What has become known as the ‘AGE’ or ‘Adventure Game Engine’ was first seen 2010 in Dragon Age – Dark Fantasy Roleplaying Set 1: For Characters Level 1 to 5, the adaptation of Dragon Age: Origins, the computer game from Bioware. It has since been developed into the Dragon Age Roleplaying Game as well as the more generic Fantasy AGE Basic Rulebook and a more contemporary and futuristic setting with Modern AGE. Published by Green Ronin Publishing, it covers every era from the Industrial Revolution to the modern day and beyond, and able to do gritty action or high adventure, urban fantasy or a dystopian future. In addition to providing a ‘Classless’ iteration of the AGE System, the Modern AGE Basic Rulebook provides sufficient focuses, talents, and specialisations to take the Player Characters from First to Twentieth Level, fast-paced action built around action, combat, exploration, and social stunts, both arcane magic and psychic powers to elements of the outré and so do Urban Fantasy, solid advice for the Game Master—whether new to the game or a veteran of it, and a sample introductory adventure, all ready for play. All of which comes packed into a relatively slim—by contemporary standards—hardback.

The Modern AGE Basic Rulebook is divided into two sections. The first and slightly longer section is for the players, its chapters covering character creation, basic rules, character actions, equipment stunts, extraordinary powers, and so on. The second is for the Game Master and covers her role, mastering the rules, provides an array of adversaries, rewards for the Player Characters, settings, and the scenario. It does not come with its own setting, but explores a number of ideas and genres including historical, steampunk, gothic and cosmic horror, Film Noir, and more. It lists a number of inspirations in each case and together these should provide enough inspiration for the Game Master to conduct further research and come up with a setting of her own.

A character in Modern AGE is defined by Abilities, Focuses, and Talents. There are nine abilities—Accuracy, Communication, Constitution, Dexterity, Fighting, Intelligence, Perception, Strength, and Willpower. Each attribute is rated between -2 and 4, with 1 being the average, and each can have a focus, an area of expertise such as Accuracy (Assault Rifles), Communication (Gambling), Intelligence (Astronomy), or Willpower (Courage). A focus provides a bonus to associated skill rolls and, in some cases, access to a particular area of knowledge. A Talent represents an area of natural aptitude or special training, and is rated either Novice, Expert, or Master. For example, at Novice level, the Burglary Talent provides a Player Character with extra information about a security system or set-up when studied and an Intelligence (Security) test is made; at Expert level, a Dexterity (Sabotage) test to get past a security system can be rerolled; and at Master level, a Perception (Searching) test can also be rerolled. As a Player Character goes up in Level, he can acquire Specialisations, such as Agent or Performer, which grant further bonuses and benefits. A character also has a Background, Social Class, and Profession, plus a Drive, Resources and Equipment, Health, Defence, Toughness, and Speed, and Goals, Ties, and Relationships.
To create a character, a player rolls three six-sided dice for each Ability—assigning them in order, but can swap two, and then rolls for Social Class and an associated Background and Profession. A Background provides an Ability bonus, a choice of a Focus, and a choice of a Talent, plus randomly determined Focus or Talent, whilst a Profession provides a pair of Focuses and a pair Talents to choose from, plus a resources score and starting Health. The player selects a Drive, such as Achiever or Networker, which grants another pair of Talents to choose from as well as an improvement to a Relationship, a Reputation, or Resources. The process itself is fairly quick and results in a reasonably detailed character.

Our sample Player Character is Dominic Grey, a journalist specialising in military affairs. He grew up a military brat and attended military college, but did not serve in the armed forces following a training exercise. Instead he currently combines a part-time junior post at a local university with freelance journalism, both roles specialising in military affairs. Although in good health, his injuries prevent from taking too active a life and he occasionally walks with a cane.

Dominic Grey
Race: Human
Social Class: Lower (Military)
Occupation: Professional
Level: 1

Accuracy 2
Communication 2 (Expression)
Constitution 3
Dexterity -1
Fighting 3 (Brawling)
Intelligence 3 (Tactics)
Perception 1
Strength -1
Willpower 2

Defence 09 Toughness 3 Speed 10 Health 18
Talents: Expertise (Tactics) (Novice), Knowledge (Novice), Self Defence (Novice)
Drive: Judge
Resources: 6, Membership (Rank 1)

Mechanically, the AGE System is simple enough. If a Player Character wants to undertake an action, his player rolls three six-sided dice and totals the result to beat the difficulty of the test, ranging from eleven or Average to twenty-one or Nigh Impossible. To this total, the player can add an appropriate Ability, and if it applies, an appropriate Focus, which adds two to the roll. For example, if a Player Character comes to the aid of a car crash victim and after pulling him from the vehicle, wants to render first aid, his player would roll three six-sided dice, apply the Player Character’s Intelligence Ability, and if the Player Character has it, the Medicine Focus.

However, where the AGE System gets fun and where the Player Characters have a chance to shine, is in the rolling of the Stunt die and the generation of Stunt Points. When a player rolls the three six-sided dice for an action, one of the dice is of a different colour. This is the Stunt die. Whenever doubles are rolled on any of the dice—including the Stunt die—and the result of the test is successful, the roll generates Stunt Points. The number of Stunt Points is determined by the result of the Stunt die. For example, if a player rolls five, six, and five on the Stunt die, then five Stunt Points are generated on the Stunt die. What a player gets to spend these Stunt Points on depends on the action being undertaken. In 2010, with the release of 2010 in Dragon Age – Dark Fantasy Roleplaying Set 1: For Characters Level 1 to 5, the only options were for combat actions and the casting of spells, but subsequent releases for Dragon Age – Dark Fantasy Roleplaying expanded the range of options on which Stunt Points can be spent to include movement, exploration, and social situations. This has been carried over into Modern AGE and expanded. Combat covers firearms, grappling, melee, and vehicles, as well as basic combat stunts, whilst Exploration stunts cover exploration, infiltration, and investigation, and Social stunts cover social situations, attitude (of an NPC towards another NPC or Player Character), and membership and reputation stunts.

So, what can stunts do? For example, for one Stunt Point, a player might select ‘Whatever’s Handy’ and grab the nearest improvised weapon, which though clumsy and possibly fragile, it will do; for five Stunt Points, select ‘Break Weapon’, which forces an opposed melee attack roll and if successful, disables the opponent’s weapon; or with a firearm, choose ‘Called Shot’ at cost of four Stunt Points, which turns the damage from an attack into penetrating damage. In an Investigation, ‘Flashback’ costs a single Stunt Point and reminds the Player Character of something he forgot, whilst in a social situation, ‘From the Heart’ costs four Stunt Points and enables the Player Character to express wholeheartedly a belief that it temporarily grants a Willpower Focus.
For example, walking home at night, Dominic Grey is spotted walking with his cane by two muggers, armed with baseball bats, who decide to take advantage of him. Dominic’s player makes an initiative roll for him, whilst the Game Master rolls for the muggers, a straight roll modified by their Dexterity Ability. Dominic’s player rolls eleven, modified to ten, whilst the muggers get a total of sixteen, so the order is the Muggers and then Dominic. The Muggers have Fighting 1, Fighting (Brawling), Dexterity, and Defence 10. Both the Muggers get a Major and a Minor action each round. Mugger #1 makes a Move as his Minor action, followed by a Charge as his Major action, which grants him a +1 bonus to his attack roll. The Game Master rolls three six-sided dice, adds +1 for Mugger #1’s Fighting Ability and +1 for the Charge action bonus, plus the standard +2 bonus for the Short-Hafted Weapon Focus. The Game Master rolls two, three, and five for a result of ten, plus the bonuses for a total of fourteen—enough to beat Dominic’s Defence of nine. The Game Master rolls for damage and Dominic suffers seven damage. The Game Master then rolls for Mugger #2, but rolls one, one, and two, which although it includes doubles, means that he misses.

The miss by Mugger #2 triggers Dominic’s Self Defence Talent, which allows him to use the Grapple Stunt, which normally costs a Stunt Point, for free. This requires an opposed Fighting (Grappling) test. The Game Master rolls two, four, and six for Mugger #2, plus his Fighting Ability for a total of fourteen. Dominic’s player rolls three, four, and six, plus his Fighting Ability for a total of sixteen. This is more than the Mugger and means that Dominic has a hold of him and he cannot move. It is now Dominic’s turn and his player rolls four, four, and six on the Stunt die. This beats Mugger #2’s Defence and generates six Stunt Points. Dominic’s player first spends two of these with the Hinder Stunt. Up to three Stunt Points can be spent on this, reducing damage taken from your opponent by two for each Stunt Point spent until Dominic’s next action. His player spends two Stunt Points on this. The remaining four are spent on Hostage. This requires another opposed Fighting (Grappling) test and enables Dominic manoeuvre Mugger #2 into a vulnerable position. If the Mugger #2 does anything other than a free action on his next turn, or if Mugger #2 attacks Dominic, he can make an immediate attack with a bonus. The Game Master rolls one, four, and five for Mugger #2, plus his Fighting Ability for a total of eleven. Dominic’s player rolls four, four, and five, plus his Fighting Ability for a total of sixteen. Dominic now has Mugger #2 in his grip and as Mugger #1 moves to attack, he manoeuvres Mugger #2 into the path of Mugger #1’s swing of his bat…Another use for the Stunt die is to determine how well a Player Character does, so the higher the roll on the Stunt die in a test, the less time a task takes or the better the quality of the task achieved. The main use though, is as a means of generating Stunt Points, and whilst Stunt Points and Stunts are the heart of the action in Modern AGE, there are a lot of them to choose from. Now they are broken down into categories, and that does limit what a player can choose from. Nevertheless, there is potential here to slow play down as players make their choices and work what is best for their characters or the situation. This should lessen as players get used to the system and what Stunts work best with their characters.

In addition to covering action, combat, exploration, and social scenes, Modern AGE covers rules for handling resources (money), reputation, equipment, and more. In particular, the more is comprised of ‘Extraordinary Powers’, divided into Arcane and Psychic powers, for example, Gremlins and Arcane Hack are effects which are part of the Digital Arcana and Kinetic Strike and Levitation are effects part of the Telekinesis Psychic Power. Each Arcana or Psychic Power is a Talent, which can be swapped out with a starting Talent during character creation or selected when a Player Character rises in Level and is eligible to choose a Talent. Depending, of course, if they are part of the Game Master’s campaign. Each Arcana and Psychic Power has its own Focus and both are fuelled by Power Points, the cost ranging between two and ten Power Points, depending on the effect. Tests are required to use an effect and so can generate Stunts Points just as with any other test. The list of Power Stunts available will be familiar to anyone who has played a mage in Dragon Age – Dark Fantasy Roleplaying. The use of Arcane and Psychic powers is entirely optional, but opens Modern AGE most obviously to the Urban Fantasy genre, but they could be mixed into a variety of different campaign settings.

The second half of Modern AGE is devoted to the Game Master and provides advice on how to run a game, game and scene types, play styles, frame particular tests, and so on. For example, it explores how to frame a breach attempt with various examples, like infiltrating a gang or hacking a computer. It does this for chases and combat as well, along with sample hazards. Other threats are presented in the form of adversaries, ranging from Assassin, Brainwashed Killer, and Cat Burglar to Psychic, Rich Socialite, and Smooth Operator—with lots in between, all of them human. Although most of the discussion of campaign types is in the Game Master section, the actual mechanics for campaigns are back at the beginning of the players’ section and run right through it. This is because they directly affect the roleplaying game’s mechanics. Modern AGE can be set in one of three modes—Gritty, Pulpy, and Cinematic. In Gritty Mode, a Player Character can be almost as easily injured as people in real life and one bullet is enough to put him out of action, and whilst he might get more skilled, a Player Character does not get tougher as he gains more experience. Stories in the Gritty Mode tend towards realism. In Pulpy Mode, the Player Characters are more obviously heroic and grow both tougher and skilled, and stories involve more action. In Cinematic Mode, the Player Characters are tough and heroic and only tougher and more heroic. Throughout the Modern AGE Basic Rulebook there are colour-coded sections which denote which rule applies to which mode, for example, Toughness works slightly differently in each mode, not all of the roleplaying game’s Stunts are available in each mode, and the adversaries have different Health, Defence, and Toughness depending upon the mode being employed. Each of the three modes makes for a different game and type of story, but no less action or success orientated with the generation and expenditure of Stunt Points.

The Modern AGE Basic Rulebook discusses a wide array of genres, from adventure and alternate history to procedurals and urban fantasy, along with various ears, running from the Age of Reason and the Victorian Age to the Cold War and the Present Day (and beyond). It devotes roughly a third to half a page to each, along with suggested further viewing. None of the discussions are overly deep, instead they do serve as a solid starting point for the Game Master, from which she can conduct further research. Rounding out Modern AGE Basic Rulebook is ‘A Speculative Venture’, designed for First Level Player Characters. The latter attend an exclusive party held by the wealthy CEO of a technology giant to remember the legacy of a cutting-edge inventor who died the year before. When a new technological break-through is revealed—the exact nature of which is left up to the Game Master to decide—it all takes a nasty turn as masked gunmen crash the party, take hostages, and it is all up to the Player Characters to come to the rescue. Involving a good mix of social and action scenes, ‘A Speculative Venture’ is a relatively short adventure, but should serve to introduce the players to the rules and what their characters are capable of.

Physically, the Modern AGE Basic Rulebook is cleanly presented, illustrated throughout in full colour, using the same cast of characters, which gives it a pleasingly consistent look. The book is also very easy to read and the rules easy to grasp. In terms of content, it is difficult to find actual flaws in the Modern AGE Basic Rulebook. Although it discusses a lot of settings, these are done in the broadest of terms, so perhaps its might have been useful to have included one or two more detailed and worked out settings, with one of them including the use of the roleplaying game’s Arcane and Psychic powers. Thus, giving the Game Master and her players something a bit more detailed to play in. The Modern AGE Basic Rulebook is designed to cover any period from the Industrial Age to the modern day, and beyond, but what that beyond is, is never really explored. Is it Urban Fantasy, is it something else? It is not Science Fiction, as that is too beyond what the Modern AGE Basic Rulebook covers. To be fair though, these are minor issues, if they are issues at all.

When Dragon Age – Dark Fantasy Roleplaying Set 1: For Characters Level 1 to 5 was published in 2009, it not only presented a setting based on a popular computer game, it also presented a simple, playable set of rules that enabled a group to play straightforward fantasy with cinematic action. For the then Dragon Die and Stunt Points mechanics proved to be both elegant and easy—and above all, fun. In the form of the Stunt Die and Stunt Points, the Modern AGE Basic Rulebook retains these same elements, but expands them to encompass another genre—two including Urban Fantasy, and provide options and actions which allow them to shine in a variety of different situations. It is ably supported by solid advice for the Game Master for both running the game and setting up a campaign. Overall, the Modern AGE Basic Rulebook packs a lot of punch in supporting action aplenty in its mechanics and the chance for the Player Characters to shine.

With Down There both author and publisher expand their range into a whole other genre, a whole other game system, and a whole other setting. Both Adam Gauntlett and Stygian Fox Publishing are best known for their ventures in Cosmic Horror and titles for use with Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition and Trail of Cthulhu. Adam Gauntlett for titles such as The Man Downstairs and Stygian Fox Publishing for titles such as Things We leave Behind. With Down There, both author and publisher have released their first fantasy adventure, their first scenario for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, and their first scenario set in the Forgotten Realms.

Down There—subtitled ‘A Fight Against the Shadows of a Sunken Temple from the Award-Winning Maker of Horror RPG Adventures’—is set in Curgir in the northern vales of the Evermoors in north-west Faerûn, a village famous for its apples and its cider, but also for its strange past. The village was once the site of a great temple which was built following the defeat of a cult devoted to the Horned Devil Caarcrinolaas and subsequently swallowed up by the ground, never to be seen again. Inhabited by a mix of Humans, Halflings, and Half-Orcs, the land on which the village sits is owned Greystone Abbey, which has established a Chapter House in the village. The monks of the Chapter House collect rent, settle disputes, and maintain common land. More recently, the monks at the Chapter House have decided to re-establish the temple with the aim of this one not sinking into the ground like the last one. To that end, the head of the Chapter House hired Marin Chain-Breaker, a Dragonborn Exorcist to determine a means of preventing that—and now he has. He plans to hold a holy wedding on the land where the new temple will be, the ceremony aiding in the reconsecration of the ground. Designed for Player Characters of First to Fourth Level, Down There will see them encounter strange creatures of shadow, dark secrets of the past, and Halfling Monks who are not what they seem!

The Player Characters are hired by Marin Chain-Breaker to escort him to Curgir and help him in his plans to re-establish the temple and prevent its disappearance. The story kicks into action when they come across signs of an abduction on the path and a note that should have been taken to Greystone Abbey. It appears that of late, the villagers are upset about the Chapter House’s leadership of Curgir, but do not give specifics as to why. Once the Player Characters reach Curgir, they find its inhabitants slightly subdued, but they can learn more with a bit of gossip. All clues point to the Chapter House, and there the Player Characters will have the first of the scenario’s two confrontations with darkness and evil. The second will likely follow after—though the scenario’s two big encounters can be played in any order—and take place in the remains of the temple that was lost… There the Player Characters will battle for the souls of the bride and groom to be, and more!

Down There involves a good mix of investigation and interaction, as well as the two combative confrontations. It comes very well appointed, as you would expect for a scenario from Stygian fox Publishing. The artwork is excellent and the maps very clear, whether for the players or the Dungeon Master. It does need an edit in places, though. Unfortunately, that is a minor problem when compared to the difficulty that the Dungeon master might have in running Down There. The issue that the contents of the scenario are not very organised. Once past the short introduction, the reader is quickly into a list of rumours and clues relating to the mystery of what is going on in Curgir, followed by an explanation of what Marin Chain-Breaker wants, and then into the scenario itself. Down There simply does not take the time to explain to the reader and potential Dungeon Master what exactly is going on in the village before diving into the plot itself. The result is that Dungeon Master has to learn it fully as she reads and thus everything is at first a surprise followed by a greater effort to pull its various elements into something that she can run.

Despite the issue with the organisation, Down There is a more than serviceable scenario. It is well presented with good maps and nicely done NPCs. It neatly subverts both the jolly image of both the Halfling Race and the reserved characters of the Monk Class, together a default combination in Dungeons & Dragons since Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition, and turns them into something greedy and venal. There is a strong streak of horror too, with some creepy moments, primarily involving the shadows which permeate the village. Whilst it needs more preparation than it really should, Down There is a good combination of the horror genre with the fantasy and would add a darker, slightly twisted feel to any Dungeons & Dragons setting, not just the Forgotten Realms.

