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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—oOo—
The first thing you notice about Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 2 is the dice. Of course, you are meant to. A set of yellow polyhedral dice with white lettering against the dark background of the cover to Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 2? It stands out. After all, what gamer does not like a set of dice? And they are nice dice. They sit on the front of the second issue of Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer, a partwork from Hachette Partworks Ltd. A partwork is an ongoing series of magazine-like issues that together form a completed set of a collection or a reference work. In the case of Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer, it is designed to introduce the reader to the world and the play of Dungeons & Dragons, specifically, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. With the tag line, ‘Learn – Play – Explore’, over the course of multiple issues the reader will learn about Dungeons & Dragons, how it is played and what options it offers, the worlds it opens up to explore, and support this with content that can be brought to the table and played. Over the course of eighty issues, it will create a complete reference work for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, provide scenarios and adventures that can be played, and support it with dice, miniatures, and more.
Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 2 does not just come with the dice. There is the second issue of the magazine, there is a very sturdy map of part of Faerün, and of course, there is advertising for the forthcoming issues of the partwork and their bonus content, as well as the advantages of subscribing. If that does not sound quite as much as came with Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 1, then you would be correct. The most obvious difference is that the dice with this issue are not official Dungeons & Dragons dice and they do not come in a tin—meaning that players will have to find something else to store them in until either an issue of Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer comes with a free dice bag or that fabled ‘dice jail’. At the same time, the price of Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 2 has risen in comparison to the Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 1. This though is perfectly normal for the partwork format, the first two issues being cheaper than the third and subsequent issues which will be priced at the full rate. Essentially, the first issue is always priced so as to be very pocket friendly, engage the purchaser, and hopefully encourage him to purchase future issues, exactly as you would expect for a loss leader.

So what of the content in Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 2? Although not as attractively—or even at all—packaged as the dice in the premiere issue, the dice are decent and having more dice around the table is always a good thing, whether playing the encounters given in Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer or not. The map depicts the area of the Sword Coast east of the city of Neverwinter. It is excerpted from the map included in the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. Measuring twenty-two by thirty inches and marked in five-mile wide hexes, it covers an area from The Crags in the north to the Mere of Dead Men and Kryptgarden Forest in the south, and from Neverwinter on the coast to the Starmetal Hills and the Sword Mountains in the east. It is done in full colour, on very sturdy paper, and is really rather fetching. As with the included encounter in Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 2, the map ties in with the original Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set and also the more recent release from Wizards of the Coast, Phandelver and Below – The Shattered Obelisk.
The magazine part of Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 2 is just twenty-four pages in length. Issues contain sections dedicated to the seven gameplay elements—‘Sage Advice’, ‘Character Creation’, ‘The Dungeon Master’, ‘Spellcasting’, ‘Combat’, ‘Encounters’, and ‘Lore’—of Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 2 focuses on just three of these—‘Sage Advice’, ‘Character Creation’, and ‘Lore’, although it does also include an ‘Encounter’ which is exclusive to the partwork. The ‘Sage Advice’ looks at three things and explains how they work. The first is ‘Advantage, Disadvantage, & Inspiration’ which examines the key mechanic introduced to Dungeons & Dragons and the wider hobby back in 2014. A decade on, these are well worn mechanics, tried and tested, whilst Inspiration was the very first roleplaying mechanic introduced to Dungeons & Dragons after being in print for forty years! Advantage and Disadvantage are simple mechanics and easy to grasp and use in play. Here Disadvantage is not quite as well explained as Advantage though. Bardic Inspiration is mentioned too, but its explanation is left for another issue of the partwork to explain. The ‘Rule of Cool’ is discussed and the prospective Dungeon Master is encouraged to employ it.
The second is ‘Resting and Hit Dice’. This covers the concepts of the Long Rest and the Short Rest, before the third, ‘Spellcasting Explained’ covers how spells are cast for both Wizards and Clerics. Spells are broken down into their components and their duration, the differences between Spell Level and Player Character Level are also explained, how Concentration works, and how spells are prepared. Everything is well explained and easy to read.
‘Character Creation’ looks at just two things. The first is Humans as a species in Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, including mention of notable Humans such as Elminster and Minsc (plus Boo, his miniature Space Hamster companion), whilst the second is the Rogue Class. This highlights the flexibility of the role, whether as thief or diplomat or investigator, and its reliance on stealth, dextrous action, precision, and in some situations, charm. As well as discussing Rogues in the Forgotten Realms, its companion piece is ‘Rogue Features’. Or rather, ‘Rogue Feature’, for although the Rogue as a Class can do rather a lot, the only feature discussed is the Sneak Attack. It is all solid information, but it highlights one of the downsides of the partwork. This is that only one aspect of a subject is going to be covered in a partwork. In this case, it is the Sneak Attack of the Rogue. The other abilities of the Rogue, even those available at First Level, will have to wait for a future issue.
Penultimately, the ‘Lore’ section proves to the shortest section in Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 2. It simply provides a two-page overview of the Forgotten Realms, serving as a straightforward introduction. The last section in the issue of this partwork is an ‘Encounter’ which at six pages long, is the longest section in the issue. ‘Adventure 1 – 2 The Forgotten Vault’ effectively introduces the players and their characters to their first dungeon. Where ‘Adventure 1 – 1 King of the Hill’ from Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 1 is set in the village of Phandalin, ‘Adventure 1 – 2 The Forgotten Vault’ takes the Player Characters away from it and under the eaves of Neverwinter Wood. They are hired by Daran Eldermath, a Half-Elf adventurer who has retired to Phandalin, to help him relocate a villa he explored and mapped years ago, but which he strangely forgot about. Once there, he wants them to recover a beautiful statue of an elf queen. The villa has long fallen into ruin and been grown over, but the vault is intact, although partially split by an underground river. The adventure comes with a map that the Dungeon Master can use as a handout and consists of just six locations. It is seeded with a trap, there is a physical obstacle in the form of the river, and there a couple of fun monsters. The scenario is short, designed to be played in an hour or two, ideally with the pre-generated Player Characters included with Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 1. There is advice—or DM Tips—throughout as well. ‘Adventure 1 – 2 The Forgotten Vault’ is a decent encounter, nicely introduces the concepts of dungeoneering play in Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition.
Physically, Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 2 is very well presented, in full colour using the Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition trade dress and lots and lots of Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition artwork. So, the production values are high, colourful, and the writing is supported with lots of ‘Top Tip’ sections. The result is that Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 2 is as physically engaging as the first issue, a nice touch being that even the backing board holding the bagged issue even has Dungeons & Dragons artwork on it where you cannot see it until you pull the bag from the board. However, the glued together spine and disparate nature of the contents highlight how the partwork is designed to be pulled apart and its pages slotted into the binders that will be available for Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer as a whole.

Where Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 1 was undoubtedly great value for money, Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 2 does not represent as good value as that first issue did. Which is to be expected. This is how a partwork works. For the prospective Dungeon Master, the encounter, ‘Adventure 1 – 2 The Forgotten Vault’ is a decent enough continuation of ‘Adventure 1 – 1 King of the Hill’ from Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 1, especially if added to the Phandelver and Below – The Shattered Obelisk campaign. However it is used, the encounter at least offers a couple of hours’ worth of play. In fact, an experienced Dungeon Master could run both encounters in the space of an evening or afternoon. Overall, Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 2 is a good continuation of Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 1, but not as good as Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 1.

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

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

—oOo—
Name: The PursuitPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Cameron Hays

Setting: Regency-era mid-AtlanticProduct: Scenario for In Strange Seas: Horror in the Royal Navy for Regency Cthulhu and Regency Cthulhu: Dark Designs in Jane Austen’s England
What You Get: Eighteen page, 5.42 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Sometimes the pressganged are worse than the dregs society has to offer... Plot Hook: Rounding the Horn to avoid danger is definitely going to make things worse.
Plot Support: Staging advice, six pre-generated Investigators, two NPCs (plus more), and two handouts.Production Values: Decent
Pros# Close knit, closed-world investigation as the Investigators sail into danger# Potential for inter-party conflict# Solid advice on investigative paths# Agoraphobia# Pagophobia# Hemophobia
Cons# Cult leader’s Sanity is impossible
Conclusion# Solid sea-going one-shot for In Strange Seas# Enjoyable emphasis on human monsters rather than the Mythos as Investigators must navigate a society a world away from Regency England.

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

—oOo—

The idea of using the Internet to deliver a roleplaying game was still new in 2003. Deep7 was one of the pioneers, publishing a series of mini-roleplaying games via what would become DriveThruRPG.com. This series was the 1PG line, now published via Precis Intermedia, a line of simple roleplaying games each focused upon a particular genre and specifically, the cinematic version of that genre and a cinematic style of play. Each entry in the series was—and still is—low preparation, easy to learn, and easy to grasp because each leaned into a cinematic genre. These factors were enhanced by the format which limited a particular aspect of each roleplaying game and its genre to a single page each. Hence the ‘1PG’ name. Thus, the rules of play fit on a single page, the rules for character generation fit on a single page, the advice for the Referee fits on a single page, each scenario fits on a single page, and so on. The 1PG series did espionage with Agent S.E.V.E.N., pulp action with Dime Heroes, and Irwin Allen-style disaster movies with Disaster!, and more.
Published in 2003, Pax Gladivs: Epic Sword & Sandals Adventure was Deep7’s entry into the Swords & Sandal genre of epic stories set in Ancient Rome, inspired by such films as Gladiator and Ben Hur—and that is really all that the players need to know. For the Referee, play is intended to be epic and exciting, but never slow, with quick and dirty intrigues in the villas of the rich, blood spilled on the sands of the arena to cheers of thousands, chases back and forth across the empire by the emboldened barbarians, and so on. Every story should have a good villain and the action should first, the rules second. This amounts to the advice given in Pax Gladivs, which boils down to stick on the soundtrack to Gladiator, describe the scene, and let the action and the drama begin.
A Player Character in Pax Gladivs is simply defined. He has four stats—Vigour, Splendour, Scheming, and Acumen. Both these and the roleplaying game’s various skills are rated between one and three. In addition, a Player Character has Spirit, his charisma and your mental and physical bearing; Guts, which is his courage and bravery; Blood is his Hit Points; and Esteem, which is a measure of his fame and respect. To create a Player Character, a player rolls a three-sided die for each stat, assigns between four and six points between skills, rolls to determine how much Spirit, Guts, and Blood he has, and then rolls against each stat to gain a point of Esteem if successful. Lastly, he rolls for money and for Background and Provenance. Background is his status and occupation, such as Senator or Gladiator, whilst Provenance determines where he is from. Both Background and Provenance provide a mixture of bonuses to stats, skills, and secondary factors.
Name: AlbusBackground: Slave Provenance: Rome
Vigour 3 (Drinking 1, Running 1)Splendour 2 (Etiquette 1)Scheming 3 (Con 2, Dodge 2, Sneaking 1)Acumen 3
SPIRIT 2 GUTS 4 BLOOD 19 ESTEEM 3
Mechanically, as with other 1PG titles, Pax Gladivs is simple. To have a character undertake an action his player chooses the appropriate combination of a stat and a skill and attempts to roll equal to or under the target number the combination creates on a single six-sided die. Rolls of one always succeed, whilst rolls of six always fail. Fear is handled via a Guts check, and if failed, the Player Character loses a point of Spirit. Losing all Spirit means losing heart and the will to adventure. The only way to recover Spirit is to survive until the end of a scenario and assign Character Points earned then. Contests of will are rolled against Spirit, but a player can add his character’s Esteem. Combat is only slightly more complex. In combat, the Fighting skill is used for melee, Archery for ranged attacks, and Dodge for evading them. Rolls are made by those involved in the fight simultaneously, with the combatant who makes the roll by the widest margin succeeding. Ties go to the defender, but if both opponents are attacking, ties mean that both attacks succeed. Damage for each weapon type is a set value, for example, five for a short sword and fifteen for a ballista bolt! The attacker’s Vigour value is added to the damaged for melee attacks and all damage is deducted from the Player Character’s Blood value, and armour reduces the damage suffered—one point for thick robes, two for leather, and three for mail or scale.
Beyond this, Pax Gladivs adds rules for genre in the form of the Circus Maximus. It suggests making use of vehicle combat rules in The 1P Companion for chariot races and combat, but the Referee can get by with what is given here. In the arena, Esteem can be used to add a Player Character’s Spirit to the Fighting skill or Armour Value, gain more Blood, invoke the crowd to temporarily increase Guts, turn the crowd against the atonement, or increase the Dodge skill. This only lasts a round and the point of Esteem is lost for the day. If a Player Character uses a point of Esteem to inflict a killing blow, it is not lost. It is permanently lost if a Player Character is defeated, but not dead, and he pleads with the Emperor to spare his life, which requires a Performance check. Wins in the arena will earn a Player Character further Esteem, and if he can earn enough Esteem in this way, he can gain his freedom and become a Freedman, but not a citizen. That requires service as a soldier. A Player Character who begins play as a Gladiator does so with Esteem, but anyone sold into service as a Gladiator loses all of his previous Esteem and has to begin again.
The rules for Pax Gladivs amount to just four pages and the character sheet actually contains two sheets. The rest of the roleplaying game consists of six scenarios, each a page long. Together, they form a mini-campaign, which begins with dramatic fashion in ‘The Iron Lion’, when a lion with iron-shod claws is unleashed on the streets of Rome to attack a particular senator! Who would engineer such an attack? The senator rewards those that helped save him—that is, the Player Characters—by taking them into his employ and quickly they discover that his life is still in danger. The plot continues over the Alps and into Southern Germania where the senator is due to enter into treaty talks with the barbarian tribes across the border. The overall plot is fairly simple, but complicated with double-crossing action back and forth and lots of attempts to stop the senator. The players and their characters need not think too much about the plot, but go with it for the action and the drama.
Physically, Pax Gladivs is cleanly and simply laid out. Bar the cover, it is not really illustrated and the roleplaying game as a whole, very much needs a good edit. Some of the phrasing and terminology is inconsistent, but it is easy to work out how every thing should play.
These smaller games often get forgotten given how old they are, but many of the 1PG titles are worth revisiting or visiting for the first time because they deliver what they promise—cinematically styled, genre focused mini-games that are easy to prepare and run, all with scenarios, some of which form mini-campaigns. Pax Gladivs: Epic Sword & Sandals Adventure was there in 2003 for a quick, dirty, and simple pick-up game set in Rome and it pretty much still is in 2023.

The Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game Starter Set takes roleplayers into a world of despair and uncertainty, when what it is to be Human is lost, when empathy is all that separates mankind from that which is not only faster and stronger than it us, but also threatens to replace us. Under the darkness of a world soiled by war, pollution, and ecological degradation, in the shadows spun by neon, simulacra skulk, hiding amongst those they want to be like, and they will do anything to survive and become more like the masters they once served. The year is 2037. The Wallace Corporation is the wealthiest company in the system and using advances made on Tyrell Corporation technology and patents, has introduced the Nexus-9, a replicant design incapable of lying or harming humans of its own accord. The United Nations classifies the Nexus-9 as ‘safe’ Replicants and grants them the status of second-class citizens with limited rights. Rep-Detect Units of the world’s various police forces are still responsible for investigating crimes related to replicants and some even begin to employ Nexus-9 units as investigators. The Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game Starter Set presents a complete investigation—or Case File—as it is known for four players and the Game Runner. This includes a summarised version of the full rules from the Blade Runner – The RoleplayingGame, four pre-generated Investigators, two sets of dice, and the complete Case File supported by innumerable handouts.
The Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game Starter Set is published by Free League Publishing and comes very well appointed. It includes the thirty-two-page Rules book, the fifty-six-page Case File 01: Electric Dreams, four pre-generated Investigator sheets, a Time Tracker Sheet, a large foldout full-colour map of 2037 Los Angeles, twenty-six full colour-handouts—both clues and maps, seventy cards, and a set of eight dice. The dice consist of two six-sided, two eight-sided, two ten-sided, and two twelve-sided dice. The dice are marked with numbers and symbols. Successes are also marked with eye symbols, two for the maximum number on each die, whilst ones are marked with an Origami Unicorn. The cards include Initiative cards as well Mugshot cards for the Case File, plus Aerial Chase Obstacle cards, Ground Chase Obstacle cards, Foot Chase Obstacle cards, and Chase Manoeuvre cards for use in the different types of chases the Investigators have to engage in. The four pre-generated Investigators consist of two Humans and two Replicants. The Humans consist of a veteran Inspector and an Enforcer with a military background, whilst the Replicants consist of a Forensics Specialist and an Interrogation and Negotiation Specialist.
The Rules book wastes very little is getting on with the explaining the mechanics of the roleplaying game. There is a little colour fiction and a timeline of events from the eighties through the events of Blade Runner and its fallout, the Blackout which destroyed the digital world, its partial restoration via the Wallace Datalink Network, and the introduction of the Nexus-9 by the Wallace Corporation. It then explains some of the concepts of game play. This includes playing in shifts—four six-hour shifts per day—with one of them devoted to Downtime, when an Investigator can rest, relax, clear his head and reset his system. The players are advised to split the party and conduct multiple, separate investigative paths. An Investigator can suffer Stress—by Pushing skill rolls and rolling Origami Unicorn symbols on the die, working too many Shifts without Downtime, and from stressful situations. An Investigator who suffers too much Stress can be Broken, and in the case of a Replicant, result in his needing to return to the Rep-Detect Unit Headquarters for a Baseline Test, which will reset his stress levels, but will lose him Humanity Points if he has gained any. The Rules book also notes the roleplaying game’s capacity for Player Character versus Player Character conflict, typically triggered by different interpretations of a case or the moral choices stemming from such interpretations.
An Investigator in Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game is simply detailed. He has four Attributes— Strength, Agility, Intelligence, and Empathy, and thirteen Skills, three per Attribute. The thirteenth Skill is Driving, which is derived from the manoeuvrability of the vehicle being driven. Both Attributes and Skills are assigned a letter, A, B, C, or D. Each letter corresponds to a die type. Thus, A to a twelve-sided die, B to a ten-sided die, C to an eight-sided die, and D to a six-sided die. To undertake an action, a player rolls one die for the Attribute and one die for the Skill. Rolls of six or more count as a success. Rolls of ten or more grant two successes. In general, unless rolls are opposed, only one success is required to succeed at an action. An extra success enables an Investigator to get more information, perform a task faster, or help an Investigator with a task. Only in combat do more than the one extra success count, indicating that more damage has been inflicted or a critical injury.
An easy task gives an Investigator an Advantage. In which case, his player rolls another die, equal to the lowest die in the pool. Conversely, a difficult task removes the lower die in the pool altogether. If any roll is unsuccessful, a player can choose to Push the dice roll and roll again. However, if a one—or the Origami Unicorn—is rolled on the first roll or the Pushed roll, the Investigator will suffer Stress. A Human can Push a Skill rolls once, but a Replicant can Push a Skill roll twice.
In addition, an Investigator can have Specialities associated with Skills—Humans tend to have them more Replicants. Both Human and Replicant will however, have a Key Memory and a Key Relationship. The Key Memory can be used once per game session to improve an Investigator’s chance to succeed  and will earn him a Humanity Point at the end of the session, as will interacting with his Key Relationship. Throughout an investigation, an Investigator can earn and lose Promotion Points, depending upon his actions and progress in the case. Replicants who lose all of their Promotion Points must take a Baseline Test. Promotion Points can be spent to learn Specialities, to request specialised equipment, and to even apply for a pay increase. Humanity Points are earned for committing acts of compassion or humanity and can be used to increase Skills.
Mechanically, the Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game Starter Set—and thus the Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game—at this stage does not quite resemble the Year Zero used in Free League Publishing, such as Alien: The Roleplaying Game or Tales from the Loop – Roleplaying in the ’80s That Never Was. It is more like the rules to be found in Twilight 2000: Roleplaying in theWorld War III That Never Was, but ultimately, the major difference lies in the fact that in most Year Zero roleplaying games, a player will be rolling a handful of six-sided dice, whereas here, polyhedral dice and used, and typically just the two per roll. Combat is designed to be straightforward, an Investigator typically having one move and one action per round, initiative being handled by cards, with options including grappling, taking aim, manipulating or influencing someone, and so on. A roll of two or more Successes on an attack roll counts as a critical success, necessitating a roll on a Critical Injuries table with the ‘Crit Die’ for the weapon used. Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game is not a forgiving game in terms of combat and all firearms have a high ‘Crit Die’, so the Investigators should not engage in combat lightly. The rules also cover vehicles in combat—some vehicles can be armed, but for the most part, one vehicle will be ramming another. The rules for chases cover chases on foot, and then by ground or in the air.
Further background details Los Angeles Police Department Precinct 995 or ‘the Tower’, which is where the Investigators are based as part of the Rep-Detect Unit. It lists some of the resources available to an Investigator via ‘the Tower’ and looks at leveraging assets, conducting investigations, and protecting your sources. It also discusses working the system in order to progress with a Case File, noting that making the wrong choices or not updating an Investigator’s Reporting Officer will result in a loss of Promotion Points, but may reward Humanity Points. The equipment covered in ‘Tools of the Trade’ includes the Voight-Kampff Machine, the Post-Traumatic Baseline Test used on Nexus-9 Investigators, various weapons including the PK-D 5223 Blaster and the PK-D FKM890 Blaster, and the LAPD Spinner – Detective Special Model 294-02.
The investigation included in the Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game Starter Set is Case File 01: Electric Dreams. It is actually the first part of a campaign arc called ‘The Immortal Game’, which Free League Publishing intends to support with further releases. Case File 01: Electric Dreams opens with a classic scene almost exactly like that of Deckard’s introduction in Blade Runner. It is a nice touch, but it also introduces one of the many handouts in the scenario—a newspaper. The investigation involves a missing Replicant, working for the Rep-Detect Unit. The Investigators are assigned to find it. The investigation is supported with an array of high-quality handouts for the players and their Investigators, a countdown of events for the Game Runner to trigger, Downtime events to make the Investigator lives more interesting, and descriptions of the clues, locations, and NPCs for the Game Runner. There is advice on running the Case File with one, two, or three Investigators and on substituting Investigators of the players’ own creation using the rules in Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game. It is a fairly complex scenario, which will probably take a group several sessions to roleplay through as the Investigators are divided physically in following multiple trails of clues—they can keep in touch via the KIA or ‘Knowledge Integration Assistant that each of them is assigned—and potentially morally as more and more of the mystery is revealed and the Investigators have to choose between what is the correct course of action in terms of procedure and what the best course of action in terms of empathy. Of course, they will be under pressure from both their boss—Deputy Chief Dave Holden—and the Wallace Corporation for a quick resolution, the Game Runner recording the Investigators’ actions and time spent on the Time Tracker. Fans of Blade Runner will definitely enjoy it as it visits several familiar locations and NPCs.
Physically, the Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game Starter Set is very well produced. The two booklets could be a little sturdier and as with Alien: The Roleplaying Game, not everyone is going to appreciate its open layout and text boxes on dark backgrounds. The handouts and the maps and the cards though, are all of really high quality. The artwork is excellent, really capturing Bladerunner’s look, feel, and tone.
If there is a downside to the Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game Starter Set, it is this. At the time of its publication and right now, it contains the only Case File available for the roleplaying game. However, once there are more Case Files, the Rules book becomes an easy reference for the basic rules that the players can consult, many of the cards can be used in play, and there are locations in Case File 01: Electric Dreams which the Investigators may revisit in future cases. Of course, the extra dice are useful too.
The Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game Starter Set will appeal most obviously to the Blade Runner fan, as well as the Science Fiction fan, the neo-noir fan, and the fan of mysteries of any kind. This is a great introduction to Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game, one which the Game Runner will definitely want as it provides the roleplaying game with its first full Case File, a superbly supported, well written mystery that captures the world of Blade Runner seen on onscreen.

There is a woman incarcerated in the Great Hospice who claims not only to be Princess Isabella von Holswig-Schleistein, sister to Emperor Karl-Franz I, but also to be in love with Duke Leopold von Bildhofen of Carroburg and a scholar herself, worthy of the title, ‘The Seer Princess’. Of course, his Imperial Majesty would likely refute such claims, but look upon kindly the efforts of the sisters of Shallya of the Great Hospice in tending to her well-being, just as Duke Leopold would deny any such relationship. What is in no doubt is that the women, simply known as ‘Isabella’ is of good stock and educated, given the papers that have been slipping out of the Great Hospice, which are of scholarly note and interest. The first of these has been collated as Archives of the Empire Volume I. This is a supplement for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Fourth Edition, published by Cubicle Seven Entertainment Ltd., which has since been followed up with further entries in the series—Archives of the Empire Volume II and Archives of the Empire Volume III. This slim first volume collates information about the Empire and the three major races living within and alongside its borders.

Archives of the Empire Volume I opens with a journal entry for Isabella before getting down its first subject matter. This is a presentation of the state of the Empire in the Year 2512 IC, notably before the events of The Enemy Within campaign play out and come to fruition with Empire in Ruins, the redone fifth, and final part of the campaign. It provides a one- or two-page description of each of the ten Grand Provinces—that is, those provinces which provide an Elector Count who has the right to elect the emperor—of the Empire, from Averland and Middenheim to Talabecland and Talabheim. These in turn list the official name, ruler, government, capital, internal provinces and notable freistadts (self-governing towns and cities), and primary exports for each Grand Province, as well as details of their lands, peoples, and significant places. The descriptions are broad in nature given the limited amount of space given to each, for example, Averland consists of floodplains, is known for its longhorn cattle and vineyards, feuds with neighbouring Stirland over three independent fiefdoms, and its peoples are seen as flighty and fickle, but still adhering to tradition, whilst Stirland has a reputation as a rural backwater and its peoples as being highly superstitious, being obsessed with both beer and their ancestry, a strong dislike for Halflings for the loss of the province’s good farmland to form Mootland, and a particular fear of vampires and the undead given that the County of Sylvania, the historic home of the Vampire Counts lies to the immediate east.

In places—and this is a feature of Archives of the Empire Volume I—the supplement clearly points to other supplements which have expanded treatments of their subject matters. For example, the description of Reikland points to Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Fourth Edition and the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Starter Set for more information, and in the case of the latter, more information on the town and goings on in Ubersreik. Whilst this is undeniably all useful, but the problem is that the relative brevity of the information feels out of place in this supplement, where at just a page or two in length, they would have provided a good overview in the core rulebook. Or alternatively, these pages could have been expanded to take up the whole of Archives of the Empire Volume I rather than covering the number of subjects that it does. In meantime, these descriptions are still good introductions, but no more, and the likelihood is that they will be superseded by supplements dedicated to them of their own, such as Middenheim: City of the White Wolf. Individual maps of the Grand Provinces would also have been useful.

