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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—oOo—

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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What is it?Aegean Quick Start Rules is the quick-start for Aegean, a roleplaying game about a group of mythic heroes building a new, free city on the shores of the Aegean Sea..

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

It is a one-hundred-and-one-page, black and white digest-sized book.

The quick-start is lightly illustrated, but tidily laid out. There are a lot of examples of the rules which speed the learning of the game.

How long will it take to play?
Aegean Quick Start Rules and its adventure, ‘The Nesaean Boar’, is designed to be played through in three to five sessions. Notes are included for the Game Master who wants to run it in a single session.

Who do you play?
The five Player Characters are all would be mythic heroes. They consist of a ranger and hunter, a famous athlete, a healer, an oracle, a merchant, and a wealthy soldier. All are available to download from the publisher’s website.

How is a Player Character defined?
A Player Character in Aegean has five characteristics—Might, Reflexes, Cool, Insight, and Cunning—and several broad skills, such as Lore, Melee, and Perform. All are rated between one and five, although specialisations increase the rating of skills by one. He also has the attributes Resolve, Risk, Endurance, Standing, Wounds, Hubris, Glory, and Fate. He can also Gifts and Talents, the first bestowed by the gods upon heroes of divine parentage, the second representing his greater expertise.

Resolve represents the gods’ favour and is spent to add to a story detail, gain a single success, or activate an item property. A Player Character does not begin play with Resolve, but can earn it when tens are rolled on the dice. It has to be used by the end of a session or the Player Character gains the disfavour of the gods and earns Hubris. Risk represents the danger he is in and can be gained through play involuntarily or voluntarily, the latter to add successes to a roll or to activate an item property. When Risk exceeds a Player Character’s Endurance, he gains a Wound. Gain enough Wounds and they can be spent as Scars in a fashion similar to Experience Points. Hubris is a Player Character’s Pride and if it exceeds his Glory, the gods’ disfavour is gained and he is Cursed. Fate can be a Player Character’s Goal, Belief, or Passion.

How do the mechanics work?
To have his player undertake an action, a player rolls a pool of ten-sided dice. This is equal to the value of the characteristic and the skill being used, plus any appropriate specialisation. Rolls of eight or more are counted as a Success. A Standard Difficulty does not require extra Successes for a Player Character to succeed, but harder tasks do, all the way up to a Difficulty Factor of five or Divine. Risk and Resolve can be spent to gain extra Successes. Rolls of ten can be used to gain an extra Success, a point of Resolve, remove a point of Risk, activate an item property, or give another Player Character a Success.

How does combat work?
Combat in Aegean is quite tactical taking into account terrain, range, and a variety of manoeuvres and actions. Actions include Defend, Disarm, Harm, and Taunt, whilst manoeuvres include Aim, Prepare, and Sacrifice Item. Initiative is interesting in that it can flow back and forth between the Player Characters and the NPCs. When the Player Characters have the initiative and continue to succeed in their combat rolls, the players can decide who acts next. If a roll is failed, the initiative passes to the Game Master and NPCs and if the Game Master fails a roll, it passes back to the players to decide who acts next. This continues until both Player Characters and NPCs have acted, but it can flow into the next round because whomever acts last in the round and succeeds gets to decide who acts first in the next.

How does magic work?
One of the pre-generated Player Characters does have the gift of Oracle, which grants him the ability to predict the future once per session. This is represented by an Insight (Lore) roll and this can be used to replace the results of a roll by another Player Character or NPC. If good roll, it can benefit the Player Character, if a bad, it can penalise an NPC.

What do you play?
Aegean is set in a mythic age which combines the periods of before the fall of Troy and the Greek dark age and Classical Greece when Sparta is at her military might and Athens a beacon of democracy. The given adventure, ‘The Nesaean Boar’, begins in Vlokis, a coastal colony recently founded by Athens where the Player Characters live. They are asked to investigate an attack upon a farm belonging to Nesaea by a boar in which her family died. The adventure will take the Player Characters from Vlokis to Delphi to consult the oracle and discover a means of dealing with the creature, before locating said means and returning to confront the beast in its lair.

Is there anything missing?
Surprisingly not. Aegean Quick Start Rules also includes rules for item properties, downtime activities, and dealing with the gods, as well as advice for the Game Master in running the adventure. Further, there is scope for the Player Characters to gain Experience Points and their players to spend them to improve skills and purchase Talents. This enables a group to play further adventures, such as those in the Aegean Adventure anthology.

