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

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What is it?
Tarkalor’s Keep is an adventure location for use with RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha which presents a simple situation that the Game Master can run and prepare for a single session’s worth of play.

It is an eleven page, full colour 2.03 KB PDF.

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

The scenario is can be easily be adapted to the rules system of the Game Master’s choice.
Where is it set?As written, Tarkalor’s Keep takes in the disputed territory between the lands of the Varmandi and the Malani clans, close to Apple Lane. The suggested time frame is during dark season of 1626 after the death of Kallyr Starbrow. However, with some adjustment, the scenario can be placed anywhere where there are rival, sometimes feuding clans.
Who do you play?
Tarkalor’s Keep does not require any specific character type.
What do you need?
Eurmal’s Truth requires RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha; Cults of RuneQuest: The Lightbringers for information about the Cult of Gagarth; and the RuneQuest Gamemaster Screen Pack for its information about the Varmandi clan and the surrounding area. The scenario, Vinga’s Ford, also contains useful information and could be run as an uncconected prequel to Tarkalor’s Keep.
What do you get?Tarkalor’s Keep presents a situation that the Player Characters are tasked with investigating and resolving. With tensions high between the Varmandi and the Malani clans, the Varmandi clan chief, Korol Serpent Tongue, suspects that they are responsible for the reports of the recent occupation of nearby Tarkalor Keep. He wants the Player Characters to investigate, confirm his suspicions, and if so drive them out in readiness for occupation by his own clan warriors.

The majority of Tarkalor’s Keep is devoted to describing Tarkalor Keep and its current occupants—and it is not who Korol Serpent Tongue thinks it is. In fact, the situation is nowhere near as straightforward as the tower being occupied by Malani tribesmen. The occupants are in fact two-fold, making the best of living alongside each other, using the tower as a refuge. The dominant group consists of Gagarthi outlaws, whilst the other consists of cowed Seven Mothers worshippers. The former are not welcome in good society because they have been exiled from their tribes for the crimes they committed, whilst the latter are unwelcome across Sartar because of the recent occupation of the region by the Lunar Empire. Neither group is spoiling for a fight, but the situation is difficult and neither group wants to be driven out, especially at this time of the year. Ultimately, the situation at Tarkalor’s Keep is one that the Player Characters are going to have to resolve and it is unlikely that this is can be done to the satisfaction of everyone concerned, whether that is the occupants, Korol Serpent Tongue, or the Malani. The choices made by the Player Characters will have ongoing ramifications on the campaign.
Tarkalor’s Keep includes the stats and background for all its NPCs, plus a description and floorplan of the keep itself. There are ideas too as to possible outcomes, but they are only suggestions. What the scenario does lack is suggestions as to the rewards that Korol Serpent Tongue might offer the Player Characters.
Is it worth your time?Yes—Tarkalor’s Keep presents a short and knotty problem that the Game Master can quickly prepare and drop into her campaign, especially if based at Apple Lane.No—Tarkalor’s Keep involves the Gagarthi, is in Sartar, or its suggested time frame is in the future of the Game Master’s campaign, so is not suitable for the campaign.Maybe—Tarkalor’s Keep presents a short and knotty problem which with a few adjustments can easily be set wherever the Game Master has set her campaign.

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

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

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Name: The Worm of Wall StreetPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Paul StJohn Mackintosh

Setting: Modern day New YorkProduct: Scenario
What You Get: Twenty-four page, 25.79 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Hedge Fund Horror!Plot Hook: A Wall Street flash crash triggers an investigation into a hedge fund which stands untouched.
Plot Support: Staging advice, eight pre-generated Investigators, two NPCs, two maps and floor plans, one Mythos tome, and two Mythos creatures.Production Values: Serviceable
Pros# Intriguing, novel setting# Simple, straightforward one-shot# Easy to adapt to other time periods# Feels very eighties# Possible links to Shadows of Yog-Sothoth, Lovecraft Country, and Keziah Mason# Scoleciphobia# Kinemortophobia# Anthropophagusphobia
Cons# Needs an edit# No pre-generated Investigator backgrounds# Keeper will need to generate Investigator links and motivations
Conclusion# Solid, eighties-style Hedge Fund Horror on Wall Street# Unique location with surprisingly timely plot

Published by Nightfall Games, The Terminator RPG is based upon The Terminator, the original film by James Cameron from 1984 and then on the seventeen or so comic book storylines published by Dark Horse Comics between 1990 and 2019. The Science Fiction horror roleplaying game enables play in two time periods. The first is the future of the here and now, or at least an alternative here and now. This is the future of Judgement Day, in which the A.I. Skynet attempted to destroy its creators and the rest of humanity in nuclear, biological, and chemical conflagration before sending out increasingly sophisticated machines to wipe out humanity, whether through brute force or infiltration followed by brute force. The Resistance arose, led by those who had been preparing for Judgement Day and the rise of the robots, most notably, John Connor, to defeat Skynet and its forces. By the end of the 2020s, the Resistance would prevail, but not before Skynet developed temporal technology with Time Displacement Equipment, enabling it to send Terminator units back into the past and attack those who would become a danger to it in the future. Thus, the war against the machines became not a war of resistance and rebellion against Skynet, but a war through time, a hunt for Skynet’s agents across the later twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. This opens up the second time period, the 1980s, and whilst it would be possible to run campaigns in both periods without any crossover, travelling back from the 2020s opens up the possibility of some entertaining ‘fish out of water’ style roleplaying. In general, the emphasis in The Terminator RPG is on the period of the 2020s, but there is still plenty of information about the 1980s to run a campaign set there. This is the inspiration for The Terminator RPG: Campaign Book.
The Terminator RPG: Campaign Book presents a series of fifteen interlinked missions across both the devastated future post Judgement Day and the unware period of the horrors to come, 1980s. Many of the missions can be played on their own, but by linking them, the Resistance Fighters can explore stories that weave in and out of, and parallel to, those of Sarah Connor, the future leader of the Resistance, her son, John Connor. What this means is that the players and their Resistance Fighters are not playing out the key events of The Terminator, but like the comic stories published by Dark Horse which specifically inspire many of the missions in The Terminator RPG: Campaign Book, instead exploring the world and stories away from the core story. There are one or two wholly original missions in the collection as well, but in general, the players and their Resistance Fighters will be telling their own stories, stories that support and contribute towards the core story. The interlinking nature of the missions is also quite loose, with in some cases, years passing between one mission and the next, enabling the Game Master to develop and add her own plots and missions between those given in this supplement. In addition, The Terminator RPG: Campaign Book has been written as part of the publisher’s ‘Signature Series’, which brings together a number of scenarios or missions from a variety of authors to provide different styles and approaches to a setting—or in this case, The Terminator franchise.
The campaign will see the Resistance Fighters fighting and surviving their way back and forth across the post-apocalyptic future of North America in the 2020s and even to a Moscow dominated by MIR, Skynet’s Russian subsidiary A.I., before throwing them back into the past of the 1980s, with rug-pulling deviation along the way. Here, in the past of both the Resistance Fighters and their players, the Resistance Fighters will hide out until needed, searching for three things. One is signs of Skynet’s operations from the future trying to ensure it creation and domination of that future. Two is looking for the events and persons involved in the creation, whether intentionally or inadvertently. Three, ultimately, chasing after Sarah Connor and her son, if not to actually locate the fugitives themselves, then at least prevent Skynet and its various terminator units, let alone the authorities, from locating them. This again, will take them back and forth across America, before a push long way south of the border. Throughout, the Resistance Fighters will encounter terminator model after terminator model, in some cases, hordes of them. In each and every incidence, the fights will be tough, the nearly unstoppable nature of the terminators horrifying, the encounter always desperate, whether defeat or victory. This does not vary whether it is the past or the future. In the future, the Resistance Fighters will have the advantage of advanced weaponry, but that will be against multiple terminators, whereas in the past, the Resistance Fighters will encounter terminators in ones and twos, but will only be armed with the weapons of the 1980s that they can scavenge or steal.
The campaign begins in the future, post-Judgement Day. The Resistance Fighters will find themselves investigating damaged Terminator Complexes for information about Skynet’s operations, visiting Russia and Moscow by submarine to curb Skynet’s operations there, and being hunted by Terminators before being rescued by unfamiliar faces. They will ultimately be given a mission by unexpectedly familiar face, before being thrown back into the past of the 1980s. This is where the bulk of the campaign takes place, missions include tracking down a notorious serial killer, survive being hunted again—though this time in rundown New York city of the period, stop a Terminator effort to take advantage of period communications (this nicely adds a Terminator twist to the suspicious man atop the telegraph pole. Very eighties and seventies), and hunt down a Terminator nurse—suitably named Nurse Hatchet—in a hospital before it reaches its target. The missions are suitable varied, but will involve a lot of action and combat as well as the desperate planning and investigation. The Resistance Fighters will also need to adapt to living in the 1980s whilst fulfilling missions and avoiding the attention of the authorities.
Structurally, the interlinked nature of the scenarios in The Terminator RPG: Campaign Book means that it is loose in places and there are long gaps between scenarios. There are two ways to address this. One is for the Game Master to add her own content to fill those perceived gaps or to run the campaign episodically, perhaps running other roleplaying games during the gaps to suggest that time has passed. Of course, there is nothing to stop the Game Master running the campaign for her group straight, from beginning to end.
To support the campaign, The Terminator RPG: Campaign Book includes two appendices. One contains seven pre-generated Resistance Fighters, some of whom are more critical to certain scenarios than others. The second provides statistics and descriptions for the campaign’s NPCs, which are surprisingly few in number. This is because the campaign draws from the core rulebook for The Terminator RPG for the majority of its NPC and Terminator stats.
However, as a whole, the campaign is lacking in a number of things. One is maps. There is only one location for which a map is given in the whole of the campaign. Now in many cases, it is easy to visual and describe certain locations, such as a hospital or a pawn shop, but there are number of bunkers and similar locations which would have been easier to visualise and impart their descriptions to the players had they been given maps. In most cases, though not all, the locations are decently described and so the Game Master can create her own. Another is hacking diagrams. There are some in the campaign, but not enough to be a strong feature of the campaign or threaten to overwhelm it with a large number of hacking attempts being needed. So, this is not an omission so much as a feature, and whilst a hacker will be required as part of the campaign, his technical skills will probably be required more often.
Physically, The Terminator RPG: Campaign Book is decently presented, well-written, and illustrated with some good artwork. The book is easy to read and includes staging notes and suggestions for the Game Master from one scenario to the next.
The Terminator RPG: Campaign Book is not a campaign in the traditional sense of there being a beginning, a middle, and an end. It definitely has a middle, and it could be argued that it has two middles rather than one with the switch in time periods, but in a more traditional campaign, the ending would involve the Player Characters defeating the big villain and bringing the story to a close. Not so in The Terminator RPG: Campaign Book, which does not come to end with the Resistance Fighters defeating the big villain. Rather, they will defeat a big villain and so contribute towards the defeat of the big villain, that is, Skynet. Which makes sense since the Resistance Fighters are not the stars of The Terminator franchise, but the stars of a story within The Terminator franchise. Overall, The Terminator RPG: Campaign Book is solid support for The Terminator RPG, providing the Game Master with some great Science Fiction horror with which to torment the Resistance Fighters and their players as they battle to make a difference and help save the future of humanity.

In the ecologically ravaged future, twelve billion people live on Earth in environmentally sealed kilometre high city blocks clustered around ‘lungs’, the colossal city-sized atmosphere processors located on the coasts. Many attempt to get off Earth and sign up to crew the service vessels maintaining stations, outposts, and mines in other star systems; the tugboats hauling the refineries back to Earth; the Arbiter ships as Colonial Marshals investigating crimes on behalf of the Interstellar Department of Trading; as military units preventing (or even conducting) civil unrest or hostile takeovers; as scientific survey teams; or as Deep Space Support Teams—DSSTs, or ‘Dusters’, effectively serving as troubleshooters for their employers. Last twenty-five years and you get to retire to a life of luxury. However, it is not that easy… Space travel takes time, even with the Gravity Assisted Drive, a minimum of a week per light year, meaning trips can take months with most of that time spent in LongSleep. Starships are places to work, utilitarian, but capable of protecting you from the vacuum of space, radiation, and random asteroids. Therese though are not the only dangers involved in space travel and mankind spreading beyond the Solar System...
Spending time in space has a psychological effect and has been known to send men mad. Murderously mad. A.I.s and other systems can malfunction. Outbreaks of diseases and viruses—known and unknown—can ravage colonies, starships, and space stations. Terrorist groups have their own agendas, like The Children of the Cradle, which wants to stop mankind spreading beyond Earth. There are cults too with their own aims and even corporations have their often, highly secret aims. Colonists, scientists, star crew and others report ghosts out in the black, but who believes that? Does not mean that it cannot send them mad... There is even the whisper that the Gravity Assisted Drive itself has a psychological effect on people, though no one has been able to prove and to be honest, no one wants to, especially the corporations. Of course, nobody has yet found any sign of any alien species, and certainly not any face-chomping xenomorphs. Faced with all that, it is wonder that anyone engages in any space travel, and if any starship crew run into any of this, the best they can do is survive. There are those that will do more then just survive. They will investigate. They identify the nature of the threat and they will nullify its effects—if they can. Special Operations Squads (SOS), equipped, armed, and trained to deal with dangerous situations, have been trained by the government of Earth to face these problems, even though it often means working for one of the corporations.
This is the set-up for Pressure: Industrial Science Fiction Roleplaying, a roleplaying game inspired by the Blue Collar Science Fiction of the nineteen seventies and early nineteen eighties, such as Alien, Outland, Silent Running, and Blade Runner, plus computer games like Dead Space. Published by Osprey Games—the imprint of Osprey Publishing best known for its highly illustrated military history books—Pressure: Industrial Science Fiction Roleplaying is in fact a sequel to Those Dark Places: Industrial Science Fiction Roleplaying, in which the Player Characters are members of corporate Deep Space Support Teams—DSSTs, or ‘Dusters’. In Pressure, the Player Characters are members of the Special Operations Squads Division, knoen as SOS Operatives. If Those Dark Places is the equivalent of Alien, then Pressure is the sequel, Aliens. Notably, Pressure uses the same conceit as Those Dark Places, that the play of the roleplaying game is actually an internal training programme, a test of the potential abilities of the ‘Duster’, or in this case SOS Division operatives. This does not always have to be case, but it is what the roleplaying game defaults to, and notably, Pressure is more upfront about it. Further, in addition to being a sequel to Those Dark Places, this roleplaying game is also an expansion, both in terms of the mechanics and the setting. That said, the Game Master can run Pressure without needing to reference Those Dark Places.

