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

—oOo—

What is it?
QAD: Family Histories – 101 Sartarite Character Backgrounds presents one-hundred-and-one backgrounds for characters from Sartar created using the character creation rules found in RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha.

It is a one-hundred-and-ten page, full colour, 4.78 MB PDF.
The layout is clean and tidy, and whilst the only illustration, ‘Ons voorgeslacht in zijn dagelyksch leven geschilderd’, is on the front cover, it is appropriate.
Where is it set?
QAD: Family Histories – 101 Sartarite Character Backgrounds is set in Sartar in Dragon Pass.

Who do you play?
No specific character types are required to use QAD: Family Histories – 101 Sartarite Character Backgrounds. Instead, QAD: Family Histories – 101 Sartarite Character Backgrounds can supply a background for whatever the type of character is being created.

What do you need?
QAD: Family Histories – 101 Sartarite Character Backgrounds requires RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha only, although HeroQuest: Sartar-Kingdom of Heroes may be useful when refering to the twenty-four classic tribes used in QAD: Family Histories – 101 Sartarite Character Backgrounds.
What do you get?One of the features of RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha is that the process of character creation results in nicely detailed characters with both personal and family background. However, as much as the end result is nicely detailed, the process is a lengthy one and if the process is followed through on the complete family history, then a great number of different names is required to fill out all of the family relationships. There is of course a quick method provided in RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, but the results are not as involved or interesting.
QAD: Family Histories – 101 Sartarite Character Backgrounds—the ‘QAD’ short of ‘Quick And Dirty’ is a potential solution to this problem. At least for Sartarite characters, other homelands being covered by other entries in the QAD: Family Histories series. The supplement provides one-hundred-and-one pre-generated family histories, each with a potted history, list of family and extended family members, starting passions, and effects upon the character from the history, such as skill increases, reputation increases, boons, heirlooms, and so on. All of which had been generated using the ‘Step 2: Family History’ of the character creation process in RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha.
Each entry fits on a single page and is organised into five sections. The Heritage section lists the homeland, tribe, clan, lineage, and family trade, and the Ancestral Focus section the character’s favoured family members—grandparents, parents, and so on, who will appeared the Potted History which lists the events they were involved in, including the character, from 1582 to 1625. The History Effect lists the effects that the history has on the character’s Passions, Skills, extra money, and so on. Lastly, the Family Relations section provides the names and dates of the character’s grandparents—maternal and paternal, both parents and their siblings, and then the character and his or her siblings and their dates. These are all arranged neatly into separate boxes—the Family Relations almost like a family tree, and so are easy to read.
QAD: Family Histories – 101 Sartarite Character Backgrounds explains each of its sections and some of the choices made by the author in a very clear manner. In particular, the does differ slightly from the process given in ‘Step 2: Family History’ of the character creation process in RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. To counter the high possibility of a character’s predecessors all dying during the process of Family History generation, it allows for guardians and other relatives to play a role in the Family History. It also addresses some of the issues with the ‘Step 2: Family History’, such as possessing both a Hate and a Loyalty to the same individual; family trades which seem incongruous, for example, Grazelander fishers; and the distinction between the passions, Hate (Lunars) and Hate (Lunar Empire). For the most part, QAD: Family Histories – 101 Sartarite Character Backgrounds—as do the other titles in the series—that the player and the Game Master be inventive when addressing these issues and explore the possibilities they suggest. For the passions, Hate (Lunars) and Hate (Lunar Empire), QAD: Family Histories – 101 Sartarite Character Backgrounds assumes that the two passions are different and that Hate (Lunars) refers to specifically to Lunar Tarsh as ‘Lunars’ and Hate (Lunar Empire) to the Empire itself. Should there be a clash, it is suggested that a possible alternative be taken, like Hate (Chaos), or substitute Hate (Lunar) with Hate (Lunar Empire). 
Using an entry from QAD: Family Histories – 101 Sartarite Character Backgrounds negates the need to work through ‘Step 2: Family History’ of the character creation process in RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha which lends itself to multiple applications. First, it can be used to make a Player Character quicker and more easily, whether a player needs a replacement character following the death or retirement of his previous one. Second, if a player does need a replacement character following the death or retirement of his previous one, it can be used to flesh out an NPC already in play which the player can take over as his Player Character, either temporarily or permanently, rather than find some way of introducing a wholly new Player Character at a moment’s notice. Third, it can be used to help create Player Characters quicker and more easily if a playing group is planning a quick session of RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. Fourth, it can be used to flesh out NPCs quickly and easily, including during play, whether that is to determine their history or whether the Player Characters want to see if they have anything in common with the NPC, especially in terms of their histories. Fifth, it can be used to round out part of a Player Character’s or NPC’s background. For example, in presenting various family members in the Family Relations section, QAD: Family Histories – 101 Sartarite Character Backgrounds is also providing lists of names which can be used to fill out details about the Player Character’s or NPC’s own family.
Is it worth your time?Yes—QAD: Family Histories – 101 Sartarite Character Backgrounds takes all of the hard effort of the dice rolling and note taking of character creation in RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and reduces its most involved step to a single roll. Simple, easy, and quick, whether you need an NPC detailed or a new Player Character ready to go.No—QAD: Family Histories – 101 Sartarite Character Backgrounds takes all of the fun and the inspiration out of the most interesting step of character creation, and simply mechanises it. Plus RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha already has a quick method. Further, your campaign may not be in Sartar or involve Sartarites at all.Maybe—QAD: Family Histories – 101 Sartarite Character Backgrounds is a potentially useful tool, but is definitely not vital to playing or creating either NPCs or Player Characters in RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha.

From one week to the next, Reviews from R’lyeh writes reviews of new games and supplements with an emphasis on Call of Cthulhu and other games of Lovecraftian investigative horror. This series concentrates on Call of Cthulhu and other games of Lovecraftian investigative horror, but not those recently released, but those of the past. There have been innumerable titles published over the years and this is an opportunity to appraise them anew, often decades after they were first released.

Having looked at the releases from Games Workshop, culminating with Green and Pleasant Land: The British 1920s-30s Cthulhu Source Pack, Reviews from R’lyeh now moves on to another early licensee for Chaosium, Inc. This is T.O.M.E. or Theatre of the Mind Enterprises, a publisher best known for the titles it released for use with Call of Cthulhu and Gardasiyal: Adventures in Tékumel, the 1990s roleplaying game set in the world of Tékumel: Empire of the Petal Throne. Between 1983 and 1984, T.O.M.E. would publish five collections of scenarios—The Arkham Evil, Death In Dunwich, Pursuit To Kadath, Whispers From The Abyss And Other Tales, and Glozel Est Authentique!—for use with Call of Cthulhu, Second Edition. It is the third of these titles, Pursuit to Kadath,  which is the subject of this review.
Pursuit to Kadath consists of two separate scenarios. The longer of the two is the titular ‘Pursuit to Kadath’, whilst the bonus, much shorter scenario is ‘The All-Seeing Eye of the Alskali’, which can be run after ‘Pursuit to Kadath’. From the outset, the title itself suggests the Dreamlands and H.P. Lovecraft’s The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, if not the city located either north or below, the plateau of Leng. However, Pursuit to Kadath has nothing do with Kadath, the title here referring to a fictional location in Turkey. The use of the title then, is symptomatic of many of the early campaigns and anthologies for Call of Cthulhu, which would include Lovecraftian references in their titles, but not make use of them in their actual content. That said, apart from Horror on the Orient Express, the two scenarios found in the pages of Pursuit to Kadath are some of the very few to be actually set in Turkey. Title issues aside, the very good news is that Pursuit to Kadath is very much a huge improvement over the first two titles from the publisher. Both The Arkham Evil and Death in Dunwich have deservedly poor reputations because essentially, they are early attempts at writing scenarios for Call of Cthulhu, which simply do not work. Or at least, require a great deal of effort to make work and even then, not necessarily work to the greatest of effects. In comparison, Pursuit to Kadath is a huge improvement because it has a plot which makes sense. It is far from a perfect plot, but it makes sense. It also has an intriguing beginning and it also comes with a lot of historical background and information. However, like its forebears, Pursuit to Kadath is not without its issues. 
Set in 1923, Pursuit to Kadath casts the Investigators as students at Miskatonic University, who are also members of The Sunday Group, a prestigious social club. They may be rich enough to be members, but if not, they may have been sponsored for membership on academic merit. The scenario opens with the Investigators in the library when Darryl Stewart, a fellow member, shows then a weird photograph which has appeared on the front page of a newspaper. The caption on the photograph reads, “FLYING ARM!” and purports to show a bloodied arm which seems to have been brutally ripped from the shoulder of a policeman who subsequently died and is now floating the air. Several witnesses, including the photographer, have sworn that this is what they saw, but both Darryl and the Investigators can see another figure in the photograph and instead the arm floating in the air, it is firmly in the grasp of this figure, a figure which looks awfully like Nils Lindstrom, fellow student and Sunday Club member, and son of a Chicago senator. Further, in the photograph, Lindstrom is holding a bag used by 1st National Bank to transport money and there is a separate report of a bank robbery on the front page. So did the normally shy, mild-mannered Lindstrom rob the bank and if so why? And what drove him to commit such an act of sheer bloody violence? And why can the Investigators see him in the photograph and not others?
In addition, as fellow members of the Sunday Club, the Investigators have attended the same social events as Lindstrom, including a party at which they will recall strange events took place. Many of the attendees, including Lindstrom and the Player Characters, were hypnotised, and Lindstrom had a strange reaction. This was followed by a seance. Could this account for his now apparently even stranger behaviour? As they look into his strange behaviour and track his activities, the Investigators will find themselves following his trail from Boston to New York, where he seems to be inveigling himself into local high society and perhaps courting a young lady his family regards as a suitable match. Mundane help comes in the form of Lindstrom’s father who also wants to know what his son is doing, whilst Mythos help—or at least advice—comes from a strange dream with the Serpent Man who previously appeared in The Arkham Evil. Ultimately, Lindstrom does not tarry in New York for long, setting sail across the Atlantic towards the Belgian Congo with the Investigators on his tail. The Investigators are expected to follow, but towards the end of the crossing, the captain of Lindstrom’s vessel urgently broadcasts a message warning that he has been forced to divert to Turkey.
When the Investigators reach Turkey, they encounter one of the great set pieces in ‘Pursuit to Kadath’. This is the fishing port of Selefko, located on Turkey’s southern coast, Lindstrom’s vessel beached and broken on the shore, the town seemingly abandoned, but with the sound of the call to prayer emanating from the town’s mosque. The only inhabitant is Ahmed Mohammed Mohammed, a mighty, Anglophobic, scimitar- and musket-wielding warrior, who has been sent to deal with the devils who came ashore in Selefko and began preying upon the town’s inhabitants. He will brook no interference from the Investigators, but potentially, could become an ally, if only temporarily, in tracking down the source of the threat which befell Selefko. Ultimately, the Investigators will climb up Alacadaq Mountain on Lindstrom’s trail and descend into the mountain to face him before he can bring about final plans.
At its heart, ‘Pursuit to Kadath’ is a chase scenario. The Investigators start the scenario on Lindstrom’s trail and follow it all the way to Turkey, only catching up with the oddly behaving student in the scenario’s final scene inside Alacadaq Mountain. And what a richly detailed trail it is! Strange behaviour, a bank robbery, missing memories, bloody murder after bloody murder, an odd artefact, a diplomatic incident, and a vampire showdown on the streets of Selefko! Which makes for a very heavily plotted scenario. In fact, Pursuit to Kadath is not only a very heavily plotted scenario, but a scenario which is heavily plotted twice—and heavily pre-plotted at that! 
The issue is that the first half of the scenario is devoted to explaining both plot and background, along with any necessary stats, and so is much of the second half—though to a lesser extent. Further, a fair degree of the beginning investigation is done as a flashback, which involves a fair degree of exposition. What the Keeper is meant to do is follow the plot in the second half, but draw heavily from the first, but what it does instead, is effectively double the effort required to run Pursuit to Kadath. Especially in its preparation.
The heavy double-plotting of ‘Pursuit to Kadath’ is not the scenario’s only problem. The second is getting the Player Characters involved. There are no hooks except, ‘a fellow member of the society you belong to, is acting oddly, so why not for the good of the society, investigate?’ Which is essentially asking the Investigators to investigate because there is a plot there. Later on in the scenario though, NPCs contact the Investigators directly to ask them to continue their enquiries, at which point they have much more motivation. 
Third, in terms of plotting, the scenario’s denouement is severely underwritten with no explanation as to exactly what the Investigators are expected to do to thwart Lindstrom’s plans. A strange artefact would also appear to play a role in the scenario, but no proper explanation of what that role is given, certainly as far as the denouement is concerned. At best, it would appear that the Investigators are expected to rush in, all guns blazing, which feels more Pulp action than Lovecraftian.
The fourth problem is the poor handling of the Mythos in ‘Pursuit to Kadath’. The primary entity involved is Yig and his servants, a set of eleven Dragon Warriors that the Father of Serpents created to fight the other gods. Lindstrom has been possessed by one of these Dragon Warriors—who also appear on the artefact—and cuts a bloody trail from Boston to New York and then onto Turkey in an attempt to prepare himself to summon his master in an underground temple. With the benefit of hindsight and numerous scenarios for Call of Cthulhu and other roleplaying games of Lovecraftian investigative horror, this does not feel like any depiction of Yig and his servants seen anywhere else. Even at the time of the publication of Pursuit to Kadath though, it was noted how much the depiction of the Mythos and its entities differed from that seen in the source fiction and in Call of Cthulhu itself. Elsewhere the inclusion of a Serpent Man makes sense, but a scene involving both Ghouls and a Nightgaunt feels just too much, whilst the creation of vampires feels more Hammer horror than Lovecraftian.
That said, the scenario is very well supported. There is a quick guide to creating students at Miskatonic University, very basic, but years before 1995’s Miskatonic University: The University Guidebook and 2005’s Miskatonic University. This is accompanied by a list of the degree requirements for numerous academic courses at the university, which whilst interesting, is difficult to bring into play and looks wholly arcane to anyone who has not been to an American university. There is a good mix of handouts, some very plain, others made to look like period documents. Some of them though, like a local railway timetable feel superfluous. In addition, there is a sensible guide to hypnotism and what was widely believed about it in the nineteen twenties, a guide to handling languages, and a guide to Turkey in the early nineteen twenties. Overall, lots of useful and interesting material.
Despite these faults, ‘Pursuit to Kadath’ is a big improvement upon the earlier The Arkham Evil and Death in Dunwich. The plot is almost coherent—twice, and the background material is solid and useful. It could be run today, but only with some effort. Not because it is necessarily bad, but because the two plots need to be deconstructed and put back together as ‘a’ plot to provide some much-needed clarity. The Keeper might also want to rework the elements of Mythos, again to add clarity, and then perhaps decide what to do about the vampires. One option would be to push the Pulp elements of the scenario, perhaps enough to use it with Pulp Cthulhu: Two-fisted Action and Adventure Against the Mythos. It would require no little effort upon the part of the Keeper, and it is debatable whether that effort is worth it, but ‘Pursuit to Kadath’ is probably the first scenario from T.O.M.E. which has the potential to be worth it.
The bonus scenario in Pursuit to Kadath is ‘The All-Seeing Eye of the Alskali’ by E.S. Erkes. Much shorter than ‘Pursuit to Kadath’, it is again set in 1923 and where ‘Pursuit to Kadath’ ends in Turkey, ‘The All-Seeing Eye of the Alskali’ begins in Turkey. Thus, it could be run as a sequel to ‘Pursuit to Kadath’. The Investigators are hired by Ghazi Mustapha Kemal, the leader of Turkey—he would only add Ataturk to his name in 1934–to locate a missing British archaeologist, Quentin Halward. Halward is an expert on Troy and the Turkish government fears that word of his disappearance will cause it undue embarrassment. Halward was last seen in the company of two Russians. This should push the Investigators to make enquiries amongst the Russian community in Istanbul, which quickly involves them in a web of intrigue between the White Russian emigres and the official and unofficial Soviet personal in the city, as well as a strange Islamic sect with a reputation for having worshipped demons. Ultimately, the Investigators’ enquiries should lead them from Troy to the Crimea and Halward’s whereabouts.
‘The All-Seeing Eye of the Alskali’ is shorter and more direct than ‘Pursuit to Kadath’. It is also very much better written and would be easy to run today, just as it would have been at the time of publication. Its use of the Mythos is better, if only because it is greatly reduced. Really all it does is add a new Mythos race, one which was the basis for the Cyclops legend. Unfortunately, ‘The All-Seeing Eye of the Alskali’ does end in a fight, which is not particularly interesting. However, all of the running around and intrigue in Istanbul with the Russians should be fun to roleplay.
Physically, Pursuit to Kadath is decent enough, or decent enough for 1983. The cover is uninspiring, but the artwork inside—apart from the random skulls used to separate sections, is not too bad. Similarly, some of the handouts are not too bad either, and whilst the maps merely okay, they at least clearly depict what was intended. The use of period maps adds an element of verisimilitude, but are either too small or too dark to really make use of effectively.
—oOo—
Reviews of Pursuit to Kadath at the time of its release, were surprisingly positive. Writing in Fantasy Gamer Number 4 (Feb/Mar 1984), Warren Spector said, “Pursuit to Kadath gets an almost-unqualified rave. TOME has offered so much background material, you don’t even have to play Pursuit to Kadath to get your money’s worth – you can just incorporate all the background information into your own campaign. And they’ve even included a second – albeit brief – scenario in the back. You just can’t ask much more in an RPG module.”
However, when reviewing ‘Pursuit to Kadath’ in particular in White Dwarf 54 (June 1984), Nic Grecas wrote that, “There is one other aspect of this scenario which caused me some disquiet — the background mythos which is presented in this scenario in respect of a certain deity (to say which one would, of course, spoil a rather large amount of the scenario’s mystery) seems to me to be at odds with Lovecraft’s own writings and also with some of the information in the main rules. Fortunately this forms a part of the background for the keeper only and with very little work can be reconciled with Lovecraft and Chaosium. This was a regrettable lapse on the part of TOME, but in a game system which was written as a ‘labour of love’ by a group of people who strove to recapture the atmosphere of brooding terror found in  Lovecraft’s work, it is fortunate that these misconceptions do not intrude into the body of the scenario.” He concluded though, that “These points apart, Pursuit to Kadath is a fine scenario which, if well managed, can produce and excellent ‘crescendo of terror’, but beware; the final scene could be a terminal experience for many of the investigators!”. He was equally as positive about ‘The All-Seeing Eye of the Alskali’ and of Pursuit to Kadath in general that, “All in all, both scenarios are most creditable.” before awarding it eight out of ten.
Similarly, William A. Barton would highlight the differences between the Mythos of Pursuit to Kadath and its portrayal elsewhere, when he reviewed all five of the Call of Cthulhu titles from T.O.M.E. in Space Gamer #71 (Nov/Dec 1984) with ‘Whispers of Things Lovecraftian: TOME’s Cthulhu Modules’. In providing an overview of the line published to date before reviewing, the fourth release from T.O.M.E., Whispers from the Abyss and Other Tales, he wrote, “TOME’s offerings are all intended for CoC, though, in some instances, the Cthulhoid connection has been tenuous at the best. … This is a tendency for which TOME has received some criticism.” before continuing with, “Pursuit to Kadath was TOME’s worst offender in this regard. While the main scenario and shorter bonus, The All-Seeing Eye of the Alskali, did have more Cthulhian references than their predecessor — including Nyarlathotep, the Al-Azif, Yig, Father of Serpents, and a new Cthulhoid race, the Alskali (one-eyed giant cyclops) —  the mix of non-Mythos occult materials were even more pronounced. Yig, in particular, was distorted beyond almost beyond recognition as far as any past references. The greatest criticism that can be leveled against this scenario, however, is its name: In the stories of Lovecraft and his imitators, Kadath was the mythical land of dreams — or a blasted plateau in the cold waste — as noted in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. Yet in Pursuit, the Kadath of the title is a town in Turkey, not the Lovecraftian Kadath at all. According to Rawlings,*TOME felt that a scenario set in the surreal Kadath of the Mythos would be too difficult to do right, so they opted for the more concrete setting of the “real” Kadath. The title was not an intentional deception.”
* Presumably Steve Rawling, who provided extra content for Pursuit to Kadath.
Pursuit to Kadath was awarded three out of four stars by Steve List in Different Worlds issue 38 (Jan/Feb 1985), who wrote, “In Pursuit To Kadath, TOME has produced an excellent package of material for Cthulhu players and added some interesting lore to the ‘things Man was not meant to know.’ It is well worth acquiring.”
—oOo—
It is surprising that Pursuit to Kadath received so much praise at the time of its publication. Perhaps we have become spoiled by the quality of the content which is being written for Call of Cthulhu, and has been written for Call of Cthulhu over the years. Even so, better content was being written than Pursuit to Kadath in 1983. Of the two scenarios in this volume,  ‘The All-Seeing Eye of the Alskali’ is merely okay, but ‘Pursuit to Kadath’ is a double-stranded suety mess that is overly plotted, suffers from a Mythos mélange, and is underdeveloped where it counts. And yet, Pursuit to Kadath is not irredeemably terrible, just not irredeemably bad enough that its potential can still be seen and that you wish it could have been better.

