Much like the Jonstown Compendium for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and The Companions of Arthur for material set in Greg Stafford’s masterpiece of Arthurian legend and romance, Pendragon, the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition is a curated platform for user-made content. 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: Hope’s EndPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author Steen Stahlhut

Setting: New England, 1914Product: One-shot
What You Get: Forty-six page, 4.74 MB PDFElevator Pitch: Can a zombie be guilty of making a false instrument?Plot Hook: New England in a time of cholera.
Plot Support: Staging advice, four pre-generated Investigators, nine handouts, three NPCs, three maps, one Mythos tome, one Mythos spell, and two monsters.Production Values: Underwhelming.
Pros# Scenario near Lovecraft Country# Easy to adjust to other locations# Historically inspired scenario# Mythos elements pleasingly hidden under another investigation# Nosophobia# Necrophobia# Kinemortophobia
Cons# Why are grave diggers in Call of Cthulhu always drunk?# Needs a good edit
Conclusion# Medical turned Mythos investigation undermined by poor presentation# Potentially a very serviceable investigation

The light of the Emperor’s divine might reaches everywhere—but not always. Only in recent years has the Great Rift begun to unseal and the mysterious Noctis Aeterna begun to recede, the Days of Blinding ended, and links reforged with worlds in the Marcharius Sector lost under its pall and beyond the sector itself. As communication, trade, and psychic links have been reestablished with Terra, the Imperium has worked hard to restore its rightful authority and ensure that no deviancy from creed has taken place in the Days of Blinding. Despite this still, heretics turn to the Dark Gods with their promises and falsehoods and corruption is rife, wasting the Emperor’s resources and wealth, and from without, there is always the danger of raids by Orks or worse, Tyranoids. Yet routing out such heresies and corruption is no matter, but an issue of politics and influence as well as loyalty and devotion. The Emperor’s great servants search out those they deem worthy to serve them and the Imperium, directing them to investigate mysteries and murders, experience horror and heresies, expose corruption and callousness, whether in in pursuit of their patron’s agenda, his faction’s agenda, the Emperor’s will, or all three. In return they will gain privileges far beyond that imagined by their fellows—the chance to travel and see worlds far beyond their own, enjoy wealth and comfort that though modest is more than they could have dreamed of, and witness great events that they might have heard of years later by rumour or newscast. This though, is not without its costs, for they will face the worst that the forces of Chaos has to fling at them, the possibility of death, and if they fail, exile and loss of all that they have gained. In the Forty-First Millennium, everyone is an asset and everyone is expendable, but some can survive long enough to make a difference in the face of an uncaring universe and the machinery of the Imperium of Mankind grinding its way forward into a glorious future.

This is the set-up in Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum, the spiritual successor to Dark Heresy, the very first fully realised roleplaying game to be set within the Warhammer 40,000 milieu and published in 2008, the very first roleplaying game that Games Workshop had published in two decades. Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum is published by Cubicle 7 Entertainment and now it has its own introduction to the setting in the form of the Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum Starter Set. Given that this is from Cubicle 7 Entertainment, there is the likelihood that this is going to be a good product. After all, since the publication of the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Starter Set, the publisher has been releasing one good starter set after another. Which begs the question, what is a good starter set? Essentially, it has to provide everything that the Game Master and her players need to play a good scenario that showcases the nature of the setting and what the players and their characters do in the game, explains the rules, and provide content that can be played beyond the confines of the box.

Open the Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum Starter Set and the first thing that the reader sees is a set of nice percentile dice and a gatefold pamphlet that screams, “READ THIS FIRST!”. This starts with a broad overview of the setting, shows you what is in the box, what Imperium Maledictum and a roleplaying game are, how you get started and what you need to play, and where to go next once the contents of the box have been played through. In four pages, it provides the reader—both player and Game Master with a solid introduction to the setting. As an introduction to roleplaying games, it is more basic, so the reader might want to look elsewhere. Nevertheless, this does not mean that it does not do a good job. Below this are six Player Character sheets, again done as gatefold pamphlets. On the front they explain who the character is and why a player might choose to roleplay that character, gives the character some quotes that player could use in play, whilst inside the actual character sheet for the character is presented, along with a breakdown of the sheet alongside it and a list of the character’s goals, connections to the other characters, and secrets. Lastly on the back of the character sheet is a full-page illustration of the character. These pack a lot of information into their three pages—four including the illustration—but the layout never threatens to overwhelm the reader, keeping everything to hand whilst the focus remains on the character sheet at the centre. The six include a Zealot, a Penumbra (a stealthy assassin and infiltrator), an Interlocutor, a Psyker, a surgeon of the Adeptus Mechanicus, and a warrior.

In addition, the box also contains a set of tokens that include the Inquisitorial Seal, a prop that is used to indicate who has possession of it in the game, Character Portrait and Environmental Trait tokens for use on a map (there are no maps provided Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum Starter Set), Superiority Tokens to track the party’s Superiority, and Fate Tokens. There is a set of reference sheets that in turn explain the basic rules, combat, criticals and wounds, conditions and environmental hazards, factions and influence, Warp and Psykers, and trading and gear. These are done on sturdy cards and contain rules and background needed for each aspect of the game, and all together serving as the rules booklet in the set.

The meat of the Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum Starter Set consists of two books, ‘Adventure Book: The Blazing Seraph’ and ‘Rokarth: A Guide to the Hive’. The ‘Adventure Book: The Blazing Seraph’ provides a full investigation in the depths of Hive Rokarth where the Player Characters’ patron, Inquisitor Halikarn, assigns them to investigate the site of a purported miracle, Acid Refinery Delta-64, which has exploded, leaving behind a possible survivor. The Adeptus Ministorum is investigating to determine if this survivor is a saint. The Player Characters have three days to investigate, locate the survivor, and confirm whether or not he is actually a saint, or merely very lucky. Inquisitor Halikarn also provides them with the details of a contact who can help, but before he does that, the Player Characters will need to find and rescue him. This is an opportunity for the Game Master to show how the game system works and how combat works in it, and thus for the players to get used to both it and their characters. The investigation takes the Player Characters from the dank industrial confines of the hive deep into its bureaucracy and out again to the governor’s table and further into the foul, fetid bowels of the hive to confront heresy and corruption.

The adventure is designed to provide a learn as you play experience and it certainly does that in its opening steps. It is a relatively straightforward investigation, though with marked changes of pace as the Player Characters navigate the labyrinthine bureaucracies of the Hive Rokarth and particularly in the council with the governor they have to attend. This is probably the most difficult scene to run. In the later scenes the Player Characters descend into the depths of the Hive are quite detailed and require careful preparation that perhaps might have been easier with the inclusion of a map. One element that the Player Characters do need to take into account of, is the fact that their patron does not want to reveal his involvement in the investigation. He does give them an inquisitorial seal as a sign of his authority, but he is never happy with its use. Further, its use will attract the attention of those who are likely to take exception to Player Characters’ presence.

The second book, ‘Rokarth: A Guide to the Hive’, describes the setting for the adventure given in ‘Adventure Book: The Blazing Seraph’, the hive of Rokarth on the world of Voll. Surprisingly, it is only six centuries old, home to thirty billion souls who dedicate themselves through the Cult Imperialis to work that sees hive manufacture material and materiel for the Imperium of Man’s continuing war efforts. However, the facilities are being constantly corroded from without from Voll’s caustic environment and from within by the caustic waste product, as well as the corruption and criminal activity. The supplement provides details of the factions within the Hive Rokarth from House Castyx, the governing family on down. This includes the other noble Houses, the Adeptus Terra, which constitutes the vast bureaucracies and organisations that actually run the Imperium and to which every Player Character and their Patron is associated with, the guilds that hold monopolies on certain goods, and all the way down to the Infractionists, the gangs that control parts of the lower depths of the Hive, some of which have ties to the noble Houses. There are notes too on how commerce, the manufactorums, and how both the open and black markets work, noting that there is a silent trade in xeno artefacts smuggled into the Hive. There is a complete description of the hive from top to bottom, breaking it down from the Spire at the top down through the Upper Hive, Lower Hive, and into the Bowels & Beyond. All of these sections include a lengthy encounter table and descriptions of places and locations found there. Each of these locations is accompanied by a plot hook, and there are almost fifty of them! For example, the Player Characters might be asked by Sister Celestia of the Orders Hospitaller in the Upper Hive to move the last victim of the plague known as the Shivers so she can conduct further research; to find out for Lawrenca Parnam why her family secretly donates to the Cathedral of Obligatory Modesty—out of loyalty to the God Emperor or a shameful history; or either put down a gang war or broker a truce between in the wake of the events of the scenario in ‘Adventure Book: The Blazing Seraph’. Lastly, ‘Rokarth: A Guide to the Hive’ describes the presence and activities of the four Ruinous Powers and their cultists in the Hive. Of course, the plot hooks need development, but for the Game Master willing to make the effort, there is a lot to work with here.

Physically, Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum Starter Set is very well presented. The artwork is good and the books are well written. The inside of the box is illustrated with a map of the Marcharius Sector, whilst the inside of the box cover shows an image of Hive Rokarth, though it is not very clear.
There is a lot to like about the Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum Starter Set—the production values, a meaty scenario, and the combination of setting and extra plot hooks, but it is not quite as good as the earlier Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Starter Set. This is because it does not have the extended content, the mini campaign that is further supported with content in Ubersreik Adventures: Six Grim and Perilous Scenarios in the Duchy of Ubersreik and its sequels, instead giving the Game Master numerous plot hooks that do require development. What Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum Starter Set very obviously does provide is something that the Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum rulebook does not and that is a ready-to-play scenario. Hopefully, Cubicle 7 Entertainment will develop scenarios for the Marcharius Sector from this starter set in the same fashion as the Ubersreik Adventures.

Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum Starter Set is another good starter set from Cubicle 7 Entertainment, providing the Game Master and her players with everything necessary to start playing and learning the rules, along with a dark investigation into heresy and corruption.

Twilight 2000: Roleplaying in the World War III That Never Was opens with the Player Characters on the run, attempting to escape the last hurrah of the US 5th Mechanized Infantry Division near the city of Kalisz in central Poland or the 2nd Marine Division near the central city of Örebro in Sweden. Where do they go? Where do they find shelter? Where do they find food and water? Spare parts for their vehicles? Extra ammunition for their weapons? Published by Free League Publishing, Twilight 2000 presents an expansive sandbox setting that the Player Characters can explore, forage, loot, protect, and even settle. A sandbox setting consisting of a broken world, torn apart and poisoned by war and weapons of mass destruction, followed by disease and starvation. In the immediacy of the aftermath of the war, it is a grim setting where every day is a struggle to survive at best, a fight at worst. Urban Operations is the first supplement for Twilight 2000: Roleplaying in the World War III That Never Was, examining the status of cities and other settlements in the broken world of 2000, presents new rules and expanded details for playing within their confines, and provides encounters, plots, factions, and scenario sites that the Game Master can add to her campaign. Lastly, Urban Operations presents two ready to play urban centres that can form the basis of urban-centred campaigns and potential destinations for the Player Characters. As with the first edition of Twilight 2000 from 1984 and the supplement, The Free City of Krakow, one of these is the city of Kraków in southern Poland, whilst the other is the town of Karlsborg, to go with the new alternative setting of Sweden as presented in Twilight 2000: Roleplaying in the World War III That Never Was.

Urban Operations comes as a boxed set that contains a ninety-six page book, sixteen Encounter Cards, fourteen modular battle maps—ten for urban environments and four for close quarters combat, four scenario site battle maps with two being for close combat quarters, fifty-four battle map tokens, and two double-sided maps. One of the double-sided maps is a city travel map for example city of Kraków in Poland and the example town of Karlsborg in Sweden, whilst the other is a battle map for Wawel castle in Kraków and a battle map for Karlsborg Fortress in Karlsborg. Everything is done in full colour and most of the maps are marked in hexes, whilst the close quarters combat maps are marked sectors. In turn they depict a large housing complex, a church, a nuclear power plant, a bunker, an industrial site, a housing estate, a hospital, a park, even a housing complex where a passenger airliner has crashed, and more. These are ready to be used in the game, the Game Master needing only to add the details of what might be found at each location. The maps also work well with those found in the box for the core rules.

The ‘Urban Operations’ book opens with a discussion of what the Player Characters might find in a town or city. What it emphasises, of course, is the differences between the now of after the war and what it was like before. So, law and order varying from town to city—even devolving on anarchy, but now always at the point of a gun; bartering has replaced currency, whilst in organised towns and cities, citizens sometimes have ration cards and may have to give up their labour in return for this, sometimes willingly, sometimes not; transportation options are extremely limited; politics continues, but is more individualistic, often feudal in nature, the consensus of party politics having been destroyed in the war; and the infrastructure has been broken, so no power, no running water, and so on. Lastly, the survivors are traumatised, damaged by the loss of friends and family and the society that they once knew. Some cities remain uninhabited, too damaged by the weapons of mass destruction deployed in the war. This presents a good overview and introduction to the situations that might be found in the major settlements in post-war Europe, suggesting a variety of different circumstances that the Game Master can use to make places different in her campaign.

New archetypes in Urban Operations include the Cop and the Criminal. Both are roles that can be created using the rules in Twilight 2000, but the archetypes enable the Game Master to create an NPC or the player a character quickly and easily without going through the full character creation process. The other new rules cover fog of war, city movement such as hugging walls, spotting shooters, breaching buildings and blocked hexes, and close quarters combat. These build on the wargaming aspect of Twilight 2000 and play out as a hex (or sector) and counter game. The rules are nicely supported by a decent set of examples. Similarly, the rules for city travel, which is harder than rural travel, are supported by decent examples. As well as the sixteen new encounters, Urban Operations adds Areas of Controls to indicate if a city hex is under the control of a specific faction, primarily replacing the military or marauder encounters with the local faction, whilst the actual encounters burning buildings, robberies, finding a spy dying in an ally, encountering the ‘Baker Street Irregulars’ gang of street kids, a pop-up market, and more. Other encounter tables cover situations when the Player Characters are stationary, radio chatter, and rumours. Four factions are described, three of which can be used in Sweden and three of which can be used in Poland. Each is given a plot and some notes, as well as a detailed description that includes goals and forces under its control. The Free Polish 6th Brigade is the one that can only be used in Poland, specifically tied in with the city of Kraków (though it could be used as a template for other local military forces in Poland), whilst the Life Regiment Hussars is the Swedish faction tied to the town of Karlsborg. The two factions that can used in both countries are the World Health Organisation and the Vorovskoy Mir, or ‘thieves’ world’. These two are also given two interesting NPCs as well.

The four factions are each tied into one or more of the plots described in the book. These are intended to provide a storyline that the Game Master can tie factions and encounters together rather than serve as a full adventure. To help this, each has a countdown of events and notes as to what factions and what sites—or rather maps—might be involved. The plots include a search by a group of fanatics for the lost and holy Spear of Longinus and the race to stop a new plague spreading in the face of desperate and brutal measures being used by the World Health Organisation (its staff in the post-apocalypse have mercenaries). Some are specifically tied to the locations described in the book’s appendices, such as getting involved in a mayoral election in Kraków or stopping a KGB power play in Karlsborg. The biggest plot is ‘OPERATION Reset’, which suggests that there were other aims than just military ones in this operation, which was to obtain secret Soviet technology. Only part of the whole plot is explained and available to play through here—the next part will play out in the supplement, Hostile Waters. Thus, ‘OPERATION Reset’ provides the beginning of an overarching espionage campaign that will carry over into several modules for Twilight 2000 and involve the CIA, DIA, KGB, and GRU at each other’s throats and the Player Characters caught in the middle.

