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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—oOo—

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

It includes a basic explanation of the setting, rules for actions and combat, details of the arms, armour, and equipment fielded by the Player Characters, the mission, ‘Riot in Commissary B’, and four ready-to-play, Player Characters, or Agents.

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

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

It requires an edit in places.

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

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

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

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

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

How do the mechanics work?
Mechanically, the Corporation 2nd Edition: Quick Start uses the ‘S5S’ System previously seen in SLA Industries, 2nd Edition and The Terminator RPG. This is a dice pool system which uses ten-sided dice. The dice pool consists of one ten-sided die, called the Success Die, and Skill Dice equal to the Skill rank of the skill being used. The Success Die should be of a different colour from the Skill Dice. The results of the dice roll are not added, but counted separately. The aim is to roll equal to or higher than a Target Number, ranging from eight and Challenging to sixteen and Insane, on each of the dice. The Skill Rank of the skill being used lowers the Target Number. Preparation and advanced technology, including toolkits can modify the Skill Rank for the Skill Test. If the result on the Success Die is equal to or greater than the Target Number, then the Agent has succeeded. If the results of the Skill Dice also equal or exceed the Target Number, this improves the quality of the successful skill attempt. However, if the roll on the Success Die does not equal or exceed the Target Number, the attempt fails, even if multiple rolls on the Success Dice do.

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

How does combat work?
Combat in Corporation 2nd Edition, as with other ‘S5S’ System roleplaying games is designed to be desperate and dangerous. It is detailed and tactical. It takes into account offensive and defensive manoeuvres, rate of fire, recoil, damage inflicted on armour, cover, aiming, and so on. The scenario features a lot of combat and the Game Master should pay particular attention to those rules in the quick-start. The mechanics take into account various weapon types, including beam weapons, incendiary weapons, laser weapons, plasma weapons, and more.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In almost forty years of The Terminator films as a franchise and intellectual property, it is surprising to note that there has never been a roleplaying game based on them. After all, the concept is pretty simple—an unstoppable killing machine comes back from the future to kill the mother of the resistance leader who will defeat its A.I. master in the future—such that it is probably one of the easiest Science Fiction/horror time travel plots to adapt to the system of the Game Master’s choice. Yet still no roleplaying game when there have been two roleplaying games—one from Leading Edge Games and another from Free League Publishing—based upon the Alien franchise. Leading Edge Games did manage a set of miniatures wargaming rules, TERMINATOR 2 Year of Darkness – Miniatures Combat System and several sets of miniatures, but not a roleplaying game. Fortunately, Scottish roleplaying publisher, Nightfall Games, best known for the dystopian roleplaying game of corporate horror, SLA Industries, gained the licence in 2020 and following a successful Kickstarter campaign, published The Terminator RPG and The Terminator RPG Campaign Book, plus The Terminator RPG Quick Start. One notable inclusion in the writing team for The Terminator RPG is Andrew E.C. Gaska, the franchise consultant for 20th Century Studios on Alien, Predator, and Planet of the Apes, who was also on the writing team for the Alien: The Roleplaying Game.

The Terminator RPG is based upon The Terminator, the original film by James Cameron from 1984 and then on the seventeen or so comic book storylines published by Dark Horse Comics between 1990 and 2019. The Science Fiction horror roleplaying game enables play in two time periods. The first is the future of the here and now, or at least an alternative here and now. This is the future of Judgement Day, in which the A.I. Skynet attempted to destroy its creators and the rest of humanity in nuclear, biological, and chemical conflagration before sending out increasingly sophisticated machines to wipe out humanity, whether through brute force or infiltration followed by brute force. The Resistance arose, led by those who had been preparing for Judgement Day and the rise of the robots, most notably, John Connor, to defeat Skynet and its forces. By the end of the 2020s, the Resistance would prevail, but not before Skynet developed temporal technology with Time Displacement Equipment, enabling it to send Terminator units back into the past and attack those who would become a danger to it in the future. Thus, the war against the machines became not a war of resistance and rebellion against Skynet, but a war through time, a hunt for Skynet’s agents across the later twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. This opens up the second time period, the 1980s, and whilst it would be possible to run campaigns in both periods without any crossover, travelling back from the 2020s opens up the possibility of some entertaining ‘fish out of water’ style roleplaying. In general, the emphasis in The Terminator RPG is on the period of the 2020s, but there is still plenty of information about the 1980s to run a campaign set there.

A Resistance Fighter in The Terminator RPG has a Role, such as Engineer, Hacker, or Scout. This provides a Resistance Fighter’s initial stats and a Resistance Ability. For example, the Grunt has ‘Physical Training’ which enables the Resistance Fighter to trade in a Skill die on a Strength or Dexterity related Skill Test and ensure that the result on the Success die is always a ‘Messy Success’ whatever is rolled. The Grunt also has extra Hit points. The Pilot, for example, has ‘Mechanised Warrior’, which enables the Pilot to control a vehicle passively and specialise in a particular type of vehicle. The Resistance Fighter has six stats—Strength, Dexterity, Knowledge, Concentration, Charisma, and Cool. Stats are rated between zero and six, whilst the skills are rated between one and four. A Resistance Fighter also has FATE, a replenishable representation of his luck, and he can have Traits, such as Addiction, Arrogant, Exceedingly Cool, or Vision (Good). He also has Hope Points, which are divided between three categories—Body, Brains, and Bravado—and indicate the ways in which a Resistance Fighter can emulate the cinematic style of The Terminator. For example, with Body 2, Brains 3, and Bravado 1, Minguez the strategist could ‘Go Crashing In’ to dive into a room and gain a single charge or ranged action before combat begins, to make a ‘Luck Guess’ and gain a free bonus to a Knowledge or Concentration skill roll, or ‘Lead From The Front’ to lead soldiers into battle and bolster their morale. To create a character, a player selects a Role, assigns seven points to the stats, receives the base skill ranks for the Role and spends thirty-six points to purchase more skill ranks, and selects traits—both negative and positive so that they balance. A Resistance Fighter does not have to have any traits and there are relatively few of them, with fifteen negative traits versus only seven positive traits.

