How do you like your GM Screen?

The GM Screen is a 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, can be found 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 all that 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 several 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.

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 Margaret Weis Productions included in its screens for the Serenity and BattleStar Galactica Roleplaying Games? Or a reference work like that included with Chessex Games' Sholari Reference Pack for SkyRealms of Jorune or the GM Resource Book for Pelgrane Press’ Trail of Cthulhu? Or a scenario such as ‘A Restoration of Evil’ for the Keeper's Screen for Call of Cthulhu from 2000 or the more recent ‘Descent into Darkness’ from the Game Master’s Screen and Adventure for Alderac Entertainment’s Legends of the Five Rings Fourth Edition. 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 RPGs.

So how do I like my GM Screen?

I like my Screen to come with something. Not a poster or poster map, but a scenario, which is one reason why I like ‘Descent into Darkness’ from the Game Master’s Screen and Adventure for Legends of the Five Rings Fourth Edition and ‘A Bann Too Many’, the scenario that comes in the Dragon Age Game Master's Kit for Green Ronin Publishing’s Dragon Age – Dark Fantasy Roleplaying Set 1: For Characters Level 1 to 5. I also like my screen to come with some reference material, something that adds to the game. Which is why I am fond of both the Sholari Reference Pack for SkyRealms of Jorune and the GM Resource Book for Pelgrane Press' Trail of Cthulhu as well as the The One Ring Loremaster’s Screen & Rivendell Compendium for The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of Lord of the Rings, the second edition of the roleplaying game from Free League Publishing.

The One Ring Loremaster’s Screen & Rivendell Compendium consists of two items. The first is the Loremaster’s Screen. It is a three-panel affair in landscape format and one of the first things the Loremaster will notice upon opening it up is the roleplaying game’s advice as to when to roll—when there is danger, when there is knowledge to be had, and when there are NPCs to influence. The left-hand panel covers the general outcomes of rolls, such as special successes and risk levels, advantages and complications, conditions, and more. As well as the advice on when to roll, the central panel covers endurance, resting, first aid, and damage in general. A sperate reprints the tables for council structure for when engaging in major meetings, whilst the right-hand panel has the rules and tables for travelling—an important part of play The One Ring. This includes journey roles, events, and perilous areas. Lastly, rules and tables are reprints for sources of both dread and Shadow. This is all laid out clearly with plenty, both making everything easy to read and highlighting the fact that The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of Lord of the Rings is not a complex game. The style matches that of the core rule book and all of the rules and tables come with reference numbers to their respective entries and full explanations in The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of Lord of the Rings. The front or player-facing side depicts a small fellowship deep in the wilderness about to be assailed by a band of Orcs. It is a nicely tense piece.

The second item is the ‘Rivendell Compendium’. This is a short supplement which details Imladris, the Last Homely House, home to its master, Elrond Halfelven, for thousands of years. His magic has kept this Hidden Valley safe in all that time and protects it still, either making difficult for anyone to find the entrance or actively blocking access. A map is given of Rivendell, though only the floorplans of the ground floor of Elrond’s mansion is given. There are multiple levels of vaults below and storeys above which are not mapped out here, and though that is disappointing, it is unlikely that the Player-heroes will have ready access to them. They are described in broad detail though, so the Loremaster can develop something from this as necessary; more detail being given to particular locations. Not all of the locations are included on the given floorplan. For example, the library is described in the text, but not marked on the floorplan. Ultimately, both the floorplan and the descriptions need to be taken as a guide—good guide—to Elrond’s home.

Also found Rivendell are many Elven folk. The many here include Elrond Halfelven himself, his daughter, Arwen Undómiel, Glorfindel, the great Prince of the Elves, and others. Elrond is described in the most detail, primarily because he is a source of wisdom and a potential Patron for the Player-heroes. In particular, he favours those with the Scholar and Warden Callings, and can be consulted for advice when it comes to making journeys and on particular marvellous artefacts and wondrous items that may have come into the Player-heroes’ possession. Along with the description are spot rules for how to find the entrance to the Hidden Valley, making music in Rivendell, the moment when the Player-heroes first see Arwen Undómiel, and more. These add to the magic of Rivendell and bring elements of the setting into play.

Lastly, the High Elves of Rivendell are added as a new Culture. They are based in Rivendell as it is one of their last refuges. Their inclusion means that along with the Elves of Lindon, members of the Firstborn who rarely leave the Grey Havens, there are two Elven Cultures available in The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of Lord of the Rings.

The ‘Rivendell Compendium’ expands The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of Lord of the Rings eastwards—if only a little. It provides a potential sanctuary and patron for the Player-heroes as they explore and journey in that direction, although there remains much to be explored in Eriador, the focus of the new roleplaying game. Devotees of the earlier edition of The One Ring—The One Ring: Adventures over the Edge of the Wild Roleplaying Game—may find there is some repetition between the new ‘Rivendell Compendium’ and the earlier Rivendell supplement, but that is inevitable given that they are covering the same subject. In fact, the earlier Rivendell supplement is notable for how many of its elements found their way into The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of Lord of the Rings such as the Eye of Mordor and the rules for treasure.

Physically, the ‘Rivendell Compendium’ is again down in the same style as The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of Lord of the Rings. The book is nicely presented and easy to read and understand. The only real downsides to the ‘Rivendell Compendium’ are that as a slim book it is easier to lose and perhaps some of this may be repeated in a fuller supplement devoted to Eriador later on. Fortunately, the ‘Rivendell Compendium’ can be stored in The One Ring Starter Set.

The One Ring Loremaster’s Screen & Rivendell Compendium is exactly as it should be, a useful tool to have in front of the Loremaster during play, whilst the ‘Rivendell Compendium’ adds to the setting of The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of Lord of the Rings with material that the Loremaster can really make use of as her Player-heroes’ explorations take them to further edges of Eriador. Overall, this makes the The One Ring Loremaster’s Screen & Rivendell Compendium a solid, useful package, one that a group playing The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of Lord of the Rings should get plenty of use out of.

Be Like a Crow: A Solo RPG is a journaling game which enables the player to take to the skies as a corvidae—crow, magpie, jackdaw, or rook—over multiple landscapes and differing genres, achieving objectives, exploring, and growing as they learn and grow old. It is clever and thoughtful in that it makes the reader and player think outside of what they might traditionally roleplay and explore a world quite literally from a bird’s-eye view. It combines the simple mechanics and use of a deck of playing cards typical of a journaling game with five genres—‘Urban Crow’, ‘Cyber-Crow’, ‘Gothic Crow’, ‘Fantasy Crow’, ‘Clockwork Crow’, and ‘Ravens of the Tower’. Each of these presents a different place and time for the bird to fly over, land on, encounter the denizens, and more. The book is easy to read and the rules and set-up easy to grasp, such that the player can start reading and taking inspiration from the prompts in Be Like a Crow: A Solo RPG and begin making recording entries in his journal, with little difficulty.

Be Like a Crow: A Solo RPG is not a roleplaying game about anthropomorphic birds. The player is very much exploring worlds and recording the experiences of an actual bird, as it goes from a fledgling to a juvenile to an adult. Each bird is defined by its size and habits such as nesting, diet, notable characteristics, and habitat. In game terms, each type of bird begins play with a certain number of ticks in various skills. Skills are broken down into four categories—‘Travel & Exploration’, ‘Social Interaction’, ‘Tools & Rituals’, and ‘Combat’—each of which has four skills. A corvidae begins play with two ticks in any one skill and one tick in a skill in each category, plus ticks in five skills for his species. He also has authority with two skills. The player’s choice of setting will add ticks to certain skills as well.

Jay
Species: Magpie
Lifecycle Stage: Fledgling
Setting: Cyber-Crow
Injuries:

SKILLS
Travel & Exploration: Fly 1, Hop 1, Search 2, Navigate 1
Social Interaction:  Befriend 1, Signal –, Scare 1, Mate –
Tools & Rituals: Dance –, Sing –, Use Tool 1, Preen 1
Combat: Peck 1, Claw –, Divebomb 1, Evade 1

Mechanically, Be Like a Crow is simple. It uses a standard deck of playing cards and when a player wants his bird to undertake an action, he draws a card from the deck. This sets the difficulty number of the task. To see whether the bird succeeds, he draws another card and adds the value of a skill to the number of the card if appropriate. If it is equal or greater than the difficulty number, the bird succeeds. If an action is made with Authority, whether due to circumstances or a skill, the player draws two cards and uses the highest one, whereas if made at a Penalty, two cards are drawn and the lowest value one used. When drawn, a Joker can be used or saved for later. If the latter, it can be used to automatically succeed at a combat or skill check, to heal injuries, or to discard a card and draw again. Combat is a matter of drawing a card for each opponent, adding a skill if appropriate, and comparing the totals of the cards and the skills. The highest total wins each round and inflicts an injury. Eventually, when the deck is exhausted, the discard pile is reshuffled and becomes the new deck.

Half of Be Like a Crow consists of prompts and settings. There are prompts for events in flight and on land that are standard to all six settings, but each setting has its set of tables for objectives, objects, characters, and locations. Only one set of objectives is given for each setting, but the objects, characters, and locations are divided between the black and the red suit colours. This gives thirteen objectives per setting and double that for each of the other categories. Each setting also includes a double-page, full colour map. Notes on each setting give the extra abilities and skills that a bird gains at each stage of his lifecycle, from fledgling all the way up to ol’ crow.

The play and thus the journaling of Be Like a Crow is driven by objectives as achieving these will enable a bird to advance through his lifecycle. An objective for the ‘Clockwork Crow’ setting, might be for example, “[character] has gone missing, last seen in [location]. Air ship pirates might be involved. Travel there and find them and return them back to their home in [location].” The player will also need to draw cards to identify the character and both locations, and then as his bird flies from hex to hex across the map, draw cards for events in flight, and then for events when he lands. The player is free to, and advised to, ignore prompts if they do not fit the story, and this may be necessary if a prompt is drawn again, but ideally, the player should be using the prompts as drawn to tell a story and build the life of his crow.

Physically, Be Like a Crow: A Solo RPG is a lovely little book. The artwork throughout is excellent and the book is well written and easy to use.

Be Like a Crow: A Solo RPG is published by Critical Kit, a publisher better known for its scenarios for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, as is unlike anything that the publisher has released. It sets out to provide the means to explore the life of an animal, sometimes in a fantastical setting, sometimes not, constantly prompting the player to tell his crow’s story, where he went, what he did, and who he met, but always to think like a bird. In keeping a journal it enables the player to articulate and express that experience of the world around him, from a very different point of view, and that roleplaying in a non-traditional way. The result is the Player Character in Be Like a Crow soars and flaps, hops and preens, pecks and divebombs, exploring a world from above and below, always through the beady eyes of his bird. The result is that Be Like a Crow: A Solo RPG is a delightfully contemplative and engagingly different playing experience.

We have a fascination with the antics of little people, whether that is of Goblins, Hobbits, or Kobolds. In gaming this goes all the way back to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and thus Middle Earth Roleplaying, but it really comes into its comedic own with Kobolds Ate My Baby!, published by 9th Level Games in 1999. The latest entry in this comedy subgenre is published by CobblePath Games, best known for Locus: A roleplaying game of personal horror. Stacks of Goblins: A Comedy roleplaying game of camaraderie, stupidity, and spite takes the comedy of the raucous antics of small and bumptious persons and literally puts them on top of another gag—the ‘Totem Pole Trench’ or ‘Two Kids In a Trenchcoat’. In other words, Stacks of Goblins puts one goblin on top of another goblin on top of another goblin, and puts them in a Trenchcoat—of seemingly elastic length—and a fedora, and sends them out to do mischief. The situation is simple. Their Snikittyness the Goblin ruler has a mighty need and multiple Goblin minions ready to see that it is met! Plus every Goblin has his heart set on finding something he desires. The best way to meet both that need and that desire is in a nearby People Place. Of course, Goblins are not welcome in this People Place. Hence the Trenchcoat and the fedora.

Stacks of Goblins: A Comedy roleplaying game of camaraderie, stupidity, and spite is a storytelling game involving multiple wants and multiple roles—roles which switch as the Goblins argue and fidget for dominance in the Trenchcoat and quite literally a higher place in the pecking order. Or rather picking (up) order. Designed for between two and six players, it requires one twelve-sided die, one eight-sided die, and several ten-sided dice. It also requires twenty tokens. The tokens represent the ‘Obliviousness’ of the inhabitants of the town or village to the Goblins who have infiltrated in their disguise and to their shenanigans. Over the course of the game, the number of ‘Obliviousness’ tokens in play will decrease to Goblin actions, first limiting their ability to move and act, and ultimately forcing them to flee the People Place. The ‘Obliviousness’ tokens also represent the game’s timing mechanism, twenty tokens being enough for a standard-length game.
A player and his goblin has one of three roles depending upon his place in the Trenchcoat, either Top Goblin, Middle Goblin, or Bottom Goblin. The Top Goblin is the hands and mouth of the operation. He operates the height of Goblin technology—a grabber in each hand. His player rolls a twelve-sided die when the Top Goblin acts. The Middle Goblin can help or hinder the Top Goblin. His player rolls a ten-sided die and can add or subtract the result from any of Top Goblin’s die rolls. The Bottom Goblin decides where the Trenchcoat goes. His player rolls an eight-sided die when the Bottom Goblin acts. His player chooses which locations in the People Place the Trenchcoat visits and narrates the outcome of the Trenchcoat’s actions. The player of the Bottom Goblin is thus both narrator and player. However, the position and role of each Goblin can change in the Trenchcoat. Consequently, the role of the player and the die size he rolls can also change.
Mechanically, to have his Goblin act, a player rolls his Goblin’s die. The result can either be a ‘Screw Up!’, ‘Good Enough!’, or ‘Goblin Success!’. Both ‘Screw Up!’ and ‘Good Enough!’ result in a complication and with a ‘Screw Up!’, another Goblin can also shuffle around and swap places with the Goblin who failed! A minimum roll of five is needed for a ‘Good Enough!’ and a minimum roll of nine is needed for ‘Goblin Success!’. Which means that the Bottom Goblin with his eight-sided die can never roll a ‘Goblin Success!’.

A Goblin can also shuffle around and swap places if his player removes an ‘Obliviousness’ token from the pile. If multiple Goblins want to change places in a shuffle in the Trenchcoat, their players have a dice off. An ‘Obliviousness’ token can also be removed if a player wants his Goblin’s action to automatically succeed. An ‘Obliviousness’ token is also removed if a Trenchcoat makes someone’s life materially worse and when a Goblin successfully acquires his desire. Ultimately, the pile of ‘Obliviousness’ tokens curbs the maximum result on any dice roll, so the more successful the Goblins are in acquiring their desires, the more material harm they cause, the more obvious their actions become to the inhabitants of the settlement, and the harder the Trenchcoat’s actions becomes.
Stacks of Goblins has tables for defining each Goblin, what their Snikittyness the Goblin ruler wants, and what each Goblin desires. Other tables determine the mission, including the target destination, the Goblin means of escape, and events happening in the destination.
When the number of ‘Obliviousness’ tokens drops below the number of Goblins, the Trenchcoat’s cover is blown and it is time to escape. The Trenchcoat must make its way back through the chaos and disarray left in its wake as it progressed through the People Place. Once the Goblins get home in their Trenchcoat, they count their loot, that is, their desires and whatever it was that their Snikittyness the Goblin ruler wanted. A Goblin succeeds if he brings home both.

Physically, Stacks of Goblins: A Comedy roleplaying game of camaraderie, stupidity, and spite is very green. As you would expect. It is simply and clearly written. The cartoon artwork varies in quality, but some of it is really quite decent.

Stacks of Goblins: A Comedy roleplaying game of camaraderie, stupidity, and spite lives up to its subtitle. It is fun and silly. It is semi-cooperative as the Goblins are forced to work together and no one Goblin is in charge, but forced into conflict with each other in order to assume the three roles in the Trenchcoat, each one necessary to grab both need and desire. It is stupid because dice rolls will fail and a Goblin always thinks he can do better, and to do better means a higher role and thus potential for a higher roll. Then as one Goblin gains his desire and their Snikittyness the Goblin ruler’s need, and the other Goblins do not, desperation and spite kicks in as one Goblin looks like succeeding and his rivals do not. All this would be fun enough, but the shifting roles from Top Goblin to Bottom Goblin and back again, enhances all of this, keeping everyone involved, and giving everyone a turn at each role. It does this through play and through each Goblin’s drive to obtain both desire and need. Which means that without knowing it and without it being forced upon him, a player gets to be the narrator of the Trenchcoat’s progress (and thus the roleplaying game’s storyteller or Game Master).

Stacks of Goblins: A Comedy roleplaying game of camaraderie, stupidity, and spite is simple and idiotic, but that simplicity and idiocy hides some clever little design decisions and a Trenchcoat full of silliness, squabbling, and fun.

