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

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What is it?
Runequest: Figurines of Glorantha is a short supplement for for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. It is by the same author of GLORANTHA: Trinkets from Dragon Pass.

It is a five page, full colour, 3.28 MB PDF.

Runequest: Figurines of Glorantha is reasonably presented, but it could have been better organised. It needs a slight edit.

Where is it set?
Dragon Pass.

Who do you play?
Adventurers of all types who could come across these rare items.

What do you need?
RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. It can also be run using the RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha – QuickStart Rules and Adventure.

What do you get?
Runequest: Figurines of Glorantha is a description of seven figurines, or statuettes, which might be found in the world of Glorantha. In comparison to other treasure guides from the same author, it points out that they more common, since they are typically carved or sculpted to represent deities, powerful ancestors, and cult figures. Some of those described in the supplement are rarer than others and some are tied to more obscure deities, which lessens their usefulness in a campaign. They are crafted from a variety of materials—bone, clay, metal, stone, and wood—grant a magical effect that is either linked to a Rune or the purview of the creature or deity represented.

For example, Fast Legs is a rough carving of a horse’s hindlegs with a handle sacred to the cult of Mastakos, Orlanth’s charioteer, the God With No Home. It is dotted with tiny points that represent Mobility Runes. It must be held in the hand to be effective and increases the wielder’s Move score and Kick skill. Gelid Breath is a flat plate of bronze with the arms, mouth, and face of a man. Crafted by Orlanthi priests, if held to the mouth, the user can fire darts of ice through its mouth using his Blowgun skill. However, if character’s player rolls a critical failure of one hundred, it explodes and will inflict damage directly to the character’s head. Perhaps the rarest item is Korasting’s Bless, a dull, but heavy statute of a pregnant Troll female raising her hand to her face in blessing. If broken into pieces and eaten by a Troll female, her next birth will always be of a Troll rather than of Trollkin.

As with the other treasure supplements from the same author, the figurines in Runequest: Figurines of Glorantha vary in quality and usefulness, as well as development. More description of their histories and their legends would have been welcome, especially since they are meant to be rare. However, none of the entries are overly powerful and they feel more thought out and less rushed than in other supplements from the author, making it the best of the series so far.

Is it worth your time?
Yes—Runequest: Figurines of Glorantha is an inexpensive way of adding more magic to give Player Characters or NPCs minor powers that will enhance their legends and the entries are some of the best yet.
No—Runequest: Figurines of Glorantha is simply too expensive for what you get and the entries too underdeveloped in terms of the setting. Plus, the Game Master could create her own with a little bit of research which are just as good.
Maybe—Runequest: Figurines of Glorantha is expensive for what you get, but entries are far from being poor and the Game Master might want to add a little variety to the treasure found or perhaps take inspiration from the treasures presented here and either develop more of their legend or create new ones of her own.

 We have been rewatching Stranger Things in anticipation of the new, and final, season coming on Wednesday. I thought it might be fun to revisit their classic monster for the system that influenced the show so much.

Demogorgon (The Creature)
Interdimensional Predator

FREQUENCY: Very rare
NO. APPEARING: 1 (rarely 1–2)
ARMOR CLASS: 4
MOVE: 15"
HIT DICE: 8+8
% IN LAIR: Nil
TREASURE TYPE: Nil
NO. OF ATTACKS: 2 claws
DAMAGE/ATTACK: 4–9 / 4–9 (1d6+3) plus special (bite 1-8)
SPECIAL ATTACKS: Bite latch, dimensional scent, drag
SPECIAL DEFENSES: Regeneration, surprise, fire vulnerability
MAGIC RESISTANCE: Standard
INTELLIGENCE: Animal to Low (1–6)* high cunning
ALIGNMENT: Chaotic Evil
SIZE: M (7 feet tall, thin, humanoid)
PSIONIC ABILITY: Nil
LEVEL/XP VALUE: VIII / 1,650 + 12 per hp

A tall, gaunt humanoid creature with elongated limbs and a head that opens like a five-petaled flower. The interior of its "face" is ringed with rows of needle-like teeth. Its flesh is pale, hairless, and amphibian-like. Movement is unnaturally fluid and silent.

Demogorgons exist between worlds. They slip into Prime Material spaces only when the veils thin or when drawn through by psychic resonance or magical disruption.

Demogorgons fight with terrifying speed and ferocity. They prefer to stalk prey for several minutes, using their ability to sense blood, fear, or psychic emanations.

Claw Attacks: Each claw deals 1–6+3 damage. A natural 19 or 20 indicates the Demogorgon has seized the target, granting it a +2 to hit with its bite.

Bite Latch: Once latched, the creature bites for 1–8 damage per round automatically until the victim is freed. Strength checks or magical force are required to break free.

Dimensional Scent: Demogorgons can sense living creatures across thin planar boundaries. They detect invisible, ethereal, or phase-shifted beings within 6", ignoring illusions involving scent or blood.

This ability also allows them to track wounded prey with near-perfect accuracy.

Drag Into Shadow: If the Demogorgon is adjacent to a dimensional weak spot (DM’s discretion: portals, rifts, magical failures, etc.), it may drag a victim through with a successful hit roll followed by a Strength contest. The victim is taken into a dark parallel space similar to the Upside Down.

Regeneration: Demogorgons regenerate 1 hp per round unless damaged by fire or holy/radiant magical effects.

Surprise: Due to absolute silence and unnatural motion, Demogorgons surprise on a 1–3 in 6.

Fire Vulnerability: Demogorgons fear fire. Fire causes it to go last in the initiative round and causes +2 damage per successful hit. 

Demogorgons are apex predators of a hostile parallel ecology. They do not communicate in a conventional sense. They react aggressively to psychic disturbance, emotional trauma, and bloodshed. Some appear to be specifically drawn to magical or psionic children. 

They do not gather treasure, nor construct lairs, but they linger near dimensional bleed sites that link their realm to others. They live only to hunt.

--

Just under 60 hours to go!

Much like the Jonstown Compendium for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and The Companions of Arthur for material set in Greg Stafford’s masterpiece of Arthurian legend and romance, Pendragon, the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition is a curated platform for user-made content. It is thus, “...a new way for creators to publish and distribute their own original Call of Cthulhu content including scenarios, settings, spells and more…” To support the endeavours of their creators, Chaosium has provided templates and art packs, both free to use, so that the resulting releases can look and feel as professional as possible. To support the efforts of these contributors, Miskatonic Monday is an occasional series of reviews which will in turn examine an item drawn from the depths of the Miskatonic Repository.

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Name: Operation BottleneckPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Chicho ‘Arkashka’ OCARIZ

Setting: World War II SpainProduct: Scenario
What You Get: Thirty-nine page, 20.62 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: A rock hunt takes Allied stalwarts from the Rock deep into SpainPlot Hook: Spain is ‘neutral’ right now, but will it be after Tartessos Suchexpedition?Plot Support: Staging advice, four pre-generated Investigators, five NPCs, nine maps, two Mythos monsters, and a giant robot.Production Values: Decent
Pros# Can be run using Pulp Cthulhu: Two-fisted Action and Adventure Against the Mythos# Sequel to Operation Midnight Sun# Nicely detailed with lots for Investigators to do in Gibraltar# Lovely period maps# Batrachophobia# Speluncaphobia# Robophobia
Cons# Needs an edit# Initial Sanity penalties overblown# More military operation than Mythos investigation# Not clear what the Investigators achieve# Ends in a big fight with little to discover
Conclusion# Action and stealth-focused World War II scenario# Ultimately does not feel as if the Investigators achieve much or push the plot forward very far

In the beginning the Immortal made the world and all that was in it. Then made strife by bringing the Amortines, the first beings into the world. They hated their father and two of their number strangled him, and so brought another god into the world, Destruction. Yet the Amortines danced and procreated in their victory, and so begat the Lamentides, the dreadful sons, and the Allurimorns, the sublime daughters, and they in turn begat their own children, the Dreads and the Sublimes. When their passions grew too wild, Life and Death, the eldest of the Allurimorns and Lamentides, invited them all to a great banquet in Heall where they captured them and sealed them in Life’s urns. It is said that when the Amortines’ prodigy escape their prisons and are once again abroad in the world, then the Last Day will begin in earnest. In Painyme, it is both said and feared that this day draws close, for Death has already closed the First Gate to Heall and turned the dead away, leaving the unquiet dead to wander… Five of the twelve border kingdoms surrounding have been consumed by the Weald surrounding the Petty Baronies before the great city of Assartum, home to the Ecclesiarch, His Excellency Boniface Pontfex IV. A crusade has been declared against the Traitor Gods and the Templars have already killed their first Traitor God. Day by day, more and more heretics give themselves up to or are thrown on the Pyre, but even those who have been given a chance for absolution for their heresies upon joining a guild by the Church of the Divine Corpse are being tempted once again by the gifts that Traitor Gods promise. Just as those who seek absolution join guilds for the safety in numbers they offer, so too do those who accept such gifts join cults for the protection they offer.

This is the set-up for Doomsong, an eschatological, pre-apocalyptic roleplaying game of heretical temptation and divine punishment and survival horror. Published by Cæsar Ink., it is described as a ‘Roleplay Macabre’, which places it in the ‘grim dark’ genre. The players roleplay characters who have either committed heresy by accepting a gift from one of the Traitor Gods or have committed various crimes, and sort absolution by joining a guild, or joined a guild to serve. The guilds can be gravediggers’ guilds, philosophers’ guilds, signmakers’ guilds, ratcatchers’ guilds, woodcutters’ guilds, and Wyccefinders’ guilds. Understandably, gravediggers’ guilds have become common since the First Gate to Heall was closed. Members of the Wyccefinders’ Guilds are allowed to truck with the Dread or the Sublime in return for the Occult abilities they grant, but this does not mean they will be absolved. Over the course of the game, the Player Characters will work to achieve their aims, serve their guild, avoid being accused of heresy, and if they do give into the temptation of the Traitor Gods’ gifts, keeping them hidden.

Prior to character generation, the players decide upon the nature of their characters’ guild and what it does. The guild is the focus of the campaign and provides a ready source of NPCs in the form of guild officers (positions which the Player Characters can also fill), equipment as well as a base of operations, and when the Player Characters begin recruiting, replacement Player Characters. In addition, the players, their characters, and their guild will have access to a calendar which can be used to track days, particularly the holy days and holidays, as well as the progress of any wounds that have to heal, activities that the Player Characters might want to do day-by-day, including cooking, crafting, foraging, keeping watch, engaging in a hobby, recruiting, working on a project, and more. It also includes Advancement, the spending of Experience Points followed by a Player Character training, the result of which is primarily random.

A Player Character in Doomsong is defined by his Origins and his Traits, and the path by which he came to be a member of the Guild. In combat, he also has Toughness and Footing. Toughness represents how difficult it is to harm the Player Character, whilst Footing is expended to defend against attacks. In addition, he will have Protection if he wears armour, which adds to his Toughness. If a Player Character is very lightly defined, the creation process does a lot of heavy lifting in adding depth to him. It uses a lifepath system which first gives him an Origin and then takes him through his youth to adulthood and perhaps beyond, pushing him towards the decision to join the Guild. At the end he will likely be presented with a choice between giving himself up to the Pyre or joining the Guild. The former means being burnt as a heretic, whilst the latter gives him protection from the ecclesiastical authorities and a possible path to redemption.

There are six Origins—‘Wild Thing’, ‘Guttersnipe’, ‘Farming Family’, ‘Middle Class’, ‘Wealthy Elite’, and ‘Star-Crossed Babe’ and multiple options in the Lifepath. Each step in the Lifepath process gives a player a choice of traits to pick from, a table of events with entries that will give him another trait or an exit to another step. Some entries determine a particular aspect about the Player Character, most represent jobs of some kind, others might give the gift of a relic, whilst others will tempt a Player Character into acts of heresy that will lead either to the Pyre or the Guild. The process is relatively quick and definitely easy—and it has to be. Player Characters are fragile. Life in Doomsong is short, brutal, and bloody. In other words, they die fast and they are fast replaced. What is interesting here is how it feels, which is like a cross between the complete career path for a Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Player Character and Player Character creation for Traveller, but done at a gallop!

Name: Maub
Toughness 4 Footing 4 Protection 0
TRAITS
Wealdean, Tracker, Swift-footed, Avowed, Ruthless
ABILITIES
Canine Familiar
ORIGIN – Welcome, stranger. The Guild takes anyone seeking sanctuary within its walls. We have high-born and low, the scum of the earth and those who would turn their backs on the dull existence of daily life. Whatever has brought you here will not surprise us.
WEALD – Growing up beyond the border castles brought as much peculiar freedom as it did danger. Concepts like law and ownership were foreign to you.
THIEF TAKER – You were tasked with hunting criminals to the Petty Baronies and beyond.
JUSTICE – A stony voice commanded you use the blood of a foe to daub your hate on unworked stone.
DO YOUR DUTY – Those who join the Guild for selfless reasons are its greatest and most ill-spent asset.
JOIN THE GUILD – You stood at the threshold of the Guild, throwing the rest of your life away to the vagaries of fate. Whether you felt relief or fear when they accepted you, we do not know.

Mechanically, Doomsong is relatively simple. To have his character succeed at a Standard Check, a player rolls a single six-sided die and attempts to roll five or more. A Player Character’s traits, equipment, conditions, and allies can add modifiers, ranging from ‘-1’ and Hindering to ‘+3’ and Defining and Perfect, though the latter is rare. If the task is Focused, then the player rolls two six-sided dice and keeps the highest, but if Hasty, the player rolls two six-sided dice and keeps the lowest. If the result is under the target number, the Player Character has failed with cost; if equal to the Target Number, it is success with a cost; and if over the Target Number, it is a straightforward success.

In addition, a player can choose to flip the Doomcoin (an ordinary coin will do, but the roleplaying game does have its own coin as an accessory). If the result of the flip of the Doomcoin is a Skull, the result of the Standard Check is one step worse, but one step better if result of the flip of the Doomcoin is a Crest. Either way, this is the only means by which a Player Character can achieve a critical success or a critical failure. Further, once flipped, the player keeps the Doomcoin in front of him. His character is now doomed and the Game Master can force the player to flip it on any test, but can only do this once. It then passes back to the Game Master and can be picked up by another player. Whatever the result, failure is permanent and the task cannot be reattempted; the cost of failure is permanent; critical results are spectacular; and a Player Character with a particular skill or trait does not fail because of a lack of knowledge or expertise, but because of the uncertainty of the situation.

