and mechanics. It is thoroughly good advice and a great inclusion in the book. As well, as the advice, the Game Master is also supported with a lengthy bestiary of creatures and monsters and NPCs from a range of genres, which of course, support the various discussions dedicated to those genres earlier in the book.

Of course, the Cypher System Rulebook examines its namesake—Cyphers. Again, first seen in Numenera, Cyphers are typically one-use things which help a Player Character. A Cypher might heal a Player Character, inflict damage on an opponent or hinder him, aid an attack, turn him invisible or reveal something that is invisible, increase or decrease gravity, and so on. They can be physical or Manifest, so could be a potion, a spray, a piece of software, a scroll, amongst other items, or they can be intangible or Subtle, which could be good fortune, inspiration, an alien concept, a blessing, an ear worm, or the like. In a fantastical game, Cyphers are likely to be Manifest, whereas in a modern setting they are likely to be Subtle and so do not break the feel of the setting and its genre by having lots of outré objects lying around which nobody has ever heard of before. Cyphers are, for the most part, genre neutral in terms of their mechanics. Their form though, is not, so a Cypher can be the same mechanically in two different genres, but their appearance and how they are seen to work differs between the two genres. For example, a Disguise Kit in the Historical genre would consist of a wig and make-up and perhaps a pair of spectacles and clothing, but in the Science Fiction genre, it could be a holo-projector which works only on the user. Obviously, Manifest Cyphers are easier to use because they have an obvious physicality both as objects and their effects, whereas Subtle Cyphers require more careful handling in order to remain faithful to a setting and its genre.

Physically, the Cypher System Rulebook is very well presented and everything is clearly explained. In addition, the sidebars are used to add extensive commentary and advice throughout the book and everything is individually page referenced to make the book itself easy to use. There are plenty of examples as well, including sample Player Characters for each of the four Types in the roleplaying game. The artwork is also decent. One oddity is that the example of play is presented at the end of the book, but it is a good example of play.

The introduction of the Cypher System with Numenera and The Strange was ground-breaking with its inclusion of player-facing mechanics, the ‘GM Intrusion’ rule, and a setting where the Player Characters had ready access to amazing abilities and amazing devices, or Cyphers. The Cypher System Rulebook brings those mechanics together in very well designed, accessible rulebook and shows the players how they can make interesting, pro-active characters and the Game Master how she can take the rules to not just run a game, but run a game in numerous different genres. The Cypher System Rulebook presents an excellent, flexible set of rules and advice for the Game Master who wants a game where her players and their characters shine and exciting, dynamic stories are told.

Further Beyond Core Rules Preview is the introduction to Further Beyond: The Roleplaying Game of Galactic Exploration & Adventure. Published by Blue Donut Games, it takes its inspiration from the artwork of Peter Elson, whose work graced the covers of numerous fantasy and Science Fiction novels during the seventies, eighties, and nineties. It has a distinctly seventies feel to its look and its style, depicting a future of strange worlds, aliens, rocketships and other giant spaceships, and of heroic men and women. Its nearest antecedent is Traveller, one which the authors admit to having had run in the past. The Further Beyond Core Rules Preview provides an introduction to the core ideas behind Further Beyond: The Roleplaying Game of Galactic Exploration & Adventure, its key rules, combat rules, how to run the game, and a short bestiary. However, what the Further Beyond Core Rules Preview lacks are details of what a Player Character or NPC looks like or anything specific that they could play. This limits the scope of the preview, unfortunately.
In Further Beyond: The Roleplaying Game of Galactic Exploration & Adventure, the players make all of the rolls. Thus, it is a player-facing roleplaying game. It uses a twenty-sided die for its core mechanic. A Player Character has four stats—Physique, Dexterity, Intellect, and Affinity—and these serve as bonuses to Saves, or saving throws. The core mechanic consists of rolling the die and attempting to equal or exceed a Difficulty Target Number, which ranges from four for Routine and eight for Basic to thirty-six for Legendary and forty for Impossible. It is possible to roll a partial success as well as success. A success is equal to or greater than the Difficulty Target Number, whereas a partial success is a roll between the Difficulty Target Number and four lower than the Difficulty Target Number. It indicates a successful action, but carried out with some consequence. A failure is thus a roll between five less than the Difficulty Target Number and a result of two. A roll of one is a critical failure, whilst a roll of twenty is a critical success. There are consequences to rolling a failure, which will be worse if a critical failure or not so bad if a partial success. The Custodian—the term for the Game Master in Further Beyond—suggests what these consequences might be. The system uses the standard rules for advantage and disadvantage, but a player never rolls more than two twenty-sided dice, whether he has advantage or disadvantage.

Combat in Further Beyond uses the same mechanics bar a tweak or two. Of course, a player will be rolling for his character to make an attack, but also rolling to avoid an attack against his character, since the mechanics to Further Beyond are player-facing. The first tweak is that there are not necessarily any consequences to failing an attack roll, which a critical success will typically inflict double damage. Damage reduces a Player Character’s Hit Points and when they are reduced to zero, they are reset to their maximum minus any excess damage which carried over the zero, and the Player Character suffers a wound. A Player Character who three or more wounds left suffers no ill effects, but saving throws against his stats are required if the number of wounds is lower, and at zero wounds, the Player Character is dying. The guide to combat covers the typical range of actions a Player Character can do, including reactions such as Opportunity Attack or Brace.

Further Beyond Core Rules Preview also covers vehicles, but not spaceships, and then only briefly. Advanced vehicles are semi-autonomous, so in combat, a vehicle can follow instructions given to its by its pilot, who can also act as well. There is also some discussion of the types of environments that the Player Characters might face before a discussion of the structure of play in Further Beyond. This divides play into missions and downtime, with options for the latter including studying a specific skill, gathering information, or making or using a contact. This is followed by advice for the Custodian, first on running the game and then on combat. Rounding out the Further Beyond Core Rules Preview is a selection of ‘Creatures of the Vast’, such as the Chameleon Broodmother which hunts in caves and is intelligent enough to cultivate environments for the herbivores it feeds on or the ‘Night Eagle’, a predator which shocks its prey with its fire breath before swopping down and grabbing them. Over the course of the next ten pages, some sixteen or so ‘Creatures of the Vast’, including mundane Earth creatures such as the wolf and the elephant. Lastly, there is a player character sheet for Further Beyond: The Roleplaying Game of Galactic Exploration & Adventure.

