As prophesised long ago, in the early years of the twenty-first century, a rogue object from outer space struck the Moon. This triggered a shockwave that fractured the very surface of the Earth and set off the Great Cataclysm. That though is only one story to explain the state that the land of Umerica finds itself in. There are many others, but if the inhabitants of cannot agree about how this world came about, they can agree that is no longer like that depicted in the archives of Hollywood. It is a world of savagery, cruel sorcery, and twisted science, with technology scavenged from the ruins of the past, stolen from aliens from outer space or other dimensions, or inspired by Hollywood and bodged together from scrap. Lying between the Northern Ice Wall and the Amazonian Sea, Umerica is a barren land, dry and dusty, crisscrossed by the shattered highways of the past upon which cars rust and decay, but there are green places to be found, around which cluster settlements and farms. There are larger metropoli too, some still broken and rusting ruins, home to marauding gangs and worse, but others have been reclaimed and fortified through great technology or wizardry—if not both. The greatest of these is the Citadel of Scrap, a marvel of pre-Cataclysm splendour that actually has running water and electricity, sewers, paved streets, and broadcast entertainment in many of its districts.
Located between the Misery and Kansan Rivers, the Citadel of Scrap is also where the train lines run by the various Train barons all meet, making it an important trade hub. The Citadel of Scrap is governed by the Three Royals, technologists and wizards who from the headquarters in the Growling Tower, control the God in the Pit which sits walled off in the centre of the city. Many gods are worshipped in the Citadel of Scrap, including Buddy O’Burger, the Clown God of Feasting, Customer Service, and Cannibalism whose burger franchises can be found across Umerica, Elmos, the puppet host of eternal pain and suffering, Kizz, the mighty intergalactic god of rock and roll, Nuka, the gentle lady of the Holy Glow and mother of all Mutants, Petrolex, deity of Fuel and Fire, and Santa, the giving god. The city also welcomes visitors, but only if they have money! The Ruins, where all of the city’s rubbish is dumped, is a haven for scavengers prepared to put up with decades of refuse dumped on old, broken buildings, but is the source of the tiny brightly coloured plastic bricks which snap together and the city’s very wealthy use from which to build their homes. Beyond the walls of the Citadel of Scrap lie the Burning Lands of Yellowstone, a mixture of churning lava and boiling mud fields; to the south the Glowing Dome of Dinotastic Park, five miles high, two hundred wide, and nobody has ever been inside; to the north, the Floating Iron Isles stand on Lake Mishigun, said to be home to Fairyfolk; to the far west is Old Seattle and the Necromancers of the Space Needle; and to the south-east in Floor-Da is the Kingdom of the False Gods, a realm ruled by mad mascot gods! This is the setting for Umerica, a Gonzo Post-Apocalyptic Campaign Setting and Sourcebook for use with the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game.

The Umerican Survival Guide – Core Setting Guide is published by Shield of Faith Studios and distributed by Goodman Games. Based on articles which originally appeared in issues of the fanzine, Crawling Under a Broken Moon, it presents a post-apocalyptic setting which combines technology and Science Fiction, gods and magic, aliens and mutants, robots and cyborgs, steam trains and Mad Max-style scrap vehicles, and more. It comes complete with new Classes, rules for combat, mutations, vehicle construction and combat, a pantheon of weird gods and their magics, plus lots and lots of tables to help the Game Master run a campaign. It is important to note that The Umerican Survival Guide – Core Setting Guide is really compatible with Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic, Goodman Games’ own post-apocalyptic roleplaying game. Or rather, they are compatible mechanically, but not tonally or thematically. The Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game very much takes its cue from Gamma World with its Player Characters as Stone Age tribesmen who have little grasp of technology, but experimenting with found items being very much part of the play. However, in the setting of The Umerican Survival Guide, the Player Characters know what technology is, and even if not everyone knows how any one item actually works, they often have an idea of how it is operated. This is not to say that the Stone Age tribesmen might not be found in some forgotten corner of Umerica, but theirs is a world where Clarke’s Third Law—‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic’—applies and that is not the case with Umerica. Of course, this does mean that the Game Master will need a copy of the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game to run The Umerican Survival Guide – Core Setting Guide.

The Umerican Survival Guide – Core Setting Guide really begins and ends with the Citadel of Scrap, being all but bookended by sections devoted to the city. The first, in the opening section of the book, is done as an in-game travelogue delivered by a citizen as he guides visitors round the city. The last chapter in the book, ‘Secrets of the Citadel’ expands upon this for the benefit of the Game Master’s eyes only. For the most part, this is given as specific background content, such as explaining the source for each Buddy O’Burger franchise’s yummy, yummy meat or who the Three Royals are, what they are capable of, and how to bring them into play. For one of the biggest secrets in the setting, however, just exactly is the God in the Pit, is left up to the Game Master to decide, but she is given a handful of suggestions as to what it might be. The expanded descriptions of various districts in the Citadel of Scrap are accompanied by two or three adventure seeds, and more can be found throughout the book. The Umerican Survival Guide only focuses on the Citadel of Scrap in this fashion, leaving the earlier locations described earlier in the book to be detailed in other supplements,* but city itself is interesting and the book provides a lot for the Game Master to work with. Further, more detailed plot seeds can be found in the preceding chapter, the ‘GM Section’, which examines some of the themes of the setting—the world is fragmented and strange, very little is new, and advanced science is rare and as frightening as powerful sorcery, as well as offering ‘A Few interesting Places to Die’ for the benefit of the Players Characters.

* In fact, many of them are actually more detailed in issues of Crawling Under a Broken Moon.

