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

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

Where Crawl! No. 1 was something of a mixed bag, Crawl! #2 was a surprisingly focused, exploring the role of loot in the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game and describing various pieces of treasure and items of equipment that the Player Characters might find and use. Similarly, Crawl! #3 was just as focused, but the subject of its focus was magic rather than treasure. Unfortunately, the fact that a later printing of Crawl! No. 1 reprinted content from Crawl! #3 somewhat undermined the content and usefulness of Crawl! #3. Fortunately, Crawl! Issue Number Four was devoted to Yves Larochelle’s ‘The Tainted Forest Thorum’, a scenario for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game for characters of Fifth Level. Crawl! Issue V continued the run of themed issues, focusing on monsters, but ultimately to not always impressive effect, whilst Crawl! No. 6: Classic Class Collection presented some interesting versions of classic Dungeons & Dragons-style Classes for Dungeon Crawl Classics, though not enough of them.

As the title suggests, Crawl! Issue No. 7: Tips! Tricks! Traps! is a bit of bit of a medley issue, addressing a number of different aspects of dungeoneering and fantasy roleplaying. The issue opens with ‘Lost in Endless Corridors’ by Kirin Robinson. It contrasts the attraction and joy of the maze with the challenge of not making the play of mazes in fantasy roleplaying games, well, boring. What it highlights is the potential frustration of playing through a maze and the loss of player agency. It suggests two solutions to avoid this. The first is to set time limits on resources and character statuses during their exploration of the maze, such as their torches running out or their beginning to feel light-headed after a time. The second is move the exploration of the maze from being procedurally-based to clue-based, and so make the maze more interesting rather than an endless series of empty of corridors. This would need more work for the Judge than simply drawing out a map, but the potential pay-off would be greater and make the maze more memorable than frustrating.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Marilyn Hilliard
First Level Seer

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

Hit Points 7

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—oOo—

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—oOo—

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

It is 4.99 MB, full colour PDF.

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

It is 499 KB, full colour PDF.

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

It is 4.82 MB, full colour PDF.

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

It is 3.83 MB, full colour PDF.

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

It is 5.66 MB, full colour PDF.

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

It is 3.12 MB, full colour PDF.

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

It is 4.93 MB, full colour PDF.

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

It is 288 KB, full colour PDF.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Deved, Son of Bunker 242
Law Giver
Age 19

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

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

Mental Disorder: Dendrophilia

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

Resources 10

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—oOo—

What is it?
Renharth Blackveins presents an NPC, his entourage, and associated cult for use with RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha.
It is a twenty page, full colour, 1.46 MB PDF.
The layout is clean and tidy, and its illustrations good.

Where is it set?
Renharth Blackveins is nominally set in Sartar, but the NPC and his entourage can be encountered almost anywhere the Game Master decides.

Who do you play?
No specific character types are required to encounter Renharth Blackveins. Humakti characters may benefit from their interactions with Renharth Blackveins.

What do you need?
Renharth Blackveins requires RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha as well as The Red Book of Magic.

What do you get?
The second volume of ‘Monster of the Month’ presents not monsters in the sense of creatures and spirits and gods that was the feature of the first volume. Instead, it focuses upon Rune Masters, those who have achieved affinity with their Runes and gained great magics, mastered skills, and accrued allies—corporeal and spiritual. They are powerful, influential, and potentially important in the Hero Wars to come that herald the end of the age and beginning of another. They can be allies, they can be enemies, and whether ally or enemy, some of them can still be monsters.
The second entry is Renharth Blackveins, which details a Death Lord, a Rune Lord of Humakt who embodies his master through ‘Humakt Indomitable’, a subcult of Humakt. Deeply honourable, he is feared duellist who always fights fairly to match any opponent, including the use of support of some fearsome bound spirits, chief of which is Liberator, an woken enchanted iron sword that is a fragment of the Unbreakable Sword known as Humakt. Challaren, Renhearth’s swordboy, normally carries Liberator and Renhearth only calls for it when faced with a worthy opponent. Despite currently leading Boldhome’s ‘Household of Death’, Renhearth prefers single engagements to mass battles, and as Death Lord of Humakt Indomitable has overcome ‘death as malice’ and his former hatred of the Lunar Empire which drove both himself and his brother to resist the Lunar occupation of his homeland. Captured and forced to serve himself as a swordboy to a Lunar captain, Renharth would come to see the honour in his former enemies.
In addition to detailing and providing full write-ups of Renharth and his entourage—including several very powerful allied spirits, Renharth Blackvein includes a write-up of the subcult, ‘Humakt Indomitable’ which represents the enduring, impossible to subdue or defeat nature of Humakt. It can be joined by the usual means and requires the initiate to swear another geas, specifically an undertaking that requires dedication to a lifelong task or prohibition. Especially if the new geas has the potential for tragic consequences.
Several suggestions are given as to how to use Renharth, noting that he is a deadly enemy, capable of killing most Player Characters. Perhaps the most interesting way to use him in the long term is as a swordmaster as he accepts students from many religions or as an actual mentor to a Player Character. Above all though, it makes clear that in conquering both his malice and that of death, Renhearth is a pleasant rather than a miserable character. The supplement comes with two scenario seeds, both of which need a little development upon the part of the Game Master.
Is it worth your time?Yes—Renharth Blackveins presents a straightforward, even pleasant aspect of Humakt, who can be an interesting supporting NPC or mentor, and if the Player Characters are powerful enough, a truly indomitable foe.No—Renharth Blackveins present a straightforward, even pleasant aspect of Humakt, who may differ too much from the traditional view of Humakt and who might be too strong a rival for the Player Characters or too powerful an NPC if they are prone to antagonising others.Maybe—Renharth Blackveins presents a straightforward, even pleasant aspect of Humakt, who may differ too much from the traditional view of Humakt and who might be too strong a rival for the Player Characters or too powerful an NPC if they are prone to antagonising others.