The Further Beyond Core Rules Preview is the first part of Further Beyond: The Roleplaying Game of Galactic Exploration & Adventure, which is designed to do two things. One is to serve as the first part of an ongoing subscription for Further Beyond: The Roleplaying Game of Galactic Exploration & Adventure, and the other is provide a test bed for the rules in the lead up to a full version of the roleplaying game. Unfortunately, the Further Beyond Core Rules Preview does not succeed at either. Although the Further Beyond Core Rules Preview provides a decent preview of the rules and combat, how the game is intended to be played, and the types of ‘Creatures of the Vast’ that the Player Characters might encounter, it completely lacks any kind of preview of what a Player Character looks like, what the Vast is like as a setting, and what sort of spaceships might be found in the Vast and how they work. Then as a potential test bed for the rules, the Further Beyond Core Rules Preview does not give for the Custodian or her players anything to do. There is no mission or encounter to play out and thus no scope for feedback to the designers.

Instead of all that, there are sixteen ‘Creatures of the Vast’ over ten pages—one fifth of the Further Beyond Core Rules Preview. It is simply too many and they do not provide the reader, let alone the potential Custodian, with any useful information. In their place, there should have been four pre-generated Player Characters, ready to play, a simple scenario, such as investigating the caves on Aventis II which are home to the Chameleon Broodmother, perhaps where a previous exploration team has been reported on a previous mission. This would have at least left room for descriptions of the Vast and possibly spaceships, but above all, provided something that the Custodian and her players could have done with the Further Beyond Core Rules Preview and potentially enjoyed, and thus given constructive feedback to the designers. Of course, this would have pushed the Further Beyond Core Rules Preview towards being a quick-start, but a quick-start that would have done everything that the designers wanted for the Further Beyond Core Rules Preview.

Physically, the Further Beyond Core Rules Preview is a lovely looking magazine-style booklet. It is well written and of course, Peter Elson’s artwork is excellent.

The Further Beyond Core Rules Preview simply does not preview enough, or at least the key points, of Further Beyond: The Roleplaying Game of Galactic Exploration & Adventure. There are snapshots of a sold Science Fiction roleplaying game in its pages, but its focus on the ‘Creatures of the Vast’ to the detriment of any sense of setting or anything playable or useable makes the Further Beyond Core Rules Preview of little use to either the publisher or the purchaser.

You are a brave adventurer, a Swordsman. After a long apprenticeship with Swordmaster Krago and now armed with your magical sword Rilgist and a shield, you travel the land, righting wrongs, and making the occasional bag of coin for your services. Such is the stuff of legend and such is the stuff of solo adventure books of which there have been many over the past four decades. However, this is the set-up for The Gloom Dragon, which although being a solo fantasy adventure, is somewhat different to others of its type. Published by Peasoup ApS—a Danish publisher—The Gloom Dragon is what is known as a ‘Smart Book’. In a traditional solo adventure book, the reader and player will create a character and explore the world detailed in the pages and random paragraphs of the adventure book, rolling dice to see whether his character avoids traps or successfully attacks a goblin, for example. The Gloom Dragon does not do this. Instead, encounters and combats and other situations are handled via an app specific to the book. What the player does is read through the book, skipping from paragraph to paragraph and from page to page as determined by the story and the choices he makes in play. Then, when prompted, typically indicated by a ‘TASK’ instruction, he uses the camera on his mobile phone or tablet to scan the image alongside the page in the app. This will typically initiate combat with a foe.

Combat in The Gloom Dragon is simple and completely handled by the app. The player rolls three six-sided dice. These will either display a sword or shield symbol, or be blank. A sword symbol will inflict one point of damage, whereas a shield will protect the wielder from one point of damage. A blank symbol does nothing and a player can lock the symbols he wants to use as he roll rolls them in the app. A player can choose to roll or keep as many of these as he likes. The fight continues until either the player or the enemy is defeated. At which point, the player will often receive a reward, but will definitely be directed to another entry or chapter in the book. Not all of the challenges involve combat. Others include finding the right bottle, which might contain a useful potion, from amongst a pile of bottles of beet juice; picking some coins up, or interacting with a combination lock.

The setting for The Gloom Dragon is in and near the village of Randomia in the Pea Soup universe. The village is being regularly visited by Worm Deathtail, the Gloom Dragon, each time threatening to eat the villagers unless they give him all of his gold. Of course, our steps up to the task, and promises to stop the Gloom Dragon, and very early in the adventure, on its next visit to the village, confronts the great beast. However, this proves too much of a challenge for the hero, who is quickly swatted away with a swing of the Gloom Dragon’s great tail. So forewarned of the strength and capabilities of the great beast, much of the adventure concerns itself with finding the means to defeat and making the hero more powerful. This includes finding more gold to spend and finding magical items that enhance the hero’s health and increases the number of dice he rolls in combat.
The interaction between the app and the book is fairly smooth, and combat is quick and easy. In general, the puzzles are easy to operate, although moving the mobile phone around to view particular rooms for clues felt somewhat clumsy. Nevertheless, the package as a whole is easy to navigate and the player will find himself switching back and forth between book and app with relative ease.

The Gloom Dragon is not designed for the veteran player of solo adventure games who started out forty years ago with The Warlock of Firetop Mountain or Buffalo Castle for Tunnels & Trolls. This is not to say that they will not enjoy playing through The Gloom Dragon, though the entries in the book are relatively limited at just one-hundred-and-forty-seven and the sense of peril is fairly low. Instead, the target audience for The Gloom Dragon is the young reader, aged nine and up, who to date has been challenged by reading. The aim of the series—and The Gloom Dragon is the third to be released—is to encourage such readers to have a greater desire to read. To that end, both the series and The Gloom Dragon encourages this through its big, bold cartoon style artwork, clear instructions, and more immediate degree of interaction in the story via the app.

Physically, The Gloom Dragon is well presented. The book is clear and simple to read, the artwork is big and bold, and crucially, the format of the book is designed to facilitate the use of the app. To that end, it has a Euro binding which means that the inside of the cover is not glued to the spine. This means that it looks like the spine is broken, but it is by design and clearly says so inside the front cover.