‘Halfling Clans of the Reikland’ explores the presence of Halflings—sometimes seen as the joke Player Character race in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay—in one of Grand Provinces of the Empire. Which begs the question, what are Halflings like in the other nine Grand Provinces? Followed by, could this have been saved for a big supplement on Halflings which covered the whole of the Empire? It feels as if there nine other articles to come dealing with Halflings in those other Grand Provinces, as if Archives of the Empire Volume I is some kind of partwork. Nevertheless, this is entertaining content, describing twelve of the most common clans to be found in Reikland. They include the Ashfield Clan, known for its Fieldwardens who patrol the borders of Mootland and its archers, many of whom join the imperial army; the Rumster clan, which specialises making pies and pastries; and the Lowhaven, thieves and racketeers who band together to stand up against the ‘big ones’ as Humans are known. These without a clan are known as Lostpockets. The clans and their predilections make for easy characterisation, whether that is of Player Characters or NPCs, and it is going to be up the Game Master and her players whether they want to embrace, at best, the archetypes, at worst, the clichés, that these clan descriptions present. One way to embrace these is to use the various skills and talents suggested for each clan that can be added to or replace those listed in the core rulebook.

Better still is ‘A Guide to the Grand County of the Mootland’, which describes its founding, history, politics—mostly a lack of them because Halflings are busy doing other things, tourism, and major locations. With its bucolic rolling hills, the inspiration for The Mootland is obvious, but the chapter gives a plenty of fun twists and tweaks to make it feel like the Old World. Thus, in the timeline, there have been several pie wars—mostly over the placement of pastry, the flan is illegal, and the sausage roll remains a symbol of lean times and looked upon with disgust! There are notes for the Game Master on how to speak Mootish or ‘Haffenaff’, which comes across as a rural version of Cockney; the Fieldwarden Jasperjohn Maskerline is using diversions and psychological warfare in the south to trick Goblin scouts that the Halfling forces are ten times the number that they actually are, which is a lovely historical reference; and the pranksterish nature of Halflings means that they bolster the region’s tourist industry with a ‘Grand Tour’ that is just one big joke on the ‘big ones’ visiting for a bit of Halfling exoticism. Where ‘Halfling Clans of the Reikland’ provided NPC examples for each of its twelve clans, ‘A Guide to the Grand County of the Mootland’ goes even further with lots of extra details and almost a scenario hook—literally given fish hook through each one on the page—on every page.

Then having done Halflings, Archives of the Empire Volume I does Dwarves, and does so in a similar manner to Halflings. Thus, you have Dwarves in the Empire and then Dwarves on home territory. ‘Imperial Dwarves’ examines the Dwarves who live across the Empire, highlighting the close links between the Empire and the Dwarves, and examining the not always cordial relationship between the Imperial Dwarves and their cousins in the Dwarf holds in the mountains, the nature of Dwarf society and settlements—the latter highlighting how they effectively build mini-fortresses with tunnels to hold supplies below, and so on. These are accompanied by three decent NPCs and story hooks for each. Contrasting this is ‘A Guide to Karak Azgaraz’, a Dwarf hold which is just south of, and has close ties with, Ubersreik, and is governed by relatively young Dwarven king—sone would say too young, whose council is riven by old grudges. The description focuses very much less on the clans to be found in the hold, and more on the locations in and around the hold, such as the skybridges which form the only point of access from the south, the fortified Argraz Trading Post built in Merchant Pass to control trade, the Under the Mountain Inn within the hold where outsiders can trade, the Erdinken Brewery which serves non-Dwarves weaker so as not to waste the good stuff, and the various Deeps where the dwarves actually live. Beyond this, it notes some of the threats faced by the hold, including bandits, Goblins, and Orcs. The accompanying adventure hooks involves the Player Characters dealing with these external threats as well as getting involved—carefully—in Dwarven politics within the hold itself. Given how close to Ubersreik the hold is, ‘A Guide to Karak Azgaraz’ is actually fairly useful, but what lets it down is a lack of maps. It would have been really useful to have maps of the hold to help the Game Master describe it to her players, and similarly, maps of the typical settlements of the Imperial Dwarves would have been useful too. Lastly, there is no proper illustration of Karak Azgaraz, so the Game Master is left wondering what it, and especially, its skybridges, look like.

Penultimately, for the Elves, Archives of the Empire Volume I simply presents ‘A Guide to the Laurelorn’. There is no discussion of Elves in the Empire, but instead this description of the Laurelorn Forest, an independent Eleven kingdom on the southwest border of the Empire, between Nordland and the Wasteland. The Wood Elves—or ‘Eonir’—are distinct from the Athel Loren—or Asrai—in that they are less isolationist and their spiritual ties to the trees are substantially weaker. The chapter includes a history of the Laurelorn Forest, a description of the three social classes, and a visitor’s guide. There is a definite sense of age to the region, evidenced in the three classes which make up the Elves’ society based on where they and their ancestors were during the War of the Beard. The upper classes reside in the restored ruins of the original Elven colony, the middle classes took refuge in the forest during the War of the Beard, and the lower classes entered the forest after the war. It should be noted that War of the Beard took place five millennia ago. Besides numerous scenario hooks, it is suggested that for Player Character Elves from Laurelorn Forest, High Elves and their associated Careers represent upper class characters and Wood Elves and their associated Careers the middle classes. It is suggested that none of the working-class Elves become adventurers. Overall, the description and details of Laurelorn are decent.

Rounding out Archives of the Empire Volume I is an appendix containing four new careers. Three of these are from the Ranger Class. The Ghost Strider is a forest warden for Elves; the Fieldwarden which patrols the borders of the Mootland and is for Halflings; and the Karak Ranger is for the Dwarves and patrols around a Dwarven hold above and below ground. The fourth career is an oddity, a bit of silliness that the Game Master can choose to include or not in her campaign. This is the Badger Rider for the Halfling. A member of the Warrior Class, the Badger Rider is typically a loner, akin to a questing knight, doing good deeds across the Mootland and protecting its borders. It does need stats and details of the badger, which are not given here or indeed suggested where they might be found. Overall, a good selection of new race-specific Careers along similar lines that will make Player Characters of those races standout for more than just being members of their races. This is followed by an appendix of new weapons particular to the three races discussed in the supplement. Halflings will, no doubt, want to ride into battle wielding either Nan’s Cleaver or an Iron Skillet, whilst every Dwarf Slayer will hope to be armed with a Slayer’s Axe, which is even more deadly than a standard two-handed axe.

Physically, Archives of the Empire Volume I is well presented. The artwork is excellent, the layout clean and tidy, and the maps decent, although there are not enough of them. The book does need an edit in places.

Archives of the Empire Volume I is companion to, and a medley of information for, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Fourth Edition and is very much hit and miss in terms of its content. Fortunately, more hit than miss. The primary miss is that the Grand Province descriptions feel like they belong elsewhere and will leave the reader wanting more, as will the description of the Halfling Clans, oddly confined to the one Grand Province. The hits though, include the descriptions and details of the three races, backed up the innumerable adventure hooks, which are all definitely more useful and can be brought into play much, much easier. In particular, the description of the Mootland is really very good, not just informative, but entertaining too. There is definite sense that the authors were having fun when they wrote this chapter.

Ultimately, if it leaves the Game Master wanting in places, the Archives of the Empire Volume I is a still a good supplement for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Fourth Edition, providing in particular, support and background for Dwarves, Elves, and Halflings that will enhance the Game Master’s campaign.

uick-starts are means of trying out a roleplaying game before you buy. Each should provide a Game Master with sufficient background to introduce and explain the setting to her players, the rules to run the scenario included, and a set of ready-to-play, pre-generated characters that the players can pick up and understand almost as soon as they have sat down to play. The scenario itself should provide an introduction to the setting for the players as well as to the type of adventures that their characters will have and just an idea of some of the things their characters will be doing on said adventures. All of which should be packaged up in an easy-to-understand booklet whose contents, with a minimum of preparation upon the part of the Game Master, can be brought to the table and run for her gaming group in a single evening’s session—or perhaps too. And at the end of it, Game Master and players alike should ideally know whether they want to play the game again, perhaps purchasing another adventure or even the full rules for the roleplaying game.

Alternatively, if the Game Master already has the full rules for the roleplaying game for the quick-start is for, then what it provides is a sample scenario that she still run as an introduction or even as part of her campaign for the roleplaying game. The ideal quick-start should entice and intrigue a playing group, but above all effectively introduce and teach the roleplaying game, as well as showcase both rules and setting.

—oOo—

What is it?
The Hellboy: The Roleplaying Game – Quickstart is the quick-start for Hellboy: The Roleplaying Game, the horror roleplaying game of occult investigation based on Hellboy, Mike Mignola’s comic book tales of horror, myth, and folklore. Originally published by Mantic, it is now published by Nightfall Games.

It includes a basic explanation of the setting, rules for action and combat, setting rules, details of the arms, armour, and equipment fielded by the Player Characters, the assignment, ‘The Sad Case of Mary Pym’, and five ready-to-play, Player Characters, or Agents.

It is a forty-six page, full colour book.

The quick-start is lightly illustrated, but Mike Mignola’s artwork is as good as you would expect. The rules are a slightly stripped down version from the core rulebook and include setting specific rules, but all are easy to grasp.

How long will it take to play?
The Hellboy: The Roleplaying Game – Quickstart and its assignment, ‘The Sad Case of Mary Pym’, is designed to be played through in one or two sessions.

What else do you need to play?
The Hellboy: The Roleplaying Game – Quickstart requires at least one twenty-sided die per player, or ideally a full set of the standard polyhedral dice.

The Game Master may want to have two sets of tokens to represent Doom and Ingenuity.

Who do you play?
The five Player Characters are agents with the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense, or B.P.R.D. They include a medical doctor who has been in the field too long; an ex-cop from Vietnam; an archaeologist with psychic powers; a Russian counter-terrorist operative seconded from the FSB; and an ex-US Army chaplain. All come with simple backgrounds and full explanations of their abilities.

How is a Player Character defined?
The Hellboy: The Roleplaying Game – Quickstart, and thus Hellboy: The Roleplaying Game, is compatible with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. A Player Character will look familiar to anyone who has played that roleplaying game or any similar roleplaying game.

How do the mechanics work?
Mechanically, the Hellboy: The Roleplaying Game – Quickstart uses the standard rules for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. However, there are some additions to the rules to take account of B.P.R.D. fieldwork. In addition to rolling the twenty-sided die for ability checks, skill rolls, saving throws, and attack rolls, a player also rolls a ten-sided die. On a roll of one on the ten-sided die, a point of Doom is generated, whereas a roll of ten on the ten-sided die will generate a point of Ingenuity. In addition, certain events or discoveries during an investigation can generate points of Doom or Ingenuity. Ingenuity has a lot of uses. Some of these include succeeding with flair, gaining extra information, failing with style to mitigate the effect of the failure, use an ability that requires a Focus Check without the need to roll, cause a maximum roll on a damage roll to explode, and so on.

Doom does not have as many uses. Typically, it is used to inflict a fumble on a Player Character. In addition, it is possible to both fail or succeed with Doom or both fail or succeed with Ingenuity, plus an investigation can have its Ingenuity and Doom spends. ‘The Sad Case of Mary Pym’ has its own set of tables for Ingenuity and Doom spends.

How does combat work?
Combat in Hellboy: The Roleplaying Game – Quickstart, and thus Hellboy: The Roleplaying Game, uses the standard rules for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. There are some additions to the rules to make play more cinematic in line with the comic book series. ‘This Is Gonna Hurt’ grants a Player Character a bonus attack on which his player can expend Hit Dice to increase damage and ‘Rapid Fire’ enables a Player Character to shoot at multiple targets within close proximity of each other.

How do Rituals and Psychic Powers work?
The Hellboy: The Roleplaying Game – Quickstart includes an introduction to both rituals and psychic powers. To perform a ritual, a skill check is required and then a Charisma check is required to maintain it, but the player must also roll three ten-sided dice instead of one for Doom and Ingenuity with these rolls. These count as extra successes. The rules for rituals are not as clearly presented as they could be. Three sample rituals are given, including Exorcism and The Grāmata Rite, which reverses a transformation or curse.

Psychic powers work in a similar fashion. The three sample powers include Psychometry, Psychic Invasion, and Séance.

What do you play?
‘The Sad Case of Mary Pym’ is a full haunted house investigation for B.P.R.D. which is set in the United Kingdom. The agents are called in to investigate after an estate agent reports seeing a ghost in Uxley Hall. The whole of the house is presented in damp, mouldy detail, which gets weirder and crazier the deeper the agents go and the more Doom they have accrued on the ‘Grand Conspiracy Sheet’, awakening more and more of the monsters. The adventure keeps some of its details hidden until towards the end, so the Game Master will need to give it a close read. It is primarily exploratory in nature, the Player Character actions triggering events and adding Doom to the ‘Grand Conspiracy Sheet’ which also trigger events. It is a decent investigation, pulpy in nature in keeping with the source material. Even the scenario’s map is brash and colourfully pulpy in its style.

Is there anything missing?
The Hellboy: The Roleplaying Game – Quickstart is complete. Portraits for the pre-generated Agents would have been useful, as well as for the NPCs.

Is it easy to prepare?
The core rules presented in the Hellboy: The Roleplaying Game – Quickstart are relatively easy to prepare. The Game Master will need to understand how Doom and Ingenuity work as well as rituals and psychic powers.
Is it worth it?
Yes. The Hellboy: The Roleplaying Game – Quickstart is a solid introduction to occult investigation in the world of Mike Mignola’s Hellboy and B.P.R.D. It is pulpy and grows to be over the top in keeping with the source material which the players and their agents will want to play up to.
Where can you get it?
The Hellboy: The Roleplaying Game – Quickstart is available to download here.

