Now in its thirteenth year, Free RPG Day in 2020, after a little delay due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, took place on Saturday, 25th July. As per usual, it came with an array of new and interesting little releases, which traditionally would have been tasters for forthcoming games to be released at GenCon the following August, but others are support for existing RPGs or pieces of gaming ephemera or a quick-start. Again, global events meant that Gen Con itself was not only delayed, but run as a virtual event, and likewise, global events meant that Reviews from R’lyeh could not gain access to the titles released on the day as no friendly local gaming shop was participating nearby. Fortunately, Reviews from R’lyeh has been able to gain copies of many of the titles released on the day, and so can review them as is the usual practice. To that end, Reviews from R’lyeh wants to thank both Keith Mageau and David Salisbury of Fan Boy3 in sourcing and providing copies of the Free RPG Day 2020 titles.

One of the perennial contributors is Paizo, Inc., a publisher whose titles for both the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and the Starfinder Roleplaying Game have proved popular and often in demand long after Free RPG Day. For 2020, the title released for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game is Little Trouble in Big Absalom, a scenario for Level 1 characters. The Game Master will require not only the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, but also the Pathfinder Bestiary. The scenario is actually a preview of the upcoming Pathfinder Advanced Player’s Guide in that it uses Heritages and Feats to be found in that forthcoming supplement. Now in times past, those Feats and Heritages would have been for Goblins, the signature Humanoids who have appeared in numerous Free RPG Day scenarios, but for Little Trouble in Big Absalom they are Kobolds! Five pregenerated Kobolds are provided, ready to play through the scenario.

In Little Trouble in Big Absalom, the five kobolds are members of the Hookclaw clan, which makes its living by digging through and scavenging from the buried ruins underneath the city of Absalom. Although the tribe has never been wealthy or really comfortable, now their miners have struck it rich. They have opened up an undisturbed vault full of treasure and so the tribe needs a stalwart team of scavengers to get in, find out what is there, and bring back the best for the tribe. This is where the fun and games begin, because what lies beyond the freshly dug tunnel is not a vault, but the cellar of a house on the surface. This house happens to be home to kindly old lady, so the cellar is full of wonders and gewgaws and bric-à-brac and whatnot. There are dangers too, of course, all scaled to Kobold size.

Little Trouble in Big Absalom is a madcap style of dungeon or adventure, which does the classic ‘little as big’, ‘ordinary is strange’, and ‘ordinary is dangerous’ tropes. So what might be ordinary to average adventurers is rendered strange by the fact that the Player Characters are Kobolds. One criticism of the scenario is that it does not play upon that as much as it could have done and the Game Master might want to create a table of objects and ‘treasures’ which the Kobolds can find and take back to the clan as this is a great opportunity for roleplaying by the players. Now, Little Trouble in Big Absalom does not do this once, but twice. It is actually divided into two parts. In the first part, the Kobolds investigate the cellar, find some treasures, and deal with some ‘threats’ forgotten about the homeowner. In the second part, the brave Kobolds actually explore beyond the cellar and not only meet the homeowner—the kindly old lady—but get given cookies and asked to do a task. Unbelievably,  this task is to retrieve a hedge trimmer from a neighbour who has failed to return it! Could this scenario be anymore suburban?

In fact, it turns out that the little old lady is incredibly near-sighted and thinks that the Kobolds are children. It also turns out that the garden of the hedge trimmer hoarder is full of dangers too. In fact, it is infested with Lawn Crawfish! Sneak into the garden, beat up any occupying garden crustaceans, steal the hedge trimmer, and the Kobolds can probably get home in time for tea—or at least more cookies. Little Trouble in Big Absalom can either be run as a whole scenario combining both parts or just using one of the parts. It depends on how much time the playing group has. Each part should take a couple of hours or so, which means altogether, Little Trouble in Big Absalom would work as a convention scenario.

The pregenerated Kobolds include a Dragon Mage or Sorcerer, a mushroom farmer Druid with Siamese cat companion, a Rogue who likes to thumb his snout at authority, an ocarina-playing Bard with a penchant for heroics, and a reluctant Fighter who is regarded as hero for driving away an actual adventurer! All find Kobold adventurers come fully statted out with detailed backgrounds and delightful illustrations. They also appear on their own pages so are easy to copy and hand to the players.

Physically, well this is a book from Paizo, Inc. for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, so the production values are as good as you would expect. The illustrations of the Kobolds are delightful, and the artwork is good throughout. The writing is also decent. Little Trouble in Big Absalom may only be sixteen pages long, but as much attention has been paid to this release as any other from Piazo, Inc.

As an adventure, Little Trouble in Big Absalom is a cliché—the little folk (in this case Kobolds rather than Goblins) exploring the big world, the little old lady with poor eyesight who takes them for children, and so on. However, just because the scenario is a cliché, it does not mean that it cannot be fun to play or that it is not well designed or put together. There is a good session of gaming, particularly in terms of roleplaying ‘small characters in a big world’, to be got from playing through the adventure and that is very much down to the quality and production values of the scenario. So, yes, Little Trouble in Big Absalom is a cliché, but that does not mean that the cliché cannot be fun to play!

‘Roll & Write’ games—the mechanic of rolling dice and writing down the results—go all the back to Yahtzee, but that design is over sixty years old and game design has come a long way since 1956. These days, ‘Roll & Write’ games involve ‘write-on, wipe off’ surfaces, so a game can be played, the playing surface written upon, then wiped clean, and played again. Railroad Ink is typical of this. Published by Horrible Guild, Railroad Ink is a family game which combines competition and puzzles for between one and six players, aged eight and above, that can be played in thirty minutes. Over the course of the game, players roll dice and draw the symbols on the dice on their maps to build networks. After seven rounds, they score points for the number of Exits they connect, their longest rail and road networks, and lose points for dead ends created. The player with the most points is the winner. Then, everyone cleans their board, ready to play again. The result is a game with simple mechanics, but thoughtful gameplay as each player tries to connect up the symbols on the dice, all using the same symbols as everyone else, but in a different mechanic.

Railroad Ink comes in different colours—Railroad Ink: Deep Blue and Railroad Ink: Blazing Red are the most commonly available. They differ primarily in their colour and in the expansions available in each. Railroad Ink: Deep Blue adds the Rivers and Lakes expansions, each River symbol making connecting route that much more difficult, whilst Lakes can connect your networks by ferry. Railroad Ink: Blazing Red includes the Lava and Meteor expansions. The Lava comes pouring out of an erupting volcano and can expand to destroy routes, as can meteor strikes, but the craters can be for precious ore (or points). Apart from these expansions (and those in the other editions), the game play is the same between Railroad Ink: Deep Blue, Railroad Ink: Blazing Red, and other editions. Both Railroad Ink: Deep Blue and  Railroad Ink: Blazing Red can be combined to enable as many as twelve players to player—something that few games can do! Of the two, it is Railroad Ink: Blazing Red which is being reviewed here.

Railroad Ink: Blazing Red comes in a little box containing six player boards, six markers, four Route dice, two Lava dice, two Meteor dice, and the rulebook. Each player board consists of a grid, seven squares by seven squares, with three exits on each side. The nine central squares are of a different colour and if routes are built across them, a player will score more points. The back of the player board folds up and serves not as a shield to hide a player’s layout from his rivals, but includes a scoring track, a means to track the dice symbols used each turn, and presents six special symbols which can be used during play. These consist of crossroads of various types, a player being allowed to use one per turn, but can only use each symbol once and cannot use more than three special symbols per game.

The basic dice—all of which are white—consist of two types. One has type has sections of curved, straight, and tee-junction highways and railways. There are three of these. The other type, of which there is only one, shows an overpass and stations at which highways and railways can connect. These connections can be straight or curved. The full colour rulebook runs to sixteen pages and does a decent job of explaining how the game is played. It is not a large rulebook, so it does need a careful read-through to spot everything.

Game set-up is simple. Each player receives a player board and a pen. Game play is also simple. At the beginning of each turn, the four dice are rolled. The players then draw those route symbols onto their player boards, ensuring that the routes connect to either an exit or an existing network. It really is as simple as that. A player can also draw in a special symbol from those listed on the inside of his player board, up to a maximum of three per game. In total seven rounds are played before the game ends. Then a player will score points for the number of exits his networks connect, the longest highway, the longest railway, and the number of central squares he has drawn routes through. Points are deducted for dead ends.

However, the puzzle element of Railroad Ink: Blazing Red means that a player will be constantly working to make the efficient connections and wondering how he can best use the routes marked on the dice that turn. It means that there is a luck element to the game, but a player can work to try and mitigate the effects of what might be a bad roll for him, whilst that roll might be better for another player. In effect, a player is building a puzzle from turn to turn, but does not know what pieces of the puzzle he and his fellow players will receive each turn until the dice are rolled. The game is mechanically simple, but there really is a neat little challenge to it from start to finish, and it really feels satisfying when the dice are rolled and the right symbols come up to make connections and draw an efficient network.

The Meteor and Lava Expansions are optional and add complexity to the game. Both shorten game length to six rather than seven rounds. The Meteor dice are rolled along side the standard dice and indicate the direction and how many squares away a meteor will hit on a player’s board on the next turn. If this means it lands on a route—highway or railway, it is destroyed. A special route can be sacrificed to ignore the effects of a Meteor strike and Meteor craters can be built over. However, dead ends which connect to an existing crater will score a player points as he mines the crater. 