The Gloom Dragon is a likeable and engaging affair, a classic fantasy tale of a lone hero facing a dragon. Veteran players of solo adventure books will be doubtless be intrigued by the combination of format, but for the intended audience, The Gloom Dragon will keep the player involved through both the text and the app from start to finish, and thus both reading and playing.

There are plenty of books of tables containing random content for the roleplaying genre of your choice. Peruse the pages of DriveThruRPG or the Dungeon Masters Guild and the Game Master will find no end of books of tables of random content. Encounters down a dungeon or in any terrain the Game Master cares to name. Treasures big and small to be found in dungeons or the possession of various monsters. Treasure magical and non-magical. Potions. Jewellery. More encounters. Swords. NPCs. Other weapons. Critical hits and fumbles. Plot hooks. Encounters again. You name it and there is probably a table for it. In most cases, the entries on all of these tables provide the barest of details. Some entries can be quite detailed, but in the main, two or three lines at the very most. This is because those entries are setting out to do two things. These are to provide the maximum amount of information possible in the quickest amount of time possible and to provide the amount of inspiration possible in the quickest amount of time possible. For example, a description of a magical sword would describe its magical effects and bonuses and might describe a little of its background or previous owners or even what the sword wants. Whereas the inspiration might be as simple as a name and occupation and appearance plus a quirk and more. Roll & Play: The Game Master’s Fantasy Toolkit does a bit of both.

The Roll & Play: The Game Master’s Fantasy Toolkit won the Silver Ennie for Best Aid/Accessory – Non – Digital for 2021. Published by Roll & Play Press following a successful Kickstarter campaign is designed to be used with any fantasy roleplaying game, but especially those inspired by Dungeons & Dragons. So obviously Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, and then Pathfinder, but also any fantasy retroclone of the Game Master’s choice. No matter what the choice of fantasy roleplaying game, the Roll & Play: The Game Master’s Fantasy Toolkit is completely systemless and contains not a single stat. All the Game Master will need is a standard set of polyhedral dice and a notebook to record any details as necessary.

Notably, the is designed to be used at the table and probably behind a Game Master’s shield. To do this, it is digest sized, the layout is clean and tidy, it colourful—but not too colourful, and overall, is easy to read. In addition, it is also spiral bound. Consequently, it sit open and flat on the table or be folded over so that one page is visible and the book still lie flat. In the case of the latter, it means that the book does not take up a lot of space behind the screen. The Roll & Play: The Game Master’s Fantasy Toolkit is also produced on a glossy paper stock, which together with its relatively small size means that the book is readily portable and will withstand the travails of being carried from one gaming session to the next.

So, what of the content? The Roll & Play: The Game Master’s Fantasy Toolkit is divided into five chapters—‘People and Quests’, ‘World Building’, ‘Journeys and Events’, ‘Combat and Injuries’, and ‘Items and Rewards’. All of the tables are easy to use. Turn to the right chapter, select the right table, and starting rolling. It is as simple as that and very quickly, the Game Master can adding details to and building the world around her Player Characters. So, if they enter a town and approach a random NPC, the Game Master rolls on the ‘Common Names’ table in the ‘People and Quests’ chapter. His name is Boris. A roll on the ‘Behaviour and Traits’ table indicates Boris ‘Barks orders at people they see as less import than themselves’ and ‘Their nose has clearly been broken multiple times’ from the ‘Appearance Features’ table. Already we are getting a picture of the man. Boris is a common villager and a roll on the ‘Common Villager Work’ table indicates that he ‘Washes carts and caravans’. So, in addition to Boris not being the most pleasant of characters, the Game Master knows that he lives in a town where there are lots of carts and caravans moving through, and that since they need cleaning, the region is prone to either dust or mud or even that there is a local ordinance about keeping such vehicles clean! Having established this, the Game Master could then switch to ‘World Building’ and begin rolling for details about the town and its economy, government, local attractions or features, rumours and gossip, and so on. Now of course, this can be done at the table during play with a quick roll of the dice or the rolls could be made beforehand should the Game Master want to have some elements either prepared or simply want to peruse the various tables for inspiration.

Of course, the Roll & Play: The Game Master’s Fantasy Toolkit also contains tables that are specific to particular points during play. Mostly obviously, the ‘Combat and Injuries’ chapter. There are ‘Critical hit, with overwhelming force!’ and ‘Critical miss, with overwhelming stupidity!’ tables, and then similar tables for both ranged combat and magic, plus tables of lasting injuries, side effects upon revival (if reduced to zero Hit Points or even rendered dead), and much more. Following that in ‘Items & Rewards’ chapter there are ideas for various items both magical and mundane, including ‘Moderately magical things’ like a ‘Small wooden sphere that tastes like delicious caramel ice cream’* or a Notebook with an unlimited number of pages, but always turns to the page the writer wants to see’. There are tables for magical flaws and a wide range of alchemical components, but alongside these is table of ‘Bargain Spell Scrolls’ which should inspire the Game Master to create more, plus table for books and novels, loot of all kinds—including the mandatory, ‘I loot the body, what do I find?’ table, and other items and objects that an adventuring party might find in a dungeon or lair.

* No, I am not thinking about who has been sucking it previously.

The Roll & Play: The Game Master’s Fantasy Toolkit contains just a little more than the tables. There are notes on how to use the tables and their content. For example, combining the ‘Bounty Posters’ table with the various name tables earlier in the book. There are notes too on the various environments that the Player Characters might explore, such as the heat and cold of the desert day and night under the ‘Desert encounters’ table. These though are very light and kept to a minimum.

Of course, not every entry in the multiple tables found throughout the pages of the Roll & Play: The Game Master’s Fantasy Toolkit is going to be wholly original, especially if the Game Master has been playing for a while. After all, creating hundreds of entries for all of the tables in the book took a lot of effort and even if an interesting is familiar, what the Game Master does with it and how her Player Characters interact with it, is what will make it interesting. Plus, there is plenty that is interesting and thus plenty that is going to inspire the Game Master with a dice roll or two. Overall, the Roll & Play: The Game Master’s Fantasy Toolkit is a very handy book of inspiration and ideas, whether before a game or during, whose format makes it unobtrusive and easy to use.

