The Shadow Over Providence is a short, one-shot, one-session scenario for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition. Published by Chaosium, Inc. to celebrate NecronomiCon 2019, it is mostly set within the confines of the Milton Hotel, based on Providence’s iconic Biltmore Hotel in the year 1928. In addition to a number of other events, the hotel is playing host to ‘The Kingdom of Fire – Egypt’s 18th Dynasty.’ This is a travelling exhibition showcasing some of the finest exhibits and artefacts from the British Museum, including treasures of Tutankhamun and Hatshepsut, and a prize exhibit, the mysterious canopic jar of Ibnhotep the Mad! Whether attending the Sterling-Homes Wedding Reception, the Society of Geological Sudies Annual Convention, or visiting the hotel because of the exhibition, all of the Investigators will have given tickets to see it and as the scenario begins, will be perusing its displays. However, as any good Call of Cthulhu player knows, almost nothing good can come of having Ancient Egyptian artefacts on display—and so it is with The Shadow Over Providence. Within minutes of it starting, it is lights out and away we go—a robbery, a bizarre and grizzly death, a crime to be investigated, abductions of guests and staff—and more… Just what is going on in Providence’s most famous hotel?

The opening scene of The Shadow Over Providence is actually tightly scripted, but this script sets everything up and does it with a bang—or a fusillade of bangs! Once the lights go on and the investigation, the likelihood is that the Investigators will be deputised by the local police and so will have permission to investigate the robbery and both the mundane and the outré deaths on the night. Barring a single excursion to the city’s morgue to examine one or more of the corpses that turn up during the scenario, The Shadow Over Providence is set within the confines of the Milton Hotel. There are actually just a few locations for them to investigate in the hotel and relatively few NPCs for them to interview, and the scenario will play out slightly differently and be more of a challenge if the Investigators are not deputised. So probably more like a traditional Call of Cthulhu scenario. 

Beyond the initial scenes, there are no set events in The Shadow Over Providence, meaning that at the same time as the Investigators carry out their efforts, the Keeper will be pushing events along with an expanding number of strange deaths and disappearances, including potentially, attacks upon the Investigators. There is a sense throughout that the Investigators and the hotel guests are being hunted and stalked through the halls and walls of the Milton Hotel, and despite the size of the building, there is a claustrophobic feel to The Shadow Over Providence. Ultimately, the Keeper will stage a confrontation between the Investigators and the antagonist, its nature depending upon the actions of the Investigators so far. This does mean that although the scenario is of a length and suitability to be run for inexperienced players or those new to Call of Cthulhu, the open structure of the scenarios mean that it better suited to be run by a more experienced Keeper.

One of the strengths of The Shadow Over Providence from the outset is that it can and does bring a diverse group of characters together to investigate the mystery at the heart of the scenario. The six pregenerated Investigators, for example, include a Sikh Psychiatrist from India, a New England elementary teacher, an African American journalist, a Moroccan artist, one of the hotel’s concierges, and the hotel handyman. One issue with these is that they do not have all of the skills listed in the checks throughout the scenario—Locksmith and Egyptian Hieroglyphs in particular. Neither issue is insurmountable should the Keeper allow her players some extra skills points with which to customise their Investigators. Were the players to create their own investigators, this might be less of an issue. Similarly, were the players to create their own investigators, they could also be of almost any background as long as they have a reason to be at the Milton Hotel—the scenario providing three already. That is, the wedding reception, the geology symposium, and of course, the Ancient Egyptian exhibition itself. Then, once the Investigators have successfully solved the mystery behind the horrid events that follow the opening of the exhibition, they have a reason to know each other and a reason to investigate similar mysteries. In this way, The Shadow Over Providence works  as a ‘Gateway’ scenario to further adventures and mysteries, just as much as it does a one-shot.

Should one of the Investigators die during the scenario, it is suggested that he be replaced by one of the NPCs. However, some of these NPCs have abilities more akin to those of Investigators created for Pulp Cthulhu: Two-fisted Action and Adventure Against the Mythos, so the Keeper might want to be careful in selecting which one she assigns to a player whose Investigator has been killed. Another issue is that one of the NPCs knows more about the attempted robbery than any other NPC. This probably makes that NPC unsuitable as a replacement Investigator, but the Keeper could actually develop the NPC into a full Investigator right from the off and include it amongst the starting Investigators. Doing so would add a degree of Investigator versus Investigator conflict to the play of The Shadow Over Providence, which could be entertaining if run as a convention scenario or for more veteran players.

Physically, The Shadow Over Providence is as cleanly laid out as you would expect for a Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, although it is in black and white rather than colour. It is generally well presented with suitable illustrations of Ancient Egyptian artefacts. The floorplans of the Milton Hotel are simple and clear, if small, and appropriately for the scenario, includes the air ducts. For all that the scenario is set in a real world location, it is a pity that none of the illustrations depict—if not the actual hotel the scenario’s Milton Hotel is supposed to be based upon, then of a similar hotel to help the Keeper describe the building to her players. Indicative of both the shortness of the scenario and the focus upon the diverse cast of Investigators is that half of The Shadow Over Providence is made up of the pregenerated Investigators.

After its opening action, The Shadow Over Providence settles down into a haunted house—‘haunted hotel’?—style scenario in which the Investigators are hunted as they themselves hunt for clues. This requires careful handling by the Keeper to maintain the pacing, but in the right hands The Shadow Over Providence delivers a solid balance of creepy investigation and scary action, whether as a one-shot or potential campaign starter.

It has been almost thirty years since there has been a roleplaying game set in the universe of the films Alien and Aliens, but that roleplaying game—the Aliens Adventure Game from Leading Edge Games—is primarily remembered for its complexity and emphasis upon combat over horror. That said, the publisher did produce Aliens, a highly effective treatment of the film which was also one of the earliest co-operative games. However, Free League Publishing, best known as the publisher of Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days and Tales from the Loop – Roleplaying in the ’80s That Never Was, obtained the licence and published Alien: The Roleplaying Game in 2019. Drawing from the films Alien, Aliens, Alien 3, and Prometheus, this explores the future of mankind in the late twenty-second century, where out on the frontiers of space, colonists scratch a living on barely terraformed worlds, starships towing mammoth refineries processing resources leave for the inner worlds with their crew in hibernation, corporations own and run worlds, rivalries between corporations escalate in cold wars and hot wars, and the United States Colonial Marine Corps attempts to keep the peace. Out on the frontier, in the coldness of space there are secrets too, some corporate, others unimaginably ancient, many of which will get you killed or kill you. There are rumours of old ruins, of impossible aliens, of lost colonies, and coverups—and maybe they will get a person killed too. This is the set-up for Alien: The Roleplaying Game, its future one of body horror, survival horror, corporate malfeasance, and worse…

The Alien Starter Set is designed as an introduction to the setting and the game. It comes richly appointed. Open up the deep box and you will find two sets of dice, a deck of cards, a large, double-sided poster map, two books—one a rulebook, the other a scenario, five pregenerated Player Characters, and a sheet of counters. Everything is done in a trade dress which evokes the Alien and Aliens milieu, muted blues and greens against a black star field, with superb fully painted artwork done by the same artist who illustrated Symbaroum. Essentially, the Alien Starter Set comes with everything that the Game Mother—as the Game Master is known in Alien: The Roleplaying Game—and five players need to enjoy their first experience of the horror setting and the roleplaying game’s mechanics.

The first of the books in the Alien Starter Set is the Rule Book. Now this is not the full rulebook, but the pared down version you would expect of a Starter Box. It introduces the setting and its history up until after the events of Alien 3, its themes—Space Horror and Sci-Fi Action, combined with a Sense of Wonder, and it explains the rules—skills, combat, panic and stress, and of course, xenomorphs. It also covers the types of characters that can be played and their associated campaign frameworks—Space Truckers, Colonial Marines, and Frontier Colonists. It also mentions Company Reps and Androids, both of which are playable using the full rules. Notably, it also explains the Alien: The Roleplaying Game can be played in one of two modes—Cinematic and Campaign mode. Cinematic mode is designed to emulate the drama of a film set within the Alien universe, and so emphasises high stakes, faster, more brutal play, and will be deadlier, whilst the Campaign mode is for longer play, still brutal, if not deadly, but more survivable. Of the two, the Cinematic mode is suited to one-shots, to convention play, and as introductions to the mechanics and setting of Alien: The Roleplaying Game. ‘Chariot of the Gods’, the scenario which comes in the Alien Starter Set, is written for the Cinematic mode.

Although the Rule Book in the Alien Starter Set does not include rules for creating characters, it explains what they are made of and how they work. A Player Character is defined by four attributes—Strength, Agility, Wits, and Empathy, each of which has three associated skills, for a total of twelve skills. For example, Heavy Machinery, Stamina, and Close Combat are associated with Strength, whilst Observation, Comtech, and Survival are associated with Wits. All skills also have stunts which come into play when a player rolls two or more successes in an action. A Player Character also has one or more Talents, essentially advantages that give him a benefit in addition to his skills. None are listed in the Rule Book in the Alien Starter Set, each of the pregenerated Player Characters in the Alien Starter Set has one.

In addition, a Player Character has a buddy and rival from amongst his fellow Player Characters—intended to create tensions and roleplaying opportunities; Personal Agendas—again to create tensions and roleplaying opportunities, but also to earn a player Story Points—which can be spent to gain automatic successes) for his Player Character; and both equipment and consumables. The latter consist primarily of air, food, and water, for whilst there are monsters—inhuman and human, out there on the frontier which will kill you, so will a lack of the right consumables.

Mechanically, Alien: The Roleplaying Game and the Alien Starter Set use the Year Zero engine first seen in Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days. The rules are light and fair quick, with dice rolls primarily intended for dramatic or difficult situations such as combat, hiding from a strange creature bent on doing unspeakable things to you, making repairs in a hurry, and so on. To have a Player Character undertake an action, a player rolls a number of Base dice equal to a combination of attribute and skill (or just attribute if the Player Character lacks the skill), aiming to roll one or more sixes. One result is enough to succeed, whilst extra successes can be used to purchase Stunts, like halving a task’s time or doing extra damage in combat. Although one Player Character can help another, the Alien: The Roleplaying Game—just like the films it is based upon—will involve conflicts between Player Characters as well as NPCs, especially when Personal Agendas clash, and where opposed rolls come into play from such situations, successes rolled by either side cancel each other out. If a Player Character fails, or wants to generate more successes, then his player can push the roll. Although this can only be done just the once for each roll, it can generate successes, but it also leads to the core mechanic in Alien: The Roleplaying Game—Stress (and panic)!

Stress in the Alien: The Roleplaying Game is designed to build and build over the course of a scenario, particularly in Cinematic mode. It is not gained just for pushing a roll, but also for firing a firearm in fully automatic mode, suffering damage, being attacked by a fellow crewman, when someone is revealed as an android, and so forth. For each level of Stress suffered by a Player Character, whenever that Player Character takes another action that requires dice to be rolled, his player not only rolls the Base dice as usual, he also rolls a Stress die. So, the more levels of Stress suffered by a Player Character, the more dice—Base dice and Stress dice—his player has to roll. This has both advantages and disadvantages. On the plus side, it increases the chances of rolling successes, but on the downside, any ones rolled have negative effects. First, they prevent the roll from being pushed; second, they trigger a Panic Roll. This requires the roll of a six-sided die plus the Player Character’s current Stress level. Results of six and below have no effect, but results of seven and above include a nervous twitch which increases everyone’s Stress level, dropping an item, immediately seeking cover, screaming, fleeing, going berserk, and more. Although rest and recuperation can reduce Stress, for the most part, over the course of a scenario, a Player Character’s Stress is going to grow and grow...

Combat in the Alien: The Roleplaying Game is designed to be straightforward, but with one or two tweaks to fit the setting. One of these is Stealth Mode, the initial state for any combat situation. This is designed to cover hidden movement by NPCs and other unknown threats, attempts to detect hidden movement and threats, and the like before actual combat occurs. The rules also cover Initiative—handled by draw of a card, rated between one and ten; actions—a Player Character receives a Fast Action and a Slow Action or two Fast Actions per turn; ranged and close combat; damage and critical injuries—the latter suffered when a Player Character’s Health is reduced to zero, some of them deadly; and Overwatch, the ability for trained soldiers to monitor a particular area and be ready to shoot when something happens within it. Other hazards covered in the Rule Book in the Alien Starter Set include starvation and dehydration, the cold vacuum of space, fire, explosions, disease, and more. The Rule Book ends with a surprisingly extensive list of guns and other equipment, the firearms in particular being illustrated.

In all of this, the Xenomorphs do get their own section. It amounts to half a page. This might seem to be somewhat sparse, but to be fair it is enough to run ‘Chariot of the Gods’, the scenario which comes in the Alien Starter Set. Plus the scenario has more detail about the threat it thrusts in the Player Characters’ way… Written by Science Fiction author, Andrew E.C. Gaska, ‘Chariot of the Gods’ written for Alien: The Roleplaying Game’s Cinematic mode. It falls into the ‘Space Truckers’ framework and is very much a Blue Collar Sci-Fi horror scenario, covering all of the themes of the setting and the roleplaying game—space horror and Sci-Fi action with both survival and body horror along with corporate malfeasance. Its fairly heavily plotted storyline  is supported with a combination of Personal Agendas and events that get increasingly horrifying as it progresses. Unlike the Rule Book in Alien Starter Set, it includes all of the details of the Xenomorph that the Game Mother will need, but this is by design and will obvious why once the Game Mother begins preparing the scenario. It should be noted that given the importance of Personal Agendas in Alien: The Roleplaying Game, ‘Chariot of the Gods’ really only works when all five pregenerated Player Characters are in play and it can benefit from the tensions and conflicts that their Personal Agendas will promote. Overall, this is a nasty one-shot which should provide one or two sessions of play and deliver a film-like plot.

Supporting both ‘Chariot of the Gods’ and Alien Starter Set, the box also includes a number of extras. These start with the two sets of dice—the Base dice and the Stress dice. Both are six-sided dice and there are ten of each. The six face of both the black Base dice and the yellow Stress dice is marked with a ‘blip’ or ‘ping’ a la the Motion Tracker of Alien and Aliens fame. When one of these is rolled during the game, it is counted as a success.  However, the one face of each Stress die is also marked with a Facehugger symbol. When one of these is rolled, it prevents a roll from being pushed as well as triggering a Panic Roll.

The five pregenerated Player Characters make up the crew of the USCSS Montero, the small cargo ship which appears in ‘Chariot of the Gods’. They are double-sided and include an illustration and background on the one side, and a filled in character sheet on the other. They are clear and easy to read.

The deck of cards consists of fifty-six cards. They include the ten Initiative cards and twelve Weapon cards, which can be used when playing any scenario or campaign of the Alien: The Roleplaying Game, whilst the remainder are tied into the ‘Chariot of the Gods’ scenario. These include ten NPC cards for the scenario and twenty-four Personal Agenda cards to be handed out as the plot progresses in the scenario. Lastly, the large foldout map, done on heavy paper stock, is also double-sided. On the one side it depicts the limits of explored space and on the other a full set of starship deck plans. This is designed for play, making use of the sheet of cardboard counters that includes USCMC marines, ship’s crew, Xenomorphs, ship counters, and status counters. One notable feature of the starship deck plans is that they include the ship’s vents—perfect for hidden movement and hunting monsters in the dark!

Physically, Alien Starter Set is superbly presented. The look and trade dress of the box and its contents screams Alien and Aliens to anyone who looks at it. Both books could have been shorter, yet the more spacious layout makes them much easier to read and digest. The cards and the pregenerated character sheets feel a little thin, and perhaps it would have been nice if the counters had been in more then the one colour. The poster map though, is pleasingly sturdy. The writing does a slight edit in places, but it is direct and to the point, getting across the dangerous and dystopic nature of the future of the twenty-second century and presenting the rules in a simple, easy-to-read, and easy-to-grasp fashion. The standard feature of the Alien Starter Set is the artwork, which is just stunning.

