What strikes you first about Liminal is not the name—that comes second—but the fact that it is a beautiful book, packed full with luminous, mysterious artwork presented on thick glossy paper. The roleplaying game is in fact a weighty, digest-sized tome that suggests heavy, even stolid game, but nothing could be further from the truth. Rather, Liminal is an urban fantasy roleplaying with light, narrative mechanics, presented in rich full colour which hints at and captures the strange place astride the familiar of the mortal and the unfamiliar of the Hidden World. Indeed, the very title suggests this, ‘liminal’ meaning ‘occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold.’ Published by Worldplay Games and distributed by Modiphius Entertainment following a successful Kickstarter campaign and written by the designer of Age of Arthur, Liminal is unique amongst the urban fantasy roleplaying games published to date in being set  entirely within the United Kingdom. Thus it is inspired by the Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovitch, Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere and Sandman, the comic book Hellblazer, Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, the television series Being Human, the film The Company of Wolves, amongst many other films and books. 

The ‘Hidden World of Liminal is one in which magic and magicians, vampires, werewolves, the fae, and many myths are real. And some in authority know. As much a rich gentleman’s club as the protector of the country from rogue magic practitioners, the conservative Council of Merlin claims origins date back to Roman times, whilst the Most Noble and Distinguished Mercury Collegium is a loose network of magicians, knowledgeable mortals, and supernatural creatures who often use magic as a means to aid their criminal endeavours. Vampires scheme and prey from behind the scenes, most belong to nests which in turn are part of the Soldality of the Crown, the parliament of vampires whose origins are as old as the Council of Merlin. Originally brought to the British Isles by the Vikings, most werewolves hunt in local packs, but the brutal Jaeger family want to unite them. The Fae vary wildly, some appear human, others lurk under bridges, but most serve one of the feuding Fae Court, typically located in a Dominion beyond this world in the Fae Realms. The most powerful Fae lords in the country are the Queen of Hyde Park, whose summer court is reached via a bridge under Serpentine, and the Winter King, whose frosty court moves anywhere between Snowdonia in Wales, the Lake District in England, and the Scottish highlands. Elsewhere, both mortals and fae worship the spirits of the rivers great and small; ghosts are the echoes of the deceased who in time may come material again or even possess the body of someone newly dead; the Aldermen protect and seek knowledge of gates into Ghost Realms, Fae Domains, and hidden crossings; and the Flowers of Expression is a community of artists—both worldly and unworldly—who accept all on artistic merit and who seek to create great art.

Two bodies of authority know something of the Hidden World and its inhabitants and secrets. One is the Order of St, Bede, a Christian order which accepts both Anglicans and Catholics and is dedicated to protecting the mundane world from magic and the supernatural and keeping it and the existence of magic a secret. Its members will use magic, but this does not stop magic from being sinful. P Division is a national agency of the British police, one that investigates inexplicable or Fortean crimes, but which never records its experiences of the Hidden World or magic lest it be revealed to press or the government. Some of its members may even know magic, but for serving officers, assignment to P Division is seen as a career dead end.

Character concepts include Academic Wizard, sponsored to Dee College at Oxford by the Council of Merlin; Changeling swapped for a human at birth by the Fae; Clued-up Criminal, aware of the Hidden World as a free agent or associate of the Mercury Collegium; Dhampir, almost a vampire, still just about human; Eldritch Scholar, perhaps sponsored by a wizard, but with an interest in the Hidden World; Face, one of the diplomats between the factions of the Hidden World; Gutter Mage who lacks the academic study wanted of the Council of Merlin, and may instead may be part of the Mercury Collegium; Investigator, perhaps members of P Division, but might also be a journalist or private detective who has stumbled across the Hidden World; Knight, the mortal servants of one of the factions, and might be lawyers or computer experts as well as soldiers; Man in Black, one of the protectors the ordinary world from the Hidden World for the Order of the St. Bede; Warden, bodyguard to a Magician for one of the factions; and Werewolf, who has undergone the initiation ritual to be able to change into wolf form. Now a player does not have to pick any one of these concepts, but can instead develop his own. What each concept does though, is suggest the possible Skills, Traits, Limitations, and Focuses that will help define a character.

A character or Liminal in Liminal is defined Concept, Drive, Focus, Skills, Traits, and Limitation. A Liminal’s Drive is what motivates him to become involved in the Hidden World, for example, ‘To find my father who was said to have run away with the fairies’ or ‘Werewolves ripped my family apart and I will seek out every werewolf and kill them’. Focus determines whether a Limininal is strong mentally or physically—Determined or Tough respectively and learn their respective Traits—or if he is a Magician and can learn different magical styles. It should be noted that although Shapechanger is listed as magical style, it only applies to magicians who can change into multiple forms, so lycanthropes such as werewolves who can only change into one, do not have to take it and so can be Determined or Tough instead. Skills represent a mix of training and natural abilities, with a skill level of two or more indicating simple professional attainment. A skill of level three or more means that it can have a speciality. Traits cover trained or innate advantages, but mundane and magical. Limitations are restrictions to or due from a Liminal’s supernatural abilities. A Liminal also has three Attributes—Endurance, Will, and Damage, the first two derived from his Athletics and Conviction skills, the latter from the means of attack used. (It should be noted though that Liminal makes clear that guns are not routinely available in the United Kingdom and that even when they are available, heavy weapons like grenades and rocket launchers simply kill their targets.) To create a Liminal, a player divides seventeen points between his skills and five points between Traits, although Limitations will add more to spend on Traits. 

Our sample Liminal is professional psychic, Neale Killough, who was orphaned at ten when his mother disappeared. She was also a psychic, but when he manifested the gift, was unable to contact her. He is convinced that she is dead and had delved further and further into the world of ghosts and the supernatural in order to find her. When not working as a psychic, he is a motivational speaker.

Neale Killough
Drive: To find out who took my mother and why?
Focus: Magician
Physical Skills: Business 1, Awareness 2
Mental Skills: Lore 2
Social Skills: Charm 2, Conviction 2, Empathy 3 (Assess Personality), Rhetoric 3 (Sincerity)
Traits: Necromancy (2), Presence (2), The Sight (1)
Endurance: 8
Will: 10
Damage: d6

Now creating a Liminal is not the only task that a player has to undertake before a game begins. In Liminal, each of the player characters, whatever their motivations or origins, is a member of a Crew which together provides them with a shared motivation, a base of operations, and some assets. So they might be a team of werewolf hunters, scientists exploring the edges of the Hidden World, a P Division team investigating crimes committed by the Mercury Collegium, and so on. Just like the Liminals themselves, the Crew will have a goal, a reason how and why it takes on cases, plus assets like a Geomantic Node, Informants, or Transport. The Crew will also have a relationship factor between itself and several of the Hidden World’s factions, either positive or negative, plus hooks which will attract the Crew’s attention. Now all of these factors are decided collectively by the players in a round-robin fashion so that everyone’s suggestions are taken into account.

Dearly Departed Consultants
Dearly Departed Consultant is a collective of psychics—some with the gift, some not—who not only perform psychic readings up and down the country, but consult on ghost hunts, hauntings, and dealings with the spirit world. It rarely performs in  major venues and does not make a huge amount of money, but it gets by.

Goal: Keep people safe from the dangerous dead
Assets: Transport, Occult Library, Informants
Relationships: The Council of Merlin (-1), The Mercury Collegium (+2), P Division (+2), The Sodality of the Crown (-2), The Order of St. Bede (-1)

Mechanically, Liminal is simple. To undertake an action, a Liminal’s player rolls two six-sided dice and adds the Liminal’s skill value and any modifiers from Traits, attempting to beat the Challenge Level, typically eight, or more to succeed. Circumstances can modify the Challenge Level, such as being increased to ten for not having an appropriate skill. Failures lead either to immediate trouble for the Liminal, success but the Liminal is hurt, takes longer, or a simple failure. Rolls of double one are critical failures and add a further complication, but rolls of five or higher above the Challenge Level is a critical success. One interesting mechanic here is that when a player character makes a successful social challenge against another player character or NPC, he does not simply persuade them to do something, he levies a penalty to all tests which contradict the action he has been persuaded not to do.

A Liminal also has Will, which can be used to boost skill tests—including avoiding a critical fumble, and use various Traits and forms of Magic. For example, the Silver Tongue Trait grants a bonus to the Charm skill when being deceptive, but the magical element of the Trait means that if a magical ability or means was used to determine if you were telling the truth, then by expending a point of Will, the Liminal could avoid detection. Will is regenerated by rest or by engaging a player character’s Drive during play.

In keeping with the rest of Liminal, the combat rules are nasty, brutal, and short. A light firearm, for example, does 1d6+3 damage. Unless the player character has a lot of points invested in the Athletics skill or it is boosted by a Trait, a gunshot will not necessarily kill a player character, but it will knock him out of the fight.

Pleasingly, experience and advancement in Liminal is story driven, the player character learning directly from his experiences conducting a case. Learn something about the Hidden World or a fellow Crew member, advance the Crew goal, conclude a case, and so on, and these enable the player to tick his character’s Experience Boxes on the character. Fill five of these and the character receives a Skill increase and fills an Advance Box, and fill three of those and the character’s skill limit can be raised, he can have a new trait, and so on. It feels similar to the mechanics of Powered by the Apocalypse, but nevertheless rewards the player character according to the story and his actions.

Magic forms a major part of the Hidden World and comes in eight types—Blessings and Curses, Divination, Geomancy, Glamour, Necromancy, Shapechanging, Ward Magic, and Weathermonger. Again, the rules are kept simple, requiring no more than a successful Lore test and the expenditure of a point of Will to use. The Challenge Level for the test will vary according to what the magician wants to do and how quickly. So a Weathermonger can change the weather for several hours by expending two points of Will and making a Lore test. The Challenge test goes up by two each for making the weather turn violent, arrive quickly, or unseasonal. In addition to this base ability, a magician can have further Traits, such as Fast Working or Call the Lightning for the Weathermonger. 

More than half of Liminal is devoted to detailing the Hidden World. This starts with the sample characters, but really delves into with the information about the factions and the location descriptions. The factions are not only detailed, but often supported with sample NPCs whom the Game Master can easily add to her game. There are some fun groups and NPCs here, such as The Queen’s Service, vampires who supply blood from Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham or the mysterious ‘Werewolf’, Shad. The chapter on ‘Liminal Britain and Northern Island’ covers both the obvious places—Glastonbury, Stonhenge, and so on, and the less obvious ones—Pertmerion, the New Forest, and so on. Working down from cities, it covers towns, villages, and locations in some detail, including Belfast, Caernarfon, Canewdon, Dartmoor, Durham, the Forest of Dean, the Giant’s Causeway, Glasgow, Glastonbury, Glen Coe, Hadrian’s Wall, Highley, Hinton St. Mary, Liverpool, Loch Lomond, London, Manchester, Mount Snowdon, Mussenden Temple, the New Forest, Oxford, Peebles, Portmeirion, Saltaire, Stonehenge, Tamworth, Winchester, and York. As well as representing a diverse range of places that will nicely take a crew on and off the beaten track, there is a richness of detail here, such as Portmeirion was designed by a geomancer to prevent the incursion of a Ghost Realm, but which has partially failed following a fire or how vampires have moved to Manchester to hunt the city’s club scene. These locations are further supported by descriptions of the various types of fae, ghosts, werewolves, vampires, and mortals to be found in the Hidden World, these in addition to those included in the faction descriptions.

Rounding out Liminal, there is some excellent advice on setting up and running investigative style games  as well as advice on running the game. The Game Master is provided with extra background—on Fae Domains and Ghost Realms as well as Liminal beyond the borders of the United Kingdom—as well as outlines for two ready-to-play cases.

Physically, Liminal is a stunningly pretty looking book. The layout is clean and simple and the editing decent enough, but the choice of artwork is excellent throughout. There is a lot of it and it really captures the otherworldliness that breathes quietly from the pages and adds so much to the look and feel of the roleplaying game. This is superb looking game, not just because the artwork is good, but because it has been well chosen.

Liminal is not a roleplaying game with an other as such. There is a sense of containment to its setting of the United Kingdom and its factions, most if not actual enemies, then at least wary of each other. These factions are the major powers in the setting against which the Crew of Liminals or player characters will be set, the likelihood being that as they investigative and bring a case or mystery to a conclusion, they antagonise one faction whilst pleasing another. As a setting, Liminal feels not dissimilar to the World of Darkness with its factions of vampires, werewolves, mages, changelings, and ghosts, but here is an emphasis in Liminal on roleplaying playing mere mortals as much as there is dhampirs, changelings, werewolves, or fae. Further, Liminal slips these and its other fantastical elements into the shadows, layering them under centuries of history and mythology within the Hidden World. Of course, involvement of werewolves, vampires, and ghosts also means that Liminal is a horror game at least in tone in places, if not mechanically, so that does mean that there is a dark, mature edge to the Hidden World described within its pages.

Lastly, it should be noted that Liminal calls for increased player involvement from the start and throughout the play. This is in deciding their characters’ goals and then again if they fulfil them as well as setting up their Crew with their choice of assets, faction relationships, and hooks. In doing so, the players will actually decide some of the direction in which they want their Liminal campaign to go in, with the mechanics providing the means for them to support this with some interesting character options.

Liminal is not just an urban fantasy roleplaying game, for its takes both players and Game Master out into the wilds of the countryside too, far from the nations’ urban centres, out into the Hidden World, even as the Hidden World has slipped into those towns and cities. This enables it to provide a stronger sense of history and mythology, drawing from the British Isles’ rich swathes of legend and folklore. Liminal combines this with simple mechanics and story-based roleplaying to provide a delightfully accessible British roleplaying game and a delightfully accessible British—grim and determined—take upon the urban fantasy genre.

If you are a board gamer, then 2019 is a good time to be alive. You are spoilt for choice and you are spoilt for choice in terms of good games and you spoilt for choice because games can be designed around a theme or an intellectual property and they can fit that theme or property. For there cannot be any other good reason why Ravensburger can get the licence for a nearly fifty-year-old blockbuster and turn that blockbuster into a game that is not models the blockbuster, but which is actually a good game. A game that could and would never have been designed or published in 1975, the year of the blockbuster’s release. A tense, desperate game of cat and mouse—or rather shark and mouse—for the blockbuster is none other than Jaws. In fact, it is the first summer blockbuster, in which a giant man-eating great white shark attacks beachgoers at a New England summer resort town, prompting the local police chief, marine biologist, and a professional shark hunter to hunt it down. The film is regarded as both a classic thriller and horror film, and has been selected by the United States Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry.


Jaws: A Boardgame of Strategy and Suspense is an asymmetrical, two to four player semi-co-operative board game for ages twelve and over, which is played in two acts and lasts about an hour. One of the players takes the role of the Shark, whilst the other players take the roles of the hunters, Police Chief Martin Brody, marine biologist Matt Hooper, and shark hunter, Quint. (If there are fewer players, then the roles of Brody, Hooper, and Quint are shared between them, so that it is possible to play a two-player game). In the first act, ‘Amity Island’, the Shark hunts the waters off Amity island, eating swimmer after holiday swimmer as the hunters try to track its location and tag it. Once the Shark’s hunger is sated or it has been tagged twice, the Shark swims out to sea and the second act, ‘Orca’, begins. In ‘Orca’, the shark attacks the hunters aboard Quint’s boat, Orca, until they manage to kill the Shark or the Shark eats them or the boat.

Act One: ‘Amity Island’ is played out on a map of the island, which depicts the island’s four beaches—North, South, East, and West, two Docks, Shop, Mayor’s Office, and Amity P.D. on the island. Each Round is divided into three phases—Event, Shark, and Crew phases, which are played out in that order. In the Event phase, an Event card is drawn which determines on which beaches new swimmers will take to the water, plus an event and its special rules. For example, ‘The Fourth of July’ opens all beaches and they cannot be closed that Round; ‘Amity Island in the News’ grants one player an extra action that Round; and ‘Ben Gardner’s Boat’ enables the Shark to knock either Hooper or Quint from their boat and into the water if it passes through the same space as the boat, forcing their players to expend actions getting back aboard.

In the Shark phase, the Shark player has three actions he can undertake. Obviously, he can Move and he can Eat swimmers. He can also use one of four special abilities, represented by Power Tokens, like being able to swim faster or avoid the detection methods that the hunters are putting in his way. Each Power Token and its special ability can only be used once per game. All of this is done in complete secrecy, the Shark player tracking his movement on a pad included with the game and noting how many swimmers he has eaten on the Shark card. At the end of the Shark phase, all his player has to do is tell the hunter players how many swimmers he has eaten, whether he swam past a motion tracker, and whether or not a Power Token was used (but of course, not which).

In the Crew phase, Brody, Hooper, and Quint get to act, but they can act in any order and each has different things they can do. All three have four actions each and can Move, Rescue a Swimmer if at a beach, and Pick Up Barrels, though what each of them does with these Barrels is slightly different. Brody is famously afraid of the water and so runs around Amity Island, collecting Barrels from the Shop and carrying them, one at a time, to the Docks, but if at the Mayor’s Office or Amity P.D., can issue an order to Close a Beach, which temporarily prevents Swimmers entering the water there when directed to do so by an Event card, and when at a beach, can use his Binoculars to scan the water for the Shark.

Hooper spends this act on his fast boat which enables him to move further, but as well as picking up swimmers, his primary task is to ferry the Barrels from the Docks where Brody has dropped them off, to Quint aboard the Orca. He also has a Fish Finder, which he can drop into the water to determine if the Shark is in the zone he is in or an adjacent zone. Lastly, once Hopper has got one or more Barrels to him, Quint can Launch a Barrel into the water, either in the zone he is in, or an adjacent zone. If it hits the Shark, it sticks, and the Shark player has to tell the hunters where he is. If the Shark is not there, then the Barrels floats in the water and acts as a motion detector which will alert the hunters whenever the Shark passes through the zone it is in.

Act One: ‘Amity Island’ ends when the Shark swims out to sea. This will either because the Shark has eaten nine Swimmers or because the hunters have attached two Barrels to the Shark and forced it to flee. The number of Swimmers that the Shark has eaten by then is important because it determines the number of Shark Ability cards the Shark will have in Act Two: ‘The Orca’ and the number of equipment cards the Hunters have. The more Swimmers that the Shark has eaten, the more Shark Ability cards the Shark player will have and the fewer extra Equipment cards the Hunters will have—and vice versa.

Act One: ‘Amity Island’ is a game of hidden movement upon the part of the Shark and deduction upon the part of the Hunters. In this, it feels like the hidden movement of Fury of Dracula where the vampire hunters try and track down the vampire count, the trail narrowing and narrowing. In Jaws: A Boardgame of Strategy and Suspense the search area is narrowed by placement of the Barrels as Motion Trackers, but at least on one occasion the Shark will be able to avoid them with a Power Token. Doing so will probably be best used by the Shark to sneak past a Motion Tracker onto a beach and grab one or two last Swimmers which will increase the number of Power cards he will have in Act Two: ‘The Orca’. Another game which Act One: ‘Amity Island’ feels like is Pandemic with its turnover of Swimmers which will appear at beaches again and again as Event cards are drawn.