A Wicked Secret and Other Mysteries is an anthology of scenarios for Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying, the Sweden-set roleplaying of folkloric horror set during the nineteenth century. It presents four mysteries which will take the members of the Society, the organisation which investigates the situations which arise from the clash between modern society and the traditions that have grown up from living alongside the supernatural creatures called Vaesen, to the boundaries of Sweden—and just beyond. In turn they take the Player Characters to the west coast of Sweden where sudden wealth has been found on Wrecker Isle, into the northern forests where logging expansions have been hampered by tales of a strange beast, to the resort town of Mölle on the south where sin and murder can be found together, and to an island off the coast of Estonia where a mother has been driven to try and drown her new born baby.

All four adventures follow the same structure. The ‘Background’ and ‘Conflict’ explains the situation for each scenario, whilst the ‘Invitation’ tells the Game Master how to get the Player Characters involved. In A Wicked Secret and Other Mysteries, the primary form of ‘Invitation’ is the letter, which will typically summon the Player Characters to the town or village where the mystery is taking place, the getting there detailed in the ‘Journey’, typically a mix of railway and coach journeys. It should be noted that every mystery has moment or two when the Player Characters can prepare and goes into some detail about the journey. There is an opportunity for roleplaying here, perhaps resulting in longer travel scenes than the core rulebook necessarily recommends. The ‘Countdown and Catastrophe’ presents the Game Master with one or two sets of events which take place as the Player Characters’ investigation proceeds, sometimes triggered by the Player Characters, sometimes triggered by the NPCs, whilst ‘Locations’ cover NPCs, Challenges, and Clues, all leading to a ‘Confrontation’ and its eventual ‘Aftermath’. For the most part, the mysteries are well organised, a mix of the sandbox and events which the Game Master will need to carefully orchestrate around the actions of her Player Characters. Only the most pertinent of the locations in each town or village is described and the Game Master is advised to create others as needed, though she will very likely need a ready list of Swedish names to hand for whenever the Player Characters run into an NPC or two.

One issue with the anthology is its lack of geography and history. Sweden at the time when A Wicked Secret and Other Mysteries and Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying is unlikely to be a familiar place to many Game Masters or their players. So, some context might have been useful, such as why the island of Oesel, located off the coast of Estonia, is part of Sweden rather than Estonia at this time or the seaside resort of Mölle’s scandalous reputation for mixed bathing on its beaches at this time. However, a little research upon the part of the Game Master will offset this. Another is that there is advice as to how to use these in a campaign. They would themselves all together not work as a campaign as beyond the letters to the Society summoning the Player Characters to each mystery and each mystery involving Vaesen there is nothing which connects the quartet. They are better used as one-shots or slotted into an existing campaign.

Another issue is the similarities between the four scenarios. Each of the four takes place at the four corners of Sweden—North, East, South, and West—and that does mean that getting to any one of them involves lengthy travel. All have priests who play ultimately negative roles in the mysteries, and it would have been interesting to see some variation to that. Likewise, it would have been interesting to see what an urban mystery for Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying looks like to contrast this similarity.