Escape the Dark Sector: The Game of Deep Space Adventure brought the brutality of the Fighting Fantasy solo adventure books of the eighties to both Science Fiction and co-operative game play for up to four players in which their characters begin incarcerated in the detention block of a vast space station and must work together to ensure their escape. Published by Themeborne, with its multiple encounters, traps, aliens, robots, objects, and more as well as a different end of game Boss every time, Escape the Dark Sector offered a high replay value, especially as a game never lasted longer than thirty minutes. Now, like its predecessor, Escape the Dark Castle: The Game of Atmospheric Adventure, the game has not one, but three expansions! Funded via a Kickstarter campaign, each of the three expansions—Escape the Dark Sector – Mission Pack 1: Twisted Tech, Escape the Dark Sector – Mission Pack 2: Mutant Syndrome, and Escape the Dark Sector – Mission Pack 3: Quantum Rift—adds a new Boss, new Chapters, new Items, and more, taking the path of the escapees off in a new direction to face new encounters and new dangers. Each expansion can be played on its own with the base game, or mixed and matched to add one, two, or three mission packs that increase the replay value of the core game.
Escape the Dark Sector – Mission Pack 1: Twisted Tech takes the escapees off into the tech-based areas of the station. It includes twelve new Chapter cards which represent the encounters the escapees will have as they flee. They may run into security droids which attempt to detain or destroy the escaping prisoners; find a partially constructed android which can be scavenged for devices like a Medical Beam or a Replicator; discover a logistics terminal which can be hacked to determine the location of the nearest equipment stash; and even find a noodle seller to gain some rest and respite! The single Boss card is for Neuroshima, a technological genius with multiple cybernetic implants, such as automatically hitting in ranged combat or close combat. Fortunately, only one implant works each time he is faced—the particular implant being determined by a roll of the ‘Tech Die’.
Escape the Dark Sector – Mission Pack 1: Twisted Tech has nine new Item cards and three Drone cards. The Drone cards—Replication Drone, Surgical Drone, and Sentry Drone—give the escapees a tactical edge. All three drone models have the one basic function, simple healing, which is always guaranteed to work, but each model also has several advanced functions, which unfortunately not guaranteed to work, and may even harm the characters. The Replication Drone replicates items out of the Discard Pile;  the Surgical Drone restores Hit Points and can even remove a mutation (a feature of Escape the Dark Sector – Mission Pack 2: Mutant Syndrome rather than Escape the Dark Sector – Mission Pack 1: Twisted Tech); and the Sentry Drone inflicts damage on designated targets in combat. However, if a Drone malfunctions, it can inflict damage on a character, and whether it malfunctions or uses a particular advanced function determined by a roll of the ‘Tech Die’. Further, the characters can only take one Drone with them, and of course, a Drone can only be used once per action.
The nine Item cards include a mix of new cyberware, gear, and guns. The ‘Drone Commander Implant’ grants a second use of a Drone’s Basic Function before its card is flipped over. The ‘Chrono Rig’ enables any type or number of dice to be rerolled once per chapter (Escape the Dark Sector is played out in four chapters) and the second result used; the ‘Teleporter’ is used and discarded to gain a flanking attack in combat; and the ‘Nutri-Pill’ heals two Hit Points. Escape the Dark Sector – Mission Pack 1: Twisted Tech also includes three new weapons—the ‘Punch-Gun’, the ‘Sniper Rifle’, and the ‘Flame Thrower’. All three work in slightly different ways. Both the ‘Punch-Gun’ and the ‘Sniper Rifle’ need to be loaded using the ‘Special Ammo’ die, but the ‘Sniper Rifle’ must be then primed before it can be fired. If either hits, the Special Ammo die is rolled and can have an extra effect. This is extra damage for the ‘Punch-Gun’, but removes either the chapter dice of one type in the combat or three chapter dice of any type. This is a powerful effect as it helps negate the effects an encounter or chapter. Lastly, the ‘Flame Thrower’ can fire three bursts of flame of varying length, represented by rolling the ‘Flame Ammo’ dice, either one, two, or three per burst. These can result in inflicting damage on a target, no effect, or even engulfing a character in flames and causing them damage. Lastly, of course, there are the dice—the ‘Tech Die’, ‘Special Ammo’ dice, and the ‘Flame Ammo’ dice. (It will be easy to see the ‘Tech Die’ being used in the other two Mission Packs for Escape the Dark Sector.)

Physically, Escape the Dark Sector – Mission Pack 1: Twisted Tech is as well produced as the core game. The new Chapter and Boss Cards are large and in general easy to read and understand. Each one is illustrated in Black and White, in a style which echoes that of the Fighting Fantasy series and Warhammer 40K last seen in the nineteen eighties. The Item and Drone cards are also easy to use and the dice are clear and simple. The rule book requires a careful read, if only to grasp how the different new mechanics work.

Escape the Dark Sector – Mission Pack 1: Twisted Tech adds new subsystems as well as new encounters with the Chapter and Boss Cards. They add both elements of complexity and luck, though more of the latter than the former. Design wise, this expansion is thematically strong rather than narratively strong, adding new technology that the escapees can use and technology that the escapees must defeat or overcome. What this means is that it has no intrinsic story of its own and is thus easier to integrate with the core game and its other expansions. Overall, Escape the Dark Sector – Mission Pack 1: Twisted Tech is a solid expansion which adds more Sci-Fi theme to Escape the Dark Sector: The Game of Deep Space Adventure.

No Security: Horror Scenarios in the Great Depression is an anthology of five horror scenarios notable for three things. First, they are written by Caleb Stokes, best known as the author of Lover in the Ice, a horrifyingly adult body horror scenario for mature audiences for Delta Green, but which was originally released as part of the No Security Kickstarter. Second, they are systems agnostic, meaning that the Game Master, or Keeper, can and will have to adapt them to the roleplaying game of their choice, typically a roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative horror, such as Call of Cthulhu or Trail of Cthulhu. As an aside, it would be possible to the quintet straight from the page, but that would take a well-prepared Game Master. Third, they are all set in the Desperate Decade of the nineteen thirties, a period of turmoil and uncertainty as the banks crashed, the soil turned to dust, and the Great Depression drove millions into poverty, which is relatively unexplored in terms of Lovecraftian investigative horror, at least in terms of the preceding Jazz Age of the nineteen twenties.

No Security: Horror Scenarios in the Great Depression is published by Hebanon Games following a successful Kickstarter campaign. All five scenarios are available as ‘Pay What You Want’, but have been collected into the No Security anthology. In addition, the anthology does address the social iniquities of the period and gives advice on how to handle them in play. Even though the author does give the suggestion that the disparities and attitudes be ignored in favour of ‘game fun’, his preferred option is to include them in play, but of course, handle them with sensitivity and care. In some scenarios, he also suggests that the Player Characters (or Investigators) be from a mixed background—for two reasons. First, it enables them to access all levels of society, both African American and White. Second, it enhances and contrasts the horror of society and its disparities in the Desperate Decade against the Cosmic Horror of the anthology’s monsters and madness. It should also be noted, that as a consequence of being systems agnostic, No Security does not use of the traditional Mythos monsters or entities. Which means that whatever Cosmic Horror threat that the Investigators find themselves facing in No Security, their players will have as little clue as they do.

The anthology opens with Wives of March. This is longest scenario in No Security and takes place in Barefoot Crossing, a sharecropping community on the rural outskirts of Savannah, Georgia, in the early part of the decade. Here the Unifying Word Revival Church preaches to the community and brings much needed relief to its parishioners, but the community is sent into uproar when the pastor, Dashell March, is murdered, and worse, an African American is the prime suspect, an African American who is also suspected of corrupting a young White girl! The set-up for the Investigators’ involvement really works best with their being hired by different parties, each with an interest in solving looking into the murder, though not necessarily solving it. Local lawyers want the pastor’s will investigated, a rival church wants to prevent any retaliative violence against its African American congregation, an heir wants his claim to the will confirmed, and lastly, the local sheriff’s office do want the crime investigated, again, primarily to prevent an outbreak of violence.

This all sets up and opens numerous paths of investigation—paths that might be closed or difficult if the Investigators are not from diverse backgrounds—and leads them into multiple levels of local society. What they discover, at least initially, is that the March family, and the Unifying Word Revival Church, are incredibly interested in helping them out beyond the mere murder investigation, as well as how helpful the March family is in the community and how pervasive their presence is. Yet oddities soon become apparent—the March family and their church seems impossibly wealthy; so many of the family appear alike (perhaps due to inbreeding?); and there is a preponderance of oddly deformed people in the community. As the scenario progresses, these oddly deformed people will begin to take an intense interest in the Investigators’ activities, to the point later on in the scenario where it becomes insanely intense!

At the heart of ‘Wives of March’, which has a The Midwich Cuckoos feel, is conspiracy between a husband and wife, one which is currently confined to the immediate area, but which has tendrils which can be traced around the world and back into prehistory… The truth of the matter is that they are effectively immortal, bound to each other, but loving and loathing each other after millennia of being together. They have died again and again, but been reborn each time remembering both how they died and what they learned in their previous lives. They cannot have children together, for any offspring would be an inhuman Un-thing, due to bargains they struck with not-Gods in their original lives, and so have children with others, but these children also remember their immortal parents’ history and have their knowledge, and so are born as insane as they are. Thus the Marchs cannot effectively die and cannot truly be together lest they unleash monsters into the world. They and their family are a brilliantly intense, psychotically focussed foe—especially if the players prefer their Investigators to take a more direct or combative approach, they are really going to scare the Investigators—as well as being actually a sympathetic foe. They are monsters true, but theirs is a burden which has made them so even as they stopped worse entering the world.

‘Wives of March’ has a strong set investigative threads, each built around the four different ways of involving the Investigators and each taking the Investigators into different strands of Georgia society. The scenario also goes into some detail about how the antagonists live and operate, explaining how they became the inhuman monsters that they are, how to portray them, and more, ultimately depicting them as victims of themselves. They are very much monsters we can sympathise with to a degree—but monsters, nonetheless. However, ‘Wives of March’ is not going to be an easy scenario to run. First, the investigative strands could have been better organised, and it does not help that it fails to explain what happened to initiate the events of the scenario until four-fifths of the way into it. Which is frustrating for the Game Master. Second, the antagonists are an almost impossible threat to deal with—even they do not know how to deal with themselves and their predicament. So how are the Investigators expected to solve it? 

Ultimately, ‘Wives of March’ requires a fair degree of effort upon the past the Game Master to prepare and run effectively. It has the potential to be an incredibly intense affair, but also a frustrating one primarily because there is no real solution to the larger problem at the core of the scenario. It also has the scope to be expanded if the Game Master wants to take the March conspiracy beyond the confines of ‘Wives of March’.

‘Bryson Springs’ is the second scenario in the anthology and shifts from the Deep South to the border of California, the destination for many escaping the Dust Bowl, and actually takes place on a stop on that route, the declining town of Byron Falls. Here, ‘Okies’—farmers and others fleeing the Dustbowl in the Midwest—have established a Hoover-town around a WPA built washhouse, as they try and find work and a way to survive. Here a Chinese ex-railway worker has been found bloodily battered to death just as the Investigators arrive, perhaps as State Police or the FBI sent to investigate the murder, bank robbers being transported to Leavensworth, relatives of the ‘Okies’ in town, Socialist labour organiser trying to rally the transient population, journalists with an interest in the Hooverville or the murder, and so on. The Game Master will probably want to develop more of the ‘Okies’ than the scenario does, and prepare carefully. Again, the scenario is not presented for ease of use—for example, the initial murder scene is described at the end of the scenario rather than at the start—and portraying that information to the players and their Investigators will be challenging. This is a much shorter scenario and more confined investigation which will probably reveal some nasty secrets other than what is necessarily going on. Like ‘Wives of March’, the ‘monster’ in the scenario also is also similar implacably unstoppable, which will likely frustrate the players. Ultimately, the solution to the problem in ‘Bryson Springs’ feels opaque, but not as much as in ‘Wives of March’, and is likely to be slightly easier for the players and their Investigators to work out. ‘Bryson Springs’ does make good use of its setting and it has some horrifyingly deadly moments. 

The third scenario, ‘Revelations’, is set in the Illinois town of Toil in 1938. The town has managed to weather the effects of the Depression and the Dust Bowl due to the local farms being able to grow soybeans, but times are still hard. They get harder still as a rash of strange events—axe heads floating in the river, a teacher in school spewing water as she teaches multiplication, sacramental bread in the town’s church turning to flesh, and much, much more. The rash becomes an onslaught as the vents turn stranger and weirder, never letting up. Responding to the incidents are members of the Toil City Police Department, who the players will roleplay, directed by the voice of the elderly, but kindly police despatcher. The scenario is inspired by the Bible—as the title might suggest, unleashing a barrage of apocalyptically biblical events each given a horribly entertaining and clever modern interpretation. This potentially leads to two problems. First, is the Biblical theme, which some may find offensive or inappropriate and second is that the players may not necessarily be aware or as knowledgeable of Biblical scripture as others, and so miss some elements in the scenario. These are not the only issues. The Game Master is handed a lot of events to throw at her players and their Investigators, so unless the Investigators decide to split up and look into different reports, it is unlikely that they will get to encounter them all. It is also unlikely that they will survive them all, for whilst they are not all necessarily deadly, the near constant onslaught does stretch and strain at the Investigators’ Sanity. The players may also not necessarily be aware of the scenario’s Biblical inspirations, so may so miss much of its religious overtones. Lastly, identifying the solution is not an easy task either, and the scenario needs staging advice as to when the Game Master should being dropping clues to that solution, or at least clues that lead to it. Ultimately, Revelations takes its cosmic horror in an unexpectedly weird direction and then ramps up the weirdness and the cosmic horror again and again. For the Game Master and players who understand and appreciate its inspiration—and who do not take offence—this is likely to be a fascinating and unnerving playing experience, just wondering what is going to happen next, and how it happens next. 

‘Red Tower’, the penultimate scenario in No Security takes place in Chicago in 1931, in and around its infamous Meatpacking District in the wake of Al Capone’s arrest. It is not a gangster scenario, although the Mob is involved tangentially. Like the earlier ‘Wives of March’, the scenario has multiple means of entry—a reporter from a Socialist newspaper looking for a missing colleague, Bureau of Investigation agents looking for associates of Capone, agents of the newly formed FDA wanting to check on the local slaughterhouse operations, mobsters looking to take down rival operations that have stepped up following’s Capone’s arrest, and more. Consequently, only a few of these Investigator concepts will work together, so the Game Master will have her work cut out as she switches back and forth between players as their Investigators follow different or similar paths of enquiry. This does mean that sat round the table the players are likely to learn more than their Investigators until either they follow the same lines of enquiry or they meet up and share knowledge. That is likely to come about as they penetrate a slaughterhouse which does not seem to be quite there, but which appears to purchase a lot of cattle for slaughter, but without producing any meat… If they meet earlier in the scenario they are likely to be odds with each other rather than co-operative. One advantage of the Investigators working separately, at least initially, is that they are more likely to find the solution to the situation inside the slaughterhouse which is not there (whether they are prepared to share is another matter), but descriptions of the final encounters which would involve that solution are underwritten and not as well described as they could have been. Getting to that point and dealing with the threats surrounding the slaughterhouse is the more interesting and the more horrifying—and longer—part of the scenario though.

The last scenario in the anthology is ‘The Fall Without End’, in which the Player Characters team up in pairs to climb Mount McKinley—more recently renamed Denali—as a great story that the American government can use as a distraction from the ongoing effects of the Depression. There is advice for both players and Game Master on the types of character to create and on the skills required to climb mountains, which both will need to understand as obviously very technical in nature. Beyond a few encounters around the base of the mountain, ‘The Fall Without End’ is a linear affair, that is, straight up the mountain, via two routes. There is a plan of the chosen routes up Mount McKinley, but no illustration of the mountain, which is disappointing. In comparison to the other four scenarios in this anthology, there very little investigation involved and the scenario is primarily action-orientated. It is also much shorter, but no less deadly. This both due to the monsters and secrets to be discovered and the environment to overcome and survive as the Player Characters climb the mountain. This combination, together with the competition to be the first to reach the top of Mount McKinley, is reminiscent of Chaosium, Inc.’s Beyond the Mountains of Madness, but as a short one-shot rather than a full campaign. One advantage of this scenario is that it could be run using the rules of a non-Lovecraftian investigative horror roleplaying game so as not to forewarn them of the horrors to come up the mountain…

Physically, No Security: Horror Scenarios in the Great Depression is a black and white book, so one advantage of the PDF is that artwork is clearer and in colour. The book does need an edit in places and many of the scenarios could have been better organised.

The primary problem with No Security: Horror Scenarios in the Great Depression is that it is a set of systemless scenarios with a great deal of detail which means that it is going take a great deal of effort upon the part of the Game Master to adapt any one of the five to the roleplaying game of her choice. The primary advantage with No Security: Horror Scenarios in the Great Depression is that it is a set of systemless scenarios with a great deal of detail which means that the Game Master can freely adapt to any one of the five to the roleplaying game of her choice, and adjust them as necessary. Overall, No Security: Horror Scenarios in the Great Depression is a solidly scary set of one-shots which takes excellent advantage of their period setting and brings Cosmic Horror to the Great Depression without involving Lovecraft, which will take effort upon the part of the Game Master to prepare and run.

Condemned to time in chokey. Put behind bars. Going down for a crime you definitely did not commit. Doing a stretch or bird. Serving time in prison can lead to some great opportunities for storytelling, whether it is The Count of Monte Christo, films such as The Shawshank Redemption or Escape from Alcatraz, or even television series such as Oz. In terms of roleplaying, prisons are typically somewhere to break out of, probably because the Player Characters have been wrongly imprisoned. What though, if they had not been wrongly accused, tried, convicted, and sentenced to term in prison, perhaps a life sentence, or even a death sentence? What if you were guilty? Did you get caught? Did someone rat you out? Perhaps you got sloppy in the end? It makes no difference now. You are in the system, and only the sentences are longer than the shadows and the grudges held in this god forsaken place...