The four scenario sites consist of a housing block where two gangs vie for access to the local resources and turf with the Vorovskoy Mir in between; a church whose flock looks to its faith for answers, but wonders if God failed to protect from the war or used it to punish them, whilst not every member of the clergy is honest; a nuclear power plant that is still operational, but are threatened by marauders and the staff believe it has a traitor amongst its midst; and a bunker, no longer a place of war or survival, but turned into a nightclub that offers many locals a few hours escape drinking and dancing, whilst behind the scenes is the target for a turf war. All four come with an explanation of the situation, rumours to fling about, a countdown of events, a description of the various locations within the site, and full descriptions of the major NPCs involved. Like the plots, these are not full ready-to-play scenarios, but rather storylines that can play out as the Player Characters get involved in them. They are all very nicely detailed, they all have their own scenario maps, and they can all be used in either setting for Twilight 2000—Poland or Sweden, Kraków or Karlsborg. Then again, like much of Urban Operations, they can be used in the city or town of the Game Master’s choice.

The last section in Urban Operations consists of a pair of appendices. These in turn, detail Kraków in Poland and Karlsborg in Sweden, after the events of the Twilight War. The descriptions begin with what the Player Characters might see on arrival before going on to give the history of the population centre, its current status, a handful of rumours, descriptions of its neighbourhoods, and its major NPCs. Kraków describes itself as the only ‘free city’ in Poland, a democracy on the verge of a new election in the face of an extremist political faction, a centre of commerce sat on the Vistula River which manufactures ammunition and various devices to trade for food whilst the Vorovskoy Mir smuggles in everything else, and the holder of one ace—a working Mil Mi-24 Hind helicopter, though fuel supplies are limited. At the heart of Karlsborg is the Karlsborg Fortress, back in control of Swedish forces and possibly the seat of the Swedish king, the town under the protection of a military which has very limited means to extend that protection, especially as more and more refugees arrive, and marauders control much of the surrounding area. Of the two, the description of the situation in Kraków is richer and deeper than that of Karlsborg, though this is understandable given that the authors had a previous work, The Free City of Krakow for the first edition of Twilight 2000, to draw from.

Physically, Urban Operations is very well presented. Everything is in full colour, the artwork is excellent, and the maps are clear and easy to use.

As much as Urban Operations provides further rules to run Twilight 2000 within the confines of the damaged and destroyed cities and towns of the aftermath of the Twilight War, what it really is, is a toolkit for the Game Master to run a series of plots in a variety of different locations in her own campaign, ideally in Kraków or Karlsborg. Each of the plots has its own scenario location and together they can easily be inserted into an ongoing campaign in whatever town or city the Game Master is using, or they can be run in one settlement after another as the Player Characters travel from one town or city or another. Either way, they offer several months’ worth of play as the Player Characters travel, get involved, survive, and build or move on. Lastly, Urban Operations does include the start of ‘OPERATION Reset’, a plot that will run through the next series of releases for Twilight 2000, so that there is an ongoing connection from one to the next. Overall, Urban Operations is an excellent expansion for Twilight 2000, providing the hooks and means to pull the Player Characters into the world around them, interact with the survivors, explore the consequences of a nuclear conflict, and hopefully make the world a better place.

As the world slides towards its seemingly inevitable end, there are those who desperately search for ways to stop its collapse—or at least forestall its ongoing effects, if only not to be the last king, the monarch whose reign would be the ultimate in failure. King Fathmu IX searches for ways in which his realm can be maintained rather than lost and now his eyeless scryers say they have seen traces of Verhu in the catacombs beneath the ruined Hangman’s Church, deep in the Valley of the Unfortunate Undead. Are these visions one more sign of the impending apocalypse or does Verhu’s chapel hide secrets that will enable the kingdom to survive? King Fathmu IX sends the worst of his servants to find out—his crypt breakers. They are given a map and a simple mission. Traverse the ruined paths and lands of the Valley of the Unfortunate Undead, gain entry to the ruins of The Chapel of the Hanged God and descend into the tunnels below, survey their extents, and take what they can, before reporting back to the capital with what information and evidence they can find.

This is the set-up for The Chapel of the Hanged God. This is a pointcrawl and dungeon adventure published by Loot the Room for use with Mörk Borg, the Swedish pre-apocalypse Old School Renaissance style roleplaying game designed by Ockult Örtmästare Games and Stockholm Kartell and published by Free League Publishing. This is a classic scenario for Mörk Borg, packed with its trademark mix of misery, weirdness, and horror. So much so of the latter that it carries a well-deserved content warning for suicide, self-harm, cannibalism, mind control, and more. Make no mistake, The Chapel of the Hanged God contains strong themes, suicide especially, so the warnings are necessary.

In terms of content, The Chapel of the Hanged God is a pointcrawl consisting of eight locations, one of the actual Chapel of the Hanged God. These are connected by a series paths, some known, some hidden, the hidden ones have to be found, but consist of shorter routes. All of the routes, whether hidden or not, shift and change, so that sometimes the journey along them is shorter, other times longer. This is handled by rolling a number of dice to determine how many ‘watches’ it takes to traverse along any one path. Each day consists of six four-hour watches, two of which can be spent travelling, two exploring or foraging, and two resting. So, it might take as little as two watches, or two days, for the Player Characters to make their way along a path, but on another attempt, it might take twenty-four watches, or twelve days.

Similarly, the various locations take a varying number of watches to cross. Seven of these are given a two-page spread, with an illustration on the left hand page and the description, along with a random encounter table on the right hand page. They include ‘The Wetlands’ where those who shamed themselves in service to King Fathmu IX and have been consigned to a pit of black filth which they wade across on stilts trawling the rot and the ordure for treasures that will enable them to return the king’s service; a maze of shifting walls, filled with writhing fat worms, faces leering out of the walls, and beset by torrential rains, as guards stand on the walls to stop the shambling dead and prisoners from escaping, and the Player Characters can search for treasures or a way out; and a Hermit’s Hut, wrapped in thick chains and with thick black smoke and heavy ash pouring from its chimney, whilst inside the hermit is bound and melded to the floor by thorny roots, his mouth the source of both the black smoke and heavy ash, and prophecies of dubious quality.

Eventually, the Player Characters will find their way to the ruins of the Chapel of the Hanged God. Inside is a dead man who speaks with one of three voices, making promises and attempting to persuade them that they can help the Player Characters. Of course, these are all lies and each voice is actually a demon trapped in the corpse. Below lies an ancient crypt dedicated to the Hanged God, full of looters and profane writings and dedications, but long abandoned bar one twisted servant who awaits the return of the Hanged God. There are worse things to be found though, including a gospel of the Hanged God that if read may enrapture a Player Character, proselytise him to worship the Hanged God, and even emulate the Hanged God and string himself up (this is where the content warning is required and the book actually repeats it here again to enforce the point). The ultimate secret below the Chapel of the Hanged God is the existence of the Book of the Hanged God. This vile tome is made from the skin of the god’s last priest, but is not yet complete and at least one of the Player Characters could be driven to follow the directions marked on a number of maps created via foul means—a combination of swallowing a ball of human skin, auto asphyxiation, and vomiting—each of which leads to the location of missing pages from the book. Once the book is complete it creates a book akin to one of the four described in IKHON, each of which provides numerous benefits, but at a cost in terms of sacrifices necessary and potential aftereffects. Although the Player Characters do carry a map marked with routes to the Chapel of the Hanged God, once there, it begins to change and push the owner to seek the catacomb where the Book of the Hanged God is kept, almost as if it wanted to be united with it…

Physically, The Chapel of the Hanged God embraces the neon bright colours of the artpunk style of Mörk Borg, but not the actual style. Thus, the colours are big and bold, and so is the layout with the map of the Valley of the Unfortunate Undead. The cartography, big and blocky, is serviceable at best. Despite the artwork being somewhat better than the cartography, the book does look most basic in several places.

The Chapel of the Hanged God can be run as a one-shot, the Player Characters essentially stumbling upon a map to the Valley of the Unfortunate Undead, but it works better as a scenario in which they in service—willingly or not—of King Fathmu IX and so are driven to search the loathsome, often repulsive confines of the Valley of the Unfortunate Undead to find clues and secrets that might hold back the apocalypse that everyone knows is coming. This is a journey into revulsion and perhaps the only thing driving the Player Characters onwards is the knowledge that they might find something to give them hope in the Chapel of the Hanged God, though this being a scenario for Mörk Borg, they may find something, but it may not be what they, or anyone, is really looking for.

Since it first appeared in 2019, Old School Essentials has proven to be a very popular choice of roleplaying game when it comes to the Old School Renaissance. Published by Necrotic Gnome Productions, it is based on the 1981 revision of Basic Dungeons & Dragons by Tom Moldvay and its accompanying Expert Set by Dave Cook and Steve Marsh, and presents a very accessible, very well designed, and superbly presented reimplementation of the rules. There is plenty of support for Old School Essentials from third-party publishers, but Necrotic Gnome also publishes its own support, including scenarios such as Halls of the Blood King, The Isle of the Plangent Mage, The Incandescent Grottoes, and The Hole in the Oak. These are full length, detailed adventures and dungeons, but for the Game Master looking for shorter scenarios from the publisher, there are two options. These are Old-School Essentials Adventure Anthology 1 and Old-School Essentials Adventure Anthology 2. Each contains four adventures of varying difficulty and Level, with many of them being very easy for the Game Master to insert into her own campaign, and working well with Old School Essentials Classic Fantasy and Old School Essentials Advanced Fantasy.

Old-School Essentials Adventure Anthology 1 contains four adventures by noted contributors to the Old School Renaissance. The first three consist of dungeons designed for Player Characters ranging from First to Third Level, whilst the fourth is that rare creation, a high-Level adventure for Old School Essentials, in this case, Ninth Level. It is also different in that it is a hexcrawl adventure and not a dungeon, and it takes the Player Characters somewhere surprisingly odd. This means that in comparison to the other three adventures, it is not quite as easy to add to a campaign. The first two adventures require an urban environment.
The anthology opens with ‘The Jeweler’s Sanctum’ by Giuseppe Rotondo. It is designed for Player Characters of First to Third Level and opens with them being hired to investigate the secret workshop of a long-dead jeweller-magician by his grandson who has been worried by the strange emanating from the complex. He cannot pay, but he will let them take whatever treasure they find as recompense. It actually has multiple sources of noise that the Player Characters have to deal with in their exploration of the workshop. The complex has the rundown feel of somewhere abandoned for decades and despite consisting of just seventeen locations, it has lots of detail and lots of things for the Player Characters to look at and examine. There are some interesting and inventive magical items to be found in the process, like the Glove Of Curse Detection, which detects cursed rings and several items which aid magical research. In the long term, these are very powerful items for any Wizard in the party. Another nice touch is that there are no active threats in dungeon, although there are plenty of dangers. The Player Characters will often be able to make plenty of progress through talking rather than rushing into danger.

It is followed by Glynn Seal’s rather unpleasant ‘Curse of the Maggot God’. Designed for Player Characters of Second and Third Level. This is a sewer crawl, slightly linear in nature—especially if the Player Characters follow the drag marks—which begins with the Player Characters being hired by the Guild of Sewermen to enter a recently opened up set of tunnels and rescue a guildsman who has been lost inside. Inside, they find the cellars, all that remains of an ancient villa, almost Roman in style, occupied by the worshippers of a vile creature they believe to be a god. Rot and decay permeate the whole of the complex, and whilst there is treasure to be found, it is either distasteful or requires rooting around in muck to find it. This is more of an extended encounter than a full scenario and probably the easiest to add to a campaign, though in comparison to the other adventures feels sparse and even underwritten.

Brad Kerr’s ‘The Sunbathers’ is for Third Level Player Characters. If ‘Curse of the Maggot God’ had a slightly Roman feel with its cellar of a villa setting, then ‘The Sunbathers’ is more of a Greek island with a temple and strange cult which has harpies in oversized cloaks as orderlies! The Player Characters are hired to travel to Fos Imeras Island, famous for its healing, perhaps because nothing has been heard from the island in quite some time or because the champion Orsilochus has vanished and was known to be heading there. Once ashore, the Player Characters find men and women blissfully and all but mindlessly sunbathing on the island’s beaches whilst tended to by white-frocked attendants, whilst inside they will find patients catatonic, mindlessly playing instruments, violently playing with children’s toys, and the like. The island then, has been turned into a sanatorium for the insane, its patients and staff a contrasting mix of the silent and the savage, with the staff also accompanied by their lion protectors. If there is downside to the scenario it is that the fate of the former staff is never explored and neither are what happens after the Player Characters visit. Nevertheless, the situation is creepy and unsettling, not unlike a scenario for Call of Cthulhu, ‘The Sunbathers’ being a very quiet horror scenario.

The fourth and last entry in Old-School Essentials Adventure Anthology 1 is as different from the first three as it is possible to be. ‘The Comet that Time Forgot’ is a mini-hexcrawl for Player Characters of Ninth Level by D. M. Wilson and Sarah Brunt. As the title suggests this is a ‘lost world’ style adventure a la Edgar Rice Burroughs or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but also X1 Isle of Dread, but one set on a comet travelling through space. The comet is actually an ark for dying world, comprised of icy mountains and forests at one end, volcano strewn deserts and mountains at the other, with mountains, jungle, and swamp in between. Numerous species live on the comet, including Fire Giants and Ice Giants, Red Dragons and White Dragons, dinosaurs of all types, Neanderthals, White Apes, and more. Thousands of years have passed since their ancestors left their home world and they have long forgotten that they are searching for a new one.
When they arrive via the Portal of Time and Space—the only way off the comet—the Player Characters encounter the Neanderthals in their metropolis of ice and grey stone and discover that they have tasks that perhaps the Player Characters can fulfil. One is to cleanse the Neanderthals’ ancient Necropolis of the White Dragons that have taken up residence there and the other is to rescue the Neanderthals’ leader’s daughter being held prisoner by the Fire Giants. However, when the Player Characters go to the lands of the Fire Giants at the other end of the comet, they learn that the Fire Giants are also having a problem with Red Dragons. There are various different factions across the three zones on the comet, but all of them have similar quests, such as having deal with dangerous beast of some kind, rescuing one of their number held prisoner by another faction, and so on. Consequently, there is a degree of circularity—and similarity—in the way in which the various factions and their quests connect to each other.

The scenario can be played out in a leisurely pace, or the Game Master can add a degree of urgency by having the comet be in imminent danger of collapse. Similarly, the Player Characters can follow the quests or simply explore the comet in true hexcrawl fashion, or more likely, a combination of the two. Ultimately, the primary aim of the Player Characters is to get off the comet via the Portal of Time and Space, but in the process they will change the societies on the comet, so the Game Master had best be prepared for that. Overall, ‘The Comet that Time Forgot’ packs a lot of adventure into its pages, enabling the Player Characters to explore a whole world in a few sessions.

Physically, the Old-School Essentials Adventure Anthology 1 is very cleanly and tidily laid out and organised as you would expect for a title for Old-School Essentials. Notably, the content is split between columns of content and almost sidebars where the monster and NPC stats are highlighted in coloured boxes. Colour is used to spot effect throughout, whilst the maps are excellent. The full colour artwork is also good.

The Old-School Essentials Adventure Anthology 1 contains four good adventures, three of which—the first three—the Game Master is most likely to use as they are for low Level Player Characters and the easiest to use. Of the four, the very first, ‘The Jeweler’s Sanctum’ is the best, full of detail and flavour and with an emphasis on exploration and interaction rather than combat, whilst the third, ‘The Sunbathers’ is quietly creepy and unsettling.

At each equinox, mythical creatures gather in the magical forest to compete to be the ones to have their tales recorded in the Legendary Story Book and remembered in times to come. Only three will survive to have their stories written down, so the competition is fierce as they confront each other with their magical powers, but they only have one night to prove themselves worthy. This is the set-up for Equinox, a betting and bluffing, card placement game designed by Reiner Knizia, one of the board game hobby’s most prolific creators. That said, Equinox is more of a reimplantation of a reimplantation than a new design, though one which has been given a very attractive retheming. Mechanically, if not thematically, it is a redesign of Colossal Arena, published by Avalon Hill in 1997, which was itself a redesign of Grand National, published by Piatnik in 1996. So, the game has a bit of a history. Equinox itself, was published by Plan B Games, best known for titles such as Century Spice Road and Azul. It is designed to be played by between two and five players, aged ten and up, and can be played through in thirty minutes.