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 be compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. However, fantasy is not the only genre to be explored in the pages of the fanzine renaissance.
Just as a number of fanzines have appeared to support Goodman Games’ Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game, such as Crawl!, a number have also appeared to support Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic and the Post-Apocalypse genre. For example, Bunker, Gamma Zine, and Meandering. The latest is Scientific Barbarian, its content written for use with the Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game and published by Mudpuppy Games. Edited by Jim Wampler, designer of the Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, its contents can of course, be adapted to other Post-Apocalypse roleplaying games.
Scientific Barbarian #1 was published in the autumn of 2020 following a successful Kickstarter campaign. As you would expect, it comes full of robots, mutations and maladies, and monsters aplenty, as well as a sizable techno-dungeon. With its excellent cover aping the look of Scientific American, Scientific Barbarian #1 is cleanly laid out, illustrated with a range of decent artwork, and is an easy read. It opens with ‘Bunker Briefings’, an editorial in which Wampler sets out his stall, stating that the fanzine is designed to support the ‘Mutant Murder Hobo’ style of play and welcomes those who have come across the fantasy genre to this one. The latter theme is continued with ‘Apocalyptic Visions – It’s Okay to have 87 Eyes’, in which Tim Kask extolls the virtues of mutations in Post-Apocalypse roleplaying games, particularly the joy of playing and roleplaying defects.
The contents get a proper start with Levi Combs’ ‘Ecology of the Crater Mutant’. This describes the barbarous, hardy mutants who worship and are mutated by a great source of radiation located at the heart of the crater where they live. Their faith in The Gospel of the Glow drives them to kidnap others and expose them to the radiation and so transform them into members of the ‘family’. The Crater Mutants are cross between Orcs and hillbillies and definitely support the ‘Mutant Murder Hobo’ style of play. It does feel overwritten, as if it could have been shorter, but that tends to be the way of such ecology articles. It is followed by ‘S.A.B.L.E. Rangers – Security Automations for Basic Law Enforcement’ by Michael Stewart and Elizabeth Stewart which details a law enforcement initiative begun in the ‘before times’ of the thirtieth century, aiming to combine the impartial judgement of A.I. law enforcement with the moral oversight of a human partner, thus mitigating human prejudices and sympathies. The programme developer, Automates, Inc., built several prototypes before the Great Disaster which buried its manufacturing complexes. Recent tectonic shifting has exposed the complexes, allowing the prototypes, each in the friendly form of a robotic horse, to escape and begin their duties as law enforcement devices. A S.A.B.L.E. Ranger unit—of which three types are detailed in the article—might already be found with a partner sitting astride it, but the obvious option and the one explored more fully is ‘A Sentient and the Horse’, in which the robot teams up with a Player Character. In addition to the obvious nod to A Dog and his Boy, the article nicely explores the idea and sets up great roleplaying potential between the Player Character and the S.A.B.L.E. Ranger unit, effectively giving the Judge a Player Character of her own to play. This would lend itself to play with just the Judge and a single player, but it could also work with another player roleplaying the S.A.B.L.E. Ranger unit too, although that is not supported in the article. Which is a pity as it is a missed opportunity. There is a Saturday morning cartoon and very American Wild West feel to the article, but otherwise an engaging piece.
‘Mutant Maladies’ by Skeeter Green is a preview of a forthcoming supplement of the same name which adds diseases and contagions to the Post Apocalypse. It gives stats and effects for several diseases, including AMD-6 or ‘Marrowblight’, which hardens the bone marrow of Pure Strain Humans, or Ultra-Coagulation or ‘Thickblood’, which turns the liquid blood of its sufferers into goop. The three diseases are described in some detail, but whilst their utility is obvious, it may be limited, since the Judge may not want to expose her Player Characters to such maladies too often, since their debilitating effects may impede game play. This is not to say that the diseases are not well designed or that the article is not decently written, but of limited scope. More useful then, is ‘Glowing Good Looks’ by James M. Ward, the designer of both Metamorphosis Alpha and Gamma World, which presents a set of three tables to be rolled on whenever a saving throw versus radiation is missed or fumbled. There are tables for humanoids, winged-folk, and four-legged mutants, all of which provide minor mutations. As promised, these are quick and easy, and sufficiently utilitarian that they work with any post-apocalyptic roleplaying game.
Pride of place in Scientific Barbarian #1 goes to Jim Wampler’s ‘The Gene Looms of Janeck-Vac’. Designed for Player Characters of Fourth and Fifth Levels, this scenario has a traditional set-up—a village suddenly imperilled by a rash of strange creatures with new mutations appearing from the nearby jungles and the Player Characters ordered by the tribal elders to investigate and put a stop to it. After a few encounters in the jungle with these strange creatures—swarms of Batslugs, Spiderhogs, and Cobrapedes—they come upon a caldera and below that a facility of the ancients full of strange devices the interfering of which will have unfathomable consequences for the Player Characters, but then again, they are Player Characters and this is the Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, so of course they will interfere. As the title of the scenario suggests, the underground complex is a genetics laboratory, and if they are careful, there are lots of secrets to be discovered and even the real Janeck-Vac to be encountered. If they are really lucky, there are some singular artefacts of the Ancients which would make fine additions to the Player Characters’ equipment and provide some excellent roleplaying opportunities into the bargain. As well as a decent set of floorplans for the facility, the scenario is accompanied by stats and write-ups for all eight of the weird mutant strains that the genetics laboratory has released to date, which of course, could appear elsewhere in the Omega-Terra of the Judge’s own campaign. The structure of the scenario does feel familiar, having been seen in multiple scenarios for Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game and other Post-Apocalypse roleplaying games before, but it is nicely detailed and adds a twist or two on the threat from the past coming back to haunt the future.
The monsters found in ‘The Gene Looms of Janeck-Vac’ are not the only ones to be found in Scientific Barbarian #1. ‘Creature Cryptology’ provides a half dozen new creatures which the Judge can include in her campaign. Some, like the ‘Eye-Cap’ is a weird variation upon a Dungeons & Dragons-style monster, the occasionally mobile, sentient fungus covered in chitinous plates and eyestalks which grant it 360° vision and which can launch a cloud of tiny flying eye spores each capable of firing an infrared laser beam! This is a nasty creature whose main means of attack can only be targeted by area effect attacks. Others are particular to the genre and the setting, such as the ‘Gem Thief’, a holographic data crystal which attempts to mind control its current possessor and subtly directs him to where others of its kind might be found. In fact, each ‘Gem Thief’ once belonged to a lost A.I. deity and seeks to find others of its kind to resurrect the A.I. deity. The nature and identity of the lost A.I. deity is left up to the Judge to decide. Overall, the selection to be found in ‘Creature Cryptology’ is variable in terms of quality or usefulness, but that is the nature of the fanzine, plus the Judge can easily adjust any one of the new creatures in the issue.
Rounding out Scientific Barbarian #1 is a ‘Retro-Review’ of Jack Kirby’s Kamandi, the Last Boy on Earth. Written by Scott Robinson, the review focusses mainly on the reviewer’s personal reaction to the collected omnibus—now and original issues when he was thirteen years old. The result is oddly uninformative and so not all that helpful to the reader when determining his interest in Kamandi, the Last Boy on Earth. This could have been addressed by the editor as well. The review is followed by a pair of cartoon strips, one an excerpt from the comic strip, Knights of the Dinner Table, the other entitled ‘Onto the Wasteland…’ Together they bring the first issue of Scientific Barbarian #1 to an entertaining close.
Scientific Barbarian #1 is something of a curate’s egg—partly bad and partly good. Or rather partly merely adequate and partly good. There are perhaps a few too many monsters in the issue, what with monsters in both the scenario and their department, the review could have been much tighter, and other articles shorter. Oddly, for a fanzine dedicated to Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, there is a lack of new technology described in its pages. However, the table of new mutations is efficient and useful, the write-up and development of the S.A.B.L.E. Ranger unit concept is nicely done, and of course, ‘The Gene Looms of Janeck-Vac’ is a decent scenario with some hidden depths to it. Overall, the good definitely outweighs the not so good and just like the magazine it pastiches, Scientific Barbarian #1 is the first issue of fanzine which should be worth subscribing to, whatever Post-Apocalypse roleplaying game you already have a subscription for.

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.
Echoes From Fomalhaut #04: Revenge of the Frogs continues this focus and again keeps the article count down to just four. Published in January, 2019, the issue opens with ‘The Technological Table’, a list of futuristic weapons and gadgets, ranging from laser pistol and laser spear to the God-box and The Dark Eye. Many of these items will be familiar from Science Fiction and other gaming articles, so it is refreshing to see some interesting entries alongside the usual electro-whip and laser sword. For example, Aquastel is a liquid so weighty, that when mixed with other liquids, it separates their constituent parts into layers according to their density, so could be used to neutralise poisons or extract valuable metals. The God-box is a communications link to an information bank located deep underground which can be consulted for information, though it is likely to be out of date or phrased on language that the Player Characters do not understand. This sort of article supports a setting where the campaign planet has links to a star faring civilisation or the various weapons and gadgets are remnants of a prior civilisation, fallen long ago. There are echoes of the lost civilisation set-up in the scenario, ‘Terror on Tridentfish Island’, published in Echoes From Fomalhaut #03: Blood, Death, and Tourism.
The scenario in Echoes From Fomalhaut #04: Revenge of the Frogs is the eponymous ‘Revenge of the Frogs’. The has always been an element of batrachian horror in Dungeons & Dragons, going back to Dave Arneson’s scenario, ‘Temple of the Frog’ and creatures such as the Bullywug, as well as drawing on H.P. Lovecraft’s short story, ‘The Shadow Over Innsmouth’. Frogs can be alien and emotionless creatures, so make a weird, but worthy enemy in any Dungeons & Dragons scenario. Designed for Player Characters of Third to Fifth Levels, ‘Revenge of the Frogs’ maroons them in the mouldering port of Silvash. The winds have ceased and the local high-priest of Murtar, God of Murky Waters hires the Player Characters to locate the means to restore them in the nearby marshland and prevent the rising of a frog-cult and its dread god that in ages past was destroyed by the priesthood of Murtar. The scenario is designed as a sandbox which will see the Player Characters delving deeper and deeper into the marshland, encountering various dank dangers and independently-minded inhabitants, all of whom are nicely fleshed out and bring colour to the region. Originally written as a companion piece to ‘Cloister of the Frog God’, part of Frog God Games’ Rappan Athuk megadungeon, Revenge of the Frogs’ is a bit rough around the edges and underwritten in terms of set-up and its explanation, especially in the placement of one of its magical items needed to complete the scenario. Otherwise, the scenario has a Lovecraftian tinge combined with a pleasing sense of mouldering decay.
Echoes From Fomalhaut #04: Revenge of the Frogs comes with a map which depicts the outline of a city. This of ‘Arfel – City State of the Charnel God’, which is fully detailed in the issue of the fanzine. This is a city dominated by Ozolba the Zombie God from his labyrinth temple-complex and necropolis which overlooks the city. He and his priesthood—both undead and living—can claim what they want and who they want, and to object is a sin. The nobility of Arfel abide by the stifling Necrotic Traditions, rarely if ever leaving their mansions which are perpetually shrouded in mourning, giving parts of Arfel a sepulchral feel. In the absence of civil government, crime syndicates and gangs have stepped in to run the city, though only unofficially. Only the Outer City beyond its walls is free from Ozolba the Zombie God’s reach, though it a lawless, rough place, where protection much be bought. Meanwhile, throughout the city can be found cat after cat after cat, which hunt in packs against the cat-catchers of the Outer City and know its secret ways from one end to the other. Again, there is the sense of the Lovecraftian to Arfel, it having a Dreamlands-like feel, though heavily influenced by Clark Ashton Smith’s Mordiggian, the Charnel God.
As with Echoes From Fomalhaut #03: Blood, Death, and Tourism, the remaining half of Echoes From Fomalhaut #04: Revenge of the Frogs is dedicated to one article. In the previous issue, this was ‘Erillion, East’, in this issue it is ‘Erillion, West’. This is the second half of a gazetteer detailing the island of Erillion, previously described in Echoes From Fomalhaut #02 and for the most part completed here—there are still plenty of locations mentioned here to be fully detailed in future issues. It continues to detail numerous locations and aspects of this end of the island, some forty or more of them. There is a strand of religiosity which runs through the location descriptions, notably the ‘Lunar Path’, a pilgrimage which leads from black lunar stones to black lunar stones and which will grant those successful with access to the world of dreams, but test them mightily in the process, and the ‘Isle of Trials’, an island west of Erillion, but connected by a pirate infested bridge, which is home to numerous persecuted cults and religious movements. Here the thumbnail descriptions never get as far as living up to their promise, since the reader is left wondering more about the cult or the religious movement and what their religious beliefs are. Hopefully, these might be detailed in a future issue. Otherwise, the thumbnail descriptions are decently done, such as the band of Ogre bandits which capture children and fatten them up for the pot, the court of Lord Virguard the Besieger who keeps five chairs empty in memory of his lost adventuring companions and who will reward tales of brave adventuring, and a marble chess high in the mountains, where two legendary wizards, one transformed into a mountain, the other a cloud, play out an endless game with living figures for the Staff of Power. There are also lots of bandits and thieves and berserkers to encounter too. This western half of Erillion is even more lawless than the Eastern half, and like the earlier ‘Erillion, East’, this half consists of many locations that might be passed through or discovered rather than necessarily visited with any purpose and the Dungeon Master will want to create that purpose or use the scenarios published in the earlier issues which are set on the island.
Echoes From Fomalhaut #04: Revenge of the Frogs definitely feels all the better for having just four articles, their content being allowed to breath and not feel crammed in. It is lightly illustrated, but much of the artwork is really quite good, whether it is public domain or commissioned for the issue, it all fits the oppressive ‘Mitteleuropa’ feel of the author’s ‘City of Vultures’ campaign and is well chosen. It needs an edit here and there, but is generally well written. Of the content, ‘The Technological Table’ is the outlier. It is a good article, but it feels out of place with the rest of the content, whilst the enjoyable ‘Revenge of the Frogs’, creepy ‘Arfel – City State of the Charnel God’, and completing overview that is ‘Erillion, West’, all feel as if they are in the same world. And that perhaps is a problem too, because so far Echoes From Fomalhaut is only giving us snapshots of the ‘City of Vultures’ campaign, not quite a partwork, but getting there. Overall, Echoes From Fomalhaut #04: Revenge of the Frogs is sol'd issue of the fanzine, but it is beginning to feel as if something is wanted to begin pulling the ‘City of Vultures’ campaign together.

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 be compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry.

Delayed Blast Gamemaster is a fanzine of a different stripe. Published by Philip Reed Games following successful Kickstarter campaigns, Delayed Blast Gamemaster is a fanzine dedicated to supporting roleplaying fantasy games, but a particular style of fantasy roleplaying games—Dungeons & Dragons. Yet the issues are entirely systemless, which means that their contents can be used in Dungeons & Dragons, any of the fantasy roleplaying retroclones you care to name, and most fantasy roleplaying games with a little effort. Published following a successful Kickstarter campaign as part of the inaugural Zine Quest, the first issue of Delayed Blast Gamemaster was published in September, 2019, followed by the second issue a year later in September, 2020, again following a successful Kickstarter campaign.
Delayed Blast Gamemaster #2 is as physically striking as Delayed Blast Gamemaster #1. Its graphical design is all white art and text on matt black pages (a printer friendly version is also available), the effect being striking, almost jauntily creepy and oppressive in its artwork’s depiction of mad mages, wiggle cubes, undying angers, gnashing rock beasts, and more. Again, the text is both heavy and large, so is a lot easier to read than it otherwise might have been.

As to the concept behind Delayed Blast Gamemaster it is simply that of inspiration scattered subject by subject across nine tables. So ‘OneDTen Urban Locations’, ‘OneDSix Forgotten Spellbooks’, ‘FiveDSix Unusual Treasures’, ‘OneDEight Dungeon Oddities’, ‘OneDSix Magic Shields’, ‘TwoDSix Potions’, ‘OneDSix Warped Monsters’, ‘OneDTwelve Adventure Hooks’, and ‘OneDFour Dungeon Doors’. So all that the Game Master has to do is pick a table or subject, roll the die, check the relevant entry, and use it as inspiration to create something of her or adapt the entry to the roleplaying game of her choice. The most obvious choice to adapt the entry to, is of course, Dungeons & Dragons, due to the similarities in language, but other roleplaying games would work too.
The concept behind Delayed Blast Gamemaster and thus Delayed Blast Gamemaster #2 is tables of inspiration accompanied by more tables. There are eleven such tables in the issue, ranging from ‘OneDSix Dungeon Characters’ and ‘FiveDSix Unusual Treasures’ to ‘OneDEight Dungeon Conditions’ and ‘OneDSix Pockets Picked’. Thus, all that the Game Master has to do is pick a table or subject, roll the die, check the relevant entry, and use it as inspiration to create something of her or adapt the entry to the roleplaying game of her choice. The most obvious choice to adapt the entry to, is of course, Dungeons & Dragons, due to the similarities in terminology, but other roleplaying games would work too.
For example, roll a five on ‘OneDEight Adventure Hooks’ and the Game Master has her adventurers encounter a ‘Grizzled Warrior Questioning His Career’. The veteran, the worse for wear from drink readily shares tales of his exploits, the type of exploits that the Player Characters are likely going to want to emulate, though somewhat ruefully since he seems to regret his career choice. However, his ramblings might contain a nugget of truth or two, necessitating a further roll of a four-sided die. For example, a roll of a three determines that he regales the party of the time that he and his companions were attacked by a giant whose mighty Warhammer crushed many of them, and the last time he saw the giant, it was wandering away with the possessions of those he had slaughtered. Could the giant still have their possessions, and just were they?
Alternatively, roll a fourteen on ‘FiveDSix Unwanted Treasures’—a sequel to ‘FiveDSix Unusual Treasures’ from Delayed Blast Gamemaster #1—and the adventurers find a small book bound in metal with pages of thick parchment, half full with the incomplete memoirs of a halfling merchant which tell of his life as a great lover and warrior. Similarly, ‘OneDEight Dungeon Oddities’ is another sequel to a table from Delayed Blast Gamemaster #1. It provides more monstrous encounters, such as the ‘Wizard’s Goblinoid’, a result of a roll of one on the table, which describes a goblin who really, weirdly enjoys being a Wizard’s familiar and knows a few cantrips, whilst a roll of five would give a ‘Wiggle Cube’, a very rare orange gelatinous cuboid with sufficient awareness to track down and take control of other oozes and slimes. Perhaps one of the most engaging table is ‘OneDSix Guards’, which describes the personalities of six town guards so making them more than just the local watch ready to step in when the party causes trouble!
With eleven tables, there are a lot of entries and ideas in Delayed Blast Gamemaster #2, which is the point. In comparison to the first issue, there is a better range of entries in Delayed Blast Gamemaster #2, including oddities, memorable weapons, adventure hooks, magic scrolls, dungeon conditions, and the contents of pockets picked. There are, however, a few tables and entries which are designed for single use only given their suggested rarity. The ‘Wiggle Cube’ from ‘OneDEight Dungeon Oddities’ is one such entry, whilst the ‘OneDSix Goblins’ table gives six strange, even singular goblins that it is advised that the Dungeon Master consult the table rarely lest their overuse lessen their impact. This slightly reduces the utility of Delayed Blast Gamemaster #2.
Rounding out Delayed Blast Gamemaster #2 is ‘Cave of Eyes’, a six-location set of caverns which comes with a background and some broad detail such that it needs to be fleshed out and detailed by the Dungeon Master. It is not a particularly interesting location as written and really needs that input, and perhaps it might have been more interesting if it had included suggestions as to which tables the Dungeon Master could roll on to further develop the cave complex. Otherwise, a table might have been more useful.
Once again, Delayed Blast Gamemaster #2 presents a plethora of things a Game Master can bring to her game. She will need to do some work to bring them into her campaign, but the ideas will work with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition as much as they would with Old School Essentials Classic Fantasy, Dungeon Crawl Classics, or The Fantasy Trip. Whatever your choice of fantasy roleplaying game, further inspiration is never unwanted and Delayed Blast Gamemaster #2 yet more.

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.

As the title suggests, 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. The issue opens with ‘Lost in Endless Corridors’ by Kirin Robinson. It contrasts the attraction and joy of the maze with the challenge of not making the play of mazes in fantasy roleplaying games, well, boring. What it highlights is the potential frustration of playing through a maze and the loss of player agency. It suggests two solutions to avoid this. The first is to set time limits on resources and character statuses during their exploration of the maze, such as their torches running out or their beginning to feel light-headed after a time. The second is move the exploration of the maze from being procedurally-based to clue-based, and so make the maze more interesting rather than an endless series of empty of corridors. This would need more work for the Judge than simply drawing out a map, but the potential pay-off would be greater and make the maze more memorable than frustrating.

Thom Hall’s ‘Roguelike Fountains’ is inspired by Roguelike computer adventure games, in particular, the fountains with their messages and effects to be found in such games. It comes with a number of tables for determining the nature of any fountain found and what its accompanying message might be. Thus magical or non-magical, and various effects and messages, with even the non-magical fountains often having some kind of effect. The use of the ‘Square’ font for tables, as used in the computer game adds to the nostalgic feel of the piece.

Sean Ellis continues his irregular Monster Column with ‘Consider the Ogre’. It points out the discrepancy between the Troll and the Ogre in Dungeons & Dragons, that the Dungeons & Dragons Troll with its rubbery skin and regenerative health is not the traditional Troll of myth and legend. That role actually falls to the Ogre. Although it does not suggest replacing one with the other, it does offer ways of making the Ogre more interesting than simply as a coarse, chaotic baby-snatching species of humanoids. It suggest the possibility that some might even be repentant and there might be multiple types of Ogre. This possibility is supported by tables for rolling an Ogre’s appearance and how different it is, and a power and a weakness, and then connecting the three together to create a cohesive design. Overall, it is a quick and dirty way of creating more individualistic Ogres.