Something Wild! The Card Game of Character Combos! is actually a whole family of card games published by Funko Games, all of which share the same simple mechanics, but each of which involves a different Intellect property. So, there are versions of Something Wild! devoted to Disney’s Aladdin, Tim Burton’s The Nightmare before Christmas, Dr. Seuss, Marvel Spiderman, Star Wars’ Boba Fett, Disney’s Steamboat Willy. Thus there is a version of Something Wild! for just about everyone and in each case, the version of the game, it includes a miniature Funko Pop figure. So, for example, in the Indiana Jones version—a new addition in 2023—the game includes a figure of that character. The fun thing is, that the various versions of Something Wild! are compatible with each other, and two or more sets can be combined for both more players and variation in theme. Something Wild! The Card Game of Character Combos! is designed for two to four players, aged six and above, and can be played in fifteen minutes or so.

Something Wild! consists of forty-five Character Cards, ten Power Cards, a Funko Pop! mini-figure, and the rules sheet. For the Indiana Jones version of Something Wild! The Card Game of Character Combos! the mini-Funko Pop figure is of Indiana Jones and all of the characters on the Character Cards come from the Indiana Jones franchise—in particular from Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Temple of Doom, and The Last Crusade, but not from Crystal Skull. The characters on the numbered cards include Marcus Brody, Marion Ravenwood, Indiana Jones, Short Round, Major Toht, Sallah El-Kahir, Captain Katanga, Elsa Schneider, and Henry Jones, Sr. The Character Cards are divided into five colour suits, numbered between one and nine, and the characters are the same on each number across the five suits. The ten Power Cards are also divided into five colours. Power Cards give a player an advantage or ability in play. For example, a Power Card might allow six cards to be played as any colour or swap a card a player in play with a card in play belonging to another player.

The aim in Something Wild! is to score or win three Power Cards. The first player to do wins the game. To win a Power Card, a player must create a set or run of cards. A set is three cards of any colour with the same number. A run is three cards of the same colour with numbers in order. This is done one card at a time and when a set or run is formed, the player takes the Power Card and discards the cards played.

Play of Something Wild! is simple. At the start of the game, each player receives a hand of three Character Cards and a single Power Card is played face up in the centre of the table. On his turn, a player draws a Character Card and adds it to his hand, then places a Character Card down in front of him on the table. If the colour of the Character Card played matches the colour of the Power Card currently, the player gets to take the Funko Pop! mini-figure. When a player has the Funko Pop! mini-figure in front of him, he can use the ability of a Power Card he has already in front of him or the ability of the Power Card face up on the table in the centre of the table. If a player has either a set or run of cards in front of him, then he can take the Power Card on the table.

Physically, Something Wild! The Card Game of Character Combos! is a solidly presented card game. Both the Character Cards and Power Cards are done in bright, solid colours and the rules sheet is easy to read. The Character Cards and Power Cards are language independent, whereas the rules are not. The rules are easy to read and understand, but younger players will need a hand. Of course, the Funko Pop! mini-figure is cute.

Something Wild! The Card Game of Character Combos! is not a difficult game to play and being aimed at players aged six and up, it is not a difficult game to teach. The latter is likely necessary because the rules are likely to be too difficult to read and understand for the six-year-old player. Another issue is that the game’s cards are language independent and so reference needs to be made to the rules to understand how each Power Card works. That is, until either the players have remembered or been successfully taught what each does. With younger players then, Something Wild! will require some supervision by older or adult players—at least initially.

In addition, whilst Something Wild! is a decent family game—especially if the edition they are playing has a Funko Pop! mini-figure that everyone likes—it actually gets better with the addition of a second set. This gives the players the chance to take control of two—or more—Funko Pop! mini-figures, as well as giving them a wider range of Power Cards, though this of course, means learning what the extra Power Cards do.

Something Wild! The Card Game of Character Combos! is simple, clean, and fast-playing. There is a little bit of ‘take that’ as players vie to take or keep control of the Funko Pop! mini-figure, but it is by no means a vicious game and with a fifteen-minute playing time, it never outstays its welcome. Overall, Something Wild! The Card Game of Character Combos! is a solid family card, easy to teach and easy to play, with some nice variations in its Power Cards to keep it interesting, but still light.

It seemed like the opportunity of a lifetime. The chance to attend the annual summer camp of Miskatonic Shoreside Conservatory, a prestigious performing arts institute located on an island just off Providence, Rhode Island. Graduates of the summer camp are guaranteed admittance to Miskatonic Shoreside Conservatory and graduates of the institute are all but guaranteed of a glittering career including recognition and status. You are gifted. A dancer. A saxophonist. A painter. A singer. A violinist. Yet something is not quite right—about you. About the Miskatonic Shoreside Conservatory. You hide a secret. Miskatonic Shoreside Conservatory has its secrets. This is the set-up for a mini-campaign published by Symphony Entertainment using Cthulhu Dark, the minimalist roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative horror in which the horror is so bleak that the Investigators can at best hope to survive rather than overcome. Thus, attendees of the Miskatonic Shoreside Conservatory summer camp do not so much need to overcome their experiences at the institute, as rather find a way to survive, and perhaps even a way to abide…
Miskatonic Shoreside Conservatory is a one-shot scenario in which the players take the roles of teenagers, musical prodigies attending the Miskatonic Shoreside Conservatory for the first time at its annual summer camp. It is designed for five players. It can be played with fewer players, but works best with five. As the inspired Investigators enter the various arts programmes at the conservatory, they will quickly come to notice that not all is what it seems on the island. It is clear that the institute and its backers are wealthy, the conservatory being almost a luxurious retreat as much as it is a school. Yet there is a strangeness to it, as if it is not quite of this world, the other students in attendance are often unsettled, or driven to act in desperately weird ways, such as attempting sculpt a statue on the campus to get it right, but do so hands on with hot food on the plate like modelling clay or such as slamming themselves from wall to wall at their inability to perform to the level of skill they want. There is also the feeling that the Investigators are being groomed for something, tested not just on their musical ability, but on their past experiences and how they affect their musical ability. Ultimately, whatever it is, they will be given a choice…

Miskatonic Shoreside Conservatory is supported with detailed descriptions of the five Investigators, as well as the Miskatonic Shoreside Conservatory, its facilities and staff, and then a broad timeline of the thirty days that the Investigators will spend on the island. There is only the one map, and no floorplans, but most of the NPCs have photographs, and the handouts are decent. (In fact, the handouts would actually work if they were physically made as props.)
The scenario is also supported throughout with ‘Director Insight’, which includes advice for the Director—as the Keeper is known in Cthulhu Dark—and playtest and staging notes. It also makes use of Cthulhu Dark’s ‘Dark Symbols’, which indicates if a scene involves a clue, something harmful, dialogue, something to sport, or a combination of two or more of them. They are useful as they highlight the key points of any one scene and they can also be used to suggest to the Keeper that certain skills need to be rolled in those scenes if she is running the scenario under another rules system. However, they are not always best placed to be spotted with any ease.

