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

Each of the two scenarios so far have has had parallels with certain historical regions. So with The Sea Demon’s Gold the feel was that of the Hellenic world, and with The Song of the Sun Queens, it was the kingdoms of Africa. The third scenario in the ‘Swords & Sorceries’ has a Middle Eastern feel to it. Designed for five characters of Third Level, the structure of The Tomb of Fire feels a whole lot like that of The Song of the Sun Queens in that the player characters have travelled to the edges of the civilised world in search of a great treasure. In The Song of the Sun Queens, it was Ndame, the Land of the Sun that they travelled to and from there to the ancient, cursed ruin known as Juakufa where a great treasure is said to rest. In The Tomb of Fire, the Player Characters travel to the Rahaman oasis, in the dry land of Kahlar, at the edge of the great Mahjur Desert, seeking the Tomb of Fire, a ruined temple dedicated to a now forgotten god. It is said that like Juakufa, the Tomb of Fire is filled with great riches, but the local inhabitants will warn that the tomb is warded by great spirits deadlier than any man can defeat. 

For the players, the adventure begins with everyone’s favourite roleplaying activity—shopping. Or rather preparing for the three-hundred-mile trek across the inhospitable Mahjur Desert to Jahiz. This trek forms the first part of the adventure, supported by detailed rules for handling its gruelling nature and a table of random encounters. Including a Ranger in the party will help, but either way, one character will be serving as guide and one as animal handler. There is just the one given encounter on the way which nicely, creepily foreshadows the sense of weirdness, distrust, and uncertainty which runs throughout the adventure. Once in Jahiz, they are welcomed by the Bashari, a deeply spiritual people who will constantly offer them prayers to their god, the Lord of Storms. They will be hospitable, once they learn of their interest in visiting the Tomb of Fire, will direct them to visit their high priest in the Temple of the Sky atop the single mountain which looms over Jahiz. He will question their motives, but explain that the Tomb of Fire is the prison of an immortal enemy to the Bashari, a devil of earth and fire known as Kallahaab. He will take Good-aligned characters into his confidence, that he has been warned that evil men are trying to break into the tomb and free Kallahaab and that he needs good men to ensure that they fail and that Kallahaab remains imprisoned. If the player characters are not Good-aligned, then their coming has been foretold, for they are ‘evil men’…

So ideally, the characters must be Good-aligned or particularly deceptive to get the directions out of the priest, but otherwise Neutral- or Evil-aligned characters will need to find their own way. The journey to the tomb will be interrupted by another band Bashari, the Paladins of the Hidden Flame. They are also friendly, but will denounce the Bashari of Jahiz as fools for not worshiping Kallahaab, the true ruler of the land who was betrayed by the Lord of Storms. They want the player characters to free him. This then sets up the dilemma at the heart of the Tomb of Fire—which faith is the true faith and who to trust? This comes to a head in the tomb itself, which although small, merely consisting of six locations, will constantly test the player characters’ faith. This includes a confrontation with Kallahaab within the tomb itself, who will be very persuasive when it comes to suggesting that the player characters free him, including promising to reward them with Wishes if they do…

There is a lot of roleplaying depth to The Tomb of Fire. All of the NPCs, whether human or monster, are interested in the player characters and in persuading them to their cause. So the players will need to decide who to follow, which will be based on two factors. One is their Alignment. The scenario does favour Good-aligned characters, but takes Neutral- and Evil-aligned characters into account. The other is the spirituality of both factions of Bashari, constantly expressed throughout the scenario and full of clues as to what is to come. The Tomb of Fire is not a scenario to be approached in too bullish a fashion, there being a subtlety present in the story that the players and their characters might otherwise miss and so land themselves in the fire… Now that said, the denouement of the scenario will require careful preparation and handling upon the part of the Dungeon Master as there is a great deal going on, whilst the aftermath is underwritten, in that it does not fully explore the consequences of the player characters’ actions, particularly if Kallahaab is freed.

This latter issue points to another problem with The Tomb of Fire and ‘Swords & Sorceries’ adventure line and the three releases so far for the ‘Broken Empire’ setting—and that is a lack of context. So far all three scenarios have been set far from the ‘Broken Empire’ and all three have been set in separate locations, so there is no sense of connection between the three and thus no sense of sharing the same world. This makes each scenario easy to pull out and work into a Dungeon Master’s own campaign world, but there is no world building between them which might otherwise have come about had the three scenarios so far been linked. The lack of context means that the player and their characters do not have any grounding in the setting, so it is harder for them to engage with it.

Physically, The Tomb of Fire is fantastically presented. The maps and writing are both good, but the artwork is excellent, full of character and rich detail, and like those in The Song of the Sun Queens can all be shown to the players as they progress through the scenario.

The Tomb of Fire is again relatively short, offering two to three sessions of play. It feels rich and deep in terms of the setting and its people, pleasingly embroiling the player characters in religious rivalries that provide a really good mix of roleplaying and action—often with an element of horror. Like the previous scenario, The Song of the Sun Queens, it presents more of a setting that nicely draws upon on cultures other than Western fantasy, but again leaves the Dungeon Master wanting and needing more. 

A couple of neat things happening here at the Ole' Brannan Family Game Dungeon this week.


My kids are missing their weekly D&D games in this quarantine time so tonight they will be running a D&D game over Roll20.  We took the plunge and bought a Pro account.  We will see how it will go.  If they like it I might even try it myself.

So while they are using new tech to run an "old" game. I just a new copy of an old game.
My friend Greg heard I no longer had my copy of the original FASA Trek game. Lost in one of my moves between college and grad school I am sure.  So here is what he sent me.




So looking forward to this! 

I am thinking I might have to recreate two of my earliest characters, Dr. Scott Elders, CMO and genetics expert, and his "Nurse" Friday who is, in reality, one of his experiments/creations.

They were created after a 1982 double shot of "Wrath of Khan" and the augments and reading "Friday" by Robert A. Heinlein.   I guess this fits in with the "old-new" theme as well.  This is a 1982 book about the 21st Century.  A Balkanized North America doesn't sound as improbable as it did then.


One of my favorite Michael Whelan covers.

Even in better times, Texans and tourists rushed out every spring to view the return of the Texas bluebonnet, Lupinus texensis, bringing family, loved ones, and pets into the mix. This didn’t always end well for the bluebonnets: the plants … Continue reading →

One of the things that amazes so many initiates to Texas bluebonnets is exactly how much animal life can reside inside one bluebonnet clump. No, not bluebonnet rattlesnakes: a thriving field of bluebonnets captures dead leaves and other debris to … Continue reading →

For those outside of Texas, and for everyone sheltering in place, the Texas wildflower season started about the time we all started self-quarantining, and it now gets going with the beginning of bluebonnet season. Lupinus texensis is a denizen of … Continue reading →

Reviews / April 2, 2020

ROBERTS: Steven Spielberg called Joe Dante’s 1978 Piranha “the best of the Jaws ripoffs,” but my vote goes to 1980’s Alligator, directed by Lewis Teague and distributed by Group 1 Films, the latter responsible for some memorable exploitation fare that included The Clonus Horror, UFO’s Are Real (both from 1979), and Albert Pyun’s The Sword and the Sorcerer (1980). Both films are cult genius thanks to their writer, one John Sayles, who went on to become an indie film auteur as well as a writer of great American novels. Both films both have similar plots, and both are satires, but Alligator’s teeth sink a little deeper: our hero quite literally eats the rich. Also, Robert Forster’s in it, and I’ve never met a Robert Forster movie I didn’t like.

MCKENNA: The problem (for me) with writing about something like Alligator is, what the hell is there to say? It’s perfect. Timeless. It explains itself. It looks like a TV movie yet comes on like it actually has brains and a sense of humor. Not simply a curio of the 1980s (though if 1980s curio-ness is what you’re after, you won’t be disappointed—in fact your head may explode), it still works perfectly today without the need for you to strap on a postmodern irony helmet. It’s smart, self-aware, knows its limitations, and is basically why there’s almost zero incentive to go to the cinema to see genre stuff anymore: because who wants to sit through fucking hours of precious art direction when stuff like this highlights how much more economically and incisively the same goals can be achieved with far less? Somehow, even though pretty much everything about Alligator is trite—and that’s kind of the point—nothing about it feels trite. In addition to the estimable Forster, who’s in top form here even for him, there’s a great turn from Robin Riker as the female lead and appearances from Michael V. Gazzo and Henry Silva. Mike, what on Earth do you make of this little gem?

