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

—oOo—

It is all but impossible to start a review of Rifts and not acknowledge the problems it suffers from being published by Palladium Books. In terms of physical design, Rifts is a terrible roleplaying game, first because it is organised in such a fashion as to make it difficult to play and second, because it has no index. Now these are standard features of any book from Palladium Books, but in a roleplaying game which is as badly organised as Rifts and therefore needs an index to make it easier to use, the designer’s stupidly stubborn refusal to include one is nonsensical. Similarly, there is no character sheet, but to be fair, no character sheet could encapsulate just how much information a player has to note down when creating and playing a character in Rifts. This is of course, a given with all Palladium Books, but in a roleplaying game with as many separate elements as Rifts, it is an extraordinarily big given. That given aside, Rifts remains physically imposing, a slab of a softback book, neatly, cleanly, and tidily presented throughout, with uniformly, if cartoonishly good black and white artwork and excellent fully painted inserts. The standard of presentation—if not the organisation—was very good for 1990.
So what is Rifts? It is a post-apocalyptic roleplaying game set hundreds of years into the future which combines big robots, magic, psionics, and bruising combat on an incredible scale. It is a roleplaying game in which Glitter Boys piloting big mecha suits, chemically enhanced Juicers, psionic Cyber-Knights, ley-commanding Ley Walkers, Techno-Wizards, Dragons, psionic Mind Melters, and more combat the ‘Dead Boy’ soldiers in their deaths head armour, Spider-Skull Walkers, and Sky Cycles of the evil Coalition States as well as supernatural monsters, D-Bees (Dimensional beings), and the instectoid Xiticix from other dimensions. It is a future in which a golden age was destroyed by nuclear conflagration as billions died, their Potential Psychic Energy—or P.P.E.—was unleashed as surges into the Earth’s many, long forgotten ley lines, coming together at nexus points and causing rifts in time and space to be ripped open. As the planet buckled under the psychic onslaught, millions more died and fed more energy into the now pulsing ley lines, causing a feedback loop which would grow and grow. The oceans were driven from their beds to wash over the lands, Atlantis rose again after millennia, alien beings flooded through the rifts, and magic returned to the planet. 
In North America—the primary setting for Rifts—the land consists of feudal states, though the Coalition States, a hundred-year-old, mutant-hating, magic hating, psionic-hating totalitarian empire is spreading its influence out of Chi-Town near the old ruins of Chicago. Its current target is the city of Tolkeen which stands astride a ley line nexus on the bones of the pre-rifts city, Minneapolis, and is home to many wizards; the Coalition States operates the Lone Star City, a huge pre-rifts military complex with the most advanced manufacturing, animal genetics, cybernetics, bionics, and robot facilities on the planet, whilst the rest of the former state is new frontier across which high-tech desperados range; the remains of Georgia and Florida are marshlands populated by dinosaurs; and the former St. Louis is a demon infested no-go zone dominated by two hundred ley lines and thirteen nexus points. Elsewhere, Mexico is aid to the home to Vampire Kingdoms; England, Scotland, Wales have become a Realm of Magic; and the Germany of the ‘New Republic’ is as advanced as Chi-Town.
So what can you play in Rifts? Here a player is faced by a deluge of choice. Rifts is a Class and Level roleplaying game, and the Classes are either Occupational Character Classes or Racial Character Classes. Occupational Character Classes are further categorised into Men of Arms, Scholars and Adventurers, and Practitioners of Magic, whilst Racial Character Classes are natural psionics—although many characters other than Racial Character Classes can be psionic—and actual separate species like Dragons. The Men of Arms Occupational Character Classes consist of Borgs—bionic superhumans or cyborgs; the Coalition Grunt is the Coalition States’ infantryman, Coalition RPA Elite or ‘Sam’ Coalition its pilots of robots and vehicles, the Coalition Military Specialist its espionage and reconnaissance specialists, and the Coalition Technical Officer its military technicians; Crazies are neurologically enhanced through nano-technology, a process which physically enhances them, but sends them literally crazy; the Cyber-Knight is a psionic paladin, complete with psi-sword and a chivalric code; the Glitter Boy pilots the famous Glitter Boy power armour complete with its ‘boom’ gun; the Headhunter is a bounty hunter and warrior for hire; and the Juicer is super-chemically enhanced at the cost of a much shortened lifespan. The Scholars and Adventurers Occupational Character Classes consist of the Body Fixer—a medical doctor, the City Rat—dwellers of a city’s lower levels and sewers, the Cyber-Doc—a cybernetics specialist, the Operator—freelance engineer or technician, the Rogue Scientist—scientific explorer and researcher, the Rogue Scholar—seekers and teachers of knowledge, the Wilderness Scout—hunter and guide; and the Vagabond Non-Skilled—the equivalent to the ordinary person in Rifts.
The Practitioners of Magic consist of the Line Walker who draws energy from and can ride ley lines, the Mystic—a sensitive and healer who combines magic and psionics, the Shifter who open up dimensional portals and summon creatures from the other side, and the Techno-Wizard who combines magic and technology to create and power wondrous devices. The Racial Character Classes start with the Dragon—the creatures of myth, but from an unknown dimension and merely weeks old at game start and is followed by the Psychic Character Classes. These consist of the Burster or pyrokinetic, the Psi-Stalker who hunts and feeds on other psionic-users, Dog Pack—genespliced canines used by the Coalition States to hunt wizards and psychics, and the Mind Melter—a superpowered psychic!
That is a total of twenty-seven characters Classes!
Every Class comes with its own abilities and skills, plus a choice of other occupational skills and secondary skills. Suggested equipment is given as well as starting funds and cybernetics—if any. Many also come with supplementary mechanics. So for example, the Crazy Occupational Character Class includes for how the Crazy’s madness expresses itself—covered in five pages compared to the two devoted to the actual Crazy Occupational Character Class, and six pages of Techno-Wizard gear in comparison to the two pages devoted to the Techno-Wizard Occupational Character Class.
A character in Rifts is defined by eight attributes—Intelligence Quotient (I.Q.), Mental Endurance (M.E.), Mental Affinity (M.A.), Physical Strength (P.S.), Physical Prowess (P.P.), Physical Endurance (P.E.), Physical Beauty (P.B.), and Speed (Spd.). The base attributes range from three to eighteen, with results of seventeen or more granting bonuses, though low rolls do not impose any penalties. A character will also have Hit Points and Structural Damage Capacity or S.D.C., essentially stun points. To create a character in Rifts, a player rolls three six-sided dice for his character’s attributes, rolls for his Hit Points and S.D.C., rolls to see if he has psionics, selects an Occupational Character Class or a Racial Character Class, chooses equipment and rolls for money, and lastly looks at rounding out the character. 
Cyber-Knight (Level 1)Alignment: Scrupulous (Good)
I.Q. 13M.E. 13M.A. 08P.S. 22P.P. 18P.E. 17P.B. 11Spd. 20
Hit Points: 12 S.D.C. 107
Save versus Coma/Death +5%Save versus Poison & Magic +1 
Psi-sword Damage: 1d6 Mega-Damage (M.D.)Automatic Kick Attack: 2d4Body Block: 1d4 (Opponent must dodge or parry to avoid being knocked down; lose one melee attack if knocked down.)Pin/incapacitate on a roll of 18, 19, or 20. Crush/Squeeze: 1d4
Attacks per Melee +4+7 damage in hand-to-hand combatInitiative +1, Parry +5, Dodge +5, Strike +2, +8 to roll with punch or fallW.P. Blunt +1 Strike, +1 ParryW.P. Knife +1 to throwW.P. Sword +1 Strike, +1 Parry
PsionicsBase P.P.E. 23Saving Throw versus psionic attack: 12 or higher.I.S.P. 24Psionic Powers: Object Read, Sense Evil, Sixth Sense
O.C.C. SkillsAnthropology 40%, Athletics (General), Automotive Mechanics 25%, Basic Electronics 35% Bodybuilding, Boxing, Climbing 67%, Cook 40%, Detect Ambush 40%, Gymnastics (Sense of Balance 60%, Work Parallel Bars & Rings 68%, Climb Rope 77%, Back Flip 80%, Prowl 40%), Hand-to-Hand: Martial Arts, Horsemanship 59%, Intelligence 36%, Land Navigation 52%, Language (American) 96%, Language (Dragonese/Elf) 96%, %, Language (Euro) 75%, Language (Spanish) 75%, Literacy 55%, Lore: Demon 45%, Lore: Fairie 30%, Paramedic 55%, Pick Lock 35%, Pilot (Automobile) 54%, Pilot (Motorcycle) 64%, Sewing 45%, Streetwise 24%, Swimming 65%, Tracking 30%, Wilderness Survival 35%, , W.P. Automatic Pistol, W.P. Blunt, W.P. Knife, W.P. Energy Pistol, W.P. Energy Rifle, W.P. Sword, Wrestling, Writing 30%
EquipmentSuit of personalised, heavy, M.D.C body armour, suit of light M.D.C body armour (Crusader Full Fibre Environmental Body Armor, M.D.C. 55), set of dress clothing, set of black clothing. Gas mask and air filter, tinted goggles, hatchet for cutting wood, knife (or two), sword, modern handgun (NG-S7 Northern Gun Heavy-Duty Ion Blaster 2d4/3d6 M.D.) and rifle (L-20 Pulse Rifle 2d6 M.D. single shot/6d6 burst) and three extra ammo clips, first-aid kit with extra bandages and antiseptic, suture thread and painkiller, tent, knapsack, back pack, saddlebags, two canteens, emergency food rations (two week supply), Geiger counter, and some personal items.Money: 300 credits, black market item worth 4000 creditsCybernetics: Cyber-armour (A.R. 16, 50 M.D.C.).
This process is not an easy one, nor is it quick. Some of the shorter Occupational Character Classes and Racial Character Classes may take half an hour to create, others an hour or more, all depending upon the particular elements of the Class and what extra elements the player needs to choose. Further, a lot of cross referencing is required as both Class abilities, hand-to-hand combat styles, and skills can sometimes enhance a character’s attributes. Then there are options too, for example the finishing touches to creating a character is a player choosing his character’s Alignment. The tables for birth order, disposition, and more are all optional…
Mechanically, Rifts is quite simple. Combat is handled by rolls of a twenty-sided die, a player having to roll high to hit, usually four or more. Mechanically, Rifts is also quite complex. If a target is hit and does not avoid the attack, the player whose character is attacking rolls to beat the target’s Armour Rating. If he does, the target take damage, if not, the armour takes damage. However, not all armour has an Armour Rating. This is because where Rifts gets even more complex is because characters will find themselves fighting on two scales—Structural Damage Capacity and Mega Damage Capacity. Both measure the amount of damage that an object or a person can take. So for Structural Damage Capacity, this is the amount of damage that a car or a house or the character can take before being destroyed. Mega Damage Capacity—previously introduced in Palladium Books’ Robotech roleplaying game—represents high-tech armour like Glitter Suits and vehicles such as Coalition Spider-Skull Walkers and dinosaurs and supernatural creatures. Only weapons which do Mega-Damage can inflict damage on anything with a Mega Damage Capacity.
Roughly, one hundred points of Structural Damage Capacity is equal to one point of Mega Damage Capacity. So a single point of Mega-Damage actually inflicts the equivalent of one hundred points of Structural Damage. However, anything which possesses Mega Damage Capacity cannot be harmed by weapons or attacks which just do Structural Damage. Conversely, anything or anyone hit by a Mega-Damage attack which does not have Mega Damage Capacity is essentially obliterated. Fortunately, whether through weapons, beweaponed suits of armour, magic, or psionics, most characters have the capacity to inflict Mega-Damage. Yet this means that Rifts is really fought on two levels and unless everyone does have access to Mega-Damage attacks and Mega Damage Capacity armour, then they cannot really play at that level. This divide is really present between those Occupational Character Classes which have this feature, for example, between the Men of Arms and the Adventurers and Scholars. That said, it does lend itself to interesting situations where the player characters might have to solve a problem or engage in a fight where Mega-Damage attacks and Mega Damage Capacity armour is inappropriate and that is all they have…
Rifts is a game about augmentation as much as it is big stonking battles against robots and strange monsters, and what it offers in terms of augmentations is bionics and cybernetics, magic, and psionics. In terms of magic it provides some one-hundred-and-fifty spells across fifteen Levels and powered by a spellcaster’s Potential Psychic Energy—or P.P.E. Psionics only offers some sixty or so abilities, divided into the Healer, Physical, Sensitive, and Super Psionics categories, some of which are particular to certain Classes, but all are powered by a character’s Inner Strength Points—or I.S.P. In terms of bionics and cybernetics, Rifts lists some hundred or so implants, some available to purchase freely, some only available on the black market. Many of these upgrades and implants will be familiar from the Cyberpunk genre with the protection that various items provide capable of withstanding damage by Mega-Damage attacks and inflicting Mega-Damage. In the case of magic and psionics, many of the powers and spells can be powered up to provide from and inflict Mega-Damage.
In terms of background, Rifts actually includes quite a lot, some twenty pages providing a potted, sometimes detailed overview of the former states of the United States, Canada, and Mexico along with thumbnail descriptions of places around the world. It focuses mainly on Chi-Town and the Coalition States as the primary enemies in Rifts. This is accompanied by full colour maps of North and South America. In general, there is a lot of room for the Game Master add her own content, but there are some details which she will have go digging for because they are in other sections. In terms of advice for the Game Master, Rifts is sorely lacking, the half page of advice just telling Game Master and players alike not to be put off by the magnitude of the game. Now there is a set of tables for creating monsters quickly and stats for the Xiticix and various generic NPCs, but there is no advice on running a campaign, on what sort of games could be run, no campaign ideas, or anything else. For a roleplaying with such big ideas and concepts, it is so frustrating not to have such small details. So for example, the Shifter Occupational Character Class is all about opening up portals and summoning things through them and doing to other dimensions, but there is not a single discussion of what these dimensions are like anywhere in the book. Essentially, a Class has been designed with a cool feature and then that feature has been ignored.
Of course, the lack of advice for the Game Master might have been less of a problem for anyone attempting to run Rifts for the first time, had the roleplaying included a starting scenario. Which of course, it does not. So the Game Master is left wondering what to do with a disparate bunch of character types, working out why they are together, and then write a scenario which will satisfy one or more of them. However, the designer does acknowledge that, “This is not a beginner’s role-playing game, nor one conducive to hack and slash gaming. Like many of our games, Rifts is a thinking man’s game. Perhaps the hostile environment makes it all the more important that one uses his head.” The fact that Rifts is not a beginner’s is undeniable, but whether it is ‘a thinking man’s game’ is debatable, given the emphasis in the roleplaying game upon combat and the amount of playing called for by combat, with player characters having multiple attacks and options and very many different combat abilities.
The other reason why Rifts is not a beginner’s game is because of the way it is organised. So the rules for psionics follow the Psychic Racial Character Classes, but the rules for magic do not follow the Practitioners of Magic Occupational Character Classes, but some eighty pages later after the Psychic Racial Character Classes, the rules for psionics, and some background. Likewise, the rules for bionics and cybernetics are placed over a hundred pages after all of the Character Classes at the back of the book. Then the relatively few pages of background are squirrelled away in the middle of the book. It simply makes no sense. 
In terms of design, there is a certain identikit feel to Rifts in that so many of its elements are pulled from other Palladium Books roleplaying games. So the Mega Damage Capacity rules are from Robotech, the bionics and cybernetic rules from Ninjas and Superspies and Heroes Unlimited, the magic rules from Palladium Fantasy Role-Playing Game, and so on. Although that said, the magic rules have been tweaked up for Rifts. Notably, the stats for the various mundane weapons—melee weapons and guns (the latter all dating from pre-apocalypse of Rifts)—seem to have been reprinted from just about every Palladium Books roleplaying game and have an oddly seventies feel to them. Part of this is intentional, to make Rifts part of the whole Palladium Books family of roleplaying settings and genres, part of its Megaverse.
Rifts was reviewed in Challenge 48 (January/February 1991) by Eric W. Haddock who said, “A preponderance of organizational problems and simple editorial errors (like incomplete sentences and spelling) all detract from the overall quality of Rifts.”, followed by “Without a doubt, Rifts is one of the most abysmally organized books I’ve seen. It is extremely difficult to find rules within a section easily and quickly when one needs to. A GM should not expect to start running a game and assume that whatever rules he isn't clear on can be looked up during play. In the games I played and ran, it took more time to find a rule than it took to read it, despite the Quick Find Table.” Despite this, he ended on a positive note, “I highly recommend Riffs because of its setting and potential for great scenarios, which can have as much connection with other Palladium games as the GM wants. However, until the Rifts Conversion Book comes out, not everything in Palladium’s previous games can be put directly into a Rifts campaign. There is enough here, though, to keep any GM busy thinking up new scenarios and creating new archvillains for players for quite a while.”
Rifts was subject to a Feature Review by Joshua Gabriel Timbrook in White Wolf Magazine Issue 26 (April/May, 1991). He said that, “The only real problem with Rifts is that inexperienced game masters are left almost completely in the dark. Although the book is over two hundred-fifty pages long, the most the game master gets is a couple of creature charts and the setting. As it is so aptly stated, “...that initial set-up is likely to take a bit of effort...” In short, it is a lot of work to run the game. However, the atmosphere is so rich with ideas for adventure that intriguing plots and stories shouldn't be difficult to develop. In fact, some may discover that it is very worthwhile and rewarding to create a campaign working from such a blank slate.” He concluded by saying that, “Overall, Rifts is an incredible roleplaying experience, and its setting seems to be as original and fun to play as the recent multi-genre games, Shadowrun and Torg. Those who are into bleak worlds, hi-tech magic, twisted rituals, fascist empires, brutal weaponry, min-boggling power armor, and fantastic stories should really give it a try.”
Rifts would appear in the twenty-second slot of ‘Arcane Presents the Top 50 Roleplaying Games 1996’ in Arcane #14 (December, 1996). The article described it as “It’s the ultimate in old-style high-energy RPGs. It uses a class-and-level system, and its supplements are full of new character classes, as well as weapons, robots and power armour. Fantasy-style creatures are a bit less common, and tend to be rather conventional elves and orcs - although it’s perfectly possible to play a baby dragon. One of the key concepts is ‘mega-damage’, which is important when you're playing with giant robots and such. This is the game for people who want to have everything possible in their campaigns - and then to blow a lot of it up with cool super-weapons.”
Rifts is not a subtle game. It is a roleplaying game for those who want to play a game in which everything goes ffizzacckk!, bada-bada-bada-bada-bada, boom!, and really, really BOOM! It presents a fantastic array of character options which should make players champing at the bit to get their gaming—if not their roleplaying—teeth into. In terms of the rules, Rifts is workable, but there are a lot of numbers and stats to keep track of—by the players as well as the Game Master. The background works as a decent enough backdrop whilst still leaving room for the Game Master to add her own content. But then, Rifts does everything it can to undermine its potential. Not just with the illogical, nonsensical organisation and idiotic lack of an index, but with the lack of advice for the Game Master and the failure to explore or discuss what to do with everything it gives the Game Master and her players, to get them to work together. Plus there are elements of the setting left undeveloped which relate directly to the Occupational Character Classes, and so on. 
Rifts is essentially the kitchen sink of roleplaying games, but without any advice as to how to turn the taps, which of course, have been put on backwards. And of course, people have played and loved and bought the eighty odd books published for it. Just think how much better it would have been if…?
—oOo—
With thanks to Doctor Andrew Cowie and Matt Ryan for providing access to a copy of White Wolf Magazine Issue 26. 