This is the situation in Life & Death at Freedom Penitentiary, a Swedish roleplaying game published by FantastiskFiktion. It is set within the grey walls of Freedom Penitentiary, the most notorious prison in Sweden. It stands amidst the tundra ten miles from the nearest town, home to over a thousand inmates, who serve out their sentences under the watchful and shadowy presence of the hated Warden and his often-corrupt Corrections Officers.

An Inmate in Life & Death at Freedom Penitentiary is defined by his General Features, Talents, Archetype, Crime, and Job. He has six General Features—or attributes—Muscle, Sense, Smarts, Acting, Notoriety, and Precision. Talents like ‘Hiding’ or ‘Dialects’ or ‘Killing Blow’ each increase a General Feature’s modifier by one, whilst an Archetype adds two or three adjustments to modifiers and determines the Inmate’s Hit Points. The Crime adds further modifiers, two Talents to choose from, and options in terms of an Inmate’s Sentence Level. The latter ranges between one and four, and represents the Inmate’s sentence length, security level, and extra Talents and modifiers, if any. For example, a Sentence Level of three has a sentence length of fifty years to life and a security level of High, as well as two extra Talents and an extra modifier of one. The Archetypes include Member of the Family, Good, Activist, Professor, and more, whilst the Crimes include Assault, Murder and Mass Murder, Drug Trafficking, Money Laundering, as well as others. The Job is the work that the Inmate does whilst incarcerated, such as Wood Shop or Canteen. Again, this adds another modifier.

To create an Inmate, a player assigns an array of values to his General Features, and selects an Archetype and a Crime, as well the Sentence Level. It is quick and easy.

Name: Gudmund Ekerlid
Archetype: Goon
Crime: Manslaughter
Sentence Level: 2
Job: Road Crew
Hit Points: 10
Muscle 4 (+3) Sense 3 Smarts 2 (-2) Acting 2 (+1) Notoriety 3 Precision 3

Talents
Act on Impulse

Mechanically, Life & Death at Freedom Penitentiary is straightforward and simple. It uses a pool of six-sided dice, either two, three, or four, depending upon the Imamate’s General Features. The modifier of the General Feature is added to the total, whilst a Talent lets a player reroll one die. A roll of nine or more is a Conditional Success, twelve or more is a Regular Success, and fifteen or more a Flawless Success. Essentially, a ‘Yes, but…’, ‘Yes’, and ‘Yes, and…’. If any two dice result in Snake Eyes, or rolls of one, the action is an automatic failure. Effectively, the more dice an Inmate’s player rolls, the greater the chance of his rolling Snake Eyes. This is due to the Inmate’s overconfidence.

Combat uses the same mechanics. Brawling inflicts one point of damage, with improvised melee weapons inflicting two or three points.

During play, an Inmate can acquire Nods and Dots. Nods are awarded for good behaviour (and play). Gain three Nods or three Dots and the player can expend them to increase a modifier for a General Feature or gain a Talent. Dots are gained for negative or disruptive behaviour. When an Inmate gains three Dots, also receives a punishment from the Corrections Officers (or even from the other Inmates depending upon the situation). The player describes what the punishment is, but the record is then wiped clean. Nods and Dots are handed out at the end of each session.

For the Game Master, there is a description of Freedom Penitentiary—or ‘Frihetsfängelse’—and advice on running the game. This is to keep up the tension, constantly keeping the Inmates on their toes, with their guard up against threats from either the Warden, Corrections Officers, or the other Inmates. The Inmates are in constant danger, their meagre belongings likely to be stolen, and more. It also advises that unlike the boring reality of prison life, life in Freedom Penitentiary should be eventful, plus it should involve an element of horror. This can play a more prominent role in a campaign in Freedom Penitentiary depending upon the type of campaign that the Game Master wants to run. And of course, the Game Master should be bringing story elements into play which remind each Inmate of the crimes he committed.
Before each session, the Game Master should also roll to see if the Corrections Officers search the cells and if so, if they find any contraband. The other event he should roll for is to see if any Inmate with a Sentence Level of four, that is, a death sentence, has had his execution date brought forward. Lastly, there is a list of NPCs and a short scenario generator.

Physically, Life & Death at Freedom Penitentiary is almost presented as an Inmate’s record. It has a rough, mimeographed quality, although one done on quite sturdy paper. The artwork is rough, but suitably utilitarian. It does need an edit in places, but the main issue
is the organisation which switches back and forth between Inmate creation and rules, often making it difficult to quite keep track of things.

Life & Death at Freedom Penitentiary is not a game for everyone. Its theme and setting is mature in nature, with the players taking the roles of criminals who have done wrong, committed crimes, including murder. And that is even before taking into account the fact that it involves capital punishment. That said, its themes are universal, and it does suggest that the Inmates’ crimes and the effects of those crimes be brought into play and explored in terms of storytelling. Likewise, although Life & Death at Freedom Penitentiary is set in a prison in sub-artic climes, its themes are so universal that the roleplaying game can easily be set in the prison of the Game Master’s choice. The real issue, at least mechanically, with Life & Death at Freedom Penitentiary is that it does not really help the Game Master in running the game in the long term—what is the ultimate story that the players and their Inmates are going to tell? In addition, the Game Master will also need to look beyond the pages of Life & Death at Freedom Penitentiary for further inspiration. As written, Life & Death at Freedom Penitentiary has a very short-term feel and the Game Master will need to work hard to develop it beyond that. Whilst keeping that in mind though, Life & Death at Freedom Penitentiary does have the potential for rich, dark storytelling about the lives of offenders and recidivists.

A village in peril. The villagers are suffering from a strange curse which leaves them listless and aimless before ultimately killing them. Fields full of sickly looking, ash-coloured crops. A swollen river which smells foul and looks like old blood. Could it be the curse of Ursodiol the Mad, the greatest mind to have ever breached the great Cosmic Void? Ursodiol the Mad who recently died, his body was interred in the nearby crypt of his famous ancestor, G’vane the White, the heroic paladin of Meth, the goddess of justice, judgement, and the soul? This is the set-up for Ominous Crypt of the Blood Moss, a scenario designed to be played with Necrotic Gnome’s Old School Essentials, but easily run with the Old School Renaissance retroclone of your choice. Designed for a party of Second to Fourth Level Player Characters, Ominous Crypt of the Blood Moss starts with the cliché of the village and a nearby source of peril, and goes beyond that to present have them face a threat of Cosmic Horror confined—for now, that is—within the walls of a mini-dungeon.

Ominous Crypt of the Blood Moss is published by Oneiromantic Press and offers one or two good sessions’ worth of play. It is easily adapted to the setting of the Game Master’s choice, needing only the combination of an isolated spot and a river to fit. A simple map of the village is provided, along with a table of random village descriptions should the Game Master be running the scenario as a one-shot and not one, but three sets of motivations to get the Player Characters involved. And if that is not enough, the surviving villagers are throwing the dead onto a funeral pyre when the Player Characters arrive, and three of the corpses get up and start attacking everyone. Including the Player Characters. Opening with burning zombies is one way to get a scenario off to an exciting start!

The scenario is straightforward. The village priest states that the late Ursodiol the Mad and his curse are responsible, points the Player Characters at the nearby crypt where he is buried, and away they go. The crypt itself consists of just ten locations and can be divided into two sections, an outer and an inner section. The outer areas are dusty with nothing seemly untoward going on there, but within the walls of the inner area, it is a different matter. The walls are covered with slime, and everywhere can be found strands of sticky red tendrils… Sticky red tendrils which reach out hungrily for new victims.

At the heart of Ominous Crypt of the Blood Moss is the Blood Moss itself, “…[A]n extradimensional protoplasmic mycelial network of nanofibers that feeds on consciousness and hungers for the experiences of sentient beings.” Which means it not only ensnares its victims, it also infects with its spores and draining their intelligence and if they have it, their magic, in the process gaining in intelligence itself and even becoming able to cast that magic. In the scenario, its tendrils creeps through the G’vane family crypt, layering it in a moss and reanimating its victims as nodes through which it can act. This is a scarlet and scary take upon the zombie genre, creating it as an extension of an otherwise seemly sessile monster.

Ultimately, the Player Characters will encounter the true monster—and victim—of the scenario, changed through his exposure to the Cosmic Void and the Blood Moss. Defeat him, and his greatest (or worst) treasure becomes theirs, a four-dimensional object known as The Crystal Tesseract. This begs to be looked into and in doing so, exposes the viewer also to the Cosmic Void. The accompanying table describing the possible effects of staring into The Crystal Tesseract—and you really, really wants to stare into The Crystal Tesseract—only has the twenty entries, but all are nicely odd. At this point, it does feel like a darker, but mini-version of The Deck of Many Things. The Game Master could have a lot of fun inventing entries for the table and expanding it into a much more significant magical artefact.

Physically, Ominous Crypt of the Blood Moss is decently presented, the environment of the crypt in particular. Everything is described in either short punchy sentences or bullet points that are easy to read with key points in bold. Each of the ten location descriptions includes its maps taken from the larger map of the crypt with any monsters given in grey boxes. The format, typically across a two-page spread for each room, is simple, clear, and easy to read, giving the scenario an accessibility that makes it painless to run with minimal effort. The maps are decent too, although it would have been nice if the map had been reprinted in side the front or back cover. The artwork consists of public domain pieces and are for the most part, well chosen. The scenario does need another good edit in places though.

If there is one single problem with Ominous Crypt of the Blood Moss, it is that naming your primary god in the scenario, ‘Meth’, is simply asking for trouble. There is no way that your players will not rise to taking the mickey out of any Game Master who retains that name. 
Ominous Crypt of the Blood Moss is easy to prepare and run, and relatively easy to adapt to a Game Master’s own campaign. The set-up of the scenario is a cliché, but Ominous Crypt of the Blood Moss takes that cliché in a challenging and creepy direction, to present an enjoyably weird and cosmic experience on a small scale.

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

—oOo—

What is it?
Day’s Rest is a supplement for use with RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha which describes the first stop along the Caravan Alley, a trade route running from Sartar to the Eiritha Hills in eastern Prax, its inhabitants, and their daily lives.

It is a twenty-seven page, full colour 2.82 MB PDF.

The layout is tidy and the artwork excellent.

Notes are provided to enable the content to be used with QuestWorlds (HeroQuest).
Where is it set?Day’s Rest is set at an oasis in Prax whose lake is sacred to Waha.
Who do you play?
As an oasis and trade stop, Day’s Rest is a location designed to be visited. So any character may do so, whether travelling from Sartar or from the nomadic Praxian tribes. The waters of the oasis are sacrosanct, so any tribe can visit, including the reviled Morokanths, to water their beasts. Waha worshippers will also visit the lake as its waters have received the blessing of Waha.
What do you need?
Day’s Rest requires RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha  and The Book of Red Magic.
What do you get?Day’s Rest presents what is in effect a mini-sandbox (literally!) location, one of the many oasis along the trade route between from Sartar into Prax. It sits amidst the harsh chaparral of the plains, providing a respite where travellers can stop and rest, water their animals, and even trade. It was the first place that Waha stopped after he rescued the Protectresses of the Herds from the Devil and is one of the founding locations of Praxian culture, a small and pitiful remnant of the Garden that once covered the lands.
Notably it is also a possession, being under the control of one of the tribes of Prax, currently the Bison tribe since 1624. This extends to the oasis’ inhabitants, part the Oasis Folk of Prax, who farm the fields that the oasis irrigates and thus support their masters with the goods and foods that they cannot source elsewhere. No matter who holds Day’s Rest, the nomads look down on the Oasis Folk, considering them pitiful and insignificant, worthy only for exploitation by their betters—those that ride. The Oasis Folk have their culture which they practice quietly and in a subdued manner, including worship of Daka Fal. Where the nomad tribes do not accept outsiders amongst their numbers, the Oasis Folk do, accepting them and their children as slaves alongside themselves. This occurred in numbers during the recent uprisings against the Lunars in Sartar and Tarsh.
In addition to providing a decent description of the oasis, Day’s Rest details fourteen NPCs, including members of the Bison Tribe, loyally, but unhappily assigned to protect the oasis against raids from other tribes and to keep the peace, slaves of the Oasis Folk, and visitors, most of the latter being merchants. These are each given a full page of details and stats, and there is a sold cast of personalities given.
Rounding out Day’s Rest is a description of Oasis Folk and the means to create them as characters, whether Player Characters or NPCs. It notes that they do not make good Player Characters as they are limited in what they can and the lives they lead. The guidelines here are better as a means to create NPCs as occupants of oasis and trade stops in Prax.
As solid a description as Day’s Rest gives, there are two or three issues attached to. A minor issue is that the map of the oasis could have also been placed at the front of the supplement for ease of reference. A few story hooks would have not gone amiss either. There are a few written into the descriptions of the NPCs, but a few more to get the Player Characters more readily involved in the doings there would have been useful. The main problem with the supplement is that it does involve slavery. Now this is part of Glorantha as a setting and whilst the treatment of the Oasis Folk as a slaves is not exploitable, but this does not mean that everyone is going to comfortable with either its portrayal or even its inclusion.
Is it worth your time?Yes—Day’s Rest is a useful addition for any campaign set in or passing through Prax, or involves Praxians or worshippers of Waha. No—Day’s Rest is specific to Prax and a Game Master’s may not be set there or may not want to enter an area of Glorantha where slavery is obvious.Maybe—Day’s Rest is a useful addition for a campaign involving Prax or Waha worshippers, but it involves themes which not every player will be comfortable with.

One of the most elegant pieces of roleplaying design in recent times is Jim Henson’s Labyrinth: The Adventure Game published by River Horse Press. Adapted from the 1982 Jim Henson film of the same name, this presented a way to explore a story similar to that of the film, with the Player Characters chasing the Goblin King through the labyrinth, visiting many of the locations in the film as well as others new, in random order, but always pushing forward. It presented what was in effect a roleplaying game and a roleplaying campaign in the one book, and because it included some one hundred locations, the randomness meant that it could be played more than once because the players and their characters were unlikely to visit the same location twice between play throughs. Further, the complete nature of the roleplaying game was cemented with a pair of six-sided dice which sat in a cut-out within the book’s pages. The result was simple, elegant, and clever, and the good news is that River Horse Press has gone and done it again with The Dark Crystal Adventure Game.

The Dark Crystal Adventure Game is based upon the 1982 film Dark Crystal and its more recent television series, The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, on Netflix. Instead of taking the Player Characters into a maze as in Labyrinth: The Adventure Game, what The Dark Crystal Adventure Game does is send a band of Gelflings on a grand quest across the strange and magical world of Thra to collect seven seeds from the seven great trees and return them to Mystic Valley within ninety-nine days, before the next conjunction. Together they will journey across Thra and back again, surviving dangers, helping each other, and hopefully returning stronger and wiser. Theirs is a great task and Gelflings are fragile in some ways, but strong in others.

A Gelfling can be from one of seven Clans. These include the aquatic, and direct in manner Drenchen; the nomadic and spiritual Dousan who prefer silence and stillness; the cave-dwelling Grottan, able to see in the dark; the Sifa who have a reputation for gregariousness and roguishness; the Spriton, clever crafters and traders; the Stonewood, dedicated warriors; and Vapra, renowned as crafters and artists and scholars. All female Gelflings, apart from those of the Drenchen clan can fly. Each Clan provides four traits and a Gelfling also begins with two skills selected from Agility, Animals, Brawn, Fighting, Lore, Scouting, and Social, as well as a Specialisation for these skills. Later on, a player can expend Experience Points to give his Gelfling new skills, buy new specialisations, and raise a specialisation to a mastery. A Gelfling also has a flaw and a reason why he was summoned to Mystic Valley.

Greyon
Gender: Female
Clan: Stonewood
Traits: Stonewood, Living Weapons, Unparalleled Fighter, Fated Warrior
Skills: Agility (Reflexes), Fighting (Ferocity)
Flaw: Prideful
Summons: A Lost Wanderer
Equipment: Sharp Blade

Mechanically, The Dark Crystal Adventure Game is very simple. To undertake an action, a player’s Gelfling rolls his creature die, which is a six-sided die for a healthy Gelfling, and attempts to best a difficulty ranging between two and ten. This is typically a single die, but if the attempt is Improved, perhaps because the Gelfling has the right equipment or if there is an appropriate trait, the player rolls two dice and keeps the best result. If the Hindered, perhaps because the Gelfling does not have the right equipment or the Gelfling has an appropriate Flaw, the player rolls two dice and keeps the worst result. Either way, the player adds a bonus to the result if the Gelfling is trained in a skill, for an appropriate specialisation, an appropriate Mastery, and also if an Gelfling is helping out.

Fighting is as equally as simple. Instead of rolling against a Difficulty number, any attack is an opposed roll against the opponent’s Creature Die, which for some monsters can be as high as a ten- or twelve-sided die! When a creature or a Gelfling suffers damage, his Creature Die reduced one step and this is what the Game Master or player rolls until healing is received. In the case of a Gelfling, if his Creature Die is reduced below a four-sided die, he is Injured. This might result in his being knocked out, having his arm broken, her wings torn, and more. It might even result in the Gelfling’s death. This is final, but on the World of Thra and thus in The Dark Crystal Adventure Game, it triggers a special encounter as a funeral for the unfortunate Gelfling is held, everyone tells stories about him (earning them Experience Points), and the player creates a new character, which may or not be a Gelfling.