Name: David Renko
Role: Historian
STATS
Strength 1 Dexterity 1 Knowledge 5
Concentration 1 Charisma 2 Cool 1
FATE 1/1
HOPE
Brain 2 Bravado 1
Hit Points: 16 Willpower: 16
MOVEMENT
Closing: 2 Rushing 5 Encumbrance: 4 Initiative: 3
Resistance Ability: Natural Academic
SKILLS
Diplomacy 3, Education: Academic (Mathematics) 4, Education: Natural (Physics) 3, Endurance 1, Interrogate 1, Language: Russian 3, Lore: Skynet 3, Melee Weapons 1, Oratory 2, Pistol 1, Rifle 1, Stealth 1, Survival 1, Tactics 1, Time Science 1, Unarmed Combat 1
TRAITS
Anxiety (Rank 1), Natural Aptitude: Time Science (Rank 1)

The Terminator RPG allows for two further Resistance Fighter types. One is the Cyborg as per Terminator 2: Judgement Day. There are no specific rules for creating this Resistance Fighter type, but guidelines suggest building it as a Grunt with the additional traits of ‘Learning to Run’, ‘All Hope is Gone’, and ‘Unstoppable’. The other is the Fated. They are NPCs or Resistance Fighters already known to Skynet (and so cannot have the associated negative trait) and worse, are in its crosshairs. The obvious character from The Terminator for this is Sarah Connor.

Mechanically, The Terminator RPG uses the ‘S5S’ System first seen in SLA Industries, Second Edition. This is a dice pool system which uses ten-sided dice. The dice pool consists of one ten-sided die, called the Success Die, and Skill Dice equal to the skill being used, plus one. The Success Die should be of a different colour from the Skill Dice. The results of the dice roll are not added, but counted separately. Thus, to each roll is added the value of the Skill being rolled, plus its associated stat. If the result on the Success Die is equal to or greater than the Target Number, ranging from eight and Challenging to sixteen and Insane, then the Operative has succeeded. If the results of the Skill Dice also equal or exceed the Target Number, this improves the quality of the successful skill attempt. However, if the roll on the Success Die does not equal or exceed the Target Number, the attempt fails, even if multiple rolls on the Success Dice do. FATE can be spent to reroll the Success Die or any of the Skill Dice. It can also be spent to add a modifier to a Skill Test or a Resistance Test.
For example, David Renko is part of a resistance squad which has broken into a Skynet facility and discovered that it has Time Displacement Equipment or TDE. Unfortunately, the TDE was partially damaged in the assault on the facility and the date to when the Terminators have been sent back is not readily accessible. The resistance squad’s hacker has already managed to get the TDE computer working and Renko needs to determine the date from the accessible data. The Director—as the Game Master is known in The Terminator RPG—sets the Difficulty of the Skill Test at Challenging or 11. Renko’s player assembles his dice pool. This consists of the Success Die plus a Skill Die for his Skill rank of one in Time Science plus an extra Skill Die. To the result of each die, Renko’s player will add the Skill rank of one in Time Science. Renko’s player rolls five on the Success Die, and three and five on the Skill dice. This a serious failure as none of the dice rolled a success. Renko’s player decides to use Renko’s of Natural Aptitude: Time Science, which at Rank 1, allows him a reroll in the skill. This time he rolls an eleven on the Success Die and a nine and a five on the Skill Dice. This is a Messy Success, which means that Renko can identify which year the Terminator units travelled back to, but no more. So, his player uses a point of FATE to reroll the Skill Dice. He rolls both of them and gets an eight and a ten. Adjusting the results with Renko’s Skill Rank of 1 in Time Science, the results are eleven on the Success Die and on one of the Skill Dice. This counts as a Solid Success and narrows the temporal destination for the Terminator down to a month.In terms of the rules, The Terminator RPG runs implacably through the key elements of the setting, starting with combat. This is a major aspect of the setting so receives no little attention here, and is designed to be deadly, fraught, and highly tactical. It takes into account offensive and defensive manoeuvres, rate of fire, recoil, damage inflicted on armour, cover, aiming, and so on. Against ordinary opponents, combat is designed to be desperate and dangerous, but this only escalates when Terminator units become involved. As well as being physically dangerous, the unstoppably callous nature of Terminator units is extremely stressful and frightening, which can trigger Fear Tests, which typically occur when the Fear Rating of the situation is above a Resistance Fighter’s Cool stat. Failed Fear Tests lead to a loss of Willpower. As well as seeing a Terminator, being trapped or attacked, witnessing the brutality of Skynet, the loss of a close one, can all lead to Fear Tests if their Fear Rating is high enough. The rules also cover vehicle combat, traps, biological warfare and toxicants, and more, whilst the rules for traps cover disarming them as much as building them, so that the Resistance Fighters can lay traps as much as disarm them. Similarly, particular attention is paid to infiltration and exfiltration, as stealth is a key part to survival and moving around in the wasted world of the future as well as learning to get by in the bright and brazen world of the eighties.

