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 a 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 Hammersmith HauntingPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Kat Clay

Setting: Cthulhu by Gaslight London
Product: Scenario
What You Get: Fifteen page, 12.17 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Who stalks fog-enshrouded fears in Old London Town?Plot Hook: When the most punctual of men is not on time, there has to be a good reason... or a bad one.Plot Support: Detailed plot, staging advice for the Keeper, three maps, four handouts, four NPCs, one new Mythos entity, and four pre-generated Investigators.Production Values: Excellent.
Pros# Delightfully crotchety old lady# Delightfully crotchety even older lady   # Good staging advice for the Keeper
# Solid straightforward investigation# Good period feel and sense of history# Diverse cast of NPCs and Investigators# Multiple outcomes explored# Handouts for failure and success
Cons
# Requires a slight edit# Mechanics underdeveloped and presented# Too linear and too straightforward an investigation for experienced players?
Conclusion
# Engaging period piece of horror# Delightfully crotchety old ladies two# Solid straightforward investigation to begin a Cthulhu by Gaslight campaign?

1974 is an important year for the gaming hobby. It is the year that Dungeons & Dragons was introduced, the original RPG from which all other RPGs would ultimately be derived and the original RPG from which so many computer games would draw for their inspiration. It is fitting that the current owner of the game, Wizards of the Coast, released the new version, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, in the year of the game’s fortieth anniversary. To celebrate this, Reviews from R’lyeh will be running a series of reviews from the hobby’s anniversary years, thus there will be reviews from 1974, from 1984, from 1994, and from 2004—the thirtieth, twentieth, and tenth anniversaries of the titles. These will be retrospectives, in each case an opportunity to re-appraise interesting titles and true classics decades on from the year of their original release.

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In 1982, TSR, Inc. published its first Science Fiction roleplaying game, Star Frontiers. Now TSR, Inc. as stated in ‘The SF ‘universe’’ (Dragon #74, June 1983), “TSR had previously published SF-oriented role-playing games, most notably the GAMMA WORLD® game and METAMORPHOSIS ALPHA game, but these two games are post-apocalyptic visions of the future.” and “While they are certainly interesting and undoubtedly SF in nature, neither of these games fully realizes the potential of a science-fiction setting. A star-spanning civilization, interstellar spacecraft, strange aliens, and adventures on a myriad of bizarre and challenging new worlds are the elements of a classic SF framework. The possibilities for adventure in such a “universe” are nearly limitless. The STAR FRONTIERS game, unlike its predecessor SF titles from TSR, is able to appreciate these possibilities.” So as the very first actual Science Fiction roleplaying game from TSR, Inc., Star Frontiers was very much intended to play off the boom in Science Fiction and space adventure which followed in the wake of Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, for example on the big, as well as Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century on the small screen. It would take a full year before it reached that potential with the Knight Hawks boxed supplement which added spaceships and spaceship combat to the roleplaying game, but in the meantime, Star Frontiers offered planetside adventure with stripped down, straightforward set of mechanics and rules designed to introduce new players to the hobby and Science Fiction roleplaying to more experienced players—especially if their only experience was Dungeons & Dragons.
Coming as a boxed set, Star Frontiers Alpha Dawn, the roleplaying game was designed for players aged ten and up and came filled with high quality components. This included the sixteen-page Basic Game Rules, the sixty-page Expanded Game Rules, the thirty-page Adventure Module, SF-0: Crash on Volturnus, a large map, a sheet of two-hundred-and-eighty-five counters, and two ten-sided dice—one dark blue, one light blue. Everything is very nicely presented, starting with the superb cover artwork for both the box and the Basic Game Rules and the Expanded Game Rules. The internal artwork is also good, with lots and lots of action scenes, Jim Holloway’s illustrations prefiguring some of his work on Paranoia. The large, full-colour poster map depicts a city centre on the one side with numerous buildings, roads, and monorails, whilst on the other are depicted craters, mountains, deserts, forts, towns, ruins, and more. These are all designed to use with the counters, for at its most basic, Star Frontiers is a roleplaying game played out as a square-and-a-counter combat game.
The setting for Star Frontiers is lightly drawn, an area of space near the centre of a great spiral galaxy where the stars are closer together, known as the Frontier. Here Humans—though not the Humans of Earth—made contact with the insectoid Vrusk and the ameboid Dralasites and developed interstellar spaceships, and together discovered the Yazirians, tall leonine humanoids with patagiums and thus capable of gliding. They settled the twenty or so worlds of the Frontier (including the unfortunately named ‘Gollywog’) and to supply their needs, the Pan-Galactic Corporation (or PGC), the first interstellar company, was formed. It conducted scientific research as well as manufacturing everything from foodstuffs to spaceships, and even developed Pan-Galactic, a language which became the lingua franca for the Frontier.
However, the melting pot of the Frontier was upset by a series of attacks by the Sathar. This previously unknown worm-like species attacked isolated outposts and frontier worlds, but would kill themselves to avoid being captured. Together the Humans, the Vrusk, the Dralasites, and the Yazirians formed the United Planetary Federation (UPF) to defend the Frontier and forced the Sathar out of the Frontier. More recently, attacks by the Sathar have begun again, but more surreptitiously and sly, often using Human, Vrusk, Dralasite, and Yazirian agents to sabotage and undermine trade and government. The UPF has formed the Star Law Rangers to investigate and stop these activities, and both the Star Law Rangers and the Pan-Galactic Corporation often employ freelancers for a variety of tasks. These freelancers are, of course, the Player Characters.
Star Frontiers Alpha Dawn offers a choice of four playable races—Humans, Vrusk, Dralasites, and Yazirians. Dralasites are short, grey amoeboid-like creatures, notable for being able to change form by extending and retracting pseudopods and possessing a quirky, pun-based sense of humour; Humans are like those of Earth, but have a two-hundred-year lifespan; the insectoid Vrusk have eight walking legs and two manipulating arms, and are known for their logical minds and their business sense; and the Yazirians are an arboreal-like species with excellent grip for both hands and feet, patagiums for gliding, and known to pushy, even aggressive, and potentially, capable of battle rages. The mysterious Sathar, wormlike with pairs of tentacles which could be used as legs and to hold and manipulate objects are the villains of the Star Frontiers setting and thus not available to play. A character has eight abilities, arranged into four pairs—Strength/Stamina, Dexterity/Reaction Speed, Intuition/Logic, and Personality/Leadership. The rating for each ability is a percentile, ranging between thirty and seventy for starting Player Characters and serving as the base rating for all actions in the roleplaying game. 
Character creation in Star Frontiers differs—though only slightly—depending upon whether the Basic Game Rules or the Expanded Game Rules are being used. In both, a player selects a race and rolls percentile dice for each pair of Abilities on the given table, applies the species modifiers, and derives a couple of factors, and that is it for the Basic Game Rules. It is quick and easy, and in the Basic Game Rules, barely takes up a page.
Name: Korung Speetrasser Race: DralasiteHandedness: – Gender: –Walking: 1 Running: 4
Strength/Stamina 70/70Dexterity/Reaction Speed 60/60Intuition/Logic 35/35Personality/Leadership 40/40Initiative Modifier: 6
Current Stamina: 70
Laser Pistol (2) 60% Damage: 1d10
The remainder of the Basic Game Rules is devoted to the core rules and some adventures. From the outset, Star Frontiers is designed to be played on a map, using the maps and counters included in the box. Later, it would move on to more ‘theatre of the mind’ style of traditional roleplaying, but in the Basic Game Rules, the Player Characters and their opponents are moving—in squares, not metres (Star Frontiers uses the metric system)—across a great cityscape, from building to building, jumping onto skimmers or aboard the monorail, and chasing each other across the city. The base value to undertake any action is the appropriate Ability, rolled against the percentile dice, using the dark blue die as the tens die and the light blue die as the ones die, as the Basic Game Rules explain it. In the Basic Game Rules, the emphasis is on combat, so modifiers are applied for movement and range, and if the roll is successful, the attack hits, and damage is rolled and deducted from the target’s Stamina Ability. Typically damage is rolled on just the one ten-sided die and an opponent would have to lose all of his Stamina to be knocked out. Consequently, combat can take a bit of time and options such as the Doze Grenade, which knocks out opponents are more than viable options, and rules for throwing grenades are included.
After a nicely illustrated introduction, the Basic Game Rules quickly cover the basics of character generation and combat before a short list of equipment (mostly weapons) and some adventures are presented. Some rules are given for other actions too, essentially a player rolls against the appropriate Ability and depending upon the difficulty, applies a five, ten, or fifteen percent modifier, either positive or negative. ‘Adventure 1: Pan-Galactic Security Breach’ sees the Player Characters investigate a series of breaches at various research centres. It is not designed as a standard adventure, but rather a programmed adventure with options like a ‘Choose Your Own Path’ solo adventure. One player serves as the Reader—rather than as a Referee, and reads out the entries and gives the options, whilst the players decide which of the options to choose. Since this is a programmed adventure, they all have to agree. It is a simple action-packed affair, more of a couple of scenes than a full adventure, with the perpetrators quickly revealed and making a run for the spaceport with the Player Characters on their heels. This is played out on the main map as is ‘Adventure 2: Alien Creature on the Loose’, in which a dangerous alien creature has escaped its confinement at the Zoological Park and the Player Characters have to capture it. The Hydra—nothing to do with the mythological and Dungeons & Dragons creature of the same name—is hunting for its handler and the Player Characters must stop it before the thing finds him. It is a big creature and tough to stop. There are guidelines for playing both adventures again. ‘Adventure 1: Pan-Galactic Security Breach’ this is as teams, one team controlling the perpetrators trying to get away, the other the Player Character types trying to stop them. For ‘Adventure 2: Alien Creature on the Loose’, this is the Referee creating her own creatures. There is advice too, for the Referee to create her own adventures, and like the two adventures these are quite basic. The focus of the advice is on a ‘crash on a desert planet adventure’ essentially preparing the Referee for running Adventure Module, SF-0: Crash on Volturnus and pointing towards the greater complexity and comparative sophistication in the Expanded Game Rules. The rules are what they say they are—basic—and come across not so much as a roleplaying game as a board game. For the experienced role-player they are probably too basic and even for players new to roleplaying, they do not offer a great deal of play.
The Expanded Game Rules, of course, greatly broaden and develop the rules given in the Basic Game Rules. It highlights the differences between the two, noting the expanded options, extra rules, and the fact that the roleplaying game can be played without maps, whether using miniatures or simply the imagination. The expanded rules for character creation add a five-point bonus to any Ability score for Humans, enable players to swap points between pairs during character creation, and Dralasities, Vrusk, and Yazirians have special abilities, such as Lie Detection and Elasticity for the Dralasities and Battle Rage, Gliding, and Night Vision for the Yazirians. All five Races, including the Sathar, are given a nicely done, detailed, one-page write-up. The Expanded Game Rules also add skills. There are thirteen of these, all fairly broad and divided into three Primary Skill Areas or PSAs. These are Military, Technological and Biosocial. Each skill has several subskills it covers and which a character automatically knows, and each subskill having its own base rating. Skills go from Level 1 to Level 6, each Level typically adding ten present to a roll. So the Biosocial Medical skill also covers Administering Drugs (100%), Diagnosis (60% + skill level), First Aid (100%), Minor Surgery (40% + skill level), Major Surgery (20% + skill level), Controlling Infection (50% + skill level), Curing Diseases (40% + skill level), Neutralizing Poisons (30% + skill level), and Activating Freeze Fields (30% + skill level), the latter the skill of putting a body in stasis until it can be revived and repaired. A Player Character has one PSA, and although he can have Levels in skills in the other PSAs, they are always more expensive. A Player Character starts play with a level in one skill from his actual PSA and one from the two others. Overall, the expanded rules for character creation do add more to a character, but without adding that much more complexity or even time to the process. 
Name: Korung Speetrasser Race: DralasiteHandedness: – Gender: –Walking: 1 Running: 4
Strength/Stamina 70/70Dexterity/Reaction Speed 70/50Intuition/Logic 35/35Personality/Leadership 40/40Initiative Modifier: 5
PSA – Military Skills: Beam Weapons (1)Biosocial Skills: Environmental Skills (1)
Current Stamina: 70
Laser Pistol (2) 45% Damage: 1d10
The Expanded Game Rules also add further details and options for combat, such as careful aim and telescopic sights, firing two weapons, and even weightless combat. Alongside this is an expanded list of weapons and their descriptions of both them and other equipment. This includes armour, which is most ablative in nature, and also screens, portable force fields which react to hits and drain Standard Energy Units from their power packs when hit. Robots and computers are detailed too, with computers being easily upgraded, and options given for simple robot design or off-the-shelf purchase. Extra vehicles are added too, although notably, not spaceships. Star Frontiers Alpha Dawn is not a roleplaying game of spaceship travel or combat, but of adventures once you get there. Some notes on space travel are included in the Frontier Societies section, primarily the various classes of travel, travel times, layovers, and potential customs entanglements. Expanded also are the rules for creating creatures, as well as a bestiary. The bestiary itself is fairly short and backed up further entries in Adventure Module, SF-0: Crash on Volturnus, and do feel influenced by Dungeons & Dragons creatures, especially the Sand Shark, a creature which would also turn up in Gamma World. The rules for creature creation really consist of a series of questions about what the creature does and what its habitat is, and in comparison to other Science fiction roleplaying games, do feel underwritten, but they are serviceable enough for a Pulp Sci-Fi roleplaying game like Star Frontiers. The section on Frontier Societies provides some basic details of the Frontier sector setting and thumbnail descriptions of a handful of worlds. Lastly, there is advice for the Referee and a guide to creating adventures, which includes a short sample, search and rescue mission. It is a one-page affair, straightforward and easy to drop into a campaign or run after the two sample adventures in the Basic Game Rules. The Expanded Game Rules also has the equivalent of its own ‘Appendix N’ on the inside back page, and it is a good selection of Science Fiction further reading, though much of it falls outside of the Pulp Sci-Fi tone that Star Frontiers is aiming for. In the middle of this—and the Expanded Game Rules—is a two-page spread collating all of the useful tables for running Star Frontiers and effectively serving as the reference section of the screen if not as a screen itself.
Once the Player Characters have completed an adventure or a task, they earn both Experience Points and Credits. If injured, the Player Characters do have to spend Credits to purchase healing—one Credit per point of Stamina healed, so very American. None of that Socialist health service for you! Experience Points can not only be spent to purchase new Skills and new Levels in existing skills, but also on increasing Ability values, again on an Experience Point per Ability point cost.
The included full adventure in Star Frontiers is SF-0: Crash on Volturnus. The first part of a trilogy which would be completed with the sperate adventures, SF-1: Volturnus, Planet of Mystery and SF-2: Starspawn of Volturnus, this adventure begins with Player Characters aboard the Serena Dawn, bound for the world of Volturnus (oddly named for the Greek god of the southwest wind, which assumes that the Humans of the Frontier, who are not from Earth, also had Ancient Greeks and Greek myths) in the Zebulon system to conduct a planetary survey and perhaps locate the previous mission. Unfortunately, the Serena Dawn is hijacked, and the Player Characters must fight pirates to both get what equipment they can and escape the ship before it is destroyed. The adventure consists of a mixture of random and pre-planned encounters and once on the surface will begin with the former and evolve into the latter. This will see the Player Characters encounter a strange race of octopoidal telepaths who practice mind-to-mind communication who will offer to adopt them into the tribe in order to help them survive. If they accept—and to be honest, the scenario will not go very far if they refuse—the Player Characters will be borne out of the desert that their escape pod crashed down in and through some caverns. After being separated due to a cave-in, resulting in a mini-dungeon crawl for the Player Characters, they can reunite with the tribe and undergo the rituals of adulthood and become officially part of the tribe and thus set up for the sequels. Alternative endings are given if the Referee is not going to run SF-1: Volturnus, Planet of Mystery and SF-2: Starspawn of Volturnus. Perhaps the best aspect of SF-0: Crash on Volturnus is the description of the Ul-Mor and their culture, which is fairly unforgiving and likely force the Player Characters to act with due consideration rather than selfishly. Sadly the Ul-Mor are not particularly well illustrated in the module, and as to SF-0: Crash on Volturnus itself, it feels as if it is really only setting up the subsequent two modules rather than being a standalone affair itself.
Physically, Star Frontiers Alpha Dawn is very well produced and is an attractive, engaging product. In 1982, this was a relatively inexpensive boxed set and certainly in terms of the quality and quantity of components, the purchaser got his money’s worth.
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Star Frontiers was first reviewed in The Polyhedron No. 9 (December 1982) by Steve Winter. Since this is the same Steve Winter who edited Star Frontiers, it is fair to say that this is not actually a review. It started out with a dig at not one, but three other Science Fiction roleplaying games of the period, with “Hey science fiction fans! Tired of travelling? Sick of the opera? Looking for a game that doesn’t require the patience of the universe to play? Have I got a deal for you!” before going to highlight in particular the fact that, “The game was designed to be played by people who had no experience with roleplaying games.”
Star Frontiers was reviewed by Andy Slack in the Open Box department of White Dwarf No 37 (January 1983), who said of the roleplaying game that, “A major drawback is space travel. This is virtually ignored. No-one can learn how to do anything useful aboard ship, which is perhaps as well since there are no guidelines for designing or using ships. There is much to be said for the point of view that ships are merely a delivery service to get you from one adventure setting to the next, but I disapprove of the lack of them. No doubt a future supplement will handle them if enough people share my view.”  He concluded that, “Unfortunately, I can't say the system struck me as especially realistic; but if you like action adventure, thinking with your fists, and Star Wars (and who doesn’t from time to time) you can have a lot of fun with this game.” before awarding Star Frontiers a score of seven out of ten.
Star Frontiers was given a ‘Featured Review’ by William Barton in The Space Gamer Number 60 (February 1983). He wrote, “To start with my overall reaction: I don’t much like Star Frontiers. But then I don’t much dislike it either. I don’t really have a lot of strong feeling about the game at all. That’s not to say that Star Frontiers is a bad game; it’s not. Neither is it exceptionally good. It has some very good features, and a few really bad ones, too. And they balance out into a game that, two years ago, might have had a fair impact on the SFRPG filed, but which now is merely another face in the crowd.” In his conclusion, he asked, “What will be the fate of Star Frontiers? If the game were by any other company than TSR, I’d predict it would quietly fade away, like Star Rovers, and a few other less-than-spectacular systems. Since Star Frontiers is a TSR product, I don’t think that will happen. TSR, unlike many companies, has an “in” to the various nonspecialty stores. For a lot of potential gamers, Star Frontiers is likely to be the first SFRPG they encounter. TSR also has a large share of the younger market, which Star Frontiers seems to be aimed at. So, yes. Though it may not really deserve it when compared to other, better systems, I think TSR’s entry into the SFRPG field will prove to have staying power, as the loyal D&Ders turn to it as their first SFRPG. For myself, I’d have preferred to see TSR back and expand Universe, which it acquired with SPI’s assets. Maybe it will yet. In the meantime, Star Frontiers probably isn’t going top lose TSR any money. But I wish there were a lot more to commend it than that.”
Jim Bambra reviewed Star Frontiers in Imagine No 1 (April 1983). He was also of the opinion that “It is also a pity that there are no rules for designing starships or space combat; though these are due for release later this year. Even without starship rules, the STARFRONTIERS™ game is one of the best available. It has been designed with an emphasis on playability and here it succeeds admirably. Its inspiration comes more from pulp fiction than the ‘believable’ SciFi on which Traveller is based. Whether this style of play appeals is a matter of personal taste. Players of the D&D® game will certainly enjoy it, for in many ways this game is a kind of D&D in space.” Finally, he said, “In summary, the STARFRONTIERS game is an excellent introduction to Sci Fi gaming, a game I heartily recommend to beginners and experienced gamers, A lot of expertise has gone into the designing of this product and the result is a very enjoyable and easy to learn game.”
Ian R. Beste reviewed Star Frontiers in Different Worlds Issue 29 (June 1983) and was upfront about his disappointment, stating that, “Star Frontiers is by no stretch of the imagination a step forward in the state of the art. There just isn’t a whole lot to the game.” At the end of a detailed review, he concluded, “It would be easy to say that Star Frontiers is just D&D with lasers. It isn’t exactly, but it’s unlikely to make anyone drop their existing campaign to set up one for Star Frontiers. This game just doesn’t have a solid science fiction feel to it. I shudder to think of articles in The Dragon on “Converting D&D Monsters to Star Frontiers Creatures.” (Doing so would not be hard.) I also shudder when thinking of the possibility of the expensive hardbound Advanced Star Frontiers Player’s handbook, a Referee’s Guide, etc. True, the game could uses them. But why? TSR has a lot of money, talent, and resources with which to make a good game. Why did it disappoint us with Star Frontiers?”
Star Frontiers was also subject to a lengthy review by Tony Watson in Dragon #74 (June 1983). After a thorough examination which included a comparison to GDW’s Traveller, he wrote, “A final question remains: Is the STAR FRONTIERS game just a D&D game in space? The pedigree is evident, but I think TSR has managed to avoid trading magic for technology, swords for lasers, and orcs for aliens. The emphasis on action and some of the design philosophy belies the kinship of STAR FRONTIERS to the D&D game, but it is innovative and original in its own right. The similarities will make it easy for D&D players to shift over to STAR FRONTIERS as their first science-fiction role-playing game. This may be the largest single body of STAR FRONTIERS buyers. One very important advantage in the TSR connection is that players can count on the company to support the game with accessories, and TSR’s wide distribution network should make these products easy to find.” Before concluding that, “The STAR FRONTIERS game is fast paced, accessible, and playable. The design shows thought and imagination, and the product is quite a bargain. While not without its weaknesses, it’s certainly a contender in a competitive market and probably a good choice for newcomers to this facet of role-playing.”
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Even with the combination of the Basic Game Rules and the Expanded Game Rules, Star Frontiers Alpha Dawn feels basic and lacking in game play. Remember though, Star Frontiers was designed for players aged ten and up, and so was not necessarily going to offer the depth, detail, or sophistication found in other Science Fiction roleplaying games, notably Traveller and its Third Imperium setting. That depth, detail, or sophistication would appear with later expansions and supplements, even though there would only be a handful of them. In the meantime, with a combination of interesting races, the Frontier setting, and the presence of the Sathar, Star Frontiers is not only potentially interesting, but also offers scope for the Referee’s own content and adventures, plus that scope is made easier by the straightforward nature of the mechanics. In fact, it is a pity that the mechanics of Star Frontiers could not have been reused in the Buck Rogers XXVC roleplaying game instead of it being hamstrung by the unwieldy chimera it got based on Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Second Edition.
What is evident from the contemporary reviews is that Star Frontiers was not seen as different enough or sophisticated enough from the other Science Fiction roleplaying games available. Yet Star Frontiers was not aimed at those reviewers, who of course, would have been an audience older than the roleplaying game was intended for, and to be fair Star Frontiers Alpha Dawn does serve its intended age group reasonably well. Undeniably though, for older audiences, even those coming to Star Frontiers as their first Science Fiction roleplaying game after Dungeons & Dragons, it is underwhelming. For them, Star Frontiers is at best a toolkit for running Pulp Sci-Fi or basic roleplaying game awaiting the arrival of more sophisticated support, most obviously Knight Hawks. Consider what it was and who it was aimed at, as a first step into Science Fiction roleplaying, especially Pulp Sci-Fi roleplaying, and especially for a younger audience, Star Frontiers Alpha Dawn is a very serviceable starting point. 