The campaign in The Dark Crystal Adventure Game consists of thirty scenes and over two thirds of the book. These can be divided into four types—Region, Location, Event, and Darkened Scenes, the latter representing the dark poison which flows across Thra and threatens to corrupt everything if the Gelflings do not fulfil their quest in time. Certain scenes or locations, such as the Plains of the Castle and the Caves of Grot already begin as being Darkened. When Darkened certain scenes cause nightmares, but the general effect is inflict damage when a Gelfling uses ‘Vliyaya’, the essence whose manipulation can lead to amazing magical effects. Play itself is player-led, they together deciding where their Gelflings go in search of the seven seeds, based upon the information they know and rumours they have. The Dark Crystal Adventure Game is thus a sandbox campaign, but one with a countdown, represented by a spiral calendar of Thra. As time passes and the Gelflings travel between scenes, the Game Master will mark off days around this calendar, which can trigger events such as the spreading of the Darkening.

Each scene typically details the particular locations to be found there, an encounter table, an appendix of further details, and the extra effects of what happens if the Darkening spreads there. Spread across a two-page spread, it is often quite not enough information, as the Game Master will need to refer elsewhere in the book—especially the ‘Creatures of Thra’ in the Toolkit chapter. Unlike Labyrinth: The Adventure Game, what this means is that The Dark Crystal Adventure Game cannot as easily be run on the go, there being a constant start and stop as the Game Master quickly refers to and gathers the stats and details she needs to run the Scene. Ideally the Game Master should prepare and read through the campaign pretty much as she would a standard roleplaying campaign. The other indication that the campaign in The Dark Crystal Adventure Game is more traditional is that with thirty scenes it does not offer the same replay value that Labyrinth: The Adventure Game does. The campaign itself is fairly dark as the corrupting effects of Darkening spread across the land and so more mature in nature than that in Labyrinth: The Adventure Game.

Elsewhere, there is good advice for both player and Game Master, and some background on the world of Thra and its history, as well as decent bestiary. The Dark Crystal Adventure Game is not a sourcebook though for The Dark Crystal, its focus being much on its campaign.

Physically, The Dark Crystal Adventure Game is nicely presented. The artwork is excellent throughout, including the fully painted illustrations in the bestiary and the photographs taken from the film. It does need an edit in places and an index in the book would have been useful. There is though an index on the inside of the dusk jacket which also doubles as a map. The cover of the book has been pleasingly etched with suitable symbols and it feels lovely in the hand.

The Dark Crystal Adventure Game is something that fans of The Dark Crystal will enjoy and likely will playing. Yet unlike Labyrinth: The Adventure Game it is too much of a traditional roleplaying game and campaign for the casual roleplayer to really run as is, because it just requires that little bit more preparation than a ‘pick up and play’ game warrants, whereas for the player this is very much less of an issue.

The Dark Crystal Adventure Game is definitely one for fans of The Dark Crystal as it gives them the chance to explore the world of Thra just this once in the face of a spreading doom. Although The Dark Crystal Adventure Game will require a Game Master with some experience, but is more than suitable for players new to the hobby.

—oOo—


River Horse Press will be at UK Games Expo which takes place from Friday, June 3rd to Sunday, June 5th, 2022.

It was with no little disappointment that Cubicle Seven Entertainment announced in November, 2019 that it would no longer be publishing The One Ring: Adventures Over The Edge Of The Wild, the hobby’s fourth and most critically acclaimed attempt to create a roleplaying game based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth. Originally published in 2011, fans had been looking forward to the second edition of the game, which was being worked on at the time of the announcement. When in 2020, Swedish publisher, Free League Publishing—best known for Tales from the Loop – Roleplaying in the '80s That Never Was, Alien: The Roleplaying Game, and Symbaroum—announced that it had acquired the licence, there was some concern that its forthcoming edition would be based on its Year Zero mechanics. However, Free League Publishing made clear from the start that this was not the case, and so the good news is that following a successful Kickstarter campaign, The One Ring, Second Edition not only retains its original design and writing team, but also the same mechanics—with some updates, and it receives its very own introductory boxed set, The One Ring Starter Set.
With The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of Lord of the Rings the changes from The One Ring: Adventures Over The Edge Of The Wild are more thematic and setting than to the rules, but they can all be seen as an evolution rather than a radical shift. The two major changes are to the date when it is set and to its location. Both take place between the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, with The One Ring: Adventures Over The Edge Of The Wild opening in year 2946 of the Third Age, exactly five years after the Battle of the Five Armies and with the death of Smaug, there was a definite sense of hope to be found in many of the cultures across Middle-earth. Yet as the years passed, darkness crept back into the world and in the Twilight of the Third Age as the War of the Ring lies ahead, and rumours spread of strange and fell things moving abroad once again, and hope began to ebb once again. The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of Lord of the Rings begins in the period, in the year 2965—notably five years after the start of ‘The Conspiracy of the Red Book’ campaign found in The One Ring Starter Set. The shift in location is  from Rhovanion, the region to the East of the Misty Mountains which was the main focus for The One Ring: Adventures Over The Edge Of The Wild, to Eriador, the region to the West of the Misty Mountains. With supplements such as Rivendell, Bree, and Ruins of the North, parts of Eriador had been explored, but no further. Here though, the focus has been expanded to take in all of Eriador, from Rivendell in the east to the Lindon and the coast in the west, from the Ettin Moors in the north to Dunland in the south. At the heart of the region, astride the Great Eastern Road stand The Shire and Breeland, and these are likely starting point for any campaign of The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of Lord of the Rings.

The second edition of the roleplaying also introduces new Cultures and Callings, which are like Races and Classes. The Bardlings are Northmen of noble origins from across the Misty Mountains, journeying once again after the death of Smaug, whilst the Dwarves of Durin’s Folk, are also travelling with renewed purpose, their having reclaimed the Kingdom Under the Mountain.  Those native to Eriador include Elves of Lindon, members of the Firstborn who rarely leave the Grey Havens; Hobbits of the Shire, happy and conservative who would prefer that world around them—or at least The Shire—remain unchanged; Men of Bree, who accept many visitors to villages, but rarely leave; and the Rangers of the North, who patrol the North in secret to keep it safe from threats despite their low numbers. The seven Callings are the Captain, who commands and leads through trust; the Champion is a valiant warrior; the Messenger who carries news and missives between settlements despite the increasing difficulties in journeying across Middle-earth; the Scholar who loves learning and the past; the Treasure Hunter seeks out the heritage of Dwarven Kings and Elven Lords, often lost to hoards guarded by fell beasts and hordes of Orcs; and the Warden, who works to protect those who cannot against the dangers beyond civilisation.
A Player-hero in The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of Lord of the Rings is defined by three Attributes—Strength, Heart, and Wits. Each Attribute value, rated between two and seven, determines the Target Number for skill rolls with its six associated skills (meaning that there is a total of eighteen skills), these rated between one and six. He also has points in Wisdom and Valour, the former representing a Player-hero’s trust in himself and his abilities and good judgement, the latter, his courage. To create a Player-hero, a player chooses a Culture and a Calling, then spends extra Experience Points to customise him, assigns equipment, and lastly selects his rewards for his Wisdom and Valour. A Calling provides a Cultural Blessing, a Standard of Living, an array of Attribute values to chose or roll randomly, a set of base skills and combat proficiencies, Distinctive Features to choose from, and a choice of names. To this are added Favoured Skills, an additional Distinctive Feature, and a Shadow Path, the latter the fate the Calling can result in if a Player-hero fails to resist the Shadow’s influence. For example, a Champion might be beset by the Curse of Vengeance and the Messenger by Wandering-Madness.
Daisy Appledore is a Bree-lander whose family often worked in the Prancing Pony where as a girl she learned of news and things from here and there. This aroused her curiosity and she wanted to find out more about the world, beginning to read books when she could find them and asking questions of other when she could not. Her family would prefer it if she settled down and took up a trade, but does not want to become a cook or serving girl like her mother and sisters, even though she could. She knows she will have to travel and find books and scrolls if she is to satisfy her curiosity. 

Name: Daisy Appledore
Culture: Men of Bree Standard of Living: Common
Cultural Blessing: Bree-Blood (Add one to Fellowship rating)
Calling: Scholar Shadow Weakness: Lure of Secrets
Distinctive Features: Fair-Spoken, Inquisitive, Rhymes of Lore 

– ATTRIBUTES –
Strength: 4 (TN: 16)
Heart: 4 (TN: 16)
Wits: 6 (TN: 14)

– SKILLS –
Awe 0 Enhearten 2 Persuade 2
Athletics 1 Travel 1 Stealth 1
Awareness 1 Insight2 Scan 2
Hunting 1 Healing 0 Explore 2
Song 1 Courtesy 3 Riddle 2
Craft 3 Battle 0 Lore 2 

– COMBAT PROFICIENCIES –
Spear 2, Bows 1 

Valour: 1 (Reward: Close Fitting Mail)
Wisdom: 1 (Virtue: Prowess – Strength) 

– GEAR –
Travelling gear, Bow & Arrows, Dagger, Spear, Shield, Mail Shirt (Armour 2d) & Helm (+1 Armour) 

Endurance 24 Hope 14 Parry 16

Mechanically, like its forebear, The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of Lord of the Rings uses dice pools formed of six-sided dice and the twelve-sided Feat die. The six-sided Success dice are marked with an Elven Rune for ‘1’ on the six face, whilst the Feat dice is marked one through ten, and one face with the ‘Eye of Sauron’ Icon and one face with the ‘Gandalf’ Rune. When rolled, these can all together give various results. A simple numerical total that beats a Target Number is a standard success, but if the roll beats a Target Number and one or more Elven Runes are rolled, they indicate a Great or even an Extraordinary success. If the ‘Eye of Sauron’ Icon is rolled, this is the worst result and does not contribute anything towards the roll. Conversely, if the ‘Gandalf’ Rune is rolled, this is the best result and the action automatically succeeds, even if the total does not beat the target number.
The Target Number itself is determined by a Player-hero’s Attributes, either Strength, Heart, or Wits, depending upon if the player is rolling for a skill, combat proficiency, Wisdom, or Valour. In addition, if a skill is Favoured or Ill-favoured, a player rolls two Feat dice, counting the higher result if Favoured, the lower if Ill-favoured. Extra Success dice can be purchased and rolled through the expenditure of Hope.

Combat uses the same mechanics, but uses a Player-hero’s Combat Proficiencies—either Axes, Bows, Swords, or Spears, which are rolled against the Target Number derived from his Strength. This is modified by the enemy’s Parry rating. Damage inflicted is deducted from a Player-hero’s Endurance, which can result in him being Weary if his Endurance is knocked below his Load (essentially what he is carrying), and knocked out if it is reduced to zero. However, adversaries cannot become Weary, but are knocked out or eliminated when their Endurance is reduced to zero. If one or more Elven ‘1’ Runes are rolled on the Success dice, they can spent to inflict Heavy Blows and more Endurance damage, Fend Off the next attack against you, Pierce armour and potentially do a Piercing Blow, which is definitely inflicted if a ten or a ‘Gandalf’ Rune is rolled. If a Piercing Blow is struck, the defendant’s player rolls to see if his Player-hero’s armour protects him. Wounded Player-heroes recover Endurance slowly and are knocked out if a second Wound is suffered. Adversaries are typically killed by Wounds. Stance, whether Forward, Open, Defensive, or Rearward also affects combat, 
The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of Lord of the Rings is played in two distinct phases—the Adventuring Phase and the Fellowship Phase, both undertaken by the Fellowship formed by the Plaeyr-heroes. The Adventuring Phase is when traditional roleplaying tasks take place, primarily built around the Combat, Council, and Journey activities. The Council and Journey activities very much model what happens in the fiction. The Council activity sees the Player-heroes entreaty with those who hold power, perhaps to gain information or aid. For example, the Fellowship might approach Círdan the Shipwright for information about some ruins said to be in the Dark Lands west of Minhiriach or approach a Dwarven overseer to enter a mine. Mechanically, this involves skill tests made against social skills such as Awe, Courtesy, Persuade, and Song, but best combined with good roleplaying.
The Journey mechanics model the long trips that the Fellowship will be making across the rough, inhospitable, and often hostile lands of Middle-earth. A travelling company requires four roles to be fulfilled, Guide, Hunter, Look-Out, and Scout, and in these roles, the Player-heroes to determine the nature of the encounters they might have and where they do along the journey. Depending on location, these can result in the members of the Fellowship suffering Wounds or gaining points of Shadow, or a chance-meeting or viewing a Joyful Sight. In addition, all members of the Fellowship are required to make a Travel skill test as they tire themselves and gain them fatigue. The rules provide some basic encounters, but the Loremaster will need to develop them before play and probably add more for later journeys.
The Fellowship Phase place between adventures, typically at the end of a Season. Mechanically, this an opportunity for the players to improve Player-heroes and have them recover from injury—both physical and spiritual. They can also select Undertakings, some of which can be done during any Fellowship Phase, but others only during the ‘Yule’ Fellowship Phase. The former, such as ‘Gather Rumours’, ‘Meet Patron’, ‘Ponder Storied and Figured Maps’, and ‘Write Song’, really affect the next season, whilst the latter, like ‘Heal Scars’, ‘Raise an Heir’, and ‘Recount a Story’ have longer term consequences, often having an effect which lasts years. For the most part, winters are spent recovering and reflecting upon previous adventures, and preparing for the next, so typically there will be three Adventuring Phases and three Fellowship Phases per year.
For the Loremaster there is advice on running The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of Lord of the Rings as well as tools for doing so. Most notably they include the Shadow, the fell, foul influence of the darkness personified by Sauron himself. A Player-hero can gain points of Shadow through dread, greed, misdeeds, and sorcery, potentially leading to madness and flaws, and pushing them down the path of his Shadow Weakness. Balancing a Player-hero’s Shadow Points are his points of Hope, but the effects of the Shadow can overcome his Hope should he gain too many. Again, this enforces the feel of Middle-earth and Tolkien’s fiction as well as giving evil a tangible effect. Later on in a campaign when the Player-heroes have made a name for themselves, the Loremaster can bring the Eye of Mordor into play and have them full under the effects of Sauron’s baleful glance.
For the Loremaster there is advice on running The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of Lord of the Rings as well as tools for doing so. Most notably they include the Shadow, the fell, foul influence of the darkness personified by Sauron himself. A Player-hero can gain points of Shadow through dread, greed, misdeeds, and sorcery, potentially leading to madness and flaws, and pushing them down the path of his Shadow Weakness. Balancing a Player-hero’s Shadow Points are his points of Hope, but the effects of the Shadow can overcome his Hope should he gain too many. Again, this enforces the feel of Middle-earth and Tolkien’s fiction as well as giving evil a tangible effect.
The list of adversaries in of The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of Lord of the Rings is quite short—Evil Men, Orcs, Trolls, Undead, and Wolves of the Wild, but this is more than sufficient. In terms of setting, there is some unavoidable repetition between the description of The Shire in The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of Lord of the Rings and The One Ring Starter Set, but the core rulebook expands to cover the whole of Eriador, including Angmar, The Barrow-Downs, the Blue Mountains, Bree-Land, The Ettenmoors, The Great East Road, The Greenway, Lake Evendim, Lindon, Mount Gram, The North Downs, The South Downs, Tharbad, The Trollshaws, and The Weather Hills. It includes numerous NPCs, encounter tables, and location specific adversaries. There are some nice touches here too, such as the Summer Smoke Ring Festival, which the Player-heroes can participate in and the common practice of tossing a coin down the well in Bree’s Old Town Well for luck before leaving on a journey. Added to this are Patrons, such as Balin, son of Fundin, Círdan the Shipwright, and even Bilbo Baggins and Tom Bombadil and Lady Goldberry, who in adopting the Player-heroes will grant them Fellowship Bonuses and advantages, but at the same time, providing the Loremaster with ready NPCs to spur the Player-heroes onto further danger and adventure. Once such site of danger and adventure is described in ‘The Star of the Mist’, a landmark in the foothills of the southern Ered Luin. It is not a full adventure itself, but somewhere to be explored, full of dark secrets, more of an adventure site, much like that found in Forbidden Lands – Raiders & Rogues in a Cursed World. It should provide two or three session’s worth of play, but the Loremaster will need to create a reason for the Player-heroes to be in the area.
If there is one single issue with The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of Lord of the Rings, it is simply the lack of examples. There are hardly any examples of play, none of combat, and none of sample Player-heroes. For anyone with any roleplaying experience or experience having played The One Ring: Adventures Over The Edge Of The Wild, this is should not be an issue. However, if new to the hobby or this roleplaying game, working out what is going on will be a whole lot more difficult.
Physically, The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of Lord of the Rings is very cleanly presented in a clear, open style, and the content itself is engaging to read. In particular, the maps are excellent, done in a style reminiscent of Tolkien and will satisfy any Tolkien fan. There are numerous quotes taken from his fiction throughout the book and these add to its feel and flavour. The artwork is also very good, a pen and ink style that captures the old-world rustic charm of the Shire and the region surrounding it. The style and look echoes that of the classic editions of The Lord of the Rings trilogy published by Allen & Unwin, and has a more scholarly feel as if Bilbo himself sat down to write it.
As an update, The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of Lord of the Rings has been mechanically streamlined and given a nip and tuck here and there. Thematically, the shift to Eriador is more open, windswept, and further away from the darkness which pervaded Rhovanion, east of the Misty Mountains. This not to say that the region is without its dangers or sense of foreboding, far from it, but there is more scope for both the Loremaster and the publisher to develop their own content and perhaps avoid running into an abundance of canon.
Fans of both Middle-earth and the previous version of the roleplaying game, The One Ring: Adventures Over The Edge Of The Wild, will enjoy this new edition just as much, opening up as it does a whole region to explore and moving it on a few decades to give new dangers to face and the Free Peoples of the West to help keep safe. Ultimately, The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of Lord of the Rings is a fantastic update of arguably what was the best roleplaying game to date to be set in Middle-earth. Which means it still is.