GRASSO: It seems like there have been a bunch of these ’70s/’80s B-movies we’ve looked at that I’d never seen before, that pleasantly surprised me, were made by folks who went on to do Serious Film later, and ended up having an interesting social-political edge to them, all while remaining on a basic level exploitation schlock. Endangered Species came to mind while watching Alligator, for certain. (Also, Kelly, thank you for reminding me that Alligator was produced by UFOs Are Real producer and narrator Brandon Chase!) It also has that same sideways ’50s monster movie vibe—doughty yet world-weary hero and brainy love interest investigate and battle a mysterious series of predations created by shadowy conspiracies and mad science.

Like Robert Urich’s character in Endangered Species, Robert Forster’s David Madison is a police detective who’s lost his faith in the system and is hounded by ghosts: in Madison’s case, a bust that went bad resulting in the death of his partner. As limbs start showing up in the town’s sewer system, the first theory of the crime (as in The Night Stalker, another film Alligator vividly reminded me of) is that a garden-variety late-’70s serial killer is on the loose. Turns out? It’s a 30-foot long alligator, released in the sewers 12 years prior by a teenage girl, Marisa Kendall: played as a grownup by Robin Riker, she’s now become the Midwest’s foremost herpetologist and helps Madison investigate and ultimately blow up the gator. The monster has been feasting on the corpses of experimental animals that have been fed a serum to increase their growth, part of a sinister biotech firm’s (Slade Pharmaceutical!) attempts to “feed the Third World.” Of course, nobody believes Madison even after he loses yet another partner in the sewers, and he’s fired from the force in favor of khaki-clad chauvinist big-game hunter (yes, seriously) Henry Silva, who gets to have an epic squint-off with Forster before getting swallowed whole by the gator.

Again, all fairly boilerplate monster movie cliché. But Alligator zags when you expect it to zig. Even if the plot emulates dozens of Roger Corman/Bert I. Gordon drive-in flicks from a generation before, it’s the little touches, the thematic surprises, and most of all the actors in this film that not just elevate the material but keep the viewer riveted, wondering where the hell this thing is going to head next. Between the aforementioned Michael “Frank Pentangeli” Gazzo, a serious thespian with impeccable Actors Studio credentials as the police chief (Henry Silva was actually one of Gazzo’s protégés), or Hollywood Golden Age mainstay Dean Jagger as the rambling oddball head of the biotech firm who inadvertently made the monster, this film is packed full of great actors. But Forster stands alone. Wikipedia tells me that it was this movie—not Medium Cool or any of his other ’70s or ’80s roles on the screen or TV—that inspired Quentin Tarantino to give Forster a shot as world-weary bail bondsman Max Cherry in Jackie Brown. And you know what? I can kind of see why.

ROBERTS: Yes, this is definitely Sales riffing on the ’50s monster movie, Mike, with your sinister corporation (Alligator was released exactly 10 days after Reagan was elected) standing in for atomic anxiety. I thought a lot about the classic Them! (1954) while watching Alligator, and in fact the estuaries of the Los Angeles River were used to great effect in both films. It’s a B movie all the way, but Teague, who had just directed another Sayles-penned picture, 1979’s The Lady in Red, mostly pulls it off. The effects are also surprisingly effective, especially the scene where the gator crashes out of the sewer onto the mean streets. As far as Forster goes, he has always been pegged as a “character actor,” a mostly bullshit term that describes incredibly versatile actors who are constantly typecast because they don’t look like Redford. I first saw him in The Black Hole, a formative film of my youth, and he’s been a favorite ever since. There’s a recurring male pattern baldness joke in Alligator that he simply slays (he improvised it, and Sayles wrote it in), not to mention the one-liners Sayles feeds him. Robin Riker—in her feature film debut—is also really damn good, despite some gross sexism and a predictably subservient role—similar to Jobeth Williams in Endangered Species. And Henry Silva? All I can say is: you will never experience a more disturbing alligator mating call.

The alligators in the sewers urban legend goes back to the 1930s, when the New York Times ran a story about a group of kids allegedly snaring and killing one after spotting it through a manhole. Thomas Pynchon made great use of the myth—which expresses industrialism’s struggle to suppress nature—in his first novel, V. (1963). Pynchon, as it turns out, was a great influence on Sales. Unlike the shark in Jaws, the gator here is something of an underdog. Shortly after the little girl brings it home, her dad gets upset about “alligator turds in the clothes hamper” (props to Mike’s ears for catching that choice piece of dialog) while (tellingly) a radio report tells us about the “chaos” of the 1968 Democratic Convention (the subject of Medium Cool). Dad flushes the gator—we spin around the bowl with the creature, looking up at the gruff patriarch we assume to be entirely sympathetic to Mayor Daley’s police force—and watch the little guy drop into the sewer with a splat, small and alone in the darkness. 12 years later, it becomes the monster it was made to be.

MCKENNA: The male pattern baldness joke is a beaut, and not just because the fact of its hitting close to home makes me feel as though perhaps I too might yet possess an iota of Forster-esque coolness. Like all great B-movie fare, it’s the film’s accumulation of miniature grace notes and memorable details that builds up into something gratifyingly greater than the sum of its parts. Take the extras, for example—everyone in Alligator acts and appears grizzled enough to credibly inhabit the film’s down-at-heel milieu: nobody looks like they just walked out of central casting, and everybody has a distinct personality no matter how briefly they appear.

I’m now going to return to one of my well-worn (though my fellow Mutants might prefer “overused”) opinions here and say that I think part of the reason Alligator still connects so powerfully is because it sort of feels like play—almost like our brains are making it up as we watch from the mulch of half-digested history, pop culture, and politics slopping around inside our craniums. None of the sets, locations or set pieces are particularly prepossessing (I mean, the big denouement is trying to convince an old lady driver to reverse her car, for fuck’s sake; you have to hand it to Teague: he makes the most of the little he’s got), much of the action is fairly low key, the story is hardly there, and a great deal of the pleasure derives simply from watching humans interact with each other, their environment, and a fuck-off massive alligator. It’s play. That’s what real B-movie genius is. That and kicking off with a gator attack that gets swept under the rug by the spectacle management so the wheels of commerce can keep turning.

GRASSO: And isn’t that a great place-setter for the overall social commentary in the rest of the film, Richard. I especially liked the set piece near the middle where the alligator’s reality has finally been revealed to the public (thanks to a tabloid reporter who’s been hounding Madison, Freddy Lounds-on-Will Graham-style, and who takes one final photograph of the monster as he’s eaten), and Henry Silva’s big game hunter is on the scene dropping depth charges in the local canal, and the entire town has turned into a three-ring media circus, complete with souvenir vendors hawking toy (and real) alligators. This scene happens right when Madison learns he’s off the case, and there’s that sinking feeling that all the wrong people are in charge of this crisis and that there’s going to be a lot of profiteering off of human injury and death. Hmm, maybe this wasn’t the right film to get our minds off of current events, guys.

But I think that gets to another thing I love about Alligator, which is how perfectly 1980 it is. Just little reminders here and there, like the aforementioned media circus (one practically expects to see “I Survived The Mega-Gator Attack” t-shirts for sale alongside the souvenir gator toys) or the big reveal scene of the alligator, where it busts Kool-Aid Man style through the concrete from the sewers while a bunch of kids (clad in an “I’m a Pepper” t-shirt, a late-’70s Texas Rangers jersey, and some kind of Freddy Krueger-esque red and green striped rugby shirt) look on. And yes, Kelly, the way Alligator substitutes corporate malfeasance for ’50s fear of the atomic age is also perfectly 1980. At the very dawning of the Reagan era, fear of pollution and criminality at the hands of unaccountable corporations was revving up, and the scientists’ use of poor innocent stray puppies as their experimental subjects is not only a perfect telegraphing of how evil they are but also pretty damn common in industrial corporate settings at this point in history. Whether or not they’re trying to help out with feeding the developing world, they’re literally killing puppies and throwing their bodies in the sewers.