Salo’s Glory is a near future Science Fiction scenario for use with Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition. The eleventh title from publisher Stygian Fox, it is a one-shot designed for three to six players and be played in a session or two. Mankind has expanded and explored to the furthest reaches of the Solar System, and begun to go beyond. One such exploratory vessel is the Galilee Heavy Industries I.E.V. Tryphena. Here on the edge of interstellar space, the crew of the Tryphena make not one, but four astounding mysteries. First is the presence of a ship identical to their own, also named the Tryphena, but powered down, seemingly abandoned, orbiting a cold planetoid. The second, third, and fourth consist of signals. One signal is the distress signal coming from the abandoned ship’s shuttle, the other two come from stone structures at the north and south poles of the planetoid. The question, what happened to the crew of the other Tryphena? Why did they abandon their ship? What exactly lies on the surface of the planetoid?

The plot of Salo’s Glory is all about the uncovering of its four mysteries. This is driven by two factors. First, by the curiosity of the players and their characters. Second by the directives of Galilee Heavy Industries which address the actions to be taken by crews under certain circumstances, many of which will occur during the scenarios. These will push the Player Characters to explore further, uncover first clues, then truths, and perhaps reveal what is going on. The plot is actually fairly simple and straightforward, though the Player Characters may not necessarily come to fully understand what is going on. The horror should build and build as the Player Characters push deeper into the mysteries, bolstered by the dark, the sense of isolation, and the alien nature of the situation.

Salo’s Glory is supported by extensive deck plans for both the old Tryphena and its shuttle, plus numerous handouts. The deck plans are done in a style similar to that of Traveller and are accompanied by good illustration of the ship which puts the deck plans in context. The handouts, consisting mostly of crew logs and Galilee Heavy Industries directives are disappointingly plain in comparison. The navigation readout for the planetoid is nicely done. The six pre-generated Player Characters which make up the crew of I.E.V. Tryphena nicely reflect a diverse range of backgrounds and genders, although there are similarities in their descriptions and the fact that they all talk with an accent, usually slight. The background for one or two of them is rather underwhelming, and perhaps the relationships and attitudes between the crew could have been developed a little further. The scenario also includes a list of the skills used throughout the scenario.

Physically, Salo’s Glory is generally well-presented. The artwork is good, the deck plans clear, with perhaps the only elements to really disappoint are the aforementioned handouts and the maps of the areas on the moon at the North and South Poles, which are plain in comparison to the rest of the book.

As a Science Fiction one-shot scenario for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, what Salo’s Glory does not have is Sanity rewards, although it does have suggestions as possible subsequent adventures depending upon the actions of the surviving Player Characters. Salo’s Glory is for the most part straight forward, easy to run, and player driven, and would make for a decent convention scenario if its pacing was sped up. Ultimately, Salo’s Glory is a short Science Fiction take upon At the Mountains of Madness which dials up its Cosmic Horror and sense of isolation against otherwise pedestrian horror elements.

Published by Lantern’s Faun, Into the Bronze: Sword & Sorcery RPG in Bronze Age Mesopotamia is a minimalist roleplaying game built on the architecture of Into the Odd. As the title suggests, it is set in the Bronze Age in Mesopotamia on the plains between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Here the first city states were founded, here the first men and the women strode forth to explore the lands between the first two great rivers known to mankind, to enter the silent, gloomy valleys where demons and their acolytes hid and devised their evil plans, here they would encounter the very gods of Sumeria, and here they would build the first great civilisations. As those first men and women to stride the land, the Player Characters are Sumerian ‘Bounty Hunters’ those willing to go forth and undertake dangerous tasks—explore the unknown, hunt down criminals, kill monsters, and more… In return, their wicker baskets will be filled with great wealth—treasures, secrets, and favours. With their treasures, their wealth, and their secrets, they not only have the potential to make their mark on the world, but go onto to stamp on the world by building and constructing civilisation around them.

Into the Bronze: Sword & Sorcery RPG in Bronze Age Mesopotamia includes thirty-six backgrounds, a flexible narrative system for enchantments, a simple system for building and construction, exploration, encounter creation, god creation, and a bestiary. A Player Character or Sumerian in Into the Bronze is lightly defined—and needs to be! A Sumerian is a fragile thing, weapons and monsters both being deadly, so a Sumerian can be quickly and easily replaced. Sumerian has three Ability scores—Strength, Dexterity, and Willpower, his Hit Protection, some Obsidian (the currency), a Background which provides two Items of Equipment. Depending on the Background, a Sumerian may have Magic Words, though they count as an Item. To create a Sumerian, a player rolls three six-sided dice for each Ability and keeps the highest two, a six-sided die each for his Hit Protection and Obsidian, and then cross references the values of his Hit Protection and Obsidian to determine his Background. A Sumerian also has a weapon of his choice, a single torch, and his Omens. Garments and physical features can also be rolled for. Rolling up a Sumerian takes minutes at most.

Harran
Background: Beer Brewer
Omens: In the night Harran was born, they saw sandstorms (Reckless/Sanguine)
Physical Feature: Has a falcon
Strength 6
Dexterity 11
Will 9
Hit Points: 3
Obsidian: 3
Item: stone spoon (1.5 m), torch, yeast, spear
Garment: Black Linen

Mechanically, Into the Bronze is simple. To undertake an action, a Sumerian player rolls a twenty-sided die, attempting to roll equal to or less than an ability. When it comes to combat, Initiative is handled narratively, with the Game Master foreshadowing events around the Sumerians to both engage them and determine when they act. Otherwise, mechanically, combat involves rolling for damage rather than to hit. Every attack hits and does damage, rolled on a six-sided die. All weapons ‘explode’ and allow an extra die to be rolled and added to the total if a six is rolled. Heavier weapons explode on a four, five, or six. Damage is inflicted on a Sumerian’s Hit Protection and then his Strength. Any time a Sumerian suffers Strength damage, his player must make a test against his Strength, failure indicating that he has suffered a critical hit. The effects of this are determined by a roll of an eight-sided die on the Critical Hit Table, and can be anything from a scar, teeth being knocked out, loss of a limb, all the way up to death. The life of the average Sumerian who ventures out from the safety of the city is likely to be nasty, brutish, and short.

Another effect of combat and other situations is that a Sumerian may suffer Conditions. Unfortunately, these are not given in ‘Annex 1’ as Into the Bronze states, but are attached to the character sheet for the game. Many of these Conditions also cause a player to roll with Disadvantage. This is not explained in Into the Bronze either, but essentially this should be taken to refer to the Advantage/Disadvantage mechanics common to other roleplaying games, first seen in Dunegons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. In play, Conditions also take up slots in a Sumerian’s Inventory, much like Mausritter. Lastly, items such as torches, lanterns, and the like all have a Usage die, which is rolled on six-sided die, one use being marked each time a player rolls four, five, or six.

Some Backgrounds such as Archivist, Astrologer, Enuuch, Scribe, Mathematician, and Tapestry Weaver have access to Magic Words, and so through Divine Intonation, the Language of the Sacred. At the start of play, a Sumerian with such knowledge knows two words, such as Treason, Clay, Bones, or Steps, but can learn more. The player of such a Sumerian describes the effect he wants using the Words his Sumerian knows and casts the combination automatically as an enchantment. However, the Game Master determines the cost of casting the enchantment in terms of Hit Protection, or Strength if the caster has no Hit Protection. For example, Gizzal the Enuuch knows the Words Treason and Shadow. Chased by some bandits, he calls upon the gods to direct the bandits’ shadows to betray them and so confuse them as to the direction they are heading in. The Game Master decides that since this is affecting several bandits, Gizzal will lose two points of Hit Protection, but he will get away from the bandits. The Enchantments rules are simple and engaging to use, encouraging player inventiveness, whilst at the same time being far more narrativist than a roleplaying like Into the Bronze usually would be.

More than half of Into the Bronze is about building the world around the Sumerians. This includes elements such as weather and travel, but much is devoted to creating the terrain nearby for the Sumerians to explore and then populating these hexes with encounters across steppes, swamps, deserts, and mountains, and adventure sites. These are backed up with a lengthy table of adventure hooks, a table for creating the gods who walk among men, and a bestiary of classic creatures, such as Ghouls, Griffins, and Minotaurs. These are joined by monsters and creatures out of Sumerian myth, such as the Ekkimu, unburied bodies who have returned as demons and hunt in packs of seven to hunt for human flesh.

Physically, Into the Bronze is decently presented with a range of Public Domain Artwork and laid out in an exciting style. In places, the artwork is poorly handled though, and worse, the roleplaying game is underdeveloped. For example, the lack of explanation of for the Disadvantage mechanic, whether or not there is a corresponding Advantage mechanic, and the missing Conditions. An experienced Game Master will be able to address this issue, but having to do so, adds more effort than is necessary in running the game—if only little. In terms of running Into the Bronze, the Game Master will need a fair bit of effort with Into the Bronze given the brevity of the rules, but at least a bibliography is included for further research. Certainly, the Game Master will need a few more monsters and threats to throw at her players. As a framework, it is potentially too sparse, but that does mean there is room aplenty for input by both the Game Master and her players.

Despite its flaws, Into the Bronze is a fantastic little toolkit for running games in a version of ancient Mesopotamia that the roleplaying game provides a means to create and the Player Characters to then explore and go onto building civilisation. Simple and easy to play, Into the Bronze: Sword & Sorcery RPG in Bronze Age Mesopotamia is an enjoyably nasty, brutish, and short roleplaying game set at the dawn of civilisation.

Mouth Brood is an exploratory horror scenario set in the wilds of Canada in the Yukon on the Kaskwulsh Glacier. Here a strange discovery has been made—a great biodome jutting out of the ice, revealed no doubt due to the effects of global warming and the melting of the glacier. Buried here for millennia, the biodome has clear walls, but what is inside is hidden by leaves and mist and smears of algae. There is though, something moving inside. Clicking and humming and crying. Thousands of things. Millions of things. Are they alien? Are they vestiges of a prior epoch? Are they the results of an abandoned biological project—corporate or governmental? With the discovery of the biodome, Astralem Biotech has been sent a biologists to enter the structure, investigate and catalogue its contents, and above all, return with five live specimens with promises of a bonus for each extra one brought back. What will the team discover? Is it safe? Is it dangerous? Will the team survive?

As with other scenarios from Games Omnivorous, Mouth Brood is a system agnostic scenario, but unlike previous scenarios—The Feast on Titanhead, and The Seed, but like Cabin Risotto Fever before it, this scenario takes place in the modern world rather than a fantasy one. Where Cabin Risotto Fever was set in northern Canada in 1949, the setting for Mouth Brood is the Canada of the here and now—although it does not have to be. As a module, Mouth Brood combines Science Fiction and Horror in its investigation, and like the other titles in the ‘Manifestus Omnivorous’ series is systems-agnostic. Although a modicum of stats is provided to suit a Dungeons & Dragons-style roleplaying game, Mouth Brood would work with, and be easy to adapt to any number of modern or Science Fiction roleplaying games. These include Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition or Chill, third Edition, as well as Alien: The Roleplaying Game, Traveller, and MOTHERSHIP Sci-Fi Horror Roleplaying Game. The point is, Mouth Brood need not be set in Canada, it could be shifted to the Antarctic or the Himalayas, or it could even shifted off world entirely, say to Mars or even to a planet in a different system (although that would break one of its rules listed below, but nevertheless, the possibility is there). Its set-up is simple, flexible, and easy for the Game Master to adjust as necessary. However, just like The Feast on Titanhead, The Seed, and Cabin Risotto Fever before it, Mouth Brood adheres to the Manifestus Omnivorous, the ten points of which are:

1. All books are adventures.
2. The adventures must be system agnostic.
3. The adventures must take place on Earth.
4. The adventures can only have one location.
5. The adventures can only have one monster.
6. The adventures must include saprophagy or osteophagy.
7. The adventures must include a voracious eater.
8. The adventures must have less than 6,666 words.
9. The adventures can only be in two colours.
10. The adventures cannot have good taste. (This is the lost rule.)

As we have come to expect for scenarios from Games Omnivorous, Mouth Brood adheres to all ten rules. It is an adventure, it is system agnostic, it takes place on Earth, it has one location, it has the one monster (though like the older scenarios, those others that appear are extensions of it), it includes both Saprophagy—the obtaining of nutrients through the consumption of decomposing dead plant or animal biomass—and Osteophagy—the practice of animals, usually herbivores, consuming bones, it involves a voracious eater, the word count is not high—the scenario only runs to twenty-eight pages, and it is presented in two colours—in this case, a dark green and greenish-blue over snowy white. Lastly, where previous entries in the series have exhibited Rule #10, it is debatable whether or or not Mouth Brood fails to exhibit good taste—though perhaps that may ultimately be up to how the players and their characters react to it.

The scenario is self-contained detailing a biodome and its almost fizzing, swarming ecology filled with strange creatures that the intruding Player Characters—or indeed anyone—will have seen before. It consists of the outer cover with a map of the biodome on the inside, descriptions of its locations layered out over three levels, from the Undergrowth up through the Canopy to the Emergent, plus a lengthy Bestiary of some eighteen creatures and species. Like all Manifestus Omnivorous titles, it is bound with an elastic band and thus all of the pages can be separated. The advice for the Game Master is to use the Undergrowth, Canopy, and Emergent pages as a screen, and refer to the pages of the Bestiary during play. There is a set-up too, that of Astralem Biotech team, and there are notes on the roles, gear, and advantages of the Expedition Leader, Ecologist, Micro-biologist, and the Bio-Mathematician. These can be copied and given to the players, but the Game Master can also use them as prompts to create pre-generated Player Characters for the roleplaying game of her choice.

Mouth Brood is also a hex-crawl—though very much a mini-hex-crawl, there being seven locations for each of the biodome’s three levels (Undergrowth, Canopy, and Emergent). Each of the hexes is given a thumbnail description, but the bulk of Mouth Brood, twenty-four pages out of its thirty-six, is devoted to its Bestiary. Each entry is accorded a fantastic illustration, a description, a table of things it is doing or is being done to it, and details of what it is doing when observed. They lifeforms of all sorts, such as Acris Motorium, a semi-mobile plant with acrid acid for its sap; the similarly motile Cryptostoma Dilitatus, a swarm-like organism which can contract and spread, and stings in proportional response to contact with it; and the Velox Sanguinus, the brachial apex predator with two sets of jaws, one in its swiveling head, the other in its belly. There is something quite verdant, fetid, and even feverish about the inventiveness of all of these creatures, which could be taken from the pages of Mouth Brood and used elsewhere if the Game Master so desired.

Mouth Brood is primarily a setting, a small environment awaiting the intrusion of the Player Characters, the creatures and species in the biodome reacting to their invasive presence. There is a slight here, that of the biological team collecting samples (and a bit more), but as an exploratory scenario and a hexcrawl scenario, Mouth Brood is very much player driven, the Game Master having to the extensive ecology react to them for much their Player Characters’ explorations. In some ways, this does require a fair bit of preparation upon the part of the Game Master, who has to understand how each of the different species will react to the Player Characters’ presence and actions. In terms of play, there will be a lot of movement and then just being still and observing, such there is almost something sedentary to the scenario. That will probably change once the Player Characters come to the notice of the biodome’s predators. If using pre-generated Player Characters, the Game Master might also want to add some storyhooks and relationships to them, not only to encourage interaction, but also to ramp up the tension when the dangers of the ecology within the biodome become apparent.

Physically, as with the other titles in the  Manifestus Omnivorous series, Mouth Brood is very nicely presented. The cover is sturdy card, whilst the pages are of a thick paper stock, giving the book a lovely feel in the hand. The scenario is decently written, if a little spare in places, but the artwork is excellent and when shown to the players, should have them exclaiming, Ugh what’s that?”, at just about every entry in the Bestiary. 

Inspired by films such as Annihilation and Roadside Picnic, Mouth Brood presents a hellishly febrile ecological unknown, its self-contained nature suggesting that its horror is all inside, when ultimately, the true horror is realising the consequences of what would happen if it were outside…

How do you like your GM Screen?

The GM Screen is essentially a reference sheet, comprised of several card sheets that fold out and can be stood up to serve another purpose, that is, to hide the GM’s notes and dice rolls. On the inside, the side facing the GM are listed all of the tables that the GM might want or need at a glance without the need to have to leaf quickly through the core rulebook. On the outside, facing the players, is either more tables for their benefit or representative artwork for the game itself. This is both the basic function and the basic format of the screen, neither of which has changed very much over the years. Beyond the basic format, much has changed though.

To begin with the general format has split, between portrait and landscape formats. The result of the landscape format is a lower screen, and if not a sturdier screen, than at least one that is less prone to being knocked over. Another change has been in the weight of card used to construct the screen. Exile Studios pioneered a new sturdier and durable screen when its printers took two covers from the Hollow Earth Expedition core rule book and literally turned them into the game's screen. This marked a change from the earlier and flimsier screens that had been done in too light a cardstock, and many publishers have followed suit.