‘Critical Table T: Traps – Traps and Crits’ by Jeffrey Tadlock details six traps ready to be placed in a Judge’s dungeon. These are simple enough—the spiked pit trap, the poison needle lock, the scythe hall, falling block, and repeating poison arrow trap—and arguably, classics of the fantasy gaming genre. Rather than have the Player Character affected by a trap make a saving throw against the effects of the trap when triggered, the Judge makes an attack roll against the Player Character for the trap. This means that traps, just as other forms of attack in the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game, need to have a table for determining what happens when a critical result is rolled on the attack. This is rolled on Critical Table T: Traps, a table of thirty results, the die rolled for any one trap determined by the attack modifier for the trap. So on a roll of one on any die, the trap springs perfectly and inflicts extra damage, but an attack modifier of +10 or +11 and the Judge is rolling a fourteen-sided die on Critical Table T: Traps, which might give the result of eleven, the damage inflicted strikes the target’s spinal area or if poison, overwhelms her central nervous system. Either way, the player needs to make a Fortitude Saving Throw for his character to remain conscious and the character also suffers two five-sided dice’s worth of extra damage. This makes traps even deadlier and makes the Thief Class far more important in disarming traps.

The ‘Shadowsword of Ith-Narmant’ is a write-up of a demonic shadow sword by Jürgen Mayer. It was forged from the demon’s own shadow by bound shadow warlocks and artificers, and like many of their creations may be found scattered across many worlds. It is treated as a longsword, but two six-sided dice are rolled for damage and when doubles are rolled, there is an extra effect, such as on double threes, ‘Taintburst’ inflicts three extra damage on the wielder and target, this damage, if it kills wielder or target, the demonic energies in the sword fuses with them, making them rise as a demon minion of Ith-Narmant. There are six such effects, one each for the six sets of doubles, but the very first, rolls of double ones, ‘Lifesucker’, sucks permanent Hit Points from the wielder and when enough is sucked out, the ‘Shadowsword of Ith-Narmant’ gains a Level. Each Level increases the viciousness and intelligence of the blade and inflict demonsigns on the wielder, which will have deleterious effects on the wielder’s alignment, ultimately turning him into a Champion of Ith-Narmant. The sword, ‘Shadowsword of Ith-Narmant’ is by any other name, Stormbringer from the novel by Michael Moorcock—or at least is inspired by it. Even if it is a bit too obvious, the mechanics are well done and bringing the sword into a campaign should give it an epic feel.

Rounding out the issue is ‘My Gongfarmer Can’t Do Sh*t!’ by Paul Wolfe. It is a call for the Zero Level characters of Character Funnel in Dungeon Crawl Classics to have skills and to be able to do things that reflect their backgrounds and occupations rolled during character creation. Not through an extensive list of skills, but rather through player creativity and narration when his Zero Level Player Character needs to do something which does not involve fighting, running, or screaming (or dying). It will require a little extra adjudication upon the part of the Judge, but the method will add to the background of any Zero Level character who survives a Character Funnel.

Physically, Crawl! Issue No. 7: Tips! Tricks! Traps! is decently put together. The few pieces of art vary in quality, some of it being a little cartoonish. The contents though, vary in quality and usefulness. This is not to say that none of the contents of the issue are useless, but none really quite stand out as being so useful that the Judge has to have access to them. The advice in ‘Lost in Endless Corridors’ and ‘My Gongfarmer Can’t Do Sh*t!’ feels a little obvious, unless of course, the Judge is new to Dungeon Crawl Classics, and whilst ‘Critical Table T: Traps – Traps and Crits’ and ‘Shadowsword of Ith-Narmant’ both add to the game, neither feels vital to a Judge’s game. Crawl! Issue No. 7: Tips! Tricks! Traps! feels like a mixed bag, containing good content, but just not good enough to be a must have.

When we sit down to roleplay, the one thing we invariably have in front of us is a set of dice. We have been using dice in roleplaying for as long as we have been roleplaying and just about everyone who games has their own set. They are of course tools, tools that we use to determine the outcomes of our character’s actions. Yet we come to invest our hopes and fears in our dice as we play and we place our characters in increasingly perilous situations, but this degree of investment and how it manifests varies from player to player. One player might hold on to one set of dice which he uses for every game he plays, another might build a set of dice he only uses for one character, one player might dump one set of dice and replace it with another due to poor results or character death, and another may simply collect dice. There is an amazing array of dice available in a variety of styles and materials—metals, gemstones, wood, and even moose poop. Then there are dice sets for different games. In some cases, particular dice are required to play particular games. For example, Star Wars: Edge of the Empire from Fantasy Flight Games requires its own set of dice, as does Fvlminata: Armed with Lightning with its ‘Talia’ or knucklebone dice and Free League Publishing’s ‘Year Zero Engine’ family of games such as Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days or the more recent Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying.

In most other cases, publishers manufacture dice for their roleplaying games which are absolutely not required to play their games. If such dice are not required, then what do they add? They certainly do not add to the game itself in terms of play, any more than any other set of dice a player might have in his collection. What they enforce is brand identity, so that if a player has a set of Call of Cthulhu dice when playing Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition or a set of RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha dice for playing RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, they add to the idea that the players are playing those games, encouraging a degree of immersion, but without adding anything directly to that play.

Released by The Evergreen Burrow following a successful Kickstarter campaign, the Lucky Ducks In A Row-Rubber Duckie Dice Set is a complete set of polyhedral dice. The standard set that we have been gaming with for over forty years. So a four-sided, six-sided, eight-sided, twelve-sided, and twenty-sided die, plus two ten-sided dice for percentile rolls, thus everything that a roleplayer will need to play a wide variety of roleplaying games, from Dungeons & Dragons to RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. What sets these dice apart from any set of dice is the fact that each die is of clear resin and each one contains a single, yellow, rubber duck. In order to accommodate these ducks, the dice in the Lucky Ducks In A Row-Rubber Duckie Dice Set is larger than the ordinary set of dice. Each one is 26 mm across, which means that they feel bigger in the hand and they are easier to read with consequently larger numbers. Only the four-sided die is different. It is not big enough to be home to a rubber duck, so instead its numbers are replaced with symbols. The one with a duck and the other numbers with the webbed feet that your friendly, cute rubber duck does not actually have.

So why ‘duck dice’? There is no roleplaying game which focuses entirely on ducks, and of course, the Lucky Ducks In A Row-Rubber Duckie Dice Set can be used with innumerable roleplaying games, so there is no obvious brand identity that these dice could be enforcing. Except… there is always Glorantha, and famously (infamously?) Glorantha has Ducks. Anthropomorphic Ducks. Complete with their own culture and beliefs which you can play and encounter as NPCs. So if you are playing a Duck in RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha or 13th Age Glorantha and you bring these dice to the table, you are not only enforcing the fact that these dice are yours, you are enforcing the fact that you are playing a Duck. Duck Dice for your Duck character.

Then there is the fact that ducks are cute. Especially rubber ducks. They are yellow, bright, and cheery. Therefore, a rubber duck dice set is, by extension, also cute. Plus, you get to roll them. How often do you get to see tumbling rubber ducks? At your table? Then, they come with a bathtub display. A clear, plastic freestanding bathtub in classic Victorian style. Which means you have somewhere to store them—on the table during the game and on the shelf after the game.

Ultimately though, like so many sets of dice, the Lucky Ducks In A Row-Rubber Duckie Dice Set is completely and utterly unnecessary. If a roleplayer already has a set of polyhedral dice, arguably, she does not need another. Roleplayers are roleplayers though, and a great many of them like having more dice, different dice, and themed dice, like the Lucky Ducks In A Row-Rubber Duckie Dice Set. And yet, these dice are fun, they are silly, and they are cute, and if you have a set, there can be no doubt that the Lucky Ducks In A Row-Rubber Duckie Dice Set is your set, that they are your dice.

When we sit down to roleplay, the one thing we invariably have in front of us is a set of dice. We have been using dice in roleplaying for as long as we have been roleplaying and just about everyone who games has their own set. They are of course tools, tools that we use to determine the outcomes of our character’s actions. Yet we come to invest our hopes and fears in our dice as we play and we place our characters in increasingly perilous situations, but this degree of investment and how it manifests varies from player to player. One player might hold on to one set of dice which he uses for every game he plays, another might build a set of dice he only uses for one character, one player might dump one set of dice and replace it with another due to poor results or character death, and another may simply collect dice. There is an amazing array of dice available in a variety of styles and materials—metals, gemstones, wood, and even moose poop. Then there are dice sets for different games. In some cases, particular dice are required to play particular games. For example, Star Wars: Edge of the Empire from Fantasy Flight Games requires its own set of dice, as does Fvlminata: Armed with Lightning with its ‘Talia’ or knucklebone dice and Free League Publishing’s ‘Year Zero Engine’ family of games such as Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days or the more recent Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying.

In most other cases, publishers manufacture dice for their roleplaying games which are absolutely not required to play their games. If such dice are not required, then what do they add? They certainly do not add to the game itself in terms of play, any more than any other set of dice a player might have in his collection. What they enforce is brand identity, so that if a player has a set of Call of Cthulhu dice when playing Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition or a set of RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha dice for playing RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, they add to the idea that the players are playing those games, encouraging a degree of immersion, but without adding anything directly to that play.

So, the question is, does the Travellers’ Aid Society Dice Set do the same for Traveller? Manufactured by Mongoose Publishing, this is a set of twenty six-sided dice, white with blue dots for the numbers on the first through fifth faces. The sixth face though is marked with the symbol of the Travellers’ Aid Society—the letters ‘TAS’ in a hexagon, a spaceship marking the counter or space at the top of the letter ‘A’. In Traveller, the Travellers’ Aid Society is a private organisation which maintains hostels and facilities at nearly all class A and B starports across Charted Space, providing its members with somewhere to stay, a regular means of travel, and information about worlds throughout known space. Membership can be purchased, but most Player Characters will receive membership as part of their mustering out benefits for meritorious or heroic conduct in service. Thus, the Travellers’ Aid Society is part of the fabric of the Traveller setting.

As much as the Travellers’ Aid Society is a part of the fabric of the Traveller setting, it not necessarily a brand identifier or icon associated with the Traveller setting or roleplaying game, whereas perhaps the Imperial Sunburst is, and is used across different institutions of the Third Imperium. Thus, black with a yellow sunburst for the Imperial Royal Family, yellow for the Imperial Navy, red for the Imperial Interstellar Scout Service, and so on. Could the Travellers’ Aid Society Dice Set have benefited from some variety in terms of colours and icons—perhaps those of the Third Imperium and other polities? Admittedly, that would mean that the Travellers’ Aid Society Dice Set would not be the Travellers’ Aid Society Dice Set, but a Traveller dice set. Plus, it would have made manufacturing and packaging that little bit more complex. Then there is the question of twenty six-sided dice—are that many needed? In a game like Traveller, most players will be rolling two six-sided dice at a time for skill checks and similar actions. They are going to be rolling perhaps four dice at the most to determine damage in combat, although this may increase as many to six when employing particularly heavy weapons or in starship combat. Thus, there is enough dice for a single group, perhaps consisting of a Game Master and four players with four dice each, or even more if they have fewer dice in front of them. In effect, the Travellers’ Aid Society Dice Set is not a dice set for a player or the Game Master, but for the group. Even so, there is still the matter of the price. The Travellers’ Aid Society Dice Set has a recommended retail price of £25 ($25).

Each die in the Travellers’ Aid Society Dice Set has a recommended retail price of £1.25 ($1.25).

Now of course, there are costs involved in the manufacture and shipping of any product. Of course, there are. Getting the moulds cut for the dice, designing the packaging, assembling the packaging, shipping, and so on. But £1.25 ($1.25) per die? For a set of dice that is not that interesting, does not add to the play of the game, and in play does not strongly enforce the brand?

There can be no doubt that the Travellers’ Aid Society Dice Set is nicely packaged. It comes a in neat little box. Yet it is no more than a frippery, a collector’s item that some Traveller devotees will want to have in their collection, because it does not add a great deal to the play of the roleplaying game and it is debatable whether it adds very much to the brand because the Travellers’ Aid Society icon is not as recognisable as others in Traveller. Could it be that the Travellers’ Aid Society Dice Set is just a bit dull and just a bit too expensive?

The Highway of Blood: A Call of Cthulhu Scenario for the 1970s is a one-shot scenario for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, published on the Miskatonic Repository. It stands out as being different for four reasons. First, it is set during the nineteen seventies. Second, it is inspired by the low-budget horror, splatter, and exploitation films of the period, shown in a ‘grindhouse’ or ‘action house’ cinema, such as Duel, I Spit on Your Grave, Last House on the Left, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes, and the more recent Death Proof. Third, in doing so, the scenario involves a number of elements which the players may find disturbing. In fact, more disturbing than is the norm for a Call of Cthulhu scenario. These include drug use, sadistic violence, implied rape (against NPCs), torture, cannibalism, body horror, and violence against children. Consequently, the scenario comes with a warning and advice on how to handle such topics, including making clear to the players the nature of the content of the scenario and discussing any boundaries they may have—essentially a ‘Session Zero’, if necessary fading to black and drawing a veil in what might otherwise be a personally harrowing scene, and ultimately respecting a player’s limits. Even if that means ending the current session. So to be clear, The Highway of Blood is not a scenario for the timid or the easily offended, its content is of a grittily adult nature and so requires mature players, but it goes out of its way to be upfront about this and gives advice on how to handle it.

The Highway of Blood takes place in 1975, along The Devil’s Backbone, a scenic drive along a limestone ridge in the Texas Hill Country. It is purportedly one of the most haunted spots in the Lone Star State. The Player Characters, who might be friends on a week-long road trip through West Texas, or FBI agents from the Dallas office who are investigating a series of disappearances in the area, begin play on the road, getting low on fuel and in one of the worst heat waves the region has ever seen, also in need of a cold drink. When they see a sign up ahead promising ‘Gas & Food’, the Player Characters make the necessary right turn onto the unpaved road and find themselves in the crumbling, mouldering former uranium-mining town of Abattoir, West Texas (population of 850, but probably much less…). Unfortunately, getting into Abattoir, West Texas, is the easy part. Getting out is going to be challenging, not to say nigh on impossible, and is likely to be tortuous. In some cases, literally…

The fourth reason why The Highway of Blood is different, is the format. It is not a traditional Call of Cthulhu scenario in that it is a strong plot driven by an investigation, with layers of the mystery being peeled back layer by layer as the Investigators make their enquiries. Instead, it is written as a sandbox-style scenario in which the Player Characters are free to go anywhere they like, though they are likely to be harried and hindered by the evil inhabitants of Abattoir and its environs everywhere they go. To that end, The Highway of Blood describes the town and surrounding locations in some depth, including the inhabitants and the items which might be found there—sometimes on lengthy random tables. The locations include the gas station, the diner, the church, and the few surviving shops in the town itself. Then beyond the confines of the town, the roads which crisscross the area, the camp and mine shafts for the long since shutdown uranium mine, a horridly bloody compound, and below the mine, a series of strange caves and tunnels. All described in some detail and all sites which the Investigators can visit as part of their sojourn in and around Abattoir.

The plot—as much as there is a plot in The Highway of Blood—is primarily driven by two urges. One is the urge by the debased and often inbred townsfolk to harass and harry, even play, with the Player Characters, and keep them in Abattoir, whilst the other is Player Characters’ urge to escape Abattoir. The highlight of this—if there is one—is the set piece car chase over the roads surrounding the town. This is ‘The Hunt’, and it is very obviously inspired by the car chases seen in the Grindhouse genre. Beyond this hunt, the motivations and plans of the scenario’s antagonists are discussed in some detail, as are possible outcomes or endgames…

The Highway of Blood is supported by a number of appendices. The first provides an overview of ‘The Hunt’, including optional car rules to supplement the chase rules in Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition; and rules for non-lethal attacks (since the antagonists do not want to actually kill the Player Characters) and driving stunts. The second provides environment rules for the desert and various hazards; the third the full statistics and write-ups for the various NPCs; the third the monsters; and the fifth, descriptions of new spells and items, plus new rules for radioactive dust and water. The sixth gives the scenario’s various handouts, including numerous maps and floor plans, plus portraits for all of the NPCs and details of the vehicles the Player Characters and their enemies drive during the scenario. The seventh appendix provides two sets of pre-generated Player Characters. One is a quartet of twenty-somethings on a week-long road trip, whilst the other is a pair of FBI agents looking into a rash of disappearances in the area. The eighth and last appendix provides a thumbnail guide to playing in the seventies—news and pop culture in 1975, slang, and recommended films. All useful for anyone who was not born then or was too young to remember the period, or was alive back and then, and has forgotten what it was like.

So what then is The Highway of Blood actually about? It can be best described as the desert version of H.P. Lovecraft’s ‘The Shadow Over Innsmouth’. The town of Abattoir is dominated by a cult dedicated to an ancient god whose members seek victims for conception, consumption, and consecration. This is no Escape from Innsmouth though, the emphasis being on the ‘no escape’, again in keeping with the Grindhouse genre. There is a touch of Mad Max in the scenario’s set piece car chase and of Deliverance in the encounters between the Player Characters and the NPCs. Instead of hillbillies of Deliverance or the bachtrachian inbreds of Innsmouth, what The Highway of Blood has is ‘Dustbillies’. There are potential allies to be found in Abattoir, but to a man—and there are no active female NPCs in the scenario—all have either been cowed by the cult or actively choose to ignore it. This adds to the challenge of what is already a challenging scenario.

Physically, The Highway of Blood is decently appointed. It is presented in full colour with a mixture of period colour photographs and photographs, as well as black and white photographs from the nineteen thirties onwards. The floorplans are clean and easy to read, as are the maps in general. Some thought has been given to highlighting the key points in the scenario and in particular, key trigger warnings for the horrific situations in the scenario. Throughout, there is staging advice and directions for the Keeper, most notably appropriate music to play at certain points, as well as the voiceover from a state radio disc jockey. In addition to it needing an edit in places, if there is an issue with The Highway of Blood, it is that the Keeper could have been given a bigger, better map of the region and it be placed more upfront for her reference.

As a scenario, The Highway of Blood is difficult to quantify. This is because as a sandbox scenario, a form more readily seen in the Old School Renaissance rather than in Call of Cthulhu, it very much being very player driven with relatively little in the way of the plot or NPC to pull them along. In fact, the plot more pushes the Player Characters along as the inhabitants of Abattoir harass and harry them in and around, but not of, the town. In addition, the format means that unlike a traditional Call of Cthulhu scenario, there is not the readymade trail of breadcrumbs or clues for the Player Characters to follow, so that because The Highway of Blood is a sandbox, the Player Characters can more easily avoid any and all clues, run into a major threat and get captured and/or butchered in the first hour or so, or simply wander around never finding anything, just desperate to escape… So a play through of The Highway of Blood could last an hour or hours over multiple sessions. And even if the Player Characters do manage to escape, they may not necessarily succeed or find a solution which deals with the threat they face in Abattoir. That said, the players and their characters have to be both lucky and resourceful if they are to fully deal with this threat, the likelihood being that they will ultimately fail, get captured, and the scenario fades to black as the Player Characters scream in terror. Such an ending though, would be in keeping with the Grindhouse genre that The Highway of Blood is inspired by.

Ultimately, the nature of The Highway of Blood is what will make a gaming group decide whether to play it or not. The triggering issues it contains means that it is definitely one to avoid for some players, but those issues are part of the genre and the authors should be praised for addressing how to handle them as well as they do. The scenario is also less useful for a campaign, though there is advice to that end, being better suited to one-shot play. For a gaming group looking to play a grim, gritty, and gruesome Grindhouse scenario, The Highway of Blood: A Call of Cthulhu Scenario for the 1970s is the perfect choice.

City of Mist is a roleplaying game of neo-noir investigation and superhero-powered action. The intersection between the film noir and superhero genres has invariably derived from the Pulp fiction of the thirties and forties, with such characters as The Shadow or Batman, with generally low-key and low-powered heroes and villains in comparison to what would follow with the Four Colour subgenre. City of Mist does something different. It brings in the powers and personalities of legends and gods of different Mythos—King Arthur, Red Riding Hood, Hercules, Athena, and Bast—and then obscures them. These powers and personalities manifest through Rifts, inhabitants of The City, a fog-shrouded, corrupt, and crime-ridden metropolis which could be Los Angeles of the thirties, New York of the fifties, or London of the sixties. It is simply known as The City. As Rifts, the Player Characters investigate Cases, and if necessary, fight crime, some of it committed by other Rifts, some not. Yet as powerful as each Rift is, the ordinary citizens of The City, the Sleepers, cannot see them for what they are and never see them manifest their powers. The Mist, a strange mystical veil renders each manifestation of a power or legend ordinary. Wallcrawling? Parkour. Lightning bolt? Broken electrical substation. Each Mythoi—god or legend or even abstract concept wants to manifest itself in The City, but the Mist works to prevent this, for the result might be chaos which could rip The City apart, so instead it allows them to manifest through the Rifts. Equally, as there is a tension between the Mythoi and the Mist, there is tension between the Mythos, both the legend which wants to become more and a mystery as to why it manifested, and the Logos, the ordinary self, safe and mundane in each Rift.