So yeah, this film does eventually revenge itself on the corporate baddies. The foreshadowing in the scene where they’re setting up Slade’s daughter’s wedding at the local country club is perfection: you just know as soon as you see it that that alligator is going to go hog wild on all those rich people in the final reel. But the first two people the gator eats at the wedding are a pair of servants! That undercuts the impact of Slade’s limo being smashed by the gator’s tail just a little bit. But was I smirking in satisfaction when the inner-city kids who Silva’s game hunter deputizes (and condescends to) abandon him as he gets eaten whole by the monster? Yeah. That was pretty cool.

ROBERTS: Class is writ large across the whole film. “Looks like a working man’s hand,” Madison says after the first body part is found, and when he busts a vendor trying to sell live alligators during the media circus Mike mentions above, the vendor cries after him, “This is an attack on the free enterprise system! Communist!” We’ve got one-percenter Mr. Slade feeding the alligator mutant and mutilated puppies so that he can get richer by squeezing the Third World, we’ve got rich neighborhoods (helicopters scan the lush swimming pools) juxtaposed with poor neighborhoods (the setting is either Chicago or St. Louis—it’s never made clear; both cities were at the epicenter of the rust belt’s decline), we’ve got “the great white hunter” paying black kids to guide him through the inner city—so many of them were so destroyed by this point that they stood in for post-apocalyptic landscapes. And there’s the working-class cop who’s got more in common with the alligator—who he’s forced to blow up—than anyone else.

I won’t go so far as to say that the alligator is the proletariat, but it’s certainly the underclass (“It lives 50 feet beneath the streets,” the trailer forebodes), as well as nature’s revenge. The gator eats workers, sure, but it would starve otherwise: that’ s the law of the jungle. The real target is Slade, as the alligator’s calculated demolition of his limousine makes clear. All of this gives added relevance to the final moments of the film, when a new sewer dweller—another innocent baby bought and sold, then banished by owners who foolishly thought they could tame it—lands with a splat in the city’s collective shit. A monster movie cliché? Absolutely. But also the spectre of revolution.

Working on the OSE Warlock in my spare time.  It's been fun but I want to be sure that all the spells are new in this one.  So no repeats from any of the OSE books and none from my recent Basic-Era books like the Pagan and Pumpkin Spice Witches.


I am also going with some different warlocks than what I had in my Swords & Wizardry Warlock book. So revised invocations and spells in some cases and all new ones in most others.

The goal is, of course, to have a book that works great with Old-School Essentials AND also will work with my witch books and the S&W Warlock book.

To this end, I wanted to make sure I was not repeating myself and built this handy-dandy spreadsheet.



Or this link. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Sd-OQ3l16V35t3ChfwGeu471V_tNWS-7Pww_tjzgRcQ/edit#gid=153289230

You can see the sheet covers the Witch, Witch Ritual, Cleric, Magic-User, Druid, Illusionist, and Warlock spells.  The hyperlinks in the sheet go to the various publications the spells are in. They are not affiliate links.

There are no warlock spells in this sheet yet. They are on my version at the moment.  Once the warlock book comes out then I'll populate this sheet.

So if you want to find a spell the default state is sorted alphabetically by all spells.
If you want to sort by Class then you need to highlight the range (A to H) and then go to Data, Sort Range and then choose the Class you want followed by Spells. It's not required to sort by spells since there are no duplicate lines in this sheet.






That should allow you to sort the spells you want.

If you have an OSE specific spellcasting class and want your spells here just let me know!

I mentioned all the great TV on now.  Which is good since we are supposed to Shelter In Place here in Chicago-land until April 30. That, and I already finished watching "Tiger King".

Well, it's Wednesday and that means we get new Magicians and new Motherland: Fort Salem.
Sadly it is also the series finale of Magicians tonight and I have no idea how they are going to wrap this all up.

Insert witty and caustic Margo quote here.
I think I am going to have to do stats someday for the Magicians characters.  Either for Cinematic Unisystem or Night Shift.

I am going to miss the Brakebills kids.

How would Alice, Julia, Kady, and Margo fare at Fort Salem?
Would Raelle, Tally, and Abigail do well at Brakebills?

I am pretty sure that Scylla and Marina would get along. Or kill each other.

Eve Tushnet / April 1, 2020

In 1983, Lizzie Borden attacked the World Trade Center.

I’m talking about Lizzie Borden the film director, and the bomb that goes off at the top of the Twin Towers is the final image of her punk feminist film Born in Flames. (It’s safe to say that the shock of the ending has not been diminished by the passage of time.) Born in Flames is a loving—or at least, love-hating—tribute to the lower-rent sectors of early ’80s New York, and to the fractious feminist movements that tried to carry ’70s militancy into the era of the “career woman.” It’s beautiful and funny, and the most punk thing about it is that it’s the rare political film that exposes contradictions rather than purporting to solve problems.

The film takes place in a near-future America ruled by democratic socialists. It’s a dystopia! No, that’s a cheap shot—the movie’s point isn’t that socialism is bad, but precisely the opposite: that the better the idea, the more useful it is in the hands of entrenched power. Most things we wish were political solutions turn out to be clown cars from which spill far more political problems than you ever could believe would fit inside. And yet that doesn’t make Born in Flames a cynical movie. It refuses cynicism as wryly and as adamantly as it refuses propaganda.

Even the film’s title suggests that the movie will transform mere political ideology into something stranger and more challenging. It was named after a song by the Red Crayola, which in turn was named after a 1929 Soviet film celebrating the triumphs of the Red Army. With each iteration the words get weirder, as the gasoline smell of propaganda dissipates. The USSR origins of the phrase make it not solely an inspiration to the film’s feminists, but a reference to the professed socialism of the government they’re fighting. Every political statement in the film carries within it at least one contradiction, at least one hint that the future born in these flames won’t be what anyone intended. The things you want done won’t be done the way you want them, partly because they won’t be done by the people you think should do them. The song plays throughout the movie: a jangly, urgent anthem, featuring saxophone by Lora Logic of Essential Logic (and the early X-Ray Spex) and vocals by Gina Birch of the Raincoats. Birch’s voice fits the mood of the film, with its quick shifts from proclaiming to muttering to shrieking; her English accent adds an unexpected touch of displacement, and a feeling that the narrative, in spite of its strong sense of place, reaches far beyond 1983 New York City.

Born in Flames rambunctiously follows several competing women’s movements. There’s the Women’s Army, which chases off would-be rapists and is advised by a radical mentor played by real civil rights lawyer Flo Kennedy. There’s soft-spoken street-level militant Adelaide Norris (Jean Satterfield); the art-punk radio station led by sly Puck-faced agitatrix Isabel (Adele Bertei); her semi-rival at the black radio station, Honey (played by a woman of the same name); and the party-line women of the socialist movement, who dissipate their radicalism in academic arguments (Borden’s friend Kathryn Bigelow plays a journalist with the Socialist Youth Review). Music and violence intertwine as equally invigorating, equally obvious aspects of radical feminism.

An FBI agent surveilling these women notes, “The Women’s Army seems to be dominated by blacks and homosexuals.” These also happen to be the kinds of women Borden’s camera most loves. Born in Flames has the quick cuts and intimacy of a documentary film, and the performers—who were not professional actors—talk as if they’re coming up with these ideas on the fly in response to the real socialist future America they live in. They ramble and grouse and talk over each other. The FBI agents, by contrast, are more stagey. They’re following well-worn roles; they know their lines and their blocking. The women, whether they’re squabbling or orating or kissing, always look like they’re figuring it out as they go.

Perhaps for this reason, the plot peeks only intermittently from the vivid shelter of the dystopian setting. In a New York City of boomboxes and pay phones, catcalling and bralessness, a Women’s Army emerges not only to protect women from rape but to propose a feminist political program. As the FBI tries to catch them in illegal acts, and the socialist President of the United States tries to entice them away from radicalism with concessions like “wages for housework” (a left-wing proposal beyond the dreams of our current politicians), the underground feminists progress from pirate radio to arms dealing to terrorism. They aren’t a unified movement—the FBI notes that “it’s impossible to say” who their leader is. It’s not always easy for the viewer to keep track of the alliances and figure out who’s going rogue. But they’re united against the government, and after the staged jailhouse “suicide” of one of their leaders, there’s no chance they’ll disavow militancy.