Act Two: ‘The Orca’ is more focused and fraught, taking aboard Quint’s boat as it withstands attack after attack by the Shark, as seen in the finale of the film. It is played on the reverse of the game’s board, the players flipping it over after completing Act One: ‘Amity Island’ and laying out the eight tiles which depict the deck plan of the Orca. Each of these tiles is also double-sided. On one is the undamaged section of the Orca’s deck plan, on the other the section after it has been damaged by the Shark. The Shark can further damage each section of the deck plan to actually destroy it and dump any of the Crew into the water. The aim of the Shark is to chew the Orca into splinters and eat the Crew, whilst they must accurately determine where the Shark will attack again and again and kill it.

In comparison to Act One: ‘Amity Island’ in which each Round has three phases, Act Two: ‘The Orca’ each Round has six phases and is consequently more complex. These phases are Resurface Options, Shark Chooses, Crew Prepares, Shark Reveals, Crew Attacks, and Shark Attacks. In Resurface Options, the Shark player draws three Resurface cards which give him the three Resurface Zones where he can attack the Orca on that Round. In addition, each Resurface Card will determine how many dice the Shark player will roll to attack that Round, how many hits the Shark can absorb that Round before it takes damage, and whether or not it can shake free of a hook, such as that from a fishing pole or the gas canister, that one of the hunters may have attached from it. All three of these factors will influence the Shark player’s decision as to where he will attack, as will how much damage the boat may have taken in those Resurface Zones. Then in the Shark Chooses, the Shark player decides which Resurface Zone to attack from the three Resurface cards and whether or not he will play a Shark Ability card, which for example, enable to completely destroy a section of the Orca if it attacks it or even take a second attack. Both of the choice of Resurface card and Shark Ability card are kept secret.

In Crew Prepares, each Crew Member decides which of the three Resurface Zones he will move to and which weapon he will use. Melee weapons have to be used in the same Resurface Zone where the Shark attacks, whilst ranged weapons can be used at a distance. Some melee weapons can be attached to the Shark which will hinder the marauder. Accessories like Ammo enable firearms to be used again, Chum can be thrown into the water to attract the Shark to a particular Resurface Zone, and the Shark Cage will protect one of the crew members. Every Crew member has his own weapons and items of equipment and will have access to more, the amount depending on the number of Swimmers the Shark ate in Act One: ‘Amity Island’. 

In Shark Reveals, the Shark player reveals which Resurface Zone the Shark is attacking followed by the Crew Attacks phase, and lastly, the Shark Attacks phase. In the former, the players take it in turns to roll the dice and inflict as much damage on the Shark as possible, or if they can, automatically attach a weapon to the Shark. In the Shark Attacks phase, the Shark player will attack the boat and if the Shark damages or destroys a section, then it is flipped or removed and any Crew Member on that section of the Orca is knocked into the water. They will have to spend their movement on the next round getting back onto the boat. The Shark can also attack a Crew Member who is in the water  and may get a bonus attack against them as well. Play continues like this until the Shark is killed and the Crew Member players win, or the Shark either destroys all of the boat or kills all three Crew Members, in which case, the Shark player wins.

Just like Act One: ‘Amity Island’, Act Two: ‘The Orca’ feels a little like another game and that is Forbidden Island with its sinking tiles. In Jaws: A Boardgame of Strategy and Suspense it is the parts of the Orca which are being attacked and damaged and then forced to sink, reducing the size of the boat and thus the play area. That said, the use of the Resurface Cards to determine where Shark comes to the surface and attacks the boat does feel new. LikeAct One: ‘Amity Island’, this has the effect of narrowing the choices in terms of where the Shark will go next, but this is fairly fraught it also increases the likelihood of the boat and potentially the Crew Members in that area being attacked.

Act One: ‘Amity Island’ and Act Two: ‘The Orca’ do feel different to each other. The first is more strategic with more planning involved as the hunters search for the Shark and the primary way of knowing where it is, is from the number of disappearing Swimmers. The second is more immediate, more tactical, the Crew Members reacting because the Shark is all but on top of them. Which is very much like the film.

Physically, Jaws: A Boardgame of Strategy and Suspense has excellent productions. The look of the game and the graphics draw very much from the look of the film and its famous poster. Where possible, stills from the film are used on the Event Cards in Act One: ‘Amity Island’, but the artwork is excellent throughout. The Meeples for Brody, Hooper, and Quint are what you would expect, but a nice touch is that the boats for both Hooper and Quint are also of wood, as is the piece for the Shark. Lastly, it should be noted that the rule is also well presented with every effort made to make it possible to learn and play the game as the players read through the rulebook on opening the box. It is not wholly perfect, but is nevertheless, very well done.

Now if you have wide experience of playing board games, then with Jaws: A Boardgame of Strategy and Suspense it is possible to spot some of the mechanics seen in other games, but this does not mean that the game is immatitive, just as it means that the game is neither radical or groundbreaking. Indeed, the mechanics have been adjusted where necessary to match both the source material and the game play. What you have in Jaws: A Boardgame of Strategy and Suspense then, is a well oiled, well tooled, design, one that really does take the source material and build a good game around it whilst being true to the source material. In fact, as a design, it transcends any novelty factor that the game might have had for being based on as famous a thriller as Jaws. Put that all together and it should be noted that the game is surprisingly inexpensive for a design of its nature and the quality of its components.

Jaws: A Boardgame of Strategy and Suspense is not absolutely perfect. It may well be too good an emulation of its source material to play more than a few times, because it does not offer a lot of variety in terms of game play. This is not to say that game is not fun—it is, how much after a few plays is another matter. In addition, you need to have seen Jaws to get the most out of the game and since Jaws is a somewhat gruesome thriller, neither film nor game may necessarily be suitable for its younger suggested age limit of twelve. 

Yet beyond those issues, Jaws: A Boardgame of Strategy and Suspense delivers exactly what you would want in a game based on Jaws the film. It is fraught and it is frantic, you do feel desperate as more and more Swimmers are eaten in Act One: ‘Amity Island’ and then the Shark comes after you in Act Two: ‘The Orca’, but that feeling can turn around as you close in on the Shark… Plus if you are a fan, you get to play out the film and see what you would have done in their place and you get to roleplay the characters, quoting all of the famous lines, and so on. If you are a Jaws fan, then Jaws: A Boardgame of Strategy and Suspense is a game you will definitely want, and if you are a board game player, then it offers semi-co-operative, heavily themed play in well-presented, solidly designed, and inexpensive package.

Another year and another bumper crop of board games as 2019 continues the trend of seeing the release of ever more board game titles and playing board games becomes firmly cemented as a hobby that everyone can enjoy. 2019 was also a good year for books about boardgames too, including The Board Game Book: The essential guide to the best new games, a retrospective of the last two years’ worth of games and Meeples Together: How and Why Cooperative Board Games Work, a detailed examination of board games in which the players work together to defeat the game. Joining them is a much broader examination of the board game, an examination which takes in eight thousand years of playing games from the ancient world to today’s golden age of meeples, co-operation, legacy change through play, thematic play, superb production values, and fantastic designs—all of which have come about in the last three decades. That book is Board Games in 100 Moves.

Published by Dorling Kindersley—a publisher known for the quality of its illustrated reference works, so the quality of the book is certain to be good, Board Games in 100 Moves is written by two stalwarts of the British hobby games industry, James Wallis, designer of The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen and Alas Vegas and Ian Livingstone, co-founder of Games Workshop and co-creator of the Fighting Fantasy series amongst many other things. Both are avid board game players and collectors and in their time have played thousands of games. Together they take the reader through eight thousand years of games and six ages of game design, all in exactly one hundred games.

From the start, almost like the rules to every good board game should, Board Games in 100 Moves explains its set-up. Both authors introduce their love of board games and explain the book’s premise, how it is organised, preparing the reader for the grand tour that is come. It sets out what the one hundred board games of its title are—from Senet in 3100 BCE, the Royal Game of Ur in 2600 BCE, and Hounds and Jackals in 2000 BCE to Beasts of Balance and Sushi Go Party! in 2016, and The Mind in 2019. Along the way it lists classics like Chess and Backgammon, playing cards and Pachisi, surprises such as Kriegsspiel and Suffragetto, stalwarts such as Scrabble and Monopoly, children’s designs like Mouse Trap! and Connect 4, it touches upon roleplaying games such as Dungeons & Dragons, before coming up to date with modern designs like Settlers of Catan, Pandemic, and Codenames.

The first four ages of Board Games in 100 Moves are ages of materials—wood and stone, paper and print, cardboard, and plastic—and examine how those materials changed the look and feel of the games as much as it examines the games themselves. In ‘Wood and Stone’ it looks at the oldest game that we know of, Senet, noting that the Pharaohs were fans of the Egyptian game of passing and that the game had spiritual significance in that passing also referred to moving into the afterlife and then it looks at the first game that we have rules for, the Royal Game of Ur. What is fascinating here is how the rules were rediscovered. Other games examined in this period are ones that we would recognise today—Go, Pachisi (better known by its modern variants, Ludo and Parcheesi), the many variants of Men’s Morris (originally a game spread by the Romans across their empire), Backgammon, and of course, Chess.

A common feature of these games is that often being made from stone or wooden, there is a certain permanence to them, but in the age of paper and print, games became colourful and complex, yet easy to transport and teach. This is when playing cards evolved from tarot cards and the first printed board games appear, such as the Royal Game of the Goose. The nature of games changed again towards the end of this period when they set out to be instructional and educational, as with A Journey Through Europe, before the age of cardboard heralded the arrival of games about campaign, first military battles, but then political ones two. So this examines Kriegsspiel, the wargame designed to teach Prussian officers military tactics and The Game of Suffragette, published to promote the cause for female emancipation, before mentioning some of the actual games as propaganda published before and during World War 2. Here it does not shy away from some of the more reprehensible and unpleasant game designs of the period. 

Unsurprisingly, Monopoly and its origins as a game completely counter to its big business theme, is highlighted before we come to the age of plastic. This period is likely to be the one that the older board game player—and certainly the authors—will be most familiar with as it is when they first played games. So Mouse Trap!, Scrabble, Connect 4, Twister, and both Risk and Diplomacy, but as Board Games in 100 Moves into the age of imagination with publication of Dungeons & Dragons and the rise of the Eurogame, there is a sense of the foundations being laid for where we are now, in an age of imagination, of Eurogames like Ticket to Ride and Settlers of Catan, and exploring a future of co-operation, of a global hobby with board games from Japan like Machi Koro and from the Czech Republic like Codenames, and digitalisation. Although one hundred games might lie at the heart of Board Games in 100 Moves, along the way, the book looks at more than that single hundred, not necessarily in the depth and detail accorded its singular hundred, but enough to intrigue and wonder about finding out more (or in some cases, rejecting out of hand).

This being a book from Dorling Kindersley, is very nicely laid out with hundreds of illustrations which showcase the changing look and design of board games throughout history as much as the words explore their impact and design. It even comes with an excellent index and buried deep in the back of the book there is a bibliography for the reader who wants to explore the hobby a little more as well as play the many games listed within the pages of Board Games in 100 Moves.

It should be no surprise that Board Games in 100 Moves gives a somewhat Anglocentric history of its subject matter. After all, the format that it is inspired by—A History of the World in 100 Objects—and its authors are all British. This in part also explains the attention paid to Games Workshop and Warhammer, although their inclusion in this history is certainly warranted and certainly does not detract from the inclusion of games from all over the world. Where Board Games in 100 Moves differs from A History of the World in 100 Objects is that it is not a look at a hundred specific games or objects—anyone wanting that should be directed to Green Ronin Publishing’s Hobby Games: The 100 Best or Family Games: The 100 Best—for many of the games listed at the book’s start are never mentioned again. (Which possibly means that there is a scope for a book which examines each title on that list in turn.) Instead Board Games in 100 Moves is a hundred moves through history of organised play, an examination of the importance and impact, the enjoyment and effect, of board games.

Board Games in 100 Moves is an interesting and informative introduction to the history of board games, an examination a hundred—and more—board games you may or have not heard of, and might want to play. For the board game fan, this book is a must, whilst for the roleplayer, this book is still of interest because of the many ways in which the two hobbies overlap each other, but either way, Board Games in 100 Moves is an attractive and enjoyable read from start to finish. One that fans of tabletop games of all types will find interesting.

Since the publication of Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition in 2000, Goodman Games has published over one hundred adventure modules for its Dungeon Crawl Classics line and since 2012, these have been for its own Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game. Derived from the d20 System, the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game sits somewhere between Basic Dungeons & Dragons and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons in terms of its complexity. The most radical step in the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game is the starting point. Players begin by playing not one, but several Zero Level characters, each a serf or peasant looking beyond a life tied to the fields and the seasons or the forge and the hammer to prove themselves and perhaps progress enough to become a skilled adventurer and eventually make a name for themselves. In other words, to advance from Zero Level to First Level. Unfortunately, delving into tombs and the lairs of both men and beasts is a risky venture and death is all but a certainty for the lone delver… In numbers, there is the chance that one or more will survive long enough to go onto greater things! This is what the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game terms a ‘Character Creation Funnel’.

And right from the outset, Goodman Games supported this feature with the very first scenario released for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. This is Dungeon Crawl Classics #67: Sailors on the Starless Sea and since 2012 it has gone through six printings. Even further, Goodman Games has marked that sixth printing with a Limited Foil Edition’, a lovely hardback edition with a foil cover which not only reprints the module, but also includes new artwork, a retrospective, sketches, a discussion of the art process, and even discussion of lead artist’s—not the author’s—variant of the module, ‘Reverse Sailors on the Starless Sea’!

The adventure in Dungeon Crawl Classics #67: Sailors on the Starless Sea is designed for Zero Level characters, roughly between ten and fifteen with three characters per player. Alternatively, it can be played using characters of First Level and Second Level, but either way, it is expected that roughly half of these characters will survive. That though, is quite possibly a generous assessment as this module has the potential to kill player characters, even cause a Total Party Kill. Nevertheless, it has some great set scenes and really has a grim and perilous feel that echoes Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.

The setting for Dungeon Crawl Classics #67: Sailors on the Starless Sea takes place in and below a ruined keep that was once the lair of Molan and Felan, brothers who were great chaos lords at the head of great armies of beastial mutants before the forces of good led a campaign against them and sacked their foul castle. Ages have passed and its vile reputation is barely remembered, but now villagers have gone missing, beastmen howl in the night, and it is up to other villagers—the player characters—to go into the keep and hopefully find the missing villagers as well as put an end to the chaos that threatens to surge up and sweep over the land once again…

The adventure consists of two levels, each with just a few locations. The first of these is the courtyard of the keep itself, a bramble-filled ruin of tumble-down towers and walls. From the outset even getting into this area is dangerous, one route threatening a rock slide, another an encounter with vine-infested villagers, and a third with via sinkhole which appears to go straight to hell! Once inside there are tombs to discover, charnel chaos-infested ruins to explore, and dread Beastmen to face, and whilst these are single locations, they are big in terms of story and atmosphere. For example, in the charnel ruins, there are charred skeletons still hot to the touch, a frog fountain with red gemstone eyes and jewelled maw, and a black ichor which drips from the fountain and forms deadly pseudopods. But there is also a means to counter them in the ruins and clues to that too, waiting for the players to have their characters work out exactly how…

However fun these locations are, they cannot beat the big set piece on the shores of the starless shore. Here the player characters are faced with puzzle which looks like a combat encounter and asks them how they get past a leviathan which they have almost no chance of defeating. In some ways, the scenario’s end encounter with the Beastmen shaman and his acolytes atop the ziggurat which stands in the starless sea is almost an anticlimax, but it is nevertheless a thrilling end to the scenario.

With its fifth printing, Dungeon Crawl Classics #67: Sailors on the Starless Sea included a bonus dungeon, ‘The Summoning Pits’. This is an adjunct to the main dungeon, one that explore the origins of a particular monster which appears at the start of the scenario. It is a change of tone in comparison to the rest of the scenario, weird and creepy rather than obviously grim and perilous. 

This being a scenario for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, it should be no surprise that there is a pleasing degree of detail to Dungeon Crawl Classics #67: Sailors on the Starless Sea. This includes not only each and every location as you would expect, but also elements such as a table of mutations for the Beastmen—a table whose content foreshadows those for Manimals in the Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, what to do if the player characters actually have five hundred feet of rope with which to lower themselves into the sinkhole, the list of curses which will befall the characters should one of their number take a certain magical item. One aspect of the scenario is the preponderance of magical items that the player characters can find and wield, but nearly all of them with some kind of cost—even when that magical item might actually help the player characters. Well, that should be no surprise given that the scenario takes place in the former lair of a pair of chaos lords!

Dungeon Crawl Classics #67: Sailors on the Starless Sea barely takes up twenty-four of the fifty-eight pages of the sixth printing and its ‘Limited Foil Edition’. The other thirty or so pages include ‘Sailors Retrospective’, an interview with Harley Stroh about the development and writing of the scenario along with his original map sketches. Doug Kovacs’ cover is accorded a similar treatment as well as a series of tribute covers by the stable of artists who illustrate for Goodman Games. The section highlights just how much of an influence his art and cartography has on the whole of the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game line. Rounding the book is a look at the artist’s ‘Reverse Sailors on the Starless Sea’ in which the players take the roles of not the villagers but the Beastmen fighting their out of the complex. It is simply bonkers… Lastly, there is a photo gallery of the early years of Dungeon Crawl Classics.

Now these extras are not as extensive as that in Metamorphosis Alpha: Fantastic Role-Playing Game of Science Fiction Adventures on a Lost Starship and Original Adventures Reincarnated #1: Into the Borderlands, but then Dungeon Crawl Classics #67: Sailors on the Starless Sea is just seven years old and does not have the same history, and obviously, it is much, much shorter than either. Nevertheless, this is lovely way in which to acknowledge the success and impact of Dungeon Crawl Classics #67: Sailors on the Starless Sea.

Physically, Dungeon Crawl Classics #67: Sailors on the Starless Sea is superbly presented, The artwork is excellent, the editing solid, and the cartography atmospheric with some lovely little details, such as the nod to the cutaway dungeon that appeared in Basic Dungeons & Dragons.

Dungeon Crawl Classics #67: Sailors on the Starless Sea is never less than deadly and dangerous, but always ready to reward good play. It feels like a big scenario, rich in grim and perilous flavour and detail, not a dungeon to be attacked, but to be explored, its secrets to winkled out and perhaps put to use in saving the villagers—and possibly the world. It set a standard for the Dungeon Crawl Classics scenarios which followed and the Dungeon Crawl Classics #67: Sailors on the Starless Sea – Limited Edition Foil Cover gives us the opportunity to go back to reexamine that standard.