—oOo—


Free League Publishing will be at UK Games Expo which takes place from Friday, June 3rd to Sunday, June 5th, 2022.

The Woodland is a vast stretch of thick, deep forest, rich with resources and cut with paths which connect the clearings scattered across its far reaches. Here are found the town, cities, and villages where the denizens of the Woodland live on the edge of the dangerous wilds that stretch deep into the forest. In recent times, the Woodland has been controlled by the Eyrie Dynasties, consecutive conservative regimes led by the birds of the region, but their power was disrupted by the Grand Civil War. This left the Woodland in ruins, but freed many of its denizens from the control of their avian overlords as much as it left much work to do in terms of rebuilding. However, this period, known as the Interbellum, left the Woodlands ripe for invasion, and it was a noble from the Le Monde de cat, the Marquise de Cat, who took advantage of its fractured state. First the Marquise de Cat’s forces helped restore the Woodlands and then industrialise it, building sawmills, workshops, and irrigation. Then it became occupation with the imposition of taxes and stationing cat soldiery. In response some denizens fled to the recovering Eyrie Dynasties, which returned to stop the invaders, but others joined the Woodland Alliance. This arose as hostilities broke out between the Eyrie Dynasties and the Marquisate of the Marquise de Cat, wanting to be free of either occupation. Even as war swirls back and forth through the Woodlands, other denizens slip from clearing to clearing, taking on the odd, dangerous job that inhabitants of the clearings will not do, serving one faction or another, sometimes doing good, other times, causing trouble. They are miscreants, outcasts, rebels, mercenaries, vigilantes, and more. All though are known as Vagabonds, regarded as occasionally useful, but all too often a nuisance.

This is the setting for Root: The Roleplaying Game. Published by Magpie Games following a successful Kickstartercampaign,it is based on Root: A Game of Woodland Might And Right, the anthropomorphic asymmetrical boardgame from Leder Games, lauded for both its design and its game play as well as its fantastic artwork. In the board game, the Eyrie Dynasties, Marquise de Cat, and the Woodland Alliance are the primary factions, whilst the fourth, the Vagabond, either disrupted or aided the efforts of the others. In the board game, there was just the one Vagabond, but in the roleplaying game there are many, and they are the Player Characters in Root: The Roleplaying Game. They may be diplomatic Adventurers, stalwart Arbiters, slippery Harriers, Woodland-wise Rangers, wilful Ronin, dangerous but lucky Scoundrels, cunning Thieves, clever Tinkers, and charming Vagrants, but all are Vagabonds. They have bonded together in a band, but for how long?

Root: The Roleplaying Game is not a traditional roleplaying game, since it employs the Powered by the Apocalypse framework, first see in2010’s Apocalypse World, around which its Player Character or Vagabond types, called Playbooks, and the Moves—or actions—they can undertake. Both Player Character types and Moves enforce both the setting and genre of Root: The Roleplaying Game, and the narratives or stories which can be told. In terms of Vagabond types and thus Playbooks, this is primarily done via a Vagabond’s Nature and Drives. Fulfilling either of the Nature and Drives rewards the player and his character, pushing the player to roleplay in particular ways. For example, with the Dutiful Nature, the Arbiter will clear his Exhaustion Track when he takes on a dangerous or difficult task for someone else, whilst he will gain an Advancement (the chance to improve the character) with the Discovery Dive when he encounters a new wonder or ruin in the forest. In terms of Moves, when the Harrier uses the ‘Smuggler’s Path’ Move, he will always find a secret path or door if the location should have one, but depending upon the roll made, he will not only find the secret path, but he will also find something useful to him along the path or even find it being used by someone else. This develops and pushes the narrative along, because throughout, a player is rolling the dice to determine what happens, rather than if it does or does not happen.

There are eight Basic Moves available to all Vagabonds—‘Attempt Roguish Feat’, ‘Figure Someone Out’, ’Persuade an NPC’, ‘Read a Tense Situation’, ‘Trick an NPC’, ‘Trust Fate’, Wreck Something’, and ‘Help or Interfere’. There are other types of Moves, such as Weapon Moves for combat and Session Moves for end of play actions, but for the most part, the Vagabonds will be making the Basic Moves. These are in the main, self-explanatory, but two stand out as different to the others. ‘Attempt a Roguish Feat’ actually consists of eight separate Feats, Acrobatics, Blindside, Counterfeit, Disable Device, Hide, Pick Lock, Pickpocket, Sleight of Hand, and Sneak. Typically, a Vagabond will have two of them, but again they roguish nature of the Vagabonds and thus the genre of Root: The Roleplaying Game. The other is ‘Trust Fate’, which covers anything a Vagabond might do when all else fails or he has no other option or the situation is just too desperate. However, this always comes at accost or complication because it is always a last resort, and ideally the player should be making one of the Basic Moves or one of their Vagabond’s in order to avoid that definite complication.

Mechanically, Root: The Roleplaying Game is designed to be player facing. When a player has his Vagabond make a Move, he selects a Move and rolls two six-sided dice, adding the appropriate stat to the result. If the player rolls seven or more, it is a ‘Hit’ and the Vagabond gets the desired result, but with a complication. If he rolls ten or more, it is a ‘strong hit ‘and the Vagabond gets everything he wants and potentially an extra bonus. However, if he rolls six or less, it is a ‘Miss’ and the Game Master instead gets to decide what happens. Some Moves add one-off bonuses to a Vagabond’s stats, whilst others generate continuing effects. For example, the Ronin’s ‘Well-Mannered ‘Move which is made when the Ronin enters a social situation where manners and etiquette matter, and generates points which a player can hold. Called Hold, these can be used to cover up a social faux pas made by the Vagabond or an ally, to call out someone else’s social faux, to charm someone, and to demonstrate his value. If the result is a Miss, the rules of etiquette are so different that you commit a grave breach of manners! All of these come with mechanical effects too. Any Move though, requires a trigger, essentially the player roleplaying his Vagabond’s actions or response, after which it happens.

The mechanics of Root: The Roleplaying Game handle the effects of danger and damage through Harm. Harm is divided into several tracks—Depletion, Exhaustion, Injury, Morale, and Wear—which are filled up as a Vagabond suffers Harm, ultimately leading to an unfortunate outcome if any of them are all filled in. Depletion represents a Vagabond’s general funds and assorted goods and supplies, and its track is filled in as a Vagabond pulls piece of useful equipment from one of his many pouches and pockets, which can be done retrospectively rather the player noting everything down that his Vagabond has on the sheet. In other words, Root: The Roleplaying Game is not a roleplaying game about shopping. Exhaustion represents a Vagabond’s energy and inner strength, and its track is filled in when he gets tired or he suffers a social slight. Depletion, Exhaustion, and Injury are the primary tracks a player will fill in for his Vagabond. Wear is a track for the durability of a piece of equipment and the equipment belonging to an NPC, whilst Morale is the track for an NPC’s commitment to his drives and beliefs.

A Vagabond also has another set of tracks. These are Reputation tracks, representing how well he is known by each of the factions in the Woodland, either his Notoriety or his Prestige. It is easier to gain Notoriety than it is Prestige, which works up to a point. However, its implementation is not clearly handled as the track really only tracks the positive gain when a Vagabond has Prestige and the negative loss when he has Notoriety, and effectively not when he loses either. This is made that little bit more complex because the Woodland has more than the four factions in the core rulebook. These are detailed in the supplement, Travelers & Outsiders, and if they come into play, they exacerbate the complexity of what the player has to keep track of, because this system is not intuitive.

Character or Vagabond creation in Root: The Roleplaying Game a matter of choosing one of its nine Playbooks. These are highly defined, in terms of species, demeanour, details, Nature, Drives, Connections, Weapons kills, and Background Questions. Species, demeanour, and details do not have any mechanical benefit whereas Drives and Nature, of which the Vagabond has to choose two and one respectively. When a Vagabond fulfils the terms of his Nature, he can clear his Exhaustion track, and gains an Advancement when he fulfils terms of his Drive. A Vagabond has a connection to a partner and a friend, both of which are with fellow Vagabonds, and five stats—Charm, Cunning, Finesse, Luck, and Might. These range in value between -1 and +3, but initially between -1 and +2. A Playbook has six Moves of which a player initially selects three. Each Playbook contains notes further explaining how the Moves work.

From the outset, the process of creating a Vagabond is intended to be collaborative. The players can only have one of each Playbook in play, that is, a band of Vagabonds cannot consist of two Rangers. The collaborative nature continues and is enforced with the players choosing the Connections between their Vagabonds. It continues in play as well, first and foremost because everyone—including the Game Master—is playing to find out what happens, and to facilitate this, the Game Master is advised not codify ahead of play. Instead, she creates Clearings with interesting NPC denizens and general conflicts and issues rather than ready-to-play plots. Root: The Roleplaying Game includes a set of tables to help her design her first set of twelve Clearings, including their denizens, the paths between the Clearings (which themselves can often be difficult and dangerous to travel), and which faction controls each Clearing. Since this is done randomly, the resulting Woodland will differ from that created by another Game Master and had there been a pre-written set of twelve Clearings proscribed by the authors of Root: The Roleplaying Game, it would have differed from that too. This also explains the general nature of the background given to the Woodland in Root: The Roleplaying Game—this is the Game Master’s Woodland, not the publisher’s, but it does come with an example Clearing called ‘Gelilah’s Grove’. This showcases the concept of the Clearing in practice and consists of a description, its conflicts and issues, and a few NPCs. Notably, at the end of the description for each conflict or issue, it states what happens if the Vagabonds do not get involved. So either way, if the Vagabonds get involved or not, the situation in Gelilah’s Grove will change, leading to a sense of things and events developing and changing across the Woodland.

For the Game Master, there is a fair amount to learn in order to run Root: The Roleplaying Game. Primarily, this consists of really learning how the game’s many Moves work. The likelihood is that on initial play, the Game Master will find herself flipping and forth to remind herself how each Move works as it comes upon play. Once past that, the advice for the Game Master is decent and the bookies rife with detailed and useful examples and explanations.

One of the moments of brilliance in Root: The Roleplaying Game is not necessarily the rules or the setting—though there is no denying that they are good, but the introduction to roleplaying. This eschews the traditional method which often has barely moved on from describing roleplaying as being like playing cops and robbers or cowboys and Indians when you were acid, to instead talk about what it calls ‘The Fundamentals’. This takes right back to basics in describing it as a conversation between the players and the players and the Game Master before building on this. So framing scenes and answering that age old question of “What do you do?” to handling the roleplaying game’s Moves and the uncertainty that involves, and beyond to Root: The Roleplaying Game being a shared experience and explaining what to expect and focus on in play. It ends by giving multiple answers to the question, “Why Play?”. There is such a core simplicity to the advice and guidance that it puts just every other roleplaying game to shame. This is one of the clearest, most elegant introductions to roleplaying in almost fifty years of the hobby and not only should the authors be commended for it, but the publisher should also make a generic version available to everyone. Otherwise, ‘The Fundamentals’ chapter is particularly helpful for players of Root: A Game of Woodland Might And Right wanting to make the shift to roleplaying and continue exploring the Woodland.

Physically, Root: The Roleplaying Game is a charming digest-sized book illustrated with the bright autumnal colours seen in Root: A Game of Woodland Might And Right. The book is well written and an engaging read. Theatre is of course fantastic, although there is arguably not enough of it.

Root: The Roleplaying Game is not a roleplaying game about heroes in a time of war, although it could be. If not heroes though, the Vagabonds are still protagonists, mercenaries, ne’er-do-wells, rogues, and more (until they decide to leave the band and retire, becoming an NPC) who in slipping from one Clearing to another and between one faction and another, perhaps taking advantage of the chaos and uncertainty, have the opportunity to influence and change the Woodland. Sometimes for good, sometimes for ill. This mood and sense of uncertainty, as well as the less than heroic nature of the Vagabonds, very much makes Root: The Roleplaying Game feel different to the traditional and often twee and quaint anthropomorphic depiction of woodland creatures.

Root: The Roleplaying Game is an engaging and attractive book whose rules encourage strong collaborative storytelling and roleplaying, and to not only explore the Woodland, its dangers and its issues, but also to change it and make it something shared between the players and the Game Master.
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Magpie Games will be at UK Games Expo which takes place from Friday, June 3rd to Sunday, June 5th, 2022.

Metamorphosis Alpha: The Warden Armoury is a supplement designed for Metamorphosis Alpha: Fantastic Role-Playing Game of Science Fiction Adventures on a Lost Starship. The first Science Fiction roleplaying game and the first post-apocalypse roleplaying game, Metamorphosis Alpha is set aboard the Starship Warden, a generation spaceship which has suffered an unknown catastrophic event which killed the crew and most of the million or so colonists and left the ship irradiated and many of the survivors and the flora and fauna aboard mutated. Some three centuries later, as Humans, Mutated Humans, Mutated Animals, and Mutated Plants, the Player Characters, knowing nothing of their captive universe, would leave their village to explore strange realm around them, wielding fantastic mutant powers and discovering how to wield fantastic devices of the gods and the ancients that is technology, ultimately learn of their enclosed world. Originally published in 1976, it would go on to influence a whole genre of roleplaying games, starting with Gamma World, right down to Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic from Goodman Games. And it would be Goodman Games which brought the roleplaying game back with the stunning Metamorphosis Alpha Collector’s Edition in 2016, and support the forty-year old roleplaying game with a number of supplements, many which would be collected in the ‘Metamorphosis Alpha Treasure Chest’.

Metamorphosis Alpha: The Warden Armoury is written by James M. Ward, the designer of Metamorphosis Alpha and simply gives descriptions of over one hundred and fifty weapons and armour. It also reveals a minor secret—or three—about the Starship Warden and the way it was stocked prior to it leaving the Earth. It is well known that as well as stocking the vast generational ship with assorted supplies and devices to ensure that the crew and their passengers would survive the long interstellar journey, the Starship Warden had whole cargo holds filled with everything necessary to help the colonists set up their new home on the destination planet. The colonisation was entirely peaceful and civilian-led, but what is not known is that a pair of secret holds were filled with powerful military weapons by Earth’s military. The locations of these secret caches are known only to the military command back on Earth and to the military commanders assigned to the Starship Warden. Like other high-ranking members of the ship’s crew, they remain in hibernation, their cryrogenic pods also hidden. Yet despite the locations of these caches remaining hidden, this does not mean that they cannot be found, and what happens if others find either cache before the Player Characters? What if a rival band of mutants found them and start attacking the Player Characters and their allies in their powerful suits of armour, wielding deadly weapons they have never seen before? Or robotic dogs and serpents that rampage across a deck? Well, either the Player Characters have to stop them, find their source, or steal them all for themselves—if not all three!

Metamorphosis Alpha: The Warden Armoury details the content of both caches. In the Secret Military Armoury Cache can be found four types of weapons. These are Bio-Heavy guns, Gamma guns, Kinetic guns, and Plasma guns. They all include grenades, pistols, rifles, throwers, blasters, and artillery. The Bio-Heavy guns fire spheres of bio-material, which when it explodes paralyses and then kills anyone who breaths it in or is touched by it; Gamma guns fire spheres of radiation; Kinetic weapons fire pellets at high velocity; and the Plasma guns, balls of well, plasma. This is a somewhat underwhelming start to the supplement, the weapons being deadly if not all that inspiring and possessing a similar feel. How some of them are fired is slightly more interesting, such as the helmet which has to be worn to fire the Gamma Blaster. Similarly, the suits of mobile armour are not that interesting, although the inclusion of various types of drone provides more of a contemporary feel.

Fortunately, the contents of the Colonisation Weapons & Armour Cache is where Metamorphosis Alpha: The Warden Armoury gets interesting. Especially with the list of non-lethal weapons, because here the designer really has to get inventive. For example, the ‘Anti-Energy Sparkle Dust’ is thrown in the air and negates energy rays and blasts; ‘Battle Gloves’ let the wearer handle energy, radiation, and poison safely, and even provides a pressure-based force field for protection in space or the deepest of oceans; ‘Electric Bolos’ stun targets; ‘Slippery Marbles’ create uneven surfaces; the Blind Pistol’ fires pellets of manganese which explode blind targets; and ‘Tagging Pistols’ fire darts which can be tracked from a thousand miles away. There are lethal weapons, such as lasers and slug throwers, and even caltrops, but again not all that interesting. More fun perhaps will be had with the Player Characters attempting to figure out what the various types of grenades, from Slippery Grenades to Sticky Mist Grenades, and various types of claymore mines, from Freeze to Nano-Cutter versions, can be found in the cache. The Colonisation Weapons & Armour Cache also contains explosives and battle armour, as well as a selection of droids, such as the battering Droid, used for well, battering, and vehicles all the way up to a Force Sphere, which can transport forty troopers into space or the deep ocean whilst providing plenty of protection.  The Special Colonisation Equipment includes a very useful Emergency Hip Container, essentially a survival kit, and a bit with a robot dog.
All of the entries in Metamorphosis Alpha: The Warden Armoury include a short description and ratings for damage, Armour Class, and Weapon Class as necessary. They also include an ICR or Item Complexity Rating to indicate how difficult an item is to understand. The tables explaining these ratings are reprinted from Metamorphosis Alpha, whilst the tables at the back of the supplement combine their rating with an index. All nicely done in one.