1974 is an important year for the gaming hobby. It is the year that Dungeons & Dragons was introduced, the original RPG from which all other RPGs would ultimately be derived and the original RPG from which so many computer games would draw for their inspiration. It is fitting that the current owner of the game, Wizards of the Coast, released the new version, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, in the year of the game’s fortieth anniversary. To celebrate this, Reviews from R’lyeh will be running a series of reviews from the hobby’s anniversary years, thus there will be reviews from 1974, from 1984, from 1994, and from 2004—the thirtieth, twentieth, and tenth anniversaries of the titles. These will be retrospectives, in each case an opportunity to re-appraise interesting titles and true classics decades on from the year of their original release.
—oOo—
Sometimes the choice of game to review is not yours to make. So, it is with this review. The death of Richard Halliwell, the co-designer of Warhammer Fantasy Battles, as well as Space Hulk and Dark Future was announced on Monday, May 3rd, 2021. Although not a player of wargames, I am a fan of what he designed and created. This is a review of one of his many designs, all of which were popular and well received.

—oOo—
In the twenty-second century, the majority of the citizens of Mega-City One live in vast tower blocks, each a cramped claustrophobic world unto its own. Each block has its own shops, schools, hospitals, parks, and more, its citizens resigned to a life of rampant unemployment and welfare benefits and rarely needing to leave the confines of the block. Everything they, if not want, can be found within the confines of their block, so as boring and as frustrating as their lives are, to each citizen, their block is their home and their identity, and if their lives are boring and frustrating, it is not the fault of the government—there is no government, then they need someone else to blame. That someone else is their neighbouring blocks. Perhaps the citizens, or blockers, of these neighbouring blocks are too rich or too poor, too noisy or too quiet and untrustworthy, too arrogant or too cowardly, unfriendly or hostile, or… Or the reason does not matter, because it is enough to turn a simple insult of one blocker made by a blocker of a rival block, a juvie rumble between rival blocks, or even a pre-emptive strike by a rival block is enough to aggravate the rivalries between blocks into an all-out confrontation between their citizens and their city-def squads. And an all-out confrontation between the citizens and the city-def squads of rival blocks can turn into a war! A war that can escalate into one block invading the other and planting bombs and setting fires sufficient to bring the whole block down! Of course, that is until the Judges, the combined policemen, judges, juries, and executioners of Mega-City One respond to the conflict and intervene to bring it to a permanent end!

This is the set-up for Block Mania, a two-player board game for players aged fourteen and up set in the Judge Dredd universe. In Block Mania, each player takes control of a single block—Sammy Fox or Buddy Holly Block—and the enraged citizens or Blockers who reside there. Armed with flamers, missile defence lazers, missile launchers, spit guns, and stump guns, City-Def units, Crocks (senior citizens), Juvies, and Spugs (really mean Juvies) will attack their rival block or defend their own. Futsies (suffering from Future Shock) will go crazy and attack anyone, Fatties rolling on belliwheels will charge and squash their rivals, Mobs will go on the rampage, Juvies and Spugs can scrawl really demeaning and demoralising graffiti, the alien hungry, hungry Kleggs will fight for anyone and chomp anyone they can, and demolition charges can be laid, firebombs places, and fires set, both of which will severely weaken a Block—and may even bring it down!

Block Mania is played out over two boards placed side-by-side and which each depicts a vertical side view of each Block. Laid side-by-side, they are connected by Mega-Ways for vehicle traffic, Pedways for foot traffic, and a Sky-Rail for quick transit. Both Blocks have balconies from which attacks can be launched and targeted, and upon which units aboard Power Boards or wearing Bat Suits can launch themselves or land. Inside movement can be eased up down the Block via the Elevators, down via Grav Chutes, and across the open spaces of Civic spaces. Once inside, Banks can be looted, really demoralising graffiti can be left in Civic spaces, Shopping Malls can be looted, and Power Houses can be switched off, which turns off the elevators, pedways, and lights! Besides the two boards, Block Mania includes some one-hundred-and-eighty counters, depicting the various units and pieces of Armoury (guns) and Hardware (equipment). Each unit has three stats—Command Value, Strength Value, and Movement Allowance. The Command Value is its cost to be activated, the Strength Value is its defensive score, and the Movement Allowance how many movement points it has when activated. Armoury counters have a damage bonus and a range value. Most of the counters are an inch-square, though the conditional marker counters, such as Fire and Collapse are a little smaller.

As well as moving his counters around the two maps, a player also has Mania cards, which give him certain bonuses and advantages during play as well as adding flavour. There are fifty-four of these and they are double-sided. One side is the Justice side, and depicts the forces and equipment that the Justice Department will deploy against the two warring Blocks—and thus both players—in the End Game phase, such as ‘Stumm Gas’, ‘Kleggs Go Home’, and ‘Riot Foam’. On the other side, the Mania cards depict events and bonuses which will benefit a player when used. For example, ‘Reinforcements’ lets a player deploy two units without paying the Command Point cost, ‘Kleggs’ allows a player to hire the mercenary aliens or take control of the Kleggs already in play (so control of them can switch back and forth), and ‘Kaboom!’ which has a player’s City-Def secretly plant a thermo-Bomb in the rival Block and allows him to place three Fire markers anywhere in the enemy Block. Throughout the game, each player holds three Mania cards and always draws another one at the end of his turn, so each player should play one every turn. Lastly, there are two books in Block Mania, both in landscape format. One is the Rulebook, the other is The Blockers’ Manual, a reference to the various counters and Mania cards.

Set-up involves placing the two boards side-by-side, each player receiving three Mania cards with another sixteen set aside for the Endgame phase, and receiving four random Blocker counters and their Hardware or Armoury counters if necessary, and again drawn randomly. They are placed wherever a player like sin his Block. The rest of a player’s counters—Blockers, Armoury, and Hardware—are placed in cups or stacks face down, so that they can also be drawn randomly. The game is played in turns each comprised of four phases—Command, Defensive Fire, Combat, and End Phase. In the Command Phase, the active player rolls the game’s two six-sided dice to generate Command Points, and then spends them to deploy new Blockers, activate Blockers in play and use their Movement Allowance to move, and spend on extra movement. No Command Points need to be spent in the other phases, but the limited number of Command Points per turn, except when a player rolls very well or plays the right Mania card, will force a player to focus on a few—even just one or two—units per turn, and thus make a few choices per turn. Overall, this should keep play relatively brisk.

In the Defensive Fire phase, the non-active player can shoot at adjacent enemy Blockers and in the Combat phase, the active player can attack—shoot or close assault—with his Blockers, make Loot, Arson, or Firefighting attacks against a target square. Rolls of six or more on the dice succeed for most actions, although in combat, the target’s Strength is deducted from the roll, whilst the damage bonus for the Armoury counter is added. During the End phase, rolls are made for chances of Collapse, Fire damage, and Catastrophic damage. Both Collapse and Fire damage causes Structural Damage markets to be added to a Block, though Fire damage can be prevented from spreading by firefighting. More Structural Damage markers in a square increases the likelihood of a collapse and the addition of a Collapse marker, and if a player rolls five dice and the total is lower than the number of Collapse markers, down comes the Block!

Play continues until the Mania cards run out and the Endgame begins. This means that a game should never last more than thirty-six turns before the Endgame is triggered. When it is, the discard pile is then shuffled, along with the sixteen cards set aside at the start of the game. A player must play one card on his turn and must use the Justice side of the card, not the Mania side. A Justice card will typically remove a Blocker from play, so the Endgame turns into a race to do as much damage to the rival Block before a player runs out of Blockers. The game ends when the last Blocker is removed from play or if both Blocks have collapsed. At this point, each player receives Defeat Points for damage done to his Block, locations Looted, graffiti left in his Block, Blockers defeated, and a whole lot of Defeat Points if his Block was brought down. The player with the least amount of Defeat Points is the winner and is given official permission by the rules to taunt his actually defeated opponent.

Block Mania is raucous, silly fun, and chaotic from start to finish. Which it should be, because none of the Blockers are necessarily trained soldiers and they are not acting in a co-ordinated fashion, often just grabbing what Armoury or Hardware that they can and rushing to attack the rival Block or defend against the invading Blockers. Which is modelled with the random drawing of Blockers, Armoury, and Hardware counters, and the randomly determined number of Command Points a player receives each turn. Plus, once any fires are set alight and bombs placed, there is always the increasing chance of the whole thing, including a player’s Block collapsing. And arguably, there can be no greater joy than seeing your rival’s Block collapse. It does not matter that you are going to spend decades in an Isocube when your inevitable arrest by a Judge comes to pass. Ultimately, the forces of the Law and Justice—and no to say life (or the game)—are against you, but after all, your rival’s defeat is greater than yours!

Block Mania is also complex fun in places too. The idea that you would get so angry and so crazy as to actually attack our neighbours is satirically funny in a dark way, especially with some of the Blocker units each player gets to deploy. Of course, much of this is drawn upon the satire of the Judge Dredd comic strip and universe, but in Block Mania, a player can have a Futsie scrawl in Civic space, Crocks fly between the Blocks on Power Boards and Loot a Bank, and Fatsies with Belliwheels trundling across the Pedway to slam into the City-Def on the other side. Which is all great fun, but thirty years on some players might have an issue with the idea of actively working to bring down a tower block. That said, this probably less of an issue than it would have been in the past. The complexity comes in some of the fiddley little details, such as working out how movement works, as it is often dependent upon where a Blocker is and what means of movement a player wants it to use—by foot or Elevator or Grav Chute or Pedway, and tracking elements of the game, such as fires and collapses. In comparison, combat is fairly simple.

Physically, Block Mania is well presented. The boards and counters are done on thick cardboard and illustrated in full colour with artwork drawn from the Judge Dredd universe, as are the Mania cards. The two books, the Rulebook and The Blockers’ Manual are done in the shades of blue and white and are neat and tidy. The Rulebook includes both Designer’s Notes and Players’ Notes, the latter some advice for play. The Rulebook does need a careful study, because there are lots of little rules that apply in different situations, and that does mean that Block Mania is anything other than a casual game.

Block Mania was originally published by Games Workshop in 1987. It was not the first time that Games Workshop would visit the Judge Dredd universe, having previously done so in 1982 with the Judge Dredd board game. However, despite Games Workshop being better known for publishing the much-loved Judge Dredd The Roleplaying Game, Block Mania always remained a fondly remembered game. The subject matter was also popular enough to be the subject of another game, Judge Dredd: Block War, published by Game and A Curry in 2018. Then in 2020, Rebellion Games, the games arm of the publisher of 2000 AD republished Block Mania and its sequel, Mega Mania, as a pair of handsome limited-edition replicas. This is the version of the board game being reviewed.

It would be inaccurate to describe Block Mania as being wholly British Ameritrash. Yes, the game comes with an H-Wagon or two’s worth of theme and applies that throughout, and yes, the game includes a fair degree of randomness, whether that is the random drawing of Blocker, Armoury, and Hardware counters, or the random determination of Command Points from turn to turn. Yet, Block Mania is also a classic counter and dice wargame, no surprise given that it is designed by Richard Halliwell, the co-designer of Warhammer Fantasy Battle, and in the use of Command Points, the game has the feel of a miniatures wargame where the limited activation of units from turn to turn is a feature. Plus, there are some complexities in the mechanics which means that it is not as much of a throwaway game.

Rowdy and clamorously chaotic, Block Mania is a darkly funny, satirical game. It is far from a perfect game, but it is a fun game to play and it is a brilliant adaptation of its source material.

The Long Hard Mile: A Solo Adventure is a scenario 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’.
The Long Hard Mile: A Solo Adventure is something different for Metamorphosis Alpha. It is an update—is that a ‘backdate’?—of a scenario which originally appeared as Metamorphosis Alpha: The Long Hard Mile for use with Metamorphosis Alpha, Fourth Edition, for use with the classic version of Metamorphosis Alpha. It draws from a storyline where the Starship Warden runs into an invisible asteroid filled with mushroom and crystal life forms smashing a hole in the ship’s hull and letting in a rash strange new lifeforms which seem to want to take over the ship. Feeling that it was in need of transition piece which tied the collision to the events aboard the Starship Warden, the author wrote The Long Hard Mile which both explored the consequences and presented the first solo adventure for Metamorphosis Alpha.
Several weeks ago, the ship hit something hard and the world about the village seems to have shaken again and again, followed by strange changes. New plants roaming and killing, a nearby valley, once wooded, now filled with giant mushrooms taller than the trees they replaced, and deadly plants everywhere. The hero of the story is equipped with the best that the village has to offer and sets out to investigate. The first thing he sees upon reaching the head of the valley is three high tech weapons mounted on tripods, with signs of burn marks on the ground and trees ahead of them. Why are the weapons there and what were they being fired at, are just some of the initial questions to be answered in the opening entries in The Long Hard Mile. As the Player Character explores the valley, he will plunge into Fungi Forests, find himself stabbed and spiked by strange flora, make friends with a piece of mobile artillery, get battered and spoken to by fungi, and ultimately discover some of the valley’s hidden secrets.
The Long Hard Mile: A Solo Adventure is relatively short and runs to just twenty entries. It is fun, and mechanically, it does involve a high degree of combat, but there are two or three scenes involving some roleplaying too—especially if the scenario is run as a standard adventure with a Game Master and several players. The combat scenes will require reference to the Metamorphosis Alpha rules, but in other scenes where a player needs to roll dice, the mechanics are explained in the entry. The scenario includes two pre-generated Player Characters, Scar-Lock and Lock-Scar. The former is a Pure Strain Human, the latter a Mutant Humanoid. Their character-type will not have any effect upon their explorations of the valley, although Lock-Scar does have some advantage in have various mutations which will help him in a fight. If the Player Character manages to survive and escape the valley, he should be able to bring back several weapons along with a few secrets and the means to end the threat which has emerged since the crash and taken over the woods.
Once a player has run through The Long hard Mile in solo fashion, there is nothing to stop her from running the scenario as an adventure for a standard group. This is relatively easy given the limited number of entries in the adventure, but to make it little easier, the Game Master should draw up a map of the various encounters so that it will be easier to plot the Player Characters’ movement from one location to another. As a solo adventure, The Long hard Mile is playable in an hour, but as a standard adventure, a group should be able to complete it in a session or so. And like so many supplements and scenarios for Metamorphosis Alpha, The Long hard Mile works with almost any post-apocalyptic roleplaying game, from Gamma World to Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic.

The capacity for The Long Hard Mile: A Solo Adventure to be played as both a solo adventure and a standard adventure, even if a short one in both cases, gives it a versatility that few scenarios possess. It also means that the Game Master gets to play Metamorphosis Alpha for a change, and whether her character—Scar-Lock or Lock-Scar—manages to survive her explorations, he can become an NPC spurring the Player Characters into action and rooting out the mysteries of The Long Hard Mile: A Solo Adventure.

The Book of Handouts – 16 Scenes to Show Players is a supplement 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’.
Next to come out of the ‘Metamorphosis Alpha Treasure Chest’ is Book of Handouts – 16 Scenes to Show Players. There is no denying the power of a good handout, whether is the matchbook from the Stumbling Tiger Bar found in Jackson Elias’ hotel room at the start of Masks of Nyarlathotep or the Origami-style elemental stones from The Doomstones campaign for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying or the rotating puzzle from The Chained Coffin for Dungeon Crawl Classics or the opening screen crawl scripts for West End Games’ Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game. They engage the players and draw them into the world of the roleplaying game, building atmosphere and a sense of immersion. Yet for most fantasy roleplaying games, handouts take the form of maps, but there is a special case for Dungeons & Dragons. Going all the way back to S1 Tomb of Horrors, certainly Advanced Dungeons & Dragons has had a history of including a separate booklet of images keyed to locations in a scenario, so that when the adventurers reach a particular location, the Dungeon Master can flip to the relevant image in the Illustration Booklet and show it to her players. These illustrations brought each location alive and made the Dungeon Master’s task all the easier, and it is from these Illustration Booklets, for S1 Tomb of Horrors or more recently, Dwimmermount, that the Book of Handouts – 16 Scenes to Show Players draws from for its inspiration.
The Book of Handouts – 16 Scenes to Show Players is simply a book of illustrations of scenes aboard the Starship Warden. Unlike the Illustration Booklets for S1 Tomb of Horrors or Dwimmermount, there is no text associated with the images in its pages. Or indeed, an actual scenario associated with it. What you have instead is literally a booklet of images. Appearing in landscape and portrait formats, one image per page, they include a Tiger Mutant Animal in armour and firing a rocket straight at the viewer—and thus the Player Characters; a woman dressed in the clothes of the Ancients, asleep in her cyropod; and a bunch of scruffy Pure Strain Humans, bearded and armed with flint spears, looking nervously into a strange hole in the wall. Some are humorous, like the four Wolfoids, clearly enjoying themselves travelling in some ancient vehicle, the passengers with their feet, whilst others are horrifying, such as the Pure Strain Human being strapped down by medbots whilst staring at the metal leg they are about to replace his own with! Then some are intriguing, like the entrance to a bunker or a facility marked as ‘Level 5’, the ground before it strewn with dirt out of which protrudes one of the many infamous coloured arm bands to be found aboard the Starship Warden and which will grant access to certain keyed areas.
However, because there is no text in the Book of Handouts – 16 Scenes to Show Players and so each picture is not displaying a specific scene or encounter, these images are not actually intended to be shown to the players—at least not at first. Their initial role is to severe as inspiration for the Game Master, for the Game Master to write scenarios and scenes in which the images can be shown to the players and illustrate what their characters can see. For example, perhaps one of the Player Characters’ friends has gone to serve the Ancients, but when they discover him, they see him about to undergo leg upgrade surgery at the hands of the medbots or during the rites to the holy carp in the lake upon whose shores the Player Characters’ village stands, the giant fish is suddenly attacked by something tentacular. Is this tentacled attacker a mutated beast, a robot gone rogue, or what else could it be?
The all but text free Book of Handouts – 16 Scenes to Show Players does another thing and that is showcase the artwork of the late Jim Holloway, drawings here each to a brief given by author, James Ward. And they are good pieces of art, interesting, a little quirky, and hopefully for the Game Master, inspirational, and her players, illustrative. And like so many supplements for Metamorphosis Alpha, the Book of Handouts – 16 Scenes to Show Players works with almost any post-apocalyptic roleplaying game, from Gamma World to Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic. Ultimately though, the Book of Handouts – 16 Scenes to Show Players is not a book that a Metamorphosis Alpha or other post-apocalypse Game Master absolutely needs, but short of ideas, it might provide much-needed inspiration for the next adventure.

