The Phoenix Initiative is a scenario for Traveller. It takes place on the world of Wochiers in the Regina Subsector of the Spinward Marches Sector and involves the classic set-up of research facility not having been heard from in a while and the Player Characters being hired to investigate. It ideally requires the Player Characters to basic training in both weapons and vacc suit, and if they do possess a starship, that it should be capable of Jump-2. The scenario includes a set of eight pre-generated Player Characters, four of which between them have the skills necessary to operate a starship as well as one of them owning a an A2 Type Far Trader. Thus, if the Player Characters own their own starship, the minimum number of Player Characters is four, but there is greater flexibility if they do not. That said, the scenario does allow the Player Characters’ employer to loan them a starship if they do not have one and to prevent piracy only a few locations are programmed into the ship’s computer to use the Jump drive. Both the mechanics and the plot of The Phoenix Initiative are straightforward enough that running it using Traveller, Classic Traveller, or Cepheus Deluxe Enhanced Edition are all easy enough to do.

The Phoenix Initiative is written by Carl Terence Vandal and begins with the Player Characters on Regina in the Spinward Marches Sector and short of funds having paid their monthly mortgage payment on their starship. In need of work, they hear of an employment opportunity with Phoenix Enterprises LIC. The company is concerned about the loss of contact from one of its research facilities and will pay handsomely for the situation to be investigated and for the safe return of the staff at the facility. The facility is on Wochiers, a nearby world declared a TAS Amber Zone due to its inhospitable environment which requires enhanced vacc suits. Wochiers is primarily known as a source of crystals, the best of which are used to enhance the performance of both starship computers and starship lasers. As the Player Characters will discover, the Law Level on Wochiers is very high and access limited, done primarily via shuttlecraft rather than starships. So, the Player characters will have to dock at the high port, and then travel down to the surface, the journey involving an engaging recognition of local customs at either end.

The journey from Wochiers Landing to the research facility is relatively straightforward—a week’s drive across the planetary surface in specially adapted ATVs. The main problem on the journey will be the environment rather than planetary species, which are for the most part passive creatures unless provoked or a lone traveller is caught outside in his vacc suit. This all sets up a mystery for the Player Characters when they do reach the research facility. There are signs of a struggle almost everywhere, a mixture of gunfire and animal attacks. The question is, what happened here and are there any survivors? Was the gunfire the result of the animal attacks or is something else going on? The Player Characters will find out, but will also find themselves being stalked by something else in the facility… This may lead to a frantic firefight…

The research facility is described in some details with various skill checks thrown in to determine what happens and what happened from room to room. The floorplans of the facility and its illustrations are decent, and the scenario is supported by a set of good Library Data entries.

The author of The Phoenix Initiative commits one cardinal sin. He does explain to the Game Master what is going on in the scenario, but leaves it right until the very end for the NPCs to do it. Which leads to a very frustrating read for the Game Master as she wonders exactly what is going on and in effect, has to find out when the Player Characters do.

Physically, The Phoenix Initiative is disappointing. It needs a good edit, it is often unnecessarily repetitive, and the map of the subsector is bitmapped and there are no names or locations on the world map. So, the Player Characters will have no idea where their journey on planet starts or ends.

The set-up in The Phoenix Initiative is incredibly familiar. A distant research base. All contact lost with the research base. Itinerant trouble-shooters hired to solve the problem. The base is home to an alien (or not) stalking and slashing the survivors after an accident. Essentially this is Death Station from Traveller Double Adventure 3: Death Station/The Argon Gambit writ large. Well, not entirely. The primary plot for it is, but the secondary plot—which does not really become apparent until the epilogue—is more interesting as it involves Duke Norris and his family, and it sets up the sequels to this scenario, Manticore and The Mariposa Affair.

The Phoenix Initiative is not a bad scenario, but it is not a good one either. It requires development in terms of presentation overall and presentation of its information. Certainly, with the completion of the latter, it might avoid—or at least ameliorate—the Game Master reading through the scenario and getting the feeling of déjà vu. However, The Phoenix Initiative does show potential in terms of presentation and detail and once past the all too familiar plot, there is promise of something more interesting to come.

The Bone Alchemist is an adventure for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. Written and published by Gaz Bowerbank—one half of the podcast, What Would The Smart Party Do?—it is designed for use with First Level Player Characters and takes place in a pseudo-Arabian Nights setting. The author suggests two possible initial locations. One is the city of Calimport in the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, the other is the great port city of Pylas Maradal in Valenar in the Eberron setting, but if not, the scenario is easily adapted to a Swords & Sorcery-style setting of the Dungeon Master’s choice. Wherever the scenario is set, a king and royal family rules the city inviolate, kept both safe and isolated from city life and any of its unpleasantness by a mixture of the royal guard and secret police. This includes the young nine-year-old prince, Masoud, whose pet pseudodragon has died, and with him unprepared accept the situation, merely thinking the beast asleep, Zoya, his mother has sought a solution to the problem and is prepared to spend deeply from the king’s purse. Unfortunately, their isolated lives have left both Zoya and Masoud gullible and thus ready to accept the ‘help’ and ‘advice’ of any of the city’s charlatans, tricksters, and opportunists. As The Bone Alchemist begins, both prince and his mother are missing, and the Royal Guard is desperate to find them. Ideally before someone tells the king…

The Bone Alchemist begins with the Player Characters in the city, in a tavern, come to meet a contact who may be able to help them find work. The scenario provides adventure hooks by Player Character Background—Acolyte, Charlatan, Noble, Sage, Soldier, and so on—to suggest why they might be there and why they might want to make contact with Equitable Ehsan, one of the city’s many wheelers and dealers. They know to meet him in a cantina, Olidammara’s Rest, which is where they find themselves in the scenario’s opening scene. In true fantasy fashion, this develops into a brawl and as a consequence, the Player Characters are either pushed or pulled into the scenario’s plot. This takes them into the bazaar where they haggle with a merchant or two, one of whom is perhaps too helpful, but will provide the Player Characters with a device which will enable them to track Prince Masoud, his mother Zoya, and his bodyguard, Atul. The device first points down to the beach where the Player Characters can gain further help, but not before delving into the first of the scenario’s two dungeons, but a dungeon with a difference! This is inside the body of a giant kraken, which a local gang is plundering for its precious alchemical components. Descending into its foul and foetid depths is optional, but doing so is to the Player Characters’ advantage. It is a ripe and bilious experience, thankfully short, but engagingly described and utterly in contrast with the rest of the scenario.

The other locations for the scenario include atop a dragon turtle, which is a great scene for a fight, and lastly, the dungeon of the true villain at the heart of the scenario, the Bone Alchemist herself. This is more like a traditional dungeon, but enlivened by some excellent descriptions and an air of decay and disregard that lingers in each and every one of its caves. Ultimately, the scenario will end with some home-truths for prince Masoud, who may have to grow up just a little, and the Player Characters either heroes or in further trouble. Either way, the scenario is supported with several hooks for the Dungeon Master to develop sequels of her own.

There is no denying that The Bone Alchemist is full of fun and inventive scenes, whether it is the brawl between the Talons, the local gang, and the palace guard in a tavern with the Player Characters caught in the middle, having to delve into the insides of the corpse of a kraken, fighting atop a dragon turtle, or fighting an undead giant goat who has already bleated out a warning! There are also pleasing descriptions for each of the scenario’s NPCs, accompanied by some flavour text that imparts what they might and how they might say it, instantly granting the Dungeon Master a feel for the NPC. Further, the author gives every scene a table of random events that enhance the action in that scene. For example, in the opening scene in Olidammara’s Rest, there is a table of rumours to glean and a table of events to throw into the combat, such as “The barkeep smashes someone over the head with a bottle from behind. One Talon or guard drops to 0 hp.” and “Equitable Ehsan appears on hands and knees, trying to crawl his way out of the carnage.” Of course, these are clichés, swiped from any one of a number of films, but they help set the tone of the brawl and thus the scene, as well as adding an element of humour, almost winking knowingly at the players in their familiarity. The combat events and random events tables are in general inventive and more tailored to their particular locations.

Yet in places the writing could be stronger, for example, the location descriptions vary in quality and ease of use. For example, the opening scene in the cantina, Olidammara’s Rest is very much underwritten in comparison, for example, to the description given of the bazaar, which is rich in detail and flavour. The Dungeon Master may want to prepare some better descriptions—the equivalent of her own ‘purple prose’—to help set the scene for her players and their characters. To be clear, not every description suffers from this, the majority of them being expressive and great scene-setting. Similarly, the villainess of the scenario, the Bone Alchemist, is fiercely underwritten and really lacks motivation.

Physically, The Bone Alchemist is clean and tidy, and well laid out. The maps are decent and the artwork also good. Throughout there are notes for the Dungeon Master which add detail and flavour. Stats are provided only for two NPCs and monsters in the scenario. The Dungeon Master will need to provide the rest, but links in the PDF connect to DnDByeond.com and the right stats in each case.

The Bone Alchemist is straightforward and easy to prepare and run or even adapt to the retroclone of your choice. Similarly, it is easy to add to any Arabian Nights or Swords & Sorcery-style setting or campaign. Above all, The Bone Alchemist provides some entertaining set scenes backed up with evocative detail and description that will help the Dungeon Master set these scenes and then bring both their action and their NPCs to life.

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

—oOo—
The first thing you notice about Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 3 is not the free gift that comes with the issue, but the price. It is almost double that of Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 2 and almost four times that of Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 1. This though is not unexpected. Published by Hachette Partworks Ltd., Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer is after all, a partwork. A partwork is an ongoing series of magazine-like issues that together form a completed set of a collection or a reference work. In the case of Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer, it is designed to introduce the reader to the world and the play of Dungeons & Dragons, specifically, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. With the tag line, ‘Learn – Play – Explore’, over the course of multiple issues the reader will learn about Dungeons & Dragons, how it is played and what options it offers, the worlds it opens up to explore, and support this with content that can be brought to the table and played. Over the course of eighty issues, it will create a complete reference work for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, provide scenarios and adventures that can be played, and support it with dice, miniatures, and more. The first issue of any partwork will always be inexpensive, the second issue more expensive, and the third and subsequent issues full price. The first issue, if not the second, is a loss leader, designed to pull the buyer in, and hopefully engage him enough to purchase further issues or even subscribe. So it is with Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer.

Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 3 does, of course, include a free gift. This is a set of character miniatures, essentially done in full colour on acrylic sheets. The four correspond to the four Player Characters given characters in Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 1. Thus they include a Human Rogue, a Hill Dwarf Cleric, a Wood Elf Fighter, and a Halfling Wizard. The tallest stands about twenty millimetres tall and each comes with a clear plastic base. They are easy to assemble and perfectly serviceable. It is a pity that there are no tokens included to represent any of the monsters that have appeared in each of the three issues of the partwork to date.
Issues of Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer contain sections dedicated to the seven gameplay elements—‘Sage Advice’, ‘Character Creation’, ‘The Dungeon Master’, ‘Spellcasting’, ‘Combat’, ‘Encounters’, and ‘Lore’—of Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 3 focuses on just three of these—‘Sage Advice’, ‘Character Creation’, and ‘Lore’, although it does also include an ‘Encounter’ which is exclusive to the partwork. The ‘Sage Advice’ looks at the one thing and explains how it works. Or rather several things and explains how they work. These are ‘Conditions’ which covers Blinded, Charmed, Frightened, Restrained, and more. These are clearly and simply explained.
‘Character Creation’ covers several background aspects to the process. ‘Introduction to Skills’ provides exactly that along with an explanation of skill proficiencies and it is accompanied by ‘Skills Explained’, which details each of the skills in Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. Unlike in the previous issues where only the one is detailed; Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 3 describes two species. One is the ‘Elves’, the other is the ‘Halflings’. For the former, various Mythical Lineages are mentioned for Elves in Faerûn, such as winged Avariel and the shape changing Lythari, along with the Wood Elves, Sun Elves, Moon Elves, and Drow. Also given is some background to the arrival of the Elves in Faerûn and the cause of the Crown wars. Similar treatment is accorded to the latter, though the Halflings will feel much the same as in other fantasy settings.
The Wizard is the subject of much of the rest of the issue. ‘Wizard’ provides description of the Class, what Wizards do, their desire for knowledge, the importance of their spellbooks, the various schools of magic. Its companion piece is ‘Wizard Features’. Or rather, ‘Wizard Feature’, for whilst the Wizard cannot necessarily do quite as much as other Classes, this article looks at just the one, which is its spellcasting ability. Thus its looks at how the Spell Attack Bonus and the Spell Save DC works for the Wizard and then how a Wizard’s spellbook is used, how Arcane Recovery works, and what cantrips are. In comparison to the ‘Rogue Features’ article from Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 2, which just looked at the Backstab feature, ‘Wizard Features’ does not feel as one-note. For although it is covering the one feature, that is, spellcasting, there are several aspects to its subject, it is talking about more than the one thing. On the downside, it does feel more technical and of course, it is. Learning and casting spells is always going to be more technical than stabbing someone in the back. 
Penultimately, as is now traditional in the partwork, the ‘Lore’ section proves to the shortest section in Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 3. ‘The Red Wizards’ continues the issue’s theme of wizards by examining the primary wizarding threat of the Forgotten Realms. This includes a description of their towering plateau home of Thay with its volcanically ashen skies, their lich leader, Szass Tam, explains what a lich is, and notes how Thay interacts with other nations, and in particular, how Red Wizards explore the surrounding lands in search of power and influence. It is a solid overview that nicely prepares the Dungeon Master for the last part of the issue.
As has also become traditional, the last part of Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 3 includes an encounter that at six pages long, is the longest section in the issue. In keeping with the issue’s wizardly theme, the encounter, ‘Adventure 1 – 3 The Tower of Iron Will’, not only involves a wizard, it involves one of the infamous Red Wizards of Thay! As with other encounters in the partwork, it is set in and around the village of Phandalin, in the Forgotten Realms, more recently detailed in the campaign, Phendelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk. The Player Characters are hired by Sister Garaele, an Elf Cleric of Tymora, who maintains a temple of luck and good fortune in the village. A few days ago, she sent a scout, Naivara Rothenel, to investigate an observatory in the mountains nearby where she knew a Red Wizard had taken up residence. She wanted to know if the Red Wizard posed a threat to Phandalin and the surrounding region. Unfortunately, Naivara Rothenel has not returned and now Sister Garaele wants to find out what has happened to her. The encounter proper begins outside the observatory. The building consists of just eight locations, all quite detailed and all quite eerie, dark, and gloomy as it appears to have been abandoned. There is a small mystery here to be solved and a fight or two to be had, and the tone of the encounter is creepy and weird, but quite constrained. Since Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 3 was published in October prior to Halloween, the ghostly nature of the encounter feels timely and appropriate.
Physically, Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 3 is very well presented, in full colour using the Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition trade dress and lots and lots of Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition artwork. So, the production values are high, colourful, and the writing is supported with lots of ‘Top Tip’ sections. The result is that Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 3 is as physically engaging as the first two issues, but the glued together spine and disparate nature of the contents highlight how the partwork is designed to be pulled apart and its pages slotted into the binders that will be available for Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer as a whole.
Now that Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer has reached its standard price, the question of whether it offers good value for money is difficult one to answer. Given their cheaper prices, the first two issues undoubtedly did, especially Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 1. Of course, price was always going to rise. This is how partworks work. So undoubtedly, Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 3 does not offer as much good value for money as either Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 1 or Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 2. Yet what it does offer is a reasonable set of plastic miniatures, some solid and useful information if you are new to Dungeons & Dragons, and an encounter that can be run in a couple of hours involving five people at a price less than that of a cinema ticket. In addition, it is strongly themed, from looking at Player Character Wizards and enemy Wizards to facing one of them in the issue’s encounter. And if the players have seen the film, Dungeons & Dragons: No Honour Among Thieves, they get the added bonus of facing a Red Wizard of Thay, so they get to be like the heroes they saw on screen. Further, the encounter, ‘Adventure 1 – 3 The Tower of Iron Will’ is exclusive to Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer and it does tie in with the campaign, Phendelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk. So, there is value there if you look for it, and of course, it has to be remembered that Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer is not aimed at the veteran Dungeons & Dragons player or Dungeon Master, but those new to the roleplaying game and those wanting to learn at a gentler pace. For the veteran Dungeons & Dragons player or Dungeon Master, the extras like the miniatures in this issue and exclusivity of the encounter may well appeal to the collector.
Overall, Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 3 is better than you might think. It still feels expensive for what get, but for learning the world’s most popular roleplaying game at a stately pace with a gift thrown in, it is worth looking at.
Where Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 1 was undoubtedly great value for money, Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 2 does not represent as good value as that first issue did. Which is to be expected. This is how a partwork works. For the prospective Dungeon Master, the encounter, ‘Adventure 1 – 2 The Forgotten Vault’ is a decent enough continuation of ‘Adventure 1 – 1 King of the Hill’ from Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 1, especially if added to the Phandelver and Below – The Shattered Obelisk campaign. However it is used, the encounter at least offers a couple of hours’ worth of play. In fact, an experienced Dungeon Master could run both encounters in the space of an evening or afternoon. Overall, Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 2 is a good continuation of Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 1, but not as good as Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 1.

Impossible Landscapes is a campaign like no other. It is a campaign of cosmic horror investigative roleplaying rather than Lovecraftian horror investigative roleplaying that forgoes much of what we expect to see in other campaigns for Call of Cthulhu or other Lovecraftian horror investigative roleplaying games. It does involve an uncaring threat to humanity, but this is not a threat whose presence on Earth can be merely forestalled until such times as the Stars are Right. This is a threat that seeps into our world, spreading like a meme before the concept was defined, infecting and altering reality over and over, changing our perceptions, making us vectors, its influence spiralling and twisting until everything we see is connected by it. Mankind cannot stop it. At best we can curtail it—temporarily, for it always finds other vectors. At the very least, we can survive it, but we will not be the same as before, for we will have seen the Yellow Sign. The threat is the Yellow King, whose influence spreads via The King in the Yellow, the story collection by Robert Chambers, from the ur-city that is Carcosa, standing on Lake Hali, out through the surrealist region that lies between Carcosa and our world and into our minds. It is in this surrealist region, this ‘Carcosa Country’ where much of the events of Impossible Landscapes take place.

Impossible Landscapes – A Pursuit of the Terrors of Carcosa and the King in Yellow is a campaign for Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game, published by Arc Dream Publishing. Its origins lie not just in Robert W. Chambers’ King in Yellow Mythos, but also in the writings of two Delta Green stalwarts. First in John Scott Tynes’ own attempts to write a campaign focused on the King in Yellow that would lead to both short stories and his lengthy exploration of ‘The Hastur Mythos’ in Delta Green: Countdown. Second, in Dennis Detwiller’s ‘Night Floors’, a highly regarded scenario for Call of Cthulhu, also found in Delta Green: Countdown in which the Agents investigate the disappearance of a tenant from the Macallistar Building in New York and discover how easy it is to get lost in the building and its new floors at night. It is ‘Night Floors’ that forms the basis of the opening part of Impossible Landscapes, greatly expanded and connected to the rest of the campaign. In terms of scope, Impossible Landscapes is both a small campaign, encompassing just New York and Boston as its key locations, and a huge campaign, taking in as it does, the whole of unreality.

The campaign opens in 1995 with the reiteration of ‘The Night Floors’. Abigail Wright has gone missing from her New York apartment in the Macallister Building. As part of Operation ALICE, the Agents are to assist the FBI in collecting evidence from her apartment connected to her disappearance and determine whether or not there is something unnatural behind it. Almost from the start, the collection of evidence will appear strange, a random assortment of oddities glued to the wall in layers, but the building itself is stranger still. The other residents are initially recalcitrant and self-absorbed, but they seem to change at night, as does the building itself. There are new floors to the building, which seems to go up and up, yet never changes from the outside. ‘The Night Floors’ lays the foundations for the campaign, showcasing a duality between night and day, between reality and unreality, between rationality and irrationality, all of which runs throughout the initial parts of the campaign until they all begin to blur into one another. ‘The Night Floors’ is creepy and weird—and whilst the rest of the campaign is also creepy and weird, here it seems constrained and containable. Of course, it is far from that, but it does not seem to sprawl as it does in the rest of the campaign. The scenario also shows the Agents for the first time, that survival is their best and only hope.

‘The Night Floors’ is likely to end without a sense of any real achievement. It is not intended to, but this is not helped by the radical shift as the campaign jumps forward two decades for the second part, ‘A Volume of Secret Faces’. The options here are the Agents to have been deactivated during the intervening twenty years or the Handler to run some cases set during that period. The jump in timeframe has another effect though. It enforces the sense of unreality as connections begin to be spotted between the encounters in the here and now of 2015 and the past investigation of 1995,and that the Agents are being called back to that sense of unreality, and for them, that it truly never went away. In the second part of the campaign, the Agents are asked to investigate Dorchester House, a Boston psychiatric facility dealing in trauma where other Delta Green agents have been committed and disappeared. What the Agents will discover is a similar, but worse duality to that of the Macallister Building that will draw them deeper into the Impossible Landscapes. Here the campaign seems to pulsate with its unreality, expanding out to some utterly bizarre and frightening encounters, before contracting again to focus solely on the corridors and rooms—and beyond—of Dorchester House. Ultimately, the Agents will find themselves trapped in Dorchester House and its duality, but they will be able to escape.

The third part, ‘Like a Map Made of Skin’ turns the Agents’ paranoia back on themselves and sees them hunted, any trust issues they have fully justified now. The Agents will find themselves pushed and pulled, and though there are chances to revisit previous locations, ultimately, they have one choice and one destination, from where they can push on through to the other side—perhaps in pursuit of answers or even Abigail Wright still. This location, the Hotel Broadalbin, is one of many places in the campaign where it possible to transition between times and places in the campaign itself. Many of these are optional, and may or may not be discovered by the Agents. Hotel Broadalbin is not. Transitioning here will enable the Agents to make the final crossing into the Impossible Landscapes in the campaign’s last part, ‘The End of the World of the End’, and onwards towards Carcosa itself. Here the Agents will find war and despair as they search for a way to attend the court of the King in Yellow.