This is a passionate movie without the self-righteous certainties of so many passionate movies. Feminists attack the “Rape Rehabilitation Center,” which seems to offer (coopted?) restorative justice to rapists. “There’s no such thing as a bad boy,” a defender of the center says. “These are sick people.” The white cop has a MOM mug and the feminist militant has a pink t-shirt saying GANJA FARMERS UNION.

The satire of hyper-theoretical socialist feminism is still funny but also somewhat expected. Less expected is the depiction of radical feminism as the servant of the corporations—all these women lined up to shake the locked gates of the construction sites are fighting not for profit-sharing or a reorganization of the economy, but for jobs at companies that seem (despite the government’s nominal socialism) indistinguishable from the worker-exploiting companies out here in nonfictional America. “We want a J-O-B so we can E-A-T,” the protesting women chant, right after a terrific montage of all the j-o-b’s a woman can do, from paper-pushing to chicken processing to hairdressing to sex. Another woman complains of spending “three years with no opportunity to move into a managerial position”; some might argue that making management women’s work is not the best form of feminism.

There’s a taking of sides here that’s familiar to contemporary arguments about subsidized day care vs. Canada-style child benefits. The film’s feminists fight for abortion access and child care, the two feminist proposals that make women’s labor more accessible to employers. In the movie’s sketched-out backstory, affirmative action for women has led to a backlash in which men demand preference for male heads of households; the government then offers “wages for housework” as a compromise measure, offering financial independence to homemakers and jobs to men. “Wages for housework,” which really would require a radical reshaping of the economy, is portrayed as an anti-feminist ploy to get women barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen—but how many women would mind, if the alternative is a chicken-processing montage?

In spite of the brief child-care discussion, it’s noticeable that in a science fiction movie about possible political futures, none of the characters has children. This childlessness may even be linked to the movie’s adolescent energy, which is its greatest strength. This is a sexy movie; it captures the thrill of political arguments with pretty women. Borden’s camera shows every character at her most beautiful. (The film’s major aesthetic weakness is the decision to film scenes of paramilitary training in a smeary style I can only call Sand-o-Vision. The grainy color footage of the rest of the film is warm and lived-in; and, you know, intelligible.) The fleeting moment of actual erotic embrace between Norris and her lover is a synecdoche for the intimate connection these women find in solidarity—and, at times, in conflict. The film’s music, especially the title anthem, adds to the feeling of smoldering, unstable dissatisfaction about to burst into gleeful violence. When Norris says, in gorgeous close-up, that violence is “already here. It’s happening,” there’s a hint of resignation but more than a hint of promise. These are women on the verge of a societal breakdown.

When the women become violent, holding television broadcasters at gunpoint so they can send out their own message, a man-socialist explains that their violence is a reaction to “terror of their own may-soh-chism.” After the “jailhouse suicide,” Isabel puts on a music show, indulging in the tambourines and beer of helplessness: “This is for all the dead heroes out there… Yeah.” Isabel promises that their fight “will not end in a nuclear holocaust”—and as she’s writing that particular check, the feminists’ bomb goes off at the World Trade Center. Is this an unhappy ending, a misstep into complicity, an own-goal? Is it desperation turned septic, or the bitter result of the prior peaceful revolution’s betrayal of its promises? Is it just smart tactics? Is it a thrill?

It’s a taste of power. And Born in Flames is among the rare political films that doesn’t yell at you about whether that makes it right.

Eve Tushnet is the author of two novels, Amends and Punishment: A Love Story, as well as the nonfiction Gay and Catholic: Accepting My Sexuality, Finding Community, Living My Faith. She lives in Washington, DC and writes and speaks on topics ranging from medieval covenants of friendship to underrated vampire films. Her hobbies include sin, confession, and ecstasy.

No jokes, no japes, no pranks, not so much as a pun. We don’t need that today. I tried that a quarter-century ago as of today, and look how that turned out.

In which an artist, in an attempt to create backstory for a recent artwork, dives headfirst into obscure fanfic. On that particular morning, Lietyran awoke with a sense of responsibility. She awoke every morning with a sense of responsibility, considering … Continue reading →

A while back I posted this about my "Ghost Ship" adventure:

Ghost Ship.  The PCs find a derelict adrift in space and it is full of the ghosts of the dead crew.  Originally this was going to be the Enterprise B when I ran it as a pure Trek game. (The Haunting of Hill House, Dreams of the Witch House, the Flying Dutchman)

Some of my ideas I had scribbled down for this, WAYYYY in the early 90s at the Corner Diner in Carbondale, IL (it's closed sadly). Back then this was the Enterprise B before there was a Generations movie and when all I knew it was an Excelsior-class ship.

The trouble I am running into is that I am stealing ideas from this for The Ghost Station of Inverness Five.

I would like to keep this as the crew discovers a ship, preferably one that has significance to them, floating adrift and full of ghosts.  So there would be elements of Event Horizon as well.

The big question I have now is this.  Should the "ghosts" on the Ghost Ship be really dead or some sort of weird temporal/dimensional accident?  I think I have my choice made for me really.
This is BlackStar, not just Star Trek.  The crew of the Ghost Ship really are all dead.

Flying Dutchman from the Time-LIFE Water Spirits book.  The genesis of the Ghost Ship Adventure
The Ghost Ship adventure will be a simple haunted house adventure with a twist; the twist is that the "house" is a star ship.

There is a "Star Trek: Ghost Ship" fan film out there from the "Avalon Universe".  What I like about this is that it feels like a nice mix of the TOS style and the Abrams/Kelvin Universe style.
It is a fan film, so don't judge it too harshly, instead, take it in the spirit it was made; the love of Trek.

I will say that Victoria Fox, the Producer, Lt. and then later Commander Amanda Beck, is pretty good. she would later go on to produce, direct, write, and star in Star Trek Demons.  Her Trek-street cred is solid.  I also think that Victoria Archer (Lt. Cmdr Jamie Archer) must be at least 6' tall (ok she is only 5'9", must be the "go-go" boots).

Part 1:



Part 2:




Of course, no Ghost Ship posting is complete without a nod to the Rime of the Ancient Mariner.



Or the woman still waiting for him on the shores.


Ghost Ship Adventure Related Postings

• Star Trek: Horror and the Old Ones
• At the Planets of Madness
• BlackStar: The Influence of Clark Ashton Smith
• BlackStar: Launch Date 31165.86
• BlackStar: The Ghost Station of Inverness Five
• BlackStar: Klingon Time Travel, The Ghost Station of Inverness Five Part 2

Jesse Walker / March 31, 2020

I can tell you the day the so-called Vietnam syndrome started to die. On November 12, 1979, four and a half years after the last American troops fled Saigon, a new single was shipped to record stores and radio stations, a ballad by the fellow who’d had a smash hit a year before with “The Gambler.” Kenny Rogers’ new song was “Coward of the County,” written by Roger Bowling and Billy Edd Wheeler. I remember the first time I heard it that November, listening to the radio in the car with my mom on our way to the supermarket.

He was only 10 years old when his daddy died in prison
I looked after Tommy, ’cause he was my brother’s son
I still recall the final words my brother said to Tommy
‘Son, my life is over, but yours has just begun

‘Promise me, Son, not to do the things I’ve done
‘Walk away from trouble if you can
‘Now it won’t mean you’re weak if you turn the other cheek
‘I hope you’re old enough to understand
‘Son, you don’t have to fight to be a man’

We arrived before the song was over, but she kept the motor running in our parking spot so we could hear how the story ended.

I can’t say I understood all the cultural context that surrounded that record on the radio. I was vaguely aware that there had been a war in Vietnam, that the US had lost, and that a lot of people, including most of the grown-ups I’d heard talking about such things, didn’t want to get drawn into a war like that again. I didn’t know that this reluctance to fight was upsetting a large swath of the foreign policy establishment, or that those mandarins of empire had begun to call this war-wariness the “Vietnam syndrome.” I was nine years old. There was a lot I didn’t know.

There’s someone for everyone, and Tommy’s love was Becky
In her arms he didn’t have to prove he was a man
One day while he was working, the Gatlin boys came calling
And they took turns at Becky, and there was three of them

I didn’t know, for example, what “they took turns at Becky” meant. Perhaps I thought they had been making fun of her. If you are of a certain age, you may have had a holy-shit moment at some point in your teens or later—a day a DJ played that song you used to sing along to as a kid, and you suddenly realized it had a gang rape in it.