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

—oOo—
World War III began on Thursday, November 18th, 1989.* The United States of America launched a nuclear attack in response to a Soviet missile attack over the North Pole. The rest of the world would follow in the exchange, the Soviet Union following up its nuclear attacks on the USA with biological attacks, and as first the military and then the civilian population fell victim to disease and radiation, civilisation collapsed. Within six months, some ninety-five percent of the population was dead. Fortunately, if the outbreak of the war had not been foreseen, then it had been prepared for. In 1962, a mysterious man who identified himself as Bruce Edward Morrow appeared and gathered nine of the country’s leading industrialists into an organisation known as the Council of Tomorrow. He warned them of the world’s coming destruction and convinced them to establish a means ensuring a means of humanity’s survival. This was the Morrow Project, a network of sealed bunkers or ‘boltholes’ each containing a cryogenically frozen team of soldiers, specialists, and scientists who would awaken after a nuclear war and using the cache of equipment stored with them, help reconstruct the United States of America. Unfortunately, Prime Base, the headquarters of the Morrow Project was partially sabotaged in the wake of the war, and instead of sending the signal to awaken each team immediately after the war, the signal would not be sent for another one-hundred-and-fifty years... Now each team—whether from the sixties, seventies, or eighties—awakens to find itself in a strange new land, unrecognisable from the one they knew, cut off from Prime Base, but still with their primary mission to fulfill.

*Actually, November 18th, 1989 was a Saturday.

This is the set-up for The Morrow Project, a post-apocalyptic, military orientated roleplaying game published by TimeLine Ltd in 1980. The player characters are members of the awakened teams, unprepared for the world they now find themselves in. Their team may be a Science, MARS—Mobile Assault, Rescue, and Strike, Recon, and Specialty team, such as Engineering, Agricultural, or Psychological. They have access to arms, survival equipment, and a vehicle, typically a Commando V-150 armoured APC. Characters are defined by six attributes—Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Accuracy, Charisma, and Luck. A character is also defined by his Structure Points and Blood Points, both derived from his Strength and Constitution, and his randomly determined blood type. Structure Point and Blood Point values are determined from for some thirty or so different locations on the body. An optional attribute is PSI, which if high enough will grant the character psionic powers like empathy, healing, telepathy, telekinesis, or pyrokinetics. A character is created by rolling four six-sided dice and subtracting four for each attribute to get a range from zero to twenty.

Dave Smith
Strength 08 Constitution 15 Dexterity 08
Accuracy 16 Charisma 11 Luck 10
Blood Type: B+
Structure Points: 220
Blood Points: 220

Apart from his equipment, what is missing from the character is anything representing intelligence or knowledge. To quote the designers, this is because, “We find it best to allow the player to supply the more subtle mental and emotional talents of the character he is playing so as to more readily identify with their characters.” The character has no skills either, and indeed, there are no skills in The Morrow Project. Everything comes down to a raw roll against an attribute—or in fact, the character’s raw ability. There is some discussion of jobs and positions, from scientists and vehicle crews to the lowly kitchen porter, but they are not mechanically reflected in the game. Similarly, The Morrow Project does not address what each player character was before joining the programme and being cryogenically frozen or what their motives were. Essentially, in The Morrow Project, a player character is either a blank slate or an odd representation of the player.

Lacking skills, there is no resolution mechanic in The Morrow Project, but in general, a player is rolling against his character’s attributes using a twenty-sided die. What the roleplaying game does have is an extensive combat system, primarily focused on firefights. A character receives a number of Movements or actions per round dependent upon his Dexterity and when he attacks, his player rolls a twenty-sided die against the character’s Accuracy, aiming to get below, but not equal to the value of the attribute. This is modified for range and visibility, range and weapon modifier, firer and target movement, target size, and terrain. If the attacker fails to hit, there is still a fifty percent chance that a Luck roll will indicate a lucky hit! Only one to hit roll needs to be made for automatic fire—the number of hits by a burst being determined by roll of die equal to the number of rounds in the burst.

Then armour penetration is determined. Every weapon has an ‘E’ or efficiency factor, for example, the E-Factor for a Smith & Wesson M27 .357 revolver is ten and fifteen for a 5.56×45 mm Colt M16A1. The E-Factor represents each weapon and its ammunition type’s penetration value, and if the Armour Class of the material worn by the target is greater than the E-Factor, then the rounds will not penetrate. However, lower Armour Class values will reduce the E-Factor. For example, Armour Class 6 is equal to 0.5 cm of steel, 15.24 cm of wood, 1.52 cm of concrete, and nylon body armour, and will reduce the E-Factor of a round by six. So it would reduce the E-Factor 10 of the .357 round to five, which becomes Damage Points. Then hit location is determined and depending on the Damage Points and location, has a chance to instantly kill the target, amputate a limb, or render him unconscious. For example, the five Damage Points from the .357 round have a ninety percent chance of killing the target if his head is hit. If the target survives, the Damage Points are deducted from the location’s Structure Points. Whatever the wound, there is always a chance of the target being rendered unconscious and then there is the subsequent blood loss from the target’s Blood Points.

Hand-to-hand and melee combat is treated in a similar fashion, though with the likelihood of unconsciousness or death being confined to head hits. Hands, feet, and melee weapons do not have the E-Factor of bullets, but straightforward Damage Points, which is reduced by Armour Class—though Armour Class is more effective against such attacks. The actual damage is determined by weapon type and modified by the attacker’s Strength. In general, hand-to-hand and melee combat is faster than gun combat, and then the one set of combat mechanics you would expect to be complex—that of vehicle combat—is faster and simpler than gun combat, requiring a percentage roll to determine if a weapon is capable of damaging the vehicle, where, and if the occupants are injured. Lastly, whilst other damage types, such as electricity and of course, radiation, are described in some detail, the effects disease are handwaved aside with the application of the Morrow Project’s ‘Universal Antibody’.

The rules for combat are supported by pages and pages of guns and grenades and missiles as well as various other items of survival equipment and vehicles. All of it dates from the nineteen sixties and seventies of course, except for some advanced laser weapons, the HAAM (Hydraulically Assisted Armored Man) suit, and the MARS One all-terrain vehicle, which is reminiscent of the Landmaster vehicle from the film, Damnation Alley. All of these are powered by fusion packs supplied by the mysterious Bruce Edward Morrow.

The future world of The Morrow Project is treated somewhat haphazardly. The core book opens with a detailed list of exactly where the Russian missiles struck the United States of America, but allots the Game Master some one-hundred-and fifty missiles and warheads to drop on whatever targets she wishes. The idea here is help the Game Master apply the effects of World War III to her chosen campaign area. The effects of radiation are also discussed, and unlike its effects in roleplaying games such as Gamma World [http://rlyehreviews.blogspot.com/2018/08/1978-gamma-world.html], the effects are generally negative. That said, the game does discuss how certain biological defects which could result from radiation damage to the human genome could be combined and interpreted as belonging to certain creatures out of myth. It adds to the generally more realistic approach taken by The Morrow Project to the post-apocalypse genre, but it does not make for comfortable reading.

The state of various types of technology—communications, energy, weapons, and construction—are discussed, mostly highlighting its decline following World War III. Guidance and rules are given for creating and running NPCs, either as fully rounded ‘people’ or cannon fodder with the ‘NPC Fast Kill’ table. Possible NPC motivations are also discussed. These are further expanded upon with various encounter groups. Some of these are genre staples, such as Bikers, Cannibals, Children of the Night, New Confederacy, and more, but the Ballooners—airborne traders, the Whale Worshippers, and others are nice additions. The post-apocalypse of The Morrow Project has its own flora and fauna, such as the Blue Undead—radioactive zombies, and Maggots—semi-human nocturnal mutants who live underground. Rounding out The Morrow Project is a little advice for the Game Master on setting up a game, including preparing two maps, one for the players and one for herself, and a standard introductory briefing. Lastly, the roleplaying game includes a glossary, a metric to imperial conversion table, and a bibliography of military works.

Physically, The Morrow Project is an unprepossessing book. The layout is somewhat rough and the artwork scrappy. The best artwork is that of the book’s weapons which seem to take pride of place. The organisation of the contents certainly could have been better, there being little thought given to it. 

The Morrow Project was extensively reviewed at the time of its release. Reviewing The Morrow Project in The Space Gamer Number 39 (May, 1981), William A. Barton began by highlighting the contrast between it and TSR, Inc.’s Gamma World, saying the new roleplaying game, “...[M]ay prove to be the most creditable post-holocaust RPG to date.” His lengthy review ended on a positive note with, “...[O]verall, I’d have to give The Morrow Project the highest of ratings as a SF role-playing system. If it isn’t at least nominated for the Origins awards this year, there just ain’t no justice in gameland.” Bill Fawcett reviewed The Morrow Project in Dragon #50 (June, 1981). After drawing several comparisons between Gamma World and The Morrow Project, he wrote, “These rules will appeal to two groups of gamers: those who are interested in modern weapons and combat, and those who play the GAMMA WORLD game, who will find the ideas in this game readily adaptable to that system. Anyone who considers the GAMMA WORLD game too “far out” may find THE MORROW PROJECT a less futuristic and more realistic alternative.”

Different Worlds Issue 33 (March/April, 1984) was a special post-holocaust issue and devoted much of its pages to The Morrow Project. This included ‘Playtesting the Morrow Project: An Anecdotal Report from Timeline’ and ‘Playing Hints for the Morrow Project: Advice for Players from Timeline’, both by Bill Worzel, as well as ‘Special MORROW PROJECT Module Operation – Link-Up’ by Barron Barnett and William A. Barton. Barron Barnett also reviewed The Morrow Project. He wrote, “Overall, considering the size of the company, Timeline, this critic believes The Morrow Project manual is more than worth small price it sells for.” but asked, “What does The Morrow Project need? I can sum that question in one phrase; character personalities. I generally run my Morrow Project adventures with each roleplayer knowing a little about his character’s personality in the game as well as a little of his character’s background as to why he or she is here in the first place. I think that sometimes a little past for the role-player lets them act out their part in the adventure to a more enjoyable fulfillment.”

The Morrow Project was also reviewed by the two British roleplaying magazines of the day. Phil Masters reviewed both The Morrow Project and the first scenario, Liberation at Riverton, in White Dwarf No. 42 (June, 1983). He described the roleplaying game as, “…[A] post-holocaust role-playing system with a highly specific American background, some excellent mechanisms, and a number of gaps. Liberation at Riverton is the first published scenario for the game, and looks like a labour of love for the designers. The overwhelming impression is that all this is one group's long-tested game, reflecting its originators’ tastes and personalities.” He concluded that, “The Morrow Project is a game with a very specific style, a lot of strengths, and a lot of weaknesses. Like any post-holocaust game, it may be a little depressing; it is certainly quite violent. It is, by current standards, simple and playable, and could be worse at the price.” (it should be noted that the core rules cost £7.50 in 1980) before awarding it a score of five out of ten. Similarly, Chris Baylis reviewed The Morrow Project and the second scenario, Liberation at Riverton, as well as the third, Project Damocles, in Imagine No. 2 (May, 1983). His opening comments were positive, saying that, “My first impressions of the Morrow Project made me want to begin a game immediately. The idea seemed new and exciting, and the system looked advanced, well thought out and imaginative.” before concluding effusively, “This is initially a very confusing game to play, yet with a lot of time and effort by the selected PD [Project Director], this could be the revelation role-playing game of the ’80s, becoming expandable and popular enough to rival any of the other major role-playing games available at the present time.”

It was also reviewed in Games Review, Volume 1, Issue 6 (March, 1989). Laurance Miller wrote, “Overall the game provides a good background for play, combined with detailed game mechanics for a high degree of realism within a post-holocaust environment. It is short on detailed assistance for role-playing, but this is no problem for anyone who has previously played an RPG and is countered by the addition of such information in the various scenarios that are available. Worth getting in its own right as well as a source of material for use with other similar games.”

Timeline Ltd. would go on to publish numerous supplements for The Morrow Project, as well as the interesting time travel roleplaying game, Time & Time Again in 1984. Of its three designers, Kevin Dockery would go on to write two notable works on firearms for roleplaying. One was The Armory, Volume One from Hero Games and the other was the well-received Edge of the Sword Vol. 1: Compendium of Modern Firearms published by R. Talsorian Games. This then, and the fact that Dockery was an ex-army armourer, explains the emphasis in The Morrow Project on guns. Richard Tucholka would go on to found Tri Tac Games, and notably publish Bureau 13: Stalking the Night Fantastic. A second edition of The Morrow Project was published in 1980 and a third edition in 1983—the later including a boxed set from Chris Harvey Games, a UK-based games distributor, published in 1989. The Morrow Project 4th. Edition was funded by a successful Kickstarter campaign in January, 2013 by Timeline Ltd. 

Despite the positive reviews of the time, The Morrow Project, forty years on, is not a good roleplaying game, or indeed, arguably a roleplaying game at all, given its lack of player character abilities, player character development, and support for the player characters. In fact, the roleplaying aspects of The Morrow Project—or lack of them—would not be addressed until the publication in 1983 of Morrow Project Role Playing Expansion and Personal and Vehicular Basic Loads, a supplement for the third edition of the game. In this earlier edition, because of its focus on guns and combat, The Morrow Project feels far more like a set of miniatures combat rules, but without the miniatures. There is no denying that the background to The Morrow Project is interesting and not without potential, indeed lots of potential, but The Morrow Project fails to develop either that background or its set-up sufficiently. There is an amateurish quality to its production values and it very much feels like a small press product based on a home campaign of survivalist action.

The apocalypse of The Morrow Project is much drier than other post-holocaust roleplaying game of its time. It has the feel of the nineteen seventies television and film Science Fiction—so Damnation Alley and the Gene Rodenberry pilots, Genesis II and Planet Earth. There was a need for the roleplaying game though. When it was published in 1980, The Morrow Project fulfilled the hobby’s need for a military orientated post-apocalyptic roleplaying game, that is until Game Designer Workshop’s Twilight 2000 appeared in 1984.

—oOo—
With thanks to Doctor Andrew Cowie for providing access to Games Review, Volume 1, Issue 6.

Since 2007, the 2004 Spiel des Jahres award-winning board game Ticket to Ride from Days of Wonder, has been supported with new maps, beginning with Ticket to Ride: Switzerland. That new map would be collected in the Ticket to Ride Map Collection: Volume 2 – India & Switzerland, the second entry in the Map Collection series begun in Ticket to Ride Map Collection: Volume 1 – Team Asia & Legendary Asia. Both of these have proved to be worthy additions to the Ticket to Ride line, whereas Ticket to Ride Map Collection vol. 3: The Heart of Africa and Ticket to Ride Map Collection: Volume 4 – Nederland have proved to add more challenging game play, but at a cost in terms of engaging game play. Further given that they included just the one map in the third and fourth volumes rather than the two in each of the first two, neither felt as if they provided as much value either. Fortunately, Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 5: United Kingdom + Pennsylvania came with two maps and explored elements more commonly found in traditional train games—stocks and shares in railroad companies and the advance of railway technology. The next map collection in the series, Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6: France + Old West provided two maps exploring a common theme—telegraphing each player’s intended placement of their trains—but the next entry in the line is very different again.

The next entry in the Ticket to Ride Map Collection is not Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 7—whatever that might be,* but is in fact, Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6½: Poland. And it only contains the one map, that is, of course, Poland. Originally released as Wsiąść Do Pociągu: Polska and only available to buy in Poland, it is now available with the rules in both Polish and English, and available to buy outside of Poland. Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6½: Poland is designed for two to four players, is played on a square rather than a rectangular board—so two thirds the size of a standard Ticket to Ride board, and thematically shifts into the nineteen fifties and the reconstruction of the Polish railway network following World War II. Like other entries in the Ticket to Ride Map Collection series, it only requires a set of Train cards, train pieces, and scoring markers from a base Ticket to Ride set to play.

* Actually that title is Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 7: Japan + Italy

Poland’s board is depicted in dark green surrounded by the earthy tones of her neighbours, who play a major role in how points are scored in Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6½: Poland. The seven are Biatoruś (Belarus), Czechy (the Czech Republic), Litwa (Lithuania), Niemcy (Germany), Rosja (Russia), Stowacja (Slovakia), and Ukraina (Ukraine). They are also represented by corresponding sets of Country Cards for a total of twenty Country Cards. Each set is also given a set of descending values, so the Czechy set is valued ten, seven, four, and two, and the Rosja set is valued seven, four, and two. Most Country card sets contain three cards, only the Czechy set has four and the Litwa card just has the one. The thirty-five Destination Cards show connections between Poland’s various cities and each comes with a little map showing the positions of the two cities a player needs to connect to complete. In the case of Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6½: Poland, this is almost a necessity as not everyone is familiar with Poland’s cities and where they are.

At the beginning of the game, each player receives just thirty-five Trains, and the standard four Destination Cards and four Train Cards. Play is almost exactly like standard Ticket to Ride. On his turn, a player can either draw Train Cards, draw new Destination Cards, or claim a route between two cities. Where Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6½: Poland is different is how the countries and Country Cards work. From the moment they were introduced in Ticket to Ride: Switzerland, players could score points by completing Destination Cards which connected a city to a country or a country to a country, and they have appeared in several expansions since. In Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6½: Poland, there are no such Destination Cards.

In Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6½: Poland, a player does not score points when he connects a country to a country. Instead, when he does so, he takes the top card from the Country Set for each country he connects to. He cannot repeat this, but if he then connects this connection to another country, then he takes the top card from the Country Set for each country he connects to—even if he has already taken cards from the now connected Country Sets. Plus, the earlier a player makes a connection between two countries, the higher the value of the Country Cards left in the set. This sets up a race between the players to be the first to connect countries because they mean more points.

