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 adaptions 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 or simply touch upon the subject of Robin Hood, such as Romance of the Perilous Land from Osprey Games.

Sherwood: The Legend of Robin Hood takes a broad to the tales of Robin Hood and his merry men. Published by Battlefield Press, it is written for use with Savage Worlds, Third Edition, but versions of the supplement are also available for Pathfinder, First Edition, Swords & Wizardry, and Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, and since it is written for Savage Worlds, Third Edition, it is easily adapted to the more recent edition, Savage Worlds Adventure Edition.

Sherwood: The Legend of Robin Hood begins with a ‘Gazetteer of the 13th Century England’, which provides a historical and geographical overview of England—and to an extent, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales—for the period. It covers geography, economy, religion, everyday life, and more, including useful little details such as a list of the religious holidays during the period. Overall, it is a decent overview, giving some context for creating Player Characters and the setting. In terms of setting rules, Sherwood: The Legend of Robin Hood offers three different modes of play. These are Historical—realistic, superstition rather than magic, and relying upon Outlaw skill, luck, and confidence; Mythic England—a combination of mysticism, the supernatural, and the fantastic; and Swashbuckling—cinematic and sword-swinging! Each mode of play comes with a list of its Disallowed Hindrances and Edges, Setting Rules, and new Edges, along with a nod to its particular inspirations. Thus, for the Swashbuckling mode, it is The Adventures of Robin Hood, starring Errol Flynn; for Mythic England, it is the British Robin of Sherwood television series of the eighties; and for Historical, it is Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves from 1991. Of the three modes, Swashbuckling is actually intended to work with the first two, either Historical or Mythic England, so that the Game Master could run a Swashbuckling Historical campaign or a Swashbuckling Mythic England campaign. It should be noted that for role-players of a certain age, Mythic England, based upon Robin of Sherwood, is likely to be the default mode.

Player Characters in Sherwood: The Legend of Robin Hood are all Human. Along with a range of new Knowledge subskills, it gives a variety of new Edges and Hindrances. Thus for the latter there is Love, the type of love which going to bring a Player Character serious trouble, ‘Maladie Du Pays’, the medieval equivalent of Shell Shock, and Xenophobia, this last probably needing to carefully adjudicated by the Game Master lest it lead to inappropriate play at the table. Alongside various modified Edges, new Background Edges can make a Player Character have the Blood of the Fey, be a Knight of the Order—three are given, Knight Templar, Knight Hospitaller, and Knight Teutonic, or be Landed, for particularly rich characters; Combat Edges include Long Shot and One Shot Left, both useful for the Player Characters who want to be as good at archery as Robin Hood himself; and Social Edges include Quip!, Witty Banter, and Taunt, which all work with the Taunt skill to grant more than one attack per round.

If a campaign does involve magic, then Arcane Backgrounds include Alchemist, Conjurer, Druid, Priest, and Witch, the latter reflecting the period attitudes towards witchcraft rather than modern ones. These are nicely done and mechanically distinct, so the Alchemist concocts his spell effects into potions and the Druid casts rituals which take several rounds. The last Arcane Background is Engineer, which functions more like the Weird Science Arcane Background than magic, and enables  a character to design and build various devices.

Mechanically, Sherwood: The Legend of Robin Hood adds three new options. First, Bennies, the equivalent of Luck or Hero Points in Savage Worlds, are called Swashbuckling Points. Like Bennies, Swashbuckling Points can be used to reroll a Trait Test or Soak damage, but in Sherwood: The Legend of Robin Hood, they can also be used to add a bonus to a Trait Test, increase the success of an Agility Trick to a Raise, and for one or two Swashbuckling Points, depending upon the degree of alteration, a player can alter the story or immediate surrounds to his character’s benefit. Second, Agility can be used to perform Tricks like Attack from Above, Blade Ballet, Running Up Walls, Swinging Attacks, and more, which the players are encouraged to use Swashbuckling Points to set up. Lastly, rules for archery contests, target shooting, including the splitting of an opponent’s arrow, and speed shooting cover the signature elements of the Robin Hood legend.

Besides equipment, Sherwood: The Legend of Robin Hood gives several archetypes, including Engineer, Knave, Man-at-arms, Noble, Priest, and Yeoman, all ready for play. In each case, their role in both the setting and gaming group is discussed, as well as ways in which they might vary. For the Game Master, there is ‘Trouble in Sherwood: Adventuring in Nottingham’, covering various types of campaign, Gritty Outlaws or Political Outlaws, for example. What it highlights upfront is that whatever the type of campaign, a Robin Hood-style campaign should ideally be episodic—which nicely ties back into Robin of Sherwood—and rather than be about combat or facing monsters, should be more like an espionage campaign, involving secrecy and subterfuge. Rounding out the supplement is a set of write-ups for the major figures of  the Robin Hood legend, from Robin Hood himself and Little John to Guy of Gisborne. Lastly, ‘Mythic Sherwood’ guides the Game Master through bringing mythic elements and magic into the setting, the primary advice being to keep the effects of magic subtle, whether real or not. The aim being with the introduction of magic or any of the ‘Legends and Monsters’, from dragons and gargoyles to pookas and banshees, is to avoid the campaign from straying into territory already covered by traditional fantasy gaming.

As much content as there is in Sherwood: The Legend of Robin Hood, it is lacking a couple of areas. First, as much as the gazetteer gives context for a potential campaign, a timeline would have been useful to give more context for the history, and second, a better map would have been useful to give more context for the geography. Of course, both of these omissions can be addressed with some research upon the part of the Game Master, but the loss of a piece of art or two would certainly give room for either. 

Physically, Sherwood: The Legend of Robin Hood is a decent little book. It is well written and illustrated with public domain artwork, but it does need an edit in places and the layout could definitely have been tidier. By contemporary standards, it does feel a little too grey and plain in terms of its look, but to be fair, it would not have been greatly improved by being full colour.

Sherwood: The Legend of Robin Hood packs a lot into its seventy-two pages, playable Player Characters, new Edges and Hindrances and skills, NPC write-ups, and both campaign ideas and modes. Together, Sherwood: The Legend of Robin Hood should just about cover anything that a Game Master and her players would want in a Robin Hood campaign in what is a serviceable little supplement.

Dungeon Crawl Classics Horror: The Corpse That Love Built – 2018 Halloween Module is a scenario for Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game. Designed for Player Characters of Second Level, as well as being a Halloween scenario for the popular retroclone, it is a sequel to the author’s earlier Dungeon Crawl Classics Horror #1: They Served Brandolyn Red—of a sort. In Dungeon Crawl Classics Horror #1: They Served Brandolyn Red, the Player Characters—all Zero Level and all members of the major families in the village of Portnelle were at the wedding of a young couple whose marriage might have healed a long running rift between two of the families. Of course, it was not to be, as wedding guests were decapitated and stolen away by strange creatures which erupted from beneath the ground. Eventually, after a weirdly crunchy encounter at the nearby abandoned vineyard and a delve underground, they revealed both the culprit behind the attacks at the wedding and darker family secrets. These darker family secrets play out in the events of Dungeon Crawl Classics Horror: The Corpse That Love Built – 2018 Halloween Module—sort of.

Dungeon Crawl Classics Horror: The Corpse That Love Built – 2018 Halloween Module opens with the inhabitants of Portnelle and the Player Characters in the local church. Recently, the townsfolk have suffered a rash of abductions and mutilations, and as a fierce lightning storm rages outside, the senile Father Giralt cries out that he has been granted a vision identifying the person responsible for both. None other than Doctor Lotrin von Weißgras-Geisterblut, a local Elf who resides in a strange castle down by the coast and a recluse who has long been estranged from his family. Of course, as the local priest makes his declaration, there is a crash of lightning, the doors get knocked down, and the congregation is attacked by strangely earthy golems! Who could have ordered such an attack, could it have been Doctor Lotrin von Weißgras-Geisterblut?

Armed with the few rumours they know about the reclusive Elf—the adventure comes with an extensive rumour table—the Player Characters proceed to Castle von Weißgras-Geisterblut! Behind its high walls, they will find all manner of strangeness. First is that the tower keep has been transformed into the head and torso of a woman reaching up out of the earth and into the sky. Second, there is all manner of odd constructed creatures. They include things like ‘Crude Fleshy-Contraption Archers’, collections of gears and levers, powered by enchanted sinews; ‘Weredoggins’, a combination of were-hound and scorpion, whose traditional curse is more spiritual than medical in nature; and the ‘Halfling-Hand Luck-Sucking Lizard’, which is as weird and as nasty as it sounds. There is some enjoyably inventive monster creations here, so it is a pity that so few of them are illustrated in the module. However, the signs of Doctor Lotrin von Weißgras-Geisterblut’s research can be found throughout the tower and together with the constructs, they add to the sense that a mad scientist is at work, which pervades the scenario.

Ultimately, signs point to the top and bottom of the tower. At the top of the staircase which climbs all the way up the arm can be found a local woman, imprisoned and at the mercy of the lightning storm, whilst at the bottom is Doctor Lotrin von Weißgras-Geisterblut’s laboratory. Between the two runs a lengthy coil of mithril. Could the mad doctor be seeking to harness the lightning for a purpose of his own? To which, of course, the answer is ‘yes’, and it is one that the Player Characters will confront—as depicted in the scenario’s centrefold of the Bride Giant, an obvious homage to Bride of Frankenstein!

There are one or two issues with Dungeon Crawl Classics Horror: The Corpse That Love Built – 2018 Halloween Module. One is that the dungeon, essentially, the inside of the tower, is small, just nine locations. It does not feel like somewhere that Doctor Lotrin von Weißgras-Geisterblut lives and perhaps another level, one in the ‘head’ of the tower, could have been included to flesh it out a little. Another is that although Exact Spirit Animal, the spell that works in conjunction with the effect of the bite of the ‘Weredoggins’, is included in the scenario, another spell, Geisterblut’s Squirming Flesh, is not. And there is also the matter of the scenario’s centrefold of the Bride Giant. It is not titillating as such, but there is plenty of ‘flesh’ on show, and it may not be to everyone’s taste.

If the horror in Dungeon Crawl Classics Horror #1: They Served Brandolyn Red is gothic, its inspiration that of Edgar Allen Poe, then the horror of Dungeon Crawl Classics Horror: The Corpse That Love Built – 2018 Halloween Module is that of Universal Monsters—in particular, Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein, as well as Hammer Horror. The scenario is horrifying, challenging, nasty, and in the right hands, campy fun too. That though is Dungeon Crawl Classics Horror: The Corpse That Love Built – 2018 Halloween Module as a standalone scenario.

As a sequel to Dungeon Crawl Classics Horror #1: They Served Brandolyn Red, this scenario is disappointing. Not just the fact that Dungeon Crawl Classics Horror #1: They Served Brandolyn Red is a Character Funnel for Zero Level Player Characters and Dungeon Crawl Classics Horror: The Corpse That Love Built – 2018 Halloween Module is designed for Second Level, meaning that the Judge will need to run a scenario or two to get the Player Characters who survived Dungeon Crawl Classics Horror #1: They Served Brandolyn Red up to the required Level to player this scenario, but that there are so few links between the two. Dungeon Crawl Classics Horror #1: They Served Brandolyn Red ended by indicating that Dungeon Crawl Classics Horror: The Corpse That Love Built – 2018 Halloween Module is a sequel, but as written, the links between the two are underwritten. The villain of this scenario, Doctor Lotrin von Weißgras-Geisterblut, is a nod at least to Lotrin Whitegrass, husband of the betrayed Brandolyn from Dungeon Crawl Classics Horror #1: They Served Brandolyn Red—and besides the fact that the two scenarios are set in the same location, Portnelle (whether town or village), that is really all there is in terms of links. There is no family set-up as there is in Dungeon Crawl Classics Horror #1: They Served Brandolyn Red, there is no advice to link the two, which is both frustrating and disappointing. It just means that the Judge will have to create some of his own.

Ultimately, as a standalone horror scenario, Dungeon Crawl Classics Horror: The Corpse That Love Built – 2018 Halloween Module is entertaining, being a fan and campy challenge. As a sequel to Dungeon Crawl Classics Horror #1: They Served Brandolyn Red, it is very much a missed opportunity.

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.

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What is it?
Shaivalla, Well-Loved presents an NPC for use with RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha.
It is a nineteen page, full colour, 1.67 MB PDF.
The layout is clean and tidy, and its illustrations good.

Where is it set?
Shaivalla, Well-Loved is nominally set in Sartar, but the NPC and her entourage can be encountered almost anywhere the Game Master decides.

Who do you play?
No specific character types are required to encounter Shaivalla, Well-Loved.

What do you need?
Shaivalla, Well-Loved requires RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha as well as the RuneQuest: Glorantha Bestiary. In addition, The Red Book of Magic will be useful and Shaivalla, Well-Loved can also be tied into The Pegasus Plateau & Other Stories.
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 inaugural entry is Shaivalla, Well-Loved, which details a power-hungry, revenge-driven priestess of Ernalda, including her background, motivation, magical items and allies, and her retinue, accompanied by their statistics and full NPC sheets for each. Shaivalla, Well-Loved is an expatriate Sartarite, a member of the Locaem Tribe’s ‘royal’ clan, the Salvi, whose family was forced to flee south into Heortland following the Lunar occupation. After time spent in Esrolia, she has returned to her homeland a Priestess of the Earth, but not to her tribe, many of whose leaders she cannot forgive for their cooperation with the Lunar occupiers. Instead, she and her retinue wander Sartar, looking for allies, lovers, and anyone who might support her campaign against those she regards as traitors.
Shaivalla, Well-Loved is presented as both enemy and ally. She is cunning and Machiavellian, preferring to work behind the scenes rather than directly confront her enemies, working her way into the local cult of Ernalda and coming to influence a clan’s leadership—whether that is against the aims or beliefs of the Player Characters, or in line with them. To that end, four adventure seeds are included, some of which are easier to use than others, all of which will require development upon the part of the Game Master to some varying degrees.
Alongside the full stats for Shaivalla, Well-Loved, there are details of each of her bound spirits and the major members of her retinue. These feel a little underwritten in comparison, especially the Initiate of Eurmal the Vain, who is along for Shaivalla’s amusement and as a disruptive influence. Lastly, there is a full write-up of a magical artefact, ‘Lengarthen’s Head’, done in the style of Treasures Of Glorantha: Volume One — Dragon Pass. This grants the Ernalda priestess a powerful advantage should events turn against her and which should confound the Player Characters should they think that they have defeated her—at least the first two or three times… Thus she can become a recurring villain.
Although discussion of Shaivalla’s tactics—in and out of combat—are discussed, her long-term plans are not quite as detailed and possibly an outline of her campaign against Aritha, the High Priestess of the Three Emeralds Temple of the Locaem could have been useful. One definite omission is an illustration of ‘Lengarthen’s Head’.

Shaivalla, Well-Loved will definitely need some development upon the part of the Game Master to bring into her game, she should have both roleplaying her and developing her devious plans. However, the NPC it presents will easily play upon any hatred the Player Characters have for the Lunar Empire, and for those who do not, potentially lead to a potential rift between the Player Characters, and thus dynamic storytelling.
Is it worth your time?Yes—Shaivalla, Well-Loved presents a devious, potentially disruptive presence in a campaign, one that potentially could lead to war against another clan—rival or not—especially if the Player Characters have a dislike of Lunars, and dynamic storytelling if they do not.No—Shaivalla, Well-Loved presents a devious, potentially disruptive presence in a campaign, and whilst there is potential for dynamic storytelling, the Game Master may not want the playing group of her campaign so disrupted o.Maybe—Shaivalla, Well-Loved presents a devious, potentially disruptive presence, especially in a Sartar-set campaign, but she does need a degree of development to work effectively.

Mansions of Madness – Vol. 1: Behind Closed Doors is an anthology of five scenarios for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition. Published by Chaosium, Inc., the anthology is an update and reimplementation of two previously published anthologies. The original Mansions of Madness: Five Frightening Adventures in Dark and Deserted Places was published in 1990, with a second edition, Mansions of Madness: Six Classic Explorations of the Unknown, the Deserted, and the Insane, following in 2007 and adding a sixth scenario. Mansions of Madness – Vol. 1: Behind Closed Doors reduces the number of scenarios back to five, keeps two of the entries from the previous editions of the supplement, and adds three new scenarios. Whether or not the other three (or four) scenarios from the previous editions will return is another matter, although with one, ‘The Plantation’, its treatment of its subject matter may not be as socially acceptable today as it was in 1990. In reimplementing the title, Chaosium, Inc. also turns it into a series, so that further volumes will follow on from Mansions of Madness – Vol. 1: Behind Closed Doors. Lastly, although the scenarios in this reimplementation can be played by Call of Cthulhu veterans and neophytes alike, Mansions of Madness – Vol. 1: Behind Closed Doors is designed as the next step up from the anthology, Doors to Darkness: Five Scenarios for Beginning Keepers and to be played using the contents of the Call of Cthulhu Starter Set, its scenarios being intermediate affairs rather than scenarios for beginner or experienced players of Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition.

