cybernecrocat:

Long dragonish friend from my sketchbook.
(Boy, wouldn’t it be great to have one consistent style and technique I could work on mastering. Oh, if only.)

And so it begins: invitations for the Chinese New Year at the Texas Triffid Ranch open house on January 25 just went out: if you happen to be a member of the arts press, Dallas or elsewhere, who needs one, … Continue reading →

It started as a lark. For the last several years, notices for ReptiCon shows in Dallas would arrive in the mailbox, usually literally seconds after scheduling another event for that same weekend. At the end of December, another notice came … Continue reading →

Reviews / January 8, 2020

Space Settlements
By Fred Scharmen
Columbia Books on Architecture and the City (2019)

You’ve seen the images before: interiors of massive cylindrical and spherical space habitats, where posh-looking off-world colonists attend catered cocktail parties and sip coffee on their (seemingly) tilted verandas; where space-suited construction workers navigate through zero-g miles above an immaculate suburbia, complete with backyard swimming pools; where elongated ribbons of verdant frontier alternate with windows admitting both sunlight and views of the looming Earth and Moon. Given the apocalyptic witlessness of our current politics, it’s hard to imagine that these brazenly idealistic renderings are anything more than cover art for an old series of Heinlein paperbacks, but in fact they are conceptual designs commissioned by NASA in 1975 “to assess the human and economic implications as well as technical feasibility” of space colonies. They pop up every year on various sites and publications, discovered anew with expressions of bewildered glee and filed under what we now call retrofuturism. But in Space Settlements, Fred Scharmen ventures far beyond the surface appeal of these enduring artifacts, exploring how they “mediate anxieties about the American city, about technology, and about the changing role of human beings within space and architecture more generally.”

The story begins with Princeton professor Gerard O’Neill, who, in 1969, invited his best students to question whether planetary surfaces were “the right place for an expanding technological civilization.” Things did not seem to be going well on Earth, after all, and young people, even young Ivy Leaguers, increasingly viewed science as a tool of destruction and subterfuge owned and operated by the military and political establishment. (Theodore Roszak makes this skeptical attitude central to the same year’s The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and Its Youthful Opposition, where he defines technocracy as a “paternalism of expertise… which has learned a thousand ways to manipulate our acquiescence with an imperceptible subtlety.”) O’Neill and his students worked on the engineering and physics of rotating orbital habitats, and O’Neill, at least, decided that space might be a better fit for us—some of us, anyway—and that he was on to “something very important.” The leading scientific magazines and journals did not immediately agree, repeatedly rejecting O’Neill’s paper on the subject; it wasn’t until four years later that he saw any progress—a grant from Merry Prankster and Whole Earth Catalog founder Stewart Brand. This resulted in two conferences at Princeton (May 1974 and May 1975), which led to the 1975 NASA Summer Study at Stanford University. Although hundreds of schematics and illustrations pepper 1977’s summary report, Space Settlements: A Design Study, it’s the 13 large paintings illustrated by American artists Don Davis and Rick Guidice that frame Scharmen’s narrative (and appear in detail throughout the book, along with hundreds of photos and a lengthy appendix of never-before-seen sketches from the personal libraries of Davis and Guidice).

The idea of orbiting space colonies, and the visualization thereof, did not emerge from a vacuum. Scharmen discusses in compelling depth the architectural and philosophical foundations of the “inside-out planets,” as Brand called them, including (this is not a complete list) an 1883 sketch by Russian space scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky that Scharmen remarks is “the earliest known visual depiction of humans living in free-fall,” John Bernal’s 1929 pamphlet The World, the Flesh, and the Devil, in which the Bernal sphere is postulated, Le Corbusier’s landmark The City of Tomorrow and Its Planning (1929) and his “ideal” Radiant City, Wernher von Braun’s “Man Will Conquer Space Soon!” articles for Collier’s in the early ’50s, Space Race-fueled futurist depictions of hollow asteroid colonies capable of supporting up to a million intrepid souls, and, of course, NASA’s short-lived Skylab. Scharmen contrasts these predecessors with fictional models like the Death Star and Space Station V from 2001: A Space Odyssey and contemporary megastructures like the International Space Station and Apple Park, always with an eye to exploring “the relationships between architecture and speculative disciplines.”

Although O’Neill and the study participants instructed Davis and Guidice on the visual designs meant to “sell” the space settlement concept, the artists (Scharmen interviewed both extensively) brought their own touches and notions to the final product, culled largely from the increasingly popular science fiction genre (one of Davis’s pre-Summer Study paintings had been inspired by Larry Niven’s 1970 novel Ringworld) and the counterculture’s ecological experiments with modular and communal living: Scharmen notes that in one of Davis’s paintings, which appeared on the cover of a 1977 Whole Earth Catalog book (edited by Brand) called Space Colonies, a Golden Gate Bridge stand-in runs parallel to the axis of a cylinder habitat designed to emulate the San Francisco Bay Area (where Davis was raised); in the lush foreground, parents and their children sunbathe, cavort in a stream, and play Frisbee, their solar-powered, dome-like cabin nearby. O’Neill himself claimed, somewhat disingenuously, that he hadn’t been influenced by sci-fi (the “stories,” he said, provided “no useful ideas contributory to a practical scheme for space colonization”), and probably came to resent the influence of Brand and his acolytes, though he seemed to understand that buy-in from both communities was necessary.

For O’Neill, and for many others inside and outside the Summer Study bubble, the space settlements were “part Eden, part Ark,” Scharmen says—“the frontier without hardship and the city without difference.” They thus represent a distinctly American brand of utopianism—Carl Sagan called O’Neill’s proposals “America in the skies,” one of “the few places to which the discontent cutting edge of mankind can emigrate”—that has cropped up and fizzled out in communities from New Haven to New Harmony to Drop City to Zuccotti Park. O’Neill wrote in 1974 that “we have now reached the point where we can, if we so choose, build new habitats far more comfortable, productive and attractive than is most of Earth,” and in his 1977 book The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space, he made a bolder claim: these new frontier settlements also would solve a “nonmaterial problem… not to be reckoned in dollars: the opportunity for increased human options and diversity of development.”

O’Neill may have been bright-eyed and full of blue sky, but he was also canny. In July 1975, as the Summer Study got going at Stanford, he testified before the House Subcommittee on Space Science and Applications about the possibility, logistics, and strategic advantage of American colonies in space. Against the backdrop of the energy crisis, turmoil in the Middle East, deepening recession, fear of imminent overpopulation (O’Neill’s project was partly a “refutation” of and solution to the Club of Rome’s 1972 Limits to Growth, a report concluding that the world’s human inhabitants would consume the resources needed to sustain themselves within a few decades), his pitch was couched in a language of entrepreneurship and nationalism that Congress could understand: we would build a “beachhead in space” that would soon grant the US “energy independence” through production of profitable synthetic fuels, as well as room to breathe and grow. “Earthlike human communities” in space represent “a product for which there is a big market, and which satisfies a need.” For a small initial investment (the “Spartan” tier cost $33 billion, while the “Luxurious” tier needed $200 billion), there would be a “direct-dollar” return, and, in 25 years or so, “total payback.” Utopia, it seems, just like everything else, can be bought.

Although a good part of Scharmen’s book is necessarily devoted to the technical concepts of space science and urban design (it’s to his credit, not mine, that I was able to follow along on feedback systems, spin gravity, Cartesian skyscrapers, and so on), Space Settlements is at heart a book about “the necessary investigations into the political and social agendas embedded” in the Summer Study’s particular “acts of design”—embedded in all acts of design, really. “If the environment is designed,” Scharmen writes, “then the population is designed.” Nearly all depictions of future space habitats and future living from the Cold War era feature a certain type of human: white, young, thin, manicured, lively, happy; one young black woman appears in the Summer Study paintings (at the cocktail party), likely based on a model from Guidice’s stock art collection. Both Carl Sagan and Stewart Brand recognized that the very idea of a space “colony,” of a new “frontier” or “settlement,” carried with it “language… hard to extricate from a history of violence, expropriation, and displacement”—but ultimately “colony” is what stuck. Was O’Neill’s project ultimately “about the creation of an inclusive, or exclusive, space?” Scharmen asks. “Who is invited into the rooms where these future spaces will be designed? Who is the space for?” It’s a timely question, given that the richest man in the world plans to build and run his own O’Neill cylinder, given all of these millionaires and billionaires reserving private flights to the Moon, given all this talk of mining Mars while, here on the old Blue Marble, our cities rust and our wilderness and wildlife burn.