Ragged Hollow is a village to the west of the Kingdom, standing on the Rime River, below Mount Mourn in The Bleak Mountains further west and near Gloam Wood to the north. It is peaceful place, best known for its temple to Halcyon, god of Law, and the quality of its flax, which is turned into paper for the books printed at the temple or into cloth and oil. Villagers rarely travel more than a day’s walk except for their Halloo, the tradition of the region’s youth to travel free and adventure for a short while before returning their hometowns and villages to take up ordinary lives like their parents and older brothers and sisters. Yet in a village where nothing happens, something strange has happened! A great gold dome, murky and impervious has descended upon the Temple of Halcyon. How has this happened and what is the fate of the temple staff and the villagers inside the temple when the dome descended? Can a way in be found? What is the significance of the tolling of the temple’s bell multiple times that midnight and the following midnight? Why are the villagers beset by nightmares in the following days that forces them to remain in their homes at night?
This is the set-up for Nightmare Over Ragged Hollow, an ‘Adventure Module for Characters 1-2’ for use with Old School Essentials, the retroclone based on the 1981 revision of Basic Dungeons & Dragons by Tom Moldvay and its accompanying Expert Set by Dave Cook and Steve Marsh. Originally published as Ragged Hollow Nightmare by Dungeon Age Adventures for use with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, this version has been expanded, adapted, and transformed by The Merry Mushmen—best known for the Old School Renaissance magazine, Knock! and the excellent A Folklore Bestiary—following a successful Kickstarter campaign. And what a transformation it is! The digest-sized scenario comes as a thick, eighty-page booklet in a wraparound card cover. The trade echoes that of classic TSR, though the artwork is more cartoonish. The cover has been purposely distressed and inside has been drawn the map of the temple, again in the style of classic Dungeons & Dragons modules. The cartoonish style of artwork continues throughout in a duotone of red and grey, depicting the ordinary nature of life in and around Ragged Hollow as well as the weirdness and horror to be found as the Player Characters explore both further afield and then closer to home. There can be no doubt that Nightmare Over Ragged Hollow is very charming little book.

Nightmare Over Ragged Hollow is designed to serve as a first adventure. Ideally, the Player Characters should be First Level and will likely to be Second or Third Level once they complete the whole adventure. Its set-up is a classic of Dungeons & Dragons-style scenarios. There is a village in peril and the Player Characters are the ones to save it. However, Nightmare Over Ragged Hollow inverts that set-up ever so slightly. In the classic set-up, the peril threatening the village will be elsewhere and the Player Characters will use the village as a base of operations in order to strike out into the surrounding wilderness, locate the source of the peril, destroy or otherwise deal with said peril, and return having saved the village. Not so in Nightmare Over Ragged Hollow. Here the peril is already present in the village, shining in gold for all to see. In addition to not having to locate the source of the peril, the Player Characters are unable to do anything about it—at least initially. Nightmare Over Ragged Hollow presents several hooks and plots that will draw the Player Characters away from Ragged Hollow to various locations nearby in the Bleak Mountains to the west, Gloam Wood to the north, and the Wailing Hills to the south. Here, the Player Characters will have various encounters, find other locations, learn hints as what is going on back in Ragged Hollow, and perhaps find the means to solve the problem. There are said to be witches in Gloam Wood, bugbears in the Bleak Mountains, cursed Dwarven ruins on Mount Mourn, and bandits threatening travellers on the roads through the Wailing Hills.

However, this inverse structure is not without its issues. The combination of a major adventuring site—in this case, that of the Temple of Halcyon—and mini-locations and adventures in Ragged Hollow and the surrounding hexes is tried and tested format. One that works very well. Normally, the players and their characters will gather up supplies and rumours and go and adventure at the scenario’s primary adventuring site where the cause of the problem is located. Nightmare Over Ragged Hollow does not do that. Instead, it expects the Player Characters to ignore the glaringly gold problem in the village in favour of undertaking minor tasks in the village such as finding out why the village well stinks or clearing a basement of vermin, then visit a ghost house on a nearby island, and so on. This begins to build a narrative chain of rumours and connections that ideally should push the Player Characters to investigate and explore further, but actually getting the Player Characters onto that narrative chain can be difficult. This is because of the initial focus in the scenario upon the Temple of Halcyon and the understandable concerns of the villagers upon the state of the temple and for well-being of those inside. Given those concerns, getting the villagers to talk about much else and start handing out rumours is counterintuitive.

In addition, the adventure includes a built-in countdown. The Player Characters will not be aware of it initially, and it takes more than a few days before it becomes obvious, but like the inverse structure of the scenario’s narrative, it is both clever and slightly problematic. It is slightly problematic because it emphasises the focus upon the gold dome when the scenario actually wants the Player Characters to be away adventuring, but clever because the negative effects of the countdown are not immediate, thus giving time for the Player Characters to investigate away from the village, and the countdown does actually reveal a way through the dome—if the Player Characters can get to it. In fact, much of the point of their exploration and excursions away from Ragged Hollow is about finding a way of getting to it, although the Player Characters will not know it.

These problems aside, there is a great deal to like about Nightmare Over Ragged Hollow. There is plenty for the Player Characters to explore and do—more so in the surrounds than in the village itself. Where the exploration of the Temple of Halcyon descends—literally as the Player Characters climb down from the bell tower—into horror and weirdness, the Player Characters will find more whimsey than horror, at least at first. There are some quite delightful encounters to be had on their travels. These include a frail old granny who everyone claims to be a witch, but will prove to be helpful and friendly and a goblin market where the vendors are keen to sell some fun things like fuzzy, woollen socks that grant resistance to cold and apples that grant simple healing, the ability to breath green fire, or cause the imbiber to fall asleep. The situations do get darker and darker, such as the encounter with the reclusive chapter who has definitely been alone in the wilderness or the bandit caves where narcotic cigars are being manufactured. Every encounter is detailed and interesting, but none of them too overwhelming in terms of size. Of the fourteen or so locations outside of Ragged Hollow, none of them would take more than a single session to play through. Travel—described in terms of time it takes to move between locations rather than distance—as well as the locations themselves can be leavened with random encounters and a gang of would be teenage ne’er do wells included to generally harass the Player Characters and be a nuisance.

In comparison though, the Temple of Halcyon will probably take several sessions to play through. The simple structure of the building—at least on the upper floors—of single corridors with doors on both sides means that it is fairly linear. What makes the location really stand out are the weirdness and the horror to be found in its halls and rooms. Walls bulge and split to spill an Experience Point-sucking Wight Leech, the faces of friends and family appear on the walls wailing and screaming in pain, murals depict wolves devouring children, and nobody can work out how long they have been trapped inside. Here the nightmares which beset the village begin to take tangible form, physically tormenting both those already trapped inside and the intruding Player Characters.

Nightmare Over Ragged Hollow is very supported and laid out. The card cover includes not just maps of the Temple of Halcyon, but also Ragged Hollow and the surrounding area. It also has tables of reasons to visit the village and random encounters in the temple. Besides the background and the various locations described in the book, there are hooks to get the Player Characters involved—it is suggested that at least one Player Character be native returning after his Halloo, a timeline and a table to track the status of the various villagers in the temple, explanations for what might happen at the end of the adventure, and appendices of new magical items and possible retainers or replacement Player Characters. There are a lot of magical items in Nightmare Over Ragged Hollow, but for the most part, they are small and quite narrow in their application like the Scribe’s Ring which lets the wearer forge any document he has seen or the Purse of Tranquillity, which shouts, “Help!” if anyone tries to steal it or cut it open.

Physically, Nightmare Over Ragged Hollow is very well presented. The writing is succinct and laid out in an easy to grasp style, whilst the artwork is entertaining throughout. If there is anything disappointing it is that the cartography of the various buildings and caves are clean, tidy, but dull. None will hinder the Game Master running Nightmare Over Ragged Hollow, but none really help their locations come to life either.

Nightmare Over Ragged Hollow is self-contained. This means that it is easy for the Game Master to drop into her own campaign world or an existing one she is already using. Similarly, although Nightmare Over Ragged Hollow is written for use with Old School Essentials, the scenario is easily adapted to the retroclone of the Game Master’s preference.

Nightmare Over Ragged Hollow is designed as a scenario suitable for new players and with its combination of low key, relatively small encounters, whimsy that ebbs away to horror, it never threatens to overwhelm those new players or their characters. This does not mean that veteran players will not enjoy its smaller scale or its combination of whimsy and horror, though they will be doubtless be quicker to pick up on the scenario’s narrative trail and appreciate its change in structure from going out to deal with an external threat to going out to find out how to deal with an internal threat. Overall, Nightmare Over Ragged Hollow is an excellent example of the classic ‘village in peril’ scenario, with a rich mix of roleplaying, exploration, and combat that combines whimsical fantasy with fear and nightmare.

Originally published in 1992, The King of Sartar stood out amongst all of the other titles that Chaosium, Inc. was publishing at the time because it was not related to Call of Cthulhu or Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos and because it was both fiction and not fiction. It was fiction because it was set within a game world, that of Chaosium, Inc.’s great fantasy world of Glorantha—the setting for RuneQuest and more recently RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha—and not fiction as it is a collection of myths and legends that are treated as being real within that world. The King of Sartar draws together a number of myths and legends that relate to Argrath, the descendant of Sartar who appeared out of nowhere to drive the occupying forces of the Lunar Empire out of Sartar and Dragon Pass, defeat them again and again, defeat the Red Emperor and the Red Goddess, and ultimately win the Hero Wars. It takes the conceit—more recently applied in Six Seasons in Sartar—that the myths and legends have been collected and examined almost a thousand years after their events have said to have taken place. Further, as revealed in the conclusion to The King of Sartar, these fragmentary, sometimes contradictory documents have been collated after a period in which knowledge of literacy was lost. As well as exploring the Argrath legends, The King of Sartar will examine Orlanthi mythology, a history of Dragon Pass and those who dwelled in and round the area, provide multiple genealogies and timelines, and more.
The King of Sartar brings together several documents. These include the Annotated Argrath’s Saga, the complete saga of Argrath’s adventures in the Hero Wars, appended by The Zine Letters; an overview of Orlanthi Mythology; The Composite History of Dragon Pass, from the Dragonkill Wars following the Empire of Earthwyrm’s Friends to Argrath’s marriage to the Queen of Saird; The Argrath Book, a compilation of material on Argrath; and Jalk’s Book, a compilation of material on the Colymar, Boldhome, and the Grazers. The more recent, annotated version adds The Lost Chapter of Fazzur Wideread. Alongside this are multiple timelines, genealogies such as those of the Kings of Sartar and Kings of Tarsh, lists that give all the gods of the Orlanthi pantheon, companions to both Argrath and Kallyr Starbrow, and more. The tone and style switches back and forth between the academic commentary of the collating author and the different voices of chroniclers recording the legends. Perhaps the most familiar here will be the sections on Orlanthi Mythology and Dragon Pass. The first presents familiar Orlanthi tales as well as the creation of Dragon Pass, his courtship of Ernalda, his enactment of the Lightbringers’ Quest for the first time, up to his confrontations with the Red Goddess, whilst the latter, supposedly one of the wedding gifts to Argrath, which presents the recorded history of the region, focusing on Sartar in particular, but also examining Tarsh and the Grazer Tribe, all the way up to Inkarne the Empress, the last great Sacred King of Argrath’s dynasty. The Lightbringers’ Quest is a subject that The King of Sartar will return to several times, noting how challenging a task it is for mortal men, even Argrath, let alone Kallyr Starbrow, who either failed or was only partially successful in her reenactment, depending upon your point of view. It does describe the various steps and tasks necessary to complete the quest, but much like the rest of the book, they are open to interpretation. Added to the annotated version is The Lost Chapter, a chronicle of Fazzur Wideread, Governor-General of Dragon Pass, a counterpoint to much of the rest of The King of Sartar, in that he is the only Lunar figure to be treated with any respect. The sympathies of the other authors throughout the book and even in The Composite History of Dragon Pass, lie with the Sartarites.

From a roleplaying perspective, The King of Sartar not only examines the coming of Argrath and his rise to power, but also his influence upon Dragon Pass and the many changes he will bring about once his role and position as king is confirmed. This has long been prophesised, but never fulfilled. Only now with the publication of RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha has the setting of Dragon Pass been advanced to the event seen as the trigger for the Hero Wars—the Dragonrise, in which the Brown Dragon rose and consumed the great and the good of the Lunar Empire’s sorcerers sent to consecrate the Temple of the reaching Moon and the Sartarite nobility who gave their loyalty to the Lunar Empire, thus curbing its ambitions to the south. Of course, there is no little debate as who exactly caused the Dragonrise, but The King of Sartar suggests that Argrath was involved or at least one of his companions, Orlaront Dragonfriend, was. For the roleplaying game though, the Dragonrise is a significant and immediate event. It is woven into the background of every Player Character. With that established, every Player Character and every Game Master’s campaign has been moved forward too, and so stands on the threshold of the forthcoming events of the Hero Wars, prophesised in the pages of The King of Sartar and promised in game terms by Chaosium, Inc.

Another aspect of The King of Sartar also plays in the future of every Game Master’s campaign. The volume’s collating commenter cannot be certain as to who the real Argrath is—the descendant of Sartar, the member of a lost clan of the Colymar tribe, the petty criminal who rose to power out of the back streets of Pavis, or all three. This gives the Game Master the freedom to decide who her Argrath will be as his role becomes ever more important and prominent in the forthcoming support for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha.

The King of Sartar is neither an essential volume that the Game Master must read to run a campaign set in Glorantha nor an easy read. Its fragmentary, often diverse subject matters, and multiple voices often leave the reader struggling to find purchase with the book. Only when the book returns to Argrath’s tale does that purchase find more solid ground, often because having one aspect of Dragon Pass or its people, The King of Sartar will return to how Argrath interacted with that. This is not to say that the other diverse subject matters are not interesting, they often are, for there is some literally fantastic worldbuilding in the pages of The King of Sartar. Of course, there is also much in the pages of The King of Sartar that will be familiar to Gloranthaphiles as much of it has been reiterated in roleplaying game after roleplaying game and supplement after supplement. That though has always been with a more authoritative voice for the Game Master’s benefit and so has been easier to read and digest, whereas The King of Sartar is without that authoritative voice by intent and is thus neither easier to read nor digest. Ultimately, The King of Sartar is not a book for the casual reader or even fan of Glorantha, but for the fan who is interested in the lore presented as legend and myth, there is much here to explore from within the setting of Glorantha itself.