The year 2019 seems quite the year for the Cyberpunk genre, as we reach the year in which the genre classic film, Blade Runner, is actually set, and the classics of the genre in roleplaying see the release of either a new Starter Set and edition, for example, Shadowrun, Sixth Edition or Start Set with a new edition to come, for example, Cyberpunk Red. It is joined by Carbon 2185: A Cyberpunk RPG, a roleplaying game notable for being from a British publisher, Dragon Turtle Games, Ltd. and for its mechanics being derived from those used for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. From the outset then, the designers of Carbon 2185: A Cyberpunk RPG were faced with the challenge of adapting a set of rules strongly identified with Dungeons & Dragons and the fantasy genre to model entirely different genre. The good news is that they have succeeded and appropriately enough in 2019, have done so with a Cyberpunk roleplaying game heavily influenced by Blade Runner.

Published following successful Kickstarter campaign, the setting for Carbon 2185: A Cyberpunk RPG is the Earth of 2185, specifically San Francisco—a possible nod to the setting of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the novel on which Blade Runner is based. It is a future which begins literally tomorrow with climate collapse, resource depletion, and an ongoing refugee crisis as corporations begin expanding offworld, building orbital factories, searching for new resources, and supplying Earth with deuterium for the new coastal fusion plants. The discovery and manipulation of several wormholes which connected to other star systems resulted in ‘The Scramble for Stars’ in which the megacorporations raced to discover and exploit new worlds. Many were suitable for colonisation leading to a steady flow of those who could afford to pay or were prepared to work for corporations in return for their passage from Earth to “...[B]egin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure.” On these new worlds, the megacorporations were able to conduct research and development free from Earth’s oversight, which would lead to the introduction of Neurolink technology, Synths or biological androids, and power cell technology.

San Francisco is surrounded by high walls to protect it against the rising sea levels  and has been long divided into five districts from the fortified and secure corporate zone of District 1 to the gang controlled, near slums of District 5. Debt and crime are rife and many prefer to spend their lives in Virtual Reality pods than the pollution drenched streets and tenements of the city. As ‘cyberpunks’, the player characters are rebels, wanting to live independently of the megacorporations, and in the given scenario in Carbon 2185: A Cyberpunk RPG, they are connected to gang which will give them a sense of family as well as employment.

At the core then of Carbon 2185: A Cyberpunk RPG are rules and mechanics of Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. This means that it is a Class and Level roleplaying game, a twenty-sided die is rolled and bonuses added to determine success on an action, there are three Saving Throw types—Fortitude, Reflex, and Mind, and characters have Skill Proficiencies. There are changes, both minor and major, as you would expect. First off, instead of Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma, a character has the Abilities of Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Technology, and People. Technology represents a character’s ability to deal with technology and People his ability to deal with people. Carbon 2185: A Cyberpunk RPG is primarily a humanocentric setting, so instead of Race it offers Origins, reflecting a character’s background. These are Badlander, who grew up in the heavily polluted regions between the Megacities where radiation has given the ability to see in the dark; the Gutter Punk, who grew up as street rats and in gangs; the Korporate Kid, orphans raised in corporate orphanages and are highly educated; and the Regular Joe. The two exceptions, are the Synth and the Wormer. The former is a cyborg manufactured offworld and indistinguishable from ordinary humans, but tougher and trained as warriors, companions, or labourers, whilst the latter is a  human born in one of the low-gravity offworld colonies, forced to come to Earth as a refugee. Some of the Origins may have Suborigins, but not all.

Carbon 2185 has six Classes. These are Daimyo, Doc, Enforcer, Hacker, Investigator, and Scoundrel. The Daimyo specialises in heavy weapons and leading teams, the Doc is a healer whose hand implant can inject healing nanobots into the injured, and the Enforcer is trained to provide military, law enforcement, or combat support. The Hacker breaks into computer systems to steal information, but can also control botnets to access the local electronic infrastructure or even mechs; the Investigator is a private eye or a journalist; and the Scoundrel is a thief, a smuggler, or a street thug. Of the six it is possible to map some of them back onto the archetypal Classes of Dungeons & Dragons, so the Daimyo with its Fury is a little like the Barbarian Class, the Enforcer like the Fighter, and the Scoundrel like the Rogue, but there are differences enough between them so that the similarities are not intrusive. All have just the ten Levels versus the twenty of standard Dungeons & Dragons, although a player character needs more Experience Points per Level and it does mean that campaigns are likely to be shorter.

To create a character, a player rolls his Abilities—on 2d6+5 rather than four six-sided dice and drop the lowest, with the effect of giving a slightly smaller range, but less deviation or by assigning the given array. Besides selecting an Origin and a Class, a player generates two further aspects of his character. The first is Vice, for example, “I am addicted to Crush. If I go more than 24 hours without it, I suffer withdrawals” or “I like to keep and look after synthetic animals.” They include beliefs, additions, fears, obsessions, and so on, and represent both a roleplaying hook for the player and a story hook for the Game Master. Between adventures they can be indulged in to gain temporary Hit Points, but exactly how that works will be up to the Game Master and player to determine. The second aspect is the character’s Background, essentially what he did between leaving education and becoming a Cyberpunk. This consists of a number of five-contracts, the player deciding how many contracts he wants his character to go through before retiring to life as a Cyberpunk. Each contract is five years long and trains the character in various skill proficiencies and languages as well as providing him with several thousand Wonlongs (the currency in 2185) and a parting gift. A character is free to stay in the same career or switch, the latter typically to gain access to a wider variety of skills. The only downside to the process is that there is a chance of injury in each contract period which will end the contract without payment and should the character take too many contracts, he will suffer the effects of aging. The contracts include Corporate Drone, Criminal, Entertainer, Explorer, Laborer, Law Enforcement, Merchant, Military Technician, and Unskilled Worker.  Overall, the Background generator feels like a simplified version of the terms used in Traveller and perhaps the only thing it could have done with, is some events to add further colour to the character’s background.

Name: PRV-1967-47 (Pierce)
Origins: Korporate Kid
Suborigins: High Flyer
Age: 38
Vice: I am careful and meticulous with my bonsai trees. Nothing distracts me when I am dealing with them.
Background: Contract Drone (4)
Languages: English, Japanese, Mandarin

Armour Class: 16 (DR/2)
Hit Points: 9

Strength 08 (-1)
Dexterity 16 (+3)
Constitution 12 (+1)
Intelligence 18 (+4)
Technology 16 (+3)
People 13 (+1)

Fortitude: 14 Reflex: 18 Mind: 20

Proficiency: +2
Skill Proficiencies: Bureaucracy, Computing, Deception, Engineering, Hacking, Persuasion, Sense Motive 
Armour Proficiencies: Helmets, Light Armour
Weapon Proficiencies: Melee Weapons, Pistols, SMGs, Shotguns
Saving Throw Proficiency: Mind
Exploits: Computer Interface, Hack Mech
Abilities: Healing

Equipment: Advanced Comms, Concealable Ballistic Vest
Augmentation: ZA Korp Enhanced Aiming MK. II

Mechanically, Carbon 2185 is basically the same as Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, but it includes a number of rules additions to make it emulate the Cyberpunk genre. For example, in combat, armour not only provides an Armour Class value, but a Damage Resistance value against ballistic damage. This protects against most firearms—there being no energy weapons in 2185—but not melee weapons like vibro knives and some ammunition types. The rules allow for major injuries to be suffered when a character is reduced to zero Hit Points by a critical hit and instead a player rolling to attack when his character fires a gun in automatic mode, the defendants in the target area make a Reflex saving throw to avoid being hit. This neatly places the emphasis on the defendants trying to not get hit and keeping their heads down rather than on the attacker having to roll for each person. 

Of course, the two signature aspects of Cyberpunk genre are Hacking and Cyberware. Both are very different to most other roleplaying games of the genre. In many of them, the Hacker character would have to play out sneaking into a network, overcoming the ICE, defeating the defending SysOp, and so on, all but a sub-game that none of the other players and their characters could participate. Further, all of that time spent in the computer network actually only took a few seconds in game time, but several minutes in real time. More contemporary approaches to the genre, as with Carbon 2185, simply have the Hacker be on the spot alongside his fellow Cyberpunks and his player making simple rolls to hack the local network, device, or mech. The one element of 2185 not discussed in Carbon 2185 is the nature of computer networks, but essentially the roleplaying game focuses on the local networks and leaves it up to the Game Master to decide that nature.

Cyberware is a bit more complex, but again different. In most other roleplaying games of the genre, installing cyberware detracts from your humanity or empathy—and in ShadowRun your capacity to cast magic—but that was never all that easy to roleplay. In Carbon 2185, cyberware, or augmentations, do not degrade your empathy; they poison you. Or rather, the power cells that power them do, leaking toxins and radioactivity into the blood. There are certain drugs which will counter both, but they are expensive and they have a limited effect, meaning that they need to be taken on a regular basis. Augmentations are arranged into tiers, the higher the tier, the greater its toxic effect, equal to its tier rating. Those on Tier 0, like Neurolink or an Enhanced HUD have no effect and the body can cope with them, but beyond that, from the Tier 1 Enhanced Aiming to the Tier 5 Supercharged Hidden Blade, and the augmentations begin poisoning the body. The base limitation or Blood Toxicity Limit is equal to twice a character’s Constitution modifier, so a character can have augmentations that add up to that before he considered to be poisoned. There are other limitations on augmentations. They can only be installed in seven locations—Neural, Eyes, Right Arm, Left Arm, Torso, Skin, and Legs—and only one augmentation can be installed per location. So they cannot be stacked in a location, but in general higher Tier augmentations are more powerful. There are also legal limitations, augmentations of Tier 3 requiring a licence, Tier 4 being reserved for the military and illegal for civilians to install, and Tier 5 being experimental. Of course, this does not mean that they are unavailable, but rather that they require certain Influence to acquire and they are expensive. The list of cyberware or augmentations is not extensive in Carbon 2185 as in other roleplaying games of the genre and some may be disappointed by the choice.

Influence represents a character’s standing and social cachet. It is measured on two tracks, Influence: Corporate and Influence: Street. Rated between one and twenty, at Influence: Corporate 1, a character gains access to the city’s auction houses or the black market for Influence: Street 1. At higher levels, a character can gain informants and access to higher augmentations. It will rise or fall depending upon the Cyberpunks’ actions, so kill an important member of a rival gang and Influence: Street will rise, but kill an important member of your own gang and it will probably fall. The Influence mechanic is fairly broad and open system with latitude for interpretation and nuance—and even expansion should the Game Master want to track the player characters’ Influence with multiple organisation.

As well as giving a timeline for its future of 2185 and describing the setting of San Francisco, Carbon 2185: A Cyberpunk RPG also includes tables of encounters district by district and a mission generator. It details the various corporations operating in the city, the many gangs—many organised along ethinic lines such as the Snakehead Tong, Aizutachi Yakuza, Diablos Eléctrico, and the Bratva, and groups of interest. The latter includes The Church of the Machine Bound God, fanatics obsessed with augmentations; The Enigma Collective, elusive hackers dedicated to toppling the corporations; The Synth Rebellion, which supports escaped Synths and protects them against the government’s ‘retirement agents’; and Villeneuve Robotics, a small, but ruthless synth design and manufacturing company. A number of NPCs are also detailed, ready for the Game Master to add to her game along with a wide range of enemies and villains, from Challenge 0 up to Challenge 11. They include civilians, gangsters, Wesleys—Crush addicts, spiderbot, mechs, synthdogs and canine mechs, retirement officers, cyberninja, liberated AI, spider tanks, and more. 

Rounding out Carbon 2185 is the scenario, ‘Chow’s Request: A Carbon 2185 Adventure for 1st Level Cyberpunks’. The cyberpunks are asked by a gang leader to retrieve some stolen property from a rival gang. Various hooks are given as to why the cyberpunks might want to get involved, including being indebted, wanting to join the gang, and being an undercover law enforcement officer. It is decent enough scenario, basically a snatch and grab and its consequences, primarily focused combat. It would have been nice to see some options for Hacker Class for example.

Physically, Carbon 2185: A Cyberpunk RPG is a stunning looking book with a great cover and plenty of full colour artwork inside—although only in the first two thirds of the book. The layout tidy and looks impressive on its stark white pages. Unfortunately, dig a little deeper and there are one or two issues with the book’s production values. It does another edit, but the main problem is one of organisation in that a lot of the rules for actually creating a cyberpunk are in the rules section in the middle of the book rather than at the beginning and then the rules section comes after the one on combat. So expect to be flipping back and forth with Carbon 2185, especially when creating cyberpunks. None of this is helped of course, by the lack of index, an absurd omission in 2019, let alone 2185.

As solid a design as Carbon 2185: A Cyberpunk RPG is, it does feel slightly lacking places. There is lack of commercialisation in its depiction of 2185, in that every item will have a brand and the brand you use matters in the Cyberpunk genre. The corporations are mentioned, but the make and model of the items they sell. The presence of the media in the San Francisco feels underdeveloped and for any Game Master wanting not to set his campaign in the Golden City, there is only limited information about the world beyond its walls. Unfortunately, there is no advice for the Game Master on running Carbon 2185: A Cyberpunk RPG or the genre, and sadly, there is no bibliography either (although it could be said that Carbon 2185 wears its influences like adverts on your neurolink display). Thus no advice on the types of games that the Game Master could run, whether that is gang warfare on the streets of San Francisco, hunting down Synths as retirement officers, attempting to bring down the corporations, and so on. Hopefully a supplement specifically aimed at the Game Master will address these issues. 

If you are looking for a Cyberpunk or Science Fiction roleplaying game after playing Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, then absolutely, Carbon 2185: A Cyberpunk RPG is a good choice. Equally, it is a good choice if you are looking for a Cyberpunk or Science Fiction roleplaying game, the core mechanics of Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition likely to be familiar and easy to handle, with the new rules and changes nicely emulating aspects of the Cyberpunk genre without disrupting the core rules and mechanics. Overall, Carbon 2185: A Cyberpunk RPG does an impressive job of showcasing the adaptability of the mechanics of Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition whilst being solid take upon the Cyberpunk genre.

Published by the Melsonian Arts Council, Troika! is a Science Fantasy roleplaying game of baroque weirdness that lies beyond eldritch portals that open into non-euclidean labyrinths which lie on the edge of creation under skies filled with innumerable crystal spheres and the golden-sailed barges that travel between them. It combines a simple set of mechanics with a world that is not so much described as implied in its thirty-six refulgent and empyrean character options. This is a world and roleplaying game inspired by Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun series and  M. John Harrison’ Viriconium series, with just a little feel of Jack Vance’s The Dying Earth. Further, and although the mechanics of Troika! are not compatible with the majority of roleplaying games and scenarios for the Old School Renaissance, in tone and feel, it is not dissimilar to scenarios like Slumbering Ursine Dunes and Misty Isles of the Eld from the Hydra Collective LLC, Crypts of Indormancy and The Monolith from beyond Space and Time, and roleplaying games such as Monte Cook Games’ Numenera, Pelgrane Press’ The Dying Earth, and Lost Pages’ Into the Odd.

Characters in Troika! are very simply defined with three attributes—Skill, Stamina, and Luck plus a Background. Skill represents a character’s capabilities and prowess in combat, Stamina his Hit Points—if reduced to zero, he is dead, and Luck for just about anything else. Every character also starts with the same set of possessions. It is the Background though, such as Ardent Giant of Corda, Journeyman of the Guild of Sharp Corners, and Temple Knight of Telak the Swordbringer which defines the character in terms of origins, role, and advanced skills and possessions. Some Backgrounds also provide a special rule to do with an ability specific to them. For example, the Monkeymonger has spent his life herding Edible Monkeys, but has left his former occupation after falling or stepping off The Wall. He owns a Monkey Club, a Butcher’s Knife, a pocket full of monkey treats, and a herd of small monkeys too scared to run away from him. His advanced skills are climbing, trapping, club fighting, and knife fighting. The special rule associated with this Background has the Game Master rolling on a table to determine the Mien of the monkeys.

To create a character, a player rolls several six-sided dice for his character’s Skill, Stamina, and Luck, and notes the results down along with his character’s baseline possessions. Then he rolls d66 to generate a number between one and thirty-six and his character’s Background. The values listed for the Advanced Skills and the Spells are simply added to the character’s base Skill value to determine their final value. The process is really simple and easy, and between a group of players should create some interesting characters (although lose a few characters and the choices available in terms of Backgrounds may be limited to avoid repetition). The process is also fast. A character in Troika! can be created in a couple of minutes! 

Our sample character is a Claviger, a Master of Keys, obsessed and trained with the opening of doors and locks, both mundane and mystical. Ixyll is an orphan raised by the Grand Order of the Master of Keys and is obsessed by opening the doors, locks, and portals to furthest reaches of creation.

Ixyll
Background: Claviger

Skill: 5
Stamina: 20
Luck: 9

Advanced Skills: Locks 4, Strength 3, Trapping 3, Maul Fighting 2
Spells: Open 2, See Through 1, Lock 1

Possessions: Knife, lantern & flask of oil, rucksack, six provisions, festooned with keys (counts as Modest armour), a Distinguished Sledgehammer (counts as Maul), lockpicking tools

Mechanically, Troika! is disarmingly simple, if somewhat inelegant. To undertake an action, a player rolls two six-sided dice, aiming for a result equal to, or under, the appropriate Skill value. In an opposed roll though, the Skill value is added to the result of the roll and compared with that of the opponent’s to see which result is higher. Where Skill or an Advanced Skill does not factor into a situation, but a roll is still needed, the player instead rolls against his character’s Luck. This though, comes at a cost, the character sacrificing a point of Luck to make this roll. So essentially, a character’s luck (and Luck) can run out over the course of an adventure. Thankfully, this is not a permanent loss, and both Luck and Stamina can be regained once a character has taken the time to rest.

Combat  primarily consists of opposed rolls of Skill plus Advanced Skill plus the result of two six-sided dice, the roll determining which combatant hits and inflicts damage, whether that is mêlée or missile combat. Rolls of double six are criticals and count as Mighty Blows which inflict double damage, whilst double ones are fumbles and enable an opponent to inflict an extra point of damage. Mighty Blows can inflict a lot of damage on defendants and that includes the player characters, so Troika! has the potential to be fairly deadly in play. Thankfully though, character creation is quick, so bringing replacement characters into play should not too much of an issue. Other rules cover grappling, use of multiple weapons, armour and shields—both reduce damage, and so on. So simple and fast enough, but initiative is very different.

Initiative in Troika! requires tokens—a lot of tokens. These can be dice, counters, and so on, as long as they are in a mix of colours. Each player character requires two tokens of the same colour. All of the enemies require tokens in the same colour equal to their combined total Initiative value. One last token is needed of an entirely different colour. This is the End of the Round token. This collection of tokens, known as the stack, goes into a bag or container and shaken up. Then over the course of a round, the Game Master draws tokens one by one. When a player character’s token is drawn, he can act and when an enemy’s token is drawn, one of their number can act. This continues until all of the tokens have been drawn, or the End of the Round is drawn.