To me, the Summer Study imagery recalls not so much an idealized future, but a mythical past. After so many wistful viewings over the course of the years, it occurs to me that the best of the paintings have something in common with classical landscapes (O’Neill instructed Guidice to make the habitat in his first illustration look like the “French countryside”). In the work of Claude Lorrain and Nicholas Poussin and hundreds of others, tiny foreground figures cavort, bathe, trade, play, work, and rest, engulfed by the indifferent grandeur of divine nature and, at times, the looming Greek and Roman temples and towers—the advanced technology—of a bygone Golden Age. The scenes are fantasy: imaginary places and mythopoetic expressions designed to instill in the viewer a sense of harmony and order and humility. The difference in Davis and Guidice is that technology has conquered nature, finally, and there is nothing left to fear. What is grander or more implacable or closer to heaven than the endless void of star-flecked outer space? And what is more comforting and idyllic than the first-generation colonist in his white tennis shirt basking in the garden sunshine refracted from the translucent skin of his cylindrical womb? Here there is no decay, no disease, no disparity, no privation, no regrets, and no way for the huddled masses to get in. What is so heartbreaking about O’Neill’s “islands in space” is not that we don’t have them, but that we shouldn’t need them.

K.E. Roberts is Editor-in-Chief of We Are the Mutants. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, two daughters, and the longest cat any of them have ever seen.

 

 

One Man's God: Indian Mythos

It's 2020 and welcome back to my series One Man's God (OMG).  I look at the various gods, monsters and everything in between and see how well they could (or would or would not) fit into the AD&D 1st Monster Manual as demons.

Before I jump back in a few introductory notes.
I use the word "demon" a lot.  By this I don't usually mean the Christian meaning of the term, but rather the much more generic meaning as a usually evil spiritual creature.  This is important here since I am going to jump feet first into the Indian myths and they have a lot of demons, and many are called demons too.

I am also limiting myself to AD&D 1st edition here.  While I do draw from other editions and games, it is AD&D 1st ed I am most interested in.   How do these creatures and monsters fit the AD&D (not Earth's) cosmology?



So in preparation for this, I grabbed my copy of the Ramayana to help me out.  Though the focus here is not on the myths and stories themselves but rather on how the Deities & Demigods presents them.

It would be difficult, if not impossible, to collect all the myths and stories of India collate them, sort them and then put them into a gamebook and have them make sense.  Indian myths, like and maybe more so than other mythologies in the D&DG, are far too dense and scattered over time to fit the needs of a book publisher with a handful of pages to spare.  So I am not going to fault the creative choices made by the authors and editors here.  The authors acknowledge this in their first sentence of text for these myths.   So the list of gods, goddesses and creatures here combine Hindu, Buddist, Shakta, Jainism, and other beliefs.  Much like India itself.

Indian mythology is ancient, with Hindu texts going back to at least 1500 BCE.  I remember reading the Rig Veda in college and the Ramayan a while back.  What struck me then and again now is how much color and vibrancy there is to these tales.  I could go on and on, but that is not focus here.

In the Indian Myths as presented in the D&DG there are many gods and goddesses that look monstrous but are not.  This will be a classic example of not judging someone by their looks.

Kali
Kali might be one of the more recognizable personas from the Indian mythos.  She gained notable status soon after the D&DG came out thanks to the Indiana Jones and Temple of Doom movie.  But Kali is much, much more complicated than that. Kali is needed and required in Hindu mythology she is the one who dances with Shiva to destroy and then rebuild, the world.  Here name means "Time" and thus is a complicated character. 
In the D&DG she is reduced to just a goddess that can instill fear in demons and devils. She should be more.

Rakshasa
The rakshasa from the MM (and every Monster Manual hereafter) is often described as a demon.  Throughout D&D's history they have been consistently Lawful Evil. They are featured in many of the ancient tales, and in the Ramayana in particular.  Originally I wanted to re-classify them as Chaotic Evil, but after rereading the Ramayana I think I'll stick with Lawful Evil, with some odd individuals as Lawful Neutral or even Lawful Good.  Even in some tales Shurpanakha, the demonic sister of Ravana, the rakshasa king of Lanka, becomes so good that her beauty comes back to her.

Vitra and Susna
Both of these creatures are described as "dragons", "serpents" or "snakes" and often as a demon of drought.  They are typically blocking rivers or damming up waters and Indra has to fight them.

In this case, he could be related to any number of world-threatening serpents such as Apep or even Azi-Dahaka.  I honestly could use the same stats for it as I did for Apep.  Or in his "human" form that of a Balor.



A bestiary of all the monsters and demons from India would fill their own book.  It would be a fun book too!

Though if I were to do such a thing I'd rather do it for Ghosts of Albion and set it in the early Victorian Age.

 Exhibit / January 7, 2020

Object Name: Space toy line
Maker and Year: Britains’ Toys, 1981-1987
Object Type: Toy catalogs
Image Source: Hobby DB, Golob the Humanoid
Description: (Richard McKenna)

Of all the weird remnants to have filtered down into British popular culture of the late 20th century, the toy soldier was one of the most pervasive. The British Army had long been an important element—read facilitator and enforcer—of the country’s imperialist culture, and the total war mindset programmed into us by the First and Second World Wars was still very much a part of the psychological and physical landscape until well into the 1980s. At the beginning of the decade, newsagents still sold multiple weekly and fortnightly war story comics for children, Sven Hassel books were as ubiquitous as ashtrays, TV was still full of war films, and it was not considered in any way peculiar for a 9-year-old school friend to turn up to a fancy-dress party in a surprisingly accurate Wehrmacht uniform (well, maybe a bit strange—my mum did ask what his German stepdad did). And a large range of toy soldiers depicting the various fighting forces of World War II was still standard stock in toy shops: what better way to accustom children to the idea that war wasn’t something terrible and only to be entered into when absolutely necessary? That it was natural—just another game?

Founded in 1893 and famous for the accuracy and detailing of its products, stuffy British toy company Britains (I know) was the most establishment of the country’s toy producers. It had revolutionized the national toy industry with the invention of the hollow casting process, which allowied its lead figures to break the German stranglehold of the lucrative toy soldier market, and it continued to produce lead figures until costs and safety concerns forced a shift to plastic (produced in Hong Kong) on heavy metal bases in the late 1960s.

Britains’ soldiers were prestige toys to be collected, placed on a shelf, and admired for their craftsmanship—not set on fire with lighter fuel or buried in the back garden. Neither I nor any of the other children I knew in the consumerist ’70s had any, because, for the price of two Britains figures (which you would probably have had to go to a special “posh” toy shop to get), you could get a whole squadron of unpainted, injection-molded Airfix British Tommies, or an entire army in a plastic bag from one of the less accuracy-minded toy companies. To those of us less concerned with unsightly flanges of molding flash than with the thought of having an entire platoon at our command, Britains’ toys barely registered. But then, we were not their quarry. It’s clear from a glance at the company’s catalogs over the years that its target audience must have been the children of the nation’s wealthy farmers: at least, it’s hard to imagine why the hell else eight of the twenty pages of the 1980 catalog were dedicated to farm animals and, even more confusingly, farm equipment. Britains’ farm line had been introduced after the First World War when the nation was, understandably, looking for a something that didn’t remind them of the vast numbers of corpses that littered the continent. As undeniably beautiful as the models are, though, it’s hard to imagine any child of 1980 who had not been raised in Britain’s (the country, not the toy maker) most frightening cult—middle-class farmers—asking Santa for a 1:32 scale Vicon vari-spreader. Appropriately, one of Britains’ (the toy maker) rare forays into the populist cesspit of licensing (another was the 1924 Nestlé World Cow) was a model of Worzel Gummidge, the nation’s favorite TV scarecrow, as played by ex-Doctor Who Jon Pertwee. Throughout the postwar period, then, Britains’ business model had been based on two of the pursuits that have shaped and enslaved the human race over the millennia: farming and war—capitalism and imperialism, if you like.