Mansions of Madness – Vol. 1: Behind Closed Doors opens with a little bit history and explanation before diving straight into a classic scenario. Shawn De Wolfe’s ‘Mister Corbitt’ takes place in the well-to-do neighbourhood where one of the Investigators, or his family live. One Sunday afternoon, this Investigator sees his neighbour, the eponymous Mister Corbitt, drop something as he returns home—something ghoulishly unpleasant and disturbing. The question is, where did it come from and what is the mild-mannered, well-regarded, and indeed, neighbourly man going to do with it? Suitable for one or two Investigators, as well as larger groups, ‘Mister Corbitt’ will probably see the Investigators following the neighbour, looking into his backstory, and ultimately breaking into his house. What they find inside is truly disturbing and weird, setting up some entertaining set pieces within the Corbitt residence. There is a pleasing sense of self-containment to ‘Mister Corbitt’. This is a small scenario, but it has everything that the Keeper needs, whether that is advice on how to run Mister Corbitt—typically to nudge the Investigators into action, involving the Police, or what happens if things break loose. The scenario’s scale also  makes it easy to use as a side-scenario or expand it out into a series of scenarios if the Keeper so desires. The scenario is also easy to adjust to other countries or time frames. Lastly, should the Investigators delve deeply into the scenario, they will discover that there is more going on, and that perhaps the villain of the piece may not necessarily be who they think it is. Overall, ‘Mister Corbitt’ is a straightforward scenario, but very much a classic which deserved to be updated to Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition.

‘The Crack’d and Crook’d Manse’ is the second scenario to be included in Mansions of Madness – Vol. 1: Behind Closed Doors from previous editions of the anthology. Originally written by the author, Mark Morrison, for a convention in 1984, the scenario is set in 1925 and has the Investigators hired by a small-town firm of lawyers to investigate a property in out-of-way Gamwell belonging to one of their clients. This is the explorer and archaeologist, Arthur Cornthwaite, who is also missing. There is some history to the house to be discovered, much of which will add to the creepy, damp sense of desolation which permeates throughout its walls and halls. Although the  Investigators will have to deal with the insular nature of some of Gamwell’s inhabitants, they will spend most of their time examining and exploring the house, trying to work out what happened to Arthur Cornthwaite. The scenario includes solid advice for the Keeper, some fun events for her to throw at the Investigators, and overall, is an entertaining twist upon both the haunted house genre and the Mythos—veteran players of the game who have not played ‘The Crack’d and Crook’d Manse’ may quickly deduce the Mythos threat, but the likelihood is that they would be wrong.

The first of the three new scenarios in Mansions of Madness – Vol. 1: Behind Closed Doors is Chris Lackey’s ‘The Code’. If the first two scenarios in the collection are intended to be intermediate scenarios for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, it is fair to say that ‘The Code’ is a step up in terms of complexity. This is because it is a Science Fiction horror scenario and because it involves time travel. The Investigators are summoned by a former colleague or teacher, the physics professor, Doctor Kenneth Connelly, to his home because he has made a scientific breakthrough. By the time they arrive at his home, the Investigators will already have been warned that something is amiss, but exactly what is another matter. What they discover is that Doctor Connelly has invented a ‘time suit’, but it is not functioning. There are Mythos elements to ‘The Code’, but the scenario mostly focuses on NPC interaction with the Investigators and there is quite a varied cast the Keeper has to portray. A couple of them do feel extraneous and do add to the Keeper’s workload during play, though there is good advice on how to portray the antagonists. This is in addition to the time travel elements which the Keeper has to handle, and this is where the scenario becomes complex. Along with numerous time-related encounters, the Keeper has to cope with the potential consequences of the Investigators’ actions once the scenario’s time travel comes into play, and adjust the narrative as necessary. There is some advice to that end and beyond the limits of the story, ‘The Code’ could take a Call of Cthulhu campaign in a very odd direction.

‘The Code’ is followed by ‘The House of Memphis’ by Gavin Iglis. The Investigators are hired by lawyers to look into the disappearance of their client, the noted stage magician, Memphis the Great, who has not been seen at his house for over a month, and into the strange deaths of three burglars in the weeks since. Alternatively, for Investigators with criminal connections, a local crime boss will ask them to look into the latter. There is a minor tradition of stage magicians and the Mythos and of strangely inexplicable stage performances (though mostly connected to the Yellow Sign, but not here) in Call of Cthulhu, and ‘The House of Memphis’ is no exception to that tradition. The scenario even adds a new Occupation, that of Stage Magician, as well as a lengthy description of the new skill, Art/Craft (Stage Magic), which the Investigators are likely to need a little of, since they will need to enter the world of stage magicians—though only as amateurs—to learn some of the background to the mystery. The Keeper will also need to understand how the skill works and will probably want to learn how a few card tricks and the like work to give some colour and detail to the Investigators’ interactions with the actual stage magicians they will meet—amateur and professional.

The scenario’s initial investigation is primarily interpersonal in nature and that does mean that the scenario has a large cast for the Keeper to portray, and again, not all of them are truly necessary to the plot. With its plot of protegee-turned rival and devoted magician’s assistant, ‘The House of Memphis’  does feel a little familiar in places, but the scenario is decently put together and there are plenty of opportunities for roleplaying and investigation before the horror really kicks in. Overall, ‘The House of Memphis’ is a solid scenario, especially if the Investigators include a stage magician amongst their number.

The last scenario in the anthology is ‘The Nineteenth Hole’ and is the only scenario set outside of the USA. As its title suggests, it takes place on a golf course and being set in Scotland, it seems only appropriate that it should be by Stuart Boon, the author of Shadows Over Scotland: Call of Cthulhu Roleplaying in 1920s’ Scotland. The investigators are hired by Crystal Macmillan, whose husband, Arthur, a retired publisher, has not been since he visited the golf course he was having restored. The police have shown little interest in his disappearance and the workers at the golf course, many of whom complained of suffering headaches and feeling sick during the restoration work, have little to say either. Again, the scenario involves a lot of interpersonal investigation, first at the Macmillan residence, then in the village and perhaps elsewhere, before proceeding onto the grounds of the golf course and into the club house itself. Here it continues the exploration theme which has been running through all of the scenarios in Mansions of Madness – Vol. 1: Behind Closed Doors, though of course, specifically exploration of a house, but the change of venue is refreshing. In comparison to the description given to some of the houses in earlier scenarios there is more detail to the clubhouse in ‘The Nineteenth Hole’ and it very much benefits from it. ‘The Nineteenth Hole’ does come with a sizeable cast, but unlike some of the other scenarios, does not overburden the Keeper with them. These NPCs are all nicely done though, as is the advice for the Keeper, which includes a few red herrings and nasty encounters to throw at the Investigators. The scenario also includes some entertaining, almost Inception-like encounters which are likely to surprise and confound both players and their Investigators. The second Science Fiction horror scenario in the anthology, with a fairly obvious inspiration in the form of H.P. Lovecraft’s ‘From Beyond’, ‘The Nineteenth Hole’ presents another entertaining twist upon the haunted house (haunted clubhouse?) genre, one that is nicely constructed and feels weird and unsettling rather out and out scary. Of the three new additions in Mansions of Madness – Vol. 1: Behind Closed Doors, ‘The Nineteenth Hole’ is the most satisfying.

Physically, Mansions of Madness – Vol. 1: Behind Closed Doors is as well presented as has become standard for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition. The artwork is not always as good as it could be though, and it does not always match the descriptions in the text. One consequence of the switch to full colour is that some of the really great black and white artwork has been left behind in previous editions. The maps are clear, but many feel as if they could do with more detail, especially the contents, which are often left up to the Keeper to describe. One nice touch is that every scenario includes suggestions as to which skills might be useful if the players are creating their Investigators specifically for the scenario and notes towards potential sequels depending upon how the events of each scenario played out.

Chaosium, Inc. could have simply reprinted Mansions of Madness: Five Frightening Adventures in Dark and Deserted Places or Mansions of Madness: Six Classic Explorations of the Unknown, the Deserted, and the Insane, and with some adjustments, that would have been fine. It would not though, have been interesting. With Mansions of Madness – Vol. 1: Behind Closed Doors, the publishers provide Keepers and players of Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition with something old, scenarios which very much deserved to be updated and showcase those new to the game why they have always been regarded as classics, and something new, for veteran Keepers and players and those new to the roleplaying game. The choices are all good in either case, and they also lay the groundwork for further volumes in the series, each bringing back classics from editions past alongside the new. Overall, Mansions of Madness – Vol. 1: Behind Closed Doors is a solidly scary set of scenarios, showing off the new, whilst remembering the past.

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

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Land of the Rising Sun: Role Playing game of myths and legends in the age of Samurai was published by Fantasy Games Unlimited in 1980. For the publisher, it predates Bushido, although that was previously published by two other publishers. Designed by Lee Gold, the editor of the long running monthly amateur press association, Alarums and Excursions, Land of the Rising Sun began life as a supplement for Chivalry & Sorcery dedicated to the samurai system of feudal Japan, but ultimately became a roleplaying game of its own. This gives Land of the Rising Sun the distinction of being first roleplaying game to be designed by a woman. It is a Class and Level system, in which samurai and nobles conduct themselves honourably; clerics—Buddhist and Shinto dispense blessings, write scrolls, conduct exorcisms, and more; merchants trade and make themselves richer than the nobility; mages of all types seek to perfect their art and studies; craftsmen make and sell their goods; bureaucrats keep the wheels of government running; and thieves, bandits, and ninja steal, rob, sabotage, and assassinate… This is a roleplaying game set in feudal Japan in which a wide array of character types can be played, including gamblers and geisha, and earn Experience Points for doing so. It presents a rich array of magical traditions, as well as extensive notes on religion and a bestiary of spirits, bakemono, demons, gaki, goblins, kami, and more. However, Land of the Rising Sun: Role Playing game of myths and legends in the age of Samurai does use the Chivalry & Sorcery mechanics, and together with a layout and organisation which is ponderous at best, does make this roleplaying game very much of a challenge to learn and play.

Land of the Rising Sun comes as a boxed set. Inside can be found the rulebook and five reference sheets which cover magic and combat. The rulebook itself, without much preamble, quickly dives into how to create a character. A Player Character in Land of the Rising Sun is first defined by his Species. This can be Japanese Human; Hengeyokai or Shapechanger, such as Fox or Cat; or Bakemono, a monster such as Kappa or Tengu. He has a Horoscope—Well-, Average-, or Poorly Aspected, which will primarily be of import should the character become a mage, followed by gender, height, and frame. The seven stats, Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Appearance, Bardic Voice, Intelligence, and Wisdom, are all rolled on two ten-sided dice for Humans, but can be modified for non-humans. Lastly, Charisma is the average of all of these factors. He has an Alignment, which ranges from Saintly to Depraved. As well as Charisma, derived factors include Body Points (or Hit Points) and Fatigue Points, then Military Ability (talent as a field commander), Command Level (ability to lead troops), and Personal Combat Factor (ability to fight). The latter is modified by a Player Character’s Class and reflects the size of a weapon he can use and how well. Father’s social class and position determines a Player Character’s initial social class, and from this a player can work out how many siblings the Player Character has, birth order, how much money he has, and what gift his family might give him.

Our sample character is Kugojiro, the younger son of a samurai noble who is a justice of the peace in a small town, a reward for loyal service to his daimyo. The plain, homely-looking Kugojiro is ill-favoured by his family, which has not yet found a position for him, his older brother being groomed to take over from his father. Kugojiro wants to be a warrior, but his family will not support him and he is prepared to undertake less than honourable work.

Name: Kugojiro
Species: Human
Horoscope: Well-Aspected
Gender: Male
Height: Medium (5’ 2”) Frame: Heavy (123 lbs.)
Alignment: Worldly (Corruptible)
Profession: Fighter
Level: 1

Father’s Social Class: Noble (Level 18)
Father’s Clan Lord: Clan Head
Position: Department of Justice (Senior Official) Income: 65
Siblings: 3 (Two older sisters, one older brother)
Family Status: Poor Child
Birthplace: Town (Small Town)
Income: – Money: 72 bu/2 Oban

Basic Influence: 21
Social Status: 15

Strength 09
Dexterity 19 Dex Factor: +10%
Constitution 18 Disease Resistance: +5% BP Regen: +1/+2/+3 FP Regen: 3/6/9}
Appearance 04 Homely (-3 Charisma)
Bardic Voice 20 Orphic (+5 Charisma, +1 Military Ability)
Intelligence 13 Language Points: 3/LVL Detect Factor: +5% Research Limit: VI Remember Spells: 65% Read Scrolls: 85% BP: –

Wisdom 11 Average
Charisma 14 Influential

Military Ability: 7
Command Level: 3
Personal Combat Factor: 10.5

Light Weapons
BL: +1 DMG/WDF: 3 Hit: +15% Parry: -15%
Light/Heavy Weapons
BL: – DMG/WDF: 3 Hit: +12% Parry: -8% Shielding: -12% Dodge: -18%
Dex Bonuses: +2% to hit/Level, -2% to parry/Level; Weapon Specialisation 5, one extra Dodge per turn, two free missile shots per turn

Class Bonus: One free active shield/weapon parry

AC: 3

Body Points: 12
Fatigue Points: 3
Carrying Capacity: 198 lbs.

There is no denying that the end result of character generation is detailed, with the random determination of a character’s social status, family, and position within the family, it is possible to begin to get some idea about who the character might. However, both the end result and the process is far from perfect. It takes both a lot of flipping back and forth through the rulebook’s first twenty pages to get to this point as well as a lot of arithmetic—the author is not kidding when she suggests that the reader requires a calculator. Nor does the Player Character feel complete. Does the character have skills apart from a low chance to hit things—or Personal Combat Factor? Or a low chance for casting magic—Personal Magic Factor—for the Mage? Digging deeper—and it takes a lot of digging—the Cleric at least begins play with one miracle, Purify. The various types of Mage have learned some spells. An Artisan or Merchant begins play with the Production, Trading, and Investment skills, and there is a Dex Skill for Thieves, Bandits, and Ninja. No skills for the gambler or entertainer or geisha though.

Nor do the write-ups of the various professions—Fighter, Mage, Cleric, Thief, Bandit, Ninja, Government, Artisan, Peasant, Merchant, and Other (which covers gamblers and entertainers)—help, since they are all about their place in society and how they earn their Experience Points, and certainly not about what they can do. And the sections on martial arts and fine arts and magic and stealth are all about how to learn them and then be able to do anything of note. In many cases, too much attention is paid to how much money a Player Character will earn and essentially Land of the Rising Sun provides a means to create characters who know their place and role in society, know that they can do things and benefit or earn from doing them, but actually have very little idea how they actually do those things. Roleplaying games are all about things that the characters can do and being able to do cool things, and whilst Land of the Rising Sun will let the Player Characters do them, they have to learn them first.

So what of the mechanics? Land of the Rising Sun is a percentile system. Yet like many roleplaying games of its generation, it does not have a universal mechanic, but rather a set of rules for different circumstances. For example, the rules for Influence and Relationships are based upon the Charisma, Social Status, Level, and Honour Points of the Player Characters and NPCs, and covers ways to increase Influence as well as exert it, before discussing various relationships, from alliances between clan lords and different types of obligations to codes of justice and the nature of seppuku. Magic is broken down into not just a few, but eighteen types of mage, including Primitive, Dancer, Shaman, Medium, Herbalist, Divine, Artificer, Enchanter, Illusionist, Summoner, Symbolist, Poet, Calligrapher, and I Ching Master! Further, Symbolists include Origami, Painter, and Carver Symbolists, whilst Artificers Weaponsmiths, Jewelsmiths, and Weaver Mages. And each type of Mage has his own magic and mechanics, whether that is using I Ching rods to forecast the coming day or the Artificer constructing a magical device—which includes magical or Ego swords by the Weaponsmith. All of these different Mages, despite possessing different mechanics, are all nicely done and would be interesting to roleplay, whether that is the Origami Symbolist folding and animating paper to make it fly or run, or a Diviner reading the stars or writing a horoscope. There is a lengthy list of spells too. Clerics, Shintoism, and Buddhism are all treated in informative fashion. The rules over exorcism plus numerous Miracles, many of which the two faiths share.

The Martial Arts section covers everything from Tessen Jutsu or use of fans to Chikujojutsu or fortifications, and all have a number of skill points which need to be invested in them to be mastered. This is at least one hundred skill points, and because only a few points can be learned through training it can take a while to master a skill. Fine Arts, like Appreciating Embroidery and Dyeing and Playing Go, are treated the same way, but Stealth skills are not. They simply use a combination of a Player Character’s Dex Skill, Detect factor, and Level. Again, this section provides more background, this time about banditry, fences, ninja, and the like. And again, the Ninja is slightly different, first learning Ninjitsu, which of course, takes a while, and then being able to learn another raft of skills.

Combat covers morale, loss of fatigue for undertaking actions, parrying, mounted and a lot more, whilst later, separate sections provide rules for aerial, water, and mass combat. At the heart of combat, attackers are rolling on Missile or Melee Matrices—or attack tables—against an Armour Class rating, which goes from zero to ten. This gives a chance for the attack to succeed, primarily modified by the attacker’s Personal Combat Factor, and there are Melee matrices for different types of weapon and natural weapons. The rules do include a pair of examples, quite lengthy ones, and to be honest, they are necessary, because the rules are not only poorly explained, but there are a lot of them, whether that is aimed hits, desperate defence, attacking with chain weapons, and so on.