Although they are not the only means of scoring points in Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6½: Poland, they are an important means. This is because the map has no routes six spaces long, just the one route five spaces long, and just a few routes four spaces long, the rest being short, either three, two, or one spaces long. Which means although they are relatively easy to claim and thus build a series of connections between cities to complete a Destination Card, they do not score a lot of points. Further, none of the Destination Cards score a player more than thirteen points and most score much, much less. Most of the shorter routes are also in the centre of the map, so there will be a scrap in game of Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6½: Poland to build routes across the centre of the country—especially in a four-player game. Whatever the number of players, this map involves a lot of blocking and that means Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6½: Poland is less suited for play by the casual gamer.

So the players will need to find another source of points if they want to do well in the game and win. One is to draw more Destination Tickets and there is some value in that given the possibility of a player having already connected or partially connected the route on a newly drawn Destination Card. The other is connecting countries and thus not only scoring by claiming the routes to those countries, but also by drawing Country Cards from the seven sets. Which is fine, except that everyone is after them, and so there is a race to claim these before anyone else! Unlike the other routes, the actual connection to countries cannot be blocked, so if there are three routes connecting to a country, then all three can be used.

Physically, Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6½: Poland is as well produced as you would expect for a Ticket to Ride expansion. Everything is high quality and the rules are easy to understand and come in two versions—English and Polish. This does mean that Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6½: Poland is not as easily accessible by speakers of other languages as Ticket to Ride typically is. Perhaps another issue with Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6½: Poland is that the map is a bit too dark and oppressive, but that is an issue with the aesthetics and should not affect play.

What Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6½: Poland shows is that you do not have to alter very much in a Ticket to Ride game to change the feel of the game. This expansion is tighter and more competitive with players having to balance the need to complete Destination Cards with connecting countries in order to score points and win. This makes Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6½: Poland an expansion for Ticket to Ride devotees rather than casual or family players of any of the core sets. For the Ticket to Ride devotee, Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6½: Poland is a tighter, more cutthroat expansion which forces players to race for more than Destination Cards.

On the tail of 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 Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game.

‘Escape from Planet Punjar’ was actually a character funnel. One of the features of both the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game and the Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game is that is possible to play Zero Level characters going out on their first adventure to hopefully survive and return as First Level adventurers. In a character funnel, each player roleplays not one character, but several, ultimately going on to play whichever one of them survives and so achieves First Level and attains a Class. In Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game, the Zero Level characters are likely to be peasants and in Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, they are simple tribal folk ready to undergo their Rite of Passage, but in ‘Escape from Planet Punjar’, the Zero Level characters are citizens living in the lightless, lawless bowels of the ecumenopolis that is Planet Punjar. It is the year 50,000 and the collision of the Doom Planet with Planet Punjar is imminent, and so it has been decreed by the High Lords of Punjar that the planet be evacuated.

Published in August 2nd, 2018 at Gen Con, The Hobonomicon #0 was the inaugural issue of a fanzine written for Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game. Unlike other fanzines, it comes not in A5 format, but letter size. Written and drawn by many of the some writers and artists who work on titles for Goodman Games—whether Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game or Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic—The Hobonomicon is the book of the void and of unbelievers, a legendary shadow tome of doom architects and fallen chaos martyrs. Or rather, it presents ‘Escape from Planet Punjar’, a full scenario based on Doug Kovacs’ after hours game at Gen Con.

At the end of ‘Escape from Planet Punjar’ in The Hobonomicon #0, the surviving player characters got off the planet. What happens next is the subject of The Hobonomicon #1. Again, this comes in letter format rather A5 and is written and illustrated by the same team as The Hobonomicon #0. Yet even as you flip open the pages of this issue, you still have to wait to find out. This is because unlike in The Hobonomicon #0, the comic strips appear at the front. ‘Dreams of a Klartesh Fiend’ continues the drug induced nightmare written by James MacGeorge and drawn by Stefan Poag, whilst Doug Kovacs’ ‘Death of a Reaver’ shows us happens to the lone warrior who was beset by a trio of bandits in the first issue who bar her way over a bridge. It is a bloody continuation, but again it does leave the reader on a cliffhanger and really does not tell much in the way of a story in its four pages. In between them is ‘The Cube’, a tale of despair of working in a cube farm by Stefan Poag. It has the style of an underground comic, but really is not adding that much to the issue.

The subtitle of The Hobonomicon #1 is ‘Meat Planet’. It is a continuation of ‘Escape from Planet Punjar’ from The Hobonomicon #0, but not a direct continuation, for it takes place some five hundred or so years after the ships escaped Punjar and joined up with the flotilla of Astro Grenadier vessels. As the scenario opens, the descendants of those who fled doomed Punjar are called to service as part of an Expeditionary Force to the planet below. The player characters are the best that their ships have to offer and in joining the service of the Astro Grenadier, will plead affiliation with one of the flotilla’s four Astral Lords. They will undergo a series of procedures—hypno-training, cyber-surgeries, chemical enhancements, and more—and sent to the planet below.

In game terms, a player can create a character anew, or take the stats of his character who escaped Planet Punjar, but then the player rolls for the character’s Astral Lord Affiliation, mutations from the flotilla effects, flotilla generational effects, and what equipment loadout each Astral Lord provides the character with. The four Astral Lords are Urcommandus, Quintestus Rex, Alpha Divinatus, and Felis Matronus. There is a distinctly Warhammer 40,000 feel to these, but odder and weirder.

Fingle Woznekki IV
Astral Affiliation: Quintestus Rex
Gender: Female 
Occupation: Anarchist Rabble Rouser
STR 18 (+3) AGL 11 STM 16 (+2)
PER 13 (+1) INT 17 (+2) LCK 16 (+2)
Hit Points: 30
Saving Throws
Fortitude +1 Reflex +0 Willpower +1
Mutations: Attracted to anything sticky, only two teeth and ear cancer (immune to sound attacks)
Flotilla Generational Effects: Bad Seals & Low Atmospheric Pressure, Inbreeding and phobia of crowds, Cyber-prosthetics Reliance (genitals), Increased Gravity
Equipment: Robot Legs (+10’ Mov), Flail Arm (1d10), Metal Carapace (+4 AC), Oil-Stained Vestment
Skill: Tinkerer (Combine two items to create a one-use techno-cantrip)

Once done, the newly developed Astral Lord adherents are dropped onto the newly discovered planet. The planet has a strange atmosphere and weirder features, walls which drip fluids, rooms with bone-like supports, veiny-walled corridors, and odd multi-buttoned protuberances. As the player characters explore the planet, they find themselves drawn deeper and deeper towards the centre. What they find there will have profoundly apocalyptic effects…

‘Meat Planet’ requires more preparation than the average scenario. The Judge is provided with a series of tables for randomly generating rooms and corridors, features, and more. She is also provided with a table of possible endings and one of these is generated as part of the scenario preparation. Some of these elements can be rolled on as the player characters progress through the bowels of the weirdly fleshy plant, but these should be mixed in with those already rolled for. Essentially, from the start, the Judge sets up the scenario’s ending and is directing the players and their characters towards it.

Ultimately in terms of a story, there is not a great deal to ‘Meat Planet’. Although there is a certain degree of cleverness to the guidance it gives on running the scenario at a convention as part of an event in which ‘Meat Planet’ is being run at each table, beyond a sense of doom, it is just not that interesting. The main problem is that ‘Escape from Planet Punjar’ from The Hobonomicon #0 is a better scenario, more involving for the players and their characters, and with a sense of urgency to the plot. In ‘Meat Planet’ less so. Plus, the fact that ‘Meat Planet’ is set five centuries after the events of ‘Escape from Planet Punjar’ means it fails to capitalise on the terrific story that ‘Escape from Planet Punjar’ told. 

Bar the cover—which is done in colour, front and back, inside and out—The Hobonomicon #1 is heavily illustrated in black and white throughout. The artwork is excellent, ranging from grim to gruesome, from daft to disturbing, but it all fits. The writing is also good too, perhaps a little underwritten, but enough to nudge the Judge’s imagination, although that will be limited by the environment of the ‘Meat Planet’.

One of the things that The Hobonomicon #0 did do was showcase how the Star Crawl Classics Role Playing Game might start, and one of the things that The Hobonomicon #1 does is showcase how such a Star Crawl Classics Role Playing Game might go in a particular direction. Unfortunately, it is not a desperately interesting direction. Again, if what you are looking for is a potential introduction to a Science Fiction version of Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, a scenario which can be semi-improvised at convention after convention, or perhaps you like Doug Kovacs’ (and others’) art, then The Hobonomicon #1 is perfect for you. Be aware though, The Hobonomicon #1 is simply not as good or as engaging as Hobonomicon #0.

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 Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game.

Terror of the Stratosfiend #1 is a of a different stripe. Published by Orbital Intelligence LLC following a successful Kickstarter campaign, it is not a collection of random articles, scenarios, monsters, treasures, and so on, but a slim booklet dedicated to just the one event—‘The Drop’, and its outcome—the ‘Terror of the Stratofiend’.

At some point in the past, portals and warp gates opened all over the Earth and began spilling forth giant aliens from beyond the stars at the same time as aliens revealed themselves on Earth itself. A mixture of tentacles, lasers, and chainsaws, they tower over humanity, wreaking havoc with mankind and themselves, followed by humans from the stars, who spoke the same language, but were ready to fight the aliens… Terror of the Stratosfiend #1 contains four new Classes, two new Patrons—the equivalent of gods in the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, armour, equipment, weapons, and more.

The four Classes are Human Sat-Caster, Half-Stratosfiend Street Whisperer, Stratosfiend Delver, and Stratosfiend Magistrate Gladiatrix. The Human Sat-Caster serves as the eyes and ears of call Orbital Intelligences, able to connect to rogue space stations and weapons satellites to call down hellfire from the skies. Wearing armour of all kinds and armed with the best laser weaponry they can find, they are essentially spellcasters who forge an ‘uplink’ with their Patron who may or may not be in orbit and who really need to maintain line-of-sight with the skies. Created via genetic engineering or unthinkable congress, the Half-Stratosfiend Street Whisperer is half-Human, half-Stratofiend, a tentacled Human despised by both sides, a ‘godkiller’ bound to slay a Patron, who with his volatile genetics, constantly mutates and evolves. As they evolve, their tentacle attacks get stronger and although primarily a stealth-based Class, may also acquire spells through their mutations. The Stratosfiend Delver is one of the terrifying races from beyond the stars, towering bipedal humanoids with combat-capable tentacles protruding from their spines who foster cults around them and who have psionically capable brains which enable them to cast spell-like effects. Lastly, the Stratosfiend Magistrate Gladiatrix are combat monsters, towering even over other Stratosfiends, killing machines whose psionic allure draws their victims in to be slaughtered.  

‘Weapons’ lists traditional weapons like daggers and two-handed swords are joined by modern firearms, such as rifles and shotguns. The warping effect of ‘The Drop’ sometimes leaves its mark upon such weapons, with twenty such effects listed under ‘Upgrades’. So a found weapon might be ‘Homing’, enabling two attack rolls to be made for an attack and the best used or ‘Acidic’, reducing a target’s Armour Class with every hit. ‘Armour’ runs the gamut from the ‘Explorer Exo-Suit’ which is slow and heavy, but is sealed against airborne contaminants and provides a bonus to skill checks and spell casting, to the ‘Twitching Carapace’, which offers increased Armour Class bonus and worse check penalties with every hit to the wearer and if the wearer takes damage when it provides the most protection, can hatch and attack the wearer! The silliest is Beach Gear, which offers less than no protection, but ensures you always hot, oiled, and beach ready, baby…! New items of gear under ‘Equipment’ include parasites, hormonal cocktails, and scanning equipment. For example, the ‘Stealth Organism’ is a living parasite which binds with its owner and uses a combination of pheromones and adrenal boosts to enable the owner to blend with shadows. The organism dies if the owner takes damage. There are downsides to using some of the new equipment. So whilst the ‘Micro-Evolution Syringe’ adds a one-time major boost to the user’s next action, its use—and subsequent use—can corrupt the user.

Terror of the Stratosfiend #1 lists just the one spell. This is Polyphemean Rage, which fires a plasma beam from the user’s single giant eye. This can manifest as the caster’s blinking a million times, the eye glows as particles are sucked into it, the caster winks air around the target begins to boil, or the caster’s eye temporarily turns into a charred gemstone. Like all spells for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, it comes with a full table of its effects plus nasty results should the spell misfire or corrupt.

The first of two Patrons in the fanzine is ‘Sky-Lasher the Everlasting, Trident of the Sun’. Whether appearing as a sentient defence satellite or a a bat-winged flaming demon, it is always solar-panelled and supported by bombers, fighter craft, drones, and zealots, ready to bring its adherents the illumination and cleansing fire of the sun. The other is ‘Terror-Eater, the Earthmother’, who resides in the depths of the Earth and who may be the Earth or simply wearing its skin. She will help her worshippers as long as they feed her… Which mostly consists of her sending tentacles up through the Earth, even if that means destroying everything nearby. Both include tables for effects when the Patron is invoked, gifts or taints, and Patron spells. Lastly, the ‘Bestiary’ details Children of Earth tied to the Terror-Eater, the Earthmother and Children of Space tied to the Sky-Lasher the Everlasting, Trident of the Sun, all seven creatures being suitably weird.

Terror of the Stratosfiend #1 is very nicely presented. It is clean and tidy with some decent artwork, though the artwork is of an adult nature in places. It is also full of ideas and rich possibilities, but the problem with Terror of the Stratosfiend #1 is what to do with it. As written, it is designed for use with the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, so what the Terror of the Stratosfiend #1 does. As written, it is designed for use with the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game and if Terror of the Stratosfiend #1 to a Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game campaign it really is going to upset the proverbial apple cart, changing the campaign’s direction and even its genre with the addition of technology as well as the weirdness of the Stratosfiends. So in some ways, Terror of the Stratosfiend is more applicable for a Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic campaign which already has many of the elements found in Terror of the Stratosfiend #1. Another issue is that Terror of the Stratosfiend #1 does not offer options for playing the Humans who came in the wake of ‘The Drop’. Hopefully Terror of the Stratosfiend #2 will cover these as well as developing more of the post-Drop world…

Terror of the Stratosfiend #1 is weird and wacky and fantastic! Its contents will radically change the nature of a campaign world, but how far will have to wait for future issues.

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. As popular in the Old School Renaissance as the genre is, not all fanzines are devoted to fantasy.

Gamma Zine carries the subtitle, ‘A Fanzine supporting early post-apocalyptic, science-fantasy RPGs – specifically First Edition Gamma World by TSR.’ This then, is a fanzine dedicated to the very first post-apocalyptic roleplaying game, Gamma World, First Edition, published by TSR, Inc. in 1978. Gamma Zine #1 was published in April, 2019, following a successful Kickstarter campaign as part of Zine Quest 1 . Published by ThrowiGames!, it comes as a black and white booklet, packed with content, including adventures, equipment, monsters, and more.

The more begins with a short interview with James M. Ward, the designer of both Gamma World and its predecessor, Metamorphosis Alpha. Just a page long it gives a little history and background to the game, hopefully the author will return to ask the designer more questions. Then it is on to the gaming content, beginning with ‘New Horrors from the Wasteland’, four new creatures and species to add to your post-apocalyptic setting. They include the Spindling, a cross between a snake and a spider which scurries and bites; the Unipede, a slug-like thing with a tooth horn which is capable piercing the hard rock and metal it likes to consume—including the player characters’ equipment and armour, so akin to the Rust Monster then; and the Shuggnagarath is a bat-winged tentacled thing which flies the across the Wasteland in search of skulls to crack open and brain matter to feed upon. Lastly, the Moleman is a new intelligent species, which hoards and uses the ancient technologies it scavenges from burrowing into lost bunkers. So a perfect source of technological whatnots and gewgaws, as foes coming after the player characters’ best gear.

Gamma World is a game without character Classes. Gamma Zine #1 rectifies that with a ‘Class Option for First Edition Gamma World’. This is the Artificer, for which a character needs an Intelligence of 15, at least two beneficial mutations, such as Dual Brain and Molecular Understanding, which grants him a bonus to both find and understand technology. Although it states that members of the Class prefer to build their own technology, this is not explored in the write-up. Notably though, the Class does gain extra Experience Points for finding and identifying technology, but none for combat. This is followed by three new items in ‘Artifacts of the Ancients’, the Type-III E-Fist—powered brass knuckles, the Pulse Grenade, and the KnifE, a vibrodagger. All three are nicely detailed and come with decent illustrations.

‘Adventure #1 – MuTech Test Facility’ is the first of three adventures in Gamma Zine #1 which details a secret pre-war research base in the Appalachian hills. Designed for two to four characters, it is a chance for them to delve into some of the events leading up to the war. The facility is essentially a mini-dungeon, all robots and electrical traps, nicely detailed and ready to add to a campaign. 

‘Adventure #2 – The Hand’ is again dungeon-like, but makes use of the Molemen detailed earlier in the fanzine, so is stuffed with technology for the player characters to find. Designed for three to six player characters, it has a more organic feel than ‘Adventure #1 – MuTech Test Facility’. Not just because it is occupied by Molemen, but also because of its shape. All of its rooms and chambers are inside the concrete stone hand of a giant statue, which gives it a weirdly natural feel despite it being an artificial environment. The complex is also lived in and there are NPCs here which may attempt to interact with the player characters. This is an easier encounter to add to a game and much like a certain statue in Planet of the Apes serves to enforce the post-apocalyptic nature of the world the player characters are in. ‘Adventure #3 – Dark Knights’ is the scenario with the most background and so the easiest to tie into the background of the Gamma World post-apocalyptic future. Knights of Genetic Purity squads have been scouring the region in search of mutants to exterminate and one squad has reopened a coal mine near the village of Gallax. Designed for three to five characters, this is a small complex, but one occupied by an armed opponent. So this is much more of a combat adventure, but one supported by a stronger motive for the player characters to get involved in comparison to the previous two scenarios.

The other continues with ‘The Hunted, Chapter One’, a short piece of fiction which recounts a violent encounter between the protagonist and some motorcycle-riding bandits. There is a desperate tone to it as she scrabbles to defend herself with few resources to hand. It is nicely written and ends on a good cliffhanger, but the introduction could have been better handled. It is followed by a new set of ‘Artifact Use (Solution) Flowcharts’,  seven simplified flow charts to help speed up play when a player character has to items to work out what they are and what they do. This includes items of varying complexity and types of doors. These are quick and easy and work well with the earlier Artificer ‘Class Option for First Edition Gamma World’.

Physically, Gamma Zine #1 is neat and tidy. It is not only decently written, but illustrated with good art throughout and each of the scenarios is accompanied by excellent maps.


