As its title suggests, Going Underground – A Case File for Rivers of London: the Roleplaying Game is a scenario for the roleplaying game based on the Rivers of London novels by Ben Aaronovitch. In this roleplaying game, as magic returns to the world, there is the need to deal with the mysteries, oddness, and secrets of the ‘demi-monde’, as well as investigate crimes committed by those within it and those associated with it. In this urban fantasy game, this need is fulfilled by the London Metropolitan Police Service’s special magic branch, also known as ‘the Folly’, and the Player Characters are its newly recruited members. Magic plays a big role in Rivers of London: the Roleplaying Game and thus in Going Underground, and some of the Player Characters are practitioners—Apprentice Newtonian Wizards—who will need their magic to best solve the mystery at the heart of the scenario. It is a short affair, a group capable of playing through it in a single session, two at best. It is also an introductory scenario, suitable for as a beginning scenario, but also easily played after the solo case file, ‘The Domestic’, and the full scenario, ‘The Bookshop’ in the core rulebook, or simply inserted into an ongoing campaign.

Going Underground – A Case File for Rivers of London: the Roleplaying Game can be played through with two, three, or four players, and there are suggestions as to which pre-generated Player Characters from the core rulebook are suitable as well as what spells will be useful. Werelight is definitely one of them. There are two issues with the scenario, one of which is that it is short, the other that it is set in 2016 rather than the present day. This is because the London Underground began running late-night services after that and so made accessing its tracks very much more difficult and dangerous. That said, there are notes if the Game Master wants to shift Going Underground out of London and set in another city with an underground mass transport network, such as New York’s Subway, the Paris Métro, or indeed Glasgow’s Clockwork Orange.

The scenario opens with a telephone call in the middle of night. This is from Sergeant Jaget Kumar, the Falcon Liaison Officer for the British Transport Police. He reports that an engineer conducting a patrol on the London Underground at the British Museum station got the fright of his life and Sergeant Kumar wants to determine if the incident is Falcon-related—which of course, it is. The Player Characters get to walk from the Folly to nearby Holborn tube station, through the city’s nightlife, to first interview the engineer. They do have a little time to conduct some preliminary research, which should turn up one interesting fact—there is no British Museum London Underground station. Or rather, there is no longer a working British Museum London Underground station. It was closed in 1933 and is no longer part of the running network, but was used as an air raid shelter in World War 2 and later a Cold War emergency command post. It is now used for storage. The British Museum London Underground station is what is known as a ‘ghost station’—and it is this conflation of ‘ghost’ and ‘station’ which the author takes advantage of and should arouse the interest of the players and their characters. That, of course, and the fact that the nearby British Museum is also reputed to have been haunted by its very own ‘Unlucky Mummy’.

After the Player Characters have interviewed the very jittery Underground engineer, they get to descend into the network and work their way to the British Museum Underground station. This is preceded by a very stern safety briefing and Sergeant Kumar’s confession that he is really looking forward to visiting the British Museum Underground station as it is a ghost station he has never visited or had reason to visit. The bulk of the scenario’s investigation and possible action takes place here. There is not a great deal to the investigation itself, but it is nicely detailed with numerous options and suggestions given and explored to deal with the handful of problems that the Player Characters find in the remains of the old station. Notably, one of these is combat, but there is certain reluctance to its inclusion here, as if not only is it not the ideal solution to the mystery, it is not one that the author really wanted to include. There is a wealth of background and historical detail to back up the scenario’s plot that showcases the research that has gone into the scenario. This includes a history of the London Underground, the British Museum station in particular, and the ‘Unlucky Mummy’. Throughout is also staging advice and suggestions for the Game Master as well as a plot progression diagram at the beginning.

Physically, Going Underground – A Case File for Rivers of London: the Roleplaying Game is very nicely produced. It is well written, the illustrations excellent, the cartography good, and the handouts decent.

If there is an issue with Going Underground – A Case File for Rivers of London: the Roleplaying Game, it is that it is disappointingly short, but then it does cover just a few hours’ worth of investigation. However, it is detailed in terms of plot and background, as well as the resolution to its mystery, with some fun NPCs for the Game Master to portray and the Player Characters to interact with. Ultimately, Going Underground – A Case File for Rivers of London: the Roleplaying Game is a very nicely done scenario that really does feel as if Ben Aaronovitch could have written it. No fan of the Rivers of London series would be surprised to see this turn up as a short story or graphic novel.

The end is nigh and there is no denying it. The seas rise. The forests spread. Crops fail. Wars continue without reason. The dead walk the land. Peasants suffer taxes, plague, and worse. As the world takes one more breath closer to dying, the arch-priestess Josilfa stands in the pulpit in the great cathedral to the god Nechrubel in the city of Galgenbeck in the land of Tveland, preaching that prophecies of the Two-Headed Basilisk are coming true. The apocalypse is pending and the inquisition of the Two-Headed Basilisks will see to it that no apostate or heretic turn their face away from the end or find salvation in other gods. Yet there are some who would deny all the signs around them and even say that there is another way. That the masses need heed to the pontification of arch-priestess Josilfa in her doom mongering prophecies of the Two-Headed Basilisk, that the darkness can be held back. Vriprix the Mad Wizard is one such voice. He believes that the Forbidden Psalm, a nameless scripture, contains the necessary knowledge to do so, and is located deep in the ruins of the city of Kergüs. He will not emerge from behind the doors of his castle home, but his pockets run deep, and he has gold aplenty to hire mercenaries and freebooters to undertake tasks for him. This is the set-up for Forbidden Psalm: The Times Edition.
Forbidden Psalm: End Times Edition is a miniatures game published by Space Penguin Ink. It is notable for a number of things. First—as the background suggests—it is compatible with Mörk Borg, the Swedish pre-apocalypse Old School Renaissance style roleplaying game designed by Ockult Örtmästare Games and Stockholm Kartell and published by Free League Publishing. That means that Player Characters can be converted to use with Forbidden Psalm and with a bit of effort, the campaign that comes in Forbidden Psalm, could be adapted to Mörk Borg if a more physical, combative game is desired. Like Mörk Borg, a set of polyhedral dice is required to play Forbidden Psalm.

Second, it is a 28 mm skirmish level miniatures game playable with just five miniatures per warband per player and as a systems-agnostic setting, those miniatures can be from any range and publisher, meaning that a player can easily tailor his band to his choice. It is played on two-foot square board and Forbidden Psalm does include rules for the co-operative play, solo play, versus mode, and multiplayer play with three or four participants. The scale and numbers of Forbidden Psalm puts it roughly on a par with a Frostgrave: Fantasy Wargames in the Frozen City and Mordheim.

Third, Forbidden Psalm: End Times Edition is not one book, but two. It compiles two volumes. The core rules, Forbidden Psalm, and the campaign, Footsteps of the Mad Wizard. This is a twenty-six-part campaign and if Footsteps of the Mad Wizard is run using Mörk Borg, it would actually make it the first campaign for Mörk Borg.

A warband in Forbidden Psalm consists of five miniatures. Each has four stats—Agility, Presence, Strength, and Toughness, Hit Points based on his Toughness, a randomly determined Flaw and Feat, and then some equipment. The latter comes out of a starting budget of fifty gold for all of the Warband. If a player wants his warband to include a Spellcaster, this must be paid for, who is then generated as a standard figure complete with stats, Feat and Flaw, and so on, plus two scrolls—one clean and one unclean—that he will begin play with. Pets—including a pet rock, which is good throwing—and a Slug Wizard can also be purchased and mercenaries be hired. These are more expensive options than hiring the spellcaster. Forbidden Psalm provides examples of both pets and mercenaries.

Råtta Strejkbrytare
Agility +3 Presence +1 Strength -3 Toughness +0
Hit Points: 8
Flaw: Loner (-1 to tests within two inches of an ally)
Feat: Rat Catcher (free Bag o’ Rats)
Equipment: Short sword, light armour, backpack, lantern, bandages

Set-up and game play in Forbidden Psalm is simple. Pick a scenario to play and set up the board, determine weather and conditions, roll for initiative, and deploy according to the scenario. Then from one round to the next, the participants determine initiative, take it in turns to activate a figure, then monsters, and that is it. Play proceeds like this until the objective for the scenario has either been achieved or it proves impossible to do so. Movement is based on a figure’s Agility stat, and each figure can act and move once when activated. An action can be to make an attack, use an item of equipment or a feat, read a scroll, interact with treasure or scenario objects, drag a down figure a short distance, and so on. If a Test has to be made, it is rolled on a twenty-sided die, the aim being to roll twelve or more. A roll of one is a fumble and a roll of twenty is a critical. Combat is equally as simple, though in melee combat, the defender has a chance to strike back, though with a penalty. A figure reduced to zero Hit Points is ‘Downed’, but is killed if reduced to negative Hit Points. A ‘Downed’ can still die at the end of the scenario or he might simply have a wound or even a wound and a new Feat he has learned!

Both players begin a scenario with each possessing access to six Omens. These grant fantastic, one-off benefits such as dealing maximum damage, forcing the reroll of any dice, cancelling out one critical or fumble.

Magic takes the form of reading scrolls. This simply requires a test versus the figure’s Presence stat. This does not consume the scroll and the figure can read a scroll again and again over the course of a scenario. On a failure or a Critical, the figure gains a Tragedy. Tragedies are accrued and carried over from one game to the next. They are then used and expunged as modifiers to rolls on the Calamity Table, such as when a player rolls a Fumble when reading a scroll. A Calamity, such as everything feeling fine, but on roll of seven on the twenty-sided die whenever the figure is activated, his head explodes and he dies, or the figure’s arm becomes permanently hostile to the figure and punches him every round until the limb is amputated, lasts for a whole scenario.

The rules for Forbidden Psalm run to some forty pages, but that covers everything—warband creation, magic, movement, action, combat, and so on. They are clear and easy to read and grasp, and anyone who has played another set of miniatures wargame rules will be able to adjust with ease, as to be fair, will anyone who has played Forbidden Psalm. The remainder of Forbidden Psalm is divided between some twenty-five or so monsters and the campaign. The monsters include ‘The Blind Spider Queen’, ‘Blood Rage Vampire’, the ‘Corpse Collector’ of the front cover to Forbidden Psalm, both ‘Dismembered Ghouls’ and ‘Faecal Ghouls’, the ‘Mutant Chicken of Kalkoroth’ (complete with laser eyes), and lastly, the scythe-armed ‘The Editors’ which stuff the mouths of Downed figures with paper covered in mad ramblings and so kill them, rising the next round as Disciples of the Editors! If a monster is killed, its organs can be harvested as ‘Sweet Meats’ and sold. However, this requires a successful Presence Test otherwise the figure realises that his actions are so disgusting he must make a Morale Test! Overall, this is a solid selection of suitably vile monsters and it would be easy to add more from Mörk Borg.

The campaign in Forbidden Psalm: End Times Edition combines the shorter campaign from the original rulebook for Forbidden Psalm and In the Footsteps of the Mad Wizard, and together they take up half of the book. In this, the extremely reclusive Vriprix the Mad Wizard hires the Player Characters to undertake various tasks, such as exploring a nearby house for Black-Spotted Fungus, killing a rival wizard, finding the culprit who has stolen his socks(!), and more… Each clearly states the goal for the Player Characters, rewards, set-up and deployment, threats, and then how to run it in solo and co-operative play, plus some colour text to read out, especially if it is being run as part of a Mörk Borg game. After Vriprix disappears at the end of the part of the campaign, the rest concerns the Player Characters’ attempts to track him down in the city of Dawnblight in the Kergüs region. Here they will find one of their number imprisoned and have to rescue him from Ice Prisons, scavenge for food to keep the Hogs Head Inn running, kill the innkeeper’s ex-lover-now Faecal Ghoul and return with proof, hunt ravenous monsters and try to survive when they turn on them, and so on. It is a fun campaign in whatever format it is being run. There are notes too on what the Player Characters can do between missions and improve themselves. In general, the scenarios are sufficiently complex for Forbidden Psalm, but they may need a little fleshing out here and there to work as anything other than very straightforward scenarios.

Physically, Forbidden Psalm: End Times Edition is decently done and keeps everything clear and simple, and so it is very easy to read. In terms of art style, Forbidden Psalm: End Times Edition avoids the illegibility of the Artpunk style of the standard Mörk Borg title.