In terms of what the players and their Agents will confront—or is it what will confront the players and their Agents?—it is primarily a sense of the ineffable, of uncertainty, of never knowing quite what is going on and who to trust. That lack of trust has always been present in Delta Green and in Delta Green, but here the author winds this up so that it is not just a case of the Agents barely being able to trust who they work for as operatives of Delta Green, but they can no longer trust reality. Once exposed to the influence of the Yellow King, the surrealism never lets up, the motifs of Carcosa and The King in Yellow seeping in everywhere. Nowhere does this show more than in the clues the Agents will discover and the cascade of connections between persons and places in the campaign that never once seems to let up. There is moment at the beginning of Masks of Nyarlathotep in which having confronted the killers of Jackson Elias, the Investigators are presented with a thick wodge of clues that connect from New York to the rest of the campaign and in its opening moments threatens to overwhelm the Investigators with too much information. Impossible Landscapes is like that moment, but it never seems to end.

As a consequence, Impossible Landscapes all too often actually feels impossible in terms of an investigation. Although the campaign is quite linear in structure, determining where and what to investigate, what clues to follow up, can be daunting for the players. At other times, the campaign funnels down to one choice, and whilst the Keeper is provided with suggestions and tools with which to push the players and their Agents forward, this does undermine the agency of the players. To an extent this fits the campaign and its intentional uncertainty, but at the same time, it feels as if the author is writing the Agents and their players into a labyrinth, thus getting them lost, and then having to force them out again via a deus ex machina and into the next…

The campaign is also deadly. There are scenes and moments where it is physically deadly, but these seem almost inconsequential to the way in which the various encounters, discoveries, and more importantly, the realisations about the connectivity of one clue or fact or encounter to another constantly threatens to scour away at each Agent’s Sanity. Actual Sanity losses are individually low throughout the bulk of the campaign, but they are ever present and they mount up over the course of the Agents’ investigation. In addition, the influence of the Yellow King and each Agent’s susceptibility is measured by a separate track—Corruption. As this increases, invariably through actions and decisions upon the part of the player and his Agent, each Agent has the chance to learn more and access other locations, thus encountering ever greater moments of surrealist uncertainty. There are moments—few and far between—when an Agent can regain Sanity and lose Corruption, but once gained, Corruption can never be truly lost. Any Agent who actually survives Impossible Landscapes will be both scarred and corrupted by his experiences in the Impossible Landscapes, but to be clear, when the Handler decides to run this campaign, there is no play beyond it.

Physically, it is clear that Impossible Landscapes is not just a roleplaying campaign or a roleplaying book. It is a tome in and of itself, subtly recursive as if trying to infect the Handler as she reads and prepares the campaign. Images are not placed in the book, they taped in place haphazardly with masking tape, as if some unknown Delta Green agent is attempting to put together a file on the investigation for the archives. The influence of the Yellow King seeps into the pages with every mention of him marked and appended with the question, “Have you seen it?” There are subtle changes throughout the volume that startle both Handler and reader, just further adding to its atmosphere and tone of uncertainty. Throughout, the book is annotated by different voices whose identities can only be guessed at, throwing in weird anagrams and comments that suggest further connections, and suggesting that somehow, these annotations have been made post publication to the copy in the Handler’s hands. And then there are the handouts. There have never been handouts like this before. They are used to enforce the campaign’s surrealist uncertainty for much like the campaign itself, they are layered, they cannot be taken at face value, and they hide their ‘true’ information. In essence, the handouts have to be investigated in themselves in order to become useful clues to the investigation. For all this, as well as the fantastically accessible, but layered graphic design and the excellent artwork, it is no wonder that Impossible Landscapes won the 2022 Gold ENnie Award for Best Graphic Design and Layout. (It is also a travesty that Impossible Landscapes only won the 2022 Gold ENnie Award for Best Graphic Design and Layout. It deserved more.)

As to the writing, Impossible Landscapes is well written and easy to grasp. This does not mean that the campaign is far from challenging to prepare and run, given the complexity of the connections that snake back and forth across its length—though there is good advice given to both ends. What it does mean is that the writing does not complicate the process of either preparing to run or actually running the campaign.

Impossible Landscapes – A Pursuit of the Terrors of Carcosa and the King in Yellow begins with surrealism and uncertainty and never lets up on either, let alone the tension. This is superb creation, one which supplants the very way in which the King in Yellow is presented as a threat in other scenarios—typically as an attempt to stage a performance of The King in Yellow, with or without the Investigators’ involvement, to pull them or others into Carcosa. Impossible Landscapes does that to an extent, but always seems to be skirting the performance, instead focusing on the reality destabilising/unreality enforcing that takes place somewhere between our world and that of Carcosa. This is not an experience that any Agent can win nor does it involve a threat that any Agent can defeat. Rather it is an experience to understand and survive, a threat to be avoided, knowing that its infectious, reality warping surrealism is never going to be stopped. As a result, Impossible Landscapes elevates the Yellow King and his influence into an existential contamination that unbinds, rebinds, and connects reality and truly delivers a superlative cosmic horror campaign and playing experience.
Tell me, have you seen the Impossible Landscapes?

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 Five Go Mad in Egypt, Return of the Ripper, Rise of the Dead, Rise of the Dead II: The Raid, and more...

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

—oOo—
Name: Debutantes & Dagon: Inspiration for Short, Improvised Scenarios Starring Badass Regency Pulp LadiesPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Evan Perlman

Setting: Regency-eraProduct: Supplement for Regency Cthulhu: Dark Designs in Jane Austen’s England and Pulp Cthulhu: Two-fisted Action and Adventure Against the MythosWhat You Get: Twenty-seven page, 963.27 KB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Demure, but secretly ACTION!!! debutantes!Plot Hook: Create dangerous, clever, and capable young ladies of eliminating all kinds of horrifying mythos threats.Plot Support: Three tables and guidance for Investigator creation and four tables and guidance for villain and scenario creation, plus eleven Mythos and non-Mythos monsters and scenario hooks.Production Values: Okay
Pros# Combines Regency Cthulhu: Dark Designs in Jane Austen’s England and Pulp Cthulhu: Two-fisted Action and Adventure Against the Mythos# Intended for low-preparation games for Investigators and scenarios# Plenty of scenario hooks# Definitely Pride and Prejudice and ZombiesMythos# Gynophobia
Cons# Combines Regency Cthulhu: Dark Designs in Jane Austen’s England and Pulp Cthulhu: Two-fisted Action and Adventure Against the Mythos# Definitely Pride and Prejudice and ZombiesMythos# Just a bit silly
Conclusion# Definitely more Pride and Prejudice and ZombiesMythos than Pride and Prejudice# Not entirely serious, but go with it for crinoline kick-ass fun

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 Five Go Mad in Egypt, Return of the Ripper, Rise of the Dead, Rise of the Dead II: The Raid, and more...

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

—oOo—
Name: Trouble in PinewoodPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Tineke Bolleman

Setting: Jazz Age Massachusetts Product: Scenario
What You Get: Fourteen page, 14.42 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: What hunts the night on Cape Cod? Bigfoot?Plot Hook: When two men are abducted in bloody circumstances, someone has to investigate.
Plot Support: Staging advice, two NPCs, one map, and one Mythos creature.Production Values: Adequate
Pros# Short, introductory scenario# Easy to adapt to other time periods and places# Suitable for a small number of Investigators# Solid discussion of the possible outcomes and their ramifications# Leaves room for development in places# Speluncaphobia# Teraphobia# Carnaphobia
Cons# Needs a stronger hook to get the Investigators there and involved# No map of Pinewood given# No map of the caves given# Leaves room for development in places# More physical than investigative
Conclusion# Involves combat and physical investigation rather than traditional newspapers and wills # Very straightforward, likeable, easy-to-prepare introductory scenario

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 Five Go Mad in Egypt, Return of the Ripper, Rise of the Dead, Rise of the Dead II: The Raid, and more...

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

—oOo—
Name: Beyond the Veil of Dreams: SusuptiPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Byron the Bard

Setting: 1980s ArkhamProduct: Scenario
What You Get: Fifty-nine page, 1.79 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Sometimes the missing disappear for a reasonPlot Hook: A missing persons case leads into strange research and encounters with desperate people
Plot Support: Eighteen handouts, eight maps, ten NPCs, one Mythos artefact, and one Mythos creature.Production Values: Plain
Pros# Modern Lovecraft Country scenario# Very detailed investigation# Very detailed backstory# Would work as a ‘Night at the Opera’# Oneirophobia# Somniphobia# Antlophobia
Cons# Never actually defines the nature of the threat# Needs an edit# Very detailed backstory
Conclusion# Highly detailed investigation that threatens to overwhelm the Keeper with information whilst leaving the real threat undefined# Potentially interesting combination of Indian mysticism and the Mythos

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 Five Go Mad in Egypt, Return of the Ripper, Rise of the Dead, Rise of the Dead II: The Raid, and more...

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

—oOo—
Name: Lucie’s DispensationPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: John Dyer

Setting: Post-World War I FranceProduct: Scenario
What You Get: Fifty page, 13.94 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Which is worse? The trauma or the covering up of the trauma?Plot Hook: Why would the Germans attack a village they already occupied so late in the war?
Plot Support: Staging advice, seven handouts, four maps, five NPCs, one Mythos tome, eight Mythos spells, and two (and more) Mythos creatures.Production Values: Reasonable
Pros# Interesting period for a Lovecraftian investigative horror scenario# Detailed scenario and investigation# Teutophobia# Rhabdophobia# Traumatophobia
Cons# No, the Keeper doesn’t know or why else would she be reading the scenario background?# Who are the Investigators meant to be given the recent Armistice?# Why refuse to give the villain a motivation?# No historical background for the period# Frustratingly overwritten in places# No Sanity rewards
Conclusion# Sometimes oddly written, often overwritten scenario hides a solid plot and investigation into collective trauma and delusion# Interesting period left unexplored

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 Five Go Mad in Egypt, Return of the Ripper, Rise of the Dead, Rise of the Dead II: The Raid, and more...

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

—oOo—
Name: The Stench of an Open GravePublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Marcus D. Bone

Setting: Dark Ages WessexProduct: Scenario
What You Get: Forty-seven page, 2.86 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: An introductory Cthulhu Dark Ages investigationPlot Hook: A hunt for a missing monk reveals dark doings in the hills.
Plot Support: Staging advice, three pre-generated investigators, no handouts, one map, eleven NPCs, and one Mythos creature.Production Values: Decent
Pros# Scenario for Cthulhu Dark Ages# Classic isolated village horror Straightforward investigation suitable as an introduction to the setting# Suitable for two to three Investigators# Plenty of historical and regional background# Dysmorphobia# Hemophobia# Traumatophobia
Cons# Needs a slight edit# Sanity losses light in places# Classic isolated village horror
Conclusion# Solid, straightforward introductory investigative scenario for Cthulhu Dark Ages# Combines a missing monk, an isolated village, and strange beliefs in well done classic isolated village horror scenario

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 Five Go Mad in Egypt, Return of the Ripper, Rise of the Dead, Rise of the Dead II: The Raid, and more...