The anthology opens with ‘The Silver of the Sea’. A priest requests the Society’s help after his mentor has been found dead, supposedly of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, after visiting Wrecker Isle, the bleak, rocky archipelago off the west coast of Sweden. Here the Player Characters will discover something fishy is going on—and not just the smell from the fishing industry which has made many men rich. Combining insular natives with a piscine theme lends ‘The Silver of the Sea’ a hint of Lovecraft’s dread Innsmouth, but there are no Deep Ones here. This is Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying, not Call of Cthulhu. The Game Master has some fun NPCs to portray and ultimately, whatever way the Player Characters resolve the situation on Wrecker Island, someone will suffer—and not necessarily the villains of the piece. This will occur more than once in the scenarios in A Wicked Secret and Other Mysteries.

If ‘The Silver of the Sea’ feels open and bleak, exposed to the Baltic Sea, ‘A Wicked Secret’ feels constrained and isolated in comparison. The Player Characters are hired by an industrialist who wants to log the rich forests around the village of Färnsta, but his opening efforts to negotiate with the villagers have come to nothing after one employee fled the village babbling about a beast with red eyes and the other went missing. The village will initially feel welcoming, but all too quickly the Player Characters will find themselves being hunted as their inquiries trigger a response from the same threat faced by their patron’s employees. There is potential here for a red herring, but otherwise this is an entertaining scenario.

‘The Night Sow’ takes place in the seaside resort of Mölle in southern Sweden where amongst sun, recreation, and mixed bathing, there have been a series of murders and disappearances. This time, the members of the Society are asked to investigate by the women who encouraged the Player Characters to re-establish the Society, as one of her former colleagues is staying in the town. The relationship between the two women is mentioned, but not explored in depth, the likelihood being that it will be expanded upon in a future supplement. Once in Mölle, against a background of social tension over the scandalous activities on the beaches—an aspect which the adventure could have made more of, the Player Characters will encounter strange hotel guests, a reclusive lighthouse keeper, and a beast which hunts the Mölle peninsula.

The last scenario, ‘The Son of the Falling Star’, takes a more personal turn when one of the Player Characters receives a letter from his cousin and noted sociologist, Hugo von Kaiserling, requesting his help. Hugo’s wife recently gave birth to their first child, but she has turned against the boy, believing him to be evil so much that she attempted to drown him—forcing her husband to commit her to the local sanitorium. The local priest’s solution is an exorcism, but Hugo refuses to believe in any of this supernatural nonsense, so wants the Player Characters’ help. They of course, know better, and once on the island of Oesel, will need to steer a course between the husband’s scientific rationalism and the wife’s (and that of the priest) fears of the ungodly. Of the four scenarios in A Wicked Secret and Other Mysteries, ‘The Son of the Falling Star’ takes a slightly different tone in not presenting the Vaesen as monsters and presenting opportunities for the Player Characters to interact with them rather than confront them. This is a refreshing change that brings the quartet in the anthology to a more interesting and nuanced climax.

As with the core book, A Wicked Secret and Other Mysteries is a beautiful book. It is nicely laid out, the artwork is excellent, the handouts are good, and the maps are good too. It should be noted that as a physical artefact . the book actually feels good in the hand. Two nice touches are the inclusion of some sketches at the end of the book and there being two versions of each handout—a plain text one for the Game Master for easy reference and one for the players and their characters done in period style. This really is a good reason to see the handouts printed twice and other publishers should take note.

The investigations in A Wicked Secret and Other Mysteries are not necessarily wholly original, their mysteries and threats being easily replaced by something from the Mythos or something from common folklore. However, what makes the mysteries stand out is the Vaesen, the morality which underpins each mystery, and the consequences of upsetting the balance between the Vaesen and men. These are folkloric mysteries which result from the breakdown in the relationship between men and Vaesen which comes with the clash between tradition and modernity, and there is invariably a price to be paid for this breakdown, often in resolving each mystery and after… A Wicked Secret and Other Mysteries is an excellent and engaging quartet of mysteries, pleasingly different in the challenges and mysteries they present, and absolutely what the Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying Game Master should have on her shelf.

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

—oOo—
The Journal of the Travellers’ Aid Society has a long and storied history. The long running magazine dedicated to GDW’s classic roleplaying game of Imperial Science Fiction originally ran to twenty-four issues, before being folded into Challenge magazine. The twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth issues were published by Imperium Games in 1996 and 1997, before appearing as an online magazine licensed by Steve Jackson Games. More recently, The Journal of the Travellers’ Aid Society was resurrected as a set of six volumes by Mongoose Publishing for the second edition of its version of Traveller and funded via a Kickstarter campaign.