Combat is slightly more complex. Each Player Character has two actions in a round represented by two six-sided dice, or Action Dice, whilst NPCs have one action and thus one six-sided die. At the start of the round, each player sets his character’s Action Dice according to the actions that he wants him to take. He will set an Action Die at one if he wants his character to ‘Aid’ another or ‘Draw’ gear; at three if he wants his character to carry out a ‘Light Strike’ or hasty attack with a non-heavy weapon or ‘Recover’ and regain Footing; or to five if he wants his character to perform a ‘Heavy Strike’, a focused attack with a non-light weapon or ‘Set Up’ a ‘Standard Action’ or ‘Standard Strike’ whose trigger the player can also establish. There are two Actions per die face and a player is free to choose from them as he wishes, even performing the same action twice, though the same weapon cannot be used for more than a single attack in a round. The Game Master counts up from lowest numbered to the highest, from one to six, completing all of the actions for one face of the die before moving onto the next. Ideally, this is set up with each player placing his two dice on the two choices he has made in the Action Block on his character sheet.

The actual attack roll in Doomsong is not treated as a Standard Check, but a Special Check. The difficulty number varies, being based on the defender’s Toughness, which can be modified by his player or the Game Master spending Footing to have his character or NPC dodge or block the attack. As with Standard Checks, the results be under, equal to, or over the difficulty number. If under, the attacker is off-balance and will lose Footing; if equal, the attacker delivers a graze and will also lose Footing, whilst the defender will lose Toughness; and if over, the attacker will inflict more damage, reducing the defender’s Tougher even more, as well as inflicting other effects, depending upon the weapon type used in the attack. For example, a bludgeoning attack might leave the defender staggered, battered, or with a smashed face, whilst a slashing attack might leave the defender grazed, scarred, or with a sliced face. Flips of the Doomcoin can also increase the result of an attack roll and potentially inflict even greater damage.

In terms of background, Doomsong provides details of the ecclesiastical calendar of Painmye, along with overviews of its geography and social hierarchy, and also the hierarchy of the Church of the Divine Corpse. The most attention is paid to its pantheon of The Immortal and The Immortal’s misbegotten progeny, detailing each of his children and his children’s children and so on, including their prayers and the cults devoted to each of them. Twelve of the Traitor Gods—Chance, Feast, Frenzy, Honour, Hope, Justice, Oblivion, Panic, Perception, Rot, Toil, and Vorcacity—grant occult gifts to their followers and so give the opportunity for the tempted to become a Wycce, an agent of one of the Traitor Gods. Familiars—canine, laceworker, or rat—are the most recognisable of the occult abilities granted by the Traitor Gods. For example, the Sublime called Feast gives his patronage to those that give generously to others, especially of their scraps of food, his familiars being vultures, boars and gowenflies, and his vow being to feed the hungry. In return for feeding the starving, his Wycces learn abilities such as ‘Attuned Forager’, enabling them to sense food stores, ‘Nature’s Bounty’ which cures food of any rot, or ‘Amphora of desire’, by which they can enchant a jug or bottle of alcohol that is so enticing, anyone who drinks it is likely to fall unconscious should he try to stop. All of the abilities have three and many actually have positive effects despite how the Church of the Divine Corpse might regard them.

In addition includes an extensive bestiary of NPCs and monsters. All have their own Action Blocks. Some of the NPCs are simple recruits to the Player Characters’ guild, but others include militia, assassins, duellists, templars, and more. There are stats for normal animals as well as familiars, and also the favoured children of the various Traitor Gods. For example, Laceworkers are favoured by Chance, preternaturally lucky (which means that when the Player Characters are confronted by them, the Game Master can force players to flip the Doomcoin, even their characters are not Doomed, and flip it a second time if it does not favour the Laceworkers) spiders that lay their eggs in partially consumed corpses that can later rise as a Husk of Chance. The Opri are associated with the Sublime Frenzy, birthed by her hatred of the Church of the Divine Corpse after the Ecclesiarch ordered the murder of sister, the Sublime Joy. The Opri hunt the pious and hunger for the bones of the holy, often desecrating churches and villages in the process, whilst their bite turns men into Opri-Falsere, servants that grow to look like the feline Opri with the passing of each full moon whilst dedicating their lives to them in secret. Given that the First Gate of Heall has been closed, it is no surprise that the Unquiet Dead are also detailed. The journey of both body and soul are described in detail, whilst there are descriptions of numerous types of the undead, all pleasingly different to that found in most other roleplaying games. Rounding out Doomsong is a selection of flora and fungi.

Physically, Doomsong is a stunning looking book. Black and white, but with grim and grimy artwork reminiscent of both Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, First Edition and the Fighting Fantasy series. This should be no surprise that its artist also drew the illustrations for Themborne Games’ Escape the Dark Castle: The Game of Atmospheric Adventure and Escape the Dark Sector: The Game of Deep Space. The layout has an early modern look to it in terms of style and feel, whilst the book has pleasing physicality in that its jacket actually doubles as a Game Master reference, whilst the inside back cover actually has a pocket for the Doomcoin! Another interesting design choice is the use of colour, used in conjunction with the Traitor Gods as if they are offering something bright and enticing in comparison to the sackcloth and ashes that is the everyday existence of Painyme.

There can be no doubt that Doomsong is a fantastic looking book, one that reeks of desperation and fear in the face of an encroaching biblical Armageddon. Yet this is both a help and hindrance. A help because it imparts so much of the roleplaying game’s atmosphere and apocalyptic alarm, but a hindrance because it makes Doomsong look like a more complex and more daunting roleplaying game than it really is. It also hides some issues with Doomsong. One is that there is no advice for the Game Master on how to run the roleplaying game, whilst the other is that there is no discussion of what a Doomsong scenario or campaign looks like. There is the sperate campaign, Lord Have Mercy Upon Us, in which the Player Characters are members of a gravediggers’ guild helping to bury the multitudinous Unquiet Dead, and Doomsong leans that way in terms of a set-up, but that requires further purchase followed by long term play and commitment rather than enabling the Game Master and her group to play just from the core rulebook. Yet despite its mechanical simplicity, Doomsong is not suitable for inexperienced Game Masters given its lack of advice as to how the game runs, what a scenario looks like, and what a campaign looks like. Even an experienced Game Master will be challenged to set something up from scratch and whatever that is, it may not be what the designers intended to best showcase their design.

There is a piquant sense of epoch-ending trepidation and existential anxiety to Doomsong. It casts the Player Characters as heretics seeking absolution, but tempted time and time gain with occult gifts that in some cases might actually do some good, more than the simple, extremely fragile mortals that they are, are actually capable of, knowing that to give in to that temptation so is heresy once again. This is the core dilemma at the heart of the roleplaying, one that reeks of dread and despair that might yet be forestalled, but ultimately in Doomsong, leaves it to another book to really show the Game Master how that will play out in the short term, let alone the long term.

Subtitled ‘A Co-operate Roleplaying Game (with only one winner)’, Two Sides To The Coin is a light storytelling roleplaying game that can be pitched as ‘being like a LARP, but played at the table’. It is a simple game, best suited to one-shots and convention games in the players will roleplay through a particular story, whether that is robbing the train coming into town, stealing a painting before it can go on display at a museum, solving a murder at a country house, conduct peace negotiations, or surviving long enough being stalked by a monster from outer space which is slowly killing off your crewmates to escape the spaceship and escape certain death. It is played just like a standard roleplaying game with everyone sat round the table, roleplaying their characters as they work towards a shared objective, but played like a LARP—or ‘Live Action Roleplay’—in that every player and every character has multiple motives and personal objectives. Some in game, some out of game. Achieving some will score a player points at the end of the game, but achieving one, his character’s ‘Ulterior Motive’ will not only score the player more points, but will win him the game. Yes, this is a roleplaying game in which there is a winner, so it is unlike almost any other roleplaying game. However, the group’s overall objective must be completed as well for there to be a winner!
Two Sides To The Coin is published by Osprey Games, better known for its more traditional roleplaying games such as Hard City: Noir Roleplaying and Jackals – Bronze Age Fantasy Roleplaying, so it is different in comparison to the roleplaying games it usually publishes. To play the game, at least one eight-sided die is required as well as ten Coins per player and some pens and notepads, as the players will be passing notes back and forth between each other and themselves and the Narrator. (This aspect makes it more difficult to run online.) The Narrator will decide upon a scenario—there four included in the book—and decide what Motives use and negotiates with her players as to what Motives their characters will have for the scenario.

A Player Character is simply defined. He has eight stats. These are Academics, Alertness, Close Combat, Dexterity, Ranged Combat, Resolve, Social, and Streetwise. He has ten Coins, one Ulterior Motive, and six Lesser Motives. To create a character, a player divides thirty-five points between the eight stats and rolls randomly to determine what his character’s Lesser Motives. These are in game and out of game Motives. The Ulterior Motive is decided upon through negotiation between the player and Narrator to fit the set-up that the Narrator has created for her scenario.

Ruud van der Aar
Occupation: Fraud Investigator
Academics 5 Alertness 4 Close Combat 4 Dexterity 4
Ranged Combat 4 Resolve 5 Social 5 Streetwise 4
Coins OOOOOOOOOO
ULTERIOR MOTIVE
Prove that the painting is real, because you already replaced it with a forgery!
LESSER PLAYER MOTIVES
Get a player to give you something to drink
Get a player to say the word ‘umbrella’
Get a player to pass a note to you
LESSER CHARACTER MOTIVES
Get a character to sing something
Get a character to give your character something to eat
Get a character to lie to another character

Mechanically, Two Sides To The Coin is simple. To have his character undertake an action, his player rolls an eight-sided die and adds the appropriate attribute to beat a Difficulty Number, ranging from eight for Simple to fifteen for Arduous. A player can expend Stat points to boost the roll and make sure that he beats the Difficulty Number. There are no set means of determining how good or how bad the outcome is, but the Narrator is encouraged to reward really good and punish really bad rolls. In addition, each player begins a session with ten Coins. These can be played heads up to add one to a roll or tails up to subtract one from a roll. They can be played after the roll and after a player has decided to spend Stat points on the roll, but they can only be spent by a player to affect the actions of another player’s character that his character is watching. In other words, a player can use his Coins if his character is in the room with the other character. There is nothing to stop the players negotiating the expenditure of Coins, whether that is for promises of help later on, the lending of equipment, suggesting the formation of an alliance, and so on. The Coins are way to signal a Player Characters intent, as in, “I need you to succeed right now, probably for all our sakes, or least mine” or “I need you to fail, because I need to succeed where you must not”.

Where Coins spent cannot be recovered, Stat points spent can be. This requires the Player Character to fulfil his Motives, gaining two points for each Lesser Motive Point fulfilled and five points when his Ulterior Motive is fulfilled. However, no other player can suspect or have reason enough to point out that a player and/or character is attempting to fulfil either type of Motive. If a Player Character does fail a Motive, whether from a bad die roll or another player pointing it out, the Player Character loses a Stat point. If a player points out that another player is trying to fulfil a Motive and it is not actually true, he will lose Stat points. Stat points can also be awarded for good roleplaying.

There are barely any combat rules in Two Sides To The Coin. Primarily because the focus of the roleplaying game is not combat, but interaction between the Player Characters in their push to achieve their overall objective and then their personal objectives. When combat occurs, the amount rolled above the Difficulty Number, modified by the weapon used, determines how much damage is inflicted. This is deducted from a ten-point track and it gets lower, the greater the effect the damage has on the Player Character.

Lastly, a player can flip a Coin once per session to attempt an action. If successful, the Player Character succeeds and gains a bonus to all attempts to do it again that session. If a failure, a Player Character cannot attempt it again and suffer a penalty to a stat. An alternative rule is the ‘Rule of Sabotage’ which turns one of the Player Characters into a saboteur, attempting to undo or prevent the objective of the other Player Characters being fulfilled.

All four scenarios in Two Sides To The Coin include a main objective and a winning condition, as well as several character concepts and their ‘Beginnings’ or introductions for the players and their characters. Some sample Ulterior Motives are also suggested. The scenario details follow, including plot, maps, NPCs, and so on. There are pointers too—on ‘Post-it Notes’—for the Narrator on how to run each scenario. The four scenarios include ‘Moving a Masterpiece’, in which the Player Characters must move a painting from a museum to a storage facility; ‘Finding Fluffy’ casts the Player Characters as an adventuring band commissioned to find a wizard’s missing pet; in ‘Stranded’, the Player Characters are Starfield Industries recruits assigned to recover a missing merchant starship and her crew; and in the Edwardian-era set ‘The Mansion of Murphy Mahoney’, the Player Characters need to find an heir for Lord Mahoney. The second first two scenarios are lighter in tone than the second two, but show off some of the situations and genres that the roleplaying game can handle.

Physically, Two Sides To The Coin is decently written and nicely illustrated with some cartoon artwork that tell the stories of several capers. There is advice and examples of play for the Narrator throughout, all of it appearing on more ‘Post-it Notes’.

Two Sides To The Coin is written to be a relatively easy introduction to roleplaying, taking its time to give an example of play and notes for both player and Narrator as to what they are expected to do. In the case of the Narrator, this includes keeping track of the machinations of both the players and their characters, determining whether their Motives have succeeded or failed, in addition to what you would expect of a Narrator. For the player, the book extolls the pleasures of roleplaying as much as roleplaying Two Sides To The Coin.

Two Sides To The Coin is not quite the perfect introduction to roleplaying as it could have been—as written. It is a better introduction for the player than the Narrator, who ideally still needs some experience of the role, but taking that into account, Two Sides To The Coin is light enough in terms of its mechanics and familiar enough in terms of the stories it is designed to handle, to introduce a player to the hobby. Or introduce an experienced roleplayer to storytelling style roleplaying. In general, experienced roleplayers will be able to pick up and play Two Sides To The Coin without any problems. Light and easy to prepare, Two Sides To The Coin is perfect for one-shots and convention scenarios, and can even be added to a Narrator’s library of pick-up games.

Call of Cthulhu is the preeminent roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative horror and has been for over four decades now. The roleplaying game gives the chance for the players and their Investigators to explore a world in which the latter are exposed, initially often indirectly, but as the story or investigation progresses, increasingly directly, to alien forces beyond their comprehension. So, beyond that what they encounter is often interpreted as indescribable, yet supernatural monsters or gods wielding magic, but in reality is something more, a confrontation with the true nature of the universe and the realisation as to the terrible insignificance of mankind with it and an understanding that despite, there are those that would embrace and worship the powers that be for their own ends. Such a realisation and such an understanding often leave those so foolish as to investigate the unknown clutching at, or even, losing their sanity, and condemned to a life knowing truths to which they wish they were never exposed. This blueprint has set the way in which other games—roleplaying games, board games, card games, and more—have presented Lovecraftian investigative horror, but as many as there that do follow that blueprint, there are others have explored the Mythos in different ways.