The Lava Expansion adds a volcano at the centre of each player’s board as well as the two Lave dice to the basic dice rolled at the start of each turn. The Lava dice depict the sides of a lava lake, some adjacent to a railway or highway, most not. When they are rolled with the basic dice, a player must use one of the Lava symbols shown to expand the Lava lake. If he cannot do that, he can either start another volcano else where on his board or the lava lake is forced to expand and erase a highway or a railway. Open Lava Lake sides will lose a player points at the end of the game, but a player will score points for each fully enclosed Lava Lake and for his largest Lava Lake.

Both expansions give more for a player to work with and draw, but also make the game play more involving and longer. The Meteor Expansion is the more complex one as there is slightly more to keep track of, but both make the game more challenging. So are probably better suited to older players.

Another way in which Railroad Ink: Blazing Red can be played and that is solo. This is playing the standard game without any competition to see how high a score you can get. However, it is not as much fun as competing with other players, and in some ways, it just highlights the fact that even with other players, Railroad Ink: Blazing Red still feels like a solo game since there is no interaction between them. This does not mean that Railroad Ink: Blazing Red is a bad game, but it is still quite light in terms of its puzzle and challenge factors, so ideally, it should be mixed in with other games or played as filler (as a ‘Friday Filler’ or otherwise). For a family audience this should be less of an issue, but for veteran players or fans of train games, it might be too light (in which case Railway Rivals is a good alternative).

Overall, Railroad Ink: Blazing Red is a very nicely done mix of puzzle and challenge which looks and feels good in play. A charming little filler worth bringing to the table amongst a mix of other fillers. 

For devotees of TSR Inc.’s Empire of the Petal Throne: The World of Tékumel, 2020 is notable for the release of not one, two issues of The Excellent Travelling Volume, James Maliszewski’s fanzine dedicated to Professor M.A.R. Barker’s baroque creation. The Excellent Travelling Volume Issue No. 11 was published in April, 2020—available direct from the author or the Melsonian Arts Council—and continues his exploration of one of oldest of roleplaying settings heavily influenced by the campaigns he has been running, the primary being his House of Worms campaign, originally based in, around, and under Sokátis, the City of Roofs before travelling across the southern ocean to ‘Linyaró, Outpost of the Petal Throne’, a small city located on the Achgé Peninsula, as detailed in The Excellent Travelling Volume Issue No. 8.

As per usual, The Excellent Travelling Volume Issue No. 11 opens an editorial from James Maliszewski. This highlights the gap between this issue and The Excellent Travelling Volume Issue No. 10 and the reasons for it, before going onto focus on the importance of fiction when it comes to Tékumel. He notes, that like many a Petalhead, his initial exposure to the setting was to Man of Gold, M.A.R. Barker’s first novel, which really is an effective introduction to Tékumel. This is because the issue includes the first part of a short story by David A. Lemire, the first piece of fiction in the fanzine and a rare inclusion by someone other than James Maliszewski. The latter also explains why he puts out a call for submissions.

The opening gaming content in the issue is another entry in the ‘Additions and Changes’ series which examines the various non-human races on Tékumel and makes them playable. ‘Ahoggyá & Shén’ adds the four-sided and four-legged, barrel-shaped with a pair of eyes on each side Ahoggyá and the more humanoid, if slightly reptilian Shén with their mace-like tail. The former are the subject of some derision for their eight underminable sexes and stubborn refusal to acknowledge the Gods of Stability and Change—or even the concept of religion, let alone Stability and Change, but are renowned as fearless warriors. The latter only have three genders and do understand Stability and Change as ‘the one of Eggs’ and ‘the one who Rends’, and when in human society make actually adopt one of the gods of Stability and Change. In terms of Profession, both make poor magic-users and priests, but excellent warriors, such that outside of their homelands, all of the militaries of the Five Empires recruit Ahoggyá and Shén into legions of their own, but not together and their renowned antipathy means that they never serve alongside each other. This is another fine addition to the series, which with the inclusion of names, makes them both reasonably playable.

The influence of the author’s Achgé Peninsula-set campaign makes its presence known with the inclusion of ‘The Hokún: The Glass Monsters’, a centaur-like sentient species with a translucent exoskeleton and a hive mind thought to be found on the other side of the planet from the Five Empires. Their attitude to mankind varies—some may hunt and eat them, some may enslave them, and some may treat them as equals. This further highlights the weirdness of Tékumel and that there are wide swathes of the planet which remain unknown. The influence continues with a number of creatures in the ‘Bestiary (Addition)’. These include the Léksa or ‘The Glass Beast’—the riding beasts for the Hokún and actually a specially-bred mutation of the Hokún; the Nékka or ‘The Graceful Runner’, a herd beast left to run wild by the Hokún; the Qu’úni or ‘The Crustacean’, a semi-intelligent species found along the Achgé Peninsula, which is highly protective of its coastal lairs and regarded as a pest by sailors for their habit of swarming ships; and the Vriyágga or ‘The Wheeled Horror’, a terrifying combination of a central braincase suspended between two muscular wheels, the face on the braincase surrounded by four tentacles and with a maw of venomous feelers. Thankfully such creatures are rare, but they are horrifyingly weird. There is a nice inclusion of some commentary on the Vriyágga, just as there is on the Hokún, which adds a little context. With any luck, future issues will expand upon the lands of the Hokún, making them somewhere that group other than the author’s can visit them.

There are more monsters in ‘Demons of Sárku & Durritámish (Addition)’ which takes the reader to the Wastelands of the Dead, the plane ruled over by Lord Sárku to describe a trio of nasty demons. Thus sorcerers might entreaty the Blind Ones of Hreshkaggétl, minor six-limbed squid-like demons who reek of rotting flesh and revere Durritámish, cohort of Lord Sárku, for the mysteries and secrets they know of Durritámish, whilst none but the mightiest of warriors, sorcerers, or priests would want to face Srükáum, the Lord of the Legions of the Despairing Dead, the Castellan of the Citadel of Sighs, and the Warder of the Gates of Skulls, a skull-faced warrior in armour of copper and gold, who serves both Sárku and Durritámish as an ardent foe of Stability—especially if it involves combat! Lastly, Ssüssǘ, the Eater of the Dead, is a snake-like demon who oversees Lord Sárku’s hells and who is known to be able to grant great courage in others and great antipathy between two individuals.

Up until this point, The Excellent Travelling Volume Issue No. 11 feels like it is all about the demons, monsters, and creatures, so ‘Amulets (Addition)’ is a welcome change of focus. Amulets are devices of the ancients and provide all manner of ‘magical’ effects. Thus the tiny hand-shaped Amulet of Uttermost Alarm shocks the wearer when it is within thirty feet of a temple, demon, high priest, or artefact of one of the Pariah Deities, whilst the Amulet of the Blessing of the Emerald Lady, a fine necklace of malachite beads, makes the wearer feel and look ten years younger, though wear it for too long and the effects become permanent. The fourteen or so devices are pleasingly inventive, a good mix of powers and abilities that provide flashy, as well as subtle effects.

The location—or dungeon—to be explored in The Excellent Travelling Volume Issue No. 11 is The Tower of Jayúritlal, the ruined structure said to have been built by an Engsvanyáli (or possibly Bednálljan) sorcerer renowned as a traveller of the Planes Beyond. Consequently, Jayúritlal’s tower not only exists partly on Tékumel, but its location varies. Thus, it is easy to place as necessary in a Referee’s campaign, who is also free to develop the legend of Jayúritlal to suit her campaign. The tower itself is a tall narrow structure, amassing some thirty or so locations, and for the most is linear in its play. There is a pleasing feel of both age and the weird to it—whole missing walls for example with just a rope between levels, and it is very nicely mapped out by Dyson Logos. However, it does feel as if one too many rooms are blocked off by doors which require magical means to open, which may impede and even frustrate the players and their characters’ progress. Perhaps also, a discussion of possible suggestions and motivations for the Player Characters to visit the tower might have been a useful addition.

Rounding out the issue is ‘The Roads of Avanthár’, the first part of a short story by David A. Lemire. This describes the discovery of a great book and the efforts by members of the military faction to get it to the emperor in Avanthár, and their own rivalries. There is quite a lot going on in this first half and it will be interesting to find out how the events play on the second part in The Excellent Travelling Volume Issue No. 12.

Physically, The Excellent Travelling Volume Issue No. 11 adheres to the same standards as the previous issues. It sees the return of the card cover which The Excellent Travelling Volume Issue No. 10 seemed to lack, and if the cover is not in full colour, that is not as much as a loss as it might seem. Otherwise, as expected, the writing is engaging, the illustrations excellent, the cartography is good, and it feels professional.

The Excellent Travelling Volume Issue No. 11 feels like a very monster focused issue, with Ahoggyá & Shén as Player Character options, the write-ups of ‘The Hokún: The Glass Monsters’, and both Bestiary and Demons articles—much of it influenced by the author’s Achgé Peninsula-set campaign. The issue thus continues the author’s exploration away from the Five Empires, expanding what we know of Tékumel, but still adding elements a Referee can include in her more traditionally located campaign.

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another DM and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry.

It has been four years since The Undercroft No. 10 was published in August, 2016, so it was something of a surprise to see the Melsonian Arts Council publish The Undercroft No. 11 in August, 2020. Previously leading way along with the Vacant Ritual Assembly fanzine in its support for Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay, the new issue marks a notable change in support away from that retroclone. It comes with content suitable for any Old School Renaissance fantasy roleplaying game, it actually includes content for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. How the fanzine’s readership will react to that shift remains to be seen, but perhaps it marks the publisher’s acceptance of the influence and impact of the current version of Dungeons & Dragons.