An SOS Division operative is defined by his name and description, CASE File, his skills, and Pressure. His CASE File represents his actual attributes—Charisma-Agility-Strength-Education, which are rated between one and four. It should be noted that Strength works as the equivalent of a Crew Member’s Hit Points, as well as his physical presence. Where in Those Dark Places a Duster has one or two Crew Positions he is qualified for, such as Navigation Officer or Medical Officer, SOS Division operative has skills and this includes combat skills, which notably, Those Dark Places did not have. Some skills require specialist training and if a player does not invest any points in them, his SOS Division operative cannot use them. To create an SOS Division operative, a player assigns ten points to his operative’s CASE File and then three points to skills of his choice. The process is more complex than that of Those Dark Places, but only slightly so, and it is still very simple. In addition, the player is encouraged to answer a number of questions to help develop his operative.

One alternative offered instead of a standard SOS Division operative, a player can roleplay a SAM or Synthetic Automation. A SAM is not affected by Pressure, but all Charisma or Education rolls require an extra round of processing to complete. A SAM is also not fully human in appearance, with smooth features, lack of hair, and unblinking eyes. SAMs are banned from the massive HyperCities of Earth.

SOS Division Operative Rosen was recruited into the SOS Division pending a conviction for computer hacking. Despite her technical role, she has put through the routine physical training, but this has not curbed her cynical edge. She is fascinated with discovering secrets still (which is what got her into trouble in the first place) and knows that being part of SOS Division will actually give her greater access than before.

Rachel Rosen
Charisma 3 Agility 1 Strength 2 Education 4
Pressure Bonus: 6
Pressure Level: 0

Skills: Charisma/Con 1; Education/Computers 2

Mechanically, Pressure is very simple and requires no more than a six-sided die or two per player. To have his SOS Division operative undertake a task, a player rolls a six-sided die and adds the values for the appropriate Attribute and skill, or just the Attribute if the SOS Division operative does not have the skill. The target Difficulty Number is typically seven, but may be adjusted down to six if easier, or up to eight if more difficult. If the task warrants it, rolling the target number exactly counts as a partial success rather than a complete success. In that case, the player needs to roll over the target difficulty.

In the long term, the combined value of an Attribute plus Skill cannot exceed six. If all the skills of an SOS Operative reach their maximum, he is considered to have achieved Elite Team status. One element of game play preventing this that Experience Points can be be spent immediately, during play, to modify rolls. This can be rolls made by the player and rolls made by the Game Monitor—as the Game Master is known in Pressure—so that a player can improve his SOS Division operative’s chance of success at succeeding in an action or chance of failure when an NPC acts against him. This can be before or after the roll. Experience Points spent in this way are permanently lost.

As well as adding skills to the setting of Those Dark Places, what Pressure also adds is a set of combat mechanics. Combatants can undertake two actions per round, initiative is handled via an Agility roll, mêlée is handled as opposed rolls, and ranged combat as standard tests, with the number to hit being seven, increased to eight if the target is in partial cover. Attacks can be dodged using the Dodge skill, but the defending combatant can only focus on this action and loses his next action. A partial success means that he will suffer only one point of damage, a complete success means he avoids all of it. Damage is rolled on a six-sided die, but each weapon or attack type has a Damage Cap. For example, a punch or kick inflicts one point of damage, but a Gauss Pistol inflicts three. Damage is still rolled for, with a roll higher than the Damage Cap indicating that the maximum amount of damage has been inflicted. In addition, each point of damage suffered serves as a penalty, raising the Difficulty Number for all tasks. Combat is brutal, but SOS Division operatives are given BallCom Mk II body armour as protection. On a roll of five or six, this will protect the wearer against direct kinetic attacks, but not explosive or energy damage.

However, Pressure does get more complex when dealing with stress and difficult situations, or Pressure. An SOS Division operative has a Pressure Bonus, equal to his Strength and Education, and a Pressure Level, which runs from one to six. A Pressure Roll is made when an SOS Division operative is under duress or stress, and all a player has to do is roll a six-sided die and add his operative’s Pressure Bonus to beat a difficulty number of ten. Succeed and the SOS Division operative withstands the stress of the situation, but fail and his Pressure Level rises by one level. However, when an SOS Division operative’s Pressure Level rises to two, and each time it rises another level due to a failed Pressure Roll, the SOS Division operative’s player rolls a six-sided die and the result is under the current value of his Pressure Level, the SOS Division operative suffers an Episode. This requires a roll on the Episode table, the results ranging from ‘Jitters’ and losing points from a SOS Division operative’s Attributes, up through Exhausted, Rigid, Catatonia, and ‘Insane Fear’. Whenever an SOS Division operative’s player needs to make a roll on the Episode Table, the maximum result possible is limited by the SOS Division operative’s Pressure Level. So at Pressure Level 3, an SOS Division operative can only be In Shock and suffer points lost from either his Agility or Strength, but not anything worse.

One issue with Pressure Level and Episodes is that a Crew Member cannot immediately recover from either. It takes time in LongSleep or back on Earth to even begin to recover… Worse, once an SOS Division operative suffers an Episode, its effects linger, and he can suffer from it again and again until he manages to control his personal demons.

And that is almost the extent of the rules to Pressure. There is a list of equipment and of typical salaries for a range of roles, a range of NPCs, and there are rules for vehicles and vehicle combat, spaceships and space combat. Spaceships are working spaces, with only a fifth of their displacement dedicated to crew and cargo space, the rest being ship’s system. In keeping with brutality of personal combat in Pressure, the rules for spaceship combat are equally as brutal, but on a bigger scale and a greater chance of death or damage from explosions, fire, electricity, and decompression.

If Pressure expands the rules from those in Those Dark Places, it also does something of greater significance—it greatly expands the setting shared by both roleplaying games. This is delivered as part of the Officer’s Briefing that Pressure is written as, but what both this Officer’s Briefing and Pressure do is present information that the average person on Earth does not have access to. Already, SOS Division operatives are being treated as different and as being part of elite, privy to information that they cannot share. This includes what the SOS Division operatives might encounter ‘Out in the Darkness’ of the furthers reaches of space, such as dangerous terrorists and cults, rogue A.I.s, malfunctioning SAMs and bio-pets, ‘ghosts spirits’, and so on, but again, notably not aliens, bug-eyed or otherwise. In terms of the setting, Pressure provides a complete future history with a timeline from the early twenty-second century to the mid twenty-fourth century, descriptions of the four dominant corporations and other organisations (including criminal and terrorist), and information about the state of Earth, installations and stations in orbit and throughout the Solar System. It touches upon what might be found beyond in ‘Explored Space’, but leaves much of this to be developed by the Game Monitor herself.

Rounding out Pressure is a short mission, ‘The Foster Report’, intended to be played as part of the SOS Division operatives’ training in the ‘Edu-Net’. The squad responds to a distress call from research facility run by Foster Private Endeavours, reporting that it has suffered a containment failure. It is a quick and dirty affair, with advice for the Game Monitor for handling various aspects of the rules, and should offer a single session’s worth of play.

Physically, Pressure is cleanly and tidily laid out. Although it is an attractive looking book, Pressure does have an issue in being delivered as an officer’s briefing because it does not make all of the content easy to use. So for example, the rules for SOS Division operative creation is spread out over several sections where the relevant rules are explained and there is no one cheat sheet guide to operative creation. Similarly, the rules for using Experience Points to adjust rolls are listed under the general rules for Experience Points, but not mentioned in the explanation of the core rules, and the rules for using cybernetics are squirrelled away in the description of Earth and its environs. That said, Pressure, being delivered as an officer’s briefing, is written in an engaging, conversational style.

What Pressure does is take the background and setting of Those Dark Places and expand from a tightly-focused genre emulation into a full Science Fiction roleplaying game. Within the setting itself, it moves Those Dark Places from the survival horror genre to more actioned-orientated horror, where the Player Characters, or SOS Division operatives, have to investigate and confront the horror, rather than merely do their best and run away. It opens up the possibility of Pressure being run as a more general Science Fiction roleplaying game as well, and thus a wider range of plots and possible source material to adapt. Fundamentally no less brutal—even with the guns and the armour—Pressure: Industrial Science Fiction Roleplaying is not just Aliens to the Alien of Those Dark Places: Industrial Science Fiction Roleplaying, taking the action straight to the horror, but a fuller, more detailed roleplaying game whose expanded rules and setting open up a wider range of stories and adventures.

Before the advent of the internet, the magazine was the focus of the hobby’s attention, a platform in whose pages could be news, reviews, and content for the roleplaying game of each reader’s choice, as well as a classified section and a letters page where the issues of day—or at least month—could be raised and discussed in chronically lengthy manner. In this way, such magazines as White Dwarf, Imagine, Dragon, and many others since, came to be our community’s focal point and sounding board, especially a magazine that was long running. Yet depending upon when you entered the hobby and picked up your first issue of a roleplaying magazine, you could have missed a mere handful of issues or many. Which would have left you wondering what was in those prior issues. Today, tracking down back issues to find out and complete a magazine’s run is much easier than it was then, but many publishers offered another solution—the ‘Best of…’ magazine. This was a compilation of curated articles and support, containing the best content to have appeared in the magazine’s pages.

1980 got the format off to a good start with both The Best of White Dwarf Scenarios and The Best of White Dwarf Articles from Games Workshop as well as the Best of Dragon from TSR, Inc. Both publishers would release further volumes of all three series, and TSR, Inc. would also reprint its volumes. Other publishers have published similar volumes and in more recent times, creators in the Old School Renaissance have begun to collate and collect content despite the relative youth of that movement. This includes The Gongfarmer’s Almanac which has collected community content for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game since 2015 and Populated Hexes Monthly Year One which collected the content from the Populated Hexes Monthly fanzine. The ‘Best of…’ series of reviews will look at these and many of the curated and compiled titles from the last four decades of roleplaying.

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The Best of White Dwarf Scenarios was published in 1980. Unlike its counterpart, The Best of White Dwarf Articles, it did not have the benefit of containing “Selected material from the first 3 years of White Dwarf”. Where The Best of White Dwarf Articles could draw from White Dwarf Issue No. 1 to White Dwarf Issue No. 20, the first scenario its pages only appeared in White Dwarf Issue No. 9 with ‘The Lichway’. Prior to that, the dungeon encounter, ‘Lair of the Demon Queen’ whish appeared in White Dwarf Issue No. 7 and ‘A Place in the Wilderness’ in White Dwarf Issue No. 11, and although both are included in this anthology, neither are scenarios in the strict roleplaying definition. However, within a few issues of ‘The Lichway’ being published, scenarios would become a regular feature of White Dwarf and grow in both detail and sophistication. Further, unlike The Best of White Dwarf Articles, the range of roleplaying games supported by The Best of White Dwarf Scenarios is not limited to just Dungeons & Dragons and Traveller. There are scenarios for RuneQuest, Gamma World, and Chivalry & Socerery, and like Ian Livingstone pointed out in his editorial, “Readers should also bear in mind that with a little thought, these adventures can be used in games systems other than the others for they were designed; the Pool of the Standing Stones, for example has been successfully converted to C&S.” Indeed, many of the scenarios in The Best of White Dwarf Scenarios are not just playable to today, they can still be converted and updated to more modern roleplaying games or updated iterations of older roleplaying games. Consequently, the contents of The Best of White Dwarf Scenarios are far more applicable and useable today than the contents of The Best of White Dwarf Articles.

The Best of White Dwarf Scenarios opens with the magnificent ‘The Halls of Tizun Thane’ for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition, from White Dwarf Issue No. 18. Written by Albie Fiore, its title is inspired by Robert E. Howard’s ‘The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune’ and there are references too to other stories by Howard throughout the scenario. Yet, the Swords & Sorcery influences are trumped by the Vancian tone, this scenario feeling as if comes from the pages of Jack Vance’s Dying Earth novels. There are nods too, to other content from White Dwarf, such as the lamented Houri Class from White Dwarf Issue No. 13 (republished in The Best of White Dwarf Articles) and the Necromancer Class, which would not be published until White Dwarf Issue No. 35! The adventure itself sees a village in peril from strange shadowy figures that hunt and kill at night and the villagers are sure come from the nearby mansion of Tizun Thane, a wizard who lives with his two brothers. The mansion itself is located in the middle of a lake in the caldera of a volcano, a palace of exotic delights full of secret doors and mysteries alongside the mundane areas where his servants worked. However, the Player Characters will quickly learn that he is dead and consequently, the household has descended into rivalry and factionalism as the brothers feud with each other, whilst the murderer lurks, lamenting his actions. There are new monsters, like the chimpanzee-like Nandie-Bear, run riot over the mansion’s rooftops; Carbuncle, an armadillo-like creature which will foretell the future of the Player Characters again and again for the fun of it and the chaos it will cause; the death-worm-like Necrophidius; the brain-eating, Wendigo-like, Gu’en-deeko.