Oddly, the author suggests the reader purchase a geographical map of Japan rather than provide one, and instead of looking at Japan as whole, it concentrates on the types of buildings to be found in the country. There is certainly no history given and it would be nice to have some more context for the roleplaying game. Penultimately, Land of the Rising Sun includes a lengthy bestiary, which together with the tables for encounters and intentions of those met, provides the Game Master with plenty of threats, NPCs, and mysteries to present to her players and their characters. Lastly, there is a short bibliography, a handful of scenario ideas, and a piece of fiction, which though it might serve as inspiration for an encounter, feels out of place here.

Physically, Land of the Rising Sun is laid out in the classic wargames style with numbered sections. The layout is generally tidy, the writing reasonable, illustrations vary in quality, but the organisation leaves much to be desired. After covering elements such as character creation and influence and the prices of goods, it wanders off into the thirty-page section of magic, which though good, leaves the reader to wonder how a character does anything except magic, before finally arriving at the section on martial skills and fine arts, which of course, leaves the reader bewildered. It is a case of having to learn the rulebook as much as learn the game. And whilst there is an index, it not always of any help.

—oOo—Land of the Rising Sun was extensively reviewed at the time of its publication. Eric Goldberg reviewed both of the roleplaying games set in Japan from Fantasy Games Unlimited—both Bushido and Land of the Rising Sun in Ares Nr. 7 (March 1981). He was not wholly positive, but said, “Land of the Rising Sun is an estimable addition to a FRP afficionado’s library. Aside from being well-explained, it is necessary for those who want to fully understand C&S. The care with which Japanese myth has been reproduced is simply amazing.” before concluding that, “It can also be said that the game is impossible to play, and requires too much of the players. Designer Gold achieved her objective, and did it in most impressive fashion. In doing so, however, she may have lost a greater audience.”

Writing in The Space Gamer Number 36 (February 1981), Forrest Johnson praised the roleplaying game, saying, “LOTRS is a very impressive effort. Lee Gold spent a little time in Japan. A lot of time studying the subject. Her game is complete and authentic.” before concluding that, “LOTRS is a beautiful treasure in an unopenable package. Recommended to zealots, and as a source-book to D&D.”

Wes Ives accorded Land of the Rising Sun a lengthy review in Different Worlds Issue 13 (August 1981). He detailed why the roleplaying game was not suitable for the wargamer or the dungeoneer, but for the romantic medievalist, it was, “A decent treatment of all those romantic, alien legends from medieval Japan! The medievalists will justifiably love LRS, even if they don’t have a Japanese FRP campaign to enjoy. After years of reading, in the hobby press (both apa-zines, which can be excused, and prozines, which should know better). treatments of various segments of Japan, held up and analysed in a vacuum, it is a glorious relief to see the strange weapons, the mysterious social classes, and the flabbergasting monsters collected and presented into an integral whole. If your wish is to run a campaign based on medieval Japan, then you will be in the care of someone who lavished as much attention on this set of rules as the Chivalry & Sorcery authors lavished on their treatment of medieval Europe.” He strongly recommended Land of the Rising Sun, describing it as, “It is a complete, entertaining game. Even if you don’t start a campaign based on the culture given, this is a good book to read to find out “How It’s Done When It’s Done Right.” LRS has all of the detail of Chivalry & Sorcery, with the added advantage of being a product of the second generation of those rules, so that the rough spots have been somewhat sanded down and refinished. And those of you who want to run a campaign in Old Japan will be in the best of care.”—oOo—
There is no denying the wealth of detail about Japan ensconced in various sections throughout Land of the Rising Sun, all of them interesting and informative, but the author never pulls back to look at Japan in any great depth, to give context to the game, instead relying upon the reader’s expectations. The sections on magic and religion and the monsters are all good, but Land of the Rising Sun is lacking in so many other ways. Whether that is the frustrating organisation, the underwhelming, but overly complex nature of the Player Characters, the dearth of advice for the Game Master, they all serve to hamper both learning and playing the game. Land of the Rising Sun: Role Playing game of myths and legends in the age of Samurai is an attempt to do a roleplaying set in feudal Japan and do it well and do it comprehensively. Unfortunately, it comes up short of its goals. There are some fantastic elements in the roleplaying game, but it is too complex for what it is trying to do.

Unspeakable Words — The Call of Cthulhu Word Game is a word game with difference. Most word games require each player to spell out words and then score points based on things like their frequency of use or complexity of use. This game—originally published by Playroom Entertainment in 2007, and given a ‘Deluxe Edition’ in 2015 following a successful Kickstarter campaign, gives the word a Lovecraftian twist. In Unspeakable Words a player spells out words, perfectly ordinary and not at all Eldritch, but scores points based on the number of angles in the letters in the word so spelled. The first player to score a total of one hundred points wins. However, there is a catch. The more angles there are in a word spelled, the greater the likelihood of the Hounds of Tindalos using the angles to ease themselves out of time and so drive a player insane. Fortunately, this is only temporary, and a player can still continue spelling out words in an effort to win the game. If it happens five times though, a player is driven permanently insane and is out of the game.

And that pretty much sums up Unspeakable Words — The Call of Cthulhu Word Game, a card game designed for between two and eight players, for ages ten and up. Unspeakable Words — The Call of Cthulhu Word Game Deluxe Edition comes with one-hundred-and-forty-eight Letter Cards, a glow-in-the-dark twenty-sided die, forty Cthulhu Pawns in eight colours, a dice bag, and a four-page rules leaflet. The Cthulhu Pawns are cute, and serve as each player’s Sanity Points; the art is drawn by John Kovalic throughout, giving the game a consistently cute look; and every Letter Card is accorded a score for the number of angles in the letter and illustrated with a creature or entity of the Mythos. So ‘S is for Shub-Niggurath’ and scores no points because it has no angles, but ‘A is for Azathoth’ and scores a player five points because it has lots of angles!

On a turn, a player has seven cards with which to spell out a word. He cannot spell out proper nouns or abbreviations or acronyms, but he can spell out multiples. Once every player has accepted the word, the spelling player totals the value of its angles and attempts to save against their sanity-draining effect. This requires a roll equal to or over the value of angles on the game’s die. If the player succeeds, the word is accepted and its score added to the player’s running total. The player then refreshes his hand. Once a word has been accepted, it cannot be spelt out again by another player, though if it has a multiple, that could. Once used, that word  cannot be spelled out again during the rest of the game.

If the spelling player fails his roll by rolling under the value of angles, the word is still kept, but the player loses a Cthulhu Pawn. Once he runs out of pawns, he is out of the game. At just one Cthulhu Pawn, a player can use his Letter Cards to spell out any word, no matter how weird or Eldritch it might be. The point is, is that with just the one Cthulhu Pawn, the player is disturbed enough to find any word acceptable even if others cannot.

And that really is it to Unspeakable Words — The Call of Cthulhu Word Game.

There are a couple of small quirks, though. The first is that the ‘Push Your Luck’ element of a player testing his Sanity means that a player must balance the need to gain the points from his word against the likelihood of failing the Sanity check! The second is that this balance will tip towards lower and lower word values as a player’s Sanity drops lower and lower. Then there is fun of being insane and being able to spell of almost any meaning the player wants from the Letter Cards in his hand. Which is even more fun if the player can define what the word actually means! Lastly, it is clear that the designers and artist John Kovalic have delved deep into the Lovecraftian mythos, for some of the cards are obscure, such as ‘Kaajh’Kaalbh’ and ‘R is for Rlim Shaikorth’, alongside the more obvious ‘C is for Cthulhu’ and ‘N is for Nyarlathotep’. The most knowing card is ‘H is for _____’. Or should that be ‘H is for _____’, ‘H is for _____’, ‘H is for _____’?

There are two downsides to Unspeakable Words — The Call of Cthulhu Word Game. One is player elimination, but fortunately, the game is short enough and since player elimination is likely to happen towards the end of the game, that no player is going to be out of the game for very long. The other is the price. Unspeakable Words — The Call of Cthulhu Word Game is  relatively expensive for what is a short filler. That said, this is the deluxe version of the game and it looks very nice.

Unspeakable Words — The Call of Cthulhu Word Game Deluxe Edition is a solid, fun filler. Amusingly illustrated, it presents an entertaining, eldritch twist upon the spelling game that will be enjoyed by family and hobby gamers.

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

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


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Name: One Less Grave

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Allan Carey

Setting: Jazz Age Home Counties
Product: Scenario Set-up
What You Get: Twenty-five page, 46.66 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Romantics Dance to Jerusalem
Plot Hook:  The Romantics Society outing to St. Batholomew’s Church on All Hallow’s Eve becomes more than a dance...Plot Support: Plot set-up, three period maps, three handouts, and five pre-generated Investigators.Production Values: Clean and tidy, gorgeous maps, and clearly done pre-generated Investigators.
Pros
# Type40 one-night, one-shot set-up
# Potential convention scenario
# Solid moral climax# Superb maps and handouts
# Pre-generated Investigators nicely fit the setting
# Easily adjustable to other periods# Player driven, not plot driven# Minimal set-up time# Playable in an hour!

Cons
# Horror rather than Mythos scenario
# Pre-generated Investigators are students# Player driven, not plot driven# Playable in an hour!# Investigator interaction hooks and relationships could have enhanced the tension.
Conclusion
# Great production values
# Minimal set-up time# Underwritten Investigator relationships undermine simple, nasty plot.

Zaharets, the Land of Risings, has been free for six generations. Kept as slaves for longer than they can remember, it has been one-hundred-and-fifty years since the Luathi rose up and overthrew the great kingdom of Barak Barad, driving out their masters, the monstrous bestial folk known as the Takan. The rebels anchored their claim to the region by founding cities at the northern and southern ends of the War Road, the route which runs along the coast. From the south came traders—in goods and information, from the Kingdom of Ger, whilst the Melkoni came from the west to establish a colony city-state of their own in the Zaharets. To the east, inland, lies a great desert, home to the horse clans of the Trauj, who trade with the Luathi and guide their merchants across the desert, whilst remaining ever watchful of dangers only they truly understand. In time, Zaharets has become a crossroads where three landmasses and numerous cultures meet. Yet as hard as the Luathi have worked to re-establish human civilisation, the Zaharets is not safe. There are a great many ruins to be explored and cleansed of the Takan, there are secrets of the time before the Luathi’s enslavement to be discovered, bandits prey upon the merchant caravans as they traverse the War Road, and there are dark forces which whisper promises of power and influence into the ears of the ambitious—and there is something worse. Jackals. Jackals give up the safety of community and law and order to go out into the ruins and discover the secrets hidden there, to burn the broken cities free of Takan presence, to face the bandits that raid lawful merchants, and worse… No good community would have truck with the Jackals. For who knows what evil, what chaos they might bring back with them? Yet Jackals face the dangers that the community cannot, Jackals keep the community safe when it cannot, and from amongst the Jackals come some of the mightiest heroes of the Zaharets, and perhaps in time, the community’s greatest leaders when the Jackals decide it is time to retire and let other Jackals face the dangers beyond the walls of the towns and cities of the Land of Risings.
This is the set-up for Jackals – Bronze Age Fantasy Roleplaying, a roleplaying game in land akin to the Levant in a post-Bronze Age collapse. Released by Osprey Games, the publisher of roleplaying games such as Paleomythic, Romance of the Perilous Kingdoms, Righteous Blood, Ruthless Blades, and Those Dark Places, this is a roleplaying game inspired by the epic myth cycles of the Ancient Near East—The Iliad, The Odyssey, Gilgamesh, amongst others, as well as the history. They primarily serve as inspiration though, for although there are parallels between the various cultures of Jackals – Bronze Age Fantasy Roleplaying, so the Ger are akin to the people of Middle/New Kingdom Egypt, the Luathi to those of Israel and Canaan, the Melkoni to Mycenaen Greece, and the Trauj to the dessert and tribal nomads of the Arabian Peninsula, these are cultural touchstones rather than direct adaptations. In Jackals – Bronze Age Fantasy Roleplaying, each of the Player Characters will be human, a Jackal from one these four cultures, most obviously a warrior or a ritualist, but also possibly a craftsman, scholar, thief, or even politician, who has eschewed his or her community in favour of secrets, glory, honour, and danger to ultimately protect it.

A Player Character or Jackal in Jackals – Bronze Age Fantasy Roleplaying is first defined by his Culture, either Luathi, Ger, Melkoni, or Trauj. This defines his virtues—what his culture values are, suggests reasons for becoming a Jackal, faith, magical traditions if a Ritualist, names and appearance, and skill bonuses. A virtue, if relevant, can be used to improve a skill test, essentially a fumble into a failure, a failure into a success, and a success into a critical success. For example, with ‘Fires of Freedom’, a Luathi Jackal can call on the virtue to defend against attempts—physical or spiritual—to take him into bondage or to fight to ensure that others remain free. A Jackal also has five attributes—Strength, Deftness, Vitality, Courage, and Wisdom—which range between nine and eighteen at start. They can be lowered at the cost of Corruption Points and a Ritualist also has a sixth attribute, Devotion, which represents the strength of his devotion to the spiritual world. He has various derived abilities, including Mettle, representing his willingness to fight; Clash Points, representing his battlefield awareness and capacity to react; and Devotion Points, used to invoke rituals, plus Skills which are percentiles and can go above one hundred percent. A Jackal has four traits, two general and two cultural. Each trait is tied to a specific skill and when that skill is rolled, a player can roll an extra die to provide with a choice of ones when determining the percentile value of the roll. This can be advantageous when determining if the player has rolled a critical result—failure of success, either of which requires doubles. So if Jackal had an appropriate trait, his player would roll percentile dice, plus an extra ones die, for example, ‘30’, ‘7’, and ‘3’, he would select the ‘3’ rather than the ‘7’ for a critical success of ‘33’ if the skill is high enough to get a critical success, or opt for the ‘7’ and ‘37’ if not to avoid a critical fumble. For example, ‘Light Touch’ is a general trait which provides this bonus for pickpocketing attempts for the Thievery skill rather than all Thievery related actions, whilst ‘The Jewels of Melkon’ is a Melkoni cultural trait which grants the extra die for Craft rolls related to whitesmithing, or working with gold or silver.

To create a Jackal, a player comes up with a concept, chooses a Culture and an associated virtue, before assigning seventeen points to his attributes (which begin at nine). After deriving various abilities from them, he assigns points to his skills. These are done group by group, so Common, Defensive, Martial, Knowledge, and Urban skills, and the points are different for each group, being derived from various attributes and derived abilities. The player selects four traits, two general and two cultural, selects equipment, and answers some character questions, primarily how and why he is a Jackal. The process is not overly complex, but it does involve a little arithmetic.

Kallistrate is a native of Kroryla, the Melkoni colony established four decades ago in the Zaharets. She is a devotee of Lykos, the founder of the colony and demi-god, and believes it is her destiny to follow in his path rather than that destined by her parents—a good marriage, children, and… boredom. She walked out on a betrothal and following in her family trade, weaving, and sort to make a name for herself in her own right.

Name: Kallistrate
Culture: Melkoni
Cultural Virtue: The Fires of Lust

Strength 12 Deftness 16 Vitality 12 Courage 12 Wisdom 10 Devotion 00

Clash Points: 5 (Max. 5)
Mettle: 12 (Max. 12)
Valour: 18 (Max. 18)

Wounds 6
Valour ×3 (6)
Valour ×2 (6)
Valour ×1 (6)

Common Skills
Craft 66%, Drive 15%, Influence 60%, Perception 55%, Perform 75%, Ride 10%, Sail 10%, Survival 50%

Defensive Skills
Dodge 60%, Endurance 45%, Willpower 45%

Martial Skills
Athletics 50%, Melee Combat 75%, Ranged Combat 30%, Unarmed Combat 40%

Knowledge Skills
Culture (own) 45%, Culture (Other) 25%, Healing 40%, Lore 20%, Ancient Lore 00%

Urban Skills 56
Deception 31%, Stealth 40%, Thievery 10%, Trade 45%

Traits and Talents
Bearer of the Eye of Chium (Perception for Ambushes)
Dangerous Beauty (Influence – Charm/Seduction)
Classically Trained (Rhetoric)
Twin Fangs (Two Leaf-Bladed Swords)

Combat
Damage Bonus: +1d4 Move: 15 Initiative: 16+1d6
Weapons: Twin Leaf-Bladed Swords (1d8)
Armour: Leather (2)

Mechanically, Jackals – Bronze Age Fantasy Roleplaying employs the Clash system. This is a percentile system in which rolls of ninety-one and above is always a failure, even though skills can be modified or even raised through advancements above one hundred percent. Rolls of doubles rolls under a skill are a critical success and rolls of double over are a fumble. Opposed rolls are handled by both parties rolling, with the participant who rolls higher and succeeds at the skill check winning. In general, except in situations where there is an extended contest, such as a chase or combat, only one roll is made for a particular skill per scene. Of course, traits and cultural values have a chance of modifying a roll, depending upon the situation, but a Jackal also has several fate Points. These are used to gain a re-roll of a skill check or a damage roll, to add a narrative twist, to invoke a talent that a Jackal does not have, and to prevent a Jackal from dying when reduced to zero Wounds.