Cthulhoid Choices is a strand of reviews that examine other roleplaying games of Lovecraftian investigative horror and of Cosmic, but not necessarily Horror. Previous reviews which can be considered part of this strand include Cthulhu Hack, Realms of Crawling Chaos, and the Apocthulhu Roleplaying Game.

—oOo—
Your merchantman ship sunk by Imperial German raiders. You captured and held in a cell. There is a chance that you can escape, steal a boat and then… How long will you survive adrift in the ocean waters? Will you row or drift, perhaps you may find yourself coming ashore in the hometown of your ancestors, Kingsport, the mist enshrouded city of dreams or cast ashore in a strange new land where death and madness await. This is opening to The Necronomicon Gamebook: Dagon, a solo adventure inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft, in particular, Dagon, The Festival, and The Hound, as well as The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. Published by Officina Meningi following a successful Kickstarter campaign, it enables the reader to explore the story from his own point of view and perhaps survive to influence the outcome for a different ending than that suffered by Lovecraft’s protagonist.
As a choose-your own-adventure book, The Necronomicon Gamebook: Dagon is short at just eighty entries for the main Earth-bound portion of the story with a further ten entries for the sidestep into The Dreamlands. The player will need just a six-sided die and pen and paper to play and perhaps a couple of hours to play through at most. The Player Character is lightly defined. He has three attributes, Force and Will. Force is his physical strength and ability to fight, whilst Will is his ability to withstand stress and the horrors of the cosmos. Resistance represents his physical skills and tolerance to pain. His mental state is tracked by his Madness, which begins at Well-Balanced. As it goes from Stressed to Delerium via Paranoid and Schizophrenic, the Player Character suffers penalties to die rolls, first in The Dreamlands, but later in the waking world too. He can carry some equipment, such as a medical kit that will restore Resistance and a syringe of morphine that will restore Resistance and prevent him from entering The Dreamlands. Throughout his journey, the Player Character will find money, other items, and weapons.

The combat system is simple. The player rolls the die and adds the character’s Force attribute to the roll as well as any bonus from a weapon. The opponent’s Force value is subtracted from the total and the result compared on the ‘Table of Comparison’ on the solo adventure’s combat table. The worse the result, the less damage the opponent suffers and the more the Player Character suffers, and conversely, the better the result, the more damage the opponent suffers and the less the Player Character suffers. It is possible to inflict damage without the Player Character suffering any, but the chances are low. To defeat an opponent, his or its Resistance must be reduced to zero. Although it is possible to avoid some combat situations, when it does occur, it is simple and brutal.

The story of The Necronomicon Gamebook: Dagon is really one of transition through the three of Lovecraft’s short stories that inspire it. The opening scenes with the Player Character captured are drawn from Dagon, but the scenes in Kingsport are primarily from The Festival with those from The Hound made part of it. What they reveal is the existence of an ancient cult abroad in Kingsport, which at the time of the Player Character’s arrival, is readying to perform an ancient ceremony of Yule, older than Bethlehem. This becomes apparent very quickly if the Player Character visits the home of his ancestors, but he may also learn more from an old friend from college and so play out scenes from The Hound. Unless discovered or he runs away, the story pulls the Player Character into attending the ceremony of The Festival and towards the climax of the adventure book. In the process, the Player Character will learn some of Kingsport’s dark secrets and may be put a stop to the cult’s dread ritual. This will not be easy, for the Player Character will encounter horror after horror and many a deadly encounter, and even though the adventure book runs to less than a hundred entries, there many ways in which he can die or go mad. It will certainly take more than the one attempt to complete The Necronomicon Gamebook: Dagon.

The majority of the journeys in The Dreamlands are encounters rather than explorations as in the main section of the book, randomly determined by the Player Character’s Madness. The higher the result, the more dangerous and the maddening and unearthly the encounter is, before returning the Player Character to the waking world, likely the worse for the night’s poor sleep. Of course, the Player Character can die in The Dreamlands, but may also return with something that will benefit him in the waking world.

Physically, The Necronomicon Gamebook: Dagon is solidly presented and the artwork is good. Devotees of Lovecraft’s fiction will likely spot both the breaks and the inspirations, but the player need not be familiar with any of three short stories that underpin The Necronomicon Gamebook: Dagon to enjoy it. Overall, The Necronomicon Gamebook: Dagon is a short, but challenging adventure book that exposes the reader to the horrors of the cosmos and secrets lurking in Lovecraft country.

Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #15: The House of Jade and Shadow is a scenario for Goodman Games’ Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game and the fourteenth scenario for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set. Scenarios for Dungeon Crawl Classics tend be darker, grimmer, and even pulpier than traditional Dungeons & Dragons scenarios, veering close to the Swords & Sorcery subgenre. Scenarios for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set are set in and around the City of the Black Toga, Lankhmar, the home to the adventures of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser and the creation of author Fritz Leiber. The city is described as an urban jungle, rife with cutpurses and corruption, guilds and graft, temples and trouble, whores and wonders, and more. Under the cover the frequent fogs and smogs, the streets of the city are home to thieves, pickpockets, burglars, cutpurses, muggers, and anyone else who would skulk in the night! Which includes the Player Characters. And it is these roles which the Player Characters get to be in Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #15: The House of Jade and Shadow, small time crooks trying to make a living and a name for themselves, but without attracting the attention of either the city constabulary or worse, the Thieves’ Guild!

This is the set-up for Dungeon CrawlClassics Lankhmar #15: The House of Jade and Shadow, is a scenario for First Level Player Characters and is both an archetypal scenario for use with the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set. A stranger has come to the City of Seven-score Thousand Smokes. He says that has come from Far Kiraay, a realm considered near mythical by many Lankhmarts, but based upon the size of the baggage train and number of men and women he brought with him, as well as the home he has had built in the style of his homeland, where even now he holds parties for the wealthy and the nobility, intrigued as they are by his exoticism and his mystique, he is a rich man. Rumours swirl about his having been exiled from Far Kiraay for the deplorable acts of depravity and cruelty, that he keeps a king’s ransom in jewels, gems, and other valuables in a vault below his house, and that he hosts lavish masquerades for the rich and powerful at which introduces them to the pleasures of his homeland. Of course, every Lankhmart loves a good party and especially one that involves masks, since masks hide a person’s identity and when you happen to be stealing from the host, you definitely want to be keeping your identity a secret! Surprisingly, there is actually a lot of truth to the rumours flying about the Far Kiraayan nobleman, Master Fang-tzu, and both the household he keeps and the soirees he hosts, but there are definitely rumours that are not true and secrets he would not want revealed. Such as the fact that he is a leading member of fanatical cult dedicated to the Snake God, which is why he fled far Kiraary after an uprising, and having found a home in the City of the Black Toga, plans to suborn its rich and powerful as acolytes of the Cult of the Snake God!
However, Master Fang-tzu’s politics and vile practices have not travelled to Lankhmar alone as Xiang-li, a fellow Far Kiraayan has come to the city and wants to employ some local thieves to perform a job for him—in other words, the Player Characters. Suggested by a local contact (which the Judge will need to work into the campaign), Xiang-li wants the Player Characters to break into Master Fang-tzu’s and steal a set of seven jade stones that are necessary to ensure the rightful sovereignty of the ruler of Far Kiraay. Fortunately, the Player Characters’ contact has a way in—an invitation on a very fancy scroll to the very next party hosted by Master Fang-tzu.
Despite a lengthy backstory, the scenario focuses upon the event and Player Characters’ attendance, though they have time to case the joint and collect some rumours before arriving at the party. This enables them to pick up on a rumour or two and probably learn that Master Fang-tzu keeps some strange creatures in the grounds of his house. There is a table of random encounters provided should the Player Characters decide to check out the sewers beneath the house, as it is another possible means of the breaking in, but the route favoured and detailed by the scenario is using the invitation they already have. This enables them to look round the grounds without looking out of place and it also enables the Judge to run some fun roleplaying encounters at the party. Here the Player Characters can make some interesting contacts if they play their cards right. The encounters include being invited to dance by a brazen noblewoman and being called to duel as another nobleman’s champion. These are nice little encounters which give a player a chance to roleplay a scene and his character to do more than sneak around the house. There are only four such encounters as well as an optional one if a Player Character is caught red-handed committing a criminal act and the watch is called. More would have been useful, but these are about enough for the low player count required by the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set.
Physically, Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #15: The House of Jade and Shadow is well presented. The artwork and cartography are both decent, but it would have been nice if a few more NPCs had been illustrated.
The sad new is that Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #15: The House of Jade and Shadow is the last release for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set, but it is definitely not a bad scenario with which to bring the licence to a finish. Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #15: The House of Jade and Shadow is a classic theft and mystery scenario for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set, in parts entertaining and horrifying. Plus, it really has some really fun roleplaying encounters. Unfortunately, it is a scenario for First Level Player Characters and there are enough of those for Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set, which really could have done with more scenarios for higher Level Player Characters instead.

The big empire—or ‘big-emp’, if you are a scholar, and ‘imp-pig’, if you are not—lasted lots of moons. It was full of Dwarves and Elves and they was all happy and stuff, which was not natural like. Cos everyone knows Elves an’ Dwarves really hate each other. That’s just the way things are and it’s just the way things ought. So they had a fight. It was a big, lovely fight and they gave each other big red noses and then they hugged and were friends again. Naaah. Course not. They stabbed and they stabbed and they stabbed some more and they all died and the ones that did not die they hid. Which is why you never see a Dwarf or an Elf today. Well almost. Mostly not. Then the Becomening took place and the Gates of Hell which should never be opened unless you got a really, really good reason why, got opened. And that annoyed the gods. So the gods do what gods do. They come down and kick and stab all the chaos gribblies that comes through the gate that the Elves says they never opened and says the Dwarves did it and the Dwarves says they never opened and says the Elves did it. Since nobody says they was the one to open the gate, the gods did clean up the world and all died when they did, but by then, the gods had given the Elves and the Dwarves a smack, which is they are all hiding. And that is why the Dark Forest is empty and the one god who did remain, Moonface, did give it as a gift to all the Goblins and we did explore the forest and agree with Big Bosh to bash the Dwarves so hard they never fight the Goblins again and then after Big Bosh was gone, smack the Dragons so they are all dead and no Goblin ever has to give any shinies to any Dragons again. Unless it is Vermanthranox, the big boss dragon nobody seen where he went. And that is why the Dark Forest is for Goblins now. This is The Age of Goblins.

The Age of Goblins is the first campaign setting supplement for Quintessence, the generic, rules-light, dice pool-driven roleplaying game from Gribblie Games. It is a post-apocalyptic fantasy setting in which Goblins squabble and brawl and wander the Dark Forest, looking for Elf retreats and Dwarf holds to raid if still occupied, scavenge if not; battle, outwit, and if either fails, run away from just any monster bigger than they are—and most are; learn what magic they can, grift what shinies they can, grab what power they can, to prove themselves to be the most goblinest of all Goblins and the gribbliest of all gribblies. All this is in a Dark Forest where every monster is out to eat you; every remaining Dwarf hold—occupied or not, is laced with traps to kill Elves, but will also splat or shred Goblins too; every Elvish retreat—occupied or not, is infused with the spirits of the forest who hate Dwarves and if they cannot take their hate out on Dwarves, Goblins will do; and every other Goblin not in your pack, warband, or tribe (probably some that are) will shiv you to get what you got, if it can. The life of a Goblin is not necessarily short, sharp, chaotic, or brutal, but it is probably going to be some of those things.
Of course, the Player Characters are all going to be Goblins, all of whom have survived their very scrappy, voracious childhoods, and matured into would be pack-members, a pack consisting of five members (so ideally, The Age of Goblins works best with up to five players). The creation process is intended to be entirely random. This includes determining which region a Goblin was spawned in, what type he is, and what perks he has. The three Goblin types are Grots, Whelps, and Brutes. Grots are short and odd, often becoming entertainers, tricksters, and volitile spellcasters; Whelps are common Goblins, big-nosed and bog-eared, often becoming assassins, hunters, or healers; and Brutes are monstrously tall, ignored due to their lack of intelligence, but respected for their strength and combat prowess. There are tables for all four stages of a Goblin’s life to determine his Perks and Approach adjustments ready for play. For example, a Grot might have a Third Eye, which grants heightened perception or mystical sight, be subject to excessive drooling, an upbringing as a Stargazer that exposed him to celestial magic (and the Perks of either Magic: Celestial, Astronomer, or Star Navigation), was so good at hiding in shadows that the tribe once forgot he existed (+1 Subtlety or -1 Resolve), found a jewel that brings him bad luck and which can never ditch (Unlucky Charm), licked a magical stone and can now become partially invisible (Invisible), and spent time swindling others (Trickery). After that, there are suggestions for possible Goblin Natures and Demeanours and Goals to choose from, and Attitudes to other Goblins and Connections to roll. The process is fairly quick and where it counts, random in outcome.
Goblin society covers two things. One is how it organises itself, from the Packs that the Player Characters belong to, all the way to hordes and the other is a look at the different roles within Goblin society. Starting with ‘Bumpkins’ who have yet to prove themselves, these include ‘Pit Pigs’ (Pit Fighters), ‘Jerks’ (Skalds), and ‘Patchers’ (Healers), all the way up to Chieftain. These are roles and positions that the Player Characters can aspire to and which the Guide can use as inspiration for her NPCs.
Besides Goblin Clobberin’ (weapons), Swag (armour), and other Gubbins, including Swill (lovely), The Age of Goblins also details Goblin magic and its possible themes. The latter includes grotesque, shadow, draconic, moon (granted by Moonface, the only god about), and more. There are no spell lists, but instead, players are expected to flavour their Goblins’ magic with these themes. There are details of ‘Fizznips’ (potions), ‘Badgrogs’ (poisons), and ‘Fiddleswills’ (recipes), all with different effects, costs, and ingredients—the latter important because the Goblins can go foraging for the ‘Fings’ which are used to concoct them and this is supported by tables of ‘Greenies’ (plants), ‘Shrooms’ (fungi), and ‘Rokroks’ (minerals). Rounding out The Age of Goblins is a selection of new monsters, including lots of Goblin types plus dragons, Dwarves, spiders, the cockatrice, and more.
Physically, The Age of Goblins is very nicely presented. Both the cover and the internal artwork are excellent. It does need an edit in places, but the supplement is an easy read.

As a set-up, The Age of Goblins has everything that a Guide and her players are going to need. A setting, a handful of hooks, some foes, and the means to create some entertaining Player Characters. Yet it definitely feels as if there should be something more. An introductory scenario perhaps in which the Player Characters need to prove themselves more than Bumpkins, some loot that would be worth scavenging from a Dwarf hold or Elf retreat, or a big table of random events when things go wrong to help forment the chaos and disorder that The Age of Goblins is about. Of course, that chaos and disorder should come about through play and through the players, but something to ignite it would have been useful.