Physically, Metamorphosis Alpha: The Warden Armoury is cleanly presented. The illustrations are decent, but the writing is sparse in places.

In a roleplaying game like Metamorphosis Alpha where there no Classes or Levels, and the only way in which the Player Characters get more powerful is through acquiring more mutant abilities or bigger and better weapons and armour, there is always going to be a call for a supplement such as Metamorphosis Alpha: The Warden Armoury. So there is no denying that the supplement is useful, although it does mean that the Player Characters may be capable of dealing out huge amounts of damage whilst wearing armour cable withstanding similar amounts, ultimately upping the scale at which combat takes place. So this may well be a supplement for later in a campaign when the Player Characters are ready to face bigger and deadlier threats.

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Goodman Games will be at Gen Con 20220 which takes place from Thursday, August 4th to Sunday, August 7th, 2022.

There have always been encounters in roleplaying because fundamentally, roleplaying is built on encounters, and the most fun has come from great encounters and their outcome and the roleplaying which comes from them. Yet coming up with interesting, involving, or even challenging encounters can hinder the most creative of Game Masters. So it is no surprise that the industry has fulfilled this need all the way back to books such as Dungeons & Dragons Monster & Treasure Assortment Set One: Levels One-Three, published by TSR, Inc. in 1977 and Traveller Supplement 6: 76 Patrons, published in in 1980 by GDW. This need has never gone away, with roleplaying genres such as fantasy, horror, and fantasy, along with specific roleplaying games and settings all being treated to their supplements of encounters, personalities, and places. In each book, each of their encounters can obviously be run as written, but each can also be adapted to fit the Game Master’s campaign, or even simply serve as inspiration. One of the latest entries to join this long list of supplements is Untold Encounters of the Random Kind.

Untold Encounters of the Random Kind is published by Loke BattleMats, a publisher best known for its maps for roleplaying games, such as The Towns & Taverns Books of Battle Mats, The Wilderness Books of Battle Mats, and The Dungeon Books of Battle Mats. Untold Encounters of the Random Kind promises over a thousand random encounters, much like the ‘Books of Battle Mats’ series across towns, wildernesses, and dungeons, as well as adventure generators, random tables, and more. The latter includes six sample adventures.

Untold Encounters of the Random Kind is designed to be compatible with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. However, it is not actually a Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition supplement and there are no Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition stats or content in the supplement. Instead it uses Keywords across seven categories—Mechanics, Damage, Difficulty, Challenge, Enemy Types, Group Sizes, and NPC Types. So for example, Damage which can be inflicted by an attack, a trap, a spell, an environmental effect, and so on, is listed as Minor, Light, Major, and Lethal, whilst the Difficulty of a task is listed as Simple, Routine, Difficult, Very Difficult, or Near Impossible. All of these are easily adapted to the fantasy roleplaying game of the Game Master’s choice, whilst the ‘5E Mechanics’ section suggests how the supplement’s Keywords can be translated into Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. This is via Keywords, primarily the Keywords for Damage, Difficulty, and Challenge—the latter to Challenge Rating, and together it amounts to just two pages. In a supplement which is over three hundred pages long… The point is that Untold Encounters of the Random Kind is just as easy to use with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition as it is with the retroclone of the Game Master’s choice, be it Old School Essentials, Swords & Wizardry, or Labyrinth Lord. In other words, Untold Encounters of the Random Kind is very much Old School Renaissance compatible.

Untold Encounters of the Random Kind is tidily organised into its three sections covering town, wilderness, and dungeon encounters. Each section begins with an overview of the nature of the location type, terrain, district, or encounter types (so cemeteries, docks, and noble quarters for towns, arctic, forests, and sea and shore for wildernesses, and dungeon doors, enemies, and intrigue for dungeons), advice on using the encounters, as well as information particular to the section. Thus for Town Encounters there notes on town dignitaries, wilderness and dungeon crossovers, townsfolk, types of town, and how to create non-human towns. For the different types of wilderness, there is guidance on the weather, visibility, geography, and travel and survival, whilst for dungeons there is advice on traps, denizens, building dungeons, crossovers, and more. None of these entries is accorded more than a few short paragraphs, and arguably, any one of them is likely worth an essay or two of their very own. As a starting point though, the advice in Untold Encounters of the Random Kind is solid throughout.

None of the advice in each section is more than three pages in length before Untold Encounters of the Random Kind delves into its encounters. There are more than fifty entries in each of these tables and each one is expanded upon with a full description. These are given alphabetically following all of the tables. There is a degree of repetition here, for example, the ‘Abandoned Cart’ encounter, found with signs of something heavy having been dragged from it, can be found in the Castle Ward, Guild Quarter, High Street, Lanes, and Noble Quarter, but for most part the encounters are confined to one area or district. For example, the ‘Jury’ is only found in the Noble Quarter and a ‘Hollow Tree’ is found in the Forest. Some entries add flavour and feel, such as ‘Fantastic Music’, the wind whistling through past them sounds so happy as they trek across the Arctic region that the spirits of the Player Characters are uplifted, whilst on the Sea & Shore, the heavy salt content in the water and the air matts hair giving the Player Characters odd hairdos. It also affects fur coats. Boons may also be found in be the wilderness and dungeons, such as a ‘Coin Stash’ or ‘Mechanical Oddity’ with an as yet unfathomable purpose, and a dungeon or ‘Ring of the Lost’ which provides protection and a strange effect on compasses and ‘Salvage Onshore’ of valuable trade goods, similarly both found, though in the wilderness. Wilderness boons consist of coins and valuables, survival and supply caches, and even ores and gems. Similarly, dungeon boons consist of coins and other valuables, but also can be clues and of course, magical items. In both cases of wilderness and dungeon boons there is advice on how to include them and their potential story ramifications.

In comparison to the earlier sections of town and wilderness encounters, the dungeon encounter section goes into a bit more detail. There are tables here for location and back story, plus sample monster suggestions and building particular encounters. Again whole essays or even supplements have been written about dungeon design, so the advice is solid, but not deep.

Included at the end of the three sections—town, wilderness, and dungeon—is a pair of scenarios. These are designed for either Second, Fourth, or Eighth Level Players and each consists of a two-page spread. These have been constructed using the tables and encounters in Untold Encounters of the Random Kind with differently formatted text used to refer to encounter types and also Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition monster types. This is by name only, so again no stats. The six include ‘Wanted’ in which a local watch captain wants a shady relative brought in before the con artist’s enemies catch up with him; ‘Parched’, which opens with the Player Characters shipwrecked on the shores of a desert and a five-day trek to the nearest oasis with little water between them; and in ‘The Cursed Folly’, the Player Characters have been paid well to clear out a folly by a somewhat dotty member of the owning noble family who wants to live in it. Each of the six comes with a decent map of the adventure location, but each will require the Game Master to provide the stats for the various monsters. All six are all decent adventures, each offering little more than a session’s worth of play, and potentially the publisher could take the format and do a whole supplement of full encounters like it.

Physically, Untold Encounters of the Random Kind is decently presented. It does need an edit in places, but the artwork is excellent. Overall, the supplement is a clean and attractive book.

Untold Encounters of the Random Kind is not necessarily a book that as a Game Master you need to own. However, as a book of prompts, ideas, and inspiration, Untold Encounters of the Random Kind is a useful tome to have on the shelf—whichever version of Dungeons & Dragons or retroclone that the Game Master prefers because this supplement will work with them all.

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Loke BattleMats will be at UK Games Expo which takes place from Friday, June 3rd to Sunday, June 5th, 2022.

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

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

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Name: Death is the Final EscapePublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Bryan Rudolf

Setting: Jazz Age BostonProduct: Scenario
What You Get: Fifty Nine page, 8.58 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Can an escape artist escape his end?Plot Hook: Murder-suicide lifts lid on vaudevillian villainy.
Plot Support: Staging advice, five pre-generated Investigators, eight handouts, one map and three sets of  floorplans, thirteen NPCs, three spells, two Mythos tomes, and Mythos creatures.Production Values: Professional.
Pros# Great cover and artwork# Could be adapted to other time periods# Detailed meaty investigative scenario# Potential addition to a Lovecraft Country campaign# Delightfully vile cult ceremony description# Nuanced depiction of a cult that is more than just evil# Clearly staged chase resolution# Interesting, but serviceable way of getting (too) close to the villain

Cons# Needs a slight edit# Vaudevillian villain
Conclusion# Classic investigative Call of Cthulhu scenario set in New England# Well developed professional scenario in which the Investigators encounter a cult that is much more than just evil for the sake of it.

Today you graduated from Meny. Today you graduated as a SLA Operative. A SLA Op. A Slop. Tomorrow you and your squad will take your first job, your first BPN or Blue Print New file, given to you by a BPN Officer at your nearest BPN Hall. You’re pretty sure it’ll be in Downtown, literally down town in the great metropolis of Mort City. It could be a Blue, and you could be exterminating a nest of rats or sewer pigs, doing a gang sweep, or breaking up some upstart soft company. It could be a White and you’ll find yourself monitoring strange activity in a neighbourhood or investigating a murder or even the activities of one of those serial killers that plague the reaches of Downtown. Or it could be Green and you’ll find yourself assigned to one of the bridgeheads out in Cannibal Sector 1, alongside the Shiver who enforce the law in Downtown, or even off planet, though being a greenhorn, that seems unlikely. Perhaps it will be Red, an emergency like a riot or a terrorist attack by DarkNight or Thresher and then you’ll get TV coverage and your chance to look good on camera, catch the eye of sponsor? Maybe. You got your BOSH SLA Blade. You got your FEN 603 Auto-Pistol. You got your ITB Mutilator Fist. You got your PP664.2 Body Blocker armour. It ain’t much, but it’s a start. You got your SLA Ops badge and Security Clearance 10. You paid your Bullet Tax. You’re ready. You’re an Operative for SLA Industries.

However, there are greater dangers which threaten Mort City, home to SLA Industries, the planet of Mort, and The World of Progress which encompasses the whole of the universe and the company’s industrial worlds, home worlds, resource worlds, labour worlds, war worlds, and more. The Grosh, the Krell, and the Momic—previously forgotten and thought lost Conflict Races from the dawn of SLA Industries’ founding, nine centuries ago—have returned from Conflict Space and begun to war against The World of Progress. SLA Industries faces a ‘Great Enemy’, said to be imprisoned on a world known as ‘White Earth’ from where twisted and bitter secret knowledge has leaked. Some of this was learned by an amateur scholar deep in Lower Downtown, the knowledge driving him to first make blood sacrifices to White Earth, and then found the Shi’An Cult dedicated to White Earth. In the decade since its founding, the Shi’An Cult is Downtown’s largest growing religion, its members dedicated to summoning horrifying monsters from White Earth, and whilst probably killing themselves in the process, sowing fear and terror amongst the downtrodden citizens of Mort. However some threats come within. In a company as large as SLA Industries, it is easy to hide corruption; the newly formed Moral Right Division sends out patrols to educate civilians on the virtues of morality, dignity, and civility, but mostly consist of bully boys out to have a good time and repress the populace; and then there is Mr. Slayer, the head of SLA Industries, an undeniably evil megacorporation and government. He has his own secrets. Who he is. Where he is from. What he knows and what he has done to ensure the growth and survival of his company. These secrets and knowing the Truth about The World of Progress? That is the ultimate danger as The World of Progress stands on the precipice of the World of Change.

This is the set-up for SLA Industries, a roleplaying game originally published in 1993 by Nightfall Games. Since its initial release, it has suffered a somewhat peripatetic existence, finding home with publisher after publisher, but receiving relatively light attention from each. However, the roleplaying game finally got attention it deserved in 2016 with the release of the excellent SLA Industries: Cannibal Sector 1, before releasing SLA Industries, Second Edition following a successful Kickstarter campaign. With the publication of the second edition, SLA Industries has been given a major overhaul. This includes an entirely new set of mechanics, the ‘S5S’ System; an updating of the setting from its original year of 901sd to 915sd; and a makeover. Like Cannibal Sector 1 before it, SLA Industries, Second Edition is generously illustrated with gloriously gorgeous and gory artwork. The artwork in the first edition was good, but here, in rich, full colour, we get to see The World of Progress and its splatterpunk, noir horror dystopia like never before.
In SLA Industries, players take the roles of Operatives for the company. A Player Character in SLA Industries, Second Edition is defined by his Species, stats, Ratings Points, skills, and traits. SLA Industries, Second Edition has nine Species. Three are Human-like. These are Humans; Frothers, drug-fuelled and tolerant who go berserk and fight with a power claymore; and Ebonites, who use the mystic power of the Ebb to alter the fabric of reality. They are divided between Ebon and Eban, who embody the positive and negative versions of the Ebb. SLA Industries also bioengineer SLA Operatives, the Stormer 313 ‘Malice’ and the Stormer 711 ‘Xeno’, designed for their speed, ferocity, and their presence in combat and thus on camera. Shaktar and Wraithen, are aliens, Shaktar being honourable warriors with fleshy dreadlocks and a prehensile tail, and Wraithen, feline and reptilian hunters known for their acute senses and response times. Advanced Carrien and Neophron are new additions to SLA Industries and thus as Operatives. Advanced Carrien or ADV Carrien are Carrien Pigs which have survived their litter and raised by SLA Industries to work as SLA Operatives because they are highly adapted to life on the polluted World of Progress. The Neophron are bird-like aliens, known for their grace, charm, and inquisitiveness, who prefer methods other than violence.

An Operative has six stats—Strength, Dexterity, Knowledge, Concentration, and Cool. The sixth is Luck, except for the Ebonite, who have the Flux stat instead. Stats are rated between zero and six, whilst the skills are rated between one and four. Ratings Points represent an Operative’s ratings in various areas, such as televised action, corporate sponsorship, or faith in his own abilities. They are expended to overcome obstacles, perform cinematic feats, or avoid certain death or defeat. They are divided between three categories—Body, Brains, and Bravado. To create an Operative, a player selects a Species, assigns twelve points to his stats, thirty points to skills, chooses traits—positive and negative, and purchases equipment beyond the standard assigned to all Operatives. Skill points also come from the Operative’s Species and choice of Training Package, which include Strike & Sweep, Close Assault, Heavy Support, Scout, Medic, Investigation & Interrogation, Technical, and Bureaucrat.

Tanktop – Stormer 313 ‘Malice’
Close Assault Operative, SCL 10
Strength 6 Dexterity 5 Knowledge 1 Concentration 1 Charisma 1 Cool 3 Luck 2
Hit Points: 28
Rating Points
Body 4 Brains 0 Bravado 2
Initiative Bonus: 6
Species Abilities: Regeneration (2), Physical Favourite
Traits: – 
Skills
Strength – Climbing 2, Melee Weapons 3, Throw 1, Unarmed Combat (Brawling) 3
Dexterity – Acrobatics 2, Athletics 2, Pistol 1, Rifle 2, Stealth 2
Knowledge –
Concentration – Detect 1
Charisma –
Cool – Intimidate 3, Survival 1
Luck –
Money: 100c, 100u
Equipment – Boopa CASDIS, Finance Chip, Headset Communicator, Klippo Lighter, Operative organiser & admin kit, Pack of Contraceptives, SLA Industries ID Card, SLL Badge, Two Sets of Cloths and Boots
Armour – PP664.2 Body Blocker armour
Weapons – Stormer Chucklerduster (2), FEN 603 Auto-Pistol (4 clips), SLA Blade, SLA 10-05 Bully Boy Shotgun (4 clips)

Mechanically, SLA Industries, Second Edition uses the ‘S5S’ System. This is a dice pool system which uses ten-sided dice. The dice pool consists of one ten-sided die, called the Success Die, and Skill Dice equal to the skill being used, plus one. The Success Die should be of a different colour from the Skill Dice. For example, if Tanktop needed to make a Stealth check, his player rolls a total of four dice—the Success Die plus two Skill Dice for Tanktop’s Stealth skill of two, plus one. The results of the dice roll are not added, but counted separately. Thus to each roll is added the value of the Skill being rolled, plus its associated stat. If the result on the Success Die is equal to or greater than the Target Number, ranging from seven and Challenging to sixteen and Insane, then the Operative has succeeded. If the results of the Skill Dice also equal or exceed the Target Number, this improves the quality of the successful skill attempt. However, if the roll on the Success Die does not equal or exceed the Target Number, the attempt fails, even if multiple rolls on the Success Dice do. Except that is where there are four or more results which equal or exceed the Target Number on the Success Dice. This is counted as a minimum success though.
Luck can also be spent to reroll dice. This is either a point to reroll the Success Die or any of the Skill Dice, but can also spend them on a one for one basis to improve the result of the Success Die.For example, Tanktop has captured Angus Ablanko, a suspected Dark Night sympathiser. He has clammed up and refuses to talk. Tanktop looks him over, gives him the once over and promises to drag him down the street and into every single fight by rope with his hands tied… “Think of it like a fight on the telly, but really, really close up.” And then he grins. Tanktop has Intimidate of three, so his player rolls the Success Die and three Skill Dice plus one, for a total of five. He will be adding a total of six—three each for the Intimidate skill and the Cool stat—to each of the dice. The Game Master has set the Target Number at Complex or ten, because Angus is showing a bit of bravado. However, Tanktop’s player rolls five on the Success Die, and then five, six, eight, and ten on the Skill Dice. This an unbelievable success, and Angus literally collapses blubbing and begging the Stormer not to drag him into any fights. Between sobs, he tells Tanktop’s squad—because he cannot even bring himself to look at the Stormer—who his contact is, where he hangs out, where he lives, and what he thinks he is planning.Combat uses the same ‘S5S’ System and is in the main relatively simple and straightforward. It can, however, be nasty, brutal, and short. The standard Target Number for combat is ten or Complex and if the attack roll is successful, that is the result of the Success Die is sufficient, any successful results on the Skill Dice either add extra damage or a specific body area being hit. If an Operative’s player rolls four or more successful Skill Dice, the Operative both inflicts extra damage and hits the target’s head. If an Operative’s or target’s Hit Points are reduced to zero, they are dead. They are at critical condition if they have six or less Hit Points left and suffer a wound if they suffer damage which reduces their Hit Points by half.
Against incoming damage or attacks, an Operative has three options—defensive manoeuvres, cover, and armour. In melee, an Operative can assign one or more levels of his skill to defence to reduce his attacker’s roll or actively and solely dodge using Acrobatic Defence to do the same. Similarly, cover makes the target harder to hit, whilst armour reduces damage taken, but at the same time, can damage the armour itself. Different ammunition types inflict different amounts of damage, but SLA Industries impose a Bullet Tax on all ammunition. This is simply because close combat looks better on television and garners higher ratings.