Is it easy to prepare?
The core rules presented in the Aegean Quick Start Rules are easy to prepare. The Game Master will need to pay closer attention to how the Resolve, Risk, and Hubris rules work as well as how to to handle interaction with, and portrayal of, the gods.
Is it worth it?
Yes. The Aegean Quick Start Rules present a concise, but detailed version of the rules that are tactical and engaging and encourage the players to roleplay through the need to balance their characters’ Risk, Resolve, and Hubris on the path to their characters becoming heroes. Although the Aegean Quick Start Rules are not free to download, they do offer scope for long term play, something that most other quick-starts do not. Whether or not a group decides to play beyond the given adventure, the Aegean Quick Start Rules are still a solid introduction to the rules and roleplaying in Mythic Greece.
Where can you get it?
The Aegean Quick Start Rules are available to download here. 

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?The Children of Hykim: The Totem Animal Peoples of Glorantha is a sourcebook for use with RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha.

It is a one-hundred-and-seventy page, full colour, 28.23 MB PDF.

It is a one-hundred-and-seventy page, full colour book.

The layout is clean and tidy and the artwork is decent, the illustrations of the totem masks being very nicely done.

It needs an edit in places.

There is a terrible, unforgivable pun.

Where is it set?
The Children of Hykim is set beyond the boundraries of civilisation across Genertela, in particular of Fronela, Ralios, and Maniria.

Who do you play?In The Children of Hykim, the Player Characters and NPCs are members of the Hsunchen, the shape-changing totem animal tribes who live at the fringes of more advanced societies. They are hunters, fishers, and assistant shaman who are, live amongst, and venerate their totem animals.
What do you need?
The Children of Hykim requires RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, the Glorantha Bestiary, and The Red Book of Magic. In addition, access to the Guide to Glorantha, Bearwalkers, Hsunchen of the East, and Armies and Enemies of Dragon Pass may provide extra background, but are not required to use the material in The Children of Hykim.
What do you get?With the emphasis upon the more civilised peoples of Dragon Pass and its environs, the Stone Age peoples of Glorantha and thus RuneQuest, especially those who both live alongside their totem animals and are able to transform into them and back again, known as the Hsunchen, are oft overlooked and forgotten. Which is how they like it. Found across much of the continent of Genertela, they keep themselves to themselves, interacting with fellow tribes when they must more than the so-called civilised people whom they regard as having been trapped by the need to grow crops and the desire to write everything down. The Children of Hykim is an exploration of their culture, mythology, technology, religious practices, relationships between tribes, and above all the way in which they embody, live with, and become their totem animals. In doing so, the author draws upon sources that date back to RuneQuest II to create a detailed and different outlook from which to view the world of Glorantha and potentially alongside the Glorantha we know and here are almost hidden from.