The City of Mist: All-Seeing Eye Investigations Starter Set is designed as an introduction to the setting. Published by Son of Oak Game Studio LLC, it provides everything necessary to play through at least one Case. Designed to be played by five players and a Master of Ceremonies—as the Game Master is known—the starter set comes richly appointed. There are two books labelled ‘The Players’ and ‘The Master of Ceremonies’; five pre-generated character folios, one each for Baku, Detective Enkidu, Job, Lily Chow, Iron Hans, and Tlaloc; a deck of twenty Tracking cards and a Crew Card; two twenty-two by seventeen-inch poster maps; forty-one illustrated character tokens; and two City of Mist dice—one purple Mythos die and one ivory Logos die. There is a lot on the box, all of it presented in full colour and illustrated throughout with artwork which invokes the two inspirations for City of Mist.

The starting point for the City of Mist: All-Seeing Eye Investigations Starter Set are five pre-generated Player Characters or Rifts. The quintet consists of Baku, Detective Enkidu, Job, Lily Chow and Iron Hans, and Tlaloc. Baku is a monster hunter, mythological Japanese chimera who hunts ghosts and devours nightmares; Detective Enkidu is an experienced police detective who hides a creature of the wild from Sumerian myth inside her which drives her to break the rules; Job is an unkillable priest whose family was killed by The City’s criminal underworld; Lily Chow is a runaway teen able to unleash Iron Hans, a magician-giant who is her companion, protector, and big brother; and Taloc is a small time crook with a gift of the gab and the power of the Aztec god of rain and water, thunder and lighting. Each of the five character folios is done on heavy, glossy card in A3-size. This does mean that there is quite a lot of information on each folio and that each folio takes up quite a bit of space on the table.

Unlike a traditional roleplaying game, a Rift is not described in terms of skills or attributes, but rather what he can do. Each of the five has the same set of Core Moves, or actions that they can attempt. What marks a Rifts out as special is the fact that he has four Themes, represented by four cards on the folio. They are divided between Mythos and Logos Themes, the legendary and the ordinary aspects of a Rift. Some Rifts have Mythos Themes than Logos Themes, and vice versa, and it is possible to lose Themes, so that a Mythos Theme might Fade and be replaced by a Logos Theme, whilst a Logos Theme might Crack and be replaced by a Mythos Theme. There are consequences to having Themes all of one type. For example, a Rift who replaces all of his Logos Themes with Mythos Themes, becomes an avatar of his Mythos, whilst losing his last Mythos Theme means he becomes a Sleeper and denies the existence of the Mythos. Whilst each Mythos Theme has a Mystery that the Rift wants to explore, and each Logos Theme has an Identity which represents a defining conviction, belief, or emotion, all Themes have Power Tags which can be invoked to help achieve a Rift’s intended goal, plus a Weakness.

For example, Tlaloc has the Mythos Theme ‘God of Rain and Lightning’. This has the Mystery, “Who Threatens to Blot Out the Fifth Sun?”, the Power Tags, ‘Call Upon the Storm’, ‘Thunderbolt Manipulation’, and ‘Electrifying Gaze’, plus the Weakness, ‘Indoor Spaces’. He also has the ‘A Dimond in the Rough’ Logos Theme, which as the Identity, “This Will Be The Last Time, I Swear!”, the Power Tags, ‘Good, deep down inside’, ‘Relentless Schmoozer’, and ‘Sticky Fingers’, as well as the Weakness, ‘Pangs of Remorse’.

Learning the game begins with ‘The Players’ booklet. It runs to forty-four pages and introduces the concepts behind roleplaying and City of Mist, explains the character folios and how the roleplaying game is played—the ‘Moves’ or actions a Rift can take and their potential outcome, describes the various districts of The City, and provides a lengthy, eight page example of play. The latter includes two of the pre-generated Rifts in the starter set and showcases the various types of Moves that the Rifts can perform as part of an investigation and then combat scene. In general, the Moves are well explained, but do come with fine print and do require a little bit of study. The example of play though, is more than helpful in showing the prospective player and Master of Ceremonies how the game works.

Whilst the Master of Ceremonies has to read the ‘The Players’ book to understand the basics of City of Mist, the ‘The Master of Ceremonies’ book is all hers. This explains the role of the Master of Ceremonies, the Moves or actions she can take—and when, explains how to present challenges and dangers to the Rifts, and so on. A Danger encapsulates a threat to the Rifts, whether that is an NPC, a location, or a situation, which might be a crime lord’s chief enforcer, a car chase through the streets of The City, or a building on fire. The bulk of the ‘The Master of Ceremonies’ book is given over to ‘Shark Tank’, the first case for ‘All-Seeing Eye Investigations’, the crew which the Rifts in the City of Mist: All-Seeing Eye Investigations Starter Set are members of. ‘All-Seeing Eye Investigations’ has its own ‘Crew Theme card, complete with its own Mystery and Power Tags which the Rifts can invoke as part of their investigation.

Mechanically, City of Mist and thus the City of Mist: All-Seeing Eye Investigations Starter Set is ‘Powered by the Apocalypse’, which means that it uses the rules first seen in Apocalypse World in 2010. These rules are player-facing in that the Master of Ceremonies does not make dice rolls, but rather that the player do. So from the Core Moves below, a player would roll ‘Convince’ to persuade an NPC, but ‘Face Danger’ to avoid being influenced. The rules in City of Mist have eight Core Moves—‘Change The Game’ (give an advantage or remove a disadvantage), , ‘Face Danger’ (avoid harm or resist a malign influence), ‘Go Toe to Toe’ with someone, ‘Hit With All You’ve Got’ (harm someone in the worst way you can), ‘Investigate’, ‘Sneak Around’, and ‘Take the Risk’ (perform a feat of daring). When a Rift undertakes an action, his player states the Move he is using, applies any bonuses from Tags—short descriptors for a quality, resource, advantage, disadvantage, or object in the game—and applies the resulting Power value for the sum of positive and negative tags and statuses affecting an action, and rolls two six-sided (or the included City of Mist dice) dice. A player can use all manner of Tag Combos to build up the Power value, as long as the Master of Ceremonies agrees. Several Tag Combos tailored to each pre-generated Rift are listed in their respective folios.

A result of a six or less is a Miss, a result of between seven and nine is a Hit, but with complications, whilst a result of ten or more is a Hit with a great success. Each Move works slightly differently and will give different results depending upon the roll. For example, the ‘Investigate’ Move gets a Rift answers to questions. If a Hit—seven or more—is rolled, the player can ask the Master of Ceremonies a number of questions and so gain a number of Clues equal to the Power value applied to the roll. If a Hit with complications—seven or more, but less than ten—is rolled, the Master of Ceremonies can expose the Rift to danger, give fuzzy, incomplete, or partly-true partly-false answers, or have the NPC ask the Rift a question, which he must answer. The aim in many Moves is to inflict a Status such as ‘Prone-2’ or ‘Befuddled-1’ or ‘Knife Wound-3’, which will give a Rift an advantage when rolling against that NPC who has suffered such a Status and a disadvantage when suffered by the Rift. A status like this is recorded on a Status card and kept in play until it is got rid of.

In addition, the Rifts can enter a Downtime sequence between the investigation or action, and undertake actions such as ‘Give Attention to a Logos’, ‘Work the Case’, ‘Explore Your Mythos’, ‘Prepare for your next Activity’, and ‘Recover for your next Activity’. This is handled as a montage scene and the effects of each action are automatic, whilst ‘Burning for a Hit’ grants an automatic success without complications, but also makes the Tag unusable until a Downtime sequence has been completed. Lastly, there is ‘Stop.Holding.Back.’, a special Move which enables a Rift to push his powers beyond their limit, though at the cost of a sacrifice to one of the Themes in a Rift’s folio.

The Master of Ceremonies has her own Moves, divided between Soft Moves and Hard Moves. A Soft Move is an imminent threat or challenge to the Rifts and their investigation, and really only consists of the Master of Ceremonies complicating things for the Rifts as a means to spur them into action. A Hard Move is a major complication or a significant setback to the Rifts and their investigation, and includes more options for the Master of Ceremonies. ‘Give a Status’ inflicts a Status on a Rift, but this can be resisted by a ‘Face Danger’ Move. Other Hard Moves, such as ‘Burn a Tag’, ‘Complicate Things, Big-time’, and others cannot be resisted and are more narrative effects and consequences than Moves as such. Essentially, they can come into play when a Rift fails to take an action or fails—rolls six or less—when undertaking an action. The Master of Ceremonies also has Intrusions, which really codify her using her judgement when adjudicating the rules.

The Case in the City of Mist: All-Seeing Eye Investigations Starter Set, ‘Shark Tank’ is organised in a couple of ways. First, it is a pyramid diagram of scenes, arranged by depth into a series of layers, which after the briefing, the Rifts can visit and investigate. Second, it is as a series of programmed steps which take the Master of Ceremonies and her players through the process of learning to play both City of Mist and the scenario. For example, when the Rifts encounter a group of enforcers shaking down a shop owner, ‘The Master of Ceremonies’ book says, “If this is the crew’s first fight, stop the story and move over to the players’ booklet, starting at Exhibit #8: Playing Through a Conflict on page 21 (see also MC Skill: Running a Fight Scene on the next page).” At which point, the players and Master of Ceremonies can set up and run the fight scene. However, this does not mean that the Master of Ceremonies can necessarily run ‘Shark Tank’ without any preparation, but it does mean that once prepared, she really has all of the references, pointers, and advice at her fingertips, including advice specific to each of the five Rifts which come pre-generated with the City of Mist: All-Seeing Eye Investigations Starter Set. The scenario itself has the Rifts interviewing the owners of several businesses on Miller’s Square where All-Seeing Eye Investigations has its shabby office, potentially exposing police corruption, confronting villains who bring a whole new meaning to the term ‘loan shark’, and having a showdown at the chief villain’s lair. Beyond the confines of ‘Shark Tank’, there are extra scenarios available which can be played using the content from the City of Mist: All-Seeing Eye Investigations Starter Set.

Also included in the City of Mist: All-Seeing Eye Investigations Starter Set are two twenty-two by seventeen-inch poster maps and forty-one illustrated character tokens. The maps depict various locations which appear in the scenario, ‘Shark Tank’, and tokens cover all five Rifts and the various NPCs in the scenario. The single purple Mythos die and single ivory Logos die are decent twelve-sided dice marked with one through five twice, and then the domino mask symbol on the six face for the Logos die, and power icon on the six face for the Mystery die. Each icon also appears on the Themes in each folio.

Physically, the City of Mist: All-Seeing Eye Investigations Starter Set is very nicely put together. The poster maps are on sturdy paper, the counters thick cardboard, the folios on glossy card stock, and both of ‘The Players’ and ‘The Master of Ceremonies’ booklets done on glossy paper stock. Inside, both booklets are superbly illustrated in a slightly cartoonish, but suitably film noir style, and their layout is excellent. Not only designed to look like a set of case files for a crime, but also designed to be accessible with effective use of devices to highlight text and boxed text for useful information. If there is a physical downside to the City of Mist: All-Seeing Eye Investigations Starter Set, it is the box it comes in. It is not particularly sturdy and unlikely to do a good job of protecting its otherwise excellent contents.

The City of Mist: All-Seeing Eye Investigations Starter Set is at first confusing. The box contains a lot of components and it is a little difficult to quite know where to start. However, once you dig into the rules in the ‘The Players’ booklet it begins to make a little sense, but really where it comes together is in ‘The Master of Ceremonies’ booklet, especially in the scenario, ‘Shark Tank’, which gives context for the rules and whether through nudges to the Master of Ceremonies to use particular rules or direct referral back to the rules in ‘The Players’ booklet. Once grasped, what the City of Mist: All-Seeing Eye Investigations Starter Set reveals is a flexible ruleset which drives and pushes the narrative. The setting itself, combines urban fantasy with super heroics, but that combination avoids much of the trappings of the superhero genre. It shrouds them in the fog of the film noir genre just as The Mist masks The City from them. The City of Mist: All-Seeing Eye Investigations Starter Set is an excellent introduction to The City and the ‘Powered by the Apocalypse’ mechanics of City of Mist.

The Future We Saw is a near-future, post-scarcity, post-labour roleplaying game of A.I. and precognitive manipulation of politics, power, privacy, and information in a world of radical political, corporate, and social factions. This is a future in which corporations and other organisations not only have their own public relations teams to make themselves look good, but teams of undercover fixers whose task is to ensure that their employer looks good and their employer’s rival looks bad, that they have the inside information on their rivals, whilst denying inside information to their rivals. Working in small team ‘Special Forces’ style operations, these fixers will conduct acts of blackmail and kompromat, assassination and intimidation, infiltration and hacking, extraction and kidnapping, sabotage and discovery, and more. Each team will comprise combat and protection Veterans, technical Specialists, Psy-Ops who provide medical and psychological support, and Seers, precogs capable of seeing Glimpses and Gazes into the possible future, and so potentially avoid them—though not without suffering high degrees of stress such that it is not uncommon for Seers to burn out.

The Future We Saw is published by Lost Pages, best known for its Old School Renaissance titles such as Genial Jack Vol. I and the Burgs & Bailiffs series. It employs the mechanics from Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition to provide four Classes—each of which goes up to Fifth Level, near-future skill and tool Proficiencies, and the spell-like Glimpses and Gazes of the Seer. In addition, it covers the types of factions found tomorrow—if not today—and the means to set up a Scheme, or campaign, in which factions will send teams on Missions against their rivals to gain or prevent leverage, perhaps discovering other information, which will lead to further Missions, and so on. Lastly it includes a campaign setting, set-up, and scenario in tomorrow’s Dublin written by the author of Macchiato Monsters: Rules for Adventures In a Dungeonverse You Build Together.

The Future We Saw is not a Cyberpunk roleplaying game. Not only does it lack the chrome and neon aesthetics, it is not about technology and our inability to integrate with it, and it is not about the masses versus megacorporations or working to bring them down. The various factions in The Future We Saw are in power, so it is about sabotaging them, manipulating them, and controlling them rather than destroying them, and all for the benefit of another faction rather than society. The Future We Saw is about the manipulation of a future that has already been lost to the control of corporations and other factions whose promises have failed to deliver as discourse polarised and technology either drove out the need for labour or began to direct it. What technology there is has been subsumed into society, whether that is robot delivery drones or mobile devices or A.I.-driven vehicles—essentially all recognisable from today, and in terms of game play there are no hacking rules. Instead hacking is handled offscreen by an NPC, if at all. However, labour is at least useful for providing a human face, or stepping in when A.I. cannot cope or needs to be repaired, but in the main, robots do much of the work. However, constant working with A.I. has caused mental illness in many, even triggering a precognitive ability in some. Typically, this comes in the form of a hallucination which suggests the best possible outcome, but not whether the action will succeed, such that the powers of a Seer are powerful, but not absolute. However, such predictions, known as Sights, can fail due to errors in belief, the blurring of details, focus upon incidental details, and personal bias as well as the Seer’s mental health.

An Agent in The Future We Saw has the six attribute scores of Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition—Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. Each of the four Agent Classes grants various Proficiencies—Saving Throws, Armour, Weapons, and Skills, as well as a series of features. For example, the Specialist starts with Expertise—double Proficiency with two skills and Specialist Training. This can be Thug, essentially the equivalent of the Rogue’s Backstab; Contacts, which grants Advantage on Charisma checks when dealing with criminal contacts; or Meaningful Practice, which grants a bonus action with one particular tool the Agent has Proficiency with. Two means of Agent creation are given. One is an array for the ‘Typical Professional’, whilst the standard three six-sided dice are rolled for those ‘From Other Walks of Life’. An Agent then receives some bonuses to these and then selects a Class. An Agent does not begin with equipment as this is provided by his employer on a Mission by Mission basis.

Marilyn Hilliard was an actuary working for Solid Life Health Insurance supporting an expert A.I. when she began to see the times of deaths of her customers. This drove her into having a mental health episode and eventually hospital. Her policy and employment was subsequently purchased from Solid Life Health Insurance and she found herself working for an entirely different employer.

Marilyn Hilliard
First Level Seer

Strength 12 (+1)
Constitution 06 (-2)
Dexterity 13 (+1)
Intelligence 14 (+2)
Wisdom 18 (+4)
Charisma 16 (+3)

Hit Points 7

Proficiencies: Light Armour, Simple Weapons
Saving Throws: Intelligence, Wisdom
Skills: Insight, Investigation, Persuasion

Features
Stress Prevision (People)
Future Sight: Emotional Button Mashing, Evil Eye (Glimpses); Alpha-Beta Approach Pruning (Gazes)

A Seer’s capacity to see into the future is divided into ‘Glimpses’ and ‘Gazes’. ‘Glimpses’ grant visions of the future about the Seer’s immediate environment—to see how a combat plays out to pre-empt an action, to determine how a conversation might play out, or to predict the worst possible outcome from a situation. In general, this is to gain a bonus action, a reaction, and so on. ‘Gazes’ take longer, often days at a time, and grant long range predictions, perhaps about the plans of a rival faction or the best possible course of action. Although The Future We Saw does not have hacking rules or mechanics, but the difference between ‘Glimpses’ and ‘Gazes’ maps onto the shift on how hacking is handled in cyberpunk and similar roleplaying games. Originally, hacking was always handled by a Player Character working from a base or home whilst the rest of the team goes on the Mission, essentially ‘Gazes’, but in more recent iterations, hacking needs to be done on scene, that is, the hacker has to go on the Mission. Which is this case, the equivalent of the ‘Glimpses’, visions of the future which happen on site, during the Mission. Predicting the future does not come without its cost. Invoking ‘Glimpses’ and ‘Gazes’ inflicts stress and suffering stress can led to burnout and exhaustion, which can greatly impede an Agent’s capacity to operate. Combat is also dangerous in The Future We Saw as it is possible to suffer grisly wounds.

Ideally, The Future We Saw should be played with four players and thus one of each of the four Agent types in the roleplaying game, though with more players, the doubled up Agents should opt for different specialities to enable each Agent to shine in different ways during play. Doubling up with Seer Agents may set up an interesting dynamic of differing views of the immediate future, but will also complicate the efforts of the Game Master to what that ‘best’ future might be in any given situation. Even with just the one Seer in a team, determining the ‘best’ future might be in any given situation is still one of the more challenging tasks in the roleplaying game for the Game Master.

In terms of setting, The Future We Saw does three things. First it presents and discusses five Factions—Hegemon, Innovator, Movement, Rentier, and Zaibatzu—and what their objectives are, why they are hated and why they are useful, and the three perks they can grant once per Mission. For example, an Innovator represents the Power of Progress, which could be cutting edge technology, pervasive data hoarders and manipulators, and the like, such as gig economy delivery and taxi services, and political consulting firms specialising in data analysis and manipulation. It is hated because it pursues improvements without any qualms about collateral or financial damage, but useful because it is building the future. Their perks include ‘Benefit: SIGINT’—harvesting data means great briefing material, Support: Cutting Edge—new technology; and Ultimate: Hack from the Stash—the possibility that the data breaches have already made in the target of the Mission, but not yet revealed. A diagram shows the relationships between the five types of Factions, so that the Game Master can see the alliances and enmities at a glance.

Second, it examines the types of Missions and Schemes that the Agents can be sent on. Whether an Extraction, Cover-Up, or Kompromat, Missions are played out in seven phases—Briefing, Procurement (assign equipment), Deployment, Execution, Extraction, Debriefing, and Consequences. What is interesting here is that in terms of game play, failure is as interesting as success, since the target Faction (or other Faction) might be running its own team of Agents and failure means approaching the problem again, but from a different angle, even a different type of Mission. Further, throughout the Game Master has her own character to roleplay in addition to the various NPCs in situ, and that is Control, a voice in the Agents’ ears, offering advice, help, and warnings, a la Control of John le Carre’s espionage fiction.

Schemes are the overall objectives of the Faction the Agents are working for, the equivalent of a campaign in other roleplaying games, but relatively short and meant to be flexible and be developed as the Agents play through Missions, make discoveries and the target Factions acts in response. These are mapped out on a ‘FTM’ or ‘Faction Tension Map’, which sets out the specific relationships between the Factions and other organisations or persons involved in the Scheme, willing or not. The relative brevity is supported by the number of Missions the Agents go on to acquire Levels—two Missions to get to Second Level, then three to get to Third Level, and so on, for a maximum of fourteen Missions to get to Fifth Level, the maximum available in The Future We Saw.