However, it is the map of the mansion that so clearly stands out, richly detailed and interesting. Combine it with the description and what the Dungeon Master has, is a building which before it began to go to seed, was lived and worked in, so lacks the artifice that a dungeon adventure would have by comparison. It is a tough adventure for First and Second Level Player Characters, especially given that the threat endangering the villagers are not ones that the Player Characters can really affect. Even if they do manage to find magic weapons capable of inflicting damage, they are incredibly tough. ‘The Halls of Tizun Thane’ is a great scenario, a superb mix of rich detail, lovely cartography, and roleplaying potential with its factionalism and decent NPCs. There is even scope to expand the scenario via the previous owner’s set of magic mirrors which the Player Characters could learn to use and travel back and forth on various adventures. They would, of course, have to claim the house and make it their own. To effectively run the scenario, the Dungeon Master will need to unpack it as part of her preparation, but ‘The Halls of Tizun Thane’ is almost worth the price of admission in The Best of White Dwarf Scenarios.

Unfortunately, John Bethell’s ‘Lair of the White Wyrm’ is not. Originally published in White Dwarf Issue No. 14 for use with RuneQuest, it details a former two-level Dragonewt colony which is rumoured to have harboured a young Wyrm. The problem is that the dungeon is zoo-like in its design, with a mixture of traps and differing creatures present without making any real sense. There are Dwarves, Dark Trolls and Trollkin, Scorpionmen (oddly chained up in a five-foot wide corridor, whilst still leaving for the Player Characters to get past), Broo, and a Duck played for silliness. It is mishmash of elements which really do not fit the setting and really lack motivation.

First published in White Dwarf Issue No. 16, ‘Paths of the Lil’ is the sole entry for use with Gamma World. Written by James M. Ward, designer of Metamorphosis Alpha and co-designer of Gamma World, this details the lair of diminutive Lil, an almost fae-like species known for their beauty, the toughness of their wings, and their willingness to defend their lairs, which consist of dense thickets of brambles covered in surprisingly sharp thorns. Assaulting the ‘Paths of the Lil’ would be a tough challenge and the Player Characters would really need a good reason to do so. The encounter is decently detailed though and could easily be added to a Game Master’s Gamma World campaign, perhaps adding the ‘Paths of the Lil’ and its occupants as a faction rather than an enemy straight off.

The second of the scenarios in the anthology for RuneQuest is also the first of two scenarios taken from the pages of White Dwarf Issue No. 19. ‘Jorthan’s Rescue’ by John T. Sapienza Jr. and Stephen R. Marsh is a raid or rescue style scenario in which the Player Characters are hired by a merchant to rescue her noble husband, who has been kidnapped by a gang of Trollkin and is holding him to ransom. The Player Characters simply have to sneak up on the abandoned hunting lodge where the Trollkin are holding Jorthan and bust him out. The gang consists in the main of Trollkin, but they are led by a Dark Troll bruiser and secretly, his mate of choice. The emphasis is upon combat as the Player Characters fight their way through the lodge, and whilst the Trollkin are dangerous individually, there are quite a few of them. The scenario packs not just a lot of stats—this being a scenario for RuneQuest 2 and so every monster gets full stats—into its pages, but quite a bit of detail and humour too. For example, the Trollkin guarding the front door is called Sleepy and he will be woken up when the spear he has leaning against the door is knocked over. The scenario also comes with an alternative layout for a different set-up. Overall, the scenario feels slightly too compact for all of the information it has to present, but again, it is easy to use and easy to adapt, especially for the RuneQuest Game Master who wants to move it from the suggested location of between Boldhome and the Pavis Rubble. (Indeed, this is exactly what I did with the version updated for use with RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha). Overall, a very playable and exciting little scenario.

Lew Pulsipher—a regular contributor to White Dwarf who already had articles published in The Best of White Dwarf Articles—contributes two scenarios to The Best of White Dwarf Scenarios. The first is ‘A Bar-Room Brawl: D&D Style’ from White Dwarf Issue No. 11. This opens with a nice bit of background to the scenario ion that it was originally run at DragonMeet 1 all the way back in August 1978, as a convention scenario. Combine the map with some miniatures for both the brawlers and the fixtures and fittings of the tavern, and this would, indeed, look like quite impressive on the table at a convention. Stated for use with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition, it packs everything that the Dungeon Master needs into three pages. This includes—in the centrespread of The Best of White Dwarf Scenarios—the open floorplan of the tavern, furniture and fixtures to cut out and use on the floorplan, and details and tokens for some fifteen would-be brawlers. This includes a wererat, a Female Assassin, Gnoll, Anticleric, and Bar-Keeper, as well as a mix of adventurer types, plus the rest of the NPC staff. All of the Player Characters have motivations, such as the Wererat wanting to kill all clerics, the Ranger on the track of a Wererat, a Female Fighter with a hatred of non-humans, the Gnoll is a bouncer—only armed with a two-handed sword, and so on. The scenario also incudes some play results, but unfortunately it is also let down by the motivation for the Anticleric. This is, “You want a woman, either voluntarily or by rape. (Time required for the act is at least two rounds, not including time necessary to remove your armour.)” This reprehensibly unpleasant, more so than the inclusion of the Houri Class in The Best of White Dwarf Articles. These days such a thing would not be allowed and rightly so, but its inclusion here and in White Dwarf Issue No. 11 was a sign that the editors did not get everything right at the time.
Fortunately, the second entry from Lew Pulsipher is not as unpleasant, but is not really a scenario. ‘A Place in the Wilderness’ appeared in White Dwarf Issue No. 6 and what it details are the species of Dragons from the Jack Vance novel, The Dragon Masters, and a very little of the setting. It does not include the full Science Fiction elements of the setting, such as spaceships or beam or pellet weapons, but just the Dragons. Even at a page long, it feels out of place in the anthology, more article than scenario.

There is a certain sense of loss to Don Turnbull’s contribution to The Best of White Dwarf Scenarios, of what would be, had we had had access to his Greenlands dungeon. ‘Lair of the Demon Queen’ from White Dwarf Issue No. 7 details a single encounter for use with Dungeons & Dragons and Player Characters of roughly Seventh Level—a rare occurrence of a scenario not designed for low-level Player Characters. It is a puzzle encounter with the Player Characters trapped in a room with a number of puzzles the clues to which are given out by a series of magic mouths in verse form. It only does this three times, so that players had better pay attention. By deciphering the verse, the Player Characters can solve the puzzle, or at least set off the various traps without suffering any damage, revealing a number of hidden areas as they progress. Most of these contain a mix of treasure and undead—often quite nasty undead, ultimately leading to the release of the ‘Demon Queen’ herself. Turnbull does give as so much suggest monsters and populate the encounter, and for the ‘Demon Queen’ he suggests a Banshee and a much nastier one than would appear in Dungeons & Dragons. This one cannot die unless someone dies first, that is, one of the Player Characters. The rewards he suggests are rich indeed, but are they worth the loss of a Player Character (or if the players are amoral, of a hireling)? The encounter is written in an engaging and chatty style and provides a big challenge for both characters and players.

The only scenario for Traveller in The Best of White Dwarf Scenarios is ‘The Sable Rose Affair’. Bob McWilliams’ scenario originally appeared in White Dwarf Issue No. 17 and primarily takes place on the Alell, a high-law world in the Regina subsector of the Spinward Marches. There has been an outbreak of piracy across the subsector and the Imperial Galactic Survey’s Planetary Rescue Systems Inspectorate (or PRSI) have identified a man on Alell who is a front for the local government, which is a communist-style impersonal bureaucracy, which is ultimately behind the piracy. He owns a club, the Sable Rose, in the Journeyman’s Quarter of the planetary capital, Naness. The Player Characters, as members of a PRSI Task Force—several pre-generated Player Characters, all ex-army or ex-marine, are given—are tasked with infiltrating the club, locating the target, and extracting him from both club and off-world without arousing local suspicion. Besides the pre-generated Player Characters, the scenario includes a good set of maps and floorplans, and is notably, broken up into a series of short modules, graphically presented as a series of files strewn over a table. These are literally designed to be modular, so that there are some for the players’ eyes and some only for the Game Master. There are suggestions on how the scenario can be played out with two sets of Player Characters, one the PRSI Task Force and one the staff and head of the club. Either way, this a very nicely detailed one-shot, but also easy to fit into a more-military-focused campaign, a type which Traveller readily supported with Book 4: Mercenary.

‘Grakt’s Crag’ by Will Stephenson appeared in appeared in White Dwarf Issue No. 20 and is a scenario for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition for Third Level Player Characters. It details the tomb of a long dead king and his queen, and until recently, no one had managed to break into it. The Player Characters will discover as they explore the tomb, either through the original entrance or the entrances dug by the intruder. He has also hired guards to keep others, like the Player Characters, out. As a tomb, the scenario is linear and filled with traps—many of which are deadly—and puzzles, including a series weighted and unweighted elevator plates, different each time, that the Player Characters must overcome. Overall, it is a serviceable enough dungeon that will test the players and their characters.

‘Ogre Hunt’ by Tom Keenes is the single scenario for Chivalry & Sorcery. The second scenario to appear in White Dwarf Issue No. 19, this is designed for four to seven low-level Player Characters and is set in the forest and valley near of the quiet village of Harlow, on the southern border of Arden in the Southmarch region. Conflict between the Empire of Archaeron and Arden means that the local lord and his men are away, leaving the village defenceless and open to the predations of an ogre. The Player Characters are hired to track the threat down and deal with it. ‘Ogre Hunt’ is short and simple, a one-session affair that essentially points the Player Characters in the right direction after encounters with a couple of NPCs. Here there are opportunities for roleplaying before the confrontation with the ogre, but the overall simplicity, along with the scenario being just two pages, makes it easy to run and easy to adapt to the setting or system of the Game Master’s choice. The only issue is that the maps are too dark in places to be able to find certain locations, but otherwise, ‘Ogre Hunt’ is still very playable and very adaptable.

If ‘The Halls of Tizun Thane’ is almost worth the price of admission in The Best of White Dwarf Scenarios, then ‘The Lichway’ caps that and together, both are worth the price of admission alone. Originally appearing in White Dwarf Issue No. 9, this is another scenario by Albie Fiore and again it is another classic. Designed for a party of First level Player Characters for Dungeons & Dragons, it describes a large burial complex where an ancient people entombed their dead. The complex has long since been abandoned and its builders long since disappeared, but it contains promise of treasure and bounty on a wizard of ill repute. At its heart is one big trap. Set the trap off and the Player Characters will unleash a problem not just for themselves, but the surrounding area, much like Death Frost Doom did for Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplaying in 2009. Surrounding this central trap, which the Player Characters really have to be proactive in order to set off, are the halls of the Lichway and its surrounding rooms. Here the Player Characters will find a variety of dangers, including several NPCs, all simply and easily presented and very easy for the Dungeon Master to bring into play. A favourite NPC is a would-be wizard who is absolutely useless at everything, but still under the effects of a Charm spell. So, he will be incredibly helpful, just not any good at it! However, there is the strong inference that one of the NPCs has been raping another whom he is holding prisoner. Now this is not quite as bad having to roleplay a character who is prepared to commit rape as in the earlier ‘A Bar-Room Brawl: D&D Style’, but that in no way makes it any good as a story element. Again, it is proof that times and attitudes have changed, ‘The Lichway’ originally having been published forty-five years ago, and that the editors of White Dwarf did not always get it right. That said, adjust or change this aspect of the interaction between the NPCs, and ‘The Lichway’ is still a very good adventure. In fact, like ‘The Halls of Tizun Thane’, it is a great adventure with an eerie feel to it as sound whistles around the halls of the complex and NPCs plot and plan from its side rooms.

Lastly, ‘Pool of the Standing Stones’ is an adventure for Dungeons & Dragons for Player Characters of Fifth and Sixth Level. Written by Bill Howard and published in White Dwarf Issue No. 12., it begins in odd fashion, with the Player Characters coming to the aid of a law-abiding village who had several of its young women abducted by a druid. This is because he believed the village to be too Lawful, so introduced some balancing Chaos with the abduction. Deal with him and potentially, they will find something else, a complex dedicated to evil. The resulting dungeon is a nicely detailed complex, home to some vile characters and elements. However, one of the NPCs does wear armour adapted for the molestation of women. Again, not as bad having to roleplay a character who is prepared to commit rape as in the earlier ‘A Bar-Room Brawl: D&D Style’, but that in no way makes it any good as a story element, even though in this case, it is not quite as explicit.

As with The Best of White Dwarf Articles, there is one last aspect of The Best of White Dwarf Scenarios to enjoy and that is the adverts. There is a sense of nostalgia and wonder in examining these adverts from the past, for shops that have long since closed down such as Dungeons & Starships or Forever People and for products long out of print, Ral Patha’s board games—Witch’s Cauldron, Final Frontier, Galactic Grenadiers, and Caverns Deep, and then Metagaming’s The Fantasy Trip.

Physically, The Best of White Dwarf Scenarios is cleanly, tidily presented. The Conan-esque, Frazetta-style cover by Steve Brown is great and whilst there is less artwork in the anthology than in The Best of White Dwarf Articles, there is more cartography and this is almost all uniformly great.