These Initiative rules are very different (at least for roleplaying, something like them being used in the board game, German Railways) and have an unpredictable, organic feel and flow. One clever extension of them is the aiming rule, which by letting a player character place one less token in the stack, lets his player rolls twice and take the best result when his second is drawn. However, the unpredictable nature of the Initiative mechanism means that the enemies might act before the End of the Round token is drawn and so prevent the player characters from acting in a round; some player characters might get to act, but not others before the End of the Round token is drawn; and all of the enemies might get to act before the player characters. Now barring the last one, which could occur in a standard combat engagement anyway, some players may be dismayed by being denied the chance to act, something which flies in the face of just about every other roleplaying game. What it represents, though, is a stronger ebb and flow of combat, of combatants hesitating, seizing the initiative and losing it, and so on.

Troika! includes some seventy or so spells. Each is treated like an Advanced Skill which needs to be rolled against when cast and also has a cost to be paid from the caster’s Stamina statistic when cast. A result of double one means that the spell is successfully cast, but a roll of double six means that the spell has not only failed to be cast, but that the caster’s player must roll on the ‘OOPS!’ table, which is given on the inside back cover. This can radically change the caster, whether that is deducting twenty-five years from the caster’s life or not, such as turning everyone nearby turning into pig, except the caster. The ‘OOPS!’ table definitely has an obsession with pigs! 

Monsters or enemies are treated in as simple a fashion that is in keeping with the rest of Troika! There are some thirty or so given from Alzabo and Boggart to Ven and Zoanthrop. The first is a ghoul-bear, the second is a grumpy Pixie, the third time travellers from the End of All Things, and the fourth, fashionistas who followed a fashion too far to be in touch with the animal kingdom and gave themselves partial prefrontal lobotomies… Every enemy entry includes a Mien table to quickly determine their attitude when encountered. All have slightly lower Stamina ratings in comparison to the player characters in order to make combat quicker to run and to balance against spell casters having to expend their Stamina to fuel their spells. 

Lastly, Troika! includes ‘The Blancmange & Thistle’, an introductory adventure. It is intended to be dropped into an ongoing campaign with little rhyme or reason, and sees the player characters taking rooms at The Blancmange & Thistle hotel in the city of Troika. They are forced to share a room because there is a big party on the roof to which they are also invited, but anyone and everyone is also going to party too. All of them just as weird, if not more so, as the player characters. The adventure really consists of the player characters having a terrible time in the hotel’s lift as one weird guest gets on as another weird guest gets off at his floor. The problem with the scenario is that it will fall flat if the player characters refuse to engage with it, but should they actually engage with the weirdness around them—and they have no excuse given just how weird they all are—then this is a lively, silly trifle of an adventure which has a feel of The Dying Earth about it. Writing adventures to fit this tone or indeed the feel of the world of Troika! may be a challenge for some Game Masters and the roleplaying game does not include any advice to that end—or indeed any advice. Although to be fair, the roleplaying game is not aimed at the inexperienced roleplayer. 

Physically, Troiki! Is very nicely presented. A nice touch is that the various sections—character creation, rules, spells, and the bestiary and scenario—are each done on different coloured paper, making them stand out a little in the digest-sized hardback. The writing is good and the artwork is suitably and weird throughout.

Mechanically, Troika! is undeniably simple, looking and feeling a little like the Fighting Fantasy solo adventure novels of the nineteen eighties. The application of Backgrounds though, not only make them more competent, they also provide ways in which the player characters can each be cool. The Backgrounds also suggest aspects of the wider world—or edge of the world—whilst still leaving plenty of room for player input. Ultimately, if Troika! is missing anything, it is more of this fantastically weird and baroque world that the Backgrounds and the scenario hints at, which as ‘The Blancmange & Thistle’ demonstrates really comes out in play rather than presented as chunks of information. Thus Troika! would benefit from further weird adventures rather than sourcebooks.

Troika! is a fantastic little book, a roleplaying game, which with its simple rules and rich character Backgrounds, possesses a superb pick-up and play quality. It would be fantastic to see that supported with a book of easy to pick up and run short scenarios, but the scenario in this book, ‘The Blancmange & Thistle’, is a fine start.

Taverns are a cliché in fantasy roleplaying because that is always where adventures begin, as in, “You all meet in an inn.” They are places where the adventurers can buy a drink, pick up a few rumours, perhaps get hired for a job, and then go on their merry way to delve into some dungeon or some other adventuring site. Then when the adventure is over, they are places for such adventurers to retire to and spend their loot on wine, women, and song. The Pocket Companion: A Tavern Guide is designed to make such establishments more interesting than that and to give multiple examples of such places where food and drink, company and entertainment can all be found and enjoyed. Some seventy or so taverns detailed, spread across four types of terrain—cities and towns, on the road, villages, and wilderness—all designed for use with the fantasy roleplaying game of your choice, for the content of The Pocket Companion: A Tavern Guide is entirely systemless. Further, the supplement published by Wisdom Save Media is very simply presented in a black and buff booklet in order to make it friendly on the pocket.

Now despite saying that The Pocket Companion: A Tavern Guide is systemless—because it is—it has its own system of presenting and rating each of the taverns described within its pages. Every entry is rated in terms of casks, from one to five, taking into consideration its customer service, quality of produce, comfort, range of services offered, décor, and overall customer satisfaction. This is only a rough guide and is open to interpretation, so a one-cask tavern might give great customer service, but serve terrible beer and have cheap furniture, or the beer is great, but overpriced, served by rude staff, and patronised by aggressively surly customers. The particular services offered by each tavern are indicated by a number of icons, one each for food, stables rooms, merchant (services), blacksmith, entertainment, and bar staff and patrons. Again, these are are open to interpretation, but further information is provided in each tavern’s description and some of their customer comments.

In addition every entry includes a description, a bit o’ history, and one or two reviews. Some also give descriptions of the staff and patrons of the tavern, each of whom is accorded their likes, dislikes, wants, fears, and flaws, all of which are organised into a table of their own. There are typically three of these per entry that includes them, nicely providing a thumbnail portrait of the individuals. This increases the page count for the entries with NPCs from one page to two.

For example, The Yellow King is rated three casks and offers food, entertainment, and rooms. The sign over its door depicts a figure with its head bowed and covered in a cowl and dressed in yellow tattered robes, surrounded by shadows which suggest the figure might have wings. Inside, its many patrons sit in small clumps, staring into their greasy yankards amidst an air of desperation and menace… According to its ‘A Bit O’ History’, The Yellow King is place for its patrons to drink and forget, ignoring the city’s worst inhabitants in the tavern’s dark corners. The right connections will get an introduction to any one of them should you have need of their prowess at blackmailing and coercing others. The price though, is often more than simple coin… Surprisingly, Hildred Castaigne only gives the tavern a rating of two out of five.

Where The Yellow King is found in a city or town, The Lair is rated at four casks and is located somewhere in the wilderness, its exact location and appearance changing at the whim or need of the owner, Nox. Nox is an average bakeep, though he does have information to sell for a price. The tavern is described as being clean and well-maintained, but the decor may well be off-putting and there are shady corners where all sorts of business can be conducted. Nox is described under ‘A Bit O’ History’ as often being sarcastic or derisive towards his customers as he would rather be elsewhere, though he will help those new to the area. It is awarded five out of five in one reward, but three out of five in another, the latter pointing out that Nox is freaky, whilst his bouncer and waiter twins are always grinning….

Under ‘Staff and Patrons of The Lair’, Nox is revealed as an intelligence broker with blank, disinterested expression and a sarcastic manner. He is also a vampire! He likes decorating and colourful cocktails, dislikes cleaning and daytime, wants better servants, fears not being needed, and suffers from the flaws of being overly supportive, even to his own detriment. Both his bouncer and waiter twins are given a similar treatment as is a secretive patron known as The Alabaster Mask.

In addition to the numerous taverns, The Pocket Companion: A Tavern Guide also includes a few plot hooks, a set of tables for determining the details of cellars as well as their secrets, for creating the names of beers, wines, and liquors and how they taste, some twenty distractions to throw at the player characters, and games like Beggars Blackjack and Drinks and Daggers. All of which can be used to add colour and flavour to the player characters’ visit to any of the establishments described earlier. Then if the Game Master runs out of choices within the pages there is a quick and dirty means of generating more taverns with a set of further tables. The book itself is rounded out with space for the Game Master to record her own creations.

Physically, The Pocket Companion: A Tavern Guide is a plain and simple book. It is only lightly illustrated, but more problematically is that it does need another edit as the writing in places is not as succinct or clear as it could be. Much of this stems from the contents of the book being crowd-sourced, so the writing is variable in its quality. The fact that the contents of the book were crowd-sourced also means that there is another issue with The Pocket Companion: A Tavern Guide in the degree of repetition between its seventy or so entries. So this means that there are lots of taverns that are run by retired adventurers, taverns that are really busy despite being off the beaten track, taverns run by Dwarves, and so on. What this means is that the Game Master has to be careful when selecting the next tavern to add to her game lest it is too similar to the last one that the player characters visited.

Overall, although The Pocket Companion: A Tavern Guide is somewhat rough around the edges, it does give the Referee plenty of choice and plenty to work with. Which it does in an inexpensive and accessible fashion.

If ever there was a city ripe for subversion by the Mythos it is Jazz Age Berlin, the Berlin of the twenties, of roaring inflation, the Weimar Republic, of unfettered artistic expression, of outrageous entertainment, of political extremes and violence, of a flood of immigration from Russia and Eastern Europe, and more that led it to be called the ‘Wickedest City on Earth’. It is this period—between the end of the Great War and the Nazi party under Adolf Hitler taking power in 1933—and its subversion by the Mythos which is explored in Berlin: The Wicked City – Unveiling the Mythos in Weimar Berlin, the latest supplement for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition. Published by Chaosium, Inc., the content and subject matter of Berlin: The Wicked City—sex, drugs, and prostitution—as well as the horror, make it one of the more mature titles published for the venerable roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative horror to date.

Berlin: The Wicked City begins by exploring why an investigator would be in a Berlin. Well despite its reputation for political violence and the rampant inflation in the earlier part of the decade, it is a welcoming city, not just for immigrants of all sorts, but also tourists, artists, and academics as well as homosexuals, lesbians, transgendered, and others. For Berliners and Germans come to Berlin, there is the matter of asking the question, ‘How did you spend the War?’ to be answered and whilst no new Occupations are given, several new Experience Packages are provided which focus on aspects of Berlin life. These are Street Fighter, Underclass, and Former Corpsstudent (ex-member of a student fraternity). Four Investigator Organisations are given as examples for the Investigators to join, all pleasingly suitable for the Berlin of the 1920s, including as they do Hilde-Film, a struggling film company—the city being the centre of European film production—which believes it has footage of ghosts and the Landsberger Tenants’ Association, whose members have uncovered something weird in the cellar and fear that others are taking an interest in it. Further on, it looks at the possible contacts that the investigators can cultivate in the city, including political, occult, and criminal.

Berlin itself is accorded a decent history and description of each of it zones and districts. Each is given a page of detail accompanied by a list of its sites of interest—both mundane and unusual, house of worship, chief contact, gang or organisation, nightlife, ongoing problem, and prominent form of prostitution. Also covered are the city’s weather, transport network, media and communication, and penal code. Equally as useful for any Investigator are the descriptions of Berlin’s museums and libraries, whilst those for Haus Vaterland—a department store of restaurants, Romanisches Forum—the square where the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Memorial-Church and the exploitative Heaven and Hell Club both stand, the Institute of Sexology, and more, are described in more detail. The discussion of food and drink and Berlin’s nightlife, including the possibility of investigators owning their own club, move Berlin: The Wicked City onto more contentious ground.

One aspect that marks Berlin: The Wicked City as a sourcebook for more mature gamers is that the fact that it includes sex, drugs, and prositution, all prevalent in the period. These are subjects which some roleplayers may find dealing with more uncomfortable than the cosmic horror of Call of Cthulhu with its death and madness, but given that Berlin: The Wicked City is a supplement about Berlin, they are unavoidable. So yes, it does give rules for the effects of taking a variety of recreational drugs—including alcohol, it does list the types of prostitutes working in the city, and it does discuss both LGBTQI investigators and LGBTQI politics in the city. Notably though, it treats all of these subject matters in a mature fashion and a tone that is always measured, never salacious. Further, the treatment of these subject matters barely scratches the surface—Berlin during the Jazz Age deserved its reputation as the ‘Wicked City in the World’.

Before Berlin: The Wicked City delves into the weird, it gives biographies of some twenty or so famous Berliners and other inhabitants of the city, including Marlene Dietrich, Albert Einstein, Christopher Isherwood, and Vladimir Nabokov. None are given stats, but they do not really need them. What is given is the period when they are resident in Berlin, highlighting the possibility that the investigators might just meet any one of them.

More than half of the supplement is dedicated to the Mythos in Berlin. This includes the presence of Nyarlathotep as the emcee of the city’s wildest parties and cabarets, wild youth who style themselves as the ‘Lost Boys’ from J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan and worship something caprine in the woods outside the city, and a dance troupe whose ‘cosmic ballets’ might just be summoning clear vision to the world, but might inadvertently be summoning something else. These short write-up are accompanied by ten scenario seeds awaiting the Keeper’s development.

Berlin: The Wicked City is rounded out with three scenarios which together form a loose campaign which takes place in 1922, 1926, 1928, and 1932. Each of the three explores a particular theme which the author discusses at the scenarios’ starts, so the theme for ‘The Devil Eats Flies’ is ‘lustmord’—‘lust death’, for ‘Dances of Vice, Horror, and Ecstacy’ it is ‘überschreitung’—‘transgression’, and for ‘Schreckfilm’ it is ‘algolagnia’—‘sexual pleasure derived from physical pain’. ‘The Devil Eats Flies’ is a noirish case of a missing person which descends into political unrest and violence on Berlin’s streets and one of the stranger tales of the twentieth century. There are some nice set pieces to this scenario, including a scene at night in the city’s zoo and at the antagonist’s home. Overall, this is a rich, meaty mystery for the investigators to get their teeth into. ‘Dances of Vice, Horror, and Ecstacy’ draws the investigators into the life of a dissolute artist when something strange happens at one of her performances and they are asked by an occultist to investigate. This is a louche and loose scenario with multiple plot strands which may not be that easy to follow and the Keeper will need to ensure that she has well prepared before running this scenario. Foreshadowing events years in the future, the scenario takes on a grandeur in its later scenes in a number of quite wicked set-pieces. Lastly, ‘Schreckfilm’ begins with a MacGuffin falling into the investigators’ possession and finds them trailed by trouble as the authorities and other organisations, both mundane and monstrous, take too much of an interest in them. Investigating the MacGuffin will furnish them with clues and an encounter with a surprisingly urbane Englishman before plunging them into the seamier side of Berlin society and an attempt to prevent the co-option of the mass media by the Mythos. Taking place before the election of the Nazi party, there is a strong sense of foreboding throughout ‘Schreckfilm’, one that stems our knowledge of events which followed. For the investigators though, this is one last chance to stop at least some of the madness. 

All three of these quite lengthy scenarios make excellent use of Berlin as a place, making them difficult to set elsewhere. They also parallel the events and moods of the decade the supplement covers. Starting with the terror and uncertainty of the political violence and economic instability of 1922 and ‘The Devil Eats Flies’, continuing with the transgressive decadence of  ‘Dances of Vice, Horror, and Ecstacy’ in 1926 and 1928, before coming face-to-face with moral decay and turpitude of ‘Schreckfilm’ in 1932. All three of these scenarios contain sexual elements, especially the second two, so any group of players roleplaying these adventures need to be aware that they contain adult content that is more obvious than in other Call of Cthulhu scenarios. 

So what is missing from Berlin: The Wicked City? There are perhaps two things which it could have included. It mentions that despite laws being enacted following the Great War which banned the private ownership of firearms, guns were easy to get hold of. What it does not do is tell the Keeper what weapons might have been readily available. It need not have given stats for them since there are plenty listed in the Call of Cthulhu Rulebook, but giving their names would have been useful at the very least. The other thing missing from Berlin: The Wicked City is a timeline for the decade or so that it covers. Obviously, much of that can be found online, but for a setting supplement for a roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative horror, a timeline of occult or weird happenings in Berlin would have been useful.

Physically, Berlin: The Wicked City adheres to Chaosium, Inc.’s now high standards in terms of layout and look. This is a clean and tidy hardback, illustrated with a good mix of period photographs and full-page, full colour pieces of artwork, the latter capturing the gaiety of the city as much as the horror. The cartography though, is excellent, whether it is the period maps that depict the cluttered layout of the city or the delightfully architectural floor plans. The cover is also well done, hinting at the reach that the Mythos has over the bright lights of Berlin.

Berlin: The Wicked City gets the balance between background content and playable content right. There is more than enough of the former that is both interesting and useful to help run the latter and help the Keeper develop her own material. Although the more mature, if not adult, elements of that background may put some roleplayers off, it is carefully handled and presented throughout, especially in the scenarios where the investigators are more than likely to encounter it. And should roleplayers decide to avoid the supplement on those grounds, then they will be missing out on what are three good scenarios. Although the Keeper is given several scenario seeds to develop, an anthology of scenarios set in Berlin between the three scenarios in Berlin: The Wicked City would be more than welcome. Certainly Berlin: The Wicked City sets the blueprint for what a good city or setting supplement should be like for Call of Cthulhu.

Berlin: The Wicked City – Unveiling the Mythos in Weimar Berlin is an impressive supplement. It more than does the setting of the ‘Wickedest City on Earth’ justice and it enables the investigators to explore that setting in three tales that cover the influence of the Mythos in a decade of danger, dissipation, and decay. 

One of the aspects of the Old School Renaissance is that with access to the Open Game License and System Reference Document, roleplayers, Dungeon Masters, Referees, and game designers can not only revisit particular versions of Dungeons & Dragons—whether that is the original Dungeons & Dragons, Basic Dungeons & Dragons, or Advanced Dungeons & Dragons—but specific editions of those games. So it is with Old School Essentials Classic Fantasy. Published by Necrotic Gnome—a publisher best known for the Wormskin fanzine and Dolmenwood setting—following a successful Kickstarter campaign, Old School Essentials Classic Fantasy is one such retroclone of a particular edition of Basic Dungeons & Dragons. That edition is the 1981 revision of Basic Dungeons & Dragons by Tom Moldvay and its accompanying Expert Set by Dave Cook and Steve Marsh. The core book for which is the Old-School Essentials Classic Fantasy: Rules Tome.

What this means is that Old School Essentials Classic Fantasy is a Basic Dungeons & Dragons retroclone. It is a Class and Level roleplaying game, the combination of the Moldvay Basic Dungeons & Dragons and its Expert Set, providing scope for characters to go from First Level to Fourteenth Level. It does ‘Race as Class’, so the Classes are Cleric, Fighter, Magic-User, and Thief—all Humans, plus Dwarf, Elf, and Halfling. The Dwarf is a Fighter able to detect underground construction tricks and room traps, with Infravision, and good hearing; the Elf is a Fighter able to cast arcane spells, has Infravision, good sight and hearing, and is immune to Ghoul Paralysis; and the Halfling is a Fighter good at hiding, has good hearing, and is good with missile weapons. The Cleric has the Turn Undead ability, but does not get a spell until he has reached Second Level, whilst the Magic-User gets just the one spell at First Level. The attributes are still on the three to eighteen scale, but the modifier ranges from -3 to +3. The Alignments are Law, Neutral, and Chaos, rather Lawful Good, Lawful Neutral, Lawful Evil, Neutral Good, Neutral, et cetera. In combat, weapons do a six-sided die’s worth of damage with Old School Essentials Classic Fantasy uses THAC0 or ‘To Hit Armour Class 0’. Notably though, the range of Armour Class values starts at 9 and ends at -3, rather than starting at 10 and ending at -10 as in other iterations of Dungeons & Dragons.