Once you have decided upon your screen format, the next question is what you have put with it. Do you include a poster or poster map, such as Chaosium, Inc.’s last screen for Call of Cthulhu, Sixth Edition?  Or a reference work like the GM Resource Book for Pelgrane Press’ Trail of Cthulhu? Or scenarios such as ‘Blackwater Creek’ and ‘Missed Dues’ from the Call of Cthulhu Keeper Screen for use with Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition? Or even better, a book of background and scenarios as well as the screen, maps, and forms, like that of the RuneQuest Gamemaster Screen Pack published by Chaosium, Inc. In general, the heavier and sturdier the screen, the more likely it is that the screen will be sold unaccompanied, such as those published by Cubicle Seven Entertainment for the Starblazer Adventures: The Rock & Roll Space Opera Adventure Game  and Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space RPG.
So how do I like my GM Screen?
The Mörk Borg GM Screen comes as a five-panel screen, very sturdy, in portrait format. The outside of the screen is perhaps anything unlike which has been seen before for Mörk Borg, the pitch-black pre-apocalyptic fantasy roleplaying game which brings a Nordic death metal sensibility to the Old School Renaissance. Instead of the riotous assault of electrically vibrant yellow and pink highlights on swathes of black, abrupt font changes, and metallic embellishments. Instead, we have a polyptych of images in white and red on black depicting scenes from the last days of Tveland’s pre-apocalypse. Bloodied demonic skulls, ominously dark towers in the distance, a cultist with sacrifice, a headless statue—or is it?—of angel in a graveyard, and great beasts scrapping over a mound of corpses. The end is nigh and the Mörk Borg GM Screen lest you know it…
The inside of the Mörk Borg GM Screen reverts to its traditional vibrant yellow and with various tables laid out across the inner panels. Working from the left, the first panel provides the means for the Game Master to create NPCs on the fly, including name (both male and female) and trade, along with a concern, a want, what he or she thinks of the forthcoming apocalypse, and lastly a trait to help make him or her memorable. Thus, Urkin the Shitshoveller, who walks with a limp, is concerned because she has kidnapped kin and wants bloodshed in response, but ultimately believes that mankind is doomed. Should the Game Master want it, an optional table can add a twist like Urkin actually being the head of a murder cult or an inquisitor! The next panel—‘Prices May Vary’—covers just about everything that the Player Characters might want to purchase, from chalk and chewing tobacco to scissors and scrolls, as well as weapons, services, armour repairs, and beasts.
The middle panel is the meat of the game and comes with the admonition that the Game Master ‘Only ever roll when failure is interesting’. So here the Game Master can see the Difficulty Ratings, rules for Violence—who Goes First?, Attack, and Defence—and tables for ‘Where Does it Hurt?’ and when an NPC, or probably a Player Character, is ‘Broken’, all at a glance. The next panel provides the stats for Sword Fodder, Worthy Foes, and The Big Bad, whether that is an Underpaid, tired guard, something all Claws, eyes, spidery legs, or The Demon Appears! Beneath this is pair of tables, one for ‘Unclean Powers’ and one ‘Sacred Powers’. All together—and in some cases combined with the NPC creation tables on the first panel—the Game Master can quickly pick and modify an opponent without the need to refer to the rulebook. The last panel is more perfunctory, proving a big table of ‘Items and Trinkets’ and another for the weather, but the entries on the former can be quite intriguing.
Across the top of the panels are pointers for the Game Master. For example, ‘Stores might be understocked’ and ‘Some will try to scam the PCs’ on the prices panel, which add just a little extra. Now initially, it does look as if the Mörk Borg GM Screen does not come with anything extra. This is in part because the extras it does come with are slim, the same shade of yellow as the inside of the screen, and are actually attached to the screen by means of corner pockets that the sheets neatly slip into—perhaps a little too neatly as they are slightly awkward to slot back in. On the front of the first sheet is devoted to Traps—how Player Character triggered the trap, what the trap is, who or what built it. On the reverse, is ‘Somewhere to Drink’ with a select menu, a menu for those who lack funds, patron traits, and answers to the question, ‘Why is the Innkeeper Twitching?’, all of which goes to creating an encounter or even an adventure in itself should the Game Minister want it. On the other separate sheet on the one side is ‘The Tablets of Ochre Obscurity’ is a set of random spell effects worked into tablets, whilst on the other, is a big table of ‘Forty City Events’.
Physically, the Mörk Borg GM Screen is a sturdy game aid. It feels solid in the hands and should withstand reasonable handling, as well as stand up on the table. Everything on the inside of the screen is easy to read—the black on yellow is very clear—including the cursive founts used. If there is an issue with the durability of the Mörk Borg GM Screen, it is that two separate sheets, as cleverly stored with the actual screen as they are, are not as solid and are likely to get separated and lost.
As a roleplaying game, Mörk Borg is mechanically light enough that the Game Master can get away without needing to resort to a screen. However, the Mörk Borg GM Screen is useful in both providing the tables routinely referenced during play and tables of prompts and ideas that the Game Master can very quickly pick or roll up—even at the table if necessary. Ultimately, the Mörk Borg GM Screen is not a necessity, but if you have one, it is perfectly functional and serviceable.

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 a Five Go Mad in Egypt, Return of the Ripper, Rise of the Dead, Rise of the Dead II: The Raid, and more...

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

—oOo—
Name: The Catcott CollectionPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Peter Willington

Setting: Jazz Age Bristol, United Kingdom
Product: Scenario
What You Get: Fifteen page, 1.96 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: “Mirrors don’t lie. They only show a part of truth.”Plot Hook: Getting lost in your studies may cost you more than your Sanity...Plot Support: Detailed plot, staging advice for the Keeper, one floorplan, two handouts, and one NPC (sort of).Production Values: Excellent.
Pros# One-to-one format more engaging# Good staging advice for the Keeper
# Short, one-session, one-to-one scenario# Strong sense of personal horror# Strong sense of isolation# Nicely done feel of decay and dream-like uncertainty# Would work as an introduction for any Academic Investigator# Easy to adjust to Cthulhu by Gaslight or Cthulhu Now
Cons
# Requires a slight edit# Tome at the heart of the scenario not written up# One-to-one format more demanding than traditional scenario# Pre-generated Investigator not given as an Investigator sheet# The intimacy of the personal horror may not suit all players
Conclusion
# Isolated, intimate horror one-shot# Nicely done feel of decay and dream-like uncertainty# Demanding horror scenario for both player and Keeper

The year is 1965. On March 19th, 1964, a joint Japanese-French mission landed on the Moon aboard the giant atomic rocket Kaguyahime, the Moon Princess – affectionately called Monsieur Renard (‘Mister Fox’) in France because of its orange-red paint job. Two space stations orbit the Earth—the US Aurora and the Soviet Budushcheye-1. In the skies over Europe and far-flung cities, the Aérospatiale/BAC Concorde carries passengers at the speed of sound with BOAC, Air France, and Air Majestique. Around the world the Cold War continues between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, with Europe divided by the ‘Iron Curtain’. This includes Arenwald, the alpine principality formerly part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, squeezed in between Hungary, Sylveria, and Yugoslavia, famous as a stop on the Arlberg Orient Express line from London to Athens, and its Soviet counterpart, the Socialist Republic of Sylveria. The Cold War is not the only threat to the world, a secret organisation known as the Octopus, a centuries-old criminal organisation, has designs on world domination. There are other dangers too, as well as mysteries and conspiracies, many of which the authorities are not best-placed to deal with. Step forward the Troubleshooters, bands of friends and adventurers who are prepared to travel the world and investigate the mysteries, crimes, and dangers that the authorities decline to do. And if they can have fun along the way, all the better!
This is the set-up for The Troubleshooters: An Action-Adventure Roleplaying Game inspired by French and Belgian comics—bande dessinée or bédé—such as Tintin, Spirou et Fantasio, Blake & Mortimer, and Yoko Tsuno. Published by Helmgast following a successful Kickstarter campaign, this is an action-adventure roleplaying game set in the second half of the sixties and first half of the seventies, an era of glamour, optimism, and technological advances. Its outlook is optimistic and exciting, a metropolitan world primarily set across a Europe full of diverse and exotic locations. The players will take the roles of the Troubleshooters, freelance adventurers and investigators, friends ready to look into mysteries and crimes, travel to exotic locales, and have adventures! The Troubleshooters can have a theme and thus be a band of curious adventurers, sleuths, agents, or criminals (in the tone of ‘gentleman thieves’)—and The Troubleshooters starts off by discussing these and giving sample inspirations. Each Troubleshooter should be competent, have a particular role in the group—such as the Doer, Investigator, or Muscle, want to adventure, possess a weakness which enhances the story, be fun to play, and fun to play with.

A character in The Troubleshooters is defined by Skills, Max Vitality, Plot Hooks, Traits, Abilities, Complications, and Story Points. Skills—rated as percentiles—are broken down into Background, Social, Investigation, Action, and Combat skills, and they include skills such as Agility, Endurance, Strength, and Willpower, which in other roleplaying games would be used as attributes. Plot Hooks, such as ‘Do-Gooder’ or ‘Media Darling’, are used to pull Troubleshooters into a scenario, and published scenarios will use specific Plot Hooks to involve Troubleshooters. Abilities mark the Troubleshooter out as a special and come in three Tiers with increasingly harder requirements, but at each Tier provide a means for the Troubleshooter to spend Story Points. For example, the Actor Ability requires the Entertainment skill at 65%, and when used with other skills like Charm or Subterfuge, enables a Troubleshooter pretend to be another person. For one Story Point, the Troubleshooter can flip a Subterfuge task check when pretending to be someone else, but for two, he can make a new task check for Entertainment or Charm, and keep the new roll. Complications are roleplaying hooks, for both the player and the Director of Operations—as the Game Master is known in The Troubleshooters is known—and also a source of Story Points. For example, a Troubleshooter with the ‘Amorous’ Complication will earn three Story Points when distracted by his emotions and receives a −2 pips modification to task checks not related to said emotions, three Story Points if a romantic interlude causes him trouble, and six Story Points when a date or romantic interlude prevents him from participating in an important scene.

Troubleshooter creation is template based, though guidelines are included which allow a new template to be built or a Troubleshooter to be built without using a template. Fifteen templates are included from Adventurous Scholar, Aspiring Student, and Caring Veterinarian to Racing Driver, Suffering Artist, and Vigilante Lawyer. Each template includes some background, eleven skills, five Abilities, three Complications, Vitality, extra languages, three gear kits, and some Plot Hook suggestions. A player can modify the skills, but must choose two Abilities, one Complication, five gear kits (this is three more than the template gives, but there is an extensive list of gear included in the book), and two Plot Hooks. He also chooses languages if his Troubleshooter has any and finally decide—or roll—where he met the other Troubleshooters. (Alternatively, the players could just use the six signature Troubleshooters included as examples who figure in all of the examples through the book.)

Dickie Jones – Curious Engineer
Skills: Contacts 45%, Electronics 65%, Engineering 75%, Investigation 45%, Machinery 65%, Science 65%, Search 65%, Security 45%, Melee 45%, Vehicles 45%, Willpower 45%. (All other Skills 15%.)
Abilities: Curious, Tech Wiz
Complications: Combat Paralysis, Crude
Vitality: 5
Languages: –
Gear: Camping Gear, Ham radio set, Electronics toolbox, First Aid Kit, Mechanic’s toolbox (Signature)
Plot Hooks: Friends in High Places, I Owe You

Mechanically, The Troubleshooters is a percentile system. To undertake a Task, a Troubleshooter’s player rolls percentile dice and if the result is equal to or less than the skill and the Troubleshooter succeeds. If the roll is a double and below the Skill value, then the Troubleshooter earns Good Karma, succeeding with a bonus and gains a Story Point. Conversely, Bad Karma is gained if a double is rolled and it is above the Skill value. The Karma can be mechanical or storytelling in nature. The former might be +2 or -2 Pips for Good or Bad Karma, the latter reinforcements turn up, either to help or hinder the Troubleshooters, depending upon whether it is Good or Bad Karma. Modifiers to the roll come in the form of Pips, which range from +5 to -5. If the number of Pips is positive, then any result equal to, or less than the number of Pips on the Ones die will always succeed, even if the actual percentile roll is greater than the Skill value. Conversely, if the number of Pips is negative, then any result equal to, or less than the number of Pips on the Ones die will always fail, even if the actual percentile roll is less than the Skill value. Pips can be applied because the environment, such as in the middle of a storm, or equipment used, such as a tool kit. The Pips system does feel a little weird, even counterintuitive, but it does not take much adjusting to, and once you have, it is very workable.

Notably, if a test is failed, it cannot be repeated, either by the current Troubleshooter or any other Troubleshooter—unless circumstances have changed significantly. Failure though is not intended be an absolute, but rather that the Troubleshooter ‘Fail Forward’ and either learn from the failure or push the story on in interesting ways. For example, in a fight, a Troubleshooter might not be killed, but rather captured, or if a Troubleshooter fails to defuse a bomb in time, he at least learns something about the design. In addition, every Troubleshooter has Story Points. Their most common use is to flip the results of a percentile roll. However, they can also be spent to activate Abilities, get gadgets beyond the standard five a Troubleshooter starts play with, gain clues, and either add something major or minor to the ongoing story. Adding something to the story may require a little negotiation with the Director.

For example, Dickie Jones is participating in a rally across Sylveria. He is the co-driver in a car driven by his fellow Troubleshooter, Tristan Narbrough, but in addition to wanting to place well in the event, they are after a Soviet spy who is heading for the Socialist Republic of Sylveria with some information stolen from one of the sponsors of their car. However, during a night stage, in the middle of a storm, their car, a Mini-Cooper breaks down. Dickie leaps out of his seat, tool kit in hand, and pulls up the bonnet. To determine the fault and fix is going to require a Machinery 65% Test. The Director of Operations sets the Task at ‘-2 Pips’ for the storm, but Tristan’s player describes how he is holding a torch to make sure that Dickie can see what he is doing, which negates the ‘-2 Pips’. Plus, of course, Dickie has his signature Mechanic’s toolbox, which gives him two Pips. So, Dickie’s player is rolling his Machinery 65% Skill at ‘+2 Pips’. Dickie’s player rolls 99%! Not only is this a failure, but it is also one with Bad Karma. This could be bad news for both Dickie and Tristian, but Dickie has the Tech Wiz Ability, which enables his player to reroll an Electronics, Engineering, or Machinery Task for one Story Point. Dickie’s player spends the Story Point and rerolls, but the result is a 71%--better but still a failure… Except no, the value on the Ones die is less than the Pips, which means that Dickie finds the fault, fixes it, and they are back on the road again, driving hard to catch up with and capture the industrial spy!

Combat in The Troubleshooters is more complex and is built around opposed Tests between attacking and defensive Skills, for example, Melee versus Melee Skill or Ranged Combat versus the Agility Skill. The Troubleshooters, as Player Characters, have Defence Skills, but unless they are important, Director characters (or NPCs) do not. Initiative is handled with an Agility Test, with the rests of the two dice added together if successful. Damage is rolled on six-sided dice, typically just two for unarmed attacks, all the way up to seven for machine guns. Rolls of four, five, and six inflict a point of Vitality damage per die, with results of six exploding and potentially doing more damage. Armour allows Soak rolls which negate points of damage, but do not explode. Recovery rolls, made to recover Vitality work the same as Soak rolls. A Troubleshooter or an important Director character is out Cold when they run out of Vitality, although either can take the Wounded or the Mortal Peril Condition instead of suffering Vitality loss. This typically to void being Out Cold, but both have consequences after the fight and take time to heal. What is stressed throughout The Troubleshooters is that it is not a roleplaying game about killing and that it is very difficult for a Troubleshooter to die. Indeed, the most common way of a Troubleshooter dying is when it is dramatically appropriate and the Director has stated that it is a possibility in a scene. As to killing, if a player has his Troubleshooter kill a Director character in cold blood, then the Director is advised to deny the Troubleshooter any free improvement checks at the end of the adventure, and remove all of the Troubleshooter’s Story Points, as well as half of the Story Points of those Troubleshooters’ who could have stopped him. This is harsh, but The Troubleshooters is intended as a positive roleplaying and roleplaying experience.

For the Director of Operations, there is good advice on setting up combat scenes to make them interesting and challenging, adjudicating the use and awarding of Story Points, an extensive list of Gear—including Weird Tech with which to equip the bad guys or interest any budding Tech Wiz Troubleshooter. The advice also covers hosting and running the game, portraying the Director’s characters—including how to make the bigger villains camp, and creating adventures and campaign. She is accorded a full description of the Octopus, its organisation, members, aims, and technology, plus plenty of stats and write-ups of various Director characters and animals. In terms of background, ‘The World of The Troubleshooters’ presents the period and setting in some detail, highlighting not just the differences between the sixties that we know from history and the sixties of The Troubleshooters, but also the similarities. It covers technology, travel, and more before providing a whirlwind guide to some of the interesting places and cities around the world, from Paris and Berlin to Buenos Aries to Ice Station X-14. These are really good, describing each location in a couple of pages including lists of where to stay, things to do, and why that location is being visited as part of the Troubleshooters’ adventure. In fact, these location descriptions feel reminiscent of the Thrilling Locations supplement for the James Bond 007 roleplaying game from 1983 and certainly that sourcebook could be useful until The Troubleshooters gets one of its own. Rounding out The Troubleshooters is a set of appendices which include a calendar for 1965, lists of first names in various languages, a table of character traits, and several lists of profanities, but not profanities, which should allow a Troubleshooter to swear, but not swear, and still maintain the spirit of the bande dessinée. “Blue blistering barnacles!” indeed.

Physically, The Troubleshooters is a stunning looking book. The artwork, done in the ‘Ligne claire’ style pioneered by Hergé, nicely sets the signature cast of The Troubleshooters against the well-drawn backdrop of the real world. Make no mistake, the artwork is excellent throughout, really capturing the feel of the roleplaying’s inspiration. Although it needs a slight edit in places, The Troubleshooters is well written and an engaging read from start to finish. Throughout, the rules and situations are explained in numerous examples of play, all using the signature cast of The Troubleshooters and narrated by Graf Albrecht Vogelin Erwin von Zadrith, the Number Two of the Octopus, as the Director. These are all entertaining to read and tell a story as much as they inform about the rules.

If there are any issues with The Troubleshooters, then there are two. First, there is no scenario. Second, the other thing is that although it references various bande dessinée, it does not list actual titles. Fortunately, there are three scenarios available for the roleplaying game in The Troubleshooters’ Archive. The lack of a bibliography can be got around using the pointers included here as a starting point. In addition, The U-boat Mystery scenario is already available.

The obvious thing about The Troubleshooters is that could be used to run a James Bond style roleplaying game. It could be, and it would work well as a James Bond roleplaying game, but The Troubleshooters is not as cynical in tone or even as murderous as the world of James Bond is in comparison. Much lighter in tone, The Troubleshooters is of course a roleplaying game of adventure tourism in the style of bande dessinée, but also that of the ITC Entertainment television series of the period. For example, The Saint, The Persuaders!, and The Protectors, and whilst it is specific in its bande dessinée inspiration, The Troubleshooters is really the first roleplaying game to look back to the period since Agents of S.W.I.N.G..

The Troubleshooters: An Action-Adventure Roleplaying Game is great looking book with artwork which wonderfully evokes its source material. The rules and mechanics support play in the style of that source material, enabling the players to create fun Troubleshooters, and jet or drive off on amazing, exciting adventures with each other and tell great stories. With its comic book or bande dessinée sensibilities, there can be no doubt that The Troubleshooters takes us back to a simpler, if headier and more optimistic time. The combination means The Troubleshooters is engagingly, delightfully European and charmingly chic.

The mystery—as opposed to the mysterious, which has always been there—has long been a part of roleplaying, all the way back to The Maltese Clue, the scenario published by Judges Guild in 1979.  It really came to the fore with roleplaying games like Call of Cthulhu, Gangbusters, and Justice, Inc. and more recently seen in the GUMSHOE System with roleplaying games such as Mutant City Blues, which combines superheroes with the police procedural. What these all do with the mystery is provide the Game Matron with a plot and a set of clues that the players and their characters investigate the mystery and hopefully piece together the clues to uncover the mystery. However, what if the mystery and its investigation was set up the other way around? What if there was no set solution and instead the solution to the mystery could be constructed from the clues uncovered by the players and their characters and would be, if not absolutely correct, then very nearly so? This is what Matrons of Mystery—and Brindlewood Bay, the roleplaying game by Jason Cordova it is derived from—both do.

Both Matrons of Mystery and Brindlewood Bay are Powered by the Apocalypse roleplaying games in which players take the roles of women of a certain age who investigate murder—often much to the consternation of local law enforcement. Brindlewood Bay has an American feel and behind the series of murders a Lovecraftian conspiracy, whereas Matrons of Mystery focuses entirely on the murder mysteries, employs a parred back version of the Powered by the Apocalypse mechanics, and has a decidedly British sensibility being inspired by television series such as Miss Marple, Rosemary & Thyme, Agatha Raisin, Queens of Mystery, Father Brown, and so on. This is not the world of the hardboiled mystery, or even mystery on a medium heat, but that of the ‘cozy’ mystery, set in a small town or village where everyone knows everyone—except that recently arrived stranger, and of course, everyone’s secrets—and there is a strong sense of community, and is of course, suitable for afternoon or Sunday night viewing with all of the family gathered round the television.

Matrons of Mystery: A cozy mystery roleplaying game is designed for three or four players, plus the Game Matron, and each mystery ideally takes a session to solve. This makes it good for one shots or convention games, and the familiarity of its genre means that Matrons of Mystery will be easy to grasp and familiar to most players. In Matrons of Mystery, players take the roles of ladies of a certain age, who are perhaps single, widowed, or divorced, certainly retired or have more than enough time to throw themselves into their community and various activities and charities. For example, keeping the parish church clean, attending meetings of the W.I., helping run Meals on Wheels, doing the village Christmas Pantomime, and so on. Of course, when murder strikes—as it invariably does in their surprisingly high murder count communities—it is the ‘Matrons of Mystery’ who take up their handbags, put down their trowels, and ever ready to make a nice hot cup of tea, discover whodunnit before the local bobby on the beat, Police Constable Plodd, and Inspector Witless from the nearest big town, can work it all out.

Character generation and game set-up in Matrons of Mystery is quite quick. First, the players name and decide on some details about their Matrons’ village. Then, every Matron has a name, a Personal Style, a Hobby, a Background, an Investigation Style, and a Contact. So a Name might be Audrey or Nettie, a Personal Style could be ‘Smart and Classic’, ‘Punk’, or ‘Twinset and Pearl’, and a Hobby Baking, Gardening, Collecting, or Amateur Dramatics. The Background consists of answers to three questions—the first is about a Matron’s former partner or whether or not she was married, what was her career before she retired, and whether she has any children, or if not, young relatives she is fond of. Her Investigation Style—Physical, Logical, Intuitive, or Gregarious—represents different approaches to solving mysteries, and the Contact is someone that the Matron knows well from her past and can rely upon to help out in a pinch. To create a Matron, a player decides upon all of these factors, answers the three questions for her Background, and then assigns +2 to her primary Investigation Style, +1 to her secondary Investigation Style, sets a third at 0, and assigns -1 to her least favoured Investigation Style.