The scenario does ‘suffer’ from a certain disconnect. More so than any other scenario of Lovecraftian investigative horror. Players of the genre quickly learn to recognise the elements of the genre in play and have to pull back from that knowledge lest it informs their roleplaying and their Investigators. In the case of Miskatonic Shoreside Conservatory, this is challenging because the scenario resonates with the Mythos. It is everywhere and unavoidable, despite the Investigators knowing nothing, so roleplaying across that disconnect is all more challenging and all the more demanding for the players. Miskatonic Shoreside Conservatory does play around a little with that divide, but not too much, and certainly not enough to alleviate the degree of challenge that the scenario demands.
Miskatonic Shoreside Conservatory is potentially a very difficult scenario because it does call upon the players to confront their Investigators committing dark acts and committing themselves to dark, antithetically inhuman forces. There is an interesting way of alleviating this within the scenario, at least initially, almost like a comfort blanket—although this one goes ‘woof!’ and wags his tail—but ultimately, the players and their Investigators will be called upon to make a choice. One minor irritant that breaks the atmosphere of the piece is naming an NPC, if only a minor one, ‘Vincent Price’.
It is possible with Miskatonic Shoreside Conservatory to draw parallels with two other roleplaying campaigns connected to Chaoisum, Inc., one Call of Cthulhu related, the other not. These are The Eldritch New England Holiday Collection from Golden Goblin Press, which is, of course, Call of Cthulhu related, and Six Seasons in Sartar, which is not. All three are about initiation and heritage, all are about playing children, teenagers. The Eldritch New England Holiday Collection, not into the Mythos, but about the Mythos. Six Seasons in Sartar is an initiation into both the core cults of Glorantha and Glorantha as a setting—both in as characters and as players. Miskatonic Shoreside Conservatory is also about initiation and the Mythos, but both into and about the Mythos, but unlike the other two where the players and characters accept their situation and their heritage, Miskatonic Shoreside Conservatory is whether not they accept their initiation and heritage. All of which plays out on an island retreat which is one part music school, one part The Village from The Prisoner, as if viewed through the fisheye lens of the Mythos.

Scenarios for Lovecraftian investigative horror which call for the players to take the roles of cultists are far and few between. This is primarily because such roleplaying games are about investigating and stopping the consequences of the cultists’ actions, preventing the end of the world, and saving humanity. They are about humanity, not inhumanity. This is not to say that such scenarios are not interesting to roleplay, and where they do occur, it is always as fully fledged cultists, having committed to the cause. Not so, here. Miskatonic Shoreside Conservatory offers something genuinely unique in offering the player the opportunity to become a cultist and everything their Investigator wants, but never once lets up on the horror and weirdness of that choice and so commit to becoming beyond human, whilst ultimately making the moral option the most painful one. Miskatonic Shoreside Conservatory is an unnervingly, relentlessly horrifying scenario which deserves to reach a wider audience and be the single answer to the question, “Are there any scenarios in which you play cultists?”

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?
The Corporation 2nd Edition: Quick Start is the quick-start for Corporation 2nd Edition, the Science Fiction, Cyberpunk roleplaying game first published in 2008 by Brutal Games, but now published by Nightfall Games.

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, ‘Riot in Commissary B’, and four ready-to-play, Player Characters, or Agents.

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

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

It requires an edit in places.

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

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

What else do you need to play?
The Corporation 2nd Edition: Quick Start requires six ten-sided dice per player. One of these dice should be a different colour to the rest.

Who do you play?
The four Player Characters are all licensed Agents who have been biomechanically enhanced and employed by one of the setting’s five Corporations. they include a Tactical Ops specialist, a Telepath, an Infiltration Tech, and a Facilitator.

How is a Player Character defined?
An Agent has six stats—Strength, Dexterity, Knowledge, Charisma, Concentration, and Cool. Stats are rated between zero and six, whilst the skills are rated between one and four. He also has a seventh stat, PSI, which represents an Agent’s instincts or intuition. It is a pool of points who use is twofold. First, points can be temporarily expended to reroll dice in a Skill Test or add a bonus to a Dice Roll. Second, it can power a Telepath’s psionic abilities. An Agent also has Traits such as Cybernetic HUD & comms, Datanetica Neural Jack, Internal Computer, Pain mitigation, and Process socket.

How do the mechanics work?
Mechanically, the Corporation 2nd Edition: Quick Start uses the ‘S5S’ System previously seen in SLA Industries, 2nd Edition and The Terminator RPG. 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 rank of the skill being used. 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. The aim is to roll equal to or higher than a Target Number, ranging from eight and Challenging to sixteen and Insane, on each of the dice. The Skill Rank of the skill being used lowers the Target Number. Preparation and advanced technology, including toolkits can modify the Skill Rank for the Skill Test. If the result on the Success Die is equal to or greater than the Target Number, then the Agent 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.

Each Agent has a point of Conviction. Conviction can be spent to perform cinematic feats such as ‘Come and Get It!’, ‘Done!’, ‘Proper Planning and Preparation...’, and ‘It’s Only a Flesh Wound!’.

How does combat work?
Combat in Corporation 2nd Edition, as with other ‘S5S’ System roleplaying games 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. The mechanics take into account various weapon types, including beam weapons, incendiary weapons, laser weapons, plasma weapons, and more.