The Best of White Dwarf Scenarios is undoubtedly a great anthology of scenarios. It is not perfect, some entries are not really scenarios and some are merely fine, but the best, ‘The Halls of Tizun Thane’ and ‘The Lichway’ standout as great pieces of both scenario and adventure design. Together, they are worth the price of a copy of The Best of White Dwarf Scenarios—both in 1980 at time of publication and now. What spoils the adventures slightly are the prurient, unfortunate, and unnecessary references to the poor treatment of women in even some of the great scenarios in the anthology. And only ‘slightly’ because such references can be removed and something else placed in their stead with only minor adjustments when it comes to updating the scenarios, and because times and attitudes do change. Of course, there is also the element of nostalgia in returning to these scenarios and reading and playing through them again, but in so many cases, that nostalgia is warranted. The Best of White Dwarf Scenarios was an excellent anthology of scenarios in 1980, showcasing how quickly White Dwarf had matured and developed in terms of adventure design and sophistication within just fifteen issues, and even putting nostalgia aside, it is still a great anthology of scenarios. For the British roleplayer of a certain age, there can be no doubt that The Best of White Dwarf Scenarios was and remains the definitive anthology of the best content from either White Dwarf or any roleplaying magazine. compilation 

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

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

—oOo—
What is it?
The Dreams And Machines: Quickstart Guide is the quick-start for Dreams And Machines, the post-apocalypse Sciece Fiction roleplaying game set on another world in the far future, where the ruins of the world that was—including giant mecha—lie all around. It includes a basic explanation of the setting, rules for action and combat, setting rules, the adventure, ‘Shelter’, and six ready-to-play, Player Characters.
It is a thirty-page, 45.76 MB full colour PDF.
The quick-start is lightly illustrated, but the artwork is is decent. The rules are clearly explained and are a less mechanically detailed version of the 2d20 System.

How long will it take to play?
The Dreams And Machines: Quickstart Guide and its adventure, ‘Shelter’, is designed to be played through in one session, two at most.

What else do you need to play?
The Dreams And Machines: Quickstart Guide requires at least two twenty-sided dice per player and two sets of different coloured tokens, one to represent Momentum, one to represent Threat.

Who do you play?
The six Player Characters in the Dreams And Machines: Quickstart Guide consist of a warrior Guardian, a Tech, a supportive Guardian, a stealthy and haggling Grabber, a Mediator, and a Gatherer.
How is a Player Character defined?
A Player Character in the Dreams And Machines: Quickstart Guide—and thus Dreams And Machines—will look familiar to anyone who has played a 2d20 System roleplaying game. A Player Character has four attributes: Might, Quickness, Insight, and Resolve. These range in value between six and sixteen. He has seven skills, Move, Fight, Sneak, Talk, Operate, Study, and Survive, all quite broad, and ranging in value between one and six. A Player Character’s Tech Level is measure of their familiarity with science and technology, whilst Talents are special abilities and Bonds are a Player Character’s connections to his fellow adventurers. Either through support or rivalries with his Bonds, a Player Character can gain Spirit. Supply points represent salvage and parts that the Player Character can use make temporary, but useful items. Lastly, every Player Character has two Truths. When these facts are brought into play, they can raise or lower the difficulty of a test, or even make it possible.
How do the mechanics work?
Mechanically, the Dreams And Machines: Quickstart Guide—and thus Dreams And Machines—uses the 2d20 System seen in many of the roleplaying games published by Modiphius Entertainment, such as Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20 or Dune – Adventures in the Imperium. To undertake an action in the 2d20 System in Dreams And Machines, a character’s player rolls two twenty-sided dice, aiming to have both roll under the total of an Attribute and a Skill. Each roll under this total counts as a success, an average task requiring two successes, the aim being to generate a number of successes equal to, or greater, than the Difficulty value. Rolls under the value of the Skill also count as two successes. A roll of twenty adds a complication to the situation. Dealing with higher Tech levels increases the Difficulty value and adds Threat. Successes generated beyond the Difficulty value generate Momentum.

Momentum is a shared resource. It can be used to gain a ‘Second Wind’ and increase a Player Character’s Spirit, ‘Create Truth’, ‘Ask a Question’ of the Game Master, increase ‘Damage’ against a target, ‘Reduce Time’ for an action, and gain a second action with ‘Follow-Up’. The Player Characters have a maximum Momentum of six.

If a Player Character has access to no Momentum, he can instead give the Game Master Threat. It is the equivalent of Momentum, but for NPCs. It is primarily used in the same fashion, but for NPCs.

In addition to access to Momentum, a Player Character has his own resource to fall back on. This is Spirit, his inner reserves of concentration and stamina. It can be spent to add an extra twenty-sided die to a test or to re-roll one. It can also be spent to avoid an injury. It can be recovered by resting, spending Momentum (as per ‘Second Wind’), gaining an ‘Adrenalin Rush’ in return for increasing the Game Master’s pool of Threat, and through a Player Character’s Bonds. If a Player Character loses all of his Spirit, he becomes exhausted, which means he can be weary, breathless, confused, and so on. This will mean he will automatically fail tests related to the type of exhaustion and suffer a penalty on all others, until he rests.

How does combat work?
Combat in the Dreams And Machines: Quickstart Guide is kept simple. A Player Character has five options: ‘Attack’, ‘Counterattack’, ‘Avoid Danger’, ‘Confront Problem’, and ‘Define Truth’. Actual attacks are contested rolls, so the attacker has to roll more successes than the defender. ‘Counterattack’ allows an attack back after a successful defence, whilst ‘Confront Problem’, and ‘Define Truth’ are in general more appropriate for situations where there is danger and confrontation, but not necessarily a fight. If a Player Character or NPC suffers an Injury, then they are defeated, although some NPCs can suffer multiple Injuries. Spirit can be spent to avoid an Injury, whilst armour will reduce the amount of Spirit necessary to avoid the Injury.
What do you play?
‘Shelter’ is set in and around the settlement of New Mossgrove, a trade town standing within the shadow of one of the largest mechs anyone had ever seen. The six pre-generated Player Characters are bored teenagers who decide to explore the wilderness. Taking shelter from a sudden storm, they discover the entrance to some tunnels containing rail tracks. These lead to long abandoned industrial and other facilities, where unfortunately, the Player Characters will awaken an overly protective program and in attempting to escape both it and back to the surface, a more immediate threat.
The scenario is a short mix of exploration and combat and only focuses on what may be found underground rather than on the planet’s surface. It includes full stats for the threats that the Player Characters will face and some nice guidelines on what they use their Supply points on to create makeshift weapons and on how to use the environment.
Is there anything missing?
The scenario could have included several questions that the overprotective program will ask the Player Characters rather than rely upon the Game Master to create her own.
Is it easy to prepare?
The core rules presented in the Dreams And Machines: Quickstart Guide are relatively easy to prepare. A Game Master who already run a 2d20 System roleplaying game will have no problem with this.
Is it worth it?
Not entirely. The Dreams And Machines: Quickstart Guide only presents a snapshot of its setting and the scenario is more serviceable than spectacular. However, the rules are both well explained and implemented in the scenario.
Where can you get it?
The Dreams And Machines: Quickstart Guide is available to download here.

The town of Stennard finds itself in desperate need. Due to the constant rain, the fields have become waterlogged and the crops have failed and famine is imminent. The leader of the town, Constable Clarice Hems, has turned to desperate measures and sent the town’s best hunters into the forbidden lands to the west. Hopefully, despite their reputation for being grim and foreboding, even home to evil creatures, the hunters will be able to return with sources of game that will keep the inhabitants of Stennard alive during the forthcoming winter.
Unfortunately, the party has failed to return, and Constable Stennard has been forced to put the callout for help, not just in Stennard, but also the nearby towns, in searching for the missing hunters. Those from near and far—at least as far as the closet town—have assembled in the town hall and following instructions and promise of ten copper piece reward—are ready to follow the road out of Stennard and into the dreary, blighted lands to the west. This is the set-up for The Precipice of Corruption, a scenario for Goodman Games’ Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game, the Dungeons & Dragons-style retroclone inspired by ‘Appendix N’ of the Dungeon Master’s Guide for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition.

The Precipice of Corruption is published by Breaker Press Games and is a Character Funnel. This is a feature of Dungeon Crawl Classics, a scenario specifically designed for Zero Level Player Characters in which initially, a player is expected to roll up three or four Level Zero characters and have them play through a generally nasty, deadly adventure, which surviving will prove a challenge. Those that do survive receive enough Experience Points to advance to First Level and gain all of the advantages of their Class. The Precipice of Corruption is a linear affair, really directing the progress of the Player Characters from the moment they set out on foot from Stennard until they confront the one responsible for the disappearance of the hunters and something much worse in a temple to a vile and corrupt god. Where the scenario really stands out is its tone and artwork. The artwork is heavy and oppressive, run through with the stench of corruption, its style echoing that of much of the British roleplaying titles from the eighties and nineties, such as the Fighting Fantasy solo adventure series or Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. In fact, there is an amazing amount of artwork in The Precipice of Corruption, including several that the Judge will want to show her players during play. The tone matches the artwork, vile and repellent, bringing to the fore pits of reeking ordure and maggots and insects that bite and burrow into flesh. Even entering into the forbidden lands to the west is unnerving and again and again, the courage of the Player Characters will be tested. This is handled by a series of fear checks that escalate over the course of the scenario. Succeed, and a Player Character will be able to press on, but fail, and a Player Character will flee, perhaps to safety, perhaps to his death, having run full pelt, in a blind panic, into a hazard that his earlier, cooler head meant he could pass it by.
The adventure is divided into three acts. The first two acts are quite short. ‘Act I: 10 Coppers’ opens the scenario with the Player Characters in Stennard, gives them a chance to hoover up a rumour or two, and gets them to and across the river, either by fording it, or making their way through the unsettling tunnel of the bridge. ‘Act II: Across the River’ finds them on the other and gets them to the final destination of the missing hunter. Here the Player Characters must figure out how to open an otherwise impenetrable door and get inside and onto ‘Act III: The Temple of Herlezzect’. This is the final part of the scenario where all will be revealed the Player Characters, and again, the design of this temple to the Debased God and Patron of Deceit, Corruption, and Decay, is as linear as the rest of the scenario. However, it is not a matter of the Player Characters walking in and making their way to final Hall of Corruption, the inner sanctum. In the warm and foetid air of the temple, they will assaulted and harassed from all sides by Nolids, a tribe of corrupted and degenerate men who have been warped into goblin-like creatures by Herlezzect’s influence and decided to cut of their eyelids in homage, using the cracks in the walls on both sides of the route. Their senses will be constantly assailed by the stench of rotting ordure and the buzzing of insects. There are moments of relief and perhaps even of civilisation, but they are spoiled by the practices and attitudes of the Orange Coven which worships Herlezzect and whose members staff the temple. The final confrontation is intended to be anything other than a ‘TPK’ or ‘Total Party Kill’. ‘Gorrecck the Lidless’, the big monster of the scenario is capable of slaughtering them to a man, Halfling, Elf, or Dwarf, but the advice tells the Judge to play up his arrogance and have him grandstand, rather than run amok. Even so, with the support of magic from a member of the Orange Coven, this is still a challenging fight, just as it should be at the end of a scenario. Options other than simply fighting ‘Gorrecck the Lidless’ are mentioned, but these are not going to go well for the Player Characters.
The Precipice of Corruption is supported with detailed NPCs and monsters. The latter includes the aforementioned Nolids, but also the maggot-like Corpse Crawlers, Giant Spitting Flies, and Scuttling Insects, all of them icky, nasty things. The former includes all of the NPCs that appear in the scenario, the most fun of which are Squelicck, the oily Nolid lieutenant to ‘Gorrecck the Lidless’, and Vela Correnwood, one of the missing hunters, whose reputation in Stennard is that of a witch. This is in fact due to her Luck attribute being so incredibly low that her bad luck not only affects her, but also those around her. This of course, includes the Player Characters, which should be entertaining for all concerned—mostly.
If there is a problem with The Precipice of Corruption, it is that can be expanded with further content. The scenario already includes several suggestions as sequels, but these are not the problem. Rather that Beaker Press Games has released several supplements that expand upon the setting that given the Judge the option of turning the scenario into more than a straightforward Character Funnel that can be run in a session or two or even as a convention scenario. For example, The Stennard Courier Vol. 1 provides details of Stennard, The Tome of Debasement adds spells specific to the Orange Coven, and Wide-eyed Terror, an extended encounter that can be included as part of the scenario. It is annoying to have to purchase all of these extras to add these options, especially when The Precipice of Corruption refers to them in its pages.
Physically, The Precipice of Corruption is solidly presented. The layout and style has a feel of that of the eighties, its art heavy, yet slightly tongue-in-cheek in places. The writing is decent, as are the maps.
The Precipice of Corruption has a lot to recommend it. As a scenario it has a dark, foetid atmosphere that, enhanced by the interior artwork, will have the players, let alone their characters, revulsed and revolted at the effluvia underfoot and the grubby, grotty insects that threaten to bite and burrow. The scenario has a surprisingly European feel to it and anyone looking for a grim and dark Character Funnel should definitely take a look at The Precipice of Corruption.

Tiny Epic Galaxies is almost, but not quite a ‘4X’ game. That is a game whose mechanics focus on ‘Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate’. Twilight Imperium, for example, is a classic example of a ‘4X’ game, but Tiny Epic Galaxies forgoes the Exterminate aspect to focus instead upon ‘Explore, Expand, Exploit’ for a competitive, but not combative board game. Tiny Epic Galaxies is a Science Fiction board game in which two to five players—though there is a solo option included—compete to exploit the abilities of planets across the galaxy, expand their fleet of rocketships, and colonise planets in order to expand their territories and become the preeminent power in the galaxy, and so win the game. Tiny Epic Galaxies is designed to played and does indeed play in thirty or so minutes and combines dice rolling and rerolling mechanics, player Follow mechanics, order assignment, and secret objectives. The third in the Tiny Epic series, following on from Tiny Epic Kingdoms and Tiny Epic Defenders, it is published by Gamelyn Games and like the rest in the line, Tiny Epic Galaxies packs a lot of high-quality game components and game play into a relatively small—though not tiny—box. Consequently, if the components are a bit small for ease of use for big fingers, the game itself is easy to transport, easy to store, and occupies very little space on the table, all whilst still offering big game play.

