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.

Two sister goddesses today who might, in fact, be the same goddess depending on who you talk to and when you talk to them.  I'll detail that more below, but let's discuss them as two separate Goddesses for now.

These Goddesses cleave closer to their ancient roots than their Norse ones. In addition to Roman and Greek influences, these Goddesses can be traced back to their Mesopotamian antecedents, with Astartē, Ishtar, and even Isis as their inspiration. Primarily, this is due to the vital importance Spring has had throughout time to an agricultural society.

Ôstara

She is the goddess of spring, rebirth, and the dawn. She is the daughter of Mutter Natur and one of the gods that has retained her old name.  Her title is "Geliebte," which means "beloved." She is celebrated on the Spring Equinox when she rises with the dawn to wake up the world from its long winter slumber. She goes to the underworld in the Fall and world weeps and sleeps, but not before her bounty is brought into the world in form of her harvests.

Ôstara is one of the overtly Pagan goddesses in this pantheon. She retains much of her earlier character and strongly aligns with Persephone/Proserpina in the Spring and Dionysus/Bacchus in the Autumn. 

ÔSTARA (Goddess of Spring)
Intermediate Goddess

ARMOR CLASS: 1 / -5
MOVE: 18" / 24"
HIT POINTS: 200
NO. OF ATTACKS: 2
DAMAGE/ATTACK: 1d10/1d10 
SPECIAL ATTACKS: Radiance of Dawn
SPECIAL DEFENSES: Blinding Defense
MAGIC RESISTANCE: 50%

SIZE: M (5' 4")
ALIGNMENT: Neutral Good
WORSHIPER'S ALIGN: All (mostly Good)
SYMBOL: An egg or rabbit
PLANE: Himmel

CLERIC/DRUID: 15th level Druid
FIGHTER: Nil
MAGIC-USER/ILLUSIONIST: Nil
THIEF/ASSASSIN: Nil
MONK/BARD: 7th level Bard
WITCH/WARLOCK: 8th level Witch
PSIONIC ABILITY: II
S: 17 I:18 W: 18 D: 20 C: 20 CH:24

Ôstara is the Goddess of Spring and Rebirth. She is the maiden that heralds the dawn and new beginnings. She is a peaceful Goddess but terrible to her enemies. She always appears as a young woman wearing a garland of flowers and dressed in bright yellows and blues.

She can charm any animal as per the spell with no chance of saving throw, they will all do her bidding to defend her if she but asks, even to the death. Afterward, she will raise them back from the dead to perfect health and maximum hp. She can also raise dead on any mortal once per day.

She prefers not to attack, but if she is she can cast her Corona of Dawn once per day. This power blinds all within 100' of her and deals 6d6 fire damage to those within 30' of her. Any who make their saves take half damage.  This power also acts as a shield, providing her with -5 AC.  She can also strike with a beam of searing light for 1d10 points of damage twice per round. 

While she would rather not attack any living creature, she has no such qualms against the undead or demons.

She is the wife of Jäger and sister to Liebhaberin. She is honored by druids and witches who look to the return of spring.

Ôstara grows the Golden Apples of Immortality. Her sister then will give them to gods or mortals of her own choosing. 

Sphere of Control: Spring

Animal: Lambs, Rabbits
Rainment: (Head) Bare (Body) Simple white garments
Color(s): White, Green
Holy Days: Spring Equinox
Sacrifices: Burning incense and apples.
Place of Worship: Any open area, fields of grains

Liebhaberin

The goddess of love, beauty, and sexuality. Where Ôstara brings life back to the land, Liebhaberin brings it to young lovers. She is the ever-young, ever-beautiful goddess of spring. She is the morning star seen after the Spring Equinox. She has aspects of Aphrodite/Venus and aspects of both Freya and Iðunn. She, along with Ôstara, keeps the Golden Apples that keep the Gods forever young and immortal. No human (likely rendered "No Man") may eat of them. (To further confuse the myths here I am going to say that because of the "No Man" statement, a woman may eat of these apples and give them to a man. That's how they explain away Adam and Eve.) 