If in terms of skills and skill checks, the Clash system in Jackals – Bronze Age Fantasy Roleplaying is simple and straightforward, combat by comparison, is not. Every combatant typically one main action in a combat round, often a standard type attack, but with the addition of Clash points, combat becomes more dynamic, more heroic. In the main they work as reactions, such as responding to a melee attack and turning it into a clash or dodging a ranged attack, or taking minor actions in addition to a main action. For example, switching a weapon, invoking a rite, or standing up from prone. They can also be spent to improve the effect of an action, such as turning a simple attack into a power attack or sweeping arc, though this costs more in terms of Clash Points. Damage is taken first in terms of Valour Points, and then in Wounds, and once a Jackal begins suffering Wounds, damage can have permanent effects. Suffer enough wounds and a player has to roll for Scarring at the end of a combat.
On the edge of the Luasa Sands, Gashur, a Luathi Hasheer, a seeker of knowledge, has engaged a Trauj guide, Ikemma of the Ashan Mudi clan, to locate some ruins. Accompanied by her bodyguard, Kallistrate, they have penetrated a cave network and discovered some worked rooms where Gashur has begun to survey some of the mosaics on the walls. Their investigations have alerted a band of Takan, the small, foul and rat-like Norakan led by their leader, one of the hyena-like Oritakan and his lieutenant, the simian Mavakan. The Loremaster states that Kallistrate can use her Bearer of the Eye of Chium Talent to determine if she spots the ambush. Kallistrate has a Perception of 55% and her player rolls percentile dice plus another die for the ones. The percentile roll is ‘99%’! Not only a failure, but a fumble too. Fortunately, the roll of the second ones die results in a ‘5’. Kallistrate’s player choses the ‘5’ and turns the roll into a ‘95%’ rather than the ‘99%’, downgrading it from a fumble to a failure. It means that the three Jackals have been surprised as the Takan come charging into the room, the Mavakan at their head wielding its chipped bronze axe.

Barely able to squeeze through the doorway, the Mavakan runs straight at the nearest interloper, which is Gashur. It attacks first, and the Loremaster rolls ‘18’, opting for a Shield Bash manoeuvre, smashing into the Luathi Hasheer and knocking him flying into the rubble. From behind the Mavakan, the Norakan swarm into the room and over Gashur. If the other two Jackals cannot stop him, they will drag him back into the darkness… On the next round, Kallistrate wins the initiative—she is faster than anyone in the battle, followed by the Norakan and the Oritakan, then Ikeema, and lastly the Mavakan. Kallistrate charges the large beast readying her twin swords to strike. This grants her a total of six Clash Points to spend. Her player rolls ‘40’, enough for Kallistrate to hit with her Melee Combat skill, but her Twin Fangs Talent grants her a second ones die, and this rolls a ‘4’, which turns a success into a critical. However, the Takan have their own supply of Clash points—not as many as the Jackals, but enough—and the Loremaster decides that the Mavakan will spend one to turn Kallistrate’s melee attack into an actual clash. The Loremaster roll’s the Mavakan’s Combat value and it comes up a ‘99%’! Not only a failure, but a fumble, and since the Mavakan fumbled, it suffers maximum damage, ignoring armour, and Kallistrate gains a Fate Point. Since Kallistrate hit, her player decides to power up her attack by making it a Power Attack for two Clash Points. This increases damage by an extra six-sided die, so together with the damage for the weapon and Kallistrate’s damage bonus, the Mavakan suffers a total of eighteen damage. This is more than half of its wounds!

Ikeema uses a Clash Point to ready his bow and fire an arrow at the Oritakan, but misses as the Norakan drag away the helpless Gashur. The Oritakan responds with its ‘Commanding Presence’ special ability, its high-pitched barks driving the Takan band to follow its orders. The Mavakan regains five Wounds too and all of the Takan can adjust their combat rolls as if they had an appropriate trait! Kallistrate’s blow was mighty, but it looks like the battle is not yet going the Jackal’s way…Magic in Jackals – Bronze Age Fantasy Roleplaying consists of Rites, its casters known as Ritualists. Each Ritualist enters into a pact with a power or entity of the spiritual realm, following one of the two ritualist traditions of his culture. For example, Luathi Ritualists are either Kahar, the Servants of Alwain, the creator of Kalypsis—greater world—and the initiator of Law, their rites focusing on purity, light, and water, or Hasheers of Ameena Noani, who seek out and gather the knowledge from before and during the kingdom of Barak Barad, their rites focusing on seeing and understanding. In terms of Jackal creation, a Ritualist selects a tradition from one of the two Ritualist traditions for his culture, receives one less general and one less cultural trait, knows the four rituals particular to his tradition, and has the Devotion attribute as well as access to the Magical Skills group.

In play, every Rite has a cost to cast or reserve—essentially to prepare it and cast when needed, a cost in Clash points to cast in combat, and so on. Each Rite is treated as a sperate skill roll, so it is possible to have critical effects and many can be advanced or upgraded. In the long term, this is necessary because Jackals – Bronze Age Fantasy Roleplaying only includes four rites per tradition, so there are no extra rites for a Ritualist to learn, although it is possible to study another tradition, and even for non-Ritualists to begin studying a tradition.
Ikemma of the Ashan Mudi clan is of the Trauj people, a deaweller of the desert who keeps the traditions and magics of his people alive through storytelling. He has explored many ruins in his time and often serves as guide to those foolish enough from along the War Road who want to delve into the secrets that the sands of his homeland hide.

Name: Ikemma of the Ashan Mudi clan
Culture: Trauj
Cultural Virtue: Hearer of Old Tales
Ritualist Tradition: Yahtahmi

Strength 09 Deftness 12 Vitality 11 Courage 12 Wisdom 13 Devotion 15

Clash Points: 4 (Max. 4)
Mettle: 11 (Max. 11)
Valour: 15 (Max. 15)

Wounds 5
Valour ×3 (5)
Valour ×2 (5)
Valour ×1 (5)

Common Skills
Craft 45%, Drive 15%, Influence 20%, Perception 65%, Perform 57%, Ride 55%, Sail 10%, Survival 60%

Defensive Skills
Dodge 40%, Endurance 55%, Willpower 55%
Martial Skills
Athletics 50%, Melee Combat 35%, Ranged Combat 60%, Unarmed Combat 36%

Knowledge Skills
Culture (own) 50%, Culture (Other) 15%, Healing 30%, Lore 60%, Ancient Lore 00%

Urban Skills
Deception 40%, Stealth 45%, Thievery 10%, Trade 44%

Magic
Devotion Points: 15 (Max. 15)
Rites
Zahara Breaks the First Horse 52%
Ilou Slaughters the Eastern Beasts 52%
Yakhia Crosses the Luasa 52%
Tamat Finds the Well of the World 52%

Traits and Talents
Born Under Oura (Willpower)
Ruin Dweller (Lore for Ruins)

Combat
Damage Bonus: – Move: 14 Initiative: 12+1d6
Weapons – Scimitar (1d8), Trauj Bow (1d10)
Armour – Linen (1)
In the fight beneath the ruins, the Takan have spirited Gashur deeper into the darkness and the Mavakan has continued to press its attacks, wounding both Ikemma and Kallistrate. When it unleashes its Howling Fury, it forces a Willpower check on the two Jackals. Both fail, reducing their Valour temporarily. Fortunately, neither fail the second roll, so they are not forced to flee, but discretion being the better part of valour, they decide to retreat with the Mavakan at their heels. They race back through the corridors only to find their way blocked by a chasm—the Takan must have collapsed the bridge over it they used earlier. Kallistrate looks nervously at the distance, wondering if she can make the jump. Ikemma asks, “Tell me, have you heard how we Trauj first came to cross the desert? It was Yakhia who-” Kallistrate looks at the desert dweller incredulously and exclaims, “Is now a good time to be telling stories? We have Takan behind us and a missing employer.” The Yahtahmi laughs and replies that is always time for stories and in telling the story, casts the rite, ‘Yakhia Crosses the Luasa’ which grants them both a bonus to their Athletics skill equal to his Devotion for the rest of the day. With any luck, this will be enough that they can make the jump as they hear the roar of the Mavakan behind them.If Jackals – Bronze Age Fantasy Roleplaying is a solid design which supports heroic play and the clash of law and order, it is long term play where it begins to shine. In the long term, a player has the chance for his Jackal to push his skills above one hundred percent. This not only opens the option for a highly skilled warrior to divide his martial skills between attacks and dodge attempts and so forth, but further, they open up Advanced Skill Talents. These enable a Jackal to be heroic, even amazing, such as ‘Arrow Snatch’, with which a Jackal can enhance his ability to defend against a ranged attack by grabbing a missile from the air by spending further Clash points. Advanced Skill Talents are provided for each of the five skill groups.

The life of a Jackal is not just dangerous physically, but also mentally and socially. In facing the chaos left over from the remnants of the great kingdom of Barak Barad and the forces of chaos that would tear down the Law of Men, a Jackal can incur Corruption. It can also be incurred for corruptive actions, such as turning to banditry or allying with a chaotic being, and gain enough, a Jackal can have his Fate Points replaced by Dark Fate Points, which can be used to fuel dark rites, and also gain marks of Corruption, such as paranoia and pus-filled blisters. Corruption can also break a Jackal’s connection to the powers that grant him his rites, a major loss for any ritualist. Fortunately, a Jackal can undertake acts of Atonement, which varies from culture to culture, and though challenging, if successful, reduces the Jackal’s Corruption.

Unfortunately, as his Kleos, or renown, grows, a Jackal increasingly comes to the attention of the forces of Chaos. He will also gain recognition and potentially patrons, but the forces of Chaos will reach out to a Jackal, not necessarily to kill him, but tempt or coerce him—and if that fails, well, then kill him. He will have prophetic dreams too, their nature depending upon the Jackal’s degree of Corruption. Of course, no town or society, wants Jackals to return from their ventures with the stain of Corruption, and since Corruption cannot initially be detected, society cannot trust Jackals.

Jackals – Bronze Age Fantasy Roleplaying is played over two seasons—rainy and dry, and at the end of each, a Jackal can undertake a Seasonal Action. One of these can be Atonement, but other options include Carouse, Craft/Commission an Item, Find Rumours, Increase Kleos, and Research. In the long term though, they also include Acquire Patron, Establish Home, and Hospitality, and these last Seasonal Actions represent not those of a Jackal excluded from society, but a Jackal who is attempting transition back into society. This will take years, but if a Jackal survives, he can retire, and the player’s new Jackal can benefit from the wisdom of the retiring one. Not necessarily covered in the roleplaying game, but there is scope here for generational play a la King Arthur Pendragon.

For the Loremaster—as Jackals – Bronze Age Fantasy Roleplaying terms the Game Master—there is a Gazetteer of the War Road, focusing upon Ameena Noani and Sentem, the Luathi cities at the northern and southern ends of the War Road, each of the various locations accompanied by a pair of secrets which the Loremaster can expand upon. A bestiary provides a range of threats, including wolves of the four-legged and two-legged (or bandit) kind, the dead, and Takan of various types. There is good advice on running the game too, but this is not a roleplaying game intended necessarily to be run by anyone new to the hobby. Lastly, there are three adventures, designed to start a Jackals – Bronze Age Fantasy Roleplaying campaign and lead into Jackals: Fall of the Children of Bronze, the first campaign for the game. The three scenarios will take the Jackals up and down the War Road.

Physically, Jackals – Bronze Age Fantasy Roleplaying is as well presented as you would expect for a title from Osprey Games. The artwork is excellent and the layout clean and tidy, but it needs a slight edit in places. It is far from poorly written, but it often suffers from a lack of examples in places, or rather a lack of full examples. It certainly could have done with a full example of a Player Character and a longer example of combat to show how the Clash system fully works. Another issue with the roleplaying game is that its tables—especially the combat tables—are not repeated at the rear of the book for easy access.

Conceptually, Jackals – Bronze Age Fantasy Roleplaying is easy to understand and grasp—the conflict between the Law of Men and Chaos, the tension between society needing those brave enough to face the threat of Chaos, but because they are, never trusted for it. Similarly, its Bronze Age will be familiar and easy to grasp, whether from The Iliad, The Odyssey, or Gilgamesh, or the films of Ray Harryhausen, but as a setting, Jackals – Bronze Age Fantasy Roleplaying is not as easily accessible. This is a combination of content and presentation, there being a fair number of terms and phrases that the players will need to know to understand the cultures of the setting. Ultimately, the Loremaster will need to work a bit harder with her players for them to match the same degree of buy-in as herself.

Jackals – Bronze Age Fantasy Roleplaying is a game which will reward long term play, so it is good to know that it will be followed by Jackals: Fall of the Children of Bronze, but it would be nice to have an anthology of scenarios too. Overall, Jackals – Bronze Age Fantasy Roleplaying nicely balances its tension between the Jackals and society, giving the Jackals a rich environment in which to explore, face ancient threats, be heroic, and ultimately return from to the society they turned away from in order to protect.

The year is 2086. In 2012, The Terminal War, a last-chance attempt by Western governments to take control of dwindling petroleum resources, triggered the use of biological and chemical weapons, as well as a limited nuclear exchange, accelerated rapid Climate Change and forced mass migration of refugees. As governments—national and local—reeled from the fallout of the war, corporations stepped in to first to aid, and then buy them out. Walls were erected around towns and cities to protect citizens from the roiling toxic fogs which cover the countryside, the mutated creatures which lurk out in the fogs, and to prevent further refugees from flooding the limited space behind the walls. Many would also combine to form larger complexes or plexes. Within the walls, these plexes were divided into security zones, from the demilitarised No-Go zone kept an eye on by police and sentry monitor guns to the wealth and protected privilege of HiSec. In between though, are LowSec and MidSec, where the police do not operate and gangs and crimes are rife. Here law enforcement has been privatised. Which is where the SANCTIONS come in.

As crime and death increase, staffing agencies are given legal powers and ‘Sanctioned’ to hire armed Temporary Employees and assign them tasks ranging from policing and search and rescue to espionage and investigation. Such employees are known as SANCTIONS and out of the money they are paid for fulfilling their assignments and bonuses for capturing or executing Officially Sanctioned targets such as ghouls or mutants, skags or gang members, biters or CHUDs (Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers), they are expected to maintain their arms and equipment. This includes guns, armour, and bioware, or Amps, such as Coagulon Skin Coating, Porcupine Spine Ejection System, and Smog Plug nasal filters. For this is a future where bioware is used to augment men and women, cybernetics and A.I. having been outlawed following the ‘Berlin Massacre’ of 2025 when A.I. Cybertroopers ran amok due to a rogue computer virus. Bio Technology Drones are common and via biotech computer flesh pods plugged directly into the user’s nervous system grant access to the GNW or ‘Global Neuro Web’, where they can explore virtual environments, often to play, but in the case of SANCTIONS and criminals, to ferret out secrets and steal data data.

This is the set up for ++SANCTIONS++ Body Horror Sci-Fi RPG, a roleplaying game which is part Judge Dredd meets Existenz meets Bladerunner meets S.L.A. Industries meets Split Second meets Strontium Dog. Published by Purple Crayon Games Studio, it employs the publisher’s own Core-6 rules. It casts the Player Characters as these law enforcement temps, or SANCTIONS, each either a Shok agent—standard operatives skilled in combat, but who can specialise as scouts, investigators, hostage negotiators, and so on; Med Teks, typically medics and forensics specialists; and Tekks, who can be security specialists, hackers, mechanics, and the like. A SANCTION has five statistics—Fight, Ability (agility and dexterity), Mind, Social, and Physical, each of which ranges between one and four. A SANCTION also has Life Points or Hit Points, based on Physical and modified by Amps; Humanity, equal to 100%, but depleted by each Amp installed until there is a chance that a SANCTION might suffer BioPsychosis and go feral; and Luck, used to purchase extra success for any action or skill attempt.

To create a SANCTION, a player assigns eight points to his character’s Abilities, again ranging between one and four. Dice are rolled for Life Points, the player selects one positive and one negative trait for his SANCTION’S psyche profile, for example, Rich Kid Adventurer and Addict, and then has ten points with which to purchase skills and Talents. Each positive and negative trait grants an advantage or disadvantage. For example, Rich Kid Adventurer gives a SANCTION more starting funds, whilst Wanted means that the SANCTION has a bounty on his head. However, it is not clear what is necessarily a skill and what is a talent in ++SANCTIONS++, plus there are a lot of them. In fact, there are ninety-five skills and talents listed. Skills and talents are either rated at Skilled or Expert, though that is not quite clear what it means. It possibly means that a SANCTION has either one die if Skilled or two dice if Expert in a skill or talent. Since a Skilled rating costs two skill points and an Expert skill three points, a SANCTION will typically start play with just five skills, all of them probably related to one of the standard three roles as a SANCTION—Shok, Med Tek, or Tekk—because obviously a Player Character has to qualify at least in some of those skills to beSANCTION. Consequently, a Sanction does feel underskilled and the ninety-five skills in ++SANCTIONS++ just a bit much… Lastly, a player has some money with which to purchase guns and gear for his SANCTION, including bioware and amps. For the most part, this will be relatively basic equipment and amps, the really interesting ones, including fusion-powered bio armour suits being expensive.

Our sample character is Bev-MED, ex-skag, who saw one too many fellow gang members die in the south BirmChester Plex, and decided she had had enough. She stole some creds, got cleaned up and trained as a medic. She works as SANCTION to help people if she can.