Much like the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, the Jonstown Compendium is a curated platform for user-made content, but for material set in Greg Stafford’s mythic universe of Glorantha. It enables creators to sell their own original content for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, 13th Age Glorantha, and HeroQuest Glorantha (Questworlds). This can include original scenarios, background material, cults, mythology, details of NPCs and monsters, and so on, but none of this content should be considered to be ‘canon’, but rather fall under ‘Your Glorantha Will Vary’. This means that there is still scope for the authors to create interesting and useful content that others can bring to their Glorantha-set campaigns.

—oOo—

What is it?
Tiny Treasures: 2 pages of neat stuff for adventurers is a supplement for use with RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha which describes six magical items that might be found at a market, on a caravan, hidden away, or on a body.

It is a two page, full colour 471.08 KB PDF.

The layout is tidy, the artwork rough, but serviceable.

With slight effort, the items detailed can be adapted to the rules system of the Game Master’s choice.
Where is it set?The contents of Tiny Treasures: 2 pages of neat stuff for adventurers can be used anywhere.
Who do you play?
Tiny Treasures: 2 pages of neat stuff for adventurers does not require any specific character type. Worshippers of Lanbril, Humakt, Chalana Arroy, and Yemalio will find items items in this supplement to be of interest.
What do you need?
Tiny Treasures: 2 pages of neat stuff for adventurers requires RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha only. However, The Book of Red Magic and both Cults of RuneQuest: The Lightbringers and Cults of RuneQuest: The Earth Goddesses may be useful for the cult connections or significance that the items detailed in the supplement might have.
What do you get?Tiny Treasures: 2 pages of neat stuff for adventurers lives up to its claim. It is a two-page PDF which describes and illustrates six magical items. For example, the Healer’s Gourd is described as a simple clay vessel with Harmony and Fertility runes carved on it and the Thief’s Dagger is a bronze dagger with no crossguard, a matching sheath, and the handle inscribed with the Death and Illusion Runes. Water drunk from the Healer’s Gourd grants a free roll on the Degrees of Illness table in RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha to reduce the severity of the illness, whilst the Thief’s Dagger grants bonuses to attack and damage, but a bigger bonus to the Sleight skill when cutting purses and pouchstrings and the Conceal skill when attempting to hide the weapon on one’s person. All six items have a suggested retail price.

All of the items are given a simple description and explanation of its powers. Alongside the text for each one is a simple illustration.
There is already a treasure sourcebook for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha available on the Jonstown Compendium, Treasures Of Glorantha: Volume One — Dragon Pass, which is more expansive and detailed. The contents of Tiny Treasures: 2 pages of neat stuff for adventurers are more serviceable than necessarily noteworthy. Their barebones description means that they do not readily feel tied to the setting of Glorantha. Had each been given a legend or history, this might not have been the case, but the lack of legend means that the Game Master has scope to create her own entirely from scratch for each of these magical items.
Is it worth your time?Yes—Tiny Treasures: 2 pages of neat stuff for adventurers is a useful addition for the Game Master looking to add some potentially interesting artefacts or treasures to her campaign, if she is willing to develop some history or legend attached to them.No—Tiny Treasures: 2 pages of neat stuff for adventurers details items which might to be too magical for the Game Master’s Glorantha, too much like magical items from another fantasy roleplaying game, and lacks the background for each which might alleviate either issue.Maybe—Tiny Treasures: 2 pages of neat stuff for adventurers works better for a high adventure style of play such as that for 13th Age Glorantha.

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

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

—oOo—
Dreams of Ghaa-Xothal is that rare creature on the Miskatonic Repository—a campaign! Beginning in London in 1924, it will take the Investigators across the capital, and under it, and then into the ‘Garden of England’. From there, the Investigators will leave the shores of England to ascend the heights of the world and then far below... The campaign consists of twelve chapters and concerns the uncovering and thwarting of a grand attempt to both undermine the financial well-being of the British Empire as an act of revenge and ultimately free an alien god and enslave all of humanity. This is definitely a campaign in which King and country matter, and if the Investigators succeed, they will be summarily recognised and ignored in equal measure!
Dreams of Ghaa-Xothal is written primarily with British Investigators in mind, but comes with enough detail to cover both the historical and cultural basics the campaign requires. This includes the use and availability of firearms during the period. The campaign downplays both use if not availability, at least not without good reason, and whilst there are opportunities for combat in the earlier chapters of the scenario, in general, running away is a better option. Both because the Investigators are likely to get hurt and because his majesty’s constabulary is likely to take an exceedingly dim view of gunplay, let along crimes being committed with guns. That view is likely to be dimmer still if the perpetrators are American. The tone of the campaign is split. What the Investigators will confront in terms of the villains of the piece, their plans, and the forces at their command—both ordinary and outré—veer towards the Pulp genre. What the Investigators are expected to do, involving a lot of investigative footwork and sneaking about, veers away from the Pulp genre to the drier Purist style, but never gets that far.
In terms of Investigators, Dreams of Ghaa-Xothal has no specific demands, but Private Investigators or Inquiry Agents will be easy to get involved, as will Journalists. Ideally, there should be between two and four Investigators. Optional rules cover infections and cholera—the Investigators will find themselves venturing into the sewers beneath London multiple times, how to handle locks, interpersonal skills, Luck, and spells. Locks, in particular, are challenging, and as well as guidance for the minimal skill level required to open the many locks throughout the campaign, assigns every lock the equivalent of Hit Points to indicate how much damage has to be inflicted before it breaks. Skills are given ratings, from 05% and below and Novice to 90% and more or Master. Whilst most skills require a Regular simply be passed simply on the basis of their Skill Rating and a straightforward measure of what they know. In addition not all spells in the campaign need be learned by poring though the pages of a Mythos Tome and these specific, campaign-related spells, tend to be easier to cast than most spells are first time.
Dreams of Ghaa-Xothal begins with the parents of Mary Perkins, a promising journalist working in Fleet Street for The London Evening News, engaging the Investigators for their help. Mary has disappeared and the police believe that she has eloped with a married man who is wanted for theft from his former employer and simply closed the case. Her parents disagree, believing that Mary would never act in such a manner that would bring shame to a respectable family like themselves. The question is, was Mary investigating something that got her into trouble?
It is a classic set-up, but investigation reveals that Chinese gangsters are as equally interested in Mary’s disappearance, so it at least looks there is substance to her parents’ concerns. Further clues lead the Investigators into something deeper and far more dangerous, something that involves a very well-connected import and export business, militantly radical politics on both the Left and the Right, and an extraordinarily reclusive member of the minor aristocracy whose plans for the cult he leads will have a profound effect upon, first, the economy of the British Empire, and then the fate of the empire itself.
Much of the campaign involves mundane investigation—visiting homes and libraries, conducting interviews and research and so on, just as you would expect. Stealth, if not outright breaking and entering will also play a big role in the investigation. This is not to say that the campaign is without its extraordinary moments. Far from it. Dreams of Ghaa-Xothal has an incredible grand set-piece that almost acts as the campaign’s finale that will amaze Keeper and player alike for its audacity out of game, and the Investigators in game. Apart from the energetic tumult of terror in this scene, some of the best scenes of horror come in the ‘Garden of England’, in the village which has been subverted by the cult at the heart of the campaign’s plot and in the home of the villain of the piece. These all serve to personalise the weirdness and the horror of the campaign and nicely subvert the rural idyll into something akin to folk horror. The culmination of the campaign in far off Tibet is perhaps more weird than horrifying, though the steps needed to get there are horrifying. The campaign’s epilogue has a nasty sting in its tail, but does leave it to the Keeper to fully explore the outcome of that sting…
As written, Dreams of Ghaa-Xothal is playable and playable without too much adjustment upon the part of the Keeper. Where it has issues it is in the detail. The campaign is overwritten and there is an incredible amount detail throughout, a lot of it devoted to individual locations, many of which the Investigators will visit multiple times over the course of the campaign. Another is the campaign’s tone. The campaign itself leans towards to the pulp genre, especially in the campaign’s oh so big, grand set piece and in the amount of Cthulhu Mythos knowledge that some of the NPCs possess, but a lot of the tone of the investigation is much drier, more purist. The latter is heavily supported by the surfeit of clues and handouts that threaten to overwhelm the players let alone their Investigators. Then there is the issue of Sanity rewards and losses, the former feeling something stingy in places.
The campaign is supported with two supplements. The first collects the almost fifty or so maps that showcase the various locations throughout the campaign. Some of these are left blank for the players and the Investigators to explore and fill in, but together they help detail the eleven or so locations that appear in the campaign. In addition, there are several period maps of London where the action of the campaign will take place. The second collects the campaign’s handouts. All ninety-six of them. To be fair, neither the maps nor the handouts are of great artistic merit. The handouts are better than the maps in that department, but in general, the best that can be said of them is that they are serviceable and they convey their intended information. In fact, this is not the best that can be said of them since the Keeper can access both supplements separate the campaign itself and easily provide them for her players and their Investigators.
Physically, Dreams of Ghaa-Xothal is decently presented. It needs a slight edit in places and it is busy in others. There is, after all, a lot of information to get through. One nice touch is the number of period photographs given throughout the campaign. These not only depict London, but also every NPC who appears in the campaign. It is a pity that these are not collated into a supplement of their own like the maps and the handouts. The campaign has so many NPCs and accompanying portrait photographs that they actually deserve an album of their own, complete with space for the players to add notes of their own like a scrapbook. The photographs contrast sharply with the full colour pieces of artwork depicting starscapes and other strange vistas which dot the pages of the campaign, depicting the ‘Dreams of Ghaa-Xothal’.
Campaigns are not easy to write. Campaigns for publication on a community content programme where the easiest thing to do is pump out one one-shot after another, are really not easy to write. Then they have the problem of vying for attention amongst that sargasso of one-shots. In the face of this, the author of Dreams of Ghaa-Xothal deserves our praise for even attempting such a herculean task. The fact that he has completed it and more importantly that the resulting Dreams of Ghaa-Xothal is rich, detailed, intricate, and actually works so that another Keeper can take it and run it, deserves not just praise, but accolades of its very own. Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition has a new campaign and it has not come from either Chaosium, Inc. or a licensee, but the Miskatonic Repository, so fulfilling the ambition of that community content programme by delivering a grand campaign whose format can be traced all the way back to Shadows of Yog-Sothoth.

Far to the north stands Fort Enterprise, the northernmost outpost of the Murian Empire in Stonespear Province, on the edge of ‘Upper Mastodonia’, a region only revealed decades ago the giant glaciers that covered the area retreated. Here was the last sighting of the gallant Prince Eyraen, brave warrior son of Syantides, Sorcerer-King of Mur, who departed with his men to descend via nearby entrance into the Underworld and there below, take revenge upon a minor chaos godling known as Shaggath-Ka. Sadly, he has not returned and is presumed lost. Soldiers under the command of Fort Enterprise’s captain went after the prince, but they too failed to return and are presumed lost. Now it is the turn of the adventurers, for it is hoped that a smaller party, one better suited to stealth (or even diplomacy!), might succeed where the troops failed. Not necessarily to find the probably fallen prince, but to return a great magical artefact that he stole from his father’s treasury before he left for the north. Descending down a thousand feet long ladder, the Player Characters will follow in the prince’s wake, discovering fantastic locations such as the ‘Beetletown Welcome Centre and Dwellings’ and ‘Local Franchise Temple of Nul’, regional church of the Cult of the Mindless God and some truly fantastic encounters on the ‘Encounters & Other Random Weirdness’ on the event table, like being engulfed in a ‘Mutagenic Cloud’ and have their lips gain tentacles, getting to trade with a Slugman on a business trip, or engage in a metaphysical debate with a Woolly Neanderthal on a spirit quest.
This is the set-up for Operation Unfathomable, a high-level dungeon designed to be played by First Level Player Character. Developed from a convention scenario published in Knockspell #5 and published by the Hydra Cooperative, LLC for use with Swords & Wizardry rather than the usual Labyrinth Lord of other Hydra Cooperative, LLC titles, Operation Unfathomable would be a Judges’ Spotlight Winner in the 2018 Ennie awards and as one of the best dungeon adventures of 2018 made the Reviews from R’lyeh Post-Christmas Dozen 2018. Now Operation Unfathomable has returned and once again, you can explore the Jack Kirby-style weird and gonzo Underworld in the company of Blue or Grey Dwarves, Underworld Otters, Citizen Liches, Woolly Neanderthals, and Underworld Rangers, but this time for use with Goodman Games’ Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. Plus, the world up above the Underworld of Operation Unfathomable—the Upper Mastodonia or the Odious Uplands—has been developed to provide a sandcrawl that the Player Characters can explore after their excursion below. All of which has been combined into one volume, Completely Unfathomable.