Old School Essentials Classic Fantasy also includes the option for High-Level play, taking the player characters above the Fourteenth Level maximum of the Moldvay Basic Dungeons & Dragons and its Expert Set, right up to Thirty-Sixth Level much in the vein of the Mentzer edition of Basic Dungeons & Dragons and it subsequent expansions. Another inclusion is a list of the Level titles—so Acolyte, Adept, Priest/Priestess, and so on for the Cleric Class and Veteran, Warrior, Sword-Master, and so on, for the Fighter Class—another feature of early versions of Dungeons & Dragons. Both the rules for High-Level play and the Level titles are taken from the Moldvay Basic Dungeons & Dragons and its Expert Set rather than being new additions.

Ixyll
First level Magic-User
Alignment: Law
Armour Class: 10
Hit Points: 3
THAC0: 19

Strength 05 (-1, 1-in-6 Open Doors)
Intelligence 13 (Elvish, Literate)
Wisdom 10 
Dexterity 12 
Constitution 12 
Charisma 08 (-1, Max. Retainers: 3, Loyalty: 6)

Spells: Sleep
Equipment: Backpack, lantern, oil flask (2), tinder box, wine, iron rations, crowbar, daggers (3), 63 GP

At its core, Old School Essentials Classic Fantasy is Basic Dungeons & Dragons writ large then. Except not—and in a number of ways. To begin with, it provides options that shift it away from the original Moldvay version of Basic Dungeons & Dragons and a step or two closer to modern sensibilities. Most obviously, providing rules for ascending Armour Class as first seen in Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition rather than the descending Armour Class of THAC0, and to be fair, it is an easier, more intuitive option. Another modernism is actually not, that of ability checks, which in Old School Essentials Classic Fantasy has a player rolling equal to or under one of his character’s six abilities for the character to succeed at a challenging task. Rather its inclusion is intended to address an ambiguity, their being included as an option in the Expert Set rules for Basic Dungeons & Dragons, but not in the Basic Dungeons & Dragons rules themselves. Other ambiguities the designer has addressed from the Moldvay edition of Basic Dungeons & Dragons includes the Encumbrance rules; how much Experience Points should be awarded to retainers—half of the Experience Points earned by the player characters is due to them; clearly distinguishing between the room traps that characters of all Classes can attempt to find, and the small or treasure traps which the Thief Class specialises in finding and disarming; clearly stating that characters cannot run in combat; changing the Morale rules so that monsters definitely check Morale the first time when one of their number is killed; and balancing the values of the various treasure types. 

In addition, Old School Essentials Classic Fantasy expands the scope of Moldvay Basic Dungeons & Dragons. For the most part these are more changes in terminology rather than scope. Thus ‘Adventure’ is no longer used to refer to a single session of an ongoing game; the term ‘Hirelings’ is introduced to cover all non-adventuring retainers; and the term ‘THAC0’ is imported from Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition to help explain the combat mechanics. (Its inclusion also helps ground player and Referee in the retroclone.) It also opens up the use of the subdual rules for dragons to apply to other monsters too and applies the rules for handling watercraft to other vehicles.

So what else is in the Old-School Essentials Classic Fantasy: Rules Tome? Besides the seven Classes and method of creating characters, the Old-School Essentials Classic Fantasy: Rules Tome covers wealth and encumbrance; vehicles and mounts; extensive spell lists for both Arcane spellcasters—the Magic-User and the Elf, and Divine spellcasters—the Cleric; adventuring—dungeon and wilderness adventuring, encounters, pursuit and evasion, and combat; hired help—retainers, mercenaries, and specialists; strongholds and domains; a bestiary, from Acolyte, Ape (White), and Bandit to Wyvern, Yellow Mould, and Zombie; advice on Running Adventures for the Referee; and treasure lists including sentient swords. Undoubtedly, there is a lot of information here, but a very great deal of it will be familiar to the target audience for the Old-School Essentials Classic Fantasy: Rules Tome. Which means that a member of that audience could grab a copy of this roleplaying game and a fantasy scenario of their choice and run using these rules.

At the sharp end of the game, the Old-School Essentials Classic Fantasy: Rules Tome also covers adventuring in just a few pages, covering marching order and the ‘Caller’ and ‘Mapper’ roles, time, movement, adventuring in dungeons, the wilderness, and on the water, combat, and more. Notably here, the dungeoneering aspect of the game is played out in ten-minute turns, the Referee first rolling for wandering monsters, the party deciding its actions and the Referee describing their outcome, followed by his bookkeeping at the end of the turn. Wilderness Adventuring and Waterborne Adventuring follows a similar pattern, but adding weather and getting lost into the mix. What the Old-School Essentials Classic Fantasy: Rules Tome is doing here is highlighting the procedural nature of play within the rules of not just this retroclone, but also Dungeons & Dragons in its earlier incarnations. In fact, the graphical design of Old School Essentials Classic Fantasy draws the reader’s very attention to this by placing each sequence of play in a box at the start of their relevant sections.

The Old-School Essentials Classic Fantasy: Rules Tome comes as a thick digest-sized hardback, but it never feels stodgy or like it is trying to pack too much information into its smaller page size. What is obvious about Old School Essentials Classic Fantasy is that as much thought has gone into its physical design as its mechanical design. A great deal has effort is made to fit particular sections of rules onto double page spreads, so how to create a character and an explanation of the six abilities take up a double page spread as do the rules for hazards and challenges, dungeon adventuring, wilderness adventuring, and so on and so on. The designer does this again and again, but some rules need just a page, like those for Alignment, and other content needs more, such as the spell lists and the bestiary obviously. The designer really makes good use of the space in the Old-School Essentials Classic Fantasy: Rules Tome and none of it feels wasted.

The Old-School Essentials Classic Fantasy: Rules Tome is liberally illustrated using a lot of black and white pieces with full colour spreads between chapters of the book. Some of it is weird, some of it wonky, some of it wonderful, but a wide range of styles showcasing many of the artists drawing for the Old School Renaissance today. The writing and editing is also good, the former succinct in presenting and explaining the rules. A nice touch is that many of the most useful rules and tables have been reproduced inside the front and back covers of the book.

What is missing from the Old-School Essentials Classic Fantasy: Rules Tome is anything in the way of examples. So there is no example of character generation, of play, of combat, and so on. True, its target audience does not need such examples, but it would have been nice to have had them included, not just to see the designer’s mind at work, but perhaps add a degree of verisimilitude from the roleplaying game that Old School Essentials Classic Fantasy is based upon. Similarly, there is no adventure in the book, or sample locales, but again, the audience for whom Old School Essentials Classic Fantasy is intended will doubtless have content of their own to use. Equally as similar is that it would have been nice to see the types of adventure that the designer had intended to use these rules for, but that said, he has published several for use with the Old-School Essentials Classic Fantasy: Rules Tome. 

What the version of Basic Dungeons & Dragons that followed the Moldvay version—the Mentzer version from 1983—ultimately got, but the Moldvay version never did, was a compilation. This was the Dungeons & Dragons Rules Cyclopedia, which is now available via Print on Demand. That is no longer the case. Thanks to Necrotic Gnome, the Moldvay version of Basic Dungeons & Dragons now has its own answer to the Dungeons & Dragons Rules Cyclopedia in the form of the Old-School Essentials Classic Fantasy: Rules Tome. It is not only a lovely representation of those rules, Old School Essentials Classic Fantasy is a representation with a polish, an adjustment for inconsistencies, errors, and so on, all to make it more playable. The Old-School Essentials Classic Fantasy: Rules Tome is the update that the 1981 Moldvay version of Basic Dungeons & Dragons deserved.

Published by Lost Pages, Genial Jack Vol. I is the first issue of a serialised setting that is one-part the Book of Jonah, one-part Green Ronin Publishing’s Freeport, one-part Swift’s Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships or Gulliver’s Travels, one part Baron Munchausen's Narrative of his Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia, but all weird nautical urban fantasy that can be best described as ‘whale-punk’. This is because Genial Jack Vol. I details a levianthine Blue Whale which for centuries has been home to the teeming town of Jackburg built across his thick skin and in his stomachs and deep into his intestines, much of it made up of the ships he has swallowed and those that have sailed into his maw and permanently moored inside of him. Jackburg is home to peoples and islands that the whale—the ‘Genial Jack’ of the title—has swallowed, from the Draugr to the Fomorians, and today it serves as a roaming free port, from which merchants sell the strange and exotic goods they have acquired in distant lands as well as the ambergris constantly formed deep in his gut.

Designed for use with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition—but very easily adapted to the retroclone of your choice—Genial Jack Vol. I focuses very much on the peoples and places of Jackburg. The former includes over thirteen new player character Races. These start with the undead Draugar, drowned corpses from the north who dwell in longships and a reputation for fell curses and trading in people, and Finfolk, sly, shapeshifting merfolk who are known for their illusions and the indentured workers they mark with their bloodsucking maws; and Formorians, giants banished from Faerie by Queen Mab who can cast an evil eye about, but are skilled crafters of magical devices and weapons and armour, to Sirens, who have reputations as malicious seductresses, but are highly charismatic and help in Jackburg’s aerial defence; Undines, water elementals who can turn into water and back again and work in Jackburg powering waterwheels, serving as living air-suits, and moving vessels and cargo; and Urchins, Jackburg’s underclass, beggars—Urchin Beggars?—who will happily eat rubbish, but who are considered to be lucky. The others do include Humans, but also the hive-mind Jellyfolk, the Karkinoi crustacean warriors, tentacular mercantile Octopoids, the sentient and artistic coral Polypoids, the bankers and thieves who make up the Ratfolk, and the often vicious shark-men raiders known as the Selachians, who include an individual casino-owner and moneylender who is called, of course, the Loan Shark. All of these Races have adapted to an amphibious life aboard Genial Jack and inside Jackburg, including being able to see in dim or low lighting, many need to be submerged at least once per day.

Genial Jack Vol. I then examines each of Jackburg’s districts in both Outer Jackburg and Inner Jackburg, the former being on the exterior of Genial Jack, the latter inside him. Each is given a full page which includes a short description and a handful of encounters and locations. So along the great whale’s flanks can be found Barnaclebank, the series of barnacles which have been hollowed out and linked via tunnels of reinforced glass and iron, then carved and reshaped, many of them into gun emplacements, harpoon launchers, and torpedo bays manned by the Whaleguard, Jackburg’s guard and security forces—unsurprisingly, Genial Jack has a decent navy to protect both himself and Jackburg. The encounters include an emergency as a porthole has cracked and is letting in water with the player characters being the nearest ones who can fix it before the Whaleguard can get there and the discovery of an enormous crimson pearl brought ashore by Jackburg’s fisherfolk, which might be anything from a mermaid lich’s phylactery to a resurrection stone. The locations given thumbnail descriptions are the Barnaclebank Fish Market which operates on the extendable docks on Genial Jack’s starboard flank, and the Sea Star Saloon, a tavern inside a single, huge barnacle-shell which is run by a man with the lower body of a starfish and which caters to Whaleguard officers and fishermen alike.

At the other end is The Gutgardens at the bottom of the whale’s main stomach. Here fish and krill is received from Genial Jack’s maw via canals and tubes and cultivated into gut bacteria and symbiotic algae which soothes his innards. They are worked by Gutgardeners in signature green and black uniforms with gas masks and heavy-duty work boots and gloves. The encounters include coming across a pair of Bloodskulls gang members about to dunk a debtor in Acid Lake; an invasion of Feral Fungoids driven into frenzy after feeding on Genial Jack’s blood; and a poisonous miasma that will leave all who breathe it in with a lung infection. The locations include an abattoir where a Jellyfolk mentalist humanely stuns livestock before their slaughter; the aforementioned Acid Lake, where enclosed and perfumed domes provide popular picnic spots for those from Inner Town; and the Digestive Reserves, areas kept entirely free of buildings and people to aid in Genial Jack’s digestion.

Some twenty or so districts are described in this fashion, along with a centre spread illustration/map of Genial Jack and Jackburg, as well as a list of city slang. So far, so good, but so far this is forty pages into Genial Jack Vol. I and the reader is left wondering how all of this works, who is in charge, and so on. At this point, Genial Jack Vol. I does cover the authorities of Jackburg, including The Captains’ Conclave held at Mysterium Tremendum, a massive ship and alehouse, where every captain and depending on the size of their constituent populations they represent, ship’s mates too, express their opinions and suggest where the Whale journeys next. Such are directions are imparted by the Navigators, the divine intercessors between the peoples of Jackburg and the ‘Godwhale’ that is Genial Jack, who are descended from those first shipwrecked inside him. Lastly, the Whaleguard is Jackburg’s navy and police force. Rounding out Genial Jack Vol. I are some details of Jackburg’s laws and criminal organisations as well as a list of some twenty interesting Jackburgers, inhabitants of Jackburg.

Physically, Genial Jack Vol. I  is more of a magazine rather than a book. Down in black and white throughout, this first issue is richly illustrated with some fantastic cross sections of Jackburg’s twenty districts. Use of the art does veer into the repetitious, but it has to be said it is good art. On the downside, the twelve new Races are only given portrait illustrations rather than full body shots, so players and Referee alike will need to use a little imagination there. The cover though is absolutely fantastically fantastic, a piece of artwork which just grabs the reader. Elsewhere, the writing is decent, as is the editing.

Genial Jack Vol. I  still feels as if it is missing one or two things. Obviously a scenario, but then it has almost forty encounters across the various districts it describes, but more problematically there is no discussion of what Classes are suitable or found in Jackburg and there are no new Classes. Yet, the one thing that is really missing is a discussion of the technology found on and in the Godwhale. Gunpowder definitely, but also an overhead tram which runs from Genial Jack’s Maw down its oesophagus, and working of iron and glass into tunnels, all of which suggests advanced technology of a kind. Exactly what though, is another matter. Hopefully, it will be covered in a later issue.

Although written for use with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, the rules content in Genial Jack Vol. I is very light being confined to the various abilities possessed by each Race. This means that it is very easy to adapt to the retroclone of your choice and it is very much a case of Genial Jack Vol. I being imaginative enough to transcend any limitations a Referee or player should have with regards to their roleplaying game of choice. Not only could this be adapted to the retroclone of your choice, it could be adapted to the setting of your choice, whether that is Green Ronin Publishing’s Freeport: City of Adventure or the world of 50 Fathoms for use with Savage Worlds or the Referee’s own campaign world.

Although just the first issue, Genial Jack Vol. I is a satisfying appetiser for what promises to be an imaginatively weird and wonderful setting. It can absolutely be described as unique, the first ‘whalepunk’ setting. Genial Jack Vol. II is eagerly awaited.

More Than Meets The Eye: A Short Adventure with Lots of Tentacles is one of four short scenarios for use with Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay released by Lamentations of the Flame Princess at Gen Con 2019, the others being Barbarians of Orange Boiling Seas, Menagerie of Exiles, and Zak Has Nothing To Do With This Book. Written by Kelvin Green, the author of Forgive Us and Fish Fuckers – Or, a Record, Compil’d in Truth, of the Sordid Activities of the People of Innsmouth, it is like several other scenarios from the publisher, set in the early modern period of the opening decades of the seventeenth century. It is also a sequel of sorts to the author’s scenario for adult Referees and players, the aforementioned Fish Fuckers.

From the start, including the title and its vibrant cover, it is obvious that More Than Meets The Eye is a weird, fantasy homage to a certain franchise of films involving giant robots capable of transforming into everyday objects. Not only is its location called St. Michael’s Bay, but the antagonists of the bay are transforming aliens, though not robots. Instead they are squidy, squidgy, tentacled aliens—shoggoths?—capable of transforming into everyday objects. This is depicted on the front cover and in a really good illustration inside the book. This transformation theme runs throughout the scenario, whether it is objects transforming into aliens (shoggoths), or the player characters into another race or Class, or simply into goop. There is a certain sexual element to the scenario, but it is not quite as prurient as that of Fish Fuckers.

Like the aforementioned scenario, More Than Meets The Eye is set in the West Country, but Cornwall rather than Devon, begging the question, “What exactly, does the author have against the people of the West Country?”. A light has been in the sky over the coastal village of St. Michael’s Bay or there has been violence in the coastal village of St. Michael’s Bay following a light has been in the sky or nothing has been heard from the leading men of the village, Ernest and Henry Hastings, and their business associates want to ensure that they are all right. These are the reasons to bring the player characters to the village of St. Michael’s Bay, which absolutely has to be the best use of the director’s name under any circumstances and well, it is set in Cornwall, home to Saint Michael's Mount (if there was a French version, there has to be a joke in there about Le Mont-Saint-Jean-Michel-Jarre).

What is going is this. St. Michael’s Bay has been invaded—twice. First by a group of shape-changing aliens in the past, fleeing a civil war amongst their kind. This group has recently been awoken after millennia of hibernation and in the process, the second group, come to Earth to capture the first. Which leads to a confrontation and a stand-off, one which the player characters are likely to break. Depending upon the outcome, there is a chance that the player characters might end up with a—unsurprisingly, given that this scenario is for Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay—weird spaceship, which is not actually as bad as it might seem. After all, there are any number of scenarios published for the roleplaying game and other Old School Renaissance roleplaying games which are set in weird locations, for example, Barbarians of the Orange Boiling Sea, which could be reached by a spaceship.

Physically, More Than Meets The Eye: A Short Adventure with Lots of Tentacles is well presented, with some really quite entertaining artwork. The book could be better edited though.

More Than Meets The Eye: A Short Adventure with Lots of Tentacles lives up to its title. It is short, probably providing no more than a session or two of play—though if the player characters get hold of the spaceship, it opens up all sorts of possibilities. It also has a lot of tentacles and no, you do not want to get close and personal with any of them! More Than Meets The Eye: A Short Adventure with Lots of Tentacles is also bonkers, but it is the best version of Michael Bay throughout all of time and space.