The very first thing that you are going to notice about Equinox is the quality of the components. The cards are large—2¾ by 4¾ inches—and the artwork is superb. The game’s stones, done in pastel colours, add a pleasing tactile feel and heft to the game, and the game even comes with nice little bags to store them in. (To be honest, this is the only thing the bags do, so they do feel superfluous.)

Equinox consists of one-hundred-and-ninety-nine cards, five cloth bags, and twenty-five stones. The cards break down in fourteen Champion cards, one-hundred-and-fifty-four Creature cards, eleven Chameleon cards, three Tree cards, six Row cards, and eleven Disappearance cards. The Champion cards represent the entrants in the competition, and consist of various animals and creatures, such as Squeak (mouse), Stag, Hoot (owl), Ursus (bear), Goatman, and so on. Each Champion has corresponding set of eleven cards in the one-hundred-and-fifty-four Creature cards, numbered from zero to ten. Each creature has a special ability, which is marked on their cards. The Chameleon cards are also numbered from zero to eleven, but do not have a corresponding Champion card. The Row cards, from zero to five, indicate the current round of the game. Their number also indicates the number of Prestige Points they will award the players who placed bets on the surviving Champions. The Disappearance cards are used to identify the creatures who have been eliminated from the game. The stones are used to indicate the players’ bets, each player being able to place a single bet per round.

Each round, the players will take it in turns to play Creature cards on the spaces in the current row underneath their Champion cards and place bets on the cards. A player can also reveal a secret bet made at the start of the game to gain control of a Champion, which allows him to trigger its special ability. At the end of each round, one Champion will be eliminated, so that by the end of the game, only three will have survived. The player who has earned the most Prestige Points from the bets he has placed on the surviving Champion is the winner. Bids placed earlier in the game are worth more than those placed later in the game.
Set-up is simple enough. Each player takes one set of stones and eight Champion cards are selected, either randomly or by choice. The six Row cards are laid out in a column, from zero at the top to five at the bottom. The selected Champion cards are laid out in a line in the top or row zero. They will be the Champions that the players will be betting on over the course of the five rounds. With fourteen Champions to choose from and only eight being used each time, Equinox offers a decent degree of replay value as it means different special abilities to try and activate over the course of the game. The Creature cards corresponding to the chosen Champion cards, the Chameleon cards, and the Tree cards are shuffled to form a single deck. Players then draw a hand of eight cards from this deck.

On each round, the players are playing cards and betting on the one row. A player’s turn has five phases. In the first, the player makes or reveals a prediction. In the first round, this can be an open prediction or a secret prediction, but can only be an open prediction in later rounds. A secret prediction is made on a Creature card from the player’s hand that he hopes will survive until the end of the game. It is placed face in front of him with a stone on top of it. If that Champion does survive to the end of the game, it is worth extra Prestige Points. An open prediction can be placed on a space or a card under a Champion in play, and once placed, no further predictions can be placed under that Champion in that row.

A player can also reveal his secret prediction. This can help him gain control of that Champion, though it means that the other players are more likely to try and eliminate that Champion.

A player can play one of three cards—A Creature card, a Chameleon card, or a Tree Card. A Creature card is placed in the row under the corresponding Champion and it can be played on top of another card. This will alter the strength of combined cards under the Champion, which is important in determining control if a Secret Bid is revealed, and it can activate a Special Ability if the player has control. A Chameleon card can be played on any space in a row and prevents the activation of any Special Ability if played, even if another Creature card is played. A Tree card is not played onto a row, but either forces the other players to reveal if they have made a secret prediction on a particular Champion or allows a player to take a previously played and visible card from any row.

The Special Abilities include drawing three cards for Squeak, retrieving a previously placed stone from any column—including for an eliminated Champion—for the Stag, and play a second card for the Twinz. There are a lot of Special Abilities and some of them are more useful than others.

Lastly, a player can discard cards from his hand, useful if he has cards in his hand for eliminated Champions, and draws back up. If all of the spaces in a row have been filled and one Creature card has the lowest value, its Champion is eliminated and the round ends, otherwise play continues until this happens. The game itself will end when either a Champion is eliminated on the fifth and final round or the deck is emptied.
Equinox is a game of betting and elimination and hoping that the Champion you are betting on is not going to be eliminated. When the Champion player is betting on is eliminated, it is likely to be devastating, because with it goes those bets and the possibility of Prestige Points and victory. It can lead to a player being knocked out of the game early because he cannot necessarily make up for the lost bets, so a player needs to be careful and not signal to the other players which Champion he is backing. Placing a Secret Bet at the start of the game can help with that as can taking control of a Champion if that Secret Bet has been revealed. Taking control of a Champion means that a player can potentially use the Special Ability for that Champion and with the right Special Ability it can give the player an advantage and even a way to counter the losses of backing an eliminated Champion.

However, once a Secret Bet and a potential player’s control of the Champion is revealed, it makes that Champion a target for the other players to eliminate. Also, not all of the Special Abilities are very useful. Further, if no Secret Bets are revealed, none of the Special Abilities will come into play. The likelihood is that only one or two Secret Bets are revealed and so equally, relatively few Special Abilities come into play. The difficulty with that is twofold. One is that sheer number of Special Abilities adds complexity because the players need to know what they are and what they do, despite coming into play infrequently. The other is that their use is an exception, meaning that the players have to look it up in the rules. (And even looking it up in the rules can signal to the other players that a player is about to do something.) It feels as if there should be a way of using the Special Abilities without having to reveal a Secret Bet.

Physically, Equinox is a gorgeous looking game. The artwork really is exquisite. The rulebook is easy to read and contains some good examples of play and scoring. There is an absolutely necessary guide to the Special Abilities on the back of the rulebook, though one per player would have been more useful. That said, the large cards mean that the game takes up a lot of space on the table and the bags, whilst nice, are a frippery too far.

Equinox is a great looking game and it is easy to see it origins as a horse betting game in which the players get to bet on the horses as they run the race and are left behind, one after the other (but hopefully not eliminated). Here though, beyond the core game play of placing bets and cards, it feels overdone in terms of its Special Abilities, that whilst seeming to add replay value, figure surprisingly infrequently during actual play and this makes them harder to teach and thus the game harder to teach and not quite as casual as it wants to be. Equinox is a decent game that will appeal to veteran players looking for a fast-playing cutthroat game of secrecy and bets, whilst for the casual player, its harder edge is hidden by its fantastic looks.

Much like the Jonstown Compendium for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and The Companions of Arthur for material set in Greg Stafford’s masterpiece of Arthurian legend and romance, Pendragon, the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition is a curated platform for user-made content. 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: William Bailey’s Haunted Mansion: A Call of Cthulhu AdventurePublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author David Waldron

Setting: Ballarat, 1890sProduct: One-shot
What You Get: Thirty-nine page, 6.66 MB PDFElevator Pitch: Unhappy is the man whose home is haunted.Plot Hook: If it isn’t a haunting, then what horrors have been lurking in the home of the town’s most notorious man?
Plot Support: Staging advice, four pre-generated Investigators, eight handouts, six NPCs, and two monsters.Production Values: Decent.
Pros# Scenario for Cthulhu by Gaslight# Investigation starts from the get-go# Historically based pre-generated Investigators# Straightforward investigation# Layout eases the investigation# Phasmophobia# Sugrophobia# Paranoia
Cons# Layout a little tight# Needs an edit
Conclusion# Neatly organised, straightforward, easy-to-run investigation# Decent one-shot for Cthulhu by Gaslight

Much like the Jonstown Compendium for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and The Companions of Arthur for material set in Greg Stafford’s masterpiece of Arthurian legend and romance, Pendragon, the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition is a curated platform for user-made content. It is thus, “...a new way for creators to publish and distribute their own original Call of Cthulhu content including scenarios, settings, spells and more…” To support the endeavours of their creators, Chaosium has provided templates and art packs, both free to use, so that the resulting releases can look and feel as professional as possible. To support the efforts of these contributors, Miskatonic Monday is an occasional series of reviews which will in turn examine an item drawn from the depths of the Miskatonic Repository.

—oOo—

Name: The Silent CurePublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Andrew ‘Lunitar’ Babcock

Setting: Modern DayProduct: Scenario
What You Get: Twenty-six page, 2.69 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Inhalation of the Body Snatchers
Plot Hook: What if the cure is the infection?Plot Support: Staging advice, six hundred NPCs (victims), and four Mythos monsters.Production Values: Spotty. Literally.
Pros# Classic invasion/infection paranoia scenario# Easy to adapt to any modern small town# Creepy atmosphere# Paranoia# Nosophobia# Sternutaphobia
Cons# Needs an edit# No maps or floorplans
# Could have been better organised
Conclusion# Invasion of the Body Snatchers meets Night of the Living Dead# “You don’t have to fight anymore. Just breathe.”

From the detective stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to the ghost stories of M.R. James, from the adventure tales of H. Rider Haggard to the speculative fiction of H.G. Wells, and the social commentary and mystery of Charles Dickens to the fantasies of Lewis Carroll, from the so-called perversities of Oscar Wilde to the murders of Jack the Ripper, from the fog-shrouded streets of London to the dusty frontier of the Punjab, from the refined and mannered lives of the aristocracy with their downstairs servants to the squalor of the slums and rookeries, there is much that we know about the Victorian Age in the latter half of the nineteenth century. This is the period of La Belle Époque, the Golden Age between the Franco-Prussian War in 1871 and the outbreak of the Great War in 1914 when the great European powers dominated the world like never before, their rivalries and tensions affecting millions of people around the world, but barely at home, a situation that would drastically change in the twentieth century when the great alliances that had previously helped to keep the peace calamitously clashed and changed the world like never before. This is a world that will be familiar to many, though both history and fiction, and has been ripe for gaming since “The first ‘Truly British’ role playing game”, that is, Victorian Adventure published in 1983. It is a roleplaying game that William A. Barton certainly saw and reviewed and perhaps was influenced by when he wrote Cthulhu by Gaslight: Horror Roleplaying in 1890s England, published by Chaosium, Inc. in 1986. This boxed set shifted the horror of H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos from the Jazz Age and the USA of the 1920s as presented in Call of Cthulhu in 1981 (and ever since) to the streets of London and the far reaches of the British Empire in the Mauve Decade. It has remained a popular setting for Call of Cthulhu over the years, the setting receiving two further editions in 1988 and 2012, but it returns with a fourth edition with the Cthulhu by Gaslight: Investigators’ Guide.

The Cthulhu by Gaslight: Investigators’ Guide – Mysteries & Frights in the Victorian Age returns the Mythos to the Mauve Decade of the 1890s as a standalone book. What this means is that neither of the Keeper Rulebook or the Investigator Handbook for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition is required to run and play Cthulhu by Gaslight. It thus means that the book include both introductions to roleplaying and the Cthulhu Mythos, as well as a comprehensive summary of the rules in the first of its two appendices. The setting and rules are compatible with Pulp Cthulhu: Two-fisted Action and Adventure Against the Mythos for a more adventurous style of play and with Down Darker Trails: Terrors of the Mythos in the Old West, should a Keeper and her players want to escape the stuffy confines of London and the East Coast of the USA and venture onto the American frontier. It provides a grand overview of Victorian England, paying particular attention to London, but also going far beyond that, as well as looking at Victorian society and attitudes. It also includes a guide to creating Victorian-era Investigators and delves into the quirks and oddities of the period that make history so interesting and help make it come alive. What Cthulhu by Gaslight: Investigators’ Guide – Mysteries & Frights in the Victorian Age is not though, is a guide to the Mythos—its gods and greater beings, alien species and monsters, and its horribly human adherents. That is saved for the companion volume, Cthulhu by Gaslight: Keepers’ Guide, and the Keeper’s eyes only.

What is clear about the Cthulhu by Gaslight: Investigators’ Guide – Mysteries & Frights in the Victorian Age is the wealth of information it presents, more so than any of the three previous editions. And to no little extent, if the player or Keeper has read or used those previous editions, or indeed, has an interest in the history of the Victorian period, then they will find much that is familiar within its pages. There is a guide to Victorian social class, life in the city and the country—including in the infamous slums known as rookeries, politics including the radicalism of the Fabian Society and anarchism, the Royal Family, the nature of domestic service, religion, philanthropy, death and mourning, women and the law, the place of ethnic minorities, and sex and society. It also covers communications—Royal Mail, the telegraph, and the telephone, as well as crime, policing, and the underworld. Throughout, many of these subjects are accompanied by little timelines of their own that highlight the notable events that changed them, often laws passed by parliament to improve the lot of society.

Perhaps the biggest factor here and the one that will most obviously affect an Investigator is that of class. Obviously, it plays a major factor in almost every social situation and the expectations of the different classes do limit the ways in which a person of one class can interact with another and do so correctly without being seen to act improperly. What this means is that Investigators of all classes are required to access different social spaces. Thus, members of the middle and upper classes would look out of place in a working-class area or space and any working-class person found there would not necessarily be as readily forthcoming in answers to queries as if they were a member of their own class. There is also a general deference to the classes above you, but this does not mean attitudes between classes did not vary. Although campaigns can be run with the Investigators all coming from a single class or group, the nature of Victorian society begs the question, how Investigators of different Classes be seen together given its constraints? Here is where the Cthulhu by Gaslight: Investigators’ Guide begins to get that little bit more interesting. It suggests a number of ‘Multi-Class Set-Ups & Locations’ as possible set-ups, such as charities operating in working-class areas, music hall performances, racecourses, seaside resorts, and so on.

This is the first of three sections in the book that suggest ways in which Victorian society was not quite as straitlaced and corseted as we imagine. Evelyn De Morgan, the female artist who painted male nudes, Benjamin Disraeli, middle class and Jewish, who rose to become leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister—twice, and Lillie Langtry, notorious ‘adventuress’, actress, producer, and theatre manager and mistress to the Prince of Wales and advertising face of Pears Soap, are among the notable Victorians listed as having defied the expectations of their backgrounds and so could serve as possible inspirations for Investigators. Similarly, there is a lengthy section on LGBTQI+ Victorians which explores their lives during the period. Unfortunately, the outwardly prudish attitudes of Victorian society means that what we know of it is drawn from its various scandals and criminal prosecutions, although this is contrasted by some calls for acceptance. The third looks at the subject of Race and place of minorities in Victorian society, highlighting the lives and places they made for themselves in the empire. Together—and despite the social mores of the period—the exploration of these three subjects open up a wider choice of backgrounds for Investigators and wider possibilities in terms of scenarios and storytelling than the Gaslight era might otherwise suggest.

Investigator creation is as per Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, but with a handful of changes. One of these is class, determined by Occupation, as for example, Acrobat and Labourer are working class Occupations, Clergy and Scientist are Middle Class Occupations, and Aristocrat is an upper-class Occupation. Others span the classes, for example, Police Officer is working to middle class and Physician is middle to upper. Some Occupations are particular to Cthulhu by Gaslight, like Inquiry Agent and the Consulting Detective, whilst some are adaptations taken from Call of Cthulhu Investigator Handbook, such as the Alienist which adapts the Psychologist. The Labourer and Criminal Occupations are further split into specialisations, including the Chimney Sweep and the Navvy for the Labourer and the Footpad and the Swindler for the Criminal. The Adventuress is an exception being upper class, but only temporarily. In addition, there are guidelines for creating Heroes rather than Investigators for use with Pulp Cthulhu: Two-fisted Action and Adventure Against the Mythos and there is also a list of Occupations from the Call of Cthulhu Investigator Handbook suitable for use with Cthulhu by Gaslight. There is also a good interpretation of skills in the period along with the addition of Alienism (similar to Psychology), Mesmerism (replaces Hypnotism), Reassure (similar to Psychiatry), and Religion. It is a very broad range of options across the three social classes.