The Children of the Hykim begins with an explanation and overview of who they are. At the core of this is their relationship with their totem animals, so it details the nature of their transformation into animals and back again which begins when they become adults, although a rare few can do it from birth, and in the case of ‘Uncolings’, the reindeer tribe, their children are born born as reindeer. Birthed by the two dragons Mikyh and Hykim—hence the dual wording on the spine—the tribes share a similar mythology, primarily differing in the role that animal played in it and how their fall from paradise would lead to the separation of man and beast and the introduction of Death into the world. This is either at the hands of the Trickster or Telmor, the great wolf from which the Telmori—the only Hsunchen to be found in Dragon Pass—are descended. Parallel to this fall are the collapse of several Hsunchen empires and the extinction of several tribes, all of which would drive the surviving tribes to the margains. In modern times, the best known Hsunchen is Harrek the Berserk, a Rathori or bear tribesman who slew the White Bear and was cast out of his tribe, murdered the Red Emperor, and became the King of the Wolf Pirates.
The Children of the Hykim highlights the Hsunchen’s closeness with the spirit world and their tribal shaman and suggests this connection as a means to learn Rune magic rather than through the tribal cult. This is perhaps where the supplement differs the most, at least mechanically, from RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, as means that Hsunchen need to access the spirit world more readily than non-Hsunchen and non-shaman do. It also highlights the importance of the shaman in a tribe. Backed up by flavour text written in the HeroQuest Voices or ‘What My Uncle Told Me’ format for the Oppussum tribe which really helps capture the outlook of one tribe of the Hsunchen, the bulk of The Children of Hykim is dedicated to describing over twenty different tribes. These include the badger, bear, black owl, mammoth, raccoon, reindeer, skunk, yellow quill porcupine, and more. Of course, the wolf tribe is there too for the Telmori, and the Puma, who are not considered to be Hsunchen. Each is accorded several pages which covers their mythology, history, appearance—Hsunchen often possessing features of their totem animals, society, religion, and magic, including their associated Rune magic. There are some fantastic spell creations here, for example, Musk Spray of the skunk or Akkari tribe, Coat of Quills for the Yellow Quill Porcupine or Zonati tribe, and Play Dead for the Opposum or Didelfi tribe. A full list of the Hsunchen and their spells is given in the supplement’s appendix.
Given the relative simplicity of the Hsunchen lifestyle, it is no surprise that character creation reflects this. Several options are discussed for playing and running a Hsunchen-based games, covering the themes, advantages, and disadvantages of an all-Hsunchen group—from one tribe or several, including the Telmori, Hsunchen mercenaries, and suggesting possible Hsunchen-themed campaigns, like reviving the White Bear in Fronela after the traitor Harrek slew him. All of these would require a great deal of development upon the part of the Game Master, but would make excellent use of the material presented in the supplement. Also discussed is the nature of Hsunchen heroquests and how they differ from those undertaken by other peoples. Rounding the supplement is a set of nine appendices. Their inclusion is an indication perhaps that The Children of Hykim is not a professionally published book given that they take up a fifth of its total pages and a professionally published book might not have included them. They cover the origins of the Hsunchen in both print and Glorantha, a Questions & Answers section, and the author’s notes, and more. 
Is it worth your time?Yes—The Children of Hykim is superbly researched and richly detailed examination of the Hsunchen and their world and world view, which although very much falling under the category of ‘Your Glorantha Will Vary’, really feels as that should not be case, that it should be an official release. It may not be the official guide to the Hsunchen, but The Children of Hykim feels like the definitive guide until there is one. No—The Children of Hykim is too a broad subject matter to readily incorporate into a campaign and set too far from civilisation for some Game Masters. Plus there is the matter of that pun. Unforgivable.Maybe—The Children of Hykim is an excellent sourcebook on the Hsunchen and their world which could be worth exploring or using to include a character from an entirely different culture for the player who wants a challenge. At the very least, it is an engaging read to learn about a marginalised and almost forgotten people in Glorantha.

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

—oOo—

Senet—named for the Ancient Egyptian board game, Senet—is a print magazine about the craft, creativity, and community of board gaming. Bearing the tagline of “Board games are beautiful”, it is about the play and the experience of board games, it is about the creative thoughts and processes which go into each and every board game, and it is about board games as both artistry and art form. Published by Senet Magazine Limited, each issue promises previews of forthcoming, interesting titles, features which explore how and why we play, interviews with those involved in the process of creating a game, and reviews of the latest and most interesting releases.

Senet Issue 3 was published in the Winter of 2020 and opens with ‘Behold’, a preview of some of the then-forthcoming board game titles, such as Moonshine Empire, a game about moving bootleg alcohol around; Lawyer Up, a card game about courtroom drama; Gladius, a card game about spectators betting on gladiators in Ancient Rome; the Cyberpunk espionage board game, Into Too Deep; and quite a few more. Given as much prominence as a full review, what is interesting about these is previews is that each give ‘What they might be’, so Lawyer Up could be the next Watergate and Frostpunk: The Board Game could be the next This War of Mine. Many, if not all, of these titles have since been released and been subject to their own reviews and analysis, so these previews can be read with the benefit of hindsight to see whether their predictions were right. However, they are pleasingly detailed and enjoyable some two years on.

‘Points’ provides a selection of readers’ letters, including a poem dedicated to the city of Caracassonne in south-west France and the board game based on it. whilst in ‘For Love of the Game’, Tristian Hall continues his designer’s journey towards Gloom of Kilforth. Here he examines how the game has become a vehicle for roleplaying and storytelling and how this enhances the play experience of some players. This is not often highlighted in board game design bar the obvious titles with clear roleplaying origins or influences, such as the critical juggernaut, Gloomhaven. This series continues to be a fascinating path and it will be interesting to follow in in future columns.