Liebhaberin is also the patron goddess of all nymphs and dryads. Her retinue is occupied only by the most beautiful nymphs. 

LIEBHABERIN (Goddess of Beauty, Love, and Sexuality)
Intermediate God

ARMOR CLASS: 3
MOVE: 18"
HIT POINTS: 220
NO. OF ATTACKS: 1
DAMAGE/ATTACK: Emotional damage
SPECIAL ATTACKS: Charming 
SPECIAL DEFENSES: Pact of the Beloved (see below)
MAGIC RESISTANCE: 50%

SIZE: M (5' 6")
ALIGNMENT: Chaotic Good
WORSHIPER'S ALIGN: All (mostly Good; lovers)
SYMBOL: The Morning Star
PLANE: Himmel

CLERIC/DRUID: 10th level Cleric
FIGHTER: Nil
MAGIC-USER/ILLUSIONIST: 4th level Illusionist
THIEF/ASSASSIN: Nil
MONK/BARD: 9th level Bard
WITCH/WARLOCK: 6th level Witch
PSIONIC ABILITY: II
S: 16 I:16 W: 18 D: 18 C: 20 CH:25

Liebhaberin is the Goddess of Beauty, Love, and Sexuality. She is the ever-young maiden. While her sister Ôstara stirs life back into the Earth and nature, she does the same for lovers.

She can appear as whatever the person viewing her most desires and can charm any mortal with no save. 

Due to ancient pacts between the gods and all living things, no mortal or immortal that has ever been loved can bring her harm in any way. This includes direct attacks and even area-of-effect magics. Since everyone has been loved by someone at least at one point, this effectively makes her invulnerable. Undead, constructs, and mindless elementals are immune to this. Demons are also immune to this and are enraged by this.

Like her sister she is loathe to engage in violence. She can touch a person and they feel whatever emotion she chooses. Her tactic is often to calm an aggressor or make them fall in love with her or someone nearby. She can also cause jealousy and rage; a common tactic when she dealing with a number of hostile mortals. 

She keeps the Golden Apples of Immortality, which are hers to give to whoever she pleases. 

Many Gods, Goddesses, and mortals claim to be her lover, and this is all likely true, but she can't limit herself to just one lover.

Sphere of Control: Sex, love, beauty
Animal: Rabbit
Rainment: (Head) Bare (Body) Simple white garments or bare
Color(s): White, Red
Holy Days: Mornings, Weddings
Sacrifices: Libations
Place of Worship: Any area of natural beauty, the bedroom.

One Goddess or Two?

One of the crucial things to consider when making a new pantheon, even one with historical basis, is that gods are not compartmentalized easily. For example, Apollo is the God of music, archery, and the Sun. Pan is also the God of music. Hellios is also the God of the sun. This is because we are looking back at these myths through our times. Apollo rose and fell (but mostly rose) in importance over the centuries. This is even more true of the Egyptian myths. Gods rose, fell, were merged, split apart, and more.  

What does this have to do with these two?

Simple, these two goddesses could have been one goddess. They could have been aspects of the same goddess.  They could be sisters, mother and daughter, or something else. Gods can be a lot of things at the same time that mortals can't be.  I had considered making them Divine Twins, but that role is being served elsewhere.

So, where does that leave me? Simple I go back to my rules. I follow what would work best for an AD&D game. I will keep them separate for now, but knowing full well, they could be combined into one goddess as time goes on.

I like my gods to be messy and have some unnecessary overlap. 

Plane

Until I come up with something better, the Plane these Gods all live on is called Himmel, the German word for Heaven. 

Where is Himmel? Well if you ask the worshipers, they will look at you strangely and point up. Beacuse where else would it be? 

Consequently, the land of the dead and the place of evil is Hölle (Hell, but it also sounds like hole).

Where either of these is on the Great Wheel cosmology is anyone's guess. I am not sure yet myself. I *like* the great wheel, but I am not beholden to it. At least I don't think I need to be even if not using it violates my Rule #1.