Tiny Epic Galaxies comes with a lot of components. These consist of five Galaxy Player Mats, a Control Mat, forty Planet Cards, twelve Secret Mission Cards, seven Action Dice, twenty Ships, and five each of the Empire, Energy, and Culture Tokens, plus the twelve-page rulebook. Each Galaxy Player Mat consists of five tracks. One for Culture and Energy combined, and then one each to track a player’s Victory Points, the number of dice he can roll on his turn, the number of rocket ships he can have in his fleet, and the size of his empire. Increase the size of his empire and the number of Victory Points, dice to roll, and rocket ships to launch and move, all go up as well. To increase his empire a player will need to spend Energy and Culture.

Each player uses the Control Mat when it is their turn and it primarily has spaces for the dice as a player uses them. It also summarises all of the actions and has a Converter space which is used to sacrifice two dice in order to get the result a player wants on a third. One minor issue is that there is only one Control Mat and it would have been useful for every player to have one for ease of use.

The game’s objectives consist of the Planet Cards and the Secret Mission Cards. Each Planet Card is illustrated with a picture of a planet, which is surrounded by a track. This is the Colonisation Track which a player will move a ship along to in order to claim the planet and add it to his galaxy. It has a Victory Point value, ranging between one and seven, the greater the Victory Point value, the longer it takes to colonise. Lastly, it has a special ability. For example, ‘All players harvest 1 Energy, but you harvest 2 Energy’, ‘Spend 2 Energy to advance +2 Diplomacy’, ‘Utilise the action of an un-colonised planet’, or ‘Reroll any of your inactive dice’. A player can use a planetary ability by landing a ship on it or if he has it in his galaxy. Secret Mission Cards provide a player with a means of scoring points in secret and an objective to aim as well building his galaxy. For example, ‘Gain 2 if you have all of your ships in your galaxy at the end of the game’ or ‘Gain 3 if you have the most planets at the end of the game’.

The game’s seven dice are marked with six symbols, each indicating an action that a player can do. These are ‘Move A Ship’, ‘Acquire Energy’, ‘Acquire Culture’, ‘Diplomacy’, ‘Economic’, and ‘Utilise A Colony’. The ‘Move A Ship’ action lets a player land a ship on a planet and use its ability or allow it to enter orbit in readiness to move it along the colonise track on each planet. ‘Acquire Energy’ and ‘Acquire Culture’ add a point to the track on the player’s Galaxy Player Mat. The amount in either case depends upon the planets the player has assigned his ships to currently. The ‘Diplomacy’ and the ‘Economic’ actions enable a player to move one of his ships along the Colonise Track of a planet depending upon whether the planet is susceptible to Economic or Diplomatic influence. Lastly, ‘Utilise A Colony’ enables a player to either upgrade his galaxy and once he has added a colony to his empire, he can activate its ability.

At the beginning of the game, each player receives four ships and a Galaxy Mat plus associated tokens. Initially, a player can only use two ships, but can add the other two during play. He also receives two Secret Mission Cards and chooses one of them. Several Planet Cards are placed down for the players to try and claim. These will be refreshed as they are claimed one by one.

On a turn, a player rolls the dice and then uses the symbols rolled to undertake actions. It is as simple as that, the player making the best use of the symbols rolled and their associated actions. A player can reroll his dice as many times he wants, but for every reroll after the first, he has to pay an Energy cost. However, there is a wrinkle and that is Tiny Epic Galaxies’ ‘Follow’ mechanic. This is similar to that of Glory to Rome, which allowed the other players to immediately do the same action that the current player has just done. However, in Tiny Epic Galaxies, the Following players have to pay a point of Culture. Thus, it is important for players to build up their Culture so that they can do Follow actions. On the downside, the Follow mechanic does mean that a player’s turn can be interrupted over and over with Follow actions.

Play continues until a player has accrued twenty-one Victory Points. Then play continues until everyone has had the same number of turns. After that, Secret Mission cards are revealed and Victory Points are awarded for those. The player with the most Victory Points is the winner.

Besides keeping his Culture high, a player needs to keep a balance between building up his galaxy and gaining colonies. Building up his galaxy has the benefit of giving a player both extra ships to move around and more dice to roll. Gaining colonies gives a player ready access to their special abilities, as opposed to a player simply landing a ship on a colony in play to use it once. Although the primary interaction between players is via the Follow action, players can also interact through the effects of the various special abilities of the planets and racing to colonise a planet.

Physically, Tiny Epic Galaxies is very nicely produced. If the Galaxy Mats for each player and the Control Mat are a bit small, they are still clear and easy to read. The quality of the game is very good, but the inclusion of wooden spaceships and tokens just gives it that extra touch of class. Similarly, the fact that the wooden spaceships are designed to look like classic space opera rocketships gives it another touch of class, though a retro one. The rules are easy to read and understand. One minor issue is that everything does not quite fit in the game’s box. It is very full and everything goes in, but the lid is not quite flush. Nevertheless, Tiny Epic Galaxies is a good-looking game that also feels pleasingly tactile.

Tiny Epic Galaxies is a fantastic filler, which not only fits into a thirty-minute window with its playing time, but offers a player a wide variety of actions, both in terms of dice actions and the special abilities of the colonies, and then of course in the planets they can attempt to colonise. There is also enough variety in the number of planets available to give the game plenty of replay value. And then there is the theme, which Tiny Epic Galaxies simply does perfectly. In fact, Tiny Epic Galaxies is the perfect ‘3X’ board game—‘Explore, Expand, Exploit’—and the fact that it does it in a perfectly appointed, ‘tiny’ fashion without losing any game play or components just makes it that bit better.

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

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What is it?
Eurmal’s Truth is a scenario for use with RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha which presents a simple, straightforward plot outline that the Game Master can run and prepare for a single session’s worth of play.

It is a two page, full colour 257.16 KB PDF.

The layout is tidy, the artwork rough, but serviceable. It does need an edit.

The scenario is can be easily be adapted to the rules system of the Game Master’s choice.
Where is it set?As written, Eurmal’s Truth takes in the lands of any clan of the Locaem tribe, specifically beginning at Salvi Top. However, with some adjustment, the scenario can be placed anywhere where the presence of Eurmali is accepted and has been under the occupation of the Lunar Empire.
Who do you play?
Eurmal’s Truth does not require any specific character type. Worshippers of Eurmal are not required, but a shaman could be useful.
What do you need?
Eurmal’s Truth requires RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha only. However, The Book of Red Magic and both Cults of RuneQuest: The Lightbringers and Cults of RuneQuest: The Earth Goddesses may be useful for the cult connections.
What do you get? Eurmal’s Truth is a murder mystery. Not so much a ‘whodunnit’ as a ‘didtheydoit’. Just as respected priest is about to acclaim the new King of the Locaem, an Eurmali, a member of the local clown society, not only accuses him of murder, but gives the location of the body too. With such a claim hanging over his head, the acclamation cannot be made, the priest’s status is in doubt, and his family is affronted. This situation must be sorted out, the priest’s guilt or innocence verified, and the accusing Eurmali proven to be either a lie or telling the truth. Fortunately, the Eurmali knows where the body is and the Player Characters are passing by—and as a neutral party with no interest in local politics or events, are requested to investigate.
The plot really has two strands. Determining whether the priest is guilty or not and once determined, what the Player Characters do with the information. The priest’s family have an interest, in particular, in ensuring that he continues to hold such an important position and role in the clan. The scenario details both the site of the ‘possible’ body dump and gives suggestions as to possible consequences of what the Player Characters discover and what they do with the information.
The scenario does require some development upon the part of the Game Master. She will need to create and develop some NPCs, in particular, the Eurmali accompanying the Player Characters and the members of the tribal ring and the priest’s family. Stats may also be required depending upon the actions of the Player Characters. This is not a criticism of Eurmal’s Truth, since there is only so much that can be packed into even a detailed, two-page scenario outline.
Eurmal’s Truth is short, simple, and to the point. It is easy to prepare and run, and it is easy to slot into an ongoing campaign, especially if the Player Characters are travelling somewhere or the Game Master wants a short interlude or side Quest or there are fewer players in the group than normal.
More scenarios in this format this would be a welcome addition to the the Jonstown Compendium.
Also, the alternative title, ‘The Bear Facts’ would have worked.
Is it worth your time?Yes—Eurmal’s Truth is a short, sharp, sweet plot that the Game Master can quickly prepare and drop into her campaign.No—Eurmal’s Truth involves those irritating buggers, the Eurmali, and anyway the Game Master’s campaign is not set in Sartar.Maybe—Eurmal’s Truth does involve the Eurmali and not everyone is comfortable with the tricksters in play, but here the scenario plays up to their nature as disruptive force for good.

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

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

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Name: The FloodPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Cesar Silva

Setting: Jazz Age New EnglandProduct: Scenario
What You Get: Nineteen page, 2.06 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: If you go down in the woods today, you’re sure of a big surprise—Deep Ones!Plot Hook: A missing persons case sends the Investigators deep into the weird woods of New England
Plot Support: Staging advice and two Mythos creatures.Production Values: Excellent
Pros# The Sinister Secret of (the) Saltmarsh# Simple, but not straightforward plot# Easy to adapt to other time periods# Mysophobia# Ichthyophobia# Teraphobia
Cons# Needs a very strong edit# ‘Glens’ of New England?# NPC descriptions, but no stats# Simple, but not straightforward plot# Instructions to draw the map, instead of an actual map
Conclusion# Very serviceable plot undone by a lack of maps and NPC stats# Unsettling small town horror that could be better and easier to run