Although not written as one, Forbidden Psalm: End Times Edition has the simplicity and ease of use of an introductory wargame, made all the easier by its low demands in terms of miniatures and terrain pieces required. The compatibility between Forbidden Psalm: End Times Edition and Mörk Borg also highlights the simplicity and adaptability of the Old School Renaissance-style roleplaying game, not just to another setting or genre, but an entirely different type of game—the miniatures wargame—and then back again. All of which is supported by over twenty scenarios which can be played in solo, co-operative, and player-versus mode or run as straightforward roleplaying scenarios. Forbidden Psalm: End Times Edition is a solid set of skirmish miniatures combat rules, perfect for the Mörk Borg devotee, suitable for the wargames enthusiastic wanting a straightforward set of rules, and good for the Game Master who wants an undemanding campaign.

On the edge of the pit, stands a great iron pole from chains hang, some broken, some not. This is the sacrificial bluff at which the great tentacular pit-beast would rise from roiling mists that filled the one hundred feet wide and some say a thousand-foot-deep pit to drag away the young and unfortunate virgins offered as sacrifices to dissuade it from attacking the surrounding countryside as it had done for thousands of years. Thus, it has been centuries, the local villages offering up their young as sacrifices once a decade, the widespread devouring of the countryside prevented following the intervention of a warrior-priest and the agreement he reached with the creature, an agreement that resulted in his being dishonoured. More recently, with the practice having fallen by the wayside and it being a decade since the last set of sacrifices, the tentacles of the pit-beast have been reaching up out of the ravine in search of offerings capable of sating its hunger. Worse, the tentacles have been accompanied by strange, grey-robed men with no faces and long, sinewy arms. So far, the predations of both have been avoided by the local peasantry banding together and driving them off, mob-fashion. That though cannot last, for the tentacles and the faceless grey men are certain to return—and in greater numbers. Thus, brave adventurers have set out to investigate the pit, find out who or what is behind the marauding pit-beast and the people of the pit, and put a stop to them, and of course, go in search of mystery, adventure, riches, and fame.

Dungeon Crawl Classics #68: The People of the Pit is second scenario to be published by Goodman Games for use with the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. Designed for a group of eight to ten First Level Player Characters, it is an important scenario for two reasons. One is that it is written by the publisher, Joseph Goodman, and the other is that it is the second scenario to be written for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game and the first to be written for Player Characters who are not Zero level. The previous adventure, Dungeon Crawl Classics #67: Sailors on the Starless Sea was not only the first, but it was a Character Funnel, the signature set-up and play style of the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game in which players control not one, but several Zero Level characters, each a serf or peasant looking beyond a life tied to the fields and the seasons or the forge and the hammer to prove themselves and perhaps progress enough to become a skilled adventurer and eventually make a name for themselves. In other words, to advance from Zero Level to First Level. Of course, the Player Characters at the start of Dungeon Crawl Classics #68: The People of the Pit are presumed to have done that or the Judge could actually run Dungeon Crawl Classics #67: Sailors on the Starless Sea before this scenario and its survivors, having reached First Level, now play it as a standard Dungeon Crawl Classics adventure.

The adventure is not so much a descent into the pit—although ultimately, the Player Characters will reach its bottom—but a descent through the caves and tunnels carved into the walls of the pit by the great tentacular beast and its faceless, blubbery, grey cultists. Here what the Player Characters discover is a working, living dungeon complex, a temple dedicated to the blind idiot god whose name they will learn is Palimdybis, its cultists conduct ceremonies to their master, make sacrifices to him, and prepare the strange powders and concoctions, made from the suckers, eyeballs, and skin scoured off their master’s tentacles, that they use to transform initiates into the inhuman state of full cultist. Even the descent to this complex is dangerous enough with its cracked and slippery stone steps which wind their way around the side of the pit, the possibility being that the Player Characters lose their footing and plummet to their deaths. Once inside the complex, Palimdybis’ influence can be found everywhere. His tentacles seem to reach everywhere, most notably in a ravine where they can reach up to attack intruders or pull down a drawbridge that will allow people to cross, the Octo-masses which burst out of the bellies of cultists once they are slain, and in the tentacle transport which can be ridden up and down the complex by clutching the rope ladder and rigging the cultists have attached to it. This only hints at the ability of the cultists to command and control the tentacles, each of them learning to summon and direct the tentacles once initiated. This is a group endeavour and requires at least three cultists. It is also possible for Player Characters to learn the spell Control Tentacle and so gain the same abilities—at least within the temple and the pit. This tentacle transport is not the only means of traversing the complex. For example, mazes serve as mediative puzzles—almost like the Pattern from Roger Zelazny’s Nine Princes in Amber—that the crimson-robed middle-ranking cultists, yellow-robed senior cultists, and blue-robed cult leader—use to transport themselves between the levels of the temple. These mazes are given as actual handouts that the players must solve using pen and paper in order to proceed further into the temple!

Dungeon Crawl Classics #68: The People of the Pit is a dangerous affair, especially once the cultists begin summoning tentacles. There are also many features which work like traps, like the meditative mazes, but are not traps in the classic sense, plus, the processes necessary for the initiates to become full-blown cultists are dangerous as well. The monsters are nasty too, like the mineral-horned mountain basilisk, a variant of the traditional basilisk whose gaze takes longer to turn its victims to stone, but whose solid gold horn is bound to attract the attention of the greedy Player Character. Lastly, the final confrontation and climax of the dungeon is a nasty fight that the players will feel lucky to have their characters survive.

One aspect of Dungeon Crawl Classics #68: The People of the Pit to note is that it is low in terms of reward or treasure. There is no real discussion of what happens beyond the adventure itself and little in terms of monetary reward to be found. There are three magical items of note to be found. One is a very fragile wand that enhances and grants detection spells, another is a short sword that can be thrown at goblins with unerring accuracy and cripples those who interfere, whilst a third is a simple +1 Mace. Of course, after reading the descriptions of the first two, why is the mace so very, very plain?

Originally, Dungeon Crawl Classics #68: The People of the Pit consisted of just the four levels of the temple complex, but later printings include ‘Assassins of the Pit’, an additional area that can be added to the pit. There are suggestions as to where this could be, one being that the Player Characters follow an Octo-Mass, not yet killed, as it flees down the side of the pit to this new area. The twelve-room complex nicely expands upon the original dungeon, providing the means for the Player Characters to learn more about the cult and its history that cannot be found elsewhere in the temple, and it also sort of puts a face to the cultists found here. Or rather multiple faces, since these purple or black robe-wearing cultists are not so much cultists or transformed humans, but Octo-Masses that have escaped their former hosts and become assassins with the ability to take on the faces of others. Nicely creepy and in true weird fantasy style, they are led by a ‘Grandfather of Assassins’.

Physically, Dungeon Crawl Classics #68: The People of the Pit is as solidly produced as you would expect for a scenario for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. The maps for the core scenario are appropriately tight and twisty for the tentacular nature of the scenario, though those for ‘Assassins of the Pit’ are plainer and not as interesting.

Dungeon Crawl Classics #68: The People of the Pit set the tone for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game scenarios that were to follow—grim and weird and challenging. Its weirdness comes from the Lovecraftian tentacular theme threading, quite literally, through its dungeon halls, its grimness comes from the fate of both cultists and victims, and the challenge from it just simply being a tough dungeon crawl. If their characters survive Dungeon Crawl Classics #68: The People of the Pit then your players are really going to feel they achieved something and their characters are truly worthy of getting to Second Level.

Thirteen Parsecs

http://tinyurl.com/13psignuptim

We want this game to be your sci-fi RPG of choice, so help us make that happen.

This uses the same O.G.R.E.S. as NIGHT SHIFT and Wasted Lands. 

Much like NIGHT SHIFT, there are core rules for playing in all sorts of Sci-Fi genres; Space Opera, Action, Comedy, Horror (of course!), and more.

There will be "Solar Frontiers," mini-settings you can use to start your game (much like the Night Worlds for NIGHT SHIFT). My Solar Frontiers will be "Space Truckers" and the currently titled "Dark Stars," my "aliens and horror in space" setting.

Jason will provide the bulk of the core rules and his two Solar Frontiers, and our long-time collaborator (and demo game GM extraordinaire) Derek Stoelting will also add his Solar Frontiers. We are all working on adding rules and expanding what worked best in NIGHT SHIFT and Wasted Lands. We have over 75 years of game design experience for a couple dozen different companies/publishers.

Speaking of our other games, Thirteen Parsecs is 100% compatible with NIGHT SHIFT and Wasted Lands.  Do you want to play deeper, dark sci-fi horror? NIGHT SHIFT + 13P has you covered. Want to pilot your Time Ship back to after the KT extinction and find a world populated by the proto-human experiments of the Great Old Ones? Wasted Lands + 13P! Or combine all three.

I am planning an epoch-sweeping adventure that takes you from Wasted Lands to NIGHT SHIFT to Thirteen Parsecs, in the vein of one of my favorite books and movies, 2001: A Space Odyssey. It's not exactly the same, of course (I do not liken myself to a Clark or a Kubrick), but it's an echo of a time when I read both 2001 and Lord of the Rings one summer.

Help us make this a reality! We are going strong out of the gate but let's hit those stretch goals.

We are exactly the type of publisher these crowdfunding sites are really for: small professionals with grand ideas and the desire and skills to get it done; we just lack the capital for some art and printing costs upfront.

All of our and Jason's crowdfunding has met our goals, and more importantly, we have delivered on time. We are even offering some nice perks for early backers.

So please check us out!

http://tinyurl.com/13psignuptim

THESE ARE THE FINAL HOURS!

 

The set-up for Cryptozoology for Beginners is quite simple. The school’s photography class has been given a new assignment and raced off aboard the big yellow school bus on a mysterious field trip. This is out into the wilds to photograph and record the local wildlife. This is no ordinary wildlife though, but cryptids—Nessie, the Chupacabra, Sasquatch, and the Mothman—and if the players can take the right photographs and complete their assignments, they will be rewarded with stars, and get to go home top of the class. Cryptozoology for Beginners is published by Cryptozoic Entertainment and is part of the second trilogy of games based on the art of Steven Rhodes, noted for its sly, subversive dig at the social attitudes and fears of the seventies and eighties. Published following a successful Kickstarter campaign, it is designed to be played by between two and four players, aged fourteen and up. The game is played over the course of three rounds in which players will draft cards—both Assignment Cards and Cryptid cards, and then play the Cryptid Cards to both activate their abilities and fulfil the requirements of the Assignment cards. A game can be played in twenty minutes or more, depending on the number of players.

Cryptozoology for Beginners consists of a twelve-page rules booklet, a deck of ninety-six Cryptid Cards, forty Assignment Cards, forty Scoring Tokens, and a Bus Standee. The rules booklet is short, easy to read, and includes a few clarifications and some optional rules. The latter are for a beginner game and a two-player game. The rules for a beginner game do feel superfluous given the simple nature of game and its play, especially given its suggested age limit. Much younger players will have no problems learning and playing Cryptozoology for Beginners. The Scoring Tokens are worth between three and six points and are kept face down throughout play, including when a player draws one and keeps it, and the Bus Standee is used to indicate the first player in each round.

The two card types are the Cryptid Cards and the Assignment Cards. These come in four colours—red, green, blue, and yellow—and are marked with one of seven icons—either Nessie, Sasquatch Footprint, Chupacabra, Mothman, Eldritch Tome, Target, and Horror. There are some cards which combine two icons, whilst the cards with the Horror icon—the Jersey Devil, Siren, and Jackalope—are colourless. Where link between the icons and the cryptids are obvious, the Target icon refers to Monster Hunters. Each of the Cryptid Cards has a special ability. For example, the ‘Nessie’ card requires a player to activate it and another two cards with the Nessie icon so that he can draw another card, whilst the Chupacabra card needs to be activated plus another four cards with the Chupacabra icon and then lets a player discard any card in play, even that of another player, and in return let the owner draw a new card.