The Umerican Survival Guide – Core Setting Guide offers nine new Classes as well as rules for creating Zero Level Player Characters suitable for the classic Character Funnel of the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. The Cleric of the Wasteland is relatively little different to the Cleric Class of the core rules, though of course, he has access to a pantheon of some sixteen gods particular to the Umerica setting. The Cyborg gains partial protection from his implants and upgrades at certain Levels, such as a Weapon Port, Rapid Response Servos, or Spring-Loaded Legs, and can self-repair with his Jury Rig die. The Feral Urchin can be a Wildchild which transforms into a mini-beast, a Slinger who is a deadly shot, or a Nerd who is good with language and technology. The Fossorian is burrowing humanoid, much like a badger, has Vicious Claws and is good at Tunnelling. This Class is similar to the Dwarf in Dungeon Crawl Classics, but with claws rather than beard. The Gray is the classic alien of UFOlogy, assigned to Earth by the Gray Directorate for purposes only each Gray knows. The Gray can speak any language, is vulnerable to iron and at various Levels receives Tech Gifts from home like a Holographic Guise or a Hovering Disc. The Mutant has mutant abilities and a pool of Glow Points which can be spent to modify rolls made to use his abilities. At later Levels, the Mutant can force Spontaneous Mutagenesis to gain more mutations. The Petrol Head—much like the earlier Feral Urchin, is inspired by Mad Max—has an Ace Die to roll when driving due to his supernatural bond with his vehicle, as a Fuel Hound can sniff out petrol, and begins play with a battered buggy or motorcycle. The Robot comes from a nearby dimension or timeline and can either be a Domestic/Companion, Labour/Maintenance, or Security/Military model. Again, at various Levels, the Robot can be upgraded, components including Flight Vents, Emergency Medical Unit, and Nth Dimension Non-Euclidean Logic Generator. The Scavenger is good at finding useful scrap and is in general similar to the Thief Class. The Technologist is good at Tinkering whether that is with weapons, robots, computers, and other devices, although his actual skill in each area varies according to his Alignment. The Technologist Class is accompanied by a set of tables to roll on whenever a Tinkering check is fumbled. The Wasteland Warrior is the equivalent to the Warrior Class, but also receives an additional Mighty Deed, ‘Armour Mastery’, which works with the new armour rules in The Umerican Survival Guide. Lastly, the Wizard of the Wasteland is similar to the Wizard from Dungeon Crawl Classics and must take a supernatural patron to cast spells. Overall, the range of Classes are fun and engaging and help bring the setting’s genre into play, even where the changes are relatively minor.

The Umerican Survival Guide – Core Setting Guide introduces significant changes to combat. Although Armour Class is retained, it is no longer modified by armour worn. Instead, a Player Character gains an Armour Die which is rolled to reduce damage suffered and can be increased by wearing better armour or even layering armour. The rules for guns are kept simple, but allow for aiming—this increases the Action Die rolled to attack, and automatic fire—more dice are rolled for damage and more ammunition is expended. There are rules too for gunsmithing and a variety of different grenades, as well as new fumble and critical tables for both firearms and grenades. The equipment focuses on arms and armour, detailing a wide range, including options cheap and/or damaged goods.

The major addition to The Umerican Survival Guide – Core Setting Guide is vehicles and vehicle combat. Operating a vehicle requires a Vehicle Control Roll, especially when performing a stunt or avoiding a hazard, and not every Player Character is necessarily going to be trained to drive. Failure can result in the roll of a Wipeout Die and consultation of the Wipeout Results table, just like critical results in combat. A driver can attempt to pull stunts, the player wagering a penalty, ranging between one and five, on the Vehicle Control Roll which if the roll is failed, also increases the Action Die rolled on the Wipeout Results table. Again, the rules are kept fairly simple and easy to use, in this case, there is a pleasing balance between risk and consequences. There is no list of possible stunts and their possible penalties, so player and Game Master alike will need to improvise. Supporting the vehicle rules are stats for all sorts of vehicles from bicycles and buggies to ultralight aircraft and gyrocopters—very Mad Max, as well as trains and mechs! The latter range in height between ten and twenty feet, and are either light or heavy, and may be used labour or military purposes. All of the vehicles are kept at a low scale rather than being over the top designs capable of inflicting hundreds of points of damage. The damage their weapons would do to a Player Character is deadly enough without overdoing it. One factor limiting vehicle use is fuel supply and the Player Characters may have to spend some of their time hunting and bartering for fuel, especially if they have a Petrolhead amongst their number.

For the Wizard of the Wasteland and other spell-casting characters there is a table for ‘Mercurial Magic of the Wastelands’, whilst the ‘Grimoire of the Wastes’ adds an array of new spells specific to Umerica. These include Curse of Life which can age a target, Tech Jinx, which causes a device to malfunction or go out of control, or Former Glory, which restores an item to its previous condition. For the Cleric of the Wasteland and the Wizard of the Wasteland, there is also a long list of gods and patrons, each with their own spells, powers granted when they are invoked, and Patron Taint when that fails. All are fantastically themed, matching the gonzo feel of the setting. For example, Kizz, the mighty intergalactic god of rock and roll grants the spells Kizz My Axe, Mosh Pit, and Aspect of Kizz, all inspired by a certain rock group to very silly, thematic effect, and this applies to the other Gods and Patrons too.

As per other post-apocalyptic settings, The Umerican Survival Guide – Core Setting Guide includes rules for mutations, which work with the Mutant Character Class in particular. If a Player Character encounters a sufficiently potent radiation source or other form of mutagen, a Fortitude Save must be rolled. If this is failed, the Player Character mutates, although a Cleric can Lay on Hands to prevent this from happening. Mutations can be bestial, botanical, altered biology, freak abilities, or more, and there are table of possible mutations for each of the six categories. For example, the ‘Testudine’ entry on the Bestial Table gives a Player Character tortoise-like features, increased Armour Class, but reduced Initiative, and has a chance of also giving him an armoured carapace, better Stamina and a longer life, as well as slowed speed and poorer Agility. The rules for mutations here differ greatly from those given in the Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, granting straightforward effects which come into play as soon as they are rolled, whereas in many cases, those in the Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game work like spells in the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game and so have to be rolled for each time to determine their effect they are used. As much fun as the mutation are in the Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, those presented here are simpler and not necessarily as complex to bring into play.