As with previous issues of Senet, the third issue of the magazine dedicates its centre section to a quartet of lengthy articles. In Senet Issue Two, the article ‘Decks in Effect’ examined the very short history of the deckbuilding mechanic, but the mechanic examined by Alexandra Sonechkina in Senet Issue 3 has a much longer history. The eponymous ‘Roll-and-Write’ article explores the history and development of the roll-and-write mechanic from Yahtzee in the 1950s to Rome & Roll in 2020, in particular at the seeming proliferation of titles since the nomination of Qwixx for the Spiel des Jahres in 2013. The article also tracks the history of the mechanic as implemented in various games via a timeline, but the article never comes to a particular conclusion beyond that the mechanic is yet to mature and very much remains under development. Thus this is more of an introduction to the mechanic waiting to see where it might go.

Owen Duffy’s ‘Game of Life’ has a more serious tone and subject matter. Prompted by the playthrough of Holding On: The Troubled Life of Billy Kerr that drove his wife to tears—though in a good way rather than a bad way—Duffy’s article looks at games inspired by real life rather than fantasy of Science Fiction or trading of goods in the past, and games that are about more than just winning or losing. In part, this does go back to the earlier ‘For Love of the Game’, since in games such as Holding On: The Troubled Life of Billy Kerr and Fog of Love where stories are told and lives roleplayed, but it also examines older games which were designed to teach morality or explore aspects of society. Thus, The Noble Game of the Swan, The Chequered Game of Life, and the more recent Tokaido are examples of the former, and Suffragetto, about raising awareness of votes for women, an example of the latter. Of these, The Chequered Game of Life is interesting in that its modern incarnation is Game of Life, a game now about getting on in capitalist, consumerist USA, more about making a good life than living a good life. (Game of Life is also one of the games I loved as a twelve-year-old would be games player.) This is a fascinating introduction to a different type of board game and showcases what the form can do to emotions and how they can make you feel.

The artist and designer interviewed in Senet issue 3 are Kyle Ferrin and Eric M. Lang respectively. Kyle Ferrin’s anthropomorphic, bold cartoon style best known from Root: A Game of Woodland Might And Right—and consequently, the roleplaying game from Magpie Games, Root: The Roleplaying Game—is given an excellent showcase here in ‘Animal Magic’, including a full centre spread. Attention is also paid to his work on Vast: The Mysterious Tower and its family of skeletal warriors and interesting hero. His artwork is delightfully cute and this is an enjoyable interview by editor Dan Jolin. He also interviews Eric M. Lang, the designer of Cthulhu: Death May Die, Blood Rage, and Rising Sun, in ‘Myth Maker’. The interview begins by describing him as a ‘rock star’ designer due to the impact of his games and their use of big, heavy metal themes, many of them being adaptations. Accompanied by some fantastic artwork from Lang’s than forthcoming Ankh, the interview explores his origins as a games player and then designer, how he compares collaborating with other designers to working with fellow musicians, before coming up-to-date with his approach to designing a game based on the works of an author as difficult as Lovecraft and how the Black Lives Matter movement affects the board game industry. This is a solid piece, continuing the strand of good interviews in the magazine.

The ‘Unboxing’ section of Senet Issue 3 includes solid reviews of titles such as Santa Monica, High Rise, Abandon All Artichokes, Herd Mentality, Isle of Cats, and more. It is invariably difficult to really keep up with the constant of board games being released, and of course, Senet Issue 3 does not even attempt to do so, instead reviewing a wide range of titles and types of board game. For example, Herd Mentality is a party game, whereas Undaunted: North Africa is a card driven war game and Oceans a rich Eurogame. In each case, the reviews are not too long, but they give just about the right amount of space for each title. Elsewhere, Matt Thrower, author of the Haynes Tabletop Gaming Manual, explores his love of playing games solo—even games not designed to do so, such as Pandemic and Target Arnhem—in ‘How I learned to stop worrying and love playing solo’. There are some titles mentioned here whose appeal reaches out into the wider gaming hobby, including Space Hulk and Wrath of Ashardalon, highlighting the crossover potential. Coming up to date, the author notes that there are more and more board games which include options for solo play, so there are pointers here for the board game player and roleplayer both to explore solo play through such titles. Lastly, Fiona and Amy Dickinson of The Game Shelf reveal just one of the games on their ‘Shelf of Shame’.