Similar to Regency Cthulhu: Dark Designs in Jane Austen’s England, there are rules for Reputation and how to both damage and repair it in Cthulhu by Gaslight, but they are optional. Suggestions are also provided for several Investigator organisations, including the ‘Mainwaring Society for the Betterment of the Working Classes’, dedicated to self-improvement, the ‘Nonstandard Club’, a slightly dubious dining society for the middle and upper classes which gathers to regale each other with frightening or embarrassing stories, and ‘The Lorists’, a middle-class organisation dedicated to investigating and dealing with goblins, giants, faeries, and weird local customs.

The Cthulhu by Gaslight: Investigators’ Guide provides an extensive price list of equipment, devices, and weapons, including a handful of Pulp Cthulhu devices, essentially everything that an Investigator might want at home and abroad. Once fully kitted out, whether for a night out to the theatre or the music hall or a walking holiday in the Lake District or a boat trip up the Nile to visit the Pyramids, the rulebook takes us there too. The book is self-admittedly London centric, so it warrants a detailed chapter of its own, covering the capital’s districts, hospitals and asylums, places of entertainment, museums and libraries, railway stations, cemeteries, places to stay and shop, clubs, and clubs for ladies and gentlemen. In comparison, the treatment of the four countries that make up the United Kingdom feels brief by comparison and feel as if they need a supplement of their own. Of course, this is not the extent of the British realm during this period, so the British Empire is given a similar treatment. Again, this quite literally has a lot of ground to cover, but from Cyprus, Gibraltar, and Malta in the Mediterranean to Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji in the Pacific, there is a solid overview of the extent of the British Empire at the time. Alongside this, there is advice on the need for the Keeper and her players to discuss the degree to which colonialism and racism should be present in their game, whilst the subject of slavery is explored historically, but not addressed in the same fashion.

The Victorian Age was one of exploration and adventure, with constant news flowing back from the furthest corners of the then unknown world to the European explorer of discoveries made and places reached to fill column inches. British Investigators need not travel very far to gain some semblance of the strange and the exotic, whether it is attending lectures hosted by the numerous societies and clubs, like the Alpine Club and Royal Geographical Society (to which they could also belong) or simply embarking on the Grand Tour of Europe. Again, and although not extensive, the book provides a good overview of exploration during the period.

For the most part, the Cthulhu by Gaslight: Investigators’ Guide – Mysteries & Frights in the Victorian Age is a very straightforward and straitlaced treatment of the period, but it does loose its stays and go beyond its ordinary limits and into the outré—and does so in three surprising ways. The first is to visit the shores of the eastern seaboard of the United States of America, noting both the differences in language during the period and violence between the two societies, before providing thumbnail descriptions of New York, Boston, and Chicago. However, the second is that it turns its sights on New England to visit a totally unexpected region, that of Lovecraft Country. Its examination of the major settlements of the Miskatonic Valley—Arkham, Dunwich, and Innsmouth—is cursory at best, but welcome acknowledgement of their existence in this period. A first for Call of Cthulhu. Of course, the description of Arkham in this period would work well in conjunction with Call of Cthulhu: Arkham.

Third and last, the Cthulhu by Gaslight: Investigators’ Guide goes beyond the mortal realms to examine the Victorian approach to pseudoscience and the occult, having just looked at science and medicine. This begins with the fringe sciences of mesmerism, electrotherapy, phrenology, and more—with a discussion of eugenics along the way—before delving into myth and folklore and the occult. This in turn covers Freemasonry, Druidism, and both the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and The Theosophical Society. Particular attention is paid to both organisations, discussing their history and their beliefs as well as providing biographies of varying lengths of their leading members. So included in the membership of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn are Samuel Liddell Macgregor Mathers, William Butler Yeats, and Aleister Crowley, and in The Theosophical Society, Madame (Helena Petrovna) Blavatsky. Also covered here is Spiritualism and ghost-hunting, including the Society for Psychical Research, although in the case of the latter, it feels slightly underwritten in comparison to the other entries. Again though, these are all good solid introductions to their subjects. Rounding out the volume is a good bibliography.

Physically, the Cthulhu by Gaslight: Investigators’ Guide is a good-looking book. It needs a slight edit, but the book is well written and very readable, and the artwork and the cartography are both excellent.

The Cthulhu by Gaslight: Investigators’ Guide – Mysteries & Frights in the Victorian Age is, of course, the book for both the players and the Keeper, so there are a lot of secrets and details of the Victorian era—at least in terms of Lovecraftian investigative horror—that have been left out. Those will have to wait for the Cthulhu by Gaslight: Keepers’ Guide. This does not mean that Cthulhu by Gaslight: Investigators’ Guide is by any means a bad book. It is in turns interesting and informative, packed with details and interesting facts, many of which will both intrigue the most ardent devotee of the history of the period and help bring the setting to life when brought into play. The Cthulhu by Gaslight: Investigators’ Guide – Mysteries & Frights in the Victorian Age is an impressively informative introduction to the Victorian Era and lays the groundwork for the Keeper to return the Mythos and madness to the Mauve Decade with the Cthulhu by Gaslight: Keepers’ Guide.

Something strange happened in Willis, Alabama at 1:43 am on December 22nd, 1998. The temperature dropped from a typical seasonal average of 3 degrees Celsius to -30 degrees Celsius for a total of four hours. Every person, every creature, is dead. Frozen to death. Is this evidence of an extraterrestrial incursion? Is it freak weather, perhaps a recurrence of a local phenomenon known as ‘Jack Frost’? Or it something else. Above all, what can be learned from it? The authorities want to know. Authorities deep with the U.S. government and they will kill to keep it a secret including even their own staff. Scientists, drawn from an ultra-classified UFO research project, are assigned to investigate the freak incident. They are part of the infamous MAJESTIC programme, specifically PROJECT PLUTO from the top-secret labs at Area 51, supported by the pararescuemen and pilots trained to recover alien technology from OPERATION BLUE FLY, with security provided by NRO DELTA, the lethal ‘men in black’ who keep America’s secrets from America itself. On the ground they will come to realise that what they are examining lies beyond the scope of PROJECT PLUTO and as the weather oscillates, sending temperatures unnaturally plummeting and nerves soaring, events around them exacerbate the growing sense of fear and paranoia. Can the scientists of PROJECT PLUTO discover the cause of the frigidly deadly ‘Jack Frost’ incidents and prevent it from escalating before their own security turns on them? Christmas is certainly going to be one to remember—if they survive!
Jack Frost is a scenario published by Arc Dream Publishing for Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game. This is the modern roleplaying game of conspiratorial and Lovecraftian investigative horror with its conspiratorial agencies within the United States government investigating, confronting, and covering up the Unnatural. In traditional scenarios for Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game set in this period, the Player Characters are members of Delta Green, the organisation, at times official, but in 1998 unofficial and regarded as an antigovernmental conspiracy, dedicated to investigating the Unnatural, limiting its effects, and preventing the wider public from becoming aware of it. Not so in Jack Frost. In Jack Frost, the Player Characters are scientists working for MAJESTIC and PROJECT PLUTO and United States Air Force personnel from OPERATION BLUE FLY. This puts them on the other side, though their enemy is not the itinerant members of Delta Green, but a combination of themselves, their own security, and what they encounter on the cold nights in the Yellowhammer state.

Jack Frost is a one-shot scenario designed to be played in two to three sessions with six pre-generated Player Characters, four of whom are scientists and two of whom are United States Air Force personnel. It is played out over the course of three days and three nights in the lead up to Christmas Day. Potentially, if there are any survivors, their experiences as part of Operation WEATHERWATCHER may drive them to switch sides and begin working for Delta Green rather than MAJESTIC. However, Jack Frost is a challenging scenario—in fact, a very challenging scenario—and the likelihood of the Player Characters surviving beyond the events in Alabama, let alone in the long term, is low. Anyone surviving long enough to work for Delta Green following an operation a la Control Group is going to be a very remarkable individual and it is going to take a lot of skill and luck upon the part of his player.

Jack Frost begins with the Player Characters being transported to Willis, Alabama, where the scenario proper opens with a briefing. By the standards of Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game, it is an incredibly extensive and detailed briefing, the wealth of knowledge presented to the players and their characters a radical contrast to that normally given Delta Green agents. What it highlights, even as it threatens to overwhelm the players, is the means and resources that MAJESTIC has to hand with its extensive governmental funding, whereas Delta Green is operating with virtually no budget! However, with that budget comes not just responsibility, but also oversight. In the case of Operation WEATHERWATCHER, quite literally, as there will be a two-man team assigned to the Player Characters from NRO DELTA to provide security, obviously to protect them and and the operation, but also to watch over their actions every day. As the scenario progresses and events get weirder and weirder, this need to watch the actions of the Player Characters transforms into paranoia. The situation is not entirely hopeless for the Player Characters though, as a combination of their persuasiveness and their knowledge, they may be able to convince them that their actions are the right ones...

Over the course of the three nights, the situation gets worse and worse. There are some truly horrible moments in the scenario as you would expect, some of which make you glad that it is a one-shot. The threat faced by the Player Characters is Itla-shua, the ‘wind walker’ of the far north, whose presence is felt nightly until the temperatures are cold enough to facilitate an appearance. Meanwhile, his children rise and if not stopped, will go on a rampage that might not end, but occur again and again in deep winters for decades to come. Stopping his coming and then banishing him is very, very difficult. The situation has to play out in a certain way and things have to go right for the Player Characters. There is definitely no guarantee that this will happen and there is the strong possibility of failure and death for all concerned.

Structurally, Jack Frost feels tightly constrained with its time limits and difficult choices made all the harder by the fact that the Player Characters will often need to get permission to follow them through. The information dump at the start of the scenario is daunting and the two Player Characters who are not scientists, but United States Air Force personnel, may initially find themselves with relatively little to do. As the action picks up on subsequent nights, this changes when they may become vital to the survival of everyone. There is scope for the players to each roleplay a secondary character, again from amongst the United States Air Force personnel, as they are better suited to the action scenes in the scenario.
What marks Jack Frost out as a very different scenario for the Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game is not just the fact that the Player Characters are members of MAJESTIC, but that it is a science horror scenario. It is science that drives the Player Characters to investigate the Unnatural and only late into the their investigative efforts do they realise that what they face is beyond science or even beyond the remit of MAJESTIC with its obsession with obtaining the advanced technology of the Greys. Nevertheless, they have to rely on the scientific process, which lies outside the traditional means of investigating Lovecraftian horror and Lovecraftian investigative horror roleplaying games. As a consequence, both the Handler and her players need to make some adjustment in conducting the investigation and reading the majority of the handouts that take the form of instrument and sensor readouts. This is not to say that there are no traditional handouts, such as newspapers or letters, but they need to be searched for whilst under the watchful eyes of NRO Delta agents.

Physically, Jack Frost is very well done. The artwork is excellent, for the most part, and the handouts are all equally as good.

MAJESTIC has always been portrayed as the villain in the Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game and Jack Frost is no different. Except that the players get to see this from the inside, by roleplaying members of the programme who believe in its aims and know that it is doing the right thing. Their experiences in Willis, Alabama will change that outlook—if they survive. Jack Frost takes Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game through the looking glass to discover just how mercilessly cold it is with a shockingly frigid and fearfully difficult investigation.

In the far future, the Astral Union was invaded by the Strand Fleets of the Nephilim Colossi. It was totally unexpected and the enemy, having come another galaxy, unfathomable. Despite initial setbacks, the Astral Union drove the invaders out and the war was won. That was decades ago, and even today, remnants of the original invasion force, as well as individual Nephilim, can still be found lurking at the furthest reaches of the spatial translation Snap Rifts that bind the planetary systems of the Astral Union together. Perhaps the most significant technological development of the war was the mech. Before the war, it had been designed as an industrial machine for use in construction and mining, and later developed as a combat vehicle, but it rose to prominence during the defence of the Astral Union. Ion Core technology harnessed the latent psionic ability of all sentient beings using advanced A.I. systems to create a Sync-Bond between a mech and its user, enhancing the precision and dexterity of the Mech and enabling the Mech itself to develop a personality of its own and operate independently, but still linked to its Pilot. Today, Mechs are seen far and wide across the Astral Union, the bond between Pilot and Mech celebrated as they were a knight and his steed of old. Together, they adventure and explore, often helping where they can, like itinerant, if armed, ronin of old.

This is the future of Ion Heart: Solo Mech Exploration RPG.It is a solo journalling game published Parable Games, best known for the horror roleplaying game, Shiver – Role-playing Tales in the Strange & the Unknown. In the roleplaying game, the player will take the roles of both Pilot and Mech, who together explore a universe ravaged by war and now recovering, growing together and strengthening their bond. The roleplaying game provides prompts that will drive the story of their adventures that the player will record in short mission logs. These missions typically take the form of an ‘Exploration Loop’—arriving on a planet, discovering a settlement, encountering a Story Circuit, and engaging in combat and travel encounters, as necessary. A Story Circuit is a narrative arc consisting of six parts. The player needs to play through a minimum of three of these before his Pilot and Mech can play out the finale of the Story Circuit, and so complete its narrative before moving. The Story Circuit is pre-written, but the rest is created at the beginning of each loop. To play, Ion Heart: Solo Mech Exploration RPG needs nothing more than some six-sided dice and a means to record a journal.

Between them, the Pilot and the Mech are defined by Pilot Body and Pilot Presence, and Mech Brawn and Mech Reflex. Pilot Body is his physical capability and toughness, whilst Pilot Presence is his mental fortitude and reasoning skills. All of these start at zero, but are first modified by the Pilot’s Temperament and the Mech’s Weight Class. The Pilot is further defined by his Origin, either Apollonian, Varziss, Urvon, Chiros, Kirvae, and Mo’nau. The Apollonians are humans, whilst the rest are anthropomorphic species, roughly reptilian, ursine, bat-like—including being able to fly, centaur-like, and feline, respectively. The Pilot also has a Goal, either ‘Adventure forth’, ‘Return home’, or ‘Escape past’, and a Temperament, either ‘Outgoing’, ‘Reflective’, or ‘Mercurial’.

The Mech has a Class that can either be Light, Medium, or Heavy. This determines whether it favours speed, durability and powerful weapons, or a balance between the two, and thus its starting values for Mech Shielding and Brawn and Reflex modifiers. Each Mech has a Ranged Weapons System, Melee Weapons System, and an Auxiliary System, which will also help in combat. Since the end of the war with the Nephilim, all Mechs have been reconfigured or designed to have a civilian Specialisation and thus the capacity to be useful out of combat. This can be ‘Shepherd’, ‘Harvester’, or ‘Bridgebuilder’. All of this—for both Pilot and Mech—can rolled for or chosen by the player. Lastly, there is the Ion Core Sync Bond, which represents the connection between the Pilot and his Mech, and in play, determines how many Heroic actions or Ion Core engagements that can be conducted per day.

Pilot Name: Aeron
Pilot Origin: Kirvae
Pilot Temperament: Reflective
Pilot Goal: Escape Report
Pilot Presence 0 Pilot Body 0
Level 1
Ion Core Sync Bond 2
Mech Shielding 43
Mech Name:
Mech Weight Class: Medium
Attacks: 3
Mech Brawn 0
Mech Reflex 0
Weapons: Concussion Maul (Damage: 4+D6) [If you hit an enemy with this weapon add +1 to your defence rolls against them]; Auto Blaster (Damage: 3+D6) [You may make a free attack with this weapon when in ranged step of combat.]
Auxiliary system: Liquid-metal armaments
Battle Scars: 0
Mech Specialisation: Harvester
Mech Quirks: 0

At its core, Ion Heart is simple. When a player wants either his Pilot or his Mech to succeed, he rolls a single six-sided die and rolls of four or more means the attempt is successful. A roll of one is always a failure, whilst a roll of six is always a success. For the Pilot, bonuses can come from his Presence or Body as appropriate, but if he fails, the player can decide to have his Pilot undertake a Heroic Action. This automatically succeeds, but at the cost of a Sync Bond slot for that day. The Mech can operate by itself when the Pilot is not in the cockpit. In which case the bonuses for the Mech’s own Mech Brawn and Mech Reflex are used, and the roll required to succeed is still four or more. When a Mech has no instructions, it will revert to the Specialisation it has been programmed with.