Physically, The Umerican Survival Guide – Core Setting Guide is clean and tidy. The artwork varies in quality and most of it is decent enough. It does not have an index, though there is a list of tables. The former is very disappointing in this day and age, but the latter makes up for it a little.

There are four issues with The Umerican Survival Guide – Core Setting Guide. One is that it was compiled from a series of fanzines and it does feel like it in places, a series of parts put together rather than a roleplaying game designed from the start. So, the setting of Umerica does not feel like a complete whole, not helped by the lack of a good overview of the setting. However, everything works together and it is coherent and easy to grasp. The second issue is a lack of maps. There is no map of Umerica or worse, given how much attention is paid to it in the book, the Citadel of Scrap. The inclusion of such maps would perhaps have helped with the first problem, bringing the setting together and making it easier for the Game Master to grasp. The third issue is a lack of scenario which would have given the Game Master something to run and given her an idea of what sort of adventures it is designed to do. That said, it includes plenty of scenario hooks for her to develop. Lastly, a bibliography would have been nice to have seen the author’s inspirations.

Weirdly, what The Umerican Survival Guide – Core Setting Guide is reminiscent of is the roleplaying game Rifts, published by Palladium Books. It has magic, it has technology, it has mutations, it has magic, reasonably sized stompy mecha, it has a world recovering from a great disaster, and more, although not psionics. Both are post-apocalyptic roleplaying games and both share a lot of the same elements and content. However, the twenty-five-year difference between The Umerican Survival Guide – Core Setting Guide and Rifts is important. Rifts can be best described as what is technically known as a ‘Hot Mess’, a nonsensical morass of ideas with all the organisation and accessibility of a rubbish dump given book form accompanied with a complete lack of idea as what to do with it or run with it. The Umerican Survival Guide – Core Setting Guide despite sharing a great many of the same elements, is not that. It is organised in a coherent fashion and it not only includes advice for the Game Master, but it also has adventure seed after adventure seed. If Rifts is garbage dump of ideas, then The Umerican Survival Guide – Core Setting Guide is the equivalent of that rubbish actually having been sorted for recycling meaning that everything in the book is ready to use and accessible in a way that Rifts is not!

The Umerican Survival Guide – Core Setting Guide is not complete or quite fully together, but comes with everything for a gonzo post-apocalyptic campaign. It is accessible, its rules additions are straightforward and easy to use, it has lots of options in terms of Player Characters, and the setting is intriguing and run through with a dark streak of satire. For the Game Master who wants a post-apocalyptic setting and is happy with the mechanics of the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, then The Umerican Survival Guide – Core Setting Guide is a great choice.

Throughout the Cold War and even today, secret messages were broadcast across international borders and around the world, enabling instructions to be passed from handlers to their agents in the field. The means were Number Stations, shortwave radio stations which broadcast formatted numbers, often vocalised, but also broadcast as music or in Morse Code. Perhaps one of the most famous is the ‘LincolnshirePoacher’, which broadcast bars from the English folk song ‘The Lincolnshire Poacher’. These Number Stations and the messages they broadcast form the basis for Numb3r Stations– A Solo RPG. Published by LunarShadow Designs and available in print here, the reader and player takes on the role of a spy posted to a foreign country where he will undertake an important mission. Tuning in to regular broadcasts, he will receive instructions and updates and in turn pass back news of the mission’s progress and what he has learned so far. However, successfully or spectacularly completing each stage of the mission has a price—it brings the activities of our patriotic spy to the attention of counter-intelligence operations in the country he is spying upon. Ultimately, if the spy is too successful, counter-intelligence will identify him as a spy and arrest him. This is espionage in the style of John le Carré and George Smiley rather than Ian Fleming and James Bond.
Solo roleplaying games and journalling games are built around prompts, typically generated in random fashion either through rolling dice or drawing cards from a standard deck of playing cards. Using those prompts, the player typically creates and resolves a scene or encounter, and then writes it down in his journal. Numb3r Stations also uses prompts, but instead of using neutral mechanical means of generating them, it uses prompts that are both random and highly thematic. In other words, it uses the Number Stations and their broadcasts as prompts. During the Cold War, an agent would listen to the designated number station for the code being broadcast and use it to decode a message on a one-time-pad. In Numb3r Stations, the player is doing exactly the same, if not to commit acts of espionage himself, then to tell the story of the agent and his mission. Nevertheless, there is a sense of vicarious subterfuge to Numb3r Stations, as the player listens in, knowing that someone else once did the same on some secret mission far away from his home, or even could be on a secret mission right now, depending upon which number station the player decides to listen to and use for the source of his prompts.
To play Numb3r Stationss, the player requires pen and paper and ideally, access to Priyom.org. This site provide numerous number stations to listen to and all the player has to do is select one to generate a random three-digit code. This is his prompt. Alternative methods of generating this number are also suggested, but for real immersion, the authors suggest using the same number station, such as E11, even if that means listening in at the same time of day to hear its broadcast. Numb3r Stations is played out over five stages—Infiltration, Mission: Objective, Mission: Recon, Mission: Execution, and Exfiltration. At each stage, the player uses a three-digit code to select a one-time-pad from the ten in the back of Numb3r Stations and from this a combination of a letter and a number. The entry on that one-time-pad is then crossed out. The letter indicates the prompt for that stage of the mission and the number the Success Rating. There are five prompts per stage, from A to E and the Success Rating ranges from ‘1’ and “You have failed this stage of your mission so poorly, adversary counterintelligence don’t even know something happened” to ‘5’ and “Outstanding work, among the best your organization has seen. All eyes are on you now, mostly unwelcome.”.Using both Prompt and Success Rating, the player writes a report to his handler. This report must include a code. There are ten given in Numb3r Stations, such as “Your report must contain a secret message that is composed of every 5th word in the message.” or “Include a list within the text, of exactly five items, listed in alphabetical order.”
Lastly, the player determines his Exposure Level based on the Success Rating. If it is too high, his messages have been Intercepted by Counter-Intelligence and his progress is easier to tracked. If he is Intercepted twice, or if a three-digit code indicates an entry on a one-time-pad that has already been used and crossed out, player is captured by counter-intelligence. This is alternative to the fifth and last challenge and gives the player a chance to write one last two-hundred-and-forty-character message to his loved ones. (In other words, a tweet!) If the player or agent completes his mission, his final Exposure Level determines handler’s or even history’s verdict on the mission.
Physically, Numb3r Stations – A Solo RPG is a rather grey, dreary little book. However, that actually feels thematically appropriate, matching the often-drab nature of espionage during the Cold War. The cover is decent though, depicting a man in fedora hat and trench coat and carrying a briefcase. Wholly unremarkable, he could be a travelling salesman, a businessman, or even a spy! The book is otherwise decently written, but in places a close study is required to understand what a player is required to do.
Numb3r Stations – A Solo RPG is at its heart, a writing exercise in five stages. At each stage, the player will be given a prompt as a subject matter, and both a degree of success and a code which will influence and complicate what the player has to write. Even overcomplicate what a player has to write if he is intercepted! Numb3r Stations – A Solo RPG is a delightfully drab espionage roleplaying game, capturing the fraught, grey no-man’s land feel of the Cold War, beginning in thematic fashion by listening into messages from a bygone age before being prompted to draft dreary report after dreary report!