The Journal of the Travellers’ Aid Society Vol. 1 is a one-hundred-and-twenty-eight page digest-sized book, done in full colour and organised into nine different departments which provide all together provide a range of content and support set across the charted space and history of the Traveller universe. The volume opens with the first entry in the issue’s department with the most entries—‘Charted Space’, which covers a wide variety of different subjects. This is ‘SuSAG’, a history of Schunamann und Sohn, AG, one the Third Imperium’s largest megacorporations and one that specialises in biology, chemistry, genetic engineering, and pharmaceuticals, both production and research—the latter resulting in a wide range of closely guarded patents and discoveries. The article provides a history and an explanation of how the company works, both within the borders of the Third Imperium and without, notably the secret production of psionic drugs. It also covers its policies, goals, corporate and government relations, and the major spheres of operation. It is a good overview let down by first by a diagram of the corporation’s organisation that is astounding in its utter pointlessness and second a certain lack of advice as to how to use the content.

The entries in the ‘Charted Space’ department continue with ‘Emperors of the Third Imperium’, a list of the forty-two individuals recognised as Emperor of the Third Imperium. This is the straightforward iteration of material which has been printed over and over—to the point that it can be found verbatim online—and only of interest if the reader is wholly new to the Third Imperium setting. The ‘Vargr Corsairs’ article is more interesting and useful though, examine how the lifecycle of the atypical Vargr corsair band, from ships coalescing around charismatic leaders and growing and collapsing or growing and growing. It is supported by a history of the Kforuzeng corsair band as an example, which should inform the Game Master should she want to use one as an NPC faction and the players should they want to run one! ‘A Concise History of the Vilani’ covers the thousands of years of history from the first time the Vilani explored space through the Grand Empire of Stars, the Ziru Sirka of the First Imperium and the ossification of the empire to its eventual conquering at the hands of the Terran Confederation. It provides a decent introduction to the broad history of charted space and the lead up to the Third Imperium. ‘Within the Two Thousand Worlds’ is more interesting, primarily because it engages the reader in a first perspective, that of the Noble K’agzi, a K’kree diplomat posted to Capital, the seat of the Emperor of the Third Imperium, as he answers questions posed by an interviewer. It does an excellent job of showing how alien the K’kree really are. Last in the Charted Space department and entry in the magazine is ‘Gazulin Starport’, a description of Gazulin Highport and Downport on Gazulin, the capital of the Gazulin subsector in the Trojan Reaches. Accompanied by a reasonable map, the article will certainly be of use if a campaign visits the world, but can also be a source of inspiration for the Game Master too in developing descriptions and details of her own starports.

The ‘High Guard’ department has three entries. The first of these is really only a paragraph, but offers ‘Burst Lasers’ as an option between pulse and beam lasers. The other two are longer and provide two alternative ships small enough for a group of Player Characters to operate. The ‘Soho class Light Freighter’ is a variation upon the Empress Marava Far Trader, refitted to carry cargo rather than passengers in frontier regions and be able to protect itself using a triple pulse laser turret and a laser barbette! They have also been adopted as Q-ships and been employed by pirates as corsairs. The other ship is the ‘Delphinus-class Starliner’ or pleasure yacht. This is a mini-starliner, just one hundred tonnes, completely streamlined and capable of operating submerged in planetary oceans, intended to carry a limited number of High Passage passengers in greater comfort than is standard for a High Passage. However, it has a light hull, energy-inefficient thrusters, late-Jump Drive, and other detracting factors, but it would be suitable for a campaign which focusses on interaction with NPC passengers or as an alternative to the noble’s standard yacht.