Physically, Senet Issue 3 is very nicely presented, all pristine and beautifully laid out. Whether drawing on board game graphics and images, or the magazine’s own illustrations, the issue’s graphics are very sharply handled, living up to the issue’s motto of  “Board games are beautiful” as much as its subject matter does. 

Senet Issue 3 maintains the high standards set by the previous issues, another fine looking magazine with a good mix of reviews, interviews, and articles. However, its articles are not all  quite as interesting as in previous issues, with ‘Roll-and-Write’ feeling shorter, if less conclusive. This does not stop the issue from being engaging and informative and still treating board games as a form that can engage and have something to say.

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

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

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

Arguably, Original Adventures Reincarnated #1: Into the Borderlands would prove to be the ultimate version of the classic module, but authors have continued to revisit the original even since such as with the fanzine version from Swordfish Islands LLC, which so far consists of Beyond the Borderlands Issue #1 and Beyond the Borderlands Issue #2. Yet there remain oft forgotten visits to the famous ‘Keep on the Borderlands’ and the equally infamous, ‘Caves of Chaos’, which are worth examining and shining light upon. For example, ‘Warriors of the Gray Lady’ is a prequel to Return to the Keep of the Borderlands by Jeff Grub, but there have also been expansions to B2 Keep on the Borderlands. It is often forgotten that the infamous Caves of Chaos are not the only cavern system to be found in the region. Located in the large unforested area between the Caves of Chaos and the eponymous keep are the Caves of the Unknown, mislabelled on the wilderness map as the ‘Cave of the Unknown’. This is mentioned twice in the module. Once on page 12 where it says, “The Caves of the Unknown area is left for you to use as a place to devise your own cavern complex or dungeon maze.” and then again, in location #51, in the ‘Shrine of Evil Chaos’, where a “Boulder Filled Passage” can lead to the Cave of the Unknown. Left up to the Dungeon Master to design and detail, one option has been to simply insert the Caverns of Quasqueton from B1 In Search of the Unknown and this was the option chosen for Original Adventures Reincarnated #1: Into the Borderlands. However, other designers have embraced Gygax’s advice in B2 Keep on the Borderlands and created their own dungeons to fill this spot. Perhaps the earliest was Keep on the Borderlands: The Expansion, published by Usherwood Publishing in 2013, but it would be followed by others, including RC Pinnell, who has a history of writing sequels to classic Dungeons & Dragons modules, would release his own version at about the same time as Original Adventures Reincarnated #1: Into the Borderlands was published.
Keep on the Borderlands: The Expansion is written for use with both Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition and OSRIC, or ‘Old School Reference and Index Compilation’, the retroclone based upon Advanced Dungeons & Dragons originally published in 2006. It is part of the publisher’s ‘High-Adventure from Middle-School’ line of adventures designed to ape the style and look of the adventures that we wrote for Dungeons & Dragons in our school days when we were first beginning to roleplay. Consequently, Keep on the Borderlands: The Expansion has a certain look. It is presented in a font designed to look like handwriting and done on the type of paper which has holes along one edge for it to be clipped into a file and both of the scenario’s maps are drawn on squared paper, with the ‘Supplemental map 1 to: Keep on the Borderlands (The Environs of the Keep)’ coloured with pencils. It gives the whole look of the scenario a certain charm, perhaps best from a sense of nostalgia, but also a certain tackiness. It does not help that the choice of font makes the scenario awkward to read and use. However, get past that and surprisingly, Keep on the Borderlands: The Expansion does exactly what the title says as well adding a new threat and a new storyline.
Keep on the Borderlands: The Expansion focuses first on the Cave of the Unknown. Although there is a cave entrance, here it is more of a dungeon complex with some twelve rooms. Together with the addition of a tower above the complex, they are the forward base for a group of bandits. In fact, a large number of bandits. Altogether, there are some eighty-five bandits in the complex together with their stores and equipment. Most of the bandits are Level One, although sergeants are Level Two, a Lieutenant Level Three, and a Captain, Level Four. They are led by Malthus the Grey wizard and Gwethlos the Red Cleric, both evil NPCs and both Fifth Level. The complex of rooms feels too small for this number of men and the descriptions of the rooms themselves are simplistic and plain. To some extent this can be explained by the ethos of the scenario, the ‘High-Adventure from Middle-School’ look and feel, but it leaves the Dungeon Master to do all of the hard work in adding flavour and detail to the scenario.
If the description of the Cave of the Unknown fails to intrigue or entice, the plot, whilst still simple, more than makes up for that. Malthus the Grey wizard and Gwethlos the Red Cleric are gathering men to make an assault upon the keep, and not only that, but they are also negotiating with the goblins and hobgoblins in the Caves of Chaos to recruit them to their cause. In addition, Palthos, the son of the Castellan of the keep, disappeared near the caves. The Castellan, greatly worried at his son’s disappearance, has put out a huge reward for the return of his son. In addition, there is a second force of bandits just outside of the area detailed in B2 Keep in the Borderlands. They have begun raiding caravans travelling back and forth from the keep and are holding several prisoners. The prisoners include merchants who will pay the Player Characters a monetary reward if rescued and several mercenaries who will serve the Player Characters for a limited amount of time if also rescued. The camp itself is not described, but is clearly marked on the ‘Supplemental map 1 to: Keep on the Borderlands (The Environs of the Keep)’ map.