Another major feature of The Terminator RPG is Hacking. The rules cover hacking and computers in both the past and the future and the radical differences in terms of technology. One of the given Roles in the roleplaying game is the Hacker and he will primarily be hacking electronic devices and computer systems. In general, hacking small systems requires only a simple skill test, but for bigger systems and where it is narratively appropriate, the hacker can attempt to infiltrate a system consisting of a series of connected nodes represented by a ‘Network Architecture Diagrams’. The player rolls Computer skill tests to generate points of Progress which can be expended to move deeper into the network, create a backdoor, capture a node, exploit a subroutine. If alerted, Network Security, or ‘NetSec’, will spread through the system attempting to locate the hacker and halt his progress, the Director rolling for and handling this process. In effect, hacking is in effect a two-player mini-game between the Hacker’s player and the Director. Fortunately, it is intended to take place at the same pace as combat rounds do, so it can be run in parallel with them if need be. It needs careful study by both the Hacker’s player and the Game Master, and although there is an example hacking attempt given of the system included, it would be a good idea for the Director to run through this at least once to understand it before bringing it into play.

In terms of technology, The Terminator RPG has lengthy sections devoted to both equipment and the machines of Skynet, the latter longer than the former. One nice touch is the equipment is organised not by name or type, but by the skill required to use each item, thus combining their description, the rules for their use, and their effects effectively under they are used. So, for example, dogs are listed under Animal Management, Time Displacement Equipment under Time Science, and everything from a flatbed truck to a main battle tank under Vehicles. Also covered are beam weapons, particle beam weapons, and other weapons deployed by Skynet. Then when it comes to the machines of The Terminator setting, The Terminator RPG covers much more than seen in the original film. So obviously the HK-Tank, HK-Drone, and T-800 Terminator, but The Terminator RPG also draws deeply from the comic book series published by Dark Horse Comics. So there are basic T-000 models, humanoid Hunter-Killers, as well as T-700 or ‘Data Junkies’, which pose as the homeless and are sent back into the past to collect data and then hide until after Judgement Day; the T-K90 or ‘Labrador Deceivers’, which hide amongst the Resistance’s dogs and acclimatise them to the presence of metal; and even T-R80 or ‘Cyberbats’, used as reconnaissance units. This offers a wide variety of threats and suggests possible story ideas for the Director to use and develop. This is all backed up by the discussion of the various components, features, and design of Skynet’s machines, so that the Director can understand how they work. Unsurprisingly, there is a focus on the T-800 as seen in The Terminator, including what happens when one loses various components. All of the machines given have game statistics as per a Resistance Fighter, but with high armour values and special rules which vary from model to model. Notable amongst the models are those developed by MIR, the Soviet Union’s answer to Skynet, which has an interesting relationship with its American counterpart.

In terms of background, The Terminator RPG also explores the rapid technological progress of the late twentieth century which ultimately led to the development of Skynet. This includes other corporations which contributed technologies later incorporated by Skynet, giving the Resistance another set of targets in the past. Numerous NPCs, drawn from both film and comic, are also given, complete with full stats, starting with Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese in 1984, John Connor in 2029, Lieutenant Ed Traxler, LAPD, in 1984, and more. If there is a potential issue here is that a lot of these NPCs will be unfamiliar to the players and the Director—especially the Director, forcing her to scurry off in search of the Dark Horse Comics. A nice touch is that every NPC entry includes notes made by Doctor Peter Silberman, providing an often-deluded psychological profile for each person, as well as an assessment by Skynet itself. The Director gets to choose which of the two assessments is worse…

The Terminator RPG terminates with not one, but two missions for the Director to run. Neither is original. The first, ‘The Phone Book Killer’, is based on the story seen in The Terminator, whilst the second, ‘The Killer in Me’, is based on the graphic novel, The Enemy Within. In both cases, the missions are designed to emulate rather than simulate the stories on which they are based. Thus in ‘The Phone Book Killer’, set in 1984, the Player Characters can be members of the LAPD investigating the case of the Sarah Connor murder spree or as Resistance Fighters sent back to stop the T-800. In the case of the latter, this will mean the players taking the roles of Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese, and essentially roleplaying the events out to see how they might differ, though there is scope for other Player Characters to get involved too. As a police investigation, the key Player Characters are Ed Traxler and Hal Vukovich, but again more Player Characters can be added, including Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese. Essentially, this is more of a toolkit to set up and explore the events of the story.

‘The Killer in Me’, the second mission is much more straightforward in its set-up and plot and is not the toolkit to set up and explore the events of its story that ‘The Phone Book Killer’ is. However, it does have the benefit of unfamiliarity, so the players and their Resistance Fighters can come to it unaware of its plot. Set in the 2020s, the Resistance Fighters are assigned to Lompoc Base, north of Los Angeles. The base is in danger of being overrun by Skynet, so when the base receives a message from a missing comrade that he has a cache of weapons and some survivors, both of which can help the base, its commander orders the Resistance Fighters to investigate. This requires a 150-mile trip, not through enemy territory, but under it via the sewerage tunnels. As the title of the mission suggests, this is a far more dangerous assignment than the Resistance Fighters will expect.

Physically, The Terminator RPG is very well presented. It is well written, the artwork is really good—the depictions of the various NPCs look right and the Terminators look scary, and throughout, there are plenty of examples of the rules and suggestions for the Director.

If there are issues with The Terminator RPG, they are relatively minor. For example, the list of Traits for Resistance Fighter creation seems paltry at best, and having ‘The Phone Book Killer’ as one of the two missions could also be seen as a cheap cop-out. Arguably, the former is more of an issue than the latter, limiting options in terms of Resistance Fighter creation, whereas the inclusion of The Terminator storyline as a playable scenario lets you roleplay and explore a situation which many a gaming group has already done inspired by the events of the film already, but do it with proper guidance and advice on how to do it differently. The inclusion of ‘The Phone Book Killer’ essentially lets you roleplay a story or situation you have been waiting forty years to do and do it with the licenced roleplaying rules.