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

—oOo—
Name: Trutz Blanke HansPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Florian Krates

Setting: German North Sea CoastProduct: Scenario
What You Get: Sixteen page, 1.87 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Dunwich-am MeerPlot Hook: An invitation to a séance turns decidedly strange
Plot Support: One handout, four maps, one NPC, one Mythos artefact, and two Mythos creatures.Production Values: Adequate
Pros# Unexpected time travel trip against the clock# Nice sense of growing urgency# Plenty of historical and regional background# Chronophobia# Thalassophobia# Antlophobia
Cons# German equivalent of ‘An Amaranthine Desire’ from Nameless Horrors: Six Reasons to Fear the Unknown# Easy to adapt to other time periods# Needs a hook to get the Investigators involved# No map of Rungholt# What if the Investigators act against the instigator of the scenario’s plot?
Conclusion# Decent enough race against the environment with undeveloped set-up and conclusion # Needs work to provide a motivation for the Investigators

A rash of strange businesses broken into and odd thefts leads the monstrous investigators in the city of Spireholm to a startling revelation. Under the very streets of the city, indeed under the very cellars and sewer tunnels of the city under those streets, there are tunnels that lead deep into the unknown. Is the rattish nature of the miscreants discovered in the initial investigation a sign that some villain dwells far below like a subterranean Doctor Moreau, sending his rodent servants to the surface for reasons that only he can divulge? Or is there something else in the tunnels and caverns to be found far below the city? This is the set-up for SHIVER Gothic: Disciples of Dregstone, a companion campaign to SHIVER Gothic: Secrets of Spireholm, which itself is a campaign and setting a supplement for Shiver – Role-playing Tales in the Strange & the Unknown. Published by Parable Games, Shiver is a generic horror roleplaying game, designed to do a variety of subgenres, from modern slasher and cosmic horror to zombie outbreaks and Hammer Horror melodramas, using easy to build Player Characters archetypes and the Doom Clock as a device to ratchet up tension and push the story to a horrifying climax combined with its own dice mechanics. It is great for one-shots, especially ones inspired by horror films. If SHIVER Gothic: Secrets of Spireholm showcased how it was possible to run and play SHIVER as a proper campaign, then SHIVER Gothic: Disciples of Dregstone expands and continues that.
SHIVER Gothic: Disciples of Dregstone does two things. First it introduces the new world below the city of Spireholm and its inhabitants and second it presents a campaign that involves both. It can be used in a number of different ways. One is a straight sequel to the campaign given in SHIVER Gothic: Secrets of Spireholm. Another is as a secondary plot, essentially a ‘B plot’, that can be run alongside or interwoven with the campaign in SHIVER Gothic: Secrets of Spireholm. And lastly, it can be used as an alternate plot that can be run whenever a player is unable to play the main campaign. This gives it some flexibility, although the ideal means of use is as the ‘B plot’ so that all of the players and their characters can participate. Another option is for the players to take the roles of members of the rattish race at the heart of SHIVER Gothic: Disciples of Dregstone, although that does mean that many of the mysteries at the heart of the setting and the campaign will have to be revealed to them.

Inspired by works of fiction such as Neverwhere by Nail Gaiman and Weaveworld by Clive Barker, as well as a whole festival of films, SHIVER Gothic: Secrets of Spireholm takes the players and their characters into the Dregs, home to Scoriath, the kingdom of the Scorians. They are rat folk, twisted into intelligence by the alchemical wastes poured into the sewers and finding a home in the ruins of an ancient sunken settlement. Ruled over by the authoritarian Rat King, Rongeur Halftail, the Scorians are large, but still smaller than Humans, and have tough tails and a strong sense of smell. There is resistance to the Rat King’s rule, and the Delvers, who search for resources far below Scoriath, are divided as to whether they should explore Topside, even though the king has forbidden it. Meanwhile, the Church of the 7 Tails worships the rats’ time as four-leggers, whilst it should be no surprise that Scorians hold alchemy in high regard given their origins. Several Scorian Backgrounds are given for Scorian Player Characters, including Gutters who guard the city; Sneakers are spies and thieves; Alchemists specialises in poisons, concoctions, and bombs; Tail-Tellers are itinerant storytellers; Pale Seers are all but blind, yet have the gift of the foresight; Swarm Wardens can psionically control rat swarms; and Scurriers do all of the physical work in Scoriath. Besides possibly playing Scorians, the options for Player Characters include watch officers, urchins, concerned citizens, private citizens, reporters, monster hunters, and more. The inclusion of the Scorian Backgrounds also facilitates the easy replacement of Player Characters should one somehow die in the course of events of the campaign.
As a campaign, SHIVER Gothic: Disciples of Dregstone is shorter than SHIVER Gothic: Secrets of Spireholm, consisting of seven parts rather than ten. Its chapters follow the same format though. Each is bookended by ‘What the Director Knows’ at the beginning and at the finish, ‘Doom Events’ which are triggered on the Doom Chapter for the chapter. In addition, the campaign supplement adds ‘Doom Tolls’ alongside ‘Doom Events’. These interact with the ‘Doom Calendar’, essentially events that affect the wider world around the Player Characters. Then, between the start and the end is the meat of each scenario, which varies from one chapter to the next, but will always include key clues and story text, the the key clues given as floating clues that the Game Master can place in the particular chapter where appropriate. In between the chapters are a series of interludes. These expand upon the overview of the Dregs as a setting, such as the background history of Rongeur Halftail, more information about the Church of the 7 Tails, Scorian terminology, and so on. These are not necessarily gameable content, but add detail to the setting.
SHIVER Gothic: Disciples of Dregstone begins with the investigation. This leads the Player Characters into the foulness of the city sewers before descending into the tunnels below. Here the Scorians have set up a ‘Mantrap Maze’ to prevent anyone from Topside from trying to get into Rongeur Halftail’s realm. The maze though, is a bit of a problem. It consists of fifteen encounters, not quite linear, but playing through it will definitely feel like it. Although these encounters are inventive and some of them are fun, such as having a giant trashball chase the Player Characters a la Raiders of the Lost Ark and a trap that fills with water as they try to find a way to solve a rat-themed puzzle. Of course, the Game Master need not use all of the encounters here and she could easily save some for a later visit to Scoriath, suggesting perhaps that the Scorians are shifting rooms and traps around their ‘Mantrap Maze’ each time that there is an incursion from Topside?
By the time the Player Characters reach Dregstone, they will have gained the first of many allies they will be able to befriend and recruit in the course of the campaign. She is a human who has long been trapped in the Dregs and long been searching for her sister, and she will be able to put the Player Characters in touch with the Resistance. This sets off the main plot of the campaign, as first the Player Characters have to sneak around the city, poorly disguised as Scorians, undertake a task for the Resistance to gain the trust of its members. This is the first of the campaign’s big set pieces, the disruption of a public execution, the Player Characters having to set up a rescue of several Resistance members being sent to the gallows. This will lead to their arrest, being brought before Rongeur Halftail himself and sentenced to life incarceration in Pipehold Prison. Here the authors get to play with all of the clichés of prison life—as seen on the big and small screen—as the Player Characters are forced to other prisoners for the amusement of the guards, deal with a variety of different prison personalities, and of course, make preparations for, and then carry out a grand escape! All with the strangeness of dealing with anthropomorphic rats rather than human prisoners.
The last part of the campaign sends the Player Characters scurrying below the Dregs, into dark tunnels and into regions where the delvers fear to tread. Here, the Player Characters will discover that the Scorians are not the only anthropomorphic species to have been affected by the alchemical runoff from Topside—and that species has an even worse reputation for being dirty vermin! One minor scene here feels like a cross between Beetlejuice and Dune, set on a great alchemical salt flat, but ultimately the Player Characters will discover the source of the mutations in the subterranean world, a secret that will upend the society of Dregstone, and a very knowing nod to The Fellowship of the Ring. Surprisingly, the interlude ending this discovery does actually have some gameable content, all in readiness with the final showdown with Rongeur Halftail. This is a big battle which brings the campaign to a conclusion, although there are a few options given to help the Game Master play various concluding scenes to the campaign.
Physically, SHIVER Gothic: Disciples of Dregstone is presented in a rich array of colours and with plenty of cartoonishly rattish artwork. The campaign does need an edit here and there, and one or two more maps, such as of Dregstone would have been useful too.
SHIVER Gothic: Disciples of Dregstone is a better campaign than sourcebook. In fact, as a sourcebook for the Dregs, it presents enough information for the Game Master to run the campaign, but not really quite enough to develop her own content beyond that and in mostly confining it to the interludes, not in a fashion that makes it easy to use. That said, as a campaign, SHIVER Gothic: Disciples of Dregstone is fun, especially if you have a penchant for puns—especially rattish puns—and want a grand cinematic delve into an anthropomorphic world of adventure and mystery for your SHIVER Gothic: Secrets of Spireholm campaign.

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 Five Go Mad in Egypt, Return of the Ripper, Rise of the Dead, Rise of the Dead II: The Raid, and more...

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

—oOo—
Name: A Drop of Nelson’s BloodPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: SR Sellens

Setting: The Admiralty, 1815Product: Scenario for In Strange Seas: Horror in the Royal Navy for Regency Cthulhu and Regency Cthulhu: Dark Designs in Jane Austen’s England
What You Get: Fifty-two page, 24.42 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, but with half the attendees and celebrating the life of Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson, 1st Duke of Bronte. Plot Hook: A dinner at the Admiralty turns deadly in celebration of the life of Nelson
Plot Support: Staging advice, five pre-generated Investigators, eight NPCs, seven handouts, two floorplans, one Mythos tome, one Mythos spell, one unnatural creature, and a sea shanty.Production Values: Excellent
Pros# More a scenario for Regency Cthulhu than In Strange Seas# One-session, locked room dinner party murder mystery# Decent pre-generated Investigators# Very well presented NPCs# Could be run as a LARP# Good handouts# Phasmophobia# Hemophobia# Phonophobia
Cons# Sea shanties# Needs a slight edit# More a scenario for Regency Cthulhu than In Strange Seas

Conclusion# Well appointed scenario that can be run with just Regency Cthulhu rather than In Strange Seas# Classic murder mystery dinner party with manners, Mythos, and nautical theme that is absolutely perfect for Trafalgar Day (and other days)

There is a realm that lies between the land and the sea that is neither land nor sea. It is said that this is where the giants died, their blood spilling as a gift that turned the realm into something in between, a land of peat and oil and mud that languorously discharges into the Endless Sea. This is Fattvëlland, the Great Slick, beyond Targ-Dungel and the festering swamps of the Rotlands, and here no flame burns except that which cannot die and burns constant below the peat and the oil and the mud. The Great Wick drinks of the land and gives birth to shunned and raging Wickheads, trimming them before sending unwanted and unloved out into the lands on the other side of Targ-Dungel and the Rotlands. Their purpose unknown to themselves and the Great Wick, no Wickhead has ever returned—or seemed to want to. Until now. This is the set-up for A Waning Light, a scenario for use with Mörk Borg, the Swedish pre-apocalypse Old School Renaissance retroclone designed by Ockult Örtmästare Games and Stockholm Kartell and published by Free League Publishing.
A Waning Light is best described as a ‘swamp crawl’ in which the Player Characters are hired by a Wickhead called Lygan, whose wick is growing short and who wishes to return to his point of origin before the God Tree and pluck a new thread and thus wick from it. He promises them riches and a sight which no mortal man has seen before. Adding A Waning Light to an on-going campaign is relatively easy. Its location can be slid onto any coast and in addition, there are suggestions which tie various other scenarios for Mörk Borg to the Great Slick. These are Rotback Sludge, Treasures of the Troll King, and Putrescence Regnant and all three come with helpful notes on how to make the connections. A table of rumours serves as other means to spur the Player Characters to action.