Henrietta Wyndham
Personal Style: Punk
Hobby: Painting
Background: Divorced (to Nigel Wyndham, Stage name: Nasty Nigel), Former Record Producer, Children include Freddy, Pandora, Ned
Contact: Gordon Blythe-White (Record Exec)
Physical 0 Logical -1 Intuitive +1 Gregarious +2

Mechanically, Matrons of Mystery uses Powered by the Apocalypse. To undertake an action or ‘Move’, a player rolls two six-sided dice, adds his Matron’s Investigative Style and aims to roll high. The results fall into the ‘Yes’, ‘Yes, but…’, and ‘No and…’ Roll ten and more and the Move is successful; roll between seven and nine, and the Move is successful, but comes with a Complication; and roll six or less, and the Move not only fails, but adds a Complication. A Complication hinders the Matron’s investigative efforts, such as her slipping and injuring herself climbing in or out of a window or the suspect taking umbrage at one or more of the questions posed to him. This can lead to an ongoing Condition, such as a sprained ankle or being thrown out of a society dinner. (If there is one issue with Matrons of Mystery, it is that it could have done with a bigger list of Complications and especially Conditions to inspire the Game Matron.)

Rules are provided for gaining Experience Points and either using them in play to improve dice rolls or saving them to improve a Matron’s Investigative Styles. They do feel optional though.

Unlike most versions of Powered by the Apocalypse, the rules in Matrons of Mystery include an Advantage and Disadvantage mechanic. Thus when a Matron has the Advantage, which can come from her Personal Style, Hobby, Background, or the situation, three six-sided dice are rolled instead of two, and the best used. Conversely, when she is at a Disadvantage, her player rolls three dice and keeps the lowest two. Another difference between other roleplaying games using Powered by the Apocalypse and Matrons of Mystery is that it does not make use of Playbooks, each of which provide an archetypal character and its associated Moves. Instead, Matrons of Mystery provides a standard set of nine Moves that all of the Matrons can use. The first five Moves—‘Investigate’, ‘Interrogate’, ‘Take Action’, ‘Lend A Hand’, and ‘Ask A Favour’ are used to gain clues and conduct the Investigation. The next three, ‘Reminisce’, ‘Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down’, and ‘Go To Adverts’, enforce both the genre and the format of the genre. ‘Reminisce’ enables a Matron to recall something from her past which will help with the current investigation; ‘Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down’ lets two or more Matrons sit down, have a nice hot cup of tea, have a chat with each other, and in doing so, each remove a single Condition; and ‘Go To Adverts’ enforces a break in the story when a Matron is in danger, ends the scene on a cliffhanger, and lets the players discuss how the cliffhanger is resolved with the imperilled Matron unharmed when the adverts end!

The final Move is ‘Put It All Together’. This happens at the end or near the end of the game when the Matrons gather their collected clues and deduce the identity of the murderer. Instead of using an Investigative Style to modify the roll, the player uses the number of clues and secrets found out so far, minus the number of suspects involved in the murder. Typically, there are eight suspects per murder, so the Matrons will need to have gathered at least eight clues and secrets to negate this, plus more to gain a modifier to the roll. Roll ten or more and the Move is successful, the Matrons are correct in their deductions and have identified the Murderer and his motive; roll between seven and nine, and the Move is successful, the Matrons are correct in their deductions and have identified the Murderer and his motive, but there a Complication which the Matrons will need to overcome in order to apprehend the Murderer; and roll six or less, and the Move fails, indicating that the Matron’s deductions are incorrect. The Game Matron has to explain why and then sends the Matrons back off to continue their investigations and try again.

For the Game Matron, there is good advice on designing a mystery, from the theme and the set-up through to defining the secrets and listing the clues. There is also good advice on running the game—both online and at the gaming table, how to handle clues, secrets, Complications and Conditions, and so on, as well as optional rules for one-on-one play and playing away from the Matrons’ home village. A short bibliography provides some inspiration for the Game Matron. Then there are three ready-to-play Mysteries, complete with set-up, teaser, eight suspects, and a long list of clues. The first is ‘Gardner’s Question Crime’ in which the village hosts the popular radio show, Gardeners’ Answers in the grounds of Hatherly Hall. With most of the village present, the guest speaker, celebrity gardener and host of the television series, Gardener’s Life, Alan Jefferson, drops dead as he is about to take to the stage. This is followed by ‘Dicing With Death’ in which the village hosts a roleplaying convention (!) and award-winning game designer, Scott Sallow, is found dead on the last day of the convention with his mouth stuffed full of polyhedrals! Lastly, ‘Ding Dong Death’ is takes place just before national bell ringing championships and with the village wanting to put on a good performance, the bell ringing team is getting in some last-minute practice. Unfortunately, the lead bell ringer, Walter Bell, is found hanging upside down from one of the bell ropes. All three scenarios are great set-ups, though ‘Dicing With Death’ feels both improbable and a direct appeal to its intended audience.

Physically, Matrons of Mystery is a tidily done digest-sized book. The cover is appropriately rural, whilst the internal artwork, all publicly sourced, is there to break up the page rather than necessarily illustrate the game. The book is well written and easy to read—especially with the slightly larger fount size.

Matrons of Mystery is fun to play and it is simple to play. Having just the one set of nine Basic Moves eases play no end. Given the age of the Matrons, it is much more of a social game than physical game necessarily, although some sneaking around is probably going to be necessary and perfectly in keeping with the genre. Although it does present her with eight suspects to roleplay, the lighter nature of the rules do provide the Game Matron with the opportunity to really focus on her roleplaying and have fun with it too. The nature of the game and its ‘no given perpetrator’ set-up also strips Matrons of Mystery of any sense of stress or competition which might arise in the players and the Game Matron as they worry whether their deductions and solution to the crime is actually right. Instead, the players and their Matrons construct the murder solution and motive from the clues, thus emphasising storytelling—both the storytelling of the murder and the storytelling of it being solved.

Matrons of Mystery: A cozy mystery roleplaying game is cleverly cozy, taking the structure of Brindlewood Bay and parring it back to focus on its core game play. It is a smart, sprightly roleplaying game which delightfully evokes its genre from the page to the table. And if you are going to play this at the table, a nice hot cup of tea is an absolute necessity.

Now in its fourteenth year, Free RPG Day in 2021, after a little delay due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, took place on Saturday, 16th October. As per usual, it came with an array of new and interesting little releases, which traditionally would have been tasters for forthcoming games to be released at GenCon the following August, but others are support for existing RPGs or pieces of gaming ephemera or a quick-start. Of course, in 2021, Free RPG Day took place after GenCon despite it also taking place later than its traditional start of August dates, but Reviews from R’lyeh was able to gain access to the titles released on the day due to a friendly local gaming shop and both Keith Mageau and David Salisbury of Fan Boy 3 in together sourcing and providing copies of the Free RPG Day 2020 titles. Reviews from R’lyeh would like to thank all three for their help.

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Goodman Games provided two titles to support Free RPG 2021, both of which were highly anticipated. Perhaps the more interesting of the two was Dark Tower: The Sunken Temple of Set, an expansion for Dark Tower, the classic  and highly regarded scenario written by Jennell Jaquays and published by Judges Guild in 1979. However, the other was as eagerly anticipated since it was for Goodman Games’ highly popular Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game. In past years, the support for Free RPG Day has come in the form of a quick-start, either for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game or Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic, but for Free RPG Day 2021, the support came in the form of a scenario, Tomb of the Savage Kings.
Tomb of the Savage Kings is a short adventure for Second Level characters which shares an Egyptian theme with Dark Tower: The Sunken Temple of Set. There the similarities end, for Tomb of the Savage Kings, for although there is a Pulp sensibility to both, that sensibility is one of Pulp Fantasy and Swords & Sorcery in Dark Tower: The Sunken Temple of Set, whereas it one of Pulp Horror for Tomb of the Savage Kings as it draws on Universal Studio’s The Mummy and The Mummy’s Hand, as well as Hammer Studio’s The Mummy for its inspiration. In fact, the sensibility is so strong in Tomb of the Savage Kings, that if there was such a thing as Pulp Crawl Classics, this would be a perfect scenario for it.
The scenario begins with the players being hired by Portnelle’s most popular and wealthy socialite, the widow Zita Aztur. Her sister, Isobel, smitten with a mysterious suitor who fancies himself as an adventurer, and has gone missing. The widow fears that she has run off with this would be adventurer in search of the Moon Spear of Andoheb, said to be located in the latter’s pyramid tomb. If true, she fears for her sister’s life as everyone  up until now who has searched for the spear has never been seen again. With promise of a handsome payout and the good widow’s Halfling servant along as a guide, the scenario begins with the Player Characters outside of the tomb looking for a way in…
Once inside, the Player Characters find a classic Egyptian tomb complex. It consists of just nine locations and packs into that the traps, undead, treasures, and clues typical of the genre. It is definitely worth the Player Characters’ searching for clues as there are signs that someone has been here before—and recently! Those clues are nicely done in a grand depiction of the life of Andoheb, and the Judge should definitely provide it as a handout to her players. Following these and exploring the pyramid should bring the Player Characters to a fantastic climatic confrontation which plays much on the inspiration for Tomb of the Savage Kings and depending on what happens, have some interesting outcomes. Two of these have links to the scenarios, Dungeon Crawl Classics #66.5 Doom of the Savage King and Dungeon Crawl Classics #77.5 The Tower out of Time, and so the Judge may want to have access to those. 
Physically, Tomb of the Savage Kings is as well presented as you would expect for a scenario from Goodman Games. The artwork, the cartography clear, and the scenario is well written, though it needs an edit in place.
Tomb of the Savage Kings is a great adventure for Free RPG Day which can be played in a single session. The theme—and probably the plot—will be familiar to many a gamer, especially if the players like Pulp Horror depictions of Egypt. It does also suggest that perhaps there is further potential in an Egypt-set or Egypt-like setting for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game or a more Pulp Horror setting. For fans of the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game who like their fantasy with steamy mix of Pulp Horror, Tomb of the Savage Kings is fun adventure.

Imagine if you will a haunted house home to several ghosts in danger of being woken up by the constant ringing of bell stolen from the nearest village by a giant, enraged and dressed only in a silk bathrobe, who is trying to find the three ne’er do wells who have stolen his golden goose and run into the house to hide. The house is called Willowby Hall, the goose is called Mildred, the giant is called Bonebreaker Tom, the ghosts are Elias Fenwick, evil occultist, the aristocratic Lavinia Coldwater, the footman, Horatio, and a Taxidermied Owl Bear, the adventurers are Helmut Halfsword, Lisbet Grund, and Apocalypse Ann, and they all really, really want something. And as the bell rings out, the house shudders and shudders until floors collapse, rooms catch alight spontaneously, the Taxidermied Owl Bear goes on the hunt, and the undead rise from where they are buried about the house… This is a recipe for, if not a pantomime a la Mother Goose, then a dark farce best played out on Halloween or at Christmas, but either way is the set-up for the scenario, The Waking of Willowby Hall. Written by the host of the YouTube channel, Questing Beast, it is designed for a party of Third Level characters for the retroclone of your choice and can easily be adapted to other roleplaying games too. It would work with Hypertellurians: Fantastic Thrills Through the Ultracosm or Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay as much as it would Old School Essentials Classic Fantasy.

The Waking of Willowby Hall was funded via a Kickstarter campaign as part of ZineQuest 2. It comes as a thirty-two-page adventure built around thirty-three named locations across the three floors of Willowby Hall and eight NPCs plus various monsters. The house is not mapped out and detailed once, but twice. First in the module’s opening pages, marked with thumbnail descriptions and page number references, the latter actually more useful than simple numbers. Second, in the latter half of the book where full room descriptions are given accompanied by a complete floorplan with the particular rooms highlighted. It feels a little odd at first, but flipping between the two is actually not as awkward as it first seems. None of the individual rooms in Willowby Hall are mapped, but it is a classic mansion which when combined with the engagingly detailed descriptions is easy to visualise and portray. The NPCs are each given half a page, including stats, personality, and wants (or motivations) , plus a fetching illustration. This includes Mildred the Goose, who is essentially there to do two things. One is to motivate her previous owner, Tom Bonebreaker, and the other is to annoy the hell of out the players and their characters. If it appears that the Dungeon Master is playing Untitled Goose Game with Mildred, then both she and Mildred are probably doing their job. Tom Bonebreaker however, is accorded a full page to himself as he is the scenario’s main threat. The scenario’s other threat is also given its own page.

For the Player Characters, the first difficulty is getting into Willowby Hall. Several reasons are suggested as to why they might want to enter the mansion. This includes a couple of classics—one of the Player Characters inheriting the mansion, the other the mansion being the retreat of an occult society which collected rare artefacts and books—as well as the Player Characters merely passing and being hired by the local villagers to retrieve the bell. The latter will probably lead to the Player Characters negotiating with the giant campanologist for the bell and he will want his goose back, which means they will have to enter Willowby Hall. With the other ideas, they will are unlikely to encounter this and instead the Player Characters will just need to make a run for the mansion. This is made easier in the scenario because it advises that Tom Bonebreaker be on the other side of the building when they make their run across the overgrown lawns to the mansion. Alternatively, the Player Characters could begin in the mansion itself and the adventurers simply charge in with goose in hand and the giant on their tails. Once inside, the Player Characters are free to explore as is their wont, but then their problems are only beginning…

The Player Characters’ first aim is probably going to be working out what is going in the house as they explore its halls and rooms, the second being to locate the trio of adventurers and probably, Mildred. As they make their search, there is the constant sound of the bell being rung outside and the eye of Tom Bonebreaker appearing at one window after another, and if the giant spots anyone, the immediate danger of him reaching in to grab whomever he can. The tolling of the bell though is a timing mechanism and as it clangs again and again, the house changes. Slowly at first, and only slightly, but then more rapidly and more obviously. This builds and builds, giving The Waking of Willowby Hall a timing mechanism, one which can easily be adjusted for single, one-off play at a convention or slightly longer play as part of campaign. It gives a sense of dynamism to the scenario.

Physically, The Waking of Willowby Hall is clearly and simply presented. The maps are easy to use, the descriptions of the various rooms engaging, and the illustrations excellent in capturing the personalities of the NPCs. In fact, they are so good that you almost wish that they and Willowby Hall itself was available as a doll’s house and a set of paper standees to use as the Player Characters explore the mansion and that giant eye keeps appearing at various windows. Add in some sound effects—at least the sound of the bell and the honking of the goose—and what a scenario that would be!

The Waking of Willowby Hall gives the Dungeon Master everything necessary to run the scenario, not least of which is a great cast of NPCs for her to roleplay—and that is before you even get to Mildred. After all, what good Dungeon Master would turn down the opportunity to roleplay a goose? The Waking of Willowby Hall is great fun, both raucous and ridiculous, combining elements of farce with a classic haunted house and a countdown ’til the bell tolls for thee.

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An unboxing of The Waking of Willowby Hall can be found here.

The God With No Name is a dungeon within the body of remains of a giant beast or god. Published by Leyline Press this is a setting more recently seen in Genial Jack Vol. 2 from Lost Pages and Into the Würmhole, the Free RPG Day release in 2021 for Vast Grimm. Instead of the dry, hard rock walls of caves and worked stone of corridors and rooms, such dungeons possess an organic, moist, often pulsating, and even fetid environment. However, they may also have calcified and fossilised over time, leaving behind an organic imprint of caves and tunnels. The God With No Name combines elements of both—the organic and the calcified. It is also noticeable for its format. Like The Isle of Glaslyn before it, The God With No Name manages to fit an adventure onto the equivalent of four pages and then present it on a pamphlet which folds down to roughly four-by-six inches. It contains all of the room descriptions on one side and the maps and various tables on the other. It is the very definition of a clever little design. Ultimately however, it is a design which places constraints on the scenario.

The God With No Name is designed for use with Old School Essentials Classic Fantasy and ostensibly details a network of tunnels and caves mined by ancient Dwarves for its very pure salt deposits. It is still said that not all of those deposits have been mined out, but the mine has long been abandoned and it is said that the local Mountain Folk revere the mine as a god. The valley below the mine is said to be infested with trolls and the mine full of secrets. There is a truth to a great many of the rumours about the mine… The mine consists of two levels, a longer main tunnel and a shorter cliff tunnel. The entrance to the main tunnel is at ground level, the entrance to the cliff tunnel above in the cliff face. Above that is a small tower. It is depicted in both cross section and a floorplan with cartography by Dyson Logos.

The long abandoned mine has in parts the feel of Tolkien’s Moria, a sense of mystery and age, but there is also something squamous to it too, as well as something of the film Alien, for parts of the mine—or rather ‘The God With No Name’—are still alive and the shadows seem to move… This is because the god is not merely dead, but slumbering, even if for time immemorial, and the shadows are infested by the Void Doppler, the shadow child of ‘The God With No Name’ who stalks the living in search of body parts so that it can be reborn and walk under the sun. It leaves behind secretions of the void, and those void secretions spread as the Player Characters delve deeper and deeper, blocking off access to parts of the mine, including the way back out…

In addition to the descriptions of the mine’s locations and maps, The God With No Name is supported with a set of tables which provide rumours, encounters outside and inside the mine, and the contents of unmarked rooms. The table of rumours also works as a set of hooks to involve the Player Characters as there is no given set-up or hook to the scenario, and the table of valley encounters as a means to expand the adventure and flesh the scenario out a little more. The size and isolated nature of The God With No Name also means that it is relatively easy to drop into a Dungeon Master’s campaign.

There is scope in The God With No Name for some nasty, horrifying sessions of play, as the Player Characters are hunted from the shadows and their body parts are stolen one by one. However, the scenario is not without its issues, which either stem from its physical design or its tone. Physically, the fold up pamphlet design of The God With No Name means that its content feels constrained and having the descriptions on one side and the map on the other—when folded out, let alone folded up—does mean that in actual play, the scenario is not as easy as it should be to use. The scenario has no set-up or hooks for the Player Characters to get involved, so the Dungeon Master will have to create those, though she can, of course, make use of the given rumours table. Perhaps the biggest issue with the scenario is the tone and genre. Although this is a dungeon adventure, it is very much a ‘you’re locked in a room with a monster’ horror scenario a la the film Alien, its horror is not just of the dark and the shadows, but also of the body. As a body horror scenario, it creeps up on both the Player Characters and the Dungeon Master, and whilst it should be doing the former, it should not be doing the latter. Some warning to the prospective Dungeon Master should have been given upfront. Also, the scenario does not state what Player Characters Levels it is designed for, but the nature of the monsters encountered—trolls in the valley and the Void Doppler in the mine—suggest at least Fifth and Sixth Levels.

Physically, The God With No Name is a piece of design concision. It is compact and thus easy to store, but format does not make it easy to use. It is not illustrated bar the front cover and as to the cartography, Dyson Logos’ maps here are not his best, or even his most clear. The scenario does require a slight edit though.

Its compact size and content means it needs a little development upon the part of the Dungeon Master, but The God With No Name is creepy and not a little weird. If the Dungeon Master wants a short—two sessions or so—body horror scenario for her campaign, then The God With No Name certainly delivers.

Now in its fourteenth year, Free RPG Day in 2021, after a little delay due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, took place on Saturday, 16th October. As per usual, it came with an array of new and interesting little releases, which traditionally would have been tasters for forthcoming games to be released at GenCon the following August, but others are support for existing RPGs or pieces of gaming ephemera or a quick-start. Of course, in 2021, Free RPG Day took place after GenCon despite it also taking place later than its traditional start of August dates, but Reviews from R’lyeh was able to gain access to the titles released on the day due to a friendly local gaming shop and both Keith Mageau and David Salisbury of Fan Boy 3 in together sourcing and providing copies of the Free RPG Day 2020 titles. Reviews from R’lyeh would like to thank all three for their help.

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Published by Magpie Games, Root: The Tabletop Roleplaying Game is a roleplaying game based on the award-winning Root: A Game of Woodland Might & Right board game, about conflict and power, featuring struggles between cats, birds, mice, and more. The Woodland consists of dense forest interspersed by ‘Clearings’ where its many inhabitants—dominated by foxes, mice, rabbits, and birds live, work, and trade from their villages. Birds can also be found spread out in the canopy throughout the forest. Recently, the Woodland was thrown into chaos when the ruling Eyrie Dynasties tore themselves apart in a civil war and left power vacuums throughout the Woodland. With no single governing power, the many Clearings of the Woodland have coped as best they can—or not at all, but many fell under the sway or the occupation of the forces of the Marquise de Cat, leader of an industrious empire from far away. More recently, the civil war between the Eyrie Dynasties has ended and is regroupings its forces to retake its ancestral domains, whilst other denizens of the Woodland, wanting to be free of both the Marquisate and the Eyrie Dynasties, have formed the Woodland Alliance and secretly foment for independence.

Between the Clearings and the Paths which connect them, creatures, individuals, and bands live in the dense, often dangerous forest. Amongst these are the Vagabonds—exiles, outcasts, strangers, oddities, idealists, rebels, criminals, freethinkers. They are hardened to the toughness of life in the forest, but whilst some turn to crime and banditry, others come to Clearings to trade, work, and sometimes take jobs that no other upstanding citizens of any Clearing would do—or have the skill to undertake. Of course, in Root: The Tabletop Roleplaying Game, Vagabonds are the Player Characters.

Root: The Tabletop Roleplaying Game is ‘Powered by the Apocalypse’, the mechanics based on the award-winning post-apocalyptic roleplaying game, Apocalypse World, published by Lumpley Games in 2010. At the heart of these mechanics are Playbooks and their sets of Moves. Now, Playbooks are really Player Characters and their character sheets, and Moves are actions, skills, and knowledges, and every Playbook is a collection of Moves. Some of these Moves are generic in nature, such as ‘Persuade an NPC’ or ‘Attempt a Roguish Feat’, and every Player Character or Vagabond can attempt them. Others are particular to a Playbook, for example, ‘Silent Paws’ for a Ranger Vagabond or ‘Arsonist’ for the Scoundrel Vagabond.