The bulk of the departments in The Journal of the Travellers’ Aid Society Vol. 1 have two entries each. These begin with the ‘Adventure’ department. The first adventure in the issue is ‘The Ship in the Lake’. This is set on the world of Hazel in the Trin’s Veil subsector of the Spinward Marches where mineral survey data has been lost following a rebellion. The Player Characters are hired to locate and retrieve the data, believed to be at the bottom of a lake in the wreck of a ship lost during the early days of the rebellion. They will need to locate and dive on the wreck, but do it without alerting either the planetary authorities or the rebels. This is a nicely done adventure which will need some preparation upon the part of the Game Master especially in terms of developing NPCs, vehicles, and the politics of Hazel—in particular, why there is a rebellion going on. The second adventure is ‘Embassy in Arms’, which is set on the world of Aramanx in the Aramis Subsector. Vargr mercenaries, ideally connected to the Kforuzeng corsair faction or band, are hired to conduct an extraction mission from an embassy using air carriers. Again, the scenario will need some development upon the part of the Game Master. Of the two, ‘Embassy in Arms’ is the shorter and will probably only provide a session or two’s worth of play, whilst ‘The Ship in the Lake’ will provide two or three. What is interesting about both scenarios is their preoccupation with low-military conflicts. ‘Embassy in Arms’ in particular is a nod to the Iranian Embassy occupation in the late nineteen seventies and an attempt to conduct a rescue in-game when the one in the real world failed.

One issue is that both scenarios involve Sternmetal Horizons, LIC, a megacorporation specialising in mining operations and manufacturing. No information about the corporation is given in the pages of The Journal of the Travellers’ Aid Society Vol. 1, yet there is a whole article dedicated to SuSAG, which has no support for it. There is an obvious disconnect here and it makes no sense. Why not curate the content so that articles and adventures are connected and support each other? So that the reader and the Game Master are not forced to ask, “How do I use SuSAG?” and “What is Sternmetal Horizons, LIC?”. Now to be fair, the Vargr Corsairs article does support the ‘Embassy in Arms’ scenario to some degree, but the connections between the various articles in The Journal of the Travellers’ Aid Society Vol. 1 could have been given stronger consideration.

Equipment is covered by two departments—‘Central Supply’ and ‘Vehicle Handbook’, both of which have two entries in the magazine. The two for ‘Central Supply’ are the ‘Remotely Piloted Reconnaissance Drone’ or RPRU, a half-metre sized Tech Level 11 sphere, and the ‘Assault Rocket Launcher’, essentially a magazine-fed mini-rocket launcher, suitable for use in low or zero gravity environments. The first of the entries in ‘Vehicle Handbook’ department details the wheeled ATV or All-Terrain Vehicle in all of its variety. All at Tech Level 12, they include the standard ATV, the Large ATV, the Grav-Assisted ATV, and the Aquatic ATV. The second details the Light Patrol Vehicle and the Light APC—essentially the armoured car/scout and armoured personnel carrier. These are both Tech Level 9 vehicles and the type that can be found across numerous worlds. The contents of all four articles lean towards the utilitarian more than the interesting, especially the vehicles, though the likelihood is that the entry on the ATV will add a little colour to a game since that is what many Player Characters will find themselves crewing in adventures.

The ‘Alien’ department has write-ups of two different species. The first is the Dynchia, a Minor Human Race known for their warriors, but for not being warlike, their highly refined Tech Level 12 technology, and possessing an honour-driven, competitive culture which transcends territory. The second is all but the complete opposite in temperate. The Girug’kagh are a humanoid, Minor Non-Human Race which possess full subject status in the Two Thousand Worlds, and who are mainly seen beyond the borders of the Two Thousand Worlds as the translators and intermediaries among for K’kree. As the first species to attain full subject status, they see themselves as inferior to the K’kree, but superior to every other species in charted space! Full stats are provided for both and each is detailed enough to create Player Characters or NPCs.

The two entries in the ‘Travelling Department’ are connected thematically, both dealing with crime in an age of space travel. The first, ‘Smuggler’s Luck’ looks at the means and economics of transporting goods illegally due to their origin or their destination. Along with advice as to good regions to conduct smuggling operations, also covered is the best type of ships to employ, tools of the trade—like concealed compartments and fake drive components with secret compartments, and an example region where smuggling can be practiced. This is the Collace Arm in the District 268 and Five Sisters subsectors, but would need to be further developed to bring into a campaign. The second is ‘Piracy on the Spinward Main’ which examines the means, motives, and methods of conducting piracy in general before identifying several worlds which could double as pirate havens in the Spinward Marches. Both ‘Smuggler’s Luck’ and ‘Piracy’ on the Spinward Main could add to, or form the basis of a campaign dedicated to, or involving, smuggling or piracy.