The Alien Starter Set does exactly what it should. It introduces the setting and explains the rules, before providing a playing experience within that setting. It does this very well and it does a good job of supporting all three of these objectives. However, the Alien Starter Set is for a licensed property and it has high production values—and both factors are reflected in the price. The Alien Starter Set does cost more than the average starter set. Yet once the Game Mother has run ‘Chariot of the Gods’, the Rule Book can easily serve as a ready reference guide for the rules at the table where it is likely to be more accessible than the Alien: The Roleplaying Game core rulebook. Both counters and the poster map can be used again, and there is no denying the utility of having more dice at the table. Further, future adventures could be run using the rules in the Alien Starter Set alone, especially if they come with pregenerated Player Characters and written for the Cinematic mode. 

The Alien Starter Set is an impressive introduction to the Alien: The Roleplaying Game. It not only looks fantastic, it also comes with everything necessary to deliver and roleplay a frighteningly nasty experience in the cold darkness of space where the horrors faced include the feared Xenomorphs and your fellow man.

The Dare is a Call of Cthulhu scenario which very much wears its influences on its sleeve. It is a horror scenario of Cosmic Horror, so obviously H.P. Lovecraft and Call of Cthulhu. It is a haunted house scenario, so obviously any number of haunted house horror films and short stories, but also—just a little bit, ‘The Haunting’, the classic introductory scenario for Call of Cthulhu, which goes all of the way back to 1980 and Call of Cthulhu, First Edition. It is inspired by Call of Cthulhu, Third Edition, Call of Cthulhu, Fourth Edition, and Call of Cthulhu, Fifth Edition—certainly for its look. It is inspired by the horror films of the late 1970s and 1980s, including Halloween, Poltergeist, Evil Dead, The Lost Boys, and more. Above all, it is inspired by the kids’ adventure and kids in peril films of the 1980s, so The Goonies, Stand By Me, Monster Squad, E.T., and more. This rich source of inspiration has been mined in recent years by Roleplaying Games such as Free League Publishing’s Tales from the Loop – Roleplaying in the '80s That Never Was, Renegade Game Studios’ Kids on Bikes, and Bloat Games’ Dark Places & Demogorgons: The Roleplaying Game, but also most obviously on the silver screen by Stranger Things.

So The Dare is a scenario for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, in which the players take the role of preteens who are dared by a school bully to enter a haunted house on Halloween. Published by Sentinel Hill Press—best known as the publisher of the Arkham Gazette, following a successful Kickstarter campaign, The Dare is written by Call of Cthulhu veteran Kevin Ross. Designed as a one-shot, ideally for four or five kids and ideally to be played on Halloween, it began life as a tournament scenario, which has now been updated to be run for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition. As a one shot set in the eighties, The Dare works as a palette cleanser for veteran players, likely going all in on the period motifs—Sony Walkman, leg warmers, genre knowledge gleaned from video nasties, and so on, but it also works as an introduction to Call of Cthulhu for new players, made all the easier by its parred back ‘The Call of Kid-thulhu’ mechanics designed to fit the genre. It could in fact, be the defining experience with Cosmic Horror for the kid investigators, who as adults grow up to become investigators into the Mythos in the nineties, noughties, and beyond!

The set-up for The Dare is simple. School bully Roger Simmons has dared several of his victims to enter the Barnaker House, an abandoned and dilapidated home on the edge of town, and spend not just any night there, but Halloween! As the house wheezes and groans around them, their senses assaulted by the stench of mould and decay, of animal urine and faeces, the sound of scuttling in the walls and from room to room as the light from their torches skitter about them, a storm blows up and it looks like the investigators are there for the long haul… As they suffer the taunts and jibes of their bully, will the investigators find out if the house is really haunted? What horrors await them as they try to last the night?

To support this, The Dare is fully plotted out together with floor plans of the Barnaker House, stats and descriptions of all of the NPCs and the monsters. This includes suggestions as to what the NPCs will do location from location, but also gives suggestions as to how to adjust the tone of the scenario from location to location. These are set at the US film ratings of PG and R, the former minimising the violence, the gore, and the death, emphasising menace and anxiety, the latter being more visceral in its inclusion of gore, violence, and injury. Essentially, the difference between The Goonies and Evil Dead.

Mechanically, The Dare uses the Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition rules. It presents the core rules to the roleplaying  game, but it also strips them back to present what it calls ‘The Call of Kid-thulhu’, a simplified version of the rules. Notably, the rules condense the eighty or so skills of Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition down to just fifteen. So instead of Psychology, Be a Pal, Be Bossy rather than Intimidate and Persuade, Sneaky in place of Sleight of Hand and Stealth, and Spooky Stuff rather than Occult and Cthulhu Mythos. The most notable addition to these skills is Play with Matches, which covers setting things alight, building traps, using chemicals, and so on, all of which should serve as a spur for the investigators’ invention. Overall, these stripped-down rules could easily be used to run other ‘The Call of Kid-thulhu’ type scenarios, or even slotted into an anthology of ‘Gateway’-type scenarios in which the investigators are kids.

Rounding out The Dare is a short essay by Brian M. Sammons, ‘Grab the Machete or: How I Learned to Stop Going Insane and Love 80s Horror Movies’. It provides a brief overview of the genre and suggests ten films that the Keeper and her players should watch as inspiration. The Dare also comes with ten ready-to-play ‘The Call of Kid-thulhu’ investigators. These are all designed to be played as girls or boys, and come with alternative names and space for boy or girl photos. There are some thirty or illustrations included in the pages of The Dare—each based upon a photograph submitted by one of the Kickstarter backers, which can be used by the players to illustrate their kid.

In terms of its horror, The Dare really revolves around its PG and R ratings and the classic confined space of the haunted house. Played using just the PG rating and it would even work as a scare ridden one-shot suitable for a younger, even preteen audience. Switched to the R rating and The Dare becomes a more visceral affair, much in the mode of the film It—though without the coulrophobia—and so is better suited for mature players. For the Keeper there are plenty of staging notes throughout, though she will need to handle one NPC with care. One option might be for the NPC to be played as a Player Character Investigator working hand-in-hand with the Keeper, but if not, and the players work out what is going on beforehand, it really is up to them to roleplay within the genre until their Investigators know. 

Physically, The Dare stands out because although written for use with Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, the layout for it is of Call of Cthulhu, Third Edition. It not only fits the period setting of the scenario, but it fits the scenario’s sense of nostalgia too and gives it a certain, delightful charm. The maps are perhaps a little plain and it needs a slight edit in places, but the artwork is excellent. The theme is applied to the front and back cover, which is done as the cover of a video cassette.

The Dare is a superb one-shot, one that manages the odd combination of being both nasty and charming, all infused with eighties nostalgia, from start to finish. Not just in the style of the story, its tone, and set-up, which can be creepy or horrible depending on the rating selected, but very much with its look. The Dare also suggests a style of play and provides a set of mechanics to support that, both of which deserve revisiting in future releases. Whether you are visiting the eighties for the first time or going back again for another go around, The Dare successfully double dares you with a one-shot of Halloween horror.

Cabin Risotto Fever is an investigative horror scenario set in the depths of winter in Canada, involving a missing academic or two, an Italian antiquary, and a bone warming dinner. If the scenario is run as written, then the Game Master will have prepared said dinner and actually dish up during play! As with other scenarios from Games Omnivorous, Cabin Risotto Fever is a system agnostic scenario, but unlike previous scenarios—The Feast on Titanhead and The Seed before it, it takes place in the modern world rather than a fantasy one. Specifically, northern Canada in 1949. However, just like The Feast on Titanhead and The Seed before it, Cabin Risotto Fever adheres to the Manifestus Omnivorous, the ten points of which are:

1. All books are adventures.
2. The adventures must be system agnostic.
3. The adventures must take place on Earth.
4. The adventures can only have one location.
5. The adventures can only have one monster.
6. The adventures must include saprophagy or osteophagy.
7. The adventures must include a voracious eater.
8. The adventures must have less than 6,666 words.
9. The adventures can only be in two colours.
10. The adventures cannot have good taste. (This is the lost rule.)

As we have come to expect for scenarios from Games Omnivorous, Cabin Risotto Fever adheres to all ten rules. It is an adventure, it is system agnostic, it takes place on Earth, it has one location, it has the one monster (though like the older scenarios, those others that appear are extensions of it), it includes Osteophagy—the practice of animals, usually herbivores, consuming bones, it involves a voracious eater, the word count is not high—the scenario only runs to twenty-eight pages, and it is presented in two colours—in this case, tangerine and black. Lastly, Cabin Risotto Fever does lack good taste—though that will either be ameliorated or exaggerated by the quality of the scenario’s singular handout and how the players and their characters react to it.

It is 1949, and Professor Martin D. Ernst from the Department of Anthropology at Schuylkill University has led an expedition into the wilds of northern Labrador in order to locate and explore an ancient Algonquian ritual site. The expedition is funded by Italian antiquarian, Rubicondo Bronzetti, who also accompanies the expedition, as does Professor Ernst’s researcher, Solomon Silverberg. It is three weeks since the expedition has been heard from, and a team of rescuers is being sent to check on them. The scenario suggests a Forest Ranger and his apprentice, another professor of anthropology, and a native shaman. It outlines the basics of the four Player Characters, all of whom should be easy to create using the roleplaying game of the Game Master’s choice. In fact, Cabin Risotto Fever could be run straight from these descriptions should a playing group want a very light game in terms of its mechanics.

What Cabin Risotto Fever does include mechanically, is rules for handling Sanity. These require four tokens per Player Character. When a Player Character sees, hears, or experiences something weird or unsettling, the Player Character’s player rolls a six-sided die. If the result is less than the number of tokens the Player Character has, the Player Character suffers a minor panic attack and looses a token. The Player Character may also learn a piece of random information pertinent to the situation in Cabin Risotto Fever. At two tokens, and then at one token, the Player Character suffers a worse panic attack and another effect, determined by the roll of an eight-sided die on the included table. These effects range from attacking a fellow Player Character to a case of unfortunate micturition. Of course, should a Player Character lose all of his tokens, then he becomes an NPC.

Cabin Risotto Fever requires some set-up, some of it traditional, some of it less so. It is suggested that the playing space be lit with candles for atmosphere and that a fast and light roleplaying game be used to prevent any impediment to roleplaying. That is the traditional. The non-traditional is the preparation of the risotto that is the scenario’s singular handout—or is that dishout?—or prop, that should be served during the play of the scenario. The recipe for the risotto al midollo in full is included in the scenario.

The focus for Cabin Risotto Fever is the cabin—as much as it is the risotto. Here the Player Characters will encounter the expedition, its members surprised to see them, but welcoming all the same and happy to invite them to dinner. Events will play out as the Player Characters poke around the cabin and interact with their hosts, some of them random, and of course, the horror of the situation slowly dawning upon them. The likelihood of course, is that the players will realise what has happened, but not their characters—and it is their realisation the players are roleplaying and reacting in horror to.

Physically, like The Feast on Titanhead and The Seed before it, Cabin Risotto Fever is well presented. It is darker and gloomier in tone given its choice of colours. The single location of the cabin is mapped out inside the separate cover. The map is detailed, but suffers a little from forced perspective. Some of the chosen fonts are a little difficult to read, but overall, Cabin Risotto Fever is easy to read. The illustrations have a heavy oppressive feel and many can easily be shown to the players during play. It needs a slight edit in places, but is overall quite a sturdy product, being done on heavy paper and card stock.

As with other scenarios which adhere to the Manifestus Omnivorous manifesto, Cabin Risotto Fever is nasty, brutal, and short, it being possible to play through the scenario and even survive in a single session. It is also easy to run using a wide variety of roleplaying games. The most obvious one is Lamentations of the Flame Weird Fantasy Roleplay, another is the publisher’s own 17th Century Minimalist: A Historical Low-Fantasy OSR Rulebook, but with some adjustment it would work with Cthulhu by Gaslight or a darker toned version of Leagues of Gothic Horror for use with Leagues of Adventure: A Rip-Roaring Setting of Exploration and Derring Do in the Late Victorian Age!. Take it away from its European setting and Cabin Risotto Fever would work well with Mörk Borg as they share a similar tone and sensibility.

Whether used as a one-shot, or added to a campaign, Cabin Risotto Fever is easy to prepare and set-up for a night’s single session of juicy, meaty horror. Indeed, the only thing difficult to set up is the risotto itself. 

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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Designed by the late Lenard Lakofka, as the first part of a trilogy, L1 The Secret of Bone Hill is a scenario for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition. Published in 1981, it presented something a little bit different for the world’s preeminent roleplaying game at the time—a sandbox, a town in which the adventurers could base themselves and explore from, locations to explore not just outside of town, but within its confines too, and an absence of plot. Or least an absence of a plot which would ordinarily drive or pull the Player Characters to explore the locations of keyed adventure module, for example, U1 The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh. In essence, L1 The Secret of Bone Hill is really a setting source book rather than a traditional roleplaying scenario, one that would lay the foundations for the two scenarios which would follow, L2 The Assassin’s Knot, and eventually, L3 Deep Dwarven Delve, and would together form the ‘L’ series or the Lendore Isle trilogy.

The full history of L1 The Secret of Bone Hill, as well as the option to purchase a reprint are available here, but of course, the original came in the classic format for TSR, Inc. scenarios for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition and Basic Dungeons & Dragons, a simple black and white booklet inside a separate card cover, inside of which were printed the scenario’s maps. The scenario introduces the town of Restenford and Isle of Lendore, part of the Spindrift Chain, far to the south in the World of Greyhawk setting. It recommends that the module is designed for novice and intermediate players, preferably between two and eight, using Second Level to Fourth Level characters. Then it begins not with a description of the town of Restenford or the Isle of Lendore, but wilderness tables and rumour tables, before going on to describe various wilderness locations around Restenford. These are located on the various around and overlooking Restenford, and include a temple where worship to the God of Chance takes the form of gambling, a den thieves, various campsites for travellers—and potential hirelings, and more.

The key location described here is the eponymous Bone Hill, atop which stands a partially ruined castle, around which there are signs of it having been under siege some time in the past. There is an odd atmosphere to place, occupied as it is during the day by a small tribe of Bugbears, and a small horde of the Undead during the night. There are some odd monsters too, such as the Ghoulstirge, a type of Stirge which not only feeds on your blood as standard Stirges do, but also paralyses its victims. Encounters above ground are relatively safe, but below ground they get nasty—more Undead, including a Wraith, a tough fight for adventurers of any Level, and they get weird, and even a little wondrous. Above ground there is a potions workshop where the concoctions are combinations of standard potions, such as a Potion of Longevity with a Potion of Speed, thus actually making use of the Potion Miscibility Table from the Dungeon Master’s Guide (!), but below there is a mirror which pulls the viewer in and forces him to fight himself, some not-Beholders (!) with treasure to guard and treasure to share, and afternoon tea with a surprisingly pleasant skeleton!

More than half of L1 The Secret of Bone Hill is devoted to detailing the town of Restenford, its keep, and their inhabitants. Besides the keep and its inhabitants, this description includes the town’s inn and tavern, homes of individuals such as Pelltar the sorcerer, Felix the mercenary, and a bait shop—Restenford being a fishing port. Notably, it includes a Burnt Guard Station, the shell of a guard station which has fallen into ruin, an actual adventuring location within the town itself. Throughout, there is a wealth of information given all of these locations, both in town and out, so if the Dungeon Master needs to know about animals, encounter probabilities, and what an NPC is equipped with, then she is well served by the module. However, what L1 The Secret of Bone Hill does not do is give support in terms of NPC motivation. Few of their descriptions include suggestions as what they want, and certainly no reason why they might hire the Player Characters. For example, there is a spy in the town from a rival duchy, a mentally ill abbot with designs on the daughter of the Baron of Restenford—though the Dungeon Master is advised to keep this a secret until she runs L2 The Assassin’s Knot, and a merchant whose nephew is interested in learning magic.

Rounding out L1 The Secret of Bone Hill is a short bestiary of new creatures in addition to several monsters given earlier, like the Ghoulstirge. These include the Spectator, a Beholder-like creature which readily guards treasure hoards, and the Stone Guardian, a new type of golem. This is followed by ten sample Player Characters, ranging from Second Level to Fourth Level. Most of them have at least one magical item.