The Gatlin boys just laughed at him when he walked into the barroom
One of them got up and met him halfway across the floor
When Tommy turned around they said, ‘Hey look, old Yellow’s leaving’
But you could’ve heard a pin drop when Tommy stopped and locked the door

Twenty years of crawling was bottled up inside him
He wasn’t holding nothin’ back, he let ’em have it all
When Tommy left the barroom, not a Gatlin boy was standing
He said ‘This one’s for Becky’ as he watched the last one fall

When I heard that as a boy, I assumed that Tommy had beaten up the Gatlins. But the lyrics are Delphic, and they could easily describe a man methodically firing a gun. Either way, I got the intended moral of the tale even before I heard Tommy spell it out a moment later:

I promised you, Dad, not to do the things you’ve done
I walk away from trouble when I can
Now please don’t think I’m weak, I didn’t turn the other cheek
And Papa, I sure hope you understand
Sometimes you gotta fight when you’re a man

* * *

In August 1980, Ronald Reagan spoke to a Chicago gathering of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. “For too long, we have lived with the Vietnam syndrome,” the presidential candidate said. “As the years dragged on, we were told that peace would come if we would simply stop interfering and go home. It is time we recognized that ours was, in truth, a noble cause. A small country newly free from colonial rule sought our help in establishing self-rule and the means of self-defense against a totalitarian neighbor bent on conquest.”

As a history of how the Vietnam War began, it was nonsense. But as a familiar tale of good and evil, it had resonance—the kind of resonance that will take you to #1 on the Billboard country chart and #3 in the pop top 10. “Sometimes you gotta fight,” the candidate could have added. Maybe in the barroom, where the Gatlin boys were jeering. Maybe in Nicaragua, which had a leftist revolution four months before “Coward” shipped to stores. Maybe in El Salvador, which was less than a month into a 12-year civil war the first time “Coward” aired on the radio. Maybe Angola. Or Grenada. Or Kuwait. All sorts of countries cycled through the news from 1975 to 1991. They had different names, but for a certain sort of speechwriter they all were Becky, surrounded by those Gatlin boys bent on conquest.

I’m not saying that Bowling or Wheeler had Vietnam in mind when they wrote “Coward.” Maybe they did; maybe they didn’t. Songs about sexual violence and bloody revenge are as old as country music—older!—and you could have penned something a lot like this song in 1929 as easily as in 1979. You didn’t have to be thinking about the war to want to buy the record either. It had a well-told story and an infectious chorus, and it might have been a hit a decade earlier too.

But it wasn’t the hit Kenny Rogers had a decade earlier. His most successful song of 1969 had been a rather different record, a cover of Mel Tillis’ haunting “Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town.” That one’s a gothic tale about a veteran, paralyzed in a “crazy Asian war,” who sits unable to do anything but plead while his wife dolls herself up for a night with her lover. He has violent urges bottled up inside him too, just like Tommy. Really ugly urges: “If I could move,” he tells us, “I’d get my gun and put her in the ground.” But he’s “not the man I used to be,” and so he’s helpless. Now there’s a grotesque twist on “Sometimes you gotta fight when you’re a man.”

Ten years later, Tommy would be manly enough by the code of these songs to take his revenge, and he’d have enough moral grounding to direct his violence at a trio of thugs rather than his mate. And two years after that, when the song became a TV movie, his violence would find another outlet. After beating the Gatlin boys in a wild bar fight, young Tommy marries Becky and enlists to fight in World War II—“because I have so much here to stand up for and protect.”

* * *

We heard that phrase “Vietnam syndrome” a lot in the ’80s, as pro-war intellectuals fretted that Americans weren’t willing to fight anymore. “Our communications on Nicaragua have been a failure,” President Reagan grumbled in his diary in 1985. “90% of the people know it is a communist country but almost as many don’t want us to give the Contras $14 mil. for weapons. I have to believe it is the old Vietnam syndrome. They are afraid we’re going to get involved with troops.”

The more hawkish Reaganites directed this ire not just at gun-shy civilians but at quagmire-wary members of the military. Some of Reagan’s appointees even directed it at each other. When Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger laid out the so-called Weinberger Doctrine in 1984—a set of six principles he thought should limit the use of American combat troops—Secretary of State George Shultz seethed: “This was the Vietnam syndrome in spades, carried to an absurd level,” he later wrote.

The hawks hailed Washington’s quick victory in the 1991 Gulf War as the end of the affliction. “By God, we’ve kicked this Vietnam syndrome,” President George H.W. Bush crowed to the American Legislative Exchange Council. It hadn’t been 20 years of crawling—hell, they hadn’t been crawling at all—but for a certain sort of Washington functionary, any constraint on their ability to project power feels like a humiliation.

But war-wariness, and war-weariness, aren’t so easy to extinguish. The Vietnam-specific version of the syndrome may have died, but Americans still had rational reasons to want to avoid quagmires abroad; the next war in the Gulf region would remind the country just how much damage a march into battle can do. As public opinion started to turn against war, the phrase “Iraq syndrome” didn’t become as popular as its Southeast Asian predecessor; but it did start to float around certain D.C. circles. (Others fell back on their old vocabulary. Norman Podhoretz, the first-generation neoconservative who once had worried that even Reagan’s foreign policy evinced “the sickly inhibitions against the use of military force,” wrote in 2007 that the media’s coverage of the second Iraq war had proved “the Vietnam syndrome was alive and well.”)

If the syndrome was still alive, so was the tale pundits told to extinguish it. In 2014, when President Barack Obama sent troops to the Middle East to fight ISIS, New York Times columnist David Brooks celebrated with a familiar story. Exaggerating Obama’s reluctance to use the military, Brooks wrote:

History is full of reluctant leaders… President Obama is the most recent. He recently gave a speech on the need to move away from military force. He has tried to pivot away from the Middle East. He tried desperately to avoid the Syrian civil war. But as he said in his Nobel Peace Prize lecture, “Evil does exist in the world.” No American president could allow a barbaric caliphate to establish itself in the middle of the Middle East.

Obama is compelled as a matter of responsibility to override his inclinations. He’s obligated to use force… Everybody is weighing in on the strengths and weaknesses of the Obama strategy. But the strategy will change. The crucial factor is the man.

It’s the clunkiest remake you’ll ever hear of “Coward of the County.” But it probably won’t be the last one.

Jesse Walker is books editor of Reason and the author, most recently, of The United States of Paranoia: A Conspiracy Theory (HarperCollins).

A regular comment about military history involves the trope “every peacetime is spent preparing for the last war.” Across four galaxies, with approximately 10,000 sentient species per galaxy, the trope holds true: whether an intraspecies conflict, a formal war between … Continue reading →

Been kinda busy the last few days.  Today is my last day of vacation, so back to work tomorrow. We set up a pro Role20 account this past week and we are going to try that out.  Maybe I'll even run a game or two online.

I went looking for a monster today for something I am working on.  About a couple hours into my search of PDFs it dawned on me.  I have a lot of monster books.  I mean an obscene amount.
One of the problems I run into is not finding a monster but finding the monster and 4 or 5 different versions.


These books are my big "go-to" books for monsters.  Even though they have significant overlap each one offers me something new and fun.