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?Yozarian’s Bandit Ducks! A RuneQuest Glorantha scenario for 3-5 players is a short one-shot with pre-generated players character Ducks.
It is a thirty-six page, full colour, 7.76 MB PDF.
Yozarian’s Bandit Ducks! is well presented, nicely illustrated in a cartoonish style, and the maps are good.
Where is it set?Yossarian’s Duck Bandits! is set in Sartar in Dragon Pass. The default location is 32 km north of Apple Lane in the lands of the Dinacoli, but it can be shifted to any location on the fringes between civilised lands and the wilderness.
Who do you play?Duck bandits. Or rather, Ducks who through misfortune and circumstance have turned to a life of banditry. Five pre-generated Ducks are included ready to play. They consist of two Odayla-worshipping Hunter brothers, an Uleria-worshipping ex-courtesan, a Humakt initiate, and an Orlanth initiate.
What do you need?Yossarian’s Duck Bandits! can be run just using RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. The Glorantha Bestiary may be useful for information on Ducks and veteran Gloranthophiles may want to refer to the scenario ‘The Money Tree’ from RuneQuest, Third Edition for more information about the primary NPC in Yossarian’s Duck Bandits!
What do you get?Yossarian’s Duck Bandits! is a tragi-comic affair about five Ducks who have been forced to turn to a life of crime and are about to commit their first act of banditry. This does not go quite as well as planned—for mostly tragic, comic reasons—but the Ducks do learn the whereabouts of even greater treasure. Unfortunately that involves a trek up a mountain and down again, a tight squeeze, some hungry, hungry trolls, and a ‘river rapids ride’ with Ducks!
Yossarian’s Duck Bandits! is in part intended to be played for comedy, played out against a very big threat, but there is a lot of flavour and nuance to the scenario which stems in part from the interplay of the pre-generated Ducks and their relationships. This should drive the events of the scenario as much as its fairly simple plot, and should also provide plenty of opportunity for some good roleplaying too. Although the outcome of the scenario is not set in stone, there is a good chance that the player characters will come out of it heroes—after all, they are bandits more by circumstance rather than choice—and the authors do provide several adventure seeds should the Game Master want to continue with the further adventures of Yossarian’s Duck Bandits.
Yossarian’s Duck Bandits! is about the right length to be run as a convention scenario and so could be run in a four-hour session. No advice is given to that end, but an experienced convention Game Master should have no issues with running the scenario.
Is it worth your time?Yes. Yozarian’s Bandit Ducks! A RuneQuest Glorantha scenario for 3-5 players is a fun, exciting affair, easy to run as a one shot (or convention) scenario which demonstrates one of the odder aspects of Glorantha. Duck fans will love this, as will fans of the original ‘The Money Tree’ scenario, and they will also want a sequel,which the scenario deserves.
No. Yozarian’s Bandit Ducks! A RuneQuest Glorantha scenario for 3-5 players involves Ducks and some people find Ducks silly.
Maybe. Yozarian’s Bandit Ducks! A RuneQuest Glorantha scenario for 3-5 players involves Ducks and some people find Ducks silly, but there is plenty of tragedy in the scenario to counterpoint the silliness—and at the very least, it is just a one-shot. 

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?This Fertile Ground is a short, two-session scenario set in Beast Valley in Dragon Pass for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. It is within easy journey’s travel distance of the Colymar tribe lands and so can be run as part of the Colymar campaign begun in RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha – QuickStart Rules and Adventure and then continued in and around Apple Lane as detailed in the RuneQuest Gamemaster Screen Pack. 
It is a twenty-two page, full colour, 9.15 MB PDF.
This Fertile Ground is well presented, but is not illustrated and needs another edit. The maps are decent though.
Where is it set?This Fertile Ground takes place in Chasteberry Hollow in Beast Valley where the Man and Beast Runes vie for control of the area.
Who do you play?This Fertile Ground does not have any strict requirements in terms of the characters needed, but ideally, the player characters should include an Ernalda (or other Earth deity) worshipper or even better, an Ernalda priestess.
What do you need?This Fertile Ground can be run using just RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. If it is run as part of the Apple Lane campaign then the RuneQuest Gamemaster Screen Pack is recommended.
What do you get?This Fertile Ground takes place in Sea Season in Beast Valley where two different Beast Men cultures have clashed over access to land and that clash has escalated into conflict between the opposed Man and Beast Runes. On the one side are the Coney, peaceful, sentient rabbit-folk from Esrolia who have settled Chasteberry Hollow where they farm and harvest the chasteberries, an important ingredient in their fertility potions. On the other are Leporids, the larger hare-like nomads for whom Chasteberry Hollow is their traditional mating ground. Enter the player characters.
Several plot hooks are given to get the player characters to Chasteberry Hollow. These include being sent to acquire several vials of the Coney’s famed fertility potion—certainly it would make sense for Queen Laika at Clearwine to obtain some for the vineyards and thus send the player characters, an Ernalda priestess going to help with the birth of the local priestess, the Coneys wanting to hire mercenaries, the innkeeper at nearby Stone Cross wanting someone to find his pot boy who has gone missing, and so on. There is plenty of flexibility in the set-up although the strongest would be to link to the Colymar campaign.
When the player characters arrive in Chasteberry Hollow, there is a standoff between the Coneys and Leporids. That is likely to change with their arrival, but although there is a plot which will play out with their arrival, there is still plenty of room for player characters to undertake whatever action they want to resolve the situation. As written there are definitely villains to the piece, but neither side is totally blameless for the situation.
Besides describing the situation in Chasteberry Hollow and Chasteberry Hollow itself, This Fertile Ground details some ten or so NPCs from each side, possible outcomes for the scenario, and presents two new types of Beast Men, the Coneys and the Leporids. These can be created as NPCs or player characters.
Surprisingly, although some of the NPCs have the Jump Rune Spell, none of them have the Jump skill. This seems an odd omission since they are described as leaping in and out of combat. 
Is it worth your time?Yes. This Fertile Ground presents opportunities for both roleplaying and combat with a standoff that nicely brings two opposing Runes into conflict and gives room aplenty for the player characters to resolve that standoff. If the player characters include an Ernalda priestess, then this is a good scenario for her to be involved in. The scenario is also easy to add to the Colymar campaign.
No. If your campaign is not set anywhere near Beast Valley and perhaps you have an issue with leporine Beast Men, then This Fertile Ground is not for you.
Maybe. This Fertile Ground can be run as scenario encountered whilst the player characters are travelling, but how useful it is depends on how far they have come and where they are going, and it does not make the best use of the given plot hooks.

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?
The Throat of Winter: Terror in the Depths is a short, two-session scenario set in Dragon Pass during Dark Season easily run as part of the Colymar campaign begun in RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha – QuickStart Rules and Adventure and then continued in and around Apple Lane as detailed in the RuneQuest Gamemaster Screen Pack. 

It is a twenty-six page, full colour, 7.76 MB PDF.

The Throat of Winter: Terror in the Depths is well presented and decently written. The internal artwork is okay, but the map is decent and the front cover is excellent.

Where is it set?
The Throat of Winter: Terror in the Depths by default takes place in Apple Lane in the lands of the Colymar tribe and then on the Big Starfire Ridge. Ideally, it takes place after the events of the scenarios presented in RuneQuest Gamemaster Screen Pack when one of the player characters has been appointed the hamlet’s Thane. Alternative locations are given for the scenario in Sartar, as well as Prax, Grazelands, and Tarsh, should the Game Master decide to set it elsewhere as well as an alternative hook should one of the player characters not hold the position of Thane. 

Who do you play?
The scenario does not have any strict requirements in terms of the characters needed, but ideally, the player characters should include an Orlanthi worshipper and an Ernalda (or other Earth deity) worshipper. A Shaman may be of use as well.

What do you need?
The Throat of Winter: Terror in the Depths can be run using just 
RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. If scenario begins in Apple Lane, then the RuneQuest Gamemaster Screen Pack is recommended.

What do you get?
The Throat of Winter: Terror in the Depths is relatively straightforward scenario which begins deep into Dark Season with the villagers asking for the adventurers’ help in locating a boy who has been abducted by what might be a bogeyman or a demon out of folklore, a figure known as Krampus. Clues and legend point to a mysterious wall of ice on the Big Starfire Ridge, but getting there means venturing out into the worst weather of the year.

The main location for the adventure is the ‘Throat of Winter’ itself, a frigid cave system home to Krampus and his minions as well as one or two secrets that keep him—mostly—in the cave system. The incredibly cold caves have a dungeon-like quality, lots to explore, treasure to be found, and a trap or two as well as the monsters. Then there is the choice of the Krampus, the ‘half-goat, half-demon’ anthropomorphic figure of Central European folklore who Christmas season, punishes children who have misbehaved, as the main villain, which essentially makes The Throat of Winter: Terror in the Depths a Christmas (in Glorantha) story. That may not sit well with every Gloranthaphile, but of course, ‘Your Glorantha May Vary’, and anyway, it is easy enough to change the name.

Nevertheless, the author presents plenty of background explaining who the Krampus is and what he does as well as what exactly is going on in the ‘Throat of Winter’. He also suggests means other than combat for dealing with the situation, but since that means dealing with a demon, the player characters do have to be careful if they are to gain anything from the situation. Various possible outcomes are explored, including one or two which will have long term consequences for the player characters and the surrounding region. The most positive outcome does feel a little too similar to that of the scenario in RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha – QuickStart Rules and Adventure, so this should definitely not be run too soon after that scenario.

Is it worth your time?
Yes. If you are looking for a slightly festive scenario to run for your RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha at Christmas, or you want another scenario to run as part of the Colymar-set campaign from the RuneQuest Gamemaster Screen Pack in and around Apple Lane, then The Throat of Winter: Terror in the Depths will be a solid addition to your campaign with nicely done background lore and wintery atmosphere.

No. If are not looking for a slightly festive scenario to run for your RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha at Christmas or a village-set scenario in Dragon Pass, The Throat of Winter: Terror in the Depths is unlikely to be of use to you.

Maybe. Some groups may balk at the obvious Christmas-theming of The Throat of Winter: Terror in the Depths, but that can be changed.

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?
Tales of the Sun County Militia: Sandheart Volume 1 is the first part of campaign set in Sun County in Prax. It includes background for a remote region of Sun County and a complete scenario, ‘No Country for Cold Men’ along with six pre-generated player characters. Besides a gazetteer of the region, there is a quartet of maps for use with the background and the scenario.

It is a thirty-nine page, full colour, 3.69 MB PDF.

In general, Tales of the Sun County Militia: Sandheart Volume 1 is well presented and decently written. It does need another edit and the artwork is a little rough, but the maps are excellent.

Where is it set?
Tales of the Sun County Militia: Sandheart Volume 1 takes place in Sun County, the small, isolated province of Yelmalio-worshipping farmers and soldiers located in the fertile River of Cradles valley of Eastern Prax, south of the city of Pavis, where it is beset by hostile nomads and surrounded by dry desert. Specifically it is set in and around the remote hamlet of Sandheart, where the inhabitants are used to dealing and even trading with the nomads who in the past have fought to gain worship access to ruins inside Sandheart’s walls.

Who do you play?
The player characters are members of the Sun County militia based in Sandheart. Used to dealing with nomads and outsiders and oddities and agitators, the local militia serves as the dumping ground for any militia member who proves too difficult to deal with by the often xenophobic, misogynistic, repressive, and strict culture of both Sun County and the Sun County militia. It also accepts nomads and outsiders, foreigners and non-Yemalions, not necessarily as regular militia-men, but as ‘specials’, better capable of dealing with said foreigners and non-Yemalions.

The six pre-generated characters include a banished Yelmalion noble, a local and  ambitious farmer’s son, and a Yelmalion tomboy whose ambitions are stifled by Sun County misogyny. Plus an Impala rider and scout who has lost his clan, a Lhankor Mhy Sage from Pavis County with a hatred of the Lunar Empire, and a mercenary, would-be Humakti from Esrolia.

Guidelines are given to create ‘quirky’ members of the Sun County militia in Sandheart. It includes character concepts, equipment, and a list of starting equipment and advises using the quick-start method of creating characters rather than the Family History method in RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. (Primarily because the Family History method in RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha is not specific to Sun County.)

What do you need?
Tales of the Sun County Militia: Sandheart Volume 1 can be run using just 
RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. 

Although not absolutely necessary, the Game Master may also find the supplements Sun County, The River Of Cradles, Pavis, and The Big Rubble to be of use in providing deeper background. Tales of the Reaching Moon Issue 14 and Tales of the Reaching Moon Issue 15 may also be of use for details about the fertility god, Ronance.

What do you get?
Tales of the Sun County Militia: Sandheart Volume 1 includes a description of Sandheart, a hamlet built around a series of plinths, remnant structures from Genert’s Garden. It details how the attitudes of the local inhabitants are different to those of the rest of Sun County and how that affects their dealings with outsiders and the rest of Sun County. Full details of the militia, its equipment, and its duties are given, along with its notable figures, the magic of the plinths, and ‘Beaky’, a highly inquisitive Wyter.

The scenario ‘No Country for Cold Men’ continues the penchant in RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha for terrible puns and pits the militia men against a well-organised band of drug runners with links all the way back up the Zola Fel River to the city of New Pavis. The drug is hazia, a highly addictive contraband euphoric herb grown along the valley of the River of Cradles and sold to traffickers who can make great profits by selling to users and addicts. The discovery of several dead riding and pack animals leads to a ragged caravan whose members seem reluctant to deal with the militia. This reluctance will probably escalate into a direct confrontation and from this the player characters will learn about the drug trafficking in the county. Following up on the clues revealed by the encounter, the militia men will track back up the traffickers’ route into the county, likely uncovering signs of corruption in the county, and giving the militia men an opportunity to strike against the criminals acting in the county. This is despite the fact that as members of the Sandheart militia, the player characters are very likely operating well outside of their jurisdiction.

Is it worth your time?
Yes. If you are looking for an interesting set-up, the opportunity to run a scenario in a more organised and civilised setting with player characters who have the authority and the duty to act in Sun County’s best interests—despite their less than upright and morally upstanding reputations. Tales of the Sun County Militia: Sandheart Volume 1 is an opportunity to run and roleplay a campaign that is very different to other RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha scenarios. Hopefully, Tales of the Sun County Militia: Sandheart Volume 2 will develop the story and the setting much further.

No. Tales of the Sun County Militia: Sandheart Volume 1 is not worth your time if you are running a campaign or scenarios set elsewhere, especially in Sartar as per ‘The Broken Tower’ from the RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha – QuickStart Rules and Adventure or in in and around Apple Lane as detailed in the RuneQuest Gamemaster Screen Pack. Tales of the Sun County Militia: Sandheart Volume 1 would be a difficult scenario to add to such a campaign.

Maybe. One of the issues with scenarios set in Sun County is that the dominant Light-worshipping culture of the Yelmalions is… “[X]enophobic, misogynistic, repressive and strict…” Some players may find this unpalatable, but that said, Tales of the Sun County Militia: Sandheart Volume 1 is about roleplaying characters who are either from outside of that culture or at odds with it to one degree or another. This sets up some interesting roleplaying challenges, as the player characters get to be noble and heroic in upholding the best values of Sun County, but still chafing against its dictats and constraints.

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

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

—oOo—
Name: Night of the Rising Sun

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Arjen Poutsma

Setting: Shōgun-era Secrets of Japan

Product: Scenario
What You Get: 7.45 MB twenty eight-page, full colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: A disastrous Dutch dinner at the end of the world before the ship leaves. 
Plot Hook: Everyone wants something off the island of Dejima.
Plot Development: Food galore, strange displays, secrets revealed, revenge, blackmail, smuggling, disaster...
Plot Support: Map of the island, six pre-generated characters, six plots.

Pros
# One-session one-shot
# Unique historical location
# Strongly plotted
# Potential convention scenario
# Six solid pre-generated characters
# Period art and cartography

Cons# Tightly plotted
# Poorly explained set-up
# Unfamiliar setting
# Not suitable for the new Keeper
# Works best with six players

Conclusion
# Unique setting
# Underwritten set-up
# Solid one-session one-shot convention scenario