Physically, L1 The Secret of Bone Hill is what you would expect from a TSR, Inc. module for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition. The layout is clean and tidy, it is easy to read, and the artwork varies in quality—the back cover seems particularly poorly handled. Some of it, is actually very good. Overall, the maps are very good, but perhaps could have been better organised. However, the organisation of the module—rumour and wilderness tables first, then the adventuring locations, including Bone Hill, and lastly the description of Restenford—feel almost backward, but are more higgledy-piggledy than helpful.

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Initial reviews of L1 The Secret of Bone Hill were less than positive. For Anders Swenson, writing in Different Worlds Issue 16 (November 1981), the issue was one of scale and randomness, stating that, “There are problems with the material as a scenario - a lot of the encounters seem to be random in nature, not closely related at all to any of the other groups of NPCs and monsters on the map. Given that the Baron of Restenford has a handy military force, why are these nests of monsters within a day’s march of his castle? How can the farmers gather their crops if the random outdoor encounter table is as dangerous as it is? And so forth.” In Ares Nr. 12 (January 1982), Robert Kern said, “The good news is that TSR is publishing a new module for low level characters. The bad news is that it might require a more experienced DM to overcome it omissions and shotgun method of presenting information.” Although he praised the functionality and description of the Restenford given in the module, he was far from positive in considering the motives for the players and their characters in exploring the region around the town.

Conversely, Jim Bambra, reviewing L1 The Secret of Bone Hill in Open Box in White Dwarf No. 35 (November 1982), were more positive. He wrote that the descriptions of both town and wilderness were “particularly colourful.”, such that “A good feel of the area is given and the whole module provides an excellent background for a campaign.”, before lamenting that, “Unfortuately [sic], it provides little more than this on a long term basis. L1 primarily sets a scene, with adventures along the way. Parts of L1 are not needed until the arrival of L2 and so trying to run this module on its own could prove to be a frustrating experience as the designer has given little indication of what L2 will contain or how many more modules there are likely to be.” However, he suggested that with the publication of its sequel, L2 The Assassin’s Knot, the module would be enjoyable and awarded the module a score of eight out of ten.

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L1 The Secret of Bone Hill is regarded as a classic, but as a classic, it is a problematic one and it would have been a problematic one at the time of its publication. Geographically, the compact and dangerous nature of the region around Restenford with its cluster of threats and busy encounter tables, does feel just a little too forced, but neither of these is insurmountable, and it is possible to suspend any sense of disbelief that this might give rise to. However, the real problems are that as a module, L1 The Secret of Bone Hill is not ready to play and it does not have a plot—or at least a hook to play and adventure there. Indeed, the nearest it gets to plot is the blurb on the cover: “Danger lurks in the Lendore Isles. Bands of evil creatures prowl the hills overlooking the town of Restenford, seeking unwary victims. Now you have come to this sleepy little village looking for adventure and excitement. You seek to fathom the unexplored reaches of Bone Hill and unlock the mysteries of Restenford.”

Obviously, L1 The Secret of Bone Hill is not designed as a plotted adventure, but as a sandbox, but as a consequence of the lack of plots and hooks, it needs to be taken apart and be prepared as a playing environment, rather than as a straightforward plotted adventure. Reasons need to be developed for the Player Characters to come to the Lendore Isle, let alone go exploring and adventuring there. After all, the minimum Level for the Player Characters is Second rather than First Level, so they will have had some previous adventures. The inclusion of the extensive rumour tables support this, but nevertheless, the Dungeon Master still has to pull them out and link them to locations described elsewhere in the scenario, to create hooks which will pull her Player Characters into the setting and the plots that the rumours hint at, but are left undeveloped and unexplored. This process is not really helped by the lack of motivations for the many NPCs to be found in the module—the villains in particular, and it is not helped by the scattershot organisation which presents the adventuring locations first rather than the starting point for the Player Characters that is the town of Restenford.

There is a lot of gaming potential in L1 The Secret of Bone Hill, but as one of the first sandbox adventures, its design—which is almost like a sandbox itself in its organisation—does not match its potential. It needs a lot of effort upon the part of Dungeon Master to even begin to work well, who will have to pull it apart and rebuild it around plots and hooks that she will have to develop. Fortunately, there is a wealth of detail in its pages for the Dungeon Master looking to develop L1 The Secret of Bone Hill into a more fully rounded adventuring environment. Far from being a plotted adventure, L1 The Secret of Bone Hill is more of a sourcebook and a toolkit awaiting the input of an experienced Dungeon Master.

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For further information about L1 The Secret of Bone Hill and its author, Lenard Lakfoka, the Grognardia blog posted an interview with him in 2009. The first in three part series can be found here and is well worth taking the time to read.

Mutant Crawl Classics #10: Seeking the Post-Humans is the tenth release for Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic, the spiritual successor to Gamma World published by Goodman Games. It is the third scenario designed for Zero Level player characters, what this means is that Mutant Crawl Classics #10: Seeking the Post-Humans is a Character Funnel, one of the signature features of both the Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game and the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game it is mechanically based upon—in which initially, 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. In terms of the setting, known as Terra A.D., or ‘Terra After Disaster’, this is a ‘Rite of Passage’ and in Mutants, Manimals, and Plantients, the stress of it will trigger ‘Metagenesis’, their DNA expressing itself and their mutations blossoming forth.

So whilst Mutant Crawl Classics #10: Seeking the Post-Humans is a Character Funnel in the classic sense of the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game and the Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game it is very different to any other Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game scenario before it—and for three reasons. First, it includes a plot which will drive both the Player Characters to act and events forward. Now this is in comparison to the majority of the other scenarios for Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game which are reactive in nature, that is, the Player Characters typically reacting to a danger that threatens their home and sees them going out to deal with the threat. Now this is not to say that there is not an external threat involved in Mutant Crawl Classics #10: Seeking the Post-Humans, but rather that it is better used to drive the plot. Second, it moves the setting of the Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game—as much as there is one—forward, and third, explores more of the genre in ways that previous adventures for Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game have assiduously avoided.

The set-up focuses on Canyon City, a settlement atop an isolated and difficult to climb mesa which divides a canyon where the inhabitants have found peace and solitude from the dangers of the world beyond.The rich soil atop the mesa means that the inhabitants of Canyon City have had time to grow and learn, and actually advance from the Stone Age into the Bronze Age and so when the Player Characters enter into the wider world, they are not only better equipped, but also have an understanding of the basics of the technology they might find out there. For example, they know how power cells work and they know how to replace them. This will give the Player Characters a slight advantage in play and means that in the play, they will not be quite so clueless about the devices they might find. However, as a tribe, they do not practise the Rite of Passage common to other tribes, or indeed other Character Funnels for the Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, and so will be at a disadvantage when facing the rigours and dangers of the wilderness beyond the mesa. (That said, the scenario does not really present the Player Characters with a lot of opportunity to find loot and so exercise their ‘advanced’ technological knowledge.)

Unfortunately for the Player Characters and their home of Canyon City, the region suffers what appears to be an incident of wondrous weather. Under dark clouds, radical rainbow-hued rainfall falls on the mesa, forming a black gloop which adheres to everything—inhabitants, crops, livestock, and more—and suffocates all it encases. As the tribe sees its future threatened by this strange incident, one the Elders comes forward and declares that in order to survive, the tribe must conduct a Rite of Passage, and since the Player Characters are of the right age, they are the ones to go forth and seek a solution to the tribe’s problem.

Mutant Crawl Classics #10: Seeking the Post-Humans is divided into three acts. In the first, they must make their escape down the mesa, either by taking a steep route down its side or negotiating passage to the ground below. It is on the way down that they are contacted—supposedly by a god—which promises to help the Player Characters in their quest, but only if they help him with a task. (And they really should, since the scenario is not really going anywhere if they decline.) There is the chance here for the Judge to ham up the portrayal of the god when roleplaying him, and even create the object of the god’s quest.

The second act is much more tradiational in its play, the Player Characters needing to explore a ruin from the time of the Ancients which will be familiar to the players. Act three is where Mutant Crawl Classics #10: Seeking the Post-Humans takes a radical turn. Here they are literally scooped up and brought to the future—or is it the past? At their destination, the Player Characters have a chance to fulfil their second quest, whether through persuasion or intimidation, and so lead to their original problem being addressed.

Mutant Crawl Classics #10: Seeking the Post-Humans is quite a short adventure, just sixteen pages in length, and likely to offer no more than a couple of sessions’ worth of play. It offers a mix of exploration and confrontation, as well as an odd puzzle to solve, and that is traditional enough in a Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game scenario, but where Mutant Crawl Classics #10: Seeking the Post-Humans departs from the norm is that it has the Player Characters encounter the remnants of the Ancients and for a little while, interact with them. Ideally, it should suggest to the Player Characters that there is more to the world than ruins and that there are greater forces at work—none of which have been hinted at before.

In comparison to previous scenarios for Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, this one is very light in terms of artefacts to be found and other rewards. That though, is not really a problem for as short a scenario as this and given that this is a Character Funnel, the real reward is survival and enough Experience Points to gain First Level. Which in fact, unlike other Character Funnels can occur during the play of the scenario rather than than at the end of it. Which would greatly increase the chance of a Player Character surviving should he attain First Level. The other reward in the scenario is ways to find the Patron AIs from which the Shaman Class is granted its spells or wetware programs. This is not something that is particularly addressed in the roleplaying game and it is a pity that the process of how a Shaman goes about making contact with the Patron AI has not been explored.

Physically, Mutant Crawl Classics #10: Seeking the Post-Humans is neatly and tidily presented. The cover is eye-catchingly pulpy in its style, whilst the internal illustrations are all good. The maps though are very nicely done and very easy to use.

Mutant Crawl Classics #10: Seeking the Post-Humans is the most different, the most radical scenario so far for the Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. The fact that it advances the Player Characters’ technology base and exposes them to aspects of the genre not really explored in the game to date, means that the Judge’s game world is going to be changed by Mutant Crawl Classics #10: Seeking the Post-Humans. The fact that it comes with a plot also makes Mutant Crawl Classics #10: Seeking the Post-Humans a refreshing change as well as a radical one. Hopefully if there are more scenarios for Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, they will explore more of the world hinted at in Mutant Crawl Classics #10: Seeking the Post-Humans and more them will come with plot. In the meantime, Mutant Crawl Classics #10: Seeking the Post-Humans is an engaging and enjoyable scenario, a fun Character Funnel which works as a campaign starter or a convention scenario.

Redfield Valley is so utterly bucolic and idyllic that there is almost no reason for anyone to go there. Unless of course, you grew up there or you have recently come into property there or you are returning the ashes of a friend to his home there or a fugitive you are hunting for is said to have taken refuge there or you are investigating rumours that the valley might actually be full of treasure or… Or whatever the reason, you and your fellow Player Characters are visiting Redfield Valley, best known for its rich, red soil, Vakefort—the dullest outpost in the Imperial Army, and that is it. Redfield Valley really is nothing to write home about. Oh perhaps after visiting the villages of Crownhill and Appleton, the inhabitants might come to you with some help dealing with some Goblins who have kidnapped several of the locals, but that is about as much excitement as you would expect to find in Redfield Valley…

And then KABOOM! And fazacck! And fire and really sharp, eye-stinging glitter (not kidding) and… the sky falls on Redfield Valley.

Now, the green, bucolic landscape of Redfield Valley has been turned into a blood red mud churned hellhole, littered with debris that crackles with strange energy from a city, whilst the Old Tusk promontory to the south is a steaming caldera, towers lie on their side, cracked and open, roads in the sky appear to climb to nowhere, and a dungeon appears to spiral into the sky. None of this was there before the fall… What has happened in Redfield Valley? Who unleashed the devastation and what secrets will it reveal?

This is the set-up for Shards of the Broken Sky, a campaign for 13th Age, the roleplaying game from Pelgrane Press which combines the best elements of both Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition and Dungeons & Dragons, Fourth Edition to give high action combat, strong narrative ties, and exciting play. Designed to take Player Characters from First Level to Seventh Level, it is a sandbox campaign set in 13th Age’s Dragon Empire. It supports different motivations and play styles, is designed to support Player Character relationships to the setting, and which really could be played more than once—though with different Player Characters—and each time their motivations would make the campaign very different in tone and flavour. It is also both brilliant and broken.

What is going on in Shards of the Broken Sky—and this explanation is clearer and more straightforward than any given in the book, and something that the authors should have led with, but failed to do so—is that Redfield Valley hides an incredible secret. It is actually the cover for an ancient prison and repository for all of the ancient secrets and dangers that Dragon Empire—and in particular the Emperor and the Archmage do not want anyone to know about or to get hold of. In Ages past, the Archmage hid these secrets behind wards which prevented access to them and built Vantage, a flying city-fortress-prison, to monitor, control, and protect the wards. Neither the wards, Vantage, or the roads that led up to it could be seen from the ground unless you had permission and knew the way. Now, something or someone has caused Vantage to come crashing down to earth, depositing an apocalypse upon Redfield Valley, causing death and devastation, weakening the wards it was built to maintain, and over the course of Shards of the Broken Sky, failing and so unleashing and revealing all of the secrets and threats Vantage was intended to hide.

Over the course of the campaign, the Player Characters will constantly find themselves delving into dungeons that are not dungeons and dungeons that are not dungeons which play with perspective and geometry and time. They are almost bookended by a pair of tombs, one full of traps inspired by Grimtooth’s Book of Traps, the other full of the deadliest of traps that the Old School Renaissance has to offer, and which would ordinarily never ever otherwise appear in an adventure for 13th Age, but also include an Area 51-like bunker which served as a repository of magic; the Shattered Spine, a wizard’s tower fallen and broken on its side; a valley of dinosaurs, all ready for the Orcs to raid and die in order to grab the gargantuan beasts as mounts; Magaheim, a golden city suspended over a volcano inhabited by demons and Dwarfs and their offspring, where the Game Master can play all of the noir storylines amongst its corruption and bureaucracy; the Winding Gyre, a floating maze which spirals into the sky and will see the Player Characters leaping up and down from one lump of rubble to ruin, again and again; and a living dungeon where the Oozes which may not be what they seem.

There are amongst them some incredibly inventive scenes. They include the Corpse of Kroon, dead and falling, but frozen in time, which the Player Characters can scale again and again in order to steal the magical items he implanted in his body; a wizard’s sanctum frozen at the moment of its destruction, its fixtures and features flung into the air around which the Player Characters must manoeuvre to fight; and a warded and party-frozen battlefield with the feel of the trenches of the Great War. All of this is fantastic and it is where Shards of the Broken Sky shines—and shines brilliantly. Not just because of these scenes and the inventiveness of these dungeons, but also because the campaign can be played in different ways. It is a mystery in which the Player Characters investigate dungeon after dungeon to determine who attacked Vantage and brought it down on Redfield Valley? Is it a heroic rescue mission in the Player Characters work to save the inhabitants of Redfield Valley and prevent the dangers warded by Vantage being unleashed upon the wider Dragon Empire? It is a campaign of survival horror, in which the Player Characters must survive and fight the dangers unleashed by the fall of Vantage? Is it a classic heist, in which the Player Characters raid the aftermath of the fall of Vantage for loot and glory? Is the new landscape of Redfield Valley simply somewhere to explore and delve into its newly revealed secrets? Shards of the Broken Sky can be played as any one of those or even combined.

However, to get to this brilliance, it takes a lot of effort upon the part of the Game Master—and that is where Shards of the Broken Sky is broken. And intentionally so. As a campaign, it is not just a sandbox, but a toolkit which the Game Master has to take the parts of and put together, taking dungeon after dungeon and encounter after encounter, and plugging them into the character Levels which the Player Characters are at. Shards of the Broken Sky provides numerous dungeons and encounters with which to do that. The Game Master also needs to work hard in order to bring Player Character motivations into play. This will primarily be done through their relationships with the thirteen Icons of the Dragon Empire—the Archmage, the Crusader, the Diabolist, the Dwarf King, the Elf Queen, the Emperor, the Great Gold Wyrm, the High Druid, the Lich King, the Orc Lord, the Priestess, the Prince of Shadows, and the ancient evil Dragons known as the Three—each of which has their own reasons for taking an interesting in Redfield Valley and the fall of Vantage. To support that, Shards of the Broken Sky provides adversary group after adversary group for the various factions and Icons with an interest in the remnants of Vantage, which the Game Master can plug into the campaign depending upon which the Icons the Player Characters have relationships with and which may or may not have been responsible for what has happened. Primarily these will appear as random encounters which the Game Master will work into the dungeons throughout the campaign, with the forces of the various Icons often appearing and working against the efforts of the Player Characters. These random encounters are in addition to the various monsters and encounters given for each location, as well as the Tension tables for each dungeon which ramp up the pressure on the Player Characters as they delve deeper—or even sometimes higher—into the dungeon.