Perhaps more problematically, is the roleplaying game’s complexity. The Terminator RPG looks complex and in some places it is. Then again, it has to be. This is roleplaying game and setting which involves near-unstoppable killing machines, which take tactics and ingenuity to destroy rather than brute force; computer systems which require infiltration against a faster, better, more capable enemy; and both desperation and courage. Yet, The Terminator RPG is not overly complex by the standards of most roleplaying games, simply requiring patience to learn and get used to the mechanics. (As an aside, the most obvious licensee back in the day would have been Leading Edge Games, since it had the licence for the TERMINATOR 2 Year of Darkness – Miniatures Combat System. However, it would have produced a roleplaying game based on The Terminator akin to its Aliens Adventure Game and that would have been complex. So, complexity is relative.

If there is a complex aspect of the roleplaying game, it is in the hacking rules, and that is to be expected. Hacking computers is not simple, especially if they are designed by an advanced A.I. Even then, the hacking rules are not that complex in comparison to other roleplaying games, but they do require attention and they do need to be learned how they work lest their inclusion slow play down.

Lastly, there is the issue of the source material for The Terminator RPG. The original film is readily available. The comic books from Dark Horse Comics not so readily. The Director will probably need to track them down. The inclusion of a bibliography would have been useful to that end, let alone for reference. That is the single real omission The Terminator RPG. However, the lack of relatively ready availability of the collected comics means that the Director’s players are unlikely to be as familiar with them and so she can easily plunder them for story ideas.

The Terminator RPG includes everything that a Director and her players need to run a game inspired by the original film—campaign ideas and advice, full stats and details on numerous killing machines, guidance on handling time travel, and fear in the face of the Terminators! The Terminator RPG is the roleplaying game we have been waiting for, for almost four decades, enabling us to enter the future and past of James Cameron’s Science Fiction dystopia, overcome our fear in facing the Terminators and take the fight to Skynet.