Departments with fewer entries include ‘Bestiary’ and ‘Encounters’, both of which have the one article each. The ‘Bestiary’ article details six creatures found across Charted Space. These include the Bushrunner, an omnivorous grazer known for its blue meat and musk glands which are prized by the perfume industry; the hermaphroditic Tree Kraken which drops onto its prey, wrapping its arms around it and grinding at its with its teeth; and the Speedspitter, a shrew-like mammal which can spit seeds from its nose and is often kept as pets. ‘Encounters’ details ‘Simone Garbaldi’, an academic and linguist who claims to have discovered the lost works of an ancient Vilani poet. However, opinion is split as to the veracity of the text—are they real or forgeries? It is up to the Game Master to decide and several ways are suggested as to how this NPC might be used. Both of these articles are nicely done and their content would be fairly easy to add to a game.

Physically, The Journal of the Travellers’ Aid Society Vol. 1 is neatly, tidily laid out. The artwork varies in quality, but most of it is reasonable, and the ships’ deck plans are decent. It needs a slight edit here or there.

Now the six new volumes of The Journal of the Travellers’ Aid Society were never going to contain all new material. It was always planned that they would contain a mix of the old and the new, but the old outweighs the new—thirteen to eight—and in the treatment of the old, let alone the new, there is a sense of appropriation and a certain lack of professionalism to The Journal of the Travellers’ Aid Society Vol. 1. The issue is that although the magazine does list its various authors, it does not attribute individual articles to their respective authors and it does not acknowledge where its various articles have previously or originally appeared. For example, the scenario, ‘The Ship in the Lake’ is by Loren K. Wiseman and originally appeared in Journal of the Travellers’ Aid Society 02, published in 1979, whilst the ‘Soho class Light Freighter’ originally appeared in 1997 in the Traveller Chronicle 13, the Sword of the Knight Publications’ periodical. In neither case, is the author or the source acknowledged. (Traveller fandom though, has provided the information where Mongoose Publishing has pointedly not.) In not properly acknowledging either, what the publisher is doing is presenting the information within its pages as its own, presenting it as new when it is not, and taking a degree of ownership that it does not possess. It is disingenuous and it is disrespectful and it is unprofessional.

If the reader is new to Traveller and The Journal of the Travellers’ Aid Society Vol. 1, then none of the issues with the magazine really matter, since its content will be all new. If the reader is not new to Traveller, then the likelihood is that he will have seen many of the articles the magazine contains before, and yes, some do update content to the current version of the rules, but not all. In fact, the new stats are relatively light in the issue. For the veteran fan of the roleplaying game and its setting, The Journal of the Travellers’ Aid Society Vol. 1 is more a collector’s piece than a brand-new Traveller publication. This is not to say that the content is not good or uninteresting. Much of it is good and much of it is interesting, but that is down to the source, not the publisher.

It is commonly agreed that Dungeons & Dragons, published in 1974 by TSR, Inc. was the first roleplaying game, but was it? If not, what then was Dungeons & Dragons and where did roleplaying come from? How did roleplaying evolve and develop into the widely accepted practice that we accept today and that we see proliferated into other media? When did what we know of today as a roleplaying game, actually become a ‘roleplaying game’? These are the questions which Jon Peterson, the author of Playing at the World: A History of Simulating Wars, People and Fantastic Adventures, from Chess to Role-Playing Games, the highly regarded early history of Dungeons & Dragons and Dungeons & Dragons Art & Arcana: A Visual History, explores in his new work, The Elusive Shift: How Role-Playing Games Forged Their Identity, published by The MIT Press. In this new tome, Peterson delves back into that fabled ‘Golden Age’ at the dawn of the roleplaying hobby and beyond to examine the precursors which would influence E. Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson in their creation of Dungeons & Dragons, the debates between the players of Dungeons & Dragons and between the players and Gygax himself about how Dungeons & Dragons should be played and refereed, and ultimately the shift that occurred in the widespread understanding and acceptance of what a roleplaying game was.
Peterson’s starting point is that Dungeons & Dragons was not marketed as a roleplaying game, nor identified as one. It was a wargame—a wargame in which each player controlled one character or wargaming figure and there was Referee who would moderate the actions of each character and their outcome. Although it had an example of play, it did not explain how to play the game and certainly not how to roleplay, an issue which would beset the hobby for years to come. Instead, players had to learn by example, perhaps drawing upon their experience in the two cultures and communities which Dungeons & Dragons drew from and Gygax would market to. One was wargaming, with its history of refereed battles and then more recent focus on simulations using one figure per player, whilst the other was Science Fiction, with its rich source material and its tradition of telling refereed stories. Both would inform how Dungeons & Dragons would be played, but none of the new wargame’s adherents could agree as to exactly how. This would lead to a discourse which proliferated throughout the hobby over what was the right way as players and Referees grappled with such questions as to the role of the Referee, was he impartial or did he game against the players and their characters? What was the right way to create characters—adhere to the strict roll of the dice or adjust as necessary? How far should character competency factor into play versus player competency? Who should roll the dice—the Referee or the players? How much should the player know about the game’s mechanics? How should Alignment work and affect a character? And what is the point of play—to acquire Experience Points and become superhuman, to explore and tell a story, or a combination of the two?