The Age of Goblins has the potential to be great fun, because everyone likes to play random, chaotic, silly characters once in a while. It just needs some effort from the Guide to set that fun up and get it going.

 Today I have another Dragon from Eric Harshbarger , and honestly, it is one of my favorites. Dragon #100 was a special issue all around. Dragon had already celebrated 10 years and now this issue came with a thicker cover and an embossed "paper cut" dragon on the cover. While there was drama behind the scenes at TSR, many of us remained blissfully unaware and this issue celebrated Dragon, D&D, and all things TSR. It was a snapshot of the end of what many call the Golden Age of  Dungeons & Dragons.

In August 1985, I was getting ready to start my Junior Year in High School. I had just gotten my driver's license (late; I needed new glasses), and I had been playing AD&D all summer long. I had seen the movie "Back to the Future" at least a dozen times that summer, and "The Power of Love" by Huey Lewis and the News from the movie dominated the airwaves. And on tables everywhere was Issue #100 of This Old Dragon.

By this point, I had been buying Dragon magazine regularly for over a year. I couldn't rely on the other players in my group, so my DM and I split the duties; I'd buy one month, and he the next. But we both bought this one. 

Dennis Kauth is our cover artist for this issue, and it is a memorable one. It is a paper sculpture laid flat and photographed. The purple color of the faerie dragon was then added later. Why purple? Because they are the oldest and most powerful faerie dragons. This was his only Dragon Magazine cover, but he was also a key contributor to the BATTLESYSTEM game, building many of the 3D paper minis and cartography. 

Kim Mohan's Editorial is, as expected, reflective. Focusing on the his shared history with Dragon. 

Letters takes a different turn this month to answer some questions they often get. It is more of a Frequently Asked Questions feature. Questions like "why haven't you answered my letter?" to "how do you handle manuscript or art submissions?"

Score one for Sabratact, which covers the sport of the same name. Forest Baker is reporting on this form of sport combat, a bit like sparing but less LARPing than, say, SCA. Gary Gygax gives us an introduction. Essentially you wear armor and use blunt fencing like swords or other weapons. Your armor is affixed with discs with a paper surface. The goal is to take out your opponent's paper discs. Each disk has a different set of points and the first to score 10 points on their opponent wins. It is still being played and the official website even has pictures from this issue of Dragon.

Frank Mentzer is up with All About the Druid-Ranger. This article has some clarifications on the multiclass Druid-Ranger Gygax talked about in Issue #96. The controversy, of course, from the time Rangers could only be Good and Druids had to be true neutral. The solution is the obvious Neutral Good alignment, and the rest of the article is the rationale. We took this article as gospel. It was from the mind and hands of Gygax and Mentzer; how much more official could it be? 

Speaking of which, The Forum has discussions on the "legality" of altering the official AD&D system in game play. 

Ed Greenwood is next (wow, we are getting all the heavy hitters in this one) with Pages from the Mages V. There is less background fiction here, Elminster sitting in a canoe enjoying the summer night in Wisconsin, but the spells are just as fun. Many of these spells made their way into our big world-ending campaign of 1986. 

At Moonset Blackcat Comes is a tale about Gord the Rogue, the Cat Lord and Dragonchess from Gary Gygax. This is a bit of fiction to show the place of Dragonchess in Gary's world. While I thought the story was ok, it ignited my DM. There were two immediate impacts of this. The first was the increasing inclusion of the Catlord in our games. The second, well that is coming up.

Nice full-page ad for the Unearthed Arcana is next.

If Dungeons & Dragons is Gary's greatest feats as a game designer, then our next article should go down as one of his most overlooked feats. Dragonchess by Gary Gygax is an ambitious chess variant played on a 12 x 8 x 3 board. Yes, it is a 3D chess, with three levels. I won't go into detail here about how to play, there is a Wikipedia article for it, but I will get into how we played it.  I came over to Grenda's for our regular D&D session and he had built a Dragonchess set. Using plexiglass and long bolts he built the boards and marked out the grids with painter's tape. He used chess pieces from different sets and made the other pieces of random bits.  We played it...well. We tried to play it. We quickly saw that we kept forgetting about the other boards above and below. But, it was fun. 

I know there was some software out there that allowed you to play dragon chess. I am not sure if it still around. I have seen other people build their own boards and sets, and with 3D printing, making the pieces would be a lot easier (in fact, here they are). While I never played a full game of it, many half-attempts, I have very fond memories of this game. 

Our centerpiece, as if the Dragonchess wasn't enough, is one of my all time favorite Dragon Magazine adventures, The City Beyond the Gate by Robert Schroeck. This adventure takes your AD&D characters of at least 9th level and sends them through a gate to London of the 1980s!  I was already a huge Anglophile at this point. My favorite bands were Pink Floyd, The Police, The Who, Led Zeppelin, and still The Beatles. Doctor Who was my favorite television show. AND the adventure was about finding the Mace of St. Cuthbert. So this was custom-made for me, really. The adventure is a long one, 21 pages, and has maps and "tech item" flow charts as seen in Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. 

The adventure was a lot of fun, and I am thinking of getting my Dragon DC-ROM and printing it out for my kids to use. I think they would find it great. If I were to re-run today, I think I might set it in Victorian London of the 1890s. Though...there is a lot of fun to be had in London of the 1980s. 

And I do love any map of London.

Wow, we are already into the Ares section of this Dragon. The "cover" has the then Guardians of the Galaxy on it. 

Creative Conjuring from Eric Walker is a variant magic system for Marvel Superheroes. Dr. Strange is featured throughout and he was always one of my favorite Marvel characters. I remember trying to figure out if I could use any of this with AD&D, but I never got it to work how I wanted. BUT given the time period, I am sure some of those notes went into one of the drafts of my witch class or characters. 

Champions gets some love for our first non-TSR RPG covered in CHAMPIONS Plus! by Steven Maurer. This has new powers for CHAMPIONS heroes. Again, I am not 100% certain, but I think some ideas here went into my witches. The "Domination" and "Vertigo" powers feel too familiar to me. 

Nice big ad for Mentzer's Masters Set rules. I think at the time I saw the Master's rules and the Unearthed Arcana as being similar products, one for D&D and the other for AD&D. That is not really the case, but it did solidify my decision to keep with AD&D and drop D&D. It would have been interesting if I had gone the other route, but I don't regret my choices. 

Charisma Counts! by S.D. Anderson gives us a charisma stat for Villains & Vigilantes. 

Defenders of the Future by William Tracy gives us the 1985 version of the Guardians of the Galaxy. The only one recognizable by today's audiences would be Yondu, and even then his comic version is different than his film version. 

The proper Marvel-Phile by good friend Jeff Grubb covers the Defenders; Gargoyle, Cloud, and Valkyrie. I always kinda liked Gargoyle and Valkyrie in the comics. 

Doug Niles talks about the BATTLESYSTEM project in The Chance of a Lifetime. He reflects on it's design and how he sees it fitting into the AD&D rules. 

We get another ad from Ramal LaMarr! Keep it funky Ramal!

From First Draft to Last Gasp by Michael Dobson covers the initial idea and creation of the BATTLESYSTEM game to it's final post editor form. Dobson was the editor of this massive project and he shares his own insight to how it was created back when it was called "Bloodstone Pass."

COMPRESSOR by Michael D. Selinker is a crossword puzzle.

Convention Calendar covers the cons of late summer to early winter of 1985. Sadly, nothing local to me then.

Gamers' Guide has our small ads.

Wormy, Dragonmirth, and Snarf Quest follow. 

Ok. So that was a crazy good issue. 

There is a lot here, and what I consider a collectible issue. 

It would be great for Dragonchess or adventure alone. And you know an issue is good if Ed Greenwood's contribution doesn't even crack the top three articles! There are many good issues coming up as well. 

 Gavin Norman of Necrotic Gnome and Old-School Essentials is releasing his long-awaited Demonic Grimoire for Old-School Essentials. And he is not alone.

https://www.backerkit.com/call_to_action/909d4351-ca9d-4206-834b-24d2b64a1249/landing?ref=home-page

From the promotional page:

What is the Demonic Grimoire?

A hotly anticipated major rules supplement for Old-School Essentials, expanding the game with demons, cults, and dark magic. Contained within this 176-page tome:

• 8 demon lords, detailed with their cults, minions, spells, and hellish domains.
• 60 new monsters, from lowly tormented souls to mighty lords of hell.
• 4 new classes: chaos knight, cultist, demon hunter, tiefling.
• 70+ new magic items of fiendish power.
• Demonology: magic circles, summoning, demonic pacts, familiars.
• Referee advice for building demonic campaigns.
• 120+ black & white illustrations, including a fully illustrated bestiary. Art by Lucas Korte, Kennon James, Tony Hough, Matt Stikker, and other leading old-school artists.
• Pristine control-panel layout to maximise ease of reference and minimise page flipping.

I mean that is cool enough right?

Well, like the man on the TV says, "but wait, there is more!"

Gavin is being joined by six more (at present) projects to expand on his demons book.

• Old-School Essentials Demonic Grimoire
• HELLCRAWL
• No Devil's Land
• Dinner with The Damned
• Emporium of the Damned
• The Black Spire Pact
• Codex Qliphothica: Demons of the Other Side for OSE

Sign up for them all!

If you like that last one, then I have some good news for you. That is my own contribution to OSE Demons Month.

The Codex Qliphothica will cover an entire new race of demons for OSE, the Qliphoth.

What Are the Qliphoth?

The Qliphoth are not merely demons; they are the discarded refuse of the first gods. When the Luminous Ones sought to transcend their flaws and ascend to perfection, they shed their wrath, envy, lust, and despair like snakes sloughing off dead skin. These husks did not dissolve into nothingness. They congealed in the dark cracks beneath creation, howling with the memory of rejection, and slowly grew into self-willed horrors. Where demons embody chaos and appetite, the Qliphoth are anti-creation, seeking to unmake what is whole, defile what is pure, and drag all things back to the Other Side from which they emerged.

The Qliphoth are encountered rarely, for they dwell far below even the demon lords' dominions, in a bleak plane called The Other Side. A nightmare realm of dead forests, cracked moons, and oceans of ash. When they do appear, reality itself seems to warp: sound dulls, color drains, and dreams turn to fevered visions.

My plan (and I am on track for this) is to have everything done to be delivered soon after the crowdfunding ends. Both the PDFs and physical print copies will be handled by DriveThruRPG. 

Cover subject to change, but I rather like this one. And Dean Spencer is really fantastic.

Most of the writing is done, and I am paying for the art upfront. I even have my writing play list ready!

See you on the Other Side!

 Stranger Things and Dungeons & Dragons have been feeding each other energy since episode one. It is one of those rare cases where a piece of pop culture borrows heavily from D&D, makes it part of its DNA, and then ends up shaping the game right back. It is a magical feedback loop, the kind of thing El and Will would draw on a notebook with ominous red pencil.

The Duffer Brothers grew up with D&D, and the show wears that devotion on its sleeve. The opening scenes of the young party around their basement table tell you everything you need to know: D&D isn’t just a hobby, it is the lens through which these kids understand the world. Every monster gets its name from the Monster Manual. Every mystery gets filtered through initiative, hit points, “fireball it,” and the shared imagination they have learned from the game. Vecna, Mind Flayer, Demogorgon, Shadowfell style vibes… none of these are literally the D&D versions, but the kids use D&D terminology as their mythology. The game becomes the metaphor that allows them to survive.

Over time, things get… stranger. The influence starts running the other direction. Stranger Things becomes one of the biggest pop-culture engines driving new players toward Dungeons & Dragons. Stores started stocking Starter Sets with Stranger Things branding. Wizards of the Coast released an official Stranger Things campaign box that lets you play Mike Wheeler’s “lost adventure.” Actual-play groups and D&D livestreams saw traffic increase thanks to the show. Even the big Vecna resurgence in 5e owes some of its spotlight to season four. Vecna was always a major villain, but now he is a household name. Well, thanks to Stranger Things and Critical Role. 

The aesthetics of the Upside Down have quietly shaped D&D as well. 5e adventures started leaning a bit harder into that mix of psychic horror, body horror, and suburban uncanny. A lot of folks writing D&D (and OSR adjacent projects) cite Stranger Things when describing a certain “kids on bikes meets cosmic dread” vibe. Campaigns like Wild Beyond the Witchlight and Vecna: Eve of Ruin are steeped in nostalgia and dark fairy tale logic, the same tonal cocktail you see on screen.

I have been rewatching the series for the first time in preparation for the final season. There is a lot more going on in these episodes than I remembered. There are also more than a few things that made their way into Baldur's Gate 3. The Mind Flayer nautaloid looks an awful lot like the "Mind Flayer" of Stranger Things. The inside of the Nautaloid looks a lot like the Upside Down.

So at this point, the relationship between Stranger Things and Dungeons & Dragons is less a straight line and more a circle, or a peculiar zig-zag thing. The show borrows D&D language to explain the impossible, D&D borrows the show’s style to explore new corners of fantasy horror, and the rest of the hobby branches outward with games inspired by the whole vibe. Dark Places & Demogorgons, Kids on Bikes, Stranger Stuff, Tales From the Loop, the whole retro-weird youth adventure genre owes some of its momentum to Hawkins, Indiana. And Hawkins, in turn, owes a lot to Dungeons & Dragons.

What started as four kids rolling dice in a basement turned into one of the biggest cultural cross-pollinations the hobby has ever seen. Stranger Things reminded mainstream audiences that D&D is about imagination, friendship, and fighting nightmares with the people who know you best. And in return, D&D gave Stranger Things a shared language, a mythic shorthand, and a way for its characters to name the horrors in the dark.  It is kind of perfect, really. D&D taught a generation how to dream, and Stranger Things took those dreams and projected them onto the screen in flickering neon and psychic static. 

I knew D&D had made it mainstream when some 20-something online was super excited to explain who Vecna was to me. 

Season five will probably dial all of this up even more, and I’m honestly looking forward to spotting the threads. Because when a show and a game get this intertwined, the real fun is watching how each new idea ripples out across the other. 

Just one week to go.

I have been on a months-long Occult D&D research project, looking for ways to add more occultism and ritual magic to my OSR/AD&D games. One thing that came up in my research was the Grimorium Verum[1][2], or the True Grimoire. Within were five demons, or spirits, that were associated with malefic witchcraft. There are a lot more of these (18 in total), but these are the five I am focusing on now.

Now, seeing how I have a lot of demons already, I thought it might be interesting to try and make this pentad into something else.