Third, The Future We Saw presents a Scheme setting, ‘Dublin 2020’. It details a city divided by wealth and a security Fence, dominated by corporate interests, alco-tourism, and tax breaks. It is supported by complete scenario, ‘L❤VE’s Data’s Lost’, in which the Agents are working for L❤VE, an Innovator and start-up company desperately on the make whose data, much of it private and harvested from its app, has been hacked into on the servers at a nearby server farm. The Faction responsible, ZPLNTR, a radical hacker group, is holding the data hostage and the Agents’ task is to prevent further leaks and get control of the data back. Mix in rival Factions, rival events, and more, and this is a decent starting Scheme which feels just a little too real.

Currently, The Future We Saw is only available in an ‘Ashcan’ or ‘Zero Edition’. This does not mean that it is roughly presented. The layout is clean and tidy, and there is a lot of white space. This is by design, and whilst some may complain, it does give the content room to breath and it makes it easy to read. The artwork is decent and though it needs a slight edit in places, the book is well written.

The Future We Saw is a heist roleplaying game, a roleplaying of small teams of experts conducting missions in small amounts of time. It is like the television series Leverage or Hustle, but with a twist. It is like those television series, but backwards—or rather forwards. In Leverage, the team achieves its aims, playing out a con on its mark, but how the mark is played, how each switch or misdirection is made, is revealed in flashbacks, showcasing the skills and abilities of the team’s members. In The Future We Saw, there are no flashbacks, but there are flashforwards, quick peeks and squints mostly into the immediate future(s), and they occur throughout the mission rather than at the beginning or the end.

Overall, The Future We Saw is an interesting take upon the heist and the post-cyberpunk roleplaying game, set in a tomorrow that we can already see.

In the nineteenth century there remained much of the world to be explored and discovered, so men and women would set out to chart and catalogue the great unknowns in Africa, Asia, and South America. Many would be sponsored by august bodies such as the Royal Geographical Society, the Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin, and Société de Géographie, as well as many museums, and in turn the most successful of explorers would return with tales of their explorations, bringing back with them charts of where they have been, fantastic animals and beautiful plants, amazing treasures, and even lost explorers. They would go on to be famous, whilst their sponsors—the societies and the museums—would gain prestige, able to conduct greater scientific work and open greater exhibits to the public. This is the set-up for Exploriana, a board game of exploration and discovery, published by Triple Ace Games, following a successful Kickstarter campaign in which august scientific bodies will send out intrepid explorers and naturalists to chart and catalogue the world, and come back with great discoveries. Each player is the head of one these scientific bodies, who Recruits and sends out Explorers to the far flung corners of the world where they explore regions, and make and return with discoveries that the scientific organisations so covet. It combines ‘Card Drafting’, ‘Push Your Luck’, ‘Set Collection’, and ‘Worker Placement’ mechanics, is designed for between two and five players, aged fourteen and up, and takes roughly forty-five to sixty minutes to play.

Fundamentally, Exploriana consists of five decks of cards and four boards. Three of the decks of cards are Region decks, consisting of Discovery cards, one each for Africa, Asia, and South America. Each Region deck has an associated Region board. The fourth board is the Renown/Score Track, whilst the fourth and fifth decks of cards consist of Explorer cards and Mission cards respectively. Each Discovery card in a Region deck indicates its type—Animal, Location, Treasure, Map, or Orchid, as well as the number of Victory Points it awards at game’s end, Renown for determining turn order, coins it awards, and potentially the Hazard it presented in acquiring. The three types of Hazard are ‘Wrong Turn’, ‘Animal Attack’, and ‘Rockfall’. If a player reveals the three different or three of the same Hazard types during a turn exploring, his turn is over. The three Region deck decks vary in terms of risk and reward, with South America having the lowest and Asia the highest.

The Explorer cards consist of individuals like the Entrepreneur who can draw new Mission cards and choose open to keep, the Medic who can turn over the top card of a Discovery deck and if has one, can ignore the Hazard it reveals, and the Photographer who can take two cards from a Region. Explorer cards are recruited in the first phase of each turn, but each has a cost to be paid if a player wants to use their effects, and an Explore card is discarded after use. Each Mission card has a task such as ‘My Hero!’ (rescuing three or more lost explorers), ‘Bloomin’ Marvelous!’ (collect a set of orchids, one of each type), and ‘Location, Location, Location!’ (collection a location from each of the three different Regions. Each Mission card awards four Victory Points.

Each of the three Region boards has spaces to place the players’ Explorer pawns and Lost Explorer tokens. They are also double-sided, one side being for two to four players and the other for five players. The Renown/Score Track is used to keep track of the players’ Renown throughout the game. Both Renown/Score Track and the three Region boards are designed to click together jigsaw fashion to form one long board.

Set-up of Exploriana is simple enough. The Renown/Score Track and the three Region boards are placed in a line down the table and the three Region decks shuffled and placed alongside them with three cards in reserve on one side and the rest on the other. Two cards from each deck are drawn and placed face up so that everyone can see them. Each player is given his two Explorer pawns, six coins, and two Missions, which will score them Victory Points if completed.

Each round of Exploriana consists of four phases. Turn order goes from the highest Renown to the lowest, but at the game’s beginning, the player who most recently travelled to another continent goes first. In the ‘Recruit Explorers’ phase, the players each choose one Explorer card from those face up. There is always one more Explorer card than the number of players and any Explorer card left has a coin added to it. A player who takes an Explorer card with coins on it, also gets the coins. This can be a consideration as players rarely have quite enough coins necessary to hire their Explorers and use their abilities. In the ‘Send Explorers’ phase, the players take in turns to assign one of their Explorer pawns, then the other, onto one or two of the Region boards. A player can only explore a Region deck if he has an Explorer pawn on the associated Region board. It is possible to completely fill the spaces on a Region board, forcing a player to place his Explorer pawn elsewhere.

Then, starting on the South America Region board and moving to the Africa Region board and then the Asia Region board, each player takes any number of actions for one of his Explorer pawns in the third phase, Explore Regions’, before going round again for each player’s second Explorer pawn. There are three types of action a player can take. First, he can ‘Explore’, turning over cards from the Region deck adjacent to Region board; second, he can ‘Hire a guide’, every player having a guide token he can use to cover a Hazard symbol on a face-up Region card, though this costs coins; and third, ‘Use an Explorer card’, a simple matter of following its instructions. A player’s turn with one Explorer pawn continues until one of four conditions are met. Either three different or three of the same Hazard types are revealed face-up on the Region cards, in which case the Explorer becomes lost and a random Lost Explorer token is added to the Region board and all of the face up Region cards in the Region are shuffled back into the Region deck, and two cards are drawn again. Lost Explorer tokens are worth two, three, or four Victory Points, and are placed face down. Either because there are five face-up Region cards adjacent to the Region board or the player decides to stop exploring, or because an Explorer card tells the player to stop.

If there are five face-up Region cards or the player decided to stop exploring, and there are not sufficient Hazard types revealed face-up to get the player lost, the last action he gets to do is ‘Take Picks’. If there are four or fewer Regions face-up to choose from, a player only gets one pick, but if there are five, he gets two. A pick can either be all of the Region cards with Animal symbols on them in the Region, a single Region card with a non-Animal symbol on it (Location, Treasure, Map, or Orchid), or a single Lost Explorer token on the Region Board. A player can then repeat this all with his second Explorer pawn, in either the same Region or a different one, depending upon where it is placed.

The fourth and last phase of a round is ‘End of the Round’. It is actually only triggered when any Region deck or its reserve pile, or the Explorer deck is depleted, and indicates the end of the game. Each player is awarded Victory Points for the number of Renown points scored, Mission cards completed, Lost Explorer tokens, coins, and Region cards with Location and Treasure symbols collected, for each Animal on their Region cards collected, the number of Map symbols collected, and the number of sets of Region cards with Orchid symbols collected. The player with the most Victory Points is the winner.

Essentially, each player is attempting to push his luck when exploring a Region and turning over its Region cards, attempting to find the Region cards he wants that will score him the most points or helps him fulfil the requirements of a Mission card. This is balanced against the possibility of too many Hazard symbols being revealed, and so making an Explorer lost, as well as the need to find coins which a player will need to pay in order to use the special ability of an Explorer card. The first player to any Region—typically dictated by Renown order—has the benefit of making use of the first two cards face-up in a Region, thematically, the equivalent of entering undiscovered territory. Later players will probably find that the face-up Region cards have changed, potentially with the best Region cards already having been picked or too many Region cards with Hazard symbols left to be revealed. The ‘Set Collection’ aspect of the game involves getting as many Region cards with Map symbols or sets of the three types of Orchid symbols on the Region cards. A last aspect of the game’s ‘Push Your Luck’ play, is whether or not to Explore the more dangerous Regions of Africa or Asia, which have higher rewards, but more risks in the form of a greater number of Hazard symbols.

Beyond the race to place Explorer pawns in choice slots on the Region boards, Exploriana is not a game with any real direct interaction between the players. This does not mean that it is a bad game however, rather that its competitive play is relatively gentle and probably suited to a younger audience than the minimum age of fourteen years old already given. Certainly twelve-year-olds would have no issue with relative complexities of Exploriana and those complexities are not that complex. Further, the playing time of forty-five minutes to an hour is a little long, except for the first playthrough perhaps. After that, it should play in thirty minutes or so.

That though, is the basic game. Exploriana includes much more than just the basic game. For two players, it adds a dummy third player to act as a rival, though this is not as enjoyable to play, and then there are several advanced rules and variants. These add valuable relics which can be discovered by collecting particular symbols for the Region the relic is from; a bonus of two coins for Explorer pawns which become lost, which encourages a player to actually push his luck even further exploring a Region and drawing cards; and Expansion cards which are taken as soon as they are drawn, such as the Poisoned Chalice which is given to another player (and later possibly to another player when an Explorer becomes lost) and losing the player who has it at the end of the game Victory Points. There are a total of nine advanced options and variants, which the players are free to pick and choose from, and that is in addition to the solo rules and variants included. Adding these to the play of the game will increase its play length though.

Physically, Exploriana is very well presented. A good cardstock is used for all of the cards, the playing pieces and tokens are of thick cardboard or wood, and everything is done in full colour. The rulebook is generally well written, but needs a careful read through in places.

Exploriana is quite a light game, with scope to make it as complex as the players want, but without getting overly so. Its engaging theme, attractive production values, and light mechanics make it a decent family game as well as something that can be enjoyed by the more experienced boardgamer too.

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 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?
Secrets of HeroQuesting is a guide to HeroQuesting—becoming a hero, creating and running HeroQuests, and other secrets of HeroQuesting.
It is 10.43 MB, eighty-one page full colour PDF.

It is generally well written and illustrated throughout with a range of Public Domain artwork. The layout is tight in places and it needs another edit.

Where is it set?
Secrets of HeroQuesting can be set anywhere in Glorantha, but focuses on Central Genertela.
Who do you play?
Secrets of HeroQuesting does not require any specific character types, but Player Characters should possess magic, be capable and willing to embody the tenets of their cults and the characteristics of the gods they worship.
What do you need?
Secrets of HeroQuesting requires RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, but will apply to, but is not specifically for, QuestWorlds: Glorantha and 13th Age Glorantha.
Secrets of HeroQuesting makes reference to numerous supplements for Hero Wars, Questworlds, and HeroQuest Glorantha, including Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes and The Eleven Lights. It also references numerous titles from the Stafford Library and fanzines. None of these are necessary to run the content in Secrets of HeroQuesting, but they will help the Game Master with examples.

What do you get?
HeroQuesting—the ability to engage with the mythology and beliefs of Glorantha’s many cults and legends, to learn from them, to enforce them, and to embody the original participants, has long been a long-term aim of roleplaying in Glorantha, from RuneQuest II to RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. After all, the Lightbringers’ Quest in which Orlanth, Chalana Arroy, Lhankor Mhy, Issaries, Eurmal, Flesh Man, and Ginna Jar quested into the depths of Hell to find the Bright Emperor Yelm whom Orlanth had slain with the newly discovered Death, and return him to his rightful place and so bring about an end to the Great Darkness, is a myth central to Glorantha’s lore, which great heroes can enact again and again to enforce a fundamental truth about the world. This re-enactment and enforcing of a myth is known as a HeroQuest and its participants are HeroQuesters, and whilst the Lightbringers’ Quest may be the greatest of HeroQuests—especially if you belong to one of the cults which worships its original participants—there are innumerable cults in Glorantha, and all of them have myths to replicate and HeroQuests to be fulfilled. Secrets of HeroQuesting explores and examines the ideas and concepts behind HeroQuesting and suggests ways in which the Player Characters—if they are powerful enough and sufficiently devout—can undertake and so become greater heroes for their cults.
A HeroQuest is the bringing of a myth into the world, typically enacted through a divinely inspired, tightly regulated mythical journey, designed to ‘Achieve the Impossible’. Secrets of HeroQuesting identifies and examines various types in some detail—‘Short Form’, ‘Long Form’, ‘Riddling Contests’, ‘Wagering Contests’, ‘Re-enactment’, ‘Magic Roads’, ‘Raid Quests’—noting the potential controversy of the latter given that we are gaming in a modern world, ‘Exploration’, ‘Mundane’, and even ‘Spell-Learning’ in which Rune and other spells can be learned through mini-HeroQuests which echo how they were originally learned. In moving on to look at their individual steps or ‘Stations’ it suggests that HeroQuests become something that a HeroQuester actually invest points of Power into—much as he did for Rune spells—so that he can access a particular HeroQuest more easily later. Similarly, individual Stations can be invested in, which sets a greater flexibility in how the HeroQuester approaches each Station and can substitute different Stations for another and even use one Station to leap to another and potentially into another HeroQuest. In terms of objectives, a HeroQuester will not only be enforcing a Myth, but more personally learning a spell, performing an improbable act or task, gaining a magical weapon or item, gaining allies, and more. It might be that a HeroQuester is undertaking a HeroQuest to gain the means and support to start a bigger more important HeroQuest which he would otherwise be unable to start, let alone complete.
What is emphasised throughout is that although a HeroQuester is enforcing a particular myth, his approach need not rigidly adhere to how the HeroQuest is completed according to said myth. The HeroQuester can be flexible in how he attempts each Station, especially if successful. If a HeroQuester’s approach can be flexible, then so can the HeroQuest in that it is possible to alter or warp a HeroQuest, not just for the HeroQuester who completed it, but for anyone who attempts it afterwards. The flexibility extends to improvising stations as well, but this requires a higher degree of knowledge upon the part of both Game Master and her players, so is better suited to veterans who have been playing for a while and whose characters have also been HeroQuesting for as long. 
Numerous examples of HeroQuests are discussed throughout, though the Game Master will still need to track them down in order to deploy them in her campaign. Also discussed are the advantages of being Illuminated and going on HeroQuests, as well as covering the different planes—from the Mundane Plane to the God Plane, and the Ages of Gloranthan Mythology—from the Formless Age and the Dark Age to the Chaos Age and the Silver Age. Advice is given on designing and running a HeroQuest, tailoring to the players and their HeroQuesters, and suggested Game Master styles. It even takes the concept of ‘Achieving the Impossible’ up a notch or nine and suggests quite how HeroQuesters could potentially save those who have been consumed by the Crimson Bat! This falls under ‘Your Glorantha Will Vary’ of course, but would make for an epic mini-campaign since it would require a great deal of preparation, research and adventuring to even attempt it, including numerous HeroQuests before the big event. Throughout, the author adds commentary to the content, personalising it and giving much of what he writes some context.
Now as good as the advice in Secrets of HeroQuesting is, and as interesting a read on the subject as it is, there are issues with Secrets of HeroQuesting which preclude it from being totally useful for your RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha or other Glorantha-set campaign. First, it is one author’s view of what it is and what it involves, born of forty years of gaming in Glorantha, so it is unlikely to be the ‘official’ approach to the subject matter when the official guidelines are released. Second, the author draws heavily on forty years of assembling an extensive library of roleplaying games, supplements, scenarios and campaigns, and fanzines—the majority of which the reader is unlikely to possess or have access to. This is particularly noticeable inthe suggested use of ‘Virtues’, the equivalent of personality Traits from King Arthur Pendragon, which although present in earlier supplements for RuneQuest: Classic Edition (and also in the fanzines Tales of the Reaching Moon #6 and Enclosure #1), they are not present in RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, though the Power Runes do use its model. The inclusion of Virtues is not the only mechanical additions in Secrets of HeroQuesting, the others being the investment of Power into HeroQuests and individual Stations, and the inclusion of a ‘Hero Soul’, a magical part of a HeroQuestor which is awakened upon a Player Character first participating in a HeroQuest and left permanently on the God Plane. These contribute towards the third issue, the inclusion of extra mechanics and elements for the Player Character and Game Master alike to keep track of in addition to the fairly complex character sheet for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. Fourth and last, is that although the author identifies that most of what has been written about HeoQuests in the past is “fragmentary and self-contradicting” and states that his aim is to reconcile these fragments together with his “…most recent ideas and gaming experiences”, as much light as is thrown on HeroQuesting, Secrets of HeroQuesting still cannot quite get away from the enigmatic and mystifying nature of its subject matter. Especially for the Game Master not as learned when it comes to the lore. Perhaps the promised Secrets of HeroQuesting: Storm will provide concrete worked examples and advice on staging and varying HeroQuests when it is released.
Despite these issues, this does not mean that content presented in Secrets of HeroQuesting is neither interesting or useful, and it really has a lot of potential, especially if the Game Master has access to the same content as the author. Bringing that potential to the table is another matter, especially if the Game Master is new to Glorantha and RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha.
Secrets of HeroQuesting ends with a detailed bibliography of roleplaying games, supplements, campaigns, and fanzines in which HeroQuesting is explored, a glossary of terminology, and full table of contents.
Is it worth your time?
Yes—Secrets of HeroQuesting provides an in-depth exploration of HeroQuesting, an important aspect of roleplaying in Glorantha and careful study will enable the Game Master to take her campaign and players and their characters onto another plane.No—Secrets of HeroQuesting provides an in-depth exploration of HeroQuesting, an important aspect of roleplaying in Glorantha, but it is not the official version from Chaosium, Inc. and it cannot quite escape being still a mystifying and enigmatic subject.Maybe—Secrets of HeroQuesting provides an in-depth exploration of HeroQuesting, an important aspect of roleplaying in Glorantha, but it is not the official version from Chaosium, Inc. and it cannot quite escape being still mystifying and enigmatic despite going some way to clarify the ideas and concepts behind the subject.

Imagine growing up in Lovecraft Country? What sights and hints of the Cthulhu Mythos might the children of that benighted corner of New England been exposed to, growing up as they have in or near its darker and more mystical corners—Arkham, Dunwich, Innsmouth, and Kingsport? Since being coined by the late Keith Herber, the setting has been more widely explored in supplements for Call of Cthulhu, such as Arkham Unveiled and Tales of the Miskatonic Valley during the nineties, and relatively recently in New Tales of the Miskatonic Valley and More Adventures in Arkham Country in the noughties. The point of view for all of these is always that of the Investigator core to Call of Cthulhu, but the very latest campaign to explore the region does so from the point of view of children, who perhaps suspect that the world around them is perhaps a little stranger than some of the adults around them would know or even admit, and in investigating that strangeness, may lay groundwork for their becoming fully fledged Investigators as adults. This is the set-up for The Eldritch New England Holiday Collection, a campaign which takes place over the course of a single year in New England, at four family get togethers, that will see cousins come together to discover dark secrets about their family and truths about the world around them, and confront mysteries and the Mythos, wonders and magic, horrors and truth, ultimately to form friendships which will last long into adulthood.

The Eldritch New England Holiday Collection from Golden Goblin Press, best known for titles such as An Inner Darkness: Fighting for Justice Against Eldritch Horrors and Our Own Inhumanity, The 7th Edition Guide to Cthulhu Invictus: Cosmic Horror Roleplaying in Ancient Rome, and Tales of the Crescent City: Adventures in Jazz Era New Orleans. Published following a successful Kickstarter campaign, it is a campaign for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, which is set in New England in 1925 and 1926 and which requires the players to take the roles of six eleven-, twelve-, and thirteen-year-old children. They each live and have relatives in the towns of Arkham, Dunwich, Innsmouth, and Kingsport, and during the course of the year will spend Halloween in Dunwich, Christmas in Kingsport, Easter in Arkham, and Independence day in Innsmouth. The campaign consists of ‘Halloween in Dunwich’, ‘Christmas in Kingsport’, ‘Easter in Arkham’, and ‘Innsmouth Independence Day’. Of the four lengthy scenarios, the first two are not new. ‘Halloween in Dunwich’ originally appeared in the Miskatonic University Library Association monograph, Halloween Horror, one of the winners of Chaosium, Inc.’s 2005 Halloween Adventure contest, whilst its sequel, ‘Christmas in Kingsport’ appeared in the 2006 eponymous Miskatonic University Library Association monograph, Christmas in Kingsport, following Chaosium, Inc.’s Holiday Season Adventure Contest. For the Keeper who has access to them, the following supplements will be useful in adding colour and detail to each of the four scenarios in The Eldritch New England Holiday Collection. These are Return to Dunwich, Kingsport: The City In The Mists, Arkham Unveiled, and Escape from Innsmouth, as well as Miskatonic University, but whilst they can be a source of colour and detail, none of them are necessary to run the scenarios in the campaign.