Keep on the Borderlands: The Expansion is basic, perhaps too basic. It has three major problems. The first is is the lack of description and flavour and detail. The second is the fact that Palthos, the son of the Castellan of the keep, is mentioned at the beginning of the scenario and never mentioned again, and arguably, his disappearance and the potential reward for his return are the major hook for the Player Characters. This is a major omission. However, neither problem is insurmountable and with some effort upon the part of the Dungeon Master, better descriptions can be added to the scenario’s dungeon and the location where Palthos is being held prisoner can be decided upon. The third is the lack of description of the region beyond that described in B2 Keep in the Borderlands bar the mention and location of the bandit camp. Again, it is left up to the Dungeon Master to not only describe, but actually develop.
Keep on the Borderlands: The Expansion is a really more of a framework to expand to B2 Keep on the Borderlands than a ready-to-play addition. It has a pair of decent story hooks and these are worth developing to expand and enhance the play of a classic module. Keep on the Borderlands: The Expansion is worth looking at for these very reasons and the fact that it is free is bonus.

Cy is a hell. The city is ripped apart by poverty and pollution. The haves, the corporates and the celebrities get to escape to their gated communities on the hills, whilst the have-nots exist in slums between the industrial districts and the enterprise regions where consumerism and corporate greed runs rampant. The industrial districts pump out a poisonous pall that never parts to reveal the sky, toxic waste is dumped into the harbour to float along with the fatbergs in the acidic waters, and nanoswarms and new diseases run rampant. In between the unchecked ecological emergencies and capitalist supremacy, everyone seems at war. The corporations against each other, gangs against each other and the cults, the cults against the militias, the militias against the rioters, and SecCorps against anyone they are paid to war against. There are rumours of a space rock which fell and unleashed a space poison, nuclear bombs exploded without a care… At the centre of it is ‘G0’. Supposedly created by ‘The Incident’. This is where the rock fell or this is where the bombs fell. It is walled off; access is denied upon pain of death. If the auto-turrets do not blast you apart, the Nanophreaks will infect you and rip you apart, pockets of nerve gas poison you, radiation dust twist your DNA… Yet smugglers use it as a means to transport illicit goods; cultists look for proof of their unhallowed beliefs; scientists conduct research in the hope of making a discovery worth selling to a corporation; and scrapheads scavenge the ruins of the past, the medieval ruins of Cy’s origins. There are worse things, let alone THAT NOISE that constantly sounds… Across all of this is the NET, a shared, consensual hallucination combination of Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality where you can buy what they want, worship the latest craze or faith or none at all, and even hack your opinion. Anyone can access the NET via their Retinal Communication Device and everyone is interfaced, injected, infected, and infested with something, and the cybertech is just another vector. This CYstainable Planet™ Certified dystopia is a future of Miserable Headlines amongst the untrammelled tumult of terrible news and corporate corruption. They say that one too many Miserable Headlines, one too many Actual Terrible Truths revealed, and the world ends. Maybe that will be a blessed relief, or maybe that it is what they want…