These questions would be first answered and debated around the table, through actual play of the new game that was Dungeons & Dragons—and then later through other roleplaying games such as Tunnels & Trolls, Bunnies & Burrows, Traveller, and Empire of the Petal Throne, but first and foremost, always Dungeons & Dragons. As the first ‘roleplaying’ game, it provided both the first terminology and a common language for the hobby. In the years to come the resulting debates would subsequently be played out in magazines, such as White Dwarf and Different Worlds, and in more recent times, the Internet. The difference between then and now is that the discussion itself was new and the ideas behind it were being formulated, rather than necessarily reiterated. To explore these debates, Petersen notably draws heavily upon the fora readily available in the nineteen seventies to discuss roleplaying, what its was, and how it should be done—fanzines and amateur press association titles. Thus, in the pages of The Elusive Shift one can read about Lee Gold’s approach to in-character roleplaying, how Steve Perrin had his players roll up their characters, and how Greg Costikyan had implemented a ‘sex affiliation’ system instead of the traditional Alignment system of Dungeons & Dragons. The focus though is constantly on the first five or six years of the hobby following the publication of Dungeons & Dragons and the debate between the leading adherents of the differing philosophies in the ongoing debate over whether the first roleplaying game was a simulationist wargame in which the aim was to accumulate power, magic, gold, and more to become superhuman or a means to tell stories of fantastic adventure.

Ultimately, as thoroughly researched as The Elusive Shift actually is, it cannot quite identify when the shift of its title occurred. That is, when the roleplaying hobby identified itself as such rather than as a variation upon wargaming or Science Fiction fandom’s storytelling. Instead, it sets out the landscape for and highlights a number of shifts. One is the maturing of the discourse, undoubtedly fierce at times, but a discourse which would culminate in Glenn Blacow’s ‘Aspects of Adventure Gaming’ which appeared in Different Worlds #10 which suggested a model with four basic categories into which roleplayers could be put—‘Roleplaying’, ‘Story Telling’, ‘Powergaming’, and ‘Wargaming’. (An examination of the model can be found here.) This model would go on to form the basis for other models and inform the discussion henceforth. Another shift is the move from open sets of mechanics and games to closed sets of mechanics and games, at the forefront of which was the commercial move by E. Gary Gygax from the openness of Dungeons & Dragons where the Dungeon Master had the freedom to run the game as he wanted and to import or devise whatever rules or mechanics he liked (and was a widely accepted practice, but would also add to a debate as to whether Dungeons & Dragons was a design toolkit or a game) to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons which was closed because it was not designed to accommodate ‘unofficial’ content from elsewhere. Lastly, there is the shift in generations, when the growing popularity of Dungeons & Dragons brought in a wave of younger, immature players, who had not had the benefit of the five years of discourse that had helped form and inform the hobby. Most of whom of course, would be locked into the closed world of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and its orthodoxy, but who of some would go on to have the same conversations explored by The Elusive Shift and greatly influence the hobby today.

The Elusive Shift is a dense and not always an easy read. As an academic work it is not necessarily a casual read, but it is a fascinating one, capturing a history that few of us remember or have access to. It also throws a spotlight on the leading contributors to those first debates—Glenn Blacow, Sandy Eisen, Kevin Slimak, Mark Swanson, and others. (If there is perhaps something lacking in its pages, it would have been pleasing to least include some details on each of these figures in the pages of The Elusive Shift.) Ultimately, there is the sense that the debate as to what a roleplaying game is and what roleplaying is, is never going to be settled, but reiterated and explored again and again, but in the pages of The Elusive Shift: How Role-Playing Games Forged Their Identity that debate is examined when it was wholly new and captures it for posterity. Perhaps it might be worth examining this first debate before engaging in the next?