Published by Loot the Room, it presents a sludge-ridden region where geysers of oil blot the sky, goblins scavenge on long stilts, baleful balls of light whisper secrets, and tar oozes blend below the oil slicked water ready to strike at the unwary. There are strange henges to be found, their stones cracked by black ivy, a colony of mournful goblins who have turned their backs on their wild and dangerous days, and an ancient dragon, Nithul, her brittle bones turned silver with age and her wings pinned to the mound of silver she sits on by foot-long iron spikes. Her only company is the calcified statue of the knight who was trying to kill her, his sword still held high, and she is half mad with loneliness. These encounters are fantastically forlorn, fitting the sombre, even woeful nature of the land. The heart of the adventure lies in its two dungeons—‘Inside Julud’ and ‘The Sink’.

The first and smaller of the two is ‘Inside Julud’. Located within the skull of a dead giant, this is a mini-dungeon consisting of fourteen locations across two levels, the lower level, either partially or wholly flooded. There is constant movement within the flooded and submerged rooms below, primarily of water and natural gas, and this is decidedly hazardous environment. Unfortunately, there is really very little reason to explore its rooms beyond greed and curiosity and given its nature it may be one that the Player Characters readily avoid all together. Perhaps a rumour or hook or too might have pushed the Player Characters to the location beyond mere chance—and perhaps the Game Master might want to develop one or two herself. Finally, despite being in the head of a giant, ‘Inside Julud’ does not feel like it is.

The second and much longer of the two dungeons is ‘The Sink’. Here the Player Characters may eventually discover the God Tree and Lygan find a way to replace his wick so that his memories need not be lost. A mixture of worked rooms and caverns, it is double the size of the ‘Inside Julud’, full of soot, oily vapours, ancient industrial machinery still covered in thick grease and dirty lubricant, and a dampness that pours in from the swamp above. Despite being a ruin, the cult operating here lends the place a sense of purpose, even if the main NPC here, the leader of the Moth cultists, is underwritten inn terms of motivations and reactions, especially in light of the attention given to the prophetic, Three Flames, the past, present, and future Voice of the Flame, the burning equivalent of the three witches from Macbeth or the Graeae from Greek Mythology. Again, this is something that the Game Master might like to develop herself.

Physically, A Waning Light is not as terse as perhaps other scenarios and dungeons are for Mörk Borg and there is a lot more description than you would normally expect. All locations are marked easily—though not always accurately in some cases—on the map, which appears on each page of the dungeon for easy navigation by the Game Master. The writing is clear and in general, presented in a bolder fashion than other scenarios for Mörk Borg. In places, the Game Master is left to wonder who or what something is until the book explains it.

A Waning Light is in need of a few hooks to get the Player Characters to explore some of the locations in the swamp and the Game Master may also want to develop the motivations of the NPCs further, as well. Fix those and A Waning Light will provide the means to explore the origins of the Wickheads from Mörk Borg, memorably set across a festering, oily sludge of a swamp, full of of mournful and scarred locations and encounters.

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

—oOo—
Senet—named for the Ancient Egyptian board game, Senet—is a print magazine about the craft, creativity, and community of board gaming. Bearing the tagline of “Board games are beautiful”, it is about the play and the experience of board games, it is about the creative thoughts and processes which go into each and every board game, and it is about board games as both artistry and art form. Published by Senet Magazine Limited, each issue promises previews of forthcoming, interesting titles, features which explore how and why we play, interviews with those involved in the process of creating a game, and reviews of the latest and most interesting releases.

Senet Issue 6 was published in the winter of 2021. It has thus left behind the social limitations placed upon both it and us by the lockdowns due to the COVID-19 pandemic that Senet Issue 5 was only just beginning to escape. It marks a return to the normality of the first few issues and allows editor Dan Jolin to talk about the pleasures of issue’s content rather than dwelling on the strange world we had existed in throughout much of 2020 and 2021. Even the cover reflects, a pair of anthropomorphised hands, one jumping for joy, the other thrusting a gaming piece at us, rather than the lock and key on the front of Senet Issue 5, which suggested both imprisonment and possible escape. However, with new found freedom, Join does get to belabour a food-board game metaphor, it being one of the themes of the issue. Sadly, the reader has little choice but to indulge him.

As is usual, the issue opens with ‘Behold’, a preview of some of the then-forthcoming board game titles. As expected, ‘Behold’ showcases its previewed titles to intriguing effect, a combination of simple write-ups with artwork and depictions of the board games. The standouts here are Spire’s End: Hildegard, a solo adventure that is the sequel to Spire’s End which displays its brilliant artwork and Forests of Pangaia, which has a real table presence as the patterns of the forest change and grow over hundreds and hundreds of years, the trees depicted by meeples ranging in shape from single cubes for seeds to fully grown trees.

‘Points’, the regular column of readers’ letters, follows, but very much without the focus of Senet Issue 5, which was very much the immediate post-COVID-19 world. Nevertheless, the raise some interesting issues, such as the possible shift to games made available to the customer via ‘Print & Play’ rather than delivery in the normal fashion given the then difficulties faced in shipping and delivery. As yet, there is not a sense of community through the letters column and whether it be developed is another matter. In ‘For Love of the Game’, Tristian Hall continues his designer’s journey towards Gloom of Kilforth. In previous issues he explored how the game became a vehicle for roleplaying and storytelling, used the mechanics to bring the game and its background to life, and marketing options, but in this issue, he examines how to handle feedback and criticism about a game’s design. There is good advice here and ‘For Love of the Game’ nicely tracks the history of game and its development.

Senet follows a standard format of articles and article types. One explores a theme found in board games, its history, and the games that showcase it to best effect, whilst another looks at a particular mechanic. In between there are two interviews, one with a designer, the other with an artist. The mechanical article is on dexterity games with ‘Feats of Agility’ by Matt Thrower, written in almost nominal deterministic fashion. This looks at games such as Jenga and Crokinole, and seems to focus on these to the detriment of others, making the point that their physical nature makes them less like a (board) game and more like a sport. The result is that the article is not really that interesting and it is certainly not helped by the fact that not one of the games is actually illustrated. Instead, the article is illustrated by abstract pieces like that on the front cover, which whilst very nice, do nothing whatsoever to bring either the article or the board games themselves to life. Given that so many of the other articles are decently illustrated, ‘Feats of Agility’ is a disappointingly frustrating piece that fails to showcase the physicality of the games themselves or explore more than a very few titles.

The undoubted highlight of Senet Issue 6 is ‘Full Steam Ahead’. This is the first of two interviews in the issue and is with Alan R. Moon, the famous designer of Ticket to Ride. This covers his early interest in games, his time at Avalon Hill—focusing mainly on the publisher’s family titles, and the genesis of Ticket to Ride came about. The whole interview could have been just about that, but it ranges through a few other titles as well as ‘The gathering of Friends’, the informal industry event he now runs. Notably, it does mention Ticket to Ride Legacy, which is due to be released next week. It is followed by the second interview in the issue, which is with artist Miguel Coimbra, best known for illustrating the mini-civilisation-style 7 Wonders and the fantasy wargame of variable races and powers, Small World. Coimbra talks about he turned his love of other worlds and Magic: the Gathering into becoming a full-time artist before talking about each of the major titles he has provided art for. Not just the aforementioned, but also Sea of Clouds, Mountains of Madness, and Fuji Koro. As in previous interviews with artists, plenty of room is given to showcase his art, including not one, but two pullout spreads! Along with his commentary, this extends the article beyond its eighteen pages, already the longest article in the issue. All of the art is crisply produced, leaving the reader wanting to go look at the games for the art itself, let alone the play.

The issue’s theme article is food with Own Duffy’s ‘Playing with your Food’, which at the very least does not make the error of not actually depicting the games being played. It starts off with quick discussion of an American introductory board game, Candy Land (which actually came out in 1949!), before rushing up to date with an examination of more recent titles, beginning with Sushi Go! It points out the universality of the theme and also how the theme can be used in other ways. For example, Steam Up: A Feast of Dim Sum from Hot Banana Games shows how games can explore the cultural side of food, whilst Consumption: Food & Choices looks at the balance between what we eat and what we do. With the inclusion of both Sushi Go!—inspired by 7 Wonders’ card drafting mechanic and conveyor-belt sushi restaurants—and Steam Up: A Feast of Dim Sum, inspired by dim sum being served on a lazy Susan, the article covers a spectrum of both lighter and more involved titles, both mechanically and culturally, and it also suggests a number of other titles themed along different foods. This includes pizza, chili peppers, salads, cupcakes, and mushrooms. Overall, Duffy serves up an interesting article on a theme which is not as readily recognised as such in the hobby as opposed to typically more mechanical or obvious themes.

If the earlier ‘Feats of Agility’ failed to showcase agility games, then ‘Unboxed’, Senet’s reviews section leads the way with its first review, which is of Crash Octopus, a flicking game of salvage at sea versus a giant octopus which actually looks fun in the exact same way that Jenga isn’t. This is not the only other game reviewed in the issue—that is the co-operative adventure game, What Next?—with a dexterity element, but the other reviews are a more traditional mix of Euro style games, along with the addition of a review of the solo roleplaying game, Apothecaria. There is a fascinating range of titles being reviewed here, including of Mind MGMT, based on Matt Kindt comic book series about psychic espionage; Streets, a tile-laying game of building and populating modern urban streets which is Senet’s Top Choice for the issue; and Roll Camera!, a thematically packaged co-operative game of movie-making. All of the reviews are well-written, informative, and as expected, give space show off each game and its components.