Bev-MED
Fight 2—Handgun X
Ability 2—First Aid X, Trauma Surgery X
Mind 2—Bio Ware X, Pathology/Forensics X
Social 1
Physical 1
Life Points 14
Humanity 95
Luck 3

Psyche Profile
Positive: Hardened (+1 to Fear Tests)
Negative: Wanted (owes $C1500)

Funds: $C608
Amps: Smog Plug
Equipment: Jaeger Arms Light Auto Combat Pistol, Flak Vest, First Aid Kit, Spray Skin, Hypo-Jet, Las Fuser, Wound Foam, FukTape, cable ties, cell phone, green boy laser

Mechanically, ++SANCTIONS++ uses the publisher’s ‘Core-6’ system. This is a dice pool system using six-sided dice. Typically, for a SANCTION to succeed at a task, his player rolls a number of dice equal to a statistic plus skill. Each five or six rolled, counts as a success. One success is needed to succeed at an Easy Task, two at a Moderate Task, three for a Tricky Test, and so on. Rolls of two or more ones count as an Epic fail, whilst rolls of two or more sixes count as a Heroic success. This applies whether the Task is a Fear Task in a scary situation, overcoming stress due to the loss of Humanity, or driving a vehicle in a fast chase. Should a SANCTION fail, then a player can spend a point of Luck to turn one die result into a success.

Combat uses the same mechanics, but primarily consists of opposed dice rolls. Thus, Fight plus an appropriate skill, the highest roll determining the winner. Both damage and any armour are rolled for, the latter reducing the amount of damage the target suffers and the amount that the armour protects by one. For the most part, damage is rolled on either one or two six-sided dice, plus modifiers, whether from weapons or C.H.U.D.s, so combat is moderately deadly. Mechanically, hacking and running the Global Neuro Web in ++SANCTIONS++ essentially employs the same rules as for combat, whilst narratively they are run as virtual reality encounters, essentially enabling Control to run as encounters in alternative genres.

For the most part, ++SANCTIONS++ includes a lot of lists. Lists of guns, amps, bioware, bio computers and custom rigs, agencies and corporations, pills and drugs, phobias, and more. In terms of background, it sketches out the future in broad strokes, never getting down to specifics more than naming the town of Northampton in the colour fiction. This is intentional since the roleplaying game is designed to be flexible in that it can be set anywhere of the Control’s choosing. It does however, provide various ‘Officially Sanctioned Targets’, from A.I.s and Bions or artificially intelligent drones to gatas (sewer alligators) and muties. It also includes several hooks for Gigs—or short assignments, an actual playable Gig, and a much longer assignment also playable. Both are enough to run and play and for a group to get a feel for how ++SANCTIONS++ runs and plays.

Lastly, there is some advice for Control. Mostly, this explores the role of body horror in the ++SANCTIONS++. It is present in the setting, certainly in the case of the monsters and the ‘Officially Sanctioned Targets’ that the SANCTIONS are tasked with dealing with. However, it is not quite as present within the Player Characters, mainly because the primary vector for body horror is amps and other bioware, and to really reduce a SANCTION’S Humanity, it requires quite a fair number of pieces of bioware—and that is expensive. Further, it is slightly offset by the other side of the Humanity mechanics which restores a SANCTION’S Humanity by a few percentage points for doing good deeds.

Physically, ++SANCTIONS++ Body Horror Sci-Fi RPG needs both an editor and a developer. Although the black and white digest-size book is liberally illustrated with a range of photographs, line art, and cartoons, the layout is scrappy, even disjointed, and it has no index.
There is no denying that ++SANCTIONS++ is rough around the edges, and in need of further development, but the combination of simple mechanics and the fact that it displays its influences like a retina overlay across your sight, makes it more accessible than it might otherwise have been. The broad strokes in which its post-Terminal War future is painted also gives it a flexibility in terms of where and when Control sets her game, whether that is in her local plex or a big city familiar to us all. Feeling more like an ashcan than necessarily the finished artefact, ++SANCTIONS++ Body Horror Sci-Fi RPG offers a biopunk body-horror future that the Control can tinker with and turn into something of her own.

Dungeon Crawl Classics Horror #1: They Served Brandolyn Red is a scenario for Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game. However, as its title suggests it is not the typical fantasy scenario for the roleplaying game. Published by Goodman Games, it presents a combination of fantasy and horror, in particular gothic horror—and it does so in one of the signature features of both the Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic and the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game, and that is, the ‘Character Funnel’. In this, a player is expected to roll up three or four Level Zero characters and have them play through a generally nasty, deadly adventure, which surviving will prove a challenge. Those that do survive receive enough Experience Points to advance to First Level and gain all of the advantages of their Class. However, in order to get the Player Characters to First Level, Dungeon Crawl Classics Horror #1: They Served Brandolyn Red, pours out a glass or two of extremely full-bodied, bloody, gothic encounters!

Dungeon Crawl Classics Horror #1: They Served Brandolyn Red is also different in that it has a story-based set-up rather than the Player Characters, despite being Zero Level, being nothing more than simple villagers. It is also different because it has handouts and for those Player Characters who survive the ordeal, it is different because there is a sequel! The set-up requires that two of the Player Characters be Elves, but all come from the same village, from one of four families—the Dragontear, Leddy, Vintner, and Whitegrass families, and the handouts include family rumours and legends, complete with family crests, a family tree, and an illustration to show the players at the appropriate time. The sequel is Dungeon Crawl Classics Horror: The Corpse That Love Built.

The setting for Dungeon Crawl Classics Horror #1: They Served Brandolyn Red is the village of Portnelle. As the scenario opens, everything is bright and festive, and almost everyone is happy. Today there is going to be a wedding. After years of feuding, the town’s most prominent and influential families, the human Leddy family and the elven Whitegrass family, will come together and end the acrimony between them when the Elven maid, Nala Whitegrass, marries her husband to be, the Human, Hort Leddy. Unfortunately, the wedding turns rancorous when ant-men burrow up from beneath the church and begin taking the heads of the guests, and the old inter-family feud resurfaces all too quickly! After an ant-men-wedding guest brawl, it will be up to the Player Characters, some of them related to the bride or groom, others not, to race off after the ant-men, if not to rescue those already grabbed, then at least to put a stop to it happening again and bringing back the body parts for proper burial.

Dungeon Crawl Classics Horror #1: They Served Brandolyn Red consists of two mini-sandboxes. The first will see the Player Characters chase the ant-men onto the Longbow Vineyard, once the property of the Vintner family—of which some of the Player Characters are members, but which long since been abandoned. The second leads through some tunnels under the vineyard to the final denouement with the semi-sentient subterranean parasite who serves as the scenario’s primary antagonist. After the somewhat absurdist nature of the wedding, the scenario gets into its full gothic swing with encounters in the abandoned vineyard, including the former home of the Vintner family, the winery, and the family mausoleum. These are quite creepy encounters, each hinting at the secret that befell the Vintner family and ultimately led to the abandonment of the vineyard. This comes to a head in the winery with an absolutely fantastic staged encounter escalates from a haunting into something worthy of a Hammer Horror film. Of course, this being an adventure for Dungeon Crawl Classics and the Player Characters all being Zero Level, this is a thoroughly nasty encounter, but it is huge fun and the Judge should ham it up for she is worth.

By comparison, the delve into the tunnels below the vineyard are not as interesting as the encounters above ground in the vineyard. Taking place in the ant-men nest, they are in turns creepy and gooey and smelly, and they do resolve the scenario in terms of what it is going on in the present, whereas the exploration of the vineyard will reveal hidden family secrets and what happened in the past. Yet, they are not as much fun as the encounters above ground. 

Physically, Dungeon Crawl Classics Horror #1: They Served Brandolyn Red is nicely presented. It is well written, the map is good, and the illustrations are all excellent. The handouts are also good. The scenario should take a session or two to complete, but no more. The length of the scenario also means that it is easy to prepare.

There are plenty of Character Funnel scenarios for Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game, after all, they are a signature feature of the roleplaying game. Yet, Dungeon Crawl Classics Horror #1: They Served Brandolyn Red is no mere fantasy set-up and adventure. It is a tough adventure, with some nasty encounters, but from the start it involves story and it involves the Player Characters in that story, and it presents not one, but two mysteries. The first, taking place above ground in the vineyard, involves the four families and all but forgotten secrets of the past between them, the second below ground concerns the present and why the wedding was attacked, and has more of the feel of a fantasy story. The story is suitably gothic and is carried through into the vineyard’s best wine, Brandolyn Red, which will have a suitably gothic effect upon anyone who drinks it and also forms the adventure’s most notable treasure! Overall, Dungeon Crawl Classics Horror #1: They Served Brandolyn Red is an enjoyably entertaining scenario, one which the Judge will have as much fun running as her players do roleplaying.

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

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

—oOo—

Name: The Posse

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Andy Miller

Setting: Down Darker TrailsProduct: Scenario
What You Get: thirty-four page, 29.29 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Cowboys and dinosaurs, oh my! (Again)
Plot Hook: The Boyd Gang has robbed the 11:10 to Santaquin! Let’s ride out and round ‘em up.Plot Support: Introduction to train robberies, five NPCs, six detailed pregenerated Investigators, NPC and Investigator portraits.Production Values: Decent.
Pros
# Cowboys and dinosaurs, oh my!# Sequel to The Last Valley
# Potential convention scenario
# Potential one-shot# Well done pregenerated Investigators
# Enjoyable introduction to the Lost Worlds genre# Straightforward plot
# Multiple set-ups# Classic Wild West set-up# Action driven scenario
Cons
# Linear plot
# Utah background underused# Requires The Last Valley# No Sanity losses for failure?
Conclusion
# Cowboys and dinosaurs, oh my!
# Classic Wild West set-up# Linear plot

Out of Time is the first campaign for Tales from the Loop – Roleplaying in the ’80s That Never Was –and quite possibly the last. With Out of Time, Free League Publishing brings the award-winning roleplaying game based on the paintings of Simon Stålenhag to a close. Throughout this alternate childhood of the 1980s, young teenagers have explored rural small-town Sweden, but a rural small-town Sweden in which its streets, woods and fields, and skies and seas are populated by robots, gravitic tractors and freighters, strange sensor devices, and even creatures from the long past. To the inhabitants of this landscape, this is all perfectly normal—at least to the adults. To the children of this landscape, this technology is a thing of fascination, of wonderment, and of the strangeness that often only they can see. In Tales from the Loop, it is often this technology that is the cause of the adventures that the children—the Player Characters—will have away from their mundane, often difficult lives at home and at school. Taking place at the end of the decade, Out of Time takes place over the course of year, but has potential to be something more—and all because the campaign involves time travel…

Out of Time begins with a rash of pets and farm animals going missing, followed by flyers asking for information about lost pets going up across the neighbourhood, then rumours of a mechanical contraption seen roaming the fields outside the small communities of the Mälaren Islands. When the Player Characters investigate, they discover the first of many strange experiments taking place, experiments which get stranger and stranger as the campaign progresses. Later, their summer takes a decidedly strange, literally ‘Out of the Body’ turn, which reveals more of the Mystery, before the weather gets randomly worse and storms threaten to shut the region down. Ultimately, to solve the Mystery and even save the world, the Player Characters must sneak out during a lockdown and break into the Facility for Research in High Energy Physics—or ‘The Loop’—the world’s largest particle accelerator, constructed and run by the government agency, Riksenergi. There at last they can discover what links the storms out of nowhere which bring strange mud and sand, the repeated crashes of the magnetrine ship Susi Talvi, the weird flashbacks at their summer camp, and the 1969 moon landing.

The campaigns consists of a trilogy of scenarios—‘The Animal Ark’, ‘Summer Camp’, and ‘The Storm in the Hourglass’. The first takes place just before Christmas, 1988, which only serves to heighten the fractious state of their home lives, but at the same time, there are reports of missing animals, strange devices can be found scattered throughout the area, and a magnetrine ship appears out of a rip in the sky to crash again and again. ‘The Animal Ark’ is quite a short scenario, but does a good job of setting up the campaign, whilst giving the players scope to develop their characters’ home lives. There is advice for the Game Master and suggestions as to what can be added to reflect the heightened anxiety and emotions which seem to occur at Christmas, but many players will have had experiences of their own and can make suggestions of their own too. Essentially setting the scenario at Christmas serves to strengthen the two contrasting strands of a Tales from the Loop game, one being the Game Master presenting the weirdness of its alternative setting and the Mysteries of The Loop, the other being the players exploring the emotional, but mundane complexities of their characters’ home lives.

‘Summer Camp’ moves the time on to the summer of 1989 and the tradition of children being sent to summer camp. Here the Player Characters and other local children are kept busy with a range of outdoor activities, from hut building and gymnastics to orienteering and telling ghost stories round the fire. Things get strange though, when each of the Player Characters wakes up to find that not only is he not in his own body, but he is not in his own time—it is 1969! This presents a challenge for both character and player, as he must negotiate life in an unfamiliar period and negotiate unfamiliar relationships. This is in addition to the ups and downs of life at the summer camp, a strange old man in the woods, and weird dreams… Although replacement characters are provided for the players to roleplay in 1969, one of the options is for the Game Master to create the parents of the Player Characters from back in 1989. Here is a fantastic opportunity for the players to roleplay their characters’ parents and what they were like as children. However, this will take some extra effort upon the part of the Game Master to set up and develop, but the emotional payoff, as the Player Characters realise that their parents had Mysteries of their own to solve and weirdness going on around them just as their children do in 1989, is a great piece of storytelling…

‘The Storm in the Hourglass’ brings the campaign and the 1980s to a close. Set in the autumn of 1989, the storms back in ‘The Animal Ark’ appear again and begin to escalate, forcing the authorities to declare an emergency as the weather worsens. ‘Men in Black’ are seen around the Mälaren Islands as ‘time bubbles’, which when the Player Characters investigate, turn out to be unstable, appear across the region. There are indications too that the technology which has been a fixture of the Player Characters’ childhood is malfunctioning, including the Loop itself. The climax of the campaign will see the Player Characters hopping from time bubble to time bubble and breaking into the Graviton at the heart of the Loop, there to confront their antagonist and the threat she has created.

Of the three scenarios in Out of Time, ‘Summer Camp’ is the longest, mainly because there is a large number of camp activities and events to involve the Player Characters in before anything strange happens. Potentially, this may unbalance the tension between the ordinary and outré strands of a typical Tales from the Loop scenario. Probably the best solution would be for the Game Master to tailor the camp activities and events to the Player Characters to avoid this. As the campaign progresses though, it does grow in complexity, especially in the finale with all of the hopping from time bubble to time bubble.

As a campaign, Out of Time introduces an aspect intrinsically excluded from TTales from the Loop, and that is the potential death of a Player Character. In 1969, the Player Characters are threatened by the campaign’s antagonist with a gun—and she is not afraid to use it. Now in this sequence, it is not as much of an issue, since the Player Characters are not in their bodies, but it highlights the greater peril they face in the campaign. Of course, if the Game Master has decided to port the Player Characters back into their parents, it amplifies the peril, even threatening a Grandfather Paradox should one of the parents be shot and die… Back in 1989, there is the possibility that the Player Characters will fail and unlike in previous scenarios for Tales from the Loop, that has world-ending consequences…

The possibility of the Player Characters facing their death in Out of Time foreshadows another possible option for the campaign, which is to run it as a link between Tales from the Loop and its nineties sequel, Things from the Flood, where death for the Player Characters is a possibility. The authors suggest that the final part, ‘The Storm in the Hourglass’ be shifted forward to 1994 when the ‘Mälarö Leak’ occurred, hot, brown liquid bubbling up out of the ground, forcing an evacuation that would last for years, flooding the Loop, and precipitating to a scandal that would force the Swedish government to shut down Riksenergi and sell the Loop. The advice on this is perhaps somewhat underwritten and it does mean that there is a much longer gap between the events of ‘Summer School’ and ‘The Storm in the Hourglass’, during which time events will have moved out of the framework for Tales from the Loop. However, Out of Time does provide options which would bridge this gap.

The first option is a nonet of ‘Secret Places’, a Mystery Landscape which fits both the 1980s of Tales from the Loop and the 1990s of Things from the Flood. These range from the strange platforms, mechanical marvels, and scrap ships being seen throughout the area of ‘Castle in the Sky’ to the lone concrete foundation with a single hatch which appears having thrust up from the ground in ‘Extra Life’. All of the Mysteries come with an explanation as to the Truth, Hooks, Countdown, and the Antagonist, and can be easily slotted into a Game Master’s campaign or expanded as necessary. The second option is ‘The Mystery Machine’, a set of tables for inspiring and generating Mysteries of the Game Master’s own design, whilst the third, ‘The Mix-CD of Mysteries’ presents an octuple of Mysteries based on eight classic CD tracks from the nineties, such as Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit and Pulp’s Common People. Again, these come with an explanation as to the Truth, Hooks, Countdown, and the Antagonist, and can be easily slotted into a Game Master’s campaign or expanded as necessary. Again, just like the Mystery Landscape of ‘Secret Places’, they will need some development upon the part of the Game Master. However, most of the tracks listed come from the mid to late nineties and so thematically, do not quite bridge the gap between Tales from the Loop and Things from the Flood as well as a wider selection might do. In many cases, the mature nature of the lyrics and the Mysteries they inspire better suit the nineties and thus Things from the Flood than they do Tales from the Loop. Nevertheless, thematically they can be used to foreshadow the nineties and events of Things from the Flood and of course, inspire the Game Master to write her own using other lyrics.