Combat uses the same core mechanic, but on attacks, a roll of six is critical hit and inflicts more damage. Similarly, a roll of six to defend against an attack is a critical and deflects part of the damage back at the attacker. A round consists of three steps—Ranged, Melee, and Disengage. A Mech’s Level determines the number of attacks per round, but if the Pilot or Mech decides not to attack, they receive a bonus to the rolls to defend themselves. Damage reduces the Mech Shielding, and this is both when the Pilot is out of the Mech and in the Mech. If the Pilot is out of the Mech, it means that Pilot is not taking damage as such, but his ability to pilot the Mech is being affected.

The Ion Core of a Mech and it’s A.I. means that it can learn over time as it synchronises with the Pilot and it can also overcharge the Mech’s systems. There is no truly safe way to do this, as even if the Pilot and Mech have enough Sync Bond points—which determines the number of times it can be done per day—engaging the Ion Core can still damage the Mech and will damage the Mech if the number of times it is done exceeds the Sync Bond points. When the Ion Core is engaged, it provides the player with a number of choices, such as the aforementioned ‘Heroic Push’, which allows a failed Mech Brawn or Mech Reflex check to succeed; ‘Shields! Full Power!’, which partially restores Mech Shielding; and ‘Meteoric Thunderstrike!’ which enables a single attack that round and has it automatically succeed with extra damage inflicted. In the long term, through play and combat, the latter if the Mech Shielding is reduced to zero and the Mech is disabled, the Mech can acquire Mech Quirks such as ‘Gallant Protector’, which grants a bonus to Defence rolls if Mech Shielding is seriously reduced, and ‘Ocular Misalignment’, damaging its targeting optics! If there is an issue with the Ion Heart: Solo Mech Exploration RPG, it is that it is hard for the Pilot to improve in comparison to the Mech and the Mech is always more interesting than the Pilot as he has no special abilities or skills.

In terms of play and the ‘Exploration Loop’, Ion Heart provides the player with tables to generate its various parts. This includes its biome, a settlement and its amenities, which the Pilot can visit two of per day, Travelling Encounters-which can be friendly, neutral, or hostile, and a selection of enemies, from improved industrial units to one of the most feared mechs in the Astral Union, the Heriot Shieldbreaker. Together these establish a broad environment where the Pilot and Mech will adventure and explore, but what forms the basis the storytelling and the adventures are the Story Circuits. Two of these are provided in Ion Heart: Solo Mech Exploration RPG, ‘The Mech Circus’ and ‘Protecting the Herd’. In the first, the Pilot and Mech encounters Marsha’s Mecha Circus and get to enjoy a night at the circus, but with a Mech! In the second, the Pilot and the Mech find a rural town whose farmers are concerned something or someone has been interfering with their herds of Malhoons, so the Pilot and the Mech have to find the robo-rustlers! Both of these Story Circuits are short and can be played through in single long session of no more than two hours or several, very short sessions in which a single event is played out and recorded.

Physically, the Ion Heart: Solo Mech Exploration RPG is a nicely done roleplaying game. It is fetchingly presented in swathes of primary colours and easy to read and understand.

The Ion Heart: Solo Mech Exploration RPG is a tough little game given that until a Pilot and Mech survives a Story Circuit and can go up a Level, there is not much in the way of modifiers to affect the dice rolls needed for many actions. This is why the Sync Bond and engaging the Ion Core is so important as it can get the Pilot and Mech out of a tight scrape, but it is more important early on in the game when there are fewer modifiers to skill rolls and fewer chances to engage the Ion Core with any degree of safety. However, careful play and some luck will get the Pilot and the Mech through some situations. In the process, the player will discover a rather charming little journalling roleplaying game, one that is engagingly optimistic in its tone and the stories presented in its Story Circuits, which makes the Ion Heart: Solo Mech Exploration RPG a very welcome change in comparison to many other journalling games.

Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #14: Thieves of Cold Corner is a scenario for Goodman Games’ Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game and the thirteenth scenario for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set. Scenarios for Dungeon Crawl Classics tend be darker, grimmer, and even pulpier than traditional Dungeons & Dragons scenarios, veering close to the Swords & Sorcery subgenre. Scenarios for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set are set in and around the City of the Black Toga, Lankhmar, the home to the adventures of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser and the creation of author Fritz Leiber. The city is described as an urban jungle, rife with cutpurses and corruption, guilds and graft, temples and trouble, whores and wonders, and more. Under the cover the frequent fogs and smogs, the streets of the city are home to thieves, pickpockets, burglars, cutpurses, muggers, and anyone else who would skulk in the night! Which includes the Player Characters. And it is these roles which the Player Characters get to be in Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #13: Treachery in the Beggar City, small time crooks trying to make a living and a name for themselves, but without attracting the attention of either the city constabulary or worse, the Thieves’ Guild!

Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #14: Thieves of Cold Corner is a scenario for Third Level Player Characters and is both an archetypal scenario for use with the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set, and like both Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #8: The Land of the Eight Cities and Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #13: Treachery in the Beggar City before it, it takes the Player Characters far beyond the walls of the City of Sevenscore Thousand Smokes. However, it is less of a sourcebook than either of those scenarios, although it does expand the world of Nehwon. Inspired by two stories by Fritz Leiber, ‘Stardock’ and ‘The Snow Women’, it takes the Player Character far to the north to Gnamph Nar and then along the frozen banks of the Mangrishik River to the foot of the Trollstep Mountains, and then from there climb over a mountain pass and down into the Coldwaste. They are providing escort for the merchant-lord Arishot who has arranged to meet the Snow Clan’s at its midwinter camp at Cold Corner and purchase from the clan, a cache of gemestones. Not just rubies, emeralds, and sapphires, but also snow-diamonds, the fabled invisible gemstones said to be worth a king’s ransom. Of course, being good thieves and cutpurses, they have no intention of simply escorting Arishot there and back again to Lankhmar. Instead, this is an opportunity for larceny—and not just petty larceny—but it will be far from easy. Anyone carrying out such a theft is sure to earn the ire of the Snow Clan and it will not only attempt to get the gems back, but is sure to want to have its revenge too. So, anyone who can steal snow-diamonds from the Snow Clan, escape its clutches, and get back to Lankhmar is certain to earn a reputation worthy of any thief in the City of the Black Toga.
The scenario does really need a Player Character who is a Wizard as otherwise they will all be sorely tested throughout the scenario by the abominable weather they will be subject to in the second half. The adventure itself can begin into two ways. The Player Characters can either be hired by the Thieves’ Guild as members in good standing, or they can be thieves who just happened to be in the same dive when a band of Thieves’ Guild members in good standing got hired to do the job and thought they would try and get there first. Either way, the Player Characters will have another band of thieves to contend with throughout the scenario who will attempt to steal the hoard of gemstones before they do or steal it from the Player Characters once they have. The action really begins in Cold Corner, the midwinter camp of the Snow Clan. Here amongst the ice and snow, under the trees, the Player Characters will have to put up with loud and boisterous youths issuing challenges involving ribald rhymes, drunken merchants and drunken barbarians, and perhaps even their rivals lurking, ready to pounce, but worst of all—the women! Known as the Snow Witches, they suffer from both xenophobia and misandry, so men, particularly men from outside the clan are subject to their most severe ire. They also control the clan’s magic, so they are powerful as well.
Of course, once the Player Characters—or their rivals—have made the theft, in their eyes, the xenophobic and misandrist outlook of the Snow Clan’s Snow Witches has been proven correct. Of course, the satisfaction being proven that you are right is not going to be enough and as the Player Characters flee back up and over the Trollstep Mountains the way they came, the Snow Witches bring their most powerful magic down upon the miscreants. Over the course of three days, they are beset by a fiercesome storm of freezing ice and snow as a result of this magic, impeding their flight and forcing them to find sufficient shelter should they freeze. Three such locations are described along the way—if they can recall where they were on the journey there (and doing so may require a little Luck to be expended)—as are the truly nasty weather conditions day and night and the menfolk who have been sent after them by the Snow Witches and are not expected to come back without the gemstones or the bodies of the Player Characters. It is a nasty challenge from start to finish, but any Wizard in the party will have a chance to shine as his continued efforts can alleviate the very worst of the Snow Witches’ storms, whilst all of the Player Characters have opportunities to find some treasure and even strike back if they believe themselves to be capable.
In addition to the stats for the various NPCs, the scenario includes for the ‘Skald’s Challenge’, the rhyming battles consisting of spontaneous songs and poems. The Player Characters will probably be forced to engaged in one of these whilst in Cold Corner and will do so again during their flight south. This time though, the consequences are deadly.
Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #14: Thieves of Cold Corner is a relatively short afair, probably lasting two sessions’ worth of play, perhaps three at most. If they succeed, it does leave the Player Characters rich—though not as rich as they might have hoped once a fence has had his cut—and thus subject to the attention of every other thief in Lankhmar. They might come away with one or two nice items in the meantime. Rounding out is another entry from ‘The Phlogistonic Eye Sees All!’, this time a report from Gen Con 2022, though not as good as the one detailed in The Goodman Games 2022 Yearbook.

Physically, Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #14: Thieves of Cold Corner is well presented. The artwork and cartography are both good, the artwork in particular, having a very frigid feel to it. That said, it would have been nice if the scenario had included a better map of the area where the adventure takes place and the route that the Player Characters are likely to take back over the mountains.
Unlike the earlier scenarios, Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #8: The Land of the Eight Cities and Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #13: Treachery in the Beggar City, before it, in Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #14: Thieves of Cold Corner, the Player Characters are very unlikely to be going back since opportunities for crime are light on the ground and word their involvement in the theft from the Snow Clan is likely to spread. So it is much less of a sourcebook then the previous two scenarios. As a scenario, Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #14: Thieves of Cold Corner provides a clash of cultures, temperatures, and temperaments for a more grueling experience than most adventures for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set. The players and their characters may find it just enough just to survive, but if they are clever and a little lucky, they might get a bit more adventure and reward in addition to their frostbitten extremities and a box of gemstones.

In the far future of broken landscapes, stretched landscapes, and lost landscapes there is often only the appearance of the Gunslinger and the power of his Gun to bring order to the mouldering settlements and ruins of the uncertain past, to drive back the strange creatures, lurking, ready to pounce and rend the unwary, and to stop the ambitious and the foolish attracted to the power of magic which threatens what remains. The Gunslinger is a wanderer, a member of a brotherly order, arriving unbidden one day, dispensing justice and order, stopping the monster, perhaps engendering a little hope, all before finding the next Slip Door and the next world. Their peripatetic existence is the only constant and perhaps the only certainty they know. This is the Drifted World of We Deal in Lead, an Old School Renaissance-style roleplaying game published by By Odin’s Beard. It is set in a post-apocalyptic dark and weird west that combines a stripped-down presentation with the mechanics inspired by Cairn, Into the Odd, and Knave and it is very much inspired by Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series of novels, but also has the feel of a weird Spaghetti Western with genre-hopping possibilities.

Omega City – Ashcan Edition is the first supplement for We Deal in Lead and presents something very different, almost a point of permanence, even though, like much of the Drifted World, it is subject to decay and decline. It arose out of the Dungeon23 challenge, the aim of which was to design a mega dungeon in one year, one room per day, over twelve levels. Each day creators would add something to their dungeons, but creators also switched format, one of which was ‘City23’. Omega City was born of this switch, a city inspired by two things. One was the city of Lud from The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands, part of the series that inspired we We Deal in Lead, and the other was the author’s home city of Edmonton, Canada. This being the Drifted World of We Deal in Lead, the universe is still breaking down and so this supplement mixes more than it matches its various locations, drawing on a wide variety of locations, situations, and creatures from different time periods and genres. In this instance, the actual setting and its disparate nature means that the designer had more freedom of design than his counterparts working on a more traditional Dungeon23 creation.

Omega City does not so much detail individual locations within a city, but provide small regions—a total of twelve—each with five or six buildings, locations, and landmarks. These are presented over a two-page spread, with the places listed on the left-hand page and a corresponding map on the opposite side. Each location is accorded a listing of two or three bullet points. Each location is accorded a listing of two or three bullet points. For example, Region 9 has five locations, a ‘Shanty Town’, a ‘Cracked Riverbed’, a ‘Lumber Mill’, a ‘Colossal Skeleton’, and a ‘Writhing Mass Grave’. The Shanty Town is described as a “Collection of lost souls and broken travellers”, being home to “Residents from different worlds and times, the languages spoken number in thousands”, and the inhabitants suffer as “More and more victims vanish each night, lost to the red claws in the sands”. Meanwhile, the Lumber Mill is “Overgrown with pungent thorns that ooze vicious orange liquid”, as “Flies swarm constantly, adding to the ooze”, and “Great grey swarms cover the dead trees of the nearby woods”. All of the entries are like this, a clash of the old and new, of the ordinary and the outré.

However, amidst the ‘Burned Out gas Station’, ‘Pitted Gibbet’, ‘Spiral Slough’, ‘Corpse-Corrupted Reservoir’, ‘Flesh-Warping Runoff Pond’, and ‘Partially Phased Office Building’, there is no room for the individual. There are groups of people, such as at the ‘Shanty Town’, but no individuals, and also no hooks. The individual descriptions are intriguing, but possibly not quite enough to get the Gunslingers to investigate every case. Also, ‘Omega City’ itself does not have an overview or broad description. To be fair, both are due to the intermittent nature of the creation process involved in Dungeon23, the creator coming back to the process day-by-day rather than sitting down and working at it. On the other hand, this nature means that lack of connections between locations means that the Warden—as the Game Master is known in We Deal in Lead—can pull them out and insert them into her own content as much as she can develop her own hooks to them.
Physically, Omega City is not yet fully formed. Only an Ashcan version is available. It is handwritten and not always easy to read, whilst the map, though serviceable, are rough. The writing though, is by intent short and punchy, often spurring more questions than answers.
Omega City – Ashcan Edition is by its very nature rough and ready, but it does present some sixty or more locations that present mouldering mysteries and decaying dangers in a minimalist fashion that the Warden can use and interpret as is her wont. In this way, Omega City – Ashcan Edition can serve as a series of prompts for the Warden’s own city or prompts for her own version of ‘Omega City’.

Much like the Jonstown Compendium for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and The Companions of Arthur for material set in Greg Stafford’s masterpiece of Arthurian legend and romance, Pendragon, the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition is a curated platform for user-made content. 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—
Deadfellas
Name: DeadfellasPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Christian Grundel

Setting: New York, 1982Product: One-shot (though probably more, plus stabbings)
What You Get: Thirty-two page, 3.46 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: “A road trip is a way for the whole family to spend time together and annoy each other in interesting new places.” – Tom Lichtenheld
Plot Hook: The Drive. The Body. The Hit. The Horror.Plot Support: Staging advice, four pre-generated Mobsters, one handout, two maps, three Mythos spells, and one Mythos monster.Production Values: Excellent
Pros# Classic Mafia road trip set-up# Fantastic tensions between the Mobsters# Mafia memories are the worst# Almost deserves to be staged as if in a car# Paranoia# Thanatophobia# Detection apprehension
Cons# Needs an edit# Short
Conclusion# Four killers, four secrets, one monster, who gets put on ice?# Great set-up demands some great roleplaying # Reviews from R’lyeh Recommends

Much like the Jonstown Compendium for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and The Companions of Arthur for material set in Greg Stafford’s masterpiece of Arthurian legend and romance, Pendragon, the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition is a curated platform for user-made content. It is thus, “...a new way for creators to publish and distribute their own original Call of Cthulhu content including scenarios, settings, spells and more…” To support the endeavours of their creators, Chaosium has provided templates and art packs, both free to use, so that the resulting releases can look and feel as professional as possible. To support the efforts of these contributors, Miskatonic Monday is an occasional series of reviews which will in turn examine an item drawn from the depths of the Miskatonic Repository.