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another DM and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry.

Upper Heleng: The Forest Beloved by Time is a little different. Penned by Zedeck Siew—author of Lorn Song of the Bachelor—and drawn by Munkao, it is the third title published by the A Thousand Thousand Islands imprint, a Southeast Asian-themed fantasy visual world-building project, one which aims to draw from regional folklore and history to create a fantasy world truly rooted in the region’s myths, rather than a set of rules simply reskinned with a fantasy culture. The result of the project to date is eight fanzines, plus appendices, each slightly different, and each focusing on discrete settings which might be in the same world, but are just easily be separate places in separate worlds. What sets the series apart is the aesthetic sparseness of its combination of art and text. The latter describes the place, its peoples and personalities, its places, and its strangeness with a very simple economy of words. Which is paired with the utterly delightful artwork which captures the strangeness and exoticism of the particular setting and brings it alive. Barring a table of three (or more) for determining random aspects that the Player Characters might encounter each entry in the series is systemless, meaning that each can be using any manner of roleplaying games and systems, whether that is fantasy or Science Fiction, the Old School Renaissance or not.

The first, MR-KR-GR The Death-Rolled Kingdom, described the Death-Rolled Kingdom, built on the remains of great drowned city, now ruled by crocodiles in lazy, benign fashion, they police the river, and their decrees outlaw the exploration of the ruins of MR-KR-GR, and they sometimes hire adventurers. The second, Kraching, explored the life of a quiet, sleepy village alongside a great forest, dominated by cats of all sizes and known for its beautiful carvings of the wood taken from the forest. The third in the series, Upper Heleng: The Forest Beloved by Time, takes the reader, if not into this forest, but into a forest.

Stepping into the forest is like stepping into the past. Time seems to pass differently there, and so it is in Upper Heleng, though no native would call it that. Beyond the two great trees which mark its most obvious entry—one dead, the other never not in flower, time passes faster for objects not of the forest. They rot, they rust, teeth fall out. It is almost as if the forest is rejecting such modernisms. Squirrels appear to chatter and gossip—if you listen. A wheezing mouse deer asks for help—it has a woman’s face. Take care lest the Leeches stalk you and steal something from more important than a mere possession—a hand, a child not yet born, a skill, your favourite song… The forest is married to Time and has given birth to many gods who make their home in her arboreal embrace. Each has their own time, some of which are embraced by the natives, some of which are not. The Leech is her eldest, who governs memory, loss, and entropy, and who defends his mother when necessary and whose manifestations stalk and steal from intruders. The Bee is her third daughter, a gibbon-shaped hive of bees whose presence indicates that harvest is here. The Moth is the youngest and the oldest, and governs death for all who die in the forest, able to see out of the spots on the moth he has for a face—and out of all spots of all moths. Anyone who died in the forest may be asked questions through the Moth for he remembers them all, but for a price.

The way into the forest—and Upper Heleng: The Forest Beloved by Time—is through a guide. The girl, Wingseed, is keen to take the Player Characters in—though Dangles, her father now living in a dog’s (and thus a god’s) shape worries greatly for her, and will advise them to eat the food grown inside to lessen the effects of time whilst under the canopy. The Player Characters may encounter Sadushan San Di, who quests for the Leech who defeated Sadushan San Di’s liege-lady, Queen Qaidun, and stole her face, but who knows which of the many Leech Spawn now bears that visage? Or Sri Jahisha, itinerant swordfish who wishes to see the un-oceaned world and is borne upon the back of fisherman blessed with magic. The forest nomads with their strange ways, but kindly manner, treating outsiders like children who know no better… Such as Tittertit, the elderly camp chief who does not give a damn and whose armful of monkeys know spells and Scoffysyrup, a woman addicted to the beakroot which is transforming her into a bird. She wants to be free to fly and wants more, but her campmates refuse to gather it. Perhaps the Player Characters have come to aid Sadushan San Di or to purchase trade goods, like the Ghost Antler, infused with the beast’s final instincts at death, the phantom vines which are found hanging in the air and can be woven into nets capable of entrapping the incorporeal, or Quick Honey, the mercury liquid which grants a day’s invulnerability and unerring action in return for the ultimate price, but which all of the gods across the Thousand Thousand Isles want at their table.

For the Game Master there are tables to determine random encounters in the forest and encounters with the forest people. There is also an insert which provides another pair of tables. Both are ‘die-drop’ tables, one a name generator for the people of the forest which with a roll of six dice also generates a personality too. The other is a lay of the land of the forest, a collection of places, the fall of the dice determining the elements of the location where the Player Characters are, or are going, the Game Master building the descriptions from where the dice land. This is not necessarily a map generator, since the land can change, rivers squirm to elsewhere, paths wither and disappear. Essentially, the forest grows and changes, but remains the same.

Physically, Upper Heleng: The Forest Beloved by Time is a slim booklet which possesses the lovely simplicity of the Thousand Thousand Isles, both in terms of the words and the art. Together they evoke visions of a very different world, inspired by forest taboos and Bateq egalitarianism, and of a very different fantasy to which a Western audience is used, but the light text makes it all very accessible as the art entrances the reader. However, Upper Heleng: The Forest Beloved by Time is not easy to use, the forest crawl being far away and not necessarily easy to reach, but worse, it is difficult to engage the Player Characters with it until they reach its eaves. The Game Master will need to work hard to create motivations and drives for them to travel to Upper Heleng, and that is its biggest weakness. It has the hooks—both ethnographic and cosmological—but it is a matter of getting the Player Characters there.

Upper Heleng: The Forest Beloved by Time has not quite the charm of the previous MR-KR-GR The Death-Rolled Kingdom or Kraching, but this does not mean that it is not without appeal. Once again, Upper Heleng: The Forest Beloved by Time is beguilingly simple and exquisitely enticing in its presentation of a bucolically strange, but seemingly tranquil land far away from whatever constitutes the main hub of the world and its action.

—oOo—

The great news is that is Upper Heleng: The Forest Beloved by Time, MR-KR-GR The Death-Rolled Kingdom, Kraching, and the others in the Thousand Thousand Isles setting are now available outside of Malaysia. Details can be found here.

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

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. Another retroclone garnering attention via fanzines is Mörk Borg.
Mörk Borg Cult: Feretory—‘Feretory’ meaning ‘a portable shrine containing the relics of a saint.’ is a fanzine of a different stripe, both in terms of content and style. It is and it is not a fanzine, but it is for Mörk Borg, the pitch-black pre-apocalyptic fantasy roleplaying game which brings a Nordic death metal sensibility to the Old School Renaissance. The format is that of a fanzine, A5-sized, on matte paper rather than the gloss of the Mörk Borg rulebook, but sharing the same riotous assault of electrically vibrant yellow and pink highlights on swathes of black, abrupt font changes, and metallic embellishments. Essentially, production values higher than that typically found in most fanzines, but influential nevertheless, as seen in the recent Knock! #1 An Adventure Gaming Bric-à-Brac. This is because although the origins of the content in Mörk Borg Cult: Feretory are amateur in origin, they have been curated from submissions to the Mörk Borg Cult, the community content programme for Mörk Borg by the designers of the roleplaying game and collated into a fanzine format. And unlike most fanzines is available through distribution. It is essentially, a cross between a fanzine with gorgeous production values and a supplement with fanzine sensibilities.
At sixty-four pages and fourteen or so entries, Mörk Borg Cult: Feretory is also longer than most fanzines. Most of its articles are fairly short though and written and presented in a sparse, often bullet-point style which makes their content easy to digest. It can be boiled down to a variegated array of tables, scenarios, and character Classes, and Mörk Borg Cult: Feretory does not waste any time in getting down to its trademark doom and gloom with the first of its tables. Slipped inside the front cover, ‘The Monster Approaches’ is a quick and dirty random monster generator which with a roll of a handful of dice, the Game Master can create something vile and unnerving to throw at her Player Characters—who are of course, just as likely to be almost, if not equally as vile and unnerving. It is quickly followed by Svante Landgraf’s ‘Roads to Damnation: Travel Across a Dying World’ which provides rules and randomness for travelling across the large island which is all that remains of the Dying Lands. It covers distances as well as events on and off the road, but like all tables has only a limited number of entries, so may be exhausted fairly soon. For a roleplaying game like Mörk Borg, which is designed for short campaigns, this is not so much of an issue.
Longer is ‘Eat Prey Kill’ by Karl Druid, which can work as a companion to ‘Roads to Damnation: Travel Across a Dying World’, providing as it does rules for hunting in the Dying Lands. In effect, it is a set of mini-tables, one for each region of the Dying Lands (indicated by the often-indecipherable use of Gothic script), with each entry on the these mini-tables being a complete monster description and its stats. So in the Bergen Chrypt, a hunter might find a Tunnel Sneak (or it might find him), Nephalix Monkeys who leap from peak to peak on boney wings, tossing their victims down the cliffs below, laughing as they do, or a Ragpie, what appears to be bundle of old cloth near a pile of bones, but which embraces and chokes its victims like a dark cloak. So it is a bestiary of new creatures also, but what makes it grim is not just the table for hunting mishaps, but also what a hunter might find in the belly of the beast he is hunting…
‘d100 Items and Trinkets’ by Pelle Svensson provides exactly that, whilst Anders Arpi, Ben H, Dom Cohen, Ripley C, Johan Nohr, karl Druid, Leander E, Paul Wilde, and Flora v/d B all contribute to ‘The Tenebrous Reliquary’ which is a much lengthier and more table which contains ‘d66 Items of Doom’, including the ‘Plasmatic Idol’ which blood is spilled over it, the blood becomes a poison or the owner gains a temporary boon; a ‘Tyrant’s Tongue’, which when placed in the mouth of a skull, screams the tongue’s final words—over and over; and the ‘Claw of the Sloth’, a dagger whose small cuts can eventually freeze a victim on the spot. All of these items have a grim, dark edge to them befitting the tone of the roleplaying game. They could easily be adapted to other roleplaying games or settings with similar atmospheres. ‘The Tablets of Obscurity’ is a list of ten magical relics of a forgotten mind-cult, essentially stone tablets used like scrolls, whilst ‘The Black Salt Wind’ blows through tombs, palaces, and places deep beneath the earth, such as in the Valley of the Unfortunate Undead and the Wästland plains, its effects random each time, such as burning eyes which weep black tears encrusting the eyes or Old Salt Madness singing to you, telling to either mock or befriend everyone you meet!
Carl Niblaeus’ ‘The Death Ziggurat’ is the first of three scenarios in Mörk Borg Cult: Feretory. The Player Characters are hired by Cretun monks to climb down into a cold and dank sinkhole in the forests of Sarkash to find an ancient ziggurat and prevent a demon laying waste to the world. This is a mini-hexcrawl, set in a freezing landscape, with just a handful of locations, including the ziggurat itself, and even fewer NPCs. Combined with a set of tables to populate the sinkhole with ruins and encounters, ‘The Death Ziggurat’ is playable in a session or two and is easily added to a campaign or run as a one-shot. It also nicely tags the core concept behind Mörk Borg and that is that the world is doomed… ‘The Goblin Grinder’ by Ripley Caldwell moves the action to the city of Galgenbeck which has become infested with Goblins, with the number of its citizens affected by the Goblin Cure growing day by day. Fortunately, a local alchemist has a cure—at a cost of forty silver a vial! The scenario comes with several reasons for the Player Characters to get involved, at least initially, but not necessarily how to take the next step and get them to locations where the scenario is likely to be resolved. Once the Player Characters get to the primary location in the scenario, it is nicely detailed, grim and grimy with a certain grinding crunch to its climax. The scenario needs a little effort upon the part of the Game Master to work, but once done, this again, is playable in a session or two.
‘The Grey Galth Inn’ is not a scenario as such, but rather another set of tables for generating elements and storyhooks when at this, or another inn. So, there are tables for both ‘Would you prefer the Select Menu?’ and ‘Ah, I see, you lack funds’ (watery femur soup or thick ooze soup—ooze is pure—sound lovely), along with tables for ‘Why is the Innkeeper Twitching?’ and ‘Patron traits’. Also included is rules for the dice-based gambling mini-game called Three Dead Skulls. Of course, these tables can be used to generate content and hook the Player Characters into whatever is going on in and around the inn. 
Mörk Borg Cult: Feretory includes four new Classes. These begin with Karl Druid’s ‘Cursed Skinwalker’, a shape-shifter able to assume the form of a singular creature, such as a Murder-Plagued Rat or a Doomsaying Monkey, within a bone-cracking painful minute. The ‘Pale One’ by Tim Rudluff is an alien of weird origins and manner, able to cast a random blessing once per day, but beset by incoherent madness and self-destructive rages, whilst Greg Saunders’ ‘Dead God’s Prophet’ listens to the voices in his head telling him what to do, and is blessed by his dead god, perhaps with poison-seeping stigmata or eyes of holy fire. Lastly, the ‘Forlorn Philosopher’ who studies have failed him and rails at the lies left. The ‘Forlorn Philosopher’ can freely use and understand ‘The Tablets of Obscurity’. Some of these Classes are easier to play than others, the Cursed Skinwalker’  and ‘Pale One’ in particular feeling underwritten in comparison to the ‘Dead God’s Prophet’ and ‘Forlorn Philosopher’, both of which add to the feel and atmosphere of the Dying Lands.
Included in Mörk Borg Cult: Feretory is ‘Dark Fort’, the solo game which formed the basis for Mörk Borg. It is a short, and in keeping with Mörk Borg, nasty solo game. Complete with five character sheets, a player rolls on its tables to generate encounter after encounter, the aim being for the victim/character to survive each room, collect silver, gain a Level, and so on. Once a player has ticked each of the six advancements from gaining a new Level, the character retires, lives comfortably, and just like Mörk Borg, the world ends. It is quick and dirty, even slight, but a nice nod to the origins of the roleplaying game.
Mörk Borg Cult: Feretory can add so much to your fantasy game—especially if it is dark and grim. Its content would work in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Zweihänder: Grim & Perilous, Shadow of the Demon Lord, and others—with a little bit of adaptation. As a supplement for Mörk Borg it expands aspects of adventuring in the Dying Lands whilst keeping them as grim and grimy, as grisly and grotty, and as ghastly and grubby as both Game Master and players would want. Mörk Borg Cult: Feretoryy is a joyously foul and febrile first supplement, offering up a jumble that the Game Master will want to sort through and add to her game.

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

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

Echoes From Fomalhaut is a fanzine of a different stripe. Published and edited by Gabor Lux, it is a Hungarian fanzine which focuses on ‘Advanced’ fantasy roleplaying games, such as Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and Advanced Labyrinth. The inaugural issue, Echoes From Fomalhaut #01: Beware the Beekeeper!, published in March, 2018, presented a solid mix of dungeons, adventures, and various articles designed to present ‘good vanilla’, that is, standard fantasy, but with a heart. Published in August, 2018, the second issue, Echoes From Fomalhaut #02: Gont, Nest of Spies continued this trend with content mostly drawn from the publisher’s own campaign, but as decent as its content was, really needed more of a hook to pull reader and potential Dungeon Master into the issue and the players and their characters into the content. Echoes From Fomalhaut #03: Blood, Death, and Tourism was published in September, 2018 and in reducing the number of articles it gave the fanzine more of a focus and allowed more of the feel of the publisher’s ‘City of Vultures’ campaign to shine through, whilst Echoes From Fomalhaut #04: Revenge of the Frogs drew from multiple to somewhat lesser effect.
Echoes From Fomalhaut #05: The Enchantment of Vashundara contains just four entries, and is all the better for it. Published in April, 2019, the issue opens with the titular, ‘The Enchantment of Vashundara’, by Zsolt Varga. This is an otherworldly scenario designed for Player Characters of Third and Fourth Levels. It begins with a giant peacock landing in front of the Player Characters and lowering her wings as if to suggest that they might climb onto her back. If they do, they are flown up into the clouds and over an ocean to a land far, far away where the bird alights at the entrance to a villa. It is an interesting start because the peacock never speaks, although the Player Characters may find animals in the villa who will, many of them quite eccentric. They will also discover that the villa is clearly built for a giant, and that giant—complete with six arms and six heads—is chained up and deeply asleep in the stables. What exactly is going on in this villa? The scenario is a mix of investigation and combat and plays upon the idea of the adventurers as midgets in a land of giants, much like Castle Gargantua, making what would be small things for a giant of a size that the adventurers can use. They are free to poke about as is their wont in the gardens—hanging or otherwise, fabulously clean bathing facilities, and lake (which is actually upstairs) of the villa. There is no one way to approach this scenario or investigating its situation, so the suggested set-up is exactly that, and whilst there is an ideal outcome given, the scenario is open enough that events could play in plenty of other directions… The second-place winner in a scenario writing competition the editor was judging, it is easy to see why ‘The Enchantment of Vashundara’ came second (and to wonder what happened to the first), because it is simple and flexible, but with plenty of scope for the players and their characters to interpret the how they will. Its set-up also makes it easy to drop into a campaign with relatively little preparation.
The bulk of Echoes From Fomalhaut #05: The Enchantment of Vashundara is dedicated to the town of Tirwas, but in two parts. The first part is ‘The Divided Town of Tirwas’ which describes the harbour town with its unfinished walls, its inhabitants, various locations, and the various tensions which make it fraught place to visit, let alone live. Located towards the eastern end of the Isle of Erillion—detailed in previous issues—this was once a sleepy village at best, known for its communal customs and penchant for smuggling, but little else. Now it has grown into a town in which smuggling is a way of life; strangers have a habit of going missing or become the victims of attacks or other crimes unless they have paid (or been extorted) for membership into one of the town’s many factions; and factions headed by the town’s Landlords. As with the town writeups in previous issues of Echoes From Fomalhaut, ‘The Divided Town of Tirwas’ goes into some detail about the town and its inhabitants. This includes all eight Landlors and their aims and rivalries, customs such as what might happen to the Player Characters if they are not willing to wear one of the Landlords’ emblems, and numerous NPCs and locations accompanied by rumours and potential hooks. 
The second part is ‘Plunder of the Stone Sacks’, a scenario for Player Characters of Third to Fifth Level. This details a series of caves which in the past were worked and expanded into a series of communal shelters below Tirwas, each family in the town having and furnishing their own cave, but which have since been partially abandoned with some areas closed off, some used as storerooms, others as a means to smuggle goods into the town, and lastly, one area as a gaol and holding area for a certain nasty trade… The Stone Sacks is a cross between a classic dungeon and a working area, the Player Characters needing to use stealth to get around sections of it to avoid being noticed in the areas under guard. Beyond mere curiosity, several hooks are suggested to push the Player Characters to investigative activities in the town and in the Stone Stacks, including disappearances in the town, stopping the smuggling activities, or even looking for an ancient, long-forgotten shrine. Together, ‘The Divided Town of Tirwas’ and ‘Plunder of the Stone Sacks’ form a solid pairing, which could easily be added to a Game Master’s campaign, but really it provides her and her players and their characters with motivations not just with reasons to visit and investigate the town of Tirwas, but also the Isle of Erillion. This is excellent support for the setting and hopefully future issues will see support in a similar fashion.
Rounding out Echoes From Fomalhaut #05: The Enchantment of Vashundara is ‘All is Well in Sleepy Haven’ This describes another coastal settlement on the Isle of Erillion. Where ‘The Divided Town of Tirwas’ and ‘Plunder of the Stone Sacks’ take up half of the fanzine, ‘All is Well in Sleepy Haven’ is a mere tenth of the issue’s length. It is described as unexciting, even dull, and the problem is that it is. There are some missing persons and suggestions that treasure hunters are operating in the area, but it is debatable as whether this would be enough for the Player Characters to be motivated enough to visit the village. To be fair, the descriptions are well done, just as they are elsewhere in the issue, but the write-up of Sleepy Haven is exactly that.
Previous issues of the fanzine came with a map which depicts the outline of a city or town, intended as a handouts for the players. Echoes From Fomalhaut #05: The Enchantment of Vashundara goes one step further with two maps on a double-sided sheet, one of Tirwas and one of Sleepy Hollow. These are done on sturdy paper and as before, nicely done. Physically, the issue is decently presented, the choice of public artwork and new illustrations, all feel fitting. It needs an edit in places, but is otherwise, well written.
Echoes From Fomalhaut #04: Revenge of the Frogs had four articles and felt the better for it, and Echoes From Fomalhaut #05: The Enchantment of Vashundara has four articles and feels all the better for it. In fact, it is better for having the two articles describing a town and the dungeon below it together with reasons to explore both, as well as an intriguing and likeable scenario in the form of the titular ‘The Enchantment of Vashundara’. Echoes From Fomalhaut #05: The Enchantment of Vashundara is a solidly entertaining issue.