As well as providing numerous adversary groups, Shards of the Broken Sky includes new monsters, new Icon-specific monster abilities to customise agents of the Prince of Shadows, new treasures, and new optional Player Character Races. The latter includes the Lava Dwarves, who can deliver a blistering heat at attack once per battle; Oozefolk, whose melee attacks do acidic damage when they are Staggered and whose touch might be acidic—an interesting defence if swallowed; and the Ophidians, legless, four-armed serpent folk with poison fangs. All make an appearance in the campaign as NPCs, and could then appear as replacement Player Characters or in the ongoing campaign once Shards of the Broken Sky has been completed. The new magical items include fading items whose power drain away from one scene to the next and various items derived from the crystals that were built into the walls of Vantage, whilst the monsters range from Pie Mimics and Kroon’s Foot Lice to Wicker Golems and Rainbow Puddings!

To fully run Shards of the Broken Sky, will need more than a few books. Not just the core 13th Age rules and 13 True Ways, but also the 13th Age Bestiary and 13th Age Bestiary 2 and the Book of Loot and Book of Loot 2. Other books, such as The Crown Commands, Fire and Faith, and High Magic & Low Cunning will be useful, but are likely optional. The excellent Book of Ages may be useful as a reference in certain dungeons of the campaign.

Physically, is in general well-presented. It needs an edit in places, and whilst relatively lightly illustrated, there is some great artwork throughout. However, of the maps that there are, many are too dark to read with ease, whilst others are comprised of icons that indicate the relationship and links between various locations. These are not often easy to read. Enjoyably throughout though are the authors’ advice and playtest feedback which provide a commentary throughout. That said, the authors could have been more upfront about the plot to the campaign and what is going on, rather than leaving it for the Game Master to discover as she reads through the book. Lastly, Shards of the Broken Sky is not actually an easy read, but that is due to it being written as a toolkit rather than as a linear dungeon which would be the case with almost any other mega-dungeon or campaign for the fantasy roleplaying game of your choice.

Anyone going into Shards of the Broken Sky expecting a more traditional, even linear campaign, even as a sandbox, is likely to be disappointed. It is simply not built that way, and in comparison to such a campaign, Shards of the Broken Sky is broken. However, Shards of the Broken Sky is designed in that way by intent because it is a toolkit, a book of parts—each of which could be extracted from the book and used on their own in a Game Master’s own campaign—that are designed to be used by the Game Master to build around her Player Characters and their Icon relationships to create her own version of the campaign. Which of course does more work upon the part of the Game Master, but if done right will make the campaign more personal to the Player Characters. Neither the Game Master nor her players are going to be able to put the Shards of the Broken Sky back together, but they are going to be able to take its brilliant brokenness and build a great campaign together.

There is no denying the continued and growing popularity of Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, with it having appeared on the television series Stranger Things and the YouTube series, Critical Role, it no longer being seen as a hobby solely the preserve of typically male, nerdy teenagers and young adults. Yet as acceptable a hobby as roleplaying and in particular, playing Dungeons & Dragons has become, getting into the hobby is still a daunting prospect. Imagine if you will, being faced with making your first character for your first game of Dungeons & Dragons? Then what monsters will face? What adventures will you have? For nearly all of us, answering these questions are not all that far from being a challenge, for all started somewhere and we all had to make that first step—making our first character, entering our first dungeon, and encountering our first monster. As well written as both Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set and the Player’s Handbook are, both still present the prospective reader and player with a lot of choices, but without really answering these questions in an easy to read and reference fashion.

Step forward the ‘Dungeons & Dragons Young Adventurer’s Guides Series’ published by Ten Speed Press. This is a series of introductory guides to Dungeons & Dragons, designed as primers to various aspects of the world’s leading roleplaying game. Each in the series is profusely illustrated, no page consisting entirely of text. The artwork is all drawn from and matches the style of Dungeon & Dragons, Fifth Edition, so as much as it provides an introduction to the different aspects of the roleplaying game covered in each book in the series, it provides an introduction to the look of the roleplaying game, so providing continuity between the other books in the ‘Dungeons & Dragons Young Adventurer’s Guides Series’ and the Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set and the core rulebooks. This use of art and the digest size of the book means that from the start, every entry in the ‘Dungeons & Dragons Young Adventurer’s Guides Series’ is an attractive little package.

The first in the series, Warriors & Weapons provided an introduction to the various Races of Dungeons & Dragons, the martial character Classes, and the equipment they use. Second is not Wizards & Spells, the companion to Warriors & Weapons which covers Clerics, Sorcerers, and Wizards—and more, or indeed any of the other spellcasting character types in Dungeons & Dragons. Instead the second book in the series is Monsters & Creatures. As the title suggests, this presents an introduction to the monsters, creatures, and animals that the prospective player may well have his character encounter on his adventures, many of them—like the Beholder, the Mind Flayer, the Owl Bear, and more—iconic to Dungeons & Dragons. Equally, the third in the series is not the eagerly anticipated Wizards & Spells, but Dungeons & Tombs, a guide to the dungeons, tombs, castles, crypts, cave networks, and other complexes which populate the many fantasy words of Dungeons & Dragons. However, the resulting book is disappointing, overly specific in terms of its treatment of the roleplaying game’s infamous tombs and dungeons.

So, it is with some pleasure—and no little wait—to finally have a copy of the much-promised second in the series, Wizards & Spells, to review. It is even more pleasurable to discover that what turns out to be the fourth book series is a return to form after the disappointment of Dungeons & Tombs. Like the previous entries in the series, it is written as an illustrated introduction to the magic of Dungeons & Dragons—spellcasters of all stripes, notable examples of each stripe, an examination of spells of all Levels, and a plethora of magical items. It is very much a companion to  the first book in the series, Warriors & Weapons, focusing on the spellcasting character Classes of Dungeons & Dragons and the spells they can cast instead of the martial character Classes of Dungeons & Dragons and the weapons they can wield.

As with Warriors & Weapons, this mystical-centred entry into the ‘Dungeons & Dragons Young Adventurer’s Guides Series’ is divided into three sections. The first section examines six of the character Classes at the heart of Dungeons & Dragons. These are bard, Cleric, Druid, Sorcerer, Warlock, and Wizard. Each is accorded a full, double spread which explores what each Class can do. Prefaced by a handful of questions, each highlights the Class’ features, gives a broad description of the Class, and lists the Equipment and Attributes key to the Class. So for example, of the Cleric, it asks if the character has a purpose, seeks to inspire others, and wants to serve a higher power? All, of course, pointing to the possibility that the character wants to be a Cleric. The Cleric’s six Divine Domains are explained and then their role in society is important because the gods are real and can bestow blessings and power upon their faithful, which of course, includes the humble Cleric. The description notes how a Cleric’s magic is defined by the god he worships, and that a Cleric will often answer his god’s call to go off on adventures and undertake various tasks for him. The Equipment and Attributes explains what arms and armour a Cleric wields and wears, the importance of his Holy Symbol, how he channels Divinity from his god to cast his magic, and that the Cleric is a scourge of the undead.

Thus, in just a couple of pages, Wizards & Spells provides a quick, easily accessible description of the Cleric Class and what it does. The it does the same for each of the other five spellcasting Classes, looking at, for example, the Bardic Colleges for the Bard, the Druidic Circles for the Druid, Draconic Bloodlines for the Sorcerer, the Pact Boon for the Warlock, and the importance of the Spellbook to the Wizard. Each is followed up by an exemplar of that Class, drawn from Dungeons & Dragons canon. Thus, for the Wizard, the mighty Mordenkainen of Greyhawk fame, is described, including his history and background, personality, and more. Three of many spells are also described, such as Mordenkainen’s Magnificent Mansion, Mordenkainen’s Magnificent Faithful Hound, and Mordenkainen’s Sword. Elsewhere, the writeup of the Gnome Warlock, Zanizyre Clockguard, whose patron is the dread Tiamat, Queen of Evil Dragons, includes a description of his Dominate Dragon spell, and the reputation of Florizan Blank, as a ‘Dandy Duellist’ who combines dance moves and swordsmanship, whilst also employing the Blank Mask, a pink carnival mask which when worn, enables him to appear as any person he likes—fictional or real life.

Rounding off the section is a flowchart, which if followed, a prospective player can quickly decide what Class that he might like to play. It is quick and easy to follow, and a player soon knows which Class he wants to look at in more detail. It would however, seem more appropriate for the flowchart to come before the description for six Classes, so that the reader can progress forward from the flowchart rather than flipping back…

‘Types of Magic’, the second section, covers everything from the eight schools of magic—ranging from Abjuration and Conjuration to Necromancy and Transmutation, the differences between using rituals and scrolls, and how spells are cast. None of it is covered in any great detail, but this is still more than enough information for a prospective player to grasp the basics of how spellcasting works. The bulk of the second section, however, is devoted to spells—in fact, over a third of Wizards & Spells is devoted to them, from Cantrips such as Message and Prestidigitation all the up to the Meteor Swarm and Shapechange of Ninth Level. Every spell is given a description and a number of tips on its usage. Thus for Web, it states that the spellcaster should have points or surfaces upon which to anchor the webbing, that they are flammable, and that in addition to be commonly used as an offensive spell to capture and hold the caster’s enemies, it could also be used as a cushion to soften someone’s fall or to detect someone or something that is invisible in the webbing! The section covers an array of spells from the eight schools, and that includes Necromantic spells like Speak with Dead and Create Undead, along with healing spells such as Cure Wounds. Notably throughout, what Wizards & Spells does not do is divide the spells depending whether they are divine or arcane in nature, or indeed, by Class. Perhaps here the ‘Types of Magic’ might have benefited from such a distinction, if only to give a greater indication of what sort of spells a player might like his character to be able to cast and thus what Class he wants to play. However, the descriptions are entertaining and the tips fun.

Rounding out Wizards & Spells is a description of numerous magical items—weapons, staves, wands, magic armour, potions, rings, cloaks, and more. Included along with are wondrous items, such as The Sunsword of Ravenloft fame, and the Staff of the Magi, the Wand of Wonder, both of which are given a double-page spread, whilst lesser wondrous items, like the Bag of Holding and Boots of Speed, are given shorter descriptions. All of these are accompanied by full colour illustrations that support the descriptions.

Physically, Wizards & Spells is an attractive little hardback, just like the other three titles in the series. It is bright, it is breezy, and it shows a prospective player what he can play, both in the art and the writing. Further, the art shows lots of adventuring scenes which can only spur the prospective player’s imagination.

One advantage of Wizards & Spells being released last is that it means that the ‘Dungeons & Dragons Young Adventurer’s Guides Series’ ends on a high note rather than the disappointment that is Dungeons & Tombs. However, Wizards & Spells is as good as Warriors & Weapons, to which it is a companion, showcasing Dungeons & Dragons and introducing the prospective player to what he can roleplay. Together—and really, they work together, and they should be together, because as a pair they cover all of the Classes in Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, and a little of the types of adventures such characters can have. Further, as with Warriors & Weapons and Monsters & Creatures, Wizards & Spells can sit on the table during play as a reference work, not necessarily as something that a player would know, but as something that his character might know.

Overall, Wizards & Spells is a decent little book, which nicely rounds off the ‘Dungeons & Dragons Young Adventurer’s Guides Series’. It serves as a solid introduction to magic for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, and serves as a solid companion to Warriors & Weapons as well as gift to the young prospective player of a mystical character.

 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?
A Tale of Woodcraft is a scenario for use with RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha.
It is an eighteen-page, full colour, 13.15 MB PDF.
The layout is clean and tidy, and the illustrations good. It very much needs another edit.

Where is it set?
A Tale of Woodcraft can place anywhere where an Aldryami forest is located adjacent to a Human settled area. It also requires a route which has been rendered impassable, for example, a ravine crossed by a broken bridge, a river in flood, or a mountain pass blocked by a landslide. The scenario also requires an area where agents of the Lunar Empire might be operating.

The default given area in A Tale of Woodcraft is Sartar.
Who do you play?No specific character types are required to play A Tale of Woodcraft, but Troll characters or characters with Lunar connections will be at a disadvantage. A literate Player Character might also be useful, but not absolutely necessary.

What do you need?
A Tale of Woodcraft requires RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. RuneQuest – Glorantha Bestiary will be useful. 

What do you get?
A Tale of Woodcraft is an on-the-road adventure, much like the earlier Vinga’s Ford, also from Beer with Teeth. However, where Vinga’s Ford has a specific location, A Tale of Woodcraft has flexible geographical requirements.
The scenario finds the Player Characters on the road when they find their route blocked. This can be because of a flooded river, a landslide, or a broken bridge—the latter the default in A Tale of Woodcraft. The likelihood is that the blockage will take days to clear or repair and so an alternative route is suggested—a rough path which will take the Player Character up and around the obstacle via a high tor. They are not the only ones on the steep route though, they are followed by a group of older men and a group of Aldryami seems to be pacing them on the path opposite. It quickly becomes apparent that the two groups are coming to meet each other for a ceremony, and that this is a regular occurrence. However, the tense nature of the meeting is threatened by the inadvertent appearance of the Player Characters as does the discovery of a strange box nearby…
A Tale of Woodcraft involves two plot strands that nicely dovetail into each other, one of which at least, may have consequences for the Player Characters for years to come. One is the ceremony, which involves formally confirming a longstanding peace between the nearby tribe and a decidedly prickly Elf, the other the contents of the box, which once determined, are likely to lead to a confrontation with some fairly tough opponents. Whilst the latter is likely to offer the opportunity for some combat in what is the scenario’s climax, the former involves a mix of roleplaying and exploration. This requires some delicacy upon the part of the Player Characters, lest a diplomatic incident occur, and ancient, near-forgotten hostilities break out once again…
However, the scenario feels slightly overwritten in places and the Game Master will need to give it a careful read through prior to running it, especially to understand its plot strands. That said, it comes with some interesting further plot hooks and the story nicely mixes tradition with inadvertent foul play.
Is it worth your time?
Yes—A Tale of Woodcraft presents an entertaining roleplaying challenge, a mystery, and some action, that all together neatly packaged on route somewhere for easy addition to a campaign.No—A Tale of Woodcraft is not worth your time if you are running a campaign involving Lunars or Trolls, or set far away from the Lunar Empire.Maybe—A Tale of Woodcraft needs a careful read through prior to being run and maybe too complex for a simple sidetrek-style adventure.

In 2020, King Arthur Pendragon is thirty-five years old and in that time it has seen five editions, the last of which–apart from some minor updates, appeared in 2008. In that time, the award-winning King Arthur Pendragon—still the preeminent roleplaying game that explores Arthurian legend, has not received a quick-start, a means of introducing the setting, the mechanics, and the style of play. That changes with The Adventure of the Great Hunt, the quick-start designed to introduce Pendragon, Sixth Edition released  to observe the third anniversary of its designer’s—the late Greg Stafford—passing. As with any good quick-start, it is designed to introduce and explain the core rules, provide a scenario which can be played in a single session, and the pre-generated characters necessary to play. The new version of Pendragon is intended as Greg Stafford’s ‘ultimate’ edition and whilst the style and play of the game remains the same, there are a number of modifications to the rules—as evidenced in The Adventure of the Great Hunt.

For anyone coming to The Adventure of the Great Hunt via King Arthur Pendragon, rest assured that the fundamentals have not changed. Players take the role of knights seeking Glory and honour during the reign of Arthur, King of the Britons; a knight will primarily be defined by his physical attributes—there is no equivalent of the Intelligence stat in Pendragon; a knight’s personality will be defined by thirteen pairs of opposed Traits, such as Chaste and Lustful, Just and Arbitrary, and Valorous and Cowardly, which can guide his decisions, help him pass (or fail) a moral test, influence others, and so on; a knight may be swayed by his Passions, such Love (Family) and Hate (Saxons); and the mechanics still involve the rolling of a twenty-sided die.