—oOo—
Name: The Exhibition of DreadPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Jared Tallis & The Stars Are Right

Setting: Modern Day Boston, USAProduct: Scenario
What You Get: Forty-five page, 4.97 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Life is art
Plot Hook: What do you do if the haunting for inspiration becomes a haunting for real?Plot Support: Staging advice, five pre-generated Investigators, three NPCs, two handouts, one map, and one (or more) Mythos monster(s).Production Values: Good
Pros# One-session, one-shot# Challengingly creative end scene# Atmospheric haunting# Nice map and decent handouts# Phasmophobia# Ososphobia# Aportaldislexicartaphobia
Cons# Needs an edit# Pre-generated Investigators underdeveloped# Two good halves, barely connected
Conclusion# Art or die decision# Too good halves do not make an engaging whole

The extinction is coming and America is dying. It began in 1974 in the wake of President Ford pardoning Nixon after Watergate and an assassination attempt on Ford. A civil rights spokesman was blamed and in the demonstrations that followed, the Capitol in Washington D.C. was stormed and the US Army was sent into to quell the protestors, resulting in hundreds of deaths when they opened fire with live ammunition. Across the USA, people took up arms in response and incidents of guerrilla warfare broke out across the country. Within a year, the conflict escalated and first California and then Texas seceded, and the country was in civil war. The Second Civil War lasted until 1984, prosecuted by the sophisticated drone technology adopted by the military following the development of scientific field of Neuronics. There were no winners and the former USA remains divided still thirteen years later. In the west, the nation of Pacifica has arisen out of the old state of California, its wealth built on Hollywood and further development and widespread adoption of neurotechnology. The biggest company in Pacifica and arguably the power behind its president, Sentre, made Neuronics available to the public through Neurocasters. Wearers of these high-tech devices are not only capable of controlling drones, but also of accessing neuroscapes, hyperreal landscapes. With the release of Mode 6 by Sentre last year, something changed—and changed for the worse. Some suggested a God awoke within the Machine, some say Pacifica’s enemies were attacking via the system, but whatever it was, users became addicted to their Neurocasters. They preferred it to real life. Some, deeply immersed in the virtual worlds that give them every experience they want, wear their Neurocasters until they die. Others roam the roads and the landscapes, stilling wearing their Neurocasters and controlling hulking great drones. Nobody was immune. As more and more people have become addicted to their Neurocasters, the more services and tasks have begun to break down. This lassitude is spreading and with it an impending apocalypse… Elsewhere there are rumours of technocults hiding out far from the cities and shambling mechanical creatures assembled by the Neuronic network rather than man. Yet there are a few who are immune to the effects of the Neurocasters and there a few who want to move, to become Travellers ready to make the long and dangerous journey to elsewhere, to get away, to find something, to find someone.

This is current situation in The Electric State Roleplaying Game, a pre-apocalyptic Science Fiction dystopia set in 1997, based on the book by Simon Stålenhag, whose artwork has also inspired the roleplaying games, Tales from the Loop – Roleplaying in the '80s That Never Was and Tales from the Flood. All three are published by Free League Publishing and all three use the Year Zero mechanics first seen in Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days. This is the 1997 of Nirvana and Sony Walkmans, Bart Simpson Tee-shirts and Nintendo Game Boys, hoop earrings and slackers, and so on. Recognisable were it not for the rise in advanced technology that has given the world drones, robots, and Neurocasters. It is a world in which the Player Characters want to get somewhere else. They each have their different reasons, but travelling together is safer than travelling alone. Society is not what it was with everyone immersed in the worlds of their Neurocasters. The landscape is not what it was, swathes left untended or poisoned from the Second Civil War. The Journey that these Travellers undertake is the focus of The Electric State Roleplaying Game, its route marked by a Starting Point and a Destination, and in between, Stops. Stops can be a place where the Travellers get food, petrol for the car, find a payphone, and then move on, but they can be a place of danger and mystery…

A Traveller in The Electric State Roleplaying Game has four Attributes—Strength, Agility, Wits, and Empathy, which are rated between two and six. Health and Hope are derived from this, with Hope being a personal resource that can be reduced to push rolls or traumatic events. He also has an Archetype, a role representing what he is. The options here include Artist, Criminal, Devotee, Doctor, Investigator, Outsider, Runaway Kid, Scientist, and Veteran. Perhaps the one signature Archetype is the Drone Pilot, who will not bodily appear in play necessarily, but instead be represented by the Drone that he constantly controls via his Neurocaster. Each Archetype provides options—either chosen or rolled for—in terms of starting Talent, Dream, Flaw, Neurocaster, and Personal Item. The Talent will either grant him extra dice under certain circumstances, such as ‘Drone operator’ or ‘Sleuth’, or provide a more specific benefit, such as ‘Medic’ being able to stabilize someone who is Incapacitated or ‘Neuroresistant’ which means the Traveller is better able to resist the Bliss of neurocasting. Beyond this, the details of Traveller are more personal than mechanical. These start off with a Dream and a Flaw. A Traveller’s Dream is their motivation, their push to go far and make the Journey rather than give into the easy lure of Neurocasting. His Flaw is something that will hold him back and something that he needs to overcome. Roleplaying the Dream and the Flaw will give a chance for the Traveller to improve. The Neurocaster is the model that he owns (though he may not own one) and he also has a Personal Item and a favourite song.

To create a Traveller, a player selects an Archetype and then rolls for the Attributes on a single six-sided die each, with the minimum roll being two Then he rolls for the Talent, Dream, Flaw, Neurocaster, Personal Item, and Favourite Song. This is not the complete Traveller creation process, but that is done collectively during the set-up for the Journey.

Name: Jake
Age: 17
Archetype: Outsider
Strength 3 Agility 5 Wits 6 Empathy 6
Health 4 Hope 6 Bliss 0
Talent: Stealthy
Dream: Get a normal life, like everyone else
Flaw: You don’t trust anyone.
Neurocaster: None
Personal Item: Dog
Favourite ’90s Song: Wannabe (Spice Girls)
Tensions: A dispute about hierarchy (Karen Brooks) [1], Religious or political differences. There’s reason Americans say never discuss religion or politics (Jesus Castillo) [1]

The Journey is the central part of the play to The Electric State Roleplaying Game. Setting this up is a collective process. This includes creating a personal Goal for each Traveller which lies at the end the Journey, whilst the Threat which is working to stop the Traveller from fulfilling his Goal. The Threat is created by the Game Master, whilst key to the Goal is the Kicker, the event that pushes the Traveller to decide to make the Journey in that moment. Together, the Travellers have a vehicle and a shared item, such as a bottle of hard liquor or walkie-talkies. Each Traveller also has a difficult relationship with one of the companions in their vehicle, which could be ‘Hidden contempt pent up for ages.’ or ‘Distrust. Something another Traveler does offends you deeply. It’s all you can do not to scream at them every time they do it.’. This is measured by Tension, which ranges between zero and three. If a Traveller acts against another Traveller who he has Tension with, the Tension value is used as bonus dice. It is possible to reduce Tension simply by talking things through or even arguing about relationships can reduce it and this will restore Hope, but equally, Tension can go up depending on circumstances and roleplaying.

Mechanically, The Electric State Roleplaying Game uses the Year Zero engine, so the rules are light and fairly quick, with dice rolls primarily intended for dramatic or difficult situations such as combat, hiding from members of a Technocult intent on inducting you, making repairs in a hurry, and so on. To have a Player Character undertake an action, a player rolls a number of Base dice equal to the appropriate Attribute (notably, The Electric State Roleplaying Game does not use skills or skill dice), modified by an applicable Talent and the difficulty. To this can be added Gear dice for weapons and other gear if used. Rolls of six on either count as Successes. One result is enough to succeed, whilst extra successes can be used to do it in a showy fashion, quickly, quietly, and so on. However, if the player does not roll any Successes, which is a failure, or needs more Successes, he can opt to Push. In this case, he rolls any dice that are not showing a one or a six, and any Successes rolled count towards the task.

However, any rolls of one after the Pushed roll, have negative effects. For the Base dice, they reduce the Traveller’s Hope for each one rolled, whilst ones on the Gear dice reduce the bonus provided by the Gear used. When Hope is reduced to zero, a Traveller suffers a Breakdown and is in danger of suffering further mental trauma.

Combat in The Electric State Roleplaying Game uses the same mechanics. Initiative is determined narratively, and when a Traveller gets to act, he has an action and move or two moves. An action be an attack, reloading, taking cover, rallying a demoralised comrade, and so on. If in close combat, the defender can choose to take the hit or fight back, in which case it becomes an opposed roll, whilst if being shot act, the defender can dodge, and that too is an opposed roll. Cover provides protection if Successes are rolled on its dice. If a Traveller’s Health is reduced to zero, he is Incapacitated and if he suffers damage equal to twice his Health in one hit, he is dead. If his Traveller is Incapacitated, the player makes three Death Rolls with four dice. If he rolls a total of three Successes in the course of the three rolls, he survives, if not, the Traveller is dead. It is also possible for another Traveller to rally one who is Incapacitated and the Medic Talent means he can be stabilised without the need for Death Rolls. An Incapacitated Traveller also suffers an injury, which can be anything from a broken finger to internal bleeding.

The most important mechanic in The Electric State Roleplaying Game is Hope. It is a measure of a Traveller’s motivation and it can be lost in a variety of ways, such rolling ones on a Pushed roll or suffering a Traumatic Event like seeing a friend get badly hurt or being confronted by your worst fear. When it is reduced to zero, the Traveller suffers a Breakdown and potentially from mental trauma ranging from ‘Confused’ to ‘Personality Split’. The challenge after losing Hope is that there no automatic means of recovering it. Instead, the players and their Travellers have to work at it. It is possible for a Traveller to be rallied following a Breakdown and this will restore Hope, but otherwise the two means to increase Hope are to reduce Tension with another Traveller or spend time with an item of Gear that will increase Hope, like a dog or a Walkman, or a religious book. Certainly, in the case of Tension, this requires dedicated roleplaying between two players, and The Electric State Roleplaying Game makes clear that time should be set aside for this. Further, these scenes should not always be about reducing Tension, but about increasing it. This is because in the long term, if there is no Tension between one Traveller and another, there is no reason to reduce it and thus no means to increase Hope. It also reduces scope for interpersonal roleplay. This then is the ‘Hope Loop’ at the heart of The Electric State Roleplaying Game.

The ‘Hope Loop’ in The Electric State Roleplaying Game is complicated by Bliss. One of the most interesting aspects of roleplaying game is how Hope and Bliss interact. Bliss is a measure of a Traveller’s addiction to using his Neurocaster. A Traveller is going to be spending most of his time on the road or at Stops along the Journey, so in the physical, rather than the virtual worlds. However, this does not mean he will never have to enter a Neuroscape, which can be global or local, as he may need to find information, use or hack a system linked to the Neuroscape—such as drones and alarms, or interact or fight with the other avatars in the Neuroscape. It is possible to act in the physical world whilst Neurocasting, but it is slow and the option are limited. It is also possible for Travellers to help another who is Neurocasting.

However, any time a player fails a roll whilst his Traveller is Neurocasting, whether any ones were rolled or not, his Bliss increases by one. This is before the player chooses to Push the roll, which whilst the Traveller is Neurocasting, has its own extra danger. This is because any rolls of one after a player has Pushed a roll reduce his Traveller’s Hope by one each, and Bliss has dire effects if it equals or exceeds the value of a Traveller’s Hope. If this happens, the Traveller is trapped in the Neuroscape, is lost in the ‘Electric State’, and cannot willingly disconnect himself from it. A Traveller lost in the ‘Electric State’ can be forcibly disconnected, but this has disturbing consequences. It automatically reduces his Hope to zero, which again causes a Breakdown.

Bliss is lost at a point per day spent without doing any Neurocasting. However, this has its own dangers too, since there is a chance that the point lost that day will become permanent. Effectively reducing a Traveller’s Hope in the long term and modelling the effect that Neuroscaping has had on society with the introduction of Mode 6.

The focus of play in The Electric State Roleplaying Game is the Journey. As described earlier, setting this up involves deciding on a Starting Point, Destination, and the route. It also involves choosing the number of Stops, each one an adventure in itself that the Travellers’ Dreams and Flaws will drive them to explore. The number of Stops determines the overall play length, from one Stop for a one-shot to a long Journey of eight or more stops. The Game Master creates these Stops using the advice and prompts given in the roleplaying game, including a Setting, the Blocker (which what makes the Travellers pause their journey), and Threats, as well as adding a Countdown that is triggered by the arrival of the Travellers and will push events forward during the playthrough of the Stop. There is good advice for both creating and running Stops, including playing Neuroscapes, and it is supported by a range of threats each of which has their own example Countdown. Mechanically, this makes them easy to insert into a Stop. The Threats include people, such as cultists or local business leaders as well as the expected technological ones, like drone growths and robots, and environmental ones, such as extreme weather or disease. There are only two entries listed for the technological and environmental, which feels too few in either case. There are rules for travel and chases to reflect the nature of play as a Journey.

The Game Master is also provided with a complete mini-campaign, ‘Into the Dust’, which takes up a fifth of the book. This is a three-part Journey, though it could easily be expanded and some of the stops could be used as one-shots, which takes the Travellers from San Francisco Memorial City into the Blackwelt Exclusion Zone (former state of Nevada), but a long route which takes them south via the Sierra Nevadas and the Mojave desert in a run-down 1993 Buick Roadmaster Estate. Between them, the Stops involve a cult, a murder mystery, and a strange festival, and between the Stops, there are encounters that the Game Master can use to make the Journey even more interesting and exciting. There is also a pre-generated Traveller with their own Goals and Threats for each of the Archetypes in the roleplaying game, giving the players plenty of choice. Overall, this is the basis for a decent campaign that could expanded to eight or more Stops. Lastly, in The Electric State Roleplaying Game,  there are rules for solo play.

Physically, The Electric State Roleplaying Game is very well presented. It is clean and tidy and easy to read. Of course, what makes it stand out is the artwork of Simon Stålenhag which depicts an American landscape in decline as Neurocasters wander like zombies and kitschy robots loom and lurk almost everywhere. The Game Master should absolutely be using this artwork to show off the state of Pacifica.

The Electric State Roleplaying Game is not a traditional roleplaying game in that its world is designed for long term play. The story of the Travellers is going to be told in a single Journey rather than in multiple Journeys because the surviving Travellers are going to need new Goals if they are to set out again. Further, there is not a huge scope for development mechanically as arguably, if a Traveller is only doing the one Journey, however long it is, there does not need to be. The emphasis on Pacifica as a setting and journeying across it also limits the scope of the roleplaying game. These are not criticisms, because instead, what The Electric State Roleplaying Game is, is a narrative, storytelling roleplaying game designed for one-shots and short campaigns that tell specific stories about Journeys across a strange new landscape within which there is scope for interaction, discovery, and horror. In this way, The Electric State Roleplaying Game adds a new twist to the classic American road trip.