The different types of Cryptid Card are also themed mechanically. Thus, the Cryptid Cards with the Nessie icon enable a player to draw more cards; the Cryptid Cards with the Sasquatch Footprint grant a player more Victory Tokens; the Cryptid Cards with the Chupacabra icon let a player steal cards from another player; and the Cryptid Cards with the Mothman icon grant a player with the most Mothman icons extra Victory Points. Of the other Cryptid Cards, those with the Eldritch Tome icon reward a player with Victory Token and those with Target icons can activated to draw and keep another Assignment card. The colourless cards give a variety of unique effects.

The Assignment Cards each provide an objective and a reward to be gained in return for completing it. For example, Assignment #1 requires a player to accrue four red cards and grants him three Victory Points, whilst Assignment #16 gives a player two points if he can accrue two points and at the end of the round, can either give the player another Victory Point or lets him keep a card with a Chupacabra icon.

Cryptozoology for Beginners is played in three rounds each of which consists of four phases. The first phase is the ‘Assignment’ phase. Each player draws two Assignment Cards, keeps one and hidden, whilst the other is placed face-up where everyone can see it and work to achieving it. In the second phase, the ‘Draft Cryptid’ phase, each player receives eight Cryptid Cards. He keeps a single card and passes the remainder to the next player. This is done until each player has drafted a hand of eight Cryptid Cards. The third phase is ‘Player Turns’. Each player takes it in turn to play a single Cryptid Card in front of him, activate its ability, and if he manages to complete an Assignment Card, either one face up on the table or the one he has secret, he gets to place it in front of him. It will add to his total score at the end of the game. Cards can only be activated once per phase. Play continues until no-one has any Cryptid Cards in their hand. This ends the round, players keep their completed Assignments and points scored, whilst all Cryptid Cards are discarded—unless a card says otherwise. A new round begins and repeats these steps, and then again for a third and final round. The Bus Standee is used to indicate the player who has the lowest score that is not hidden and lets him begin first in the next round. At the end of the game, the player with highest score wins the game.

In this way, the play of Cryptozoology for Beginners is simple and straightforward. In fact, too simple and straightforward. The problem with Cryptozoology for Beginners is that once play begins, there is very interaction between the players, only through a number of limited Cryptid Cards and then through the draft in the second phase of each round. This draft is the most important stage of play, since it sets up much of what a player will play and do in the ‘Player Turns’ phase. To go further, the ‘Draft Phase’ is not so much a ‘draft’ phase, but a ‘planning’ phase, a player trying work out whether to aim to complete Assignment Cards, focus on Cryptid Cards that give more points, and so on. The benefit of the draft means that each player will also have some idea of what his opponents are planning because of the cards they draft—in secret of course, but they are no longer there as the hands are passed around the table. Also, with just a few Assignment Cards in play, the competition between players can be fierce and made all the worse if a player grabs one that another player has been working towards completing, leaving him little time to adjust or really catch up.
Physically, Cryptozoology for Beginners is nicely done. The rules booklet is easy to read and the rules to understand, whilst the Victory Tokens and the School Bus are done on the thick, bright cardboard. The Assignment Cards are clear and simple, if bland, but really all of the game’s flavour comes from Steve Rhodes’ artwork on the Cryptid Cards which is highly entertaining, such as the Sasquatch on the ‘Seclusion of Sasquatch’ Cryptid Card making filming another Sasquatch whilst a third looks on laughing!

Ultimately, what sells Cryptozoology for Beginners is its artwork—and it really is good artwork. Otherwise, game play focuses too much on its draft mechanic—get it right and a player will sail through his turns, get it wrong and he will have slog to catch up. There is also little interaction beyond the draft. Younger players are more likely to like this more than older ones, the latter including the minimum suggested age group for Cryptozoology for Beginners. It is too simple a game for them. Ultimately, Cryptozoology for Beginners feels as if it should offer more than it does.

 The new cover for the 2025 Monster Manual has been revealed.

That is Minsc and Boo on the front and a character I do recognize but can't name at the moment.

A beholder makes perfect sense really. 

I know some people out there won't like it call it a "crash grab" but the truth is anyone that cares about that isn't buying this anyway and anyone buying it doesn't care.

Me? I like it! Lots of monsters, a call back to some classic characters. Yeah, this looks great.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." 

 - Clarke's Third Law

 Come on. You knew I was going to go here.

Before I start I will say this, there is no "witch" class in the core Thirteen Parsecs book. But that doesn't mean you can add one yourself. As I mentioned yesterday, Thirteen Parsecs is 100% compatible with NIGHT SHIFT and Wasted Lands, and those games have witches and sorcerers, respectively.  Rules-wise, there is nothing at all stopping you from adding either to your sci-fi game of Thirteen Parsecs. 

The only thing that remains is "How?"

Well. I have you covered.

While there are not a lot of witches in science fiction, they are there and they have made quite an impact. 

Bene Gesserit

The easiest one to talk about, and the one we should really talk about first, is the Bene Gesserit Order from Frank Herbert's Dune Series.  This order of Sisters practice extreme mental control, have psychic abilities, and have secret, occult even ways. They often even play the role as witches when being set up against the "Holy Order" that Paul is trying to create. I don't pretend to be an expert on Dune at all, but it is my wife's favorite series, and she can go on and on about much in the same way I can about Dracula or Lord of the Rings. So, I trust her assessment of this. Note that we both ignore the Brian Herbert books. Me out of no desire to read them and her for "dancing on the corpse of his dead father to make a buck with high school English class level writing." 

The Nightsisters, the Witches of Dathomir

Ok. What is not to love about the force using, Dark Side, magic (or even magick) Nightsisters, aka the Witches of Dathomir? Nothing. That's what.  There is even a great meme out there for them. 

I learned about these witches, and really, that is what they are, via the Star Wars RPG. I don't recall if it was a later book in the d20 line or if it was from the Saga system. But my very first experience was getting a box of Star Wars minis from Wizards of the Coast and there was a "Dathomir Witch" in the pack. Well, you can imagine my surprise.

We finally saw some on screen in the Ahsoka series. We even got Claudia Black to play one! 

Bellerians

Ok...I am not really serious here, but hey, if I can have a Pumpkin Spice Witch, then certainly, space is large enough for the Bene Gesserit, the Dathomir Witches, and the Bellerians. BUT if we take the equally not-so-serious idea that Space Mutiny exists in the same universe as the original Battlestar Galactica, well, they already had Space Angels and Devils. Witches don't seem to be that much of a stretch. 

Plus Bellerian sounds enough like Raëlian for me to have some fun with. 

Occult Themes in Doctor Who

I talked at length about this in a full post. Based on a recent line dropped by the Head of U.N.I.T. Kate Lethbridge-Stewart in the recent "73 Yards," supernatural elements seem to be going to become more common. 

And these are only a few easily accessible ones. I have not even gotten into books, like the Morgaine Saga by C.J. Cherryh, that have witches or witch-like characters. While Trek is notoriously light on witches, there was mention of the Wiccan religion in Season 2 of Discovery. Even Babylon 5 had "techno-mages." So yes, there is room in a large universe for witches. 

Witches in Darker Stars

While I have had witch-like characters in my play-tests of Darker Stars, there are no witches. The two starships I have been using in my games, The Protector and The Imbolc Mage, have their roots in my Witchcraft/Buffy games. But even the "witch" characters only have psychic abilities, and none to any great extent. I like to play-test with normal characters to start with, to get a feel for the game.

I do acknowledge that my own Sisters of the Aquarian Order would fit right into my Darker Stars setting and maybe even other "Solar Frontiers."  While overtly designed for the White Star system, they do work with NIGHT SHIFT and Thirteen Parsecs. But my habit is to make a new Tradition for different games. If I had the inclination to update the Aquarian Order, I might instead come up with something new for Thirteen Parsecs.  

My idea at this point? Something like the Aquarian Order, but maybe not so "light." An order of witches that began in the Dreaming Age of the Wasted Lands, part of the supernatural underground of NIGHT SHIFT, and then to the stars in Thirteen Parsecs.  An ancient, primordial witch cult that spans æons and light years. 

I certainly have my work cut out for me. 

 June is the month I usually dedicate to Basic-era (B/X, BECMI) D&D, but not always. I have D&D-related plans for June, but I am not entirely done with science fiction yet. 

I have been doing a feature most nights, largely without pomp or circumstance, called Dracula, The Hunters' Journals, where I post the entries from the novel Dracula on the day they were recorded.  It has been a odd thing to post all this Dracula and Victorian content in the midst of all the sci-fi material I have been talking about all month.  But it is not unprecedented. 

Vampires in Space

What do Buck Rogers, Doctor Who, Vampirella, and Colin Wilson all have in common? They are all different science fiction media properties that have featured stories of vampires in space.

One of the strong selling points I think of our new Thirteen Parsecs RPG is it's 100% compatibility with NIGHT SHIFT.  Creatures, characters, classes, and more can be lifted whole from NIGHT SHIT and dropped right into Thirteen Parsecs.  You just need to figure out why they are there.

The vampire in NIGHT SHIFT is based on the Gothic vampire of old, which, of course, has roots in mythology, but mostly in Dracula, Ruthven, and Carmilla. It is also flexible enough to allow for various modern re-interpretations against the Gothic archetype. There is no reason why this can't be extended beyond that to space.  And like I said before, I kinda owe it to my 10-year-old self to at least try a Space Vampire. 

So, how have Space Vampires been done already?

Buck Rogers TV Series: "The Space Vampire"

In this episode from the 1979 TV series "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century," Buck Rogers faces a creature known as a Vorvon, a space vampire that drains the life energy from its victims. The episode blends science fiction with classic vampire mythology and powers, as the Vorvon can possess and control other beings. Buck must find a way to stop this menace before it can spread its evil influence throughout the space station. As expected, the Vorvon goes after Col. Wilma Dearing (though it does give Erin Gray a bit more to do). The vampire here can only be destroyed by flying it into a sun.

Doctor Who: "State of Decay"

This 1980 serial from "Doctor Who" features the Fourth Doctor, played by Tom Baker. The Doctor and Romana II and unknown to them, Adric, land on a planet where a trio of ancient vampire lords. These human explorers encountered the last of a race known as the Great Vampires, and have enslaved the local population. The story explores the conflict between the advanced Time Lords and the primitive yet powerful vampires, mixing gothic horror with futuristic elements.  Here the Great Vampires are depicted as an ancient race, as old as the Time Lords themselves, and their wars with the Time Lords. Again, like the Buck Rogers episode, many Vampire mythological elements are re-translated here.

Of note, well at least to me, is a line dropped by the Doctor that every inhabited planet has myths about vampires. We will later see other types of vampires in future episodes. The Haemovores in the 7th Doctor's "The Curse of Fenric," the Plasmavore in the 10th Doctor's "Smith and Jones," and the Saturnyn, another type of vampire (sexy fish vampires, according to the 11th Doctor) in "Vampires of Venice."

I discuss both of these episodes here and more about vampires in Doctor Who specifically here. 

Lifeforce (1985)

"Lifeforce" is a fairly notorious sci-fi horror film directed by Tobe Hooper. The plot centers on a space mission that discovers an alien spacecraft hidden in the tail of Halley's Comet. Inside, the crew finds three humanoid creatures in suspended animation. When brought back to Earth, these beings awaken and reveal themselves to be energy vampires, draining life force from humans to survive. 

The film was a minor hit in 1985, maybe not so much for the plot or story, but because it featured then-newcomer Mathilda May, who appeared completely nude throughout most of the film. It also included Steve Railsback, who would later give a strong and memorable performance as the abductee Duane Barry in the "X-Files" and Patrick Stewart who would the following year go on to star in "Star Trek the Next Generation."

This movie is, in theory anyway, based on the 1976 book by Colin Wilson, "The Space Vampires." I read the book after seeing the movie, and they have a few connections, like some vampires and character names. They are so different. I'll talk about the book separately.

Vampirella

Ah, Vampy. Vampirella is a character from the eponymous comic book series created by Forrest J. Ackerman and artist Trina Robbins, first appearing in 1969. She is an alien vampire from the planet Drakulon, where blood flows like water. After her planet is doomed, she travels to Earth. Blending science fiction and horror, Vampirella fights evil supernatural beings while struggling with her vampiric nature. The character has become iconic, appearing in various comic series, novels, and a 1996 film adaptation. of late she is often paired with Red Sonja in a number of reality spanning adventures. The strangest, and oddly the most fun one? "Red Sonja & Vampirella meet Betty & Veronica." On paper it should never work, yet it does.  Part of this, I think, also is due to the amazing art of Maria Sanapo.