Long ago, at the beginning of the 13th Age, war raged between the Elves and the Dwarves. The Elf Queen commanded the magic of the wild and the fey capable of defeating her people’s enemy, but could not truly control it. Liris, a nature goddess, voluntarily underwent a ritual to contain this magic by binding her into a vault. The ritual was a success and it bound both the magic and the three elven districts—Greenwood, Darkwood, and Lightwood—to the Elf Queen’s own Thronewood. With the magic, the Elf Queen helped withstand the Dwarven assault and as time passed, the relationship between the Elves and the Dwarves eased and they became allies. Yet the power which Liris helped contain and control and so save the Elves corrupted her and drove her to attempt escape and wreak revenge upon those she blamed for her imprisonment—even though it had been voluntary upon her part. The Elf Queen and her greatest spellcasters from all three districts offered a Key up to perform a great ritual which would ensure that the vault imprisoning Liris would remain closed. Then the Keys were returned to their respective districts and placed in three mystical towers, hidden from those who did not know the means or routes to find them. More recently, the Elf Queen senses that the ritual keeping the vault containing Liris is weakening and needs to be performed again. For that, she needs the three Keys from each of the three districts, but relationships between the Elf Queen and the three districts were not they once were and many of those who readily knew the locations of the three towers have long since died. As the magical bindings on Liris’ vault weaken, her dark influence is being felt across the Thronewood and beyond as shadows and sorrow deepen. With her strength dedicated to withstanding Liris’ influence and preparing for the forthcoming ritual, the Elf Queen needs agents she can trust to find the three mystical towers, assail their heights (or depths), and return in time for her to perform the ritual which will save her kingdom.
This is the set-up for Elven Towers, an adventure for the Champion Tier for 13th Age, the roleplaying game from Pelgrane Press which combines the best elements of both Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition and Dungeons & Dragons, Fourth Edition to give high action combat, strong narrative ties, and exciting play. The adventure requires access to both 13 True Ways and the 13th Age Bestiary to play and mostly obviously, will hook in Player Characters with Icon relationships with the Elf Queen or her allies. Options though are suggested for involving Player Characters with other Icon relationships, even ones so adverse to the Elf Queen that they would be prepared to betray both her and the efforts of their fellow adventurers should the need arise! Several ways of handling the interaction of the Player Characters with Court of Stars are offered, each of varying complexity or detail. The simplest is to run it as a group test, but alternatively, the Player Characters can attend the court and get involved in its activities and events, fully interacting with the various courtiers and hangers-on. There are plenty of NPCs detailed here as well as some nice means of handling the effects of Liris’ growing influence and the Player Characters being unsuccessful in their interactions with the Court of Stars. This includes increasing the amount of time it takes to get information, temporary penalties to saving throws, and temporarily delaying the increase of the Escalation Die in combat.
Once the Player Characters have worked out where the three Keys are located, they can set out to each of the locations. Consisting of the Tower of Memory in Greenwood, the Tower of Dreams in the Darkwood, and the Tower of Fate in the Lightwood, they can be tackled in any order, but they all adhere to the same format—a montage travel scene followed by three or four encounters between the Court of Stars and each tower, and each tower consists of four encounters before a finale. The encounters, inside the tower or outside of the tower, are essentially big set pieces, each different, but themed along the lines of the region the Player Characters are travelling through and the tower they are trying to reach. The format provides room for the Game Master to insert encounters of her own, if thematically appropriate, but to fair, the given encounters will be challenge enough. The Tower of Memory and the Greenwood are home to the Wood Elves and are forest-themed with the Tower of Memory being a giant tree. The Tower of Dreams and the Darkwood are home to the Dark Elves—or Drow depending upon the Game Master’s campaign—and the Tower of Dreams may be entered via a tree, but is actually in a spire protruding down into the Underworld. Many of its encounters veer between dreams and nightmares. The Tower of Fate is in the Lightwood and is home to the High Elves, with the Tower of the fate ascending to the Overworld. Many of the encounters in the Lightwood and the Tower of Fate relate to oracles, fate, and destiny.
The design of the scenarios as a series of big set pieces, means that the author gets to be inventive. For example, in the Tower of Memory, the Player Characters have to race across a rope bridge high above the forest floor, the missing slats of the rope bridge hidden by illusion, harassed by a Pixie knight and a Drunken Sprite Swarm; on the way the Tower of Dreams in the Darkwood, an ambush involves a Player Character being dragging back and forth behind an enraged wild boar and then back again after confronting equally enraged Owlbears, the whole encounter threatening to collapse into chaos; and a surprisingly creepy encounter in the Tower of Fate in the Lightwood in a cave of birthing pools left over from the Elves’ first creation of the Orcs a very long time ago, that should really resonate with any Half-Orc Player Character or Player Character with Icon Relationships with the Orc. The final encounter atop each tower always includes facing agents of one or more of the other Icons and there are stats and suggestions on how to tailor the forces of each Icon to each encounter. This allows the wider involvement of the Player Characters’ Icon Relationships, including both those with Icons who oppose the Elf Queen and those who might have interest in limiting or disrupting her power and influence.
Not all of the encounters in Elven Towers involve combat, though most of them do or will result in combat. Answering riddles or sharing secrets are a common feature, and is making trades. The sharing of secrets involves a roleplaying upon the part of the players, whilst riddles some deductive reasoning, though rules are given for skill checks and rolling dice for those players adverse to riddles. Trades will often see the Player Characters give up minor magical items, Revives, even Icon Relationship rolls—temporally!—and more. All of the encounters include advice on staging them and if necessarily, scaling them up to make a tougher battle.
Finally, the Player Characters will return to the Court of Stars with the three Keys—or not. The Player Characters may not necessarily gain all three Keys to Liris’ vault and the fewer Keys they have, the more difficult and dangerous the ritual that Elf Queen has to perform, becomes. The Player Characters get invited to a big party before the ritual to celebrate their success in obtaining the Keys and an even bigger party if the ritual is a success. The Player Characters are, of course, invited—or is that expected?—to help defend the ritual, which leads to a big boss, end of adventure-level fight. There is scope here too, for the Player Characters to betray the Elf Queen, if that is what their Icon Relationships demand. How that plays out is down to the Game Master, but if the betrayal succeeds, or the ritual as a whole fails, there could actually be a change in one of the Icons! However, if the ritual succeeds, there are rewards aplenty, including powerful magical items, the Elf Queen’s favour—which mostly means she will use them as her agents again, no matter what their Icon Relationships are, and even gaining or improving an Icon Relationship with the Elf Queen.
Physically, Elven Towers is well presented. The artwork is excellent and individual encounters are all easy to use and reference. However, some of the maps are a little dark and murky; the text requires a slight edit in places (one monster inflicts over three hundred points of damage, when it should be just over thirty); and an index would have helped. There are lists with page numbers for all of the monsters.
Elven Towers is an adventure that the Game Master will want to run if she has an Elf amongst her Player Characters or a Player Character with a strong Icon Relationship with the Elf Queen. The adventure is harder to run without either of these, but once involved in the adventure, Elven Towers is an entertaining, often exciting affair, with plenty of opportunities for roleplaying alongside the big, sometimes bigger, fights. Elven Towersis a grand quest in traditional fantasy and fantasy roleplaying style, well designed and executed with plenty of variation that reveals some of the secrets and nature of the Elf Queen and her realm.

—oOo—


Pelgrane Press will be at UK Games Expofrom Friday 2nd to Sunday 4th, 2023.

There is a big difference between making ends meet and making a living when it comes to operating a starship. With expansive docking fees, fuel costs, and repairs to be made, let alone paying the crew, making a profit is never easy, unless that is, you pick up a contract from a crime boss. A crime boss like Algoth Nieminen, who just happened to take over and expand the Jitana Syndicate to the point where it is the primary crime organisation in the binary. Now he has a cargo which he needs transporting both carefully and speedily and he is short of his usual ships and crews. He will not say what it is, but it is sensitive and highly illegal. He will, however, say where it is. The cargo is aboard a ship which has been impounded and the held at the impound yard in orbit around Kandhara. So all the crew has to do is, fly to the Shan system, infiltrate the Kandhara Independent Impound yard, get aboard the ship, steal the cargo, and deliver it as Algoth Nieminen, as promised, right? Wrong. We not entirely wrong. The crew do have to fly to the Shan system, infiltrate the Kandhara Independent Impound yard, get aboard the ship, steal the cargo, and deliver it as Algoth Nieminen promised, but it is nowhere as simple as that. First, there are three ships and crews who worked for Algoth Nieminen in the impound and one of them has the cargo. Second, Algoth Nieminen has hired four other crews to retrieve the cargo and will only pay the bonus to the crew which successfully retrieves the cargo. Third, there is a detective who wants to make a name for himself—and if that means arresting Algoth Nieminen and breaking up the Jitana Syndicate, then all the better.
This is the set-up for The Kandhara Contraband: A System Agnostic Sci-Fi Adventure. Published by LunarShadow Designs, this as the title suggests is a rules free, mechanics free, stats free scenario for the Science Fiction genre. So more plot than numbers—and more set-up than plot—this is also a scenario which involves space crime. Which narrows it down to the types of roleplaying game it will work with. In terms of generic roleplaying games, Savage Worlds or GURPS or FATE Core would all work easily with this plot. In terms of setting, the set-up and theme points to two obvious choices. Star Wars is the most obvious, whether that is the D6 System version from West End Games or Fantasy Flight Games’ Star Wars: Edge of the Empire. The other option is the Firefly Roleplaying Game published by Margaret Weis Productions. But whichever system or setting the Game Master decides to run The Kandhara Contraband, the key elements are crime and space travel.