This is the set-up for CY_BORG, a cyberpunk purgatory that is modelled upon Mörk Borg, the Swedish pre-apocalypse Old School Renaissance retroclone designed by Ockult Örtmästare Games and Stockholm Kartell and published by Free League Publishing. It is another doom driven roleplaying game, set in a nightmarish future in which the existence of the medieval ruins beg the question, is Cy the future of the city of Galgenbeck in the land of Tveland? Or is the city of Galgenbeck in the land of Tveland with its prophecies of the Two-Headed Basilisks just one more MMORPG in the NET. Or even CY_BORG itself a virtual reality simulation gaming out a future and waiting for a reset? Published following a Kickstarter campaign, CY_BORG is a roleplaying game in which the Player Characters kick out against the consumerist conspiracy and the supremacy of corporate capitalism run rampant and their government, police, and mercenary tools. They are Forsaken Gang-Goons, the Shunned Nanomancers, Burned Hackers, Discharged Corp Killers, Orphaned Gearheads, and Renegade Cyberslashers. Their loyalties are not to the system or the man. Even as they take jobs from one Mister Johansen or Ms. Johansen to keep afloat, to maintain the struggle, they want to burn it all down, destroy the system, and kill and die to do it. If they fail, there will always someone else to assume the cause. Unless that last Miserable Headline leads the breaking news and CY ends…

Yet much like, what grabs you from the start is the look of CY_BORG. It employs the same Artpunk style, but here the bold swathes of neon colour are constantly broken as if the artwork is under assault from the nanites, toxins, and chemicals affecting the city of CY itself. This is less heavy metal and more punk; its jagged uncertainty only contributing to the tone and feel of the book. Similarly, there no explanation as to what a roleplaying game is and what roleplaying is. Once you open the book, you are straight into the game. And that is fine. Neither Mörk Borg nor CY_BORG are roleplaying games for anyone new to the hobby. One other difference between CY_BORG and Mörk Borg is that it does not start with the end of the world. Whilst the last Miserable Headline will mark the end of the CY, the rate at which they can appear can be adjusted by the Game Master for a longer or shorter game.

A Player Character in CY_BORG is defined by five Abilities—Agility, Knowledge, Presence, Strength, and Toughness. These are rated between -3 and +3. He also has some cash and some cheap gear as well as Retinal Communication Device. A Player Character also has a Class, of which there are five—Forsaken Gang-Goon, Shunned Nanomancer, Burned Hacker, Discharged Corp Killer, Orphaned Gearhead, and Renegade Cyberslasher. Each provides a bonus to an Ability, a value for his Hit Points, plus one or more items of equipment, including armour. For example, the Shunned Nanomancer also gains a reason why he got infected, such as spending a night practising profane rites with neo-pagan cultists or kidnapped and subjected to horrible experiments and a strange leaf-looking blade which inflicts wounds that bleed or an elongated, pointed skull and semi-translucent skin which enables his brain to shine when the Shunned Nanomancer is thinking. The creation process is quick and easy and Player Characters are simple to replace. A player rolls three six-sided dice for his character’s Abilities, then rolls for cash and gear, then various aspects of the Class, weapon and armour, and lastly debt and to whom it is owed. Elements such as style, feature, wants, quirk, and current obsession can also be rolled for, but are optional.

Name: Kratar
Class: Discharged Corp Killer
Agility +0 Knowledge +0 Presence -1 Strength +1 Toughness +3
Toughness: 8
Glitches: 2
Armour: Combat Armor (Tier III) with A_HST auto-injector
Weapon: Monosword
Item Stolen From The Corp: Prototype Smart™ Assault Rifle
Deployment: PeriGlacial SecCorp (Plundering released gas and bioweapons)
Style: Kill Mode Feature: Unnatural Eyes Wants: Anarchy Quirk: Rapid Blinking
Current Obsession: Belts
Debts: 7000¤ (owed to fixer cops on the payroll)
Cash: 110¤
Gear: CWPC Metro Card, Small Bottle of Pulverised Acid, Tiny Surveillance Drone (300 m)

Mechanically, CY_BORG is simple. A player rolls a twenty-sided die, modifies the result by one of his character’s Abilities, and attempts to beat a Difficulty Rating. A normal Difficulty Rating is twelve, but it can go as low as six or a Simple Difficulty Rating or as high as eighteen or an Almost Impossible Difficulty Rating. The Difficulty Rating may go up or down depending on the situation, but whatever the situation, the player always rolls, even in combat. So, a player will roll for his character to hit in melee using his Strength and his Agility to avoid being hit, whereas Agility is used to both hit and avoid being hit in ranged combat. Autofire in gun combat is kept simple with the first successful hit allowing a second roll and so on up to three hits. So essentially, more three round bursts than full auto. Simple rules also allow for criticals, fumbles, and ammunition use. Optional rules take into account cover, aiming, range, hits always hurting, and suppressive fire. The rules are quick and dirty rather than necessarily realistic, but arguably CY_BORG is gritty enough. Armour is represented by a die value, from -d2 for light armour to -d6 for heavy armour, representing the amount of damage it stops. Medium and heavy armour each add a modifier to any Agility action by the character, including defending himself. This is pleasingly simple and offers a character some tactical choice—just when is it better to avoid taking the blows or avoid taking the damage? In addition, each Player Character has one or more Glitches. These are spent to inflict maximum damage in an attack, enable a reroll of any die, lower damage done to the Player Character, neutralise a critical or a fumble, or decrease the difficulty of a skill test.