The City is one of contrasts and contradictions. Of gleaming skyscrapers from where the Trusts control every aspect of commerce and politics and governance, whilst the majority of the populace reside in crumbling, concrete tower blocks or alleyway-ridden rookeries. Of buildings without end and no city limits, yet few rarely travel beyond the confines of their community. Of the advanced technology that only the rich and powerful have access to versus the rickety, often make do devices that the masses have—the rusting machinery they have to work with in the factories, mills, workshops, and mines, the guttering, reeking fish oil lamps and flickering electrics with which they light their homes, and the dim televisions and squawking talkboxes they have for entertainment. Of the cleanliness of the rich and the churches versus the squalor of the slums and the streets. Of the humanity to be found there versus the inhumanity of the petty bylaws enforced by the authorities and the nightmares that stalk the streets—killers such as the Ticktock Man and the Iron Lady and the Shifted, strange entities barely whispered of in the darkest of corners of pubs and speakeasies. The City is divided by massive series of concentric canals, crossed mainly by skiffs due to the lack bridges, the iron for them going into the railway which clanks and groans its way around The City, policed heavily and often heavy-handedly by the Transit Militia. The City is a Dickensian nightmare filtered through the films Brazil, Delicatessen, and Dark City, where life is mean and paltry, but there are those that will stand up to the narrow-mindedness of the authorities, of the avariciousness of the Trusts, the viciousness of the gangs, and worse. They do this not for themselves, but for their corner and their community, even if it means causing trouble. This is the setting for A|State.
A|State was originally published by Contested Ground Studios in 2004 as a traditional roleplaying game that presented a fascinating setting, but unfortunately no real idea what it was about or what the players and their characters were supposed to do. A|State, Second Edition returns to the setting of The City and provides a reason to explore its dystopian dimensions as well as shifting to a more modern set of roleplaying mechanics that emphasise both player agency and its consequences. A|State, Second Edition is published by Handiwork Games and it uses the Forged in the Dark rules, first seen in Blades in the Dark, published by Evil Hat Productions in 2017. In A|State, Second Edition, the Player Characters are Troublemakers, who have banded together to form an Alliance, which seeks to protect and improve the Corner and its surrounding community that they call home. In the process, they will travel across The City, further than any other members of their community, discover secrets, and more importantly, in returning to the Corner, bring usually unwanted attention upon themselves and their community, and accrue trouble. The Corner itself is not predefined, but created collectively during the roleplaying game’s set-up process and through play, the players and their Troublemakers can expand and upgrade its features in ways which grant them further benefits whilst also having to protect the newly added Claims.
A Troublemaker in A|State has three Attributes and twelve Actions. The three Attributes are Insight, Prowess, and Resolve. These represent a Troublemaker’s ability to resist bad consequences. Each Attribute has four Action Ratings associated with it. Examine, Find, Scrounge, and Tinker for Insight; Fight, Sneak, Touch, and Wreck for Prowess; and Care, Command, Charm, and Persuade for Resolve. Action Ratings vary in value between zero and four. The value for Attributes are equal to the number of associated Action Ratings which have points in them and not the number points in the Action Ratings. A Troublemaker has an Origin, an Upbringing, and Faith; one or more special abilities; an Escape, such as Faith or Gambling, as means of relieving stress, but which can also become a Vice; and potentially one or more Trusted Allies. This is with another member of the Alliance, another Troublemaker, and must be agreed between the two Troublemakers and their players.
Troublemaker creation begins by selecting a Playbook. A|State gives seven Playbooks. These are the Stalwart, who uses politics to improve the Corner; the Dinginsmith, who uses small computing devices called dingins and other advanced technology not readily accessible to the general populace of The City; the Ghostfighter, a warrior renowned for his stealth and skill with the preternaturally sharp ceramic knives they wield and the scars from wounds closed by adhesive; the Lostfinder, revered for his ability to find things; the Mapmaker, turned to whenever an intermediary or dealmaker is required; the Sneakthief, who avoids confrontation and steals from the wealthy and the cruel; and the Stringer, citizen-journalist who feeds the constantly turning over media machine of The City. Each Playbook provides base values into two Action Ratings and a player assigns another four points. Each Playbook suggests where to assign them, but the player is free to decide. The player also selects a Special Ability, notes his Troublemaker’s special equipment, and rolls for Backing Faction, a faction in The city which supports the Troublemaker. The player though does not have to choose the standard version of each Playback, for all seven provide three alternatives and what to choose to create them. Thus, the alternatives to the Dinginsmith are the Wiretapper, who accesses The City’s communications for information; the Fulgurator, a member of the Fulgurator’s Guild and works with The City’s railway network; and the Scientist, who examines the nature of The City. Once a player has chosen his Troublemaker’s playback, he also adds Troublemaker’s Origin, Upbringing, Faith, and Escape.
Hope Botchlethorpe – Lostfinder
INSIGHT 2Examine 0 Find 2 Scrounge 2 Tinker 0
PROWESS 0Fight 0 Sneak 0 Touch 0 Wreck 0
RESOLVE 3Care 1 Command 0 Charm 1 Persuade 1
Special AbilityAntiquarian
Special ItemInvestigation Kit
Origin: Lower middle class, medium-sized businessUpbringing: ApprenticedFaith: Third Church of God the ArchitectEscape: GamblingBacking Faction: Professor Pohler’s Historical Institute
Once the players have their Troublemakers and their Alliance, they work together to create the Corner their Troublemakers are protecting. This is done by choosing a spot on the map of The City and then the Crossroads, the central meeting point for the Alliance, such as the unstable waiting room of an abandoned railway station or the dusty attic of a tax records storage depot. This is placed on one of the really quite lovely local maps which will become unique to the Troublemakers’ Alliance as the game progresses. The players select a Reputation, such as Ambitious or Rough, assigns points to its own associated Action Ratings, sets its Morale and Resources values, and adds two Qualities like Bombed Out or Towering. Factions, which can be a Trust, Government, Enforcement, Media, or Criminal, and range in Tier 0 or known on the block to Tier VI or guides the whole city, and take an interest in the Corner to provide potential allies and enemies. This includes the initial Claims that the Troublemakers will want to add to their Corner. Each faction will have its Faction Record which tracks it actions and influence on the Corner as well as NPCs that the Troublemakers can have relationships with. In general, Troublemaker creation is easier than Corner creation, but together their set-up process will take a session for their own.
Mechanically, A|State is quite simple. To have a Troublemaker undertake an action, his player decides on the action’s goal and the Game Master sets its associated risk and reward. The player will roll a number of six-sided dice equal to an Action Rating. Extra dice can be added and rolled if a fellow Troublemaker helps in the action, for suffering either grief or pushing the Troublemaker, and from Special Items and Special Abilities. Pushing the Troublemaker will cause him to suffer stress, whilst grief is narrative consequence, such as collateral damage, losing an item, pushing a Trouble Clock onwards, and so on. Once the dice have been rolled, the player selects the highest value rolled. If this is a six, the action is successful; if four or five, it is successful, but either imperfect or with an added complication; and on a one to three, it fails. Essentially, the equivalent of ‘Yes’, ‘Yes, but…’, and ‘No’. Further, the players collaborate with the Game Master to determine what happens and before the roll is made have the opportunity to manipulate any reward or risk, whether due to a Special Ability, pushing the Troublemaker, or pushing the reward at a cost of a bigger risk. This has its own Risk/Reward Grid for use in play.
Primary Rewards take the form of ticks on the Progress Clock towards the Alliance’s objectives, increasing the quality of an item or tool, or altering the scale of the action. Risks typically add ticks to the Threat Clock, but other Consequences can add complications to a situation, lose opportunities, and even harm the Troublemaker. The latter is how combat works in A|State and when a Troublemaker does suffer harm, he can either block it via any armour worn (after which the armour must be repaired) or he can resist using the associated Attribute. This inflicts Stress and if the Troublemaker takes too much Stress, he can suffer a Stress Condition such as Obsessed, Reckless, or Vicious. The Stress will need to be relieved either via the Troublemaker’s Escape or his letting his guard down, but this can leave him open to further trouble. It should be noted that the use of firearms in any situation always increases the nature of the risk associated with an action.
What is not made immediately clear is that mechanically, A|State is a player-facing roleplaying game. This means that throughout, the Game Master does not roll any dice. Thus, the player will not just be rolling to see if his Troublemaker succeeds or fails, but in some cases, whether an NPC succeeds or fails.
A|State is played in three phases—downtime play, the mission phase, and mission fallout. Missions are intentionally broad, such as Broker, Confront, Deliver, or Evade, and the players will work together to determine the nature of the mission and what it requires, but only to an extent. The aim here is to get to the point where the mission becomes risky and what Troublemakers now do matters. The downtime play is a period when the Alliance can recover from a previous mission, make some coin, engage in a community project, build trust, and so on. It also allows time for personal projects or private jobs. A Troublemaker can also pursue Hidden Agendas which can come into play through the factions whose backing they enjoy, but can suffer consequences if they do not purse an assigned Hidden Agenda.
There is really very good advice for the players and the Game Master, but the advice for the players does feel slightly hidden in the rulebook. For the Game Master, the advice on running A|State is extensive, beginning with a look at using the clock to track progress in a number of different aspects of The City and the campaign. These include Goal Clocks, Threat Clocks, and more. In the long term, the Danger Clock will track new problems and difficulties that the Troublemakers will face as it generates new Troubles for them. These feed into their own Trouble Engine, which tracks how a Trouble, which might be a change in the mood at the Corner or the disappearance of a contact or friend, changes and escalates, and how the factions might react in the meantime, if the Troublemakers do nothing.
The last third of A|State is devoted to describing The City itself. It never eases up on its extremes and its brutality, such as the Deathdealers patrolling after cold snaps for the dead who have died from hypothermia or been killed because they want or have access to the cold or the mikefighters which flit and dogfight in the skies above the city, piloted by children because of their size. Short sections break down aspects of The City such as weather, travel, law and order, technology and industry, and more, all with advice on how to use each of the sections. There is a wealth of detail here for the Game Master to bring colour and flavour into her portrayal of The City and that is before a series of two-page spreads detail the numerous neighbourhoods to found across The City. These include notable powers in each neighbourhood, what everyone knows, transport links, locations, what might be known on a Corner there, and ‘Faces in the Crowd’, NPCs that the Game Master can quickly bring into play. For example, Mire End is a large crime-ridden neighbourhood actively denied help by the nearby Three Canals Authority, slowly mouldering into the ground, and known for its for dampness due to its ruined drainage system and the fact that most of the population has turned to the Hohler Gang for help and work. Its main point of access is via the ancient, creaking chain ferry from Folly Hills district and the Mire End Terminus is one of the major buildings in the district. Even the mission from the Third Church is run down and poorly funded by the bishopric, whilst some of the Hohler affiliated gangs get by like everyone else, some want to buck the situation and will do anything to do that. The ‘Faces in the Crowd’ are Dandy, Fritillery, and Hoop, a trio of urchins that the Troublemakers might run into, often found snooping about and exploring the neighbourhood, much to the despair of Father Herbert at their Third Church Children’s Home. As a consequence, they probably know more than most about what is going on in Mire End.
In addition to detailing the various neighbourhoods of The City, A|State describes its various factions, from Trusts such as Arclight which sells military technology and hires out security forces and mercenaries and governing powers like the Lay Reserves Martial of the Third Church and The Transit Militia to unions such as The Venerable Society of Lock Keepers and criminal gangs such as The Third Syndicate whose assemblies can be found almost anywhere controlling whole districts through violence. Some of the mysteries of The City are detailed too, starting with The Shift, an event which changed the city, yet no one can agree on what it was, but many are sure that enabled The Shifted, monsters liked Sixfingers and Rotting Billies, to creep into The City. Other mysteries include The Bombardment, Lost Palaces, and even The City’s Edge, but again no-one can agree on what these are and were… Instead, A|State hints at options and leaves it to the Game Master to decide, or perhaps even leave it up to the players and their Troublemakers to discover and determine—if they can or even want to… There are no stats for The Shifted as there might be in another roleplaying game, but mechanically the threat they represent is going to be more narratively based and drawn from the Risks incurred on failed dice rolls.

Physically, A|State is very well presented. The artwork throughout is excellent, always focusing on the neighbourhoods of The City and their inhabitants rather than The City as a whole. The maps for developing and marking up a Corner have an engaging architectural feel to them, whilst the adverts, such as the one for a shoe store specialising in the footwear of the recently deceased, add verisimilitude and help pull the Game Master into the world of The City. That said, it does feel as it could have been better organised for ease of use and the index is not quite as useful as it could be. What is missing is examples. There are examples throughout the roleplaying game, but it never feels as if there are enough and it never feels as if they provide enough detail to help the Game Master understand how A|State works with any ease.
The original A|State was a straightforward and easy to understand roleplaying game. A|State, Second Edition is not and from the start it is going to demand a lot from both the Game Master and her players in creating the Corner and engaging in Missions, whilst the Game Master has lot of tools and details and especially clocks to keep track of as play progresses. Forged in the Dark veterans will have no issue with either, but anyone new to it, will need a gentle ramp up into play. That said, the advice for both the Game Master and the players is very good and will definitely help the Game Master understand the game and how it is played. It is still not going to be easy though.
In shifting to the mechanics of Forged in the Dark, what A|State, Second Edition does is provide the tools and means for the players and their Troublemakers to not just explore the baroque, dystopian Dickensian contrasts of The City, but make a part it of their own and something to care about and invest in. It puts giving the players and their Troublemakers a stake in their part of The City and its future first and foremost, and provides the tools for the Game Master to help the players tell their Troublemakers’ stories and that of their Corner. A|State, Second Edition is a demanding return for a setting that showed promise, but with that return and the commitment it asks for, A|State, Second Edition brings The City to life like never before.

The majority of the roleplaying that we do involves heroes in fantastic and fantasy situations. A mighty warrior holding off a horde of orcs. A powerful wizard opening a portal to another world. A skilled star pilot threading his way through an asteroid field in pursuit of pirates. A wily thief sneaking into the headquarters of a bank to break into the vault. A priest forcing back the undead through the power of faith alone. A superspy confronting a supervillain in his volcano secret base. A telepath with two heads exploring the ruins of the long past in a post-apocalyptic future. All of these situations are familiar from our roleplaying. What though if we could roleplay heroes in situations that are fantastic, but grounded in reality rather than fantasy? What if we could roleplay heroes who help others and come to the rescue of those caught in situations beyond their ability to cope with, let alone survive? Fight fires before they spread? Search mountainsides for climbers and skiers caught in avalanches? Dig into earthquake zones to find the trapped? Range across flood zones to get to those still caught? Research outbreaks of deadly diseases before they can infect more? As we have seen on the screen—big and small—all of these situations can form the basis for exciting and dramatic storytelling where the protagonists rush into danger to save others, but curiously, not in roleplay.
First Responders presents the means to roleplay exciting situations in the contemporary world where highly skilled men and women deal with emergencies and disasters—fires, floods, volcanos, earthquakes, pandemics, and even nuclear disasters. The only other roleplaying game to deal with this is Deep7’s Disaster! 1PG, but that put the Player Characters at the heart of the disaster and has them survive it rather than deal with its consequences. In First Responders, the Player Characters are ordinary men and women, but they are trained as firefighters, medics, search and rescue specialists, scientists, HAZMAT specialists, counsellors, Incident Commanders, and more. They are literally the first to respond, and in the default setting, do so as members of Sovereign Agency of Veteran Emergency Responders—or SAVER—on an international scale. The players will take on multiple characters, troupe style, drawing from a rooster of Player Characters, each with different skills, abilities, and areas of expertise, in order to ensure that the right personnel are assigned to deal a particular situation. Alternatively, First Responders can be played as a series of one-shots, with different teams still tackling different situations, but the roleplaying experience providing a genre cleanser, a change from the more fantastical fare that a roleplaying group might roleplay. First Responders is published by Monte Cook Games and is a genre supplement for the Cypher System.
As a supplement, First Responders fairly zips along, racing through its rules and advice in smart order before providing multiple scenarios that deal with a range of threats and disasters in a good third of the book. It begins though, by explaining what the Player Characters do as first responders and giving advice to the Game Master on how to run a First Responders game effectively. This means eschewing realism, or rather eschewing too much realism, whether particular techniques or terminology used by first responders, or even scientific detail—note, not science itself, but overly encumbering play with it. Everyone, players and Game Master, need to set the mood by accepting that disaster scenarios invariably mean they the first responders are against the clock and they need to act urgently, and the first responder Player Characters work together to co-ordinate a plan and then execute it. Also discussed are the types of actions that the first responders can take, and whilst they are often very physical in nature and not combat actions per se, they still involve the first responders battling against a danger, such as a fire or rising waters. That danger is actually defined in the same way as creatures and monsters are in the Cypher System, but instead of Health the danger has Threat. Thus, a first responder can ‘Suppress’ a fire or flood, to reduce its Threat; he can ‘Quell’ it to temporarily subdue or stop its progress; Vent’ a flood or fire or alter the flow of larva, to redirect the danger and effectively hinder it; and ‘Contain’ a danger to stop its spread. Other actions include the more obvious ‘Detect’, ‘Rescue’, and ‘Heal’. What have here though, is an adjustment in terminology for many of the actions that the first responders will be undertaking, from the more standard actions that Player Characters would undertake in a more fantastical Cypher System setting. There is advice here also, on consent, on the dangerous and often deadly nature of the First Responders setting, and the use or not of gallows humour. It is all good, solid advice.
In terms of what a player roleplays, First Responders explains how to use the “I am an adjective noun who verbs” phrase to create Player Characters, noting how the more fantastical language of the many options in terms of Descriptors and Foci can be applied to a real-world setting like that of First Responders. For example, “I am Brash Warrior who Stands Like a Bastion” can be a firefighter or a rescuer and “I am a Careful Explorer who Runs Away”, a volcanologist or a nuclear scientist. This does take some adjustment and some interpretation upon the part of player and Game Master, but the results are no less exciting or heroic. Useful skills are listed, as are numerous roles, whilst the Responder is a character Type—like Warrior or Adept from the Cypher System core rules—specific to First Responders. The new Foci, such as ‘Battles the Blaze’, ‘Controls the Scene’, and ‘Shuts Death’s Door’ are also specific to First Responders, but could find their way into settings. The focus of the equipment section is mostly on protective gear, much of which will actually be part of the first responders’ role, so there is very much not the need to go looking for bigger and better equipment as play. There are also few weapons in the traditional sense, just the knife and fireman’s axe, whilst the backpack pump, the charged fire hose, and so on, are treated as weapons because they are used to fight or battle the elements of the emergencies.
For the Game Master there is excellent advice on the nature of a First Responders campaign and how to run one. Most notably, the Game Master is expected to proactive in telling her players what their first responders know, since after all, they are trained in their respective fields. Introduced here is the ‘Challenge System’ as a means to present the emergencies and disasters as obstacles to be overcome in both dealing with them and the dangers that they place NPCs and the first responders in. This will often require the putting together of an Amalgamated Goal, representing a number of objectives that need to be overcome in order achieve it. Some of the dangers can be unexpected and these can be handled through Game Master Intrusions, the means of presenting greater challenges to the Player Characters in the Cypher System. Game Master Intrusions are also used to drive the escalating nature of the emergencies, known as ‘Disaster Mode’. In standard play of the Cypher System, and initially in First Responders, a mandatory Game Master Intrusion occurs when a player rolls a one on the die. In ‘Disaster Mode’, when this occurs, not only does the Game Master make an Intrusion, the range under which a mandatory Game Master Intrusion can occur also increases. Initially at one, the first time it occurs, it rises to two, the second time, it rises to three, and so on. A list of Game Master Intrusions is given here, but there are also plenty throughout the book in its sidebars. First Responders also encourages something that runs counter to the age-old advice of ‘Never split the party’, but here it is necessary. The first responders will be facing multiple, often separate difficulties, which need to be dealt with simultaneously rather than sequentially. Lastly, it suggests bringing them back together to deal with mundane issues, such cleaning equipment or aiding a friend or helping an organisation. In this, it neatly models the epilogue of an episode of a television series, where the characters have a chance to relax and recover from the dangers that they faced in the field. It also points to the one of the origins for the supplement.
In terms of disasters, First Responders explores and categorises six—fires, floods, earthquakes, nuclear disasters, pandemics, and volcanos. In each it explores the danger they represent and gives samples of each model different danger levels. Thus, for fire, there is a Small Fire, a Standard Fire, a Demanding Fire, a Difficult Fire, a Challenging Fire, and an Intimidating Fire. Each is treated like a monster with a Task Difficulty which the player must roll against to affect it when it is his first responder’s turn to act and again when trying to avoid its effects, whether that is actual damage from the fire or being engulfed by flood waters. As mentioned before, a disaster like this will have Threat which must be reduced rather than Health, though not always, as for example, flood dangers have no threat at all. First Responders does this for six of its disaster types. It provides enough detail for the Game Master to use SAVER as an organisation for her campaign, and then suggestions to use each of the six disaster types in other genres. These are thumbnail descriptions only, designed to give the Game Master ideas. As well as giving sample NPCs, First Responders suggests new Cyphers that can be used in the genre in addition to those found in the Cypher System core book. These are all subtle Cyphers, like ‘Big Breath’ or ‘Dumb Luck’, all entirely in keeping with the non-fantastical nature of the genre.
Penultimately, the Scenarios chapter provides situations which both SAVER and the first responders can come to the rescue. These all have a challenge rating of four and vary from a Collapsed Motel for earthquakes to a crashed transport truck for nuclear disasters. All are nicely detailed, with details of their Amalgamated Goals, encounters, challenges, and Game Master Intrusions, and more. Any one of them could provide a solid single session’s worth of play and if used as part of a SAVER campaign provide episodes for that. Lastly, First Responders does include a glossary of emergency responders’ terms and some sample first responders reader for play.
Physically, First Responders is very presented. Both artwork and cartography are excellent and the writing is engaging, helping to bring exciting if mundane action to life and present as something that is playable.
Even if its mechanics would not work in other roleplaying games, the advice and the situations described is so good that it actually makes First Responders the key sourcebook to opening up the no less heroic world of emergency response teams to roleplaying in general. It also works as a sourcebook for running a television style series-style campaign based around hospitals and firefighting teams, perhaps with a little bit of Soap Opera thrown in! In whatever way it is used, First Responders provides everything the Game Master needs to run an exciting and challengingly heroic campaign in the world that they already know and see in the daily news broadcasts. With First Responders, you can be heroes and it does not have to involve magic.