The Five Spirits of the Grimorium Verum

Surgat, Frimost, Silcharde, Bechard, and Guland

In the Grimorium Verum, these spirits are not “princes of Hell” but operational tutelary spirits, meaning they are summoned for specific types of magical work. They have jobs to do. They form a functional unit often referred to by occultists as the Five Servitors. They are not demons or devils, and fall outside of the hierarchies and power struggles of the creatures of the lower planes.  

Each can act as a witch's or warlock's patron, but most often they are used in conjunction with the others. Even witches and warlocks with other patrons can summon these spirits.

Summoning these spirits is not an evil act in itself. However, the knowledge and power gained are often used for evil purposes; aka Maleficia.

Their common traits:

• All five are primarily invoked in witchcraft rituals, not theological demonology.
• Their powers correspond to typical maleficia: seduction, storms, deception, disease, and unbinding.
• They act as tutelary spirits, entities who “teach a witch how to do” the thing they themselves embody.
• They are not rivals; they form a loose cohort, each governing one sphere of maleficia.
• In folklore, they sometimes appear as a witch’s familiars in spirit form, each taking animal shapes (goat, wolf, owl, rat, or snake).

Surgat

Title: The Opener of All Locks

Sphere: Unlocking, unbinding, access, paths

Witchcraft Role: Patron of spell-breaking, opening portals, bypassing barriers

Typical Animal Form: Owl

Surgat is invoked when a witch needs to:

• Open a locked door (physical or magical)
• Break an enchantment
• Cross a boundary normally forbidden
• Find a hidden path or secret entrance

In folklore he is “the spirit who removes obstacles,” but at a price. Symbolically, Surgat represents the act of transgression, and witches petition him when attempting forbidden travel, escape, or the violation of taboo spaces.

Relationship to the others:

He begins the process. Surgat opens the way so the others may act.

Frimost

Title: The Seducer and Subduer

Sphere: Love philtres, lust, domination

Witchcraft Role: Glamours, charms, influence, the bending of hearts

Typical Animal Form: Goat

Frimost is associated with:

• Causing love, lust, obsession
• Enthralling a target
• Empowering erotic magic
• Creating magical bonds between partners (consensual or not in medieval texts)

Witches call on Frimost when they wish to bend or sway another’s will through desire. He is also linked to glamour magic in some French folk traditions.

Relationship to the others:

He acts within the opening created by Surgat, influencing those who stand in the witch’s path.

Silcharde

Title: The Fraudulent Spirit

Sphere: Trickery, lies, deception, invisibility

Witchcraft Role: Glamours, illusions, shape-altering, persuasive lies

Typical Animal Form: Snake

Silcharde teaches witches:

• How to deceive others
• How to lie convincingly
• How to cloak their activities
• How to create false images, ghostly lights, or illusions

He is the classic witch-trickster spirit and the likely origin of the folklore that witches could “bewitch sight.”

Relationship to the others:

He ensures the witch’s actions remain concealed, while Frimost affects minds and Surgat opens doors.

Bechard

Title: The Lord of Storms and Tempests

Sphere: Weather magic, thunder, whirlwinds, destructive forces of nature

Witchcraft Role: Storm-raising, blighting crops, harvest magic

Typical Animal Form: Wolf

Bechard rules:

• Tempests and whirlwinds
• Thunder and lightning
• Weather harmful to crops
• Illness brought by bad winds

He is central to early-modern accusations of witches causing hailstorms and destroying harvests.

Relationship to the others:

Bechard is invoked when the witch wants direct malefic harm done after the others have prepared the way.

Guland

Title: The Bringer of Disease

Sphere: Sickness, fever, wasting illness

Witchcraft Role: Malediction, curses, bodily harm

Typical Animal Form: Rat

Guland is invoked to:

• Cast wasting diseases
• Aggravate fevers
• Harm livestock
• Create curses that manifest physically

He is the most feared of the five, and his powers are the source for the old belief that witches could “blight by touch.”

Relationship to the others:

Guland is the finishing blow, the result of the process begun by Surgat and supported by the other three.

--

In my notes, I wrote "like the Cult of Skaro" from Doctor Who. Five elite demons/tutelary spirits/cthonic spirits that exsist outside of the hierarchies of demons/devils and yet serve and are served by all. They are evil, I would like to think of them as demonized gods or spirits. 

I thought about doing stats for them, and even began Surgat's, but ultimately I decided not to do them. Why? Well, these are not combat creatures; they are forces. Given their command of magic, I can see each having multiple ways to kill characters instantly and even more ways just to avoid combat altogether. So, combat stats seem rather pointless to be honest. 

If you must, then they should be between 22 and 25 HD at the very least. 

Now to work them into regular rotation in my games.

A good starter set has to do a number of different things. It has to introduce and explain the roleplaying game it is a starter set for, whether that is the roleplaying game’s setting, mechanics, or both. It has to both tell and show what the players and their characters are expected to do in the setting and how they do it, first with the rules and then with a scenario. It has to provide everything that a group needs to play—rules, scenario, pre-generated Player Characters, and dice—and ideally more. Maps, handouts, tokens, and the like are all items that will help bring the world of the roleplaying game’s setting to life and give the players something to look at and interact with. Above all, a good starter should showcase the roleplaying game and entice both Game Master and her players to want to roleplay more with the rules and in that setting by picking up the core rulebook, and if the contents of the start set support continued play, whether that is providing an extra set of dice or maps for the setting, then all the better.

—oOo—
The Vaesen – Starter Set is the introduction to Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying, the roleplaying game based on Vaesen: Spirits and Monsters of Scandinavian Folklore as collected and illustrated by Johan Egerkrans, and published by Free League Publishing. It is an investigative horror game set in Scandinavia during the nineteenth century, using the Year Zero engine first seen in Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days, and subsequently a wide array of roleplaying games. It is set in the Mythic North of Scandinavia in the nineteenth century, a time when old traditions and secrets of the past clash against modernity and industrialisation. In dark forests and deep valleys, along brown rivers and at the edge of forgotten groves, in the eaves and in the shadows, there lurk creatures and monsters called ‘Vaesen’ that have begun to hate man. In ages past, everyone knew how to interact with Vaesen so that both could live alongside each other. Now many of those that knew have died or left to find work in the cities, whilst others have come to the mountains and the rivers and the forests to plunder and exploit what they want in the name of progress, so destroying the homes of the Vaesen and making them feel unwanted and unloved. In the past, a secret organisation known as The Society investigated both the Vaesen and their clashes with mankind, but it has long dissolved, its members retired or confined to an asylum, and its headquarters, Castle Gyllencreutz, in the Swedish city of Uppsala, shut up. Yet there are still those who have the Sight, those Thursday’s Children, who can see Vaesen, and perhaps they need a purpose worthy of their gift?

This is the set-up for both the Vaesen – Starter Set and Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying, but the Vaesen – Starter Set is designed to be an introduction to not just the rules and the setting for Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying, but also to its set-up. This will involve both players and their characters learning about the Vaesen, The Society, and Castle Gyllencreutz, and preparing for further investigations and more mysteries. It designed for play by five players and the Game Master and will provide them both one or two sessions’ worth of play.

Open up the Vaesen – Starter Set and what the Game Master will find first is a set of ten Vaesen dice and Initiative cards. Below that is the ‘Getting Started’ sheet which provides a quick introduction to Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying, what to do first with the contents of the Vaesen – Starter Set, and what to do after a group has played through its contents. Below that are three books. The first is the sixteen-page ‘Rules’ booklet, the second is the twelve-page ‘The Haunting of Castle Gyllencreutz’ scenario book, and the third is the forty-four-page ‘Codex Occultum’. Underneath that is a set of five Reference Sheets—one per player, three handouts for the ‘The Haunting of Castle Gyllencreutz’ scenario, five pre-generated Player Characters, and two maps. One of the maps is a particularly good cutaway map of Castle Gyllencreutz, which is new to Vaesen, whilst the other, larger map is double-sided, one side showing the Mythic North, the other the city of Uppsala, home to Castle Gyllencreutz.
Anyone who has played a Year Zero roleplaying game will instantly grasp the rules for Vaesen, but they are quickly and easily explained in the ‘Rules’ booklet. To have his character undertake an action, a player will roll a number of six-sided dice equal to a combination of his character’s Attribute and Skill, plus whatever bonus or penalty dice the Game Master awards, such as from the situation or a Talent. To succeed, all he needs to roll is typically one Success or six—though sometimes it may be more—on any of the dice. Extra Successes can be expended to gain various effects. In combat, this will be more damage, but in other situations it will usually mean learning more information. These are tailored to the scenario in the Vaesen – Starter Set, but are further expanded upon in Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying.
If a player fails a roll, he can instead choose to Push the roll. This enables the player to reroll the dice which did not result in Successes in the hope of getting some or more Successes. Doing so will inflict a Condition on the Player Character, either Exhausted, Battered, or Wounded for Physical Conditions, or Angry, Frightened, or Hopeless for Mental Conditions. Suffer too many of either Physical or Mental Conditions and the Player Character will be Broken, meaning that he cannot act. Damage from combat is also inflicted in terms of Conditions. The Initiative Cards, numbered from one to ten, determine when a Player Character, NPC, or Vaesen acts each round, though it is possible to swap Initiative cards between Player Characters and/or friendly NPCs each round, and in each Round, a Player Character has a Slow action and a Fast action. A Fear test is required if a Player Character encounters a Vaesen or magic, the number of Successes required determined by the Fear value of the creature, magic, or situation. Overall, the explanation of the rules in ‘Rules’ booklet is brisk, but covers most situations and is backed up by examples of play. It also provides explanations of what roleplaying is and what Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying is.
The ‘The Haunting of Castle Gyllencreutz’ scenario book opens with the Player Characters being invited to a tavern in the poor part of Uppsala where they will meet the elderly Linnea Elfeklint. She will tell them that like herself, they are one of Thursday’s Children and have Sight, which means that they can see creatures known as Vaesen that most people cannot. She will also tell them about The Society and Castle Gyllencreutz and that she wants to restart The Society. However, she will explain that she does not have access to Castle Gyllencreutz as her ex-fiancé possesses its deeds and that recently other Thursday’s Children have gone to the castle and not returned. This half of the scenario sets up its mystery, whilst second half involves investigation in the castle itself. The castle is in a dilapidated state inside and out, and is haunted by strange lights. The final confrontation is ethereal in nature and players who are prone to fight may be at a disadvantage. The scenario is short, but it set the Player Characters with ready access to Castle Gyllencreutz and further play of Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying.
The five pre-generated Player Characters consist of a Hunter, a military officer, a priest, a writer, and a vagabond. All five have an illustration and some background as well as full stats and game details, including notes on what each think of the other four Player Characters. Each player will have a Reference Card, which neatly summarises the rules for ease of play.
The third booklet in the Vaesen – Starter Set, the ‘Codex Occultum’, is actually the thickest and is effectively the players’ own copy of Vaesen: Spirits and Monsters of Scandinavian Folklore as collected and illustrated by Johan Egerkrans and their characters’ guide to the Vaesen. From the Ash Tree Wife to the Wood Wife, it illustrates and describes some twenty-two Vaesen and how they might be banished, appeased, or otherwise dealt with. This is lovely little reference work—both in game and out—and it is highly likely the one item in the Vaesen – Starter Set that the players will return to over and over. Lastly, the maps of both Uppsala and Mythic North are excellent, whilst the one of Castle Gyllencreutz shows it in its prime, potentially a status that the Player Characters cab return it to in the long run. It certainly gives the Player Characters some idea of what the castle was like and what might be behind the locked or otherwise inaccessible parts of the castle.
Physically, the Vaesen – Starter Set is very well presented. Both the ‘Rules’ booklet and ‘The Haunting of Castle Gyllencreutz’ are easy to read and grasp, whilst the physical components are of a high standard, particularly the maps and the ‘Codex Occultum’.
The Vaesen – Starter Set is a good starting package for Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying, except for one thing and that is the depth of play it offers in the box. A single scenario is less than what is expected of a good starter set today, yet the straightforward physicality of the Vaesen – Starter Set actually makes it a worthwhile purchase. Not just the Vaesen dice and the Initiative cards, but also the maps, especially the one of Castle Gyllencreutz, and of course, the ‘Codex Occultum’ handout will all support continued play of Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying long after the players have roleplayed the scenario in Vaesen – Starter Set. Arguably, the Vaesen – Starter Set is a better accessories kit than an actual starter set, but its scenario is by no means bad, and will get a Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying campaign off to a good start.

As its title suggests, SHH!! A Game of Hiding, Sneaking and Staying So “They” Don’t Find You! is a game about being quiet. This is actually two games in one, both involving the Player Characters maintaining silence against their being discovered, both using the same rules, and both differing in tone and tension. In the first game, this will be monsters, such as zombies, a crazed cannibal, a creepy killer doll, and so on, which the Player Characters have to run away from or survive until daylight. In the second game, the Player Characters are sneaking into a bank or an office building or a museum and performing a heist, whether to obtain secret files, an important artefact, or diamond, and get out again. Designed for fast, simple play, with a marked switch back and forth between ‘Narrative Scenes’ and ‘Narrative Rounds’ when the tension ramps up and plays out. Published by Uknite the Realm, best known for straight-to-DVD action movie-style roleplaying game, Samurai Goths of the Apocalypse, this is a light storytelling roleplaying game best suited to single sessions and one-off games. Barring the need for everyone to buy into the genre and set-up for the session and perhaps the Narrator establishing a few details beforehand, SHH!! requires little preparation—and if the players are happy to add to the details of the scenario as they play, then even less. However, SHH!! also punishes the players who are not quiet, which means that the roleplaying game has to be played in whispers…!

SHH!! A Game of Hiding, Sneaking and Staying So “They” Don’t Find You! is first played in Narrative Scene which move the plot along as fast as necessary. It is only when the Player Characters face danger or want to maintain, temporarily at least, their safety, that the game play switches to Narrative Rounds and the mechanics, the Tenson 20 system, comes into play. To undertake an action for his character, his player rolls a twenty-sided die and attempts to equal or beat a Target Number. If the player succeeds, the next player in the scene rolls for his character, and so on, until every player with a character in the scene has rolled and their actions have been taken. The Narrator describes the outcome and either a new Narrative Round is played out or play switches back to a Narrative Scene.

However, the consequences of failure have repercussions for all of the Player Characters. Initially, the Target Number is nine, but if a player fails a roll, the Target Number rises by one—and that is for every player. Effectively, the difficulty goes up and so does the tension, not just for the Player Character who failed, but for every Player Character. The failure also means that the Narrator—who never rolls a die in the game—can introduce ‘THEM’ into the scene if not already presence, which will increase the number of Narrative Rounds that the players have to play through. However, failure does earn Desperation, a communal pool of points that a player can spend to ensure a successful roll.