The rules to The Adventure of the Great Hunt and thus the basics of Pendragon, Sixth Edition—whether coming to Pendragon for the first time or having played previous versions of King Arthur Pendragon, are explained with no little efficiency. It covers the core mechanic—rolling under a skill, attribute, trait, or passion, on a twenty-sided die, with the critical success being equal to the exact value of the target, and a natural twenty being a critical failure. It also explains how skills, traits, and passions can be rated above twenty. Traits and Passions of sixteen or more, are of course, something that a Knight is considered to be Famous for, whilst he is Exalted if they are twenty or more. The Adventure of the Great Hunt explains the results when Passions are invoked, typically an Inspired +5 bonus to a skill on a success and an Impassioned +10 bonus on a critical success, but a loss of a point of the Passion on a fumble as well as several days of melancholia—or oven madness, depending upon if the Passion is Famous or Exalted. Mechanically, Passions are a great way of Knight gaining a bonus to his next actions, but they are simply great roleplaying hooks too.

Combat is resolved using opposed rolls against the combatants’ skills, for example sword versus sword or spear versus axe. To make a successful attack, a knight’s player must successively roll under his attack skill and roll better than the opposing knight’s player. It is possible for both players to make successful rolls, in which case the player with the lower result has achieved a partial success and although his knight does not inflict damage, he can use his shield or weapon to help block damage from the incoming attack. The combat system allows for dropped or broken weapons on a Fumble, for a Knight to be knocked down if the base damage—before armour deducts any points—inflicted in greater than his Size attribute, and Major Wounds to be suffered if the damage inflicted after armour stops it is greater than a Knight’s Constitution. Understandably, given the historical period in which Pendragon, Sixth Edition is set, Major Wounds are difficult to recover from. So woe betide any Knight who suffers a critical strike in combat—the base damage for most weapons is four six-sided dice, and critical strikes add another four six-sided dice!

As well as healing, mounted combat, and so on, the last thing that The Adventure of the Great Hunt covers is the squire who a Knight is responsible for training in arms, courtesy, and the other skills necessary to bear the title of knight. In return, the squire is a servant for his Knight and may conduct certain actions in combat, such as rendering First Aid, and bringing a new weapon or a fresh horse should a Knight need them.

The scenario in the quick-start is ‘The Adventure of the Great Hunt’. Set during the Conquest Period of Arthur’s reign, it can be played in one long session or two shorter ones, and is suitable to be run as a one-shot or as part of a campaign. If part of a campaign, the Player-Knights will gain Experience Checks for critical successes, as well as Glory for their actions. If run as a one-shot, the Player-Knights will simply gain Glory, and the Knight who gains the most Glory over the course of the adventure will be the one best remembered in the tales told about its events in the winter months to come.

As the title suggests, ‘The Adventure of the Great Hunt’ involves a great deal of hunting—of creatures great and small, Courtesy, Orate, travel, one of their unmarried sisters, and logistics! The scenario comes with a built-in time limit and it is entirely possible for the players to scupper their Knights’ efforts if they are too inefficient in terms of where they decide to travel to. It begins with the Player-knights as guests at the hunting lodge of Sir Servause le Breuse, a veteran knight and renowned hunter, when suddenly their discussions are interrupted by the arrival of Sir Ector, the foster-father of King Arthur Pendragon! He seeks the aid of Sir Servause le Breuse in either slaying or driving off a fearsome dragon which is ravaging some of his holdings in Norgales (North Wales). There is the chance here that one or more of the Player-knights will valorously, if not prudently, decide to rush off and attempt to slay the dragon himself—or help Sir Ector do so. Fortunately, for more Player-Knights, their host has a plan, and this forms the meat of the scenario.

The plan requires the sweet perfume that is the belch of the panther!

Ordinarily, every other beast in Christendom—and likely beyond, finds this scent to be attractive and fragrant, but not the dragon. To such a fearsome creature, it is a stench, a small so strong it will drive the beast into a torpor, or even deep into the earth. To gain such an eruction, the Player-Knights not only have to acquire a Panther, but also such beasts whose special qualities are so efficacious to a Panther’s digestion that it will emit the richest and most pleasing of belches, and so have the greatest effect upon the dragon! So begins the great hunt!

‘The Adventure of the Great Hunt’ will see the Player-Knights travel back and forth across England to the various locations where Sir Servause le Breuse suggests the desired beasts may be found. Many times, this will see the Player-Knights pursuing various beasts, such as cranes in the fens of Anglia or stags in the nearby forest, on day-long hunts using the given hunting and pursuit rules. However, not every creature can be obtained with as simple a task as a hunt, and the Player-knights have opportunities too to persuade the great and the good of the land to lend them their aid and their beasts. There is even a hunt which will not involve the Player-Knights at all! Ultimately—and if they are in time, the Player-Knights will have assembled their menagerie, driven it Norgales, fed the panther, satisfied its appetite, and have eruct the sweetest of belches imaginable!

Of course, this is all up against the time limit and the Player-Knights may not necessarily have acquired sufficient beasts and not fed them to the panther in time—and so, there is the chance that they will fail. There is also the chance that Sir Ector may not wait around long enough for them to arrive and ride out in one last valorous attempt to drive off the dragon from his lands… So as much as the Player-knights to be successful in obtaining the necessary animals, they really do need to effectively manage their time.

In addition to the stats for the NPCs and various beasts, The Adventure of the Great Hunt comes with six pre-generated Player-Knights. They include an adventuring knight, a champion knight, a courtier knight, a hardy knight, a hunter knight, and a religious knight. The hunter knight will be the most obviously useful, but all of the knights will have a chance to shine in the adventure. The adventure includes a map showing the locations of where the various creatures may be found and the travel distances between each location. The Game Master will not only want to provide the sample Player-Knights for her players, but also some tokens to track the Player-Knights and their various quarries on the many hunts they have to undertake, and probably a calendar to track how many days the Player-Knights have spent on their tasks so far and how many they have left.

As well appointed as The Adventure of the Great Hunt is, there are one or two issues with it. It would have been nice if the pre-generated Player-Knights had been given a single sheet each and perhaps an explanation as to what makes them stand out. That would have been useful for players new to Pendragon rather than just Pendragon, Sixth Edition. Also a list of names, both male and female as the Knights can be ‘Sirs’ and ‘Dames’, would have been useful for ease of play—especially if The Adventure of the Great Hunt is run as a convention adventure, for not only do the players have to name their Knights, they also have to name their squires. Another issue is with the map. It is not obvious where the Player-Knights start. Reading through The Adventure of the Great Hunt, it becomes clear that it is the site of the stag hunt, but it is not clear from the text.

Physically, The Adventure of the Great Hunt is well presented. It is neat and tidy, and easy to read. The illustrations are suitably medieval in style and the monkish marginalia adds to the PDF’s illuminated style.

As has been stated before, King Arthur Pendragon is Greg Stafford’s masterpiece, design classic, a master class in using mechanics to both model its Arthurian genre and to encourage its players to roleplay its knightly character types, in a setting that was a labour of love upon the part of the author. The Adventure of the Great Hunt is a great introduction to knightly adventuring in the time of King Arthur, efficiently explaining the rules and key mechanics before presenting the players and their Knights with a grand challenge, and constantly testing them throughout using a variety of skills, traits, and passions.

The Symbaroum Game Master’s Guide is a supplement for Symbaroum, the near-Dark Ages fantasy roleplaying game from Swedish publisher, Free League Publishing, distributed in English by Modiphius Entertainment. The supplement does two things. First, it collects and collates material from previous titles for the Symbaroum roleplaying line, but not only that, builds upon them. The titles include the Advanced Player’s Guide and Monster Codex, as well as Thistle Hold – Wrath Of The Warden, Karvosti – The Witch Hammer, and Yndaros – The Darkest Star. Second, it builds on and expands on this content as well as adding new content of its own. This has a number of consequences. First, in replicating content from previous titles, there is a sense of redundancy to it, more so if the Game Master already has those supplements. Second though, in collating the content, it brings it all together in one place for easy reference, and that does mean it is useful. More so, of course, if the Game Master lacks one or more of the earlier volumes it draws from

Intended as the capstone to the core books for Symbaroum, the Game Master’s Guide essentially explores the adventures, challenges, and rewards to be had in the setting, giving advice and practical suggestions  that the Game Master can bring to her game. It is divided into three sections, each of which is further divided into chapters. The first section, ‘The Adventure’ essentially covers the design and creation of game worlds, chronicles, and landscapes—the latter better known as scenarios or adventures. It begins with the primary building blocks such as theme—most obviously Symbaroum’s ‘struggle between civilisation and nature’, stories, and tone, before adding secondary building blocks such as history, nature, cultures, population, and more. It guides the Game Master through the process, and then it does the same for chronicles—better known as campaigns, from establishing a chronicle’s theme and the importance of the first adventure through the course of the chronicle to its climax. Adventure landscapes are treated in the same fashion. The opening chapters of the Game Master’s Guide narrow their focus again and again, going from an overview down to individual scenarios, throughout referencing various scenarios for Symbaroum, as well as the Crown of Thorns campaign begun with Thistle Hold – Wrath Of The Warden.

However, these opening chapters are not overly engaging, particularly early on when examining the base building blocks. The references, especially to roleplaying games from Free League Publishing for other than Symbaroum feel somewhat superfluous and the chapters feel overwritten. This is not to say that the advice is poor, but the writing becomes more engaging and to the point when subject being covered is more specific, for example, when discussing the concept of Troupe Play in Symbaroum, in which the players take the roles of more than one character, suggesting the roles that the players might take in particular organisations. Thus, for a Barbarian village, the first set of Player Characters would be the chieftain’s council, the second his guard warriors, and the third, common villagers. ‘Adventures for Heroes’ gives advice on presenting scenarios and encounters for experienced Player Characters, not just adjusting the enemy’s numbers, but also adapting the enemy’s tactics and altering the terrain. It also suggests weaknesses against particular character types, not necessarily to defeat them, but rather to present such characters with challenges. So for the giant berserker with a two-handed weapon, the Game Master might counter with ranged enemies, monsters which bind or hinder movement, and enemies using mystical powers.

More specific to the setting is ‘Under, Above, and Beyond’ which explore the realms beyond Ambria and Davokar—the Underworld, the Yonderworld, and the Spirit World. It covers what might be found in each as well as encounter tables, adventure suggestions, and more. None of this is intended to be definitive, but more a guide for the Game Master for the few occasions when her Player Characters have to visit or traverse such realms. Again, more specific, ‘Goal Oriented Roleplaying’ presents objectives that the Player Characters might want to achieve, such as a conquest or staging an expedition, and examines each through five phases, the problems and challenges that they might face. Here the Game Master’s Guide most obviously draws from, and builds on, content from Thistle Hold – Wrath of the Warden and the Symbaroum Monster Codex, so is much more a case of developing content further along with the straight reprint and presenting it in the one location.

The practicality of the second section, ‘Challenges’, means that the focus in the Game Master’s Guide strengthens further. ‘Advanced Traps’ is useful for adding to the tombs and treasure vaults know to be located in the Davokar Forest and comes with some rather nice illustrations reminiscent of Grimtooth’s Traps, whilst ‘Pitched Battle’ enables the Player Characters to take to the battlefield, whether as combatants or commanders. It is an abstract system which calculates battle odds via the ratio between attackers and defenders, adjusting for factor such as resistance levels and battle location, to determine the outcome and casualties suffered. It also allows for random events, such as waking amongst the dead or being saved by allies, whilst an adjacent article provides a good examination of the nature of Ambrian Wars. This covers the Great War, the invasion of Ambria, and the battles of Karo’s Fen, as well as discussing the tactics used by the Dark Lords, the Ambrians, and the Barbarian clans. However, what the ‘Pitched Battle’ rules lack are an example or two, not an issue with the ‘Managing a Domain’, which puts the Player Characters in charge of a small fiefdom, from a fortified farm to a small market town. It includes events and improvements which can occur over the course of a year, as well as ways to protect the domain should it come under attack.

Equally as well supported by examples are the rules for ‘Social Challenges’, which cover Player Character scheming as well as tracking the relationships between them and Symbaroum’s various factions. However, the Player Characters’ favour with any one of the factions will wax and wane, so it is not merely a case of doing a deed or conducting a task to gain a faction’s support, but doing more deeds and conducting further tasks to maintain that support.

Travelling through and exploring the Davokar forest comes under the spotlight in first ‘Expeditions in Davokar’, followed by ‘Exploring Ruins’. These are perhaps the most familiar chapters, covering content previously presented in Symbar – Mother of Darkness. ‘Expeditions in Davokar’ covers the dangers and travails of moving through the forest—planning, misfortunes, companions, treasures to be found, reasons to delve underneath the canopy, and more. ‘Exploring Ruins’ provides a set of tables for the Game Master to create various that might be found in the forest. The penultimate chapter in the section, ‘Ceremonies’, expanded from The Darkest Star, covers powerful rituals the casting of which comes with significant corruption and side effects, and which are outlawed by the Ambrians. Numerous examples are given, but for the most part, these remain the province of NPCs and likely events which the Player Characters will either have to investigate, prevent, or interrupt. Lastly, ‘Legendary Creatures’ draws on the Monster Codex to present legendary, climatic challenges for the Player Characters, such as Sakofal the Slaughterer, legendary dragon, recently awoken and emaciated, and very, very hungry…

The third section, ‘Rewards’, is the last and shortest, consisting of two chapters. The first, ‘Enhanced Rewards’ covers everything from thalers to artefacts as rewards, but there are some non-traditional options too, including ‘burdens as rewards’. The idea being that the Player Characters will have faced great, probably stressful challenges and dangers, and the likelihood is that they will come away hurt in body or mind, if not both. This is an interesting way of developing a Player Character, plus the ‘burden’ grants both roleplaying opportunities and Experience Points! The second, ‘Great Artifacts’ gives almost unique devices of a magical nature, such as Bunefor’s Death Mask, which enables the wearer to find gaps in an enemy’s armour as well emit a piercing scream under certain circumstances or Desdemorgos’ Iscohedron, a device which protects the user against environmental corruption, but which also allows the user to draw corruption and use it as an attack! Each of the artefacts comes an adventure hook ready to develop.

Physically, the Game Master’s Guide is up to the standard you would expect of the Symbaroum line. It needs a tighter edit perhaps in the earlier chapters, but is otherwise well written and the artwork is up to the usual standard.

As much as the Game Master’s Guide reprints content from previous titles, it also expands upon them and it collates them, all in one handy reference tome. In doing so, it supports whatever type of campaign set in Symbaroum the Game Master is running, whether that is the Crown of Thorns or one of her own devising, with advice on set-up and theme, handling traps and ruins, Player Character goals and rewards, and really, quite a lot more. It goes further though, in offering ideas and suggestions for running campaigns in Symbaroum other than that presented in the Crown of Thorns campaign. The chapter on troupe play lends itself to roleplaying and adventure opportunities aplenty, as does managing a domain, so that a campaign could be location-based rather than travelling hither and thither.

However, as good as much of the content in the Game Master’s Guide is, it is difficult to describe as a must-have title—and less so if the Game Master already has many of the other supplements and titles for Symbroum. As much as the content has been expanded upon, it is simply a case of being less useful if the Game Master already has it. On the other hand, it does collate as well as expand that content and that means that it is useful reference tome to have alongside the core rulebook instead of having to leaf through numerous supplements. So for the Game Master new to Symbaroum, the Game Master’s Guide is a worthy purchase, but for the veteran Symbaroum Game Master, the Game Master’s Guide is worth considering before making the purchase.

Sinking the Stercorarius: The Salty Funnel Level 0 Adventure is a ‘Character Funnel’ for use with Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game and thus features one of the feature elements of  both Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game and Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game. The set-up for this requires each player 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 chosen Class.

Published by 2 Old Guys Games, following a successful Kickstarter campaign, Sinking the Stercorarius dumps the Player Characters aboard what turns out to be a sinking ship—whether as criminals, slaves, members of the elite, or simply day-trippers—and has them fight their way on the deck just as something tentacular takes advantage of the ship going down.