Interest in combining horror and playing children in roleplaying games has picked up in the last decade, with television series like Stranger Things and roleplaying games like Kids on Bikes and Tales from the Loop – Roleplaying in the '80s That Never Was. For Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, scenarios like The Dare and The Haunted Clubhouse have explored the more modern periods, but The Eldritch New England Holiday Collection predates them all—not only in the genesis of the four scenarios in the anthology, but also in the period they are set. Further, as much as the players are called upon to roleplay children in the campaign, they will be confronted with elements of the Cthulhu Mythos and cosmic horror as well as horrific elements of the mundane world, including racism, prejudice, child abuse, bullying, and worse. Whilst none of these elements are specifically aimed at the Investigators the players will be roleplaying, they are present in several of the scenarios and they are likely to witness them. Consequently, many of the scenarios do carry warnings and both they and the pre-generated Investigators are designed to be played by mature players.

The six pre-generated Investigators consist of Donald Sutton, Gertrude ‘Gerdie’ Constance Pope, Gordon Brewster, Edward Derby, George Weedon, and Alice Sanders. Donald Sutton, the son of Kingsport artists and gallery owners, is a sensitive artist who is also friends with a ghost; Gertrude ‘Gerdie’ Constance Pope is from Dunwich and has strange white hair and ice blue eyes and has the gift of knowing things she should not, but does not know who her parents are; Gordon Brewster is also from Dunwich, a sturdy and hardworking farm boy who knows that the local hills are home to strange things; the studious and intelligent Edward Derby lives just off campus from Miskatonic University in Arkham, and has managed to read the strange books his father left him; George Weedon, also from Arkham, is athletic and principled; and the oldest cousin, Alice Sanders is a resident of Innsmouth, sturdy and stocky, but with keen mind and a slightly devious streak. All six are given full Investigator sheets and more—the more of which comes at the end of the book.

The campaign opens with ‘Halloween in Dunwich’. As members of the extended Morgan family, the cousins and their parents or guardians are invited to spend Halloween at the farm of the family patriarch, Great-Grandpa Silas. As the adults gather and catch up with the family gossip and rumours—some of which the Investigators have an opportunity to overhear and presages plots and events to come in the rest of the campaign’s scenarios—Great-Grandpa Silas takes the children away for a day of activities, games, and competitions. These include apple picking, pumpkin harvesting and carving, singalongs, and more, ending with a family feast and ghost tales round the fire. These activities serve functions in and out of the game. They get the Investigators to interact with each other and with their family, to begin forging relationships with each other in play rather than simply as written. They also serve to get the players rolling dice and have their Investigators be active and gain Experience Checks so that they are more skilled as the campaign progresses, and they also show how children’s lives can be fun, especially in a period where the fun was not so technologically sophisticated to what it is today. This is a device which the author pulls again and again as the campaign progresses, but each time the setting is different, the family dynamics are different, and the activities are different.

The activities also establish a very nicely balanced contrast between the mundane and the Mythos, again a device which will be used in all four scenarios. Of course, when it comes, the Mythos is no less horrifying than you would expect. One of the old family ghost stories told round the fire proves to have more than a ring of truth to it as a vengeful spirit returns from the family’s past to enact a ghastly plan. The adolescent Investigators are the only ones capable of defending their family against the predations of this spirit, and must fight through a swarm of Halloween-themed threats to confront the evil spirit and put an end to its dread ambitions.

If the Investigators looked forward to spending time with Great-Grandpa Silas in Dunwich, they are resigned to spending ‘Christmas in Kingsport’ at the home of their joyless Great Aunt Nora. She expects children to be ‘seen and not heard’, so there is little likelihood of any laughter or fun. Fortunately, Aunt Nora’s ward, the Investigators’ beloved older cousin Melba, a carefree flapper and black sheep of the family, comes to their rescue. She sneaks them out of the house and takes them on a guided tour of Kingsport—sledding, visiting friends, feeding cats, snowball fights, and more. There is something delightfully picaresque about this day out and despite her reputation as the black sheep of the family, Melba is a very positive character who likely reminds both the players and the Keeper of someone in their own family and childhood. Unfortunately, the joie de vivre of the cousins’ grand day out comes to a crashing halt when they are discovered and then the opprobrium heaped upon them and their cousin, Melba, is upstaged by the arrival of their uncle, who has returned from Europe with his new wife. Who is German, no less! Which all threatens to sour Christmas even more.

However, ‘Christmas in Kingsport’ takes a stranger and more wondrous turn when cousin Melba leads the Investigators Beyond the Walls of Sleep and into the Dreamlands. This strange realm of sleep and dreams has always been portrayed as strange and weird, but ‘Christmas in Kingsport’ focuses on the magic and the joy of exploring a mythical, almost Narnia-like, realm. Having made their day in the mundane world, Melba makes the Investigators’ sleep a magical holiday adventure, but it suddenly takes a scary turn when a party in their honour is literally crashed by Christmas demons! Captured, they must find out by whom and why, using clues they have learned in both the waking and the dreaming world—the Investigators will definitely need to listen, and hopefully solve the mystery before they wake up on Christmas morning. Ultimately, there is a great deal at stake in ‘Christmas in Kingsport’, but it is a wonderfully entertaining and thoroughly enjoyable scenario.

The third scenario, ‘Easter in Arkham’, is darker in tone and pulls the Investigators deeper into the Mythos and the secrets of Arkham. Staying at the homes of both Edward Derby and George Weedon, the Investigators have a lot of freedom to visit some of their favourite places in the town and get up to a lot. These include going to the cinema to see films such as The Thief of Bagdad or The Gold Rush, getting ice cream, visiting the penny arcade, bicycling, and more. Chief amongst these though, is attending and even participating in the Miskatonic University Easter Parade, there being opportunities for the Investigators to bake goods, paint Easter eggs, and make Easter bonnets, as well as enter their associated competitions. The pleasure of these activities is first interrupted by strange rumours of missing pets, evil lunch ladies, swarms of killer rats, and worse, and then fraught encounters with one of Edward Derby and George Weedon’s classmates playing truant and a horrid attack by one of the animals in the petting zoo at the Easter Parade. Investigation will reveal that recently departed pets have been returning to their owners, but changed, tainted, and unstable, which for Call of Cthulhu veterans can only point to one cause—and they would be right! However, the Investigators do not know that and getting to that cause will entail dealing with terribly afflicted animals, making friends with a gang of would-be members of the feared O’Bannion mob each of their own age, and negotiating with a figure out of witch-haunted Arkham’s past in a very nicely judged and staged encounter.

The fourth and last scenario in The Eldritch New England Holiday Collection is ‘Innsmouth Independence Day’. Almost like the film Jaws, the Investigators get to spend and celebrate the Fourth of July on the New England coast, but this takes place on Haven Cove, an island opposite the harbour of Innsmouth, the most shunned and reviled towns in New England. This is a chance for the Innsmouth side of the Morgan family to meet the rest of the family, and vice versa, and do so on neutral ground, just sufficiently far away from the mildewed and mouldering seaport and its strangely inbred and evolving inhabitants, to gain the grudging acceptance of the High Council of the Esoteric Order of Dagon. However, one of the Investigators, Alice Sanders, a resident of Innsmouth has a plan. Once all of the competitions—swimming, sailing, fishing, sandcastle building, and more—are out of the way, she wants to sneak off the island and into Innsmouth and locate her family records. There are elements of The Shadow Over Innsmouth here, but the Investigators are sneaking in as well as sneaking out, and whilst there are plenty of watchful eyes who will alert the authorities to their presence, the Investigators can find allies too—and make friends. ‘Innsmouth Independence Day’ culminates in some quite nasty confrontations with some family secrets and truths, and whilst the protagonists are children, the scenario does not shy away from the sometimes brutal and inhuman way of life in Innsmouth.

Almost the last fifth of The Eldritch New England Holiday Collection is dedicated to Investigators sheets for the six children at the heart of the campaign. This is fifty pages long, which is somewhat unnecessarily over the top given the size of the cast. However, The Eldritch New England Holiday Collection does not just give Investigator sheets for the six children for the four scenarios in the campaign, but for later in their lives as well. The first set take the sextet into their early twenties, whilst the second presents them as Investigators for use with Pulp Cthulhu: Two-fisted Action and Adventure Against the Mythos. Hopefully, their inclusion will see the Investigators who have come of age and aware of the Mythos during the events of The Eldritch New England Holiday Collection return again to conduct further investigations.

In terms of staging the four scenarios in The Eldritch New England Holiday Collection, the Keeper will need to do some preparation. Primarily this will be to create the various adult members of the family in addition to those mentioned in the text. In terms of running the scenarios, the Keeper is encouraged to have his players spend Luck as needed on their Investigator’s tasks and actions, and in return be generous with restored Luck between adventures. In terms of staging the scenarios and the campaign there are, nevertheless, a number of issues with the campaign. First, The Eldritch New England Holiday Collection really only works with the full six players. Second, the scenarios are linear in places, though this is offset by the fact that there is a lot for the Investigators to do throughout, both in the linear sequences and in the sequences where they have greater freedom of action. Third, the campaign negates the parents and guardians of the Investigators. They are named, but they are never really developed and it would have been useful if the Keeper had been given some roleplaying notes about both how to roleplay them and how each of them feels about the Investigators.

Physically, The Eldritch New England Holiday Collection is very well presented. In contrast to most releases for Call of Cthulhu, there is a sense of warmth to the book and a vibrancy to its illustrations. Many of these are taken from period festival illustrations of the day, whilst the illustrations of the Investigators have a suitably slight cartoonish feel to them that enhances the childhood sensibilities of the campaign. Not all of the illustrations quite match the text, but that is a minor issue. 

As a piece of writing for a roleplaying game, The Eldritch New England Holiday Collection is simply an entertaining read. There are moments of tragedy and joy and outright humour in the writing and it is easy to see that the author is actually enjoying himself in writing the four scenarios in the campaign. As a campaign, The Eldritch New England Holiday Collection is linear in places and it does demand all six players, but it captures the feel of being a child again and pulls the players into roleplaying children again with all of its fun and disappointment and excitement and frustration of dealing with adults—and it does this without being patronising or belittling any one of them. It also brings alive a sense of family, with its gossip and secrets and difficulties. All of which will be familiar to so many players and Keepers from their own childhoods. As individual scenarios, The Eldritch New England Holiday Collection adeptly contrasts the mundane with the Mythos, whilst giving time for the Investigators to be children and revealing step by step some of the darker secrets about the world around them.

Golden Goblin Press has a well-deserved reputation for publishing excellent anthologies and campaigns for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, but The Eldritch New England Holiday Collection is the exception. The Eldritch New England Holiday Collection is a superb piece of writing, which in capturing our childhoods and taking a new, fresh angle to Lovecraft Country, brings charm to Call of Cthulhu and Lovecraftian investigative roleplaying. The late, much missed Keith ‘Doc’ Herber would have been proud.

It has been almost a decade since the previous edition of Savage Worlds was published, but following a successful Kickstarter campaign, Pinnacle Entertainment Group released an updated version, Savage Worlds Adventure Edition, or ‘SWADE’ in 2019. Originally published in 2003 and derived from Deadlands: the Great Rail Wars, the simplified skirmish rules for use with Deadlands, what Savage Worlds is, is a generic roleplaying game which promises to be ‘Fast! Furious! Fun!’. The RPG focuses on action orientated, cinematic style play, with the player characters able to take down mooks or Extras with ease, but always having a fight on their hands when they face any villains, either minor or major. The system is also designed to handle skirmishes between multiple opponents, so that the players can easily engage in small-scale wargaming as part of a campaign. It is capable of handling, and in its time, has handled a wide variety of genres and settings, including fantasy and pirates with 50 Fathoms, gritty fantasy with Lankhmar: City of Thieves, horror and the Wild West with Deadlands, ancient military horror with Weird Wars Rome, college and horror with East Texas University, pulp sci-fi with Flash Gordon, and more.

A character in Savage Worlds Adventure Edition is a known as a Wild Card because he brings in a degree of unpredictability to a situation. He is defined by his Attributes, Skills, Edges, and Hindrances (disadvantages), with both Attributes and Skills defined by die type—four, six, eight, ten, or the twelve-sided die. The bigger the die type, the better the Attribute or Skill. Edges include Attractive, Brawny, Gadgeteer, and Two-Fisted, whilst Hindrances include All-Thumbs, Clumsy, Heroic, or Mild-Mannered. Many of the Edges have requirements in terms of skills and attributes, experience or Power Level, or other Edges. Hindrances are either Major or Minor. To create a character, a player selects some Hindrances, which will give him points which he can spend to purchase Edges or improve attributes or skills. Choice of Race will give the character some beginning Edges, Hindrances, attributes and skills. Race is not an Edge in itself, but a package of Edges, Hindrances, and skill and attribute bonuses which can be selected during character creation. For example, a Saurian begins play with Armour +2 (scaly skin), a Bite natural weapon, Environmental Weakness to the cold, Keen Senses which gives him the Alertness Edge, and the Outsider (Minor) Hindrance which penalises his Persuasion skill. The average heroic Human of Savage Worlds, begins play with an extra Edge. A player has five points to raise his character’s attributes from their base of a four-sided die each and twelve points to raise his character’s skills.

Henry Brinded, Antiquarian
Attributes: Agility d4, Smarts d8, Spirit d8, Strength d4, Vigour d6
Skills: Academics d6, Athletics d4, Common Knowledge d4, Language (Latin) d6, Notice d6, Occult d8, Persuasion d4, Research d8, Spellcasting d6, Stealth d4
Charisma: 0
Pace: 6” Parry: 4 Toughness: 5 Bennies: 3
Power Points: 10
Hindrances: All-Thumbs (Minor), Bad Eyes (Major), Mild Mannered (Minor)
Edges: Arcane Background (Magic), Investigator, Strong-Willed
Powers: Arcane Protection, Detect Arcana, Speak Language

To do anything, a player rolls the die associated with his character’s Attribute or the Skill as well as an extra six-sided Wild Die because the heroes—and some villains—are Wild Cards and thus unique in the Savage Worlds setting. The highest result of either die is chosen by the player as his result, with the maximum result or Ace on either die allowing a player to reroll and add to the total. The base target for most rolls is four, but can be higher depending on the situation. Rolling Aces usually enables a player to roll higher than the target, with results of four higher than the target providing Raises that give extra benefits. Every Wild Card has one or more Bennies. These can be expended to reroll a trait, recover from shaken, soak rolls to prevent damage, draw a new action card and so gain a better place in the initiative order, to reroll damage, regain Power Points, and to influence the story. They are awarded for clever actions, good roleplaying, and acts of heroism, and so on, plus whenever a player character draws a Joker during combat. In which case, all Player Characters receive a Benny! The Game Master is encouraged to be generous with Bennies and the players to expend them to facilitate the action.
For example, there have been attacks in the city over the past few weeks and Henry Brinded suspects it might be some supernatural entity. He conducts some research based on the clues he has already discovered. The Game Master sets the target at four as it is a standard task. Henry’s player rolls two dice for the task—an eight-sided die for Henry’s Research skill and a six-sided die because Henry is a Wild Card. He will add two to the resulting roll because he has the Investigator Edge. Henry’s player rolls a one on the six-sided die and an eight on the eight-sided die. He selects the latter because it is higher and because it is an Ace, meaning that Henry’s player can roll again and add. The result of the second roll is a five, which Henry’s player adds to the first roll, as well as the bonus, for a total of fifteen. This is four, then eight higher than the target of four, so it grants a Raise or two. This means that Game Master will reveal a lot more information about the threat that Henry is hunting.Combat uses the same mechanics with initiative being determined by an ordinary deck of cards. In general, Wild Card characters have the edge over their opponents, able to shrug off damage or soak it with the expenditure of Bennies before they start suffering Wounds. The combat rules in Savage Worlds cover not just man-to-man, man-to-Orc, or man-to-Xenomorph combat, but mass combat and vehicular combat too. The rules for mass combat lend themselves towards the use of miniatures, either actual miniatures or counters, and the book comes with effect templates that can be copied and used with them.

The treatment of Powers, whether they be Magic, Miracles, Psionics, or Weird Science, is kept very uniform in Savage Worlds. Each is fuelled by Power Points, each has an associated Arcane Background Edge and Skill, and each of the Powers can have an associated set of Trappings. So, for example, the common Bolt Power could have different Trappings depending upon its source, which means that a wizard’s fire Bolt spell could have the flammable Trapping, potentially causing materials to catch alight, whilst a Gadgeteer’s Bolt Power could be an Electro-Zapper that with the Electricity Trapping causes target’s to spasm. The one type of Power which Savage Worlds Adventure Edition does not do effectively, is superpowers. They do fall under the Arcane Background (Gifted) Edge, but would be very low powered in comparison to a proper superhero roleplaying game and do not stretch as far as a ‘Four Colour’ style of game.

There are changes and tweaks throughout Savage Worlds Adventure Edition. To begin with, every character has some beginning or basic skills—Athletics, Common Knowledge, Notice, Persuasion, and Stealth, but have fewer points to spend on skills during character creation. Climbing, Swimming, and Throwing have been folded in Athletics, Lockpicking into Thievery, Common Knowledge is a skill of its own, Knowledge been replaced by a range of skills—Academics, Battle, Electronics, Hacking, Language, Occult, and Science, Streetwise is an Edge rather than a skill, and so on. Elsewhere, for vehicles, Acceleration is now factored into Handling and Top Speed, and Top Speed has replaced the earlier Pace to better reflect real world vehicles rather than vehicles on the table. Other changes have been to the way in which stories are told using Savage Worlds.

The rules for Dramatic Tasks, Interludes, and Social Conflicts are retained from earlier editions. Dramatic Tasks handle nail-biting scenes such as diffusing a bomb, hacking a computer, casting a ritual, or even escaping a deathtrap, and involve the players making skill checks for their characters in order to collect enough ‘Task Tokens’ to overcome the Dramatic Task—the more involved the Dramatic Task, the more ‘Task Tokens’ required. Interludes involve either Downtime, Backstory, or a Trek, and give scope to a player to roleplay and explore more of his character during more quiet times in the narrative. Social Conflicts work a little like Dramatic Tasks and are again, designed to add tension to a social situation, such as a negotiation or arguing a case in court, and involve a player rolling his character’s Persuasion or Intimidation skill to accumulate Influence Tokens which are compared to table to determine the outcome. Added to these tools are mechanics for Networking and Quick Encounters. Networking covers social characters interacting with clients to get information and clues, whilst scholarly type characters are in the library, and require no more than a single Persuasion or Intimidation skill check to determine the outcome. Similarly, Quick Encounters also use a single skill check, but what skill is used depends on the nature of the encounter. A chase might require Common Knowledge, Driving, Repair, and Shooting, whilst a heist might make use of Hacking, Notice, Stealth, and Thievery. Quick Encounters are designed to cover situations where the Game Master is pressed for time or has not prepared a big encounter, or there is simply no need to play out a situation roll by roll. There is scope here for the Game Master and her players to develop and combine these scenes, so that they could be run as montages. Another narrative change is to Experience Points, which have been replaced with a simple advancement scheme based on campaign length.

Savage Worlds Adventure Edition also comes with mechanics rules for creating races for both Player Characters and NPCs, a list of spells along with the means for a player to colour and modify their magic, and a bestiary of thirty or so animals, beasts, and monsters. It is rounded out with solid advice for the Game Master, which is worth reading whether she is new to Savage Worlds or has run it before.

Savage Worlds Adventure Edition follows the format of the earlier Explorer Edition of Savage Worlds in coming as a smaller sized—though not digest-sized—book. It is a full colour hardback, illustrated throughout with plenty of artwork which showcases the potential ranges of genres the rules can cover, emphasises the action, and focuses on the Player Characters. The book is well written, it is easy to read, there are decent examples of play, and where there are changes from the previous editions of the rules, the Savage Worlds Adventure Edition makes it clear what they are. If perhaps there is a niggle to the book it is that the elements of the Player Characters, the advantages, disadvantages, and skills, known as Edges, Hindrances, and skills, are organised in an odd order in the book. Any other roleplaying game would do attributes, advantages, disadvantages, and skills, but not Savage Worlds Adventure Edition, in which the order is Hindrances, Traits—attributes and skills, and then Edges. This is a holdover from previous editions of the rules and it made no sense in those editions, just as it makes absolutely no sense in Savage Worlds Adventure Edition.