The Phoenix Initiative is a scenario for Traveller. It takes place on the world of Wochiers in the Regina Subsector of the Spinward Marches Sector and involves the classic set-up of research facility not having been heard from in a while and the Player Characters being hired to investigate. It ideally requires the Player Characters to basic training in both weapons and vacc suit, and if they do possess a starship, that it should be capable of Jump-2. The scenario includes a set of eight pre-generated Player Characters, four of which between them have the skills necessary to operate a starship as well as one of them owning a an A2 Type Far Trader. Thus, if the Player Characters own their own starship, the minimum number of Player Characters is four, but there is greater flexibility if they do not. That said, the scenario does allow the Player Characters’ employer to loan them a starship if they do not have one and to prevent piracy only a few locations are programmed into the ship’s computer to use the Jump drive. Both the mechanics and the plot of The Phoenix Initiative are straightforward enough that running it using Traveller, Classic Traveller, or Cepheus Deluxe Enhanced Edition are all easy enough to do.

The Phoenix Initiative is written by Carl Terence Vandal and begins with the Player Characters on Regina in the Spinward Marches Sector and short of funds having paid their monthly mortgage payment on their starship. In need of work, they hear of an employment opportunity with Phoenix Enterprises LIC. The company is concerned about the loss of contact from one of its research facilities and will pay handsomely for the situation to be investigated and for the safe return of the staff at the facility. The facility is on Wochiers, a nearby world declared a TAS Amber Zone due to its inhospitable environment which requires enhanced vacc suits. Wochiers is primarily known as a source of crystals, the best of which are used to enhance the performance of both starship computers and starship lasers. As the Player Characters will discover, the Law Level on Wochiers is very high and access limited, done primarily via shuttlecraft rather than starships. So, the Player characters will have to dock at the high port, and then travel down to the surface, the journey involving an engaging recognition of local customs at either end.

The journey from Wochiers Landing to the research facility is relatively straightforward—a week’s drive across the planetary surface in specially adapted ATVs. The main problem on the journey will be the environment rather than planetary species, which are for the most part passive creatures unless provoked or a lone traveller is caught outside in his vacc suit. This all sets up a mystery for the Player Characters when they do reach the research facility. There are signs of a struggle almost everywhere, a mixture of gunfire and animal attacks. The question is, what happened here and are there any survivors? Was the gunfire the result of the animal attacks or is something else going on? The Player Characters will find out, but will also find themselves being stalked by something else in the facility… This may lead to a frantic firefight…

The research facility is described in some details with various skill checks thrown in to determine what happens and what happened from room to room. The floorplans of the facility and its illustrations are decent, and the scenario is supported by a set of good Library Data entries.

The author of The Phoenix Initiative commits one cardinal sin. He does explain to the Game Master what is going on in the scenario, but leaves it right until the very end for the NPCs to do it. Which leads to a very frustrating read for the Game Master as she wonders exactly what is going on and in effect, has to find out when the Player Characters do.

Physically, The Phoenix Initiative is disappointing. It needs a good edit, it is often unnecessarily repetitive, and the map of the subsector is bitmapped and there are no names or locations on the world map. So, the Player Characters will have no idea where their journey on planet starts or ends.

The set-up in The Phoenix Initiative is incredibly familiar. A distant research base. All contact lost with the research base. Itinerant trouble-shooters hired to solve the problem. The base is home to an alien (or not) stalking and slashing the survivors after an accident. Essentially this is Death Station from Traveller Double Adventure 3: Death Station/The Argon Gambit writ large. Well, not entirely. The primary plot for it is, but the secondary plot—which does not really become apparent until the epilogue—is more interesting as it involves Duke Norris and his family, and it sets up the sequels to this scenario, Manticore and The Mariposa Affair.

The Phoenix Initiative is not a bad scenario, but it is not a good one either. It requires development in terms of presentation overall and presentation of its information. Certainly, with the completion of the latter, it might avoid—or at least ameliorate—the Game Master reading through the scenario and getting the feeling of déjà vu. However, The Phoenix Initiative does show potential in terms of presentation and detail and once past the all too familiar plot, there is promise of something more interesting to come.

The Bone Alchemist is an adventure for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. Written and published by Gaz Bowerbank—one half of the podcast, What Would The Smart Party Do?—it is designed for use with First Level Player Characters and takes place in a pseudo-Arabian Nights setting. The author suggests two possible initial locations. One is the city of Calimport in the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, the other is the great port city of Pylas Maradal in Valenar in the Eberron setting, but if not, the scenario is easily adapted to a Swords & Sorcery-style setting of the Dungeon Master’s choice. Wherever the scenario is set, a king and royal family rules the city inviolate, kept both safe and isolated from city life and any of its unpleasantness by a mixture of the royal guard and secret police. This includes the young nine-year-old prince, Masoud, whose pet pseudodragon has died, and with him unprepared accept the situation, merely thinking the beast asleep, Zoya, his mother has sought a solution to the problem and is prepared to spend deeply from the king’s purse. Unfortunately, their isolated lives have left both Zoya and Masoud gullible and thus ready to accept the ‘help’ and ‘advice’ of any of the city’s charlatans, tricksters, and opportunists. As The Bone Alchemist begins, both prince and his mother are missing, and the Royal Guard is desperate to find them. Ideally before someone tells the king…

The Bone Alchemist begins with the Player Characters in the city, in a tavern, come to meet a contact who may be able to help them find work. The scenario provides adventure hooks by Player Character Background—Acolyte, Charlatan, Noble, Sage, Soldier, and so on—to suggest why they might be there and why they might want to make contact with Equitable Ehsan, one of the city’s many wheelers and dealers. They know to meet him in a cantina, Olidammara’s Rest, which is where they find themselves in the scenario’s opening scene. In true fantasy fashion, this develops into a brawl and as a consequence, the Player Characters are either pushed or pulled into the scenario’s plot. This takes them into the bazaar where they haggle with a merchant or two, one of whom is perhaps too helpful, but will provide the Player Characters with a device which will enable them to track Prince Masoud, his mother Zoya, and his bodyguard, Atul. The device first points down to the beach where the Player Characters can gain further help, but not before delving into the first of the scenario’s two dungeons, but a dungeon with a difference! This is inside the body of a giant kraken, which a local gang is plundering for its precious alchemical components. Descending into its foul and foetid depths is optional, but doing so is to the Player Characters’ advantage. It is a ripe and bilious experience, thankfully short, but engagingly described and utterly in contrast with the rest of the scenario.

The other locations for the scenario include atop a dragon turtle, which is a great scene for a fight, and lastly, the dungeon of the true villain at the heart of the scenario, the Bone Alchemist herself. This is more like a traditional dungeon, but enlivened by some excellent descriptions and an air of decay and disregard that lingers in each and every one of its caves. Ultimately, the scenario will end with some home-truths for prince Masoud, who may have to grow up just a little, and the Player Characters either heroes or in further trouble. Either way, the scenario is supported with several hooks for the Dungeon Master to develop sequels of her own.

There is no denying that The Bone Alchemist is full of fun and inventive scenes, whether it is the brawl between the Talons, the local gang, and the palace guard in a tavern with the Player Characters caught in the middle, having to delve into the insides of the corpse of a kraken, fighting atop a dragon turtle, or fighting an undead giant goat who has already bleated out a warning! There are also pleasing descriptions for each of the scenario’s NPCs, accompanied by some flavour text that imparts what they might and how they might say it, instantly granting the Dungeon Master a feel for the NPC. Further, the author gives every scene a table of random events that enhance the action in that scene. For example, in the opening scene in Olidammara’s Rest, there is a table of rumours to glean and a table of events to throw into the combat, such as “The barkeep smashes someone over the head with a bottle from behind. One Talon or guard drops to 0 hp.” and “Equitable Ehsan appears on hands and knees, trying to crawl his way out of the carnage.” Of course, these are clichés, swiped from any one of a number of films, but they help set the tone of the brawl and thus the scene, as well as adding an element of humour, almost winking knowingly at the players in their familiarity. The combat events and random events tables are in general inventive and more tailored to their particular locations.

Yet in places the writing could be stronger, for example, the location descriptions vary in quality and ease of use. For example, the opening scene in the cantina, Olidammara’s Rest is very much underwritten in comparison, for example, to the description given of the bazaar, which is rich in detail and flavour. The Dungeon Master may want to prepare some better descriptions—the equivalent of her own ‘purple prose’—to help set the scene for her players and their characters. To be clear, not every description suffers from this, the majority of them being expressive and great scene-setting. Similarly, the villainess of the scenario, the Bone Alchemist, is fiercely underwritten and really lacks motivation.

Physically, The Bone Alchemist is clean and tidy, and well laid out. The maps are decent and the artwork also good. Throughout there are notes for the Dungeon Master which add detail and flavour. Stats are provided only for two NPCs and monsters in the scenario. The Dungeon Master will need to provide the rest, but links in the PDF connect to DnDByeond.com and the right stats in each case.

The Bone Alchemist is straightforward and easy to prepare and run or even adapt to the retroclone of your choice. Similarly, it is easy to add to any Arabian Nights or Swords & Sorcery-style setting or campaign. Above all, The Bone Alchemist provides some entertaining set scenes backed up with evocative detail and description that will help the Dungeon Master set these scenes and then bring both their action and their NPCs to life.