Links

• One Man's God Special: Syncretism Part 3, the Roman-Norse Pantheon
• One Man's God series
• Deities & Demigods II: Part 1, Hecate (stat block construction)
• Monstrous Mondays: D&DGII The Monsters of the Black Forest Mythos
• My overview and rules for these postings
• Unser Vater, Father of the Gods

This is another post for my RPG Blog Carnival Horrors, Gods, and Monsters.

 Beyond the River of Blood roams a Purple Dragon, aka an Arcane Dragon.  It is attracted to the necromantic energies here to feed. But it never misses the chance to snack on the occasional dwarf or human.

There is a 65% chance that the dragon will not attack first, living creatures are a rare event here and it will be sizing the party up. Even going as far as stalking the party from the shadows. There is an additional 35% it will even talk with the party.

Regardless of attitude or outcome, it fully intends to eat the party. That is not to say it won't first seek out what the party can offer it.

 Carnival of Souls from 1962 was always "that one movie" for me. That one I had heard so much about. That one I had always wanted to see. I finally got around to it sometime after 2000 when  The Criterion Collection released their 2-DVD set of it. I have to say that it lived up to all the hype for me. Rewatching it again 20+ years after that, it still holds up.

It is also a perfect move for tonight's "What a Twist" theme.

Carnival of Souls (1962)

Mary (Candace Hilligoss, who is haunting in this) is in a street race with her two friends against two other guys. The guys, in an attempt to win, nudge the girl's car and they fly off a bridge into a muddy river somewhere in Kansas.  Hours later Mary walks out of the river with no memory on how she survived.

We followed up with Mary as she moved to Salt Lake City to get a job as an organist in a church. She has some minor, rather mundane adventures, except she keeps seeing this ghoulish-looking man everywhere she goes. Mary thinks she is going crazy and no one else can see the man. She is also oddly interested in a run-down old building that used to house a carnival, a building she has been told never to enter.

Finally, she can't help herself and she goes to the building where she sees not just the Ghoulish man and other ghouls, but a ghoulish version of herself dancing with the man. She runs off and is chased by the ghouls.

What a Twist: The last scenes are back in Kansas where the car is finally pulled up from the river. Inside are all three girls, including Mary, dead.

The movie is slow, but it is a slow burn creeping horror. Sure there is plenty of evidence that Mary is dead from the start, but much like "Sixth Sense" you don't notice it until the end. Indeed this movie is the spiritual ancestor of The Sixth Sense.

The vibe of this movie is also just really creepy. Everything seems slightly off and nothing looks or feels exactly right. There is a solid Twilight Zone feel to it. The fact that it is in Black & White only enhances this feeling. 

Worth noting is the haunting organ soundtrack throughout the whole movie. It adds to this feeling.

This movie is a classic for good reason. It might not be the scariest movie I have seen, but it is a very satisfying one.  

October Horror Movie Challenge 2023
Viewed: 5
First Time Views: 2

 It's October, and my thoughts turn to scary things. And honestly, what could be scarier than a trip to Hell? There are a lot of great adventures to take your characters through. I can't review them all, but here are a few.

I DO still want to do my "A Barbarian in Hell" adventure sometime. These will help me out. 

So come with me. Let's go to Hell!

666: The Number of the Beast

PDF, 20 Pages, DMsGuild. $6.66

This one is fun. It's 20 pages long, and it takes its inspiration from both Dante's Inferno and Heavy Metal music. Sounds like my kind of mix, to be honest! This one also takes cues from a few different video games. This works if you imagine that your characters are already dead and in Hell and not traveling there as a "Soujurn in Hell."

This PDF sets up seven "boss battles" for characters in Hell. It can be used as described or as a supplement to an ongoing campaign in Hell, which is what I am using it for.

This is obviously for D&D 5e via the DMsGuild.

Nine Hells Adult Coloring Book

PDF, 48 Pages. B&W art (by design). $6.95 PDF / $8.98 Print

This is overtly a coloring book, but it is also a great resource for the Pathfinder version of Hell and stat blocks for the rulers of each level. Again this could be in the form of a "boss battle" or as a resource. Buy it for the coloring book, but stay for the backgrounds, lore, and stat-blocks.

The art from Jacob E. Blackmon is excellent as well, and there are some pieces here that would be a lot of fun to color. Now, where did my kids leave their crayons?