The adventure is the first to use the publisher’s ‘Multi-Adventure-Theme System’. What this does is present different themes or ways in which the set-up for adventure can be played. In the case of Sinking the Stercorarius, these themes explain why the Player Characters are aboard the ship when she springs a leak. Four are given. They are in turn, prisoners, rushed through a trial, found guilty, and now bound for the gaol on the island of Prison Rock; as slaves in the hold; as pompous members of the elite aboard a jolly cruise; or as day-trippers getting an ‘Authentic Pirate Experience’. To support the first three of these set-ups, but not the fourth as for that, the Player Characters could be of any background, Sinking the Stercorarius includes three Occupation tables. One for Prisoners, one for Slaves, and one for the Elite.

Whichever of the themes—singly or combined, which is also discussed as an option—the set-up for Sinking the Stercorarius finds the Player Characters aboard the ship as it springs a leak and begins to sink. The Player Characters must find their way out of their confinement and fight their way onto the deck, and then just as quickly, off the ship before they are dragged into the depths by the undertow! As this happens, the water swirls around the Player Characters, something tentacular moves between them, attacking some, grabbing others, and dragging them away. When the Player Characters find themselves in the freezing seas, they spot a strangely isolated, conical island of black rock within swimming or rowing distance.

What the Player Characters find atop the cone is a crater, at the heart of which is a strange metal tower-like structure, bent, even crumpled. Equally as strange are the armoured and betentacled, two-armed and four-armed figures moving stiffly about the crater and the structure. Can the Player Characters find out what the structure is and who the figures are—and perhaps find a way of the island?

Designed to be played between one and two sessions, Sinking the Stercorarius is decently supported. Besides the Occupation tables, it comes with maps of both the Stercorarius and the strange structure, details of three new weapons, five alien and aquatic monsters, plus handouts. There is also some decent staging advice for the Judge as well as playtest notes throughout which make for an enjoyable read.

Physically, Sinking the Stercorarius is reasonably well presented. The new artwork is decent, as are the maps, although those of the strange structure on the island are really too small to be used with any ease. It is a pity that the two pages left ‘intentionally blank’ could not have been put to better use. The scenario could have done with another edit as well.

Now whilst Sinking the Stercorarius is adequately playable, it unfortunately suffers from a number of problems. The most obvious one is the inclusion of the ‘Player Characters as slaves’ theme, which some playing groups are going to find objectionable, especially since they begin play as slaves in the hold of a ship. It should be made clear that the Player Characters are not Africans and that the adventure does not take place in the real world—the authors have in no way been that insensitive. However, the difficult nature of this theme and its set-up could at least have been addressed by the authors and the Judge been given some advice about handling what could be a difficult theme for some. Or at least told to avoid that theme if she knows that her players would find it objectionable and insensitive.

Another problem is that the authors commit the cardinal sin of not explaining what the scenario is about. There is no explanation of the plot anywhere and essentially, the Judge only learns what Sinking the Stercorarius is about and what its plot twist is by reading through the scenario herself. On a first read through at least, it feels as if the authors are pulling the same bait and switch on the Judge as much as they are on the players.

That bait and switch is the fact that Sinking the Stercorarius is not salty, is not nautical, and is definitely not piratical. It might begin on a ship, but since the ship sinks, the only nautical things that the Player Characters get to do is cling to some flotsam, swim to ‘safety’, and possibly row a dinghy. They do not get to sail a ship, they do not meet any pirates, and they do not get to be abused by ‘salty’ language. In fact, the only ‘salty’ language that the Player Characters might be abused by is their own.

What the bait and switch involves is a crash-landed alien spaceship—the strange, metal tower-like structure, bent and crumpled, and this will become immediately obvious as soon as one of the handouts is shown to the players. The majority of the new monsters are aliens and the new weapons are basically, ray guns. In essence then, Sinking the Stercorarius: The Salty Funnel Level 0 Adventure starts at sea, goes to a mysterious island—and completely ignores the possibilities that exploring a mysterious island, especially in what is supposed to be nautical adventure—might provide an adventure with, and presents the Player Characters with a miniature version of S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, the classic Science Fiction adventure for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition.

Sinking the Stercorarius: The Salty Funnel Level 0 Adventure is a ‘Character Funnel’ and undeniably so, but equally undeniable is the fact that Sinking the Stercorarius is not salty. Obviously, it does not taste of salt nor is it preserved with salt (I checked); equally, it is neither down-to-earth or coarse in terms of its language or humour; and nor is tough or aggressive, or angry or resentful in terms of its attitude. Ultimately, without the salt, whether that is in terms of the tone or the nautical theme, Stercorarius: The Salty Funnel Level 0 Adventure is a bland and uninspiring adventure.

 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: Cages of Light & Lenses - A Call of Cthulhu adventure of lost film

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Alison Cybe

Setting: 1980s New York glamour & Soviet-era Bulgaria grime

Product: Scenario
What You Get: Twenty-seven page, 1.18 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Sometimes lost media should stay lost.
Plot Hook:  A collector wants the only copy of a once-thought lost Silent Era film; guess who he hires to get it? Plot Support: One creature, four Mythos entities, two maps, and five pre-generated Investigators.Production Values: Tidy layout, plain maps, and decent illustrations, but needs an edit.

Pros
# Engaging introduction and theme
# Potential convention scenario
# Solid climax
# Room for development
# Scope to play up the Capitalist/Communist culture clash

Cons
# Needs an edit
# No stats for the lost film as a tome# Antagonists underutilised
# Missed opportunity for Capitalist/Communist culture clash 
# Missed opportunity for Committee for State Security involvement# How does the bear get out of the basement?

Conclusion
# Engaging introduction and theme
# Underdeveloped, but plenty of Cold War-horror potential 
# The King in Yellow, but in reverse?

Harper’s Tale: A Forest Adventure Path for 5e is a campaign for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. Funded via Indigogo and published by Saturday Morning Scenarios, it is an adventure path of ten connected scenarios which will take the Player Characters from First Level to Tenth Level and is designed for players as young as ten. This is reflected in the name of publisher—Saturday Morning Scenarios—for the fantasy of Harper’s Tale is very American, being that of Saturday morning cartoons, so light in tone and with elements that are simply cute, such as Sir Cheddar, a magic-wielding Corgi, and Fred, a rainbow-maned, purple Allicorn—both of whom are likely to join or aid the Player Characters, but nevertheless still with elements of peril. However, its fantasy is neither grim nor dark, so it is thus suitable for a younger audience. Some older or more mature players may perhaps find its fantasy too light in tone, but that tone also means that Harper’s Tale is suitable for a family audience.

Notably, Harper’s Tale is the final result of a successful fundraiser for Friends of Kids with Cancer. This was because the publisher’s youngest daughter, Harper, was diagnosed with leukaemia. Fortunately, Harper is in remission, and in response to the support that she and her family received during her treatment, she and her father decided to devise a story for a Dungeon & Dragons adventure book, which once she was discharged, was developed into a proper outline. This is because Harper is a gamer and enjoys creating stories. Her father took the outline and together with a team made up of industry luminaries, including Jeff Stevens, Ben McFarland, Brian Suskind, Hannah Rose, Ashley Warren, Kienna Shaw, Bill Barnett,  MT Black, Donathin Frye, Anna Landin, Gwendy B, Anna Meyer, Dyson Logos, Jessica Ross, Kobold Press, Petersen Games, and more, has brought it to print.

The campaign begins in the village of Grove. Whether the Player Characters are merely passing through, visiting, or returning home, they discover a farming community devoid of its inhabitants, its animals run amok, its crops in danger of rotting before they are harvested. Eventually they will find two villagers, the sisters Rose and Grace, who can tell them what happened. The other villagers have all fallen asleep and cannot be woken, the sisters caring for them as best they can. Further investigation as the source of the illness points to the activities of outsiders and a previously unknown series of caves underneath Grove. Here, the Player Characters will encounter the first of a number of entertaining NPCs whom the Dungeon Master will undoubtedly enjoy roleplaying. Most obviously, this will be Sir Cheddar, the magic-using Corgi who will join the party on its adventures, but they also include a Goblin hermit, an out-of-his-depth Wizard, and more…

From the caves, the clues lead onto a number of other settlements which also seem to have been beset by strange illnesses and outbreaks of odd behaviour. The highlight of these is the seventh adventure, ‘The problem with Prattle Creek’, where amidst a rash of sickness and bizarre happenings, the town is being visited by Professor Piewright and his travelling medicine show with promises of a cure for that ails the townsfolk. Amidst the oddness, a murder occurs and in the ensuing investigation, the Player Characters will discover further links to the overarching plot. Of course, the ‘Snake Oil Salesman’ nature of the encounter is pure Americana, enforcing the ‘home on the range’ feel of earlier encounters, whilst giving the Dungeon Master a fun NPC to portray in the form of Professor Piewright.

For the most part, the encounters and scenarios in Harper’s Tale are rural or forest-based in nature, barring the larger cave system near the campaign’s start, there is very little in the way of traditional dungeons—and what there are, is not necessarily very interesting. Thankfully, the other encounters make up for it, much of the middle part of the campaign involving the Player Characters’ attempt to gain an audience with Deng, the arch-druid of the forest who might have a cure to the rash of poisonings and illnesses flooding the region—not once, but twice, and then going out to find the necessary ingredients. There is even a touch of the Lovecraftian here as the search for ingredients takes the Player Characters into the forests within the Dreamlands and back again, where they will encounter both Zoogs and Cats of Ulthar. In general, the encounters and scenarios will reward the player and their characters for clever play and roleplaying than the use of brute force, the encounters and scenarios themselves primarily requiring exploration and investigation.

Each of the ten encounters is presented in a similar format. Each gives a synopsis of the adventure, hooks to the adventure if not played as part of the campaign, a description of the locations in the adventure plus any events which will happen, and the conclusion. Each is followed by an appendix containing all of the stats for the scenario’s monsters and NPCs, plus any magic items. In general, they are well organised, and the hooks for running them separately decent enough. However, the scenarios do all work together and even with a coterie of different authors, the publisher has done a good job of keeping the tone and feel generally consistent throughout.

Harper’s Tale comes with eight pre-generated adventurers. They include a Faunkind Fighter, a Lion Paladin, a Tielfling Cleric, a Firbolg Druid, a Panthaka Monk, a Human Barbarian, a Gnome Wizard, and a Halfling Bard. This is a mix of traditional and non-traditional races, some of which may not be necessarily familiar to Dungeon & Dragons players. All eight are presented with a full colour illustration and their character sheets are tidily presented and easy-to-read. However, of the octet, given the campaign’s forest setting, it seems odd that a Ranger is omitted, but more problematically, the campaign includes challenges involving the use of thieves’ tool, and so the inclusion of a Rogue would have been more useful. Perhaps another useful addition for the Dungeon Master would have been some advice on creating the type of Player Characters presented in this set of pre-generated ones, especially as fall outside of the scope of the standard options in Dungeons & Dragons.

Physically, Harper’s Tale is well presented and has a bright and breezy look to it. The artwork in particular, tends towards more vibrant or pastel colours, which further enhances the tone of the campaign. However, in places, the book needs another edit and could really have done with a campaign overview before diving into the first episode. The background and story to the campaign is simple enough, but the Dungeon Master should not really be discovering the backstory as she reads through the campaign. There are also a couple of issues with the maps. One is that some of them are not quite as well presented as they could have been, another is that the regional map, showing the location for all ten of the campaign’s episodes is decidedly bland. The campaign could also have done with more maps, in particular those of individual buildings and their immediate surrounds, to help the Dungeon Master bring them to life during play.

Harper’s Tale is not perfect, it is underdeveloped in places and slightly unpolished in others, such the Dungeon Master will need to do more preparation than the campaign really needs. Those, however, are issues with the production rather than the core story and its adventures, which are light and accessible, and supported by some entertaining NPCs. Overall, Harper’s Tale is an enjoyably light, straightforward campaign for Dungeons & Dragons well suited for a younger or a family audience. 

October 10th marks the second anniversary of Greg Stafford’s passing. To both commemorate that date and celebrate Greg’s contribution to the roleplaying hobby, today’s review from Reviews from R’lyeh is of The Smoking Ruin & Other Stories, the first anthology of scenarios for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha.

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The Smoking Ruin & Other Stories is an anthology of ready-to-play scenarios for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, the roleplaying game set in Greg Stafford’s mystical world of gods, faith, magic, cults, and great heroes that is Glorantha. Published by Chaosium, Inc., it presents three scenarios and source material that will take the Player Characters west of Sartar and into the South Wilds of the Dragonspine Mountains where they will discover ancient ruins and encounter ancient legends, rabid troll spirits, creatures out of the past, dinosaurs and Dragonnewts, Beastmen of every stripe and colour, priests and politicians, and more. It is designed for beginning Player Characters, but can easily be run using more experienced Player Characters, and that includes Player Characters who have played through ‘The Broken Tower’ from the RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha – QuickStart Rules and Adventure and the RuneQuest Gamemaster Screen Pack—and that includes the roleplaying game’s signature beginning Player Characters from RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha – QuickStart Rules and RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha core book. This is because the first adventure in the anthology—‘The Smoking Ruins’ begins and ends at Clearwine Fort, which if the players have played through the scenarios from the ‘RuneQuest Gamemaster Adventures’ book from the RuneQuest Gamemaster Screen Pack, their characters should have visited and forged links with, and further, the events of The Smoking Ruin & Other Stories take place after those of the scenarios in the ‘RuneQuest Gamemaster Adventures’ book.

To play through The Smoking Ruin & Other Stories, the Game Master will need access to RuneQuest – Glorantha Bestiary as it provides more details of the foes and NPCs that the Player Characters are very likely to meet as they adventure through the three scenarios in the anthology. Ideally, the Game Master will want the ‘RuneQuest Gamemaster Adventures’ book from the RuneQuest Gamemaster Screen Pack. It is not absolutely necessary to run The Smoking Ruin & Other Stories as the anthology includes background information and the major NPCs from Clearwine Fort described in the ‘RuneQuest Gamemaster Adventures’ book. However, the full information on both is given in the ‘RuneQuest Gamemaster Adventures’ book and will be useful. Access to a copy of King of Sartar will serve as an interesting corollary, but is definitely not required and only the most dedicated of Gloranthaphiles should be concerned about its inclusion. 

In terms of the types of adventurers required for The Smoking Ruin & Other Stories, a Shaman will prove more than useful, but again, not essential to its play through. Orlanth and Ernalda worshippers will find much to do in the scenarios—especially in ‘The Smoking Ruins’, and if such Player Characters have played through the scenarios in the ‘RuneQuest Gamemaster Adventures’ book from the RuneQuest Gamemaster Screen Pack, then all the better. This is because one of their number is likely to have been appointed Thane of Apple Lane and will have begun forging political links with Queen Leika’s court at Clearwine Fort. Similarly, a priestess of Ernalda or worshipper is likely to have links to the Ernalda temple at Clearwine Fort and at least be aware of its politics. Lastly, one of the Player Characters should have some kind of performance skill, such as Dance, Orate, Play Instrument, or Sing. The likelihood is that one or more of the Player Characters will have some of these skills, so again, a specialist with a high rating in any of these performance skills is not necessary. However, ‘The Smoking Ruins’ will present an opportunity for any Player Character with a good performance skill to shine—and more!

In addition to presenting its three scenarios, The Smoking Ruin & Other Stories presents some background and history of the region where they take place as well as the locations particular to each of the three scenarios. This starts with a gazetteer and history of the South Wilds, but also covers Clearwine Fort, political and religious centre of the Colymar Tribe; the Lost Valley, home to an isolated farming and herding community loyal to the Feather Horse Queen, but also the site of ruined ancient tower out of time and myth; and the Grove of Green Rock, for which the Aldryami have great plans. Each of these locations is accompanied by full descriptions and stats for each of the monsters, creatures, and NPCs to be found there, plus for the Lost valley, there are notes should a player want his character to originate from there. Arguably, the most notable of these locations is The Wild Temple, an eight-kilometre-wide web of megalithic standing stones which dominates the valley it stands in, sacred to both Beast People and the Grazeland Pony Breeders, particularly the former as it is centre of their spirit religion. Here may be encountered a wide array of creatures and peoples, from Centaurs, Satyrs, and Minotaurs to ‘Things No Longer Found in this World’, spirits, and Fox Women. All of them are given full stats, individualising them as you would expect for a RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha supplement.