Adventures Dark and Deep Bestiary
PDF and Hardcover, 457 pages. B&W Interior.
If you ever only buy ONE product from BRW and the Adventures Dark & Deep line then make sure it is this one.
I love monster books. I have said so many, many times. But I also hold them to a high standard.  While I Will gladly buy any monster book, few get my high praise.  Adventures Dark and Deep Bestiary is one of those few.
Let be honest upfront.  We have seen most if not all the monsters in this book somewhere else before.
Most are in the SRD or from other Open sources. The new ones are great, but they are ideas we have seen.
And none of that matters.  This is still a great book.
At 457 pages (pdf) it is a beast. Monsters are alphabetically listed by areas you would find them in.  So Wilderness and Dungeon is by far the bulk of them, but there are also Waterborne (fitting in with the rules) and "Outsiders" or monsters from the other planes.  But I am getting ahead of myself.
The book begins with two monster spell casters, the Shaman and the Witch Doctor.  Shades of similar classes from the BECMI RC to be sure. But they work here great and frankly I know someone will want to use these rules to play a Shaman one day.  Heck I once tried a Wemic Shaman in early 2e days myself.  Maybe I'll see if I can do that here.  The classes are not detailed and they don't need to be. The do what they need to do.
The Monster descriptions are a bit like those found in OSRIC though there are some interesting additions.
Each Monster has a Morale, like that found in Basic and 2nd ed, though it is not a score but an adjustment.  Attacks are listed in the stat block, though they are the attack types. This is most similar to "Special Attacks" in other rules.  Also wholly new are "Weaknesses" which is an interesting idea and one I think other OSR publishers should adopt.  Each monster then gets a couple of paragraphs of text.  Many are illustrated thanks to the highly successful Kickstarter for this (more on that later).  The illustrations are great too as you can see here.
All the monsters have General, Combat and Appearance sections in their write-ups.
Unlike 2e (and 4e) monsters are not confined to one-page entries.  Some have paragraphs, others just a few lines.  This is good since I think we would have something like 1000+ pages.  I think I read there are 1100 monsters in this book. Maybe 900.  Anyway it's a lot.  I spot checked a few monsters I thought might not be there, but sure enough they were.  Ok so the ones that are Closed via the OGL are not here, but I was not expecting those.  There are some alternates and stand ins if you really, really need them though.
The book sections are:
Wilderness and Dungeon, aka Most of the Monsters
Underwater and Waterborne, larger than expected, but not surprised given the material in the core books.
Prehistoric Monsters, always nice to have; Dinosaurs and Ice Age mammals.
Extra Planar Monsters, your Outsiders.
Appendix A details creating your own monsters.
Appendix B has something I didn't even realize was missing till I started reading the stats; a basic psionic system for psychic strikes.
Appendix C covers random creatures from the Lower Planes.  This is the first "Gygaxian" touch I have noticed in this book.  Reminds me of a really old Dragon magazine article from years ago..
Appendix D is magic resistance table
and Appendix E covers the abilities of Gods.
All of this in a PDF for just under $15.
I have mentioned before that Joe gets his work done and gets it done fast. Well this is not only no exception but it is the new benchmark.  Joe ended his kickstarter and then got printed books out to people 6 months early.  Let that sink in for a moment.  In a hobby where we tolerate (although not quietly) Kickstarters with delays of 18 months, Joe and BRW are out there, turning out product and getting it to people early.
You should buy a copy of this book on that principle alone.
So should you get this book?
If you like monsters then yes.  If you need monsters for your oldschool game then yes.  If you want to support Joe and the Adventures Dark & Deep system then yes. If you want to reward good Kickstarter behavior then absolutely yes.

Lots of good reasons to get in my book.  It is also the best book in his line. Kudos to Joseph Bloch.

Amazing Adventures! Manual of Monsters
PDF and Hardcover, 95 Pages. B&W interior art.
The Amazing Adventures Manual of Monsters manages to give me monsters I have seen before, but with a whole new take. I mean a mummy is a mummy right? Well...your old monster book won't tell you how it reacts when you fire your .38 into it. But beyond that, this book also has a lot of new monsters. Enough to make it worthwhile in my opinion.
Also as an added bonus feature is an appendix of monsters from different countries. So fight that Kelpie on its native soil. Or tangle with the machinations of the Greys.
If you play Amazing Adventures or Castles & Crusades then you need this book.

Castles & Crusades Monsters & Treasure
PDF and Hardcover 178 Pages. B&W interior art.
This is the main monster and treasure book for C&C. Here you will find what I call the "classic" monsters from the great Monster Manual. If you are familiar with 3.x then these are all the monsters from the SRD in C&C's format. There is plenty of new text here though to make this more than just another SRD-derived book. Like all the C&C books the art and layout is great. I have the physical book, the pdf and a printout of the PDF and all read great.
The Castles & Crusades Monster stat block is a nice combination of Basic's simplicity, 1st AD&D's comprehensiveness, and some 3.x style rules. Saves are simple (Physical, Mental or both), AC is ascending and there is a "Challenge Rating" stat and XP all factored in. Honestly, it really is a synthesis of the best of D&D. Grabbing a monster from another source and converting it on the fly really could not be easier.
This book though is more than just a monster book, all the treasure and magic items (normally found in a Game Master's book) are here. This is a nice feature really. One place to have your encounter information.
This really is a must-have book for any C&C fan. 178 pages and full of everything you need.

Swords and Wizardry Monstrosities
PDF 544 Pages. B&W interior art.
Some of these monsters we have seen before either in the SRD or other books.  That though does not detract from its value as this is a 540+ page book. In addition to all that there are some new monsters.  The cover is very evocative of the old-school (pre-1980) covers.
There is much in common between this book and The Tome of Horrors. Each monster is given a page of stats, descriptions and a plot hook.  While ToH used some recycled art, this all seems to be new art.  Even Orcus (which we now have 3 listings for) is new.  Actually, the art is pretty darn good and I don't mind the occasional repeat of a monster to see some new art.
Honestly, there is so much great stuff in this book that even with the occasional repeat monster this is still a top-notch collection. If you play S&W then this is a great monster book to have.
I am even going as far as to say it is a must-have for any serious S&W GM.

Tome of Horrors Complete (S&W)
PDF 688 Pages. B&W interior art.
What can be said about this product? The original Tomes of Horrors were all great products that featured and number of "old school" monsters from previous editions of the game all under the OGL. It even had a breif "tutorial" on how to add these beasties to your own products. Now those very same monsters are back in one huge book "updated" to Swords & Wizardry stats. Nearly 700 monsters, all ready for your game. In addition to art and stat blocks for every monster there is also an adventure hook for each one. The monsters have been "scaled down" to fit the S&W rules better. One minor nit-pick. The original art is used (which I am happy about) but in their efforts to redo the layout sometimes that art is reduced in size (making it hard to see) and other times the art is placed over some text. Not often mind you and not enough for me to downgrade this product.
Now what I would like to have is one "Ultimate Tome of Horrors" that has the Pathfinder and S&W stats together with the plot hooks.

I have a few more I like.  I'll have to post about them the next time I run out of monster ideas!

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


—oOo—


What is it?
The Duel at Dangerford is a scenario for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, a confrontation between Sartarite heroes and a vengeful Lunar army.

It is a thirty-seven page, full colour, 5.11 MB PDF.

The Duel at Dangerford is well presented,  decently written, and illustrated with publicly sourced artwork. It needs an edit in places.

Where is it set?
As the title suggests, The Duel at Dangerford is set in Dangerford—specifically on the Isle Dangerous—as well on the road to Runegate. In the official canon of Glorantha, this takes place in the Storm Season of 1625, but due to the vagaries of the author’s campaign and ‘Your Glorantha Will Vary’, in The Duel at Dangerford it takes pace in the Storm Season of 1626.

Who do you play?
The player characters should ideally be heroes of Sartar. The scenario works particularly well if one of the player characters is a Humakti.

What do you need?
The Duel at Dangerford requires RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and the RuneQuest Gamemaster Screen Pack to play. To get the most out of The Duel at Dangerford, the Game Master will need access to The Coming Storm: The Red Cow Volume I, The Eleven Lights: The Red Cow Volume II, and The Glorantha Sourcebook. To get the utmost out of The Duel at Dangerford, the Game Master will also need access to Wyrm’s Footnotes #12, Wyrm’s Footnotes #15, the Dragon Pass board game, the Argan Argar Atlas, King of Sartar, Arcane Lore, and Troll Gods—although the last seven are really only of note or use if you are dedicated Gloranthaphile and have copies in your library.

In terms of the narrative, the player characters will also require an outspoken rival, ideally set up beforehand. If The Duel at Dangerford is run as part of the scenarios included in RuneQuest Gamemaster Screen Pack, this could be someone at the court of Queen Leika in Clearwine or if the Game Master has run ‘Cattle Raid’, then this could be a member of the Malani tribe.

What do you get?
The Duel at Dangerford is a simple scenario at its core. Divided into three acts, it begins in media res with the player characters on the road to Runegate with the Colymar Tribal Host, having answered the call to war in the face of an imminent invasion by a Tarshite Provincial Army. Following a council of war, the player characters are sidelined to Dangerford in order to protect the flank of  the Colymar Tribal Host of the Sartarite Army. As they make their way there, they spot both a second column of Tarshite soldiery heading towards to Dangerford, no doubt to cross the river there and conduct a flanking manouevre as was feared, and the fact that the column is led by no less a figure than General Fazzur Wideread, one of the greatest figures of the age. The player characters must therefore rush to Dangerford and find a way of stopping the advancing Tarshite forces, and it just so happens that the Isle Dangerous is a legendary duelling ground, where the Humakti rules of duelling are upheld by an ancient hero.