Of course, like any new edition of a set of rules, it is primarily there to support new content, but one of the fantastic aspects of Savage Worlds Adventure Edition is that it is still compatible with earlier versions of the rules and thus with much of the support which was published for those rules, such as the 50 Fathoms or Sundered Skies campaigns. Plus, notes highlight the changes, making them easy for the Game Master to spot. There is also a shift in Savage Worlds Adventure Edition over previous editions, which is that as much as it supports mass battles, there is less of a military emphasis in the feel of the rules. Instead, the new rules emphasise the narrative flow of the game more in keeping with a contemporary style of play. Overall, Savage Worlds Adventure Edition is a slickly presented, well written new version of the action orientated, cinematic rules.

The tales of Robin Hood, of a band of outlaws standing up to the tyrant King John in the Forest of Nottingham are so strongly woven into the folklore, legends, and myths ‘Merrye Olde Englande’ that they are familiar across the English-speaking world. Over the decades, the tales have been reinforced again and again by film and television, from the 1938 The Adventures of Robin Hood with Errol Flynn and the 1950s television series The Adventures of Robin Hood with Richard Greene to more recent adaptations such as the BBC’s Robin Hood of the noughties and the 2018 film, Robin Hood. These adaptations and retellings, of course, vary in quality, tone, and humour, some even having been done as comedies. Similarly, Robin Hood has been the subject of numerous roleplaying games and supplements. Some have been quite comprehensive in their treatment of the outlaw and his band, for example, the supplements Steve Jackson Games’ GURPS Robin Hood and Iron Crown Enterprises’ Robin Hood: The Role Playing Campaign are both highly regarded in this respect, whilst other supplements take a broad approach, such as Sherwood: The Legend of Robin Hood for use with Savage Worlds, or simply touch upon the subject of Robin Hood, such as Romance of the Perilous Land from Osprey Games.

It is the author of Romance of the Perilous Land, Scott Malthouse who explores the aftermath of the Robin Hood legend in Merry Outlaws: A roleplaying game of folk ballads and justice, a roleplaying game in fanzine format. This takes place in the thirteenth century after the death of the tyrant, King John, during the reign of his son, Henry III or Henry of Winchester. Robin Hood has been dead five years, Little John has disappeared, Friar Tuck was burnt at the stake for heresy, and Marian has become a sullen sellsword. Although a better king than his father, Henry of Winchester’s England is rife with corruption, the powers of the barons unchecked, and the poor suffer. The Player Characters are Merry Outlaws, wanting to take up the mantle of Robin Hood’s justice and rob from the rich to give to the poor. Over the course of a campaign, they will scheme and steal, spreading their newly acquired wealth in acts of largess, and for each adventure they have, they will write a Stanza. When they have ten Stanzas, perhaps they will have a ballad worthy of ensuring their place in English folklore. Much like Robin Hood.

To play Merry Outlaws, each player requires two six-sided dice and two coins—the latter the older the better (though only for aesthetic reasons). Each Outlaw is defined by an Outlaw Code, two Outlaw Abilities, Stamina, and starting equipment. Apart from Stamina, which starts at ten, everything else is randomly determined. More Outlaw Abilities will be gained as the Outlaw has more adventures and writes more Stanzas.

Ralph of Bridport is an unassuming man who only came alive on the stage, performing for others. This was his downfall, for he was not noticed when the lord his troupe was performing for got into an argument with a merchant. When the merchant was later found murdered, it was Ralph who noticed the spots of blood on the noble’s blood. Before he said anything, the noble noticed his stare and denounced him as the murderer. Ralph was forced to go into exile and now works with fellow outlaws and exiles to make restitution for damage that the nobility inflict on the peasantry.

Ralph of Bridport
Outlaw Abilities: Warden (Roll with Edge when spotting something hidden), Disguise (Roll with Edge when disguising yourself or others)
Outlaw Code: Never break bread with the wealthy
Starting Gear: Broken lute, drinking horn
Stamina: 10

Mechanically, Merry Outlaws: A roleplaying game of folk ballads and justice is simple. It is player-facing in that the Game Master never has to roll dice. Thus, a player rolls for his character to undertake an action, make an attack, and to avoid an attack, but the Game Master does not make any rolls to attack. An action requires the roll of a six-sided die. Rolls of three or less are a failure, a one being a botch. Rolls of four or more are a success, a six being a Triumph. If a Player Character has an Edge, then the player rolls two six-sided dice and selects the best one, but if faced with a Setback, he rolls two dice and uses the worst one.

Combat uses the same mechanics, better rolls inflicting more damage when attacking, and avoiding more damage when defending against damage. Damage reduces a character’s Stamina by between one and three points, depending upon whether the attacker was armed and the quality of the roll. A Player Character whose Stamina is reduced to zero is ‘On Death’s Door’ and has a fifty percent chance of surviving and gaining a wound. Otherwise, he dies. At the beginning of each Stanza (or adventure), each Player Character has two Fate Coins. These can be used to lose a wound, gain five Stamina, or reroll a ‘Dying Roll’.

Merry Outlaws: A roleplaying game of folk ballads and justice adds two mechanical wrinkles at the end of any Stanza. The first is to describe how the wealth the Outlaws acquired during their Stanza is distributed amongst the deserving poor and every player writes a stanza, a four-line verse which will contribute towards the ballad of their do gooding. An Outlaw will gain three more Abilities over the course of his helping the poor, but with the tenth Stanza, his tale is over and the ballad is complete.

Physically, Merry Outlaws: A roleplaying game of folk ballads and justice is cleanly and simply laid out. It explains everything quickly and everything is easy to grasp. It is illustrated throughout with public domain artwork, all appropriate to the genre.

What Merry Outlaws: A roleplaying game of folk ballads and justice does not do is present the world of the thirteenth century or the detail of Robin Hood and his legend. Indeed, there is almost no background in this roleplaying game. What it instead relies upon is the knowledge of the Game Master and her players of the Robin Hood legend and the period when it is set. Having seen a Robin Hood film or television series would probably be enough, the folklore around the legend being enough and common knowledge. Which is fine because what the players are doing with their Outlaws is creating their legend or ballad to be sung down the centuries. Nevertheless, the Game Master will still need to develop some setting material, a scenario or two, and so forth for the Outlaws to get involved in.

Merry Outlaws: A roleplaying game of folk ballads and justice is easy to play with characters who are simply, but clearly defined by their abilities, which of course will colour play because of what they can do well. For example, Ralph of Bridport is definitely going undercover rather than engaging in a lot of fights! Ultimately, Merry Outlaws: A roleplaying game of folk ballads and justice is a quick and dirty version of—if not the Robin Hood legend—then the means for the players and their characters to step into his shoes and compose their own legend.

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 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?
Rivendell Maps is a publisher of maps drawn from RuneQuest Classic supplements.
Map of Apple Lane is a map of Apple Lane, the village in Dragon Pass as described in Apple Lane: Two Beginning Scenarios - Gringle’s Pawnshop & The Rainbow Mounds (Scenario Pack 2).

It is 4.99 MB, full colour PDF.

Map of Tin Inn is a map of the Tin Inn, the inn located in Apple Lane, the village in Dragon Pass as described in Apple Lane: Two Beginning Scenarios - Gringle’s Pawnshop & The Rainbow Mounds (Scenario Pack 2).

It is 499 KB, full colour PDF.

Map of Gringle’s Pawnshop is a map of Gringle’s Pawnshop, the trading house located in Apple Lane, the village in Dragon Pass as described in Apple Lane: Two Beginning Scenarios - Gringle’s Pawnshop & The Rainbow Mounds (Scenario Pack 2).

It is 4.82 MB, full colour PDF.

Map of The Rubble of Old Pavis is a map of a section of The Rubble, the ruins of Old Pavis, as described in the boxed set, Big Rubble.

It is 3.83 MB, full colour PDF.

Map of Zebra Fort in the Big Rubble is a map of a location in The Rubble, the ruins of Old Pavis, as described in the boxed set, Big Rubble.

It is 5.66 MB, full colour PDF.

Map of the Topside of Balastor’s Barracks is a map of a location in The Rubble, the ruins of Old Pavis, as described in the scenario, RuneQuest Scenario Pack 1: Balastor’s Barracks.

It is 3.12 MB, full colour PDF.

Map of Balastor’s Barracks is a map of a location in The Rubble, the ruins of Old Pavis, as described in the scenario, RuneQuest Scenario Pack 1: Balastor’s Barracks.

It is 4.93 MB, full colour PDF.

Map of The Sea Cave is a map of the location east of Corflu on the coast of Prax, as described in the scenario, RuneQuest Scenario Pack 2: SP8 The Sea Cave.

It is 288 KB, full colour PDF.

The majority of the eight are generally clear and easy to understand, mostly done in tones of brown and grey. The exceptions are the Map of the Topside of Balastor’s Barracks and the Map of Balastor’s Barracks, both of which suffer from a lack of detail and are not easy to understand.

Where is it set?
The Map of Apple Lane, the Map of Gringle’s Pawnshop, and the Map of Tin Inn are all set in Apple Lane in Sartar.
The Map of The Rubble of Old Pavis, the Map of Zebra Fort, the Map of the Topside of Balastor’s Barracks, and Map of Balastor’s Barracks are all set in the Big Rubble.
The Map of The Sea Cave is set east of Corflu on the coast of Prax.
Who do you play?
None of the maps have specific play requirements in terms of the Player Characters.
What do you need?
All of the maps from Rivendell Maps require RuneQuest: Classic Edition, but can also be used with RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. All eight are designed to be imported into the virtual tabletop, Roll20. (Other virtual tabletops are available.)
The Map of Apple Lane, the Map of Gringle’s Pawnshop, and the Map of Tin Inn require Apple Lane: Two Beginning Scenarios - Gringle’s Pawnshop & The Rainbow Mounds (Scenario Pack 2).
The Map of The Rubble of Old Pavis and the Map of Zebra Fort require The Big Rubble.
The Map of the Topside of Balastor’s Barracks and the Map of Balastor’s Barracks require RuneQuest Scenario Pack 1: Balastor’s Barracks.
The Map of The Sea Cave requires RuneQuest Scenario Pack 2: SP8 The Sea Cave.
What do you get?
One of the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting lockdown is the rise in online gaming, such that in some parts of the world, this is the prevalent way in which many roleplayers now play, whether one-shots, regular games, and virtual conventions. So Virtual Tabletops have become platforms on which roleplayers game, their handling elements which would have physical form when playing at the table (pre-COVID)—dice rolling, handouts, miniatures, and maps, and more. In some cases, publishers work with Virtual Tabletops to make their scenarios available, but in others, the Game Master creates and imports her own content, the handouts, the maps, and so on. This is where the maps from Rivendell Maps are useful. Each one was designed to be imported into Roll20, one of the more popular Virtual Tabletops. This is their primary advantage.
There are eight maps available from Rivendell Maps. They are of locations detailed in titles explored in RuneQuest: Classic Edition, so not locations immediately associated with the more recent RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. This limits their usefulness, as does the fact that beyond the confines of their individual scenarios, they are unlikely to brought to the Virtual Tabletop again. Of the eight maps, the Map of The Rubble of Old Pavis, the Map of the Topside of Balastor’s Barracks, and the Map of Balastor’s Barracks are rough and indistinct, again impeding their utility. To be fair, the map of Balastor’s Barracks given in RuneQuest Scenario Pack 1: Balastor’s Barracks is plain anyway, but this map is not an improvement. Of the eight maps, the Map of the Sea Cave is the most pleasing, being clearly and simply drawn, makes good use of colour, and is free of clutter.
Is it worth your time?
Yes—The maps from Rivendell Maps vary in quality and are often a little too dark to read clearly. However, should the Game Master require a map in an emergency for her Virtual Tabletop game, they offer a solution at least.
No—The maps from Rivendell Maps vary in quality and are often a little too dark to read clearly. They are also an expensive option, when it may be simpler for the Game Master to draw and upload her own.Maybe—The maps from Rivendell Maps vary in quality and are often a little too dark to read clearly. Serviceable at best, they are also an expensive option, when it may be simpler for the Game Master to draw and upload her own.

Most Lovecraftian investigative horror is about preventing the apocalypse, about preventing the disaster which would end the world as we know it and instigate the fall of mankind, which would arise because the Stars have come Right, and some powerful entity—god?—of the Mythos or the Unnatural has appeared or been summoned to unleash a hell hitherto unimagined. Whole scenarios and even campaigns have been dedicated to preventing such an occurrence, but what if it did? It is a question that devotees of the genre have constantly asked themselves, and over the years it has been visited a handful of times. First in print with End Time, Doctor Michael C. LaBossiere’s Miskatonic University Library Association monograph which took humanity off of Earth and out into the universe following the end of the world, whilst the more recent Cthulhu Apocalypse from Pelgrane Press and Fate of Cthulhu from Evil Hat Productions answered the question in very different ways. The former by presenting the ‘Apocalypse Machine’, a tool/flowchart that provides the means to build an apocalyptic disaster and track its effects on both mankind and the planet, the latter presenting the apocalypse as something which could be stopped by going back in time. The latest entry into this subgenre is the Apocthulhu Roleplaying Game.

The Apocthulhu Roleplaying Game is published by Cthulhu Reborn, best known as the publisher of the well-received Convicts & Cthulhu: Call of Cthulhu Roleplaying in the Penal Colonies of 18th Century Australia. It explores futures and futures past—the Post-Apocalyptic worlds it posits all stem from the modern world, from the Victorian era onwards—in which the calendar has turned and Great Cthulhu has risen from his slumber under the Pacific and the coasts washed over with the oceans and strangely batrachian creatures; in which the Black Pharaoh was restored in Egypt and all became enthralled to his dark worship; in which the Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young strides out of the deep jungle and the gifts the world with a rewilding of such fecundity that it boils over with rabidly radical births that spawn change after change; in which strange fungoid insects appear with promises of great gifts and new technology, only to enslave mankind in rapacious drive to strip the planet of its resources, including humanity itself; and in which Serpentine Humanoids are awoken from their aeons’ old slumber to reclaim their ancient empire and reclaim the planet from the primitive ape descendants which have stolen it in their absence.

Such disastrous turn of events may have only happened recently, they may have happened hundreds of years of the past, but as with many imagined Post-Apocalyptic worlds, the survivors are forced to pick over the bones of former civilisations and societies and compete with other survivors for scare resources in order to merely get by, let alone attempt to build a better future. Yet in a future where the forces of the Unnatural run wild, the survivors must contend with the knowledge of what exactly happened being all but lost, the lawless of the new world, with cultists and devotees of the Unnatural reveling in the worship of their true masters and their victory over mankind, and with confronting both devotees and masters, the resulting shocks to their psyche likely to claw at the bonds forged with family and community, if not drive them insane.

It should be noted that the Apocthulhu Roleplaying Game is both a roleplaying game of its very own and not a roleplaying game of its very own. It is not a roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative horror a la Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition or Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game, but somewhere in between and hewing towards the latter rather than former. It is a percentile driven roleplaying game, but not a Basic Roleplay variant. Rather it has been written under an ‘Open Game Licence’ much like Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game. It is not a Mythos roleplaying game in the sense that it does not simply replicate entity after entity, race after race of the Mythos or the Unnatural. In fact, it limits what entities it can mention to those which are out of copyright and points the Game Moderator in the direction of both Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition and Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game, as well as Trail of Cthulhu, as ready sources of such things, as well as spells and Mythos tomes (and that is in addition to the possibility of borrowing the ‘Apocalypse Machine’ from Trail of Cthulhu). Being written under an ‘Open Game Licence’ also means that there is a wide number of shifts in terminology to be found in the Apocthulhu Roleplaying Game, such as Rituals for spells and Tomes of Terror for Mythos tomes. These shifts are no more than a simple step to the left though, and the adjustment for a Keeper and her players from any other roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative horror will be relative slight. As much as the Apocthulhu Roleplaying Game encourages reference to those other earlier works, it does stand alone, and it does something further, it presents a future—or futures—of those games if the Investigators fail…

A Survivor in the Apocthulhu Roleplaying Game has six statistics—Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Intelligence, Power, and Charisma, all ranging between three and eighteen. Willpower represents a Survivor’s mental fortitude and drive, and is equal to his Power. Willpower Points are lost when a Survivor attempts to suppress his mental illness, is exhausted, attempts to resist persuasion, suffers emotional burnout, or fuel unnatural phenomena—such as casting rituals. Besides a range of skills and a Sanity score, both rated as percentage values, a Survivor has Resources and Bonds. Resources, rated between one and twenty, represent supplies and personal possessions, their value determined by a Survivor’s Archetype (or Occupation), but can be increased at the cost of skill points. Bonds come in two types. Individual Bonds represent a Survivor’s relationships with friends, family, and so on, and are each equal to a Survivor’s Charisma, whilst his Community Bond represents the strength of the connection with a group and is equal to half his Resources rating. Both Bonds and Resources can be tested during play like statistics and both can change over time through play.

To create a Survivor in the Apocthulhu Roleplaying Game, a player rolls for his statistics (or chooses from an array), selects an Archetype, calculates his Resources and selects his Bonds. Archetypes are divided between those of the Recent Apocalypse, such as Former Military or Former Student, and those who Post-Apocalypse-Born, such as Muscle and Technology Salvager. Each recommends a particular statistic, grants some set skills and some further options, all at a set value, plus staring Resources and number of Bonds. A player can also customise his Survivor’s skills with extra Skill Point Picks. A player has ten of these, each of which adds twenty percentile points or they can be sacrificed to increase a Survivor’s level of Resources. A Survivor can also have more depending on the harshness of the post-apocalypse, but these can only be assigned to Post-Apocalypse skills, such as Scavenge or Survival.

Deved, Son of Bunker 242
Law Giver
Age 19

STR 14/70 (Wiry)
CON 12/60
DEX 13/65 (Agile)
INT 14/70 (Perceptive)
POW 15/75 (Determined)
CHA 17/85 (Magnetic)

Hit Points 13
Damage Bonus +1
Willpower Points 60
Sanity Points 60
Breaking Point 45

Mental Disorder: Dendrophilia

Bonds
My father, Commander of Bunker 242 17
Old Man John, Keeper of the Statutes 17
Nency, friend and companion 17
Community (Bunker 242) 14

Resources 10

Skills: Dodge 50%, Firearms 40%, Insight 70%, Law (Regulations According to Bunker 242) 60%, Melee Weapons 50%, Persuade 80%, Post-Apocalypse Lore (Fecund Forest) 40%, Research 30%, Scavenge 50%, Search 60%, Survival (Fecund Forest) 30%, Technology use 40%, Unarmed Combat 60%, Unnatural 20%

Mechanically, the Apocthulhu Roleplaying Game is a percentile game. The results of any test—statistic or skill related—can be a critical success, success, failure, or fumble. A critical success is a result of one or doubles up to the value of the statistic or skill being tested; a success is a roll equal to or under the statistic or skill; a failure is result over the statistic or skill; and a fumble is a result of double zero or doubles above the value of the statistic or skill. The deadliness of the Apocthulhu Roleplaying Game is reflected in the Luck mechanic, which is a straight 50% roll and many weapons, such as grenades or submachine guns possessing a Lethality percentile rating. If an attack is successful and the Lethality roll is also successful, the target is killed straight, and even if failed, the dice results of the Lethality roll are added together and inflicted as damage, so the larger the failure, the more damage inflicted!

The Sanity mechanics in the Apocthulhu Roleplaying Game are similar to those of the Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game. Sanity can be lost through exposure to three sources—Violence, Helplessness, and the Unnatural, and in the case of Violence and Helplessness, a Survivor can become inured to such sources, though this comes at cost to their personality and their Bonds. If a Sanity test is failed, a Survivor suffers from Temporary Insanity, and will either Flee, Struggle against the source of the insanity, or Submit and collapse. When a Survivor’s Sanity is reduced to below his Breaking Point—equal to four fifths of his starting Sanity score—the effects of the Sanity loss are not temporary, the Survivor gaining a Mental Disorder. The Mental Disorder can be triggered by further exposure to whatever caused it in the first place. Lost Sanity can be recovered by interacting with a Bond, defeating Unnatural creatures, destroying accounts of the Unnatural (which sets up a tension between the need to study such accounts in order to destroy them and the need to destroy the tomes to remove them from the world), fulfilling personal goals, and looking after others. The last two are conducted during periods of Downtime which follow any investigation into the Unnatural and narratively serve as a counterpoint to the horror which has gone on before.