Bar the opening scenes, SHH!! is played in stage whispers. If a player raises his voice, this will alert ‘THEM’ as to the presence or location of the characters. It also increases the Target Number by two! This is temporary though. If the Player Characters can avoid ‘Them’, the Target Number can reset to what it was before, but if ‘THEY’ cannot be avoided, the increased Target Number’ becomes permanent.

Amongst this rising tension and difficulty, a Player Character is very simply defined. He is an archetype. For example, a Jock, a Nerd, or a Clown for a horror game or a Smooth Operator, Hacker, or Safe Cracker for a heist game. Each Archetype grants advantage when a player attempts an action using its skill or ability. For example, in a horror game, the Prep archetype grants advantage when using ‘Social Clout’, whilst in a heist game, the Cat Burglar grants advantage when attempting to ‘Breach the Vault’. In each genre, one archetype grants a more powerful ability. For example, the Goth grants advantage when using his ‘Horror Knowledge’ to guess the next actions of ‘THEM’, which will also reduce the Target Number for everyone for the next round.

Besides his archetype, a Player Character also has a Stress factor. Initially set at zero, this represents the Player Character’s mental and physical well-being. When a player fails a roll by more then five, his character gains a point of Stress. A Player Character also gains a point of Stress for fighting ‘THEM’, which means on a failed roll, he can gain two! If a Player Character gains five points of Stress, he is dead. Death though, is not the end. A dead character continues as ghost, his player aiding the player to his left (or right if that Player Character is also dead) by spending his character’s accrued Stress as Fate Points, which work like Desperation, but which he can only spend. This will push the play of SHH! towards that typical of horror stories, that of the lone survivor having lived through a terrible existence. It does not quite work for heist stories, since this genre does not always involve the deaths of its central cast, and perhaps in heist stories where such deaths are unlikely, a Player Character who has his Stress increased to five represents his being captured or arrested rather than killed.

Advice for the Narrator is light and two genres are given broad treatments. The one on horror is better than the one on heists as it also suggests what the ‘THEM’ can be that the Player Characters will be facing and what they have to do to survive. The treatment for heists only lists the archetypes. Given how light SHH! is, and how it is designed for ‘pick up and play’, some advice on preparing and setting up scenarios for either of its genres would have been a welcome addition. Although the rules are clearly explained—and include a rules reference on the inside front cover—one issue not addressed is if the tension and thus the Target Number ever goes down. There are situations where it does, such as after temporarily raising it due to a whisper, but arguably, it should drop during Narrative Scenes, in moments of respite in keeping with the types of storytelling that SHH! wants to tell.

Physically, SHH!! A Game of Hiding, Sneaking and Staying So “They” Don’t Find You! is decently and darkly presented. The artwork is all shadows and foreboding. Whilst everything is clearly explained, the use of the coloured text on black is not necessarily going to be easily read by everyone.

SHH!! A Game of Hiding, Sneaking and Staying So “They” Don’t Find You! has a ‘pick up and play’ quality by design with its simplicity and broadly drawn genres and archetypes. Arguably, it is so light, the Narrator does not even need a copy at the table to run it! Its Tension 20 system is also intentionally brutal, making play increasingly uneasy and jittery until it escalates into panicky fear and horror. The whisper mechanic will probably annoy the players as much as it enforces the genres that SHH!! is designed for. SHH!! A Game of Hiding, Sneaking and Staying So “They” Don’t Find You! works better with the horror genre than the heist genre, but its low preparation, fast play, and easy buy in make it a good choice to have to hand.

King Leland never wanted to be king, but he reluctantly took up his duty as others had before him. He found no favour with the lords and ladies of his court, heeding little of their advice or their wishes, and only entering into a marriage of convenience to appease them upon becoming king. Instead, he favoured Sir Eardwulf, a lowly knight who was at first a friend and then a lover, who he wished to raise to rank of Earl. This outraged the nobles of the court such that a faction led by Lord Blacklow moved against the king’s wishes, capturing and beheading Sir Eardwulf before his ennoblement could come to pass. King Leland was apoplectic with grief such that it fuelled years long retribution upon those lords who had conspired to kill his lover, soaking fields and forest in their blood. So he became known as the Red king. Now King Leland lies dead and his grief continues to be felt across the land. Crops fail, livestock dies, and the people are driven into madness by a sorrow that was never theirs. At the heart of this dolorous malaise stands the Tomb of Grief, the last resting place of King Leland. Can the curse be lifted? Which riches were buried with the Red King?

This is the set-up for The Tomb of Grief. This is an adventure written for use with ‘5E+’, so Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition and Dungeons & Dragons 2024. It is a playtest adventure, the second, in an anthology of scenarios published by No Short Rests! called One Room One Shots. The first was Temple of the Forgotten Depths. Each entry in the collection is a short adventure themed around a single room or structure and intended to be slotted readily into a campaign or more readily, played in a single session with either no preparation or preparation required beforehand. This might be because some of a group’s players are unable to attend; because they want to play, but not want to commit to a longer scenario or campaign; or because a group wants to introduce new players to the roleplaying game. The Tomb of Grief is written for a group of Player Characters of First Level. The scenario has no other requirements beyond this and its setting, but both a Cleric and a Rogue will be useful, and a character of Noble background may have a minor advantage.
The scenario proper begins with the Player Characters at the entrance of the Tomb of Grief itself. Here amidst the rubbish-strewn floor and the broken, battered, and vandalised statues, the Player Characters can begin to search for hints and clues as to what lies in the burial chamber beyond. This search involves a variety of different skills, not just Investigation and Perception, so multiple Player Characters can be involved in the process. There is the challenge of how the Player Characters actually get past the heavy gate between the entrance and the tomb, but again, multiple means to get through are given and even when it feels like they are being punished, the scenario makes clear it is only temporary.
Inside, the tomb is embraced in darkness, resting over an abyss. The first challenge that the Player Characters face will be King Leland’s ‘Knight Protectors’, serving him in unlife. Thematically, each of the four is associated with the four stages of grief and this is applied not just in their special attacks, but also in their memories. For example, when a combatant hits or is hit by Sir Ben the Negotiator, there is a chance that they will be convinced that the ‘Knight Protectors’ are no longer a threat and that the everyone in the party should lay down their arms. This only lasts for a turn, but each effect of the different ‘Knight Protectors’ has a different attack.
The second part of the scenario focuses upon roleplaying. It consists of four, dedicated encounters consisting of memories of the ‘Knight Protectors’ who swore to serve the king and who the Player Characters have just defeated. Some are the significant memories that some of the ‘Knight Protectors’ have of the king they served, others are memories of significant events during his reign. All together, they chart the reign of King Leland. In each one, the Player Character will experience an event in a Knight Protector’s life and be tested in how the Knight Protector responded to it. There are three different responses per memory, each involving a different skill and each memory is also tied to several different Backgrounds. What this means is that the Dungeon Master can help tailor each roleplaying encounter to specific Player Character and test their skill accordingly. Of course, none of this will affect the outcome of scenario, or indeed, its set-up, since King Leland was sent mad with grief and took that grief out upon the land. What it will do though, is reveal the history of what brought about the fall of both King Leland and the land. This is a grim tale that gets ever grimmer, and what it will do ultimately, is influence how the players and their characters feel about King Leland and his actions.
The third and final part of the scenario is divided into two parts. In the first, the Player Characters face the real villain of the story and a giant of a knight hinted at the memories, whilst in the second they will confront the former king. How they decide that, ideally based upon the memories that revealed his history and characters, will determine the nature of the scenario’s conclusion. One last touch here is that the material reward that the Player Characters can earn, King Leland’s Sword of the Red King, will actually have different effects depending upon the outcome.
Physically, The Tomb of Grief is reasonably well presented. It is lightly illustrated, but the artwork is excellent. It does need an edit and the map is rather too dark to read with ease, but simple enough that it should impede the Game Master too much. If there is an issue with The Tomb of Grief, as with the earlier Temple of the Forgotten Depths, it is that the text is small, making it a challenge to read!
The Temple of Grief delivers a solid, enjoyably thematic scenario for a good session’s worth of play. It is presented as a playtest adventure, but in truth, it is ready to play, whether that is as a one-shot for an evening or an encounter for a campaign, and ready to play with a minimum of effort. The Tomb of Grief sets out to tell a story and it is an epic story, such that it is surprising that the scenario manages to pack all of that story in a single session. Ultimately, it is a tragedy, one reminiscent of A Game of Thrones that if The Tomb of Grief is played as part of campaign, the Player Characters will be able to tell the truth of what happened during the reign of King Leland and so reveal that tragedy.

—oOo—
One Room One Shots: Epic D&D Adventures in a Single Session! is currently on Kickstarter.

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—Senet is a print magazine about the craft, creativity, and community of board gaming. Bearing the tagline of “Board games are beautiful”, it is about the play and the experience of board games, it is about the creative thoughts and processes which go into each and every board game, and it is about board games as both artistry and art form. Published by Senet Magazine Limited, each issue promises previews of forthcoming, interesting titles, features which explore how and why we play, interviews with those involved in the process of creating a game, and reviews of the latest and most interesting releases. Senet is also one of the very few magazines about games to actually be available for sale on the high street.

Senet Issue 17 was published in was published in the winter of 2024 and if the cover stands out for its singular look and stark simplicity which makes it stand out on the newsstand, it should be no surprise that the editorial talks about the importance of a good cover. The cover itself is an illustration taken from the board game Emberleaf and the editorial applies that importance to board games as much as its own cover. Which gives space to highlight the artist interviewed in the issue, ‘The Mico’, and the rich detail of his covers that ensure the games that he illustrates standout on the shelves.

As usual, ‘Behold’ begins the issue proper, highlighting some of the then forthcoming games with a preview and a hint or two of what to expect. The releases of note here Emberleaf, from which the issue’s front cover comes, a game about restoring a forest after it has been attacked by a villainous overlord; A Nice Cuppa, a mini-game about relaxing with a nice hot cup of tea amongst today’s travails; and A Wayfarer’s Tale: The Journey Begins, a roll-and-write game about exploring and charting new islands. The other opening sections of the magazine continue to underwhelm the reader, but for different reasons. The regular column of readers’ letters, ‘Points’, continues to be constrained to a single page, waiting for room to expand build into something more, but in this issue, the letters continue to show that the audience for magazine is wider than letters in previous issues have suggested, with letters from older readers and highlight the benefits of playing board games. With ‘For Love of the Game’ the journey of the designer Tristian Hall continues towards the completion and publication of his Gloom of Kilforth—and beyond. By now, very beyond. In ‘The Art of Success’ he asks how you can measure success when it comes to publishing board games. As he makes clear, it is not money, but rather bringing a project that he loves to the market and hopefully, successfully so. Besides comparing the process of creating board games to creating art, and whilst that is not a bad comparison, nothing is added to the conversation about games and the process of their design that has not be said before.

Every issue consists of two interviews, one with an artist and one with a designer, plus an article about a theme in games and an article about a mechanic in games, and of course, Senet Issue 16 is no exception. The tried and tested formula begins with ‘The Wolf Man’, Matt Thrower’s interview with designer and publisher, Ted Alspach. Through his company, Bézier Games, he is best known for titles such as Castles of Mad King Ludwig and One Night Ultimate Werewolf. The interview charts him from shifting from player to designer via expansions for the highly regarded railway game, Age of Steam, and then the Werewolf games. One interesting fact revealed in the interview is that Castles of Mad King Ludwig was actually inspired by the designer drawing maps as a Dungeon Master for Dungeons & Dragons and wanting originally to apply that theme. It is clear that Alspach is enthusiastic about his own games and seeing other playing them. It is an engaging affair as is the second interview in the issue by Alexandra Sonechkina, which is with the North Macedonian artist known as The Micah. ‘Monster Mash’ showcases his artwork with space given for him to discuss the origins and inspirations for the numerous illustrations he has supplied to innumerable board game designs. The monster illustrations for Monster Lands 2 are amazing, whilst despite his not liking drawing buildings, his cover to the board game Merchants Cove is rich in detail and really could have been benefitted from being larger so the reader could have better seen some of that detail. As with the best of the artwork shown off in the pages of Senet, the illustrations serve as mini-portfolio for the artist, intriguing for the reader to want to look at the games they are for.

Between the two interviews is Tim Clare’s ‘Boards and Borders’ which explores the contentious theme of immigration in board games. The article notes that immigration has actually been a means of spreading the play and popularity of board games, such as that of Mancala across India and the adoption of Mahjong by middle-class Jewish women in the twenties and thirties, but also points out although the subject matter for some board games would historically involve immigrants, the board games themselves do not address this, for example the building of the railways in the United States in almost any train game. However, other board games do focus on immigrants and the immigrant experience, more often than not in the USA, since the country experienced notable influxes of immigrants in relatively recent times. For example, Alea’s Chinatown explores the growth of the Chinese population in Manhattan in the late sixties following the relaxation in immigration laws, whilst Pandasaurus Games’ Tammany Hall sees the immigrant groups being used as bargaining chips and the means to garner votes and thus power by corrupt politicians in the late nineteenth century and again in Manhattan. Manhattan is major location for immigrant-themed board games since it was the key entry point for immigrants coming to the USA. The article does not shy away from challenging nature of the subject matter and highlights the artwork for later versions of Chinatown for perpetuating stereotypes. This is an interesting look at a theme that appears not be commonly explored in board games.

The mechanic is ‘pick-up-and-deliver’, one that is very much more commonly used in board games. ‘Delivering the Goods’ is the double-meaning title of Dan Thurot’s article about games in which the players pick up goods or passengers and transport them to specific locations. Mayfair Games’ Empire Builder series is the first series of board games to make use of this mechanic, but Lancashire Railways from Winsome Games followed by Age of Steam from Warfrog Games, both by designer Martin Wallace have continued and expanded its use. All of them see players not only laying routes between locations, but picking up goods or passengers and delivering them elsewhere. The structure has spread far beyond the romance of the railways to other modes of transport, such as sailing ships in Merchants & Marauders from Z-Man Games and starships in Xia: Legends of a Drift System from Lavka Games though. Oddly, no canals, though. However, what the article shows is that the further designers gets away from the simple elegance of the ‘pick-up-and-deliver’ seen in Age of Steam, the more complex their designs get, even up to the point where mathematics and mass-thrust ratios need to be considered in the early days of space exploration board game, Leaving Earth from The Lumenaris Group, Inc.