 

Emirikol's Guide to Devils

PDF, 246 Pages. Color art. $15.00

From Sean McGovern, of The Power Score RPG blog.  So right away I knew this was going to be a well-researched product. Sean has been one of the best at deep lore D&D research in the blogging scene for years. He is meticulous and encompassing on any topic he tackles.

This is a massive volume at 246 pages and covers the Hells and its inhabitants. It takes D&D lore from as far back 1st/2nd Edition (I noticed that details from "Politics of Hell" are not really included though, but everything else is) and tries to bring them all together. It leans heavily into the 5th edition versions of Hells (naturally), and the book is presented like many of the newer 5e books, with notes from Emirikol the Chaotic and Natasha the Dark. 

The information makes for a great read, and there are some details I really enjoy. I like how the author explains the shift from Demon to Devil to Fiend for Succubi. There are plenty of stat blocks, which is good if you don't have all the devils and Archdevils. And there are plenty of new devils and backgrounds on playing characters associated with devils and the Hells.

The art is a mixed bag, as with any DMsGuild product, and I am not 100% on board with all the lore choices made here.  But there is enough text and information here to keep me busy. Plus any choice I don't like I can simply say "well, Emirikol got it wrong" or even "This was from Natasha when she was younger and not yet Iggwilv."

In any case, it is good to have multiple points of view on something as complex as the Nine Hells.

I do wish there was a printer-friendly version. This would be nice in my big red binder of devil information.

Dalor's Guide to Devils & Demons

PDF, 127 pages, Color art. PDF $19.99 / Print $34.99

Now this one was a bit of a pleasant surprise to me.  It is for 5e so I was expecting something akin to the DMsGuild products I had been reviewing. But this one reminds me of the best of the OSR in terms of look and feel, with solid 5e design and layout. Really the best of both worlds. The vibe I get from it is like the old Mayfair Demons series.

This book gives you a ton of new demons and devils and plenty of background and lore for them. There is even a fiendish language and alphabet. I am a little surprised this one doesn't have more sales because it is just a treasure trove of great stuff.

There are new demon lords, new arch-devils, cults and contracts, and even a new class. A little bit of everything really. 

--

See you in Hell!

 Across the Ghoul Plain, the party gets deeper into this nightmare level.  Here they encounter a river of blood. The river runs slowly, but constantly.

The river taps into the horrors of the Abyss, and the Vampire Queen tapped into this evil in another attempt to increase her own power. This river is a side effect.

The blood is poison. Drinking it will require a save vs. poison of taking 4d12 hp points of damage or save for half.

The party will need to find a way to cross it. It is 10' wide. There are materials laying around where the party could construct a raft.  There is a point about 1000 feet down where they can cross. They can also teleport, fly, or dimensional door across. 

Tonight is an "Attack of Opportunity" Pluto now has a Godzilla channel and I love it.  I have seen this one many times, but since tonight is "Mother Nature Strikes Back" I thought it would be a great choice.

Godzilla vs. Hedorah (1971)

Also known as Godzilla vs the Smog Monster this movie is what you get when the writers of Godzilla start to worry about pollution. Now Godzilla has always been social commentary, but this one seems a bet heavy-handed, and the monster...well Hedorah is just silly.  Still, I had good memories of this one as a kid and the battles for the most part hold up.

The teens in this one seem like some nihilist hippies. Thinking the world will end due to pollution (we will burn ourselves up first!) and deciding to have one last party on Mt. Fuji. Plus we get a rare spotting of Godzilla's ability to telepathically communicate with children. 

No, it is not good, even by cheesy late 1960s, early 1970s Toho standards. But it is still fun.

I still can't get that "Save the Earth" song out of my head from the English dubbed version. I watched the subbed version and it has the equally ear-wormy original version, "Return the Sun."