By the end of the 1970s, American products had forced their way into the British market, and a dated domestic industry found it was struggling to retain kids’ affections and obtain their cash. Now add to that a movie called Star Wars. Global behemoth Lego had released its Space range in 1977 and the other big UK toy companies had already come out with their own ripostes to the changing landscape: Matchbox with the Adventure 2000 series and Corgi with its doom-laden X-Ploratrons. In 1981, Britains evidently decided that it could no longer afford to ignore the laser blasts shaking the heavens and embarked on its belated, ill-omened attempt to seize the thrashing tail of the zeitgest. What emerged was an unexpectedly joyous eruption of plastic that felt as though the warehouse-coat-clad bods usually charged with creating photo-accurate 1:32 scale diecast baling machines had done a load of mushrooms while reading a pile of sci-fi comics and listening to Hawkwind.

The relativism and lack of perspective implicit in calling a range of plastic space people transcendently beautiful, as I did above, doesn’t escape me, but in this case I feel as though it’s to some extent merited. Originally given a name whose uninspiring nature was fully in keeping with Britains’ reputation for dull worthiness—“Space”—the range’s strange cosmology posited an unexplained army of space soldiers clad in beautifully-designed bright yellow spacesuits, their feet anchored, like all Britains figures, to unwieldy metal lozenges for stability. Arrayed against them, for no clear reason, were their nemeses, the “Aliens.” The unexplained antagonism between the two sides was made even stranger by the fact that they shared exactly the same bodies, though the aliens’ suits were black and, in place of helmets, their heads took the skull-motif of the Cylon helmet to its extreme conclusion and colored it blood red.

The figures were alluringly idiosyncratic even by the standards of other space toys, and, incredibly, given their origins, some of the figures were even women—women who seemed almost to be in a position of equality with the men. In the world of 1980s British toys, women who wore unisex uniforms, carried weapons, and competently piloted vehicles were very much the exception. And stranger yet, there were female aliens too. Was it a genuine nod to sexual equality? Who knows. “Space”, of course, still existed in the realm of childish Manicheism: the (white) humans were the goodies, the be-tendrilled weirdos were the baddies. And as the range grew, more baddies were added, first among which were the Mutants (ahem). Surely one of the strangest of all the toys produced in the UK over this particularly fecund period, the Mutants in particular seemed almost a slap in the face to the tight-lipped Protestant worthiness of Britains’ other toys, a demented explosion of tentacles and forms that even now looks inexplicable, as though decades of repressed imagination were erupting through them. Obviously, the “Space” range also included its own line of distinctive spacecraft and accessories, all beautifully designed (initially) examples of Britains’ precision craftsmanship.

Unfortunately, British kids—drunk on years of heady backstories and manipulative advertising campaigns—were not impressed. Britain’s Space fitted into no greater marketing narrative: it was just there, in all its glorious weirdness. It’s hard to imagine how children could not have been immediately entranced by the grotesque forms, but Britains’ toys remained prohibitively expensive and available in a relatively limited number of outlets. Presumably in response to the lack of interest, the range underwent increasingly bizarre mutations over the following years, becoming Stargard and Star System and god knows what else, and adding cheaper- and cheaper-looking accessories before eventually disappearing from Britains’ annual catalogue altogether in 1988. I never managed to get my hands on any: my one attempt, which involved sending away six empty packets of Outer Spacers snacks, was doomed to failure, the 19½p in change I’d enclosed to pay for postage presumably snaffled by some venal postal worker before it ever reached its destination.

With its incongruous egalitarianism and its grotesque mutations, did Britains’ Stargard mean anything, in the wider sense? I doubt it. It was a daft toy that represented a tiny bubble of creativity and absurdity that ran completely counter to the company’s reputation as a purveyor of sturdy, well-crafted, establishment-supporting dullness. Yet there it now sits, its peculiar beauty somehow burnished even more by its complete and absolute triviality. And in some strange way, Britains’ Space, or Stargard, or Star Force, or whatever the hell it ended up being called, evokes the UK’s own recent history: the dream of an explosively egalitarian future sabotaged by a grotesque reflux of farmers and generals hacking, plowing, and shooting their way back into the past.

"Seek a fallen star," said the hermit, "and thou shalt only light on some foul jelly, which, in shooting through the horizon, has assumed for a moment an appearance of splendour."
- Sir Walter Scott, The Talisman (1825)
Star Jelly

Star Jellies, also known as astromyxin or astral jellies, are creatures known to fall to the earth from celestial bodies.  They are often found where a shooting star is thought to have struck the earth.
These are chaotic and evil creatures of alien will.   They will attempt to attach themselves to other life forms and feed on them.

Upon landing they will move, slowly to the nearest warm-blooded creature it can find.  It prefers humans and humanoids.  Once attached the star jelly will excrete a poison that both paralyzes their victim and causes them to have vivid hallucinations or horrible phantasmagorias.  The victim feels they are being attacked by creatures unknown and will attempt to lash out at them.  In truth, the victim is paralyzed and the jelly is attempting to digest the victim from within.

The jelly's only attack is an attempt to latch on to the flesh of a humanoid.  The victim gets a saving throw vs. Paralyzation (to keep from being paralyzed) and a save vs. Poison each round afterward to realize they are hallucinating.   Once attached the jelly will dissolve flesh, causing 2 points of Constitution damage per round.  The only way to remove a jelly is to burn it off or expose it to direct sunlight.  Something about the combination of sunlight and air damages them and they take fire damage per round in the sun.

Constitution loss is permanent unless healing magic is used.

Star Jellies have an intelligence, albeit an alien one.  They are immune to charm, hold, sleep, and other mind-affecting magics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_jelly

Star Jelly
(Labyrinth Lord)
No. Enc.: 1 (1-2)
Alignment: Chaotic (evil)
Movement: 10' (30')
Armor Class: 8
Hit Dice: 2+2** (11 hp)
Attacks: 1 (special)
Damage: 2 points of Constitution damage
Special: Causes paralysis and hallucinations
Save: Monster 2
Morale: 12
Hoard Class: None
XP: 50

Star Jelly
(Blueholme Journeymanne Rules)
AC: 8
HD: 2d8+2
Move: 40
Attacks: : 1 (2 points of Constitution damage), causes paralysis and hallucinations
Alignment: Chaotic
Treasure: None
XP: 50

Star Jelly
(Old-School Essentials)
AC 8 [11], HD 2+2 (11hp), Att 1 touch (2 pts Con damage), THAC0 19 [+1], MV 30’ (10’), SV D17 W18 P17 B18 S17 (2), ML 12, AL Chaotic, XP 55, NA 1 (1), TT None
▶ Poison skin: Causes paralysis and hallucinations.

Star Jelly 
(WhiteStar)
ARMOR CLASS: 8 [11]
HIT DICE: 2
HDE/XP: 2/50
SAVING THROW: 18
TOTAL HIT BONUS: +1
MOVEMENT: 3
SPECIAL:  Causes paralysis and hallucination
ATTACK: by touch, 2 points Constitution damage
In the depths of space, their natural environment, Star Jellies are immune to the effects of sunlight.  They can also grow to very large size (up to 10hd) if given enough living organic matter to eat.