Unfortunately, as simple a scenario as The Duel at Dangerford is, it could have been a whole lot more simple. The problem is that it is overwritten, the author dwelling just a little too much on details and information that is not really pertinent to the scenario, either in the scenario’s extensive footnotes or annoyingly, in the text itself. So in a lot of cases, it is more hard work for the Game Master than it should be to prepare and run The Duel at Dangerford, but then it is underwritten else where, in particular not really giving information on how the the player characters go about performing a certain ritual on the Isle Dangerous. What is happening here is that the author is showing his love and knowledge of Glorantha, and whilst much of that information is interesting and whilst there is a certain joy to the writing, it is fundamentally just a little too much—certainly for anyone without that same degree of love and knowledge. Especially since the scenario suffers in places as a consequence.

In addition, The Duel at Dangerford comes with four appendices. The first contains a poem that the the author wants the Game Master to read out during the scenario, the second the author’s feedback on the scenario, ‘The Smoking Ruin’—all ten pages of it, some suggestions for expanding the scenario, ‘The Dragon of Thunder Hills’ from the RuneQuest Gamemaster Screen Pack; and some stats for any Tarshite militia the player characters might encounter during the scenario. To be fair, this is all interesting content, but it is not useful content as far as The Duel at Dangerford is concerned—except the stats for the soldiery. The poem is optional, the author’s feedback on the scenario, ‘The Smoking Ruin’ is lengthy and not relevant, and the notes on expanding the scenario, ‘The Dragon of Thunder Hills’ are very much optional. Now if the Game Master is planning to run ‘The Smoking Ruin’ or has not yet run ‘The Dragon of Thunder Hills’, then both feedback and notes are useful, but they do feel as if they should be in a fanzine rather than here.

Is it worth your time?
Yes. The Duel at Dangerford presents a fantastic opportunity for the player characters to be heroic—especially if one of them is a Humakti. 
No. Either because your campaign is not set in Sartar or you have already run the Battle of Dangerford. 
Maybe. The Tarshites and their Lunar allies are sure to launch another invasion of Sartar—at least in your campaign—and The Duel at Dangerford could be adjusted to fit, just as the author adjusted his to fit.

some other things I've downscaled to N or recolored or both for playing Battletech...

Collections of short scenarios for Call of Cthulhu are nothing new—there was the 1997 anthology Minions, but that was for Call of Cthulhu, Fifth Edition. That though was a simple collection of short scenarios, whereas Gateways to Terror: Three Evenings of Horror is both a collection of short scenarios and something different. Published by Chaosium, Inc. for use with either Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition or the Call of Cthulhu Starter Set, it is a trio of very short scenarios—scenarios designed to be played in an hour, designed to introduce players to Call of Cthulhu, and designed to demonstrate Call of Cthulhu. All three have scope to be expanded to last longer than an hour, come with pre-generated investigators as well as numerous handouts, and designed to be played by four players—though guidance is given as to which investigators to use with less than four players for each scenario, right down to just a single player and the Keeper. All three are set in different years and locations, but each is set in a single location, each is played against the clock—whether they are played in an hour or two hours—before a monster appears, and each showcases the classic elements of a Call of Cthulhu scenario. So the players and their investigators are presented with a mystery, then an investigation in which they hunt for and interpret clues, and lastly, they are forced into a Sanity-depleting confrontation with a monster.

Gateways to Terror: Three Evenings of Horror starts out though with an extensive introduction—or reintroduction—to the core rules of Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition. This is to help the Keeper introduce the rules herself to her fellow players, whether sat round the table at home, playing online, or at a convention. In turn it discusses the investigator sheet, using Luck, skill rolls, bonus and penalty dice, combat, and of course, Sanity. Included here are references to both the Call of Cthulhu: Keeper Rulebook and the Call of Cthulhu Starter Set with pertinent points marked. The only thing not included here that perhaps might have been useful is a list of these references, possibly at the end of the section. Otherwise this is all very useful, if not as a reminder, then at least as a means of the Keeper having to avoid flipping through another book.

Each of the three scenarios is tightly structured and follows the same format. This starts with advice on the scenario’s structure, specifically the timings if the Keeper is running it as a one-hour game. Then it discusses each of the four investigators for the scenario, including their notable traits and roleplaying hooks, what to do if there are fewer than four players, and what if there are more than four, before delving into the meat of the scenario itself. All three are very nicely presented, clear and easy to read off the page in terms of what skill rolls are needed and what the investigators learn from them. As well as really good maps—for both players and Keeper, but it has to be said that the maps for the Keeper are thoroughly impressive—which depict the different locations of the three scenarios in three dimensional perspective, each scenario comes with a sheaf of handouts, suggestions as to how each of its four investigators react when they go insane, and lastly, four investigator sheets. What is notable about these is that they are not done on the standard investigator sheet for Call of Cthulhu. This does feel off brand, but presented as straight text, the information that a player would want, or need is easy to find and easy to read.

So to the scenarios themselves. They open with Leigh Carr’s ‘The Necropolis’. Set in 1924 in Egypt this is a classic set-up, four members of an archaeological expedition excavating a tomb in the Valley of the Kings when the worst happens—they are entombed themselves! The quartet are driven to explore and discover as much as they are to escape, but the latter becomes more important when something appears to be inside the tomb with them! First though, they need to stop whatever is in the tomb with them because it seems very, very hungry… Of the three scenarios in the anthology, this has the largest area for the investigators to explore, consisting of five rooms rather than the single rooms of the other two. It is also probably the pulpiest in tone and style, and if the solution for dealing with the monster is a cliché, it is entirely in keeping with the genre. More of a locked room horror mystery than the other two, veteran players will enjoy the links to both Call of Cthulhu and Lovecraftian lore.

‘What’s in the Cellar?’ by Jon Hook switches to upstate New York in 1929. Arthur Blackwood, a respected local attorney is on trial for the bloody murder of his wife in the cellar of his family’s ancestral holiday cabin and is likely to go to the electric chair. He claims to be innocent, that his family is cursed, that there is a genie in the cellar who murdered his wife. Blackwood’s business and his defence team are desperate to keep him from being given a death sentence, so ask friends, family, a private investigator, and a psychiatrist—the latter to help prove that Blackwood is not deranged—to investigative. Although the opening scene takes place in New York, this is essentially a one-room scenario—the cellar. Here the shelves that line its walls are stocked with clues amidst the tools and bric-à-brac you would expect to find in a rural cellar. Again, there is a race again time—although neither players nor their investigators will be aware of it—before something goes wrong and the investigators find themselves trapped with something nasty in the cellar.

Lastly, Todd Gardiner’s ‘The Dead Boarder’ takes place in Providence, Rhode Island at the start of the Great Depression in an utterly mundane location—a single room at Ma Shanks’ Boarding House. All four of its investigators have rooms here and all four are worried about a neighbour of theirs. Apart from the late-night prayers, he was always nice and quiet, but has not been heard from for a couple of days. So being neighbourly, they gather to check on him, they are aghast to discover when the door to his room is unlocked, him lying on the floor in a bloody mess. Since no one has been seen entering or leaving his room—and everyone would know if they did—what happened to him? Of all the three scenarios in the anthology, this is the most detailed and the richest in terms of its play. All four of the pre-generated investigators have different motives for entering and examining the room, sometimes motives which will clash, so the investigators have more personal drives other than the need to survive. Where in the other the scenarios the investigators do not have an obvious time limit on their actions, here they do, as the police have been called and will arrive within the hour. So this will also drive the investigators to act. Overall ‘The Dead Boarder’ nicely brings the horror home, or at least to the room down the hall.

If perhaps there is an issue with Gateways to Terror: Three Evenings of Horror, it is with the monsters. Now they are not all the same, but they are the same in terms of being unstoppable, appearing from nowhere, and so on. This though comes from the format of the three scenarios and its built-in time limit, and really this would only be a downside were a group to play all three in quick succession. The monsters are also not drawn from Call of Cthulhu canon, so any player expecting them to be might be disappointed, but there is no need for them to be and there are plenty of other scenarios and campaigns where they appear anyway.