Skipping past the editorial—since it is a secret and you are not meant to read it, The Undercroft No. 11 begins with a description of ‘The Aulk’, a strange grossly-fat slug thing which inhabits the Astral Sea and preys upon the memories of others. No one can quite agree on what the thing looks like, since it is often forgotten about or the memory of the encounter is quickly forgotten about—or actually eaten by the Auk. Written by the Chuffed Chuffer, this sounds like a rather banal beast, but if the Player Characters can actually find it and kill it, then they can harvest two things from it. First, Aulk Slim, its mucus trail said to enhance memory and illusion spells, and second, Aulk Crystals, small glass orbs—actually Aulk poo!—each of which contains a memory which can be experienced by holding it to your forehead. Such memories might be skills, spells, experiences, and more. There is plenty of gaming potential here if the Player Characters have to go on a ‘Hunting of the Aulk’ for a lost memory or clue.

Luke Le Moignan’s ‘Edicts of la Cattedral della Musica Universale’ presents seven heretical clerics. They include the Tithenites, who devote themselves to humble good  deeds, animal care, and beer-making, but revile Oozes instead of Undead and manufacture St. Tithenai’s Salt, a pinkish salt which works as Holy Water against such creatures; the Indulgencers, who believe that the spirits of the dead face a jury in the afterlife and so summon ghostly sinners to the mortal realms to work off part of their sentence; and the similar Venerators, who compel the Undead to participate in tea ceremonies and discuss their grievances, hopefully coming to terms that will redress their issues and so allow them to become restful dead! There are some interesting NPCs to be created out of these options, though for Player Characters, they present some equally as interesting roleplaying possibilities, but the descriptions do seem underdeveloped for that purpose.

For Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, the fanzine details three Dwarven archetypes. Written by Daniel Sell and Daniel Martin, these are the Circle of the Mole Rat, the Oath of the Hammerer, and the Dungeon Master. The Circle of the Mole Rat is a Dwarfen Druid Archetype which grants Blind Sight, tunnelling abilities, and even secrets answered via message drops by Mother Mole Rat. The Oath of the Hammerer is a Dwarfen Paladin Archetype which embodies Dwarven cultural justice, using hammers as a holy symbol to dispense justice, becoming intimidating and fearless, and ultimately being able to cast Branding Smite upon those that deserve justice. The Dungeon Master is a Dwarfen Ranger Archetype which hunts for monsters and creatures which the Dwarves keep as their exotic guardian beasts. Of the three, the latter again feels underwritten and perhaps the least interesting, but the other two lend themselves to inclusion in a Dwarven focused campaign.

S. Keilty’s ‘The Corpse Seller’ is weird monster NPC, a long-armed creature found only down dark alleys at night where it sells members of the undead tailored to willing buyers, reaching into its abyssal mouth to pull them forth. However, the bargain will be steep—an arm, betrayal, or worse. If a bargain is not reached, then the buyer will become one of the corpses! This is a nasty thing which might be difficult to add to campaign, but would be memorable if so added.

Lastly, ‘The Root’ by Luke Gearing—author of Fever Swamp—presents a force born of Chaos, almost primal, which constantly shifts and probes with tendrils for cracks which allow it to enter into our worlds. When it does, each tendril can take one of several different forms, from a fungal colony whose spores drive the infected to defend and become one with the colony whilst granting the secret to destroy it—if they can or are even willing, to Mind of a Willing Host which spread the Root as spoken language, written word, and meme. Could the glossolalia of a mystic be the vector for the Root’s influence? All six options are interesting and any one of them could form the basis of a campaign backdrop with some effort upon the part of the Game Master, perhaps an even larger one as the adventurers travel from plane to plane, world to world, dealing with different forms of the Root.

Physically, The Undercroft No. 11 is well presented with an excellent colour cover and an array of dark illustrations inside. It does need a closer edit in places though.


The return of The Undercroft No. 11 is certainly welcome, and despite the shift to support for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition for some of its content, it still presents oddities and weirdness just as the previous issues did. Thus Dungeon Masters can use the oddities and weirdness just as much as Referees can for the Retroclone of their choice. 

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another DM and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry.

Monty Haul is both a different fanzine and a misnomer. Published by MonkeyHaus Press, Monty Haul suggests a type of Dungeons & Dragons game or campaign in which the Dungeon Master is unreasonably generous in awarding treasure, experience, and other rewards. Monty Haul is not that—or at least Monty Haul v1 #0 is not that. Monty Haul is also that rare beast, an old style or Old School Renaissance not devoted to a retroclone, but to Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. 

Describing itself as ‘A Fifth Edition 'Zine with an Old School Vibe’, Monty Haul V1 #0 was published in April, 2020 following a successful Kickstarter campaign as part of Zine Quest. It is written by Mark Finn—notable as the author of Blood & Thunder: The Life & Art of Robert E. Howard—as an update of his World of Thea setting originally run and written for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. With ‘Welcome to Monty Haul: Do You Kids Want Any Snacks?’ he sets open his store, introducing himself and explaining his gaming history, why he chose Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, and what the aim of Monty Haul is—and in particular, what the purpose of Monty Haul V1 #0 is. Which is as a ‘Proof of Concept’ for the fanzine, the aim of which is rebuild his World of Thea afresh, with less inspiration taken from gaming settings and supplements past. It is a nicely personal piece which sets everything up.

Monty Haul V1 #0 gets started properly with ‘Critical Hits: An Old School Option’, designed to create special combat effects when a natural twenty or critical hit is rolled. Inspired by the viciousness of S1 Tomb of Horrors and Grimtooth’s Traps, with a roll of a six-sided die, the Dungeon Master can determine where the strike hits, for example, in the midsection and then another for the effect, such as a hit in the kidneys, which inflicts extra damage, forces a Constitution check to avoid being knocked prone, and then make all actions at Disadvantage for several hours. Critical head hits also have chance of causing confusion too. The mechanics are short and generally nasty, but not all of the effects are lethal, and once a Player Character has suffered one critical hit, he cannot suffer another (or at least until healed).

However, ‘Familiars: An Old School Inspired Alternative’ is rather disappointing because it does not deliver on its promise. The problem is that the author is himself disappointed at the options for familiars in Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, and does not quite counter that. The familiar is presented as companion and conduit for for the spellcaster, and even a storage for some cantrips, but the suggested list of familiars that a Player Character might summon is just ordinary. It really would have good to have explored the ‘weird-ass’ options he found lacking. Likewise, ‘Interlude: My Balkanised World’, the author’s introduction to his campaign world is also disappointing, but because of the lack of context. It is only a very light introduction, giving descriptions of the five city states of Highgate, Rocward, Dimnae, Riverton, and Farington, but not the world itself. The only nod to that is the fact that founders of the five cities were forced to flee south when the Old World was beset by a great evil, through a mountain pass, which was subsequently blocked by a massive wall and a city before it. The lack of context is not helped by the lack of a decent map.

Fortunately, Monty Haul V1 #0 gets back on track with a slew of new character options. These start with ‘New Cleric Domains for City Campaigns’, which add more civilised options to a city state type campaign and so also contrast with more ‘savage’ options for the wilderness of a Swords & Sorcery setting. The Domains are Justice—bringing the ‘Judge, Jury, and Executioner’ to a campaign, and Civilisation—or essentially the ‘city’ Domain. These are both really flavoursome, though Justice more than Civilisation, providing numerous benefits and skill Proficiencies as well as spells. For example, the Civilisation Domain grant the Friends, Message, and Mend Cantrips and Advantage on Charisma skill rolls to influence a single person, at First Level. At Second Level, Domain grants the Ease Emotions spell, Proficiency with Insight and Perception skills at Sixth Level—double within the city walls; bring the power of the people and increase the damage of weapon strikes at Eighth Level; and at Seventeenth Level be able to walk through any door and out another. Of the two, the Justice Domain is the more obviously playable, but both are good and it would be fantastic to see the Civilisation Domain be developed city by city, to make Clerics of each city different.

‘The Divine Archaeologist: A Rogue Archetype’ is a cross between a tomb raider and a church sanctioned thief. In the Five City-States the many temples feud for worshipers and possessing the right artefact rather than leaving it in the hands of a rival and/or heretical temple is way to attract worshipers. The Archetype combines knowledge of history and forgotten lore—noted down in the Divine Archaeologist’s notebook with spells and thievery skills, and even divine intervention, for a much more nuanced Rogue character type, almost in the mode of Lara Croft or Indiana Jones, and could be a lot of fun to play. (It would also work in a setting which has a tomb raiding profession, like: Tékumel: Empire of the Petal Throne.)

‘New Backgrounds for your City-States’ adds exactly that. Six new Backgrounds, from high to low. They include the Exterminator of vermin—though no little yappy dog, the Pilgrim, and the Bureaucrat, followed by three types of Nobles. These are the Dilettante, the Disgraced Noble, and the Knight Errant. These open up the options for the Noble Background given in the Player’s Handbook, and are more nuanced. All six come with suggested skills and tool Proficiencies, equipment, languages, features, as well as suggested Personality Traits, Ideals, Bonds, and Flaws. These are all very nicely done and really expand the character options available and allow the players to create interesting characters beyond their Classes.