Mother Nature Strikes Back: All of the Godzilla movies are this at some level.  After all The Blue Öyster Cult sang "History shows again and again, How nature points out the folly of men." in their song "Godzilla." This movie turns that message up. Hedorah is like a polluted titan rising up to attack those who harmed its mother Gaia. Honestly, when reading over the list of themes this is the movie I thought of for today. So this works out well.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2023
Viewed: 4
First Time Views: 2

Kicking off the first of my posts about the gods of the Black Forest Mythos. For more details on this project and the background on who these gods are, please see the links section below.

Unser Vater

Unser Vater ("Our Father") is the chieftain of the gods. He is the father figure in both a spiritual and literal sense. He is the sky god and it is possible that this syncretic Norse-Roman god has a bit of other gods in his mix, including various Celtic and maybe even Christian beliefs. But make no mistake here this is a Pagan god.

This figure, like the Jupiter and Thor he is syncretized from, is the god of the sky, storms, especially lighting, and he is the one who defeated the Hüne (giants/titans) in the battle of the gods. 

He is temperamental and reacts more often than acts.

UNSER VATER (Father of the Gods)
Greater God

ARMOR CLASS: -2
MOVE: 12"/24"
HIT POINTS: 400
NO. OF ATTACKS: 2
DAMAGE/ATTACK: 6-72 (6d12) (Thunderbolt)
SPECIAL ATTACKS: See below
SPECIAL DEFENSES: See below
MAGIC RESISTANCE: 80% (see below)

SIZE: M (6')
ALIGNMENT: Chaotic Good
WORSHIPER'S ALIGN: All (mostly Good)
SYMBOL: Lightning bolt on a grey sky
PLANE: ??????

CLERIC/DRUID: 14th level druid
FIGHTER: 25th level fighter
MAGIC-USER/ILLUSIONIST: 10th level Illusionist 
THIEF/ASSASSIN: Nil
MONK/BARD: 10th level Bard
WITCH/WARLOCK: Nil
PSIONIC ABILITY: II
S: 25 I:16 W: 18 D: 20 C: 22 CH:25

Unser Vater, "Our Father," is the chieftain of the gods. He rules because he is strong and powerful.  He keeps Der Hüne at bay and protects those who pay him homage. He tries to be good and just, but he has a temper that can rage out of control.  He can usually be calmed by his wife, Herde Oberin.

This god appears as a tall, muscular man in his late middle age. He has grey-white hair and blue-grey eyes. He has a quick laugh and an even quicker temper. His appearance is that of a former warrior turned father figure.

He attacks with his thunderbolts, which he can hurl twice per round. He knows many of the secrets of magic and can also cast spells as a 14th-level druid and a 10th-level illusionist. No weapon or spell hurled through the air can harm or touch him. He is surrounded by a whirlwind that acts as a 15HD air elemental. He can summon up to 6 (1d4+2) additional 10HD air elementals at will. 

Unser Vater makes few demands on his worshipers other than to honor his name and remember that even in peace, war is always nearby. His followers are most often warriors, farmers in need of the rain he provides, and sailors. Heads of the household, male or female, invoke his name as their authority over others. Rangers and any who hunt giants are also his followers. They invoke his name on their hunts, and there is a 5% chance (10% if on his holy days/times) that he will offer a boon of +1 to hit until the next sundown. 

Sphere of Control: Storms, Rulership
Animal: Eagle
Rainment: (Head) Bare (Body) Simple white garments
Color(s): White, Grey, Red
Holy Days: Red Sunsets, Thursdays
Sacrifices: After storms, goat
Place of Worship: Any elevated area

--

Notes

I obviously need to flesh this guy out some more. BUT I want to do that as part of some actual play. The original Deities & Demigods had the advantage of working with myths that were (in many cases) thousands of years old. My myths are less than two years old but build on some solid and even old, ideas.

I am still determining what their home Plane is in AD&D. The Greeks and Romans had Olympus, and the Germanic and Norse people had Asgard. I am considering these in terms of my Rules for this. I can stick to history, but it must conform to AD&D first, somewhere near Olympus and Gladsheim.  Right now, if you were to ask me what one of his Pagan worshippers would say, well they would just point up to the sky.  I will cheat and look into the Manual of Planes for these answers.  But in a future post. 