Operatives can look good on camera through the use of Ratings Points, which lend themselves to a cinematic style of play. Ratings Points fall into three categories—Body, Brain, and Bravado, as do their associated Feats. For example, ‘How Did You Hit That?’ and ‘Tear Right Through Them’ are Body Feats, ‘I Just read About That Yesterday!’ and ‘Lucky Guess’ are Brain Feats, and ‘Charming Smile’ and ‘Pure Grit’ are Bravado Feats. They either cost one or two Ratings Points and add a bit more colour and dynamism to what an Operative can do.

Ebonites—and some threats faced by SLA Industries—have access to the mystic power of the Ebb to alter the fabric of reality. Not quite spells, not quite psionics, the study of the Ebb is divided between ten disciplines, ranging from Awareness, Blast, and Communicate to Senses, Telekinesis, and Thermal (Blue/Red). Like skills, each discipline has four ranks, but each rank grants access to a pair of abilities. For example, at Rank 2, the discipline Reality Fold grants ‘Jump Port 2’ and ‘Shared Port’, the ability itself being akin to teleportation. Points of Flux have to be expended to use disciplines, an Ebonite calculating the formulae for each discipline via their Deathsuits, which takes concentration.
The mediatisation of violence within The World of Progress is in part represented by a lengthy list of arms and armour, and other equipment. All of which is very nicely illustrated. This adds to elements of game play as not only do the stats of a weapon or suit of armour matter, but so does their name and look. After all, they are designed to look good on television and if an Operative can get good coverage on camera, then he might gain sponsorship from a manufacturer. The equipment list also includes a lengthy list of combat drugs, one reason the roleplaying game carries a mature warning.
Rounding out SLA Industries, Second Edition is ‘Threat Analysis’ and ‘Web of Lies’. The former presents a wide range of dangers that the Operative might face on the streets of Mort and beyond. These threats range from Carnivorous Pigs, Carrien, and things that seep in from White Earth to rival soft companies such as Dark Knight, Thresher, and Tek Trex, Dream Entities, serial killers, and the freelancer mercenaries and vigilantes known as Props. These are all decently detailed and superbly illustrated.
‘Web of Lies’ is a chapter of advice for the Game Master. It is ultimately where the problems with SLA Industries, Second Edition come to head. What it covers is advice on running the game, in particular, the Blueprint News file types, what they entail, their importance, and what the rewards they pay out to the Operatives. Added to this are Hunter Sheets, essentially bounties on particular targets or persons of interest, which are suggested as being suitable for single sessions or one-shots. The advice also covers handling the game’s mechanics, sponsorship deals for the Operatives, what they might do on their downtime, and more.

The issue with ‘Web of Lies’ is that it suggests something more than it covers, and that feeling pervades SLA Industries, Second Edition throughout. The focus in the roleplaying game is on beginning Player Characters and Operatives, and their taking on Blueprint News file mission after Blueprint News file mission, in order to increase their Security Clearance, climb the corporate ladder, gain sponsorship, and fame and fortune. It does a very good job of explaining what an Operative does in SLA Industries, Second Edition and The World of Progress. From the outset, a player and his Operative knows what he is expected to do… and yet. SLA Industries is roleplaying game and a setting which has secrets—deep secrets. These are hidden behind layers of bureaucracy and conspiracy within The World of Progress, and ultimately, playing the roleplaying game is about discovering or being exposed to them and the consequences of that happening. Yet despite the colour fiction in the pages of SLA Industries, Second Edition hinting at those secrets and conspiracies, none of them are actually explored in its pages or supported with advice on how to include them in play. Which is exactly what a chapter entitled ‘Web of Lies’ suggests it might do, but does not. For the player who has been a fan of SLA Industries since original publication, this is very much less of an issue, but for anyone new to the roleplaying game and its rich setting, they are going to be left mystified as to what the significance of the colour fiction is and likely wondering quite what SLA Industries is ultimately about. This is despite the fact that SLA Industries, Second Edition goes out of the way in places to make itself and The World of Progress accessible, especially with the guide to Operative life which clearly explains what an Operative does on a daily basis.

SLA Industries is a roleplaying game from the nineteen nineties and ultimately, it does something that is so typically nineteen nineties. It hides its meta-plot. Or rather, its backstory. As typified by the superhero roleplaying game, Brave New World, it keeps what is really going hidden from both players and Game Master, even though Brave New World revealed some of its secrets, SLA Industries, Second Edition does not even do that. However, this does not mean that as written, SLA Industries, Second Edition is unplayable, as it still provides the means to explore a very dark corporate dystopia. Perhaps though, a scenario or two would have helped.

Physically, SLA Industries, Second Edition is superbly presented. The layout is clean and tidy, and though it needs a slight edit in places, it is engagingly written with lots of colour fiction. The artwork though, is amazing, and really does a fantastic job of bringing The World of Progress and its rain sodden, polluted, and horror haunted streets (and beyond) to life like never before.

SLA Industries, Second Edition is a great update to the original nineties darkest of dark dystopian roleplaying games. The designers have revisited the setting of The World of Progress and clearly worked hard to update it, to make it more accessible, and represent it in gloriously gorgeous colour. For the most part, they have succeeded, yet so much of The World of Progress is only hinted at and left inaccessible and that can only hamper the Game Master in the long run.

The true nature and secrets of The World of Progress will have to wait for revelations in future supplements, but as an exploration of what Mr Slayer wants you to know, SLA Industries, Second Edition is the ultimate in dark dystopian splatter punk and corporate horror roleplaying. 
—oOo—

Nightfall Games is at UK Games Expo which takes place from Friday, June 3rd to Sunday, June 5th, 2022.

Luna-1 is a supplement for Judge Dredd and the Worlds of 2000 AD. Like The Robot Wars before it, it is as different a supplement as there has been for any of the four roleplaying games based on the Judge Dredd comic strip from the pages of 2000 AD, and that is all down to its focus. Traditionally, supplements for a Judge Dredd roleplaying game have concentrated on particular aspects of the setting—criminal organisations, crazes, psi-talents, block wars, and more—but Luna-1 focuses upon the one storyline, examining its episodes or Progs, and exploring their ramifications in detail. In Luna-1, this is the six months in which Judge Dredd is assigned to serve as Judge Marshall of Luna-1, a colony on Earth’s moon governed by judges from all three Mega-Cities. Told in Progs 42-59, this storyline thus takes Judge Dredd off Earth and onto the oxygen-short, crowded, and lawless and often wild frontier of the Moon. Here gangs and perps can escape the Mega-Cities to hide out and continue their criminal activities; corporations shorn of the scrutiny and regulations of Earth, build and hold more power and influence; resources are poor—especially oxygen, which needs to be paid for; even though they might hate each other, the Mega-Cities of North America and the Soviet East-Meg cities, will come together to participate in the Lunar Olympics; and criminal conspiracies work behind the scenes to take over the Moon! The supplement includes a Prog by Prog guide to the storyline with story hooks which the Game Master can develop as part of her campaign; descriptions of the Moon’s most notable locations and events, as well as what it like to both live and enforce the law there; new Exploits and Careers for Judges, Perps, and Civilians; an examination of a Moon-set campaign inspired by the ‘Luna-1’ storyline; stats and write ups for numerous NPCs; and more. 
LUNA-1 opens with a description of the Moon and a history of its settlement, including its important locations, such as the famous Armstrong Monument or Moonie’s Ranch, home to the reclusive corporate boss, C.W. Moonie, where he has ranchers raise genuine protein cake-fed, bio-engineered cattle on actual grass, their meat being highly prized by gourmets. The inhabitants of the Moon reside in domed settlements, ranging in size from urban sprawls to classic frontier towns. The maintenance of these domes is vital to everyone’s survival, as is a supply of oxygen, which of course, the inhabitants of the Moon have to pay for! The Oxygen Board has a monopoly on the supply. So it can be expensive! The Mega-Cities’ Justice Departments sometimes use Safe Houses on the Moon to keep witnesses safe. The Moon is also home to colonies from the other Mega-Cities beyond North America, including Shi-Shen Territories and Sov-Cities Territory, the closest they get to territories of the Mega-Cities. Locations important to the Moon, but back on Earth are detailed too, such as Moonray Tower and Temple of Lunar Light, a cult often described as being full of ‘loonies’. Events, like the Land Race—a race to grab new opened up territory, and the Lunar Olympiad are covered as well. They are all accompanied by adventure seeds.
In terms of mechanics, LUNA-1 provides numerous new options for Player Characters and NPCs of all types. New Judge Careers include Luna Judge, Zero Squad Judge (trained to work in zero gravity), Customs Judge, and more. STAR Judges or ‘Special Target Attack Retaliation’ Judges are drawn from all three North American Mega-Cities and their allies and assigned to police Earth’s off-world colonies, so the Player Characters could actually be a mixed group from various cities, not just Mega-City One. New Civilian Careers include Xenodiplomat, Corporate Executive, and Settler, whilst Perp ones include Luna Raider, Gunslinger, and Smuggler. They all include their own Exploits which can be gained by choosing them as Careers during character creation, and all provide interesting options for both Player Characters and NPCs. As expected, all of the characters from the ‘LUNA-1’ storyline are included in LUNA-1, from simple Badlands Gang Member and Futsie to Deputy Luna Marshal Tex, Judge Mex (complete with lasso for reigning in Perps), Elvis the Killer Car, and Judge Dredd himself. These can be used as is, if the Game Master wants to run the ‘LUNA-1’ storyline for her players and their characters, or simply used as inspiration for a campaign set on the Moon.
The campaign advice for the Game Master examines the how and the why of setting and running stories for Judge Dredd and the Worlds of 2000 AD. This should not just be because the setting itself is cool, but rather because there are particular types of stories which can be set there, which in this case might involve the Lunar Olympics or the looser regulations applied to corporations. It also highlights the differences between Mega-City One and the Moon—as well as colony frontiers, and how that will change game play. Smaller communities means fewer places to hide and everyone knows everyone’s business, including that of Perps, plus colonies like the Moon rely much more on technology for everyone’s survival. Only light synopsises are given for the fourteen Progs which make up the ‘LUNA-1’ storyline, more attention being paid to the whole storyline as a roleplaying campaign with a beginning, middle, and end. There is advice here on how to use Dredd, for it might be that the Player Character Judges are actually seconded to the unrelenting lawkeeper as his deputies.
The full adventure in LUNA-1 is ‘Sundance Rising’, an unashamed space western. It is set further on the frontier of the Moon in the isolated toon of Grey Rock. Inspired by the film High Noon, the town’s Judge, William Kane, is gunned down by the Sundance Gang, led by the vicious Preacher Jackson and the Judges are sent into restore order. The scenario and setting of Grey Rock is nicely detailed and there are notes too to run with Civilians as inhabitants of the town taking the law into their own hands and fighting back and also as Perps attempting to impress Preacher Jackson enough to become members of the Sundance Gang. Either way, this is a good scenario with lots going on that should provide multiple sessions of play.
LUNA-1 does not just cover Judge Dredd’s six-month secondment to the Moon, although that is its primary focus. That is told in Progs 42-59, but there were stories which took place between this and the events of ‘The Robot Wars’—as detailed in the supplement of the same name, and these are detailed in LUNA-1, again Prog by Prog. Each includes a synopsis, settings and locations, villains and bystanders, how the story can be used ‘Outside the Law’ (that is, used with Perp and Civilian Player Characters rather than Judges), and suggested further adventures. Some of these can be used as part of a Moon-set campaign, some not, but either way, the Game Master is given another eleven story hooks! Lastly, an appendix takes the Game Master—and potentially, her player’s characters to Titan. This includes a complete description and history of the penal colony where corrupt Judges are sentenced and again hooks and for the Game Master’s campaign.
Unlike ‘The Robot Wars’ storyline there is perhaps less satire and less social commentary in LUNA-1. Obviously, there is the rampant commercialism, but the Moon-set storyline is more of a means to tell stories away from Mega-City One and on the frontier in the style of the Wild West than anything else. The writing style has settled down a bit and there is more of the comic strip’s humour coming through than there was in The Robot Wars.

Physically, LUNA-1 is a slim, but nicely presented book. It is an engaging read and it is liberally illustrated with artwork from the ‘LUNA-1’ story and the other Progs it details in its pages. This is all black and white artwork and it is drawn from the very early issues of 2000 AD so there is certain quaintness to it since it dates from before the character of Judge Dredd evolved into the way he looks today.
Luna-1 picks up where The Robot Wars left off, continuing its fantastic approach to turning episodic source material into gameable content. The humour is stronger, even if the satire is not, but this is thoroughly excellent sourcebook on ‘LUNA-1’ story, for the stories which can be told in and around it, and of course on the Moon (and other frontier settings) for Judge Dredd and the Worlds of 2000 AD (or in fact, any roleplaying game based on Judge Dredd).
—oOo—


En Publishing will be at UK Games Expo which takes place from Friday, June 3rd to Sunday, June 5th, 2022.

Lâminas & Feitiços or Blades & Spells is a minimalist fantasy roleplaying game from South America. In fact, Blades & Spells is another Bronze Age, Swords & Sorcery minimalist fantasy roleplaying game done in pamphlet form from Brazil. In actuality, Blades & Spells is a series of pamphlets, building from the core rules pamphlet to add optional rules, character archetypes, spells, a setting and its gods, and more, giving it the feel of a ‘plug and play’ toolkit. The Storyteller and her players can play using just the core rules, but beyond that, they are free to choose the pamphlets they want to use and just game with those, ignoring the others. So what is Blades & Spells? It describes itself as “…[A] simple, objective and dynamic minimalist RPG game where the Storyteller challenges the Player and not the character sheet.” It is written to pay homage to the classic Sword & Sorcery literature, uses the Basic Universal System—or ‘B.U.S.’—a simple set of mechanics using two six-sided dice, and in play is intended to challenge the player and his decisions rather than have the player rely upon what is written upon his character sheet. Which, being a minimalist roleplaying game, is not much. So although it eschews what the designer describes as the ‘classic restrictions’ of Class, Race, and Level, and it is very much not a Retroclone, there is no denying that Blades & Spells leans into the Old School Renaissance sensibilities.
Blades & Spells: An agile, objective and dynamic minimalist RPG defines a Player Character in simple terms. He is Human and he has a Name, Focus, Background, and Equipment. His Focus is either Fighter, Mystic, Intellectual, Support, or Specialist, whilst his Background includes goals, skills, knowledge, adjectives, and at least one flaw. He also has ten Hit Points. Character creation is a five-minute job and everything can be recorded on an index card.

Ublaf the Unbelievable
Focus: Fighter
Background: Ublaf is a blond, blue-eyed warrior from the frigid north, who has come far south to make his fortune and prove himself to the girl he wants to marry, but who has so far spurned his advances. He is a good hunter, and capable with both axe and spear, but has no tongue for languages. So often others think him a fool—or ‘Unbelievable!’. He is often impulsive, but invariably tries to be helpful and friendly.Hit Points: 10

Mechanically, the Basic Universal System of Blades & Spells uses two six-sided dice. To undertake an action for his character, a player rolls the dice attempting to equal or beat a difficulty number set by the Storyteller, ranging from Easy at three all the way up to Epic at twelve. Any roll less than this is a failure and also adds a new complication to the plot. If a Player Character can gain an Advantage from either his Background or Focus, the difficulty number is reduced by two, but increased by two if his Background or Focus would impose a Disadvantage (though this would not increase the difficulty number beyond twelve). Ideally, elements of a Player Character’s Background should work as both Advantage and Disadvantage, depending on the situation. For example, Ublaf’s Impulsiveness would be a Disadvantage if there was trap he could have spotted before he acted, but an Advantage in attempting a foil an assassination attempt on a merchant.