Physically, Out of Time is as well presented as you would expect for a Tales from the Loop title. Of course, it highlights Simon Stålenhag’s fantastic artwork, but the writing is also good and the layout is clean, tidy, and accessible. All three scenarios follow the same format, making them easy to access and relatively easy to run.

It is great to finally have a campaign for Tales from the Loop, even if it is bringing the decade and the roleplaying game to a close. It should be no surprise that the campaign is challenging given it involves time travel, and although the plot is given a clear diagram for the Game Master to follow, it is complex and will require her to read through the plot with some care. With that preparation, Out of Time is a fantastic campaign, presenting the Player Characters with a challenging and enjoyably complex mystery, a mystery which brings Tales from the Loop to the conclusion it deserves.

The Dark Forest – A Call of Cthulhu Scenario Set in the Modern Day is a scenario for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition. Published by Stygian Fox Publishing, it is the second release from the publisher as part of its Patreon programme. The scenario is a missing persons case—that of a child at a detention and rehabilitation centre for youth offenders—which takes the Investigators to Michigan state’s Upper Peninsula and deep into the Hiawatha National Forest where they will confront ancient gods and the pernicious influence of the Mythos, all hiding behind a façade of corporate greed and child rehabilitation. The set-up of the scenario means that The Dark Forest could easily be run using Delta Green: The Roleplaying Game as it can Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, although it introduces an agency of its own, The Advocacy, an independent consultancy which takes U.S. government contracts and investigates unusual events. However, the scenario does carry a ‘Contains Explicit Content’ warning and the advice that some players might find its mature themes disturbing, dealing as it does rape, molestation, and institutional violence against defenceless teenagers. 

The Dark Forest – A Call of Cthulhu Scenario Set in the Modern Day begins with the Investigators being contacted by Martina Love. Her son, Donte, is nearing the end of his sentence at the P.J. Nelson Training School for Boys in Michigan state’s Upper Peninsula, but she has not heard anything from him, the staff say that he is at an external facility, and she is becoming increasingly worried. She asks the Investigators to find her son for her, but when the Investigators begin to make enquiries, they quickly learn that the youth correctional facility is currently in lockdown because several of the boys have absconded. All this and more will need to be determined before the Investigators arrive in northern Michigan, where the mobile phone network is unpredictable and connection to the Internet even worse. Beyond this however, there is relatively little to be learned through the research methods traditional to Lovecraftian investigative roleplay and consequently, the scenario has just the single handout. An alternative set-up for The Dark Forest is to have the Investigators be teachers at the P.J. Nelson Training School for Boys. This is a stronger set-up if the Keeper wants to run the scenario as a one-shot, but does require the Keeper to prepare and present a lot of information that the teachers would know upfront because they work at the facility, rather than delivering them piece by piece as Investigators coming from the outside conduct their enquiries. 

Once the Investigators get to Hiawatha Township and the P.J. Nelson Training School for Boys, the investigation takes place in three stages—interviews at the prison, at the prison’s work camps where the boys undergo vocational training for life beyond their sentence, and with the prison’s de facto warden, Bill Nelson. The Investigators are likely discover that the staff and inmates have grown used to the oddities of life in and around the Hiawatha National Forest, and are not necessarily hiding anything sinister, but simply corrupt. (Well, the scenario is set in a privatised prison system after all.) A radically transformative and horrid encounter with one of the missing boys definitely points to the former though, that is, if the Investigators survive the encounter, as it comes at a moment when they are unaware of what is to come and thus unprepared. The scenario does not deal with the fallout from this, but it will point towards something going on deep in the forest. 

Initially, there is an ethereal feel to the Investigators’ incursions into the forest, but as their search for answers continues and takes them it deeper and deeper, the feel becomes darker and darker, as well as literally as the foliage and canopy thickens, and the light fades… Ultimately, the Investigators will confront the evil at the heart of the scenario, a confrontation which will take them into the Finnish equivalent of the ‘Upside Down’. The change from the here to the ‘Upside Down’ is nicely handled, but the confrontation itself, although climatic, is one note—a fight. No other means of defeating the threat are suggested and the likelihood is that the antagonist will defeat the Investigators unless they are forewarned and thus well-armed. Unfortunately, that is not necessarily likely since Investigators do not have the opportunity to learn very much about what it is that they are facing, and less so if the Investigators are teachers at the P.J. Nelson Training School for Boys. The advice is that the Keeper should allow the Investigators to retreat and make a plan, before coming back to face the threat. Notably, at the end of the scenario, there is a Sanity reward for retreating from the threat, which is only slightly less than for defeating it. 

Physically, The Dark Forest – A Call of Cthulhu Scenario Set in the Modern Day needs an editor. 

Yet in other ways, The Dark Forest is a superbly presented book. It is done in quite a rich palette of earthy colours and the artwork is, for the most part, excellent. Besides the absence of editing, the book could have been better organised in places, but that is something that the Keeper can easily adjust to. 

As interesting as The Dark Forest is in reinterpreting the forces and influence of the Mythos through another mythology and pantheon, that of Finnish myths of the Kalevala, the execution is ultimately underwhelming. The Investigators are never quite able to prepare for, or understand, what they will face in the Finnish equivalent of the ‘Upside Down’, and the singular solution of violence is disappointing. The Dark Forest – A Call of Cthulhu Scenario Set in the Modern Day starts strong with an intriguing mystery and its presentation of mature themes is well-handled and there are some creepy scenes, but its dénouement leaves much to be desired.

It has been almost thirty-five years since the publisher of Britain’s longest running Science Fiction comic, 2000 AD, dabbled in the field of roleplaying. Both times, it was with solo adventure books, first with the Diceman comic, and then with You are Maggie Thatcher: a dole-playing game, but that changes with the initial release of a new publication from Rebellion. This is Adventure Presents, essentially a complete roleplaying game and scenario in a magazine format. The first issue is Tartarus Gate – A Roleplaying Game of Sci-Fi Horror, from the designers of Spire: The City Must Fall. This consists of a simple roleplaying game and a full, three-session scenario designed for up to six players and the Game Master for which everyone will need three six-sided dice and some pencils. The Game Master will need to do some careful preparation, but Tartarus Gate – A Roleplaying Game of Sci-Fi Horror comes with everything necessary to play—six ready-to-play pregenerated Player Characters, a handful of NPCs, and some absolutely gorgeous cartography and art.

The setting for Tartarus Gate is the year 2130. For years, Earth has been dominated by the OBOL Corporation and in search of a better future—or at least proper employment, the Player Characters have taken positions as unpaid interns aboard the transport ship Charon, entrusted with shepherding cargo from Earth to the Tartarus Gate Waystation. Six months into the journey, they are awoken from their Deep Sleep Pods and after recovering from the process, they are given their first task. Visual feeds from the lower decks have gone down, but before they did, the computers registered that something was moving. All the interns have to do is descend to the lower decks, restore the visual feeds, and ensure that there is nothing moving down there that there should not be… The Charon is six months’ travel from the nearest help, so it is down to the interns. With luck, they can impress their employer and make their temporary employment permanent.

The format of Tartarus Gate is important. The centre twenty-two pages are intended to be pulled out. They start with the six four-page character sheets, each of which includes a briefing, the character description, equipment list, and deck plans of the Charon. Then they followed by the various map handouts, all done in three dimensions and full colour, the four-page explanation of the rules for Tartarus Gate, and the eight-page GM Reference Book. This leaves the other twenty-two pages of Tartarus Gate devoted to the actual scenario.

A character or intern in Tartarus Gate is simply defined. He has four Abilities—Toughness, Agility, Smarts, and Wits—each ranging in value between one and four. He has a value for his Health and his Resolve—his willpower, the former as high as twenty, the latter as high as twelve. He also has three Drives, for example, Hasty, Selfless, and Haunted. Each character has a background and a given role, such as Veteran or True Believer, and an excellent illustration. It is left up to the player to name the character.

Mechanically, Tartarus Gate is simple and straightforward, its key mechanic, known as the ‘Adventure system’, best described as ‘roll three and keep two’—mostly. For his character to undertake an action, a player rolls three six-sided dice and removes one die. Which die depends upon the rating of the Ability being tested. If the Ability has a value of one, the highest die value is removed; if two, the die with the middle value is removed; if three, the lowest die value is removed; and if four, no die is removed, and all are counted. Either way, the total value of the remaining dice needs to equal or exceed the value of a Target Number to succeed, the Target Numbers ranging from six or doable to twelve or extremely difficult. The Game Master can adjust the difficulty of a task by temporarily increasing or lowering the Player Character’s Ability value. A supporting Player Character can help another and so temporarily increase the supported Player Character’s Ability, whilst the acting Player Character can spend Resolve to also increase his Ability value. Resolve can be regained by a Player Character pursuing one or more of his Drives and in Tartarus Gate, and may be reset at the beginning of some chapters, as can Health.

Combat in Tartarus Gate consists of opposed rolls. The lower roll is subtracted from the higher roll and the remaining value deducted from the losing combatant’s Toughness. Combat is designed—much like the rules in general—to be fast and in the case of combat, potentially deadly.

Tarsus Gate as a scenario is broken down into three chapters. In the first chapter, the Player Characters will waken from their Deep Sleep Pods and put through their paces as a ‘recovery process’, much like the first though steps of a video game as a player is taught the controls and what each button does. Given their assignment by Assisti, the ship’s AI, they make their way to the engine room and there they have their first and then second strange encounter—the former with a bloodless, mangled corpse, the latter with a figure from Earth’s recent and wrought past… This figure will come to dominate the mystery which lies in the bowels of the Charon and will be revealed as the Player Characters moves from one chapter to the next.

It should be no surprise that the plot and structure to Tartarus Gate is linear. After all, the Player Characters have been tasked with going from one end of a spaceship to another and the scenario is quite short. However, there is still plenty for them to do and explore, and interact with the handful of NPCs the Game Master has to portray. As well as the detailed NPCs to run, the Game Master also has events to throw at the Player Characters in every location.

The chapter breaks are also used as moments of reflection, for the players to check how the game is going and perhaps a chance for them to change their characters’ Drives if necessary. Tartarus Gate also makes clear that its play is meant to be fun—for everyone, and that if anyone is made uncomfortable, then he should raise his hand and say so. 

Physically, Tartarus Gate is very nicely presented. It is well written, but what really stands out is the artwork—which is as good as you would expect from a publisher which puts out 2000 AD each week. If the illustrations are good, then the maps are even better. Overall, the production values, for what is just a ‘magazine roleplaying game’ are stunning.

Adventure Presents Tartarus Gate – A Roleplaying Game of Sci-Fi Horror is intended as a first roleplaying game and for the most part succeeds. Its combination of a simple, straightforward plot, set-up, and quick mechanics certainly supports that, as does the vibrantly exciting presentation. However, whilst it works as a first roleplaying game for those new to roleplaying, it is a slightly different matter for the prospective Game Master. If the Game Master has played a roleplaying game or two before, then not as much of an issue, but if the Game Master is coming to this totally anew, it will be more difficult for her. For the experienced Game Master, readying and running Tartarus Gate is relatively easy.

Adventure Presents Tartarus Gate – A Roleplaying Game of Sci-Fi Horror is an impressive first issue, an attractive package that is easy to pick up, prepare, and run—it could be done in thirty minutes!

 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?The Quacken presents a leviathan monster and associated scenario for use with RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha.
It is forty-five page, full colour, 3.29 MB PDF.
The layout is clean and tidy, and many of the illustrations good. It needs an edit.

Where is it set?
The Quacken is set in any coastal area or sea area around Genertela, although the default location for the associated scenario, ‘Clash with the Quacken’, is Mirrorsea Bay, off the coast of Esrolia.

If the Game Master really wants to play up the inspiration for ‘Clash with the Quacken’, it could easily be moved to the coast of Prax and involve the members of the Sun County Militia from Tales of the Sun County Militia: Sandheart Volume 1 and its sequels.

Who do you play?No specific Player Character types are required to play ‘Clash with the Quacken’, although sailors, fishermen, and anyone with the Darkness or Water Runes may have an advantage. A Shaman or anyone with Spirit Sight will also be useful and any good Orlanthi should relish the opportunity to confront the sea again.
What do you need?
The Quacken requires RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. The RuneQuest: Glorantha Bestiary may be useful for details of Ducks.
What do you get?
The last in the ‘Monster of the Month’ series, The Quacken presents a terrible creature, one which brings the land and the sea together, created during the War of the Gods when the Sea Tribe invaded the Earth, Magasta and an unnamed goddess. Essentially, giant squid with the beak and head of a duck, including feathers, and potentially, the bad temper of each. They notoriously aggressive, especially the females after they have come onto land to lay their eggs. Such females enter a state called ‘stupmi’ and vigorously drive off or consume anyone or anything which they see as a threat. Where females die after suffering through ‘stupmi’, males do not and may undergo bouts of it again and again. Males under its effects have been known to attack ships. However, the dead body of a Quacken can be harvested, its flesh sweet and best fried, the beak as a mild stimulant for Newtlings, the eyes for their oils, and their teeth as Death talismans!
In addition to fully detailing what is, really, a weird leviathan, The Quacken includes a scenario ‘Clash with the Quacken’. This is coastal set scenario in which the Player Characters are hired to come to the help of Stone Dock Village. The village chieftain has been having terrible dreams of the ocean depths, merfolk, and a crimson, and this comes at time when the fishermen of the village are bringing in reduced catches. He fears that worse is to come and wants the Player Characters to discover the cause of what has beset the village. This will see the Player Characters going to sea, dealing with a very grumpy and direct shaman, and protecting Stone Dock, the huge slab of primordial rock  that is the village wyter.
The inspiration for the scenario is obvious, and whilst it does draw from Clash of the Titans, ‘Clash with the Quacken’ is very much its own, making it an epic confrontation between the land and the sea. It does need some careful staging in certain scenes—especially in the spirit world, but the scenario is well supported with some solid NPCs for the Game Master to roleplay. Although, multiple versions of the Quacken are provided in order to scale the final confrontation to the power levels of the Player Characters, ‘Clash with the Quacken’ is still a challenging scenario.
Is it worth your time?Yes—The Quacken is a ridiculous idea. I mean, whoever would have thought of combining a Duck and a Squid? And yet... and yet, you know you are just waiting for someone to yell, “Unleash the Quacken!”
No—The Quacken is a ridiculous idea, like the ‘surf and turf’ equivalent of a Turducken. I mean, no. Really no. Let’s not even go there.Maybe—The Quacken definitely falls under ‘Your Glorantha May Vary’. In fact, it probably strays into your ‘Your Glorantha DOES Vary’, but Glorantha has Ducks, so why not Duck-Squids (or Squid-Ducks)?

Neverland is that faraway land where Peter Pan and the Lost Boys frolic and play, fairies gather in revelries, Captain James Hook connives and seeks vengeance against Peter Pan for cutting off his hand, the mermaids croon and scheme—and of course, children never grow up. As told in J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan; or, the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up, it is also the island and land to which Peter Pan brought the Darling children—Wendy, John, and Michael—to be the family that he never had. It is a story of growing up and accepting the responsibilities of becoming an adult, and putting childish things behind you, that is, part from Peter Pan himself. In the process, they lose the way to Neverland. In other tellings of the tale, Peter Pan becomes a story about what is lost—which of course, is childhood—and then reclaiming it. Yet what if the adults could find their way to Neverland, three adults in particular, and grow old? What if Wendy, John, and Michael Darling found their back to Neverland? What would they become? Would their presence change the island? Would Peter Pan notice? These are some of the themes explored in Neverland: A Fantasy Role-Playing Setting, a hexcrawl designed for use with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition.

Neverland: A Fantasy Role-Playing Setting is published by Andrew McMeels Publishing—best known for publishing ZWEIHÄNDER Grim & Perilous RPG—and features a roleplaying interpretation of Neverland, richly detailed across twenty-four hexes, over one hundred monsters, creatures, and NPCs, fourteen or factions, and numerous locations. The latter includes coral caves, Gnome hamlets, the Home Underground where Peter Pan and his Lost Boys have made their hideout, an inverted home to a lich, an amphitheatre dedicated to mermaid performances, Captain Hook’s ship the Jolly Roger, and the very Crocodile who hunts for the rest of Captain Hook, which can actually be explored as if it was an actual dungeon!

From the outset, Neverland: A Fantasy Role-Playing Setting is very much a book for the Dungeon Master, beginning with a very clear explanation of who’s who on Neverland and the various factions on the island. They include all three of the Darlings—all grown up, Peter Pan and his Lost Boys, Captain Hook and his crew, and much more. There is a wide array of factions on the island, all of them drawn from Peter Pan; or, the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up, but many of them unlikely to be unfamiliar to the players since they are more likely to be familiar with works based on the play rather than the play itself. It should be noted that in drawing from the original source, Neverland: A Fantasy Role-Playing Setting also updates one or two of them, since attitudes towards certain groups and words have changed in the century or so since the original play was performed.