E. Gary Gygax died thirteen years ago on March 4th, 2008. His contributions to roleplaying cannot be underestimated. He codified what became the first commonly accepted roleplaying game—Dungeons & Dragons. He created a hobby. He launched an industry. His creation would influence other industries and hobbies too. However, his role and his influence is not widely known outside of the hobby and the industry. In the years since, two works have examined his life specifically. One is Empire of the Imagination: Gary Gygax and the Birth of Dungeons & Dragons, very much a traditional biography of the man, whereas Rise of the Dungeon Master: Gary Gygax and the Creation of D&D is not. Instead, Rise of the Dungeon Master: Gary Gygax and the Creation of D&D is a graphic novel.

Published in 2017 by Nation Books, Rise of the Dungeon Master: Gary Gygax and the Creation of D&D is written by David Kushner and illustrated by Koren Shadmi. It is based upon Dungeon Master: The Life and Legacy of Gary Gygax, an interview with Gygax which the author conducted in 2008 in the run up to the then upcoming revised edition of Dungeons & Dragons—what would be Dungeons & Dragons, Fourth Edition. It tells the story of Gygax from when he was a little boy, enjoying adventures and stories, to his enjoying playing games and ultimately developing and publishing games as an adult, before exploring some of the influence that he and Dungeons & Dragons would have on wider culture. This would include controversy that would grow from the disappearance of James Dallas Egbert III in 1979, on computer games such as the Ultima series and World of Warcraft, and its more recent wider acceptance with the release of Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, its appearance on the television series, Stranger Things, and the popularity of Game of Thrones.

Rise of the Dungeon Master is not, however, a traditional graphic novel, just as it is not a traditional biography in the choice of format. Where Empire of the Imagination is written in the third person, Rise of the Dungeon Master is written in the second person, beginning each chapter and many of its subsequent panels with the words, “You are…” It is immediately immersive, literally casting the reader as Gygax himself and involving the reader in the decisions that Gygax makes himself. (Although the second person of “You are…” echoes the format of the ‘Choose Your Adventure’ books such as The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, the graphic novel is not the reader’s adventure. This is E. Gary Gygax’s adventure after all, and the reader is passive throughout.) It switches from this format at times to allow Gygax to explain things almost as if he is being interviewed—to go back to the author’s original 2008 interview—and it also switches viewpoints too, to that of two other men which prominently in the history of Dungeons & Dragons. One is Dave Arneson, Gygax’s co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, the other is the detective, William Dear, who would conduct the search for the missing teenager, James Dallas Egbert III, and write about it in the book, The Dungeon Master. Of the two, Arneson is portrayed in a better light, but his relegation to a more minor role than he necessarily deserves in the development of Dungeons & Dragons arises from Rise of the Dungeon Master: Gary Gygax and the Creation of D&D being Gygax’s tale rather than that of Arneson and from the graphic not being an actual history per se, like Jon Petersen’s Playing at the World: A History of Simulating Wars, People and Fantastic Adventures, from Chess to Role-Playing Games or Shannon Appelcine’s Designers & Dragons: the ‘70s. In comparison, Lorraine Williams, who succeeded Gygax in controlling the company between 1986 and its eventual sale to Wizards of the Coast in 1997, is cast in a very dark light.

Ultimately, the format and the relative lack of space in the one-hundred-and-thirty-six pages of Rise of the Dungeon Master: Gary Gygax and the Creation of D&D means that the graphic novel cannot do the man and his story justice. It seems to leap from big event to the next, and whilst Dave Arneson receives and deserves a chapter of his own, there are many figures in Gygax’s life who barely get a mention or not all—Don Kaye, his wives, Kevin and Brian Blume, all of whom played a role in his life. The format also means that as much as the author wants the reader to engage with Gygax, there is never time to engage with him as a person, flaws and all—the nearest we get to that is Gygax’s often dismissive attitude towards Arneson, and so Rise of the Dungeon Master: Gary Gygax and the Creation of D&D is not a true biography of the man. It is arguably, more a hagiography. Although not perfect, Empire of the Imagination: Gary Gygax and the Birth of Dungeons & Dragons, is a better choice if the reader wants that, as are the two aforementioned history books.

If the reader is looking for an introduction as to E. Gary Gygax was and what he accomplished, then Rise of the Dungeon Master: Gary Gygax and the Creation of D&D is a very acceptable starting point. It is delightfully and engagingly illustrated, the writing light, perhaps suffering from the functionality of the “You are…” second person format as much as it pulls the reader in. Overall, Rise of the Dungeon Master: Gary Gygax and the Creation of D&D will set the reader up to ask more questions about E. Gary Gygax and the origins and history of Dungeons & Dragons, whilst also serving as a well-drawn homage to the man, his creation, and the effect he would have on millions and millions of gamers.