As support for Gamma World, First Edition, there is a lot to like about Gamma Zine #1 and fans of the old roleplaying will certainly appreciate the new content. For newer post-apocalyptic roleplaying games, the content in Gamma Zine #1 is perhaps drier in tone, certainly later editions of Gamma World or its thematic descendant, Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic. This does not mean that it cannot be used with those roleplaying games—in fact, it would be very easy to add to them—but the Game Master should be aware that it is not quite as weird or as wacky. Overall, Gamma Zine #1 is both a good first issue and a good fanzine—hopefully, Gamma Zine #2 will be as good.

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 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 a mixed bag, Crawl! #2 is surprisingly focused, as announced by the issue’s subtitle—‘The Loot Issue!’. Published in June, 2012, what the issue does is explore the role of treasure in the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game, highlighting the fact that treasure is a relative rarity in comparison to Dungeons & Dragons and other retroclones—its fantasy world lacks the piles of gold and hoards of magical items and gewgaws found in other fantasy roleplaying games. In the first article, ‘Loot!’ the editor builds a means of determining treasure types from one simple table—the ‘Random Loot by Monster Type’ table. This breaks down the treasure finds by monster type, so ‘Humanoids with Weapons’, ‘Dragons’, ‘Demons’, Un-dead’, and ‘Other Monsters’. What a character finds—the roll modified by his Luck bonus—actually does not vary all that wildly, so handfuls of coins, a few gems, and so on, though a character is more likely to find cursed items with the Un-dead. Further tables expand upon the one table, one in particular adding ‘Items of Note’. These are not necessarily magical, but whether charms, bottles, scrolls, books, and the like, they are valuable, at least to someone. Magical items can be found, but they are rare—really rare in comparison to Dungeons & Dragons—and they are anything other then generic. So no mere +1 swords…

Instead, the fanzine offers ‘Lucky Items’. These are items which not only have a Luck bonus or a ‘magical’ effect, they also have a story. They can also be created during a play, such as when a warrior uses a weapon for the first time and it inflicts a critical wound or a wizard carves a staff from a branch of tree that the wizard witnessed being struck by lightning. Now the Luck bonus or ‘magical’ effect may not always work and it can degrade and even be lost over time, but idea is that over time, instead of a player character discovering yet another shield +2 or Dagger +1, he will come to favour certain weapons or items of equipment, and perhaps they might grow with him as the story and legend of his doings are told, becoming Lucky, and ultimately, Legendary as looked at in ‘Legendary Items’. (Though this does not stop him from discovering the Dagger +1.)

All together, these three articles form a trilogy, one that nicely builds upon its subject matter without the reader necessarily noticing until the end. Although the mechanics for Lucky items are slightly more complex than that might be found in standard Dungeons & Dragons, they make such items fickle—rather than unreliable—and thus more fun. Overall, this trilogy is good alternative to the rules given for Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game, adding depth, but also highlighting the differences between it and Dungeons & Dragons. 

This difference is further highlighted in the fourth article. ‘OSR Conversions: Treasure!’ As this series of articles details, there is a great deal of difference between how Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game and the Old School Renaissance handles treasure. This details how the Judge can take an adventure for another retroclone and adapt its treasure element to Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game. So this extends the utility of the previous trilogy in enabling a Judge to run more scenarios without losing the flavour of Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game.

Jon Marr of purplesorcerer.com provides the first of several articles by other authors in the second issue of the fanzine. This is ‘Honest Orkoff!’, a personality from his Sunken Cities campaign, a generally trustworthy merchant of Mustertown who if he is not interested in making a purchase from you, then can put you in touch with someone who will be interested. Just three are described in a lovely line of patter from the merchant, each really being a little vignette or encounter that the Judge can develop and bring into her game. Colin Chapman offers new rules for both shields and helmets with ‘Shattered Shields’ and ‘Helmet Law!’. The former suggests that shields can be shattered in a single blow in order to offset damage that might otherwise greatly injure a character, whilst the latter details how a helmet can do the same, but if used in that fashion there might be unintended consequences (as detailed on the accompanying table). Much of this will be familiar from any number of retroclones from the past few years or so, but to be fair, these rules would have been nice additions for a more brutal style of game in 2012 and they still are in 2020.

Lastly, Colin Chapman takes the reader shopping. In ‘Helmets & New Shields’, he adds new rules and new types of armour, such as bucklers which can be used with ranged weapons and as weapons and the check penalty to all actions whilst wearing various types of helmets. In ‘Killin’ Time!’ he lists several new weapons, such as Bullwhip and Maul, and the rules for using them, along with notes and suggestions as to which Classes from the  Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game can use them. ‘Be Prepared!’ covers food and lodging, tools, miscellaneous items, and more—even prosthetic items!

Physically, Crawl! #2 is surprising. The layout is clean and tidy, uncluttered and easy to read. The artwork is good too. Overall and though it is a fanzine, there is a feel of professionalism in terms of how Crawl! #2 is presented. If Crawl! No. 1 was a good first issue, then Crawl! #2 is better. The presentation is cleaner, tidier, and easier to read, making the content more accessible. That content itself is useful, helping to develop a Judge’s Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game campaign in terms of how she handles treasure and how treasure can be made important to the player characters, and then making combat more bruising and battering with the rules for shields and helmets. 

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 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 a mixed bag, Crawl! #2 is surprisingly focused, as announced by the issue’s subtitle—‘The Loot Issue!’. Published in June, 2012, what the issue does is explore the role of treasure in the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game, highlighting the fact that treasure is a relative rarity in comparison to Dungeons & Dragons and other retroclones—its fantasy world lacks the piles of gold and hoards of magical items and gewgaws found in other fantasy roleplaying games. In the first article, ‘Loot!’ the editor builds a means of determining treasure types from one simple table—the ‘Random Loot by Monster Type’ table. This breaks down the treasure finds by monster type, so ‘Humanoids with Weapons’, ‘Dragons’, ‘Demons’, Un-dead’, and ‘Other Monsters’. What a character finds—the roll modified by his Luck bonus—actually does not vary all that wildly, so handfuls of coins, a few gems, and so on, though a character is more likely to find cursed items with the Un-dead. Further tables expand upon the one table, one in particular adding ‘Items of Note’. These are not necessarily magical, but whether charms, bottles, scrolls, books, and the like, they are valuable, at least to someone. Magical items can be found, but they are rare—really rare in comparison to Dungeons & Dragons—and they are anything other then generic. So no mere +1 swords…

Instead, the fanzine offers ‘Lucky Items’. These are items which not only have a Luck bonus or a ‘magical’ effect, they also have a story. They can also be created during a play, such as when a warrior uses a weapon for the first time and it inflicts a critical wound or a wizard carves a staff from a branch of tree that the wizard witnessed being struck by lightning. Now the Luck bonus or ‘magical’ effect may not always work and it can degrade and even be lost over time, but idea is that over time, instead of a player character discovering yet another shield +2 or Dagger +1, he will come to favour certain weapons or items of equipment, and perhaps they might grow with him as the story and legend of his doings are told, becoming Lucky, and ultimately, Legendary as looked at in ‘Legendary Items’. (Though this does not stop him from discovering the Dagger +1.)

All together, these three articles form a trilogy, one that nicely builds upon its subject matter without the reader necessarily noticing until the end. Although the mechanics for Lucky items are slightly more complex than that might be found in standard Dungeons & Dragons, they make such items fickle—rather than unreliable—and thus more fun. Overall, this trilogy is good alternative to the rules given for Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game, adding depth, but also highlighting the differences between it and Dungeons & Dragons. 

This difference is further highlighted in the fourth article. ‘OSR Conversions: Treasure!’ As this series of articles details, there is a great deal of difference between how Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game and the Old School Renaissance handles treasure. This details how the Judge can take an adventure for another retroclone and adapt its treasure element to Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game. So this extends the utility of the previous trilogy in enabling a Judge to run more scenarios without losing the flavour of Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game.

Jon Marr of purplesorcerer.com provides the first of several articles by other authors in the second issue of the fanzine. This is ‘Honest Orkoff!’, a personality from his Sunken Cities campaign, a generally trustworthy merchant of Mustertown who if he is not interested in making a purchase from you, then can put you in touch with someone who will be interested. Just three are described in a lovely line of patter from the merchant, each really being a little vignette or encounter that the Judge can develop and bring into her game. Colin Chapman offers new rules for both shields and helmets with ‘Shattered Shields’ and ‘Helmet Law!’. The former suggests that shields can be shattered in a single blow in order to offset damage that might otherwise greatly injure a character, whilst the latter details how a helmet can do the same, but if used in that fashion there might be unintended consequences (as detailed on the accompanying table). Much of this will be familiar from any number of retroclones from the past few years or so, but to be fair, these rules would have been nice additions for a more brutal style of game in 2012 and they still are in 2020.

Lastly, Colin Chapman takes the reader shopping. In ‘Helmets & New Shields’, he adds new rules and new types of armour, such as bucklers which can be used with ranged weapons and as weapons and the check penalty to all actions whilst wearing various types of helmets. In ‘Killin’ Time!’ he lists several new weapons, such as Bullwhip and Maul, and the rules for using them, along with notes and suggestions as to which Classes from the  Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game can use them. ‘Be Prepared!’ covers food and lodging, tools, miscellaneous items, and more—even prosthetic items!


Physically, Crawl! #2 is surprising. The layout is clean and tidy, uncluttered and easy to read. The artwork is good too. Overall and though it is a fanzine, there is a feel of professionalism in terms of how Crawl! #2 is presented. If Crawl! No. 1 was a good first issue, then Crawl! #2 is better. The presentation is cleaner, tidier, and easier to read, making the content more accessible. That content itself is useful, helping to develop a Judge’s Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game campaign in terms of how she handles treasure and how treasure can be made important to the player characters, and then making combat more bruising and battering with the rules for shields and helmets. 

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

—oOo—


What is it?
Humakt, Raven, and Wolf is a short scenario for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha involving a Heroquest to obtain help in searching for something.

It is a fifteen page, full colour, 6.50 MB PDF.

Humakt, Raven, and Wolf is well presented,  decently written, and sparsely illustrated with solid artwork. It needs a slight edit in places.

Where is it set?
On the Heroplane.

It is suggested that if the Game Master wants to run Humakt, Raven, and Wolf as part of the scenarios that form the campaign in and around Apple Lane found in the RuneQuest Gamemaster Screen Pack, that she run it as part of the scenario, ‘Dragon of Thunder Hills’.

Who do you play?
The player characters should ideally be heroes of Sartar. One the player characters really should be a Humakti.

What do you need?
Humakt, Raven, and Wolf requires RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. If being run as part of the Colymar campaign, the RuneQuest Gamemaster Screen Pack will be required. 

What do you get?
Humakt, Raven, and Wolf is a short, simple Heroquest which ideally should take no longer than a session to play, although it does involve a lot of combat and that can take time. Based on the myth of how Humakt found a way to track down the dead following the theft of his sword by his brother Orlanth, by enacting the heroquest the player characters will not only enforce the strength of the myth, but gain help in finding what they are searching for. (If run as part of the scenario, ‘Dragon of Thunder Hills’, this will be the location of the dream dragon Yerezum Storn.)

Humakt, Raven, and Wolf gives simple rules for getting the player characters onto the Heroplane and takes them through the six stations or steps of the Heroquest. The majority of these do involve combat and the Game Master will need to take care that she does overwhelm the Humakti player character and his colleagues with two many opponents before the final encounter. One requirement of the heroquest is that the Humakti test his love of his family, but that immediately raised the question what to do if the Humakti lacks the Passion of Love (Family). Fortunately, the author provides a solution.

Is it worth your time?
Yes. Humakt, Raven, and Wolf presents a short scenario in which the Game Master can pull her players and their characters into of one of Glorantha’s many myths, especially if one of them is a Humakti warrior. It is a particularly good to run as part of the scenario, ‘Dragon of Thunder Hills’, but may be run at any time the player characters need help in looking for something—a person, a thing, information, and so on. 
No. Either because you do not have a Humakti amongst your player characters or because running Humakt, Raven, and Wolf as part of the scenario, ‘Dragon of Thunder Hills’ is just overly specific in terms of time and place.
Maybe. Humakt, Raven, and Wolf is short and relatively easy to slip into a campaign, but really only works if one of the player characters is a Humakti.

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


—oOo—
What is it?
Monster of the Month #3: Night of the Quacking Dead is a short supplement which presents undead Ducks and their consequences for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha.

It is a nine page, full colour, 4.86 MB PDF.

Monster of the Month #3: Night of the Quacking Dead is well presented and decently written.

Where is it set?
In and around the Upland Marsh in Sartar.

Who do you play?
Adventurers of all types would work with Monster of the Month #3: Night of the Quacking Dead, but Humakti character would be an appropriate choice. A good Duck would leap—just not very high—to strike back at the nefarious plans of the Necromancer of the Upland  Marsh.

What do you need?
Monster of the Month #3: Night of the Quacking Dead requires both RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and RuneQuest – Glorantha Bestiary. Both the  supplement, Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes, and the magazine, Wyrms Footnotes #15, may be of use for their further background to the Upland Marsh.

What do you get?
Behind its cartoonish cover, Monster of the Month #3: Night of the Quacking Dead gives an introduction to the Upland Marsh, a scenario seed and associated NPC, and three undead creatures, all of an anatine un-nature.

The introduction examines the relationship that the Ducks—or durulz—have with the Upland Marsh and the unspoken truce they have with the Delecti the Necromancer. It also provides rules the environmental effects of fighting in the marsh which will be important should the Game Master develop the scenario seed in Monster of the Month #3: Night of the Quacking Dead. This has the newly declared Sword of Humakt, Orlaventus Great-Bill, putting the call out for adventurers to join him on an excursion into the marsh. He wants to locate and destroy those members of his family who were killed by the undead whilst the Ducks were taking refuge in the marsh as a result of the Lunar Duck Hunts and who have themselves raised from the dead. For the adventurers he makes promises about finding legendary treasure. Unfortunately, this hook for the player characters is undeveloped, leaving the Game Master to come up with ideas herself. At the very least, one or two suggestions would have been helpful.

The main focus of Monster of the Month #3: Night of the Quacking Dead though, is on presenting undead Ducks. This includes both the Duck Zombie, which unlike most undead, has the advantage of being already adapted to the terrain, and the Duck Skeleton. Lastly, the Duck Goliath is literally a ‘Frankenduck’s Monster’ of a creature, stitched together from the body parts of various, typically ill-suited creatures, but always with the head of a Duck. Facing a Duck Goliath would be a suitable encounter for the given scenario seed—or make for a bizarre encounter anywhere in or near the Upland Marsh.

Again Monster of the Month #3: Night of the Quacking Dead falls into the category of ‘Your Glorantha May Vary’ and is a very specific—geographically specific—addition. Ultimately, Monster of the Month #3: Night of the Quacking Dead is of limited use, but if a Game Master wanted to use it, it is a pity that the scenario seed was not quite as developed to help the Game Master a little more.

Is it worth your time?
Yes. If you are running a campaign or adventure set in Sartar and are planning for your adventurers to venture anywhere in or near the Upland Marsh, then Monster of the Month #3: Night of the Quacking Dead is worth your time and interest. The Duck puns are just a bonus.
No. If your campaign or adventure is not set in Sartar and will not going anywhere near the Upland Marsh, or Ducks do not play a role in your campaign, then then Monster of the Month #3: Night of the Quacking Dead is unlikely to be of interest to you. The Duck puns may also be off-putting. 
Maybe. A devout Humakti warrior would travel far to strike at the unwholesome undead of the Upland Marsh and who knows what such a warrior would encounter when he got there, let alone what he might have been sent to retrieve? Yes, Monster of the Month #3: Night of the Quacking Dead is very specific in terms of its geography, but a Game Master could develop reasons for the player characters to travel as far as the Upland Marsh. The Duck puns are just silly and you should be fine with that.

The seas rise. The forests spread. Crops fail. Wars continue without reason. The dead walk the land. Peasants suffer taxes, plague, and worse. There is no hope. All is despair. The world is dying, reduced to a handful of lands amidst the Endless Sea. The prophecies of the Two-Headed Basilisks are coming true. In the great cathedral to the god Nechrubel in the city of Galgenbeck in the land of Tveland, the arch-priestess Josilfa heeds the prophecies whilst the inquisition of Two-Headed Basilisks hunts down the apostates and heretics who would commit of the ultimate of taking their lives rather than meeting the apocalypse with eyes wide open. Before Galgenback lies Graven-Tosk, an ancient cemetery ringed by a tangled, spreading forest at the heart of which stands the gothic black Palace of the Shadow King, from whose crumbling halls the Shadow King’s sons—and only sons—go out to wander the cemetery ruins to trick passing travellers and those who would delve into the grave, all to further enhance the misery of men. To the east is Grift, located on a peninsula separated from the rest of the lands by the bottomless Múr over which span three giant bridges. Múr once ensured that the city-state was a bastion of hope and light from the plague-ridden, war-torn lands on the other side of the bridges, but now the rock upon which Grit stands cracks and nightly spawns monsters, the bridges shriek and scream, and King Sigfúm heeds the prophecies of the Two-Headed Basilisks and prepares to march his peoples over the cliffs and into the seas. In the west lie two kingdoms. In north-western Kergüs, Blood-Countess Anthelia cries out for colour and warmth from her white stone castle in the black glass city of Alliáns, yet in her ice-wracked lands, everything the fragile countess touches, looks upon, and breathes upon is drained of colour. To the south-west, the paranoid, corpulent, and crazy King Fathmu IX obsesses over the prophecies of the Two-Headed Basilisks even as he viciously raids and taxes his peasantry to ensure his seat, the city of Schleswig, maintains its gaudy opulence. Between them all is the Valley of the Unfortunate Undead, its crypts rumoured to be home to one of the Basilisks, its soil said to be lethal, its air roiling with deadly despair…

This is the world of Mörk Borg, meaning ‘Dark Fortress’, a Dark Ages, a Swedish pre-apocalypse Old School Renaissance retroclone designed by Ockult Örtmästare Games and Stockholm Kartell and published by Free League Publishing following a successful Kickstarter campaign. It is a doom-laden, death metal driven, dark fantasy roleplaying game set in a grim-dark world of despair in which the last remnants of mankind with the will to act work themselves up to perhaps plunder the crypts and graves of those fortunate enough to have left this land or even stand up against the forthcoming apocalypse. It is rules light, with minimal, player-facing mechanics, in fact so light, it can be played with or without Classes. The rulebook comes with everything necessary to play—rules, setting, a bestiary, a guide to magic, and a short, bloody dungeon.