Since its publication in 1977 and development as the Third Imperium setting, only one event and time and date has mattered in the Traveller roleplaying game. That time and date is 1517 hours on 132-1116. The event is the assassination of Strephon Aella Alkhalikoi, the Emperor of the Third Imperium, his wife, Iolanthe Abartii Guuibataashullibaa, and their daughter and his heir, Grand Princess Ciencia Iphigenia Alkhalikoi, and the Aslan Yerlyaruiwo ambassador, at the hands of Dulinor Astrin Ilethian of Dlan, Archduke of the Domain of Ilelish. Although Archduke Dulinor would assume the throne by Right of Assassination, the bullets he would fire from the Magnum Revolver it was his perogative to carry it loaded anywhere within the Imperium—even into the Imperial Throne room—would topple the Third Imperium. This event and its subsequent Rebellion changed the future of the Traveller timeline, the conflict between the leading claimants grinding each other into technological regression and making Humaniti’s greatest empire vulnerable to attack by external forces.

It does not have to be though… For example, between 1998 and 2015, Steve Jackson Games published and supported GURPS Traveller, a version of the Third Imperium setting in which Dulinor’s assassination attempt was foiled and the Rebellion never took place. Alternatively, a gaming group can explore what happens on the date 132-1116 and perhaps decide the future of the Third Imperium with the scenario, Eve of Rebellion. Now in most Traveller campaigns, players take the role of ship’s crews, being the eponymous travellers, moving from world to world, trading, thwarting crimes, uncovering mysteries and making discoveries, and so on. Alternatively, the player characters will go to war, undertaking contracts as mercenaries in low-conflict engagements. In Eve of Rebellion though, the players take the role of those present at the events leading up to the assassination of Emperor Strephon. Each has his motivations and reasons for being at the Imperial Court—all of which will drive them to act in the best interests of the Imperium (or so they think).

Published by March Harrier Publishing via Mongoose Publishing, Eve of Rebellion is a one-shot scenario suitable for conventions or campaign breaks, designed to be played between four and five players—though it will play best with all five players, plus the Referee. In terms of mechanics, Eve of Rebellion is written for the current rules for Traveller, but is so rules light, it can be run by almost every previous version of Traveller, or indeed, be adapted to almost any system of the gaming group’s choice. Indeed, the primary game content in Eve of Rebellion in terms mechanics are the stats and skills of the five characters involved, although stats are also provided for the Cepheus Engine.

The five characters in Eve of Rebellion are Emperor Strephon Alkhalikoi, Grand Princess Ciencia lphegenia Alkhalikoi, Prince Varian Alkhalikoi and Prince Lucan Alkhalikoi, Dulinor Astrin Ilethian, Archduke of Ilelish, and Duke Norris Aella Aledon. Of these, one player will take the roles of both of the twins, Prince Varian Alkhalikoi and Prince Lucan Alkhalikoi. It should be noted that Empress Iolanthe is not amongst these five. In the first of two non-canonical elements in Eve of Rebellion, she is not included, having died in 1112. The other is that Duke Norris is present at the court prior to when the asassination attempt took place in the official history instead of being in the Spinward Marches restoring the ravages of the Fifth Frontier War. Of the five, Emperor Strephon Alkhalikoi wants to continue his reforms and ensure that he has a successor to continue them; Grand Princess Ciencia lphegenia Alkhalikoi wants to maintain her status and power of Iridium Throne and possibly marry a suitable suitor; Prince Varian Alkhalikoi and Prince Lucan Alkhalikoi want maintain their louche lifestyle; Dulinor Astrin Ilethian, Archduke of Ilelish wants to reduce Imperial taxes which he sees as unfair and a cause of corruption; and Duke Norris Aella Aledon wants to learn why he is at the Imperial court. Now it should be clear that these are not all of their motivations, but their motivations interlock with each others, some opposing, some in alignment.

Now there is a very good reason for this, and that is the fact that the author has experience in writing LARP—Live Action Role Play—scenarios where the emphasis is on interaction, talking, negotiation, and scheming, rather than on physical actions, such as sword fights, use of magic, running and jumping, and so on, but with tightly bound and opposing characters that possess strong motivations to encourage roleplay. And this is what is, a LARP scenario, written for the Third Imperium and around the most significant event in its history. Unlike a LARP scenario, the players do not have to dress up as their characters, but rather Eve of Rebellion is played around the table with a Referee, just as a standard tabletop roleplaying scenario would be. Of course, with the scheming and intriguing going on, the players are allowed to leave the table and perhaps conive, intrigue, and confide in their fellow players, but they still need to keep the Referee informed.

To support Eve of Rebellion, the author provides everything necessary to play. This includes an explanation of the plot and its set-up and intricacies for the Referee, a guide to running the scenario, labels for each character—including two for the Varian/Lucan player, full stats and briefings for each character—these are two to three pages in length, a set of library data which can be printed out for each player, a quick briefing for the Referee and list of who has what skill for her reference. Every character is illustrated and comes with detailed background, goals, and resources. The goals and resources are very clearly marked and easy for the players to grasp.

Physically, Eve of Rebellion is a 1.29 Mb, twenty-seven page, black and white PDF (though the cover does use colour). It is well written, the characters are superbly designed, and the advice is excellent throughout. 

If there is a problem with Eve of Rebellion it is that the casual player is not going to grasp the nuances and significance of the situation in its set-up. This is very much a Traveller scenario, and for the players to really get the most out of this scenario they very likely want to be au fait with the background to the Third Imperium and its events. Now the Library Data undoubtedly helps with that, but this is still very much a scenario that a Traveller fan will get the most out of. Similarly, this is not a scenario for Traveller devotees more interested in the technical and technological aspects of the setting rather than the background and roleplaying. That said, if you are a Traveller fan, and a Traveller fan with some knowledge of the setting, then this is a scenario that you absolutely have to play. With its superbly designed set-up and support, impressively presented characters and well-explained, interlocking goals and motivations, Eve of Rebellion is an opportunity for you to explore and play out a pivotal event in Traveller canon, to redirect its history in a way that no other scenario does. 

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

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What is it?
Early Family History is a supplement for creating the backgrounds of mostly Sartarite characters in earlier time frames than given in RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha.

It is a fourteen page, full colour, 1.71 MB PDF.

Early Family History is tidily presented in the same format as ‘Step 2: Family History’ (pages 27-43) of the Adventurers chapter of the RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha core rulebook. It needs an edit in places.

Where is it set?
Early Family History focuses on events in and around Sartar with excursions to Esrolia, Pavis, and Tarsh.

Who do you play?
Any of the character options as per the RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha core rule book.

What do you need?
RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha.

What do you get?
The rules in RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha include a set of tables in the Adventurers chapter to create the family and personal background for characters who come of age in 1619 and enter play in 1625. This does not mean that characters from other periods of history cannot be created using the rules in RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, but what it does mean is that characters created for those other periods will not enter play with the same degree of detail and family and personal history.

Early Family History addresses this issue by providing two sets of tables for creating the backgrounds and histories of player characters, their parents, and their grandparents. ‘Early Family History’, the first set of tables in Early Family History covers the period from 1565 to 1615, from the Orldaging War (1565-1577) to the Grazelander raids on Trash (1614). ‘Even Early Family History’, the second set of tables in Early Family History covers the period from 1538 to 1564, from the Axes Against the Empire and Destruction of the Temple (1538) to the Trollkiller War (1551-1561). Both sets of tables detail events at which the player characters and their immediate ancestors may have been presents as well as a range of possible outcomes and the benefits which might result from their participation.

The default period for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha is 1625 and the beginning of the Hero Wars, but most of the supplements and scenarios published for previous editions are set earlier in the timeline, typically from 1615 onwards. The use of Early Family History enables a playing group to play using those supplements and scenarios—for example, Apple Lane, but also for many of the other titles published for RuneQuest II with characters who are as detailed in terms of background and history as the default characters are in RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha.

In addition, the ‘Early Family History’ and ‘Even Early Family History’ tables enable a player to create a more experienced character with more than the base five years back story developed during the character creation process. Alternatively, the Game Master can use these tables to flesh out the backgrounds of her NPCs. Of the two tables, Early Family History’ is easier to use, whilst for ‘Even Early Family History’, the Game Master will need to calculate the birth dates for the player characters’ ancestors.