How do PSI Powers work?
One of the pre-generated Agents is a Telepath. Common Psi Powers in Corporation 2nd Edition include Biokinesis and Telekinesis, whilst true Telepathy and Empathy are rare. Use of a Psi Power requires a Manifestation Test, a Skill Test where Successes can recover the points of PSI expended on the Manifestation Test or increase the duration of the manifestation beyond a single round. The

What do you play?
The setting for Corporation 2nd Edition is the year 2500. The United International Government has ensured two centuries peace, hand-in-hand with the Big 5 corporations. The fortunate reside in the soaring spires where they live in monitored, crime-free comfort. The unfortunate live in the Underswells, where there is warmth and comfort, but the gangs rule. The worse off reside in the old crumbling cities of the twentieth century—and earlier—and take their chances with the best policing they can get in the face of widespread banditry.

The Corporation 2nd Edition: Quick Start includes the adventure, ‘Riot in Commissary B’. Initially, this is a highly tactical affair as the Agents deal with several Wretches from the Underswell who have broken into the commissary and potentially, the rest of the Spire, instigating a riot. After stopping the riot, the Agents are tasked with investigating how the break in occurred since the only point of access is kept locked and requires a high Ranked individual to open it. The resulting investigation is not easy—probably slightly too difficult to run as a convention scenario—and quickly leads to powerful corporate interests who would prefer the Agents not to be investigating despite them being under orders to do so. The scenario has a bureaucratic feel to it as well as a sense of irony.

Is there anything missing?
The Corporation 2nd Edition: Quick Start is complete. Portraits for the pre-generated Agents would have been useful, as well as for the NPCs. The pre-generated Agents do not have any backgrounds, but these are available online.

Is it easy to prepare?
The core rules presented in the Corporation 2nd Edition: Quick Start are relatively easy to prepare. The Game Master will need to pay closer attention to how both combat and PSI Powers work in the roleplaying game, as both figure, and combat is designed to be highly tactical in play. The scenario, ‘Riot in Commissary B’, is also fairly complex, and will require a high degree of preparation.
Is it worth it?
Yes. The Corporation 2nd Edition: Quick Start introduces a Cyberpunk setting where the Player Characters are agents of the authority and have the licence to act on their employer’s behalf, but balanced against that is the bureaucracy and power of the corporation they work for. Essentially, their agency grant by their employer against the agency above them.
Where can you get it?
The Corporation 2nd Edition: Quick Start is available to download here.

As the title suggests, Bumbling – a solo RPG is about bees. Or rather about being a bee, a worker bee, to be precise. Published by Button Kin Games, also responsible for the fun Caltrop Kaiju: A Monstrously fun and fast-paced TTRPG, and part of the team responsible for the superlative Odd Jobs: RPG Micro Settings Vol. I, , this is a solo roleplaying game in which you control the fate of a worker bee as it goes about its bee business—learning dances, dancing, leaving the hive and questing, and so forth. On the quest, the worker bee will encounter other creatures, some friendly, some not, who perhaps will point the bee in the direction of flowers, discover landmarks, and when flowers have been found, complete the quest by returning with pollen to fill the hive. The further away from the hive the flowers are, the fewer fellow bees will have visited them, and so they will contain more pollen. Once the worker bee returns, it can not only learn more dances and go out questing again, but it can also dance too, and so teach other worker bees about the flower locations it found on its quest.

Bumbling – a solo RPG is played out on—what else?—a hex map. At the centre is the hive and surrounding will be a patchwork of landmarks, including buildings, natural features, and so on, as well as the much-desired flower beds. Initially, just three, but as the worker bee travels further and explores new hexes, it will discover new landmarks, encounter new friends and enemies, and hopefully escape the creatures that want to eat it, and return with ever increasing amounts of honey. To play, the player will need a six-sided die, a sheet of hex paper, a journal to keep notes in and record his worker bee’s quests. Dance moves are optional for the player, if not the worker bee.

Bumbling – a solo RPG is about exploration, learning, and making friends. The play is derived from randomly generated elements—the dances that the worker bee knows, the dances associated with particular hexes on the maps, the landmarks and flowers on each map, and the creatures and their reactions. What is not random is how the worker bee reacts to these core elements and thus what the player records in his journal. In play, the limitations upon the worker bee’s travel are twofold. First, on the dances that it knows and the dances associated with particular landmarks. Second, on the creatures it knows and interacts with. Both will serve as navigation points. So, the worker bee will initially fly in the direction of hex with a dance it already knows. If this leads to flowers, fine. It can return with the much-needed pollen. If not, the worker can begin to explore, building a map of new locations and landmarks and creatures and hopefully, flowers full of pollen. These become way points that the worker bee can return to again and again as maps dances and locations. In returning to the hive, the worker bee can do three things after depositing the pollen. Learn a new dance, tell the other worker bees about the flowers it has found, and best of all, develop new dance moves and teach these.

Play ends with the worker bee having filled up all one-hundred-and-eighty cells of the pollen score sheet. It might also end early if a creature attempts to eat the worker bee, but the game does suggest the worker bee is nimble enough to get out of the way. At which point, the player has a map to consider and a story to read.

Bumbling – a solo RPG is slightly underwritten in terms of explaining the initial exploration and tying a dance to a hex. Perhaps an example of that would have helped. Otherwise, physically, Bumbling – a solo RPG is bright and pink and simple and quick and easy to pick up and begin play. It even comes with blank hex maps and scoring sheets for the player to copy.

Bumbling – a solo RPG is exceptionally light as a solo, journalling game. In comparison to Caltrop Kaiju, it is contemplative in nature, without the sense of peril. That lack of peril means that its sense of achievement comes from the exploration and the interaction with friendly creatures, and telling the story of this rather than defeating or overcoming an obstacle. However, without that, it does mean that there is not the inherent need to return to Bumbling – a solo RPG to play again and to see how well you did. Nevertheless, Bumbling – a solo RPG is a bee-calming little game, providing the means to explore and learn about world from a worker bee’s eyes point of view and tell its story.

Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #2: The Fence’s Fortuitous Folly is a scenario for Goodman Games’ Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game and the first scenario for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set. Scenarios for Dungeon Crawl Classics tend be darker, gimmer, and even pulpier than traditional Dungeons & Dragons scenarios, even veering close to the Swords & Sorcery subgenre. Scenarios for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set are set in and around the City of the Black Toga, Lankhmar, the home to the adventures of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, the creation of author Fritz Leiber. The city is described as an urban jungle, rife with cutpurses and corruption, guilds and graft, temples and trouble, whores and wonders, and more. Under the cover the frequent fogs and smogs, the streets of the city are home to thieves, pickpockets, burglars, cutpurses, muggers, and anyone else who would skulk in the night! Which includes the Player Characters. And it is these roles which the Player Characters get to be in Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #2: The Fence’s Fortuitous Folly, in which they see a strange pair of silver-plated skeletal hands escape the the shop of their local fence and after a chase through the streets and alleys of the city, find themselves at the entrance to vaults under the city. The fence claimed that the legend says that the silver-plated skeletal hands know the location of a great treasure. So anyone in possession of the hands might get a pointer. Of course, that might only be a legend and legends are not always true...
Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #2: The Fence’s Fortuitous Folly is designed for Second Level Player Characters and it is as different from other Dungeon Crawl Classics as could be—although not as different as the first scenario for the setting, Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #1: Gang Lords of Lankhmar. It is also much shorter, more straightforward, and does involve a dungeon of sorts. Designed for two to three Player Characters, it opens with them at a local pawnshop run run by Rooga the Fence, who specialises in the odd and the unusual and the occasional bit of objets d’art. Having offloaded most of the goods from their most recent larcenous endeavours, both they, Rooga, and Rooga’s bodyguards are surprised when the silver-plated skeletal hands suddenly animate and make a successful scuttle for freedom, climbing out of a window and racing off down the street. Which means that the race is on!
Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #2: The Fence’s Fortuitous Folly is divided into three acts. The first takes place in the pawnshop, but the second out on the fog bound streets of the city as the Player Characters race after the rapidly disappearing pair of silver-plated skeletal hands. This is handled as a chance as the Player Characters attempt to remain in sight of both their quarry—and as they fall behind—and each other. Along the way, there are encounters, mostly random, one or two not, which the Player Characters can plough into or through, perhaps avoid, but all will delay their progress in the chase. There are some inventive scenes mini-encounters here, made all the fun because they are run into and at pace. There is a reward to be gained in keeping with the fleeing silver-plated skeletal hands, though that may come at a loss to those who cannot keep up and get lost in the fog.

In the third act, the Player Characters will find themselves at the entrance to vaults under the ruins of a burned out building. Gaining access is easy and as they search for the missing hands, the Player Character discover a long abandoned wizard’s laboratory, oddly linked to the worship of the martyred god, Crooked Issek, and showing signs that dreadful experiments took place here. In the last act, the owner of the vaults—and what remains of the house above, appears in a nasty showdown which could lead to loss of a Player Character or at the very least, the loss of their body! The latter possibility can lead to some interesting adventures which are hinted at here, but the Judge will need to develop them herself. There is also the possibility of a rich reward if the Player Characters can keep hold of it and out of possible litigation.

Physically, Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #2: The Fence’s Fortuitous Folly is as decently presented as you would expect from Goodman Games. The scenario’s chase is clearly explained and comes with examples, as well as a tracker. If there is a downside to the scenario, it is that its map is not that interesting. It could have done with some detail and flavour.

The only issue with Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #2: The Fence’s Fortuitous Folly is its Player Character numbers. Two to three is low for a typical playing group, but there are notes throughout the scenario for upping the ante and adjusting to running it with four to six Player Characters.

Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #2: The Fence’s Fortuitous Folly is not as good or as interesting a scenario as Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #1: Gang Lords of Lankhmar. However, that does not mean that it is not worth either the Judge’s time or adding to her Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar campaign. Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #2: The Fence’s Fortuitous Folly is fast-paced, easy to add to a campaign, and offers an entertaining single-session adventure.
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Goodman Games will be at UK Games Expofrom Friday 2nd to Sunday 4th, 2023.

The pamphlet scenario or supplement packs as much information as can be got onto an A4 sheet of paper down in a trifold format and aims to make it playable. First seen as a support for roleplaying games such as MOTHERSHIP Sci-Fi Horror Roleplaying Game and Mörk Borg, the format enables publishers to present smaller content in distinct—and succinct—packages of their own that are quick and easy to prepare and run at the table. In many cases these pamphlet scenarios are available in collected bundles as well as singly, enabling the Game Master to pick and choose which one she wants and which ones she wants to run. The format, of course, has its limitations, primarily those of limited space and arrangement of information in that space. This can often lead to poor explanations of the context for their content, or worse, inadequate or missing explanations. In the case of the latter, the Game Master will have to supply that after reading through the rest of the content, whilst for the former, she will simply need to read through the pamphlet for it to make sense.

Loot the Room has published several of these pamphlets. Two are compatible with Mörk Borg, the Swedish pre-apocalypse Old School Renaissance retroclone designed by Ockult Örtmästare Games and Stockholm Kartell and published by Free League Publishing. One is a generic fantasy adventure. All three fall into the ‘GrimDark’ fantasy—or fantasy horror—genre and like the majority of content for the Old School Renaissance, are easily adaptable to the Dungeons & Dragons rules variant of the Gamer Master’s choice.

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The God of Many Faces is not only compatible with Mörk Borg, but also set in the city at the heart of Mörk Borg—Galgenbeck, and it shares the Artpunk sensibilities of Mörk Borg in of neon yellow as its choice of colour. It begins on the steps of the Cathedral of the Two-Headed Basilisks. Rumours ripple out and back again that a prophet has appeared proclaiming Verhu to be a fraud, the Calendar of Nechrubel is sham, and the Miseries are the work of the Basilisks themselves. The Basilisks must and in their stead a new god will arise—the God of Many Faces, The Eternally Open Eye. As the rabble before the steps beats drums and cries for donations to their new god, the Player Characters must decide upon their course of action and examine their motivation. Perhaps they have to gather information upon The Many-Faced God upon pain of death, simply want to witness them first hand, seek salvation and a new life from them for a sick family member, or as an agent of Two-Headed Basilisks, just stop them by any means.