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another DM and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry.

Fanzines are fundamentally a means and a platform to support a publisher’s and authors’ favourite roleplaying game. This can be in the good times and the bad, when the roleplaying game a fanzine supports is in print, and when it is not. And when it is not, a fanzine can become the focal point for a roleplaying game’s fans, a way for which they can maintain their interest in the game. This can be whether the fanzine is in print or electronic format. This is the case with Dragon Warriors and Casket of Fays. Dragon Warriors, the fantasy role playing game system published by Corgi Books in the mid-eighties originally as a series of paperbacks, then in the noughties by Magnum Opus via Mongoose Publishing, and more recently by Serpent King Games, as a series of standard-size books. Casket of Fays is a fanzine published by Red Ruin Publishing [https://www.redruin.org/], a fan-community-driven community, and available for free as a PDF.

Published in July, 2020, Casket of Fays #1 – a Dragon Warriors RPG fanzine is a short fanzine, running to just twenty pages. In that limited space it packs in a new monster or two, a preview, new weapons, a new profession or more. Short of an adventure, or two, this is a generally pleasing little medley of content which a Game Master can use in her campaign. The issue opens with Wayne Imlach’s ‘Mere-Trolls’, first of two monster types in the issue. The Mere-Troll is a riverine hunter, humanoid, but reptilian and bestial, which prefers to lair in the muddy waters of the banks of rivers or lakes. They are not however necessarily a danger to most, whereas their wives, or ‘Mere-Hags’, are. Anyone forced to drink the blood of a Mere-Troll or Mere-Hag becomes subservient to them, but being more intelligent and cunning, only the Mere-Hag takes advantage of this. Which means that if adventurers are forced to confront such a creature, she will be guarded by many other beasts!

‘Welcome to the Thousand Islands’ by Damian May is an ‘Extract from the Journal of Damprong Kak of Batuban, Captain of the junk Śakra.’ and a preview for then—and still—forthcoming supplement, Thousand Islands, from Ambula in Fabulam. It is readable, but bereft of context, it simply just is, and without that context, it just feels as if it is taking up space. More useable though are Damian May’s ‘Weapons of the Thousand Islands’, which describes a trio of blades used in the region, such as the Mandau, a heavy chopping sword often with a hilt carved from human bone and used in head-hunting ceremonies and the Karambit, a knife whose blade is shaped like the claw of a tiger and whose hilt has a finger ring which can be used to punch an opponent and prevents the user from being disarmed—though this is jarring when such attempts are made.

Even more useful though, are the entries in Lee Barklam’s ‘A Spell and a Nasty Magical Item’. The spell is Moonthread, a Sorcerer spell which creates a strand of the moon’s light into a thread as light as silk, but strong as heavy rope. It cannot be cut, remains as long as there is moonlight (or the light of the Moonglow spell), and vanishes if exposed to sunlight or touched by a magic weapon. A nice simple spell, which although utilitarian in nature, has some nice flavour and a couple of wrinkles or two. The nasty magical item is nasty, the Scarred Pearl, a short, plain silver rod topped by a heavily scarred pearl, which scarred again with a sharp implement and that scar inflicted permanently on the face of the user’s target, which reduces their looks. It lives up to its description and would be a perfect addition to any villain jealous about the looks of others.

‘Chaubrette: The Barony of Séverac’ by Greg Dzi provides an overview of the Barony of Séverac which lies between the cities of Méore and Quadrille on the Mergeld Sea. It is dominated by Baron Enguerrand backed by the Merchant Guilds of Varnais, known as the Sleepless Port, whose fleets of ships trade far and wide. It also describes the city, along with ‘le Chancre’ or ‘Canker’, the maze of slums and hovels that make up the shanty town outside its walls, in detail enough that a Game Master could draw a simple map, perhaps the only thing that is missing from the article. Wayne Imlach also gives a write-up of ‘Bödvar Bjorn’, a great hero of the Mercanian sagas, a famed sea wolf, berserker and archer of unmatched ability. There are not full stats for him, but again enough for the Game Master to create him should she want to include him as an NPC.

‘The Light Elementalist’ by James Healey and Joshua Roach details a new Profession. The Light Elementalist follows one of the two non-traditional Elemental Paths, the other being Time. They originally drew their power from seven Sun Orbs, but one has been stolen and used by the Priests of the True Faith and two have been bonded to Darkness. The Profession feels underwritten, but is supported with a set of ten increasing powerful spells, such as Flare, which creates a bright light in the sky which blinds everyone within a mile; Sunbeam which inflicts a ray of pure light at a target; and Purge, which removes all diseases and poisons from the subject of the spell. There is a good mix of spells, some intended to heal, others not, which brings spells normally associated with healers and clerics to the sorcerer type of Profession.

Last in the first issue of Casket of Fays is ‘The Tatzelwurm’ by Brock. This is a serpent with the head and forelegs of a cat, which is a minor danger encountered in the northern mountains of the Coradian mainland. It has a poisonous bite and can even exhale the poison. It is a colourful enough creature, but does not come with suggestions as to how to use it since it only appears to prey on lone villagers, shepherd, and the like.

Physically, Casket of Fays #1 is plain and simple. The few illustrations are decent, but like any amateur publication, it could always benefit from a few more. More useful perhaps would have been an extra map in one or two places. The editing is decent, but overall, the issue feels somewhat underdeveloped. This is the first issue though and to an extent, that is to be expected. And of course, Casket of Fays #1 is free to download, so it is very much a labour of love as opposed to be being a commercial venture. For the Game Master running a fantasy campaign—whatever the setting or rules system—Casket of Fays #1 is worth perusing for ideas given that it is free. For the Game Master of a Dragon Warriors campaign, Casket of Fays #1 is definitely worth perusing for ideas, though she may have to develop the content further herself in order to bring some of it to the table..

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another DM and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. Another choice is the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game.

Published by Straycouches Press, Crawl! is one such fanzine dedicated to the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game. Since Crawl! No. 1 was published in March, 2012 has not only provided ongoing support for the roleplaying game, but also been kept in print by Goodman Games. Now because of online printing sources like Lulu.com, it is no longer as difficult to keep fanzines from going out of print, so it is not that much of a surprise that issues of Crawl! remain in print. It is though, pleasing to see a publisher like Goodman Games support fan efforts like this fanzine by keeping them in print and selling them directly.

Where Crawl! No. 1 was something of a mixed bag, Crawl! #2 was a surprisingly focused, exploring the role of loot in the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game and describing various pieces of treasure and items of equipment that the Player Characters might find and use. Similarly, Crawl! #3 was just as focused, but the subject of its focus was magic rather than treasure. Unfortunately, the fact that a later printing of Crawl! No. 1 reprinted content from Crawl! #3 somewhat undermined the content and usefulness of Crawl! #3. Fortunately, Crawl! Issue Number Four was devoted to Yves Larochelle’s ‘The Tainted Forest Thorum’, a scenario for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game for characters of Fifth Level. Crawl! Issue V continued the run of themed issues, focusing on monsters, but ultimately to not always impressive effect, whilst Crawl! No. 6: Classic Class Collection presented some interesting versions of classic Dungeons & Dragons-style Classes for Dungeon Crawl Classics, though not enough of them. Crawl! Issue No. 7: Tips! Tricks! Traps! is a bit of bit of a medley issue, addressing a number of different aspects of dungeoneering and fantasy roleplaying.
Published in November, 2013, as its title suggests, Crawl! No. 8: Firearms! is another focused issue, and that focus is on guns and adding guns to your Dungeon Crawl Classics roleplaying game campaign. Guns are something of a difficult subject when it comes to Dungeon Crawl Classics because it is a fantasy roleplaying game and guns, whether because of their history or their technology, do not belong in a fantasy roleplaying game. Much like firearms historically negate the degree of training necessary to wield a bow effectively on the battlefield, in fantasy, they negate the years of study and training necessary to become a wizard, as well as being easier and faster to reload. They are in the main, the province of roleplaying games and campaigns set in the modern day or the future, although historically, the modern day begins in the seventeenth century when armies and individuals wield arquebuses, flintlocks, wheellocks, and the like. Historical precedent aside, this does not mean that a Dungeon Crawl Classics Judge cannot include or add them to her campaign, and well as providing rules for their use, Crawl! No. 8: Firearms! gives at least one way in which they can be added to a campaign.
Crawl! No. 8: Firearms! opens with Reverend Dak’s ‘Firepower!’. This gives a quick discussion of how and why firearms might be introduced into a campaign before providing rules for their use. Should they be powerful and rare or mundane and not much pop? The advice for power and rare at least is to build limitations into their use, whether that includes limiting them to black powder or non-automatic, or using the optional rules included. The basic rules include their being fast and that they can be aimed, so that the user gains Die Bump up to a bigger die for the initiative, attack, and damage rolls. Damage is always the one die, except when it is doubled for aiming. Taking cover is an action and increases Armour Class, and duels are extremely deadly, inflicting a number of dice’s worth of damage equal to the Level of the Player Character or NPC. Since the duellists will be standing facing each other, this seems fair enough—if nasty! 
Optional rules include making Critical hits deadly, firearms complicated—giving users a negative Die bump to rolls until they are properly trained, and automatic weapons can be used to attack everyone in a ten feet area. Actual stats for guns are given in ‘From Gold to Guns’ by Mike Evans with the Reverend Dak. This covers weapons across four eras—of powder and smoke, gear and bullet, destruction and calamity, and lasers and rockets. The latter group is where the article strays into the realms of Science Fiction, but its contents are very easy to use.
Reverend Dak provides a reason for the inclusion of firearms in a campaign with ‘Invasion!’. This sets up an invasion by an alien species, the reasons why it is invading, and so on, with a series of tables. Thus, who they are, where they are from, what they want, and who and what they brought with them, whilst stats are provided for all of the given invaders in a separate appendix. This is the first of several appendices which round out Crawl! No. 8: Firearms!. ‘Appendix R: References’ lists other roleplaying games where firearms play a role, whilst ‘Appendix S: Submissions’ collects the best submissions to the editor’s blog, and notably adds explosives and bombs to the mix. Lastly, ‘Appendix T: Firearms Critical table’ and ‘Firearms Fumble Table’, both by S.A. Mathis, provide exactly what you expect.
Physically, Crawl! No. 8: Firearms! is decently presented. The writing and editing are good, and artwork, if not of highest quality, is all very likeable. The wraparound cover is a nice touch. The subject matter—and thus the whole issue—is going to be a hit or a miss for most Judges, players, and campaigns. It all boils down to whether or not they want to include the use of firearms alongside their fantasy. If they do, then everything is here in a handy fashion to include it. If not, then the issue will be of little interest, though this does not mean that the issue is by any means a bad one. Even if a Judge has no plans to add firearms to her campaign, there is nothing to stop her reading the issue to find out how it might be done, and Crawl! No. 8: Firearms! certainly provides that. Overall, Crawl! No. 8: Firearms! is a solid, serviceable treatment of its focused subject matter which is easy to bring to the table if that is what a Judge wants for her game.

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

—oOo—


Published by Fantasy Games Unlimited in 1981, Merc: A modern Roleplaying Game of Counter Insurgency was one of the first military themed roleplaying games. It had been preceded by The Morrow Project from Timeline, Ltd., although that was a post-apocalypse roleplaying game, and would be followed by FASA’s Behind Enemy Lines and Role Playing Games, Inc.’s Recon: The Roleplaying Game of the Viet Nam War, both in 1982. The genre would arguably reach its apotheosis in 1984 with the release of Twilight 2000 from GDW. Of course, the earlier Traveller Book 4: Mercenary from 1978 from GDW would cover some of the same subjects and situations as Merc, but being a Science Fiction roleplaying game, it would avoid some of the real-world issues that Merc deals with. What is interesting about the titles in this genre is not that they were published at all, but rather that it took so long for the roleplaying industry to publish straight, non-fantastical treatments of military subjects given that hobby had essentially come out of the wargaming hobby and that many of its designers and players had military experience. 
The designers of Merc set out their stall with, “Think of the possibilities: go back to 1954 and go on patrols with the Legion in Indo-China, or search the countryside of Ireland for I.R.A. terrorists, join 5 Commando in 1964, or even lead a patrol of Soviet 103 Guard Army Airborne into Afghan hill country. With these rules and your imagination you can visit Rhodesia, Chad, Angola, El Salvador, Panama, or even Cuba. Of course, your accommodations won’t be first class and you’ll have people shooting at you, but we guarantee lots of excitement.” Thus, Merc is a role-playing game of modern mercenaries in action, carrying out missions for their employers anywhere in the world, being employed as Soldier of Fortunes operating in small teams. Missions will be covert or overt, and range from assassinations and search and destroy to sweeps and reconnaissance.
Merc comes as a boxed set, which contains a thirty-six-page book, four cardstock reference sheets, plastic transparent overlay, and two six-sided dice. The book covers character creation, including former service and why the Player Character decided to become a mercenary, rules for movement and stealth, small arms combat, vehicles, experience, and a short mission. The reference sheets reprint various tables from the book, whilst the plastic transparent overlay has a target which is placed over the silhouettes of vehicles and men on the other reference sheets and the hit location rolled for. This is likely one of the first uses of a transparent overlay in a roleplaying game, and would most notably be seen again in 1991’s Millennium’s End from Chameleon Eclectic Entertainment and 2007’s Aces & Eights: Shattered Frontier from Kenzer & Company.
A Player Character in Merc is defined by his Physical Appearance, Physical and Mental Attributes—Strength, Agility, Intelligence, Knowledge, Intuition, and Prior Military Service, and one or more Military Specialities. The latter two will be defined by a mercanary’s Physical and Mental Attributes. Physical Appearance values are rolled on three six-sided dice. All Physical and Mental Attributes are measured as percentile values, but range from eleven to sixty-six. These are all generated by rolling two six-sided dice and treating one as the tens dice and the other as the ones dice, again one of the earliest uses of the ‘d66’ in a roleplaying game. The process is relatively straightforward and a player is free to assign the rolls to the attributes as he likes, primarily to be able to select the ‘Military Occupational Specialty’ of his choice.
Name: Ernest LuddeAge: 31Height: 5’ 9”Weight: 170 lbs.
Hair Colour: BlackEye Colour: BrownComplexion: AverageVoice: AverageHandedness: Ambidextrous
ATTRIBUTESStrength 62 – Strong (+5 Test Modifier)Agility 63 – Nimble (+5 Test Modifier)Intelligence 24 – AverageKnowledge 54 – Knowledgeable (+10 Test Modifier)Intuition 61 – Primordial (+5 Test Modifier)Prior Military Service 44 – Extended Service (+10 Test Modifier)
MOS #1: Heavy Weapons ExpertMOS #2: Martial Arts Expert
Frame: MediumCarrying Capacity/Build: Above Average (125 lbs.)
MAJOR TESTSStress Test: 46Dexterity Test: 46Command Control: 51
Mechanically, Merc uses two core mechanics. The first is Major Tests, of which there are three—Stress, Dexterity, and Command Tests. The first is rolled when a Player Character is in a tight situation, under sniper fire, in a minefield, and so on, and can result in him freezing, bolting for cover, or blindly opening fire. The second covers acts of agility and athleticism, whilst the third is how well troops follow a Player Character’s command. All are rolled as percentiles on ‘d66’, the aim being to roll under. The second type of test is the Skill test, and there are nine of them—Detection, Evasion, Pathfinder, Stealth, Intercept Messages, Decipher, Concealment, Set/Disarm Explosive Devices or Traps, and Set/Disarm Non-Explosive Devices or Traps. All are rolled on two six-sided dice, the aim being to roll under a target of six or less, though this target can be modified by the situation and the Merc’s Primary and Secondary MOS.
As a military game, Merc recommends that it be played using 20 mm miniatures. It covers just about everything you would expect—types of movement, terrain, vehicles, types of opponents, combat, ambush, traps, and equipment. Movement is by type, cross-referenced with terrain and how far a mercenary can get in thirty seconds. The vehicles tend to be light and relatively small, so trucks and jeeps, no more than armoured personnel carriers, scout cars, and light tanks, plus limousines and private jets. Opponents include government troops, terrorists, guerrillas, and natives. The list of equipment is exactly that, and anyone expecting something more complex or detailed is likely to be disappointed. Combat uses three different mechanics. Unarmed combat is a standard Skill Test, as are use of grenades and mortars, though with higher targets. Small arms fire though, is rolled on three six-sided dice, the aim being to roll under a target of twelve or less, though this target can be modified by the situation. Sniper shots use the transparent overlay placed over a silhouette. Two six-sided dice are rolled, modifiers are applied, and the result compared to the number on the transparent overlay. The aim is to roll as low as possible to get closer to the aim point. Rolls of zero or below are considered to be on target.
There is not a huge amount of depth to Merc, but damage is where it definitely feels underwritten. Located in the section for the Corporation—the name for the Referee in Merc, and also the employer for the teams of the Player Character mercenaries—it is handled on a single table which with a roll or two, determines hit location, severity and damage inflicted, and effect. Typically, this includes the initial damage, the ongoing damage, and whether or not the damage inflicted is a mortal wound. There is no effect from skill or weapon type as such. The rules also state that Body Points are lost, when in fact they are not. Rather they are gained, whether from the initial damage, from wounds, and ongoing damage, such as internal bleeding. As a mercenary gains more, the greater the chance of his falling unconscious or dying from his wounds. Similarly, the rules for medical care are also underwritten and undeveloped.
Also, for the Corporation, there is a guide to mission types and how many Experience Points a mercenary will earn from successfully completing it. A mercenary will earn more if his MOS is pertinent to the mission and he performed it well, so a medic will earn more for keeping a hostage already known to be seriously wounded, alive long enough to bring him back after being rescued. Experience Points are then divided in two, one half being paid as money to the mercenary and the other awarded as actual Experience Points, and these are split between Attributes and MOS. Exactly how that works is not quite fully explained. Ultimately, should a mercenary acquire enough Experience Points, he is hired by the corporation and retires.
The Corporation is provided with an example of play, which is definitely of use when trying to understand the rules and how the game is meant to be played. There is also a scenario set in Rhodesia in 1975. The Player Characters are mercenaries hired by the White minority government to strike at a village harbouring ‘terrorists’ who have crossed the border with Zambia and begun operating in the area. It comes with a couple of maps and six pre-generated mercenaries. There is a distinct anti-Communist tone to some of them and in comparison, to the pre-generated mercenaries, the scenario does not even name any of the terrorists, give them any personalities or motivations, or backgrounds—and the villagers are ignored all together. The orders for mercenaries are to eliminate the terrorists—and if necessary, the village. Much more of a wargaming than a roleplaying scenario, would anyone really want to roleplay such a mission? There is no denying the historicity of the situation, but that does not make it any less abhorrent.
—oOo— 
It would be at least a year before Merc: A modern Roleplaying Game of Counter Insurgency was reviewed at the time of its release. In the January 1983 edition of The Space Gamer (No. 59), Brian R. Train thought that the game suffered from a lot of ambiguous rules, saying, “This is quite a good game for an (assumed) first effort – I feel its flaws are due basically to not enough development time and design limits. If a later, revised edition of Merc were put out, I would heartily recommend it. As it is, though, I would warn the buyer to ‘approach with caution’ unless he is already quite familiar with the subject matter, in order to fill in the numerous holes.”
Paul Cockburn gave Merc only a thumbnail review in Imagine No. 9 (December 1983), alongside reviews of other Fantasy Games Unlimited titles—Daredevils, Daredevil Adventures, Vol 2, No. 1 & 2, Merc Supplement 1, and Swords & Sorcery for Chivalry & Sorcery. He wrote, “Merc is clearly designed for the gun nut, the sort of role-player who likes to know just how much of a mess his assault rifle will make of a ‘soft’ target.” before concluding “The book is dedicated to ‘Mad’ Mike Hoare, (Mercenary Extraordinaire)—and I’m sure he’ll be delighted.” In comparison, William A. Barton, writing in Different Worlds Issue 32 (Jan/Feb 1984), gave Merc and its first supplement a more detailed review, in the process identifying several issues with the rules which felt should have been caught in the editing and playtesting stages. He stated that, “If the thought of going into corporate employ for combat missions in third-word countries on a regular basis is appealing to you—or if you desperately need additional information to bolster campaigns based on systems such as Traveller’s Mercenary, which lacks data on most of the situations covered by Merc—FGU’s little game of modern counter-insurgency situations might not prove a bad buy for you at all.” However, he thought that the price was “…[j]ust a bit steep for those not thoroughly committed to modern merc role-playing.”
—oOo—
When it was published in 1981, Merc: A modern Roleplaying Game of Counter Insurgency was a very contemporary roleplaying. After all, Colonel ‘Mad’ Mike Hoare would attempt a coup d’état in the Seychelles in November of that year, the film The Wild Geese and the book it was based upon appeared in 1978, and The Dogs of War, the film based upon the book by Frederick Forsyth, had been released the year before. The concept of mercenaries conducting small unit operations in faraway countries was common, and as Soldiers of Fortune, such men were revered and reviled in equal measure. It is rare that a roleplaying game can be or would be as contemporary. Forty years on, and both Merc and the world it depicts are very much a piece of history—and a troublesome one at that. Today, mercenary work has been corporatised as security work and is rarely in the news as it was then, but the world of Merc is one of post-colonial intervention, even meddling, in Third World countries, and it feels, and is, distasteful. As is mention of the fact that mercenaries served with the Nazis in World War II, as is having to determine height, weight, build, and so on, according to ethnicity, as is the scenario being set in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and being employed by the White government to prevent ‘terrorists’ sneaking over the Zambian border and attacking the railway. This was the situation in Rhodesia, but having to roleplay that now as well as the other elements, means that it is horribly dated, and feels at least horribly inappropriate, if not actually racist. And that is not even mentioning that all of the Player Characters are meant to be male. Of course, it depicts what was a male world, but again, it feels unintentionally misogynist.
In some ways more a military skirmish wargame than a roleplaying game, Merc: A modern Roleplaying Game of Counter Insurgency has not dated well in the forty years since it was originally published. At best, it showcases why sometimes the contemporary is not always the best realm for a roleplaying game to be exploring. It might be serviceable for what it is, and arguably not even that in some places, but the world it depicts and what it involves the Player Characters doing is most definitely a different country, and beyond its limited historical significance as a roleplaying game, perhaps Merc: A modern Roleplaying Game of Counter Insurgency should stay there.