Is it worth your time?
Yes. If you are looking to create characters who enter play during an earlier period, have more history and are older before entering play, or develop more detailed backgrounds for the older NPCs in your campaign, then Early Family History is the supplement you need.
No. If you are not looking to create characters with more detailed background in the earlier periods of Glorantha’s timeline, then Early Family History will not be of use to you.
Maybe. Useful to have around to add colour and background to an older NPC at least, but not absolutely useful or a must have.

New year, new decade, and now new show: this weekend, the Triffid Ranch sets up in Grapevine, Texas for the first Repticon Dallas show of the year. See you there. And the year

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

The Song of the Sun Queens is an adventure designed to be played by five characters of Second and Third Level and takes place out on the vast plains of the Sunlands. In the Broken Empire—the setting for Arc Dream Publishing’s campaign world—this lies far to the south of the remnants of the Zyirran Empire, a fallen Byzantium-like empire, placed of course, in the Swords & Sorcery genre. There is no background given on the Broken Empire in The Song of the Sun Queens, but it does include details of the Sunlands kingdom, its weather and its gods. The Sunlands themselves are similar to parts of Africa, so the scenario is relatively easy to adapt to other settings, to other roleplaying games like Robert E. Howard’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of, and even to other genres, for example, it could be run using Raiders of the Lost Artifacts: Original Edition Rules for Fantastic Archaeological Adventures, Leagues of Adventure: A Rip-Roaring Setting of Exploration and Derring Do in the Late Victorian Age!, or Pulp Cthulhu: Two-fisted Action and Adventure Against the Mythos . Essentially, The Song of the Sun Queens is a fantasy scenario with pulp undertones and so perfectly in keeping with its ‘Swords & Sorceries’ genre.

As the scenario opens, the adventurers have travelled south to the colourful royal fortress of Juafalme, where they hope to learn more about the location of an ancient, cursed ruin known as Juakufa where a great treasure is said to rest. Here in Ndame, the Land of the Sun, the Sunlanders of the local kingdom welcome the adventurers as honoured guests and invite them to join an ostrich hunt and a celebration afterwards. The former drops the adventurers into the action more or less straight away, the latter an opportunity for roleplaying and the chance to learn more about their proposed destination. (It should be noted that there is a scene of an adult nature here, but it is well handled and could easily be dropped if a group would be uncomfortable with it.) Armed with what they have learned and equipped with a guide, the adventurers then set out south and into the Bleak Lands.

There really is only the one route south, which means that the trip is linear in nature. That said, The Song of the Sun Queens is quite short and the encounters the adventurers have along the way, as well as the villages they visit, could all be moved around if they decide to deviate from the route that the guide is leading them along. As they journey south, they will be harassed by giant hyenas and hyena giants—which even the author notes is confusing—and their Gnoll allies, as well encountering other horrors and finding respite at various villages. Ultimately, they come to Juakufa, otherwise known as the ‘Cackling Fortress’, a dusty, rubble-strewn ruin littered with some nicely detailed treasures, but haunted by a pair of quite tough monsters in a pleasingly creepy climax.

The Song of the Sun Queens is decently presented, cleanly laid out, and well written, and includes advice on making it tougher or easier depending on the strength of the party. The maps are excellent as are the illustrations, both being fully painted. Certainly the illustrations can all be shown to the players as they progress through the scenario.

The Song of the Sun Queens is a relatively short scenario, offering two to three sessions of play. Consequently, it is straightforward in its plotting, but the Dungeon Master could easily expand the scenario, perhaps by playing up the rivalry between the twin monarchs in Ndame, the Land of the Sun, and have that dog the adventurers all the way to scenario’s denouement. Even without this expansion, The Song of the Sun Queens presents a good mix of roleplaying and action, offering a strong combination of pulpy horror and fantasy in a setting that nicely draws upon on cultures other than Western fantasy. 

Happy 2020 everyone!  I expected to have more cybernetic implants by now, but hey at least we are not living in a futuristic dystopian hellscape right? Right?
Anyway.

I am now at a point where I can say I have been playing D&D for 40 years. 

2019 was my celebration of 1979, the year I first learned about D&D and started to play.  I thought that might be the end of my "Back to Basic" but I was wrong, I find I still have more to do and say.
If 2019 was my focus on Holmes Basic and the AD&D Monster Manual (my gateway drugs) then 2020 will be my focus on the Moldvay Basic Set and the games I was playing with that.

So here are some things I am looking forward to doing here at The Other Side in 2020:

Sci-Fi
This was a science-fiction Christmas break for me.  We watched The Mandalorian, season 2 of Lost in Space, we started The Expanse on TV.  We binged watched all of Star Trek Discovery and LOVED it.  Saw Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker in the theatres (I loved it) and we will see Doctor Who later today and then again at the Fathom Events special in the theatres.  We really had a great sci-fi vacation.  It all has me pretty pumped for a good Sci-Fi game.

The Expanse and Lost in Space have a grit to it that I really like.  Both also have some elements of horror to them I also liked.  All the things I want to add to my BlackStar game*.
(*just a reminder, BlackStar is not a game I am looking to publish, just something to have some fun with.)

I already knew that I was going to add elements of ST:DISCO to my game too, I just didn't what yet.  With Picard coming up soon, season three of Disco after that AND the re-merger of Viacom and CBS it looks like a great time to be Star Trek fan.

Both Lost in Space and the Expanse (pre-warp Sci-fi) have also refueled my desire to finish "Space Truckers."  I'd love for it to capture that late 70s Trucker movies and early 80s campy sci-fi.

Back To Basics, Year 2
2019's Back to Basics was so much fun I want to keep going.  Last year was mostly dedicated to Holmes and my weird Holmes/AD&D hybrid.  In the OSR this was best represented by Blueholme and Labyrinth Lord.

This year is the 39th anniversary of the Moldvay Basic set.  Though the copyright date is 1980, it is good enough for me to call it 40.  My focus this year then will be Moldvay/Cook/Marsh B/X flavor basic.   This system is represented best by Old School Essentials (formerly B/X Essentials) and Pacesetter's BX RPG.


I do have at least four more witch books I want to get out.  The Pagan Witch and the Warlock for OSE.  For BX RPG I am wanting to do a Diabolic Witch book and one I am calling "The Secret Order, The High Witchcraft Tradition".

The nice thing about The High Witchcraft book is it will take me full circle back to my original notes and witch class.  After this, I want to focus on other things.  I love writing about witches but I have more I want to do as well.

 So here is to a new 2020!

Since 2001, Reviews from R’lyeh have contributed to a series of Christmas lists at Ogrecave.com—and at RPGaction.com before that, suggesting not necessarily the best board and roleplaying games of the preceding year, but the titles from the last twelve months that you might like to receive and give. Continuing the break with tradition—in that the following is just the one list and in that for reasons beyond its control, OgreCave.com is not running its own lists—Reviews from R’lyeh would once again like present its own list. Further, as is also traditional, Reviews from R’lyeh has not devolved into the need to cast about ‘Baleful Blandishments’ to all concerned or otherwise based upon the arbitrary organisation of days. So as Reviews from R’lyeh presents its annual (Post-)Christmas Dozen, I can only hope that the following list includes one of your favourites, or even better still, includes a game that you did not have and someone was happy to hide in gaudy paper and place under that dead tree for you. If not, then this is a list of what would have been good under that tree and what you should purchase yourself to read and play in the months to come.