To undertake an action or Move in a ‘Powered by the Apocalypse’ roleplaying game—or Root: The Tabletop Roleplaying Game, a character’s player rolls two six-sided dice and adds the value of an attribute such as Charm, Cunning, Finesse, Luck, or Might, or Reputation, to the result. A full success is achieved on a result of ten or more; a partial success is achieved with a cost, complication, or consequence on a result of seven, eight, or nine; and a failure is scored on a result of six or less. Essentially, this generates results of ‘yes’, ‘yes, but…’ with consequences, and ‘no’. Notably though, the Game Master does not roll in ‘Powered by the Apocalypse’ roleplaying game—or Root: The Tabletop Roleplaying Game. 

So for example, if a Player Character wants to ‘Read a Tense Situation’, his player is rolling to have his character learn the answers to questions such as ‘What’s my best way out/in/through?’, ‘Who or what is the biggest threat?’, ‘Who or what is most vulnerable to me?’, ‘What should I be on the lookout for?’, or ‘Who is in control here?’. To make the Move, the player rolls the dice and his character’s Cunning to the result. On a result of ten or more, the player can ask three of these questions, whilst on a result of seven, eight, or nine, he only gets to ask one.

Moves particular to a Playbook can add to an attribute, such as ‘Master Thief’, which adds one to a character’s Finesse or allow another attribute to be substituted for a particular Move, for example, ‘Threatening Visage’, which enables a Player Character to use his Might instead of Charm when using open threats or naked steel on attempts to ‘Persuade an NPC’. Others are fully detailed Moves, such as ‘Guardian’. When a Player Character wants to defend someone or something from an immediate NPC or environmental threat, his player rolls the character’s Might in a test. The Move gives three possible benefits—‘ Draw the attention of the threat; they focus on you now’, ‘Put the threat in a vulnerable spot; take +1 forward to counterstrike’, and ‘Push the threat back; you and your protected have a chance to manoeuvre or flee’. On a successful roll of ten or more, the character keeps them safe and his player cans elect one of the three benefits’; on a result of seven, eight, or nine, the Player Character is either exposed to the danger or the situation is escalated; and on a roll of six or less, the Player Character suffers the full brunt of the blow intended for his protected, and the threat has the Player Character where it wants him.

Root: The Bertram’s Cove Quickstart is the Free RPG Day 2021 from Magpie Games for Root: The Tabletop Roleplaying Game. It includes an explanation of the core rules, six pregenerated Player Characters or Vagabonds and their Playbooks, and a complete setting or Clearing for them to explore. From the overview of the game and an explanation of the characters to playing the game and its many Moves, the introduction to the Root: The Tabletop Roleplaying Game in Root: The Bertram’s Cove Quickstart is well-written. It is notable that all of the Vagabonds are essentially roguish in nature, so in addition to the Basic Moves, such as ‘Figure Someone Out’, ‘Persuade an NPC’, ‘Trick an NPC’, ‘Trust Fate’, and ‘Wreck Something’, they can ‘Attempt a Roguish Feat’. This covers Acrobatics, Blindside, Counterfeit, Disable Device, Hide, Pick Lock, Pick Pocket, Sleight of Hand, and Sneak. Each of these requires an associated Feat to attempt, and each of the six pregenerated Vagabonds has one, two, or more of the Feats depending just how roguish they are. Otherwise, a Vagabond’s player rolls the ‘Trust to Fate’ Move.

The six pregenerated Vagabonds include Dara the Adventurer, a kindly Owl in search of friends and justice who prefers to subdue her opponents; Sherwin the Harrier, a highly competitive Squirrel always on the move; Clip the Ronin, a well-mannered Raccoon Dog who knows how to trick those in charge; Umberto the Raider, a sturdy axe-wielding Mouse and former bandit with a love of battle; Rattler the Pirate, a Mouse who is truly at home on the water; and Lucasta the Raconteur, a Weasel who is an outstanding performer. Most of these Vagabonds have links to the given Clearing in Root: The Bertram’s Cove Quickstart and all are complete with Natures and Drives, stats, backgrounds, Moves, Feats, and equipment. All a player has to do is decide on a couple of connections and each Playbook is ready to play.

As its title suggests, the given Clearing in Root: The Bertram’s Cove Quickstart is Bertram’s Cove. Its description comes with an overarching issue and conflicts within the Clearing, important NPCs, places to go, and more. Once again, the overarching issue is the independence of the Clearing. Bertram’s Cove is an important fishing port at the mouth of the Alberdon River on the eastern shore of the Grand Lake. An important Marquisate military and supply base, the Woodland Alliance has been providing support to the local rebels and spurred on by mysterious rebel hero, Captain Sparrowhawk, rebel pirates have been harrying Marquisate shipping in the area. The townsfolk of Bertram’s Cove have done well under the obedient peace of Marquisate military occupation, but many want their freedom and will do anything to achieve it. The conflicts include determining quite how far the rebels in the town are willing to go, finding a missing spy who might be able to identify the rebels in Bertram’s Cove for the Marquisate governor, searching for the treasure lost aboard a sunken Marquisate courier vessel, and ultimately, saving Captain Sparrowhawk. There is advice on how these Conflicts might play out if the Vagabonds do not get involved and there are no set solutions to any of the situations. For example, an attempted bombing by the rebels will go wrong if the Vagabonds do not intervene or get involved, leading to martial law and all fishing on the lake being banned—which would be a disaster for the port. All of Bertram’s Cove’s important NPCs are detailed, as are several important locations. Bertram’s Cove is a scenario in the true meaning—a set-up and situation ready for the Vagabonds to enter into and explore, rather than a plot and set of encounters and the like. There is a lot of detail here and playing through the Bertram’s Cove Clearing should provide multiple sessions’ worth of play.

The overarching issue is the independence of the Clearing. The Goshawk have managed to remain neutral in the Eyrie Dynasties civil war and in the face of the advance of Marquisate forces, but the future is uncertain. The Conflicts include the future leadership of the Denizens of Pellenicky Glade, made all the more uncertain by the murder of Alton Goshawk, the Mayor of Pellenicky Glade. There is advice on how these Conflicts might play out if the Vagabonds do not get involved and there are no set solutions to any of the situations. For example, there is no given culprit for the murder of Alton Goshawk, but several solutions are given. Pellenicky Glade is a scenario in the true meaning—a set-up and situation ready for the Vagabonds to enter into and explore, rather than a plot and set of encounters and the like. There is a lot of detail here and playing through the Pellenicky Glade Clearing should provide multiple sessions’ worth of play.

Physically, Root: The Bertram’s Cove Quickstart is a fantastic looking booklet, done in full colour and printed on heavy paper stock. It is well written and the artwork, taken from or inspired by the Root: A Game of Woodland Might & Right board game, is bright and breezy, and really attractive. Even cute. Simply, just as Root: The Pellenicky Glade Quickstart was for Free RPG Day 2020, Root: The Bertram’s Cove Quickstart is physically the most impressive of all the releases for Free RPG Day 2020.

If there is an issue with Root: The Bertram’s Cove Quickstart it is that it looks busy and it looks complex—something that often besets ‘Powered by the Apocalypse’ roleplaying games. Not only do players need their Vagabond’s Playbooks, but also reference sheets for all of the game’s Basic Moves and Weapon Moves—and that is a lot of information. However, it means that a player has all of the information he needs to play his Vagabond to hand, he does not need to refer to the rules for explanations of the rules or his Vagabond’s Moves. That also means that there is some preparation required to make sure that each player has the lists of Moves his Vagabond needs. Another issue is that the relative complexity and the density of the information in Root: The Bertram’s Cove Quickstart means that it is not a beginner’s game and the Game Master will need a bit of experience to run the Pellenicky Glade and its conflicts.

Ultimately, Root: The Bertram’s Cove Quickstart comes with everything necessary to play and keep the attention of a playing group for probably three or four sessions, possibly more. Although it needs a careful read through and preparation by the Game Master, Root: The Bertram’s Cove Quickstart is a very good introduction to the rules, the setting, and conflicts in Root: The Tabletop Roleplaying Game—and it looks damned good too.

Now in its fourteenth year, Free RPG Day in 2021, after a little delay due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, took place on Saturday, 16th October. As per usual, it came with an array of new and interesting little releases, which traditionally would have been tasters for forthcoming games to be released at GenCon the following August, but others are support for existing RPGs or pieces of gaming ephemera or a quick-start. Of course, in 2021, Free RPG Day took place after GenCon despite it also taking place later than its traditional start of August dates, but Reviews from R’lyeh was able to gain access to the titles released on the day due to a friendly local gaming shop and both Keith Mageau and David Salisbury of Fan Boy 3 in together sourcing and providing copies of the Free RPG Day 2020 titles. Reviews from R’lyeh would like to thank all three for their help.

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Goodman Games provided two titles to support Free RPG 2021, both of which were highly anticipated. One was Tomb of the Savage Kings, an adventure for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game. The other was potentially much more interesting. As its name suggests, Dark Tower: The Sunken Temple of Set is an expansion for Dark Tower, the scenario written by Jennell Jaquays and published by Judges Guild in 1979. The scenario details a dungeon built around two buried towers contested over by followers of Set and Mitra and the surrounding lands and has a strong Eastern Mediterranean and Egyptian flavour. Regarded as a classic, Dark Tower was included in ‘The 30 Greatest D&D Adventures of All Time’ at number twenty-one in the ‘Dungeon Design Panel’ in Dungeon #116 (November 2004)—notable because it was the only third-party scenario to be included on the list. In March, 2021, Goodman Games announced it had acquired Dark Tower from the Judges’ Guild, and would republish it for use with both Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition and the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game.
Dark Tower: The Sunken Temple of Set is a mini-adventure for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition which adds an extra area which can be added to the new edition of the Dark Tower scenario. This is a flooded box canyon to the east of the village of Mitra’s Fist at the far end of which stands a partially flooded, and as the Player Characters will discover, cursed temple. At first, it appears to be abandoned, but as they explore further, they are warned off, and then ultimately, will find signs of occupation. Here resides more agents of Set and their allies, each pursuing their own agenda—whether for or against the god of deserts, storms, disorder, violence, and foreigners. And that agenda may even see them giving aid to the invading Player Characters. The valley and temple complex are described in just eleven locations, but each location is highly detailed and easy to place on the nicely done map. The temple itself contains a good mix of traps, secret doors, a puzzle or two, and of course, nasty crocodilian and serpentine threats, many of which will be a challenge to defeat by the Player Characters. There is a decent amount of treasure to be found, as well as some singular magical items which do tie with the Dark Tower scenario.
Dark Tower: The Sunken Temple of Set is designed to be played by four to sixth Player Characters of Seventh and Eighth Level. In addition to the nasty reptilian threats they will encounter, the main challenge in the scenario is the environment—much of the temple is flooded. This will make fighting and exploring in those locations difficult. The scenario includes a decent background and several hooks which the Dungeon Master can use to persuade her players and their characters to investigate the valley and the temple. These work even if Dark Tower: The Sunken Temple of Set is not used as an expansion to Dark Tower, but work better if they are. In addition to detailing new weapons and magical items, the module details two new spells—Snake Charm and Ticks to Snakes.
Physically, Dark Tower: The Sunken Temple of Set is decently presented. The artwork is excellent, the cartography good, and whilst it needs a slight edit in places, the scenario is well written. Dark Tower: The Sunken Temple of Set is a good module which should challenge the Player Characters and provide everyone with a session or two’s worth of play. Dark Tower: The Sunken Temple of Set will make a fine addition to Goodman Games’ new version of Dark Tower, and is probably worth putting on hold until the two can be run together.

Now in its fourteenth year, Free RPG Day in 2021, after a little delay due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, took place on Saturday, 16th October. As per usual, it came with an array of new and interesting little releases, which traditionally would have been tasters for forthcoming games to be released at GenCon the following August, but others are support for existing RPGs or pieces of gaming ephemera or a quick-start. Of course, in 2021, Free RPG Day took place after GenCon despite it also taking place later than its traditional start of August dates, but Reviews from R’lyeh was able to gain access to the titles released on the day due to a friendly local gaming shop and both Keith Mageau and David Salisbury of Fan Boy 3 in together sourcing and providing copies of the Free RPG Day 2020 titles. Reviews from R’lyeh would like to thank all three for their help.

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In 2020, the most radical release for Free RPG Day was LEVEL 1 – volume 1 2020. Published by 9th Level Games, Level 1 is an annual RPG anthology series of ‘Independent Roleplaying Games’ specifically released for Free RPG Day. LEVEL 1 – volume 1 2020 consisted of fifteen featuring role-playing games, standalone adventures, two-hundred-word Roleplaying Games, One Page Dungeons, and more! Where the other offerings for Free RPG Day 2020—or any other Free RPG Day—provide one-shots, one use quick-starts, or adventures, LEVEL 1 is something that can be dipped into multiple times, in some cases its contents can played once, twice, or more—even in the space of a single evening! The subject matters for these entries ranges from the adult to the weird and back again, but what they have in common is that they are non-commercial in nature and they often tell stories in non-commercial fashion compared to the other offerings for Free RPG Day 2020. The other differences are that Level 1 includes notes on audience—from Kid Friendly to Mature Adults, and tone—from Action and Cozy to Serious and Strange. Many of the games ask questions of the players and possess an internalised nature—more ‘How do I feel?’ than ‘I stride forth and do *this*’, and for some players, this may be uncomfortable or simply too different from traditional roleplaying games. So the anthology includes ‘Be Safe, Have fun’, a set of tools and terms for ensuring that everyone can play within their comfort zone. It is a good essay and useful not just for the fifteen or so games in LEVEL 1 – volume 1 2020.
LEVEL 1 – volume 2 2021—‘The Free RPG Day Anthology of Indie Roleplaying Games’—was made available on Free RPG Day in 2021 and once again provides some fifteen different roleplaying games of varying sizes, subject matters, and maturity in terms of tone. Once again, the volume opens with the same guidelines on safe play, consent, lines and veils, and so on, all useful reminders, especially given the subject matter for the issue, which is ‘Masks’. The issue is thus exploring questions and ideas about identity, different roles, and revelations (or unmasking).
LEVEL 1 – volume 2 2021 opens with Nat Mesnard’s ‘Ball of the Wild’, in which all of the animals shall go to the ball, but not as themselves. Instead they go as glamorous, crossdressing, speciesdressing dragged up attendees who bring all of their flamboyance and their joy as they participate in contests of dance, fashion, makeovers, lip syncing, comedy, and acting. Inspired by RuPaul’s Drag Race, this gets the anthology off to a good start with a layering of roleplaying upon roleplaying, before coming to a close with an unmasking. This is followed by ‘Once This Land Was One’. Written by Alexi Sergeant, this is a short storytelling game of cities attempting to survive following the Cataclysm and ultimately competing against each other. More timely and more in keeping with the anthology’s theme is Whitney Delaglio’s ‘Tiny Tusks’ in which half-orcs come together to talk about themselves and their families. This encourages the players to get behind the supposed perceptions of half-orcs and upfront states that the game is “…[A] self-indulgent game about being biracial.” What this means is that players can explore what for most is an unfamiliar experience through the mask of fantasy.
MV’s ‘Let’s wear masks & hide from humans’ is a vampiric game for two players. One takes the role of the City, the other the Vampire. Both are hiding behind masks—the City between night and day, the Vampire between a Human and a Vampire face. The Vampire hunts for victims to drain of the blood he needs across a city that the City player builds and is subsequently changed by the Vampire’s predations. Ultimately, this will culminate in the Vampire attempting to sneak into a Grand Ball where another immortal, vampire hunter, the city mayor, or distant family is also in attendance, and the Vampire may be unnoticed, captured, or identified, but escapes. ‘Faeries on the Run’ by Helena Real is a dark twist upon the changeling myth and the fae exchanging Human babies for their own. The players take of the roles of the changelings, each with a powerful Façade and magics of a Faerie Domain, who are hunted by the Humans who grew up in Faerie. Designed as a one-night affair of pure survival in which the Player Characters—in and out of game—taking place from dusk to dawn, this a horror game using simple mechanics in which the Player Characters must balance the sometimes need to use the powers of their Façade against the loss their human face and thus revealing their true nature and being banished back to Faerieland. Joel Salda’s ‘Heavy is the Mask’ is the second city-themed game in the collection in which unseen individuals—the Masks—who can be an Artist, Diplomat, Innkeeper, or more, work to build and shape the future of a city. From round to round, the players take control of these Masks and narrate how they attempt to solve problems and issues caused by the unclaimed Masks and created by the players in turn. This is an engaging storytelling and city-building game which could even be used to create a city’s history for another game.
‘Getting Away With It’ by Adam Bell is more complex than the previous entries and requires the use of a deck of tarot cards rather than a standard deck. It is about loosely affiliated supervillains in a long-term struggle against a league of heroes. Primarily, each villain is pursuing their own master plan, but can interact with the plans of their evil cohorts and of course, can sometimes be thwarted by a do-gooding superhero. This has plenty of scope for storytelling, but consequently requires a lot of input by the players. The complexity continues with ‘Friends on a Walk’, the contribution from Tim Hutchings, the designer of the ENnie award winning Thousand Year Old Vampire. This is a procedural game in which the players create and explore a tableau of changing scenery as several characters go on a walk. It is played silently, and that combined with the point-by-point of the way the game is presented and it feels not a little sterile. Mara Li’s ‘Restoration’ is a two-player game in which one player is Veteran returned from the Great War with an injury to his face, the other the Artist charged with creating a Mask which will restore his features. Based on the movement following the Great War to help restore damaged veterans’ faces (detailed here), this is a short game with the potential for personal intimacy and emotion as it does involve one of the player’s face. It does require a photograph and potentially some artwork too, as well as strong degree of trust.
Jonathon ‘Starshine’ Greenall’s ‘We Are The Order’ is about cultists, their rituals, and their masks. The players take the roles of Detectives undercover infiltrating The Order’s grand party with the Game Master as the Cult Order. Rituals are part of the party and so the Player Characters have to perform them even as they conduct their undercover operation. Unfortunately, the rituals have an almost brainwashing effect, turning The Order’s strongest critics into happy members, seemingly without resistance—and that means the Detectives. This is an interesting adversarial game in which first the Game Master is against the players and if one of them defects, then the player against the others. In ‘The Ascent of Todd’ by Michael Faulk, the players are faced by a terrible choice. They have travelled far to ritually destroy an ancient MASK, but their friend Todd has put it on! The players need to decide if their characters will try thwarting Todd or continue with the ritual. The powers and strength of an unthwarted Todd grow and grow, ultimately to the game ends and the ritual cannot be performed. The game comes with four pre-generated characters and can be played solo or with up to four players. This the game to play in remembrance of that one player who invariably did the most inappropriate thing at the most inappropriate time. In Josh Hittie’s ‘Death Mask’ the players take the roles of Revenants protecting Tomb City unsure of why they are bound to it and what lies beyond… As they explore Tomb City and protect it from Aberrations, they will uncover truths about it, strengthen their Reliquary or Fracture their Mask until they either become an unholy saint bound to Tomb City or their spirit is freed and they move toward the light…
‘The Chaos Café’ by Tim McCracken is about robots who think they are humans. Not just robots, but ‘Wrecks’ who and emotionally unstable and prone to giving into one single emotion, who have each set themselves three goals in life, such as ‘List out date ideas’ or ‘Work out self-doubt’, all whilst occasionally suffering from random acts of chaos. Players take it in turns to be the Game Master in this slice of silicon silliness, focusing on one Wreck with the others as possible NPCs. Lysa Penrose’s ‘Coven of Crones’ is about crones protecting the Loom of Destiny despite it having been broken and thus damaging your ability to do magic. They undertake mortal missions at any point in time and space, but their capacity to do magic is not only limited on the mortal realms, it causes chaos too! This is modelled with Spell Tokens which are flipped to become Chaos Tokens, and then back again when the Game Master uses them to cause mayhem about the crones. A balancing act is required between the two, but towards the end of the mission, the Game Master should be using and flipping more Chaos Tokens to ensure that the crones have the Spell Tokens to achieve their objective. Ultimately ‘Coven of Crones’ is about how the Player Characters succeed rather than if they will. Jack Rosetree’s ‘Skeletal Remains’ is set in world where everyone is undead and the Player Characters are skeletons attempting to fill in time when they have no objectives, but only memories. This is an interesting idea, but it is underdeveloped as it does not effectively bring the memories into play and acknowledges the lack of motivations for the characters by then offering three story ideas.
Maxwell Lander’s ‘Vis-a-Visage’ is a two-player game in which each has an opposing goal or opinion. Each character has a goal, a weakness, something that he will not compromise on, and a tell. This on the top half of the sheet, whilst his physical details and contacts are on the bottom half. This divide is because the players will swap the bottom halves of the sheets with each other. What this means is that each player will be trying to achieve a mission hindered—and sometimes even helped—by their characters looking like each. Essentially, the Player Characters Face-off until one has achieved his goal and then wants his face back to replace the mask he is currently using. The included character sheet is definitely needed to fully explain the game’s set-up. ‘Tooth or Truth’ by Dawn Metcalf is a game about building trust in which the characters answer questions truthfully—the aim of the game, or get drunk, and the drunker they get, the greater the chance of their swallowing a tooth. Presumably the tooth is in the drink, the rules are not quite clear on this. It is designed as an in-game drinking game and a means of developing and further roleplaying the Player Characters. The default is for Dungeons & Dragons, but ‘Tooth or Truth’ could be adapted to any rules or setting. It comes with twenty-five questions of increasing maturity, but it is easy to replace them. Playing this live would be another matter… Lastly, R.K. Payne’s ‘STALAG 14’ is about allied prisoners of war who have allowed themselves to be captured in order to conduct missions of sabotage, disruption, and disinformation deep inside of Nazi Germany, inspired by Hogan’s Heroes, Stalag 17, and The Great Escape. Instead of escaping, the Player Characters are using the tunnels to get out, complete their missions, and get back in. They take the roles like Medic, Fixer, Conman, Scrounger, Grunt, and Snitch and have Story Points which can be used to modify dice rolls or buy off stress. Mechanically, more dice are rolled depending upon how dramatic a scene and any doubles rolled means that a character has failed and suffered Stress. A Player Character can suffer a maximum of two Stress, whereas NPCs only one. Complete with a mission generator, ‘STALAG 14’ is intended to be a light-hearted game, more action-orientated than an accurate depiction of the war.