“Good evening, and once upon a time…” What if these were the opening words of the six o’clock news? What if the news was not only of the latest government initiative, a war in a faraway country, threat of famine in another, a new economic report, a celebrity’s scandalous activities, and all you would expect, but also of Gods walking the Earth, their cults proudly and joyously celebrating festivals dedicated to them, of myths being enacted and reinforced? What if corporations and celebrities and politicians purposefully align their brands with the Gods in the hope gaining their patronage, the love affairs and scandals of the Gods are the subject of the magazines at the supermarket checkout, Valkyries and Amazons work as mercenaries, Satyrs make for the greatest party hosts and revellers, and victorious sports teams give praise to Nike? And not millennia ago, but yesterday, last week, and tomorrow? This is The World, which is just like ours except that the Gods are real, their faiths accepted alongside the more modern monotheistic faiths of ours, and the supernatural is real, but occluded rather than hidden.

The World is one with multiple pantheons—the Aesir, Manitou, Theoi, Netjer, Kami, Tuatha Dé Danann, Óríshá, Devá, Shén, and Teōtl pantheons—often rivals and competitors for the same myths, legends, artefacts, and aspects of The World. As much as they are idolised, it is rare for any one of the Gods to walk the Earth or directly intervene in the affairs of mortals, primarily because they need to maintain a balance between the human belief and worship in them which forms both their personalities and their roles and the danger that the fickle nature of that belief and worship will drastically change their personalities and their roles. Instead, they reside in Overworlds and Underworlds from which they project Terra Incognita, lands of myth once removed from The World, but accessed via Gates such as Bifrost or Fengdu Ghost City, or Axes Mundi, like travelling the aether or sailing the ocean to reach the River Styx. Many of these Terra Incognita parallel real-world locations in The World. For example, Boston’s Catholic churches double as Tuatha sancta, whilst its city parks are strewn with fairy mounds from which lead stray paths where tolls must be paid or riddles answered to again access dreamlike gardens. Sailors carrying a piece of wood or stone from Ireland may find themselves voyaging into Tir na nÓg rather than docking in Boston Harbour. The shining metropolis of Memphis in Egypt with its skyscrapers and maglev mass transit is contrasted with the ancient and macabre necropolis of Saqqara next door, where with the right spells, entry into the Duat, the realm of the dead, may be found.

The feuds and rivalries between the Gods are not the only sources of conflict in The World. The primary conflict is between the Gods and the Titans. The Titans are also deities, but are archetypal embodiments of a particular purview whose pursuit of their primal urges tend to have destructive effects, especially on the mortal realms. Consequently, the Gods, many of them children of the Titans, imprisoned the Titans, who have rattled their chains ever since, more recently weakening them and allowing their more monstrous offspring to enter The World and threaten humanity. Into this conflict step the Scions. Each is the half-divine child of one the Gods and humanity. Many do not know the true nature of their parentage and so explain their amazing abilities and skills as being due natural talents, others have undergone the Visitation, the moment when their true nature and divine lineage is revealed and they are granted their Birthright, gifts from their godly parent.

This is the set-up for Scion: Second Edition, published by Onyx Path Publishing. Inspired by The Wicked + The Divine by Keiron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie, Roger Zelazny’s Lord of Light, American Gods by Neil Gaiman, the television series Carnivàle, and others, this is a contemporary roleplaying game of modern myth and epic heroism in which not only do the gods walk amongst us, they often have children too. These children, the Scions of the gods, born to the magic of yesterday and the promise of tomorrow, are caught up in a war with the Titans, elder beings who rage against the human world and its wayward gods. As children of the gods, the Player Characters protect the interests of their parents on Earth whilst protecting humanity against the ravages of the Titans. It is explored through not one book, but four, each book representing a different Tier. These are Scion: Origin, Scion: Hero, Scion: Demi-God, and Scion: God, which explore the Scions’ growing ties to their own myths and legends and to the mortal world, the latter weakening as the former strengthens, as they become increasingly involved in divine conflicts.

Scion: Origin is the starting point. The Player Characters are mortals, not yet aware of their true nature, even though divine ichor flows through their veins. They might be a faith healer whose powers are truly divine in nature, a stuntman whose physical prowess enables him to throw himself into any situation, a gambler whose luck truly shines, a mercenary for hire always able to get the job done, but part of that will be their unknown divine mature. Alternatively, a Scion may not be the son or daughter of a God, but a Supernatural being. These include Saints, Kitsune, Satyrs, Therianthropes, Wolf-Warriors, and Cu Sith, who may in turn achieve true divinity like the sons and daughters of the Gods.

A Player Character in Scion: Origin is first defined by a Concept and three Deeds—short-term, long term, and band-term—which combine the Scion’s aims and what his player wants. He has three Paths, one each connected to his Origin, Role, and Society/Pantheon, representing decisions the Scion has made or experiences made, the Origin his background, the Role his occupation or area of expertise, and Society/Pantheon his connection to an organisation, cult, or pantheon. Origin Paths include Adventurer, Life of Privilege, Military Brat, or Child of the Street; Role Paths include Charismatic Leader, Detective, and Technology Expert; and Society/Pantheon the Aesir, Manitou, Theoi, Netjer, Kami, Tuatha Dé Danann, Óríshá, Devá, Shén, and Teōtl pantheons and one of its Gods. In the long term, a Path also provides a route along which a player can develop his character, and will be rewarded in doing so with slightly reduced Experience Point costs. He also has Skills and Attributes, and lastly, a Calling and Knacks. The Calling is an archetype such as Creator, Guardian, Hunter, Lover, and so on, each of which has several associated natural or supernatural benefits, or Knacks. For example, ‘The Bare Minimum’ for the Healer Calling, enables a Scion to tend someone safely even without the right tools and ‘Experienced Traveler’ for the Liminal Calling lets a Scion quickly pick up social cues and language even in the remotest of locations, and is unlikely to be seen as out of place. Some Knacks require the expenditure of Momentum—acquired from failed dice rolls, and whilst a Scion can know multiple Knacks, at the Tier of Scion: Origin, he can only have the one active.

Creating a Scion is a matter of making choices building upon the Concept and selected Pantheon, the player deciding which of his Scion’s Paths is primary, secondary, and tertiary and assigning dots to skills based on each Path’s skills. Attributes are divided into three arenas—mental, physical, social, and are assigned dots based whether they are primary, secondary, or tertiary. The Scion’s Approach, how he prefers to act, whether through Force, Finesse, or Resilience, grants further dots in the three associated attributes. The process is not complex, and whilst it is supported by a solid example, it could have been eased with a clearer summary at the start of the process.

Our sample Scion is the Pre-Visitation Elias Castro who made it big as a successful lawyer defending even bigger-name clients, some of whom were guilty and he managed to get off. He made himself rich and famous—even infamous—and then his conscience got to him. Elias began to drink and gamble, putting himself in debt, leading to a vicious circle of terrible clients, drinking, and gambling. Part of him wants to be off the rollercoaster, part of him continues to enjoy the ride.

Name: Elias Castro
Concept: Off-the-deep-end Gambler
Parent: Hermes
Origin Path: Surburbia – Everybody’s gotta grow up somewhere
Role Path: Charismatic Leader – Honey tongued lawyer
Pantheon Path: Hermes – Caught between two worlds
Calling: Trickster (1)

DEEDS
Short-Term Deed: To take one more risk (Courage)
Long-Term Deed: To get sober (Conviction)
Band-Term Deed:

SKILLS
Culture 3 (Rough & the Smooth), Empathy 5 (I can see through you), Integrity 3 (I stand by everything I say), Leadership 2, Persuasion 5 (Would I lie to you?), Subterfuge 4 (God of Gamblers), Technology 1

ATTRIBUTES
Intellect 3 Might 1 Presence 3
Cunning* 4 Dexterity* 2 Manipulation* 5
Resolve 2 Stamina 1 Composure 3

Movement: 2
Defence: 1

KNACKS
Aura of Greatness, Rumour Miller, Wasn’t Me

Mechanically, Scion: Origin employs the Storypath system, which can be best described as a distillation of the Storyteller system—the mechanics of which date all of the way back to Vampire: The Masquerade—and certainly anyone familiar with the Storyteller system will find that it has a lot in common with the Storypath system, except that the Storypath system is simpler and streamlined, designed for slightly cinematic, effect driven play. The core mechanic uses dice pools of ten-sided dice, typically formed from the combination of a skill and an attribute, for example Pilot and Dexterity to fly a helicopter, Survival and Stamina to cross a wilderness, and Persuasion and Manipulation to unobtrusively get someone to do what a character wants. These skill and attribute combinations are designed to be flexible, the aim being any situation is to score one or more Successes, a Success being a result of eight or more (this can be lowered as Scions become more powerful). Rolls of ten are added to the total and a player can roll them again.

To succeed, a player needs to roll at least one Success, and may need to roll more depending upon the Difficulty of the task. Should a Scion succeed, he can increase the number of Successes with an Enhancement, such as having a fast car in a race or the favour of a particular God, but he needs to succeed in order to use the Enhancement. Any Successes generated beyond the Difficulty become Threshold Success and represent how well the character has succeeded. These can be spent by the player to buy off Complications, for example, not attracting the attention of the Police in a car chase, or to purchase Stunts. These can cost nothing, for example, the Inflict Damage Stunt, whereas the Disarm Stunt costs two and the Critical Hit Stunt costs four. Characters in Scion: Second Edition often have Stunts due to their Birthright, such as Loki, which grants the ability to positively influence someone, but only when the character lies, but Birthrights are outside the scope of Scion: Origin.

Under the Storypath system, and thus in Scion: Origin, failure is never complete. Rather, if a player does not roll any Successes, then he receives a Consolation. This can be a ‘Twist of Fate’, which reveals an alternative approach or new information; a ‘Chance Meeting’ introduces a new helpful NPC; or an ‘Unlooked-for Advantage’, an Enhancement which can be used in a future challenge. Alternatively, a character gains Momentum which goes into a collective pot and which can be spent to add extra dice to a dice pool or used to fuel various Knacks possessed by the Scions. Scion: Origin focuses on three areas of action—Action-Adventure, Procedurals, and Intrigue. The first covers combat and is fairly straightforward. The second handles information gathering, which is divided into two categories. Leads start or continue the plot and so do not have to be rolled for by the players, whereas Clues provide extra information, are more challenging to find, and do require a roll. Intrigue covers social interaction and the reading and shifting of the attitudes of both NPCs and player characters.

Scion: Origin is a roleplaying game of supernatural and divine beings, many of varying power and scope. The mechanics cover this with Scale, both Narrative and Dramatic. Narrative Scale covers minor characters and story elements, whilst Dramatic Scale covers situations when it applies to the Player Characters. When Scale comes into play, it adds a number of Enhancements equal to the difference between the two sides involved in the scene. As with the rest of the Storypath system, Enhancements come into play as effects if successes are generated as part of a test.

The advice for Storyguide includes the general and the specific. The general is the fairly standard and includes ignoring or modifying rules she does not like, ensuring that everyone around the table is comfortable with the tone and content of the game being played, and so on. This does feel underwritten and could have included further advice and safety tools such as the X-Card. The specific discusses how to set up a campaign through steps of what it calls the Plot Engine—the seed, the pitch, and deeds and arcs. Naturally, it emphasis how to bring the myth into the game, but keep it subtle because the Scions are not truly divine, so will not be enacting the Saga of Argonauts, the search for the Golden Fleece, or penetrating the maze of the Minotaur—at least not literally. Instead, they might be enacting them with the myth alluded to, but underlying the mundane. So at the Myth Level of Scion: Origin, set at Iron Level—with the divine present in the mundane world as signs and omens which may or may not be real, bordering on Heroic Level—in which the supernatural has begun to become apparent, the search for the Golden Fleece might turn into a road trip to get a fleece jacket back , whilst penetrating the maze might mean a bureaucracy rather a labyrinth. This can be as subtle or not as the story warrants, the Storyguide advised to play with and enforce mythic tropes such as the Rule of Three, Hometown Advantage, Beauty is Only Skin Deep, and so on. To do this, the Storyguide will need to research and adapt myth upon myth, and depending upon the choices made by her players, the mythos of pantheons she is not familiar with. She is also advised to keep it dramatic, including repeating a call to adventure over and over if a Scion ignores it, slightly changing the nature of the call each time. This is delightfully unsubtle and whilst you might not do it in another roleplaying game, it is perfectly in keeping with the Urban Fantasy genre and thus Scion: Origin.

The setting to Scion: Origin is explored in several ways. This includes several pieces of fiction, all by Kieron Gillen—author of The Wicked + Divine—telling the story of Scion discovering the true nature of the world around and her place in it. Along with the sample pre-generated Scions, these a holdover from the roleplaying game’s first edition, they bring a personal perspective to the setting. One of these examples includes a God not given in the list pantheons to show other deities can be included. As well as exploring the nature of The World and its differences with ours, several cities are described, including their links to the Terra Incognito and the Axis Mundi. They include Boston and New York, Kyoto and Memphis, Mexico City and Varanasi, and more. Not all in the same detail, but they do suggest how other cities might be explored in a similar fashion. There is also a good chapter of antagonists, including archetypes, using qualities, flairs (one-shot abilities which require a cool-down period to use again), and utilities to build important NPCs, advice on creating them, and numerous ready-to-play examples. The latter are accompanied by design notes which explore the principles of each mythic creature, suggesting how they can be used and adapted from one pantheon to another.

Rounding out Scion: Origin is a set of appendices. The first explores six Supernatural Paths. These include Saints, Kitsune, Satyrs, Therianthropes, Wolf-Warriors, and Cu Sith. Of these, Therianthropes are lycanthropes, Wolf-Warriors are berserkers, and Cu Sith are fey canines. Guidelines are given on how to adjust them to model other mythical figures, such as adapting the Wolf-Warrior to be a classical Amazon, a Dahomey Amazon, and a Shieldmaiden. These shift Scion: Origin away from being a roleplaying game about the divine, and more to encompass the Urban Fantasy genre, as well as pleasingly demonstrating the flexibility of these archetypes. That said, more of them included in the book would have been nice. The second lists all of the major Gods and their Callings and Purviews for all ten pantheons presented in Scion: Origin. They include the Aesir or Norse Gods, the Manitou or Algonquian pantheon, the Theoi or Greco-Roman pantheon, Netjer or Egyptian pantheon, the Kami or Japanese Gods, the Tuatha Dé Danann or Irish Gods, the Óríshá or Yórúba pantheon, the Devá or Gods of South Asia, the Shén or Chinese pantheon, and Teōtl or Aztec pantheon. These are lists only, and whilst useful, further research upon the part of the Storyguide and her players will be needed beyond this. The third and last appendix provides a conversion guide from the first edition to the second edition of Scion: Origin.

Physically, Scion: Origin is well-written, the full colour artwork throughout is excellent, and the whole affair is attractive. Perhaps in places it feels a little too concise, especially in the examples of the rules. What Scion: Origin is lacking though, is a beginning scenario, which would suggest some idea as to how the designers intend the roleplaying game to be played. However, there is the quick-start for it, A Light Extinguished: A Jumpstart For Scion Second Edition, which could be played with the full rules using Scions of the players’ own design, rather than the pre-generated ones provided in the quick-start. More of a problem is the lack of story hooks or campaign suggestions which might have helped spur the Storyguide’s imagination. Similarly, it would have been interesting to see myths taken from the different pantheons and worked through to see how they could work in Scion: Origin. Doing so would also have been a chance for the designers to showcase some of the less familiar pantheons. Elsewhere an example of play and a full example of combat would both have been helpful.

Scion: Origin is a roleplaying game about playing Gods to be, so it is almost as if Scion: Origin is wanting to pull the Scions onto the step in their Paths to divinity, which technically would be Scion: Hero, but it never goes as far as pulling the setting of The World and the Scions over that threshold. There is a sense of the liminal to Scion: Origin which is not helped by the lack of examples and the Storyguide being left to research, adapt, and develop myths of the pantheons to really get started. This is not to say that the tools are not there for the Storyguide to get started—the Storypath system is suitably cinematic, the advice is solid, and the background is good, but Scion: Origin does not help the Storyguide make that first step into The World easy. However, Scion: Origin is a roleplaying game full of great potential and a roleplaying game in which the Player Characters are also full of great potential. For the Storyguide willing to work myths, Scion: Origin will turn into some potentially mythic stories and adventures.