After Monsters & Magic Roleplaying Game and Mindjammer – The Roleplaying Game: Transhuman Adventure in the Second Age of Space, the third roleplaying game from Mindjammer Press is Capharnaüm – The Tales of the Dragon-Marked: Fantasy Roleplaying in a World of Arabian Nights, Argonauts, and Adventure!. Originally published in French by Studio Deadcrows, it is a roleplaying game inspired by One Thousand and One Nights, Greek mythology, and Crusader legends. The Capharnaüm of the title is a land at the centre of the ‘The Known World’, lying on the Jazirat peninsula, the meeting point for many trade routes, making it the strategic target for numerous powers over the last five millennia. These include the Agalanthian city states to the north whose leaders can only dream of the world-spanning empire they once were, whilst beyond them the barbarian tribes of Krek’kaos on the cold Northern Steppes cut through the mountains to regularly raid the warm and sunny lands to the south. Great trade in silks and spices from the east with Nir Manel and Asijawi have made the merchants of the Jazirat peninsula wealthy. The south, dominated by the dangerous Southern Seas, remains the province of only the maddest of sailors and criminals with nothing to lose. To the west, the worshippers of the Quartered God—the Quarterian nations—prepare their next Crusade of the Knights of the Quarter, whilst the continent of Al-Fariq’n jealously guards its secrets.
It is said that in the world of Capharnaüm the gods inspire both men and women, even said to have walked amongst them in ages past, but since the dawn of time, they have sent their agents, the dragons to watch over over men and women. They do more than that though, marking out those who have the potential to become great warriors and warchiefs, philosophers and thinkers, explorers, heroes, lovers, and more, to become the divine agents of the gods. Such men and women are born with the birthmark of a dragon’s claw upon their backs and so are known as the Dragon-Marked. This mark gives them great powers and potential, the ability to draw upon the stars themselves—known as Lighting Up a Constellation, but six centuries ago, the Dragon-Marked stopped being born. Only in the last few decades have the Dragon-Marked begun to appear again. It these Dragon-Marked that the players will roleplaying in Capharnaüm – The Tales of the Dragon-Marked: Fantasy Roleplaying in a World of Arabian Nights, Argonauts, and Adventure!
A character or Dragon-Marked in Capharnaüm – The Tales of the Dragon-Marked is defined first by his Blood, three heroic virtues—Bravery, Faith, and Loyalty, his Heroism, five attributes—Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Intelligence and Charisma, and which of eight archetypes he favours—Adventurer, Labourer, Poet, Prince, Rogue, Sage, Sorcerer, or Warrior. The three heroic virtues are rated between one and six, as are the five attributes, whilst Heroism is equal to the average of the three heroic virtues. A character will also have a number of skills, again ranked between one and six, gained from his Blood and the archetypes.
His Blood are his tribe and clan into which he was born or raised. The Hassanids, the Salifah, and the Tarekid make up the three Great tribes, and then there are Tribes of the Shiradim , the Agalanthian City States, and the Quarterian Kingdoms, each of which consists of three different clans. Now whilst the Great Tribes are the equivalent of the Arabic peoples of Capharnaüm, and the  Tribes of the Shiradim its Jewish people, the Agalanthian City States its Greeks, and the Quarterian Kingdoms, its Crusaders, these are not intended as exact parallels of own history. Rather they are fantastical versions designed for background and culture rather than as a source of bigotry and prejudice. This is something that the roleplaying game flags early on, making clear that the heroes or Dragon-Marked are beyond such attitudes.
Each of the setting’s eighteen clans gives attribute and skill bonuses as well as a path, a discipline that the character follows. This can be training, a school, a sorcerous college, mystical tradition, and so on, but is a discipline rather than a character’s occupation.  The character does not have to follow this path, but may instead rebel and study a path connected to his clan, but not of his clan. For example, those from the Clan of Yussef, Servant of Salif who follow the Path of The Saffron Dunes are merchants with great skill at Unctuous Bargaining when their constellation is lit up; those of the Tribe of Ashkenim of the Shiradim are elite warriors who follow the Path of the Red Lions of Shirad gain greater results when they Light up a Constellation and they enter a mystical trance; and the Occidentia of the Quarterian Kingdoms who follow the Path of the Occidentian academy of the Order of the Temple of Sagrada, are knight monks who gain a bonus to their combat skills or Sacred Word skill when they Light up a Constellation.
To create a character, a player selects a Blood, a Clan, and a Path, which will give the character his first path ability. Ten are divided amongst the three heroic virtues, which are then averaged to determine the value of his Heroism virtue. Six points are divided amongst the five attributes. Then instead of simply picking one of the eight eight archetypes, the player ranks according to how he sees his character. The first five grant bonuses to various skills. There is an elegance to making this choice, a means of the player signalling and emphasising the type of character he wants to play in the roleplaying game. A player also some free points to assign and lastly, rolls on the legends table to create dramatic background and storytelling aspects to the character. Lastly, the player answers some questions about the character’s involvement in recent events and determines his wealth and possessions.  The process is not complex, but it does take a little time as a player works through the various steps and it is supported by a good example.
Our sample character is Muhdati Sala, a thief and former street rat who defended Capharnaüm against the Quarterians on the Holy Crusade to retrieve the Mirabilus Reliquiae—the holy relic of Jason’s skull, the Quartered God—not out of loyalty to the kingdom, but of his band of thieves and the peoples who would suffer under the invasion. The leader of his band directed raids and guerrilla actions against the invaders. Towards the end of the war, he was captured and taken as prisoner. Whilst in gaol he learned to read and write and even compose poetry from a fellow prisoner. Since his escape and his long journey home, he has begun to look beyond being a mere thief.
Name: Muhdati SalaBlood: The Children of the SoukPath: Path of Aziz, Servant of Salif
Heroic VirtuesBravery 4 Faith 2 Loyalty 5Heroism 3
AttributesStrength 2 Constitution 2 Dexterity 4 Intelligence 2 Charisma 3
Skills: Acting 2, Assassination 3, Athletics 1, Charm 2, Combat Training 2, Command 1, Elegance 1, Endurance 1, Fighting 2, Flattery 2, Intimidate 1, Intrusion 6, Music 2, Oratory 2, Poetry 3, Prayer 1, Riding 1, Save Face 1, Stealth 5, Storytelling 2, Survival 1, Thievery 5, Unctuous Bargaining 3, Willpower 2
Hit Points: 20Soak: 5Maximum Initiative: 3Passive Defence: 11
Path Ability: Light up constellation on difficulty 9 INT + Thievery to recruit Charisma✕Loyalty henchmen
Archetypes: The Rogue, The Poet, The Adventurer, The Prince, The Warrior, The Sage, The Labourer, The Sorcerer
Legends: Crossed the lands of the Djinn unarmed to prove your love; of distant Hassanid origin; escaped from a terrible prison; read an original great manuscript owned by a thespian; fought a demon in astral space; the Muses whisper in my ear
Equipment: City clothing (three outfits), lockpicks, khanjar, jambiya
Mechanically, Capharnaüm – The Tales of the Dragon-Marked uses six-sided dice in a ‘roll and keep’ similar to that of Legend of the Five Rings, Fourth Edition. Typically, to undertake an action, a character’s player typically rolls a number of dice equal to an attribute plus a skill and keeps the best results equal to the attribute, with the total ideally being equal to or greater than a difficulty set by the Al-Rawi—as the Game Master is known. An Average difficulty is nine, Difficult is twelve, Heroic is fifteen, and so on. So for example, if Muhdati Sala wanted to cut a purse from a passing wealthy merchant, his player would make a skill roll of ‘difficulty 9 DEX + Thievery’. Which would be roll nine dice (Dexterity plus Thievery) and keep five (Dexterity). One of the dice should be different colour. This is the Dragon Die and when a six is rolled on that die, a player can roll it again and again as long as it keeps rolling sixes. Another way to modify the difficulty of a task is to increase or decrease the number of dice a player rolls.
Managing to roll and beat the difficulty number only determines if the character has succeeded, not how well he succeeded. To determine that, the player looks the dice results which did not go towards the successful roll. Results of two or more generate points of Magnitude, a measure of how well the character succeeded if the roll was a success or how badly he failed if not. Generate six or more points of Magnitude and the character has achieved either a critical success or a critical failure. When determining success and Magnitude, the player can choose to keep the Dragon Die and count it towards his success or not keep it and use to add more Magnitude. 
A player can increase the Magnitude before rolling by having his character swagger. When a character does this, his action is done with great bravado, but the player reduces the number of dice he keeps and so actually making the task more difficult, but increasing the number of unkept dice, which generates more Magnitude. These extra unkept dice are known as Swagger dice. Of course, if the roll is failed, the order of Magnitude towards the failure is even greater.
Lastly, if a player rolls three or more dice with the same result, he is said to Light up a Constellation and have activated a Path ability. These results can come from either the kept or the unkept dice. Alternatively, a player can use points from his character’s favoured Virtue to Light up a Constellation.For example, Muhdati Sala has spotted a mark in the Souk, a merchant accompanied by a bodyguard. The merchant appears to be carrying a heavy purse on his belt. The  Al-Rawi sets the difficulty at Difficult or twelve. So this will be a skill roll of ‘difficulty 12 DEX + Thievery’. Muhdati Sala’s player would roll nine dice (Dexterity plus Thievery) and keep five (Dexterity), but decides to make two of them Swagger dice. This means he is rolling seven dice and keeping three. The results are 3, 5, 5, 5, 5, 6, and 6 on the Dragon Die. He rolls the Dragon Die again and gets another 6 and another 6 and another 6, and lastly a 2. This means that if he kept the Dragon Die and the best results, he would keep 5 and 6, and then 26 on the Dragon Die for a grand total of 37. Which is definitely a success.However, the player wants to find out how well Muhdati did and looks at generating as much Magnitude as he can. He already has two Magnitude from the Swagger dice. He decides to switch the result of the Dragon Die to unkept dice because results of six generate two Magnitude, though only the first six counts, not the rerolls. This means that he keeps the 5, 5, and 6, which still generates a result of 16 and a success. It means that he has the 3, 5, and 5 from the roll which generate a point of Magnitude each, plus the two from the Swagger dice and the two from the Dragon Die, which gives a grand total of six Magnitude and a critical success. Lastly, there were four fives in the roll, so Muhdati Sala’s Constellation is lit up and so he has fifteen henchmen ready to help him…
So in this instance, Muhdati Sala does not so much sneak up on the merchant, but exaggerates the sneaking in a fashion that everyone else in the souk can see but not the merchant and his bodyguard. With a quick slice of the khanjar, Muhdati cuts the purse free from the merchant, and with a wide grin in front of everyone pockets a few coins before grabbing the rest and throwing it up in the air to the delight of the urchins which stream into grab the coins and cover his escape.There is a cleverness to these mechanics, the Swagger dice in particular fitting the genre, but they there is no denying that they are not as elegant and are perhaps too stolid for the type of action-orientated, heroic style of play that Capharnaüm – The Tales of the Dragon-Marked and its genre calls for. Extracting not one, but three pieces of information from the one dice roll and then having to work out the arithmetic of the success, the Magnitude, and the constellation is neither quick nor intuitive. It is also not easy to teach, so more than most roleplaying games, it takes time to get players to the point where they will work through these steps unassisted.
Combat uses the same mechanics, with initiative rolled for each round, and combatants allowed two actions per round, such as attack, defend, parry, cast a spell, and so on, whilst Brutal Attacks and Charging take both actions. The Combat Training skill can be used at the start of a fight to grant a character bonus dice equal to the Magnitude, and really skilled fighters can use two weapons. Damage is reduced by a character’s armour and Soak value, but should a character lose half of his Hit Points in a single attack, then he suffers a major wound. The combat system is designed to be both cinematic and heroic in nature though and to that end includes a couple of nice touches. One is that player characters do not involuntarily kill NPCs. Instead their players have to declare that they are delivering a coup de grâce. There is even an optional ‘Epitaph Rule’ which encourages a player to deliver a panche-filled phrase when dispatching a foe! The other is that opponents are graded according to the threat they represent and are treated slightly differently in combat. So Babouche-Draggers are the mooks of Capharnaüm – The Tales of the Dragon-Marked and fight as groups, but are quickly vanquished, Valiant Captains are henchmen and are automatically eliminated from a fight with a critical success on an attack, and Champions are the major villains—infamous knights, princes of thieves, evil vizirs, and even fellow Dragon-Marked, who use the same combat rules as player characters. 
To be even more heroic, a character has access to three Heroic Virtues and his Heroism Virtue. They can be gained for intense roleplaying in keeping with the Virtue and lost for intense roleplaying against the Virtue, as well as actions such as saving another’s life, dedicating a poem to the gods, lying to save your skin, and letting someone disparage your gods without encouraging them to repent. The primary use of Virtue is to Light up a Constellation and activate one of a character’s Path ability, but higher Virtues grant an increased Heroism and that has more uses—to consult the Stones of Fate which enable the character to modify the narrative slightly, to make a double attack, to avoid a major wound, to avoid environmental and encumbrance penalties, and so on. What this means is that the more a player roleplays his character in keeping with the Virtues, the greater his Heroism and the more chances the character gets to be heroic.
As with everything else in Capharnaüm – The Tales of the Dragon-Marked, Terpsichore, or magic and sorcery, is treated differently according to the culture. Agalanthian Chiromancers bake their spells into clay tablets which can be broken later to cast the spell, Jazirati or Saabi Al-Kimyati manipulate the alchemy of word and art, the Shiradi Sephirim practice a purely spoken form of sorcery, the Quartarian Thaumaturgists practice miracles rather than sorcery. Although several examples of Saabi workings, Shiradi covenants, and Quartarian miracles are included as examples, mechanically, in Capharnaüm – The Tales of the Dragon-Marked magic is designed to be freeform, primarily improvised by the player who decides on a spell’s outcome, the Magnitude of a Scared Word skill roll determining the spell’s duration, range, number of targets, and so on. In the case of Chiromancy, the roll is made when the tablet is broken in order to find out how well the spell was baked into it. The basis of the magic is formed by three verbs—Create, Destroy, and Transform—and by learning elements such as Agility, Will, Sand, Proof, and more, which a sorcerer can incorporate into his magic, he can create a wider range of effects.
There is plenty of rich theme and flavour to this magic system and no doubt, there are players who will relish the opportunities for improvisation and flavour it offers. The improvisational nature means that a player should also keep notes about the spells his character has cast, literally creating his own spellbook! The system though is not going to suit everyone though, and in some players hands, it has, like the rest of the system, the potential to slow game system down as decisions are made and the aim of any one spell discussed.
As much flavour as there is in the mechanics, Capharnaüm – The Tales of the Dragon-Marked, the setting comes alive in ‘The World of Capharnaüm’, a lengthy exploration of Capharnaüm and its five millennia old history. It opens with a series of beautiful maps of the various regions before going to present each of the cultures, nations, and peoples in no little depth. There is a wealth of detail here in what takes up of over a third of the core rulebook, indeed a surprising amount given that there is enough here to take up a whole supplement of its own. It is followed by ‘Al-Rawi’s Guide to Capharnaüm’, not just advice on running the roleplaying game, but exploring some of secrets and the signature elements of the fantasy of Arabia and One Thousand and One Nights. So it looks at the Djinn and Mirages, then Agalanthian Ruins left by their many invasions, and the gods of Capharnaüm. It includes a good set of monsters and adversaries, including animated statues and skeletons, Chimera, Djinn, Ghul, Golem, Roc, and more, all feeling as if drawn from the best of Ray Harryhausen’s filmography. Lastly, there is a look at the danger of magic and some of the setting’s secrets.
Physically, Capharnaüm – The Tales of the Dragon-Marked is a stunning hardback book, drawn from an artist’s palette of sun-drenched rich browns, oranges, and ochres enlivened by sparkling blues and other colours. Some of the artwork is perhaps a little cartoonish, but all of it captures the fantastic and fantasy nature of this world of Arabian adventure. The writing in general is also good, though slightly odd in places, an issue with the translation in the main.
Tonally, it should be noted that being a translation of a French roleplaying game, Capharnaüm – The Tales of the Dragon-Marked does deal with mature subjects, obviously differing faiths, but also sexuality, for example, the Path of Mimun enables its followers, known as Paper Virgins, to extract the heroic essence from they make love to. That said, the tone is never salacious, but always mature and measured, and the roleplaying game’s artwork is of a similar nature.
Capharnaüm – The Tales of the Dragon-Marked does lack a scenario. This is really its only omission and really, there is such a great deal of background to Capharnaüm – The Tales of the Dragon-Marked that the Al-Rawi should be able to develop something of her own. Nevertheless, it would have been interesting to what a scenario for this roleplaying game looks like and perhaps what the designer had in mind.
Capharnaüm – The Tales of the Dragon-Marked is a rich, deep, and enthralling treatment of Arabian myth, fantasy, and adventure, evoking the films of Ray Harryhausen. It aspires to be cinematic—and it can be—but the mechanics, though clever, are an impediment to achieving that, presenting prospective players with a steep learning curve in order to be comfortable enough with the mechanics for it to be cinematic. Overcome that, and Capharnaüm – The Tales of the Dragon-Marked: Fantasy Roleplaying in a World of Arabian Nights, Argonauts, and Adventure! is a fantastic fantasy, all ready and waiting for the players to make their Dragon-Marked the legends of Capharnaüm.

Hypertellurians: Fantastic Thrills Through the Ultracosm is a roleplaying game of retro-Science Fantasy inspired by the artwork of Frank Frazetta and Roger Dean, the adventures of John Carter of Mars and Buck Rogers, and Barbarella. Published by Mottokrosh Machinations, it casts Aliens, Beasts, Constructs, Revenants, Royalty, and Ultranauts into the the past of an extreme far future and has them explore the fantastic and discover the wonders of an age unimagined. This is a future in which it is all but impossible to tell the difference between science and sorcery, between technology and magical artefacts, a future in which adventures can take place any when and anywhere. Mechanically, it has been inspired by a range of roleplaying games from Dungeons & Dragons and Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game to The Black Hack and Forbidden Lands – Raiders & Rogues in a Cursed World, but the roleplaying game it feels closest to is Numenera, but the retro-future of Hypertellurians is weirder, more wondrous, and is more Swords & Sandals meets Ray-punk than the Ninth Age of Numenera.

A character in Hypertellurians is defined by three abilities—Brawn, Agility, and Mind. He will have Affinities and Buffers in one or more of these as well as a Defence value and a Drive and a Weakness. He will also have an archetype and a concept from that archetype, and they together will determine the character’s initial major and minor powers. There are six Archetypes—Aliens, Beasts, Constructs, Revenants, Royalty, and Ultranauts—each of which gives three Concepts. For example, under Beast, the three concepts are Shapeshifter, Gnoll Madam, and Learned Centaur. Each given Concept sets a character’s abilities, Affinity, Drive, Weakness, Advances—what Cosm powers a character starts with, and Equipment.

Every Hypertellurian starts two major and three minor cosm powers. For example, the starting powers for the Alien archetype are ‘Level Playing Field’, by which the Hypertellurian can raise and lower natural features—this requires a Mind check and costs the Hypertellurian one or more Mind points in damage, and ‘Phase’, by which the Hypertellurian can pass through solid objects. Again, this will cost him Mind points in damage. An Alien with the Aquatic Creature Concept will have ‘Bioluminescent’, ‘Deep Lungs’, and ‘Well Adjusted’, whereas a Royal with the Genie Without a Lamp Concept would have the powers ‘Different Down There’, ‘Spoken Like You Mean It’, and ‘Vox Furore Dei’, as well as the archetype powers of ‘Grace’ and ‘Rallying Speech’. As a Hypertellurian adventures and explores the Ultracosm, he may gain experience and learn or develop further cosm powers. These can come from within his own archetype or they can be taken from a general selection.

One issue here not really explored or supported in any depth is that of a player creating a Hypertellurian of his own design. The danger here is that any design could be too powerful or too weak, and perhaps a future supplement might address this as well as provide wider options in terms of possible starting powers and cosm powers.

Character creation in Hypertellurians is foremost a case of choosing Archetype and a Concept. A player is free to take the given options—Drive, Weakness, Advances, and so on, or choose more freely. Similarly, he can note down the values for his character’s abilities or he can roll for them or assign points. Alternatively, a player can devise a character from scratch, including Archetype, Concept, and so on, working out the details with the Game Master.

Captain Larissa Tosca
Pilot, Soviet Air Forces
Brawn 9 (-1), Agility 11 (+1) (Affinity 1), Mind 12 (+2)
Defence: 11
Drive: Justice
Weakness: Must always be the hero
Powers: Favoured, Know Things; Beloved, Ray Emitter, Wonders Never Cease
Equipment: Power of the People Beam Emitter, alms for the poor and innocent (who have suffered at the hands of capitalists), temperature controlled space suit, nozzled container of pressurised and condensed vapor, mini-skirt, picture of her family, picture of Lenin.

Mechanically, Hypertellurians is again fairly simple and designed for fast, character focused gaming. When a character wants to act, his player rolls a twenty-sided die, applies a bonus from an appropriate ability, and attempts to beat a given Target Number. This is set by the Game Master, but in combat is equal to the defender’s Defence value. It also uses the Advantage and Disadvantage mechanic of Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition and The Black Hack. Combat is slightly more complex in that characters have a choice of taking a Fast Turn or a Regular Turn. Actions within those turns include making an attack, moving, disengaging, performing a special manoeuvre, using a power, and so on, but if a character takes a Fast Turn, he only gets one action, but goes first, whereas if he takes a Regular Turn, he can take two actions, but acts after anyone who was going to, has taken a Fast Turn.

Combat allows damage to be transferred from mook to mook to allow player characters to take out hordes. Damage is inflicted directly on a character’s abilities, first Brawn, then Agility, and lastly Mind, although social or psychic damage might inflict damage on Mind directly. Damage can be reduced by armour, an affinity with a particular ability, a buffer, a power, and so on. When an ability is reduced to zero, then a Hypertellurian suffers trauma and the player rolls on the appropriate table—the Physical Trauma table for damage suffered by the Brawn or Agility abilities, the Mental Trauma table for damage suffered by the Mind ability.