Combat in Blades & Spells is deadly, with attacks, whether by a weapon, magic, or a creature, being either light, strong, or fatal. A Player Character could be killed with a couple of strong blows or even one fatal blow as he only has ten Hit Points (monsters can have more), and once they are gone, that is it. Although monsters have a Challenge Rating equal to the standard difficulty numbers, Player Characters do not, so the default is probably Normal or six. However, shields and armour, in whatever form they take, reduces damage and the Storyteller can allow a Player Character to make a defensive or dodge manoeuvre.

Magic and spells are available to all Player Characters. No spells are described in the base rules for Blades & Spells, but instead, the player decides what the aim of the spell is. Is it to Attack, Defend, Create an advantage, or Overcome an obstacle? The Storyteller sets the difficulty number and the player rolls. If successful, the spell is cast and has the desired effect. Failure though means that the Player Character has suffered Arcane Corruption, which might be that the spell effects turn on the caster rather than the intended target or a second grotesque head grows from the caster’s shoulder, which stays for a few days before withering away, in the meantime annoying everyone with its different opinions and ideas.

So that really is it to Blades & Spells: An agile, objective and dynamic minimalist RPG. Or at least the core rules. It fits on two sides of a single sheet of paper. It is cleanly laid out, although it does need an edit in places to account for the translation from Portuguese to English. It has a decent piece of artwork on the front. It is also perfectly playable barring a couple of issues. One is that it does leave the Storyteller to wonder what sort of complications a failure of a dice roll might add to the plot and it does not state what the difficulty number is for hitting a Player Character in combat.

Blades & Spells is a simple, straightforward set of mechanics, but there are numerous optional pamphlets which expand upon its core rules and turn Blades & Spells into a fully rounded roleplaying game rather than just a core set of mechanics. Nevertheless, Blades & Spells: An agile, objective and dynamic minimalist RPG is a solid, serviceable, easy to learn and play, minimalist roleplaying game.

The Sight: A True & Faithful Relation of Acts of Supernatural Foresight, Uncanny Vision, divers Readings of Occult Tokens: shewing the Particulars of SOME SPIRITS is a supplement of magic for The Dee Sanction: Adventures in Covert Enochian Intelligence. Or rather The Sight is a supplement of alternative and deeper magic for The Dee Sanction. For in The Dee Sanction, all Agents of Dee have magic. For under the terms of the Act Against Conjurations, Enchantments and Witchcrafts, it permitted those with heretical knowledge to work off their sentence in service to, and in protection of, Her Majesty, Queen Elisabeth. This includes the one Favour, the very low key magical, Angelic means of influence that the Agent can bear upon the world, learnt through study of a corrupting tome or tutelage at the hands of a secret society. Theirs is a minor magic, but amongst their number, since after all, the authorities are on the constant lookout for any capable of even minor magics, there will be those capable of more—much more.

The Sight is a short supplement which introduces to four new talents—Aura Reading, Prophecy, Scrying, and Token Reading—to The Dee Sanction. It also provides guidance on visions, communing with spirits, possession, hypnosis, and the miraculous intervention of the Divine Chorus. Potentially, it increases the magical potency of the Player Characters or Agents, as well as adding a degree of uncertainty when using their magic. To determine if an Agent or indeed, an NPC, has the Sight, the supplement uses an expanded table over that given in The Dee Sanction. When a player uses the table, he either rolls larger dice types or draws from a full deck of playing cards to account for the increased number of entries. Standard rolls or number playing cards indicate that the Agent has a Favour, as in the core rules for The Dee Sanction, but here every entry has a list of three options, which the player can choose from or take all three, depending how much magic the Game Master wants her player to know.

Rolls of elven or twelve, or draws of either a Jack, Queen, or King, if using cards, determines whether has the Sight. Aura Reading enables an Agent to view and interpret someone’s supernatural aspects, Prophecy to see the future, Scrying to see things that are unseen, and Token reading to examine the lore and history bound up in objects. They are further divided into three, the die result or card determining which particular one an Agent has. For example, Prophecy includes Danger Sense, Things to Come, and Fortune Telling, whilst Scrying includes Visions, Divinations, and Summoned Advisor. There is some overlap to these, but there is every effort to make them different and feel different in play. Divination, for example, allows an Agent to experience the environment around a specific person, place, or event once a significant connection is established with them, which would require the blood or hair of the person, or an object from the location. Whereas Things to Come gives brief visions or warnings of threat, perhaps upon meeting someone, and is always involuntary.

Use of the Sight requires a player to succeed at a Supernatural Challenge. However, unlike the angelic nature of Favours, the Sight is supernatural in nature and therefore fickle. Which means that even in a player facing roleplaying such as The Dee Sanction, the Game Master gets to roll as well as the player. This elevates what would be a Supernatural Challenge in an Uncertain Challenge. The results of the use of the Sight range from Untruthful to Truthful depending upon whether the player and the Game Master both falter, one succeeds and one falters, and both succeed. The result, especially if the Agent is attempting to see the future, is only a possible future and it need not be easy to understand. In fact, it should be cryptic, and further, it should only told to the player of the Agent with the Sight, and done so in private. Further, the player should not write it down. This accentuates the uncertainty of the Sight. Inspiration for such foretellings is provided in a pair of tables.

The Sight also covers communing with spirits and talking with angels, the former answering a few questions, the latter even performing a miracle. There are rules here as well for possession and exorcism, and for both major and minor miracles. Both lend themselves to story possibilities, and of course, Enochian is the language of the angels, so it seems obvious to have talking with angels included here.

Physically, The Sight is cleanly and tidily laid out. It is lightly illustrated and consequently less obtrusive in comparison to the core rulebook.

The Sight is an excellent expansion to The Dee Sanction: Adventures in Covert Enochian Intelligence. Its rules are all entirely optional, and even if the Game Master decides not to add them to her campaign of The Dee Sanction or does not necessarily want her players’ Agents to possess them, they can remain the province of the NPCs or simply a source of ideas. However it is used, The Sight: A True & Faithful Relation of Acts of Supernatural Foresight, Uncanny Vision, divers Readings of Occult Tokens: shewing the Particulars of SOME SPIRITS still open up further story avenues and ideas as well as making the use of magic uncertain.

—oOo—


Just Crunch Games will be at UK Games Expo which takes place from Friday, June 3rd to Sunday, June 5th, 2022.

Some games have a table presence as soon as you have them unboxed and everything is out on the table. Others have table presence as soon as you look at them, and that presence follows through from the moment you hold them in your hand to point where you are actually playing them. Colt Express, the 2015 Spiel des Jahres Winner from Ludonaute is an example of the former, taking place aboard a card board train which you set up and attempt to rob. Burgle Bros 2: The Casino Capers is an example of the latter. It comes in a block-shaped box which when you stand it up, looks a cartoonish rendering of a Las Vegas casino. Open—or rather unfold—the box and everything inside comes stored in plastic trays and once these have been removed, a leg is inserted into the receivers in each of the four corners of the box and the box itself is then flipped over to stand on those legs. A playmat, showing a four-by-four playing grid, is placed both on top of the box and under the box. Together these two playmats, when laid out with the rooms and locations of the casino, form the playing surface for Burgle Bros 2: The Casino Capers and the target of the players and their characters and their heists. Add wall sections and playing pieces or meeples illustrated with yet more themed artwork and what you have in Burgle Bros 2: The Casino Capers is a board game with table presence. And yet… Burgle Bros 2: The Casino Capers looks a little rickety. The top of the box is not quite flat. Plus playing under the box is a little fiddly. Which is all a bit of a shame, because Burgle Bros 2: The Casino Capers really does look like a great game, with great artwork that supports its theme. However, Burgle Bros 2: The Casino Capers does not have to be played using this three-dimensional set-up, as clever as it is. It can be played using just the playmats, and it works just as well.

Published by Fowers Games, Burgle Bros 2: The Casino Capers is a sequel to Burgle Bros. and both are co-operative games. In Burgle Bros., between one and four players perform a heist on an office or bank, attempting to locate a safe whilst dodging patrolling guards, all done in the style of a sixties heist. In Burgle Bros 2: The Casino Capers, between one and four players attempt to break into a Las Vegas casino, locate and open a safe, and get away with the loot. However, Burgle Bros 2: The Casino Capers is much more of a challenge than Burgle Bros. This is no night-time burglary—it must be performed during the day. Security is tighter and the safes are tougher, plus there are Bouncers who will follow patrol routes, but who are always on the lookout for any Commotion which they will want to break up. And since this takes place during the day, the casino is thronging with guests. Some are customers, some are not. Some are helpful, most are not. A player might be forced to make a detour to avoid a drunk or get caught up with a saleswoman who never stops talking, be spotted by an undercover member of the casino’s staff or hide from a Bouncer in a crowd. On the plus side, the players are skilled and have gear too, but both only have a limited use. And when the crew manage to get to the safe and crack it open, they have to take the loot and get it out of the casino in an exciting finale!

At the start of the game, the game’s tiles are randomly placed on both floors of the casino, face down. Each floor must have an ‘Escalator’ and a ‘Monorail’ tile. The ‘Safe’ tile is placed on the second floor, whilst the ‘Owner’s Office’ tile is on the first floor. The Patrol Cards for each floor are shuffled and one drawn for each floor to determine where the Bouncer on each floor starts from and where the guests are placed. Guests are represented by poker chips, and these are also placed face down. A second Patrol Card is drawn to indicate where the Bouncer is going to move to, at least initially. Each time a Bouncer reaches his destination, a new Patrol Card is drawn to determine the new destination location, and so on and so on, until the Patrol Card deck is empty. In which case, the Bouncer will start hunting for the nearest player. Eight walls are placed randomly on each floor. These block movement and sight between locations. Then the first—or the next, if Burgle Bros 2: The Casino Capers is being played a campaign—Finale card is drawn out of its envelope, and its text read out. This adds flavour and detail to the heist. The rules on the back will only be revealed and come into play after the players have emptied the safe.

A player receives a character and the character’s three pieces of Gear, either by choice or at random. There are a total of nine in the game. With a maximum number of four players, this adds variety and replay value to the game. For example, Rook is an Elvis impersonator who has an ‘Earpiece’ which enables him to move any player to an adjacent tile, but not through a wall; a set of ‘Facemasks’ which enable two players to swop places; and can ‘Impersonate’ another player to use one of their already prepared items of gear. All great takes an action to prepare, but no actions to use. All have a limited number of uses before they are flipped over granting a last one-shot bonus action before being discarded, and for the most part, an item of Gear affects another player rather than the one using it.

The aim of Burgle Bros 2: The Casino Capers is for the players to enter the casino, locate both the Owner’s Office and the escalator on the first floor and then go up to the second floor. They must find the safe and open it. Not only do the players get the loot, but they also get to turn over the Finale Card and bring its rules into play. The Finale Card also details the players’ means of exit. There nine heists in Burgle Bros 2: The Casino Capers and thus nine different Finale Cards. Initially, Burgle Bros 2: The Casino Capers is designed to played in order, but once they have been played through once, the Finale Cards can still be played again, but in a random order.

A player’s turn consists of two phases—the player phase and the Bouncer phase. On the player phase, a player can take up to four actions from a choice of four. These are ‘Move’, ‘Peek’, ‘Use While Here’, and ‘Prep’. ‘Move’ is to an adjacent tile, revealing any face down poker chip and resolving it, and then resolve any ‘When You Enter’ effect if the tile has one. ‘Peek means to look at an adjacent tile, whilst ‘Use While Here’ is an optional action on a tile, again if it has one. Lastly, ‘Prep’ means to ready a piece of Gear for use.

In the Bouncer phase, the Bouncer on the same floor as the player moves three spaces towards the destination on the current Patrol Card. If the Bouncer moves through any tile occupied by a player, that player gains two Heat. If a player gains six Heat, either from encountering a Bouncer or from particular locations, not only does that player lose, but every player loses! If a Bouncer is hunting after running out of Patrol Cards and their routes to follow, he moves directly towards the nearest player. So it is very much in the best interests of the players to avoid the Bouncers on both floors. Out of the Bouncer phase, a Bouncer will also move towards a Commotion when it is created in a particular tile. When a Bouncer is hunting the players, a Commotion can actually be used as a distraction, which is both helpful and thematically brilliant.

Each of the tile types has particular effects. For example, in the ‘Buffet’ a cube is added to the tile each time a player enters it. When there are three cubes, a Commotion is caused, the cubes are removed, and the Bouncer moves three rather than the standard one space towards it. If a Bouncer enters the ‘Crow’s Nest’, he surveys the adjacent tiles and if there are players on them, they each gain one Heat. At the ‘Table Games’, a player rolls two dice and if he rolls either seven or eleven, he loses one Heat, but causes a Commotion on any other roll. Both the ‘Lounge’ and ‘Pool’ tiles have their own decks of cards for even more random events.

Locating and opening the safe is a multi-stage action. First, the players need to locate both the ‘Owner’s Office’ tile on the first floor and the ‘Safe’ tile on the second floor. They also need to reveal all of the tiles in the same row and column as the ‘Safe’ tile. Second, they need to locate the ‘Moles’ they already planted in the casino ahead of time. There are four of them in the casino and when a player finds one, he can be exchanged for a single die at a cost of two actions. This die is stored on the ‘Owner’s Office’ tile. Third, when a player is on the ‘Owner’s Office’ tile, he can transfer it to the ‘Safe’ tile. A player on ‘Safe’ tile can expend an action to roll the dice. If any of the numbers match those tiles in the same row and column as the ‘Safe’ tile, they are covered up, including multiple numbers. One die is returned to the ‘Owner’s Office’ tile, but a player can continue expending actions to roll the dice as long as one remains on the ‘Safe’ tile. Completely covering all six numbers in the same row and column as the ‘Safe’ tile means that the players have cracked the safe’s combination and triggered the effects of the Finale Card. If the players fulfil the victory conditions on the Finale Card, they have won the game.

At the end of the game, it can all be put away, or alternatively, the players can fill out the Heist Log if Burgle Bros 2: The Casino Capers is being played as a campaign. Successfully pulling off a heist increases their Suspicion value, ranging between one and ten, but failing decreases it. If they were successful they get a sticker to add to the Trophy Case in the bottom of the game’s box, and whether or not they win or lose, they do get an alternative piece of Gear which can be used in future heists. The rulebook also include a variant rules for ‘Dead Drops’, representing randomly distributed pieces of ‘Gear’ that the players must find rather than being assigned everything at game’s start. This makes the game more challenging, whilst the separate ‘Casing the Joint’ makes it less so by reducing the element of randomness in terms both set-up and game play.

Physically, Burgle Bros 2: The Casino Capers is very well produced and it is a great looking game. The rulebook is simple and straightforward to understand, though a lot of the game’s nuances are expected to come out in play rather than be explained in the rules. Some of the Gear cards could have done with clearer explanations though.

Burgle Bros 2: The Casino Capers is a fantastic combination of both theme and random events. The theme is instantly recognisable and playable, the casino heist a la the film Ocean’s 11, only the sixties version rather than the noughties update. It is very much get into the casino, case the joint, avoid the bouncers, dodge the guests, luck out on the Craps table, and slip into the safe room to crack the combination, but it is also another theme present too. One which Burgle Bros 2: The Casino Capers constantly threatens to tip over into—farce! The possibility of running into the wrong guest or Bouncer one too many times or entering the wrong room, and more, all threaten to endanger the heist attempt, and perhaps tip the attempt over into farce and then failure. Burgle Bros 2: The Casino Capers is an easy game to teach and play, but difficult to beat because of random events, and whilst that can be both great and frustrating—it can be a little too random in places, where the game really scores is theme and story. Theme because everyone loves a heist and story because all that randomness can set up great stories as the players run into that drunk one too many times or find a spot to pause whilst the Bouncer moves past or an item of Gear gets a player a out of a tight spot. Plus the Finale Cards simply add more theme, not just with the narrative at the start of the game, but also with the extra rules for the getaway at the end of a heist.

Ultimately, you do need to be lucky to pull of a heist in Burgle Bros 2: The Casino Capers. However, the theme is sheer brilliance, the game is fun to play, and together, everything in the game helps build a great stories.

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

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

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Name: Into the UnknownPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Sean Johnston

Setting: Near Future Antarctica & BeyondProduct: Scenario
What You Get: Thirty-Four page, 1.02 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Atlantis: The Lost Empire meets Pitch BlackPlot Hook: An elevator straight to a hell offers ‘the experience of a lifetime’. 
Plot Support: Staging advice, seven handouts, one map and two sets of  floorplans, no NPCs, and nine monsters and Mythos creatures.Production Values: Underwhelming.
Pros# Science Fiction horror one-shot# Could be adapted to earlier modern time periods# Hints at interesting future setting# Decent descriptions# Potential for Investigator versus Investigator action
Cons# Needs a strong edit# Linear and light plot# No pre-generated Investigators# More exposition heavy travel log than adventure# Potential for Investigator versus Investigator action
Conclusion# Serviceable set-up leads somewhere interesting with a plot that is more story than interactive.# Into an unknown of what the Investigators are supposed to do.