Rules also cover travelling and exploring across the island—including, if the Player Characters can get sufficient fairy dust, the ability to fly, and using the Mermaids’ secret whirlpools and the Lost Boys’ hollow trees, the island’s daily cycle and movement of the Crocodile. Fun and recreation includes games of Hurling, Gnome Fairs, and Pirate Parties, whilst advanced rules cover chase sequences, and the dangers of harvesting from the dead—also pointing to a scarcity of resources on the island, and of harnessing the powers of a star, which can be used by non-spellcasters to cast spells appropriate to their personality. The huge Cast covers numerous monsters and creatures, as well as the various characters from Peter Pan, including the eponymous hero, the Darlings, Captain Hook and his crew, and more…

In comparison, the section devoted to the island of Neverland feels a little short, with just the one page devoted to each of its twenty-four hexes. Each page includes a larger view of the hex in question—taken from the larger isometric map of Neverland, a short description, a note of the timed events which occur twice daily, and a quintet of tables which can be used to generate encounters. These can occur every hour, and since it takes four hours—or a Clock in ‘island time’—to cross a hex, every hex can be very busy. Many of the hexes are also the locations of key places on the island, and whilst these are mentioned, they are not cross-referenced, making the flipping between the two in the book that little bit awkward. The various locations, whether a dungeon or a ship or an inverted tower or a mine, and so forth, are each given a page each, so feel a little more expansive than the pages devoted to individual hexes.

Besides various tables which provide adventure hooks, animals, fairy trades and tricks, locations, loot, Lost Boy traps, Mermaid games, objects, trinkets and trophies, and more, the book comes with ‘Tales from Neverland’, a set of eight short stories presented as extra chapters to the original Peter Pan story. They are each a very quick read, and can serve as inspiration, hooks, clues, and the like. They do add some flavour and perhaps a little context for the Dungeon Master, but nothing more. Rounding out Neverland: A Fantasy Role-Playing Setting is not only a bibliography, but also a sketchbook. This collection of sketches, finished pieces, and notes nicely charts the development of the look of the book and its art. Its inclusion undoubtedly adds to the charm of Neverland: A Fantasy Role-Playing Setting.

However, as rich and as well-presented as Neverland: A Fantasy Role-Playing Setting actually is, there is a handful questions that it does not effectively address. These include, “What do I do with this?”, “How do I get there?”, and “What do I play?”. There is some initial discussion of the book’s themes, but it is all too brief. Then, at the end of the book, the author provides six ready-to-play pre-generated Player Characters, ranging from a Big Game Hunter or Ranger and Child Pickpocket or Thief to Holy Orphan or Cleric and Stranded Pirate or Fighter. All of these are done as Humans and all have reasons for being on the island, and together the hextet feel just a very little like the adventurers from the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon in being from the ordinary world and cast into the land of dreams that is Neverland. They also suggest reasons why Player Characters might end up in Neverland, but beyond this, there is a lack of advice for Dungeon Master on what Classes and types of characters the players might play, how they might get to Neverland, and what they do when they get there. To some degree this is offset with tables of random and specific adventure ideas, plot hooks, and rumours, but whilst the author states that they are there if the Dungeon Master is stuck as to what to do next, what if the Dungeon Master is stuck at the start?

Another issue is with the monsters. Including variations, there are over one hundred of them, and whilst that gives Neverland and the Dungeon Master variety aplenty, it does feel like a lot for a twenty-four hex hexcrawl and the likelihood is that many of them the Dungeon Master may never bring into play. Now that is not necessarily a bad thing, but with that many entries in the bestiary or cast list as Neverland: A Fantasy Role-Playing Setting terms it, not all of them are given the descriptions that they deserve, forcing the Dungeon Master to rely upon their illustrations to describe them. Which is disappointing.

Physically, Neverland: A Fantasy Role-Playing Setting is a beautiful book, done in rich blocks of greys and blacks, reds and green. The layout is crisp and clean and the book itself is an easy read. The cartography is also good. However, the book could have been better organised, especially when it comes to cross referencing the locations in the text and the placement of the random tables which come in the middle of the book rather than at the end where again they might be easier to find.

Neverland: A Fantasy Role-Playing Setting is a rich and detailed setting, one which takes the whimsy and wonder of the source material, Peter Pan; or, the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up, and makes it somewhere that the Player Characters can explore and perhaps discover the darker secrets of the island. It is beautifully presented, but ultimately, it needs more effort upon the part of the Dungeon Master to bring to the table and to draw her players in than perhaps it should.

The Alpha Quadrant Sourcebook is the second setting supplement for Modiphius Entertainment’s Star Trek Adventures roleplaying game following on from the Beta Quadrant Sourcebook. It is home to Federation member worlds such as Betazed and Tellar Prime, but its dominant powers are the Klingon Empire and Romulan Star Empire. However, these are not the focus of the Alpha Quadrant Sourcebook, which pushes out to the frontier where fractious borders exist between the Federation and the Cardassian Union, the Breen Confederacy, and the Tholian Assembly, whilst the Ferengi Alliance pursues between them all. Further, the Alpha Quadrant Sourcebook pushes out to the nexus of the conflict in the region—the planet Bajor, Deep Space 9, and the Wormhole (although the supplement is not a Deep Space 9 sourcebook)—and on a further year into 2372 from the 2371 of Star Trek Adventures and the Beta Quadrant Sourcebook. Although there are mentions of them here and there, the Alpha Quadrant Sourcebook is not a sourcebook for a campaign setting during the periods of Star Trek: The Original Series or Star Trek: Enterprise.

The slimmest book to date for Star Trek Adventures, the Alpha Quadrant Sourcebook is essentially a series of briefings given by Benjamin Sisko, the commander of Deep Space 9, to a Starfleet starship captain assigned to the quadrant. In turn, it covers the recent history of the quadrant with the recent liberation of Bajor from Cardassian occupation by the Bajoran Resistance, the discovery of the Wormhole through to the Gamma Quadrant, incursions by the strange forces of the Dominion from the other side of the Wormhole, and the Klingon Empire’s withdrawal from the Khitomer Accords which have maintained peace between the Klingons and the Federation for decades. Three worlds of the Federation are covered in some detail, Betazed, Denobula—probably the prime section of information for a Star Trek: Enterprise campaign in the Alpha Quadrant Sourcebook, and Tellar Prime, the latter completing coverage of the founding members of the United Federation of Planets. These are presented in some detail, not just Betazoid physiology, but also their political structure, legal system, culture, important locations, and more. There is a lot of nice background here, such as the Temple of the Great Houses where information about the no longer existing Great Betazoid Houses is kept, but which can be restored if descendants can be found; Quok’lox Trash Island on Denobula where everything on planet that cannot be recycled is kept and is rumoured to be home to Denobulans living apart from the rest of the planet; and the difficulties of Tellarite-Andorian relations, the former with their love of antagonistic debate, the latter with their propensity for martial action. Bajor, the Cardassian Union, the Ferengi Alliance, the Tzenkethi Coalition, the Breen Confederacy, and the Tholian Assembly are all given similar treatment, so for Bajor it looks at the effects of the Cardassian Occupation, the Provisional Government, Bajoran spirituality, whilst Deep Space 9 and the Wormhole are detailed under Places of interest. Full stats are given for Starbase Deep Space 9 as well. Included in the background to the Cardassian Union are details of Maquis, the resistance movement that resulted from the Federation-Cardassian treaty of 2370 which created the DMZ and saw some colony worlds transferred to the Cardassian Union, whilst the Rules of Acquisition are discussed in the section on the Ferengi Alliance. Various worlds of the Cardassian Union and the Ferengi Alliance are also described.

From the Arbazan and the flight-cable, bewinged Aurelians—complete with rules for flight—to the Ktarians and the Zaranites, the Alpha Quadrant Sourcebook introduces eleven new species available as playable options, including the Ferengi, whilst the inclusion of the feline Caitains and the tripedal Edosians are sure to please fans of the Star Trek: The Animated Series. Some ten starships are detailed for the Cardassians, the Ferengi, the Breen, the Talarians, and the Tholians. These range from the Cardassion Hideki-Class Corvette and Keldon-Class Heavy Cruiser to the Spinner and Weaver vessels of the Tholian Assembly. As in other supplements for Star Trek Adventures, these are poorly illustrated, or not all, and as with the Beta Quadrant Sourcebook, there are no starships given for the Federation, but again, this is less of an issue.

Rounding out the Alpha Quadrant Sourcebook, its ‘Encounters and Adversaries’ explore some campaign ideas and present various NPCs across the Demilitarized Zone, the Badlands, and the Federation Border. As well as background they come with encounter seeds and campaign ideas, such as a Maquis-themed campaign and a Federation Border campaign, and write-ups of major NPCs such as Gul Dukat, Ro Laren, Michael Eddington, and Thomas Riker. These are all useful and the campaign ideas point towards the potential of the Alpha Quadrant and the Alpha Quadrant Sourcebook.

There is a wealth of detail in the Alpha Quadrant Sourcebook, especially when it focuses upon the various polities at the far reaches of the quadrant and their particular worlds. The write-ups of the Betazed, Denobula, and Tellar Prime are all decent, as are those of the Cardassian Union and Ferengi Alliance, and the campaign ideas and adversaries all support the material in the supplement. Yet, the Alpha Quadrant Sourcebook is far from perfect. Its problems are fivefold. First, it is not the Alpha Quadrant Sourcebook, but the ‘Alpha Quadrant Sourcebook in 2372’, so there is no timeline and no sense of history to the region as if nothing really happened until recently. Second, it covers just a handful of worlds and third, whilst it gives numerous new species to play or use as NPCs, it does not give them a great deal of background or details of their worlds. In many cases, they are not illustrated either, leaving the Game Master to work with some really underwritten descriptions—for example, the reader is left with no idea what the Tzenkethi look like. Fourth, there is an avoidance of the technical elements that a Science Fiction setting and roleplaying game would seem to want. So, in addition to the lack of a timeline and the lack of illustrations for certain species, starships are not illustrated when detailed, worlds are pictured, but not mapped, and so on. Fifth, the writing is often unengaging, especially in the case of the sidebars, which all too often add flavour but not substance.

Physically, the Alpha Quadrant Sourcebook is a decent looking book. There are some inconsistencies in the layout, but otherwise the book is generally well-written and decently illustrated—though not always effectively—with a fully painted images. The layout is done in the style of the LCARS—Library Computer Access/Retrieval System—operating system used by Starfleet. So everything is laid out over a rich black background with the text done in soft colours. This is very in keeping with the theme and period setting of Star Trek Adventures, but it is imposing, even intimidating in its look, and it is not always easy to find things on the page because of the book’s look. The other issue is that the none-more black pages are easy to mark with fingerprints.

Ultimately, just like the Beta Quadrant Sourcebook, the Alpha Quadrant Sourcebook has much to cover—and it is a lot—but it is not quite up to the job. Again, there are whole sections, like the Cardassian Union and the Ferengi Alliance, the Badlands and the Demilitarised Zone, which could have had whole sourcebooks and campaigns of their own devoted to them, and as good as the information is on say, the Cardassian Union and the Ferengi Alliance, the Alpha Quadrant Sourcebook does not feel comprehensive. Further, the focus on the one period of Deep Space 9 and relations with the Cardassian Union and Bajor, do leave the treatment of both the rest of the Alpha Quadrant and its history lacking by comparison. The Alpha Quadrant Sourcebook is interesting and informative, but it never gets away from feeling like an introduction to a sourcebook on Deep Space 9 or the Cardassian Union, and again, the Game Master is left wanting more.

The abandoned wizard’s tower is almost as much a cliché for Dungeons & Dragons as the dungeon below ground is, but the joy of coming to an abandoned wizard’s tower (or indeed, a dungeon) in Dungeons & Dragons is seeing what the author has done with it to make it is own, to make it stand out, and to make it different. The Coral Tower of Naaman al-Raman is an adventure designed for Player Characters of Fifth Level by Louis Counter for use with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition which involves an abandoned wizard’s tower. It scores points for originality by not being just another run-of-the-mill abandoned wizard’s tower ready to be dropped into the cod-medieval setting of the Dungeon Master’s choice, but by being set in Zakhara, the Land of Fate, from TSR, Inc.’s setting inspired by One Thousand and One Nights and the Hollywood cinema which drew from it, as detailed in Al-Qadim: Arabian Adventures and Al-Qadim: Land of Fate. This places it to the southeast of Faerûn, the Forgotten Realms, with the Coral Tower of the title being specifically in the foothills of the Furrowed Mountains southwest of the village of Talv, some days travel to the southeast of Muluk, ‘The City Of Kings’. Of course, the scenario can be moved elsewhere in Al-Qadim, and even elsewhere bearing in mind that the scenario involves Djinn, Efreet, Dao, and Marid—as well as their rivalries, relationships, and politics, which firmly place the scenario in Al-Qadim, or at least settings with similar Arabic elements.

The Coral Tower of Naaman al-Raman is designed for Player Characters of Fifth Level and does not require any characters of specific Classes. That said, The Coral Tower of Naaman al-Raman is an abandoned wizard’s tower, so arcane spellcasters will be useful and since the scenario involves Djinn, Efreet, Dao, and Marid—as well as their rivalries, relationships, and politics, a Sha’ir will be useful. Three adventure hooks are given to get the Player Characters involved. Two involve the Player Characters being hired to recover a gem known as The Liquid Heart, one by a Marid, Oshaba Abu Zobaah, the other by a Dao, Ynadin. The third suggests that the Player Characters are attracted by the possibility of the treasures to be found in the Coral Tower of Naaman al-Raman. These do feel underwhelming, especially the third, and especially given that the hook does not suggest or hint as to what treasures might be found within.

The Coral Tower of Naaman al-Raman of course stands alone. Its lower floors have been occupied by an evil shepherd and his guard ‘dogs’ and both they and one or two middle floors have suffered from being exposed to the elements. The lower floors because the shepherd and his guard ‘dogs’ do not care and the middle floors appear to have suffered some kind of explosion. Could that have been the cause of Naaman al-Raman’s disappearance? The explosion has also caused a break in the tower—which is still standing despite the break—and this likely to initially impede the Player Characters’ progress until they can find a way up. Fortunately, the means is provided for them to bridge the gap. It is worth the effort, for this is where the tower gets interesting and more detailed. There is a strong sense of the elements and the elemental races native to Al-Qadim to the descriptions given of various rooms and locations, with paintings which appear to give off the natural light of the elemental regions they depict. It has a slightly weird, almost ethereal feel to it in one or two of the rooms, and whilst there are monsters, the Player Characters will find themselves being faced with puzzles just as much fights. There is also plenty of treasure to be had, though none of it comes in the form of coins and indeed, very little of it in the form of traditional magical items. That may be disappointing to some players and their characters. It would have been nice if a few more the books to be found within the tower had been given titles.

Ultimately, The Coral Tower of Naaman al-Raman is lacking a climax. Not necessarily a final boss battle, but at least the option for the Dungeon Master to stage one. With a Marid and a Dao both wanting The Liquid Heart, a standoff between the two seems like a great way to end the Player Characters’ explorations. Plus, The Liquid Heart is also underwhelming in the sense that it is at best a MacGuffin—but it could have been more, perhaps with its own power and then the opportunity for the  Player Characters to wield some of that power (or even The Liquid Heart to wield one of them!). 

Physically, the layout for The Coral Tower of Naaman al-Raman is basic, but tidily presented. It does need an edit and behind its decent cover, the scenario is unillustrated. Instead, it is left up to the floor plans of the tower to break up the text. These are drawn by the ever-dependable Dyson Logos and so are good as you would expect. However, the floor plans for his ‘shattered wizard tower’ are released under a free, royalty-free, commercial licence which does mean that they are not original and they will be used elsewhere (such as ‘The Tower of Jayúritlal’ in The Excellent Travelling Volume Issue No. 11). There is thus, a certain familiarity to them, a chance—a slim one, but a chance that they might be recognised. However, what is interesting about their use here and elsewhere, is just like the very nature of the abandoned wizard’s tower, seeing how another author approaches them and details them.

Where The Coral Tower of Naaman al-Raman really works is its use of themes and setting, the elements and the elemental races native to Al-Qadim, to detail the various rooms and locations of the Coral Tower. It enforces that setting as does the author’s tying in of Dao and Marid rivalries, relationships, and politics, and suggested link to the the Ruined Kingdoms campaign. It suffers though in terms of Player Character motivations and potential storytelling elements, but a good Dungeon Master can address those. Overall, The Coral Tower of Naaman al-Raman is a thematically enjoyable take upon the traditional abandoned wizard’s tower that needs a little more development in places.

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

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

—oOo—
Name: Too Close to Home

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Benjamin Schäfer

Setting: Modern
Product: Scenario
What You Get: Twelve page, 31.04 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: “It isn't hard at all to make a wish. The difficultly lies in how to make what you wish for a reality.”
Plot Hook: A strangely impervious corpse, a missing funeral director, could they be connected?Plot Support: Simple and straightforward plot, detailed location descriptions, four maps, four NPCs, and a single ‘monster’.Production Values: Clean and tidy, well organised, and reasonable maps.
Pros
# Easy to adapt to other time periods
# Short one to two session scenario
# Nicely detailed locations# Monster light# Mythic mystery
Cons
# Mythic mystery
# Mythos light# Monster light# Potential for handouts, but no handouts# Mystery might not be revealed
Conclusion
# Mythic mystery, which might not be revealed# Short and ineffable

It is somewhen in the nineteenth century… It is the dawning of a new age, yet the relationships of the past age linger… For centuries, the peoples of Scandinavia have lived side by side with the Vaesen, supernatural creatures who helped out on the farms, gave a hand when it came to calving, ensured that lost children would find their way home, and kept everyone alive during the harsh winters of Northern Europe, and in return would receive milk and grain from the farms. As Scandinavia is changed by war and industrialisation and revolution and urbanisation and migration and sciences, the once symbiotic relationship between the people and the vaesen has been driven asunder. The ways of the country have been forgotten, few knowing how to appease the vaesen, and in turn the vaesen have turned aggressive, bloodthirsty, and wicked—snatching children where they once would have kept a watch over them, wrecking houses when once they would have swept them clean, and burning barns when once they would have driven out the vermin. In their wrath, they grow stronger and volatile, and the supernatural seems to spread as streams run with blood, calves are born with two heads, children are lost in the forests, and faeries skip into villages to lure the young maid and the handsome man away with them. The vaesen—Mermaids and Wood Wives, Werewolves and Witches, Revenants and Mylings, Sea Serpents and Kraken, and more, have become a threat and for the good of all, a solution must be found to their pernicious activities!