The genre specific rules of CY_BORG cover cybertech, drugs, and hacking. Both drugs and cybertech are covered in a page each, and it should be noted that not every Player Character begins play with any cybertech. Only the Renegade Cyberslasher begins play with any cybertech, although a Player Character may have some as a result of a roll for his gear. The rules for hacking are given a bit more attention though. This is no surprise, but unlike many other Cyberpunk-themed roleplaying games where they grind play to a halt as the hacker Player Character is run through an entire little rules subsystem all of his very own, here they are covered in just four pages—and two of those are devoted to possible backlashes if a hacking roll is fumbled. In CY_BORG hacking is done on the spot by a hacker activating Apps, custom-made cartridges and cassettes, slotted into his cyberdeck, for example, the Nok_Nok App opens a nearby door whilst the CTechAttak App inflicts damage on targets connected to the network. To do this, the hacker has to be jacked not the cyberdeck and the more an App is used, the more likely it has of causing a fumble and inflicting a backlash, such as corrupting the hacker’s Retinal Communication Device or the hacker getting identified by a hacker collective and being extorted.

In addition, it is possible to have Nanopowers, such as Psychic Scalpels which inflict damage or a half metre cube of inorganic matter can be reduced to dust. These abilities are rumoured to be from an infection of alien bacteria riding nanobots that has swept the city of CY following The Incident. In addition to the power granted by the infection, the user suffers an infestation, like Gills or Barbed Skeleton. They have two effects. One is permanent, such as the being able to breath underwater for the Gills and for Barbed Skeleton, having sharp pieces of bone piercing the skin around the sufferer’s joints, hindering his movement, unless he grinds them down. The other is a triggered effect when excess damage is suffered, which prevents the sufferer from breathing air if he has Gills and a painful growth spurt of sharp bone for Barbed Skeleton.

For the Game Master, there is section of opponents, from Generic SecOp or Gang Goons and United Citadel Security Operatives, through raging menaces, enhanced beasts, drones, and cydroids to combat vehicles, mechs, and ghosts. Then there is the extensive mission generator, based on Backswords & Bucklers: Adventuring in Gloriana’s Britain, which when combined with the random tables for generating corporations and events, enables the Game Master to generate the basics of numerous scenarios. CY_BORG includes a sample mission, ‘Lucky Flight Takedown’, which has the Player Characters take a job from a shady salaryman to destroy the influence of a newly opened casino upon a neighbourhood. It is a strike mission, one which the Player Characters are tasked with attempting with some delicacy, rather than simply conducting a smash and grab. So, although in some ways it reads as a dungeon similar to that of Mörk Borg, this is more demanding and thoughtful and if gone at in the wrong way, will likely teach the Player Characters just how fragile they can be. Notes are included which could link to future scenarios.

Physically, CY_BORG does suffer to an extent to the same issues as Mörk Borg. Their Artpunk style does not always make the content the easiest to access, so the summary of the mechanics included inside the back cover is a good idea. The illustrations are often heavy and oppressive, veering between the doom metal genre and the doom punk genre, both highlighted by neon and blighted by poisons. Overall, CY_BORG is still a handy little rulebook.

CY_BORG brings the Grim Dark to the cyberpunk genre, stripping back the complexities of both the genre and its associated mechanics, but revving up the maelstrom of the media, the unbridled ambition and greed of the corporations, the suffering of the have-nots, and driving them towards another doom. Its combination of brutal, in-your-face dread, and despair never really lets up and even as the often already unpleasant Player Characters are damaged by this, they do care about the state of CY, if not the world. CY_BORG is a roleplaying game in which the world appears free of moral certainties—except one. Corporations are evil, capitalism will be death of us all, and they need to be smashed and their crimes revealed.