Physically, Gateways to Terror: Three Evenings of Horror is very presented, the choice of photographs is decent, the maps are good, and a great deal of the artwork can be used to show the players during play. In terms of design, the trio are also multi-function scenarios. They can be used as demonstration scenarios, though they are not long enough for the traditional four-slot of a convention game. They can be used as one-shots, as written or expanded in terms of game length by ignoring the suggested timings. They can be added to an existing campaign, but with each being written for their set of pre-generated investigators, this will take some adjustment upon the part of the Keeper. They can be used to introduce investigators, perhaps as flashbacks or prequels, and to explore their first encounter with the Mythos, rather than say, all of them having been run through ‘Alone Against the Flames’ or ‘Paper Chase’ from the Call of Cthulhu Starter Set. Lastly, they can be used to introduce players to Call of Cthulhu and how it is played. Each of the three scenarios in Gateways to Terror: Three Evenings of Horror is flexible enough to support these functions and if not in terms of place, could also easily be adjusted in terms of date.

It would be fantastic to see more scenarios written to the format of Gateways to Terror: Three Evenings of Horror, whether as more demonstration games, one-shots, longer convention games, or investigator introductions to the Mythos. Overall, Gateways to Terror: Three Evenings of Horror delivers three, short doses of horror and does so in an engaging, well designed, and multi-functional fashion.

At the end of the fourth and most recent campaign and campaign set in Free League Publishing’s Mutant: Year Zero post-apocalyptic future, there remained one big question, “What happens next?” Since 2014, the publisher has been exploring the place of mutants with Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days, anthropomorphic animals with Mutant: Genlab Alpha, robots with Mechatron – Rise of the Robots Roleplaying, and Mutant: Year Zero – Elysium, and by with each release revealing a bit more the world and the disaster which brought it to its current state. Each release also saw the four different groups encountering one or more of the other groups for the first time, if only fleetingly, in the wake of the events which played out in Mutant: Year Zero – Elysium, all four groups are together and interacting with each other. This is the new world of Mutant: Year Zero presented in a mini-campaign for setting, Mutant: Year Zero – The Gray Death.

Mutant: Year Zero – The Gray Death takes place in the Zone, the region first explored in Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days. The default Zone is The Big Smoke—essentially bombed out, flattened, and ravaged London—but it can easily be moved to the Game Master’s own Zone. All that it requires is a long body of water which boats can easily travel up and down. Advice is given on how to run it as a stand-alone adventure, but really Mutant: Year Zero – The Gray Death is designed to be run as part of campaign, specifically after Mutant: Year Zero – Elysium, and ideally after Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days, Mutant: Genlab Alpha, and Mechatron – Rise of the Robots Roleplaying. In addition, to get the best out of Mutant: Year Zero – The Gray Death, the Game Master should also have run Mutant: Year Zero Zone Compendium 5: Hotel Imperator. Since the campaign takes place after the events of Mutant: Year Zero – Elysium, there no restrictions on what type of characters the players can roleplay—be mutants, animals, robots, or humans. This is one of the features of the brave new Mutant: Year Zero world.

As Mutant: Year Zero – The Gray Death opens, the world has changed. There is more trade and interaction between the different groups, there are more boats on the river, and so on, but there are ominous signs. In the depths of a snowy winter, there are disappearances around the Ark, including of people important to the Player Characters, and there are shadows in the sky—vehicles which float in the air and move fast. The Player Characters come across a Zone Rider—one of the couriers who carry messages back and forth across the Zone—under attack by a band of orderly and well-equipped soldiers. If they come to the Zone Rider’s rescue, or from a contact later on if they decide not to intervene, they learn of a mysterious new organisation known as the Army of the Dawn. It has recently taken over a wretched junktown to the west and renamed it Dawnville. The Player Characters are tasked with travelling to Dawnville, which is shortly to stage a wrestling tournament, to find out more information. To prepare themselves for that, it is suggested that the Player Characters visit two other places to conduct some investigation and learn what they can about the Army of Dawn. The first is a trading post run by Oscar Battenburg, an enclave Human from Elysium I known to trade slaves to the Army of Dawn, the second is the Showboat Saga, which travels up and the river putting on entertainments and which recently visited the Dawnville.

The Player Characters are also given a deadline—the wrestling tournament takes place in a week. To get them across the Zone in time, the Player Characters are lent a big-wheeled all-terrain robot vehicle and given some equipment. It is also likely that they will have been able to scavenge the guns and the armour of the Army of Dawn soldiers who attacked the Zone Rider—in particular, the tin helms which give the Army of Dawn soldiers the look of Great War soldiers. In comparison to a normal Mutant: Year Zero campaign, the Player Characters will be able to zip across the Zone, and with initially three locations—or as Mutant: Year Zero terms them, ‘Special Zone Sectors’—there is scope for the Game Master to run random encounters and ‘Special Zone Sectors’ of her own in between these three.

Mutant: Year Zero – The Gray Death actually consists of five ‘Special Zone Sectors’, not three, although the first three can be run in any order, followed by the fourth and fifth in that order. Each of these locations is nicely detailed and includes full stats for each of the NPCs, clear maps—both full illustrations of the locations and floorplans where needed, and events which play out when the Player Characters visit them. The five ‘Special Zone Sectors’ are all different in scope and theme. So ‘The Showboat Saga’ has a certain extravagance to it with its comparatively lavish performances and restaurant which becomes a mini-murder mystery, whilst ‘Dawnville’ is essentially ‘Bartertown’ from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome—complete with the equivalent of its own ‘Thunderdome’, which of course is where the wrestling tournament takes place. For the most part, the encounters involve a fair degree of stealth and subterfuge as well as combat. Certainly, the wrestling tournament will appeal to characters and players who like physical combat.

So what is going on in Mutant: Year Zero – The Gray Death? Well, its events do stem from what happened at the end of Mutant: Year Zero – Elysium and the fact that it involves an army—the ‘Army of Dawn’—points towards a new force wanting to conquer the whole of the Zone. This is a genre staple, a new military arising to threaten the fledgling communities working to survive in the weird world order of the post-apocalyptic planet, but it well handled in Mutant: Year Zero – The Gray Death. 

Now Mutant: Year Zero – The Gray Death describes itself as a campaign, but at best it is a mini-campaign. With just five ‘Special Zone Sectors’, this is really more of scenario than a campaign and the first few, ‘The Showboat Saga’ and ‘Battenburg’s Trading Post’ in particular, are short, playable in a single session, two at the very most. The later ‘Special Zone Sectors’ are longer and more involved, and it will probably run to two or three sessions. Fortunately, the fact that the first few ‘Special Zone Sectors’ can be run in any order provides the Game Master with room to add her own content and perhaps bulk up Mutant: Year Zero – The Gray Death a little.

Physically, Mutant: Year Zero – The Gray Death is well written, nicely presented in full colour with excellent cinematic-style artwork. Some of the illustrations show scenes that can happen in the campaign and the likelihood is that the Game Master will really want them to happen—such as a gunfight aboard an airship—because they look fun! However, it does need an edit in places and some of the artwork still has Swedish signs and writing on it. The campaign also comes with some good handouts, including newspapers and event posters, both a sign of the growing new civilisation of Mutant: Year Zero. These handouts though, are not collated at the end of the book.

As a campaign—or really a scenario—Mutant: Year Zero – The Gray Death begins to show what the new world of Mutant: Year Zero is like, the beginnings of new civilisations.  It returns to the openness of Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days after the closed and confined worlds of Mutant: Genlab Alpha, Mechatron – Rise of the Robots Roleplaying, and Mutant: Year Zero – Elysium, and of course, it brings each of the inhabitants of the four campaign settings together much post-apocalyptic roleplaying games of old, such as Gamma World.  In fact, with the new set-up, a Game Master with access to those old post-apocalyptic scenarios written in the early 1980s could actually adapt them to the world of Mutant: Year Zero. Overall, Mutant: Year Zero – The Gray Death shows us what the new world of Mutant: Year Zero is like and has the Player Characters confront the first threat to it in an action-packed scenario. It is though, just the next chapter. 

Because.