Clark Ashton Smith's Works

Clark Ashton Smith, a long-time favorite here at The Other Side, incorporated vampiric themes into his science fiction and fantasy stories. In "The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis" (1932), explorers on Mars encounter a parasitic creature that drains their life force, functioning similarly to a vampire. His works often feature otherworldly landscapes and cosmic horrors, blending the supernatural with speculative elements.

The Space Vampires by Colin Wilson

This 1976 novel is the basis for the movie "Lifeforce." It follows the story of alien vampires who travel to Earth and attempt to drain the life energy of humans. The novel delves into themes of sexuality, existentialism, and the survival instinct, blending sci-fi with classic vampire lore. 

The vampires, the almost Lovecraftian "Ubbo-Sathla," here, are more like Sex-Vampires. So that much tracks with the movie. The novel takes place in the late 21st century, not the 20th, and the discovery of the alien ship is in the Asteroid belt. 

Shambleau by C.L. Moore

"Shambleau" is a science fiction short story written by C.L. Moore, first published in the November 1933 issue of "Weird Tales" magazine. It is the debut story of her character Northwest Smith, a space-faring adventurer often compared to figures like Han Solo or Conan the Barbarian. "Shambleau" is noted for its innovative blend of science fiction and horror, as well as for its exploration of erotic and psychological themes.

The creature, Shambleau, is an exotic alien beauty with snakes for hair like Medusa. She has a hypnotic effect on those around her and, like Wilson's vampires, drains life energy. In many ways, she is a vampire, much in the same way that the Leanan sídhe is. There is also a scene in the Lifeforce movie where the female vampire (Mathilda May) is created out of the blood of two victims and she bears a passing resemblance to the description of Shambleau. 

Vampires in Thirteen Parsecs

How you do vampires will largely be up to your Thirteen Parsecs campaign. For example, I will likely not have them in my "Space Truckers" games except as a gag. But "Darker Stars" is a different story. 

I would have them as an ancient but dying race. Their homeworld orbits a "Black Sun," a Brown Dwarf star. Their planet would be the last dying remains of a great feudal empire where Vampires were all the nobility. They took to the stars to find new planets to drain, but encountering humanity from Earth, they met their first real resistance in their 10,000-year reign. Part of the Darker Stars camping mode would be this first contact.

I once saw a meme that said you can turn a Gothic cathedral on its side to make a gothic-looking spaceship. That's what the ships of the vampires look like. Something that should look ancient and like it was built as an act of worship to their Vampire masters. 

To give you an idea of what I am doing in Darker Stars, I don't even consider the Vampires to be the biggest threat. 

I can't wait to get this all to you.

Since 2013, Goodman Games, the publisher of the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game and Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic has released a book especially for Gen Con, the largest tabletop hobby gaming event in the world. That book is the Goodman Games Gen Con Program Book, a look back at the previous year, a preview of the year to come, staff biographies, community content, and a whole lot more, including adventures and lots tidbits and silliness. The first was the Goodman Games Gen Con 2013 Program Book, but not being able to pick up a copy from Goodman Games when they first attended UK Games Expo in 2019, the first to be reviewed was the Goodman Games Gen Con 2014 Program Book. Fortunately, a little patience and a copy of the Goodman Games Gen Con 2013 Program Book was located and reviewed, so since 2021, normal order has been resumed with the Goodman Games Gen Con 2016 Program Book, the Goodman Games Gen Con 2017 Program Book, and Goodman Games Gen Con 2018 Program Guide: The Black Heart of Thakulon the Undying.
What was notable about Goodman Games Gen Con 2018 Program Guide: The Black Heart of Thakulon the Undying was rather than providing a range of support for the roleplaying games published by Goodman Games, it focused on just the one, its flagship, the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game, and did so by providing one big single adventure—a tournament adventure. Or rather, a series of three connected and thematic dungeons that were played by multiple teams at Gen Con 50. Not only did Goodman Games Gen Con 2018 Program Guide: The Black Heart of Thakulon the Undying provide the dungeons ready to play, but also the same means of scoring as used for the tournament so that a group playing at home could measure their progress against those who participated in the event itself. It is a format that the publisher for the next title in the series, the Goodman Games 2019 Yearbook: Riders on the Phlogiston.
Goodman Games 2019 Yearbook: Riders on the Phlogiston, though, goes beyond Goodman Games Gen Con 2018 Program Guide: The Black Heart of Thakulon the Undying in terms of format, scope, and scale. In terms of format, it comes not as one book, but five, all contained in a bright and attractive wraparound cover. The five books are ‘Riders on the Phlogiston’, which contains the tournament adventure of the title, ‘Riders on the Phlogiston – Player Handouts’, which provides the visual clues for the adventure, ‘Riders on the Phlogiston – Judge’s Pack’, which provides a guide to running the tournament and more for the Judge, ‘Riders on the Phlogiston – Player Pack’, which provides advice and rules for the tournament for the players as well as the pre-generated Player Characters, and ‘Goodman High Class of 1974 Yearbook’, which contains the community content and overview of Goodman Games attended events in the previous year. In terms of scope, the three parts of ‘Riders on the Phlogiston’ will in turn take the Player Characters to Terra A.D. and the post-apocalyptic future of Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic, then the Shudder Mountains of Dungeon Crawl Classics #83: The Chained Coffin, and finally, the weird world of Dungeon Crawl Classics #84: Peril on the Purple Planet. (It should be noted that none of those are required to run the tournament, but the Judge will enjoy the references, as will her players if they have time between their characters getting themselves killed.) Finally, the scale and brutality of ‘Riders on the Phlogiston’ is turned up to the maximum, as the Player Characters race across three different worlds, attempting to outpace the ever-expanding phlogistonic sphere that will kill them all and survive to the end to face the one responsible for their situation—who they thought dead at the start of the first part, something none of the tournament teams managed to achieve. In other words, they all ended in a ‘TPK’, or ‘Total Party Kill’. Make no mistake, ‘Riders on the Phlogiston’ is designed to be and is a tough adventure.
‘Riders on the Phlogiston’ begins in media res, with the Player Characters about to prevent their arch-nemesis, the vile sorcereress, Haera the White, and her band of crocmen about to summon something unspeakable. Being stalwart heroes, the Player Characters leap into action, but in managing to sop her, they find themselves flung into the first of several increasingly odd worlds. ‘Round 1: The Infinite Phlogistopic Engine Complex’ proper, opens with the Player Characters in an experimental energy complex which has suffered a reactor meltdown exacerbated by the phlogiston explosion caused by their intervention in Haera the White’s summoning. Here the Player Characters must adapt to a highly advanced technological facility—so advanced that magic works here too—and work out how the basic technology works, solve some incredibly fiendish puzzles, and then race to escape. There is a flash-freezing device to get past which could stop them in their tracks, a nuclear reactor to learn control to not only get past, but also on a mutagenic mist, a lake of carbon tetrachloride—also known as energized cold plasma—to cross and try not to get swarmed by nanites, and teams giant mutant rabbits with the ability to use technology and turn anything into orange-coloured cellulose on touch to get past. The path through is linear and far from easy. It is also, at times, quite complex. The Judge really does need to study this section of the adventure as there are some difficult puzzles which she has to understand and be able to impart the effects when the Player Characters interact with them. In comparison with the other two parts, the map in ‘Round 1: The Infinite Phlogistopic Engine Complex’ is not as interesting, nor does it depict its area as well.
‘Round 2: Beneath The Shudder Mountains’ begins at the bottom of a coal mine and it feels very much more like a traditional Dungeon Crawl Classics scenario, full of weird magic and odd creatures. It is purposefully filled with temptations that lead to dead ends and TPKs, like the giant-like coal outcropping which turns out to be an unkillable coal demon if the Player Characters are greedy enough to pull the silver axe out of its thigh, or the suit of mithril plate armour worn by a body which is under rock pile in a room in danger of a rock fall! Despite these diversions, ‘Round 2: Beneath The Shudder Mountains’ is more obviously linear than ‘Round 1: The Infinite Phlogistopic Engine Complex’ and for the characters and their players, a whole lot less weird. It also benefits from some clearer map excerpts that make it much more straightforward to run. The round ends with a highly entertaining encounter with a Hillbilly Hydra—a Ganderbeast—which has multiple honking geese heads and its own nasty, nasty Critical Hit Table.
‘Round 3: Escape From The Purple Planet’ drops the Player Characters at the base of tomb which they must ascend. This first involves being chased through a labyrinthine cave by a growing Orm Swarm, past a psychic resonator which creates objects in response to their thoughts that might kill them, followed by an ascent up a cylindrical tomb with no means of ascent whilst liquid brass from below wants to drown everyone, and then towards the end, a puzzle involving colour combinations which infuriatingly, relies on the way colours are combined in modern computers and thus on player knowledge. Lastly, ‘Riders on the Phlogiston’ comes full circle for a final confrontation with Haera the White and the chance for the Player Characters to escape back home.
As a tournament scenario, each of the three stages in ‘Riders on the Phlogiston’ is designed to be played in a four-hour slot. That is, of course, if the players and their characters are exploring the dungeons in an optimal manner, making best use of their time and resources. This does not mean that their progress is on a tight schedule, but rather that they should not get too distracted. There are some fiendishly difficult puzzles and traps and the whole affair is, as you would expect highly inventive from start to finish. Throughout ‘Riders on the Phlogiston’, there is advice on running it, including a discussion of the advice given E. Gary Gygax on playing tournament adventures in the Player’s Handbook for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition and how that was not applied in many of the cases that lead to team TPKs, and lots and lots of entertaining tales of how many of the teams and even individual players fared.
‘Riders on the Phlogiston – Player Handouts’ provides a set of images to be given out during play as the Player Characters proceed through the tournament, in ‘Round 1: The Infinite Phlogistopic Engine Complex’ in particular. The ‘Riders on the Phlogiston – Judge’s Pack’ begins with a recap of the tournament just as entertaining as the play reports in ‘Riders on the Phlogiston’, before giving a breakdown of the results, TPKs, deadliest rooms and rounds, and even a comparison with the tournament adventure from the Goodman Games Gen Con 2018 Program Guide: The Black Heart of Thakulon the Undying. This is followed by a list of Special Awards and then the ‘Judges’ Rules And Tournament Guidelines’, including general advice, handling the different Classes in Dungeon Crawl Classics, Critical Hits, and so on. Since ‘Riders on the Phlogiston’ is partly set on Terra A.D. and the post-apocalyptic future of Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic, the new rules for 2018 cover the use of ‘Artifacts Of The Ancients’ and how to work out how they are used and mutations. A good quarter of the ‘Riders on the Phlogiston – Judge’s Pack’ is devoted to the scoring for each round and location.
The ‘Riders on the Phlogiston – Player Pack’ gives the player’s guidance for playing a tournament scenario for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game, a minimum of background to the scenario, and in the main, the eleven pre-generated Player Characters. These are all Fourth Level.
The ‘Goodman High Class of 1974 Yearbook’ is the longest book in the pack that makes up Goodman Games 2019 Yearbook: Riders on the Phlogiston. It is also the only book to be in colour in the pack and as the title gives it its theme, which is that of a high school yearbook. This begins with entries for all the members of Goodman High, complete with photograph from their high school photograph, which means bad, oh so bad, haircuts! Goodman Games has always brought a physical presence to any event that it attends, such as the Doom Gong, which is banged at the start and end of tournament sessions and even when a Player Character dies! ‘Real Life Adventures: Quest For The Wizard Van’ charts the beginning of the quest for Goodman Games’ Wizard’s Van. The quest does not get very far, but it is start, and there is a happy ending as Goodman Games definitely has a Wizard’s Van now! Where there was no success in hunting for a wizard’s van for Goodman Games, one addition to the Goodman Games booth are the obelisks, complete with shelves and the means to fly the Dungeon Crawl Classics flags. Nicely, complementing the Doom Gong introduced for Gen Con 50 in 2017 whose construction was detailed in the Goodman Games Gen Con 2018 Program Guide: The Black Heart of Thakulon the Undying, ‘Building the Obelisks’ explains how they were made. It is a surprisingly long, but entertaining piece.
The gaming content in the ‘Goodman High Class of 1974 Yearbook’ is quite light and in keeping with the tone of the high school yearbook is somewhat tongue in cheek in places. Thus, ‘The Partial Spellbook Of Dr. Lotrin Von Weissgras-Geisterblut’ describes a Cleric’s spell that strips flesh of a fresh corpse and animates them into different form, whereas ‘The Customer Creature Catalogue’ details thirty-seven monsters based on photographs of certain winners on the Luck Token Redemption Table found at the back of the Goodman Games Gen Con 2018 Program Guide: The Black Heart of Thakulon the Undying. This does lean into the tongue in cheek tone, with creatures like the ‘Fro-Bro’, a slush/snow elemental, or the ‘Gleft’, a combination tadpole, dragon, and ocular bat! All are depicted in a cartoonish style, and fairly silly. The silliness continues with one of the items on sale at Gen Con 51 at the Goodman Games booth was DCC RPG Nunchuks! Putting aside the ridiculousness of them, ‘Nunchaku!’ gives full rules for their use in Dungeon Crawl Classics. This includes the Nunchaku Master as a variant of the Warrior Class and the only Class capable of using the nunchaku without penalty. There are new Mighty Deeds suitable for the Nunchaku Master, such as ‘Nunchaku Intimidation’ and ‘Nunchaku Counterstrike’. This piece of silliness make you wish that there was a pulpy martial arts setting for Dungeon Crawl Classics.
The Goodman Games Gen Con Program Guides have always thrown a spotlight on the artwork that appears as covers on its titles and in their pages. In this volume with ‘Painting The Froghemoth’, Erol Otus shows off his development of his Froghemoth painting that is featured in the endsheets of Original Adventures Reincarnated #3: Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. It is fantastic to see the work in progress and the end result, also shown here, is stunning. ‘Erol And The Rubber Monsters’ looks at his collection of rubber monsters is an entertaining addition.
Every Goodman Games Gen Con Program Guide highlights the activities of the Goodman Games community and the ‘Goodman High Class of 1974 Yearbook’ is no exception. It includes a group photograph of the winners of the program guide’s tournament with ‘Meet The RidersOn The Phlogiston’, a full list of the events Goodman Games planned to attend in 2019, and photographs from the thirty-four events it attended in the previous year! This all highlights Goodman Games’ presence at conventions. It returns to ‘Riders on the Phlogiston’ with ‘News Flash! Origins Tournament Update!’ which reports on what happened when the tournament was run at Origins 2019, a nice complement to the ‘Riders on the Phlogiston – Judge’s Pack’ and its big report on the tournament at Gen Con 2018. There are the usual additions such as ‘road crew flyer DESIGN CONTEST 2019’ and ‘2018 – 2019 mailing label artwork’ too.
The ‘Goodman High Class of 1974 Yearbook’ ends on a more serious and actually more interesting note, especially for scholars of Dungeons & Dragons and anyone with an interest in its inspiration as listed in the Appendix N of the Dungeon Master’s Guide for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition. The latter important because of its strong influence on Dungeon Crawl Classics. ‘Comics In D&D’ by James Maliszewski looks at the very obvious inspirations for art in the Original Dungeons & Dragons taken directly from Marvel Comics. The author tracks down the originals and compares with how they appeared in the roleplaying game to show really just how amateurish the beginnings of the hobby were. Michael Curtis’ ‘Adventures In Fiction: Ballantine Adult Fantasy’ is engaging history and examination of the fiction published by Ballatine Books as part of its Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series between 1969 and 1974. Several of the titles would go on to be listed in Appendix N, so this is a nice piece of bibliographic archaeology for Appendix N. Lastly, in ‘Appendix N Archaeology’ spotlights are thrown on authors who might have been included in Appendix N. The three authors discussed—Harold Lamb, Clark Ashton Smith, and William Hope Hodgson—are all interesting and in each case, are given good introductions to their respective works and examinations of their influence on E. Gary Gygax and Dungeons & Dragons. These are all excellent essays and if Goodman Games were to expand this into a book all of its very own, it would a fine complement to the Appendix N.
Physically, the Goodman Games 2019 Yearbook: Riders on the Phlogiston is an odd product with multiple booklets and books, one in full colour, the others not. All though are decently laid out, easy to read, lavishly illustrated throughout, and good-looking both in black and white, and in colour, much in keeping with the other entries in the series. However, the pack as a whole is not quite as durable because it is made up of several parts rather than a whole and is both easier to damage and more difficult to store.
The Goodman Games 2019 Yearbook: Riders on the Phlogiston greatly differs from the previous entries in the series—and even from the Goodman Games Gen Con 2018 Program Guide: The Black Heart of Thakulon the Undying—as it contains only the one scenario and not as much gaming content. Consequently, it is not going to be of interest to anyone who does not play Dungeon Crawl Classics and who does not want what is a very tough tournament adventure. There are points of interest though for the Dungeons & Dragons scholar in ‘Goodman High Class of 1974 Yearbook’ that are worth reading even if the tournament adventure is not to their liking. For the Dungeon Crawl Classics devotee, there is of course, the community content to enjoy, but what Goodman Games 2019 Yearbook: Riders on the Phlogiston really presents is the roleplaying game at its hardest, its most challenging, and even if said devotee never gets to play the tournament adventure, at its most entertaining.
—oOo—
Goodman Games will be at UK Games Expo which takes place on Friday, May 31st to Sunday June 2nd, 2024.