The main scenario in The Smoking Ruin & Other Stories is the eponymous ‘The Smoking Ruin’, which takes the Player Characters from the political tensions at Clearwine Fort to an ancient ruined settlement high in the Dragonspine Mountains filled with Troll corpses set alight long ago and still burning such that the smoke blights the sky and back again to political tensions at Clearwine Fort. Beginning in Sea Season, 1626, Player Characters are hired by a priestess at the Temple to Ernalda to lead an expedition into the South Wilds where an ancient, sacred artefact might be found. They will need to conduct some research first, but accompanied by a precocious NPC, they must make the trip there and back again in a matter of just weeks. Despite the limited time frame, they are treated to something of a travelogue across the South Wilds before getting to the Smoking Ruins themselves. There are plenty of opportunities here for the Player Characters to meet people, learning something of the region, and lay the foundations for some firm friendships.

The limited time frame means that the Player Characters are unlikely to do more than make a brief exploration of this ancient complex of buildings and temples, for there is a lot more going on here than is presented in the plot of the scenario, ‘The Smoking Ruin’. In fact, so much more, that the location deserves at least more scenarios which will bring the Player Characters back to it to explore and play through the threads the scenarios hints at, but leaves hanging. As to the plot of ‘The Smoking Ruin’, it is both weird and wondrous, both mysterious and magical, and both mythical and epic in its storytelling. The scenario is lengthy and rich in detail, focusing on roleplaying, exploration, and Glorantha as a magical place, rather than on combat, offering multiple sessions of play. Plus, the beginning and the end pull the Player Characters into the politics at Clearwine Fort, also offering opportunities for further roleplaying and if playing the ‘Apple Lane’ series of scenarios, tying them further to the region—or beginning to if The Smoking Ruin & Other Stories is the Player Characters’ first scenario.

Whilst ‘The Smoking Ruin’ is an epic in length, the other two scenarios in The Smoking Ruin & Other Stories are shorter. All three though, share a sense of the epic in their scope. The first of these is ‘Urvantan’s Tower’, which takes place in the Lost Valley described earlier and begins with the Player Characters at the mouth of the valley, having been sent there as observers at the behest of Queen Leika. (This might be a punishment, or it might be an indication of trust, depending upon how Queen Leika regards the Player Characters after the events of ‘The Smoking Ruin’). The captain of the Wardens, essentially the militia for the Lost Valley and its village of True Ford, has come to Clearwine Fort to petition the Queen for help following the Lost Valley’s occupation of the Company of the Manticore, a band of mercenaries in the service of the Lunar Empire. 

Like many of the inhabitants of the Lost Valley, the Warden captain had hoped that another denizen of the Lost Valley, the Zzaburi Urvantan, a great sorcerer, might have come to their aid, but he has not left his tower retreat in some seasons. The likelihood is that the Player Characters will be outmatched by Company of the Manticore, so ultimately the sorcerer may be their only hope, as well as that of the Lost Valley’s inhabitants. Thus, they will need to find their way into Urvantan’s Tower—which will probably involve a certain amount of stealth upon the part of the Player Characters, and determine what has happened to him, before hopefully getting to come out and drive the Company of the Manticore out of the valley. 

‘Urvantan’s Tower’ is playable in two or three sessions and certainly gives the Game Master an incredibly powerful NPC to roleplay. The danger to avoid in the climax is making the final showdown between the sorcerer and the Company of the Manticore all about the sorcerer, for although he plays a major role, the Player Characters should also. Good advice is given to that end. Now whilst ‘Urvantan’s Tower’ has the structure of a traditional fantasy roleplaying adventure—‘village in peril, mercenary/monstrous threat, mysteriously disappeared wizard who is the only hope’—the scenario gives a very different spin on the set-up. Again, it is tied very much into the background and history of Dragon Pass, which gives the scenario a richness and introduces the players and their characters to more aspects of Glorantha.

Where ‘Urvantan’s Tower’ involved a mixture of stealth, exploration, and combat, the third scenario in The Smoking Ruin & Other Stories is all about combat, well combat and secrecy, but primarily combat! ‘The Grove of Green Rock’ is not designed to be played in a few long sessions, but really played out over the course of a few years. The Player Characters are hired as mercenaries by an Aldryami, but as to their mission, they are sworn to secrecy! In fact, they are hired to help protect a ritual which will strengthen the Aldryami presence in Dragon Pass, but to complete the ritual, the Elves will have to repeat it several times over the next few years, which means that the Player Characters will be hired again and again, each time to protect it from enemies sworn to prevent the return of the Aldryami to the region. Each time the Player Characters will face increasingly more difficult foes, but will receive some aid from their employer and better and better reward! Essentially this is the RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha equivalent of a ‘base defence’ game and the likelihood is if the incidences or ‘waves’ of the ritual defence are played out one after the another, they will lose their impact. Plus, returning to protect the ritual year after year means that each time the Player Characters are more powerful and capable of facing the increasingly tougher foes. 

Physically, The Smoking Ruin & Other Stories is a well presented, sturdy, hardback. The artwork is excellent throughout, some of it being repeated from other supplements, and the cartography very clear. However, it needs an edit in a few places and writing could have been clearer too in places, and sometimes the artwork feels as it could have served the scenarios better. It certainly would have been nice to be able to show some illustrations of specific locations in the Smoking Ruins as handouts for example. Another issue is the placement of the maps. Although there is a handy book in The Smoking Ruin & Other Stories, it would have been perhaps useful if the maps of the South Wilds and the Smoking Ruins had been printed inside the front and back covers respectively for easy access. Nevertheless, The Smoking Ruin & Other Stories is another good-looking book for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha.

It feels like there has been an age to wait for new scenarios for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, but with the publication of The Smoking Ruin & Other Stories, the wait has definitely been worth it. The three scenarios it contains are all begging to be played and in particular, added to a campaign, because each one has ramifications for campaign play. After ‘The Smoking Ruin’, the Player Characters might improve their standing at Clearwine Fort and of Clearwine Fort itself—or not, they may help forge a friendship and an alliance with the inhabitants of the Lost Valley in ‘Urvantan’s Tower’, and in ‘The Grove of Green Rock’, the Player Characters may help return the Elves to Dragon Pass. They will also reveal more of the history of the Dragon Pass, perhaps even some of its secrets, bringing both to live through play. Yet The Smoking Ruin & Other Stories only details so much, whilst hinting at so much more. There can be no doubt that The Smoking Ruin & Other Stories deserves a sequel, especially one which focuses on the Smoking Ruin itself.

The Smoking Ruin & Other Stories contains interesting setting material and two decent scenarios. The comparative brevity of ‘Urvantan’s Tower’ and ‘The Grove of Green Rock’ and the emphasis on combat in the latter means that they are unlikely to be quite as memorable as the first scenario in the anthology, but do not take that as meaning that either scenario is bad. Far from it. However, in comparison, ‘The Smoking Ruin’ is a fantastical epic, rich in the flavour and detail that Glorantha is so famous for, an impressive epic that draws the Player Characters into it, and it is simply begging for a return visit.

Overall, The Smoking Ruin & Other Stories presents a fantastical trilogy of scenarios for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, opening up some of the wonders and wondrous nature of Glorantha. Hopefully, future scenarios will return to explore the South Wilds in further detail and to as high a quality.

Kelvin Green hates small villages. He must do. After all, in Fish Fuckers – Or, a Record, Compil’d in Truth, of the Sordid Activities of the People of Innsmouth, Devon, he unleashed aspects of H.P. Lovecraft’s ‘The Shadow Over Innsmouth’ on a small west Country village with piscine horrors wanting to procreate with the inhabitants of said village, whilst in More Than Meets The Eye: A Short Adventure with Lots of Tentacles, he unleashed a weird, fantasy homage to a certain franchise of films involving giant robots capable of transforming into everyday objects, but with aliens/not-shoggoths rather than robots. Both scenarios are written for use with Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay, whereas the third of what has become Kelvin Green’s ‘village vitriol’ trilogy is a systemless scenario. However, despite the scenario being systemless, it is set during the Early Modern Age, between 1625 and 1725—the default period for Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay, and its tone and playstyle matches that of the Old School Renaissance.

The Seed, published by Games Omnivorous, is a system agnostic scenario of fantasy horror which would work with any number of Old School Renaissance retroclones. The most obvious one is Lamentations of the Flame Weird Fantasy Roleplay, another is the publisher’s own 17th Century Minimalist: A Historical Low-Fantasy OSR Rulebook, but with some adjustment it would work with Cthulhu by Gaslight or a darker toned version of Leagues of Gothic Horror for use with Leagues of Adventure: A Rip-Roaring Setting of Exploration and Derring Do in the Late Victorian Age! Take it away from its European setting and The Seed would work well with Mörk Borg as they share a similar tone and sensibility. Notably though it adheres to the Manifestus Omnivorous, the ten points of which are:

1. All books are adventures.
2. The adventures must be system agnostic.
3. The adventures must take place on Earth.
4. The adventures can only have one location.
5. The adventures can only have one monster.
6. The adventures must include saprophagy or osteophagy.
7. The adventures must include a voracious eater.
8. The adventures must have less than 6,666 words.
9. The adventures can only be in two colours.
10. The adventures cannot have good taste. (This is the lost rule.)

So yes, The Seed adheres to all ten rules. It is an adventure, it is system agnostic, it takes place on Earth, it has one location, it has the one monster (the others are extensions of it), it includes Osteophagy—the practice of animals, usually herbivores, consuming bones, it involves a voracious eater, the word count is not high—the scenario only runs to twenty-eight pages, and it is presented in two colours—in this case, fluorescent pink and black. Lastly, The Seed does lack good taste. Be warned, just like The Feast on Titanhead before it, this scenario is one of gut churning—in some cases, literally—horror, bodily fluids, and madness. 

The setting for The Seed is the village of Midwich. And being the village of Midwich, it has its own cuckoo—a giant alien terraforming bio-machine which sits at the centre of the village and pumps out a fluorescently pink, corrosive—mentally and physically, miasma which rots mind, body, and anything else it envelops. Its aim, or rather it is programmed to transform the planet into a world suitable for colonisation by an alien species from another dimension. Which requires that it is fed, which is why a bunch of misogynist cultists—members of the Final Brotherhood—are feeding whatever organic material they can into the Seed’s greedy maw, whilst phallic-headed alien dogs which ejaculate acid patrol the mist and protect the Seed. Meanwhile, the Storm Society, a semi-secret scientific society has sent agents—inspired by a pair of Marvel Comics’ legendary creators, to investigate the Seed and what it is doing in Midwich. So, at some point, the Player Characters should expect figures in diving suits to loom out of the fluorescently pink gloom…

Which is the point at which the Player Characters turn up. Perhaps they want to find someone in the village, or the Storm Society has sent them to check on its agents already in Midwich, but whatever their reason for being in the village, they find something really weird going on. Of course, to determine what requires penetrating the pink miasma and potentially suffering its deleterious effects, ranging from hair loss and sudden uncontrollable anger to constant vomiting and the sudden, inexplicable attack by a random monster from the Game Master’s preferred Wandering Monster Table. Within the miasma, the Player Characters are free to wander wherever they like, explore as they like, and do as they like, and were it actually not for the effects of the Miasma, then determine what is going on would be relatively easy, as for the most part, the physical threats present in Midwich are not all that challenging.

Physically, The Seed is a vibrantly pink and white booklet with a separate cover, on the inside of which is the map of Midwich. The illustrations are a mix of the weird and the gruesome, whilst the map is large and easy to read. It needs a slight edit in places, but is overall quite a sturdy product, being done on heavy paper and card stock.

Like The Feast on Titanhead before it, The Seed is short and brutal, it being possible to play through the scenario and even survive in a single session. Unlike The Feast on Titanhead, the effect of failure in The Seed is disastrous, but not necessarily apocalyptic, however unless the Player Characters have a strong motive to investigate or a strong sense of altruism, the corrosive effects of the Miasma may be too strong for them, and so may drive them away rom Midwich, keeping them from investigating further. To that end, The Seed is need of some development upon the part of the Game Master to create hooks strong enough to motive the Player Characters, whether she is planning to run it as a one-shot or as part of a campaign.

Much like the earlier More Than Meets The Eye: A Short Adventure with Lots of Tentacles, Kelvin Green serves up another slice of ‘village as victim’ horror, this time weird Science Fiction horror for a profoundly pink encounter. The Seed is literally the seed of a session’s worth of weirdness and horror for the roleplaying game of the Game Master’s choice. 

Best known as a manufacturer of props—both gaming and comic book related, Type 40 has now entered the actual gaming industry with the first of its ‘Seeds of Terror’ for use with Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition. Each Seed is designed to be concise and easy to run, and not only that, be easy to purchase, prepare, and run all within a single session. To that end, each includes a set-up and a plot, all of the necessary maps and handouts, and five ready-to-play pre-generated Investigators. The very first in the series is The Mummy of Pemberley Grange.

The Mummy of Pemberley Grange: A 1920s Call of Cthulhu Seed of Terror for 4 or 5 investigators takes place at a country mansion in the 1920s to which the Investigators have been invited. Their host, Jessica Pemberley, rich socialite and Egyptophile, has shipped a mummy to her home all the way from Cairo and has invited them to an exclusive ‘unwrapping party’. This is a great event, an especially prestigious event which promises great, even macabre spectacle, made all the more so because of its intimacy, just a handful of attendees rather than the very public spectacle of a Mummy unwrapping as had occurred during the Victorian Era.

Essentially, the unwrapping in The Mummy of Pemberley Grange goes ahead as planned. Then something happens and the Investigators find themselves in a perilous situation—hunted from room to room and down corridor after corridor by a nigh-on unstoppable monster. All the Investigators have to do is keep out of the monster’s clutches and find a means to stop the threat facing them. Fortunately, everything that the Investigators needs is contained within the walls of Pemberley Grange—maps, clues, books, et cetera. The solution, once found, is gruesomely entertaining, though some players and their Investigators may find it quite unpalatable.

For all that there is a plot in The Mummy of Pemberley Grange, it is a simple plot and a straightforward plot. In fact, The Mummy of Pemberley Grange is primarily the set-up for a trigger event, and once that event is triggered, whatever happens next is driven by the actions of the Investigators. Aided, of course, by the occasional nudges from the Keeper in the form of the unstoppable monster…

The Mummy of Pemberley Grange comes with five ready-to-play pre-generated Investigators. They include an Egyptian archaeologist, a reporter, a businessman, a socialite, and a dilettante. Each comes with a little background, but for the most part, the players have plenty of space in which to create the details of their Investigators’ backgrounds. The three handouts are also well done.

However, there are a couple of issues with The Mummy of Pemberley Grange. The first is the map, which shows the floorplans of Pemberley Grange. The floorplans are in fact excellent and have a period feel, but they are only of the ground floor. Which is a bit of a problem should the Investigators want to go upstairs. The second is that there are twenty or so locations given on the map, but only a handful are given any description, which means that the Keeper is going to have to make up whatever might be found in these rooms. This should not be a problem if the Keeper has watched her fair share of episodes of Downton Abbey or Poirot, but if not, the flavour and feel of the scenario might suffer, let alone the pacing if the Keeper has to improvise too much.

Physically, The Mummy of Pemberley Grange is presented and easy to read. The handouts and the map are available to download separately, as are the Investigator sheets. They are also easy to use.

A classic Mummy unleashed horror scenario rather than a Mythos scenario, The Mummy of Pemberley Grange has potential to be great fun and the nature of its monster and set-up makes it easy to run as a Cthulhu by Gaslight scenario during the Victorian Era. Equally, it could be shifted to the USA or Australia just as easily—or another country with a few name and language changes. In fact, those changes would only take a few minutes, but really, that would only double the set-up time, because The Mummy of Pemberley Grange really can be downloaded, read through, and prepared in ten minutes—and that is being generous. Overall, The Mummy of Pemberley Grange really delivers on its low preparation promise; after that, it is up to the Keeper to deliver the horror and the Investigators to run scared as the Mummy stalks them in the halls of Pemberley Grange.