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Jaws: A Game of Strategy and SuspenseRavensburger £24.99/$29.99Can you defeat the great white shark which has been preying on swimmers and holidaymakers on Amity Island? Jaws: A Game of Strategy and Suspense is proof that game designers can take an forty-five year old intellectual property and turn it into a good game. This is a semi-co-operative game in which Brody, Quint, and Hooper must first drive off the shark—played by the fourth player—before it eats too many swimmers and go to sea aboard the Orca to face the shark as it hunts them. This is a tense game of hidden movement (by the shark) and desperate searching (by the hunters) played across two very different acts, but which together can the flavour and feel of the film. Play the game, quote the film, and see whether you can beat a great white shark before it eats you and the boat!
Gamemaster Screen PackChaosism, Inc. £23.95/$29.99The Game Master Screen Pack for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha is proof that you can do more with a GM screen and some reference and/or character sheets. Yes, there is a references booklet, a Gloranthan Calendar, two character sheets, seven pre-generated characters, and six full colour maps, and that in addition to the sturdy, genuinely useful GM screen. That is not all though, for the included ‘RuneQuest Gamemaster Adventures’ book provides everything that the Game Master needs to get her RuneQuest campaign going. It reintroduces the classic setting of Apple Lane as well as the surrounding lands and supports it through three scenarios and numerous scenario hooks. These tie the adventurers into the local area, events, and politics following the Dragonrise which presages the coming of the Hero Wars. Altogether, the Game Master Screen Pack will not only support a gaming group for numerous sessions, but it also sets a standard by which other Game Master screens and their supporting content should be measured.

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Starter SetCubicle Seven Entertainment £22.99/$29.99
The shelves at our local gaming shop always feel better for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, the British fantasy roleplaying game being on them. And they feel better for the new Fourth Edition having its own starter set. Like any good starter set the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Starter Set includes everything necessary to play. In particular, ix, ready-to-play adventurers, a complete setting, and a five-part mini-campaign, plus a whole lot more for the Game Master to develop. This is a richly appointed box set which comes at very pocket friendly price and with everything necessary to get a group playing or it can be used as a scenario and setting set which can be played using the full rules of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Fourth Edition. Whichever it is used, the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Starter Set is a perfect introduction to the Old World and a life of ‘Grim and Perilous’ adventure.
Old School Essentials Classic FantasyNecroctic Gnome £26/$40Remember a time when men were men (and Clerics, Fighters, Magic-Users, and Thieves) and Elves were Elves, Dwarves were Dwarves, and Halflings were Halflings? And what they did was delve deep into caverns and dungeons in search of adventure and danger? This is the world of Old School Essentials Classic Fantasy, a retroclone of Basic Dungeons & Dragons, the version designed by Tom Moldvay in 1981. Long out of print, this redesigned and represented version brings ‘Old School’ roleplaying back like never before in an accessible and attractive hard cover enabling gamers to experience the gaming they played back when they started or even for the very first time. The Old-School Essentials Classic Fantasy: Rules Tome is everything that a gaming group wanting to try the ‘Basic Dungeons & Dragons’ of old will need and the perfect update that the 1981 Moldvay version of Basic Dungeons & Dragons deserved.


LiminalWordplay Games/Modiphius Entertainment £35/$46.99Published as a beautiful hardback, Liminal is an urban fantasy roleplaying game set entirely within the United Kingdom, a United Kingdom with a Hidden World populated by the strange and the otherworldly, in which magic and magicians, vampires, werewolves, the fae, and many myths of the British Isles are real. It is riven by factions, such as the conerservative Council of Merlin, the scheming vampires of the Soldality of the Crown, the Fae lords, the Queen of Hyde Park and the wife-hunting Winter King of the north, whilst the Order of St, Bede, a Christian order, is dedicated to protecting the mundane world from magic and the supernatural and keeping it and the existence of magic a secret. Where Fortean or inexplicable crimes occur, P Division, a national agency of the British police, are likely to investigate, but cannot mention magic, for fear such knowledge might leak… The players take the role of ‘Liminals’, able to stand astride the mundane and the Hidden World, working as a Crew—which the players create along with their characters—which has its own objectives and facilities, to investigate the weirdness and mysteries that seeps into the real from the Hidden World.
Alien: The Roleplaying Game
Free League/Modiphius Entertainment £39.99/$53.99
In the vast coldness of space, you might lose your life to the environment—radiation will cook you alive, black holes will rip you apart, and the void itself will freeze your blood and seize your brain; you might die as collateral damage in the cold war of aggression between rival governments; greedy corporations might enslave you or drive you into poverty in their relentless scramble for resources; or the frontier world you staked your hopes and dreams on might simply poison or starve you. Then are the things that lurk in the darkness, the things of nightmare, the things that see humanity as prey, as a resource… or worse. This is the future of 2183, a future we have seen depicted on the Silver Screen in Science Fiction Horror classics, Alien and Aliens, but now made accessible and ready for us to explore in the Alien: The Roleplaying Game. Play marines or corporate troopers, colonists, ship’s crew, scientists, company men, even synthetics in cinematic one-shots or grim sandbox campaigns in what is the definitive licensed bug hunt Science Fiction roleplaying game.


King Arthur Pendragon
Chaosium, Inc. £31.99/$39.99

The classic roleplaying game of Arthurian legend, questing, honour, passion, romance, and glory returns in a brand new, full colour edition, today very much the masterpiece it was upon first publication in 1985. King Arthur Pendragon takes place in the ‘Dark Ages’ of the Fifth Century with native Britons, the players taking roles of noble knights, holding off the Saxon invaders, sees the discovery and rise of King Arthur, inaugurating a golden age of chivalry, Christianity, and feudalism, and of honour, romance, and great quests, before the death of Arthur ushers a return of the Dark Ages with greater Saxon successes… At its heart lie a set of personality traits shared by every knight which can change and grow over time, but in play can direct a knight to a particular response or action and so further the story. Knights do not only go on quests and go to war, but they raise families too, hoping to have an heir who will continue the glorious actions of his father. This dynastic play ensures enables a gaming group to play from before, after, and throughout the whole of King Arthur’s reign. King Arthur Pendragon is one of the greatest roleplaying games ever published, the perfect combination of mechanics and theme. 

Best Left Buried
Soul Muppet Publishing £12/$17
We have been doing it for decades. We have been venturing through the cracks and breaks in the ground into the caves and crypts below and beyond in search of secrets and treasures. We were told that this was dangerous. We were told that we would face monsters, weird environments, eldritch magic, and more… We did not believe what we were told. We were fools. Deep underground we suffer constant stress, face fears hitherto unknown, and will probably return from the depths physically and mentally scarred, the strangeness we have seen and the wounds we have suffered separating us from those not so foolish as to descend into the dark. This is the background to Best Left Buried, a stripped back, simple Old School Renaissance-style roleplaying game of brutal, unforgiving underground exploration, in which Cryptdiggers plumb the depths, make discoveries if they are lucky and suffer the consequences if not… Best Left Buried is a bruising fantasy heartbreaker, presenting the old school style of play anew in which few Cryptdiggers return unscarred from their endeavours with some remaining below to become monsters that will stalk and prey on future delvers.

Carbon 2185: A Cyberpunk RPGDragon Turtle Games, Ltd.

The world of Carbon 2185: A Cyberpunk RPG is the Earth of 2185, a world of the left behind by ‘The Scramble for the Stars’, a world where rampant environmental collapse has forced cities to build protective against the rising seas and pollution has turned the spaces between the cities into wastelands, and a world that is simply a market for corporations discovering and developing new products offworld. As Daimyo, Docs, Enforcers, Hackers, Investigators, and Scoundrels, the player characters need to find a way to survive, to make connections, to make money in this Cyberpunk roleplaying. If only to pay for the implants and cyberware whose power cells are poisoning them even as they give them an edge on their missions. Using the mechanics from Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, this is a surprisingly accessible, but gritty treatment of the Cyberpunk genre.