Doom on the Warden is a scenario 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 make use of the fantastic devices of the gods and the ancients that is technology, and 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’.
Published following a successful Kickstarter campaign, Doom on the Warden is a special scenario. Written by James M. Ward, the designer of Metamorphosis Alpha, it is intended to be played using between six and eight characters with plenty of play experience behind them and plenty of scavenged equipment and artefacts. It can be played as a convention scenario and there are guidelines towards that end, but Doom on the Warden is definitely a scenario which experienced and long-time players of Metamorphosis Alpha will get the most out of. This is primarily for three reasons and why the scenario is so special. First, the scenario takes place on the fabled Level Zero, the equivalent of a lost Xanadu or Atlantis where some, all, or even none of the answers might be found as to exactly what is going on aboard the Starship Warden. Second, in exploring this Level Zero and discovering its secrets, one potential outcome is that Doom on the Warden could set the Game Master’s campaign on an entirely different course—literally and figuratively. Third, Doom on the Warden is inspired by another scenario all together—S1 Tomb of Horrors.
Published in 1978, and more recently in the 2013 Dungeons of Dread and Tales from the Yawning Portal from 2017, S1, Tomb of Horrors was designed by E. Gary Gygax and has always had the reputation of being the ultimate ‘Deathtrap Dungeon’, being filled with puzzles and traps which when combined with a seeming random factor makes it a challenge that is almost impossible to beat. It would be reprinted multiple times, receive a boxed sequel in the form of Return to the Tomb of Horrors, and its legendary status would ensure that it appeared at number three in Dungeon #116’s “30 Greatest D&D Adventures of All Time” (November, 2004). S1 Tomb of Horrors was always intended to present a challenge to the most experienced of players and James M. Ward has taken the same approach to Doom on the Warden. It is designed to challenge the players of Science Fiction roleplaying games, presenting difficult situations and fearsome opponents, but is different to S1, Tomb of Horrors in a number of ways. Obviously, it is a Science Fiction rather than a fantasy adventure—although buildings and bunkers to be found in the scenario could lend it the description of being a Science Fiction ‘dungeon bash’, but the puzzles and traps to found on Level Zero of the Starship Warden are less random and less arbitrary, and there is not the feeling that there is with S1, Tomb of Horrors that the Game Master—and thus E. Gary Gygax—is trying to kill his players’ characters. Lastly, where the title of S1, Tomb of Horrors suggested that as a scenario it was a combination of horror and fantasy, and was not, the title of Doom on the Warden does not suggest that it is a combination of Science Fiction and horror, but actually is. Doom on the Warden takes its Player Characters from megalophobia to nyctophobia to triskaidekaphobia to phobophobia to simply a sense of quiet dread…
Whether through discovery of their own or learning of it through a myth or legend, perhaps imparted by a tribal shaman, Doom on the Warden begins with the Player Characters at the entrance to ‘heaven’, an engineering hatch through which rises a great chimney, ascending to the home of the Ancients. Inside they discover several bodies of the Ancients—perhaps cast out of Heaven?—and as the chimney turns into a walkway, the Player Characters find themselves seemingly in a land of the giants, a forest of Brobdingnagian proportions, filled with giant trees, hornets the size of fists, and beasts such as rabbits and squirrels large enough to become beasts of burden. As with other levels on the Warden, Level Zero is a large oval shape, approximately eighteen miles across from the bow to the stern and fourteen miles from port to starboard. The level is divided into three concentric ovals or zones, working inward, a forest of giant willows, a berry plantations laid out with patches of mutant berries, and extensive flower gardens full of glens of mutated flowers, each one of different character and invoking a different sense of fear. There are plenty of encounters to be had in each of these zones, depending upon the direction in the Player Characters want to explore. They are free to wander and there is a table of random encounters included for each zone. Most of these encounters will either be dangerous or hostile, but there are plenty which are not and many of these are quite lightly done, adding an element of humour and roleplaying which nicely contrasts with the dangers and hostilities to be found elsewhere. One thing that the Player Characters will discover is that there is something or someone at work on the level—forestry robots work the forests, others work to restore the damage done by the catastrophe centuries ago, and there are transport devices readily and willing to ferry the Player Characters onward.
Ultimately, the Player Characters should make their way to the centre of the level and the island in the centre of Blume Lake—the latter a nod to the brothers who were early investors and co-owners of TSR, Inc. The island is home to a bunker, a place of the Ancients, and clearly an important one. Numerous robots protect it, but whatever intelligence is at work on the Level, it seems to want help… The final scenes of Doom on the Warden will see the Player Characters either save the Starship Warden or…?
Doom on the Warden is a difficult and challenging adventure. There are numerous encounters which will kill the Player Characters, a few simply by design, many through a player’s foolishness, but most through luck and the roll of the dice. As they proceed across this secret level, the players and their characters will be rewarded if their play is both careful and intelligent—and not just in terms of their characters’ survival, for there are plenty of artefacts and equipment to be scavenged too.
There are two ways in which Doom on the Warden can be run. One is as part of an ongoing campaign, the author suggesting that it be run as the midpoint of such a campaign. By that time, the players and their characters should have accumulated plenty of playing experience of Metamorphosis Alpha and the Starship Warden, as well as their characters having collected numerous artefacts, devices, and weapons of the Ancients. Even then, Doom on the Warden may be too challenging a scenario and its degree of lethality too high, such that it may even be a campaign-ending scenario. If so, it might be better off run towards the end of a campaign, or even as the culmination of campaign, more so because if the Player Characters are successful, the scenario sets the campaign and the Starship Warden in a wholly new (old) direction.
The other way of running the Doom on the Warden is as a tournament scenario much as S1 Tomb of Horrors was originally intended. This is run as a more linear scenario, rather than allowing the Player Characters the freedom to roam, the aim being to get them to Blume Lake and the bunker on the island at its centre. As well as advice on running the scenario, the author includes three sets of different pre-generated Player Characters and their motivations for exploring Level Zero aboard the Starship Warden. For the purposes of tournament play, each of the three groups of pre-generated Player Characters begin play with more knowledge about Level Zero than they would if the scenario is being as part of an ongoing campaign. The first group consists of Pure Strain Humans, members of the Vigilist tribe which dates back to the original Metamorphosis Alpha campaign run by James Ward. The Vigilists and their village were created by E. Gary Gygax and their inclusion is a nice tribute to him alongside the author being inspired by S1 Tomb of Horrors. The aim of the Vigilists is to ascend to Heaven and restore the Starship Warden to its original course. The second group consists of Wolfoids from Epsilon City—as detailed in the supplement of the same name—and like the Pure Strain Humans, their aim on Level Zero is to take control of the ship. Lastly, the third group consists of Mutants, drawn from across multiple levels of the Starship Warden, who also want to take control of the ship, primarily to deny control to the Pure Strain Humans. Almost a fifth of Doom on the Warden is dedicated to character sheets for the three different groups. They consist of eight Mutant, one Pure Strain Human, and six Wolfoid pre-generated character sheets, there being just the one Pure Strain Human character sheet because they are easy to roll up in comparison to Mutants and Wolfoids. Lastly, Doom on the Warden includes three pre-generated Player Characters inspired by backers of the Kickstarter.
Physically, at just forty-eight pages, Doom on the Warden is a nicely presented hardback. Both writing and editing are decent and as you would expect from a title from Goodman Games, the range of artwork is excellent. In particular, Peter Mullen’s double-page spreads inside the front and back covers really capture the scope and scale of the Starship Warden. They, like much of the artwork can be used as handouts when running Doom on the Warden.
If there is an issue with Doom on the Warden, it is perhaps that it is difficult to use, that it has the potential to end a campaign. That though is by design and by inspiration, S1 Tomb of Horrors itself suffering from both issues. Fortunately, Doom on the Warden is very much less arbitrary in its play and its design than S1 Tomb of Horrors. If there is anything missing from Doom on the Warden, it is a gallery of its artwork which the Game Master can use as handouts for her players. 
Doom on the Warden is a fantastic scenario. It is big, it is nasty, it is dangerous, and it has the scope to either end a campaign, whether as a Total Party Kill or as the culmination of an ongoing campaign, or set both campaign and the Starship Warden on a wholly new (old) course. It lives up to its inspiration, S1 Tomb of Horrors, but goes beyond it to have the Player Characters’ actions have an effect upon Level Zero of the Starship Warden, on the Starship Warden itself, and on the campaign, and is better for it. Doom on the Warden is deadly and if the Player Characters are not careful or smart, they will get killed, but not necessarily in as arbitrary a fashion as S1 Tomb of Horrors. Which means that if the Player Characters can succeed and overcome the challenges presented in Doom on the Warden, then both they and their players truly have the right to feel a sense of great accomplishment.

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

—oOo—


The undead have arisen and are dead set on chewing down on any still alive. A handful of Survivors are stuck in the centre of a city, but know if they can get to the helipad, there is a helicopter which they can escape aboard. Between them though, is a cadaver cavalcade with Bullets in short supply—though nearby buildings can be scavenged for further supplies and weapons, and the Survivors are as equally as desperate to escape as each other. This is the set-up for Zombies!!!, which takes a classic zombies movie plot and turns it into a board game designed for between two and six players, aged fifteen plus. Originally published by Journeyman Press in 2001—and by Twilight Creations, Inc., since 2002, Zombies!!! combines dice rolling, hand management, and take-that mechanics with the themes of exploration, combat, and bloody zombie horror!

Open up Zombies!!! and you find a lot of components—thirty map tiles, a fifty-card Event deck, Life and Bullet tokens, six human Survivor miniatures, and a hundred zombie miniatures! Yes, really. A hundred zombie miniatures! The miniatures are simple. The humans all wield shotguns, whilst the zombies are all reaching out for their next victim whilst moaning , “Brainssss…” The map tiles are each four inches square and marked with a three-by-three grid of squares. They depict the streets and buildings of the town where Zombies!!! takes place. Some have named buildings like the Toy Store, Police Station, and Hospital. Each named building indicates the number of zombies found in the building and the number of Life and Bullet tokens which can be scavenged from the building. One map tile is marked with a helicopter. This is the Helipad, the destination which is one of the ways of winning a game of Zombies!!!. The map tiles are done in grey and muted tones, reflecting that this is a town at night.

What stands out though about the production values of Zombies!!! are its Event cards. Painted by Dave Aikins these are superb slices of horror, each depicting a Survivor dealing with the zombies swarming the town. Perhaps sneaking past as in ‘Alternate Food Source’, which stop all zombies from attacking that Survivor until his next turn; confronting them like throwing a ‘Grenade’ in the Army Surplus Store, killing all zombies inside, but inflicting damage on the Survivor too; or healing from their attacks, such as applying a ‘First Aid Kit’, which prevents the Survivor from taking damage when in the Hospital or Drug Store. Many of the cards are designed to complicate the lives of other Survivors. For example, ‘Butter Fingers’ forces a target Survivor to discard a weapon or two Bullets; ‘Your Shoe’s Untied’ halves the target Survivor’s movement roll; and ‘Slight Miscalculation’ fills a target building up with zombies, up to double the amount given on the named map tile. Many of the Event cards work only specific buildings, for example, the aforementioned ‘First Aid Kit’ and ‘Grenade’. Lastly, the rules are done in simple black and white and easy enough to read and understand. The rules run to three pages, the other page devoted to a piece of fiction and a nice little foreword by George Vasilakos, publisher of the zombie roleplaying game, All Flesh Must Be Eaten.

Set-up for Zombies!!! is easy. Each player receives a Survivor miniature, three Life tokens, three Bullet tokens, and three Event cards. The Town Square map tile is placed in the centre of the table, the other map tiles are shuffled and the Helipad tile placed at the bottom. Then on each turn, a player draws a new map tile and places it anywhere on the map as long as any of its roads connect to the adjacent tiles. Zombie miniatures are added to the new tile and building on a name tile as indicated. The player refreshes his hand of Event cards back up to three, rolls a die to determine how far his Survivor can move, fighting any zombies encountered square by square. To defeat a zombie, a player rolls a die and hopes to get a four, five, or six. If he does, the zombie is defeated and added to the player’s collection. If he rolls a one, two, or three, he loses a Life token. If he loses all of his Life tokens, his Survivor miniature is moved back to the Town Square map tile to start again, and he loses any weapons he has from Event cards and half of his accumulated Zombie miniatures. Alternatively, if the player has any Bullet tokens, he can spend them on a one-for-one basis and hopefully increase the value of the roll to survive the combat and continue moving. Lastly, the player rolls a die and moves that number of zombies in any direction he likes. Typically, this will be either away from his Survivor miniature to ease his path on his next turn or towards the Survivor miniature of another player to make his next turn just that bit more difficult, or a mixture of both. During the turn, a player can also play a single Event card and also discard one.

Play continues like this until the Helipad map tile is drawn. This is always placed by the player with the least number of zombies currently in front of him. This will typically be nearer that player’s Survivor miniature than those of his rivals, but at that point, Zombies!!! becomes a race game to get to the Helipad first. The player whose Survivor gets there first wins the game. The other way to win is by defeating and accumulating a total of twenty-five zombies in front of you.

Physically, Zombies!!! is a decently produced game—at least for 2001. The rule book is a bit plain, but the zombie miniatures are fun and the tiles decent, if a little thin. The Event cards are to reiterate, fantastic. They really capture the grim, bloody nature of the situation that the Survivors find themselves in, and they are the exact reason why Zombies!!! would go on to win the 2001 Origins Awards Best Graphic Presentation of a Board Game. They are also the same reason why later editions of Zombies!!! would raise the suggested minimum playing age from twelve to fifteen.

Zombies!!! manages to be both a great game and a terrible game at the same time. It is a great game because it is pure Ameritrash. It is high on luck, it involves lots of deadly combat, has a high take that aspect as everyone plays Event cards against each other, and it does not so much ooze theme, as bash it against the nearest wall and splatter it across the room. It is also easy to learn, easy to teach, and it can be fun to play. It can also be tense because each player is desperately trying to husband both Life and Bullet tokens against the need to search for more, entering the dark confines of buildings to do so. It is a terrible game because it is pure Ameritrash. It involves too much luck and the take that value is high; many of the weapon Event cards only work in specific buildings, which whilst thematic, limits their use; there is too much combat without any real significance, which slows game play—Zombies!!! does feel as if it should be a shorter game; and ultimately, the Survivors are just waiting for the Helipad map tile to be drawn and the race for the endgame to begin, because trying to get the twenty-five zombies necessary to win is really challenging.

In 2021 Zombies!!! is twenty years old. Not only did it win an Origins award, but would receive sixteen expansions, which in turn added a military base, a mall, a school, and more, including new themed map tiles, Event cards, and zombie miniatures. As much as these added theme and further showcased Dave Aikins’ art, they did have the side effect of increasing the space and time needed to play Zombies!!!. Plus, the game received spin-off titles enabled players to play as the zombies hunting humans, deal with an alien invasion, and even have the players face skeletons rather than zombies back in medieval times. Which all serve to highlight how successful Zombies!!! was. Indeed, it would ride the wave of popularity that hit board games in the noughties all the way up to the release of The Walking Dead television series, and beyond… Notably, it would make the jump from specialist shops that supported the hobby into mainstream shops, especially ones that sold CDs, DVDs, and the like. With its eye-catching, action-packed cover, this ensured that Zombies!!! reached a wider audience that it would not have done otherwise.

It is easy to dismiss Zombies!!!, but it has been highly popular and despite its flaws, it is still playable, it is very easy to bring to the table, and it can be fun to play, even after twenty years. Zombies!!! is a still a classic ‘beer ‘n’ pretzels’ treatment of a classic horror situation.
—oOo—
Twilight Games is currently running a campaign for the Zombies!!! 20th Anniversary Edition on Kickstarter. (With thanks to Niamh for her loan of her copy of Zombies!!!, which she can definitely have back.)

The Pegasus Plateau & Other Stories: Seven Ready-to-Play Adventures for RuneQuest is an anthology of scenarios designed for use with RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. Published by Chaosium, Inc., the septet is designed for use by a Game Master new to Glorantha and is set across the various lands of the Sartarite tribes in Dragon Pass. The scenarios will see the Player Characters attend a festival and compete in a great competition, rescue clan regalia, come to the aid of a distant village beset by a ghostly monster, help lift a curse from a village in danger of famine, search for missing children in woods infested with ghouls and a skulk, investigate a previously unknown ruin, and venture out onto the Plains of Prax to attend a wedding ceremony. In order to run any of the scenarios, the Game Master will need no more than the core rules for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and the Glorantha Bestiary, although The Glorantha Sourcebook may prove useful for its further information. The scenarios in The Pegasus Plateau & Other Stories do not constitute a campaign, but they can be worked into a campaign, especially one set in and around the hamlet of Apple Lane and the lands of the Colymar tribe, such as RuneQuest Gamemaster Screen Pack and The Smoking Ruin & Other Stories.

The Pegasus Plateau & Other Stories opens with the titular ‘The Pegasus Plateau’. It takes place before the Three Emeralds Temple, which is dedicated to the Ernalda and stands below the Pegasus Plateau, a few miles south of Clearwine. Pegasus Plateau is notable as having been the home to a flight of Hippogriffs, which serve as the spiritual liaison between Earth and Sky and guide the Three Winds into Dragon Pass. Recently, a flight has returned to the plateau and the priestesses of the Three Emeralds Temple have decided to reinstate the Three Winds Celebration, a three-day festival which ends in a race up the almost unclimbable plateau to locate and a chance to bond with a hippogriff and so make it a competitor’s mount. The Player Characters not only have the opportunity to participate in the Three Winds games—and very much should participate—they also have the chance to interact with a number of different NPCs. These include the priestesses at the temple, the various traders attending the festival, and their fellow competitors. This can lead the Player Characters becoming involved with local politics—the nearby Locaem tribe is currently in turmoil following the death of its leadership during the Dragonrise, as well as creating both rivalries and friendships with their fellow competitors.

Ultimately, the winners of the Three Winds games will have to ascend to the top of the plateau, locate the flight of Hippogriffs, and attempt a bonding. The ascent is difficult and involves several unexpected challenges, not least of which can come from the other competitors. Good roleplaying throughout the festival may grant the Player Characters both clues and advantages. ‘The Pegasus Plateau’ is a good scenario, one that gives the Player Characters the opportunity to shine and the chance to really begin building their reputations and legends. After all, how much greater a starting point is there than bonding with a Hippogriff? However, it is a busy scenario with lots going on and several things for the Game Master to keep track off. The Game Master will also need to work with her players to get their characters involved, as unlike the other scenarios in the anthology there is no standard reason for them to attend the festival. Consequently, it feels a little underwritten in places and too busy in others for a scenario designed for a beginning Game Master and whilst it is the anthology’s titular scenario, it does not feel quite right as the opening scenario for the anthology. However the Game Master decides to use ‘The Pegasus Plateau’, its outcome is likely to be memorable for the Player Characters and their players, there are both NPCs which can become recurring members of the campaign, and hooks the Game Master can develop into further adventures.