Yet make no mistake, what grabs you from the start about Mörk Borg is its look. Behind its striking, even shockingly yellow cover with its subtly reverse-embossed illustration of a skeletal warrior, the hardcover consists of vibrant swathes of pink and yellow which contrast sharply with the stark blocks of heavy black on white and heavy white on black. A jumble of fonts—gothic fonts being the mainstay—flood its pages and the whole book has the look and tone of one thing—the heavy metal fanzine. This is not amateurish though, more artfully designed—especially with the silver and gold foil pages—and nor is it all solid tone colours though, full illustrations being quite subtly worked to further enhance the sense of despair and menace, such the fully painted image of the human heart placed behind the text which explains Hit Points. Overall, the layout and look of Mörk Borg is brutal and stark, in your face and constantly remind you of the doom that hangs over the world. 

Once you open the book, you are straight into the game. There is no explanation as to what a roleplaying game is and what roleplaying is. And that is fine. Mörk Borg is not a roleplaying game for anyone new to the hobby. It does carry a warning though, that it is really not suitable for anyone under the age if sixteen. Which is probably true.

Mechanically, Mörk Borg starts with the end of the world. The Game Master can roll for what Miseries befall the world, predicted in a series of psalms from The Calendar of Nechrubel – The Nameless Scriptures. So, it might be “Behold the Endless Sea, where Leviathan causes waves to be as mountains.” or “As at the beginning, so at the end, all manner of fly and wasp shall fill the air.” The seventh Misery will herald the actual end of the world, but how far away that is can be determined by the Game Master enabling her to set the rough length of her Mörk Borg campaign.

Mörk Borg is humancentric, the player characters being the men and women unlucky to be alive in this dark age. A character is defined by four abilities—Agility, Presence, Strength, and Toughness. Of the four, Presence is the odd one out. It is not just used for Charisma checks, but also for perception checks, ranged attacks, and casting spells. The four abilities range in value from -3 to +3, these being equal to ability modifiers found in Dungeons & Dragons and other retroclones. Character generation though depends upon whether you are using the Classes in Mörk Borg. If not, a player rolls for his character’s starting weapon and equipment, and then rolls four six-sided dice and drops the lowest for two abilities and three six-sided dice for the other two.

Kratar
Agility +2 Presence +3 Strength -2 Toughness 0
Hit Points: 6
Armour: No armour
Weapon: Warhammer (d6)
Equipment: 110 sp, waterskin, two days food, backpack, metal file and lockpins, sacred scroll (Grace for a Sinner)

If using character Classes, Mörk Borg offers six. Although optional, they do add flavour to the setting as much as they enhance what a player character can do. Three of the Classes are equivalents of classic Dungeons & Dragons-style Classes, whilst three are particular to Mörk Borg. Fanged Deserter, Gutterborn Scum, and Esoteric Hermit are the equivalent of Fighter, Thief, and Magic-User respectively, whilst the Heretical Priest is an adherent of an unholy faith, the Occult Herbmaster is a mixer of potions and poisons, and the Wretched Royalty is fallen noble. Each Class determines what dice a player rolls for his character’s abilities, armour, equipment, weapons, and origins, and can either be selected by a player or rolled randomly like everything else.

Quillnach
Occult Herbalist
Agility +1 Presence -3 Strength -1 Toughness +1
Hit Points: 6
Omens: d2 (1)
Armour: Furs (-d2 damage, tier 1)
Weapon: Femur (d4)
Equipment: 50 sp, waterskin, four days food, portable laboratory, donkey, silver crucifix, heavy chain (15 ft.), red poison (two doses), Southern Frog Stew (four doses)
Origins: Raised in the old frozen ruins not far from Alliáns

Mechanically, Mörk Borg is simple. A player rolls a twenty-sided die, modifies the result by one of his character’s abilities, and attempts to beat a Difficulty Rating of twelve. The Difficulty Rating may go up or down depending on the situation, but whatever the situation, the player always rolls, even in combat or as Mörk Borg terms it, violence. So, a player will roll for his character to hit in melee using his Strength and his Agility to avoid being hit. Armour is represented by a die value, from -d2 for light armour to -d6 for heavy armour, representing the amount of damage it stops. Medium and heavy armour each add a modifier to any Agility action by the character, including defending himself. This is pleasingly simple and offers a character some tactical choice—just when is it better to avoid taking the blows or avoid taking the damage?

In addition, characters have access to Omens, of which a character typically has one or two a day. They can be used to deal maximum damage on an attack, reroll any die—not just that player’s, lower the damage die rolled against a character, to neutralise a critical success or fumble, or to lower the Difficulty Rating on a test.

Instead of magic, Mörk Borg has scrolls. There are twenty of these and they can either be ‘Unclean’, for example, Foul Psychopomp, which summons zombies or skeletons, or ‘Sacred’, such as Enochian Syntax, which gives a command which must be blindly obeyed. Although any character—of any Class or none—can use a scroll, they cannot be used whilst wearing medium or heavy armour or carrying a two-handed weapon. Once a character has a scroll, he can use it or his other scrolls a random number of times per day, each time requiring a standard Presence test to succeed. Fail and the character will suffer one or two points of damage and is dizzy for an hour, so cannot use any scrolls. A roll of a one is a critical failure and means that the player must roll on the Arcane Catastrophes table, the best results of which can simply kill the character…

Optional tables for the characters add terrible traits, backgrounds or ‘Troubling Tales’, and what Two-Headed Basilisks might demand of them, whilst for the Game Master, there are tables of occult treasures, corpse plunder, bad—and only bad—weather, and more, enabling her to create dungeons and adventures with just a few rolls of the die. A dozen or so monsters are listed, plus ‘Rotblack Sludge or The Shadow King’s Lost Heir’, a short dungeon.

As physically fantastical as Mörk Borg is, the design is not necessarily the easiest to use, although a summary of the mechanics is included inside the back cover and the idea is good. In addition, some of the imagery may not be to everyone’s tastes, it being heavy, oppressive, and often of an occult nature. It is though in keeping with the doom metal genre which inspires the game (and its own soundtrack).

As a Grim Dark roleplaying game, Mörk Borg would work with other content too. It would work perhaps as the last days of the Kingdom of Alberetor from the other Swedish fantasy roleplaying game from Free League Publishing, Symbaroum. Then again, it more easily plugs into various scenarios for Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay, such as A Single Small Cut or the infamous Death Frost Doom .

The style of Mörk Borg’s look makes it look more complex a roleplaying game than it is. The simplicity of the rules is hidden by the oppressive feel of the graphic design, but this graphic design imposes its Grim Dark, doom laden atmosphere on player and game alike, and is carried over into the mechanics, which support suitably brutal play in a world free of moral certainties and weighed down by a portentous sense of doom as it draws to its end. Mörk Borg is the roleplaying game your mother warned you about during the Moral Panic of the eighties—brutal, in-your-face dread and despair, a low and bloody guitar riff of a game.

The year is 2260 AD. Two years ago, the United Terran Republic and its allies won the Terran Liberation War, forcing the mighty and ancient Reticulan Empire to sue for peace after twenty-five years of uprisings and war. For some one-hundred-and-seventy-five years, Earth and Humanity had been repressively suborned as the Reticulan client state of House Thiragin, the Earth Federal Administration. Humanity was allowed to expand and establish colonies, but in return had to commit auxiliary troops to serve in the wars against House Thiragin’s rival houses in the Reticulan Empire and other alien species, and was subject to both a tight rein on its economy and Reticulan abductions and bio-technological experimentation. The latter not only resulted in the confirmation and development of psionics among humans, but also the creation of Human-Reticulan Hybrids. Besides having a higher likelihood of possessing psionics, Hybrids were favoured by House Thiragin and dominated the Earth Federal Administration government, the loathed Federal Security Apparatus, and the Exalted Order of Fomalhaut, the latter the Earth Federal Administration’s state sanctioned faith. Ultimately, it would be an unexplained mass abduction of children by the Reticulans that would trigger the Terran Revolution and it would be troops who had served with House Thiragin, known as the Returnees’ Circles, who would form the backbone of the Terran forces in the revolution.

As of 2260 AD, the United Terran Republic is a presidential republic attempting to switch from a wartime to peacetime footing; to expand coreward to explore and establish new colonies and make contact with lost ‘black’ colonies established in secret from the Earth Federal Administration; and maintain vigorous defences against Earth’s former master, the Reticulan Empire to rimward. Although there is trade and contact between the United Terran Republic and the Reticulan Empire, the two states are wary of each other and a state of cold war exists between them. The territories of the United Terran Republic and the Reticulan Empire come together in an area known as the Terran Badlands, along with a third interstellar power, the Ciek Confederation. Located within the Terran Badlands are two client states supported and maintained by the United Terran Republic, the Reticulan Technate and the Ssesslessian Harmony. The first of these is governed by the rebel Technocratic Movement, consisting of Reticulans who supported the Terran revolution, whilst the latter was given to the serpentine Ssesslessians as a new homeworld after theirs had been glassed by the Reticulans.

This is the set up for These Stars Are Ours!, a near future setting published by Stellagama Publishing for use with the Cepheus Engine System Reference Document from Samardan Press which details the core rules for a Classic Era Science Fiction 2D6-Based Open Gaming System. If the Third Imperium of Classic Traveller draws upon the Imperial Science Fiction of the 1950s, then These Stars Are Ours! draws upon another sub genre of the same period—UFOlogy and ‘little green men’. Or rather, ‘little grey men’, for the Reticulans are akin to the Greys of UFO lore and their spaceships and starships are saucers. What these point to are the space opera or  pulp sensibilities of the These Stars Are Ours! setting, and these sensibilities continue with the other alien species to be found across known space. These include the Cicek, aggressive and personal glory-obsessed warm-blooded, humanoid reptiles complete with tails; the snakelike Ssesslessians, a theocratic species with a complex pantheon who served the Reticulans as assassins; and the Zhuzzh, pragmatic, opportunistic, and nomadic insectoids who all but worship technology and who are inveterate tinkerers rather than designers and innovators. There are other races to be found across known space, but these are the main ones to be found in the Terran Badlands. Behind them though are the ‘Precursors’, one or more ancient species who disappeared millennia ago following a devastating war leaving behind mysterious ruins, who may have seeded and manipulated species across known space and who may be the forebears of numerous species.

Now despite the strong nods to both pulp and space opera sensibilities with these alien species, These Stars Are Ours! is not really a pulp or even a space opera setting. This is because it still uses the dry, technical mechanics and terminology of the Cepheus Engine System Reference Document—and thus ultimately of Traveller. So it employs Tech Levels, Maneuvre Drives, Jump Drives, Parsecs, Sectors, Subsectors, the Universal World Profile, and so on.  Looking to the sources of inspiration in the book’s appendices and it is clear that the tone and feel is other than Pulp Sci-Fi—so Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, Barry B. Longyear’s Enemy Mine, and Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy; films such as Alien, Outland, and Serenity; television series like Babylon 5, Dark Skies, and Space: Above and Beyond; and computer games including Mass Effect, UFO: Enemy Unknown, and Dead Space. The Science Fiction of These Stars Are Ours! is much drier than straight space opera, but the inclusion of both the film Serenity and the television series Firefly point towards another influence and that is the Western genre. Much like both of those sources, These Stars Are Ours! is set after a devastating war, during a period of reconstruction, much like the years after the American Civil War. 

Now as much as there are similarities between the aftermath of the American Civil War and the aftermath of the Terran Liberation War—or the Terran Rebellion as the Reticulans call it—there are numerous differences too. The most notable difference is that These Stars Are Ours! presents an obvious and very alien enemy in the form of the Reticulans whilst moving the Human-Reticulan relationship into one of a cold war. Yet it retains the sense of distrust and resentment that arises from a period of occupation and civil war, which in the United Terran Republic—and beyond of These Stars Are Ours! is aimed at Reticulan Hybrids—humans genetically modified as embryos with Reticulan dna—who were seen as collaborators.

In terms of background, These Stars Are Ours! is richly packed. Not just with a history of the Terran Liberation War, but also the state of the United Terran Republic and its politics, military and intelligence agencies—notably CRC-32 which provides the military and government with covert Psionic Intelligence (or PSINT) support and its civilian research counterpart, the Psionic Research Institute (or PRI). It also covers the major corporations in the United Terran Republic, along with religion and spirituality, legal system, and various criminal and terrorist groups. It covers the various alien races in similar detail, from the Reticulans of the Reticulan Empire and the separatist Reticulan Technate to the eight-limbed, two metres tall, crustacean-like Klax who serve as security forces for the Reticulans, whilst of course adding details about their various biologies, psychologies, and societies. Where a particular alien species is available to choose as a player character, notes are given on how to play them. 

As well as Humans, These Stars Are Ours! offers the Cicek, Reticulans, Reticulan Hybrids, Ssesslessians, and Zhuzzh as playable races. The main major difference in the setting to the more familiar Traveller is that Psionics are more freely available and that Psionic Strength is added as a seventh attribute. In terms of Careers, These Stars Are Ours! uses those from Cepheus Engine System Reference Document, but adds another twenty on top. Those available to Humans are the most diverse, including Teran Navy and Terran Police as well as Terran Naval Infantry and Teran Marines. For the most part,  the new Careers reflect the past quarter of a century that Humans have spent at war. If a character is a Psion, then he will serve in CRC-32 or the PRI, depending upon his Psionic Strength. Those of the Alien species are not as diverse, apart from the Reticulans, typically presenting one Career per species—essentially much like Basic Dungeons & Dragons did Race as Class. There are Event tables for all of the new Careers and the character rules also allow for cybernetics and cyborgs.

Creating a character in These Stars Are Ours! is the same as Cepheus Engine System Reference Document or Traveller. A player rolls two six-sided dice for his character’s seven attributes and then chooses a Career for him. Over the course of the Career, the player will add skills and other benefits to the character. A character may have an illustrious career, be discharged following an injury, and so on. The process will require a little flipping back and forth between These Stars Are Ours! and Cepheus Engine System Reference Document, especially if a player decides on a career not in These Stars Are Ours! Either way, the process is a lengthy one.

Our sample character was one of the elite of the Earth Federal Administration who was in training to become a politician and administrator before he discovered the extent of Reticulan activities in Terran space and defected. He was tested for psionic capability and recruited by CRC-32 and constantly trained throughout his career. He was on active military campaign in the last years of the Terran Liberation War, but was captured and held captive until the armistice between the United Terran Republic and Reticulan Empire was signed.

Brigadier Jeffry Ennes
Reticulan Hybrid Age 50
Elite-2 (Rank 3: Manager)/CRC-32-6 (Rank 5: Brigadier)
7B5C8B-D
Admin-2, Advocate-3, Carousing-o, Clairvoyance-1, Comms-1, Computer-1, Gun Combat-1, Jack-of-All-Trades-2, Leadership-1, Liaison-0, Linguistics-0, Medicine-1, Melee Combat-0, Reticulan-1, Telepathy-3, Teleportation-3, Vehicle-0, Zero-G-0
History: Political Infighting, Psionic Training, Strange Science, Advancement, Psionic Training, Battle, Captured.
Benefits: Explorer’s Society, CR 30,000, Pension: CR 12,000
Traits: Bad First Impression (humans only), Engineered (TL13), Notable Dexterity, Weak Strength, Psionic.

In terms of technology, These Stars Are Ours! is roughly Technology Level 11, with military equipment and technology being typically Technology Level 11 and Technology Level 12. This means that starships are commonly capable of Jump-2 (travelling two parsecs in a single jump), fine gravitics is being developed, fusion power is freely available, and so on. Reticulan technology is generally higher, most notably shown in its mastery of gravitics and longer Jump ranges. As befitting the setting, their ships are saucers rather than the sleeker, if not streamlined ships deployed by other races. Some six ships—starships and small craft—are detailed and given deck plans, and where necessary civilian and military versions are both given. They include the Reticulan Abductor and Saucers, the Ssesslessian Infiltrator, Zhuzzh Scavenger, Cicek Raider, and Terran Shaka-class Light Military Transport. The latter is the only Terran ship, which is perhaps a little disappointing, but given the post-war state of the United Terran Republic, these ships are commonly available to purchase and are used as by free traders. Plus the fact that it happens to look not unlike the Firefly class is likely to make it a popular choice with the players (if not their characters). 

Some seventy or so worlds of the region Trailing-Rimward to Terra are described as part of the Terran Borderlands. The latter lies at the point where three interstellar powers meet—the Reticulan Empire, the Cicek Confederation, and the United Terran Republic—and contains the two Terran client-states, the Reticulan Technate and the Ssesslessian Harmony. Each of the worlds comes with its own Universal World Profile and a fairly detailed description, though this can vary in length from one to as many as five paragraphs. Along with the accompanying star map, this gives a good-sized area for the player characters to explore and to support that, These Stars Are Ours! comes with a dozen patrons. These range from supporting a colonisation on a ‘jackpot’ planet and transporting a Reticulan diplomat—hopefully her money will be enough to overcome any lingering antipathy towards the Reticulans, to the exploration of a Precursor site and a hunt for a celebrity’s missing yacht. They represent a good mix of adventure types and make good use of the background to the setting. These Stars Are Ours! is rounded out with a pair of appendices, one a bibliography of inspirations, the other various news entries or Terran News Agency Dispatches, which the Game Master could develop into scenarios of her own.

Physically, These Stars Are Ours! is simply and clearly presented and there is a good index. The few illustrations are decent, the star maps clear, and the deckplans good. As much as the content is interesting and engaging, what lets the setting supplement down is the editing. At worst someone has edited the book, at best no one has, and in places, the unpolished writing in These Stars Are Ours! does sometimes make a cringeworthy read.

If there is anything missing from the These Stars Are Ours! setting it is perhaps a few more starships to individualise the setting some more and certainly some personalities. Apart from the president of the United Terran Republic, no individuals are really mentioned, so the history and setting do feel slightly impersonal. There is no advice for the Game Master, but anyway, she should be able to come up with scenarios and campaign ideas from the background material given in These Stars Are Ours!.

Although using mechanics derived from Traveller, the setting of These Stars Are Ours! is very different to that of Traveller. It is not ‘high’ or Imperial Space Opera, but has a harder, rougher edge to it, drawing from a source that is more pulp Sci-Fi in its sensibilities even as the Cepheus mechanics serve to reduce said pulp tendencies. Nevertheless, These Stars Are Ours! draws deeply upon its source material of UFOlogy and ‘Little Green Men’ and infuses them with a frontier, almost Wild West feel to present a very accessible setting in terms of background and size.

Arc Dream Publishing is best known as the publisher of the Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game, the roleplaying game of conspiratorial and Lovecraftian investigative horror, but in 2019, branched out into publishing for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition with its ‘Swords & Sorceries’ adventure line and two releases for its ‘Broken Empire’ setting. The first of these was The Sea Demon’s Gold, an adventure offering more dangers than rewards, and doing so in a weird, dank, and squelchy environment, with a strong undercurrent of the Lovecraftian. Where The Sea Demon’s Gold roughly threw the adventurers ashore and into a clammy dungeon, the second scenario, The Song of the Sun Queens, took the player characters to a southerly kingdom and there enmeshed them in its sisterly rivalry, before leading them out onto sun bleached savannah in search of a great treasure.