It is odd to think that in over forty years since Call of Cthulhu was first published, it has been supported by numerous supplements detailing other times and places, from the classic period of the Jazz Age and the here and now to the Roman Empire of Cthulhu Invictus and the more recent late Georgian period supplement, Regency Cthulhu: Dark Designs in Jane Austen’s England, but not the Age of Sail or indeed, anything piratical. This is not to say that that that have been no scenarios involving both Lovecraftian investigative roleplaying and roleplaying. Arguably, Green Ronin Publishing’s Freeport Trilogy for Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition was the first to do it in 2000, but there have been a few scenarios since specifically for Call of Cthulhu, such as Lost Port Royal and The Curse of Black Teeth Keetes, which have involved pirates, if not actual piracy. That changes with Corsairs of Cthulhu – Fighting Mythos in the Golden Age of Piracy, a supplement for Chaosium, Inc.’s Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, published by New Comet Games following a successful Kickstarter campaign. This is a rules and setting supplement detailing the Golden Age of Piracy—between 1650 and 1730 CE, for Call of Cthulhu, and further, it provides a complete campaign in which the Player Characters, or Corsairs, will set sail on the high seas to face and fight the evil of the Mythos. They will chase and board other vessels, encounter strange ice demons in the frigid lands to the far south, sail across the Pacific to make land at numerous islands and encounter strange practices the inhabitants engage in, and travel far beyond their imagination before returning to sail into battle against an alien foe they could never have imagined!

Corsairs of Cthulhu – Fighting Mythos in the Golden Age of Piracy is an ambitious book. Which given that it is published by New Comet Games should be no surprise given that the publisher has aimed high with each of its previous titles for Call of Cthulhu. However, in the case of all three of those books— The Star on the Shore – Struggles Against Evil in 1920s New England, Devil’s Swamp – Encountering Ancient Terrors in the Hockomock, and A Time For Sacrifice—that ambition remained undeniably unfulfilled. The question is, has New Comet Games again sets its ambitions too high with Corsairs of Cthulhu – Fighting Mythos in the Golden Age of Piracy, its first period sourcebook and campaign? If not, has the publisher actually fulfilled those ambitions and presented content that the Keeper can bring to the table with ease, without need for further development, and be both enjoyable and engaging for her players? The answers to those questions are ‘yes, but no’, for although Corsairs of Cthulhu is a very straightforward sourcebook and campaign, explaining how good both the source background and the campaign actually are, is far from straightforward.

It is important to note what Corsairs of Cthulhu is not and that is an examination of the Mythos during the Age of Piracy, the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Thus, there is no background at all pertaining to the presence of the Mythos in the Caribbean or indeed what its adherents, races, or entities might be doing during this period. Its background and source material is wholly mundane then. This though does not necessarily mean that it is bad. In fact, the source material is decent enough. There are roleplaying books which do it far better, such as Skull & Bones: Swashbuckling Horror in the Golden Age of Piracy, but nevertheless, Corsairs of Cthulhu is decent enough in terms of background content. It starts with a solid if repetitive overview of both the period of the Golden Age of Piracy and the Caribbean before diving into the rules. Character creation follows the standard rules for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition but adds a wide selection of new Occupations—Adventurer, Boatswain, Coxswain, Criminal, Fisherman, Master Carpenter, Master Gunner, Sailing Master, and more. Many of them are specific to positions aboard ship, although Alchemist and Voodoo Priest/Priestess are included as optional. There is an array of new equipment, as well as skills such as Antiquarian—the equivalent of Archaeology, Artillery—for cleaning and firing cannon aboard ship, Language: Pirate Chant, and Seamanship, whilst Art/Craft (Voodoo Rituals) and Science (Alchemy) are for the optional rules and Occupations.