Rounding out Monty Haul V1 #0 is a ‘Noble House Random Generator’ which again expands upon content given in an official supplement—in this case Xanathar’s Guide to Everything—and provides more detail and nuance. With a few rolls of the twenty-sided die, the Dungeon Master can create a complete noble family, from history and current trade to family tree and noble house personality traits. In general, this would work in any setting which has noble houses or families—and of course it complements the three new Noble Backgrounds in ‘New Backgrounds for your City-States’—and not just the Five City-States. 

Physically, Monty Haul V1 #0 is neat and tidy, with some decent artwork—both rights free and new. The maps are disappointing, especially given that the author is trying to present his own campaign setting. Another issue is that the table of contents does not quite match the titles of the articles as they appear, but a nice touch is that the author provides a little commentary at the start of every article.

Monty Haul V1 #0 is a curate’s egg, some good articles, some bad. However, the bad are more disappointing and the good are excellent adding more flavour through their mechanics and descriptions than in the background material. Certainly, the new Backgrounds would suit many a setting other than the Five City-States. However, there is not much in the way of a Swords & Sorcery feel to Monty Haul V1 #0, more Italianate city-states than the Hyborian Age. That is no bad thing, but it may not necessarily be what the author is aiming for.


Overall, as a Proof of Concept, Monty Haul V1 #0 is decent support for a Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition campaign, especially in the character options. It proves you can have as good a fanzine for the latest version of Dungeons & Dragons as you can for the Retroclone of your choice.

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another DM and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry.

Kraching is a little different. Penned by Zedeck Siew—author of Lorn Song of the Bachelor—and drawn by Munkao, it is the second title published by the A Thousand Thousand Islands imprint, a Southeast Asian-themed fantasy visual world-building project, one which aims to draw from regional folklore and history to create a fantasy world truly rooted in the region’s myths, rather than a set of rules simply reskinned with a fantasy culture. The result of the project to date is four fanzines, each slightly different, the first of which is marked with a ‘1’ and is MR-KR-GR The Death-Rolled Kingdom. This described the Death-Rolled Kingdom, or the Dismembered Land, which sits on the lake and was once the site of a great city said to have been drowned by a thousand monsters, located far up a lush river. It is ruled by crocodiles in lazy, benign fashion, they police the river, and their decrees outlaw the exploration of the ruins of MR-KR-GR, and they sometimes hire adventurers.

What set MR-KR-GR The Death-Rolled Kingdom apart from its setting is the combination of art and text. The latter describes the place, its peoples and personalities, its places, and its strangeness with a very simple economy of words. Which is paired with the utterly delightful artwork which captures the strangeness and exoticism of the setting and brings it alive. Kraching is just the same and like MR-KR-GR The Death-Rolled Kingdom, it is systemless, having no mechanics bar a table or two—MR-KR-GR The Death-Rolled Kingdom has more—meaning that Kraching could be run using any manner of roleplaying games and systems. Where MR-KR-GR The Death-Rolled Kingdom described a kingdom though, Kraching—marked with a ‘2’—details a village and its forest environs.

Kraching lies five days to the west on foot, the route lined with wooden posts carved with cats—snarling tigers, sulking tabbies, and sleepy tomcats, each of them watching you warily. Cats are found everywhere in Kraching, on the streets and in the houses, worn as hats, on the seat of the local ruler such that he has to perch on the edge of his seat, and of all sizes—from kittens to tigers, and carved everywhere. Even the local god, Auw, a six-legged panther with a human face has been carved as a statue which stands at the centre of the village, scratched by many cats and burned by many offerings. The villagers are famed for their skill in woodcarving, the wood they take from the surrounding forest possessed by spirits so bored their want is to be carved into masks and worn in the theatre. Thus, they will get to see the world, and many have gone on to have illustrious careers!

Both the details and the secrets of Kraching are revealed at a sedate pace. The Player Characters may encounter Neha, a Buffalo-woman who sells silks, fine tools, and pearl jewellery in return for crafts, forest goods, and the occasional adventuresome youth; priests who come to Kraching to commission idols of their gods in the forest’s holy rosewood—blasphemous acts cannot be performed in the presence of such idols; and whether a tabby or a tiger, no cat in the village is tame, all are wild and can only be distracted. This can be best done with a magical wand, ball, or chew toy, that is, a cat toy! Along the way, the relationship between the villagers and the cats they revere and honour is explained through the stories of Auw, from ‘Auw the Woodworker’ who carved cats to drive out soldiers who had come to cut the forest down and so filled it with felines of all sizes, to ‘Auw the Suitor, who would have cruelly taken a woodcarver, but she cleverly carved a tigress with which to capture his ardour and so force him to reign in his cruelty. It all builds a simple, but beautiful picture of the village and its surrounds.

Unlike MR-KR-GR The Death-Rolled Kingdom, there are no the tables for creating encounters and scenarios in Kraching. Instead a handful of scenario seeds are scattered across its pages, such as Neha the Buffalo-women having lost her Ari the Bookkeeper, her counting spirit, in the village or Mahi needing adventurers to escort her apprentice who has been sent to deliver an idol to a distant temple whose priesthood has suffered a schism. None of the seeds amount to more than a line or two, so a Game Master will need to do some development work, and further their number fits the sparseness of the descriptions and of the village itself. Kraching is a quiet, sleepy place and to have fulsome encounter tables might have made it feel too busy. Plus of course, it leaves plenty of room for the Game Master to add her own content.

Physically, Kraching is a slim booklet which possesses a lovely simplicity, both in terms of the words and the art. Together they evoke visions of a very different world and of a very different fantasy to which a Western audience is used, but the light text makes it all very accessible as the art entrances the reader. For the Game Master wanting to take her campaign to somewhere a little strange, somewhere warily bucolic in a far-off land, Kraching is a perfect destination.

—oOo—
As much as it would be fantastic to see MR-KR-GR The Death-Rolled Kingdom, Kraching, and the other two—Upper Heleng and Andjang—collected in volume of their own, they are currently available here.

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another DM and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry.

The Wormskin fanzine, published by Necrotic Gnome is written for use with Labyrinth Lord and issue by issue, details an area known as Dolmenwood, a mythical wood, an ancient place of tall trees and thick soil, rich in fungi and festooned with moss and brambles and rife with dark whimsy. Wormskin No. 1 was published in December, 2015, and was followed by Wormskin No. 2 in March, 2016. Both issues introduced the setting with a set of articles rich in flavour and atmosphere, but lacking a certain focus in that the region itself, Dolmenwood, was not detailed. Fortunately, in March, 2017, Necrotic Gnome Productions released Welcome to Dolmenwood, a free introduction to the setting. Further, Wormskin No. 3 and Wormskin No. 4, published in July, 2016 and Winter 2016 respectively, improved hugely upon the first and second issues, together providing a better introduction to Dolmenwood, giving some excellent answers to some very good questions about the setting before delving into what is the biggest secret of Dolmenwood. Published in the winter of 2017, Wormskin No. 5 looked at how the region might be explored, whilst also presenting the region around ‘Hag’s Addle’. Wormskin No. 6 focused on the area around Prigwort, as well as detailing ‘The Fairy Lords of Dolmenwood’ and the ‘Unseasons’ that beset the region, whilst Wormskin No. 7, published in the autumn of 2017, added both personal names and honourifics to Dolmenwood as well detailing further hexes under the eaves of the extensive forest.

Wormskin Issue Number 8 was published in February 2018, and exposed further secrets of Dolmenwood, presented a further guide to travelling in the region, and added further monsters. It feels like a relatively short issue, just containing four, reasonably lengthy articles, but all four do add to the setting. The issue opens with ‘The Sisters of the Chalice and the Moon’, an examination of witches and the witch cults to be found in Dolmenwood. The witches of Dolmenwood worship and become companions, guardians, and wives to otherworldly wood-gods known as Gwyrigons, and are highly secretive about their beliefs and practices. Their tenets are given as well as their initiation rites, how they live, their powers and abilities, schemes and goals, rumours about them, and their relationship with the factions also in the region. So they are cast spells like Magic-Users, gain certain powers from the Wood-gods—these are detailed in Wormskin Issue Number 7, can craft potions, talismans, and charms, and so on. For the most part, these are fairly typical abilities accorded witches, and since no mechanical details are given, the Game Master could easily refer to The Craft of the Wise: The Pagan Witch Tradition for the game stats. The relationships with other factions is just as useful, such as the Elf Lords’ view that the witches’ communion with the daemon nobles of the Otherworlds as discourteous, treacherous, and disgusting, whilst the witches claim fairies to be selfish and false; that the Duchy of Brackenwold and Barony of the High Wold tend to pointedly ignore the witches—since some of their family members might actually be witches, whilst the witches see both as ephemeral and irrelevant; and the witches seeing adventurers as useful when they need a task done that they themselves cannot do. Overall, it is good to a faction like the witches covered in such detail, and for the most part they are going to remain as NPCs, so the Game Master will need to provide the mechanics and rules herself should one of her players want a witch character.

In the course of eight issues, Wormskin has described a lot of the hexes, roads, and locations in Dolmenwood and since the region is quite a wide area, the Player Characters are going to be doing a lot of travel throughout the wood. Which also means that they are going to be staying out in the forest overnight on a regular basis. This is where ‘Camping in Dolmenwood’ comes into play, which provides rules and guidelines and charts for camping wild in the woods. This covers finding a suitable campsite, setting it up—fetching firewood, building a fire, fining water, foraging, hunting, and more, activities they might undertake during the evening, setting watches, and sleep. It all looks a bit mechanical, but with the roll of a few dice—including a thirty-sided die to determine a particular campsite and its features—a Game Master and her players can determine where and how well the Player Characters are camping, and from that derive a bit of roleplaying and party interplay. How often a Game Master wants to use these rules depends how much she wants to make travel a strong feature of her campaign (for example, it is a strong feature of The One Ring: Adventures Over The Edge Of The Wild), but can also be used to reinforce the fact that Dolmenwood does not being weird and eerie when the Player Character beds down for the night.