LEVEL 1 – volume 2 2021 is a slim, digest-sized book. Although it needs an edit in places, the book is well presented, and reasonably illustrated. In general, it is an easy read, and everything is easy to grasp. It should be noted that the issue carries advertising, so it does have the feel of a magazine.

As with LEVEL 1 – volume 1 2020 before it, LEVEL 1 – volume 2 2021 is the richest and deepest of the releases for Free RPG Day 2021. Not every one of the fifteen games in the anthology explores its theme of masks, but for the most part, the fifteen are interesting, even challenging, and will provide good sessions of roleplaying. The standouts are ‘Ball of the Wild’ and ‘Tiny Tusks’ as these nicely explore to issue’s theme to its best. Once again, despite the variable quality of its content, of all the releases for Free RPG Day 2021, LEVEL 1 - volume 2 2021 is the title that playing groups will come back to again and again to try something new each time.

Since 2001, Reviews from R’lyeh have contributed to a series of Christmas lists at Ogrecave.com—and at RPGaction.com before that, suggesting not necessarily the best board and roleplaying games of the preceding year, but the titles from the last twelve months that you might like to receive and give. Continuing the break with tradition—in that the following is just the one list and in that for reasons beyond its control, OgreCave.com is not running its own lists—Reviews from R’lyeh would once again like present its own list. Further, as is also traditional, Reviews from R’lyeh has not devolved into the need to cast about ‘Baleful Blandishments’ to all concerned or otherwise based upon the arbitrary organisation of days. So as Reviews from R’lyeh presents its annual (Post-)Christmas Dozen, I can only hope that the following list includes one of your favourites, or even better still, includes a game that you did not have and someone was happy to hide in gaudy paper and place under that dead tree for you. If not, then this is a list of what would have been good under that tree and what you should purchase yourself to read and play in the months to come.

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The Eldritch New England Holiday CollectionGolden Goblin Press ($50)The Eldritch New England Holiday Collection originated as a series of scenarios in the Miskatonic University Library Association monograph line, but Golden Goblin Press has collected and updated them to Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, and presented them as a fully playable campaign set in Lovecraft Country. Not though as traditional Investigators of Call of Cthulhu, but as children growing up and attending family holidays—Halloween in Dunwich, Christmas in Kingsport, Easter in Arkham, and Independence Day off Innsmouth. They are aware that their hometowns are different, that horrors—both human and inhuman—lurk in dark places and even beyond the Veil of Sleep. As friends and family, they must face the dangerous truths of the secret world around them, including their relatives… The Eldritch New England Holiday Collection combines a sense of magical realism with Lovecraft’s cosmic horror and infuses traditional Lovecraftian investigative roleplaying with a sense of warmth and charm not found elsewhere in Call of Cthulhu.
Colonial Marines Operations ManualFree League Publishing ($41.99/£32)One of the big questions about the Alien: The Roleplaying Game is whether or not it could be played in Campaign mode. Alien: The Roleplaying Game can be played in two modes—Cinematic and Campaign. Cinematic mode is designed to emulate the drama of a film set within the Alien universe, and so emphasises high stakes, faster, more brutal play, and will be deadlier, whilst the Campaign mode is for longer, more traditional play, still brutal, if not deadly, but more survivable. However, until the publication of the Colonial Marines Operations Manual, a Campaign was something that the roleplaying game lacked. With its release, we got both a sourcebook on the history, organisation, and equipment of the United States Colonial Marine Corps, and a full blown, seven-part campaign for Alien: The Roleplaying Game. This is Frontier War, a horrifying campaign in which multiple factions vie for control of the biotechnology derived from the Xenomorphs. Frontier War consists of seven parts and combines Space Horror, Sci-Fi Action, and a Sense of Wonder, in a horrifically good, desperately deadly (but not too deadly), and epically grand military-conspiracy horror campaign.
Desert Moon of KarthJoel Hines ($24/£18)Desert Moon of Karth is a complete scenario for the MOTHERSHIP Sci-Fi Horror Roleplaying Game in a different vein for the Blue Collar Sci-Fi horror roleplaying game. It is a Space Western sandbox scenario inspired by Dune, Firefly, Alien, John Carter of Mars, Cowboy Bebop, and The Dark Tower. Located on the far edge of the galaxy, the Desert Moon of Karth is the only source of Coral Dust, the addictive powder harvested and ground from the bones of the ancient, almost mythic species known as the Wigoy. Thus there has been a ‘gold rush’ to Karth, plus its remoteness means that it has become a haven for criminals and the galaxy’s most wanted, all behind a world protected and blocked by a network of relic orbital satellites which shoot down all ships or flying objects—incoming or outgoing. The setting is built around ten locations of the sandbox and four factions, each with their own motivations and tasks for hire. Armed with an incredible set of inspiring tables, including the ever faithful, ‘What you find on the body’ table, the Game Master can support Desert Moon of Karth’s player-driven campaign as they and their characters—bounty hunters, on-the run criminals, prospectors, journalists wanting a story, and so on—explore the weirdness of this alien world. The rules-light Desert Moon of Karth is good not just for the MOTHERSHIP Sci-Fi Horror Roleplaying Game, but is a great little toolkit and scenario for almost any Science Fiction roleplaying game.
RuneQuest Starter SetChaosium, Inc. ($29.99/£29.99)If you thought the Call of Cthulhu Starter Set was good, then prepare to be amazed because the RuneQuest Starter Set is actually better. It uses the same format of rules, sample Player Characters, a solo scenario, and several scenarios you can play with your friends, plus dice, but there is more background content, fourteen ready-to-play Player Characters, a lengthy solo scenario, three lengthy scenarios to play with your friends, plus dice, play aids, and maps—maps that are gorgeously detailed in their depiction of Glorantha’s Sartar. Designed as an introduction to RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, the RuneQuest Starter Set provides the prospective Game Master and her players with everything needed to start playing in the mythic world of Glorantha and then keep playing for multiple sessions. All of which is presented in an easy-to-learn fashion with the rules in one booklet, the background in another, the solo adventure in a third, and three adventures in the fourth. Further, the adventures booklet includes the complete details and a lovely map of the city of Jonstown, the perfect starting base for the Player Characters and provide further background that will be enjoyed by the veteran players of the game. No starter set has been as comprehensive as the RuneQuest Starter Set, making it the perfect entry point for both Glorantha and RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha.
Knock! #1 An Adventure Gaming Bric-à-Brac The Merry Mushmen ($35/£25.99)2021 saw the continued rise of the gaming magazine and the Old School Renaissance got its own with Knock!, of which two issues were released in 2021. It came crammed with content—polemics and treatises, ideas and suggestions, rules and rules, treasures, maps and monsters, adventures and Classes, and random tables and tables, followed by random tables in random tables! All of which is jam-packed into a vibrant-looking book. Primarily designed for use with Necrotic Gnome’s Old School Essentials Classic Fantasy, the contents of Knock! are readily and easily adapted to the retroclone of the Game Master’s choice, making the magazine an incredible resource. It includes contributions from a wide array of the movement’s most influential writers, publishers, and commentators, some of the best entries being the ‘Dungeon Checklist’, ‘What Do Monsters Want?’, ‘300 Useless Magic Loot’, and ‘Borderlands’—the latter a surprisingly learned examination of B2 Keep on the Borderlands. Fantastically presented, it was followed up by a second issue which had even more content and thus more ideas and support for your Old School Renaissance campaign.
The Elusive Shift: How Role-Playing Games Forged Their IdentityMIT Press ($35/£30)The author of Playing at the World: A History of Simulating Wars, People and Fantastic Adventures, from Chess to Role-Playing Games explores the first decade of the roleplaying hobby in search of the answer to the question, “What was the first roleplaying game?” Or rather, when did the wargame, Dungeons & Dragons, and the similar games which followed it, actually become roleplaying games? In doing so, he charts the debate over questions such as the role and impartiality of the Referee, the right way to create characters, character competency versus player competency, who should roll the dice—the Referee or the players, how much should the player know about the game’s mechanics, how should Alignment work and affect a character, and what is the point of play—to acquire Experience Points and become superhuman, to explore and tell a story, or a combination of the two? This is a fascinating account of the earliest days of the hobby and its fandom, capturing it for posterity.
Matrons of MysterySavage Spiel ($6.75/£5)Inspired by the mystery stories of Miss Marple, Jessica Fletcher, and Father Brown, murder comes to your small cosy village and it is up to the ladies of a certain age to gather the clues, identify the culprit, and solve the murder! Based on Jason Cordova’s Brindlewood Bay, this storytelling roleplaying focuses entirely on the mystery. Using stripped down Powered by the Apocalypse mechanics, the matrons search for clues and chat with the suspects, each applying their own investigative style. Sometimes finding a clue is easy, but sometimes it comes with a complication or a condition, and when that happens, the Matrons can always have a ‘Nice Cup of Tea’ and so remove the condition. If the investigation gets really hairy and a Matron finds herself in trouble, she can always ‘Go to the Adverts’ and have everyone help resolve tense moment during the break! Once the Matrons have acquired enough clues, they can ‘Put It All Together’, make their accusation, and explain their deductions. The clever aspect of all of this is that every mystery comes with a potential set of suspects, complete with clues pointing towards their guilt, but no predetermined murderer. Who exactly committed the murder is all up to the Matrons of Mystery to deduce.
Jackals – Bronze Age Fantasy RoleplayingOsprey Games ($35/£25)Inspired by both history and the epic myth cycles of the Ancient Near East—The Iliad, The Odyssey, and Gilgamesh—Jackals – Bronze Age Fantasy Roleplaying takes place in Zaharets, the Land of Risings, a fantastic version of the Levant whose peoples have only recently risen up and over thrown the monstrously bestial kingdom of Barak Barad whose Taken enslaved humanity and staked their claim to the region by establishing cities at both ends of the War Road, the north-south route which helps ensure peace and prosperity. Yet dangers lurk beyond the road, dark secrets left over from Barak Barad, bandits raid the caravans on the road, and dark powers whisper promises of power to the ambitious. There is another danger—Jackals. Men and women who give up the safety of community and law and order to face the threats and mysteries which lie beyond the road. No good community would have truck with the Jackals. For who knows what evil, what chaos they might bring back with them? Yet Jackals keep the community safe when it cannot and some become Zaharets’ mightiest heroes, even leaders when they retire. This is an excellent set-up and makes for great community tension even as the Jackals give protection, and there is even a campaign available, Jackals: The Fall of the Children of Bronze.
Impossible LandscapesArc Dream Publishing ($64.99/£47.99)The first campaign for Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game pulls the Agents into a world of twisted apartments and improbable architecture before dumping them out again and then pulling them back in again decades later to twist the world around them in a paranoia-infused mystery that defies both answers and conception. When even reality cannot be trusted there is only each other to rely upon in this insidious investigation into madness and mayhem whose answers—if not the solution, may lie on the shores of Lake Carcosa. Will you answer the call of the Yellow King? Can you withstand his influence which seems to change the reality around you? And if you can, just who are you working for and can you trust each other? Impossible Landscapes is a truly disturbing and brilliantly weird campaign, as both a book and a campaign, and the latter is supported by some incredibly rich, detailed, and layered handouts—handouts that constantly raise questions more they provide answers. 
Dune: Adventures in the ImperiumModiphius Entertainment ($63/£44.99)Finally, after twenty years of waiting since the release of Dune: Chronicles of the Imperium and with the release of the new film, the hobby got the Dune roleplaying game it deserved. Dune: Adventures in the Imperium the player take on roles of members of one the noble Houses of the Imperium and must guide its fortunes through the conflicts, conspiracies, and connivances which play out just under the veneer of formality and civility that every House projects. How this is played out—espionage, political or diplomatic manoeuvring, forging alliances, black operations, and even open warfare are potentially useful tools if the result can elevate the House to an even greater status. In game terms, this is played at the level of the House itself as an organisation, but as Player Characters—Bene Gesserit, Mentats, Smugglers, Spy Masters, Sword Masters, and more—they will not be influenced by such decisions, but they have the potential to affect their outcome with the success or failure of individual missions. Dune: Adventures in the Imperium combines the simple mechanics of the 2d20 System with an incredible amount of background detail. This is fantastic gaming adaptation of a highly detailed and much revered setting, and a must for any gamer who is a fan of Frank Herbert’s Dune.
Original Adventures Reincarnated #6: Temple of Elemental EvilGoodman Games ($63/£79.99)The sixth in the Original Adventures Reincarnated line from Goodman Games, this takes another classic scenario or campaign and combines high-quality scans from multiple printings of the original first edition adventure modules, commentary by gaming luminaries, and a complete adaptation of the original module for use with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition—and more. Coming as a two-book slipcase set, Original Adventures Reincarnated #6: Temple of Elemental Evil takes us back to T1 The Village of Hommlet and T1-4: The Temple of Elemental Evil as the region around Hommlet is once again beset by bandits and monsters. Has the great evil, defeated many years ago, returned to prey upon lands hereabout? Of course it has! Beginning with a classic village imperiled by evil—indeed, T1 The Village of Hommlet was one of the first villages to be so imperiled—brave adventurers will gather clues and investigate, eventually venturing into the Temple of Elemental Evil itself and delving deep into the complex below where it is said the evil still lies undefeated. Not just a great reproduction, Original Adventures Reincarnated #6: Temple of Elemental Evil is an expansion too into a complete mega-dungeon and mini-campaign designed for First Level through to Seventh Level. Original Adventures Reincarnated #6: Temple of Elemental Evil can be played through as of old, but the new addition brings new mysteries and encounters which will enhance the nostalgia.
The Company of the DragonChaosium, Inc. ($74.95/£55.49)Last year, the Jonstown Compendium, the community content programme for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, gave us a great starting campaign with Six Seasons in Sartar. Now the author of that campaign returns with an even bigger campaign, one that can be run as a standalone, but really works best as a sequel to Six Seasons in Sartar. In The Company of the Dragon the Player Characters must guide the survivors of their clan as they are forced to go on the run from the Lunar Empire. As they do, they must build and maintain their own community, to create their own myth, and ultimately, as they become involved in some of the major events leading up and including the Dragonrise, have them forge their own destiny. Superbly supported with tools, advice, and discussion, as well as numerous episodes to run, The Company of the Dragon is exactly what both the campaign and the sequel that Six Seasons in Sartar needed, as well as being a great prequel to the events of RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and the forthcoming Sartar Campaign.

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

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What is it?
The Company of the Dragon is a campaign for use with RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. It is based on a campaign developed on the author’s blog.

It is a sequel to the author’s earlier Six Seasons in Sartar: A Campaign for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, which can also be run as a standalone campaign.
Notes are included so that The Company of the Dragon can be run using Questworlds (formerly known as HeroQuest: Glorantha) or 13th Age Glorantha.
It is a two-hundred-and-seventy page, full colour, 222.29 MB PDF or alternatively a two-hundred-and-seventy page, full colour hardback book.

The layout is clean and tidy. It uses classic RuneQuest cartorgraphy,  the artwork is good, and although it requires an edit in places, is well written and easy to read.

Where is it set?
The Company of the Dragon is set across Sartar in Dragon Pass. Specifically, it is set between Earth Season, 1620 ST and Darkness Season, 1625 ST.

Who do you play?
If The Company of the Dragon is played as the direct sequel to Six Seasons in Sartar, the Player Characters will be dispossessed and on the run members of the Haraborn Clan, broken following a confrontation with the occupying forces of the Lunar Empire.
Alternatively, if The Company of the Dragon is played as a standalone campaign, the Player Characters should be Sartarites who have been rendered clanless due to the actions or influence of the Lunar Empire and therefore have a dislike of either Chaos or the Lunar Empire.
What do you need?
The Company of the Dragon requires RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, the Glorantha Bestiary, the RuneQuest Gamemaster Screen Pack, and The Book of Red Magic. The Startar Campaign may also be useful.
What do you get?The truth of the matter is that like Six Seasons in Sartar before it, The Company of the Dragon is not one thing. Both are campaigns and both are more than the sum of their parts, for each and every one of those parts stands out on its own. Not necessarily because they are gameable, but together they contribute to the campaign as a very satisfactory whole.
First—and most obviously, The Company of the Dragon is a campaign and a sequel to Six Seasons in Sartar. In Six Seasons in Sartar, the players and their characters, newly initiated members of the Haraborn, the Clan of the Black Stag, the 13th Colymar clan play out the last year of existence before its sundering at the hands of the Lunar Empire. Brought to the attention of Kallyr Starbrow, the last few members of the clan—including the Player Characters—are on the run, hunted by both occupying Lunar forces and the empire’s indigent servants. They have taken to hills, one more dispossessed band of the clanless, relying at best on the generosity of those Sartarite hill clans prepared to support the victims of the Lunar Empire. Some—mostly the ‘gentrified’ Sartarites of the towns and cities—instead view them as bandits and rebels in the face of the peace and prosperity that comes with being a Lunar client state, and the divide between the Sartarites of the towns and the hills is an important aspect of the campaign.
As a campaign, the focus and setting for Six Seasons in Sartar was narrow—the Vale that is home to the Haraborn and the six seasons which run from 1619 ST and into 1620 ST. It did not so much take the Player Characters out of those confines, as force them out at the end of the campaign. The Company of the Dragon takes place between Earth Season, 1620 ST and Darkness Season, 1625 ST, during which time the Player Characters and their band, will crisscross Sartar, often with the enemy dogging their heels, potentially participating in the great events of the period, such as the Battle of Auroch Hills. Ultimately, as the campaign comes to a climax, the Player Characters will participate in the Dragonrise (which takes place just weeks before the beginning of RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha) and the ascension of Kallyr Starbrow. Chronologically, this equates to the same period that players are rolling the family backgrounds for the active five years of their characters’ own adventuring in character generation in RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. What this means is that The Company of the Dragon could be used as a means not to simply generate the backgrounds for the Player Characters, but rather play them out. This would work playing the campaign as members of the Haraborn clan or simply the dispossessed if run as a standalone campaign.
As a campaign, The Company of the Dragon consists of some twenty-seven seasons, covering some five years, into each of which can be slotted the campaign’s episodes. Some of these come pre-filled, such as The Forging, the campaign’s starting point, and then The Battle of Auroch Hills, Famine, Dragonrise, and Kallyr Starbrow. The rest are left empty for the Game Master to populate as best suits her campaign and her players. Over half of the book is dedicated to these, each broken down into its what, when, where, who, why, and how, before presenting potential exits. Some are connected, but many are standalone and many can be repeated, such as encountering ‘rival’ bandits, escaping from capture, facing the famine which besets Sartar due to the Great Winter, being hunted by the authorities, and so on. In many cases, these episodes can be varied slightly so that they do not feel repetitive. The episodes range in tone, some are merely exciting, others epic, and some truly horrific and creepy. Depending upon the players, there are some episodes which are of a mature nature and so may not be suitable for all groups, even though their roleplaying potential is still very high. 
Second, The Company of the Dragon is a means to quantify and run an organisation—in this a band of rebels which will rise above mere banditry and become a warband associated with and allied to Kallyr Starbrow. As a band on the run, the organisation becomes the Player Characters’ community, a mobile one, but a community, nevertheless. This is the ‘Company of the Dragon’ itself and the Player Characters form its Ring, its heart and ruling body, along with any other surviving NPCs from the Haraborn Clan, if the campaign is being run as a sequel to Six Seasons in Sartar. The community/warband is done as a Player Character in its own right, complete with Community characteristics, Runes, Reputation, and even skills. The Community characteristics interact with the world around in two ways. One is directly against another organisation, for example, against a Lunar force sent to track them down, and this is handled with opposed rolls, whilst the other is as resources, for example, donating food to a starving Clan and in doing so, depleting the warband’s Community Constitution. Throughout the campaign, the Player Characters must constantly keep track of and maintain the Community characteristics to ensure the warband’s survival.
Third, The Company of the Dragon is also a guide to Illumination, for the warband is also its own cult and has its own Wyter. This stems from the final scenarios in the earlier Six Seasons in Sartar, and ultimately the loss and replacement of Clan Haraborn’s Wyter. The Illumination involved is neither that of Nysalor or the Red Goddess, but that of Draconic Consciousness. Here The Company of the Dragon resolutely veers into ‘Your Glorantha Will Vary’ territory and the author’s interpretation may not match that of the Game Master running the campaign. However, it does push the members of the company to become something more than a mere warband and perhaps achieve the mythic, if in a very different fashion.
Fourth, The Company of the Dragon is an initiation into the mysteries of Glorantha. These are primarily explored through the alternative form of Illumination, but The Company of the Dragon continues the writings in Six Seasons in Sartar which examined initiation rituals. Six Seasons in Sartar included detailed initiations for both Orlanth lay worshippers and Ernalda lay worshippers, but here expands on that to detail the rituals involved for Orlanth Adventurous, Vinga, Humakt, Babeester Gor, and Storm Bull. The last one detailed is that for The Company of the Dragon itself.
Fifth, The Company of the Dragon, much like Six Seasons in Sartar, is a toolkit. Take the various bits of the campaign and what you have is a set of tools and elements which the Game Master can obviously use as part of running The Company of the Dragon, but can also take them and use them in her own campaign. So this is not just the advice and discussion as to the nature of initiations and how to run them, but also the rules for creating and running streamlined NPCs—supported by a wide range of NPCs which the Game Master can modify, a guide to running character and story arcs, running and handling communities, and of course, advice on running both the campaign and RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha in general.
Sixth, The Company of the Dragon, much like Six Seasons in Sartar, is a conceit. Throughout the campaign, commentary is provided by a number of notable Gloranthan scholars and experts in Third Age literature, not necessarily upon the campaign itself, but upon the events detailed The Warbands of Sartar Under the Pax Imperii by Temerin the Younger, a Lunarised Sartarite who was intrigued enough by the ‘rebels’ of The Company of the Dragon to want understand what motivated its members. Again there are excepts from later authors, such as ‘Bands of Brothers, Circles of Sisters’ – The Warbands of Ancient Sartar by Deborah Abadi, or Miguel Moreno’s ‘Between Two Nations: Temerin the Younger’s Identity Struggle’ from The Journal of Heortling Studies, October 1998. As before, this device enables the author himself to step out of the campaign itself and add further commentary, not just from his own point of view, but from opposing views. Beyond that, the conceit pushes The Company of the Dragon as a campaign from being a mere campaign into being an epic, because essentially, it is what a heroic poem does.
Of course, The Company of the Dragon comes to an end. The climax manages to be epic and monstrous, gloriously involving the Company of the Dragon and the Player Characters. It enables them to be involved in the most pivotal events of the recent Gloranthan history and likely prove themselves to heroes worthy of myth and legend. 
Is it worth your time?
Yes—The Company of the Dragon is a superb treatment of community, myth, and destiny in Glorantha, which pushes the players and their characters to build and maintain their own community, to create their own myth, and ultimately, have them forge their own destiny. Packed with tools, advice, and discussion, this is exactly the sequel that Six Seasons in Sartar needed and whether as a sequel or a standalone campaign, is a superb prequel to the events of RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and the Sartar Campaign.
No—The Company of the Dragon presents an alternative campaign set-up, one which takes place prior to the default starting date for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and requires you to play out season by season—and you may already have begun your campaign.Maybe—The Company of the Dragon includes content which is useful beyond the limits of its campaign—the initiation rites, the notes on heroquests, rules for streamlined NPCs, quick resolution rules for battles, and more. That more consists of almost thirty fully detailed adventures and adventure seeds which can be drawn out and developed by the Game Master. All useful in an ongoing campaign. 