In addition to rules for confronting the Unnatural, researching Tomes of Terror, and handling Supernatural Effects just as you would expect for a roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative horror, the Apocthulhu Roleplaying Game also includes rules for living and surviving in the apocalypse. These include rules for scavenging and jury-rigging found technology, resource scarcity, vehicles, and heavy weapons, all mainstays of the Post Apocalypse genre. It also integrates the effects of the Post Apocalypse futures in sanity. Each Post Apocalypse is graded on its degree of Harshness—either Normal(ish), Harsh, Very Harsh, or Nightmarish. The greater the degree of Harshness, the lower a Survivor’s beginning Sanity and the greater the likelihood of his beginning play with a Mental Disorder. This is offset by more skill adjustments and increased statistics during Survivor creation. For the Game Moderator, the Apocthulhu Roleplaying Game poses a number of questions such as, “What event triggered the Apocalypse?”, “What changed?”, “Is there any hope?”, and so on, which answering should ideally spur the creation of an Apocalypse of her own. In addition to this, the Apocthulhu Roleplaying Game provides eight example Apocalypses, each very different. For example, in ‘Apocalypse 1: The Stars Turn, Turn, Turn’, the stars have come right and multiple entities of the Mythos stalk the Earth, whilst in ‘Apocalypse 2: Nyarlathotep Unmasked’, the failure to prevent a summoning off the coast of China in the 1920s—in a knowing nod to Masks of Nyarlathotep indicative of the Apocthulhu Roleplaying Game’s potential role as a sequel—pushed the world into a nuclear strike and nuclear winter. Each of the eight Apocalypses provides answers to the eight questions plus some threats and tomes of terror, but is really only a snapshot of the Apocalypse in question, ready for further development upon the part of Game Moderator.

The Apocthulhu Roleplaying Game also comes with a campaign setting plus two quite lengthy, and very different scenarios, which together showcase the possibilities of the Lovecraftian-Post-Apocalypse genre. The campaign setting is an adaptation by Kevin Ross of William Hope Hodgson’s 1913 novel, The Night Land. Set millions of years into the future, this has the last of humanity surviving under a dwindling sun in the Great Redoubt, an eight-mile high pyramid, watched over by the leviathan Watchers, waiting to be able to crack open the Great Redoubt and consume the souls of the last of mankind. Although due to be developed into a full campaign setting of its own from Cthulhu Reborn, it comes with everything that a Game Moderator would need to get started. It covers technology and life in the Great Redoubt, psychic powers, and the geography and threats and allies of the Night Land, plus several scenario hooks. What is interesting about the setting is that although The Night Land has also been acknowledged as an influence upon H.P. Lovecraft, it has never been translated into a gameable setting before, primarily because, as Ross explains, the novel is impenetrable. The result of his efforts though, is a fascinating campaign setting, in some ways more of a Science Fiction setting akin to that of Marcus L Rowland’s Forgotten Futures, but combined with a terrifying and weird mythos of its very own.

The first of the two scenario’s in the Apocthulhu Roleplaying Game is ‘Kick the Can’ by Jeffrey Moeller, which is set in one of the earlier example Apocalypses given in the book, ‘Apocalypse 4: The Firelands of Melqart’. It takes place a year after civilisation has been reduced to ashes by a rain of fire following a prophecy by the weird cult-like, Church of Melqart. The Survivors, each of whom was initiated into the Church of Melqart, have spent the last year in a bunker and emerge into the ash-laden world because their supplies are running low and because they received a summons from the Church of Melqart to come to Washington, D.C. to participate in a great ceremony. As the Survivors make their way towards the capitol, they will discover some of the secrets of the apocalyptic event and the Church of Melqart, all of which point to a greater catastrophe to come. The scenario is linear, but has the scope for the Game Moderator to add her own scenes and the potential to become something of a slog as the Survivors cycle their way across America to Washington, D.C. Another problem is that it involves graphic, violent acts towards women and children, and whilst the Apocthulhu Roleplaying Game is a horror game, this may be outside of the players’ comfort zones. So, at the very least, the Game Moderator will want to establish that the players are fine with this in the context of the scenario or at least alter some of the more graphic elements. Otherwise, ‘Kick the Can’ is a solid one-shot with quite a lot of information and detail to it.

Similarly, Jo Kreil’s ‘A Yellow and Unpleasant Land’ will require some discussion with regard to the degrees of debauchery it involves and to what degree the Game Moderator wants to describe them. The scenario is set in Victorian England in the 1890s following multiple performances of a play called The King in Yellow, including for the late Queen Victoria, which saw the Yellow King come to Earth and corrupt the morals of every upstanding Englishman. This is an apocalypse of decadence and debauchery rather than death and destruction, one which the Survivors can hope to overturn if they follow the instructions of Myrddin and ensure the return of England’s one true king to bring an end to the rule of the Yellow King. ‘A Yellow and Unpleasant Land’ then, is a combination of The King in Yellow and Arthurian legend, a combination which could have clashed and it may take a little convincing upon the part of the players to accept the combination, since the Arthurian elements are not subtle, but as it turns out, works well together. ‘A Yellow and Unpleasant Land’ provides two possible endings—‘hopeful’ and ‘nihilistic’. The former is the more positive and grants the Survivors the capacity to defeat the Yellow King, whereas the latter does not, it being revealed to them that their efforts were naught but an entertainment for the Yellow King’s benefit. ‘A Yellow and Unpleasant Land’ is the least traditional Apocalypse in the Apocthulhu Roleplaying Game and is all the more interesting for it, highlighting not just the continued flexibility of the corruptive mythos of the Yellow King, but also the Post-Apocalyptic format too.

Physically, the Apocthulhu Roleplaying Game is presented in quite a bold fashion in terms of colours used and the layout. The full colour artwork is excellent throughout, but the maps do vary in quality. It also needs an edit in places. In general, the book is well written, but the title of the running example throughout the book, ‘The Making of ‘Mad’ Maxine’, is trite.

As a Post-Apocalyptic roleplaying game, the Apocthulhu Roleplaying Game is perhaps one of the harshest and deadliest available, though it avoids the more gonzo elements to be found amongst many of the similar treatments of the genre. As roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative horror, the Apocthulhu Roleplaying Game draws from many elements that are familiar, including mechanics, making it easy to adjust to—at least in terms of the streamlined rules and terminology, if not the setting. As a roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative horror, it adds a weirdness to the Post-Apocalypse’s brutal survival horror. As a roleplaying game of Post-Apocalyptic Lovecraftian investigative horror the Apocthulhu Roleplaying Game is far from innovative or ground-breaking, since it draws heavily on elements which have gone before it. However, it does push at the boundaries of the genre and it does provide the means for the Game Moderator to create and explore Apocalypses of her own, whether created from the ground up, or as a result of failure upon the part of her players’ Investigators. Perhaps in having the opportunity to explore the consequences of their failure, the Investigators—as Survivors—will have the opportunity to undo what they could not stop in the first place?

Fever-Dreaming Marlinko – A City Adventure Supplement for Labyrinth Lord details a borderlands city where life takes a strange fever-dream cast, where confidence tricks and scams are an accepted way of life, where its each of four contradas—or quarters—worships one of the four gods (and pointedly ignores the fifth) entombed in the squat, black bulk of the Tomb of the Town Gods, and where adventurers can find respite, relaxation, rumours, and more from the wilderness beyond… It stands amidst the Greater Marlinko Canton in the world of Zěm—as detailed in What Ho, Frog Demons! – Further Adventures in Greater Marlinko Canton, not too far from the Slumbering Ursine Dunes, and from there, Misty Isles of the Eld. It is published by Hydra Collective LLC and is an Old School Renaissance setting supplement designed to be run using Goblinoid Games’ Labyrinth Lord. Of course, it can easily be adapted to the Retroclone of the Game Master’s choice.

As a city located in the Hill Cantons, a region described as, “A Slavic-myth inspired, acid fantasy world of Moorcockian extradimensional incursions and Vancian swindlers and petty bureaucrats.”, Marlinko matches much of that description. Both of its four contradas and their inhabitants have Slavic names and many of its monsters are drawn from Slavic legend. For example, one of the city’s leading socialites is Lady Szara, organiser of the annual Bathe in the Blood of your Servants charity ball, is secretly an ancient and evil strigoi—a Romanian version of the vampire—who it is suggested, should speak in the style of the actress, Zsa Zsa Gabor, only more sinister. She may even employ the Player Characters to locate certain magical gewgaws and knick-knacks, that is, if she simply does not decide to consume them... The Eld—essentially ‘space elves’ from another dimension with a distinctly Melnibonéan-like, decadent sensibility—slink secretly into the city, and the bureaucracy extends to unions, such as The Guild of Condottiere, Linkboys, Roustabouts, and Stevedores, a union for adventuring party hirelings, which really objects to scab hirelings! Numerous swindlers and scam artists are mentioned throughout the description of the city, and there is even a section on ‘Running Long and Short Cons’.

Intended to be regularly visited by Player Characters of Second and Third Levels, what Fever-Dreaming Marlinko – A City Adventure Supplement for Labyrinth Lord is not, is a traditional city supplement. There is no building-by-building description, no great history of the city, or great overview. Instead, it focuses on the pertinent details about four contradas and the things that can be found there and more importantly, can be interacted with by the Player Characters. Včelar is home to Marlinko’s wealthy, dominated by their great painted-plastered town-manses and famed for Jarek’s Manse and Tiger Pit where the perpetually name dropping and bragging owner has built a domed all-weather tiger pit in which he stages tiger wrestling! Obchodník is the city’s business district, where at Fraža’s Brokerhouse, the Player Characters might make purchases from the radically—for Marlinko, that is—honest and unfortunately terribly racist, Fraža the Curios Dealer, or pay for at fortune at The Serene Guild of Seers, Augurs, Runecasters, and Wainwrights—the clarity (at least) of any such fortune depending on the cost. Svině is home to Marlinko’s slums, but also many guilds, such as The Illustrious Workers of Wood or The Guild of Condotierre, Linkboys, Roustabouts and Stevedores’ Dome of Supernal Dealings, but also home to the Catacombs of St. Jack’s Church of the Blood Jesus, whose disturbingly bloody misinterpretations of Christianity has the potential to unleash murderous mayhem upon the city. Soudce is home to the city’s suburbs, their skyline dominated by the Onion Tower of the Checkered Mage, the home of the city’s resident arch-mage, František, a surprisingly level-headed wizard, who might pay well for certain items.

Each of the four contradas is accompanied by a table of random encounters, a mixture of the mundane, the silly, and the weird. For example, a group of flirts who if a Player Character parties with might wake up the next morning at his own shotgun wedding; Kytel the Duellist, a thoroughly bored swordmaster who will fight anyone to first blood; Old Slinky Panc, an escaped tiger, probably drugged and quite harmless, who Jarek the Nagsman would probably want returned—and returned unharmed; and a Hairless Hustler who will offer to sell the Player Characters two bars of surprisingly warm to the touch silver metal—and there is a reason that the Hairless Hustler lacks hair… These are all engaging encounters which make getting about the city memorable and interesting, some of them having the capacity to turn into interesting adventures depending upon the actions of the Player Characters.

Marlinko’s notables are described in some detail, but perhaps the best part of their descriptions are the suggestions on how to speak like them. The Game Master should have enormous fun portraying any one of them. In comparison, only two adventure sites are detailed in Fever-Dreaming Marlinko—‘Lady Szara’s Town-Manse’ and ‘Catacombs of the Church of the Blood Jesus’. Ultimately, they are both places to raid and ransack, home to respective evils present in the city, but not raid and ransack without reason. A Player Character might be kidnapped and find himself locked up in the catacombs first or the Player Characters all together might be hired to find a missing person, whilst Lady Szara could hire the Player Characters rather than give them cause to attack her and so have them visit her home. Of the two, ‘Lady Szara’s Town-Manse’ is the more interesting and the more thoughtful in its design, being an actual home rather than just another monster lair. It is also better mapped.

Beyond describing might be found in each contrada, Fever-Dreaming Marlinko details crime—sanctioned and unsanctioned crime—and punishment in the city, advice on running cons in the city, and buying and selling in the city—everything from War Ocelots and Radegast’s Dark ale to the Poignard of the Overworld and a campy, faux-barbarian meadhall. Emphasising Marlinko as a place to visit and unwind in its taverns and other entertainment establishments, Fever-Dreaming Marlinko includes a guide to carousing in the city and potential outcomes whichever contrada the Player Characters are visiting. There are even three locations for the Labyrinth Lord to expand as potential adventure sites, though of course, it would be nice to have had more ready-to-play adventure sites in the book.

However, as odd and as weird as the city of Marlinko is, it can get weirder. As with the other titles set in the Hill Cantons, Fever-Dreaming Marlinko has a Chaos Index, which tracks the ebb and flow of the weirdness in the city, much of it being driven by the actions of the Player Characters, including making trips back and forth to the Slumbering Ursine Dunes. This is indicative of the design of Fever-Dreaming Marlinko, that it is ideally meant to be played in tandem with Slumbering Ursine Dunes. As the weirdness factor grows, the cultists of the Church of the Blood Jesus might commit more, and bloodier murders, mass hallucinations might break out, hundreds participate in a group wedding, and more. The weirdness factor also affects the ‘News of the Day’, the rumours and truths which spread throughout the city.

Rounding out Fever-Dreaming Marlinko is a set of five appendices. The first is a bestiary which adds three monsters—the Robo-Dwarf, the Wobbly Giant, and the Cantonal Strigoi, whilst the second, a ‘Tiger Wrestling Mini-Game’, provides the rules for handling events at Jarek’s Manse and Tiger Pit, the only tiger-wrestling arena in town. It is definitely a dangerous pastime, but good luck to any Player Character who throws his hat into the ring! Two new Classes are detailed in the third appendix. The Mountebank is a Thief-subclass which has the Sleight-of-Hand skill for moving and switching out objects as part of a scam, can use Illusionist spells—though they can only be learned by swindling them out of actual Illusionists, and even temporarily raise their Charisma to eighteen! The other Class is the Robo-Dwarf, which is more of a strange mechanical variant upon the actual Dwarf Class. The last two appendices provide the Labyrinth Lord with a useful list of ‘Common NPC names and Nicknames’ and a pronunciation guide.

Physically, Fever-Dreaming Marlinko is generally well laid out, the writing is clear, and the artwork is excellent. It needs an edit in places, the real problem with the physical book is that it is not well organised, lacking an introduction which would help the Labyrinth Lord understand how the city functions as a game setting and the order in which the book’s contents come not always in the right place. Once the Labyrinth Lord has read through the book, it is relatively easy to grasp how the city works as a setting.

Apart from the less than useful organisation, there are really only one or two other issues with Fever-Dreaming Marlinko—both of which could cause offence. The first is that St. Jack’s Church of the Blood Jesus is a potentially offensive misinterpretation of Christianity, whilst the second is that one or two of the NPCs are described as fervent racists and that the Labyrinth Lord is expected to portray this in character. Now this does take place in a fantasy world, but that does not mean that neither a player nor the Labyrinth Lord cannot or should be necessarily comfortable about this. This is one aspect of the setting which will require a discussion between all of the players before play begins to see whether they are prepared to accept it or not as part of the setting. The likelihood is not and the Labyrinth Lord should be prepared to replace it with potentially less offensive character quirks or attitudes for the NPCs concerned.

Fever-Dreaming Marlinko is designed as campaign base, one which the Player Characters will return to again and again after exploring first the Slumbering Ursine Dunes, then the Misty Isles of the Eld, and from there, the wider world of Zěm as detailed in What Ho, Frog Demons! – Further Adventures in Greater Marlinko Canton. Although the Labyrinth Lord could use it in another setting, it does work best with those other books. And each time the Player Characters visit Marlinko, the Labyrinth Lord is given the means to make that visit memorable—with locations they might want to go to, random encounters which can become something more, rumours, and eventually weird things going on around them. There is no part of Marlinko as described which cannot be interacted with or does not add to the sense of oddness which pervades the city and which will probably be worse with every visit. Overall, Fever-Dreaming Marlinko – A City Adventure Supplement for Labyrinth Lord is a brilliantly written, incredibly gameable setting supplement which provides the Labyrinth Lord with an excellent toolkit to bring a fantastical city setting to life.

Robots Among Us 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’.

The Starship Warden was stocked not just with thousands of robots, ready to help humanity settle the new world that the colony ship was destined for, but also large factories intended to manufacture yet more useful robots and automated terraforming machines ready to begin transforming the new world into a new paradise for humanity. However, these many robots were just as affected by the radiation cloud that caused the change as were the ship’s crew and colonists, and plant and animal stock, their A.I. brains warped and twisted and their programming altered beyond what their original designers intended. Metamorphosis Alpha focuses on the biological inhabitants of the Starship Warden, the Humans, Mutated Humans, Mutated Animals, and Mutated Plants. Robots Among Us switches the focus to the mechanical inhabitants of the Starship Warden to present a set of seventeen encounters with robots aboard the colony ship.

Written by Jim Ward, the designer of Metamorphosis Alpha, with many of them entertainingly illustrated by Jim Holloway, the entries in Robots Among Us range in length from half a page to two pages long. Each includes a subtitle which suggests what the encounter is about, such as ‘ Arc Bots – More Than Just Security’ and ‘300 Years And Counting – Butler Robot Ready To Serve’, an explanation of what is going on, some colour text—in bold—ready for the Game Master to read out to her players, and the stats for the one or more robots involved in the encounter. The writeup for each robot includes its normal reactions, so that the Game Master can easily gauge its actions. The Game Master will need to refer to the Metamorphosis Alpha rules for descriptions of the various Miscellaneous, Defensive, Weapon, and other systems installed into each of the robots, and in some cases will need to prepare an encounter to fit into her campaign, but others can be dropped straight in with almost no or little preparation. Their theme is always though, that of ‘robots gone awry’.

Robots Among Us includes encounters with warbots, security bots, horticultural bots, cargo bots, servant droids, bomb disposal bots, cleaning bots, med bots, and more. In ‘Bunker Bots’ the Player Characters are attacked out of the blue by a damaged bot, and tracking it back to its source reveals more; in ‘War Unit’, the Player Characters are visiting a village when they see a battle involving military bots nearby—do they join in, wait to salvage the battle, locate the source of the robots, or all three?; whilst in another village, everyone comes under attack by a host of war machines, but is saved by an intelligent tank that sat dormant for centuries almost like a statue outside the village! Given the short length of the encounters in Robots Among Us, it should be no surprise that many of them are combat orientated. Some of the more interesting encounters involve more roleplaying—upon the part of both Game Master and her players—than combat and whose events will play out over the course of several sessions beyond the pages of Robots Among Us. For example, in ‘300 Years And Counting’, the Player Characters encounter a robot butler who is still awaiting the return of its former masters and will treat them differently depending upon whether they are Humans, Mutated Humans, Mutated Animals, or Mutated Plants, a theme which runs throughout Robots Among Us and Metamorphosis Alpha and its subsequent descendants. Similarly, in ‘Mother Knows Best’, the Game Master gets to ramp up the camp when the Player Characters encounters a ‘Orabelle 3,000 Matron Unit’, and it starts to clean up after them and actually clean them and admonish them when they take actions which it perceives is dangerous!

Physically, Robots Among Us is well presented , neat and tidy, and an engaging read. In places, it could have been better organised to make it clear quite what is happening in each encounter. If there is an issue with Robots Among Us, it is perhaps that too many of the encounters do involve combat rather than other forms of conflict or engagement. However, that does make them easier to use by the Game Master, but it does also mean that the Game Master will want to use the encounters to be found in Robots Among Us judiciously, to mix them up with encounters. Of course, Robots Among Us provides plenty of support for the Metamorphosis Alpha Game Master, but this is supplement for a post apocalypse roleplaying game, so there is also a lot here which could be brought into the post apocalypse roleplaying game of the Game Master’s choice, whether that is Gamma World or Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic or any of the others. The content in the individual entries would require some adjustment, but the parred-back stats in Metamorphosis Alpha would make that relatively easy.

Robots Among Us is a useful supplement, a supplement which the Game Master can pull off the shelf and peruse and prepare an encounter with relative ease—some encounters require more preparation times than others. Robots Among Us provides solid support for Metamorphosis Alpha, and with a little bit of effort, for other post apocalypse roleplaying games too.