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?
Infestation: An Introduction To Maggot Machine is the quick-start for Maggot Machine, a post-apocalyptic roleplaying game set in the 1994 when the world was ruined by Maggot Machines, acid reign began to fall, and mankind was driven deep into the UnderLand when they still pray that they will remain undiscovered.

It is an Old School Renaissance-style roleplaying game of post-apocalyptic horror.

It is designed to be played by four players, plus the Game Master.

It is a thirty-two page, 6.49 MB full colour PDF.

The quick-start is lightly illustrated, but the artwork is excellent, reminiscent of SLA Industries, Second Edition from the same publisher.

The themes and nature of the Maggot Machine Roleplaying Game and thus the Infestation: An Introduction To Maggot Machine, specifically the horror and its bloody nature, means that it is best suited to a mature audience.

How long will it take to play?
Infestation: An Introduction To Maggot Machine and its adventure, ‘Journey into LightHell’, is designed to be played through in a single session.

What else do you need to play?
Infestation: An Introduction To Maggot Machine requires six six-sided dice per player.

Who do you play?
The Player Characters in Infestation: An Introduction To Maggot Machine consist of four Guild Knights which make up a Brigade. The four pre-generated Player Characters consist of two Scrappers and Clashers. Slashers rely on stealth, caution, and experience to creep through the long-abandoned streets and buildings of LightHell in search of lost artefacts. They are noted for their conical helmets. Crashers are the muscle of the Guild Houses, sent out alongside Scrappers to protect them. One of the two pre-generated Scrappers grew up a Sewer Pipe Orphan and wields a fire sword, whilst the other was a Child of the State and can easily traverse rough terrain. One of the two pre-generated Clashers was raised in luxury as Guild Spawn and is a One Person Rumour Mill who can more knowledge of a building to be scavenged, whilst the other is a LightHell Mongrel, a foundling from the surface above, who as a Trusty Canary, can first detect the first traces of the poison winds and the distinctive rotten whiff of Maggot Machines.

How is a Guild Knight defined?
A Guild Knight has six stats—Agility, Cunning, Might, Movement, Presence, and Wyrd. The latter is used to power Weird Abilities. The pre-generated Guild Knights have stats ranging between two and four.

How do the mechanics work?
Mechanically, Infestation: An Introduction To Maggot Machine uses a dice pool system. Rolls of six allow an extra die to be rolled. Rolls of one can simply be rerolled. Once this has been done, all results of one are removed and the remaining dice results compared. Each die of the Reactive Character that is higher than the Active Character’s dice cancels that die, and removes it from the Active Character’s pool. At the end of the process, whichever of the Active Character or Reactive Character has any dice left, they score Victory Points equal to the remaining dice. Victory Points will deal damage in combat, but can mean the winner completes a task faster or better.

How does combat work?
Combat in Infestation: An Introduction To Maggot Machine uses the same dice pool system. Might is used as the Active/Reactive stat for melee combat and Agility is used as the Active/Reactive stat for ranged combat. Once Victory Points are determined, a Soak roll is made for armour. Any roll of four or more reduces the Victory Point total by the amount rolled. Any Victory Points remaining are inflicted as damage. If the damage is inflicted by the Reactive Character, the damage is halved.

Infestation: An Introduction To Maggot Machine does not include the full combat rules. More detail and more tactical options are covered in the core rulebook.

How does ‘Wyrd’ work?
Wyrd is used to active Wyrd powers and gifts. Only one Guild Knight has an ability which requires Wyrd points to be spent.

What do you play?
In Infestation: An Introduction To Maggot Machine, the scenario is ‘Journey Into LightHell’. The House of Wire sends the Brigade from the UnderLand into the LightHell to deal with a Maggot Mite infestation at Sterafill Stop and make repairs to the warning system installed on its rooftop. The Guild Knights discover a map of the immediate area indicating possible danger, but are expected to explore and scavenge the area for artefacts and useful items to bring back to the UnderLand. The area is infested with Maggot Mites, Stab Merchants, and worse, although there is some delightfully grotty, grubby, and British salvage to scavenge…

The background suggests some politics between the Houses of the UnderLand, but this is not explored in Infestation: An Introduction To Maggot Machine.

Is there anything missing?
Infestation: An Introduction To Maggot Machine is complete.

Is it easy to prepare?
The core rules presented in Infestation: An Introduction To Maggot Machine are very easy to prepare. That said, the dice mechanics are not immediately easy to grasp and will take a slight adjustment getting used to because dice of a lesser value are being cancelled rather than the same value.
Is it worth it?
Yes. Infestation: An Introduction To Maggot Machine is easy to prepare and run in a single session. It portrays a grim and grimy future with a British grottiness in which it is always 1994, whilst hinting at more to come in the core rulebook.
Where can you get it?
Infestation: An Introduction To Maggot Machine is available to download here.
—oOo—
Nightfall Games will be at UK Games Expo which takes place on Friday, May 31st to Sunday June 2nd, 2024.

 Jonathan awakens to a new horror.

31 May.—This morning when I woke I thought I would provide myself with some paper and envelopes from my bag and keep them in my pocket, so that I might write in case I should get an opportunity, but again a surprise, again a shock!

Every scrap of paper was gone, and with it all my notes, my memoranda, relating to railways and travel, my letter of credit, in fact all that might be useful to me were I once outside the castle. I sat and pondered awhile, and then some thought occurred to me, and I made search of my portmanteau and in the wardrobe where I had placed my clothes.

The suit in which I had travelled was gone, and also my overcoat and rug; I could find no trace of them anywhere. This looked like some new scheme of villainy....

Notes

Moon Phase: Waxing Crescent

So where was Jonathan hiding his Journal? If Dracula took everything why not this? I am sure it is because Jonathan would have kept his journal on his person. Everything that Dracula took were things he expected Jonathan to have and things he had use for; the letter of credit, travel documents, and even the suit. 

It will be a bit before we hear from our heroes again.