SLA Industries: Cannibal Sector 1Nightfall Games £45/$60SLA Industries: Cannibal Sector 1 takes 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 beyond the mammoth city walls and out into the poisoned, disease ridden, horror infested, dream rent, carnivorous pig romping, Carrien filled, Manchine-stalking, trench-cut quagmire-jungle-urban ruin no-go zone that is Cannibal Sector 1. Here the Shivers man outposts and send out forward patrols in an attempt to stop the incursions into Mort City by monsters, serial killers, and terrorists that would murder its citizenry—and worse, as Rangers work deep into the ruins of what was once part of the city itself to determine the nature of threats SLA Industries faces, and SLA Operatives get to the cool stuff and look good on TV! SLA Industries: Cannibal Sector 1 opens up an whole range of environments for SLA Industries along with numerous threats and dangers. It also adds new ways in which to play, including running conflicts out in Cannibal Sector 1 as squad battles using miniatures. Every monster, every threat, every item of equipment is fully illustrated in glorious colour, bringing the World of Progress to live as never before. SLA Industries: Cannibal Sector 1 is the supplement that SLA Industries has been waiting for and fully deserves. There is so much detail here, all of it rife with gaming potential that this supplement could have been a roleplaying game all of its very own.

Berlin: The Wicked City – Unveiling the Mythos in Weimar Berlin
Chaosium, Inc. £35.99/$44.99In a good year for Call of Cthulhu, with numerous supplements and plenty of support on the Miskatonic Repository, the highlight Berlin: The Wicked City – Unveiling the Mythos in Weimar Berlin, a supplement which explored the place of the Mythos in the wickedest, sexiest city during the Jazz Age. This most mature–in both tone and subject matter–of supplements for Call of Cthulhu explores Berlin as a city and its radical culture and politics and also discusses both LGBTQI investigators and LGBTQI politics. It combines all of this with three sophisticated scenarios which together form a loose campaign which begins in the decade’s political turbulence and end just as Hitler comes to power, foreshadowing the horror which was to come in the next decade and a half. These three take in history, noir, louche artistry and dissolution, and the frightening effect to which Mass Media could be utilised. There is still yet room aplenty around these scenarios for the Keeper to create her own scenarios, or indeed, for Chaosium to bring us an anthology of Berlin-set scenarios. In the meantime, Berlin: The Wicked City sets the blueprint for what a good city or setting supplement should be like for Call of Cthulhu.


Dune
Gale Force 9 £39.99/$50
With a film adaption of Frank Herbert’s novel, Dune coming in 2020, it is no surprise that it is being licensed out, including to games publishers. There is a Dune roleplaying game to be published by Modiphius Entertainment, but when it came to a Dune board game, instead of designing something new, Gale Force Nine turned to a classic long out of print and much sought title, the original Dune board game published in 1979 by Avalon Hill. This is a game of warfare, diplomacy, alliances, and treachery in the very far future on the planet Arrakis where highly individual six factions work to take control of the only source of the life-extending Spice. Updated and newly presented, this is a game of asymmetrical that fans of the book and film will enjoy, whilst gamers will enjoy the chance to play a board game classic.

—oOo—
And last, but not least, because after all of the fun and palaver of getting the family together, you might want to play something about bringing them together or breaking them up once and for all. Plus of course, it is traditional to not actually do a dozen.

Eve of Rebellion
March Harrier Publishing £3.81/$4.99
A Traveller adventure like no other, Eve of Rebellion, enables five players to take the roles of the great, the good, and the well-intentioned of the Third Imperium and explore the events which would lead up to the assassination of Emperor Strephon and the rebellion which would follow. Except that is not a forgone conclusion, for the cast of five—Emperor Strephon Alkhalikoi, Grand Princess Ciencia lphegenia Alkhalikoi, Prince Varian Alkhalikoi and Prince Lucan Alkhalikoi, Dulinor Astrin Ilethian, Archduke of Ilelish, and Duke Norris Aella Aledon—have their own motivations and goals, many of them conflicting, not necessarily all of them in the best interests of the empire. The scenario includes everything needed to play—five detailed characters with goals and resources, background material for all five characters (and those new to the Traveller setting), and solid advice for the Game Master in running what is all but a systemless scenario.

The end of any year in the Gregorian calendar that ends in a “9” always ends the same: innumerable alcoholic amateurs assuming that they’re channeling the spirit of Hunter S. Thompson, massive disappointing clearance sales with clothing stores acknowledging that … Continue reading →

And finally my Top 5 RPGs of all time.

Dungeons & Dragons



CJ Carella’s WitchCraft



Chill



Ghosts of Albion



Blue Rose

I am still on Christmas vacation and I barely remembered today was Monday.
So here are some minis my wife has painted over break.

First up, a blue dragon.







And, my favorite, a Demogorgon!







Here's to new monsters in 2020!

Continuing my Top 5, here are my top 5 television shows of all time.
The Twilight Zone


Star Trek: The Next Generation


The X-Files


Tales from the Darkside


Game of Thrones

A pulse. A glow. A flash. A strobe. Sometimes nothing at all. Of all of the wonders of Burin IV, the most renowned is the Witchstone Array, near the outpost town of Cottingley. Many swear that the stones visible in … Continue reading →

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


—oOo—

Adventures in Fantasy is the only roleplaying game to be designed by Dave Arneson, the co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons following his leaving TSR. Inc. in 1976. Co-designed with Richard L. Snider, who would also designed Avalon Hill’s Powers & Perils—and who like Arneson, passed away in 2009—Adventures in Fantasy was first published in 1979 by Excalibre Games Inc. and then by Arneson’s own Adventure Games in 1981. Adventures in Fantasy is a classic Class and Level roleplaying which draws from the Medieval period for its inspiration rather than Tolkien—though monsters and magic are a mainstay—which comes as a boxed set. Inside can be found three books. These are the fifty-eight page ‘Book of Adventure’ and the ‘Book of Faerry and Magic’ and ‘Book of Creatures and Treasure’, both fifty-six pages.

Adventures in Fantasy opens with this forward (sic): 

“Many years back Dungeons & Dragons by Gygax and Arneson first appeared on the gaming scene and a veritable revolution took place. Soon dozens of supplements and imitations were also on the scene, vying for the ever growing attention of gameplayers throughout the world. Yet throughout this I have felt that the original spirit of the Role Playing Fantasy game has not been well looked after and that there have been few real improvements to that less than perfect original system. To this was added dozens of additional rules in a chaotic jumble of that buried the original structure under a garbage heap of contradictions and confusion. Any person without the aid of an experienced player was hard pressed to even begin to gain an understanding of the rules and even with aid it sometimes still proved to be impossible.”

The authors continued by hoping that Adventures in Fantasy would be as understandable to the novice as it is to the experienced player. Thus they threw down a gauntlet for themselves and potential players and set the standard by which Adventures in Fantasy—and to be honest, any roleplaying game—should be gauged. The unfortunate fact is though, that Adventures in Fantasy failed to meet that bar. From the outset, Adventures in Fantasy suffers from an unnecessary complexity in its design, one which apparent just four pages in, with the player needing to apply the following formula to generate a character’s Hit Points.

((Strength÷2)+(Stamina÷3)+(Dexterity÷4))÷5

A character in Adventures in Fantasy is defined by his Class, six attributes—Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Charisma, Stamina, and Health, Social Status, Starting Age (with a chance of natural death before play has even begun!), and Education. The Attributes are straight percentile rolls—though Adventures in Fantasy being from 1979 means that these are rolled on two twenty-sided dice marked ‘0’ to ‘9’ twice, whilst Social Status and Starting Age are rolled on the given tables. Education is represented by a number of courses of instruction that a character has taken. To determine how many, first a player works how months his character spent being educated or trained and then spends the months learning various packages. 

Adventures in Fantasy offers just the two character types, Warrior and Magic-User. Neither can be called a Class in the Dungeons & Dragons sense. A Warrior simply gains a 1% bonus to hit at each Level, whilst a Magic-User it increases the number of Magic Points he has. (That said, Adventures in Fantasy appears not actually define what the Levels actually are, so the Game Master will probably need to define them herself).

Our sample character is Edgar Smith, a simple townsman who was conscripted into the local liege lord’s army before he could undertake an apprenticeship. Once that war ended, rather than coming home, he sort service elsewhere and has fought in many battles as a swordsman since. He is physically fit, but lacks stamina.