Alchemy is based on Hermetic sorcery and practitioners study a variety of formulae—divine and greater and lesser arcane, but can only learn a relative few. For example, Transmutationibus, one of the Arcanum Mortis Divina Formulae, creates a salve which can be spread over lead to turn it into gold as per the legendary aims of the science of alchemy, whilst the Orbis potion, one of the Arcanum Mortis Luminare Minus Formulae, allows the imbiber to always know magnetic north. What an Alchemist knows in terms of formulae is very much limited by his skill rating, and learning more as the Alchemist gains in skill will be a challenge in itself and for the major formulae, likely sanity draining. Finding ingredients and mixing up the potions also takes an Alchemist time and effort, countering their often-powerful effects. Voodoo practitioners—known as Bokor or Caplata—call upon the deities and saints known as Loa, through song, dance, and other rituals to cast rituals such as Create Zombie, Curse of Misfortune, and Gift of Tongues. All rituals cost both Magic Points and Sanity to cast, and like Science (Alchemy), a practitioner’s skill in Art/Craft (Voodoo Rituals) limits the number of rituals he can perform. Learning a new ritual takes time, but are faster to cast than creating potions. In addition, Bokor or Caplata may begin play with an understanding of the true nature of the world and thus the Cthulhu Mythos. The rules for Alchemy and Voodoo are optional, but workable enough should a Keeper decide to bring them in to her game.

For all things nautical, Corsairs of Cthulhu details the ship’s crew and their duties, pirate culture and life, as well as the major parts of a ship, ship types and sizes, ship’s weaponry, as well as how to handle ship-to-ship combat. The rules for chases and combat are succinctly described, but an example of combat does help the Keeper understand how they work. Once ships start exchanging volleys of cannon fire, combat can become very deadly for the crew. Unfortunately, the critical result tables for combat do not include the possibility of the Player Characters killed unless they hold one of the important positions aboard ship. This is not all of the background content in Corsairs of Cthulhu, although the rest of it is at the back of the book, separated by the campaign itself and placed in a series of appendices. ‘Ports of Call’ details several notable pirate ports across the Caribbean, ‘Pirates and NPCs’ give stats and write-ups for notable pirates such as Anne Bonny and Edward Teach, and ‘Slang, Swears, Songs & Shanties’ is exactly that and can be used to add colour and flavour to a Corsairs of Cthulhu campaign. Apart from rules for using Pulp Cthulhu: Two-fisted Action and Adventure Against the Mythos in Corsairs of Cthulhu and ‘More Adventures’ which provides several extra adventures for the Keeper to develop, the rest of the appendices support the campaign. They consist of the ‘Bestiary’, which has full stats for the monsters and NPCs in the campaign, plus the officers of the ship in the campaign, whilst ‘Pre-generated PCs’ provide read-to-play Corsairs, and finally, all of the handouts. One change to the ‘Pre-generated PCs’ which is absolutely necessary is to ensure that one of them speaks Ancient Greek when transposed onto Investigator sheets as none of them do, and for the campaign, they do need to be able to read Ancient Greek.

The Corsairs of Cthulhu campaign is set in 1697 and begins en media res in exciting fashion, chasing down another vessel and about to engage it in an exchange of cannon fire. The Corsairs are crew members recently hired, aboard the Cronos under the command of Captain Kristoff, who is in search of a treasure known as the Astronomer’s Map. This treasure plays a major role in the campaign. It has been broken into multiple pieces and as the Corsairs locate more and more sections of it, they will gain further clues as to what the campaign is about and where the next sections are located. Full colour illustrations are provided for the various sections of the Astronomer’s Map, but the Keeper can also use STL files to print copies of the section as physical handouts so that the Corsairs can piece the artifact together as they progress further into the campaign. As members of the crew of the Cronos, the Corsairs are directed, if not led, by Captain Kristoff, and as members of the crew they sail from capturing the ship in the first scene to shore leave in Nassau and then onwards into the Pacific after a difficult journey through the Drake’s Passage. From Easter Island—visited by the Cronos some twenty-five years before Europeans actually visited it historically—to Galapagos and beyond, the Corsairs track the sections of the Astronomer’s Map across the Pacific to experience one extremely strange encounter after another. This includes hunting wererats on Easter Island, dining with the vampire daughter of Nyarlathotep in the Dreamlands, freeing and being thanked by Mother Hydra, being transported into a post-apocalyptic future of a city that is yet to be, and so on. Ultimately, as written, the Corsairs will discover the true nature of the Astronomer’s Map and the identity of the villain of the piece, and sail on the risen isle of R’lyeh, ready to unleash volleys of cannon fire upon Great Cthulhu himself!

Given all this background material and the great scope of its campaign, the actual campaign itself in Corsairs of Cthulhu should be good. Yet it is not. In fact, it is far from good. The idea of sailing the high seas to ultimately face Cthulhu as pirates sounds good, but in practice, the campaign is linear and the Corsairs themselves have no agency over the direction of the campaign. Instead, the Corsairs essentially island hop back and forth the Pacific Ocean, first at the direction of the captain of the Cronos, then from clues given on the Astronomer’s Map, until the final confrontation. Much of the action in the scenario takes place in the Pacific and thus away from the Caribbean. Consequently, barring a couple of scenes, the Corsairs have extraordinarily little opportunity to engage in piratical activity of any sort. And although they start play aboard the Cronos, the Corsairs have little motivation to be aboard to begin with or really engage with the campaign except for the fact that Captain Kristoff will them throw overboard if they do not swear to remain aboard as part of the crew. This applies to the pre-generated Corsairs, let alone what the players might come up with. Once under sail, there are all too often scenes where the Corsairs have to stand around and await until some ceremony is over and an NPC can advise them before they can act. Then there are scenes which are more plot fiat rather than actually adding to either play or plot, such as automatically, but accidentally killing a cat in the Dreamlands or when sailing through the Drake’s Passage to the Pacific, the crew of the Cronos have the choice of sailing the quicker, but more dangerous route closer to the shallows of the coast of South America or the calmer, slower, but much colder waters to the south. It does not matter what choice they decide on as ultimately the Cronos will be driven south into the colder waters where they will be attacked by Ice Demons which skip across the sea to board the ship. The encounter is pointless, an excuse for some combat and dice rolling which only serves to scrape some Hit Points and Sanity Points from the Corsairs—and that is ignoring the fact that Ice Demons add nothing to the Mythos. Similarly, there are points where one of the Corsairs has to sacrifice himself to in order for the campaign to progress, and whilst there are ways round this, it makes progress that much more difficult. Then, when the Corsairs do encounter the Mythos, it is with Elder God after Elder God—Nyarlathotep, Nodens, the Yellow King, as well as Father Dagon, and Mother Hydra—all put in an appearance, like some sort of Mythos medley. Father Dagon and Mother Hydra do make sense, but the others? Lastly, the campaign drops hints as to who the villain of the piece is, mostly coming from the dead Corsair who can appear in his former comrades’ dreams, but never really lets the Corsairs act on it as if trying to forestall the inevitable showdown at the end of the campaign.