Each of the two scenarios so far have has had parallels with certain historical regions. So with The Sea Demon’s Gold the feel was that of the Hellenic world, and with The Song of the Sun Queens, it was the kingdoms of Africa. The third scenario in the ‘Swords & Sorceries’ has a Middle Eastern feel to it. Designed for five characters of Third Level, the structure of The Tomb of Fire feels a whole lot like that of The Song of the Sun Queens in that the player characters have travelled to the edges of the civilised world in search of a great treasure. In The Song of the Sun Queens, it was Ndame, the Land of the Sun that they travelled to and from there to the ancient, cursed ruin known as Juakufa where a great treasure is said to rest. In The Tomb of Fire, the Player Characters travel to the Rahaman oasis, in the dry land of Kahlar, at the edge of the great Mahjur Desert, seeking the Tomb of Fire, a ruined temple dedicated to a now forgotten god. It is said that like Juakufa, the Tomb of Fire is filled with great riches, but the local inhabitants will warn that the tomb is warded by great spirits deadlier than any man can defeat. 

For the players, the adventure begins with everyone’s favourite roleplaying activity—shopping. Or rather preparing for the three-hundred-mile trek across the inhospitable Mahjur Desert to Jahiz. This trek forms the first part of the adventure, supported by detailed rules for handling its gruelling nature and a table of random encounters. Including a Ranger in the party will help, but either way, one character will be serving as guide and one as animal handler. There is just the one given encounter on the way which nicely, creepily foreshadows the sense of weirdness, distrust, and uncertainty which runs throughout the adventure. Once in Jahiz, they are welcomed by the Bashari, a deeply spiritual people who will constantly offer them prayers to their god, the Lord of Storms. They will be hospitable, once they learn of their interest in visiting the Tomb of Fire, will direct them to visit their high priest in the Temple of the Sky atop the single mountain which looms over Jahiz. He will question their motives, but explain that the Tomb of Fire is the prison of an immortal enemy to the Bashari, a devil of earth and fire known as Kallahaab. He will take Good-aligned characters into his confidence, that he has been warned that evil men are trying to break into the tomb and free Kallahaab and that he needs good men to ensure that they fail and that Kallahaab remains imprisoned. If the player characters are not Good-aligned, then their coming has been foretold, for they are ‘evil men’…

So ideally, the characters must be Good-aligned or particularly deceptive to get the directions out of the priest, but otherwise Neutral- or Evil-aligned characters will need to find their own way. The journey to the tomb will be interrupted by another band Bashari, the Paladins of the Hidden Flame. They are also friendly, but will denounce the Bashari of Jahiz as fools for not worshiping Kallahaab, the true ruler of the land who was betrayed by the Lord of Storms. They want the player characters to free him. This then sets up the dilemma at the heart of the Tomb of Fire—which faith is the true faith and who to trust? This comes to a head in the tomb itself, which although small, merely consisting of six locations, will constantly test the player characters’ faith. This includes a confrontation with Kallahaab within the tomb itself, who will be very persuasive when it comes to suggesting that the player characters free him, including promising to reward them with Wishes if they do…

There is a lot of roleplaying depth to The Tomb of Fire. All of the NPCs, whether human or monster, are interested in the player characters and in persuading them to their cause. So the players will need to decide who to follow, which will be based on two factors. One is their Alignment. The scenario does favour Good-aligned characters, but takes Neutral- and Evil-aligned characters into account. The other is the spirituality of both factions of Bashari, constantly expressed throughout the scenario and full of clues as to what is to come. The Tomb of Fire is not a scenario to be approached in too bullish a fashion, there being a subtlety present in the story that the players and their characters might otherwise miss and so land themselves in the fire… Now that said, the denouement of the scenario will require careful preparation and handling upon the part of the Dungeon Master as there is a great deal going on, whilst the aftermath is underwritten, in that it does not fully explore the consequences of the player characters’ actions, particularly if Kallahaab is freed.

This latter issue points to another problem with The Tomb of Fire and ‘Swords & Sorceries’ adventure line and the three releases so far for the ‘Broken Empire’ setting—and that is a lack of context. So far all three scenarios have been set far from the ‘Broken Empire’ and all three have been set in separate locations, so there is no sense of connection between the three and thus no sense of sharing the same world. This makes each scenario easy to pull out and work into a Dungeon Master’s own campaign world, but there is no world building between them which might otherwise have come about had the three scenarios so far been linked. The lack of context means that the player and their characters do not have any grounding in the setting, so it is harder for them to engage with it.

Physically, The Tomb of Fire is fantastically presented. The maps and writing are both good, but the artwork is excellent, full of character and rich detail, and like those in The Song of the Sun Queens can all be shown to the players as they progress through the scenario.

The Tomb of Fire is again relatively short, offering two to three sessions of play. It feels rich and deep in terms of the setting and its people, pleasingly embroiling the player characters in religious rivalries that provide a really good mix of roleplaying and action—often with an element of horror. Like the previous scenario, The Song of the Sun Queens, it presents more of a setting that nicely draws upon on cultures other than Western fantasy, but again leaves the Dungeon Master wanting and needing more. 

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


—oOo—


What is it?
The Duel at Dangerford is a scenario for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, a confrontation between Sartarite heroes and a vengeful Lunar army.

It is a thirty-seven page, full colour, 5.11 MB PDF.

The Duel at Dangerford is well presented,  decently written, and illustrated with publicly sourced artwork. It needs an edit in places.

Where is it set?
As the title suggests, The Duel at Dangerford is set in Dangerford—specifically on the Isle Dangerous—as well on the road to Runegate. In the official canon of Glorantha, this takes place in the Storm Season of 1625, but due to the vagaries of the author’s campaign and ‘Your Glorantha Will Vary’, in The Duel at Dangerford it takes pace in the Storm Season of 1626.

Who do you play?
The player characters should ideally be heroes of Sartar. The scenario works particularly well if one of the player characters is a Humakti.

What do you need?
The Duel at Dangerford requires RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and the RuneQuest Gamemaster Screen Pack to play. To get the most out of The Duel at Dangerford, the Game Master will need access to The Coming Storm: The Red Cow Volume I, The Eleven Lights: The Red Cow Volume II, and The Glorantha Sourcebook. To get the utmost out of The Duel at Dangerford, the Game Master will also need access to Wyrm’s Footnotes #12, Wyrm’s Footnotes #15, the Dragon Pass board game, the Argan Argar Atlas, King of Sartar, Arcane Lore, and Troll Gods—although the last seven are really only of note or use if you are dedicated Gloranthaphile and have copies in your library.

In terms of the narrative, the player characters will also require an outspoken rival, ideally set up beforehand. If The Duel at Dangerford is run as part of the scenarios included in RuneQuest Gamemaster Screen Pack, this could be someone at the court of Queen Leika in Clearwine or if the Game Master has run ‘Cattle Raid’, then this could be a member of the Malani tribe.

What do you get?
The Duel at Dangerford is a simple scenario at its core. Divided into three acts, it begins in media res with the player characters on the road to Runegate with the Colymar Tribal Host, having answered the call to war in the face of an imminent invasion by a Tarshite Provincial Army. Following a council of war, the player characters are sidelined to Dangerford in order to protect the flank of  the Colymar Tribal Host of the Sartarite Army. As they make their way there, they spot both a second column of Tarshite soldiery heading towards to Dangerford, no doubt to cross the river there and conduct a flanking manouevre as was feared, and the fact that the column is led by no less a figure than General Fazzur Wideread, one of the greatest figures of the age. The player characters must therefore rush to Dangerford and find a way of stopping the advancing Tarshite forces, and it just so happens that the Isle Dangerous is a legendary duelling ground, where the Humakti rules of duelling are upheld by an ancient hero.

Unfortunately, as simple a scenario as The Duel at Dangerford is, it could have been a whole lot more simple. The problem is that it is overwritten, the author dwelling just a little too much on details and information that is not really pertinent to the scenario, either in the scenario’s extensive footnotes or annoyingly, in the text itself. So in a lot of cases, it is more hard work for the Game Master than it should be to prepare and run The Duel at Dangerford, but then it is underwritten else where, in particular not really giving information on how the the player characters go about performing a certain ritual on the Isle Dangerous. What is happening here is that the author is showing his love and knowledge of Glorantha, and whilst much of that information is interesting and whilst there is a certain joy to the writing, it is fundamentally just a little too much—certainly for anyone without that same degree of love and knowledge. Especially since the scenario suffers in places as a consequence.

In addition, The Duel at Dangerford comes with four appendices. The first contains a poem that the the author wants the Game Master to read out during the scenario, the second the author’s feedback on the scenario, ‘The Smoking Ruin’—all ten pages of it, some suggestions for expanding the scenario, ‘The Dragon of Thunder Hills’ from the RuneQuest Gamemaster Screen Pack; and some stats for any Tarshite militia the player characters might encounter during the scenario. To be fair, this is all interesting content, but it is not useful content as far as The Duel at Dangerford is concerned—except the stats for the soldiery. The poem is optional, the author’s feedback on the scenario, ‘The Smoking Ruin’ is lengthy and not relevant, and the notes on expanding the scenario, ‘The Dragon of Thunder Hills’ are very much optional. Now if the Game Master is planning to run ‘The Smoking Ruin’ or has not yet run ‘The Dragon of Thunder Hills’, then both feedback and notes are useful, but they do feel as if they should be in a fanzine rather than here.

Is it worth your time?
Yes. The Duel at Dangerford presents a fantastic opportunity for the player characters to be heroic—especially if one of them is a Humakti. 
No. Either because your campaign is not set in Sartar or you have already run the Battle of Dangerford. 
Maybe. The Tarshites and their Lunar allies are sure to launch another invasion of Sartar—at least in your campaign—and The Duel at Dangerford could be adjusted to fit, just as the author adjusted his to fit.

Collections of short scenarios for Call of Cthulhu are nothing new—there was the 1997 anthology Minions, but that was for Call of Cthulhu, Fifth Edition. That though was a simple collection of short scenarios, whereas Gateways to Terror: Three Evenings of Horror is both a collection of short scenarios and something different. Published by Chaosium, Inc. for use with either Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition or the Call of Cthulhu Starter Set, it is a trio of very short scenarios—scenarios designed to be played in an hour, designed to introduce players to Call of Cthulhu, and designed to demonstrate Call of Cthulhu. All three have scope to be expanded to last longer than an hour, come with pre-generated investigators as well as numerous handouts, and designed to be played by four players—though guidance is given as to which investigators to use with less than four players for each scenario, right down to just a single player and the Keeper. All three are set in different years and locations, but each is set in a single location, each is played against the clock—whether they are played in an hour or two hours—before a monster appears, and each showcases the classic elements of a Call of Cthulhu scenario. So the players and their investigators are presented with a mystery, then an investigation in which they hunt for and interpret clues, and lastly, they are forced into a Sanity-depleting confrontation with a monster.

Gateways to Terror: Three Evenings of Horror starts out though with an extensive introduction—or reintroduction—to the core rules of Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition. This is to help the Keeper introduce the rules herself to her fellow players, whether sat round the table at home, playing online, or at a convention. In turn it discusses the investigator sheet, using Luck, skill rolls, bonus and penalty dice, combat, and of course, Sanity. Included here are references to both the Call of Cthulhu: Keeper Rulebook and the Call of Cthulhu Starter Set with pertinent points marked. The only thing not included here that perhaps might have been useful is a list of these references, possibly at the end of the section. Otherwise this is all very useful, if not as a reminder, then at least as a means of the Keeper having to avoid flipping through another book.

Each of the three scenarios is tightly structured and follows the same format. This starts with advice on the scenario’s structure, specifically the timings if the Keeper is running it as a one-hour game. Then it discusses each of the four investigators for the scenario, including their notable traits and roleplaying hooks, what to do if there are fewer than four players, and what if there are more than four, before delving into the meat of the scenario itself. All three are very nicely presented, clear and easy to read off the page in terms of what skill rolls are needed and what the investigators learn from them. As well as really good maps—for both players and Keeper, but it has to be said that the maps for the Keeper are thoroughly impressive—which depict the different locations of the three scenarios in three dimensional perspective, each scenario comes with a sheaf of handouts, suggestions as to how each of its four investigators react when they go insane, and lastly, four investigator sheets. What is notable about these is that they are not done on the standard investigator sheet for Call of Cthulhu. This does feel off brand, but presented as straight text, the information that a player would want, or need is easy to find and easy to read.

So to the scenarios themselves. They open with Leigh Carr’s ‘The Necropolis’. Set in 1924 in Egypt this is a classic set-up, four members of an archaeological expedition excavating a tomb in the Valley of the Kings when the worst happens—they are entombed themselves! The quartet are driven to explore and discover as much as they are to escape, but the latter becomes more important when something appears to be inside the tomb with them! First though, they need to stop whatever is in the tomb with them because it seems very, very hungry… Of the three scenarios in the anthology, this has the largest area for the investigators to explore, consisting of five rooms rather than the single rooms of the other two. It is also probably the pulpiest in tone and style, and if the solution for dealing with the monster is a cliché, it is entirely in keeping with the genre. More of a locked room horror mystery than the other two, veteran players will enjoy the links to both Call of Cthulhu and Lovecraftian lore.

‘What’s in the Cellar?’ by Jon Hook switches to upstate New York in 1929. Arthur Blackwood, a respected local attorney is on trial for the bloody murder of his wife in the cellar of his family’s ancestral holiday cabin and is likely to go to the electric chair. He claims to be innocent, that his family is cursed, that there is a genie in the cellar who murdered his wife. Blackwood’s business and his defence team are desperate to keep him from being given a death sentence, so ask friends, family, a private investigator, and a psychiatrist—the latter to help prove that Blackwood is not deranged—to investigative. Although the opening scene takes place in New York, this is essentially a one-room scenario—the cellar. Here the shelves that line its walls are stocked with clues amidst the tools and bric-à-brac you would expect to find in a rural cellar. Again, there is a race again time—although neither players nor their investigators will be aware of it—before something goes wrong and the investigators find themselves trapped with something nasty in the cellar.

Lastly, Todd Gardiner’s ‘The Dead Boarder’ takes place in Providence, Rhode Island at the start of the Great Depression in an utterly mundane location—a single room at Ma Shanks’ Boarding House. All four of its investigators have rooms here and all four are worried about a neighbour of theirs. Apart from the late-night prayers, he was always nice and quiet, but has not been heard from for a couple of days. So being neighbourly, they gather to check on him, they are aghast to discover when the door to his room is unlocked, him lying on the floor in a bloody mess. Since no one has been seen entering or leaving his room—and everyone would know if they did—what happened to him? Of all the three scenarios in the anthology, this is the most detailed and the richest in terms of its play. All four of the pre-generated investigators have different motives for entering and examining the room, sometimes motives which will clash, so the investigators have more personal drives other than the need to survive. Where in the other the scenarios the investigators do not have an obvious time limit on their actions, here they do, as the police have been called and will arrive within the hour. So this will also drive the investigators to act. Overall ‘The Dead Boarder’ nicely brings the horror home, or at least to the room down the hall.

If perhaps there is an issue with Gateways to Terror: Three Evenings of Horror, it is with the monsters. Now they are not all the same, but they are the same in terms of being unstoppable, appearing from nowhere, and so on. This though comes from the format of the three scenarios and its built-in time limit, and really this would only be a downside were a group to play all three in quick succession. The monsters are also not drawn from Call of Cthulhu canon, so any player expecting them to be might be disappointed, but there is no need for them to be and there are plenty of other scenarios and campaigns where they appear anyway.

Physically, Gateways to Terror: Three Evenings of Horror is very presented, the choice of photographs is decent, the maps are good, and a great deal of the artwork can be used to show the players during play. In terms of design, the trio are also multi-function scenarios. They can be used as demonstration scenarios, though they are not long enough for the traditional four-slot of a convention game. They can be used as one-shots, as written or expanded in terms of game length by ignoring the suggested timings. They can be added to an existing campaign, but with each being written for their set of pre-generated investigators, this will take some adjustment upon the part of the Keeper. They can be used to introduce investigators, perhaps as flashbacks or prequels, and to explore their first encounter with the Mythos, rather than say, all of them having been run through ‘Alone Against the Flames’ or ‘Paper Chase’ from the Call of Cthulhu Starter Set. Lastly, they can be used to introduce players to Call of Cthulhu and how it is played. Each of the three scenarios in Gateways to Terror: Three Evenings of Horror is flexible enough to support these functions and if not in terms of place, could also easily be adjusted in terms of date.

It would be fantastic to see more scenarios written to the format of Gateways to Terror: Three Evenings of Horror, whether as more demonstration games, one-shots, longer convention games, or investigator introductions to the Mythos. Overall, Gateways to Terror: Three Evenings of Horror delivers three, short doses of horror and does so in an engaging, well designed, and multi-functional fashion.

At the end of the fourth and most recent campaign and campaign set in Free League Publishing’s Mutant: Year Zero post-apocalyptic future, there remained one big question, “What happens next?” Since 2014, the publisher has been exploring the place of mutants with Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days, anthropomorphic animals with Mutant: Genlab Alpha, robots with Mechatron – Rise of the Robots Roleplaying, and Mutant: Year Zero – Elysium, and by with each release revealing a bit more the world and the disaster which brought it to its current state. Each release also saw the four different groups encountering one or more of the other groups for the first time, if only fleetingly, in the wake of the events which played out in Mutant: Year Zero – Elysium, all four groups are together and interacting with each other. This is the new world of Mutant: Year Zero presented in a mini-campaign for setting, Mutant: Year Zero – The Gray Death.

Mutant: Year Zero – The Gray Death takes place in the Zone, the region first explored in Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days. The default Zone is The Big Smoke—essentially bombed out, flattened, and ravaged London—but it can easily be moved to the Game Master’s own Zone. All that it requires is a long body of water which boats can easily travel up and down. Advice is given on how to run it as a stand-alone adventure, but really Mutant: Year Zero – The Gray Death is designed to be run as part of campaign, specifically after Mutant: Year Zero – Elysium, and ideally after Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days, Mutant: Genlab Alpha, and Mechatron – Rise of the Robots Roleplaying. In addition, to get the best out of Mutant: Year Zero – The Gray Death, the Game Master should also have run Mutant: Year Zero Zone Compendium 5: Hotel Imperator. Since the campaign takes place after the events of Mutant: Year Zero – Elysium, there no restrictions on what type of characters the players can roleplay—be mutants, animals, robots, or humans. This is one of the features of the brave new Mutant: Year Zero world.