Rounding out Senet Issue 6 are regular end columns, ‘How to Play’ and ‘Shelf of Shame’. For the former, Dan Thurot pens ‘Flipping the table (and how best to avoid it)’, a look at the phenomenon of getting so frustrated whilst playing a board game that you stand up and flip the board and all of its components over the table and floor. Thankfully I have never done this, but I have walked away from a game in sheer frustration. Working from the concept of the ‘Magic Circle’ where we as players agree to interact using different rules, the author explores how the issue might arise and how to avoid it, primarily checking to if everyone is in the mood to play a particular game or type of game, know your foibles, and if you can, avoid your nemesis. The result is engaging and thoughtful, bringing to the reader’s attention a negative aspect of play, how we can take that play too far, and how to not do so, all without any judgement upon the part of the author, except on himself. For the ‘Shelf of Shame’, Rodney Smith of Watch It Played, selects Andean Abyss, a COIN or ‘counter-insurgency’ wargame set in 1990s Columbia. This nicely tells of how he could not grasp the game’s play upon first exposure, but through a friend and play of another COIN game, Cuba Libre, he was able to understand the concepts and then go back and play Andean Abyss, having to reacquire it, having sold it after the first attempt to understand it.

Physically, Senet Issue 6 is very professionally presented. It looks and feels as good as previous issues of the magazine.

As with previous issues, Senet Issue 6 offers a good mix of articles, interviews, and reviews—almost. To be fair, this reviewer is not a fan of dexterity-based games and thus for the most part, the ‘Feats of Agility’ is not aimed at me. Yet as with the magazine’s similarly mechanically themed articles, I was hoping for other options and ideas which might entice me to look at these games again, and definitely more than just Jenga. Unfortunately, the article failed to do so. Consequently, Senet Issue 6 is the most disappointing issue to date, if only because the standard has been so high otherwise. Now of course, tastes will vary and some may enjoy dexterity games and an article about them, but not this reviewer. ‘Feats of Agility’ could have been better and consequently, Senet Issue 6 could have been as good as the magazine usually is.

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 Five Go Mad in Egypt, Return of the Ripper, Rise of the Dead, Rise of the Dead II: The Raid, and more...

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

—oOo—
Name: Archives of Terror – Call of Cthulhu paranoia horror in 1990 RomaniaPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Christopher Dimitrios

Setting: 1990s RomaniaProduct: Scenario
What You Get: Twenty-one page, 24.76 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Archives hide secrets... Secrets mean power and fear...Plot Hook: In the wake of the Christmas Revolution, there is a chance to get into the national archives of the Securitate. What secrets do they hide?Plot Support: Staging advice, five pre-generated Investigators, three NPCs, three handouts, one floorplan, five Mythos tomes (technically), and two Mythos monsters.Production Values: Decent
Pros# One-shot of heightened feeling of paranoia and post-surveillance# Set at an interesting point in history# Mythos and magic driven by secrets# Could be adjusted to other post-Communist states# Nicely detailed pre-generated Investigators# Scopophobia# Paranoia# Papyrophobia
Cons# Needs a close read to understand how the secrets and magic works# Shares Investigators with Baba Dochia. Could be a sequel? 
Conclusion# Investigators need to know will drive revelations and magic in this paranoia-fuelled delve in state/personal secrets # Supported by well done Investigators

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 Five Go Mad in Egypt, Return of the Ripper, Rise of the Dead, Rise of the Dead II: The Raid, and more...

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

—oOo—
Name: The Show Must Go OnPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Sandra Catharin

Setting: 1930s AmsterdamProduct: Scenario
What You Get: Fifteen page, 14.00 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Sometimes being traditional really is the safest option. Plot Hook: When the theatre is notoriously superstitious, it’s the last place you want accidents.
Plot Support: Staging advice, four pre-generated Investigators, three NPCs, and two handouts.Production Values: Plain
Pros# Short, one-session focused investigation in a nicely detailed environment# Easy to adapt to different cities and time periods# Could be associated with the King in Yellow?# Superstition-driven scenario that inflicts the dangerous avant-garde# Nice Keeper background on theatrical superstitions# Theatrophobia# Keriophobia# Eisoptrophobia
Cons# Needs a strong edit# More reactive in the second half
Conclusion# Short, superstition-driven investigation in a theatre# Ultimately... burn the place down.

In an alternate timeline of the Known Universe, House Nagara was awarded the fiefdom of Arrakis and not House Atreides. It thus gained both the right to mine the Spice melange that can only be found on that one world and which powers the Known Universe and the greater enmity of the previous holder of the fiefdom, House Harkonnen. This is a giant ‘What if?’ scenario explored in the massive boxed set, Dune – Adventures in the Imperium: Agents of Dune, published by Modiphius Entertainment for use with for Dune – Adventures in the Imperium, the roleplaying game based on the novels by Frank Herbert. Dune – Adventures in the Imperium: Agents of Dune also asked several other questions. What if the transfer of power was peaceful rather than necessarily fractious and partially contested as seen between House Atreides and House Harkonnen? What if the reason for this is the fact that House Harkonnen and House Nagara are allies? What if, despite losing control of Arrakis, it was in the best interests of House Harkonnen to help House Nagara gain and keep control of the fiefdom? Of course, despite Agents of Dune actually depicting House Harkonnen in a more sympathetic light, House Harkonnen being House Harkonnen, ultimately the transfer or at least its aftermath will not go as planned for the Player Characters and House Nagara, but ideally, at the end of Agents of Dune, they will be control of the Spice mining on Arrakis and masters, at least for the moment, of their destiny. This is where Masters of Dune – Adventures in the Imperium: Agents of Dune begins.

Masters of Dune – Adventures in the Imperium: Agents of Dune is a complete campaign for Dune – Adventures in the Imperium. It is a sequel to Agents of Dune which put the Player Characters and House Nagara in charge of the most important substance in the Known Universe and sees them plot, intrigue, entreat, and investigate potential allies and enemies in an ongoing effort to maintain their control of the Spice flow. Fail, and House Nagara will lose wealth, reputation, and honour—at best. At worst, the House might be disposed and broken, its peoples and former holdings the possessions of House Harkonnen. At best, the House will rise in estimation of one or all of the Emperor, the Landsraad, the Bene Gesserit, the Spacing Guild, and the Fremen. There is even the possibility that House Nagara could build enough status, power, and most important of all, allies to challenge the Emperor himself! That though is a possibility only explored in a sidebar in Agents of Dune and would send the campaign off in a very different direction. Although Masters of Dune is written as a sequel to Agents of Dune and thus for use with House Nagara and its pre-generated Player Characters, it need not be. Masters of Dune can be run without a playing group having roleplayed its way through and with a playing group creating a Great House and Player Characters of its own and substituting both for House Nagara and its members. However, to get the most out of Masters of Dune, the group should ideally have played through Agents of Dune, either using House Nagara or one of their own creation. This is not just because of the emotional investment that the players will have in their characters and their characters’ House after playing Agents of Dune, but also because Agents of Dune will prepare them for the plots within plots of the story of v. One lesson learned from Agents of Dune is ‘trust no-one’ and that is going to be true of Masters of Dune also. The other important lessons for a playing group preparing to play Masters of Dune is that the players and their characters need to be proactive, they need to look for motives beyond what is obvious, and they need to look for allies.

Masters of Dune does not need anything more to play than Dune – Adventures in the Imperium. It is even suggested that it could be run using just Dune: Adventures in the Imperium: Wormsign Quick-start Guide, but this is not really recommended given the amount of detail and extra rules needed to help the campaign flow. That said, Sand and Dust: The Arrakis Sourcebook will be useful for extra detail, especially the scenes involving the Fremen.

At the heart of Masters of Dune is a set of Influence Indices. These are Honour, Imperial Support, Landsraad Support, Military Power, Ruthlessness, Spice Production, Wealth, and Sietch Korba Trust. The latter is important in one particular scenario of the campaign, whilst the rest are important throughout. Each Index runs from -5 through 0 to +5. These mix reputation and other factors, and will rise and fall depending upon the actions and decisions of the Player Characters. For example, Wealth might fall because the Player Characters need to purchase a particular item to present to a potential ally and so gain a favour and improve their House’s standing with them. In addition, a sperate chart tracks Spice production over the course of the campaign and there are checkboxes to indicate that the Player Characters have gained the favour of the Bene Gesserit and the Spacing Guild. The latter two indicate possession of one-off favours owed by either faction. Either the Player Characters have it, and if they do, once used, they will need to do something else to regain that favour. These Influence Indices need to be tracked throughout the course of the campaign, the current state of Spice Harvesting especially at the end of each chapter of the campaign, so that there is an ongoing need for some bookkeeping throughout Masters of Dune. Not complex bookkeeping by any means, but it is necessary.

The structure of Masters of Dune is not linear. It consists of nine chapters and begin with the first chapter and end with the ninth. In between, the other seven chapters can be played in any order or in some cases, not at all. As newly appointed fief holders of Arrakis, House Nagara and thus the Player Characters have been placed in a position of great trust by the Emperor and to some extent the Landsraad and the Spacing Guild. Yet it is also a precarious position, most notably because House Harkonnen covets the wealth and the position itself and wants the fiefdom back, but also because no other faction truly knows if the Player Characters can ensure that the Spice can flow. So, as well as working to prove that House Nagara can do so, the Player Characters will often find themselves looking for allies. This means visiting other worlds—Geidi Prime in an attempt to parley with House Harkonnen, Kaitain to win the favour of the Emperor or those of the other Great Houses, and even to Wallach IX to court favour with the Bene Gesserit or simply into space itself to deal with the Spacing Guild. These two encounters are interesting in themselves because both the Bene Gesserit and the Spacing Guild are notoriously neutral when it comes to the power politics of the Known Universe. Except, of course, when Spice production is threatened.
Other chapters are more reactive in nature, for example, if the Player Characters have weakened themselves and their House too much, their enemies will attack the House’s facilities on Arrakis, and if successful, could lead to the destruction of House Nagara, or more likely, drive it off Arrakis and out of control of Spice production. It is possible to continue the campaign if this happens, but it becomes all the more challenging for both the players and their characters. If it comes to pass, it will probably signal—or at least hasten—the end of the campaign. Another takes the Player Characters offstage and puts them in direct contact with the Fremen, shrinking the scale of the story down to just one location rather than encompassing the whole of the Known Universe. If it seems to the players that this story—at least on the campaign’s grand scale—is not as relevant, its events and those of the Player Characters do have the potential to influence the course of the campaign and its outcome, although in small ways.

The scope and scale of Masters of Dune telescopes in and out over the course of the campaign. The Player Characters will find themselves attending a lot of formal events, most frequently dinner parties, but there are audiences with the Emperor and operas to attend, but also targeting criminal gangs on Arrakis and hunting for saboteurs. The Player Characters will find themselves questioned as to their actions and having to justify themselves as well. Just as there are many factions that they cannot trust, there are factions who do not trust them and whose trust they have to earn. For example, the encounter with the Spacing Guild includes a scene which echoes that between the Emperor and the Third Stage Guild Navigator in the David Lynch version of the film from 1984, which then leads to a completely unexpected set-up and means of gaining the Spacing Guild’s favour. For the most, all of the individual chapters are well done, with clear explanations of the situation at the start and possible outcomes at the end. Only the final chapter feels slightly rushed it climaxes in a confrontation between House Nagara, House Harkonnen, and the Emperor. Ultimately, even it does feel as if the authors are taking the Game Master and her players on a grand tour of the Known Universe, Masters of Dune presents a set of plot threads that the Game Master can weave in response to the directions and actions of the players and their characters.
Physically, Masters of Dune is very well presented. The writing is good and it is easy to read and for the Game Master to run. The artwork is also very good. However, the cartography is more relational than representative, showing connections to areas rather than mapping them out, so making them very bland. Worse still is the editing. Too many ‘page XX’ references and in one case, a whole page being printed twice.