What happens when the Player Characters have their magical items stolen? They want them back, of course, but they also want revenge. And that about sums up the motivation for Magic Eater, a scenario for Lamentations of The Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplaying. Except that there is a problem with that, because whilst Lamentations of The Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplaying is an Old School Renaissance retroclone, it is not one known for the generosity of its treasure, let alone its magical items. In fact, Lamentations of The Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplaying is renowned for its frugality with regard to such matters. So, what Magic User does instead is suggest that the Player Characters’ employer be the one who has the item, the MacGuffin, stolen and wants it returned. So, if the Player Characters have not actually had something stolen, then they can at least be repaid by someone who has. No matter who the victim of the theft is, a note was left by a notorious thief going by the name of Grimalkin, who works with a Northman, in an obvious nod to the Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stories of Fritz Leiber. Tracking the Grimalkin is intended to be easy because it gets to the next bit in the story, the fact that Grimalkin’s house has been set on fire, he is dead, and whatever MacGuffin the Player Characters have to retrieve is gone, having been stolen a second. This time by a gang which styles itself as the ‘Loquesymths’, which if any of the players find out how the gang spells its name, is going to result in the players thinking that their characters are dealing with a bunch of pretentious wankers.
This is the set-up for Magic Eater, a scenario for Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplaying published by Lamentations of the Flame Princess. And despite the antagonists having been identified as pretentious wankers, things are going to get weirder from here on in, because it turns out that that yes, the ‘Loquesymths’ are a bunch of pretentious wankers, half of them are arseholes to boot. This is because half of them are now dedicated to the worship of a thing they call the ‘Magic Eater’. Part of this worship involves feeding him actual magical items—so yes, have a good guess as to has happened to whatever magical MacGuffin the Player Characters are after—and then take the great balls of excrement that the ‘Magic Eater’ defecates and brew them into psychoactive tea that grants them certain blessings whilst at the same the magic energies they are exposed to are causing them to deliquesce. Consequently, the thieves and the cultists in the ‘Loquesymths’ are easy to tell apart. The thieves look like thieves, bandits, or just ordinary folk, whilst the cultists are wrapped in cloaks to hide the fact that they have wrapped themselves in bandages. Unlike the cultists, the thieves do not make squishy sounds when they move.

The ‘Loquesymths’ hide out in a base in the boglands close to the city where the Player Characters or their employer resides. Infiltrating this base, the remnants of a Roman fort that has been used over the centuries and since fallen into a state of disrepair, is the focus of the scenario. (That said, it could be any old fortress, so need not be set in the default period of the Early Modern era for Lamentations of The Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplaying.) The fortress of thieves consists of three parts. First, the above ground ruins, consisting mostly of the remaining towers and partially repaired walls, then the damp cellars, and the cult temple, a mixture of caves and tunnels and worked corridors and tunnels. The cult temple stinks like a hot, sweaty toilet, areas marked with weird colours due to the arcane seepage from the Magic Eater. There is the possibility here for any spells or magic to fail here, and when it does, it is suggested that the Game Master use either Vaginas Are Magic! or James Raggi IV’s Eldritch Cock as a means to handle this failure, and probably the most entertaining. That said, it would have been just as easy and as easy to create a table of results that could have been included.
The end of the scenario, against the semi-gigantic thaumaphage that is the Magic Eater of the title, is essentially an end of level, big boss battle. The battles against the thieves in the upper parts of the fortress are going to be fairly normal, whilst the ones against the cultists are going weird and creepy with their bandaged hands and faces and their squishy sounds, let alone the odd powers imparted to them by imbibing the excrement-infused tea they brew. The battle against the Magic Eater is going to be a big brawl of all against the hulking, lumbering grump, enlivened by the fact that his consumption of magical items has given him random magical powers. The randomness does rely on the Game Master rolling a natural twenty, so the powers may not even change over the course of the battle. Which is a pity and the Game Master might want to alter the odds to make it all the more fun for herself, if not the players and their characters.

There are some suggestions too, as to what might happen to the Player Characters actually decide to drink that tea—definitely not a good idea; what they might do with the fortress afterwards, because possession is possession; and what actual treasure might found if the Player Characters search the fortress above ground and below. There are suggestions to determine if the MacGuffin that the Player Characters were attempting to retrieve is still here and has not been eaten and what might be found if the players and their characters decide that a colonoscopy is in order. It might be the MacGuffin, or it might be one of the most useless magic items ever created. It really is useless—and intentionally so.
Also included in Magic Eater is the bonus scenario, ‘Another Rough Night at the Dog & Bastard’. If that sounds like the author’s author’s tribute to ‘A Rough Night at the Three Feathers’, the classic scenario for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, recently updated as Rough Days & Hard Days, then you would be right. In this scenario, the Player Characters take refuge at the eponymous inn on the same night as a trio of nuns who are not as innocent as they look, a bounty hunter, a thief, and a pair of sex cultists, because after all, this is a scenario for Lamentations of The Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplaying. And the cultists would not mind having sex with everyone and if that is done in front of their cult idol, it releases what can only be best described as ‘Jizz Pixies’. In addition, the inn and its staff have secrets of their own, randomly determined. The scenario primarily works off a relationship map which connects ten NPCs. The players will need to actively involve their characters in the relationship map to get the most out of the scenario, which is both roleplaying and NPC interaction heavy. As a one-night, one session affair, ‘Another Rough Night at the Dog & Bastard’ is pruriently serviceable.
Physically, Magic Eater is well-presented. Both artwork and cartography are decent, the maps being very clear and the depictions of the cultists a little creepy. It does need an edit in places.

Magic Eater is a daft scenario that punishes the Player Characters for being too attached to their possessions and then rewards them with a nice piece of real estate if they try to get them back—if they survive. That does not mean it is not entertaining though and Magic Eater is easy to drop into any campaign.
—oOo—
DISCLAIMER: The author of this review is an editor who has edited titles for Lamentations of the Flame Princess on a freelance basis. He was not involved in the production of this book and his connection to both publisher and author has no bearing on the resulting review.

—oOo—
Lamentations of the Flame Princess will be at UK Games Expo which takes place on Friday, May 31st to Sunday June 2nd, 2024.

 This Sci-fi month was a lot of fun. I got to look into the history of Gamma World, reminisce a little on Star Frontiers and Star Wars, and finally spend some quality time with Alternity. 

All fun games that I enjoyed, but none really hit the mark I am looking for. Now to be fair, this is largely about me and not the games themselves.  Next year I am going to cover a bunch of d20 based games, but in the meantime I have a solution to my sci-fi game problem, and it is one I knew I had to do for a very long time.

I am just going to have to do my own. 

With Thirteen Parsecs, that is exactly what I am doing. 

This game uses the same O.G.R.E.S. game system that you find in NIGHT SHIFT and Wasted Lands. Also, like NIGHT SHIFT's "Night Worlds," this one has new "Solar Frontiers."

At least for me, I want to make a game to fill the hole in my life that Star Frontiers, Star Wars, and Alternity would have filled. 

Thirteen Parsecs will be hard sci-fi for people who like that (me!), Space Opera for people who like that, and futuristic military in space. It will also fill my need for horror in space. Something that Dark•Matter was also doing. 

You can combine Thirteen Parsecs with NIGHT SHIFT for all sorts of horror in space or even just horror sci-fi.  If you also like this sort of thing, I recommend the "No One Hears You Scream" pledge level. 

We are very close to offering hardcovers and leather-bound editions, and I really, really want to see that become a reality. 

If you want to know more, beyond the funding page information, then check out this Q&A Jason, Derek, and I did with Dan Davenport. 

• Jason Vey, Tim Brannan, & Derek Stoelting (Thirteen Parsecs: Beyond the Solar Frontier)

I can even begin to tell how excited I am for this game and to get it into your hands.

Recently I saw copies of Wasted Lands at my FLGS and they told me it was selling great. Tim Kask gave us praise on his post-Gary Con wrap-up show. We have a lot of great things for you and can't wait to get them all to you.

Back Thirteen Parsecs if you can!

Under the Seal of Solomon is a scenario for Into the Bronze: Sword & Sorcery RPG in Bronze Age. Published by Lantern’s Faun, as the title suggests, it is set in the Bronze Age in Mesopotamia on the plains between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Here the first city states were founded, here the first men and the women strode forth to explore the lands between the first two great rivers known to mankind, to enter the silent, gloomy valleys where demons and their acolytes hid and devised their evil plans, here they would encounter the very gods of Sumer, and here they would build the first great civilisations. As those first men and women to stride the land, the Player Characters are Sumerian ‘Bounty Hunters’ , those willing to go forth and undertake dangerous tasks—explore the unknown, hunt down criminals, kill monsters, and more… In Under the Seal of Solomon, the Player Characters have a greater calling—killing demons!

In Under the Seal of Solomon, the king, Solomon himself, has selected the Player Characters for a great task. Whether the Player Characters are augurs, astronomers, sorcerers, priests, or warriors, you have been given a new role—exorcist. Demons run rampant across his kingdom, and King Solomon has chosen them to rid them from his lands. However, this is no easy task since demons cannot be killed. Instead, their physical manifestation must be defeated, the demon captured, and then conveyed to the Temple of Solomon where it can confess its corruptions. Only then will the kingdom be free of that one demon. There are seventy-two demons. If though, a demon cannot be killed, how is this task to be achieved? In addition to blessing the Exorcists with an oath to capture the demons, King Solomon bestows them with three other gifts. These are the Keys of Solomon, the Seal of Solomon, and the Jar of Solomon. The Keys work in similar fashion to the Magic Words in Into the Bronze, being written down on tablets or sheets of vellum and used against a demon. However, unlike the tablets of the Magic Worlds, the Keys of Solomon do not break, only the implements using them do. The Seal of Solomon is a ring engraved with his sigil used to seal the written Keys, whilst the Jar of Solomon is used to trap a demon before taking it to the Temple of Solomon. So think of this as Ghostbusters, but with Demons and set in Ancient Mesopotamia and not New York.

The bulk of Under the Seal of Solomon is dedicated to describing its seventy-two demons who are ranked as Kings, Dukes, Princes, Marquises, Counts, Knights, and Presidents—and some can hold more than one rank. A pleasing presentation places the hierarchy of the demons upon the steps of a ziggurat! Each demon is described in terms of its Manifestation, its Domain, and what Invocations it knows. The Domain is the power it holds over other demons and the Invocations are the powers it tempts sorcerers with. For example, Bael, King of the East, holds the Rank of King, manifests as a three-headed conglomeration of cat, toad, and man, has the Domain of “66 legions of demons”, and his Invocations include the teaching of science, bestowing of Invisibility, and the teaching of love. Attributes, Hit Points, and Damage are determined by the demon’s Rank.

In terms of support and advice, Under the Seal of Solomon suggests that a demon might be hiding amongst the population or tempting them openly as a false god, or colluding with a sorcerer. It suggests having a single demon dominate or take over a single hex, creating a location around it, in the process turning Into the Bronze into not so much a hexcrawl, but a hex clearance. The other factor that the Under the Seal of Solomon makes clear is that seventy-two demons is a lot and so the Player Characters are not the only ones to have received the blessings of King Solomon. This enables the Game Master to bring rival Exorcists into play. Lastly, Under the Seal of Solomon notes that it is set during the end of the Bronze Age, at the dawn of the Iron Age.

Physically, Under the Seal of Solomon is nicely presented, although the use of red text on black in places is not easy to read. It does need another edit.

Unfortunately, Under the Seal of Solomon is at best very light, at worst underwritten and underdeveloped. For example, it is not quite clear whether one Exorcist is holding the Keys of Solomon, the Seal of Solomon, and the Jar of Solomon and using them to fight demons or if they are divided between several Exorcists. Nor is it really clear how the Keys of Solomon work against the demons and what the user is actually dealing with them. Similarly, there is no actual adventure in Under the Seal of Solomon as its cover claims. Instead, what it gives the Game Master is a campaign set-up. It is not even a campaign framework, because there is only a beginning, and not a middle or an end. After all, what happens when the Exorcists have defeated all of the demons?

Ultimately, there is no denying that Under the Seal of Solomon is a great set-up for Bronze: Sword & Sorcery RPG in Bronze Age Mesopotamia (and indeed for any roleplaying game set in Bronze Age Mesopotamia). Unfortunately, it simply does not support the Game Master as fully as it should and leaves her with more concepts to develop and questions to answer than it really should.
—oOo—
Soul Muppet Publishing will be at UK Games Expo which takes place on Friday, May 31st to Sunday June 2nd, 2024.

 It's time to put everything together and see how it works. Since this is a modern horror sci-fi game, I'm going to use my standard character for these things. But first, I should at least talk about how I'm going to do it all.

I knew I had to use both the Alternity Core rules as well as the Dark•Matter campaign setting. I also looked into two of the other books I have here, Mindwalking: A Guide to Psionics and Beyond Science: A Guide to FX. Both books are good, but they are designed with Star*Drive in mind. Plus the rules for Psionics and FX, in particular Arcane and Miracles, have been updated in the Dark•Matter book. The designers even mention there are differences. So as fun as those too books look, I am going to not use them for this build.  