As Mutant: Year Zero – The Gray Death opens, the world has changed. There is more trade and interaction between the different groups, there are more boats on the river, and so on, but there are ominous signs. In the depths of a snowy winter, there are disappearances around the Ark, including of people important to the Player Characters, and there are shadows in the sky—vehicles which float in the air and move fast. The Player Characters come across a Zone Rider—one of the couriers who carry messages back and forth across the Zone—under attack by a band of orderly and well-equipped soldiers. If they come to the Zone Rider’s rescue, or from a contact later on if they decide not to intervene, they learn of a mysterious new organisation known as the Army of the Dawn. It has recently taken over a wretched junktown to the west and renamed it Dawnville. The Player Characters are tasked with travelling to Dawnville, which is shortly to stage a wrestling tournament, to find out more information. To prepare themselves for that, it is suggested that the Player Characters visit two other places to conduct some investigation and learn what they can about the Army of Dawn. The first is a trading post run by Oscar Battenburg, an enclave Human from Elysium I known to trade slaves to the Army of Dawn, the second is the Showboat Saga, which travels up and the river putting on entertainments and which recently visited the Dawnville.

The Player Characters are also given a deadline—the wrestling tournament takes place in a week. To get them across the Zone in time, the Player Characters are lent a big-wheeled all-terrain robot vehicle and given some equipment. It is also likely that they will have been able to scavenge the guns and the armour of the Army of Dawn soldiers who attacked the Zone Rider—in particular, the tin helms which give the Army of Dawn soldiers the look of Great War soldiers. In comparison to a normal Mutant: Year Zero campaign, the Player Characters will be able to zip across the Zone, and with initially three locations—or as Mutant: Year Zero terms them, ‘Special Zone Sectors’—there is scope for the Game Master to run random encounters and ‘Special Zone Sectors’ of her own in between these three.

Mutant: Year Zero – The Gray Death actually consists of five ‘Special Zone Sectors’, not three, although the first three can be run in any order, followed by the fourth and fifth in that order. Each of these locations is nicely detailed and includes full stats for each of the NPCs, clear maps—both full illustrations of the locations and floorplans where needed, and events which play out when the Player Characters visit them. The five ‘Special Zone Sectors’ are all different in scope and theme. So ‘The Showboat Saga’ has a certain extravagance to it with its comparatively lavish performances and restaurant which becomes a mini-murder mystery, whilst ‘Dawnville’ is essentially ‘Bartertown’ from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome—complete with the equivalent of its own ‘Thunderdome’, which of course is where the wrestling tournament takes place. For the most part, the encounters involve a fair degree of stealth and subterfuge as well as combat. Certainly, the wrestling tournament will appeal to characters and players who like physical combat.

So what is going on in Mutant: Year Zero – The Gray Death? Well, its events do stem from what happened at the end of Mutant: Year Zero – Elysium and the fact that it involves an army—the ‘Army of Dawn’—points towards a new force wanting to conquer the whole of the Zone. This is a genre staple, a new military arising to threaten the fledgling communities working to survive in the weird world order of the post-apocalyptic planet, but it well handled in Mutant: Year Zero – The Gray Death. 

Now Mutant: Year Zero – The Gray Death describes itself as a campaign, but at best it is a mini-campaign. With just five ‘Special Zone Sectors’, this is really more of scenario than a campaign and the first few, ‘The Showboat Saga’ and ‘Battenburg’s Trading Post’ in particular, are short, playable in a single session, two at the very most. The later ‘Special Zone Sectors’ are longer and more involved, and it will probably run to two or three sessions. Fortunately, the fact that the first few ‘Special Zone Sectors’ can be run in any order provides the Game Master with room to add her own content and perhaps bulk up Mutant: Year Zero – The Gray Death a little.

Physically, Mutant: Year Zero – The Gray Death is well written, nicely presented in full colour with excellent cinematic-style artwork. Some of the illustrations show scenes that can happen in the campaign and the likelihood is that the Game Master will really want them to happen—such as a gunfight aboard an airship—because they look fun! However, it does need an edit in places and some of the artwork still has Swedish signs and writing on it. The campaign also comes with some good handouts, including newspapers and event posters, both a sign of the growing new civilisation of Mutant: Year Zero. These handouts though, are not collated at the end of the book.

As a campaign—or really a scenario—Mutant: Year Zero – The Gray Death begins to show what the new world of Mutant: Year Zero is like, the beginnings of new civilisations.  It returns to the openness of Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days after the closed and confined worlds of Mutant: Genlab Alpha, Mechatron – Rise of the Robots Roleplaying, and Mutant: Year Zero – Elysium, and of course, it brings each of the inhabitants of the four campaign settings together much post-apocalyptic roleplaying games of old, such as Gamma World.  In fact, with the new set-up, a Game Master with access to those old post-apocalyptic scenarios written in the early 1980s could actually adapt them to the world of Mutant: Year Zero. Overall, Mutant: Year Zero – The Gray Death shows us what the new world of Mutant: Year Zero is like and has the Player Characters confront the first threat to it in an action-packed scenario. It is though, just the next chapter. 

D-Day was a momentous event at the end of War World 2, marking the major assault by the Allies on a Europe which has been under occupation by the Nazis for four years. This single combined forces action has been the subject of numerous books and memoirs over the years, as well as films such as D-Day and Saving Private Ryan, television series like Band of Brothers, and boardgames such as D-Day and Axis & Allies: D-Day, both from Avalon Hill Games, Inc. Many of the board games which explore D-Day are simulations, typically hex and counter wargames. This means that they will only appeal to a certain type of gamer, the wargamer, and typically, they can only be played by two participants, each of whom commands numerous units, which depending upon the game can be squads, platoons, squadrons, battalions, regiments, and more. Yet modern gaming can and often does approach its subject matters with different mechanics and ways of playing. So it is with D-Day Dice, which combines co-operative play, dice mechanics, and a timing mechanism, all played against the board rather than another player. Originally published by Valley Games, Inc. in 2012 following a successful Kickstarter campaign, in 2019, Word Forge Games published D-Day Dice, Second Edition, again following a successful Kickstarter campaign.

Designed to be played by between one and four players, aged fourteen and over, D-Day Dice, Second Edition can be played in roughly forty-five minutes, or less once the players get used to the mechanics or lose. In the game, each player controls a Unit of soldiers assaulting one of the beaches fortified by the Nazis as part of their Atlantic Wall. These Units come from one of four Allied nations—the USA, the United Kingdom, France, and Canada—and will be represented by a single die on the map and supported by a Reference Card and a Resource Tracker. Each turn the players will roll dice to generate resources and use to be able to survive on the battlefield whilst supporting each other and building up a force strong enough to get up the beach and breach the bunker. All this is against the clock and difficult odds. To win, every Unit must assault the bunker and survive—that is, have at least one soldier alive at the end, but if all of the soldiers in a Unit are killed or a Unit cannot advance up the beach before time runs out, then everyone loses and the Nazis win!

Open up the box for D-Day Dice, Second Edition and you will find an eighteen-page rulebook and a twenty-page scenario book; four Reference Cards and four Resource Trackers—one for each nation; six double-sided map boards providing twelve different scenarios; over one hundred cards, representing Specialist soldiers, items, vehicles, and award; thirty tokens; and thirty-two dice. Each of the map board represents a particular historical target, starting with Exercise Tiger, the Allied rehearsal for D-Day, through Omaha Beach and Pointe Du Hoc, up to Pegasus Bridge. Divided into various Sectors, they are marked with obstacles such as land mines and barriers. Many have certain conditions, such as Sectors where there is just room for a single Unit, have requirements to enter, and certain loses which need to be met—for example a Specialist or an Item—before they can be entered. Matching these conditions and maintaining enough Soldiers to keep going will challenge the players throughout D-Day Dice.

Of the thirty-two dice in D-Day Dice, Second Edition, four are black and are rolled when German weapons inflict damage on a Unit. Four are Unit Markers, used to track each Unit’s movement on the map and how much time the Unit has before it must move—either to an adjacent Sector or forward into a Sector closer to the bunker. These is a Unit Marker for each of the Units in the game. The other twenty-four—six per Unit and player—are ‘RWB’ or ‘Red-White-Blue’ dice and lie at the heart of the game. These dice are red, white, and blue, and each player has two of each colour. Each die is marked with six symbols that represent the resources in the game. Star symbols are used to Rally Specialists to a player’s Unit; Soldier symbols—single and double—add Soldiers to a Unit; medal or Courage symbols are used to draw Awards which grant various bonuses or to advance a Unit up the map; and Tool symbols generate Item Points with which to purchase Items. Lastly, Skull symbols cancel other die results if they appear in a player’s Final Tally.

On a turn, each player will roll his six ‘RWB’ dice. He must keep and lock two of them, but can reroll or keep as many of the other dice as he wishes. After the second roll, he must keep and lock another two, but can keep more if he wishes. After the third roll, all of his dice are locked. This is his Final Tally used to generate the resources for that Turn, which are recorded on the Resource Tracker—which requires a little assembly before first game—and spent in that same Turn. Resources are not kept from Turn to Turn.

This is simple enough, but D-Day Dice adds a couple of twists to the dice mechanic. One is that is if a player rolls a ‘Straight’—one of each symbol on every die, he earns a free Award rather than purchasing it with multiple Award symbols. The other is if he rolls three identical symbols on different dice, so the same symbol on a Red, a White, and a Blue die. This grants a ‘RWB’ bonus. So three Skulls or ‘Dead Man’s Gift’ has a player’s Unit finds equipment on a dead soldier’s gear bag; three single Soldiers grants ‘Reinforcements’ which join a Unit; and three Medals or ‘Battle Cry’ inspires a Unit to go above and beyond the call of duty. Now it is not merely a matter of each triple combination granting a ‘RWB’ bonus, because the actual bonus is different for each nation. So for ‘Battle Cry’ for the USA either grants two Stars or enables a Unit to advance into a new Sector without meeting its requirement, but for the United Kingdom, it grants three Soldiers or it enables a Unit to advance into a new Sector without meeting its requirement. These little variations add flavour and variation to each of the Units.

A Turn consists of six phases. In Phase One, the players roll the dice and then do the Upkeep—recording resources generated in Phase Two. In Phase Three, they adjust Unit Markers, turning the die each Turn until the fifth face shows an arrow indicating that the Unit must move in the next phase. In Phase Four, each player can Rally a Specialist, Find an Item, or Draw an Award, depending the results of the ‘RWB’ dice that Turn. A Specialist adds an ability to a Unit, such a Runner which enables a player to give another Unit resources and Items no matter where they are on the map—otherwise they need to be in the Sector to either give or trade resources. Specialists are also important in the game because some maps require them to be sacrificed in order for a Unit to be able to advance. Such Specialists cannot be rallied again, that is, there are no replacements. Items are single-use items of equipment like the Flamethrower which reduces the Defence value of the bunker or the Despatch Case which lets a player copy the Final Tally of another Unit. Awards are again one-use cards and add a great effect to play, for example, the Bronze Star enables a Unit to stay in a Sector for one Turn longer, whilst the amazing Victoria Cross enables a player to determine every player’s Final Tally that Turn.

In Phase Five, each Unit which wants or to Move must do so. This is to a new Sector—either to the side or forward. A Unit cannot retreat or revisit a Sector. In Phase Six, Combat, each Unit takes damage according to the Defense value of the Sector it is in. Damage reduces the number of Soldiers a Unit has and if reduced to zero means that the Allies have lost. If a Unit can get into the Bunker, it will take a lot of damage, so a Unit will need to find Items which reduce its Defense value sufficiently for the Unit to survive assaulting it and so help win the game. This does not have to be done simultaneously, one Unit can successfully assault the Bunker and its player wait for the others to arrive. Once every Unit has attacked and held the Bunker, then the game is won. 

Physically, D-Day Dice, Second Edition is very well produced. Everything is done in full colour, the card stock is good, everything is readable in the Rule Book and the Scenario Book, and the dice feel good in the hand. Perhaps the map boards are a little small and they do not quite sit as flat as they should, but really, these are minor niggles. A better explanation of how the Bunker is assaulted might have been useful for less experienced players.

The rulebook for D-Day Dice, Second Edition also includes notes for solo play as well as adding Victory Points to the game. It ends with some advice on how to play too. The Scenario Book comes with three training missions on Tiger Beach as well as the other eleven maps. Pleasingly, each scenario comes with a dedication to the men and units who fought there along with the specific details about the map.

The twelve map boards and the four different nationalities—and then the addition of the Victory Point rules—give D-Day Dice, Second Edition a lot of replay value. As does its short playing time. It is also easy to set up again, so if one game is lost, it is not difficult to set up another and start again. Whether playing solo with a single Unit or multiple Units—which will take longer to play, but does keep the game’s co-operative element, D-Day Dice, Second Edition is tense and challenging to play. This is especially so on the later maps as you would expect, but it is not just because the players are relying on random dice rolls to determine how they plan and what they can do.

Throughout the game, the players are forced to think ahead and plan what they need on the route they are going to take up the beach, but this changes from map to map. Get that wrong and the game will be lost. So having learned one set of conditions to advance on one map, the players have to learn to prepare for a whole new set of conditions on another map. This is in addition to the game’s co-operative element which will often force Units to congregate in order to swap the game’s various resources. This may be an issue for the more casual player, but not for the experienced board or wargame player.

The ‘RWB’ dice and mechanics are not only clever, they also add some pleasing theme and variation to the different nationalities, though sometimes you wish that there was a little more of this national flavour and theme. That said, they form the foundation upon which a narrative can be told as D-Day Dice is played, as Specialists are Rallied, Vehicles and Items found, and Awards won, and a Unit makes its assault on the Bunker.

D-Day Dice, Second Edition is a clever implementation of modern game mechanics—dice rolling, co-operative play, timed play, and against the clock—to explore an old theme in a new way. 

By 1980, RuneQuest had begun to mark itself as a roleplaying game and setting in the form of Glorantha, which was very different in comparison to other fantasy roleplaying games. It was skill-focused and emphasised every player characters’ faith and belief system and world view in the context of the world of Glorantha, especially in the form of the superlative Cults of Prax. Then came along Plunder, a supplement detailing some six-hundred-and-forty pre-generated treasure hoards and forty-three magical treasures of Glorantha. Plunder does not add as much to the world of Glorantha, but it does support it, both in terms of the mechanics and the background.

The first half of Plunder consists of ten tables, each an eight-by-eight grid, thus providing sixty-four results in each table. In each space is the listing for a treasure hoard that the player characters might be found in their intrepid adventures in Glorantha. This might be nothing; 38 Clacks; 406 Clacks, 364 Lunars, 30 Wheels, and a single gem or piece of jewellery; or 1068 Clacks, 1383 Lunars, 332 Wheels, four gems or pieces of jewellery, and a special item. When the Game Master needs to determine the contents of a hoard, he turns to a table and rolls two eight-sided dice to get a result. Two further tables enable the Game Master to determine what the gems and jewellery are if there are any and what the special items are if there are any. So the gems and jewellery might be an excellent gemstone worth 900 Lunars or costume jewellery worth 45 Lunars, and special items might be a scroll written in Stormspeech which grants a +5% bonus to the Dagger skill if studied, an eleven-point Power storage crystal, or a wand with the Glamour matrix on it.

Mechanically, this all ties into the use of Treasure Factors from the second edition of RuneQuest, recently republished as RuneQuest Classic. Treasure Factors are are means of determining how much loot a monster or an NPC might. The Treasure Factor for any one creature derived from its Hit Points, combat skills, how many extra dice are rolled when it inflicts damage, armour, combat spells, special powers, any poison used, and any extra attacks. If there is more than one monster or NPC, their individual Treasure Factors are added together, and the final value broken down into groups of a hundred. When it comes to using Plunder, the Treasure Factor is used to determine which table the Game Master will roll on when it comes to generating the hoard for a monster or an NPC. So for a single Trollkin with a Treasure factor of six, the Game Master would roll on the very first table in Plunder, but add a whole lot more Trollkin and mix in a Dark Troll or two, and the Treasure Factor rises rapidly so that the Game Master will be rolling on a table later in the book. In general, if the Game Master knows the Treasure Factor, she can generate a treasure hoard with just a handful of rolls.

The second half is dedicated to just some of the magical devices to be found on Glorantha. These range from the marvellously mundane, such as the Golden Torches which never go out, even underwater or in great darkness or Soup Bones which can always be boiled to provide soup, to amazingly magical, like Tora’s Hammer, a stone Warhammer wielded by a hero during the Dawn Ages who slaughtered untold numbers of Mostali with it and which returns to the hand if thrown, and Glass Butterflies, tireless magical messengers which will deliver a spoken phrase anywhere in the universe! Many are very particular in terms of who can use them, such as Morokanth Thumbs, black lumps of thumb-like flesh which when Power is sacrificed, the thumbs can attach to a Morokanth’s hands and enable him to be as dextrous as any human, whilst others are tied to a particular cult. For example, the Lightning Bands once worn by the bodyguards of a high priest of Orlanth Thunderous, which when imbued with Power, enables the wearer to blast out a bolt of lightning via a spear. There are treasures from the Aldryami and the Mostali, Chalana Arroy, Chaos, Kyger Litor, Dragonewts (and from Dragonewts), Waha, Stormbull, and more. Some have more generic links such as Fire or Sky cults.

Every item follows the format. A description, followed by a listing of the cults associated with the item as well as those friendly, hostile, or enemy to it; a discussion of how common knowledge of the item is, ranging from common to one of a kind or owner only; its history and the procedure required to use it (and sometimes make it); and lastly powers and value. The latter should one come up for sale. For example, Bajora’s Shield is a large iron shield with a glowing Death rune on it. It is associated in friendly fashion with Humakt and knowledge of it is automatically known to Humakt’s cult, though it is a cult secret, it is famous and one of a kind. Its history is that it was originally carried by Bajora, a friend of Humakt who sacrificed his life to save Humakt from a thing of Chaos. All that was left of Bajora was his shield, which Humakt carried for the rest of Godtime in his honour. Humakt refused to use it though and so since time began, none of his followers can either. They do know of the shield’s powers, so anyone wielding it and wanting to use if to its fullest powers needs to be on good terms with Humakt’s cult.

The procedure to use it requires the wielder to be a Rune Lord of a cult not an enemy of Humakt. He must then sacrifice a point of Power. Once attuned it grants a +20% bonus to the wielder’s Shield skill, the same effect as the Shield 4 spell when in melee, Light spells on command with no expenditure of Power, and immunity to Sever Spirits when cast anyone other than a Humakti. The value 120,000 Lunars and selling it would offend any Humakti (although buying it to donate to the temple is fine).