Physically, Corsairs of Cthulhu – Fighting Mythos in the Golden Age of Piracy looks clean and tidy, and for the most part it is. Unfortunately, the layout is not always consistent and certainly early on in the book, Corsairs of Cthulhu needs the input of a professional editor, as the content is repetitive and oddly phrased. The maps are actually nicely done, but the artwork is highly variable in quality. Some of it is good, the rest is often just artless.

Yet for all of its faults, Corsairs of Cthulhu – Fighting Mythos in the Golden Age of Piracy is not necessarily a bad campaign or a bad supplement for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition. It does provide the rules for running a pirate scenario or campaign for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition and it does provide a campaign that can be played. In that, New Comet Games has achieved its aims and definitely fulfilled its ambitions. However, that does not mean that those ambitions have been in any way exceeded, or as the publisher’s best book to date, that Corsairs of Cthulhu is a good supplement. The new rules and background included in the pages of Corsairs of Cthulhu are undoubtedly fine. A Keeper can take those and can run a scenario or campaign using them. The campaign though, is not fine, and definitely not good, but at the same time, not terrible. Fundamentally, it is too linear and does not give the players and their Corsairs enough agency, and it is more like a heavily plotted Derlethian video game than a roleplaying campaign. Ultimately, Corsairs of Cthulhu – Fighting Mythos in the Golden Age of Piracy is arguably the best book for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition that New Comet Games has published to date, but then only for part of the book.

The classic hex crawl is an open-ended sandbox-style adventure in which the players and their characters explore a large geographical area, containing various Points of Interest, each of which can be explored individually or perhaps in a sequence determined from clues found at each location. Typically, the Player Characters will have a good reason to explore the area, such as being tasked to find a specific location or person, but instead of knowing where the location or person might be, only know that they are somewhere in that region. Armed with limited knowledge, the Player Characters will enter the area and travel from one hex to the next, perhaps merely running into a random encounter or nothing at all, but perhaps finding a Point of Interest. Such a Point of Interest might be connected to the specific location or person they are looking for, and so might contain clues as to its location, then again it might not. In which case it is just a simple Point of Interest. Initially free to explore in whatever direction they want, as the Player Characters discover more clues, their direction of travel will typically gain more focus until the point when they finally locate their objective. Classic hex crawls include X1 Isle of Dread for Expert Dungeons & Dragons and Slavers for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Second Edition, whilst more recent examples have been Barrowmaze and What Ho, Frog Demons!.

Bottled Sea is a hex crawl—or sea crawl (seabox?)—from Games Omnivorous dotted with the flotsam and jetsam of the ages, coral-reefs stung together from debris from across the universe, wrecks both sunken and afloat, technology scavenged and jury-rigged to new purpose—survival, dolphin-riders, Mother Sea Cucumbers spraying acid, Mimic-Islets that swallow ships whole, strange tides that sweep ships away, and more. The Bottled Sea is an in-between dimension where ships lost at sea end up, from past, from today, from the future, and from elsewhere. Here survivors search for the food and water necessary to survive, but also myths of the Bottle Sea, rumours of solid land, and salvage that can be used to make repairs or even something better. At the heart of the Bottle Sea is the Harbourage, a palimpsest of waste and rubble kept assiduously buoyant, where Travellers are always welcome, especially if they have resources, in particular, the rare dirt, paper, and plants, to trade and use as currency. Four factions vie for control of Harbourage. The Collectors are a masonic lodge of inventors working haphazardly to create an article island. The Ichthys are amphibious mutants, highly capable deep-sea salvagers, who want a greater unity between the sea and the surface. The Shepherds are an ascetic cult which worships and herds Sheep for their wool and their milk, and want to take its herd home. The Rainmakers are priests of the rain.
The Bottled Sea takes its cue from the publisher’s earlier The Undying Sands, being part of its ‘Hex-n-Screen’ format series. It is thus a hex crawl of a different stripe. First, it is systemless; second, it is improvisational; third, it is random; and fourth, it is physical. The Bottled Sea consists of four elements. These are forty hex tiles, Game Master Screen, two double-sided card sheets, a cloth bag, and two pamphlets. The hexes, done in sturdy cardboard and full colour using a rich swathe of tones, measure six-and-a-half centimetres across. Their backs are either blank or numbered. The former show simple calm seas on their front, whilst the latter have locations on their front. There are eighteen such locations, all of which are different. There is the floating city of Harbourage, home to the four factions which dominate the Bottled Sea. On their journey across the Bottled Sea, the Player Characters may run into the Alabaster Fingers, colossal rocks scoured by guano and inscribed by Myths; the Drifting Dealers aboard their lashed-together ships, ready to trade salvage and other goods; the Hives, where enigmatic Beekeepers harvest and sell hallucinogenic honey; and the Great Dross Reef at the shallowest point in the Bottled Sea, a combination of rubbish and coral. There are many more, the most notable of which is the Floating Hexahedron, a sealed cube of highly polished, reflective material, which so far nobody has been able to gain access to and has any idea as what might be inside. The style of the artwork on the hexes is busy and cartoonish, but eye-catching, and gives the Bottled Sea a singular look which sets it apart from both other gaming accessories and neighbouring regions.