Miseries & Misfortunes is a roleplaying game set in seventeenth century France designed and published following a successful Kickstarter campaign by Luke Crane, best known for the fantasy roleplaying game, Burning Wheel. Notably, it is based on the mechanics of Basic Dungeons & Dragons. Originally, Miseries & Misfortunes appeared as a fanzine in 2015, but its second edition has since been developed to add new systems for skills, combat, magic, and more. However, the underlying philosophy of Miseries & Misfortunes still leans back into the play style of Basic Dungeons & Dragons. For example, the differing mechanics of rolling low for skill checks, but high for combat rolls and saving throws. Plus, the Player Characters exist in an uncaring world where bad luck, misfortune, and even death will befall them and there will be no one left to commiserate or mourn except the other characters and their players. Further, Miseries & Misfortunes is not a cinematic swashbuckling game of musketeers versus the Cardinal’s guards. It is grimmer and grimier than that, and the Player Characters can come from all walks of life. That said, it is set in the similar period as Alexandre Dumas’ Three Musketeers and Twenty Years After, so will be familiar to many players. The other major inspiration for Miseries & Misfortunes is Les Misères et les Malheurs de la Guerre, a set of eighteen etchings by French artist Jacques Callot that grimly depict the nature of the conflict in the early years of the Thirty Years War.

Miseries & Misfortunes – Book 4: Plus de Misères is the fourth of the roleplaying game’s rulebooks. The first, Miseries & Misfortunes – Book 1: Roleplaying in 1648 gives the core rules for the roleplaying game, and the second, Miseries & Misfortunes – Book 2: Les Fruits Malheureux provides the means to actually create Player Characters, and together they make up the core rules. Miseries & Misfortunes – Book 3: The Sacred & The Profane expands on this with rules for magic and related Lifepaths, whilst Miseries & Misfortunes – Book 4: Plus de Misères offers modes of play and further subsystems that also expand upon the core play. As the introduction to the supplement states, what it it offers is ‘More Misery’, with the majority of the supplement intended for use by the Game Master, but all of the new rules will add detail and flavour to her campaign and affect the lives of the Player Characters in some ways.

The supplement opens in interesting fashion. If the majority of Miseries & Misfortunes – Book 4: Plus de Misères is for the eyes of the Game Master, the opening essay should be read by player and Game Master alike. ‘Modernity’ provides the reader with an eye-opening perspective of what life was like and people believed in 1648. This includes the belief that the world was in decline, the high point having been classical Rome and Greece, that the science and philosophy of thought we know of today were not for the common man, history and its ideas were accepted truths, disease was spread by miasmas and worms, cities had yet to be transformed by the dictates of either mass or public transport and so streets remained as they did in the Medieval period, and so on. It is a fascinating read that does not swerve the worst that the era had to offer, including misogyny and ant-Semitism. This is not necessarily to enforce their presence in play, but rather acknowledge that they were part of the culture in 1648. This is an excellent start to the supplement.

The majority of Miseries & Misfortunes – Book 4: Plus de Misères consists of two sections. One is ‘Mode de Jeu’, or ‘mode of play’, the other is ‘Petits Systémes’. ‘Mode de Jeu’ begins with ‘Moments’, which examines the structure of play in Miseries & Misfortunes, which is made up of the eponymous ‘Moments’ in time, essentially situations or scenarios that the Player Characters can involve themselves in. It divides them into two types—‘Historical’ and ‘Novel’. The first of these are based around actual events, the aim being to involve the Player Characters in their events, whilst the second are plots and events that the Game Master creates herself. The Game Master sets up a timeline of moments, a mix of both types, that he weaves a plot through. The players do not roleplay through them one after another in linear fashion, but have the freedom to dip in and out of the timeline, according to their needs and those of the plot. There is even a full breakdown of a Historical Moment, making you wish that there was a full book of such events for the Game Master to use. To mark the passage of time, after the playthrough of a Moment and any subsequent downtime, the play of Miseries & Misfortunes switches to narrative scenes in which the lives of the Player Characters’ dependents are examined to see what has happened to them in the meantime and how they might have been affected by the actions of the Player Characters.

To support the ‘Moments’, ‘Mode de Jeu’ breaks down two types of plots—quests and intrigues—and discusses how to prepare for play. This includes right at the start of a campaign and comes with some excellent suggestions, such as having the player recap the adventures and heroics of their characters, even just the one of their characters. There is good advice on creating antagonists and the supporting cast too and the chapter ends with a discussion on safety tools. Arguably, given the nature of the setting for Miseries & Misfortunes, this could have been placed earlier in the book.

‘Petits Systémes’ or small systems, provides a number of sub-systems that expands options and rules for Miseries & Misfortunes. These begin with ‘Favour’, the gaining of the patronage from notable figures, based on the traits that these potential patrons seek or value, such as charm or cleverness or piety. If the Player Characters perform tasks and missions in accordance with those traits, they will gain patronage and be rewarded. If not, the patron will feel disappointed and even feel betrayed. The Player Characters can have more than one patron and it is suggested that beyond the first or major patron, the players should each control and roleplay a patron rather than the Game Master in what is another shift to narrative style play.

Perhaps the new addition that most players will be interested is ‘Duello’, which are rules for duelling in Miseries & Misfortunes. This starts with the legal difficulties of duelling, having been outlawed by the king’s father and grandfather, versus the desire of the nobility to satisfy their honour, and goes on to cover issuing a challenge, employing a duellist, the duelling code, and more. A duellist’s Duelling skill is based on his Mêlée and how many Lifepath skills he has in Fencer. This greatly favours the latter as it should, hence the need for some to hire a duellist to protect their honour. Ideally, the duel should be played out on a grid of squares—which can be constrained by the location and its features—with the actual cut and thrust of the swordplay done as series of initiative tests to first see who can outmanoeuvre the other and the options then available to both, such as ‘Barbed Words’, ‘Break Grips’ if the duellists are in a tie, ‘Trip’, ‘Inside Cut’, and more. There is a pleasing back and forth flow to the rules, but whilst they allow for manoeuvre and movement, these are not duelling rules for swashbuckling and cinematic play. So, footwork, but not jumping and leaping. This is all about swordplay and honour, but as the rules suggest, not necessarily to the death. Lastly, ‘Duello’ points out there are legal ramifications for duelling even when a duel does not end in a death, such as a six-month prison sentence for the soufflet—the slapping of another in the face with a glove! Overall, ‘Duello’ adds a nice combination of skill and roleplay to Miseries & Misfortunes and is likely to be one of the most used rulesets in the supplement.

Penultimately, Miseries & Misfortunes – Book 4: Plus de Misères takes an unpleasant turn with ‘Disease’, an examination of maladies and infections in the period. As noted in ‘Modernity’ earlier in the book, disease was rife in the period. The best that a Player Character can hope for is rest and the hope that he receives proper treatment—or at least what can be regarded as the proper treatment of the day. There are three recognised sources of treatment—Barber, Chirurgy, and Physic—which provide different means to treat different diseases. The use of the improper source, insufficient skill (represented by Gnosis , the degree of knowledge a practitioner knows, as detailed in Miseries & Misfortunes – Book 3: The Sacred & The Profane), and even a complete of skill can result in Quackery, the ability to appear to be aiding the sufferer whilst not actually doing anything to help or even inflicting further suffering. This can include a range of tonics, baths, and pills—and even prayer! The section includes a full list of diseases, their symptoms, and cures—both legitimate and quack. It all makes for very grim reading and a player had best hope that his character does not fall ill, because having to roleplay the treatment, let alone the symptoms, is not going to be pleasant. Lastly, Miseries & Misfortunes – Book 4: Plus de Misères gives guidelines on communications and languages in ‘Communications’.

Physically, Miseries & Misfortunes – Book 4: Plus de Misères is well presented and written with lots of period artwork and etchings which helps impart its historical setting. It does lack an index, but this is not so much of an issue given the compartmentalised nature of its various subjects.
Ultimately, Miseries & Misfortunes – Book 4: Plus de Misères is the equivalent of a Miseries & Misfortunes miscellany or a Miseries & Misfortunes companion. Some of the content is more useful than others and some does add more detail and complexity than every group will want to in engage with. ‘Chevaux’ is an example of the latter, whilst ‘Duello’ is an example of the former. Then some of it is fascinatingly revelatory, like the ‘Modernity’ essay, and in the case of ‘Disease’, both revelatory and grim. Elsewhere, Miseries & Misfortunes – Book 4: Plus de Misères provides support for campaigns with its discussion of ‘Moments’ and ‘Favour’ that also at the same time do shift the roleplaying game away from its Old School Renaissance roots towards a slightly more narrative style of play. Ultimately, the ‘Duello’ chapter is what is going attract the Game Master and her players to the supplement, but there is a lot more misery in the pages of Miseries & Misfortunes – Book 4: Plus de Misères to explore and bring into play.

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

—oOo—

What is it?
The God Beneath the Tree: A Quickstart Playset for Cthulhu Awakens is the quick-start for Cthulhu Awakens, the roleplaying game of Lovecraftian and Cosmic Horror investigative horror using the AGE System published by Green Ronin Publishing.

The time frame for The God Beneath the Tree: A Quickstart Playset for Cthulhu Awakens and thus Cthulhu Awakens is roughly one hundred years. It begins in the 1920s and runs up until the present day and is known as the ‘Weird Century’.

It is a forty-five-page, 22.36 MB full colour PDF.

How long will it take to play?
The God Beneath the Tree: A Quickstart Playset for Cthulhu Awakens and its adventure, ‘The God Beneath the Tree’, is designed to be played through in a single session, two at most.
What else do you need to play?
The God Beneath the Tree: A Quickstart Playset for Cthulhu Awakens needs three six-sided dice per player. One of the three dice must be a different colour. It is called the Stunt Die.
Who do you play?
The five Player Characters—or Character Types—in The God Beneath the Tree: A Quickstart Playset for Cthulhu Awakens consist of an immigrant athletic brawler and aspiring soldier, a stealthy refugee turned farmer, a volunteer farmer good with her hands, a cosmopolitan and observant merchant, and a veteran Soldier. The five Character Types represent a diverse range of backgrounds and origins, including a Black Briton and a Basque, whilst the veteran is a Sikh.
How is a Player Character defined?A Character Type in The God Beneath the Tree: A Quickstart Playset for Cthulhu Awakens is defined by Abilities, Focuses, and Talents. There are nine Abilities—Accuracy, Communication, Constitution, Dexterity, Fighting, Intelligence, Perception, Strength, and Willpower. Each attribute is rated between -2 and 4, with 1 being the average, and each can have a Focus, an area of expertise such as Accuracy (Pistols), Communication (Persuasion), Intelligence (Medicine), or Willpower (Faith). A Focus provides a bonus to associated skill rolls and, in some cases, access to a particular area of knowledge.
A Talent represents an area of natural aptitude or special training. For example, ‘Brawling Style’ increases base damage when fighting unarmed, whilst ‘Scouting’ enables a player to reroll failed Stealth and Seeing tests. A Player Character also has one or more Relationships with other Player Characters or NPCs and Fortune Points to expend on adjusting die rolls. He is further defined by a Drive, Resources and Equipment, Health, Defence, Toughness, and Speed, and Goals, and Ties.

How do the mechanics work?
Mechanically, The God Beneath the Tree: A Quickstart Playset for Cthulhu Awakens uses the AGE System first seen in in 2009 with the publication of Dragon Age – Dark Fantasy Roleplaying Set 1: For Characters Level 1 to 5. If a Player Character wants to undertake an action, his player rolls three six-sided dice and totals the result to beat the difficulty of the test, ranging from eleven or Average to twenty-one or Nigh Impossible. The value for an appropriate Ability and Focus is added to this. If any doubles are rolled on the dice and the action succeeds, the value on the Stunt Die generates Stunt Points. The player can expend these to gain bonuses, do amazing things, and gain an advantage in a situation. Stunts are divided into Combat, Exploration, and Social categories. For example, ‘Lightning Attack’ is an Action Stunt which gives an extra attack, ‘Assist’ is an Exploration Stunt which enables a Player Character to help another with a bonus, and ‘Spot Tell’ is a Social Stunt which gives the Player Character an advantage when an NPC is lying to him.
How does combat work?
Combat in the The God Beneath the Tree: A Quickstart Playset for Cthulhu Awakens uses the same mechanics as above. It is a handled as ‘Action Encounters’ in which the Player Characters have one Minor Action and one Major Action per turn. Major Actions include attacks, running and chasing, rendering first aid, and so on, whilst Minor Actions can be readying a weapon, aiming, and so on. Damage suffered reduces a character’s Health, but a Player Character can also suffer a variety of conditions.

How does ‘Alienation’ work?
Although the genre for The God Beneath the Tree: A Quickstart Playset for Cthulhu Awakens and thus Cthulhu Awakens is that of Lovecraftian investigative horror, encounters with the unnatural, supernatural, or the weird do not cause madness in those that witness them. Instead, anyone who encounters the Mythos suffers from Alienation as his mind attempts to understand what he has witnessed actually disobeys the natural laws as mankind inherently understands them and forces us to challenge our preconception that mankind’s role in the universe matters.
Alienation can come from seeing Entities of the Mythos, from being confronted by Visitations from the Elder Gods and Great Old Ones, other Phenomena, and from Revelations contained in Mythos texts and other similar sources. A successful Willpower Test can withstand the immediate effects, but if this is failed, then the Player Character gains Alienation Bonds, one for the player and one for the Game Master. If either Alienation Bond exceeds five, it resets to one, but the Player Character suffers from distorted thinking. This can be roleplayed by the Player Character or the Game Master can provide false information based on the Player Character’s now flawed thinking.
The points in Alienation Bonds can be spent as bonuses. By the player as bonus Stunt Points in understanding and fighting the forces of the Mythos and by the Game Master as bonus Stunt Points to enhance the actions of the Mythos and its agents. Effectively, Alienation represents a Player Character’s capacity to confront the Mythos, but it also makes him more vulnerable to it.
What do you play?
The scenario in The God Beneath the Tree: A Quickstart Playset for Cthulhu Awakens is ‘The God Beneath the Tree’. This is based on a real historical mystery and takes place in 1940 at the height of the Birmingham Blitz during the Second World War in the nearby village of Hagley. The Player Characters are Home Front volunteers, ordered to keep an eye out for downed Luftwaffe airmen, or worse, German paratroopers, after the local Home Guard is ordered to help in Birmingham, which was badly bombed the previous night. As the Player Characters go about their duties of patrolling the town, there is some lovely period advice for the Game Master in terms of tone and they will be challenged with various tasks that will engender trust with the townsfolk who otherwise regard them as children. It is at this point, all very Famous Five, the Player Characters do begin to detect hints that something is amiss, but are not quite sure what. The scenario takes a dark turn when a storm descends on the village and a German aircraft crash-lands in the surrounding woods.
The scenario really consists of two parts. The first is primarily social, whilst the second is more exploratory and action-packed. Both halves are a lot of fun and all together, the scenario has knowing English sensibility to it. The scenario also provides an interesting explanation for the local and very real historical mystery. It is likely that players who are British and also have an interest in the oddities of history will get more out of ‘The God Beneath the Tree’ than those who are not.
Is there anything missing?
No. The God Beneath the Tree: A Quickstart Playset for Cthulhu Awakens includes everything that the Game Master and five players need to play through it.
Is it easy to prepare?
The core rules presented in The God Beneath the Tree: A Quickstart Playset for Cthulhu Awakens are easy to prepare. Anyone who has played or run an AGE System roleplaying game will adapt with ease.
Is it worth it?
Yes. The God Beneath the Tree: A Quickstart Playset for Cthulhu Awakens presents the basics for a fast-playing and slightly more action-orientated roleplaying game than most roleplaying games of Lovecraftian investigative horror, and supports them with an enjoyably bucolic scenario that turns nasty when something is unleashed from deep in the woods.

The God Beneath the Tree: A Quickstart Playset for Cthulhu Awakens is published by Green Ronin Publishing and is available to download here.