Characters in Hypertellurians: Fantastic Thrills Through the Ultracosm are meant to be dynamic, if not heroic, and that means unencumbered. Instead of his carrying around numerous bags and pouches—a task best left to servants, pak-yaks, and the like—a Hypertellurian can only comfortably carry a number of items about or on his person. Mechanically, this is equal to his Brawn and represented by a number of slots, and some items take up more than a single slot. So a light force shield which is projected from a ruby gem on a wrist bracer would take up a single slot, whilst a spiked maul would take up three slots. The encumbrance mechanics are simple, but have a couple of nuances. One is that heavy armour and heavy weapons are exhausting to use and cost Brawn to employ, so there is an emphasis away from lumbering slug-fests in combat in Hypertellurians. The other is that spellbooks—which anyone in Hypertellurians can read and cast from—also fill a single slot, but since magic is esoteric and complex, a spellbook only holds one spell. Some spells are given in Hypertellurians: Fantastic Thrills Through the Ultracosm, but a Game Master can easily plunder any other fantasy or Old School Renaissance roleplaying game and its supplements for more spells and equally, more magical artefacts. That said, spellbooks capable of holding more than a single spell are sought after in the Ultracosm.

At the heart of Hypertellurians is wonder—that of the Ultracosm, its awe-spiring places, creatures, and vistas—and Wonder. When the Hypertellurians encounter the amazing, the fantastic, the phantasmagorical, the Game Master hands out points of Wonder, roughly ten per session. This goes into a communal pool from which every player can spend for various effects. In combat, this can be to inflict a Brutal Blow, make a Called Shot, Charge, or Sprint. Typically, such use of Wonder in combat will trump the actions of others, its use being a Fast Action. Out of combat, this can be to suddenly Manifest Memory, reaching through the Ultracosm to manifest a relevant, experienced memory to gain a wildly beneficial effect; draw upon the Ultracosm to make a Marvelous Adaptation and become an expert in a skill or topic for a scene; Push Fate and gain a reroll on an action, though the Ultracosm will add a complication to the Hypertellurian’s future; or Recall Memory to gain a roll with advantage.

In addition to tracking Wonder going into the communal pool, the Game Master also tracks how much is spent. For every ten spent, every player character can take an advance. These can be to increase an ability, gain affinity or a buffer with an ability, or gain a new Archetype or Cosm power. Advances are either minor, medium, or major, and over the course of one hundred gained and spent Wonder, a Hypertellurian will gain six minor, three medium, and one major advance. Overall, this handles experience and experience in a simple, communal fashion.

Hypertellurians: Fantastic Thrills Through the Ultracosm with solid advice for both players and the Game Master. For the former, this includes making sure that your character supports the tone and setting of the Ultracosm, supporting concepts of your fellow players, enjoying failure, playing beyond the character sheet, and so on. For the Game Master, it is to support the players and their characters, to say yes, to reveal rather than keep the scenario hidden, be informative, take pleasure in the game play, and so on. It is thoroughly good advice, pertinent to most roleplaying games, not just Hypertellurians: Fantastic Thrills Through the Ultracosm, and yet…

Hypertellurians: Fantastic Thrills Through the Ultracosm feels underwritten in a number of places. Mechanically, for example, how does Manifest Memory work in play. There is no example, so the Game Master will have to adjudicate or decide. Although sample NPCs, monsters, and magical items are included, and there is a list of inspirations in the roleplaying game’s own Appendix N, there is the question of what exactly the Ultracosm is and what it looks like. There is also the visual inspiration of the author’s Pinterest page and the roleplaying does include a table of reasons why a diverse range of characters such as the player characters are together, but some more advice and help would have been useful, because as much as some Game Masters are going to find the freedom of the Ultarcosm exhilarating, others may well be daunted by it. Much of the problem stems from the emphasis upon creating characters in Hypertellurians: Fantastic Thrills Through the Ultracosm.

One way in which to see Hypertellurians: Fantastic Thrills Through the Ultracosm is the fantastic of Dungeons & Dragons and the Old School Renaissance pushed a million years into the future or into the length and width of a cosm parallel to those fantasies. Indeed, the roleplaying game gives advice on adapting the characters to such worlds—every ten Wonder spent being the equivalent to one character Level in Dungeons & Dragons—and converting monsters and NPCs, and so forth. Thus the Game Master could take her Hypertellurians campaign up and down and across the Ultracosm, having her player characters visit or play through various scenarios Dungeons & Dragons and the Old School Renaissance (and other roleplaying games). Ideally, these should be weird, arch, or arcane, obvious publishers whose scenarios would probably fit include Lamentations of the Flame Princes and Hydra Collective LLC, but there are plenty of others from numerous different publishers. 

Another issue is the lack of a scenario in Hypertellurians: Fantastic Thrills Through the Ultracosm, if only to see what a Hypertellurians: Fantastic Thrills Through the Ultracosm scenario looks like. Again, this comes back to some Game Masters are going to find the freedom of the Ultarcosm exhilarating, but others may well be daunted by it. To some extent, this can be offset by the Game Master looking for scenario herself, perhaps from those publishers listed above, but it would have been both useful and interesting to see what the author had in mind.

Physically, Hypertellurians: Fantastic Thrills Through the Ultracosm is a relatively slim tome, illustrated throughout with period artwork. There is a certain lurid oppressiveness to its look, but the artwork is never less than fantastic and inspirational.

Hypertellurians: Fantastic Thrills Through the Ultracosm is not an Old School Renaissance roleplaying game in the sense that it does not directly draw from Dungeons & Dragons and its advice for the Game Master is definitely contemporary. That said, its roots do lie in Dungeons & Dragons and the Old School Renaissance and it is able to plug back into it as much as it and the Ultracosm stands outside of it. Indeed, Hypertellurians: Fantastic Thrills Through the Ultracosm is a fantastic way to revisit the fantasy of Dungeons & Dragons as well as other genres from an entirely different place.

Barbarians of Orange Boiling Seas is one of four short scenarios for use with Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay released by Lamentations of the Flame Princess at Gen Con 2019, the others being More Than Meets the Eye, Menagerie of Exiles, and Zak Has Nothing To Do With This Book. Written by Zzarchov Kowolski, the author of the highly regarded Scenic Dunnsmouth, it is like several other scenarios from the publisher, set in the early modern period of the opening decades of the seventeenth century. It is also a sequel to the author’s Going Through Forbidden Other Worlds, itself part of the publisher’s quartet of releases for Gen Con 2018. Unfortunately, Barbarians of Orange Boiling Seas is not as upfront about this fact as it could have been.

Instead, the back cover blurb focuses on a story from the far future which although tying in with the overall background of the scenario, it is not really relevant to what the player characters will do in the scenario. Essentially, an interstellar robotic probe a thousand years into the future reaches a distant star system and scans it for habitable worlds. What it discovers will astound those it relays the information back to—and what it has discovered are the doings of the player characters on a moon very, very, very far away from Earth. Some five centuries ago…!

Barbarians of Orange Boiling Seas is not a scenario in the sense that there is a plot with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Rather it is a set-up where the possible arrival, and then definitely the presence and actions of the player characters will drive the action and the story. The set-up is this. It begins in Going Through Forbidden Other Worlds where an off-world missionary mission of Portuguese conquistadors has successfully used the portal in Hell to reach an icy moon called Nibu. There they are surprised to discover the city-state of Bwang-Quos with its sophisticated Stone Age technology clustered around a boiling sea of lava in one of the moon’s volcanic regions and inhabited by the descendants of Earth’s neanderthals who had been abducted thousands of years before by a race of Alien Wizards. The Alien Wizards are now long gone and are of course, revered as gods, which meant little to either the Jesuits or the Conquistadors, who being Jesuits and Conquistadors, set about bringing the Word of God to the heathens and plundering the wealth of the new world for crown and glory.

At the start of Barbarians of Orange Boiling Seas, the conquistadors have conquered Bwang-Quos, have barely pacified the local inhabitants, thrown down their idols (of the Alien Wizards) and begun to construct a proper Catholic cathedral. However, the leaders of the off-world missionary mission are divided in their aims. The Portuguese conquistadors wants to pacify the Bwang-Quos and prepare against any resistance attacks, whilst the surviving priest wants to continue building a cathedral and create a bishopric of his own. The last remnants of the city-state’s royal dynasty has fled to an impregnable sky-fortress said to be the home of an incredible weapon of the gods, and there plots to throw out the invaders. Both factions in the off-world missionary mission would like to capture the last of the royal dynasty and take control of its famed weapon of the gods. Beyond the city, rebels and raiders have taken refuge in the bulrush marshes surrounding the city, there hiding whilst looking for opportunities to strike at the invader and planning to eventually drive them away. The resistance also wants to make contact with the royal dynasty and perhaps gain control of the legendary weapon to use against the invaders. Lastly, the tribes of Ice Barbarians who live in the tundra beyond the forests and bulrush marshes look on, waiting to see what will happen and hoping that the situation will eventually be to their advantage.

It is this febrile situation that the player characters are thrust. The likelihood is that they will have have arrived on Nibu via the portal in Hell—as detailed in Going Through Forbidden Other Worlds—and so will encounter the conquistadors first. Such an encounter is likely to lead to an alliance or an offer of work, either against the rebels or the Royal holdouts. Exploring the city-state will bring the player characters into contact with the local inhabitants, some of whom support the Portuguese, some of whom do not. They may even meet the rebels who might try and persuade the player characters to fight against the Conquistadors. Conquistador patrols and rebel bands are likely to be encountered in marshes. Of course, if the characters arrive by a different method, such as a magical mishap which lands them on Nibu, they may arrive anywhere of the Referee’s choosing and so meet the various NPCs in an entirely different order. Another option, would be for the players to create native inhabitants of Nibu and play as members of one faction or another. That though, would require further preparation upon the part of the Referee.

Barbarians of Orange Boiling Seas provides sufficient detail about all of the various and pertinent factions and locations on Nibu, although there is scope for the Referee to create more of either. Only one location is described in any detail—Hawk’s Peak, the secret redoubt of Bwang-Quos’ royal dynasty—but it is not really a dungeon or adventuring locale in any sense. Surprisingly, none of the NPCs have stats, so it is left up to the Referee to provide these. Whilst it means that the Referee will need to put more effort into preparing the scenario, she can easily scale it to the Levels of her players’ characters. That said, they do have an advantage over the native inhabitants in being stronger and having access to metal arms and armour, and possibly firearms and magic versus the Stone Age materials of the Nibu inhabitants. The lack of stats also makes it easy to adapt to other rules systems, whether that is for the Old School Renaissance or not.

Physically, Barbarians of Orange Boiling Seas is a slim booklet, tidyily laid out with an illustration or a map on every page. It needs an edit in places, but it both art and maps are decently done.

Barbarians of Orange Boiling Seas describes itself as having the “...[C]lassic conquest versus liberation adventure going on…” and indeed, it has that. In fact, it actually has the classic conquest versus liberation adventure going on, because when all said and done, Barbarians of Orange Boiling Seas is a fantasy/Science Fantasy reskinning of a classic conquest versus liberation situation from Earth’s own history, one contemporary with this scenario. That situation is the 1516 invasion of the Aztec Empire by the Spanish conquistadors and there are a great many elements in Barbarians of Orange Boiling Seas which parallel the history of that invasion. 

With that parallel in mind, Barbarians of Orange Boiling Seas presents an interesting roleplaying situation in how far the players are willing to explore the strength of their characters’ religious beliefs. Certainly how far they are willing to side with an invading force before it abuts with our contemporary inclination to side with the oppressed… That said, Barbarians of Orange Boiling Seas is of a limited utility. To get the fullest out of it, the Referee will need to have run Going Through Forbidden Other Worlds or found some other means to get the player characters to the distant moon, otherwise the scenario is not easy to add to an ongoing campaign. Barbarians of Orange Boiling Seas has potential as one-off or some weird dreamscape, but this would require some development upon the part of the Referee.

Of limited scope and utility, Barbarians of Orange Boiling Seas is an interesting addition to the Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay range, but one that may not see a great deal of play.

As its title suggests Bayt al Azif – A magazine for Cthulhu Mythos roleplaying games is a magazine dedicated to roleplaying games of Lovecraftian investigative horror. Published by Bayt al Azif it includes content for both Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition from Chaosium, Inc. and Trail of Cthulhu from Pelgrane Press, which means that its content can also be used with Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game and The Fall of DELTA GREEN. Published in October, 2018, Bayt al Azif Issue 01 includes four scenarios, reviews of classic titles for Call of Cthulhu, new rules, interviews, an overview of Lovecraftian investigative horror roleplaying in 2017, and more. All of which comes packaged in a solid, full colour, Print On Demand book.

Bayt al Azif Issue 01 opens with an editorial, ‘Houses of the Unholy’, which manages to explore both the meaning and origins of the magazine’s title and perhaps suggest a possible scenario seed drawn’ like said title, from the life of eighteenth century novelist and antiquarian, William Thomas Beckford, and the infamous gothic folly, Fonthill Abbey. This would some development upon the part of the Keeper, but the editorial certainly provides some pointers. It is followed by ‘Sacrifices’, the magazine’s letters page, the missives here posted in response to the preview of the first issue, and ‘How to play’, by the editor, Jared Smith. This is serviceable enough, starting with the fiction and a discussion of the themes found in Call of Cthulhu, but it has dated given that it does not take into account the number of scenarios available from various publishers to help prospective players and Keepers started.

Dean Englehardt of CthulhuReborn.com—publisher of Convicts & Cthulhu: Call of Cthulhu Roleplaying in the Penal Colonies of 18th Century Australia—presents ‘CthuReview 2017’, a look back from 2018 of the previous year in terms of Lovecraftian investigative horror and its associated segment of the gaming hobby. It covers the notable figures and their doings as well as the various publishers, projects, Kickstarters, and more. It is a rather useful overview which nicely chronicles the year keeps us abreast of anything that we may have missed or forgotten. It is notable for including several Kickstarter projects which have to be fulfilled.

In terms of gaming content, the first scenario in Bayt al Azif Issue 01 is ‘A Conspiracy in Damascus’, again by Jared Smith. It casts the investigators as members of the Diwan al-Barid, the courier service of the Muslim caliphate in the eighth century, tasked with discovering the nature of a large object a group of Bedouin from an unknown tribe transported to the city and then transfered to a local merchant who bribed a guard to let it pass through uninspected. This is a swords and sand investigation, with opportunities for roleplay and combat and a nice feel for the history of the city which goes all the way back to Roman era. This period of history, post-Cthulhu Invictus, but pre-Cthulhu Dark Ages is is sadly unexplored in terms of Lovecraftian investigative horror, so this scenario is to be welcomed. That said, advice is given on how to adapt it to other periods, including Cthulhu by Gaslight and the relatively recent here and now.

The second scenario is also by Jared Smith, as is the third. ‘Double Dare’ is a modern-set, single-night one-shot scenario, initially written for play on Halloween. It casts the investigators as teenagers, bullied into spending a night in a reputedly haunted schoolhouse on Halloween. This is a thoroughly creepy piece with a constricting mechanic driving the narrative, necessary for a one-shot. Not a scenario for anyone who suffers from automatonophobia. This also benefits from a good handful of handouts. The third scenario. ‘Overdue’, is a short, fifty-entry solo adventure set in the library at Miskatonic University where the player character is a custodian, cleaning and tidying up after the students and academic staff each day. Of course, nasty thing are afoot as the library lives up to its terrifying reputation. This is a short, brutal scenario, stripped down in its mechanics to really just sanity, but easy to replay if the investigator dies.

The fourth scenario, ‘Easier to Fill the Ocean with Stones’ is written by Rich McKee rather than Jared Smith. This is set in Vietnam in 1968 and sends the investigators into a war zone where American forces may have committed an atrocity. Tasked with determining what happened, the investigators must chase after the potential perpetrators as North Vietnamese and other forces descend on the region. This is a murky, messy scenario and suitably so. It can be run on its own or adapted to run with Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game or The Fall of DELTA GREEN, made easier by having GUMSHOE System mechanics.

Stu Horvath offers two reviews under the ‘Vintage RPG’ title, one of Arkham Unveiled, the other of Escape from Innsmouth. Each is only a single page, and unfortunately, with both pages in each case consisting of more pictures than text, there is little depth to either. Disappointing in both cases when really two pages could have been devoted to either and even then neither would have been  explored in sufficient depth or thought. Fortunately, Jason Smith’s ‘Sites of Antiquity’ more than makes up for it, exploring the much re-purposed archaeological site of Husn Suleiman, as well as suggesting some Mythos connections. The inclusion of actual photographs of the site and a map adds to the verisimilitude. Equally, Catherine Ramen’s ‘Rebooting Campaigns with a Modern Sensibility’ is just as good, if in a different way. It highlights some of the prejudices and discrimination present in the classic period of the 1920s (and elsewhen) and thus, if unintentionally, in Call of Cthulhu and its supplements, and then addresses how to adjust what has always been a historical game by increasing diversity and representation. A welcome companion piece to Darker Hue Studios’ Harlem Unbound: A Sourcebook for the Call of Cthulhu and Gumshoe Roleplaying Games.

The full title of ‘Clerical Cosmic Horror: The Brief Era of the Cthulhu Mythos as Dungeons & Dragons Pantheon’ gives away the subject of Zach Howard’s article. It is a good history of the Cthulhu mythos in the hobby prior to the publication of Call of Cthulhu in 1981, and again, a good companion piece to the more recent The Making and Breaking of Deities & Demigods by James M. Ward.

There are two interviews in Bayt al Azif Issue 01. The first and longer one is ‘Going Rogue – An interview with Rogue Cthulhu’. This is a team of Keepers and scenario authors who run their creation at conventions such as GenCon and elsewhere. Based and operating solely in the USA, this is a good look at the fan side of the hobby and Lovecraftian investigative roleplaying. It gives the team their due and highlights how the fans bring Call of Cthulhu to life. Sadly, the interview with Chris Spivey of Darker Hue Studios in ‘Harlem Renaissance’ is half the length of the other interview and as informative as it is, the length of the first interview does leave the reader wanting more. 

Jensine Eckwall’s ‘Character Creation’ is the first of two cartoons in Bayt al Azif Issue 01. It is short and sweet, but the horror is decently done. The likewise short ‘Grave Spirits’ takes the central character of a doctor into Red Hook, but lacks the punch of ‘Character Creation’. Hopefully future installments will develop from the set-up presented here. Lastly, ‘Run for it! – Random Tables for Chases’ provides obstacles, hazards, and barriers for chases on foot. This is very useful article, handily supplementing the chase mechanics in Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition.

Physically, Bayt al Azif Issue 01 lacks polish, having the somewhat rougher feel of a fanzine. In another publication, this might be seen as charming, but here it is more something for the publisher and authors to strive to overcome. It could also benefit from a better choice and use of artwork, some of it feeling as if it is there because the designers could rather than because it is suitable. In general, the layout of Bayt al Azif Issue 01 feels inconsistent and could do with a stronger layout style.

Ultimately, the originality, and in some cases, the unique nature of the scenarios make the first issue of Bayt al Azif worth the price of admission and all come with pre-generated investigators ready to download, whilst many of the extras are informative or useful, if not both. If this first issue lacks polish, then that means that future issues can only look and feel better, for Bayt al Azif Issue 01 is a solid first issue. And that bodes well for Bayt al Azif Issue 02.