Half of The Kandhara Contraband is dedicated to the set-up and describing the other interested parties in the adventure. This includes the three syndicate ships and their captains who got impounded, as well as the four rival ships and their captains that Algoth Nieminen has also hired to retrieve the cargo, plus of course, the police detective. These are all given a good paragraph or two’s worth of description, which in most cases is accompanied by a question, which the Game Master has to put to her players. For example, Jacinda Sedius is the captain of The Icarus, a ship which though the same make and model as the Player Characters’, but is often on the verge of breaking down and in need of much maintenance. Captain Jacinda and her crew has suffered a rash of bad luck and really needs the payout that successfully retrieving Algoth Nieminen’s cargo would bring. The accompanying question is, “Ask the PCs about a time they have previously helped Jacinda and her crew. How many drinks does he owe them?” The Kandhara Contraband asks similar questions for each of the NPCs in the scenario, as well as at Kandhara Station, the orbital station. The effects of this are twofold. First, it involves the players in the creation of elements of the scenario, tying locations and NPCs to their characters and into the setting or game that the Game Master is running, and in the process setting up background details and roleplaying hooks. Second, if The Kandhara Contraband is run as a convention scenario—and it is about the right length to do that, even if there are no suggestions as to how to that or pace the scenario—each time it is run, it will be different for the Game Master.

The second half of The Kandhara Contraband is devoted to the scenario’s locations, which consist of the barren mining world of Shan, Kandhara Station, the orbital station above Shan, and the Kandhara Independent Impound Yard, and the final destination for the cargo. Here individuals, facilities aboard Kandhara Station, and events are all described. Most of the detail is spent on Kandhara Station, as it is here that the Player Characters will find the crews of the impounded ships and learn more about the cargo—which is very much far from ordinary.

Physically, The Kandhara Contraband is a plain and simple affair. Behind the decent cover, the scenario is unaccompanied by either maps or illustrations. Otherwise, the layout is tidy and the booklet a clean affair.

The advice for the Game Master in The Kandhara Contraband is brief. For the Game Master with experience of running a fairly improvised scenario, this should not be an issue. A less experienced Game Master might well have wanted more help and advice, or at least a summary of the events and hooks which help her more readily prepare the scenario and give her some idea as to what might happen once the players and their characters get involved.

The Kandhara Contraband: A System Agnostic Sci-Fi Adventure is plot and set-up. Both though, are more than enough to get a good session or two’s worth of Sci-Fi action and intrigue going, as well as provide content that the Game Master can easily add to her campaign and the players add to their characters’ backgrounds. Of course, it is going to need some effort upon the part of the Game Master to supply the stats, but once she has that, the Game Master is ready to run her Player Characters into trouble and hopefully, back out again, hopefully with The Kandhara Contraband in their cargo hold and out again.

. Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #1: Gang Lords of Lankhmar is a scenario for Goodman Games’ Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game and the first scenario for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set. Scenarios for Dungeon Crawl Classics tend be darker, gimmer, and even pulpier than traditional Dungeons & Dragons scenarios, even veering close to the Swords & Sorcery subgenre. Scenarios for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set are set in and around the City of the Black Toga, Lankhmar, the home to the adventures of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, the creation of author Fritz Leiber. The city is described as an urban jungle, rife with cutpurses and corruption, guilds and graft, temples and trouble, whores and wonders, and more. Under the cover the frequent fogs and smogs, the streets of the city are home to thieves, pickpockets, burglars, cutpurses, muggers, and anyone else who would skulk in the night! Which includes the Player Characters. And it is these roles which the Player Characters get to be in the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #1: Gang Lords of Lankhmar, in which they they get recruited by a gang and that gang goes to war with the rival gangs on its block. As the situation escalates and the tit-for-tat situation turns bloody, can the Player Characters keep their gang safe and avoid the attention of either the Thieves’ Guild or the Overlord’s constabulary before either starts handing out bloody lessons?
Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #1: Gang Lords of Lankhmar is designed for First Level Player Characters and it is as different from other Dungeon Crawl Classics scenarios as could be. In a typical Dungeon Crawl Classics scenario, there is an issue which threatens a tribe, a village, or some other organisation, and the Player Characters are instructed to go out and either deal with it or investigate it. In Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #1: Gang Lords of Lankhmar, the Player Characters help initiate a situation and then manipulate it, before trying to weather the consequences and come out on top. Consequently, there is a sophistication to the scenario and more moving parts than us usually found in the average scenario for Dungeon Crawl Classics. The scenario takes place in the slums between the Old Slave Barracks on Chapel Street, Rookery Way, the Shrine of the Rat God on Squalor Row, and Pimp Street. Here, three gangs run the roofs and work the streets with smalltime protection rackets, gambling dens, pickpocketing, and more. They are the Knife Twisters, the Pimp Street Scuttlers, and the Forty Owlets. All three are consist of petty criminals and crooks and strictly small fry, not worth the notice of the Thieves’ Guild or the Overlord’s constabulary, but that is about to change.