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

—oOo—

What is it?The God Skin & Mad Prax: Sandheart Volume Four is an anthology of two scenarios and the fourth and final part of the campaign set in Sun County in Prax following on from Tales of the Sun County Militia: Sandheart Volume 1, The Corn Dolls: Sandheart Volume 2, and Tradition: Sandheart Volume Three for use with RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha.

The quartet is based on material present in Sun County: RuneQuest Adventures in the Land of the Sun.

It is a full colour, one-hundred-and-nine page, 28.95 MB PDF.

It is one-hundred-and-seven page, full colour hardback.

The God Skin & Mad Prax: Sandheart Volume Four is well presented, decently written, and has excellent artwork and cartography. Both scenarios are very well supported with handouts, maps, and illustrations for all of their NPCs, creatures, and monsters.

Where is it set?
As with previous volumes in the series, The God Skin & Mad Prax: Sandheart Volume Four takes place in Sun County, the small, isolated province of Yelmalio-worshipping farmers and soldiers located in the fertile River of Cradles valley of Eastern Prax, south of the city of Pavis, where it is beset by hostile nomads and surrounded by dry desert and scrubland. Where Tales of the Sun County Militia: Sandheart Volume 1 is specifically it is set in and around the remote hamlet of Sandheart, where the inhabitants are used to dealing and even trading with the nomads who come to worship at the ruins inside Sandheart’s walls, The Corn Dolls: Sandheart Volume 2 is set in and around Cliffheath, on the eastern edge of the county, and Tradition: Sandheart Volume Three focuses on  a cave known as Dark Watch on the edge of the county, The God Skin & Mad Prax: Sandheart Volume Four takes the Player Characters onto a bigger stage both in and beyond the borders of Sun County.
The events of The God Skin & Mad Prax: Sandheart Volume Four take place in ST 1621.
Who do you play?
The player characters are members of the Sun County militia based in Sandheart. Used to dealing with nomads and outsiders and oddities and agitators, the local militia serves as the dumping ground for any militia member who proves too difficult to deal with by the often xenophobic, misogynistic, repressive, and strict culture of both Sun County and the Sun County militia. It also accepts nomads and outsiders, foreigners and non-Yemalions, not necessarily as regular militia-men, but as ‘specials’, better capable of dealing with said foreigners and non-Yemalions.

What do you need?
The God Skin & Mad Prax: Sandheart Volume Four requires RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. Both RuneQuest – Glorantha Bestiary and Sun County: RuneQuest Adventures in the Land of the Sun might be useful. 
What do you get?
The God Skin & Mad Prax: Sandheart Volume Four is a collection of two scenarios, ‘The God Skin Incident’ and ‘Mad Prax: Beyond Sun Dome’. The first will involve the Player Characters in a murder mystery and then a quest and several moral quandaries they are unexpectedly required to complete, whilst the second brings the Player Characters to the attention of Solanthos Ironpike, Honoured Count of Sun County, and involves them in events that are a precursor to the Hero Wars.
The Sandheart Militia is called into apprehend a band of murders and thieves at the beginning of ‘The God Skin Incident’. The culprits are already known, a group of Elves, actually allies of Sun County and tolerated visitors, that has murdered the head of a hamlet and stolen an artefact important to the hamlet’s economic future. In the first part of the scenario, the Player Characters chase them down into the scrublands on the edge of Sun County, where they face their first moral quandary. Do they aid the Elves, aid another group chasing them, or do nothing? Either way, as a result of this confrontation, the Player Characters find themselves under a geas to fulfil the same quest that the leader of the Elves had sworn to complete. This is possible because he and his cohorts worshipped a different aspect of Yelmalio known as Halamalao.
The second part takes the Sandheart Militia back into Sun County and out again into Prax, this time on a journey to Biggle Stone to complete against an ancient enemy known as ‘The Betrayers’.  The journey borders on the picaresque with numerous engaging encounters along the way in the company of an interesting, often demanding protector of the stolen artefact. Where the scenario feels weakest is that it does not make very much of the settlements of Horngate and Agape, both stops along the route. The climax of the scenario sour is dark and sour, dank and sodden, unlike anything that the Sandheart Militia are likely to have encountered before, making it all the more challenging. Its grungy, earthy feel and tone make it the more interesting of the two scenarios in the collection.
The epilogue to the scenario again presents the Player Character with a moral dilemma. Unfortunately, the options are presented in black and white, leaving no room for nuance or other choices.
Originally run at Necronomicon III in Sydney, New South Wales in 1991, ‘Mad Prax: Beyond Sun Dome’ has here been updated to bring the Sandheart Militia quartet to a close. When the Sandheart Militia come to the aid of Yelanda Goldenlocks, a would be Yelmalian hero held back by the conservative and misogynist attitudes of her fellow Sun Domers, they come to the attention of Sun County’s ruler, Count Solanthos Ironpike. Despite his disdain for her, he instructs Yelanda Goldenlocks to undertake an important mission, to deliver a package to the Sun Dome military forces which have been despatched elsewhere, and because of his disdain for her, he assigns the Player Characters to accompany her as well as Melo Yelo, a Baboon who is annoyingly keen to become a Yelmalio cultist. Which, of course, is completely anathema to the Sun Domers.
The scenario is again another travelogue, one that takes them to the River of Cradles, the journey interrupted by increasingly odd occurrences and encounters, including the very entertaining one of the title with a berserk Praxian which is made all the more challenging because it triggers all of Yelenda’s geases, riddles with an Orlanthi, and desperately running Trolls. There is a real sense of this part of Sun County being in disarray, though the Sandheart Militia will not discover why until the climax of the scenario. This occurs in Harpoon overlooking the River of Cradles and sees them participate in an assault on a Giant’s Cradle, something which has not been seen on the river for centuries. Ultimately, the Player Characters, posted to the Sandheart Militia due to their non-conformity, have the opportunity to prove themselves heroes in front of the whole of the Sun County military. It brings the  whole campaign to a big rousing climax, literally on a big stage!
Both scenarios are linear in nature and do not provide much in the alternative when it comes to dealing with the situations that the Player Characters find themselves in. To be fair, both are military missions and the Player Characters are under orders, so that they do have their orders. The Game Master will have fun portraying both Yelanda Goldenlocks and Yelo Melo, but there is also the option for them to be roleplayed by a player. This works better if the scenario is being run as a one-off.
Is it worth your time?
Yes—The God Skin & Mad Prax: Sandheart Volume Four brings the series to a rousing climax and provides an opportunity for the Player Characters to prove themselves worthy of Sun County.No—The God Skin & Mad Prax: Sandheart Volume Four is not worth your time if you are running a campaign or scenarios set elsewhere, especially in Sartar.
Maybe—Tradition: Sandheart Volume Three might be useful for a campaign involving Yelmalions and the worship of Yelm from places other than Sun County, but its framework structure may be more challenging to use if the Game Master has already run the previous scenarios in the campaign.

Between the quotas and the quanta, there is time for questions. Between the propaganda and proselytism there is time for pondering. Between the machinations and murders there is time for messages. Between the intrigues and insurgencies there is time for infatuation. Between the assassinations and alterations there is time for assignations. Between these moments, there is time for love. These are not moments that matter to great empires that believe that the only way to survive is to make the past, present, and future theirs, to adjust every version of themselves so that it survives and every version of their rival so that it does not. To wage wars violent in word and deed, but also subtle and imperceptible. There is a war up and down the timeline and sideways across the multiverse fought by armies and agents and two of those agents—one on either side—are beginning to question if the war will ever end? If either side will win? If there is more than the futility of fighting and thwarting each other’s efforts? If the other feels like they do? And if they do, can they shape reality so they are no longer foils for and reflections of each other, but together? After all, as elite agents in the war for time and reality, only they know what the other has experienced.

This is the set-up for The Words We Leave Behind, an epistolary roleplaying game for two players inspired by the multi-award-winning Science Fiction LGBT novella by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, This Is How You Lose the Time War. It is published by Lunar Shadow Designs and uses the same mechanics and format as the publisher’s interstellar epistolary roleplaying game of increasingly challenging communication and saying goodbye, Signal to Noise. In Signal to Noise, the players, as friends, relatives, or lovers, beamed letters to each other back and forth across vast distances of space, between the Earth and a gigantic colony ship. In The Words We Leave Behind, the players take the roles of Proxies on opposite sides of a massive time war, one that has the capacity to spread to other worlds and dimensions. Each is their Faction’s ultimate warrior and agent because they perfectly embody the emotional profile which their Faction views as the ultimate driver behind the rise and fall of civilisations. In The Words We Leave Behind, each player will take the role of a Proxy, each guided by three emotions, which can be opposed to, or in direct competition with, the other Proxy. Over the course of play, the players will not exchange letters as in other epistolary roleplaying games, but draw cards to create points in the future and the past of a Timeline, each an Incursion which their Proxy will enter and alter details. As they play, they may visit previously visited Incursions, adding and changing other details, even to Incursions created by their rival Proxy. These changes can cascade down the Timeline to alter further points in the future. This is all played out on a shared document, meaning that The Words We Leave Behind is intended to be played online.
Besides the shared online document and a means to send each other messages, each player in The Words We Leave Behind requires a standard deck of playing cards. These have their jokers removed, separated into their four suites and shuffled in four decks. A card is drawn from each suit to form the starting hand and there is always a card from each suit in the suit. (An extra Hearts card can be added to simulate the themes of This Is How You Lose the Time War.)

A Proxy is first defined by the three emotions that also define the Faction they serve. The player is free to develop their Proxy’s Faction as much or as little as they want, including its objectives, and will also ask the other player what their Proxy’s Faction thinks of theirs and what their Proxy’s Faction calls their Proxy whom it regards as the enemy. A Proxy also has a preferred form, worn between missions, and three anchors or possessions, which helps maintain the association with their roots, one of which is a trinket, an actual physical object that the player owns. Lastly, each Proxy decides how they perceive themselves and their rival.

Verdigris
I am CALCULATING and you are RECKLESS
Prime Emotion: Hope
Secondary Emotions: Shame, Anger
Anchors: The skull of bird whose species was made extinct by dangerous technology (it reminds me of what we lost); a blade grass from my home farm (it is what we work to preserve and I leave behind on every mission to show what we are working to save); trinket: a single-sided die (from the game we played as children)

Play consists of several turns, typically four to five, in which each player will take control of the narrative and send a message as their Proxy to the other player and their Proxy. In subsequent turns after the first, a player will have their Proxy read the message from their rival, be assigned by their Faction to make an Incursion—roughly between five and thirty sentences long—and manipulate events there, before leaving a message behind for their rival to find. The Incursions are recorded on the Timestream document as are their effects on downstream Incursions. If a Proxy returns to an existing Incursion, their player can edit it by adding text at the beginning or end of the current Incursion, effectively changing the lead into the Incursion or the outcome. These changes can cascade down the Timestream, the current player examining subsequent Incursions and if necessary, adding, deleting, or altering a single sentence in the Incursion description. (Whilst the changes are made directly to the Timestream document, the prior state is tracked via the messages between the players. One of the potential issues with the play of The Words We Leave Behind is losing track of earlier incarnations of the Timestream.)

Cards are played randomly from the hand and provide two important details. First, the number determines the Incursion, whilst the suit advances the emotion which it matches. Once played, the cards represent a Proxy’s emotional state, the more cards a Proxy has in a suite, up to a maximum of three, the more intense the state. Roughly, Hearts equate to the emotion of love, Clubs to anger, Spades to uncertainty, and Diamonds to understanding. The emotional state will influence how the player describes their Proxy’s actions in an Incursion and their Proxy’s reactions to their rival’s actions.

A player can spend his Proxy’s Anchors for various effects. The first two anchors can be used to either let the player choose a card to play, alter three sentences in an Incursion when the changes cascade down the Timestream, or even to reverse the cascade, so back up the Timestream and into the past rather down into the future. The third anchor, a trinket, can be used to revert an Incursion to its original state, place an Incursion under a Temporal Lock so it is immune to the cascading effect, or to take a second turn.

The interaction between the proxies and thus the play of The Words We Leave Behind comes to climax when a player plays the third card from a suit and so acts on the emotional prompt it triggers. As in This Is How You Lose the Time War, this is the point when the Proxies decide to meet, and as in the novel, in The Words We Leave Behind it is not via the messages going back and forth between the Proxies, but in person, face to face (or alternatively, via a video call). Based on the current state of the Timestream, the messages exchanged, and their respective emotional states, the Proxies have a simple choice to make. Will they place their trust in each other or attempt to take advantage of the other. If they both place their trust in each other, their feelings transcend the conflict and they leave both it and their Factions behind together. If they attempt to take advantage of the other, the war continues to a calamitous end. Lastly, if one Proxy attempts to take advantage of the other and one Proxy places their trust in the other, the Proxy who attempted to take advantage prevails and their Faction gains greater control of reality. In all three cases, the outcome is then narrated.

Love and trust are not common themes in roleplaying games, with trust being a more common theme than love because it is easier to deal with via humour or politics or espionage rather than feelings. This is not to say that love cannot play a part in a roleplaying game, but in general, love is not a core theme of most roleplaying games. When it is, it has tended to come out of the storytelling and narrative style of design, such as Emily Care Boss’ The Romance Trilogy, consisting of Breaking the Ice, Shooting the Moon, and Under the Skin. Nor does this mean that more mainstream publishers have not ignored the subject, such as Thirsty Sword Lesbians from Evil Hat Productions and Blue Rose: The AGE RPG of Romantic Fantasy from Green Ronin Publishing. This, though, does not escape the fact that ‘love’ as a theme in roleplaying games is challenging to handle for the players because it requires trust between the participants and it requires them to roleplay feelings that are normally kept private. Lastly, The Words We Leave Behind has the possibility of the most devastating response to both love and trust—betrayal. As with those other roleplaying games, The Words We Leave Behind is best played by mature players.

The Words We Leave Behind can be played from start to finish in a matter of a few hours, but its epistolary format means that it can be played at a more leisurely pace over the course of a few days or weeks. It can also be played on an Earthly, Galactic, or Dimensional scale, but really this only adds to flavour and scope of the setting rather than the themes. Those themes are explored in the messages between the Proxies and in the changes made to the timestream, pushed and prodded by the suits of the cards played and then escalated. Each player and their Proxy is aware of how the other feels as the card details are exchanged in the messages and whilst for the most part the cards themselves are played randomly from their hands, each player has the choice to change how their Proxy feels by playing an anchor and being able to select a card instead of drawing it randomly.

Apart from the aforementioned issue with keeping track of the timestream, The Words We Leave Behind is more challenging to play if the participants have not read This Is How You Lose the Time War to understand the themes and structure of the roleplaying game. The roleplaying game is also part of the publisher’s Dyson Eclipse future setting, the same as Rock Hoppers, Signal to Noise, and The Kandhara Contraband: A System Agnostic Sci-Fi Adventure, but it is not clear how. Lastly, as an epistolary roleplaying game, The Words We Leave Behind feels that it should have more emotional prompts for longer play rather than the three for each suit which befit a game played in one go.

Physically, The Words We Leave Behind is neat and tidy and includes a lot of helpful advice and prompts on handling its themes, which undeniably are all needed give the nature of those themes.

Fans of This Is How You Lose the Time War will doubtless be intrigued by The Words We Leave Behind, but will find it a daunting prospect if they have not played a roleplaying game before or their roleplaying experience is with more mainstream roleplaying games. The Words We Leave Behind is a personally demanding game, asking us to explore themes and feelings that not every roleplaying game, but the epistolary format means that this exploration does not have to be immediate and it can be more considered, which ameliorates some of the challenge to The Words We Leave Behind. Nevertheless, for mature players willing to do so, The Words We Leave Behind presents the demanding means to explore the growth of love and trust—and potentially betrayal—in considered fashion in an age of a time war.

—oOo—
This review is of the ‘Ashcan’ edition of The Words We Leave Behind. The full version is currently being funded via Kickstarter.