Senet’s reviews section, ‘Unboxed’, covers a wide array of titles as usual. They are led by a review of Undaunted 2200: Callisto, the Science Fiction version of the highly praised Undaunted series from Osprey Games. However, whereas titles in the Undaunted series have been awarded ‘Senet’s Top Choice’ in previous issues, not so here, though it gets a big review. Instead, the award goes to CMYK’s game of warehouse organisation, memory, and imagination, Wilmot’s Warehouse, which is bright, breezy, and very colourful, and sound a lot of fun. The oddest choice reviewed is Blackwell Games’ For Small Creatures Such As We, a solo journaling game in which the player controls and tells the story of a crew of a spaceship. It is odd because it strays into the roleplaying space rather than board games and thus feels out of place. This is not the only time that the issue strays into the realm of roleplaying though.

As per usual, the last two columns in Senet Issue 16 are ‘How to Play’ and ‘Shelf of Shame’. In ‘When board gaming meets therapy’, therapist Alex Roberts explores ways in which board games can be used as part of therapy, as vehicles via which patients can be tell their stories. This is a fascinating subject and consequently, a fascinating article, but again oddly, it uses not a board game to illustrate the possibility of organised play the author suggests, but a storytelling game, a roleplaying game. This is For the Queen, which is not a board game. Simply, there is a disconnect here between the title of the article and the content.

Lastly, the team behind Knightmare Live pull a game from their ‘Shelf of Shame’. This is Blood Rage from Cool Mini Or Not in which the players lead clans of Vikings in battles against monsters during Ragnarök to earn a place in Valhalla. They come away having enjoyed the game, describing as fun, but not in their top ten.

Physically, Senet Issue 17 is shows off the board games it previews and reviews to great effect, just as you would expect. The most interesting article in the issue is ‘Boards and Borders’ because of the difficult subject, but the issue is treated fairly, showing where it has been used to best effect and where it has been poorly handled in board game designs of recent years. Elsewhere, the missteps in roleplaying feel out of place, but otherwise, an enjoyable, if serviceable read.

 Back in 2022 I kitbashed an old TRS-80/Tandy Color Computer 2 into a modern PC using a RaspberryPI 4. I had so much fun doing it, I immediately began my ideas for another Kitbash, this time using a TRS-80 Model 4 and trying to build something that would have been like the proposed Tandy Color Computer 4. 

I didn't quite do that, but I used the knowledge from my first Kitbash to build something new. But first I needed to figure out what to do. Well, that's not true, I pretty much knew what I wanted, I just had to do it. First I needed the case. Thankfully eBay comes through.

I scored a TRS-80 Model III case. Just the case, nothing inside. I wanted a Model 4 since they were a little bigger and white. It seemed fitting that a Model 4 case would be the start of my Color Computer 4 project.  But Model 4s were rarer than Model IIIs, but I could fix that.

Case ready to go I needed remove some internal pieces to fit a new keyboard.

Thankfully, I had gotten a Dremel for Christmas. 

Now came the longer part, finding a monitor and keyboard that would fit. I found some custom scientific equipment monitors that were even in HD and had a touch screen, but in the end I found a cheap ass monitor on Amazon.

It didn't look bad, and even had built-in sound.

I played around with a few keyboards, including a cheap one my wife and I found at a second-hand store we were dropping off old toys at. 

Not really liking that one, and it later died on me anyway, I spent some money to get a really nice keyboard. Nicer than the project dictated, but I could also redo the keys to make it look like the old TRS-80 keyboard.

I knew heat was going to be an issue, so I installed some fans. 

They worked out better than expected really!

Now came the time to get everything together. I scored a 5" monitor from my brother and added that to one of the drive bays, my youngest even designed and 3D printed some adapters for it fit in better.

I picked up a power strip with USB ports to power everything inside (thankful for those fans) and started putting it all together.

Tested everything and spent a few hours planning where to put all these cables and unplugging and plugging back in so I was not creating a fire hazard.

Till today.

It looks nice next to my other Kitbash.

The top bay is still empty, but I have a 3D file to print that will turn it into a 3.5 drivebay. The 3D filament currently loaded is glow-in-the-dark, since I am just going to paint it black, it seems like a waste. 

Well.

That was a blast. Now to load some old DOS games on it. That's the external hard drive in the middle. I have another monitor, I should put it up and use it for my Atari 600 and 2600 emulators. 

What should I do next I wonder.

So when I was working on The Left Hand Path - The Diabolic & Demonic Witchcraft Traditions there were some other OSR books I thought would be fun to suggest. Not for compatibility, or even "must buys" but for their general coolness and because I often used their material alongside my own when playing my Old-School games. 

In the end, I decided not to put them in the book in Appendix N style because I didn't want customers to think they need to buy these other books (though many should buy them and most of you likely already have). Also, I didn't want a book excluded because of time, space, or my forgetfulness.

So instead, I am going to post them here. The reviews are below, but like I said, I think you all know these. 

This is not an exhaustive list. Nor is it just a list of favorites. I have plenty of favorites. These are a subset of products that work great with my various witch books or ones I like to use with them. The key here is that they work well with my various witch books. None are needed to play with my witches, but all have something about them I really enjoy. Often compatible classes, spells or something else I enjoyed. 

I am not including complete rule sets or adventures in this post. Just extra material I use alongside my witch material in my Old School games. 

These are in no particular order, save how I remembered to add them. 

The Basic Illusionist

The one thing you can say about the entire OSR Gestalt that despite it all there is still a sense of community and of giving back. Case in point, The Basic Illusionist.

The Basic Illusionist is the brain-child of Nathan Irving and was first seen during the S&W Appreciation Day Blog Hop.

Before I delve into the book itself. Let's take a moment to look at this cover. Seriously. That is a cool cover. I am not sure what made Nathan Irving choose this piece ("Beauty and the Beast" by Edmund Dulac), but I love it. The title works seamlessly, like they were meant for each other. The woman in the foreground is no longer the "beauty" but she is now an Illusionist.

Ok. So the book is overtly for Swords & Wizardry, but there isn't anything here that keeps you from using any Original or Basic-inspired system. I know it works out well in Labyrinth Lord and Basic D&D and it really should work well in ACKS, Spellcraft & Swordplay or any other system. Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea might be a trick, but they have an Illusionist class already.

Getting into the book now, we have 34 pages (with cover) on the Illusionist class. The book starts off with a helpful FAQ. Personally, I think Nathan should also put that FAQ on his blog as a page so everyone knows why they should get this. The Illusionist class itself is in S&W format, but the only thing keeping you from using this in any other Basic or Advanced Era game is a table of Saving Throws. Copy over whatever the Wizard or Magic-user is using in your game of choice, and give them -1 bonus to saves when it comes to illusions. The Illusionist gets a power or feature every odd level, but nothing that is game-breaking when compared to the wizard. The Illusionist trades flexibility for focus in their magical arsenal. There is even an Illusionist variant class called the Mountebank. Which is more of a con artist. How does it compare to other classes of the same name?

One of the best features of the book is a guideline on illusionist magic and how to play with illusions. Great, even if you never play the class.

What follows next is over 150 Illusionist spells. Many we have seen before and come from the SRD. That is not a bad thing. Having all these spells in one place and edited to work with the class is a major undertaking. I, for one, am glad to see them here. Spells are alphabetical instead of sorted by level. A list of conditions ported over from the SRD is also included. I like that personally. We all love how the older games and the clones play, but in our zeal, we tend to forget that 3.x and later games did, in fact, have some good innovations and ideas; this is one of them.

We end with a couple of monsters and a two-page OGL statement.

Really, this is a fantastic piece of work and really should be the "go to" document if you ever want to play an illusionist.

Since this book was released I have had a chance to try it with various systems. I can say it works great with S&W, Basic D&D, AS&SH (when used with their own illusionist class) and even AD&D.

B/X Companion

The Game We Never Got.

One of the things I like most about the OSR are the products that don't give me things I already have, but things I have always wanted or never knew I needed. B/X Companion is one of those products.

The product I think I have been waiting for for close to 30 years. Sure, I have had books that have covered the same ground, and books that made this book obsolete, but somewhere, deep in my psyche, there is still that 12-year-old version of me wishing he could take his cleric to 15th level.

The B/X Companion does not disappoint. If this isn't exactly how it was going to be, then I'd be hard-pressed to know what it would have been. I am reading through it all now, and I am purposefully NOT comparing it to the BECMI version of the Companion rules.

The cover, of course, is very much part of the original scheme. The three principle characters, the fighter and the two wizards (or maybe she is a cleric, that could be a "light" spell, though she has a torch too) stand in front of their followers. They braved the dungeon, the wilderness, and now they are ready for the next adventure. So are we.

For those of us who grew up with the Moldvay/Cook Basic and Expert sets, the Companion book feels very familiar. The layout is similar, the flow is similar, and even the art has a familiar feel. If you own the Basic or Expert books, then finding something in the Companion book is trivial. I turned right to the character rules and took a glance at all the tables. Yes, sir, they run from 15 to 36, just like promised. Clerics still top out at 7th-level spells, but eventually they get 9 of them. Wizards still go to 9th level, and get 9 of those too. Fighters get more attacks per round (as they should), and thieves get more abilities.

There are plenty of new spells here. Many look like they take their inspiration from the products that came after, the Player's Handbook or the D&D Rules Cyclopedia, but nothing is an outright copy. It does have the feel like Becker sat around one day and thought, "What are some good spells, and what level should they be.

There are new monsters and advanced versions of some others. The Greater Vampire nearly made me laugh out loud as I had done the exact same thing after reading and playing the Expert book for so long. My Greater Vampire was a photocopy of Ptah from Deities and Demigods with some fangs drawn in. I never claimed to be an artist. The monsters all are appropriate for the levels, though a few more in the 30 HD range might have been nice, but not really needed.

The BIG additions here, though, are the ones that were most "advertised" back in the day. “Running a High Level Game” is great advice for ANY edition of the game. 

Related is running a domain and running large armies. Battlesystem would later give us these rules for AD&D, but here they are much simpler to use. Again, this is something to consider for porting to other versions of the game.

I loved the new magic items and can never get enough of them. I also liked the part on the planes and how it is totally left up to the design of the DM. How many people out there will re-invent the Gygaxian Great Wheel for their B/X/C games?

Companion to Basic/Expert Rules. Obviously, this is where it works the best. But there is something here that I don't think others have tapped into just yet. Companion makes the Moldvay/Cook rules a complete game. With these three books, you now have a complete D&D game. The only thing really missing is a "C1" module or maybe a BXC one.

Companion to Labyrinth Lord/Basic Fantasy. The new Becker Companion owes a lot to Labyrinth Lord (LL) and Basic Fantasy (BFRPG). While not directly, these two games showed that there is a market for "Basic" styles of play. Both LL and BFRPG take the modern 1-20 level limit for human classes. Companion is 15 to 36. So some adjustments need to be made. There are a few differences in how each of these books calculates XP per level, and how they do spells. But nothing so complicated that a good DM couldn't figure out.

If I were playing a LL/BFRPG game, I'd go to 15th level and then switch over to B/X Companion for the next levels to 36. OR even go to 20 and use B/X Companion as a guide to levels 30 or even 36.

Frankly, the homebrewiness of it all has me very excited for anyone who has decided to throw their lot in with "Basic" D&D.

Final Tally, I like this book. A lot. It makes me want to pull out my ratty Basic and Expert books and play Moldvay/Cook era Basic D&D again. In the mean time, I think I'll just have to satisfy myself with converting some D&D 3.0 or 4e characters over to Companion, just for the fun of it.

One of the best of the OSR ethos; to give us something we never got but really wanted. Likewise, The Complete B/X Adventurer is also great.

Theorems & Thaumaturgy Revised Edition

Theorems & Thaumaturgy is a Free product. The book itself is 66 pages (standard letter) with text and art that immediately remind you of the old Moldvay Basic books.  If you have The Complete Vivimancer, then you have an idea of how the text and art look.   To me, the art is like psychedelic art-nouveau meets Elric.  In other words, perfect for a magic book in my mind.

There are three large sections (Classes, Variant Classes, and Magical Tomes) and an Appendix with nine sub-sections. Like old-school Basic the new spells are all listed with the classes.  The book is designed for use with Labyrinth Lord Advanced Edition Characters, but really it can be used with any sort of "old-school" game.

The new Classes are the Elementalist, Necromancer, and Vivimancer.  The Vivimancer is, of course, detailed in a later book, but he gets his start here.  The classes do pretty much what you would suspect they would do.  The Elementalist uses elemental forces, the Necromancer deals with the dead and undead and the Vivimancer.  Each class has a good number of new spells (250 in all!) to make using them feel different than your normal "magic-user". Each has spells from 1st to 9th level.  All the classes use the Magic-User XP, to hit and saving throw tables, so whatever system you use, you can just use that to put them on the same footing as the Magic-User.  While I like the simplicity of this and it helps make the "subclasses" feel like a part of the same Magic-user family. I would have liked to have seen some powers or something for each class.  After-all they are sacrificing spell flexibility for what?  Power? More variety of spells in their chosen field?  I think I would have given them a couple of bonuses at least.  But that is fine, these rules are flexible enough to allow all sorts of edits.

For the variant classes there is the new Fey Elf race.  This elf is closer to the faerie origins of the elf.  The class taken by these elves is the Sorcerer.  This class is similar in idea to the D&D 3.0 version; a spontaneous spell caster with magic in their blood.  The sorcerer has a couple of new spells and a modified list of spells they can cast.  There is an alternate version of the Illusionist as well. This version has a few more spells and has 8th and 9th level spells.

The final section is all about magical tomes.  It includes a bunch of unique magical tomes with new spells. The books' histories are also told and which classes are most likely to get use out of it.

The vivimancer gets expanded in its own book, too. 

Magical Theorems & Dark Pacts

Magical Theorems & Dark Pacts (MT&DP) is an Old-school reference for all things Magic-user. The book is designed with what I call "Basic Era" in mind, so the rules from right around 1979-1981, where "elf" is a class, not just a race. Overtly, it is designed for Labyrinth Lord. That being said, it is still compatible in spirit with 99% of all the OSR and books from that time.

The book itself is 6"x9", black and white interior, and 161 pages. So, for a "Class" book, there is a lot here. There are 5 Chapters covering Classes, Spells, Magic Items, Monsters, and a section on using this book with the "Advanced Era" books (and their clones), along with an Introduction and OGL page.

The introduction covers the basics. What this book is, what it is for, and its very, very open OGL declaration.

Chapter 1 is the heart of this book, really. It details 13 magic-using classes. The two core classes, Cleric and Magic-User (Wizard), and 11 new classes.