One issue perhaps is that a few of the items are unlikely to come into play, for example, the Aluminium Tridents of various sea cults, and of course there are some treasures which are unlikely to fall into the hands of the player characters—mostly Chaos related. Plenty of the others though will be desired by the player characters and some will certainly be subject of great hero quests. If there is an issue with the selection it is that there are few treasures related to the Air and Earth cults, but that is likely due to the contents of Plunder, like Cults of Prax before it, being set in Prax rather Sartar and its surrounds.

Physically, Plunder is again a book of two halves. The first is tables—large, open, and easy to read tables, but tables nonetheless. The second is more open, with one or two entries per page. Some are illustrated, some not, but the artwork is decent, if a little ‘Swords & Sorcery’ in style in places. If any of the artwork is disappointing, it is the cover, which comes from the ‘chainmail bikini’ school of female depiction in fantasy. The skull panties are a notable feature.

At the time of its release, critics could not agree about Plunder. In Space Gamer Number 33 (November 1980), Forest Johnson said that, “About half this book is not very useful. It consists of a shorthand method for generating treasure. (This does nothing to lighten the real work – adding up all those cursed treasure factors.)”, but ended on a positive note, concluding that, “The lack of exotic magic items has heretofore been a weak point in RuneQuest. These items have authentic Gloranthan flavour, complete with history and cult affinities. The discreet use of these items will add spice to a campaign without reducing it to Monty Haul.” Conversely, writing in The Dungeoneer’s Journal Issue: 25 (February/ March 1981), Clayton Miner said, “The variety of the items, and the detailed information included with the great treasures is sure to make this book very useful to Judges. Of more use to a Runequest Judge is the first section of Plunder, which presents easy to use tables for determining that value of a lesser treasure…” and that, “…[T]his book would make a welcome addition to a Judge’s stock of Runequest items. Plunder is definitely a useful piece of work and shows a great deal of imagination, and the only question I had with the book as a whole is, why so none of the items listed under Treasures of Glorantha have a negative side effect on the user.”

Other reviews were more balanced. Oliver Macdonald, reviewing Plunder in White Dwarf No. 25 (June/July 1981) awarded the supplement just five out of ten, adding that, “All points considered Plunder is an interesting but by no means essential RuneQuest play aid, certainly not worth buying if you have a limited budget.” Plunder was reviewed by John Sapienza, Jr. in Different Worlds Issue 12 (July 1981). Of the first half, he wrote that, “I think that a bit of reflection will let the GM realize just how dull it is putting treasure descriptions together, particularly those that get improvised during gaming. Once you realize this, the usefulness of this play aid makes it attractive.” He was more positive about the second half, saying that, “…[T]he treasures are, by and large, not out of balance, and most of them come complete with cult associations that provide effective limits on their use. Other limits are the tendency of certain races to take offense and kill the wearer, such as a suit of dragonewt skin armor. Use this at your own risk, in other words. Neat.” before concluding that, “Plunder is a useful idea, and well done. I recommend it to all RQ GMs.”

Plunder is a curio from a bygone age and another style of play. That style of play is one in which plunder is important. In Dungeons & Dragons, it was treasure and it would directly count towards the number of Experience Points a character gained in addition to that gained from killing monsters. In RuneQuest and Glorantha, the plunder paid first for any dues you owed to your cult and temple, second any monies owed to a cult, temple, or guild for prior training, and third for any skill or spell training undertaken with your cult, temple, or guild. Certainly in RuneQuest II, all of this would cost a character thousands of Lunars. Not so in the latest iteration, RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, which presumes that a character’s training has already been paid for, though a character still owes his tithes to his cult and is encouraged to purchase further training. So there is less of an emphasis today on plunder when roleplaying and exploring Glorantha, as evidenced by advice given in the back of the core rulebook to cut the value of the treasure found when playing classic scenarios. 

So, forty years ago in Glorantha, the need for treasure was greater. Player characters had debts. Thus, the Game Master had to seed his scenarios with plunder aplenty—well not too aplenty because the characters had to have a reason to be coming back for plunder and the peril which went with it—and that took time and effort. Forty years ago then, the tables in the first half of Plunder were useful as they helped speed the process. Not so now when they feel redundant. Similarly, the second half of Plunder with its listing of forty-three magical treasures was useful forty years ago because so few of them had been then detailed in the early days of RuneQuest. So the forty three were useful, many of them tying into the cults described in Cults of Prax and so helping to build the world of Glorantha just a little further. 

Conversely, at this point in the history of RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, the current iteration of the roleplaying game has the same problem—few if any treasures of note have been detailed. There is background and detail to many of these forty-three items that the Game Master could bring them to her Glorantha today and they would still work. Doubtless, new supplements will appear detailing new treasures of Dragon Pass, but the conversion process is anything other than challenging. Until such a supplement is published, Plunder is actually more than a curio.

There can be no doubt that Plunder is no Cults of Prax, for it is very much a curate’s egg. Its dual focus and character—divided equally between the mundane and magical—mean that one half is at best utilitarian, at worst bland, whilst the other by comparison rich in detail and flavour. Conversely, the Game Master is likely to have got more use out of the Treasure Tables than the individual items, even if they are mundane, but nevertheless, the actual treasures in Plunder further showcase the more fantastical nature of Glorantha.

In classic Lovecraftian investigative horror roleplaying, news of the weird and the unnatural is spread by letter, by newspaper, and by word of mouth. Information spreads slowly. Not so in the modern age. Information spreads as fast as social media picks up on it. So when an Internet video of woman, crying and shouting about a community that does terrible things, including taking women and children, whilst society takes its money and looks the other way, before suddenly vanishing, screaming in agony, goes viral, it is sufficient to attract the attention of Delta Green. In response, the highly secret government agency assigns a cell of agents to investigate and establish what happened in the video, but not only investigate. If there are any signs of continuing danger, the agents need to save lives; if there are indications that this was an incursion of the Unnatural, they need to locate its source and stop it; and if this was due to an incursion of the Unnatural, they need to establish a mundane narrative for the video, make sure that nobody suspects Unnatural phenomena to be the cause; but above all, they need to make sure that nobody learns of Delta Green.

This is the set-up for Delta Green: Hourglass, a short investigation for Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game and Lovecraftian investigative horror published by Arc Dream Publishing. It can be played using the roleplaying game’s full rules or those from Delta Green: Need to Know. It also includes notes for running the scenario with agents who members of the Program—and thus members of Delta Green, and those who are Outlaws—thus not members of Delta Green. Like Ex Oblivione before it, Hourglass is another slice of horror which explores the subjugation and corruption of the innocent—though in not quite as brutal or obvious a fashion—and like Ex Oblivione before it, Hourglass also has links back to the very foundation of Delta Green, though not as obvious. In fact, the agents will probably have to dig deep into the scenario in order to find them, but their very presence suggests both a greater framework for both Hourglass and Ex Oblivione—though one that it not necessarily obvious—and the far wider influence of the peoples and things which drew the attention in 1928 of what would one day become Delta Green to the unnatural.

Were it not for the video, the community of Hourglass would be unremarkable. In fact, the only thing of note is the Church of the Twelve Martyrs, a staunchly conservative and insular commune of Christians with grounds just outside the town. A commune which the woman who disappeared belonged to. Could this be the community that woman was raging about before she disappeared? That the woman was a member of the Church of the Twelve Martyrs is easy enough to determine, learning more than this will prove to be a challenge for both the agents and their players. Although insular, the Church of the Twelve Martyrs is an accepted part of the Hourglass community, it pays its taxes, and if its interpretation of Christianity is counter to that of the town’s devout Catholics or evangelical Christians, then it is at least Christian. So the town authorities are reluctant for any agents—if they become aware of their presence—to investigate either the disappearance of the women, believing the video to be a fake, or the Church of the Twelve Martyrs.

Most investigations by Delta Green require a degree of delicacy and so it is here. Agents who jump readily to conclusions or run headlong into examining the Church of the Twelve Martyrs may quickly find their efforts blocked or even themselves reassigned and under investigation. If they take a more systematic approach and dig into the clues and evidence before they approach the church’s compound, they will be better prepared. Even so, getting anything more than hints that there might be something weird going on with the Church of the Twelve Martyrs is going to be difficult for the agents. The compound seems to be normal enough, including a ranch and a farm as well as the church, but there is tension and a sense of paranoia in the air. Hopefully this should be enough to persuade the agents to tread carefully, for if they do not, the members of the Church of the Twelve Martyrs will react in an all too paranoid a fashion. There should be no doubt that its members will go to almost any lengths to protect the church’s secrets—with any luck the agents will have picked up on this after investigating the video. When the members of the Church of the Twelve Martyrs do react, the Handler is given some fun—sorry, I mean nasty—ways in which to mess with and torment the agents. Some of these are quite subtle, but others are enjoyably weird and brutal. These though will need careful staging by the Handler since the players may feel like she is messing with their characters. It is here perhaps that Hourglass could have done with some staging advice on how to handle that. (I would suggest taking the player aside to explain the situation and then letting him roleplay it out.)

Just as it is difficult for the agents to investigate the Church of the Twelve Martyrs, it is equally as difficult for the Handler in two ways. First in maintaining a balance between the paranoia of the various NPCs and their unleashing all hell on the agents, and second, in supporting the investigative efforts of the players and their agents without frustrating them in the face of some very careful and very paranoid NPCs. Another problem with the scenario is that it does have a high number of NPCs for the Handler to deal with. The difficulty of the investigation in Hourglass is really highlighted by the fact that resolution deals more with what could wrong and the subsequent repercussions than with effect of a successful outcome, though of course, the odds are against this. 

Physically, Hourglass is a slim, cleanly presented book. As ever, the artwork is excellent, but the area map feels as if it should have more detail and although there are floorplans of the church on the Church of the Twelve Martyrs, there is no map of the compound itself. It needs a slight edit, but the scenario is otherwise well written.

Delta Green: Hourglass showcases how far the forces of the Unnatural will go to work themselves into society, how far they will go to prey upon the weak, and how willing they are to corrupt the innocent. Coming to this realisation will be undoubtedly be horrifying for the agents and their players, but getting to it is not easy. Delta Green: Hourglass presents a challenging scenario for both Handler and players alike, and with its potential for frustration, is best suited to an experienced gaming group.

It is impossible to ignore the influence of Dungeons & Dragons and the effect that its imprint has had on the gaming hobby. It remains the most popular roleplaying game some forty or more years since it was first published, and it is a design and a set-up which for many was their first experience of roleplaying—and one to which they return again and again. This explains the popularity of the Old School Renaissance and the many retroclones—roleplaying games which seek to emulate the mechanics and play style of previous editions Dungeons & Dragons—which that movement has spawned in the last fifteen years. Just as with the Indie Game movement before it began as an amateur endeavour, so did the Old School Renaissance, and just as with the Indie Game movement before it, many of the aspects of the Old School Renaissance are being adopted by mainstream roleplaying publishers who go on to publish retroclones of their own. Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game, published by Goodman Games is a perfect example of this. Other publishers have been around long enough for them to publish new editions of their games which originally appeared in the first few years of the hobby, whilst still others are taking their new, more contemporary games and mapping them onto the retroclone.

Yet there are other roleplaying games which draw upon the roleplaying games of the 1970s, part of the Old School Renaissance, but which may not necessarily draw directly upon Dungeons & Dragons. Some are new, like Forbidden Lands – Raiders & Rogues in a Cursed World and Classic Fantasy: Dungeoneering Adventures, d100 Style!, but others are almost as old as Dungeons & Dragons. One of these is The Fantasy Trip, published by Metagaming Concepts in 1980. Designed by Steve Jackson, this was a fantasy roleplaying game built around two earlier microgames, also designed by Steve Jackson, MicroGame #3: Melee in 1977 and  MicroGame #6: Wizard in 1978. With the closure of Metagaming Concepts in 1983, The Fantasy Trip and its various titles went out of print. Steve Jackson would go on to found Steve Jackson Games and design further titles like Car Wars and Munchkin as well as the detailed, universal roleplaying game, GURPS. Then in December, 2017, Steve Jackson announced that he had got the rights back to The Fantasy Trip and then in April, 2019, following a successful Kickstarter campaign, Steve Jackson Games republished The Fantasy Trip. The mascot version of The Fantasy Trip is of course, The Fantasy Trip: Legacy Edition. 

The Fantasy Trip: Legacy Edition is a big box of things, including the original two microgames. So instead of reviewing the deep box as a whole, it is worth examining the constituent parts of The Fantasy Trip: Legacy Edition one by one, delving ever deeper into its depths bit by bit. The first of these is Melee, quick to set up, quick to play game of man-to-man combat. It is designed to be played by two or more players, aged ten and over, with a game lasting roughly between thirty and sixty minutes. The second is Wizard, which brings in more options in terms of tactical play because it introduces magic to the arena. Although the two integrate well, Wizard is more complex and harder to learn, yet offers more for a player to get into. The third is Death Test.

Death Testactually consists of two adventures—‘Death Test’ and ‘Death Test 2’—both originally published as MicroQuest 1: Death Test and MicroQuest 1: Death Test 2 in 1980. The new, combined edition comes in a box which contains the two adventures and some sixty-six new counters. Both require the map from Melee and can either be played using just Melee or a combination of Melee and Wizard. Both can also be played in a number of ways. They can be played solo, one player or several players against the adventure, instructions being included in the text as to how any monsters or NPCs will react to the player characters. They can be played with a Game Master controlling and rolling for the monsters and NPCs, whether is with just one player or several. They are designed to be played by between one and four characters. Ideally, these should not be beginning characters, but unfortunately ‘Death Test’ does not say how experienced the player characters should be. In addition, although having more characters in play will provide more tactical options—especially if they include a wizard, they do reduce each character’s final score at the end of the test. If they get to the end of the test, that is. In this way, ‘Death Test’ sets its own difficulty. It is easier with more characters, but the rewards will be less.

The background to ‘Death Test’ has the character—or characters—travelling to the city of Ardonirane, which is ruled by the famous and powerful war leader, Dhallak m’Thorsz Carn. He is once again hiring mercenaries, but will accept only those that pass a test—enter the labyrinth beneath his palace and there fight animals, monsters, prisoners, wizards, and rival would-be employees—and survive! Although there is treasure to be found, what matters to Thorsz is the mercenary’s or mercenaries’ performance. The more foes they defeat or kill, the more they will rank in his estimation and the higher position they will attain in his army.
The labyrinth consists of twelve colour coded rooms connected by a series of corridors. There are no doors, but entrances and exits are marked by black curtains, or rather black magical illusions which the player characters can sometimes pass through and others not, but which they can never see through. This means that in order to find out what is in a room, one or more of the player characters must enter said room. Most of the time, they can leave the way they came. Each room then is its own discrete encounter and with just a dozen of them, it allows for variety of denizens and challenges. ‘Death Test’ is not a dungeon in the traditional roleplaying sense though, the focus being more on combat—as the background suggests—than exploring, finding traps, and so on. Nor is it really a roleplaying adventure, a ‘programmed adventure’ certainly, but not a roleplaying adventure as there is very little, if any, roleplaying involved. That said, run ‘Death Test’ with a Game Master and one or more players and then there are opportunities for the Game Master to roleplay and bring some of the NPCs to life and thus for the player characters to interact with them rather than fighting them.
Consisting of one-hundred-and-sixty-seven entries over seventeen or so pages, there is a greater physicality to ‘Death Test’ in comparison to other solo adventure titles. This not surprising though, for Death Test is an expansion for a man-to-man combat game. So instead of sitting down and reading through a book and rolling dice as necessary, this is definitely an at the table affair with the map, the counters, and the dice in front of you. In further comparison with those other solo adventure books, ‘Death Test’ has a greater replayability factor. Only score enough points to get hired as a recruit? Well, why not try again to see if you can attain a better position or try it with a different mix of characters?
‘Death Test 2’ is double the size of ‘Death Test’. Again, it can either be played using just Melee or a combination of Melee and Wizard, but it can also be played using Into the Labyrinth, which covers roleplaying, character creation and experience, and advanced magic and combat rules for Melee and Wizard. Like ‘Death Test’, it can be can be played solo, one player or several players against the adventure, instructions being included in the text as to how any monsters or NPCs will react to the player characters. They can be played with a Game Master controlling and rolling for the monsters and NPCs, whether is with just one player or several. This is certainly the case if ‘Death Test 2’ is run using the rules from Into the Labyrinth. Unlike ‘Death Test’, ‘Death Test 2’ is intended for a party of four characters rather than between one and four, and it includes advice as how experienced the player characters need to be, for like ‘Death Test’, it is not designed for beginning characters. ‘Death Test 2’ can also be run like a traditional dungeon adventure, and this is supported with advice on adding it to a campaign and on expending gained Experience Points.
The background to ‘Death Test 2’ is that Dhallak m’Thorsz Carn is unimpressed with the candidates to join his army who succeeded at getting through the labyrinth in ‘Death Test’. So he has another built, one which is more involving and more challenging. Consisting of some two-hundred-and-eighty-seven entries over thirty-six pages, ‘Death Test 2’ only adds a few more rooms in comparison to ‘Death Test’. The increased number of entries allow for more detail, more things to happen, and more things for the characters to do. There are traps and puzzles, a greater range of monsters to encounter and magical items to find, players will find their characters tested in other ways than combat—‘Death Test 2’ includes the need to make Saving Throws. This is a richer environment for them to explore and no mere complex of arenas to enter and fight in. This does not mean that ‘Death Test 2’ is not a combat focused adventure—it very much is—but it is written far more like a traditional solo roleplaying adventure and presents a richer playing environment, so is far more engaging. 
Physically, both ‘Death Test’ and ‘Death Test 2’ are plain, simple booklets with paper covers. Behind the full colour covers, they are black and white throughout. Each is lightly illustrated, but the artwork is excellent throughout.
Of course, of the two, ‘Death Test 2’ is better than ‘Death Test’. It is more detailed and offers more options than just combat, plus it supports more roleplaying, especially if Into the Labyrinth is being used. On the downside, because it has more secrets to be found, it is not as readily replayable. In other words, there is less of the simple board game to its play than there is in ‘Death Test’. Yet ‘Death Test’ should not be discounted. Its simplicity means that it can more readily be replayed, and it is easier to both set up and play. At its very simplest, ‘Death Test’ provides a reason to play Melee and/or Wizard than just fights in an arena.
Death Test is a good combination boxed set, presenting two solo adventures of differing complexity and detail that offer a great deal of flexibility in terms of their set-up and play options. More so than traditional solo adventures. If you have Melee and/or Wizard, then you should put yourself through the Death Test—both of them.