As a sequel to Agents of Dune, Masters of Dune is exactly what the Game Master wants. It picks up where Agents of Dune left off, opening up the linear plot of the massive starter set to give greater agency to the players and their characters in interacting with the great and the good of the factions of the Known Universe, whilst still providing the Game Master with numerous means by which those factions can react to the actions of the Player Characters and act accordingly. Agents of Dune takes the Player Characters to places both expected and unexpected, has them face challenges major and minor, and ultimately confirm their place and the place of their House in the Known Universe. Dune – Adventures in the Imperium: Masters of Dune is a great sequel to Dune – Adventures in the Imperium: Agents of Dune and a campaign worthy of the setting.

Danger Gal Dossier – A Faction and NPC Guide for Cyberpunk Red is not just a ‘A Faction and NPC Guide for Cyberpunk Red’. It is much more than that. Within the ‘Time of the Red’, the future period between the classic Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0. and computer game, Cyberpunk 2077, is a collection of data dossiers stolen by Edgerunners from Danger Girl, the foremost, most mediatised cat-girl themed premiere investigation and security NeoCorp working in Night City, actually run by an Arasaka scion! Out of game, it is a collection and short examination of fifteen different factions within the city, details of over one hundred NPCs—complete with stats and biographies, NPC creation guidelines which expand upon those found in Cyberpunk RED, and lastly, the presentation of a scenario involving a new and secret faction. This is a supplement for Cyberpunk RED, published by by R. Talsorian Games, Inc. that can be used in multiple ways. The most obvious is as a simple collection of threats, and perhaps, in the case of some of the gangers included, such as the infamous clown-themed Bozos and the previously Arasaka-backed Tyger Claws, that may be so. But these NPCs have lives and motivations beyond being mere fodder for the guns of the Player Character Edgerunners. They can all be sources of information, they can be sources of employment, and some like Trauma Team, can even be sources of help. Then again, they need not be met when they or the Player Characters are on the clock—they have lives too, and those lives can also start for the Player Characters during character generation. Thus, Danger Gal Dossier is a source of NPCs that can be plugged into a Player Character’s Lifepath during character generation to create ready made relationships, if not potentiation scenario hooks. There is one final use of the various factions in the collection and that is as set of factions with Cyberpunk Red: Combat Zone from Monster Fight Club. This is further strengthened by the members of the Monster Fight Club being included in the book as a faction!
Danger Gal Dossier – A Faction and NPC Guide for Cyberpunk Red is neatly organised. Each faction is given a general description, a description of its base of operations, recent history, resources, and goals. This is done as a single sheet and then is followed up by detailed writeups of several members of the faction, again given a single page each. The NPCs are divided into four broad categories—mook, lieutenant, mini-boss, and boss. Where appropriate, there are links—including page numbers—to other members of faction, strengthening their connections and relationships. Each NPC also includes a good illustration and full set of stats that are easy to read and bring into play. Of course, the stats can be used more than once if the Game Master wants another NPC. All she has to provide another name and some other background. If there is anything missing from the basic guides to each faction it is any discussion of their tactics and how each might react under particular circumstances. The Game Master than will have to develop this herself.
For example, the Bozos, updated here after their activities detailed in Cyberpunk RED Data Pack, are a Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0. classic updated to Cyberpunk RED. They are presented as having broken up into multiple circuses, all trying to out-prank each other and all with an almost anarchic approach to motivation. The Hardened Boss detailed is Big Top, who wants to outdo and thinks he has outdone the original gang leader, The Great Bozo, and as well as planning new pranks likes to perform radical surgery with the help of his extra cyberarms fitted with medtech. Blammo is a veteran Boss who likes to use explosives and give often snarky advice—sometimes to Big Top; Jester, a Mini-Boss who was a former acrobat before becoming a kick-murder Bozzo after a big accident; Tomfool is a Hardened Lieutenant who was already bioscuplted as a clown on the underground bloodsport scene before being recruited into the Bozos by Big Top; Cenwit is a Lieutenant with an actual clown heritage and a hatred of the Voodoo Boys; the Dead Ringers are both Lieutenants and also sisters, one all flashy and bling with grenades, the other silent and stealthy; Finale is also a Lieutenant, a former street who got his jaw wired shut, which the Bozzos found funny enough to recruit him and then even funnier when they annoy him to the point his anger kicks in; Burt the Squirt is a Hardened Mook who lost his hair in an industrial accident and is obsessed with acid and uses an acid-squirting gun to inflict baldness on his victims; Dunce is a Mook recruited for the vent which led to the Bozzo civil war and has managed to graduate to full Bozzo; and finally, The Fool is a Mook undergoing initiation and is given the worst equipment, brightest gear, and a bag to wear over his head!  Throughout there are details here and there to suggest that this bunch of Bozos are not one big, happy family, with tensions that perhaps the Player Characters might take advantage of. This though is just one Bozo gang and the Game Master can easily models others on it or use it in conjunction with the Screamsheets in Cyberpunk RED Data Pack if she has not already.
If the Bozos are one of the larger factions, or at least of the factions with the most members detailed in the supplement, Network 54 is the shortest with just three. They include Fiona Hayes, the seemingly ageless investigative reporter; Angle, her bodyguard—or is that bodyguard for himself or network 54; and Stringer, cameraman who happens to know too much. The relationship between the three is even tighter than those for the Bozos, but not always a good one and the revelations given here highlight the data that the Danger Gal neocorp was collecting.
Other factions in the supplement include the Danger Gal Puma Squad, all cat themed; The Digital Divas, a band whose hit Burn It Down got taken up by arsonists everywhere; Maelstrom, a traditional pre-Fourth Corporate War boostergang which survived and had to rebuild; the officers of Precinct #1 of the NCPD, including Gustav, a Custom Security Canine; the Sightseers, a Nomad squad which recently caught the attention of the worst officers of Precinct #1 of the NCPD; whereas Edgerunners is not so much a faction as a collection of individuals. Perhaps the oddest entry here is Generation Red, a YoGang consisting of a mixture of children with mostly absentee parents and orphans seeking to avoid the attention of adults, but able to protect themselves if bothered, including one girl having borrowed her parents’ rocket launcher! Danger Gal is thinking of recruiting them. There are notes here too how to use kids and YoGangs in a Cyberpunk RED campaign, including advice on handling the subject matter with the Game Master’s players.
The initial design aim of Danger Gal Dossier was use only gear, equipment, and cyberware from the core rulebook for Cyberpunk RED. However, this has been achieved! So what the designers have done is include the full details of the equipment in the supplement no matter where it was taken from. This includes Interface RED Volume One and Interface RED Volume Two as well as Micro Chrome. This is a very nice touch, although some might grumble about the reprints. It just the two pages though. The ‘NPC Creation Guidelines’ following this is as useful as you would want it to be.

Lastly, ‘The Incident’ is a Mission Brief which can easily be slotted into a campaign. The Edgerunners are hired to conduct an investigation into a recent break-in and in the process get caught up in the activities of one of the factions detailed in Danger Gal Dossier as well as discovering a whole new one! The Mission Brief makes good use of the contents of the supplement without wasting them and actually ties into the incident that initiates the whole book.

Physically, Danger Gal Dossier is very nicely presented. The book is well written, the artwork good—especially the NPC illustrations, and there is a useful list of the NPCs at the back of the book. There notes too in the sidebar giving links to information in other books. It should also be pointed out that although the NPC write-ups are relatively short, there is a fair bit of detail to them and they contain snippets of background that add to the setting of Night City.

Danger Gal Dossier is such a versatile book. The contents of Danger Gal Dossier are well written and easy to use, whether the Game Master wants to throw a threat at her players and their characters, possible employment, or simply someone to interreact with, it really gives a lot for her to play with. For a Night City campaign, Danger Gal Dossier is not just a versatile book, but a highly useful one. 

NIGHTSTALKERS – A Rules Light Roleplaying Game of Investigation, Horror and Pulp Action is a light roleplaying of Lovecraftian investigative horror as if H.P. Lovecraft had written for the pulp detective magazines rather than the pulp Science Fiction ones. Think Marlowe versus the Mythos, Sam Spade gets scared, and Mike Hammer faces down the horror of the unknown. The Player Characters will not just be detectives, but also police officers, journalists, scholars, or even plain ordinary folk caught up in a situation beyond their understanding. Whatever their background, they not only want to know more, but they also want to make sure that whatever the threat is, put a stop to it so that nobody else can suffer or fall victim to its vile, often inhuman predations and designs. NIGHTSTALKERS – A Rules Light Roleplaying Game of Investigation, Horror and Pulp Action is published by Farsight Games and is designed by the creator of Those Dark Places, the Blue Collar Science Fiction horror roleplaying game from Osprey Games.
A Player Character in NIGHTSTALKERS is simply defined. He has ten Skills. These are Agility, Charisma, Close Combat, Drive, Knowledge, Medicine, Perception, Ranged Combat, Strength, and Subterfuge, and they range in value between two and eleven. In addition, he has Hit Points starting at twelve and then modified by his Strength. In addition, he can have an extra specialist or hobby Skill which lies outside the scope of the standard ten. To create a character, a player simply assigns each of one of the numbers between one and eleven to one of the Skills and decides on a specialist or hobby Skill, if any, a name, and an occupation. Character generation can be done in thirty seconds.

Urszula Sikorska
Journalist
Agility 8 Charisma 10 Close Combat 6 Drive 6 Knowledge 7 Medicine 3
Perception 11, Ranged Combat 3 Strength 2 Subterfuge 9
Speciality: Writing 6
Hit Points 14
Sanity 0

Mechanically, NIGHTSTALKERS is a simple. To have his character undertake a task, a player selects the most appropriate Skill and adds its vale to the roll of a twelve-sided die. If the result is thirteen or more, then he has succeeded. It is as simple as that. If the Player Character has failed, his player can temporarily spend points from the appropriate Skill on a one-for-one basis to increase the result to equal the target number. Alternatively, the Skill points can come from any number of different Skills, but the player can only do this once per Act. There are no other rules than that for the core mechanic, although the simplicity does leave plenty of scope for the Game Master to add more without overly complicating the core mechanic. Combat is handled as opposed rolls, with the highest roll indicating the winner. Thus, Close Combat versus Close Combat in a fist fight, but Ranged Combat versus Agility if the defendant wants to dodge. A punch does 1d2 plus Strength in damage, a blade 1d4 plus Strength, a pistol 1d6 plus six, and a rifle 1d12 plus six. Most Player Characters will last a punch up, even a knife fight, but once firearms start being used, the best thing a Player Character is to get behind cover as a rifle can kill in a single shot. Rules are also added for vehicles. The only thing missing from the base rules are damage rating for shotguns and submachine guns because they are exactly what a player is going to ask about.