‘Strange Waters’ lists thirty different types and forms of water, their appearance, taste, and effect if consumed to be found in Dolmenwood—whether at the end of the day when setting up a campsite. For example, a shallow, muddy pool decorated by lilies and inhabited by amphibians whose surface is a perfect mirror and which tastes perfumed, but if drunk, instils an insatiably lascivious urge to remove your clothing! With thirty options for each element, the Game Master can use this table to make some of the waters to be found in the forest weird and hint at some the magics which run through them.

Rounding out Wormskin Issue Number 8 is more ‘Monsters of the Wood’. This entry in the department has a mycological theme with the inclusion of the Brainconk, Jack-o’-Lantern, Ochre Slime-Hulk, Pook Morel, and Wronguncle. These are all predatory fungi, some even sentient, such as carnivorous Brainconk which creep down from their current treetop homes to latch onto sleeping victims and slurp out their brains, and Pook Morels, which are tiny, but which project psychic horrors upon their victims who drop their possessions. These the Pook Morels scoop up and scamper back to their lairs to hide! All five of these fungi are accompanied by superb illustrations which will be sure to highlight their creepiness when shown to the players.

Physically, Wormskin Issue Number 8 is as well presented as previous issues. It is well written and cleanly and simply laid out. The artwork is good too, a mix of colour and black and white, which captures the weird and dreamy feel of Dolmenwood.

Of course, if you have previous issues of Wormskin, then Wormskin Issue Number 8 is absolutely worth adding—a major faction, something to engage the players and their characters with, a little of the weirdness to be region’s waters—literally, and new monsters. There is a nice sense of scale to the issue too, moving from the overview of the witches and their place in Dolmenwood, then getting smaller and smaller down to the mycology.


Sadly, Wormskin Issue Number 8 is the last issue. This is not as bad as it sounds, since Necrotic Gnome is planning to create a definitive Dolmenwood supplement, one which would best showcase the setting’s promise first hinted at with Wormskin Issue Number 1. Looking back at the eight issues, the ultimate problem with them is their ‘partwork’ structure, resulting in an incoherent feel. It meant that there would be several issues before there was a real introduction to the setting and articles which asked the most basic of questions about the region. What it felt like was needed is to take all eight issues and then split their articles up and assemble in some sort of order. With any luck, the forthcoming Dolmenwood setting supplement will address these issues, for the Wormskin fanzine has never been without flavour or atmosphere, just organisation.

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another DM and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. Another choice is the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game.

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

Where Crawl! No. 1 was something of a mixed bag, Crawl! #2 was a surprisingly focused, exploring the role of loot in the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game and describing various pieces of treasure and items of equipment that the Player Characters might find and use. Similarly, Crawl! #3 was just as focused, but the subject of its focus was magic rather than treasure. Unfortunately, the fact that a later printing of Crawl! No. 1 reprinted content from Crawl! #3 somewhat undermined the content and usefulness of Crawl! #3. Fortunately, Crawl! Issue Number Four was devoted to Yves Larochelle’s ‘The Tainted Forest Thorum’, a scenario for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game for characters of Fifth Level. Crawl! Issue V continues the run of themed issues.

As the title suggests, Crawl! Issue V: Monsters is all about monsters in the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game. To that end, its seven articles do several things, such as adding Class-like features to monsters, adding a monstrous Player Class in the form of the ORC, providing a cheat sheet for creating monsters quickly—and more. Published in February 2013, Crawl! Issue V: Monsters is no mere menagerie of new creatures to kill and loot—though it does include a few new creatures—but in general a collection of ideas to help the Judge handle her monsters, from creation to making them interesting.

Crawl! Issue V: Monsters opens with Reverend Dak’s ‘Monsters with Class’. This provides a means giving monsters one of the four core classes in the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game—the Cleric, the Thief, the Warrior, and the Wizard. It does this by applying a simple template. So to make a Goblin Thief, the Judge would decrease its Hit Dice by one, increase its Reflex and Fortitude Saves by one, and give it the Sneak Attack, Trickster, and Trapper abilities equal to a member of the Thief Class four Levels higher than the Goblin’s Hit Dice. It is a quick and dirty method, but it adds quick abilities to the monsters, and it does one more thing—it hints at the possibility of playing monsters as Player Characters! Now it does not follow through on that, but the possibility is there. However, Shane Clements’ ‘Orc: A monstrous class’ does follow through in detailing the Orc as a playable character type, adhering to the ‘Race as Class’ model of the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game. There is definitely an Old School Renaissance feel to the design in making the Orc nasty, brutal, and (probably) short. Orcs are Chaotically-aligned fighters, preferring to use two-handed weapons and the power necessary to wield them. The Orc can also enter into Rages to gain bonuses to his attack bonus and damage, as well as movement, Hit Points, Fortitude Saving Throws, and more. For the most part, this looks very much like the Barbarian of the traditional Dungeons & Dragons, but again, point to the possibility of monsters as a Player Characters. (As an aside, it would be fun to do that with Goblins for something like In The Shadow of Mount Rotten.)

‘Quick Monster Stats’ by Jeremy Deram provides a ‘cheat sheet’ for creating and adjusting monsters very quickly. It is similar to the earlier ‘Monsters with Class’ in allowing similar options, but broadens the types of monsters it covers by type, from Aberration, Animal, and Beast to Shapechanger, Undead, and Vermin. It is not immediately obvious quite how it works, so it could have done with an example or two, but once adapted to, it should help the Judge fairly easily. Sean Ellis’ ‘Consider the Greenskins’ attempts to tackle the hoary old issue of how to make your monsters unique—or least less generic. It gives three different takes up three types of ‘Greenskin’, the Goblin, the Hobgoblin, and the Ork. So for the Goblin suggests that they are patron-bound to demons and often to come to work as go-betweens between demons and the mortals who truck with each other; the Hobgoblin is not as warlike as portrayed elsewhere and prefers to serve others, but his thieving tendencies often get him into trouble; and the Ork serves as warriors. Unfortunately, for all of the efforts upon the part of the author to make these creatures (more) unique, there is very little here that does this—especially for the Ork. There is potential here, but ‘Consider the Greenskins’ is underwritten and underdeveloped and just not that easy to bring to a game.

Jeff Rients—author of Broodmother Skyfortress—provides ‘Quickie Wandering Monster Tables’, something that the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game actually lacks. These run from Level 1 to Level 5 and enable the Judge to use some of the roleplaying game’s weirder shaped dice. In general, the Judge will need to generate some Primeval Slimes and Type I Demons if using these tables. Rounding out Crawl! Issue V: Monsters is an actual quartet of monsters. These include Brad Littman’s ‘Fung-Eye’ and ‘Stonecrawler’. The ‘Fung-Eye’ is a carnivorous fungus which has stalks ending in eyes that blink in a disturbing fashion and can daze those who walk into areas they carpet—dazed victims become food, whilst the ‘Stonecrawler’ is a Primordial creature resembling a massive, if flat boulder, which it turns out, is incredibly difficult to nudge into action. It might be worth it though, for the Stonecrawler’s Black Adamantine heart can be ground up for amazing benefits if consumed, such as a permanent +5 bonus to Armour Class and Fortitude saving throws. Lastly, Colin Chapman’s ‘Hounds from Hell: A Pair of Monstrous Canines’ offers two nasty types of dog. The Blood Hound is a vampiric dog capable of gliding short distances on the membranes between its front and rear legs, and from its high perch ambush and feed upon its victims with its tubular, bloodsucking tongue. The Gloom Hound is a silent, hairless, white dog which lives and hunts in packs deep underground, often able to spot the invisible through its sense of small and its echolocation ability. The Blood Hound has never been domesticated, but supposedly, the Gloom Hound can be. Nicely, both of these alternate dogs come with a scenario seed for the Judge to develop for her game.

Physically, Crawl! Issue V: Monsters is neat and tidy. The few pieces of artwork are decent, and the writing only needs a slight edit here or there. As an issue though, Crawl! Issue V: Monsters feels more utilitarian rather than inspirational. That in part is down to the inclusion of not one, but two means of tweaking monsters which cover some of the same ground, and the fact that the one article which discusses new interpretations of standard humanoid races, ‘Consider the Greenskins’, is underwhelming. However, both ‘Monsters with Class’ and ‘Quick Monster Stats’ are useful. ‘Orc: A monstrous class’ is perhaps a bit more interesting, and it would have been nice to have seen the inclusion of other Orcish or Goblinoid Classes to really push the monstrous theme in a different direction. Overall, Crawl! Issue V: Monsters is not a great issue of the fanzine, but neither is it a bad one either. Rather it is just lacking a certain something.

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

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


—oOo—

Name: Prison for a Thousand Young

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Jessica Gunn & Skippy

Setting: A Correctional Centre in 1950s USA

Product: Scenario
What You Get: Eleven page, 5.15 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Sometimes escaping one prison means ending up in another.
Plot Hook:  Escape is your only hope of getting out of here.
Plot Support: Five handouts/maps/Mythos tomes, five NPCs, and four pregenerated inmates (investigators).
Production Values: Tidy layout, needs another edit, but double-page spreads.