From the product page: Cleric (warrior-priests) Wizard (classic magic-users with 10 levels of spells) Elven Swordmage (elves from the core rules – arcane warriors) Elven Warder (wilderness elves, guardians of their kin) Enchanter (artists, con-men, and masters of… duh… enchantments) Fleshcrafter (twisted magic-users that work with flesh) Healer (compassionate and tough hearth-healers) Inquisitor (ecclesiastic investigators and master intimidators) Merchant Prince (elite merchants with spellcasting support) Necromancer (you know exactly what these guys do) Pact-Bound (magic-users who sell their souls for power) Theurge (divine casters who learn from liturgical texts) Unseen (thieves with an innate knack for magic)

Clerics are as you know them, but Magic-Users are now Wizards (since everyone here is a magic user) and they get 10 levels of spells. The "Elven" classes replace the "Elf" class in the book. The others are as they are described, but there is more (much more) to them than re-skinned Magic-Users (not that there is anything wrong with wrong that). The classes are re-cast with many new spells, some powers (but nothing out of whack with Basic Era) and often different hit-dice and altered saving throws.

Nearly a third of the book is made up in these new classes.

Chapter 2 covers all the spells. Spells are listed alphabetically with class and level for each spell noted (like newer 3.x Era products). There are a lot of spells here, too. Many have been seen in other products, but some are new. In any cas,e they are a welcome addition. This section makes up more than a third of the book.

The last three chapters take up the last third or so of the book. Chapter 3 covers Magic items. There are 28 new magic items with these spellcasters in mind. Chapter 4 covers some magical creatures. These are monsters listed in many of the new spells for summoning. There aren't many, but they are needed. Chapter 5 is the Advanced Edition conversion materials. It covers HD changes, racial limits, and multi-class options.

So what are my thoughts? Well, you get a lot of material in 160+ pages to be honest. At 10 bucks, it is a good price. For me, it is worth it for the classes. Sure, we have seen variations of these over the years, but it is all here in one place, and they all work well together. The spells are good. At first, I balked at 10th-level spells, but really, they are, for the most part, other people's 9th-level spells, so they work for me.

The magic items are nice, but for me the value is in the classes and the spells.

Who should buy this? If you play old-school games and enjoy playing different sorts of Magic-Users, then this is a must-have book. If you are looking to expand your class offerings or even add a few new spells then this is also a good choice. Personall,y I think it is a great book and I am glad I picked it up.

So many classes and spells here, including another necromancer and a healer. One of the main reasons I have never felt the need to complete my necromancer and healer.

PX1 Basic Psionics Handbook

I love Basic-era gaming. Basic/Expert D&D was the first D&D I ever played. Even when I had moved on to Advanced D&D, it still had a strong Basic feel to it. So I was very, very pleased to hear about +Richard LeBlanc's new psionics book, Basic Psionics Handbook. If you have been reading his blog, Save vs Dragon, a lot of what is in the book won't be a surprise, but it is all great stuff. Even then there are things in the book that are still a treat and a surprise.

The book itself is 58 pages (PDF), with a full-color cover and a black/white interior.

The book covers two basic (and Basic) classes, the Mystic and the Monk. Both use the new psionic system presented in the book. The system bears looking at and really is a treat.

Overview. This covers the basics, including how psionics is not magic and how attributes are used. It's a page of rules that slot in nicely with the normal Basic rules. The basics of psychic power, including Psionic Level and Psionic Strength Points (PSP), are introduced.

Mystics are next. Mystics in this case are more molded on the Eastern philosophy of mystics, not the clerical sub-class-like mystics I have detailed in the past. Though through the lens of Western thought. That's fine this is not a religious analysis, this is a game book. This class helps builds the psionic system used in this book based on the seven chakras. Chakras divide the psionic powers into broad groups; something like the schools of magic for spells. As the mystic progresses in level, they open up more and more chakras. Each chakra has seven Major Sciences and twelve Minor Devotions, similar to the old AD&D rules (but not exactly the same, so read carefully). This gives us 72 devotions and 42 sciences. That's quite a lot really. As the mystic progresses they also earn more PSPs and more attack and defense modes. They are the heavy hitters of the psionic game.

Monks are the next class. Monks really are more of psionic using class in my mind and to have them here next to the mystic is a nice treat for a change. Everything you expect from the monk is here. Unarmed attacks, no need for armor and lots of fun psionic based combat powers. The monk does not have the psionic power the mystic does, but that is fine it is not supposed to. It does have a some neat powers from the mystic's list. One can easily see a monastery where both mystics and monks train together, one more mental and the other more physical. The monk has plenty of customization options in terms of choice of powers. In truth it is a very elegant system that shows it's strength with the mystic and it's flexibility with the example of the monk.

This is very likely my favorite monk class.

Psionic Disciplines detail all the powers of the chakras. It is a good bulk of the book as to be expected. There are not as many psionic powers as you might see spells in other books, but this is a feature, not a bug. Powers can be used many times as long as the psychic still has PSP. Also many do more things as the character goes up in level.

Psionic Combat is next and deals with the five attack modes and five defense modes of psychic combat. The ten powers are detailed, and an attack vs. defense matrix is also provided. The combat is simple and much improved over it's ancestors.

The next large section details all the Psionic Monsters. Some of these are right out of the SRD but others are new. Personally, I am rather happy to see a Psychic Vampire. Though it is not listed, I assume that these creatures are also undead and are turned as if they were vampires.

Appendix A deals with something we abused the hell out of, Wild Psionics. At two pages it is the simplest set of rules I have seen for this sort of thing. Also it looks like something that could be ported into ANY version of D&D including and especially D&D 5.

Get out your crystals, Appendix B details Psionic Items. Again, short, sweet and to the point.

Appendix C: Psionics and Magic is a must read chapter for anyone wanting to use both in their games.

Appendix D: Phrenic Creatures turns normal creatures into psionic ones.

Appendix E covers Conversions for Monsters from LeBlanc's own CC1: Creature Compendium.

Appendix F details how to convert any monster into a psionic one.

We end with a a couple pages of collected tables and the OGL.

Bottom line here is this is a great book. Everything you need to play psionic characters and add psionics to your game. Personally I am going to use this to beef up The Secret Machines of the Star Spawn which I also picked up today.

I have played around a lot with various forms of Psionics. For now, this is the one I use most often.

Carcass Crawler: Issue Two

I am a fan of anything B/X and OSE in particular. This zine for Old-School Essentials gives me two elves and some new snake-cult monsters.

Carcass Crawler: Issue Three

I have lots of variations on Dragonborn and Tieflings, but these are good. 

Old School Magic

This is an update to The Alchemist also by Vigilance Press. For another buck, you get more classes, another 23 pages, and a better-looking layout. A good deal if you ask me. The alchemist is very much like the one from the previous product. Like the alchemist supplement, I might do a multi-class with this alchemist, either as an alchemist-artificer or an alchemist-sage.

The other classes include the artificer, conjurer, elementalist, hermit, holy man, naturalist, sage and seer. Plus, there are some new spells that I rather like.

Old-School Psionics

Designed to be a new psionics system for OSRIC this book introduces the Mentalist class. Powers are divided out among disciplines going to 7th level. Powers are treated mostly like spells, but that works well for adding into OSRIC. Also some psionic monsters are detailed including my favorite (and worth the price of the book) the Doppleganger as a proper psionic monster. 22 pages including cover and OGL. Very nicely done.

Another great set of psionic rules.

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I have some other posts with adventures and monster books coming up for the future.

 Little delay today. Had internet issues off and on AND the first measurable snowfall here in Chicago. I am sure these are not related. 

My wife and I have been watching the AMC series "Dark Winds." It is based on the books by Tony Hillerman about Navajo Tribal police. It is a police procedural, but but set in the 1970s and has unique issues of its own due to the interactions between the various law enforcement entities (tribal police, sheriff, border patrol, FBI) and the Navajo culture. It also features quite a bit of dialogue in Diné, the language of the Diné/Navajo people. It is really good, and maybe just a little depressing at times. 

I have mentioned before that I have always had a fascination with Dickson Mounds and Cahokia Mounds, as well as the Kaskaskia peoples. Many of the indigenous names, or their French or English derivatives, still name many places here that I am familiar with.

When the first snow falls in Chicago, local mainstay WXRT-FM always plays Frank Zappa's "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow."  Well. I wanted to do a snow monster for today AND also do something from Native American lore. I really didn't want to do another Wendigo (as much as I enjoy them), but thankfully I found a monster that fits my needs.

Drawing of a ChenooChenoo

Undead Spirit of Hunger and Greed

FREQUENCY: Very Rare
NO. APPEARING: 1 (unique) or 1–3
ARMOR CLASS: 2
MOVE: 9"/24" (fly)
HIT DICE: 7+7
% IN LAIR: 30%
TREASURE TYPE: D (in life, hoarded)
NO. OF ATTACKS: 1 (touch or bite)
DAMAGE/ATTACK: 2–8 plus special
SPECIAL ATTACKS: Energy drain, cold aura, wail of hunger
SPECIAL DEFENSES: +1 or better weapon to hit, immune to charm, sleep, hold, and cold
MAGIC RESISTANCE: 25%
INTELLIGENCE: Average (8–10)
ALIGNMENT: Chaotic Evil
SIZE: L (9–10' tall)
PSIONIC ABILITY: Nil
LEVEL/XP VALUE: VII / 1,200 + 10/hp

A Chenoo is the cursed spirit of a mortal who refused charity in life. Greedy, proud, and cold-hearted, they hoarded food and wealth while others starved. When they died, their souls were claimed by the cold hunger they had unleashed upon others. Now they appear as towering, frost-covered corpses with sunken features and teeth of ice, eyes glowing pale. Their presence chills the air, and their howls echo the cries of the starving.

A Chenoo attacks living beings out of an insatiable envy of warmth and sustenance. Its icy touch drains one energy level per hit, and any creature slain by this attack becomes a frozen corpse that will rise as a lesser Chenoo (4+4 HD) within a day unless blessed or burned.

Their aura radiates a 10’ cold zone, dealing 1–4 points of cold damage per round to all within range (save vs. spell for half).

Once per night, the Chenoo may utter a Wail of Hunger, a keening cry that forces all living creatures within 60’ to make a saving throw vs. spells or be overcome with magical hunger and weakness, reducing Strength and Constitution by –2 for 1d4 turns. Those who die under this curse are said to have their souls devoured, leaving behind a husk of snow and bone.

Solitary spirits, chenoo are found in frozen forests, desolate mountains, or abandoned villages where famine once struck. They remember their mortal lives dimly, clutching at phantom possessions and muttering about stolen food or ungrateful neighbors. Some witches claim that a chenoo’s curse can be undone if the spirit is offered a feast and genuine forgiveness, but few have survived to confirm it.

These undead creatures do not eat, yet they hunger eternally. They despise the living, especially those who share food or generosity, as such kindness burns them like holy fire. Their presence can blight the land for miles, causing game to vanish and winter to linger unnaturally long.

Chenoo are turned as Spectres. Lesser chenoo are turned as wraiths.

It is the year 1829 and polite society’s horror and disgust at the poor and the great unwashed is once again being stoked by reports of them shambling about at night, faces ashen, and looming out of the miasma along the River Thames to scare anyone and everyone, whether going about legitimate business or not. In sordid South London, in the notorious slum that is Jacob’s Island, right on the banks of the Thames, people are going missing—and worse, they are coming back very much in discombobulated fashion! It is a very strange matter indeed, and despite it having been brought to the attention of Sir Robert Peel and his recently founded Metropolitan Police Force, there is not the manpower, or indeed, the political willpower to do a great about it. Which is why the Apollonian Society, whose members investigate the unseemly and the unnatural, is approached to look into the matter.

This is the set-up to Mists of Old London, a scenario for use with Vaesen – Mythic Britain & Ireland, the campaign supplement for Vaesen – NordicHorror Roleplaying, which details the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in the nineteenth century and the clashes the arose between the old ways and the new with rapid industrialisation. The scenario is set primarily in the rotten rookery and sodden slum of Jacob’s Island, home to some of the city’s poorest inhabitants, on the south bank of the river, notable as being the home of Bill Sykes in Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist. Investigation will reveal the are is rife with tension. There has been a recent influx of immigrants from Jamaica into the slum as well as the people vanishing into the mists and then reappearing at their homes, as cold as the grave. There are also strange figures stalking the streets. One is hooded in rags and mutters curses and incantations as she clambers across the rickety walkways and bridges that connect many parts of Jacob’s Island, whilst the other strides purposefully, a gentleman in frock coat and top hat as well as a mask. She is Madame Otay, he is Monsieur Thursday.

It should be pretty clear that to the players that what their characters are facing is an infestation of zombies, appropriate for the threat that the Player Characters face, though since the word would have been little known at the time when the scenario is set, it is very unlikely that the characters will initially know they are facing and extremely unlikely that they will have come across the term before. There are opportunities for both Madame Otay and Monsieur Thursday to educate the Player Characters though. Being a scenario for Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying, there is a countdown in which things get worse, the mists will rise and worsen, and the zombies will walk the streets of Jacob’s Island openly. There are a limited number of lines of investigation, but the Player Characters should get enough clues to work out what is going and where they need to go—whether either of the major NPCs want them to, or not. All of which will lead to classic showdown at a summoning by the villain of the piece and the Player Characters in position to stop it.

This is a most serviceable scenario with a pleasing tense and strong, if sodden atmosphere of fear, tinged just a little with a fear of the unknown. Smart or experienced players will probably crack on through and complete it in a single session, though it should take no more than two sessions’ worth of play at the most for other. It could work as a convention in the case of the former, but it is not really set up for that. Thematically the plot could work with the Rivers of London: the Roleplaying Game or period wise with Regency Cthulhu: Dark Designs in Jane Austen’s England, both from Chaosium, Inc. In fact, retooling it for the latter for the Miskatonic Repository would work rather well.

Mists of Old London is not without its issues and the likelihood is that the complaints about are going to come from both end of the spectrum. One is that the scenario makes use of African diaspora religion of Obeah as a feature of its plot. The other is that one of the NPCs is called ‘Nigel Barrige’, who as MP for Southwark, “…[N]ow seeks to consolidate his power by stoking parliaments [SIC] fears of the working class and social revolution.” The author goes further than this though, in what is a parody of a contemporary British political figure. To be fair, the first of these is more of an issue than the second, but the author does make clear that it is not intended faithful representation of the religion, but stick to being a Western, dramatised version for the sake of the scenario’s plot. The author also suggests that if the Game Master is unhappy with this, then it is possible to some research and adjust as necessary. A link is provided should the Game Master want to get started. As to the second, it is parody, and parody is fair game.

Mists of Old London is published via the Free League Workshop, the community content programme for Free League Publishing, so not professionally produced. As a consequence, physically, Mists of Old London is rough. The layout and the few pieces of illustration are fine, but it really, really needs a good edit. There are also no maps.

Mists of Old London is far from a bad scenario. It just needs to be more clearly and tidily presented and supported with a map or two. Otherwise, Mists of Old London is eminently serviceable, enjoyable scenario.