The second scenario, ‘The Grey Crane’, is perhaps the easiest of the entries in The Pegasus Plateau & Other Stories to work into a campaign built around the content and scenarios contained in the RuneQuest Gamemaster Screen Pack. It takes place in the lands of the Hiording Clan, part of the Colymar tribe which shares Apple Lane with the Varmandi Clan, although it could be moved to another clan altogether. Either way, the Player Characters are summoned to the clan hall of their affiliated clan along with the great and the good of the clan as the chieftain is about to receive a small delegation from Lunar Tarsh under a banner of peace. Not all of the tribe are happy to see the Lunars—and some of the Lunar delegation are unhappy to be there—but the leader of the delegation causes an uproar when he politely asks to see a set of relics, known as the ‘Grey Crane’, sacred to the clan and associated with a clan legend involving the death of an overly ambitious and misguided alchemist known as Miskander. This is a chance for the Player Characters to test out their feelings about the Lunar Empire versus the demands of Sartarite hospitality, persuading the current holder of the relics either way. Whatever the outcome, a week later, the relics are stolen, and the obvious culprits are the Lunar delegation which just visited. The chieftain charges the Player Characters with recovering it, which means travelling to the Lunar Tarshite’s camp and again testing out their feelings about the Lunar Empire, but with the situation reversed.

‘The Grey Crane’ is a much more straightforward scenario. It does the social nuances of both receiving and ‘probably’ acting as a delegation nicely, and whilst the final twist as to where the ‘Grey Crane’ actually is feels a bit like a deus ex machina, it actually works and is explained why. The scenario also does a good job of humanising the Lunar Tarshites and if used with the adventures in the RuneQuest Gamemaster Screen Pack would serve to help pull the Player Characters into their local community.

Previously released to mark the anniversary of the passing of Greg Stafford, ‘The Rattling Wind’ takes the Player Characters east to the remote Antorling Clan hamlet of Farfield in the foothills of the Quivin Mountains near the Dog-Rat Valley. Of late, the village has been attacked by the ‘Rattling Wind’, a ‘monster in the night’ which has killed locals once a week for the last three weeks, its arrival heralded by a thunderous cadence and the shaking of shutters and windows as it passes, disappearing into the night after leaving its victims crushed. The desperate villagers cannot account for what caused this, only pointing to the arrival of a family of Ducks into the area as the only recent event of note.

‘The Rattling Wind’ is a classic action-horror-mystery which uses a well-worn plot, but uses it to good effect. It comes with secrets and consequences and a handful of not always likeable NPCs, including a grumpy Duck! It is more of an investigative scenario than the previous ones in the anthology, leading to a good mix of interaction and fantastic action scenes, as the Player Characters first poke around and then are confronted by the threat as it comes rattling out of the night to take its victims. The solutions to the situation are straightforward, enabling the adventurers to tackle with either brains or brawn. The former will be required early on in the scenario and perhaps later on if the clues are not necessarily found. There is no right way to address the situation in The Rattling Wind and the adventurers are pleasingly not penalised for choosing one means of resolution over another.

There is a degree of the Gothic to ‘Crimson Petals’, the fourth scenario, which takes place in the village of Greyrock, which has been forced to the edge of famine, forcing the inhabitants to wider hunting and even greater acts of raiding on nearby villages. The villagers are suspicious of outsiders and although in desperate need of help, not always welcoming of it, but astute investigation will reveal carefully hidden goat bones, a preponderance of red flowers, a blocked temple to Ernalda, and a sickness of red blotches found on men, women, and children alike. If they get nowhere, it is the children who will be able to supply the Player Characters with certain information, enabling them to investigate further. This is a lovely touch in an investigative scenario which will probably benefit from the inclusion of an Ernaldan priestess and a shaman—if not both.

‘Gloomwillow’s Hollow’ is set in the Woods of the Dead, the lands of Brangbane, the Ghoul King, between Herongreen and Alone, and includes a description of the Highwall Inn, previously detailed in Highwall Inn for HeroQuest and Questworlds to mark the first anniversary of Greg Stafford’s passing and The Coming Storm, a campaign sourcebook for HeroQuest Glorantha. The adventure, actually called ‘The Hollow’, begins with Player Characters in Alone, hired by the city’s desperate mayor to find the more than a dozen children who have disappeared into the nearby Woods of the Dead in the past few weeks—or to avenge their deaths. Harried by strange batrachian creatures, the Player Characters are drawn into the Woods of the Dead where they must explore a twisted, arboreal dungeon which almost seems to be alive as it thrashes about them. ‘The Hollow’ is a dark and twisted adventure which may well put off the Player Characters from entering another forest any time soon.

In some ways, ‘The Ruin on the Stream’ is the strangest adventure in the anthology. Whether due to rumours of strange lights, sounds, or sights or perhaps of indication of a ruin marked on ancient rather than modern maps, the Player Characters are drawn to a rich and verdant area where dinosaurs may be found as well as a set of ancient ruins. There they encounter a Dragonewt ready and willing to communicate and even teach them about the purpose of the ruins. He encourages their participation and if they do, the Player Characters are put through a series of tests, participating in his heroquest and in the process learning secrets of the past. This is a good scenario for any Lhankor Mhy Player Character, who might be nudged to investigate the site following the purchase of some maps available in the earlier ‘The Pegasus Plateau’. The Game Master will probably wants to conduct a little further information in The Glorantha Sourcebook, especially if she want to develop sequels to this scenario.

The last scenario in The Pegasus Plateau & Other Stories is ‘The Pairing Stones’, which takes the Player Characters east out of Sartar and onto the Plains of Prax. They are employed as caravan guards by a Trader Prince of Issaries who is taking a pack train carrying various trade goods to sell at a wedding. This wedding will be held at the Pairing Stones, two natural pillars of differing colours leaning towards each other, where it has become common for those of different tribes and nations to marry. The marriage in question is to be between a prince and princess of the Impala and Bison tribes, the hope being that the union will help end the ongoing feuds between the tribes. Unfortunately, when the pack train arrives at the Pairing Stones, the place is in uproar—the bride-to-be, Delenda Bretta’s Daughter, has been  kidnapped by Rhino Riders! The Player Characters’ employer quickly negotiates their involvement in the search for the missing bride. The situation is, of course, no simple abduction, and the story behind ‘The Pairing Stones’ has a familiar feel, but the scenario is nicely set up, the NPCs’ motivations well described, and the potential outcomes of the scenario explored in some detail. Overall, it is well told and the scenario will introduce Sartarite Player Characters to Prax and Praxian customs.

The Pegasus Plateau & Other Stories does not only include scenarios. In the case of ‘Gloomwillow’s Hollow’, there is extra information about the region in and around the Woods of the Dead and the dangers it contains, principally, of course, the Ghoul King and his ghoul horde. A quartet of adventure seeds provide further reasons for the Player Characters to revisit the area and perhaps put an end to the threats it is home to—though beginning Player Characters are likely to find these threats very challenging. Elsewhere, the anthology describes the Locaem, the tribe upon whose lands upon which the Three Emeralds Temple stands. The description includes its history right up to its difficult relation with the Lunar Empire, walking a fine line between deference and rebellion, until the last king and his family were killed in the Dragonrise. The tribe’s clans are also detailed as are the various places of interest on its territory. The last entry in the anthology is a write-up of ‘Renekot’s Hope’, a small village lying on the route between Tarsh and Dragon Pass. It is a community of refugees, ex-veterans, and exiles wanting to avoid the conflict between Sartar and the Lunar Empire, so is home—and a would-be home—for the disparate types which typically make up the Player Characters. Various NPCs are detailed, accompanied by some excellent illustrations, and along with the village major locations, a trio of potential threats are described, ready for the Game Master to develop. ‘Renekot’s Hope’ is designed as a starting location for the Player Characters and a campaign, though it is in a region which is not as well covered as Sartar and the area around the Colymar tribal lands currently is.

Physically, The Pegasus Plateau & Other Stories is as solidly presented as you would expect for a title for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. The illustrations are excellent throughout, the index good, and sections of boxed text provide supplementary information, such as a guide to the Great Winter or where to look for information about the full Draconic Creation Myth, or advice for the Game Master, such as setting the ‘Goals for this Scene’. Both provide help for the Game Master, especially for the Game Master new to RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. Physically, there is an issue with the anthology, it is with the maps. A variety of styles is used, which gives the book a slightly inconsistent feel and the regional map, which shows the placement of the book’s content, is not necessarily an easy read. Certainly, some maps are easier to read than others.

None of the scenarios in The Pegasus Plateau & Other Stories are very long, each one needing two or three sessions to play through. This makes them easy to work into a campaign, especially one set in and around Sartar, though in some cases, they do require a degree of preparation, in some cases more than might be necessary for the beginning Game Master. Some of the stories verge on the cliché, but where this is so, the stories are well-handled, and in all cases, the potential outcomes of each scenario is usefully explored. Overall, the seven scenarios in The Pegasus Plateau & Other Stories: Seven Ready-to-Play Adventures for RuneQuest showcase the diversity of adventures and stories which can be told in Glorantha and a session or three.

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

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


—oOo—

Name: Full Fathom Five
Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Paul Fricker

Setting: 1840s South Seas
Product: One-Shot Scenario
What You Get: Sixty page, 5.63 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Moby Dick meets the Mythos (with Sea Shanties).Plot Hook:  The lure of the sea runs deep.Plot Support: Twenty-three pre-generated Investigator sheets, portraits for all NPCs and Investigators, staging advice for the Keeper, deck plans, glossary and location guide, five handouts, three Mythos NPCs/monsters.Production Values: Clean and tidy, decent deck plans, good handouts, and clearly done pre-generated Investigators.
Pros
# Nautical one-night, Blood Brothers-style one-shot scenario
# Potential convention scenario
# Different historical setting# Twenty-three pre-generated Investigators and/or NPCs
# Nasty series of deaths# Challenging switch between Investigators, victims, and/or NPCs
# Challenging roleplaying of Investigators, victims, and/or NPCs# Strongly plotted# Natty nautical X-card# Sea Shanties

Cons
# Twenty-three pre-generated Investigators and/or NPCs
# Involves whaling (animal cruelty)# Challenging switch between Investigators, victims, and/or NPCs# Heavily plotted# All male cast# Sea Shanties
Conclusion
# Different historical setting
# Challenging roleplaying of Investigators, victims, and/or NPCs# Nasty nautical one-shot# Sea Shanties

Published in 2015, Shadow of the Demon Lord is roleplaying game which feels like a combination of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and the Dungeons & Dragons Ravenloft setting that is slipping towards Fantasy Flight Games’ Midnight setting by way of The Dying Earth and some steampunk elements and an unhealthy dose of Heavy Metal. Published by Schwalb Entertainment, it combines fast character generation—taking no less than five minutes—and offers a player  plenty of choices in what his character becomes; models short campaigns which take a Player Character from Zero Level to Tenth Level, a group of characters going up in Level at end of each adventure so that a campaign can be played in just eleven sessions or scenarios; and as the titular Demon Lord rattles at the last bars that keep him imprisoned in the Void, his influence continues to despoil land and mind alike, the ‘Shadow’ of the Demon Lord and its effect upon the world can be adjusted and set by the Game Master. This can be something hinted at in prophecies, a rumour threatening in the background, an imminent disaster, or a catastrophe such as a pandemic, famine, earthquakes, the dead living and walking, the Wild hunt abroad in the land, a sudden winter out of season, wild magic warping all and sundry… and more.

Tales of the Demon Lord is a campaign for Shadows of the Demon Lord. It consists of eleven adventures set in the lands of the Northern Reach, the far-flung province of a dying empire, whose capital is Crossings, a city perched on shores of the island-strewn and fae-inhabited lake known as Dark Waters. The city is best known as a fishing port and for its Academy of Engineers established by the Empire long ago and the six faerie spires which have stood since long before the city was built. Originally founded by exiles, refugees, and bandits from the Empire, but since subsumed into its borders before being ignored as a distant province, the council rather than governor-led Crossings acknowledges Sixton as the capital of the province, but otherwise ignores it and decides what is best for the citizens of Crossings. However, as the Shadow of the Demon Lord looms over the Empire, Crossings is not immune to the impending doom, an ancient cult with a branch in the city, the Brotherhood of Shadows, scrambles to find a way to bore a hole into the Void that is home to the Demon Lord, and so release both him and hordes of demons intent on destroying the world. As the Player Characters undertake one task or mission after another, they will cross paths with not only these cultists, but also rival cultists who want to take control of the Brotherhood of Shadows and so claim the glory of successfully summoning their master and doom the world…

Tales of the Demon Lord provides several reasons why the Player Characters might be in Crossings according to their Profession—Academic, Common, Criminal, Martial, Religious, or Wilderness—and quickly lays out the basics of the plot and details Crossings and various NPCs. Some of the city is described in detail, including its government, various districts, and important NPCs. The description is accompanied by a decent map and is enough for the Game Master to run the Tales of the Demon Lord campaign or any other scenarios set within its walls, whilst still leaving plenty of room for the Game Master to add her own content. Very quickly though, Tales of the Demon Lord gets into the first part of its campaign.

The first of the eleven adventures in Tales of the Demon Lord is ‘Harvester of Sorrows’. A priest from Crossings’ poorest district, Grievings, has gone missing following a series of disappearances he was investigating himself, and the Player Characters are asked to find him. A little investigation will reveal that the priest was enquiring about a nearby dilapidated house, once home to an infamous demonologist, and after a run-in with a local gang, there the Player Characters will discover that someone else also has an interest in the house and accidentally released a dread creature that is preying on the inhabitants of the surrounding the district. This is a common aspect of the scenarios which will follow in Tales of the Demon Lord. ‘Harvester of Sorrows’ gets the campaign off to a grim start just as you would expect for Shadow of the Demon Lord, but is not too challenging.

‘Born to Die’ is the first of two scenarios for Novice-level characters. The gang encountered in ‘Harvester of Sorrows’ has kidnapped the daughter of a local merchant and is holding her for ransom, and her father engages the Player Characters to see to her safe return. However, the Player Characters are not the only ones looking for the daughter and will need to deal with at least one other faction to get to her. Mostly set on an island in Dark Waters lake, the first of several scenarios which will take the Player Characters out of Crossings, this is a hostage rescue scenario, which of course, will go wrong. The second scenario for Novice-level characters, ‘The Curious Case of the Errant Swine’, takes the Player Characters truly out of the city to the farm of Farmer Ham, who recently had one of his fine hogs stolen. He wants the thieves caught and his hogs returned, if possible. Signs point towards the nearby Sentinel Wood and investigation there will locate both the culprits and the reasons behind the abductions, but has horrid secrets of his own he wants kept hidden. This scenario has a nice mix of interaction, investigation, and exploration, in particular into a partially-flooded Elvish underground shrine.

‘Temple of Shadows’ sees the Player Characters back in the city as a vile plague sweeps through Purse, Crossings’ wealthiest district, its victims descending into gibbering madness before dying and rising as demon-possessed animated corpses! In this first scenario for Expert-level characters, the fact that house of Pentachus Katandramus, a wealthy aristocrat, has been destroyed in a recent explosion surely cannot be a coincidence and Inquisitor Randolfus and his henchmen, but have not returned. When the Player Characters get past the cordon and descend into the house, they discover another factional feud, this time for control of the vile temple under the remains of the house and what might be hidden there. ‘Temple of Shadows’ is followed by ‘The Moon Spire’, which will take the Player Characters away from Crossings again, this time to the hamlet of Carbuncle, infamous for the physical oddities and infirmities of its inhabitants, and the strange Moon Spire, an elvish tower which appears at the full moon. This is a strange exploration of an even stranger building, the Player Characters needing to find portal after portal to work their way up the tower without being kicked out. Again, this is another search for a relic which needs to be denied to the enemy, but one which will require the Game Master to track carefully where the Player Characters are as there is a high chance of their being separated.

Another theme in Tales of the Demon Lord, that of others uncovering things best left covered, continues with ‘Mines of Madness’. The third scenario for Expert-level characters, this has the Player Characters sent into the Black Hills west of Crossings, where the Dwarf, Gundren the Ironmonger, operates a mine. Ore shipments have stopped coming and he wants to know why. Arriving at the mine, the Player Characters discover that the miners are missing and must descend into the mine to find out what has happened. This scenario is incidental to the campaign, as is the next, but ‘Mines of Madness’ is a decent enough dungeon-bash. The fourth, and last scenario in the campaign for Expert-level characters is ‘In the Name of Love’, which takes place in the rapidly declining town of Verge. This is a more sophisticated piece, one-part sandbox, one-part character study, in which rumours of missing villagers and strangers seen about the place should drive the Player Characters to investigate. A combination of good roleplaying and investigation will reveal that not all is well in Verge as anger has awoken a demon-tree, strangers predate on victims’ tears, and brigands pick at the bones of the settlement in this bloody tragedy.

If the Player Characters have been working to prevent the coming of the Demon Lord and thus the end of the world, if only inadvertently at this point in the campaign, then they find themselves with a rival in ‘Shadows in the Mist’ in this first scenario for Master-level characters. When they return to Crossings, they hear reports of new-borns having gone missing, a new island appearing in the lake, and then a monster haunted fog rolls in and shrouds the city. The island and its inhabitants prove unwelcoming to visitors and when the Player Characters get to close to the culprit, they become the hunted. The steampunk elements of Shadow of the Demon Lord are played up in ‘Off the Rails’, as the provincial governor recruits the Player Characters to investigate a recent train crash and recover several iron titans, prototype mechanical soldiers which might replace the Empire’s Orc soldiery and which were aboard the train. As the Player Characters are investigating the crash site, they are drawn to a nearby village by the sound of an explosion. If they race to investigate, they discover the village under attack by Orc rebels in command of the iron titans—but the villagers have their own means of defence! The likelihood is that a big battle will ensure, either against the Orcs or villagers, not both, and then there is the matter of the remaining rebels to deal with…

The penultimate scenario in Tales of the Demon Lord is ‘Prince of Darkness which brings the summoning of the Demon Lord one step closer, but for the Player Characters, help comes from an unexpected quarter—a reformed demonologist who has escaped Hell! A demon has taken possession of the demonologist’s former stronghold and is tearing open a rift to the Void. With the demonologist’s aid, the Player Characters must enter his stronghold and find a way to defeat the demon or prevent it from opening the Void. The last scenario and campaign finale is ‘The End is Near’ in which the Brotherhood of Shadows moves openly to summon its master as rivals try to take control of the cult’s efforts. The scenario begins with an investigation into the death of Crossings’ mayor, the first of several possible murders in the city, and culminates in the Player Characters confronting several factions in an attempt to bring about the end of the world!

Tales of the Demon Lord is rounded out with ‘Appendix: New Creatures’, which presents several types of an insectoid species encountered in the mines in ‘Mines of Madness’. Physically, Tales of the Demon Lord is well presented, with decent artwork and some nice cartography. In terms of a campaign, Tales of the Demon Lord lives up the grim and bruising tone of Shadow of the Demon Lord, the Player Characters being constantly assailed by demons, cultists, and other vile threats. It feels compact, there being roughly two or four pages per scenario, each of which should provide two or three secessions’ worth of gaming.

However, Tales of the Demon Lord does not quite work as a campaign as written. Some effort is required by the Game Master to provide monster statistics and magical relics when found, but further, the Game Master will need to set up and provide continuing links between the scenarios, as none are provided. A patron is required for the Player Characters at the very least, but once the campaign gets under way, this should be less of an issue. It does add to the set-up requirements for the Game Master though. Similarly, the Game Master will be on her own when comes to the outcome—successful or failed—of any scenario, plus the outcome, if successful, of the campaign. The effects of failure though, is easier to determine. The lack of connective tissue between the scenarios means that not every scenario is specifically connected to the campaign’s story line as well, and whilst in places this means that the campaign is showcasing the ongoing, dying nature of the world around the Player Characters, it also means that sometimes it feels as if they are being shunted off scene whilst other things occur. However, the lack of connective tissue between the scenarios has an advantage too, providing some flexibility in terms of the order in which they can be played—though this would have to be within the confines of the Path the Player Characters are on (Novice, Expert, or Master)—as well as making them easy to extract from the book and either replaced, added to another campaign, or run as a one-shot. With some effort, a Game Master could also adapt the campaign to the roleplaying game of her choice, whether grim and perilous, or not.