Pros
# Focused one-shot
# Different time, different setting
# Good mix of stealth, action, investigation, and roleplaying
# Potential convention scenario
# Horrible flashback scenario?
# Easily transported to other times and places

Cons
# Linear plot
# Double-page spreads
# Difficult to work into a campaign

Conclusion
# Good mix of stealth, action, investigation, and roleplaying
# Different time, different setting
# The Shawshank Redemption meets Shub-Niggurath

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

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

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Name: Leptis Magna

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Marco Carrer

Setting: 1930s Libya for Pulp Cthulhu: Two-fisted Action and Adventure Against the Mythos

Product: Scenario
What You Get: Eleven page, 606.96 KB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Imperial ambitions don’t always end in glory, sometimes they end in gore.
Plot Hook:  Exemplary service got you noticed, a special mission could get you sent home—a fine reward. 
Plot Support: Three NPCs, multiple Mythos creatures, and four pregenerated Italian Regio
Esercito soldier player characters.
Production Values: Tidy layout, scrappy art, and needs localising.

Pros
# Different time, different place
# Scenario for Pulp Cthulhu

Cons
# Linear
# Just following orders
# No investigator agency
# How are you with the fascist regime? 
# Pulp Cthulhu or Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition—does it matter?

Conclusion
# Just following orders
# More novel than 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 a Five Go Mad in Egypt, Return of the Ripper, Rise of the Dead, Rise of the Dead II: The Raid, and more...

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

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Name: Hidden Within

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Avery M. Viers

Setting: Jazz Age Toledo

Product: Scenario
What You Get: Thirteen page, 820.88 KB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Blue murder in the doghouse
Plot Hook:  When family members suddenly turn giggly, obese, and standoffish, something strange must be going on.
Plot Support: Four NPCs, two Mythos creatures, one Mythos tome, and one handout.
Production Values: Tidy layout, needs another edit, and functional map.

Pros
# Bloody body horror
# Charnel house horror
# Decent mix of investigation and combat
# ‘Aliens’ in Toledo?

Cons
# Bloody body horror
# Potentially too combat focused?

Conclusion
# Decent mix of investigation and combat
# Charnel house horror-oneshot

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

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


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Name: Nightmare in Providence

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Justin Fanzo

Setting: Jazz Age Lovecraft Country

Product: Scenario
What You Get: Thirty-three page, 2.0 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Sometimes it really is possible to get lost in movies.
Plot Hook: Occult experts—the investigators—are asked to look for a missing Nickleodeon owner and a missing wouldbe star. 
Plot Support: Two gods and eleven handouts.
Production Values: Plain layout, needs another edit, and ordinary maps.

Pros
# Linear like a silent movie
# Verbally challenging
# Lunar cameo

Cons
# Linear
# Minimal roleplaying
# Pointless puzzles
# Overeggs the Sanity losses

Conclusion
# Linear
# Minimal roleplaying
# Pointless puzzles

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

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


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Name: Call of Cthulhu Occupation Kit: Occultist

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Evan Perlman

Setting: Jazz Age

Product: Investigator supplement
What You Get: 264.37 KB, four-page, full-colour PDF.
Elevator Pitch: Want extra depth and detail for your Occultist Investigator?
Investigator Hook: Delve into the ‘hidden’, the Occult world of folklore, spiritualism, Theosophy, esoteric magic, and other traditions for this classic Occupation for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition.
Investigator Support: Career Paths, Roleplaying Tips, Public Perceptions, Real-life Examples, Variant Skill Lists, and Equipment Lists.
Production Values: Plain and simple, but needs an edit.

Pros
# Good overview of the Occupation
# Touches upon various traditions
# Introduces real world examples
# Roleplaying tips
# Public perception of the Occupation an interesting inclusion.
# Solid concept

Cons
# Feels underdeveloped
# Good overview of the Occupation
# No sample Occultist Investigators
# No sample Occultist NPCs

Conclusion
# More magazine article than supplement
# Feels underdeveloped
# Solid concept

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

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


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Name: The Pipeline: A Call of Cthulhu Scenario for the 1980s

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Alex Guillotte

Setting: 1980s British Columbia, Canada

Product: Scenario
What You Get: seventy-two page, full colour softback book.
Elevator Pitch: The oil must flow, the pipeline must be kept open.
Plot Hook: Contact has been lost with Exxon Pumping Station #31 in British Columbia. Mechanical fault or radical environmentalists, you are assigned to find out.
Plot Support: Seven arctic hazards, eleven handouts, fifty-six NPCs (alive, deceased, and/or insignificant), eight pregenerated investigators, a new Mythos creature, the Arctic Guide Occupation, and new equipment and archaic weapons.
Production Values: Needs another edit, but clean layout, excellent artwork, and nice handouts..

Pros
# Grueling mechanically and narratively
# Grueling mentally and physically
# A wealth of detail
# Fantastic handouts
# Marginalia!
# Potential Delta Green flashback?
# Survival horror

Cons
# Grueling mechanically and narratively
# Grueling mentally and physically
# A wealth of detail
# New Mythos monster when the Yeti would have done?
# Linear plot—as in a ‘Pipeline’

Conclusion
# Potential Delta Green flashback?
# Grueling and linear
# Superbly presented

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

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

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Esko Evtyukov
Artists: Ina Pylkkö

Setting: Jazz Age Lovecraft Country

Product: Scenario
What You Get: 15.14 MB, twenty-page full colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: “In time of test, family is best.”
Plot Hook: Magic and the Mythos do not exist, but even the FBI hates to see a sorcerous criminal with the wrong book.
Plot Support: ‘New’ investigator organisation, eight NPCs and creatures, and a Mythos tome.
Production Values: Needs another edit, but clean layout.

Pros
# Delta Green-not Delta Green
# Family-focused scenario
# Federally-backed investigation
# Bowler-hatted Man-in-Black
# Suitable for a smaller group of investigators # Decent first scenario by new author

Cons
# Delta Green-not Delta Green
# FBI rather than P-Division?
# No maps
# Illustrations more placeholders than helpful
# Monster motivations underdeveloped

Conclusion
# Too close to Delta Green
# Decent first scenario by new author
# Suitable for a smaller group of 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 a Five Go Mad in Egypt, Return of the Ripper, Rise of the Dead, Rise of the Dead II: The Raid, and more...

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

—oOo—

Name: Akhenaten Unveiled

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: James Austin
Setting: Ancient Egypt (Cthulhu Invictus)
Product: Scenario
What You Get: 38.56 MB, thirty-five-page full colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: ‘Death on the Nile’

Plot Hook: King Amenhotep IV rejected the Egyptian gods. You have been assigned to assassinate him.
Plot Development: A perilous trip down the Nile leads to party town, strange magic, and ‘The King is dead! Long live the King!’
Plot Support: Glossary, twelve NPCs and monsters, its own Appendix N, two handouts, one spell, and six pregenerated investigators.

 Pros
# Intriguing plot
# Cthulhu Invictus one-s+hot
# Set in Ancient Egypt
# Physical puzzles
# Cthulhu Invictus meets Stargate

Cons
# Cthulhu Invictus meets Stargate
# Pregenerated Investigators lack motivation
# Assassination set-ups needs development 
# Non-Mythos scenario

Conclusion
# Feels underdeveloped in places
# Physical puzzles
# Original, but non-Mythos plot

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

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

—oOo—

Name: Little Torches 

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Heinrich D. Moore
Setting: 1990s

Product: Scenario
What You Get: 8.29 MB sixty-page, full-colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: “Fly too close to the sun, and you’ll burn your wings.”
Plot Hook: What causes a college student to immolate herself in front of you? Her depression? Her mother’s cult? Or something else…? Plot Development: An explosively fiery beginning, a constantly burning box, dreams of a lighthouse, and the warmth of the sun.Plot Support: Fourteen full-colour Investigator handouts, twenty NPCs and Mythos creatures and entities, and five pregenenrated Investigators.

Pros
# Opens strongly, with a fiery bang!!
# Cast of interesting NPCs
# Well explained artefact
# Straightforward plot literally becomes labyrinthine
# Parallel plots in and out of dream
# Adaptable to other time periods with a little effort
# Potential to be developed into a Mythos versus the Mythos campaign
# Innovative use of handouts to pull investigators into the plot
# Handouts used to help develop each investigator
# Interesting in-game interpretation of the Great Old One, Cthugha 

Cons# Themes of isolation and alienation not suitable for all
# Pregenerated investigators tied to the plot, but not the set-up
# Innovative use of handouts to pull investigators into plot may feel too much like solo play.
# Needs careful preparation by the Keeper
# Overeggs the Mythos in places
# Handout and scenario structure gives Keeper a lot to keep track off.

Conclusion
# Intriguing encounter with the Mythos which starts with a bang!
# Innovative use of handouts to encourage roleplaying# Needs careful preparation by the Keeper

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

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What is it?
Valley of Plenty is the first part of The Jaldonkillers Saga, a campaign for QuestWorlds (HeroQuest Glorantha). 

It is a one-hundred-and-fifty page, full colour, Print on Demand softback book.

Although it needs a slight edit in places, Valley of Plenty is nicely presented with some reasonable artwork. The cover is pleasingly bucolic.

Where is it set?
Valley of Plenty is set in the lands of the Blue Jay clan of the Dundealos tribe in southwest Sartar on the border with Prax.

When is it set?
Valley of Plenty begins in 1602 and will explore events which take place in 1602, 1605, 1607, and 1608.