—oOo—

A full play through of The Mummy of Pemberley Grange is available to watch on YouTube recorded as part of Melbourne International Games Week.

Lover in the Ice, a scenario for Delta Green: The Roleplaying Game carries the proviso that it is, “Recommended only for the most resilient players and Agents”. Be advised that this warning is well deserved, for the horror in Lover in the Ice is of a horrifyingly adult nature, being body horror akin that of the 1979 film Alien, but combines it with the almost viral-like vector of John Carpenter’s The Thing and a psycho-sexual drive of a David Cronenberg film that ramp up its intimately sexual elements to disturbing levels. Whilst most horror scenarios are of an adult nature and require a mature audience, the horror in Lover in the Ice is of an unremittingly intense, if not extreme timbre, which would be very difficult to tone down. However, if a playing group is prepared for it and are forewarned about the strength—though not necessarily the nature—of horror in its pages, Lover in the Ice will deliver a memorably vile investigation into something that should not be…

Published by Arc Dream Publishing, what Lover in the Ice has in common with so many other scenarios for Delta Green: The Roleplaying Game, is that it is about ‘Investigation, Containment, & Denial’—and it really plays up the Containment angle. As is tradition for a Delta Green: The Roleplaying Game scenario, it begins with a telephone call. The Agents are to go to Lafontaine, Missouri which is currently caught up in an apocalyptic ice storm which has shut down and isolated the town. As the Agents may come to realise, although this might hamper their investigation, this is a very, very good thing. An alert has been triggered on a Green Box, one of the private storage areas—typically a rental storage unit, but it could be the boot of a car in a used vehicle dealership—where Agents can store valuable resources such as equipment and arms and materiel, as well as dump evidence of their activities and investigations in relative safety. In this case, the Green Box is at a storage rental facility in Lafontaine and the Delta Green ‘Friendly’—the employee at the facility paid to keep an eye on its has not responded. The Agents need to ride the relief efforts in Lafontaine, locate the ‘Friendly’ and find out what he knows, then verify the contents of the Green Box, determine if any of it is missing or has been stolen, and if so, get it back.

This though, is only the start. The Agents will at least need to establish the veneer of their cover before launching the investigation proper, but clues can be found almost from the off, and the Investigators are likely to be faced by a steady flow of them as they conduct their investigation—almost dauntingly so. The players really do need to be taking notes throughout and linking the clues to gain an understanding of both the backstory and what is actually going on—and ultimately, the threat that represents. Which means that the handler needs to read Lover in the Ice carefully to have that understanding herself. For the most part, the clues veer from signs of weirdly sexual activity to bloody murder scenes and back again, but the author gives the Agents a pause early in the scenario with an inventive array of weird and peculiar artefacts and not-tomes—mostly unexplained—which they need to examine and verify that were stored in the Green Box. Of course, major clues as to what was going on can be found here too, and the Agents are likely to suspect that they tie into some the oddness they will already have discovered. All of this should hopefully prepare them for the horribly bloody, even intimate encounters and confrontations with the threat at the heart of Lover in the Ice which become more dangerous each time they happen.

The environment for the investigation in Lover in the Ice also plays a part, although not as an active a part as you would think, and a Handler might want. It has two effects, one immediately obvious, one not. Not wanting to spoil the nature of the not so obvious one, the primary and obvious effect of the ice storm is to constrain the limits of the investigation. Not just in terms of geography, but also in the size of the cast in the scenario—the Handler really only has the one NPC to roleplay throughout the whole scenario. This only serves to heighten the sense of isolation in Lover in the Ice already present from limitations upon the physical senses due to the storm and the weather and the limited capacity to contact the outside world. However, the weather has no other physical effect on the scenario, and it will be up to the Handler whether she wants to enforce the effects and limitations upon her Agents when investigating in a severely cold environment.

As constrained as the environment for Lover in the Ice is, one of its major problems is that it is lacking a map of Lafontaine. The investigation has a Geographic Profiling aspect to it, and it would have been nice if the Agents had been able to spread open a map and plot the clues on a handout. The other issue is that not all of the monster NPCs are given stats. Neither problems are insurmountable, and the Handler should be able to create both the stats and a map with a little effort. That said, she should not have to, given that the last two pages of Lover in the Ice consist of a Delta Green Agent sheet, which to be honest, is superfluous here.

Lover in the Ice is very much a player and their Agents driven scenario. Its plot is already in motion and the Agents are essentially tracking that down in order to contain the threat. Again, a map of the location for the scenario’s denouement—climax would probably have been an inappropriate description—would have been useful, but again the Handler should be able to find one. In comparison to the investigation, the denouement does feel slightly underwritten, but the conclusion does highlight how the Agents’ failure to contain the situation in Lafontaine is likely to turn into a storm of another nature…

Physically, Lover in the Ice, as with so many other scenarios for Delta Green: The Roleplaying Game, is for the most part neatly laid out and well written. Its clues and handouts are nicely done and the details on the floorplans included are a huge improvement in terms of detail in comparison to other scenarios.

Essentially, The Thing in the ‘Show Me State’—as Missouri is also known—the likelihood being that the players will be going, “No, please don’t show me!”, is as nasty a slice of physical horror that Delta Green: The Roleplaying Game has ever served up. Its adult tone and the nature of the horror simply will not be for every player—and the Handler should take that into account when deciding to run Lover in the Ice. If however, the Handler does decide to run it and with the right group of player, Lover in the Ice combines a rich welter of clues and investigation with desperately disturbing horror.

As well as introducing players to the cosmic horror of H.P. Lovecraft and the concept of playing ordinary persons—or investigators—pitched stopping the entities and their servants borne of an uncaring universe, Call of Cthulhu introduced something else. And that is, clues, and in particular, their associated handouts. For Call of Cthulhu is a literary game and an academic game, a game in which clues come in the form of letters, diaries, newspaper clippings, excerpts from Mythos tomes, and more. Which of course, means that they can all be copied and cut out for the players and their investigators’ perusal, and from the clues found, so push the play of the game forward. As scenarios and then campaigns grew in complexity, then so did their clues, and then so did their handouts...

Of course, the first sophisticated handout for Call of Cthulhu would arguably be the match book for the Tiger Bar in the Shanghai chapter of Masks of Nyarlathotep, and in some ways, just as Masks of Nyarlathotep has remained the preeminent campaign for Call of Cthulhu, so its handouts have remained as correspondingly important. Thus to accompany the most recent edition of the campaign, updated and adjusted for use with Call of Cthulhu, Seventh edition, The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society has created the Masks of Nyarlathotep: Gamer Prop Set. With its one hundred and more props and handouts, this—even in its standard form—is a gorgeous looking collection and would deservedly go on to win the 2019 Ennie Award for ‘Product of the Year’. (Note that Reviews from R’lyeh has only had a chance to examine the Masks of Nyarlathotep: Gamer Prop Set and is not ashamed to admit that it would like to write a review of this and other prop sets.)

However, not every campaign or scenario warrants so lavish a treatment, but over the years there have been many efforts to support Call of Cthulhu’s use of handouts as props. For example, Chaosium, Inc. published the Beyond the Mountains of Madness Game Aid, which collected all of the handouts and supporting material for the pre-millennium campaign, Beyond the Mountains of Madness Game Aid. Similarly, Pagan Publishing published GM Packs for many of its campaigns, such as that for Realm of Shadows. Many of these extras have become highly collectible, with correspondingly high prices, even though in some cases, they have not amounted to much more than a few sheets of paper.

Alongside this, another trend has allowed the Keeper to create more and more of her own handouts—the use of the personal computer and inexpensive Desktop Publishing software. Previously, a Keeper might have written out a handout and then soaked it in tea before drying it out in the oven to get that effect of its being old, and whilst she might still do that today, she is just as likely to create something her computer—a letter, a diary entry, a newspaper article, a map, and the like. This also means that publishers can do the same, whatever their size. So it is with Dave Sokolowski and Weird 8, who has released the Sun Spots Prop Kit, a set of handouts for the 2016 scenario, Sun Spots. Set in 1926, west of a wintery Boston in the resort town of Red Valley where sun-worshippers are taking advantage of the unseasonably warm weather and a father—accompanied by the investigators—have come to retrieve his daughter, whom he believes to have fallen into immoral company. Of course, nothing is as it seems, for that immoral company turns out to be sun-worshipping cultists, more and more of whom flocks to the town the heat grows and grows, threatening burn it—and more—down.

The Sun Spots Prop Kit is a simple envelope, inside of which are just four items. The first of these is the first of three maps in the Sun Spots Prop Kit. This is an A3-sized, double-page spread of the town, drawn in topographical style, and done as the sort town map you might find at a tourist office or a hotel. It even comes with marked and numbered location as well as list of adverts down one side. This gives it a lovely verisimilitude. The second prop consists of several entries in the daughter’s diary over a couple of sheets and they are nicely presented with a slightly rough and idiosyncratic feel to the handwriting. The handwriting is large and easy to read, but with elements that make it just a little harder to read in places—just like the handwriting of you or I.

The second map—and third prop—is a simple plan of the town of Red Valley. This feels much more a handout rather than an in-game map like the first one, but is clear and simple. The likelihood is that this map was designed to accompany the third map—and fourth prop, an elevation map of the valley around the town of Red Valley. Now in Sun Spots, only the fourth prop was included in its pages, rather than including a map of the town. So, the Sun Spots Prop Kit certainly fixes that omission. Of the two maps, the elevation map is the only one done in full colour and it has a pleasing delicacy to it matching the area maps of the period.

Physically, the Sun Spots Prop Kit is solidly presented. All four items are printed on weighty paper stock and feel good in the hand. 

The Sun Spots Prop Kit is smartly done and all four props have a lovely feel to them. Now if you have a copy of Sun Spots, then the truth is that the props in the Sun Spots Prop Kit are not entirely necessary to play the scenario. However, they do add a degree of verisimilitude when running the scenario—especially the tourist-style map and the diary. Which means that the Sun Spots Prop Kit does what it is intended to do and that is, help make the play Sun Spots all the better.

 

Mutant Crawl Classics #8: Evil of the Ancients is the eighth release for Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic, the spiritual successor to Gamma World published by Goodman Games. Designed for Third Level player characters, what this means is that Mutant Crawl Classics #8: Evil of the Ancients is not a Character Funnel, one of the signature features of both the Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game and the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game it is mechanically based upon—in which initially, 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. In terms of the setting, known as Terra A.D., or ‘Terra After Disaster’, this is a ‘Rite of Passage’ and in Mutants, Manimals, and Plantients, the stress of it will trigger ‘Metagenesis’, their DNA expressing itself and their mutations blossoming forth. By the time the Player Characters in Mutant Crawl Classics #8: Evil of the Ancients reached Third Level, they will have had numerous adventures, one of which might have been Mutant Crawl Classics #3: Incursion of the Ultradimension. This is important because both scenarios are written by Michael Curtis and because Mutant Crawl Classics #8: Evil of the Ancients can be played as a sequel to Mutant Crawl Classics #3: Incursion of the Ultradimension.

In Mutant Crawl Classics #3: Incursion of the Ultradimension visited a strange island off the coast, home to a scientific research facility which has been invaded by, guess what, an Incursion of the Ultradimension. It combined a sense of the weird with a hint of Blue Collar Science Fiction Horror a la the 1979 film, Alien. The facility also contained a map indicating the location of other facilities in the time before Terra A.D., which might actually still be found, possibly even found intact, in the here and now of Terra A.D. The location for Mutant Crawl Classics #8: Evil of the Ancients is such facility located on the map. However, it need not be run as a sequel, but simply as an encounter along the way as the Player Characters travel from one place to another. However, it may lose a certain resonance if played as a standalone and playing Mutant Crawl Classics #8: Evil of the Ancients as a sequel to Mutant Crawl Classics #3: Incursion of the Ultradimension will go towards building a sense of a campaign, something that is not necessarily a strong feature of the Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game.

Most scenarios for Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game are a combination of the gonzo and the weird, Science Fiction with an element of fantasy. Mutant Crawl Classics #8: Evil of the Ancients is different in that it is less fantasy and less gonzo, and very much a weird horror scenario. Once the Player Characters descend into the facility, they at first find scenes of death, but the more they explore, they find that these deaths appear to be the result of a manic outbreak of madness and violence. Of course, the apocalypse that brought Terra A.D. into being, killed millions, but in many of the thirteen rooms and corridors underground, the Player Characters will discover signs of the staff having run amok, signs of their not only having inflicted bloody violence, but of have actually committed acts of torture upon each other. The question is, what drove them to act in such a way?

What drove them to act in such a way was an extra-dimensional creature, a thing dragged into this world by the comic researches being conducted at the facility—think the Large Hadron Collider, but significantly more compact—and in its efforts to persuade the scientist to find a way of getting it home, its viral emanations drove the staff mad and they killed each other. Unfortunately, for the Player Characters, it is still trapped, and it still wants to get home, and it will go to any means to make it possible, even if it means sacrificing a sufficiently powerful enough psychic mutant as part of the process. Which means communicating with the Player Characters, which means that just like the facility before them, it means driving the Player Characters crazy! And is something of a problem when it comes to running Mutant Crawl Classics #8: Evil of the Ancients as part of a campaign.

Essentially, Mutant Crawl Classics #8: Evil of the Ancients is a haunted house scenario whose horror is cosmic in nature. Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game is not a horror roleplaying game and does not have a Sanity mechanic a la Call of Cthulhu, but as the Player Characters explore the facility, they will receive—initially, but then eventually suffer echoes of memories of the staff before they died, and then when they died. It is horrific and it is horrible, and worse, the most terrible of memories not only inflict harm on the Player Characters, they also force the Player Characters to inflict harm on both each other and themselves—and that is a big problem.

Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game is not a horror roleplaying game and so does not normally deal with situations in which the Player Characters are trapped in a closed environment and in some cases driven to inflict bloody torture on each other and themselves. In a horror scenario for a horror roleplaying game, this would not be as much of an issue because it is within the remit and the nature of the genre. In the post-apocalyptic genre of the Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game it is so much. So as consequence, the first issue with the scenario is that it should have included warnings as to its nature and the traumas it entailed. The second issue is that the scenario’s events and traumas are divisive and will see the Player Characters acting against each other—physically and mentally given that this is a scenario for the Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. Ultimately, this could see the Player Characters killing each other, potentially leading to a ‘Total Party Kill’, and not every group will be happy with this. For such a group, it could break the game or even the group itself! And again, the scenario should have included warnings as to its nature and the traumas it entailed.

However, if the players are happy with the horrific nature of Mutant Crawl Classics #8: Evil of the Ancients, then it is a horrifically atmospheric scenario, its creepiness building and building as the Player Characters encounter memory echo after memory echo and become aware of the true nature of past events in the underground facilities. Ultimately, it is likely to lead to an outbreak of bloody violence amongst themselves, and perhaps their best course of action is to retreat, to count the exploration as at best, a horrifying experience best left unrepeated. Its horrible nature means that it also works as a one-shot, and its short length, means that it could also be played in a single session, possibly as a convention scenario (doing so, would definitely require the warnings that the scenario is sadly lacking).

Lastly, it should be pointed out that Mutant Crawl Classics #8: Evil of the Ancients discusses possible outcomes to the scenario and gives an alternative ending involving a more physical confrontation—rather than the Player Characters running away. An appendix details the viral nature of the threat they will face in the scenario.

Physically, Mutant Crawl Classics #8: Evil of the Ancients is nicely presented. It needs an edit in places, but is generally well written and the artwork involves a lot of the signature characters seen in other Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game titles.  The double-page spread map is excellent though.

For all of its issues, Mutant Crawl Classics #8: Evil of the Ancients is a good scenario—creepy and weird, with a growing sense of horror as the Player Characters explore the facility. However, the scenario is also nasty in its horror, and some playing groups are not going to be happy with that and its divisive effects, especially in a game like Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game which normally does not feature either. The Judge is advised to read the scenario carefully and consider its effects on her campaign and her players before running Mutant Crawl Classics #8: Evil of the Ancients, and perhaps if Goodman Games publishes a scenario of a similar nature in the future, advisory warnings might be a good idea.