The God of Many Faces is a hex-crawl across the city of Galgenbeck. Just limited to ten hexes, the Player Characters will travel back and forth across the city in search of The Many-Faced God, constantly finding signs of their passing, including warriors with their eyes sewn closed; a rampaging Many-Faced Mace, sacred to The Many-Faced God, so killing it will be an act of blasphemy; and apostates ready to convert the will even as they castigate and execute the unwilling. There are a couple of encounters which the Player Characters must have in order to trigger the final encounter, so the Game Master will need to improvise what happens if the Player Characters need to return to previously visited locations. Other than a quartet of new Sacred Scrolls, The God of Many Faces is a short, direct affair, which can played through in a single session. It does suffer from not being quite clear as to what is going on, at least initially, as the explanation is on the inside back page of the trifold, with the full locations, stats, and map placed across the centre spread. However, read through that and the Game Master has in hands a riotously raucous adventure set across a city in uproar and religious fever that is easy to read through, and prepare in minutes.

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SNÜNGEON is a molluscular dungeon that is easy to drop into location. The husks of dead titan snails litter the landscape, slimy, grimy, and simply odd. Others come to the field of husks to find refuge, the secret treasures left behind by the giant molluscs, or for darker ends. For the Player Characters, might need to find the dead flesh of a titan snail to clear his debts, another to hunt down rivals who have hidden amongst the husks, or simply because wants a snail nail helm because they are cool! SNÜNGEON is linear, its innards spiralling deeper, odd and alien… This snail-themed dungeon might not contain all that the Player Characters are looking for, but what they will find is a secret cult of snail-worshippers, working towards their own molluscular transformation, and snail assassins which creep along the ceiling…

SNÜNGEON has an oozy atmosphere and a mature tone that echoes that of the Xenomorphs of Alien. It is a straightforward dungeon in a different type of enviroment, which runs to just seven, decently detailed locations. Again, easy to prepare and run, it is actually presented in a more accessible manner so that it is easer to prepare than The God of Many Faces.

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The Grasping Tunnels is not for, or compatible with, Mörk Borg, but it could be. It does take longer to prepare because it is systems agnostic and thus needs stats to be created by the Game Master. Once done, it is easy to drop into almost any location. It opens with the collapse of a patch of earth in a fallow field, followed by the expulsion of a blast of foetid air. What is in the tunnel? Where the air come from? Does it represent a danger to the children who used to play in the field? Some have already ventured below, only to return, wounded of body and mind, dragging their dead companions with them, and whispering of the grasping claws and teeth to be found below.

The Grasping Tunnels has Lovecraftian undertones in that its tunnels are home to strange beast with long arms which can snake the length of many corridors in the net, grasping for food to drag back to its babbling, tongue-filled maws. There is a strong sense of claustrophobia too, as the Player Characters face these flailing, grasping limbs in a series of lightless rooms and tunnels of crumbling earth. This is made all the worse by every hand being different—and odd, there being a table provided for the Game Master to roll randomly each time one is encountered. There are no suggestions as what kind of power or ability to pitch the adventure at, though the Player Characters do need access to decent magic, silver weapons, or magical weapons to effectively defeat the creature. The Grasping Tunnels is also clearly laid out and thus easy to use, and overall, provides a horrifying descent into the earth for the Player Characters.
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All three pamphlet scenarios are easy to use, in general, well presented, and above all, incredibly quick and easy to prepare. In the cases of The God of Many Faces and SNÜNGEON, very easy to prepare, taking only a few minutes. Overall, adventures like The God of Many Faces and SNÜNGEON, as well as The Grasping Hands, are decent mini-encounters, but worth holding in reserve when the Game Master needs something quick to run. Of the three The God of Many Faces stands out for capturing the rapture of a religious riot and making the Player Characters work their way through it.

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

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

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Name: The Terror in the TapestryPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Ryan Sheehan

Setting: Dark Ages EnglandProduct: Scenario
What You Get: Thirty-two page, 22.80 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: What would drive someone to commit tapestry theft?Plot Hook: Part of a holy tapestry has been stolen. Can the thief be found?
Plot Support: Four pre-generated Investigators, two handouts, eight NPCs, one map, one Mythos spell, one Mythos tome, one Mythos artefact, and two Mythos monsters.Production Values: Serviceable.
Pros# Scenario for Cthulhu Dark Ages# Can be run using Cthulhu Through the Ages. Better with Cthulhu Dark Ages.# Set near Totburh, setting for Cthulhu Dark Ages.# Nicely detailed ritual# Good mix of action and investigation# Ophidiophobia# Homichlophobia# Textophobia# Pentiliarphobia
Cons# Needs a slight edit.# Plain map.# Some terminology could be called ‘problematic’# Odd means given of obtaining the ritual
Conclusion# Solid scenario for Cthulhu Dark Ages themed around an interesting artefact# Suitable addition to a campaign set in and around Totburh

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

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

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Name: The Cult of Gl’thol’ticPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Jess Charle

Setting: Jazz Age Massachusetts
Product: ScenarioWhat You Get: Thirteen-page, 39.00 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Small town murder mystery, plus the MythosPlot Hook: Can your god be summoned before they come for you?Plot Support: Two handouts, five NPCs, and one map.Production Values: Plain.
Pros# The very definition of a ‘fixer-upper’ scenario# One-shot with the players as cultists# Call of Cthulhu Investigators as the enemy# Small town mini-murder mystery# Pretty map# Paranoia# Capiophobia
Cons# Needs an edit# Player Characters are not supposed to know they are cultists# Murder mystery mostly incidental# No staging advice# No sense of the Player Characters being investigated# No option for the Player Characters to act against the Investigators# No pre-generated Player Cultists# Bryce Wane. Millionaire Vigilante. Industrialist. Notorious playboy. Fights crime as ‘Rat Man’.# Yes. You read that correctly.# Bryce Wane. Millionaire Vigilante. Industrialist. Notorious playboy. Fights crime as ‘Rat Man’.# No. Not kidding. Really is an NPC in the scenario.
Conclusion# Potentially interesting scenario with Player Characters as cultists undone by severe lack of development# Lack of pre-generated Player Cultists significant omission # Bryce Wane. Millionaire Vigilante. Industrialist. Notorious playboy. Fights crime as ‘Rat Man’.