Edgar Smith
Class: Warrior
Social Status: Tradesman/Man-at-Arms (Rank 6) Age 28

Strength 96
Dexterity 65
Intelligence 74
Charisma 48
Stamina 31
Health 20

Hit Points: 15

Education
Physical Training I, Physical Training II, How to use a shield, How to use a sword, How to use a club

Key to creating a character and what he can do is the roll for Social Status (modified by the Starting Age). This determines the number of years of education he has and thus what courses he can learn. Any character who wants to use his full physical attributes will need to take ‘Physical Training I’ lest he only be able to use them at three quarters of their value. Similarly, unless a character has been trained in the use of a weapon, any time he attacks with it, his player will be rolling against a third of the base skill. An average character should be able to enter play with an occupation, for example, blacksmithing or huntsman, and some physical and weapons training. Yet roll well in terms of Status and Starting Age, and the character created is highly capable with a wide range of skills and training packages, a member of the nobility, and even perhaps a Magic-User. Conversely, roll poorly and a player character is essentially a peasant levy who has been drilled to use a pike. Lastly, this does not take into account the fact that a player might fail the course and literally waste the time devoted to it.

As this point, you would expect ‘Book of Adventure’ to start discussing the rules to Adventures in Fantasy, but the middle third of the volume takes a sudden swerve into Game Master territory with advice on how to set up a campaign, an adventure, and laying out and designing the underworld, plus random encounter charts. These include the chances of a party being detected or evading another group of individuals or monsters in an area. It supports this with a sample dungeon, ‘The Dragon’s Lair’, and the wilderness location of the Bleakwood Fief, including the tower of a sorcerer. This is a serviceable set of examples with rather plain maps, though the hex map of the Bleakwood Fief is decent enough.

Mechanically, Adventures in Fantasy uses percentile dice, rolled for most situations against a character’s attributes—with no obvious modifications. Combat though, is more complex. It involves comparing body types, so Human versus Human, Human versus Snake, Lion versus Human, and so on to provide a base attack value. This is modified by the combatants’ Dexterity values, size, and comparative Experience Levels. Damage inflicted is determined by a six-sided die roll—no matter what the weapon—with no damage modifiers. Alternatively, an option allows for a straight percentile roll to be made against the body type of the defendant, which determines the type of die rolled for the damage, which could be a four-sided die or it could be two ten-sided dice, whilst special results inflict damage directly against the defendant’s Dexterity attribute. Other optional rules take the effects of terrain on combat into account, provide an armour saving throw—shields block damage, but armour reduces it, and allow a Strength bonus to damage. Throughout though, both Game Master and players need to keep track of their combatants’ Stamina, as it is possible to fight until exhausted. 

Combat in Adventures in Fantasy is a wonky mix of the simplistic and the complex. The damage mechanics are either too basic or too complex, neither effectively modelling character skill or attributes unless the Game Master includes the various options. Further, none of the options would be regarded as options in any other roleplaying game, including Dungeons & Dragons. Similarly, the rules for Experience Points for both Warrior and Magic-User require yet more arithmetic which only gets more complex the more player characters are involved in defeating an opponent.

Magic in Adventures in Fantasy uses Magic Points, a Magic-User gaining more Magic Points as he rises in Level. Spells are divided into non-alignment spells and three alignments, Law, Neutral, and Chaos—with no real explanation of what these alignments are—and once a Magic-User has selected a spell of a certain alignment, he cannot select those of the others. The spells are a mix of the usual, like Light, Fly, and Open Door, but also the odd like Insolence—which forces the target to be rude, Abandon—the target gives up all actions and devotes himself to cavorting about as if in an idyll, and Persecution—the target feels constantly persecuted by invisible demons. The target of a spell always has a saving throw against any spell, this being a percentile based on the number of Magic Points the spell cost to cast.

As well as normal spells, a Magic-User can cast permanent magic, typically on buildings, statues, swords, rings, and so on. This takes weeks of time and a Magic-User has a limited lifetime supply of Permanent Magic Points which rises slightly as the Magic-User gains Levels. Magic-Users can also enter into sorcerous combat, another complex sub-system which echoes the Psionics mechanics of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Then again, Faerry Magic, the magic of Dwarves, Trolls, the Faerry, and Elves is a simpler and flavoursome, divided between songs and runes, but essentially a reinterpretation of the spells for Magic-Users.

Besides the details of Dwarves, Trolls, the Faerry, and Elves, Adventures in Fantasy provides a wide range of creatures and monsters. Quite possibly the best done book of the three in Adventures in Fantasy, ‘Book of Creatures and Treasure’ is comparatively simple and accessible, with fun rules for creating quite varied Dragons, and a decent mix of creatures and monsters familiar and unfamiliar. The treasures and various artefacts are of a similar nature.

Physically, Adventures in Fantasy is decently presented, each book on a heavy buff paper. It needs editing in many places, as the writing is often clumsy, but the artwork is simple and clear enough throughout, having what would be called an ‘Old School’ look and feel. On the downside, the decision to colour-code the books and use colour rather than plain black text has repercussions. The use of red text in the ‘Book of Creatures and Treasure’ makes its content all but unreadable.


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Unfortunately, Adventures in Fantasy received mixed reviews at the time of its publication. Writing in Ares Nr. 4 (September, 1980), Eric Goldberg wrote, “The design of Adventures in Fantasy is, in every way, a direct lineal descendant of D&D, and is, in many respects, superior to its forebear. The resemblance unfortunately applies to the massive disorganization and frequent incoherency of the rules. Given the success of D&D, perhaps this is a good marketing strategy; it does, however, make the rules slightly indigestible.”, before concluding that, “AIF would seem to have many things against purchasing it. The price, the graphics are terrible, the rules are worse, and many of the systems are overly complicated, However, when played, the game is a lot of fun. Of course, some of the burdensome rules must be streamlined, but that work is not excessive.” (Note that Adventures in Fantasy cost $20 in 1979.)

Clayton Miner, in Pegasus #01 (1981), said, “Admittedly, this game does have its fascinations, especially to those who are interested in running a game with the flavor of medieval tales, rather than as Middle Earth. This is a game that should be avoided by those people who derive enjoyment from running a wide variety of character classes, as the only ones available are Warrior and Magic User. It is unfortunate that what could have been a superior project has turned out to be a disappointment in terms of playability and quality.”

Referring back to the introduction to Adventures in Fantasy in Space Gamer Number 30 (August, 1980), Ronald Pehr  commented that, “D&D might had ‘contradictions and confusions’ as Mr. Arneson points out on page 1 of ADVENTURES IN FANTASY, and he may be correct that ‘Any person without the aid of an experienced player was hard pressed to even begin to gain an understanding of the rules…’ However, we now have other games which aren’t full of confusion, offer some excellent role-playing, and can be handled by beginners, and don’t cost $25!”


—oOo—
Adventures in Fantasy is all but forgotten today, but its legacy is ever so slightly interesting. Most obviously, co-designer Richard L. Snider would go on to design Powers & Perils for Avalon Hill, but Adventures in Fantasy influenced other designers too. Notably, Jonathan Tweet took the concept in Adventures in Fantasy that a character marking a magical item would pay a permanent cost to do so and applied it to Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition. In Adventures in Fantasy, the cost is paid from a limited supply of Magic Points, in Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition, it was paid in Experience Points.

Adventures in Fantasy is a mess of complexity and simplicity with uneven explanations. It is not hard to see what the designers are trying to do, but all too often they make the game inaccessible and unnecessary hard work. They would go on to release a second edition in 1981, but how many of the issues in Adventures in Fantasy were fixed or addressed is another matter.

Ultimately, Adventures in Fantasy is more curio than roleplaying game. Essentially what Dave Arneson did next after Dungeons & Dragons and what he designed in response to what he saw Dungeons & Dragons had become. Unfortunately, the result is dense and fiddly, and hard work, in places incomplete, and undoubtedly not what either of the authors intended, at best a set of their house rules, at worst, a sideswipe at Dungeons & Dragons.

Many artworks found thanks to Dr Tenge.
A brief article on the artist can be found at feuilleton.