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

—oOo—
The first thing you notice about Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 3 is not the free gift that comes with the issue, but the price. It is almost double that of Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 2 and almost four times that of Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 1. This though is not unexpected. Published by Hachette Partworks Ltd., Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer is after all, a partwork. A partwork is an ongoing series of magazine-like issues that together form a completed set of a collection or a reference work. In the case of Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer, it is designed to introduce the reader to the world and the play of Dungeons & Dragons, specifically, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. With the tag line, ‘Learn – Play – Explore’, over the course of multiple issues the reader will learn about Dungeons & Dragons, how it is played and what options it offers, the worlds it opens up to explore, and support this with content that can be brought to the table and played. Over the course of eighty issues, it will create a complete reference work for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, provide scenarios and adventures that can be played, and support it with dice, miniatures, and more. The first issue of any partwork will always be inexpensive, the second issue more expensive, and the third and subsequent issues full price. The first issue, if not the second, is a loss leader, designed to pull the buyer in, and hopefully engage him enough to purchase further issues or even subscribe. So it is with Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer.

Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 3 does, of course, include a free gift. This is a set of character miniatures, essentially done in full colour on acrylic sheets. The four correspond to the four Player Characters given characters in Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 1. Thus they include a Human Rogue, a Hill Dwarf Cleric, a Wood Elf Fighter, and a Halfling Wizard. The tallest stands about twenty millimetres tall and each comes with a clear plastic base. They are easy to assemble and perfectly serviceable. It is a pity that there are no tokens included to represent any of the monsters that have appeared in each of the three issues of the partwork to date.
Issues of Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer contain sections dedicated to the seven gameplay elements—‘Sage Advice’, ‘Character Creation’, ‘The Dungeon Master’, ‘Spellcasting’, ‘Combat’, ‘Encounters’, and ‘Lore’—of Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 3 focuses on just three of these—‘Sage Advice’, ‘Character Creation’, and ‘Lore’, although it does also include an ‘Encounter’ which is exclusive to the partwork. The ‘Sage Advice’ looks at the one thing and explains how it works. Or rather several things and explains how they work. These are ‘Conditions’ which covers Blinded, Charmed, Frightened, Restrained, and more. These are clearly and simply explained.
‘Character Creation’ covers several background aspects to the process. ‘Introduction to Skills’ provides exactly that along with an explanation of skill proficiencies and it is accompanied by ‘Skills Explained’, which details each of the skills in Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. Unlike in the previous issues where only the one is detailed; Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 3 describes two species. One is the ‘Elves’, the other is the ‘Halflings’. For the former, various Mythical Lineages are mentioned for Elves in Faerûn, such as winged Avariel and the shape changing Lythari, along with the Wood Elves, Sun Elves, Moon Elves, and Drow. Also given is some background to the arrival of the Elves in Faerûn and the cause of the Crown wars. Similar treatment is accorded to the latter, though the Halflings will feel much the same as in other fantasy settings.
The Wizard is the subject of much of the rest of the issue. ‘Wizard’ provides description of the Class, what Wizards do, their desire for knowledge, the importance of their spellbooks, the various schools of magic. Its companion piece is ‘Wizard Features’. Or rather, ‘Wizard Feature’, for whilst the Wizard cannot necessarily do quite as much as other Classes, this article looks at just the one, which is its spellcasting ability. Thus its looks at how the Spell Attack Bonus and the Spell Save DC works for the Wizard and then how a Wizard’s spellbook is used, how Arcane Recovery works, and what cantrips are. In comparison to the ‘Rogue Features’ article from Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 2, which just looked at the Backstab feature, ‘Wizard Features’ does not feel as one-note. For although it is covering the one feature, that is, spellcasting, there are several aspects to its subject, it is talking about more than the one thing. On the downside, it does feel more technical and of course, it is. Learning and casting spells is always going to be more technical than stabbing someone in the back. 
Penultimately, as is now traditional in the partwork, the ‘Lore’ section proves to the shortest section in Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 3. ‘The Red Wizards’ continues the issue’s theme of wizards by examining the primary wizarding threat of the Forgotten Realms. This includes a description of their towering plateau home of Thay with its volcanically ashen skies, their lich leader, Szass Tam, explains what a lich is, and notes how Thay interacts with other nations, and in particular, how Red Wizards explore the surrounding lands in search of power and influence. It is a solid overview that nicely prepares the Dungeon Master for the last part of the issue.
As has also become traditional, the last part of Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 3 includes an encounter that at six pages long, is the longest section in the issue. In keeping with the issue’s wizardly theme, the encounter, ‘Adventure 1 – 3 The Tower of Iron Will’, not only involves a wizard, it involves one of the infamous Red Wizards of Thay! As with other encounters in the partwork, it is set in and around the village of Phandalin, in the Forgotten Realms, more recently detailed in the campaign, Phendelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk. The Player Characters are hired by Sister Garaele, an Elf Cleric of Tymora, who maintains a temple of luck and good fortune in the village. A few days ago, she sent a scout, Naivara Rothenel, to investigate an observatory in the mountains nearby where she knew a Red Wizard had taken up residence. She wanted to know if the Red Wizard posed a threat to Phandalin and the surrounding region. Unfortunately, Naivara Rothenel has not returned and now Sister Garaele wants to find out what has happened to her. The encounter proper begins outside the observatory. The building consists of just eight locations, all quite detailed and all quite eerie, dark, and gloomy as it appears to have been abandoned. There is a small mystery here to be solved and a fight or two to be had, and the tone of the encounter is creepy and weird, but quite constrained. Since Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 3 was published in October prior to Halloween, the ghostly nature of the encounter feels timely and appropriate.
Physically, Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 3 is very well presented, in full colour using the Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition trade dress and lots and lots of Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition artwork. So, the production values are high, colourful, and the writing is supported with lots of ‘Top Tip’ sections. The result is that Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 3 is as physically engaging as the first two issues, but the glued together spine and disparate nature of the contents highlight how the partwork is designed to be pulled apart and its pages slotted into the binders that will be available for Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer as a whole.
Now that Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer has reached its standard price, the question of whether it offers good value for money is difficult one to answer. Given their cheaper prices, the first two issues undoubtedly did, especially Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 1. Of course, price was always going to rise. This is how partworks work. So undoubtedly, Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 3 does not offer as much good value for money as either Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 1 or Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 2. Yet what it does offer is a reasonable set of plastic miniatures, some solid and useful information if you are new to Dungeons & Dragons, and an encounter that can be run in a couple of hours involving five people at a price less than that of a cinema ticket. In addition, it is strongly themed, from looking at Player Character Wizards and enemy Wizards to facing one of them in the issue’s encounter. And if the players have seen the film, Dungeons & Dragons: No Honour Among Thieves, they get the added bonus of facing a Red Wizard of Thay, so they get to be like the heroes they saw on screen. Further, the encounter, ‘Adventure 1 – 3 The Tower of Iron Will’ is exclusive to Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer and it does tie in with the campaign, Phendelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk. So, there is value there if you look for it, and of course, it has to be remembered that Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer is not aimed at the veteran Dungeons & Dragons player or Dungeon Master, but those new to the roleplaying game and those wanting to learn at a gentler pace. For the veteran Dungeons & Dragons player or Dungeon Master, the extras like the miniatures in this issue and exclusivity of the encounter may well appeal to the collector.
Overall, Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 3 is better than you might think. It still feels expensive for what get, but for learning the world’s most popular roleplaying game at a stately pace with a gift thrown in, it is worth looking at.
Where Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 1 was undoubtedly great value for money, Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 2 does not represent as good value as that first issue did. Which is to be expected. This is how a partwork works. For the prospective Dungeon Master, the encounter, ‘Adventure 1 – 2 The Forgotten Vault’ is a decent enough continuation of ‘Adventure 1 – 1 King of the Hill’ from Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 1, especially if added to the Phandelver and Below – The Shattered Obelisk campaign. However it is used, the encounter at least offers a couple of hours’ worth of play. In fact, an experienced Dungeon Master could run both encounters in the space of an evening or afternoon. Overall, Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 2 is a good continuation of Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 1, but not as good as Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Issue 1.

 October was my time to host the RPG Blog Carnival. This year my topic was Horrors, Gods, and Monsters. For this, I did a lot of postings about my Black Forest Mythos set of gods and monsters.

I did not get through all my Gods and Monsters so I am going to keep on going.

But there were others that participated as well.

The Ideocron of The Oracular Somnambulist had Spooky Scary Skeletons! with tables to make your skeletons more spooky and interesting.

Codex Anathema always has good stuff. Their entry covered "Horrors, Gods and Monsters" AND they helped me practice my Spanish. ¡Gracias!

Sea of Stars gave us a new monster, the Thornkin.  You know I love new monsters.

Seed of Worlds expands on their petty gods with d8 natures of this quasi-godlike entity. Tables for your OSR (or really any) game.

Stuffed Crocodile, one I have been lurking at for a bit for their Dark Eye content, gives us a new monster, Wiedergänger. This one will be a lot of fun to use!

Finally, we have V Donnut Valley. We get a monster and a god.  Not to mention that they are hosting the November Blog Carnival, Let’s Party! Festivals and ceremonies! I will certainly have to find something for my group of gods here.

I hope you enjoyed all these entries and the ones I did! Looking forward to participating again next year.

The party reaches Encounter Area #2 of this maze. They encounter a Purple Worm.

Note: One of my desires here is to have some "classic" Monster Manual monsters here. With some tweaks here and there.

Well...not so much of a hangover, really. Covid-19 still has me down (I tested positive again just a bit ago).

October Movie Challenge

Follow Timothy's board October Horror Movie Challenge on Pinterest.

Last year I said I'd hit over 500 by this year. Well...I was not expecting to get sick so I am seven short. Too bad really. It would have been nice to hit that 500-movie mark. 

RPG Blog Carnival

I'll get a wrap-up of this this week (or next). I am going to do more of these gods and get a recap of what others have posted as well.

 Opening the large iron doors from Level 10, the party walks through an open expanse. In front of them is a large stone archway flanked on either side by two large gargoyles (the mundane sort) with burning braziers at their feet. When the party gets close, the braziers alight. The gargoyles then recite the following:

In shadows deep, where bravery has led,Adventurers with hearts of courage bred,Before you lies a path of chilling dread,The Labyrinth of Terror, where fear's thread.

You've ventured far, your courage on display,With every step, you've faced the darkest fray,But now, heed well the words I must convey,For in this maze, only the strongest may.

The Vampire Queen, her power bound in night,Within these walls, she plots her vile delight,Turn back, dear souls, before the fading light,For wisdom now demands you take your flight.

The bravest, strongest, wisest shall endure,In this dread maze, where terrors still obscure,In unity, your fate you must secure,Or face the Queen, with darkness to ensure.

The party stands before the entrance to the Labyrinth of Terror.

The walls are made of a uniform gray stone that seems to move with distorted faces out of the corner of the eye. Looking at them directly though shows only gray stone. The hallways are 25 ft apart, the ceiling is 50ft high. The walls run from the floor to the ceiling. The walls can't be broken down. Any damage appears to repair itself once the party looks away.

--

This month will the Labyrinth of Terror. Instead of a series of rooms there are marked encounter areas the party may or may not find. I'll detail each encounter area.

Here are the Encounter Areas.

Monsters are tied to their areas by magical compulsion. Suitable prey and food is teleported in from parts (and persons) unknown. They are under a curse so they never age.

And this is the correct path out.

 Still down with Covid. So, I only have about one movie left in me. Tonight's topic is "All Hallow's Eve" and there were a bunch of movies I wanted to watch. But in the end I landed on another one I had wanted to see for a bit. Thankfully it also takes place on Halloween.

Last Night in Soho

Matt Smith, Anya Taylor-Joy, and Thomasin McKenzie as the stars? Dianna Rigg and Terrance Stamp as special guest stars? Yeah, you can see why I wanted to see it.

Thomasin McKenzie plays Eloise "Ellie" Turner. A nice girl who wants to be a fashion designer. She lives with her grandmother, loves music and fashion from the 1960s, oh, and she sees the ghost of her dead mother ever so often.  Ellie gets accepted to the London College of Fashion in London and it is obvious that this little Cornish girl is not as sophisticated as her peers.  Uncomfortable with all the partying and her roommate bringing home guys she seeks out an apartment for rent from old Ms. Collins (Dianna Rigg).  

Soon Ellie starts having visions. Very, very detailed visions of the life of a girl her age in the 1960s, Sandie played by the always amazing Anya Taylor-Joy. Ellie meets Jack, played with fantastic creepiness by Matt Smith, who wants to help her achieve her dreams of singing on stage. 

Ellie wakes up and begins having trouble determining what is real and what isn't. She also starts seeing an older man (Terrance Stamp) everywhere who seems to know a lot about her. 

Soon Ellie's visions are getting more and more violent. Jack is not Sandie's manager but her pimp. Each vision is getting worse to the point where she she sees Sandie and Jack fighting in the same room she is now staying in. Ellie is convinced that Jack killed Sandie and goes looking in the archives for her. But she all she finds are more and more ghosts of her former Johns.  She tries to tell the police, but they think she is crazy.

She confronts the old man, who seems to have known Sandie and Ellie thinks is Jack. But after he is hit by a car we learn he had been a Vice Cop back in the 1960s. Ellie soon realizes that she had seen him, through Sandie's eyes.

Deciding she has had enough Ellie wants out of the apartment, she goes back and asks her friend John (Michael Ajao, as maybe one of the few decent people here) to wait for her while she gets her things.  Ms Collins is waiting for her and offers her a cup of tea. We learn that Ms Collins is in fact Sandie. She was killed, she was the one doing the killings and she hid all the bodies in the floorboards of her home.  The ghosts have been coming to Ellie to ask for help.

In the end we see Ellie has completed her designs and has a fashion show where her grandmother and John come. Sandie is doing better, but she is still seeing the ghost of her mother and now of Sandie as well.

Among other things this was a great little thriller and mystery.  It was Diana Rigg's last role.

The soundtrack is quite amazing.  A great spooky ghost story.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

October Horror Movie Challenge 2023
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