Who do you play?
Members of the Wildlings, the gang led by the younger daughters of Dinorth Many-Spears, leader of the Blue Jay clan and King of the Dundealos tribe. They are in turn children, teenagers, young adults, and finally adults, who will play and then grow into their roles in the tribe.

What do you need?
Valley of Plenty requires QuestWorlds to play. (At the time of the publication of Valley of Plenty, only the QuestWorlds - System Reference Document is available. Alternatively, Valley of Plenty can be run using HeroQuest: Glorantha.).

Valley of Plenty also makes reference to Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes, Sartar Companion, Sartar Player’s Primer, The Coming Storm: The Red Cow Volume I, The Eleven Lights: The Red Cow Volume II, The Guide to Glorantha, and The Glorantha Sourcebook. Of these, Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes will provide details of the gods and their associated cults that are also worshiped by the Blue Jay clan, whilst The Glorantha Sourcebook provides wider background.

What do you get?
Valley of Plenty is notable as a release on the Jonstown Compendium for being the first for use with QuestWorlds rule-system—Chaosium, Inc.’s update for HeroQuest. It is both a sourcebook for, and the first part of, The Jaldonkillers Saga, a campaign set in Sartar which will take a group of characters from the idyll of their childhood through the sundering of their tribe and beyond to its reconstitution in exile and then the efforts made to retake both their tribe’s lands and glory. This is framed against the invasion of Sartar by the Lunar Empire and its repulsion following the Dragonrise. Valley of Plenty only covers the first part of this and sets everything up and deeply involves the players and their characters in their clan through notable events in the early lives.

The player characters begin play as children. They are members of the Wildings, a gang lead by the younger daughters of Dinorth Many-Spears leader of the Blue Jay clan and King of the Dundealos tribe, who have plenty of time to play and have fun. No matter what trouble they get into, the Wildlings have the favour of the king—though sometimes not his wife—and this has interesting implications for the campaign. It means that as the campaign progresses and the characters grow, the characters’ friendship with the king’s daughters and his favour enable them to grow into a place close to the king and the events that will beset the clan, rather than being the default set-up from the outset. So initially, the campaign will have a little of the feel of Swallows and Amazons or Five Go Adventuring Again, but this will change as the characters grow, become adults, and assume their full roles in the clan.

The structure of the campaign is episodic. The first takes place when the Player Characters are eight or nine, beginning with a day that many players will recognise from a hot summer’s day from their own childhoods, before going on to explore the consequences of the day. From an adult perspective, it is very light-hearted, but not so from that of children. In particular, the second scenario, ‘Two Frogs Too Many’ presents a challenge typical of that which might be faced by an adult adventurer in Glorantha, but here appropriately scaled down to match the ability levels of the children. (Mechanically, of course, this does mean that the abilities of the Player Characters or the threat they face have been scaled down, but for QuestWorlds, they have been scaled down narratively.) The second is set in 1605 when they are eleven or twelve, have some responsibilities, but still time to slip away on an adventure, one that brings then face-to-face with the clan’s enemies and then have a day at the races. In 1607, the Player Characters will undergo their rites of passage and become adults, before in 1608, engage in adult activities—a raid and the difficulties of engaging with a rival clan. The Player Characters will have their first encounter with the Lunars, a sign of things to come in future parts of The Jaldonkillers Saga.

In between these periods of intense activities, the players roll for events which will affect them and their families and learn of ongoing events in the tribe and the wider world. All the adventures though, are really well done, in presenting tasks and challenges appropriate to the ages of the Player Characters, the risks and responsibilities growing with each new chapter. Each period comes with additional seeds and throughout the bonuses to be gained and changes to be made to each character’s stats as they grow up and eventually gain responsibilities, meaning that the characters grow up both mechanically and narratively into adults and members of the tribe. At the same time, both they and the Game Master are growing into QuestWorlds’ mechanics, the campaign introducing different elements of the rules as it progresses.

In addition to the mechanical progression, Valley of Plenty also presents the background information that the Player Characters would know, also progress. Notably, this is done through two player handouts, ‘Child’s Knowledge’ and ‘Youngster’s Knowledge’, which present their world view rather than that the clan’s adults. These present a Sartarite clan from first principles, then second principles, and then the wider world, introducing Glorantha in an easy to digest step-by-step fashion. Other handouts cover the gods commonly worshiped by the Blue Jay Clan and the Dundealos tribe and details of the small city of Dundealosford, and the surrounding area. For the Game Master, there is more information about the Jaldonkillers tribe, including very full write-ups of the cults of Elmal (the Jaldonkillers being Horse Orlanthi, though the Player Characters are ‘City Jays’, living in Dundealosford), Redalda, Andred, and Drogarsi the Skald, as well as the Shamanic Tradition of the Steadfast Circle. These are exceptionally well done, and full of suggestions as what benefits worshippers—and the Player Characters—can gain from belonging to each cult as well as extra details that the Game Master can bring into play and each cult’s role in Blue Jay society. The cult of Andred—she is the goddess of victory and justice deferred—is new, as is the shamanic tradition write-up, and it should be noted that the cult descriptions for Elmal, Redalda, and Drogarsi are written from a non-Orlanthi perspective. So if a player would participate in a different campaign, he would need to be apprised of the differences. Further, not all of the cults which the Blue Jays belong to are covered in Valley of Plenty and a Game Master may need access to Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes if a player decides his character belongs to one of those.

On the downside, some of these handouts are lengthy and in places it feels as if the players need to do a bit of homework to play Valley of Plenty. As much as it is designed as an introduction to Glorantha—although one from a particular point of view—there is still a degree of buy-in upon the part of the players. Another issue is that Valley of Plenty only takes The Jaldonkillers Saga campaign so far, that is from childhood to adulthood, and not as far as the events surrounding the sundering of the tribe. Of course, Valley of Plenty sets up and hints at the events to come, but anyone expecting more will be disappointed, plus the scenarios in Valley of Plenty do not really end on a high point or a low point, or indeed with any great sense of a climax. These issues are minor, however, and will not really impinge on a play-through of Valley of Plenty.

With Valley of Plenty, the Jonstown Compendium has not one, but two good starter campaigns—campaigns that start from first principles about Glorantha and who the Player Characters are in the world—and take them deeper into the setting. The other of course is Six Seasons in Sartar. It is not difficult to draw comparisons between the two, because they share a number of similarities. They both focus on the one clan, their storylines both involve the sundering of their clans and subsequent reclamations, and both have the Player Characters beginning play before they are adults. However, whilst the events of Six Seasons in Sartar are more direct, those of Valley of Plenty are gentler, with more adventures before the Player Characters come of age. Of course, the big difference between Six Seasons in Sartar and Valley of Plenty is that the former is written for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha whereas the latter is written for QuestWorlds. In fact, this is a good thing, since it means that they do compete with each other, though there is nothing to stop a Game Master adapting Valley of Plenty for use with RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. However, she would need to take care as the RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha mechnics are not as forgiving when handling children Player Characters as QuestWorlds is.

Valley of Plenty is an excellent campaign, an excellent campaign for Glorantha, and an excellent entry point for playing in Glorantha—so good that it could easy have been published by Chaosium. It guides both Game Master and her players, step-by-step, into the game and the world of Glorantha as well as the mechanics of QuestWorlds, in an enjoyably gentle fashion, supporting the process with an easily digestible background and details that can be brought into play. As an introduction to, and a first campaign—literally and narratively—for, Glorantha for QuestWorlds, this is a must buy, and were not for the fact that Valley of Plenty is written for use with QuestWorlds rather than RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, one of the first purchases which should be made from the Jonstown Compendium. 

Is it worth your time?
Yes—Valley of Plenty is a near perfect introduction to gaming in Glorantha and should be your first QuestWorlds purchase.
No—Valley of Plenty is another Glorantha campaign starter and for another set of rules when there is more enough for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha right now.
Maybe—Valley of Plenty contains background as well as adventures which could be adapted to your campaign or indeed, rules system, of your choice.

The Last Equation is a short, but challenging investigation for use with Arc Dream Publishing’s Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game. It can be played using either the roleplaying game’s full rules or those from Delta Green: Need to Know. It opens with bloody murder. The Agents are activated by Delta Green after the secret interagency conspiracy is alerted to the presence of a strange series of numbers painted on Highway Six in Teaneck, New Jersey, right outside the home of a family of eight who had just been gunned down by an assailant who was witnessed spray-painting the numbers before blowing his own head off. He has been identified as  Michael Wei, a mathematics student at Columbia University in New York, which makes the crime an interstate case and so the FBI is already involved. Which makes getting the Delta Green Agents involved a whole lot easier.

At the outset, The Last Equation looks to be relatively straightforward case. After all, the identity of the murderer is clear and he committed suicide. However, the Agents are not tasked with investigating the case per se, but rather with providing an acceptable cause for Wei’s action and then eradicating any traces of his research. This is not an easy task and the Agents are faced with difficulties right from the start. Not only do they have to take care to maintain their covers, they also have to alter the evidence—and both are criminal acts. At the same time, the Agents face two other dangers. One is a news team which takes an understandable, but annoying interest in what is a sensationalist crime as well as the members of law enforcement assigned to investigate it. The other is the nature of the threat itself—a cross between a virus and a meme—which threatens to spiral out of control and begin to replicate. Unless the Agents are careful, this will come home to them very quickly.