The Game Master Screen is a horizontal, three panel affair. The front depicts a paddle-galleon on the Bottled Sea itself, about to be overtaken by a tempestuous storm. The back is the meat of the supplement. Here, from left to right, it explains what Bottled Seas is, how to use and the best way to use it; tables of myths, salvage, pelagic—meaning open sea—encounters, weather, and details of the locations across the Bottled Sea—including areas of Solid Ground and the Mythical Whirlpool. Two locations are described in detail, one The Beacon, a lighthouse home to a Wizard, said to be able to use magic or psionic powers, depending upon, of course, who you ask, whilst the other is the Harbourage. Here can be found the Sea Lion Milk Farm, the Museum of Discarded Curiousity, the Blood Polo Sharkadrome, the Oyster Ranch, Wishing Windows, and other establishments. These require development upon the part of the Game Master, as they are not as detailed as other locations (and tiles) on the Bottled Sea, and similarly the entries on the tables of tasks and jobs will also need some development.

The first of the two posters has a full illustration of The Beacon on the one side and Harbourgae on the other. The second depicts and describes not what is on the Bottled Sea, but in the Bottled Sea. On the front is a cross section of the sea below the surface with various creatures and features illustrated and numbered, whilst on the back, ‘What is in the Sea’ provides a quick description, plus rules for fishing and deep-diving.

The Bottled Sea also includes two small pamphlets. ‘The Floating Hexahedron’ describes the six-sided, very shiny polyhedron, which literally floats above the surface of the Bottled Sea. The Shepherds from the Harbourage make an annual pilgrimage to wherever it is currently located, but like everyone else, cannot find their way in. What is inside is thus a mystery for everyone. The means to open it can be found somewhere across the Bottled Sea and locating said mean will form part of the backdrop to any campaign set on the Bottled Sea. The pamphlet provides basic descriptions as to what is inside the Floating Hexahedron, its major features, and also some adventure hooks to bring into play. The one piece of advice for the Game Master is that she should watch the 1997 film, Cube. The smaller, but longer pamphlet, ‘Watercrafts’ details some ten of the water-going vessels on the Botted Sea, from Rubbish Raft and Hydro-Cage to Catamaran Wavecutter and Benthic Bell. All have a lovely illustration, a short description, and details of their speed, price, crew requirement, power source, and cargo capacity. These are very nicely done and the illustrations are thoroughly charming. These are all vessels that the Player Characters can encounter, build, purchase, or sail—or depending upon their scruples, attack and/or capture.

So that is the physicality of Bottled Sea. What of the random nature of Bottled Sea? Simply, the hexes are placed in the cloth bag and drawn one-by-one, as the Player Characters cross or explore one hex and then move onto the next, creating the region hex-by-hex. If the hex is simple sand dunes, the Game Master might roll on the ‘Pelagic Encounters’ or ‘Weather’ tables to create random encounters. When the Player Characters reach a numbered location, they can explore one or more of individual places there, the Game Master improvising what will be encountered there based on the sentence or two description given for each. There is more detail for Harbourage, The Beacon and the Floating Hexahedron, especially the latter, and thus more for the Game Master to base her improvisation upon. This randomness means that playing Bottled Sea will be different from one gaming group to the next, more so than with other hex crawls or scenarios.

So that is the random nature of Bottled Sea and the improvisational nature of Bottled Sea? What of the systemless aspect of Bottled Sea? No gaming system is referenced anywhere on Bottled Sea, yet there is an assumed genre within its details. So it is weird. It is more Science Fiction than fantasy, especially with the inclusion of the Floating Hexahedron and many of the watercraft. However, it would work with Player Characters from any setting with a tradition of sailing, whether the ancient world or the Age of Sail or the modern day. Player Characters can come from the same setting, perhaps the same ship, or from an array of backgrounds or settings. Then depending upon what style and tone of game that the Game Master wants to run, a Bermuda Triangle style game could be using a fairly mundane ruleset, such as Savage Worlds or Basic Roleplay. However, there are numerous choices for a more fantastic style of play considering the Science Fiction elements of the setting. Numenera would be an obvious choice, as would Electric Bastionland: Deeper into the Odd, Hypertellurians: Fantastic Thrills Through the Ultracosm, and Troika!. It could even be run using Rifts if the Game Master wanted to! A more generic rules system would also work too, as would any number of Old School Renaissance retroclones. Another genre to shift Bottled Seas into would be that of the Post Apocalypse, for example, using Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic or Barbarians of the Ruined Earth. However, Bottled Sea underplays its Post Apocalyptic elements, so the Game Master will need to bring them into play more. Ultimately, whatever the choice of rules, the Game Master will need to know them very well in order to improvise.

As suggested by the range of roleplaying games which Bottled Sea would be a natural fit for, its influences are equally as diverse. Those given include Waterworld, New Weird, and a Canticle for Leibowitz, but there is also the feel of boy’s own adventure or Saturday morning cartoons combined with elements of horror, such as the Floating Hexahedron. Of course, Bottled Sea need not be run as a standalone mini-campaign, but as an extension to an existing one. All the Game Master need do is provide a reason for the Player Characters to visit the Bottled Sea. For example, the Bottled Sea could be a rumoured location of a device of the Ancients in the Third Imperium for Traveller or what if the Player Characters were passengers from a crashed starship in the MOTHERSHIP Sci-Fi Horror Roleplaying Game?

In terms of play, Bottled Sea sort of traps the Player Characters within its confines. It keeps them within its limits until the last hex is drawn from the bag and they can find their way out. By that time, the Player Characters will probably have visited every hex and encountered multiple threats and dangers, and if they have engaged with any of the four factions to be found in Harbourage, they are likely to have found employment too, and that will drive them back out onto the Bottled Sea again. How or when that will happen all depends upon when the city location is drawn during play. What this means is that the Bottled Sea is a mini-campaign in its own right.