 Additions I have made to the classic AD&D D&DG's stat block are to include a "WITCH/WARLOCK" line for class level and the information from the table in the back of the book for other details. I had considered doing some other details from AD&D 2nd Ed and D&D 3rd Ed, but in the end, I dropped those ideas when it became obvious that AD&D 1st Ed style would work best for me. 

These gods will not have Psionic powers. I have nothing against them (I love them, in fact), but the notion does not fit well with them.  This is a case where my Rule #2 overrides Rule #1.

My goal is to have a PDF of all of the gods of this Pantheon ready by the end of the month in D&DG format.

Links

• One Man's God Special: Syncretism Part 3, the Roman-Norse Pantheon
• One Man's God series
• Deities & Demigods II: Part 1, Hecate (stat block construction)
• Monstrous Mondays: D&DGII The Monsters of the Black Forest Mythos
• My overview and rules for these postings

This is another post for my RPG Blog Carnival Horrors, Gods, and Monsters.

 Among the many graves there others (marked with 3).  These look like the other graves (marked with 2), but are deeper. They are occupied by a dwarven wight.  There are 12 total. 

These wights are former dwarven warrior elites. They each wield +1 battle axe.

It is not very often you can find two related movies that are 100 years apart. However, this is something that will become more and more common.  Today's Re-animated movies are the classic The Golem (Der Golem) and 2020's The Golem.

Both movie deal with the old Jewish legend of the Golem as a being made of clay and imbued with the word of Life/God to become a protector to the people. But if the Golem is kept around too long it also brings destruction to all those around it. 

The Golem: How He Came into the World (German: Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam) (1920)

This movie is a classic in every sense of the word. It is slow, black & white and silent, but worth watching. You can easily see some of the design choices that would later go into the Frankenstein movies from Universal Studios. 

In this one, the golem is created to protect the Jewish people of Prague. A warning is given that if the Golem is still animated when the planets enter the house of Uranus the evil spirit of Astaroth will take it over. 

There is a bit where the Rabbi who animated the Golem uses it to impress the Emperor and save all his people when his place collapses. As expected the Golem turns to evil and begins killing people. Well, he kills a knight of the Emperor who has been sleeping with a girl (Miriam) who the Rabbi's apprentice wants. In the end the Golem is "shut down" by a girl who removes the scroll from his chest (not mouth as in the legends).

The Golem (2018, 2020)

This is an English-language Israeli movie set during the Black Death. We see Hannah visiting a healer where we learn it was 7 years ago when her child had died. She sneaks off to listen to the Rabbi preach about the Kaballah (forbidden at the time). Her husband knows, but while not exactly understanding he is supportive. During her sister's wedding men from a nearby village bring in a plague-stricken girl. They blame the Jewish people and their sorceries for the plague. 

Hannah decides to use the book her husband smuggled for her to create a Golem to protect the village from these men.  We are given scenes where the Golem, in the form of her dead son, just beat the living shit out of these men; especially a group that attack Hannah alone and try to hang her.

In this we get the same story where the Golem protects, but after a bit it begins to turn on everyone. Int this case it seems to be connected to Hannah, who can feel it when the Golem-boy gets shot and sends it (unconsciously) to kill the woman she thinks her husband it having an affair with. 

The men leave when the daughter of their leader gets better, but come back to burn the village down after his daughter dies. The Golem wipes them all out and Hannah asks the golem to stop so she can remove the scroll from it's mouth. 

It is a good flick but only horror in the broad sense of the word. Hani Furstenberg as Hannah was rather great, to be honest, and the movie rides on her performances.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2023
Viewed: 3
First Time Views: 2

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.

Welcome to the first Monstrous Monday of October 2023. Monstrous Mondays are always a treat for me in October since I can really do some of my favorite monsters here. This October is special for a number of reasons.  First, we have five Mondays in October this year so that already feels like a bonus monster. Secondly, I am going to do monsters of the "Black Forest Mythos" for my speculative Deities & Demigods II project. And finally this is my first *real* entry for the October RPG Blog Carnival: Horrors, Gods, and Monsters.