1974 is an important year for the gaming hobby. It is the year that Dungeons & Dragons was introduced, the original RPG from which all other RPGs would ultimately be derived and the original RPG from which so many computer games would draw for their inspiration. It is fitting that the current owner of the game, Wizards of the Coast, released the new version, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, in the year of the game’s fortieth anniversary. To celebrate this, Reviews from R’lyeh will be running a series of reviews from the hobby’s anniversary years, thus there will be reviews from 1974, from 1984, from 1994, and from 2004—the thirtieth, twentieth, and tenth anniversaries of the titles. These will be retrospectives, in each case an opportunity to re-appraise interesting titles and true classics decades on from the year of their original release.

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Published in 1981, the second entry in the ‘X’ series of modules for Basic Dungeons & Dragons designed for use in conjunction Expert Dungeons & Dragons could not have been more different than the first. Both are pulpy in their tone and inspirations, but where X1 The Isle of Dread is a lush mashup of King Kong and Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle’s The Lost World with a dash of H.P. Lovecraft, X2 Castle Amber combines its Pulp sensibilities with a mixture of horror—the Gothic and the Lovecraftian in particular, sybaritic ennui, dreamlike dread, and woozy whimsey. The locations are different too, the Player Characters expected to sail to and explore a large island in search of treasure in X1 The Isle of Dread, whilst in X2 Castle Amber, they are unceremoniously pulled into an alternate dimension—not once, but twice—and forced to go looking for answers (and solutions) to their predicament, again not once, but twice. The bulk of X2 Castle Amber take place in a castle—or technically, it takes place in Château d’Amberville and is therefore not actually very castle-like—followed by a potentially lengthy wilderness section. In fact, having the scenario’s location before the wilderness section, when it is normally set after it in a traditional wilderness module, is very strange indeed, and that is in a very strange, often weird module indeed.
X2 Castle Amber is designed for a party of six to ten Player Characters, between Third and Sixth Level. The total of the party’s Experience Levels should be between twenty-six and thirty-four, ideally averaging thirty in total. Both X1 The Isle of Dread and X2 Castle Amber begin with the Player Characters on the Continent of the ‘Known World’. In X1 The Isle of Dread, they discover the journal describing a trip to the Thanegioth Archipelago, and lured by the mention of great treasure, sail off on the thousand-mile journey as soon as possible. In X2 Castle Amber, they are traveling to the Glantri City where they are hoping to find employment with one of the princes, but along the way, they get lost and are forced to make camp. After a sleep filled with nightmares, they awake to find themselves in the foyer of a mansion—a French mansion no less! With the mansion surrounded by a strange and very deadly mist, the Player Characters have no choice but to go forward and explore. In room after room, they will be confronted by one strange encounter after another—a nobleman who wants to set-up a bare-knuckle boxing match between his magen (or magical men) and whomever the party nominates as their champion, with bets on the outcome encouraged; a great banquet attended by ghosts which the Player Characters can attend and eat their fill, and in doing so gain great benefits or dire consequences; a room with its floor covered in a Green Slime, ceiling in a Black Pudding, and its only furniture, a very full treasure chest, is covered in a Grey Ooze; an Ogre servant who killed his mistress and now dresses like her and attempts to emulate her; a river in an Indoor Forest crossed by a bridge under which lives a troll; a noblewoman buried accidentally alive in the chapel by her brother—in a very obvious nod to Edgar Allan Poe; a throne room populated by skeletons frozen in their last moments; and a mad, misshapen court jester with the power to charm others and turn them into white apes! And this is only the start.
X2 Castle Amber is home to the aristocratic Amber or D’Amberville family, and they are either incredibly bored or insane, often both. Their aim, when encountering the Player Characters is not necessarily to kill them, but toy with them and extract some entertainment value. This is not to say that Castle Amber is not deadly or that its inhabitants are all friendly—it is deadly in a great many places and many of the inhabitants are decidedly hostile. It is deadly—and weird—in another way too. There are multiple means of a Player Character dying simply by eating the wrong thing or making the wrong choice, notably at the banquet and later when picking cards from a tarot deck, and then failing a Saving Throw. However, death is not the only effect that a Player Character might suffer, such as having the spell Feeblemind cast on him or being turned into a ghost, and there are also many beneficial effects that a Player Character might gain. For example, he might gain a permanent increase in Hit Points or actual attributes or an increase by one Level upon the completion of his next adventure beyond that of Château d’Amberville. There is also quite a lot of treasure, both monetary and magical, to be found if the Player Characters are thorough and are prepared to brave the castle’s many dangers.
For the most part, X2 Castle Amber is fairly linear. The Player Characters start at the foyer of the castle and work their through the West Wing into the Indoor Forest and from there either into the East Wing or the Chapel. Although this is a mansion, it does not have a lived-in quality. It is all quite self-contained and all but frozen in time. This applies to many of the individual rooms and locations too, which often feel more like tableaus awaiting the arrival of the Player Characters and their involvement, the mix involving opportunities for roleplaying in interacting with the inhabitants and deduction in working out the tricks and traps to be found in the castle—as well as combat. This sense of the scenario being frozen in time applies to the Player Characters too, for at the end of each gaming session, they are encircled by a cloud of amber light, a space in which they are protected from the denizens of the castle, including wandering monsters, can recover Hit Points and spells, and even train to go up a Level if they have acquired enough Experience Points. This not only enhances the oddness of the Château d’Amberville, but it suggests a degree of agency upon the part of someone else… This though is only the first part of X2 Castle Amber.
Much of the first part of the scenario is presented as a mystery. Not so much a murder mystery—although that is sort of present in the scenario’s overall plot—but a mystery as what is going on and why the Player Characters have been pulled into the weird and whimsical world of Castle Amber. Plus of course, how they escape the castle and ultimately the grey mist. The scenario makes this relatively easy in placing a scroll in several places around the castle which gives explicit instructions as to the means of escape. This requires that the Player Characters locate several Silver Keys and then the Gate of the Silver Keys, which is located in the dungeons below Castle Amber, and from there travel to the original homeland of the D’Amberville family, Averoigne, and this is where the scenario opens up and again marks it out as something different to previous scenarios.
Averoigne is a mythical province of France and the setting of a series of short stories by Clark Ashton Smith which originally appeared in Weird Tales magazine. Used with permission, this marks X2 Castle Amber out as one of the first scenarios for Dungeons & Dragons to use licensed content and the module includes a list of all of the stories in its bibliography. Unlike in the castle, the Player Characters have far more freedom of movement in Averoigne—to an extent. No longer are they in a Dungeons & Dragons-style fantasy land, but an ahistorical fantasy land, one based on mediaeval France in which magic is outlawed by the church and the likelihood is that any demi-human Player Character is likely to be regarded as an abomination. So as much as they freedom of movement, they are constricted by the society of the land they are in. Like any good wilderness scenario, the Averoigne section of X2 Castle Amber is a sandbox which the Player Characters must explore driven by the need to locate the four items they need to unravel the final scenes of the scenario. So there is a need for subterfuge here unless the Player Characters want to become outlaws and fugitives.
However, advice and background for the Dungeon Master for this section of the scenario is perhaps a little underwritten. X2 Castle Amber is definitely not a sourcebook for Clark Ashton Smith’s Averoigne—though it could certainly form the basis of one—and so states that, “The encounters in this part of the module are left sketchy since most take place in cities and would require more detail and space than is available in this module. The DM should flesh out each adventure as he or she desires, designing NPCs, town streets and other details as necessary.” Potentially, this does leave the Dungeon Master with a lot of work to develop encounters and NPCs should her Player Characters deviate too much from the four quests to find the items necessary for them to progress onwards. At the very least, the Dungeon Master will need to improvise some of the encounters and NPCs outside of the scenario’s plot, and as a consequence, X2 Castle Amber is best run by an experienced Dungeon Master rather than one new to Dungeons & Dragons.
Lastly, the Player Characters can enter the scenario’s final dungeon, The Tomb of Stephen Amber. This is X2 Castle Amber at its mostly deadly, a complex of nine rooms, containing in turn, a Blue Dragon, a Flame Salamander, a Wyvern, a Stone Giant, a Manticore, a Mud Golem, a Great White Shark, and a five-headed Hydra, and that is in addition to dangerous environments in these denizens reside. Now the Player Characters will not face all of these creatures, but they will face most of them, making for a tough physically challenging end to the module. If the Player Characters persevere and survive, they will encounter the NPC who has been sort of helping them along the way, be thanked, and richly rewarded for their efforts, including the resurrection four of their dead comrades—if they want. Surely, there can be no clearer indication of how tough a module if the Player Characters are being offered the chance of resurrection at the end?
Rounding out X2 Castle Amber is a bestiary of seventeen new—or mostly new—monsters. These include Amber Lotus Flowers, Giant Amoeba, Aranea, Brain Collector, Death Demon, Mud Golem, Grab Grass, Gremlin, Killer Trees, Lupin, Magen (of various types), Pagans, Phantoms, Rakasta, Slime Worm, Sun Brother, and Vampire Roses. Of these, the Aranea and the Rakasta originally appeared in X1 The Isle of Dread, and of the rest, the Pagans are worshippers of nature some of whom actually practice human sacrifice…! They can be found in the castle and in Averoigne, whilst some of the larger monsters are confined to the castle’s dungeon, including the Neh-Thalggu, or brain collector, and the Slime Worm.
Physically, X2 Castle Amber is done in the traditional format for TSR, Inc.’s modules—a wraparound cover with maps on the inside, containing a plain black and white booklet inside. The Errol Otus cover depicting a giant wielding a tree trunk and grabbing a castle tower is excellent, but not necessarily appropriate to the events of the scenario. The internal illustrations, many of them done by Jim Holloway are superb, imparting both the horror and the humour of the module.  
One interesting aspect of X2 Castle Amber is how in 1981 it prefigures I6 Ravenloft and Ravenloft itself as a campaign setting. Surrounded by a strange grey mist, Castle Amber is essentially a pocket dimension all of its very own—as is Averoigne in the later part of the module—and both would sit very easily on the Demiplane of Dread as Domains in their own right. Of course, the module is completely unconnected to Ravenloft for obvious reasons, but the similarities are there such that importing X2 Castle Amber into the Realm of Terror campaign setting for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Second Edition, without any difficulty at all. Further, given that both have the influence of Edgar Allan Poe in common, with some adjustment, X2 Castle Amber could also be adapted to be run as part of a Masque of the Red Death campaign as well.
As a complete scenario, X2 Castle Amber is principally a ‘funhouse’ dungeon, essentially a series of self-contained tests and challenges consisting of mostly puzzles and traps with little to any overarching plot or nod to consistency. Hence you have a weird room layered with puddings and oozes, and a ceiling with shafts in that hide a myriad of traps. The effect initially then, is to confuse both Dungeon Master and then her players. First the Dungeon Master, because the module provides a sort of over view and of course, advises her to read the module through carefully, yet until she has actually done so, she will not really grasp what is going on and what the full plot is. This is because it is not effectively explained in the introduction to an infuriating degree, leaving it to the Dungeon Master to thoroughly read through the module to find out what is going on. Second for the players and their characters. They will have no idea what is going with the characters’ abduction and limited choice but to go forward and explore. Only once the Player Characters find the scroll they will at least have an objective and even then, there is the possibility that they will find the scroll, collect everything they need in Averoigne, do everything necessary to solve the mystery of how to leave Castle Amber, but never work out or learn what the overall plot is. However, by this point, the Dungeon Master will of course know what is going on.
The funhouse aspect of X2 Castle Amber also comes out in the humour, often dark humour, of the scenario. This includes squirrels with the Midas touch, the Jester with his White Ape companions, and Gremlins whose Chaotic area of effect will reflect spells, prevent mechanical effects from working, trousers to fall down, helmets to slip down over the eyes, and the like, all at their whim and amusement. 
One issue with X2 Castle Amber which will require an experienced Game Master is the underwritten motivations of the NPCs, specifically the members of the D’Amberville family. Although the background to the Amber family is given and it is made clear that none of them is actually sane, ranging from slightly eccentric to completely insane, that they are Chaotic, uncooperative, bored, and looking for some diversion to relieve that boredom, individual motivations—apart from one or two—are sorely lacking. Which leaves the Dungeon Master with a lot of effort to put into the portrayal of these NPCs, many of them of high-Level Magic-users and Clerics beyond that possible in Basic Dungeons & Dragons and Expert Dungeons & Dragons at the time of the module’s publication.
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X2 Castle Amber was reviewed by Jim in White Dwarf No 35 (November, 1982), who said, “Castle Amber is the second module for use with the Expert Set and is an attempt to bring randomness back into D&D. The 3rd and 6th level party become trapped in Castle Amber where they are beset by the members of the Amber family. Escape lies into a wilderness on another world where magic is frowned upon and spell casters may well come to the attention of the Inquisition. Non-humans are going to have a hard time here as they will be very conspicuous. Amber Castle depends a lot on chance leaving little room for skill and at times can be deadly.” His conclusion was that “I don’t recommend X2 unless you like chaotic adventures and designing urban areas.” and gave it a score of six out of ten.
More recently, X2 Castle Amber was included in ‘The 30 Greatest D&D Adventures of All Time’ in the ‘Dungeon Design Panel’ in Dungeon #116 (November 2004). Author of Return to the Keep on the Borderlands, John Rateliff said, “A rare example of a licensed product that shines both for its treatment of the original setting and for its excellence as a D&D adventure. Inspired by the ‘Averoigne’ stories of Clarke Ashton Smith, the best of the Weird Tales writers, it has a distinctive quirkiness, dangerous and sensuous and slightly amused all at the same time. There’s a reason it inspired not one but two sequels.”
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By being set on an alternate plane of existence, X2 Castle Amber is very self-contained, which means that it is incredibly easy to adapt to other settings, whether that is as a Demiplane of Ravenloft or elsewhere. Yet initially, X2 Castle Amber feels incomprehensibly weird, leaving the Dungeon Master with little or no idea as to what exactly is going on, but give it the careful read through that every module demands—and is warranted here more than most—and the module’s weirdness and whimsy begins to come together. In places, underwritten and underdeveloped by modern standards though it is, X2 Castle Amber does have a coherency, eventually, that the archetypal ‘funhouse’ dungeon often lacks and the challenge perhaps lies in imparting that sense of coherency to the players. In addition to that, X2 Castle Amber does leave the Dungeon Master with a lot to develop to get the very most out of the adventure, whether that is fleshing out the motivations of individual D’Amberville family members or expanding upon the Averoigne wilderness section. The latter is arguably a not much more than a fascinating snapshot of the county which deserved further exploration which it never got in Dungeons & Dragons. It certainly would have made a fine addition to Ravenloft. 
X2 Castle Amber is not perfect and it requires a lot of input upon the part of the Dungeon Master, but it is a fantastic Dungeons & Dragons adventure, made all the more enjoyable by its whimsy and weirdness, its humour and its horror. This with the combination of the Gothic and the Pulp Horror push it away from the classic medievalism of earlier modules into a much darker fantasy than that typically found in Dungeons & Dragons, and that is why X2 Castle Amber is regarded as a classic.

1974 is an important year for the gaming hobby. It is the year that Dungeons & Dragons was introduced, the original RPG from which all other RPGs would ultimately be derived and the original RPG from which so many computer games would draw for their inspiration. It is fitting that the current owner of the game, Wizards of the Coast, released the new version, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, in the year of the game’s fortieth anniversary. To celebrate this, Reviews from R’lyeh will be running a series of reviews from the hobby’s anniversary years, thus there will be reviews from 1974, from 1984, from 1994, and from 2004—the thirtieth, twentieth, and tenth anniversaries of the titles. These will be retrospectives, in each case an opportunity to re-appraise interesting titles and true classics decades on from the year of their original release.