Yet there are those who have not forgotten the vaesen. In fact, it was an encounter with vaesen, perhaps a werewolf under the full moon or a troll under that bridge, which gave them the gift of the Sight, the ability to see vaesen, and made them each a Thursday’s Child. Some of those with the Sight have gathered at the headquarters of the Society, the old and decaying Castle Gyllencreutz by the Fyris River in Upsala, a city noted for the size of its Gothic cathedral and power of the Church, its large university, and recent which devastated much of the city. The Society was a body of men and women which for centuries had dedicated itself to the study and understanding of the vaesen, whose last members have been missing or resigned for at least a decade. As members of the newly re-established Society, they will travel across Scandinavia, seeking out vaesen, not to hunt them or take them as trophies, but to understand them and to help them, so that they will stop preying upon the peoples of Scandinavia. It is not a matter of taking force of arms to stop the vaesen, but to research them, to identify their weakness, and to use it against them. And despite their courage, conviction, and ability to see the supernatural, this is not without its dangers for members of the Society. Exposure to and confrontation with the vaesen and their strange abilities and the secrets of Scandinavia, will scar members of the Society, perhaps even permanently. However, duty and the lure of understanding will drive members of the Society to confront the vaesen for as long as they are able…

This is the set-up for Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying, a roleplaying game of investigative folklore horror set in nineteenth century Scandinavia, based on Vaesen: Spirits and Monsters of Scandinavian Folklore as collected and illustrated by Johan Egerkrans, and published by Free League Publishing. It is an investigative horror game set in Scandinavia during the nineteenth century, using the Year Zero engine first seen in Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days, and subsequently a wide array of roleplaying games from Tales from the Loop – Roleplaying in the '80s That Never Was to Forbidden Lands – Raiders & Rogues in a Cursed World. Although suitable for oneshot scenarios, Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying is designed for campaign, the Player Characters expected to return from their investigations into the vaesen to Castle Gyllencreutz where they have the chance to recover from and ruminate on their encounters and discoveries, explore the castle and perhaps uncover its secrets and facilities, make friends and allies in the community at large, and hopefully ward off the unwanted attention and intrusion of the curious, the superstitious, and the sceptical… To that end, Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying provides the means to create characters, investigate and confront the vaesen, develop and explore Castle Gyllencreutz, details of the various types of vaesen with some twenty or so fully described, advice for the Game Master, and ‘The Dance of Dreams’, a complete introductory mystery.

A Player Character in Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying is defined by his age; Attributes and Skills; a Motivation, a Trauma, and a Dark Secret; a Talent and a relationship with another Player Character, a memento, and some equipment. Age sets the balance between Attributes and Skills, the Attributes of Physique, Precision, Logic, and Empathy being rated between two and five, Skills between one and five; Motivation explains why the Player Character is prepared to hunt down and confront vaesen, whilst Trauma explains why or how the Player Character gained the Sight; and the Dark Secret is something that the Player Character wants to keep. Each Talent is a trick or trait, such as Bookworm which provides a bonus to the Learning Skill or Nine Lives, which enables a player to switch the dice when rolling to determine what critical injury his character suffers. Talents are either tied to a particular Archetype or general, in which case, any character can select them later on in the game. A Memento is a possession which the Player Character holds dear, such as a dried red rose or a golden box from a distant land, and by interacting with it, help him overcome a Condition.

To create a character, a player has two options. The first is to choose an Archetype of which there are ten—Academic, Doctor, Hunter, Occultist, Officer, Priest, Private Detective, Servant, Vagabond,  and Writer. Each provides options for the player to choose from in terms of Names, Motivation, Trauma, Dark Secret, and Relationships, and lists the Archetype’s main Attribute and Skill, and suggested Talents and Equipment. The player also assigns points to his Attributes and Skills.

Our first sample character is Selma Nilsson, a middle-aged women who always wanted to be a writer, but her ambitions were thwarted by having to look after her sick mother, who also frowned on her desire to tell stories. Unable to complete any stories due to her mother’s influence, it was a great shock to discover upon her mother’s death that her mother had written stories herself. Not long after Selma published the first few of them, she was visited by a strange creature who cursed her for stealing its stories… And now she cannot complete any stories!

Name: Selma Nilsson
Age: Middle-Aged
Motivation: Revenge
Trauma: Cursed by a homeless vaettir to write a book in your own blood
Dark Secret: My life’s work is a lie
Relationship: Tries to win your appreciation (Doctor)

Physique 2
Precision 3
Logic 4
Empathy 5

Talent: Automatic Writing

Skills
Agility 0, Close Combat 0, Force 0, Inspiration 3, Investigation 0, Learning 2, Manipulation 1, Medicine 2, Observation 2, Ranged Combat 0, Stealth 0, Vigilance 2

Equipment: Writing utensils and paper, camera, pet dog
Memento: Gold jewellery worn by your mother

The other option is to create a character using the Background tables at the rear of the book. This covers everything from a Player Character’s Class, Upbringing, Profession—which determines his Archetype, to life events which can be rolled numerous times, aging the Player Character in the process. Both options are quick, but the Background tables add flavour and detail lacking in the simple method of picking an Archetype.

Our second sample character then is Oskar Dolk, a Vagabond whose strange capture and subsequent escape from a troll bag ultimately led him to the doors of Castle Gyllencreutz. Oskar Dolk is not his real name, but that of a fellow prisoner who Rolf served part of his sentence with. Rolf’s family were servants to the nobility, much put upon and unhappy in their lot, and after one too many beatings, he ran away and was captured by the troll. When he escaped and made his way home, his masters beat him some more and banished him from his former home. Forced to live on the road, he was first arrested for vagrancy, and then accused and imprisoned for theft. He later escaped, finding refuge with a former cellmate, Oskar Dolk, and when he died the next winter taking his identity.

Name: Oskar Dolk (Rolf Krabbe)
Age: Young
Class: Poor
Upbringing: Servant
Profession: Day Labourer
Motivation: Being liked
Trauma: Survived a week inside a troll bag
Dark Secret: Stolen identity

Relationship: Feigned gratitude (Hunter)
Life Events: Prison

Resources: 1

Physique 5
Precision 4
Logic 3
Empathy 3

Talent: Hobo Tricks

Skills
Agility 1, Close Combat 1, Force 1, Inspiration 0, Investigation 0, Learning 0, Manipulation 3, Medicine 0, Observation 2, Ranged Combat 0, Stealth 1, Vigilance 1

Equipment: Walking stick, knife, liquor, lockpicks
Memento: A scruffy cat

Mechanically, Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying uses the Year Zero engine, Free League Publishing’s house rules, which uses pools of six-sided dice. Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying uses a simpler version than first seen in Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days—so not Base (or Attribute) dice, Skill dice, and Gear dice, but simply Attribute and Skill dice, plus whatever bonus or penalty dice the Game Master awards, such as from the situation or a Talent. For a character to undertake an action, his player rolls dice equal to the character’s Attribute and Skill appropriate for that action. To succeed, all he needs to roll is typically one Success or six—though sometimes it may be more—on any of the dice. Extra Successes can be expended to gain various effects, such as gaining bonuses to further skill tests where the information will be useful in Observation tests or increase damage or inflict stress upon an enemy with Ranged Combat.

Where the Year Zero engine and Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying gets interesting is that if a player fails a roll, he can reroll or Push the test. A player rerolls everything bar the Successes already rolled to get more. In other iterations of the Year Zero engine, such as Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days and Forbidden Lands – Raiders & Rogues in a Cursed World, rolls of one in both the original roll and the pushed roll are kept and have negative effects upon the character, typically reducing temporarily, the Attribute used in the roll or damaging the item of equipment used. Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying does not use that mechanic and so there is not the degradation of Attributes or equipment as there are in those games. Instead, the character suffers a Condition if forced to Push a roll, the nature of the Condition depending upon if the action was physical or mental. So Exhausted, Battered, and Wounded are physical Conditions, whilst Angry, Frightened, and Hopeless are mental Conditions. The Condition only comes into effect after the dice roll has been made and its success or failure been determined. Each Condition of the same type reduces the number of dice rolled for the associated type of action and if a character acquires four Conditions of the same type, then he is Broken and cannot undertake any actions of that type.

For example, Oskar Dolk believes that the flop house he is staying in is haunted and the landlady knows what is causing it—he has determined that she is meeting something down in the cellar. He decides to creep down the stairs and spy on what is going on—this is what Oskar’s player states that his aim will be. The landlady has locked the cellar door behind her, but fortunately, Oskar has the late Rolf’s set of lockpicks. The Game Master sets the difficulty at one and Oskar’s player assembles the dice pool of five dice from his Precision Attribute and Stealth Skill. He rolls one, two, four, five, and five—so no Successes. His player decides to Push and pick up all of the dice again and rerolls them, this time rolling one, two four, five, and six, for one Success! However, Oskar also suffers a Condition, which will be a Physical one because Precision is a Physical Attribute. The Game Master selects Exhausted for him and suggests that he has not getting enough sleep and until Oskar addresses the Condition, his player will roll one less die on all physical tests.

Combat in Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying uses the same core mechanics, but adds tweaks to both initiative and actions. Initiative is handled by both players and Game Master drawing from a ten-card deck, numbered one to ten. Initiative then proceeds in ascending order, though some Talent allow Initiative to be changed and players can swap initiative cards if one character needs to act before another. Otherwise it remains the same throughout a fight. In combat itself, a character can perform two actions—a Fast Action and a Slow Action. The first might be a dodge, a parry, a swing of a heavy weapon before an actual attack with a heavy weapon, run, aim, and so on, whereas the second might be a slash with an edged weapon, stab with a pointed weapon, a taunt or persuade attempt, and so on. Fast Actions typically do not require dice rolls, whereas Slow Actions typically do.

One major change to the Year Zero engine is that damage suffered in combat does not directly degrade a character’s Attributes. Instead, it inflicts further Conditions, and once a character has suffered four Conditions of one type—Physical or Mental—and is Broken, he also suffers a Critical Injury, which is rolled randomly. Tables are provided for both Mental and Physical Critical Injuries, and can be defects or insights, as well as potentially fatal. So for example, a Physical Critical Injury might be a Knee injury, a defect which causes a skewed walk and reduces the character’s Agility skill by one, whereas a Coma grants the insight of Prophetic Vision for up to six days and a bonus to the Investigation skill. When the character returns to his headquarters, he has the choice to heal both defects and insights suffered or make them permanent.

Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying is a horror game and so has a Fear mechanic. This is either an Empathy or Logic test rolled against the Fear value of the Vaesen or the situation being faced. For example, a terrible situation such as encountering a werewolf or discovering the corpse of a child, has a Fear value of two and this is the number of a Successes a player must roll to avoid becoming Terrified. If this happens, a character suffers Conditions equal to the Fear value and must either flee, freeze, faint, or attack—the player’s choice. Like the rest of the mechanics in Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying, the Fear mechanic is simple, fast, and effective, as well as enforcing the fact investigating the vaesen is a collective endeavour—bonus dice are awarded for the number of characters present when a Fear test has to be made.

There is also a sense of the collective when it comes to the most immediate element of the setting for the Player Characters, the crumbling Castle Gyllencreutz, the headquarters of the Society in the city of Upsala. There a sense of mystery to the place, with doors locked and keys missing and sections closed up, but the Player Characters have the opportunity to improve the castle each time they return home from solving a mystery. Here there is a marked difference between Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days and Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying. At the end of each session or scenario in both roleplaying games, the Game Master asks questions of his players, such as “Did you play in the session?”, “Did you go somewhere new?”, and so on, and for each positive answer, a Player Character earns a Development Point. In Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days, the Player Characters invest their time and skill in improving their community—their ark—but in Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying, the Player Characters invest Development Points, which might otherwise be expended to improve Skills and Talents. As a consequence, there are more questions to be asked and potentially, the Player Characters can earn more of them. Upgrades to Castle Gyllencreutz come in the form of facilities, such as Butterfly House and Séance Parlour, Contacts, from Banker to Psychiatrist, and Personnel, from the Butler Algot Frisk (he more or less comes with the castle though) and Stable Boy.

There is a delightful scope for roleplaying in this aspect of Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying. The connections to the Contacts and Personnel can of course be roleplayed, but so can the Facilities. Essentially, the Player Characters do not so much simply purchase them, but they might find them behind a hidden door or find the key to a locked door, and so be restoring them rather than simply building them. There is a potential downside to every upgrade though, in that the growing Society can be faced with Threat, which is rolled for, such as a Journalist intent on exposing the Player Characters’ secrets at any cost or a bank clerk who comes to collect on an old debt connected to the castle’s previous owner, providing further opportunities for roleplaying.

The history of the Society is given in some detail, from the involvement of the young scientist Carl Linnaeus through to its relatively recent dissipation and refounding by the Player Characters. Beyond the Society, Upsala is explored in some detail, taking in its high points and low points, from Upsala University Hospital—the most modern in Sweden, and Upsala Botanical Garden of Upsala University to the Poorhouse and Wellspring Street 59 ( a highly disreputable brothel). In comparison, the Mythic North is explored in broader detail, taking in Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark, the social upheavals which wrack the region throughout the nineteenth century, such as between country and city, science and faith, and so on. There is very much an ahistorical feel to the background, which lets the Game Master set her campaign at any time throughout the nineteenth century.

At the centre of Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying are the vaesen themselves. This covers their nature in general, but not necessarily defining ‘exactly’ what they are, simply categorising them into five broad types—nature spirits, familiars, shapeshifters, spirits of the dead, and monsters. Their magic is also presented—Enchantments (animals being born with defects or terrible storms), Curses (inflicting a sense of self-loathing or making someone lame), and Trollcraft (altering age or transforming victims into animals), all powerful, but clearly stated as being story tools rather than means of eliminating the Player Characters. It is possible for Player Characters to learn magic, but each spell or cure is treated as an individual skill and cannot be simply studied. Vaesen are simply defined, and mechanically, their actions are decided by the Game Master to suit the narrative rather than her rolling the dice. Similarly, the Player Characters do not test their skills defeat or banish any one vaesen. Instead their players describe what they do. If it matches the criteria, then the attempt to banish the vaesen automatically succeeds. The conflict here lies in discovering what the means of banishment actually is, protecting or defeating those persons who have fallen under the vaesen’s sway, making the preparations, keeping the vaesen from attacking them, and so on.

Each of the twenty-one vaesen in Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying, from the Ash Tree Wife, Brook Horse, and Church Grim to the Werewolf, Will-o’-the-Wisp, and Wood Wife, is given a two-page spread. Along with some flavour text and a description, this lists its magical powers, the Conditions it suffers if the Player Characters do manage to hurt it, the ritual required to banish it, and a trio of example conflicts, essentially each one a scenario hook the Game Master can develop into a fuller mystery. This is in addition to hooks scattered throughout the book. As a side note, Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying looks at vaesen around the world, so that although no stats are given, a Game Master could set her campaign elsewhere other than the Mythic North with some effort. The write-ups of the vaesen are accompanied by an excellent guide to what makes up a mystery—atmosphere, clues, locations, the conflicts at the heart of the mystery, and so on, plus its structure and advice for the Game Master. The structure is broken down into a series of eight steps, from the prologue where the Player Characters can have a scene each in Upsala and an Invitation which gives them the reason to go to the country location where a vaesen is proving to be a problem, to the confrontation with the vaesen and its aftermath. Along with the good advice for Game Master, this is a solid chapter, and it even comes with suggestions as to how to make each mystery and a campaign, more like traditional fairy tales.

Rounding out Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying is ‘The Dance of Dreams’, a short mystery designed to start a campaign. It is a nice little haunting tale tied back into the history of the Society and its secrets, whilst also laying the foundation for scenarios and content to come.

Physically, Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying is simply lovely. It is richly illustrated by Johan Egerkrans, drawing on his Vaesen: Spirits and Monsters of Scandinavian Folklore, and gives the roleplaying game a consistently singular look throughout. The book is very well written, being engaging and easy to read throughout. The book also feels good in the hand, with a tactile cover and off-white pages which give it the look of a period tome.

There can be no doubt that Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying is a beautiful book, there being something mythical, almost lyrical and fairy tale-like in Johan Egerkrans’ artwork. It sets the tone and style for the roleplaying game, whose tried and trusted Year Zero mechanics have been tweaked to support its ‘monster-mystery’ style of play—a style of play that ultimately emphasises brains over brawn. Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying is a superb horror roleplaying game, one which takes a different take upon the genre and a different take upon the period, and one which begs to be played.