Now, one of the things I have had for Dark•Matter, well, forever, it seems, is this download on Witchcraft FX. While I am not 100% sure where I got it originally, it can still be downloaded from the alternityrpg.net site. 

• Witchcraft in Dark•Matter by Christopher West and Rod Bedison

I like it. I have liked it for many years now*, and I really wanted to use it. Instead of explaining it, you can download it for free yourself.  Here Witchcraft is a Faith-based FX. I like this. It tracks with what I was doing with Larina and all my witches at the same time. My own 1999 Complete Netbook of Witches & Warlocks had witches as a type of priest using wisdom. 

I began my base stats for Dark•Matter Larina using her AD&D 2nd Ed stats as a base. I used the guidelines in the Alternity Gamemaster's Guide for conversion. For her "back story" well, I used the version I was using at the time in WitchCraft. Here she is, a 29-year-old divorcee living in Chicago and working in the library of a major university. She is a librarian and linguist by training but an occultist "by night."  This gave me a good idea of who this Dark•Matter Larina was going to be.

Larina "Nix" Nichols

Human Female, Age 29 (1998)
Height: 5'4"  Weight: 125 lbs

Level: 10

Profession: Diplomat
Career: Occultist

Attributes
Motivation: Find the truth
Morals: Ethical / Just
Traits: Curious

Allegiance: Independent

Ability
Strength 8  (Res. Mod. 0)
Dexterity 9  (Res. Mod. 0)
Constitution 9
Intelligence 14  (Res. Mod. +2)
Will 14  (Res. Mod. +2)
Personality 14

Stun 9
Wound 9
Fatigue 5
Mortal 5

Last Resorts 3

Action Check Score
Marginal 13+
Ordinary 12
Good 6
Amazing 3

Combat Movement Rates
Sprint 8
Run 6
Walk 2
Easy Swim 1
Swim 8
Glide (8)
Fly (16)

Armor: None

Special Abilities: Witchcraft (Faith) FX

Perks: Great Looks, Second Sight

Flaws: Obsessed (+2)

Social Class: Middle Class

Contacts: Scott Elders (Psychic), Heather McHael (Seer). 

Enemies: Eric MacAlister (ex-husband, former IRA operative)

Attack Forms
Unarmed 4/2/1 LI/O Personal d4a/d4+1s/d4+2s
Athame 8/4/2 LI/O Personal d4w/d4w+1s/d4+2w

Skill Points Spent: 91  Stored: 6

Skills

Skill    CostAbility RankScoreAthletics3STR
842Vehicle Operation3DEX
942Land Vehicle3DEX11052Stamina3CON
942Knowledge3INT1473Lang. English1INT31784Lang. Latin1INT31784Lang. Greek1INT31784Lang. Hebrew1INT11573Lang. Russian1INT11573Medical Science3INT11573Psychology5INT21684Physical Science7INT11573Astronomy3INT11573Social Science6INT11473Anthropology3INT21684Linguistics3INT21684Awareness3WIL1473Intuition3WIL11573Perception2WIL11573Investigate7WIL11473Research3WIL31784Lore6WIL11473Conspiracy Theories3WIL11573Occult Lore3WIL21684Psychic Lore3WIL11573Entertainment4PER11473Sing2PER11573Interaction3PER
1473Charm3PER21684Seduce3PER11573

Bolded skills are Free. Skills in Purple are from Dark•Matter.

FX

SpellCostAbilityRankScoreWitchcraft13Glamour4INT11573Cast the Circle2WIL21684Divination3WIL31784Earth's Harvest2WIL31784Part the Veil4WIL31784Spellbind2WIL21684Ward of Protection3WIL21684Call Familiar3PER11573Crone's Curse4PER11573

I went ahead and gave her Glamour even though it is not on the witchcraft list—it should be.

--

So I REALLY like this build. A few notes.

Levels in Alternity are treated differently than they are in *D&D games. In D&D games, you gain a level, and that helps define how powerful your abilities and skills will be. In Alternity, it is the other way around; your skills and powers help determine your level.

So Larina here would be a lot more skilled if she had dumped all of those skill points she spent on FX  (65 total) on more skills. 

She is not a combat person. She has no combat skills to speak of, and I am not likely to add much more to her for that. She can read a lot of languages and is a good researcher. More importantly, she has magic. I should give her some sort of blasty magic, but she is a support character for the most part. 

She compares well to her WitchCraft and AD&D 2nd Ed versions. I should get her WitchCraft version up sometime.

I will admit this build took me a while. A lot of it was my unfamiliarity with the system. It still took a bit. Going between multiple books is never really ideal. But this is a character I would play.

Now, if I were to get serious about Alternity Dark•Matter, I would likely work up my go-to psychic character, Scott Elders. He is a good choice since it would allow me to use all of the Mindwalking rules. He has alternates in AD&D, Modern times, and the Far Future so that also makes him a good fit.

*In the process of re-reading this to post today I found my original Dark•Matter sheets for Larina AND the printout of the Witchcraft Faith FX.

I started working on her back in March of 2000.

It only took me 24 years to finish.

 Ah. Now, this one is hitting me where I live. By 1999, Alternity was already interesting to me. I had, of course, seen bits of it online and knew about it from the internet and talking to other gamers. But it was 1999's Dark•Matter Campaign Setting that REALLY got me interested. 

Dark•Matter came out at a time when Dark Urban Fantasy was my drug of choice, and I was an addict.  I had played Chill off and on (mostly off) through the 80s and I had picked up a new copy of Chill 2nd Edition. It didn't have enough magic in it for me. Oh the Art and the Evil Way were fun, but I wanted something more.

I will get into what was going for me in 1999 a bit later on and talk about how Dark•Matter almost made the cut, but didn't. But first lets talk about what it is and what was good about it.

Dark•Matter (1999)

by Wolfgange Baur and Monte Cook. Full-color covers and interior art. 288 pages.  Wizards of the Coast logo.

Like all the books in the Alternity line, Dark•Matter is out of print and not available on PDF.

By this time, the Alternity line has given over completely to Wizards of the Coast, with the TSR logo only seen in ads on the back few pages.  Reading through this book, its layout, and its art make me think of the early d20 Modern books and the d20 Call of Cthulhu book Wizards would later do. They share some artists. 

Ok stop me if you have heard this one before, Dark•Matter takes place on Earth, but not the Earth we know. This is an Earth with a hidden history where monsters, aliens, psychic powers and even magic are real. 

Now I freely admit, I love the name. It is sci-fi and yet spooky at the same time. I mean what is not to love really?

Chapter 1: An Introduction to Dark•Matter

Like our previous books, this is an introduction and some fast-play rules with a sample adventure. Nice way to do it. Maybe it is because it is Baur and Cook, but this seems a little more readable to me.

Chapter 2: Welcome to the Hoffmann Institute

Ah, now we get into some in-world background on what is going on. The Hoffmann Institute is our BPRD, our SAVE, our SPC, our Sanctuary, our in world organization to help our character push back against the night. 

Unlike Star*Drive, which didn't grab me, this grabbed ahold of me pretty hard. I remember reading websites on the Internet dedicated to the Hoffmann Institute and thought it was great. Yes, I had read similar things about SAVE back in the days of Chill, that doesn't matter. The fact was this stuff was new and it was out there and I was enjoying it. This fluff, as much as anything else made me want to play this game more.

Chapter 3: Heroes of Dark•Matter

This is our hero creation chapter. The rules for hero creation are still in the Alternity Core rules, this just adds some additional skills, perks, flaws, and careers. As expected most of the high tech or advanced sci-fi stuff is out. No alien heroes, no cybertech (well...limited). But Mindwalking is now a "core" profession. 

Chapter 4: Arcana

Now this is something new! In the Dark•Matter world, magic is real. There new FX rules here that replace the FX rules from Alternity and the FX book (more on that). There is Arcane Magic in the form of Diabolism, Enochian, and Hermeticism. And Faith magic in the form of Monotheism, Shamanism, and Voodoo. Really fun stuff. Magic FX is taken like a broad skill with skill-specific "spells" chosen under each one. The spells are powered by a limited resource of FX points. So, magic-using characters will not be the magical powerhouses seen in D&D, or even Mage or WitchCraft, but they are more powerful than the ones found in games like Chill.  Honestly, this worked GREAT for me since my own home campaign was based on the idea that as we approached, the new Millennium magic was going to increase. 

Chapter 5: History of the World

Dark•Matter was released between two great paranormal TV shows; The X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It manages to capture the zeitgeist of both of them well. This chapter feels like it could have come from the series bible of either show. 

There is a timeline of the world that manages to incorporate some sort of malignant, evil force, the arrival of aliens, and the rise and fall of Atlantis. There is the expected involvement with the Egyptians, and then later the Olmecs, Mayans, Aztecs and Incas. Tesla gets name-dropped, as do the Templars and Masons. Nazis, Roswell, New World Order. It's like we all read the same books! Even the rising "Dark Tide" to the new Millennium. I would say I read it here, but it was something I was doing in Chill 2nd ed. 

There is no "game" information here, but it is a great read.

An aside: I wonder how this timeline tracks with the one from TSR's Masque of the Red Death. I have no expectations they are the same on purpose save that they both are drawing from the same sources of information. It might be fun (yes I said fun) to see how they line up. 

Chapter 6: The Illuminati

With conspiracy theories, the Illuminati will inevitably be brought up. This covers a bunch of topics related to the Dark•Matter world. We get a bunch of groups that are vying for control of knowledge of the world. These include The Free Masons, the Rosicrucians, The Hidden Order of St. Gregory, The Invisible College, the Knights of Malta, The Final Church, The Bilderbergers, and of course the Hoffmann Institute. All of these factions are trying to control and all of them will either try to stop or recruit the heroes. There are also plenty of governments, the UN, and other organizations involved. 

It reads like a who-who of conspiracy theories. 

Chapter 7: Places of Interest

A trip around the globe starting in Africa and giving the Congo, Sahara, and Egypt their due. Lots of locations in America. I was happy to see a local favorite while growing up, the Cahokia Mounds, get some good ink as well as a place more local to me now, Lower Wacker Drive in Chicago. All the expected sites are here. Groom Lake (Area 51), Rosewell, Los Alamos. Moving on to Asia, Australia and Europe. There is even coverage of Atlantis, Earth Orbit, and Mars. 

Chapter 8: Xenoforms

Or our Monster chapter. We get all sorts of creatures here including aliens, demons, trans-dimensional travellers, Elohim, Ghosts, Men in Black, Sasquatches, and Yeti just to name a few. No vampires though. 

Chapter 9: Running a Dark•Matter Campaign

This is all pretty good advice for a lot of modern supernatural/conspiracy style games. Non of this is game specific and would work well for WitchCraft, Chill, Conspiracy X, and yes even NIGHT SHIFT.  There is a huge list of topics on page 240 that is a fantastic starting place for any intrepid Game Master. 

Chapter 10: Campaign Options

This chapter covers various ways to see up a campaign and give the characters (and players) a focus. There are even nots here on playing a Grey, Kinori, Mothman, Sandman or even a Sasquatch hero. 

Chapter 11: Raw Recruits 

This is a sample adventure where the characters are new recruits to the Hoffmann Institute. 

Thoughts: 1999 to Now

1999 was a pivotable year for me and gaming. I wanted a new modern supernatural game. I had flirted with Vampire: The Masquerade off and on for years. I played Chill 1st Ed, and had made the drive out to Mayfair Games (which was now local to me) to buy one of the apparently "hundreds" of Chill 2nd edition books they still had laying around. But neither Vampire nor Chill were giving me what I wanted. 

Enter the Dark Trio.

Around the same time, I discovered Mage: The Ascension (and Dark Ages Mage), C.J. Carella's WitchCraft, and Dark•Matter.

All three of these games can do very similar things. They all draw on a lot of the same history, myths, and legends. In my mind, all were very good games.

I love Mage. But there is a lot going on there. Dark•Matter had nearly everything I wanted, but at the time, I had a new baby on the way and not a lot of readily disposable cash to drop on three hardcovers to play a game. WitchCraft though. Man, that game hit me hard and never stopped. 

You can play the same game with all three rule sets. I think even that each of these has Roscrucians, Hermetics, and stats for the Comte de Saint-Germain.