On one level, the Judge could take Completely Unfathomable and just run Operation Unfathomable. However, Completely Unfathomable includes everything in the original version of the scenario and the Operation Unfathomable Players’ Guide. This includes the new Classes—the Blue Dwarf, which specialises in surveying and repairing the tunnels and ancient machinery of the Underworld; the Grey Dwarf, whose hatred of Chaos godlings has transformed him into an explosives-laying anarchist; the Underworld Otter, a magically-uplifted species whose sense of frivolity and fun often gets him into trouble, including picking locks and pockets; the Woolly Neanderthal, from Mastodonia, can summon strength to kill giants and carry out great feats and can survive in the wilderness; the Citizen Lich, really, really hard to kill, unrecognised by any god, enthrals the undead, and capable of only learning the spells they knew in life; and the Underworld Ranger, trained and equipped to fight the Primal Chaos found in the Underworld. There is guidance too if the scenario is to be run as a Character Funnel and the complete ‘Operation Unfathomable’ comic strip. There are details too, where Completely Unfathomable differs from standard Dungeon Crawl Classics. Fortunately, there are only two. One is that many of the campaign’s arcane spellcasters have magics of their own, necessitating a simple table of effects for all of their spells rather than the Judge having to referring to the multiple spell tables in the Dungeon Crawl Classics rulebook. The other, perhaps more of a fundamental change, is its treatment of Law and Chaos, and the arcane and the divine. It differs from Dungeon Crawl Classics in that Chaos is an intrinsic part of the world rather than an outlook or attitude and that there are no gods. Instead, Clerics are arcane spellcasters who use religious practices and beliefs to cast their spells. This is not say that there are no Patrons in the setting of Completely Unfathomable, as there are, but they are not necessarily divine. The Judge is, of course, entirely free to ignore this.

Of course, the other way to use Completely Unfathomable is have the Player Characters travel to Upper Mastodonia via the massive caravanserais drawn by moustachioed yaks to Fort Enterprise, the heart of government in Stonespear Province. Along the way, they will see herds of mammoths and mastodons, fortified polebarges travelling down river, sabre-toothed apes watching from the forest, and the Chaos Aurora—a scintillating ribbon of light—flickering around Mount Impossible with its doughnut-shaped top. Fort Enterprise, built and governed by a former barbarian-adventurer suffering from middle-age spread, is home to a Wizard’s dormitory, a Tree of Jobs, a beer garden, and docks as well as the all-important Monster Alert Sign which indicates whether Koloko, a giant monster Man-Ape is in the vicinity and whether or not he will attack. It is updated regularly. The Player Characters may find work from the Tree of Jobs, such as putting a stop to Sephilax, the newly appeared Chaos godling before it becomes a real threat or culling the nearby lake of its dangerous kraken population. Of course, once at Fort Enterprise, the Player Characters are likely to find themselves pressganged into going after to Prince Eyraen, an effort fully detailed in Operation Unfathomable. When they return, then they can explore the wilderness spread before Fort Enterprise, that is, if the imperial authorities let them…

Fort Enterprise itself is full of details, NPCs, jobs, and rumours, all of which can be used to nudge the Player Characters to travel and explore. Once they do, they will discover a province pockmarked with generic locations—sites of dead adventurers, fossil sites, fungal blooms, and sabre-toothed ape nests—and named areas. The generic locations are supported with tables used to randomly generate what might be found there, such as the state of the bodies, what killed them, and what might be found there at sites of the dead adventurers or the simple ‘We Search the Fungal Bloom Table’ of the fungal bloom sites. The process is fast and simple, but the Judge may want to develop content of her own here as there are a lot of these sites and the content could easily be exhausted. The named areas of interest, range from the Crab Forest, the Frost Giant Forest, and the Fossil Forest to the Dominion of the Mammoth King, the Underworld Incursion, and the aforementioned Mount Impossible. All begin with a table of encounters—all very nicely detailed—before going on to describe in detail the actual individual areas of interest. Individual areas of interest are relatively small, there being no big dungeon or similarly large location in Upper Mastodonia—only under it—and none amounting to more than ten described rooms.

There are some truly memorable and utterly odd encounters to be had in the Odious Uplands. In the wetlands, the Player Characters might encounter Athohta, the cat-fish god who will talk via the face at the end of her tentacle-tongue and perhaps give aid in the search for and defeat of Sephilax; a tower of enlightenment which was partially buried by stoney debris by the movement of the glaciers, being explored by a rival outfit, which happens to be home to Old man Dinosaur, the ghost of a very old tyrannosaurus rex; Crook-Ah-Ah, Man-Ape Immortal Oracle and Tattooist, who will provide help in defeating Sephilax, but only in the form of tattoos drawn on the Player Characters’ backs; a secret joint invasion by the Science Fungoids and the Nul Cult in a link to the encounters to be had underground in Operation Unfathomable; and the Inn Invisible, an out of time guest house from 1973, Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, which has been turned into a retreat for the nobility and the wizards of the Murian Empire. Throughout, every location and every NPC, encountered is described in succinct, bullet point fashion, engaging presenting descriptions and details in easy to find on the page and easy to digest fashion. For the NPCs, this includes possible motivations and some samples of what they might say when encountered. These in particular, really help the Judge to portray these NPCs.

In addition to Operation Unfathomable and the Operation Unfathomable Players’ Guide, the campaign includes several thorough appendices. These provide the Judge with background information on chaos, the Underworld, and the Beetle Empire, the Temple of Nul and its cult which encourages members to replace their heads with an aerial-like implant that makes them unsurprisingly easy to control, fully detailed hirelings, and ways of replacing the Player Characters should they die. Full stats and details are given for all of the monsters that appear in the Operation Unfathomable and Odious Uplands halves of the campaign, from the Two-Headed Ape Mummy, Sabre-Toothed Ape, and the Giant Bardolph (if you were to think William Shakespeare’s Bardolph* cloned using Science Fungoid technology, then you would be wired, but right) to Vat Goons, Moustachioed Yaks, and Worm Soldiers. Numerous items of equipment, devices, and treasures are detailed, starting with the Anti-Chaos Pills the Player characters need to take to survive the Underworld, whilst new spells include Send and Receive Magic Missive, Create Newt-Man, and Hell’s Mandibles. Finally, Athohta the Catfish God, the Mammoth King, Nul the Mindless God, Sephilax, Shaggath-Ka the Worm Sultan, and others are given as Patrons, should the Player Characters want to pledge themselves to these strange, and not always benign beings…

* Bardolph the Beer Hound, Underworld Ranger, provides an ongoing commentary in Operation Unfathomable on his adventures in the Underworld. He has less or little to say about the Odious Uplands.

Physically, Completely Unfathomable is very well presented. The writing never lets up on being engaging and intriguing, constantly pulling the reader further into the setting and bringing to life the fantastic artwork which appears through the book. It is cartoonish, but heavy and imposing, adding a weight to the world described in Completely Unfathomable.

Operation Unfathomable is a great adventure, constantly veering between the weird and the baroque, never letting its weirdness tip over into silliness and always presenting the Player Characters with an Underworld that is both lived in and strange, but perfectly normal to those that live and work there. With Completely Unfathomable though, it brings the baroque Science Fantasy of Operation Unfathomable to the surface of the Odious Uplands, which have the rough primal feel of a land that has never felt the touch or influence of mankind, waiting to be explored and its secrets revealed even as explorers from below have begun their operations. The Judge is given a wealth of detail, NPCs, hooks, and more to help get started and then she had everything she needs to run a player driven campaign.

Completely Unfathomable is a very good sandcrawl campaign. It has a primeval brilliance that combines the Science Fantasy of Saturday morning cartoons with the sybaritic loucheness of the Melnibonéan empire in a wild, untamed frontier and supports its with plots, hooks, NPCs, monsters, and more aplenty. For the Dungeon Crawl Classics Judge, Completely Unfathomable is great campaign that will provide months and months of memorable Appendix N Swords & Sorcery & Science gaming.