The scenario begins with the Player Characters coming to the notice of, and being hired by, King Korvul—perhaps after their Meet in the scenario, ‘Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #0: No Small Crimes in Lankhmar’, to be found in the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set. King Korvul wants the Player Characters as part of his gang because he wants to be boss of the block, which means taking out the Pimp Street Scuttlers, and the Forty Owlets and taking over their operations. The Player Characters are disrupt the operations of the Scuttlers, play one gang off against each other, and protect the gang against reprisals. If the Player Characters can put up with King Korvul’s ego, then this is a pretty good deal. However, once the other gangs get wind of his aims, things do not go to plan and the Player Characters are going to firmly in the crosshairs.
The play of Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #1: Gang Lords of Lankhmar is built around three moving parts. The first of these is a timeline of detailed encounters which take place over the course of eight days. The second is a  ‘Neighbourhood Tension Tracker’ which presents a series of consequences which can occur as the shadow war between the gangs escalates and the bloody feuds break out into violence on the streets and action in the alleys. These consequences can come multiple sources, including the other gangs, and the Thieves’ Guild and the Overlord’s constabulary. Neighbourhood Tension begins at three and can rise to above forty or more, driven by assaults on other gangs, deaths of other gang members, acts of arson, and more. Bribes will alleviate it though, at least as far as the constabulary is concerned. So at a Neighbourhood Tension of eight or more, members of the rival gangs prowl the neighbourhood spoiling for a brawl with the Player Characters, whilst the Player Characters begin hearing that there are strangers about, asking questions about them. At thirty-five or more, the Thieves’ Guild dispatches assassins to kill the Player Characters, who are also declared enemies of Overlord and Wanted posters are put up with their names and faces on them!
 Third is the encounter areas, which in turn detail the major locations for the area where the scenario is set. This includes the bases of operation for all three gangs and the Dogfish, a dive bar roughly equidistant between them, all complete with maps, as well as other locations. There is also a table to randomly detail and populate (or not) the other tenement blocks in between, this being the city of Lankhmar, details of the roofs above and sewers below. pride of place though goes the centerfold map of the neighbourhood, which the Judge really needs to copy and put out on the table in front of her players so that they can plan their campaign against the other rival gangs.

There is a problem with the set-up in Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #1: Gang Lords of Lankhmar and that is that the Player Characters have to join the Knife Twisters for the scenario to really get going. What if the Player Characters wanted to join the Pimp Street Scuttlers or the Forty Owlets instead? The Forty Owlets is less of an option because it is an all-female gang, but not so the Pimp Street Scuttlers. The players and their characters may be put off by King Korvul being such an oligeaniously odious man and might want to side with another gang. This is not an option that the scenario explores, but had it done so, the scenario could have been a more rounded toolkit. However, there are enough details given that the Judge could make this change if necessary, but it would take some effort upon her part.

In play Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #1: Gang Lords of Lankhmar is a busy scenario with a lot going on in comparison to other scenarios for Dungeon Crawl Classics. This is both in terms of the Player Character actions—the scenario is very player-led—and NPC reactions, and there is a lot of interplay back and forth between the two. So the Judge is going to need to track both and the result of the ‘Neighbourhood Tension Tracker’.

Physically, Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #1: Gang Lords of Lankhmar is decently presented. The scenario in general, well written, the maps clear, and artwork constantly captures the grimy and grimy nature of life on the streets of Lankhmar.

Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #1: Gang Lords of Lankhmar is a busy scenario and a different scenario. It is primarily player-led, it focuses upon one small location which the Judge can bring to life, and potentially, it sets the Player Characters up with a base of operations in Lankhmar, gives them a small source of income, and provides them with something to care about with both the gang and the neighbourhood—if only as petty crooks. Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #1: Gang Lords of Lankhmar is great first scenario for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set, which rightly focuses on crime in the City of Sevenscore Thousand Smokes. In the process, it provides opportunity aplenty for action, roleplaying, and skullduggery for Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar.
—oOo—


Goodman Games will be at UK Games Expofrom Friday 2nd to Sunday 4th, 2023.

The world of Okkorim was rich and verdant. Then the Empire of Ydrissid rose and fell and so we have the Blighted Lands. The sorcerers of the Empire of Ydrissid commanded great magic and not only established dominion over Okkorim, but also out onto other planes. Key to their power were the ‘eanifisilat’ or ‘dragoncoils’, the focal points where magical power coalesced around slumbering elemental dragons. Yet over time, the power of the ‘eanifisilat’ began to fade, eventually dwindling to nothing and the sorcerer god-kings of the empire sought other means to maintain their arcane power. They could not recreate the ‘eanifisilat’ which had enabled them at their height, to send whole armies across the empire in the blink of an eye, but they could create artifacts imbued with the power of the elemental dragons—air, earth, fire, and water. One of these artefacts is the Occulus of Senrahbah. Like many of its type, it would lost in the years that followed the collapse of the Empire of Ydrissid due to the Wrath which turned its territories into the Blighted Lands and many lesser empires and nations rose and fell. Several factions in the port city of Chentoufi believe they have determined the location of the Occulus of Senrahbah. If there is even the slimmest possibility of holding a sliver of the power of the sorcerer god-kings of the Empire of Ydrissid, then these factions will do their utmost to either obtain it, or prevent it from falling into the wrong hands. Enter the Player Characters…