Bottled Sea is fantastically thematic and fantastically presented. A Game Master could grab this, set-up the Game Master’s Screen, pull the first tile, and start running a mini-campaign. However, that would take a lot of improvisation and improvisational skill upon the part of the Game Master, who also has to know the game system she is running the Bottled Sea with very well to run it easily. All of which is needed because the textual content of The Undying Sands really consists of prompts and hooks with little in the way of detail—if any. Perhaps a better way of approaching Bottled Sea—especially if the Game Master is not as confident about her ability to improvise—is to work through the locations, especially Harbourage, and prepare, prepare, prepare. Some Game Masters may relish the prospect, but others may wish that there had been more information given in Bottled Sea to make the task easier for them.

Ultimately, Bottled Sea gives a Game Master the means to improvise and run a fantastically pulpy campaign in a range of genres against a weird Science Fiction, lost worlds, lost at sea background. How much improvisation and how much preparation is required, will very much be down to the individual Game Master.

The Black Hack – Classic Monsters is a bestiary for use with The Black Hack, Second Edition, the player-facing retroclone originally published in 2016. It is both incredibly dull and incredibly useful before it gets a bit interesting. Designed to support the play of classic fantasy, it contains some the stats and mechanical details of some two-hundred-and-forty monsters based on those that appeared in Original Dungeons & Dragons and the version of Basic Dungeons & Dragons and Expert Dungeons & Dragons designed by Tom Moldvay. So almost everything from Ankheg, Ant, Giant Worker, Soldier, and Queen, Ape, Man-eating, Basilisk, Bat, Giant, Bear, Black, Grizzly, Polar, and Cave—and that is just on the first page, to Wraith, Wyvern, Xorn, Yellow Mould, Yeti, and Zombie—and that is on the last page! Which is a lot of monsters to get on the one page. So, the question is, how does The Black Hack – Classic Monsters manage to cram as much monster on the one page?
The Black Hack – Classic Monsters is not a bestiary in the classic sense, despite containing a large number of classic monsters. To get as many monsters as it does in its forty-six pages it forgoes any monster description and almost any monster illustration. Instead, it contains just the stats, or rather the stat for each monster and a list of each monster’s abilities or notable features. Often with a little bit of humour. This for example, is the entry for the classic Dungeons & Dragons monster, the owlbear.

Owlbear – HD5
Claw, Claw, Bite – STR (1 Close) 6 dmg

• Huggy bear! If a failed Defence Roll is an odd number, the target takes Ongoing Damage until they make a successful STR Test as an Action.

The result is short, to the point, easy to use, but not necessarily all that interesting to read or look at. Certainly, in comparison to The Black Hack, Second Edition, which has its own bestiary and illustrations. However, The Black Hack – Classic Monsters is handy, especially if the Game Master is running an old module or scenario which itself draws from the same sources, as a ready reference to have at the table. The Game Master will still need to add some flavour to any encounter using these stats, but the likelihood is that either she would actually know many of these monsters and what they look like or her players will—if not both. Further, the scenario she would be running would have details she could use to add flavour and detail as well. So, an eminently serviceable supplement then? Well actually, The Black Hack – Classic Monsters contains a bit more than just one big list of monsters and their stats virtually free of any illustrations.

In fact, The Black Hack – Classic Monsters contains several lists. The main and longest lists contains the aforementioned monsters. The rest of the slim book consists of appendices. The first of these is a page of dinosaurs—just the one?—whilst the second consists of ‘Monsters of Legend’. These are reinterpretations of monsters extremely specific to Dungeons & Dragons. These include the Bestial Eye, Dimension Cat, Hooked Lurker, Koi-Ped, Mushroom Men, Under-Mauler, and more. These are decent adaptations, slimmed to the minimum of information necessary. However, in contrast to the easier entries in the book, the ‘Monsters of Legend’ are illustrated. This is as much to indicate to the Game Master what they are actually given the fact that the names have been changed for reasons! So, the Bestial Eye is a floating orb with a single large eye, a maw full of large teeth, and a halo of tentacles each ending in an eye of their own. The third appendix is the ‘Monsters’ Spell Index’. This lists all of the spells used by the monsters in the supplement for easy reference. It includes on how monsters cast spells according to the rules, that is, the players rolling to avoid or reduce the effect of a spell rather than the Game Master making the equivalent of a casting roll. There are guidelines too for creating shaman and witch doctor Humanoid monsters.

The fourth appendix is more expansive and possibly the most useful section in book. The ‘Conversion Guide’ provides a means for the Game Master to adapt any monster from Dungeons & Dragons to The Black Hack. This is a step-by-step process, explaining which stats and elements of Dungeons & Dragons monsters to adapt to The Black Hack. It is a quick and easy process, which with a bit of practice, the Game Master can even do during play. The notes also cover how to create powerful foes as well, and there is a list of sample abilities too. Most of these have been drawn from the abilities given for the various monsters listed earlier in the book, and of course, the Game Master can peruse their entries for other ones as well. Lastly, the final appendix, ‘Poison Tables’, provides a set of tables for determining poison effects other than death of Out of Action. These work with the book’s monsters as well as any assassins wielding a poison-coated blade!

Physically, The Black Hack – Classic Monsters is a handsome little book. The artwork is decent, if occasionally cartoonish, but the writing is clear and the layout clean and simple.

The Black Hack – Classic Monsters is more serviceable than it first appears to be. The lists of monsters are useful—and with some adjustment could be used with other microclones such as Knave or Cairn, but the ‘Conversion Guide’ makes just about every scenario or supplement monsters for classic roleplaying fantasy accessible and convertible to The Black Hack. Which is why every Game Master for The Black Hack should have it on her shelf.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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