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

—oOo—

It is often forgotten that Star Trek: The Role Playing Game, published by FASA in 1982 was not the first Star Trek roleplaying game. It is often forgotten that Call of Cthulhu, published by Chaosium, Inc. in 1981 was not the first licensed roleplaying game. The very first licensed roleplaying game and the very first roleplaying based on Star Trek was Star Trek: Adventure Gaming in the Final Frontier, published by Heritage Models, Inc. by in 1978. If the first roleplaying game based on Star Trek is all but forgotten now, there is a third roleplaying game based on Star Trek which remains almost unknown which in its own way is equally as important as Star Trek: Adventure Gaming in the Final Frontier. For if Star Trek: Adventure Gaming in the Final Frontier is notable as the first licensed roleplaying game, then Enterprise – Role Play Game in Star Trek is notable for being the first domestic roleplaying game to be published in Japan and the first licensed roleplaying game to be published in Japan. Enterprise – Role Play Game in Star Trek was published in 1983 as a boxed set by Tsukuda Hobby, which at that time was better known for its wargames and model kits. In 1983, Enterprise – Role Play Game in Star Trek came as an eye-catching box set that included a twenty-page Rulebook, thirteen-page Adventure Book, fifteen double-sided Character Cards, two twenty-sided ten-sided dice, and one six-sided die. What is being reviewed here is not a copy of the original roleplaying game, as that would be almost impossible to obtain, but rather a translation that has been collated into a slim, fifty-eight-page hardback. The rules though, remain the same, even if the format does not.
A Player Character in Enterprise is defined by his Race, several abilities or traits—Strength, Dexterity, Intellect, Charisma, and Luck, Alignment, and one or more Special Abilities. The roleplaying game’s ‘Alien List’ includes Andorians, Talosians, Romulans, Metrons, Eugenic Superhumans, Organians, Klingons, Medusans, Melkotians, Tellarites, Zetrians, Gorns, M113 Monsters, Horta, and Vuclans. It does not say, though, which of these are suitable for use as Player Characters. All have an Alignment, one or more Special Abilities, and possible ability modifications. All five abilities range on the three to eighteen scale. Strength is both the amount of damage a Player Character can withstand and the chance he has of defeating an opponent in hand-to-hand combat; Dexterity is used to determine Initiative in combat and with the Mechanical Repair Special Ability to disable traps; Intellect determines if the Player Character has the Medical Talent or the Science Talent and can help him gain allies; Charisma to help him gain allies, but from force of personality rather than intellect; and Luck is used to avoid traps. Alignment includes Logical Good, Logical Bad, Neutral, Emotional Good, and Emotional Bad. It is easy to map the characters from Star Trek: The Original Series onto this array. The four Special Abilities are Mechanical Repair, Medical Talent (Treatment), Science Talent, and PSY Talent (ESP). Some aliens automatically have the PSY Talent (ESP), but Humans only have 10% chance of doing so. A Player Character’s chance of having the other three Special Abilities is based on their associated abilities. It is possible to create a Player Character who has multiple Special Abilities or none, depending upon whether the player rolls well or badly.
To create a character, the player selects a Race, rolls four-six-sided dice for each ability and deducts the lowest, and then rolls for each Special Ability. The process is very quick and easy. Alternatively, the player could select a member of the crew of the Enterprise. The roleplaying game comes with a double-sided Character Card for each as well as several opposing characters. Each Character Card lists the various statistics, Special Abilities, and has space for tracking hits, making notes, and so on, whilst on the front is a photograph of the character. There are fifteen Character Cards, three of which are blank for the player’s use, whilst the rest consist of Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Uhura, Scotty, Sulu, Chekov, Chapel, Rand, Commander Kang the Klingon, Stonn the Vulcan, and Subcommander Tal the Romulan.
Name: Rosana GuimarãesRace: HumanAlignment: Emotional GoodSpecial Abilities: Mechanical Repair, Science TalentStrength 10 Dexterity 13 Intellect 12Charisma 15 Luck 16Equipment: Science Tricorder, Type II Hand Phaser, Communicator, knife and three days water and food.
Mechanically, Enterprise – Role Play Game in Star Trek uses percentile dice, but that is about as standard as it gets, and not because the Game Master uses the six-sided die to determine if the Player Character senses something hidden—a door or a trap—and which Player Character an enemy targets in a fight. After that, everything else is a subsystem of its own, each straightforward in itself, but different enough to require referring to a table each time. So to find out if a Player Character discovers a trap or hidden door, the player needs to roll 30% or less, modified by his character’s Luck and to avoid a trap if triggered, is another percentile roll, the number determined by the character’s Luck after consult the ‘Avoid Trap’ table. The chance is equal to 50% if the Luck value is 13, then modified by 5% up or down depending upon the Luck value. However, consulting the ‘Bypass Lock or Trap’ table, the required number is based on Dexterity and the chance is equal to 50% if the Dexterity value is 10. Undertaking tasks such as analysing or repairing a piece of equipment or an artefact requires the Player Character to have the Mechanical Repair Special Ability and his player to roll under the device’s Repair Probability, for example, 20% for a Universal Translator. If a Player Character has the Science Special Ability, he can use a computer or tricorder without any problems. Enemy computers are assigned a percentage, which the Player Character must roll under to be able to use. There are no modifications from the abilities on any of these rolls, so effectively, a Player Character with higher stats has a higher chance of having a Special Ability, but not a better chance of using it.
Encounters with NPCs are either hostile or non-hostile. Hostile NPCs always attack. Encounters with non-hostile NPCs require an Alignment Check. The Game Master compares the Alignments of the Player Character and the NPC. This determines the attitude of the NPC, either Domination, Equality, or Deception, which is kept secret from the player. The player then guesses what the NPC’s attitude is and selects his character’s approach, either Domination, Equality, or Deception. If the player is correct in guessing the NPC’s attitude, he can make an Attitude Option roll, again, either Domination, Equality, or Deception. This is a base percentile roll modified by either the Player Character’s Charisma and Intellect, sometimes both. If successful, the NPC becomes an Ally under the player’s control, joining the party of Player Characters. If the Alignment Check fails, the NPC becomes hostile and attacks, although it is suggested to the Game Master that depending upon the scenario, if the roll is failed, an NPC can still appear to act in a friendly manner towards the Player Characters, only to betray them later or act hostile initially, only to become an Ally later.
The Alignment Check and interaction rules for NPCs are not developed enough to work effectively. There are no bonuses or penalties to determine the effect of the three approaches—Domination, Equality, and Deception—working against each other. Unless the player successfully guesses the NPC’s attitude, the results are binary—failure, if not open hostility and combat. Also, the rules state that, “Regardless of whether or not the Alignment Check is required, the GM should roll the 20‐sided dice. Otherwise, the player may be able to discern whether or not they were right or wrong about the attitude of the NPC.” At this point, it is not clear what the Game Master is rolling for. Only in the accompanying example, does it become clear that the Game Master makes the Attitude Option roll and not the player.
Once surprise and initiative has been sorted, combat begins with dividing the combatants into groups of three on each side and the Game Master the values of a six-sided die to help randomly determine who targets who. Ranged combat is based on range—determined by the weapon’s range bands and distance to the target—and the attacker’s Dexterity. The result is a percentile value that the player or Game Master must roll under. The Game Master also has the option of applying penalties if the target is dodging, lying prone, or behind cover, but there are no standard penalties given. Damage from energy weapons is deadly—a ten-sided die’s worth for a Hand Phaser’s Destruction setting and instant death for the Dematerialise setting. The Stun simply renders the target unconscious.
Hand-to-hand combat involves not so much out and out brawling as attempts by the combatants to knock each other out. The two combatants’ Strength Ability ratings are compared. If they are equal, they have a hand‐to‐hand combat value of 50%, this the chance of knocking each other out. A higher Strength than the opponent will increase the hand‐to‐hand combat value, whilst a lower Strength will decrease the hand‐to‐hand combat value. Being armed with a knife or a stone count towards the hand‐to‐hand combat value. Of the two combat systems, the ranged combat rules are better than the ones for hand-to-hand combat, which really fail to capture the knockabout nature of brawls seen on screen in Star Trek: The Original Series.
The Adventure Book contains a single scenario, ‘The Drifting Ring’. The Enterprise has been assigned to investigate an object called the ‘The Ring’. It is a ten-kilometre diameter toroidal spacecraft and it is currently heading for Klingon space. The origins of The Ring lie at the centre of the galaxy where a race realised that their worlds increasingly in danger from a series of supernovae that would destroy the systems around them. They built a huge generational spaceship, populated it with crew, passengers (mostly in cryogenic sleep), and samples from their worlds, and headed for a safer area in the galaxy. Which to be honest, sounds an awful lot like the plot or at least the set-up, of Larry Niven’s Ringworld. Aboard, the crew will find a society that has regressed due to isolation and lost knowledge, and then rebellion, resulting in the inside of the spaceship being perpetually in the dark. The location where the Player Characters beam aboard has the feel of an agrarian valley, complete with river, mountains, forest, and ruins. The area is home to three different factions which keep apart from each other, some of whom will not be hostile to the Player Characters, some will, and of course, if one of the players is roleplaying Kirk, there is a young girl who will follow unconditionally no matter what the result of the Alignment Check suggests. (That said, given that she is described as a “[B]eautiful 16 year old girl.”, the Game Master would probably want to add a year or two or three…) Much of the adventure is given over to detailing the various locations in the scenario, but the descriptions are lacking, even absent in many cases of describing what something or someone looks like.
‘The Drifting Ring’ does actually feel as if it would fit into a Star Trek setting, given that the series dealt with a number of regressed civilisations, such as in ‘The Omega Glory’ and ‘For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky’. Effectively, ‘The Ring’ is a sandcrawl, the Player Characters free to explore where they want to. It is also more scenario than mission, since there is no real mission attached to the adventure. The implied mission is that the Enterprise crew is trying to stop the flight of The Ring. How that is achieved is left up to the players and their characters to decide. Overall, ‘The Ring’ feels a bit too open, a bit too big to be contained within one episode of Star Trek: The Original Series and despite, lacking in easy to use detail.
The Adventure Book concludes with some Design Notes from the author, Tama Yutaka. Notable later as the co-editor of the Japanese version of Warlock – The Fighting Fantasy Magazine, here he states that, “I designed this STAR TREK game as a way to introduce the Role Playing Game ‐‐ currently at dizzying heights in the United States ‐‐ to Japan.” He emphasises the importance of the human, that character should be central, even given the prominence of machines in Science Fiction and Fantasy—especially Star Trek—and this is what differentiates a roleplaying game from a board game. There is tentativeness to the Design Notes, if not the roleplaying game as a whole.
So what is missing from Enterprise – Role Play Game in Star Trek? Fundamentally, two things. First, there is no background on Star Trek at all in the setting. None at all. It assumes that both Game Master and her players are familiar already with the television series to play. Second, the U.S.S. Enterprise. Or, indeed, any starships. They are completely ignored, so very much like the earlier Star Trek: Adventure Gaming in the Final Frontier, published by Heritage Models, Inc., Enterprise – Role Play Game in Star Trek is all about the away missions and what happens on planet or aboard a space station rather than aboard ship. Similar to Star Trek: Adventure Gaming in the Final Frontier, there is no means of character progression either, even though it is possible to create Player Characters. The combination of this lack of character progression with the limited options in terms of the Special Abilities to select from or roll for—Mechanical Repair, Medical Talent (Treatment), Science Talent, and PSY Talent (ESP)—means that characters themselves feel shallow. It does not help that with no ships involved in the roleplaying game, there are no Special Abilities related to their option, but there are no combat or interaction Special Abilities either. Perhaps a second edition might have addressed these issues and been less of a skirmish roleplaying game, something that not even FASA’s Star Trek: The Role Playing Game was able to wholly avoid.
Physically, Enterprise – Role Play Game in Star Trek was presented for 1983. Its combination of a box set containing the two books, the Character Cards, and dice would have looked attractive and caught the eye of any Star Trek fan. The translation is clear and simply presented, the Character Cards of the crew of the Enterprise and their foes and allies are decently done, and the maps are workable.
Enterprise – Role Play Game in Star Trek is very much the Star Trek: The Original Series roleplaying game, really suggesting that the players take the roles of the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise rather than create their own crewmen. Like the earlier Star Trek: Adventure Gaming in the Final Frontier, it wants to push away from the wargaming origins of the hobby and like Star Trek: Adventure Gaming in the Final Frontier, it does not quite do so because it never really gets away from being a skirmish game played out on maps and floorplans. Yet it has some interesting ideas, such as the emotion-versus-logic Alignment system that is very Kirk-McCoy-Spock and the Alignment Check interaction mechanic, that suggests it does want to be more than this. These remain undeveloped though and with a focus on elements of play such as the need to check for traps and hidden doors, on movement, and the like, Enterprise – Role Play Game in Star Trek remains an unsophisticated design that all too often feels as if it has been written through the lens of Dungeons & Dragons and its play style as much as Star Trek. Ultimately, what makes Enterprise – Role Play Game in Star Trek an interesting roleplaying game is not that it is a Star Trek roleplaying game, but that it is the first Japanese roleplaying game.

You made it and you survived. In answer to the signal sent from Tau Ceti almost a century ago, you were among those who made the three decade-long first journey by mankind through interstellar space. What humanity found were the arrays, installations ranging in size from a metre across to kilometres across and performing a variety of functions—habitants, defence systems, power stations, communications relays, and many more. What they all do remains yet to be determined, but if humanity is to survive, it needs resources—which can hopefully be found in Tau Ceti’s outer system. Prospectors, known as ‘Rock Hoppers’, have been sent out, one-part miners, one-part salvagers, one-part explorers, to search for the resources mankind’s first colony needs to survive. Hopping from rock to rock, from asteroid to asteroid, every rock hopper hopes to locate that lucky strike which will set them up for life—and if not that, enough to continue operations. That was what you thought when you detected the gravitational anomaly. It could only be xeno-tech, something that help understand the installations of the array which drew humanity to the system. Only for the gravitational anomaly to spike, soaring to nine times what you first detected, collapsing the entrance to the asteroid, trapping you inside. You cannot go back the way you came. The only way to survive is to find a path forward, hopefully a route out if not answers as to what happened…
This is the set-up for Rock Hoppers, a solo journalling game of desperate exploration in the near future in another star. It is a sequel to The Long Goodbye and both are set in the same Dyson Eclipse future. Where The Long Goodbye explored the journey from the Earth to the unknown of Tau Ceti and the fear of the journey and what might be found at Tau Ceti, Rock Hoppers explores what might be found there and what it takes to survive. Where The Long Goodbye was a two-player epistolary roleplaying game, Rock Hoppers is a solo affair, one which takes it desperate tone and urgency from The Wretched, though not its horror. 
Published by LunarShadow Designs and like The Wretched before it, Rock Hoppers is a game about exploration, isolation, fear, and perseverance and potentially, survival in the face of overwhelming odds. The game requires an ordinary deck of playing cards without the Jokers, a six-sided die, a Jenga or similar tower block game, and a set of tokens. In addition, the player will require a means of recording the results of the game. It is suggested that audio or video longs work best, but a traditional journal will also work too. Rock Hoppers is a played out as a series of days, the player, as the titular rock hopper, undertaking a series of tasks each day and responding to prompts before ending the day by recording its events and his thoughts in his personal log. As in The Wretched, the rock hopper is unlikely to survive the experience. The rock hopper’s personal mining rig might become trapped in the tunnels in the asteroid or the tunnels might collapse, crushing the rock hopper—which will happen if the tower block collapses. The only way for the rock hopper to survive is to reach the cause of the gravitation anomaly and hope that it some answers…
 
The four suites correspond to different aspects of the rock hopper’s mining rig and the environment around him. Spades represent the rock hopper’s personal mining rig and the supplies it was carrying when he became trapped; Clubs detail the asteroid itself, previously mined by whomever it who built the arrays; Hearts are signals that the rock hopper will pick up from outside the asteroid; and Diamonds are the secrets to be found buried deep in the asteroid. Unlike in The Wretched, there is no sense of threat from without, no monster or alien lurking, ready to find its way into the asteroid… Instead, there is a sense of isolation and desperation, rather than of being stalked. In that isolation, there is also time for reflection for the situation that the rock hopper finds himself in and likely, if disaster strikes, on his life.
Rock Hoppers does have secrets. These are revealed only under certain circumstances. The likelihood is that the player will take several attempts to play through Rock Hoppers in order to get to them and begin to reveal the secrets of the asteroid and thus the very first secrets of the Dyson Eclipse future. 
Physically, Rock Hoppers is cleanly and tidily presented. It is not illustrated. 
Although Rock Hoppers uses the same mechanics as The Wretched, but is much more constrained and isolated in nature, primarily because there is no external force. It does take a while to play through, in the sense of multiple attempts, to reveal any secrets of the Dyson Eclipse setting, and a player may find himself going over old story prompts.

SLA Industries Species Guide 1: Shaktar – Wraithen is a supplement for SLA Industries, the roleplaying game set in a far future dystopia of corporate greed, commodification of ultraviolence, the mediatisation of murder, conspiracy, and urban horror, and serial killer sensationalism. S.L.A. Industries has its headquarters on Mort City, its rain sodden, polluted, and overly populated heart, located on the industrially stripped planet of Mort and surrounded by five Cannibal Sectors, and from here it governs the planet and the World of Progress beyond, encompassing all of known space. It is here the citizens come from far and wide to enlist in Meny to become SLA Operatives and part of the mediatised programme even as they protect SLA Industries and the World of Progress from innumerable threats from without—and some from within. Some of the most loyal of citizens who serve as Operatives are the Shaktar and the Wraithen and have been part of the Operative Programme since the start and it is both of these that the subject of the species guide for SLA Industries.

SLA Industries Species Guide 1: Shaktar – Wraithen is a slim volume that divides its content equally between the two very different species. These are the honourable warriors that are the Shaktar and the hyperactive hunters that are the Wraithen. In both cases it provides details of each species, their history and home world, culture and outlook, and connection to SLA Industries. This is supported with details of some of the species indigenous to their homeworlds, arms and armour particular to their species, and new additions to the rules. These include new skill packages and Traits for use with Player Character or NPC creation as well as Feats for cinematic action, and their outlook and attitude towards the other species who typically sign up as a SLA Operatives. Beyond this, there is extra content as such as details of the Shaktar faith and of ‘The Killbox’ in Mort City, an attraction in Little Polo—the Wraithen focused entertainment district—where a five-kilometre square area underground has been turned into a killzone watched by a live audience that only one team has so survived. Plus, there are two BPN—BluePrint News files—tasks tied to the Wraithen Liberation Front, a political movement dedicated to Wraithen life to what it once was on Polo before SLA Industries arrived, and a Hunter Sheet for ‘The Copycat Killer’, which directs the Operatives to track down a serial killer who is murdering the bird-like Nephrons in the style of a Wraithen presently arrested as the perpetrators of the crimes.