This is the set-up for OS1 The Eye of Chentoufi, an adventure compatible with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition which saw the Player Characters cross back and forth across the city of Chentoufi and then finally below it in order to locate the ‘Occulus of Senrahba’, also known as the ‘Eye of Chentoufi’. Having outraced several factions either wanting to obtain the Eye of Chentoufi for themselves or deny it to everyone, they encountered and defeated Yusepefesos, the greater water jinn, supposedly protecting the location of the ‘Occulus of Senrahba’ and there the scenario came to a conclusion. OS1 The Eye of Chentoufi is notable for several things. First and foremost, it is set in ‘Luke Gygax’s World of Okkorim’ and thus co-authored by Luke Gygax, the son of E. Gary Gygax, the co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons and thus the hobby itself. Second, it is the first part of a trilogy, which will continue with OS2 The Heart of Chentoufi and OS3 The Fate of Chentoufi. Third, it can be run as a tournament scenario, in just a single four-hour session, and there are notes and points awards so that the players’ progress can be tracked and scores compared at the end of the tournament. Alternatively, it can played through in two or more sessions with the addition of the scenario’s optional scenes. Fourth, it was written as a special tournament scenario for Gary Con XIII, the convention held each March in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.
OS2 The Heart of Chentoufi picks up where left OS1 The Eye of Chentoufi off. Designed for a party of Seventh to Ninth Level Player Characters, it is also a tournament scenario, having been run at Gary Con XV. A portal behind the body of Yusepefesos opens up on some stairs that lead deep into the earth under the city of Chentoufi. Across its three acts, the adventure will take the Player Characters not only deeper below the city, but deeper into its past and that of the Empire of Ydrissid and its secrets. The Player Characters first discover an imperial prison followed by a series of giant-worm chewed tunnels, known as the ‘Carve’, and below that, the ‘Dahloom’ or ‘Everdark’. This is akin to the Underdark of the Forgotten Realms and the scenario plays up its alien nature, being damp, even sometimes wet, unlike the Blighted Lands of the surface world above.

The majority of the encounters in the adventure are combat related. The Dungeon Master though, with have fun roleplaying ‘Varneezer’, a crotchety old Halfling adventurer, who is very much out of his depth. He is not, rather just out of his time, and there are some nicely done clues included in his suggested dialogue. The combat encounters tend towards the epic, each of the three parts of the scenario involving or ending in a big fight. Ultimately, the scenario ends with the Player Characters still in the hunt for ‘Eye of Chentoufi’. Their reward for their efforts feels much bigger than that of OS1 The Eye of Chentoufi, they are none the wiser as to the location of the trilogy’s MacGuffin.

Unfortunately, OS2 The Heart of Chentoufi suffers from many of the same issues as OS1 The Eye of Chentoufi. The primary problem is that there is not enough context for the benefit of the players and their characters. There is no background information that is readily presentable to the players, whether on the Blighted Lands or the city of Chentoufi. So, the players will have difficulty getting a feel for the setting as a place, let alone motivation for their Player Characters. This starts with the beginning of the scenario—en media res, and in context of being a direct sequel to OS1 The Eye of Chentoufi, that is fine if the players have played it. Not though as a standalone scenario which it is suggested that OS2 The Heart of Chentoufi could be run as, because not enough attention is paid to why the Player Characters are there and what they are doing. Some of this could have been alleviated with some pre-generated Player Characters, but there are none. Which makes no sense for a tournament scenario, especially one set in a background which is not vanilla fantasy. The background to Okkorim, the Blighted Lands, and Chentoufi all have an Arabic or Middle Eastern feel, much like Al-Qadim: Land of Fate. Some of this information could have been presented in a set of pre-generated Player Characters, which could also been used to provide motivation for the players and their characters and have been used to showcase what can be played in the ‘Luke Gygax’s World of Okkorim’ and its differences between it and Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. This is a missed opportunity—though Luke Gygax does promise that the setting of Okkorim will be presented in a supplement of its own.
The scenario also starts of in an underwheming fashion. Or rather with a puzzle whose solution defaults to either a skill roll or a Comprehend Languages spell. The puzzles were the highlight in OS1 The Eye of Chentoufi, so why not present the first puzzle as a puzzle rather than a mechanical problem which does not serve the story? That way, the players could have been rewarded with points in the tournament for their deductive skills rather than combative skills. Further, whilst the highlights of OS1 The Eye of Chentoufi were its big puzzle encounter, this is really the only puzzle in the scenario, which makes it all the more disappointing. Further, in comparison to OS1 The Eye of Chentoufi, there are far fewer optional scenes in OS2 The Heart of Chentoufi. In fact, there is only one, and arguably, that scene is not optional, since it provides information about what happened to ‘Eye of Chentoufi’ and who was responsible, thus setting up event for OS3 The Fate of Chentoufi.
OS2 The Heart of Chentoufi has some great features, much like OS1 The Eye of Chentoufi. Each of its three acts starts with a summary of the plot for that act; there are suggestions as to what music to play during various scenes (with links to YouTube for the PDF version of the scenario); and both the monsters and the treasures are decently done. opportunity.
Physically, OS2 The Heart of Chentoufi is hit and miss. The artwork is excellent, as is the cartography, and on the whole, the scenario is a fine-looking book. However, the editing is inconsistent.

OS2 The Heart of Chentoufi is simply not as good a a scenario as OS1 The Eye of Chentoufi. It is too linear, there are far fewer optional scenes which helped add detail and colour to the first scenario in the trilogy, the scenes are all combat-orientated, and its lacks the puzzle scenes which were the best feature of OS1 The Eye of Chentoufi. Instead, OS2 The Heart of Chentoufi does have a fun NPC for the Dungeon Master to portray. Some of the issues with the scenario are due to it being designed as a tournament scenario, others not, but ultimately, OS2 The Heart of Chentoufi is the middle part of a trilogy and feels like it, connecting the beginning and end parts of the trilogy, and not necessarily in an interesting way.
—oOo—

Luke Gygax will be at UK Games Expofrom Friday 2nd to Sunday 4th, 2023.