Dark•Matter is excellent. It really is, but it also suffers from the same Alternity system that bogs it down. Also, I am partial to Roll-Over Mechanics and not Roll-Under. Mage is Dice-Pool. 

A lot of these arguments against Dark•Matter go away when you consider the 2006 d20 Dark•Matterreleased by Wizards of the Coast. But that is a discussion for next year.

All three are at least thematically compatible with each other. You can move characters between the games with some effort, and as expected, I have done so. 

Let me restate it. Dark•Matter is excellent. It is a wonderful game that, in the end, fell just a little short of perfection. At least for me. In another world, a world where I didn't find the Unisystem WitchCraft, I'd still be blogging about this game today.  I am looking forward to covering the d20 version next year when I take on the 25th Anniversary of the d20 system.

Harker sends his letters before the trap closes and a plan is foiled.

28 May.—There is a chance of escape, or at any rate of being able to send word home. A band of Szgany have come to the castle, and are encamped in the courtyard. These Szgany are gipsies; I have notes of them in my book. They are peculiar to this part of the world, though allied to the ordinary gipsies all the world over. There are thousands of them in Hungary and Transylvania, who are almost outside all law. They attach themselves as a rule to some great noble or boyar, and call themselves by his name. They are fearless and without religion, save superstition, and they talk only their own varieties of the Romany tongue.

I shall write some letters home, and shall try to get them to have them posted. I have already spoken them through my window to begin acquaintanceship. They took their hats off and made obeisance and many signs, which, however, I could not understand any more than I could their spoken language....

 

I have written the letters. Mina’s is in shorthand, and I simply ask Mr. Hawkins to communicate with her. To her I have explained my situation, but without the horrors which I may only surmise. It would shock and frighten her to death were I to expose my heart to her. Should the letters not carry, then the Count shall not yet know my secret or the extent of my knowledge....

 

I have given the letters; I threw them through the bars of my window with a gold piece, and made what signs I could to have them posted. The man who took them pressed them to his heart and bowed, and then put them in his cap. I could do no more. I stole back to the study, and began to read. As the Count did not come in, I have written here....

 

The Count has come. He sat down beside me, and said in his smoothest voice as he opened two letters:—

“The Szgany has given me these, of which, though I know not whence they come, I shall, of course, take care. See!”—he must have looked at it—“one is from you, and to my friend Peter Hawkins; the other”—here he caught sight of the strange symbols as he opened the envelope, and the dark look came into his face, and his eyes blazed wickedly—“the other is a vile thing, an outrage upon friendship and hospitality! It is not signed. Well! so it cannot matter to us.” And he calmly held letter and envelope in the flame of the lamp till they were consumed. Then he went on:—

“The letter to Hawkins—that I shall, of course, send on, since it is yours. Your letters are sacred to me. Your pardon, my friend, that unknowingly I did break the seal. Will you not cover it again?” He held out the letter to me, and with a courteous bow handed me a clean envelope. I could only redirect it and hand it to him in silence. When he went out of the room I could hear the key turn softly. A minute later I went over and tried it, and the door was locked.

When, an hour or two after, the Count came quietly into the room, his coming awakened me, for I had gone to sleep on the sofa. He was very courteous and very cheery in his manner, and seeing that I had been sleeping, he said:—

“So, my friend, you are tired? Get to bed. There is the surest rest. I may not have the pleasure to talk to-night, since there are many labours to me; but you will sleep, I pray.” I passed to my room and went to bed, and, strange to say, slept without dreaming. Despair has its own calms.

--

Notes

Moon Phase: Waxing CrescentWaxing Crescent

The "Szgany" or more likely "Tzigane" are a Romany people common to the area at the time. 

Harker tries to bribe them with a French gold coin, the "Travelers Checks" of the Victorian age. The Tzigane though know what was asked of them since it is likely they were multi-lingual, but Harker (and maybe even Stoker) doesn't know that.

 The new cover for the new 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide is now out and features some fan favorites.

So we got Venger, Warduke, and favorite of the Other Side, Skylla!

When I started posting about Skylla years ago, she was a relatively unknown character save for some Old School gamers like me. Now, she is moving up in the world.

I like the red spine. Help differentiate them from my 5.0 books.

Skylla is looking good. I am hoping we will be getting some more of her.  Greyhawk will be the core setting so I am expecting more Tasha/Iggwilv material too. 

I'll keep you posted on this new 5R version of D&D. 

Continuing on with Alternity, I am turning my attention to the Star*Drive Campaign Setting. Before I go too deep into it I have to say that I think TSR, before their purchase by WotC was on track to making the same mistakes with Alternity that they were making with AD&D Second Edition. That is having a core system and too many campaign settings. Now, to be 100% fair here, Alternity only has two different but linked campaign settings; Star*Drive and Dark*Matter. Two and a half if you also count Gamma World. Two and two halves if you add in the Starcraft material too. But the seeds are here. Sadly, they never fell into fertile ground, and even the ones that did were not well tended to.

Star*Drive Campaign Setting

by David Eckelberry and Richard Baker, 1998. Full-color covers and interior art. 256 pages. 

This book still features the TSR logo, but all details of the company that produces it is Wizards of the Coast. I only point this out because it is a weird transitional time for the company and I can't help but think this as much as anything else sealed the fate of this game.

As with the rest of the classic Alternity material, this is out of print and there are no PDFs availble. 

Chapter 1: The Star*Drive Campaign

This covers what this setting is about and some basics and a timeline of contact with the Fraal to the modern day of the 26th century (2501).  Interestingly we are 100 years away from constructing the first Star Drive tech. This is roughly comparable to the timeline we would later see in Star Trek.  This chapter also discusses different ways to play this game. The feel is somewhere between Star Frontiers and Traveller, with dashes of Star Trek and/or Starship Troopers added in. 

Chapter 2: The 26th Century

An aside. Are we in the 26th Century because it is not the 25th century of Buck Rodgers? 

Anyway. Here we get an overview of what our setting is like now. Science, Technology which includes cybertech and biotech, mutants and psionics, medicine, and even religion, is covered here. There is not a lot of game text here, this is all an overview.  The religion section is interesting since it usually gets ignored by most sci-fi games. Unless it is Star Wars.

Chapter 3: Stellar Nations

This takes us into more detail of the who, what and where of this campaign setting and feels most like an extension of the Alternity rules. Note, not a lot of mechanics, but more information on material presented in the core rules. All of the species from the core are here, with their home worlds. Also, the various "Nations" in space, including the Solar Union (oddly not established in 2112). 

Chapter 4: The Verge

This is the area of unexplored space and the part that gives me the "Star Trek" vibes.  We are introduced to "The Lighthouse" which I will get into more detail about later on. Plenty of new worlds and systems are detailed, but the obvious thing here is that GMs will create their own worlds and systems. Still, though, there is plenty here to keep you busy. This section is the bulk of the book; over half. Game stats are largely limited to NPCs, some ships, and planets. 

Chapter 5: Hero Creation

This is the most rules heavy section of the book, but that is not say a lot. It is largely additional information to what is found in the Core Rules. The additions here include Homeworld or Nation and a few new careers. Though there are a lot of new details here that can affect every career. 

While there is a lot of material here, it is really all "World Building" material. While it is interesting, I don't find it compelling. Chances are very, very good that if I had played this game in the late 1990s, I would have converted it all to some sort of Star Trek-like game and used that background. In truth, I also find it less compelling than Star Frontiers, which tried to do something similar 15 years prior. I mean the Fraal are interesting, but they are no Vrusk!

Still I can't fault the game for what I want it to be, only what it is. It is somewhere between a fully realized campaign setting and a toolbox. Maybe if it had been allowed to continue on we could have seen more growth. Certainly, sites like Alternityrpg.net give credence to this idea. Their Star*Drive section certainly has enough to keep anyone busy for a long time. 

Select Supplements

I don't have a lot of material for the Star*Drive Setting, but I have some. Here are a few.

Game Masters' Screen
This is lighter card stock. Not too different than some of the early D&D 3.0 screens. 

Gamma World

Softcover, 192 pages. Color cover, black & white interior art. 2000. This one has a TSR prefixed product code (as did Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition) but the logo and company information is all Wizards of the Coast.

I briefly discussed this one in my discussion of post-TSR-Gamma World offerings. This softcover book by Andy Collins and Jeff Grubb takes us back to Gamma World—or at least, a Gamma World. It is still Earth, and it is still post-apocalyptic. 

This book uses, but doesn't require, the Alternity Core. Also it feels like Gamma World. I think this is because the design of Alternity had Gamma World in mind. Mutants and the like are already baked in to the core so no extra rules are needed to add them, just some extra options.  

While the rules are 100% Alternity, the background sort of precludes Star*Drive. Unless of course you want the Galaxy to have moved on without humans and Earth is this wasteland, OR, this is different, very Earth like planet. Imagine the shock when space travelers from Earth/Solar Union find this planet out in the Verge and there is a colasping Space Needle in a town called Seatle. This is something that would work, and work well, in Alternity. 

I would say that if you like Gamma World and Alternity is your system of choice then this is the version of it to play. 

Starships

by David Eckelberry. 96 pages, color covers, monochrome interior. 1999.  This one has the TSR Silver Anniversary logo on the cover. Listed as copyright 1999 TSR.

This one is fun. Not only do we get some cool spacehips (always a plus in my mind) but there are alternate FTL systems listed here so you can have the kind of game you want. Me? I would have seen the section on Warp and never looked back. Though there are some other good options here including relativistic travel with time dialation effects. And get out your scientific calculators, because in relativistic flight you will need to caluclate gamma changes. Yes. This is a selling point to me. 

We cover basic spaceship operations, technology, some skill uses and most importantly Spaceships!  The last third of the books covers ships and deck plans with costs. Again, not sure how acurate the costs are, but who cares! Spaceships!

The Lighthouse

by David Eckelberry. Color covers, mono-chrome interior. 1998. 64-pages. Features the TSR logo of the late 90s. Contact information is all Wizards of the Coast. 

This is the space station mentioned in the Campagin setting. The cover come free (like the old adventure modules) and has deck plans for all (well most) 200 decks. The feel is a cross between a Star Trek Starbase and Babylon 5. 

The history of the lighthouse is discussed including why it was built. We get some details on it's various systems and who lives there. It is be necessity a broad overview, but there is enough here to let me really dive into it. 

One of the reasons I have kept this one around becuse the plans are really perfect for my various Ghost Tower/Ghost Station of Inverness ideas [1][2][3]. For this reason alone I am glad I have held on to this.

--

Alternity Star*Drive has a lot going for it. If you are a fan of the system then I think this is a must aquire set of books. It doesn't do anything above and beyond what we have seen in Star Frontiers, Traveller or many other games, BUT it has a great flavor and the oprotunity to add material from Gamma World, Starcraft and even their other campaign setting, Dark*Matter. 

Sadly all of this was superceded by the d20 system. Much of Star*Drive (and Dark*Matter) would go on to live in d20 Modern and d20 Future. I will deal with those in another time. Likely next May.

I can't say for sure, but I have the feeling that Alternity was never given the chance it needed to survive. Cut off early and not supported. We saw the leel of support WotC could give to d20, which was in truth their darling. Alternity was the lost and forgotten older sibling of d20.  I am happy to see it has support online and that it still has fans out there.

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

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

—oOo—
Name: Hospital IslandPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author Jane E Cooper

Setting: Jazz Age EnglandProduct: Scenario
What You Get: Twenty-three page, 12.36 MB PDFElevator Pitch: Hospital horror in the fog of isolationPlot Hook: A mysterious telegram calls for help.
Plot Support: Staging advice, four handouts, three maps, five NPCs, and eight Mythos monsters.Production Values: Plain
Pros# Can be run using Pulp Cthulhu: Two-fisted Action and Adventure Against the Mythos# Easy to adapt to other times# Nice sense of isolation# Combines the cosy and the consternation# Mycophobia# Homichlophobia# Autophobia
Cons# Needs an edit# Are an Investigator and the prime villain related?# Feels like a solo adventure for a party of Investigators
Conclusion# Atmospheric, isolated sense of foreboding and something lurking.# Solid scenario that needs a polish to make it stand out.