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The year 1991 gave the hobby two radical roleplaying games. Both focused on plots, intrigue, and story. One was Vampire: The Masquerade, which introduced us to the World of Darkness and playing monsters almost as a kind of unnatural superhero roleplaying game, and did so in a stunning looking book. It would go on to win the Origins Award for Best Roleplaying Rules of 1991. The other was Amber Diceless Role-Playing, which as the title suggests, was radical in a wholly different way.
Amber Diceless Role-Playing is a licensed roleplaying game based on the Chronicles of Amber, the ten-book series by Roger Zelazny. The books are set in the one true reality that is the kingdom of  Amber with every other world or realm being a reflection or ‘Shadow’ of the kingdom—including Earth—all the way out to the Courts of Chaos. Amber is ruled by one family with many members who plot and scheme for the throne and who have mental and physical powers that are almost godlike. Not only that, but they also have the ability to walk through and manipulate the Shadows after having walked the Pattern, a symbol of the order of the universe, as well as use Trumps. These are playing card-sized decks illustrated with members of the family which can be used to contact each other, transport between their respective locations if they are willing, and even scry on each other—if they are careful. Given their long life and their ability to step out into a Shadow where time might run faster, an Amberite can also have almost any skill he wants, but ultimately that skill may not matter against the true mental and physical abilities of an Amberite.  There are seventeen or so brothers and sisters in the Amber royal family, all the children of Oberon, the first King of Amber who has disappeared at the time of the first book, Nine Princes in Amber. However, the players do not take the roles of these princes of Amber, but their children, and they can be as fractious as their parents and their aunts and uncles—and even towards their parents and their aunts and uncles. The fourth novel in the series, Hand of Oberon, asked, “What would have another generation have been like?” Amber Diceless Role-Playing sets out to answer that question.
A character or Amberite in Amber Diceless Role-Playing is defined by four attributes—Psyche, Strength, Endurance, and Warfare. Warfare covers fighting and strategy of any kind; Endurance is health, fortitude, and tenacity; Strength is raw physical power; and Psyche is mental strength and ability with a host of different magical powers. A Player Character begins play with all four attributes at Amberite level, which means that he is capable of defeating almost every person or creature that he might meet out in Shadow. At that level though, any Amberite with a higher value—even a slightly higher value—in an attribute will nearly always beat him. They can also be lower—Chaos or Human level. However, most Amberites will have attributes higher, much higher. Plus, there is no limit to how high an attribute can go. A Player Character can also have Powers. Pattern Imprint and Trump Artistry are common to most Amberites, whilst Logrus Mastery and Shapeshifting are found amongst the members of the Courts of Chaos. All are incredibly powerful and can be used with relative ease, often reflexively once known, whereas Magic takes time, effort, and study. Magic comes in three forms: Power Words are instantaneous effects primarily used defensively, Conjuration covers the creation and empowering of artefacts and creatures, and Sorcery details more complex, but inordinately more time-consuming spells. In addition, a Player Character can have allies, his own Shadow, and signature artefacts—arms and armour are common since swords are the most often wielded weapons in the setting.
Character creation in Amber Diceless Role-Playing is not only diceless, but co-operative and adversarial. Diceless because no dice are rolled, co-operative because it done together, and adversarial because the Player Characters will be better in one or more of the attributes than their cousins. This is because character creation is handled as an auction, the player bidding in each of the four attributes, if not to be the best, then at least be better than their potential rivals. This automatically sets up rivalries between the characters with the players outbidding each to see whose character is the best. Points bid are lost—or rather expended—to determine where each of the Player Characters ranked in terms of the four attributes, with a higher ranked character nearly always able to beat a lower ranked character. However, a player can decide to pass and buy up to just under another character’s in an attribute and do so in secret, adding a degree of uncertainty in deciding or knowing who is better. Then beyond the four attributes, a player is free to purchase the Powers, Shadows, allies, artefacts, and so that he wants his character to have. The problem here is that no player has enough points for all of this.
At the start of the attribute auction, each player has one hundred points on which to bid on his character’s attributes and purchase his powers. Each of the Powers is really good—and that is before a player considers the advanced versions, and the auction can get fiercely competitive, especially in the key Psyche and Warfare attributes. Options then might be for the player to decide to buy down at attribute, either to Chaos or even Human level. Then a player might opt to help the Game Master by contributing a diary or keeping a campaign log, or even writing poetry or stories, or he might opt for his character to have Bad Stuff. Essentially, Bad Stuff is bad luck and means that things invariably do not go the character’s way and that he suffers from a poor reputation. Should a player have points left over from character creation, they are converted to Good Stuff. Having Good Stuff means that the things invariably do go the character’s way and he benefits from a positive reputation. EdmundEdmund grew up an orphan out on a Shadow and only began to discover his heritage when he found Witherbrand, renowned for its cutting remarks, which began to teach him about the true nature of the universe. He has yet to discover which of the sons and daughters of Amber is his true parent and that is his primary goal.
PSYCHE: 5th [16 points]STRENGTH: 5th [5 points]ENDURANCE: 3rd [10 points]WARFARE: 3rd [24 points]
55 Total Points in AttributesPattern Imprint [50 points]WITHERBRAND – Sword [14 points]Deadly Damage [4 points]Able to Speak in Tongues and Voices [4 points]Sensitivity to Danger [2 points]Shadow Path [2 points]Alternate Forms, named and numbered [2 points]Bad Stuff [1 point]Personal Diary [+10 points]
Mechanically, in Amber Diceless Role-Playing—because it is diceless, a character can do almost anything as long he has the capability and can narrate it, and long as it is not challenging or he is not opposed. Further, Powers such as Pattern Imprint and Logrus enable a Player Character to literally manipulate the worlds around him. If a character is opposed, combat can ensue and whilst the character with the highest rank will likely win, there are circumstances when another attribute will influence the outcome. For example, in a contest of Warfare, the character with the higher Endurance might be able to outlast his opponent or laying his hands on his opponent with his higher Strength defeat him in a grapple. Like the rest of the game, combat is handled narratively, whether that is simple matter of affirming that a Player Character defeats an opponent out on a Shadow or when faced by one of his rival Amberite cousins or an agent from the Courts of Chaos, played out blow-by-blow, right down to the stances assumed and the manoeuvres made. If this sounds all too simple, then on one level it is. Yet, at the level of the blow-by-blow account of a duel—whether using swords, armies, magic, or even wits, it is far from simple. It takes narrative skill and judgement upon the part of the Game Master to unfold the outcome of such an encounter effectively and reasonably—though not necessarily fairly because stories are not always like that and a Player Character may just have some Bad Stuff which will probably influence the outcome too.
Fortunately, the handling of combat is liberally illustrated with not one, but eight examples of play, depending on the skill of the combatants. It is these examples where Amber Diceless Role-Playing begins to shine. There are not just examples of combat and of play, but a complete example of auctions for all four attributes, followed by examples of the Game Master working through the resulting characters with her players to get better more playable results that match their concepts. In addition, all of the Powers and the types of magic are explored in depth and detail, not just to understand how they work, but also how they can be brought into a campaign in interesting ways to challenge the Player Characters. To be fair, the advanced versions are not explored in as great depth as the standard versions, but the likelihood is that few of the Player Characters are going access to those at the start of a campaign. This is followed by an examination of twenty of the Elder Amberites, including different versions built with differing number of points, suggesting their roles in a campaign, and what each would be like as a parent. Plus allies and artefacts. Any fan of the Chronicles of Amber will enjoy both the examinations of the various powers and the Amberites in particular, especially the latter where the designer begins to diverge away from the baseline narrative and point of view that is Corwin’s in the first five books of the series. 
For the Game Master there is advice on running the game, which though may look obvious today, at the time of roleplaying game’s release would have been perhaps not quite as widely accepted. Much of this caps the advice throughout Amber Diceless Role-Playing, covering character backgrounds, outline hints for the rules of engagement for character information, choices, and other narrative elements. It even goes one step further into the radical by suggesting that “The best kind of roleplaying is pure role-playing. No rules, no points, and no mechanics.” and the playing group best ditch everything from character creation, points, magic, rules, and even the Game Master! This though may be step too far though given how much of a step change even the diceless, narrative style of play in Amber Diceless Role-Playing would have been at the time of its publication.
Rounding out Amber Diceless Role-Playing is a set of three scenarios, each of a differing nature. ‘The Throne War’ is an experimental way to play, intentionally designed as the opposite of an atypical game of Amber Diceless Role-Playing. In this, everything from attributes to Powers is up for bid in the auction and the Player Characters are actively campaigning—and thus the players playing—against each other in a bid to become King of Amber. As the first scenario in the book it is literally a swerve away from the way the game is typically played and is not really suitable as a first scenario. It is followed by ‘Battleground on Shadow Earth’ which is framework for a battle between Law and Chaos which the Player Characters need to cleave through to get to the source of the problem. The third scenario, ‘Opening the Abyess’ which does open with a deus ex machina, but is otherwise a better plotted and more interesting set-up at the very least, which the Game Master can extend into a campaign.
Physically, Amber Diceless Role-Playing is clearly written and laid out with some excellent black and white artwork. In terms of tone and style, it is clear that the author loves the Chronicles of Amber and is thoroughly engaged with the series and wants the reader to love it just as much. This infectious pervades the pages of Amber Diceless Role-Playing from start to finish and the book is an immensely enjoyable read.
If perhaps there is a downside to Amber Diceless Role-Playing, the most obvious is that the roleplaying game is a step too far into the radical and away from the accepted notions of what a roleplaying is and how a roleplaying game is actually played and run. They should have dice and a resolution mechanic, and the players should not have to compete for aspects of their characters like their attributes. Yet make that a hurdle to overcome and is it really a downside rather than an adjustment to be made, even if one that is not for everyone? Perhaps then the downside is the evangelising tone which the author of Amber Diceless Role-Playing takes in places, such as when it pushes the aforementioned radical step of ditching the rules or describes Amber as the grandest of settings or when it states that it is the Game Master’s job to encourage and teach good roleplaying and is accompanied by advice on how to deal with players who prefer bashing monsters, are indifferent, or rules lawyers. Perhaps it does go too far, but is it any worse than any other roleplaying game designer espousing ‘the one true way’? Certainly there have been plenty of tomes of advice on being a good Game Master and a good player, and the differences between them and Amber Diceless Role-Playing look negligible in hindsight. Lastly, there may be an issue with just how much detail there is in Amber Diceless Role-Playing and that it does not cover everything in the Chronicles of Amber in sufficient detail. Fair enough, but it is just the one book. There is Shadow Knight, a second supplement which explores the Courts of Chaos in more detail, as well issues of the fanzine, Amberzine.
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Dirk DeJong reviewed Amber Diceless Role-Playing in Challenge Issue 65 (October 1992) as a fan of the novels. He identified that, “The biggest problem with this endeavor, and its downfall, is the nature of the conflict systems. First, they are diceless, and don’t involve any sort of random factors at all, aside from those that you can introduce by roleplaying them out.” …although he countered with “Admitted, this does force more cautious play, as most fights are simply to test your opponent’s prowess, rather than for your blood.” He also said, “In Amber’s favor, I have to say the gamemaster help sections, the sections for players on how to be better roleplayer, and the amount of time spent on how to really create a flesh-out character were excellent. If more RPGs had this quality of work and obvious love of roleplaying put into them, the entire industry would benefit.” In his Evaluation, he said, “As to whether or not you should buy “Amber,” I have to profess that it is really up to you. If you love Zelazny and the Amber series, jump on it, as this is the premier sourcebook for the running an Amber campaign. Just don’t expect miracles from the game system itself. Personally, I just can’t get tuned on by a system that expects me to either be content with a simple subtraction of numbers to find out who won, or to describe an entire combat blow by blow, just so that I can attempt some trick to win. In my final estimation, the good and the bad pretty much balance out, leaving me with “Zero Stuff.””
Amber Diceless Role-Playing was given a feature review in White Wolf Magazine #31 (May/June 1992) which included opinions from multiple contributors. The lead reviewer, Steve Crow readily identified flaws in its auction attribute system, the combat rules and firearms, and the fact that “Amber is not a game for beginning gamemasters or players. Understandably, it is impossible to deal with every permutation of Zelazny's concepts in 256 pages. The gamemaster must have a good grasp of the material. If nothing else, he’ll need to know the material so he can explain it to theplayers and interpret their actions.” He concluded though with “Amber is, overall, an appealing game. It encourages the use of imagination, character development, and problem solving. Its main flaw is that it is, more often than not inaccessible to novice gamers and individuals unfamiliar with Zelazny’s work. It is undoubtedly a game for experienced gamers. While I would not recommend Amber to novices, it is a must buy for experienced gamemasters and players looking for new challenges.” He gave it a rating of four.
Sam Chupp also gave Amber Diceless Role-Playing a rating of four and said that, “This is a game for expert roleplayers, people who have outgrown Monty Haul and killer-dungeon style games and who are looking for something challenging.” Mark Rein-Hagen increased the rating to five and said, “Amber is an extraordinary game. Not so much because it is well put together and fun to play  (though it is), but because it is something entirely new.” describing Amber as “…[A] revolutionary work in roleplaying, deserving the highest accolades, but it is pioneering work and is not all it should be. I can hardly wait to see what is coming next. Whatever it is, it will owe a great deal to Amber.” before concluding that, “If you want to see what roleplaying might someday become, read Amber.”
However Robert Hatch only gave Amber Diceless Role-Playing a rating of three, saying that “As a sourcebook for Zelazny’s world, this product is unparalleled. As an actual game - well, it's not one, really, any more than a Choose Your Own Adventure book is. While Amber could work in  the hands of a very talented GM, I think all too many other campaigns will fail.” Lastly, Stewart Wieck was more positive and also gave it a rating of four. He said, “The game is certainly most valuable and understandable to those who read and enjoyed Zelazny’s exciting books, but the roleplaying conventions employed and introduced make this a game that really needs to be investigated by anyone interested in seeing this hobby develop. Additionally, the game would be less with dice.” He finished by saying, “In the end, Amber can be approached one of two ways. Either read it merely as an experience in “mature” roleplaying, or prepare to dig in and enjoy a long and complicated campaign.”
Amber Diceless Role-Playing was reviewed not once, but twice in Dragon Magazine #182 (June 1992). First by Lester Smith, who wrote, “As impressed as I am with the game, do I think it is the “end-all” of role-playing games, or that diceless systems are the wave of the future? I’ll give a firm “No” on both counts. First, the AMBER game is pretty much Amber-specific.” and “Second, as fun as the AMBER game can be, there are certainly times when I’m not up to such intense role-playing and would rather take part in a dungeon crawl.” He concluded that, “…[T]he AMBER DICELESS ROLE-PLAYING game is destined for great popularity and a niche among the most respected of role-playing game designs.” 
This was followed by a second opinion from Allen Varney. He was clear that, “The “attribute auction” in character generation is brilliant and elegant.”, but criticised it because, “Advancement comes slowly, perhaps too slowly. Players have little idea how their own characters improve, let alone other players’ characters.” He also advised that, “…AMBER game clearly targets the most experienced GMs (and players!). But it’s tough work. Proceed with caution.” Overall, he commented that Amber’s “…[B]old approach unsettles me. Politically, I must applaud the dominance of story values over rules. The text offers copious advice, including scripts that advise GMs how to stage a fight at varying levels of detail. But I betray my upbringing. I keep looking for a way to sequence combat, hit points, and all those training wheels I grew up with.”, before concluding that, “Yet the intensity of the AMBER game indicates Wujcik is on to something. When success in every action depends on the role and not the roll, players develop a sense of both control and urgency, along with creativity that borders on mania.”
Loyd Blankenship reviewed Amber Diceless Role-Playing in Pyramid #2 (July/Aug., 1993). He stated that “Amber is a valuable resource to a GM - even if he isn't running an Amber game. For gamers who have an aspiring actor or actress lurking within their breast, or for someone running a campaign via electronic mail or message base, Amber should be given serious consideration.”
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Amber Diceless Role-Playing is a fantastic sourcebook for any devotee of the Amber Chronicles, presenting the setting and its very many characters in an accessible fashion and exploring every facet of both them and their powers. However, when it came to the gaming, Amber Diceless Role-Playing broke every conceived notion of designing a roleplaying game, for although it had rules, it had no mechanics in terms of a resolution system, no means of randomly generating the outcome of an action. Instead, its resolution system consisted of the roleplaying skill and storytelling ability of both the player and the Game Master, as well as the capacity of the Game Master to interpret and narrate the rules and narrative as fairly as possible. In doing so, it not only emphasised storytelling capacity and skills, but demanded a high level of trust between player and Game Master that they both be the best roleplayers that they could. This is perhaps as demanding and as pure a roleplaying game as ever there was in making such demands. 
As a roleplaying game based upon the Chronicles of Amber, there can be no doubt that AAmber Diceless Role-Playing is a superb adaptation, and a satisfying examination of the setting and characters of Amber. As a roleplaying game or book just to read, it is an engaging, even enthralling joy to read from start to finish, whether in the rules examples and ideas or its exploration of the setting. Few roleplaying games are quite as much fun. 
In 1991, Amber Diceless Role-Playing was a ground-breaking design and it looks as radical now as was upon its release. Many of conventions ideas have been disseminated into designs since, but Amber Diceless Role-Playing was the pioneer. 

On the tail of Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showcased how another DM and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will be compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry.

One of the trends in ZineQuest—the annual drive on Kickstarter to create fanzines, fan-created magazines supporting their favourite game—has been away from the more traditional format to the more focused. Traditionally, the fanzine consists of a collection of articles, covering a wide array of subjects. For example, in a fanzine devoted to Dungeons & Dragons or one of its many retroclones, such articles might provide new character Classes, spells, monsters, magical items, a scenario or dungeon, and so on. Although ZineQuest in 2021–ZineQuest #3–certainly included fanzines of that type, there were fanzines that were not so much fanzines as complete roleplaying games in themselves or complete supplements for existing roleplaying games. Desert Moon of Karth is a perfect example of the latter.

Desert Moon of Karth is a complete scenario for the MOTHERSHIP Sci-Fi Horror Roleplaying Game. Designed and published by Joel Hines following a successful Kickstarter campaign, it is also quite a different scenario in tone and flavour and set-up for the MOTHERSHIP Sci-Fi Horror Roleplaying Game. The genre for the MOTHERSHIP Sci-Fi Horror Roleplaying Game is Blue Collar Sci-Fi horror, most obviously inspired by the films Alien and Outland, and the majority of the scenarios for the roleplaying game are horror one-shots. Not so, Desert Moon of Karth. Instead, Desert Moon of Karth is a sandbox scenario whose genre is that of the Space Western and whose inspirations include Dune, Firefly, Alien, John Carter of Mars, Cowboy Bebop, and The Dark Tower as well as A Pound of Flesh, Ultraviolet Grasslands, and Slumbering Ursine Dunes.

The setting for Desert Moon of Karth is a desert moon on the far edge of the galaxy. It is perhaps best known as being a source of Coral Dust, the addictive blue-grey powder harvested and ground from the bones of the ancient, almost mythic species known as the Wigoy, which have ossified into coral and when ingested stills the aging process and sharpens the mind. There has been a ‘gold rush’ to Karth, a ready flow of would be prospectors willing to brave the harsh environment and the attacks by the infamous Sandsquids attracted by their searches deep into the sand. Access to Karth is limited though via a rickety orbital elevator fiercely controlled by the colonial marines of the Manian Expeditionary Force, as a network of relic orbital satellites shoot down all ships or flying objects—incoming or outgoing. This combination of distance from the centre of the galaxy and inaccessibility means that Karth has gained another reputation—that of a haven for criminals and the galaxy’s most wanted. So the lawless desert moon attracts not just prospectors, but bounty hunters too.

Like any good sandbox—and Desert Moon of Karth really is set on a sandbox—Desert Moon of Karth is a toolkit of different elements. These start with ten highly detailed locations, beginning with the frontier boomtown, Larstown, and then continuing with the Shattered Visage of an angelic man, the Seahorse Mine, the played out location of the first Wigoy prospecting operation on Karth, the Silver Spire, home to a trio of immortal Old People known as the Dawnseekers who research and harvest organs to ensure their longevity, a Ship Graveyard of vessels brought down by the orbital defences, and the Krieg Ranch where the best though-flea-bitten camels for travel across the deserts of Karth can be hired, run by a cranky old woman who keeps her husband on ice in case he can be taken off world for treatment to a grievous injury. Around these locations, four factions dominate Karth. One consists of the Dawnseekers, another the Manian Expeditionary Force, but these are joined by the Valley Rangers, a cargo cult formed around the Lunar Park Service’s bureaucracy and conservationists who abhor technology and seek to maintain the world’s ecology, and the Wigoy themselves, aliens hiding from the other factions with long term aims for the whole of Karth and beyond…

All four factions and the majority of the locations include NPCs with often opposing aims and jobs—both known and secret—that the Player Characters might be employed to fulfil. These, though, are just the start in Desert Moon of Karth, because they are richly supported with table after table of random encounters, motivations, NPCs, rumours, and more! That ‘more’ includes tables of reasons why the Player Characters might have come to Karth, gifts that the Wigoy might grant, worn space hulks, bounty hunters and their possible quarries, oldtech artefacts, what happens when the Player Characters go Wigoy prospecting, and things to be found on bodies, and more.

Although there is potential future mapped out in Desert Moon of Karth, it really only plays out if the Player Characters do nothing. Ultimately then, the Player Characters have a huge opportunity to involve themselves in and influence events on the moon, but this is very much player driven. Once their characters have their motivations—either selected ahead of time or generated using the table in the book, it is very much up to the players to involve themselves in both life and the events going on across Karth.

Mechanically, Desert Moon of Karth is very light, and thus much in keeping with the MOTHERSHIP Sci-Fi Horror Roleplaying Game. There are various stats for the NPCs of course, but they are percentile and easily adaptable, whilst the specific rules cover things such as travel across Karth and prospecting for Wigoy coral—and that is it. What this means is that Desert Moon of Karth is not only very light, but easily adapted to the mechanics of the roleplaying game of the Warden’s choice. Any version of the Star Wars roleplaying games, Cepheus Deluxe, Stars Without Number, Firefly, HOSTILE, and others would work with this supplement with a minimum of preparation, as would many a generic system too.

However, the tone of Desert Moon of Karth may not necessarily match the campaign being run by the Warden if for the MOTHERSHIP Sci-Fi Horror Roleplaying Game, and that likelihood increases if adapted to another Science Fiction roleplaying game. There is horror as you would expect for something written for the MOTHERSHIP Sci-Fi Horror Roleplaying Game, but there is also a weirdness too in the presence of the Wigoy and their secrets, and they might have a profound effect upon a Game Master’s campaign if certain events happen. Nevertheless, the self-contained nature of Karth itself and of Desert Moon of Karth makes it very easy to use. Nor need that be as an addition to an existing campaign. It could be a one-shot adventure, a mini-campaign of its own, or as a source of ideas and tables from which the Game Master can pick and choose elements to add to her own game.

Physically, Desert Moon of Karth is a compact fifty-two page supplement—perhaps a little too big to be really called a supplement. It is well written, it is easy to read, the illustrations are excellent, and the maps, whether of the moon itself, or Larstown or the interior of a Sandsquid are all great.

As a sandbox, and a sandbox space western at that, Desert Moon of Karth pushes MOTHERSHIP Sci-Fi Horror Roleplaying Game in a new direction and opens up the scope of gaming possible for those rules—especially with the new edition available. Whatever the system used, Desert Moon of Karth is crammed full of gaming content adding a weird world to the Science fiction roleplaying game of your choice, but really offering a fantastic mini-campaign. Not just a good fanzine, Desert Moon of Karth is really good good Science Fiction supplement.