Tales of the Demon Lord is as dark and twisted and as grim and perilous a campaign as you would want for Shadow of the Demon Lord. It is a solid, intentionally short campaign, which serves up a good mix of horror and insanity, but which will require more development and set-up than another campaign might not.

The Ana-Sin-Emid Report is a scenario for Those Dark Places: Industrial Science Fiction Roleplaying, the roleplaying game of Blue-Collar Science Fiction horror published by Osprey Games. It is written by the roleplaying game’s designer and presents a short investigative scenario which can be played through in a session or two. It takes a traditional type of Science Fiction setting and gives it a horror twist which echoes that of the film, Event Horizon. It can be played as a training simulation to determine their suitability for working between Earth and the frontier of space as part of the application process as described in Those Dark Places, or it can be run straight as an assignment during their years of employment. This also means that it can be run with new Player Characters or more experienced ones, but its horror elements will probably be more effective if the scenario is played with Player Characters who have encountered some scary situations and suffered Episodes of Pressure before. Either way, it will take relatively little time for the Game Monitor to prepare The Ana-Sin-Emid Report for play.

The setting for The Ana-Sin-Emid Report is the Iota Pegasi B System, the site of Grant Stellar Station, a Cambridge-Wallace, Inc. facility. The Player Characters are either stationed there or making a pickup or delivery, perhaps Cambridge-Wallace, Inc. employees, perhaps not. Whatever the reasons for their being on the Grant Stellar Station, a situation has arisen and the station manager grabs the first available crew and assigns them to resolve it. If they are Cambridge-Wallace, Inc. employees, then fine. If not, there is a set of emergency employment mandates written into their contracts—in very small print—which means that they have little choice in the matter. The situation is that in the last hour, the Deep Space Transport Vessel The Ana-Sin-Emid dropped out of FTL and began coasting towards the inner system. If it continues on its current path, it will disrupt operations and present a potential hazard. There has been no communication from the vessel and its current pattern of deceleration suggests that it is under automated piloting. The Ana-Sin-Emid is the property of the Wayne/Tanaka Corporation, but as it is Cambridge-Wallace, Inc. space, Cambridge-Wallace, Inc. has the right to offer assistance, board her and, if the opportunity presents itself, claim salvage. Which is where the Player Characters come in.

The Player Characters are tasked with getting aboard The Ana-Sin-Emid, get to the bridge, and report back to the station manager. If they have their own vessel, they can use that, but if not, the Player Character are assigned the Deep Space Reconnaissance Vessel Grahams, a small starship designed to jump into distant star systems and conduct preliminary survey sweeps and collect information upon which the decision to conduct deeper survey or resource exploitation missions can be made. If the Player Characters lack a pilot amongst their number, then one will be provided. The Player Characters have about twelve hours before another ship can be readied and sent out to The Ana-Sin-Emid, so they are the first response to the emerging situation.

Once at their destination, the Player Characters find The Ana-Sin-Emid under power, but unresponsive. Energy and heat blooms can be detected, there is no sign of damage, and the airlocks are closed. Essentially, the Player Characters are free to explore the two decks of the vessel, and its eighteen locations as is their wont. They will quickly find that it has been abandoned and that there are signs of violence scattered throughout the ship. However, as they explore The Ana-Sin-Emid, the Player Characters—singly or in groups—begin see strange things. Are they hallucinations? Are they something else? And whatever they are, what is causing them? Is there a chemical agent in the ship’s air supply or is it something else? Ultimately, the cause of the problems aboard The Ana-Sin-Emid is relatively easy to determine, but this does not mean that the Player Characters will necessarily solve it. Strange incidents may place them under too much Pressure, and there is scope for both accidents and incidents of violence during their exploration of the apparently abandoned vessel.

In addition to the plot, The Ana-Sin-Emid Report includes for increasing the Pressure upon the Player Characters—either because they knew somebody The Ana-Sin-Emid or due to past experiences of Episodes of Pressure. An option is given for having an NPC Helm Officer, who would of course abandon the Player Characters aboard The Ana-Sin-Emid at the first sign of trouble, and there are clear deckplans given for The Ana-Sin-Emid. There is decent staging advice for the Game Monitor too.

The Ana-Sin-Emid Report is cleanly laid out, though the text needs a slight edit and the labelling on the deckplans is a bit tight in places. The various incidences of Pressure could also have been slightly more clearly marked for ease of running the scenario, especially if the Game Monitor is running with minimal preparation. The scenario does not require a great deal of preparation, but this would have helped.

The lightness of the mechanics in The Ana-Sin-Emid Report means that it is more plot than necessarily stats. This has the advantage of making it not only easy to run for Those Dark Places, but also easy to adapt to almost any Science Fiction roleplaying game. Of course, it is ideally suited to those which already combine Science Fiction with horror, especially Blue Collar Science Fiction, such as MOTHERSHIP Sci-Fi Horror Roleplaying Game or even the Alien: The Roleplaying Game, whether that is to run it straight and as is, or as a training exercise. (In fact, Those Dark Places would work as a training exercise or employment application in the setting of those roleplaying games!)

The Ana-Sin-Emid Report is nasty, weirdly creepy, and short. It is easy to run as a one-shot or add to an existing campaign, and should provide one or two sessions of play. It would also work as a convention scenario and so easily fit within a four-hour slot.

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

—oOo—

What is it?
Vajra of the Skies presents an NPC, his entourage, and associated spirits for use with RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha.

It is a twenty-two page, full colour, 3.35 MB PDF.
The layout is clean and tidy, and its illustrations, although sparse, decent.

Where is it set?
Vajra of the Skies is nominally set in the Grazelands to the west of Sartar, home to the Pure Horse People, but the NPC and his entourage could be encountered almost anywhere, though he may also be found in the lands of Prax.

Who do you play?
No specific character types are required to encounter Vajra of the Skies. Shaman characters may benefit from their interactions with Vajra of the Skies.

What do you need?
Vajra of the Skies requires RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and Glorantha Bestiary as well as The Red Book of Magic. In addition, The Smoking Ruin & Other Stories may be useful as Vajra is related to some of the NPCs the Player Characters may encounter in the scenario of the same name. The Game Master may need to seek further information about the Pure Horse People.
What do you get?
The second volume of ‘Monster of the Month’ presents not monsters in the sense of creatures and spirits and gods that was the feature of the first volume. Instead, it focuses upon Rune Masters, those who have achieved affinity with their Runes and gained great magics, mastered skills, and accrued allies—corporeal and spiritual. They are powerful, influential, and potentially important in the Hero Wars to come that herald the end of the age and beginning of another. They can be allies, they can be enemies, and whether ally or enemy, some of them can still be monsters.
The third entry is Vajra of the Skies, which details a Vajra, a shaman of the Golden Bow who once led the Four Gifts Clan with his younger brother, Rajhan. Since the tragic death of his brother, he has dedicated himself to his duties as his clan’s shaman and to wandering the skies of Dragon Pass on the back of the great vrok hawk Sunfriend, keeping an eye out for potential threats to the Four Gifts Clan. However, in that time, he has become all but lost in his repeated explorations of the Spirit World and addicted to the intoxicants necessary to enhance and extend those explorations. Consequently, his mind has been damaged and his grasp on the mortal realm has weakened.
Vajra may be encountered in the air astride his constant companion, the vrok hawk Sunfriend—from which he prefers to pepper any foes with magic and missiles, should combat ensue from any encounter—or even in the Spirit World, perhaps lost and in need of the Player Characters’ help. He might even seek to trade with them for any of the intoxicants he requires or ask them to obtain them for him. The two adventure seeds in Vajra of the Skies suggest encountering him in the Spirit World or having Vajra’s nephew and current leader of the Four Gifts Clan request the Player Characters track his uncle down and bring him home safe and sound. There is potential too, for a shaman Player Character to become Vajra’s apprentice, which is likely to be more of a challenge than is the norm for training to become a full shaman, given Vajra’s mentally wounded state. However, he is encountered, it will quickly become clear that Vajra is a broken man in need of sympathy and healing.

Lastly, Vajra of the Air describes the ‘Sun Horse’s Mane’, a magic item woven by worshipers of Yu-Kargzant the Sun Horse. This is a seasonal decoration and good-luck charm favoured by adolescents and new adults among the Pure Horse People, which can be woven with different flowers for different effects. It takes much of somebody’s downtime to locate the right flowers and weave them, who must invest Rune Points into the creation, and if successful, grants gifts such as resistance to disease, enhancing the Fertility Rune, and the ability to locate the wearer’s beloved. This is an interesting ‘colour’ item for any member of the Pure Horse People, but perhaps one or two suggestions as to its use could have been included for the Game Master.
Is it worth your time?Yes—Vajra of the Air presents a difficult, but challenging NPC, who can be used to introduce the Player Characters to the Pure Horse People and serve as potential, very difficult mentor for the Player Character shaman.No—Vajra of the Air presents a difficult, but challenging NPC, who might be too awkward to work into a campaign, especially if the Player Characters who do not number a shaman, as well as exploring a subject matter which not every playing group wants to include in its campaign.Maybe—Vajra of the Air presents a difficult, but challenging NPC, who might be too awkward to work into a campaign, especially if the Player Characters who do not number a shaman, as well as exploring a subject matter which not every playing group may want to include in its campaign.

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

—oOo—
From the off, Knock! #1 grabs the reader’s attention and starts giving him stuff. Flip open the book and, on the front folded flap of the dust jacket, there is the beginning of a dungeon adventure, ‘Zaratazarat’s Manse’. Flip open this front folded flap and it quickly becomes apparent that the dungeon is continued on the inside of the dust jacket, all the way to the dust jacket’s back folded flap on which the dungeon’s maps have been reproduced for easy reference. Flip the actual book over and on the rear, under the dust jacket is a drop table of options to determine the stats and abilities of the baboon-like demon illustrating both the front and back covers of Knock #1. Even on the title page there is a table, ‘d12 Pamphlets Found In A Dungeon’, and this continues throughout the issue with nary a page wasted and every page filled with something interesting or useful. Leaf through the pages of the magazine and what you have is a panoply of articles and entries—polemics and treatises, ideas and suggestions, rules and rules, treasures, maps and monsters, adventures and Classes, and random tables and tables, followed by random tables in random tables! All of which is jam-packed into a vibrant-looking book.

Knock! #1 An Adventure Gaming Bric-à-Brac was published in January 2021, following a successful Kickstarter campaign by The Merry Mushmen. It is a two hundred-and-twelve page 5.9” by 8.25” full colour book containing some eighty-two entries contributed by some of the most influential writers, publishers, and commentators from the Old School Renaissance, including Paolo Greco, Arnold K, Gabor Lux, Bryce Lynch, Fiona Maeve Geist, Chris McDowall, Ben Milton, Gavin Norman, and Daniel Sell, along with artists such as Dyson Logos and Luka Rejec. The content itself is formatted for use with Necrotic Gnome’s Old School Essentials Classic Fantasy, but readily and easily adapted to the retroclone of the Game Master’s choice. Particular attention should be paid to the look of Knock! #1, which employs vibrant swathes and blocks of colour to break up and highlight the text, along with strong use of differing fonts and quotations. It is clear though that the graphic style Knock! #1 has been heavily influenced by the look (though not the tone) of Mörk Borg, but that is no bad thing as the result is eye-catching and distinctive.

Knock! #1 quickly sets out its stall and identifies what the Old School Renaissance is and what it is not. Brooks Dailey presents ‘What I Want In An OSR Game’, whilst in ‘Old – A comparison of old and new D&D’, Gavin Norman examines why he prefers Old School Dungeons & Dragons to the new through his play experiences, so elements such as objective, challenged-based gaming, encounter-based high adventure, the lack of specific rules and reliance on the Dungeon Master to make improvised rulings, rather than relying on pre-defined rules, rules where necessary, and the like. What this highlights is the fact that in places, Knock! #1 does feel as if it is treading old ground, not just that of the Old School Renaissance, but of Dungeons & Dragons itself. For example, Bryce Lynch’s ‘Wandering Monsters Should Have a Purpose in Wandering Around’ and Sean McCoy’s ‘What Do The Monsters Want?’ both address the issue of monsters being more than mere victims of the Player Characters’ weapons and wizardry, whilst Bryce Lynch’s ‘Better Treasure’ discusses why treasure to be found in many an adventure sucks and suggests ways to make it more interesting. The latter is later supported by ‘300 Useless Magical Loot’, Chris Tamm’s cramped table of magical gewgaws and whatnots. ‘The Danger of Skills’ by Brooks Dailey is very much an Old School Renaissance response to modern Dungeons & Dragons and its use of skills in that they restrict play by telling a player what his character cannot do as much as what they can, rather going by a series assumptions, such as that the character can cook and can ride.

Also traditional are the articles in Knock! #1 on dungeon and adventure design, but what is not traditional, is their approach to them, which are theoretical rather than mechanical in nature. Arnold K presents a ‘Dungeon Checklist’ of things which should be in a dungeon, to be read before and after the Dungeon Master has designed her dungeon, whilst Gabor Lux provides two pieces on the subject. The first is ‘The Overly Thematic Dungeon’ which looks at the balance between populating the dungeon in a spirit of almost random, but fantastical whimsy, and does so whilst keeping a sense of fantastic realism in mind. The conclusion is of course, to find a balance which works for you. The second is ‘The Tapestry and the Mosaic Box: On the Scope of Module Design’, which surprisingly, is inspired by my review of Echoes From Fomalhaut #02: Gont, Nest of Spies in which I criticised his scenarios for a lack of hook to involve the Player Characters. The article does not necessarily change my mind, but it does explain the author’s philosophy and that makes it an interesting response.

Knock! #1 offers plenty of new rules and means of handling various rules and rulings in Old School Renaissance play too. In ‘Does Energy Drain Suck?’ Gabor Lux suggests ways to make the attacks of Wights, Wraiths and other lesser undead more of an immediate and less of a long term effect, whilst Eric Nieudan offers alternative ways in Hit Dice might work in ‘Hit Dice Are Meant to be Rolled’, Vagabundork offers ways to avoid Player Character death in ‘Save vs actual Death?’, and Brooks Dailey gives a new rule system for handling the Class’ skills in ‘1D6 Thieving’ (which oddly follows immediately after his ‘The Danger of Skills’ article). Add to all of this are the numerous tables to be found in the pages of Knock! #1. Daniel Sell’s ‘Wizard Weaknesses’ adds multiple secrets to winkle out and undermine a wizard’s magical prowess, whilst his ‘ The village’s local retired adventurer...’ quickly generates a background for that hoary old veteran nursing a pint in the corner of the local tavern. Good-deal Nobboc’s ‘Get your gear!’ provides d66’s worth of starting equipment, Eric Nieudan suggests ‘20 Gunpowders’, Jack Shear asks, ‘What’s the Deal with Igor’s Hump?’ (complete with a picture of Marty Feldman), and Fiona Maeve Geist explains that ‘My Goblins Are…’ in a  set of tables which create goblins as more fey creatures, mundane and unnatural, but always with something interesting in their pockets. Chris Tamm also provides a complete set of sewer geomorphs and tables in ‘Sewers of Mistery’ to provide an adventuring environment close to home, under the town or city the adventurers are currently in. It also nicely ties in with James Holloway’s ‘My Aesthetic is PATHETIC And Yours Can Be Too.’ which explores the humble, grubby, and dangerous style of play British fantasy roleplaying and also the Character Funnel of Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game fame.

Elsewhere Knock! #1 explores some interesting issues and issues from interesting angles. With ‘What Kids’ RPGs are Missing’, Ben Milton analyses a playthrough of roleplaying games designed for play by kids, before suggesting that perhaps the high-risk, high-reward structure would be more to their liking, whilst in ‘The Labors of Hercules as OSR Obstacles’ suggests ways in which each of the twelve tasks might work in Old School Dungeons & Dragons-style games. It is not so much mechanical as much looking whether Hercules’ solutions might be the sort of thing players would come up with. Interesting, nevertheless. One of the criticisms of B2 Keep on the Borderlands is that it lacks names for its NPCs, but Nicolas Dessaux uses that as a starting point to apply anthropology, archaeology, geography, and other fields of study to actually find a place for the eponymous keep and explain its various features. It does get close to being dangerously realistic, but it is a fascinating examination of the module from outside of the hobby.
Knock! #1 showcases a range of maps before presenting the more mechanical content—the type of content you would perhaps expect in an Old School Renaissance fanzine—in the last quarter of the issue. The section includes new Classes such as the Living Harness, a living suit of armour once worn by a hero who died on a dark and moonless night and the Ne’er-do-well, lazy vagabonds and the like, rogue-ish, but not thieves, and very, very Vancian, both by Nobboc. None of the six classes are very serious, or even serious at all, and to a certain extent, the same can be said the monsters in the issue, such as Eric Nieudan’s ‘Thurible Cat’, a cast iron in the shape of a portly feline deity which must be fuelled with coal and incense and guards temples and which is actually based on a tea infuser! Lastly, Knock! #1 concludes with three adventures. ‘Citadel of Evil’ is for Player Characters of First to Third Level and is by Stuart Robertson, and sees them enter a mountain and ascend inside it in order to rescue kidnapped villagers. It is more serviceable and linear than interesting. Graphite Prime’s ‘Praise the Fallen’ is more interesting, a race against time for Player Characters of Second to Fourth Level to cultists from resurrecting a Fallen Angel—an angel of chaos—and whilst relatively small presents more of a challenge and a theme. Chris Tamm presents a wizard’s lair in the ‘The Wizard Cave’, which is more of a location for the Game Master to add to her campaign rather than actual adventure. The other adventure, ‘Zaratazarat’s Manse’ is for Player Characters of First and Second Level and has something strange going on in the swamps around a mouldering village. Could it have something to do with a wizard who lives in a hill in the swamp? Of course, it does, but the adventure nicely makes use of random monsters and gives a solid explanation for their appearance.

Physically, Knock! #1 is impressively bright and breezy. The layout is a little cluttered in places and the text a little too busy, but on the whole, it looks good. It needs an edit in places, but the artwork is good and the cartography excellent, but then with Knock! #1 coming out of the Old School Renaissance, it would be remiss if the cartography was anything else.

Subtitled ‘Being A Compendium of Miscellanea for Old School RPGs’, the truth of the matter is that much of the contents of Knock! #1 is far from new. A great number of the longer essays originated as blog posts, so there is a sense of some of the entries being yesterday’s comments and ideas. Much of what they say is still applicable to the Old School Renaissance segment of the hobby today, just as when they were originally posted, and in some cases, when they were explored and examined back in the ‘Golden Age’ of roleplaying that the Old School Renaissance actually draws from. So, this is not to say that the contents are poor or uninteresting or not useful, but rather that having had them published, to ask, “What next?”. As much as Knock! #1 is full of interesting, thoughtful, and useful stuff, should subsequent issues be relying quite so much on blogposts a few years old?

Knock! #1 An Adventure Gaming Bric-à-Brac lives up to both its subtitle and its own description as ‘Being A Compendium of Miscellanea for Old School RPGs.’ It is both a mishmash and an anthology of articles, essays, monsters, tables, adventures, and more—and it works for any retroclone. There is some excellent content in this inaugural issue too, like the ‘Dungeon Checklist’, ‘What Do Monsters Want?’, ‘300 Useless Magic Loot’, and ‘Borderlands’. However, some of the content does feel staid and some of it feels as if it has already been said, but the great thing about not finding one article or entry interesting, is that with over eighty entries in the anthology, all the reader has to do, is flip the page and the chances are that the next entry will be more to his liking. Ultimately, not only an excellent addition to the shelf of any Old School Renaissance Game Master, but in bringing to print a bundle of blogposts, Knock! #1 An Adventure Gaming Bric-à-Brac captures what the Old School Renaissance is like in terms of its aims and its ideas in 2020.