There is a sense of duality which rules throughout the supplement. Most obviously in the two very species presented in its pages. The Shaktar, stoic, valorous, honourable, and always at war with something—themselves, the pitiless nature of society, or an enemy of SLA Industries, versus the Wraithen, ultra-competitive, win-at-all-costs, casually sadistic, impulsive hunters with low attention spans. Yet even within the Shaktar, there is a duality, between the ideologies of those who follow the Shining Moons and those who follow the Shadow Moons. The Shining Moon Tribes have long been allied with SLA Industries, whereas the Shadow Moon Tribes worship the White Earth. The Shaktar embrace war and conflict, but feel the need to counter this violence by paying a debt to society, by doing good works, helping others and so on. They call this ‘The Sword and the Bowl’. When a Shaktar has no purpose, such as undertaking an ordeal, pursuing an injustice, going after the Ion Pirates—Shaktar who follow the Dark Moons, he is unbalanced and tip into its counterpart, Emptiness. This is the absence of joy, faith, and compassion and the Shaktar is in danger of slipping onto the path under the Dark Moons. Dualism plays out again and again with the Shaktar, adding depth and detail, but not so with the Wraithen. They are much more straightforward and direct, having no sense of reflection like the Shaktar do, regarding the need for faith and honour as a waste of time when one could instead be winning and being the best. The focus for them and on them is on the immediacy of what they want.
In the first half of SLA Industries Species Guide 1: Shaktar – Wraithen, the focus is on the Shaktar, reptilian humanoids of The Shining Moon Tribes and the balance in the Shaktar species. The descriptions are full of details that the Game Master can use to bring their culture to life. For example, the ‘sword’ aspect of ‘The Sword and the Bowl’ is easy to fulfil with combat and violent deeds, but the ‘bowl’ requires charitable, unselfish deeds, which need to be resolved and accepted by a Shaktarian Confessor or Priest. Here then is a roleplaying opportunity that can only be made the more interesting if the Shaktar’s squadmates have to get involved too. Ordeals—grand, self-appointed quests—drive a Shaktar’s actions too, so every Player Character Shaktar should be on one or thinking about one. The Game Master can flesh out the Player Character Shaktar’s relation with the Confessor or Priest using the accompanying description of Shaktar religion, whilst the Tribal Education packages are good for Shaktar who are native to the worlds of the Shaktar Nation, though all Shaktar trace their lineage back to the eight tribes or castes. The supplement adds Language: Shaktarian and Lore: Shaktarian, though only the Progressive dialect of the Shaktarian language can be spoken outsiders, the Dawn language bing incomprehensible and unpronounceable. New equipment includes the HonourBound armour, which can only be given as a gift to those Shaktar on an ordeal and must be worn until the ordeal is complete, Ion weapons that fire positively-charged ions, S’k’-r’n blades made from the bones of personally vanquished foes, and legendary weapons—weapons, armour, and artefacts that have lost since the Conflict Era and Green and Yellow BPNs are used to recover. Shaktar starting skill packages include Gallant, Stalwart, K’th Priest, and R’tha Champion—the latter from a religious sect of warriors dedicated to the destruction of anything connected to the White Earth. Feats include Battle Lust for Body to act before Initiative is rolled for and Shadow Blood for Bravado and a Shaktar who has family members who have fallen into Emptiness or aligned with the Shadow Moon Tribes. Can he be trusted? Rules are included for Shaktar honour codes, Lineage, Acclaim, and Blessings, enabling the Game Master to bring out more Shaktar culture in play.
By comparison, the Wraithen are shallow. What the highly competitive fast-moving apex predators are not—as the supplement makes clear is ‘comedy cat people’, ‘attractive to other species’ because they are too alien with their movement and big jaws full of teeth, or indeed, savages, honourable, stupid, or actually evil. It is a warning upfront to the Game Master and player alike on how to roleplay given how alien they are. There plenty of details also what does keep their attention span, such as the ‘Hlicks’ or ‘Hunting Flicks’ which show fast-moving prey animals hunting and culminate in a bloody kill (there is the suggestion of underground Hlicks where the target is a humanoid being hunted by skilled SLA Operatives), Wraithen focused adverts, and Little Polo, the district specifically designed to cater to Wraithen. There is some background on the Wraithen homeworld of Polo, extremely cold such that Wraiten need a bio-implant to encounter the effects of the heat on Mort, but in someways the means of getting off it and into SLA Operatives training at Meny is more interesting, SLA Industry having turned the application process for young Wraithen into a game! New skill packages include the Media Darling, the Big Game Hunter, the Saboteur, the Sneak Thief, and many more. Wraithen specific hardware includes the WWD ‘Heart Stopper’ Blade, originally designed as a filleting and flensing knife, but now used as a finesse weapon, WWD ‘Monofangs’, and FEN 313 ‘Goodnight Sweetheart’ Tranq Rifle, which can fire a range of drug-delivering darts. Some tranquilise the target—with or without leaving an aftertaste, and some like Kickoff, causes uncontrollable and indiscriminate aggression, so can be used to make a hunt all the more challenging. There is the comment that bored Wraithen are known to fire a dose of this into their squadmates because they simply bored… Besides a wide range of arms and armour—WWD ‘Ishmael’ Harpoon Launcher from hunting Ice Whales on Polo anyone?—there are a lot of new Feats, such as ‘Nine Lives’ for Body, with which they avoid a killing blow, but are knocked prone and stunned and ‘Me?’ for Bravado which enables a Wraithen to feign innocence by blaming someone else. New Traits include Double Jointed, Perfect Balance, and (really, really) Short attention Span. 

Physically, SLA Industries Species Guide 1: Shaktar – Wraithen is very well-presented, The artwork is as good as to be expected for a SLA Industries supplement, the writing is decent, and it gets away with not needing an index with its relatively short page length.
SLA Industries Species Guide 1: Shaktar – Wraithen is a good resource for the player and Game Master of SLA Industries alike. The player has extra background about his character and plenty of new character options to help him bring them into play, whilst the Game Master has content she can use to showcase both the Shaktar and the Wraithen and their culture and outlook in her campaign and provide species specific content for Shaktar and Wraithen Player Characters, both on their homeworlds and off.

With war looming – at least in Europe, the future of the world may depend upon who gets possession of a startling piece of equipment which could push the future of aviation technology—a rocket pack! Stolen to order from Howard Hughes by gangsters, they were forced to hide it in their getaway and both the one working model and the plans have ended up in possession of Cliff Secord, a stunt pilot. As he learns to fly the rocket pack, he comes to the attention of Eddie Valentine, the mobster hired to carry out the theft in the first place, and the man who hired Eddie, the matinee idol, Neville Sinclair, who also happens to be a secret Nazi! If Eddie Valentine cannot get the plans, then Sinclair’s henchman, the glowering Lothar certainly, if Lothar fails, Sinclair has a secret army of soldiers at his command. Cliff Secord must stop the plans from falling into Nazi hands—and if they do, get them back before Sinclair can travel to Germany. He has the help of his trusty mechanic, Peevy, and his girlfriend, both of whom can get places he cannot. Will Cliff keep hold of the rocket plans or will he fail and advance Nazi science in readiness for the coming conflict?

So this essentially, is the plot to the 1991 Disney film, The Rocketeer, which of course, was adapted from the brilliant comic book series by the late Dave Stevens. Both combined arty deco stylings, pulp action, and a serving of modest cheesecake with the inclusion of the Betty Page-like Jenny with the inspiration of Republic Pictures serials of the early nineteen fifties, most notably Radar Men from the Moon and Commando Cody: Sky Marshal of the Universe. (If you have not seen the film, why not? It is genuinely good fun. Actually, go watch the film instead of reading this review. I honestly do not mind. Really. I promise you will not be disappointed. In fact, I am watching it right now as I type this, so what is your excuse?) This it also turns out is the set-up for The Rocketeer – Fate of the Future. Designed by the same team behind Indiana Jones: Sands of Adventure and Jaws, The Rocketeer – Fate of the Future is a two-player, asymmetric boardgame which was published by Funko Games in 2021—the thirtieth anniversary of the film. Designed for ages twelve and up, each player in The Rocketeer – Fate of the Future controls a team of three characters who will race back and forth across Los Angeles, trade punches as much as pithy putdowns, all the while trying to ensure that by the time the zeppelin, the LZ Luxembourg, is in town, they have possession of the rocket pack plans. The game plays in forty-five minutes, but faster once you get to it is rules—though it is not that complex.

The first thing that can be said about The Rocketeer – Fate of the Future is that this is a great looking game. You know that the moment you open the box and the Rocketeer’s helmet stares at you from the back of the board. This is a lovely detail—as is the map of Los Angeles on the inside of the lid of the box. Neither add a single thing to the game except love for the source material. The game is full of such details, such as the Current Event cards being designed to look like newspaper front pages and the art deco style throughout. The artwork is excellent, fully painted rather than drawn from Dave Stevens’ own artwork or stills from the film. It is all inspired by the film and is all very, very good. If there is a downside to the components, it is the miniature figures for each of the six characters. It is easy to tell which one is which, but they are more representative than effectively depicting the characters. The other aspect of the game’s look is the lack of reference to, or iconography of, the Nazis. Although we know Sinclair to be one, that is enough to play the game and it need not be made obvious and so spoil the look of the game.

At the heart of The Rocketeer – Fate of the Future are the plans to the rocket pack. These are represented by three cards. One is the Rocket Blueprint, the other two are dummy plans. The Heroes start play with these hidden and face down. The Villains will Tussle with the Heroes to determine which of them has the Rocket Blueprints and having taken possession of them, will keep them hidden and face down. It is the Heroes turn to Tussle with the Villains Heroes to determine which of them has the Rocket Blueprints and having taken possession of them again, will keep them hidden and face down. Play will continue like this over the course of five or six rounds, the aim being not just to keep hold of the Rocket Blueprint, but acquire Finale cards. Finale cards can be earned from playing the Abilities on cards and from having the Plans at the end of each round. Finale cards reward points and the player with the most points at the end of the game—indicated by the arrival of the LZ Luxembourg in Los Angeles—wins the game.

The Rocketeer – Fate of the Future is played out a board depicting different locations from the film across Los Angeles. These include The Observatory, the setting for the film’s climax, the South Seas Club where Sinclair takes Jenny to dinner, Sinclair Mansion, 1935 Palm Terrace—home to Peevy and Cliff, Bulldog Café where Cliff takes Jenny to dinner, and Chapel Airfield, scene of much of the film’s action. These locations are marked with Icons indicating the benefits a player can gain from visiting, knocking out opponents, and being in control at the end of a round. Each Player controls the three heroes—Cliff, Jenny, and Peevy, or the three villains—Neville Sinclair, Eddie Valentine, and Lothar. As the Rocketeer, Cliff has the advantage of the rocket suit and has greater movement—which can be increased, whilst as a Nazi agent, Neville Sinclair can recruit and build a secret army of soldiers. When he ambushes any of the heroes, Eddie Valentine realises who Sinclair is working for and scarpers, but Sinclair has his army, nonetheless. It is best for the Villain player to recruit as many as he can before unleashing them. Sadly, unlike in the film, Eddy Valentine does not then fight on the Heroes’ side.
Control of each player’s three characters is done via a deck of cards. Every card has icons to indicate which character or characters the card applies to, an action or an ability that the player character choose between, and the cost of using the ability as well as a good illustration. For example, ‘Put It In Neutral’ can be used by either Cliff or Peevy. If used as an Action card, it grants a Move and a Tussle Icon and their associated actions. However, if used as an Ability, there is no cost, but the character can move to any Location and take the associated action there. The illustration shows Cliff as the Rocketeer in the back of Peevy’s pickup truck, using the power of the rocket pack to make a getaway. This illustrates one of the scenes from the film and all the cards are like this, depicting a scene from the film and so combining the film’s story and the rules in such a way that helps bring the game to life. It is really quite subtle, but if you know the film, it is just one more way in which the designers reward the players. Other rewards from the Ability options on the cards include gaining Grit or Clout, drawing a card, drawing a Finale card, revealing or hiding Plans. The Hero player can also increases Cliff’s skill and range with the rocket pack and the Villain player can recruit soldiers to his secret army and stage ambushes. Grit is possessed individually by each character and is used in Tussles and Clout is a shared resource used to activate the Abilities on many of the cards.

The game consists of several rounds. At the beginning of each round, a Current Event card will be draw, which adds a random event and determines how far the Luxembourg travels this round. Then, using a hand of seven cards, each player will take it in turn to active his three characters, have them move, Tussle with the enemy. A player can use as many cards as he wants or he can for each character. Once a character has been activated and moved, he cannot do so again that turn. At the end of the round, rewards are earned for having the Plans and from each location controlled. Tussles are simple. The Action part of a card has a Tussle icon on it. This represents the character’s strength in the Tussle and it can be increased by adding the character’s Grit tokens. The defending player can block the attack by discarding cards which have the Shield icon on them and card’s which have the defending character’s Icon on them. This also costs Grit. The character with the higher Tussle Strength will win the Tussle. Only the defending character can be knocked out in a Tussle, which if his side has the Plans, will also reveal if he has the Rocket Blueprint or the dummy plans. A Tussle can—and will often—end with a standoff, with blows exchanged, Grit expended, and no knockout. This though does make a defending character weak if the acting player still have characters to move. Once both players have moved all three of their characters, the round is over, rewards are awarded, and a new round is set-up. Once the Luxembourg arrives in Los Angeles, a final round is played and the game ends. Players total their points from the Finale cards—typically two or three points per card, though some have zero points and others have conditional rewards such as a bonus for Grit in play or controlling a location—and the player with highest total wins.

The Rocketeer – Fate of the Future does feel a little long in its game play and though designed to be asymmetrical, does favour the Heroes more than the Villains. The Heroes have more chances to gain Finale cards and their mechanics are simpler, whereas the Villains have the Secret Army, which is a bit fiddlier and a different sub-mechanic for the Villain player to have to contend with. Plus, when the Secret Army does come into play, it cannot possess the Rocket Blueprint, meaning that if in the Villains’ hands, either Neville Sinclair or Lothar has it, making it easier to track down and get back. The aspect of winning via the Finale cards means that neither player quite knows who is winning until the very end unless one player has managed to get many more than the other. So, it can be difficult to work out how you are progressing in the game.

The Rocketeer – Fate of the Future is a clever design which really takes advantage of its source material to turn it into a good game. The game play is fairly simple, tactical rather than strategic—a player needing to get the best out of his hand of cards in a round rather than long term planning, and thematic. In fact, highly thematic! If you are a fan of The Rocketeer, then The Rocketeer – Fate of the Future is definitely the game for you. The Rocketeer – Fate of the Future definitely looks the part—or the film, and who wouldn’t want to sock Neville Sinclair where it counts?