Photo by Michiel Annaert on Unsplash

The Monsters of the Black Forest

A brief recap of what this project is. I speculated on a combined Roman-Norse Pantheon taking root somewhere in the Black Forest region of Germany in the 6th or 7th centuries AD. While there are some similarities between the gods I am working on and their Proto-Indo-European ancestors, I am not trying to recreate the PIE gods.  I am not doing archeology or comparative anthropology here. I am doing game design.

The goals then for this pantheon (and their monsters) are:

1. It is for use in a game first and foremost, and AD&D 1st Edition in particular
2. I want to stick as close to history as I can unless it violates #1 above. 
3. I want to write this as something I would have written in 1985-6.

Why that last rule? I want to capture the feel of what I felt was peak AD&D 1st for me.  And since today I am talking about monsters, I have a fourth rule just for them.

4. Monsters need to reflect the tales and fears people of this age would have had. 

Pretty simple, really. My idea is that the Romans fleeing the fall of Rome would have brought their gods and monsters, from house spirits to more horrible things. Same with the Germanic/Norse people. The monsters need to be scary but also fit the myths (#2) and be something that works in an AD&D game (#1).

Beware the Forest

I live in a huge metropolitan area (Chicago), I grew up in a small town, but it was still a town. My wife grew up in the country. We went to college near a very old forest (Shawnee National Forest), so I understand why people in late Antiquity and the Middle Ages feared the forest. It is where witches, goblins, and, worst of all, the Devil himself lived.  The people who made these myths lived in one largest forests in Europe, the Black Forest of Germany. I really want to lean in on that and capture WHY this is a scary ass place. Their gods are for solace in a changed world, the monsters though are a lot closer at hand.

I don't want this place to be scary. I want it to be terrifying.

Of Gods and Monsters

One of the things I loved about the Deities & Demigods was getting new insights to old monsters. Old in two senses. First, the obvious one, these were monsters from mythology. Secondly, old in the sense that they may have already been part of the Monster Manual and now get a new (or old as it were) version.  The best example of this is the Greek Myths. So many monsters in the Monster Manual (even true still today) came from Greek myths. Using them in context changes them a bit.  This was one of the things I explored in my One Man's God series. 

The same will be true here.  So to start off I want to revisit some monsters I have posted here and talk about how they fit into this new/old/different worldview. 

Aglæca

Ah. Now this one is kind of my poster child for these myths. The Aglæca, as I have built it, is the monster type that Grendel was. Grendel's mother then was an Aglæc-wif. Why poster child? Well back in grade school (pre-1980) I read this book of myths that I would love to find again. It had all the Greek myths, then Norse, and finally, it ended with Beowulf. In my young mind, there was a progression in these tales as time went on. One lead to the other in a mostly unbroken line. That isn't exactly how it happened, but for these myths I am going to assume they did.

Elves

Elves are tricky since they are an established AD&D mainstay. So there are light elves (the PCs) and there are "other" elves. 

• Elf, Álfar
• Elf, Shadow

Hag, Hyrrokkin

These hags are related to the giants/titans/Hüne.

Hüne

The Titans of Roman myth and the primordial Giants of Norse/Germanic myth. I created these just for these myths.

Kobolds

Kobolds are part of Germanic myth and the D&D interpretations have moved a bit away from their mythologic and folklore counterparts. Don't get me wrong, I like D&D Kobolds. I just like my versions as well. 

• Kobold, Drude
• Kobold, Knockers

Sennentuntschi

No reason other than it is a cool monster.

Trolls

Trolls and Ogres will be smooshed into one type of creature called a Troll. They are the offspring of the giants (Norse ideas) and are fairly elemental (Roman ideas) in nature. Though like the trolls and dwarves of Germanic myths, they turn to stone when exposed to sunlight.

• Troll, Cave
• Troll, Earth
• Troll, Jötunn

Others I am considering are: 

• Alraune
• Grýla and the Yule Cat
• Hamingja
• Schreckengeist (because it shares a genesis with this mythology).
• Titania, Queen of Faerie (but in her Germanic guise, maybe even using bits of The Elf King's Daughter for her) 
• Wight, Barrow
• Wolf Witch

This is a good start. I have some new ones for the rest of this month and I think it will be a great project.

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.