When it comes to conducting investigations, the players will be using their characters’ Perception and Knowledge Skills to uncover clues. Clues are seeded throughout each act, which can number between two and six, with there always being a clue present that will lead the Player Characters onto the next act. If a roll to find the pertinent clue to get the Player Characters is failed, the players have another option. This for all of them to each temporarily spend one point from their highest Skill to gain the lead, otherwise the investigation ends there and then. Skill points expended in this way and to increase the likelihood of succeeding at a task are recovered at the end of an investigation.

Being a roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative horror, NIGHTSTALKERS needs a means of handling the mental stress of encountering the unknown. Sanity is rated on a scale of zero to eighteen. A point is gained for reading a forbidden text, discovering a dead body, or suffering a scare, and two for taking eight more points of damage or seeing something grisly. The Sanity gained from encountering or seeing cosmic monsters is measured by die type. For example, seeing a Deep Thing is two-sided die whilst seeing a Spawn (of the Great Spawn who sleeps awaiting the day when the stars come right), a four-sided die. Gaining Sanity temporarily reduces the effectiveness of all of a Player Character’s Skills; if it rises above twelve, the reduction is longer lasting; and if it reaches eighteen, the Player Character descends in madness. Unless it is permanent, Sanity can be lowered through complete rest.

NIGHTSTALKERS includes some sample cosmic horror monsters—bit no sample forbidden tomes—as well notes on cultists and rules for magic. In essence, reading forbidden tomes inflicts Sanity gain on the reader, but casting magic from such tomes inflicts a permanent Sanity gain on the caster. It also requires a Knowledge Skill test, which still inflicts a permanent, but lesser Sanity gain on the caster if failed.

In terms of setting, NIGHTSTALKERS suggests the Big City, thronging with people and shadows. This can be London or New York or Paris or Cairo. It is lightly drawn in its detail, whilst a table provides twelve hooks for mysteries and a single adventure is included. This is ‘The Thing in the Old Bank’. It is a three-act affair which begins with the discovery of the dead body of a banker under suspicious circumstances. His chest has been cut open and his heart is missing. How did he come to die in such a macabre fashion and who was responsible. Much like the rest of NIGHTSTALKERS, this a quick and dirty adventure that the Game Master can run in a single session that lends itself slightly towards a pulp style rather than a purist one.

Physically, NIGHTSTALKERS – A Rules Light Roleplaying Game of Investigation, Horror and Pulp Action is a tidily laid out with dome decent artwork. It needs a slight in places as well as a reorganisation to make clear how some of the rules connect to each other, such as Skill Point Spends, which comes a page or two after the explanation of Skill rolls.

Much of the setting and world building for a game of NIGHTSTALKERS is going to be down to the Game Master, who will ideally need some experience with Lovecraftian investigative horror roleplaying games to get the very best out of its fairly light rules. Similarly, both Game Master and her players will need some knowledge of the period and the noir genre to bring a sense of setting alive, though that need not be anything more than watching a few period films. That aside, as intended, NIGHTSTALKERS is quick and easy to grasp and get playing as soon as the Game Master has a mystery for the Player Characters to solve. More than the single one included in NIGHTSTALKERS would fully support that. For the Game Master and Player Characters wanting simple, straightforward Lovecraftian investigative horror roleplaying that requires low preparation time, NIGHTSTALKERS – A Rules Light Roleplaying Game of Investigation, Horror and Pulp Action is a quick and dirty option.

Dungeon Crawl Classics 2017 Halloween Module: Shadow Under Devil’s Reef is upfront about its inspiration—H.P. Lovecraft’s short story, ‘The Shadow Over Innsmouth’. Roleplaying game fantasy is no stranger to the Cthulhu Mythos, the Great Old One and others having appeared in the pages of the first edition of the Deities & Demigods supplement for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition back in 1980. It moved back and forth with Realms of Crawling Chaos for Labyrinth Lord and other retroclones and with adventures like Carrion Hill for Pathfinder, before coming up to date more recently with a supplement and set of campaigns for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition written and published by Sandy Petersen, the designer of Call of Cthulhu no less! This began with Ghoul Island Act 1: Voyage to Farzeen, the first part of a four-part campaign for use with Sandy Petersen’s Cthulhu Mythos. Given that its inspiration has always been ‘Appendix N’ of the Dungeon Master’s Guide for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition, it should be no surprise that Goodman Games’ Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game has flirted with Cosmic Horror over the years, and equally, it should be no surprise that the author of Dungeon Crawl Classics 2017 Halloween Module: Shadow Under Devil’s Reef is by Jon Hook, who has authored several titles in the publisher’s Age of Cthulhu line.

Dungeon Crawl Classics 2017 Halloween Module: Shadow Under Devil’s Reef is designed to be played by four to six Player Characters of First level, but could easily be run as Character Funnel in which each player takes a quartet of Zero Level Player Characters and hopes to have at least one of them survive the scenario to gain sufficient Experience Points to rise to First Level and gain all the benefits of a Class. The scenario opens in Black Sand Port, a coastal backwater best known for the deadly ring of jagged coral known as Devil’s Reef surrounding the island of Devil’s Horn and which has been the cause of many a shipwreck and many a sailor’s death. In the past few days, the coast, Devil’s Reef, and Devil’s Horn have been wracked with severe thunderstorms and it is these which are believed to have delayed the arrival of The Royal Dawn, a vessel carrying Princess Kaeko of the Golden Sun, daughter of Lord Tkkeh-Luum, the Eternal Emperor of Fu-Lamia. The princess is betrothed to a local prince and the marriage will seal an alliance. Unfortunately, when the crew of The Royal Dawn begin being washed ashore it quickly becomes clear that the vessel, let alone the princess, having been driven onto the hull slashing Devil’s Reef, is never going to arrive. Worse, it quickly becomes clear that the survivors are suffering from something worse than being shipwrecked—something seems to be affecting their minds! Nevertheless, this does not stop the local burgomaster from assembling a party to go and rescue the princess. After all, there will surely be rich rewards for the men who do. The Player Characters also see this as an opportunity to make their fortune and after ‘borrowing’ a longboat and armed with a rumour or two about Devil’s Reef and Devil’s Horn, row out to rescue the princess.
From the start, there are one or two issues with the scenario, primarily to do with the placement of the wreck of The Royal Dawn. This is on the other side of the Devil’s Reef, away from Black Sand Port, which makes the idea of the surviving crew being washed ashore at Black Sand Port incongruous. Ideally, the Player Characters are meant to explore The Royal Dawn, but placing it on the other side of Devil’s Reef away from Black Sand Port means that the Player Characters have to row around the reef to get to it and there is no obvious incentive for them to do so. The Royal Dawn is also the obvious source of treasure for the Player Characters, but their very presence aboard, let alone attempts to plunder the wreck with its broken back will result in the statue of a six-armed, female demon in the bow of the ship animating and casting Animate Dead. The problem is that the Player Characters really do need to get aboard the ship, although they do not know it. What they need to retrieve from the ship it not the treasure, but Princess Kaeko’s pet psi-spider which is bonded with her. However, even once the Player Characters have got past the dead crewman and soldiers animated by the six-armed, female demon statue, they have to deal with a confused psi-spider whose actual attempts at telepathic contact will inflict damage. Which could end badly if the Player Characters think the psi-spider is attacking them… What the Player Characters really need is someone trained as an Animal Trainer.
The reason why the Player Characters need the pet psi-spider is because it can identify Princess Kaeko, for there is another danger inherent to the island and its eldritch occupants and that is that it transforms anyone on its coral shale shores into Deep One Hybrids. In fact, there are no Deep Ones on the island—they are all Hybrids!
Even getting to the island is problem in terms of the narrative. Of course, the Player Characters are going to have to row through Devil’s Reef with its razor-sharp coral, relying on the Thief’s ability to Disable Traps to determine a route. If this—or three Luck rolls—fails, the hull of the longboat takes damage. However, there are no actual stats for the boat! Then, once on the island, what the Player Characters also need is a Wizard who can cast Comprehend Languages or Knock. Several other occupations may also prove useful, whether the Wizard has either of those spells or not. Comprehend Languages or Knock will be useful because there are couple of doors which can only be opened by having their puzzles solved, rather than having a Thief do it. In both cases, the doors have a pair of dials which need to be turned to particular positions for the doors to open. Yet there are no real clues as to what the solutions are to either puzzle and unless the Wizard can cast Comprehend Languages or Knock, the only other option is going through all of the possible combinations and taking damage each time. A solution can be found elsewhere, but even that means suffering the loss of Hit Points.
Behind the first door—located in a coral pillar at the centre of Devil’s Island—is a small dungeon. Here the Player Characters will encounter more Deep One Hybrids, a potentially injured Shoggoth, several Elder Things, and more. All in quick succession. The dungeon, which is actually a laboratory operated by the Elder Things who are conducting an eons’ long experiment, is linear. The Player Characters are forced into it because beyond the entrance is a slide-like passageway. How do they get out if they have no rope? Ultimately, the scenario will end with a confrontation with the Elder Things in their laboratory and the Player Characters will either accidentally kill the Deep Hybrid that was Princess Kaeko, or if they are lucky, rescue her. If they manage the latter, the reward gained turns out to be particularly paltry...
Physically, Dungeon Crawl Classics 2017 Halloween Module: Shadow Under Devil’s Reef is impressive. The cover is creepy, the artwork inside excellent, and the maps decently done. However, illustrations of the two doors with their dial locks and traps are completely absent.
As written, Dungeon Crawl Classics 2017 Halloween Module: Shadow Under Devil’s Reef appears to want to nothing more than punish the Player Characters for information they simply lack. The two sets of doors are an exercise in frustration and the inclusion of the psi-spider without any sign that it might be important only seems to reward the most avaricious Player Character willing to fight past the undead crew. Ideally, The Royal Dawn could be shifted to face the post of Black Sand Port, to make it an obvious destination, one of its surviving crew inform the Player Characters about the importance of the princess’ pet psi-spider, or the pet psi-spider’s telepathic cries be heard across the wreck of the ship. Perhaps a scroll of either Comprehend Languages or Knock be found aboard or an illustration of both doors be given. Or at least have the second door rely upon another means of being opened, one that requires a Thief rather than a Wizard? Much of which could be fixed with the inclusion or preparation of suitable pre-generated Player Characters.
Dungeon Crawl Classics 2017 Halloween Module: Shadow Under Devil’s Reef looks like a great adventure with its decent maps and artwork, but it does not live up to either. It needs the input of the Judge to fix its issues and make it something that she might want to play and her players roleplay. Even then, Dungeon Crawl Classics 2017 Halloween Module: Shadow Under Devil’s Reef is a pulpy, eldritch-themed scenario rather than a horror scenario since there is no element of fear written in.