The second part of the scenario takes the Agents from New Jersey to New York and beyond—certainly if events spiral out of control, which they very much threaten to do in The Last Equation. As the danger appears to spread, there is the chance that one or more of the Agents falls victim to it and as they too spiral into madness, the likelihood increases they too, will become part of the problem. In a way, The Last Equation models an Agent’s mental trajectory in the long term as he investigates a multitude of cases on behalf of Delta Green, but radically and deleteriously accelerated. It also highlights Delta Green’s ruthlessness and there are also some quite weird and creepy moments once the investigation moves away from New Jersey, which under any other circumstances would look like coincidences, but in The Last Equation are anything but. Ultimately, The Last Equation is not a scenario about investigating the Unnatural, but about containing it.

Previously available from the author’s website, The Last Equation has been redesigned and presented in full colour. As will other titles for Delta Green: The Roleplaying Game, it is generally well presented and well written, and as you would expect, the artwork is excellent. However, there is not enough of it and the Handler will probably want to supply portraits of the scenario’s various NPCs. There is solid advice on how to handle the consequences of the Agents’ evidence cover up or alteration—whether successful or not, but Handler may want to prepare a timeline for easy reference. Two timelines of events are included, but whilst separate, they cover the same period of time and might be easier to track as one timeline.

The Last Equation could be run as a one-shot or even as a convention scenario, but it would need to be played with some alacrity to fit easily within a four-hour slot. It is better run as a two to three session scenario, and it is easy to add to a campaign. Overall, The Last Equation is a nasty scenario which will challenge the Agents’ capacity to not only deal with the Unnatural, but also with the consequences of their cover-up. 

Pax Londinium is a supplement for Liminal, the urban fantasy roleplaying game set entirely within the United Kingdom, a United Kingdom with a Hidden World populated by the strange and the otherworldly, in which magic and magicians, vampires, werewolves, the fae, and many myths of the British Isles are real. The United Kingdom of Liminal is riven by factions, such as the conservative Council of Merlin, the scheming vampires of the Soldality of the Crown, the Fae lords, the Queen of Hyde Park and the wife-hunting Winter King of the north, whilst the Order of St, Bede, a Christian order, is dedicated to protecting the mundane world from magic and the supernatural and keeping it and the existence of magic a secret. Where Fortean or inexplicable crimes occur, P Division, a national agency of the British police, are likely to investigate, but cannot mention magic, for fear such knowledge might leak… The players take the role of ‘Liminals’, able to stand astride the mundane and the Hidden World, working as a Crew—which the players create along with their characters—which has its own objectives and facilities, to investigate the weirdness and mysteries that seeps into the real from the Hidden World. 

As its title suggests, Pax Londinium takes the Crew to the capital of the United Kingdom and steps back and forth across the Liminal to explore its strange and long history, its factions and personalities, its diverse cultures and their place in the Liminal, and more. In doing so, what it is not, is a London source book per se—either mundane or magical. There is so much to mundane London that the pages of Pax Londinium would be overflowing before it even made the crossing of the Liminal and back again—and anyway, there are available numerous books on mundane and magical London (many of which are listed in Pax Londinuim’s bibliography in the introduction). There is also plenty that is magical or mystical in London, whether that is Jack the Ripper or Doctor John Dee, but Pax Londinium steadfastly avoids such obvious elements—and is very much the better book for it. The book also wears its influences upon its sleeve—the fiction of Ben Aaronovitch, Paul Cornell and Neil Gaiman—and both acknowledges and is unapologetical about doing so, most obviously in the inclusion of the Hidden, the homeless folk of the city who have slipped across the Liminal, to be in the city, but never seen by its mundane inhabitants.

Pax Londinium begins by stating what makes the city of London different, highlighting the differences between Greater London the City of London, that it is multicultural and constantly changing, and that its history is both obvious and obfuscated. It also states that it is home to lots of Liminal beings—ghosts, gods and goddesses, trolls, the fae, magicians, and more. What keeps them from acting against each other is the ‘Pax Londinium’, which divides the city in two, north and south, the dividing barrier being the River Thames. North of the river and the Hidden are free to act and plot as they will, but south, such Liminal activity is all but forbidden. In fact, the Hidden are often prevented from crossing the river, whether this by a taxi driver telling that he won’t go south of the river—in fact, this is the Knowledge, a neutral manifestation of the genus loci of the city; the Trolls of the Duchess of Bridges physically stopping you; or P Division suggesting that you had best be moving on.

As you would expect, the supplement covers the presence of the core factions in Liminal in the city. So the Council of Merlin somewhat reluctantly maintains a private members club, often accessed by its members via their privately created and maintained Thriceway Gates. The Court of Queen of Hyde Park is a powerful presence, but must contend with the thieving Boggarts ruled by King Pilferer which infest the Hidden city and Temese, the River Spirit of the Thames who would have her throne. She has the support of the Duchess of Bridges who commands the Trolls found on very many bridges and in as many tunnels and the Lady of Flowers, the spirit of the city’s trees and plants whose fortune and presence wax and wane with the seasons and whose Flower Knights act to protect all women. The Mercury Collegium has four guilds in the city—one of which, the East End Guild, is a firm of magical gangsters! The Order of St. Bede cannot prevent London being home to a multitude of the Hidden, but attempts to curb their influence, whilst also maintaining the Pax Londinium. P Division does the same, but is more proactive as its branch, working closely with the Order of St. Bede to stamp out any vampire presence in the city. Thus, the Sodality of the Crown keeps out of city—despite its obvious attractions for any vampire, though it fears that there might be rogue vampire at large. Similarly, the werewolves of the Jaeger Family are rarely seen in the city.

Of course, Pax Londinium adds new factions. These include the aforementioned The Knowledge and the Hidden, but also add numerous guilds, such as the Guild of Water and Light—or Lighters, who guide fallen Visible Londoners back to the mundane world, the Guild of Sewer Hunters, which hunts the horrors below, and the Guild of Toshers, which scours the city’s sewers and tunnels for lost things. The sewers are home to Queen Rat, who takes secret lovers and grants them incredible luck—as long as they keep their liaison a secret. There is a handful of mysteries too, some obvious like the Ravens and the Raven Master and his duties—and who he might report to, and the Ancient Livery Companies, but others less so, like the Pig-Headed Woman of Maida Vale and the Bleeding Heart which sometimes plays a big role in swearing pacts and agreements.

London is also a city of both gods and the dead—no surprise given its history. The gods include a mixture of the native and the non-native. The former includes the Guardian Head of Bran the Blessed, who watches over Britain and whose head is buried under the Tower of London, as well as Branwen, the actual goddess of Britain, her fate tied to the land. The latter includes the Cult of Diana the Hunter, a ruthless cult dedicated to the ambitions of its female members; the Children of Ra, which is attempting to increase the city’s connection to Egyptian magic and so dominate the Council of Merlin and the Mercury Collegium; and the spirits known Orisha, which accept Liminal from around the world with the Queen of Hyde Park’s blessing, in ‘Little Lagos’, south of the river. In general, that non-native gods are the more interesting of the two and the more developed. The dead make their presence felt through the negative magical energy released in the spiritual disruption caused by the excavations for the Underground and Eurostar, which now seethes through the London Underground, while Mr. Killburn’s Acquisitions Association keeps bodysnatching very modern and the #7 Ghost Bus, which runs round London, even south of the river unimpeded and into the Ghost Domains where Ghost Courts meet.

Pax Londinium comes with a number of encounters, including ‘Ahmed’s VHS Wonderland’, a grimy VHS video equipment and cassettes which is actually a cover for an emporium of magical artefacts, spell components, and more, and New Aeon Books, a trendy magical crafts shop which is gleefully treated as a joke by the Hidden. These are all easy to use and drop into a Liminal game set in the capital, or simply serve as inspiration for the Game Master. Similarly, ‘The Worshipful Company of Investigators’, a Crew which investigates instances of the Hidden seeping into the mundane at the behest of its anonymous benefactor, The Professor, can work as a Player Character organisation for a Liminal game set in London, as an example, or a rival organisation. It includes writeups of several read-to-play would be Player Characters or NPCs. Lastly, the new rules add Chronomancy as a power for a Mage.

There is a lot to like about Pax Londinium. Primarily what it does is add a lot to the city, whilst leaving more than enough space for the Game Master to develop her own ideas. Plus, for the most part, a great of the content is new and original. It could have gone for the cliché, but mostly avoids that, so that when it includes the Ravens of London, its familiarity grounds the setting rather than overegging it. Which would have happened if Jack the Ripper had been included for example. Perhaps one element which is left unexplained is why London was divided north and south by the River Thames as part of the Pax Londinium—the reason why the Pax Londinium was made is given, the reason for the exact terms is not. What it amounts to though, is a means to control the Hidden and magic in the city by the factions north of the river.

Physically, this book is both simple and beautiful. The layout is the former, clean and easy to read. The art is the latter. It consists of a mix of stunning depictions of London vistas and London Liminal. The artwork throughout Pax Londinium is in turns weird and wonderful, mystical and majestic, intriguing and inspiring. This is award-winning artwork.

At just eighty pages, Pax Londinium is a short book, but it uses its space in a very economical fashion. It sketches out Liminal London in broad details before narrowing its focus again and again, first on the city’s factions, then its gods, right down to individual locations and elements which the Liminal Game Master can bring into her game. It makes the content both easy to access and bring to the table, and it is backed up by an excellent bibliography should the Game Master want to conduct research of her own. Pax Londinium showcases how to do a city book for Pax Londinium and showcases not the capital as we see it, but the peace of London on the other side the Liminal.